The Final Cut

Home > Other > The Final Cut > Page 19
The Final Cut Page 19

by Bark, Jasper


  Jim came to a fork in the path and headed right to Sloman’s office. Whatever was pursuing him sped up and blocked his way again. Jim was forced to take the other fork. It’s playing with me, he thought. Pushing me down the route it wants me to take.

  Jim was panting and his lungs were beginning to burn. He wasn’t in the best shape and the running was taking its toll. Halfway down the new path he saw the grave. He recognised it instantly. The gravestone was unique; Jim knew every inch of it intimately. The moment he saw it he knew why the thing in the ground had guided him here.

  The ground in front of the gravestone had sunk into a deep depression, like a grassy pit. What made it look even odder was the way the turf all around it was folded in on itself. As though the grass was a balloon that had been deflated or the stretched and flabby skin of someone who’s undergone rapid weight loss. It had looked very different several days ago.

  3:

  A Week Earlier . . .

  Cundle rubbed his bald patch, and sighed. He was a short bloke with a neatly trimmed beard and glasses. His belly hung over the front of his jeans, stretching the trendy T-shirt he wore.

  “Any idea what’s causing it?” said Sloman, who was tall and thin with a long face and a liking for tweed jackets, which made him look older than he was.

  “I do have a theory,” said Cundle. “But it’s still hypothetical and not very conventional I’m afraid.”

  Sloman and Jim exchanged a look, Cundle had a habit of talking like he was giving a lecture. Cundle stepped forward and patted the hillock that had sprung up on the grave. The ground all around it was perfectly level, but the grave itself had developed a mini hill that was at least five feet high. Its shape was unusually bulbous and reminded Jim of the distended belly of a famine victim.

  The hill had been growing slowly, like a bulge in the earth, for the past three months, getting noticeably larger by the week. The grave was one of three affected in this way, all of them growing large swollen mounds. Jim was very well acquainted with each of the graves and had originally brought the matter to Sloman’s attention.

  Sloman hadn’t thought it important at first, but when the mounds began to swell up into little hills he’d gotten in touch with the cemetery’s trustees and they’d found some money to get an expert to investigate. That’s when Cundle had been called in. He was a professor at a nearby university.

  “I think the graves are being affected by the moon,” Cundle said. Jim rolled his eyes and Sloman shook his head to quiet him.

  “We know that the moon affects the tides,” Cundle continued. “But it’s my belief that it has a similar effect on the outer layers of the earth’s crust. Usually this effect takes place over such a long period of time we can hardly account for it, but occasionally there are anomalies such as this one. Phenomena that point to the extraordinary effect of the moon on the ground beneath our feet.”

  “Do you know how we can fix it then?” said Sloman. “Without taking a bulldozer to ‘em.”

  “Oh no, you can’t bulldoze these graves. This is a site of great scientific importance. I shall have to come back in a week’s time when the moon’s at its lowest ebb to do some more tests and then some weeks later when it’s at its fullest. All tests will have to be conducted after midnight, so I’ll need access to the cemetery then.”

  Sloman frowned, annoyed that Cundle wanted to study the problem, not fix it. “Jim’ll let you in,” he said. “He lives on the grounds and he’s often up and prowling around at night. Isn’t that right, Jim?”

  Jim blushed at this. He put his hand in his pocket and adjusted his boxer shorts. A few crumbs of soil fell out and he shook them from his trouser leg without the others noticing.

  4:

  The grave had fallen in that morning, before Cundle arrived with his fancy equipment. He looked crestfallen when Jim showed him. He had no explanation for the dramatic collapse of the hillock, and didn’t understand why it had sunk in on itself in a matter of hours.

  Cundle acted as though his precious theory had collapsed along with the grave. He seemed to take comfort in the fact that there had been localised tremors in the area just before the collapse.

  As Jim tore past the grave now, he noticed something new. At its foot was a long vertical slit in the earth, almost a gash, where the turf had been pulled apart. In the waning light of the early evening, he could just make out that the gash opened onto a small tunnel.

  It took ten minutes to get to Sloman’s office from the grave. Jim’s legs shook, he knew he couldn’t keep up the pace. He wondered for a minute if he shouldn’t just lie down on the grave and get it over with. Then he thought of Cundle and what had been done to him and the fear of that spurred him on. Now that Jim had seen the grave, whatever was chasing him seemed content to hover two steps behind him. If he slowed to a walk, it would move closer and worry him, like a sheepdog herding a stray.

  Sloman’s office was by the main gates, a single storey building with a gabled roof that had once been the cemetery keeper’s cottage. Now it served as a visitor’s centre and workplace for Sloman. The largest room contained a little display about the history of the cemetery and a few shelves with ‘local interest’ books. In the back was Sloman’s office, a small kitchen and a toilet.

  It was usually locked at this hour. Jim fumbled the keys from his pocket as he jogged up. He noticed the main gates were chained and padlocked. Jim hadn’t seen the big padlock before and he had no key for it. He had no idea who’d done it, but it changed all his plans. He’d hoped to get the hell out of the cemetery the minute he’d alerted Sloman. Now he’d have to make his way out of one of the side entrances. That meant facing whatever was out there again.

  Jim’s heart sank the minute he entered the largest room. Something was obviously not right. For a start there was the smell again. It was fainter, but it was definitely there, heavy with rot and a sickening ripeness.

  The strip lights in the main room were flickering, but the office out back was in shadow. Jim had expected to hear Sloman at work, typing on his laptop or chatting on the phone. Instead the whole place was dead silent, too silent. The door to the office was slightly ajar. Jim couldn’t see beyond it.

  He felt like he was in a horror movie. He realised this was the moment when the audience would scream for him to get the hell out, to turn around, run or do anything other than go in that back office. It was one of the reasons he couldn’t watch horror movies. He couldn’t believe how stupid most of the characters were.

  Yet here he was walking towards the office at the back like there was a horrible inevitability to it, as though he had no other choice but to do this. In real life, he thought, sometimes you don’t.

  Jim pushed open the door and stepped into the office. He let out a sob when he saw Sloman. He sounded like a little school girl. Suddenly he felt very detached from his body, as though he were far away from that office, watching it all from a safe distance.

  He hadn’t liked Cundle very much, but Sloman was a different matter. Sloman was a decent guy and he’d been good to Jim.

  He shook his head and blinked the tears out of his eyes. He couldn’t take in what had happened to Sloman, his brain couldn’t process it. It was like trying to decipher an unknown language or work out an entirely new branch of mathematics, wholly beyond his comprehension.

  Every bit of furniture was shattered. Sloman’s laptop, his cable router and his radio lay in tiny pieces on the ground. The walls, floor and ceiling ran with blood and viscera. Thick, viscose droplets fell all about Jim.

  The bones from Sloman’s disassembled body were scattered around the room in strange geometric arrangements. Bits of cartilage and tendon still stuck to some. Jim couldn’t grasp anymore than that, his mind wouldn’t let him.

  There was a slight tremor in the ground, causing all of Sloman’s bones to rattle. The same fetid odour rose in the office like a sudden increase in temperature. Jim started to back out when his foot kicked something that skittered out of the d
oorway. He turned to look and saw it was Sloman’s hand, the only part of his body to remain intact. It had been severed at the wrist but Jim could still see his wedding ring.

  The fingers of the hand were clutching something. Jim bent to get a better look and saw it was Sloman’s phone. A tiny flutter of hope awoke in him. There might just be a way out of this, he could still call for help. Jim had not owned a phone, a laptop or a tablet since he came to the cemetery. It was one of the things he did to stay off the grid and avoid detection. He regretted that now. He desperately needed to connect to the outside world.

  Jim pried the phone from the still warm fingers of the hand and tapped the screen to check for a signal. No bars were showing, but the screen was open on a text conversation. He swallowed hard. He was sure he recognised the number and it made him nauseous. The most recent message had been sent a few hours ago, while Jim had been out weeding. It read:

  TY Phil, once again u r a STAR!!! I’ll b there soon 2 pick up the spare keys. Don’t tell J I’m w8ing for him @ the bungalow. Don’t want him 2 do another runner!!! xxx

  Jim’s hands were so sweaty his fingers were almost too moist to scroll to the top of the conversation. The first message in the conversation, from a week ago, confirmed his worst fears:

  Hi Phil, sorry 2 bother u with a txt, but u’ve been so gr8 and I’ve been out of my mind since Jim took off. He got rid of his phone and everything. I have so many bills 2 pay and I’m due in just over a month. u don’t no wot it means to finally find him. thnx Fi xxx

  Jim thought Sloman had been a bit off with him for the past week and now he knew why. Fiona had tracked him down, but how? How had she known he was at the cemetery? Had she guessed why he really came to work here? She’d be the only one who could.

  There was another tremor and Jim turned to look back into the office. For the first time he saw the huge hole in the corner. It had been behind him when he entered, so he hadn’t seen it. The small pile of soil poking up through the hole began to shake and grow, sending loose earth onto the blood soaked floorboards.

  The cloying smell wafted out of the office and Jim knew he had to get to the bungalow. He wasn’t certain what he dreaded more, finding Fiona alive or dead.

  Run to Ground will be out June 10th.

  THE QU’RM SADDIC HERESY

  by Nicola Tanthus PhD,

  Associate Professor, Camford University

  The Qu’rm Saddic Heresy, also known as the ‘Faith that Comes Before Man’ and the ‘Oldest Truth,’ is one of those enigmatic by-roads travelled by scholars of antiquity, especially those interested in lost and ancient beliefs. As with other heretics such the Gnostics, the Bogomils and the Cathars, most of what we know about the heresy comes from its harshest critics. But whereas many works have come to light, in the case of Gnosticism, that allow the heretics to speak to us across the ages, no document has yet been discovered that belongs to this heretical set of beliefs. Though the ancient Greek scholar, Achaikos of Thebes, informs us its adherents claimed all religious beliefs stem from this heresy and are a mere corruption of the more profound truths it contains.

  This belief is mirrored in the writing of Italian scholar and Catholic priest Marsilio Ficino, who proposed the doctrine of the Prisca Theologia, which asserts that a single true theology exists, one that underlies all world religions, and was given by God to man in antiquity. Ficino, the first modern translator of both the Corpus Hermeticum and the works of Plato, never directly referred to the Qu’rm Saddic heresy in his writing. However, later commentators on his work have inferred certain references to it. Given the precarious political situation that Ficino operated in, and given that he was a proponent of pagan philosophers in a highly Christian power structure, it is not surprising that he would not make any direct reference to a heresy that, if the rumours are to be believed, has been brutally suppressed since religion became organised and allied to the state.1

  Ficino’s brilliant, but ultimately doomed disciple Giovanni Pico Mirandola is also said to have made veiled allusions to the Qu’rm Saddic heresy in his much feted 900 Theses and his Oration on the Dignity of Man.2 There are some that have hinted that Mirandola’s mysterious death by poison at the young age of 31 may have been linked to the heresy. That other most famous Renaissance philosopher: Giordano Bruno, was also rumored to be in possession of certain scrolls that pertained to the ancient heresy. Given that Bruno was subsequently burned at the stake for heresy himself in February 17th, 1600, some fringe historians have speculated as to the truth of these rumours.3

  Ficino, Mirandola and Bruno were scholars who rescued ancient pagan philosophies and made them available to early Enlightenment audiences. By the time they were doing this, the Qu’rm Saddic Heresy was already considered impossibly old. One of the earliest references we have to the heresy comes from the Ebla Tablets, 1800 clay cuneiform tablets found in the Syrian city of Ebla. The tablets speak of an incident in the Mesopotamian city of Harran, one of the oldest human settlements and the site of perhaps the world’s first university, or centre of learning. Harran was linked to Elba due to the marriage of an Harranian city ruler to the Eblanian princess Zugalum.4 Even when the tablets were written, the incident was said to be ancient history. It concerns the expulsion of a school of heretics, from the university, who were said to be misleading the student body with their blasphemous teachings. This is the first time the heresy is referred to as the Qu’rm Saddic heresy, though no explanation is given as to where this name originates. The heretics in question were summarily stoned to death.

  Although I stated earlier that no actual texts outlining the beliefs of the heretics have survived, Johannes Hennenbloch, the 17th century Swiss scholar, claimed that the mysterious Voynich Manuscript was in fact a copy of a text central to the heresy. Dating to the 15th century, the manuscript was purchased by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph from Dr. John Dee in 1586. Believed to have been written by Roger Bacon, the volume contains many pages of an indecipherable text accompanying strange botanical and zodiacal drawings. No one has ever been able to decipher the writings but Hennenbloch makes an interesting argument for them being part of a lost cannon of the Qu’rm Saddic heresy.5

  Subtle allusions to the heresy have appeared in many occult writings down through the ages. Most notably in the works of Christian Rosenkreuz and other Rosicrucians, then later in the writings of the Theosophists Madame Blavatsky and Rudolph Steiner as well as the mystic G. I Gurdjieff. Perhaps the most interesting development in the history of the heresy was its adoption by weird fiction writers in the early 20th Century.

  Little is known about the life of Herbert W. Soames, other than that he lived in Schenectady, and published in the pulp magazines of the early 20th century, most notably between 1919 to 1931. Many of his most salubrious and sensational stories featured references to the heresy that, in spite of their many literary faults, suggest the author had a knowledge of the more esoteric strands of the Qu’rm Saddic beliefs. Titles such as Murder in the Name of Monanom, Blood for the Byrflings and My Heart Beats Fast for the Heolfor thrilled readers of such forgotten publications as Racy Tales, The Red Book and All Male Stories.

  In contrast, L.P. Hartington was a Don of the University of Camford, who in 1940 published a slim collection of stories entitled Late in the Day it Came to Pass. The stories are very much in the vein of M. R. James, Walter De La Mere and Lord Dunsany. While they lack the power and artistry of those same writers, one or two of them are eerily effective, especially the haunting and morose Why the Willows Weep for Me. All but two of the eight stories in the small volume deal in one way or another with concepts that are central to the Qu’rm Saddic heresy.

  Both authors are long out of print. Soames’s work was never collected, and Hartington’s had a limited print run. As a consequence, the stories never appear online and are seldom to be found in the back catalogues of booksellers. If you do come across a copy of Late in the Day it Came to Pass, or a pulp containing Soames’s work, be warned, despite their sc
arcity and novelty, their literary merits do not match the exorbitant prices that are asked for them.

  In spite of the Western occult revival that began in the 1960s, the Qu’rm Saddic heresy was almost completely ignored by esoteric writers in the latter half of the 20th century. I am reliably informed, however, that it has recently come back into favour as a fictional theme in the early part of the 21st century. I have not read the works of such writers as L.L. Smith, Jasper Bark or Simone Lastwick, whose work is said to touch upon the heresy, but I am reliably informed that there is little there to recommend them, other than a macabre ingenuity and a tiny amount of scholarship.

  What is most astonishing about the Qu’rm Saddic heresy, is that a belief system that was said to be old when our most ancient records were made, should still exert a hold on the contemporary imagination. There is an allure that surrounds forbidden truths and a certain mystique about banned beliefs. A sense of longing pervades their study, a yearning for deeper answers and a better glimpse into the darker matters of the cosmos.

  This is perhaps why they inspire such frightful fiction (in both senses of the word). It’s also why the unwary and the foolhardy seek to learn more about them. There is something within human nature that can’t help but question the perceived wisdom of its age. That’s why there will always be heretics and heresy, and why we seek out dark truths that may best be left to antiquity.

  Crystal Lake Publishing would like to thank the author for her kind permission to reproduce this work.

  * * *

  1 Yates, Frances Giardano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) pp 15 ISBN-10: 041527849X

  2 Ibid

  3 Lachman, Gary The Quest for Hermes & Trismegistus (2011) pp 210, ISBN-13: 978-0863157981

  4 Moorey, Peter Roger Stuart, A Century of Biblical Archaeology (1991), pp 149, ISBN 978-0-664-25392-9.

 

‹ Prev