by Matt Cogar
I stood upon the blood-ridden grass, and saw the monster, his axe rising up from the gore-infested earth. I couldn't see it's face. A blood-soaked blindfold appeared to cover it's somehow familiar face. I saw the thousands – millions of cuts which covered its pale flesh. And then, it vanished, without a trace…
CHAPTER 17
C A R O L I N E
I walked into town. It seemed alive, but dead. And then, I heard an oddly familiar-sounding feminine voice. “Hey! Hey you,” she called. I looked over to the sidewalk to find a young woman standing before me. I was awe-struck. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Catherine? Is that you? I thought, No, it can't be.
I walked over to her. “You seem new around here,” she stated, “what's your name?”
“Jack Berkowitz. Why do you want to know?”
“Relax, I just wanted to know your name. I'm Caroline.”
Caroline offered her hand in a friendly gesture, but I refused. She returned her hand to her side.
“Is there something you want?” I asked, somewhat impatient.
“Kind of strange place, isn't it?”
“Yeah...it is?” Strange isn't even half of it, honey I thought.
“Are you okay?” She asked. Do I look okay? I don't know why I was annoyed, but I was. Was it this town?
“Yeah. It's nothing,” I told her.
“Speaking of nothing – how did you get here?”
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“What do you mean?”
“I must be dreaming this. This place can't be real. It can't be,” she said, with slight denial in her voice.
“Real enough for me.”
“I was driving home from work one night...next thing I knew I found myself awake in this strange city.”
A city of the dead, I thought. “Yeah...” I said, contemplating something.
“Are you sure you're alright?” She asked, motherly, almost. “Yeah. I'm fine.”
“If you are real – a real, breathing human being – how did you end up here?”
“I don't want to talk about it...it's nothing you want to hear, anyways. It's a long story.”
“Fine. Don't tell me.” said Caroline.”Well...since you're here...maybe you can help me with something.”
“You see...my brother is here. A couple months back he went missing, out of nowhere. But I saw him just now...I swear it. I'm not hallucinating. I thought I was – but I'm not.”
“So? Go find him. What do you need me for?” I began to walk away. “Hey,” called Caroline from behind me as I stopped. She walked closer to me as I turned around. “You're big and strong. You can protect me, can't you?” This made me remember something...something very important to me. A promise…
Just promise me one thing...that we will be together. Always. Forever.
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“Are you sure you're okay?” Asked Caroline, snapping me back into reality.
“Yeah, I'm fine.” “So?”
“Okay. I'll protect you.”
“You promise? I mean, I've seen those things. I have a life to live. I have a husband, and a son. He just turned three. I don't want to die.”
“I promise. Now let's go.” I told her, as I began walking, and she followed.
CHAPTER 18
C O L D
As we walked through the dead, ruined city, the lantern burned out. “Shit, got a flashlight?” I asked her.
“Sure, here,” Caroline said as she handed me a flashlight. I turned it on, and light once again illuminated the path ahead.
We arrived at the hotel. The large neon sign had been partially burned out, leaving behind the words Hell's Hotel. We approached a vacant parking lot, and I froze as I heard the sound of flesh dragging across broken pavement. I turned, and shone my flashlight at the nearby alley and caught the glimpse of blood-soaked legs disappearing behind the building.
“Did you see that?” I asked Caroline. “See what?” She replied.
“Nothing...I think I'm losing my mind.”
The hotel ahead was beckoning us to enter. Caroline stood beside me, shivering. “You could?” I asked her.
“Freezing. I've never felt this cold in my life.” She replied, clearly trembling in the freezing cold. I took off my Jacket, and
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offered it to her. “Here,” I said, “take this.” “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I'm fine.” “What about you?”
“Take it...the cold doesn't bother me.”
She put on the Jacket. “Something the matter?” She asked.
“You just remind me of someone I know...someone important to me.”
“Who?”
I didn't want to tell her. I couldn't bear talking about it. Her name was too much for me to bear.
“Don't worry about it, come on.”
CHAPTER 19
H O T E L
We entered the hotel. The stylish, classy interior greatly contrasted the urban, showy exterior. Something felt very off about this place, but I couldn't put my finger on it…
A large chandelier hanged from the towering ceiling above. A small book sat upon the redwood desk ahead. I walked over to it, and opened it. Names written within, scrawled in blood…Joe Ball, Charles Albright, Angelo Buono Jr., Charles Manson, Albert Fish, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, Dennis Rader.
“What's wrong?” Asked Caroline.
“Serial Killers. All of them. Every one of them is a murderer. It's as if this town was the center of all the evil in the world...as if it all collected here, now just a hellish nightmare of it's former self.”
“I'm not sure I want to be here,” said Caroline.
“We'll make it,” I replied reassuringly, “I've already lost one person in my life. Someone very dear to me. I'm not going to let that happen again.”
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We entered an elevator. It seemed small, and claustrophobic. “Which floor?” I asked.
“I don't know. Maybe the sixth?” Caroline replied.
I pushed the button for the sixth floor, but nothing happened. I pushed it again, still nothing. And then, for a brief moment, the power went out, before coming back on as the elevator hummed into motion.
“There. Now it works.” I said nonchalantly, with a hint of triumph, almost.
The doors ominously opened as I envisioned a message, carved into the wall: Welcome to Hell. The message was only visible ever so briefly before vanishing into the night.
The walls were eroding, the wallpaper peeling away. Several portraits, presumably of wealthy/famous past residents lined the walls. Some of them had either fallen onto the floor, shattered, while others hanged at awkward angles.
I followed Caroline to a room. “Is this the one?” I asked. “Might be.” She replied.
I slowly opened the door, and entered. Caroline followed me into the room. I flipped on the lights. No one was here, but the room seemed to have been prepared fairly recently. And then I heard it…
I heard humming. I heard her. I approached the bathroom
door.
“Jack?” Caroline asked, uncomfortably.
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I felt completely zoned-out. I almost didn't hear Caroline's voice. All I heard was hers. I entered the bathroom.
The bathroom seemed clean, and sterile. Nothing out of the ordinary, it seemed. “Guess it was just nothing,” I said, disappointed. And then I heard a slam as the door shut behind me. “Caroline?” I called...but got no response. The lights began to flicker, and I could practically see my own breath. I heard a sharp noise, like the sound of ice breaking. I looked over my shoulder to discover a shattered mirror, my reflection twisted and distorted into monstrous forms of myself.
I watched as blood trickled from the walls. I was pounding on the door. “Open the door!” I yelled, as if fearing my own mental breakdown. But I got no response.
The lights went out. The room, now dimly lit. I turned around to find my own corpse, lying there on the now-blood-soaked bathroom floor, its eyes gouged out and its face fixed in
a horrid fashion, as if screaming, a candle nearby illuminating this nightmare. I pleaded for help but got no reply. The walls seemed to move. All of a sudden, something pushed me, causing me to fall against the bathtub. And then I saw him. The slayer of man.
The slayer approached me, the dreaded axe in his hands. I wanted to die, but feared dying at the same time. I smelled the putrid, and horrific odor of decay as it stepped closer to me. I thought I was going to die, until…
I had a vision. I was walking down one of the hotel's hallways, but this one had no doors, no portraits. A blank canvas. I saw the slayer behind me, and started to run. But no matter what I felt as if I just couldn't run fast enough. A door ahead. I entered.
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I sighed, as I looked back through the peephole. He's gone, I thought. And then he appeared before me, outside the door. I backed away, as it drove its axe through the wooden door. The door cracked and twisted and broke until nothing was left. The slayer stepped into the room.
I took a step back, but fell on something. A corpse! I quickly rose to my feet. There were bodies everywhere. It was like witnessing the sight of some grizzly massacre. They weren't just murdered, they were slaughtered. Body parts hanged by threads of skin, severed heads appeared to be screaming, and other bodies appeared bent at unnatural angles.
The slayer raised it's axe above me, and struck me down…
CHAPTER 20
H E L L
But I did not die. I found myself in a small concrete room. It appeared hundreds – no, thousands of years old. Metal bars prevented my escape. I was imprisoned. I was trapped. The bars were rusted, yet very sturdy, somehow. The only light which illuminated the room was a small lantern. I sat up as something rang, both in the distance and in my head. It sounded like a funeral bell.
And then I saw a man before me, his face seared and burned and melted. He looked as if he had been made of wax, and was on fire. He spoke to me. “You kill anyone lately?” He asked me.
“No.” I replied, and although this was true at the moment, it hadn't been so a few years ago when that unspeakable thing happened.
“Well, I have,” the main told me, “I enjoyed it. It was like a dream come true. Seeing them on the floor, blood everywhere! The best experience a man can have!” He began to laugh...and then, in a cold, sinister voice, he said to me, “you see...we've ALWAYS been dead!”
A sharp grinding sound pierced my ears as the metallic cell door slid open. I stood, as two dark-robed men grabbed me,
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escorting me somewhere. I was on the prison block. I walked as I witnessed monsters being gruesomely tortured. They were men, but became so disfigured that they didn't even look human.
Ahead, a rotunda-like chamber. A stone block in the center. It appeared sinisterly ornate. A fellow prisoner knelt at the block. The slayer entered as the man bowed his head. With great force, the slayer brought his axe down on the man, decapitating him. His body fell over to one side, as his head rolled in the opposite direction.
And then it glared at me, as if gazing at it's next victim...
CHAPTER 21
D E V I L
I had a vision. I was in a hospital. In an ever-so-familiar room...the room where it happened. I saw her, the love of my life...Catherine, lying on the bed. And then I saw me, a different me, walking over to the bed, with pale skin and deep, blood red eyes. I saw the shine of metal as I discovered a knife in his hand. I tried to stop him. “Wait!” I pleaded. It stopped, and looked right at me. “Don't do this. Please...I beg you...stop...” I pleaded with the monster.
I watched as it began to stab her. I tried to stop it but was held back by something...I was forced to watch her murdered again. I was forced to relive that moment. I watched in horror as it slashed her throat, the blood soaking her hospital gown. It stared at me, as I watched in horror.
CHAPTER 22
R E T U R N
I awoke within the hotel, alone. Everything seemed faded. The wood floor, the walls...everything almost looked gray. A ticking grandfather clocked seemed to be the only noise in the world at this point, as an aura of death become the atmosphere of this place. Cobwebs lined the corners, and dust covered the furniture.
A little girl stood in the corner, her eyes piercingly black. I watched as she vanished then appeared before me. She would appear normal, adorable, even, had it not been for the fact that a wound pierced her chest, and her hair had appeared caked with blood.
“Where did daddy go?” She said to me. She touched me, and I had a vision…
I saw a little girl, like the ghost I just saw. Standing before a door, frightened by something. I heard a man's screams emanating from outside the door...and then a gurgling sound as if he had been choking on his own blood.
An older woman, presumably the girl's mother, stepped out in the open, telling her daughter to hide in the closet. The daughter
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obediently did as she was told. She seemed to be breathing heavily as she watched from within the confines of the closet. Suddenly, the door began to shatter and fall apart, as the slayer hammer it with his axe. The little girl was in tears by this point. Her mother tried to stop him, but to no avail. Slashed nearly in half by his axe.
The little girl covered her mouth, sobbing, as the slayer searched the room. Looking for her. A slight moan. The little girl looked beside her, and saw a man hanging there. His cold, dead eyes staring right through her.
The little girl screamed. Suddenly, the slayer darted straight toward the closet, smashing through, and ripping the little girl out. He threw her on the floor.
And then, one single image that will haunt me forever...the little girl, only about five or six, laid out on the floor, brutally murdered. A giant axe wound across her chest, her little dress soaked with her blood, her hair now tingled with dried blood. What once was a cute little girl, was now lying in a pool of blood, mangled.
The vision ended.
I awoke. The girl was gone. I tried to find the elevator but there was no such thing. Only a wall. I turned my head to find body-bags hanging from the beams above. Blood seemed to slowly drip to the floor below them. A door burst open violently, out of nowhere. I walked over to the door, slowly, step by step.
A stairwell. I looked down, and the staircase appeared to vanish into a void. Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind me.
There's no going back now, I thought to myself.
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I began to descend the staircase. I kept descending into this hell but there weren't any doors. It seemed eerily continuous. The walls and staircase began to rust, and erode. The walls became naked, and the staircase became stark red.
I reached the final step, and walked onto the cold, mildly wet floor of the basement. Two large iron doors, seemingly distorted with age. I tried to open them but couldn't, however with some time and effort, I managed to open one of them.
I entered a room, lined with raging furnaces. A wide-open hallway up ahead. I saw a man standing in the corner, looking at me. A towel about his waist, a blindfold covering his eyes. An X slashed across his chest, formed by two deep, still-bleeding cuts. His skin was pale as snow, and appeared to be severely underweight, anorexic, even. I walked after him, but he vanished. On the floor where he stood, was a poem: