When I just started out as a police officer, on a snowy night, our local station was called by a woman in distress. When I told them the address, the rest of the officers became very quiet. Sheriff McGill came out of his office and looked around. “Who died?” he asked. “The newbie got the call from Mayweather Manor.” One of the other officers said. “Jesus Christ, has nobody explained the situation to him?” McGill asked. He then walked back into his office and signaled for me to follow him.
“From time to time, we get calls from that house. We do not go there, we don’t even acknowledge them, don’t bother asking why, just consider them prank calls, okay newbie?” McGill said as I sat in his office, him looming over me.
I couldn’t let it slide like this, so after my shift, I drove up to Mayweather Manor.
Mayweather Manor was built on a hill overlooking the town, driving up there the house loomed over me menacingly, casting its shadow by the light of the full moon.
The trees around the manor were all dead or dying, and the house was cold and dark, not a single light could be seen from the outside.
When I got out of my car and approached the house I could vaguely see the light of candles through the windows, yet it seemed colder and darker still.
Knocking on the great dark oak door, a woman quickly opened the door. Her hair was black silk, her skin pale, with clear green eyes that had a hint of playfulness in them. She was wearing leather black pants and a black tight shirt that, let’s say complemented, her figure. “Evening, officer.” She said with a voice like honey. “My name is Sofia.”
“Good Evening ma’am, I am officer Davidson,” I said while looking past her into the foyer, noticing many boxes, layers upon layers of dust, and cobwebs all over the place. She must have noticed. “Yes it’s in a sorry state, I just moved back here. I lived in another town not too long ago, unfortunately, I lost my home in a house fire.” She explained. “I am sorry about ma’am”
“Oh no don’t be, I have always felt trapped there, so I moved back to this house, it’s part of my family’s estate you see.” She said as her full, red lips curled into a smile.
“Ma’am, we received a call from a distressed woman, was that you?” I asked.
“No officer, there’s no signal out here and the landline isn’t hooked up yet. I’m afraid this is a dead zone”
“I’d still like to have a look inside.”
“Very well officer, who am I to impede the good work of the Woodfall PD? But please do be careful, the house is not in a great state, it could use some upkeep.” She said leaning against the doorpost, with a slightly teasing tone in her voice.
“Duly noted, ma’am”
“You do know the reputation of this house, don’t you, officer?”
“I have heard a few rumors ma’am”
“Oh they aren’t rumors officer, the cannibal cook killing and serving the last Mayweathers their 21-year-old twins after they assaulted a maid, and before that the groundskeeper who dug up bodies from the graveyard and used them as fertilizer, and even before that a cult using this house to perform dark magic and sinister rituals, it’s all true.”
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, ma’am”
“Please, call me Sofia,” she said as she walked up the stairs to the second floor. First I went right through a door to the kitchen, with a black and white checkered floor, bigger than my living room. On the stove were rusted pots and pans with huge flies buzzing around them, a horrible smell came from them, not unlike rotting flesh that had marinated in open sewage in the hot summer sun. I ran out of the kitchen trying my very hardest to keep my stomach contents right where they were.
I now stood in the dining room, through the big windows at the far end I saw the garden, unkempt, and a vine-like plant with blood-red star-shaped leaves had overrun the garden. When I approached the window I heard a low humming noise and noticed the glass was vibrating.
When looking behind I noticed a door to the foyer opened, a girl, she could be no older than 8, soaking wet, ran to the door on the left of the dining room. I followed her, the floor creaked with every step I took. Other than the creaking of the floor and the little girl’s footsteps, the house was as silent as the grave.
She ran through the hallway, lit with candles, to a door made of a dark, black wood, which was aged and weathered. The little girl turned around, now dry and her eyes black. The door swung open and she ran down the stairs into the darkness. I drew my gun and followed in after her.
The basement was littered with bones and covered in blood splatters, with cobwebs all over. From far into the basement, where no light reached, a creature with a bone-white exoskeleton of vaguely spider-like shape with a fell stinger that brought a scorpion to mind, two long arms with sharp claws, and a human face moved towards me with lightning speed. Up close I recognized the face as Sofia’s with six additional red, beady eyes. Her black silky hair was now ever longer reaching down to the ground.
She slashed across my face and on my left cheek is a scar that still stings from time to time to this day. During that brief moment of contact, I saw a city of insectoid abominations, the buildings were made of blue-gray stone and surrounded by rivers and jungles, well hidden in this ancient rain forest. Somehow, I knew its name to be Kazamyr.
Her jaw unhinged and as she was about to end me, the door at the top of the stairs swung open and a light shone into the darkness, with a man in a trenchcoat and hat, holding a baby, standing in the door opening.
This man cast a shadow unlike any I had seen before, it moved across from one side of the stairs to the other, looking nothing like the man, and then spread out over the floor, darker than anything I’ve seen before.
If true darkness is the complete lack of light, this was the opposite of light, his shadow was not just the absence of light, it was the very inverse of light.
The thing that had introduced itself as Sofia stared at the man, in a state of absolute fear and submission, almost as if asking for permission yet with that same playfulness and defiance in her two humanoid eyes, to which he replied, with multiple booming, echoing voices, in a tongue I can only describe as not of this world.
Then while making a hissing sound at me, she retreated back into the darkness. When I looked back up the stairs the man was gone, and as I made my way back to the dining room, sheriff McGill stood there waiting for me. Besides him was a black man, bold, wearing sunglasses and black jeans with a black turtleneck.
“I’ll take it from here, Heinrich. Please forgive him, he will fall in line” McGill replied in an apologetic tone.
“Close call, McGill,” Heinrich said.
“I know, newbie. You’ve got questions.” McGill said once back in my car. I was not in any state to drive. “These things, they are ancient, powerful, and dangerous.”
“You knew?” I asked with shock and disgust.
“We’ve got to work with them to protect people from them. The one you met, She’s one of the most savage, brutal, and strongest of her kind.”
“And Heinrich..?”
“Do not ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to, newbie.”