Hell

by Tom Lewis

  ****

  Kyle ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and quickly lit another. While she hadn’t actually kept count, Cassie guessed this was his third cigarette since she’d gotten in the car several blocks back. They had stuck mainly to side streets, so he could talk without the distraction of dealing with traffic. That suited Cassie just fine, as he seemed distracted enough just talking. Plus, if he tried anything, they were going slow enough she could jump from the car and make a run for it. She doubted he would, but you never know.

  Kyle Martin gave new meaning to the term “basket case.” He had all the signs of someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown — the jitters, the shaky hands, the glazed-over eyes, the hundred-mile stare, the million-words-per-minute speaking — it was all there. And yet he was convinced that he was holding himself together.

  There was one thing that kept Cassie in that old run-down car with him — Kyle Martin was haunted, and by the same tormentor as she was. And so far he had survived (if that’s what you wanted to call his existence).

  Kyle had grown up within the rock and roll culture and had been one of the founding members of a death metal band called Black Plague. They played fast, and hard, and loud, and the band’s name was an indication of the dark themes their music contained.

  While the band never became a success financially, it managed to pay the bills and kept Kyle and his bandmates in a lifestyle of drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And all in excess, with dealers on speed dial and a harem of groupies always ready for a backstage quickie.

  Kyle’s wild days and nights of excess came to an abrupt end when he overdosed on heroin during a hotel room binge. Had the groupie he was with not awakened in time, Kyle’s story would have ended there. But fortune was with Kyle, and the young groupie had the sense to dial 9-1-1. Kyle was rushed to the emergency room, where he was successfully resuscitated.

  With a new lease on life, Kyle gave up his former life of vice, although he retained chain smoking as his fix. He moved back home with his deeply religious mom, who assisted him with his detox. Sex obviously had to go as well, as she refused to allow any of that under her roof.

  It was shortly after he’d moved home that his mom began to suspect something was deeply wrong with her son; something beyond the delirium tremens and violent outbursts that accompany a heroin detox. Something evil had attached itself to her son. She had reached out to the local minister and asked him to meet with her son. He had agreed, but before the meeting could take place, Kyle’s mom was killed when the brakes and steering on her car simultaneously failed and caused her car to slam head on into a large semi-truck.

  There had been nothing wrong with her car before that night.

  The meeting with the minister never took place.

  From their onset, Kyle’s hauntings closely paralleled Cassie’s, as he began catching glimpses of the Shadow lurking just outside his peripheral vision, and experiencing the unnerving sense of the Presence that accompanied it. This had been going on for several months longer than Cassie’s, and rather than abetting, these attacks had intensified. Kyle was no longer sleeping, and he experienced waking visions of grotesque images. He was also plagued with audio torments, which, as he attempted to describe them, were on the verge of shattering his sanity.

  He began reaching out to others on the Internet who were suffering similar experiences and had started his blog in an effort to build an online community of survivors. He hoped there would be strength in numbers, or perhaps someone out there held the key to beating this thing. But over the months, the other survivors had died, with the vast majority being from suicide.

  “How come you think it’s a demon?” Cassie asked from the passenger seat. She watched Kyle’s hands shake with the rush of nicotine. Or was it just nerves?

  He shot her an incredulous look. “Really? You really just asked that?” He shook his head. “You and me, we’re being honest here. And your soul knows exactly what that thing is. ’Cause there’s nothing else in existence that’s evil in the way this thing is. It’s not just something that does evil things; the evil is its essence. It’s what it is.” He looked over to make sure she understood. “You can’t play around with this thing, Cassie, and pretend it’s not what you already know it is. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. So, is it showing you things yet?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like really fucked-up stuff. You know, madness... death... mutilation... the worst shit you could ever imagine.”

  She shook her head. “No. Not like that. But I’m having nightmares.”

  He nodded. “That’s how it starts. It’s digging its roots into you.” Then he turned to her and for the first time seemed to actually be looking at her; not from behind some veil. “But it won’t stay in your dreams.”

  She shivered, and not just from what he said, but from how he said it. This guy was haunted by what he saw. And she had to wonder if that’s why he was hiding behind those veils.

  Just as she thought this, that veil clouded back over his eyes, and he was again hiding. “What about people you know getting killed? Any of that happen yet?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Good. But it can happen. Happened to my mom.”

  “Can it kill us too?”

  He snapped the fingers on his free hand. “Like that, if it wanted to. But it doesn’t. It needs you to choose death and kill yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause then it has your soul.”

  An icy chill ran down Cassie’s spine.

  “How close is it when you see it?” Kyle continued.

  “It’s usually like across the room.”

  He nodded. “Good. That means you’ve still got some time. It’s when it gets close that you need to worry.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause that’s when the shrill happens.”

  “What’s the shrill?”

  His jitters were back as he flicked his ash out the window. “It’s this crazy, intense sound in your head that blasts the fuck out of your mind. And I mean this — there is nothing you can imagine that will prepare you for it. And when it hits, you need to do something quick to get your mind to focus on something else.”

  He placed his cigarette in the ashtray, then rolled up his sleeve. “Here’s something I tried.” He showed her the deep cigarette burns that traced across his forearm like craters. “Hurts like fuck, but still nothing compared to the shrill.”

  “This sometimes works too.” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it aside to reveal a safety pin shoved through his chest muscle. “You twist it around, and it gives your brain a new pain to focus on.”

  Cassie could only watch in horror. She hoped that most of this insanity was unique to Kyle, but she suspected it wasn’t. “Did those other people do that too?”

  He nodded and fished the cigarette from his ashtray. “The ones who survived longest did. Knew one guy who pounded a nail through his hand. This other girl used a razor to slice her tongue open.” He glanced at her and saw the scared look on her face. “You’re getting freaked out by all of this, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Good. ’Cause you need to be. This thing that’s after us is no joke. It hates us. And it’s going to torture the fuck out of you to make you chose death. And once you feel that shrill hit, you need to do everything it takes to get your mind off it. ’Cause the people who couldn’t, they’re the ones that chose death. And now they’re His.”

  ****

  By the time they finished their talk, Cassie and Kyle had spent almost three hours together. They had driven laps through the same neighborhood streets over and over, with the rain pattering the windshield and the cigarette smoke clogging her sinuses. When she finally stepped from the car, her legs almost buckled, and she realized she had been tensed the entire ride.

  As much as she wanted to disbelieve Kyle — particularly with regards to this thing he kept
calling the Shrill, she knew she couldn’t. He had known most, if not all, of the people in those obituaries she had read, and they all had those two things in common — they had suffered near-death experiences, and they were tormented by this Thing. Although Kyle had never participated in a Black Mass, he knew several of them had, and he admitted he would have been open to it back in his death metal band days.

  The sun had already set by the time she returned home, and her mom would still be at work for several more hours. She thought about crashing on the sofa till her mom got home — she was still spooked by the idea of being alone in the house — but she decided to just crash in her room.

  As she entered her room, she noticed a sharp temperature drop. It was much colder now than it had been even earlier that week. And even then it had felt cold. She went over to the window and made sure it was closed and locked. It was.

  It was then that she noticed her small bonsai plant, Dodger, and her heart sank. It was dead and had already wilted. She hurried over to the plant and ran her fingers along its tiny trunk. It was dry and lifeless, like something that had been seared by the sun for weeks without water. But it had been fine just that morning, when she had watered it before school.

  She sank down on her bed and lay back. She closed her eyes, and sleep eventually came upon her. But the night would soon bring the most terrifying and traumatic encounter she had experienced up to that point.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  What the Moonlight Brings

  In the progression of possession, the possessing spirit seeks to both isolate its target, and instill feelings of despair and hopelessness.

  No better vehicle serves to accomplish both tasks than a beloved pet. The sense of betrayal at seeing a once-loyal companion converted to the enemy is catastrophic.

  — From “Into the Periphery” by Rev. Sean McCready. Reprinted with permission.

  ****

  It was on a cold autumn night that Cassie would again see Rex. A full moon hung in the sky and cast its ghostly pall over the quiet town that slept beneath it. It hung as a beacon and a caution that dared the unwise to explore down lonely forest paths in its light.

  It was a witches’ moon, as it was once called by the early settlers to the area, and considered a harbinger of doom. But on this cold November eve, it came as a harbinger of something sinister and uncanny.

  Cassie stirred from a restless sleep to the moanful sound of a distant howl. Her eyes snapped open, filled with the startled alertness of someone shaken from their sleep.

  Something was in her room.

  As her eyes adjusted to the glow from the moonlight that sifted through her filmy curtains, she sensed the presence of something hiding in the shadows.

  She pulled the covers to her neck and let her eyes slowly scan the room. There were so many places for something to hide — behind the dresser or desk, inside the closet or adjoining bathroom...

  Beneath her bed.

  “Mom?” she squeaked in a voice barely above a whisper. But there was no response, which confirmed what she already knew — that Presence she felt wasn’t a person.

  As would always happen when she awakened at night, her imagination populated the dark corners with those things of nightmare that stalk us while we sleep. Always there, waiting for us to close our eyes.

  We’re never really alone.

  Then it came again — that moanful howl, and it was no longer distant. It could be as close as the tree line beyond their yard. She turned to the window, where the curtains billowed softly in the night breeze.

  She had closed and locked the window.

  Icy fingers ran up her spine. The full moon was framed perfectly within the window’s corners like a giant eye. It was watching her.

  It had something to show her.

  There was something out there beyond the window. Something in the dead of night it wanted her to see. And like a ghoulish siren, it beckoned her to come.

  That low deep howl came again.

  It was right outside her window.

  Was it Rex?

  She sat up in bed. It hadn’t sounded like his howl, not even those she had heard in the cemetery, but that had been over a week ago. She pushed aside her night terrors and hurried over to the window. She pulled aside the curtains and looked down at the yard.

  In the moonlight stood the dark silhouette of a large dog, watching her from eyes that reflected back the moonlight.

  It was Rex.

  Cassie could barely contain her excitement as she raced from her room. She bounded down the stairs to the first-floor hallway, and raced down it past the kitchen and dining room doors to the laundry room at the end. On the far side was the door to the back porch.

  The porch door was open.

  Muddy paw prints tracked across the floor and out the laundry room door. The tracks were fresh and wet from the damp ground out back. Rex had come inside and she’d missed him.

  As she stared at those tracks, the hairs on her arms prickled. Didn’t he hear her racing through the house to let him in?

  Her instincts screamed at her to get out of there. Something had come in through that door that she was never meant to see.

  But it was only Rex, she tried to assure herself.

  “Rex,” she said in a hushed voice ignoring that warning. She looked back out the laundry room door to where the tracks took a right turn into the kitchen.

  Maybe he was just hungry...

  “Rex? Are you okay, buddy?” She used the same hushed voice as she began slowly following those tracks.

  She reached the opening to the kitchen and peeked around the corner inside it. The full moon hung like a ghastly eye in the window above the sink and gave just enough light to see by. She inched inside...

  Something crashed to the floor.

  Cassie jumped. It had come from the adjoining dining room.

  “Rex?”

  She crept across the kitchen to the opening to the dining room. In its center was a long table with three chairs around it and cabinets along the walls. She started to turn on the lights, then stopped. It might startle him. And there was still enough moonlight from the kitchen to see by.

  “Rex,” she said quietly as she stepped inside. “It’s me, buddy.” There were fragments of a glass bowl on the floor. She stepped around these as she eased over to the table and crouched down to look beneath it...

  The dog watched her from the dark opening to the hallway. Warm saliva oozed from its jaws as it contemplated the soft flesh of the girl’s throat. He could lunge and tear it open within seconds, and her screams would drown in a gurgle of blood.

  But tonight wasn’t the time. It could come later.

  With a final glare, the dog turned and stalked off on silent paws. Seconds later, a bucket hit the floor in the laundry room.

  Cassie spun around. “Rex?”

  She raced back through the kitchen and into the laundry room. A bucket lay on the floor next to the washer, and now there were paw prints leading out the door.

  Cassie stepped out onto the back porch, and her blood froze.

  The dog stood there in the moonlight. It was halfway across the yard, but she could see its eyes reflecting back the moonlight like glowing orbs. In those eyes she saw neither kindness nor friendship. There was only a cold malevolence. It was the predator, basking in the fright of its prey.

  Cassie knew she needed to retreat into the house, but a strange thrall held her fixed. And when it finally released her, a parting message was conveyed in her mind — it would be back, at a time and place of its choosing, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  The dog that had once been her best friend then stalked off into the night and Cassie was again able to move. She backed into the laundry room and closed the door, sliding home the deadbolt. She sank to the floor trembling and pulled her knees to her chest. She was too terrified to mourn over the loss of her friend. That would come later.

  Rex belonged to Him.

  CHAPTER TWENT
Y-FOUR

  The Breaking Point

  The definitive investigation into the matters regarding Cassie Stevens was known as The Dawkins Report, named after its lead investigator, Dr. Jerome Dawkins, PhD, chair of the Department of Parapsychology and Paranormal Sciences at the Simpson Institute.

  The investigative team was tasked with examining certain forensic evidence and conducting extensive eyewitness interviews over the course of two years.

  Upon its completion, the committee concluded that there was “sufficient and credible evidence to support a finding of persistent and sustained occurrences of paranormal phenomena directly attributed to Cassie Stevens.”

  What was noteworthy is that while the report drew no conclusions as to the diabolical origins of the phenomena associated with Cassie, owing primarily to the lack of forensic evidence and a heavy reliance on subjective opinions and observations, the report refused to rule it out. In preparing the report, Dr. Dawkins noted that, “If one were to accept the existence of these supernatural beings, commonly known as demons, one would find no more compelling a case than that involving Cassie Stevens.”

  Indeed, the findings of diabolical influence in the matter were so compelling that at least two members of the investigative committee — men with no history of religious bias — reached out to priests and ministers following the investigation to express their fears and distress over their findings.

  — Excerpts from “The Dawkins Report” published by the Simpson Institute. Reprinted with permission.

  ****

  Flames roared through the interior of the decrepit garment mill and set the building aglow in their fierce light. They raced along walls and across the floor and ceiling. Massive lights that hung from the rafters exploded and showered sparks down on the crowd of partiers below.