He took another step towards me. “Then use it, for I have come to collect on our contract,” he said in that strange accent.
I pulled the trigger and the cap fired, billowing smoke into the room, but the powder in the barrel chamber never ignited. As I threw the pistol aside and reached for my cutlass I heard such a sinister laugh from the man that it rung in my ears like an echoing cave. I picked up the cutlass and wheeled about, thrusting the blade most of its length into the chest of my challenger. He stepped back one step and looked down at the sword I had impaled him with.
I saw no blood, and to my utter disbelief, he seemed to turn into some sort of apparition of mist and smoke. The cutlass fell to the floor and before my eyes the devil reformed from mist back into flesh and clothes. I stumbled back into the corner with my back against the clock. I looked up and back to see the time was now nine minutes to midnight. My heart was racing, pumping blood through my veins at an incredible rate. I tried to speak but the words would not form.
The fiend took a few steps closer towards me and as those weird green eyes gazed into mine he spoke. “You are asking yourself who I am right now, are you not? And in just a matter of minutes you will have your answer, my supposed master of the words. For I knew you would fail our little contest and not be able to provide me with what we agreed upon, leaving me the master of your soul, you pitiful creature.”
It was that precise moment that has amazed me well beyond all the other fantastic and bizarre events that had taken place. For he gave me the clues, I’m sure without intending, with his very own arrogant words. It all seemed to make perfect sense to me very suddenly, like the realization of an incredible story idea. I looked back at the clock again as the minute hand clicked another notch towards the midnight hour.
I turned to the… well, I was positive that this was no man before me now. So henceforth I will refer to him as the demon. I turned to the demon and straightened my clothes a bit, gaining back my usual tepid composure. I stepped forward and placed myself face to face with my challenger and with my own style of arrogance exclaimed, “You think yourself the riddle master, eh? It is not midnight just yet and so therefore I still have the chance to solve your feeble attempt at a riddle.”
I could see a bit of a startled look in the face of the demon as I continued on with my little speech, while also keeping a close eye on the clock in the corner of the room. “The first part of your riddle was easy and written like that of a simpleton. The last line was, to be honest, a bit of a challenge, but not that difficult either.” I heard the clock’s minute hand shift again and I took a brief look towards it to see I had four minutes left before midnight struck. “You said you wanted two things of me. It was child’s play to figure that your riddle was also in need of two responses. What lies in the dungeons of holy men’s fears? For what would kings cower and men drown in tears? What brings death and pleasure, growth and decay? What makes life worth living? All of this can be answered with one word my good… whatever you are. And that word is reality.”
The demon stepped back and suddenly the fiend’s eyes were no longer green but more like obsidian orbs. “That is but one answer, mortal,” he said shrilly. “As you admit yourself, there must be two.”
“Oh, yes I understand full and well,” I continued, trying not to show the enormous amount of cowardly fear that was ebbing up within me. His face, within inches of mine, was changing. The human look that it once possessed seemed to be melting away, along with the clothing as well. I heard the clock’s minute hand shift again. “The next part is what gave me a little trouble, but as I said before, not that much. You see, you are not the riddle master today or any other as far as I can tell. I am the riddle master and I am the master of my own destiny. So who is the master today? It is I and I believe you owe me my wish.”
I will never in my days forget the shrieking cry that came from the demon at the moment I spoke those words. It was the most hellish sound I have ever heard. The demon’s body and head lunged towards me growling and screaming and then suddenly there was a huge circling gust of wind that blew like a whirlpool within the study. I grabbed onto the bookshelf and clung to it as this maelström of wind funneled through my chamber. I looked into the center of this whirlwind to see the demon had changed completely and no longer resembled any human form of life, nor the devil I had expected. No horns or red spiked tail, but a grotesque figure like that of a burnt body with the skin still melting away from the bone. In an instant there was a burst of wind that seemed to explode within the study and suddenly I found myself alone with the room seemingly untouched.
I loosened my grip on the bookshelf and looked about the study. I picked up the pistol from the floor along with my cutlass, rounded the desk, and somewhat fell back into my chair. I started to shake a bit and quickly retrieved the bottle from my desk, putting it to my lips without even bothering with a glass. I looked up to the ceiling, still trying to comprehend the gravity of what had just transpired. I sat back up and pulled my chair in toward the desk when I realized there was something missing from the desk top and also something new upon it. The parchment with the riddle was gone and where it had been was a small bottle of laudanum just like the one the demon had in the pub. Was this my reward? Was this my wish? How could that be? I asked to be a famous writer that would be renowned throughout the world for centuries to come.
I dare not share this episode of my life with anyone, not even my dear friend Frederick, for I would surely be taken by all as a madman. And I suppose that I should have had a bit more care in the wording of my wish, for I realize now that what I wished for could come at any time and not necessarily during my lifetime. But then again, maybe my time of true recognition is upon me, for a story of mine won a contest award in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, and I have just secured a job as assistant editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond.
There is one thing, though. That period of my life still haunts me. I cannot seem to drown the dreams away. I have such horrific dreams now. Visions of the grotesque and macabre. They plague me and I have found only one thing that will keep the dreams from recurring and that is to pen them to paper. So the nightmares come and the only saving I have from them is to write them down. That is why I am penning this now. It is in the hope that the haunting horror of it all will somehow vanish and I may still have a chance to live and love like a normal person. But if this was to be found it would mean the end of my writing career, I am sure, so I will hide it in a secret compartment of my desk in the study here in Baltimore. I will be leaving for Richmond soon and hopefully this will mark the end of the horrific and nightmarish dreams that persist in haunting me night after night.
I still have to wonder if I shall ever encounter the demon again. Or for that matter how many others there are like it within our realm. It is unbearable knowing what I do and not being able to talk openly about it to even my closest of friends or family. But I cannot and will not speak of this to anyone and so therefore it shall be a secret that I take to my grave. Blessed be those who have seen what I have.
E.A.P.
Eve’s Grave
By Scott Waldrop
What knew I of the grave before? Its knowledge became mine and befouled me to the core in all aspect. It’s with no little grievance and pronounced trepidation for fear of The Dead’s retribution that I endeavor to recount the summer of my youth during which I set forth upon the great southerly vanishing point. This was a highway of highways that lured the gamut of guileless romantic adventurers to humanity’s most sordid detritus, from extreme north to southernmost tip, upon the New World’s vast eastern coastal stretch. It was then whence the blackish devil and I chanced upon one another for the first time, and were ultimately entwined in an enduring dance of morbidity. It was there that the said devil’s four spectres of doom taught me their lessons. Never before was there a more oppressive space, a vacuum of light, and a vacuum of positive nature, than was its dwelling hideaway consigned to obscurity in the mar
shy wastes. I have not spoken of the account and have gone as far as to feign indifference towards airy and otherworldly matters for a lifetime until now upon my impending expiration, that I’m obliged of abject cosmic terror to purge the dark energy which has nested within me and clutched at me indefinitely since those early summer days and persisting into decrepitude. The restrictive nature of language constrains my availability to convey to you what unwanted knowledge has been imposed on me. The forthcoming explanation of my strife will prove an infinitesimal measure, and therefore a tentative aim, to convey upon you what abominable revelations lie crouched in wait behind our illusory supernal vault. Notwithstanding full acknowledgement that I offer myself to the derision of the rational preponderance, I own my last words and so pen them disposed they may be my prime legacy and perchance they should ever be displayed alongside my effigy. That I bequeath to pseudo-intellectuals an innumerable eons’ recreation of mockery to my memory is of superficial concern. For me, it is certainty that a dark spectre of unlimited power and distance catalyzed my creeping destruction. It was this inhuman spirit hailing from an unrecorded dystopian antiquity that prodded me through an existence of misery and unto me, cast it the cruel destiny of a violent plunge into final singularity. Forgive me as my delivery ebbs and flows betwixt elegance and drunken blather, as the resurrection of memories here within have driven me to imbibe the poison fire spirit, notwithstanding a myriad dubious antidote. If nothing else, derive from this that a serpent is ever-crawling through Eden and that every man dies pathetically.
In a recent past obscured by machinery and contractual obligation, I was a wayward youth with unquenchable wanderlust. The southern coach roads and their associated lore long-solicited my every thought. I conceived beyond doubt the private conviction that in some remote bog, lecherous and cadaverous nymph-sirens splayed upon a lichen-crusted rock ushered me and telepathically inoculated me with festering obsession. Their beckoning surmounted incessantly and manifested itself as a fever—soon to which I would succumb. I made haste to embark whilst unknowingly accepting this spectral invitation into oblivion, though my sojourn began without incident nor omen indicating the malady I had been slowly coming to intersection with since birth. It was a season when the fetters of adolescence had been removed and an open road provided a canvas with which to paint a personality out of visceral experience and dormant desires. Months were spent in a marinated swoon indulging in orgiastic liberties and seeking out all manner of vice. I made the crevices of ill repute my own and compartmentalized several lifetimes of perverse self-absorption into fleeting moments. I, pandemonium incarnate, liked to laugh about peering into the abyss as it stoically reciprocated admiration. My uncanny observer knew we were respectively closing in on one another for eternity and once within its clutch, the beast-thing saw it fit to plant within me a longing for purpose. I dried sober and surrendered my path to whatever whim this magnetic and seemingly guardian force required.
The genesis of my so-thought enlightenment afforded me a rapturous perspective and consistently positive philosophy on all I observed. Miracles within miracles abounded within plain sight and were absorbed deliciously into a joyful, grateful heart. With sunlit dust rising from the shadows of its ancient travel ruts, the great southern road before me offered a quintessential hinterland beauty, flanked on each side by olden agrarian charm and graveyards full of old beloved slaves. Oleander and magnolia sweetened the air as nearby mangroves would occasionally accompany the bouquet which inspired one’s lungs to full capacity with assurance that the air here was surely nothing less than a medicinal wonderwork of Mother Nature. I basked in this rustic opulence while passing Baptist churches and cross-crested shanties beaming with celebration and hope of a glorious hereafter.
I was given these fleeting last moments of solace merely so that the insufferable daemon may confiscate them and hold me evermore with their memory intact. I was given them so I may be marked by bitter loss. This would be the first demonstration by it which’s tutelage I was forcefully given to and obliviously marched towards. The gloaming came dour upon that dirt road on the eve of my perpetual fall. The firmament’s gradation from the late afternoon’s amber-honey to amethyst transitioned with unnatural suddenness as if an act perpetrated at the caprice of some mad black magician. The air lingered stagnant and was suspended in that twilight shade. I was hypnotized by the proliferation of softly floating glowworms which were cast against cool lavender for an inordinate stretch of the hour hand. The pattern of time frayed, stiffened, and died though I was unaware. As I traveled on, my mood turned as I awakened to my peril. Black shapes revealed themselves leering behind hoary tree trunks, materializing and vanishing sporadically and with great secrecy. They occupied my thoughts profoundly and influenced my observations making me aware of a polar shift in my personality. The scenery took on a dark overtone when the ugly intuition came to me that those with mere hope are servants to the torturous thoughts that nihilism or undreamed horror aren’t also potential fates henceforth this world. Subsequent to my neurotic and anxious foreboding, all things leaned negative and with feverish pitch. Deep I rode into waning light and cypress wood where willows faithfully thronged my path on either side. I had vague concern that they may be phantom sentinels with the capacity to snatch me of their own autonomy—predatory and without warn. Upon the eldritch and gnarled bark were crudely fastened planks containing biblical verses imploring travelers to repent. As I went on, the weather-stained boards were appearing on most trees, making it apparent that I was in the space of ill-minded religious zealots:
“Prepare to Meet Thy God”
—Amos 4:12
“Strive to Enter at the Straight Gate”
—Luke 13:24
“Repent”
—Mark 6:12
In a sunlit church these words could bring comfort, but in the dark woods the messages on signs appeared more as death threats rather than spiritual suggestion. My unbridled fear rendered any altruistic motives of their creator mute. The arcane scrawling heightened the oppressive pitch in atmosphere to a tangible and choking crescendo. I needed nothing more than to hide away from the maddening wood. I fled down the next available side path and raced furiously over its root-gnarled clay until it opened upon a moonlit grove. There calmly stood something against the midnight sky.
Usurped by eons and the ever tenacious southern flora stood the faltering carcass of a once venerable manor house. Dangling precariously upon its now single hinge, the Lamp Light Inn’s moniker poignantly fluttered in the still air. I was bemused, beholding the structure an odd marriage of antebellum grandeur coupled with the pitiful finite inevitability of materialism. Its forlorn majesty was surely an icon to phantoms yet fable to flesh. The spell of this transfixing juxtaposition burst as I was mesmerized anew to a beckoning distant glow deep within house’s innards. With unintelligent stare I could scarce perceive a whisper of sickly yellow light stuttering with autonomous frenetic energy in that country darkness. Something was inside. Inasmuch as the notion of encountering its inhabitants was acutely appalling, lethargy compelled me onward to the loathsome mansion. As I approached closer, an ominous nausea enveloped me while the slithering reek of grave slime went from what I first believed to be a figment of imagination to a dawning grim certainty.
Once at the threshold I had scantly a moment to take in the edifice before I slipped into some phantasmagoria. I was immediately intoxicated to a pathetic state at what can only be defined arbitrarily as the will of a strange and extremely evil dominance. Near the door I beheld the visage of a ghoul-man glowering pallid behind milky glass, and framing a first floor windowsill to create a most hideously repelling portrait. I fancied that the image would evaporate faintly and materialize with a sickly breath-like quality in its rhythm. Somewhere inside and far beyond the white imp, the yellowish incandescence continued to flicker with sporadic unpredictability. This house, this light, and the white face were all I knew as I went forward. One foot falling bewilderedly be
fore the next, I was puppeteered by some thing undefined. I regretfully must reprove my own articulation as to presume said “thing” could even be given this cryptic and arbitrary label albeit for lack of human comprehension, my decided language suits the purpose of a distant attempt at conveyance.
My host opened the door and revealed himself floating. He wore a retarded countenance with a plastic grayish complexion. I had no option but to acquiesce in his strange offer to visit with what horrors await within, and fell forth into their funereal carnival. Inside I was first besieged and rendered prostrate by the unmistakable and sweetly fetid miasma of a rampant vermin infestation. Once regaining composure, I discerned that the walls around me were swollen pregnant and amorphously animated. I was possessed of dire suspension that all manner of night creature teemed and writhed in copious volume inside the lime plaster. I peripherally perceived in my mind’s eye that the presence of a myriad squirming and intelligent invertebrate glowered at me unseen and comprised the bulk of the house’s bones, as some strange ecosystem unified by psychic bond and shared malevolence towards those who they capriciously deem unfavorable. The bleak-skinned imbecile took my hand and pulled me languidly towards one of the many blackened corridors afforded by the main foyer which was itself in a state of mortuary draped-shadow and a void of unnatural blackness. I drunkenly slumped forward, submitting to the tug of these mortal remains which slinked towards a north facing hall; an entry point I felt was taken without pretence, intelligent conjecture nor device. With dull wit, my guide imbued within me the knowledge through its graven cold clasp, that it matter not which path we begin for each and all are but a macabre tangle permeated by undesirable wisdom of which I’m obliged to obtain upon this grand tour. A black so deep in its saturation suffocated my perceptions so that nothing save tactile cues engaged any inferences as to my present course or surroundings. Spongy floorboards made malleable by funk moisture, sagged underfoot as my boot sank into what must have once been wood, now long-since transmogrified into more of a mildewed niter which blossomed a noxious cloud with each dreaded step. One hand in the clutch of my skeletal host and the other fumbling in nothingness, I twitchingly and tentatively reached out nervous fingers, dismaying at their touch upon foul walls coated viscous with gastropod trails and gossamers moistened by the sultry crypt air. The blind neverness in which I found myself being escorted through agitated my thoughts to a degree that the mind eventually belched forth a secession of crazed notions which would spree across my mental plane and take chase after a next series of demented inner monologues. I was a schizophrenic infant crouched, cornered, and impotent for fear of the primeval elementals taunting me and touching at my flesh. Finally in that primeval darkness a lesser dark suggested itself and my eyes fixed upon a faint contour that I desperately needed to be more than a wishful apparition projected by an ill mind. Oh gramercy! Oh gramercy! My strife hath boundary indeed! That sick, yellow, flickering, vertical and oblong illumination did sleepily manifest itself from darkness over the expanse of twenty minutes to twenty years; know not I which nor care for I gazed upon it warmly and comforted for it proved a reprieve from my ever-surmounting madness. There indeed was natural science upon which to rely and I was clearly healing from some intoxicant I unwittingly ingested. No. Crestfallen, I crashed back into phantasmagoria as its bony hand held fast to my right wrist whilst a sharp phalange from its other hand scratched new life lines into the palm of my left, altering and dictating my hitherto fortune to misfortune. Vapid and dumb whilst I gasped at my mutilation, my diviner gestured toward the light. Telepathically I understood I should now pass through the first of four doors to dark perception imposed by the void-thing.
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