The Pulsing

                                                             The Pulsing

                                                       by Donald D. Shore

As we drove deeper into the countryside, my brother turned to me and said, “I don’t like coming out here anymore than you do.  I just want to get it over with.”

I shrugged and turned to watch the cotton fields that stretched out on either side of us.

“I never understood why he lived way out here,” I said.  “It’s not like he was a farmer or anything.”

“He was an old bastard who didn’t want to be around anybody.  That’s why he lived out here.” 

Silence carried us the rest of the way, to the steep incline of my father’s driveway.  A canopy of trees gave shade to the road and the car’s tires spit gravel as they struggled for traction.  I held tight to the door handle as the car wrestled over the granite boulders protruding at intervals, like barricades, up the drive.   

The driveway flattened out around a bend and we saw our father’s house upon the hill, it’s edifice soiled and peeling.  The windows looked like they had never been washed, and the summer heat rose in waves off the dilapidated tin roof.  It was an old house, ancient, fallen into decay even before the passing of my father.  It was a place I never wanted to go.  A place from my memories that had become a thing of nightmares.

  We climbed out of the car, each of us surveying the place in silence.  Refuse lay scattered about the front yard, as if our father had tossed his trash out for the wind or the rain to wash away.

“You sure you want to do this?” I said, gazing upon the house.  The southern humidity collided with memories of a time I had fought to forget. 

“We’re here,” was my brother’s answer.    

I swatted away a swarm of gnats attacking my face as we made our way onto the porch. It, too, was littered with refuse and had formed ecosystems for moths and insects.  Spiderwebs were everywhere.  The boards of the porch were rotten and buckled.  From the corner of my eye I saw more than one blue tailed lizard scurry between its planks.  The scent of rot permeated the perimeter, though whether the odor came from below the porch, from around the house, or from inside, I could not say.  

My brother fidgeted with the key and I watched him struggle with the knob.

“The key doesn’t work?” I asked, the heat and oppressive atmosphere agitated my already frayed nerves and the question came out like a curse.  I wanted to be done with this place.

“It works,” he said.  “The door’s jammed.”

He put his shoulder to the door and forced it open.  The entire dilapidated structure groaned.  Stale, trapped air washed over us, as the warm currents sought escape from the darkness within.

We stood for a moment, beside one another, and peered into the strange recesses of our dead father’s home.  Sunlight slivered past the opened door, to cast a muted path across the wooden floors of the living room.  Decrepit furniture lay scattered about, covered in dust and cobwebs thick as blankets, as though the house had been abandoned and lost to the ages.

“He lived here?” I said.  “Like this?”

My brother tried the light switch.

“Must have turned the power off,” he said with a whisper, as if he were trying not to disturb whatever lingered within the darkness.  

He stepped deeper inside, and I followed, my eyes adjusting to the dim light selfishly allowed inside by the opened door and the clouded windows.  Together, we assessed the remnants of our father’s life.

“Start gathering stuff,” said my brother.  “We’ll pile it outside and burn it.”

“We should just burn the whole house down,” I said.

A thud from upstairs answered my threat. It came from directly above us, where the attic would be.  Our eyes turned upwards, to the low ceiling above our heads.  We stood frozen, and waited for another sound or movement, but the house grew still and silent.  We looked to one another.

“Let’s get to it,” my brother said, moving off towards the hallway.  “I don’t want to be here all day.”

As my brother went to the hall, my eyes searched the walls and shelves.  Photographs and keepsakes were tucked into dust filled crannies and nooks. All of them covered in the dust of neglect.

My brother forced open another door.  This one lead to the porch at the back of the house.  A breeze shot through the hall, pulling with it dirt and debris that had accumulated within the stagnant vacuum.

“It’s like no one’s been here in years,” I said, raising my voice loud enough for my brother to hear through the thin, cracked walls.

 My eyes fell upon a photograph hanging over the mantle.  A picture of us as children, flanked by our mother on one side, and by our father on the other.  I picked up the photograph and wiped away the soot that covered the glass.  I set the picture back, the familiar faces from a lost age stared back at me like strangers.

“He wasn’t much for housework, was he?” said my brother, stepping back into the den.

“No,” I agreed.  “Not much at all.”

We began our work downstairs, carrying armloads of clutter and useless paraphernalia out to a hill at the front of the house.  My father collected all manner of things, some old enough to perhaps be considered antiques, some simply modern era trash. Things he refused even to toss into the yard for nature to absorb.

Nothing there was of value to us.  Pictures, letters, newspaper clippings, all went into the pile.  Memories of a childhood we had both tried to forget.  Once the pile was big enough, I handed my brother a lighter.

I stood over him as he struck the flame.  The flame caught, and we stood back to watch the fire dance and spread, consuming the accumulation of our father’s existence.

            My brother went back to the house. I lingered a moment, to watch the hypnotic dance of the fire, the dark plumes of smoke billow up into a cloudless sky.

“Come on,” my brother called from the porch.  “I don’t want to be here all day.”

I followed him.  The task before us had claimed the day, and little progress had been made.

On the porch, my father stood as I had last seen him, old and bent at the back.  I froze at the sight of him, blinked, and he was gone.  As if he were nothing more than an after-image of the black smoke curling from the fire. 

My brother passed through the place my father had stood, oblivious to the phantom I had seen, and entered the house.  With trepidation, I followed.

We cleared the downstairs portion of the house as thoroughly as possible, and stood at the base of the staircase, staring into its narrow maw.  Neither of us had yet to venture up the stairs. Fatigue was taking hold, our strength drained from our bodies as rivers of sweat ran down our backs.  We collected what reserves we had, and prepared for what lay ahead.

“Doesn’t look like he’s been up there in years,” said my brother, noting the dust and cobwebs stretched across the stair railing. 

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said.  “The whole house looks like it’s been empty for years.  I can hardly breathe from all this dust.”

“Well, he is dead,” said my brother.  “Maybe that’s what killed him.”

“The dust?”

“The dust,” said my brother, setting a foot upon the first step and his hand along the rail.  “Or this house.”

I followed my brother up the stairs.  They led us along the wall at a steep grade and then turned, with five steps left, to the top floor.

“Damn!” cried my brother, pulling his hand off the bannister.

“What?”

“Splinter,” he said, taking the last of the steps in quick succession.  He put his finger to his mouth and slurped at the bright blood pooling on his torn skin.  “Look,” he said, extending his finger towards me.

A thin, inch long wooden splinter was embedded in his finger.  Blood dribbled from the wound and spilled onto the dusty wooden floorboards.

He raised his finger to his mouth again and pulled the splinter from his skin using his teeth.  It was a slow extraction, with blood dripping down his chin.  He took his hand away and spit a mixture of blood and phlegm to the floor, then held his hand up to the light flooding through the hallway window.  A sickly flap of skin covered fresh blood that flowed out to replace that which had spilled.

“You should wash that.”

“Yeah,” he said absently, putting his finger to his mouth again to stop the overflowing spillage of blood.  “I’ll be back.” 

He turned, moving past me, to walk back down the stairs.   

I went to the window in the hall.  I heard my brother moving through the house as I looked out at the burning pile below.  The scent of the smoke crawled through the gaps of the ill-fitting window and I watched the pile of refuse blacken and smolder.

“Son,” a voice spoke to me from behind.  It was the voice of a dead man.  The voice of my father.

I spun around, but there was no one there.  Just an empty wall and a narrow door, nailed shut, that led into the attic above the den.  To the left and right of me were bedrooms.  My heart pounded with the fear I would find my father, recently buried, waiting for me, inside one of the dust filled rooms.

I went to one room and then to the other, finding nothing more than rotted furniture and piles of clothes blanketed with cobwebs.  I went back into the hall, that sealed attic door calling my attention, drawing my steps slowly towards it, as if some magnetic presence lurked within, locked away in the darkness.  With a trembling hand, I reached for the door, the compulsion to pry into the hidden secrets locked away there bringing fresh perspiration to my temples.

“What are you doing?”

I turned to see my father standing next to me.  Then he was gone, and my brother stood where my father had been. 

I felt as though I had just woken from a dream. 

“I want to see what’s in there,” I said, my composure returned.

“That can wait,” said my brother.  He stepped past me and into the hall.  “Let’s get this other crap cleaned up first.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice a whisper, my eyes drawn to the attic door.

“Come on,” said my brother, “we’d have to pry it open.  Let it be someone else’s problem.”

“Who else?” I said, captivated by the door and what lay beyond.

“Whoever buys this place,” said my brother, irritated.  “Give me a hand.”

I tore my eyes from the door and caught up with my brother.  The house groaned with every step I made.

“Don’t you think we should be the ones to clean it out?” I said, following my brother into one of the bedrooms.  He was inspecting a chest made of dark wood, the brass bindings painted black.

He looked at me with a quizzical expression.  My eyes went to his now bandaged finger he held out to his side.

“That’s going to get infected,” I said.

“Help me and maybe it won’t.”

His shirt was wet with sweat and his face smudged with the dust we had been fighting all day.  Upstairs the house felt even more stifling.  We were trapped inside a hotbox, and our thin tempers were fraying.

“You going to stand there looking at me, or are you going to help?” my brother demanded. 

The expression on his face reminded me of my father.   I blinked away the image in my mind, an image of my father, and bent to help my brother with the trunk.  The trunk had a handle on either side.  My brother took one handle, I took the other, and as one, we lifted.

“Jesus, it’s heavy,” groaned my brother.

I grunted in agreement.  The trunk was barely an inch off the ground.

“Set it down,” I said.

We set the trunk back down. 

“Open it,” said my brother.  “See what’s inside.”

I looked at my brother and back again at the trunk.  “How’d the old man get it up here?”

“Hurry up,” my brother said.  His voice sounded so like my father’s I had to blink the sweat from my eyes to reassure myself it was still him, and not my father’s phantom.

His face was tight, with deep scowling lines.  For a moment, he did indeed resemble my father, perhaps a younger version of the man. 

“Sorry,” he whispered.  “Heat’s getting to me.” 

I nodded and bent down to the chest.  The latch was a simple thing of thin brass.  I pulled it away and raised the lid.

A foul sent oozed from the interior of the chest like a thick oil.  The smell of death and decay and rotting sickness.  I threw the lid open and stood back, beside my brother.  He covered his face with his wounded hand to block the smell, and peered over to see what lay hidden inside.

“What is it?” I said.

He inched closer, afraid whatever lay within would jump out and attack him.  His eyes went wide, and he reeled back.  His body convulsed, and he put a hand against the wall to brace himself and fight down his revulsion.

“Close it,” he said between gasps of air.  “Close it.”

I reached across the chest and took the lid in my hand.  My eyes fell to its contents.  Matted, rotting fur.  Bones and decomposed flesh.  Vacant eye sockets.  Exposed teeth.  I slammed the lid closed and stood near the doorway.  My brother marched past me, pushing me aside, and exited into the hall.

“Was that a dog?” I said.  We stood near the window, but felt none of the draft blowing in through the ill-fitting frame.

“I don’t know,” he said.  There was no softness in his face, only those hard lines he inherited from my father.  “I have to get out of here.”

He raced down the stairs and disappeared around the bend.  I followed and met him on the porch, where he stood, hands braced along the railing.  Smoke from the fire washed over him with faint, diaphanous clouds.  He turned to face me.  His eyes were red and swollen.  Deep hatred and anger seethed behind his crumbling façade.

“I’m done here,” he said.  “I’ve got to go.  I’ve got to get out of here.”

“What about the fire?” I said, pointing to the pyre of my father’s possessions.  Heat radiated from those dancing flames.  “We can’t just leave it.”

“To hell with it!” my brother yelled, spittle flying from his lips.  “To hell with the fire, to hell with this house, and to hell with him!”

My brother turned and left the porch, making his way towards the car.  I ran after him and grabbed him by the shoulder.  He spun around and slammed his fist into my face.  I stumbled back, the world spinning above me.

“I said to hell with it!” he screamed.  “This place can burn for all I care!”

He turned towards the car.

“Stop,” I said, feeling my own warm blood flood into my mouth.  “We can’t just leave the fire burning.”

“Watch me,” he said. 

He climbed into the car and started the engine.

“Wait!” I cried.

He put the car in reverse.  I ran around the frontend and tried to get in the passenger door as the car rolled back.  My brother left me standing there, impotent, as he descended backwards down the hill.

The car disappeared around the bend.  A deep grinding of gravel turned under the car’s tires, and I heard the wrenching sound of plastic and metal smash against a tree.  I rounded the bend and found my brother’s car tipped over the steep bank, backed against the network of trees that shielded my father’s house from the road.  

I froze, the sound of my beating heart throbbed in my ears.  A loud scream came from inside the car. I watched, mutely, as my brother beat his fist against the steering wheel.

I ran towards him.  The sight of his face, contorted with anger, slowed my descent down the hill.  The car came to life with the roar of the engine. The tires spun, throwing rocks against the trees.  The car lurched from side to side, but made no progress back onto the driveway.

“Hold on,” I yelled, but my voice was no match for the sounds of the engine and my brother’s fury.

The engine idled down and shut off, of its own accord or my brother’s command, I could not say.  He climbed out of the car, his face contorted and his back bent, and slammed the door behind him.

“What are we supposed to do now?” I demanded, my own temper flaring.

My brother turned and slammed his foot into the car’s front fender, again and again, until his strength waned, and he backed away, out of breath. 

He turned to me, his eyes creased and bloodshot.

“Are you happy now?” I demanded.  “We’re stuck out here.”

He strode past me, his feet digging into the gravel of the driveway like a mountain climber, and went back towards the house.

“I’ll call a tow truck,” he said over his shoulder.

I stood there a moment examining the damage.  The rear bumper was wrapped around a cedar tree.  Chunks of plastic and bits of glass sprinkled the ground like cheap costume jewelry.  The back tires were trapped off the ground. They could only spin and spit out loose gravel.

I calmed my nerves and walked back towards the house.  It’s difficult to describe the feeling I had, as I made my way up the hill, the house rising before me, smoke from the fire passing over it, like a misty fog, foretelling a story of old.

My brother sat on the porch facing the fire.  His face was a statue of chiseled worry, stress, and anger all combined.  He looked older, with more gray hairs than I remembered, peppering his hair.

“Well,” I said, “did you call a tow truck?”

He shook his head.  The muscles in his neck were pulled so tight I could see his pulse.

“No service out here,” he said.

I pulled out my phone, panic seizing me.  My heart all but froze.  My phone didn’t get even a single bar.

“What about the house phone?” I said.

My brother sat looking at the fire as if he didn’t hear my voice.  He seemed resigned to stay there, his attempt at escape forgotten.  I stomped up the steps and marched inside the house, feeling victimized by my brother’s mood swing.  The phone hung on a wall inside the kitchen, where hundreds of flies buzzed over a moldy sink full of dishes.  I held my breath and picked the phone up off the cradle.  I breathed again when I heard a dial tone.

The door slammed behind me.  I turned to see a blurred image of my brother.  His feet banged up the stairs.

I dialed my mother, hoping she could send a tow truck.  The phone rang three times, then picked up.  “If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try your number again.”

I slammed the receiver down on the cradle.   A crash came from upstairs, then a loud, hollow thud. 

“It’s not working,” I called out. 

Another loud thud.  I picked up the phone again, my nerves burning like a lit fuse.  I dialed the operator.  Another loud thud.  The phone rang in my ear.  Thud…ring…thud…ring…thud!

“If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try your number again.”

Thud!

I slammed the phone down. 

Thud!

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. 

Thud!

I went up the stairs, taking two steps with every stride, my mind swimming in confusion, anger, and heat.

Thud!

Every thud I heard was like another nail driven into my brain.

Thud!

It was coming from the back bedroom, where we found the chest.

Thud!

I went forward, ready to have it out with my brother, and froze beside the sealed door that led into the attic.

Thud!

Something held me there, pulling at me from the other side of the door.  The rhythm of the thuds grew distant, like some tribal percussion on the eve of a great hunt. 

Thud!

I placed my hand upon the sealed door.  I felt a pulse, as if the sealed door was a bandage covering a deep wound. 

Thud!

I turned, my hand against the door like an anchor, and I saw my father at the end of the hall.  He was old and hunched.  A pale and decrepit form.  His arms hung limp at his sides.  One boney hand held a hammer, something black and oily dripping from its head.  Something fowl.

His voice, like air trapped too long in a dark place, said, “You’re not allowed in there!”

Sunlight fought through the dust covered window, making my father a black silhouette.  Fresh, warm sweat washed over my body.  My father stepped forward, the thick, crude ichor dripping to the floor from the head of the hammer.

“I thought I heard something in here,” I said, trying to explain as fear mangled my thoughts.  My hand clung to the door, fingernails dug into the fibers of the rotten wood.

“Get your hands off it!” my father cried and raised the hammer. 

His shadow fell over me, and I bent low, cowering.  My hand refused to leave the flat, pulsing surface of the door.  I closed my eyes and awaited the blow.

“What are you doing?”

My brother’s voice.  Calm.  I opened my eyes to see him standing at the end of the hall, backlit against the window.  My hand slipped away from the attic door.

“What are you doing?” my brother said again, more demanding.  Like my father, he carried a hammer in his hand.

“I – I don’t know.”

“Well, come in here and help me with this,” said my brother, going back into the bedroom.

I moved slowly, gathering my senses.  I felt drunk.  Disoriented.  I chanced a look back at the attic door.  It continued to pull at me, to want me.

“The phone didn’t work,” I said.  My anger and frustration had evaporated.  Now, I only felt confusion. 

In the doorway, I froze.  A foul stench, almost physical in form, pushed against me.  My eyes went wide at the horrible scene before me.

The room was splattered with the black ocher of rotten, spoiled blood.  The trunk we found was shattered into pieces.  The creature’s remains had been pulverized.  Splintered bone and decrepit flesh lay scattered, in what appeared to be haphazard chaos, until I drew near.

 Some subconscious mechanism drew me inside the room. A pattern had indeed been formed.  I reeled at the sight of tiny of maggots as they crawled and wiggled amongst the decay, at the buzzing of flies, like an echo from beyond this realm, a pin prick glance into insanity.  My eyes followed the scene of rotting tissue, dragged from its tomb inside the trunk, to form the shape of a pentagram along the floor.

My brother had the eyes of an idiot newly committed, and the smile of a child expecting reward.

“What have you done?” I said.

“Don’t you see?” he said.  “The old man knew we’d come here.  He knew we’d find it.  He knew it would be us to pacify this place.  To clean out what he left behind.  Who else but us?”

He stepped towards me and I fell back.

“Don’t you see why he did all those things?” he said, his face glistening.  “He had to teach us.  It’s why he moved to this old house. There’s power here.  An old power.  I felt it before.  All those years ago.  You saw it, when I tried to leave.  It stopped me.  Pulled me back.  And our phones…,”

He trailed off, his face looking every bit as insane as he sounded.  His hand held tight to the hammer at his side, dripping with the black gore of rotten death.  Fresh blood painted his fingers and trailed down the handle, dripping methodically onto the floor.

“It’s ours now,” he said, coming towards me.

I turned to retreat, to flee this house and escape whatever hold it had on me.  I made for the stairs, leaving my brother behind, though I could all but feel the crushing, cold blow of the hammer as he followed me.

At the staircase I froze.  The attic door once again calling out to me, so palpable I could feel it.  Something dark and warm.  Something hidden behind that shuttered door.

I turned, bracing myself, and saw my father, hammer raised, slinking towards me, readying for a killing blow.

“Stop!” I cried out, shielding my head with crossed arms and eyes closed, unwilling to witness the culmination of my father’s fury.  When no blow fell, I opened my eyes and found my brother standing before me, the dull light from the window casting skull-like shadows upon his face.

He stared at me, glassy eyed, as if awakening from his own hypnotic confusion.

“What’s happening?” he asked, his face washed clean of our father’s resemblance.  He looked like a child on the cusp of enlightenment.

I straightened my back against the door.  Heat radiated from the other side.  A strange pulsing.

“We have to leave,” I said, pleading, “we have to get out of this house.”

I said these words, yet I did not take a step.  The palms of my hands touched the door behind me, softly, and I felt it within.  That presence, pulsing like the blood through my veins.

My brother looked at me, sweat running down his face.  His furrowed brow clouded his dark eyes. I wondered, as he looked at me, if it was me or my father he saw?

The hammer shifted in his hand as he tightened his grip.  I tensed, fearing the blow about to fall.

“We need to get in there,” he said, meaning the door behind me.

I came away from the door and stood beside my brother.  I felt some relief, though the weight of encroaching insanity still ran a finger across my mind.  But to know he felt the presence too, that nameless thing beyond the door, gave me a sense of unity.  I was not alone.

With a swift, smooth motion, my brother raised the hammer and brought the curved edge down into the doorframe.  The pulsing within drew me near.  I dreaded what we were unearthing.

Nails groaned in resistance as my brother levered his arm.  He gave a great pull, and the door came loose, swinging slowly on rusted hinges.

The darkness within the attic bled out through the opened portal.  Every fiber of my being screamed for me to flee this place, but I could not.  By some compulsion, I was forced to push the door open. 

Neither of us breathed as a new odor crept from that dark place.  The odor was hot, tepid, like bad water or molded bread.  Shadows swirled throughout, strange images in the depths of oily darkness.

“There,” said my brother.

He stepped through the portal and I found myself following.  My eyes adjusted to the darkness. The attic floor was littered with rat droppings.  Yellowed pages from books lay scattered like confetti.  Cardboard boxes lined the walls, their sides shredded as if by the claws of a trapped animal.

My brother went to the center of the room and stopped, his body bathed in darkness.  His broad shoulders hunched like an old man’s, and his neck craned forward. 

I stepped beside him, the thin floor of the attic threatening to buckle beneath my weight.  I peered down to see what had captured my brother’s attention.

At our feet was a human skull.  It’s dirty white glare stared up at us with empty eyes.

“The power,” said my brother.

I turned to him, and saw instead the face of my father, his eyes burning with hatred.  I tried to step away but that pulsing, the pulsing that could be felt throughout the house, held me in place.

I looked at the skull again, it’s eyes hollow no more.  A serpent, blacker than the shadows of the room, twisted itself through those vacant orifices, it’s tail slithering through the skull’s opened jaw.

“The power,” said my father.  The old man fell to his knees, his arms stretched, hovering over the serpent and the skull, the gore-coated hammer tight in his grasp.

I had hope my father would bring the hammer down against the serpent’s arrow shaped head, but my hope was quickly dissipated.  Instead, he began a strange incantation.

“Hum bah lah mah doh.”

Over and over, he chanted these words, as I stood forgotten.

“Hum bah lah mah doh.” 

His voice rose with each incantation until he was shouting them at the serpent. 

“Hum bah lah mah doh!”

The temperature of the attic rose.  Wet with sweat, I wanted to run for the door, but my legs wouldn’t work.  My father continued the strange chanting, hammer held high, like some savage totem.

“Hum bah lah mah doh!”

The chanting stopped.  The pulsing stopped.  It seemed time itself had stopped.

My brother’s head turned slowly, for he was my brother again, and he gazed at me, his face strangely contorted.  A bar of light coming through the roof cut across his face, just below his eyes.  They were my father’s eyes.

He rose to his feet and drew back the hammer.  My father’s eyes revealed my brother’s intention.

I turned and ran, finding strength in my legs, and went for the door.  The hammer came down, striking across the back of my head.  Sick blackness flooded my vision.  I crumpled to the floor, arms stretched, reaching for escape. 

“You boys disappoint me,” said my brother.  His voice distant, as the comfort of unconsciousness called to me.  “You always have.” 

He took me by the ankle and pulled.  I dug my fingernails into the floorboards as he dragged me back into the center of the attic.

“You don’t understand the Power.  The Power gives us immortality. The true taste of the soul.”

He dropped my leg and I rolled over.  He stood above me, leering through the shadows.  His face was strained and haggard, lines of drool dripping from his chin.

My eyes fell to the skull.  The dark serpent rose up, its long sinuous body glittered with its many scales.  Its tongue darted out, tasting the air.

“Look into its eyes,” said my father.  “Look into its eyes and see the world beyond this one.  The ancient world where true gods roam.  Look.”

He stepped towards me with the hammer.  I tore my eyes away from the mesmerizing enchantment of the serpent and, like an animal fleeing a trap, scurried away.

He brought the hammer down.  I rolled amongst the scattered trash and debris.  The hammer punched through the floor.  My father groaned and pulled the hammer free.  Light shone through the hole.  A small spot gleamed against my father’s face.  His eyes resembled those hollow sockets of the skull.

“Do not resist.  It comes for you, as it comes for all men.”

He launched the hammer again.  I swiveled and came to my feet. The hard steel of the hammer slammed into my back, like a bullet.  I gasped, the air forced from my lungs.  I struggled towards the door, my only chance at salvation.

The hammer came down again, hard steel grazed past my head.  I stepped through the portal and swung the door closed.  I stumbled into the hall, and fell against the banister.

The attic door flung open.  My brother stood within the portal, his face so contorted with anger and hate I hardly recognized him.

He stepped calmly into the hall, hammer in hand.

“Stop,” I moaned, my senses twirling.  The pulsing thing that lay hidden behind the door seemed to have no more need of me, now that it had my brother to do its bidding.

He smiled and I backed away, feeling my way down first one step and then another.

“Stop!” I cried. as

He lunged for me, hammer held high.  I dodged to the side and the hammer crashed against the wall.  I lost my footing and fell, arms and legs akimbo, until I rolled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

My brother’s boots clunked against the steps as he came towards me.  I couldn’t move.  My body throbbed, and I felt paralyzed from the fall.  I writhed against the floor, and tried to regain control of my battered, twisted limbs.

He came closer, mere feet away.  I pulled myself up.  He laughed, the sound of it like an old tree swaying in the cold wind.

“Stop,” I said.  “This isn’t you.  Think!  This isn’t you.  You wouldn’t do this.  You’re not our father!”

His shadowed face held a blank expression.  Then, slowly, a smile spread, and his face stretched to resemble the serpent slithering in the attic above us.

“He’s dead!” I screamed, tears streaming down my dirty, bloodied face.

“There is no death for him,” my brother hissed, saliva dripping down his chin.  “Only nothingness.”

He raised the hammer.  I pulled the front door open and stumbled out to the porch.  My eyes searched desperately for a weapon, as my brother followed me.

“Help!” I screamed desperately, knowing there was no one around to hear me in this isolated place.

I stumbled down the porch steps, my brother following.  He seemed in no great hurry to overtake me.  Instead, he seemed to enjoy the chase.

“Help!” I screamed, my plea answered by my brother’s hollow laughter.

There was nowhere to flee in that dark, sweltering landscape.  The sun had fallen, and dusk had overtaken the land.  Shadows of the trees shifted against the newly come night like hostile witnesses.  The glow of the still burning fire drew me like a beacon.  The flames were low, and a warm breeze blew across the cursed land.  Coals shimmered amidst burned out husks of things that had once been.

“Your brother was always better than you.”

My father stood before me, at the cusp of the burn pile, inhabiting my brother’s body.  In the darkness beside the light of the glowing coals, he stood, hunched over, his arms spread out as if welcoming an embrace.  The hammer, a black instrument of death and torture, held high in his hand.

“You were the oldest,” my father continued, “but it was your brother who was a true man.  I knew he would grow up to be like me.  While you --,” he paused, face tightening, some resemblance of my brother showing through.  Then the monster regained its dark composure, the color of midnight in his eyes.  “You.  Are.  Useless.”

He swung the hammer.  It took me on the chin, and though the night was starless, and no moon showed in that limitless sky, lights flashed in my vision.

I fell to the ground, the heat of the burning flames scorched my clothes and burned my skin.  The sound of that dark hideous laughter followed me, obliviating the pain.   He stood over me, readying the final blow.

I dug my hand into the pit of ashes beside me.  The searing pain was nothing compared to the fear of death looming above.  I scattered a handful of glowing embers in an arc across the darkness of the sky.  The embers glowed like dying candles and descended like a tiny barrage of cannon fire against my brother’s face.

He screamed and dropped the hammer.  I rose and brought with me the remnants of a board from the fire, its end covered in ash and smoldering coals.

My brother glared at me, his face acned with blisters.  He lunged forward.  I swung the board with every reserve I had, any thought of harming my brother overrun by the fear of my own death.

The board took him in the head.  He fell into the fire, throwing a mist of carbon and glowing shards of living coals into the air.  His body squirmed, like a serpent, out of the fire and into the grass.  He began to chant again, those strange words with a meaning and origin surely derived from some ancient evil.  I brought the board down upon him, again and again, until he squirmed no more and the words were silenced.

I stood upon the hill beside the dying fire, my brother laid out next to me, his body still, only the shallow breathing escaping his mouth letting me know he was alive.  He stared up, his face bathed in shadows, blisters from the coals still forming on his tired, strained flesh.  There, I saw the face of my brother again, free of hate and animosity which had so consumed him.

A wave of fatigue overwhelmed me.  I longed to lay down next to him and join him in his sleep.

But again, I felt the pulse.  That vibrating pull originating from my father’s house.  The call of the demon, hiding in the attic. 

I groaned, and wept from the exertion of insanity.  That chant, those dark evil words, were escaping from my own lips.

“Hum bah lah mah doh!”

The pull was stronger now, as though me and my brother were no longer competitors for the demon’s attention.  Sweat poured down my face.  I fought for control of my own mind.  My lips chanted those words in a voice I could not, would not, call my own, I reached down into the pit of the fire, with the same blistered hand I had used to fend off my brother, and took up another destroyed piece of furniture, a flame undulating in its death throws at the end.

I formed my own mantra, deep in my clouded mind, to drown out the commands assaulting me from that vile source within my father’s house.

I went forward, torch in hand, repeating the words, “I am me,” over and over in my mind.  “I am me I am me,” I said, though my own voice competed for dominance.  “I am me!”

I climbed the steps back into the house, fear threatening to override what I knew in my thudding heart must be done.

“I am me,” I repeated, walking up the stairs that led towards the attic. 

“I am me!” The words came from my lips, in my voice, as I peered once again into the oily black dwelling of the serpent.

The light of the torch wavered as I stepped forward.  The stifled air inside the attic felt combustible.  I plunged forward, towards the absolute darkness emanating from the center of that terrible place.

The serpent slithered in the wavering light of my torch.  The creature watched me with the absolute hatred and evil that poured out of its abysmal eyes.  The serpent rose, its tail tangled about the empty sockets of the skull, coming to a height greater than should have been possible in that cramped space.  It stood a head taller than myself.  Its arched neck brought the spade-shaped face of evil level with my own.  A slick black tongue flicked out from its maw and it spoke through unmoving lips.

“I am all,” said the serpent, “I am darkness.  Darkness is everything.”

“No,” I said, my voice frail and worn from the mental fight for control.  “Darkness is nothing without light.”

The serpent drew back, ready to strike.  I swung the torch, batting away the death promised in those dripping fangs.  The serpent sprawled and twisted and struck again, maintaining its unnatural balance.  I parried the serpent’s strike, with as much force as I had left to give, scalding its jeweled scales with my flame. 

The serpent wavered.  I sensed the creature feared the flame.  The serpent struck at my hand, and I backed away.  A new plan formed in my exhausted mind. 

“You fear the darkness,” hissed the serpent.  “Darkness will have you.”

“No!” I screamed, my mind reaching back to its primal origins.

I tossed the torch.  It flew in an arc and landed on the boxes stacked along the edge of the attic.  The dried out cardboard fibers took the flame as though it thirsted for it.  A bright light rose, and shadows stretched long against the wall. 

The serpent hissed, writhing, avoiding as best it could the growing light and the spreading fire.  Smoke filled my lungs and the serpent went low, slithering along the floor, coming towards me like a black torpedo.  The serpent rose into the air, it’s fangs aimed like daggers, poison dripping from the sharpened points like thick molasses. 

I threw myself from the room and slammed the door behind me, bracing it with my back.  The serpent smashed against the door.  The force of the blow nearly sent me forward, allowing its escape.

I dug my feet in and held strong, repeating my mantra.  The great pulsing surged forth from the attic, stronger, more frantic, than before, trying to pry my mind loose from the fragile hold I had upon my own sanity.

The serpent beat itself against the door, again, and again, it’s great strength pounding against the thin wood.  The rusted, ill-fitting hinges threatened to break loose.  The heat of the fire burned against my back as I held the door shut with the weight of my body.  Clouds of smoke billowed forth from around the edges of the doorframe with every blow the serpent launched.

In my mind, I heard the thing screaming, cursing, threatening, and then, finally, pleading, for me to allow its escape.

I thought of the evil this demon had done.  The murderous captivations it held over my brother and attempted to hold over me.  I thought of my father, his mind twisted and mean, and wondered how long this creature had controlled him, warping him to its own dark ways.

I held the door, listening to the beast thrash from within, its mind screaming with pain inside my own.  I held the door until the only sound I could hear was the burning roar of the flames as they consumed the dark secrets hidden there, amongst the tomes and scattered collections of my father.  I held the door until the heat burned through my clothes and seared my skin.  I held the door until I could hold it no more, the flames from the attic growing up alongside me, destroying the darkness that had dwelled there for so long.  Only when I could take the flames and smoke no more, I fled, leaving the burning abyss behind me.

I stayed awake through the long night and watched the house burn and turn to ash, as my brother slept fitfully beside me.

As the sun rose above the hills to the east, my brother woke and came to a sitting position beside me.  He looked at me with heavy eyes, and I saw it was his own eyes that he looked through.

He ran a bloodied hand over the burns on his face, and tried to sift through memories of the night.  Memories that might not have been his own.  “What happened?” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I said, as the morning light wove its way around the trees and over our faces.  I held the hammer high, and said, “Hum bah lah mah doh.”

                                                            The End