The Cemetery - VIII
Part 1
Mathias
23rd June,
1712
It is only now with sound mind and sound body that I can
recall what has happened. This will be my last penning in this journal for I have
set out to conceal these words from the world and cast them aside with the
bones I have exposed to the light. No one will know the truth aside from me and
that is alright. I will die with these images ever burned into my brain. I know
not why then I feel the need to recall and restore my mind to that night or why
I must put it to paper now. I feel compelled to. I feel like I must put these
words down in the service of another though I shall pray that no one finds this
text. I have already started melting the wax I wish to encase this journal in. I
will move at night and then I will be gone from this town forever. I can’t show
my face again in this place. I can’t breathe its air. I can’t feel the amiability
of its people. I am not worthy.
The
night of the 20th of June into the morning of the 21st
will forever haunt my mind and soul as long as I shall live. In these pages
that proceed this entry I have described my pain and fear and worry in
concerning my family. The loss of my daughter, the apparent illness of my wife,
and the fear of darkness that permeated all my comings and goings betwixt them.
In the
days prior to the days I have mentioned I called upon an old friend in Dr.
Starcross, a physician of mental and physical health that I had met many years
before. He was in fact the man who helped my wife in years before with sleep deprivation
and other brain maladies she was carrying at the time. So upon noticing a drastic
change in my wife I sought him out as an agent to help her.
He
agreed to meet us and stayed for a few nights to prepare his machinations of
experimentation upon her in sleep. After one final attempt to speak with my
wife I found nothing more to be done on my end and we simply resolved to the
tests.
That
night after she went to sleep, we approached her room to listen for her speaking
that I had reported to him before. It did not take long for her words to emerge
in the dark. She spoke as if in conversation with someone. She once again spoke
of a trial, how things would go the way they were always meant to and that
steps need be taken.
We
entered the room stealthily enough and found her laying in sleep. Her eyes were
half open, irises turned back towards her skull. It made me shudder with how
still she lay. The doctor reassured me that it was normal for the eyes to do
this but that a person’s eyelids should remain closed. Nothing truly abnormal
had occurred, in his words, so far.
In the room
he set up a table and a few instruments I can barely recall their function and
he sat next to her bedside. When he drew near her voice returned.
“They
are here.” Her voice was monotone and
cold. I stayed across the room out of sight, practically hiding in the shadows.
Dr. Starcross was not as feeble as I was and leaned over my wife to speak to her.
“Who is
here?” the doctor said.
“The
twilight ones. The ones of the trial. They are all here.”
“What
are they here for?”
“As
witness to their purpose.”
“What
is their purpose?”
There
was a pause. The room grew colder by degrees and I felt my bones ache and skin
tighten with fear. The doctor seemed not to notice this or either how the room
seemed to get darker though we had brought in candles to light our work. The
same presence I had felt in the study while conversing with my wife seemed to
be present but this time a new aura could be felt. One of dark intent. I wished
to flee to take the doctor and retreat until daylight, but I could not move and
he seemed intrigued.
“What is
their purpose?” Starcross repeated and in a swiftness, I can not be sure is even humanly possible my
wife shot up from sleep. In her violent motion the doctor was knocked to the
floor. He fell almost knocking his already bruised head, having been struck by
my wife’s shoulder in her motion, on the night stand missing it only by inches.
In the
faint light I could see my wife’s eyes glowing a deep hollow red. It shot an
icy spear through my heart of hearts. The being sitting on the bed starting to
move to is feet in a jerking violent motion was no longer my wife. But a beast
in my wife’s flesh. That could be the only conclusion.
I slid down
the wall towards the table of instruments to find a weapon to protect myself. In
the background I saw the doctor stumbling to his knees and then to his feet. In
a daze from the blow to his head he reached out and grabbed my wife on the
shoulder. The sudden shock of being touched made her spin in a whirlwind. With
that action she put the doctor off balance and exposed him to her next violent
outburst.
I can
not say if this image will ever leave my dreams or my waking sight. The same
image I had beheld days before in a dream had become a reality. My wife ripped
open the fleshy parts of the doctor’s throat with her teeth and hands exposing
so much flesh that the bone was visible underneath. She stood over her quarry
and looked at her hands so reminiscent of the dream I had that I felt like I was
reliving the experience tenfold. She even looked longingly at eh mirror on the
wall in the same way I recalled from the dream.
I’m still
not sure how the next moments came to pass. Whether it was animal instinct on my
part or the divine touch of God himself, or the guiding hand of my angelic
Genevieve, I cannot say. But in the next instant was upon my wife in a flurry.
I had had taken a metal instrument of some substantial weight and charged at
her with it. I bashed her on the head bringing her form to the ground in a heap
of flesh and blood and broken bone.
I know
now that a devil inhabited my wife for once I looked upon her face staring up
at me, pleading for mercy before my next blow, I saw a glimmer of change flash
over her eyes. If I had hesitated even for a second to finish my savagery she
would have bitten into my flesh as she had done to the poor doctor sprawled below
us. With two more crashes of my hand I snuffed out the vessel of the great devil.
With her expiration I felt the presence flee the room, the light return from
the candles light, and the weight of oppression I had been feeling be expelled.
I fell
back against the wall to behold what had transpired without the white-hot fury
of instinctual rage to guide me and the rooms stench of death flooded my
senses. At what cost had I acquired this respite from devils? What would have
been spent if I had not done what I had? All I hoped for in that instance, was
not forgiveness for my deed, was not respite from my crime but simply that my
wife’s soul be taken to my daughter, so they might live together in Heaven. For
no matter the deed that caused it, or the greater good that followed, murder
was still a capital sin in the eyes of God. I knew I would not escape his wrath,
but I prayed he would show mercy to my wife. For she knew not the pact she was
making, I’m sure of it. I will never know fully what transpired for my wife to
accept such a pact. What gifts the fiend I saw behind my wife’s eyes promised
to her for doing her bidding. All I know is that she will finally rest in peace
in death.
I will
move her body to the cemetery and dig her a grave of my own making next to my
daughter. This will all be in secret of course and I will place this text with
her as evidence that I was not in fact the murdered of my wife but that this shadow
devil was the culprit. I will leave this place once my deeds are finished. I
will burn down my old home and I will never set foot anywhere near Westknell
again. I owe their spirits that much.
I’m sorry my loves…Genevieve…Josephine…I am truly sorry.
-Mathias Ryan McMahon
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