Hey, Dreadites. Here is another short piece of horror fiction I conjured up some time ago. This one was heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecrafts Dreams in the Witch House and was originally conceived as a story seed for the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Enjoy and let me know what you think - ALL THE DEVIL REQUIRES October, 1927, Arkham, Massachusetts The good Reverend Charles Noyes of the First Baptist Church of Arkham was a quiet, unassuming man who never married, having chosen to devote all his energies to the spiritual care of his parishioners. He proudly watched as his congregation grew steadily from the previous summer. A baptism had been scheduled for later in the month and his dear mothers seventy-fifth birthday was fast approaching. Despite these joyous events, Noyes was a troubled man. Recently, his church had suffered two break-ins in as many months. As far as Noyes could tell nothing was stolen but church records dating back over two hundred years had been rifled. Additionally, Noyes was disturbed by a number of recurring nightmares. These nightmares usually involved himself as a child being frightened by clawing, scratching noises emanating from behind the walls of his bedroom and a large rat with the face of a man whispering obscene things to him while ugly, old women cackled horridly from the foot of his bed. The trigger for these night terrors was an event that Noyes had been keeping to himself for some time. One Sunday, while giving the morning prayer to his congregation, he glanced up and gazed briefly and lovingly across the heads of his flock. His eyes happened to rest upon one head in particular that was not, at that moment, inclined in prayer. It was an ancient woman, staring directly at him. Her eyes, nestled in a face as wrinkled as a dried apple, burned with a hate and a darkness that was, at that very second, unbridled, and thoroughly malign. Without her gaze wavering at all, she held one bent, gnarled index finger against her thin, dry lips in a gesture of silence and smiled a smile that was fairly brimming with malice. Noyes had never seen this crone within his church before but he certainly recognized her. This recognition, having originated from a long since buried portion of his mind, shook Noyes to the core of his being. He faltered in the verbal delivery of his prayer. For a brief moment, the very breath in his lungs seemed poisonous to him. It is a credit to the man and his powers of recovery that not one person in church that day was at all aware that the good Reverend Noyes had come perilously close to suffering a heart attack. Since that day, Noyes habits changed dramatically, though he did his best to conceal it from those closest to him. Night was for the dreams. Endless nightmares that left him shaken, that made sleep not a restful state of recuperation but a threat-laden territory populated by bitter enemies. Days were spent trying to bury himself in the daily minutia of church business. He worked harder in those days than at any other time in his life. A strategy designed to keep the terrors at bay. The work, though, did have its own advantages. He had determined, for instance, through extensive examination of files and dates, that the thieves who had illegally entered his church did indeed abscond with something. A slim folio, dated from 1788, Thaumaturgical Prodigies in New England Canaan, written by a Reverend Ward Phillips. In order to combat the threat of exhausted slumber, Noyes began walking at night. He wandered, aimlessly at first, through the streets of Arkham but eventually his sleep deprived subconscious sent him into the infamous French Hill district. In those shadowy tangles of unpaved, musty-smelling lanes where eldritch brown houses of unknown age leaned and tottered and leered mockingly through narrow small-paned windows, Noyes swam blindly through a monstrous past. He knew something had happened to him here but he was either unable or unwilling to remember. When, at last, he found himself standing at a nondescript corner of cracked and weed-strewn walk staring up at the dusty, irregularly paned windows of a particularly legend haunted structure, its gambrel roofs casting a black shadow that threatened to engulf him in its inky depths, Noyes paled and fell to his knees with such force that his trouser legs were torn and his knees bloodied. Noyes prayed then, with all the vigor and passion his exhausted soul could muster but nothing could stem the tide of memory that flooded his brain. It was here, in this house, in that gable room, that little Charlie Noyes had spent his twelfth summer. His mother, who worked tirelessly was rarely at home, leaving young Charles to pass the days reading voraciously at a scarred wooden desk and the nights in his small bed, eyes tightly shut to the preternatural violet glow that emanated from the cracks in the ceiling directly over his head. He recalled the scritch, scritch, scratching as of tiny claws searching tirelessly for some egress from that tiny, strangely angled space that resided in the forgotten corners of that mouldering edifice and into the only slightly larger space occupied by young Charlie himself; alone and frightened. And it was here that Charlie first espied the hideous crone that would, nearly twenty five years later give his heart such a shock. She had emerged one night, to his undying horror, from the deepest, darkest corner of the room. A corner containing no door nor window but a place where a number of bizarre angles and planes converged at a point that often made Charlies head ache if he happened to glance in that direction. At night, when the shadows were at their most fathomless, that point seemed, to Charlie, not unlike a bottomless chasm. Its black depths plumbed not by any creature native to this world. The crone came toward him from the shadows, her bent figure creaked and cracked as she walked. Charlie gripped the sheets tighter as she bent over him and smiled. Her teeth were like so many sharpened fence posts. Her breath like the rot from an open grave. In her arms she held a bundle of damp, black cloth. A fold of the material fell aside to reveal its contents. It was an infant, pale and lifeless. A drop of the wetness that soaked the cloth dripped from that errant corner of material onto the back of Charlies hand. In the darkness the drop was as black as ink but Charlie had no doubt what colour the liquid would prove to be come morning. The crone regarded his horror stricken features and raised one index finger tight against her stretched, leathery lips and uttered a single sound, Shhhhhh She exited the room through the door but her dry rattle of a laugh seemed to linger in the room long after her passing. Charlie, who felt, quite instinctively, that he was lucky to be alive just then remained rooted to the bed where he lay until the first rays of sun penetrated his tiny, dusty window. He left the house that morning and, later, refused to ever darken its ancient doors again. His mother assumed he had been stricken by some inexplicable brain-fever. Charlie had never bothered to refute this theory. He implored his mother, with hysterical insistence, to find them new lodgings and in the end, she did as he bid her. As time went on, Charles Noyes was quite successful at suppressing the memories of that night and others like it. He knew that, for the sake of his sanity, forgetfulness was the only course to be taken. He also knew that such defensive measures of the brain were fragile, at best. But now that the gates of memory had been roughly thrown open, certain questions began to rise to the surface of his turbulent mind. For instance, what relationship, if any, did the appearance of the old crone have with the recent robberies of the First Baptist Church? Is the woman interested solely in tormenting him or is there something about his church that has attracted malevolent forces? Were answers contained within the pages of the book that was stolen? Do any other copies exist? Was it the only thing stolen? These questions and doubts plagued Noyes as he made his way home through the streets of Arkham that evening. As he walked and pondered a passage came unbidden to his mind. He could not remember the source but, nonetheless, it became an internal mantra for the remaining length of his journey home, All the Devil requires is acquiescence. Not struggle, not conflict, acquiescence.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 23:53:19 +0000