This is a harrowing story about a sinister experiment. Squeamish readers are hereby warned. A terror-filled tale depicting an unspeakable perversity. The kind of thing that will most certainly shock moralist conservatives and ethical progressives alike. Images and phrases depicting a most dreadful deed shall not be in short supply.
This is the story of a mendacious act committed by a man called Phil. It is not known why this man was given the name ‘Phil’, nor is it known if him being a man could be of any significance to this shocking tale. Phil was not a property owner who could live off the rent collected from his tenants; he was not a boss who could live off the labour of his employees; and he was not an investor who could live off the interest and profit generated by his investments. He was therefore a wage earner. The job he was given is that of a sound engineer. Why so? Because sound engineering is as good a job as any, and a person needs to have a job to avoid starvation or death by starvation.
Phil became a sound engineer as a consequence of having developed certain skills in sound engineering, itself a consequence of a personal interest in musical sounds and music recording. As such, it can be said that Phil had it good. Not only was he able to earn a living from his job – something which has become increasingly difficult, even impossible – he also had a job that was somewhat related to a personal interest. This is where things get tricky and terrifying. It was this interest in music, particularly in more sordid kinds of popular music readily associated with evil things, that instigated Phil’s journey towards a very nasty activity.
At the time of our story, Phil, a gainfully employed sound engineer in his mid-50s, of relatively good health and living in a relatively good society, was in a rather bad place. His romantic relationship of over twenty years had come to an end. His partner, the woman he had met and fallen in love with after the end of his marriage, had decided that she no longer loved him and had left Phil and their rental house and, more importantly, their cat, Carlos the Jackal. The reason this obviously misnamed cat is important to this story shall be revealed in great, horrible, hair-raising detail in due course. The abundantly lazy, solipsistic ginger cat’s role in this demonic ditty is utterly ghastly.
Phil was now lonely, sad, disappointed, regretful, heartbroken and self-hating. He did not put in a request for stress leave with the boss of the recording studio where he was lucky enough to have stable employment. The overwhelming majority of sound engineers are either self-employed or casually employed. Phil knew this and knew not to push his luck by making too many demands. So he continued showing up for work and doing his tasks despite his emotional state. He believed, after all, in the value of escaping from one’s personal misery by focussing on one’s professional duty. He therefore woke up early every weekday, had his organic coffee and porridge and probiotics, rode his bicycle to work and did as much sound engineering as was expected of a sound engineer. In the evenings, he fed, groomed and interacted with Carlos the Jackal, ate healthy vegetarian meals, and read popular science books about the environment, insects and other planets.
But there remained the problem of the weekends.
Phil didn’t really know what to do with himself on Saturdays and Sundays. It was this tragic unknowing that led to the treacherous trajectory to the evil unknown. Recall that as a young man Phil had been attracted to ostensibly evil music. Heavy metal, death metal and black metal. This attraction had died out, naturally, by the time Phil realised that he was not going to earn a living from listening to and playing these or any other kind of music. He had therefore cut his hair, sold off his heavy, death and black metal albums and T-shirts, and had even sold his electric guitar and amplifier. He had then enrolled in a second university degree, after his initial, professionally useless degree in musicology, to study sound engineering.
This personal, professional and academic transformation had come about following a rather strange, ultimately horrific encounter. Phil’s favourite musicology lecturer had been a rather large, rather loquacious woman called Thelma. Thelma had taken a shining to the shy, skinny, morose young metalhead for reasons that eluded the said metalhead. Thelma had once invited Phil to her office for a chat about his final assignment, and the chat had grown into something like a lively conversation about the origins of heavy metal.
Thelma, much to young Phil’s surprise, had turned out to be one of Australia’s first hardcore heavy metal devotees during the genre’s inception in the late 1960s. The enthusiastic banter at the office of a musicology lecturer in the 1990s concerned the essay that Phil had written about some of the black metal bands of the time. Thelma, after offering Phil a cigarette and then a swig from her hipflask, had told Phil about her time as the bass player of an utterly obscure and entirely forgotten hard rock band in Brisbane thirty years earlier. She and her fellow bandmates had, according to senior lecturer Thelma, started to play the kind of music that would eventually be labelled heavy metal. Screaming vocals, chunky guitar riffs, a driving bassline, and fast drumming.
After this very interesting exchange, Phil had been easily persuaded to visit the middle-aged lecturer at her home in a leafy, isolated suburb of the Gold Coast. He had thought that the invitation to visit the academic’s abode had been extended to other like-minded students, and that visit would entail listening to old records, smoking weed and hearing the older woman’s reminiscences about the better, older days. But this had not been the case. Thelma had been alone, sober and severe. She had told her sole guest that she was dying of an incurable disease, and that she needed an heir.
Phil had been both dismayed and a little delighted to hear Thelma’s unexpected announcement. Dismayed, because he had become quite fond of her; a little delighted, because she had now placed him under the impression that he would be inheriting her earthly possessions. Thelma had then spoken quickly prior to revealing a large, cumbersome object – a cardboard box sealed with masking tape.
She had been a ‘true heavy metal pioneer’, according to her final words spoken to Phil, and that, long before Black Sabbath and other heavy metal pioneers had flirted with ‘dark mysticism’, Thelma and her all-girl bandmates had affiliated themselves with ‘dark mystical’ entities.
Phil had been burdened with the weighty box, and had then been asked to leave. He had been so confused and frankly disappointed by the encounter that he had not bothered with bringing in, opening and investigating the contents of the strange box upon driving back home. It had been in part due to the negative emotions roused by this last meeting with the senior lecturer Thelma – who would eventually be found dead by a door-knocking Mormon missionary – that Phil resolved to leave heavy, death and black metal behind and become a wage-earning sound engineer.
And more than thirty years later, middle-aged, balding, vegetarian, sadly single, after a fibre-rich breakfast of porridge stewed in almond milk, after clipping the claws of an unspeakably lethargic, fat and indifferent cat called Carlos, Phil realised that he didn’t know what to do with himself on a sunny Sunday in an eastern suburb of Melbourne. He knew not to dwell on the grief and self-criticism occasioned by his recent romantic loss, and he also knew that he needed to do something – anything – to keep himself busy to avoid dwelling on grief and self-criticism.
He therefore decided to attend to the somewhat undesirable task of sorting through the things stored in the backyard shed of the large house that he would need to leave in the near future, now that he was no longer living with a partner. This would be an emotionally challenging task, as Phil would no doubt come across many unwanted things abandoned by his ex-partner, things that would only remind him of her and the unspeakable pain that her departure had caused him.
Alas – Phil reasoned with himself – this was work that needed to be done, and it would certainly keep him busy for the rest of the day. He therefore changed into a flannel shirt, put on his headphones, and chose a 1990s song-list on his digital device. Songs by very mainstream bands that he had started listening to after growing out of heavy, death and black metal would motivate him with the potentially unpleasant task of cleaning out the remnants of his failed amorous relationship.
So far so good, all things considered. Phil got to work, hauling cobwebbed suitcases and rusty outdoor chairs out of the shed and dumping them in the backyard, singing along with the lyrics of Top 40 rock anthems of the 1990s. And then something genuinely horrible happened. His digital gadget’s app that organised the song-list misbehaved. It selected a song with screeching vocals, heavy guitar riffs, repetitive bassline, and brutally fast drums. Black metal. Phil’s headphones creaked and his eardrums chafed, and then his eyes fell on a strange, forgotten, unfathomably unexpected thing amid the other things in the shed. A water-damaged, crumbling sealed cardboard box.

* * * 

‘Do you remember Thelma, our lecturer from third year ethnomusicology?’
‘You wanted to see me to ask me that?’
‘Correct. Do you remember her, Emma?’
‘I do. A bit. And?’
‘Did she ever talk to you about her youth, her early years as some sort of occultist, playing in a band that had songs about female pagan deities, worshipping ancient goddesses and demonesses like Lilith and –’
‘What the hell are you on about, Phil?’
‘Should I order us another coffee, Emma? A chia? A decaf?’
‘I’m a very busy woman, Phil. I’ve got a business to run, and things are pretty tough at the moment. I’ve also got my son’s crap to deal with. When you messaged me on Facebook asking us to meet after so many years, I thought you’d have something important to say.’
‘Emma. This is important, very, very important. It could help with your ethical erotic toys’ business, with all your financial worries. I mean it.’
‘You’re not gonna talk me into investing in some stupid get-rich-quick scheme Phil, are you?’
‘No. Well, not really. Listen, Emma. I tracked you down and contacted you because you were also of one of Thelma’s students. You know that she was … basically normal. That she was not some sort of lunatic.’
‘Why do keep going on about her, Phil? What the hell happened to her anyway? Suicide, was it?’
‘No one really knows, and that’s beside the point. She left me something before she died. A gift, if you will. An unfinished project. And, weird as it might sound, I stumbled upon it again recently. So I decided to look into it more closely. And it, well, seems legit.’
‘A treasure map?’
‘That’s not a bad guess!’
‘I’m sick of guessing, Phil. Out with it, or I’m leaving right now.’
Phil opened his mouth, but then pursed his lips. He took a deep breath. He then started telling his old, irritated classmate about what was inside the mouldy, mysterious box. The astral charts, the cryptic diagrams, the Betamax videotapes, the incomprehensible mathematical calculations, the Latin poems, the ceremonial chalice, and the steel dagger. He also told her about the books of philosophy – including the celebrated Phenomenology of the Ghost – which, apparently, shows how ‘the Ghost’ can enter material reality. Phil emphasised that, as a sound engineer and a man with technical knowhow, he could verify the plausibility of such theories. Finally, Phil assured Emma that he had not gone mad, and that the apparent absurdity of what he has told her should not be an obstacle to the two of them working together on the frightening project.
Emma, a shaven-headed woman with dark eye sockets, had listened to Phil’s outrageous proposal with an uneasy expression on her face. She then leant back into the threadbare cushion of the armchair in one of Melbourne’s oldest, most neglected cafés. The wrinkles on her face seemed to have softened. She sighed and agreed to have another coffee.
‘This is bat-shit crazy, Phil. But why me? Can’t you do it yourself?’
Phil shook his head dramatically and his combover shivered atop a creased forehead.
‘No I can’t. I absolutely bloody can’t. I love him too much. He’s all that remains of my love life. We … my ex and I, we picked him together. He’s like the child we never had.’
‘You’re speaking in riddles again Phil. Who’re you talking about?’
‘My cat, Emma! Carlos!’
‘You serious?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘That’s such a fucking cliché, Phil. That’s evil.’
‘Of course it is, Emma. But that’s the whole point.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there has to be a transgression. A moral outrage. Something that deeply, irreversibly wounds one’s sense of self. Something that permanently negates one’s moral values.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘No, Emma. Listen. It’s all in one of Thelma’s books. Taboos have a functional value. This … experiment, it has nothing to do with superstition, the supernatural, the Dev–’
‘The hell it doesn’t!’
‘We won’t be conjuring anything that’s not already inside us. Thelma calls it the will to power, after the philosopher Nietzsche of course. It’s like this force that my morality has been holding back, and it I transcend my moral values, my sense of self, then I could connect with this unbelievably powerful energy –’
‘Called Satan.’
‘Well, according to Thelma, Satan is a masculinist patriarchal monotheistic name imposed on the primordial, primarily feminine source of –’
‘Oh I don’t give a fuck what Thelma said, Phil. Just answer one question. Are you sure it’ll work?’
‘Yes, I am. I’ve done some initial tests. With insects and bugs only, of course. And also the warm corpse of a freshly deceased roadkill possum. It’s produced promising results.’
‘So why me then, eh? Don’t bullshit anymore, Phil. Why me?’
‘Because, Emma, I remembered some of the stories you used to tell people when we were drunk or stoned, stories about life on your parents’ farm before coming to university. About being a country girl. About putting down sick animals.’
‘You’re out of your mind, Phil.’
‘I’m not, Emma. I’m sure about this. It has to be done, and there’s only one way I can do this, but I can’t do it myself. I love him too much. I need someone else to do it for me, while I watch them do it, while I am sickened by watching them do it.’
‘You’re one sick son of a bitch. And if I tell you to fuck off?’
‘Well, then you’re saying fuck off to what could be the greatest event in your life. An unbelievable transformation. Power, success, love, you name it, Emma.’
‘Go fuck yourself, Phil.’
‘So what do you say, Emma?’
 ‘I just told you. Go fuck yourself. What happened to that coffee, anyway?’

* * *

On the 13th minute of the 13th hour of the 13th day of the 13th month – 1:13pm on 13 January – Phil, the lonesome sound engineer, and Emma, the financially fraught merchant of erotic accessories, knelt on the floor of the emptied shed at the back of Phil’s house. This kind of evil act is classically nocturnal, but the need to perform the deed according to the temporalities of number thirteen resulted in an overly well-lit, early afternoon communion with the Dark Side.
The numerical aspect, the chalk pentagram drawn on the cement floor, and the tarnished steel dagger struck Emma as ludicrous clichés. But Phil had insisted on arranging the event according to the instructions from the battered cardboard box. Such tropes would directly evoke the demonic in the minds of the participants – Phil had reasoned with Emma – and such an evocation was the pillar of the success of their sordid exercise.
Phil began to chant some nonsense in a language he could hardly understand, mispronouncing every single word. He then sheepishly glanced behind him at a furry, breathing orange bulk on a pillow. Carlos the Jackal the cat had been tranquilised, perhaps unnecessarily, seeing as his normal state was one of interminable sleep.
Phil couldn’t bring himself to lift and place the drugged animal on the macabre chalk drawing. He directed his moist eyes towards his anxious accomplice. Emma stood up.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Phil.’
She walked around him and picked up the comatose cat and nearly dropped the beast on the sacrilegious symbol.
‘Gentle, Emma. Please be gentle with –’
‘Fuck off, Phil. We’re about to kill the poor bastard.’
‘No, you are, Emma. You’ll be doing .. what needs to be done. I’ll be reciting the next section of the Carmina Sacrificii.’
‘Get on with it then.’
Phil diverted his gaze from the sleeping Carlos towards the yellowed sheets of paper in his trembling hands.
‘Destrue bona tua, immolare quod amas. Leva pugionem … Emma, that apparently means – oh God – that means, raise the dagger.’
‘Fine. Pass it to me.’
Phil could not do that, immobilised by a fusion of deep disgust and an intensification of his characteristic cowardice. Emma signed and stepped over the blissfully snoring sacrifice and took the sharpened blade by its ornate hilt.
‘Now what?’
‘Now … imaginary malum, desideres malum, facti sunt mali … Malum, Emma, it means evil …’
‘Alright. So it fucking does. Let’s get this over with.’
She was certainly not happy to be doing this, but her business was very much on the cusp of bankruptcy, and her son had just lost his job prior to impregnating his girlfriend. Emma would need to plunge the glorified knife into the unconscious animal, according to all the mumbo jumbo that Phil had brainwashed her with, in order to access a power that would radically change her fortune. But she had not really been indoctrinated by Phil. She had convinced herself that something drastic needed to be done to turn her life around, and slaughtering some defenceless domestic animal was exactly the sort of vicious thing that would break with her lifelong habit of being too nice, too dutiful, too accommodating, and too ‘resilient’.
How Emma despised that word. She was done with putting up with the rotten hand that life had dealt her. She gritted her teeth, tightened her fist around the dagger’s handle, lifted it and then forced it down upon the shiny carroty coat of the unsuspecting cat.
‘No!!!’
Emma heard Phil’s howl at the exact moment that the tip of her blade tore into the flesh. She lurched back and let go of the dagger. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The flesh that she had torn was not the cat’s. It was Phil’s. Phil’s neck, to be precise. She had ripped open Phil’s throat with unintended precision.
‘Phil … you fucking idiot …’
Despite his best intentions to summon his inner Lord of Darkness to use its will and power to seduce and win back his estranged ex, Phil had not finally been able to have Emma kill his beloved, innocent cat. Perhaps automatically and without anything like a moral decision, he had thrown himself between the dagger’s tip and the cat’s body. He was now on the floor, chocking, convulsing, and bleeding rivulets of blood.
Emma stepped back towards the shed’s door, aghast, appalled and angry. She didn’t know what to do or what to think about she’d done. Had she just committed murder, or was it manslaughter, or had she unwittingly assisted with a suicide? Was Phil dying, or could he be saved? Should she call an ambulance, or the police, or make a run for it, or clean up first, or maybe kill herself, be done with her horrible life, with all the worries and nightmares and –
‘Emma. Good work. Truly.’
She stifled a scream and almost fainted with shock.
‘I must say, this is an unexpected outcome.’
Emma fell to her knees and stared at the weirdest, most diabolical thing. An unhealthily fat cat, woken out of his slumber, covered in his former owner’s sticky blood, speaking to her. Yes, the cat was really talking.
‘I’m afraid I could not allow you to slay him.’
Carlos the Jackal, smiling and glistening red, spoke in Phil’s voice, albeit a more refined, more confident version of it. He sauntered over the ritual site, leaving bloody pawprints across the five-pointed star. He approached Emma, sat in front of her, and began licking his front paws. She struggled to speak.
‘What … the fuck … are … you?’
‘I suppose I’m your familiar now.’
‘My … what?’
‘It’s all in Thelma’s notes. We must take them with us. Alongside Carlos’s, or should I say my, litterbox.’
‘Where … to?’
‘To your place, of course. You’ll be looking after me hereon.’
‘What … about …’
‘My old body? I’m afraid that’s your problem. I can try to help, but I very much doubt I could dig much of a grave in the backyard. Perhaps that good-for-nothing son of yours could help?’
‘May … maybe … but …’
‘Not buts and maybes, Emma. The ritual has been a tremendous success, although, I must say, I am rather hungry, and I have quite enjoyed the taste of blood. To be frank, I always hated being a vegetarian as a human. I’d like some raw meat, please. Beef or chicken mince. Could that be arranged?’
‘I … suppose … so.’
‘Very good. Now, I have to empty my bladder. And once you’ve disposed of my human corpse, I’ll tell you all about the amazing things we shall do together. Truly amazing things.’
‘Like … what?’
‘Oh wait and see, dear Emma. You just wait and see. Far more extraordinary things than sound engineering or selling vibrators. Oh yes, amazing things.’
‘I … I just … want to be … happy.’
‘Don’t we all, dear. Don’t we all.’