The Dark Reciprocates

The Reed name should not have been one of particular note in New England, despite an established lineage from before the revolutionary war. By the time the tendrils of iron rails had radiated industry between every hamlet and township, the family was of only modest means and of no particular standing outside of the local Elk lodge. Such dour thoughts on the history of my dwindling family tree were as inescapable as the curse on the Reed name as I crossed over the twin iron lines of modernity and headed into the woods.

Foster Reed, my uncle, had been the first to fall from the curse, and he likely died thinking the culprit his weak heart. The police-work was shoddy. It was only after they discovered Justice Reed, my father, with a letter from a Roy N Jaune claiming to be the second of its kind that they suspected foul play. The occult symbol drawn on the back of the letter was the only clue that there was a curse on the Reed name at all. I received word of that dark news from my sister, Imogen. She had enough time to acquire a small revolver for self-defense before the end came. She was shot by the very same gun during a walk home from her job at the library.

 The police ruled the act a suicide, despite the bullet entering her chest and not her head, and occurring outside under the ancient elms and not in a den of morose thought. Imogen may have had an uncouth familiarity with occult history, but my sister would not be the sort to randomly kill herself mid-commute. As the last bearer of the Reed name, and as familial obligation demanded, I departed my job on the Model T line and began to investigate. Upon searching the crime scene where my sister was killed, I found a letter inside a windblown shrubbery. The letter mocked our family name with strange curses, naming my sister Imogen as a ‘foul phylactery of the metaphysical Luddites’ and a ‘Pharisee of the academic.’  Turning it over, I found an occult symbol on the back, a four-pointed star with a circle in the middle along with four interlocking circles spaced around it. Three of the four circles had been filled in, one with a yellow substance, one with ash, and one with blood. The final circle stood empty.

Questioning the neighbors on the street where it happened revealed that there was someone spotted that night, and he was of such a peculiar nature it was only natural to conclude that the figure must be the killer. He was described as tall, with an irregular movement to his walk. His locomotion was quick despite this, and his clothing was of a long, flowing variety. Witnesses claimed an inability to detect any discernible facial features, or specify what type of cloth it was due to darkness. There were ample streetlights of the modern incandescent variety lining both sides of the avenue, and when probed about this inconsistency the neighbors recalled a shroud of darkness that seemed to follow the figure. They, too, remembered an increased agitation of the local cicadas in the immediate area on the night in question occurring shortly before hearing a gunshot.

Returning to the beginning of my sister’s final journey revealed that she had checked a rare book out of the library to herself just before her demise. The book was of an occult nature, and records show that a Mr. Juane had attempted to check out the book mere weeks before. My sister, who loved learning almost to her detriment, had denied his request even for access. No book was found at the crime scene, either by the Police or by my own more thorough search of the premises.

It didn’t take someone of Imogen’s learning to deduce Mr. Juane’s motives.

It took considerably more research to learn the means by which he could enact his curse on my family. The library proved fruitless, as the occult tomes necessary for further speculation were denied me by their recall to their original university. Further reference of my sister’s lending record indicated that she had investigated along the same lines as I was pursuing, but she had left her notes in no obvious place. I searched her home, reverently at first, and then with a desperation borne of insanity. There, hidden under the floorboards of her bed, my search for such an answer bore rotten fruit in the form of a stack of rumpled papers.

The book my sister had died trying to protect contained a ritual involving a particular self-illuminating crystal, the ruby of Ahatiwaqrat, that had recently gone missing from a traveling archeological display. My sister had denied access to the book because of the theft, and accordingly she had begun to make notes on how it could be used. Of its notable properties, it was fabled to be able to kill with a thought, although the text warned that such a process was fraught with danger. It required a pure heart to wield, but my sister had circled an alternative translation to this phrase: pure intention. Certainly, Roy N Juane had no noble goal to follow, and it followed that the passage meant the caster of such profane magiks had to possess a certain single-mindedness rather than hold any charitable thoughts in their mind. The killer certainly didn’t hold any pity in his heart.

I resolved that I should have none either.  

Tracking Juane to his lair was less difficult than it should have been. I simply followed the path to a convergence of ley lines highlighted in my sister’s notes, at a spot supposedly used by a sect of witches years earlier. A local boy had stumbled across a clearing with then strange marks burned into the ground, but whose star and circles were now unwelcomely familiar to my eye. The newspaper clipping accompanying my sister’s map noted that the town had become crazed with paranoid fervor for several years after, with locals expecting some magical conspiracy akin to the one I was now embroiled in to manifest itself. None occurred, at the time.

It was the logical place to look for a madman who believed himself an occult master.

Imogen’s death proved that normal means of defense would prove useless against the curse set against me. I would have to avail myself of the same means of attack, and arming myself with several spells my sister had scrawled in the margins of her notes, I embarked on the path that led me into those fateful woods.

The moonlight made it easy to skulk through the woods undetected without becoming lost. When I came into the clearing, it was not as I had supposed to find it. Despite a recent squall, the ground seemed recently charred, with clear black lines of sulfurous resolve etching themselves into the expected ugly pattern. However, the interlocking circles now had unnatural color to them: yellow, black, red, and white now tarnished the hale grass of the clearing between the scorch marks.

A single source of red light glowed dimly from under the cover of fallen foliage from just outside the circle to illuminate the scene with a devilish radiance. Enraged, I realized my quarry had not only eluded me, but that he was so secure in his position that he thought he could leave the weapon of my destruction in the open, that I was powerless to oppose his will. That the Reed family was a line ready to be snuffed out over a petty warlock’s grievance. That my family died for nothing.

Before I could stop myself, I had walked boldly across the clearing to the source of the red light. Swiping away the leaf litter revealed the Ruby of Ahatiwaqrat in all of its hideous beauty. Closing my hand around the rock it felt warm as my chest went cold. I felt a chant build on my tongue. The ruby glowed as crimson as the blood of a hunter’s kill as I invoked the spell of vengeance. I let my hatred of this man overtake my thoughts as I poured venom into the chant over and over, manifesting a malignant luster into the rock as it glowed with cold light. Even as my hand began to frost I kept a tight grip through a pain I barely felt as the cry came from my lips again and again: let me hang in the balance, and let him know.

“Adpendat me in statera iusta et sciat!”

“Freeze! Stop!”

I turned to the nervous exclamation as everything happened at once. My hand slammed into the trunk of an old elm tree in the darkness, the very timber I had positioned myself next to and forgotten about in my lust for revenge. I saw the scared eyes of a police officer charging across the field, revolver drawn but without the understanding of what was happening to point it anywhere sensible. A scarlet pulse of light blazed across the clearing like a flash bulb as shattering crack sounded out with enough force that I could have believed it was the policeman’s pistol were it not for the source coming from directly beneath my feet. The sound of tinkling glass came with it, like the laughter of fate, and that was when hell let loose.

Screeching, whirring and sudden darkness sprang forth in an instant, disorienting the senses beyond any attempt at coherence. I was forced to my knees purely out of shock, my body entering the start of a nervous break as its only defense against the sudden assault on the senses. A scream cut through the unrelenting whine only a moment later. Spurred by the sound, my mind managed to overpower my body once more as I fled into the night.

In my fright I found a path I had not yet trod that led away from the circle, and before a rational thought could enter my mind, I flew down the avenue of escape. Seeking any salvation from the monstrosity I had unleashed; I saw an incongruously square source of welcoming yellow light coming from the ground. Rushing to the spot, I found an old trapdoor on rusty hinges splayed open to show a simple earthen corridor with a much newer ladder allowing for a drop down to the wet soil below. I threw myself down the escape presented. I slammed the hatch behind me with a terrible creak of protesting metal before I sought out the source of the dim light.

A single candle poorly illuminated the space, resting on a dirty wooden table. Refuse of food and paper, magical knickknacks and waste pervaded the foul-smelling lair. A single sheet of paper, bearing the mark of the curse, sat on the desk, and flipping it over I was confronted with my own name on the address line. The name at the bottom came as no surprise, for I had found the conservatory of Roy N Juane.

A distant whine alerted me to my current predicament, the wizard’s curse a far-off matter compared to the monstrosity raging its way towards me. I blew out the candle quickly, hoping the thing would pass overhead even as I desperately tried to search for a safe hiding spot. The screeching outside grew with steady certainty. I dropped to the floor to hide in the one spot I knew was hidden to the doorway, directly underneath the table, and fell onto the decomposing corpse below.

The stench intensified to a vaporous level and I had to hold back a cry of disgust. The body was not fresh, and the creeping things of the forest had found the ample source of sustenance quickly. It was only fear that kept me rooted to the squirming mass beneath me. Something cold and sharp was in its hand, and I grabbed at it in the hope that it was some kind of weapon to defend myself with. The corpse had only been clutching an amulet, and in the dark my fingers traced the grotesque shape of the profane symbol that had obsessed Roy N Juane. I suddenly understood the meaning of the ruby exposed in the wood, and the festering body on which I now laid: the warlock had been killed by the very beast I had summoned.

I began to shake at the revelation, only for the harvest of my miserable sowing to come forth.

I heard the sound of the trap door squeal as the rusty hinges cried out against their violent opening to the searching moon beams. The screeching sound increased in volume, echoing wet earthen walls to cacophonous effect. I hardly breathed as the shaft of moonlight was blotted out from above as I waited for the inevitable rattle of the thing on the metal ladder. I closed my eyes and pressed myself into the wriggling decay beneath me in the dim hope that I could shield myself from joining it. I thought that the beast might hunt on scent, or movement, and it was in these desperate notions on which I pinned my next actions. I forced even the thought of fighting back from my head and willed any animating energies into a catatonic state until perspiration broke across my brow.

I had no way to measure the passage of time other than by the slow progress of exploring larva crawling over my skin, but with each squelching extension of their fetid trails, I heard no sound come from the ladder, nor did the moonlight return. The beast remained as motionless as I. The cloud kept the tunnel in a pitch black that only heightened the sensation of the grave vermin crawling on my skin. They moved under the collar of my shirt, into my hair, fell onto the ground with wet plops that complimented their fellows scraping teeth. The air remained still.

Just as I was about to scream, to cry out and flee in madness to some unknown corner in the dark expanse, to a place my logical mind knew to be an impossibility in that enclosed space, I saw a sliver of moonlight. It fattened on the ground, growing slowly, and then all at once as the buzzing shriek faded into the distance. I was too shocked to move for long minutes afterwards, until a reflexive retching reached the back of my throat. With the return of motion so did the visceral revulsion of the insects creeping over my body, and I dug furrows into my flesh in my exuberance to claw them from my skin. Once I had regained a semblance of composure, I pushed myself up and away from the sick I had left on the floor towards the fresh air of the moonlight.

I stopped myself at the ladder as fear stayed my over eager hands from rattling the loose bolts lest I alert the creature lurking outside. Carefully grasping the first rusty wrung, I pulled myself upwards towards the possibility of escape. At the top, the scent of recently disturbed loam gave credence to my fear in the tunnel while reassuring me of my return to the natural world. As I came to my feet into the world of order, a madness overtook me.

I fled along the path, retracing the monster’s steps. It had a curious gait, the deep impacts into the sodden soil almost resembling bare human feet, but with mismatching, loping strides that left a staccato pattern in its wake. If it left foot prints, it had a form. If it had a form, it could be touched. If it could be touched, it could be killed.

I had tried to answer witchcraft with witchcraft; to match a foolish endeavor into sorcery in kind. I saw now the error of my ways and the logical path seemed clear in my mind. Police officers had guns. The wizard was dead, but the creature remained. I had to fight back, and I would do it with understandable phenomena. The creature had to be killed, it couldn’t be allowed to exist in the ordered world, and I would hunt it down without a thought of escape for myself.

I heard the high insectoid screech in the background, and I broke into a run as I came back into the clearing. There was a dull crunch as I stepped on the shattered remains of the crystal on my way to the dark form of the dead policeman face down on the ground. His pistol glinted in the moonlight where it had fallen from his hand. I dove for the weapon even as the terrible noise of the beast was joined by a drumbeat of crashing branches as it picked up speed through the underbrush. My hand closed around the unfired weapon, cold and heavy in my hand, as I whirled to face the truth of the creature that I had unleashed.

In the moonlight, I saw the form of the thing at last. It had a human face, bent by feral calculation. It did not hesitate, and neither did I, under the lamenting stars. In the last moments of clarity before we met, my unease crystalized into a tangible monstrosity, and I realized the face of the creature was my own.