Diábolos Graphica
The last heartbeat. Another life of mine ends and I slip from his withered fingers, falling to the Earth in an eruption of dust. Here again to wait the years out until another fragile soul passes into my circle. Not by chance I fall into the pentagram, carved into the living rock by the eons of servants that have knelt before my master. The life blood runs around me, filling the indentations, the alphabets and the symbols. The channels fill, completing the sacred rings of red, a last dream cast to call the innocent to corruption and the weak to service.
In time the dry bones of my servant will be gone, lost into the winds of the endless caverns, buried in dark eternity deep within cold earth and stone. Only now as the fires fade do the horns of my master’s statue cast a long shadow, clawing into the future. Time and tide are no consequence to the key to the bottomless pit.
I am the fear in the night, the angst in men’s souls and time is always on my side.
“It did well on IMDB,” he offered as if that might sway her.
She leaned out of the bathroom doorway, half dressed, trying to fix her hair and lipstick at the same time. The last minute arrangement with friends had her riled.
“It’s easy for you,” she scowled at him, he could be ready to go in ten minutes and now he lolloped about on the bed flipping the TV channels and idly flicking through her magazines.
“You don’t have to put on makeup.”
“I could try.” he retorted playfully
The inequality nagged at her, while beyond their anonymous room in a non-descript down-town block dark clouds had begun to gather.
“Oh spooky…,” he teased as another report of missing cavers at the abandoned quarry languished on the local channels, the press as ever digging up the old tales of night terrors and legend. “Sensation sells.” he said to himself while in the bathroom untold and mysterious bottles and tiny brushes were arranged for the ritual of ‘putting on a face’.
“Pack it in, you know what happened to my school friends down there.”
Thinking he could make light of the moment he threw the bed sheet over himself and wandered into the bathroom, ghost like with his best scary voice and thrust himself against her, his erection all to obvious.
“OoOoOo….,” he warbled, “The horny beast is coming to get you,” he again mocked over the distant thunder. One sideways glance was enough for him to pull off the sheet, he’d gone too far.
“Dinner at Old Hobs?” he offered meekly.
The journey there was frosty, the emotions of losing her friends still raw two decades later. The route through town drew darker as the storm clouds gathered, no rain, just darkness growing from the horizon. The threatening clouds illuminated from time to time by great claws of lightning and vast rolling lights deep within as if the firmament was at war with itself.
Old Hobs was an ancient ivy covered and isolated house perched on a knoll not far from the town boundary, its position gave it commanding views of both the route into town and the quarry beyond. A deep mist rose from the fissure near the quarry, formed by the folding of the Earth over the millennia and the fast running underground river that neared the surface at that point, exhausting water vapor like a fuming volcano. The Devils Chimney.
Hobs himself had long since been moved to a place of care and the once dilapidated building had undergone a renaissance, now a well-to-do restaurant and bar the rambling gothic building serving as a backdrop for the diners in the great glass conservatory.
“Jack, this is so nice, it’s just a pity about the weather,” looking up the sky was black in every direction, as if the glass house were a bubble in a starless space.
Her phone bleeped, “Oh, that’s a shame, Janet and Brads car has broken down again, looks like it’s dinner for two,” They moved to the restaurant, drinks in hand and were ushered to a quiet table in the corner, almost lost amongst the foliage in the opulent velvet room. The bread and fish starter arrived swiftly, followed by the lamb. She’d never had an issue holding up a conversation, so it took several minutes before she realized he’d stopped eating.
“Jack?”
He coughed as if something was caught in his throat, his eyes glazed “He has found his way back,”
“Who has?” she reached for him, rising thinking he might choke but stopped when he appeared to recover.
“Who has what?” he asked, cutting into the succulent meat. The remainder of dinner was stilted conversation, both with an uneasy feeling over the now clearing weather.
Jill left Jack in bed at 5am to avoid the rush-hour traffic, heading for her place of employment at the Coroner’s Office. An unremarkable municipal building put up in the nineteen sixties it held the towns dead prior to criminal proceedings or the lamentation of relatives and a dignified funeral.
Like so many buildings of the period it was constructed as a means to an end and lacked charm and humanity, dull to match the sky. On that day the concrete planters liberally dropped around the concourse by some long deceased architect rendered the place even less inviting by the sudden death of the plants. Their wilted remains hung like executed criminals, trailing their once magnificent blooms upon the grey concrete. Only the flaking “Best in Bloom Winner, 2007” sign remained upright as a reminder of the towns faded glory.
Today the world offered up a more unusual case, two pot-hollers lost to an underground river had risen from the depths of a lake a few miles east of their last known location – the quarry. Not that uncommon, spelunking was a dangerous hobby. The cold water and recent demise meant the two young men were in decent shape, no need for dental records this time so with reasonable care relatives could do the identification. Jill’s autopsy of the two lost boys revealed the expected, drowning. Although it was common for cavers to have contusions and broken bones there was no evidence of foul play. Wallets revealed identities and dutiful officers could be dispatched to give the worst news. She found nothing else of remark amongst their possessions except a book, wrapped in a water tight bag. Logging the items Jill locked up the building and went home, tomorrow would be a long day of grieving relatives.
Her night was disturbed, as was her day, always she thought of the locker in which the book sat, still in it’s bag, still safe from harm. Like it needed to be. For the rest of the week the book played on her mind, as if it was calling to her.
Sunday. The two rose early as they were amongst the few remaining church goers in the town. The bells of the church rang no more for since the incarceration of old man Hobs the they had remained silent, their sound now a fading memory. As no-one remained with the time or skill to make them peel as they had for the last six centuries they endured the gathering dust, forgotten and guarded only by a sign on the belfry warning against curiosity.
Having arranged the flowers, powered up the tea urn and swept the floors they sat in the sparsely populated pews, the smell of Tweed and mothballs hung in the still air. The aging priest bestowed what wisdom he could find amongst his long thumbed notes and rambling tales of devil dogs that slew the choir of old. This, he went on to explain in passing, was why the church was built over the old stone circle known in the dark ages as the Spirit Stones. He ended with a reassuring message that those were more superstitious times.
“Are you OK?” Jack whispered, having seen Jill struggling to keep her eyes open.
“What?” she muttered weakly, “I’m just tired,”
Jack swatted at the flies that buzzed around her
“I’ll be fine when I get back to work. Tomorrow, I’ll be fine. Tomorrow.”
Monday. Jack opined into his diary that Jill had become more and more distant and cold, she hadn’t eaten and didn’t seem to sleep, sitting bolt upright in the bed her tired eyes mournfully wishing for rest. He’d offered hot drinks, a back rub, the TV remote control and even a copy of Shakespeare only to be told “I need the right book”. The plague of flies that followed them around persisted, even through the night there was the odd noise at the window as the larger of them collided with the invisible barrier.
Jill had left at 5am again, just rising from her bed and barely stopping to put on any clothes she slipped silently out of the door.
“You’ve been up all night!” he cried after her while leaning out of the window, “I can drive you.” but she was gone, the tires of her car screeching as she sped away into the dawn light.
“Is there someone else?” he whimpered into the wind.
Jill arrived at the Coroner’s Office, haphazardly dumping the car across two spaces, the door ajar as she abandoned it in her haste to the dark entrance, shielding herself from the rising sun. She knew it was still there for it called to her in the depths of her mind.
“Damn, I thought I’d logged it, how did I miss it?” she looked at the carbon-copy of the form, no-one had claimed the book because the entry was just meaningless symbols, Jill scratched her head, “What was I thinking?” she was unable to understand how this had happened “Could have been worse, at least I still have my book.”
That afternoon the undertaker arrived in a long sleek dignified black car, parked in the loading bay at the back of the building. From the vehicle emerged a slim and solemn man, a man whose life had been dedicated to the dead.
“Oh. How many today?” he asked in the campest voice, Jill had always flirted with him knowing he had no expectation but today she was just too tired. With almost no words she helped him load the hearse and he carried them away wondering what he had done wrong after all these years. Looking in the rear mirror while the shutters came down he saw her standing, head leaning to one side with a stoop, oblivious to the cloud of insects humming around her.
”Today. It must be Today.” She turned and made her way to the locker, to the book.
The cover was not of any material she had felt before, certainly not leather but clearly the book was old, a relic of some sort. Had they found it in some deep cave? The stiff cover opened, the first page a mass of circles and symbols looking like a mixture of alchemy and hieroglyphics, long strings of writing in dark ink spread across the pages, written forward and back top to bottom and bottom to top. The script was variable as she thumbed through the book, evidently written by hundreds of scribes over countless centuries, the seam showing repairs and additions.
Some of the pictures revealed events of the past, beings falling from the sky to an underworld kingdom, the gradual rise of empires, pyramids and towers, great floods and fires, vast armies waging brutal war and the darkest works of humanity. All the trials and tempests wrought upon the world from the heavens and the depths of hell. All here in the book, a record of history itself but with no clear purpose.
None of it made sense, only on the last page did Jill find any words in English “I am for the fallen star. I am the breaker of chains. I am the key.”
She slammed the book closed but held it tight to her breast, “There must be meaning in it,” Jill muttered, “There must be.” she abandoned her work knowing the Hobs Collection at the church might hold the answers. Before he lost his mind, and his home, Hobs had been an avid collector of old manuscripts and books and used them to make a life long study of the occult. The church hadn’t taken kindly to being given such a mass of material and kept it under strict lock and key, professor or otherwise Hobs legacy was an unwanted burden. Leaving the dead where they lay she left, discarding her mobile phone as it buzzed furiously for attention.
Jack had had enough. Canceling the sixth call attempt he saw all of his messages had gone unanswered. Was she having an affair? He determined to have it out with her, surely it couldn’t still be the ghost joke from the other week?
“Have I missed something?” he wondered out loud, checking the date of their anniversary with relief.
“It was just kids imagination.” he remembered from his childhood the stories of the now bricked up cavern uncovered in the last working days of the quarry. It had caused such panic those years ago, children claiming to see demons in a dark cave, then suicides and unexplained deaths in the dangerous swirling black pool deep within it. Even old Hobs had succumbed to the wild occult speculation in the end and been carted away screaming “Satan’s gate.” or the such like, all those years on the lonely moors in the big house had taken their toll.
Jack put on his jacket and stepped out into the street making the short walk to the bus stop, checking his watch he found he could be at her work place in half an hour.
The wooden door splintered as she hacked at it with the fire axe. Loud thuds echoed and splitting wood showered the floor as she chopped at the only impediment to her quest. Outside a few bewildered parishioners wondered why “Back in ten minutes” was scrawled on a notelet stuck to the locked door. The old priest would not interfere again, nothing would stop her, she must have the means to understand, to recite the content of her book. On the steps to the alter the priest lay, sightless to the heavens marking the spot upon which he had fought with her for the axe.
Jack arrived at the Coroners office to see Jill’s car being lifted onto a tow truck by some greasy oversized jobs-worth. From the doorway emerged Ron, Jills boss who he had met over the years at various functions.
“Hi Ron, is Jill about?”
“I need to talk to you about that.”, his tone was grave as he ushered Jack inside.
The news was every where, “…Ageing priest jabbed with tranquilizer filled syringe…” the headline rolled across the bottom of every channel, “...expected to be asleep for days…” the news scrolled on. The town was a flurry of media activity, vans with satellite dishes and reporters hounding passers by for the all-important vox pops. “Who would do such a thing?” they screamed from every outlet “What was the mysterious chest of documents stolen from the church?” The internet was awash with even more outlandish conspiracy and all the usual back biting.
Jill sat in the corner of the room, Hobs life work scattered around her searching for some means to understand the revelations the book might bring forth. She heard Jack enter but didn’t care, nothing could distract from her work, nothing and no-one must stop her, no mercy this time. She tucked the carving knife behind her back.
“Jill?” he cried, “Are you in?” she heard the footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the door as it slowly opened into the darkened room.
“What has happened to you?” he knelt next to her “We can get through it.”
She looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes, dropping the papers and reaching for him with some hope of rescue. He lifted her away from the manuscripts and onto the bed, and for once she slept curled in his arms.
When he awoke she was gone, along with all the papers that had been strewn about.
“Damn, where would she go?” he paced the room, by now the police had come and gone but a suspicious van was parked just down the street. Convinced Jack had had no part of it and with her mobile tracing to her place of work they had made off. Jill’s face was all across the media and this disaster was now spiraling out of control for Jack, besieged by the press he made a run for it, heading for the safety of his sister who had recently moved into the area.
Emma had been tending her garden when Jill had crashed through the back gate, brown papers and scrolls under her arms and clenching an old tome. With an excuse she’d had a breakup with Jack Emma took her inside, in spite of being Jacks sister she was sympathetic as ever, a shoulder to cry on.
“I just need some space” Jill pleaded and was shown the spare room, surreptitiously unplugging the phone cable as she passed. Once the door was closed her work began again.
Jack ducked and dove through the streets, if only he had a car but Jills was now at the pound and the press-pack was on his tail. Emma’s house was in the far distance, over the rise toward the Devils Chimney, the vast cloud it emitted towering in the background. Strangely as he ran he saw the drunks and drop-outs that normally begged a living in the town center were all wandering the same way. Their blank eyes fixed on the darkening sky they blindly navigated their way down roads and across streets and bridges as if drawn like the flies to the source of the poison.
This was it, the missing piece, the key to the translation of the book. One flimsy old parchment had some notes scrawled on the back that had Jill running to the bathroom for two mirrors. Aligned correctly the reflected symbols matched another document and now translation was possible. It was hers, all the knowledge the book contained and the authority it could bring into the world.
“High priestess,” she uttered the title she found fitting for her intended position.
“I alone shall be the way, high priestess to the god of my age.”
Reading the words aloud she heard a language lost at the beginning of creation, the dialect of the fallen. Only now she recognized the serpent skin that made the cover of her book, formed at the dawn of sin.
Emma was stuffing her dirty thongs in the washer when the inclination to go upstairs hit her. As if on auto-pilot she drifted to the bottom of the stairs, then rose up them as if floating in a daze. The door to the spare room, Jills room, was open and she stood holding the book, muttering as Emma stumbled in.
“Jill?” she was confused, her vision unstable, her mind slow.
“Emma, you will be my first,” Jills voice was confident and calm “give yourself to our master and be one with us or suffer!” her voice now malice and threat. As Emma staggered forward the door slammed shut behind her.
Emma collapsed on the bed, Jill turned the page of the book and read some more in the lost tongue of the stars that fell from heaven. On the bed Emma writhed, as if a hundred tongues licked at her skin and powerful mouths sucked at her hardening nipples.
“Feel the pleasure,” Jill offered, but the pleasure became pain and Emma’s moans became cries and she wrestled with unseen hands, “Or feel the pain, the choice is yours”. The low rumble of thunder signaled the return of the freak weather conditions of the previous weeks, black clouds blowing in from the dusk.
“Ummmm” Emma rolled again on the bed, shedding her top as the pleasure returned, her bra cast away as if it were stifling her joy, Jill repeated the cycle, flicking through the pages of the book for new means to seduce the woman she had always hungered for.
“Pleasure” the dulled woman’s senses surrendered to the feelings and Jill put down the book moving swiftly onto the bed. In a single motion Emmas shorts were cast aside and the pink thong stripped off.
“Give yourself to us,” Jills tongue pushed deep into Emma who bucked under the pressure, fingers followed, searching out her g-spot. With deep pressure applied the enchanted Emma submitted to her new priestess, thrusting herself upon the willing wet fingers of her mistress. Her mind lost in a stupor of magic and desire as again Jills tongue pressed home, a hand between her legs servicing her own lust. The final assault brought Emma under the spell of her new lord and master, screaming in ecstasy as ownership of her soul was lost for an orgasm that shattered her mind.
Jill looked down on the panting girl naked and ravished on the bed and a wicked grin cut across her face. “We must go.”
Jack arrived at Emma’s to find the front door open, with caution he lingered listening for his wife, fearing for his sister. He slowly pushed the door open, one eye looking around it into the hallway in case she was waiting to strike, his weight on his back foot for a quick retreat if she was armed. The place was empty and abandoned, even the lazy house cat had deserted while the neighborhood dogs howled incessantly at the menacing sky.
In the spare room he found a few scraps of the parchments he’d seen Jill with and noticed with curiosity the wet patches on the bed. Of the papers in his possession the Devils Chimney was circled in pen, this he decided was the first place he would look. He knew he must reach her before she was overcome by this madness.
By now the long twilight climb up the crag by the two ill-prepared ladies had drawn some attention, a few well-equipped hikers approaching to enquire if they were alright only to suffer Jills wrath and the power of the book. Future legend would record these unfortunates as ‘the flaming men’, their bodies burning fiercely in the screaming winds. The Priestess and her acolyte reached the roaring fountain of mist as the world rumbled below from the hidden river in the depths and the violent flashes above. Around the Devils Chimney the thunder roared from the coal black sky.
She began, the chant quiet at first, building as her co-conspirator joined in, above them the mist began to change, drawing in on itself, forming a denser cloud. In time a monstrous figure began to take shape darkening as it did so, joining with the black sky above.
“Apollyon...Apollyon…” she chanted again and again, as the darkness rose, a being was drawing itself from the netherworld into a form to rule this one. So it was that the father of lies, the angel of the bottomless pit, came within reach of the key.
“Jill!” his voice threw her concentration, she turned slowly.
“Jack?” her voice was faint and far away.
“Jill, it’s the book, drop the book,”
Her grip on it tightened, her eyes alternating with hate and love.
“No! It’s mine!”
“It’s using you!” he moved closer, standing before the lady he’d loved for as long as he could remember, his heart racing at the thought of losing her, “Let it go, for all our sakes, let go of the book. I can hear it too, but it’s using you.” Again the thunderous roar of the heavens and Earth reverberated around them, deep within the cacophony Jill could hear her masters will. She looked down upon it, then to the burning stumps of the good samaritans who smouldered on the scarp, then again to the book.
“I can’t,” she cried softly “I one with it now.”
Jack moved in, tearing the book from her hand and she fought for it. Far above a monstrous arm reached down, its hand ending in great talons. Burning eyes looked on its would-be kingdom and its horns scraped upon the heavens.
“Give it back!” she bit, scratched and battled with all her might but he somehow managed to wrestle it away casting it into the chimney.
“Noooo!” she cried as if he’d thrown her only child into the depths, he held her back from jumping after it.
Above them the mist dissipated and shafts of light cut through the clearing sky, far below in the valley the blue lights of the police gathered, reports of deaths having reached them from the fleeing walkers. Jill began to regain her senses, collapsing in his arms she looked up at Jack, her face looking as if a great weight had been lifted from her. Jack looked around for Emma, but she had gone.
“Well,” he reassured Jill “We’ll get through it. I’ll always be here for you.” but he knew they’d be old the next time they met.
“I wonder if I’ll meet Hobs again?” she sobbed.