I was frozen in fear on the ground with no weapon and whatever it was kept crawling towards me. I had fallen down over some loose boards running away. My flashlight had rolled away shining its light back down the dark hallway I was trying to escape. Back toward that thing, that half a body lurching toward me. It crawled rapidly lunging one arm over the other, writhing and gnarling in horrific movements. It growled flailing saliva on the ground. Its eyes were a milky gray with skin rotted and peeling. Its eyes glowed in the light. I looked past it and could see another one sliding up the wall and a third chewing on Jeff's face. Bill was already dead.
Why was I even here? It was about a week ago talking with my uncle that has led me here.
My mom had died a few years back and I never knew my father. My uncle was the closest thing to a dad that I had. After my mom died, I went to live with him. He never had any kids of his own so he always treated me like an adult which I kinda liked. One night I had to explain to him I had gotten beaten up at school. I didn't like explaining my embarrassing beat up stories to him but I continued and told him they had dunked my face in a toilet full of piss and even had my face rubbed in dog shit in front of a girl I liked. I told him it had been going on for years. I could tell he was very upset and gave me the advice that any adult that didn't know how to handle that situation would give, he told me "I had to defend myself."
It was a few days later after that we sat by his fireplace in his old 18th century victorian house and he started telling me about my father. He told me how he used to beat my mother and do drugs and cheat on her. He was very abusive and always threatened that if she left him he would kill her. My mom was apparently in a bad place and didn't know what to do. Then he started telling me ghost stories from his time in the war and some about the city. He told me that during the vietnam war, all the men in his small platoon had unknowingly picked a burial mound to sleep around and laying there in the mud that night all the men had horrifying nightmares. His dream was of an old mansion on the outskirts of the city where his house is now and of a ritual in that mansion. He didn't know why he was so intrigued with the ritual. A burning curiosity that stayed with him long after the war. At first I didn't believe him but the level of sincerity on his face won me over and a cold chill of fear and reality began to set in. Why was he telling me this?
Then I knew. He had done it. He tried to fight the burning urge to perform it but couldn't fend it off. He told he had done the ritual done years ago in that mansion a year after I was born. He told me of these creatures that were called eaters that came only if the ritual was done correctly. It took about a few hours for them to lurch out of whatever bowels of darkness they laid in but they always came. They were half body creatures that were rejected from death and were damned to feed on sacrifices of the living flesh. As I was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, he got up and served himself a glass of brandy before he continued. The chilling fear began to snake over my skin. Something about it was horrific yet fascinating and felt very real. He was a big burly man with a huge mustache and gut. He had an imposing figure and whatever he told me I took very seriously. He was not a bullshitter and never needed to lie. He always spoke his mind. I was very inclined to believe what he was telling me. I never knew my uncle to make up stories to get a laugh or to scare. He was always straight forward.
The mansion used to belong to an old woman back in 1792 that practiced the black arts. The story goes that one night she was trying to summon undead creatures to become her slaves to enact her will upon the town. She was successful in summoning the creatures but apparently they weren't as she expected. They were only a torso with rotted flesh and blind. They only hungered for flesh and couldn't leave the grounds of her house. They were useless to her and she couldn't expel them back to hell. They were forever damned to remain on her property with her. The best she could do was contain them only to be released when she needed them. A ritual. She placed a black incantation on them for if she ever needed them, a very specific ritual needed to be performed. Only one other knew the ritual, her underling by the name of Rosa. Years pass and Rosa betrays the old witch and feeds her to her own creatures. Well, that's how the story goes anyway. The ritual was kept very secret with only a few knowing about it and even fewer knowing how to do it.
My uncle came about the ritual only through a nightmare from the war. A vessel. Only there to deliver the message. I asked him why he did it? He told me that for years that burning curiosity was like a madness threatening to overtake his soul. Every night for years upon years he would see that house in his sleep and he tried so hard not to do it. Then finally he had a reason to. He laid out raw lamb meat in the living area of the house. He then lit 45 candles and arranged them in three triangles around the meat. Each triangle consisted of 15 candles with each side having a line of six. Then he had to make an altar of ebony wood he had none but he knew the floor boards were all ebony. He ripped them out and built a triangular structure. On top he placed cinnamon and wormwood. On the candles he then had to burn nettle leaf. He then placed a pound of flesh onto the altar cutting his hand and dripping his own living blood onto the meat. Then repeated Invoco caput pedibus edere six times which according to my uncle roughly translates to "I call upon thee to eat from feet to head."
I was afraid to ask but I knew the creatures were only summoned to eat living flesh according to my uncle. I finally asked who he sacrificed to them. He said he finally had a reason to use the ritual and find out if it was real. He told me he used it on my father. He needed to help his sister and get that man out of her life. He never told her what he did. He said my father was an awful man and deserved for his face to be eaten along with his body. They came for him that night and ate my father as my uncle watched from outside where they could not go. He watched as they ripped apart his face and arms and tore his skin away from his bones. He watched and felt satisfied that evil found an evil end. Then he told me that those bullies deserved an evil end. He asked for their names and I told him it was Jeff and Bill.
