Framed for Mortar

If walls could talk ... no one would listen. I know that from experience. I am not exactly a wall, admittedly, but I have lived inside one for ... well it depends on how you calculate time. It has been completely dark down here for, well centuries, I would guess. But now they have opened up for business again. Its no longer a dungeon, but something they call a "museum" - and there is light down here part of the time as well as visitors like yourself.

I am pretty sure that you are not listening to me now. You keep glancing in my direction, but it's so dim in here that you can't see much. I don't even know what language you speak. Maybe you hear some sort of strange creaking or rattling coming from my direction. A disturbing moaning perhaps? One can only hope.

Well, now that I've got someone to talk to, I'm just going to keep talking. I'm not sure why you thought it was a good idea to stay behind when the tour moved on, but you are here now until they reopen in the morning. And I'm here, well indefinitely. So we've both got plenty of time for me to tell my story.

I belong to an ancient lineage. We called ourselves udug back in the day, but now you would probably use the derogatory term, "demon," a word which has no meaning to us. Back then, in the Land Between the Rivers on the banks of the Tigris, our life was carefree. The Enemy had not shown Himself, so there was nothing to stop us from going where we wished and doing what we wanted. All of the endless wars and conflict were a boon to us. Back then, the victors didn't kill everyone they defeated. They took the survivors home and sold them as slaves. That meant there were lots of abandoned villages, along with lots of graveyards, of course, so we moved in and enjoyed ourselves. Any living mortal who came by was our legal prey. We just climbed on board and worked our will!

I remember the day it all changed. We were in a graveyard near the Sea of Galilee. It contained some nice mausoleums with wonderful sculptures! A robust young mortal had wandered in among the tombs - why, we didn't know. Perhaps he was seeking to commune with his ancestors. He probably thought they could tell him something about his future, though of course the dead know nothing about what happens after they depart from life. Nor do we udug, to tell the truth.

At any rate, the word spread and cousins came from all around to take advantage of the new vehicle. It was quite a ride! But then the Enemy heard about it and came to put and end to our fun. He faced us down and asked for a name. One of us - I forget who - confessed that we were many. He thought that without a name, the Enemy would have no power to command us. But he was wrong! As we were about to be sent into the Everlasting Darkness Beyond Night, I surrendered to fear and begged that we be cast instead into a nearby herd of pigs. They were the only living things around which could accommodate all of us. So there we went, but the pigs panicked and stampeded off a cliff into the sea. I was blamed for the disaster and I am still trying to live it down. The "pig-udug!"

Well, after that, I was recalled from the field and put on probation for a while. Nothing I did or said made any difference. Finally, I regained enough trust from the Lower-Downs to be put on book duty. Solomon, an ancient King of Israel, had stumbled upon some dangerous Words of Power that gave him absolute control over our people. After his death, we hoped that he and his works would be forgotten, but one of his books survived the wars and unrest - even the destruction of Judea by the Romans. It turned up unexpectedly some centuries later and I was given the job of making sure that it was never properly used.

It wasn't a challenging assignment. I just needed to stay with the book, to try to keep it hidden, and, if it were ever opened, to discourage any mortal from speaking any of the valid enchantments therein. It was a pretty easy post, I admit. Not many humans were even literate at the time and those educated souls who had learned to read had also been taught to fear the prying eyes of the Inquisition - one of our finest innovations, if I do say so myself.

So the book mostly stayed hidden in secret stashes of manuscripts. It changed hands every now and then but avoided general discovery and thus was, unfortunately as it turned out, never burned. Finally it came into the hands of a ruler who, for some reason, called himself a "Holy Roman Emperor." He wasn't "holy" - far from it! Thanks to the efforts of my colleagues, he had given himself over to all of the pleasures of the flesh. Nor was he Roman! In fact, I don't think he ever even set foot in that deplorable city of seven hills - seven piles of excrement they should say. Finally, he was no emperor. There was no longer any empire for him to be emperor of!

He lived in a horrible town on a river named after the ford - Praha it was called, and I think it has kept the name, though in Latin I believe it is designated "Praga." He had a library there full of the books he had collected. I don't think he ever read a single one. He just liked having them.

So far, so good, right? But then this disgusting con-man showed up, claiming to be from "Angel Land." It is beyond me how anyone who met him could have believed such a thing! He was a hairy, filthy peasant with cropped ears that he tried to hide under his hat. Unfortunately he did have some skill with languages. Perhaps the "Angels" of his homeland had taught him something after all.

So this fellow, who called himself Kelley or some such, actually posed a legitimate threat. He announced in the presence of the so-called Emperor that he could work miracles of transformation and healing. So the Emperor did what any sane ruler would do. He locked him in a dungeon and insisted that he prove his claims beyond any doubt. Kelley had somehow found out that King Solomon's book was hidden in the Emperor's library and he made access to the book a condition for successful completion of his miraculous feats. Now there was trouble on the horizon.

The book was delivered to Kelley in his dungeon cell - which happened to be this very chamber in the old tumble-down castle known so appropriately as Hrad Křivoklát (the Crooked Roost). That was when I first met Kelly, and of course I dismissed him immediately as a liar, a rogue and a charlatan. After a while, however, I realized that his pronunciation of the Words of Power was amazingly accurate. No matter what precautions I took - distracting sounds, inexplicable indoor breezes ruffling the pages, physical pokes, prods and pushes - he was still making progress.

When Kelley began painting designs upon the floor of the cell, I knew things were getting serious. He had requested some foul ingredients - snake's blood and powdered myrrh and garlic oil. He mixed them together and traced a huge circle on the floor which took up almost the entire chamber. Then he painted other symbols in various locations. Before I knew it, he had incense burning, lamps lit in the four corners and the chanting commenced.

I was frozen in place. At first I thought it was the chanting, but then I recognized the symbol on the floor under me. A so-called "demon-trap" to keep unwanted spirits from interfering in the goings-on. I was an unwanted spirit!

Now the real danger had arrived, but since I was immobile, I was unable to warn anyone. Kelley had decided to call up one of the Big Guys - Belial, who is among the highest-ranking lords of our people. If I had been disgraced by the pig incident, this was going to be my ultimate downfall - or, perhaps, upfall?!

The Words of Power resounded in the room, shaking my innards to the core. The floor trembled and then a hole opened up under the triangle Kelley had painted next to his cowardly circle of protection. Lord Belial appeared, flapping leathery bat-wings and fluttering his robes of fire only to discover that he was bound inside the triangle the same way that I was caught in the trap. Kelley did not seem to be the least bit perturbed. He just kept chanting. Lord Belial transformed himself into a pitiful figure - an elderly, inoffensive monk in a black cowl, though his eyes still burned with fire. Kelley kept up with the chanting. Now His Lordship became a great lizard-creature, bigger than a dog, with a pointed tail and a long, narrow snout filled with crooked teeth. The chanting continued. Lord Belial, changed into a wolf with foam-dripping jaws and then a giant bear waving its enormous claws in the air. There was still no effect on Kelley, who was nearing the end of the passage that would give him complete control over his captives.

I could tell that His Lordship was getting desperate - there was that sense of intolerable tension like a bridge before it collapses. In any other situation I would have been absolutely delighted. But now I was shaking with terror. Then the bear disappeared and a naked woman took its place. She was of surpassing beauty, and she flexed her lovely limbs and reached out as if to caress the filthy magician. Finally Kelley lost his focus. He stumbled over his words and his eyes strayed to the femme fatale.

At that moment, Lord Belial broke free, changed back into the lizard thing and snapped Kelly up in his twisted fangs. In another instant, both had vanished down the hole in the floor, which sealed itself up as if it had never been there.

I was left behind and, unfortunately, still frozen in place above the damnable sigil. There was now no one who could release me. Lord Belial had wisely snatched Solomon's book along with its user and had taken them both with him back home.

In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. The Emperor got it into his mind that Kelley had escaped and he brought in various guards and servants to be put to the question. The screaming and the delicious miasma of human despair were like salve to my imprisoned soul. And then there were the religious wars. During his brief visit, Lord Belial had perceived how useful these could be to disrupt and dispirit the forces of the Enemy. For the next thirty years there was a constant flow of prisoners through the dungeon - first heretics accused by one side and then those accused by the other. Even when they confessed, the torture continued - in fact it was even more vicious after they had submitted. I lapped it up like water from a polluted spring.

The building above was damaged during the conflicts, and finally the torture chamber was abandoned. Those were long, lonely years for me. At last, a crew of workmen showed up to reinforce the foundations so that the castle could be restored. It was no good trying to possess them, since I was still held by the sigil, but I tried anyway. The worst part was that they needed to widen the walls. So the place where I am frozen in place is now inside the masonry, and I am completely embedded. So, you know, these things happen. I am part of the wall now, immured, so to speak. We have become very close.

There is a tarnished silver lining to all of this. Now that the restoration is complete, they have opened the castle to visitors. Visitors like you! I get to enjoy the vicarious sense of horror you all exude when you first see the instruments of torture. You know, your morbid imaginations are really something else.

I can't leave, but neither can you - for a while, at least. But don't sit back and relax. Scream your lungs out! Scratch uselessly with your fingernails at the stone walls! It's your turn to entertain me now, and I have all the time in the world.

Historical Note:

In 1576 Rudolf II succeeded his father, Maximillian II, as Holy Roman Emperor. Seven years later, he moved the capital of the Empire from Vienna to Prague in the then kingdom of Bohemia. An enthusiastic sponsor of occult sciences, Rudolf attracted the most notable astrologers, alchemists and natural philosophers of Europe to his court. Among them were the Englishman Edward Kelley along with his long-time collaborator, the renowned scholar Dr. John Dee, royal astrologer to Elizabeth I of England. Arrested on trumped-up charges of killing a man in a duel, Kelley was imprisoned by the Emperor and forced to perform his alchemical experiments under close supervision. He died in 1597 or possibly 1598 during what was reported as a failed escape attempt.