LEVITATING MACHETE MAGICK

Christopher and Michael Wilburson were, let me see…13, when their great-grandmother reposed in 1997. As with many great-grandchildren in the West today, they knew their living ancestor only cordially; being much more kindred to their grandparents. Grief, the mighty equalizer, is gargantuan perhaps; but it is not infinite- it is not God. Yet the workers of the underworld want an infinite grief, thereby bringing the underworld to all humankind. Many who have hunted these ‘underworld workers’ have simply called them ‘ghouls’ throughout time and space. I’ve learned to call them by another name: the Bligg. In January of 1997, they almost succeeded in damning their human cousins. Were it not for two 13 year-old cousins exploring an old country church before their great-grandmother’s funeral service…

“In about 30 minutes,” answered Patricia Wilburson, glancing at her watch. Chris sighed, softly enough to not be overheard by his mother or anyone else. He wasn’t bored, but anxious. He’d never been part of a funeral service. He’d been to exactly one visitation once before, when he was nine. An elderly man who his mom had grown up around, who went to their church, had died; he was in his late 80’s and he looked a bit weird in the casket, dressed up nicer than he ever was on a Sunday morning. Reader’s glasses were perched on the tip of his nose. But Chris felt a leaden sadness. And it was a demanding thing to feel. He’d lost two armwrestling matches to his cousin Liza, played paper rock scissors with his older sister Jenny until she was done, and presently he looked at his cousin Michael. The four front pews of the church had been reserved for the family, and there’d been constant mingling of the nine grandchildren. Permission granted from both sets of parents, Chris and Mike made their way to the bathroom.

Hill Street Missionary Baptist Church in Marshville, North Carolina had the same architecture and design of any small country church: a paltry steeple (from ground to the cross on top it stood no higher than 15 feet), a small entrance with a few coat racks and a unisex bathroom, and a main room functioning as a sanctuary with pews and a raised couple of steps for a pulpit. The back wall had a choir door beside a small baptistry. Beyond that door was a hallway with all the rooms, where elderly women and men would split for Sunday school, and where, in younger times, the youth had gone to grade-specific classes. Mike and Chris exited through the right door, looking to explore the quiet dust-laden and maroon-carpeted places so many feet had trod over the eighty-odd years of the building’s existence.

There were the men’s and women’s restrooms which they ran past, seeking what entertaining strangeness could be found in the different classrooms. To their immediate left, they entered a wood panelled room with a kitchen counter in the far back corner. A middle-aged man in a black three-piece suit stood behind the sink, rinsing his round-framed glasses. The two boys giggled in their surprise, immediately backing out of the room. “Who’s he?” asked Mike. “I don’t know, but what a dork!” breathed Chris, stifling all-out laughter. The two briskly walked down to the first door on the right.

“Boys!” Chris and Mike glanced mischievously at each other, bumbling into the empty Sunday school room before them.

Chris, taller and half a year older than Mike, always became the default decision-maker in instances of trouble. Smiling, the older cousin shook his head incredulously; they wouldn’t be called for by some creepy old mortician dude like poodles. So they huddled behind a slender and grandfather clock-high bookshelf in the room, just by the doorway. “What if he tells our parents or something?” Mike whispered. Chris shrugged. And then he saw it enter the dusty room: a brightly crimson orb, about the size of a softball. In it rolled, noiselessly, atop the clashing maroon, threadbare carpet. Mike was in the middle of asking another hypothetical when he stopped, following his older cousin’s stare. The two watched as the orb, unlike any toy or tool or prop they’d ever seen anywhere before, came to a natural stop on the floor. And then it began floating, rotating sluggishly like a heavenly body. Both asked each other in hushed elation what it could be? The orb traveled in the still dusty air over top of the long plastic table (which was painted to appear like wood). And after a second of levitating over the table, its rotating stopped. And then it fell with a thundering slam.

The boys scrambled out of the room, shrieking in adrenaline-fueled intrigue and fear. But the man now stood before them in the hallway, wearing his round glasses, folding a kerchief into the breast pocket on his jacket. “Now y’all need to listen,” he began. Instinctively Mike and Chris bolted in the opposite direction, down the hallway towards the exit door. And as they dug their loafer-heels into the dry carpeted floors, they watched in twitterpated horror as the red-orange “exit” letters above the door began to melt and run in oozing, bubbling membranous streaks over the wooden door to the outside.

Turning back to dash down the hallway, back towards the choir door, back towards the sanctuary, both Mike and Chris were ready to topple this bizarre suit-clad spectre, mustering every ounce of 5th grade football tackling training they’d ever learned. But the man said something which caused them to slow; perplexed. “No, y’all are gonna listen! Look at the door, what youn’s done!” He pointed. They turned back to the now gelatinous pink mucus covering where the door had once been. In the ooze’s center was a sort of maelstrom; and as the two looked in mesmerized fright, they saw it form into a caricature of a human face. It was a bas-relief into the membrane. “See that?” asked the man behind. Mike and Chris gripped each other by the forearms now, abandoning all semblance of bravado or defiance.

“There ain’t but four doors: the elder, the fool, the misadventurer, and the victim. This here’s the door of the elder. Yer kin layin’ in that casket is our elder,” the man gestured his head to the left, towards the wake on the other side of the rooms.

In between them, the red orb came floating back out into the hallway. “See that there door’s gotta open, so’s I can let my kin in through. Youns’ll use yer kin in the casket in there-I just need her eyes- to open up the elder’s door. Then? I don’t care what youns do; hell, tear the place down if’n ya want!” The orb slowly floated towards Mike and Chris, and as the two watched in petrified fixation, it stopped in midair about six feet before them. Through the dense red in the orb, they both saw swirls of crimson seemingly lighten in color, and faintly at first, saw smaller orbs densely floating together inside-eyeballs. Mike’s throat was stilled, his mouth gaping open. When he heard the shrill screaming of his cousin beside, he joined in. They screamed for help; they yelled for their parents.

“Shhhhhhhut up!” the man spat, a grimace scrawled over his features. Violently, he began sneezing. Cursing under his breath after several barking sneezes, he peeled the thin black mustache off and flippantly tossed it to the floor. Then he peeled from above his ear a façade: his black-haired combover. In reality, his now exposed bald head was wrinkly, like an elephant’s, or a newborn. He had small wisps of colorless hair. Finally he tore off the two black eyebrows above his spectacles, and looking at the two cousins, grinned widely revealing yellow-brown teeth. “Now youns wanna ever see yer livin’ kin again?” Confusedly, the two cousins nodded their heads. “Y-yes sir!”

“I need her eyes. Don’t matter how youns’ get ‘em, but you better get ‘em. Bring ‘em back here to me, so I can open up that there door!” The Bligg pointed straight behind them at the bewitched sludge. Feeling a pulling sensation, like a magnet, Chris and Mike could faintly hear a frequency emanating from the orb to the goo-sealed exit door. “Follow,” the Bligg commanded, gesturing towards the levitating crimson orb. Clinging to each other, the two walked after the Bligg and the orb in between them. Mike looked down at the fake mustache and eyebrows, the combover cap on the floor, the adhesive sides of them gleaming like fresh roadkill innards. The Bligg walked, and the orb followed him, back into the first wood panelled room. Inside, on a wooden table over which several layers of green paint had been applied over the years, laid odd-looking tools and instruments which neither Mike nor Chris had ever seen. The boys deduced what such surgical looking tools might be-including a set of curved forceps. Behind the table, the Bligg said softly “you’ll bring me the eyes if’n y’all ever want to see yer families alive again.”

Noiselessly, a machete which had been laid atop the table with the other blades and tools, rose. In the back corner antipode the counter, were floral patterned armchairs and a matching couch, surrounding a wooden coffee table. Suddenly, surprising himself, Mike challenged the Bligg, even as the machete rose higher into the still air. “What do you need her eyes for?” The tone wasn’t challenging, and he barely got the words out; for it was all he could manage to not begin shouting for his parents. Taking his glasses back off, the Bligg said “that’s how the magick works, fetis. Eyes of the elder open the elder’s door.”

A cacophony of rupturing sounds filled the room, as if commanded to begin as soon as the Bligg finished his brutal command. Enveloping them was a terribly loud noise of wooden chair legs straining and creaking; though not cracking apart. It was apparent then that the noise was from the floral pattern-upholstered furniture: the wooden legs were growing in sickening creaks, unnaturally growing in length and girth! The actual frames were contorting, and the padding of the seats and backrests were writhing into impossible forms-the Bligg began chuckling lightly; gleefully.

“Yesss!” he laughed. “Youns probably don’t wanna look at ‘em head on like that; mortal eyes takin’ in things they ain’t supposed to see can cause insanity.” Chris looked down, but Mike couldn’t peel his eyes off the satanic transformation. The couch rose, almost seven feet tall, just a foot below the cream-colored drop ceiling. Two stubby yet aberrantly-muscled wooden legs stepped forward; with four identical legs serving as arms to either side. Then Mike saw that what used to be the couch, what used to be the two chairs, and the wooden horror that now walked about like the manic scribbling of a spree killer; they all were taloned legs. The orbs in their wickedly jagged and jointed talons-Mike saw immediately the uppermost arm-or leg-of the couch reach forward. There was nothing in its ferocious talons, but the crimson orb presently shot into its outstretched talons as if it were spring-loaded. The crimson color faded slightly, closer to a brown; though it retained a ruddy glow.

The floating machete remained, hovering like a hummingbird. Curved forceps also rose, followed by a scalpel. Again there was a soft, satisfied chuckle emanating from the Bligg. “After you!” he said, gesturing for the two boys to follow the levitating machete and the scalpel and forceps in its wake. Noiselessly they sailed through the dusty air, and as the boys began walking, they heard the freakish thuds of the orb-squeezing taloned monstrosities shambling behind the Bligg. The choir door, as the machete approached, slammed open fiercely. Chris and Mike then found themselves ardently closing in on the floating blades and forceps, eager to see their parents and families in the sanctuary. But as they came to the open door, there was a blackness which seemed to emanate a sound all its own, so lightless was the rectangle before them. Chris and Mike looked back at the Bligg behind them, and the stop motion-like traipsing of the furniture things behind him. “Go through it!” said the Bligg, as he retrieved a viciously wavy sinuous keris knife from behind his suit coat.

“C’mon, we have to!” said Christopher, urging his cousin. But Mike was frozen. “I’m gonna start with an ear!” The Bligg warned. Chris notided the wavy blade of the keris had rust spots all over it. How it happened, neither Chris nor Mike Wilburson could have recounted precisely, but they came through the black screen of unhallowed Bligg magick. The furniture-men were even wider and taller now-they surrounded Mike and Chris, clipping them inside to just a five foot radius about their great-grandmother’s casket. Mike wanted to look through the things, or around them; but he couldn’t. It was as if he began to forget who he was, each time he tried to look at them; so he kept them in his peripheries. There was unnatural blackness above and beyond; and a weird light, from a source unknown, keeping the casket, the flowers to either side of it, and the lectern visible. Chris couldn’t take his eyes away from the floating machete and the two instruments. All three softy sat themselves down atop the steel casket’s closed lower half lid. The gently metallic tap brought Mike’s full attention to them.

The Bligg pointed to the body of their great-grandmother. “Why can’t you just do it?” sobbed Chris. Frowning, the Bligg answered through nearly-clenched teeth. “Has to be kin of the deceased!”

Chris and Mike looked at each other. “You’ll let us back, to like the way things were before, if we do this?” Mike asked. The Bligg only nodded in one full affirmation. Stepping close to the casket, Chris and Mike began sobbing. “Just use the blade-hurry!” hissed the Bligg. Chris presently held the machete, which Mike then saw had strange symbols etched upon the duller back edge. It gleamed weirdly in the diabolical light. Mike then began to hyperventilate. Were they about to cut off her head?!

Like a bullet, the machete flew out of Chris’ trembling, limp hand. It flew behind them, through the maddening spectre of the contorted furniture men-who suddenly began creaking, and cracking. The undeniable sound of wood breaking apart, screaming as the sinews are shredded apart, came roaring somehow from the headless, faceless furniture men. A person-or something like a person wearing a gray, fibrous polyethylene jumpsuit. In a blinding array of throbbing sussrations, cotton and wood splinters erupted like fireworks all around them; the boys could only peripherally see me making hay of them with my Landau sword. And just as lightning-like, there were eighteen softball-sized wooden-brown orbs in the midst of rubble. In seconds, they shrunk back to their original size as part of furniture. But the carved talons were in splinters. The Bligg yelled in frustration and rage. Placing the curved dagger in his teeth, he ripped off his suit jacket. He’d no sooner done that than I appeared in the circle of demonic illumination. The Bligg had the chance to take his long knife out of his teeth. I commanded the machete to circle around behind us, and cut off the Bligg’s head. My levitation control is still a work in progress, and so th blade cut into his shoulder, wedging itself between shoulder and nape of neck.

I cannot speak aloud in instances of hauntings. Around my neck I wore my dry erase board, and as the Bligg sputtered, weakly feeling for the blade lodged into him, I wrote: Her eyes wouldn’t work. She is not an elder. I sheathed my Landau sword behind my back.

“Impossshiple!” spat the Bligg. I wiped the letters clean with a gloved hand, continuing: She’s a victim. I heard either Mike or Chris say, I don’t remember which, “What do you mean?” I wrote beneath Just like you. Wiping clean the board once more I wrote: Your dead eyes will be used, Bligg, to open the door of the victim-through which her kind soul will enter eternity.

I commanded the blade to slice through the Bligg’s neck. It came just short of going all the way through. His head fell to the side and then back, dangling by a few threads and spurting the fetid blood. Unsheathing my Landau bar, the two round ends lifted up and began circling the gruesome remains of the Bligg, absorbing his flesh and soul. The eyes of the Bligg were all that remained after the dissolution. As the spheres returned and flattened to either end of the Landau sword, the blackness dissipated and the sanctuary became visible. Of course the place was empty, in our perspective; we were the haunters. I explained to Chris and Mike how the doors of death could be accessed and why the parasitic Bligg used them to enter into our realm. I opened a victim’s door, it was the upper half of the casket which became the portal. I had to hold the body and let the boys timidly pass through.

Before the boys walked back into the unhaunted normalcy of their lives, I instructed them. They’d be, from this moment onward, sworn to keep secret what they’d seen, lest they wanted to be diagnosed with some mental ailment. They were entering a life of Bligg-hunting, of protecting humankind. I warned them that they’d not be left alone by the Bligg; not now that one of their own had died in his quest to use them to open the portal. But I assured them not to fear. God willing; I’d always be there to help-and to train. I commissioned them, somewhat forlornly I suppose; that they were both now going to be what I am: a Bligg Slayer. My name is Mike Wilburson, my story began here at my great-grandma Wilburson’s funeral.