Fallen Stones (15 page)

Staring intently at his barely visible reflection in the glass hanging on the open door, Armstrong noticed the surface begin to ripple in the shadows, as a voice seemed to call from deep below the surface. At first, the sound was a distant, barely audible whisper but all too soon, it became more clearly defined. He was not shocked by the voice as he had been on the very first occasion he had heard it but he was nonetheless terrified not only by the voice itself, but by what it represented.

As the hardly visible ripples increased their intensity back among the shadows, as did the unsettling noise, Armstrong saw an all too familiar thin, bony bare foot extending from the mirror and setting down hovering just above the luxurious oriental carpet adorning his office floor. It never came in direct contact with the carpet but seemed to float an inch or so in the air just above it.

As his eyes reluctantly followed up along the length of the limbs, Armstrong could catch occasional glimpses of the all too familiar skeletal legs as the hideous creature stepped naked from the mirror into the shadows of his back office. Thankfully, Mason had never seen the abysmal creature in its entirety before and hoped he would not do so tonight, since the thing was still floating largely silhouetted at the back of the room. From what Mason could determine, the wretched being was gaunt and hunched, and Mason barely recognized the nude and emaciated specter as his recently deceased client Emerson Washburn.

When Washburn had first purchased the property and contacted Armstrong to handle his legal needs, the man had been tall, well over six feet in height and as broad as a refrigerator. He had looked to Armstrong very much like a typical Hollywood interpretation of how an enforcer for the mob might appear. Although Washburn had been dressed in an expensive top of the line business suit at the time, there was an obvious underlying sense of brutality to the man, which Armstrong suspected would find its way through any sort of expensive attire Washburn might use in a feeble attempt to cloak his real persona.

As such, Armstrong had been able to see right through the gangster's attempted ruse. He realized the mysterious new client who seemed to have more money than the lawyer had ever imagined, was not a well-educated gentleman, although he seemed fairly well-spoken in a self-educated sort of way. But Armstrong sensed he was actually some sort of hardened street-smart thug; likely a criminal who had acquired his money through illegal means.

Armstrong had requested a very brief and discreet background check on Washburn as he did with all potential clients of obvious means. Although he had discovered many unsavory tidbits in the man's past, he nonetheless accepted Washburn as a new client. H. Mason Armstrong understood his place in the world. He knew at best, he was a small-town lawyer who currently had scarcely enough paying clients to make ends meet. The simple fact was with the addition of Washburn to his client list he would receive a windfall of funds to help his ailing business. So Armstrong chose to overlook any apprehension he might have about Washburn and immediately began handling his legal needs.

As a result of the various often high pressure demands of his new client, Armstrong often found himself going beyond the call of duty on Washburn's behalf often performing tasks, which some might consider outside of the scope of a typical lawyer's responsibility to a client. Mason did his best to try to think several steps ahead of Washburn so he didn't inadvertently find himself in a less than legal situation on his employer's behalf. Washburn was shrewd and street-smart, but Armstrong was intelligent and quite cunning himself.

One service Washburn had requested was for Armstrong to coordinate the renovation of his property. During the remodeling, Armstrong handled the disbursement of funds and payment to the army of contractors Washburn had requested he hire. These sorts of activities were things he normally didn't do for his clients, but when called on to do so he often worked with local banks and sometimes would even subcontract an area accounting firm. However, Washburn had demanded that Armstrong handle everything personally with no outside help.

Armstrong also found himself coordinating all of their construction activities, and acting as a middleman between the workers and Washburn. This type of construction project management and liaison efforts were definitely outside of Armstrong's comfort zone. But he was able to quickly adapt to the role.

The lawyer found a great deal of satisfaction, of both a personal and financial nature, in carrying out his duties as project coordinator throughout the renovation. It had been, in fact, Armstrong himself who had recommended most of the contractors used on the project. And it was far more than coincidental that those same contractors also happened to be Armstrong's clients. As such, in as much as they began to prosper so too did he further prosper. At first, he had balked at the idea of doing everything himself, but once he was able to realize the financial benefits of the arrangement, he wouldn't have changed a thing. He liked being the fox in charge of that particular financial hen house.

Emerson Washburn had requested Armstrong find and hire the best of the best to do the work on his property, but Armstrong was always careful to never hire anyone who was not one of his clients, or any contractor who would not agree to sign on with him in order to get the work, regardless of their superior skills.

Since Washburn was a stranger in the area while Armstrong was a well-known pillar of the community with a great deal of assumed influence and political power, none of the contractors dared to challenge him. They always agreed to his terms. One more than one occasion, it became apparent to Armstrong that he and Washburn were not so different after all. Washburn had used threats and physical coercion to make his fortune in his criminal enterprises, while Armstrong used his own brand of persuasion to get what he wanted.

But in Armstrong's case, he believed what he was doing was legal, or at least straddled the line between legal and illegal, if not completely ethical. He figured if he was the project manager in charge of everything, it was his right to hire whomever he chose to hire, and Emerson Washburn would be none the wiser.

Besides, in Armstrong's opinion, it was not as if he were hiring anyone who would provide shoddy workmanship by any means, as all of his clients were top-notch contractors. But if one were to press him or were for example, to threaten to sever his finger or hand in order to get to the truth; and if they were then to ask him who the best candidates for the various positions truly were, there were only a few of his clients who could have hoped to have met those qualifications.

As the project progressed during the previous year, Armstrong noticed a dramatic and continually declining physical and mental transformation in Emerson Washburn. As the months passed, the man began to lose a great deal of weight, eventually shrinking down to less than half his original size. In the weeks preceding his suicide, Washburn's clothing had hung limply on his bony frame. The man had seemed to have aged by decades; his once coal black head of thick hair had grayed, thinned and actually seemed to have fallen out in places. His formerly charming and charismatic smile had turned into what appeared to be a permanent scowl.

Armstrong was shocked to see Washburn had actually lost several of his teeth as well. He was beginning to resemble a victim of radiation poisoning during his last days on earth. That same shadow of a man, over a month in his grave, or some twisted and perverse incarnation of what was once that man, now stood across the room from Armstrong. However, the unimaginable being now appeared more like some nightmarish creature from the warped mind of a deranged horror fiction writer.

The thing, which was how Armstrong thought of him, appeared to be above average height, yet was noticeably stooped as if its skeleton could not support the weight of its empty withered skin. Flesh hung from its shadowed naked form like deflated balloons. Between glimpses in the darkness, Armstrong thought he saw a dark empty spot where the man's genitalia had once been.

The lawyer was perfectly aware of the horrible ending Washburn had apparently chosen for himself. Armstrong recalled the self-mutilation, which Washburn had so gruesomely carried out, the slashing of his wrist, the V-shaped furrows carved in his chest, the severing of his ear and finally the removal of his own genitals. Armstrong would never be able to forget that repugnant sight.

He had been the person called to the scene by Ashton police Chief Max Seiler Jr. to officially identify and claim the body. He recalled how as he stared down into the crimson, blood-soaked bath water, Armstrong had no idea how the man could have inflicted such incredible damage upon himself. Mason had almost passed out when he saw Washburn's severed penis bobbing along the top of the ruby tub water.  

The lawyer recalled how Seiler, a veteran police officer nearing retirement, had blanched white at the unimaginable carnage. Seiler was a tall muscular man who was no stranger to horrifying scenes of human disaster. He was a second generation Ashton police chief, his father Max Seiler Sr. having been chief during the 1950's through the mid 1980's. Max Jr.'s son, Max III was a member of the Ashton force destined to succeed his father someday, carrying on the Seiler dynasty.

Seiler had seen many horrifying sights during his tenure on the force, but none as mentally challenging as the sight of Washburn's decimated remains. Although he had heard stories of worse atrocities from his father he had never been seen anything so horrible in his career. Seiler' father had told him of an incident, which happened back in 1965, outside of an abandoned coalmine, the Coogan Coal Mine on the northern outskirts of Ashton. A young boy had apparently been attacked and disemboweled by some sort of wild animal while he and his friends were playing near the mine.

Rumors began to spread about an old local legend of a soul-sucking demon living in the mine. The legend said the demon was a 19th century coal miner who had become trapped and sold his soul to Satan for a chance to escape. Apparently, the great deceiver had tricked the man and transformed him into a demon. The monster had to remain in the mine until he collected the souls of ninety-nine victims. Of course many people blamed the demon on the boy's death, but a conclusive answer was never determined as the mine collapsed the next day and was never reopened.

Seiler had asked his father once about the incident, but the man refused to speak of it. That particular scene haunted Seiler's father until the day he died. Armstrong suspected the incident with Washburn would be Max Seiler Jr.'s equivalent.

Armstrong looked at the horrifying creature, now standing far across the main office from him. The thing's chest appeared to have become shrunken and still bore the marred V-shaped gashes occasionally visible in partial, shadowy glimpses. Armstrong remembered from one of his previous encounters with the spirit how the thing's mottled flesh had folded downward from the savagely ripped incisions in flaps, loose and shredded, and how from deep inside each of the ghastly tears worms and larvae seemed to crawl freely. He hoped against hope that he would not be forced to see so much grizzly detail this time. He prayed the beast would stay back in the shadows.

He had no idea what the insects inhabiting the ghost actually were. He was quite certain they were not creatures of this world, as they only slightly resembled any insects he had ever seen; enough of a likeness that he was able to think of them as insectile in nature. Although Washburn was now some type of non-corpulent being, Armstrong assumed perhaps on the other side, in that unimaginable hellish world where Washburn now resided, his body must have taken on some strange new form.

It seemed logical that if such an alternate manifestation of the man existed in such a bizarre world then it would also stand to reason other strange creatures, similar but different than those in our world, would likewise exist over there as well. And just as such similar creatures find their way into open festering wounds on this side; those particular things must have been able to do something quite similar on the other side.

He recalled how in some past encounters with Washburn, some of the disgusting creeping maggot-like things occasionally would drop from the specter's open wounds, falling to the carpet where they would writhe as if in agony for a few moments before they simply flattened out then vanished in a puff of foul smelling smoke. Apparently, the creatures from that world beyond the grave could survive in this world only as long as they stayed attached to Washburn. However, once they contacted the physical aspects of this world, they simply could not survive. The lawyer noticed how Washburn's shriveled and blackened feet never actually touched the carpet but floated an inch or so above it. Armstrong began to wonder if perhaps this small tidbit of information would come in handy at some time in the future. He had always believed knowledge was power, so he tucked it away for reference, although he had no idea when or if he would ever find an opportunity to use it.

Now Armstrong could clearly see the creature's face, which was a mask of slashes and its left ear was missing, as he remembered it had been. From within the gaping hole where once Washburn's ear had hung, a long worm-like thing emerged as if sniffing the air. Then the disgusting creature retreated, squirming back inside of the specter's skull.

As far as Armstrong could recall, this was the sixth time he had been confronted by the specter of his deceased client, but its inexplicable sight still nonetheless revolted him; not to mention the foul and disgusting odor, which accompanied its countenance. Trailing in its wake was a horrible smell, which only such a vile undead creature could bring with it; a reek, which Mason recognized as the very stench of the grave.

Armstrong recalled now how on the night of the suicide Washburn had called him to the house feigning some sort of emergency. He had always assumed that the man had made the call just moments before he decided to begin butchering himself, but now after many, post mortem encounters with the fiend, he realized he likely had made the call after he was already dead.