Deni DeMarco smiled as he looked Pepper in the eye, something only possible due to the step up from the driveway to his door. “Oh hey,” he said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, it has,” said Pepper. She studied the man before her–the man who now dressed in a near perfect blend of bohemian and business–and took in how much he had changed. Last she had seen him, he’d been clean shaven and bore a standard buzz cut; now, he bore a Van Dyke and had long, shaggy hair. Even his once naturally tanned skin had lightened to an olive cream from a lack of sun, and he had discarded his frame-less spectacles for a pair of prescription tea-shades. “Have a falling out with your razor, did you?”
Deni chortled. “You could say that. So you wanted to look at the Somnia Arcana?”
Pepper smiled. “Of course,” she said. “It took me months to track them down for you. I want to know what the fuss was about.”
Deni’s face went blank. He suddenly looked much older, as if he’d aged a decade the very moment she’d spoken. Although it was clearly the hall’s light, he appeared haggard and harried; his eyes seemed to darken and she could almost see deep creases forming around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.
Definitely not the Deni I know, she thought. She knew Deni suffered from bouts of depression, but he was rarely anything but chipper and polite around her. Yet for whatever reason, the very mention of those books seemed to have stripped away his affability, and–as hard as he tried to hide it–had given way to a bizarre impression of a man who was too afraid to show his own fear.
But just as suddenly as it had vanished, Deni’s smile returned. “Of course,” he said, stepping aside to let her in.”“Mi casa es su casa.”
Pepper ascended that step and crossed the threshold, only to be hit with a chill. At first she thought he’d set the air conditioner to arctic, but as she passed under the chandelier she realize that the cold wasn’t a physical cold–it was something intangible, almost spectral. This is probably not a good sign, she thought.
Deni followed her inside, closing the door behind him. “I don’t keep those books in the library,” he said. She heard several hollow clacks as he locked the door. It was another level added to the oddness of this visit–the neighborhood was hardly crime-ridden, but the number of locks she heard made it seem like he was barricading them inside, as if he thought the entirety of Calusa Shores might converge on his house at any moment and try to ram the door in like an invading barbarian horde.
“Where do you keep them, then?” Pepper asked. She leaned against a nearby table, gazing up at the flickering chandelier. “Or did I come out here for nothing?”
“Of course not,” Deni replied. “I keep them in my study.” He motioned for her to follow.
Pepper subtly scanned the hall as they walked. It was pretty much the same as it was two years ago–same furniture, same carpet, even the same paint job–but everything somehow seemed duller, as if she were viewing it through a filter of haze. “If you’re going to show me anyway,” asked Pepper, “then why bother pointing that out?” She struggled to keep up with him.
He stopped. For a brief moment, the entire house seemed to stand still, and during that time he stared ahead, almost as if he were far looking past the walls at something in the distance. Then he glanced at her with the slightest of scowls. “You’ll understand when you read them,” he said, his voice carrying a mask of fake cheer. Oh yes, Pepper thought. This is very much not my Deni.
They resumed walking.
It was odd. She knew she wasn’t bothering him. He never got many visitors, but Deni never shied away from them, especially not her. Yet something about her visit was clearly upsetting him.
The study was the first door at the top of the stairs, right where it had been a year prior. However, while the foyer and hall were untouched since her last visit, the door to the study had been subject to similar renovations as the front door. The frame was now heavily reinforced, and he’d placed the mahogany wood with what appeared to be a solid hunk of steel, braced by thick metal strips that were clearly designed to withstand brute force. The old warded lock had been replaced with a computerized keypad and heavy-duty double bolt.
It wasn’t like him to go that far with security. Deni was fairly well off, but he kept very little cash in his house and avoided credit cards. Instead, he kept a single debit card on his person, onto which his trust regularly deposited a check every month. Still, she tried to pretend it didn’t bother her. “Pretty tough security. Those books must be priceless.”
“They are,” Deni said, “but so are most of the books in my library. There’s another reason for this.” Deni punched in a lengthy code and twisted the handle, but stopped short of opening it. “Don’t worry about damaging them,” he said. “There’s a reason they were so hard to find–there’s just no market for these books.” He flashed her a strained smile and opened the door.
They entered, and without stopping or stepping off course for even a moment, he led her to the center of the study where a small table was placed, seemingly isolated from the rest of the room. On it were four rather massive volumes, each with a strange symbol embossed onto their bindings. Yet to her surprise, one of the books had a second symbol on the spine, scribbled in oily ink by what must have been very shaky hands. Her initial reaction was one of shock–shock that Deni would so willingly devalue his books in this way. He was a collector, after all, something a quick scan of the study and its many curios showed her had not changed at all.
The room was, as always, immaculate, with the books and oddities neatly placed and clearly handled with care. The windows were shuttered, and the lights kept somewhat dim–to reduce bleaching caused by light. She even spotted a dehumidifier could softly humming not too far from where she stood. Yet for whatever reason, he’d vandalized that one book.
But all of that gave way to a new sense of dread when she realized what that symbol was. It’s that sun wheel, she thought. The same one that Jacob drew.
“Oh don’t worry about that,” Deni said. The statement caught her off guard. “Think of it as a good luck charm of sorts.”
Pepper smirked. “You’ve become pretty superstitious, haven’t you?” she said. “Maybe you should spend a bit less time on that radio of yours.”
Deni didn’t respond. It was at this point she realized his cheerful attitude thus far had been a facade–the man was nervous, and for whatever reason, she hadn’t picked up on it. Looking back and the vandalized book, the other symbol–the one embossed on the leather itself–caught her attention. That cross, she thought. A quick glance at Deni again revealed that he had become even more uncomfortable. She wondered why–why deface this book, why that symbol, and why her interest in this particular volume had him devolving into a nervous wreck.
She grabbed the book, at once she felt a shudder spread across her body.
“Do you feel it?” he asked. What little was left of his affable facade was gone. In place of his typical exuberance was a restless man whose cheerful voice now had an almost grave tone. “It’ll get worse as you read.” He paused. “I’ll stay if you want me to.”
“No need,” Pepper said. “A few disturbing images aren’t going to bother me.”
“Okay,” he replied. He took a few steps toward the door and stopped. “I heard about your mom,” he said. “I won’t make it to the funeral, but if you need anything else–anything at all–let me know.”
“I’m fine,” Pepper said. “The world didn’t end when she died, and it’s not going to bother me if you don’t show up. She hated funerals anyway, and it’s not like she went out of her way to get on your good side.”
“That’s not….” Deni stopped himself mid-sentence. “It’s not going to be easy, reading that. If you begin to feel overwhelmed, stop. There’s an intercom on my desk–don’t hesitate to let me know if you change your mind.”
And with that, he left.
Pepper leaned back, watching her friend disappear down the hall. Strange as it was, she didn’t feel compelled to give it any more thought. Turning back to the defaced volume, she carefully gripped the spine–and as that same shudder enveloped her again, she gritted her teeth and opened up the tome.
She was greeted with a satisfying lack of surprise–as expected, she was hit hard by the musty smell of old parchment. The ink was blurry and faded, the expected result of centuries of moisture and dust that even the best attempts at preservation would fail to fully stop. From the feel of the vellum, she guessed that the text was somewhere between four and five hundred years old–a guess that was supported by the text itself, written in secretary hand–an annoying font to read as far as she was concerned, but not too far off from modern cursive. Not to mention it’s Deni, she thought. I’m lucky I’m not dealing with blackletter.
Hither they came in ages passed–the Gods of this world. They arrived from worlds beyond, watchers and creators of life and death, who were born beyond the void, and who shall still remain when our own time doth end. For from the Voice and the End were they begotten, and they themselves from the Great Mother were born; with the Great Mother’s grace do they give us life, and with the Great Mother’s grace does their light make us whole.
That uncanny shudder returned. Once again she felt the need to run from the room-to escape, she felt, a growing dread. The fear she felt was subtle, but pronounced; it was a primal terror, not unlike the kind one might feel as a child in the night, as if the unseen eyes of some dreadful beast had suddenly focused themselves on her. The ominous and archaic text did nothing to help, but despite its tense and foreboding tone, she could not connect what she had read to what she currently was feeling.
Even still, she forced herself through that fear. What she was feeling was irrational–the consequence, no doubt, of Deni’s weird behavior, accentuated her frustration with the author’s rambling voice and his choice of script.
Dreadful though is Dheania, the God that even other Gods fear. She sits unbridled on the edge of creation, devouring without end, consuming all She sees. She is the Pale Beast, the Hell-Mouth, the White Horror of the Waxing Moon; She is End of Life, and the death of all is Her domain.
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Deni,” Pepper muttered. She should’ve known what she was looking at as soon a she saw the cover–a grimoire, a book of spells, demons and mystical drawings that existed for the sole purpose of summoning the pocket change of superstitious morons. Sure, some were valuable, but so was fossilized dinosaur dung–and much like coprolites, the ones that were valuable were only so because of how old, rare and filled famously full of crap they were.
And yet she realized she was shaking. That unexplainable dread was slowly growing, its hold on her seemingly worsening with every word she read. But it wasn’t right. This book was drivel–elaborate, flowery and paradoxically valuable drivel, certainly, but still very much drivel. Whatever was getting to her had nothing to do with what she was reading–it felt, she thought, to be coming right out of the ink. Yeah, right, she told herself. Listen to yourself, girl. You’re actually considering magical ink. She gave herself the mental equivalent of a wake-up slap, and moved on the the next paragraph.
Often She appears as a monstrous beast, white as bone, bloated, mountainous and loathsome beyond measure. Three heads has She, and the flesh of their mouths are as red as blood; and within one mouth She bears two great fangs, each three men tall and curved like scythes. So great is She that the eldest trees would not touch Her, and She would gaze upon us like an elephant would an ant.
“Elephants and ants,” she said. An old memory stirred inside her–one that should have been nostalgia, but instead filled her with disturbing uncertainty. She three years old, sitting next to Fiona and her grandfather and watching her mother on some dim college stage. Deni was there, standing next to her mother, and there were others: John Reynolds–who she’d seen a more than a few times since then–some older man in a tacky suit, standing just offstage, and someone else behind her mom–another of her mother’s friends, but one she’d only ever seen that once. Her mom was–for lack of a better term–singing, and she was singing that phrase. But how? And why, she asked herself, did she remember being afraid of that song?
Yet She is not bound to any form, nor to any size; if She so wishes, She could be as great as mountain or as small as the point of a needle; She has been seen as a child dressed in rags, as a lioness as great in size as a king’s chariot; She has been seen as a mighty beast with three eyes, and as a woman wearing a silver gown. She is the raven-haired maiden clad in silver and white.
Holy fuck, Pepper thought. This didn’t seem as incomprehensible to her as it should have–all matter was largely empty space after all, and if all of that empty space were gone, the entirety of humanity would barely fill the bottom of a teacup. What bothered her about it was the implication that, in violation of any and all natural laws, Dheania could change size in that at will, into any shape she wanted, and could do so without any restrictions or consequences. She could be in the room without you ever knowing, she thought. She could be here right now, watching me like a fly on the wall, and I’d never know. She could slip between your cells….
Another odd feeling crept over her. She felt as if what she had just read was forbidden, as if it were an ancient secret kept from man for countless eons. It was a feeling she shouldn’t have, a feeling that she couldn’t explain. There was nothing overtly threatening about what she was reading, nothing that should convey terror or guilt, especially not for her; yet still she felt these emotions, or at least thought she did, and she felt them so strongly that they were almost a manifestation themselves. It was becoming clear to her why Deni had been so on edge.
Get over yourself, Pepper, she thought. It was nonsense. There were no curses. There were no gods, no ghosts, and no devas, devils or demons. There was nothing in the night that wasn’t there in the light of day. That was all magical thinking–the ignorant man’s explanation for perfectly mundane. Everything that existed had an explanation, and that explanation was rooted in reality, reason and simple logic.
But here you are, jumping at shadows like a brat without a nightlight. She couldn’t deny that she felt terror, like something sinister was now watching her, staring her down from the distance, stalking her from beyond the realm of reason and out of sight. It wasn’t rational and she knew it, but then again neither was the thing in those pictures. You’ve gotten yourself into one hell of a mess, she told herself. But suck it up, girl. It’s a fucking book. No one has ever been killed by a book.
She is the weakest of the Three, but even to lesser Gods Her power is beyond their grasp. She hath oft ended life itself on this world, and ever the more so on the worlds that came before.
The worlds that came before. Was Earth not the first world these “gods” created? And what exactly did this book mean by, “the Three?” As these questions crept into her mind, she gazed down at the large ink drawing at the bottom of the page and shuddered.
It was a drawing of the Beast from her aunt’s nightmares. However, this drawing seemed far more grotesque than the copy Jacob had sent–the Beast was laying on a massively swollen belly, each head joined at he nape of the neck with their mouths opened as wide as possible. Thick crimson tongues hung from each jaw, sprawling forward across the ground before it. The eyes were almost blank–in a fearsome way–with only a tiny pupil in each, all focused on something miniscule just beyond the center mass of bright red muscle. Whatever it was was so small that it at first seemed to be without form, but after a moment of strained eyes and intense concentration she realized to her horror what it was: a man, his arms outstretched, kneeling before the Beast and readied to fall of his own free will onto the tongue of the monster before him.
And just as before, the feelings of disgust and fear she felt about that drawing seemed more prominent than the faded ink could possibly portray. It was a visceral reaction–almost primordial in nature–a feeling of deep, overwhelming dread that she could only guess was hardwired into her mind. Still, she refused to accept it all, even though it was undeniably real, even though she couldn’t begin to explain any of it.
She turned the page, only to be met with a detailed ink drawing of the same symbol as on the binder. Beneath it was a description, not incorporated into the main text:
The Fear’s Crucifix, the mark of Dheania, that She stole from the Primal of old. They who take this mark upon themselves shall belong to Her for-ever, and they shall know only hopelessness, and suffering, and horror ever-lasting even in death–and yet therein still lieth the fate of us all.
Pepper cringed. Most religions were kind enough to give you an out from damnation–eternal or not, the worst afterlives were usually reserved for terrible people and unbelievers. But this god not only condemned those who followed her, but it seemed she did so to everyone. She knew there were gods in some myths that were obnoxious or even evil–Greek mythology was rife with rape by the divine–but something so utterly demonic was not the trait of any deity she could recall.
Those who win Dheania’s favor may be granted respite, if but for a short time. They shall have no more the mind of a man, for such is lost the moment they are taken. She in this manner brought forth the bladed man, and sent him again to the desert between Scythia and Donghu. And for the weakest of slights he slew his own, and cut out their eyes, and their tongues, and he hanged their bodies from the gate posts, and offered their souls to the Maiden in White. And when She stood before him, he kissed Her, and took Her hand, and with his abominable heart reborn he swore to Her his everlasting faith.
“The fuck?” She’d heard of the bladed man before–both her aunt and the prophecy had mentioned him–but what struck her were the locations. Scythia was an ancient territory in Central Eurasia–one that came into conflict with the Romans and ancient Greeks–while the Donghu was a nomadic nation inhabiting what present-day northern China. There was no desert in this region–it was dominated by a vast grassland called the steppes–but there was once a nation there that had left little trace in the history books: the Xiongnu Empire, which existed around the time of the Han Dynasty, and which was only known through the latter’s records. But if that were the case, then the man who attacked Roderigo would have been more than two thousand years old.
At that moment the sheer enormity of the book became too daunting. She was only a few pages in, but the writing didn’t seem to have any stops, and those old letters, and that vague language were already driving her up the wall. It couldn’t possibly span the entirety of a book that size–no person could keep up the charade that long–and while she knew rationally that the worst that would happen would be a headache, she couldn’t explain why she felt so terrified. If it continued like this for even another page, there would be no way that she have been able last the entire tome.
In fact, she’d had enough.
Pepper pressed the button on the intercom. “Thank you Deni,” she said. “I think I’m done now.” She noticed that her voice was shaky; truth be told, she wasn’t even surprised anymore.
“Really?” Deni said, sounding more curious than surprised. “It’s only been five minutes.”
Five minutes? Five fucking minutes? She couldn’t possibly have been reading for such a short time. It had to have been hours–it sure felt like it–and the very thought otherwise made her want to spit into the mic. “Yes, Deni,” she said, forcing herself not to scream at him. “I’d say this was worth the effort. It’s a shame I don’t have a copy.”
“I’ll be up there in a minute then,” he said.
“That’s okay. I’ll show myself out.” She didn’t really want to, but she knew that while there was danger ahead, it wouldn’t be found in Deni’s study. Heading down the hall, she removed her cellphone from her pocket and began furiously typing on the keyboard.
Once outside, Pepper stared back at Deni’s house, trying to make sense of what she’d read. Finally, she put her phone down and shook her head.
Pepper, she thought, just what the hell did you get yourself into?
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