Ding-dong!
“Goddamned doorbell!”
Luis Oswald, or Lew as his Mother used to call him, and probably his friends too if he had any, was not used to having visitors. Especially not when he was busy killing enemy soldiers on his computer screen. Although, for Lew, there was no such thing as the right time for visitors anyway.
He anticipated another ring, but the absence of one annoyed him even more. Why would anyone ring at the door and leave again? In his mind he pictured someone sneaking around the house to make sure nobody was at home.
With a sigh, he paused WWII on his screen, raised his legs and gingerly turned around in his office chair, trying to avoid contact with anything around him. His efforts were in vain. The tip of his toe touched the rim of an empty bottle, and as it fell, a large section of the empty bottle array to his left tumbled down like a sea of dominoes.
“Goddamned shit, Goddamnit!“ he cursed, but didn't pay any more attention to it. His full focus was on the door. It took his eyes a few seconds acclimatize to the darkness of the room, only illuminated by his flickering monitor. To the left and right were towering heaps of trash, empty beer cans, bottles, magazines, newspapers and fliers, books, CD’s, video tapes, all stacked up in an attempt to keep his path from disappearing. The path was his only way through the house. The rift in the mountains was also the only place where the floor was still visible. Some of the fallen bottles rolled along the narrow path, but he stepped over them, just like the tumbled newspaper stack that waited for him in the corridor.
Eventually he arrived at the door to the outside lobby. With some effort he turned the oversized iron key and with a loud grinding noise the lock opened. He pushed the old oak door open with his shoulder. Sunlight shone through the colored glass of the lobby as he called out into the little roofed porch with stained glass walls. His father had built it, and it didn’t match the rest of the house in any decent way.
Lew blinked and raised a hand to protect his eyes from the colored sun-rays. Looking through the thick, uneven glass he saw that there was nobody outside, but something had been left for him. A box, a package, something like that. It could not have been the regular mailman, who always left the mail inside the lobby.
As Lew stepped outside the cold air reminded him that he was only wearing his underwear. “Goddamnit!” He scratched the back of his head and pondered if he should still open the door and pull the mysterious package inside, but instead he turned around, and with plenty of cursing started to look for his pants.
Somewhere near his bed he found a filthy pair of sweatpants that made him feel safe enough to get whatever was in front of his house.
When he picked up the package, he saw that it was a cheap Styrofoam cooler, the kind they sold at every gas station. The lid was secured with sloppily wrapped packing tape.
Lew decided to check its contents in the corridor, the dirty windows leaving just enough light inside for that purpose. He pushed his dirty fingernails into the gap under the lid and used them to cut the thin tape. When he opened the box and saw what was inside, he dropped it and jumped back, tripping over the newspaper stack and tumbling into the cleared path.
“Oh shit! Oh goddamn, holy shit, what the hell is that?”
Inside the cooler was a human arm, carefully severed at the shoulder, the white socket joint unscathed.
After gathering himself up, Lew grabbed the lid and smashed it onto the box. Too strong, his hand broke through the Styrofoam and his fingertips touched the arm inside. “Shit! Oh goddamn shit!” he cursed again, and hastily reached for a discarded pizza box to put on top of the hole.
What was that? Who would put something like that in front of his door, and why? Lew felt an oncoming panic-attack. What should he do? Call the police? No way! He didn't want to attract any attention. No policeman could come to his house and ask him questions.
He left the cooler where it was and made his way back to the computer, the center of his house and his life. It was the place where he kept his cigarettes and booze, and the only place in the house where he could sit without cleaning anything away first. If he was lucky, Marduk would be online.
Marduk was the only person he somewhat trusted. Lew didn't know his real name, but Marduk had helped him out with good ideas before.
Lew sat and closed the game that was still paused. He clicked on his Messenger application, and while the modem started to connect to the internet with it's annoying beeping sounds, he nervously lit a cigarette and took a deep swig from a bottle of whisky.
Marduk was online, as usual — the question was if he would answer. He seemed to be getting worse the last few weeks. His answers would take longer and longer to come through. He had some kind of disease slowly killing him, which was the only reason Lew told him things that he would share with nobody else.
> Marduk, U there? Big problems!
Lew waited and kept asking under his breath for Marduk to respond. After he had finished half of the cigarettes and all of the bottle, Marduk finally answered.
> Hello Lew, my friend. You sound terribly upset, what seems to be the Problem?
Lew told him everything in short sentences and waited a seeming eternity for Marduk’s answer.
> It seems to me You may have been selected
> Selected? By who? What for?
> Well, now that is difficult to tell. The Mafia maybe, or some such organization.
> What? Does that mean you think they’re dumping their bodies in my back yard? Why don't they throw them into the river like in the movies?
> I am only making assumptions here. There may be other reasons. But maybe you could take comfort in the thought that the person the arm belongs to does not necessarily have to be dead.
> NO! I cannot say that is any goddamned comfort for me Marduk! What am I supposed to do now?
It took Marduk the length of several cigarettes to reply. Lew was left hanging, completely on edge.
> I am sorry Lew, I am not feeling well. I have to lie down now.
> Come on Marduk! What am I supposed to do with that thing? Help me! You can die later!
Again an eternity passed.
> How is your Mother, Lew? Do you think she is lonely?
“Goddamned bastard!” That hit where it hurt. Marduk knew exactly what to say to make Lew to leave him alone. He cut the connection under a steady stream of angry curses, and threw the empty whisky bottle into a pile with the others, creating an oasis of shards in the midst of the desert.
After a while, Lew had finished the rest of the cigarettes. He looked at the cooler, stumped. He realized what Marduk had been trying to tell him, but hesitated. He thought some more about other possibilities, but in the end resigned himself and went cursing to clear a way to the cellar door.
Lew's mother had died a few months ago. She had been sick for a while, and not left her bed for almost a year before that. Lew had taken care of her as well as he could. Even back then he had asked Marduk for his advice, because he knew about illness and disease. Lew's mother never wanted to see a doctor, and all he could do was getting her over the counter medicines and hope for the best. He didn't even know what she had died of, but one morning she was quite suddenly dead.
Her death trigger a change in Lew's life. He didn't have a job, had never had one, but had been dragged along all his life. His mother's widow’s pension had just been enough for both of them.
It had all been Marduk’s idea. “Who else knows about your mother’s death? Are there any friends or relatives she had contact with?”
Lew and his mother had lived by themselves for the last five years without any visitors, and his mother hardly ever left the house in that time. Sometimes Lew had gone shopping with her, and once a year she had insisted of going to church, but that had been her only social activity.
“Nobody would miss her?” Marduk asked. “You see, as long as there is no one who knows that your mother is dead, her pension will keep being paid out.”
This was what went through Lew's mind, as he continued to clear away the trash from on top of the trap door to the basement. He had never planned to ever go down there again. But that arm would have to keep his mother company. Lew felt sick from the unfamiliar effort and the whiskey. The trapdoor was eventually cleared and opened with a loud creak. He walked back to the front door, where the cooler still waited for him next to the newspaper stack.
His nausea got worse as he got closer to it, and the mental image of the arm pushed back into his mind. He was unable to hold it back. He barely had time to pull the pizza box off the cooler and use it to hold the contents of his stomach. The flat box was not designed for such use, and soon enough the liquid started dripping down over the gaming magazines he put it on.
Dropping to his hands and knees, Lew waited for the nausea to pass. The cooler had fallen over and lay on its side in front of him. Skinny fingers with unusually long and dirty nails were sticking out from under its lid, as if they were trying to creep out of their Styrofoam prison. The yellowed skin was like leather, but also appeared oddly fresh. It looked like it might move at any moment.
He took one of the newspapers out of the stack behind him, rolled it up and used it to push the fingers back into their container and set it up-right again. Then he flattened the paper again and put it on top of the cooler to cover the hole.
A few minutes later, having recovered a bit, he took the cooler and held it with outstretched arms, as far away from his body as possible. In this way, he moved towards the cellar.
The stairs were made out of uneven clay bricks that had been worn down by decades of use and moisture. Only the narrowness of the passageway, tight enough that his shoulders almost touched the walls to the left and right, had saved Lew from a nasty accident not long ago. The corridor opened into a small, circular room with brick walls. A single lightbulb hung from a cable, illuminating the space poorly. On the other side of the room was a stone well, sealed with a round oak cover.
Lew put down the cooler and retrieved the key from a little recess in the brickwork, to open the heavy padlock which secured the cover. There used to be a winch with a chain and a bucket, but shortly after Lew was born, his father had removed everything and put the cover on top for safety. Since then the cellar had hardly been used at all. Lew had not even thought about it after his mother died — it had been another one of Marduk's suggestions.
“It would be unwise to transport a body around, Lew. It would be best if it didn't leave the house at all. Do you have a cellar, Lew?”
The well was perfect for his reasons, and nobody used it anyway. Lew didn't feel much remorse when he dropped the corpse of his mother down the hole. She was already dead. Her worries were finally over, and she would have wanted him to be cared for.
The arm was more problematic. He didn't know where it had come from or what he should think about it. He lifted the cover and turned the ice box onto its side, making sure not to look down. He picked up the cooler and hovered it over the gaping opening for a while. “Screw it,” he mumbled eventually, and turned it over. Although he didn’t watch it, he felt the arm fall out and imagined it disappearing into the darkness below. A hollow splash gave away its arrival at the bottom.
…
“That Goddamned bastard! Why did he have to die just now? He could have waited!” Lew muttered. He got up from his bed and sat at the computer with a blanket over his shoulders.
He couldn't sleep. For almost a week he had rolled around in his bed every night, wide awake. It was better to be awake. Then he would not hear it.
Each time he closed his eyes and set his head down on the pillow, he could hear a sloshing. The water in the well wouldn't settle.
When Lew managed to fall asleep eventually, it would instead haunt his dreams. He saw the arm as it twisted and turned and tried to climb up the slick walls of the well. He woke up screaming and soaking wet.
Of course, he was only imagining things. It was impossible to hear any sound from down there in the cellar. There was no real sloshing sound — there couldn't be! His mind was playing tricks on him. What else could it be? Nothing! Right? He had locked the well again when he was done, and piled up some more trash on the trap door, just as a precaution.
He would have liked to ask Marduk for advice, but he had not replied since the arm had arrived. Maybe he had died? But he was still showing as online. Lew must have sent a million messages by now. Nothing!
Lew hadn’t been feeling very well either, since he had dropped the arm down the well. He had not eaten much, apart some cold pizza and a few chocolate bars. Alcohol, cigarettes and sleeping pills were no substitute for Marduk's advice. If he would just come back for a moment. Marduk always knew what to do. Lew didn't dare to go offline out of fear he would miss a reply.
He just sat there, avoiding his bed, staring at the screen with red eyes, waiting for an answer.
>Marduk?
>Marduk?
>Marduk?
Ding-dong!
Lew was startled. He had fallen asleep in front of the monitor, sleeping without dreaming for the first time in seven days. The sun was already up. Daylight illuminated the dirty curtains where the blinds didn't block it out.
The doorbell did not ring a second time. Lew was scared to look, but eventually the uncertainty conquered his fear and he went after all. But first he took some of the pills he had found in his mother’s things. He didn't know exactly what they were, but she had always felt better for a while after taking them. He used a good amount of whisky to flush them down, then scuffled towards the front door. He opened it a crack and looked into the porch. There was a well-known white shape visible through the stained glass, which sent a shiver down his spine. What if he just left it outside?
Children's laughter interrupted his attempts to think. Those brats were close — too close!
He panicked. He didn't even take the time to get dressed, instead holding a blanket together at his chest with his left hand, while he used his right to grab the cooler. He pushed his fingers through the Styrofoam lid to use the package tape as a handle. He immediately realized this was a bad idea as he felt that the package was heavier than the last one, and his fingers touched something inside. Surprised and startled, he jerked away. Lew lost his balance and fell back. The Styrofoam box burst open as it hit the ground behind him, and whatever had been inside rolled along the junk-pile path into his living room.
Lew felt like he was going insane. Shaking, he sat on the floor and muttered curses. “Oh God, oh shit, oh Goddamned shit…”
There was a chiming sound. It was the messenger signaling a reply. Marduk! Finally! But the thing from the cooler was between him and the computer. Lew would have to get past it before he could reach his PC.
Slowly crawling along the path on his hands and knees, he fumed at the direction the thing had taken. Had it rolled straight down the path, it would be further along the corridor now, closer to the trap door. But no, it had to turn and find its way into the living room. He had to ask himself if it could have chosen its direction deliberately?
“Goddamned shit! I've had it!” he exclaimed and got his feet. The arm had made him completely crazy. There were no sounds of water and no deliberately rolling body parts in this house!
Whatever his mother’s pills were good for, they seemed to be kicking in. Lew felt more confident and daring than he had just a few moments before. He remained cautious, though, as he entered the living room.
There it was, and Lew's speculation about the object turned out to be reality. It was a head. From the door he could only see the back of it, with its white, greasy hair. He moved closer, as another chime from the computer startled him. Marduk! He had almost forgotten.
He stepped over the head and sat down at his desk.
> lewq im deiing
The message said, and below:
> cme to saz farwell, good by lew
Lew wasn't planning on letting him go that easy.
> Goddamnit Marduk! I need your help! They sent me a head, a goddamned head! Please help me one last time! I can't go on like this without you! If you don't help me I’m going to go crazy! Marduk, please!!
Waiting for an answer, he smoked a few cigarettes and took the last two of the pills. Eventually Marduk answered.
> a ritual, a old godm 3 contaimers hand head the 3d empy
Lew waited and tried to figure out what Marduk wanted to tell him. Then came one more message:
> itill bover soom lew soon
What was it supposed to mean? A ritual? How would Marduk know about rituals? But Marduk had always been good at finding information on the internet. Maybe he was on to something.
> Marduk?
Nothing else came, and Lew felt increasingly watched by the head behind him. It would be over soon? How was Marduk supposed to know that? It didn’t matter. Lew wanted to take care of the head while the pills were still working.
He took a plastic bag full of empty beer bottles and emptied it, then put the bag over the head and left it there while he went to clear the trap door again. Then he went down, opened the padlock and lifted the well-cover.
Lew listened. There was no sound.
He went back up to the head and carefully lifted one side of the plastic bag, nudging at it so that it would remain inside as he turned it over. Lew carried it down to the cellar. He listened again. Nothing. He dropped the plastic bag into the well and didn't even wait for the splash before closing the lid.
Distantly he heard another chime from his computer. Had Marduk answered once more after all?
Lew ran upstairs to check, but it only said:
> soon farewell lew
He didn't ponder Marduk’s last words, but resigned himself to knowing he would not figure out what they were supposed to mean.
“It will be over soon.” Those were the words he liked, and made him feel a lot better. He even ordered pizza, and sending the delivery guy away without a tip was fun.
“It will be over soon.” He kept repeating in his head, over and over, as he emptied a bottle of red wine to celebrate. Eventually he passed out from the mixture of pills and alcohol, slipping off his chair and falling face down in the cleared path.
Lew regained consciousness in complete darkness. His mouth felt dry and his head hurt. Slowly he realized that it must already be the middle of the night. And with this realization, his fear returned. There were sounds, and this time he wasn’t imagining them. Shaking, he dragged himself upright and stumbled along the path to get to a light switch without making any noise. He heard a muffled splash from the basement. Something had fallen into the well. Something big.
Then he heard a scratching noise, and his imagination told him something was trying to climb back out of the well. He rushed to the trapdoor and toppled the heap of trash he had stacked on top of it. Running down the stairs, he found that the lid was still on the well. He trudged more slowly back up the stairs and sealed the trapdoor as well. Good. That should do it. That should give him time to think things over.
His first thought was Marduk, but he was probably dead. But thinking about the messages, he remembered — realized — that the last message had distracted him. He had not put the padlock back in place. The cover was not locked.
“Goddamn shit goddamn!”
Lew was torn. The sounds had started again and seemed to be coming closer. There was the door,. He could run outside screaming for help. Outside? That made him pause for a moment, and in that moment realized that the world outside was not much less scary to him than the thing in his cellar.
Lew started to grab the trash on top of the trap door and shoved it off to the side again. He had to get to the well cover. The well was deep, there was still time. If he didn't make it, he could still run away. He was sweating and panting, moving all the useless trash. Eventually he cleared enough away to lift the trap door. The light in the cellar was still on.
As he rushed down the stairs, one of the worn old bricks crumbled underfoot, and his right leg slipped forward, forcing him into a painful, awkward splits. The kneecap of his left leg did some splitting of its own as it hit the edge of a step. He tumbled down the rest of the stairs into the cellar.
He couldn't get up. His left leg was twisted and his pants were becoming soaked with his blood.
He ignored the pain and started crawling towards the well. The padlock was right in front of it. Only a little bit further...
The heavy wooden cover moved. It lifted. And a white slimy hand pushed its way through the gap. It was not the hand from the cooler, but his mother's. He recognized the wedding ring she had still worn until her death, like a good widow.
He couldn’t do anything but watch the cover lift further as a creature crawled out of the well. It had the decaying body of his mother. Her stomach was bloated from putrid gasses, like a pregnant woman, and she was covered in black spots. Slimy water seeped out of the openings of her body. But it was not his mother. On the creature’s shoulders sat the head he had dropped down only a few hours ago, her right arm was the one from the cooler.
Lew started to scream as the creature stooped over him. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you personally, Lew,” it said with its gargling voice. The following sound it made may have been some sort of laughter. Then the creature grabbed him by his genitals, lifted him up, and threw him down the well.
Epilogue:
Ding-dong!
The Marduk heard the doorbell. It was the messenger who had delivered the other containers.
The Marduk waited. The body of the mother would not serve him for much longer. Just like Lew, the messenger knew nothing about the Marduk. Just like Lew, the Marduk had used and manipulated him. The messenger had delivered the arm and head. Lew had united them with the body of his mother, and the Marduk had used the disparate pieces to recreate himself. Nobody else knew where the Marduk had gone.
The Marduk was old. Older than any man. He had been born a god a long time ago. But he had fallen and was forgotten by man — but not by the gods.
He was alive, and neither the sun nor the moon nor the stars could have discovered his method of travel.
Ding-dong!
This time the messenger would not leave, just as the Marduk had instructed. He could not step outside in the body of the mother to retrieve him, so he waited. The Marduk had not lied to Lew. The last container would be empty. The immortal Marduk had found a new home. The house of a man who would sacrifice his own blood, as the rituals demanded. In such a place, the Marduk was safe from the ones that would try to take his immortality.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
The messenger grew impatient. He would come inside soon to claim his promised reward.
He was dumb, maybe even dumber than Lew. But the Marduk was not after his mind. The messenger's body was strong and healthy. It would serve him well for another hundred years as his own.
Finally! The Marduk heard the door opening...
The water was shallow at the bottom of the well, and Lew was still alive down there, sniffling and shivering. The Marduk would give him back the body of his mother soon.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
