Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Page 13

  His assumption had been right. By then, the fox was far into the trees, as far as the rope would let him travel. In fact, from where he stood, he couldn’t even see the fox, only the rope as it trailed off into the waiting darkness. The man’s heavy boots beat across the stone and onto the dirt and leaf strewn ground. He grabbed the rope, wrapped it around his fist, and yanked hard. The pull jerked the fox backward, flipping him over onto the ground. The animal yelped in pain and fear.

  “I’ll teach you to mess with me!” The man yelled and yanked at the rope again. “Pest,” he muttered as he began untying the rope from the tree.

  He dragged the fox back down the same path that they had come. He had to pick up the fox and carry him up the house’s steps. Once again, the fox growled and bit at the man, but the man closed his hand around the fox’s snout, not allowing it to open again. He returned the fox to the cellar and once again slammed the door.

  The man sat up that night, reading Stanwood’s handwritten book, making plans. He was in his bed, leaning up against the heavy, elaborately carved headboard. Below him, there was the occasional bark and scratch from the cellar. The man learned that the box that he had seen in the Rimbault’s cellar contained the essence of the entire realm of Fractus. The man pondered this thought. It was astounding to think that everything around him, including him, was inside that single, square box.

  When the man finally dozed off, he dreamed of an empire. He stood in a large chamber that was made of stone. Behind him was a large throne that had been constructed out of countless, white bones. A horde of figures stood in front of him, each of them had been created by him, to serve him, to give him power. Each of the figures wore a cloak similar to what the man wore. The hoods were pulled up and covering the faces in shadow, but each set of eyes gave a colorful glow. One of the figures stepped away from the others and stood face to face with the man. When the figure threw its hood back the entire cloak fell away to reveal the woman in the blue dress.

  THE ONE handed man tried to use the spell to create a portal that would lead him out of Fractus, but to his disappointment, it didn’t work. It didn’t take him long to understand that the spell had to be cast on Earth.

  So similar to what he had done before, he retrieved the fox from behind the cellar door, looped the rope around the mammal’s neck, and led him through the trees. With the fox’s presence, the portal opened again. The man went through just as he had before and emerged through the dirt floor of the Rimbault’s cellar. Stanwood was still sitting in the chair just where the man had seen him last.

  The man followed the cellar’s concrete steps up to the main floor of the house. He had to unlock the door that was at the top of the flight before swinging it open. He stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him. The house was dark. Surely Mrs. Rimbault would be asleep at this hour, he thought. What hour was it? He looked across the room, toward a tall, freestanding clock. The pendulum was swinging back and forth. The ticking was earsplitting in the silence of overnight. It was the only sound in the otherwise quiet room. It was nearly three thirty in the morning.

  The man stepped across the floor, careful not to make too much sound on the hardwood. He knew where he was going because this house was exactly like his own in Fractus. It was, after all, the mortar of this house that Stanwood had used when creating the house where he resided.

  He reached the front door and stepped onto the porch. The nighttime air was cool. It was so chilling that for a moment he was actually happy for the cloak that he wore without choice. He walked down the steps. To his surprise, his feet crunched on something on the ground. When he looked down, he saw that the ground was littered with crisp orange and brown leaves. It was autumn. The man inhaled deeply. He could smell wood smoke along with the aroma of dying foliage. He remembered that on the night that he had been abducted it had still been summer and the heat of the day had been unbearable. And now, it was evident that the entire world had changed in his absence. He understood that it would eternally be summer inside Fractus because that was the season that it was created. This realization was heart wrenching. It was upsetting to know that Stanwood hadn’t bothered to place a spell that would give the man the luxury of changing seasons.

  As the man walked around the side of the house, he saw a path that led into a garden. Like before, what he saw caused jolts of unwanted memory. He knew that it was the same garden that he had found himself the previous month. He stood at the head of the path and peered down the length. By now, the tall grasses were wispy and brown. The flowers had mostly fallen by the wayside. Some branches were already bare.

  He passed the garden by and stepped into the woods. He had to find the perfect place to open the portal, somewhere inconspicuous that wasn’t likely to be unwillingly discovered by a passing vagrant, secret lovers, or a group of rambunctious children. After traipsing through the woods for half an hour, he came to a small cemetery. Inside the wrought iron fencing, there were a dozen or so headstones. Several straggly trees stood on the grounds. The tree’s dry leaves and thin, skeletal branches clattered in the breeze. Every so often, a leaf would fall to the ground. The cemetery was the type of place where the man could imagine tales of haints and specters being unfolded on a cool autumn night just like the one that he had come upon.

  The gate was standing open and swayed slightly in the wind. The rusty hinges screeched. The man stepped into the cemetery and went to what was about the center of the fenced in area. He looked over his shoulder and through the trees could barely see the looming side of the Rimbault’s house. He looked in the opposite direction, and through the trees on the other side of the cemetery, there was a small cottage. Smoke was rising from the flagstone chimney.

  He removed the book from where he had tucked it within the cloak and laid it out on top of a waist high tombstone. He flipped the pages until he came to the spell. Under the light of the waxing October moon, he was able to decipher the handwriting. He spoke the words out loud.

  And just as he hoped, on the ground in front of him, the leaves began to swirl about. The crabgrass and dirt of the ground were exposed, and pretty soon, they too were spinning around in a cyclone-like pattern. At the epicenter of the swirling mess, the portal began to open up. As it expanded, he could see that the inside was full of dirt. Old boards jutted out from the dark earth here and there. The man knew that they were surely the rotting boards of long buried caskets. What the man felt upon seeing the portal materialize in front of him was a feeling of success and triumph. Behind the mask, he smiled.

  Unsure of where he would end up, he went into the portal. Like the one that he had traveled through to eventually come out in the Rimbault’s cellar, this one was a tight fit for him to work his body through. When he emerged from the other side, he was on the stone overlook in Fractus. The fox was still tied to the tree. Behind him, the other portal, the fox’s, was still open.

  “You need to stop now,” the fox said. “What you are doing is dangerous. I don’t think you know how dangerous it could be.”

  “As if you haven’t figured it out by now, from now on I’m in control, you filthy piece of work!” The man spit the words at the fox. “I don’t need you telling me what to do or informing me of the rules anymore!”

  “This is not supposed to happen. None of this goes past the Halfords! Do you understand?”

  The man had already turned his back to the fox and was going back into the portal that would lead to the Rimbault’s basement. He needed to lock the cellar door, leave things just as he had found them.

  While he was in the cellar, he picked up a sharp knife from one of the shelves and placed it inside of his cloak. After succeeding in the mission of locking the door, he turned back around and ran back down the steps. When he emerged from the portal, the fox was already speaking to him as soon as he was visible.

  “Trust me, you’re making a big, big mistake,” the fox told him.

  “I don’t think you’re no longer in the position to tell me what
to do,” the man said.

  “Whatever it is that you are planning, I think it is a bad idea. This was never meant to go this far. It stops now!”

  “It stops when I want it to stop.”

  The fox gnashed its teeth, growling. He pounced toward the man as far as the rope would let him go, snapping his jaws, but missed the man by several inches and fell to the hard stone. The man laughed at the failed determination. He reached into his cloak and pulled out the knife that he had brought back from the Rimbault’s cellar.

  “From here on out, I forge my own destiny,” the man said as he stepped toward the fox. He gripped the knife tight. The man reared his leg back and kicked the fox. The animal cried out. While the fox was down, the man plunged the knife into the animal’s side. A sudden spray of warm blood covered his hand. The man stood upright, looking down at the wounded animal as it kicked its body back and forth. “You know,” he said out loud. “I just thought about something. Let me see if what I’m thinking is true.” He turned his back to the fox and walked through the portal.

  When he stepped into the cellar, what he had assumed was proven to be true. He could see it even though the candlelight had long since been extinguished. A fresh stab wound was on Stanwood’s torso. Dark blood had soaked through his white shirt. The man understood at that moment that since the fox was a conduit for Stanwood, the two of them could be used like voodoo dolls for one another.

  The man stepped close to Stanwood. He placed the knife on the wide chair arm and gripped the frilled neckline of Stanwood’s shirt in his fist and pulled him close. Anger and hatred coursed through the man as he was face to face with the one that had done all of this to him. He wanted to kill Stanwood and in the process take control of his own life once again.

  “Thank you,” he said, “for giving me this opportunity.” He released the fabric of the shirt, flung the comatose body against the chair back, picked up the knife, and without a moment of reluctance, plunged the blade deep into Stanwood’s neck. A spray of hot blood jutted out, soaking the man’s hand and arm. He laughed maniac-like and flung Stanwood’s bleeding out body against the back of the chair. When he looked over his shoulder toward the portal, he saw that it was collapsing. He knew that Stanwood was dying and taking the portal with him. Without Stanwood, the portal wouldn’t exist. The man ran to the shelf of books and grabbed up what he could in haste. With the books in hand, he pounded through the portal and emerged onto the overlook. He walked across the stone, holding the knife in his hand and the stack of books in the crook of his other arm. Behind him, the portal was dim.

  The fox lay on the ground at the edge of the woods, just where he had left him. Its body was twitching with the final spasms of life. Even from the distance, the man could see that the animal’s neck was wounded. A pool of dark blood had formed underneath the mass of the soon to be carcass. After reaching the fox, the man kneeled down and began slicing at the flesh, cutting through meat and muscle, tendon and bone. He sawed with the serrated knife until the head came free from the body. He dropped the knife and it clattered on the stone below his feet. He stood from the blood drenched mess, and while holding the fox’s head high above his own, he screamed into the night. It was barbaric-like, a scream of triumph and of a fresh start. The world was his.

  After returning to the house and cleaning the blood from his hand and arms, he tried to retire to bed, but as much as he tried, he couldn’t sleep. His mind was racing. The adrenaline of what he had done, what he had accomplished, and what he would do was too much. He was full of thought and plans.

  While sitting against the headboard, the man studied the books that he had brought back from the Rimbault’s cellar. Two of them were sitting on the bed at his side, stacked on top of one another. The third was in his hand. All three books were handwritten. The book that he was currently studying was full of otherworldly creatures. In between passages that were devoted to ghosts and vampires, there was one page in particular that caught his attention. There was a sketch of a dancing, horned demon above a block of Stanwood’s neat penmanship.

  Demons feed off of the fear, pain, and hurt of humans. It is their reason for being. It is what keeps them alive. They are able to do so with no remorse for their actions. I believe that it is the lack of remorse that makes it so easy and desirable for them. Without remorse there is nothing to guide them away from their intentions. There is no battle waging within their mind and body that makes them feel like what they have done is wrong.

  That was it! He could use the spells and instructions within Stanwood’s books to create his own demons. By doing so, he would be able to rule over them, knowing that what they were doing and all of the pain that they were causing was being controlled by him. He would be a leader. And so, before he fell asleep, he was thrilled by the knowledge that the pieces of his plan were coming together.

  But who will be the first?

  He remembered standing in the small, derelict cemetery where he had opened the portal. Through the trees, he had been able to see glimpses of the Rimbault plantation. And on the other side, through those trees, there had been the sight of that much smaller house with the stone chimney. That was where he would go. It was close enough to where he could grab someone and bring them over quickly and without being caught.

  When he fell asleep, he dreamed of the traveling menagerie where he had spent so much time before. In the dream he stood in front of several large felines. Instead of the usual small town or empty field, they were in a royal court. The felines circled in front of him and roared ferociously as he swung and raised his arms, guiding their every move. In the dream, he had both of his hands. The surrounding crowd erupted into applause and cheer. The man knew that as dangerous as the animals were, he was their leader. They were doing his bidding, following his instruction. The rush that the danger gave him was like no other. He was in control, putting his life on the line. What he felt underneath the cheering crowd as he stood face to face with each of the three hundred pound predators was exquisite.

  THOMAS RILEY woke to a loud clamor that came from somewhere. In the just waking haze of what is real and what is not, he wasn’t sure if the sound had been outside or inside his house. He bolted upright in bed and looked over at his wife who was sound asleep at his side. Outside the window that was located just to his right, the sky was finally turning from dark to light. Somewhere in the distance, a rooster was just beginning to crow.

  Thomas threw the bed clothes aside and stood from the comfort of Rebecca’s side. He stepped quietly across the floor and finally outside. The autumn morning was cool. Thomas thought for a moment that he should’ve put on a thicker coat, but didn’t bother to turn around and pick one up from the wooden pegs that were just inside the front door. He made his way across the yard and into the leaning outhouse, shutting the door behind himself. While he was urinating, his mind wandered to the sound that had woken him. He hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary as he had walked through the house, so maybe the sound had only been in his dreams?

  After relieving himself, he exited the outhouse and didn’t see the figure that was standing on the other side of the door in the darkness of the lingering shadows around the wooden structure. Instead, his mind was on breakfast and the day’s work that was ahead of him. He was the local blacksmith and farrier. That day, he had to travel to a nearby farm where there were several horses that needed shoes put on their feet. His main interest was in applying common medical practices to animals. He read and studied the procedures that doctors used on humans and fantasized that many of the same things could be applied to other species. He had heard of the research of one Sir John McFadyean and of the colleges in France that taught veterinary science, but there was nothing of the sort where he lived and was left to his own devices. As much as he looked forward to working with the horses, he knew that the iron work that he needed to complete should be done first, before the heat of the fire would become too unbearable in the afternoon humidity. All in all, the work would la
st well into the late afternoon. After walking a few feet, from behind him, he heard a crunch. It was a footstep on autumn leaves. Thomas spun around and was face to face with a monstrosity. The figure was taller than he was. The face was a thing of nightmares. It was some sort of animal, two animals actually. Thomas quietly asked himself, is that a leopard and a wolf? He could see that the faces of the two had been stitched together with black twine. The snout and nose were intact. The eyes of the creature searched him. He could see the evil that emanated from those two windows to the soul, if there is even a soul in the ghoul, he thought. Soon the monster leapt forward, wrapping Thomas in its arms. Thomas was fighting against the attack. The feel of the heavy, scratchy burlap on his skin was unsettling. Thomas was flung back against the wood siding of the outhouse. The creature pulled a knife from within the folds of the filthy cloak and held it to his neck. Thomas looked in the monster’s eyes and knew that he was going to die. Past the creature’s shoulder, there was an abrupt movement that caught Thomas’s eye. Rebecca stood on the porch of the house, looking in his direction.

  “Thomas!” She yelled. “Thomas!”

  The creature paused and looked back at her and then its determination and hold on Thomas became stronger. It grabbed Thomas’s hair, pulled forward, and bashed his head against the wall, knocking him unconscious. Rebecca continued to scream as she helplessly watched in horror as her husband’s limp body was dragged away from her, across the yard.

  Thomas came to consciousness and went out time and again as he was carried across the field and through a slim set of trees. Through the blur of pain and the high field grass that slapped against his face as he was being dragged, he could see that he was being taken to the cemetery that was behind their house. The last thing that he remembered seeing was a swirling chaos in the ground. He heard Rebecca yelling for him and caught a glimpse of her white nightgown glowing in the moonlight as she was rushing toward the cemetery, along the same path that he had been dragged. He saw that she had his musket held tight in her hands. Just as he was being pulled into the earth, Thomas heard the too late, loud crack of the gun.