Servants of Darkness (Thirteen Creepy Tales)

by Mark Edward Hall

  Things have not been good for us in a very long time. The truth is, I can no longer stand being around her. Looking at her, especially at those awful glasses she insists on wearing, revolts me. They’re narrow with pink plastic frames studded with rhinestones, and they turn up at the ends like the fins of a fifty-nine Cadillac. But the glasses aren’t the only antiquated things about Leona, although they’re probably the most repulsive. She refuses to have them updated. She says they fit her style perfectly. I suppose she’s right. Her style is drab, boring. Her hair has gone gray (she won’t even consider having it colored) and most of the time she wears it pulled back in a tight bun. Left over from her days as a school teacher. She retired two years ago. Her body has lost its curves. Now she’s thick through the middle, shapeless, and I never see her in anything but faded housedresses. It’s no wonder that dream haunts me.

  Leona’s not afraid of much, but she’s afraid when I drink, I can tell, although she never says anything about it. Just stays out of my way, glaring balefully at me from around corners. Lately I’ve been drinking too much. Even I know that. I’ve been retired five years and there doesn’t seem to be much else to do except drink, wander around the house and wait for that dark void to come and claim me.

  These days, my only saving grace seems to be the dream of Leona when she was young. I can’t explain why it has taken over my life. In reality, the dream woman is far better than the young Leona I once knew. I should not kid myself about that. Inexplicably the dream seems to have sexual undertones. I don’t understand it. For a very long time now sex has been virtually non-existent in my life. Could it be a subconscious last-ditch attempt to capture a dynamic that never really existed between us? I don’t know. Christ, nothing seems real anymore. Except that noise, of course. The sound of metal scraping against dry, pebbly soil.

  “They’re rats,” she insists, although I haven’t challenged her. “They’re chewing on something. Electric wiring or worse. You’d better do something about it soon, Harold before all hell breaks loose.”

  I just stand there looking fixedly at her, sorry I’d mentioned it. Sorry I’d gotten out of bed. Sorry I’d been born.

  I turn and slump away from her defiant stare, trying to come to grips with going down into the cellar. It is a dark and gloomy place. I’ve never liked it much, and furthermore I’ve never been able to articulate those feelings very clearly. They belong to someone else, I think. They come from a place inside of me that I don’t recognize, a place that frightens me even more than the cellar does.

  Down there is where we keep our laundry appliances and deep freeze, and I’ve got a wine rack with maybe a hundred bottles on it. I like wine. Especially the hearty reds. They’re supposed to be good for the health. Lately I’ve been thinking about moving the rack up here so that it’s closer at hand. In truth it’s because I do not want to go down there. The dreams of my young Leona and my fear of that noise have become too closely linked. I don’t understand the connection and I fear what I don’t understand. So now I send Leona down when I need a bottle and she’s the one who does the laundry. That way I don’t have to deal with it.

  Half the cellar is crawl space; hard-packed soil with a quarter inch layer of dust covering it. The other half, the half with the appliances, the furnace and the wine rack is dug out, lined with rocks, has a cement floor with long jagged fissures running through it. And it’s not deep enough for me. I’m a tall guy. Six-foot-one. I have to bend down like an arthritic, and usually end up cracking my head on a furnace pipe or a floor joist. It really pisses me off when that happens.

  I hesitate a moment too long.

  “Come on, Harold, be a man.”

  She has a way of making me feel smaller than my six-foot-one frame. The anger and the shame meld together. Finally I snatch the flashlight off the rack and go down. Leona stands at the top of the stairs watching me go. At the bottom I switch the light on. It’s not a very bright one. A single bare forty-five watt bulb hanging from two frayed electrical cords. The only thing it manages to do is cast gloomy shadows. I point the flashlight’s beam into the crawl space looking for the source of my fear. There is nothing there, of course. But I wait, nevertheless, biding my time. Suddenly I see something, a quickly-scurrying shadow that disappears almost immediately. “Rats . . .” I breathe with astonishing relief. Leona was right. Thank God. I’m not about to crawl up there, though, through that dust and all those spider webs. I hate rats, but I hate spiders even worse. I decide to get drunk instead. On my way out of the cellar I grab three bottles of wine.

  “What did you find,” Leona asks, looking at the wine with circumspect eyes.

  “You were right, boss. Rats.” I uncork one of the bottles.

  “Well, aren’t you going to do something about them?”

  “Later.”

  “Have you forgotten, I’m leaving tomorrow?”

  “Leaving?”

  “Yes, I’m going to Toronto to visit my sister Ruth. You’ve known for two weeks. Are you daft? I’ll be gone seven whole days. When I get back I expect this rat situation to be taken care of. Do you understand?”

  I nod and head for the living room with my wine. Relief washes over me; an entire week without Leona. Now I can get drunk and dream of that soft body in peace.

  Later that night, drunk, I fall into bed. Leona is already there, snoring softly. She awakens to my touch and brushes my hand away with what feels very much like revulsion. I lay there for a long time staring up at the ceiling, wondering what my life has come to. When I finally do sleep my dreams are filled with shattered images of Leona, the way she never was, the way she never will be, floating above me on gossamer threads. When I reach out to caress her, the face contorts into ridicule. For some unknown reason I feel dirty and so terribly ashamed, and for the rest of the night my dreams are filled with that awful, inexplicable sound, the sound of metal scraping against dry pebbly soil.

  Sometime well after dawn I awake with a start. My head throbs with a wine hangover. Leona is no longer in bed beside me. I push the covers aside and step out onto the cool floorboards. My legs are shaky. My head wants to burst. I look at the clock and a deep feted breath escapes me when I see the time. It’s eleven AM.

  In the kitchen there is a note on the table.

  “I did not wish to disturb you,” the note says, in Leona’s curt and customary style. “See you in seven days. Don’t forget the rats.”

  I pick the note up and crumple it in my hand. “Right,” I say, tossing it at the garbage can. “You take care of the rats.”

  I am afraid to go into the cellar, so I get dressed, drive to the store and buy wine. I spend the rest of the day doing the best thing a man can do for a hangover: getting drunk. By midnight I fall into bed, and when I sleep my Leona is there, drifting above me, melding into my arms. My beautiful Leona, My soft sweet Leona. Come to me.

  I am awakened suddenly by the sound of metal scraping against dry pebbly soil.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  And I am suddenly sure that it is not rats.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  How could it be? Rats do not make industrial sounds. The fear wants to stop my heart cold in my chest. I try not to let it. I lay there all sweaty, panicky, my breath ragged in my lungs. I do not dare move as those sounds completely invade my senses. I pull the pillow up over my ears and scream, but still it does not go away.

  It has been nearly a week now and the sound has not stopped.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape, it goes, all day and all night in a never ending cacophony of grating noise that fills my senses and has most probably taken my sanity. The image of my young, beautiful Leona has stopped as well, and for that I am sorry. As much as I hate to admit it, I really miss her. The laundry’s piling up and I’m running low on wine. I don’t want to go into the cellar, but I know I must eventually. Something is waiting down there for me; I know that as well, and sooner or later I will have to face it.

  Finally, when I can stand it no l
onger, I get my gun out of the drawer in the desk, and I go to the cellar door, open it, and walk carefully down the steps. At the bottom I switch on that dusty light, glance furtively around me looking for the demon that lives there in the dark bowels of my existence.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  At first I do not see anything because my eyes haven’t adjusted to the dim light.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  But then I look down and see the dried blood on the cracked concrete floor, and the drag marks across the dust that covers the hard-packed soil of the crawl space. And the shovel is there, lying askew in the dirt. And then I see the mound of loose soil where the hole has been dug and refilled, and Leona’s shattered glasses are lying there in the dusty clay as if they have been angrily stepped on. I look stupidly down at the gun in my hand, open the chamber and notice that only five of the cylinders are occupied with live rounds. I look back into the crawlspace searching for that peripheral movement. But now I don’t see it. And finally, thankfully, that scraping sound has stopped. Leona was right about one thing. She said I was nuts, and I refused to believe her, but now, dear God in heaven, I can see that she was right.

  The Immortal Breath of Life

  The Egyptian Desert, 1939

  Torch-light illuminated the outside of the stone-lined entrance chamber. Hieroglyphic pictographs, etched beautifully in polished marble, made their way in evenly divided rows all the way to the top of the huge chamber door. Vultures, snakes, flowering reeds, water—all telling their ancient stories. And, in the top center of the door, a huge bloated sun—Aten the Sun God—his life-giving rays shedding his beneficence on all.

  The old archeologist stood in silent awe, savoring this, his grandest moment. He did not need to translate the pictographs to understand what he had discovered here. A chill of excitement went through him when he realized that he had been right all along. Although he’d been digging in a likely spot three hundred yards from the actual discovery, he’d believed from the beginning that the tomb was somewhere in the immediate vicinity. And here it was, only five hundred yards from camp and one hundred and eighty degrees from the main dig.

  Winston Smith had been digging in and around these barren hills for the better part of three decades with merely a pittance of artifacts to show for his labors.

  Now, in a few short weeks his discovery would be plastered all over the front pages of the greatest newspapers in the world—London—New York—Paris. What sweet retribution it would be after so many years of being the outcast. If this find proved to be what he suspected, Smith would go down in history as one of the greatest discoverers in the annals of Egyptology. He stood gazing at the door, scarcely able to comprehend his good fortune.

  Perhaps the most surprising—and the most redeeming—aspect of the discovery was the Mastaba tomb. Mastabas were from the period of the Old Kingdom. The contents of this tomb, Smith suspected from the markings on the door were from the period of the New Kingdom, the eighteenth dynasty. This could mean only one thing. A heretic pharaoh from the New Kingdom—one who believed himself clever enough to deceive his enemies—had buried himself beneath an Old Kingdom tomb.

  Three thousand years, hidden away in these barren hills, and then, in the night, the wind had howled out of the Sinai like a supernatural thing, as if some magical deity had purposely parted the great sea of sand for just such a delivery. How ironic. In two days, or three, a week at the outset, the ever shifting desert would crawl back over the tomb and hide it away again for perhaps another thousand years.

  “Joseph, bring the torch in closer!”

  Joseph Kumara, a young Indian man of twenty-one years had been Smith’s personal assistant for the better part of a decade. Smith had rescued the boy from the slums of Calcutta at the age of eleven after his parents had been killed in a fire. Smith, in need of an energetic assistant, had seen great promise in the boy and took him under his wing. He’d brought Joseph to Egypt and had taught him the rudiments of archaeology. Joseph had been eager to learn, and life with Smith had been very good to him. He had come from poverty and would never have had the chance to visit the great cities of the world—London—Cairo—Paris or New York—if it had not been for his beloved master. Smith had schooled Joseph; taught him the finer points of the English and Arabic languages, to read and to write; taught him about his own ancestors and the fascinating histories of other cultures as well. And there was no doubt about Joseph’s loyalty to Master Winston. The young man owed the old Englishman a great debt. If it had not been for Winston he never would have risen up out of the slums of Calcutta and the hard life that had claimed both his parents.

  Joseph moved into the chamber behind Smith holding the flaming torch high over his head. Smith used his roughly calloused hand to brush away the centuries of encrustation on the door of the sealed vault. He squinted into the gloom and began to translate the inscription there, reading aloud as he did so.

  “Here lies Akhenaten the great Pharaoh,” he read. “I am the Immortal Breath of Life, the mighty leader of the Kingdom of Egypt and all of the lands beyond.”

  Smith stopped. He felt such a chill of excitement go through him that for a moment he thought he might actually faint. He had to force himself to stay calm. Gray motes darted across his vision like energetic sea monkeys as his legs weakened into nearly useless lumps of flesh and bone. His pulse raced in his temples. He had to grasp the door with both his hands to stop himself from tumbling over.

  “Master Winston,” Joseph said. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing, Joseph,” Winston lied. “Just need a few moments to regain my bloody senses.”

  “You mustn’t get too excited, Master Winston. Remember what the doctor said. Your heart is not well.”

  “My bloody heart is just fine, Joseph.” Smith said crossly. He rested there for a moment, his forehead pressed against the cool stone of the door. Finally he stepped back and again began to read.

  “No mortal must ever disturb the contents of Akhenaten’s tomb. To look upon the dead gives the dead new life. Turn away now and be gone forever lest ye incur the wrath of ka.”

  Lord of heaven and earth, it was true. After all his years of searching had he finally found Akhenaten’s tomb? Akhenaten—the sun worshiper, husband of Nefertiti, Tut’s predecessor.

  Although an empty tomb had been found at Tell-El-Amarna by German Archaeologists in 1912, the mummies of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were never located. Several artifacts and a bust of Nefertiti were discovered, but that had been all. It was widely assumed that robbers had plundered the tomb centuries before. But Smith, ever the dissident, had thought not. He believed the empty tomb a clever deception by a King unsurpassed in the ancient Egyptian art of deception. And now he knew beyond a doubt that he was on the threshold of proving that theory. He’d spent the majority of his life in these barren hills, chasing his elusive dream, and last night a bloody sandstorm had delivered it right into his lap.

  “What is ka, Master?” Joseph Kumara asked, his heavily accented English tinged with awe.

  Smith barely heard him. He could scarcely believe what he’d just read, and he was in a daze as he stared at the huge slab door before him.

  “Master Winston!” Joseph insisted. “Do you understand me? What is this . . . ka?”

  Smith reluctantly turned away from the door and faced his servant. “Ka is the cult of the dead, Joseph. It is the ancient superstition of life immortal. The “ka” is a part of the symbolism in ancient Egyptian mythology and represents several things: the reception of the life powers to each man from the gods. Ka is the source of these powers, and it is the spiritual double that resides within every man. Legend speaks of a spiritual double being born with every man and living on after he dies as long as it has a place to live. The ka lives within the body of the individual and therefore needs that body after death. This is why the Egyptians mummified their dead. If the body decomposed, their spiritual double would die and the deceased would lose its chance for eterna
l life. Each pharaoh had his own interpretation of ka and therefore his own symbol. Akhenaten’s symbol was the head of a man placed upon the body of a great bird of prey so that after death he would fly away into eternal life. With Akhenaten it had to do with the Sun God, Aten. According to legend, ka cannot survive unless the body of Pharaoh is preserved from decay and violation. The inscriptions on this door are his warning to those who would violate the sacred covenant.”

  Joseph’s dark, almond-shaped eyes widened. “It is surely magic, master,” Joseph whispered in awe. “A curse. We must leave this place at once.”

  Smith flapped an impatient hand at his servant. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “It is merely ancient superstition. Have the workers dig here at the base of the entrance. Remove all of this sand. I will enter the tomb when the task has been completed.”

  Joseph Kumara backed away from the shadow of the huge stone door, a strong feeling of unease settling over him like a weight. “As you wish,” he turned and nearly stumbled in his haste to depart the entrance chamber.

  Smith made his way out of the narrow corridor. He stood on the hummock for a long moment gazing out over the desert. His heart had finally begun to settle down, and for this he was thankful. At this altitude he could just make out the Nile Valley’s green ribbon of vegetation as it receded into the desert like a twisting snake. “Mighty Nile,” Smith whispered. “My beloved friend, lifeblood of the ancients. You have finally given up your greatest secret to me, and for this I will be forever grateful.”

  Smith was in a state of euphoric shock. Rarely did he take time to ponder the poetic mysteries of this place in which he had spent the better part of his life. His existence had been singly focused; a quest for the ultimate discovery, and now it seemed he would finally be given his due. He pulled his gaze away from the hypnotic horizon, turned and made his way down the treacherous path towards camp. There he would find the sanctity of his tent and his journal. He would enter what he’d just read and contemplate the bountiful treasures which must surely be waiting there for him inside the tomb.