Harbinger Island

by Dorian Dawes

  "We will bring about the coming," they chanted again. "We will bring about the end of all things. You will hear the final melodies and despair. Avaroth! Avaroth! Avaroth!"

  Helena took a glance around the barn. There were lights flickering from the symbols scattered below and they cast faint illuminations along the walls. She could see faces now writhing behind the boards - howling, screaming, tortured faces, clawing out their eyes and flailing madly. Justin broke from her grip, rushing towards the shadows.

  "Justin!" She lunged forwards.

  "Do not leave the circle!" Bartleby screamed, grabbing her by the elbow. "You cannot help him now."

  The tall figure in robes pointed a claw at Bartleby. The chanting ceased long enough for them to croak out one harsh word. "Suffer."

  A second later, the tall cultist was standing directly before Bartleby. They reached forwards and touched the tip of their finger to Bartleby's chest. Bartleby coughed, looking down at his chest where the cultist had touched him. He froze, croaking. His mouth hung open as his entire body shook. A pair of chapped and bloody lips smiled from beneath the tall cultist's hood and they vanished, returning to their original position outside the barn.

  "Professor?" Kara grabbed him by the shoulder.

  Veins began appearing all along his skin, stretching up from his chest and becoming visible along his neck and face and temples. He let out a hoarse cry and collapsed to the ground quivering. The light from the symbols below faded. Unabated, the undead minions who'd been standing at the edge of the barn began walking forwards once more.

  Helena rushed and grabbed Kara by the side of her head. She whispered out a quick incantation. Kara felt energy pulse through her and her grip on her bat tightened.

  "What the fuck did you just do to me?" Kara said. "I feel great."

  "My magic is running through you, giving you extra strength," Helena explained. She knelt down besides Bartleby's quivering body. "I'm gonna try and fix whatever the fuck they did to Professor Bartleby. Can you go to town on the zombies?"

  "Way ahead of you." Kara's grip tightened around the bat and she charged into the throng.

  The nails made a sickening sound as they met the face of the first corpse that lunged at her. Blood and brain-matter spattered across the bat as it ripped the creature's head from its skull. Kara found herself laughing as she kicked a charging zombie in the chest cavity only for it to be sent flying backwards, where it splattered messily against the barn wall.

  Helena turned her focus to Bartleby. She ripped open the buttons on his shirt. The cultist had created some form of black spot along his chest, right at the center of his surgery scars. Helena placed her palm flat against the area and began concentrating, whispering incantations under her breath. Light formed at her fingertips and began pulsing into him.

  "This better fucking work," she whispered.

  * * *

  Justin ran, stumbling and coughing in the dark. He was only aware after several minutes that he'd left the barn far behind. He somehow found himself standing in the Black Goat Woods. He wiped his nose against the edge of his sleeve jacket and looked around. He felt weary, on the verge of collapsing.

  "Pharaoh," he cried out. "Come out here, you sack of shit!"

  Pharaoh emerged from the dark with a hurt expression on his face. He was shirtless and barefoot. He wore a set of black robes that belted around his waist and draped long on the ground behind him. An elegant headdress sat atop his head, which was also black and inlaid with gold. There was a gold ring on each of his fingers.

  "You know my name by now," Pharaoh said, stepping close and touching Justin's cheek with the back of his hand. "Let me hear you say it. I want to feel it dripping from your lips."

  Justin shivered beneath his touch. He couldn't bring himself to pull away. He looked into Pharaoh's eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks as he felt more of the black bile rising in his throat.

  "Rhamal," he said.

  The creature grinned. "Now, what is it you would ask of me, fragile one?"

  Justin stared at him, limbs trembling with exhaustion and terror. "Call off your cult. Tell them to release my friends."

  Rhamal let out a disgusted snort and released him, making a little tch sound. "You know who I am, the power at my fingertips. I could show you such grand vistas, grant you powers unimaginable, and this is what you ask?

  "We're not responsible for that cult anyway, but our influence has an interesting effect on weaker souls. I mean, do you personally weep for every ant that gets scraped beneath your boot?"

  Justin clenched his fists. "Why me? Why'd you get me mixed up in this nightmare?"

  Rhamal gnashed his teeth and laughed. "You amused me. My name has become synonymous with songs of sex and identity. I needed to know your touch."

  Justin recoiled visibly. "What's happening to me? What's this black stuff? I feel it inside me, making me sick. My head hurts, and I'm starting to see things."

  "Your eyes are opening, fragile one." Rhamal grabbed Justin by his hands and pulled him into an unwilling embrace. He kissed the top of his head and held him close. "See, my time inside this flesh wall is coming to a close, but I'm not ready to give up my autonomy and freedom just yet. I need a new vessel, or at least someone to share the burdens to prolong my stay among you."

  "What are you doing to me?" Justin whimpered.

  "We can be truly intimate." Rhamal's grip tightened around his wrists. "The stuff of which no lover has ever dared dream. Our consciousness melding into one being, the ultimate expression of love. Or perhaps we can remain separate and flit through eternity together, hand in hand while we bask in all the wonders of the universe. We'll see the glorious end of this world and many others, watching their rise and fall."

  "Let me go," Justin begged.

  Rhamal released him. Justin stared for a second. The sharp, knot-turning pain in his stomach resumed. His mouth burned as the same awful black sludge spewed forth from it. He stared doubled-over at the writhing mess in dawning horror.

  "It's you," he whispered. "You're making me into you!"

  Rhamal laughed. "Something like that. It's too late to stop the process completely. You were mine the moment you took me into your bed."

  "I don't want this!" Justin screamed. "I want to be me! I worked hard to become this. My name is Justin. I fuck around with my gender. I like loud music and sex with hot guys and I love my friends, and I love being me! I don't want to be you or anyone else!"

  Rhamal sighed. He looked more than a little disappointed. "I've only been courting mortals for the last two hundred years … this is the first time I've ever been dumped."

  Justin wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He looked about ready to begin crying again. "Yeah, well, get used to it. You're a creepy fucking asshole."

  "I'll get over it. Only I can know the terrible mistake you're making, all the wonders you're giving up."

  "Shove it, slime-breath."

  Rhamal grinned. "I suppose I deserve that. Hold still, this is going to hurt - a lot."

  Before Justin had a chance to react, Rhamal was on him, pressing his thumb sharply into his skull. He began chanting out several words, some of them in Ancient Egyptian, others in a language far older and almost unutterable by human tongues. Justin howled as he felt something being ripped from him, pulled from every pore in his body. Rhamal opened his mouth inhumanly wide and there was a light from deep inside him shining through.

  Justin's mind flashed through a series of terrible images. The ground was a road paved with corpses, scarcely visible through the streams of flowing blood. Skyscrapers made of decapitated flesh and muscle stretched high into the heavens. Moaning, screaming figures, still alive, were strung between them on rusted barb wire. Hulking behemoths with red wrinkled skin formed the dead and dying into their twisted sculptures, their long slender fingers almost like giant serpents coiling expertly about their battered bodies.

  He felt sharp pains digging into his sides and he was one of the naked and tortured
figures being pulled about by giant alien hands. Faceless bulbous heads the size of football stadiums stared at him while their fingers worked to rip the skin from his flesh. He could hardly hear his own screaming over the roar of machines thumping rhythmically in the distance.

  None were so loud as the creatures themselves, whose language emulated that of the shrillest sirens. They pulled Justin to pieces and laid him in the foundation of one of their many flesh structures. He was aware of every sickening crunch as his bones were reshaped and molded.

  Justin woke. He stood once more in the woods. The black trees loomed on all sides of him. The oppressive unnatural silence reminded him that he was alone. He placed sweaty hands against the sides of his head and screamed. He spent the next several minutes trying to rid himself of the dreadful memory.

  He was grateful for the cold night air chilling his skin, snapping him back to reality. His friends were still trapped in the barn. He could still see the field before him, and the farm some distance at the bottom of the hill below. Justin ran without thinking.

  God, this was suicide. Hopeless, fruitless, suicide. His lungs filled with despair. He nearly choked on it as he ran.

  * * *

  Crack! Kara's bat slammed into each ghoulish minion lumbering forwards. With another blow, she sent one flying several feet back. Its body slammed into the back wall of the barn where it fell into a slump before slowly reanimating and crawling forwards again. At least four crept behind her, gnarled fingernails latching onto her clothes and pulling at her hair.

  Vicious, yellowed teeth punctured her skin through her sleeve. Kara nearly dropped her bat as she screamed. The zombie didn't have a chance to bite again. She used one hand to keep batting the others away, and with the other yanked its head from its shoulders and stomped it into the dust beneath her thick-heeled boot.

  "Motherfuckers won't stay down!" she hollered. "Helena, how's Operation Get-The-Fuck-Out going?"

  Helena continued pumping more healing energy into Bartleby's wounds. There was a visible effect as color gradually returned to his skin. The black veins along his flesh had at least disappeared.

  The head cultist hissed some word in a guttural voice and the walls of the barn croaked and groaned with the foul energies let forth. Scratches and thumps from the dirt behind her caused Helena to peer over her shoulder. The spirits of the dead slowly took form, reborn as pallid translucent wraiths. With naught but gaping voids for eyes, they clawed blindly through a stringy membrane of black pitch to crawl into this world.

  Kara slowly backed towards Helena, keeping the bat held defensively out in front of her. "Got anything else to throw at these guys? I think I'm running out of juice."

  Helena looked up, eyes red from crying. Her brow was furrowed in a fierce expression. The cultists had entered the barn now. Their minions parted reverently before them. Helena made a motion for Kara to stand aside. She stood, fists clenched, mouth set in a tight line, fingers crooked and ready to unleash her spells.

  The tall cultist swayed towards her, making strange hissing noises. Kara watched as best she could while still bracing herself for the creatures creeping up behind her. The cultists' movements gave her the impression of a collection of snakes stacked on top the other. The tallest one leaned close to breathe a chilly air in Helena's face.

  "I'm over here, shit-heads!" Justin called, hands cupped around his mouth.

  He was standing in the doorway, silhouetted in the moonlight. He looked like shit, with blood covering his forehead and leaking from his ears. His clothes were stained with black filth and more blood. Even with how petite and fragile and terrified he looked, there was something about his anger that was frightening.

  The lead cultist turned away from Helena in that second. It was all she needed. She hissed an arcane word under her breath and flipped her fingers around, making a swift hex symbol like horns in the air. She grabbed the cultist by his shoulders and barreled her way into him, legs perched against his chest. Moths of varying sizes, shapes, and colors swarmed out of her mouth and covered him. He made a motion to shove her off his collapsed body as he beat around, shrieking and hissing beneath the attack of the moths as their tiny teeth burrowed into his skin. Helena was flung against the dirt, moaning as fresh bruises formed against her chest and arms.

  The other cultists rushed to either side of Helena as Justin came charging into the barn. She caught a brief glimpse of his face up close in the dark. One of his eyes had changed color, and was now a shimmering golden hue. The other cultists locked arms and grabbed her, while a few were distracted by Justin's charge.

  Justin thought of the horrible visions he'd been subjected to while under Rhamal's grasp. There were more images now, fleeting glimpses at indescribable landscapes filled with untold horrors, each nightmarish segment like a bleak hallucinatory apocalypse running rampant through his mind. He'd seen and suffered so much from this cult and their gods. He wished for nothing but for them to have to witness those same horrors, to see the things he'd seen and suffer the knowledge of it all.

  One cultist's hood had fallen off, revealing a grim-faced old white man staring back at him. He locked eyes with Justin and screamed. He fell to his knees, clutching his eyes and tearing at them with his thumbs. The others pulled their hoods tighter over their faces, refusing to look upon Justin's fury.

  It was opportunity enough for all of them to flee with Bartleby in tow under Kara's arm. Helena paused only to close the door and slam it behind her, trapping the remaining living cultists and undead in the barn. She saw briefly the wraith-creatures grappling with the cultists and holding them in place, and she nodded in approval before backing away from the barn. A small orb of fire appeared in her hands as she whispered a chant under her breath.

  "Go fuck yourselves," she said, hurling it at the barn.

  Flames licked the side of the walls and the night was filled with screams and crackling cinders. Bartleby's eyelids slowly fluttered open. He took one look at the flames rising high into the sky. He glanced at Helena and gave an approving nod to her handiwork.

  "My car is around back," he murmured. "Get me the hell out of here."

  * * *

  Bartleby sat in his living room, surrounded by piles upon piles of books. Over the course of his life, he'd collected so many that he'd simply run out of shelving. His disorganized late-night studying and reading left many of them in scattered stacks, along with notes on papers and pushpin boards full of yarn with the connecting conspiracies all over his house. His office-study was worst of all, with strings and clothespins holding up photos and other documents so he could see the way it all pieced together.

  Justin had never been to the professor's home before. There was a skull sitting on top of a pile of books, and a photograph of him as a younger man standing next to a woman and her small son. When asked about it, Bartleby gave a flustered cough and mentioned a colleague of his from Germany - they kept in contact through brief letter exchanges. There was a lot about the eccentric history professor that he didn't know.

  After tending to their injuries, they sat in the living room together and exchanged stories, sparing no details. Only Justin omitted a few of the horrific things he'd witnessed, instead claiming he'd lost consciousness and nothing more. Bartleby leaned back, placing a weary hand on his forehead.

  "I'm afraid that this isn't the end of this story," he said. "My experiences with the Maleficarum have demonstrated them to be focused and single-minded. Perhaps, though, they have realized this to be a case of mistaken identity, especially now that Rhamal has revealed himself. You are lucky to be alive, my boy."

  Kara stared at the nasty wound on her arm. It had been healed through Helena's magic, but there was still a horrific discoloration where she'd been bitten. She rubbed at it and closed her eyes.

  "So … this bite? Will it kill me?" she asked. "I mean, I'd rather you all smack me over the head now before I get all snarly and shit."

  Bartleby shook his head. "Summoned undead are serv
ants of powerful evil. Were the condition allowed to spread as a virus might, they would already have won."

  "I still feel him as part of me," Justin said. "Rhamal. Is that ever gonna go away?"

  Bartleby closed his eyes, mournful. "I don't know. I can't tell you how sorry I am. I wanted to protect you, and I failed. You should never have had to experience what happened tonight."

  Kara shook her head. "I'm not sorry I got involved. I can't speak for Justin or Helena, but it sounds like this shit was already out there to begin with. So long as there's butt that needs to get kicked, I'm all in."

  Helena gave a reluctant grin. "My spells needed to get used for something."

  Justin shook his head. "Freaks. I love you both."

  Bartleby leaned back comfortably in his chair, watching as the tension in the room gave way to mirth and laughter. His smile faded, and a darkness passed over him. Those kids would never be safe again, not after this. His only comfort was that they wouldn't suffer alone.

  The Historical Society

  Gloria Padilla had been running the Wakefield Historical Society independently for the last 30 years. It'd been a labor of love, funded almost-exclusively by donations and the occasional exhibition, and she would probably have kept running it that way had her health not started faltering in her old age. The shriveled old Mexican woman had a particular way she liked things and little patience for idiots; the HELP WANTED sign had stood in the window for nearly a year before Dayabir Singh walked through the door, wearing a big grin and striking blue turban.

  There weren't many Sikh people on Harbinger Island. Out-of-towners were always the most interesting to Gloria - at least tourists had the spark of curiosity in them. However, Dayabir was no tourist. This kid had enthusiasm. He wandered wide-eyed over creaking floorboards, past the Wabanaki arrowheads that usually garnered the most attention from visitors and tourists, and went straight to the set of yellowed pages preserved behind panes of glass. He was scarcely able stifle his delighted gasp.