Host of Monstrosity

Debbs awoke from the train scraping the rail as it turned a curve to transverse around a pond shore. At first he kept his eyes shut, he felt it in his lap, in his arms. The suitcase- he curled up with it, tried to slip back to the mists of dream, but his spinal disks grinded above his hip, and old aches wringed his neck. He gave up hopes of finishing his dream and watched the city emerge from crop dust. Sunshine lit up a billboard warning of the apocalypse over flaming effigies that looked to him like children.

The usher offered to take his suitcase. Debbs refused- “We’re almost there. Leave me be.” the usher insisted with saddened eyes stained yellow from sleepless nights. Debbs surrendered the suitcase, his heart sinking, but once he secured the case’s key in his possession he felt relief. He looked up at the netting overheard where his suitcase rocked against the wall. He kept his eyes on the case and squeezed the key and embedded the shaped into his moist palms.

The train halted. Debbs stepped off with his case in hand and dragged his dead foot down rows of panel and brickwork until the pavement began to shatter and dandelions propped from sidewalk fractures. He found a small place with a sign reading “for rent”. He paid in cash and moved in that day. The place cost him only a few hundred dollars a month. The space fit only a cot and a desk. Debbs liked the tiny space, his own pantry of dominion. He divided his time between starving and resuming his work. The suitcase contained everything he collected so far. His handwritten translation keys from classic latin and Phoenician, and the accounts he claimed along his path. For some he merely asked, for some he disinterred bodies, robbed homes, even tortured for. He set it all out on his desk to review for overlooked details. His title read “The Tolkhamtec Cult”.

He read the first account written in 1608 by a portuguese portmaster- he wrote that a Chinese ship rammed the port and sunk. They tried to rescue the crew- but the sole survivor died trying to save the cargo. The portmaster said what the ship contained looked like a nightmare. At first impression, Debbs thought they discovered a dinosaur fossil but the portmaster described the bones as human in shape, but ape in stature, with backwards legs, stubs on it’s shoulder blades and slots for some undetermined purpose across its solid ribs, with three extra identical limbs, and a cubic skull the size of a war helmet with eye sockets in each corner and an inner, round skull to protect the brain. The portmaster determined the cause of the crash to be fog, and sent the cargo on an Asia bound ship to be returned, only for the vessel to sink in the Mandeb strait.

The other came from 1890. An Indian boy came to the house of a wealthy Oklahoma judge. The judge described the young man as “suspicious” as the kid shook with nervousness and only glanced into the judge’s eyes as he spoke his name before locking his gaze back down at his feet. The judge went with the Indian to the site of where a meteor struck the earth the night before. The impact caused fissures in the desolate bedrock. Smoke rose from the crater, but the Indian took the judge to the ejection of clay. There lay a skeleton in the same shape as described by the portmaster. The Indian claimed that the bones came out in pieces after the impact, but once surfaced they reassembled. The judge told the Indian to halt his spiritualisms, so the Indian began shattering the bones and casting them in every direction. As he claimed, the bones reassembled before the Judge’s eyes. The judge took the skeleton home in a wagon. The next day the neighbor came to the property due to the whooping of unmilked cattle. He found no one inside the house, but he did find food burned on the stove.

The barn door hung open. The neighbor noticed by the sneering of a cow pushing the door open and roaming to the pasture. The neighbor entered and discovered the Judge and his family laying in a row with their heads removed by a nearby spade and piled in an empty grain sack. The locals rounded up the last person to see the Judge alive- the Indian boy. He protested to the mob rigging ropes to a sturdy tree limb to find the skeleton- but no one recovered any such skeleton at the Judge’s property.

In 1910 explorers in the Andes discovered the erect shambles of an unidentified civilization at the base of a cave deep within the earth. The cave collapsed with the explorers inside. A rescue crew only recovered their belongings. Among the torn bags and collapsed tents they found a box composed of crimson puzzle pieces unmentioned in the snow soaked pages of their journals. The rescue crew attempted to open the box. The accounted ended with three hundred blank pages.

Debbs lost sleep, lost weight, lost teeth in the arriving weeks he spent delving into his research. After a month of work, he phoneticized the first line of a page he found in a 15th century tome in the bottom of French catacombs. The stream of unpronounceable consonants strained his voice box and popped his jaw. He took to the mirror to examine how he’d changed since discovering the Tolkhamtec. He found it hard to believe the reflection once belonged to someone swimming in alleyway ponds and peddling cheap drugs cut with baking soda to the ghosts of hometown aspirations. “I’m a changed man,” he declared to himself for his hair turned from yellow- orange to gray. His shoulders thinned to razor blades, and his chest became a fortress sinking into sand. A gap formed below his rib cage as his spine slumped and locked in place. “Soon, I’ll be better than ever before.” He daydreamed of his homecoming in his new form, and the vengeance he wrought in this fantasy caused him to cackle to his reflection with his eyebrows pulled to his hairline and eyelids a canyon apart from each other. Hairs grew from between his remaining teeth. A green film covered his tongue. His breath fogged the mirror and obscured the reflection.

One afternoon Debbs awoke to his window falling shut. His suitcase and the work he stored inside no longer rested under his cot. Instead he found a note- it read “This Is A Warning.”

He crumpled the note and tossed it to the corner.

Debbs sat still for hours on the hardwood, the air sucked from his lungs, the wind taken from his back. Then came a knock at the his door. He crawled forth, and climbed up groaning as the knots in his spine wound tighter around what nerves he had left. The knocks felt limp like a weak handshake slapping at the door. Debbs undid the chains and the three bolts, then peeked out to find a smiling set of blackberry stained teeth. Sunken eyes hid behind glasses thick as bullet proof glass. He held a hand out with knuckles long as pocket knives. “Hello, I’m moving in today- I’m your new neighbor.”

Debbs shook his hand, extended some pleasure of greeting, but kept the door between the two. After pleasantries, Debbs shut the door and sealed it once more. He forgot all about the neighbor within an hour of meeting him.

Debbs grabbed a cane, tossed a winter coat on that touched the ground due to his deformed condition and limped around the neighborhood. He saw one man waiting at a bus with a suitcase. He came within ten feet, stood before the bus stop, and studied the suitcase. The man went from pensive to nervous as the strange hunched over man stood still, and seemed to slip into a trance of deep contemplation before limping towards the bus stop like cries for help from a cavern pit. “Can I help you?” Fear filled the stranger’s eyes as he sat his suit case over his chest.

“That suitcase belongs to me. Let me see inside.”

“Get lost.”

Debbs produced a wad of crumpled dollars, but the stranger dismissed his offer.

“Just let me see inside.”

The stranger looked around for the bus, he checked his time and the fear in his eyes developed into panic. The bus was late. Debbs parted his lips and reached for the case. The stranger swatted his hand, so Debbs struck him in the head with the cane until he dropped the suitcase. He limped into the bushes with it and settled under a bridge where he opened it and found transcripts between the CIA and an agent named DB Cooper, but found none of his material, so he tossed the suitcase and its contents into the canal.

He felt hungry and his knots needed their ointment. The cold air made them crack open and bleed. His tongue too felt like a slug on the tanker of a desert semi truck. He drank a handful of canal water. It tasted bitter and sent shivers of revulsion down his blood vessels. By  sunset,  his search produced three more suitcases. He found clothes that didn’t fit, stacks of money from an unknown land, and the last contained two sandwiches. None of them held his work.  

On his silent return a person shrouded in the cool gusts of night shuffled near him from behind cracks in the shadows. At first it looked like a lost child bundled up with a scarf over their face, but as they entered the overcast from window light, Debbs saw eyes elongated and wrinkled to closed lips along with white hair strands and the reek of antique wine bottles. A thin voice gargled from beneath the scarf as she pulled it away to reveal the crumbling features of an ancient woman.

“I know where it is.” She blindly spoke to the night, but Debbs heard her voice dance-

“Tell me then, old woman.”

“The same person stole from me. You know him, you’ve already met once.”

“Do you mean?”

“Yes, the very same man. Do you know his name?”

“I… forgot.”

“Professor Archer Mollar of Anthropology, or he was until recently... “ She handed him a toothless key. “This will get you into any door once.”

“Do… you want whatever he took from you?”

“I trust you will do the right thing.” She put the scarf back over her face, icy hacks of laughter flexing from underneath. Her quiet steps idled down the sidewalks, then slid into a crack in the sidewalk. Debbs hobbled to the portion of concrete, and found a dark oil sinking into the rift. The key he held by a thin ring that weighed more than five pounds. The material felt cold even as his soft hands sweat against the smooth metal. Electricity vaulted up his arm and his veins pressed against his skin. His fingers tingled. He he felt a physical strength that he lacked before. He held his cane up because it slowed him down. His aches and bodily needs drained away. He heard whispers in a familiar, but far more elegant script- he only recognized the initial verse. Ash he walked the unreadable characters flashed before his eyes between flickering street lights. He decided the ancient woman’s item may be worth the attempt, but he never thought so clearly, with ideas not standing idly until a truck of daily worries crushes them, but fluid notion that connected to other ideas across the vast regions of his brain. He knew nothing of the professor’s habits, nothing of his life. The porchlight of his home appeared from the unfolding architecture that broadened like wings as he turned on the sidewalk. His thoughts raced like bullets where before they dragged like a rusted plow in the sand. By the time his hand fell on the front door handle he knew exactly what he needed to do, and by the time he reached the stairs he knew what to do if the ancient woman planned to deceive him. Yet by the time he reached his door the plans changed. He heard the professor speaking from his room. In lengthy verse he uttered the lost words. Debbs went to sleep with a new plan in mind.

In the morning, Debbs shaved and washed the grime from his body. He combed what hair still clung to his skull, and brushed what teeth still gnashed together when he closed his mouth. Once he smelled nicer he knocked at the professor’s door. Someone scuffled within. Debbs kept knocking. The professor came to the door red faced and agitated.

“What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Just thought neighbors ought to share some breakfast, what do you say-”

“Leave me alone. Come back later rather.” He slammed the door. Before he did a fly escaped and buzzed around the light fixtures. The professor obscured a peek into his room with his body. Debbs saw nothing. He still held onto the key, and now he knew something good waited for him in the professor’s chamber.

Over the next several days Debbs listened and watched the professor’s routine. Both of time stayed awake until sunrise then fell asleep in solitude. He rarely left, but every night spoke the strange chant.

They both came into the kitchen to warm up frozen food in the microwave. Debbs asked what the professor studied. The professor looked stricken with doubts as he inspected the refined appearance of his neighbor.

“I don’t recall mentioning that I’m a professor to you.”

“I can tell that you’re a studious man. What are you researching?”

“Celtic artifacts.”

“You don’t say…I hear you speaking some funny language in your room. Is that celtic?”

“Oh- oh that! That’s a friend of mine… from Malta. It’s a strange language not many know. We both study the celts.”

Debbs uttered the initial verse as best as he remembered and the professor paled like a ghost, then recited the next verse.

“Listen, you don’t know what trouble you’re going to get me in. You speak of this to no one. Not even to me. We just go on living our lives like nothing happens.”

“Fine. I want my things back.”

“What things?”

“My suitcase and everything inside of it.”

“I don't have your damn suitcase.”

“Did you leave this note?” He showed him the bewaring inscription.

The professors tore the paper, and let the two halfs float to the floor. The pages slid across the stained tiles back together. The message changed. You were warned.

The professor dropped his glasses. “They know I’m here. You have to get out of here while you can.”

“Why? What’s in your room?”

“Stay out of there.”

Debbs dangled his new key. The professor recognized it at once.

“Who gave that to you?”

“I think you’re going to show me what’s inside. If it’s nothing of mine than you have nothing to worry about.”

The professor shook his head and turned away to hide his face as he lead Debbs down the hall. The bulbs burned out. The fly from last night lay dead on the carpet.

“I did steal something… but not from you. I took it from a witch in the mountains of Alamikamba. If I show you than they may come for you next!”

“The Tolkhamtec cult doesn’t scare me. In fact, I intend to join them.”

“You damn fool. What makes you so sure they want you?”

“They don’t, or they have no reason yet. But once I learn the secrets, nothing will stop me from becoming one by my own volition.”

The professor unlocked his door and let debbs enter. Flies swarmed empty bean cans stacked by the window. Piles of dirty clothes and rotten books obstructed the floor. Empty whiskey bottles lay in the crumpled bedsheets. The alarm clock blinked with a concerning hour. 42:61. Even the paint on the walls seemed to seep into harsh grains and shining sediment.

The professor dug through a locked chest, and he pulled it out like a diamond from a mud puddle with a satisfied groan. A crimson box composed of jigsaw segments. Debbs collapsed besides the chest, landing on the seam of the professor’s pants, he ripped the box from his hands. Familiar shock tingled his body but this went deeper than his arm, it touched his memories, his fears, his hopes and dreams.

“I can’t open it.”

“We’ll try this…” Debbs searched the box until he found a tiny hole in the top. The perfect size for the toothless key. He inserted it, and twisted it until he heard a series of rapid clicks. The key turned to smoke. A whistle exhausted from the hole. Each jigsaw piece glowed with characters he recognized, and as static rushed into his brain he understood the language all for a brief moment before the hole expanded and swallowed him.

Colors he never before witnessed blinded him as the static sensations rose from his skin, and hurled his body in a cyclone. Debbs braced for slamming against the walls, but no impacts met him. Only wind and screams. Then his hearing, his touch, his smell followed his loss of vision until he felt like a lost sock caught in a tide.

The first sense to return alerted him to the scent of searing meat and burning metal. He heard chains and feet, whips and fluttering wings. Then he felt the grated material- same material that composed the key. Each grain bit into his flesh. Warm blood dripped down his hand. A furnace blasted a stream of smoke from a sky reaching chimney. When he opened his eyes he found his vision blurry. He wiped the tears from his eyes, only to find his impaired vision did not becloud the creatures among him. One the bars of his cage focused, he saw the mossy feathers covering the moaning monstrosities. Some flew by machines that hooked to their shoulder blades and chest, others walked like spiders on seven limbs with their heads twisting and turning,each end with a different feature, a tongue, an ear,  a pair of antennae. Beyond them stood megalithic pyramids built upside down, slowly spinning in a ring of gravity. Below him, other monstrosities reached from a boiling pool and crawled out. Each one a different shape- each one invoked a new level of terror as the cage began to shrink around Debbs until his arms and legs hung out and the bars cut into his back and chest. A mechanism turned a wheel and a pair of mechanical wings slid down a wire. The monsters took the hold of the hooks. Black nails protruded from their fingertips. He felt pricks of pain but the nails also filled him with alcohol. Soon he swooned, his body slipped into numbness, but held onto the bars tight. The monsters each carved a character into his flesh until every inch illustrated in unmistakable detail the bleeding images of the Tolkhamtec. Then the hooks pierced his shoulder and pins secured his body to the wingsuit above him. The cage started cranking. The bars weakened. He closed his eyes, feeling his body sinking- but as the cage dropped to the pool below, he fired high into the air, above the pyramids, to the copper clouds and the black smoke. He saw the parade of Tolkhamtec creatures crawling in curving streets, up walls, and through holes high up in the jagged structures balanced on fine tips. Drawstrings and switches dangled from digital numeric pads. Lights and sounds blinked and squealed. The wings folded inward, then his ascent stopped and he hung for a second and he saw the entire civilization. His fall accelerated at twice the rate as when he flew up. He choked on chimney soot as his eyes locked onto the spear of a tower head. Lower and lower he dropped, like watching a needle pierce thread, until all of his senses at once collapsed at the utterance of one single jaw splitting word.

He awoke in the same room. His head swam and stars sparkled on the ceiling. A crunching noise tickled his ears, but it sounded like something coming from the other side of the room. He tried to rub his eyes, but he only wiped blood into them. He examined his body to see himself naked and covered in the lacerations inflicted by the Tolkhamtec. “The professor- where is he”, Debbs wondered. The box sat on the chest. The crunching continued. He rolled over and tiled his head back. The ancient woman stood with the professor in her arms. Her jaw splitting in half to take full bites from within his skull. Her blind eyes didn’t see him, until the box lid snapped shut. Debbs watched at two red tomato eyes coagulated from her eye sockets. Debbs crawled under the bed and shook as the Professor’s body dropped, and the ancient woman with her soundless steps approached the bed.

“Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t release you from the box only to eat you. You saw them?”

“Yes...”

“I can turn you into one. Then you may live among us forever more.” A reptile hand offered itself. The bed dropped on him and constricted until the air discharged from his lungs. He tried to take deep breaths but the air stopped at the back of his mouth. His spinal knots cracked, and straightened. He reached for the alcohol dripping finger tips.