THE AWAKENING [Part 1]

by Michael Timmins

  Suddenly, he sensed those two presences from earlier — more urgently and closer. He still had no idea who or what they were, or whether or not they were a danger to him. All he knew was he had to move… now. He concentrated harder and he felt the bullets push out of his skin and his skin knit closed behind them. He heard gunfire and screams from outside the room.

  As the last wound closed itself, Blain opened his eyes and stood up. He expected to be shot again, but realized all the attention was fixed on the door to the hall where the gunshots had been heard. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but the presences he had felt were right outside that door. Blain reached out at the guard standing in front of him, his gun pointed at the hallway door. Blain’s clawed hand wrapped around the man’s throat and before the he could let out a scream, Blain flexed and clenched his fist and the man’s throat buckled under the pressure. He was dead. Blain tossed the body aside. It hit the floor with a loud thunk, loud enough to bring attention back towards him. As the guards’ eyes turned to him, they realized their mistake in forgetting him. They spun around, guns leveled. Then, as if by some signal, the door behind them slammed open and what came in surprised even Blain.

  Two more creatures identical to him, only about a half a meter shorter and not as broad in body, burst into the room. They split up at the doorway, each heading for a different guard.

  The guards were thrown into a state of confusion. They didn’t know which way to turn as creatures that shouldn’t exist barreled towards them. One of the other creatures lowered its head and charged, slamming into a guard, goring him with its’ tusks. The other one was closing in on another guard.

  Blain stood frozen for a second before he flew into action. He crossed the room with a short burst of speed and leaped the sofa, landing on the table in front of Jimmy. It shattered beneath his weight and he almost lost his balance. Jimmy scrambled over the back of the coach. Blain reached out and grabbed the back of his pants, lifting him up into the air. Jimmy screamed for help and Blain felt bullets striking him from behind. He turned to see where they came from. They stopped. He watched as the guard who had shot him flew and struck the marbled bar with his back, snapping when he hit. The guard, now dead, fell forward onto the ground. With that guard taken care of, Blain turned back to Jimmy, just in time to see a gun pointed right at his face. There was a loud bang. A searing pain blazed in Blain’s left eye. It went dark. He felt blood drip down his face. The pain was excruciating and radiated from his eye to the back of his skull. Blain’s anger burst into flames. He roared. He shook Jimmy and the gun went flying. Grabbing Jimmy’s head with his other hand, he brought him upwards, suspended above. Jimmy let out a muffled scream as Blain’s teeth punctured his back and abdomen. Blain bit down hard, Jimmy’s midsection was almost completely in his mouth. He felt Jimmy’s spine break and his organs burst as he brought his jaws together. He pulled Jimmy’s body away, tearing apart his midsection. Jimmy was staring at him and trying to find the strength to hit him, but his arms were no longer responding. At last his head dropped and he ceased moving. Blain, in disgust, tossed Jimmy’s body aside and chewed his flesh for a bit before swallowing it. He spat out part of what was left of Jimmy’s backbone and looked around the room.

  His eye hurt badly, and he knew it had been destroyed by the bullet. He once again concentrated on repairing his body from the inside out. The bullet slowly made its way back out of his head till it fell to the floor at his feet. He pictured his eye as he remembered it and he felt it lock in his brain. His eye socket felt warm as the cells in his body worked to build new membranes, rods, cones that would form his eye. Blain felt an odd sensation as his body worked to produce the aqueous humor that filled his eye. Slowly his eyesight returned as his body reformed its optic nerve connecting his eye with his brain. He then looked around the room. Guard’s bodies lay heaped around the room, none of them moving. Standing some distance away from him were the two boar-men, like him. They were watching him as if waiting for him to attack. He had no idea who these things were and what they were doing here, but he knew these were the ones he had sensed. He could sense them now. He was sure if he closed his eyes he would be able to point to them no matter where they moved in the room. Well, he wasn’t going to get any answers right now. They had to get out of here.

  With that he moved to the back of the room and found a back door in the storage room behind the bar. He sensed the other two were following, but didn’t turn. After opening the door, he glanced outside. The alley was empty. He stepped out into it and the other two followed. Turning, he examined them. Time to get some answers he thought, and began to change back to his human form. As he began to shift he watched them follow suit. They both cried out in pain and collapsed and he felt a sense of superiority. He had mastered the shift so it no longer hurt as much. Finishing a few moments before them he had time to watch as they shifted back to their human forms. He got a good look at them. He recognized them, but wasn’t sure how or why. When they finished shifting and stood before him, he racked his brain trying to figure out from where he knew them. Then it came to him. They had been at the hotel where he had first changed. They were the two survivors from his attacks. Somehow, they had survived, and not only survived, but had been changed. Blain smiled. This was going to get interesting.

  Joseph Clark was a despicable man. By all accounts he was truly a mean person. He was also fairly ugly, which probably didn’t help his disposition at all. Being short and pudgy, he also had the type of fingers that looked like little sausages. In fact, when he was growing up, that is what the kids at school would call him, Sausage Fingers. His hair was thinning early at the age of thirty-six, black hair ran in strands down his forehead like oily black water running down the side of a white ball. His skin was pale to the point of pasty and seemed to always be glistening with sweat.

  Joseph worked at the London Bank as a loan officer and loved his job. He liked it best when he could tell someone who desperately needed a loan to keep their house, or car, or to pay for their dream vacation, and he could look them right in the eye and tell them ‘no, they would not get the loan.’ He enjoyed watching their world come crashing down around them when they realized they were going to lose their house or car, or that they wouldn’t be able to open that business they always wanted to open.

  The bank adored him, because he saved them money, and hassles. He would always find some flaw in the prospective loanee so he could happily tell them no. He enjoyed destroying people’s dreams because he never had any himself. Life had just happened to him, and he didn’t even bother trying. He didn’t want to be a loan officer, or married, or have a kid, but he was, and he did. He didn’t want anything, except be left alone.

  Joseph despised his wife Martha. She was fatter than he was and he couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with her. There was only one reason they had a kid: their wedding night. It was obligatory to have sex on your wedding night. He performed his duty. She got pregnant, hadn’t been with her since. That was eight years ago.

  He spent little time at home. He would leave the bank. Go to the pub and drink for a few hours then go to the motel down the street from his favorite pub. It was a motel hookers used. He would stop there, and pay one of the girls to slap him around a bit. He wasn’t sure why he liked being slapped around, but he did. He enjoyed it greatly. The whore would slap him around, and sometimes blow him. He would go back to the pub, drink till it closed and stumble home.

  That was his life. At least it was, until a month ago. He didn’t make it home that night. No. He barely survived the night at all. He had just paid a hooker, when everything went crazy. The whole building began to shake and he barely kept his footing. The shaking seemed to go on for eternity, then as abruptly as it had started, it stopped. There was silence. Joseph didn’t move. Neither did the whore after she had picked herself up off the ground, having lost her balance. He had never been in an earthquake before, but he was sure he had just experienced one.

  The buildin
g seemed to have weathered the quake intact. He glanced over at the hooker and she looked back at him. He let out a weak chuckle and she laughed uncomfortably as well.

  He figured it was time he was on his way home. His wife would be all concerned and worried if he was all right. Then he heard it — screams and shouts, loud bangs and crashes.

  He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to find out. The whore wasn’t being brave either. They both stood in the room, and stared at the door. The sounds got closer and they heard someone run pass their door, or at least tried to. Their footsteps abruptly stopped what sounded like right outside the door. Joseph strained to hear. There was a short yelp and the door crashed inward, slamming to the floor. A man sprawled on the door, unmoving. Blood oozed out of his crushed skull. Joseph could barely look away from the man; however, the thing in the doorway drew his eyes away from the body. He wasn’t sure what it was. It looked like some sort of bear, standing on its hind legs. No. Bear wasn’t right. It had a pig’s snout and white tusks that jutted from its lower jaw. A boar, he guessed. But a hell of a lot larger than any boar he had ever heard of. It was at least three meters tall. It was so tall it had to stoop to get in the doorway. It was muscular, and wore torn up clothes. The thing was staring at him. He pissed himself. He had never been so frightened before in his life. The monster stepped forward, closing the distance between them. It loomed over him. The creature stared down at him, its head and crested back brushing the ceiling.

  The hooker who had been cowering by the bed made the mistake of assuming the creature’s attention was solely on Joseph. She clamored over the bed and tried to make for the door. The creature, still staring down at Joseph, thrust its clawed hand out and snagged the girl around the chest, pinning her arms to her sides. She screamed. The creature, never taking his eyes off him, pulled back his arm and with all its might threw the girl towards the window. Joseph’s eyes followed her body, which moved at an incredible speed across the room. The body soared upright, and the window was only a meter tall, the girl was taller. When the body hit the window, it snapped. He could hear the sound of bones breaking as the woman’s body continued out the window at an impossible angle. He stared towards the shattered window and flinched when he heard the sickening thud her body made when it finally hit the ground. Shouts and screams came from the street below. Joseph looked back at the creature in front of him. It, too, was staring at the window now. He wasn’t sure, but he believed it was smiling. He knew one thing, though. He was about to die. The monster’s gaze once again lowered to Joseph. He watched in what seemed like slow motion as the creature’s arm stretched, pulled back, and came flying towards him, its razor-sharp claws making their way in a descending arc. When the claws sliced across his jaw, chest and abdomen, he felt a burning fire erupt from his skin. The force of the hit threw him back against the wall. His head hit, and everything went dim. He could feel the blood stream wetly from the slices in his flesh as he slowly slid to the floor. When unconsciousness came, he welcomed it.

  He awoke in a hospital bed. At first, he couldn’t remember what had happened. In a rush, it came back to him and he felt he was about to have a heart attack. Even the machine beside him that beeped in a slow steady rhythm, picked up pace as his heart raced at the memory. He immediately reached for his lower jaw and felt puckered skin lined with stitches running from the back of his mandible to below the center of his lip. He cautiously lifted the blanket that covered him and saw he had bandages wrapped around his chest and midsection. He heard the steady drip of whatever painkiller they were giving him. In slow measured drops, it was fed into his blood stream, causing him to feel a little tipsy, as if drunk. He assumed it was the drugs. It was difficult to keep focus, but he tried his best to recollect what had happened. It seemed impossible what he remembered could have been reality. It must be some drug-induced hallucination.

  ‘But what about the scars? He was sure if he removed the bandages around his chest and midsection, he would have wounds matching what he remembered that beast doing to him. So, he had to assume what he remembered was true, however unbelievable.

  He was coming to terms with the fact he had been attacked by a three-meter-tall boar-man when there was a sharp rap at his door. He looked to the door and there was a man leaning in slightly. He was a tall man, which made him immediately unlikable by Joseph’s standards. He was wearing a dark suit and tie. He had a very official look about him. His blonde hair was swept back from his oversized forehead. An angular face seemed to hang from his hairline as if he, at one time had a fat face, but someone pulled his hair too hard and his face was drawn back against his facial bones. The only thing that wasn’t angular about his face was his bulbous nose that seemed to have been beaten way too many times. Sitting beneath his nose was a narrow mustache bordering on being a tactless facsimile of Hitler’s. The man forced a smile when he saw Joseph was awake and had seen him.

  “Joseph Clark?”

  Joseph nodded. The man forced another smile.

  “Ah, good. Wasn’t sure I had the right room.” He walked in.

  Another gentleman in a suit and tie followed him. This man was older and had a fairly weathered look to his face. He had graying black hair that was still thick and full. The man looked angry. Joseph figured this guy always looked angry, as if the world had dealt him a pretty shitty hand and he was fed up with it. He was also tall, at least taller than Joseph. His face was wrinkled and pocked marked, probably from horrible acne when he was younger, or from the measles. His suit was different from the other gentleman in the fact it looked slept in. In fact, it looked like he had slept in it all week. The man had blue eyes that seldom seemed to look in one spot for too long, although they mostly stared at the floor.

  “I’m Detective Belize, and this is Detective Coles.” The younger guy spoke as he approached the side of the bed and motioned to the older gentleman who settled down in one of the chairs against the wall. He looked up, caught Joseph’s eye, and immediately looked back down at his feet. Sergeant Belize grabbed a chair and slid it next to Joseph’s bed.

  “I think you can probably guess why we are here.” He looked at Joseph for some affirmation. Joseph didn’t give him any. He hated cops. The man glanced at the older officer who shrugged. Belize looked back at him.

  “Look. We just want to hear your story of what happened last night, okay?”

  Joseph stared at him for a bit. He wanted to tell this cop what had happened. But it was too nuts. The guy would never believe him.

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Don’t remember, huh? That’s a shame, Joseph,” Belize said. “A damn shame. You know what would be more of a shame? It would be a shame if we had to inform your wife you were in a motel last night, in a motel room with a known hooker, a known hooker who is now dead. Now that, well, that would be a shame.”

  He shook his head as if he had just informed Joseph he had been bad, and now he was going to be punished. He obviously hadn’t met Joseph’s wife, yet. He snorted a laugh and turned on the TV. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Belize look at him for a moment before glancing at his partner. His partner shrugged again.

  “Well, I see your memory is still a little foggy. We’re going to be doing a little background check on you, just so you know. Nothing to worry about, mind you, just police procedure in these types of cases.” Belize stood up and made to leave. As he got to the door, he paused and looked back.

  “Oh, by the way, who do we talk to at the bank about your work history? You don’t have to worry about calling them to tell them you are in the hospital; we will be more than happy to fill in your boss on what happened to you.”

  Joseph closed his eyes. Fucking coppers. They had to bring work into this. They would tell his boss where he had been. Probably imply they were going to leak the story to the papers, and the bank, to protect itself from bad publicity, would fire him, even as he lay in the hospital.

  He turned off the TV and set the r
emote down beside him. He caught Belize’s smile, this time it wasn’t forced. Belize walked back and sat once again beside Joseph’s bed. Coles hadn’t even bothered to get up.

  “Now, you were saying about what happened last night?”

  “You aren’t going to believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  Joseph sighed. This was going to sound nuts, but what choice did he have. He told them everything from the moment of the earthquake to the last thing he remembered, being sliced open by some boar-man like creature. At the end of the story he looked at Belize, half expecting him to burst out laughing. He wasn’t laughing. He was looking into Joseph’s eyes as if to read the truth there. After a moment, he looked at his partner. The old man wasn’t looking at the ground anymore. No. He was looking at Joseph, too.

  “It’s almost the same description the other fella gave,” Coles muttered.

  “What other fella?” Joseph asked, but they ignored him like he wasn’t even in the room.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Well, either they are both giving us the same lie, which seems improbable, since by all accounts they have never met. Or, there is some asshole who is playing Halloween, dressing up like some monster, and killing people.”

  “He threw a woman through a window and snapped her spine. What guy could do that?” Joseph was incredulous now. He wasn’t sure when he decided he had actually been attacked by some monster, but he was sure now. The thought of it being some guy in a Halloween costume just seemed ludicrous to him.

  The old guy looked at him. He had that look of someone about to explain the obvious to an idiot.

  “He was probably doped up on crack or something. That must be the answer, because there is not some giant walking boar-man running around London slaughtering people!”