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The dead man answered thus:
"What good gift shall God give us?"
The boards answered him anon:
"Flesh to feed Hell's worm upon."
--- Algernon Charles
Swinburne
"After Death"
Being the first important mission and one of the earliest recorded episodes of mystical inquiry by the master hunter of the arcane, Troy Revexi, better known as The Shadowchaser.
A cold wind whips frigid rain into my face as I walk beneath the smothering dark gray sky. The chill wind even finds egress into my tightly wrapped trench coat. I have been trudging along the swollen banks of the Serpentine in Hyde Park for forty-five minutes, but the meeting has not taken place. Still, I will not let the no show and oppressive atmosphere darken my mood.
Today is the culmination of my searches. My name is Troy Revexi, and I am a freelance hunter of what you might call rare and unusual artifacts. Treasures to some, reviled objects of horror to others. Demonic, mystical, spiritual, occult - well, if you must pigeonhole, I prefer the term arcane. I have spent my twenty-eight years searching the world for these artifacts, at the hire of some, well, to be coy, rare and unusual individuals and institutions. But today was my own day. A tracker-for-hire hunts for a living, but always for others. There is a peculiar dissatisfaction that one comes to live with as a part of this life. However, along the way the hunter cannot help occasionally finding the spoor of prey so spectacular, so incredible that he must keep them for himself. I was searching for my prize today, my own treasure. And was about to find it. Though I must allow a cautionary thought: the hunter is also at risk of becoming the hunted.
Over the last several years, I have found myself increasingly drawn to London. My search for arcane knowledge first brought me to English shores some years back. Since that time, though, my quest has led me in ever-decreasing circles back to this island, now to the point of infatuation. London has always been a center of mystical awareness, as even Londinium founded by the Romans before the age of Christ was built upon the ruins of far more ancient cultures. It is no different today.
I returned to London three weeks prior, this time in search of the Lakashym Meenkashekoh, an ancient Hebrew tome of dark sorcery. It is here, somewhere. This I am assured of, though exactly where and in whose possession, I know not. If found, it will prove to be the most valuable item in my collection. Today's meeting was to be the answer to this search.
I stare blankly across the Serpentine and watch the fluid union of heaven and earth. The rain looks like long gray strings stretched from the surface of the water to the slate of the sky, as innumerous as the strands of some immense, dewy web..
"And on the darkest of days the people avert their eyes while demons converge in the heart of the storm."
A grave, frightfully deep voice shakes me from my reverie. I feel a chill touch my soul far colder than the biting wind.
I turn to find a dour-faced, dark-skinned giant standing behind me. He is garbed in black; the boots, heavy wool pants, featureless turtleneck covered by a matching black leather jacket, and all topped off with a black bowler. His eyes are lost in the shadow of his brim, but I can see that his cheeks and hands and the skin of his neck and head visible beneath the high razored and harshly shorn edge of his black hair, which barely exceeds the rim of the bowler, are of a swarthy complexion. The overall effect was that of a man eternally wrapped in shadows.
"Razin?" I query, knowing full well the answer.
The dark giant smiles coldly, his thin lips a slightly curved hard line, and gave a slight nod. I do not know of any other name in connection with him, only Razin. A British friend in arcane circles had set up this meeting.
"You are the American." His voice rumbles out as if spoken from a great depth.
"Yes." I try to peer beneath the rim of his hat. "You have knowledge of the Lak..."
He hisses violently, cutting me off. "Do not mention it again," he warns, leaning in. I catch a glimpse of jagged, yellow teeth as he speaks.
A scent of strong herbs, perhaps garlic and cumin, fills my nostrils before being drawn away on the wind. I shake off the feeling of revulsion trying to creep over me. "Very well. Shall we off?"
He nods again and suddenly strides off. His long stride forces me to keep a brisk pace. I am soaked through, but as we walked I notice the water beading on his jacket and imagine that it beads on his skin as well. I think of the similarity between the tanned leather of his jacket and his skin.
We follow the Serpentine, and I watch the dark waters, unreflective due to the constant choppy rippling of the surface from the rain, lie off to our side as if in wait. Utterly silent, we take the Ring out of Hyde Park. At Marble Arch we catch the Tube. The walk has been quiet, other than the wet tread of our feet, and now the ride is only the monotony of mechanical noise. Luckily, it only lasts two stops and we get off at Oxford Circus. He leads me through a maze of streets and I realize shortly that we were in Soho. He seems to know his way quite well and in little over twenty minutes we have found our way deep into the heart of an area of small dark streets and dirty, blacker alleys.
The lanes seem quiet and repressed, almost vacant as if the inclement weather has driven everyone away, maybe indoors or further yet on holiday, seeking the light and warmth of Mediterranean climes. I listen to the fall of the rain and the sounds of our footsteps echoing off the walls and fancy his dull thumping boots a heart beat while my sloshing steps are a feeble small animal being sucked into a bog.
We turn into a narrow alley that ends in a wall. Midway down one wall is a small door. Razin produces a key and unlocks it. He steps through into darkness and without hesitation I follow.
The door creaks shut behind me and for a moment I am entombed in total blackness, the air heavy with the earthen musk of age. With a click the room is doused in light. Razin is standing by a switch on the far wall.
I can see now that we've entered a book store of some kind, the old shop's walls lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves, excepting the one clear wall where Razin stands. In this clear wall is the inset of another doorway. The shop's air is stuffy and full of the dust of years. I am unsure if it is an active store or one long closed.
"What now, then?" I can't help but ask after we stand for several minutes.
"I've heard that Americans talk too much and listen too little. What an arrogant race," Razin sneers. Opening the door briskly, he moves his great bulk through the other doorway.
I follow him again. We pass through two more rooms of books and reach the rear of the shop. Here there is a stairway leading down. Like many London buildings, I fancy this one has a cellar.
He flips another switch and lights up a staircase spiraling down sharply into deeper darkness. He suddenly speaks, making me jump. "When I first heard of you I laughed. Your offer was very substantial, but I dislike people from the young countries. I did not trust you at all. Your treatise on the Nicaean Iron was amusing, at best."
I was taken aback by this sudden burst of conversation from the formerly silent giant, and the fact that all it entailed was my humiliation. The Nicaean Iron paper had been warmly received at several universities. It helped establish my reputation as an antiquities scholar, not just another loudmouthed mystic charlatan. Cheap astrologers and reincarnationists were my bane.
He chuckles and descends the staircase. "It's no insult to your writing, Mr. Revexi, but that you should write about only what you know. But then, I guess, you'd be almost as old as I." His laughter, deep and throaty, resonates strangely up that narrow spiral.
I feel a great unease settle in my bones as I descended that stairway. I begin to feel the first tickling comprehension of the child with the adult, or worse the mouse with the cat. The air grows thicker and the smell of mold and decay is greater below the ground. Books lined the walls of the narrow passages that lead off in two directions. We follow one which is periodically interspersed with small rooms full of high piles of manuscripts and ancient worm-eaten volumes. A ways on we reach another stair and descend once again, into a system of dank, stinking passages this time of dark wet walls unlined with shelves.
The tunnels are of thick cut square stones, dripping moisture and outlined with black, slimy molds. We must be well below the level of the river. We walk mostly in darkness, broken only by small sputtering kerosene lamps bolted occasionally into the wall. The light throws narrow black shadows dancing around us as we walk. The tunnels are filled with the pungent stench of rot and decay that burns my nostrils and waters my eyes.
"There is something you should know about the Spells of Darkness, American."
I start again at his voice, having been hypnotized by the constant drumming of his boots in the tunnel. Curious that he named the book, I ask, "I thought we could never mention the book again?"
"No. Just not its true name. Refer to it as Spells of Darkness. In your young tongue that evokes nothing," Razin explains.
My blood chills at the thought. What evil might I bring upon myself - might have already brought upon myself, when referring to that book? I have numerous times over the years.
Razin seems to read my mind. "I have known of you for some time. You are quite careless in what you say. When you say the wrong thing, things know it. Whoever fathoms the power of the puny human voice to pierce the fabric of the worlds?"
I shudder. Scared now even to speak, lest I say something that reaches down into the deepest pit in hell and awakes what nameless horror, I clamp my mouth shut and follow.
We reach another door, thick oak, iron bound with large round-headed rivets. Razin unlock it as well, though he holds it firmly closed. He turns to stare at me, his face completely enshrouded in black. "Do you wish still to possess the book?"
I stare at the shadowed man. He seems to be genuinely offering me the choice to leave it be, one rarely offered in occult work. Deep inside is the burning desire I have held so long, yet now there seems an icy chill throughout my body warning me against it. I am burning with questions, about the book, about the truth and also, now, about this strange, dark giant. He has made several offhand comments during the conversation that make me seriously question his age and my conception of reality.
My lust for knowledge eventually wins out, and I nod vehemently. "I must possess the book! I've waited half my life!" A shout, over loud. Suddenly I seem out of control. I no longer care what dangers lay ahead, only that I possess the Spells of Darkness no matter the cost. I move for the door, but Razin pushed me firmly away.
"I see it is too late." His hands trace a complex pattern in the air, then he lowers his head and releases the door.
It flies open, blasted by a foul rush of freezing air. The wind blows me back a step and I the corridor grows darker. I do not know the fate of the lamps along the path. A low moaning accompanies the rush of air from the door.
Almost fainting from a sudden overpowering nausea, I fall to my hands and knees. The fetid stench of rotting organic material washes over me so powerfully that I retch uncontrollably. I think I hear his harsh laughter, but all sound in lost with my own gagging.
Powerful hands grip my sides and lift me to my feet. Razin shakes me and curses. "Come on, child. This is your desire. Be strong enough to live it out."
With this I am hurled bodily through the gaping doorway, headlong into that foul wind. It seems to carry me aloft in a weightless black void where I can sense nothing other than the rushing of that frozen wind and the horrible stench of decay. In this void I first swoon.
* * *
I awake to a harsh prodding. Opening my eyes, I flinch at the sight of a grotesquely twisted dwarf prodding me with a wooden staff. He is a disgustingly disfigured, gnomish parody of a man.
When he realizes me awake he lurches back a step and grins. Lips writhe like worms. Rotten black nubs are his teeth. He leans on his staff for support as I sit up, determined to live beyond this nightmare.
I am in a small pit. Light of unknown origin reveals its walls and a singular spiral of dark stairs, above which stretch an infinite darkness wherein I hear the moaning rush of air.
Returning my attention to the dwarf, I ask, "You are?"
"Mikhashephe, to some," he rasps in a heavy accent, my language coming difficultly to him. "Or Kosem, or Magus, or otherwise. But, I prefer Mikhashephe."
I stare at his scarred features. It is written in some tales that the Spells of Darkness had originally been penned by a madman named Mikhashephe. But this is five thousand year old myth. I laugh loudly. Surely I am mad from a blow suffered in my fall. Perhaps I am not with a dwarf at all, but only deliriously misperceiving Razin. A dwarf for a giant, what will I think next!
The dwarf draws up and his expression becomes wrathful. "How dare you laugh in my face, mortal worm! Suffer what you deserve!"
Mikhashephe lurches forward and grabs my wrist with painful strength. With that contact my body jerks taunt as if electrocuted and my mind goes numb. Thinking nothing, I can only perceive.
The rock walls seem to melt away and the void lights with spectral webs of lightning. The air fills with crashing thunder and terrible moans and shrieks. The screams rent my head with absolute terror, so soul-wrenching are they.
>A huge burst of red lightning fills the void and I see a great shape sitting on a throne. To the right of the throne is a black, ironbound tome resting upon a pedestal. I can see that the floor of this pit is alive with writhing human and half-human forms that seemed fused into one.
The shrieks issue forth from this floor-mass of organisms and the foul wind streams out of this incomprehensible thing upon the throne. The image is beyond terror and horror and penetrates my soul to its core. I can neither scream nor faint nor even die. I only know that what I am seeing is real, so damnably true that I will never again doubt its existence, though I doubt everything else I have now seen. I realize now that the chill I felt in the wind I did not feel with my skin, but rather with my soul. It is the only way I can manifest the absolute radiance of evil that I feel, blazing over my soul like a black nova.
Beside me I hear, but can not see, Mikhashephe speak.
"Surprised at the truth? So was Dante. Yes, this is it. This is the result of a lifelong search for power through the black arts. Just as the twisting dark paths of knowledge possess corrupt versions of humanity, so they corrupt the soul - twisting mind and body to their will. Look at me and you see the greatness of my magic. Look at yourself and you'll see the stinking, rotting corpse I hold in my hands.
"Now, live up to your greatest dreams. Approach He Who Awaits y ou on the throne, and take the Lakashym Meenkashekoh in your hands. Do it now, living corpse!"
Suddenly, like the coming of dawn, I see it shift on the great throne and scream for my life. I scream to God to forgive me and save me and free me from this Abysmal pit and the want of the Book of Darkness. I plead with my soul, squeezing my eyes closed so I no longer can behold the truth. I pray now for death, even - any deliverance at all.
It came.
* * *
I wake to a prodding. Screaming, I jerk away violently and try to grab the wooden staff of Mikhashephe. I hurt myself with the straps. Opening my eyes, I find myself in a hospital bed, strapped down with thick belts.
A lady in white is hovering over me and behind her, towering above, is a man in black
"Told you I could wake him. He was not in a coma, he was just scared to come out and face the world like it really is. I am right am I not, you young American scum?" The swarthy man laughs at me.
At first I can not remember anything, even who I am. All I know is, the big man terrifies me.
"You'll have to leave now, Mr. Razin," the nurse states.
The truth returns as a howling black wind. I shake uncontrollably with a fevered chill, my teeth chattering.
"I should," he nods. I know him now. Razin. The old black giant who led me to the Spells of Darkness, who led me to the bowels of Hell. "Good life to you, child. And remember, do not go looking where you should not be - you might find something you do not like."
With this the dark giant bursts out into laughter again and leaves the room.
The nurse tries to soothe me, but I don't care. I can't. For whatever reason, I have been allowed to live. But knowing what's there, what is lurking in life, I can't waste this chance to correct myself.
(Excerpted from The Journal of Troy Killebrew Revexi. Editor's addition to the text.)
Looking back now, a quarter of a century later, I can clearly see that this day, the day I began my long association with the giant Razin, the day I attained the goal of my childhood dreams, once the very worst in my experience - the day when I first knew and embraced absolute terror and thus the day I quit, gave up all hope and turned away from my chosen profession - is in fact the first day. It is the day of the test, the day of the threshold between ignorance and knowledge, lies and truth. The day that burned away my baby fat and re-fired my clay into that of a man. The day I can look back on and say with absolute certainty: This day I became the Shadowchaser.
Copyright © 1997 Peter A. Worthy
"Black Revelations" © 1997 by Thomas Fortenberry
