Posted on June 16, 2008

The Hole: Part 76

I’d take the rune transcriptions back to the university with me and have other professors within the antiquities department look them over. They were clearly outside of my area of expertise. While I now know better, the safest bet at the time would have been to attribute the inscriptions to one of the many primitive tribes who had populated the area before the arrival of the civilizing whites–and blame any tribal stragglers or local copycats for the newest carvings.

When the sky began to deepen in color, I set about preparing my camp for the night’s sleep. The unsucessful stakeout of the previous night had me worried, but I remained convinced that proximity to the scar would assure a supernatural experience, if one was to be had at all. I ate a small meal, my nerves forcing my stomach to reject anything more, and then lay awake, staring up at the glow of the moon through the canvas of my tent.

I must have fallen asleep, because I can remember being awakened by the odd and terrifying sensation of the ground shifting underneath me. I sat up, startled, and realized what was happening: the mouth was again opening, with me on top of it. I scrambled out of the tent, for a horrible moment getting caught in blankets, and was then outside, dashing up the hill to safety. While my back was still turned, my palms and knees muddy as I crawled, the light came, erupting upward from the mouth.

I forced myself to crest the hill and duck into the coverage of some low bushes before turning to take in the sight. The mouth had opened fully and my tent consumed, with only a corner flap of canvas protruding. As I watched, the mouth finished its growth and that awful tongue Bear described climbed forth, carrying its expected passenger.

I will apologize now for the potentially incoherent nature of what follows. As a man of science and history–and, more significantly, a man without religious faith–I had long believed that the human mind was capable of wrestling down anything nature might confront it with. The intellect eroding beasts and gremlins of the supernatural were only pits in our understanding. With sufficient tools for learning and the degree of knowledge they afford, we might come to grips with the paranormal–the unexplained–and expose it for baseless mumbo-jumbo.

This conviction, so crucial to my own sense of place in the universe, was deeply shaken, if not outright destroyed, by the events I witnessed in those woods–and the terrible research and exploration I conducted following. You hold in your hands the result and it is my hope that reading it will not do the same to you as has been done to me. These are terrifying times in which we live and, if what I’ve learned proves true, there are only greater terrors in our future. I pray to whatever good may be out there to stand strong against the evils I’ve only recently discovered. Humanity, no matter our countless faults, deserves better than what I fear is coming to us all.

But that is enough. The best way to prevent an apocalypse is to share my knowledge and share it quickly. I’ll let the proceeding pages provide their own reason. I only ask that you believe their words. I am not insane, nor am I a fantasist like I so often accused my grandfather Joseph of being. I’ll tell my tale as I remember it.

The sheep–or goat, it being deformed enough to make identification difficult–ignored me, instead walking off in a direction my compass briefly indicated was east. I say briefly because the magnetic pull of the earth had suddenly become inconsistent and the needle swung erratically before settling on east for only half a minute. Then it resumed its apparently random rotation. I waited until the demonic beast had gone a good distance before I worked up the nerve to follow.

Its path was not straight, nor was it entirely random. Instead, the creature seemed to be following some unknown purpose, looking for something hidden. I remained as far back from it as I could manage without losing its trail. There were several times I had to convince myself to continue, for the thought of what the beast might do if it turned around and saw me intruded constantly. What was this thing? Was that opening what it immediately appeared to be, a terrible mouth leading to the very stomach of Hell? I still cannot say, even after my subsequent research, and I now imagine there are certain questions none of us are meant to have answers to.

The beast carried through its exploration for a good hour, stopping only once to leap upon a deer foolish enough to wander near its path. The poor animal was not so much eaten as consumed, the demon sheep falling on it and pinning it down, while its hellish flesh seemed to burn through the deer, giving forth an awful cloud of smoke and a grayish seepage that ran out and soaked into the earth. When the beast finally stood, all it left behind was wet earth and a few nubs of corroded bone. I felt sick at the sight, but forced the bile down, mouth held tightly closed to keep from making even the smallest sound. Finished with its meal, the beast continued its search and I followed as before, though with perhaps a degree more fear troubling my bowels.

Eventually the beast found what it was looking for. We emerged over a low hill–fortunately tree covered to keep me safe from accidental view–and into a surprisingly gorgeous valley, the overflow from a small and clear spring trickling through it to the east. At the bottom, nestled into the side of the opposite slope, and beneath the roots of a huge and ancient tree, was the mouth of a cave. This last was hidden, however, and I noticed it only because the beast made right for it, digging at the overhanging vines and creepers with its nose until it had exposed the dark opening.

I crouched low, watching this scene, wondering what could be in that cave that such a monster would spend so long searching for. Surely not just food? After a minute of rooting at the entrance, the beast pulled back, kicked its feet, and then charged forward, running through the opening and squeezing the whole of its terrific bulk inside. I gasped. Surely the beast was too large to fit in that cave. But equally surely, that creature was not of an entirely natural sort and so could not be expected to abide by the laws of nature and science–and size–as I understood them.

I was not going to follow it in. No matter how great my curiosity, no matter how burning my desire to find out where it had gone, I could not justify the risk of finding out what horrors might await me just past the mouth of that cave. Instead, I decided to wait, for unless the passage beneath the hill lead to another exit somewhere else in the forest, the beast would have to emerge here again and I could then resume tracking it.

I sat for hours. I can’t say exactly how long it was, but the sun had begun to come up, the sky turning a faint bluish orange, before I saw anything from the mouth of the cave. I sat up at the first shaking of the leaves and leaned forward. I’m not sure what I expected but it certainly was the not being that emerged from that small opening.

A man in white walked out of the cave, seeming to grow in size as he did until he stood perhaps twice my height. I was backing up, trying to get away from the thing, when it looked directly at me and held out its hands, gesturing me to come forward. I did. I can’t explain why, but like sleeping on the mouth, going toward that phantom man seemed exactly the proper action to take. I climbed down the hill until I stood at its feet.

The creature–demon or angel, I knew not–seemed surprised at my presence. It asked me if my name was Smith and, when I said it was, the being appeared to relax. “I had thought you dead,” it told me, and I realized it had somehow mistaken me for Joseph Smith, Jr., my grandfather. There is a strong family resemblance, I admit, but I believe that, too, the creature had little experience with humans. In effect, we all look very much the same in its eyes.

“Why have you returned?” it asked me. “The time has not yet come.” Its voice sounded broken and muffled and forced, as if it were speaking through a mouth that had only recently come to be used for a such a purpose. I could feel each word deep in my stomach.

“I was searching,” I said, stumbling through the short sentence. I had to answer it satisfactorily or, I was convinced, it would kill me–or drag me to whatever awaited on the other side of that awful mouth from which it had come. “For… For you.”

“The time is too early for that, Smith,” it said.

“Too early?” I asked.

“You grow impatient, as your kind so often do. You cannot wait the necessary time for what is prophesied to come about. You feel the need to rashly drive events forward.” And then it laughed. I fell backwards in horror at the sound. “You will be dead before I return again,” it said. “You will not experience my glory.” It paused. “Have you done as I asked?”

“Yes,” I said, for it was all I could think to say.

“The message spreads then.” It nodded. “Good. Your flock will grow. Your faith will cover the earth and shall make my return–my victory–all the more grand. A god needs his followers, no?”

“Of course,” I said. “He definitely needs them.”

“There shall be war,” the creature said, ignoring me. “I will have need of a great army. It is you, Smith, who have provided it. Your faithful will be the vessels for my minions. And for that I shall give you prime place by my side as I rule this world. When I and my army have eradicated the scourge of my enemy, driven out that foul demon Yahweh, murdered him, and desecrated his corpse, then I will furnish you with your deserved reward. You shall witness the rebirth of Moroni’s kingdom. Can you wait? Can you be patient?”

“Yes,” I said. The creature nodded and turned away, but I stepped forward. “Where are you from?” I asked it.

The being looked at me for a moment before answering. Then it said, “Worlds beyond these.”

I did not know how to respond, nor did the mysterious being give me the opportunity to. Instead, it walked away from me, shrinking in size, until it vanished through the mouth of the cave. I didn’t bother running to look for it. It was gone.

Entirely unable to return to sleep–and missing my tent and bedding–I began the hike back to the village. I let my path take me by the scar and that was again all it was: the mouth had closed with no trace of its supernatural occupant. The journey was not easy and I started and jumped whenever some unseen thing in the forest snapped or rustled.

But I did survive the experience, even if my mind was irreparably shaken. I made it back into town, found a comfortable room for rent, and fell almost immediately into a long and dreamless sleep.

And that is where I shall end my tale. The remainder of this journal is not my continuing adventures, so to speak, but instead a summation of my discoveries in the subsequent months, an exposition of what I learned as I sought to make sense of what I’d seen. I cannot speak to the entirety of its truth, for none if it is corroborated outside of my own rather mad experiences and similar ones from potentially untrustworthy characters such as Bear. But the story I have managed to piece together is terrible enough that, if even a portion is true, I can manage nothing but pessimism for the future of my race.

It all begins with my grandfather, Joseph Smith, Jr., for whom I was named. It is the true and hidden history, as I understand it, of that great religion he founded, the Mormon faith. I do not know who will read these words, when they will be read, or even if this journal will see human eyes again. I can only hope that its contents find a sympathetic ear and that you, reader, will take them seriously, for the very future of humanity–mine, yours, and everywhere we exist and thrive–is at stake. The Mormon Church is a fraud built upon a horrible lie. Its very mission, one undreamed of by all its living followers, is the subjugation of this realm, this universe, to an evil of unimaginable scale.

Fear the Mad King Moroni, for his return is at hand.

****

Elliot stopped and looked up.

“Is there more?” Evajean asked. She was leaned back on the bed, propped up on her elbows, and the room around them was quiet and dim.

Elliot set the book down on the stretched bedspread next to him and stood up. “Yeah,” he said, “there’s more.”

“Are you gonna read it?”

“In a minute,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and pulled her arms our from underneath herself, falling back until she was lying across the bed. “I don’t know how much of it to believe, how much of it is just made up. I mean, it could be the whole thing.”

“I believe all of it,” Elliot said. “Every last word.”

“But you really think he’s right about even the church? That all of Mormonism is caught up in this Moroni’s plans? I mean, I remember seeing commercials for them on television.”

“I don’t think they know,” Elliot said.

“That’s nuts.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“And is that what the crazies are? Moroni’s army?”

“They came back and took over the vessels,” Elliot said. “That’s what we saw in the caves under Nahom. Those ghosts floating behind and above the people–those were Moroni’s soldiers.”

“They were possessed.”

Elliot nodded. “I think so.”

“What are we supposed to do, Elliot? Are we still the ones mighty and strong? I mean, what are those? We’re not supposed to fight Moroni, are we?”

“I have no idea.”

“Will you do the rest now?”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. He sat down, picked up the journal, and continued to read.