Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Read online

  “Samhain,” Meghan answered softly and nodded her head. She remembered being told that when Fractus had been created it was believed that it would be summer forever, but now everything was changing. It was fall for the very first time.

  “What?” Valerie shot back, unfamiliar with the strange word that Meghan had said.

  “Samhain. Halloween. It is the one night of the year when it is believed that the past and the present are the closest that they’ll be. I think all of this is starting to make sense to me now.”

  “You do?”

  Meghan nodded. “With the Durori beginning to remember their life in such vivid detail after centuries of not, that is exactly what is happening. It is all unraveling. The past is coming back; it is here. Thomas must think that this is Samhain, today.”

  Meghan stepped to the door and knocked. They could hear shuffling feet on the other side, and when the door eased open, Meghan was taken aback by the man that stood across the threshold facing them.

  Unlike Embry and the other Durori that Meghan had come to know over such a short period of time, Thomas wasn’t able to retract his horns and wings, and so he stood in front of Meghan and Valerie with his wings spread out behind him. He wore a cotton shirt that had been cut so that his wings would fit through the back. There were no sleeves on the shirt, leaving his lean arms exposed. His imperfect wings were vastly different from Embry’s. They weren’t the same color as his skin like Embry’s were; Thomas’s wings were a deep gray-brown, nearly black. It was obvious that Thomas’s wings had been made out of countless, much smaller batwings that had been sloppily stitched together at some point in time. The horns that sat low on Thomas’s cranium, near his forehead, were lopsided with one of them several inches higher than the other, making them not symmetrical at all. The black sutures that had been used to affix the horns to his forehead were visible against his nearly bald and pale skin. The horns were larger than the other Durori; they were those of a goat.

  “Hey. My name’s Meghan. Meghan Langley. I was hoping that you could talk to us.” She glanced toward Valerie and because of the lit pumpkin near her feet, the thought that the other woman looked like a trick-or-treater that had arrived at Thomas’s front door shot through her mind. On other Halloween nights in the past, Meghan had seen girls dressed just like Valerie was then, the 80’s pop star. She nearly laughed out loud at the thought.

  Thomas studied the two women that stood in front of him, seeming to judge for himself what their intentions could possibly be. “Come in,” he finally said. When he spoke, Meghan noticed that his teeth had been filed into jagged points. They were similar to those of a shark. And like the horns and the wings, he wasn’t able to change them into a more human-like smile. He stepped aside, allowing Meghan and Valerie to enter his home.

  Meghan went into the house first, followed by Valerie. They stood in the foyer as Thomas closed the door behind them. The inside was in a similar state as what they had seen on the outside. Complementary to the green shutters that she had noticed next to each of the windows as she had approached the house from the woods, framed oil paintings were hanging askew all along the cream colored walls. Most of them that she could see were of some sort of animal. The one to her left was of a sitting brown squirrel; its tail was curled into an S and it was holding an acorn. The inside of the house was cluttered with books. They seemed to be everywhere that Meghan looked. They were stacked on every table and within the seats of several of the old, high back chairs. There were philosophical books and heavy medical tomes. She even noticed a Latin dictionary. Some of the books looked ancient, while others appeared to be from more recent publishers. Aside from the books, countless ceramic and cast iron animal trinkets were resting on every shelf. There were rigid, monocle wearing dogs and curled, sleeping cats. There were larger, heavier pieces on the floor. She noticed a concrete sitting wolf that was being used as a door stop. They were the type of things that Meghan imagined could be found in the stereotypical Grandma’s house or cluttered among the shelves of antique stores.

  “Let’s have a seat in the dining room,” Thomas pointed through the set of double doors that were straight ahead of them. “You’re just in time by the way,” he looked over his shoulder as he led the way. “Rebecca was just making tea.”

  As soon as he said it, Meghan could hear the tea kettle whistling from the small kitchen that was just off the room that they entered. Aside from the kettle, she could hear voices in the other room. As she walked past the open doorway, she noticed that the voices that she was hearing were coming from a flat screen TV that was resting on the smooth, marble countertop. It occurred to her then that the home was a conglomeration of the past and present. First Samhain and now the house. Meghan thought that if she was inside the pages of a novel or trapped within a scene from a movie that the house would be the perfect setting for what was unfolding around her.

  The dining room was cramped with old furniture that also held countless books on most every available flat surface. The table was standing in the center of the room. Unlike every other piece of furniture in the house that she had seen so far, it was spotless. A long, lace runner stretched across its impeccably polished top. Overhead, there was a large, crystal chandelier. A lit candle was on each arm. It took Meghan a moment, but she realized that the candles weren’t actually real. They were the kind of bulb that resembled a flickering, orange flame. She then noticed the wiring. She realized that all through the house there was black, electrical wiring. She had seen it in the foyer, but had been so overwhelmed with the entirety of everything else around her that it hadn’t even registered in her mind what it was. Instead of being hidden within the structure of the wall, the wiring was on the outside, snaking up and across the ceiling. It was obvious that the electric had been added to the antebellum house as an afterthought. Thomas took a seat on one side of the table, and Meghan and Valerie sat across from him.

  “So what brings you here?” He glanced at his surroundings. “To my humble abode?”

  Meghan looked at Valerie, gathering her thoughts for a moment and then broke the contemplative silence that hung between the three of them. “Is it possible to change a Durori back to his human form?”

  Thomas sat motionless and without expression for a moment before smiling and nodding his head in understanding. “I guess you could,” he shrugged his shoulders and leaned forward, crossing his arms and propping his elbows on the tabletop. His wings were spread out behind him. “I’ve never done it, but I assume that it is possible.”

  “What would happen if we tried? What if we succeeded?” Meghan asked.

  “My guess is that most of them would die. If they are turned back into a mortal, time would catch up to them. I think our time is preplanned before we are ever born. If they were intended to die in say, 1850,” it was obvious to Meghan that he was just throwing a random year out there, “but because of our interference of bringing them here they didn’t, then I think that is exactly what would happen,” he nodded his head. “I think it would catch up with them and they would cease to exist.”

  So far, Meghan had no idea when Embry had been born or anything about his previous life, and she knew that she wouldn’t know until she talked to him. Even then, she didn’t know if he would answer. And by not knowing, if Thomas’s idea was solid, she had no clue as to what the outcome would be.

  “But you do think that it is possible to change them?” Meghan asked. She was full of hope.

  Thomas stared at her, quiet for a long moment before finally speaking again, “You broke into the lab,” he stated matter-of-factly, nodding his head again.

  Meghan felt her heart skip and her body tense. She was afraid that the scene was about to turn from one of tranquil conversation into a confrontation of justice and punishment for what she and Valerie had done.

  “You see, this whole thing, Fractus and all of it is based on superstitions and symbols. Stanwood Rimbault, the one that created Fractus, was a very superstitious man. His first
creation, The Master as you have come to know him, is a horrible and evil man. In fact, he was before he ever came here. When you throw someone like that into a place like this it is surely a recipe for disaster. He was put here for one purpose, to cause heartache to the Halfords, but the truth is that he had this entire world that he could do anything with, anything at all, and he used it for bad things, he saw it as an opportunity extend his reach and to satisfy his insatiable hunger of hurting others. He wanted it to go beyond the Halford family. That was where I came in. I was the first Durori that he created. Of course I wasn’t called that then. He thought that he would be able to create a demon by using Stanwood’s journals of magic and superstitions, but you can’t make a demon; they would have to be summoned. The part of the demonic that interested him the most was the idea that they feed off of heartbreak and pain by hurting others and that was really all that he wanted. I was a learning process for him. You always learn from you mistakes, I guess,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I was, and am, imperfect. I’m a rough sketch of what he intended. When The Master created me, he didn’t know yet how to make it so that the wings, horns, and teeth would retract. I was created before he figured out how to make it so that our sweat could seduce someone into doing our bidding. In the end, he knew that someone like me wouldn’t be able to fit into the normal society of Earth and so he needed a new role for me to assume. That was when he learned of my studies. You see, back on Earth, I held a strong interest in medical studies, especially with helping animals. He decided that I would be appointed to be the one to do the research and the surgeries. I would be the one to experiment on the foxes and complete the transformations of the men that he brought here.”

  Thomas’s wife, Rebecca, entered the room. She was a beautiful woman with light blondish-brown hair. The complexion of the skin that covered her high cheekbones could only be described as being rosy. She was wearing a loose fitting, long, white dress. A thin, silver necklace hung around her neck and a charm rested against her chest. The charm was shaped like a hummingbird. The overhead light shimmered off of its silver surface. Meghan remembered that hummingbirds were a symbol of love and that one had been used in the spell that gave the Durori the ability to fall in love. Rebecca carried a silver tray that had a white, ceramic tea pot and four matching cups resting on its flat surface. She eased the tray onto the table, placed a cup in front of each of them, and poured tea into each one. The tea smelled divine.

  “There’s sugar and mint leaves on the tray,” she smiled as she talked and nodded her head toward the additives. Rebecca pulled out the chair next to Thomas and sat down. She leaned toward her husband. She looked radiant under the light. Her honey colored skin seamed to glow.

  “Thanks,” Thomas said to his wife and looked back at Meghan and Valerie. “Again, like I said, it is all based on superstitions and symbols. Through the use of magic, we found a way to transform the part of the men that would cause them to hesitate in The Master’s order of hurting people into a tangible thing, the honeycombs that you saw. Honey, bees, and honeycombs are all symbols of goodness.” With a pair of silver tongs, Thomas dropped a sugar cube into his tea and stirred it with the small, silver spoon. He offered a sugar cube to both Meghan and Valerie. Meghan declined. Valerie took two. “But just to make things clear, what we took out of them is not the entirety of their goodness. It is their remorse, that hesitation that I’m talking about. We focused in on that. And then we placed something else inside of them.”

  “Mosquitoes,” Valerie said with certainty. She was sipping her hot, steaming tea.

  Thomas looked toward Valerie and nodded. “Mosquitoes,” he answered her. “They serve two purposes. The way that we made them, the mosquito makes the host become immortal and it also gives them the drive to feed. With The Master’s intentions, it was pain that we made them feed off of. I guess I don’t need to explain the rest. I think you’ve got it. Even though I will say this, that remorse, that hesitation, the honeycomb is The Master’s downfall. Eventually it all caught up with him and he couldn’t stand the guilt that he felt over all the bad things that he had done. Over the past two hundred years he has gone under the knife more times than I can count, but each time it slowly builds back up inside of him. That is what The Indescribable is. He found a way to fill the one that he wants to punish full of guilt and remorse where they would spend the rest of eternity with the knowledge of the bad things that they had done. Even though it wasn’t really them that did those things, it was the mosquito, the Durori that he turned them into, but he doesn’t let them know that. When they are faced with The Indescribable, he makes them think that they had made those decisions on their own and the knowledge of that is what tortures them. I think that all people are created good. It’s just the choices that we make that are wrong. The Master’s evil intentions far outweigh the good that is inside of him, but again, that remorse is still there, eating at him, reminding him of his wickedness and I think that is what he battles with, the knowledge that what he is doing is wrong, that he will be punished in the end, even though he can’t exactly pinpoint why he thinks so, he knows that it is the truth.”

  “Why did you go through with it?” Meghan asked. “Why did you agree to do the work?” She imagined the experiments on the foxes must’ve been hard for someone like Thomas, someone that loved animals as much as him. Surely some of the experiments went wrong and the fox succumbed to the error.

  “I was afraid of what he promised would happen if I didn’t.”

  “The Indescribable,” Valerie said, sure of her answer.

  Thomas shook his head. “No. He said that he would take her away from me.” He glanced to his right at Rebecca who was still sitting beside him. “It was my love for Rebecca that sparked the idea of the ritual that we, The Primordial, the first ten Durori, performed that would give all Durori for the rest of time the ability to fall in love. The Master took my idea and ran with it. Unlike the pure, true love that I had for Rebecca, and still have for her mind you, it was a crazy obsession that he had in his mind and that drove him to the agreement. His obsession over her, The Mistress, is said to have been so strong that she was the only thing of Earth that he never forgot about. Her name is Carolina Rimbault, the daughter of Stanwood. When I came up with the idea, he jumped at the opportunity and promised that I could have Rebecca brought here to me for eternity under one condition; that I would use my scientific knowledge to perform the experiments and transformations for him, that I would become his lackey, so to speak. What other choice did I have? She means everything to me.” He started crying. His winged shoulders heaved with each and every heavy sob. Rebecca reached out her hand, soothing him. “Sometimes I regret my choice to bring her here. Sometimes I think that it was a selfish act.” Rebecca placed her hand on his shoulder. “I should have killed him when I had the chance,” he said. “Any one of the times that he has been on the table I could have done it and maybe this would all be over.”

  “You’re not that kind of person,” Meghan told him from across the width of the table. “You’ll never be,” she shook her head. “You’re not the type that can just take somebody’s life like that.”

  “You seem to be driven by science, but you keep talking about magic,” Valerie cut in. “Where do the magic and the spells come from?”

  “I am driven by science, but I’ve always believed that there is magic in the world. Men can be made up of many different beliefs. Science is only one facet of my understanding. And after all of this, everything that I’ve seen and been through, I know there is magic out there. As I’ve said before, every part of this place has been created with it. The Master and I used it to create both the soldiers and the cherubs. It was used to create the Pool of Love that the cherub’s arrows are dipped into. I don’t know if either of you know it or not, but there is another key player in this whole ordeal. There was an old crone that has been part of this process every step of the way. She was the one that made the spell for the Halfords to curse the Rimbault bloo
dline into never being able to fall in love. She was the one that Stanwood went to and wrote the spell that he used to create Fractus in the first place. She is the one that wrote a spell for Ella Rimbault that would be able to end it all. She is able to change into different people; she is the one that lives on the outskirts of small towns and deep within the dark woods and the edge of the swamp. She is the one that people go to out of desperation. She is a worker of dark magic. She calls forth the Durori out of Fractus and then the Durori makes a deal with the desperate. One of the last incarnations of the crone was a man by the name of Mr. Baxter.”

  Meghan knew the name. The Baxter that Thomas was speaking of was the worker of dark magic in Truesdale that Franklyn Hexley had gone to in 1908 in hopes of saving his farm and family from certain ruin. Mr. Baxter had called forth a Durori to make a deal with Franklyn. In exchange for the town to have the perfect weather for growing anything there was to be a sacrifice every thirteen years. Franklyn agreed to it and the responsibility of the sacrifice was to be rotated among four other Durori that were sent to Truesdale. One of them was Embry. “You said that Mr. Baxter was one of the last incarnations. Who did the crone become after that?”

  “It had long been rumored within the small town of Truesdale that Mr. Baxter was a warlock, and after wind caught that there was something concrete to go on, some members of the town went to his house and lynched him. The vengeful townsfolk of Truesdale thought they killed Mr. Baxter, but the crone only changed again, into someone else. She became another name that you may recognize, the one and only Zeke Thaniel.”

  “Zeke Thaniel? As in the Zeke Thaniel, the one that wrote The Book of Demon Lore?” Meghan asked. She could vividly remember her one quick glimpse of the book in the small, Gullah community of Emecheta as it had been clutched close to Embry’s chest as he had emerged from the swampy waters. That was just before they had been captured by the soldiers and brought to Fractus. At the time, the book had been her only hope, but now there was more promise. Turning him seemed more likely than she ever imagined.