Season of the Witch CHARACTERS: Nathaniel Zale. TOPIC: "What would the papers say?" DATE & TIME: Monday, November 2nd 2020. 9:15am. LOCATION: The hallway.
The mystery of the appearing door was only a few days old, and Nathaniel had quickly discovered the well of clues was nearly bone dry. He'd spent an alarming amount of time with the doorway with little in the way of progress. The mountain of dark features and hair was about to toss in the provable towel when he opened the door for what felt like the thousandth time. But this time, Nathaniel was presented with a dark hallway instead of a passageway to the Asgardian-themed guest bedroom. The walls, the baseboards, and the ceiling inside the hallway were consistent with the Silvercloud house as far as the light from Nate's bedroom pierced the tunnel. "Fascinating..." Nate spoke to no one but the empty space ahead of him.
He closed the door. Nathaniel stood and waited. He opened the door. Like a Dungeon and Dragon's player with trust issues, Nate repeated his exercise several times, and the hallway remained each time the door opened. "This is fine," he quoted the meme, then closed the door again. The librarian disappeared from the bedroom but quickly returned with a heavy cardboard box. On the outside of the container was a familiar Sharpie writing, "Do not open Troy's pr0n collection." Nate winced as he opened the flaps, remembering Troy's comment about having a digital camera in the attic. Nathaniel did indeed find a camera and tripod, along with several memory cards. Surprisingly, the box contained no visible adult content - because Troy was seemingly always an agent of chaos. In fact, after Nathaniel turned the camera on and examined the first memory card he found, he was pleasantly surprised to find only time-lapse videos of plants growing.
Once he'd discovered an empty card, he pressed record and set the camera up to face the door. Nate walked to the door and opened it again. The hallway remained, and he moved to look through the camera's viewfinder. He peered into the digital display and spied the same hallway in a slightly pixelated form. "Okay. Now call Eva." Nathaniel said out loud as if the audible words would fight off the intrusive thoughts. "Call Eva, don't walk into the hallway."
Nathaniel walked into the hallway.
As he crossed the plane, nothing happened. He felt the same; the room behind looked the same, and the hallway was dark but not any more eerie than its appearance required. He stepped further in while his eyes readjusted to low light, and after about ten feet, the bedroom lamp's range ended. The silence was omnipresent, to the point of being noisy, and the darkness swallowed the space before him. Nathaniel's thumb flicked the silver ring on his second finger, and like a lighter, a spark sprung forth, and a small flame appeared in his left palm. Now further illuminated, the hall continued without interruption. Nathaniel stepped forward to investigate, and his mind carefully tracked the number of steps he'd taken into the space. He lost sight of the door behind him, and then he lost track of the steps until the darkness and silence of the hallway started to warp his perception. The only thing more unsettling to Nate than finding something within the hallway was finding nothing. In the absence of malice, one found indifference...
Nathaniel's little flame flickered on, but his feet halted. Perhaps he'd seen enough of nothing. The dark-haired man turned, then felt the first change in atmosphere since he'd entered the space. His instincts told him he was no longer alone, that perhaps he'd never been alone, but that something now stalked him from behind. "Should have called, Eva," he spoke to the emptiness, his heart now longing for her voice, face, and embrace. He stepped forward, back toward the bedroom, and heard his footfall mirrored behind him. But now, with thoughts of Eva in his mind, his steps held purpose and could not be stopped. Another step, another echo. He paused, and his muscles tensed. Was this real? Or had the sensory deprivation tricked his brain into making monsters where he expected them to be. He stepped again and attempted to ignore the sounds and the feeling of dread that had quickly built up within him. Then the echo stopped being an echo, and the new footsteps started to hit between his steps, and Nathaniel quickened his pace. The pace behind him matched his own. Nate told himself not to look over his shoulder or acknowledge the sound but relented and peeked. Nothing. But when his head turned back around to the front, he was met with a muzzle. Nearly the size of an elk or a moose, Nate was eye to empty eye with a mostly skeletal animal, a dog, he believed, with only small patches of mangy fur. It didn't snarl, but Nathaniel felt it would have if its lungs were present.
As the stare-down settled into an uncomfortable stalemate, Nathaniel finally heard a voice behind him, precisely three. The chorus of vaguely female voices spoke in unison from more profound into the hallway.
"Forgive our hound; he's rarely asked to heel," the voices offered in a distorted unison.
Nathaniel's mind raced; images and blocks of text flew by inside his skull, and he attempted to slapdash puzzle pieces together. His momentary pause did not go unnoticed.
"His mind churns with activity, but his heart knows the answer," a single voice in the chorus uttered.
"Three voices, three faces, a dog to guard the threshold..." Nathaniel spoke without turning away from the beast. "My patron, I presume," he hoped. "Beloved Hecate."
"He's normally quicker," another voice chimed in before being quieted by another.
"No, I agree," Nathaniel added, his eyes still locked with the absent eyes of the undead hound.
"Humble when it suits you," the voices combined back into one.
"Why have you blessed me?" Nathaniel asked.
"You have been positioned in a consequential place. In a confluence of powerful beings," they explained.
"I've noticed. Are you about to tell me I'm descended from a similar powerful being," Nathaniel delivered with a light, hopefully playful tongue.
"Not humble enough to be boring," one voice rose until the chorus rejoined itself. "No, child. You are not the one destined for Chernobog's greatness," they made clear. "But we still have use for you."
"You have my attention," Nathaniel shared.
"Despite our disciples, we have been gone far too long, and the gates beyond the veil have been unguarded for too long. We require a champion," Hecate explained.
"What would that mean for me?" Nathaniel asked as the hound stepped backward into the darkness. The long muzzle and bared teeth formed into a strange, almost glowing grin, floating disembodied in the dark.
"We do not possess the living," Hecate explained as a group until one voice rose above the others. "But we offer bargains."
"You want to make a deal?" Nate said, watching the gnarled smile gently bounce in the inky blackness.