Rite of Passage

by John Passarella

  Once he had convinced himself the woman was a good candidate, he proceeded toward the exit. As he passed a partially enclosed office behind an information desk, he spotted a grainy photograph of himself being displayed on a small television set. A news bulletin was warning civilians to contact police if they saw him. Sometimes he forgot how efficiently humans in this age disseminated information.

  As he was not yet ready to tip his hand, Tora must remember to fade from human perception when his power was not otherwise engaged. Though hidden electronic surveillance cameras might capture his image, he could channel his power so that humans focused their attention elsewhere, overlooking him, despite his imposing size.

  He left the supermarket empty-handed and waited next to the woman’s silver Nissan Altima in his blue and white Chevy conversion van.

  He had acquired the vehicle behind a store from a shop owner who had the misfortune to run into the oni while locking up for the night. With the dead police officer slung over his shoulder, the oni convinced the proprietor that he needed to get the cop to the emergency room immediately. The man wanted to call 911, but the oni persuaded him that driving to the hospital in the van would save time.

  “Oh, but I’d be keeping you from your family,” the oni said, as if reconsidering the emergency call option.

  “I’m recently divorced,” the man said bitterly. “I live alone.”

  “Well, I could wait here for the ambulance…” the oni said.

  “No, you’re right. This is faster.” With that, the owner opened the rear doors of the van.

  But when the oni laid out Officer Gravino on the carpeted interior, the shopkeeper finally saw the mortal wound in the cop’s throat and slowly backed away.

  “That man’s dead,” the shopkeeper whispered. “What have you—?”

  Tora shoved his cane under the man’s jaw and drove the point up through the roof of his mouth and into his brain with such force the man’s feet left the ground. For a few seconds his arms and legs twitched and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then his body slumped, lifeless, suspended in mid-air by the cane. With his free hand, the oni opened the back door of the store wide enough to heave the corpse into the room. After locking that door, he closed the rear van doors and drove away.

  En route to his hideaway, Tora stopped at a traffic light and noticed the young woman in the car next to him. On a whim, he followed her a few blocks and waited until she parked in the supermarket lot before he pulled in beside her car.

  To keep the storefront in view, he had backed the van into its parking space. Through gaps in the windows between large posters proclaiming double coupons and other special offers, he watched her enter an express checkout lane near the exit. Before she left the store, he started the van and drove to the far side of the parking lot, pulling into a space where he could watch her car through his side-view mirror.

  She opened the car door lock with a key fob button and climbed in with two small plastic bags of groceries that she placed on the passenger seat before buckling her seatbelt. A moment later, she started the car, turned on her headlights and drove from the lot. He followed at a discreet distance.

  Within a half-mile, she left the commercial district and turned onto a state road with longer gaps between traffic lights and a limited number of streetlights. Tora gradually accelerated, closing the gap between her Altima and the van to several hundred feet. Before he had climbed back into the van, he had nicked the base of the valve stem on her rear driver’s side tire with his hardened and darkening thumbnail. Pressing his right index finger to his temple, he focused his power, reaching out to apply pressure to the compromised valve stem. This was about fine control. He must create enough damage to drain the tire, but not so much that it triggered a blowout, which might startle the woman and cause her to crash. If she suffered a serious injury, she would be useless for his ritual. Of course, he could keep her body for its food value, but he already had a fresh human corpse for his larder.

  Her tire began to thump and wobble, the metal rim digging into the flattened rubber. After a few seconds, she noticed the problem, coasted onto the shoulder and turned on her hazard lights. Two hundred feet behind her, he slowed his approach, giving her time to react to the roadside inconvenience. As he neared, he noticed the telltale glow of an activated cell phone near her cheek.

  Of course, wearing formal clothes she would want to avoid the grimy task of changing a flat tire, which is why he planned to offer assistance. But if she had the services of an automobile club, she might decline the offer of help from a stranger.

  Focusing again, he interfered with her cell phone operation. The transmission would become too garbled to give her location.

  From a hundred feet back, he saw the exaggerated pantomime of her frustration with the phone. This was exactly the type of situation in which a portable, personal communication device could prove invaluable. If it worked.

  As she exited the car and walked to the trunk, he pulled onto the shoulder, coasting the rest of the way to avoid startling her. She opened the trunk, hands on her hips as she stared down into the interior, her body language a study in frustration. After a few moments, she managed to haul out the spare tire and lean it against the rear side panel of the Altima.

  He climbed out of the van, intent on playing the role of Good Samaritan. As he swung his door closed, the sound startled her. She looked up, eyes wide, staring into the glare of his headlights, and probably saw him in silhouette.

  “Good evening, madam,” he said, tipping his hat. “May I be of service?”

  “Got a cell phone I can borrow?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “But I know how to change a flat tire.”

  “You some kind of male chauvinist? Think a woman can’t change a flat?”

  “You would soil your clothing.”

  “What about your suit, pal?”

  “It is of no concern to me.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I can handle this on my own.”

  “As you wish,” he said and tipped his hat once more before returning to the van. He climbed into the driver’s seat and waited, unmoving as she wrestled with the lug nut wrench. First she broke a fingernail and cursed loud enough for him to hear it in the van. Then the wrench slipped and gouged her foot above her navy shoe, prompting a louder torrent of curses.

  Once more he left the van and walked toward her.

  “I said you could leave,” she barked at him, a convenient target for her frustration.

  “I thought you could use the illumination from my headlights.”

  “Your headlights are giving me a migraine,” she snapped. “Now go. Please! Before I call the cops.”

  “How will you call them?” he said. “Your phone doesn’t work.”

  “What?”

  “How will you call for help?”

  She raised the lug nut wrench defensively. “I’ll scream, you bastard. Get out of here. Now!”

  “Nobody will hear your scream.”

  With a flick of motion, he swatted the wrench out of her hands with his cane. It clanged on the asphalt on the far side of the road. Startled, she stared at him for a moment, her eyes wide in terror. Then she backed away, preparing to run, but he flipped the cane around and hooked her ankle with the handle, tripping her.

  She fell to her knees, crying out in pain.

  When she reached for the door handle with her right hand to pull herself up, he grabbed her hair and rammed her head into the side panel of the car. This time he took extra care not to kill the woman in the process of subduing her. Dazed, she fell backward onto the hard surface of the road, moaning in pain and confusion, struggling to rise with limbs that had not regained sufficient coordination to complete the task.

  He grabbed her upper arm and dragged her to the back of the van. Holding her upright, he opened the doors. Though her head lolled to the side and her eyelids fluttered, she became aware of the police officer’s body sprawled across the carpeted floor and her moa
ning became shrill. She tried to pull away from him, but lost her footing and dangled from his tight grip. Unceremoniously, he tossed her into the back of the van where she landed on the corpse and immediately pushed herself away.

  While she struggled to sit up and escape from the van, he opened the toolbox he had discovered earlier and removed a large roll of silver duct tape. She tried to push herself off the floor of the van, but he shoved her back, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Again he cautioned himself to moderate his use of force. It was so easy to break their bones. He caught one ankle, pressed it against the other and quickly wrapped a few loops of tape around them.

  “Stop! Get away from me! HELP!”

  He slapped her face hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.

  In a moment, he wrapped tape around her face, covering her mouth but leaving her flaring nostrils exposed so she wouldn’t suffocate. He reached for her wrist, but she slapped his hand away, pushing herself deeper into the van to remain out of his reach. Catching one foot in his grip, he yanked hard, pulling her to him.

  “I do not plan to kill you,” he assured her.

  Immediately her eyes tracked to the corpse sharing the back of the van with her.

  “That was self-defense,” he said, which was a partial truth. The cop had pointed a gun at him. “I have other plans for you.”

  That information seemed to alarm her more than he had anticipated. She thrashed as if suffering a violent seizure.

  With a sigh, he grabbed her head and banged it forcefully against the floor of the van, hoping to incapacitate her without crushing her skull in the process. Again her eyes fluttered, rolling up in her head, and her limbs sagged as she drifted toward unconsciousness. While she remained docile, he rolled her onto her stomach and taped her wrists behind her back. A moment later he slammed the van doors and returned to her car to clean up the scene.

  She had stopped the Altima on a lonely stretch of road, with a thin border of trees on either side. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough depth or darkness in the woods to conceal the vehicle, which left one other reasonable option.

  After tossing the spare tire and the lug nut wrench back into the trunk, along with her two bags of groceries, he removed a grimy white T-shirt and left it tucked in the driver’s window. Passing motorists would assume a mechanical malfunction had caused the driver to abandon the vehicle until it could be towed or repaired. He took her purse and cell phone with him, as leaving those items behind would arouse suspicion.

  After he climbed back into the driver’s seat of the van, he looked in the back and saw that the woman remained semi-conscious. No broken bones, no serious tissue injuries, and she was young and healthy, a perfect candidate.

  He shifted the van into gear and drove away. Soon the Altima’s blinking hazard lights faded in the distance.

  Despite his earlier frustrations, his plans remained on schedule. Already, the calling had begun. Now he could perform the demon gate ritual with the woman.

  Twenty

  Ryan Bramble slipped in and out of consciousness, plagued by a series of disturbing nightmares.

  In one dream, he was lost in a jungle of Amazonian proportions, the type of place where explorers might find cargo cults or discover new plants or species of animals. He dangled over a precipice, clutching coarse vines and roots as his feet sought purchase. Glancing over his shoulder, he couldn’t see the bottom of the cliff; the greenery descended into an encompassing darkness. In the distance he heard animal grunts, and strange birdsong filled the air. Strain as he might, he heard no human sounds, no voices and not the slightest hint of technology. The place was strange and alien to him, as if he had been transported into the setting of a Jules Verne novel.

  He wanted to call for help, but some instinct warned him against revealing his location. A sense of foreboding pressed like a weight against his awareness. The unseen predators rustling through the bushes possessed a ferocity he was unprepared to face. For his own survival, he must stay hidden from them. Dream certainty told him so. But his position was untenable. His tight grip on the vines that supported his weight was causing them to excrete sap, and that moisture was loosening his hold. Inch by inch, he slipped farther down from the edge, farther from potential rescue.

  When the vine in his right hand snapped, he swung wildly to the left and almost lost his grip on the other vine. With his right arm flailing, he snagged a dry root protruding from the cliff face and stabilized himself. Panting from fright and exhaustion, he sucked in the sickly sweet smell of the treacherous sap and the heavy jungle air. How much longer could he grip his meager lifeline? Isolated from civilization, what were the odds of rescue? A grim certainty took hold in his mind, that he would slip and fall, plunging into the darkness below, and die alone, unnoticed and forgotten.

  With hope slipping away and his arms trembling with exhaustion, he glanced up when a shadow fell over him and couldn’t believe what he saw. Sumiko! Standing on the edge of the precipice, staring impassively down at him, arms crossed.

  “Sumiko, help me!” he whispered fiercely. “Get something to pull me up!”

  “Help you?” she asked incredulously. “Oh, I have something right here,” she said, turning away to lift something by her feet.

  He waited nervously. A glimmer of hope flickered to life. She would save him. Sumiko would save—

  A dark rectangular shape swept into view and at first he couldn’t understand what it was, but then he saw the large crack down the middle, the power cord dangling behind like the tail of a stingray. It was the flat-screen monitor he had broken.

  “Miko?”

  She hurled the monitor at him.

  One corner smashed into his right hand and he lost his grip on the root. Spinning from the vine, he felt sap ooze between his fingers and slipped down several inches.

  “What the hell?” he yelled at her. “You could have killed me!”

  Now she was holding a countertop microwave in both arms. She dropped it on his head.

  “Nooo—!”

  Ryan thrashed in bed, muscles convulsing as the nightmare turned to instant darkness.

  Then he stood in a long hallway in what looked like an elegant hotel gone to seed. Every ten feet, on both sides of the hallway, doors with chipped gold paint awaited him. He ran from one end of the hallway to the other, but found no elevator or stairwell exit, only the hallway and the doors.

  He picked a door at random and tried the doorknob. The door swung inward and he almost stepped into a pitch-black void that chilled him to the bone. He slammed the door and backed away, bumping into the door on the other side of the hall.

  Tentatively, he tried that door. It opened on a single room with gray brick walls and warped floorboards; no windows or closet or bathroom. The room seemed like a cell, or a root cellar, not a place to spend much time. He turned in a circle and again felt a chill. Glancing at the door, he saw it was slowly closing. A fierce premonition overwhelmed him—if the door closed it would vanish, leaving another brick wall. He would never escape. Below the warped floorboards, nothing but a grave waited for him. Lunging forward, he caught the edge of the door an inch before it reached the doorjamb. Without a backward glance, he fled the room and slammed the door. He was trembling and soaked with perspiration.

  The third door opened onto the hallway itself, as if he was peering into a mirror. When he walked through the doorway he simultaneously stepped into the hallway again.

  A fourth door opened into a room with pulsing gray walls, glistening as if wet, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch them. Stepping closer, he felt heat radiating from the throbbing walls, as if they were part of a diseased organ. He noticed tiny pores or spiracles covering the surface and they appeared inflamed. As he watched, black goo, like some sort of toxin, began to ooze from the tiny holes, running down. Following the course of the black liquid, he looked down for the first time and realized the floor was made of the same living material as the walls. As soon as he noticed it, the flo
or began to undulate beneath him. Twice he almost fell before catching his balance. The second time, his hand nearly touched the floor. He saw with horror that the black ooze had begun to pool in several spots around him.

  Stumbling, he worked his way toward the exit, and with each step his shoes pulled against the tacky, glistening floor. He felt like an insect caught in the petals of a carnivorous plant, like one of the flies his seventh grade science teacher had fed to the Venus flytrap on his desk. Somehow he fought his way out to the hallway and pulled the door shut.

  Unwilling to try any other rooms, Ryan stood helplessly in the middle of the hallway and tried to formulate a plan to escape. At least one room must have an exit. How else could he have gotten into the hallway?

  Sooner or later, he would have to try the other rooms.

  He took a step and his foot broke through the floor. Yanking it free, he took another step and felt the floor collapse beneath his weight again. The building that contained the hallway—whatever the building was—began to tremble, slightly at first, but gradually increasing until cracks appeared in the walls and spread to the ceiling. Domed light bulbs popped or flickered out, one by one, and darkness claimed the hallway. Plaster rained down on his head and the flooring shook so violently he fell down. He knew that if an earthquake rocked the building and he couldn’t leave, the next best option was to huddle in a doorway, but that meant he would have to open another door.

  A violent explosion shook the hallway. Ryan flinched and made a decision. Lurching forward, he fumbled in the dark until he found a doorknob and pushed the door open. Though he braced himself in the doorway, another violent tremor cost him his balance. He swayed forward and stepped into the dark room—and toppled into thin air to the sound of people screaming.