by David Beers
Hartwell had went on the television this evening, about the time that Brett was on the roof with Ease, and let the world know who they were looking for. There was some good news—if not a lot. Demsworth had been a rising star in politics—a phenom of sorts, apparently—and this kidnapping was creating a lot of buzz. A young, white kid with unlimited potential now attached to gruesome satanic killings.
The entire country was watching, and that meant people in Atlanta would be on high alert.
Even so, Brett hadn’t heard anything yet, and now he sat watching as a man who should be in an asylum looked through pictures.
Ease had been looking at them for the past two hours, and Brett’s patience was growing very, very thin.
Brett had done other work, made phone calls, checked in with Hartwell … but Ease just kept looking through the photographs. At first, they’d used digital copies, but Abel had asked if there were originals. Now he had a manila folder open on the floor, hundreds of pictures spread out across Brett’s office. He sat in the middle of them.
Brett stared down from behind his desk. He dry swallowed the pill, replaced the cap, and then stuck the bottle quietly back in his drawer. The amphetamine would start working in about 30 minutes, and Brett knew he could use them consistently for probably about 18 hours, but then he would need sleep. Even the drug’s effectiveness would wear off sooner or later.
“Listen,” Brett said. “You’ve been doing this for hours, and you haven’t said a word. I’m sitting in here with you, wasting my time, wasting Emi’s time, and it’s looking like for nothing. I need to know what you’re getting out of this. I need to know if it’s going to help. If it’s not, or if you can’t tell me, then you’ve got to go. I don’t think you’re involved in this at all, but I am starting think ….”
Fuck it, he thought. Brett didn’t have time to be cordial.
“I’m starting to think that you’re a crackpot, and this is a wild goose chase.”
The man didn’t look up from the picture in front of him. He was quiet, the seconds growing into a full minute, and Brett felt anger rising inside him.
“Are you listening to me?” he asked.
“Yes. I hear you,” Ease said.
“So then answer me. What the hell are you doing?”
Ease looked up then, and the anger inside Brett didn’t fade—it died.
The man’s face was drained … of blood, of energy, nearly of life. He looked more tired than even Brett felt.
“I’m trying to get them to talk to me,” Ease said.
A chill rolled across Brett, goosebumps flashing upon his arms. He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly caught himself. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he wanted to be careful here. The man in front of him was insane, Brett knew that now. He’d read what had happened to his parents—read about the murder of his sister, how he’d killed his own father. He’d read all of it and still he’d gone up to the roof with him, because the coincidences were too eery. Him showing up, Emi’s problems … Ease shouldn’t have known about any of it.
Yet now, Brett remembered a quote from one of the articles he’d read.
The father, a diagnosed schizophrenic, thought dead Jewish holocaust victims spoke to him.
And then, Ease’s words.
‘I’m trying to get them to talk to me.’
Brett swallowed, moving his hand down to his hip. He didn’t unholster the piece, but only wanted to feel its cold steel. “Who do you want to talk to you?” he asked.
Ease looked forward and stared across the office. “You don’t know?”
“I want you to tell me,” Brett said, his hand still touching his gun.
Ease smiled. “It’s weird. The weirdest thing I could ever imagine, and I’m not sure I could describe the feeling if I tried. My whole life these people have been trying to kill me, and now I’m asking for their help.” He looked at Brett again, and tears were in his eyes. “The dead, of course. I’m trying to get them to talk to me.”
What Brett Lichen didn’t know was that dead people surrounded him. They filled his office, their dirty, skinny bodies nearly shoulder to shoulder across the entire space. Abel tried to imagine what the agent saw. Him, sitting on the floor, pictures scattered in front of him. Pictures of carved up bodies, crosses in flesh, and other grotesqueries. He saw Abel reaching forward and picking one up, staring at it for a long while before discarding it and picking up another.
That was somewhat true, Abel supposed, though it missed the truth of what was happening here.
Abel felt like he was inside a tornado, strong winds lifting him up, crushing any control he once had. He was being propelled forward to the thing that had done these acts. The winds were carrying him, but at the same time, he could see nothing. The dead in here, shoulder to shoulder, standing on the pictures and smelling of sweat, dirt, and death … They were the ones that could see. They knew what was happening, and they were also the ones thrusting him forward.
They were the tornado, and he was lost.
Terrified.
For himself, but also for Emi.
Because the creature that did this, it wasn’t human, and Abel now realized that. It might look human, might speak like a human, but … it was not.
Abel was also starting to think that was another reason the dead thrusted him into these hundred mile-per-hour winds—the Jewish faith would call whatever took Emi an abomination. Something from Satan. They wouldn’t want to let something like that take a child of God …
But Abel couldn’t know any of that for sure; it was only his thoughts after staring at the dissected flesh.
The dead, of course. I’m trying to get them to talk to me.
He’d spoken the words, his voice shaking.
The FBI agent looked back at him, and Abel saw exactly what he’d seen his entire life: disbelief and fear. Despite his own terror, he couldn’t let those emotions control Lichen. Not if Abel wanted to help Emi. He needed to make him understand, at least somewhat.
“Just a few minutes more,” he said. “That’s all I need. An hour at the longest. I’m close.” He reached up and wiped the tears from his eyes, wanting to see the room clearly just as he had when he entered that kitchen as a teenager.
Had he wanted to see anything clearly since then? Since walking into that kitchen, his sister hanging from the ceiling, his mother on the stool, and his father ready to kill all of them.
“A few more minutes,” he said, nodding. “I’m close.”
Lichen was quiet, didn’t even nod, but Abel saw where his hand rested—on his pistol, even if it was on his hip and beneath his desk.
Abel looked back at the picture in his hand. It was of the third murder, the woman hanging from the elevator. Her skin missing, her body a raw mass of bloody flesh. Abel didn’t know how such a thing was possible, the detail, the time it would take mind boggling.
He looked up from the photograph. A dead child stood in front of him. She was clothed in rags and holding a pathetic looking doll. The stuffing was missing from one leg and one arm, its eyes gone and its hair torn out in ragged clumps. It was as dirty as the rags the girl wore.
“Show me,” he whispered, tears in his eyes again. This is what he’d run from. This right in front of him. The child and all the rest—because it had been his ancestor that did it. His people that caused the harm to this little girl.
They’d all run from it, his whole family. His grandfather died alone, an unmarked grave, and Abel’s father? Bashed to death by his own son, because these people wouldn’t quit. The dead would never quit, not until his lineage was gone from this Earth.
So Abel fled, mentally running from them every single day.
Yet now, the dead wouldn’t even let him run, they were thrusting him toward something that might be even worse than them.
The little girl stuck the doll out at Abel.
She was offering it to him.
Not knowing if his movements would be seen by Lichen, or if
they were only in his head, Abel reached up and took the doll. He brought it to his lap, placing both hands on it, and then Abel’s mind left the room.
Brett did not leave. He listened to the crazy person say, “Show me,” and then watched as the crazy person stuck his hand out, as if taking something.
Only, there wasn’t anything in the room for him to take. His hand hung in the air for a second, before bring the invisible object to his lap, where he rested both hands on it.
There had been emotions in Ease’s face up until that point, and Brett saw them all. Fear, sadness—yet, when he put his hands in his lap …
The emotions vanished.
Ease’s face went lax and he stared forward endlessly like a comatose patient.
God damn it, Brett thought, his hand still touching the butt of his pistol. All this time you wasted working with this psycho, and now he’s done. Just shut down like a damned computer.
Brett stood up, unsure exactly what to do, but knowing that he was finished with this man. Lock him up or send him back to the psychiatric ward he came from, Brett didn’t care. Only that he was through. Brett would waste no more of Emi’s precious time.
He stepped around the desk, ready to lift the man up by his armpits if he had to, and that’s when the lights went off in the building.
For a brief second, the emergency lights flickered on, and Brett’s eyes flashed to them outside his office. But then, even they went off—including the signs that said emergency. The building was cast into complete darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
The entity parked the car in the gravel lot. It got out of the front seat, feeling no pain in its broken hand. It opened the back door, reached in, and pulled the woman out first, dragging her by her hair. She hit the ground with a large whack, her head connecting hard with the small rocks. The entity squatted and put its head close to hers, sniffing, hoping for pregnancy. Hoping that the Altar was with child—carrying another Altar.
It smelled nothing of a child, only grime, sweat, and something awful that Demsworth’s mind identified as BOOZE.
The entity shook its head and huffed, looking like a wolf displeased with a dead animal it’d found.
It stood and leaned back into the car, grabbing the man and ripping him out of the backseat. The entity didn’t toss him to the ground, but stood holding him by his hair.
The entity reached down, grabbed the woman’s hair, and then dragged them both across the parking lot.
It entered the doorless building, checking immediately to make sure the other Vessel was still there. The body hadn’t moved at all, still COMATOSE.
The entity dragged the man and woman to the middle of the warehouse, then dropped them. They landed with a thud, one on either side.
It sniffed the air, sensing something that it hadn’t before.
It wasn’t alone. The entity checked through Demsworth’s mind, seeing if it held any information, but all it said was that the warehouse appeared to be clear of humans.
Something else then. It sniffed again, its own essence replacing more and more of Vince Demsworth’s, appearing more animal like.
Its eyes went to the Vessel lying next to the bent metal pole. Slowly, its head turned upward, its eyes following an invisible line between the body and the ceiling.
The entity’s eyes narrowed.
It sniffed again, hard.
Something was up there, and though it couldn’t be completely sure, it thought the woman hung above her body. Watching Demsworth. Watching the entity.
It smiled, the grin spreading slowly and revealing teeth the way a lover might reveal skin as they remove a sexy negligee.
Only, there was nothing sexy here. No lust to be had, at least not for someone viewing the smile. Perhaps there was lust in the smile, though—a perverted, twisted version of it. The grin grew wider and wider, Demsworth’s eyes nearly alight with excitement.
The woman would watch, and then she would know that nothing she wanted mattered anymore. She would know this place was now the place of the Master. Its Master, and nothing she did would stop that. The entity would have her soon and then they would find more Altars. More praise for the Master.
It smiled up at the ceiling, the grin not quite ear to ear, but close. Had Demsworth been able to feel anything at all, the pain in his face would have only been second to that in his hand.
The entity looked down at the two lying by his feet. Both were still unconscious, but the entity was beginning to understand these Altars. The entity couldn’t enter these two like it had been able to Demsworth, and like it should be able to the woman. It didn’t know why, but it didn’t care—the entity simply chalked it up to the RULES of this world. Some were Vessels. Some were Altars.
The entity would start with the woman, and then use the man as the final piece. The first two murders—the woman and child, then the family—had been Altars. They were for the Master. The third murder had been for Emi Laurens, to help ingratiate the entity more with her. To help make her see, make her soul see, that it was to be possessed.
These two would be for the Master, though, and that meant a different sort of preparation. A different ritual.
It would take time, and the result wouldn’t be ready until the morning, but the entity was fine with that. All great things took time and complete surrender. The entity would surrender itself to perfecting these Altars, so that when finished, it could enter the Vessel.
The entity reached down and grabbed the woman by the hair again. It began tugging her along the ground.
“Come, come,” it said. “Come now, little one. Let us create something.”
Emi understood that what she saw now was not human. Perhaps once, but no longer.
Something was inside Vince Demsworth’s body, propelling it forward, but for Demsworth to be doing any of this? The laws of physics would have to cease existing. Emi couldn’t even bring herself to think of the creature as a him, despite the outward gender it portrayed. Everything about it was far, far too alien. Her brain simply identified the thing beneath her as an it.
The creature had seen Emi, she held no doubt about that. It had looked at her body lying on the ground, sniffing the air like some kind of highly intelligent animal. Then, it’d slowly turned its head upward until it was staring right at her.
A grin had appeared, and it reminded Emi of something. She’d been a kid and riding in the car with her father. He’d been drunk, as he usually was, only one headlight working on his truck. They’d come across a possum in the middle of the road, its snout eye deep in the intestines of another creature. The possum had looked up for a moment, entrails dripping from its face. The grin had been the same. Manic and consuming, as if it simply could not believe its good fortune—such a delicious meal to be found right there in the street.
Her father’s truck rolled over the animal moments later, ending its ecstasy with bone crunching finality.
There would be no truck for this creature, though. No one headlight piece of steel to run it down.
Finally, the creature had looked away, back down to the two people it’d dragged in. The dead were still here, though Emi found it hard to focus on them once it entered. They turned as the creature grabbed the woman by her hair and started dragging her again, now heading toward the far wall. Emi watched just as the dead did, though perhaps they understood better what was to come.
The creature dropped the woman about 20 feet from the wall, though it kept going. She saw where it was headed, toward a control panel of some sort. There were buttons across it, green, yellow, and red. The creature stopped and from this angle, Emi saw its hand clearly.
Destroyed, was the only thought that came to her mind. It hardly resembled a hand at all, looking more like a purple balloon filled with puss than anything a human might carry at the end of their arm.
The creature stared at the panel for a few moments, and then raised its right hand and pushed the green button.
Chains rattled from above, the sound of an
cient machinery whirring to life. Emi had no idea how anything in here worked at all, perhaps the electric company simply never disconnected service. Either way, she looked to the sound and saw 10 large, rusty chains lowering from the ceiling.
It used to be a slaughter house, she thought, for the first time focusing on something other than the dead people or the strange creature that killed everything it saw.
A hook was attached to the end of each chain, and Emi understood they were for draining meat. Pigs or cattle, or whatever the hell they’d processed in here.
God no, she thought. Please God. Please. Make this stop.
Emi hadn’t prayed once since first hearing Abel’s voice, hadn’t even considered God. Her savior had been in a bottle.
Yet now …
Please don’t let it do this, she prayed. Please. Please. Please.
There could be no tears, no physical sensations at all, only the knowledge that cruel pain was coming for everyone in here.
The chains stopped descending, though not from any act of God—they’d simply reached the end. They swayed slightly, gently rattling … almost peacefully if not for the dreadful hooks.
The creature turned and started walking back to the woman’s body.
Please, please, please, Emi thought over and over, unable to do anything besides pray.
The creature didn’t pause, but reached down and picked the woman up by her hair again. She made no noise, didn’t even open her eyes. The creature dragged her to the hooks; they hung about 10 feet in the air, four feet above its head.
They’re too high, she thought. Oh thank God, they’re too high for it to reach.