~~~Back To Top
Family Reunion
By Allan Kaspar
For Cliff Shepherd, there was nothing better on a long road trip than a Starbucks Venti white chocolate espresso. No additives needed, of course, this stuff was sweet enough. He took another sip, being careful to grab the hot cup by the cardboard sleep so he didn’t burn his hand.
The gears on “Ol’ Blackie,” his 1995 Ford F150, ground as Cliff shifted into fifth gear. For a Saturday afternoon, Route 33 was blessedly free of traffic, allowing him to really open her up and go. Cliff hadn’t been on this northbound highway in over twenty years (back when he bought the truck at Grant’s Auto).
An exit sign came into view on the right side of the road, “Arrow’s Rest – 5 miles.”
Arrow’s Rest is one of the oldest towns in Pennsylvania, founded in 1732. It wasn’t an overly large place. Hell, according to the sign Cliff had just passed, the population was 4,204 according to the last census. The Arrow’s Rest Town Hall was the oldest building in the area, being the first one built when the town was officially declared as such. Now, hundreds of years later, it’s surrounded by many modern conveniences. King’s General Store, the town Museum, a Drive-In, several restaurants, several more churches, and even a University on the outer stretch of town going towards the hookup to highway 33.
For Cliff, Arrow’s Rest brought something of a hesitant nostalgia to his heart, and he smiled as he savored and gulped another mouthful of espresso. He spent the early years of his life here, his earliest memories being Mrs. Burrus’s third grade class, and his most pleasant memories being days spent on Al’s front porch in high school playing quarters and drinking beer until 3AM.
His father used to tell him, “Enjoy these days, Son. You can’t get em back, and they’ll be gone before you know it.”
And they were. Everyone graduated and went their own way. Cliff left Arrow’s Rest in a hurry, and moved as far away as he could. Hell, he hadn’t seen his parents in over a year (they met for dinner at their favorite Thai restaurant in Shawnee), but it was hard to get them out of the house these days. Sure, he could go visit them himself, if he didn’t hate the idea of going back to Arrow’s Rest. His parents still lived in the same house, too.
Cliff had left Arrow’s Rest in a hell of a hurry. The townsfolk had many rumors at first. Old Bill Grant thought he had gotten his girlfriend (at the time) Susan pregnant and high-tailed it to freedom. Of course, Mike Willis, the town Coroner, discounted this when Susan died in a fatal automobile accident a week later and he saw she wasn’t carrying. Some of the less intelligent townies thought Cliff may have had something to do with it, until his father informed them all he was in NYU at law school at the time. The fact remained, Cliff left in a rush and he never looked back for almost twenty years.
Anyone who wanted to see him had to come out his way, and that was fine by Cliff. It was fine for his friends too, the real friends anyway. They understood why and they respected his wishes. Now, he found himself taking the off-ramp on to Route 209, heading towards the town he never, ever thought he would see again. What choice did he have, though? Cliff had been replaying the phone call over in his mind since it woke him up at two-thirty the previous morning. The proposition was irresistible. It wasn’t for money, Cliff had plenty of that thanks to his career. Answers. Finally, after almost twenty years… he could get some answers to that night all those years ago.
The drive resulted in a flood of long forgotten memories. Cliff drove past Zion United Lutheran, one of Arrow’s Rest’s oldest churches. The old wooden benches were still there. The benches where he, Al, Looch, Johnny boy and Jimmy (his brother) would smoke cigarettes, sip vodka and dream of the future. Next up, on the left, was Willie’s Hill-Top Drive-In and Grille. Cliff cracked a half smile as he saw the parking lot slowly filling up with cars for the Dusk-Til-Dawn special. Things never change in Arrow’s Rest, and something about that comforted him. In the parking lot, Cliff swore he could see Al’s old Chevy Cav Z24 Convertible. We all piled up into “Dusty,” he remembered, “Hot dogs, a couple of stashed beers, and horror flicks until 4AM.”
Those were the happy memories. And the Drive-In was the last reminder of the good times. A dread filled the pit of Cliff’s stomach as he crested the hill that descended into the town center. The campus of Arrow’s Rest University (founded: 1879) loomed ahead to his right. The massive, glass domed Technology Center towered high above the rest of the more eclectic brick buildings on campus.
Cliff felt his fist clench at the site of the place. He studied for his undergrad degree there, it was cheap compared to the other state schools, and he could commute from home to save cash. Not to mention he could follow in the footsteps of his older brother Jimmy. If Cliff had to pick one point in his life where things took a turn towards shit, it was at ARU.
The anger faded as the site of the University disappeared in the rear-view mirror, and was gone completely when another familiar sight came into view. Cliff’s jaw dropped to the floor. He pulled off the road and turned into the nearest open parking spot. He blinked twice, hard. He couldn’t believe his eyes, especially having heard that Milly’s Steakhouse had burnt down several years ago. Yet there it was, good as new.
Cliff drained the rest of his coffee (now barely warm) from his cup, nearly gagging on the pile of sugar sitting on the bottom. He shut off the truck, being sure to grab his wallet that was sitting in the arm-rest, and stepped out onto the loose gravel of the parking lot. Of all the memories in Arrow’s Rest, Milly’s and the Drive-In back up the road had all the best ones. Like everything in Arrow’s Rest, Milly’s hadn’t changed much, save for signs of yellowing plaster on the old Tudor architecture. Cliff found he could barely hold back a large smile as he walked towards the entrance, planted his shoulder in the familiarly heavy front door, and shoved his way inside.
Walking into Milly’s felt like walking back through time. The inside was exactly the same as he remembered it, aside from the pictures of local baseball teams they sponsored being a completely different set of kids. He was happy to see the picture of him, Johnny-boy, Jimmy and Looch hadn’t moved, though.
The interior was a sort of re-creation of a 1700s English-style Public House. Mildred “Milly” Schaeffer, the owner, had a mild obsession with history, especially that of the town. “The Steakhouse building,” Cliff remembered Milly explaining, “is almost as old as the Town Hall itself, and is an exact replica of the original Arrow’s Rest Public House, rooms and all!”
Cliff always loved the place. He hung out here with his friends ever since they all turned 18. They would play rounds of darts after classes, listen to local musical acts, and if any of them “snuck too much of the boozin’” they would crash upstairs, laughing until they passed out. Cliff admired the reception room, lost in thoughts of the past. He was so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the Maitre ‘d smiling at him from behind the desk.
“Well I’ll be damned, if it ain’t Cliff Shepherd!” the man said and extended his hand.
Cliff recognized the man in an instant as his old friend Johnny-Boy, Milly’s son, “Johnny boy! Holy hell! You’re still workin’ here, huh,” he said and clasped his old friend’s hand, “how the hell you been!”
John and Cliff were only two months apart in age, and as such grew up and went to college together. John gave his old friend a huge grin, “Well I might think I was goin’ crazy seeing you turning up here in town again! Reminds me, uh, I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to get out to see ya much, but I can’t go too far with Mom’s health the way it is nowadays.”
“No worries, bud. Life has a habit of getting in the way for all of us sometimes. Sorry to hear about Mom…she’s not really sick is she?” Cliff asked, giving John’s hand one more good shake before letting it go.
John thought for a second, “Are ya in a hurry? Or can you stay and chat a bit? I was just about to take a late lunch, and Pablo—he’s our new head chef—can put a couple of steaks on the
grill for us.”
Cliff’s stomach rumbled instantly at the thought of sizzling steak, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since earlier this morning since he was eager to get to town and didn’t want to stop for lunch. “Absolutely, Johnny,” Cliff nodded, “And if y’all are still brewing that Brown Ale yourselves, I’d love a mug!”
Johnny cackled, “Oh you have been gone a long time! Of course we still sell our family ale here! Bill—you remember my older brother—well he took over the brewing and family recipe after Dad passed away. He wound up using that business degree of his and building a small brewery on the north end of town. We distribute to the whole tri-state area now!”
Cliff laughed and shook his head, “Of course! That’s Billy for you.”
John lead them through the main seating area (all furnished to the period, with a fully functioning Franklin stove for cold winters), and they pulled up a seat at the bar. The bar was the only thing left of the original building, which burnt down in the Great Fire of 1913, which leveled over half the town during a terrible summer draught. Contrary to what Cliff had heard, Milly’s had a small kitchen-fire some years back. But rumors have a way of getting distorted when they leave town.
The bartender was an elderly black gentleman named Gerald, whose family came to the US from St. Martin when he was in his teens. He had short cropped, curly white hair and dark brown eyes, and he always looked like he was on the verge of loud, boisterous laughter.
“Oh my word, if dese eyes don’t deceive! Clifford Paul Shepherd,” Gerald greeted Cliff with a handshake and his trademark heavy island accent.
“Damn Gerald, you haven’t aged a day, and your eyes are working just fine,” Cliff said as Gerald pulled him in for a hug.
“Two beers for da boys, eh?” Gerald said, grabbed two mugs and spun around without waiting for a reply.
“So,” John started, “everything’s going good? How’s that job going with that law firm in the city?”
Cliff bobbed his head back and forth, “Not too bad, really. They’re finally starting to let me take on my own cases. I think the word got around I was getting tired of being a paralegal in all but name and that I wanted some serious casework or I was going to split. How about you, Johnny? I didn’t think I’d ever see you back here.”
John shrugged, “Me neither to be honest. I moved back when Mom got sick. Doc said she’s got the Parkinsons…but the good kind? Whatever that means. Once they got her meds right that brought the shaking in her hands under control. The meds make her really tired, unfortunately, and it happens pretty quickly anymore. She just didn’t have the strength to keep this place runnin’ right.
I came home one weekend to check on her and haven’t left since. I gave the place a thorough cleaning and then just took over all the day-to-day. Mom still runs the books, but the rest is generally in my hands. I just couldn’t bear to see this place fall apart, ya know?”
Cliff nodded and sipped his freshly poured beer. Seconds later, Pablo, (a wiry, skinny man who moved with a ninja-like speed and agility with a full tray in his hand) rounded the corner with two still-sizzling steaks on a hot stone. He placed them on the bar and gave them a final dusting of the “secret rub” and placed each on their own plate, “Enjoy, boss. You too, man. Fresh off the grill, they don’t get much better than this.”
That’s a damned understatement, Cliff realized as he cut a crisp end piece and placed the first bite in his mouth, and took another good drink of beer.
“So Cliff… What brought you home?” John asked, suddenly finding himself shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
Cliff took another bite and swig and considered his words. “Well, how to put it, John. I got a rather interesting phone call earlier this morning.”
John leaned in closer and motioned for Cliff to continue. Clint drained his beer mug, “Do you remember the day I left?”
John nodded, “Who could forget. Your brother had gone off with that kook professor for a month by that point. You just got out of the hospital.”
Cliff nodded, “Do you know why I was there? Did anyone ever tell you?”
John shook his head, and Cliff rubbed his temples, preparing to re-live the month. “As we all know, Jimmy got pretty obsessed with that anthropology professor, Dr. Richard Boone I think his name was? Anyway. Jimmy always wanted to be an Archaeologist, and was a nut for history. So, when the University hired an experienced Archaeologist like Boone to teach there, Jimmy did what he could to take all of his classes.
They seemed to feed off of each other’s enthusiasm. I remember Jimmy saying that Boone had just received a grant for a project in Arrow’s Rest itself. The project concerned the Children of the Moon, a cult that was rumored to have settled here when the town was founded, under the guise of escaping religious persecution or some shit. Well, they found something.”
John raised an eyebrow, “Oh? Something here in town?”
Cliff nodded, “The day I was put in the hospital, I got a call from Jimmy. Like you said, no one heard from him in almost a month. When I picked up the phone I could tell he was in a panic. He told me he needed me right away, that his life depended on it and I needed to get to Zion United Lutheran right away.”
John’s eyes went wide, “You mean to say…you saw him that day? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Your Mama thought--”
“Stop and listen, please,” Cliff interrupted, “I drove to the church as fast as I could. Maybe took me ten minutes…at most. When I got there the whole place was empty. Not too unusual for a Wednesday mind you, but there was no one around. Not even Marty, the groundskeeper. When I entered the side door and called for Jimmy, I heard him yelling up from the basement stairs.
“Down here!” he kept yelling to me, and I could hear pure terror in my brother’s voice. The kind of terror you hear in a child, screaming after a nightmare at the shadows on the wall. I could see lights coming from one of the rear classroom doors, so I ran towards and opened it…”
Cliff’s voice trailed off as the memories rushed back with a vivid determination.
“Okay… you went inside, and? You know if you don’t want to talk about this, Cliff, it’s cool. I was just—“ John started to say.
“There was a hole dug out in the back stone wall. It opened into a series of hallways that had been deliberately sealed off. You could tell by the brick work. It was so damned dusty, I remember you could almost taste the shit. The place had been abandoned for many years by the look of it all. I found a flashlight on the table there, flicked it on and went inside.
Jimmy called out for me again…he sounded like he was in pain. I went down the passage as quick as I could, which was difficult, considering the floor was cracked all to hell and heaved upward every other step. The passageway turned and twisted, snaking underground through the town. It was so dark down there, even with the flashlight. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I reached an opening… a lighted room in the darkness. The light was coming from candles and torches ensconced on the walls, and as I ducked to enter the room, I could see stone benches set out in rows before a large stone alter.
It was some sort of hidden chapel or temple. But not a holy place. I could feel a—putrid evil in my very skin the second I left the passageway. Hell every molecule in my body felt like they were screaming at me to run. Run away and never look back,” Cliff said, nearly yelling at this point, then drained and ordered another beer.
John sat silently as Cliff waited for and sipped from a new beer. Cliff rubbed his eyes, then continued, “I walked towards the alter. Something glinted on it, reflecting the candlelight directly at me, catching my eye. I recognized it immediately as I got closer… Jimmy’s watch.”
“I’m glad you came, Cliff,” Jimmy said to me, “I don’t have much time.”
Jimmy had a wild, paranoid look in his eye. He dashed towards the tunnel, looking down it to make sure I wasn’t followed. He looked sick too, coughing frequently as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have. I knew it. I knew
it I knew it. Should never have done, nope. Too late now, though. Too late, too late.”
“Jimmy, what’s wrong? What’s the matter with you?” I asked him.
“He shouldn’t have read from the Book,” another familiar voice said, echoing off the stone walls to sound like a hundred voices in unison.
I spun around to see none other than Doctor Richard Boone standing next to the alter. Johnny, he was holding this book… the very memory of it makes me wretch just thinking about it.
“Do you know what this is?” Boone said to me, smirking, while my brother went to sit and whimper on a nearby bench.
I shook my head, “What have you done to my brother!”
“This is the Nocturne Codex,” he said, completely ignoring me, “Well, a copy of it to be sure. I’ve heard of it in all of my studies, but I never, ever thought I’d see one intact. When the Church makes an effort to destroy a book, they can be pretty thorough.”
“Whatever, what did it do to Jimmy?” I asked him again.
“That’s a tough question, really. I mean, this book may be thousands of years old. It is filled with Egyptian, Pictish, and even Atlantean death rituals if the text is to be believed. Hard to doubt the book when it’s been so meticulously bound, the cover and each page in dried human flesh. See the small skull embedded in the front? The rumor is it’s the child of an Egyptian Pharaoh, who sealed it’s two eyes with his most precious gemstones. I’ve never seen their like before.”
“You’re nuts!” I shouted at him, “What the hell happened to Jimmy! Tell me, or I’m going to beat you to a bloody pulp.”
“He was too eager. Too impatient. I insisted on careful study of the book when we found it in the alter. He found some ritual of summoning. It explained the power of calling upon The Darkness, and the true names of the nameless beasts that lurk above in the cosmos and below in the hells. I left him alone with the book once. Just once. I arrived too late to find him calling upon Roggatoth, one of the names scrawled in the summoning ritual.”
“So? You going to try and tell me it worked?” I said, not believing the man.
“Look at him, you fool! Not only did it work, but he saw the results first hand.” Boone said and grinned.
It was then, Johnny, that I heard the roar, and Boone said ‘He was all yours’ out loud into the darkness.” Cliff said and took several gulps of beer.
“Dear God,” John said, crossing himself as he did so.
“It came out of the darkness from behind the alter. This..thing.. Johnny it looked like it was made of the shadows themselves. The candlelight couldn’t illuminate it’s pitch black skin. The worst though…The worst was the faces. It was covered in faces, and you could only see them when the light hit it just right. All the faces…they cried…they twisted and cried and looked at me accusingly, as though to say how dare I be alive. It roared, this thing, roared like with the screech of a thousand mules, and bleated like a hundred sheep when it exhaled. Then…it rushed at Jimmy. Jimmy screamed so loud I thought he was on fire. Then the thing was gone.
Jimmy collapsed on the ground, and I hurried over to him, afraid that he might have hit his head on the stone bench as he fell. He didn’t move at first, I don’t even think he was breathing. And then he opened his eyes. I was happy to see him alive, and asked him if he was ok.
Jimmy ignored me, and rose to his feet. He looked himself up and down. I remember, Johnny, the way he looked at his hands, as though seeing them for the first time. He nodded as though he approved, and I asked him again if he was alright. He turned to me, smiled, and then pushed me,” Cliff said and shuddered as a chill of remembrance crept down his back.
John, now totally enraptured by the story, gave Cliff a nod to continue, “Then what happened?”
“I think I remember feeling like I was flying,” Cliff said, “and then I woke up in the hospital a month later. The nurse told me they found me at the bottom of the church basement steps, and that someone called an ambulance saying I fell.”
“What about Jimmy?! What about the Thing under the Church?” John asked, gripping Cliff’s arm now.
“Gone. I went back after getting out of the hospital to see if I could find Jimmy, and it was all gone. The whole in the downstairs classroom. The passageway. Everything was just gone. Jimmy disappeared, Boone never came back to the University. It was as if all of it never even existed.”
John started piecing it all together. Cliff’s sudden departure. Jimmy’s body never being found. Doctor Boone’s mysterious illness and permanent sabbatical.
“Cliff…who called you this morning?” John asked, his hands visibly shaking.
Cliff drained his third beer, and looked at John as a tear fell from his eye, “It was Jimmy. Said he was at Mom and Dad’s…and that it was time for a family reunion.”