The Summons

Mankind lives in a time where everything is known. What little they don’t know is considered irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Everyone has their minds geared towards the future, towards progress. Which is why, when the incident transpired, nobody had an answer for what happened. It was beyond their realm of thinking, their reality.

Hector Glass, an old mechanic, was working on his truck. The blue sky, blotted with grey clouds here and there, soon darkened. Time passed so quickly that when he looked up from the leaking filter he wrenched from his truck, he was shocked. He placed the filter on the table, turned off the barn light and with great effort, closed the two heavy doors.

The mechanic walked leisurely back to his house, surveying the countryside as he walked. The sun finally falls behind the horizon, leaving only a green-purple light across the sky. Pushing his front door open, Hector called for his wife. After no response, he simply followed the sound of voices to the living room.

Agnes Glass sat in her large chair, a small, frail woman falling asleep. The drama that played on the old tv-set went unheard as her eyes finally shut before Hector entered. He saw Agnes drifting away, hand-in-hand with Morpheus, to a dream world he could never visit. He smiled fondly, examining her kindly features as he sat in the chair beside her. He knew he had to wake her, but he wanted to give her a moment’s peace.

Mrs Glass was different from other wives, who would throw a fit at their husbands for missing the dinner they prepared with love. Agnes simply understood how Hector could lose himself, becoming deaf, blind and numb to the world. A plate of cold food sat on the coffee table in front of them and Hector began to eat gratefully.

A peaceful moment, it's silent disturbed only by the crackling voices that came from the television. When Hector found himself slipping as well, he pushed himself out of his seat and made to wake Agnes. Before his hand could even touch her shoulder, a flash of movement caught his eye.

Hector froze, staring out the window for a long moment. In a dark room, on a dark night, with only the white light of the television behind him, Hector could only make out the reflection of the room in the glass. Staring at his dark form, Hector sighed thinking of the worst.

Leaning down, Hector shook Agnes awake. When her eyes fluttered open and saw her husband, Agnes tried to say something but was quickly silenced by a warm hand over her mouth. Without a word, Hector guided his wife out of the living room and towards the stairs. It was slow as they had no lights to help them and fear kept Hector from turning any on.

Despite the difficulty, Hector and Agnes soon reached their bedroom. Hector sat his wife down in the bed, whispering what he saw to her, telling her to wait while he looked outside. There was no argument, but once Hector closed the door as he left, Agnes plucked up the telephone and began to call the police. To her dismay, the line was dead. She looked out the bedroom window, a creeping fear building inside her heart.

Hector had only an old shotgun and a dusty box of cartridges to keep his home secure. With it in hand, he felt more secure leaving his home to investigate the fields. Hector was not a farmer, he didn’t grow crops and keep livestock, only fields of grass and the odd tree surrounded his home. Watching over his land, from the porch of his house, he was able to spot movement in the distance.

Scowling, the old man marched towards the crawling figure. It didn’t appear to have noticed him, far too concerned with something in the grass. Had he been further away, the form would have appeared to be a dog or some other four-legged creature scavenging. As Hector would soon discover, the form was not as human as he believed.

It lifted its small head on a long neck, turning towards the light of Hector’s flashlight. The pale, white eyes gleamed in the light, the jaw swinging from the skull with the sudden movement as if the beings lower face was melting from its skull. The pale complexion, the ragged clothing and the monstrous appearance had Hector confused as well as terrified.

The thought of a creature like this, so close to his home that he could see it crawling in the dark from his window, made Hector Glass’s heart sink and his blood turn cold.

Before Hector could say a word or raise his gun to fire a warning shot, the ground shook. The earth cracked, the world trembled beneath Hector and he fell unable to keep balance. It was an earthquake unlike any he had ever experienced and at the worst time. He pushed himself off the ground, trying to keep balance. Yet, all he could do was watch as the crawling creature fled.

Hector tried to follow, but could only manage a few steps before he tripped. It was not the rumbling ground which brought him down, but the assortment of objects laid out on the grass. Hector had only a moment to glance at them, seeing odd stones with carvings he could not examine properly and even the corpses of small animals, from rodents to rabbits.

Confused and scared, Hector remembered his wife and looked down at the lone house down the hill. Clambering to his feet, he marched down as fast as he could towards his home. He could see a window break in all the shaking and he cursed the idea that something could have fallen on Anges. The earthquake didn’t lessen, instead, it grew stronger with each passing moment, until at last, the ground opened up.

Hector stopped in place, watching the earth separate, a divide between him and his home spanning wider and wider. The dirt rumbling and a loud crack as the rocks split. It was catastrophic and all Hector could do was watch. Watch as the land he stood on carried him further away from his home. He screamed her name, but it was muffled by the noise.

The land began to sink away, taking the barn along with Hector’s truck. For a moment, Hector feared that his home would fall into the chasm with it, but his fear subsided when it finally ended. The ground stopped shaking, the noise faded and as quickly as it all began, it ended. The silence of the night returned.

Hector Glass saw his house stand strong and then the sight of his wife Agnes, standing at one window. She looked out across the chasm and saw her husband. Hector fell to his knees once more, but this time it was of his own will. Grateful that what was important still existed, grateful that his heart could take all the excitement.

Yet, it was only the eye of the storm.

From the chasm came a thunder, not of cracking rock, but of voice. A roar, a cry of anger. It asked of the world, in a voice so powerful that it shook Hector and Agnes to their core, it asked who woken it. Hector dared not approach the edge to make sense of it, his legs could not move. However, it did not matter, as from the dark pit a hand greater than any other, larger than the home he lived in, stretched towards the sky, only to fall and grasp the edge of the chasm.

The force was tremendous, bending the earth and causing Hector to jump as the tremor ran through him. Another hand followed and then the fierce head of the titan. It’s wisened face made cruel by its snarling expression and long white hair and beard. The ground struggled to hold firm, eventually crumbling beneath his grasp. The giant clutched, scrambling to stay above ground, but to no avail.

In the chaos, the earth was wrenched in might handfuls, only to fall down into the pit. Hector Glass followed the monster as the ground gave way. As if recognition of the horror it nearly unleashed, the earth began to close. The ground trembled once more, closing the chasm until at last the earthly prison was shut.

Agnes Glass, who fainted at the sight of something she could not explain, was woken up by the police. Without a single memory of what happened after the earthquake began, she thought her husband had fallen into the chasm that swallowed the barn. No matter what remembered, or how the police tried to make sense of it, there would always be lingering horror at the back of Agnes’s mind.

A horror that Mrs Glass’s mind would not dare recall, preferring to preserve itself in denial, than to suffer in fear. She would still live in that home, unaware of the creature that returned. A creature twisted by an ancient evil. A creature bent on recreating the ritual that broke the earth and released its master.
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