Horror and Science Fiction

A Simple Task

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It was late in the month of November, 1928, when I received an urgent telegram from a Mr. August Henry begging me to visit him as soon as possible at his home on the west side. Mr. Henry was dying, the telegram said, and it was his wish to make his peace with the Maker. It mattered not at all that the old man was a stranger to me; as a minister I was often called upon to comfort the dying and have never refused such a call. We are all God's children, after all, and deserving of compassion, or so I thought.

It was a bitter afternoon that found me standing outside the great gray structure the old man called home. The sky was overcast with a light snow hanging in the air, buffeted about by a chilling breeze. Lights were lit in several windows of the house, giving, on first glance, the unsettling impression of a great grinning skull.

The old gentleman must have seen unfortunate times in his waning years, for as I walked the long gravel drive to the house, I passed the ruins of several small out-buildings and decaying gardens. Tall grass choked with weeds clung to my pant legs as I made my way onto the sagging porch.

I am not by nature an overly-sensitive man, but the sight of such decay and the grayness of the day stirred within me a sense of deep depression. However, my strong sense of duty soon prevailed, as it always does with me, so, steeling my nerve, I closed my eyes and knocked on the great wooden door. A squat gray woman of perhaps sixty years opened the door.
       
"Yes?" she said in a voice as gray as the weather.
       
"I am the Reverend Peters, ma'am." I tipped my hat. "I have an appointment to see Mr. Henry." I smiled sweetly, receiving a cold stare and silence in return. I produced the telegram from my coat pocket. "I was invited."
       
She stared dully at the paper. "This way, sir."
       
She led me through the foyer into the library. The room was unnaturally cold despite a blazing fireplace.
       
"Wait here. I shall prepare Mr. Henry for company." With that, she left me.
       
I stood with my back to the fire but, failing to gain any warmth from it, I took a stroll around the room. Huge leather-bound atlases, volumes of poetry, history, philosophy and the sciences crowded sagging shelves alongside numerous volumes of witchcraft and sorcery. Mr. Henry had an eclectic, if not bizarre, taste in reading material.
       
I had just reached for an unusually bound volume by a mysterious-sounding Arabic author as the housekeeper reappeared.
       
"Mr. Henry will see you now," she said. "Follow me."
       
I followed her up a great curving staircase to the upper floor where I was ushered into a dimly lit room dominated by a gigantic four-poster, complete with thick velvet curtains held back by braided ropes.
       
"Sir," she said, "may I present the Reverend Peters." Then she was gone, closing the door behind her.
       
"Mr. Henry," I said, approaching the bed. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
       
Mr. Henry was a diminutive figure nearly swallowed whole by two voluminous down comforters, so ancient in his appearance I marveled he should still be breathing.
       
"Ah, Reverend Peters," the little man said in a slurred voice. A slight trickle of drool glistened on his chin. "I have been expecting you. Please," he motioned with a palsied hand to a large chair next to the bed.
       
I sat, still in my coat, playing nervously with my hat.
       
"How are you, sir?" I asked.
       
"I'll be dead by week's end, Reverend," he said flatly. "That's how I am. Massive stroke. The doctor assures me there is nothing to be done, so that's that."
       
"I am truly sorry, Mr. Henry," I said in my most comforting minister's voice. "You move on to a better place."
       
"Pah," he scoffed. "I know where I am going and I need neither your sympathy nor your fantasies."

"But your telegram said..."
       
"A ploy." He smiled humorlessly, revealing jagged black teeth. "A ruse to ensure your arrival." He struggled to sit more upright but, failing that, resigned himself to remaining prone. "You are here to perform a task for me."
       
"I am a minister, Mr. Henry," I objected gently, "not an errand boy."
       
"You are the man for this task, Reverend Peters. Your war record speaks for itself."
       
"How do you know of my war record?" I stammered. Three years in this city and I had spoken of the war to no one. I had my reasons. "My service in the military is a black stain on my life, sir," I said. "I would rather we not speak of it."
       
He beckoned me with a shriveled finger. I stood, leaning over his bed, the stench of rotting teeth assaulting my nostrils.
       
"You are a man of God, sir, but a man of action as well," he whispered. "It is the latter that interests me; I have no use for the former."
       
"Mr. Henry," I said. "I'm afraid I don't understand. If you have no use for God, why did you seek out a minister?"
       
"I did not seek out a minister, I sought a man of honor, a man of conviction, a man unafraid to do what needs doing. You are that man." He wheezed, coughing deeply. Sputum clung to his lips. "To my great shame, I have left something undone and I need you to act in my stead. It is a simple task, one which I know you are capable of performing. You must swear to me that you will do as I ask."
       
"Surely," I reasoned, "you cannot expect me to make such a pledge without first knowing what you want me to do. What is the task?"
       
His gnarled hand grabbed my coat with surprising strength. "I can not tell until you promise!" he gasped. "Promise you will do what I ask!"
       
His face was flushed with excitement; great drops of sweat formed on his leathery face. What could I say? He was becoming more agitated by the second, and it was certainly not my purpose to cause this old man's death.
       
"Please, calm yourself. I will do what you ask," I relented.
       
His arm fell limp to the bed. "Excellent," he sighed. "Excellent." His breathing slowed and his color returned. I glanced at the door, wanting nothing more than to leave.

"The task, Mr. Henry," I asked at length. "What is it you want me to do?"
       
"Do? I want you to do nothing," he said. "The task is to undo something I have done."
       
I must have looked as confused as I felt.

"Let me explain, Reverend," he said. "I am a member of, or I should say, I was a member of a society of men of like mind, practioners of the Black Arts."
       
"The Black Arts? You mean spiritualism? Seances?" Seances and spiritualism had been all the rage some years back.
       
"Pah! Mere parlor tricks designed to relieve gray-haired matrons of their excess currency! No, no, I speak of the darkest arts, darker, blacker and more horrifying than you could fathom."
     
I strive to love my fellow man; it is my job as well as my life's philosophy, but I found it difficult to like this old man. What he said next eliminated that possibility altogether.
       
"One of the rites we practiced was that of resurrection, of raising the dead, to do our bidding."
       
"Impossible! Blasphemy!" The man was mad.

"Ah, I do enjoy a challenge." His smile made me shiver. "May I offer proof? You served on the front line in France during the Great War. You befriended a young private named Jonathan Collins. Collins was horribly wounded in battle."
       
I sat bolt upright.
       
"You were next to him in the trench, not ten inches away, when a German bullet blew half his skull away. His brains splattered your face, remember?" I felt cold under the old man's evil smile. "Such a horrible wound, but he didn't die, did he? He lay in the mud, moaning horribly, staring at you with his one remaining eye, pleadingly. What could you do, Reverend?" he said. "The battle raged on, there was no medic to be found. The Germans were advancing and soon would overrun your position. Collins was your friend, how could you help him? How could you end the poor lad's suffering?"
       
I squirmed, a bug stuck on a pin.

"You did the only thing you could do, the only thing that could be done ," he said, his cold, gray eyes piercing me to my very soul. I closed my eyes against the vision he was conjuring. "You placed your rifle against his heart. A simple squeeze of the trigger and his suffering was over. It was not murder, Reverend Peters; it was mercy."
       
For an eternity of moments I was again in that mud-filled trench, staring in horror at what I'd done.
       
"Reverend Peters," he said, his words soft and low, "how else could I know this but by occult means? No one knows this thing but you and Collins."
       
I could not deny it; everything had happened just as he said, every word, every detail, as if he were there with me in that filthy trench. The Germans did overrun our position and I was forced to leave poor Collins to rot in that stinking trench.
       
"But enough of your history," he said at length. "Let me tell you mine. The organization to which I belonged is unknown to the outside world, yet there is no world event of consequence in which we have not exerted some influence. We lurk just under the surface of society, influencing, modifying events, exerting our will in subtle ways. Through our powers, we shape society to our liking."
       
I am no scholar of the occult, but I have heard stories of such occult societies. I must admit I had dismissed such tales as the prattle of uneducated paranoia. Perhaps I was wrong.
       
"But," he went on, "I gave it all up. I left the organization when I met her," he said.
       
"Her?"
       
"Claire." He closed his eyes. "My sweet girl. We met in Paris. I was in Europe for a Society gathering. This was long before the war, of course."
       
A smile softened his face, easing the great creases in his leathery skin as his mind traversed the years. "She was all of seventeen when first we met. We fell madly in love and were married within a fortnight. Oh, such happiness! I had never known love before! We sailed across the Atlantic in total bliss, to start our new lives together, here, in this house. But God could not let a sinner such as I go unpunished."
       
He fell silent, his smile melting away, replaced by a lost, haunted look.
       
I leaned forward, lightly touching his arm, curious despite my revulsion. "What happened, sir? What happened to Claire?"
       
He answered slowly, in an anguished voice. "It was our second night on the train from New York. I had left her in the dining car to retrieve my pipe and tobacco from our compartment. I was gone only a few moments, such a short time to change my life so completely." I felt a twinge of sympathy for the old monster; I knew exactly what he meant. "A fire broke out in the dining car," he went on. "I tried to reach her, tried to fight my way through the smoke and flames, but I couldn't. I couldn't. Her screams seared me to my very soul as the flames seared her flesh."
       
There followed a long, terrible silence.
       
"I brought her here," he said at last, "to our home. I hired the finest surgeon in the city to reconstruct her body as best he could. He was suspicious, of course -- was this not a task better suited for a mortician? -- but he said nothing and took his ample fee, leaving me to grieve. But little did he know! There was no time for grieving, I had work to do! I carried her down to the catacombs below this very house. I laid her out on the stone slab I used for my rituals..."
       
"No!" I stood, sending my chair toppling to the floor. "You didn't!"
       
"Would you have done differently?" he shot back. "Wouldn't you have raised Jonathan Collins if you could? Judge not, young Reverend!"
       
"But this is horrible!" I said. "Repulsive! How could you?"
       
He laid silent and still, a tiny man in a giant bed. I tried but could not find it in me to feel the least bit of compassion towards the monster. I sat my chair upright and prepared to take my leave.
       
"She's still alive," he rasped.
       
I collapsed in the chair, the wind knocked from me.
       
"Oh, dear God," I moaned.
       
"Don't you understand?" he said. "I had her back, she was alive! I couldn't have her rotting in the grave! She was the only true happiness I had ever known. But..." His voice trailed off.
       
"But what?"
       
"She wasn't quite right," he said. "It wasn't the surgeon's fault; he'd done the best he could with what he had to work with. But there was so much damage. I'm afraid the shock of seeing her body was too much for Claire, her mind could not cope." He looked at me, eyes brimming with tears. "She's little more than an animal. My sweet Claire!"
       
"And for all these years..." I stammered.
       
"For all these years I've cared for her, cared for her out of love and no small amount of guilt."
       
I stared at the floor, listening to the old man's labored breathing, finally realizing why I had been summoned.
       
"When you are gone," I whispered, without raising my head, "there will be no one to care for her."
       
"I meant to relieve her, to return her to death's slumber, but I delayed too long and now my strength has left me and I cannot do the deed," he said. "You are my only hope, Reverend Peters. If only I had more time..."
       
He looked at me with pleading eyes. "You must relieve her from her, from our, agony," he said softly.
       
I sat, barely breathing, squeezing my eyes shut against hot tears.
       
"You have done it before," he whispered.
       
Indeed, I had.
       
"Where is she?" I heard myself say from far away.
       
"In the catacombs below."
       
With great effort, he removed a silver chain from his thin neck from which hung a brass key. "You will need this."
       
"What do I do?" I asked numbly.
       
"A simple recitation," he explained, producing an ancient parchment from beneath his blanket. "Say aloud these words in her presence and she will fall asleep, forever. It is a simple task," he said. "She will feel no pain."
       
I sat in silence.
       
"It is mercy, Reverend Peters, not murder. She has been dead more than fifty years."
       
I stared at the faded parchment, trying to convince myself of the truth of his words, but I could not, for if she breathed, she lived, and if she lived, it was murder and I would be a murderer. Again.
       
"Very well," I said, rising. "May God have mercy on our souls."
       
"There will be no mercy for me, Reverend," he whispered. "No mercy for me."
         
I found the housekeeper at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me. She led me to the back of the house, stopping before a large wooden door. I produced the key, slipping it into the lock.
       
"Do you know what lies beyond this door?" I asked.
       
She crossed herself with a shaking hand. "No, sir," she said, "nor do I ever wish to. I will be leaving this house now, sir, and I will not be returning. God be with you."
       
I turned the key, swinging the door on squeaking hinges as I stepped onto a narrow landing. A steep rail-less stair disappeared into inky blackness below. I found an oil lamp on a hook and by this feeble light I descended into Hell.
       
With each downward step, an ever stronger odor assaulted my nostrils. It was an odor I was all too familiar with: the smell of the trenches, the stench of death. When at last I set foot on the dirt floor it was as if I had stepped out of reality into a horrific world worthy of Dante's worst nightmare. My wavering light revealed bodies by the dozens, some in open coffins, some leaning against walls, others stacked in piles four and five high. Pentagrams, hexagrams and symbols unknown to me adorned the walls. A skeletal ram's head leered from the shadows.
       
I made my way down a long low corridor, bent nearly double, picking my way over corpses and boxes, when at last I reached a large chamber at the end of the passage. The room was vast, filled with wooden crates and barrels as far as my dim light could illuminate. Before me stood a massive stone slab on a pedestal, an inverted cross suspended above it. Ugly dark stains covered its surface. "The Lord is my shepherd," I prayed.
       
I stood for a moment, wondering how to proceed, when I felt something, some stirring of the air or some vibration -- I know not which -- that convinced me I was not alone. I stepped further into the room, inching cautiously forward.
       
From the inky blackness came a slight scraping sound, whether from a rat or something else, I could not tell. A dark shape darted across an opening between two stacks of crates.
       
"Hello?" my voice cracked. "Mrs. Henry?"
       
Something small and bent slammed into me from the right, knocking me to the floor. The parchment fell from my grasp as my lamp flew from me. I struggled as the creature tore at my throat. Why had Mr. Henry not warned me there was a wild animal in the catacombs? But as I fought I became aware of the horrible truth: This was no animal; it was a human being, a bent, deformed, mad human being!
       
"Mrs. Henry!" I screamed, connecting a solid blow to her jaw. She retreated into the maze of crates.
       
I stumbled to my feet, dazed and confused. Why was it becoming brighter? And hotter? A scream arose, more than animal, less than human. Then I saw her, a hideous, crooked figure of blackened flesh and disfigured limbs, a scrambled jigsaw of a human form, shrieking in agony as flames fed by lamp oil engulfed her body. She stumbled and staggered, spreading flames in her horrible dance. I searched for the parchment, hoping to relieve her agony, to spare her the pain of the flames. I could not imagine the terror she must have felt, being burned alive for a second time. The heat became more than I could bear as flames jumped from crate to crate, filling the chamber with noxious smoke. Having failed to find the parchment, and fearful of being overcome by smoke, I said a quick prayer for the condemned woman and crawled from the chamber on hands and knees.
       
Realizing my only hope for escape was the staircase which I had descended, I crawled blindly through the thickening smoke, saying another prayer, this one for myself, asking God's guidance from this hellish place.

When at last I reached the kitchen, flames had engulfed the entire front of the house, cutting off any route to the helpless old man upstairs. I foolishly tried rushing through the inferno, but the heat and smoke were impenetrable. My heart sank as I realized he would be dead before I could reach him.
       
I smashed through a kitchen window into the chill November air, stumbling to the safety of the street as the cry of fire was raised throughout the neighborhood.
       
I have never spoken a word to anyone about Mr. or Mrs. Henry. After all, who would believe me? But it has been my curse to relive that day in my dreams, night after night for all these years. I would not have thought it possible anything could supplant my nightmares of the war. I was wrong.