Matthew Gamertsfelder

The Summoning


Edwin Carpenter just wanted to get away for a few hours, that Sunday afternoon in later September. A gorgeous day, by any standards: seventy and sunny, without any of that awful August humidity, the intermittent cloud cover from bleached ivory sky cotton confirming the afternoon’s rainless forecast. Edwin Carpenter just wanted to be by himself for a while, to think. At thirty-three, he held a dead end job working twelve hour shifts at a plastic products factory, seven AM to seven PM, running the molding machines for ice cube trays, baby bottles, Tupperware containers and the like, where the only thing lower than the pay was the level of responsibility. He had needed to have essentially no responsibility when he took the job, five years ago, after his newborn son Charlie had died of SIDS, after his wife Clare divorced him and went to live with her mother in Weehawken, New Jersey, because she couldn’t look at his face without seeing Charlie’s. Edwin Carpenter had awoken that morning with the conviction that five years of wallowing in self pity was quite enough; the pieces of his broken life beckoned, cried out to be picked up and reassembled, a siren’s song he could no longer ignore.
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In those long ago, happier days, he and Clare had loved to take long walks in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, just a short drive from their apartment in Cuyahoga Falls. They’d even gotten to bring Charlie a few times before he passed away. An older, more somber Edwin would now take a long walk through the park alone, to decide how best to rebuild his shattered existence.
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So it was that at 1:47 PM, Edwin Carpenter found himself walking unhurriedly down a well-beaten trail, hands in his pockets, thinking of his Uncle Bob’s oft-repeated offer of employment at his construction firm in Taos, New Mexico, an offer he had refused as often as it was repeated. He thought also of Bob’s former step-daughter, with who his uncle remained on good terms, a kindergarten teacher Edwin’s own age named Tiffany, to whom he had often mentioned his intelligent and handsome, if melancholy, nephew from Ohio. Tiffany very much wanted to meet Edwin, and for the first time, Edwin began to think he might like to meet her as well.
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As he walked and thought, a whisper of wind whistled through the trees, unseen birds twittered theo doe theo doe theo doe. A brown and grey rabbit shot out from the underbrush to his left as though it were being chased by Satan himself, vanishing into the bushes to his right as rapidly as it had appeared, just beside a short pine tree, perhaps twice as tall as Edwin, its trunk three Louisville Sluggers around and coated with slow oozing sap. As he walked, his tread became lighter; the emotional deadweight of five years of despair uncoiling itself from his soul a bit more with each step. Edwin Carpenter thought of giving a two weeks notice at the factory tomorrow morning, of forfeiting his security deposit on the apartment where he lived to break out of the lease six months early, of loading a U-Haul truck with his few meager possessions and driving cross country, to the fresh start that awaited him two time zones away. He thought of how he could do it, could really do it, could be there in probably as little as three weeks. A broad smile bloomed on Edwin’s face, the first to have done so in a very great while.
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It was then that he heard the chanting; from somewhere off to the right, too low and distant to be recognized as anything but human voices. A moment later, a doe burst out from the brush, moving away from the direction of the chanting with the same frantic rapidity as the rabbit. The deer paid him no mind, but instead fairly charged into the bushes on the opposite side of the trail, and for several minutes afterward, Edwin heard it crashing through the forest in its mad flight.
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He became intrigued: what could so badly frighten the animals in the park? What were those people chanting, and how were the two connected? Edwin felt his growing elation intensify, after all, this was the first time in a very long time that he had taken a real, genuine interest in anything beside a liter bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Overcome with curiosity, Edwin began to carefully and quietly make his way through the undergrowth to his right, toward the chanting with its eerie wailing undertone. Several minutes passed as he blazed a trail toward the oddly hypnotic chorus. Edwin was no linguist, but as he drew nearer he became convinced he had never heard the strange and alien tongue being chanted. It was harsh and guttural, almost as though the words were not meant to be spoken by human lips. Abruptly, he reached the source.
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Standing behind a thick stand of tall bushes just behind the edge of a small clearing, Edwin saw the source of the chanting. A triangle had been scorched into the grass, each side lined with bizarre, runic markings or hieroglyphs which made him faintly uneasy to look upon. At each of the triangle corners stood a person garbed in flowing black and purple robes, their faces concealed by their cowled cloaks and silver masks, roughly like nondescript human faces, with more of the eldritch markings across the forehead and down the temples and cheeks. Each stood with arms outstretched and fingers splayed; a faint azure glow shimmered around their hands with no apparent source. A scent like gunpowder and burning hair hung thickly in the air. Suddenly, the chanting became louder and faster, congealing his blood in his veins, and Edwin thought the wail of a banshee from Irish lore could hardly be less pleasant than that terrible song.
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He saw a smokeless, bluish-purple flame erupt in the triangle’s center, first a few inches high, then a foot, then two, then a yard, then two yards, up and up until it reached some ten feet into the afternoon air. The chanting reached it loathsome crescendo as the impossibly hued flame stopped growing, blotting out all other sounds so completely it was as though audition existed solely to register that demonic hymn. Then, just as Edwin didn’t think the scene before him could become any more ghastly, it did.
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The flame surged to twice it height for a brief moment, then winked out of existence at precisely the same time the robed figures ceased their chanting. Immediately, he wished it had not, for what replaced it was infinitely worse. Edwin could not believe what he saw, could not believe something so terrible could actually exist, yet there it was. His mind could find no other term for it but demon.
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The monstrosity stood approximately ten feet tall, on hoofed feet like a goat’s, but hairless. Its scaly skin was a bright blood red. From its massive shoulders sprouted enormous bat like wings, from the small of its back a spiked tail swayed and slithered like a python. Each of the three digits on its thickly muscled arms ended in a curved claw like a miniature scimitar. Its horned head was somewhat like that of a bull, but instead of flat, bovine molars, it short muzzle was filled with serrated fangs like those of a shark. Three unblinking eyes fixed intently on the robed figure standing at the triangle’s point furthest from where Edwin stood, petrified with terror. This figure, dropping his hands to his sides as did the others, addressed the horror.
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“Greetings, demon,” said a human male voice from behind the silvered visage. “I am Symun, your master.” The demon made no reply other than a sound midway between a dog’s growl and a cat’s hiss. “I have summoned you here for a purpose.”
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The monster spoke then, or made the nearest approximation of speech of which it was capable, in what Edwin recognized as the same language as the chanting. “Let fall the warding spell,” said the man who called himself Symun to his accomplices.
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“Master, are you sure that is wise?” said the one to his left, a young woman by her voice.
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“Fear not, Euripida. My control over the demon is complete. Observe. Kneel, demon,” Symun commanded, and the demon immediately obeyed, with another growl-hiss. “In return for your services, demon, we offer you a sacrifice. You may rise.” The demon rose, and again spoke. “Why, right over there,” replied Symun, raising a hand toward where Edwin still stood, too transfixed by what he had seen to even think of escape. Symun spoke a string of words in that hideous tongue, and from his hand erupted a gout of flame that burned away the foliage concealing Edwin. This last impossible event proved enough to shock Edwin out of his stupor, and he turned to flee, hearing yet another incantation in the demon’s tongue. Edwin halted, mid stride, and although his mind screamed at his body to move, to get away, he could not so much as bat an eyelid. It was as though all the muscles in his body had suddenly atrophied away into nothingness. “Behold, demon, your feast.” Edwin heard the demon charge toward him on its great wings, and felt its hot, foul breath on his neck even as he heard Symun’s cold laughter ring out through the clearing.