The boards beneath the carpet creaked like old ladies laughing. Each step up seemed noticeably higher than the previous. The flashlight bored through darkness thick as insulation, and once he set foot on the landing, he froze, startled, at a strange thumping sound but then smirked when he realized it was his own heart.
He turned into the first room and snapped the light to all corners. This must be it, he knew by the smell. Smells like cum'n pussy in here. A fancy bed with mussed covers sat against the wall; then he shined his flashlight down and stared.
The indescribable starfish-shaped goo lay there... moving. I don't care WHAT that writer says—this ain't no halluci-fuckin'-ation... Each elongation of the milk-marbled configuration seemed to grow like a slow trickle. Whatever this stuff was, though, Balls could not construe it as a threat.
Waste'a time. We should be loadin' up the haul... Disgruntled, he checked the other rooms, which offered more of the same: old-style furniture, old paintings and the like.
Fuck this. Time to git back to work'n git out'a this freaky joint. He headed back toward the stairs but paused. Something unbidden made him hesitate... and he peeked back in the first room...
The muck on the floor was beginning to... get up, two of the viscid configuration's extensions serving as legs. A vague tumescence misted about the room, and even some of the bulbs in the lamps flickered—as though the rising thing carried some inexplicable static electricity with it. Balls couldn't know, of course, that this phenomenon came from the flux of its Death Force, the residue of which carried over from its genetic origins which were rooted not of this earth but of the Labyrinthine District of Hell. Soon the spindle-form mass stood upright and close to six feet in height. Balls' sensibilities were now essentially high-jacked by his witness of what was taking place: a Para-Planar Birth.
He just stood and stared as the featureless stick-figure began to evolve before his eyes.
A crush of sounds percolated about the room, something like hardboiled eggs being peeled, and rushing sewage, and emphysematic respiration. The clock he'd heard ticking previously now seemed to tick ten times faster, all the while the thing before him growing in girth and taking on more details, until—
Balls' breath locked in his chest.
The thing stood complete: a beautiful nude woman with large, high-riding breasts, indefectable curves, and a plump, hairless pubis. Her skin shone fresh, poreless, and alabaster-white.
And one last detaiclass="underline" this "woman" had the head of a bull.
It appeared to be of the Angus variety, with shimmering black hair flowing down the arched muscular neck, then over the woman's sleek shoulders. Eyes green as backlit emeralds glittered in the small round sockets. But of this entire being—this monstrous crossbreed—the most notable feature was the pair of long, curved horns sprouting from its head.
It stood for several moments, seeming to stare at Balls as if uncomprehending. Then its delicate white hands caressed the burgeoning bosom. Thumb and index fingers teased the puckered dark-pink nipples, then the hands slid down over the flat abdomen and glided over the pubis. Then—
It looked again to Balls, snorted, and charged.
Balls came out of his stasis fast enough to yell, leap backward out of the room, and slam to the door. A bang and a crunching sound were heard immediately thereafter, and instantly two splintering holes appeared in the door through which jutted the tips of the entity's horns.
Balls fumbled for the pistol, then—
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Six .455 bullet-holes tracked up the center of the door, right between the horn-points. Balls stood wide-eyed in the sequent silence, waving away smoke. No way in fuckin' holy hail I missed, he thought.
The door exploded, splintery shards flying, and the unfathomable creature stepped through, jerked its head, and snorted a string of mucus.
Balls had a half-second to notice the six bullet-holes in the back bedroom wall, then he ran down the stairs as fast as he'd ever run in his life.
During Balls excursion upstairs, Cora remained unconscious on the floor while Dicky meandered around the strange room of bookshelves, Doric columns, and old doors. The Writer continued to smoke as he examined the pile of very old books set around the table.
Every second that transpired felt more like a minute. Dicky kept looking up at the ceiling. "What's takin' him so long?"
"Relax, Mr. Dicky. He seems like a pretty thorough man."
"But what if... What if the black chick came back and now—now she's fuckin' Balls?"
"I have every confidence that that's not the case."
Dicky groped for any distraction. "What's with all them books?"
"These are some very interesting books indeed, Mr. Dicky," the Writer said. "Hundreds of years old, and more proof of Crafter's devotion to his satanic delusion." There were a number of tomes that Crafter had obviously taken down off his shelves for the ritual he'd engaged in. One wasn't a book at all but a yellowed manuscript which the Writer was leafing through now. "But this holograph is the most interesting of all. They're hand-written notes by an infamous astrologer and occult translator named Dr. John Dee. Evidently he compiled these missives between May and December of 1581; he was translating ritualistic techniques from various sources, for his own use. This passage here—" The Writer pointed to the yellowed sheet of vellum. "It was translated from an older book, thought to no longer exist, called the Magnum Maleficarum, originally penned in Old Latin. The passage copied here is entitled ‘The Proper Procedure and Use of Eibon Wood.'
"Never heard of him."
"It's not a him, Mr. Dicky. It's a type of conditioned wood, and you may be intrigued when I explain what's written here. It tells of how wooden planks can be ritualistically conditioned by burying them in a graveyard of unconsecrated ground that served as the final resting place for condemned witches."
Dicky's brain could almost be heard clicking. "The graveyard we seed outside! Lots of 'em were half dug into."
"Precisely. It's a solid bet that the wooden planks that Crafter used to make the six doors in this room are made of such wood. Each plank was buried over the graves for a total of 666 days; then they were nailed together and used to fashion the door-faces. This manuscript here is quite concise. Dee calls these doors a ‘Talismanic Traversion Bridle.'"
"Huh?"
"Think of it this way. Each door is a magic door, Mr. Dicky. They've been ritually charged with an occult power to close off the passage to a netherworldly domain—six such passages, I'd say. And when the proper ritual is enacted... that barrier—that bridle—comes down, and the door opens to a predesignated supernatural realm." Again the Writer's eyes gestured the corpse hanging by the spike through its neck. "Lowering this barrier, of course, must involve a human sacrifice. Before Crafter left on his trip, it's clear he engaged in such a task, and that poor girl was the fodder for the rite."
Dicky whispered, eyes wide. "He opened that there door to some place full'a demons... "