From: "John & Christy Thompson" To: Subject: Chaosium Digest v37.03 Date: Sunday, December 08, 2002 11:30 PM Chaosium Digest Volume 37, Number 03 Date: Saturday, Dec. 7, 2002 Number: 4 of 4 AN EVENING WITH ASMODEUS Chapter four Late September 2001 "The darkness ahead stretches creeping tendrils back through time to consume the wriggling, writhing past. It's malignancy eating its way towards me, screaming ahead of it the meaninglessness of the light. I unthinkingly trace the shadows and call it fiction. The charade is not what you assumed, the game is not to the rules you understand. My lies upholster your lies, the filth I ingest and let seep distorted through my fingers and onto paper. I alone seem to see the predatorial shadows hanging over us hungrily, I alone seem to see what tapers from them, casting excretion into our lives. We are the dirt shaped into their footprint but maybe I haven't been trampled into submission. The only thing I don't know is whether I've tried to climb out or whether I've just tried to reshape myself in unconscious sycophancy. Do you think I'm whimpering, cringing with obsequiousness? Don't answer that." Sighing, James Aspera stopped his Dictaphone but kept it cradled in one hand, and huddled in the very individual chilliness that a church reserves. He had undone his ponytail and now his hair hung in lank, tangled creepers across shivering shoulders. He licked his lips nervously, eyeing the stonework that leaned over him and seemed to look down disapprovingly. The carvings writhed as they coiled around the largely purposeless buttresses, indignant at the electricity cables now stapled to them to provide electric light. Rested at the base of one a woman whimpered faintly now that she had clawed back up through unconsciousness into a mere exhausted sleep. Pausing to check her temperature and to shift her into a slightly more comfortable position on the prayer-mats he had dragged hastily together, Aspera walked wearily to the door of the church and looked out glumly. He looked on a world that he had become unnecessarily accustomed to. What had once inspired deep horror in him now fostered a frightened, yet weary, peculiar depression. Dereliction shrouded the buildings towering over him through the chilly haze of fog that ghosted across the snow-covered ground. He did not need to investigate those buildings to know what doubtless waited. Things that slithered through stinking warrens, slogans scrawled across stained walls with inhuman hands, the only humanity found in the pathetic victims of the endless perversity that existed in this shadowy nightmare. And out there too would be the grim puppeteers of the unreality, pulling the strings that bound him and laughing as he twitched. He still knew too much terror, adrenaline still hotwired his brain when he encountered the unimaginable things that this hellhole could vomit up for his delight. He was too frightened to do anything but flee maddened from the worst, but he vehemently hated this deceptive calm. The tension brought goose bumps up on his arms and made him something far beyond jittery. No. He would not play by their rules, as pathetic and meaningless as such a posturing show of defiance was. He would not desperately scrabble in the dirt for a redeemer. He certainly would not admit that what frightened him the most was what he kept locked inside his mind, trying to ignore the roots it was eagerly throwing out, the seeping filth that it was injecting into his soul. Maybe he would have felt differently if he'd seen how much worse Swindell's inner secrets were. Suddenly his neck prickled and a deeper chill infused his spine. He spun, and caught the flicker of movement. A shadow whipped past, seeming to caper. He flung himself against the wall, breathing hard. A whisper reached him, and he turned his neck so sharply that it clicked. A giggle. Aspera suddenly gulped hard. The woman. Where was she? There were dark droplets glistening on the stone where she had been and the cushions were in disarray. Aspera went still. Then, as quietly as he could, he crept forward. An almost imperceptible clink rooted him to the spot. He knew that sound. He looked up, and shrieked. Pinned to the ceiling a man hung, grossly mutilated. His head lolled, eyelids puckered over empty sockets. From underneath a ripped shirt, tentacles were beginning to protrude, beginning to hang down, beginning to sway and seek. He threw himself at a wall and tried to choke a cry of pain. He slipped on a floor suddenly greasy with muck, and saw the rusted barbed wire that suddenly coated the walls, and that he had just flung himself upon. The carvings writhed on the buttresses, and this time they truly did literally writhe. As Aspera began to scrabble for footing, with a low panicked moaning he saw the torn and ragged banner hanging above an altar suddenly streaked with dripping blackness. The shadows began to spin and caper around him, emaciated figures just beyond sight dancing with inhuman lurches and disgustingly liquid-limbed poses. Chains began to clink, and he saw them creeping across the ceiling, dragging themselves by their barbs, accompanied by the pulse that reverberated suddenly in the floor. The woman, Aspera thought, desperate for focus, where is she? Where? He edged quivering towards the open doorway, and glanced out of the door. It was not snow that now lay upon the ground. The buildings surrounding the square had bloated, and spawned their own proliferate display of stains and bodies. He saw the shape traced in the darkness, heard the chitters all around that whispered its name gleefully. Without thinking he mouthed the phrase he knew well. "They sway and undulate around the baphomet in filth." The ground convulsed at his words, and bubbled with sudden breaths of a sickening stench. He was so distracted by gagging and clutching his stomach that he didn't notice when the drumming began. As the shadows capered and the fog wreathed he heard the sound of footfalls and knew the dancers were manifest. And he knew them. Screaming at the world, Aspera tore his coat pocket, clutching desperately at a leather bag concealed there. He saw the shape of the figures staggering towards the church through the foetid alleys, saw the ground shifting and sinking inwards. Like he hadn't done since he was a child, even at the worst, Aspera began to cry. The rivulets of tears ran across his grubby cheeks as he heard the dancing intensify behind him but dared not look at what the church was becoming when he heard the painful, ancient groan of stones grinding and shifting. He ripped the leather bag and pulled out a cube covered in inscriptions and sigils, feeling it hot underneath his hand. For a second he flashed back to the night where he had originally lain hand on it and instinctively known its purpose even then. As the ground displaced, muck sliding into a black, dripping chasm from which dank smells and disturbing, high pitched cries emitted, Aspera emerged from the fetal position he hadn't realized he'd adopted, and raised his tear-stained face towards the altar. Yes. There was the tall, silhouetted figure stood behind it arms raised exultantly. There was the prostrate female form spread-eagled on the altar. The thin figures pranced, their faces shifting and melting, grins widening and puckering, eyes appearing and disappearing. Aspera choked down another useless cry. From behind him in the abyss he heard them, dragging themselves on spindly limbs, eagerly chittering with their many mouths, eyeless but sighted, gathering. The wavering, toneless chant resolved itself from the murmurs from the alleys and contorted streets, from the dead and the living alike. Aspera shrieked the name they echoed in a pathetic challenge, thrusting his hand skyward bearing the cube-shaped idol that pulsed with an inner light or an inner darkness. Again and again he shrieked, as the stench intensified. As he began to stagger forward, the exultant figure stepped into the baleful light that the idol threw in pulsing swathes, grinning and raising the cruelly barbed and twisted knife he held in one gaunt hand. The chanters screamed in adoration. -Asmodeus. Early December 2001 Swindell knelt in the dust, frowning with concentration, staring at the symbols shown meticulously in the book. The inscriptions were fractionally incomplete, but Swindell knew how to finish symbols when he'd seen them complete in his nightmares. Almost disconnected, he felt the chalk drag his hand as abhorrent and unfamiliar words wrote themselves. He sat back on his haunches for a moment, admiring his handiwork. With deliberation, he removed his gun from the holster and placed it ready at his side. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out his last set of Polaroid's, his most precious, his most recent. His face sagged and his eyes glistened as he looked at what he'd done to them, what his desires had become. The circle was almost complete, and he left the chalk ready to fill in the last inch of it. With a voice cracking with emotion, he read out the ceremonial chant, feeling the syllables pull themselves up out of his throat and escape gleefully into the air. He did not yet say the last name, however. He pulled himself laboriously out of the space beneath the stage, clutching the Polaroid's in one hand. Sifting through the damp-fattened textbooks, wincing at the rubbery feel of the covers and the stains that covered them, he ripped out as many dry pages as he could find, ignoring the insects skittering away to the dark corners when uncovered. Clutching the thick wad, he scrambled back under the stage and built a small fire. As the pages crackled and fragmented in the flames he tossed in one Polaroid after another, letting the tears finally slide freely down his cheeks. The images distorted and blurred in the heat, but their perversion shone through mockingly. When the last Polaroid had succumbed to its fate, Swindell stamped out the fire, almost overcome with a flash of anger, then wracked with sobs, kicked the ashes into the corners. Eventually he returned to the symbol that had been scribed through him, and with a decisive snap of the chalk completed the circle. The space darkened. Swindell began to tremble as he heard the chittering from infinitely far, that was clawing its way closer. With a tremulous voice, he intoned the final name. -Asmodeus. Late September 2001 Silence. The echoes of Aspera's last defiant but despairing cry faded as he lowered his arm. The thin, horribly graceful figures capered no longer, but crowded motionless in the rafters, gazing down raptly whenever their eyes appeared. The tentacles protruding from the dead man's chest wavered and circled hungrily, tipped with sensuously lipped mouths. The gaunt figure stepped forward and began to speak, both to the sagging crowds gathered around the abyss and to Aspera himself. Breathing hard, Aspera grimaced with a mixture of fright and hatred at the sound of the sonorous, deceptively quiet voice. "The circle is almost complete. Do you understand me?" Wiping a thread of nervous involuntary slaver from his mouth, Aspera hurled the carven cube-idol at the floor, causing it no damage. The gaunt man raised his eyebrows questioningly, mockingly. Almost like a human. His chains and piercing, his leather clothes, gleamed despite the darkness, and the glittering facets danced as he raised his arms again, lifting the bound and wakened woman up from the altar like a feather in one hand and bearing the knife. He stepped down from the dais, with sinuous grace, and approached Aspera. The throngs outside stirred excitedly. Aspera, bedraggled, a high-class scarecrow with his exhausted posture and ruined clothes, raised his eyes and met those of the one approaching. The other grinned at Aspera humorlessly, and threw the woman down onto the flagstones. She cried pitifully into her gag and struggled. The tentacles above began to twitch with eagerness. The gaunt man reached forward and grabbed Aspera's chin in his hand with thin, pale fingers. He examined the struggling, incoherently protesting author thoughtfully, angling his face so that the long white scar dividing his dirty left cheek caught the fading light. "So are you marked," the gaunt man said tersely. "So I shall mark you again." He raised the knife as Aspera doubled his frenetic struggling. He brought the knife down, and Aspera screamed again, doubling over and clutching his face as the blood ran through his fingers. Maimed. He raised the knife again, and the chanting began to invoke a new name, which the crowds had harbored a fierce desire to intone for millennia. Eleven leather-clad figures emerged from the surrounding buildings, echoing their chants with resonant voices. The tentacles above leapt with sudden speed and bore the woman upward as she screamed in terror through her gag, pulling her towards an eternity of pain with undisguised lust. The gaunt man grinned. The sacrifice was made. The circle was complete. Early December 2001 Swindell grunted ineffectually. Nothing had happened. Nothing! It had no right not to happen! Frustration welled up in him and he beat the symbol he'd written in the dust until it was scuffed and unrecognisable. He beat his fists on the floor until his knuckles bled, and he howled. He had already known that he didn't have the courage to use the gun on himself. He always called Aspera the coward, the sniveling weaselly coward that Aspera undoubtedly was. But Swindell knew that he simply couldn't do it. He howled again. He had left no defenses at home, Richard would almost certainly have discovered something. The shame gnawed at him, ate at him, tore and ravaged at his insides as he wept. Why hadn't it worked? In a maddened rage Swindell rose up like a spectre and began beating at the tables, props, walls, scratching himself and screaming in his incandescent, anguished self-loathing. "Please!" he screamed, "Please!" He didn't know who he was screaming to or what he was hoping for. In the midst of his immense lashing outburst he folded up and hugged his knees, as something snapped inside him. Any last vestige of coherency left him and he collapsed in a fetal position with a gentle sigh. He didn't know how long he lay there, murmuring and cuddling himself, before he heard the footsteps from the hall above. In sudden haste and rationality he scrambled up and peered out into the murk. Night had fallen at some point out in the distant, hazy world, and the curtains in the hall had been drawn for some obscure reason. A tall figure stood silhouetted, with its back to Swindell. Carefully, the beleaguered private eye clambered out from under the stage, eyes narrowed with suspicion, clutching his gun tightly to himself. When he finally stood, shaking and brushing the dust off his clothes, he was surprised at how level his voice turned out to be. "Ok, what do you want?" His voice echoed in the uncomfortable silence. The figure at the other end of the hall did not reply. "I'm really, really not in the mood for fun and games at the moment, so either say something useful or get out before I shoot you. No messing. I'm at the end of my tether. Well?" The figure shifted position but didn't turn. "Swindell, you disappoint me." Swindell relaxed a little, at least marginally. "Aspera, what are you doing here of all places?" "Looking for you." Swindell suddenly felt anxious and frightened. Had Aspera stumbled on his stash? There was something else though. Something different about the voice, the tone, and the way his old acquaintance stood. Suddenly he began to shiver. The echoing, vaulted hall had a new quality that he felt he recognized. A nauseating smell wafted over him. No, he thought, it can't have. No. Aspera turned. Swindell gaped and backed away in horror. "Aspera, what the hell have you done to yourself?" Swindell's old companion was an evil sight. His clothes, ragged and stained, were hung with chains, some of which hanging from disgusting, mangled piercing in his pallid skin. He wore a pendant that glittered with red malice, and one bared shoulder was swollen and reddened with a complicated brand that Swindell knew well - he had just written it in dust, after all. Aspera toyed with a barbed and twisted knife playfully in one hand. But the face was worse. It was hideously scarred, a huge line that veered across his forehead, across an eye socket sewn up. But the other eye was more frightening. It glittered with avarice, a keen and cold calculation and a dreadful hunger. He was smiling, a vaguely pleasant smile that had no relation to the rest of that face. His hair hung bedraggled, but threaded in places with chains. "No." Swindell backed away as he said it, his voice quavering with fear. "No, no. You can't be. Not after everything we've done. You couldn't be. Never. Tell me so, Aspera." Aspera's smile widened and there was no longer anything pleasant about it. "Tell me you aren't Aspera, for the sake of what we've done together, please!" Aspera straightened up more, and then bowed mockingly. "I am-" he began. "-The Thirteenth." Swindell finished, in disgust, horror, dejectedness. Beaten. "You're the last of them. The circle is complete," He finished with bitter sarcasm, and realized that the invocation had worked after all. Aspera raised his arms with a flourish, and the curtains dropped. Swindell stared and screamed. An inner encyclopedia at the back of Swindell's head babbled some nonsense about Giger landscapes. But the things out there were beyond that. They stared down at him, eyes shifting, mouths opening and closing in an arachnid fashion. Their limbs hung clumsily about them as they stood motionless. The sky dripped down, collapsing, and the fields outside were of filth, trees blasted of life and coated with fungi. The dead were everywhere, on the buildings, on the trees. Witnessing. Stood just beyond the window, eleven figures cavorted while one stood motionless, arms upraised, in their centre. "They swayed and undulated around the baphomet in filth". He knew it, he'd heard it before in another place a long time ago. Swindell made a decision he couldn't have. He couldn't bear looking at it when he raised the gun to his head and fired. Or tried to. Aspera giggled and the trigger melted, the metal of the gun sagging and glowing with sudden heat that Swindell couldn't feel. Howling anyway, he dropped the remains of the weapon of the floor, where it dissolved, evaporated, leaving only a strangely attractive burn on the wood of the floor. He sagged further, tear-ducts dry. Beaten. "What will you do with me?" he muttered dejectedly, staring at the floor. "Me?" growled Aspera, "I won't do anything. It isn't up to me." The thirteenth motioned Swindell to look round. He did so, and found vent for more voice. The opening beneath the stage had stretched, distorted and widened, becoming mouth-like, ringed by thick lips of contorted wood and brick. Down below, in the dark beneath, mist writhed, wreathed, spun and wove. Suggestions of faces and bodies occasionally coalesced, the forms of slack-jawed children. Swindell knew them. He had defiled the world enraptured by the pictures of them, had given into temptation, and had taken them for his own disgusting satisfaction. They seemed to reach for him. The Thirteenth grinned again. "Aspera, no! Please, no!" he squealed in fright. "Please, just let me die!" he sniveled. He felt the wood warping beneath him, lost his footing, felt himself slipping inexorably. He clawed at the floorboards with his scratched fingers and broken nails, seeking ineffectually for purchase. "Please Aspera! Aspera please! PLEASE! ASPERA!" Almost sensuously he felt the first mist tendril close over his legs, felt their strength and their unexplainable tangibility. With a slightly damp sound he felt himself being pulled, sucked, into the pit beneath the stage. "ASPERAAA!!! NO!!!!!" he shrieked, and then felt himself gagged by mist. The last thing he heard before the shifting, hungry fog envelop him was Aspera, giggling. Not Aspera. The Thirteenth. Then the child-things closed in. EPILOGUE - Written in collaboration with Brooke Johnson The policeman peered through the mist-cloaked drizzle at the charred skeletal remains of the buildings; muffled sounds seeped through the early morning mist in a similar fashion to the birthing light. The girl crying fitfully, she had discovered the.well the thing, whilst on a morning jog. The sobs blended bizarrely with the sounds of police radios and the baffled forensics team milling uselessly about. He had a job to do and he was doing it to the best of his abilities. The few slack jawed gawkers and press were easily kept at a distance, so all he had to do was keep them out until the special unit had arrived then cleaned this mess up. He hadn't actually seen the 'remains' but of the five who had only two were still conscious and neither of them had retained the contents of their stomachs. He fingered his badge uncomfortably as a group of figures fluidly emerged from the mist. He walked forward, holding up his hands in a warding gesture. 'I'm sorry but I can't let anyone...oh, I am sorry sir, I didn't realize it was you. All this fog, sorry. Go straight on through.' Mr. Seth's group stalked purposefully towards the centre of the macabre scene, the mist only retreating a foot at a time, so when the hall began to rear around the group it looked more like a craggy alien landscape than a seat of learning. The members of the team looked about and nodded in affirmation to each other one taking notes, another lightly rubbing one of her temples with one hand and fingering a metal amulet with another, her eyes somewhere completely different. 'Here,' she rasped harshly. 'Here, I'm sensing some very negative energy...the karmic value of this location has been inverted completely!" Other neo-spiritual effluent flowed from her mouth in a flower wreathed stream of Californian new age psychobabble. One of the group snorted derisively; the assistant at the back struggling under the weight of the team's field equipment. He grunted again for good measure then dumped several hundred pounds worth of dream catchers, focusing crystals and chi alignment mirrors unceremoniously to the ground. He stood a while breathing in the atmosphere then began to inspect the strange inscriptions that festooned the walls. Frowning, he checked them against some well-worn notes whilst muttering absently to himself. As he did so, there was a small scream and the amulet-girl ran past, vomit streaming through clasped fingers over the mouth. 'Lets see what we've got here then,' he sighed. He sauntered nonchalantly over to the centre of attention, stared a moment at the various collapsed and vomiting members of the new age army then perused the reason of their being there. 'Bloody hell, I wish who ever it was would stop lumbering me with all the new age types. They're too busy feng shuing here, there and everywhere to take notes and carry equipment. Fit though, must be all that time spent rearranging their furniture,' He grumbled light-heartedly at the one taking photos. The crouching photographer continued his business but chortled a reply. ' Watch it, Mr. Seth, you'll wiggle the bad mojo inversely. And believe me,' he paused for dramatic effect and looked up, face full of contrived concern. 'You DO NOT want Baron Samedi voodooing all over your Weetabix.' There was laughter and then the air of professionalism returned. 'Crap.' The younger of the men exclaimed, 'I know him!' Mr. Seth looked up, surprised. 'It's Matt Swindell, you know from, well you know...' the younger man, named Jones, swirled his hands in the little pantomime people make to indicate searching for the right phrase. 'That business at the Nihil Industries labs. The one who used to be in that special unit with the police who thought our work was 'interesting.' He wiggled his eyebrows for emphasis, then continued. 'Intriguing. What do you make of that?' He pointed at the groin area of the incumbent Swindell, where the private investigator had been pierced by an expensive pen, attached to which was a Polaroid and a sheaf of papers. Gingerly, hands gloved in rubber. Jones pulled out the pen with a wince and examined the photo. 'Holy shit, that's .I.oh fuck, I knew he was greasy and all but I can't say I expected this.' The older man looked at the sickening still life of perversity. It showed Swindell with a small and obviously terrified boy. The look of unrestrained lust and adulation on Swindell's face begged a sacrifice of the viewer's bile. The sheaf of papers turned out to be a hand written manuscript. 'Huh,' the older man voiced as he briefly scanned it. 'I would say our murderer had more than a little smattering of the lesser-known occult dealings. Ah, an author, James Aspera.' He frowned and unconsciously tapped his cheek. 'Does that ring any bells?' Jones grunted. 'Yeah, third rate horror hack. Pretty poncy bastard actually. Swindell went through something with him and that's the impression I got. I made an attempt at reading his novel, "whippoorwill hopes' picnic" or something, but I just couldn't get into it, reason being - it was fucking lame. Swindell swore it was true but, well I don't know it just wasn't very convincing you know?' The older man nodded sagely, and glanced at the unfortunate pen as he gently slipped it into a re-sealable plastic bag. The pen bore the address of the Thistle Hotel in Middlesbrough. After a while the two men had finished their work and stood looking at the shamble of life solidified before them. A senior but plain-clothed policeman strode up and looked stonily at the scene. 'We can take the photo and other evidence for standard file but what about the special report?' 'Well...' the younger man began expansively, aiming to begin a soliloquy. 'Truthfully speaking, you're not going to like this,' the older man cut in, 'Last night for whatever reason there was a major incursion initiated by this man.' 'And what is this supposed to mean to me?' the policeman asked curtly. Seth decided not to mince words. 'Unfortunately, this has seriously weakened the natural barrier of the area and this means that you're going to be in for a rough time. At first there won't be any noticeable change but as more and more happens, the barrier will weaken further and eventually you're going to have them popping in and out whenever the fancy takes them. Sorry and all, but that's what's going to happen. That's what always happens when someone leaves the door open for the axis of perdition.' Seth spoke fairly tersely as if he had delivered the same speech many times before. The policeman nodded glumly. 'And unofficially, what do we say about that?' He pointed at the stage. Jones looked at Seth and shrugged, then turned back to the policeman. 'Er.ball lightning?' Seth decided it was high time to bring his flippant assistant Jones down to earth, and burst his inflated opinion of himself. His unprofessional attitude was becoming a detriment to the department. As he took the policeman further aside to mouth some fictional but plausible explanation for the incident he idly mulled over the matter of Jones's reproof. After the scientists had gone the work crew moved in to clear up the mess. They were broadly used to the unusual work they were given, and the pay was phenomenal. It was also only very occasional and they were only required to hold their tongues so none complained. But this job was spooking even the old timers. It wasn't the way that the bloke had melded so completely with the stage that flesh was indistinguishable from the wood, but the way that the very inner fabric of the surrounding walls had twisted into a writhing sea of gleeful children swarming towards the terror-stricken man. Even considering that though, what really sent the chill down the spine was the way that unless you were making enough noise, you could swear you could hear giggling children and the screaming of a man being shown the void in his own soul. -- To unsubscribe from the chaos-digest ML, send an "unsubscribe" command to chaos-digest-request@chaosium.com. 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