Dark Exodus

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  The sound drifted from the tear, totally unexpected, freezing them all in place as they listened. It was not the sound of impending doom but of new life.

  From within the hole, a baby was crying.

  Again there came a flurry of movement, and the hole hummed and sputtered and sparked as something tried to emerge.

  The crying grew louder, more insistent, filled with fear, and he found a deep, primal part of himself driven to act.

  Elijah moved closer to the hole, to where the panicked cries originated.

  “Mr. Covington!” one of his team yelped, as Elijah did the unthinkable, what he should never have done.

  He plunged his hands into the aperture, fumbling toward the sound.

  To do what exactly? the sane part of his brain shrieked.

  The sensations were profound: incredible pain radiating up his arms, gradually shifting to near orgasm-inducing pleasure, back to an agony that could have driven him to take his own life.

  He didn’t even know that he was screaming, hands searching for purchase in the void, searching for the plaintive wails of a newborn.

  Elijah’s hands found something within the passage—

  And something found Elijah.

  Something with a powerful grip that took hold of him, and he began to panic. Elijah pulled back, trying to withdraw, but the grip from the other side was too powerful.

  “Help me!” he found himself screaming.

  And his team rushed to his side, kicking away the dried corpses, grabbing hold of him and trying to pull him back.

  Whatever had hold of him beyond the rip gripped his hands all the tighter. Team Brimstone pulled upon him, and he thought his arms were going to tear free from their sockets.

  The tear in time and space hissed and snapped, not wanting to let go of its possession as a baby’s cry wafted out from the abyss.

  “Pull,” he found himself urging as he thought he felt some give on the other end.

  They did as he urged, and he was moved back, what he held on to—what held on to him—from the other side ever so slowly being drawn through the opening.

  The baby’s cries were louder now, filled with panic, and it spurred them on, giving them the strength to . . .

  Elijah now saw what held on to him. It was that same, blister-covered hand, flowing up into a spindly, pale-skinned arm. There was no turning back now, they had to go on, they had to deal with the repercussions of their actions.

  They continued to pull.

  The angel emerged from the tear in time and space, its feathered wings afire.

  And protected in the crook of its arm was a wailing child.

  The angel dropped to its boney knees, wings still burning, and held the crying child out to Elijah.

  “Take her,” the divine being said.

  “She will save us all someday.”

  1

  Nicole sat quietly at the back of the sandwich shop, sipping the cold remains of the coffee she’d bought a little over an hour before.

  She faced the front of the store and watched as a dark-haired girl and an older man took orders at the counter and chatted with customers.

  Maybe this isn’t the place, she thought.

  She was looking for someone although she had no idea what this person looked like—

  But they did.

  Ghosts of animals swarmed around her: cats, dogs, squirrels, raccoons, a horse had even joined them for a short while, but it left when an old pickup truck drove by. Nicole figured the horse probably knew the people in the truck and had wanted to spend some more time with them before eventually moving on.

  Daisy, Nicole’s long-deceased cat, was draped over her shoulders like a mink stole, furiously licking her front paws.

  “Do you have to do that in my ear?” Nicole asked softly.

  The cat stopped for a moment as if considering her question, then began to lick again.

  “Guess you do.”

  The older gentlemen behind the counter was starting to give her the hairy eyeball, which meant that she’d been taking up space in the restaurant for too long.

  “All right, guys,” she said to the ghosts that were strolling on the tabletop and on the floor around her feet. “Looks like we struck out again. I thought for sure the creep worked here.”

  The creep was the one she—they—were looking for.

  The creep was the one who had tortured and killed the two kittens that Nicole now called Ike and Mike.

  They had come to her, still frightened, trailing the residual energies of the inhumane acts done to them. Nicole could read those energies, glimpse what the kittens had experienced, feel their fear.

  And there was nothing more horrible.

  Nothing that made her more angry.

  She downed the bitter remains of her coffee in one gulp and pushed back her chair. “C’mon,” she said beneath her breath. “We’ll go back to the shop on Berkeley for another look . . .”

  Raised voices from the counter drew her attention, and she glanced over to see the older man wildly gesticulating and yelling in what sounded like Greek. She couldn’t immediately see who had caused such an outburst, but as she began to move toward the door, she saw him and stopped.

  The creep was wearing the same black T-shirt with the spattering of bleach stains that he’d worn the night he . . .

  Again she felt what had been done to the kittens—every poke, every stab, every burn.

  The creep simply nodded as the older man berated him, then he rounded the counter and headed into the kitchen. He pulled a full trash bag from the barrel, replaced it with a fresh one, and half carried, half dragged the full bag toward the screen door at the back of the kitchen.

  “All right, kids,” Nicole said to the ghosts that followed her as she opened the door to the sandwich shop. “We’ve got some business to attend to.”

  The spirit animals could sense her anticipation, her anger, and grew more agitated as they swirled weightlessly around her. It was like being followed by a cool, fall wind.

  She hurried around the building and entered the filthy alley just in time to see the creep heft the trash bag into the Dumpster. Quietly, Nicole approached him as he slammed the lid closed and began to turn. He actually jumped when he saw her standing there.

  “You scared me,” he said with a sneer. The cruelty flowed off him in waves.

  This one was bad news. Just being close to him made Nicole feel sick.

  “You should be scared,” she said. The animals were becoming agitated, their ghostly bodies moving through the air, becoming more substantial as they siphoned off some of her life energies.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” the creep asked. “Get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.” He pushed past her toward the screen door.

  “What do you get out of it?”

  The creep stopped and turned.

  “Get out of what?” he asked. But something in his eyes told Nicole that he knew exactly what she meant.

  “Is it just kittens?” she asked, ignoring his question. “Or do puppies give you the same thrill?”

  His eyes widened, and he took a menacing step toward her. “Who the fuck are you?”

  She wasn’t that big, skinny by all accounts. He had a good hundred pounds on her.

  But he wouldn’t lay a finger on her.

  They wouldn’t let him.

  “Somebody who knows what a sick fuck you are,” she said. “They told me all about it.”

  She could see that her words confused him, stopped him cold.

  “They?” he asked. “What the fuck are you . . .”

  The kittens were no longer afraid now that they were dead. They were the first to make their presence known, flying toward the creep, siphoning just enough of Nicole’s life energy to give their ghostly claws sub
stance.

  “Arrrrrrrh!” he cried out, jumping back and swatting at the air around his head. Two sets of bloody scratches marked his face, one running down his cheek, the other across his greasy forehead. “What did you do?”

  “Me?” Nicole asked with a small smile. “I didn’t do anything.”

  The other animals were feeding off the kittens’ anger at the man who had harmed them. They swirled around her like wisps of winter air, waiting for her approval, waiting for her to tell them that it was okay.

  Of course it was okay.

  The kittens continued to fly about the creep, scratching and biting him.

  “You bitch,” he screamed, waving his arms around his head as if warding off a swarm of insects. “What are you doin’ to me?”

  “I’m not doing a thing,” she said with a slow shake of head. “They are.”

  The other spectral animals had joined in now, and she could see that the creep was really afraid. He was trying to scream for help, but ghostly birds fluttered over his mouth and nose, stealing away his voice.

  “This is for all you have hurt,” Nicole said, watching bloody bites appear on the exposed flesh of his arms and tears appear in his T-shirt and jeans. “For every single living thing that you tortured and killed for your own sick amusement.”

  The creep fell backward to the ground, hands around his face as he struggled to breathe, his body twitching, kicking, and thrashing with each new bite or scratch.

  Nicole silently enjoyed his suffering for a few moments before calling out to the animal spectres. “I think that’s enough.”

  The animals stopped their attack but continued to hover about the crying, shivering man, who now lay curled up tightly on the trash-strewn ground.

  “You heard me,” she said. “I think that’s enough.”

  The ghosts flowed back to her, swirling around her like her own private cyclone.

  She stepped closer to the creep. “I hope that you’ve learned your lesson.” She waited for a response, but he just lay there, bleeding and crying like the miserable, cowardly piece of shit he was.

  “Look at me,” she said, squatting down and poking him with her index finger. He began to shake and cry all the harder.

  “I said look at me,” she repeated angrily.

  The ghost dog by her side darted forward, sinking spectral fangs into the man’s arm.

  He wailed like a baby, eyes opening to gaze upon her.

  “Hurt another one of them,” she said. “Even the tiniest bug, and I will come back for you.”

  He looked at her pathetically, his mouth moving soundlessly.

  “I will come back, and I will bring them with me.”

  Then she stood and strode from the alley, satisfied by what she had done, ghostly animals following in her wake.

  But her satisfaction was fleeting.

  Her own revenge yet to be realized.

  • • •

  Jackson Price was dead because of John Fogg.

  Yet here John sat, on the edge of an overstuffed sofa in Jackson’s family home.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything stronger?” Barbara Price, Jackson’s mother, asked. She sat in a chair across from John. “I think there might be a few beers that Jackson didn’t drink the last time he was home.” A visible wave of sadness passed across the older woman’s features as she remembered her son and that he was gone.

  “This is fine,” John said, holding up the bottle of water she had given him. “Thank you.”

  Jackson had been the cameraman on the television show based on John’s and his wife’s investigations into the paranormal. Something very bad happened while filming their live Halloween episode. Something that had killed their entire crew, badly injured him, and left his wife worse off than dead.

  The official reports had blamed a gas leak for the tragedy. Gas leaks were so much easier to explain than what had actually occurred.

  “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to attend Jackson’s memorial service,” John said, the guilt he was feeling like a heavy weight dragging down his soul. He’d already been to visit the families of the other two members of his crew, and Jackson’s mom was the last.

  “You were laid up, weren’t you?” she asked him. “You and your wife? How is she doin’, by the way?”

  He thought of his beautiful Theodora, the reality of her current situation. His wife had been changed dramatically—horrifically—by the events that had occurred during that Halloween investigation.

  Being possessed by two thousand demons was bound to have that effect.

  “She’s doing as well as can be expected,” he said with a polite smile. “But she still has a ways to go before she’s a hundred percent.”

  Barbara Price nodded in understanding.

  “You look well,” she said, a mock smile appearing on her wrinkled face. “You seem to have recovered nicely.”

  Was that some kind of a dig, he wondered. That he had survived while the other members of the crew weren’t so lucky.

  “I still have some aches and pains from time to time, but I healed up pretty good, thanks.”

  She was staring over to the fireplace now, more specifically to the framed photos that lined the mantel. There were high-school-graduation pictures of Jackson, as well as Jackson’s sister. There were some family shots as well.

  “They said it was a gas leak,” she said, not looking at him.

  “Yes,” John answered, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

  “Would have thought with a gas leak, the whole place would have blown up . . . caught fire and burned down.”

  “It was . . . an unusual situation.”

  She looked away from the mantel, from her family. “Yes, I believe it was.”

  He didn’t know where this was going, guessing it was nowhere good.

  “Did you know that they didn’t want me to see him?” the older woman said. “They thought that it would upset me . . . the way that he looked.”

  John was growing more uncomfortable, wrestling with the idea of telling her the truth, but how does one explain the idea that her son was killed by a plague of demons released after a receptacle that held the demonic entities exploded, releasing them into the world?

  It was better to listen, to feel her pain and anger, and just play dumb.

  “And they were right,” she said. There was a tremble in her voice now as her eyes, behind the large-framed glasses she wore, began to fill with tears. “They were right,” she said again, fishing a wrinkled Kleenex from the sleeve of her sweater and dabbing at her eyes. “His face . . . there was very little left.”

  “I’m so sorry,” John said, rethinking whether or not this was the best of ideas but realizing deep down that it was. He needed to do this. He needed to see those who were left behind as a result of demonic encroachment into the world. He needed to see and feel their pain.

  “How could a gas explosion have done something like that?” Barbara asked, shaking her head.

  “It was a terrible thing, and a terrible loss,” John replied. “Jackson was a good man and a good friend, and I’ll miss him terribly.”

  The older woman nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for coming by.”

  He could see that she was done, especially with him.

  “I wish it could have been sooner,” he said, standing up from the couch. “If there’s anything that I can do, please don’t hesitate to . . .”

  She looked at him then, her eyes wide behind the thick lenses of her glasses. There was an intensity to her stare that practically caused him to step back and away.

  “Haven’t you done enough?” she asked, anger and resentment dripping from every word.

  John Fogg knew that it was time to go.

  “I’ll show myself out,” he said, turning toward the exit from the parlor, to
the hallway leading to the front door.

  Jackson’s mother did not follow, choosing instead to stay where she was, sobbing pitifully as she mourned the life of her son.

  A life that he’d played a part in cutting short.

  • • •

  Stephen Vasjack hated the phone.

  “John isn’t here right now,” he said into the receiver. “And I’m not authorized to make any booking decisions for him.”

  He lied.

  As personal assistant to John Fogg and Theodora Knight, there wasn’t much he didn’t have authorization to do.

  “He’s currently away on a business trip,” Stephen told the booking agent on the other end of the call. They were desperate to get John, and Theo if they could, on their shows since they had recovered from the events of the Halloween debacle.

  “No, Theo is not available either,” he said.

  At first he didn’t recognize the sound, turning in his seat to look about the office until he realized what it was.

  “Hey, Rob? I’ve got somebody ringing the doorbell. I’ll have John give you folks a call as soon as he gets back.” He nodded, listening as the booking agent gave his best spiel. “Yes, and if Theo is feeling better, I’ll have her call you. I promise. All right, Rob. Bye now.”

  Stephen hung up with a grunt, getting up from his chair and heading to the front door. He hadn’t recognized the ring of the doorbell because they hadn’t been set up at the mansion for all that long. There was still quite a bit about the place that he wasn’t familiar with.

  He opened the door on two people, a man and a little girl, and multiple suitcases—the last of which was being brought over by the cab driver—stacked upon the front landing.

  “Can I help you?” Stephen asked, covering his surprise with his most pleasant of smiles.

  The man was bald, wiry in his build.

  “This is the Fogg residence?” he asked.

  “Yes, it is,” Stephen answered. “Can I help with anything or . . .”

  “No, we’re good,” the man said, picking up two of the bags and pushing past Stephen.