By Ryan Bush
“I’m gettin’ real sick of these death cults,” Jack growled, his flashlight reflecting eerily off hundreds of skulls lining the tunnel wall. “This is the third one this year! Why do sorcerers keep choosing catacombs and haunted places for their dark deeds? Why can’t I fight an evil magician in a nice, sunny field for once?”
Lorenzo, Jack’s hulking Italian companion, merely grunted at the short American’s complaints. They crept down the dark passageway through Paris’ infamous catacombs, heavy knapsacks weighing on their backs. As they rounded a bend, Jack let loose a string of expletives when his flashlight revealed a horrid design carved into the wall: a crude skull with words smeared underneath it in blood.
Truly truly I say to you, you shall be born again.
“Look at this blasphemous thing! Suicide cults don’t even use this sigil! What’s going on here?” He resumed cursing, but Lorenzo laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Peace, friend. This place is foul enough already. No need to befoul it further.”
“Right, right, I’m sorry,” Jack muttered. “Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth. I get it. It just gives me the creeps. The signs are all wrong!”
Shrugging, Lorenzo continued down the passage. “Either way, it is magic, and we must stop it.”
They wended deeper into the catacombs, weapons close at hand as the sound of hundreds of chanting voices began swelling from the darkness. Lorenzo glanced up.
“I see spirits. Foul spirits, moving through the air. They are not of men.”
Jack shuddered.
“C’mon, man, why you always gotta say creepy things like that? If they’re not the spirits of men, what kinda spirits are they?”
Lorenzo said nothing. Soon, they could discern the endlessly repeated words of the chant.
As we are, so you once were. As you are, so we shall be!
They turned another bend and emerged into an enormous chamber. Hundreds of robed figures chanted and swayed by the flickering firelight of torches. The two men watched as the crowd slowly reached a crescendo. A tall, hooded man stood up in the middle of the room, and the crowd suddenly fell silent as his voice boomed among the cavern walls.
“Greetings, my brethren!”
“There’s our magician,” Jack whispered. “But what’s his plan? Why all these people?”
The sorcerer continued.
“Today, you shall witness a miracle! With your gathered power, these dry bones around you shall be granted flesh. Let these people be born again!”
Jack recoiled in surprise.
“This ain’t a death cult, it’s necromancy!”
Lorenzo growled and strode forward, cracking his knuckles, but before he took two steps, the congregants raised their hands, holding aloft hundreds of tiny green crystals. The magician shouted something in a strange tongue, and red light exploded from his palms. A dazzling, sickening array of color shot out, ricocheting off the cultists’ gemstones. The ground rumbled, and dust rained down from the ceiling.
Something grabbed Jack’s leg, and he spun around. A skeletal hand had broken through the floor, brittle fingers grasping his ankle. Even as he watched in horror, the hand grew stronger, small ligaments and tendons slowly reknitting the ancient bones.
Yelling, Jack kicked the hand away, then stomped on a half-formed leg. All around him, the cultists began grasping the reality of the magic they’d unleashed, and some fled.
The sorcerer’s cackle rose above the growing cacophony.
“Yes, witness the rebirth! From dust they have returned, from dust they are formed! See the power of re-Creation!”
Another skeleton lunged towards Jack, grinning hideously. He flung it away, snapping brittle bones. But more emerged from every side, attacking the living with the fury of souls inhabiting bodies they did not own.
“Jack!” Lorenzo bellowed as he fought several of the undead creatures. “The floor! It’s a circle! Use ochre!”
Jack spotted a thick line of white paint inscribed on the cavern floor. He unslung his knapsack, rooting around frantically as he was jostled on all sides. Ripping open a plastic bag full of red powder, he grabbed a fistful and smeared it on the white paint, breaking apart the lines.
Jack scrambled across the floor, rolling and dodging as he spread the pigment on every painted line. Ochre was sacred around the world for a reason; he only hoped its holiness was strong enough here. The skeletons looked grotesque now, half-formed flesh creeping over their bones as the spell’s power intensified.
Suddenly, in a brief glimpse between tangling bodies and legs, Jack saw the circle’s center, where dozens of lines converged. He dove forward, but a skeleton grabbed his ankles and dragged him back as he clawed desperately at the floor. Rolling sideways, Jack yanked his pistol from his holster and fired two silver bullets through the creature’s skull. To his relief, it collapsed lifelessly.
Jack lunged forward again, his bag of ochre lost amidst the trampling crowd. But red dirt still covered his hand, and he frantically smeared his palm across the circle’s center as he was kicked and pummeled on all sides.
The magic shifted, its power teetering for a moment. A heavy body crashed onto Jack, and he flailed blindly as screams rose all around him. His vision began growing dark.
And then, in a snap, the spell broke. Power blasted in all directions, colorful lights exploding throughout the cave before dissipating into nothingness.
Silence reigned, and Jack crawled out from under a dead cultist’s body. Most of the living had fled or been killed, but the dead had also returned to their dusty graves, their half-formed bodies collapsed throughout the cavern. Jack limped over to Lorenzo and helped the big man struggle to his feet.
“The sorcerer escaped,” Lorenzo said quietly. “We must find him before he tries another ritual like this.”
Jack surveyed the scene.
“Eventually, yeah. But first, we gotta clean this up. How’d’ya even hide something like this from the public?” He let out a long sigh. “Some days, I really hate my job.”
Rate this story:
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 3)
You need to be a registered member to rate this.
Loading...ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tell us your thoughts!