As readers of
The Darkening
Dream are aware,
nothing is ever black or white. Certainly this is the case with Pastor
John Parris. Is he a
villain or victim? Well… villain, but even the most evil come from somewhere.
In this short story, which began life as a chapter in an older larger versions
of the novel, we explore some important questions about the creepy little man:
1) How did he come to dabble in witchcraft? 2) Who was Grandmother Grace, and
what was the manner of her unpleasant death? 3) Is shit really useful for
spellcraft? And most importantly, 4) When did Parris meet his succubus lover,
Betty?
It turns out,
one weekend reveals all four.
In 1875, when John Parris was two, his parents both succumbed to the
influenza that swept through Boston. Soon after, he was sent to Salem and
delivered into the care of his grandmother.
Grace Parris, for her part, was a
very religious woman. She had long maintained that Satan infiltrated the weak
hearted through even the smallest of lapses. Righteousness was to be
earned, through the application of discipline, suffering, penitence,
prayer, and any number of other important words. It was this way
that she raised her grandson, and those words that she trusted he hold close
when he matriculated at Harvard Divinity.
For Parris, Harvard meant new
freedom, but liberty that came at the price of solitude. Years of practice
with reserve had not gifted him with a temperament conducive to
socializing or easy friendship.
Regardless, October 1893 in
Cambridge was a testament to His glory and His works. The leaves took on every
imaginable autumn hue, and the air was scented with the woodsy smell from a
hundred fiery hearths. The second Saturday, after a particularly pleasant walk
through Harvard Yard, he returned to his red-brick and white-trimmed colonial
dormitory.
Inside, he found her waiting.
“Grandmother, what are you doing
here?” he said.
“Nice to see you too, John.” She
wore her traveling dress, severe and black like all her garments. She carried a
single traveling case, and despite the pleasant weather, her large umbrella. “I
took the train. It’s not proper for you to spend Sabbath without family.
Tomorrow we shall go to church together.”
“Yes, Grandmother.” He made a
study of his shoes on the way to his room.
“Close the door behind you, young
man.”
Her demeanor stiffened the instant
the clasp clicked. “Completely unacceptable. Look at your bed.” One
corner of his sheets was indeed sloppy. “And this?” The point of her finger
threatened a small book on his night table.
“Whitman’s Leaves of Grass,
Grandmother.” He knew what was coming.
“This,” she tapped the volume of
poems, “is Satan’s work. The only book by your bed should be His word.” She
hurled the book into the fireplace. The flames were low, but the coals ignited
nonetheless. “You must be cleansed of frivolity.”
Inside he was screaming, but years
of habit forced him to face the wall and drop his pants to the floor.
Grandmother raised her umbrella.
“Only through constant vigilance, and the reminder of His suffering
on the cross can we transcend the corrupt influences of temptation.”
She smacked the umbrella across his naked buttocks. The steel ribs tore into
Parris’ skin.
After Grandmother left on Sunday
evening, the pain in Parris’ nether regions burned dully. Four hours on a hard
church pew had not improved matters, but left him with the usual combination of
excitement and agitation.
He had put her on the train
himself. This was his chance.
Manic energy helped thin arms pull
his trunk from under the bed. Deep inside, underneath his winter clothes, was
the false bottom. Such was his state, that the messy garments, even strewn
about the room, didn’t bother him. He pried up the trunk bottom to reveal his
special books and supplies. What he needed was there: two volumes, a small
bowl, candles, and a flat piece of wood a foot square.
Parris built up the fire in the
hearth, placed the candles in the bowl, and propped it by the heat to melt the
wax. Grandmother’s visit had provided him with two crucial elements. First, a
few hairs taken from her brush just this morning, and second, the repulsive
contents of her chamber pot. Knowing her distaste for public bathrooms, he had
offered to empty the ceramic convenience. Instead of dumping the contents into
the lavatory latrine, he had poured the foul substance into a jar — soon
stashed in a hall closet.
Now, he bound her long gray hairs
around the wooden tablet. Then, carefully taking the molten wax from the fire,
he added a urine-softened log of feces to the pale mixture. Stirring, he
grimaced from the olfactory effect of the amalgamation. This brown and lumpy
wax he carefully spooned across the face of the tablet, which was then placed
it by the open window for the cool night air to dry.
An hour later, the room clean,
Parris dressed in black linen shirt and trousers to sit cross-legged by the
fire. He took up a stylus and began to carve a Latin inscription into the lumpy
wax and feces covered surface of the tablet. He spoke the curse out loud:
Great Sterquilinus, thrice bind
her. Bind her by the power of her own shit, bind her by the power of her own
flesh, bind her by the power of my shared blood. Exact a terrible vengeance, oh
Great Sterquilinus, bind her so that she shall shit no more! I implore you, and
am in your debt.
Parris felt an odd tingling
elation, like standing after kneeling for hours in prayer. The hall outside was
quiet, and he tiptoed toward the lavatory while facing the wall, lest someone
observe his strange and stinky burden. Thankfully, his destination was also
empty. The lid covering the latrine brought forth the usual stench. He tossed
the tablet into the blackness, calling after it three times, “Grace Parris, I
curse thee.”
The electricity in his limbs
redoubled, and he felt empowered by the completion of the ritual. His research
had been most thorough, and he was convinced of the spell’s efficacy. Elated,
he turned back toward his room to dispose of the evidence.
On the way, he passed two other
students. The hallway was wide enough for three, but one of them veered at the
last minute to collide with Parris. The other was far bigger, and Parris was
thrown hard against the wooden wainscot.
“Excuse me.” The stranger tipped
his hat.
Parris said nothing, only smiled
at their receding backs. They would reap what they sowed. They all would.
In his room, the hearth flames had
grown tall. As he shut his door, they danced, filling the fireplace out of
proportion. He found himself drawn to the fire. The electric feeling mounted
within him, and the flames pirouetted in lock step to the sensation. Like an
illusionist’s curtain, the blazing surface parted.
He stepped into the darkness
between.
Parris found himself lost in thick
fog. The color and angle of the light betrayed the dawn hour, but the thick
mist only illuminated, refusing to reveal. As he was thin, and a stranger to
physical exertion, he labored under the heavy burden of his gear. The oval scutum
shield weighed more than twenty pounds, and he had a difficult time balancing
both it and the two long pilum spears. The cheek guards of his helmet
chaffed his face. He wore sandals, and the lake waters to his left lapped
against his feet. A rectangular iron plate was strapped to his chest and a
heavy short sword to his wide leather belt. Grandmother’s bruises burned his
buttocks as he marched in step with the legionaries to his sides.
Death rained from above, filling
the clammy air with muffled screams. The adjacent soldier fell with an arrow
piercing his neck. A fine mist of blood splattered Parris’s face. He twisted,
stepping into the marshy wetness at the lake’s edge. Something small dropped
from the sky to graze his right arm. A hail of lead pellets followed. He
imitated the nearby legionaries by raising his scutum above his head.
Further projectiles thudded against the shield’s leather marching-cover.
Horsemen swept through the ranks
like riders of the apocalypse. A nearby beast reared, and its rider speared a
legionary in the face. So powerful was the blow — driven with the momentum and
weight of the animal — that the shaft drove into the man’s brain and lodged
itself in the back of his helmet. This hapless soldier twitched like a speared
fish. Parris peered from behind his shield at the enemy cavalryman struggling
to free his weapon. What he saw loosed his bowels. The horse was small — almost
a pony — and the man astride was a fierce looking Negro, naked except for a
leopard-skin cloak. The terrible feline visage crowned the man’s dark face. The
enemy horseman gave up on the first spear to draw another.
This he raised to impale Parris.
Two legionaries, shields
interlocked, spears in hand, smashed into the cavalryman, driving the barbed
iron tips into the horse’s neck.
A centurian, recognizable
by his transverse crest, bellowed into the chaos. “Citizens! Lake Trasamine
behind you, Hannibal’s Numidian beast fuckers in front. Three lines deep. Go
Go! Form in front of the eagle, now!”
But the men only turned and ran,
turned to be cut down from behind. Missiles pelted their unprotected backs.
They dropped shields and weapons to flee into water stained red-brown with
blood.
Parris too fled into the lake. He
lost his gear, tore his heavy helmet from his head, and waded out with the
others until they could barely stand, just their heads above the lake surface.
He saw soldiers step deeper, struggle with heavy armor, and become bubbles
agitating upwards from submerged faces. The milling Carthaginian infantry stood
knee deep, but the Numidian cavalry amused itself by swimming their horses to
swipe at bobbing Roman heads. Parris watched faces speared and brains
splattered. He tugged his breastplate free and paddled feebly toward the center
of the lake.
The sounds of death and
dismemberment faded into the mist. Swim he might, but he had merely chosen a
slower end by drowning. He pushed himself beyond any conceivable point of
exhaustion. Soon, it was all he could do to stay afloat.
It was there, near the end, that
she found him.
Betty’s skiff drifted out of the
mist. She propelled the boat, a tiny coracle of roughly hewn timbers, with a
long pole. Her pallid blue complexion seemed at home in the cold gray mists.
She looked no younger or older than she would twenty years later, when her
naked form and sagging breasts graced his bed.
“You seem in much need of warmth.”
Her decayed fingers hauled him aboard the small craft, her strength surprising
for one so slender.
Exhausted, Parris lay wet and
panting on the tiny deck. Despite her strange and horrid appearance,
desperation made her a welcome sight.
She poled the little craft further
into the lake, and the screams were lost altogether in the mists, replaced by
the gentle lapping of calmer waters. She examined him carefully, red fires
burning in her black eye sockets.
“You don’t belong here,” she said.
“Was it you who summoned me?”
“Not that I’m aware.” This
outburst triggered a spasm of wet coughing.
Rank fumes closed in as she knelt,
bare purple-skinned feet balancing on the tiny flat-bottomed craft. She tugged
one of his arms to herself, and licked at his scrapes, her tongue like hot
sandpaper.
“It was you,” she purred. “Which
of ten thousand fucks spawned you, I know not. What do they call you?”
“John Parris, of Massachusetts,”
he said.
Her smile revealed rotten and
crooked teeth. “Truth knots mysteriously in this place. I was called Betty Anne
Parris once. Long ago, I whelped a half-breed she-bitch by the incestuous seed
of my own father, Samuel Parris. You smell like her spawn.” She giggled
hysterically. “What brings you to this damned placed of abandoned hope and
forgotten loss?” Her tone was soft and conversational, as if they had met on
the carriage between Harvard and Central Squares.
“I don’t know. I think I came
through fire. Somehow, I found myself a Roman soldier in some ancient war. Am I
dead, lost in time?”
“They call this place the Campus
Martius,” she said. “Truly, the ‘fields of Mars,’ a damned dominion where Hades
and Ares rule together. Here, for countless eternities, great battles rage, men
and beasts die, and the crows feast on their rotting flesh.”
“Is this hell?” he asked.
“Of sorts,” she answered. “There
are as many foul and twisted places as there are suffering souls to imagine
them.”
She reached one cold hand beneath
his waterlogged tunic. What she found there she swiftly brought to life.
Squatting, she lowered herself down onto him.
This first time only, she was
tender.
He was surprised any energy
remained in him, but a certain charge, not unlike what he had experienced back
in his room, quickened him. For six years, he had pleasured himself in the
guilt-ridden dark. To find even an instant of happiness here, so soon after
escaping a terrible death, seemed so perverse, yet almost sacred.
Buy
The Darkening Dream Now!
The Darkening Dream is the chilling new dark fantasy novel by Andy Gavin, creator of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter.
Even as the modern world pushes the supernatural aside in favor of science and steel, the old ways remain. God, demon, monster, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs.
1913, Salem, Massachusetts - Sarah Engelmann's life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand.
With the help of Alex, a Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to the factory mills of Salem, on a midnight boat ride to spy on an eerie coastal lair, and back, unexpectedly, to their own homes. What can Alex's elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah's own rabbi father tell them? And what do Sarah's continuing visions reveal?
No less than Gabriel's Trumpet, the tool that will announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces that have banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling cast is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.
The Darkening Dream is the chilling new dark fantasy novel by Andy Gavin, creator of Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter.
Even as the modern world pushes the supernatural aside in favor of science and steel, the old ways remain. God, demon, monster, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs.
1913, Salem, Massachusetts - Sarah Engelmann's life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand.
With the help of Alex, a Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to the factory mills of Salem, on a midnight boat ride to spy on an eerie coastal lair, and back, unexpectedly, to their own homes. What can Alex's elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah's own rabbi father tell them? And what do Sarah's continuing visions reveal?
No less than Gabriel's Trumpet, the tool that will announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces that have banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling cast is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.
About the Author
Andy Gavin is an unstoppable storyteller who studied for his Ph.D. at M.I.T. and founded video game developer Naughty Dog, Inc. at the age of fifteen, serving as co-president for two decades. There he created, produced, and directed over a dozen video games, including the award winning and best selling Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter franchises, selling over 40 million units worldwide. He sleeps little, reads novels and histories, watches media obsessively, travels, and of course, writes. His first novel, The Darkening Dream, is a thrilling dark fantasy that features vampires of the non-sparkly variety.
Find him at: http://andy-gavin-author.com
How epically perverse! I love it!
ReplyDeleteMan. Parris is a creepy, creepy character. Interesting to find out the pre- Darkening Dream.
ReplyDelete