Ghoul Night

by William Massa

  “Stop shooting. I’m giving myself up,” I shouted, trying to sound as sincere as possible.

  I could feel my demonic side protesting, but I was unwilling to risk more innocent lives. I had to persuade them to leave this place.

  I rose to my feet, left the protective cover of the tombstone and tossed my weapons aside. It pained me to let go of Demon Slayer and Hellseeker, but there was no other way to diffuse this situation before it turned into a full-on shootout.

  A figure separated from the group of heavily armed exorcist commandos and advanced toward me, glowing cross in hand.

  “Father Cabrera, I know you see me as the enemy, but you and your men are in grave danger.” I tried to keep a measured, even tone and look as non-threatening as possible. Knowing the head exorcist the way I did, I doubted it would make much of a difference. There was a reason Cabrera had earned himself a near-mythical reputation as the best exorcist in the world. The man didn’t negotiate with demons—or half-demons—no matter how convincing their arguments might be.

  My gut told me the exorcists would have already opened fire if it hadn’t been for the strange glow emanating from the glyps etched into the grave markers and the quaking ground. Where earlier the eerie light had only been visible to someone with psychic abilities like mine, it had grown in strength and become detectable to normal human senses.

  “This cemetery is the nexus for some seriously bad magic,” I explained. “We need to leave immediately.”

  Cormac shot me a sharp look. The idea of leaving Jennifer behind didn’t sit well with the psychic. I had no intention of abandoning the poor woman, especially since she was the key to what was unfolding here. But I needed to know more about the details of the ritual before I made the wrong move. Simply tearing her out of the spell’s grip might kill her or blow up the entire cemetery.

  I took another step toward Cabrera when the air stirred behind me. A loud snap cracked as a whip lashed around my demonic wrist. Pain flared, and the demon inside of me wanted to draw blood in retaliation. It took all my willpower to calm Cyon.

  I spun around, one end of the whip still wrapped around my forearm. My face fell as my eyes found my newest attacker. Archer stared back at me, her face unreadable, the other end of the Witch Whip in her gloved hand. As I had feared, Skulick had decided to turn everybody against me. My eyes must have blazed with a demonic glow because even Cormac backed away from me. Every one of my former allies had fallen away. I was on my own.

  The whip’s magic burned my transformed hand, and smoke curled from the sizzling inhuman flesh.

  “Raven, it’s time to come in,” Archer said. “Don’t’ make this harder than it has to be.”

  “For God’s sake, Archer look around you! Can’t you tell something is wrong? Something terrible is about to happen here!” My voice shook with urgency. I didn’t care about my own safety as much as what might happen to Archer, Cormac and even Father Cabrera and his team.

  I recognized the hesitation on Archer’s face. “Please, Jane,” I pressed.

  “The demon will use every trick at its disposal to deceive us!” Cabrera shouted, cross held high.

  I pressed my lips into a tight line. I had heard this one before. This was a page right out of the exorcism playbook, Demon Hunting 101, but it never seemed to get old for Cabrera.

  Before I could think of some way to convince everyone to leave peacefully, all hell broke loose. One by one, the glyphs on the grave markers exploded with a burst of luminous spectral energy. The ground heaved up and down, throwing us all off balance.

  One of the exorcists stared at the rippling earth beneath his feet mere seconds before a giant sink hole opened and swallowed the man whole. A burst of gunfire shredded the night air, followed by panicked shouts and screams as the ground was wrenched apart by an enormous release of supernatural power. Fissures zigzagged between our scrambling feet. A collection of grave markers rose from the burial site like the teeth of a giant beast, growing as they emerged, revealing themselves to be the tips of far larger structures.

  A tombstone behind Archer thrust from the ground in a violent spray of soil. Before the structure could catapult her into the air, I pulled my arm back, the whip still attached, hoping Archer’s stubbornness would make her hold on tight to her end. She did, and with my inhuman strength, I yanked her forward. Not a second too soon, as the stone spire erupted from the spot where she had stood moments earlier. She hit the ground face first, but it was better than the alternative.

  I finally freed myself from the whip, my gaze meeting Archer’s. I hope she realized I couldn’t be all bad if I was willing to save her. Cabrera stood stock-still, overwhelmed by the transformation of the cemetery, his stunned expression mirroring the panic of the other exorcists.

  “Run for your lives!” I shouted at everyone and surged toward Archer. She was still on the ground, and I pulled her back to her feet before she could protest.

  I scooped up my two magical weapons and broke into a sprint. Within seconds, we were all running. More tombstones exploded like missiles from the ground. The cemetery was alive with unnatural movement. I had once witnessed an earthquake while hunting a jaguar shifter in Mexico City. This was worse. Far worse. The earth continued to buckle, the cemetery having transformed into a theme park ride from hell. Coffins burst from the ground while the main mausoleum rose from the earth, revealing itself to be a giant underground pyramid.

  As we fought our way toward the cemetery’s wrought iron gate, the spectral light emanating from the rising tombstones went supernova, turning the headstones into beacons of flashing supernatural energy. The cemetery had become a Tim Burton fever dream, a Halloween attraction on crack—the ghoul’s final, parting gift to this world.

  The exorcists might’ve come to the cemetery to capture me, but they now had a much bigger problem to contend with. Personal survival took precedence over their mission.

  One by one, we burst through the cemetery gate. I hazarded a glance backward. Each grave, coffin, crypt and mausoleum was revealed to be a building block of a greater structure. How to describe it? Imagine a giant gothic mausoleum crossed with the size and scope of an Egyptian pyramid. The cathedral of darkness was rising hundreds of feet into the air, blocking out the watchful orb of the moon as it engulfed us in its gigantic shadow.

  I heard hushed cries and footsteps as a few curious onlookers appeared behind us. Where had these newcomers come from? A quick glance provided an answer as I spotted more and more young people stumbling out of a nearby warehouse. They were dressed up for the holiday, a parade of pitchfork-wielding devils, winged angels and gargoyles, rotting zombies, and black-cloaked vampires. Monster hunters appeared seriously underrepresented among the Halloween outfits. I guess everybody wants to be the bad guy. Hopefully none of the trigger-happy and terrified Vatican commandos would mistake the partygoers for the real thing.

  Thumping techno echoed from the structure, suggesting the warehouse had been turned into underground club for the night. It’d be the perfect venue for a Halloween bash with a creepy cemetery on one side of the warehouse and blocks of abandoned buildings all around. The earthquake-like vibrations triggered by the transforming cemetery had put a damper on the party, sending curious club kids spilling into the abandoned streets. Perhaps they were hopeful they might stumble upon an even better sound system. Judging by their wide-eyed, drug-addled stares and lopsided, drunken grins, they probably thought it was all part of the show.

  None of us could take our eyes off the cemetery palace rising before us. What purpose did this ominous fortress serve? Jennifer’s father had designed the ritual and laid the groundwork, but the ghoul had altered the original spell, bending it to his own unholy purpose. And with the ghoul dead, I had no choice but to wait and see what happened next.

  Everywhere I looked, tombstones dotted the fortress’ stone hide like turrets on a castle. This gothic nightmare gave off a palpable aura of darkness and decay. Death infused the air. The club kids migh
t be so stoned to think they were looking at the best Halloween haunted house on Earth, but Cormac, Archer, and Cabrera all knew better, as did the well-trained team of exorcists.

  One thing was certain. This was the overture to a far greater evil, the opening act of what was to come. The ghoul’s ritual had conjured this malevolent monstrosity for a reason. Had the cemetery been turned into an interdimensional gateway between worlds? Suddenly, I wasn’t worried about the structure as much as what might lurk inside of it.

  Almost as if to confirm my worst fears, the giant gate of the fortress-like structure began to rumble open.

  Death will be unleashed upon this world.

  The ghoul’s dying wish was about to become a horrific reality. A widespread blanket of yellowish-grey mist billowed from the open gates and descended on the area surrounding the cemetery like a giant shroud.

  16

  There was a heaviness to the huge, almost solid-looking smoke as it shifted and eddied. What horrors might be hiding in the yellowish cloud drifting sluggishly toward us?

  I stood and watched as the nightmare approached. The first translucent clouds enveloped our group. A few of the bravest—or dumbest—club kids who lingered near us were also caught in it. My scar was throbbing something fierce, but I didn’t need a demonic mark to know that the smoke-like vapor was supernatural in nature.

  Shivers ran up and down my spine as the the swirling mist engulfed us. It prickled my skin and laced my tongue, its lightly acidic smell burning my nostrils. There was a strange, acrid taste to the condensation, almost as if charged with electrical energy.

  Paranormal energy, I corrected myself.

  For the first few seconds, nothing happened. My eyes bored into the thickening soup, waiting for it to spit out some ravenous monster. But when the first Vatican exorcist cried out in shrill agony, I knew the horror wasn’t hiding in the fog.

  It was the fog.

  One by one, Cabrera’s team collapsed into twitching, screaming balls of human misery. Now the club kids started to retreat in droves, smart enough to know that they needed to get as far away from the strange gas as possible. The three partiers who had ventured the farthest from the nightclub joined the writhing exorcists on the ground, their screams turning into a dirge of agony that rattled me to the core.

  I rushed up to the contorting bodies. The men’s arms flailed, their legs kicking out as saliva bubbled from cracked lips. The exorcists resembled victims of possession themselves.

  Strangely enough, Archer, Cormac, Cabrera, and I remained unaffected by the fog. And then it hit me. We were all protected in one way or another through mystical means. Archer wore the Medal of the Saints, I had given Cormac my Seal of Solomon earlier, and Cabrera had the Cross of Light. And as for me, well, I was half demon, so normal rules didn’t apply to yours truly any longer.

  The same couldn’t be said for the rest of Father Cabrera’s team. The violent shakes that had taken hold of them kept building in intensity, as if their bodies were trying to rip themselves apart.

  “Heavenly father, what’s wrong with them?” Cabrera cried out. He received his answer a heartbeat later. He was reaching out for one of his fallen comrades when the afflicted Vatican exorcist tilted his head upward. The salivating visage was barely human, black orbs glaring back from dead features as the man’s mouth snapped for Cabrera’s hand. The head exorcist withdrew his hand mere seconds before his own man would have chomped down on his fingers.

  The other exorcists staggered back to their feet, eyes transformed in a similar manner, dead yet alive. I had faced this type of monster on numerous occasion over the years. First in Haiti, when Skulick and I had tracked the voodoo master Takomanda, and most recently during an investigation in New Orleans when I went up against Nocturna’s Serpent Clan. The fog had transformed the exorcists into zombies.

  I hated zombies. They were little more than walking meat grinders with insatiable appetites.

  My mind was racing as I drew Hellseeker and blasted the first revenant. I recalled Varthek’s dark, cryptic last words— the dead shall inherit the world. The ghoul hadn’t been making empty promises. The fog, which was already devouring this rundown area of the city, would continue to spread and claim more victims, turning the living into the walking dead. The Cursed City was about to be overrun by zombies.

  Nearby, the club kids not affected by the fog surged back into the warehouse. Three of the fleeing party goers were dressed up as rotting zombies, which added a surreal touch to what was happening. In the confusion, it would be difficult to tell the innocent from the afflicted. The real monsters were hunting the impostors.

  And people wonder why I fucking hate Halloween.

  I gnashed my teeth, and kept firing, felling one undead beast after another.

  Cormac unloaded a magazine from the Glock, silver bullets dropping one exorcist zombie after another. Archer’s Witch Whip lashed out and drew streaks of black blood across the face of one of the undead. She fired her crossbow, and the bolt found the sweet spot between the zombie’s eyes. The creature collapsed like a string-cut puppet. Father Cabrera wielded his glowing Cross of Light as if it was Excalibur, slashing at the zombies with ferocious abandon. The ends of the cross were tipped with spring-loaded blades. He drew the cross across the chest of one zombie, and the wound ignited with a white-hot light that devoured the revenant and almost instantaneously turned him into a heap of ash. The cross was clearly the most effective magical weapon here, and Cabrera wielded it like he’d been born with it.

  It’s not like I was jealous. I had Hellseeker and Demon Slayer, and they would get the job done eventually. I couldn’t have wielded the cross anyway, thanks to Cyon’s presence.

  As the undead succumbed to the cross’s power, I caught a glance of Cabrera’s pained expression. How horrible was it to fight the men under your own command? To slay men you’ve trained and mentored? Suddenly, I had a pretty good understanding of what Skulick had to be going through with me.

  I scanned the scene and realized that we were winning the battle but not the war. This fight wasn’t about stopping a few zombies. As the undead bodies piled up, the fog continued to spread, vaporous tendrils of eerie glowing mist extending around us like the tentacles of some beast. A handful of us were safe for the moment, but what about all the people who were hiding in the club? And how long would we stay safe, anyway? Our amulets protected us for now, but their magic might be overwhelmed by the power of the fog at any moment. I sure as hell didn’t want to put that last one to the test. I think being a half-demon was bad enough without also turning into a zombie on top of that.

  I scanned the streets for my car but the mist made it next too impossible to locate. So much for that option. Our best option, our only option, was to head for the club and regroup. Figure out some sort of strategy.

  “Get to the warehouse. Now!” I yelled.

  Archer, Cormac and Cabrera fell in step with me, all of us on the same page. As we retreated, we did our best to ward off the inhuman tide trying to break over us.

  I made sure everyone was inside the warehouse before I followed. I drilled two more pursuing zombies on the way, and then I was in the club. Immediately, I pushed the steel door shut behind me. The undead pressed against the closing door on the other side before it could snap shut, their rage and frustration swelling, howls cutting through the misty night.

  That’s when Archer, Cormac, and even Cabrera joined me. Together, we managed to push back against the mass of screaming zombies on the other side that were fighting to get in. The door finally closed, and Archer slid the large bolt into place with an audible rasp. The rage of the attacking zombies outside turned into wails of shrill frustration as they realized we had locked them out.

  The club was basically an empty warehouse space which had been equipped with top of the line stage lights and a killer sound system. The techno thumped as the spotlights conjured intricate patterns, adding to the surreal nature of what was happening. Mercifully the venu
e’s organizers killed the sound almost as soon as we set foot in the place. The harsh glare of spotlights dimmed, giving way to muted overhead lighting. Behind the dance area, I made out a large bar stocked with every conceivable liquor on the planet. I suddenly felt thirsty and craved a drink.

  Just one couldn’t hurt. I need to steady the old nerves…

  Knowing all too well from past experiences that alcohol and monster hunting don’t mix, I shifted my attention back to the stunned crowd of club kids and employees. For an eternal beat, I couldn’t shake the impression that I was surrounded by enemies, the parade of witches and vampires and monsters making me feel that I’d taken a wrong turn into Hell. Some of the costumes were cheap and laughable, but others came close to the real thing. I had a feeling if these kids should be lucky enough to make it through the night alive, they might skip next Halloween. Facing the real thing had a way of souring the appetite for the fantasy, as I so well knew.

  The clubbers’ terrified eyes were fixed on us, desperate for an explanation. Not all of them had seen their fellow club goers turn into bloodthirsty monsters, and I imagine they clung to the hope that it was all some big joke or stunt. Amazing how the human mind tries to rationalize terrors beyond its comprehension.

  The pounding and howling continued unabated, but the steel door held. For now. Wisps of mist penetrated the club through the cracks, but the low concentration of the fog wasn’t enough to trigger any further transformations, at least not yet. For the moment, we were safe. But what about everyone else out there in the city? It was Halloween, so a sizable part of the populations was out partying, making themselves even more vulnerable to the encroaching death fog.

  If we didn’t find a way to reverse the black magic mist, by morning it might be too late to save the Cursed City.