http://www.shadowgod.biz (RB Vs. The Shadow God, Chapter 19) · 3:12pm Jul 12th, 2022
Previously, on The Shadow God:
Ugh.
And now:
Quick summary of the previous chapter for anyone who skipped: Craig and Todd got away from Detective Underwood. Mark crossed the moral event horizon. Mark and Kristy were killed by Ridley.
Let us speak of it no more.
This chapter is called "A History Lesson", and begins with Craig once again dreaming of the same place he always seems to dream of:
Craig was having another dream. He knew this. He knew this because he was back at the old familiar location beside the cave opening, looking out into the vast land of open fields. He could vividly remember where he left off the last time he had had this dream.
What's more, the guy Craig saw in the distance is there, too.
It was the first time Craig was able to lay eyes on him, to take in his appearance. The stranger was beastly in size with thick, bushy eyebrows, a prominent protruding forehead, and a thick, black coarse beard. His gait was that of a mammal—a Neanderthal.
Quick question, what does "His gait was that of a mammal" mean? The author knows that humans are also mammals, right?
He crouched to hide from the grotesque mammal, but he knew he’d already been spotted.
R-right?
The neanderthal is holding a "sword-like object" made of bone. It begins to chase Craig. Craig runs but manages to smack straight into a tree with enough force to incapacitate himself.
Craig cowered as the stranger with the mammal-like features screeched and drove the sword downward into his sternum.
Okay, seriously now, I don't think Mr. Rayburn knows that humans are mammals. I'm also not convinced he even knows what the word means.
Craig wakes up screaming as the neanderthal stabs him with the sword.
Craig slammed himself against the inside of the trash dumpster as Todd sat bolt upright next to him. Todd cleared his eyes and found a rat sniffing innocently beside him. He screamed and the rat burrowed itself underneath the trash.
Craig looked around the bin and then at Todd. “I guess this was the only place we could hide from Underwood, eh?”
In the trash WHERE YOU BELONG.
So yeah, they spent the night in a dumpster behind a AAA. As one does. Their next goal is to get to the prison, but before they do that, they need to wash the stench off and get Mark, so they decide to go to Mark's place. Which is totally not going to be swarming with police due to the dead body they buried in the backyard that Underwood already knows about.
They make it to Mark's house, and there are no police there. Somehow. So they go inside.
Craig and Todd stepped into the house. They immediately spotted a female figure tied and slumped over in a chair. Her back was to them. Their hearts began pounding when they caught a whiff of the putrid air around them, the same smell that met them at Todd’s house.
That's Margie confirmed dead.
“First, we’re going to get ourselves cleaned up,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” said Todd. “I can’t take a shower knowing that Margie is downstairs, tied to a chair, and slaughtered with a crowbar up her cooch! I just can’t!”
There's a what up her what!?
They end up showering there anyway. Then, they take Mark's car and head for the prison.
Cut to Ridley, who has just been confronted by Father Spiers.
Ridley shook his head, backpedaling as Spiers advanced on him. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Well, I tried to kill Craig like you asked, but Mark disobeyed me. I had no choice other than …”
“Do you mean to tell me you killed Mark Williams?” Spiers shouted.
“I had no choice,” Ridley protested. “He wouldn’t obey me!”
Spiers, with his blazing red eyes, looked down into Ridley’s shocked face. He gripped him by the jaw and raised him up onto his toes. “So how is Craig Johnson going to die now, huh? Who’s left to do it?”
“Mark,” replied Ridley, veins pulsing from his strained neck. “I’ll bring him back to life!”
Oh please don't. Please, please don't.
“It’s useless!” Spiers cried. “Mark needed to be alive, not brought back from the dead! It doesn’t work that way! The blood of the Shadow God is dried up! He needs to have the blood!”
“What about Todd Harris?” asked Ridley, struggling against Spiers’s strong grip.
“We haven’t the time,” said Spiers, looking around the room. He paused, and then suddenly jerked his head toward Ridley. “You resurrect Mark and you get him to where he needs to be. I very seriously doubt that it will still work, but you will try.”
“Yes, master, I will.”
Cut back to Craig and Todd, who have just arrived at the prison. They go in to reception. Rodgers is at the desk again.
But luckily for Rodgers, Craig was willing to do anything to get him and Todd inside.
Officer Rodger’s thin smile broadened as his fat palm closed on two, crisp bills, each bearing the head of Benjamin Franklin.
Question, where and when did Craig get this money? Does he also just walk around with hundred-dollar bills in his wallet? Is that just a normal thing in this town?
Cut back to—oh god dammit.
Cut back to Mark.
Mark opened his eyes, and as consciousness roamed across his mind, he realized he felt different; not like himself.
Mark appears to have amnesia, and cannot recall anything other than his own name. Ridley and Sledge appear. Ridley shows him a picture and tells Mark that he's to kill this man or die. Mark agrees to it. Then Ridley shows him a different picture and tells Mark he's to kill that person first. Mark agrees. Ridley and Sledge lead him out of the room and to a garage.
In the middle of the bay was a shiny, burgundy, Ford F-150, 4X4, V-8 Triton, sitting atop huge thirty-five-inch tires. Mark stared at the ass end of the monster truck and he could see the outline of a white skull positioned in the center of the back glass. Inside the skull, on its forehead, were three red sixes and just below that were four red letters, TSGA.
Y'know, I wanted to say something about this in the first or second chapter, but cut it because it was pretty minor then. However, I will say it now: giving us the exact name, make and model of a car does nothing to help a reader picture the car in their mind if they don't know what that car looks like. Furthermore, 99% of the time, the exact make of the car does not matter. It would be better just to tell us that it's a large pickup truck.
After seeing Mark off, Ridley stepped back inside his building. He was in one of the rooms deep into his tavern. He stared at the back of a high-backed, brown, leather chair. “You think you’re ready?” he asked.
The chair swiveled around, revealing a strikingly good-looking woman. Her face was just as beautiful as it was the first day she walked into his office.
“Yes, of course,” said Kristy, smiling.
I swear to god, if the story tries to play off what happened in the last chapter by making her evil—
Cut back to Craig and Todd. They're in the visiting room, now. Craig's dad appears; he's holding a big black book under his arm.
“When they told me I had a visitor,” said Matt, “I figured it was you so I brought this book out.” He picked it up, turning it over in his hands, revealing its shiny black cover. It read: Demons & Entities, in big gold lettering at the top. “It’s a book that came down from Columbus. One of their libraries had a big sell and I guess the librarians here went up and claimed a whole shit load. And one of ‘em was this one.” He sat down and gingerly slid the book under his chair. “I was ecstatic when I saw it; you bet your ass I was!”
Convenient!
Matt found the page he sought and handed the book to Craig. Todd leaned over and stared over Craig’s shoulder for a better view. On the page there was a picture of a silhouetted man and bold, black, capital letters at the top of the page which read: “The Shadow God.”
Guy's gone and found the Shadow God's Wikipedia page.
The book explains that the Shadow god is linked to or is Cain. Craig finally puts two and two together and gets four.
Craig looked intently at Todd and his father. He leaned close to them and whispered, “Let me get this straight. I’m supposed to be Abel, reincarnated, and Cain, my fucking brother, from the beginning of time, is trying to kill me all over again?”
Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Glad we're finally on the same page.
They also work out that the Dark World is probably Nod, the place Cain was banished to. Matt suggests they go to library in Portsmouth and look for more info. Todd also suggests looking it up online.
As Craig and Todd watched Matt exit through the big iron door, neither of them knew that would be the last time they ever saw him alive.
The narrator keeps doing this thing where it drops spoilers for its own story, and I can't decide if that's an interesting way to attempt to keep a reader's attention or just clumsy writing.
We swap POV's once again, this time to Underwood. He's smoking a cigarette in front of Todd's house. He's thinking about how little sleep he's gotten as of late.
Eubanks cocked his head. “You might not want to know this right now, but I’ve got to tell you.”
“What is it?” Underwood said colorlessly, already dreading the words that were about to come out of Eubanks’s mouth.
“Another body was found at the Williams’s. The old lady that lives beside them? She made a call and one of our guys went to check it out.”
The look which crossed Underwood’s face was one that was pure suicidal.
Switch over to Mark, driving his new Satan truck. He pulls up outside of Craig's house.
After a short moment, the door opened and Susan Johnson’s face contorted into a mask of surprise.
“Susan?” he asked. It was the name Ridley had given him to ask for.
“Mark?” she asked. “Is that you?” Her hand slowly slipped over her mouth.
Mark nodded, tried to smile.
Susan brings him inside. She asks where Todd and Craig are, and he lies to her. Then, she asks him what happened to his face. Mark looks in a mirror.
A grotesque form seemingly put back together with clay.
Mark stepped up onto the couch and moved within an inch of the mirror, peering longingly into his distorted, newly chiseled face.
He saw that he was able to move one eye, but not the other, which he realized was made of glass. His fingertips grazed the confines of his features and he gasped at its texture.
As ugly on the outside as he is on the inside. Well, no. Maybe he needs to be uglier.
Susan runs away from Mark and into the kitchen. She grabs a knife. Mark pulls out his gun and shoots her in the head.
Mark tucked the pistol back into his pocket and searched the kitchen for items to use in his ceremony.
He picked up the long blade, which Susan had intended to use on him, and immediately set to work.
What that ceremony entails is not for us to see, however, as we cut back to Craig and Todd, speeding towards the library at over ninety miles an hour. They just barely make it there before it closes. They set about looking for the card catalogue.
“Yes, we were looking for the card catalog,” said Todd.
The short, old librarian with black, horn-rimmed glasses uttered a silent laugh, moving her hand to her mouth. “How long has it been since you boys were at a library?”
Craig and Todd looked at each other. “Second grade,” they said in unison.
The librarian directs them towards the computer room.
The boys thanked her and Todd sat down at the first computer. He typed: “The Shadow God,” and then hit enter.
The screen went white and then a message appeared: “This page cannot be brought up. Hit refresh or try again at a later date.”
Todd typed: “CAIN.”
Again, the same message.
“What the hell?” said Craig.
“Let’s just check the catalog,” Todd suggested.
“Wait!” said Craig. “Try one more. Try ‘the Dark World.’”
Todd typed it in and got the same message.
“I think he’s blocked all sites leading to any information,” said Craig.
That's ridiculous. My parents are in their sixties and can barely work a computer. Imagine how much trouble biblical Cain would have.
Todd moved the cursor to back and before he could click it, a message appeared on the screen: YOU WILL NOT LEAVE THIS WORLD ALIVE! THE DAY OF AWAKENING IS UPON US!
Spooky.
They check the digital catalogue. A quick search for "evil spirits" gives them two results. They start looking for the books, but the library closes before they find them, so they hide from the librarians until they've gone home. They resume their search, but still cannot find either book.
Suddenly, they hear a book hit the floor on the other side of the library. They freeze for a few moments. Then, when it seems safe, they turn around and—
Cut to Detective Underwood and co. They've just found Margie's body.
“It’s a damn shame what they did with that crowbar,” said Underwood, gazing at the hunk of steel protruding from Margie’s vagina.
Why is that any more of a shame than her being murdered? Don't tell me you're into that, cuz. You're already on thin ice with me as it is.
Cut to Mark. He's driving past his own house. That's it. That's the entire scene.
Cut back to Craig and Todd. They're face to face with the scariest thing imaginable: a goth librarian.
Tiffany wetted her lips, and then smiled. “What books are they?” she asked.
Craig let down his guard a bit and relaxed. Finally, he thought. Someone who was taking their side for a change. “Evil Demons,” he said. “And Spirits of the Dead.”
Tiffany smiled again. Without taking her eyes from Craig and Todd, she reached over to the opposite side of the bookshelf, walked her fingers over a couple of books, and finally settled on one, pulling it out, and presenting it to Craig and Todd.
Craig reached out and took hold of the book titled Evil Demons. He looked up at Tiffany in amazement. “How did you do that?”
Tiffany smiled. “We have secrets, too,” she said.
She tells him to turn to page 333, the contents of which I assume are half as evil as whatever's on page 666. It contains an entry on the Shadow God.
“I could tell,” she said. “I have been having these dreams about someone finally solving the ancient mystery of the Shadow God.”
Magic goth librarian. Got it.
They read the entry; it's largely either things we already know or things which don't much matter. The magic goth librarian (her name is Tiffany, by the way) tells them a story about her grandmother's mother.
Tiffany peered out the window and gazed at the many colors of twilight around the horizon. “It happened in the woods where all those hunters had died and mysteriously disappeared over the past several years.”
Craig met Todd’s gaze. “The Dead Woods,” he said softly.
About time the woods became relevant again. Note that this is a different set of woods from the woods near Mark's house, one which has never been mentioned at any point previously in the book.
Tiffany tells them about how her grandmother once snuck after her mother into the woods. When she eventually caught up to her, she was talking to a man in a suit and top hat standing next to a hole surrounded by blue flames. When they both got home, she asked who the man was, and her mother told her that it was the town preacher.
A shock wave jolted through Craig. “Did she say what his name was?”
Tiffany nodded. “Yes,” she said dismally. “She said his name was Spiers. And that he was a lykenvaulk.”
I tried Googling "lykenvaulk". The only results are from this and Mr. Rayburn's other book, Spiritual Sorrow.
Apparently after this, Tiffany's grandmother watched Spiers kill her mother and drag her into the fiery hole.
There was another moment of silence before Tiffany spoke again. “Spiers is having a big revival at his church tonight. It just makes me wonder what’s really going to go on there.”
The Day of Awakening, Craig thought horridly. That was tonight?
Tiffany walks off and apparently vanishes, her role as an exposition mule complete. Craig decides their next course of action will be to go into the Dead Woods and find that hole.
And that's it for today's chapter. See you tomorrow for more.
Finished the (first draft of) the final blog in this series this morning. I'm (mostly) free!
PLEASE LET THIS ALL END!
You can add it to the list of things he doesn't know!
By the smell?
God, this is ridiculous.
You have such a way with words. XD Unlike some people I could name...
This is legitimately funny.
It vaguely sounds like a (poorly-translated) take on 'werewolf'. I mean, "lyken", lycan. Google Translate tells me "vaulk" is Finnish for "form", but of course "lyken" is not a Finnish word (it's Frisian!), so that's pretty much par for the course for this meathead.
5672010
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