Gustavus wasn't like anyone Kyle had ever met before. He would sometimes hear is uncle talking to himself, narrating himself and his actions as if he was in a book. Agatha Christie was his God. It seemed strange to Kyle that he worshiped Agatha Christie despite his head role with Bejazoot's cultists. Several grand portraits of Agatha hung across the house, as well as her works filling the spaces between the books on the occult and historical mysteries from the last century.
Kyle felt like the mirror opposite of his uncle. For Kyle everything was about destroying and seeing through the false narrative, whereas for his uncle it was all about the narrative. Gustavus disagreed; narrative was life, it was the story that gave us breath and drove us forward towards our conclusions.
Kyle would occasionally walk in on his uncle, who would be pacing back and forth erratically, flicking his switchblade back and forth like he was cutting up the air. Gustavus would just walk right past him, as if he wasn't there. It was out of character for Gustavus to lose his cool collected composure when others were around, but Kyle was a part of him.
"Oh Agatha! How long must I wait for my Poirot?! How many dames do I need on my hands? Must I really open up the doors when I already know where he is?! YOU WERE EVER SO CRUEL AND CUNNING WHEN YOU WROTE ME! Now I play the puppet resurrecting a dead god, just to get the key to which you promise me! To my Poirot! You pulled me through time! And the pages still turn... always turning!"
Kyle felt like it was best to leave it, but he had to know more about the cult. He wanted to see Eva again.
One night he entered his uncle's study to get answers. He hadn't yet fully explored the house, and kept out of his uncle's study. He was sure he had heard someone. Something was rapping and tapping.
A rap tap tap goes the Grimace...
"Hello!" he called out.
No response... just silence.
Kyle looked around the study. It was cluttered with fiction, mainly works of Agatha Christie. On the hard oak desk there were some newspaper cuttings of a jazz musician who died back in 1955 as well as an article and some information about an American detective. It was like he was trying to connect something together. He picked up a dossier with a top secret stamp and flicked through it.
"Louise..." he read out loud.
She worked with some secret military operations for the US.
WHERE IS IT?! was angrily written on a mainly blacked out report of hers about a series of incidents in New York.
Kyle looked back at the newspaper clipping about the Jazz musician. He died in the same place where the incidents took place... The Mo', a motel turned apartment complex. He saw another dossier about a New Orleans incident that occurred around the time of Hurricane Katrina. He picked it up, pulling a face of disbelief as he read out loud "Hitl.."
A rap tap tap goes the Grimace...
"Who's there?" Kyle said as he spun around dropping the dossier.
There was no one, but Kyle could feel something watching him. A wooden chest sat in the corner of the room next to a world globe. Something was rumbling from inside. Kyle slowly walked across the old wooden floor, hearing the floorboards creak with each footstep. His heartbeat slightly raised in anticipation for what he might find. He was slightly disappointment that the chest wouldn't open, a metal lock prevented it from even budging a milliliter. Kyle turned at the sound of something falling from one of the the bookshelves. It was Murder is Easy by Agatha Christie, and out of it popped a key.
As expected the key opened the lock to the chest. Inside was a cane-sword contained within glass casing.
Meanwhile, Gustavus Grey had been in the kitchen making a pot of coffee.
"I pour the boiled water onto a carefully positioned spoon, and let it splash onto the ground coffee" Gustavus said as he poured the water.
"I swirl the cafetiere breathing in the aroma" he said as he swirled the cafetiere and breathed in the aroma.
"I throw the used spoon into the sink. It clangs and it clatters" he said as he threw the spoon into the sink.
"I stare at a picture of a cat, wooden frame, brown and amber as I wait for the coffee to cool" he said as he waited for the coffee to cool.
"Oh Agatha! How clever you wrote me, able to see and perceive through your writing. When I look out at the elm tree through my kitchen window. It becomes so! Before it was not there. Neither was that cobweb and spider in the corner. It is there only because I have the power to say it is there. Without my description of the black leather coasters, they wouldn't exist. I colour and create the world around me... and for what Agatha? To endlessly be teased as a serial killer without a Poirot to stop me? Always evading capture! What happened to you Agatha to allow so many women to die at my hand? Is it your only way to get closer to me? I know you love me, and I love you Agatha! But you betray me by denying me my Poirot! Why do you tease?! What perfunctory monstrosities must you have me unleash just to see my conclusion? And what twists and turns will you present me?"
He poured the coffee into his cup.
"I breathe in... heavily, enjoying the aromas of the coffee, before taking my first sip" Gustavus said, breathing in heavily, before being interrupted from taking his first sip.
A rap tap tap goes the Grimace...
Gustavus' eyes widened with apprehension and almost fear as he placed the coffee cup down onto the black leather coaster. He quickly dashed towards his study.
"Don't touch that!" Gustavus commanded as Kyle's hand floated above the cane-sword.
Kyle stepped aside as his uncle closed the glass casing, and closed the chest, locking it, and placing the key in his jacket pocket.
"What are you doing in my study?"
"I wanted to ask you about the cult. I heard a noise and thought you were in here..."
"Did you now?" Gustavus said as he looked into a mirror, seeing a Grimace reflection looking back, grimacing with bloodlust and the desire to once more get out and play.
Gustavus shook his head as he thought You aren't getting out yet...
"So what do you want to know?" he calmly asked Kyle.
"Is it real?"
"Is anything real? Are you real? Am I real? I tell you this young Kyle. It is written" Gustavus said as he opened a desk drawer and began shuffling through it.
He handed some photos to Kyle.
Kyle stared at them... "I don't understand... that's you?"
The photographs were from the 50s, taken in New York. They were of Gustavus. He looked maybe only a few years older, if even that.
"The truth is I am not your uncle. I'm more of your GREAT uncle, if you catch my drift"
"How?"
Gustavus smiled, as he turned and opened up a filing cabinet. He passed a folder to Kyle.
"The immortality trials" Kyle read out loud.
He flicked through the folder. It was a carefully written out, detailed, series of scientific papers, written at a future date.
Kyle didn't understand what he was reading. The immortality trials started with deadly experiment after deadly experiment on the assistant researcher. He was constantly being killed, and then "reset" back to just before the trial begins, never knowing that the other researcher had already finished the device, or even that he was constantly being killed over and over by someone he considered a friend.
"His name was Rupert... he was the first traveler. The one who built it all. His story starts a few years ago. Someone dear to him dies, and he vows to overcome death, to overcome time, to overcome God himself. Right now he is probably working on cancer research, a first step towards his grand plan. Eventually he has lived long enough for the technology to be created. He harnesses the power of the sun, and begins his immortality trials. But he discovers something unanticipated as he traps his assistant in a never ending hell. There is a world between worlds, and those who get lost in this in-between are contorted into monstrous versions of themselves. This world between worlds is full of wraiths, distorted afterlives of every traveler who will ever exist and get lost"
"And Bejazoot"? Kyle asked,not fully believing what he was hearing.
"When you open a door, you never know who or what will come through" Gustavus said smiling "There are things that shouldn't be here, or perhaps were always meant to be here. Powerful artifacts and places, such as that cane-sword. It is bound to the first traveller's doppelganger, his wraith, the Grimace.
It was all bullshit. Kyle didn't believe it. It was just random events and moments, that were being stitched together with narrative.
"You want to know who Bejazoot is? You want to know how your story ends?" Gustavus said licking his lips, as he passed an ancient looking leather bound black book to Kyle.
Kyle took the book and left the study.
Gustavus looked at the calendar on the wall and flicked it to August. Soon the black moon ceremony would be occurring. Everything was falling into place. No one else's story mattered. Only he mattered. They were just plot devices Agatha had created for him to drive his story, as she teased him always denying him his conclusion with his Poirot.
"Soon Agatha soon... I think I will satisfy myself tonight with any dame I find breaking the lockdown, I say smiling, flicking my switchblade back and forth" Gustavus said smiling, flicking his switchblade back and forth.
Kyle thought Gustavus was full of shit, an eccentric who spent too much time in fiction. But that all changed that night as he began to read through the black book.
Chapter 1 - Deathwish
Chapter 2 - Screaming with No Mouth
Chapter 3 - Nazi Babe with a Cute Smile
Chapter 4 - The End of the World
Chapter 5 - The Dead Streets
Chapter 666 - So I Flipped the Board
Chapter 7 - I Could Feel Myself Changing
Chapter 8:16 - Bejazoot's Coming!
Chapter 999 - The Road To Hell
@RiskDebonair
Irish Writer, Poet, & Agent of H.I.V.E.