Blandishment wasn’t working. The spirit was far too angry for any simple method of persuasion to propitiate. It was unhappy with my decision to read from its book. How was I supposed to know that this tiny book tucked away behind all my grandmothers cooking books was going to awake some ancient being!?
After she passed it was my job to go through all of her things. She had all the basic items an old lady would have, endless pictures of grandchildren, newspaper clippings dating back to the Nixon administration, hard candies. Nothing caught my eye, until I saw the little yellow book behind her copy of “The Joy of Cooking”. It had no title, just a funny picture on the front of a small hunched over being. The cover was yellow but it looked worn, like it had sat in the sun for years, and not behind my grandmother’s dusty bookshelf. A dead moth fell from the pages as I skimmed through. It was probably only 50 pages long, but right in the middle in bright red were the words
EXCOQUATUR IN TERRA
I know, I know, reading ancient latin from a mysterious book is always a one way ticket to a bloodsoaked cliche horror movie, what do you want from me? I’m grieving!
Anyway, nothing happened when I first read the words, but for days we got no rain. Which is weird because it’s winter up here in the pacific northwest and to go a whole week without rain is not normal. Weeks passed as plants slowly began to dry up, the air was heavy with dirt and winter veggies dried up and rotted away. No one knew how to explain the lassitude nature of the weather. On one particularly hot and dry day in January I decided to look through the tiny yellow book again.
The pages were filled with latin and strange pictures. The pictures all showed death, the death of plants came first, and then animals, and then on the last page
people
People dried up like the winter squash in my backyard
Bodies dry and brittle like my neighbors grass that he worked so hard on.
Mothers strangling their infants so their dried lungs didn’t suffocate them slowly.
I slammed the book down and shuddered at what I might have done.
I searched endlessly in this 50 page book for clues, stupidly reading out loud all the latin until the funny crouched over being from the front of the book appeared in the corner of my kitchen.
Horripilation occurred on my arm as this large and shadowy figure approached me.
“What do you want!?” I screamed
“BLOOD” The creature shrieked out an ear shattering sound, the glass windows in my kitchen exploded, glass cutting me, blood spilled on the floor.
The creature smiled and its mouth opened into a bright yellow hole, sucking the blood off my arm and the floor.
“NOT ENOUGH” And then it was gone, through the broken glass window, out to wreak more havoc I presumed.
700 people in my community died that day, the creature swept through windows, consuming everything in sight. Families were ripped apart, literally left to clean up the pieces of their loved ones as the spirit grew fuller and fuller. There was nothing any of us could do but wait for it to get full. Beautiful homes that once had lush gardens now stood empty with blood soaked dead grass, broken glass, and nothing but anguish where love once stood.
I knew it was all my fault, but what good would announcing that do for the town?
I wish I could tell you there was a happy ending to this, but there wasn’t. Sometimes we can’t put a bow on these types of stories and wrap it up nicely. There was no appeasing this creature once I let it out of the book, it wanted blood and it wouldn’t stop until it was full.
I looked deeper through my grandmother’s things, until I found a clipping from a local Indiana newspaper, where she was born.
The headline read
Town Flees as Unseen Force Destroys Community
I looked up the town, and there was nothing left, a ghost town of a once prominent community. I knew what I had to do at that point. I packed up everything I owned, including the little yellow book, with the creature back on the cover, this time laying down with a full belly, and I drove.
I drove for days, to get as far away from the town that I killed.
As I got to the outskirts of town petrichor hit my nose, that comforting smell of rain after a long dry winter.
I drove until I couldn’t smell death anymore and I vowed to make sure no one would find that little yellow book on my bookshelf.
Inherent Fear 