Kolozun Church (Second Update)

"Minor earthquakes continue across Maine... The governor has asked residents to remain indoors and not panic... We have invited geologist Richard..." Salomon tossed aside the TV remote and answered the call as if granted a pardon. The host's drowsy voice had been torture, and this call transferred from the front desk temporarily spared him from the boring program.

"Mr. Augustus? This is Bonhams Auction House. The painting you purchased will be personally delivered to the Brunswick Inn Hotel in five hours. Please be available to sign for it." Salomon hung up and glanced at Wanda, who was bent over the table, intently carving a protective charm into a bronze plaque. He intended to tell her the news.

Recovering the Darkhold or its scattered pages had been a long-term mission, one Salomon had carried out for nearly a decade. He had been able to pinpoint the mission's location through a peculiar work of art. It was a grotesque and clumsy imitation of The Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus—the figures were fat-limbed, like those in Peter Paul Rubens' Nymphs and Satyrs, while the composition possessed no less tension than The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus. Yet the painting offered no sense of beauty. On the contrary, it was profoundly unsettling. The figures' expressions brimmed with malice, their limbs displayed nothing but the loose, wrinkled skin of old age, and beneath their graceless bodily curves were densely packed bulges, as though there was not flesh and blood beneath their skin, but worms. In the dim oil-painted background, bizarre creatures frolicked and played.

This terrible yet irresistibly captivating painting had been auctioned as an eighteenth-century imitation by an unknown artist copying Rubens' style. Trusting his instincts, Salomon purchased it, earning the chance to inspect it up close and contact the seller. Through