I left the hysterical housekeeper downstairs with my partner and strode up the wide staircase to the first floor, my feet sinking into the plush carpet, my hand clasping the burnished bronze railing to speed my journey on.
The call had come in towards the end of our shift, and I was keen to assess the scene quickly so I could get out of uniform and into the bar as fast as possible. Since Jeannie had left, I could no longer bear our meager apartment, a constant reminder of the myriad failings of my career and tainted love.
I reached the top of the stairs and paused to catch my breath, looking around at the oil paintings in gold frames, ornate vases and Persian rugs. I felt a pang of jealousy at the opulent riches of this man's kingdom. His smallest closet contained more than everything I own, but even rich men cannot escape what must come to us all, and affluence means nothing to a corpse.
The stink of death reached me as I turned towards a partially open door made of dark oak, intricately carved with symbols of alchemy and superstition. I bent to look closer and found every sign of protection engraved upon it: an inverted horseshoe, an Islamic charm to ward off the evil eye, and a Catholic saint holding up a cross in his right hand to guard against Satan's encroachment. A Jewish mezuzah of teal Venetian glass was nailed to the doorframe, its Holy verses on parchment scroll denying destructive agents access. This man had clearly tried everything to stop supernatural forces from reaching him, but the stench told me that death had crept in here regardless.
I was no stranger to the dead, but now I felt the need for that extra ounce of courage, for a curious dread had taken hold of me, a leaden coldness that spread through my limbs. I thought with longing of the hip flask hidden in the car outside, craving the swig of vodka to help focus my mind on the task ahead. I didn't want to see what was beyond the door, but I crushed down the insidious fear and reached to push it fully open.
The door creaked, and wind chimes jangled to scare away malicious spirits, the sound bringing an incongruous sense of life to the inert atmosphere.
I put my hand to my nose, trying unsuccessfully to mask the foul odor of voided bowels and rotting flesh. My sweeping gaze took in the lavish glamor of the room, then the dead body splayed wide on the antique four-poster bed. A naked man on white satin sheets, now hideously stained with bodily fluids, bulging flesh on a morbidly obese body lying in a vile slush of his own foul emissions. Christopher Faerwald had been a famous author who made millions from his novels, many of them adapted for the big screen, but he hadn't been seen in years. Now I understood why. His physical disfigurement had turned him into a recluse.
Accustomed to the stink now, I moved closer to the bed to examine the corpse. Flies rose into the air at my approach, swollen from feeding, indignant buzzing at my interruption of their feast. Tattooed words covered every inch of the man's bloated body. They may have been legible once when his skin was young and taut, but they had since morphed into grotesque shapes. Open vowels that threatened to swallow and sharp consonants, each angle cut deep into his flesh, all inked with a dark crimson stain.
Were the words written in his own blood? I shuddered at the thought, surely a fantastical idea awoken by this macabre den. The walls were covered in crucifixes and painted with pentacles, and ancient holy books cluttered the floor in overflowing piles as if he had tried to barricade himself in here.
The man's face was a rictus of horror, a gaping grimace, as if he had witnessed the denizens of Hell streaming out of the maw of Hades and died of terror to look upon them.
A thin scalpel and a mirror lay next to him on the bed, fallen from his hands as he carved more words into his forehead even as he died. It looked like the beginnings of a prayer for deliverance.
As I examined him more closely, I could see that strips of skin had been torn from his limbs leaving weeping open wounds, crawling with maggots that devoured his souring flesh. It looked like torture, yet there were no signs of forced entry and, according to the housekeeper, nothing had been taken from the man’s store of great wealth. I turned to survey the opulent space.
The dying sun flooded through a pair of large bay windows, suffusing the room with a ruby glow and a touch of flame. Outside, thick purple clouds gathered in the dusk like blood blisters across the sky, the beginnings of an unseasonal storm evident in the rain that pattered against the window.
A wide mahogany desk looked out towards a small church that squatted on the edge of a wood. Faerwald's personal chapel, part of his vast estate out here on the edge of civilization. He had purchased this place before he rose to the heights of fame, buying luxury properties around the world with his riches. I'd rather be on the beaches of Monaco than holed up here to die in obscurity, but he had returned to his roots in the last years.
The wall to the right of his desk was devoted to erotic images, gorgeous art morphing into pornography. I couldn't help but look closer. Sandstone carvings from the Hindu temple of Khajuraho depicted orgies of debauchery, bodies entwined in yogic poses as they thrust and writhed together. A set of art-house black and white photographs revealed scenes from a dungeon, soft tongues soothing scarred and whipped bodies.
A small print caught my eye amongst the frenzied sensory overload. Naked human figures swept into a hellish vortex, embracing each other with desire even as they were sucked into oblivion. Circle of the Lustful by William Blake, I read in the text below. I couldn't help but glance back at the obscene figure spread-eagled on the bed, pushing away the repugnant image of this bloated body engaged in carnal acts. He was a shade of the handsome youth he had once been, a magnet for beautiful women, envied by men for his success. But beneath the mound of flesh, fattened from years of gluttony and excess, Faerwald's bones were still aristocratic.
I picked up a Hollywood-style photo frame from the desk. The picture within showed the author in a slim-fit white tuxedo, strong arms wrapped around a stunning young woman who smiled up at him with cornflower-blue eyes darkened with a hint of wanton pleasure. Envy surged within me, and the need to drink almost drove me back to the car, desperate to tip even the tiniest dribble into my mouth.
I pushed down the craving and turned to examine the desk, using my pen to flick open a leather diary in the center. On the final page, Faerwald's last words stared up at me, written in blood, diseased with tinges of purple and rusty clots that stained the thick ivory paper.
She comes tonight to claim what I promised in exchange so long ago.
I didn't believe her words back then, didn't think at all. What she offered has come to pass, and yet still I struggle to believe that my soul can be taken from me. I know I must pay the price for my sin, but if I can, I will prevent another from falling as far as I have done.
I have hidden the book so she must sleep again. It is buried, and I am finished, but perhaps this last act will earn me a sliver of redemption.
His handwriting was measured, sane and deliberate, but the words read like one of his novels. Was Faerwald living within the realms of fantasy when he passed so violently into the next world? Yet as I looked over again at the man's horrified face, I knew that his agony had not been mere imagination.
Rain pattered on the window, and I looked out again to the chapel. Faerwald had sat here looking at it when he wrote those last words, and I felt a prickle of sensation, as if those murky portals called to me. Could he have buried the strange book inside?
Something dark began to uncoil within me. I would exchange much to experience the riches this man enjoyed in his lifetime.
I made my decision.
I ran back down the stairs, calling out to my partner that I needed to investigate further evidence outside. He shouted after me, but I ignored him, caught up in the sensation that I must get to the chapel, that time was of the essence.
As I stepped outside, the light rain morphed into icy sleet, and heavy purple clouds above me split open with forked lightning. Thunder rolled across the desolate space between the house and the chapel. I pulled my coat tighter, fighting against Nature, buffeted violently as opposing winds clashed all around. It was as if I pushed a great weight ahead of me into a squall sent from Hell itself to tear this somber valley apart.
Each step across the open ground was a huge effort, but when I finally made it to the lych-gate at the entrance to the tiny churchyard, the storm eased a little, the rain lighter, although the wind still howled around me.
The chapel was old and partly ruined. Stone blocks covered in lichen lay in the grass below gargoyles hanging skewed from the edges of broken masonry, their faces eaten away by time. The present facade seemed to be built upon a more archaic structure, stones that had perhaps been worshipped as pagan gods in the days before Christ.
The plants in the churchyard were withered, all color leached from them. They covered the earth in thick patches, rising up from around the edges of tombstones, nourished by the dead beneath. I had imagined that I was running to sanctuary, but now the oppressive and malevolent miasma of the place sank into my bones. I hesitated, yet I still wanted to enter, my curiosity deeply roused to search for the mysterious book.
The fury of the storm surged again, crackling with energy, wind whipping round in tornado spirals, lifting the heads of strange albino flowers to the sky. Dust and ashes blew into my eyes, painting the scene with the desolate grey of mourning. I rubbed them frantically to clear my vision and hurried into the porch, my face brushing against something soft as I stumbled out of the wet gloom. I reeled back to see a dead crow hung by the neck above me, blue-black feathers still adhering to decaying flesh, its eyes open and unseeing.
The great door opened with a sigh, the wind sucked inside, filling the void with the desolation of chill air.
I stepped through, my footfall stirring dust from the floor, the sound echoing around the deserted building. The light inside was an amethyst haze from the heavy storm clouds, barely penetrating the nave through intricate stained glass windows with images of tortured saints, martyred for the glory of their God. The chapel venerated death, rather than eternal life, and ahead of me, as if in homage, a life-size crucifix hung behind the altar. Christ's face was a skeletal version of the dead Faerwald, as if the Son of God could see what Hell awaited him beyond the veil.
My eyes dropped to the altar, draped in cloth that had once been pure white but which now hung in dirty, dismal tatters. As the holiest place in the building, it was surely the most fitting location to bury such a book. I walked towards it, across flagstones carved with the names of the dead. The words ran into each other like the broken letters on Faerwald's body, a mass grave of victims who perished together in some ancient plague.
I usually felt a calm peace within churches, a sense of something holy, but this place was malignant and hungry, taking each breath faster than I could exhale.
A pair of candlesticks coated in melted wax rested on the altar, the gold of their surface dulled by dust. I could just make out the twisted figures of crucified angels, their mouths open as they pleaded with a God who had deserted them.
In the centre of the altar was a box, a tabernacle for the Host, the bread of the Eucharist turned into Christ's body for the consumption of the faithful. I pushed the lid open to see a mass of crawling maggots within, their swollen white bodies wriggling over each other to get at the crumbs of wafer, an unholy miracle of rotting sustenance in this unnatural place.
Sensing that the book must be close, I knelt at the altar, and a momentary chink appeared in the madness that possessed me. My resolve wavered. I should walk away now, leave this chapel and be done with the place.
But other thoughts intruded – my sordid apartment, the neighbors who disturbed my sleep with their fighting, the debts I owed at the bar and my ever-growing need for vodka to keep the nightmares away. Below it all, the sense that my life was wasted, insignificant, meaningless.
To walk away now was to return to that life, but this book was something precious, valuable enough to be hidden, a secret that perhaps I could unlock.
I crawled around the altar, examining the flagstones for any evidence that they had been lifted. The dust and grime of years layered my frantic fingers as I searched, and finally, I found a place that had been brushed clean.
A strange symbol marked the stone, a curling filigree of loops ending in a forked demon's tail. It had cracked through the center, revealing a cleft at the side. My heart pounded with excitement as I levered it open.
As the violet light touched the stone with a sickly haze, I saw the book. A visceral desire to possess it rose within me, and I lifted it from its resting place, pulling it to my chest like a long-lost lover. The cover was soft leather, a patchwork of colors reminiscent of the varieties of human skin. It smelled of ancient herbs, a heady scent of rich tombs and incense disguising the darker note of death.
The pages opened beneath my eager hands and I tried to read the first words aloud. They were strange-sounding in my mouth, but within a few lines I could not hold back the torrent that flooded out. It was as if the book spoke through me and as my voice grew stronger, the sound echoed in the nave of the deserted place, rivaling even the power of the storm that raged outside.
As I reached the end of the powerful prayer, the world seemed to tremble and split. Sounds of lamentation filled the air. I crouched down, utterly terrified, screwing my eyes tight shut, trying to block the cacophony with my hands over my ears. Words of agony assaulted my mind, horrible dialects with the sounds of pounded flesh, as tortured spirits howled like dogs on the hunt, fangs bared to tear apart their prey.
Then all at once, it was over.
I heard soft footsteps in the silence that followed and looked up.
Emerging from a side chapel, where I had thought lay only tombs, came the young woman from the photograph who had danced with such abandon all those years ago with the handsome author.
Her long silken hair hung loose with flowers wound within as if she had just woken from dappled sleep on the banks of a sparkling stream. Her skin glowed with an internal light like alabaster from an Egyptian tomb, and her full lips were a deep peony pink. Her eyes were blue as a cornflower meadow, languid like a summer day. She exuded innocence with an edge of erotic knowing, and as she walked closer, I could scarcely draw breath. She pressed herself against me, her cool hand feathering down my chest to my belt.
"Through me, there is everything you desire in this life," she whispered, as her hand moved lower. "You only have to write it on your skin, and it will be yours." Her lips touched mine, her tongue darting out to lick delicately at the corner of my mouth. “There is only one tiny thing I want in return."
My lips opened against hers. I pushed all thought of Faerwald's bloated body from my mind, for surely his diary could only be the ravings of a madman.
