Westland, NY, Thursday, July 18, 1929

A Gathering of Strangers

Eric Rarsch, Samuel Blood, Otis O’Leary, and Frank “Mookie” Grant were very different people.  They were all called to the hospital bedside of Jason Longborough, an elderly trustee of Reister who was succumbing to cancer.

The four were not acquainted with each other, but they all knew Longborough. Eric was a geology graduate student at Reister University.  He came from a well placed family.

Longborough was an old family friend who had assisted with Eric’s position.  Sam was a janitor at the university. He got around everywhere and had been nice to the trustee when they ran into each other over the years.

Otis was a professor of theology who Longborough had championed in the faculty selection process.

Mookie was a private investigator with a shady past.  He had done a job for Longborough investigating his son Wilson, who was seeking early access to his inheritance to cover gambling expenses.

The Bedside Meeting

The information desk in the main lobby provided directions to Longborough’s private, third-floor room. The group found the door to Longborough’s room open and the bedridden man engaged with two other visitors—his grieving wife, Janice, and his 33-year-old Wilson.

As they were entering the room, Sam noticed a man wearing a trench coat and fedora listening from the room across the hall.  Sam closed the door.

In a rasping whisper Jason introduced the investigators to his wife and son, and to each other. He then asked his weeping wife and suspicious son to leave him alone for a moment with his friends.  Wilson protested, but Mookie interposed himself between father and son, suggesting that the man honor his farher’s wishes, and the closed the door.

After making sure the door is shut, Jason revealed why he had called for them.

The Old Man’s Story

In the days of his youth, some fellow students and I became involved in what we believed to be an innocent exploration of the occult.  We called ourselves the Cabal.  Led by a slightly older student named Brett Hanke, we six purchased an old farmhouse a few miles west of Westland near the village of Stuckley. There we could conduct our seances and other psychic research in privacy. The unexpected result of our last experiment was the summoning of some evil force into this world. But instead of attempting to expel the thing, we abandoned the old house, confident that the magic which brought the evil to this world would keep it confined to there. However, the spell that binds the being to the house lasts only as long as the casters live.  I am the last of the group and I fear that upon my death the thing will go free and wreak havoc on the countryside.

Jason gestured weakly at an innocuous metal box on the nightstand beside the bed.

“Take the box,” he croaks. “All the aid I can offer you lies within. You must find a way to send that thing back to where it came from. You must see that this is done. Do this for me.

Otis picked up the box. As soon as he did, the ailing Jason was choked by a sudden spasm. He doubled up, groaned, and coughed forth a huge gout of blood and tissue that spattering guests.  Then he fell unconscious.  Mookie called for a doctor, and the room quickly filled with interns and nurses. In the way, the visitors were asked to leave.

Outside the room, Longborough’s son Wilson demanded that Otis hand give him the box to avoid trouble.   Mookie interposed between the two and told Wilson that he should respect his father’s wishes, or he would have go through him. Wilson backed down reluctantly.

Discussion

The group went for a walk about the campus to discuss the request. Sam kept watch for someone observing them. They discussed how they knew Longborough. Eric said that he was an old friend of his family who had helped him gain admission to the university. Otis was a theology professor that Longborough had also helped to attain his position. Mookie said that he had done previous work for Longborough investigating his son’s gambling problems.  Seeking privacy, they went to a chemistry lab that Eric knew was not currently in use to examine the box.

Once in private, they opened the box and found a yellowed envelope containing the deed to a house and a key, a small, sarcophagus-shaped gold box of ancient design, and a slim journal bound in leather.

Research

Mookie examined the deed.   It was to a farm near Stuckley.   The key must be to the front door.  He noticed that the deed was in the names of John Dalton, Homer Cunningham, Brett Hanke, Murray Levin, Roger Furlong, and Jason Longborough. He suggested checking the public records about them.

Otis opened the gold sarcophagus.  Inside was a layer of translucent material.  Eric was immediately drawn to it and scraped out a quantity of it to examine under a microscope. Otis kept possession of the sarcophagus to examine it more thoroughly.

Sam took possession of the journal.  It appeared to be a record of the Cabal’s activities at an old farmhouse.  He found a scrap of newspaper inside that was an obituary for Brett Hanke, who had been murdered in Savannah in 1883 under mysterious circumstances.  He read the final two entries to the group.

Journal Entry, March 1882

We begin the ceremony as Brett instructed, according to that described in his book, Inviolati Conditori Pueri.  A fire is set in the fireplace and a pentagram chalked on the floor, marked with appropriate symbols and illuminated by two black tapers placed near the center flanking the piece of amber with its entrapped spirit.  The others sit in a circle while I, the designated “watcher” who guards for malevolent spirits, sit in the far corner of the room.

Marion throws a handful of powder in the fire, producing an evil-smelling smoke and dampening the flames which now burn a sputtering green and brown.  Those seated begin the Latin chant Brett Hanke has transcribed from his book.

After nearly two hours I see a trail of smoke circling up from the piece of amber.  Its surface seems to be bubbling, melting.  Could this be it?  Have we finally achieved success?  I can see a form –

It is the following day.  We have finished with our plans and have sworn a pact to never speak of what happened last night.  We have explained the death of John, and in some manner the madness of Homer.  The sheriff accepts the explanation of a carriage accident – we planned it well.  John’s neck was broken in the fall, we told him.  Homer struck his head on a rock when the horse’s leg broke and the carriage rolled.  Would it be that it was only that.  For the rest of us, we will be forever changed by what we experienced last night.

The thing formed in the center of the pentagram, shapeless, nearly invisible.  Its terrible voice should have given us a clue but we were foolish.  It spoke, then Brett cast that damned powder on the spirit, the Dust of Ibn-Ghazi he calls it, and that’s when we could see it.

Words cannot describe the faceless thing with a thousand maws.  It roiled and bubbled, never fully revealing itself.  So terrifying was its aspect that I sat though frozen to the floor, the pen falling from my nerveless fingers.  Roger and Brett seemed as lifeless as I, while and short, sharp cry issued from Homer’s mouth.  John, however, rose to his feet and before anyone could stop him, stepped forward as though to embrace our horrible guest.  With its arms, or those appendages that seemed most like arms, it took hold of poor John and twisted his head around as it was a doll’s head.  The lifeless corpse was then thrown back in Murray’s lap and that’s when he began that damnable shrieking – the shrieking that hadn’t stopped even after we handed him over to the Sheriff’s men.

We still had a chance, apparently.  Brett now believes that if we had kept our wits, we could have reversed the chant and eventually forced the creature back to wherever it came from.  But Roger panicked, and believing it would dispel the creature, reached forward and destroyed part of the pentagram, breaking its effectiveness.  Released from that binding symbol, the thing – with a screech that could have only been unholy satisfaction – fled the house, disappearing out the window as a roaring, screaming wind of boiling colors.

Brett believes that the thing could still be destroyed, or at least dispelled, but none of us who remain have the stomach for such an undertaking.  It is believed that the spell we cast inextricably binds the thing to the house and it is true that when we went back a few days later to retrieve our things, we heard it bumping around in the attic over our heads.  The warding signs so cheerfully carved by Brett Hanke during better times – times that seem so long ago – apparently are effective and bar the thing entry except into the attic of the house.

The final entry of the journal was written in a noticeably weaker hand, and the ink was still fresh.

I gravely fear that which I and my colleagues
have loosed upon this countryside. Nothing of
consequence has yet taken place but with my
death the bonds will be broken and the thing
then freed to come and go as it pleases. Lives and
souls not yet taken already lie heavy on my conscience.

The method of delivering the thing out of
this world is still in that accursed house, the
translation made by Brett Hanke from the
horrid Inviolati Conditori Pueri. I am not strong
enough to take on the task, but I know of those
who perhaps are. Should they fail me, may God
have mercy on my soul.

Follow Up

The team separated to pursue separate lines of inquiry.  Eric suggested that they meet at the Kovacs house on the west side of the village that evening to compare notes.  Professor Kovacs had disappeared some fifteen years ago.  The Kovacs house was maintained by the university awaiting his return.

Mookie went to the municipal building to research the names on the deed.  He discovered that all of them except Longborough had died under mysterious circumstance.  There was nothing noteworthy about the property itself.  He looked into the sheriff mentioned in the journal, but discover that he had died several years earlier.  He uncovered the police report about the incident in Stuckley in 1882, but it was not very detailed.  All it said was that one student was decapitated in a carriage accident and another lost his wits upon seeing the body.  The six students were all mentioned by name.

Eric examined the material from the sarcophagus and performed some chemical analyses on it.  As he expected, the material was amber, which apparently had melted over time and adhered to the sarcophagus.  Based on its composition, he determined that it was north African in origin, and over 10,000 years old.

Sam was intrigued by the book mentioned in the journal, Inviolati Conditori Pueri, which seemed to be the source of all the trouble.  He decided to sneak into the library after hours and “borrow” it.  However, he was unable to find it as it was in the Restricted Collection vault in the basement.  Knowing it was written in Latin, he absconded with a Latin dictionary, planning to return for the tome later.

The Investigators

  • Samuel Blood – a Reister University Janitor
  • Eric Rarsch- a geology graduate student
  • Frank “Mookie” Grant – a private investigator
  • Otis O’Leary – a theology professor