The Monocle Man Read online

  “Tea young lady. For my associate here.” She trotted off and back into the pub. Crowley sipped from his, steam rising in the early morning light as he breathed out before consuming. When she returned, she set a cup and saucer in front of Jakob and poured from a copper kettle. When she turned to leave- “Please leave the kettle my dear. We will gladly serve ourselves and trouble you no more.” She smiled, nodded, and left the kettle on the table. “Now, my young friend. What is it that ails you so?”

  “My sister Mr. Crowley.”

  “Please, refer to me as either Edward of Aleister. Preferably the latter.”

  “As you wish,” Jakob accepted, nodding, and taking his first sip of the tea. It burned when he swallowed, but offered an ample feeling of comfort. One he welcomed willingly. It seemed to him, as of late, that he’d spent much time in the dark and cold. This simple gesture of sipping tea afforded him a glimpse of hope, as foolish as it sounded.

  “And you are, if I remember from your correspondence, Jakob?”

  “Yes. that is correct.”

  “Continue.”

  “The issue, is my sister. She is… is…”

  “Possessed?” Crowley offered.

  “To say the least. You speak of it so bluntly. I fear I am just coming to terms with it.”

  “Yes, well that is to be understood. You are young. New to things as such. I am old. Older than my years in truth, older than all the knowledge I possess. I have seen a great many things. And it is a rare occasion to find myself bewildered. But please Jakob. Know you can speak freely with me. I will not judge. In truth, I expect the utmost honesty, regardless of how preposterous the events you intend to recite may seem.”

  “Very well. As I said. It is my sister. And alas, I do not know if possession is the correct way to describe what has happened.”

  2

  2.

  It was an ordinary day, like any other. Jakob finished early, the last of his classes canceled early due to a school function, one in which didn’t require his attendance. University was like that. Being just a temporary fixture in the system, one who taught the hows and whys of being literate, he was often abdicated of additional duties. Made a modest living though. Enough to house his widowed mother and younger sister. Enough to keep things stable, while his mother picked up odd errands about town, ironing or cleaning; sometimes cooking or some relative form of care-taking. His mother often insisted his little sister Lillian and she could manage without. Wishing so much, he would leave the ladies to themselves and find a decent, intelligent woman to stand at his side. But at thirty-two, Jakob felt he still had time. In truth, he bore little passion for women. No, his passion lie elsewhere. Words.

  Words were his life. He seldom wrote them down or recorded them like the great thinkers of his time were wont to do, but he devoured them with much vigor. He could write, yes; well spoken and educated. It was a requirement for such a position at University, teaching literature and language. But he sensed he was better suited to pass along the words of others rather than try to carve them into the pages of history himself. No, Jakob was a gatekeeper. A wrangler of written prose, he collected them with enthusiasm, reasserting them back into the world where he saw fit. Or, as often the case, where the curriculum dictated.

  How he loved to see his students light up from the inside, their eyes all aglow from the lines or phrases that excited their very souls. And though Jakob spent most of his time educating the young men, from time to time, he’d be called across campus to the girl’s dormitories to assist as well. It was mesmerizing almost, the way the young ladies lit up in a different manner from the young men. The catalysts were almost always different. The romance, the intrigue and danger of love is what most often flushed the girl’s cheeks. And poetry. Of course, always the poetry. Whereas, the violence and often, adventure awaiting in other tomes made the boys sit up straight, on the edges of their seats.

  But Jakob taught it all with the same forthright manner. The same urgency and fervor. As if, in failing to expel the knowledge as quickly as he could, it might fade away into yesterday with no one else to take notice. It was words he loved. And as well versed as he might have been, it was the words his sister spoke that day, which had left him distraught.

  As he rounded the corner of Baker Street, onto Albion Place, he heard the screams. He took it at first as some wretched animal in the alleys. Cats so often waged turf wars, the howls and screeches they emanated were not uncommon. Nor dissimilar. But no. Walking closer to his tenement, he understood that the cries and bloodcurdling screams were coming from the second floor of the domicile. The sounds reverberated off the tall brick structure and seemed to shake the foundation. A few passersby stopped to witness the disturbance. One, an older gentleman and his wife, her arm tucked beneath his, stood across the street, their chins turned upward in that direction. She, a hand across her mouth, astonished and upset; he with an utter look of bewilderment, his eyes nearly invisible beneath the large furrowed brow upon his forehead. Both squinted as if they might spy into the windows where the panes shook.

  Jakob took only a moment’s notice though and ambled to his front door. He fumbled with the key; the utensil grinding against the lock, slipping over the hole several times before driving home. The door swung open on its hinges and he pushed it closed behind him as he entered the hall. Stopping only a tick to verify both the sounds and their orientation, he dropped his keys on the sideboard near the stairs, and bounded up them two at a time.

  Upon the second landing a crash resounded off the walls. Something bashed the inside wall of the last room on the left. The door shook on its hinges. Next it swung open in stutters, and Jakob stood frozen as his mother, clawing with her fingers on the wooden floor, pulled herself through the opening. She struggled against some as yet unseen force from within, which tried to pull her back. He thought his eyes must be deceiving him.

  Shaking from his reverie, Jakob bolted down the rest of the hall and gripped his mother by the wrists, tugging her the rest of the way out of the room. He looked up a moment, but his eyes met with a slamming of the door as all air seemed sucked from the hall. Jakob pulled his mother by her wrists still, dragging her down the hall several yards before falling onto his knees in front of her.

  “Mother?” Her head swung from side to side, panic stricken, face damp with sweat. “Mother?” She looked up at her son and screamed, recoiling. Her hair dangled in front of her face before her eyes cleared and recognition entered them.

  “Ja-… Jakob?”

  “Mother, what is it? Are you all right?”

  “Oh Jakob! My sweet, sweet Jakob.” Her head dropped to the floor as her back heaved with the sobs of a woman on the edge.

  “Mother! Speak to me.” His eyes averted to the bedroom down the hall, the door still shut. A hand brushed his cheek and pulled his gaze back downward. His mother’s eyes looked tired. Worn thin. Almost vacant.

  “Jakob. I do not know what has become of her.”

  “Of who mother?”

  “Lillian.” Her head bounced on the hinges of her neck as she strained to keep looking up into her son’s eyes. The tears continued down her damp and dirty cheeks.

  “Lillian? But… but what of her?”

  “She is no longer with us.”

  “What?” Jakob stood up straight and started down the hall.

  “Jakob!” His mother cried after him. “Do not open that door! She is not in there! She is not in there!”

  “Mother,” as he turned back a moment. “Don’t be absurd. What has happened to Lillian? Is she all right?”

  “Lillian…” Her voice trailed. “No… more… Lillian.”

  Jakob, not sure what transpired before his arrival, continued down the hall. At the door he stood a time, listening. But there was no sound from within. With caution he placed his hand upon the handle and turned. But the knob would not move.

  He gripped tighter.

  Now with both hands.

  Turned the knob ever so sli
ghtly.

  Little by little the knob gave way, his hands turning white at the exertion.

  But what force could hold such a thing? He leaned lower, centering his gravity. He could feel the knob getting closer to its destination, hearing the bolt grind from the strike plate in its course for freedom. Dear God! Lillian! Was she truly all right? She was just a girl? And what manner of evil was trying to keep him from opening this cursed door?

  Finally the bolt cleared its housing, and the door nudged open a crack. Jakob put his foot down against the bottom of the door to keep it from closing, before crouching lower and driving his shoulder into the structures’ panels. The door popped momentarily before some blow assaulted the other side and tried to push it shut again. His head banged against it, a fierce concussion, sending stars across his line of sight and sending a jolt of exquisite pain down his neck and back. He pushed again, eyes closed against the headache that was now evolving, teeth grit against the strain his body exerted.

  Inch by inch the door opened. Each moment, he would lower his shoulder, bracing himself against the opposing force. Then slide his foot forward, the side of it anchoring it in place at the bottom, while the top of the door bowed in his direction, the wood creaking as if it might snap at the middle.

  “Jakob,” his mother called one more time from down the hall. She had managed herself up onto her haunches, reaching a hand in his direction. Her eyes pleaded, begging him to stop.

  But he couldn’t stop. He just couldn’t! His little sister was in there! Suddenly, the door gave way, swinging wide as if all the force which held it fast dissipated in an instant. Jakob, pulled forward by the momentum, stumbled into the room. He tried to catch himself with one of the bedposts, but failed. His arms flailed as a foot caught beneath a throw rug and he tumbled to the floor, his head just missing the dresser across the room.

  He regained himself though, spinning onto his backside, and lifted himself up, his eyes directed at the door. It groaned in the room’s stillness, almost beckoning him, teasing, before the wood seemed to laugh and the structure swung shut again with a force so concussive, he thought the neighborhood might rattle. On the other side, just faintly, little more than a murmur, he could hear his mother scream his name again.

  3

  3.

  “And what of it?” Crowley questioned over the top of his teacup.

  “What of it? Why, that is just the beginning! Is it not enough?”

  “Relax young man. You requested this meeting. Let me ask my questions as I see fit.”

  “But-“

  “Your job is simply, to answer them. How else am I to ascertain whether your… circumstance, might require my attention?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s that… well… the whole ordeal was, it was… well God man! I am horrified still!”

  “As you should,” Crowley agreed, setting the cup back onto its saucer. He pulled a small piece of cake from where it sat between the two, sliding it into his mouth and closing his eyes as if it were the most gracious thing that had passed his lips. “At least, from what I’ve heard thus far.”

  “Then, you have some idea?”

  “Some, yes. Well, maybe. Possibly.” Wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. “There are all manner of things in the netherworld that could cause such a disturbance. We’ve not even the time left in this life to begin listing them here and now. And I grant you, that even I have not the knowledge of them all. I myself, have been little more than a student until recently. So please… continue your tale.”

  “Very well,” Jakob agreed. His chest heaved in a great sigh, fortifying his soul against the memories he’d conjure next.

  With a hand on the dresser, Jakob pulled himself to his feet, eyes still locked on the bedroom door. The room sat still, quiet. But humid. Damp with an unseen decay. It crawled up his nostrils like tendrils of smoke and bored into his brain. It was a sensation more than anything. A sense that all possibilities of heaven had been devoured and shat out in the very room in which he now stood.

  It was then he heard the scratching. He turned his head, trying to decipher the sound. Was it some rodent scampering under the bed; behind the dresser? If so, it sounded like a chorus of the little beasts. He held his breath, focusing on the sound. Jakob looked up. The ceiling, once pressed tin, ornate and a bit elaborate, crawled with all manner of things. Their tiny feet scuttled about the surface, making a tick, tick, ticking in sporadic rhythms. He covered his head with his arms as if that menacing chorus and pulsing quilt of millions of legs might drop upon him. But they held fast. A wavering jumble of black creepers. Paying him no mind. They scuttled back and forth about their business, undisturbed by his presence in the room. Oh how he now wished it were rats instead! The bugs scurried in haste, climbing over each other in a writhing mass, hiding the ceiling beneath.

  And then… the laugher began. It was low. Guttural. Almost masked behind the hand of the devil himself. Jakob’s head snapped to the side.There upon the bed, sat his little sister. Her nightgown had been torn from her, clad now in only her drawers, the skin of her torso almost translucent with little spidery veins snaking beneath the surface. The nightgown lie at the side of the bed. She was but a child, only eleven years, though somehow looked much older now. Not her body, but her eyes, and the way they held Jakob’s. The way they penetrated the fabrics of his soul and seemed to dig deep, scratching at the secrets of his mind.

  She tilted her head to one side, not slightly, but at the deepest of angles; an unnatural crook in her neck, running the side of her head nearly parallel with her shoulder. And her mouth worked in ovals.

  Sporadic.

  The lower jaw jutted, biting back, as if she were chewing something with only her back teeth. No sign of her tongue, which was pulled in; curled up as if waiting for the precise moment to strike, a cobra between her lips. This created a gaping blackness as her mouth continued to open and close in stutters. And then she smiled. Or at least, made an attempt. Her lips widened at odd angles, the sides of her cheeks pulling up, teeth never touching, while the veins straining in her neck stuck out likes cords beneath her mottled skin.

  Hair damp with sweat.

  Eyes, an inky black, seeming to swirl.

  Skin pallid, almost rotting.

  Covered in aging spots, marks of black and brown.

  Nails yellowed and cracking at the tips.

  With these she reached toward Jakob, her face assuming some semblance of pleasure. She beckoned him without words. He found his feet shuffling toward her with trepidation. Lillian’s eyes watered, and her face offered a hint of softness. Jakob reached out with one of his hands. She leaned forward on the bed, now on her knees. As their fingers were about to touch, Jakob witnessed something behind those eyes. Something changed. Something hidden, now revealed. And it wasn’t his sister.

  He pulled his hand back and the no-longer-Lillian screeched with horror! She leapt from the bed at Jakob, wrapping her legs around his torso. Her hands grasped the back of his head as she opened her maw and bit for his face. His hands came up, one in the nick of time near his chest, keeping some distance between her and him. The other reached for the back of her head, taking up a clump of hair and yanked backward on the thick brown lochs. He felt the slime of perspiration and what else he knew not, squish between his fingers. She bounded forward again, her mouth now working mechanically, chomping up and down, up and down.

  Jakob struggled for moments, but eventually felt her grip with her legs slacken. He pushed with the one hand on her chest, still tugging at her hair, keeping her face from his.

  “Lillian! Lillian stop!”

  That laugh came again. More shrieking this time, hacked in pieces by the working of her jaw in a sawing motion. Finally, he heaved with all the strength he could muster, and the little girl came free, tumbling to the floor. She landed on her backside, and in a blink, bounded back to her feet, jumping backwards over the foot of the bed and landing in a haunched position. She swayed side to side on the ball
s of her feet. Her mouth still working. Her lips still attempting some form of smile, eyes never leaving her brother.

  “Lillian, by God, what has gotten in to you?”

  “It’s not what’s in. Not what’s in, what’s out!” Her voice husky and wet. “Not what’s in, what’s out. What’s out! What’s in, what’s out! Ha!”

  “Lillian, stop! I beg you!” Throwing his hands to the sides of his head. “Please!”

  “Please you be, me be, maybe please! What’s in, come’s out!”

  Lillian leapt from the bed again, her teeth bared, her eyes glazed with an animalistic overture.

  Arms stretched.

  Hands and fingers in claws.

  She cleared the foot of the bed with ease. Instinctually, Jakob closed his eyes for impact. As she neared, something within him forced his arm out, his fist clenched, coming at her in an arc. His hand connected with the side of her face with some force. There was a quick gulp from the creature/Lillian thing, followed by silence, save for the girl’s limp body crashing to the floor in a heap.

  Tears streaming down his face, he couldn’t look at the poor girl. Turned on heels and bolted for the door, grasping the handle. All unnatural influence seemed to have left the room. The door opened. Jakob exited to the other side, closing it behind him. He was still crying. Leaned his back against the door frame, and crumbled to the hallway floor, resting his elbows on his knees, a dizzying spell coming over him.