Roderick Burgess storms angrily into his study with one of his Acolytes in tow, disrupting his son's studies. "Bugger and blast him!" the Magus growled. "I know he understands me!"
"Ten years in that damned circle and he hasn't said a word!" he continued. "Just stares at me with those creepy eyes of his!...He hates us-"
"Er, Father, Magus?" Alex interrupted as he rose to his feet. "I've found something that may cast some light on our guest. In the Paginarum Fulvarum." Handing the volume to his father, he points to a very old illustration of a creature referred to as 'Oneiros'
"Hmm...Yes indeed." nodded Burgess in approval. "Dream was the only one that fit the bill. I was hoping that you'd work it out on your own one day though, and you have. Well done, Alex." The Magus returns the book to his son with a prideful smile and turns to face his acolyte, quietly mixing himself a drink on the other end of the study. "I know the Order will be safe in your hands if ever I forsake the material plane, eh Mr. Sykes?"
"Indubitably, Magus" the acolyte replied with a scotch and a smile of his own.
A schism brings chaos to the Order. Ruthven Sykes, second-in-command of the Order of Ancient Mysteries, disappears.
...In the company of the young and beautiful Ethel Cripps, the Magus's mistress.
They take with them many of the Order's treasures and over two hundred thousand pounds in cash.
Magical war is declared.
San Francisco, December, 1930
Ruthven Sykes makes a deal.
"I beg protection, Lord."
"Protectionss comes, dear mortal." the demon hisses. "The thingss you offers uss isss paltry trifless....have you nosing elsse?"
"Perhaps this helmet, Sire?" Sykes offers in desperation.
"Ahhh! Yeesss! the Helm of Onerios. For thiss, I will givess you what you asssk. Ssplendid!"
The demon extends a putrid appendage, and from it, Sykes takes ownership of a small artifact forged in Hell.
"Thisss amulet will makess you safe from all thingss..."
Wych Cross, England
Roderick Burgess performs a blood sacrifice on a white tabby.
"As this blood is shed, so spills your blood Ruthven Sykes, Adept of the 33rd, whose secret name is Ararita...Traitor and oath-breaker!"
Beheaded and disemboweled, the feline simply will not die...The black magic has failed. Burgess is furious...
"...The ritual has proved useless again." the aging 'Daemon King' told his son during their nightly stroll on the estate grounds. "He has protection, that venomous Oaf!"
"What about our prisoner? Couldn't we make him do something to Sykes?" Alex offered.
"We can't make him do anything." The Magus retorted. "All we can do is keep him there and hope."
Alex thought a moment. "We could try and raise Death again?"
"Cretin!" Burgess replied in disgust. "We can get Sykes if we just keep trying."
...In 1936, Ethel Cripps walked out on her man. She took the demon's gift with her.
While he owned it, it kept him safe. While he possessed it, It was worth everything.
...The morning after the next full moon, Ruthven Sykes was found in his apartment by the landlord, beheaded and disemboweled.
"Father, do you think this is wise at your age?" Alex asked the Magus outside of the ritual chamber.
"My age? ::khoff:: Don't be so bloody insolent!" Burgess argues. "Open the damn door!"
The Daemon King bursts in past the guards, raging, to the edge of the circle. "YOU! It's your fault!...DAMN YOU!"
"You aren't Death, but you live forever!" he glowered. "You haven't aged a day since we caught you!...You could have given me power beyond my wildest dreams."
Roderick Burgess's heart breaks and he begins to cry. ::sniff:: I didn't have to get so old...I shouldn't have had to get old..."
Roderick Burgess clutches his heart as it fails and he collapses to the floor.
'I have watched my captor grow old and die.' 'No satisfaction.' 'Still here...'
Roderick Burgess
1863-1947
Not Dead,
Only Sleeping
Toronto, Canada
Ellie Marsten is diagnosed as suffering from Encephalitis Lethargica. She Now wakes four or five times a year.
...She wants someone to read her a story.
Kingston, Jamaica
Daniel Bustamonte is awake much of the time. He doesn't speak though. The superstitious say that he is a zombie, a walking dead man. If he spoke, he might agree with them. Something died in him a long time ago.
...A castle made of clouds.
London, England
When her parents died, the family executors had Unity Kinkaid put into a nursing home. They have to explain where she is to her every time she wakes. She never remembers...Around her, the elderly wait for Death as they would wait for an old friend.
"Alex, I still don't understand why you keep him down there..."
"What else can I do?"
"But what if the police found out? It's kidnapping!"
"Don't be foolish Paul." responded Alex. "I've told you...He's been down there for forty years, without eating, without...sleeping. Hell, I don't even think he breathes."
"He's a being of unknowable power, so what should I do?" He continued. "Say, 'Sorry--it was all my father's fault. Look me up the next time you're incarcerated on the physical plane?'"
"If you say so." Paul said. "You've been around alot longer than I have. Fancy a game of tennis?"
"Not now. Sorry. Too tired."
Alex leaves Paul in the kitchen and heads down to the cellar.
He nods to the guards as he enters the ritual chamber and stands at the edge of the mystic circle.
"Hello." he said to the creature inside it. "You don't have to be in there, you know. The deal's still the same one my father offered you. Power. Immortality. A promise that you won't seek revenge."
"Well?" he asked after a moment passes. "I know you can understand me! Say something!"
They come to him seeking enlightenment. Alexander Burgess tells them of Kundalini Yoga, Tantric Sex, Astral Travel...Nothing important.
He forbids them from using psychedelics in the house, worried that the waking dreams could somehow empower his prisoner.
Toronto, Canada
Moved to a hospital specializing in Encephalitis cases, Ellie continues to sleep. There are many there like her. People for whom the sands of time stopped flowing, sometime half a century earlier.
Kingston, Jamaica
Daniel sleepwalks through his world. He moves slowly, like a man wading through quicksand.
London, England
The nursing home staff pretend that Unity is awake. They wheel her from room to room with the other patients. Asleep, she watches television. Asleep, she relaxes in the sun.
Wych Cross, England
There are two guards in the ritual chamber at all times. Coffee and amphetamines are freely available. They never sleep on duty.
1970
The young people have drifted away.
Alex hands over the reigns of the organization to Paul McGuire, his longtime personal assistant. Paul doesn't believe in magic. He sees the Order of Ancient Mysteries as an efficient method of parting the credulous from their cash.
Alex spends most of his time in his study. He wrote a memoir about his father. He writes letters to newspapers defending his father's reputation. He edits a volume of his father's letters.
One night, he slashed his father's portrait with a knife.
Alex will no longer read books on magic. Except for one. The Liber Fulvarum Paginarum...and he only reads one page of that book. The one with Onerios...Over, and over, and over...
An aging Alex rants in frustration at the thing from the edge of the circle.
"Why won't you talk to me? you could tell me so much! So many things!..."
1978
"I haven't had a decent night's sleep for sixty years! Is that your fault? Is it?!"
1984
I could torture you, you know. Don't think that I couldn't. I've killed people before now."
1990
An elderly and chair bound Alex again rants in frustration at the thing from the edge of the circle as his personal assistant, now turned caregiver, yawns from boredom nearby.
"I hate you." Alex says. "I'm glad we trapped you. You're nothing special, you know that? You're nothing at all. A naked man in a trap. That's all you are...You're nothing at all."
'Soon.'
"Ehh!...Pointless. Quite pointless." Alex said in his yearly resignation. "He never speaks. Take me up to my office, Paul. I have work to attend."
"Of course, Alex." Paul said from behind the wheelchair stifling another tired yawn.
Turing the old man in his chair towards the chamber exit and overcome with boredom, Paul McGuire failed to notice that his action allowed one of the wheels to scuff the edge of the circle...and break it.
"Boy, that old man is stoppy today." One of the guards said to the other after Alex and Paul left the room. "So, How's your week been?"
Ernest yawns and responds without looking up from the article he's reading in his newspaper. "Same old rubbish I s'pose, but I'll be on the beach at Majorca for a few days by this time next week, so it's not all bad."
"Lucky bastard." Said Phillip jealously. "I once met a blonde buying a choc ice on the beach at Eastbourne..."
Phillip sees any conversation as an invitation to concoct tall tales about his sexual prowess...Ernie is used to it and no longer listens.
He is thinking about his holiday. With another yawn, he closes his eyes and the Spanish beach becomes a tropical paradise........
Ernest dreams of a place straight out of a holiday brochure.
Sun, sea, surf, volleyball, tanned women in bikinis...he doesn't notice the bone-white hand reaching into his beach for some sand.
THUD!
"Uh!...Christ!" Earnest cried out as he awoke with a start. "What the hell was that?!"
He immediately bolts up, joining Phillip on the edge of the mystic circle. They are both horrified, staring down at the naked prisoner that, until now, has not gone unconscious for almost eighty years running.
"Look at him!" said Phillip. "Do you think he's dead?"
"I don't know what to think." replied Ernest nervously. "What the hell do we do now? They won't think it's our fault will they? We didn't do nothing!"
"Dead. I bet he's dead." Phillip said equally as nervous. "Wait here--I'll get McGuire!"
Earnest turns his attention to Phillip to nod in agreement as Phillip spins, already hastily making his way to the door.
...Neither of them notice the thing in the circle lift its head and blow the sand it was holding in its palm straight towards them both.
The force of it ripped the skin from their bones in much the same way you hear it can do to a person during a Saharan sandstorm.
Onerios smiled for the first time in almost a century, created a portal by igniting the air in front of him and finally escaped.
