Rebecca raised the gun to shoot again, but the attacker, along with her husband, had already disappeared.
Where have they gone? She wondered. Into the earth?
By the time that she reached the center of the cemetery, the portal had closed completely, and there was no sign of the struggle or that her husband had ever been there. Rebecca stood among the tombstones and cried out against the rising sun. She wondered how it was possible that a brand new day could already be one of the most horrible that she had ever known.
The first few days after Thomas’s disappearance, Rebecca remained optimistic, but the more time that passed, the more worrisome she became. She began to no longer think of herself as a woman with a missing husband, but instead, she saw herself as a widow.
Thomas wasn’t the last to disappear over that autumn. Over time, as shadows grew longer and the harvest of the last of the summer vegetables had already passed, several men around the area took missing. Pretty soon, there was gossip and tales of a horrifying creature that wore a robe and had the mask of an animal that began to emerge among the countryside. People said that they saw the creature in the fields as the sun was dropping behind the trees. One young boy claimed that he saw the villain near the cemetery. Some that only got quick glimpses of the creature speculated that it was a werewolf that they had seen, while others thought that it was a masked madman that was terrorizing the countryside in a murderous and bloodthirsty rampage.
It was only men that disappeared. Before long, in an effort to keep their husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers safe at home, families bolted their doors as soon as dusk began to fall and didn’t open them again until the sun was well into the sky the following day.
IN FRACTUS, the cellar of the plantation house had become a blood soaked mess. The one handed man had been working numerous hours trying to perfect his creation. A single lantern lit the room, giving the ominous flicker of fire. Stanwood’s books were lying open on the shelves. The head of a black goat sat on the floor in a pool of its own blood. Each of the horns had been removed from the cranium.
In the center of the room, Thomas was laid out on a makeshift table that the man had crafted out of old timbers. Thomas was nude except for a piece of cloth that had been tossed over his groin. He was unconscious and couldn’t feel any pain from the procedures that were being performed on him. The one handed man was seated next to the table, hunched over, sewing up an incision on Thomas’s chest. After the procedures had been completed, the man sat back in a chair and waited. He drank ale until Thomas’s eyes opened. He watched as Thomas finally sat up and groaned in agony.
Looking at him, the man saw that Thomas had become a jagged example of what the he had intended to accomplish. By referencing the books of superstitions, similar to what Stanwood Rimbault had done to him, the man had used various symbols of evil for his creation. In between collecting men from along the countryside, he had been bringing other things over into Fractus; goat horns, bats, foxes, and snakes.
He had sewn the goat’s horns onto Thomas’s forehead with thick, black sutures. In his inexperience of any type of surgical process, the horns had ended up lopsided, one way above the other, well into the hairline, while the other was only a few inches above the right eye. The wings had been constructed by sewing numerous bat wings together into one solid piece that in the end had a span of several feet. He had given Thomas the claws of a fox.
That night, as he tried to sleep, he could hear the shuffling of feet below him in the cellar. There was the occasional moan of pain. His mind raced with what he had created. He knew that the creation wasn’t exactly what he had intended, but he would keep on until he perfected what he was trying to do.
After bringing several more men to Fractus, it wasn’t long until he got it right and he had several demons under his leadership. He would guide them on their journey of hurting men and women. With the exception of Thomas, each of them was able to transform themselves from one form to the other, making it easier to blend into the society of Earth. Their sweat could seduce anyone. He would call the first ones The Primordial. Along with the name that he had given them, he had also appointed himself a name; he had become The Master.
And all he had left to do was set the whole thing into motion.
HE TOOK the spell book with him through the portal. He searched all through the nearest township until he was confident that he had found a worker of dark magic. The woman appeared to be hideous, what one would call a hag. He took his time studying the old woman’s comings and goings, what her habits were. He didn’t want to scare her. He needed her. She would be a key player in the unfolding of his master plan.
He finally approached the old hag late one full moon night. She lived alone in a ramshackle hut on the edge of the swamp. The air held the pungent smell of swamp water and thick mud. He saw movement near the edge of the water and was sure that it was the tail of an alligator disappearing into the mush. His feet squished into the ground as he walked. All around him were orbs of glowing swamp gas that looked like ghosts floating into the night sky. The walls of the house were so threadbare that he could see orange candlelight flickering through the cracks between the boards. He knocked on the door, and it was only a second until she opened it. The old woman stood facing him in confidence. It was obvious that she was not the slightest afraid of who would be at her door at that late of an hour.
The hag was even more repulsive up close than she had been from the distance where he had watched her. She was bent over in a near horizontal hunch. A cloak that was the color of brackish pond water covered a piss-yellow dress. The cloak’s hood was thrown back, exposing the top of her head. Her hair was the color of cobwebs and matted together in a tangled chaos. Dead leaves and small twigs were caught within the mess of hair. The man even saw the shell of a cockroach.
The woman didn’t speak. Instead, she looked at the man and laughed. It was a cackle. Her breath was rancid. It smelled like her cloak and dress looked.
“Come in,” she said and turned her back to the man.
The man stepped inside the house, behind the woman. Without her touching it, the door slammed shut behind him. The sound startled him. The inside of the house was small, barely livable by the man’s standards. It was tiny compared to the plantation house that he had become accustomed to. A fire was burning in the stone fireplace that was on the other side of the room and not all of the smoke was escaping the chimney. A cast iron kettle was over the fire. The woman walked to the pot, picked up a bowl and ladle, and made the man a bowl of soup. She walked back across the room and handed it to him.
“Don’t worry, dear. I won’t poison you,” she said. “It’s just alligator eggs. Sit down.” She motioned to a small table and a set of chairs that sat in the corner. The man wondered who, besides him, would ever be a guest at her house.
Facing one another, the man spoke. “This is why I’m here.” He slid the spell of how to open the portal across the table. The woman reached out her hand and placed it on top of the paper and pulled it to herself. She picked it up and began to read.
He told her about The Primordial and how they had been created to feed off of the pain and hurt of humans.
“You can’t create demons,” she said. “Those would have to be summoned. You’ll have to give them a new name.”
“What are they then?”
The woman stared blankly into space before turning her attention back to him. “Durori. It is from one of the most ancient of languages; it is Latin for hardship. I was the one that gave Fractus its name in the first place.”
The man nodded his head and went back to the reason that he was there. “I want you to approach the most desperate person that you can find. When you do, make them an offer. You can fix their problem, whatever and how horrible it is; you can grant their wishes. You will open a portal and send on of the Durori.” He stumbled over the strange word. “All they have to do is agree to the rules that you set forth. A sacrifice,” he said.
The woman cackled again. “A blood sacrifice,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been involved in anything as heretic as that.”
“You -”
“I know,” she cut him off. “I don’t have to do anything. I only set it in motion,” she said. “I’ve been involved in this since the beginning. I was the one that wrote the spell for the Halfords to curse the Rimbaults. And then the one that the Rimbaults used to create you.” Her yellow eyes locked with his.
The man was speechless. He hadn’t expected for her to know who he was.
“And now you’re here. I guess everything eventually comes full circle,” she said.
“What do I need to give you as payment?”
The woman cackled again. “I don’t need a payment. This is what I was created to do. If I don’t do these kinds of things then I would cease to exist.”
.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JULY 31st
“WHAT IS it?” Thorn asked into the old and outdated rotary phone. He had not succumbed to the more modern way of only having a cell phone at his use. Unlike most people that he knew, he still liked to have the comfort of the landline. And it wasn’t just the phone. He liked to surround himself with old things. It was a reminder of how things could last. He was sitting at the antique banker’s desk in his apartment and the curled phone cord was stretched tight from the wall inside the kitchen to where he sat. The carved wood talisman sat on the otherwise empty desktop. Its eyes and wide mouth were facing him.
“It is an eater of worlds,” It was his mother on the other end of the line.
Thorn glanced at the talisman and studied the abnormally sized mouth. Eater. He had just told her about the vision that he had experienced upon touching the door and how he had found the talisman.
“I see now that everything that I’ve suspected over the years is true. You are the one that will be able to break the curse,” she said.
“How do you know? What makes you think that?”
“When you touched the door and blacked out, the things that you told me that you saw and experienced would only happen to the one that was prophesized to end it all. The same thing happened when you were little. Meet me at Sherry’s and we’ll talk over lunch.”
After hanging up the phone, Thorn placed the talisman into its box and left it sitting on the desk. He thought about what his mother had said and could vaguely remember the same thing happening to him when he had been a kid. As soon as he opened the door, the humidity of the day crashed over him. He locked the door to his apartment and went down the flight of steps. It wasn’t long after his feet hit the concrete of the sidewalk and he was walking in the direction of Sherry’s that he saw Mandy round the corner. She was wearing a pair of jeans, cowboy boots, and a loose fitting blue blouse. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. A large, brown leather purse was thrown over her shoulder. He saw that she had a wide smile spread across her face. As they approached one another, the smile slowly faded into a look of concern.
“Thorn,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Thorn hadn’t seen her since the night that she had knocked the picture off the wall and hadn’t even thought about how he must look to her now. Since his fall from the tree at the plantation house, a deep purple-black bruise had come up around his eye. He hadn’t had a black eye since he had been a kid and felt humiliated by it now. A small bandage covered the deepest scratch that was on his cheek. He had left the others that were across his forehead uncovered, and each of them was now scabbed over. He thought that he must look like he had been in a fight. And lost.
“I’m going to have lunch with Momma,” he said, realizing that it wasn’t what she was asking.
“I mean, what happened to you?”
“Mandy, it’s a long story, but to make it short, I fell out of a tree.”
“A tree?”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the talisman and with it I think I can finally set things right.”
“Thorn -”
“I need to do this,” he said, cutting her off and hopefully reassuring her. “Maybe then I’ll be able to fall in love like a normal person.”
Mandy nodded her head. It was obvious that she was no more confident in his wellbeing, mentally or physically, than she had been when she had first spotted him. “Well I’ll let you get back to what you were doing, but I was just coming by to tell you that I, Mandy Walker, was chosen to open for Birdhouse.”
“Mandy, that’s great,” he said with a smile so big that it hurt his already damaged face.
Birdhouse was one of the hottest up and coming country bands, and they would be performing a show at the amphitheater that was near the Rimbault’s plantation house. With each town that the tour stopped at, they had held an open audition for local artists to win the coveted opening slots. It made him happy to know that Mandy had won.
“It’s a sold out show,” she said with a smile. “I can’t believe that I’ll be playing in front of that many people. They gave me a band for the night and everything. I really think that this is my chance.”
SHERRY’S WAS a quaint, little café on the edge of the city. There were only two tables outside on the sidewalk. Thorn and his mother occupied one and the other was empty. Both of them had ordered pimento cheese that was served over iceberg lettuce, yellow and purple striped dragon tongue beans, and sliced cucumbers. They each had cold iced tea to drink. The day was too hot to even contemplate eating something any heavier.
Cassie, Thorn’s mother, reached into her perfectly sized black leather purse. She had worked hard over her life trying to make something of herself and now owned a prestigious antique store in the heart of Savannah where she sold to the wealthiest clients that the city had. That day she looked every bit the part. She wore a perfect white shirt and her graying hair held the confident dignity that some older women were able to pull off. Her days of working multiple jobs just to make ends meet were long gone. She pulled an envelope out of her purse. “Ella Rimbault, Stanwood’s wife, had a diary. Several of the pages got passed down through the generations, photocopied and eventually ended up here.” She handed the envelope to Thorn.
Thorn ripped into the paper and found a small USB drive.
“Those are the actual pages that have been scanned. I think after you read them, a lot of your questions will be answered.”
Thorn nodded. “I’ve also been having a kind of guilty feeling about this whole thing. It’s almost like I was the one that did it.”
“That feeling of guilt started with Ella and has haunted our family ever since. Eventually all of us feel it.”
That night, Thorn put the USB drive into his laptop. The contents appeared on the screen. ELLA RIMBAULT’S DIARY, it said. Thorn clicked the file and opened it…
27 September 1795
The guilt that I feel about what Stanwood and I did today is horrible. I am embarrassed and shamed at both mine and his actions. I wish I could go back and fix it all. My greatest dream is that we never would have done what we did in the garden tonight. I know that I am just as guilty of the horrendous crime as Stanwood. My God, please forgive me.
13 October 1795
It has already been over two weeks. The situation has gotten worse. The man wasn’t supposed to die. It was only supposed to be an astral projection, placing him in that made up world, hurting the Hexley bloodline until the Hexleys surrendered and lifted the curse on my family. But the plan fell apart. Somewhere, somehow, the man’s body ceased to function. Stanwood and I buried him in the field behind the house. The guilt is piling up upon me like a pile of brick. I assisted in killing someone and for what? It was all for a selfish act of revenge. I don’t know if I can live this way any longer.
15 October 1795
As if everything else that has happened hasn’t been bad enough, Stanwood has remained in the cellar for days now. He doesn’t even come out to eat or drink. I fear for his sanity. I don’t know what he does down there all day and night. I haven’t seen my husband in
three days. Because of that heart that he carved in the wood I can’t open the door. He put a spell on it so that it can not be opened and Fractus can not be destroyed until the curse is lifted and a Rimbault falls in love. Stanwood says that love is what will open the door, giving access to the box, and the ability to destroy what we have done once and for all.
15 October 1795
Since my entry this morning, I decided that I’ve had enough. I spent all afternoon carving a talisman that will hopefully aid in my goal of destroying Fractus. I can’t sit here and wait indefinitely for them to lift the curse so I’ve taken the matter into my own hands and I will destroy it myself. I used magic once again to create the weapon. I swear that it will be the last time I fall to such desperation and needless contempt for what the good lord has planned for me. If I pass before I’m able to release the talisman’s power, I’ve drawn a map that will lead to its location. I really think that a member of our family will one day fall in love. It may not be soon, but I truly believe that it is already in the works. I think that the higher power has already planned it all out for all of us. It may not be in my lifetime, but one day a Rimbault will make things right.
16 October 1795
Today I went to the slave quarters and gave the talisman to my friend Nala. Stanwood doesn’t like me associating with her, but I do anyway. He says that I shouldn’t be friendly with the slaves. Nala is going to hide the talisman. If I’m not here on the next full moon, I’ve written the spell on a piece of paper and placed it inside the box. Everyday I feel worse about what I’ve done. The guilt is horrible and I don’t know if
Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Page 14
