Dead Religion

by David Beers

  It was too funny not to laugh.

  Brandon might have giggled into eternity had he not heard the cab door close outside.

  He walked to the window and saw his brother grabbing a bag from the trunk.

  24

  Days Past

  Alex, Brittany, & Daniel

  The connections inside his head happened fast, but were still too slow to matter. The woman in front of Alex, with her white uniform and name tag, should have been just a maid. Had his mind made the connections when he spoke to her, he might have been okay—but only after the words were out did the necessary synapses fire. It could have been intuition, or the right parts of his brain seeing the right thing at the right time, but he knew this woman had been the one who called him. Her voice threatened him and his family.

  He was sure, but the surety came too late.

  Her eyes changed and then her face, but the human eye could not discern such a small time delay. Her eyes blackened, the pupils breaking their constraints and spreading to the entire eye. Her lips peeled back over her teeth; the rest of her skin stretching and twisting itself into the same predatory look.

  She launched herself at Alex, her feet leaving the ground and her hands outstretched.

  The maid collided with his chest and they both went to the floor.

  The door swung back and hit the wall, leaving a hole. Brittany screamed from the bed.

  Alex grunted, hands scrambling to get between him and the woman on top of him.

  “Remember me, Alex?” The voice, the same tempting whore voice on top of him now. Her nails raked over his shirt, shredding it as she spoke sultry words, peeling into the skin beneath. He felt his skin ripping from his body, pulled in long strips over and over again.

  “Still want my mouth on your cock?”

  More flesh tore as he struggled to get out from under her.

  Brittany watched blood spout from Alex’s chest; her breath caught in her throat. The thing, and her mind couldn’t identify what attacked her husband as anything else, was ripping him apart. Cutting through his shirt and trying to dig a hole inside.

  Brittany heard her husband’s grunts and knew he would die. She didn’t move though. She wanted to help, needed to help the man she had dedicated her life to—but she didn’t move. She watched the thing claw and rake across her husband’s already scarred chest.

  She listened to them scream and rage as she sat on the bed—her hands covering her mouth and her eyes watering.

  Daniel Nayek stopped his car as soon as he pulled into the hotel’s driveway. He opened his door and got out, not paying attention to the valets staring at him, wondering what the hell he was doing. He was…entranced. The building held him unlike anything he had ever seen before—he felt unable to take his eyes from the upward stretching glass that danced in the sun.

  Daniel was lost for quite some time after the bus ride. Not physically, the GPS installed in the rental directed him fine, but mentally, he had been separated from the logic that his life was usually based on. A haze descended across his mind, making it impossible to focus, to follow a line of thought for too long.

  It cleared now; when he pulled into the hotel, the haze lifted and the brain that had pushed him so far in life revealed itself.

  Only to be trapped by the beauty in front of him.

  He walked away from the car, leaving it with the keys in the ignition—discarded. A valet shook his head, spit on the ground, and started walking to it. Daniel paid him no mind; only the building mattered.

  He stood below it, looking almost straight up.

  This isn’t why I’m here.

  Even with the thought, he could not look away.

  Something is wrong with me. That’s why I’m here. I need to get those two and leave.

  Daniel closed his eyes, his head still tilted up, and focused inward. Yes, something is wrong. Whether or not it’s reality, it’s my reality, and in order to move forward I have to find Alex and Brittany. They’re inside. I have to get them and get us all under observation. To do that, I have to stop looking at this fucking building.

  He went through the doors, not frightened, only determined to end this psychosis.

  When he entered, Daniel understood that the delusions from his bus ride were not over. He hadn’t moved past it. Apparently, that face with those teeth were only a beginning.

  “Hello?” he shouted into the atrium. His voice echoed off the high ceiling, bouncing back only to him.

  The lobby, with walls stretching twenty or thirty feet up and the trendy—but elegant—dip in the middle, was completely empty. No one behind the check-in counter. No one walking around or reading newspapers. No one here.

  He ran to the check-in area and looked over the counter as if someone might be hiding behind it. No one. Daniel looked behind him again, checking, and then hopped over the counter. He walked along, heading towards doors that led to another room—hoping the employees had taken a lunch break, or smoke break, or some kind of goddamned break all at once.

  No one.

  He turned around and looked at the lobby again.

  “This can’t be,” he said.

  Would he even be able to find Alex and Brittany here? Would he be able to see them? More, were people able to see him now? Had they just watched him hop over the counter, seen him run, heard him scream? If they had, and he didn’t respond, then surely the police were being called. Perhaps that was good; perhaps he needed to be locked up.

  He went to the massive glass doors at the entrance, pulled one open and peered out. There was nothing. The only thing existing outside the doors was the absence of light. The hotel seemed to float in the deepest part of the universe, where no stars had dreamed of touching. Daniel looked down, hoping he would see ground, that what appeared in front of him was just some sort of freak eclipse of the sun. Where the hotel ended, the world ended. Nothing could be seen outside of it, and if Daniel was to step away from the door, he would fall forever. Nothing was there to catch him and nothing was above to view his drop.

  Turning his head to the left, Daniel looked down the side of the building. It was there, as solid as when he entered, but as the light from inside faded, the building tapered off into blackness—no longer shining in the sun. It was the same to the right.

  Daniel stood in a building that drifted in nothing.

  He let the door close, finding himself alone in the lobby again. He could sit down and wait on something to happen—maybe the man with the long teeth would show up—or he could walk around and perhaps find those teeth in the hallways. Daniel felt no panic, or real fear, because this had to all be in his head. He wasn’t hanging out in deep space, flying around in a hotel—he might be in the rental car, pulled over to the side of the road and knocked out, or even in a hospital somewhere. The things here were only hallucinations taking place in his brain, like an LSD trip. Panic or worry would only cause the trip to worsen.

  Wherever his body was, outside of this hallucination, Daniel had to hope someone would find and help him. Here, in this place, he could only act or not act.

  He started walking. He began on the first floor, going past rooms, checking doors from time to time.

  Alex knew with complete conviction that he was about to die. The strength, the fury, the whole goddamned thing on top of him was too much. She raked at his face, his neck, anywhere her fingers could touch. The nails felt like sharpened steel, razors rather than dead skin cells. He didn’t think of Brittany, didn’t consider where she was—he only concerned himself with surviving this onslaught. He fought, pushing against her, trying to find her face and smash her soft eyeballs back into her brain. She caught his fingers in her mouth as they slipped around her face, biting into them and bringing blood there just as she had the rest of his body.

  He looked at the face biting off his fingers—it wasn’t human. The black eyes, the hate—but more, she was physically changing. Her teeth were growing, becoming the face he had seen for years; her nose flattening and h
er ears melting into her head. Even as it happened, his mind refused to believe it. The God his parents fell to, the reason for all this, was on top of him now. All his desires to see this end were only silly notions, fucking farts in a tornado—he had only been here an hour and his life was over.

  Brittany stood, trying to gather strength. Alex was being shredded in front of her. The thing would have his eyes in a moment and his life a few moments after that. Fear didn’t hold her back, although it ran as rampant through her as any emotion ever had, but the knowledge of what stood before her. A primitive knowledge, one of the heart instead of the head; the thing mauling Alex was larger than she dreamed possible—older than this world or any ever discovered. That she, something not even on an evolutionary scale with this being, should try to stop it was revolting. Against nature.

  Daniel heard the shrieks but was unable to tell whether a man or woman made them. High, terrified vocal chords working at an unsustainable level.

  Despite knowing this was a dream of sorts, he felt his muscles spike with adrenaline and his heat rate jump. He started walking faster, and as the screams stretched on, he began running. Rounding corners, trying to find the screams—because anything was better than the nothing behind him.

  Daniel stopped when he saw the open door. All the rest had been closed, and the ones he checked were locked. Screams roared from the room in front of him, echoing down the hall.

  “Who’s there?” Daniel yelled.

  An actual snarl answered, as loud as the shrieks, but from someone other than the victim. The answer was as clear as words: approach at your own risk. Knowing that he moved only in his mind, Daniel walked forward.

  He saw two things when he looked in the room. A woman ravishing something beneath her, and Brittany—with her mouth open and hands in fists.

  Blood was beneath the woman, a lot of it. The snarls and screams came from the two things writhing on the floor. Daniel acted without much thought.

  He reached forward, grabbed the woman by her hair, and pulled. She came easily, one hundred-or-so pounds being dragged off the bloody mass beneath her. Daniel stepped to the side and slung the woman out the door. He saw her teeth as he threw her and felt instantaneous fear, however irrational it was. He let go of the thrashing creature, its black hair hiding a face more animal than human, and reached for the door—shutting it as the thing slammed into the hallway wall.

  He waited, everyone in the room waited, for the thing to attack the door. Only silence. Not a single sound of movement from outside. Daniel turned the lock.

  Brittany pulled Alex, helping him to the bed. He was a mess. The tears that had not spilled during her paralysis now streaked downward as she looked at her shredded husband. His shirt was tatters, if that, and the skin beneath more raw flesh than top layer skin.

  “Oh, baby,” she said, pulling him into her arms, blood smearing everywhere.

  Daniel walked to the bed.

  “He’s going to be fine, right?” Brittany asked as she frantically wiped at the blood on Alex’s face.

  Daniel knew they would be okay because they lived only in his head. They were…figments as the saying went. He turned from them, looking at the door. That explained why the thing attacking Alex disappeared when it closed. Daniel had decided It no longer existed. If he wanted, he could do the same to Alex and Brittany—just send them on their way. Why not? Why sit here and deal with these invented problems? He needed to free himself from this cage, and dealing with a carved up Alex wouldn’t help.

  Daniel walked out the door and into the hallway. He let the door close behind him while keeping the handle turned to allow him reentrance.

  The hallway was empty, even the cart gone. Daniel nodded, having expected this.

  After a few seconds, he walked back in the room.

  “Is it out there?” Brittany asked. Both Alex and her stared at him. Daniel’s eyes narrowed—he took a few steps backwards and let the door close again.

  They won’t be there, not this time.

  He opened the door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Brittany demanded.

  “You shouldn’t be here…” he said, a conversation strictly with himself.

  “What?” Brittany closed her eyes and shook her head. “It doesn’t fucking matter; come look at Alex.”

  “If you’re here and I can’t send you away, then…” He didn’t know. Not really. It was all arm chair philosopher bullshit. Still, his mind wouldn’t let them go, so they were here for a reason.

  So simple it seemed stupid: he had to help them here. Unable to find what plagued them in life, he would have to do it here—in this hotel of the mind.

  “Okay,” he nodded, looking at the floor. “Okay.” He walked to the bed, finally meeting eyes with the people existing only in his imagination. “Let me see.”

  25

  Days Past

  Roberta & Abella

  Maux stepped back, allowing the body to flop to the floor and the inhabitant—Roberta—to come forward. She had resisted inside the room, harder than Maux predicted, causing It to take over more than It wanted—more than was safe. It needed sacrifices, not just death. Maux could not simply use Its hand here—that wouldn’t further the awakening.

  The woman’s purpose was done.

  Maux fell back completely.

  Roberta opened her eyes—felt her lids move back, knew that they were open. Only blackness greeted her; no shapes, no objects, no world. She blinked rapidly, hoping it would fix whatever blocked her vision, but she looked at the same darkness whether her eyes were opened or closed.

  She felt along the floor with her hands—her eyes staring blankly into the hall—trying desperately to find something, anything, that would help her.

  She didn’t know it, but her pupils had exploded, stretched further than any human’s before, filling nearly her entire eyeball with foreign fluids. After the burst, which she never felt, the nerves inside drowned—leaving her without pain.

  Not without bewilderment though, as she whimpered in the hallway—going slack against the wall behind her.

  She knew, maybe not everything that happened when the door opened, but enough to understand It had come. That whatever was supposed to happen, whatever the puppeteer wanted her for, had occurred.

  Her face burned and she moved her hands clumsily to it. She felt fire engulf her skin as she moved her hands over cuts. She pulled away, knowing all she needed to of her face.

  She only wanted to find her mother. To go home. She rose to her feet slowly, bumping the wall as she did. Hospitals and emergency rooms—she didn’t give a damn about any of it—because she was going to her mother. Going to find her and cry in her arms. She was blind and her face scarred, yet she didn’t know if there was more to this plan, if she was to be used again. She decided she would find out while holding her mom.

  Abella knelt in front of the one picture she owned of The Christ. She held the cross, pulled from the wall, in her hand. Kneeling in the living room, the picture propped up against the wall in front of her, she prayed. Prayed to The One True God that these apparitions, these Devil sent fiends would disappear from her life.

  She knelt for hours, but God did not speak back. God left her holding the cross and praying.

  Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come…

  The words would save her. Evil could not stand against it.

  Her prayers were so intense she didn’t hear the key scraping against the door or the multiple times it tried to slip into the slot. Her focus so strong, that even the door opening escaped her.

  Because God would save them if she only believed.

  “Momma?” Roberta whispered into the room.

  Abella heard then, turning her head from Christ feeding His children. She saw her daughter but didn’t understand. Why were her eyes black? Was it a mask, one that came with bloody, red slashes across it? Why were chunks of her hair and scalp missing? She birthed the person before her, but i
t wasn’t the person who left this morning. The daughter from this morning had been scared, but physically whole. This person was…hurt.

  “Momma, are you here?” Roberta whispered again, tears running through the blood and dirt on her face.

  Abella stood, muscles and joints screaming from the stilled position they had assumed for hours. She went to her daughter, fighting her muscles that seemed to never want to move again.

  “I’m here, darling. I’m here.” She pulled Roberta close, ignoring the blood on her face.

  “I can’t see,” Roberta said, her hands gripping her mother’s back. “I can’t see anything.”

  Abella began crying too; God forgotten, her own horror this morning forgotten, only her daughter’s pain with her now. “What happened? What’s going on?”

  Roberta pulled back some, turning her face upward, trying to look at Abella through those dead eyes. “It came for me, for him too…the man in the hotel.”

  “No, no, Roberta. No. You’re okay.” Abella smothered her face with kisses, trying to ignore—to fight—the fact that stared upwards at her.

  “I can’t see you, Momma.”

  Abella heard those teeth clacking in her head: Ask your daughter…she’ll be able to tell you how much worse. Looking upwards at her, the eyes staring into eternal blackness, the face with deep gashes across it, chunks of meat missing from the scalp—she’ll be able to tell you how much worse.

  “Is It here?” Roberta asked, completely still now. “Do you hear It?”

  Roberta’s fear caught and Abella only whispered. “What?”

  “It’s here,” Roberta said, her hands trying to pull her mother closer, trying to find protection in her. She started turning, turning her mother too—trying to find the sound she heard. She stopped when they faced the mantle, where the picture of Christ normally sat and the picture of Roberta and her old dog hung.