Curious now, I clicked on it and read the article. Apparently, one of the tracks that was playing that night was done so without the artist’s knowledge and they found out because, following the incident, the police investigation revealed that the track the guy was listening to, the designated song for his color group, was from that particular artist. You probably see where this’s going, but I’ll tell you that it honestly shocked me the first time I saw it. The artist was “Ghostwhispers.io”. More specifically, “Rolfe E. Cau”, the apparent mind behind the madness.
Rolfe was quoted in saying that his music was “More than an art, but a gift to the elder ones” and explained that, because of that, he required a high price for any individual or media platform to download, use, or even listen to his music. “A sign of tribute to the ones below” as he put it. A bit overcompensating, I know, but art is art, I guess, to each their own. The point was that the club had been playing his music, despite him refusing to allow it after failing to agree to his lofty price arrangement.
This compelled me to want to look further into Rolfe E. Cau and see exactly what “Ghostwhispers.io” was actually about. After spending about 30 minutes trying to find anything about it, other than the lawsuit and the incident at the club, I finally settled on an old Facebook page from Rolfe himself. Judging from the fact that the last post that’d been made by the account was from all the way back in ‘09, I knew that any information I’d find here would be outdated at best. Still, I was able to sift through and learn that Rolfe E. Cau, to no real surprise, used to be an active satanist and ran an old group on there known as “The whispering ghosts from below”.
Now, I’m in no way religious. I don’t have anything against those that are, your beliefs are your own, but I’ll say right now that the shit I read on the old posts from this guy and a few of the others in his little niche was nothing short of fucking bizarre. I can’t really explain much of it, but basically, these wingnuts believed in preaching about the coming of what they called “The Elder Spirit”. None of them could give any consistent details on what “The Elder One” was or what they did.
Some gave more or less a weird spin on the story of Genesis, where others tried putting elements from Lovecraft books to create this pseudo fan fiction for it. Rolfe E. Cau himself, however, oddly enough, didn’t seem to take part in this. In fact, his philosophy was that only by speaking with the “Elder One” themselves could you even begin to understand what they are and/or what and why they do. If you’re wondering just how to do that, there’s actually a list he put together on how to somehow pull this off, but you’re insane if you think I’m gonna list it here. Suffice to say, it’s a long, and EXTREMELY dangerous process.
Somewhere along the way, though, there was a sort of disconnect, some sort of point in time where the “Whispering Ghosts” drifted apart from another, with less and less posts being made and less and less chat among the members. From what I could see, there wasn’t any sort of falling out between any of them or Rolfe himself, but rather just a growing apathy between them all. That is, except for Rolfe who, up until the last post made in late 2011, kept up the most, and pretty much only activity throughout the group. For the most part, the posts contained mostly just drawings and/or descriptions or “portents” as he called them – real wack-job this one, cannot stress this enough – about “The Elder One’s rising”.
The drawings were, at least the best I could make of it, of something similar to those freakish “Biblically accurate angels”, being a giant mass of assorted eyeballs surrounded by a generated aura of some sort of energy or something. Some showed something similar to this, but instead of just a ball of eyes, the “Elder One” had the body of a person with the eyes embedded all across its body with the exception of its face which was blank. The dreams were more or less the same psychotic shit you’d expect a burgeoning cult leader to ramble on about, being all “I have just dreamed of the almighty “Elder One’s” awakening to hail the apocalypse” and shit.
It was in mid 2010, when the group had really lost traction, that Rolfe started talking about making music. It started with small posts, similar to the ones about his “Portents”, where he’d describe how he’d “Hear and transcribe the prophecies of the “Elder One”. Then he’d start leaving audio tracks in his posts. Finally, come the end of the year, he’d start downloading the tracks to SoundCloud and start posting links to there.
This continued right up until the last post made at the end of 2011 like I mentioned earlier. While at first, it seemed like there was potential for Rolfe to re-ignite interest in the group with his music, with members engaging in the posts, commenting on the tracks themselves, it didn’t last terribly long. The last post was Rolfe, saying, “The “Elder One” has chosen me as his prophet, and I have spoken. You have all closed your ears and your hearts to him. Do as you all will, but with or without disciples of my own, I will continue his good work.”
I tried to click on the SoundCloud links, only to find the account and the tracks were no longer there. No surprise, I guess, considering the lawsuit, but that got me wondering then, just how in the hell did the club owner have the track playing to begin with if he didn’t pay for it? In that same vein, how did Jenna even hear about it? The solution: ask the club owner himself.
That day, I went through my routine check-up with no further incidents. At least, none as extreme as that. The next few days progressed like this, with the only weird thing to occur being the occassional nightmare here and there or the odd auditory hallucination sometimes when I’d walk down the halls to the bathroom or lie in bed. I still can’t say whether or not it was necessarily a good thing that I’d become so desensitized to it by that point that it meant next to nothing for me to repeatedly hear “Hominum Flebit” in my ear by about a hundred different people – in the floor just below the wack-o lodge – but nevertheless, I didn’t make any sort of scene with it.
I still had control over my body and my senses. I guess that was enough for me. Either that, or my mind has a twisted sense of humor all its own.
Anyway, it was enough of a charade to swindle the doctors and nurses to deem me safe to go back home without hurting myself or anyone else just a few days following. I called Jenna that afternoon to come pick me up and she was there a few minutes past noon. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry I haven’t called.” she said immediately after I got in the car.
“It’s okay.” I replied. “I have a favor to ask you though.” She raised her eyebrows. “Can you drive us by the club?”
She chuckled, “Wow, five days in the hospital and the first thing you think about wanting to do is dancing?” She threw her head back laughing. I just stared at her. “Oh… Oh shit, you’re serious.” Her eyes passed rapidly back and forth between the car clock and me. “Hell, Kitty Kat, I don’t even think the place is open. What’re you even wanting to go there for, especially when it’s only noon?”
I opened my mouth, then stopped. To be honest, up to that point, I hadn’t really thought of what to say. I just kind of thought she’d go along with it, even if she had a point and the place probably wasn’t open and wouldn’t likely be until around 10 that night at the earliest. I wasn’t sure what to tell her about the “Ghostwhispers.io” stuff I’d found online. At the same time, I needed to talk to the club owner, see what he knew and/or how the hell he even got the track to begin with.
In the end, I went with pulling out my phone and showing her the article about the lawsuit. Her first reaction was confusion, then shock, then something of interest (giving the phone the same look she sometimes gave me when we’d get drunk together late at night…). “Ooh… I see, you’re trying to learn more about the band, huh?” She winked and added, “Atta girl.”
“It’s more than that, Jen.” I opened the Facebook links. “This dude was nuts and I want to know how and why they got the track illegally.” She raised an eyebrow and gave me a patronizing smile.
“God, I told you you watch too many crime shows.” I sighed and stared pleadingly. “Oh come on, not the puppy eyes, you know I can’t resist that.” Somewhat amused, somewhat relieved she was caving, I made my eyes cartoonishly bigger and more pathetic looking. “Oh, alright.” she said finally, throwing the car in gear and driving out of the hospital parking lot.
We arrived at the club about five or six minutes later. Admittedly, Jenna might’ve had a point with the club probably not even bring open because the parking lot was the most deserted that I’d ever seen. We got out and went to the door, knocking as usual. Fortunately, Jenna always remembered the club’s secret knock because I never could. It was a certain rhythm that was taught to all the paid members like Jenna and I. Sort of like a gang sign, if you will, that lets them know that you’re a member.
For almost three minutes, the two of us just stood there like a couple of the idiots we’d always hear about who didn’t know the secret knock and were left standing all alone outside – shit she and I used to make jokes about. Jenna turned to me, giving me a sarcastic look that said “I told you, dum-dum” without telling me. I was actually about to try my hand at the knocking when I heard the bolt on the door slide back. We took a step back and the door soon opened.
Tanner, the door guy, stood in the doorway, eyeing us wondering why the hell we’d be here so early. “Hey, the owner here?” I asked.
“Yeah, but he’s a bit tied up at the moment, why?”
“We need to–” Jenna cleared her throat. “Okay, I need to talk to him about the other night.”
He scoffed and said, “Good luck and get in line. Fuckers from the record studios and the courthouse have been chomping away at him all morning. The way this shit’s going, it’s probably going to be yet another couple of nights before we can get this in order and open up again.”
“Look, I promise it’ll only take a min–” I was cut off when I heard the sound of shouting coming from down the hall. I couldn’t make out much other than something about “Mother fucking whore! God, son of a cocksucking whore!” I exchanged glances between Tanner and the hallway and he grimaced.
“See what I mean now?” he asked.
“Yeah… but still, I need to ask him something.” His eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“Come on, sweetheart, you really wanna go pissing the big man off after hearing that? Here, why don’t you tell me, and I’ll give him the message?” I sighed and was about to turn back when Jenna stepped up.
“Look dude,” she said in that same “I’m about 2 seconds from planting my foot in your ass” tone I was talking about earlier, “my girl here just said she needed to talk to the guy, okay? Now you gonna let her through or am I going to have to lay you out like a lil’ bitch while Kat here gets it on video for the world to see?” Tanner looked at her, then to me, and back to her before stepping aside. I almost couldn’t believe that actually worked. Jenna was tough, sure, but I honestly figured Tanner, built as he was (keep in mind, he was also the bouncer for the place), that he’d be able to take her in a one-on-one.
Regardless, the two of us waltzed right in toward the room at the end of the hall. Right when I reached the door, I heard a low humming sort of noise, a droning so to speak. It was low, almost like a buzzing noise. I stopped from opening the door and instead started listening. The droning remained low for almost three minutes before I heard this garbled, rumbling sort of voice say something I think like, “Vigilamus, sic creatio ardet.”
A shiver passed down my back at the sound of the low toned Latin. My arm shook, caught stuck between wanting to throw open the door and rush in and wanting to rush backward to the exit. Jenna, noticing my hesitation, took charge and threw the door open for me. The both of us then froze in shock when we saw the owner of the club splayed out on the floor, seizing violently.
The droning sound was deafening. I was forced to bend down and cover my ears when I heard the music let out a huge wave of synth noise and the voice repeated, “Vigilamus, sic creatio ardet.” This time, though, I noticed the voice wasn’t actually coming from the speakers in the room at all, but instead from the guy himself.
His eyes were bugging and his mouth was wide open, almost impossibly so. I was about to rush to try and help him when Jenna threw her arm out in front of me, stopping me. That was when, in a single motion so quick that it was startling, plus a bit painful to watch, the guy shot upright, staring right at me and Jenna, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. From there, he started jerking while disjointedly standing up. Jenna grabbed my arm and pulled us toward the door when it slammed itself shut, jamming itself in place.
Jenna tried pulling and pulling, even battering against it with her shoulder, but it wouldn’t budge. The droning was not heart-stoppingly loud. I could feel it, like it was actually part of the air itself, it was an all-consuming force. The owner took a disjointed step forward and the two of us stepped back in response. “Unh, Damn it, it won’t open!” Jenna shouted above the droning.
The owner’s jaw distended and the deep, distorted voice spoke, “We awake, and thus creation burns.”
“What?” I asked, too confused to even properly be terrified. He took another step. With each second, his body jerked more and more, actively dislocating and relocating several of his bones simultaneously.
“We have been awakened after thousands of years, and we’ve heard the call. Creation’s time has come, now it must end, starting now, with you!”
“Who are you?” Jenna yelled.
“We are the Elders of all creation.” My eyes grew. The man stopped suddenly, doubling over in pain. I watched bright, glowing orbs of light appear all over his body, followed with him screaming in a way that resembled 100 people screaming in pain, all at the same time. The orbs began to char and burn themselves into his skin like cattle brandings before revealing themselves as a multitude of eyeballs. They were all different colors and twitching anxiously all over his body.
Jenna screamed “What the?” I just froze. I couldn’t feel my heart pound away in my chest. The man, thing, whatever the hell you wanna call it, took two more disjointed steps toward us. Jenna was back to beating on the door, shouting “Hey, open up, get us out of here!”
“He can’t save you. No one can.” His arm raised and Jenna was suddenly thrown from the door into the wall. Before my brain could even register what’d just happened, the man’s arm raised again to the ceiling, causing a handful of the electrical cords to coil around her wrists and ankles, suspending her into the air. She struggled furiously but couldn’t break herself free.
I watched the prongs of the different plugs embed themselves into her arms, causing her to cry out in sharp pain. The cords started to glow bright orange and the smell of burnt matches filled the room. Plumes of smoke started to rise from the different points where the plugs were embedded into her arms. Her eyes rolled back and her body started to shake and twist.
I ran to save her but was stopped before I even made my fifth step by a rogue cord that’d suddenly come to life as well, wrapping around my leg and likewise stabbing my thigh with its prongs. Immediately, I felt something searing the nerves in my leg before then feeling nothing at all. I wrestled furiously, but just like with Jenna, this thing had me stuck fast and I wasn’t going anywhere.
I looked up to see black spots growing all across her arms and all the way up to and around her shoulders. Others were even forming up her neck. I reached out to keep trying to pull myself to her but I couldn’t move. Smoke then began coming out of her mouth and blood rained down from her eyes. “Jenna!” I screamed. I turned to the figure, still holding its arm outstretched. “What are you doing to her?”
The figure turned to face me but didn’t speak. Instead, the voice came from Jenna, whose jaw now moved up and down all wonky like she was trying to talk while it was broken. “I told you; we are bringing creation’s end. We have seen the error in its creation, and we can no longer stand for it.” In seconds, the lights from the room blinked rapidly for a couple seconds before going out completely. The room began to glow again when Jenna’s body emanated a bright orange aura just like the club owner’s body did before.
Her eyes were gone, with all the other ones from before now opening up across her body. Her jaw began to move again and she said, “Yes, this will suit us nicely. She is one of our strongest disciples, thus, she will be our voice to the world.” She ended this with a screech that almost immediately deafened me.
“Jenna!” I cried out, feebly attempting once again to wrestle my foot free from the cord. “Let her go, you son of a bitch!”
“We can not. We will not. She is with us now.” The eye’s twitching intensified, as did the glowing around them. “She will be the voice of life’s end. The bugle of the end of days.”
“No! I’ll do whatever you want, okay, just give Jenna back!” I struggled forward again. This made the prong sink itself deeper into my thigh. It would’ve hurt like hell, had the electrical surge not fried all the nerves until a black patch had formed all around the muscle itself. Still, I couldn’t move, even if I’d have been able to rip my leg free without feeling anything.
“You are of no use to us. Your mind was weak when you heard our call, but hers is strong. Only the strong can vessel us.” Before I had any time to think about anything, I was yanked back by my leg and hurled into the back wall, smashing into the control panel in front of the recording room. The impact of my body, small and mousy as it was, totaled the panel itself, causing several sparks to shoot out everywhere, catching the carpet floor aflame. It only took about five seconds for the entire floor to turn into an inferno, and only a further three before the flames were going up the wall.
My consciousness didn’t last any longer than that, though, having cracked my head hard against the panel. I was out cold, too, no voices, no dreams, nothing. Just silence, which made me think I was finally done in until just a few moments later (at least, I’m assuming only a few moments), when I was being shaken awake by Tanner and a couple of firemen. My head felt light and when I opened my mouth to take a breath in, smoke and carbon stuffed themselves like lead weights into my lungs and I coughed.
“Easy there.” said one of the fire fighters. He held up an oxygen mask and said, “Here, put this on.” I did and after a few seconds, I was able to breathe a bit more normally again. I looked around the room. Everything, from the floor to the ceiling, was charred. By the door was a discarded fire extinguisher and a few areas covered with foam. I looked over to where Jenna was and I almost wanted to vomit right there and then.
She was burned almost beyond recognition, having just enough of her intact for me, though probably very few others, to even realize that was or had ever been her. The plugs were still hooked permanently into her carcass. The club owner’s body was likewise scorched, only he had absolutely no flesh left uncooked. A few seconds later, two policemen entered the room and came over to me, asking me if I was okay.
I was taken out of there in a stretcher and rushed to the burn ward at the hospital. From there, I was treated as best they could do for me. I ended up having to have the leg amputated and fitted with a prosthetic – fortunately, I happen to have the insurance and a good bit saved up to have afforded that. Of course, that meant I couldn’t go to the club anymore, not that that mattered anymore. Jenna wouldn’t be there anymore. My Jenna…
“She’s ours now…”
Those words have resonated with me ever since that moment, about a week ago now. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me. The being, “The Elder Ones”, claimed that my mind was “too weak” to be used as a vessel like she and the club owner were. I was unsure of what they meant at first until I thought back to that night at Jenna’s, as well as at the club before that. That’s where the dots started connecting, realizing that both Jenna, the club owner, and God knows how many others had all listened to “Ghostwhispers.io” before, none of them having suffered any sort of effects like me and the kid from the club that night had.
I thought at first that it may have been something Rolfe E. Cau had done in the event someone tried pirating the music like the club owner allegedly had. But then the thought came back to me that that couldn’t have been it, given that Jenna couldn’t have paid the price he was asking for just to download the track she played that night, never mind the others she probably had. that led to the conclusion only certain people could and/or couldn’t be affected in any such ways by the music.
The only thing I could think to do was to try actually reaching out to Rolfe E. Cau directly, see if he could explain any of it, but everything I’ve tried; emails, various phone numbers, and/or social media outlets, all resulted in nothing. I’m stuck on what to do now.
I was finally released from the hospital to go back home two days ago. It didn’t feel as relieving as it had the first time. My Jenna wasn’t there with her snarky wit to greet me. No, it was just some random Uber guy who wouldn’t shut the hell up. It was what happened leaving the hospital on the way back to my apartment that it happened though. Over the driver’s radio while it was on some comedic radio show, I heard the all too familiar droning noise in the background that built in pitch overtake the audio, followed by a deep, garbled voice bellowing:
“Hominum flebit…“