The Root Devil
“Oh, Gawd! It’s some unairthly thing.
It’s a-hoppin’ raoun’ like it was too big to move right--like jelly.
Oh, hurry, hurry, afore it’s too late. It got my dog...”
- August Derleth
The cabin was in an uproar amidst the incessant scratching and punching at the walls, door and boarded windows, from the outside. I alone could maintain my calm--surely due in no small part to my being the only one who knew just what the thing was which was so fervently trying to break its way inside. The hicks ran out of bullets on the way down here, all shooting at the air while trying to avoid looking at what was chasing them; and now they do nothing but sob and pray to their non-extant deities. I, too, know our end is within the hour--but while they offer up a shameful display of infantile psyche for divine guidance in return, I have resigned myself to putting down a record of the events that led up to this.
I
The origins of the horror can be traced back to only a week ago--July 7, ‘98. There was a new deforestation project in store for my vicinity--to what purpose I was not even sure--but I had to take action; I was, at the time, a highly-involved member of a lesser known Eco-Terrorist group called the Ferngully Resistance Movement, dedicated to fighting deforestation wherever possible, and by any means. The project of which I speak would have culled several impressive conifers, many surrounding this very cabin in which I await my demise.
Initially we undertook various measures to halt the project, ranging from explosives planted on machinery in the middle of the night, to threatening graffiti left about. Our numbers proved far too small for strikes or direct confrontation, and we never sprouted a respectable propaganda arm. Alas, it was all to no avail; they stationed night watchmen armed with rifles following our meagre attempts over the first three nights.
Turner, our shortest and ugliest member, came up with a novel idea on the fourth day--that we should use ‘blakke magicks’ (that is exactly how he spelled it in our later correspondence) to summon up a servitor, a supernatural protector of the woods.
We laughed heartily, and suggested that he should do less role-playing--yet he was serious, and he took us all into a stern glare which was intimidating even from a man whose head was barely level with our nipples. We decided, perhaps we should humour him, if only to avoid nightmares of flying anacondas with Turner’s face on them.
We went into a more secluded part of the woods that night, removed from the night watchmen’s sights, and not far off from this cabin, which appeared unoccupied at the time. Turner came wearing a silky, black hooded robe, which dragged and collected pine needles behind him.
“HAIL Brethren,” he shouted to the sky, even as we were right before him. “I HAVE BROUGHT the BOOK of INCANTATIONS with which WE SHALL SUMMON--”
I slapped his face. He rubbed his cheek for a moment as he scowled under his hood, and we waited in silence.
Before long, he collected himself and yanked the filthy volume dramatically from under his arm--it was the Necronomicon, or rather, A Necronomicon. He collected several of these ridiculous forgeries, and appeared to take them all for real.
He opened the tome--decidedly published within the last five years--and flipped slowly through the pages. Very, very slowly, making sure we all had a chance to see the minute movements of his sickly thin, disproportionately large hand.
“I HAVE FOUND IT,” he exclaimed.
Then, he took two steps back; he fell dramatically into a kneeling position, outstretched his free hand to the heavens, and recited the incantations, which I choose not to transcribe for fear that some fool will repeat our mistake.
When he finished, he slammed his previously outstretched hand down onto the soil before him; and putting down the book for a moment, he took a large rock with his other hand, and what happened next was the least of horrors that will re-play on the backs of my eyelids, until I drop dead in a few minutes anyway.
Turner brought the rock down hard, and crushed his hand between it and the earth. That wasn’t all, either--he did it again, and again, working especially on his wrist, until his hand was a bloody pulp; and it separated from the rest of his arm, trailing grotesque, stringy sinews as he pulled back. I cringed when I heard that dreadful wet ‘snap’.
Turner, in spite of it all, was inhumanly calm--a sociopath if I ever saw one--and he told us to bury the gore that had once been his appendage, to bury it where he had left it, and we did so.
He said we should all go home and rest for what we would surely behold tomorrow; I inquired about his bloody stump, which he had already wrapped rather skillfully in the sleeve of his robe, and he assured me he would be alright.
I awoke the next day in the afternoon, and I checked my email as I always do first thing. There was only one item of note, and it was from Turner, having been received six hours prior to my reading:
“I RETURNED TO THE PLACE THIS MORNING WHERE OUR BLAKKE MAGICK RITUAL WAS CARRIED OUT. THE BUNYIP HAS RISEN AND HAS ALREADY KILLED THE WATCHMEN OF THE NIGHT. BY THE WAY I NAMED IT BUNYIP, BUT IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE ONE. IT’S TALL AND BROWNE... WOODY, HAS VERY LONG FINGERS WITH POINTED TIPS. I TRIED TO TALK TO IT BUT IT WAS FAST, CLIMBED UP A TREE. I LEFT THE SCENE SO I WOULDN’T BE QUESTIONED ABOUT THE DEATHS. VERY HARD TO TYPE WITH ONE HAND. MY MOM ASKED ABOUT THAT BUT I TOLD HER IT WAS A MOTORBOAT ACCIDENT. BYE”
I thought he must have been pulling my leg, but I had to see. I got dressed and left my house, jogging most of the way to the woods, and creeping the rest. There was, as I had feared, a police presence in the area. Surely the bodies of the night watchmen had been found. I tried to look like a curious bystander and jogged up to one of the officers.
“Area’s off limits,” he said. “There’s been a double-murder and ain’t no one should have to see it...”
“Can I see it?” I inquired, naturally.
He looked at me like I had stared too long at his crotch or something, but he did let me by to see.
The two corpses, I could see from the remains of their tacky uniforms, belonged indeed to such mall-cop mercenaries as were hired to threaten our environmentalist activities. They were torn limb from limb, as well as split down the middle of the abdomen each. It was a vaguely horrific sight, but I was relieved, and more interested in the implications of the killer’s existence than anything. I decided that I was later going to take that book from Turner, just to see what else was possible, but of course I never got around to it.
I met with Turner on my way back home--he had a desperate and exhausted look on his face, and it seemed as though he was trying to find me.
“IT KILLED HILARY!” he wheezed.
Hilary was the other member of our organisation. She enjoyed long walks through those woods, collecting pine needles and talking to the trees.
I asked him when it happened, as I had just come from the woods and did not see her, and what he told me was shocking--
It had followed her home last night.
II
Turner and I knew then that we had risen a daemonic force. I followed him back to his house where we would determine our next course of action.
“THE BOOK doesn’t have an UNDO spell!” Turner whined.
In my great wisdom--or what I thought was so at the time--I suggested we gather a town militia comprised of our fathers, our friends’ fathers, our friends’ friends’ fathers and so on; and that they should all bring guns and copious ammunition with which to ‘undo’ the summoning.
Turner liked my idea, and we set out to put it into effect. The turn out, however, was far less than we had anticipated, for only three men showed up; Dave, uncle of Turner; Obed, Turner’s brother’s girlfriend’s father; and Sally, Hilary’s mother. Moreover, they were all unabashed, rifle-polishing, deer-shooting REDNECKS. Despite my principles, I could not afford to be choosey here.
It was not hard convincing these people to aid us. Dave, Obed and Sally were all keen to bring down a daughter-murdering ‘bigfoot’, ‘megatooth land-shark’ and ‘Satan Himself’, respectively.
Over the rest of the day, we developed an extensive strategy for the next, which was sure--we thought--to result in the righteous slaughter of the beast; and come nightfall, our company of five marched out to this cabin and set up camp inside.
Old Obed prepared us, as we dozed, with stories of the ‘megatooth land-shark’ his grandpappy shot back in ‘36--how it turned into a fine powder upon death, and ‘gon’d with the wend’.
We awoke in the early hours of the morning. The night was uneventful, thankfully, and all was silent even then. A horrendous stench suddenly assailed me, but just then Dave came in from outside, holding a roll of toilet paper. One could easily have forgotten why we were out there.
I came up with the idea to send out a scouting party, but I wasn’t going to be a part of it. I sent Dave, Obed and Sally to go out to where the night watchmen were slain, to investigate the area and to shoot at anything suspicious and large that moves. They obliged, thirsting for vengeance as they were, gathered their weapons and ammo, and left immediately.
Hours passed. I devoured a can of pink salmon and watched ‘stumpy’ twitch in his sleep--at least, I thought he was asleep. He was a decent actor when it served for averting danger, which led me idly to entertain ideas of him having been ‘possessed’ when he mutilated his hand in front of me the other night.
I was considering scrawling arcane symbols on his face with this pen when I heard something at last. Shots fired, people yelling “FUCKING SHIT”, “WHAT IS IT”, and less mentionable things.
I looked out the window to see if I could glimpse what the commotion was about, and that’s one of the things I regret most--I saw the tree-guardian we had summoned.
The thing was not much taller than the men who shot at it, but it was fast, and scary. It looked fucking retarded to be honest; like a giant, bipedal rabbit made of wood, severely emaciated with two glassy, red orbs in its ‘head’--eyes I assumed--and the only scary aspect of its anatomy, honestly, were the ‘hands’; five ‘fingers’ to each, each ‘finger’ about as long as a man’s arm, and tapered to a deadly point.
The three I sent were running back to the cabin screaming bloody murder, firing into the air like idiots; but Sally tripped on a rock--it seemed only I was aware of this--and the creature was upon her like a starved hound.
I watched through the window as it mounted her in the way a rapist might--the same way it must have started with her daughter. It tried to pin her limbs, but she struggled, and one of her arms got torn off as a result. The creature proceeded to thrust one of its ‘fingers’ into her mouth, which was agape with screaming, and she started choking; but this wasn’t anywhere near the worst of it, I learned, as a curious bulge manifested on her abdomen--then the skin broke, and the creature lifted her up, spilling her entrails over itself. I had to stop watching then. The men were already pounding at the door anyway, and I opened it for them.
I probably don’t need to go into depth explaining what happened between then and now. The creature, guardian of the woods, magickal servitor, cacodaemonical ‘bunny-yip’--whatever, it spent some time mutilating Sally further, I suspect, before it remembered there were others it had to split open, and we’ve come to the present--four men scared shitless in a cabin by the persistent, maddening ‘knocking’ of their imminent, gory death. Fuck, I heard something break and--