The Essence of Darkness Page 5

  The three shadows had left the area.

  “Satellite surveillance, this is Cooper. Do you have a visual on me in the area?”

  No response.

  “Satellite surveillance, I repeat: do you have a visual on me?”

  Silence, once again.

  “Nothing’s going through here!” he exclaimed. “The fog must be blocking it.”

  He climbed up onto a megalith whose top rose above the milky fog.

  “Satellite surveillance, do you read me?”

  “We read you, Agent Cooper.”

  “The persistent fog covering the ruins is interfering. Did the targets show up again outside the valley?”

  “Negative.”

  “They should have—unless they’re still in the area, which I doubt.

  “Check your sensors.”

  “I will, once it’s daylight. I’m going to stay here tonight and probably the next few nights too. If our nocturnal visitors reappear, I’ll be there to see what they’re up to.”

  “We’ll stay in constant contact with you.”

  “Perfect. Out.”

  He shed his equipment. He was dripping with sweat. He staggered down to the stream, knelt at the water’s edge, and plunged his head into it, taking large, cold gulps while he was at it. After he set up his tent, he took no time sliding into his sleeping bag and dropping off to sleep.

  When he opened his eyes, the sun was on the horizon. The whitish veil that floated above the circular alignments of megaliths overshadowed the dawn’s glow. The huge stones rising toward the sky looked like frozen sentinels. What kind of secret were they keeping? He had pitched his tent in the crevice of a rock, hidden behind the foliage of bushes and ferns. He climbed out of his sleeping bag and remained naked for a few minutes, stretching, letting the cold air energize his slender body with its well-defined muscles. He got dressed, walked to the stream to splash water on his face, and then set to work.

  Cooper spent most of the day checking the devices he had set up around the valley. Although everything seemed to be working, but the system had recorded no images or sounds, which was technically impossible. Yet all he could do was observe the facts, powerless to change them. In addition, the blanket of fog made satellite transmission impossible. Had the three silhouettes that had appeared last night taken advantage of this invisibility to disappear? Had they realized someone was observing them?

  He tried several times to break through the interference and restore the signal under the layer of fog, but to no avail. And when he came out of the mists and contacted the satellite relay agent . . .

  “This is Agent Cooper.”

  He heard only silence.

  “Do you read me?”

  He let nearly a minute go by.

  “Satellite relay, do you read me?”

  There was no response.

  He changed locations and repeated the call with no result. The signal no longer came through, even outside the blanket of fog.

  The interference zone appeared to have extended beyond the valley.

  “This is Agent Cooper.”

  After a few minutes, he abandoned his attempts to call.

  In addition to the communications, Cooper soon realized that every device he had installed was now inoperative. He sat down and thought calmly about possible solutions. If he returned to the cabin, he could surely restore transmissions from the server. His main concern was the nature of the malfunction. It was like some kind of virus had spread. His computer equipment did show symptoms of a viral attack. He was now completely alone and could only rely on himself to hold his position in the area. For a long time, he watched a loop of the brief images capturing the three silhouettes that had appeared during the night.

  The circular alignment of the megaliths suggested that these ruins could have been a place once sacred. The three female shadows might have been performing some kind of ritual there. He deduced this by reviewing the recordings where one of the silhouettes was probably holding a book open in front of her.

  He got up and took a few steps, still lost in his thoughts. The absence of wind plunged the woods into such a state of immobility that even time itself seemed to have stopped. He tried to re-establish the satellite connection without success. It would have been wiser to go back to the cabin to notify headquarters and get some backup, but he decided to stay hidden in the ruins. His feeling that the three shadows would appear again that very night had hardened into certainty.

  The daylight slowly faded, making way for dusk. The night spread like black water into every corner of the woods. He had positioned himself up high on a hill away from the mound so as not to leave any area of the maze outside his field of vision. He stretched out on his stomach, partly covered by a carpet of humus. With his eye to his telescope and keeping within reach what little equipment was still working, he waited. Around eleven p.m., a breeze stirred, lifting dead leaves that danced in the corridors of the ruins.

  “A little movement,” Cooper whispered, following the leaves through his viewfinder.

  At 11:28 p.m., the wind blew harder now, howling a funereal lament between the old stones. This place was nothing more than a sinister theater where the only performance was death. The moon finally rose and shed its light on the mantle of mist.

  That’s when he heard noises farther down in the valley.

  They were coming toward the ruins.

  He listened closely, holding his breath.

  Crackling twigs resonated like thunderclaps in the silence unbroken until then.

  They were definitely footsteps.

  And the footsteps were getting closer.

  A surge of adrenaline swept through his body. His index finger flexed automatically on the trigger of his gun. The three silhouettes appeared, climbing the mound without a sound, as light as the mist that wove around them. It seemed to welcome them with its milky coils.

  6

  They were three young women, strangely identical, extraordinarily beautiful. Their black hair curled over their shoulders. Their graceful faces were as pale as the moon that had just risen. They glided between the megaliths and seemed to float above the ground in their dark wool robes that trailed behind them. They looked around suspiciously, and then one of them became engrossed in reciting psalms, but Cooper didn’t recognize the language she was speaking. They arrived at the center of the ruins and positioned themselves in a triangle, just as they had done the previous night. Cooper crawled toward them, positioning himself high up so that he could observe them better.

  Once he was above them, what he heard froze the blood in his veins. The one chanting had begun shaking. Her voice, or rather the voice—because what came from her throat could not belong to a young woman—was fluctuating wildly, in an almost palpable insanity. Her face had transformed into that of a vile creature, convulsed by evil in its raw state. Blackish, coagulated blood oozed from folds that streaked her cadaverous complexion. And as her hideous mouth vomited a flood of sinister words, she trembled as her bulging eyes feverishly followed the lines in the huge book she was holding.

  The other two circled around her with slow, solemn steps, occasionally stroking her hair affectionately. After a long while, the malevolent incantations stopped, and the three silhouettes froze in place. They remained there for a several endless minutes, standing perfectly still without making a single sound.

  Cooper lay there watching them, half petrified, struggling to make sense of the situation. Torn between disbelief and terror, he was as silent and motionless as they were. Then they came back to life. The officiant once again had the appearance of a young woman as surprisingly beautiful as ten minutes before. Then they left again, inscrutable, toward the bottom of the valley from which they had emerged.

  Cooper didn’t have enough evidence to intervene or send a credible report to his superiors; at least he had nothing that related to the disappearances of the children of St. Marys. But he was onto something serious here. Luckily, he’d managed to record the sce
ne on his cell phone.

  Witches, he thought. Although Native American blood flowed through his veins, this kind of belief was foreign to him. However, he had to face facts; he had obviously just witnessed what seemed to be a witchcraft ceremony.

  The next day passed again in the gloomy tranquility of the bleak woods. The stench of the malevolent energy that had spread the night before still floated in the air. Putrid odors heavy with miasmas attacked his nostrils with each breath. In his report, he noted that these fumes could only emanate from the ground, just like the stubborn mists whose vaporous composition was still unknown to him.

  “Day Fourteen of the mission,” he began, speaking into his recorder. “Last night, the ruins were the scene of events I would describe as occult. Three female individuals engaged in esoteric practices similar to those of the black masses associated with witchcraft. Is there a connection between these three young women, these singular ruins, and the kidnappings in St. Marys? This is the only question to which I must provide a concrete and rational answer, even if, for the time being, many of the events that have taken place in these forests remain difficult to explain.

  He picked up his phone and opened the file of images he had managed to film. But an error message indicated the file wasn’t readable.

  At dusk, a huge moon rose, even fuller than the night before. Soon, it bathed the woods in light. He was hiding in a cavity just above the place where the ceremony had taken place the day before, almost part of the rock. He had been on the lookout for several hours, practically invisible, his face covered with black paint. He knew the three priestesses would eventually show up. His hunting instinct had never failed him; maybe this was a gift from his ancestors. So when he heard the rustling of crushed leaves and branches shaking, he wasn’t surprised.

  The three silhouettes stood outlined in the silver light. They walked solemnly toward the ruins, their faces covered with hoods. One of them had a large basket made of black fabric slung over her shoulder; it clearly contained something heavy. They arrived at the flat, circular area at the foot of the large megalith on which Cooper was hiding. They pushed back their hoods. Their angelic faces were so close that he could describe their graceful contours in detail. While two of them set up a circle of torches, which they lit one by one, the third drew the lines of a large pentagram on the ground with a white powder. Their preparations now expertly completed, they began their macabre ritual.

  Two of the priestesses bowed gracefully to the enchantress, who slowly undressed until she was almost naked. Only a sheer veil covered her, hinting at her breasts and intimate parts. The other two started chanting, gradually entering a trance. They were now performing a haunting dance around the first one. One of them then grabbed a torch and placed it over a stone altar. She ceremoniously pulled the huge book she would use for the ritual out of the black basket. She placed it in the hands of the officiant, who opened it up and began to chant its evil verses.

  The other two seemed to be at fever pitch and struggled to contain their frenzy. They stomped their feet, shouted, and beat the air with their arms, like puppets waiting for the hand of evil to come and seize the strings of their will to animate them.

  The officiant, now shaking with violent tremors, approached the altar. Cooper then noticed something at ground level. He had a clear view of a blackish cloud that rose from the ground and curled over to the officiant’s feet. Then the thing slowly rose up the length of her legs. As if animated by some form of consciousness, the repulsive swarm seemed to seek out the moist warmth of the priestess. She stood with thighs spread, ready for the hideous fluid to penetrate her. Then the thing suddenly slipped into her open crotch. The priestess shuddered with convulsions, carried away in a deathly metamorphosis. At first, Cooper heard bones cracking. Then dark smoke, as thick as ink suspended in water, began to gush out through all the poor girl’s pores and orifices. She flailed and uttered horrifying screams. The black cloud masked her atrocious transformation; its tendrils coiled around the young woman in sinister embraces. When the screams had faded, the priestess’s body, now as dark as coal, had stretched, grown in height. The creature had to be ten feet tall. Its face was now decrepit, as black as ebony, split by two reptilian pupils, and adorned with an oversized mouth that crossed its entire width. The teeth were like a row of sharp, black, shiny blades. Heavy threads of drool flowed from its vile mouth, which continued to issue a stream of incantatory gurgles. The creature reared up and sniffed the air. Cooper held his breath. The thing then approached the altar, opened the black fabric hamper with its outrageously long, bony hand, and emptied its contents onto the stone altar.

  At that instant, reality tipped into the most brutal horror.

  On the altar lay a shapeless, bloody mass. Cooper adjusted the brightness of his viewfinder to get a clear look. It was the mutilated body of a young child. Hysteria had taken hold of the other two women, whose dancing had turned into violent spasms. The creature also seemed to be in the grip of a force that had taken possession of its awful carcass. It threw itself on the child’s bruised body and began to devour it with furious greed. Cooper heard the creature’s jaws and sharp teeth dislocate the bones and tear apart the flesh. Without waiting another second, he grabbed his handgun to put an end to the carnage. He leaped down from the top of the megalith, landing in the middle of the pentagram less than two yards from the creature. It swung around in a flash and stared at him with its pale eyes. It stopped chewing and studied him with interest for a moment. Cooper gave no warning before emptying his clip into the beast, which collapsed.

  The other two harpies froze and stared at him, petrified with terror. He suddenly realized that what they were actually looking at was behind him, floating above his head.

  It was too late.

  The black cloud descended on him.

  *

  When Cooper opened his eyes, the sun shining above the milky mist of the ruins blinded him.

  He was stretched out on the ground, completely naked.

  He was cold. His body radiated pain.

  In his mouth, a harsh, gamey taste gave him uncontrollable nausea. He vomited the contents of his stomach, dumping a stream of reddish liquid onto the grassy mound. Blood mixed with lumpy substances, torn, crushed, bits of bone of varying sizes. He fell to his knees and emptied himself again in a liberating spasm.

  “What’s happen to—?”

  A third ruby-red stream gushed from his mouth, along with partially digested bits of flesh. He covered his mouth with his hands out of reflex, both to stop another bloody torrent and stifle a scream, but he couldn’t contain either one. He howled a primal scream like a newborn baby opening his eyes to the kingdom of hell.

  Then he collapsed on the wet ground, curled up, and shook with spasms. Only after a long time did he open his eyes again and look to the sky, begging for all of this to be just a nightmare. But the sight of his body covered in coagulated, black blood all the way to his feet, and stinking of death, wasn’t a hallucination. He tried to pull himself together and regain as much focus as possible. He needed to understand what was happening to him and find solutions—fast.

  How long had he been unconscious? He was now down below the maze, near the stream. He had probably rolled down here after losing consciousness. He gathered his remaining strength and climbed up the mound. Questions rushed through his mind, each more inconceivable than the last, but he ignored them so that he wouldn’t have to imagine the possible answers. His clothes were scattered throughout the corridors of the ruins. He picked them up and dressed as well as he could in the clothes that weren’t torn. He tried to recall the events that had taken place before he lost consciousness, but a vague fuzziness clouded his thoughts. His last memory was killing that creature, then . . . nothing, just a total absence of memory. He stumbled from rock to rock, dreading what he was about to discover. When he reached the circular area, what he saw made him retch again, but with nothing left to vomit, he could only belch loudly.

 
Cooper fell to his knees on the ocher earth covered with blood. Shredded pieces of flesh—the remains of several bodies, apparently three in total—littered the ground. The evil force had trampled the satanic pentagram, now almost wiped away. Images flashed through his mind. Salvos of ever-bloodier scenes exploded inside his head. The unbearable visions linked together until they assembled into a coherent chronology. His memory managed to reorganize all of this abominable chaos because it was necessary to understand, to carry out a reconstruction. His rationality and powers of analysis regained control. He managed to realize objectively what had actually happened.

  He remembered the black cloud, the incantations, the priestess transformed into a monstrous creature eager for blood. He remembered the massacre that followed and his intervention. The images were jerky, shaky, and in a confused order. He managed to visualize the black cloud penetrating his body, stirring his entrails, stretching his bones, tearing his flesh.

  And then he saw in his mind, with the eyes of that creature he had become, all the horror—all the horror he himself had perpetrated.

  That night, Agent Cooper, who had been pursuing and tracking evil for years for the FBI, had just executed the most unbelievably atrocious acts the human consciousness could imagine. Based on the condition of the bodies and the scraps of memories that came back to him, he realized he had partially devoured the three young women, alive, and the remains of a child, probably one of those missing from St. Marys.

  Those were the facts.

  Even if all of this was hard to believe, objectively speaking, this was what had happened. Something had taken complete control of his will and seized him as one grabs a simple object, making any use of him it wanted.

  “Okay . . . Now what do I do?” he shouted, agonizing with horror.

  He felt like a tightrope walker, dancing a waltz with madness, twirling above the underworld on a thread that threatened to snap at any moment.

  He looked around, haggard, unable to ask himself any more questions. The question machine had short-circuited. Scattered here and there on the ground, the dismembered bodies shrieked all the horror of the night. They hung on the walls of the megaliths like the improvised ornaments at a funeral. Cooper crawled to the altar and knelt before the remains of what he assumed was the child. All that was left was a thin row of vertebrae coiled in the bloody reservoir.