by N. P. Martin
Are there bodies down here?
Our footsteps sounded loud on the wet floor. We both froze when I kicked a piece of metal on the ground, making a loud clanging noise. I gritted my teeth, sure that I had now alerted the demon to our presence.
Fuck.
Frank glared at me for a second and then kept walking until we came out of the narrow entry and into another room, this one bigger than the last. The ceiling was the same height but the room was wider, longer.
I almost walked into Frank when he stopped dead in front of me. “What?” I whispered urgently.
Frank shone his flashlight out into the room and I gasped when I saw what was in there. A few feet away, a body hung from the ceiling, some sort of meat hook in its back, the hook attached to a chain that hung from the ceiling.
Jesus.
I counted six different bodies suspended from the ceiling.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Every body was horribly mutilated, cut open from chest to groin, the insides pulled out, bits of intestine still dangling from the cavities. The sight of the corpses hanging there almost motionless, in combination with the atrocious smell, made my stomach heave and I turned and vomited, the bile in my stomach hitting the wet floor with a loud slapping sound. I did my best to be quiet about it but it was hard to be sick and quiet at the same time.
I stood, breathing heavily, and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. I shook my head apologetically at Frank, who gave me a pained expression, knowing there was nothing we could do now. If the demon didn’t know we were there before, it did now. “Fuck it,” he said, raising his gun. “Alright, demon, you know we’re here, we know you’re here. Show yourself!”
Almost recovered from my vomiting, I moved along with Frank into the room, knife held out in front as I tried not to touch any of the hanging bodies around me. I shone the flashlight to the back of the room, looking for signs of the demon and seeing none.
Maybe it isn’t here after all. Maybe Frank’s intell was wrong.
I hoped it was wrong.
“Come on, demon,” Frank said, his voice loud and booming in the confined space of the basement. “No point in hiding. We’ll find you eventually. Come out now, get it over with.”
There was no answer but I could see what Frank was trying to do. He was attempting to goad the demon into showing itself, though it wasn’t working so far.
I spotted a large metal table at the back of the room. Pointing the flashlight I walked over to it to see another body splayed out naked and eviscerated on the cold steel. It was the body of young boy, no more than sixteen. The face was frozen in a wide-eyed expression of terror. As grossly distorted as the face of the boy was, I still recognized him as the one who had run into Josh’s car a few days ago, which meant that the other boy who was chasing him at the time had to be the demon.
I was about to tell Frank about this when something caught my eye, up high in the corner of the room. Frowning, I shone the flashlight up towards the ceiling and was startled to see someone hanging there upside down, two shiny obsidian eyes glaring back at me. “Frank!” I shouted, keeping my torch beam trained on the demon who still hung from the ceiling like a huge spider.
Frank fired his gun at the demon, getting off two shots as the demon leapt back like some grotesque monkey and landed on the floor in a crouch. I did my best to keep the light on it so Frank could see. I shone the flashlight directly in the demon’s face. It was indeed the kid from the other day, still dressed in the same scruffy clothes. His young face should have been innocent looking but the demon inside him contorted his features so much that he just looked monstrous and nasty as hell. The dried blood around his mouth only added to the sadistic killing machine look, which was probably all the rage in the demon world. Clearly possessing the body of a kid made the demon’s job easier when it came to luring other kids to their deaths.
Before the demon could move again Frank fired three shots into it, one hitting it square on the forehead, sending it reeling back. I ran forward, planning on sticking it with my knife, but as I did I heard a loud screeching sound and in the beams from the flashlights I saw the demon on the floor, seemingly dead. Then the body of the young boy arched up and out of his mouth came a thick cloud of black smoke that trailed into the room.
What the hell is that about?
“Shit!” Frank said. “No!”
“What?” I asked in a panic.
“It jumped out of the meat suit. Motherfucker!”
Meat suit?
I assumed he was referring to the demon’s human host. The black smoke must have been the spirit of the demon. “What does that mean?”
“It means it will jump into the next body it finds and get away. Come on.”
“Why not one of us?”
“They can’t possess Nephilim. Let’s go!”
I ran after Frank, almost bumping into one of the hanging bodies, my head way too close to an exposed stomach cavity. I dodged around it and kept running after Frank as he rushed up the narrow corridor and out into the other room. It wasn’t until I got to the stairs that the meaning of what he just said hit me.
It will jump into the next body it finds.
Kasey!
I sprinted up the stairs. Frank was already at the top, looking around for signs of the demon. “I’m going to check on Kasey,” I said, rushing past him.
“Wait!” Frank shouted, but I was already running up the stairs, heading for the third floor, taking the steps two at a time, dropping the flashlight on the way up but retaining the knife in my other hand. It didn’t take me long to get to the third floor. As I ran down the hallway, Kasey came walking out the door ten yards ahead of me. I stopped running. “Kasey, are you alright?”
Kasey walked towards me, a bit too casually I thought, but otherwise she seemed normal. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just heard gunshots. What’s going on? What’s with the knife?”
I stood, looked hard at her, but I saw no sign that she had been possessed. No flickering face or demon eyes. “Everything’s fine. You need to go back inside now.”
“Okay.” Kasey made to go back into the room but Frank’s voice made her stop.
“Get away from her!” Frank shouted as he moved down the hallway with his gun pointed at Kasey.
“Frank, its okay” I said instinctively walking in front of Kasey as if to shield her.
“You don’t know that. Move away from her. It could be hiding its true form.”
I didn’t even know demons could do that.
I looked at Kasey again and was shocked to see that her eyes had turned coal black.
I jumped away from her and Kasey ran back into the apartment. Despite Frank’s protestations, I went in after her. She stood in the middle of the room, her eyes black as tar and a menacing smile on her face. “Stupid little bitch!” she said—or rather the demon inside her said. “Let me go or I rip your friend apart from the inside out. Throw me the knife now.”
I jumped when the door slammed shut behind me.
Did the demon do that?
A second later Frank was banging on the door.
I held my hands up, the knife still in one hand. “Don’t hurt her, please,” I said.
“Throw me the knife.”
“Just take me instead. Let her be.”
The demon cocked its head at me. “Are you as dumb as you look? Demons can’t possess Nephilim. The knife!”
I shook my head. “No.”
The demon looked perplexed. “No?”
I walked towards it. “No. Kasey, I know you’re in there. You have to fight this thing. Force it out.”
The demon just laughed in Kasey’s voice, but in a way that Kasey had never done. “You really know nothing, don’t you? That can’t happen. Don’t come any closer!”
I stopped, and two gunshots resounded behind me.
The door burst open. Frank stood with his gun raised. “Kill that thing!” he said.
“But I’ll kill Kasey!
”
“She’s dead anyway. Kill it now or I will!”
Dead anyway? That can’t be.
“He’s right,” the demon said. “No human ever survives a possession, at least not from me.” It started laughing.
“Kill it now!” Frank had his knife out. He was walking towards the demon who was backing itself into the corner of the room.
“Wait!” I said. With tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, I moved towards the demon who looked fearfully between me and Frank. I raised my knife, ready to do what had to be done when the demon’s eyes changed back to Kasey’s. She looked at me like an injured dog as she crouched in the corner.
“Please,” she said in a small voice. “Don’t hurt me, Leia. Please.”
“It’s not her,” Frank said. “Do it!”
I stood with the knife raised, about a foot away from Kasey, who cried, pleading with me not to hurt her. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just stab my best friend.
I lowered the knife.
And that’s when the demon leapt toward me.
Too late, I saw it had a knife in its hand, Kasey’s knife that it must have found in her jacket. She carried it for protection. I felt the blade go into my stomach and then get pulled out again, the demon grinning into my face as I staggered back. I dropped my knife and clutched my belly, blood already pumping profusely from the wound.
The demon rushed past me and attacked Frank with the knife as I fell back onto the mattress. Frank blocked the knife swing from the demon and plunged his own knife up under the demon’s chin, burying it to the hilt. Dark orange light burst from the wound as the demon seemed to convulse for a few seconds like it had been electrocuted, then it took its final breath and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.
From the mattress all I could see was Kasey’s dead body on the floor, her eyes open and looking in my direction. “Kasey…”
I felt ice cold suddenly, like all the heat had gone from my body.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 12
“Where am I?”
My voice sounded strange, like it belonged to someone else. I opened my eyes fully and tried to make out where I was. A room of some sort, brightly lit, green walls, some sort of machine to the right of me. Nothing seemed familiar. An acrid smell assailed also my nostrils.
Antiseptic?
Nothing felt right.
I tried to sit up but a combination of debilitating pain in my stomach and a weight on my chest prevented me from getting any further. Then I heard a voice right beside me.
“Relax, Leia,” the voice said—a woman’s voice, soothing. “Don’t try to move, you’ve been hurt, you need to lie still.”
I managed to turn my head to the side so I could make out the figure standing beside me. It was a woman with dark hair and large eyes. I felt her hand on my chest, gently pushing me down. “Where am I?” I mumbled.
“You’re safe. We had to perform surgery. You’re fine now, you just need to rest.”
I had cotton mouth. I kept smacking my lips. “Water…”
“Hold on.”
A moment later I felt a cold glass on my lips and a hand at the back of my head, lifting it up slightly so I could sip the water. I choked on the first sip and the coughing created more pain in my belly.
“Easy, easy…” said the woman. “There we go.” My head was rested back on the pillow.
“Where’s…Frank?” I asked.
“I’m here.” Frank’s voice came from within the room. A second later I saw him standing beside the woman in the white coat.
“Frank?” I held out my hand and felt his strong grip.
“You’re safe, Eva will take care of you. She saved your life.” He paused. “You almost died.”
“Died?” Then it hit me all at once, the memory of Kasey and her black eyes, the demon inside of her stabbing me with the knife. The images in my head were vivid and it felt like I was being stabbed all over again. I groaned and arched my back off the bed.
“Easy, easy…” Eva said, her hands on me, holding me down.
“Kasey…”
“Kasey?” Eva asked.
“Her friend,” Frank said. “The demon possessed her. She’s dead.”
It was more than I could take, hearing those words come out of Frank’s mouth. A huge swell of anger and resentment welled up in me and I clawed at frank as I tried to get to him from the bed. “You fucking killed her!” I screamed “You killed her! You killed Kasey! You didn’t have to kill her…”
Eva was doing her best to get me to lie back down, but I was full of rage; I just wanted to get at Frank so I could rip his eyes out for killing my only friend in the world. I screamed and thrashed until I felt a sharp prick in my leg. Eva had injected me with something. I didn’t care. I continued to scream, not even at Frank anymore, just screaming because I didn’t know what else to do. I spewed rage and sorrow into the room until eventually I had no choice but to slump back into the bed. Whatever Eva had injected me with forced me back into oblivion. “You killed her…” were the last words I remember saying before blacking out.
The next time I awoke I was more lucid. I opened my eyes to find Frank’s lady friend doing something to the IV drip at the side of my bed. She was strikingly good looking, with large smoky eyes that were a sapphire blue and dark brown hair that fell just past her shoulders. She wasn’t tall, about my height, and her body was slender, which she moved with great composure. A warm smile spread across her face when she noticed I was awake. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
How was I feeling?
Apart from being numb, which no doubt had to do with whatever medication they had given me, I felt groggy and weighted down by an overwhelming sense of sadness. I remembered screaming at Frank because I blamed him for killing Kasey. Whatever anger I felt towards him had now gone, and in its wake a tsunami of grief, overtaking and smothering everything else that I might have felt. The last time I had felt such pain was when my parents were killed, but I was just a kid then. The hurt went deeper this time, maybe because it was mixed up with everything else I felt about Josh, my mom, and the whole demons and Watcher thing. I hung from a cliff by a thread, a black abyss beneath me that if I fell into I would never escape. I’d be gone forever.
I said nothing to Eva, who smiled her pleasant smile and shone a small light into my eyes. She seemed satisfied and put the little flashlight back in her coat pocket. “I’m glad to see you are pulling through,” she said. “You had a lucky escape. You almost bled to death by the time Frank got you here. You’re healing power is the only thing that kept you alive until I could repair the damage.”
“What damage?”
“The knife you were stabbed with hit an artery in your abdomen. I had to operate and tie it off to stop the bleeding.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Eva,” she said. “I’m a friend of your Uncle’s. I was also a friend of your mother’s.”
“Seems like everyone knew my mother except me.” Eva didn’t know what to say to that so she just smiled tightly. “Where’s Frank?” I asked. “And when can I get out of here? Where the hell am I anyway?” I tried to lift myself up again but Eva rushed forward and held me back down.
“You’re not strong enough to be moving around just yet. You need to stay still and rest or you’ll rip your internal stitches and that would just be a messy business. We also have to replace the blood you lost. It was a lot.”
“Where’s Frank?”
“He just popped out. He’ll be back.”
Eva went back to checking my IV drip and glanced briefly at the EKG machine I was hooked up to. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Wait,” I said. For some reason I didn’t like the idea of being left alone.
Eva placed a hand on mine. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.” She smiled at me, her large almond-shaped eyes caring and detached at the same time. I nodded and she left the room.
Looking around, I had no
idea where I was. It was a large room from what I could make out from my position. There seemed to be some sort of laboratory over to the left and all the walls where filled with shelves lined with small glass bottles and jars, each of them containing some liquid or powder of some sort. To the other side was a wall filled with books, similar to the books Frank had back at the cabin and the ones I found in my mom’s lockup.
Was this Eva woman a Watcher too?
Most likely, I decided. Given Frank’s commitment to the cause, I doubted he associated with anyone who wasn’t involved in some way. And she had said she knew my mother. I would have to press her further on that.
Looking down, I could see under the sheets that covered me that I was wearing a surgical gown. I peeled back the sheets and pulled up the gown so I could assess the damage. Apart from the dried blood and iodine, all I saw was a large bandage that covered the wound.
“Ah-ah,” Eva said when she came back into the room. “Don’t touch.” She put the gown back over me and then the sheets.
“Are you a doctor?” I asked.
“Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve had medical training, just not in the way most doctors have. As a Watcher, I was trained elsewhere. Our bodies work slightly differently compared to humans.”
Compared to humans. I was still getting used to the fact that I was something other than human.
“How do you mean?”
“Our DNA is completely different,” she said. “We also have a blood type that is unique only to us. Our insides are arranged slightly differently as well. The arteries and major organs are more protected. The demon who stabbed you knew exactly where to put that knife so it would hit an artery.”
“It used my friend to do it. Frank killed her.”
“He killed the demon inside of her. Your friend was dead when the demon jumped her, I’m afraid. Don’t blame Frank for her death.”
“I don’t.”