"Yeah, Mom….. I just arrived here. No, I found the keys; they're beneath the flowerpot. Seriously, Grandma needs to find another spot; that was way too obvious!"
CLICK
"Yeah, I'm just entering the house…. Yeah, I'll call you after I settle in."
Damien ended the call as he entered the house with a luggage bag in his hand as his gaze roamed around the house.
With a tired expression threatening to overtake his face, he sighed, "Haa, it will take forever to sell this place."
His eyes then roamed around the place. As soon as he entered, a flight of stairs met him from the left, with a small bathroom to his right.
In front of him is a large hall that was connected to the kitchen to the left, while the door to the backyard stared right at him, standing right opposite to the entrance.
He then removed his shoes, placing them on the stand tucked beneath the stairs, and dragged his luggage bag into the hall.
And as soon as he reached the sofa in the middle of the room, "Ahh, I'm beat!" He groaned aloud and fell on top of it with a creaky thud. Of course, even the sofa was older than him in this place.
And after taking a moment, Damien slowly closed his eyes, falling asleep almost instantly. He drove for almost fifteen hours straight, and his body felt sore all over. Although it was a good thing that the road's condition was good, sometimes even that failed him.
He only woke up after a couple of hours of sleep, and it was nighttime by now. The owl's hoot echoed around the house, reminding him just where he was—in the middle of nowhere.
Deciding to eat, he quickly went back to his car in the barn and brought back a stack of frozen pizzas that he bought beforehand, predicting an emergency just like this.
Throwing a slice in the microwave, he called his mother, and after a few rings, she picked up, "Hey, honey!"
"Hey, Mom. Sorry, I just fell asleep; I was too tired."
"It's okay, honey. I, too, returned a few minutes ago."
"Uh, Mom, can you put on Grandma? I still haven't looked upstairs, but there's a lot of stuff in here. I want to know which stuff is important to her and which stuff I can sell."
"Sure, honey. Just give me a second."
Just then, the microwave pinged, and Damien pulled out the slice and stuffed his mouth, groaning in satisfaction.
And as he was eating his slice, his grandmother's voice sounded from the other side, "Honey?"
"Hwey Grawndma, How arwe youu dowing?" He barked while munching on the pizza, causing his grandmother to chuckle, "Honey, you shouldn't talk while you eat."
"Swwrry!" he then gulped all the food in his mouth before he grabbed a bottle and drank a gulp of water.
"Ah, sorry, Grandma. I was too hungry. Anyways, I'm looking around the hall right now, and there's a lot of stuff. I want to know if you have anything important here before I move on to sell these things."
"Yes, honey. I haven't really brought anything with me except my clothes when I came to your house. There are a lot of important things of value there, especially some things that your late grandfather cherished a lot."
"Hmm, okay then. Can you make a list of which are important? I will separate them and bring them back when I return."
".... Okay, honey. I will get it ready by tomorrow."
"Good…"
Damien then went on to talk to his mother and grandmother for another hour before his grandmother said, "Honey, I know you bought some frozen pizzas, but they're just plastic! They're unhealthy for you. I know you can't cook, so I asked my friend to bring you some food while you're there. She lives a couple of miles down the road. She will bring you some food in the morning, but you should go to her house from then on."
"Okay, thanks, Grandma! I love you both!"
""We love you too, honey!""
Damien then ended the call before he crashed on the couch. He didn't have the energy nor the patience to walk upstairs and sleep on the bed. And again, almost immediately, he fell asleep.
...
The next day,
CLICK
Damien opened the back door as he rubbed his eyes; he had just woken up. Walking outside, he was greeted with a vast open field filled with dried, dead plants.
He knew that if his grandfather were to see this, he would definitely have a heart attack all over again.
Shaking his head, he began to walk into the fields as he pulled out his phone, video calling a woman named Cynthia.
It took a while, but Cynthia answered the phone, and the screen lit up with her image. She was a mature beauty with long, jet-black hair and deep green eyes. In her background was a large, open office where employees worked tirelessly for their upcoming project.
"Hey, Cynthia. Sorry to take a leave at this time, but something urgent came up."
"It's okay," the woman answered, "but I expect you to pay me back once you return!" She added with a sneaky smile.
"Whatever you say, my queen!" Damien replied.
"Tsk! You and your glib tongue…" The duo continued to talk as Damien walked in the field. Cynthia was actually his boss, but they always acted as friends and were always seen together in the office, courtesy of Cynthia's daughter, who was his college mate.
"Ah, and also—Ah! Fuck, that hurts!" Suddenly Damien winced in pain while his face morphed into a scowl as he jumped around.
"Damien, what happened?!" Cynthia exclaimed in worry, The image was too shaky to discern what happened to him.
"Ah, it's nothing. I just stumbled into a rock!" he groaned with a frown, earning a chuckle from Cynthia. "You should watch where you're going, you know. Not just flirting with your boss."
"Tsk! I'll call you later!" he exclaimed with a frown while ending the call, which only made Cynthia laugh out loud.
He then stared at the rock in irritation, only to be bewildered by the unique shape of the rock.
It was a black rock, shaped like a milestone. And on it was an engraving that he didn't understand.
"What is this…?" He mumbled to himself as he looked around. He noticed that he walked away past the fields. He was still inside the farm; his grandfather didn't just plant the whole farm due to his old age and only planted a quarter of it.
Damien continued to stare at the stone, and the more he did so, the more he felt as if he was looking at something ancient.
Curious, he decided to dig it out. "I mean, what could go wrong?"
He then grabbed it firmly and began to shake it, trying to wedge it out slowly, and after a few minutes of struggling, it came out.
The rock was two feet in height, of which half of it was underground, and was a foot in width. But as he looked at the hole, his brows furrowed once again, as underneath the stone was a box.
It was covered in dirt and was roughly about nine inches long and six inches wide. He picked up the box as he raised his eyebrow, surprised by the heavy weight of this tiny box.
"What are we looking at…?" he mumbled out loud in curiosity. Deciding to bring it back, he left the field, leaving the stone behind, as it was obvious that it was just used to identify the place this box was buried in.
Entering the house, Damien directly went into the kitchen and put the box under the tap. After washing the box and patting it with a towel, he then sat at the dinner table with the box on the table.
It was a black box; its color mirrored the stone, and its texture was similar to wood. And on the box itself were engravings, designs etched right into it, and it was filled with gold.
On its edges was a floral design, a flower vine circling around its edges with a few bats hanging down from it, and in the center was a huge golden moon with the shadow of a bat etched into it.
He was getting more and more curious; he didn't believe in the occult or the supernatural and wasn't afraid to poke his nose where he shouldn't, and since the box itself wasn't locked, he opened it.
Inside the box were two things, a vial and a parchment. The vial contained a red liquid that had small black dots floating in it, while the parchment paper was rolled neatly and tied by a small thread.
"Hmm," Damien hummed as he took out the contents, placing the vial on the table. He opened the parchment paper to see what was in it.
"What the…?" Written on the parchment paper were words unknown to him; he couldn't understand a single line. But he did notice that one of the symbols resembled the symbol he found on the stone.
He then pulled out the phone and clicked a photo of the paper and ran it through AI, hoping it would trigger something. But no matter which program it was, it couldn't identify the language.
Disappointed, he gave up on translating the thing, concluding, "It might be an ancient dead language…or maybe a prank by some conspiracy theorists."
With the only thing left being the vial, he lifted it up and began observing it for a few moments before he pulled out the cork, only to once again be surprised.
"What the….?!" The moment he pulled out the cork, a sweet fragrance exuded out of the vial, salivating his mouth. It smelled sweet, too sweet in fact, almost like honey with a hint of rose in the back.
"This is definitely a prank!" he exclaimed confidently, "Although the stone, the box, and the paper were good. This juice gave it away. I mean, at least make it smell like blood if you want to scare people!"
He continued to observe the vial while commenting on how obvious all of this was, but as he inhaled the sweet fragrance of the liquid, he felt the urge to drink the liquid until it reached a point where he could ignore it anymore.
"Just one drop would be fine, right?" He mumbled to himself, and although there was a part of him that suspected it could be poison, he deftly ignored it.
He then tilted the vial just enough for one drop of liquid to fall in his palm. He stared at it for a moment, and with a gulp, he licked the drop off his palm.
BADUMP
His heart thumped while his vision almost blurred. He felt as if the whole world was swirling around him and the urge to drink the liquid flared to an uncontrollable degree.
And before he realises what was happening, Damien lifted the vial and gulped the entire liquid down before he threw the vial away at the wall, shattering into pieces.
He then stood there silently, his eyes seemed to be in a daze, and his body wobbled as if he was drunk. And just as he was about to regain consciousness,
BADUMP
"Ackkk!!!" His heart throbbed once again, and this time—it didn't stop!
Damien felt as if his throat was burning from the inside with a sudden urge to drink while his body trembled with terrible pain.
From the outside, a black goo like liquid oozed out of his body while his muscles visibly moved. If one were to X-ray him they would even see his bones moving too.
His nerves tangled themselves to the bones, curling tighter and tighter until they burst while muscles began to grind against each other, turning themselves into paste and his organs? They exploded, and soon, Damien stopped moving….he died.
But as if by a miracle, his stomach began to glow red and his nerves began to reconstruct themselves. He regrew his muscles and his bones too, began to grow, gaining him about four inches.
"Aackkkk!!!" He then snapped open his eyes, his hands shooting towards his neck while he writhed in pain. This isn't over yet!
His bones crushed themselves, his nerves burst apart, his muscles tore each other and his organs exploded, only to regrow again.
This continued for almost a hundred times before it stopped. By now he had torn off his clothes, and grew almost a foot in height.
He was already muscular, but now, his muscles had become denser than steel each lean, packing explosive power in each of its tendons.
And his eyes, they had turned blood-red shining ominously.
"Aaaackkkk!!!"
Yet his urge to drink never vanished. He held his throat, almost squeezing himself to death as he rampaged around the kitchen.
He wanted to drink something, anything!
Soon, he smashed into the sink and he yanked the faucet with his hand with enough force to break it in half and for the water to spray out.
He grabbed the faucet and put it in his mouth, water filling his stomach, yet, this wasn't it.
This wasn't it…..he didn't need water, he ended something else. Something that would quench his thirst and satisfy him! Just like that liquid in that vial.
But the vial is gone, he drank all of it….
Where could he find it again? He will search for it. Scour the entire earth to drink it again! Where?! Where?! Where?! Whe—-
DING DONG
"Damien? This is Sarah. I'm your grandmother's friend! I bought you food!"
…..found it!