by Mark Lumby
I could feel the energy of the demon from behind, pulsing through the air like static. But now I was only a few seconds away from the cave. It reached out for me, catching my shoulder with its long arm and throwing me off balance. But I didn’t fall.
Feet first or head? If I went into the cave feet first, my head would be vulnerable; it could be ripped away from my neck. But if I managed it, I would land on my feet. I went for instinct, so I dived through the entrance. The demon growled as I disappeared and fell head first down the six feet hole into nowhere. I heard the demon strike the stone walls with its fists, grunting and growling, shuffling. Then there was an eerie silence.
In the darkness I released the rucksack and removed the relic. I was blind. I unwrapped the cloth from around the mirror and placed it on the ground.
There was a scratching noise from outside, then scraping. Soon the noises were muffled as if I was hearing them from behind a wall, or within the stone. I could feel its energy again and the hairs on my arms twitched and stood to attention. It was moving, searching for me through the stone. I suppose I wouldn’t know it was here until it was too late to do anything about it.
I ran my hand over the coldness of the frame and then the smooth glass of the mirror. I crawled to my knees and looked down onto the relic as though I was looking into nothing.
“What now?” I pleaded. “I’m here; take me in. I want to see something, be the guardian. What do I need to do?” It was dark. I could see nothing, so why should this work?
The grunting was on top of me now. The demon was in the cave and directly above. It shuffled as though it was baffled. I continued to gaze into the mirror, not knowing what to expect or what I should be seeing, but desperate for this to work. The demon shook the ground above and I was covered in a blanket of dirt. Did it know where I was? Was this how I was going to die? Buried alive! More dirt rained down. I tried not to scream out, although I’m sure it heard me when I eventually did.
“Take me now, I beg of you. Please!” I yelled at the mirror. The ground above trembled once again, then stopped, and I was experiencing a silence where expectation was my enemy.
Hands gripped tightly around the relic, I lowered my face until I could feel my own warm breath deflecting back. I was feeling light headed and nauseous. It may have been a combination of the dark confinement of the cave paired with disorientation, or it might have begun.
My head throbbed. There was a stench of rotten meat. I could taste blood and hear the screams like something or someone was in so much pain they would prefer to die than suffer another second. It was a tortured cry for help. I heard the sound pleasure; the climatic moaning of sex. I could smell it, too.
I closed my eyes; my senses absorbed the smell and I felt aroused. In my mind, I could see another dark place, a women in the distance with her wrists and ankled chain to something that I couldn’t see. She was naked. I walked closer to her. She screamed out in pain, her head falling forward in exhaustion, long blonde hair hiding her face. And then she would moan with pleasure, her head lifting and falling back, flinging her hair back like whips.
Pain came, pleasure came, then pain.
I was close enough to touch her. And within the nudity, I saw bruises, lacerations to the breasts, infected wounds that hadn’t healed and still trickled blood. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to release her from the pain, cut her free, snap the chains. That much I did sympathise. But there was another part of me that was aroused by what I saw. The pleasure came and she knocked her head back again. I saw her face, sweating, dirty skin; she cried blood. But she was beautiful. And I wanted her. I had to have her. She slowly looked up, peering through her wet greasy hair. She licked her lips and parted her legs wider. I could hear her heavy breathing, and saw that her breasts oozed a crimson discharge with ever breath. She buckled with pain momentarily before surrendering to pleasure.
She grinned, gyrating her hips and lifting herself with the chains. She moaned, “You going to put that thing inside of me?”
My hand drifted and I loosened my jeans, dropping them to the ground. What was I doing? I took a step closer, my hand caressing her arms and waist, wet with sweat and sticky with her blood. She was feverishly hot.
She moaned again, “I want you, baby. I want you right now!”
I placed my hand on her breasts and squeezed until she whimpered. Blood flowed from the cuts. I moved closer. I lowered my hand, covered in her blood, to vagina and forced her lips apart.
She groaned through gritted teeth, and spat at my face. “You bastard!!!” she screamed, veins sticking out from her neck. And she squirmed again, throwing back her head. “Take me now! Take me now!” she moaned.
But then I stopped. I removed myself from her warm passage and stepped back. I looked around into the darkness. Someone else was here. I could feel them watching. It was neither something natural nor human. And that something that I could sense began to laugh.
The women, exhausted, looked at me through strands of her hair. She said, “Mmm, spoil sport!” And began giggling the words, “We have you now, Daniel.”
I swallowed hard. It hurt like I was gulping back a hand full of needles. I started to cough and couldn’t stop myself, until eventually I spat out blood. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “This is the mirror doing this! It’s not real!”
“Oh, its real,” a deep voice from the shadows cut through the darkness. “As real as I make it. This is what you really want; this is your deepest of desires.” It laughed; this laughter made me feel terrible inside, vulnerable, weak, helpless…guilty. “And now you are one of us, your desires are as real as you or I make them.”
The woman was still moaning and giggling, her legs crossing and then opening. But her head was down and I saw her face no more. I searched for where the voice was coming from, but it echoed like it was bouncing off the walls of a big hall or huge cave. It was impossible to pin point where the voice was. Everything went quiet and the woman was absorbed into the darkness until there was nothing.
I couldn’t breath. There was something squeezing my chest so tight it felt like it would crumble under the pressure. And then I realised what it was. The demon was here. The Pacemaker had reached through the ground above and had hold of me. I expected to be ripped through the walls, but there was nothing. It did nothing. It just held onto me, its stale warm breath burning the back of my neck. But it did nothing. It could’ve crushed me, dragged me through the walls like the tragic ending that was gifted to Father Thomas. I tried to break away from the demon, but it was locked onto me and it wasn’t doing a damn thing.
I realised that the mirror must have worked. And if it had, then I had total control of the demon.
I experimented by asking it, “Are you going to let go of me?”
The demon grunted, expelling a warm and intoxicating stench through the cloth wrapped around its face.
But I could feel its grip tighten; the air was squeezed from my chest in a sudden painful jerk of its arm. I coughed and pushed out against its unmatched strength, and I knew that at any moment my torso would implode into a bloody mess of flesh and splintered bones. I strained to say, “I’ll rephrase that; let me go!” I screwed my eyes and familiarised myself with the end of my life, and the pain was so intense that at that moment I prayed for the demon to rid me of my life.
This was it…I’m screwed…its over.
Slowly, as if reluctantly, it moved away. The pain in my chest hurt, but it felt lighter. I did have control over the mirror; I controlled the demon also.
I hastily wrapped the relic in the cloth and crawled through the black of the hole until I hit my head on the side. It was too high to climb out, so I called out, “Lift me out of here.” And to my instruction, I was levitated out of the hole. I could see moonlight from the entrance. I crawled out. The demon was there, too, hiding behind the trees like a dog that had spilled the trash can and was being punished by its owners. It snorted warm steam through the cloth around its face, the smok
e being separated by the branches. It appeared afraid. “You can go,” I instructed. It awarded me a nod and faded into air. I assumed that it had gone back to hell, or wherever it is that demons come from.
I navigated my way out of the forest. I walked through the trees in relative darkness, and even the moon and starlight ceased to help as clouds covered them like curtains. I stumbled a few times and slips down an embankment. A burning smell filled the air. Smoke drifted like fog. I made it to the car and started walking down the road that lead into town.
I left the car behind, partly because I needed the walk to clear my head, gather my thoughts as if I was trying to reverse or erase the impurities of the night. But mostly because Jack had set it alight and was now a burning shell.
The night was cold; frost oozed from my mouth like ectoplasm. But strangely, I didn’t feel cold. I speculated that this was just a reaction of the mirror. And once the curiosity door was open, I was allowed to wonder about other things too. I thought about what Carl had said about having something to hold on to, something to love to avoid being absorbed or consumed. He had my mother and his wife; his love for them was the key to what made him safe. That had been the magnet to avoid being consumed by evil. But what did I have? Who did I have? My mother was dead, and although I loved her dearly, that love had been reduced to the fact that I had cared for her in the last months of her life. I had given up everything for her, and now she was dead, and my life was transparent. So I suppose my relationship with my mother had turned bitter sweet. And I cannot say that I loved her in the same way anymore. So was this enough to have something to hold onto? I hope so.
***
The house was in my sight. Carl was standing within the doorway like it was the bars of a prison cell; he couldn’t pass it, couldn’t step over the threshold and sit on the rocking chair. When I was noticed, he looked as if he hadn’t expect my survival. I jumped up the steps, forcing a smile. Happy to see my face, he patted my arms, and I knew that he wanted to hold me, but I suppose he wasn’t that type of a man. He stood back and studied me as if calculating my clothes size. He rubbed his thin stubbled chin. I expected him to tell me that I’d lost weight, or something similar, a typical parental reaction when you’re not looking after yourself properly. But he didn’t.
“You’re different,” he said.
I nodded and my smile faded because I did feel different. “It’s done,” I said as though I hated him for being a part of this.
“You killed him; you killed Jack?” he gasped as though he could hardly believe it.
“Yes,” I said.
He shook his head in a disbelieving way. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“But I did, Carl.”
He nodded, gratefully. “Thats why I’m no longer attached to the walls, I guess. The hands that held onto me disappeared a couple of hours ago. I wondered why, but now I know. And the mirror?”
“It’s safe.” I showed him the rucksack on my back.
“Good,” he gasped. “And how do you feel? You look peaky. I’m assuming you used the mirror.”
“Enough Carl!” I raised my voice, although eventually breaking. I jostled him aside and darted into the house, but as I went through the doorway I buckled over and slumped to my knees in pain. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Like razor blades slicing through every nerve in my body, paralysing them only to endure the agony that was beyond pain.
“What’s happening to me?” I cried out.
“You’ve crossed the threshold, Daniel,” he advised, and he sounded guilty for giving no warning. “Once you walk back through this door, you can’t use the door again.”
“But why does it hurt so much?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Evil runs through your veins now, boy. It’s trying to consume you, eat your soul and use you. But you’re strong, you can resist it.”
“You could have warned me! You could have fuckin warned me!”
“If I did you may have changed your mind.”
“It hurts so much! You tricked me!”
“Of course it does hurts, Daniel. You have hell flowing through your blood like a virus; if you close your eyes tight enough, you can see what goes on there. Take a few deep breathes; it’ll go away.”
I did as he said, breathing deeply and exhaling slowly. It took a few minutes until the pain began to ease. I realised that Carl was rubbing my back, reducing the pain.
He said, “Just wait till you take your first piss.”
“Eh?”
“Its like pissing fire, or acid! Now that stings,” he chuckled.
I used Carls arm to heaved myself up, picked up the rucksack, and he supported me to the kitchen. I sat at the table, releasing the bag and dropped it to the floor.
“Careful with that!” he spat, but his voice changed to concern.
I chuckled and said, “Why? Because if it breaks you’ll live in hell for an eternity?”
“Well, yes, there is that! I just want to die accordingly; you know that, Daniel!” He gazed into my eyes and said, as though I needed reminding, “You know the plan!”
I stretched my arms across the table and lowered my head to the cold wooden surface. I breathed out and said, “I know the plan,” I huffed. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little tired.” My veins were tingling like pin and needles and my skin was ice numb. I looked around the kitchen. The room appeared different than before, as though I was looking at it through dark lenses. It was a few shades darker. I glanced back into the hallway; the front door was still open. But the sunlight that bled through was a hazy grey, although the door remained shiny red. I said, still curious of the grey sunlight, “Of course, you want to go. What do I need to do?”
“Not much…just allow it to happen.”
“Sound easy enough,” I said. “Ok!” I waved him out of the door. “You can go.” And I chuckled as though I was a little tipsy through too much beer.
“Thank you, my boy,” he sighed. “Thank you.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, and as appreciative as he was, his body language showed that he was reluctant to leave. Whether it was the house grounding him here or the myself, I didn’t know.
I followed him to the front door. “So that’s it, then? I won’t see you again?”
“No, but I shall call you…everyday. You don’t need to answer it; I’ll understand. And if you do find the need to answer, you don’t need to talk, although it would be nice to hear from you.”
“How will I know its you thats calling?”
“You’ll know. And besides, nobody else rings here so you will know its me.” He stopped at the door, reaching behind it for a medium sized brown cord holdall. He looked down at it and said, “all I need in this world,” and he smiled weakly, acknowledging that it wasn’t much to take with him. He took a deep meditated breath and stepped onto the porch. “Haven’t smelt such sweetness in a long while.” He breathed in deeply like a diver taking his final breathes of air. Holdall in his hand, he turned. “When the calls stop, wait one week. If after that you still haven’t heard from me, you can then assume I’m dead. After that, you know what needs doing, don’t you? Right?”
I glanced over my shoulder, into the kitchen, where the mirror was still packaged in the rucksack and lay on the cold kitchen floor. For a moment I thought I saw a shadow crouching over it, like a prize it couldn’t touch. It was a darkness so dense and with specific shape that I was sure its head pivoted to look at me. I could feel its laughter, but it also feared something else in that house, too. It feared me.
“Daniel?” He sounded edgy and was about to settle his bag on the decking.
I turned to him and said, “The mirror will be destroyed, Carl.” We stared at each other for a while. I could see in his eyes that he had doubts; it may have been disappointment. Did he honestly believe I’d go back on my word? “I know what I have to do. Father Thomas advised the same thing. So, yes…I will destroy it. And despite what you’re thinking right now, because I do know what you’re thi
nking, you know I do, I will not be tempted by its offerings.” And although he had good reason to doubt me, I was still offended by his accusation.
“I’m sorry, boy. Its just, I know how strong it can pull you in. So in the mean time, all I ask is that you take the mirror to the basement and lock the door on your way out.”
“Ok,” I shrugged. But I was just tired, and as harsh as it was, I wanted him to go. I wanted him to start his journey so that I could finish mine sooner.
Carl didn’t say, ‘goodbye’; he did shake my hand, though, a lame hand shake from a frail dying old man. And I know he wanted to hold me, but he refrained from doing so. Instead, he pushed a folded piece of paper into my palm. It was the paper that had burnt on the fire. It was still blackened at the edged, but intact.
“But…how?”
“Things happen here, Daniel. You’ll learn that. I was tempted to read it, but its for your eyes.” He turned round, looked up into the sky; it was grey and looked like rain. He said, “It would suggest that I’m going to get wet.” He chuckled. “Then so be it. I haven’t been touched by rain in some time. Hopefully it will pay service to my conscience, and cleanse my soul.” He descended the steps, and tested the garden path as if he didn’t trust it was real. But once he was convinced, he strolled down the path and through the gate. He never looked back; I don’t think he had the courage, just in case this was a trick and the evil inside the house would claw him back and imprison him within the walls. But before he disappeared, he stopped, and without turning, he yelled, “Don’t trust them, Daniel!”
“Trust who?”
Carl still didn’t turn. “The children!” He started to walk around the corner and continued down the road heading towards town.
I closed the front door, and thought about what he must have meant. It was a pretty random statement. Don’t trust them.
For some reason, the house didn’t seem as uninviting as before; it was very familiar as though I belonged. The hardened wax didn’t appear out of place; the darkness up the stairs had lost all hostilities. This was now my home, my house. I went down the hallway, past the wax, and into the kitchen. The shadow had gone; just the natural shadows from the light of the window. I tucked the note behind the hourglass, which was now full. I didn’t feel the need to read the letter. A lot had changed in the past few days and my life had become clearer. I felt free, and besides the hourglass being full, I didn’t feel trapped.
