the curse

Some find their assignment in the most weird places...

By seeing the village for the first time I knew it was cursed. The fields around it were dry and farmed poorly. The forest crowding around the houses in opposite was thick and looking somehow insane. From afar it looked as if the buildings tried to hide under the trees. The hills surrounding the village seemed to be burial mounds of gods forgotten since eons; their shapes were too regular and ancient stone monuments on their tops intensified this impression.

In fact it only was bad luck; my car broke down with the oil pump damaged. There was nothing left to do but to walk to the next village to ask for some help.

First I had some doubt to talk to the villagers. Their faces didn’t seem too friendly, their look was distrustful or better hostile. They sat or stood in front of buildings that seemed to be not much more than broken huts, besides one or two must have been nice long time ago. I only could see adult men and some male teenagers, neither a woman nor a child. From an indifferent reason I flinched from looking in their eyes, but I watched them from the corner of my eye and mentioned they showed signs of high age besides they looked young at first sight. Especially around the eyes and at their throat they had deep wrinkles, they had only less hair and noticeable skin folds at their neck.

I was looking for a gas station and about in the middle of the village I found something that was looking alike. It was a half destructed hut with the nearly faded character of a well known oil company, two gas pumps and a lapsed shed in which a rusty pickup was sleeping till years.

In fact I wondered about something underdeveloped existing at the 20^th century, I knew this kind of village only from the movies or bad TV series, but I never would have dared to say this loudly. There was no bell so I knocked at the dirty window pane. Scuffling steps told me my knocking had been heard.

The man opening the door goes with the gas station perfectly. Dirty, untended in a dungarees looking like he had found at the dump he looked at me with eyes until now I only had seen with drug dead.

I tried to tell him my problem as simple as possible. As an answer he pushed back his greasy cap, scratched extensively his neck and then told me he’d care about my car, meanwhile I should try to get some lodging at the inn. With a vague hand waving he showed about the direction of the tavern.

I was tired so I tried to overlook the in was looking not so much different than the other buildings. It there was any difference it was the sign someone fixed years ago saying one could get cold drinks. The door stood open so I entered without knocking. First time I mentioned the smell around. It smelled sharply, like in a carnivore’s cage, but with a touch of exotic spice, like one had tried to hide a bad taste with perfume.

At the bar parlor it was dark and my eyes needed some time to get acclimatized to the lighting conditions. Dusty rays of light marked the places of the windows which were that dirty one could not recognize them when it was cloudy. Behind the bar, made at the colonial era there stood a fat, dingy landlord rubbing a chipped glass. The deal boards creaked under my feet when I walked over to the bar.

The man answered my greeting with an indefinable grunt which might have been a salute or something less friendly. I first ordered a glass of beer, which was surprisingly really cool and fresh besides the glass was not that much clean. I was thirsty so I overlooked that and emptied it with two drafts. From the corner of my eye I mentioned the landlord was watching me curiously. I asked him for accommodation.

I found out there really were rooms to rent although there were not so many travelers coming here. By a wave of his hand the waitress entered, the first female I saw here at the village. Besides her frowzy appearance and the clumsy motions she trudged ahead there was something around her that made a difference between her and other women also on First Avenue. Her deep brown eyes showed a fey view, her dirty, nearly black hair made her look Madonna �" like defying her grubby gown.

She waved me to follow her and went up a caved stairway. There were four doors leading from a short corridor into small, grungy rooms. If one more often is on a journey like I am he could believe that he has seen everything that is to see. But this room here was so torn down that it makes a rotten highway motel seem like to be a royal suite.

Crude planks built floor and walls which were poorly laminated with detaching tapestry. The tapestry’s patterns were from the last century, same as the furniture which even at a monastery would have been called comfortless. A narrow bed, a shaky table with a chair and a case you would have been in trouble putting in more than two or three shirts, which was all.

Without saying a word the girl sent me a melancholic glance and disappeared to the corridor. I looked out the window watching the yard which was the center of the village. I felt like in an old western. At the moment I didn’t know which one was the bad guy and which one the good.

*

My car arrived at the village on a rope behind an ancient John Deere. As I saw it disappear at the gas station’s shed I left my room and walked over.

The station’s owner had opened the cowling and took a look at the mess. I started praying the man knew what’s to do. My luck I didn’t drive a new car, so there was no need for a specialist. The man scratched as before so I think it was his manner to start conversation. He declared repairing was possible but it would take some days until he could find a matching spare part. Meanwhile I should stay at the inn or take a look at the native cult sites that were found around the village.

I turned away resigned took my suitcase out the car and went back to the tavern. As I went through the lounge lunch was served, something looking like Irish stew and smelling like a dead Possum. I stepped up to my room.

The serving girl might have been sleazy, but she brought me a washbowl and two jars of water. I washed the dust off my face and dressed with a fresh shirt. On my way through the village I had mentioned a Shaw’s store. Leaving my room I noticed there was no lock at the door. Surely the villager knew each other well so there was no need to fix some.

I went to the store. In the parking area there stood only an old Ford and an also aged Volvo. From outside the store didn’t look different from the other village’s buildings but opening the door I noticed the store was looking the same as all the chain’s stores. I took two sandwiches and a bottle of mineral water. The man at the pay desk visibly didn’t hail from here. He wore a clean market uniform and overall he looked neat.

Asking him where he did come from he told me he was from a neighboring place and every single day driving home. Whispering he admitted it was scary for him to sleep here in the town. After looking around carefully he told me for him the villagers all were crazy. Once it had happened he could not drive home because of a late delivery so he had to stay at the office for the night, at the back of the store.

He had already been sleeping when he awoke from weird sounds. From a building he called temple there had been coming queer chants, sung in language he never heard before, accompanied by repellent flute sounds and cheerless drums reminding him at the music in some horror movies. Through a narrow window under the room’s ceiling he had looked out and watched an odd procession. The villagers had been walking round the temple singing and marching a ritual path leading round the building in wide turns. The celebrant’s movements had been such absurd that he had locked the office’s steel door plugged his ears and waited for the morning cowered upon the bed.

As I had told, arriving the town I had mentioned something was wrong with it, and now this feeling had been confirmed by one who had seen the whole thing with his own eyes. But as much the salesman’s story did scare or unsettle me my curiosity grew. Since ever I had been a reader of fantastic novels and weird incidents. And the idea I found an ancient cult here in peaceful and civilized Maine with a whole village celebrating was absolutely fascinating for me.

I was torn between the feeling I should leave the site as soon as possible and my curiosity on the other hand. The things the man had told me about might have been some kind of ritual from an ancient natural religion. I also had heard about similar ceremonies which were celebrated on some outlying islands of the Pacific Ocean. Since I was trapped here already I decided to take a look at the place the salesman had called temple.

*

The building turned out to be a former church or chapel. The tower, once built in colonial style was broken and never built up again. The windows were nailed up; the door was locked and fixed with a massive scantling. I once walked around the place but there were no signs or inscriptions showing the use of it.

I looked down on the ground and really I detected some broad turns that must have been formed by the feet of the celebrants as the man at the store had told me. The whole thing was very large, I could not see the general view but I thought it like an ancient labyrinth whose turns lead up into a point in the middle.

While I ate my sandwich I tried to take a look at the complex from afar, but I could not recognize more than I had thought before. A little disappointed I took a walk out of the village. The forest was very thick there, shrubs and insane looking weeds made a natural barrier and felted rose and blackberry bushes kept me from exploring the forest. So I shambled along the edge of the forest. I noticed the ground under my feet was fenny although it hadn’t rained for weeks as it seemed.

In my thoughts I didn’t recognize how far I had been walking because at once I stood in front of one of those ominous hills which were unpleasantly remembering me on an antediluvian burial mound. However my curiosity was stronger than my anxiety. I went up the hill’s face which was grown with dry grass. The knoll was flat as if it was man �" made. Amidst dry grass and nearly head �" high growing pest plants stood or laid a number of rocks. They didn’t seem to be here since the mound did exist. In opposite to the sandy ground they seemed to be extrusive rocks that were brought to this place like the standing stones in Europe.

But in difference to the stones in England or Brittany something strange extinguished from the stones in front of me; something I hardly can tell. I knew European stone monuments had been orientated at the sun or marked burial sites, but both reasons could not be used here. The always are straight lines at Stonehenge or Carnac, but the stones here stood in curves reminding me at the path around the temple of the village. But my senses failed to capture them, every time I tried to look nearer it seemed the pattern changed and blurred before my eyes like an arabesque simulating a movement when watched nearer. Also there was a strange odor, nearly a miasma, but it also was not to fix, every time I thought to be able to identify it there was something new in it changing the whole impression.

In addition it seemed the heat of the sun was more intense than in the village. Together with the strange odor and the confusion stone monument it made my head ache and I decided to return to the village.

Passing the gas station I watched the mechanic whispering conspiratorially to an other villager, and I would have bet they had been talking about me. As the mechanic saw me he lifted his arm and waved to me like to an old friend. Not sure about the meaning of this I waved back and went along to the inn.

*

After drinking two or three glasses of beer I retreated to my room where I noticed not only the lock was missing but also there was no lock bar to lock the door from inside. But I was so tired I only wanted to sleep and I didn’t speculate about. The room wasn’t that much clean but I wondered there was no vermin, not even a mosquito was around the lamp. I turned off the light and disappeared under my blanket.

I hadn’t been sleeping for long I was awakened by a terrible noise coming from the swampy forest. Thousands of frogs had started their calling. I remember my amazement because it was summer and the mating season was over for some time. In my room it was pitch black, there was no street light and skies were cloudy. While I was staring into the darkness I felt I not longer was alone in my room. I felt a movement between door and bed more than I saw or heard.

Then there was a soft breeze as the blanket was lifted and the soft touch of smooth skin on mine. Then a whiff came through the darkness and it surely was female. I knew it was the girl who led me to my room.

I’m not a vivid man usually and normally I use to contemplate about the things I do but this time…. I didn’t know what it was, the flavor, the soft touch or the magic atmosphere; I suddenly was so impassioned I took the girl in my arms, I kissed her and I made love to her.

Much later I felt she rose and silently as she had been coming she disappeared from the room.

*

I unmistakably had the feeling the nightly incident did change my whole situation at the village. The landlord greeted when I came downstairs and as I settled at the bar he reached over a pot of hot coffee. Behind him the girl came out the kitchen. She still had the same absent expression but she also seemed to be gleaming from inside. With a smile she placed in front of me some buns, butter and ham. To my surprise everything was fresh looking.

I ate with some appetite since I hadn’t too much yesterday. When I left after finishing I had the feeling her views were following me.

I turned towards the gas station but it was closed so I went on. In front of the houses today I saw some people, women and children who seemed to look behind me. I thought them malformed but I could not tell where this impression came from. The things they did were ordinary, women hung their laundry raked the dry grass or swept the veranda, children ran around, played with balls or wood sticks. I had the feeling they did all those things only to have an excuse to watch me.

Passing an old general store which was looking like the shops you can see at a western movie something weird happened. An old man, apparently drunk came shambling up to me and looked at me with his streaming eyes. “Yepp”, he started conversation. “As they did say hehe. Old Mason’s grandson. He’s there, he found his way home.” This he babbled, but before I could ask him what was the meaning of this he turned around and disappeared between the houses.

I was a little startled, because one of my ancestors was a man named Ebenezer Mason. But this was not a forefather one could be proud on. He had been hanged as a warlock in 1692. But this had happened in Salem and an association to this nameless village never was given. An other ancestor had been Keziah Manson, who could escape her prosecution by the authorities by disappearing from a locked prison cell.

Times later the last Mason’s daughter married Asaph Craven, the man my own name came from. To hear the name of one of my forefathers in this place was a little weird. I decided to visit the burial site, perhaps the gravestones could tell me what was about this similarity of names.

Like at an old movie the cemetery was outside the village on a hill on which some crippled trees were growing. Weathered stones and wood crosses stood in disordered rows, leaning or half sunken into the ground overgrown by dry grass and high grown pest plants. The epitaphs were hard to read, written in old fashioned letters and abraded by wind and rain.

Underneath some old, wind tousled yew trees I found a Gothic looking gravestone wearing the name Mason. As first names there stood Eliphas, Leah and Ebenezer, with which as note was carved saying “died in Salem 1692”. I had to settle down, it made clear my ancestor arose from this lost village.

*

I went back to my room to think over my situation and I stayed there until the evening. As the sun had set I rose from my freezing. In front of my window I heard strange sounds, steps and murmuring in a language that had been old when Atlantis sunk into the floods. I remembered I heard something like this when I visited my grandfather and found him sleeping. In his sleep he babbled weird syllables similar to those I caught from under my window.

I got up and looked out. A lot of people had congregated on the space in front of the temple; all were dressed in queer cloaks and equipped with torches. In front of the house one of the celebrants looked up to me and I identified it as the girl from the inn.

Directly in front of the temple there stood a malformed person lifting its arms in a ceremonial way being answered by an exclamation from the people around. Then started a kind of chant in strange words and barking sounds while the hooded formed rows and started walking around the temple an the paths I had seen.

The longer I stood there the rhythm of the chant started spreading inside my head. There was subliminal allurement in the singing, something startling and prepossessing at the same time. I turned off the window and walked downstairs.

At the lounge I noticed someone was waiting for me. Slowly I turned towards the hooded person. Before even seeing her face I knew it was the girl standing there. She pushed back the hood and looked at me.

“Robert Craven”, she said with a rough voice, “can you hear them? They’re waiting for their high priest. Since years they are waiting and now you are here.” She took my hand. “So come on with me”, she told me and I followed her. Someone, perhaps the landlord gave me a cloak before I left the tavern. Behind my guide I rushed into the crowd. The celebrants stepped aside respectfully when we went towards the temple. Hand in hand with the girl I entered the building which was lightened with torches and candles. The people who stood on both sides of the central corridor bent down reverential when we passed.

*

In front of the altar there was an open trapdoor the girl led me to. A narrow stairway headed into the depth. I got a torch from one of the celebrants and followed the girl into the abyss. The descent was like in a fever, it seemed to be miles and miles the stairway wound into the ominous darkness, a malodorous pit where madness or something more uncomfortable might wait, amidst slippery moss and the monotone sound of water dripping.

At least we reached a cave, as dark as hell itself the light of our torch didn’t reach more than a few feet and crawling with things who are dead but pretended to be alive. At a single spot in the cave there stood something like an altar and a lectern on which lay an old, moldy book. As I stepped behind the lectern and took a look around I recognized a considerable crowd waiting for what I would do next. The girl stood at my side and held my hand.

Without being told I knew what was to do. I opened the book and a whisper went through the crowd. I identified the book to be the horrible Necronomicon I’d heard so much whispering. And then I started to read. Words I never heard before coming onto my lips and conjured nameless things from the dark earth’s bowel. The celebrants issued mad sounds and the girl pressed near to me as if to show I was hers.

She had been right, she who was my soul mate since centuries, waiting for me here, the high priest had returned and he would attend his duty as he had done since the times the brood of Cthulhu and Shub �" Niggurath lurched from the stars down on the earth. She and I, we would pray to the Elder Ones as human have done since crawling out of the fen of earth. And we would give the cult to our descendant as it always had been.

Author's Note

hope this I was doing well, it's a long time since I wrote it, if you could help me making my stories better I'd appreciate.