The Satisfying Terror Of John Baldock

[Hallow]

The Satisfying Terror Of John Baldock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o1R2YfIO_Y&feature=related)

2491


Set an hour after the glorious rising of Wizard Hallow at the end of The Dreary Screaming Of Leslie Levine. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22994-The-Dreary-Screaming-Of-Leslie-Levine)

Here concludes the Simulacrum Saga.

Warning, contains content some may deem adult in nature.


It tears me apart to say the words
To think the truth for just a second
Because then it's real - not a lie
And I'll have no choice but to forever cry

But still it's something I must face
And I must fight - win or lose
Because it's there - inside of me
Hidden in my skin - hard to see

I'm truly scared of what could be
Of what lurks beneath my skin
It may be hard for you to know
Thats because I cover it with a show

No one knew of my horrid secret
The thing I dreaded most
And then you appeared - came along
And spoke to me with hope's song

The lyrics came so loud and clear
Hold on, be strong, have hope
For that reason I trusted you
And that trust just grew and grew

I dont know where to next or if
This battle I will win
But you're here to keep me strong
And forever remind me or hope's song

I've said before how scared I am
How hope is hard for me to keep
But this I'll face just for you
My friend, my hero - It's true

I hear the clock as it slowly ticks
Shows me how time goes by
So not a minute should we waste
Let's get this over with - post haste

And if the news is really bad
I won't cry or break down
I'll fight it all the way
So next time I can save YOUR day.


Dean Rands.

[Hallow]

John Baldock was a murderer, a vicious thief and a bastard amongst men.

He was not particularly pleasant to look at, either.

The dead however, needed to be put to rest, and to do that, they had to have their last requests granted.

Leslie Levine had screamed for months about wanting revenge on her killer.

Soon, she would be given that opportunity, and looking at him, Hallow lost all sense of pity and concern for unleashing a vengeful spirit onto the living.

As the middle aged griever rattled off his thanks to Hallow, he wondered from behind the sanctuary of his helmet just what he had gone to all the trouble for exactly. It had not occurred to him when he had encountered the banshee Leslie Levine that the reason she was screaming so loudly, for so long, was because she had been murdered, robbed and raped repeatedly by her own uncle.

Malefor chuckled from inside the folds of the Shadow Brand, his temporary prison so that he could leave the tower without being torn ethereal limb from ethereal limb.

“Tell me again, Mr Baldock, why you wanted to be reunited with you relative?”

He sat at the small table in the cluttered and grubby kitchen of his house, and tended to a cigarette with shaking, well-worn fingers. Whatever had happened between him and his niece, it had clearly shaken him, perhaps, Hallow hoped, riddled him with doubt and pious atonement. He noticed his fingernails were laden with dirt, and his digits stained yellow, and his shirt spattered with blood, and then cast any doubt from his mind.

“I want,” he was jittery, but rattled off his half truthful reasoning hurriedly, “to say sorry. I want to say goodbye, she left so, so quickly.”

Hallow picked a piece of bacon rind from between his teeth with a rough finger and sighed. He chomped on the salty titbit and with a non-chalant roll of the head, admired the various gardening and hunting tools which covered every spare section of the shack’s wooden walls.

Quaint, isn't it? Malefor said snidely into Hallow's head.

There was a small sink, and a poky Raeburn on one wall, but it was clear the man did very little cooking, and from his lanky, withered appearance, very little eating here. It if wasn’t for the presence of a small bowl of flour, which did not appear to be anything more than mill dust, and the clay jug of milk next to it by the sink, Hallow could have forgiven himself for forgetting he was in a small household at all.

[Hallow]

“I understand, and I sympathise with you most humbly, Mr Baldock. However, whilst we were able to achieve a satisfactory method for you to be reunited with Ms Levine, there were some…” Malefor whispered the word complications into Hallow’s ear, “complications during our research.”

John licked the paper and rolled the tobacco into a bent instrument to calm his nerves, and with shaking fingers and sweating palms, put it into his mouth. He looked at the wizard, and traced the gold patterns in his armour as if he was looking for a weakness or a pocket to filch, then raised an eyebrow questioningly. “What sort of 'complications'?”

Hallow cast his mind back to the start of their day, and the incident with the bacon and the brief pan fire. He chuckled, but then settled back into a serious, mercantile mind set. He and Malefor had commanded the simulacrum to life, and with their minds bent on it, walked out of the Tower of Ravens and the crumbling infirmary grounds they called their home and into the dark streets of Beinost, beset with the silent glamour of the abyssal dusk.

“We were able to imbibe Ms Levine’s spirit in a more, corporeal vessel, one which you can interact with and one she can interact with you through.”

He looked into the slits in the helmet with a nervous, almost uncertain curiosity. He twitched even more and his forehead shone in the light of the lantern on the table with salty vigour. He started to tap his torn and worn boots on the dirt laden stone floor as if he were consumed in a rage or narcissism from poppy seed opiates or just eager to spill blood. With a flick of the wrist, he produced a small flame from a flint and lit his habit unceremoniously.

“That’s good, right?” He said with pursed lips from behind the first wisp of pearl smoke.

Hallow nodded.

“I think you should be prepared to witness your niece in a way that you would not expect. She is Leslie Levine; she is just entombed in the body of a simulacrum.” He paused for dramatic effect, and when John cocked his head uncertainly, and took another drag, he continued. “A necromantic servant stitched together and created from other dead bodies, a ghoulish zombie, a golem, I guess you could say.”

John Baldock lost his nerve, and his twitches turned into uncomfortable jittery squirming in his rickety chair. He took several quick drags and stubbed out the remainder into the small glass ashtray that was clearly too expensive and well made to have legally been his.

“Now look here, Wizard.” He jabbed a stern finger at Hallow, who extended the Shadow Brand in response, covering his body with the flickering, life riddled darkness of his own soul, “I wanted to speak with her…you and the Order never said anything about,” he stood and leant closer, his dirty, yellow teeth clenched, “necromancy.”

[Hallow]

Even Hallow flinched.

“Sit down, Mr Baldock.”

He did so, with remarkable speed and a glint of fear in his eyes. The only people able to resist the authority of a Wizard’s voice in Beinost were other Wizards, a fact every pointy hatted individual in the city and the College Arcana relished with ignoble arrogance and glee. Hallow waited a moment for his client to ease his nerves, and he leant onto the table and rested his grubby chin on his grubby hand. The candle flame flickered ominously in an unseen breeze.

“Thank you,” he clicked his fingers and summoned the Grimoire Graviga from its resting place on his own kitchen table, far from the distant spires of his home. With a little flourish of shadow and a deep hum, it appeared several inches above his extended palm and dropped with a soft thud on to its waiting lectern. Hallow pulled it closer, and opened the cover.

“I will say this only once, Mr Baldock. I know what, and indeed who you are. I was fortunate enough to finally calm Ms Levine’s wailing, a dreary cavalcade of screams and abject rants about what had happened to her in her final hours, and the dead, as I know all too well, cannot lie.”

This was a small lie in itself, because the dead were very good at lying. Malefor was a prime example of that skill, though he would call it ‘distorting the many possible truths’ and never actually admit to anything.

“What…what did she say?” John Baldock became nothing more than a terrified old man, well past his thirties and clinging to his seemingly adventurous and dangerous youth. He rolled a second cigarette out of habit, and his knee began to tap softly as his nerves crept into his rickety bones and undernourished muscles.

“That is for her to recant, but look,” he held the book up and turned it, revealing a hastily sketched anatomical drawing of the six souled simulacrum they had spent far too long constructing for a man like Mr Baldock.

He spat air, and sent his hobby flying into little flecks of tobacco leaf over the unpolished table top. He gasped and tried to speak his disdain several times before Hallow closed the back and tucked it under the folds of the Shadow Brand. In the darkness of the hut the bellowing, living entity engulfed the bulk of his Grimoire, so it didn’t seem to be under his armpit at all.

“What in the Thayne was that?”

Hallow got a small rush of blood to the head at the terror his accurate and well scribed anatomical drawing had gained, and commended himself for his talents.

“That was your niece, Mr Baldock, who is kindly waiting in the abandoned warehouse at the end of the street. It was quite difficult getting her this far without causing a wave of horror through the evening populous, so you will have to accompany me a short trip to solicit the arranged reunion.”