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During my travels I have sought a means to find the gates of hell. This black endeavor would later consume me. Alas, I am speeding ahead and you have no recognition of the beginning of my journey. So it is logical that I start at the beginning. My name is Kelion Moralis and I am a man of 34. I started my life in the town of Linton just south of Edinburrough England. Mine was a family fascinated with the occult, my father a man consumed by his greed for the dark lore squandered a rich portion of the family wealth on books and written accounts of the men who are said to have made the journey into fire. In no way were we practitioners of the unholy arts, in all honesty the entirety of my family were devout Catholics raised on the stories of saint’s and miracles. I started my education at a Catholic academy called St. Sebastian’s. This pious upbringing continued well into my collegiate career and I was a god fearing man who believed that life should be lived by the bible and its lore. My father, do not think ill of him for his was not a mind of evil intent, was well versed in the biblical sense as with most members of a theocratic royal society. He was a banker and dealt with the finances of an ever evolving industrious society. His lenience was legendary for his heart was grace itself. Stories could be told of his willingness to look the other way at finance charges or giving the downtrodden that little bit of extra time to produce the needed capital to keep their farm land. T’was his curiosity that managed to break his faith and our dear family friend Lawrence Tildbrandt, who never could find his was out of trouble financially or otherwise.
Lawrence came across a predicament that led him to a man named Tolliver Whitehall whom by circumstance he owed much money. A time frame of relative short length was given to acquire the money. Lawrence had indeed found his life in the balance and true to form used any means necessary to find himself absolved of this problem. His penchant for gambling led him further down this arduous road to death. In the end he was reduced to the sale of personal effects. This is where my father’s participation leads to the involvement of my family and the furthering of our story. Lawrence had acquired many curious items due to thievery and other illicit activities. Earlier in his career he had come across a man who owed his benefactor a considerable sum and all this man had was a book bound with tan leather. This book he said was invaluable and could be, in the right hands, the key to an impossible power and tried to give the book as an answer to his current situation. I later found out that Lawrence killed the man, gliding a knife from one ear to the other, and took the book. I digress for I should get to the point lest the light fail me.
My father gave Lawrence an audience in the tea room and listened as he pleaded his plight. He did scold Lawrence and stated that no man of god should have found himself in this amount of trouble. Then again Lawrence Tildebrant was no man of god. He mentioned the book to father but withheld the story of its acquisition. Father had for sometime been interested in old text and had made a healthy hobby of it. He held the book and examined the cover and the spine, which seemed to have hair of some sort protruding from it, and even flipped through the pages. Age was indeterminable as was the writing therein. He accepted the sale and gave him an amount not known to me but pleasing to Lawrence. The book sat in his study for a time surrounded by other books not nearly as old or as morbid. One day after work my father came to his study and sat in his leather upholstered chair, filled his pipe with the Turkish tobacco he dearly enjoyed and opened the book.
I was under the assumption that the book was indiscernible and my father was far from a linguist, yet I dare say he comprehended the text in the book that day and the oddest thing is that his eyes never closed. Four hours later mother happened into the study to find my father affixed to the chair with eyes bloodshot and a pipe on the floor. His breathing was shallow and his pants soiled. She quickly grabbed the book, although this took some effort on her part due to the fact that his grip on the book turned his knuckles a soft white. With the book out of his grasp he opened his mouth and uttered a sound as if one were having their abdomen eviscerated. Mother, frightened but quick witted threw the book into the fire place and embraced her husband in an attempt to comfort. Moments later father came around to his senses and tears permeated his reddened eyes.
Three years later my father was much the worse for the experience. His job suffered as did his marriage. Mother thought she had seen an end to the book but father consumed by unknown forces pulled it from the fireplace the next day, remarkably the book had not the slightest singe for something held by fire overnight. He placed the book in a cloth and hid it behind some volumes of Don Quixote on his bookshelf. Routinely he would shut himself in his study for hours on end. Each time he would exit he looked drained and exhausted. Mother’s threshold was nearing its end for she had not idea what he was did behind that closed door. She had heard of many of the young men in the city sampling the dangerous pleasures of opium but would never consider her husband the sort to do such a thing. She knew she had destroyed the book that had so consumed him that night 3 years ago. What this a lasting effect of the wretched thing?