Nizeam
I had to write this for English class. The story which I handed up was slighty different then the one you see in front of you, as there are some thing which you can just NOT hand up to your English teacher. If any plot holes or gramatical errors are to be found, please email me at talktome@stuffslashersaw.com or use the 'Contact me' button at the top of this page.
Nizeam
Cian Mac Mahon
It was a nice, sunny day on campus of the University of Carolina, and Jane Wilson
was just entering her small, stuffy flat. After the three fli ghts of stairs, she was very tired,
and fell into her soft, squishy couch, the only commodity from home the college allowed. A
few minutes passed, in which Jane thought about all the study she would have to do in or-
der to pass the big exam in her main class, Game Theory. Game theory had been a “spe-
cial offer class”, as the students called them, offering free accommodation in order to draw
people into the college. Being quite well off in life, all Jane really wanted to do was to move
out of her parents house, and get a place of her own so that she could sleep in on Sun-
days, put her feet up on the table, and not be worried as to when her parents would come
home when she had a male friend visiting. And the free room helped save money which
could be put to “better” uses, such as all night parties frequently held by her and her
friends.
Unfortunately, all was not good in the land of free accommodation. In order to help
pay for her flat, the university had decided to rent out the next room to a non-student per-
son. Jane had to share her bathroom, kitchen nook (she could never bring herself to call it
a kitchen. It was just to small,) and a miniature, meter squared hallway with a person of
the college's choosing. This person was to arrive today, and Jane had rushed “home” in or-
der to clean the place up. She had a lot to do in just half an hour, so she got straight to
work, cleaning her floor, cleaning the new roommates room (a rather wild party had been
held their the night before. Jane could still hear the security guard knocking)
At the appointed time, half past nine, her doorbell made its little buzzing noise. Jane
had put on her most exotic perfume “just in case”, and was waiting at the door. With just
about too much excitement she undid the lock, and peered out, waiting for the worst. But
oh, joy! It was a young man, about the same age as herself! She fli cked the hair out of her
eyes and welcomed him in. As she stood back and admired him, she noticed a snow-white
collar around his neck. He bent down on his knees, and said something in a language
Jane had never heard before. Just her luck. She had found herself a priest!
As a atheist, Jane found this new intrusion to her life rather annoying, and decided
to complain to the university about it. On her form, she had clearly marked the section on
religion, and a priest had been the last thing person they should have put her up with. In
her mind she was already getting all the counter arguments for creationism. She hoped
that their belief differences would not make them hate each other.
Later on that night, as Jane was studying the ins and outs of Extensive Form
Games, she heard a strange noise coming from Father Dawseys (as he liked to be known)
room. Sort of a latinesque chant. It only lasted a few seconds, so she assumed that it was
only a rehearsal for some ceremony which he was going to perform the day after. She re-
marked to herself how it sounded a bit like a funeral march.
On the floor below, Jerry Gaiman looked up from his study. He was trying to find out
the answer to a particularly difficult problem, one of those nasty ones which don't have a
right answer. But if answered badly could turn you into one of those people who sit at the
back of the class and hopes that the teacher will not ask you a question. The only reason
he was in the class, after all, was his god, (although she refused to see him as her sheep,
more the stuff which sheep leave after themselves), Jane. He had first seen Jane while en-
rolling on 'freshers day, and had followed her to the Game Theory booth. After reading the
blurb on the subject, he decided that it would be quite an easy class, and if this shining
star was doing it, he may as well try his luck. So far in his college career, he had not managed to get his hands on her, but was looking to make his first real move tomorrow. He
had to break through her idea that he was just a slacker, and by getting almost all A*s, he
thought that this would be the time to do it.
After staring at the roof of his small apartment for 30 seconds, he decided that the
strange noise which he had heard was nothing but Janes radio turning on. He sent Jane a
text message asking her to turn it down, and settled down to the problem.
Jane picked up her phone, and took a look at the message which she had just re-
ceived. It was from Jerry, asking her to “shut the hell up!”She giggled to herself, and
pressed Compose.
“its not me! Its my strange new roommate. If he does it again, I'll check it out.”
Pressing send, she got the unfamiliar error message “not enough credit”, and cursed un-
der her breath. Jerry was the guy she had her eyes on at the moment, and she thought
that she had done very well keeping it hidin. Any time he had shown any interest in her,
she had just ignored him completely, playing hard to get. She knew that he liked her
though, and was just waiting till the exams were over to ask him out, as he seemed to
chicken ask her. The exams were in less then a week, she remembered, and went back to
the question.
About half an hour later, the noise started again, and this time lasted 10 minutes.
Jane could make out a few of the strange sounding words this time,
“Nizeam, Nizeam, obhlas gachnaigh Nizeam!”
This was repeated around 10 times, and Jane was getting worried, as the vile
sounding phrase grew and grew in intensity. The sound suddenly stopped, and a large
thump which made ripples in her cup of coffee sounded from the next room. This was fol-
lowed by the sound of claws on wood, a sort of damp scratching. Suddenly the chanting
restarted, but this time in a less confident sounding voice.
“Nizeam, Nizeam, obhlas gachnaigh Nizeam!”
This time the voice only lasted around 30 seconds, when a loud smash, followed by
what sounded like someone groaning in pain blasted from the room next door. Jane, now
worried, reached under the bed for the shotgun her dad had given to her “just in case”.
Had the university known she had had it, she would have been kicked out the first chance
they got. Unsteadily she started to walk towards the door, not knowing what she would
see. She hoped that it was just Father Dawsey watching some very strange television, but
knew that the sounds which she heard were to realistic sounding to have come from any
speakers which the college supplied free of charge.
Jerry was about to settle down to bed.
“that new uoy upstairs is makin’ quite the racket”
He thought to himself, and promised that if it went on for another 10 minutes, he would call
security to have him shut up. As he listened, he noticed that the new lodger above him
seemed to be listening to the radio, as a very strange noise, akin to the static gotten by
tuning the radio-dial to an unused frequency was to be heard. He gave up, and dialed
*1786*, the security number.
Back upstairs, Jane could also hear the noise, but at close qourters, and not having
a few inches of floor separating her from it, only a few centimeters of wood, she would not
have called the noise static, but have likened it to leaves blowing over the road, rustling as
they went along. She leveled the gun, then thought to hide it under her coat, just in case
the priest WAS watching T.V. She would not like to have her gun confiscated. She cracked
the door open, and gasped.
A few years earlier, Jane would have been used to the smell now wafting from the
priests room. It was crack cocaine, and the very smell of it made her sick to the bone, to
many bad memories, having to pick up her dazed friends, throw them into a cold shower,
and take care of them when the “downs” came about. She had dabbled in the drug herself,
but had never smelled such a concentrated amount in her life. She was already starting to
get a bit wobbly, not having evin stepped into the room.
In the college rooms, the windows are adjacent to the doors, a thing which many a
dormer used in order to spy what their friends were doing by reflection. This is what Jane
was doing now. What she saw next would scar her for the rest of her life. This is not the
only thing which would in the next few minutes.
Colm Lunacy, the security man for this part of the building, stood outside door 666,
the room which had been reported by quite a few students for loud noises. As he listened,
he could hear a strange scratching noise, one he had last heard as he had opened the
squeaky door of his room to check this noise out. Then he heard a scream.
Jane, looking through the door, fell to her knees in shock. The Thing which occu-
pied the room beside her had ripped the head off the priest. The Thing had more then 3
arms, all moving like snakes. Its head, should you call it that, was dug into its back, and
had no forehead, just two fiery red eyes, and a huge, gaping mouth. Jane recovered, and
stepped into the room, determined to take the thing out with her gun. The thing still had its
back turned, and now that Janes eyes were getting used to the mucky gloom of the room,
she could see strange symbols marked into the walls in something which appeared to be
chalk. She fired once, and the bullet dug into the spiny back of the creature.
Colm kicked the door down, and pointed his gun at the room in which he had heard
the one thing which any security officer did NOT want to hear. Gunfire. He slammed all his
weight into the next door, and what he saw nearly drove him mad.
The same could not be said for Jane, who having shot the beast, had been socked
to the core when the door burst open, and the thing disappeared. Colm, the friendly securi-
ty mad stepped in, saw her, and leveled the gun. Then he saw the mutilated body of the
Priest, and pointed it at her again. He shot her in the thigh, careful to avoid any vital or-
gans.
Jane sat, in a straight jacket, in the Police station in Caroline town. She kept hear-
ing the rustle of leaves, and almost fell of her chair trying to find out where they were com-
ing from. Next to her, two detectives stood talking.
“So. This is how is see it. The girl goes ape shit over, say, her boyfriend, hacks the head of
her roommate, then draws satanic symbols all over his room. Reckon she was high at the
time. Do you know how much crack they found in that room? $10,000 worth, at first guess.
Wonder what made her snap”
Jane sat bolt upright. This time she was certin. She could hear it, hear the leaves.
Looking around, all she could see were the two detectives, talking about something which
she couldn't really understand. But, There, in the corner. What was that?
