Call To The Void Definitive Edition: Call To The Void, #1

By Robert Royal Poff

Trigger Warnings- gore, suicide, self harm, graphic death, blood, cannibalism, abuse

A broad, lanky man, with an endless chin cuffed in a scraggly beard and beady eyes that caught the light in a sobering squint as he entered the disheveled country house. The smell of the neighboring farms manure was masked by a pungent rot that laid heavily upon his tongue. He ducked under the cautionary tape and entered a room smothered in a thick fog of confusion. Cameras clacked, their flash illuminating a corpse half diluted into the seams of a couch. Its dilapidated skin bubbled, blistering in the onslaught of Texas summer heat, a firm layer of dust inlaid over the globs of flesh that ran coarse over prodding bones. The skin stretched like the wings of a bat, seeming almost translucent as it shrunk into the bone's grooves.

He bent over the corpse, careful to keep the expansive brim of his hat from touching the scene as the unlucky man's blank, void eyes sobbed slightly in the heat. "Ain't sure why you called me out here, seems pretty obvious the poor bastard was starved. Got anything that'll peg a killer?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Poff
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215071953

Book preview

Under Silent Sight

TWO FIGURES WANDERED aimlessly through the phantom town. One carried with him a clipboard and a standard camera while the other brandished a gilded glock. Bodies speckled the streets in pools of coagulated blood which was evaporating in the sunlight, saturating the air with such a fetid odor that it laid waste to the wanderer's mouths, fileting their taste buds in decay. The first traveler, fingers paled around the metal of his glock, strode over a body which twitched as dozens of sprinkled maggots withered within empty eye sockets. The eyes, as far as the two could distinguish, were nowhere to be found; the only evidence of their existence at all was the bloodied clumps of haphazardly stretched skin that indicated their torturous removal. Not a single one of the bodies seemed to have eyes, an entirely alien phenomenon.

The man with the clipboard crept up to one of the bodies, prodding at a note that had been crumpled up and shoved within the socket that would've housed his left eye. It had been so thoroughly drenched that the only segment he could decipher was, there they are...constantly glaring through the windows, the vacuous beams of abominable all-knowing stares melted into our every thought. Nothing was our own anymore, nothing sacrosanct, nothing safe...if one still exists, God help us.

The man glanced towards the house that the body seemed in mid-escape from. The body of a child lay strung across the steps, its mouth pried open by a crow that plucked away at the corpse's tongue. Again, no eyes. He motioned for the other traveler to follow him as he went inside. Another corpse sat hunched against the innards of the door, pushed aside as the men entered the residence. Its skull had been peeled open in a crevice of stingy tissue that revealed jutting masses of placid bone, cratered and cracked as if their head had been repeatedly bashed against the door, seemingly on their own will.

On the body was a hastily scratched note which read, It was my idea to have Keith spend the night at our place. I had told him it was to study but in reality, I was hoping he'd make his move, that he'd admit his feelings for me. Then the eyes came. We had enough supplies to maybe last five people three weeks. We were trapped here, six of us, for two months when my father pulled us from our sleep, specifically leaving Keith from the conversation as we met around the dinner table, our observers constantly mocking our greed through the windows. We had decided that to preserve the family we had to cross a line. I sat in the kitchen, clogging my ears in a desperate struggle to keep out the noise as my father took a length of metal across my sleeping friend. His skull crushed with the sound of a bat hitting a baseball, his gurgle of pleas that permeated between smashes went far beyond that of any horror movie recreation. I slammed my head into the table fruitlessly as he choked a final gasp through a throat congested in blood. I can only imagine what the visuals were like. My dad butchered him, serving globs of human onto the table at which we used to say grace. I tore into the muscle, fat dripping down my chin as we feast. I tore every morsel off the bone, savored it even, as though it was a rich filet. We deserved it after that. Death was the least of our punishments. Even now I can taste Keith upon my tongue. This regret. Perhaps this is our damnation.

A deep crimson stain smeared the floor in the living room, carpeting multiple indents that cracked the wood. What the hell happened here? The first muttered, though any sentiment was lost in the vapid otherworldly nature of the town.

The man toting the gun shoved a finger over his mouth, gesturing for the other to go silent. A curt round of tapping seeped into the otherwise still air, dull, methodical thuds that bore their weight into the emptiness. He inched towards a door, allowing his glock to lead the way as he opened it with painstaking hesitation. A boy sat within the cabinet, rhythmically banging his ghastly head against the wall as he moaned through a parched throat, eyes whipping in wild directions. His skin was strung taut on a skeletal frame that ridged with the protrusion of each rib which viciously tore arches across his mangled chest, a mountain range of starvation. A hand struggled towards us before dropping to the ground silently. The croaking moans formed thought as he gasped; a whistle for death. The gun discharged. The body slumped, a Jackson Pollock of blood splattering the wall in a whip.

The man with the clipboard turned to vomit while the other shook his head somberly, He was too far gone, poor bastard never would've recovered. He eyed down his partner cautiously. Besides until we find out if this is some kind of terrorist attack we need to assure there's no loose ends. Any word of this could cause mass panic, best to just keep it under wraps until we know more.

QUINTON AWOKE TO A jumbled mess of screams that raged over his ears as he galloped from the bed. He raced through the hall, backtracking to a window he had passed and gawking at the sight. A single eye, emerald green just like his own, leered in unblinking omnipotence as it peered within the hall, consuming his likeness within its reflection. It didn't blink, though he wasn't sure if it could. He approached the window, circling the eye which consisted of just that. An eye. No skin wrapped its surface, nor did anything attach it to the ground which it hovered more than ten feet above.

Just a drifting three-foot sphere broken solely by the coil of wirelike nerves that snaked from the back, dangling aimlessly. A person could trace the memories inlaid within every stabbing vein that ran red lightning strikes down its surface and never comprehend a single story. Quinton fumbled back a few feet, bumping the other wall, and the pupil followed, a swiveling black hole, taking with it a kaleidoscope of ever shifting green hews. He stared until his own eyes burned from their inability to blink, anticipating the moment where the sight made any sense to his mind. His eyes only moved once more when his legs gave out, dropping his gaze to the floor. He scampered down the hall, descending the stairs, and into the safety of the living room where he met statues in the shape of his family members. They stood frozen, all staring out the multiple windows where similar eyes sat in wait. One eye, every window.

They all did nothing. They didn't move up or down, inward or outward. All they did was gawk at any movement within the house. The entire day was spent within that room, transfixed to the power of absolute emptiness the eyes possessed. It wasn't until that night that his father had left the room, rummaging through the house in a dreamlike wander that had no clear motive. The rest of the family followed suit after a bit, closing blinds in a futile attempt at defense against the eyes, whose shadows imprinted blurry images still pressed into their face.

Still, the eyes gawked on, day and night, every second for weeks. None of the family dared leave the house, nor did they look through the windows. Sleep never washed over like it was meant to, instead fainting periodically when the body could stress no longer. Quinton took to sorting their stockpile of goods, only noticing that the supplies had cut in half overnight as he rummaged through the sparse stockade of food. He wandered the house, perusing shelves for the lost days supplies as he sidestepped the oblong shadows that speckled nearby windows. Dad? Did you do something with our food supplies for the next few days?

His dad entered the room, scraggly beard cutting against his sinking cheeks. He carried a wave of caked-on musk, as the stale air collected the scent of four unwashed bodies. I thought you were in charge of food.

I had it sorted into days but Saturday through Tuesday’s all gone missing. Do you think mom could’ve moved it?

Your mother hasn’t been feeling great, she’s been sleeping all day.

As if in response the fire alarm released a shrill shriek from upstairs. Sarah?

Quinton raced his father up the steps as they fought through a barrage of smoke that permeated from her room. A mixture of burning food slapped his nose as he watched a box of snacking cakes hit the fire, landing on various other stolen goods. What are you doing? His father roared, trampling the fire as Sarah fought against him.

No, no,, no, no! I get it now! I get it, listen to me! The eyes watched the fire through open windows, not bothering to float any closer as they spectated. I finally realized it was this food. She picked up a box of snacking cakes, stabbing the back with a shaky finger, it's all the chemicals, don’t you get it? Chemical after chemical, I mean what the fuck even is any of this? One of these things is poison- something we’ve been eating is poisoning us. It’s making us hallucinate that, whatever those things are. She managed to slide the box past her fathers frame, dropping it into the flames. We need to purge ourselves of anything toxic.

She grappled against her father for more boxes, taking advantage of his weak disposition as she struggled desperately towards the flames.

Why would you think that? He growled.

He told me. He said...he said he knew someone in the government-

Who said?

She pointed to a small hole that had been dug out of the wall so that one of the windows in the neighboring house could be seen. One of the few windows not guarded by the eyes. "He goes to the window at