by Phil Maxey
“This really is quite extraordinary—”
Sparks were now flying from the liquid, small explosions of color which were increasing in size and vigor. “I think it’s going to explode!” I shouted.
Alyssa ran to a door. “This way.”
“But I need to study it!” said the professor.
Ignoring the old man, we ran into a tunnel, the walls and ceiling being lit by the fireworks coming from the three inch vial. It was taking all my strength just to keep it gripped as I felt it wanted to expand outwards. “We haven’t got long!”
She flung open a door which looked dated to a bygone era and a rush of cold air hit me. “Throw it out there!”
I ran forward, almost falling off the top of a rickety staircase which appeared to be at the top of a ravine, and threw the vial into the darkness. We both watched as it lit the cave walls as it fell, and then...
An explosion of purple flame filled the ragged gap in the earth, causing us to both lean back as the heat surged past, looking for an escape above. Once the walls returned to absolute darkness small puffs of dust fell from the ceiling. Wherever that was.
I could sense the professor behind us and turned. “What the hell was in that vial? I thought it was water?”
He looked at me, his eyes wide. “Yes, it was water. Holy water.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
We all sat in the first room I had entered, which Fortacan regarded as his living room. They had been quiet since my blood caused a small nuclear explosion. I looked at the professor. “So…” He didn’t want to meet my gaze. I looked at Alyssa, she was seated on the end of the long table, studying me even closer than before. “There’s something you’re both not telling me. Tell me or I’m walking out that door.”
Fortacan pushed his glasses up his nose. “I tested your blood to try and understand what you are… Although we still do not know the why. The test did confirm the ‘what.’”
“Okay…”
Fortacan exchanged a glance with the vamp.
“The only way holy water and your blood would react is if you were a being of supreme evil. A foul beast from the deepest depths of the underworld.” His eyes locked on mine. “You are a demon.”
Green faced girls that puked over priests flashed through my head. In other words I had no idea what that meant. “What?”
“It explain’s why you can walk during the daylight. Your strength resists the natural light.”
“I’m one of those things that are on the outside of churches?” I looked at my arms and legs. “Am I not a little big to be one of those?”
“That’s a gargoyle. Lesser demon,” she said. “You’re obviously not that.”
“Yeah… obviously,” I said, my attempt at sarcasm falling flat.
“You don’t understand,” said Fortacan. That was the understatement of the century. “To be what you appear to be, for the reaction with the holy water to be that…”
“Explosive?”
“Yes, you would have to be an immense evil…”
They were both scrutinizing me. I held my hands up. “Hey, you got nothing to worry about. I don’t have any plans to dress up as my dead mother or anything.”
“You would also be drawn to the void, to do its bidding…” said Alyssa.
“Void what?”
“Most of the universe is full of a force,” said Fortacan. “A sea of chaos always seeking to destroy the tiny oasis’s of order, where good can flourish. Our reality is one such oasis. We call this force the void.”
“Bad guys and girls, and most paranormals, do it’s bidding,” said the vamp.
“And you don’t?”
She frowned.
“You do not appear to be affected by it,” said the professor. “This is most puzzling, but I am glad for it.”
“Hmm,” said Alyssa, her leg dangling back and forth.
“So how does a vampire make a demon?” I said.
The professor shook his head. “I know of no other time that has happened. It’s quite the mystery.”
I stood. The walls of the underground sanctum were becoming claustrophobic. “Sure… I’m a demon. I need to go.” I walked to the door.
“You shouldn’t leave,” said the professor. “The damned will hunt you to the ends of the earth. Their masters must believe you know where your family’s seal is. We have some rooms here with beds if—”
“What?” said Alyssa.
Undeterred, the professor continued. “— You could stay the night?”
I hesitated. The world made less sense than it did when I entered, but if any of this craziness was true I needed to know more if I was to survive…
It wasn’t long before I was laying back on a wooden framed bed, staring up at pipes and broken plaster. I wondered what the room had been used for before, because I was sure there were bloodstains on the walls and I learned the hard way to avoid coming in contact with that stuff unless I needed it for nourishment. Touching the red left its impression on me. Literally. I craved it, but on contact, as I felt my energy levels recharging I also got glimpses of the life of the person the blood had oozed from. Sometimes it was good show, usually not.
I’m a demon.
What did that mean? Sure, I had seen the films like everyone else had and Hollywood didn’t seem to have a great view of my kind. Also the bed hadn’t levitated once.
“My kind,” I whispered. All I knew was I was strong, durable, my senses were improved and when I touched blood I saw things, but apart from that…
I took in a deep breath, then turned over, the bed creaking as I settled on my side. I looked at my watch, sat at the end of my arm. The only piece of my past I gave a damn about.
It’s a super magical thing that kills monsters, and stops hell from coming into our world…
I sighed and turned onto my back.
Sure it is.
I had worn it most of my adult life. Never set any thing or one on fire once. Also, Middle Ages? It was seventy years old at most. But it definitely saved my ass in the apartment block, a fact I still wasn’t ready to reveal to the old man or his sidekick. I turned one more time, a last attempt to get comfortable. Usually I wouldn’t be tired after the sun had gone down, but my mind was doing it best to shut down under the weight of new information. Sleep came quick…
*****
My eyes flicked open to a sound. Giggling came from my right, causing me to quickly turn in that direction. The room’s door was open, waving slightly in a light breeze.
Imagined it.
It happened again, a young girl’s laughter was definitely coming from beyond the gap in a greater darkness outside.
Someone else had to be staying with the professor. Maybe his grandchild?
I swung my legs around till my feet hit the cold floor, missing the frayed rug in the middle of the room. I quickly slid a pair of jeans on that I had found in the chest and made my way to the open door, peeking out to the corridor. “Hey!” I shouted to a glimpse of a bare foot walking right of the junction ten feet away. Candles flickered in iron holders fixed to the walls, that looked like they had been down there a hundred years.
The giggling continued. I moved out onto the paved stone floor and walked past paintings and dusty furniture trying to remember where this particular tunnel led, until I emerged into a kitchen area I hadn’t seen before. A young girl, maybe of ten years old sat on one of the stools at a dark wooden counter. A strong smell of sulfur filled the air, and in her hand was a porcelain jar. One of many I noticed that were on shelves along a wall.
She looked at me. “He lies you know…”
I looked around the room for any sign of an adult. “Who lies?”
She pulled the cork top from the jar and plunged her hand into it, pulling out a cookie and examined it. “You didn’t know he was a former priest did you?”
I took a step closer but my instincts told me to keep the counter between me and her. “Who are you?”
The cookie turned black as she
bit into it, then smeared a black soot like substance across her face. I noticed her lips were blue, and her skin a similar but lighter shade. “I’m—” her voice was now deeper and echoed around the small room. “— from the dark place, where the worms fight the maggots for food.”
A number of fast foot joints I used to visit sprang to mind. I looked around the room once more, including the corridor behind me. The candles were no longer burning there, sending the walls, floor and ceiling into a void which even my enhanced vision was unable to penetrate.
A waft of something rotting wafted across my face and I turned back to the kitchen counter. “Whoa…” A spindly decaying body now sat on the stool, its damp soiled clothes hung from its bony shoulders, while what hair it had covered one half of a head that was more skull than face. It giggled again, but now it was more gurgle, which grated on my teeth.
The thing pushed its hand once again into the jar but this time it was not cookies that were removed but sodden lumps of flesh and sinew. “You won’t be strong enough to protect them. Just like the others…”
“What?”
“And the girl, she has killed innocents. Like you will, young master Hell-Lock…”
I could have sworn the last few words were from my father. A cupboard door rattled, which I hadn’t realized my back was up against. I looked to my right at a rack of kitchen knifes.
The stool creaked. The thing was awkwardly standing, its limbs longer than they should be. It looked directly at me, its head awkwardly balanced on a vertebra revealing neck.
Shit. Is it smiling?
I flicked my hand out and grabbed the biggest knife I could.
“The evil within you, is too great for you to contain. Once we destroy the seal, it will devour you, and then you will belong to him—” It surged towards me. I swung the knife.
I woke up for the second time, thrashing my arms about me at the hellish undead thing that was no longer there. More creaks came from the wooden slats of the bed, which suddenly gave way, sending me to the floor, while the torn sheets with the rest of the frame collapsed as well.
I sensed a heartbeat, then another approaching the room’s door, which promptly flew open, bringing with it light from a candle.
“Why are you shouting?” said Alyssa, looking at me and then around the room.
I pulled a piece of sheet and a splintered slab of wood from my face, and looked at a tense looking female vampire. Fortacan was just behind her, with his own light. “Bed broke,” I said.
Alyssa threw her arms up in the air and left. Fortacan frowned and went to follow.
“Umm…”
He stopped and looked back.
“This place got a kitchen?”
“Indeed it has.”
“It got a whole wall of jars?”
“Yes, I keep several types of herbs and… How do you know that?”
I sat up, pushing some of the planks away. “I always wanted a kitchen with a wall full of jars…” It was the best I could do.
The old man’s brow tightened. “Okay, well tomorrow we can have breakfast there. Try and get some rest. We have much to discuss.”
I smiled. “Great.”
His eyes lingered on me, and then looked across the walls and floor. “Do you wish to have a candle lit in here?”
“Ha!” I realized my gesture was louder than it should have been. “Pfff… I don’t need a light left on. I can see in the dark. Like a cat… I’m fine. Bad dream.”
He turned. “Right. Well, night then.” And closed the door behind him.
I leaned my head back on what remained of the headboard and tried to rid my mind of the creature that wasn’t real.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I sat in the kitchen trying not to notice the empty spot on the shelves of jars or the stool where the zombie ghost sat. Fortacan was happily frying something and even though it smelled good enough to make my stomach rumble, just being in a room which I knew like the back of my hand despite never having actually stepped inside it, was making me antsy.
“Morning!” said Alyssa, making me jump. Damn vampires, always sneaking up on you. She slammed down the missing jar, while munching on a cookie.
Fortacan briefly looked back. “I wish you wouldn’t take that jar to your room. You leave crumbs everywhere.” I wanted to mention the fact that the entire place looked like it had crawled out of a mausoleum, but refrained from doing so.
She ignored his consternation but looked at me while she went to the refrigerator. “What’s eating you? Had more ‘bad’ dreams?” she said the last part with a smirk. I frowned, but then noticed because of the light from the fridge, I could see her physique pretty clearly through the single long white shirt she was wearing. My agitation of the previous night reduced by around ten percent. “I haven’t slept in a bed for a while.” I looked at the professor who was placing flash fried liver draped in herbs onto a plate. “If you got some nails, I’ll try and put that bed back together.”
Alyssa sat on the bad stool, placing a plate with a silver foil covering on the counter. I tried to hide my unease.
“You know how to use a hammer?” she said.
Now it was my turn to smirk. I could have told them about my weird dream, but I wasn’t sure myself that it wasn’t just that. I had just been told I was a demon, descended from a bunch of knights who protected the world from literal Hell. That’s going to mess with anyone’s head. And maybe I had seen the kitchen already somehow…
Fortacan placed the plate in front of me. “I’ve become pretty good at making what paranormals like over the years. I’ll make you some tea as well.”
“Thanks.” I tightened my brow. “You mentioned that last night. ‘Paranormals’? Like ghosts?”
Alyssa pulled the foil back revealing a slab of fresh bright crimson meat, then promptly took a hefty bite from it, her canine teeth slightly extending on doing so. “Paranormals, that’s us,” she said between chews.
I lifted the fork, stabbed the liver and chomped down on it. There was just enough taste to remind me what real food tasted like. I nodded and took another bite. “This is good.”
Fortacan smiled while placing some leaves and other herbs into a pot of boiling water, then poured the result into a mug and placed it in front of me. I took a sip, my eyes immediately growing wide. “Hey… this actually tastes like… well it tastes.”
“Hawthorne and angel root,” said Alyssa nonchalantly.
“Yes. It’s my own recipe for Paranormals. It’s quite potent,” said Fortacan.
I took another sip allowing the earthy fragrance to settle on my taste buds. “This is not half bad. You should think about selling it online.”
The professor sat with his own plate of fried food and started eating. This was probably the weirdest breakfast I had ever had. “The damned are paranormals?” I said.
“Kind of,” said Alyssa. “They are people… soccer moms, stocks and shares guy, that are taken over by phantoms.”
“Uh?”
“They are creatures that exist between worlds,” said the old man. “In some senses, living but also dead. They can possess a person, make them do their bidding.”
I tried to remember old horror films. “I thought demons possessed people?”
“No,” said Alyssa. “Well, yes some can, but demons are flesh and blood, phantoms are… just think evil ghost. They crawl into your skull and make you do shit.”
“Can they do that to me?”
Alyssa looked at me closely. “Only to paranormals that are weak of mind… so yeah maybe.”
I frowned and took another bite of my meat. It was the best meal I had since the change, but my mind was still trying to piece together everything I had been told, and more importantly my part in it. Every day was a first day at school.
“There are creatures that are from beyond the veil,” said Fortacan. “Some of them are strong enough to punch through and whisper into the minds of vulnerable humans.” I noticed his eyes flicked towards Alyss
a, who concreted on her food. “Others act more directly and take what they want.” He looked down as if a weight was upon him. “I have worked for over fifty years to hold back the tide. At first I worked alone, but then one day, I found someone who was like yourself.”
“A demon?”
“No, a vampire.”
“Not me, before you ask,” said Alyssa.
“Well, we found each other. But she was not like the others I had been fighting against up until that point. There was good in her and together we fought against the agents of the night. But…”
“Then some years after, he found me,” said Alyssa. “I had just been turned, freshly minted vamp. Fed me on animal blood, and played Clair de Lune over and over. Man I hate that piece now.”
Fortacan smiled. “I fail to believe anyone can become truly evil if they hear Debussy. Anyway,” he continued. “When people are turned, whether that means they become the damned, or they become another variety of paranormal, like a vampire for example, the good parts of them slowly dissolve until only hate is left.”
“They become psychos,” said Alyssa, finishing up.
“Unfortunately they do. But some… a tiny amount have such fortitude that they manage to hold on to their humanity.”
“What was her name?” I asked.
The old man got to his feet and disappeared through a door.
Alyssa scrunched up the foil. “Maybe not ask too many questions about the past.” She stood and walked to the basin and began to wash the plate.
“Okay…”
I could hear other doors open and close until he returned with a frame photo of a knockout blonde in a miniskirt and high boots. The athletic looking guy next to her I almost didn’t recognize as the man holding the frame.
“Grace,” he said.
“She was a beauty,” I said.
He nodded and produced a smile that was tinged with sadness. “She was.” He placed the frame down gently. “I have been thinking… If you are willing to work with us, then we can help hide you from the phantoms and other things.”