A loud crack from a thunderstorm woke me up about twelve hours later. For a moment, I felt as if I’d slid off the couch and into a pool of slimy water. But it wasn’t water, it was sweat—all over the fleece throw and myself. The place came into focus. I wasn’t in my penthouse in Grace City. Lightning flashed, casting heavy shadows on the walls. My stomach complained of hunger with such force it hurt, and I was nauseated.
Or perhaps I drink too much when I’m alone.
I ate a small meal of leftovers, and found there was little else I could think about but ancient texts, demons, and Wendy. Though my body settled, my mind was not so satisfied.
Becoming rather enamored with Wendy’s story as of late, I’ve done a great deal of digging during lulls in the ER (and every break I could finagle). I’m tempted to try the spell in its entirety, but wouldn’t dare. Does that mean I believe? No. I’d just feel like a fool doing it.
I’ve brought my research on Undaga to several scholars, universities, and even Wendy’s mentor. There is nothing known about him outside esoteric references, and Wendy uncovered one of the exiguous translations available. He’s not mentioned in other texts at all, and those other translations discuss other members of the Timeworn Order, but no mention of that one. At first, I thought perhaps Wendy’s imagination invented him in a desperate attempt to save herself from whomever the real perpetrator of that rape was.
Wendy’s mentor was next on my list of fact-finding. He was perhaps the easiest to track down of all her connections save for her immediate family.
“I’ve had a long look at the translations,” Professor Alan said. “Undaga would be the closest translation we could make into Albionian for his name, so, no, it’s not fabricated. Was Langelier saying that was the case?”
He didn’t know why I had paid him a call, other than curiosity about the current work he was doing.
“No,” I said. “It was just a personal curiosity as I’d never heard that name before I encountered the SHHS.”
I told him my interest was due to my connections with the Silver Hollow Historical Society because I didn’t want to give away any of Wendy’s confidential information. As far as he knew, Wendy and I weren’t acquainted.
He knew Langelier was quite a wind-bag, so he concluded that the man had been gabbing, and I wouldn’t correct him. I heard him mutter something and the name Langelier, but what he muttered I couldn’t make out. It didn’t sound pleasant, though, as little connected with that man is.
“This is an exciting discovery as it’s the earliest work that mentions Undaga,” Alan said, a tinge of hurriedness in his voice. “The student who made this discovery will go down in history for its significance.”
“No doubt.”
“There are few later texts that mention him. Only two I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been studying the Timeworn Order for almost forty years. Fifty, if you count my fascination as a boy.”
I chuckled as he continued talking.
“Both are about a hundred to two hundred years younger than this text. The student found a gold mine.”
“Incredible,” I said, biting back that he really didn’t know the whole story. We said our farewells and concluded our business.
So Undaga is there in the texts. There is no question whether he appeared anywhere else because he did. That still didn’t mean he was real, or he somehow came to life to terrorize Wendy.
There’s something a little strange about the recording I made of Wendy, too. There was nothing wrong with the recorder at the time. It’s a small, digital recorder that I can upload to a secure cloud service we use for medical records. While I was uploading, saving it by patient code, I took a minute to listen to it on my laptop.
Any time Wendy mentioned Undaga, I heard a noise I couldn’t identify. The hospital is a noisy place, filled with electronic beeps, boops, and voices over the intercom. The room that Wendy and I were in was a private room, and though I can hear a hiss of ambient noise, this isn’t related to anything found in a healthcare setting.
It’s a growl, covered in a layer of static.
I have no idea what it is, and I’m not sure how to go about investigating it. But I have other things to concentrate on, rather than some electronic disturbance that may or may not be “unexplained phenomena.”
I’m going for a walk and will stop by the Historical Society. I’ll write again when I have answers. Or rather, when I have good questions that are worth answering.
-Kit
***
29 September
This past fortnight (short of a fortnight), I decided to dig more, and went back to Wendy. She is still at hospital receiving treatment and doesn’t wish to leave just yet. Again, not because she thinks she’s mad, but because she believes she’s safe.
The patient refuses medication, but is showing no signs of mania nor depression, and is only upset about the attack. She is like any person who has faced a crisis, other than her story of Undaga.
“Do you have a moment?” I asked before entering her room.
Wendy motioned me in, but she seemed more distant this time. I haven’t spent all that much time with her, being busy in the ER and all that.
“Sure, as much time as you can spare,” she said.
I took a seat. “Would you be willing to tell me more about this Undaga?”
Wendy shook her head. “Why do you keep asking about him? You don’t believe me.”
“No, I don’t believe in the Timeworn Order. They’re fairy tales from long ago that people in authority used to control the populace.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, until one of them raped me.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again—scrambling a moment for what to say. “I’m sorry, Wendy, that you went through that. I think your mind changed a human being into this demon to cope with what happened to you. I can’t blame you for that. It’s terrifying to think that a person would do such a thing.”
“I can summon him, you know,” she said. She was giving me a scathing look. If she’d had something sharp, she would have stabbed me.
This was not going the way I’d envisioned. Wendy was bitter about the incident now that the shock was over. I should have seen that coming. I should have left her alone to grieve what happened to her.
Instead, I pressed. “Is that so?”
“Yes. The text translations told me how.”
If Undaga existed, I wanted to see him. Not that this would happen. I tried to hide a scoff at her and instead put one hand up to the back of my neck and gave it a squeeze. “Perhaps I should just go. You don’t seem like you’re in a good place right now and I’m not helping.”
I stood up to leave. Her therapists would do a better job than I would, and, my curiosity overrode what was best for the patient. The only solution was to get out of there and stop bothering her.
Wendy shrugged. “Tell you what, Doctor Cross. When I’m discharged, I’ll send Undaga your way.”
I froze and turned around to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “Did you just threaten me?”
She barked a laugh. “No, Doc. You want to see him so much; I’ll send him to you. That’s all. I’m tired of people not believing me.”
I got it. But what did her delusional mind mean by sending him my way? Did I want to encounter such a creature? Was she angry enough to summon him and send him to harm me? She thought I didn’t believe her, and I suppose she was angry about the incident, so she turned to a target convenient and safe as an outlet—one of her doctors.
“If it’s that important to you, Wendy—that someone believes you, then please, send him my way.”
“Sorry, Doc—I’m tired.” She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed the area between her eyebrows.
“I know, and apologies for disturbing you.”
Wendy nodded, and I left.
I’m not a psychiatrist. Right now, I am an ER doctor in a small township who has to clean up messes in
my department. I don’t have the time, patience, or inclination to work with psych patients other than to toss them in the rubber room when they get out of control. The lot of us are overworked (normal for doctors but double for us). I can’t wait to go back to Grace City at the end of October at the latest and never return. I promised myself I’d stay committed to charity work, and help in a rural area with an underserved population. Silly me. The next time I leave, I’m going to Albion to serve the still-struggling country. It will always be my home.
At any rate, I’ve left Wendy alone for a while, checking up on her through my colleagues and taking peeks at the case notes on her. Been doing that for a while now.
She recovered to where she decided she would be safe. We could no longer keep her in the hospital, despite her insistence upon an ancient demon rapist that assaulted her. That’s not dangerous, just delusional. She threatened me for a while, though. When I reviewed the case notes, I found that out. That alone could have been enough to keep her hospitalized, because even though none of us believed her, she could be delusional enough to hunt me down, then blame the demon. Then the threats to send him my way stopped. It’s okay to be out of touch with reality these days, so long as no one gets hurt. I won’t even start that whole political hornet’s nest.
Time for bed. I can’t think about this anymore for tonight.
-K.C.
***
3 October
None of this matters anyway, because now I’m one of the nut cases, too. Except I don’t believe what happened was real. My mind made it up out of fear and generated by a night of having too much to drink and being alone all too often. Not to mention a possible fungus that has infected my rental home.
Maybe.
Ever since I moved to Silver Hollow for the summer, I have had difficulty getting to know people and making friends. All of my friends—Mercy, Frank, Bryce—they’re all at home in Grace City, which is a bursting metropolis in the Northeast Territory. Mercy’s there, recovering after her incident. I still feel guilty about that—that I put her in such danger. Perhaps this is my comeuppance.
Life here consists of long walks, visiting the general store (Haverty’s) to be stared at like a medical curiosity, workout, and work at the hospital. Bryce was planning to visit, and I was planning not to let him get any sleep.
This is off track but I’m getting around to explaining what happened—whether in my mind or not.
My injuries were real.
I was sitting up in bed awhile after Wendy’s discharge, alone with my near-empty glass of red wine in one hand, and in the other, my favorite detective, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes comes to bed with me as often as possible these days. Near the end of The Hound of the Baskervilles, I heard a noise outside my bedroom window.
Stupid is not a word I use to describe myself. One, we have wild animals around here, and I’ve heard them make human-sounding racket outside my house, so I won’t just fly off the handle with my shotgun. Two, I didn’t bother to inspect it, because it would likely turn out to be a large animal, and what did I care? If it tried to come in the house, I’d shoo it or shoot it if I had to. Simple as that. Unlike some city dwellers, I’ve never feared animals. I suppose that’s because of my summers in the country in Albion. My brother and I encountered so many wild animals there. We knew to keep our distance and observe them.
After Mercy’s visit, I wasn’t shy about using my shotgun. Plus, if any of the residents got it in their heads it was okay to break into my home, I was ready for them to be surprised. I hate having to shoot a person, but I will if it means protecting myself.
When I looked up, the noise stopped. I strained to listen. No noise. I went back to reading the last three pages.
As I looked back down at my page, the noise started again.
Fantastic.
I got out of bed, grabbed my shotgun off the wall and loaded it (as a woman living alone in a rural area that still gathers a transient influx, I don’t think this is paranoid). Then, I walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain, calm as always.
But there was nothing there. Just the bins for refuse and the enormous oak tree that bent in the breeze.
Not stupid enough to open the window’s screen and stick my head out of it, I put the curtain back in place, and crawled back under the covers. I set the shotgun down onto the floor (within reach) and picked up my book.
As I finished my reading, I heard the noise again.
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. It was just a large animal—a deer wandering around looking for a garden to graze or a bear on the hunt for berries. There are black bears around the area but they’re people shy unless they’re starving. Then they’ll march right into one’s garden or home and help themselves to the kitchen. In the summer here, Haverty told me, wild animals appearing in people’s yards was not a to-do. Though I’d spent time in the countryside as a youngster, I didn’t know this was so prevalent (it never happened to us). After a few weeks of being in Silver Hollow, I’d gotten accustomed to the country. Wild animals in the Union still gave me a bit of a scare (the worst we had in Albion was foxes), but I learned that if one leaves them alone, they will return the favor.
I reclined back on the bed, dimmed the lights, and just listened.
A few crunches, and then silence—not even crickets chirping. But it was getting colder at night, and I supposed the insects and amphibians wouldn’t be as active.
I switched on some classical music and settled.
That’s when the creaking noise happened.
Just a soft creak as if someone had stepped on a floorboard and disturbed it. Again, living alone makes one vigilant, so I snapped my eyes open and grabbed my shotgun. This wasn’t a normal house settling sound. It was just one footstep. Not the little kids noise either—as I mentioned before, sometimes the settling of the foundation sounds like small children’s feet pattering across the floor. That wasn’t it. This was a deliberate footfall.
The cats are back home, so it couldn’t be that. Besides, it had sounded too heavy to be a pet-sized animal. It was more like a man walking in my house.
The thought made my stomach tense up and my flesh tighten, a sensation of little bugs crawling all over my arms and neck.
I sat up and listened for a moment, shotgun in hand. Nothing. When I checked the hall from my open bedroom door, I couldn’t see anything.
I turned on my side and raised the lights, then double-checked to make sure my firearm had shells loaded and ready. Paranoid? Yes. But what if I wasn’t?
Looking out the bedroom door from my seated position, I kept my gun at the ready. I didn’t ask ‘who’s there?’ or say anything aloud, because why give away my location? No. Instead, I waited in silence to see if I would hear it again.
I did. More than once. Creak, creak. Stop. Creak. The noise sounded as though it had reached the top of the stairs.
That was enough to make me come close to weeing myself. My heart rate picked up. I felt the first prickles of fear touch my scalp and work their way down my body, steeling my spine and making my stomach drop.
Weapon aimed at the door, I heard the footsteps get closer. “I have a shotgun aimed right at you, so whoever it is, you’d better get out of here!”
Then, a laugh. A soft, low, deep voice laughing. “Don’t shoot,” the voice said. It sounded like Bryce.
I got up off the bed and hollered again. “Where are you?” It was far too dark out there and the light from my room was obfuscating the hallway.
“I’m at the top of the stairs. Can I come in?”
I went to the door and saw Bryce standing there. Tall, handsome, black-haired, blue-eyed Bryce. He and his man-jaw and sexy prominent cheekbones. Stupid git.
“What are you doing here?” I said, coming over to him and giving him a hug, my sigh of relief audible. He hugged back and I could smell his cologne, like burning autumn leaves. I inhaled my fill of him as he squeezed me.
“I wan
ted to surprise you, so I let myself in with my mad lock-picking skills,” he said. “But when I got here, I saw something funny hanging around the back window, so I went to look, but there wasn’t anything there. Sorry if I scared you.” He gave me one more reassuring squeeze back.
“It’s all right,” I held him close, then backed away and pointed at him. “But you could have been shot, you know.”
“I should have known better, but I trust you not to be a hair trigger,” he reached out for me and snickered. “I wanted to be spontaneous.”
My frown from admonishing him turned back into a soft smile. “Well, I suppose I can’t fault you for that.”
I forgot all about my earlier grievance. I put the safety on the shotgun, then back on the floor next to the bed, and hopped in, giving Bryce an open invitation. He was enthusiastic. It had been a while for me, and I think so for him too. I didn’t care if not, but he’s selective about his companionship. Judging by his repeat performances that night, he had been living a monk’s life during my absence.
A natural sleep aid, I drifted off in his arms in a matter of minutes after we were uncoupled.
His heart’s rhythm carried me off into the darkness. Then, the rhythm changed to a kind of drumbeat. Bryce was not the man in my bed. It was that god-awful monster my mind had built up to be demon from Perdition—Undaga. I was paralyzed underneath him, much the same way that Wendy had described. He tore into my flesh, the pain not registering at first, and then searing and burning came, enough to wake me up.
When I turned over, I expected to be face to face with Undaga, but it was Bryce, his chest rising and falling in a deep sleep. I huffed out a sigh as I relaxed.
I put my head on Bryce’s chest and listened to his heart rhythm. The slow, steady, and strong beat of an athlete’s heart. It helped to calm my racing one, and still my breathing back into its own quiet pace.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Another. An echoing laugh sounded in my head and I saw a wide grin with crimson lips stretched too far to be human, revealing sharp, serrated teeth, a runner of drool trickling out of the corner. My eyes snapped open, and the image faded. I stared at my lover for a while, watching the rise and fall of his broad chest, the smoothing of his brow, and the tiny twitches in his face as the muscles relaxed. My eyelids drooped, and images of our earlier pairing soothed me back to slumber. Then, on horseback, chasing my brother through the sloping fields of the summer home as we rode towards a lighthouse. The great tower loomed at the edge of a cliff as waves crashed against the rocks, and I was on foot then, running, cutting the bottoms of my feet on jagged rocks as Phillip laughed, pointing to the sky. The sky turned red, and the towering lighthouse caught fire, raining stones down on us.
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