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Belial

I looked until my eyes watered at its silent blackness. Stinging, they flew shut. When they closed, they could see the cloven feet scurrying down the stairs.

By Dani BuckleyPublished 4 years ago 13 min read
1
Photo credit: thephobolographer.com

When I was little, we held a séance.

Not for any old reason, but because of the hole in our attic.

It was the late '70s, and in our house the most advanced form of technology we had was a polaroid camera. Huge thing, it was, with a flimsy strap to hook round your neck so your hands wouldn't tremble with the weight of holding it up. Mum had nabbed it at a car boot sale down by the market. She was pleased with the discounted price she had been able to haggle it down to. I bit my tongue, afraid to tell her the reason why it had been so cheap was because it was just under a decade old. I had seen it on the back of an old catalogue from 1969.

Nevertheless, mum had brought it home, beaming with pride and announcing to my sister and I that it was the perfect vessel through which to 'make memories'.

My mother was a very shrill, cheerful woman, with a tiny gold cross nestled in the groove of her collarbone at all times. Dad was a gruff, simple man who enjoyed TV dinners and beers when he came home from the mill. His boots were a permanent fixture of the landscape of our living room, piled beside the small pillowed footstool he treasured as though it were a block of gold bar.

One night, Dad had been sipping from a can of beer and huffing at some political debate on the television. Mum had been folding the washing, offering the occasional 'tut' at whatever drivel was being spouted from the host's mouth.

Daisy and I were strewn across the carpet, colouring line drawings of Bert and Ernie in our dog-eared colouring book. There came the sound of a loud crash and the splintering of wood tumbling across the carpeted landing.

Instantly I leapt up, bare feet stumbling over the array of colouring pens on the carpet. Wide-eyed and mouth hanging open in an awed 'o' shape, I monkey-crawled up the stairs on all fours. The heavy footsteps of my father were not far behind, his voice an irritated grumble at having been disturbed from his nightly relaxation. "Emmaline!" He yelled, "Em, you wait there!"

But I was already at the top, tiny ink-stained fingers grasping the top of the railing and emerging onto the landing. The carpet was a sea of debris. Plaster coated the floor like a blanket of snow, and fragments of wooden beam were scattered among the grooves of periwinkle wool.

"How the bloody hell-" Barked Dad, lifting me up and fitting me into the crook of his side. I used this opportunity to take a look at the ceiling, where the mess must have come from. As I did, I noticed something. Something that I have never forgotten.

The outline of a solid black hoof, dangling from the edge of the roof's tear, hovered for a moment before vanishing into the attic gloom. When I turned, startled, to face my father, I noticed he was still looking down at the mess, shaking his head. A second or two too late, he raised his green eyes beneath their furrow of bushy black brows and gawped at the puncture in the ceiling.

"Christ knows how I'm going to fix that!" He exclaimed, running his spare hand through the torrent of jet-black hair that hung thickly about his ears. Clinging to his shirt, I watched the hole closely, studying for any sign of a cloven foot, listening for the whinny of a horse. My child's mind supposed we had a stray pony inhabiting our roof. But, as wild as that thought was, even for a nine-year-old, I was sure of what I had seen.

Dad did try to fix the hole. Many times. But, like a cancerous growth is defiled the plaster he had bridged upon it. All attempts to patch it up fell away days later, until Dad gave up. Each graft of gloopy white skin failed to take to the layer of thin plaster marking the hole's edge. He moaned that, since we didn't have enough money to move, we would have to get used to the attic hole for now. Daisy and I affectionately named it "Mr. Holey". Mum used to wrinkle her nose in disgust at the sight of it. She wouldn't let any guests go upstairs after that.

At night odd thumps and scratches would sound from the attic, drifting out of the mysterious crevice like warbled melodies. Dad went up there and inspected, but found no mice, rats, birds… nothing for that matter. He supposed the sound was travelling from outside. The matter was dropped, and the sounds were assimilated into our day-to-day life.

The hole always fascinated me. I would find myself staring up at it, slack-jawed, until Daisy would come and prompt me into returning to our game with a smack on the arm. Scowling and reluctant, I would follow her, my eyes flitting back to the hole.

-

Blackouts were common in those days. On one of the all-too frequent days when our electricity failed us, Daisy and I ran up the stairs giggling. She was pretending to be a model, a real Cybil Shepherd type, posing in mum's pale pink lipstick and fake pearls. I had the polaroid camera and was pretending to be a paparazzi, doggedly asking questions about the next fashion show she was to appear in. While we played by candlelight and I aimed the odd camera flash at Daisy, ignoring mum's shrill cry that we were going to waste the film, noises emerged from the attic.

Daisy stopped laughing and grew quiet and uncomfortable. Promptly, she unwrapped the lasso of pearls from her neck and gathered them up in her fists. "Don't want to play anymore," She mumbled.

But I was ignoring her. I stood beneath the hole, arched my back until my spine was titled at a strange angle, and held the viewfinder of the camera to my eye. Cold plastic pressed against my socket. I remember the feeling so clearly. Tongue pinched firmly between my lips in concentration, I aimed the camera above me, at the pitch mass of the hole.

"Emmie, what are you doing?" Whined Daisy, wrapping the python of pearls around her hands anxiously.

"Just a sec!" I hissed. My finger hovered over the trigger. I pressed the pad down onto the button. The flash went off. Daisy screamed.

Before I knew it, mum was racing up the stairs yelling at us. "I told you two not to play in the dark! Look! Emmaline you've upset your sister!"

Blinking, the light of the flash imprinted on the inside of my lids, I turned away from my mother, hearing the familiar hiss of the polaroid sliding out of the camera's internal mechanism. I plucked the polaroid from the slot with my thumb and forefinger and let my mother wrench the camera from around my neck, her shrill voice and Daisy's sobs fading out as the picture faded in. I held my breath as the film developed. Black bled onto the white square, until the nuances of the hole and the cream ceiling became perceptible to the naked eye.

A tiny gasp flew from my lips when I realised exactly what I was looking at.

At the edge of the hole closest to Mum and Dad's bedroom, something was peering at the camera. It had honey-coloured eyes that shone like a cat's in the flash. Its skin was mottled and covered in black and brown fur. Its hands grasped the edge of the hole, long fingers entirely black, from palm to nail. They bled over the cracked edge of the plaster like a pair of huge, hairy spiders.

A pair of long, ridged horns, just visible beyond the pair of blank, staring yellow eyes, faded into the darkness of the attic.

I looked from the polaroid to the ceiling. Even by the dim candlelight I could see no pair of yellow eyes staring back at me.

It must be hiding, I thought excitedly.

"MUM!" I yelped, waving the polaroid in the air triumphantly. "MUM THERE'S A GOAT IN THE ATTIC! I THOUGHT IT WAS A HORSIE BUT I WAS WRONG! IT'S A MAGICAL GOAT!"

My mother was staring at me as if I'd just told her the earth was flat. "What on earth are you talking about?!" She snapped.

I waved the polaroid at her insistently. She took it and her face paled to a stark white. Her hand flew to her lips. "Richard…" She mumbled, wide eyes un-moving from the square of film in her hand. "RICHARD!" She screamed, causing Daisy to burst into another flood of frightened tears.

-

They argued in the bedroom.

Mum's shrill voice could be heard even over the howling wind and rain outside. I heard the word 'demon' emerge from Mum's lips in a frustrated scream, followed by a grunt of disbelief from Dad. When Mum emerged, hollow cheeks blotchy and red, Dad's words followed her, "If you want to dabble in that ghost shite your mum got herself involved in, be my guest, but I won't be here! Do it when I'm at work if you have to - and don't come crying to me if it doesn't fucking work!"

-

Mum had us at the table when the medium came in. He was a portly, elderly man dressed entirely in black with a crisp white collar hiding the loose skin of his turkey-like neck. He had told her on the phone to set up a table and a few chairs beneath the hole. Mum had diligently removed the old fold-out garden table from the shed and hauled it up to the landing. She had asked if it would be too traumatising for us. The medium insisted we should be present, as we had interacted most with the 'demon'. I hissed under my breath that it was a magical goat man, actually, and the medium shot me a scathing look, as if I were somehow in league with it.

We held hands in a circle, Daisy and I propped up on cushions so we could see over the table's edge. Dad wouldn't be home until 5. The cuckoo-clock in the kitchen had just announced midday. Mum had insisted with a rather strained voice that it gave us lots of time.

I gazed up at the hole, willing Goat-Man to reveal himself. The medium shot me another look with his watery eyes and said, "Eyes closed, head bowed, please".

Huffing, I consented, dipping my chin so that my carob hair fell like a small veil beside my face. The medium began to talk incessantly, asking a string of ridiculous questions. Then he began to speak in a funny language. I shot Daisy a look from behind my curtain of hair. She returned my puzzled inquisition with a curved brow and pursed lips.

I was growing rather bored and sleepy, and thought about leaning a few inches further forward so that my chin would rest against the table's edge. Then, a strange sound caused my skin to prickle, hot and pulsing with the white fear of adrenaline.

A voice, neither male or female, but undulating somewhere between, rang out in a sharp, rasping wheeze from the crevice above us.

"Begone, miles christi,"

Mum let out a small scream, her hand trembling in mine. I stole a glance at her from the protection of my dark veil and saw her eyes were firmly shut.

"Tolle quod tuum est et pseudopropheta eius sanguinem crucis a meis mansit,"

The voice, a meandering moan, sounded as though it were coming from right beside me.

The medium, resolute and determined, shouted something in reply. Even now, I struggle to remember what he said. I can only clearly remember the harsh sounds tearing from the throat of the Goat-Man, but it was something to do with the creature's name.

A strangled cackle came from the hole. It was a sound so venomous and mocking it made my shoulders envelope my neck and my knees draw up to my middle.

Came the voice again, "Ego non dabo te in nomine meo, ego autem devorabit in innocents".

I strained to hear it, despite its repulsive tone. It sounded as if many made up the single sound. A choir of moans and whispers in different pitches, all twisted together to make one guttural string of words.

The medium repeated his request for the name, this time, insisting it was in Jesus' dominion that he spoke.

The Goat-Man screamed, a hissing, sobbing cry tearing from his throat as though struck with force or burned.

"Be - li - aaaaal," Came the Goat-Man, as if the word were hoisted from his throat like a bucket in a well-shaft.

"Belial?" The medium questioned.

All that came in response was a deafening moan of one writhing in fervent agony. I could hear my mother's stifled sobs rising over the terrible sound. I looked. Her nose was gushing with a mixture of snot and tears. Her golden cross seemed, even to my child's eye, pathetic in the way it glinted feebly on her chest.

The medium began to recite in the strange language again, the language used by the beast. It then felt as if the sky broke. Something was plummeting from the hole, its heaving breath hot and laced with a foul odour. The stench filled the room like an acrid smoke. I gagged on my own tongue and squeezed Daisy's hand.

"GET DOWN!" Shrieked the medium, who had been watching the ceiling avidly.

The circle broke. In unison, we ducked below the table.

There was a clatter on the flimsy, metal table. Daisy screamed; a blood-curdling scream that made it feel as though someone were chipping at the grooves of my stomach walls with a chisel. I dared myself to open my eyes, to take one last look at the Goat-Man in all his frightening glory. As I raised my gaze to the table edge, I caught a flurry of cloven feet as it leapt from the scratched metal surface and bounded across the landing. A strange sound of wind between trees welled up in the house as the strange, hairy figure careened down the staircase.

The front door slammed violently. So much so that the pictures lining the inclining wall of the staircase rattled and fell from their nails in a series of ear-splitting sounds. The crunch of the frames falling against broken glass resounded off every surface.

The wind died.

The stench vanished.

Both my mother and Daisy wept.

No one seemed to notice the twin 'U' shapes burned into the thin sheet of circular plastic that made up the tabletop. A trickle of black smoke rose from their indentations, disappearing into the crevice hanging over our heads. Hoofmarks. A Dear John from the Goat-Man in our attic.

I stared at the ceiling and its black stain of nothingness, like a fleshy tear in the artery of a pumping heart.

I looked until my eyes watered at its silent blackness. Stinging, they flew shut.

When they closed, they could see the cloven feet scurrying down the stairs.

When I close them now, I can see them still.

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About the Creator

Dani Buckley

Pennings of the dark and cinematic. Phantasmagoria abound.

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