I woke up this morning and strode out to the mailbox since I forgot to yesterday. I didn’t see it ‘til I’d gotten inside and sifted through the junk mail and bills. A letter addressed to me, from my father. I stared at it for several minutes before opening it, and a tiny velvet bag fell out of the envelope along with a thick letter.
I know the postal service can be slow, but if this was real, someone had royally fucked up. The rational side of my brain reasoned that someone probably had dropped the letter in some crack or crevice behind a desk or in one of those mail jeeps and finally found it after more than 40 years. Why 40 years, you ask? Well, he walked out on my mom back in 1981 and disappeared without a trace, not that it had made me sad. I had already grown up, moved out, and moved on by then; His cold and sometimes downright abusive behavior long since passed in the rearview. So, needless to say, I didn’t exactly lose sleep when he ended up on the national missing persons clearinghouse in ‘84. Though I had long since grown up, knowing he was gone brought me some peace.
I’m getting off topic. The only problem with my lost mail theory: The envelope and the paper the letter had been penned on looked brand new, and my father had been missing for four decades and had been presumed dead in ‘98. I figured at that point that it must have been a prank, albeit a very elaborate one, so I decided to read it in its entirety. I was wrong.
Now, if you couldn’t already tell by the numbers and years I’ve been throwing around, I’m not young… at all, so after I got through the letter, I damn near had a heart attack. I’m not completely tech illiterate, but I’m no computer whiz either, so I don’t really know how to go about understanding it fully. I called the library to ask about some of the things mentioned in the letter and all they had was a book by someone named Alistair Crowley and a couple military history novels, but they’d all been checked out. So that’s why I’m here. My daughter Olivia told me that people talk about weird stuff that’s happened to them on this web site for others to try and make sense of, so I thought I’d put the letter here. She got me a laptop computer as a housewarming present for the assisted care apartment I moved into last month, and this is the first time I’ve fired it up, and my neighbor Jan is letting me borrow her Wifi, so I’ve spent the day typing down what the letter said and it’s finally ready to share.
I’ve talked enough, so I’ll shut up and let you read the letter. I’ve used the pound key to indicate the start and end. This is what it says:
###
My dearest son,
Your grandfather served in the United States Army during World War One, and like many veterans of the Great War, he returned wounded—both physically and mentally. Being born in 1920, I knew not what his face had looked like before the war, and as such, I never asked him about his time overseas and he never spoke of it, as though those nearly two years had never occurred.
That was, until he summoned me beside his deathbed, voice hoarse and dry from the respiratory medicines working to keep him breathing. It was the morning of May 19, 1979. A cardinal perched itself on a large branch directly outside his solitary window in the bedroom on the second floor of my home. He had lived with me for several years by this point as his health had deteriorated and he began to need round the clock care. Dementia had begun to gnaw away at his faculties and it was difficult for him to verbalize his needs or say anything coherent, also due to his lung cancer from years of smoking. We had visited his doctor the previous Saturday and he recommended my father’s treatment plan transition to hospice care. As his power of attorney and not wanting to pry him from the comfort of his recliner and the familiarity of his room, I hired a home health service in lieu of sending him to a VA facility.
As the light shone in on his recliner, illuminating his disfigured face, I approached.
“Father, the nurse said you wanted to see me,” I said.
“Come… to me,” he said in two raspy breaths, slowly turning to face me.
I approached in shock. He had essentially gone nonverbal several months prior, typically using only one word and pointing when he needed something. I knew it must have taken everything in him to be able to utter that sentence. Eyes still locked on him, I reached for the folding chair I kept in the corner and opened it, setting it next to his rocker and sitting down, joining him at eye level. He took the glass of water sitting on the TV tray next to him and took several sips. He set the glass down and turned back towards me.
“I need to tell you about Tournai.”
Your grandfather, who I will refer to henceforth as my father, began to tell me of his time in the 1st Engineer Regiment, in which he participated in several battles fought during brutal campaigns throughout France in 1917 and 1918, including the Meuse–Argonne offensive, in which he saw several of his friends die. I wondered in which battle he had lost his left eye and most of the left side of his face, and what kind of weapon could have inflicted such an injury.
In late October of 1918, less than a month before the cessation of hostilities, he and three other American combat engineers were embedded within a small sapper unit of the 63rd Division of the Royal Navy, who were in the city of Tournai supporting French efforts to fortify the city. The German Fourth Army had begun its offensive against Mons, about thirty miles west, and the forces in Tournai had been determined by French high command to be too few to effectively combat the Germans. As such, the French left their positions, though forgetting to inform the British and Americans, who had begun digging trenches and erecting defensive emplacements. By the time they realized the French had retreated to the larger city of Lille, it was too late to fall back. While major action would take place at Mons, General Friedrich Sixt von Armin’s Fourth Army would indeed shell Tournai, too. As combat engineers and sappers, the men, including my father—would have no trouble making their way underground, but under the threat of artillery, they sought shelter in areas where someone had already done the digging.
“These bastards aren’t going to cease, men,” shouted British First Lieutenant Oliver Wescott, as he directed the men near him into the cellar of an old home in the city center.
As Wescott looked back to direct more troops inside, an artillery shell screamed through the air, impacting the street outside, collapsing the roof onto the cellar doors. During the explosion, Wescott was blown off his feet into the cellar where my father, along with Private Lester Daniels and two British soldiers, had taken shelter. They were now cut off from the outside, in pure darkness.
“Are you men alright?”, asked Wescott, winded, but physically unharmed.
My father grabbed for his lighter to illuminate the damp, musty cellar. Flick. His face became illuminated, and as he looked to his left, he saw the nearly-decapitated body of one of the British soldiers, his head severed by a piece of shrapnel, head dangling from his neck like the last bit of metal you have to peel back after you’ve used a can opener.
“Fucking Christ,” said an American-sounding voice to his right.
Private Daniels stood up, taking a step back. Daniels inadvertently dumped his haversack as he stumbled to his feet, ration tins and hatchet clanging as they hit the cobblestone floor.
“Christ, Baker…” said a soft British voice.
Another lighter flicked, and the face of a boy, no older than nineteen, came into view. His skin appeared as smooth as a baby’s, with the exception of a deep gash on his right cheek. His eyes, however, appeared hollow. A tear escaped his eye and his lip quivered slightly. A large, bright flame appeared behind him and then slightly faded. Wescott held a rusty lantern he had found in his right hand, lighter in the other.
The room was large, filled with old furniture on one side, and large barrels on the other. My father looked around, searching for any possible exit point. The roof above them was constructed with heavy wood, many once-strong beams fractured by the explosion. One wrong swing of a hatchet, and the entire structure could crush the men in their escape. As Wescott berated his sole surviving countryman for shedding tears at the loss of his friend, Daniels pointed towards the wall furthest from the staircase.
“The mortar,” he said, matter of factly. “It’s new.”
My father approached the wall alongside Daniels, as Wescott walked behind them towards the wall. My father went to observe closer as Wescott brushed past him.
“Yes, it’s lighter here,” Wescott said.
The mortar of an eight by eight section of the stone wall that stood before the three men was indeed lighter than the aged mortar that adorned the cracks and gaps between the other stones comprising the walls. Not necessarily new per se, but definitely not original.
Lacking explosives and other tools that would be useful for dismantling a wall, all four men began striking the mortar around one large stone with their hatchets, hopeful they had found a way out. After several minutes, the stone fell backwards, leaving a dark hole in its place. A loud thud echoed through the hole, followed by a slightly muffled thud, and several more after that, decreasing in pitch each time.
The men all exchanged looks with each other, unsure of what they had found. After half an hour, a man-sized hole had been created, and Wescott climbed through, lantern in hand.
“What’s there?”, said the young British solider, who had introduced himself simply as Arthur during the demolition process.
“Stairs,” said Wescott in a questioning tone, almost as though he was confused by the concept of a staircase.
My father entered the gap to converse with Wescott, with Daniels and Arthur entering behind him. A staircase stood before the four men, though not one leading back to the surface. Past the landing the men found themselves on, a flight of dark, jagged steps led down to a corridor approximately twenty feet below them, the stone from the wall resting at the bottom.
“Do we wish to travel down there?”, said Arthur, apprehensively.
Another artillery shell exploded on the surface, the ground shaking followed by small chunks falling from the rock ceiling above. With no other option besides waiting to die, the four men returned back to the cellar to retrieve their supplies and rifles, and then journeyed down the stairs.
Greeted by a large passageway spanning as far as the lanternlight could reach, the men moved forward. A soft thump could be heard above the men, and small bits of rock crumbled to the floor. More artillery. After walking for what he estimated was ten minutes, my father heard a noise from up ahead. A large shadow appeared around a corner, illuminated by the lantern, small appendages dancing on the wall like a finger puppet, a large oblong head adorning the top of the form. What appeared to be wings fluttered on the back of it. Wescott drew his revolver from its holster, racing forward with the lantern to confront the unknown shadow. He rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.
Lowering the revolver and chuckling, Wescott looked back at the three men.
“Was a fuckin’ rat,” he said, laughing.
The rest of the men entered the small room Wescott had rushed into. A small statue rested in the corner of the room, inscribed Clovis, in French. A rat poked its head out from behind the statue before retreating behind it again. The men continued on down the passageway, stopping briefly to drink from their canteens. Shortly after resuming their journey, the narrow hall widened.
“Christ almighty…”, Daniels trailed off, seeing a massive circular room come into view.
The ceilings here extended higher than those in the passageway, though not by much. Enveloping the perimeter of the room like wallpaper, were skulls. In the center of the room laid a large, rectangular stone object, which my father immediately believed to be a coffin. He approached it, the others in tow. While appearing incredibly simplistic from a distance, the dark box was covered in various symbols, none of which my father recognized. He then proceeded to open it. What sounded like a breath emerged from the coffin and a searing pain coarsed through his hand, as though he had been stung. He cried out in pain, clutching his hand, stumbling back. Daniels unshouldered his rifle, hands shaking violently as his finger slipped and he fired a shot into the coffin, putting a hole through the thin rock.
Their ears rang and something clattered to the ground behind the two men. Standing there, facing away from them, was Arthur. The lantern laid on the ground a few feet ahead of him, flame slowly dying.
“Where the fuck is Wescott?”, said my father, voice trembling.
Arthur turned towards him, face completely pale. He spoke in a deep, unnatural voice.
“He…”, was all he managed to get out as the wet squelch of a hatchet burying itself in his head reverberated throughout the room. Arthur fell to the floor, blood seeping from his eyes, now red. As he collapsed onto his side, still facing them, he smiled.
Just then, Wescott emerged from the darkness, holding his rifle, bayonet affixed. My father unshouldered his rifle and pointed it at Wescott.
“Wait,” said Wescott, just as my father and Daniels both fired at the murderer. Daniels’ shot missed by a mile, his hands still shaking, but my father’s shot pierced Wescott’s uniform, puncturing his right lung.
Coughing on blood, Wescott said two words that would make my father shudder when recounting his tale. “Not… him,” he said, drawing his Webley and placing it to his temple. He stared straight ahead at the coffin, eyes wide.
“Our God who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Accept me into your gracious arms ‘O Lord,” he sobbed, before pulling the trigger, grey matter and gore spraying the solid ground, the shot deafening to my father and Daniels’ already ringing ears.
Emerging from one of Arthur’s ears came a small fly-like creature, which then flew into the darkness.
Daniels staggered backwards towards the coffin as the light from the lantern faded. My father followed. Using his boot, Daniels, for some reason, kicked the remainder of the stone lid off, revealing a skeleton adorned in jewels, rings, and a golden crown. A sword, whose handle was wrapped in rubies, fit between the skeleton’s hands. My father said he did not know why the two of them didn’t simply run the opposite direction. It was as though they were drawn by the mystery just as much as they were afraid of venturing outside what was illuminated by the still-dying lantern.
Daniels reached into the coffin, attempting to remove a ring from one of the skeleton’s hands, breaking the finger off in the process. A low roar emanated from the direction opposite of which they had entered. A fly buzzed through the air and landed on Daniels’ outer lobe. My father could only watch as it entered his ear, for as soon as he was able to verbalize that there was a fly, it had already burrowed in. Daniels blinked and looked down. He felt the strap on his shoulder and looked at the wooden and metal rifle he now held in his hands, his face reflecting off the surface of the sharp bayonet affixed to the muzzle. Daniels dropped the weapon haphazardly and stumbled towards my father, as if he had not walked in years. My father backed up, frightened. Daniels held up the bony finger in his hand and smiled, a pentagram carved into the middle of the ring and the script of a language unknown to my father, at the time, surrounding it. Daniels moved forward towards my father and touched his face. My father screamed in agony and fell to the ground, steam rising from his cheek, his left eye melting from its socket and dripping onto the ground.
“Put. On. The. Ring,” Daniels said, in what sounded like the voices of a thousand dying men.
My father ran, grabbing his rifle and falling as Daniels fell on top of him. Blood poured out on my father’s torso as it ran like a river from Daniels’ mouth and stomach, his body now resting on top of the rifle, bayonet extending out of his back. Daniels blinked and swatted at my father, his hands unable to make contact. The bony ring finger fell from one of Daniels’ hands and landed on my father’s uniform. A sizzling sound came from his chest as the ring made contact with his skin after eating through the green wool. Another shout of unbearable pain came from my father as he swatted the finger and ring away from him.
The buzzing sound could be heard once more as the small fly emerged from Daniels’ left ear and approached my father, still pinned under the corpse. He removed his lighter from his pocket and sparked it in front of the creature, causing it to burst into flame. An unholy screech could be heard as it fell to the ground, wings alight like a plane that had been shot down, and it impacted the ground. My father stood up, moving Daniels’ body from atop him, and stomped on the downed creature several times before running to the lantern, now barely alight, and rejuvenating the flame.
That’s when he saw them. Hundreds of shadows without owners stood along every side of the room, blocking two passageways. They slowly began to approach him, encircling him with intent. He walked back to the center of the room, now his only option. Grabbing Daniels’ discarded rifle, he backed up to the coffin, panting. The shadows were closer now, nearly upon him. Removing the bayonet, my father painfully explained to me that he put the barrel of the rifle under his chin and fired.
As he lay on the ground, he found himself looking at the body of his friend, rifle still sticking out of his chest, propping him up like a pike. The shadows moved around the corpse as though something in the way—other than the body itself—prevented their travel. My father, in a final act of desperation, crawled towards Daniels, seeking whatever was keeping the shadows away from him. Resting under his rifle-propped body like someone sheltering in a tent, was the skeletal finger, ring and all.
My father grabbed the ring off the finger and the shadows immediately stopped. He placed it slowly on his finger and the pentagram burst into flames. The shadows slowly began to kneel. My father looked around and gasped when he saw Daniels kneeling before him, his dead eyes staring up as blood dripped from his mouth, rifle still buried in his chest.
His now-purple lips moved, and in a scratchy voice, slowly said “My… king.”
My father walked towards the other passageway slowly as he moved to escape, the shadows backing away to form a path. Some of the shadows began to take form, but my father refused to describe them. He finally reached the end of the second passageway, and when he turned around, the shadows were gone. After climbing a set of rocky steps, like those he had descended before, a wall appeared before him, and using the hatchet still in his haversack, still slung around him, smashed through the mortar surrounding a large rock and pushed it through. Outside, he saw men marching down a street, who paused after noticing the rock fall to the road below.
“Hello!”, he shouted, waving his arm through the hole.
My father then pushed his head through and was greeted by dozens of German soldiers. As my father pulled his head back through, he heard shots ring out as the soldiers opened fire. He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes. Then the screams began. The sounds of flesh being ripped apart, throats being torn from bodies as their owners’ screeches ceased as they separated from one another. And then, there was silence. After hacking away at the wall enough to make a hole large enough to pull himself through, my father emerged to a street flowing with blood and bodies twisted and contorted like putty.
One of the German soldiers was still alive, smiling. My father had left Daniels’ rifle behind the wall, and had already dropped the hatchet.
In perfect English, the German spoke. “You are going to need this,” he said, gesturing towards the man’s uniform. The man then fell to the ground, eyes rolling into the back of his head, a small fly emerging from his ear. My father donned the German’s uniform, ditching the Kaiser’s garb after leaving the city, and walked towards Allied lines.
“American, American!”, my father shouted, hands raised, wearing only his undergarments and boots as he approached a trench.
“Christ, get a medic!”, shouted a British soldier.
My father then collapsed.
He awoke in a field hospital and was shipped home. He was fitted with a prosthetic face, covering his lower left side, along with a glass eye, as his upper facial structure remained intact, though heavily scarred from burning.
While he shared his truth, the ordeal was chocked up to shell shock by the War Department. The official story was that my father had been separated from the rest of his comrades during the bombardment of the city, lost his eye, and suffered facial burns due to fire and debris, while the gunshot wound was sustained when a German soldier wrestled with my father for his rifle and it fired, but he managed to survive.
He received several medals and what he called a “wound stripe”, which was the equivalent of the Purple Heart, at the time. He had the option to receive a Purple Heart retroactively later in life after it was introduced, which he declined.
After my father finished speaking, he turned away and looked back out the window, the red cardinal still perched on the branch looking in at him. He smiled at the bird, and I slowly walked back downstairs.
“You were up there for quite a while, is everything okay?”, the nurse, who had been waiting on the couch in the living room, asked me.
“Yeah.. I… uh, was having a conversation with him,” I said.
She laughed.
“Robert? Talking? That’s hilarious. I’ve been here every day for a month now and he’s only spoken to me once,” she laughed.
“What did he say?”, I asked.
“He asked me to put on a ring.”
My father died five months later. He was buried with full military honors, dressed in uniform. As he was lowered into his eternal resting place and the preacher waxed lyrical about his good deeds, I held my hands in my pockets. It was quite chilly that day. In one hand, I gripped the funeral program. In the other, I held the ring that had been on my father’s finger just before he was transferred to the hearse.
In the years following his death, I traveled to Tournai and spoke with numerous scholars and occultists regarding the events surrounding my father’s experience. This is what I found.
Clovis I was the King of Frankia from the late 400s to early 500s, ruling an area which comprised much of what is now northwestern France and surrounding areas including Belgium, where modern day Tournai sits. Relics of his reign were discovered in the late 1600s, including a trove of gold and other precious jewels, metals, and rings whose worth was beyond measure. Though converting to a form of Christianity later in his short life, he was born into a certain breed of pagans and held various beliefs that made those closest to him fearful. Vast riches seemingly did not satisfy Clovis, as he would begin practicing and experimenting in Goetia, a Greco-Roman form of sorcery that existed long before the term witchcraft was coined. While mostly consisting of innocuous spells and methods of divination, there also existed a more supernatural element. Namely, the practice of summoning angels, demons, and other entities beyond our realm of understanding. The Catholic Church, having later granted him sainthood, sought to cover up his sorcerous past, and, given the power of the Church at the time, information on the topic is incredibly limited, found only in centuries-old texts and through the mouths of orators and mystics.
One of the works that especially intrigued Clovis was the Testament of Solomon, a text written in Greek, in which Clovis was fluent. The Testament speaks of King Solomon, who after confronting a demon, receives a ring, known as the Seal of Solomon, from the archangel Michael, emblazoned with a pentagram, giving him the ability to bring demons under his control by branding them with the sigil. Solomon wielded the Seal, bringing countless demons under his behest, including Baphomet; Mephistopheles himself. While certainly equipped with a strong conventional army, Clovis found the prospect of controlling an otherworldly force loyal only to him too tempting, sending multiple expeditions to Israel to search for the ring, his lust for control growing stronger as the years passed. The ring was found, and the fruits of Clovis’ labor could finally be reaped. Shortly after summoning and employing demons to do his bidding in the catacombs, the king died. While the Catholic Church claimed his body was moved to an abbey in Paris, I know that he still rests in the depths below the soil of Tournai.
I understand that this is much to process, though as the years drag on and I gaze upon you from time to time, know that I am proud of you. Congratulations on your new abode. Now, while I have lived much longer than I could’ve fathomed, I am not immune to mortality. It is time for me to bestow the greatest honor upon you, my child. When you were diagnosed with cancer, you feared the worst, but I called upon my servant, Sphendonaêl, to heal you. When you and your wife began to fall out of love, I beckoned Buldumêch to mend your marriage. When you have experienced miracles, my child, they have not been of any god. The Testament explains it much better than I can:
So Ornias took the finger-ring, and went off to Beelzeboul, who has kingship over the demons. He said to him: “Hither! Solomon calls thee.” But Beelzeboul, having heard, said to him: “Tell me, who is this Solomon of whom thou speakest to me?” Then Ornias threw the ring at the chest of Beelzeboul, saying: “Solomon the king calls thee.” But Beelzeboul cried aloud with a mighty voice, and shot out a great burning flame of fire; and he arose, and followed Ornias, and came to Solomon.
Once he was struck with the ring by the lesser demon Ornias, already behest to Solomon, our Lord became the king’s servant, along with his spawn. You see, my son, this is why I named you Solomon. It is now time for you to reign over Beelzebub and his legion and reap the benefits that come with such an honor.
I know that you have seen the velvet pouch I sent you alongside my letter. If you have not opened it already, it is time to do so, my son.
Put on the ring.
###
And that’s the letter. I’ve been sitting at my kitchen table all day trying to process this. I opened the bag after I finished reading it. It was like an involuntary motion. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I saw my hands move and could do nothing to stop them.
It’s going on 3 p.m. now and all I’ve done today is stare at this fucking ring. It’s exactly like he described it. It felt wrong at first, just looking at it. Like a kid gazing at a forbidden cookie in a jar. But it’s calling to me. I can see now. It’s so beautiful. It’s just the right size.
Since my wife Ruth died last year, I’ve repeated the same goddamn routine. Wake up. Check the mail. Watch the Rifleman before lunch, go to the civic center for bingo on Wednesdays, and watch M.A.S.H. at dinner with my microwave Salisbury steak. To my only daughter, Olivia, if you are reading this, I am sorry. I’m miserable, so I think I’m going to do something different for a change.
I’m going to try it on.