The door to the cellar flew shut with such a resounding boom that both the woman and the man jumped out of their skin, stumbled off the steps and came crashing down on top of me.
Darkness enveloped us. Darkness absolute.
And the house seemed to breathe around us, as though alive for the first time in a long time. The air sank from the room and my lungs were suddenly parched of oxygen. The couple were panicking, shrieking and scrabbling around to find purchase and I knew exactly what they were experiencing. Not through any sixth sense but because I was experiencing the same thing.
Terror on a primal level. The kind of fear that replaces the marrow in your bones, shoulders its way into your soul like a shard of spreading ice and throws everything else out your feet. My lips were instantly dry and numb, my hands prickling and clammy. Simultaneously I felt watched, hated and probed. I had the full attention of the thing I had named and it wanted to know what frightened me most. Frightening me was now its priority; its sole purpose for existence. Like the atoms in the woman's hand, this thing had travelled far and wide through the drifting void of infinity since the beginning of time and space in order to coalesce here and now, in this moment, in this place, for the express purpose of making me shit my pants.
Thoughts like that are humbling, but I had a job to do and pushed the humility to one side. Humiliation and worse were my fate from this point on if I failed to concentrate, and besides - I had the man and wife to think about. Two writhing vessels of terror at the foot of the stairs.
I was on my feet now, having pushed the pair off in an unceremonious but necessary fashion. I grasped the fear threatening to paralyze me in metaphorical hands and crushed the life from it. I closed my eyes to shut out any visual assault the thing might make and forced words from the cavern of my throat. "I am the servant of the womb of light. I am travelled of the many roads of the endless web and fear not the flies of the profane, nor the pestilence of those who cower in shadow. You cannot harm me, nor those I protect."
A reply came like the slow ride of a cymbal introduced by a hidden drummer. Words formed in the hiss of noise, distant and sporadic, as though somebody were shouting to us from a long way away, strong winds carrying the meat of their message away to the ether. I couldn't understand the words, but the couple seemed to.
"Oh my God," the woman sobbed. "It whispered in my ear!"
"Don't invoke God," I warned her, "what did it say?"
"Tell him to get the fuck out."
"And are you going to do that?"
"No!"
"You have your answer, but I don't have mine," I addressed the dark behind my eyelids. "Is your name Malis? Malis Vox, myrmidon of the Eater in Space, foul servant of the egest? Thus do I name you, lurker in the dark, thus do I command you. Reply now."
The voice came again, floating from every corner of the space around me, like a whirligig flying at speed about my head, emitting its sibilant whine and the shape of words. In the shapes I heard a variety of disgusting profanities and the word 'yes'."
I switched on my halo. My body started to glow, from head to foot, the halo seeping from the pores of my skin, the skin itself, my muscle and bone and my eyes. I opened my eyes and the light poured forth like spots, throwing illumination across the whole basement, chasing shadows into corners, behind boxes, behind crates, and under cobweb draped shelves veiled in dust.
Sometimes those in my presence would say something like, "you're glowing!" or "Wow, you're all lit up." But this time the couple behind me simply fell silent, as though they'd been expecting this turn of events and welcomed it. The light chased away their fear as surely as the dark and they rose slowly to their feet, holding one another, watching on with a gentle awe that made me want to like them.
