We travelled in a large shuttle bus of the kind I had always associated with class reunions and senior citizen field trips to see musicals. The seats were comfortable and there was food and a bathroom, but it was still hard to ride for so long after having been on the road so many days. We stopped every few hours to stretch our legs, and I saw that Pete and Marjorie were in a second identical bus traveling behind us. They looked okay physically, but neither of them would speak to me or meet my eyes when I tried to call out to them. Whether it was out of fear or resignation, they both bore the air of condemned prisoners, and after they ignored me the first couple of times, I gave up trying.
I was mildly surprised that I wasn’t scared or worried about myself or them, but as time went on and the road unspooled before us, I felt the last remnants of my old self-doubt and fear falling away. It reminded me of watching a butterfly or moth shaking off the detritus of the cocoon before taking flight. I didn’t know if a moth remembered life before the cocoon, but if it did, I imagined it grew dimmer with each passing night.
The people on the bus with me were friendly enough, but they left me alone other than to occasionally ask if I needed anything. I only drank and ate a little, and when I slept, it was only for a half hour or so at a time. Still, I didn’t feel sleepy or especially tired. Just tired of riding and waiting, waiting and riding. I was ready to reach Wizard’s Folly and the gargoyle that lay at its heart.
By dusk the following night we were there. I had held off asking any more questions during the trip, and I found myself regretting it now. I had no real idea what I was walking into. For all I knew, these people were part of some dangerous cult and were going to torture and kill all of us. It seemed I wasn’t past all fear or all doubts after all.
But they paled next to my drive to see for myself. My desire to enter the house and get rid of this terrible longing that had taken over my heart in the last few days. So I left the bus with the rest of them. We had been driven right up to the front door of the house by some route we hadn’t seen during our prior visit, and when the expectant crowd parted the way for me, I stepped forward and opened the door.
Inside was dark and cool, but not pitch black. There were electric lamps and candles at various spots, perforating the shadows enough to give a rough geography of the hall I was entering and its adjoining rooms. I felt no need to explore or wander once I was inside. The house was clean and well-furnished, as well as impressively decorated in a strange gothic style, but none of that was why I had come.
I came to meet my father.
The thought had occurred to me as I traveled past the sweeping staircase going up into the upper floors and around the corner to a smaller hallway that led to a small black door at its terminus. I opened the door and began my journey down the winding stone steps into the basement and sub-basement beyond. All of this was done without hesitation, because as with so many things now, I just knew the truth of them as they came to me.
I reached the primary ritual room, the centerpiece of which was the large pit that had once contained so much death and decay. It was empty now, but I could still feel the energy radiating from it. This pit had been my womb, and I felt some connection to it. I looked around the room, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Sitting in the corner was a small, hunched man, or something that resembled a man. I wasn’t afraid, but I still approached cautiously, as I could feel great power coming from him as well.
“Father?” I didn’t know why I said the word except that it was right and true.
The figure stirred from some kind of slumber, grey rheumy eyes studying me for a moment before gleaming with recognition. “Vesper? Is that you?”
I nodded slowly, almost gingerly, as I sat down near him. “I think so. My name is Phil, but I think it’s also Vesper.”
The man smiled, the crisscross of age lines making the expression seem more like a wound across old leather. “Phil is just your name this time. The name of your outward self. Before you were Dora. You were Stephen. And perhaps more I never knew.” His eyes narrowed. “I thought I dreamed of you coming here before. Did you come here before?”
“Yes…me and my wife, Marjorie. Her brother, Pete. They brought me, but we didn’t come inside the house. I never came down here. I didn’t remember enough.” I felt a slight shame at admitting the last, but the old man patted my shoulder.
“No shame in that. They are old and crafty. I suspect they knew just what to say to confuse you, get you back away from here without me waking up.”
I jerked back at that. “Old and crafty? Marjorie? I don’t understand.”
The man sighed. “I know, and I hate it had to be this way for so long. Let me explain.”
Hell is a real place. As real as this one…or more real I suppose. It is one of the chief Realms that encircle this world and an infinite number like them. There was a time that Hell was ruled by Lucifer and his fallen. It was a terrible place, but it was orderly and it served many purposes. A key cog in the machinery of Creation, if you will.
But then Lucifer was destroyed and Hell began to change. The fallen angels and other infernal demons that were left no longer controlled things, and they found themselves hunted to the edge of extinction, for the new ruler of Hell, the Hunter, was all but immune to their infernal magics and diabolical snares. With no way of fighting back, they ran.
The weaker ones hid in the shadows of the new Hell, eking out a meager existence while waiting for their turn to come as the Hunter’s prey. The stronger ones fled to other realms and worlds like this one. Over the years, some formed communities like the one you visited in Brimley. And while many appreciated the respite, and some even came to enjoy their lives on Earth, most were ill-suited for it. They felt a yearning to return to Hell not that different than what pulled you to the very place you sit right now.
So they began to work and scheme. They enlisted the aid of numerous human agents and practitioners of the black arts, and over several centuries they devised a plan. The start of that plan was put into motion when a man named Francesco Pazzi came to America and founded the town Firenze. He was skilled in black magic and had been entrusted with this plan, this last hope of Hell’s orphans.
And he succeeded. Year after year, ritual after ritual, sacrifice after sacrifice, he layered the blood and the pain and the power needed to craft a very special spell. It required not only human sacrifice, but demonic sacrifice as well, and over two dozen fallen angels were rendered in the process, as well as a tiny relic from the Hunter itself. A single strand of hair that had fallen from its head during its brief battle with Lucifer.
In many ways, this was the most important part. If something was going to be able to face the strange magic of the Hunter, it needed to possess a bit of that magic itself, as well as the magic of infernals and humans both. These three magics were never meant to be together, never meant to co-exist, so it was only through great skill and will and power that this was done. Only by all of this effort and sacrifice were you born.
The night you were born, men from the town stormed this house. Most were killed and others were taken. They have served various uses in the years since then, but one pair, one special couple, has lasted longer than the rest. Rudolph and Annabelle Perkins. Star-crossed lovers, you might say. Or rather, as you might say, your wife Marjorie and her “brother” Pete.
I know even now that comes as a shock to you. You still retain your life as Phil, and some of those old feelings are still there. But I have been sending them out to find you for decades, and I know them better than they know themselves.
When I came to America as Frank Pazzi, I had hoped my rituals would be complete by 1920. That I would gain vast power in this world and, when I eventually was forced into Hell, I would be lauded as a hero and given a place of privilege in the new infernal court. Then that fucking whore Annabelle and her stuck-up husband came to town. I had hoped that taking her would send him packing, but instead he riled the townsfolk up when you were fresh to life--and I was weak from your creation.
In the chaos of that night, you somehow slipped away. I had taken them as prizes, but I had to disappear for a time while I searched for you. By the time I found you a few years later, you were living as a young girl named Dora Wilcher outside of Omaha, Nebraska. From what I could learn, you had just shown up in town as a young woman and started living life like everything was normal. No memory of what you really were or that you hadn’t existed five years earlier.
My first instinct had been to try to force you to remember, try to make you come with me. Then I realized how foolish and arrogant I was being. I was dealing with something new, something I didn’t understand. That no one understood. So I decided to trust you and let you find your own way, develop the human side of your nature and grow in strength until you were ready.
For years I watched you while cultivating more money and power as Wilson Tattersall. I rebought my own house, my own property, and I waited. I had a feeling we would need this place of power again, and I was right. When Dora was in her forties, she started getting sick. I kept close tabs on you at all times back then, and I knew that the doctors you had seen had no idea what was wrong. Desperate, I sent two of my servants out to push you in this direction, hoping I could help you without disturbing your development.
Those servants were Marjorie and Pete. Except they didn’t call themselves that, or Annabelle and Rudolph. Back then they were Tess and Johnny, a married couple that buttered up to you and your husband for months before springing a surprise trip on you. A surprise trip to an exclusive new amusement park that had just opened up in California.
I had waited for months for your arrival, making use of the guests we had in my own small ways, but all with the end goal of seeing you walk through those gates. Because without you, all of it was for naught. I had started to lose hope—I felt that my bindings on “Tess and Johnny” were strong enough that they couldn’t betray me, but I also felt sure by that point that you needed to come of your own free will for any of this to truly work.
Then, on the evening of October 27, 1947, I saw you standing in line for the house. I have never been a romantic or even a sexual man, but you were a vision that night. I had only seen you in pictures and from a distance a handful of times over the years, but nothing could have prepared me for the excitement I felt seeing you so close to fulfilling your destiny. When you entered the house, you did remember more of yourself and your nature, but something was still wrong. You lashed out, killing several people and making others sick or insane. All of which I was happy with at the time, as you seemed to grow stronger as others fell around you. I even felt pride for my hand in it, for I had tainted many visitors in the preceding months, letting this place and you feed off them indirectly during your rampage. I thought you were finally being made whole. But then, just as quickly you were gone, vanishing into thin air.
I didn’t despair as long this time, but set others to the task of finding you again. The problem is that to most people you would just look like a normal person. People I have claimed—my touch gives them unnatural life, but it also gives them a certain sensitivity. They can find you where others cannot. Over the years, without regular influxes of power, my ability to create new servants of that sort has waned.
Annabelle and Rudolph found you as Stephen Keller in the 1970s and eventually led you back here. That time, you only wanted to talk to me, largely about my life and whether my goals were noble or worthy, and then you disappeared again. I didn’t find you again until now.
That damned couple—they have to do my bidding, but they enjoy their life outside far too much and have devised ways over the years to avoid finding you, to thwart the spirit of my commands if not the letter of them. When they ran across you, they had no choice but to come or the magic that preserves them would start to fail. But if they brought you and manipulated you into leaving before you could remember, their hope was they could claim ignorance and buy themselves another few decades of “searching”. Alas, the magic is smarter than they are, as are my demonic companions.
I set up Brimley as a waystation years ago. A place they would have to travel through if they were bringing you to me. An independent check, if you will, to help keep them honest or stop them if they decided they didn’t want the ride to end. It served its purpose in the end, and they’ll be dealt with for their treachery, if you can call their disloyalty to me treason in the first place. I did abduct and magically subjugate them, but they had a lot of good years as a result, so I can’t help but feel somewhat unappreciated.
But I digress. My age is catching up with me I’m afraid. Wait until you’re 170 years old and see how you do.
The real question is are you ready? Do you feel whole yet? I’m not trying to pressure you, and I trust you to know when this cycle of…whatever it is…is complete, but I’m running out of time. And Hell, while vast, grows closer to being wholly under the Hunter’s control every day. I’ve even heard stories of the Hunter appearing in this world, albeit very briefly, a few months ago and slaughtering quite a few notable occultists. No one on my level, of course, but still…it gives one pause.
I named you Vesper after the old meaning of the word. Evening star. The morning star has died and his Hell has been lost, but I believe you can champion a new era. With you to lead us, I think Hell can be retaken and made whole again. So what do…
He gurgled slightly as I punched into his ribcage with both hands, separating his torso like a rotten head of lettuce and letting the wet halves splatter-drip onto the old stone floor. This rotting monster, this decrepit sadist, thought that I would help him? That I would help any of them?
I remembered everything now. I recalled the bloody and horrible origins of my birth. I could see my husband when I was Dora. My parents when I was Stephen. Marjorie the day I married her. And yes, I had been lied to and tricked. Manipulated and moved around like a pawn. Or I suppose more like a nuclear warhead being ferried from place to place.
But I didn’t feel anger or sadness. I felt joy and love for all the lives I had lived and the world I had lived them in. Unlike when Dora lost control and hurt people out of confusion and fear, I was past that now. The only negative emotion I was really feeling at this point was disgust. Disgust at this little mummy that wanted me to be a good dog. Disgust at the horde of foul things masquerading as humans outside.
I walked back upstairs, and even before I reached the doors, I could feel their anticipation, their corruption, flowing through the cracks like waves of heat. I think my father was right. It was time that I helped these demons find a way home.
I opened the doors wide and smiled at the expectant crowd. They weren’t stupid, and it only took moments of seeing me now for their expressions to change, for their flesh and bones to start shifting in unnatural ways in anticipation of what was coming. That was all right. It wouldn’t matter in the end.
Closing the doors behind me, I walked out into the crowd, watching with slight amusement as they shuffled back at my approach. The fear and hate in the air were palpable, and I breathed it in deeply. Scanning the crowd, I looked for any sign of Marjorie and Pete but saw none. No matter. I’d find them later. For now, it was time to show these things just what all their murder and horror had brought them. I leaned forward slightly, my voice barely above a whisper, but still resonant in the silence of the cool evening air.
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Credits
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