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Chaosium Digest Volume 37 Number 03
Chaosium Digest Volume 37, Number 03
Date: Saturday, Dec. 7, 2002
Number: 4 of 4
AN EVENING WITH ASMODEUS
Chapter four
Late September 2001
"The darkness ahead stretches creeping tendrils back through time to consume
the wriggling, writhing past. It's malignancy eating its way towards me,
screaming ahead of it the meaninglessness of the light. I unthinkingly trace
the shadows and call it fiction. The charade is not what you assumed, the
game is not to the rules you understand. My lies upholster your lies, the
filth I ingest and let seep distorted through my fingers and onto paper. I
alone seem to see the predatorial shadows hanging over us hungrily, I alone
seem to see what tapers from them, casting excretion into our lives. We are
the dirt shaped into their footprint but maybe I haven't been trampled into
submission. The only thing I don't know is whether I've tried to climb out
or whether I've just tried to reshape myself in unconscious sycophancy. Do
you think I'm whimpering, cringing with obsequiousness? Don't answer that."
Sighing, James Aspera stopped his Dictaphone but kept it cradled in one
hand, and huddled in the very individual chilliness that a church reserves.
He had undone his ponytail and now his hair hung in lank, tangled creepers
across shivering shoulders. He licked his lips nervously, eyeing the
stonework that leaned over him and seemed to look down disapprovingly. The
carvings writhed as they coiled around the largely purposeless buttresses,
indignant at the electricity cables now stapled to them to provide electric
light. Rested at the base of one a woman whimpered faintly now that she had
clawed back up through unconsciousness into a mere exhausted sleep. Pausing
to check her temperature and to shift her into a slightly more comfortable
position on the prayer-mats he had dragged hastily together, Aspera walked
wearily to the door of the church and looked out glumly.
He looked on a world that he had become unnecessarily accustomed to. What
had once inspired deep horror in him now fostered a frightened, yet weary,
peculiar depression. Dereliction shrouded the buildings towering over him
through the chilly haze of fog that ghosted across the snow-covered ground.
He did not need to investigate those buildings to know what doubtless
waited. Things that slithered through stinking warrens, slogans scrawled
across stained walls with inhuman hands, the only humanity found in the
pathetic victims of the endless perversity that existed in this shadowy
nightmare. And out there too would be the grim puppeteers of the unreality,
pulling the strings that bound him and laughing as he twitched. He still
knew too much terror, adrenaline still hotwired his brain when he
encountered the unimaginable things that this hellhole could vomit up for
his delight. He was too frightened to do anything but flee maddened from the
worst, but he vehemently hated this deceptive calm. The tension brought
goose bumps up on his arms and made him something far beyond jittery. No. He
would not play by their rules, as pathetic and meaningless as such a
posturing show of defiance was. He would not desperately scrabble in the
dirt for a redeemer. He certainly would not admit that what frightened him
the most was what he kept locked inside his mind, trying to ignore the roots
it was eagerly throwing out, the seeping filth that it was injecting into
his soul.
Maybe he would have felt differently if he'd seen how much worse Swindell's
inner secrets were.
Suddenly his neck prickled and a deeper chill infused his spine. He spun,
and caught the flicker of movement. A shadow whipped past, seeming to caper.
He flung himself against the wall, breathing hard. A whisper reached him,
and he turned his neck so sharply that it clicked. A giggle.
Aspera suddenly gulped hard. The woman. Where was she? There were dark
droplets glistening on the stone where she had been and the cushions were in
disarray.
Aspera went still. Then, as quietly as he could, he crept forward. An almost
imperceptible clink rooted him to the spot. He knew that sound. He looked
up, and shrieked.
Pinned to the ceiling a man hung, grossly mutilated. His head lolled,
eyelids puckered over empty sockets. From underneath a ripped shirt,
tentacles were beginning to protrude, beginning to hang down, beginning to
sway and seek.
He threw himself at a wall and tried to choke a cry of pain. He slipped on a
floor suddenly greasy with muck, and saw the rusted barbed wire that
suddenly coated the walls, and that he had just flung himself upon. The
carvings writhed on the buttresses, and this time they truly did literally
writhe.
As Aspera began to scrabble for footing, with a low panicked moaning he saw
the torn and ragged banner hanging above an altar suddenly streaked with
dripping blackness. The shadows began to spin and caper around him,
emaciated figures just beyond sight dancing with inhuman lurches and
disgustingly liquid-limbed poses.
Chains began to clink, and he saw them creeping across the ceiling, dragging
themselves by their barbs, accompanied by the pulse that reverberated
suddenly in the floor. The woman, Aspera thought, desperate for focus, where
is she? Where?
He edged quivering towards the open doorway, and glanced out of the door. It
was not snow that now lay upon the ground. The buildings surrounding the
square had bloated, and spawned their own proliferate display of stains and
bodies. He saw the shape traced in the darkness, heard the chitters all
around that whispered its name gleefully.
Without thinking he mouthed the phrase he knew well.
"They sway and undulate around the baphomet in filth."
The ground convulsed at his words, and bubbled with sudden breaths of a
sickening stench. He was so distracted by gagging and clutching his stomach
that he didn't notice when the drumming began. As the shadows capered and
the fog wreathed he heard the sound of footfalls and knew the dancers were
manifest. And he knew them.
Screaming at the world, Aspera tore his coat pocket, clutching desperately
at a leather bag concealed there. He saw the shape of the figures staggering
towards the church through the foetid alleys, saw the ground shifting and
sinking inwards.
Like he hadn't done since he was a child, even at the worst, Aspera began to
cry.
The rivulets of tears ran across his grubby cheeks as he heard the dancing
intensify behind him but dared not look at what the church was becoming when
he heard the painful, ancient groan of stones grinding and shifting. He
ripped the leather bag and pulled out a cube covered in inscriptions and
sigils, feeling it hot underneath his hand. For a second he flashed back to
the night where he had originally lain hand on it and instinctively known
its purpose even then. As the ground displaced, muck sliding into a black,
dripping chasm from which dank smells and disturbing, high pitched cries
emitted, Aspera emerged from the fetal position he hadn't realized he'd
adopted, and raised his tear-stained face towards the altar. Yes.
There was the tall, silhouetted figure stood behind it arms raised
exultantly. There was the prostrate female form spread-eagled on the altar.
The thin figures pranced, their faces shifting and melting, grins widening
and puckering, eyes appearing and disappearing. Aspera choked down another
useless cry.
From behind him in the abyss he heard them, dragging themselves on spindly
limbs, eagerly chittering with their many mouths, eyeless but sighted,
gathering.
The wavering, toneless chant resolved itself from the murmurs from the
alleys and contorted streets, from the dead and the living alike. Aspera
shrieked the name they echoed in a pathetic challenge, thrusting his hand
skyward bearing the cube-shaped idol that pulsed with an inner light or an
inner darkness. Again and again he shrieked, as the stench intensified. As
he began to stagger forward, the exultant figure stepped into the baleful
light that the idol threw in pulsing swathes, grinning and raising the
cruelly barbed and twisted knife he held in one gaunt hand. The chanters
screamed in adoration.
-Asmodeus.
Early December 2001
Swindell knelt in the dust, frowning with concentration, staring at the
symbols shown meticulously in the book. The inscriptions were fractionally
incomplete, but Swindell knew how to finish symbols when he'd seen them
complete in his nightmares. Almost disconnected, he felt the chalk drag his
hand as abhorrent and unfamiliar words wrote themselves. He sat back on his
haunches for a moment, admiring his handiwork. With deliberation, he removed
his gun from the holster and placed it ready at his side. Fumbling in his
pocket, he pulled out his last set of Polaroid's, his most precious, his
most recent. His face sagged and his eyes glistened as he looked at what
he'd done to them, what his desires had become. The circle was almost
complete, and he left the chalk ready to fill in the last inch of it. With a
voice cracking with emotion, he read out the ceremonial chant, feeling the
syllables pull themselves up out of his throat and escape gleefully into the
air. He did not yet say the last name, however.
He pulled himself laboriously out of the space beneath the stage, clutching
the Polaroid's in one hand. Sifting through the damp-fattened textbooks,
wincing at the rubbery feel of the covers and the stains that covered them,
he ripped out as many dry pages as he could find, ignoring the insects
skittering away to the dark corners when uncovered. Clutching the thick wad,
he scrambled back under the stage and built a small fire. As the pages
crackled and fragmented in the flames he tossed in one Polaroid after
another, letting the tears finally slide freely down his cheeks. The images
distorted and blurred in the heat, but their perversion shone through
mockingly. When the last Polaroid had succumbed to its fate, Swindell
stamped out the fire, almost overcome with a flash of anger, then wracked
with sobs, kicked the ashes into the corners. Eventually he returned to the
symbol that had been scribed through him, and with a decisive snap of the
chalk completed the circle.
The space darkened.
Swindell began to tremble as he heard the chittering from infinitely far,
that was clawing its way closer.
With a tremulous voice, he intoned the final name.
-Asmodeus.
Late September 2001
Silence.
The echoes of Aspera's last defiant but despairing cry faded as he lowered
his arm. The thin, horribly graceful figures capered no longer, but crowded
motionless in the rafters, gazing down raptly whenever their eyes appeared.
The tentacles protruding from the dead man's chest wavered and circled
hungrily, tipped with sensuously lipped mouths.
The gaunt figure stepped forward and began to speak, both to the sagging
crowds gathered around the abyss and to Aspera himself. Breathing hard,
Aspera grimaced with a mixture of fright and hatred at the sound of the
sonorous, deceptively quiet voice.
"The circle is almost complete. Do you understand me?"
Wiping a thread of nervous involuntary slaver from his mouth, Aspera hurled
the carven cube-idol at the floor, causing it no damage. The gaunt man
raised his eyebrows questioningly, mockingly. Almost like a human. His
chains and piercing, his leather clothes, gleamed despite the darkness, and
the glittering facets danced as he raised his arms again, lifting the bound
and wakened woman up from the altar like a feather in one hand and bearing
the knife.
He stepped down from the dais, with sinuous grace, and approached Aspera.
The throngs outside stirred excitedly. Aspera, bedraggled, a high-class
scarecrow with his exhausted posture and ruined clothes, raised his eyes and
met those of the one approaching. The other grinned at Aspera humorlessly,
and threw the woman down onto the flagstones. She cried pitifully into her
gag and struggled. The tentacles above began to twitch with eagerness. The
gaunt man reached forward and grabbed Aspera's chin in his hand with thin,
pale fingers. He examined the struggling, incoherently protesting author
thoughtfully, angling his face so that the long white scar dividing his
dirty left cheek caught the fading light.
"So are you marked," the gaunt man said tersely.
"So I shall mark you again."
He raised the knife as Aspera doubled his frenetic struggling.
He brought the knife down, and Aspera screamed again, doubling over and
clutching his face as the blood ran through his fingers. Maimed.
He raised the knife again, and the chanting began to invoke a new name,
which the crowds had harbored a fierce desire to intone for millennia.
Eleven leather-clad figures emerged from the surrounding buildings, echoing
their chants with resonant voices.
The tentacles above leapt with sudden speed and bore the woman upward as she
screamed in terror through her gag, pulling her towards an eternity of pain
with undisguised lust.
The gaunt man grinned.
The sacrifice was made.
The circle was complete.
Early December 2001
Swindell grunted ineffectually. Nothing had happened. Nothing! It had no
right not to happen! Frustration welled up in him and he beat the symbol
he'd written in the dust until it was scuffed and unrecognisable. He beat
his fists on the floor until his knuckles bled, and he howled. He had
already known that he didn't have the courage to use the gun on himself. He
always called Aspera the coward, the sniveling weaselly coward that Aspera
undoubtedly was. But Swindell knew that he simply couldn't do it. He howled
again. He had left no defenses at home, Richard would almost certainly have
discovered something. The shame gnawed at him, ate at him, tore and ravaged
at his insides as he wept. Why hadn't it worked? In a maddened rage Swindell
rose up like a spectre and began beating at the tables, props, walls,
scratching himself and screaming in his incandescent, anguished
self-loathing.
"Please!" he screamed, "Please!"
He didn't know who he was screaming to or what he was hoping for. In the
midst of his immense lashing outburst he folded up and hugged his knees, as
something snapped inside him. Any last vestige of coherency left him and he
collapsed in a fetal position with a gentle sigh.
He didn't know how long he lay there, murmuring and cuddling himself, before
he heard the footsteps from the hall above. In sudden haste and rationality
he scrambled up and peered out into the murk. Night had fallen at some point
out in the distant, hazy world, and the curtains in the hall had been drawn
for some obscure reason. A tall figure stood silhouetted, with its back to
Swindell.
Carefully, the beleaguered private eye clambered out from under the stage,
eyes narrowed with suspicion, clutching his gun tightly to himself. When he
finally stood, shaking and brushing the dust off his clothes, he was
surprised at how level his voice turned out to be.
"Ok, what do you want?"
His voice echoed in the uncomfortable silence. The figure at the other end
of the hall did not reply.
"I'm really, really not in the mood for fun and games at the moment, so
either say something useful or get out before I shoot you. No messing. I'm
at the end of my tether. Well?"
The figure shifted position but didn't turn.
"Swindell, you disappoint me."
Swindell relaxed a little, at least marginally.
"Aspera, what are you doing here of all places?"
"Looking for you."
Swindell suddenly felt anxious and frightened. Had Aspera stumbled on his
stash? There was something else though. Something different about the voice,
the tone, and the way his old acquaintance stood. Suddenly he began to
shiver. The echoing, vaulted hall had a new quality that he felt he
recognized. A nauseating smell wafted over him. No, he thought, it can't
have. No.
Aspera turned.
Swindell gaped and backed away in horror.
"Aspera, what the hell have you done to yourself?"
Swindell's old companion was an evil sight. His clothes, ragged and stained,
were hung with chains, some of which hanging from disgusting, mangled
piercing in his pallid skin. He wore a pendant that glittered with red
malice, and one bared shoulder was swollen and reddened with a complicated
brand that Swindell knew well - he had just written it in dust, after all.
Aspera toyed with a barbed and twisted knife playfully in one hand.
But the face was worse.
It was hideously scarred, a huge line that veered across his forehead,
across an eye socket sewn up. But the other eye was more frightening. It
glittered with avarice, a keen and cold calculation and a dreadful hunger.
He was smiling, a vaguely pleasant smile that had no relation to the rest of
that face. His hair hung bedraggled, but threaded in places with chains.
"No."
Swindell backed away as he said it, his voice quavering with fear. "No, no.
You can't be. Not after everything we've done. You couldn't be. Never. Tell
me so, Aspera."
Aspera's smile widened and there was no longer anything pleasant about it.
"Tell me you aren't Aspera, for the sake of what we've done together,
please!"
Aspera straightened up more, and then bowed mockingly.
"I am-" he began.
"-The Thirteenth." Swindell finished, in disgust, horror, dejectedness.
Beaten.
"You're the last of them. The circle is complete," He finished with bitter
sarcasm, and realized that the invocation had worked after all. Aspera
raised his arms with a flourish, and the curtains dropped. Swindell stared
and screamed.
An inner encyclopedia at the back of Swindell's head babbled some nonsense
about Giger landscapes. But the things out there were beyond that. They
stared down at him, eyes shifting, mouths opening and closing in an arachnid
fashion. Their limbs hung clumsily about them as they stood motionless. The
sky dripped down, collapsing, and the fields outside were of filth, trees
blasted of life and coated with fungi. The dead were everywhere, on the
buildings, on the trees. Witnessing. Stood just beyond the window, eleven
figures cavorted while one stood motionless, arms upraised, in their centre.
"They swayed and undulated around the baphomet in filth".
He knew it, he'd heard it before in another place a long time ago.
Swindell made a decision he couldn't have. He couldn't bear looking at it
when he raised the gun to his head and fired.
Or tried to.
Aspera giggled and the trigger melted, the metal of the gun sagging and
glowing with sudden heat that Swindell couldn't feel. Howling anyway, he
dropped the remains of the weapon of the floor, where it dissolved,
evaporated, leaving only a strangely attractive burn on the wood of the
floor.
He sagged further, tear-ducts dry. Beaten.
"What will you do with me?" he muttered dejectedly, staring at the floor.
"Me?" growled Aspera, "I won't do anything. It isn't up to me."
The thirteenth motioned Swindell to look round.
He did so, and found vent for more voice.
The opening beneath the stage had stretched, distorted and widened, becoming
mouth-like, ringed by thick lips of contorted wood and brick. Down below, in
the dark beneath, mist writhed, wreathed, spun and wove. Suggestions of
faces and bodies occasionally coalesced, the forms of slack-jawed children.
Swindell knew them. He had defiled the world enraptured by the pictures of
them, had given into temptation, and had taken them for his own disgusting
satisfaction. They seemed to reach for him.
The Thirteenth grinned again.
"Aspera, no! Please, no!" he squealed in fright.
"Please, just let me die!" he sniveled. He felt the wood warping beneath
him, lost his footing, felt himself slipping inexorably. He clawed at the
floorboards with his scratched fingers and broken nails, seeking
ineffectually for purchase.
"Please Aspera! Aspera please! PLEASE! ASPERA!"
Almost sensuously he felt the first mist tendril close over his legs, felt
their strength and their unexplainable tangibility. With a slightly damp
sound he felt himself being pulled, sucked, into the pit beneath the stage.
"ASPERAAA!!! NO!!!!!" he shrieked, and then felt himself gagged by mist. The
last thing he heard before the shifting, hungry fog envelop him was Aspera,
giggling.
Not Aspera. The Thirteenth.
Then the child-things closed in.
EPILOGUE - Written in collaboration with Brooke Johnson
The policeman peered through the mist-cloaked drizzle at the charred
skeletal remains of the buildings; muffled sounds seeped through the early
morning mist in a similar fashion to the birthing light. The girl crying
fitfully, she had discovered the.well the thing, whilst on a morning jog.
The sobs blended bizarrely with the sounds of police radios and the baffled
forensics team milling uselessly about. He had a job to do and he was doing
it to the best of his abilities. The few slack jawed gawkers and press were
easily kept at a distance, so all he had to do was keep them out until the
special unit had arrived then cleaned this mess up. He hadn't actually seen
the 'remains' but of the five who had only two were still conscious and
neither of them had retained the contents of their stomachs. He fingered his
badge uncomfortably as a group of figures fluidly emerged from the mist. He
walked forward, holding up his hands in a warding gesture. 'I'm sorry but I
can't let anyone...oh, I am sorry sir, I didn't realize it was you. All this
fog, sorry. Go straight on through.'
Mr. Seth's group stalked purposefully towards the centre of the macabre
scene, the mist only retreating a foot at a time, so when the hall began to
rear around the group it looked more like a craggy alien landscape than a
seat of learning. The members of the team looked about and nodded in
affirmation to each other one taking notes, another lightly rubbing one of
her temples with one hand and fingering a metal amulet with another, her
eyes somewhere completely different.
'Here,' she rasped harshly.
'Here, I'm sensing some very negative energy...the karmic value of this
location has been inverted completely!"
Other neo-spiritual effluent flowed from her mouth in a flower wreathed
stream of Californian new age psychobabble. One of the group snorted
derisively; the assistant at the back struggling under the weight of the
team's field equipment. He grunted again for good measure then dumped
several hundred pounds worth of dream catchers, focusing crystals and chi
alignment mirrors unceremoniously to the ground. He stood a while breathing
in the atmosphere then began to inspect the strange inscriptions that
festooned the walls. Frowning, he checked them against some well-worn notes
whilst muttering absently to himself. As he did so, there was a small scream
and the amulet-girl ran past, vomit streaming through clasped fingers over
the mouth.
'Lets see what we've got here then,' he sighed.
He sauntered nonchalantly over to the centre of attention, stared a moment
at the various collapsed and vomiting members of the new age army then
perused the reason of their being there.
'Bloody hell, I wish who ever it was would stop lumbering me with all the
new age types. They're too busy feng shuing here, there and everywhere to
take notes and carry equipment. Fit though, must be all that time spent
rearranging their furniture,' He grumbled light-heartedly at the one taking
photos. The crouching photographer continued his business but chortled a
reply.
' Watch it, Mr. Seth, you'll wiggle the bad mojo inversely. And believe me,'
he paused for dramatic effect and looked up, face full of contrived concern.
'You DO NOT want Baron Samedi voodooing all over your Weetabix.' There was
laughter and then the air of professionalism returned. 'Crap.' The younger
of the men exclaimed, 'I know him!'
Mr. Seth looked up, surprised.
'It's Matt Swindell, you know from, well you know...' the younger man, named
Jones, swirled his hands in the little pantomime people make to indicate
searching for the right phrase.
'That business at the Nihil Industries labs. The one who used to be in that
special unit with the police who thought our work was 'interesting.' He
wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis, then continued.
'Intriguing. What do you make of that?' He pointed at the groin area of the
incumbent Swindell, where the private investigator had been pierced by an
expensive pen, attached to which was a Polaroid and a sheaf of papers.
Gingerly, hands gloved in rubber. Jones pulled out the pen with a wince and
examined the photo.
'Holy shit, that's .I.oh fuck, I knew he was greasy and all but I can't say
I expected this.'
The older man looked at the sickening still life of perversity. It showed
Swindell with a small and obviously terrified boy. The look of unrestrained
lust and adulation on Swindell's face begged a sacrifice of the viewer's
bile.
The sheaf of papers turned out to be a hand written manuscript.
'Huh,' the older man voiced as he briefly scanned it.
'I would say our murderer had more than a little smattering of the
lesser-known occult dealings. Ah, an author, James Aspera.' He frowned and
unconsciously tapped his cheek.
'Does that ring any bells?'
Jones grunted.
'Yeah, third rate horror hack. Pretty poncy bastard actually. Swindell went
through something with him and that's the impression I got. I made an
attempt at reading his novel, "whippoorwill hopes' picnic" or something, but
I just couldn't get into it, reason being - it was fucking lame. Swindell
swore it was true but, well I don't know it just wasn't very convincing you
know?'
The older man nodded sagely, and glanced at the unfortunate pen as he gently
slipped it into a re-sealable plastic bag.
The pen bore the address of the Thistle Hotel in Middlesbrough.
After a while the two men had finished their work and stood looking at the
shamble of life solidified before them. A senior but plain-clothed policeman
strode up and looked stonily at the scene.
'We can take the photo and other evidence for standard file but what about
the special report?'
'Well...' the younger man began expansively, aiming to begin a soliloquy.
'Truthfully speaking, you're not going to like this,' the older man cut in,
'Last night for whatever reason there was a major incursion initiated by
this man.'
'And what is this supposed to mean to me?' the policeman asked curtly. Seth
decided not to mince words.
'Unfortunately, this has seriously weakened the natural barrier of the area
and this means that you're going to be in for a rough time. At first there
won't be any noticeable change but as more and more happens, the barrier
will weaken further and eventually you're going to have them popping in and
out whenever the fancy takes them. Sorry and all, but that's what's going to
happen. That's what always happens when someone leaves the door open for the
axis of perdition.' Seth spoke fairly tersely as if he had delivered the
same speech many times before.
The policeman nodded glumly.
'And unofficially, what do we say about that?'
He pointed at the stage.
Jones looked at Seth and shrugged, then turned back to the policeman.
'Er.ball lightning?'
Seth decided it was high time to bring his flippant assistant Jones down to
earth, and burst his inflated opinion of himself. His unprofessional
attitude was becoming a detriment to the department. As he took the
policeman further aside to mouth some fictional but plausible explanation
for the incident he idly mulled over the matter of Jones's reproof.
After the scientists had gone the work crew moved in to clear up the mess.
They were broadly used to the unusual work they were given, and the pay was
phenomenal. It was also only very occasional and they were only required to
hold their tongues so none complained. But this job was spooking even the
old timers. It wasn't the way that the bloke had melded so completely with
the stage that flesh was indistinguishable from the wood, but the way that
the very inner fabric of the surrounding walls had twisted into a writhing
sea of gleeful children swarming towards the terror-stricken man. Even
considering that though, what really sent the chill down the spine was the
way that unless you were making enough noise, you could swear you could hear
giggling children and the screaming of a man being shown the void in his own
soul.
--
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