Justin Peacock                                                        Word Count: 2516

jbpeacock@mail.com

The Hooked Queen

by

J.B. Peacock

It's a hot day in Safaga. The tiny port is lifeless under the afternoon sun, with the exception of a pair of pilgrims, dressed in black. On the outskirts of town, a lonely mud-brick tavern is the final refuge before travelers pass into the miles of wilderness that parallel the Red Sea on the way to Quseer.

The tall man and the woman following close behind him enter the bar. The place is lit by oil lamps overhead, which cast a yellow pallor over the sparse room. They see the bartender, wiping out a cup behind the bar. To his left is a man sitting at a table, staring into his drink as if the whole of his past were within. He doesn't like what he sees.

The tall pilgrim gestures to a bench running the length of the wall. His companion goes to sit in silence while the men conduct their business. He takes a seat at the table across from the man, who must be the sailor they are here to meet. The sailor looks up from his beer.

“Ah, you made it.” He says in a slurred voice. “I'm Alfiz.” He holds out his hand to the stranger.

“Josiah.” Says the tall man as he takes Alfiz's hand. “I understand you have a story to tell me.”

The sailor releases Josiah's hand. “Yes. You want to hear about the scroll.” He is silent a moment. “I keep telling people, hoping they'll listen, hoping to sort it all out for myself. That scroll holds secrets, knowledge about things better left buried.” He says to the beer resting on the rough wood before him.

When he looks into Josiah's eyes, the swordsman gets the feeling that he may be getting in too deep. No matter. This is the job she's paying him to do.

The sailor says, “That scroll taught me a lesson about death. It is an illusion, skin. Under the surface, things are dark, warm and shapeless.” He takes a drink and shakes his head to be rid of a memory, then swallows.

 “We took on trouble when we took on that kid. He was a student, carrying a scroll from Alexandria. Said he was taking it to a monastery near the place of its discovery. Somewhere in northwestern India. He said his dreams told him to take it there, where he would learn more of its secrets.

 There was calm for a day, but as we reached open ocean on the second evening, trouble started. I woke up to the sound of a struggle. I grabbed my knife and went up to look. The main deck was silent, empty at first glance. All I could hear was the water. I took a few steps and then I saw Mikas.  He was slumped against the port-side railing. Something had ripped out his throat. I still don't know what could've done that to him. I got light headed and I stumbled back, straight into the student.

His eye sockets were empty. Blood was running down his face and he was muttering something, but I couldn't make it out. He held up the scroll and with a bloody finger he drew a symbol in it.

Then he cackled, like a lunatic, and ran off. I called for the rest of the crew. We tried to round him up, but he fought like I've never seen a man fight before. You wouldn't have guessed this mousy guy was so strong to look at him. He killed two more men with his bare hands before we could get a hold of him.” Alfiz's eyes went back to his drink. It was a minute or two before he continued. “We tied him up, and beat him 'till he stopped moving.” He finished the rest of his mug and waved at the bartender. When his new mug arrived, Alfiz took a drink and resumed his story.

 “Six more of the crew died before we reached Goa. No one could say how. We never once let him loose. When we got to port, we tossed him and his cursed scroll to the dock and immediately set sail again. I still can't make sense of it. Trust me, you don't want to go anywhere near that scroll.”

As thanks for his story, Josiah slides a gold coin across the table. He looks over at his employer, who nods slightly, the black hood and veil masking her face. She has come to find the anonymity comforting.

Her companion has guarded her for the better part of two years. The first stories Josiah heard in Greece were centuries old rumors. As they made their way toward Persia, following the tales of madness and gore, the accounts became fresher.

“We're close now,” she thinks. She rises and follows Josiah out of the bar. “We leave for India tonight,” she says, walking behind him as he leads them to their rooms to gather their things.

It is a month before they find themselves on a green ridge overlooking a Punjabi valley. She does not let on, but she knows this place well. There are memories here that tell her to keep her face veiled.

In the night, they enter the temple through an open window. No one stirs as the thieves make their way to the room where the scroll is kept. She grabs the stained wooden box that bears markings of the Great Library. She can feel it, moving within. Josiah catches her glance and she points back the way they came. They leave as silently as they entered.

A man waits in the shadows just outside the window. Josiah draws his sword. “Wait,” the stranger says, “you can't take the scroll. It is the ruin of the world. Think about what you're doing, Josiah. Do not be taken in by her guile, she will destroy you before she finally destroys herself.”

“How do you know me?” Josiah hesitates. Before he can say more, she puts a hand on his shoulder. Josiah's sword drives forward, and buries itself in the stranger before he can stop it.

“You've killed us all. Millenia will be darkened by your ignorance tonight.” The stranger says, before he falls dead.

“Why did you do that?” Josiah asks.

“Get your sword. We go to Edessa,” is her only response.

He nods, knowing there is no saving himself now.

They rent a room in Edessa two weeks later. While her companion sleeps, the twilit woman studies the scroll. She can make little sense of the meaning behind the runes and decides she needs the council of another. She removes a book from her packed belongings and leafs through it.

Setting the book open on the table, she lights a candlestick, made from the remains of dark and powerful mystic creatures. She withdraws a small leather roll, containing chalk and some other materials to focus spiritual energies. She chants a spell in low tones and draws symbols of strange and terrible meaning on the floor with the chalk. When her drawing is done, she seats herself cross-legged in front of her horrid diagrams and chants with increased fervor.

A black dot of fluid forms in the center of the circle and begins to spread. As it does, a fingernail emerges from the puddle along with a terrible groan. The fingernail is followed by a finger, which precedes an arm coated in black ooze. A bristling mass of feathers follows.

When the thing completely emerges, it slumps to the floor and struggles to rise. As it does so, the bristling cocoon of its wings unfurl. Its body is scaly, worm-like. It coils to lift the thing's torso from the floor.

The features of its face, hidden inside the folded wings, become visible. The head is a bulbous, misshapen thing covered in polyps. A handful of diseased feathers protrude in sparse patches from the bird-like flesh of its head. Its face is human-like, with the bottom jaw hanging loosely and askew. Its mouth is crowded with a double row of barbwire teeth and its tongue is overlarge and unnaturally prehensile, whipping wildly around.

There is only one large eye and it stares at the dark woman as if waiting for something. She bows and greets the thing.

“Welcome Mog, scribe of horrors. It has been too long. Without you, I could never have found this again. This moment has been such a long time in coming. Will you help me to read it?” Mog chirps in response and waits with anticipation. She rises and retrieves the scroll.

She gives it to him and he holds it gently despite his gnarled, three-fingered hands. She wonders what power she will gain from the mysteries within as the beast examines the ancient runes. When it is done, the dark sage hands the scroll back to her and demands its payment with a growl. As is to be expected, the demon's price is steep.

She creeps silently from the room, extinguishing the light as she does so, then lights a candle in the sitting room and which illuminates her companion. She approaches the small couch that serves as his bed and gently touches his chest, whispering through her dark veil into his ear.

Josiah slowly rises to sit. She removes her veil, revealing her face for the first time. She is far younger than he expects, the woman in front of him can not be more than twenty years old. She is incredibly beautiful, with bright green eyes and full lips set in a mocha-colored doll's face. She bends to kiss him and, taking his hand, leads him in the direction of her room.

He stops her, just two feet from the darkened portal, his instincts fighting each other madly. She backs into him, pressing her body against him and untying her loose robe as she does so. Her robe slips around her shoulders and she turns, revealing a long and shapely leg. He can not protest any longer and steps into the room after her.

He begins to undress in the dark. He feels her hands his back. She steps around him toward the bed and begins to giggle. Josiah reaches to touch her shoulder and something brushes against his back.

He jumps away in surprise, but something solid has caught hold of him. It is a scaled thing, a branch covered in snake skin. His companion's giggle changes into a cold laugh and it begins to build, along with the panic in his heart.

She lights the candle and flops on the bed to watch the end of another companion. Josiah gurgles his last words as the creature dismembers and eats him. “Another penny in the well,” she muses.

Mog tells her the location of the temple and instructed her in the process for opening the site. She pays half a dozen men and leads them to Göbekli Tepe to dig. They uncover a henge of massive blocks that are elaborately carved with images of creatures, either long extinct or not ever of this earth.

Within the center of the complex is a stone block that is raised at a slant from the floor. The place is oppressive, clearly evil to anyone with mystical sensitivity of any kind and the workers flee from the horrible stones. No matter, this leaves the dark woman to her own devices. She reads a passage from the scroll.

  As the words Mog taught her fall from her lips, a blue miasma materializes in thin wisps which float among the stone columns. As it passes over them, the carvings dance, changing into hideous shapes. The central stone slab dissolves and there is a dark staircase behind it. She slowly makes her way down the passage and into the depths.

The foot of the staircase opens on a narrow bit of stone that leads into the center of a rough earthen chamber. The keyhole shaped platform is surrounded by a pool of black liquid that bubbles slowly. A blue flame rises from a silver bowl on a pedestal set in the center of the space. She is irresistibly drawn to it. This is it, the secret for which she has searched so long. The hidden flame that has been in her dreams since childhood.

 She is aroused; as if all life is culminating within her. The seduction of Alexander the Great was her first great triumph, setting in motion the quest that has been her chief motivator for over three centuries. Long life and youth were granted to her as she compiled her book of spells, all the while trying to understand the cryptic writings of the scroll.

She did not have it long after she took it from Alexander. As the leader of a society of dark mystics then; her followers worked many evils in the effort to appease her and her gods.

The people rose up against them and in the confusion she lost the scroll and was exiled. Since then, many died. Just as Josiah died the night before.

Now it was over, all of it building to this. The flame in front of her call her back from her memories and she stares into it. She hears the whispers, calling her name, “Sedeena”. They urge her to join them.

She relishes the anticipation, staring greedily at the flame, wanting to savor the feeling and deny herself the ecstasy. The woman is so enraptured that she doesn't notice the shadows shifting about her, betraying the motion of unseen things there with her.

Closing her eyes, Sedeena smiles. When she can bear the suspense no longer, she plunges her head into the flaming bowl. She is overwhelmed by cold; painful and vitalizing. The fire crawls through her hair and spreads to her skin, quickly engulfing her in the blue inferno. She collapses to the floor and screams her agony.

 As she writhes, she sees the shadows give form to the beings that creep within them. Mog and his multitude of brothers surround her. They carry glowing hooks; attached to barbed chains. They step from the slim ledge that runs the circumference of the vault and slosh toward her.

When they arrive, they gouge her with the hooks, driving them deep into her body. The lost ancients wrap the chains around her and the fire sears her with the impressions of the rough links. They encase her in the chains, dragging her screaming into the darkness to keep her.

Some time later, a Roman legion marching their way east stumble across a signpost in the desert. It is peculiar, old and weathered, supported by a heap of rocks. They camp nearby.

That night, strange dreams prompt the commander to investigate the stones. At the heart of the mass is a scroll, unintelligible to the most learned among them. However, nothing is clearer in the man's mind than what must be done with it. The gods told him, in his dreams, that this scroll must be rendered unto Caesar.

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