Anyhow, last year they also had a KS for a monster guide, Carta Monstrorum. I'm still waiting for it to be completed and delivered, but yesterday they posted an update for backers that was a narrative extract from the journals of fictional character Clement Birkenbosch. I thought it was really cool and decided to add it here just for others to read.
The Year of Our Lord 1716
I first encountered rumours of the soulless ones deep in the wild woods of the Black Forest. Naturally, curiosity drove me to investigate, though what manner of monstrosity awaited within those dark trees I dared not contemplate. There are horrors enough on the long road, but they pale in comparison with those lurking in the isolation of those lost places. I was, I freely admit, beginning to fear my obsession with the esoteric and the arcane. It was a sickness I could not shake.
I had been travelling for more than a month through the territories of the Swabian Circle, following the whispers, gathering more and more in the way of stories. It was hard to discern what might have been the truth from what was almost certainly fever dream and fiction. I moved from lordship to lordship, trading on the goodwill of the people, offering stories from the road in return for food and drink. I had become quite the raconteur, able to hold my audience in the palm of my hand with the more macabre tales I had gathered and offered up as fabulous diversions. The food was often good, if simple, the company better.
I believed, with good reason, that I was in pursuit of some form of demonic spirit or other restless dead. There was so many accounts of ghostly happenings and frightened stories of possession, but of course, ours is an age for evil spirits. They cling to the living most maliciously.
This trail of breadcrumbs that I followed through the regions of the Black Forest was different, though. It felt more elemental in nature.
I sensed the difference within minutes of walking within a mile of the town, leaving the safety of the road in favour of exploration. There were no animals. No foragers in the undergrowth. No bird song in the canopy of leaves overhead. Only silence. Deep, undisturbed, and so very, very unnerving. That lack was the first thing about the place that I marked as uncanny, but by no means the last. According to my map, I was little more than ten miles from the lordship of Messkirch as the raven flies. The world can change a lot in such a comparatively short distance.
I walked into town, not sure what to expect. I did not, I must admit, expect to be greeted like a saviour, but the township had petitioned its lord for holy aid, and these poor souls took me for that aid. I did not disabuse them of the notion for it served my purpose, and truth be told I had more than a few tricks that would help me pass for a holy man. Claiming hunger, I ventured into what passed for a taproom in the small town, looking to whet my appetite and wet my lips after hours on the road. I tried to pay for the food and drink, but the barkeep would have none of it. I asked about a room, and though he was quick to discourage me, when I would not be deterred he did offer up one of the three rooms he had set aside for guests that never came. After a decent meal, I retreated to my chamber, where I stumbled upon a crude carving in the wooden doorway that convinced me I was in the right place; it is hard to describe with any great accuracy, but easy to visualise—a stooped figure of a man, a traveller, nothing unnatural or sinister about that, but there was a second figure, an almost perfect mimic of the first, more of a shadow-shape than an actual man, carved around the traveller’s body as though cradling or clinging to his back like some sort of demonic burden.
It matched several of the more bizarre tales I had heard on the road. It was reasonable to assume the carver was the source of the stories, but there was a message in this crude carving that I knew I would be a fool to ignore. Despite my better judgment, or perhaps because of it, I decided to stay long enough to satisfy my curiosity.
All of these stories had similar roots, and all of those roots were entwined with a grave. It didn’t take long to find a fresh one in what passed for the town’s cemetery. The marker named the inhabitant as a nine year old boy, Ezekiel. It is never easy when a child dies, not least for the child. That is one truth I have learned on this long journey of enlightenment. I have seen more than enough to know that it is naïve to dismiss the other world and the afterlife. I have witnessed hauntings and possessions of the most brutal nature, and indeed performed exorcisms as a pious man. Very little in this life, or after it, surprises me now. But what was to happen that night, that surprised me. No, I must not bear false witness. What I lived through terrified me.
These good people were terrified of sunfall and what it would bring.
The hours of darkness unshackled an entity, allowing it to make mischief. And what mischief!
When I returned from the grave and sought out the grieving parents I heard tell how their poor damned son had risen out of the dirt every night since its harrowing death, making a mockery of its tender soul.
Every night.
Both mother and father were living in terror of a child they had loved and nourished and nurtured, and lost no more than a week ago. They were living through their own damnable hell. So when they looked to me and asked if I was the holy man come to see their boy to his eternal rest how could I tell the truth?
I am no Lutheran minister, neither am I a rabbi, but for these fine god-fearing parents I would be all that and more. I have come to understand death. I know now that the dead need a compelling reason to haunt the living so. I asked questions, hoping that they might offer some understanding, but the more I heard of young Ezekiel the more he sounded like a normal nine year old boy, full of curiosity and mischief, yes, but an innocent with a good heart and a warm smile. Not the essence of a vengeful wraith come for retribution or to see justice.
I helped them barricade the doors and shutter the windows so that the boy could not gain access to what had been his home. I hated the work. It went against my every instinct, which was to gather knowledge, to learn what drove this restless spirit and help it find peace if peace was there to be found, but it wasn’t about what I needed right then, it was about his parents.
I am no fool—or perhaps I am just a small fool, but I had an idea.
“Will you permit me to do something?” I asked, explaining that on my travels I had encountered this thing, a Mezuzah, which in the Jewish faith was a warding that placed the words of God on the doorposts as protection against evil entering. I did not put it on the front door, but rather on the second doorway inside their home, effectively protecting the bedroom. I doubted very much that this particular soul owed allegiance to the Jewish god, but any slight protection was better than no protection or warding. It wasn’t as though the dead would mock me for adhering to the wrong religion, after all. I inked out the words on a piece of paper torn from the back of this very journal, a single line from Deuteronomy 6:4: Hear O Israel, the LORD our GOD, the LORD is ONE.
The thing is, the Mezuzah wasn’t for the dead boy, it was for the living who I asked to hide behind it. I believe in the arcane, the unnatural and the bizarre, but more than anything I believe in faith and humanity and these two people trusted me. They looked to me for help and sometimes the illusion is enough.
It wasn’t until the first rattle of the door that I began to doubt myself.
The dead truly did WALK this unholy land.
But why?
Why, to me, is always a more compelling question than how. The answers to why are more often than not fascinating, and more convoluted than simply because something can happen.
I heard his fingers clawing at the wooden shutters. Clawing. Scratching. Raking down the wood.
My breathing was shallow. Quick.
What I had in mind was suicide. I knew that. And yet… I knew that I was going to go through with it. I had no choice. Not if I wanted to free the boy from the evil spirit clinging to his corpse and finally let him find his eternal rest.
Armed only with an oil lantern, I crept close to the window, leaning my back against the wall and listening. The thin yellow light offered a glimpse of the now decomposing face as the boy grinned at me. He raised his hands, beseeching me, begging without words. I knew what he wanted. It was such a natural desire, he wanted to come home. Who was I to deny him?
I whispered, barely loud enough for my words to carry back to the boy’s parents, and yet he heard, or the thing that possessed him did. It reeled back, howling at the night sky as though slapped, as I intoned, “This house is protected.”
During my many ordeals I have learned much of the transmigration of souls. Some faiths refer to it as reincarnation, but that is an over-optimistic interpretation of the phenomenon. In the Kabbalah it is called Gilgul. For whatever reason, a soul cannot ascend. It clings to this place. To a person. It isn’t ready to ascend. Some call these clinging spirits. I have heard them called Dybbuks, too.
Is the clinging spirit a sinner? Do they fear punishment or eternal damnation? Have they been cut off from God, whatever god it is they believe in? Or is it something more? Unfinished business? That manner of thought offers a clue to what I had in mind, and how I hoped to deal with this restless one. I needed to speak with the dead.
There are a pair of abjurations I learned from a Persian mystic involving an empty vessel and a white candle that might be used to trap a lost soul. The first involves the discovery of the clinging spirit’s true name. True names are not necessarily the same as birth names, and wielding them is never easy, but there is such power in a true name. In cases of possession, speaking it with confidence, along with the second flawlessly incanted abjuration, is enough to compel a spirit to flee the host body, drawing it into the empty vessel which will glow a haunting, bloody, red when the deed is done. Such is the wielder’s power that he commands dominance over the spirit and may force it to do his bidding, not merely retreat into the trap of the empty vessel. For that reason, as well as many more, denizens of the other world are fiercely protective of their true names, and more than capable of killing to keep them secret.
Which is why what I intended to do was nothing short of insanity…
“I am going to open the door,” I warned the parents. “You are going to hear things… awful things… It will sound like tortures unimaginable, but remember, it is not your child. Whatever you hear, you must remember that… It is no longer your boy.”
They did as they were told.
What had become so much more than Ezekiel continued to scratch at the door. It was a desolate sound. Nails dragging down wood, picking out splinters, over and over.
I opened the door.
Face-to-face the boy’s injuries were harrowing to see, as was the cruel intelligence behind his dead eyes. “You are welcome in this place, spirit. Enter.” I stepped aside to allow him to enter. I have a few conjurations and abjurations at my disposal. Most are little more than tricks, but it is how you use those tricks that counts, not how powerful they are. I once witnessed a single man with little more than a blush of bluish light create a legend that lives on to this day. That is the true power of it.
“What do you want here?” I demanded.
“This is my home,” the dead boy said, sounding so very reasonable. Then he giggled, a manic sound that shattered the illusion of sanity.
“Not anymore,” I told it. “Now tell me, what is it you want here? What do you hope to achieve? How can I help you move on?”
“I have no intention of moving on, I like it here.”
“You mistake me, spirit. I am not giving you a choice.” I began to shape the first syllables of the abjuration on my tongue and the child flew at me, sensing what I intended.
Even as he clawed at my eyes, seeking to blind me, I said the first of the four lines. It tried to choke the air out of my lungs as I said the second and the third lines, shrieking and howling out its frustration. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t need to. All I needed to do was whisper the fourth and final line, compelling the spirit to name itself.
It spat the name out like it was poison on its tongue. “Morrrrrd eck… eye… Reeeeezlah.”
I repeated it, along with the simple demand, “Let go of me.” And the boy relinquished his choke hold on my throat. “You do not belong in this boy,” I told it. “You are not welcome. The child has done nothing to you. Leave his flesh, Mordecai Rizla. End the child’s torment.” The boy’s body bucked and writhed as the evil spirit clinging to it was expelled from nose and mouth in a black smoke that hung in the air for a moment. The boy fell, dead again. Before the spirit could blow away on the wind in search of another host body, I voiced the second abjuration, forcing it into the small glass bottle I set down on the table. The smoke streamed in tatters around the mouth of the bottle, swirling in an eddying gyre until, as I finished the last word of the abjuration, it coiled and curled around itself, spilling into the mouth of the bottle. As the last curls of black smoke disappeared inside, I capped the small glass bottle with its cork. It was done.
The bottle glowed redly in my hand.
