The Keeper and the Thing

“The gates of hell are held shut by man’s humility. Do you know how they are opened, Joseph?”

Joseph hadn’t known, not then, but he thought he knew now.

“Pride.”, Joseph grunted to himself, the only reply was the wind that whistled through the cracks in the splintered wood of the barn walls. Pride, that was the answer his father had wanted to hear, though Joseph thought it was something simpler than pride that opened the gates of hell, a baser instinct, call it “want”.

Joseph stood before his workbench, lording over the dismantled parts of a vintage word processor. The top of the workbench was littered with bits of wire and crude electronics, these things were relics now and Joseph treated them with the sort of reverence that a priest might have for a splinter from Noah’s ark. Joseph’s father had built this barn with his grandfather in the summer of 1986, when his father had been a boy. It was funny to Joseph to think of his father as a boy, cowlicked and straw-colored hair, tattered overalls, face all freckles with a scabbed chin. The thought almost always made Joseph smile. Joseph didn’t smile now, it was hard with the feeling of those heavy, grey eyes on his back. Joseph put his hands on the table and leaned his weight against it, suddenly very tired.

“Pride is but a face on the water.”, a voice said from behind Joseph, the voice was young and sweet in a sick, hateful sort of way.

“Time,”, Joseph said, realizing the weight of his tired eyes as he said it, “it’s, ‘Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.’”

“I was never much of a King man, myself, saw a couple of the movies, I liked the one with the dog.”

“You’ve never been much of a man at all, have you?”, Joseph said.

The thing with the grey eyes behind Joseph tittered, the sound was almost lyrical, Joseph shuddered in spite of himself.

“Drop dead.”, Joseph grumbled low in his throat, the thing with the grey eyes guffawed.

“Friend, I’ve waited for that day since long before God spat on the earth and made man. But, in the meantime, my…associates and I have things to do.”, The thing with grey eyes was silent for a moment and added, “Things to procure.” Joseph hated the smile in the thing’s voice.

The thing with grey eyes had suspected Joseph to break then, maybe beg for his life, the lives of his friends and children, but Joseph said nothing. The thing with grey eyes furrowed it’s brow.

“You know why I’m here.”, it said contemptuously.

“Yes,” Joseph said, the years of his task heavy in his voice, “only, you’re not here, not really.”

Joseph turned to look at the sallow thing leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. It wore a slim black suit with a pencil-thin black tie like a g-man, it had a broad forehead bisected by a widow’s peak of blonde hair that was not quite buzzed, and on its face was a pair of square-framed, tortoise shell sunglasses. Joseph extended his arm, pointing a finger at the thing in the suit and it smiled thinly. A salesman’s smile, Joseph thought, and he cocked his thumb up toward the roof of the battered barn and brought it down against his finger.

“Bang.”, Joseph said, and for a moment the sallow thing in the doorway seemed to flicker like a dying lightbulb.

“No,” It said, Joseph dropped his arm to his side, “Not here, but close.” The thing in the suit took real pleasure in the look that crossed Joseph’s face then, it was dread, lovely, delicious dread.

“Is Evie still having trouble with her two hand scales? What am I saying, of course not! That kid of yours can play a mean piano and we both know it. Oh how you must swell with pride when you hear the twinkling of her little fingers on your mom’s old baby grand. What’s the one she loves? Oh, you know, she plays it over and over. The one from the Chopin book you bought her in Charleston, I believe it’s Prelude in E minor? Lovely bit of music, so somber, chilling really. Odd that a little girl would love such dreary music, but I guess it’s to be expected given the…tumultuous nature of her childhood, what with her mother’s…”, the sallow thing’s face spread in a smile, showing rows of crowded yellow teeth, “…accident.”

Joseph’s jaw tightened and tiny muscles at his temples worked, clenching and releasing, he eyed the shade leaning against the doorframe, as if he could burn his hate into the tip of the thing’s forehead. It laughed; the sound raised hairs on the back of Joseph’s neck. The task was Joseph’s, the keeping, it was not Evie’s…and it certainly hadn’t been Evelyn’s, but she’d paid for it all the same. Joseph’s mouth filled with liquid grief, it was cold and bitter, his color drained from him, seemed to pool up around his shoes on the hard dirt floor of the barn, he clenched his fists.

“I hate to think of sweet, little Evie having an…accident.” The sallow thing said gravely, “But…such things do happen.”

“Keep my daughter’s name far from your filthy maw, thing. For a creature who claims to have lived for millennia, wielding the power of archons you sure enjoy threatening children like a petty thug.”, Joseph spat through his teeth. The well of anger in Joseph began to slosh and spit, his fingernails dug deep into his palms.

“To me you are all children.”, the thing said evenly, “And the…the thing that you have…is wasted in the hands of a child.”

Joseph thought of the plain, brown paper box, crisscrossed with twine tied in a loose bow, tucked away in a corner of the old barn’s attic, wedged between stacked cardboard boxes labeled with black marker: XMAS and PHOTO ALBUMS and BABY STUFF. Joseph relaxed his fists.

“And what would you do, I wonder...”, Joseph heard himself say, not knowing he was going to speak at all, “What would you do with it once you had it? I don’t think you have the slightest idea.”

The thing’s face darkened and it came striding across the dirt floor, kicking up no dust, leaving no print on its surface, and stood towering over Joseph, beaming black fury down at him.

“AND WHAT KNOWLEDGE DO YOU POSSESS OF IT, MORTAL?”, the thing’s voice changed, it amplified and multiplied, taking on the quality of a thousand voices, pitched in torment and fury, and want.

“You don’t know,” Joseph taunted, “you haven’t a clue!”, Joseph began to laugh, “What are you gonna do? Wave it in the air and say, ‘Sim Sim Salabim’? That’s rich!”. Joseph almost doubled over laughing, he was clutching at his sides, “Are you gonna light some candles? Play light as a feather, stiff as a board? The witching hour might be too far past your bedtime, you think you can stay up that late?” The grey eyed thing’s fury was beyond my ability to describe. It grew then, its features becoming long and distorted. Joseph heard the splintering of the thing’s bones as it’s limbs elongated, heard the joints of its fingers pop and crack as its hands grew twisted and long, saw its knees buckle and reverse so that it stood like some horrible, ten foot bird. Then the thing’s face began to look like that of a monstrous jackal, oily looking stuff dripping off its protruding rows of jagged, yellow teeth.

“YOU WILL BREAK ON MY WHEEL, INSECT!”, the thing’s voices thundered, “YOUR DESPAIR WILL FLOW DOWN MY CHEEKS LIKE WINE, YOUR LINE WILL BE BORN TWISTED AND RUINED, I WAS MADE IN THE BLACK FIRES OF SAMAEL, THE ICHOR OF ANCIENTS RUNS THROUGH MY BODY, MINE IS THE SWORD OF GABRIEL AND I WILL NO—”

“ENOUGH!”, Joseph boomed, he clapped his hands in front of his chest, the sound was the crack of lightning, then he thrust both his hands above his head, pronging the sign of the goat with his fingers. A great ball of electric light swirled and pulsed at his fingertips, driving away all shadow in the decrepit barn. The sallow thing shrank away from that light, hissing and cursing in a tongue that could drive men mad.

Joseph’s voice was no longer his own, it was the collective voice of his line, his father’s, his grandfather’s, all of them, countless, all of them together, “LOOK UPON THE LIGHT OF ADONIOUS, CREATURE! KNOW THIS RIGHTEOUS LIGHT!”, Joseph’s eyes began to glow with the same electric blue light as the ball above his head, wind began to gust through the cracks of the barn wildly, whipping up feverish, miniature brown tornadoes around Joseph and the thing. The thing winced and threw its hands up before it’s eyes. “MY LINE IS TRUE, MY LINE IS OLD, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED IN THIS PLACE, ELIOUS, I CAST YOU OUT!” Joseph cried, and his feet lifted from the ground, light began to shine from the inside of his mouth, the dirt whipped in the whistling wind and the ball of light began to grow and convulse, “DARSHAM DHURBHIKSHA STHAA…”

“I AM MANY, ADONIUS, HEAR ME AND ANGUISH, I WILL NEVER REST!”

“VYAAS!”, Joseph boomed, clapping his hands again, and light exploded throughout the barn. Joseph lost consciousness then.

Joseph awoke on the dirt floor of the barn, he stood and a stab of pain shot through his head, he winced, he looked to the barn’s doorway, the sallow thing was gone. The stairs leading up to the attic of the barn were old and puffs of dust mushroomed up from Joseph’s shoes as he climbed them. He found the paper box wedged between the wall and a box of Christmas decorations and held it in his hands. The paper crinkled against his fingers and he could feel the weight of the object inside it, and he feared it.

They will come, Joseph thought, they will never stop coming and, eventually, they may have it, God help us all.

Joseph glanced at another cardboard box marked “PHOTO ALBUMS” in thick black marker.

“But I will not be the one they take it from.”, Joseph said to the barn.