Episode 52: The Silver Sigil

We further investigate the silver sigil we discovered in the Web of Wax (See Episode 48). With the help of our consultant, C. E. Talbot, we attempt to discover just what demonic force is connected to it, and how to destroy it once and for all. Also, Lucas dives into the mystery of the man known as The Perse Enigma.

Content Warning:  demonic forces, occult practices and summoning magic, mysticism, black market, black magic items, alcohol and drug use, manure, golems, exorcisms, physical manifestations

Host: Chris Estes
Writer: Chris Estes & C. E. Talbot
Senior Investigator: Lucas Knight
Special Investigator: Megan Meadows
Special Guest: C. E. Talbot
Sound Design: Chris Estes
Producer: Megan Meadows

Transcript

Malevolent Maine

Episode 52: 

Malevolent Maine is a horror podcast, and may contain material not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

INTRO: 

A breakthrough in our investigation into the King Beyond the Desert. Something nasty haunting one of Maine’s most famous businesses. And a dark history lesson. These are the stories we’ll be sharing in the coming weeks.

Hey everyone, it’s your host, Chris. We’re barreling towards our season finale and you’re not going to want to miss a single episode. Each one comes jam packed with new information, new mysteries, and new horrors. As always, keep up with us on social media at MalevolentMaine. Rate and review the show as that helps attract new listeners. And if you’re willing to spare a few dollars, join our Malevolent Mob on Patreon. Just a small monthly contribution gets you access to all of our side stories, including the two most recent ones - Cardinal Sins and Witch’s Mark - plus access to behind the scenes stuff, some swag, and more exclusive content coming in the future. Thanks for listening!

The air is both hot and cold at the same time, and weighted with a fetid odor. The fire’s wicked gleam casts deep shadows into the corners of the room, making it seem alive. In the center the thing that looks like a man sits immobile, slumped. Suddenly it moves with a jerk, as if a current had been run through it. Its head, drooping at an impossible angle, starts to slowly turn, and its rusty red eyes latch onto yours. Whatever this thing is…it’s alive. And it’s looking right at you.

This is Malevolent Maine.

TITLE SEQUENCE

Stand back, MMers. A few weeks ago we shared the story of our trip to the Web of Wax, Maine’s own abandoned wax museum. There we discovered an extremely rare silver dollar that had been transformed into a sigil, or a magic symbol used in occult practices. We contacted one of our experts in such matters, a man going by the name C. E. Talbot. He informed us that the sigil was in fact his, one he had made several years ago. He advised us that the sigil was dangerous and that we should take measures to destroy it, and at the very last contain it. We stored the sigil as he asked, but we couldn’t let the story rest there. We needed answers. Why did Talbot create this sigil? What demonic entity is it connected to? And how did it get from him to the Web of Wax which hasn’t been active since the late 1990s? 

Let’s start with what we know. The sigil is a 1795 “Flowing Hair” silver dollar, or at least it was until Talbot presumably hammered down the face side and engraved it with his magic symbol. The symbol itself seems nebulous. It appears to twist and and turn on itself like some sort of Mobius strip, though whether it is actually moving or if it is some optical illusion, it’s hard to say. According to Talbot, the coin, which he had turned into a pendant, was used in an evocation ritual with a demonic force. Here’s Talbot from Episode 48, describing the coin.

TALBOT: This is, in fact, a sigil used in an evocation or invocation ritual, a summoning. High Mages of old used to do this sort of thing to have questions answered or to put these entities to a task for the operator, or operators as sometimes the seer and the summoner are different people, and SHOULD be actually, because it's very easy to be sidetracked by these things sometimes, they are full of guile and always completely literal, so the questioner must be very careful with how things are worded, after all, in the beginning there was the WORD, so they are kind of a big deal. With a seer, there is a gap between the mage and the entity that allows for a bit of critical thinking to take place that can help to avoid issues.

Talbot warned us that the pendant was still connected to the demonic entity he had summoned or communed with, and that it could have dangerous, disastrous repercussions if it fell into the wrong hands. 

He told us to place it in a blackened oak box, lined with yellow silk, something that sounds relatively uncommon, but for those of us in the business of cursed artifacts can be found easily enough with the right connections. Our plan was to contain the sigil until we could find a way to destroy it. 

For that we needed to find out more about Talbot’s connection to it, and that was something he wasn’t overly willing to share.

In the meantime, we did our best to investigate how the mysterious pendant had found its way from the bottom of the ocean where Talbot had tossed the accursed thing, to Freeman Belasco’s haunted house.

LUCAS: There were several angles we wanted to follow up on. The first, of course, was how Belasco had found the sigil. But there was also the wax figure it had been placed on. We found the pendant hanging from the neck of an occult figure in the Web of Wax’s Hall of Horrors. The figure was a tall man, almost seven feet tall, with severe features, dark hair and a long mustache and beard. He wore purple robes and a pointed hood, with his face uncovered.

I’ve done a lot of research on cult figures and esoteric groups, but this wasn’t someone I recognized right away. Maine has a relatively short history with organized esoteric orders. There are several, of course, but many branches of the larger ones last for a short time before petering out. The way this man was dressed, in something that resembled a uniform or sorts, made me think he must be part of something more coordinated rather than a lone individual performing occult rituals.

One would think a seven foot tall purple cultist would be easily recognized in Maine history, even of the more… secretive nature. But nothing jumped out at us right away, and as Lucas delved deeper into uncovering this mystery man, I decided to look more into Freeman Belasco.

The owner of the Web of Wax developed a growing fascination with the so-called darker aspects of humanity. As his horror-themed room at the wax museum grew in popularity, so too did his interest. He had started his Hall of Horrors with a few figures representing the popular Universal Monster Movie villains, but soon spread out, adding the likenesses of 80s slasher icons, killer clowns, and real life serial killers. By the end of his tenure at the Web of Wax, the room was filled with a veritable who’s-who of horror icons, along with several real world occult figures.

But it seems his collection was more than just in wax reproductions. We were able to track down several collectors and vendors who deal with genuine occult pieces who had records indicating they had sold items to Freeman Belasco. The story we got from them was always the same.

Belasco was keen to purchase any and all items associated with black magic, occult rituals, or arcane practices, as long as there was clear proof they had been used in actual rites and rituals. He didn’t always offer top dollar and was often outbid by more serious collectors. As one dealer told us, “Belasco was a conman. He was always trying to work a deal and come out on top. He thought he was brilliant, but a smart guy like me or [redacted] could usually get the upper hand on him. He was that crazy for the stuff.”

Belasco always paid in cash, odd currencies and denominations. His money was always good, however, and many of the dealers assumed he had a thing for odd money as well as occult items.

One man, who claims to be an antiques dealer and wouldn’t give his real name, only his professional one, -The Black Fox - told us that Freeman Belasco went into considerable debt over his newfound obsession. The Black Fox showed us a heavily redacted page of an old business ledger dedicated to Belasco. Listed were several well-known Maine occult items including a set of Penobscot Warding Stones, the Katahdin Spirit Whistle, and the Mortimer Hand. There were other things listed which weren’t as well-known or didn’t bear a recognizable name: two black candles on pewter stands, a ritual knife bearing the initials A.S., and a set of human molar earrings dating to 1663. Beside these entries was the price Belasco had paid and for many of them was another number, usually much smaller - the price the Fox had paid to purchase the items back from Belasco when the museum owner had begun to run out of money.

The Black Fox said that by the end of his run, Belasco owed a lot of money, not just on his legal business, but on several more under the table deals that had fallen through. He said he wasn’t surprised that Belasco had disappeared, though he assumed it was to avoid debt more than anything more sinister.

None of the vendors we spoke with knew anything about Talbot’s coin sigil, which isn’t that surprising. But one of them told us that Belasco was a known treasure hunter as well. He scoured yard and estate sales, invested in a metal detector and combed beaches, went looking for lost riches, including Jordan Cooper’s missing money from Episode 49. The man said it wouldn’t surprise him if Belasco had found the pendant on one of his hunts. We asked if Belasco may have been unaware of the pendant’s true nature. The man grew silent for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he told us. “Freeman Belasco was many things, a swindler, a con artist, a fool of the highest order, but he knew his occult stuff. If he had that pendant, he knew exactly what it was.”

LUCAS: I asked many of these collectors about the man in purple. I didn’t have any pictures, because we got out of there so quickly, but I could describe the wax figure in detail. No one seemed to have a clue. I had begun to think Belasco had just invented him, perhaps using pieces from several discarded figures, but then I spoke with a woman named Hester Collins.

Hester Collins is almost ninety years old. Her hair is still mostly black, though shot through with an almost metallic silver. Her eyes are dark and sharp, and though she walks with the help of a black cane topped with a silver wolf’s head, she seemed spry and sharp. She is also one of Maine’s foremost experts on mystical artifacts.

LUCAS: Hester thought for a moment. She closed her eyes and held one gnarled finger to her pursed lips. It was easy to imagine her flipping through some sort of record book or card catalog in her mind. Finally, she sighed and nodded before opening her eyes. “It could be Alaric Thorne,” she said, “He was said to be a giant, though I don’t know if he ever had a devilish mustache and beard like you describe. That could be Belasco’s own dramatic touch. He always had a flair for the dramatic, that one. Most likely got it growing up in the circus.” She clucked her tongue, and I got the feeling she had never cared much for Freeman Belasco. “I never knew Thorne,” she continued. “But I believe my father had some contacts with him. What did the locals call him… ah, yes, the Perse Enigma.”

“Perse” is an older term for a dark purple color, almost gray. A Google search reveals a color a little more muted than the one the wax figure was wearing in the museum. Still, the chances of this being anyone else seemed far-fetched. Two giant purple cultists seemed impossible.

With a fresh lead, Lucas redoubled his efforts, at the same time we were finally hearing back from Talbot.

C. E. Talbot is a hard man to reach. Or perhaps, he’s relatively easy to reach once you know how, but he’s notoriously difficult to hear back from. Often we will send him a question and only hear back from him several months later. He sometimes sends us messages or leaves us voicemails, but when we go to return the call we don’t hear from him for some time.

We don’t know where Talbot lives, exactly. We expect it’s somewhere off the grid, though he seems well versed in the modern world. He does have social media, though he uses several disguises and filters, which he claims are to protect his identity. In fact, we’re not even sure his real name is C. E. Talbot. We can’t find any history of anyone with that name and initial being born in Maine, paying taxes, or owning any land.

Still, he is a knowledgeable contact, and over the years we’ve developed something of a friendship with the man. He knows occultism inside and out and claims to have been a student of nearly every great mage and sorcerer, though we doubt he means personally. He’s well read with a near encyclopedic memory, if a little scatter brained.

We weren’t surprised that we hadn’t heard from him in several weeks, but we were able to finally get a hold of him for some follow up questions about the pendant.

CHRIS: Talbot. It’s good to talk with you again. Uh, last time we spoke you mentioned that the coin we found, the sigil, was yours. How did…how did you make it? And, I guess, why?

TALBOT: Well, that is an exceedingly long story but I will do my best to whittle it down to something, shall we say, useful?  Yes, it's the usefulness of a thing that determines its value.  Though, what is useful in one instance, could be completely useless in another, don't you agree?  A hammer is an excellent tool unless you mean to chop down a tree.  A basket woven of reeds will help you gather more reeds but when faced with the task of holding water it... 

CHRIS: Uh, Talbot…

TALBOT: Of course, I apologize, after years of life I have gathered a strange need to be clearly understood, which is nearly impossible because we all experience the world as a unique perspective, almost its own universe! In fact I was once dealing with one of the Fae, you know how cheeky they can be…

CHRIS: Talbot, can we focus on the sigil?

TALBOT: Yes, yes, apologies... I became involved in the occult at a very young age.  It started with dabbling in pagan traditions and so-called "practical" magick. Small things like filling the left glove of someone who didn't like you with sugar and then secreting it under their mattress where they rested their head to "sweeten" their disposition towards you or anointing candles of different colors and arranging them, just so, on an altar, lighting them in a specific order every day for a certain number of days until the ritual was complete and the goal attained.  I quickly realized that these little spells worked!  Not with any kind of explosive changes in reality, but instead with a subtle almost coincidental tempo that left me wondering if perhaps I was just seeing a coming change and my ego wanted in on this process, to claim it as my own power.  But something in me felt that this was not the explanation, that these cantrips did, in fact, cause a change in reality in accordance with Will.  

CHRIS: Okay, but none of this sounds like greater demonic forces, like we’re talking about with the coin.

TALBOT: From there I began to delve deeper into the older, more obscure traditions of mysticism and "High" Magick.”  I quickly moved into the realm of Evocation, of summoning entities of great power and intelligence.  I wish I could say that I was seeking knowledge of the Universe and its secrets, or trying to help humanity as a whole to better itself, but that was not the case.  In my brashness I sought to increase my own position and personal wealth.  I was young, you see, too young.  

CHRIS: You tried to summon a demon for money.

TALBOT: In these traditions, there is a minimum age at which one is meant to begin this winding path, yet I felt that I was a rather advanced human, one wise beyond my years, more capable of understanding than other people and that I need not heed this limitation.  I was wrong.  One was meant to attain a quarter of a century before they would be initiated into these secrets and interestingly enough, modern science has confirmed that the human brain, the gray matter in which our consciousness swims, does not reach its full development until the age of 25.  I was much younger than that.  Instead of taking my time and following each step, I jumped in near the end so instead of a solid base from which to focus my intent, I had only a flimsy, ephemeral idea of where I was supposed to be moving from.  Though I knew the movements and incantations of the rituals that were meant to protect me and properly bind these entities, I lacked the deeper understanding that was needed to do them effectively. 

CHRIS: So what happened?

TALBOT: For my first operation, I chose an entity called Abraxius, a great power, at the top of the food chain, so to speak.  I sought to bind it to myself as a familiar, of all things!  Even now I am amazed at the impudence of my younger self.  I set out to perform the ritual and so created its sigil first.  These sigils are very important and must be recreated perfectly, not only to be effective but to prevent any kind of misunderstanding as to whom is to be brought forth.  Again, I thought myself to be of greater talent and skill than most and in that insolence I made a terrible mistake.  It was unknown to me, at the time, that certain texts were not correct, you see, they contained small imperfections that were intentional, so that if they were found by those that lacked the proper training, they would be ineffective at least and downright dangerous at worst.  

CHRIS: Like a test to see if you were ready for such a big task.

TALBOT: Unfortunately, the text I had found was one of the latter.  The sigil I had scribed onto that disc of silver was one perverted from the original.  Instead of a King of Demons that would have the power to do whatever I asked of it, I ended up summoning a twisted, malevolent thing that would try to consume everything around it, thus removing the failed operator and everything around them, keeping the secret of the true rituals from those that lacked the proper training.  I fought that horrid thing for three days and the battle nearly broke my mind and consumed me.  But I had created a few other talismans and circles that were not required by the summoning, since this was my first attempt I felt that a few extra precautions couldn't hurt.  They were the only thing that saved my life, however, my memory was overwritten by the entity and I left the experience believing I had achieved my goal and that false pride that impregnated my ego caused me to fail in the completion of the ritual, the dismissal of the entity and the destruction of its sigil.  I only learned of this after you contacted me and I dove deeper into that experience with another energy that shown a light on the truth of my time in that room and what had actually happened. Not Abraxius, but its mutated, infernal cousin, for which there is no name, used its power to cloud my mind and obscure the reality of what transpired, preventing me from banishing it from our world.

Like Talbot said, Abraxius is something of a greater demon or entity in the cosmic hierarchy. In various texts he’s regarded as one of the nine Lords of Hell, the Prince of Three Thousand and Thirteen Demons, and even sometimes referred to as the Three-Headed Goat.

If what Talbot was saying was true, then we were lucky his evocation had gone awry. Dealing with a greater entity like Abraxius would be beyond our means, but the entity Talbot had actually summoned and bound to the coin was a twisted shadow of the demon lord. It was a dangerous thing to be sure, but lacked much of the cunning of its master. While no laughing matter, to be sure, with Talbot’s help, we felt confident we could deal with the entity.

But first, Lucas had made an interesting discovery of his own.

LUCAS: Following up on what Hester Collins told, I looked into the man she had called the Perse Enigma, Alaric Thorne. I had to admit, the Perse Enigma sounded more like a professional wrestler than a mystic, but the coincidences were too much to ignore. The Thorne family had been a prominent one in the Fairfield area during the second half of the Nineteenth Century, after Sewell Thorne returned from the Civil War. They were influential in town, quite wealthy, and well-respected by their community. By the turn of the Twentieth Century though, the Thorne family had begun to…well, change. As near as I can tell Alaric Thorne was born in either 1898 or 1899. His mother, Beryl, was a known opium user and claimed during her pregnancy that she had been sent visions of a new world and that her son would be a leader of men. At least, that’s what Alaric would later claim. Beryl Thorne died two weeks after delivering her child.

Alaric was a big child and grew into a larger man. Records indicate he was six foot ten when he was arrested for disorderly conduct in 1921. Many reports indicate he was something of a gentle giant unless he was drinking. He didn’t often consume alcohol, at least not after his arrest, which was outside the Riverside Tavern. According to the interview the owner of the tavern, Brent Smith gave at the time, Thorne drank two bottles of whiskey and twenty-one pints of beer before wandering out into the streets to pick fights with whomever walked by.

LUCAS: After his incarceration, Thorne emerged a changed man. He swore off drinking, and would often go on long walks in the woods. It was on one of these hikes that he claimed to hear the voice of God. God told him of his plans for the future and that Thorne would have a crucial role to play in all of this. He would inherit the Earth, if he would embrace a new, meeker lifestyle. Thorne started wearing the purple robes he fashioned himself with the help of a local seamstress, as a way of indicating he had been marked by God, and would often go out into the woods to preach. There are few reports of any attending these gatherings, but many knew of Thorne’s “woods talks.”

It was also said that Alaric Thorne practiced a kind of woods magic, something he claimed he had been taught by the Holy Spirit. He would often speak in tongues, and presented many offerings on the makeshift altar he had fashioned from old barn wood doors. He would light different dried plants on fire and use their smoke in his services. There were even some reports that the man took mushrooms of the more psychedelic variety.

For the people of Fairfield, Alaric Thorne wasn’t some sinister figure performing Satanic rituals in the woods. By the 1930s he was something more of the “crazy hippie” type recluse living in a cabin on family property on the edge of the forest. He was a known eccentric, but a relatively harmless one, even if his ways were strange. Many people thought his mother’s drug use combined with his heavy drinking as a younger man may have addled his brain. They gave him the nickname Perse Enigma because not many people understood what he was doing or why he was doing it, but mostly folks just left him alone.

LUCAS: It’s hard to picture the Perse Enigma as the sinister figure we found the pendant on in Freeman Belasco’s Hall of Horrors. I was only able to find one picture of Thorne. In it, he’s wearing his full regalia, holding what looks like a long, white chicken feather up to the sky, and smiling a buffoonish grin. He looks happy, if a bit unhinged. Unlike the figure in the Web of Wax, who wore an almost stereotypical Devil-like goatee and mustache, Alaric Thorne has curly light brown hair and beard, and there’s nothing of the malicious gleam in his eyes of the wax figure. There’s no denying the similarity between the two men. The robe Thorne wears in the picture is almost identical to the ones the wax figure wore, complete with the pointed hood with the open, exposed face. There is also a knife hanging from his belt, similar to the wax figure, though if it’s inscribed with runes and symbols it’s impossible to tell from the faded picture. 

If we had to guess, we’d say Freeman Belasco heard the story of the Perse Enigma, who from all accounts was more mystery than menace, most likely he even saw the same picture Lucas did. He most likely decided that while Alaric Thorne was unique enough to earn a spot in his monster menagerie, the Perse Enigma needed a sinister makeover. Many people from the area might recognize the myth of the giant mystic, but by the 1980s and 90s not many would remember the actual man, who died sometime around 1940. 

LUCAS: My original thought was that this figure had to be connected to a larger occult network, some sort of  organization or group, but it appears I was wrong. From all accounts, Alaric Thorne didn’t follow any prescribed dogma, but instead acted, as he once said, “as the Voice of the Woods commanded,” him to. I think Belasco just liked the idea of a giant, imposing figure in his Hall of Horrors and so he co opted Alaric's likeness added his own more sensational and demonic embellishments.

Which brings us back to the pendant we found around the figure’s neck, Talbot’s sigil. According to Talbot, the sigil was linked to the demon, Abraxius, and as long as it existed it posed a threat to anyone who came into contact with it.

That may explain Belasco’s sudden disappearance. The rumors that he performed some sort of ritual, most likely to get himself out of debt or find more wealth, might indicate that he used the pendant. It’s possible that the entire time he was setting up the Hall of Horrors as an attraction, he was also preparing it for his summoning ritual, trying to impose his will on the very entity Talbot sought. 

If Belasco strayed from his ritual, if he made one small mistake, cut any corners so to speak, the entire thing may have gone wrong. The demon could have…taken Belasco.

Going back and listening to our recordings from our trip to the Web of Wax and looking at our notes, it’s clear we felt drawn to the Hall of Horrors. At the time we mused it was our excitement. For both Lucas and I this was a fond childhood memory, and one of the foundations for the work we do today. But what if there was something else pulling us? If you listen, we discover the pendant, Tom takes it, and we leave rather abruptly. Almost like the sigil wanted to be removed from the wax museum, that it wanted to find someone else to attach itself to.

What if the demonic force Talbot accidentally summoned was pulling us in?

We also noticed there was no trash or litter in the Web of Wax, aside from the decaying figures themselves. The palace looked almost pristine, like the owner had shut it down for the season before disappearing into the night. Compare that to Rand’s Animal Kingdom which Tom and I investigated last episode. Yes, the animal refuge was outdoors and more open to the elements, but even after almost forty years, there were still signs of human debris, trash, old items of clothing, small objects dropped and forgotten.

The Web of Wax had none of that. Even the dust seemed…fresh somehow.

If Belasco attempted to summon Abraxius and instead got its warped counterpart, could he have accidentally opened a portal or a vortex to the demon’s netherrealm? Could this have sucked him in like some sort of demonic sinkhole, and could that have pulled everything else towards it? Maybe drawing all the debris, all the remains of the wax museum towards its infernal core?

It may seem far fetched, but Talbot said the force he summoned wished to consume everything, including the summoner. He had been able to escape because of his protective charms, but Belasco may not have been as lucky.

It was clear to us that the sigil needed to be destroyed and for that we needed Talbot’s expertise.

CHRIS: Okay, Talbot, so how do we destroy the sigil once and for all and send this thing back where it came from?

TALBOT: To even suggest this chills me to the core of my being...

We need to re-summon the entity and close the ritual.  One method is horrid and nefarious and I won't even consider it as it involves the invocation of it into a living human and destroying them both once they are bound.  The other... the other is nearly as awful.  Normally, when we evoke an energy, it is bound within the circle of a black mirror captured in a perfect triangle, this acts as a window through which the seer, or the operator themself, can converse with the demon, keeping it at a distance.  It is usually quite safe as long as everything is performed correctly.  Yet, I have learned that this thing has managed to pull some artifact into its pocket dimension that is protecting it from being bound into the mirror again.  The only way will be to use that diabolical sigil to summon it to this realm of physical existence, to build it a body from an offering of blood and excrement and to then destroy it, once and for all...

Blood and excrement. Great.

Tom and I were out of town investigating Rand’s Animal Kingdom. Which left Lucas and Megan to gather the necessary materials and begin the process.

LUCAS: We double and triple checked just to be sure, both with Talbot and with all of our other sources. While this… construct had to be made with feces, there was nothing in the requirements that said it had to be made with human feces. 

MEGAN: Right. So we went to a local dairy farmer and got… a lot of manure.

LUCAS: We made a scarecrow-like figure. We got some old clothes, boots, and gloves and we stuffed them with the manure. Like kids do around Halloween with raked up leaves.

MEGAN: Only this smelled a lot worse.

LUCAS: We filled an old bag for the head and propped it up in the backroom at the office. The ritual hadn’t been clear about the excrement, but it was about the blood. It needed to be human blood, from the person or people involved in the summoning.

MEGAN: So, Lucas and I pricked our fingers with a silver knife and drew a face on the bag. I did one eye and the nose, and Lucas did the other eye and the mouth.

LUCAS: The finished product was disturbing. It sat in the middle of our back room, one leg out straight the other propped up at some weird angle. Its arms hung limply at its sides and the head tipped back, almost like it was looking up at the ceiling.

MEGAN: Have you ever seen Return to Oz? That 80s movie sequel to the Wizard of Oz with Fairuza Balk as Dorothy? The, uh, dung man, looked like the Scarecrow in that movie. And the face… [kinda shivers in disgust]

LUCAS: I don’t know if we did it on purpose or not, but the face sort of looked like Crinkle Face.

Crinkle Face is a sort of cursed imagery, passed from one person to the next which induces insanity and violence, which we covered in Episode 14. 

The two took the sigil out of the black box where we had stored it, and placed it around the neck of the dung man. Then they prepared the rest of the ritual.

We’re not going to go into too many details about the ritual itself. This is a dangerous evocation, one that’s plagued even a skilled magician like Talbot for years. We don’t want to endanger any of our listeners who may be tempted to imitate the summoning. Candles were involved, each of a different color, and the three black mirrors Talbot spoke of were arranged in a triangle around the effigy. Lines and circles of power and binding were drawn on the floor around all of this in both white chalk and salt, not the regular table stuff you buy in a canister, but Celtic sea salt.

[On Location of the Summoning]

LUCAS: Okay. We’re going to start the ritual now. I’m standing at the southern corner of the room, outside the circles we drew. As a precaution, I’ve asked Megan to stand outside the doorway, in the hall. The door’s open, but we ran a line of holy water blessed by three different holy people from three different religions across the threshold to seal it. [to Megan:] If anything goes wrong…run. Find the guys, tell Talbot, just get out of here.

MEGAN: Got it.

LUCAS:. Okay….ready?

MEGAN: Ready.

LUCAS [begins the ritual]: 

Abraxius-born, dark one of the shadowed abyss,

By the ancient pact, I call upon thee,

From the depths of night, arise and appear,

To this place of summoning, I beckon thee.

[a wind starts to pick up]

By the power of old and the circle’s might,

Abraxius-born, demon of the eternal night,

Cross the veil and heed my call,

Manifest here, within this place.

[the wind grows louder]

MEGAN: Oh my God. It…it’s moving.

The effigy, the manure stuffed form of a man within the summon circle had begun to twitch. Its limbs began to jerk and spasm and its head began to roll around on a neck that didn’t exist.

LUCAS: 

Bound by the light, you shall not remain, 

By flame and force, I shatter your hold, 

Demon of the darkest abyss, 

By this rite, I break your chains.

MEGAN: It’s breathing. I swear to God it’s breathing. It blinked! Its eyes blinked. They can’t do that. They’re just…we painted them on. They - Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. It’s looking at me. It’s looking at me!

LUCAS:

By salt and stone, by light and fire, 

I cast thee out, thou dark foul thing, 

Begone, demon, return to your depths, 

Vanish now from this plane of existence.

MEGAN: It’s standing up. It’s - oh God!

[the dung man burst into flame. A roaring inferno. It’s screaming, a high-pitch demonic wail.] 

According to both Lucas and Megan the dung man stood up. It grinned with a malicious energy and for a moment it seemed poised to pounce. Then, as Lucas finished the incantation, it suddenly burst into flames. The flames quickly engulfed the thing, reaching all the way to the ceiling in a raging inferno. It should be noted that nothing else in the back room caught on fire. The ceiling, where both Lucas and Megan swore the flames reached, was untouched, not a single scorch mark, and the sprinkler system never went off.

LUCAS[in studio]: It flailed around, dripping fire with every movement. It couldn’t escape the circle or the triangle the black mirrors had trapped it in. It started to beat its hands against the air, like it was pounding on a wall…and…I swear it looked right at me. It was screaming, cursing, in whatever demonic language it spoke in.

MEGAN: It was so loud. I…I thought I was going to go insane listening to it. It…it…it saw me. I know it saw me. It looked right at me. Like it was memorizing my face. And…I don’t know. I screamed. I know I screamed. I couldn’t help it.

The dung man collapsed after a few minutes, its individual pieces coming apart as it was consumed by the flames. The fire burned for another hour. Neither Lucas or Megan looked away, intent on making sure nothing escaped the blaze. In the end, after another hour after the fire had burned itself out, Lucas dared to enter the circle.

LUCAS: It was cold. Not like, absence-of-a-raging inferno cold, like dead-of-winter cold. There was actual frost on the ground. The candles had burned out and I threw yellow silk curtains over the three mirrors. There was nothing inside the circle. No remains of the man we had built, no ash or coals. And there was no sign of the sigil. The silver coin had been consumed completely by the flames.

According to Talbot, this means the demon should be banished, whatever mortal form it had, or physical presence in this world, should be destroyed forever. We’re not taking any chances, however.

MEGAN: We swept up all the salt we used and dumped it into a mountain river. We took each of the candles and submerged them in individual basins of holy water for forty-eight hours before melting each one in a bonfire. We boxed the mirrors up in black oak, wrapped in the yellow silk, and we’re sending them off to different magicians and practitioners we know to keep an eye on. One of them is going to Talbot, the other two to trusted friends and confidants.

For now, we’re optimistic. The ritual went exactly as Talbot explained it would. The demon, not Abraxius, himself, but some sort of clone-like minion, should be gone. It should no longer be able to haunt the world and cause harm. Talbot has said it already feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, and we suspect if we were to return to the Web of Wax in a few months, we’d find it full of dust and decay.

We never thought in a million years that we would encounter something as potent and dangerous as this when we visited the wax museum, but if we were able to exile the entity bound to the coin, then we’re thankful it was us who found it, and grateful we were able to finally destroy it.

We won’t know for sure, of course, not for a long time. Many of our wizard and magician colleagues have promised to keep an eye out for signs of this creature, both in our realm and in the ethereal ones, but it’s entirely possible this demon has simply gone into hibernation, weakened and hurt, attempting to reconstitute itself so that one day it can induce more chaos into the world. And for that reason…

Stay safe out there, Maine.

Malevolent Maine is Lucas Knight, Tom Wilson, and Chris Estes.

If you’d like to read more about our investigations check out our website at malevolentmaine.com

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Thank you for listening to Malevolent Maine. 

And as always, stay safe out there, Maine.