The Idol.

A short piece I did out of boredom whilst I was at College. Yay for timewasting? I didn't like the intro much but it was insisted I use that sentence at the start of my story.

'Although it was almost midnight, I heard footsteps approaching our house. I opened the door...'

 

This was where the diary ended, with a smear of blood covering the final few words and the messy and rushed handwriting indicating some sort of distress on the writers behalf. I gazed up from the gore-covered journal, shuddering even as the final few drops of blood passed through its pages and onto the wooden floor below me. It was an awful moment, for each step I took seemed to draw a creak or one of countless strange sounds from the floorboards. I knew to watch my step, for earlier one of the junior officers had plummeted through a particularly rotten patch of the floorboards and into what looked like a hidden room. This said room was contained behind the back of a cupboard.

 

Upon this discovery I had cursed the detectives for their lack of skill at, well, detecting. Upon inspection of how the room had been hidden, it was surprising that any of us had missed it. A different shade of wooden-panels formed the hidden doorway, making it rather obvious and out-standing when compared to the others bland and empty walls of this decrepit abode.

 

The officer, whom was fighting with his innermost thoughts to remind himself that this was a daily hazard as an officer rather than just a spot of his infamous bad luck. I must add, this officer felt as if he was cursed by some malevolent spirit that wanted nothing more than to watch his poor mortal form blunder at every opportunity. Falling down steps, up steps, over railings, into basements etc. was a daily occurrence for this poor sod. Being one of the higher-most ranking officers on the job, I knew that in reality it was down to his poor eye-sight. Which he refused to get fixed with the help of corrective lenses or spectacles.

 

Upon violently kicking down the rotting panels, I entered the room within which the junior had fallen into it. It was, unimpressive to say the least, with no decoration along the walls. With no windows to allow fresh air into the room, it tasted stale, clogging up my throat and nose. A sharp cough pierced my lungs as the dust slowly began to gather. In the center of the room, sat a small stone pedestal, barely up to my waist in height. Normally, I would dismiss this and allow a less experienced member of the team to conduct an exotic story about how it was a lost Aztec relic! or, something stolen long ago from the tomb of an ancient viscount or Wallachian noble. I say this because one of the junior offices, Michael, believed in the Dracula stories. Of ancient vampires and men inhabiting the old castle of this world. Silly sod, he was too inexperienced by half and had never stared death in the face as I have!

 

Anyway, as I was saying. Upon this table, sat a strange idol. It was carved out of a strange green stone that shimmered under the light of my torch and bore no shadow. It's horrible visage was akin to that of what I can only summarize as a deformed Jackal, a long snout with fangs that punctured through the lower-most part of the jaw, its body consisted of multiple limbs of various creatures, human, monkey, cat and finally bird. It sat upon a snake like tail, which was decorated with the engravings of human skulls upon its scales. A strange purple liquid dropped from its deformed jaw, dropping into a small hole in the pedestal. There was something unnatural about this accursed object, in a moment of what I now believe to be unconscious stupidity. I grabbed the idol and slid it carefully into the leather messenger bag that hung over my shoulder, it crumpled a few of my notes and papers on other crimes,  but at the time I didn't care.

 

 

 

Author's Note

This took me around thirty-five minutes. So do not expect anything special or of great value. I am not sure if I ever will finish this and would very much like to collaborate with another author to finish this off! Please, message me if you feel like you want to contribute.


Many thanks!
Apothecary~