by James Palmer
“’Tis no use, Master Cain.” The fiend will have its way with us now. We are not in league with it, and so will be devoured as would anyone else caught out at this late hour.”
“I do not intend to die tonight,” said Cain through clenched teeth. “And I believe the Reverend is convinced of our innocence.”
Maggie Dean gasped. “What are you saying?”
Cain grunted as he pulled one hand free, wincing as the rope cut into his wrists. Removing his other hand, Cain went to the old woman and began freeing her as well.
“How did …?”
“I held my wrists farther apart than was necessary while I was being bound, though not enough so it was obvious. Then, by pushing my wrists together and working against the rope, I was eventually able to get free. As for the Reverend being convinced of our innocence, I think it was your vision that swayed him.”
“He didn’t sound very convinced.”
“That is because he was lying,” said Cain as he pulled the last knot loose and tossed the ropes to the ground. He knows that something is buried among these trees.”
“Because he’s the one who buried it.”
“Yes. Did you see his left hand when he held it aloft? It has a white scar running across the palm. He alone controls the fiend. For what dark purpose, I cannot fathom, but he plans on sending it to destroy us this night.”
Even as they spoke they heard slow, steady footsteps crunching leaves, moving closer. Cain looked all about them, but his keen eyes could make out nothing. The moon was high in the sky now, and illuminated the landscape in its soft, white light, but everything near the trees was wreathed in shadow.
“We must get into the clearing,” said Cain. “Come.”
“But we have no weapons,” said Maggie Dean.
“I have my angelic runes, and my bare hands if need be. Come!”
Cain guided the old woman away from the trees and toward the clearing where he had been restrained in the stocks but a few hours earlier.
“Wait!” said Dean. “The object that was buried. If we dig it up, we’ll control the beast. We can vanquish it.”
Suddenly a huge, dark shape landed between them, knocking Cain over and sending the old woman toppling to the ground where she lay insensate. Cain quickly recovered, rising into a fighting crouch and staring directly at his attacker.
The creature was completely black and devoid of any visible feature. It was shadow incarnate. It barely made a sound as it lunged toward Cain, lashing out with sharp talons that rent the outer layer of the Puritan’s buff coat as easily as a knife through silk.
Cain staggered back, letting his coat take the brunt of the creature’s assault. “I know not from which pit of hell you came, demon,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I shall relish sending you back.”
The creature hissed then, the darker O of a mouth opening in its face revealing what Cain sensed where long needle teeth. The creature came at Cain again, this time in a grappling move that grabbed Cain’s forearms in an iron grip. Cain gripped the fiend’s black shoulders, feeling as if his hands would pass right through the beast like smoke, but his strong hands found purchase and held, squeezing tightly.
Thus the two struggled for several minutes, whirling, losing and gaining ground, fighting beneath the baleful moon. Then the creature winced and released Cain’s arm when its right talon touched the angelic rune tattooed on Cain’s wrist. It was only for a second, but it was the opening Cain had been waiting for.
He swung with his free hand, striking the creature’s lantern jaw. It was if he had struck an oaken door with his bare hand, but the creature’s head flew back and night black shards of what could only be the thing’s teeth flew from its gaping mouth to fall invisibly somewhere on the moon-haunted ground.
The creature yelled in pain and anger and redoubled its efforts, but Gideon Cain was ready. Finding the fiend’s weakness he struck the creature again, making sure to connect with a part of his skin that had one of the angelic runes etched upon it. The creature roared in pain now and seemed to shrink back a little into the shadows from whence it came, growing weaker.
Something flashed silver in the moonlight, and Cain came face to face with his own moonlit reflection, glinting back at him from the broad blade of his own mortuary sword. Maggie Dean held it out to him.
“Where did…”
“Just take it!”
Cain wrenched it from the old woman’s grasp and swung it wide in a singing arc that relieved the creature of the burden of its left arm. Great gouts of thick black stuff exploded from the wound, showering the ground before fading away like smoke.
The thing struck with its right arm, but Cain blocked the attack with a move that removed at least three fingers from the fiend’s remaining hand.
By this time, the thing had grown another left arm.
“What the devil?” Cain swore furiously. “This can’t be. It is a gruesome fiend indeed who can grow new limbs.”
Cain could hack and slash at the creature all night without effect. He had to change his tactics or they were both doomed.
Cain noticed that the wounds inflicted by contact between the fiend’s shadow skin and his angelic runes healed more slowly. This, he could use. Uttering a maddening cry, the Puritan swung his mortuary sword and severed the fiend’s head from its black body.
“Run!” he shouted to the old woman, and the pair ran into the copse of trees. Even now Cain could sense the thing was right on their heels, but he dare not stop until he reached his goal. Panting, their lungs burning, they finally made it to the trees. The thing halted then, its newly reformed head glaring at them with unbridled hatred. It seemed to know what Cain was about to do.
“It’s afraid to come closer,” said Maggie Dean.
“Perhaps, said Cain. “We shall see. For now, you must dig. Quickly.”
While Cain busied himself once more engaging the creature in battle, the old woman began to cast about in the undergrowth for signs where the earth had been recently disturbed. Fortunately the moon was bright even among the thick growth of trees, and she soon found a recently turned mound of dirt. She sunk heavily to her knees and began digging, wincing has she forced her ancient, aching joints into swift action.
Cain hacked and slashed at the thing, rending it to shreds even as it reformed, vowing to add more angelic decoration to the blade of his mortuary sword should he live through this night.
“Found it,” said Maggie Dean, holding up a dark object.
Upon viewing what the old woman held in her hand, the creature paused in its assault, its limbs reforming and standing stock still before Cain’s deadly blade.
“I control it now,” said Dean. “I can command it back to the deepest pit of hell from whence it came.”
“Wait. I’ve a better idea.”
*
Reverend Green was roused violently from a peaceful slumber by a loud banging upon his door. Finally gathering his wits about him, the Reverend grumbled as he threw back the covers and hastily lit an oil lamp sitting on the table in the center of the single room cabin. Knowing what foul forces were currently at work in his once peaceful village, the Reverend next went to his hearth and pulled down the rifle suspended from pegs above it, and went to the door.
“Who goes there?” he demanded.
As if in answer, the door trembled violently, breaking the feeble lock and flinging itself wide open, revealing the stranger and Maggie Dean.
Gideon Cain glared at the Reverend angrily, the flickering oil lamp casting the entire scene in stark relief. He had retrieved his buff coat, flintlocks and slouch hat, and his tattooed face glinted with sweat. In his hand he held a dark, round stone.
“What is the meaning of this?” He shouted, pointing the gun at his unwanted visitors.
“You tell us,” said Cain, holding the black stone where Green could see it. “You buried this in the wood. It controls the fiend that haunts this town..”
“You lie!” the Reverend spat.
“Leave at once or I’ll…”
“You’ll what? Shoot me?” Cain grabbed the barrel of the rifle and wrenched it from the Reverend’s startled grasp, flinging it across the room.
The Reverend held up his hands. “Please. What do you want of me?”
“We want the truth,” said Maggie Dean, entering the room. “You wanted to frame me for a witch. Why? Speak not falsely, for we control the fiend now.”
The nightmare creature appeared in the tiny room, emerging from the long shadows cast by the weak glow of the Reverend’s oil lamp. It exuded malice, but did nothing.
“You wished to turn this horror on us,” said Cain. “I shall not hesitate to do the same to you if we do not hear the truth this time.”
“Oh God,” the Reverend gasped. “Only a witch could control such a blasphemous horror!”
“More lies!” shouted Cain. “You controlled it, didn’t you? Speak!”
“He said it would rid this town of evil!” said Reverend Green, collapsing to his knees.
“Who?”
Cain reached down and grabbed the Reverend by the font of his nightshirt and pulled him upright.
“I don’t know! He came to town a fortnight ago, talking of foul things afoot. Remembering what happened in Salem town, we were on guard. The congregation became uneasy, and wanted something to be done. The stranger came to me in secret, said he had something given him by a witch finder up Jamestown way, said it would draw out witches. Said it was blessed. He knew the Bible front and back, so I believed him. I knew Maggie Dean had to be a witch, so I buried this stone to lay a trap for her. Sure enough, a few days later everything started happening. The cows gave sour milk, animals were slaughtered, and those who went out late at night saw the shadowy fiend.”
Reverend Green looked at the creature again now, his face blanching with horror.
“What did this man look like?”
“Tall he was, though not as tall as thee. A young man. Hair like flax, with blue eyes.”
“Azazel,” Cain hissed. “I have been tracking this same man for many weeks, for he is one of the fallen in disguise.”
The Reverend gasped. “Surely not.”
“Would that it were not true, but it is as I told you in the beginning. The demon I have been pursuing inhabits bodies for his evil purpose, sending their souls to damnation or reward, according to Providence.”
“As I said before,” said Maggie Dean, stepping forward. “I am no witch. I wasn’t a witch when I helped cure the townsfolk’s ailments, and I am not a witch now. You will tell everyone this fact tomorrow.”
“You will also reveal the real cause of the trouble,” Cain interjected. “Or I will loose this creature anew, and leave this town to its evil devices.”
“Very well! I will do as you say. Just make that thing go away.” He pointed a shaky finger toward the night black creature staring at him from the corner.
Cain turned toward the phantasm, holding the stone aloft between his right index finger and thumb. “In the name of God Almighty, I command thee to return from whence thou came.”
Bowing its head as if in submission, the creature dissipated like smoke and was seen no more. The stone vanished from Cain’s grasp in similar fashion.
The Reverend saw none of this, for he had fallen again to the floor, sobbing loudly.
*
The Reverend’s public apology to the town had been long, sorrowful, tear-laden, and sermonized, but in the end it tarnished his reputation among the townsfolk. Especially when he revealed his true reason for trying Maggie Dean for witchcraft, the fact that she had recently spurned his advances.
Maggie Dean received heartfelt apologizes from everyone, as did Gideon Cain, who made ready to leave that same afternoon.
Maggie escorted him to the village’s edge, where they stood for a time.
“There is one thing I do not understand,” said the old woman.
“Aye?”
“The stone. What happened to it?”
Cain shrugged. “It was a thing of pure hate, and like hate it vanished when blasted with the light of understanding.”
Maggie nodded, thinking on this awhile.
“What of thee,” Gideon Cain?” she asked.
The tall stranger looked at the path ahead. “I must find Azazel and vanquish him.”
“Then may God speed you on your errand.”
“What of you?”
“I think I have once again overstayed my welcome. Tomorrow I will leave by the same road and go where the wind takes me.”
Cain nodded. “Peace be with you.”
“And you as well.”
The old woman watched as the tall stranger walked purposely down the path, his long strides carrying him quickly into the distance.
The Tunnels of Lao Fang
The terror first began for me when I received a strange letter from my good friend Durant, and will haunt me for the rest of my days. Even now, as I finally sit down to write all that happened in the mystery-shrouded Orient, I shudder and look over my shoulder, fearful of continuing, as if the process of writing will make these horrors concrete once more.
Three months have come and gone since that ghastly adventure unfolded. Three months of nearly sleepless nights, of waking up shouting in the dead of night. No, these painful memories are very much alive within me; better to write them down, to imprison the demons in ink lest they dog me forevermore.
First, the letter.
My friend Charles Durant was possessed of a very precocious nature. The last scion of a wealthy industrialist, and boasting a lineage that could trace itself back to seventeenth century England, my dear Durant had all the benefits of his landed gentry ancestors, and spent his days in more or less idle pursuits, which included everything from chess to chemistry to amateur astronomy. These days it was history and archaeology, and he spent much of his time traveling all over the United States and the world following some vein of research or another, which he wrote of excitedly in his many letters to me.
As our monthly chess games had grown more and more infrequent, I looked forward to receiving one of Durant’s letters as one awaits word from a loved one at the front of battle. I worried about him constantly. Durant had always had a weak constitution. As a boy, he took ill often and ended up being home schooled as a result. I was the only one of his school chums who went to visit him after he left school, and I could tell even then that all of his maladies weren’t physical. In his early twenties he suffered a nervous breakdown and was remanded to a sanitarium for a month.
This is why, when I received that last letter, scrawled in a nervous hand, that I feared the worst, and went immediately to the aid of my friend.
Dear Rick,
Help me, dear fellow. I am in dire straits this time. I think my life is in danger. I came to Hong Kong following some strange bit of research I uncovered while in China, but now I curse this knowledge as I write to you, beseeching you to come to my aid. You were always the man of action, and I could use your strength here. There is no one else whom I can trust. My archaeological colleagues have abandoned me among the opium dens of Hong Kong to conduct my research, thinking me mad. Oh, my dear Rick, I wish I were mad! If only the horrors I have seen existed only in a fevered, malarial brain.
I don’t have time to relate all that has happened these past several weeks. Suffice it to say this has to do with my investigations into the depictions of a strange, frog like deity that I have encountered throughout my travels in Europe, Africa, the Orient, and Oceania. I have discussed these with you at length, so I have no need to go into them now.
I found another instance of the frog thing, this time in the form of a golden idol in the remains of a village near Kowloon. My investigations into its origins let me to Victoria City, where I encountered some unsavory characters interested in the object.
Please help me, Rick. I am in deep. This is bigger than I imagined. Unless I contact you by some other method, you can assume that something horrible ha
s happened to me, and I can only hope that our friendship will implore you to find out the truth of that event and set things to right. I have included in this letter my itinerary and the hotel in which I am staying, so that you may retrace my steps should I fail to return to my room. Again, I fear that by the time this letter finds you, it will already be too late, but I know you will do your best to come to my aid or avenge my soul, whichever is needed. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
Your friend,
Charles Durant
I read the letter over and over again, seeking some clue as to my friend’s current whereabouts. Could he have had another nervous breakdown? Could there really be something to this outrageous story?
I knew in my own limited travels that Hong Kong could be a wild place, and dangerous for a foreigner, especially one with Durant’s physical makeup. Whatever this letter was, it was certainly a cry for help.
Suffice to say I booked passage for Hong Kong at once.
The journey was long, and I will not bore whoever reads this with the vagaries of transcontinental travel. By train and tramp steamer, I made my way to Hong Kong, all the while turning in my mind over and over again all that Durant had said in his letter. I stared at the drawing of the idol he had provided me, committing its frightful visage to memory. And what a ghastly thing it was too! A horrible abomination of nature. Part frog, part toad, part fish, it had no comparison with any deities I had ever heard of, and no direct counterpart in the animal kingdom. Whoever brought this nightmare vision into being uncounted eons ago must have surely been mad. To think that the worship of such a monstrosity gained in popularity enough to spread around the world and end up in a Chinese village three hundred years ago, before being mercifully forgotten by time. I was and am a man of action, as Durant had described me in his letter, and I was not given to such thoughts. It was unsettling.
