Among the Fallen: Resurrection

by Ross Shortall

  Suddenly, she came to a post on the side of the road, a road that lead off into even more darkness, an old sign saying Welcome to Blackwater city: Population 3,821,650, with Alex’s name crudely scribbled on the front of it in what looked like blood. Her bones cracked and crunched as she began to walk off into the void, only just noticing that the rain had stopped leaving her to walk on slushy muddy roads. As she walked off towards the city she could not help but wonder what would happen once she got home.

  Would her father and the staff that worked there be as shocked as she was?

  Would they believe her story?

  Where were these Judges?

  Blackwater was huge, finding five, whatever they were, would be ridiculously impossible. As her head spun with a whirlwind of questions, she wandered down the dark road home, wondering about the reactions she’ll get, hoping she will be greeted with joy happiness, if they were even there at all.

  Chapter Nine: Another World

  According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. - Thessalonians 4:15

  The exit 89 from freeway 28874 was for all intentional purposes the only way to get into Blackwater, unless of course you chose to hike through five miles of woodland, farms and fields. During the day it was quite a pleasant walk, with squirrels, birds and other little signs the world was still alive; but most people drove it. Tonight however, Alex was walking down the isolated and probably the loneliest road in American backwater history, with quite literally, the world on her shoulders.

  Alex peered up into the sky, scowling past the vile tree tops and into the red clouds. She could just make out the stars on the other side, their beautiful glows untainted by the fear and pollution all around her; their souls almost immune to the sickened world around her. Rosetta always told her that each star was a soul that had passed on, a spirit that was released; an angel that watched the good people below. Alex looked down as a tear rolled down her face, her saddened memories once again coming back to haunt her; but this time the rules had been changed. She looked back into the sky and smiled as the stars continued to glow, the angels watching her with their infinite gaze. With all she had learnt tonight, Alex was beginning to understand that science was not absolute, those stars up there could very well be angels, Rosetta could have been right all along; but if they were, she could really use their help about now. Alex sighed and looked into the darkness, continuing her hike along the cold desolate road as the dying wildlife continued to cry around her.

  Alex crept slowly and carefully along the road listening for signs of life, aside the crickets, crows and howling dogs, the land appeared morbidly abandoned. As the time dragged on, she thought it was strange that there were no cars what so ever; with this road being the only way in or out of Blackwater, she expected a car either way sooner or later; but there was nothing. Whether anyone would give a lift to someone as creepy looking as her at God knows what hour is another thing entirely, but the question still remained as to why the roads were empty.

  Alex sped up the pace, she knew there weren’t a lot of surprises here; okay so it was dead creepy in the dark and if it weren’t for the trees waving about in the wind and the other little noises; she would have been forgiven if she thought she was deaf. But she travelled this road a thousand times before and ironically, it is also the road she was killed on, so it lent a sort of tranquillity to her in a weird kind of way. The fatal night in the car was still in some respects a vague memory to her, yet peculiarly, she had started remembering the smallest of details.

  She tried her hardest to look for a sign, a key object that could refresh her memory and bring back some more of the pieces that eluded her; but there was nothing; well nothing she could see at least.

  Her mind just tortured itself over and over again at the sight of Sarah’s lifeless body, defenceless and cheated out of a life she deserved to experience. Maybe Sarah was just as alive as she was in some way, roaming around city, sitting in her room talking to her imaginary friend and hacking up a colouring book; but even that in itself brought more sad feelings as the thought of Sarah being alone out there, terrified and it worried her to no end. Alex never had an imaginary friend through childhood and took Sarah and her friend Gauge very seriously. They say you can never miss what you’ve have never had, but that don’t stop you longing for it. An imaginary friend through her shitty childhood could have been a blessing, most definitely a time killer as there’s only so many video games and DVD’s a person could buy. She felt like in a way she had been cheated from her childhood by her father, if not embittered from it; she was definitely cheated from a normal parent and daughter relationship. Children used to hate her as a child because physically she had everything she ever wanted, but emotionally, she hated everyone else because they had the one thing money could not buy; parents that loved her. She came to believe a long time ago that you are never born with everything, there is always something missing from your life; without a hunger for something then you have no reason to instinctively hunt or better yourself. But this now was very little compensation to her because she knew in her heart she was no longer the person she was, the game has changed and now she’s not even fighting for her survival; which led to the next question: what exactly was she fighting for?

  She had been dragged from her eternal sleep and tossed into a fight that was no longer hers; just a random name plucked from a hat out of the millions of the living and the dead in Blackwater’s recent past, but even Alex wasn’t that stupid, she was undeniably picked for a reason. She silently walked through the darkness, thinking and mulling over a twisted history that made her wish she had never been born. Most would jump at the chance at the thought of forever living and immortality, but Alex was a pessimistic even from birth, she was always the glass is half empty kind of girl. Immortality meant that one day she would eventually be alone; watching the generations of her family die every fifty years was far from her to-do list.

  She thought back to her years among the living as she hiked down the miles of tarmac towards the burning skies of Blackwater. She thought of things that made her happy, people she met no matter how brief. When you are in a situation with no apparent escape, you do tend to think back at what you miss. Maybe that is what they mean when they say My life flashed before me.

  One of the people in her life she remembered the most was a Housemaid called Rosetta, a big nanny type middle aged Spanish lady with huge breasts and fat belly making her look like a muffin roll.

  Huge warts and hairy chin like a man; and many even joked that she was. But to Alex, she was the best thing in the world as she grew up and even treated Alex like her own child and missed her greatly. Rosetta used to take her to Blackwater Church on a Sunday to listen to the Preacher tell stories of old. Bored the shit out of her at the time, but there was something about it that was just calm and happy, almost appeasing in a non-religious way, she always felt safe there. Was the Church still there? Hidden inside the hospital they built around it? She had not been for years since Rosetta died. Alex in her head began making a to-do list, okay so a bit late for a bucket list, but to say she cared at this present time would be a bit pointless. Things to do in Blackwater when you’re dead. Could be a great title for film one day, she thought as she amused herself on her long and seemingly endless walk back to Blackwater.

  Alex stopped and looked into the dense forest at a light. Was that music?

  She clambered up the verge and made her way through the bed of nettles and broken twigs.

  Cursing and swearing as her feet gashed and stung before re-healing again. She listened and headed towards the old music, crackly and from way back; it sounded like that shit your Nan would listen to on a Sunday afternoon. The light was coming from the window of an old lodge, a cabin made up of wood and corrugated iron; covered in moss and vines but sturdy and habitable, not quite as impressive as a log cabin, but definitely as
eccentric. A pipe came out the roof with smoke pouring into the heavens with a faint smell of barbeque that teased her nostrils. Flickering candle light stuttered within the dirty fogged up windows, flashing light deep into the forest terrain and cast ghostly, yet warm shadows all around her. She smiled to herself as she realized where she was, Crazy Barrie’s cabin in the woods.

  Crazy Barrie was the kind of person Urban Legends were made of. People drove past and saw him habitually sweeping the road and he often waved at them happily as they mocked him. People often joked and called it the clean mile as it was an exact perfect mile of road completely trash and leaf free. Alex had never seen him personally, but rumours were rife and very varied as to what he looked like. Some say he was a strange hobbit looking man and others claim he is a wizened old man with a pipe and long grey scruffy hair. But extraordinarily, nobody ever really stopped to find out. Alex back then, like most of Blackwater; saw Barrie as some sort of joke. He did nothing to deserve such treatment, but somewhere in his life he decided to live differently to the others, and as a result, was labelled an outcast by those who considered themselves sane.

  Alex crept up to the cabin and listened as she could hear an old man whistling to the music happily.

  She kneeled down listening to the joy coming from the cabin which warmed her heart from within, the gentle crackling of the fire numbed against the instrumentals of a decade past. She gently walked around the hut peering into a dirty frosty window, a warm light flickered and a figure could be seen in a rocking chair eating, his head loosely nodding to the orchestral music that filled the cabin.

  “Anyone out there?” an old voice came from inside. Alex stepped back. She imagined walking in and saying hello as the poor old man blows her head off with a shotgun in fright at her ghostly appearance. But Alex being Alex, liked people, especially now more than ever.

  “Erm, Yeah hi, I’m Alex I’m from Blackwater!” she said nervously. “I’m on my way home and I saw your light from the road” she continued warily as a long cold silence fell upon the cabin. The silence dragged for a few moments as Alex looked around the darkness, the music suddenly lowering in volume as the man stood from his chair and approached the windows.

  “You driving?” he bellowed nosily.

  “Erm, No walking!” she sighed as the dogs howled on the horizon. There was a slight pause and Alex gazed around the trees and the red sky, her paranoid mind fearing the shadows that loomed over her ominously.

  “Well you had better come in then, have a brew!” the voice said with a friendly tone. “The door’s open!”

  Alex took a deep breath and then walked round to the front, pushing the door open slowly.

  The music was gone and there was no candle, no light; nothing. It looked like nobody had lived there in years, just a silent and disturbed cabin that had appeared to be ravaged by time itself. She stood in the doorway for a few moments as she peered inside, placing her hand on the old diesel generator placed by the door, its surface ice cold to the touch. Alex was fast becoming irritated by herself, her growing paranoia especially, and the fact she was seeing things that weren’t there was fast becoming a constant annoyance; she definitely spoke to someone, his voice was as clear as day; or was it?

  She shivered as she walked in, the cold air inside causing her to shudder and her breath steam.

  Cobwebs and mould had set in the cracked coffee mug on the table, the candle was covered in dust and the radio never even had a plug on it. Huge wooden beams of oak held up the roof and the old iron fire stove was also cold to touch, something definitely strange was going on, but it seemed to be happening within her mind rather than the world around her, or so it would seem. She walked up a couple of steps into what could be best described as a living room, various racks of books and an old black and white television sat unused, a dogs bed and what appeared to be a car engine laid littered and in pieces all around the floor.

  Musty wooden strips of wood and old plank floorboards squeaked as she walked around cautiously inside, the lightening outside flashing in the windows and lighting up the invisible dust that fell from the rafters. Above her appeared to be an open floor and a ladder that led to it, but there was something odd about it that almost felt like she was being summoned, her morbid curiosity almost stimulated. She frowned and gazed up at the area as she clasped the ladder, looking down at the floor for a few moments and then over the old room sympathetically. Suddenly, she threw caution to the wind and climbed the old ladder, pulling herself up into the room and stood gazing over the area with a shiver as the air around her turned ice cold.

  In the corner was a bed with what looked like someone asleep in it, breathing gently as the old tatty sheets raised a lowered continuously with every breath, the room filled with long and drawn out snores and broken breaths.

  “Hello?!” she whispered nervously, approaching the sleeping man with growing restraint. The person in the bed coughed and muttered, turned over and went back to sleep, his limitless snores echoing around the old cabin. Alex walked over and gently pulled the sheet back revealing nothing but a blood stained mattress, a few lumps of dried flesh and handfuls of matted hair. She covered her mouth in revulsion before noticing a small note, tucked away inside the sheets. She leant over and picked up the old piece of blood-stained paper and then pulled the sheet back over bed, startled slightly as the sleeping shape reappeared and continued to snore. Alex backed away carefully and opened up the note.

  Creepy Poem – Dear Alex – No Date

  Dear Alexandra,

  My love for you lately knows neither limits nor bounds, Limitless patience as I watch and wait in your grounds. Sometimes I stare through your window begging to be seen, watching you change for bed and dreaming about you keen. You are my world and my one reason of being alive, the more I see you and the way you pose for me I thrive. But lately I am finding myself forever let down and ignored, my unflinching loyalty and lust for you without reward. So I have been thinking of a way to bring us closer together, for us to hold hands in any fearless world and bad weather. To do that we might have to go away in a world far from reach, A place where we are alone and untouched by actions and speech. For soon I will come for you and take us to a faraway place, together in a land where the still await us and our loving embrace. W.S

  She looked at the poem queerly as the words made her feel growingly cautious, its creepy and sinister promise to her making her feel deeply anxious. She had never met this man in her whole life, never even gave his cabin a passing look whist driving, yet here was this note. Was it a serious poem? Had it been left there deliberately?

  She walked over towards the back wall and on it was old newspaper clippings; Barrie, so it would seem, definitely had a thing for the news and the wall was littered with random clippings. She was suddenly drawn to one clipping. “Swine Flu hits Blackwater! ” Frustratingly, all it had was a title and a photo, no story; but it did look considerably newer than the rest of the articles. She scanned the wall briefly taking in Blackwater’s bad news until she came to the ones she hoped weren’t there.

  “Mayor’s daughters: MURDERED! ”; “CITY MOURNS!”; “William Stanson Arrested for Beaumont Double Murder! ” and “STANSON: DEAD AT DAWN!” Alex gazed at the clippings and stood quietly as her mind processed what she was unfortunately seeing. Who was William Stanson? He was found guilty and executed for their murders? What of the accomplice?

  She looked at the mug shot of William beleaguered and with doubt, his face scribbled over and hidden in thick marker pen. She slowly reached out and touched the picture but she felt nothing, not a single feeling or emotion, it was not him. She didn’t remember much, but she looked at his scribbled face and just knew instinctively he had nothing to do with it. She felt that in her heart that when the time comes, she would know her killer and she would spot him from the millions very easily, his smell, the way he moved and walked, his breath alone was carved into her soul and tortured every living and breathing moment, she could still smell
his vile stench on her even now. As Alex ran her hand over the clippings she paused suddenly, as if her mind told her to stop deliberately. She looked under her hand and pulled a clipping from the wall.

  Beaumont Murders spark Global Suicides - Blackwater Gazette.

  On June 20th, 2012, Victor Edwards taped himself speaking of mass suicide and believed “it was the only way to appease Decido; the Death of the Sisters is the sign of their arrival”. The Fallen Angel cult opposed suicide but believed they must leave Earth as quickly as possible, after claiming that a race of superior beings called the Decido were about to enter through a gate on Earth, Edwards convinced 239 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could enter Heaven before the Decido destroyed the gates into Heaven. Edwards believed that after their deaths, they would enter Heaven before the entrance was permanently sealed forever, which Edwards described as being a century old war coming to a climax. This and other religious beliefs held by the group have led some observers to characterize the group as a type of Fallen religion as the name Decido is a Latin name meaning the Fallen. Edwards committed suicide with 239 other members in Elkhart, Texas by mixing Sulphuric Acid with vodka. They also placed plastic bags over their heads after ingesting the mix to ensure asphyxiation in case the mixture did not kill them. The cult members, aged between 26 and 72 were said to have drowned on their own blood after the cocktail dissolved their lungs and stomach. The tape itself clearly sees Victor Edwards claiming that the murders of Alexandra and Sarah Beaumont, almost on the other side of the country, is a clear sign of the Decidos coming upon the Earth. What makes the event even stranger are similar Cults across the world all partaking in mass suicides in as many weeks after the death of the two sisters in Blackwater just off the East coast of the United States. In Norway a group called ‘Medlemmer av den falt’ which loosely translates as ‘Members of the Fallen’ left a 300 page suicide document answering for the suicides of 2,533 members claiming