Grayland: Chapter Three of the Dark Chicago Series

by David Ghilardi

  “Up here, asshole.”

  Doug’s fury fueled him. Gray began coming up the steps. Doug held onto John’s shoulders, handing him the metal bar, pushing him out the roof exit into the frigid cold. The paramedic was lifted from the roof and almost flung aloft.

  Doug glanced behind him, catching sight of Gray, burning in Hellfiire, tortured souls wailing, follow up the steps. He went out after John. The wind blew him offf his feet, his body skittering across the roof's rough surface. He found himself rolling towards the edge.

  The Heavens stormed down at them. Northern Gods angry with their followers actions. Doug didn’t care. He was furious enough to slay a God.

  Anger unabated could not help him now, as his legs swung out into the white abyss.

  Chapter 34

  Honest John was on a roof now. It was the northeast corner looking offf into white squall. He had just seen his baby daughter die in his girlfriend’s arms again. The tiny Daphne hated him for letting her die. Daphne and Teena. Teena, only 18, had brushed red locks from her face, those green eyes probing his.

  “You’re weak. You let us die.”

  A most damning accusation spoken softly like a fly’s fiilthy kiss. He was surrounded by damnable weather pursued by nefarious forces bent on his destruction. How had his brief life come to this?

  The dark bearded creature kicked open the exit door. The panel swung open, broke free of its hinges, and skittered offf the roof aided by gale winds. Gray paused as icy fiingers blew black hair away from his wounds revealing how extensive the damage was. Where was that other guy? He knew he couldn’t do this alone.

  Gray strode towards John, that abominable cube in his hand.

  The paramedic froze. He couldn’t take any more of this.

  Jump? What could he do? Gray was no more than six feet from him. John raised the crow bar. It struck the man in his chest. The pronged end punctured him. The furious thing grabbed it from John, bending the metal in one hand like a tooth pick. Gray tossed it like a boomerang into the night.

  John found the man’s fiingers wrapped around his throat. The monster opened his jaws. John had no more fiight in him left. Gray went to rip out John’s throat. Lifted offf the ground, the paramedic glimpsed Doug running towards them.

  It was too late. John bit the Gray man’s cheek even as Gray’s fangs sunk into John’s chest. The Gray looked shocked as his hunk of flesh tore away in John’s mouth. Gray tasted like rotten marshmallow.

  Savoring his last tactile sense, John felt the e fffort of his entire 210 pounds being lifted out over the edge of the roof. This is how I end, John thought peacefully.

  He glimpsed Douglas piercing Gray’s skull with an axe. John noted the startled look on Gray’s face before the roof top scene retreated in the whiteout.

  Was that me falling? Am I falling? It was quiet as he descended. John could see long fiingers of the oak tree reach out for him as he hurtled past. Branches received his crackling bones as he landed where wood met trunk. The thick mass of a junction, like the palm of a mitt.

  Nature’s lusty roar bu fffeted his body as he fell meters, gravity pulling at his form, serenity impacted him with fiinal certainty.

  John was gone. On the roof above, Doug was cutting Gray apart with the axe. Splitting century old bone, severing sinew and slashing synapses. After seven blows, Gray caught the blooded blade allowing to sink into the meat of his palm.

  The pair stood there struggling. Doug had spent his entire store of energy against the Gray. He’d almost been swept offf the roof before. Only his left sleeve being caught on metal eaves had prevented Doug from making the deepest snow angel in Chicago that night. Beyond exhausted, He had climbed back up, retrieved the fallen axe, yet been too late to save John.

  It hadn’t been enough. All his efffort had fallen short. Gray had been burnt, slashed apart, set on fiire and even melted by Holy water. Twice. Yet here he stood, an axe embedded in his hand, the sharp end pointed down.

  Doug was caught short, frustrated tears freezing in absolute cold. The wind was immense. Doug knew any moment a gust could whip him offf the roof. He had to try to end this. Or let the earth erase him from the fiight.

  “Well, Shit.” He muttered. Doug leaned in, pulling up on the handle freeing the axe from Gray’s palm. The incensed monster roared as his hand shredded apart. The Gray looked stunned at the loss of his flesh. His face had been melted, burned, bitten to pieces. Damaged him, these humans had. That damnable box had blunted his instincts. Gray looked up in surprise.

  Doug gritted teeth, tilting the pointed end of the hatchet into the vampire’s chest. He used it like a cleaver. Sharp steel sank deep into Gray’s stomach. Its prong slit Gray’s vitals. Doug wrenched the axe down using all of his weight. Vile bloody contents spilled out over Gray’s leather boots along with most of his large intestine. The blade hung embedded in the vampire’s groin.

  All the ailing creature could do was try to contain his escaping innards arcing across the roof bufffeted this way and that, by the hurly-burly of the wind.

  Doug whirled away from Gray then, smacking his gloves together. He half stumbled, half fell forward towards the edge of the roof. Attached to a heavy battery rig were the main power cables which provided electricity to the building.

  Two cables ran o fff the YMCA connecting to a secure transformer nearby. Doug fiigured the cables had to be sturdy enough. At least, he was praying they were. He jumped for the nearest one grabbing it. The black cable bobbed in the wind. Doug used both arms to hold onto the cable praying for it not to separate from its moorings. He didn’t know how long he could hang there.

  Gray, with entrails exposed, refused to be bested. His face was an ivory mask. A shambling wreck and offf-balance, the ruined vampire tried to reach for Doug. It limped to the edge, trying to brace its weight, but misjudged the distance from the edge, falling past Doug’s dangling fiigure. Gray gurgled as he tumbled away below.

  Doug strained to listen, hearing Gray’s dull landing moments later, amidst the breaking of glass. He allowed himself a moment of triumph. Then gathered his strength, climbing back towards the building. It took a few minutes moving inch by painful inch. Finally, after swinging his body back and forth, his legs caught the lip of the building's cornice. He thrust himself back onto the roof. Doug collapsed to his knees. He was beyond exhausted. But he was still alive.

  “Hope you’re dead, soulless prick.” Doug whispered before passing out, his body crouched against the low hung wall of the roof safe for the moment from the Gods, alive or dead.

  Chapter 35

  Humans would be the death of him. Gray lay sprawled half in and out of a collapsed truck bed. Landing upon the truck had blown out of the tires. Glass shattered, metal became jello, even the car’s engine vomited out through the flimsy hood. The monster's body was destroyed. The amount of blood needed to repair himself would be prodigious.

  “My Lord. May I aid you?”

  Gray looked up into the swirling clouds. Was this a trick from that damned box? The voice quieted riotous sounds in his head. Gray had cut loose all the useless acolytes in the vicinity. This was the faint presence he had felt earlier. It had somehow grown stronger. Erna’s gift for her dark lord before she had tried to betray him. He concentrated on where the stranger was located.

  “Come to me.” Millions of swirling flakes stormed the heavens as the damaged bloodsucker waited for succor. The box grew hot in his pocket burning the layer of flesh on his thigh. Gray ignored the hostile impetus. His will remained stronger than the voices rapt to enter this world.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Nefarious voices chittered. ‘Humans beating you. Weak, you’ve grown laying in the dirt. Set us free. Open it.’

  Gray was going insane. He knew his faculties had been compromised. Ribbons of confiidence were aflame burning with self-doubt. How much longer could he be custodian to such a powerful object?

  Not much longer, he decided. He would have to fiind a new place in the fiirmament where he could
shine. Gray ventured long enough through history. Out in this old land, the prairie Indians called ‘stinky onion’. Chik-a-go was the demeaning name for Gray’s beloved city. Enough, he decided. The world he knew was done. The human’s time was done. They were well on the way to destroy what was left of the beauty of the planet anyway. Best to let the demons have it.

  He would open the rift giving the demons what they desired.

  “Lord.” A pale gure appeared, his body floating on the wind. Flowing platinum blonde hair pricked at the gusts stabbing ice pellets in the air. This acolyte’s face was mutilated, half the man’s face on his left side was gone. There was a devastating hole in the man’s head. Gray could feel the rococo obstinence and old world strength emanating from the fiigure before him.

  Erna, Viktor, all his aides had been extinguished. Now he was left with this halfling. Lithe arms beckoned to the dark man. Gray responded by grasping his hands gently. The world had grown mad. This was his last tool left.

  Janusz stood back, helping his lord up. Gray leaned upon him. Both limped slowly into the swirling snow gusts. “What action shall we take, Lord?” Janusz asked.

  Gray rumbled, his words, disappearing from the snowcovered parking lot.

  “We unleash hell.”

  Chapter 36

  The dark haired woman was humming a Beatles’ song. Was it a ‘Hard Day’s Night’?

  She was brushing her long black hair turned away from him. Doug knew who it was even without seeing her face. His mother was sitting on her favorite stool in the kitchen. It was bright red. Something smelled wonderful, its aroma wafting up from the oven. Something tasty always was baking in his mother’s kitchen when he had been a child. Was it Bread? No. A cake. It was a Bundt cake. That burnt smell as batter heated up.

  She was knitting now, her legs crossed in front of the stool. A drink was nearby on the counter. It looked like her favorite, a highball. Looked like a double. Her fiingers flew like mad, the needles clacking. The sound of the metal was soothing. It was like a beetle’s mandibles.

  Nothing was said. The only action was her fiingers flying as they continued to sew, spinning like a spider, what appeared to be a sweater. It was blood red. His mother refused to look up. He felt her fear. She whispered.

  “Don’t open the box, sweetie. Infernum.”

  Her metal needles striking each other became a steady banging. Needles continued weaving the sweater. The aroma of the batter grew stronger. Tears rolled down his mother’s cheeks. Again, a faint whisper.

  “Whatever else, keep that box shut.” His mother sewed even faster. Clacking and banging. She leaned over for more yarn. A long crimson drop of blood slowly funneled down from a hidden spot on her head. One large plop of blood splashed onto the kitchen tiles. His mother shrieked.

  “My cake is burning.” Doug jerked up from his fetal position on the icy roof. The banging of a loose board woke Douglas up. He moved slowly, his limbs having frozen to the surface while passed out. He felt like an old man. Being unconscious was mercy though. He did feel lucid. He was alive. He knew the real agony would come later after he had thawed out.

  It would be the title of his memoirs: “Life is Pain.”

  There it was. The gallows humor that had allowed him to survive the Middle East. Foot by foot, he fought to crawl o fff the exposed roof. Doug could see the opening to warmer environs just ahead of him. It mattered not if there were one hundred of those blood sucking things waiting for him just inside, he had to get out of the elements. Exposure was killing him.

  Once he reached the doorway, his eyes began to adjust to the dim light again. Outside was like being in a shaking snow globe. Nature presented its frozen parabola, with undulating waves like a musical sonata with its notes rolling towards you. It was enough to fiinish driving Douglas mad.

  The roaring of the wind got less and less the further towards warmth his body took him. Inside was silent as a tomb. Doug didn’t know what he would fiind, but was pretty sure no one at the YMCA was left alive.

  His legs shook as he tried to rise up, taking the steps gingerly one at a time. John was gone. Gray swept away as well. Doug’s remaining musings had followed them offf into the abyss. He could think of nothing. Instinct was all he relied on now.

  He reached the hallway. If Gray had created any more of those undead things, he was in no shape to fiight them. Step by step, listening for any strange noise, he kept moving down the corridor. He was determined to survive. It meant checking every door along the way. Doug knocked on the four closest to him. He developed a quick routine: a series of three quick raps, listen for reaction, repeat the series. There were no responses. The only sound was a fiire alarm peeping somewhere ahead in the corridor.

  The next door was open. Torn o fff its hinges was the best way to describe what had happened. An old man’s body lay draped over his bed, all the remaining blood seeping into a blue blanket. His head was placed on YMCA stationery on a small desk nearby. Adjacent to this room, another man, similar in age, body cocooned in white blankets and sheets, had his bald head placed on a red tray on his identical desk.

  It was a noticeable pattern. The elderly males had been drained, not bitten. Gray apparently wanted not to make any more acolytes for himself from these old residents. Bleary-eyed, Douglas carefully walked past the remaining open doors. There were six open doors on this floor. How many more were below him?

  All this had to end. The familiar fury Doug felt back on the roof roared back like Vulcan into his body. Clenched fiists, gritted teeth, heart pumping, all of his physical being had had enough of this crap.

  How many are dead? Had Gray eaten all of them? Doug found himself at the opposite stairwell. Emergency lights blinked illumining bloody footsteps leading up the steps towards him. Gray had come up this way. Doug could only imagine what lay below. Drawing deeply, the young soldier crept down the concrete steps quickly. He stepped past another door ripped from its hinges laying diagonally against the steps continuing downwards.

  Once again, he listened. Silent still except for the peeping of the same alarm, nearer now. Doug peered around the corner nearly catching a fiire axe in his right cheek. The blade whooshed past. An upward arc, the blade embedding itself into the lathe wall. Plaster cracked, breaking apart a good two feet of it. Doug flinched, barely dodging the blade. It was luck that sharp metal fell short of its mark.

  “Whoa! Holy crap—it’s you. Hey, buddy!” Doug held the blade in its place on the wall, so it could not be used again against him. He rounded the corner punching right. His haymaker struck its target. The young soldier began to follow up his attack eager to spend his rage’s capitol. His assailant held up his hands, even as his thick body lay prone against the wall where he fell.

  “No more. Truce! Hey, pally. It’s me. Louie. You gotta remember me.” Doug’s coiled arm shot forward. His palm found desperate purchase on the wall above Louie’s head. He smelled the fat man. It brought back unpleasant memories.

  “You’re the guy who crapped himself.”

  The wide man winced, creating wrinkles across his forehead.

  “Try to forget that part, will’ya? I actually helped out here.”

  Doug breathed deeply dispelling any stars dancing in his vision. Louie continued.

  “Let’s go down. I’ll show you.” Louie rolled onto his side like a roly-poly bug, found his footing then laboriously got up. He clapped his thighs, picked up the axe and began walking away down the hallway.

  “Come on. We been hiding.”

  Doug forced his beaten body to follow.

  Chapter 37

  Gray held onto to Janusz for far too long. He was broken. It was now or never. He had to begin preparing the box. The unholy scourge must be released. The old vampire would take his chances with the denizens of the dark. I have friends in low places, he thought.

  The Race Mansion stood stonily proud standing in the midst of Chicago’s worst blizzard after being neglected and run-down for nearly a century. This Chicago rel
ic had been Gray’s residence for decades. No one had known its original owner remained in residence all that time.

  He’d planned it that way. Over a century ago, Gray and his kind had been nearly hunted to extinction. His own stinking family were part of an entire clan’s demise. A plan had been laid for Gray to wait while others less noticeable searched for one of the ‘Pandora’s Boxes’. Thirteen had been constructed back in the Middle Ages, when the vampire population warred with the living. Plagues had leveled the world. Man was weak.

  Nefarious Stygian forces decided to open the Inferno. Their motto was taken from Dante’s own words, ‘The path to paradise begins in Hell.’ Defrocked priests, corrupt statesmen and assorted monsters sought to remake the world in the Light bringers image. If Jesus Christ, his Holy Father, and Heaven existed, the theory went, so must the darker dimensions of the world. The sordid collection of damaged souls sought to release arcane forces unseen since earth’s creation.

  Hence, the construction of keys, built to be doorknobs in rifts of space. Once unlocked, travel between states of being would be possible. Good and Evil free to mingle, marry together, seek a new reality unencumbered by guilt or fear.

  Janusz brought Gray downstairs back to his dirt creche. He’d lain under the dirt while Chicago changed around him. Planes, trains and automobiles developed. Buildings rose, houses and families fiilled farming spaces. Cable was laid, city codes were updated, even new gas line

  rudimentarily laid back in the 1950s. The city grew faster and changed its face quicker than Gray’s barristers could keep up. His plan worked for the most part. Five boxes had been found, but only one had made it close enough for Gray to use. And it was in the hands of a stufffy arrogant popinjay. Abernathy Smythe was its overseer. Until Gray rose once more.

  The drawback was the Race Mansion itself. Humans had designated the abode a ‘Historical Landmark’, ceasing all updating or remodeling work unless proper permits could be obtained. Jamusz’s family had been their barristers for years, but the city of Chicago had grown obstinate. Updates were not allowed.