The Dead House In The Woods

 
The Leaves crunched soundlessly under Jonathan's feet as he traversed the weary forest trail. It was uncanny how deafening the forest silence could seem at times. The vast mob of trees one either side of him stood sentry like a mass of spectators to a parading hero leaving on a quest. Indeed, a similar air had surrounded his departure from the party after friends had dared him to go spend the night at the old house entombed in the deepest reaches of the forest.


  The alcohol still hadn't completely left his system, and the arrogant feeling of teenage invincibility thrilled in his body as he marched down the trail: any thoughts of the estates so-called curse all but removed from his mind.


  Everyone knew the stories of The Dead House In The Woods: the macabre tales of bloodied bodies, blasphemous rites, and otherworldly screeches. All the townsfolk knew the stories told in bated breath by the superstitious and stoic alike of morbid sins committed in the abyss of that ruined edifice. The newspaper reports of hundreds of human and animal remains alike scattered through the damned grounds. The terrified prayers of a bewildered town still seemed to echo in the streets.


  Everyone also knew the proud tale of the enraged mob that ten years ago stormed the house, and cleared out every last one of the demented denizens, many caring little if they killed them or not. The police even avoided the scene until the following morning; and the investigations was cut short when the twisted and mangled corpses left behind were found to be those of the cultists.


  Or so the stories were told. In a situation such as the cult scare, hyperbole and embellishment could only be expected in such a small town. As far as Jonathan was concerned, however, it only served to make his triumph all the more grandiose after his exploration of the eerie building. The pallid looks of terror and surprise when he agreed to the dare had been sweeter than ambrosia as he drank in the awe of his peers, savoring the ecstasy of respect.


  But even his stolid dogma of fearlessness wavered upon sighting the brobdingnagian structure of pure Gothicism. Like David approaching the omnipotent Goliath, Jonathan strode towards the stone-hewn beast with a regained aura of confidence. As imposing as the house had originally seemed, the rot and deprivation proved it to be as mundane and material as himself. Not only that, but the originally massive seeming structure suddenly appeared laughable, and impotent in stature. The rotting wood and weathered stone allowed no support to the building, which seemed to sag and wilt under itself. The murky land amongst the trees became thick and swampy in such a way that the earth seemed to threaten swallowing the building as the rot and mold worked its way up the timbers.


  A vague level of uncertainty filled him as he examined the boggy woodland, shuddering at the thought of the corpse-filled ground. But it was more a material fear of disease and disgust that kept him at bay than a fear of some phantom menace. The prospect of ethereal assault was far from his mind; stepping in someone, not so much. And the repercussions of stepping in a years old decomposing body was far more tangible than that of attack by a being with no physical form. Besides, he already had to scrape off enough people he didn't want clinging to him back at the party.


  At long last he sighted what seemed to be a trail of sunken stones that must've been the bare remains of an old walk way leading up to the ancient building's front stairway. After meticulously stepping from stone to stone on the marshy ground, he reached a short flight of sodden stairs that was so termite ridden he wondered if it wouldn't just collapse as soon as he touched it. In fact, as he did step on it the wood didn't so much creak as he stepped on it as it squelched with the sickening sound of the boggy wood unleashing its viscous contents. Brackish slime swishing around his shoes, tendrils snatching at the edge.


  After surmounting the stairs, Jonathan coolly swung open the door, which gave surprisingly little protest, and strode into the tepid bowels of the building. Reaching back with his foot, Jonathan kicked the door shut, waiting for the satisfying thud which never came. Turning around in confusion, he found the door tightly sealed, and put the lack of sound off as a lack of force to his kick.


  Looking around his current room, Jonathan found himself in a strangely elegant chamber. Although the room itself was clearly of low quality, and the lack of craftsmanship was evident in the wilted ceiling; the furniture was made of a highly polished ebony adorned with rich crimson silks and gilded trimmings. Massive obsidian candelabras stood in each corner of the room, and somehow seemed almost predatory in their profile.


  An extremely long, and highly polished table spanned the center of the room, with high, wing backed chairs flanking it. At the head of the table sat a massive stone chair that seemed to be a part of the floor, and could be described only as a throne. The dark stone was so smooth and perfectly glossy it was like an ink-black glass, reflecting the pale moonlight shining in from holes in the ceiling.


  Approaching the throne swiftly, Jonathan felt his heart begin to race in his chest. Whether from fear or elation, his intoxicated mind couldn't decide. A strange sort of insignia decorated the back of the throne, which comprised of a circle inside of another connected by three arcs. The three segments outside the smaller ring contained three different symbols comprised of various combinations of various arcs in dots in almost mesmerizing patterns that called to some past memory of his soul. In the central ring, however, was a very clearly defined symbol that even the carving style seemed reverent of. Reminiscent of a house, or temple, the small symbol contained the only straight lines and sharp angles of the entire carving, save for a single straight line on the uppermost design.


  Staring deep into the glossy depths of the throne, Jonathan fancied he could see strange shapes swirling within it like acrid vapor or smoke. Standing slowly from a crouched position behind the shimmering throne, Jonathan re-examined his surroundings for a way to elsewhere in the house and was rewarded with two doors, choosing one to his left which stood slightly ajar.


  As he pushed the door aside he found this one just a soundless as the first and wondered at the uncanny silence. The room he found himself in smelled heavily of blood, sweat, and heavy candle smoke. Looking down at the floor found the source of all three. Outlined in white chalk on the floor was a massive pair of pentagrams, connected on a diagonal by their opposite corners. One of the two was about half the size of the other and had the immolated corpses of burnt out candles marking the outer points. Smeared within the other, was a ridiculous amount of blood, and scraps of dead flesh. Taken aback by the gruesome discovery, a scream bubbled up in his throat before being stifled by a false sense of his need to appear impassive to everything; his need to appear cool, even in his solitude. Laughing inwardly at his loss of nerve, Jonathan kicked aside the scraps of flesh and blood carelessly, and walked further into the room so as to examine the contents.


  The pool of blood squelched uncomfortably beneath his feet, and the slickness of it nearly made him lose his footing as he strode towards a small, rough-looking desk cramped into the corner of the room. Across the table was a thick piece of parchment covered in notes surrounding a rough sketch of the same symbol he discovered on the back of the throne, however on this sketch the central ring and symbol were both highlighted and emphasized. Much of the surrounding notes both on the parchment itself and on several accompanying sheets made little sense with their ramblings of magick, metaphysics, and ethereal worlds. Carefully pocketing some of the notes to use as show pieces the next day for his friends, he couldn't help but feel a strange chill as he began to roll up the large piece of parchment, mind pre-occupied with his reading. Strange words and titles resounding in his head: Rithulsen, Gada-Rah, The Fulcrum Trinity, the Priests of Whispers. The merest thought of the words filled him with inferiority to the mystery they held.


  Stranger still was a small stone tablet he found hidden away in a right hand drawer of the table. the tablet seemed to be about the size of a pocket book, and consisted of a weathered gray stone textured in carvings and symbols reminiscent of those that made up the recurring insignia. As the tablet rested in his hands, Jonathan could almost feel the living-stone pulse in his hands with a strange, inner power. Unlettered as he was, especially in something as obscure as the tablet before him, he could sense the knowledge within.


  Pockets laden with his plunder, and mind clouded with things he couldn't understand, Jonathan headed back into the main room, determined to explore the other room in hopes of a bed to pass the night on.


  As he passed by, the high polish surface of the throne appeared to internally undulate upon examination. The entire quality of the throne seemed so surreal, almost like it existed only to make a mockery of the surrounding world. Still the strange symbols and insignia decorating the throne beckoned with ancient ideas and knowledge, enticing in their strangeness.


  Relief flooded his body as he entered the final room to find it full of beds, all seeming to be within a realm of cleanliness. The prospect of laying on the rotten floor like another fetid corpse did not appeal. Slowly lowering himself to the nearest bed of relative sanitation, Jonathan let out a long held breath. Beneath the facade of fearlessness he had showed when accepting the dare to stay the night in The Dead House, a knot of fear had twisted deep in his chest as he thought of the terrifying legends surrounding the grounds. Now it would seem that fear had been misplaced, and the ancient house held nothing to fear but blood and mold.


  As he fell into rest, a terrible thought came to him: the blood was wet. Sitting up as fast as he could, a cold terror filled him, and he eyed the barren room wearily. Before he could even finish getting out of the bed, the door silently crashed open and several figures stormed the room, clothed in robes and hoods as dark and wispy as the throne. Hands reached for him, and he was hopeless to resist as iron grips latched onto his body.


  Of course they were still around. He thought as he tried to scream, but no sound would come out, even as he felt himself loosing his breath. The clues had been so obvious: the polished furniture, the blood, the manuscripts, and tablet; how could he have ignored it all so easily? The cultists drug him violently from the bed, and continued to lead him through the main room, and on into the sacrificial chamber. Upon entering the room, a sudden omnipresent wall of whispers assailed his ears, and as he twisted in the cultists' grips, still screaming silently, he caught sight of a massive, vaguely human form watching over them.


  Watching was of course, a term used loosely, as the terrible spiked, spherical helmet of the figure lacked any eye holes. Indeed, the only features of the smooth gray metal being the foot long spikes, and three narrow breathing slits cut roughly into the face. Clad in equivocally plain blackish gray robes, the figure stood several heads taller than anyone around, and Jonathan was almost certain, anyone he knew. But most terrible of all was the man sized sword clutched in the demon's hand, glistening in a malevolent light cast by candles that one of the cultists has began to reset around one of the pentagrams.


The closer he got to the center of the room, where the pentagrams laid in wait, the omnipresent whispers grew ever more incessant in his ears. Growing ever louder, but never more clear. Like a vague and muffled conversation heard through a wall. From the few words he could make out, they only served to eat away at a thin layer of sanity that held his conscious mind in tack. He wanted to say they made no sense to him, but these words were the same as the ones he had read upon the manuscripts, and felt almost as if the tablet had hinted at.


The cultists pulled him roughly towards the central pentagrams, obviously eager to get their ritual under way, Jonathan renewed his struggle with greater vigor, but found the cultists too strong or perhaps just too numerous to fight off. The cultists then proceeded to throw Jonathan bodily to the floor, crashing roughly into the pentagram, only to be swiftly restrained once more by waiting hands, and the cold embrace of solid steel chains.


As the cultists began to restrain him, he couldn't help but notice as the demon began to walk towards him, massive blade held lazily, and effortlessly in its hand as the heavy blade gouged deep ruts in the floor where it was drug. As the demon approached him, the whispers grew even more forceful, threatening to rip away what mind he had left, always tugging and biting at the edges of his sanity. The demon moved so detached from  the world, almost as if it didn't belong to existence. Even the very material that made up the demons robe seemed impossible. The more he looked at it, the less it seemed fabric, and the more it seemed to be some gathering of swirling energies, undulating about the body of the demon, holding the shape of a robe as they seemed to devour the essence of light and clarity at the edges of the demons form.


Chains pulled sharply across jonathans arms, legs, chest, and throat, and with a terror Jonathan once more tried to scream. At first wordlessly embodied, but slowly he tried to form words as he began to hysterically cry. 'God, no! Please God make them stop!'. But still the screams and words remained soundless, only the whispers seemed to have reign here. Turning his pleas to the cultists, Jonathan once more tried to scream: 'Please! Mercy! I beg you, I'll do anything you want. Just please: don't kill me!' But even if they could've heard the soundless screams, Jonathan doubted they would've cared. And as eager hands pulled the chains always tighter about his body before mooring them to hooked anchors set in the floor, Jonathan continued his soundless screams. But as the force of the scream pulled at his throat and anxiety stricken body, it proved far too much and his stomach upheaved, leaving him to be violently sick. But the cultists grip didn't loosen for even a moment as he vomited onto himself, the floor, and even those closest to him. Once he was done being sick, one of the cultists with free hands come forward and slapped Jonathan roughly across the face and then threw his head back against the floor boards before tightening his neck chain to choking.


Jonathan noticed then that the demon was nearly upon him, and in fact believed that if he were not bound he would be able to reach out and touch the hem of the robe to discover whether or not it was of this world. With their master now being close enough, the cultists finally released Jonathan, trusting in the strength of the chains to keep him in place as they fell to their knees and bowed over in reverence of their vile master. With his final steps, the demon then knelt beside Jonathan and reached an arm towards his face, a long sleeve of its robe pulling back to reveal a long bony hand ending in six inch talons. The skin seemingly dead and grayish blue, with bulging veins across the hands in arms that seemed almost to imply that the blood had stopped in place and then coagulated within the veins themselves. In the mockery of a lover's caress, the demon gently brushed the talons down the side of his face, where the razor like talons gouged his flesh, leaving rivulets of blood to mix with the mess of bile and tears on his face. The demon stroked his face several more times as it began to bring its faceless mask nearer to Jonathan's own face.


Bleak and featureless, Jonathan felt hopeless as he draw upon his final reserves of courage to keep his eyes level with where he believed the demons eyes might be beneath that eyeless mask. Feeling betrayed that he would not have even the solace to look his murderer in the eyes, Jonathan began to cry harder as he let his body go fully limp beneath the chains while the demon began to stand to its full height before him. Jonathan then became explicitly aware of the massive blade clutched in the demon's hand. The weapon was awe inspiring as the demon reverently raised it impossibly high in the air, hefting the incredible weight with a single arm. At the top of the arc, the blade gouged deeply into the ceiling of the Dead House, where the demon momentarily allowed it to rest, seeming to almost glow malignantly with its own energies and darkened life. the image of a guillotine flashed through Jonathan's mind as the blade hung ominously in the air. Then came the plummet.


The pure inspiration of death seemed to follow the cruel blade in its violent, reaping arc that determinately crushed towards Jonathan's chest with the full force of gravity, the demon's swing, and the sheer weight of the impossibly large blade. But it was the very action with intent to kill that at least momentarily saved his life: as the blade swung and balance shifted, the weight suddenly became too much for the rotted floors of the Dead House and where the demon had once towered, it was now hip deep within the boggy land upon which the Dead House was built. With the demon's fall, the course of the blade had altered too, and where once it would've crushed Jonathan's life, it instead cleaved wetly through one of the kneeling cultist's torsos, and with a macabre shower of blood it cleaved too through many of Jonathan's bonds, leaving half of his body with complete freedom.


With the sudden rush of insane energy and adrenaline, Jonathan pulled with near super human strength at the remaining anchors which pulled out of the floors with seeming ease. Jumping to his feet, it appeared that for the moment at least the cultist's were to busy trying to pull their master out of the swamp to notice Jonathan's sudden freedom. Taking full advantage, Jonathan sprinted towards the main room, and towards the front door and freedom. But at about half way through the main room, one of the many candelabras suddenly flew across the room from behind him and impaled its many archaic spikes through both the door and the frame. Looking back, Jonathan could find no source for the sudden projectile, and instead of searching for one, brought his attention back to the rooted candelabra and attempted to free it from the door. But to no avail, and was now unable to pry the door open.


Turning back to the room, Jonathan found a window on an adjacent wall that appeared to be boarded over with seemingly decayed and termite ridden wood. He also found that several of the cultists had now followed him into the main room, and had spread out into a human net, seemingly cutting off any hopes of escape. Feeling the thrill of the adrenaline in his body, and bracing with steel-like resolve, Jonathan tucked his body into a football style position and charged headlong towards the weakest looking cultist in the direction of the window. Unsuspecting of such a bold move, the cultist had no time to prepare himself as Jonathan crashed into him, sending the smaller man flying and freeing his path to the window. But as he made his way across the room, objects small and large began to launch themselves at him seemingly upon their own accord. Ranging anywhere from books and cutlery to entire tables and chairs hurling in his direction, the adrenaline and fearful courage that filled Jonathan then allowed him to deflect or brace against the oncoming objects with relative ease.


But suddenly as his foot caught against a loose floor board, Jonathan found himself crashing into the floor with enough force and momentum to knock out his breath, and crush through the rotted floor boards, submerging much of his arms and legs in the fetid marshland beneath. With the set back, one of the cultists managed to cautiously make his way across the ever weakening floor boards and grabbed Jonathan by his hair, pulling him to his feet with agonizing force. As Jonathan twisted in the cultists grip, he noticed that in his free hand the cultist carried a long, cruel knife that was drawn back for a killing thrust. Instinctively, Jonathan drew back his hand, and punched the cultist directly in the face with such sheer force that he felt bones break both within the cultists face, and his own hand.  Releasing his hair as he fell unconscious, the cultist crumpled limply to the ground and into the boggy ground Jonathan had just released himself.


Not wanting to give anytime for the others to reach him, Jonathan turned back for the window. He ran, leapt, and braced himself. CRASH! The boards flew in splintering pieces as their weak forms gave way before Jonathan as he exploded forth from the window, and landed soddenly on the marshy ground, long silenced screams finally bursting forth from his throat and shattering the air around him. Splinters prickled his face, arms and torso, but the stinging pain barely registered amongst the euphoria of freedom. Turning back to the shattered window of the Dead House, Jonathan had been prepared to see the Cultists clambering after him, but instead saw the window clear, and the inside seemingly clear. 


After moments of recovery as the pain began to fully set in, Jonathan walked swiftly to the front of the Dead House, eager to get on the wooded path back home. But as he began into the woods, now fully believing that for some reason the cultists would not pursue further, something made him look back, the terrible desire to take just one final glance at what had almost sealed his fate: the sight brought him to his knees. 


The door to the Dead House now hung wide open, the candelabra apparently removed to allow it to swing freely, and as the door swung in a non existent breeze, Jonathan watched as a black gray smoke swirled within the house which was now devoid of the cultists, the only figure left was the demon. But it did not seem to wish pursuit, it instead reclined regally upon a crystal clear throne that dominated the room, where once the obsidian throne had perched. The demon seemed almost to fade within the smoke as Jonathan watched it sit there, an embodiment of pure evil. And before Jonathan's eyes, the demon joined with the smoke in the air which oh so slowly swirled and dissolved to hide once again within the glass throne, darkening it from crystal to an obsidian once more. Within moments, the Dead House was deserted once more, and Jonathan felt the grips of fear strangle at him. Reaching into his pockets, he found that they still contained the tablet and manuscripts. Knowing that this would haunt him for the rest of his life, Jonathan ran away from the house as fast as he could, determined to learn what secrets the manuscripts and tablet may hold, and knowing that he was now a member of a very dangerous world. But regardless of what he might learn, Jonathan vowed to never again return to The Dead House In The Woods.