Estelle Ana Baca

Month: August 2010

  • Valac the Demon, Part II

    Back to Valac the Demon, Part I.

    Before I return to Valac, it’s important to understand something about how demons work. Present circumstance forbids me from explaining precisely why demons do what they do—Estelle shakes her head and mouths, No! Not now. Not yet.—but for the meantime, suffice it to say that it’s a given that they have it out for humanity.

    Demons are indeed powerful. They’re stronger than humans, and there are even some demons who are stronger than some angels. (However, as an Archangel, I’ve yet to meet a demon who would dare cross my path and not expect swift annihilation.) You might ask yourself, “If they have it out for humans, and they’re stronger, why don’t they just take over the world?”

    Not that they haven’t tried. But humans are a resilient species. Every attempt to subjugate them has been repelled with defiance. Such as the time—oh, no? OK. Furthermore, humans have a purpose that—not even that? Very well then.—More shaking of the head from Estelle. Apologies.

    Back to Valac, then.

    Throughout the assault from the boys of Fontainebleau, Valac maintained his shape as the wealthy young boy, feigning the victim with a red face and tears, volleying with childish threats that he knew would cause the boys to chase him as he ran off. Then Valac, as the boy, hid. The boys looked for him, and they voiced aloud their fantasies of how they would punish the little boy when they found him.

    Valac watched in amusement, for he had dematerialized, occasionally appearing as a wisp in the corner for the boys to chase. After the better part of an hour, the boys had lost interest and were more interested in harassing a local girl. The demon then took the shape of a young man of about eighteen wearing the uniform of the newly formed French Republican Army. He strutted past the boys, and pretending to show outrage for their idle behavior, he admonished them for their laziness. He appealed to their innate childish recklessness and told them all to enlist in the Army, for France had wars to fight.

    By the next day, all six boys had been sent off to assist in the crushing conflict between the Republicans and the Royalists that had arisen near the west coast of France, the War in the Vendée. Valac hung around, assuming the shape of various soldiers, ensuring that each boy met his end in a gruesome fashion. The eldest boy was trampled to death in a surge. The youngest boy, who served faithfully as a little drummer boy, was blown up in a cannon blast. Valac nearly brimmed over joy when the last boy died viciously at the hands of the Royalists.

    However, Valac had no idea that that fourteen-year-old boy, the last of the six boys, was destined to become legend. His name was Joseph Bara, and to this day, he is celebrated as a hero of the French Republic. How he met his end is the reason for his fame: he was captured by the Royalists. Valac was well aware of Joseph’s inner terror and unwillingness to die, and the boy already had a plan in mind to beg for his life. Valac couldn’t have Joseph being returned to Fontainebleau in one piece, so he took over his body and began to pronounce a laundry list of rude names all directed at the Royalists captors. The Royalists were already blood thirsty, and they had no patience for a Republican brat spouting curses at them. They gave him one last chance to recant, and they ordered him to declare, “Long live the King!” to save his life.

    Internally, Joseph fought the demon’s hold over his body and mind, but he was no match for the Apokomistis. Valac quieted the boy, and said, “Long live the Republic!” instead.

    The soldiers were slightly kinder than Valac. At least they made sure that Joseph died quickly.

    The Royalist soldiers were captured later that day, and one of them let slip Joseph’s seeming bravery. Word spread throughout the Republic of Joseph’s bravery, and Valac followed the path of the story, amused beyond comprehension that his—and not Joseph’s, the poor boy—defiance of the Royalist soldiers served to foment further hatred between the factions.

    Valac remained in Paris for a while, while the story turned to myth turned to the cornerstone of a religious devotion to the lad, and he was immensely intrigued that one of the Republic’s strongest (and rather blood lustful in himself) supporters, a painter named Jacques-Louis David, offered to immortalize the boy in a painting.

    David debuted his painting in 1794, the year after Joseph’s death. It wasn’t so much an accurate tribute to how Joseph died—Jean-Joseph Weerts came far closer with his representation almost a century later—as it was an odd combination of praise for the Joseph’s purported demigod-like bravery through its neo-classicist themes and an indication of David’s own, shall we say, varied and unusual tastes.

    Given even the slightest hint of corruption of the soul, Valac is ever intrigued. Valac followed David for a few days, and it was there, in David’s studio, that he uncovered an entirely new opportunity among a throng of hungry and ambitious young artists all desperate for immortality in one respect or another.

    (Time’s up. More on the next day of Ariel. Dominus tecum.)

    Charles Moreau-Vauthier, Mort de Joseph Bara
    The Death of Joseph Bara by Charles Moreau-Vauthier

    On to Valac the Demon, Part III.

  • Valac the Demon, Part I

    Valac is an ancient demon, and just as the word упир has changed over the centuries of human history, so has his name. He answers to Volac, Valax and Valu, the latter pronounced with a nice French-sounding u at the end. Sometimes he can be even summoned as Moloch whenever Moloch himself is out of reach.

    Valac's Sigil
    Valac’s Sigil as it was not altogether erroneously recorded in the Lemegeton, the Lesser Key of Solomon

    Humans have created their own classification systems for demons over the last few millennia. Byzantine writer and politician Michael Psellos dreamt up one of the most fantastically elaborate systems back in the eleventh century. He wrote (and many others copied) that there were demons of the Empyreal (the atmosphere), the Aerial (the air), the Subterranean (underground), Aqueous (all bodies of water), Terrene (land) and Lucifugi (exclusively nocturnal). Mr. Psellos wasn’t so much wrong as he was overcomplicating something fairly simple, like inventing categories for pencils based upon their length after they’ve been sharpened for the first time.

    There are only two categories of demon as recognized by angels: the older and stronger demons, known as the Apokomistai (Ἀποκομισταί, singular Ἀποκομιστής), and the young and weak demons, known as Nekudaimones (Νεκυδαίμωνες, singular Nεκυδαίμων), commonly shortened to Nekus. Whereas a Neku must possess a human or animal in order to have a corporeal form, an Apokomistis is capable of taking whatever corporeal or non-corporeal form he or she wishes. Of course, if any demon were to choose to inhabit a cloud in the upper atmosphere, he or she could, but as humans have firmly established themselves as ceaseless forms of entertainment to demonkind, most demons opt for human forms.

    Valac is an Apokomistis. He only answers to a handful of other Apokomistai and generally keeps to himself, unlike most of the other most powerful demons, who are typically accompanied by an entourage of Nekus. He is frequently sighted and summoned by humans, and he has a reputation for appearing as a child who uses his seeming innocence to lure willing victims to terrible ends. In fact, you’ve probably heard about some of Valac’s greatest crimes and never knew it. Have you ever heard of the Children’s Crusade? Or the Pied Piper of Hamelin? Those were both Valac, leading children away to certain death. Some of his lesser-known but more ghastly feats took place in France, not long after the Revolution.

    In the months before the Bastille fell on July 14, 1789, a clutch of Apokomistai and supporting Nekus had been irresistibly attracted to the streets of Paris by the kind of turmoil that eventually leads to bloodshed. The demons dug in and transformed the French Revolution into a ruthless affair that would usher in almost eighty years of intermittent unrest, conquest and, at its worst, horrific civil war.

    Valac arrived in France in May of 1789, at the invitation of the Apokomistai Astaroth and Mammon. Over the next fifty years, he showed up wherever he felt he could do the most damage to the French. Valac, Belial and a squadron of Nekus participated in the Reign of Terror from June 1793 to July 1794 that saw the deaths of tens of thousands of humans (although Kimeries himself rightfully claims the responsibility for having caused it).

    On occasion, Valac would find himself bored with the warring factions and preening Nekus, and he would set off on his own to satisfy his need for human flesh and blood. He was on his way to find a battle or even a minor skirmish to occupy his time when he accidentally discovered a whole new opportunity.

    Fontainebleau is a town to the south and east of Paris. It had been a popular retreat for the French monarchy over the prior centuries, and so it was no stranger to the violence of the Revolution. On the 23rd of Fructidor, Year 1, in the newly adopted and quickly discarded French Republican Calendar (more commonly recognized as September 9, 1793), Valac was passing through Fontainebleau disguised as a young boy of about eight years of age, when he came across a group of six idle teenaged boys. The eldest of the boys was fifteen, the youngest was barely eleven, and they were all from peasant families.

    Valac, like most demons, has a sincere appreciation for money and everything its appearance affords them. As he passed the group of boys, they couldn’t help but notice his wealthy-looking attire, even though he was curiously unaccompanied and travelling with purpose in his step. The boys had all heard plenty from their non-landed families about how miserable life had been under the King and before the Revolution, and they couldn’t pass up the chance to take it out on what appeared to be a weak child with money.

    The eldest of the boys initiated the torment with a vile taunt. He was soon joined by the younger boys, and they all took, very unwisely, to throwing stones at the disguised demon.

    (To be continued later. Dominus tecum.)

    On to Valac the Demon, Part II

  • UPYR! Part III & Conclusion

    Back to UPYR! Part II.

    …her life had seemed to fall apart. yes yes yes. End of sentence.

    Before we return to our history of the servant woman Aleksandra, there are two things that you must know about demons: one, demons love to pose as gods, and two, if they can sniff it out, they will never miss a blood sacrifice.

    This occasion was no different. A demon called Valac was in the vicinity, and he was enticed by the miserable scene. And so, just when Aleksandra couldn’t possibly have felt any more dejected, Valac assumed a shape that matched her inner visualization of Perun, put his hand to her shoulder and assured her that her sacrifice was more than acceptable.

    Aleksandra was the very picture of shock. She had always believed in Perun, but never had she imagined that she was worthy of a personal visit. Valac as Perun glowed faintly in the dark of the woods, and he smiled brightly, assuring the poor servant woman that she was worthy of his attention. When she recovered her senses, she threw herself at his feet and begged him to rescue her from the court of the disbelievers. Valac petted her head and promised to rescue her on the following night at midnight, all the while nibbling on the bit of flesh she’d hewn off for Perun.

    The servant woman wiped her tears away. Although she was exhausted and weak from the blood loss, she felt relieved for the first time in weeks. She had kept her promises to Mariya, and she was finally going to be rewarded.

    Valac disappeared after making additional promises to return for her, taking his glow with him. Aleksandra caught her breath for a few long moments while she allowed her eyes to readjust to the darkness of the wood. She was preparing to stand when she heard a twig snap behind her, and a pit settled in her gut when she realized that she hadn’t been alone in the woods.

    The darkness had obscured Gleb’s expression, but it was clear to her that it was full of malice. He whispered that he had seen her evil treachery in the woods, and that if she made even the quietest complaint that he would not hesitate to let the Prince know that she worshipped false gods.

    Aleksandra was filled with terror, but she also recognized that she had a god—a god who had just promised to save her, at that!—in her corner. So she screamed. She screamed as loud as she could.

    Her scream carried far, even though she had travelled deep into the woods. In the distance, the palace guard took up arms and shouted to each other to search for the disturbance.

    Gleb panicked. Aleksandra continued to scream, and Gleb understood that the only way for him to stop her scream was to stop her throat. So he stopped her: he put his hands to her neck until Aleksandra could scream no more.

    The boyar was furious that he had destroyed so lovely a creature. He knelt next to her, uncertain as to which vile action he wanted to perpetrate on the destroyed woman.

    Remaining true to his degenerate self, Valac hadn’t left the woods. He had stayed to watch the whole ghastly murder play out. With the taste of flesh still on his tongue, he felt compelled to toy with the humans, so Valac entered Aleksandra’s poor, lifeless body and animated her corpse.

    Gleb was still kneeling over Aleksandra’s body when he was suddenly thrown onto his back. He looked up in utter horror to see that Aleksandra had pinned him to the forest floor, and she had a vicious, ugly grin on her strangely illuminated face. With a burst of unanticipated strength, he broke free and ran toward the palace, but he was no match for the demon inside the body of the dead servant woman. Just as they reached the edge of the woods, Valac overtook the boyar, and the demon, in Aleksandra’s body, bit into the warm, tender flesh of Gleb’s neck and subdued the boyar without much effort.

    All the while, the palace guard had spread out in search of the source of the scream. It wasn’t long before one of the guards happened upon Valac possessing Aleksandra, feasting upon the throat of a convulsing Gleb, with that same vicious, ugly grin on her face. The guard recognized Aleksandra and was frozen for a moment by his revulsion. Only one word came to mind, and it was the epithet that had been uttered about her behind her back. He cried, УПИР!

    Good news travels fast, but slander travels faster. Before the end of the night, everyone within the palace of Kiev was unable to sleep, for word had spread that the упир Aleksandra had murdered the boyer and was on the loose.

    Helena wept over the body of her husband, and her grief dared her to demand from the Prince Vladimir and Princess Anna why they hadn’t believed her when she said that the servant woman had been nothing other than an evil, blood-drinking упир.

    And упир, after it’s been transliterated and contorted over several centuries to fit inside the Romance and West Germanic languages, starts to sound very much like the word vampire.

    Poor Aleksandra.

    I’ll tell you more about Valac on the next day of Anael. Dominus tecum.

  • UPYR! Part II

    Back to UPYR! Part I

    Where were we? Oh, yes.

    On the morning following the Baptism of Kiev, Aleksandra was summoned to assist in attending to one of the visiting boyars, Gleb of Smolensk, and his wife Helena. Gleb was immediately taken with Aleksandra’s understated beauty, and the objects of his fascination never escaped an encounter with the boyar without harm.

    Helena knew all too well of her husband’s wicked ways, but she loved him still. When she sensed his intentions for the servant woman, she found it difficult to conceal her jealousy and wanted to eliminate her competition. Uncertain how to act, Helena ordered her own servant to follow Aleksandra and learn everything she could about her.

    Helena’s servant girl reported back her mistress after a week. The boyar’s wife, who was born a Christian, was delighted to discover that Aleksandra appeared to be less than enthusiastic about having Christ in her life. Prince Vladimir had made it clear that paganism was no longer allowed in his Christian state, and so Helena found it all too easy to discredit her rival. That evening, while in the company of her peers at court, she let it slip that she worried that Aleksandra was an упир (which is insufficiently transliterated into Roman characters as upyr and pronounced vaguely like ooh-peer). Even though she pronounced it with the leaning drawl of her native dialect, everyone knew what she meant. Everyone knew that Helena believed that the servant woman Aleksandra was a witch.

    Poor Aleksandra hadn’t noticed that the boyar’s wife had it out for her, for she had been too busy trying to avoid the boyar himself. Gleb had made a habit of accosting her at every opportunity. Fortunately, all of his attempts had been foiled by the luck of someone turning the corner to interrupt his advances, giving Aleksandra the split second she needed to sneak away from him.

    The boyar’s persistence frightened her. She set a chair against her chamber door each night to prevent him from entering her room while she slept, and before she drifted into a deep sleep every night, she prayed to Perun to reward her faith and service with the punishment of those who didn’t recognize the lightning god’s awe and might.

    As Midsummer approached, life grew still more difficult for Aleksandra. Not only had the boyar pursued her without relent for more than two solid weeks, but she had also been ordered to handle some of the more difficult work around the court. She didn’t complain, for she honored Mariya’s dying wish to serve the court despite vehemently disagreeing with the Prince’s conversion to Christianity. However, it was worrisome to notice that the nobility were punctuating her name with whispers of contempt for reasons she didn’t understand.

    Worse still was that the feast of Perun was on the first of August, and she realized with despair that she would have to make her sacrifice to honor the great god in secret, for none of the other servants in the court would dare to make the sacrifice with her for fear of being unfairly accused of acts of high treason. She also knew that she wouldn’t be able to obtain any animals to offer Perun, for the gamekeeper kept track of the animals for consumption and would notice if any went missing. She knew that all that she had to offer were her own flesh and blood.

    On the eve of the first of August, Aleksandra lifted a bowl and a carving knife from the kitchen. A few hours after night fell, she sneaked out of her chamber and listened carefully for the guards behind a column near the eastern palace gate. The guards lazily relaxed their watch after an hour, and when the coast was clear, she ran out into the darkness with the knife, the bowl and her wooden statue of Perun.

    She found a small clearing where the moonlight shone through the trees. She set up her small wooden statue and the bowl. In an act of great bravado, she begged Perun’s forgiveness for her weak offering, and she cut into the flesh of her arm. She hacked off a small patch of flesh and placed it into the bowl.

    Aleksandra fell into tears as she lamented how her life had seemed to fall

    (Humans eat more than any other creature. Maggie, Sage’s mother, has summoned me to another meal. More later. Dominus tecum.)

    On to UPYR! Part III

  • UPYR! Part I

    As a matter of fact, almost every monster ever counted and named by a human is merely an angel or a demon in disguise. The others are merely misunderstood living, biological creatures that have been maligned over the years.

    Since I’ve assumed the shape and station of a human teenage girl, I just couldn’t help but notice that the most popular monster of all these days—quite a shift from what it used to be—is the vampire.

    The history of the vampire is rather varied. There’s no singular event that brought about the origin of the creature as it’s recognized now. All the intelligence on them was, for the most part, consolidated within a single narrative when Mr. Stoker created the character of Dracula (which drew from the seminal work by Mr. Polidori), and even then, most of what he had put together was largely based on myth.

    However, I can report on the origin of the term vampire.

    It was in the year 988, in the city of Kiev, when Vladimir the Great realized that the Slavic gods could no longer provide him with the spiritual comfort and refuge he had sought for so long. And so it was that the Grand Prince of Rus was won over by the promise of heavenly salvation (and earthly power) that was offered by the Cross, and with a show of great love for his new (Christian) wife Anna of Macedonia, and with even greater intentions for his kingdom, he embraced Christianity.

    Vladimir couldn’t think of a more sincere profession of faith than to save the souls of his pagan people, and on the 12th of July (on the old Byzantine calendar) of the year of his conversion, he ordered bid all Kievans down to the banks of the Dnieper River and made invited them to step into the water in an act of mass baptism. All the true believers there testified that the Dnieper carried the sins of the city downstream and far, far away into the belly of a giant sea dragon lurking in the depths of the Black Sea.

    But not all the Kievans fell in line immediately. Some of them held onto the old ways. One Kievan who refused to accept Christ as her Lord and Savior was a young woman named Aleksandra.

    Aleksandra had been left upon the doorstep of the servants’ quarters at the palace of Kiev in the spring of 970, and she was taken in and raised by Mariya, the matriarch of the servants. Mariya was typically perceived as a stern woman, but she loved Aleksandra as a daughter and reserved all her tenderness for her ward. She taught the child the arts of healing, which was an invaluable skill to have as a servant of the court. She instilled within her surrogate child a strict loyalty to the court of Kiev and an unwavering obedience to the gods of the sky, forest, mountain, river and sea.

    Neither Mariya nor Aleksandra had been allowed much in terms of possessions in their shared quarters, but they did have one small wooden statue of the supreme deity Perun that they held dear. They took it down from their makeshift altar only once, and that was during the festivities following the coronation of Vladimir in 980. The Grand Prince had unveiled a new monument to the lightning god, and when they compared the two likenesses, the ladies were pleased to discover that their representation of Perun was just as omnipotent-looking as the rich sculpture fit for a monarch.

    Mariya had already lived far beyond her own expectations when she reached her sixtieth winter by her own reckoning at the beginning of the year 985, and it was no surprise to anyone when she became gravely ill on the last full moon before the spring equinox. Mariya sensed that death was near, and in her final breaths, she made Aleksandra swear to her that she would always maintain her fealty to the gods and to the court that had looked after them.

    Life went on for Aleksandra in the years that followed. She kept the promises she had made to Mariya: she served the court of the Grand Prince Vladimir until her feet ached and her back complained, and she honored the gods with every spare moment she was afforded.

    Thus July 12, 988, was a day of unimaginable horror, for Aleksandra awoke to the insufferable blasphemy that Vladimir was forsaking the gods and embracing a new god—a single god—who demanded that they all bathe in the river to rid themselves of evil.

    Aleksandra was painfully offended. She had lived an honest life. She knew that she had no evil within her. She hid her tears when they cast the great statue of Perun into the Dnieper and hacked the effigies of all the other gods to pieces. That night, after she prayed to her little wooden statue of Perun, she hid it inside her mattress, and when she slept, she dreamt that he sent a violent storm to crush the god that had usurped him.

    (And would you believe it but Sage’s father Dennis is demanding that I help him prepare yet another meal. I’m afraid I’ll have to finish this history later. Dominus tecum.)

    On to UPYR! Part II

  • Nadiel the Archangel

    I would like to thank Estelle for the introduction and high praise. She does have better authorities at her disposal, when it comes all matters concerning angelology and demonology, but she knows as well as I do that the Authority has more pressing matters to attend to. Nonetheless, she’s left all the rest for me to impart to you. I noticed that she failed to mention some pertinent details as to why I’m here, and I take it that she doesn’t want me to spoil the surprise that awaits all patient readers.

    I am called Nadiel. I lack a surname because I am older than names. I am an angel. To be even more precise, I am an Archangel, the highest of the twelve orders of angels in what was Heaven. And presently, I am masquerading as Sage Holloway, a fifteen-year-old human-angel hybrid known as a Nephil. Sage is off receiving her training to become a warrior, and as her parents would have problems understanding the reason for her absence, I have been tasked with assuming her place as her clone. So far, her parents haven’t really noticed that there’s any difference between the two of us. I have always been an excellent mimic. It’s nice to know that my skills haven’t faded.

    I promise to write every Tuesday until further notice about my history and the history of the angels soon enough, along with the histories of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc, but unfortunately Sage’s summer math tutor assigned her an unforgiving amount of geometry proofs to work on. I would handle it on my own without any trouble at all, but as Sage’s most challenging school subject is math, I have to pretend to ask for her parents’ help in completing it before they go to bed in order to keep up appearances.

    Dominus tecum.

  • Introductions

    I like writing about monsters.

    The history of storytelling, from time immemorial, features a literal pantheon of monsters. Most of the stories that we, as a human culture, have carried forward through the millennia involve the defeat of one monster or another, even though occasionally we are entranced by a story in which the monsters are not to be defeated but must be transformed into our friends. Regardless of plot and characters, monsters are part of the mythic that we apply to daily life, that we see within everything to give our lives meaning. Even though we live in an age in which monsters have been relegated to the metaphorical rather than the literal, we still put great stock in them. Time and again, our fascination with monsters highlights two conditions within the human struggle: they show us where we are weak, and we find ourselves edified when we overcome the obstacles they have set before us.

    Over the better part of the last year, I’ve dedicated myself to the creation of a young adult trilogy that features monsters. The first book is finished, and the second book is underway.

    This blog is meant to be a repository for thoughts about monsters. However, as I am but a mere novice to the world of monsters, I must defer to a superior source. Her name is Nadiel, and I discovered her astonishing insight into the world of monsters when I first put her thoughts and actions within the pages of my own meager story. It only seems fair that she should share her knowledge with the rest of you, my dear readers. She really does have a tremendous amount of time on her hands since I marooned her in the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl for an indeterminate amount of time.

    (Oh, how cruel are we writers to our characters!)

    ♥

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