Immortal From Hell

by Gene Doucette

  “And watching. But, this screen is quite expensive, so I am afraid this is the last time you’ll be seeing me. Or anyone else. Goodbye, Adam.”

  The screen went dead, and then retracted into the ceiling.

  As advertised, the wall behind it was the same metal as the rest of the room.

  I tried the exit, as one does. It was locked, which was disappointing, but not surprising. I couldn’t even see the locking mechanism in the seal between the doors, and the hinges were unexposed. There was no handle or knob. If I hadn’t already known a doorway was there, I might have mistaken it for another wall. Which, I guess, is the point when one wants to create an oven that someone will voluntarily walk into.

  I considered trying the shotgun on the door, but steel that thick wouldn’t respond well; I’d just blow myself up.

  “Herman?” I shouted. “I know you can still hear me. We can work something out. You don’t have to do this.”

  Silence.

  The air was already becoming difficult to breathe. I decided for my own safety to relocate the guns to the other side of the room, before the gunpowder ignited. I had no idea what temperature that might happen at, or whether or not it was a higher temperature than that at which I could still survive, but it still seemed like a solid decision anyway.

  A minute later, I was adding the knife and sword to the other side of the room. The metal was conducting the heat better than I was; the sword nearly burned a hole in my back.

  None of this mattered. If someone didn’t open that door soon, the next thing to happen would be the wood of the table catching fire, and then maybe my clothes, and then me.

  Maybe if I was lucky, I’d suffocate first.

  Another thirty seconds, and I was down on my knees gasping for air. If I thought I could speak, I’d tell him to hurry up with it already. It wouldn’t have mattered—probably—because he was clearly interested in my suffering.

  Then the table burst into flames.

  Strangely, when that happened, it felt like I could breathe a little easier.

  The chair went next, and then one of the guns fired off a round. It looked like Herman had answered my silent wish that he speed up the process, because the walls were glowing white and the air was wavy with the oppressive heat…and I was fine. The air I was breathing was cooler than it should have been, and I wasn’t on fire.

  Then I realized why I wasn’t currently dead or dying. I wasn’t entirely in the room anymore. I stood in the middle of it, but I wasn’t really there. It was like I was witnessing a particularly impressive interactive movie from the other side of the screen.

  There was a hand on my shoulder. When I noticed this I nearly pulled away in surprise, which would have surely been a lethal decision. If memory served, doing that would drop me right out of the veil.

  It was Eve. Somehow. I couldn’t believe she was not only there, but actively rescuing me, and I would have asked her why, but then I saw the strain on her face.

  She took my hand.

  “Don’t let go,” she said.

  I got to my feet, and then she walked us through the doors and into the hallway.

  It all felt really strange: passing through the solid door; standing in the hall and feeling like I was taller than I should have been; the continued sensation that I was on the other side of a screen, the same way Herman had been a few minutes earlier.

  Then Eve let go of my hand, and we both fell back to Earth.

  I ended up on the floor, gasping, as if my lungs had been taking in all of the hot air of Herman’s kiln that whole time.

  Eve lay on the ground next to me, on her back. I noticed she was wearing a hospital gown, which was the same thing she had on the last time I saw her.

  “You came straight from the island,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “How did you know to come here?”

  “I know the man,” she said. “I knew he would lead you here, as he led me here.”

  “But you want me dead at least as much as he does. Don’t you?”

  She smiled that ridiculous smile of hers and sat up, then leaned against the wall when sitting up completely on her own proved too challenging.

  “It’s possible I have changed my opinion on that point, Urr,” she said.

  “Well, that’s nice.”

  We were both ignoring the copious amount of blood and guts just out of reach down the hall. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like the only time we really got to talk was around corpses.

  “You may also be the only one capable of stopping him. Perhaps I’m keeping you alive so that I might kill you later.”

  I laughed, and she joined in.

  I’d never heard her laugh before. I liked it.

  “Sounds like a deal,” I said.

  There was a banging on the stairwell door at the other end of the hall.

  “That was fast,” I said. “He must have sent the police right down to the bottom floor. Can you…”

  I was going to ask her about maybe pulling the same trick that got me out of the kiln, to get us good and far from the police, but the question would have been posed to empty space.

  Eve had disappeared on me again.

  “Hey come on,” I said. “That isn’t funny. Get me out of here.”

  Silence. If not for the part where I’d been walked through a solid steel door, I’d have suggested she was never there at all.

  At least, I reflected, as the stairwell door flew open, she was being historically consistent.

  Three armed men with CPD on their bulletproof vests poured through the doorway with their guns out.

  “Don’t move, don’t fucking move!” the first one barked.

  I was unarmed—my guns were undoubtedly slag at this point—and covered in blood that mostly didn’t belong to me. So, I didn’t move other than to raise my hands.

  “Jesus, look at this,” the second guy said. It was the kind of scene that puts a person off of solid food for a while. “Is that him? Is that him?”

  He seemed fully prepared to shoot me right there.

  “I’m not armed,” I said. I remained on my knees, my hands up, palms empty. Then I waited for one of them to wade through the bodies to get to me.

  If any one of these three was actually here to collect on the bounty, this was going to go very badly, very quickly.

  “Command, we have him,” the first guy said in to his radio.

  Guy number three lowered his gun and pulled out a pair of cuffs. Number two still looked like he was going to shoot me.

  “Repeat, we have Adam. We’re bringing him up.”

  He nodded at the one with the handcuffs, who started walking.

  “You’re under arrest,” number one said.

  Then he began to read me my rights.

  I didn’t do a head-count, but by my conservative estimate, I was being take into custody by every police officer in Illinois. I was marched up from the bottom level by the three officers who found me, and then it took the assembled forces a half an hour to figure out how to get me up out of the hole, since I couldn’t climb a ladder while my hands were cuffed behind my back.

  Once that was resolved, I was perp-walked past all the television crews in the Midwest—thankfully all were kept at a moderate distance so nobody could Jack Ruby me along the way—and into a squad car.

  I was joined in the back seat by the arresting officer—the first guy through the door, whose name was Stanton—a driver who looked like a regular patrolman, and a captain who introduced himself as Dunwitty.

  Dunwitty did two things, as soon as I got into the car: he had Stanton change it so my wrists were handcuffed in front instead of behind me (so I could sit comfortably); and he provided me with a bottle of water, which was really nice.

  “Were you advised of your rights, Adam?” Dunwitty asked. He was going to try to come off as my very best friend on the ride back downtown. I wondered how strong his case was.

  “Yes, I was,” I said.

  �
�Good,” he said. “Is any of that blood yours?”

  “Some of it. I have a wound on my side. Nothing too deep.”

  Dunwitty glared at Stanton.

  “I’m sorry about that, Adam,” the captain said. “We should have had a paramedic take a look at that.”

  “It’s okay, I heal fast.”

  “Which one of those bodies down there did that to you, you reckon?”

  Here was where he tried to get me to admit to killing at least the six in the basement. Which was interesting, because I was pretty sure that crime scene wasn’t in his jurisdiction; the laboratory was outside the city limits.

  “Probably the one next to the bow and arrow,” I said. “Hey, how many bodies do you have me down for? Ten, fifteen?”

  “Sixteen. Right?”

  “Yes sir, sixteen,” Stanton said.

  “You’re going to pin all of those on me?” I asked.

  “That’s not up to us,” Dunwitty said. “But you are the only one still standing. If there’s something else going on, now’s the time to start talking.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “So we can go round up the folks responsible. Just put us on the trail, Adam. We’ll do what we can.”

  I thought back to when I fled England, and why. Now here I was, well over a century later, still getting arrested for murder thanks to Herman. Even though he didn’t get to kill me in his oven, he still got what he wanted.

  Just like in Whitechapel, and at the World’s Fair, he outsmarted me before I could stop him, before I was even aware I was in the middle of a battle of wits.

  This time, he was committing mass genocide—for fun—and I might not even make it to the sunrise. There was still a contract on my life, and thanks to the media attention, the entire Western hemisphere was going to know where to find me before we even made it into the police station.

  With all that in mind, I started laughing. I couldn’t help it.

  “What’s so funny?” Dunwitty asked. He looked over at Stanton, who shrugged.

  “Captain,” I said, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. May as well get it recorded somewhere. But I can guarantee you’re not going to believe a word of it.”

  About the Author

  Gene Doucette is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist, playwright, humorist, essayist, and owner of a cyclocross bike, which he rides daily. A graduate of Boston College, he lives in Cambridge, MA with his family.

  For the latest on Gene Doucette, follow him online

  genedoucette.me

  genedoucette@me.com

  Also by Gene Doucette

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  Someone’s altering the future, and it isn’t Corrigan Bain

  * * *

  Corrigan Bain was retired.

  * * *

  It wasn’t something he ever thought he’d be able to do. The problem was that the job he wanted to retire from wasn’t actually a job at all: nobody paid him to do it, and nobody else did it. With very few exceptions, nobody even knew he was doing it.

  * * *

  Corrigan called himself a fixer, because he fixed accidents that were about to happen. It was complicated and unrewarding, and even though doing it right meant saving someone, he didn’t enjoy it. He couldn’t stop—he thought—because there would always be accidents, and he would never find someone to take over as fixer. Anyone trying would have to be capable of seeing the future, like he did, and that kind of person was hard to find.

  * * *

  Still, he did it. He’s never been happier.

  * * *

  His girlfriend, Maggie Trent of the FBI, has not retired. Her task force just shut down the most dangerous domestic terrorist cell in the country, and she’s up for an award, and a big promotion.

  * * *

  Everything’s going their way now, and the future looks even brighter.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, that future is about to blow up in their faces…literally. And somehow, Corrigan Bain, fixer, the man who can see the future, is taken completely by surprise.

  * * *

  Fixer Redux is the long-awaited sequel to Fixer. Catch up with Corrigan, as he tries to understand a future that no longer makes sense.

  The Frequency of Aliens

  Annie Collins is back!

  Becoming an overnight celebrity at age sixteen should have been a lot more fun. Yes, there were times when it was extremely cool, but when the newness of it all wore off, Annie Collins was left with a permanent security detail and the kind of constant scrutiny that makes the college experience especially awkward.

  Not helping matters: she’s the only kid in school with her own pet spaceship.

  She would love it if things found some kind of normal, but as long as she has control of the most lethal—and only—interstellar vehicle in existence, that isn’t going to happen. Worse, things appear to be going in the other direction. Instead of everyone getting used to the idea of the ship, the complaints are getting louder. Public opinion is turning, and the demands that Annie turn over the ship are becoming more frequent. It doesn’t help that everyone seems to think Annie is giving them nightmares.

  Nightmares aren’t the only weird things going on lately. A government telescope in California has been abandoned, and nobody seems to know why.

  The man called on to investigate—Edgar Somerville—has become the go-to guy whenever there’s something odd going on, which has been pretty common lately. So far, nothing has panned out: no aliens or zombies or anything else that might be deemed legitimately peculiar… but now may be different, and not just because Ed can’t find an easy explanation. This isn’t the only telescope where people have gone missing, and the clues left behind lead back to Annie.

  It all adds up to a new threat that the world may just need saving from, requiring the help of all the Sorrow Falls survivors. The question is: are they saving the world with Annie Collins, or are they saving it from her?

  The Frequency of Aliens is the exciting sequel to The Spaceship Next Door.

  Unfiction

  When Oliver Naughton joins the Tenth Avenue Writers Underground, headed by literary wunderkind Wilson Knight, Oliver figures he’ll finally get some of the wild imaginings out of his head and onto paper.

  But when Wilson takes an intense interest in Oliver's writing and his genre stories of dragons, aliens, and spies, things get weird. Oliver’s stories don’t just need to be finished: they insist on it.

  With the help of Minerva, Wilson’s girlfriend, Oliver has to find the connection between reality, fiction, the mythical Cydonian Kingdom, and the non-mythical nightclub called M Pallas. That is, if he can survive the alien invasion, the ghosts, and the fact that he thinks he might be in love with Minerva.

  Unfiction is a wild ride through the collision of science fiction, fantasy, thriller, horror and romance. It's what happens when one writer's fiction interferes with everyone's reality.

  The Spaceship Next Door

  The world changed on a Tuesday.

  When a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts, everyone realized humankind was not alone in the universe. With that realization, everyone freaked out for a little while.

  Or, almost everyone. The residents of Sorrow Falls took the news pretty well. This could have been due to a certain local quality of unflappability, or it could have been that in three years, the ship did exactly nothing other than sit quietly in that field, and nobody understood the full extent of this nothing the ship was doing better than the people who lived right next door.

  Sixteen-year old Annie Collins is one of the ship’s closest neighbors. Once upon a time she took every last theory about the ship seriously, whether it was advanced by an adult ,or by a peer. Surely one of the theories would be proven true eventually—if not several of them—the very minute the ship decided to do something. Annie is starting to think this will never happen.

  One late August morning, a little over three years s
ince the ship landed, Edgar Somerville arrived in town. Ed’s a government operative posing as a journalist, which is obvious to Annie—and pretty much everyone else he meets—almost immediately. He has a lot of questions that need answers, because he thinks everyone is wrong: the ship is doing something, and he needs Annie’s help to figure out what that is.

  Annie is a good choice for tour guide. She already knows everyone in town and when Ed’s theory is proven correct—something is apocalyptically wrong in Sorrow Falls—she’s a pretty good person to have around.

  As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it.

  Fixer

  What would you do if you could see into the future?

  As a child, he dreamed of being a superhero. Most people never get to realize their childhood dreams, but Corrigan Bain has come close. He is a fixer. His job is to prevent accidents—to see the future and “fix” things before people get hurt. But the ability to see into the future, however limited, isn’t always so simple. Sometimes not everyone can be saved.

  “Don’t let them know you can see them.”

  Graduate students from a local university are dying, and former lover and FBI agent Maggie Trent is the only person who believes their deaths aren’t as accidental as they appear. But the truth can only be found in something from Corrigan Bain’s past, and he’s not interested in sharing that past, not even with Maggie.

  To stop the deaths, Corrigan will have to face up to some old horrors, confront the possibility that he may be going mad, and find a way to stop a killer no one can see.

  Corrigan Bain is going insane ... or is he?