Post by Exigent Contact on Jul 30, 2009 22:33:00 GMT -5
The mind is ultimately a rather frail thing, so easily pervaded and and penetrated and broken by things unknown. Jacob Matthews aged 28, lived a life totally ignorant of this reality.
In his simple Pennsylvania home he lived alone and rather content, this Jacob, single and making minimum wage. He worked carpentry during the week and tossed back the beers on the weekend. He was no Adonis, for his paunch was truly a thing noticeable. It was also true that he was no Prince Charming; his hairline receding at a relatively young age. None of hygienic habits were in line with modern standards either. He brushed his teeth when he felt and bathed weekly, and changed his clothes perhaps twice within the same timeframe. To put it blunt, the man was somewhat repulsive. He minded it not however, being the loner that he was.
It wasn't two weeks after his big raise that Jacob noticed the odd books in the house of a simple elderly man that had called him on the most basic of carpentry. He merely wanted to appraise how much an addition to his house would cost. Simple enough work, to be sure, but he needed beer money anyway. And within an hour of his call, he headed out.
There was an odd air to the cool twilight of late May. It felt warm enough, but something was...off about the night. Jacob wasn't a man of particular faith or superstition, but even he found himself looking over his shoulder at the call of some crows. After that he entered his Ford pickup, a heap from the 70s or 80s one might wager, and drove off, sure of his safety in his tough American-made ride.
The back country of Pennsylvania is truly a sight to behold in some areas, with its rolling hills and miles of wooded acreage. With the trees soon in bloom it would look even better. The final hints of a long and arduous winter had been slowly stripped away from a week of rejuvenated sun, and in another, there would be not be a hint of slush even in the dankest edge of a forest. Even so, bloom was still on the horizon, not in the current. The woods still rapped at the sky with twisted and abhorrent fingers, a molesting touch which those uninitiated with country life might take as intimidating. Jacob was a country boy though, and with a keen eye for foliage and a comfortable sense of backwater knowledge, he felt secure in knowing that there was nothing wrong with the trees. They were in fact beneficial, as his Pappy told him moons ago. Something about oxygen and carbon dioxide-Jacob wasn't much of a man for the books, so such trivialities escaped his memory with liquid ease.
As he got further and further into the night he had trouble with the roads leading up to the elderly sounding man's home. He was familiar with back roads that out-of-towners would know nothing of, but some of these seemed terribly obscure, even for our country boy Jacob Matthews. By the time he even was back into a road he could consider close to his own innate knowledge, it was pitch black in the night, as if someone had simply thrown the veil over him to confound his journey further. Had he been able to make this connection in his head, he would have felt a rising anger within him. This, however, his simple mind could not conjure, and so he continued on in a brazen sense of adventure.
Then he came upon the house. It was a place of some discomfort. It wasn't terribly ancient, but very well-worn nonetheless, and in Jacob's rough (and incorrect) estimation, it must have at least been there since before the Industrial Revolution. The land, however, seemed even more old to him, and in this train of thought, he was all-too-correct. It smelled of wood rot and grave dirt. It was as if the land around the house simply corrupted all around it, muddying the flora and fauna of the area with a tenebrous fog. Jacob was dimly aware of his mounting sense of dread, but continued up the hill to the home anyway.
The windows were in working order, not cracked or broken in, as one might expect. They were however, shrouded by shades beyond, and the dust collected by them told a story of lengthened stand at such a battlement. The roof was in considerable pain, in contrast with the ground frame, and it seemed to be giving into leakage or infestation-likely both. The house smelled worse in many respects than the ground. Jacob, at his most eloquent moment, might have described it as "smelling like squirrel shit that's been baked on a grill using farts instead of propane" but that wasn't important to him. What was important is that he knocked on the door, and the man answered.
He was dressed of another time, it seemed. Not terribly ancient like his house, but simply extremely outdated. He wore a lounging vest and slacks and a light blue business shirt beneath and even had a peculiar set of pink slippers on. His house similarly followed this same kitsch; sundial clocks and checkered floors, a wood-paneled TV and even a similarly styled radio. In all honesty it reminded Jacob of his grandfather's home.
The scouting job was a simple task that was done in thirty minutes or less. The old man seemed pleasant enough in disposition, his tooth-lacking grin leaving Jacob a little happier as they went along, but that sense of displacement he had felt since the start of this job had not left. He forced it away, but it hadn't been kept at bay long. The old man wanted to know how much the addition would cost. Jacob put it in the ballpark of $7000. Of this he was correct. The old man had scantly the money required for it, but asked for him to come downstairs into the basement. Jacob followed simply, comparing in his mind the situation to some stupid horror movie he had watched as a child. Step by ancient step, the old man made it down with Jacob in tow, and that's when he saw it.
The basement was ancient and awful, far worse than anything that had been suggested thus far. If the ground had smelled of the grave, then the basement was the corpse. It was a horrible, rotting smell that Jacob could not compare anything to even in his sharpest moments, but it was that slab -a dark heart to a fetid place- with the book laying atop it that caused him the utmost dread.
"You see," said the old man, wistfully. "The addition I wish to acquire is outside of my budgetary frame...but it has a significance beyond that. It is...a little test. If you can afford it for me, allow me to live on your time, then I can double, even triple what you lost to me previous. What do you say?"
Jacob was no fool. Pappy had always told him to take fifty dollars when offered to him over 100 bucks a year in the future, and this was the same math to him, more or less. He told the old man to shove it, and promptly made for the stairs. Except, on the fifth step, the rotted wood gave out on him, forcing him back down on a newly broken leg. He might have cursed his years of gluttonous living, if his mind could have processed thought and pain simultaneously.
"That's a terrible accident for such an able body, Mister Matthews," he said, walking into a dark corner of which his waking eye could not see. "Yes, a broken leg is a bad wound, but not an irrevocable one."
Jacob was wide-eyed as the horrible tome the old man had held opened of its own will. Its sinewy surface and skeletal frame reminded him of something, maybe a movie or a TV show, but that didn't matter. This was real, and Jacob Matthews -aged 28, carpenter, high school dropout- wanted out of the clammy corpse-smelling basement.
"I can heal that ailment of yours," he said, skimming through to a certain passage in a completely blase manner. "If you will assist me with an addition, of course."
Jacob screamed and cursed at the man. He was terribly bewildered at that awful book and the man and the basement of some increasingly surreal nightmare. It was as if the world was gaining some symmetrically asymmetrical design, a jigsaw that zigged when it was going to zag and still made some horrible coherency to the naked eye. The old man now sat atop the ceiling, but still held the floor, too. Jacob blinked and yelped, but the double image did not cease.
"It's a shame really," he said with a legitimate sounding regret. "that you could not will yourself in my favor because of a nature that you cannot understand. What would have been beneficial for you is now going to seal the opposite fate, and that I do hold remorse for. You scantly deserve it, but there is little else I can do."
And then, after some terrible malaise that haunted his visions with unspeakable things that now seemed so far away, chants and cries and shrieks that seemed so resonant and alien at once now fell apart as Jacob woke up. It seemed he was in his bed, as usual. His paunch was still there, and there bandages on his leg, but he was otherwise fine. Beside him was that terrible book, but now he regarded it with a simple distaste.
Then he got up and went into the basement. The old man's body lay there, in some dim state of comatose. Jacob merely snapped his fingers and the old man rose to his feet.
"Now, Mister Matthews. I have liquidated all your assets and become shareholder of them as well. I am beginning my plans of expansion. Are you ready to help me with my little test?"
The old man simply nodded, and they both continued up the stairs-carefully.
In his simple Pennsylvania home he lived alone and rather content, this Jacob, single and making minimum wage. He worked carpentry during the week and tossed back the beers on the weekend. He was no Adonis, for his paunch was truly a thing noticeable. It was also true that he was no Prince Charming; his hairline receding at a relatively young age. None of hygienic habits were in line with modern standards either. He brushed his teeth when he felt and bathed weekly, and changed his clothes perhaps twice within the same timeframe. To put it blunt, the man was somewhat repulsive. He minded it not however, being the loner that he was.
It wasn't two weeks after his big raise that Jacob noticed the odd books in the house of a simple elderly man that had called him on the most basic of carpentry. He merely wanted to appraise how much an addition to his house would cost. Simple enough work, to be sure, but he needed beer money anyway. And within an hour of his call, he headed out.
There was an odd air to the cool twilight of late May. It felt warm enough, but something was...off about the night. Jacob wasn't a man of particular faith or superstition, but even he found himself looking over his shoulder at the call of some crows. After that he entered his Ford pickup, a heap from the 70s or 80s one might wager, and drove off, sure of his safety in his tough American-made ride.
The back country of Pennsylvania is truly a sight to behold in some areas, with its rolling hills and miles of wooded acreage. With the trees soon in bloom it would look even better. The final hints of a long and arduous winter had been slowly stripped away from a week of rejuvenated sun, and in another, there would be not be a hint of slush even in the dankest edge of a forest. Even so, bloom was still on the horizon, not in the current. The woods still rapped at the sky with twisted and abhorrent fingers, a molesting touch which those uninitiated with country life might take as intimidating. Jacob was a country boy though, and with a keen eye for foliage and a comfortable sense of backwater knowledge, he felt secure in knowing that there was nothing wrong with the trees. They were in fact beneficial, as his Pappy told him moons ago. Something about oxygen and carbon dioxide-Jacob wasn't much of a man for the books, so such trivialities escaped his memory with liquid ease.
As he got further and further into the night he had trouble with the roads leading up to the elderly sounding man's home. He was familiar with back roads that out-of-towners would know nothing of, but some of these seemed terribly obscure, even for our country boy Jacob Matthews. By the time he even was back into a road he could consider close to his own innate knowledge, it was pitch black in the night, as if someone had simply thrown the veil over him to confound his journey further. Had he been able to make this connection in his head, he would have felt a rising anger within him. This, however, his simple mind could not conjure, and so he continued on in a brazen sense of adventure.
Then he came upon the house. It was a place of some discomfort. It wasn't terribly ancient, but very well-worn nonetheless, and in Jacob's rough (and incorrect) estimation, it must have at least been there since before the Industrial Revolution. The land, however, seemed even more old to him, and in this train of thought, he was all-too-correct. It smelled of wood rot and grave dirt. It was as if the land around the house simply corrupted all around it, muddying the flora and fauna of the area with a tenebrous fog. Jacob was dimly aware of his mounting sense of dread, but continued up the hill to the home anyway.
The windows were in working order, not cracked or broken in, as one might expect. They were however, shrouded by shades beyond, and the dust collected by them told a story of lengthened stand at such a battlement. The roof was in considerable pain, in contrast with the ground frame, and it seemed to be giving into leakage or infestation-likely both. The house smelled worse in many respects than the ground. Jacob, at his most eloquent moment, might have described it as "smelling like squirrel shit that's been baked on a grill using farts instead of propane" but that wasn't important to him. What was important is that he knocked on the door, and the man answered.
He was dressed of another time, it seemed. Not terribly ancient like his house, but simply extremely outdated. He wore a lounging vest and slacks and a light blue business shirt beneath and even had a peculiar set of pink slippers on. His house similarly followed this same kitsch; sundial clocks and checkered floors, a wood-paneled TV and even a similarly styled radio. In all honesty it reminded Jacob of his grandfather's home.
The scouting job was a simple task that was done in thirty minutes or less. The old man seemed pleasant enough in disposition, his tooth-lacking grin leaving Jacob a little happier as they went along, but that sense of displacement he had felt since the start of this job had not left. He forced it away, but it hadn't been kept at bay long. The old man wanted to know how much the addition would cost. Jacob put it in the ballpark of $7000. Of this he was correct. The old man had scantly the money required for it, but asked for him to come downstairs into the basement. Jacob followed simply, comparing in his mind the situation to some stupid horror movie he had watched as a child. Step by ancient step, the old man made it down with Jacob in tow, and that's when he saw it.
The basement was ancient and awful, far worse than anything that had been suggested thus far. If the ground had smelled of the grave, then the basement was the corpse. It was a horrible, rotting smell that Jacob could not compare anything to even in his sharpest moments, but it was that slab -a dark heart to a fetid place- with the book laying atop it that caused him the utmost dread.
"You see," said the old man, wistfully. "The addition I wish to acquire is outside of my budgetary frame...but it has a significance beyond that. It is...a little test. If you can afford it for me, allow me to live on your time, then I can double, even triple what you lost to me previous. What do you say?"
Jacob was no fool. Pappy had always told him to take fifty dollars when offered to him over 100 bucks a year in the future, and this was the same math to him, more or less. He told the old man to shove it, and promptly made for the stairs. Except, on the fifth step, the rotted wood gave out on him, forcing him back down on a newly broken leg. He might have cursed his years of gluttonous living, if his mind could have processed thought and pain simultaneously.
"That's a terrible accident for such an able body, Mister Matthews," he said, walking into a dark corner of which his waking eye could not see. "Yes, a broken leg is a bad wound, but not an irrevocable one."
Jacob was wide-eyed as the horrible tome the old man had held opened of its own will. Its sinewy surface and skeletal frame reminded him of something, maybe a movie or a TV show, but that didn't matter. This was real, and Jacob Matthews -aged 28, carpenter, high school dropout- wanted out of the clammy corpse-smelling basement.
"I can heal that ailment of yours," he said, skimming through to a certain passage in a completely blase manner. "If you will assist me with an addition, of course."
Jacob screamed and cursed at the man. He was terribly bewildered at that awful book and the man and the basement of some increasingly surreal nightmare. It was as if the world was gaining some symmetrically asymmetrical design, a jigsaw that zigged when it was going to zag and still made some horrible coherency to the naked eye. The old man now sat atop the ceiling, but still held the floor, too. Jacob blinked and yelped, but the double image did not cease.
"It's a shame really," he said with a legitimate sounding regret. "that you could not will yourself in my favor because of a nature that you cannot understand. What would have been beneficial for you is now going to seal the opposite fate, and that I do hold remorse for. You scantly deserve it, but there is little else I can do."
And then, after some terrible malaise that haunted his visions with unspeakable things that now seemed so far away, chants and cries and shrieks that seemed so resonant and alien at once now fell apart as Jacob woke up. It seemed he was in his bed, as usual. His paunch was still there, and there bandages on his leg, but he was otherwise fine. Beside him was that terrible book, but now he regarded it with a simple distaste.
Then he got up and went into the basement. The old man's body lay there, in some dim state of comatose. Jacob merely snapped his fingers and the old man rose to his feet.
"Now, Mister Matthews. I have liquidated all your assets and become shareholder of them as well. I am beginning my plans of expansion. Are you ready to help me with my little test?"
The old man simply nodded, and they both continued up the stairs-carefully.