The Expedition to Ehudalel

--This is a short story that goes along with the "How to Kill" series of stories, featured on this site--

"It is easy to go down to Hell; night and day the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again.. there's the rub."--Virgil.

In 1937 I was completing my first book (a critical translation of the lesser Mandean text, "Of the Rivers" when I received in the mail an invitation to join the now-infamous Expedition to Ehudalel. The letter came from Gordon Soames, a Welsh officer in the King's Hussars. Until this point, I had never met, nor heard tell of, Soames, but his letter belied incredible erudition and confidence in the field. I confess I was also tempted by his expedition's goal: to examine the lost Essenic temple, first built in the Hasmonian era of Israel. He did not need to mention that Ehudalel was likely where John the Baptist began his ministry. The site supposedly held a "bottomless well" where John was baptized by an angel.

I wrote back with a tentative acceptance. The work I had done in translating was mostly finished. I packed lightly, informed my classes of my absence and secured substitute professors. I too made a point to travel to the Institute of Archaic Studies and requisition a .337 elephant gun, a broomhandle Mauser in the 7.56 caliber, and several satchels of the explosive Cyclotol (in Britain known as Composition B). I flew by charter from Maryland to New York, New York to Ireland, and from Ireland to Marseilles. There we met in a cafe off the Rue de Ashkenaz in the Sephardic neighborhood of the city.

Soames was a tall, soft-spoken man in riding boots and khaki. He had with him the late Solomon Cohen. Bespectacled and bearded, Cohen was an expert on all matters supernatural, and I knew his Three Aphorisms on the Occult by heart:

1. When threatened, act quickly.

2. When stumped, research diligently.

3. When in doubt, don't.

I was also introduced to a fellow American, the historian Eric MacArthur, and our guide, an Arab named Yusif al-Hassan.

I spent the night discussing the ramifications of the expedition with Cohen, whose manner of speech captivated me. He spoke only after a long period of consideration; his answers were erudite and eloquent. We spent the next day securing passage by steamship to Palestine and left early the next morning.

I spent the journey familiarizing myself with the rest of the expedition. Soames was distant, preoccupied with the details of the trip. MacArthur proved quarrelsome and private; I grudgingly recognized his talents in Pre-Christian studies. Al-Hassan was nothing but polite, he was a formidable backgammon opponent and well-versed in his Koran. Cohen and I naturally spent most of the trip conferring on all aspects supernatural and in particular the lost Beckwythe Grimoire, which Cohen swore he saw in a bookshop in Kiev as a child.

We made landfall in Tyre and moved by lorry through a mess of roads policed infrequently by British soldiers and Arab tribesmen. We soon debarked from the trucks and on foot into the desert- it was six miles till we came to the hills which appeared on our map. Two days later we came to the site.

Soames and al-Hassan went straight away about preparing the camp while Cohen, MacArthur, and myself went into the ruin in search of identifying radicals. We were nearly an hour into examination when MacArthur finished the first translation. I'll admit I was fiercely jealous.

"It reads, 'Beware the well and its water'," he said. Cohen snorted.

"That can't be true, let me see that."

I asked him why.

"Because," he said while copying down the characters on a crumbling brown wall, "It's supposed to be what the angel said to John before his baptism. It fits too neatly with antiquity. And further.."

He frowned, and stopped speaking.

He took the characters down again and went through the translation while MacArthur stood aside, wearing a smirk.

"Son of a bitch," Cohen said, and looked to MacArthur. "This is it. This is where it happened."

Soames then came up to learn the cause of our commotion. He was deeply excited when he heard the news, and encouraged us to keep working with Goethe's motto: "Without haste, but without rest!"

We worked until the light was too weak to continue. The first day had been incredibly productive, and we had found a lower chamber with a stone-capped well. We could not contain our enthusiasm, but the lid of the cylinder proved implacable. I mentioned casually my cyclotol but argued it would be madness to damage such ancient remains. Cohen agreed, but MacArthur appeared upset, wanting to press on as quickly as we could. The consensus of the team was to sleep until dawn and begin again apace.

I fell fast asleep and awoke sometime in the night, my tent's flap whipping back and forth in the desert wind. Around me I found my belongings were scattered chaotically, further examination showed my cyclotol missing. I cursed MacArthur and, furious, grabbed my pistol and shouldered the rifle, determined to stop his mad quest to unearth the well.

The night was cold and as I moved towards the ruins I could make out the shadows of light coming from the lower chamber. As I drew closer I saw a man doubled over, linking the charges with wire, moving frantically. I readied my pistol when the man stood, and I saw his face in profile.

It was Cohen. And he was speaking. I could only barely hear his words:

"We praise the Gods below us, for their indulgence and their rest, we shame the Lord above us as we prepare this feast.

We sully his temples and flout his laws in order to raise you, O Kazkal, O Yardbolath, O Samael. We offer you the world and its spoils for you to burn and rebuild."

I moved closer, keeping as silent as I could. My foot struck a stone and the sound echoed against the ancient rock walls, and Cohen turned to see me. His hand drew to the detonator as he connected the final wire, he began to run up the stairs towards me. I fired and struck him in the shoulder just as he turned the lever. The chamber exploded behind him and propelled the both of us into the desert.

Louder even than the ringing of my ears was an incredible whooshing of air. I could hear granite upended and sucked into the earth, and somewhere below that, an unearthly groaning. A fetid and grotesque smell crept into my nose, it was only when I managed to get to my feet that I saw Cohen on his knees, his hands upward in supplication, laughing.

I turned to seek out the help of Soames and al-Hassan. I opened up their tent flap to find the both of them in various states of advanced decomposition. I swore- somehow Cohen had done all of this in the space of an hour- and then spun when I heard shouting.

It was MacArthur. He was clearly wounded, but very much alive. He had lifted Cohen up and was pummeling him into the floor of the desert. Still I could hear the mad cackling of Cohen. I began to charge back to the ruins when, out from the depth of the blackness where the well once stood there came a piercing cry.

All at once, they emerged.

They were surely angels, messes of tattered cloth, with visible skulls and bony hands, screeching, singing, pouring out of the well with incredible speed and strength. I could smell the odor of death and nothing else. When I could peel my eyes away from the sight, MacArthur was doubled over, vomiting, and Cohen was standing, his hands lifted towards the long dead angels emerging from the earth.

They were moving towards Cohen, circling him, singing that wretched song. I emptied the clip into the swirling mass and was suddenly buoyed when a handful of the dead things flopped onto the sands. Nevertheless they were almost two dozen still, and so I brought the elephant gun to my shoulder and took aim.

My first round produced a deafening lowing, almost like that of a lame horse. The recoil of the gun had me dizzy, I fought to rechamber the next round. I closed the bolt home and fired again, and this time nearly half of them fell in a pile around Cohen. I could see him, now, no longer obscured by the creatures.

He was not human.

He turned to face me. Locusts were flying out of his mouth, and light poured from his eyes. His hands were the crooked branches of a cypress tree, and thankfully whatever his legs had become were obscured by his still-intact pants. I reloaded the rifle and fired again, and the shell took away the top part of his skull. More light poured suddenly from the hole I had created. The angels were nearly all crumpled around him, but I wasn't concerned with them any longer. Cohen began to walk towards me.

Over the din of the well, the flapping of the dead angels, and Cohen's damned laughter, I suddenly heard MacArthur. He had stood. His entire torso was covered with blood and his left arm was a stump past his elbow. At first I couldn't hear a word of his. I was terrified as Cohen slowly began to walk towards me.

"Stop firing, Charles!" he was shouting. I hesitated, but the tone of MacArthur's voice convinced me.

It was then that MacArthur charged at Cohen, grasping him with what remained of his limbs in a grim embrace, half-pushing, half-carrying the thing that was my friend towards the ruin. Cohen had stopped laughing and was beginning to shout in anger in a language I couldn't begin to understand.

It was then that MacArthur and Cohen, wrapped together like two doomed lovers, tipped forward into the well and were gone.

It was then that the merciful silence of the desert slowly overtook the merciless noise of the bastard monsters of the Deep.