by Jerome Sitko
“Enemy nine o’clock, ready grenades!” We all pretend to pull our pins, still in the prone position. “Ready! Aim! FIRE!” Ryan yells, his voice cracking—we all pretend we didn’t hear it. We thrust ourselves into the ready position, imitating the little green Army men we played with as children, right arms cocked back, left arms straight out in front of us to aim, and our legs spread for balance. For a brief second, the lights from the cars below silhouette our bodies, and reality does not match our imagination. We look nothing like the plastic green Army men.
I quickly glance at my three buddies. When I lock eyes with Joey, I feel a chill go down my spine and explode through my feet. Joey’s eyes for a brief nanosecond don’t belong to him. The eyes I’m staring into are soulless and black, not light brown with speckles. I quickly glance away toward the street and look back up at Joey. Although it’s dark, I can see the life in his eyes, Joey’s eyes. Did I imagine that? I had to have imagined it, I think, and don’t give it another thought. We hurl four baseball-sized rocks down toward the street at a passing vehicle, not considering what they might do—damage a car, cause an accident, or kill someone. At that moment in our stoned-out state, we only know we have a mission that must not fail. We can’t see the rocks; it’s too dark down below. But we sure do hear the BANG and screeching of tires. We quickly drop onto the gravelly roof, ducking, arguing about whose stupid rock hit the car. It dawns on us that maybe this wasn’t a good idea. We hear a car door loudly slam shut, and we peek over the ledge. We can only see the car and its driver when other vehicles pass by and illuminate them with their headlights.
The car is a four-door Galaxie 500, and it looks like it’s packed full of kids and a nervous woman, probably the mom. We can see the spider web cracks the rock made where it impacted the windshield. The man is hard to miss. He must be six feet tall, thick, wearing a blue and white button-up cowboy shirt and a large white cowboy hat, and he is pissed. “Ariana! I said, stay in the car and keep them damn kids quiet. I’m going to find who did this and beat them soms a beetches senseless,” the cowboy says to his wife, seeming to accentuate his accent for our benefit.
He walks around to the trunk, opens it, and retrieves a wooden baseball bat, loudly cursing to himself. By this time, all of our hearts are beating out of our chests. A feeling of fear and helplessness washes over me. I visualize that man up here beating all four of us until we’re nothing but bloody clumps of broken bone and flesh. The cowboy is at the lumber piles, saying, “You little heifers show yourselves. I’m only going to break your legs, not kill you.” He is walking, slow and confident, taking practice swings with his bat at the lumber piles. He must have heard us and knows that we are just a couple of kids. He moves to the side of the building, and we can’t see him anymore, but we can still hear him cussing and calling us out. The bat slams against the CAT dozer, and we know he is close to finding the door now. Did we shut it? Who was the last one in the building? Was it me? Thoughts are streaking through my head at an accelerated pace now. Jeremy must have been thinking the same thing because suddenly, he yells, “Every man for himself!” as he simultaneously leaps to his feet and runs toward the stairs. Almost instantaneously, the rest of us follow. We breach the back door and slam into each other.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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WE CRASH INTO EACH other like the Three Stooges and end up in a tangled mess of arms and legs, lying on the ground. As I look up, the sun blinds me, and I blink over and over again as I try to make sense of how we went from night-to-day. My first thought is someone has a floodlight fixed on us, maybe the cops? But that’s not it, that’s not it at all. Believe me, I want that to be the explanation. It’s an explanation that’s reasonable, sensible. As my mind is racing to rationalize what is happening, I hear another voice, a soothing, calm, female voice say, “Don’t fear, I am here.” It’s my ‘guardian’ again. Did I really hear a voice? I dismiss it as my mental hysteria caused by our current situation.
I've been looking at the sky, cause it’s gettin’ me high
forget the hearse’ cause I never die
I got nine lives
cat’s eyes
The voice next to me is singing in a gravelly tone that would sound good if not for the current circumstance. I glance over, and sitting on an overturned white bucket is an oddly dressed man. Not any man. This man is in his mid-forties, I guess, and dressed like someone out of the 1960s. He looks ridiculous wearing green corduroy slacks, a red-and-white mock turtleneck with a solid red V-line insert, and covering it all is a black leather biker jacket, faded and browned at the collar, elbows, and wrists. The silver zipper is zipped halfway, and the coat looks about two sizes too small for him. He has long, dark, asphalt-colored hair contouring his chiseled cheekbones and dimpled chin. His eyes are brown—or they could be black. When I look into them, I can’t tell. What I do know is I can sense, more than see, pure evil in his eyes. I shove Joey off me and scramble to my feet.
“What the fuck, what the fuck just happened?” I yell as I stumble around to the corner of the building, nearly tripping on a scrap piece of two-by-four. It’s all there—the big yellow front-end loader, the lot Joey disappeared into to gather rocks just minutes ago, and my pile of perfect hand-grenade-size rocks. Everything seems normal except that night’s turned into day, and a strange man is sitting here singing an AC/DC song. Jeremy, Ryan, and Joey scramble to their feet, looking around, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what just happened.
When Ryan looks around, his expression has changed; his face is now that of an infant oblivious to the cruel world that awaits—that’s the best way I can describe it. He’s not excited like the rest of us, he doesn’t look confused, and he seems content standing there in a boy’s body with the expression on his face of a one-year-old: pure, happy, no fear, no prejudice. I examine Ryan from head to toe, and he looks normal, except for a slowly spreading dark spot. “Ryan, what the hell. You pissed yourself,” yells Joey. Ryan looks in Joey’s direction but doesn’t offer an explanation. “What’s going on?!” we all exclaim at the same time.
Then the man stands—the dirt below his feet swirls like tiny tornadoes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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THE CONSCRIPTED SOUL’S FACE was distorting between this world and the other, glitching like a subliminal message on TV, so brief you don’t even know if you saw it. The man was somewhere in Chicago in an abandoned brick building with the windows boarded up and mattresses and hypodermic needles littering the floor, gang graffiti on the walls. The stench of human waste soaked into the beds was overwhelming.
He’s at one of his many portals where our world, Adamah, and his world, Sheol, meet.
In his current stance, the man looks humorous the way the arms on his leather jacket barely pass his elbows. The odd man swirls and turns toward his flock, both arms raised high above his head, fingers flashing the peace sign. He is singing a Doors song,
You know the day destroys the night
night divides the day
He points at two girls in his flock.
Tried to run
tried to hide...
The two girls begin to fight, scratching, punching, and kicking each other. He raises his arms back up over his head and continues.
Break on through to the other side
When done singing, the two girls stop fighting and look back up at their master. He is bored with them, and with a simple nod and no spoken word they end their own lives and dissipate into nothingness like hairspray from an aerosol can. Gone.
“Listen to me, grouplings.” He calls his flock of followers “grouplings,” like groupies that follow their favorite band around the country while touring. However, these groupies are coerced into a doomed life of servitude, unlike hippies looking for endless parties and fun. As humans they are duped, usually with the promise of drugs or sex, to cross a threshold into Sheol, where their human self is sacrificed and they are reborn, or maybe a better word
is transformed into grouplings. The grouplings interact and mingle with humans, mostly junkies and prostitutes, the type of crowd that does not ask or judge. But more importantly, the kind of crowd that will not call the police when one comes up missing.
When in Adamah, they can speak, show emotion, and integrate quite well among the living. By all appearances, they’re normal humans. In Sheol, they can be whatever their master desires. He uses the grouplings as he wishes and then discards them when their usefulness is used up, or he grows bored. He was bored when he commanded the two girls to fight and then end their lives. The odd man was socially inept when alive in Adamah, but in Sheol, he is confident and powerful. He proxies his grouplings to Adamah to do his dirty work and prefers to stay in the safety of Sheol. There’s another reason he remains in Sheol—if you die in Adamah, you’re dead, ashes to ashes. But in Sheol, you can come back, like a cat with nine lives.
“I’ll be leaving soon to start my journey,” he says as the grouplings start shuffling closer to him. The only sound in the room is their dragging feet and a distant police siren from the streets above, bleeding through the threshold.
“There are three boys that I must go see, three special boys that hold the key.” He turns around, and in the blink of an eye, he’s gone, leaving a tiny trail of dust so small and fragile that the movement of the grouplings dispels it from existence. His last command to his grouplings is to prepare to make the pilgrimage when the time comes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
◊
“WELCOME BOYS! WELCOME TO your hell,” says the oddly dressed man. I don’t know if we should run away or run toward him and try to tackle him. It doesn’t matter; my feet are now firmly planted in the same imaginary tar as when Larry caught me after school. I can’t move. Damn, this psycho is going to kill all four of us, and I’m going to stand here not able to run or protect myself.
“It looks like Ryan isn’t cut out for this journey we’re about to embark on, eh boys,” says the man, fiddling with the cords on his pants. I look at Ryan and the man is right. Ryan is in no condition to do anything except stand there with that infantile look on his face.
“Ryan, you in there, buddy?” Joey asks. He inches closer to Ryan and looks into his eyes. It’s dark and blank in there, like looking up at the sky on a clear night—nothing but black for eternity with little speckled shimmers of distant stars. Joey grabs Ryan’s hand in his and drops it as quickly as someone touching a hot burner. “Fuck, his hand’s cold,” he exclaims, but he’s not looking at us, he’s looking at the man. Since the odd man didn’t give us his name, I gave him one myself: Charlie, after Charles Manson. This psycho reminds me of him. He has something magnetic about him that draws you to him, but he’s quirky, too; makes you want him to like you, but there’s something else that makes you want to piss your pants like Ryan did when he looks at you. Little did I know that this man is Erebus’s conscripted soul Emma warned me about earlier.
Charlie laughs a hardy genuine laugh, and as suddenly as he starts, he stops and becomes deadly serious. “Joey, this boy won’t make the journey. What should we do with him?”
First—why is Charlie asking Joey? Second—what journey?
“What do you mean, what should we do with him?” Joey asks, staring down at his own feet, afraid to look Charlie in the eyes. I glance over at Jeremy and he’s frozen—scared. Even though it’s a warm June night, Jeremy is shivering like it’s January.
“Joey, you remember what I told you? Not all of your friends will make the journey, and you agreed that the risk is worth it, remember?” Charlie says.
“What the fuck, Joey, when did you meet this guy?” I ask.
Briefly, Joey has a blank look on his face, and then his expression changes. “I met him tonight… or last night…” he looks up at the sky, confused. “When we were collecting rocks, remember?”
“You were with us last night, dipshit, and we didn’t meet anyone except that pissed-off cowboy.”
“Yeah, I did, I followed Wendy to that apartment and met him, and we planned our journey,” Joey says in a sober tone.
What is going on? Did I fall down the stairs and knock myself out, or did Jeremy bean me in the head with a rock? I reach my right hand up to my head and begin exploring—nope, no bump. The man looks at Joey, and Joey nods and says, “OK.”
What the hell—are they somehow communicating? It doesn’t make sense. Suddenly Joey reaches into his front left pocket and pulls out his Old Timer pocket knife and flips it open like I’ve watched him do a hundred times. Joey’s proud of how fast he can draw his blade and be ready to fight. Then without a word, Joey takes his right hand and pushes down on Ryan’s chin, so his mouth is wide open, and he taps Ryan’s bottom lip with the tip of his blade. I hear the steel contact his teeth, making a tang sound. I grimace. Ryan’s tongue automatically juts out as we all watch in horror.
This is not happening; it’s a trick to freak out Jeremy and me, I think, I hope. Joey cinches Ryan’s tongue with his fingers and pulls as Jeremy and I wince and look away. Trick or no trick, I can’t watch. But I can’t not watch it. Without missing a beat, like a butcher carving a raw roast, Joey levels his blade and slices Ryan’s tongue. It doesn’t happen with one swift action; it takes Joey several attempts, and blood immediately begins to pool in the lower jaw that once housed Ryan’s tongue. Ryan doesn’t scream, but Jeremy and I do; we scream loud enough for us all. I feel like I’m going to pass out, and Jeremy looks like he’s throwing up in his mouth. Ryan stands in the same spot, motionless, with blood spilling out of his mouth, and he has the same neutral expression on his bloody face. The wind picks up and I instinctively lick my lips, and wish I hadn’t. I taste dirt and the unforgettable metallic taste of blood. I almost puke. The sound coming from Ryan is reminiscent of gargling mouthwash, and then he ungracefully drops down to his knees and leans back into his final resting spot as we watch, petrified.
He lies there on his back with his left leg bent awkwardly behind him, blood filling his mouth as each labored breath forces the blood out and down his cheeks. He’s choking to death right here in front of us. I look down at Ryan’s face; his eyes are still expressionless but watering, and the blood is frothing now as it bubbles and spills over his lips and onto the ground.
Again, my legs refuse to listen to my mind, and I’m frozen. I want to run, I want to help Ryan, but I can’t do either. I stand there in shock and fear. Charlie is smiling and humming a tune to himself as he watches the four of us like we’re all part of a play just for him. He gets the same sense of self-satisfaction he had with the two girls in the abandoned building. He gets a thrill out of the power he has to make anyone do what he wants when he wants.
Jeremy drops to his knees and is hysterically crying while Joey stands next to Ryan, unfazed. Ryan’s blood reaches Joey’s Vans, and now the tips of his shoes are covered with dirty blood. Charlie looks at Joey; Joey reaches over and places his index finger and thumb over Ryan’s nose and squeezes. Ryan’s bloody lagoon begins bubbling and frothing more violently and blood shoots up as Ryan tries to gasp for air. When Ryan’s body stops twitching, and he has breathed his last breath, Joey releases his grip on Ryan’s nose. Charlie turns to us and says, “I felt the humane thing to do was end his misery as quickly as possible.”
What the fuck is this guy crazy? I want to leave and go home to my mom and forget this ever happened. Charlie, expressionless, turns to me and looks straight into my teary eyes and says, “You won’t be seeing your moms for a while, kiddo.” What, now he can read my mind, too? This is too crazy, and I want it to end.
Charlie addresses all three of us. “Ryan was too weak to go with us, and I can’t have any dead weight,” Charlie quips, “so, unfortunately, he had to meet his maker a little sooner than any of us wanted. Now saddle up, boys; our journey awaits.”
“What about Ryan, his body—we have to tell his mom or something,” I’m able to say.
Charlie replies, “Don�
�t worry about Ryan; they will take him.”
“Who—who will take him?” As we reluctantly follow Charlie out of the lot, my question goes unanswered.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
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IN A PAST LIFE, Charlie was a serial killer, a rapist, and a sadist. For a decade, he terrorized the towns along the Oregon and Washington coasts. He was a meticulous and smart man, choosing his prey carefully and planning every detail of his crimes, right down to the disposal of the bodies so they would never be recovered. Dumb luck eventually caught him.
He hijacked what he thought was an abandoned cabin deep in the Washington forest, accessible only by a crude trail that was overgrown and showed no current signs of use. The cabin was small—just one room that served as the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. The windows had boards across them to protect from weather or nosy neighbors of the four-legged kind, so it was dark and damp. Water had to be brought in, and the only light came from candles or the old black wood stove in the center. The closest humans were more than ten miles away. Ponderosa pines surrounded the cabin and nearly impossible to find unless you accidentally walked upon it. By all accounts, it should have been the perfect hideaway. The day Charlie was caught, he was enjoying his seventh victim.
She was a beautiful, seventeen-year-old runaway named Lori. Charlie watched her on the streets of Yakima for hours before making his move. He watched her get off the Greyhound bus with only a small brown suitcase. As soon as she stepped off, she sat down, clueless what to do next. She looked terrified, sitting on the bench in front of the bus station. Charlie didn’t know if she was waiting to be picked up by someone, but he doubted it. So he continued to stalk his prey.