Serendipity? I was rearranging my dresser drawers yesterday, getting ready for the cooler weather, when I ran across this large white sweat shirt, as pristine as the day I got it, laying there, sort of looking up at me!
and it brought another Halloween tale to my mind, back from the year 2002 past.
I had been contributing to the EEEEK! forum for over a year, when they came up with a contest for the best Halloween TRUE scary story. Well, I had one alright, and I quickly wrote it up and submitted it. The sweat shirt was the first prize for the mysterious true ghost story I share with you today.
THE GHOSTS OF VILLA CHIGI
Copyright
2000
September was dying, that year of 1973, in our little eastern valley. The leaves had been drifting down from gypsy-colored trees for a week or so. They smelled dry and musty and crackled underfoot, their colors mingling into a mortician's powdered rouge.
But, it had been raining all night and into the late morning on the day HE drove into the parking lot of the Little Italy Restaurant. His beat-up Chevy sedan sloshed soggy gobs of leaves up on to its white fenders, as he slithered the weary car into a spot near the delivery entrance. He saw me watching him from the door and waved a hand with a tube of newspaper clutched in it.
In a rush he was through the rain and up the stairs, grinning a big, "HI!" at me. "Says in the Herald here that you need a short-order cook. Well, I'M a short-order cook and I need a job. Can we talk?"
So, we talked. I found out he had a social security card, that he had worked all over the country, and that he was broke. I took him into the kitchen and let him cook us both up some lunch. He was good; quick, neat and creative. It was Friday.....big fish fry night in 'Catholic Valley', and I needed help badly, so I signed him on.
When he finished up a shift at 1:00 a.m., he asked me if it was OK for him to sleep in his car in the lot. I told him to spend the night in the empty apartment over the restaurant. I thought he was going to cry, he was so thankful....and amazed. The next day, I trusted him a bit further. I gave him half a week's wages so that he could find a weekly motel room nearby. Which he did, and there he stayed for all the time he was with us.
About the middle of October, he came into work quite early one day lugging a huge covered package. With pride, he said, "I've got something for you. I really appreciate how good you've been to me, and I know that wall over there in the dining room could use something nice, so I picked this up today."
He quickly tore off the wrapping, and I was dumb-founded. It was a huge, wonderful piece of art about 3 x 3 feet. It was called "Villa Chigi" --Village of the Blind. It portrayed at least forty villagers at their tasks in their village in Italy. Nothing unusual about the tasks, a shopkeeper, a blacksmith, weavers, women washing clothes at a spring......all beautifully done. The only thing unusual was that each and every person was chiga (blind). The BLIND were the only inhabitants of Villa Chigi.
All the help oohed and aahed over this beautiful picture, and HE even insisted that he install it himself, which he did. There wasn't a customer in that night that didn't remark about it and many left their seats to take a closer look.
Two days later, HE didn't show up for work on the 4:00 p.m. shift. I had been wondering all day where he was, because the Chevy was parked out back when I came in at 9:00 a.m. and hadn't moved. I filled in for him that night, and waited to hear from him. When I still had no word the next morning, I called the motel. They hadn't heard from him, but he hadn't checked out.
Several more days went by, and I hired another cook, for that is what restaurants are all about. Cooks come and they go. But, the Chevy was still in the lot.
On October 31st, the police came and towed the Chevy. We still had heard nothing, and the police knew nothing. That evening I went over to dust the frame of the Villa Chigi and turned on the viewing light above it. I looked at the picture, and then crawled into a booth to get a closer look. Behind two of the villagers, men wielding scythes in a grain field, were two ghostly figures. They appeared to be white shadows of the men--lurking behind them.
It was a nice touch....the only problem being that I had never seen that in the picture before. I called my husband over and asked him if he had seen it previously. He just looked at it, looked at me and said "Hell, no!"
Now all the employees took turns looking at the 'ghosts'. We all had a chuckle, saying it must have been a processing 'thing' that we missed early on.
The evening went on and soon it was closing time. I went over to shut the viewing light and now there were six figures with the white apparitions behind them! Everybody was only too glad to get closed up and the heck out of there now.
The next morning when I came in there were twenty apparitions. It went on for several days, until finally there were over half of the villagers being stalked by the ghostly shadows. Some thirty ghosts haunted the Villa Chigi......
We never saw HIM again. We never knew what happened to HIM.
The tale of the "Ghosts of Villa Chigi" at Little Italy Restaurant soon spread over our little valley. People brought their out-of-town guests to enjoy the pasta and pizza, but no one left without 'Ghost Busting' the picture. And, if they were lucky and I wasn't too busy, I told them the story about what HE brought to Little Italy Restaurant, one Halloween night.
When we moved to Las Vegas, Villa Chigi came with us. It is on the wall right behind my back as I am writing this. If I turn around, I can easily find a ghostly figure, hard at work in the Villa. I took a close-up for you to do some ghost-busting on your own. When you look closely, you should find some haunting the people gathered in the center of town.
Don't worry, they can't harm you as long as your intentions are good. They are my sentinels, given to me by HIM, some 35 years ago, just before he disappeared. Maybe he is there, in the picture, watching and waiting for each HALLOWEEN....
Every year since they were about 16, my grown sons have a doozer of a Halloween Party. The other day I saw Phil intent at his computer, working out the invitations for the 2006 hauntings. He's usually the one who does the art work and selects the music for the band they've had for over 20 years.
When I saw him hard at work on this year's bash, I thought it was probably time to put up some Halloween/October shivers here on my blog, so I decided to start with CLARK COUNTY HORROR. Phil wrote the initial story for the website dedicated to inviting guests, a job well done, IMO. Further down you will find the EPILOGUES to the story, which I wrote, together with some pictures pertinent to the occasion.
I hope you will enjoy all of Halloween 2005, and who knows what 2006 will bring?
**********
THE CLARK COUNTY HORROR
A Halloween Serial
By PDB
I
A Bad Place
The Horror didn’t start in Las Vegas. It followed us back. Back from places and things we shouldn’t have ventured. An old house. A rickety staircase that carried us up into the menacing gloom of the attic. The letters we read there. The secrets we learned. The charred heap of ...something... in the corner.
We called it the McGill Mansion. My brother, Rick, the purveyor of real estate investments. The property speculator. He brought me to this moldy reliquary from the days when copper was Queen in the early years of Nevada. The house stood on a hill as an overlord surveying the ruins of smelters, offices, rail spurs and company buildings for the defunct McGill Copper Consortium.
We got out of the car and approached the house. Pushed open the gate on the iron fence that surrounded the property. We climbed the mortar-starved steps up a rather severe incline to the front porch. Apparently a renovation had been attempted because the screen frames for the porch were stacked neatly to the side. We looked in the front window, which was still intact and saw the walls had been stripped of plaster all the way back to the wood lath. New lumber was stacked on the floor. Fast food bags and soda cans were strewn about. A coat of dust covered everything. The front door was locked.
“Let’s check around back, there might be a way in back there,” said Rick.
“I’m not sure about this. We came up here for a fishing trip, remember?” I asked.
“Right. And we were going to look into some real estate properties as well, if I recall.”
“This wreck? You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “I didn’t think breaking and entering was part of the deal when I agreed to check out some houses with you.”
“Oh Christ, give me a break! It’s pretty obvious the place is abandoned. The owner probably ran out of money during the renovation and the contractor split. Look, I’ll call the number on the For Sale sign and let ‘em know we’re up here,” Rick pulled out his cell phone and walked over to the sign which hung askew from some rusty wire wrapped around one of the porch posts. “Then we can sit out here in the hot sun and wait for the owner to finish taking a crap so he can walk us through a house we probably aren’t gonna buy anyway. OR we can save some time and have a little fun sneaking into this old mansion and poking around.”
“If you just want to walk the grounds and not break in, I’m cool with that,” I said.
I had a peculiar feeling about this whole McGill side trip. When the copper mines closed, the town died a slow, wheezing death. Some folks held on, mostly the old with nowhere else to go. When we first pulled off the main highway and onto the gravel road that leads into McGill, we saw a crazy-eyed man sitting on his wrecked porch with a shotgun in his lap. Rick had laughed nervously and hummed a few notes from “Deliverance”. I wasn’t so sure. He looked like a man making a sober decision to place the barrel of that gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Every town has a haunted house. Most of them aren’t haunted. Just old and deserted. A couple of windows busted out by teens on a midnight dare. Overgrown, needs paint, plumbing – the works. Something ready for a visit from Bob Villa. Other houses are the real deal. You can feel it. Smell it like an undercurrent of sewer gas on an otherwise pristine summer day. Things are just not quite right. Not right at all.
Investigators into the paranormal visit haunted houses and can document many manifestations of wacky electromagnetic fields, unusual temperature fluctuations, electronic voice phenomena, and photographic anomalies. Most have reasonable explanations. A small percentage do not.
The McGill Mansion is one of those unreasonable places. But here is the kicker. The whole town is one of those places. Something went seriously wrong here. A Bad Place.
(Continued...)
So we walked the grounds. The yard was overgrown scrub and cracked bricks all around. There were a few out buildings, one that resembled a caved-in garage, along with a tool shed and a smokehouse. The backyard was more cracked bricks and a seating area with a ruined fireplace, overturned and crumbling urns filled with dust and cobwebs. The back doors were locked and barred with metal strips to keep people out… or something inside.
“Well, that settles it in my book," I said. “I think we're out of luck trying to get into this old heap.”
I was relieved. This house gave me the feeling it was sizing us up. Daring us to breech its defenses. Call its hand. I happily folded.
Rick still had his hand in though, “Hey, check over here.” He was making his way around to the side of the house, tearing his way past a thorn bush that had grown over the pathway and had tried to keep him away. “There’s one of those storm cellar doors over here on the... Shit!” The thorn bush did its best and gave Rick a deep scratch for his efforts.
I ducked under the thorns and met him. “It’s a sign, Rick. We aren’t wanted here.”
“It’s not a sign, it’s a scratch. You are one gigantic pussy, you know? I’m bleeding and this place owes me. That cellar door is unlocked and I’m going in. Now are you coming with me, or do I have to let everyone know how you pussed out on our little adventure? Besides, this is right up your alley with all the horror stories you read and all that Halloween stuff you do every year. This will be one for your memoirs.”
“You know, there’s some truth to a lot of those stories about the paranormal.”
“Yeah, yeah. One night on that Coast-to-Coast radio show you heard the story about the haunted blah, blah, blah. That stuff is all bullshit, you know.”
“Maybe it is a steaming bag of shit, but I’m telling you right now don’t go into that cellar,” I said. “I really have a bad vibe right now.”
“OK! Tell you what, you stand out here and suck your thumb and try to channel Art Bell and I’ll wave at you from the attic window just to show you what a complete idiot you are.” Rick turned and swung open the cellar door. It rattled and creaked like a pile of bones falling out of a coffin.
Rick screamed. “Dust! And cobwebs! Oh, Jesus! A house spider! Run! Run!!”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s the spirit! Now come on!” Rick made his way down the stone steps to the cellar.
I looked up at the side of the house above the stairway. Two large windows stared out from the second floor. Eyes. A long red brick chimney ran up from the cellar to above the roof. A nose. The dark chasm of the storm cellar. The mouth.
Into the belly of the monster we went. Swallowed alive. The house won its hand, aces and eights.
It was gloomy and musty but not too dark to see. Daylight poured in from the cellar door and barred; basement windows with stained glass panes allowed multiple colors of light to enter, giving the room an almost church-like atmosphere. But this was a church of the damned.
The floor was stone. An old bicycle hung from the rafters. Wood panels were stacked against the wall along with a mantle and some oak doors. A dead coal furnace with a Medusa head of radiator pipes guarded a dark corner of the cellar. Everything was covered with dust and cobwebs.
A sturdy wooden staircase led to a doorway.
“Going up?” I asked Rick.
“I better find something to stop this bleeding." The thorn scratch was pretty deep and a line of blood dribbled down his arm and dripped onto the stone floor. The blood pooled into a seam between the floor stones. “There might be some bandages upstairs that those carpenters left,” Rick said. He headed up the stairs into the first floor.
I watched him go up the steps for a moment then looked back down at the pool of blood on the floor. The blood was gone, down into the seam in the floor. The old timbers of the house gave a satisfied creak and clouds must have moved over the sun because the whole room became much darker.
“Uhhh, Rick?”
“Shit! What? I’m bleeding like a stuck pig here!”
“What was the weather forecast for today?” I climbed the steps to meet him on the first floor landing.
“Do I look like a fucking weatherman?”
“It was mostly sunny.”
“Well, thank you for the update. What’s your point?”
He opened the first floor door and the parlor was bathed in a gloom of a heavily overcast day. Thunder rumbled loudly and the house settled again letting out a long series of creaks and groans. A gust of wind whipped around the house and the storm doors below slammed shut plunging the cellar into darkness.
“It’s a desert thunderstorm,” Rick said as he made his way into the renovation area of the parlor. “Happens all the time out here, you know that.”
Lighting flashed very close to the house and thunder cracked with a deafening crescendo. The rain started like someone turned on a faucet. I looked out the large dormer window at the front drive. The drops were heavy and small chunks of hail bounced off Rick’s parked car.
“Great. Just great,” said Rick. “I hope that hail doesn’t ding up my hood. Hey! I’m in luck.”
Rick pushed aside a painter’s drop cloth and found a serviceable first-aid kit. We opened it up, and I helped him put some hydrogen peroxide on his cut and dressed the wound with some bandages. The hail tapered off, but the rain continued along with the lightning and thunder.
“Thanks,” said Rick. “Shall we continue our tour? Next stop, second floor. Linens and kitchen wares!”
I wanted to tell him about what I saw in the cellar. I wanted to tell him that the house had consumed a piece of him. The house had gained nourishment from his blood. I wanted to tell him the house was a vampire of stone and timber and it was going to get us....
But it was silly. It sounds silly. I was a fool. The joker’s wild and the house always wins.
(Continued)
The second floor renovation had never been started. The staircase was an open lift to the upper floor. The banister was barely connected to the steps and wobbled treacherously at the slightest touch. Luckily, the steps were safe to tread but they squeaked at every point. The thunder rumbled again and the house gave something of a sigh.
A long hallway stretched out from the top of the staircase with closed doors on both sides. We tried them but they were locked. A suffocating gloom enveloped the musty hallway. A final door ended the hallway and I heard that sigh close to my ear again. The hair rose on my neck. I think even Rick began to lose his nerve.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered.
Rick steadied himself and gathered every ounce of courage that remained and reached for the final door handle, “Almost done.” He didn’t deny hearing what I heard.
The door handle turned and the latch released easily. The door swung open on rusty hinges as if a force from behind pushed it. Cool air came out of the opening and we were confronted with another set of steps. A scent of burnt wood and spice came on the air blowing down from the attic.
“That’s it, Rick, I’m done. There is no way we should be here! Let’s get the fuck out of here now!”
Too late. Rick was already bounding up the steps. It was if he was in some sort of trance to see this through to the end, to expose the magician as an illusionist and not a wizard, to show how the trick is done. I had to follow him. I still had to tell him about the hungry floor in the cellar and how the house was going to get us. I raced up the stairs.
Then we entered the den of the Wizard. Magic was in the attic. Real magic. Ancient magic....
The whole room was charred dark black. A round wooden table with guttered candles at the points of a carved compass on the surface stood in the center of the attic. On a stand at the center of the table rested a smooth stone, obsidian, with a cryptic symbol embedded under the surface The stone seemed to have an eerie internal glow. A rusted strongbox, unlocked, sat on the floor under the table.
Charts on the walls contained crude symbols and sigils. Ancient words were carved on the beams supporting the peaked roof. A pedestal stood against one of the walls and a dusty scrapbook lay on top, while a curious pile of charred bones was collected in a rope net beneath it.
I went to the scrapbook. A kerosene lamp was near. I shook it and heard that it still had fuel. I fumbled for the lighter in my pocket lit the wick and the room was bathed in a soft yellow light. The thunder rumbled outside and I could still hear the rain pattering against the roof. Things felt better with the light on. Rick found an old stool and sat, transfixed by the stone on the table. I read:
THE STATEMENT OF GARRETT HEWSON-DEE
December 21, 1923
I have chosen to present this statement in a scrapbook format because only then can I illustrate the revelations I have discovered along with the proper supporting evidence and documentation.
My name is Garrett Hewson-Dee and I am the Chief Site Manager for the McGill Copper Consortium Smelter Works #1. I transferred to Nevada in 1919 after serving on the Board of Directors for the Belsen Copper Works in Providence, Rhode Island. I was sent here to oversee the operations of the Ruth copper pit excavations and ultimately the processing and refining of the ores. These facts are rather insignificant to my statement and I direct you to the current edition of Who’s Who in Mining and Archaeology if you would like a further biography.
In contrast to my duties as Site Manager, I lead an alternate life away from the drudgery of the copper business. I am a Magician. I am a Twelfth Degree Acolyte of The Order of the Morning Star and I can trace my magical lineage back to the Great Wizard Jonathan Dee. I am well practiced in the arts of Ritual Magic and in the Ordination of Heaven Banishment. I have attended at spiritual medium presentations and have even managed to reanimate a dead cat in a Resurrection Binding.
I believe I have been prepared for the Opening of the Way for the Great Ones and the presentation in my hands of certain items was not mere coincidence but Astral Intervention. Through my experience in the Resurrection Binding I hope to see the fulfillment of a great prophecy and usher in a new era for humanity.
On March 20, 1923 a discovery was made at the Ruth pit following a blasting procedure. The crew was clearing the blast debris when a cavern in the side of the hill was discovered. The workers scrambled into the breach and discovered two items – a chained and locked military strongbox and the skeletal remains of a human male. These items were collected and brought to me to determine what to do with them.
A peculiar sensation came over me when I came near these items - almost a feeling of mild electrical shock. Certain energies, undetectable to others, called to me from these relics.
I had the items brought to my home where I keep a private room. The bones were placed in a hemp rope net. The strongbox was opened with the help of bolt cutters. Inside the box was a stack of papers neatly bound with a cord. Wrapped in rough Indian blankets, was an obsidian stone, roughly the size of an eggplant with a curious esoteric symbol engraved beneath the outer surface. I will try to recreate the symbol here for you :
The papers were handwritten in a rather crude, childish style and the grammar was atrocious but they were the work of what appears to be an old prospector by the name of Obed Issom. I am adding his papers to this scrapbook so you can read his exact words:
Obed Issom Octobar 1905
I done got in a mity fix diggin fer silver where I shoodn’t. PieUte Rattler sez stay outter Fire Valley. Sez ShadoWalk’r lives outter that valler. I sez I’m a goin outer were ‘ol Mouse hid from them deputees, think he waz hidin’ more then his red ass out there in the tanks. That ol Injun had a bagger silver on his belt when they finely popped a bullit in his drunk noggin’.
So I go down inner that Fire Valley down below Mouse’s Tank. Back inner red canyons. Ain’t seen shit but rattlesnakes fer three days but I heers a lot. And the Rye ain’t keepin’ the sounds away neither.
Think I must be gettn’ nuts cuz I lost my canteen the third nite, lost my lanturn forth nite and the last nite I was down in th’ canyon my damn mule up an died on me. Found em with his guts all ripped out and a hole in his head with the brains suck’d out and trailin’ on the sand up into th’ rocks. Ain’t never seen a coyote do that a’fore so its time for me to light outter there.
Keep seein’ stuff otter corner my eye that ain’t there. Heerin’ stuff too. Nuthin’ good neether. Think I done catched a ShadoWalk’r to me soes I’m to see ‘ol PieUte Rattler to get me a fixer up on it.
PieUte Rattler took me in the Sweat Lodge and sez I got one bad on me. He gave me smoke and oils and some fethers and sez he gonna work the big medicine on me. I sez I cain’t pay ‘em cuz the sonabitch Mouse done hid that silver good in them canyuns. He sez no charge but I gotter go far away from here when he done. I sez Ok cause ain’t much down south in Nevader ‘cept for that new jack mormon town over the mountin at Las Vegas. Can’t evin get a good Rye or a whore over there no more.
Oils ain’t workin’. Feathers ain’t workin’. Smoke works a little. Sure culd use some Rye but PieUte Rattler sez no fire water for seven days. Holy Shit.
I’m in the Sweat with PieUte Rattler evry night. I think I done lost half my size.
Last night I was sleepin’ but the terrers was too much. Heered ShadoWalk’r prowlin’ the camp callen my name an laffin like a split hoof sonabitch. Winds blwin’ the fire flat and I seen him an I screemed and Shado disapeerd and saw PieUte Rattler chasin after into the dark with a big ‘ol stick. God Bless that redskin.
Weer in the Sweat an my time is come sez PieUte Rattler. The big medicine is ready ‘cept he needs some a my blood so I gives him an arm and he cuts me deep. Blood drips inter a coyote skull hollered out. He adds some water and twigs and berrees and dry bat shit. Then he starts mumblen his Injun stuff.
After a time he takes a fing’r an dips it to the goo. He grabs a shiny rock that’s sittin on the floor an draws somthin on it. Then the rock starts a glowin like a cole and I’m a sceered piss. Winds start a howlerin an a dust devil comes inter the Sweat. A black devil a spinnin’ and a bitchin’ an cursin my name and cursin PieUte Rattler. And the rock sorta splits and the devil gets sucked in still a bitchin’ and cursin’. Then all the lite goes outer the Sweat and now I’m shitless. A big ‘ol clap a thinder shakes the Sweat and then the lite coms back.
Sez PieUte Rattler - It’s done.
Now I gotter go and keep my end o’ the deel. He wraps the rock in a blanket and sez the devil is stuck in the rock for a hundrud yeers but I am cursed by the bind and my burdin is this here rock. He givs me silver and food and water and Rye and smoke and sez don’t com back nomore.
So I lite out to the North on the train to Ely. I’m a gunner get shut a this here rock. I picks out a hefty strongbox with chains and locks. I’m a gonna rite this stuff out on sum paper put the rock in the strongbox with my papers. Lock it up and pitch the key. Then I’m gonna stow it where ain’t no one gonna find er. Then I’m a gonna get the bests botle of Rye, sits down next to my strongbox, drink up th Rye and blow my brains out cause that devil mite be in that there rock and I ain’t seen him around in the daylite but he’s there in my dreems and that just ain’t gonna do.
~~~~I think now you might begin to see the significance of this find. This stone is the key to the gateway to the Great Ones. The crude prospector and his Indian Shaman had no idea of the powerful entity they encountered. This entity is a precursor to the great Becoming. The Transformation from our nattering, war ape existence to a Higher Intelligence where the Great Ones will come down out of the sky and shower the worthy with the Ultimate Knowledge.
Even now, the culling has begun! The ugly immigrant, the diseased prostitutes, the weak children, the useless infirm, the addicts. Since I have pried open, ever so slightly, the Gates of Enlightenment with the help of this fantastic stone, certain events have occurred which have begun a wholesale cleansing of the McGill community! Read the headlines from the McGill Prospector!
TRAGIC BROTHEL FIRE BURNS TEN WOMEN ALIVE
FREAK MINING ACCIDENT CRUSHES TWENTY IMMIGRANT WORKERS
DRUNK MAN STRUCK, KILLED BY TRAIN
MAN HANGS SELF AT FONG OPIUM HOUSE
SIX ELDERLY SUCCUMB TO NEW WINTER VIRUS
CHILD WANDERS AND DIES IN NIGHT SNOW. MOTHER FREEZES TO DEATH IN SEARCH
The Path of the Great Ones is being cleared.
The entity was to be encapsulated for one hundred years. The entity was interred on October 29, 1905. It is December 1923 as I write this. The odds of me surviving until October 29, 2005 are low. I will perfect the Resurrection Binding and I will witness the release of the entity. This I vow with my blood.
GARRET HEWSON-DEE
(continued)
I put the scrapbook down. An appalling cold filled the attic and the rain poured down on the roof with renewed vigor.
“Rick,” I said. “Rick! Snap out of it!”
Rick sat transfixed by the stone on the table. Finally, he picked up the stone and said, “I’m taking it.”
“The hell you are! Put that thing down and let’s get out of this place!”
“Sorry, Phil. I came in here and I’m going out with a souvenir.”
“Look! I just read…”
“A stupid ghost story. You are so gullible.” Rick slipped the stone into his backpack. “You stick to your scrapbook but this here stone is going up on my bar at home. Hell I’ll even bring it to the Halloween party we’re throwing and prove that story is a cheesy work of fiction.”
“Don’t do it, Rick. If you even have an inkling of doubt that what I read was a bunch of bullshit, leave that rock right where you left it.”
“That’s just it. I have no doubts. This is just a cool little relic and I might even Ebay it. Then you’ll kick yourself in the ass after I show you how much I get for it. It’s a beautiful piece of capitalism, my man.” He got up and headed down the steps.
I stood alone in the attic dumbfounded. The shadows in the corners of the attic gathered into a shapeless form and followed Rick down the steps. I followed.
When we got down to the main floor I was amazed to see the room bathed in sunlight. The storm had blown away. Rick shrugged. “Goofy weather up here.”
I looked for our shadow companion but it was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s try the front door,” Rick said. He tried the handle and it opened with ease. The deal was done. The house won. Now it was just a run down old building. The horror was removed. It was now in Rick’s backpack.
What could I do? We drove off the hill, out of McGill and back to Ely.
“Let’s head over to the Nevada Hotel and grab a beer. You look like you need it,” said Rick.
We drank. We drank more. It felt good to drown those horrors in alcohol. It numbed the dread I could feel all around but which was undetectable to my brother.
*******
We’re back in Las Vegas. Life goes on. Work. Planning the party.
The stone sits and waits. The Shadow Walker plans its great debut.
I have a plan for it. I can feel its workings. But I wonder if it knows my workings? These papers I write serve as my testament. I’ve done some studies of my own, Shadow Walker. The Ordination of Heaven Banishment. Remember?
I have learned your nature, Shadow Walker. Eighty-two years ago, I sought to bring you into the world through the Opening of the Way ritual. What a fool I was! With time comes wisdom. You have concealed your true self to the brother of my Host and you have found your way back to the deserts of the South where you can gather the powers of darkness to you. In a way, it is a good thing that you have worked your way back here. This is where you will be destroyed.
My Host and his brother have planned a little party for you on October 29. I have seen to it that you will not survive your rebirth through the workings of my Host. Like a good parasite, my Host was not aware of the placements of objects and the construction of devices I willed him to complete for your “party”.
How did it come to this, Shadow Walker? Remember the Resurrection Binding I sought to perfect? I performed the spell on the bones of Obed Issom in the Midsummer of 1954 when I knew my life was at its end. The very bones below the altar in my aerie.
The bones sat in my sealed chamber waiting with you.
When the time came, I moved into my Host just as you moved into his brother’s knapsack.
You will fail, Shadow Walker. Then I will release my Host and I will rest. This I vow with YOUR blood.
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