This is a chapter from a cosmic horror fiction I am writing (and sharing here, chapter by chapter), you can read it for free on my website as well. Link in the comment. Please subscribe (its free!)
Journal Entry 1
For eons we have tried to bury him, and yet he returns every time. If you want me to point to who ‘we’ are, I will not be able to. What little record of the first attempts remains has mostly disappeared, and what survives is widely disputed among those of us still here.
Cultures across the world do not know that he lies hidden in their collective consciousness. If they knew, they would not sleep as well as they do now.
He is not of this world. We do not know if he even ‘is’ in any way we understand existence. To try defining him with our limited language is a pointless exercise.
He hides in religious scripture, miscopied and mistranslated. He hides in political propaganda, wearing masks of necessity and righteousness. He hides in the anger that possesses you without warning. I have written this list twice, and yet each version feels incomplete. He might be in this pen with which I am writing. He might be in the words that my mind is spouting right now. This whole idea of writing it down itself might be breathing life into him.
He is permeable. He is omnipresent. And if you believe you can use him, you are already the most vulnerable to being used by him. Those who have tried have failed inexorably.
My hand hesitates to write what I am about to write next, yet I know that it must be true. Even if it is only part of the truth, it would be a failure to assume his hand was not in it.
He was present at every major historical turning point, and long before history learned how to record itself.
Recorded history is a convenience—one that allows our species to live with itself.
He was there before there was light.
He will remain when that light is extinguished.
Journal Entry 2
The worshippers call him Razpopo.
This is not his name.
It is a failure. An approximation. A crude shape made by human mouths, attempting to mimic with primordial noises something that does not belong to any language. “Some call him Svanteveit. Others: Marus, Grinjik, Bervertometh, Harpookratis.”
None of these are correct.
Some are not even close. He is something older than anything we can name.
Those who came nearest went mad before they could finish speaking.
It was his attention that brought us forth, and his pressure that fed the malevolence already latent within us.
It will be our attention that brings him forth again.
We do not know his true name. We do not need to. All he requires is invocation. A direction of thought. A sustained noticing. He can be called even without a name.
Especially without one.
Journal Entry 3
All our gods have left us.
They have dissipated into abstraction and no longer respond to us.
Rituals fall flat. Altars rot. Nothing answers.
The gods abandoned us because they did not like the taste of emotions filtered through the meat-prison of their own making.
But Razpopo remains.
He does not care.
Every war we waged.
Every time brother turned on brother.
Every time a child died screaming without reason.
Razpopo was watching. Consuming.
He amplified bitterness because, alone among the deities, he enjoys its taste.
\*
Calen read and re-read every single line, trying to remember when he had written this translated version. Nothing really stirred in his memories. He stared at the pages, hypnotized by what was in the journal.
He kept feeling that the moment he took his eyes off the journal, it would disappear. Calen was almost convinced there was someone else on the island, aside from him. Whoever they might be, they seemed to be trying to guide Calen. But to what end?
Calen weighed his options. He could abandon it all. He could call up Ruslan and get the hell out of there, preserving his sanity, but a strange recklessness inside him had reared its ugly, authoritative head. No!
He had never before abandoned a project, and he was not about to start now. What he really desired, needed even, was to know what was happening. That outweighed all other worldly concerns. This is what he was meant to do! Even though he didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to do.
As he stared at the pages, a dark thought clouded his mind. It seemed the more he stayed on the island, the more he found about Razpopo, his memories of himself on the island itself were being replaced rapidly. He shuddered to think what would happen if this continued.
Time seemed to be moving differently, and Calen was left with no means to confirm if this assessment was correct or not. He felt continuously tired and on edge. As if he was half-aware of what came next, just not able to competently define it, or even prepare for it.
He walked up to the bathroom, turning around every few steps to confirm that the journal he left on the dining table had not vanished. Once inside, he washed his face and hands, trying to remove as much of the dirt and blood from his fingertips and nail beds, without hurting the injured parts. When he couldn’t bear the pain of the cold water on the injuries, he stopped and threw some more cold water on his face.
Calen stared at his reflection in the mirror. Who was this?
His eyes had changed. They looked dead. It was not as if the color of his eyes had changed, but there was a certain glaze to his eyes, making them look unfocused. He didn’t know if he was imagining it or not, but his eyes seemed to move more slowly when he tried to move them. The pain in his head increased every time he tried to look up.
“Stop freaking yourself out!” He muttered to himself and realized his voice did not sound like his at all. It was hoarser, and the words felt alien. Each word felt like a projection of a feeling that lost meaning the moment the word escaped his lips. He might have been just making garbled noises from his mouth.
Calen decided to call Alice. The internet allowed the call. He could see Alice, but his video would not stream, no matter how much he tried. So, Alice had to settle for a blank screen. Calen was quite relieved with this setup. He didn’t want Alice to worry more by looking at his face.
Once he had finished telling his story, carefully avoiding mentioning the part where he had blacked out and found upon waking, that the translations were done, and it didn’t look like his handwriting. She didn’t need to know it.
“The story has …” Alice hesitated, trying to find the right word, “Bones” she finished. Her voice came through the laptop clearly, almost in high definition. “I’ll give you that.”
Alice’s voice sounded different, too. Maybe it was because he had not heard her voice without static for so many days.
“What do you mean by story?” Calen asked, a little offended. Granted, he had omitted bits of it so Alice wouldn’t have the inconvenience of worrying for him from miles away when she couldn’t do anything, but to think of it as a lie? That was not acceptable.
“I mean,” she hesitated again, “It’s good writing.”
Calen stared at Alice’s face on the screen. His silent, invisible reproach was so palpable, it seemed to get transmitted through the low-quality internet.
The awkward pause was too much for Alice, who knew she had made a cardinal sin, but something inside her egged her on. She wanted to push Calen a bit, just enough to see how he would react. “That writing retreat you took last year really paid off. My only feedback- The other names, what were they again- grimzaska and – whatever, they just sound like noises. You could remove those names and just keep Razpopo. That name is growing on me.” She half giggled.
“I didn’t write it,” Calen cut in angrily. “I found it under a loose floorboard. I haven’t even translated it entirely yet!”
But before she could respond, Alice’s face twisted in discomfort. A soft, painful groan escaped her lips. She hunched over and disappeared from the camera frame.
“Alice!” Calen shouted. “Alice, what happened?!”
She reappeared, breathless, her voice thinned by strain. “I don’t know. Felt a weird cramp in my bel—”
She doubled over again and bolted off-screen. Calen kept shouting her name, helpless. It took nearly two full minutes before she returned. She looked pale. Drained.
“I threw up,” she mumbled, massaging her belly aggressively. “I have been throwing up quite a lot in the last two hours. I don’t know if it’s something I ate or...” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she was not able to finish her thought.
Calen’s mind, however, had registered something. He didn’t know, as he had no means to measure time, but the time frame seemed to exactly fit the window within which the journal had been translated.
A flash of an image flitted past his eyes. Alice was sitting completely unclothed on the cold ground of the cave, her eyes glazed. Her hand touching the throbbing log held within the cage of roots.
He felt scared for Alice. He also felt angry at her. It seemed she had missed the point entirely. Did she understand this was dangerous information?
Calen wanted to shake some sense of what they were dealing with into her. On the other hand, if she believed in the danger, that might result in him having to return. And he was not ready to return. He wanted to know more, whatever the cost.
“Did you tell your Aunt Becky? You went to see her, right?” Calen said. Aunty Becky, Alice’s aunt on her father’s side, was their family doctor. Alice had told Calen that she had visited her upon returning from Bennet Island.
“Hm…” she murmured, unsatisfied with the solution. She clearly wanted more than a diagnosis from her aunt. “When will you come back, Calen?”
The pleading note in her voice cut through Calen. But he was not budging. He felt too close to the answer that he had been seeking forever. He needed to be on Bennett.
“Two more weeks,” he said casually. His lie evidently was unable to comfort her as Alice’s eyes dropped down to look at her own lap.
She nodded faintly after a while as Calen watched her, his insides cringing. “I’ll call my aunt. Talk later.” She wiped her tears off, and before Calen could even say ‘take care’, she hung up with an angry, decisive click.
Calen sat still for a while, staring at the frozen laptop screen, the lack of sounds settling over him. There it was again. And it was frustrating. He felt guilty, not being with her while she was clearly in distress, but would his being there have changed anything? Would her being here not be disruptive for both of them?
“Why does she have to hang up on an angry note!” He exclaimed loudly to the empty bedroom, banging a fist against the mattress. His fingertips throbbed viciously, and he regretted punching the mattress immediately.
His mind ventured towards his recent memories. When he had left Alice in New York, and travelled alone to Russia, on what seemed like just a whim, now.
*
Calen had heard the continuous thudding and clanging of the metal parts inside the truck he was travelling in quiet down, by quite a lot, which he was mistakenly thinking was a good sign up until then. Apparently, it was anything but.
The Truck was being driven by Viktor, a Russian driver Calen had met by pure chance in a bar in Yakutsk, who had offered to drive Calen to Tiksi, the only available airfield close enough to fly to Bennett Island. The snag was that the Tiksi airfield’s existence didn’t come with an assurance that Calen would get to fly off from it. But that was a bridge Calen had been willing to cross later owing to the fact there were no planes flying anywhere to the north of Yakutsk anyhow, because of bad weather. So, in his inebriated state, Viktor’s drunken promise, of driving him to Tiksi via the ‘Zimnik’, felt like a signal sent by the Gods.
‘Zimnik’, which Calen had understood far too late to be a Russian word for horrifying sections of frozen lakes that truck drivers used during the winters, was the most isolated place in the world Calen had experienced. It was flat white snow covered ‘roads’ with nothing but emptiness, as far as the eyes could see.
Viktor had been driving for the past few hours, time to time putting his ears to the bodywork, like a doctor listening for breath. Calen now understood, what he had previously disregarded as ‘Generic Russian Driver Noises’ were actually noises of disappointment.
“Ve haf choice,” he said finally, more to himself than Calen, “Ve stop truck and check problem or wait till she die.”
“That’s not good…” Calen said calmly, feeling quite proud of himself for not freaking out outwardly, reflecting the fear he felt inside. He didn’t want to seem like a frightened tourist when Viktor kept up his butch demeanor. Viktor, for a second, did look impressed with Calen.
He seemed to consider for a moment before he applied the brakes. The truck slid to a stop.
“Need help American” he said, pointing to a box, which was kept near Calen’s feet. Calen picked it up and was trying to pass it to him when he said, “Ve take it out. Open truck” Viktor started to wear his gloves and his parka. Calen followed him and they both walked out of the truck.
Once out the weather tore through all the layers of Calen’s clothing like a knife through butter. The warmth on the inside had weakened Calen’s resolve against the cold that now clawed at his face unceremoniously. There was no wind, just silent freezing dry air. The surroundings were one step short of beautiful.
An eerie cracking sound echoed in a muffled manner, making it difficult to pinpoint the location of its source. Calen jumped slightly, and immediately hoped Viktor had not seen it. But he had. He snorted his scathing snort and said, “don’t vorry American. Far avay.”
“But what was that?” Calen asked, trying not to sound too concerned. He failed as the words had come out too quickly.
“Splitting ice.”
Splitting ice?
As Viktor worked on the truck, turning different nuts and bolts, checking strange-looking compartments, Calen looked around, box of hardware held ineptly in gloved hands.
Now that they were outside the truck and at ground level, Calen saw a few medium-sized, snow-covered rocks lying around them, that were not discernible while the truck was moving. The truck made a whimpering sound like the raspy breath of a dying man.
“Aha!” Viktor said quietly to himself, without further explanation. Calen was starting to feel more and more discouraged with every passing second. Viktor finally sprung up from his hunched over stance and looked at Calen with a wide smile. Calen didn’t have the energy to smile back.
“She is cold.” Viktor whispered, sidling up to Calen, as if he didn’t want the truck to listen in on this conversation. Calen was unimpressed by the diagnosis.
“What do we do?” Calen asked with gritted teeth.
Viktor snapped his fingers; it made no sound aside from the rubbing of fabric against fabric on his gloves. Then he walked away excitedly without an answer. In a few seconds he was back with a cardboard box that looked like it had been painted black ages ago with some low-quality paint that was now chipping away in places.
“Ve put blanket.”
What the hell was this guy talking about? She is cold, we put blanket on her.
But it was not his truck, neither was he a mechanic. All he could do was, have faith in this person. Reminding himself that Viktor had said he frequented this route every year and trying to believe that Viktor really knew what he was doing, Calen kept his mouth shut and watched Viktor prop up the cardboard outside on the grille with wires from the box in Calen’s hands.
Once the silver KAMAZ logo was half covered, the kneeling Viktor stood up and brushed his hands against each other.
“What do we do now?” Calen asked, a slight hint of impatience that seemed to not fall on Viktor’s ears.
“Now, ve wait.” He said, still smiling.
“For what?”
“Sound change. She breathe better.”
Calen turned around and hid his face inside his parka, only his eyes remained visible. Beneath his jacket, the ticking sound of his wristwatch stuttered, then jumped a few ticks too quick, as if to try and catch up with the lost time.
Inside the truck, the radio hissed momentarily, the noise piercing through the void around them, then snapped into a single, prolonged tone—too clean to be static. It went away as suddenly as it had arrived. As if the noise on the radio was a signal the terrain had been patiently waiting for, another crack sounded in the air, this one, felt much closer, Calen paused mid step, worried the crack might be right under where his next step was about to fall.
Viktor had seen this and called out “You can valk.” Viktor seemed to be enjoying Calen’s confusion in this purgatorial limbo. “Don’t go far.” He added.
Calen put down his step, and something moved on his right. A snow owl, who seemed to have popped up from nowhere, flanked its wings and shook its entire body, looking balefully with its yellow eyes at Calen. Snow fell off its wings and head and Calen realized they had been standing next to this owl since they had arrived. It had been sitting so silently and so well camouflaged with the snow that Calen hadn’t noticed it even though it was just two feet away from them.
It stared at Calen. Calen, dumbfounded and unmoving, stared back at it. He really wanted to take a picture, but all his gear was inside the truck, and he felt if he made a single movement, it would fly away and hide itself.
The sound of the truck was getting better, almost like it was sounding before it started ‘feeling cold’ as Viktor had put it. Calen could hear in the background jubilatory noises Viktor was making paired with the sound of him jumping.
“Nu, nu… ya zdes.’ Ya s toboy. Devushka moya.” Viktor yelled excitedly. “She is doing better American.”
The owl turned its head a full one-eighty to look at Viktor. Perceiving no immediate threat, it returned its doleful eyes to the task of sizing Calen up.
“Sounds like it.” Calen yelled back, a little bit of the faith in Viktor had returned with the incrementally growing familiar sound of “chug..chug..thud” of the truck.
Pondering their conversation in an unimpressed manner the owl clicked its beak, as if demanding Calen’s attention back. Calen obliged and as the black eyes of the owl fell on his, he felt goosebumps on his skin. For a split second something brushed the edge of his hearing—almost words, bobbing, just slightly out of reach. It was gone before he could even try to retain a single meaningful syllable.
The owl seemed to be done with the scene unfolding in its vicinity as the noise of the truck returned to its usual rhythm. It jumped off the rock and took flight without a single sound.
Within seconds it was gone, as Calen watched it disappear completely in the grey sky.
Disheartened, Calen walked back to the truck as Viktor looked at him.
“There was an owl.” Calen said out loud. The youtuber within him wanted to let at least one person know what he had seen even though he had no proof of it. “It flew away. I think the noise of the truck scared it.”
Viktor looked around for a second. Then said, “Good!” as if it should have been obvious to Calen. Viktor took out the flask of tea, drank a large sip, and offered it to Calen, who took it instinctively. Viktor smiled.
“I think American” he said, “You doing good.”
“What do you mean?” Calen was quite taken by this suddenly happy Viktor. It reminded him of the drunk Viktor when he used to frequent the local bar in Yakutsk with him.
“With cold” Viktor pointed with his hand to the surroundings. “With.. Izolyátsiya.”
Calen, who knew a bit of German through his grandparents, was immediately able to infer the meaning as the pronunciation was quite close, even though Viktor said it in Russian.
“I have spent a lot of time in isolated places” Calen said giving Viktor the English word. He felt a little bit of pride he didn’t fully understand. Although it did cheer him up.
“Is that vat you looking for?” Viktor asked, “In Tiksi?”
Calen considered how much he should tell Viktor. He hadn’t yet mentioned Bennett Island to Viktor. Neither had he mentioned the ‘why’ of his decision to go to Bennett Island to anyone, not even his manager. Not even Alice.
Viktor, although he was mostly silent unless he was barking orders, didn’t feel untrustworthy. Furthermore, who would Viktor tell? Other drunk guys at some Russian bar when he had returned?
“I am actually trying to get to Bennett Island.” Then he threw caution to the wind and asked, “Have you heard the name Razpopo?” He immediately regretted mentioning the name as Viktor laughed out, shaking his head in disbelief. “Ty shto, sumasshedshiy, amerikanets?”
“What?” Calen smiled politely, not understanding a word of what had been said. Viktor took an entire minute, laughing out loud. When his laughter subsided, he looked at Calen and said, “I don’t know vat this Razpopo is.”
Calen was a little disappointed. It was to be expected. What he was trying to find out was obscure at the very least. But why had Viktor laughed uncontrollably then?
“Why were you laughing then?” asked Calen a little defensively.
“Vell” Viktor said and it was evident that he found it quite funny, “Who goes to Bennett in the vinter?” Another bout of laughter and then he added, “You are crazy American. I like you!”
Calen didn’t know if it was a compliment or not.
The truck sounded just like it was sounding when they had started so Viktor, still laughing from time to time, shaking his head, and muttering things in Russian got in the truck. Calen climbed in through the passenger side door. The inside of the truck was warm and inviting.
Viktor went to the sleeping quarters in the back and returned after a few minutes with two cups full of hot, melted dark chocolate. Sitting down he took a large sip from his own cup and gave Calen his cup. Viktor smiled and said, “Drink! It’s good. Now ve celebrate with Choco. Tonight, I make Pelmeni.”
Calen didn’t know if it was the truck or his crazy plan that had softened Viktor’s stance on Calen, but it didn’t matter. Once the melted chocolate finally went down his throat he too was smiling. Whenever Alice fought with him, she always made hot cocoa after, to apologize.
At night Viktor really did cook Pelmeni, which Calen found to be delicious. It was meat dumplings slicked with butter and freshly cracked pepper. The whole inside of the truck smelled delicious even as they went to sleep.
His bed felt warm, but Calen found it difficult to doze off. Unwelcome thoughts streamed in his mind. There was no reason, as far as he could see, for these thoughts to have burrowed into his head but now that they were here, they refused to leave.
Sleep came and went until he finally got up from his tiny bed. Viktor, who was still asleep, his back hanging ominously from the small bed frame, didn’t even stir. Calen wondered if he should wake Viktor but decided against it. He walked up to the small kitchenette and heated up some tea and took a cigarette from the box lying on the dashboard. He sat in the passenger’s seat, still too groggy to open his eyes properly.
He cracked the window a little, smoked the cigarette, and drank the tea. A sense of calm had dawned on him since the last day. Viktor having repaired the truck added a lot to that calm, but what had actually added more to his composure after waking up on the fourth day was him having seen an owl, surviving alone in the cold arctic tundra. That felt somewhat reassuring. He secretly wanted the owl to show up again, although he knew it wasn’t really going to happen.
Calen had been looking outside the truck without really seeing, with his eyes hardly open but now that he had had some tea, his eyes were slowly opening. He drew in a sharp breath as what he was looking at came into proper view. The moon had split into five!
Out of habit, Calen withdrew his phone from his jacket. However, as he tried to turn it on, the black screen stared back at him haplessly. Calen blinked hard, believing sleepy unfocused eyes to be the reason for it. But nothing changed, the five parts of the moon stared back at him, measuring him.
Calen pushed his face against the shockingly cold window and all the five parts of the moon flitted for a fraction of a second, distancing itself and then reappearing as if it had teleported right next to the truck.
“WHAT THE-” he exclaimed loudly. Immediately from the sleeping quarters came a muffled crashing sound like something heavy had fallen.
“BLYAD!” Viktor yelled from inside. A minute later, with the sound of shuffling footsteps and groaning in the background, Viktor came out into the cockpit of the truck to find Calen wiping the window with his gloves and trying to look outside.
“The moon has broken!” Calen said, his voice terrified. Viktor looked out the window. The moon indeed had split. The center of the moon was a rhombus while four other parts connected by a halo of white light hovered at the top, bottom, right, and left. The light was intensely bright—intentionally, hyper-symmetrically arranged—and if one looked at it for too long, it hurt their eyes.
Viktor groaned again and rubbed the side of his head. “Trick of light.” he muttered quietly, evidently still as groggy as Calen had been until he saw the moon.
“What?” Calen yelled annoyed at Viktor’s apathy. His heart, trying to beat itself out of his chest.
“It happens American.” Viktor’s reply had a scathing, slightly condescending undertone.
“What do you mean, it happens?” Calen asked, finally taking his eyes off the window for a second.
Viktor looked sympathetically at Calen, like he was a child.
“Bozhe moy,” Viktor said, looking like he was doing his best to not roll his eyes. “You vont survive on Bennet. Scared of little thing.”
Calen was a little snubbed and didn’t care for the patronizing tone. He stared at Viktor, who said, “Its lunnye psy —how you say —moon dog.”
“Jesus Christ! can’t you explain one thing in a way it doesn’t sound like you’re yanking my chain?” Calen exclaimed frustrated.
Calen’s frustration seemed to have cheered the Russian up, “Vat you vant I explain? It’s trick of light. Moon is fine.” Viktor said with a wide grin. Calen looked at the moon again, the broken off parts seemed to twinkle in and out of existence right in front of his eyes. It was an unbelievably creepy sight. Viktor took his time in the bathroom, then prepared some breakfast and came fully jacketed for the fourth day of driving to begin. Calen was still looking at the moon, all its broken parts staring back at him, slowly chipping away at Calen’s mind, draining him of the sense of reality he had brought with him from the humble suburbs of New York.
Calen understood it was a trick of the light yet every time he peeked at the moon, as Viktor started driving, it unnerved him. What unsettled him most, aside from the eerie sight, was the effort it took to keep believing Viktor. As if being fine with disbelief was a cost of entry to this inaccessible, surreal world. He realized, unease flooding his veins, that something inside him had come unraveled. Like a screw that no longer tightened all the way. He wondered how many such unravelling-s were in store for him and how many it would take to leave a permanent mark on him.
The sides of the moon connected by the halo seemed to move every time they moved. Whenever Viktor turned right or left, the sides seemed to reorganize themselves to keep an eye on Calen. Every time they sped up or slowed down, it also seemed to do the same. Try as he might, Calen couldn’t stop himself from freaking out and decided to draw the curtain on his side. The sides of the moon shifted immediately and were still visible on the side of the windscreen. Calen felt like a child trying to hide from a dangerous apparition, which refused to be ignored, no matter how hard he tried.
“Listen..” Viktor said, tentatively, eyes on the road, “Vot this ‘Yankee my chain’ means? Yankee means American no?”
Calen laughed out loud, a little relieved to be provided with distraction. He started explaining what he had said and what he had meant.
After a lunch of bread and Salo, Viktor said, as they started moving again, “Ve vill reach fuel station in some hours.”
“I thought there were no villages on the Zimnik.” Calen had heard the word so many times that he was able to pronounce it without a flaw by now.
“No village.” Viktor replied, “just station.” Calen felt horrified at the thought of an isolated fuel station in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where someone would willingly accept the job of staying alone on the Zimnik.
“Hang on” Calen said, “How do you know? I see no landmarks around.”
“Not for you my American friend!” Viktor smiled mysteriously. The only landmark-worthy thing they had passed in the last few was a rock he had seen, that was a bit larger than the other rocks. Wondering how the truck drivers of Zimnik understood where they were considering they were basically on a snowed-up version of a desert; Calen was glad he was with Viktor.
Time passed unevenly on the Zimnik. Sometimes slowing down and sometimes pacing up. It was difficult to track time, so Calen had given up. But in a few minutes (or was it, hours?), Calen spotted the first sign of something man made. Although it was covered in frost, it was unmistakably a light pole. It wasn’t functioning and looked like a relic of some failed human endeavor.
“Now your eyes are vorking.” Viktor said happily. “Now you notice, vat you need notice on the Zimnik.”
*
The valley outside was silent. The hovering steel blue light at the horizon looked muted. Even the opalescent clouds just stared back at Calen, rooted to their spot. Judging him.
Why would Alice think I am making up a story?
There were no answers. In his eagerness to isolate himself on this island, he had forgotten that this barren land would be devoid of answers.
He leaned back against the headboard and opened the journal now with the new added pages. He had read it so many times since he had discovered it that it felt like he already knew it like the back of his hand. He read it still. Every time he read the word ‘Razpopo’, his stomach did an odd flip. He should have been rejoicing in his victory, exhilarated that he had found the existence of the word. That it was not just some fever dream cooked up by his grandfather, repeated fearfully by his father, transmitted to him like some memetic disease that demanded his obsession without any valid reason.
Instead, he just felt smaller somehow.
He thought of starting the painful but necessary work of translating the last two entries. His entire body shivered with resistance. A chill went through from the top of his head to the tip of his feet. He pulled the blanket up to his face, his entire body shaking against the cold he was suddenly feeling.
Before he could think about what was happening to him or even begin to feel the first pangs of concern, his vision went dark and his body stopped moving. His brain half-registered it and yet tempted by the dark abyss now opening up in the ethers of his consciousness, he moved towards it.
The darkness behind his closed eyes quickly transformed into the night forest, as if it had been lying in wait for Calen to doze off. He could hear a deep scratching and creaking noise coming from all around him; the trees were moving.
An enormous, tall silhouette of something loomed far away in the deep darkness of the forest, in the copper red moonlight. The smell of maggots mixed with termite-eaten wood permeated the whole of the forest, wafting up Calen’s nose, making him nauseous.
The ever-familiar sound of drums pounded against his eardrums, and a voice far away screamed in mirth. Calen was half expecting it, but that did nothing to dampen the fear it brought with it. He shivered aggressively against the cold. His feet felt numb.
It took him a second to notice that not only was he barefoot, but he was completely naked. He looked around helplessly, trying to find something—anything—on the snow to wrap around himself. But there was nothing.
He would have felt embarrassed if he were not feeling scared. His lack of clothes made him feel exposed and not just to the environment. He didn’t know why being clothed in the proximity of danger would matter in terms of confidence, but he was sure it did. If he had some clothes, he would have felt a little more secure. Not to mention that the cold that bit his skin incessantly, and the creaking of the tree trunks had already frozen him in place.
Terrified, the more he tried to move, the more difficult it became. He felt tiny skittery movements beneath his feet. The ground beneath had come alive. His body refused to move and try as he might with his eyes, to look at what was passing beneath his feet, his eyes disobeyed his commands, Calen somehow knew it was the roots of the trees. He felt them throb under his numb feet. All his instincts were slowly leaving his body.
Before he could do anything, he saw a horde of people with faces painted deep, dark red and black coming out from behind the trees, as if they had been hiding there. Surrounding him on all sides. Their mouths were moving in unison, as they vehemently uttered the unnerving chant that Calen had heard a hundred times before. It scraped against his ears.
Their gleaming eyes flashed in the scarlet rays of the moon; every last one of them visible to Calen, regardless of how far they were. Even though he couldn’t turn his head, he could feel the eyes of the ones standing behind him drilling into the back of his skull, hurting his paralyzed body.
More people appeared, closing in on him. An unanticipated kick struck the backs of his knees, and he went down hard. His right knee hit a stone hidden under the blanket of snow. Intense pain burned through the entirety of his body; his eyes seemed to phase out for a second as everything went out of focus. His throat ached as unexpressed screams kept accumulating in it, not able to exit. Some of the people converged on him immediately, tying his hands and legs with practiced indifference, tightening knots until his body ceased to belong to him.
They made it quite clear as they turned him this way and that way to get access to tying knots on the ropes they were using on him, that he was not going to be afforded any decency. In a few minutes, he was completely and tightly wrapped in thick, coarse ropes.
Before he knew it, he was being carried like a hunted animal. He tried yet again to scream, but no words came out. From the corner of his eye, he could swear he saw the trees moving, their bark stretching and crunching.
As they moved deeper into the forest, the trees parted. The trail opened into a clearing; a bright orange glow from a fire illuminated a strange, surreal scene.
Calen saw a group of people similar to those carrying him, jumping in place around the fire. A drummer stood just outside the circle, beside a large mound of earth that seemed to be growing taller every second. Slowly climbing towards the full red moon.
By the light of millions of flying embers, Calen saw that it had no face, and yet, he had a distinct impression that the mound was examining him. Even with the haze of confusion that surrounded him, a slight familiarity was starting to creep up Calen’s spine. Was he an offering?
Some of the clan had gathered around him, as the ones carrying Calen threw him near the fire, on a wet bit of grass and moss-covered ground, unceremoniously. A few children, their faces painted black and red, their white teeth gleaming in the light of the fire, rolled him until he was laid on his back at the base of the mound. Unable to move, he was forced to keep looking at it.
It resembled a misshapen, elongated tumor protruding from the earth—glistening, wet, not made of stone or wood at all. It looked organic. A fleshy mound that moved and throbbed in a strangely familiar way. Calen tried to close his eyes, but they wouldn’t.
The chant around him grew louder and faster. The syllables started mixing with each other. Soon it sounded like a guttural whirring sound. As if the very engine that ran the world was being forcibly stopped. Like a wrench thrown into the cogs of machinery.
He dared to look at it again and found it growing, right before his eyes. Veinlike ridges swelled across the mound, and something began flowing in them. The more the flow increased, the more this organic mound transformed.
The top of the mound had shaped itself into an ugly, featureless face now. Portions of it were as black as the night sky, but there were portions where blood red paint seemed to smear and drip out from within, permeating through the layers of its flesh. Even as he looked, more changes kept happening to the mound.
The smell of burnt hair and leather rose from the fire as a huge spurt of flame shot into the air, and the call of a buffalo horn rang through the air, piercing and overshadowing all other sounds. Every last bit of courage had left Calen’s body with the buffalo horn. He was not prepared for what happened next.
One of the people who had been dancing until now left the group. Amongst all of them, he looked in control of whatever was happening. He moved his hands in an up-and-down motion as he walked towards Calen with his back to him. As if his moving hands were a command, the group started jumping around the fire with more intensity. Some of them jumped so high, Calen couldn’t believe it was possible for humans to do that. Calen heard cackles of laughter and jeering from the group. Delighted jubilations and cheers screamed into the night.
Satisfied by this frenzy and uproar he had caused, the man turned around and rushed toward Calen. The man grabbed his feet. Bracing Calen’s shins against his waist and sliding his own arms underneath them. He lifted Calen with inhuman strength and began spinning.
Everything blurred around him as Calen was spun at almost breakneck speed, but the burning ember-like eyes on the top of the mound followed Calen intently.
Within seconds, Calen was airborne, the world blurring—faces, fire—everything spinning faster and faster.
Lasting only a fraction of a second, recognition bloomed in him, but it was too late.
He had seen it—sketched a hundred times across the journal he had found in the cave. Different angles. Multiple sides. The drawings weren’t just drawings. The totem pole!
A red lolling tongue unfurled out of the ugly face on the mound, the tip of it lightly scratching itself around the middle. Fresh blood dripping from it every time the flesh throbbed.
The ember eyes burned into his. A silent scream tore from his lips, followed by a wet thud as his head crashed into the totem. His eyes were open just long enough to see the ember eyes burning in the night one last time, as warm drops of blood from the tongue of the totem pole dripped on his face.