Demon Summoning for Beginners E-Book

Cora Buhlert

• Herausgeber: Cora Buhlert
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

When observing a magical ritual in the woods, make sure to take precautions…

If you try to summon a demon to grant you your heart's fondest desire, you'd better get your Latin right…

When studying ancient grimoires, it's never a good idea to actually read the contents out loud or you might just cause the end of the world…

Following your grandma's heirloom recipe might just conjure up something other than marinara sauce…

Four short humorous horror tales of rituals gone very wrong by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert of 5800 words or approx. 20 print pages altogether.

Leseprobe

Demon Summoning for Beginners

by Cora Buhlert

Bremen, Germany

Copyright © 2020 by Cora Buhlert

All rights reserved.

Cover image © Dominick Critelli, Dreamstime

Cover design by Cora Buhlert

Pegasus Pulp Publications

Mittelstraße 12

28816 Stuhr

Germany

www.pegasus-pulp.com

Impartial Observer

You sneak through the woods, careful not to step on any cracking twigs or rustling leaves that might give your location away. After all, you want to observe the ritual unnoticed, like a good researcher should.

As you approach the gathering place, you switch off your flashlight. You stop and wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Gradually, trees begin to emerge from the darkness, followed by branches, leaves, roots. And above it all the full moon, half shrouded in clouds.

You hear the chanting before you see anything. It echoes through the forest, rhythmically pulsing like a heartbeat.

Closer and closer you creep, your phone camera at the ready. After all, you don’t want to miss a second of this. A pagan ritual in the local woods — not faux hippy New Age paganism — but the real deal. Ancient rituals and traditions that predate Christianity, handed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter over the centuries.

The paper you’ll write about this ritual will be your breakthrough in the world of anthropology. It will win you tenure and recognition, it will make or break you. Once more, you check the phone battery, hoping that it won’t give out on you now.

The closer you creep, the louder the chanting gets. You can make out words now, though you can’t understand them, because the language is older than anything spoken in these parts. So you begin to record audio. The linguists will have a field day with this.

Between the trees, you see a flicker of lights. The cultists are carrying storm lanterns. The chanting is even louder now and seemingly coming from everywhere at once.

You creep even closer. You spy figures in hooded robes, each bearing a lantern. You get out your phone and hit “record”.

From between the branches of the trees, you watch as the figures form a circle around an altar of roughly hewn stones. You watch as they step forward one by one and set down their lanterns on the altar. You watch the pool of light around the altar grow brighter and brighter as more lanterns are added.

The chanting reaches a frenzied climax now. To your own surprise, you realise that your heartbeat is hammering in tune with the chanting.

The light around the altar still grows brighter and brighter, even though everybody has set down their lantern by now. The beams pierce through the foliage, near blinding you. You’re forced to avert your eyes, but you’re not averting your phone, because you want to get it all on video.

Your eyes adjust to the light and you see the robed figures dropping to their knees one by one, arms raised in what appears to be prayer. The altar is still drenched in bright light, so much brighter than what a few flickering lanterns should give off.

Swirling shadows appear in the circle of light, spreading, growing, coalescing into something almost solid. Fascinating. It looks as if the cultists have somehow conjured up a physical manifestation through their chanting, though that shouldn’t even be possible.

You can’t wait to write everything down. This paper will win you so many accolades.

The shadowy form in the circle of light is steadily gaining substance. You can make out arms, legs, horns, a tail. A classic demon form, even though this cult and its rituals predate Christianity. Fascinating.

The thing in the circle grows and grows. It’s spreading beyond the boundaries of the altar now, stepping out of the circle, moving among its worshippers.

It’s coming in your direction now and you keep the phone recording, hoping, praying that the camera will capture everything. Briefly, you wonder whether this thing can even be photographed or whether it is like the vampires of legend, invisible to recording devices. You sure hope not, because who’d believe you that you truly witnessed this summoning ritual without visual proof?

The thing comes closer and closer, moving among the trees. It’s definitely solid now, for you hear the branches cracking, as it approaches.

It’s almost here now. You can make out its face, a hideous demon face. It opens its mouth and you can make out every single one of its needle sharp teeth and the forked tongue emerging from its mouth.

Closer and closer it comes, its jaw dripping saliva and its tongue flicking back and forth.

Maybe, you think just before the creature devours you, this wasn’t such a good idea after all…

Ritual Failure

Lucas took a deep breath. Everything was ready.

The altar had been prepared and the ritual circle had been drawn on the basement floor with chalk pilfered from the classroom. A gong had been set up. The candles and the incense — proper church incense and not those joss sticks from the Chinese import store — awaited. The correct page was bookmarked in the ancient grimoire he’d found in the local used book store. Lucas had put on a ceremonial robe that looked only a little bit like the bathrobe it was. The athame was ready — forged of virgin steel as required (though Lucas wasn’t sure if there even was non-virginal steel — after all, who had sex with daggers?). He’d even procured a sacrifice, a clucking chicken that had gifted him with a bonus egg it had laid that afternoon.

Lucas checked his wristwatch. The hour was here, determined by arcane calculations. In its cage, the chicken clucked and idly picked at some grains.