It's been a wild couple of weeks here at Malevolent Maine, MMers! A lot has been happening behind the scenes, and a lot of it has to do with our encounter with the Midnight Magician, Malachai Blackstone. There's a lot of moving pieces when it comes to running an investigative blog and often times these things take some time. As you'll see, we also weren't able to talk about this until now because of police involvement.
After our discussion with Professor Carter Derwent, a history and linguistics professor from Bowdoin College, about Az'azouzis, a word we first encountered when we investigated the six people in Crannog's Field with no memory of who they were or why they were there. We heard the word again from Malachai Blackstone when we "interviewed" him last month. Blackstone claimed the word meant, "the end is not the end." Professor Derwent discredited this and translated it instead as, "dark watcher from beyond the stars."
Derwent did a little more digging for us, reaching out to several colleagues from different universities. He was able to piece together a pretty clear description of Az'azouzis. Here's Derwent:
Az'azouzis is a creature from beyond our plane of existence. Some call him a god, others refer to him as a beyonder - a being outside the known world. He is said to be watching the world, waiting for a way into this world. Over the centuries there have been various cults and groups dedicated to finding a way to open a doorway or portal for Az'azouzis to enter the world. One group, the Order of the End, was active in Europe from 1800 until about 1840. And here's the interesting thing, one of the high ranking members emigrated to America, specifically the New England area.
Az'azouzis, the dark watcher
We also heard from one of our contacts in the local occult scene. He didn't want us to reveal his real name, so we'll call him Desmond. He's been a practitioner of occultism for several years and has been one of our sources for all things paranormal. Here's a transcript of a voice mail call we got from Desmond:
Hey, guys. It's [Desmond]. I have to tell you about a session I just came from. There's been some talk in the past few months about that guy Blackstone, the magician. He's been coming around to different groups, mostly doing lecture stuff, but he's been leading some ceremonies too. He's deep into the occult stuff. So the other night, I catch wind about a ceremony happening on Frye Island, in the middle of Sebago Lake. I decide to go, and when I get there, it's him, Blackstone, clearly running the ceremony. There were probably twenty of us there, no names. This was a black robes and hoods kind of event. We're all standing in a circle and that's when things start to go crazy.
Blackstone starts chanting, pretty typical occult stuff at first, but then he gets going. He starts talking about how the end is not the end. "There are tremendous and treacherous things beyond." All this kind of stuff. He starts talking about Az'azouzis, and I recognize that from your blog, right? That's when we hear this great roaring sound. It sounds like the sky is splitting open and some big angry animal is coming through. You know that long rumble of thunder you hear sometimes? It was like that times a thousand. The ground starts shaking, like an earthquake. Out of the ground comes this big stone pillar, like the one from your site.
Occult ritual
It grows out of the ground, rising up, and then the air around us goes red. Not the light, like from the fire, but the air itself. I can't really explain that, but it's what happened. Then this rip opens up, like in the air itself, this big black void, and through it walks three naked people, two men and a woman. The whole time Blackstone is chanting something, I can't make out the words, but then I realize everyone is chanting along with him. I mean everyone, me included. I don't even understand what I'm saying, but the words keep coming out as that portal opens and those three people walk out.
And then it's done. Everything goes back to normal. The air, the sound, everything. Blackstone is standing there, looking down on those three naked people and he says to us, "The end is not the end. We will bring them, one by one, then thousands by thousands. The Army of Az'azouzis, his Chosen People, the ones who will usher in his everlasting darkness. We send you, brothers and sisters out into our world, Beyonders. Tremendous beings. Treacherous beings. Go and bring about your master's will."
It was right around this time that we were contacted by the Maine State Police. It seems that Kerri Delong had gone missing. You'll recall she was in the second batch of Black Tarot cards. She was the only person we could to receive the cards who had not gone missing. That wasn't the only reason the police contacted us, however. You'll also remember we received another set of cards from a reader going by EroDemon96. It turns out EroDemon96 is a woman named Rebecca Wentworth, aged 29, from Porter, Maine. She too had gone missing. When the family went through Rebecca's emails they found her messages to us.
We went out of our way to prove to the police that we were not involved. That included turning over lots of our emails, as well as the details of our meeting with Malachai Blackstone. In the end, the police dismissed us from any suspicion.
We find it interesting though that after the disappearance of the original four recipients of the Black Tarot, four people appeared in Crannog's Field. After the disappearance of Brenda Williams, Kerri Delong, and now Rebecca Wentworth, three more people appeared during the ritual Desmond witnessed. Could Malachai Blackstone be the heir of the Order of the End, obsessed with summoning the being Az'azouzis to our world? Could he be somehow marking people by sending them a spread of Black Tarot cards? Could he be using their lives to open a portal to... Beyond and bringing forth new people-looking things, minions of Az'azouzis?
We told the police everything we knew about Malachai Blackstone and everything we suspected. They were skeptical, of course, but in the end they agreed to at least talk with Blackstone. At the time of this writing, we believe Malachai Blackstone is on the run. He has not performed any magic shows in several weeks, nor any occult rituals. His whereabouts, as well as the whereabouts of the three "Beyonders" who walked through the portal remain unknown, though Blackstone's picture has been distributed among law enforcement agencies.
Desmond believes that Blackstone was harnessing the energy of the people who visited his shows. He thinks that the password system, combined with the timing of Blackstone's performances, was a ritual derived to funnel the aether from the audience to create his Black Tarot. These marked members were somehow sacrificed to power the portals beyond. Desmond believes that after a certain number of these "Beyonders" had been summoned then they would be able to open the door for Az'azouzis, himself.
We hope that we have disrupted Blackstone's rituals. We believe that now on the run from authorities, Blackstone will not be able to perform his ceremonies. Since the police began searching for Malachai Blackstone no new sets of Black Tarot cards have arrived and no new missing persons reports have been filed. We believe it's finally over.
Stay safe out there, Maine.
UPDATE - 10/23/20:
Since we originally posted this on 10/21/20, we received a black envelope in the mail. There was no stamp, no return address, something that will be familiar to our readers. We were hesitant to open it at first, but after much discussion, we decided we were not going to let Malachai Blackstone control our lives, and that we would not live in fear of him.
Inside the envelope was just a single card of the deck we're calling the Black Tarot:
