Beloved

I have never told you about how our family came to be as powerful as it is. It’s a secret I have always hoped that I could spare you from but alas today is your grandmothers birthday and It has occurred to me that I’m the same exact age my mother was before her passing. Your Grandmother was sick. She had been sick for some time and the doctors weren’t quite sure what it was but she hadn’t been responding for a while now. You see she was always very healthy, she even seemed immortal, until one day she just collapsed.

Unlike you and I, we did not have the closest relationship. She was always busy maintaining this company and only ever really home on the holidays so we never bonded well. It even seemed at times that she didn’t even really want me there as if I was more of burden than her only daughter. So naturally I rebelled at every chance I could when she wasn’t around, and even more so when she was. I just wanted her to pay attention to me and not her company, a company who’s function I was never even told ! Whenever I confronted her about it she would always give me the same exact answer. “ Everything Ive done I do so that you can live the life I have given you ”. I never liked her answer .

Right after barely finishing college I was surprised to get a letter from my mother, and the contents were even more shocking since it was a check for $20,000. Shocked at its value I read her letter. It said that she wanted to try to mend the rift that had grown between us. She was sorry that she had neglected me for most of my life and was willing to finally explain herself to me. It wasn’t the money she had given me that made me happy but her words. Not only was I going to get my answers but maybe just maybe I was going to get my mother back. I packed up and left for home immediately but it was on my way there I had received the news about her condition.

The letter she had sent me was from a month prior so when I made it home she was already too sick to even speak to me. I had never seen her so frail. It crushed me. She was always so alive and now she had been reduced to a husk with all matters of tubes from machines keeping her alive. I couldn’t bare it. I walked over to her bed and just collapsed clenching her now thin hand as I tried to speak to her. “Mom....I’m here now, I’m sorry that we haven’t spoken...I...I’m just so angry”. At this point I began to sob on the side of her bed. I felt her try to squeeze my hand to let me know she was still in there. I cried for hours before I fell asleep by her bed.

When I awoke I decided to take a stroll around the old house to try take my mind off of what was happening and of course decided to poke around where I shouldn’t be ending up in grandma’s old office. If she couldn’t tell me what she had been doing all these years I was just going to find out myself . I shut the door and walked over to her desk plopping myself in her massive chair. I started looking though all her files just digging trying to find anything that explained what it was she did. Rummaging through her things I knocked her desk lamp over by accident completely shattering it on the floor making me jump out of the chair. I kneeled down to pick up the broken lamp but as I reached for it something else caught my eye. A little black book spread open face down on the floor. It was almost as if it called to me. It was her planner. I had never actually seen it before since she had always kept it so hidden. Engraved on it were the words “Darkness Lives Here”. I reached for it and as soon as I touched the book I felt it. I felt evil.

It was definitely my mother’s book but I had never held it before in fact I don’t think anyone else ever had.This book can, NO this book will answer my questions I thought to myself as I immediately began examining its pages. At first the contents were just names and numbers but then I realized the numbers were ages. None of the ages went over 14 and there were so many pages of names. I started reading through all of them. Names of children that went missing years before my time. I kept flipping though it till the names became strange writings. Symbols I’ve never seen but somehow understood.

One really resonated with me and I found myself uttering a word I’ve never heard before a word that did not exist. However when I said it everything went dark and I found myself in the same room but different. It was darker and it seemed like all the color had been blotted out. When my eyes finally focused there was a huge knock at the door followed by the sounds of countless voices saying the same exact thing. “Let me in”. They weren’t shouting it they were all saying it calmly but yet almost as if they were begging, but soon the voices were filled with rage screaming over one another shouting “LET ME IN”. As if I had lost all control of my body I found myself walking towards the door and as I began to turn the knob a very familiar voice shouted over the others, the voice of my mother pleading with someone...something is more like it. I could hear her screaming “PLEASE NOT MY BABY” and whatever it was replied in a language I’ve never heard however I didn’t need to understand to hear that it was full of fury.

I don’t remember opening the door but I do remember the feeling that came afterwards. It was the same feeling I had when I touched the book just pure undeniable evil. The voices I once heard were now gone replaced by a deafening silence as I stared out into what seemed like nothingness. Suddenly hundreds of hands erupted from the doorway coated in a thick umbra that was pure black pulling me violently into the void. My screams echoed and I found myself in an endless darkness the only living being floating amongst the vast nothing. I thought for sure that it was all over that my curiosity had actually cost me everything, all of this because I flipped throughout some insignificant book. My thoughts spun in circles as I couldn’t come to terms with my self inflicted demise...but then I heard it. The voice my mother was pleading with was laughing and in the distance I could faintly make out a massive shape. One I was being pulled straight towards.

I found myself in front of it, this thing, this being. Its size was massive as if it had no true end spanning for miles across an abyss forever reaching deeper into the void. The only light I could see was the faint multicolored glow that illuminated from its vast coiling body and hundreds of red glowing eyes all fixing their gaze right on me. As I was brought closer the light that came from it revealed the hands to be a part of it tangling into a massive tendril bringing me to what I can only say was it’s “face”. It’s laughter subsided as the hands that held me released their grip and I was actually standing, on what I could not tell you but I was no longer floating. The being spoke but not out loud it spoke directly within my mind. It began to tell me that I had an opportunity not only to help my mother but to obtain untold knowledge and power as well but at a price.

It told me that my mother was much older than she appeared to be that SHE wasn’t what she appeared to be. She was it’s emissary charged with helping it keep a foothold within our world however she stopped doing her job, she stopped helping it so it gave her a choice an impossible choice. It wanted me. It wanted her to give it her most prized possession because of her transgression or it would strip her of all the power it had bestowed. Her choice shocked me. She chose to spare me. My entire life she never so much as held me and my mother sacrificed herself for me to live and my actions completely overwrote hers. I was furious. This thing had won it had me. So feeling as if I didn’t have a choice I told it to name it’s price, if it meant saving my mother I didn’t care what it was. My price was the same as my mother’s my complete and utter servitude in exchange for the knowledge and power she once possessed as well as ending whatever torment it was inflicting my mother. I agreed and it’s face cracked open with a massive red glow that shot from within. It blinded me as I stepped forward accepting my new fate. The crack opened wider as I walked towards it becoming a mouth that completely engulfed me.

Everything went red and before I knew it I was being remade. First there was only pain as I felt my very being getting torn apart and put back together. My mind overflowing with information both ancient and current, past, and future, all knowledge, it’s knowledge. Then I felt the power as my form rematerialized right back where I was in the chair. It took a few moments to gather myself and sort out all that was happening to me. I felt different, stronger, smarter, like I was invincible, the same way I saw my mother I now felt. Then suddenly I heard it. A flat-line. I ran to my mothers room faster than I ever have. She was gone. The entity I had made this deal with never specified how it would end my mother’s suffering and it was at that point I knew that no matter how nefarious this thing was it kept it’s word and expected me to keep mine unless I wanted to end up as she did. Yet again I found myself on my knees sobbing at the loss of my mother who in the end literally gave everything she had for me.

Her son staring at her with the most puzzled face imaginable. “But mom everything you’re telling me just sounds crazy, books can’t do anything like what you are describing”. She places her hand gently on his face and looks directly into him as if she was looking straight into his soul as she spoke her final words of caution. “All books big or small are other worlds created by those who have written them, they all take you somewhere far away regardless of where you are or what you are doing. They can take you to the most wonderful places, and some take you to the places of nightmares… Is it really that hard for you to believe in what I’m telling you? Why would I lie to you about any of this?” Seeing the seriousness in his mother’s eyes he glances at the book that she is holding pulls her in close for an enormous hug. “I believe you mom and no matter what I’ll never touch it”. She smiles and holds him closer to her. As they share this tender moment all he can hear is the book. All he can hear is “LET.ME.IN”.