The Hole (32 page)

The beast carried through its exploration for a good hour, stopping only once to leap upon a deer foolish enough to wander near its path. The poor animal was not so much eaten as consumed, the demon sheep falling on it and pinning it down, while its hellish flesh seemed to burn through the deer, giving forth an awful cloud of smoke and a grayish seepage that ran out and soaked into the earth. When the beast finally stood, all it left behind was wet earth and a few nubs of corroded bone. I felt sick at the sight, but forced the bile down, mouth held tightly closed to keep from making even the smallest sound. Finished with its meal, the beast continued its search and I followed as before, though with perhaps a degree more fear troubling my bowels.

Eventually the beast found what it was looking for. We emerged over a low hill-fortunately tree covered to keep me safe from accidental view-and into a surprisingly gorgeous valley, the overflow from a small and clear spring trickling through it to the east. At the bottom, nestled into the side of the opposite slope, and beneath the roots of a huge and ancient tree, was the mouth of a cave. This last was hidden, however, and I noticed it only because the beast made right for it, digging at the overhanging vines and creepers with its nose until it had exposed the dark opening.

I crouched low, watching this scene, wondering what could be in that cave that such a monster would spend so long searching for. Surely not just food? After a minute of rooting at the entrance, the beast pulled back, kicked its feet, and then charged forward, running through the opening and squeezing the whole of its terrific bulk inside. I gasped. Surely the beast was too large to fit in that cave. But equally surely, that creature was not of an entirely natural sort and so could not be expected to abide by the laws of nature and science-and size-as I understood them.

I was not going to follow it in. No matter how great my curiosity, no matter how burning my desire to find out where it had gone, I could not justify the risk of finding out what horrors might await me just past the mouth of that cave. Instead, I decided to wait, for unless the passage beneath the hill lead to another exit somewhere else in the forest, the beast would have to emerge here again and I could then resume tracking it.

I sat for hours. I can’t say exactly how long it was, but the sun had begun to come up, the sky turning a faint bluish orange, before I saw anything from the mouth of the cave. I sat up at the first shaking of the leaves and leaned forward. I’m not sure what I expected but it certainly was the not being that emerged from that small opening.

A man in white walked out of the cave, seeming to grow in size as he did until he stood perhaps twice my height. I was backing up, trying to get away from the thing, when it looked directly at me and held out its hands, gesturing me to come forward. I did. I can’t explain why, but like sleeping on the mouth, going toward that phantom man seemed exactly the proper action to take. I climbed down the hill until I stood at its feet.

The creature-demon or angel, I knew not-seemed surprised at my presence. It asked me if my name was Smith and, when I said it was, the being appeared to relax. “I had thought you dead,” it told me, and I realized it had somehow mistaken me for Joseph Smith, Jr., my grandfather. There is a strong family resemblance, I admit, but I believe that, too, the creature had little experience with humans. In effect, we all look very much the same in its eyes.

“Why have you returned?” it asked me. “The time has not yet come.” Its voice sounded broken and muffled and forced, as if it were speaking through a mouth that had only recently come to be used for a such a purpose. I could feel each word deep in my stomach.

“I was searching,” I said, stumbling through the short sentence. I had to answer it satisfactorily or, I was convinced, it would kill me-or drag me to whatever awaited on the other side of that awful mouth from which it had come. “For… For you.”

“The time is too early for that, Smith,” it said.

“Too early?” I asked.

“You grow impatient, as your kind so often do. You cannot wait the necessary time for what is prophesied to come about. You feel the need to rashly drive events forward.” And then it laughed. I fell backwards in horror at the sound. “You will be dead before I return again,” it said. “You will not experience my glory.” It paused. “Have you done as I asked?”

“Yes,” I said, for it was all I could think to say.

“The message spreads then.” It nodded. “Good. Your flock will grow. Your faith will cover the earth and shall make my return-my victory-all the more grand. A god needs his followers, no?”

“Of course,” I said. “He definitely needs them.”

“There shall be war,” the creature said, ignoring me. “I will have need of a great army. It is you, Smith, who have provided it. Your faithful will be the vessels for my minions. And for that I shall give you prime place by my side as I rule this world. When I and my army have eradicated the scourge of my enemy, driven out that foul demon Yahweh, murdered him, and desecrated his corpse, then I will furnish you with your deserved reward. You shall witness the rebirth of Moroni’s kingdom. Can you wait? Can you be patient?”

“Yes,” I said. The creature nodded and turned away, but I stepped forward. “Where are you from?” I asked it.

The being looked at me for a moment before answering. Then it said, “Worlds beyond these.”

I did not know how to respond, nor did the mysterious being give me the opportunity to. Instead, it walked away from me, shrinking in size, until it vanished through the mouth of the cave. I didn’t bother running to look for it. It was gone.

Entirely unable to return to sleep-and missing my tent and bedding-I began the hike back to the village. I let my path take me by the scar and that was again all it was: the mouth had closed with no trace of its supernatural occupant. The journey was not easy and I started and jumped whenever some unseen thing in the forest snapped or rustled.

But I did survive the experience, even if my mind was irreparably shaken. I made it back into town, found a comfortable room for rent, and fell almost immediately into a long and dreamless sleep.

And that is where I shall end my tale. The remainder of this journal is not my continuing adventures, so to speak, but instead a summation of my discoveries in the subsequent months, an exposition of what I learned as I sought to make sense of what I’d seen. I cannot speak to the entirety of its truth, for none if it is corroborated outside of my own rather mad experiences and similar ones from potentially untrustworthy characters such as Bear. But the story I have managed to piece together is terrible enough that, if even a portion is true, I can manage nothing but pessimism for the future of my race.

It all begins with my grandfather, Joseph Smith, Jr., for whom I was named. It is the true and hidden history, as I understand it, of that great religion he founded, the Mormon faith. I do not know who will read these words, when they will be read, or even if this journal will see human eyes again. I can only hope that its contents find a sympathetic ear and that you, reader, will take them seriously, for the very future of humanity-mine, yours, and everywhere we exist and thrive-is at stake. The Mormon Church is a fraud built upon a horrible lie. Its very mission, one undreamed of by all its living followers, is the subjugation of this realm, this universe, to an evil of unimaginable scale.

Fear the Mad King Moroni, for his return is at hand.

* * *
 

Elliot stopped and looked up.

“Is there more?” Evajean asked. She was leaned back on the bed, propped up on her elbows, and the room around them was quiet and dim.

Elliot set the book down on the stretched bedspread next to him and stood up. “Yeah,” he said, “there’s more.”

“Are you gonna read it?”

“In a minute,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and pulled her arms our from underneath herself, falling back until she was lying across the bed. “I don’t know how much of it to believe, how much of it is just made up. I mean, it could be the whole thing.”

“I believe all of it,” Elliot said. “Every last word.”

“But you really think he’s right about even the church? That all of Mormonism is caught up in this Moroni’s plans? I mean, I remember seeing commercials for them on television.”

“I don’t think they know,” Elliot said.

“That’s nuts.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“And is that what the crazies are? Moroni’s army?”

“They came back and took over the vessels,” Elliot said. “That’s what we saw in the caves under Nahom. Those ghosts floating behind and above the people-those were Moroni’s soldiers.”

“They were possessed.”

Elliot nodded. “I think so.”

“What are we supposed to do, Elliot? Are we still the ones mighty and strong? I mean, what are those? We’re not supposed to
fight
Moroni, are we?”

“I have no idea.”

“Will you do the rest now?”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. He sat down, picked up the journal, and continued to read.

There is hope, gentle reader-though I fear it is slim, indeed. Moroni’s return seems inevitable, but with luck he can be defeated, either killed or driven back to the dimensions from where he came.

Let me begin by telling you what I know of Moroni, called “The Angel” by the modern church, but elsewhere granted the title “The Mad King.” He-it-is an awful creature, a demon birthed on a plane far removed from our own. He is not of this world, but he desires absolute power over it, and drove Joseph Smith to create the Mormon faith so as to further that goal.

My grandfather was a pawn in Moroni’s plans. I have every reason to think the stories he told of angelic beings coming into his room, of meeting them in the woods, and even the discovery of the golden plates, were true as far as he had knowledge of them. Moroni showed him the untranslated Book of Mormon, except that the story contained within was nothing more than a fictional account designed to launch a great religion. By opening themselves up to him, making their minds available through faith, the subsequent generations of Mormons could function as conduits through which Moroni’s hoards might return to this world.

I have come to learn that the conspiracy reaches farther than that single Christian sect, however, and in fact includes the whole of its mother religion, and even those related to it by the book of Yahweh. You see, it was Yahweh who first moved to solidify a hold on the earth, and he did so by spreading his name via the lips of countless faithful.

Neither Moroni nor Yahweh are gods as we use that term. (I have come to doubt whether such a thing as “god” even exists.) Instead, they are best described as demons: extra-dimensional beings who have warred for eternity and have, in part, used our world as their killing field. More about their nature I do not know and I imagine grasping it fully would prove impossible, just as it is impossible to understand the whole of the heavens. Our minds reach only so far.

What little more I can state of the matter is that there exists two competing armies, one under the command of Moroni, the other lead by his nemesis, Yahweh. Moroni’s legions are the Nephites, a people key to the Book of Mormon, though very different than their portrayal would suggest. They are not the original inhabitants of this continent but, instead, alien creatures who have walked these lands in the past and hope to do so again in the near future. Yahweh’s armies are the Lamanites, those cursed and declared evil in Smith’s text. Neither Nephite nor Lamanite is likely the true name of these varieties of creatures, but I’ve discovered no others and so am forced to continue to use them. We should not fall into the trap of placing our faith in Yahweh simply because we know Moroni’s nature. Both beings seek only our subjugation, and both would destroy us all if given the chance.

Hope instead rests with the One Mighty and Strong, a term out of Mormon scripture for the one who will come to see the faith through the end times. I have been able to discover little more except that Moroni appears terrified of him. This I learned from a drunk I spoke with in a back alley in Boston, a man of considerable years who had spent most of them staring into the end of a bottle. I’d found him when my inquiries reminded a visiting professor of a story he’d once heard about an elderly tramp who’s mad rantings had caused terror throughout a sizable portion of New England. After meeting the man, I have to wonder about the sensibilities of the region, if they are so easily spooked by such a seemingly harmless merchant.

Regardless of his reign of terror, the drunk, when I met him, exhibited all the usual signs of excessive and prolonged alcohol intake. He mumbled through his interview with me, but I was able to extract enough information to recognize the significance of this prophesied savior Joseph Smith, Jr. first spoke of in 1832. It is my view now that the One Mighty and Strong is not meant as a hero to Mormonism but is, in fact, the ultimate weapon against the tyranny of Moroni and Yahweh. Moroni sent the particular vision to Smith, working the myth of this person into the Mormon belief structure, so as to excite believers and, in a sense, place them on a lookout should the One appear. Identifying him would then make him easier to dispatch, thereby preventing Moroni’s downfall. Unfortunately, that is all I can say. The drunk man was found dead the following morning, his frozen body propped among some trash in one of the many alleys he called home. I have no evidence, but I suspect foul play.

I implore you, reader, to search this being out. Find the One Mighty and Strong and take whatever actions necessary to assure his survival and victory.

Enclosed with his journal is a document sent to me by post just two weeks ago. It is my grandfather’s handwriting, I’m sure, but, as is clear, the text is not a language currently known. I’m inclined to believe it is the same alphabet as the purported Book of Mormon and, if so, only my grandfather’s seeing stones, the Urim and Thummim, can read it-for these are what he used to do his translating. Find them. Discover his message. And put a stop to the conquest of Moroni and Yahweh. This I beg.