Chapter One

  Max ran as hard as he could. The gravel beneath him crunched and slid beneath his feet. Small puffs of dust rose up from his stomping footfalls.

  His face was a mask of pure panic as he pumped his fists.

  “Max! don’t leave me,” screamed the high pitched voice behind him.

  Its wails were like fingernails on a chalkboard. The piercing torment in its cries were filled with the agony of the damned and the rage of all those who had gone before unavenged.

  Max’s chest was heaving and his legs felt like lead but when he felt the cold caress of the thing behind him he pushed even harder. He raced into the small town that was as empty and quiet as the grave.

  “Help!” he tried to scream. The attempt burnt his chest and only a hoarse cry of desperation came from his gasping mouth.

  He turned sharply down a small alley, animal cunning kicking in alongside his terror as he saw the door to a local shop and rammed into it hard. The pain jolting up his left arm but the door didn’t give.

  He clenched his fists and pounded on the wood so hard he felt blood spattering from his hands as he called for help.

  There was no motion or activity from the drawn windows or locked door. He thought of breaking a window but then felt the presence follow him down the thin winding alley.

  He didn’t have the time, he realised as he dashed around the building and started to climb over the four foot wall leading around the back. The sound of the thing smashing hard against the shop door kept him going as he rolled over the wall landing on sore feet as he started to run. The sound of wood smashing close behind fuelling his tired body onwards.

  “Please!” the agonising voice cried over the sound of bricks shattering everywhere.

  Dashing over the small garden fence he was back on the main road and turned towards the small cottage he had been renting. Exhaustion quelling the panic in his soul enough to give him an idea.

  Home has a threshold, was the mantra keeping his legs pumping and his eyes focused on the chipped green door in the distance. The screaming creature loomed closer behind him. Tendrils of its otherworldly existence reaching out to pull him back.

  When he would have wagered he couldn’t possibly run any faster, he felt something as cold as the grave caressing the back of his neck. It spurred him to reach a new burst of speed that was not going to last long. If he didn’t make it very soon he would collapse. His heart giving out on him as he felt the rapid beats through his whole body.

  Was his door even unlocked? Was the dread thought in his mind. There was no way he had the kind of time to unlock it. As the door got closer he was prepared to ram it no matter what. He closed his eyes as he crossed the last few feet to the door and then slammed into the hard wood with a painful crash.

  The unlocked door flew open causing him to trip and fall on the floor. The door flying open and bouncing closed from pure momentum leaving the thing on the other side.

  The screams from before were as nothing to the howls of rage that came from it as he felt the whole cottage shudder and shake.

  His legs collapsed under him with exhaustion. His breathing so laboured and heavy that his stomach convulsed and he threw up right there in the hallway.

  Fighting to not black out in a puddle of his own vomit he crawled on his hands and knees to the dining room where it all began.

  Stumbling to the large wooden dining room table he collapsed into the chair, wiping his mouth and still breathing heavily, he looked at the five unlit black candles standing in a perfect pentagram on the table.

  His eyes flicked across the table looking for the book. It was no where to be seen. He took one more long breath and looked under the table to find it there, open cover down with its pages creased on the carpet floor.

  He picked it up and quickly straightened the pages as he felt the cottage shudder once more with the force of the thing hitting against the outside door.

  The stress of the situation made his whole body shake as he tried to turn the pages, tearing a few by accident as he flicked through diagrams of different ceremonial rituals until he reached a place almost at the end.

  It was the only one he could find which used the same configuration as was on the table and could even be used by a single person. His eyes flicked over the various details and warnings straight to what was required.

  All he could focus on was that it was something that was powerful enough to get rid of this nightmare.

  His hands shook violently as he struck match after match before unsteadily lighting each of the black candles.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  After an eternity they were all lit and as he looked down at the text he heard a thumping sound coming from the dining room window. Looking up he felt the horror crawling up his spine as he saw a face pressed up against the window. A once beautiful face, once gazing at him through brown eyes of love and compassion. Now those eyes were empty. Once full lips now drawn tight over greying skin as the lips opened to cry out in a twisted imitation of his loves voice as it screamed, “MAX! HELP ME!”

  “Kate,” he sobbed the name as he saw the face itself slide down the window, unattached to any other body part. Eyes of dozens of others staring at him through foggy clouds of darkness.

  He closed his eyes trying to stop the tears from flowing down his face. He opened them again to begin reading the ritual. Tears dropping onto the pages as he shakily began the chant.

  “I call to the hells, above, below and beyond.

  Let my agony open the door.

  Let my rage grant me audience.

  With a plea to the abandoned and unfound,

  the dead and those dead inside I call to the dark ones.

  Pass the veil to the furthest depths,

  to the unblessed and unbound hear my call.

  Come forth.”

  As he chanted the words his voice shook as the screaming from outside became louder. The fury reaching a fever pitch but by focusing through the prism of his tears he finished the words without mistake.

  For several heartbeats, that lasted a century to Max, nothing happened except for the shaking of the whole building. But then all five of the candles flared up to three feet high and the pentagram glowed with a deep red barely visible to the human eye.

  The light and sound of everything around max started to fade into the distance, not quite gone but far away. An overlay of infinite darkness surrounded him.

  Even the screams of the creature felt distant as the flames burned and the red glow increased in intensity.

  At the centre of the pentagram shadows coalesced to show a darkness so deep Max felt if he kept looking he might fall into that place forever.

  From the shadows a shape moved. The glow of its eyes matching the glow of the pentagram. It was barely visible in the darkness but he saw small glimpses of snake like scales and yellow sharp teeth as he felt more than saw the entity’s gaze fall upon him.

  Sibilant whispers scratched the inside of Max’s brain as the words, “mortal. Your pain has called to me. Your rage has granted you audience. For what reason have I been called?” etched their way into his consciousness.

  Sweat trickled down his brow as his guts twisted up. The fear that this being might be more dangerous than the thing outside took hold and seized his throat for a few precious seconds.

  The being seemed to sense this and a low hissing chuckle filled Max’s mind. It was enjoying his torment, he realised.

  Swallowing hard and steadying his breath Max spoke with a clear strong voice.

  “Something has pierced the veil. Past the forbidden gates. It hunts me and has hunted the ones I love,” the last words coming out in a croak despite how hard he tried to hold it back.

  “I summon thee to redress the imbalance and to banish the forbidden one from this realm,” he finished. His mouth dry as he awaited a response.

  The hissing laughter filled his mind again before words clawed their way into his mind as the entity said, “so you played with the forces of the hells and created a horror your animal mind could not comprehend. Then you have the audacity to claim it to be an imbalance I am obliged to redress?” The laughter came again but held a clear sound of mocking condescension.

  “Oh no mortal. This is a debt of some significance you will incur.”

  A new cold trickle of sweat ran down Max’s back as the gamble to convince the being to fix this without payment failed. He struggled not to let his teeth chatter with fear as he asked, “What do you want?”

  “I demand your tears, your flesh and your pain,” it stated coldly. The deep red burning eyes gazing deep into his soul as the pronouncement was made.

  “How much?” Max asked with dread.

  “Your tears spilt on my grimoire of rituals will suffice. For your flesh the sinister mirror of your right hand.”

  “Sinister mirror of my…” Max trailed off. His fear-addled mind not quite parsing what it wanted. Then he gasped and said, “my whole left hand?”

  A dark chuckle was the beings only response.

  Max began trembling again as he tried to stall for time. He asked, “and just how much pain?”

  “Bargaining is done. The terms are made. Pay the price for my succour or pay the price for your folly,” said the dark entity before falling silent.

  As it watched him with malevolent patience his shattered nerves threatened to overwhelm him as the sound of the screaming thing at the window got louder, letting him know his time was running out.

  His eyes were pulled to the open bag on the chair beside him. Spare candles, an ornamental chalice and a serpent handled silver dagger were just a few of the items visible to him.

  Kate’s ‘woo-woo’ bag, as she playfully referred to it. His mind beginning to disassociate with memories of her.

  The screams broke even this temporary reprieve from this nightmare. When his focus came back he found himself holding the silver dagger in his right hand. The serrated handle, meant to resemble the scales of a serpent dug into his palm as he rested his left hand on the edge of the table.

  The deep crimson eyes watched him intently from behind the shadows as his tears now ran freely down his cheeks as he raised his right hand. The very edge of the blade shimmered with the same red glow of the pentagram.

  With a scream that felt both close and very far away, he brought his hand down hard. The blade parted flesh and bone in one single agonising motion.

  The light of the pentagram and the scarlet gaze of the entity all pulsed in time with his throbbing heartbeat as blood sprayed from the wound.

  The spray of his very life blood spattered into the centre of the ritual as he felt more than heard the entity’s rumble of pleasure as it tasted him.

  With the very last ounces of strength he had, he dropped the dagger and picked up his severed hand with his right one and threw it into the centre where the shadowy creature waited.

  A low ecstatic hiss of pleasure came from the unholy being followed by two simple words.

  “Bargain struck!”

  The deep red glow of the eyes grew brighter as Max felt the agony of something red hot pressing against his severed arm. For a moment his own screams drowned out the thing from outside. They even drowned out conscious thought itself as he drowned in an ocean of suffering.

  The pain built up and reached a crescendo of torment that was on the edge of breaking his fragile mind when suddenly all sensation from the elbow down was gone.

  He felt a dark power flowing through his veins as, without conscious thought he raised his left arm. His eyes widening to see a new hand. It was green and mottled with scales and pitch black fingernails which came to five sharp points.

  With a compulsion he couldn’t understand he stood up from the chair and walked to the window where the screaming thing was still pressed, Angry and screaming as the multiple eyes from its depth gazed at him with accusation and hatred.

  A voice in the back of his mind cried out to him asking him what he was doing as his right hand reached up to the window latch and swung the whole thing open.

  The thing screamed in glee as it reached in to collect its prize.

  But just as its icy tendrils came closer the serpent-like hand flashed forward with blinding speed, Gripping the creature itself.

  The screams now transformed to wails as it was drawn into the hand. The thing was crushed down to the size of a bowling ball, then a baseball, then finally a marble before it was drawn into the horrifying appendage.

  At that point the burning energy inside him faded and his body had nothing else left to give as he collapsed onto the floor unconscious.