Conjuring Fiction

Conjuring Fiction

By – Robert Goldsborough

         They swayed with the breezes to make themselves more like the trees.  An ocean of darkness lay just outside the circle of light that the fire cast.  Their mouths moved and muttered the secret words.  The darkness wanted in, into the circle, into them.  It wanted to see through their eyes and feel with their flesh.  Shadows rolled over each other in the light of the flames.  The three that stood inside the circle kept their eyes shut tight.  They could not let anything in.  The words were started.  The words had to finish.  That was why there were three.  If one fell two could still speak.  If two fell, the weight of the words would fall on the shoulders of the last.  They all knew that this could be their fate, and none wavered.



         The shadows shrieked.  The darkness thickened.  The moon was a weak sliver that could not help the stars shine.  The only light was the fire.  Nothing in the dark dared to venture even into that meager light, but they planned.  The darkest of the shadows sent terrors into the three men’s skulls; images of death and torture.  They stayed their ground and continued the words.  The dark watched the fire burn.  The flames would not last forever and if the circle receded just enough the things in the dark could try and grab the men.  The things waited on the very edge of the light and hoped that the words would outlast the flames.



         When the words were started the things that hid in the dark answered.  The more the words were spoken the more power the things had to form and take shape, horrible shapes and horrible forms.  Now that the things that slithered and rolled knew themselves they wanted more.  They wanted the life, the life that glowed like a beacon just within that circle.  If the words were allowed to finish there would be no hope.  The things would lose all power and fade back into the dark.  All they needed was one brief moment where the flames would gutter and shadows would fall.



         An ancient mind buried in the darkness thought and revealed its intentions to the others.  They did not need total darkness to snatch their prey, just time.  He showed the others the men’s shadows.  As the flames licked away the fuel the flames fell closer to the earth.  When the final log collapsed the flames would be low, but the shadows would be long.  The men’s shadows would bridge the circle and the things could have their life.  It would not be long now.  The once roaring blaze was eating itself lower.



         The stronger things still assaulted the men’s minds with their hideous images, but listened to the ancient one’s wisdom.  They listened too hard.  One of them sent the plans into the circle.  One of the men saw his images of death change for just a brief moment.  He saw the flames crash, his shadow lengthen and the things crawl across the bridge.  He felt claws tear through him driving him out into the nothing.  He saw his essence squeezed out through his eyes by the force of the oncoming horde.  He felt the cold nothing that awaited him if he was to be disembodied. In that nothing he ceased to exist.  He screamed.  Even the thoughts of the things were rent by that terrific wail.  He opened his eyes.  He saw what was just beyond the flames, what their foolish words had conjured.  Darkness had built a wall around the fading circle, a wall of twisting flesh; arms withered and unformed, leathery wings traced in thin spider’s webbing, pulsing organs not yet hidden by full flesh, and eyes.  Eyes in the dozens reflected back fire with a greed that he could feel.  He knew what they hungered for.  He knew what he had to do.  He turned his back away from the nearest edge of the circle and looked deep into the closest, burning eyes.  The things’, angered at being seen, fury built to a physical force that drove the man back, back towards the flames.  The things knew his plan.  Unformed limbs, still dripping with the ephemera of dreams, reached into the light to grab him, to stop the man.  The light dissolved the reaching limbs and roars filled the darkness.  He stumbled as he stepped away from the writhing wall of darkness.  As he fell he whispered a short prayer, ‘may whatever gods exist, look down on me in my folly and grant me respite before finding me again.’  Then he fell back into the fire.  The heat alighted his clothes in seconds, the flames burned on him as new fuel.  The fire grew tall.  His eyes never left the darkness, his mouth never moved to scream.



         As the air filled with the stench of burning meat the other two men kept at their words.  Darkness kept at its vigil.

         “That was one of the most unnerving things you have ever read me,” Kathryn said.

         “Thanks.  I’m glad you liked it,” I said.

         “I didn’t say that. But, I gotta know.  Did they finish, you know, with the words?”

         “That’s what makes it kinda scary.  You don’t know for sure.  It keeps you wondering.”

         Kathryn uncrossed her legs and climbed off the gold brocade couch.

         “I need some iced tea.  You?”

I nodded and she walked off to the kitchen.  I heard her shuffle around the old wooden floors, digging in the cabinets, and tinkling ice into our glasses.

         “I made cookies earlier.  Want one?”

         “Of course I do.  Why do always ask?  You know my sweet tooth is legendary.”

         “Good I made your favorite.”

Kathryn came back in balancing two large tumblers filled with unsweetened iced tea and a large orange plate stacked with cookies.  I stood and saved the glasses from her famous clumsiness.

         “Thanks.  See, your favorite.  Bat-shaped chocolate-chocolate chip cookies.”

She held the plate up to my nose.  There was no escape.  I grabbed one of the brown beasts and smiled.

         “There are loads of ‘em.  So you’d better eat more than just one.”

The plate made it to the coffee table without incident and I stared at the two piles of separated cookies.  The left was a pile of the shit dark chocolate bats and the right held their nemesis, snowmen sugar cookies doused in a thick white frosting.  Kathryn loved snowmen.

         “Nice.  I see the bats and snowmen are at it again, eh?”

         “Now, you know that Christmas cookies and Halloween cookies can’t get too close to each other.  That’s not right, not natural.”

         “Yeah, but making Christmas cookies two weeks before Halloween, that is?”

She elbowed me in the ribs and made me spray tea everywhere.  I coughed and sputtered as she reached for the sugar. 

         “Sorry.  I know better than that.  Besides, where can I get homemade bat cookies anytime of the year?”

Kathryn gave me a stare that stated ‘that’s right and don’t you forget it, mister’.  I watched as she put spoonful after spoonful of sugar in her tumbler of tea.  I bit my lip so I would not say another smart-assed thing and probably get the bat cookie knocked out of my mouth.



         It had taken a while for Kathryn and I to hang out like this again.  Right after Christmas last year Kathryn had attempted suicide.  I could not understand why she would have done that and I do not think that she knew why either.  We had known each other since we were little; our parents had been friends, and we remained that way even though I would leave for months or years at a time.  We would lose touch during those times, but we always managed to find each other again when I came home.  Except four years ago I came home and had not heard from her.  I found out that her parents had died in a car crash two years earlier, but that was all I knew.  I guess I just figured that she had moved away and no one knew where, she had always been a great survivor so I did not worry.  Then I bumped into her older sister at the local grocery store and she dropped the bomb on me.  Kathryn had not survived her parents’ deaths too well.  Her sister and I both knew that Kathryn had enjoyed taking illegal drugs in her past and that she had slowed her usage, but never stopped.  A few months after their parents had passed Kathryn had freaked out and overdosed.  She had been alone in the house when she took the drugs and had lain there all night before her sister found her the next morning.  Kathryn had been lucky to have not died, but because of a small lack of oxygen to the brain she would forever be a ‘little off’.  I was lucky that she recognized me when her sister let me see her.



         Kathryn had lost a lot of her maturity and common sense.  She acted younger than her age and was inquisitive a lot.  I had started to feel my age recently so Kathryn became a fresh breath to me.  There were days of normal drudgeries that made me impatient to be able to hang out with her again.  Her world always seemed fresh and new to her and the sentiment rubbed off on me for the times I got to be in her world.  Her sister could not stand being around her all the time so she moved into the house next door so she could keep an eye on her.  Their parents had an insurance policy, not a big one, but sufficient, so Kathryn would be taken care of.  When her sister did not feel like doing the shopping for her, I would and even though her sister resented me as part of Kathryn’s past I was accepted as Kathryn’s only friend.  At times Kathryn could be unpredictable, but she had not been violent in any of the interactions I had with her.  But still she had cut open her forearms with a piece of a broken glass from a Christmas ornament.  She became moody and depressed, blaming herself and her attempted suicide on her inabilities.  It was almost like she had small glimpses at what she had once been able to accomplish and those glimpses tortured her.  I stayed by her as often as I could, but the hospitals that she was going to more often would only allow relatives.  So the times that Kathryn and I had to hang out became more and more limited.



         By mid summer Kathryn had had enough.  She had found her confidence again and wanted to go home to stay rather than any more hospitals.  I had been maintaining her house while she had been absent: cutting the lawn, painting the porch, and keeping the dust at bay.  So, when Kathryn came home she acted as if nothing had happened.  To her it probably did not.  We picked up again hanging out and we have never mentioned that dark period again.  She seems happy and so am I.

         “Ooo.  Don’t stick that bat in your mouth yet.  We haven’t toasted.”

I had forgot our little cookie ceremony.  We touched bat to snowman for a second and then she glared at me.

         “Oh yeah.  The toast.  To good friends.”

Kathryn smiled and stuffed the snowman into her mouth.  I nibbled away at the bat’s wings.

         “So.  Tell me more about the things in the dark.”

         “Why do you want to know about them?”

         “Don’t know.  Just curious.”

         “Well, in some cultures there are medicine men.”

         “Like doctors?”

         “Yeah, like doctors.  But they heal by talking to the spirits rather than by just handing you some pills.”

         “Blech.  I hate pills.”

         “Don’t we all.  Anyways, these medicine men will sit and meditate and think about these spirits.  They believe that thinking about them and talking to them it gets their attention so they can manifest and help out the sick person.”

         “Manifest?”

         “Yeah.  Show up.  Like, the spirits need to be talked to or about so they can appear.  Of course those are usually good spirits that show the medicine man what herbs to use or what they need to help out the sick people.”

         “But, you can get the attention of bad spirits too?”

         “Sure, why not?  If you can get the attention of good spirits it should be just as easy to get the attention of bad spirits.”

         “So that’s what the men did?  In the story.”

         “Yes.”

Kathryn stuffed her mouth with another cookie.  Crumbs fell from her face like snow.  Her eyes widened with more questions.

         “So what did the things in the dark look like?  Were they snakes and lizards?”

         “You sure you want to know?  Not gonna have nightmares?”

         “Sheez.  I’m old enough to handle some creepy crawlies ya know.”

         “Well all spirits start out as nothing, at least nothing more than desires.  That’s all they really are after all.  Little pieces of dreams that can’t touch us unless we want them to.  Like wanting a cookie more than anything else in the whole world.  We want that cookie so bad that it fills every part of us until we can actually reach out and grab that cookie.  Then its no longer just a desire, but something else.”

         “What is it?”

I smiled, broke off a bat’s wing and popped it in my mouth.

         “All that dream stuff that desire wades around in trying to be defined, well, that’s what we call the ephemera.  That’s like spiritual water.  It’s part of that giant ocean we swim in while we dream.”

         “I like to swim in my dreams.”

         “Other people have called it ectoplasm, but I don’t think that’s as nice sounding or as accurate as ephemera.  Because ephemera can’t really exist here, it just helps the desires float around until we name them and then it helps them change.”

         “But when do they get all nasty looking and why?”

         “Well, not all desires are as nice as ‘wanting a cookie’, like lust, or wanting to hurt people.  These can become nasty desires and they are everywhere.  They just need to be pulled out of the water and given shape.  The water gives them the strength to try and come here.  But they can’t stay on their own.  They have to have help.  They have to have a life and people are the only ones that can give it to them.”

         “That’s why they were hiding in the dark and why they wanted to take over the men’s’ bodies.”

         “Yep.  If they can take over someone completely they can live.”

         “But what do they look like in the dark before they take someone?”

         “They can look like anything.  But, usually they are unformed or rough sketches until right before they take someone because they aren’t fully defined yet.  Like in the story.  They have small deformed limbs with animal-like claws, some have wings that are too small or thin to fly with, and yes, some crawl on their bellies like snakes grumbling about how cold the ground is.”

         “Ooo. Gives me the shivers.”

I felt a chill too.  Kathryn’s house was old and I thought about the tiny autumn eddies spinning through the cracks.  I pulled the blue blanket from the back of the couch and spread it over both of our legs.

         “Why thank you kind sir.”

Kathryn batted her eyes at me as if she was a southern belle.

         “They live out there in the darkness.  Trying to take shape.  Listening and waiting for someone to talk about them.  That’s all they really need most of the time, just someone to mention them.  Then they pull themselves out of the ephemera and get stronger with each word that’s said about them.”

The screen door on the front porch slammed in its hinges.  Kathryn screamed and tossed half a snowman into the air.

         “Go check the porch, please.”

         “See you are scared.  We should stop.”

         “No way.  You already started this.  You have to finish, but go check the porch okay?”

I shook the blood back into my sleeping legs and headed to the front door.  The wood door swung open in my hand.  The sun had set several hours ago.  The streets were quiet and dark.  Only the wind made noise, a low, steady rustling of the trees.  The screen door had a hook clasp that had not been set.  I latched it, closed the front door and went back to the couch.  Kathryn’s eyes were huge.

         “Did you see them?”

         “See who?”

         “The things in the dark.”

         “No.  They weren’t out there swatting your screen door.”

         “Good.  You didn’t let any in did you?”

I shook my head ‘no’ and sat down.  Kathryn squirmed closer to me.  She stared at me for a few minutes; I knew what she wanted, but I thought she was already scared enough.  Then she pinched me so hard I jumped to my feet.

         “What the hell was that for?”

         “You gotta finish.”

         “Oh come on.  You’re already hearing things on the porch.  That’s enough.”

         “Well, I don’t want to hear them getting in here.  So you’d better just finish up.  Or I swear I’m gonna pinch you some more.”

         “Okay, okay calm down.  No more pinching.  I think you left a bruise.”

         “I pinch really hard.”

         “Yeah ya do.  Fine.  Where was I?”

         “They get stronger with each word.”

         “Okay.  Yeah, so they draw strength from being talked about and they become as solid and real as they can.  Their limbs become more substantial.  They can almost reach through the darkness and touch our world if they are fed enough, but light keeps them at bay.  It’s one of the oldest rules.  The dark is still the dream world and whatever is in the dark can’t be visible in the light.”

         “Well, how do you know what they look like without light?”

         “You know what they look like by describing them.  Like what I was saying about their limbs and wings.”

         “And their snake bodies.”

         “Yeah, their snake bodies.”

         “But, we have the lights on so they can’t come in.”

         “Right as long as we have light.”

Lights flickered and went out.  Kathryn screamed.  I grabbed my cell phone and opened it.  In the dim electronic green I saw Kathryn shaking under the blanket.  I stood and made my way to the kitchen where she kept some emergency candles.  I heard her whimpering.

         “It’s okay.  This is an old house.  I’ll just light some candles and see if I can find the breaker box.”

         “Bathroom.  It’s in the bathroom.”

I could hear the terror in her voice.  She was not coming out from under the blanket until I had the lights back on.  I lit two candles with my cigarette lighter and went back to the couch.  I put one candle on the coffee table next to the cookies and walked the other back towards the bathroom.  My feet squeaked the wood floor.  Kathryn was still whimpering.

         “There’s a lit candle on the table.  You can come out now.”

I felt the tiled walls for the breaker box.  The candle’s flame was getting brighter to my eyes.  I found the box and pried it open with my thumbnail.  All the fuses had been tripped, must have been the power station down the block; sent us a surge.  I popped the plastic switches to ‘on’ and heard the electricity course back through the veins of the house in a low hum.  I went back and sat next to Kathryn on the couch.

         “See there, just bad timing on the electric company’s part.  All the lights are back on.”

The lights flickered again.  The candle on the coffee table was out, but I still held the lit one in my hand.

         “It’ll be okay.  Even if the lights go back out we have two candles.  That should be plenty of light.”

I shared the lit flame with the dead candle. 

         “Come on Kathryn.  I know you’re scared.  We shouldn’t have talked about those things.  I’m sorry.”

         “I’m not.”

         “Good, then come on out.”

I pulled the blanket off her head.  Her eyes were dilated and her face was slack.  I hoped she hadn’t gone into some sort of shock.  I thought about her medicine cabinet and wondered if there was anything that might calm her down if she had.

         “There is no medicine here I need.”

Her jaw twitched rather than moved as she talked.  Her hands were still gripping the blanket.

         “Okay.  But, no more creepy story stuff either.”

         “We don’t need that anymore.”

Her mouth was still not moving right, as if she had just had a minor stroke.

         “Kathryn, you’re starting to freak me out a bit.  Relax, have another cookie.”

         “I don’t want another cookie.”

         “What’s wrong?”

         “You left me in the dark too long.”

         “What?”

         “They came up through the floorboards like smoke.  They came through the cracks in the windows.  I was all alone in the dark too long.”

         “Kathryn?”

         “I recognized them.  They were here last Christmas when I was feeling bad.  They scared me then.  They don’t scare me now.”

         “What?  Kathryn, snap out of it.”

I reached for her shoulders to try and shake her, rouse her a little from this fugue.  She smiled a crazy smile that stretched her face wide and toothy.  I pulled my hands back afraid that she might bite them.  She looked like a shark in my dear friend’s skin.

         “Your words.  Your words brought them back.  You should have been more careful with your words.  Then you left me in the dark.  How could you leave me in the dark like that?  Your words brought them into me.”

         “No, Kathryn they were just words.  Come on now, just relax.  I’ll get you some aspirin and some milk.”

         “No, I think there’s something more important you should do.”

         “Really?  What?”

         “You need to tell somebody something.”

         “What? Who?”

         “The person reading this story.  They’ve been conjuring the dark too and they need to be told that.  It may not be too late for them, maybe.”