In the House of the Wicked

CHAPTER FOUR

The vessel had to be filled before he could return to his creator.

Zeroing in on the collective pulse of multiple life energies, the vessel strolled down the quiet city street until he came upon the nightclub. He moved toward the door, drawn to the hum of vitality within, but he was blocked by a large, bearded man whose own body vibrated with excess vim and vigor.

“Fifty-dollar cover,” the man announced.

The vessel stepped back to assess the situation. He appeared human, although was far from it, and had the strength to easily snap this man’s neck and simply walk into the bar brimming with life. But his creator had also given him far less destructive means of getting what he required. He reached into the back pocket of his trousers and removed a wallet filled with several types of currency.

“Fifty-dollar cover,” the vessel repeated as he held out a fifty-dollar bill.

The bouncer’s hand closed around the cash, snatching it from the vessel’s grasp. Their fingers touched briefly as the exchange was made, and the vessel sampled some of the large man’s energy. It was relatively healthy, clean of any terminal disease. The selection was accepted, and now the vessel was that much closer to being full.

The big man swayed ever so slightly, then seemed to shake it off as he pulled open the door for the club’s newest guest.

“Enjoy yourself,” he said, as the vessel passed by him on his way inside.

The vibrancy of life emanating from within nearly pulled the vessel down a red-lit corridor, electronic music growing louder, beating like a strong, healthy heart. The hallway ended at the top of a metal staircase and the vessel stopped for a moment to watch the activity on the dance floor below him-bodies overflowing with an abundance of vivacity, their exuberant gyrations beckoning him, calling him to walk among them.

To sample the vitality they radiated.

The vessel descended to the dance floor. With hands outstretched, he waded into the sea of bodies, and everyone he passed, everyone he casually brushed up against, filled him with their life.

The Shadow Lands

Sixty-seven Years Ago

It was dark in the Shadow Lands, but then again, when wasn’t it? That was probably one of the things Squire liked most about the place: It didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was.

The hobgoblin pulled his tattered cloak about his squat, muscular body as a freezing wind from another time and place found its way into the repository of shadows to caress him.

It was a realm of perpetual darkness, a place connected to all the shadows that ever existed-then, now, and even into the future. Traveling the Shadow Paths could take him just about anywhere, but for right now, the hobgoblin was content where he was.

Squire sat, reveling in the quiet. He couldn’t recall how long he had been here this time but knew that this was where he needed to be…where he belonged.

The long hairs on the back of his thick neck suddenly came to attention, and the hobgoblin was in motion, pulling the concealed machete from inside his cloak to meet the attack from one of the myriad life-forms that called this black realm its home. Shades of darkness writhed about him, and he narrowed his vision to see the beastie that used the shifting colors of black and gray for cover.

It was insectoid in its basic design, and he had run into one or two before. Squire also recalled that its meat was quite tasty, if one enjoyed the flavor of rotting meat soaked in Listerine, which he did.

The creature attacked high, and Squire went low, slicing the blade that he had sharpened that very morning across the exoskeletoned belly of the large bug. Its innards spilled out onto the ground, its life ended before it could even complete its leap.

Squire was used to such things, always waiting, always ready for that next attack. For as long as he could remember, somebody or something was trying to kill him.

The hobgoblin figured that it probably all started with his birth, when his kicking and screaming from his mother’s womb resulted in her death. That didn’t go over well with his father, to say the least. And from that day forward it seemed as though someone had pinned a sign on his back saying KILL ME, and that’s what everybody had been trying to do since.

Of course, it hadn’t helped that he’d gotten himself mixed up with a band of would-be heroes-monsters, ghosts, and magick users trying to save from various supernatural threats a version of the Earth that he had made his home. At first that had seemed like a really good idea, but in the end…

Not so much.

The hobgoblin hated for his thoughts to go there; he’d spent too long remembering what had happened to his friends and the world that they had been trying to save. Emphasis on trying.

But failing miserably.

He’d used the Shadow Paths to travel to other worlds just like the one he had lost. Though details varied, he found them all on the verge of heading down that same road his world had gone, or, worse, having already succumbed to the planet-devouring threat.

No, he would just stay here in the realm of darkness. It was simpler here, and the things that tried to kill him were only doing it because they loved the taste of hobgoblin meat.

Nothing more complicated than that.

Squire dug into the insect’s carcass with his knife, breaking the thick shell to get at the soft insides. Just like lobster, but different, he thought as he cut away the foul-smelling meat and shoved it into the lined leather bag that he always carried.

He felt the disturbance in the air behind him and readied himself for another attack, but as he turned, he realized that it came not from an imminent threat but something off in the distance. The sky in this place was like a black velvet curtain, and as he gazed across the plain of shadow, it looked as though something was moving behind that curtain, punching and pushing on it.

Stretching it.

He’d never seen anything quite like it, and got that nasty feeling in the pit of his belly that told him it couldn’t be anything good.

Leaving his kill, he trudged closer. The phenomena intensified, the sky writhing like the belly of a shadow snake after swallowing its prey alive. Squire suddenly knew that something was about to happen-he could feel it on his skin like pinpricks of electricity-and he raised his cloak to cover his face just as the explosion came.

The sound was deafening in the dark and quiet world. The force of the blast tossed him across the blackened landscape, tumbling like a pile of dry fall leaves, until he managed to sink his fingers into the solidified shadow that comprised the ground of this place, stopping his progress.

As the winds died down, he carefully climbed to his feet and could not believe what lay before him. Where there had once been only rolling plains of shadow, there now stood a house…a mansion, really.

It sat there, squatting in the perpetual gloom like some gigantic prehistoric toad.

The air was tinged with the stink of ancient magicks, and he knew that the dangerous environment that he had come to embrace had now been changed forever.

“Fuck me,” the hobgoblin grumbled before spitting a wad of something hard and green onto the ground. “There goes the neighborhood.”

The Deacon Estate

The Shadow Lands

Sixty-seven Years Ago

Deacon had wished them all dead, using every ounce of power his body had stored.

He had never expected to awaken, but his eyes did open and the nightmare that his world had become was reintroduced to him. His wife and son were still dead, his research ransacked. The bodies of his enemies were nowhere to be found, and he had to believe that the spell he had cast had failed.

Weak beyond words, he dragged himself from the basement study, leaving behind the remains of his family.

He hauled himself up the stairs to the first floor, remembering how the estate had moaned and groaned as he’d unleashed his spell, as if being torn asunder in the grip of a powerful storm. He was surprised to see that the old manse had managed to stay in one piece. Although as he lurched through the door and rebounded off the wall, he realized that the house was strangely askew. He was reminded of a family trip to a Coney Island fun house, and almost heard the shrieks of laughter from his son as they made their way through the distorted amusement.

But there was nothing amusing about this.

The ancient spell had come from someplace deep within his memory, something discerned from an arcane tome, deciphered and memorized in the effort to acquire as much ancient arcana as he could store in his human brain.

He passed a mirror that had fallen from the wall and caught a glimpse of himself in the shattered fragments. It appeared that his home was not the only thing changed by the spell. The magick had taken much from his human form, leaving behind not the visage of a man rejuvenated by the life forces of thousands, but an old man in the twilight of his existence.

The spell has taken much, but did it succeed?

Deacon thought he’d had an understanding of what the spell would do, but realized that his translation of the scroll may have been…

Lacking.

The house creaked as he struggled through it. He hoped to see the bodies of the members of the cabal along the way, but found only those of his golem staff, left by his former partners in their assault upon his home.

Did they manage to escape? he wondered. Were my efforts wasted?

Deacon struggled to maintain his footing on floors that bulged upward and then slanted precariously to one side, as he fought to reach the foyer of the grand old home. On aching hands and knees, he crawled up a section of marble floor, then slid down the other side to reach the front doors, now skewed drunkenly to the right.

He reached up, grasped one of the doorknobs, and pulled himself to his feet, the bones in his spine popping loudly as he righted himself. The brass knob was incredibly cold in his gnarled fingers, but, surprisingly, it turned. He tugged on the door and it swung heavily open.

At first his mind rationalized what he saw outside his door as only nighttime in the Catskills, but then he noticed the lack of stars in the sky. And where were the verdant forests just beyond the front gate?

There was only darkness, the blackest he had ever seen.

Slowly it dawned on him. This wasn’t the night at all; he- his entire home — had been transported to somewhere else.

And it didn’t appear to be anyplace on Earth.

The call of inky shadows drew him outside the safety of his home. Deacon squinted into the pitch black, trying to see beyond the ocean of darkness, but there was nothing.

Suddenly, there came the slightest of sounds, and at first he believed he had imagined it, that his mind was attempting to fill the vacuous void that now surrounded him. But then he heard it again: the soft expulsion of breath, like a sigh.

Deacon moved farther from the front door and was about to descend the steps to the stone path that led from the front doors to the gate when he thought he saw movement.

Something darker than the blackness around him.

And then it rushed at him, swimming through the ocean of dark, mouth agape, ready to claim its prey. Even in his prime, Deacon wasn’t sure he would have been fast enough to escape it. The only thought in the magick user’s brain was the hope that the other members of the cabal had met with a similar fate. If that was the case, Deacon would go to his death happily.

A hand fell hard upon his scrawny neck, and Deacon felt himself yanked roughly backward toward the still-open door. A powerful figure now stood where he had been, the sounds of gunfire echoing strangely in the world of shadows.

The attacking beast emitted a high-pitched shriek that caused the hair on Deacon’s body to rise, but the rifle fire was enough to drive it away.

He blinked wildly as he stared at the broad back of the one who had saved him. Slowly the figure turned, and he looked into the pale, tattooed face of the golem Scrimshaw.

“It is dangerous here,” the golem said, moving to his master and pulling him to his feet. “We will need to be careful if we are to venture outside.”

“You should have let the damnable thing take me,” Deacon spat. “There is nothing left to live for.”

“What of your son?” Scrimshaw asked, shouldering the rifle.

“My son?” Deacon asked angrily, looking at the tattooed face of his creation. “My son is dead.”

Scrimshaw slowly shook his head.

“No, master. Your son still lives.”