Again and again, the cycle repeats.
I’d been spared their fate, for what reason I do not know, nor can I decide if I’m grateful or ashamed for my lack of beastliness. But I suppose my own beastly nature lies in how I failed to feel sympathy towards the plight of my bloodline, my own greed—my need for more, more, more. But pain could always be cushioned by money; secrets can always be locked away in cellars until they’re proper enough to emerge once more; demons can be kept away by the wards of the Spiritualists’ books.
Never have I spoken of this to anyone; this book serves as a confession to the sin that I have committed, though I cannot say that I seek forgiveness from anyone other than God and His angels—
Terence threw the book down as he turned to a page with several drawings of the beast. The demon Claunek was scribbled in as well, its name stuffing the margins. Jane recognized the crude drawings of that skinless face. It was what taunted her in that nightmare organ-room—the idol atop the fireplace, leering down at them, silently giggling. Old Man Hayes’ drawing failed to capture the rot of the demon’s boiled skin, the way its eyes hungfrom its sockets, the stench of Hell it carried with it.
Jane flinched as Terence pushed the stool out from beneath him and stormed across the room to the bookshelf. He took hold of the family photograph, grip tight as he scowled down at it. Tears mottled his face, red as wrath.
Jane came up behind him, though kept her distance as she watched his back. Old Man Hayes sat too calmly in the portrait’s center. The blurred eyes, seeking out the demon haunting them; the burned hand a mark of their deal, in the name of regaining wealth lost. Looming behind them were those misshapen shadows, heads elongated and ears pointed. Perhaps those weren’t the shadows of setpieces, but rather the echoes of the beasts within them, servants of Claunek.
A crack spiderwebbed across the glass.
“My sister was murdered,” Terence started, strained. He sneered, and Jane saw vestiges of the beast in the fury etched into his profile. “My mother wasted away, my brothers and father reside in unmarked graves. My life has been torment, because ofhim. It was no wonder he never wanted to see us: the bastard was too much of a coward to face his victims.”
He snarled and threw the photo to the ground, and glass splintered everywhere. Jane covered her face in an instinctive jolt and hopped back with a small yelp.
“Terence…” She started as he stared down at his mess with ragged pants.
He didn’t seem to hear her.
“And thenyou—” he jabbed a shaking finger at the idol atop the mantle.
Claunek.
Terence looked as though he were trying to form words, lips trembling and eyes transfixed, but none came out. His mouthpeeled back to flash his teeth in a wolf-ish sneer. He charged to the fireplace and viciously snatched up the idol. He clutched it in a fist. Its eyes seemed to glow from beneath its veil, a wordless dare.
It was as though he had many things to say and they were all wrestling to come out at once. Whatwasone to say when they cradled their creator and eternal tormentor in the palm of their hand?
“You… You did this,” he coughed out. His body shivered, and a vein throbbed at his temple, with restraint. “And I banish you back to Hell—” He raised a hand to throw it to the ground, just as he did the portrait, but the action was abruptly cut short.
He suddenly doubled over with a violent retching sound. Each heave lurched him closer to the floor. The idol fell heavily from his grasp into the carpet. It stared at them both with its gleaming eyes.
Terence clutched his throat as he continued to gag, as if Claunek reached its unseen hands outwards to strangle him. The dim shadows he cast across the curtains, hunchbacked and feral, resembled too closely a wolf.
Jane rushed to his side and, unsure of whether to grab him or smack his back to loosen whatever may be clogged in his throat, she elected to gingerly grab his shoulders and give him a blunt shake.
“Terence, what—”
His head snapped to her, and Jane reeled backward with a gasp as he looked at her with yellow eyes. Not golden,yellow. The color of illness and Hell. The eyes of the beast. Blood had begun to ooze from corners where flesh tightened and pulled taut.
Blood foamed from his mouth as he gurgled out something resembling words. Eventually, she was able to make out only two: “C-curtains…Jane!”
Jane paused as her blood suddenly ran cold.
The curtains.
She rushed to the windows and threw aside the accursed fabric, and was met with her horrified reflection in a darkened window, the world outside having fallen into a rain-bloated darkness. It was night. The time for the beast and Claunek to roam.
Jane’s ribs rattled with a wheeze as Terence choked on another harsh gag, this one so violent it threw him to his knees.
Another retch shook his body when his pestilence-yellow eyes sought her.
Jane’s skin crawled, almost in the same manner in which the flesh of his throat twitched. It seemed as though something was wriggling its way upwards from deep within. Skin strained and split, and blood wept from the opened seams. Just as wiry fur sprouted from the wounds in hellish splinters, Terence’s crooked hands clutched at his neck, fluids and viscera leaking from between his fingers, his eyes, his mouth—everywhere.
His beastly eyes found Jane once more, and theybegged.
Help, save me, end me—run.
