9 Tales Told in the Dark 15

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  NORCAHAZTUTA by P.L. Bogen

  I brush my thick black-out curtains aside. The glow of the carniceria's neon pig illuminates my tiny studio apartment. My window is open to help relieve the boiling heat of the July night in South Texas. My yellowed souvenir thermometer from a distant trip to the Alamo with the cousins down from East Texas reads 95 degrees. It's too hot to sleep and my old twelve-inch television can only pick up static signals from late night infomercials on the local Fox affiliate. Assuming I ever could, a buzzing, erratic energy has filled me for what has seemed like weeks.

  I breathe in deeply through my nose, instead of the comforting smells of cumin, chile, frijoles and fatty pork that fill the air in the evening, I am greeted with the true smells of barrio poverty -- cheap marijuana, stale tecate, and the bitter fermented smell from garbage in the alleys. The neighborhood is quiet, at least relatively speaking. Summer in San Antonio is never silent. The drone of the cicadas ensure a minimum level of background noise. Distant tire squeals, angry bursts of Spanish out other open windows, the sounds of fussy babies crying and the bloodthirsty barks of pit bulls of questionable purpose ring out.

  My gaze falls out onto the dimly lit streets from my apartment window. I feel safe behind these bars, high above the empty street. A dark figure stalks the shadows of the alley between the panadería and carniceria across from my apartment. The figure emits a sickly light from his phone to illuminate the space of wall he is staring about. A cat screeches and the man darts glances up and down the alley. After a moment, the man returns to his contemplation of the wall. He takes his backpack off and sets it on the ground. As he rummages through the backpack, I swear I hear a rustling sound. The hairs on my neck prickle. There is something deep and ancient warning me about the rustling. I want to flee and hide from it, but I am transfixed.

  My eyes are locked; my mind is intent. The figure finds what he is looking for and stops rummaging. The sound also stops. The dark figure cracks a small tube that begins to put off a green chemical glow. He drops it on the ground to illuminate the wall he was contemplating. I can see now that he is young, no more than 15. He puts on a pair of headphones and begins to move to the music piped into them. The rustling begins again. He pulls from his bag a can of spray paint. He shakes the can and as the metal mixing ball rattles inside the rustling grows louder. Clicks, whispers, and scraping sounds begin to emerge from the rustling. The glow-stick seems to shift colors growing washed out and more dead-like. The chemical reaction causing the glow appears to be stalling in sporadic bursts. The figure seems not to notice the changes to his light as he starts the outline of a grotesque figure. The lines he paints seem impossible and dangerous. The light shrinks and almost seems to follow the shapes and motions the figure is making.

  The sound no longer seems to be coming from the alley, it sounds like it is within my skull reverberating out. My rational mind beats against its prison as the primal takes control. There is something ancient inside man, from the days on the African Savannah, that knows what is beyond the thin veil of our world. I don't know if it was the sound or the light or the deadly images laid in spray paint. But this part of my mind is trying to take control. Flee it says, find shelter, in the trees in a cave. Anywhere but here.

  My rational mind seizes me and tells me the boy is in danger. I fly from my apartment leaving my door swinging wide. I more fall down the stairs than walk and I struggle with the metal gate separating a tiny foyer from the alleyway. As I finally get the gate to slam open with a bang against the brick wall of the building, a scream pierces through the noise inside my skull. And then silence as if the entire world stopped. I swing to the right, I think I catch a glimpse of something. Not man or beast I know, just something. Something unspeakable that though only glimpsed from my periphery I know will be burned in the edges of my vision for the rest of my life. But as it should have come into full view, I find it is gone. The boy's glow stick seems to come back to life exposing what appears to be black paint splattered over the spray-painted wall. The boy has vanished. I run across the deserted road, the asphalt still stinging hot against my bare feet, even in the dead of night. The backpack lays on the ground. A can of spray paint rolls slowly to me. Only now I can tell that the black paint only appears to be black under the green chemical light. I gag, but my empty stomach has nothing to void. The ground here is sticky and damp. The boy's cellphone lays on the ground with a broken screen showing distortions of the last image captured by the camera -- something wet and black with a green tinge sharper than flesh and more flesh than metal.

  I see a torn page with its edge out of the bag. I reach down and grab it and the phone. A flash of lightning as I pull the page lets me see an aged sheet with mold and water stains. It seems to be written in the same tone as the wall is now covered. I cannot make out the symbols, but I vaguely know they come from the past, the Levant? or the Valley of Mexico? I can not recall.

  Rain starts to fall, diluting the red on the wall and ground. I run back across the street and up my stairs. I don't even remember to close the gate in the foyer. Again in my home, I leave the paper and the phone on the kitchen counter. I strip my clothes through the house until I am in the shower. I turn the water as hot as it goes as if the cold and slime that feel like it is under my skin can be kept away by heat. The water scalds me and I stay in it until it becomes cold again.

  I awake later on the floor of my bathroom. I think its day, but I don't dare to look out at the world knowing that the veil can be pierced. I have the sense I slept with feverish nightmares. Dark things crawling out of where they slumber. Hunting in the night. I fear their viciousness and take comfort in their just reckoning. I am still naked and damp when I awake, so I throw on a robe and exit my bathroom. On my shelf sits a thick book of forgotten morals told by a dead race who dwelt in the mountains since before the nations, before the missionaries and before the classical empires. I pull it and feel its heft. It feels heavier than its size. There is something real and protective about this tome. It is closer to the earth like those who wrote the stories it contains. The Earth that insulates us from the fires below, the Earth that provides our life. I open the book to a random page, it speaks of a life-giving mother goddess who would help those lost in the wild. I knew then that the page is only safe in her embrace. Without looking at the page again, I slip it in the book. I closed the book. It looked as if it was a container of a sinister evil like an envelope from the IRS or one of LaHaye's novels. I slip the book back on the shelf.

  In the kitchen, I make a pot of coffee. The coffee helps make the three-day-old pan de huevos on my counter more palatable as I try to fill my stomach with something. As I eat, the phone with the smashed screen sits across from me on the counter. Who was that boy? What happened to him? Where is this page from? I know that the answer is probably stored on the phone. My laptop sits idle on the couch. I could just plug it in, but I think of the distorted image I saw. My mind reels from the thought of seeing more of that creature.

  I force down the entire pot of coffee, burning my tongue in the process, along with the stale Mexican pastry before I resolve to plug the phone into my laptop. Finally, I bring the courage to gingerly plug it in. Despite my caution, I cut a thin line across the tip of my finger from the broken glass in the process. Blood sacrifice to what deity controls electronics. On my laptop, an icon appears for the phone's storage. Two rapid clicks and I can see the normal detritus that clutter cell phone storage. I feel like an archeologist digging through an ancient site. What rubbish will make sense to me? What will be lost and puzzled over forever? The pictures directory is filled with a combination of young men trying to look tougher than they are and a normal looking Hispanic family with a strong father, a loving but worried mother and three playful children. Two boys with a girl in the middle. In a subdirectory, the phone's disappeared owner had collected images of graffiti art he made, inspirations -- mostly older well-endowed chicas who wouldn't give the boy the time of day, the neighborhood thugs, a
nd old cars. The most recent inspirations were different. There are pictures of stained glass and illustrations in old books. It looks like they came from a library or a church. The final picture shows a weathered leather cover decorated with symbols like the page I had found last night.

  Something was familiar about the book. In the same way that the sounds last night were familiar. It is in my Animal brain. I know I have to find it. I continue to stare at the image. A name rises to the surface: Norcahaztuta. Suddenly, it strikes me, that the image may have a geotag on it. I check and it does. I plug the location into my phone and set off. I grab a flashlight and the book of lore holding that cryptic page. My faded blue compact car is parked two blocks away. As I walk down the street I can feel the stares of my neighbors. They know that I have seen something. It repulses their subconscious. Children grow silent as I pass, women cross the street thinking they are interested in a storefront display. But I know, they sense that I've been tainted and exposed to something we all want to forget despite the echoes of genetic memory.

  I arrive at my car at last. I could have sworn the color had faded from it, or maybe it's all fading from the world. I fumble with the keys for a moment. There is a tremor in my hand. But my hand were so steady in the past. I get in the car, it hesitates to start. Already the life of the motor is shrinking away. The car turns over and I set off.

  Fifteen minutes later I arrive. The coordinates have led me to the abandoned site of the South Texas Diocesan Home for Boys. Once the compound held orphans and delinquents, providing structure and healthy does of religion, imparted by the swift hand of the Sisters of a certain ancient yet disgraced order.

  In the early 1980s, amid scandal and a rebuke by the pontiff himself, the sisters disbanded and the home was closed. I walked the crumbling site past the cottages that housed the boys, the maintenance sheds, recreation facilities, imposing school and main chapel to a smaller stone mission. The building seemed to be in better condition than the rest of the compound. Maybe it is because the plant life halted about 100 yards from the building on all sides. Maybe it was the absence of graffiti and litter like the rest of the compound. Or maybe these old Spanish missions were better built than the 1950s boys home. Could someone be taking care of this building?

  I walk up to the mission's massive bald cypress doors. I push, the doors are heavy and resistant to motion. With a deep moan they open. The air inside is musty and humid yet cooler than the summer heat outside. I proceed slowly. Broken pews are scattered around the narthex. Many objects are covered in a thick layer of dust. Footprints roaming the floor betray past explorers. Maybe the man in the alley made the prints? I follow the prints around the church. The stained glass from the pictures on the boy's phone is all here. But no sign of the library. I walk up to a stone relief, the footprints seem to disappear into it, another set emerges but with a different pace -- more shuffling and confused. They then head back out the door.

  I look closer at the relief and see smudges in the dust where someone traced the shapes of the saints carved into it. I see two hand-prints on either edge. I place my hands there and lean in. Only as I get much closer to the relief does something seem to emerge. Something not of the world of man. It reminds me of the visages from the prior night. Before my eyes focus clearly on it the relief groans and moves, turning to reveal a hole with a rusted iron ladder descending below.

  I slowly descend the ladder into the darkness. I worry about my grip as the ladder's sliminess increases with each rung. At the bottom of the ladder, I get my flashlight out of my backpack and turn it on. The light illuminates a crypt with numerous filled niches of past sisters of the order. The walls are carved with strange writings and images of mutilation of bodies, fire, and cannibalistic ritual. A deadly black mold is making its way up from the damp floor. The low ceiling makes me crouch as I stalk among the dead women. I notice that each of the sisters seems to be interred laying on a bed of iron. At the far end of the crypt, I find a vault door. The door is obviously newer than the rest of the crypt. Etched into the metal of the door is an image of St. Lawrence tied to the grill and being roasted alive. Around him, the fires consume the bodies of the poor and sick. I pull on the handle of the vault door. It is locked. I hear a whisper that sounds as if it is coming from the corpses in the crypt ten, eight, two-hundred and fifty-eight. I turn the sticky combination wheels until they read those numbers. I hear a click and the handle turns. I pull open the door to find the room in the photos the boy carried on his phone. The air in the room is cool and dry, bookshelves line either side of the room. At the far end of the room, is a series of lecterns with thick ancient books chained to them. Down the center of the room are transcriptionist tables with high painfully austere stools. I step closer to a shelf and examine the titles. The shelves have titles in a mix of books in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and other languages I can't decipher. As I head further back the books get more alien appearing. Leather covers give way to rawer hides and what may be pig, or human, skin.

  One series of five volumes seems vaguely familiar, Ηυπομνήματα and Hγήσιππος are the only words on the exterior besides Greek letters (Α, Β, Γ, Δ, Ε) to indicate which volume each book was.

  My back begins to feel warm and my pack feels heavy. I take off the pack and set it on one of the desks. It looks like something is glowing inside my bag. I open the zipper. Nothing seems odd, but I'm drawn back to the book storing the page that has burned itself deep into my psyche. I remove the book and I swear I hear a muffled tune almost bird-like or maybe like a dolphin's whistle. More of the sounds echo through the room or perhaps just my head. I open the book to where I stored the page, the image of the mother goddess has blackened and is brittle. I remove the page from the book, not daring to look at it once more. I am compelled to walk down the room to the central chained book. It is open to a place that seems to be filled with madness and decay. A ragged edge shows where my page belongs. I set it back and as if the book was a living thing observed under time lapse photographs, it heals back together.

  I must know what the book says. I am consumed by it. Somehow I know that the secret to unlocking this volume is in the strange books filling this library. I will crack this. I will know what is just beyond the illusion. But first, I must prepare. So I leave the library and the crypt.

  The next day I return, I have with me books on ancient languages, food that I hope will last through my studies, a sleeping bag, lanterns with extra batteries and a journal. I set to my work. I feel like no time passes anymore. I just study with a manic pace that never stops. I collapse in a spot when I am too tired to do anything else only to awake later ready for more study. I know not much time can really have passed. My supplies seem to not be depleting fast. But I do also notice that my hands seem more skeletal each time I awake.

  I master the languages first, Koine Greek, Aramaic, Classical Hebrew, Sanskrit, and more. I discover a section of books that seem to be Rosetta Stones for many lost languages. I believe a group of particularly helpful books are written in Olmec. I read about suppressed Gnostic insights, rituals hidden inside the Church, histories of fallen saints and earthbound demons. Eventually, the chained tomes start to make the smallest bit of sense.

  But disaster strikes, for I must pause my study. I have run through my supply of batteries, so I must emerge into the world. The light at first is blinding, but then I remember what one of the martyred wise-man in the books told. "The sun's light is but an illusion, it's just a common belief in our kabuki play. We cannot stand to see just how dark the universe is." While the wise-man said he could see beyond and the sun disappeared, I find that it only grew dim. I am still too connected to the veil.

  I try to use my car but find it will not start. Fortunately, a truck driver passing by offers to give me a ride to the nearest store. He eyes me the entire trip. Finally, he asks if I'm carrying. I am puzzled by this, carrying what?

  The driver lets me off soon after. I walk another two miles to find the mega-store. The
eyes of all are on me again. Repulsion, fear, and angst seem to be what others feel. I first head into the dirty restroom, I feel like I haven't relieved myself in ages. I try, but nothing happens. I go to wash my hands and I am shocked at my appearance. Skeletal and dirty. My hair long but brittle from a lack of vitamins. My eyes burn with a fevered intensity. I try and wash up as best I can. I scrub my arms, neck and face. I wet my hair.

  Back out in the store, I find some cheap and austere clothes, a dozen or so notebooks and a few boxes of cheap ballpoint pens. In the camping section, I get a box of waterless wipes and an assortment of new lanterns and batteries. I think about going to get more food but decide against it.

  I approach an open register. The employee looks like a complacent beast of burden or livestock. She scans my supplies and tells me a total. I hand her my debit card. It's declined. I try a credit card, she frowns and says it's expired. I look at the card confused, it should have three months left on it. I hand her another card. She asks for an ID. I gave her my driver's license. She looks at the picture and then at me. She holds it up to see me and the card at the same time. She asks if I had lost weight. I look at my death like arms and say that I must have. She asks about my beard. I tell her I wanted to do something different. No-Shave November and all. She tells me that it's March. She runs my card gives me a receipt.

  I head outside and look for someone to beg a ride from. I find an old woman willing to drive me back to the abandoned boys home. She chatters on about something, I know not what, the whole time. I nod and respond as if I am listening, but all I can think about is the words I am unlocking in the books. When we arrive, I thank the old woman and get out. I walk into the compound, something seems different. The grass has been disturbed and the gate is no longer closed. The chain holding it closed is on the ground. It appears to have been cut. As I get further in, I notice two SUVs sitting next to my car. They are black and imposing. I don't know who could be here, but I worry that they may have found the library.