The man took several halting steps toward me, and the room around me grew one shade darker. Before the change could truly register in my mind, the man was in front of me reaching out his hand. When his palm made contact with mine, I felt a piercing pain shoot through my finger tips, and run up my arm. I remember wanting to scream out Louise, Patient 888, Dale even, but no words would come out of my mouth.
The man's eyes grew black, and all of the light within them disappeared. Soon, afterward, the lights in the room began to flicker and fade. I remember the feeling of cold reaching the center of my spine, and slowly moving up to the base of my skull. The horror was moving toward my brain, paralyzing me and preventing me from taking the slightest move to defend myself.
I heard the door slam shut behind me, and the feeling of cold finally reached some center just behind my eyes. What little light that was left in the room began to shift and flicker with abrasive frequency. In the strobe effect of the weird light, I saw the figures transforming before me.
The hand of the young man who was grasping a hold of my hand, became slick with perspiration. The sweat increased in volume and viscosity until it felt like a thin layer of slime had developed between our bodies. In revulsion and shock, I tore away from the hand. To my surprise, my entire body wrenched backward with the sudden movement. My head hit the door, and I slowly sank downward toward the floor. I was dizzy, and all I could do was pray for some alleviation in my condition.
I received no such grace.
The only change I was rewarded with was a pulsing headache, and the onset of intense nausea. Slime now spread on the floor in front of me as my hand reached out to steady my body from impending collapse.
Looking up once more, I saw that man, and the sweet old woman who had been in the room with me only moments before had completed a transformation.
Before me, I saw two preachers who were naked from head to toe, and covered with a thin layer of slime, which clung to my fingertips. They stretched out their lengthy and unsightly hands as though coming to terms with their new form. I saw the one that used to be the old woman grimace. It's expression, for I could no longer tell who was a man or a woman, revealed a row of the razor sharp teeth. I shuddered, as the teeth gleamed in the shattered light of the admissions room.
The one who was closest to me used to be the body of the young man. In his new form, he hunched down on all fours so that I could see the protrusions of each vertebrae in its spine come through its flesh. The eyes of this hunched over monstrosity flared to life with an unholy glow of an emerald flame.
The eyes shut, as the mouth opened wide. A hideous roar came deep from within the beast. The tone of the roar was so deep and guttural that it shook the floor beneath my body. The vibrations served to bring me back to life, and the feeling of nausea passed away from me. Once more, I was able to push myself backward against the door. All I needed to do was pull my body up from the ground, to replace my left hand on the handle of the door. My weight would open it, if only I could fall backward and away from these terrible creatures.
The plan was formed in my mind, and I was prepared to execute it when I heard a name. My name, somehow articulated from the throats of the creatures that stood before me. They crept toward me, my name spelling out from within their chest cavities like the central mantra of some perverse, archaic chant.
"Roma!
Now, I screamed, all pretense of action behind me.
"LOUISE!"
My voice was so shrill and hoarse, that I could scarcely believe that it came out with my mouth.
"DALE!"
It was no use.
The sound was just as alien as the two figures that appeared before me - just as twisted and broken. Both the voice, and the two creatures had one thing in common though. They had been forgotten, or dismissed by a caring and compassionate God.
"HELP!!"
The words were unintelligible at this point. The sound of the cry for help had been transformed into a singular high, pitch scream - and then nothing more than a whisper.
8
Roma
Summoning all of the strength inside of me, I pulled my body up against the door, and desperately tried to turn the handle. No matter how hard I pushed into the door, I was unable to move it in the slightest. While my body had been paralyzed only moments earlier, so the door was paralyzed from opening now.
When I turned to see how close the creatures had gotten to my position, I realized that they were not closing in for the kill. Instead of devouring my body, the two assumed a prayer position, and were now positioned on either side of me facing the entrance to the facility. Between their hulking bodies, I could see the entrance to the clinic. There was no way I felt confident enough in my abilities to try and maneuver my way past them.
Slamming my body into the door behind me once more, I gave one final effort to open up the door into the clinic.
No such luck.
The two creatures began to use their guttural language for some kind of ritual. They began to pronounce words in a chant that sounded like liturgical recitations from a catholic mass. I watched these two deformed and nightmarish creatures bowing their heads in prayer. As I watched, I imagined what dark and vicious God they must be appealing toward. The image of the devil brought swell of nausea fresh to my body, once more.
The temperature of the room began to grow colder, and I felt the inability to move sink into my bones once more. My teeth began to chatter and time slowed to a crawl. At first, I thought about Louise and about the patients in the facility. Then, my thinking slowed down, and all I could focus on was the constant droning chant of the two creatures. Staring at them, everything began to seem less and less real. All that was left of the world, was a frost so deep that it burnt my nerves into submission.
Then came the fire.
At first, the fire started out as an aspect of the cold. Then, I realized that the heat was actually emanating out from within my chest. A spell was being cast by these dark creatures, and there was no way for me to counteract its course.
As the fire began to grow inside of me, I feared that it might consume my entire being.
So, this is the hell that I was promised, I thought to myself, my mind dredging up histories of unbelievers and willfully charismatic sermons.
I nearly lost my mind there, in that demented, and twisted reality. Still worse, hallucinations of the most vile sort appeared before my eyes. Between the pain and the nightmares, I was unable to do anything but press my body desperately against the back door, and scream.
When it seemed as though my prayers would never be answered, the door flung open behind me, and I fell backward into white light. Above me, I saw the figure of a man clothed in white. The ambient light of the facility radiated around his body like a halo, and left me staring in awe.
I squinted upward, into the light, and made out the image of Patient 888, standing above me. I had to double check, just to verify that I was indeed seeing the world as it really was. I had to be sure that I wasn't in some continuation of those chaotic and horrific fantasies. In fact, the figure above me remained in place, and did not shift or change as did the man and woman had. While those beasts were entrenched in archaic incantations by my feet, Patient 888 had a sense of serenity. The resolve within his disposition transposed itself toward me. He seemed as though he could be trusted.
He could be my shelter from the storm.
I reached out to him, and he grabbed my hand firmly, offering me an anchor amid the madness and pain. Where our fingers touched, I felt a glorious sense of calm overtake my body. He provided a locus of security and control within the hellfire.
The internal heat brought about by the demonic magic had been pushed aside by a higher level of power and light. Though I was in pain, the severity had lessened back toward a tolerable state. The sense of restorative calm had given me peace once more. I thought this all might have been a psychotic episode. I assumed the stress was brought about by the stress of the weddi
ng, and some form of existential angst - I knew then, that this wasn't the case.
It was real. Everything.
The man above me was Patient 888. He was awake, and what's more, he held power over the nightmare.
"Everything's going to be all right," I heard the voice offering a calming reassurance within my mind. "The domain of the Lord is at hand."
9
Roma
Quicker than a flash of light, the man who stood above me and offered me comfort against the darkness was gone. His flight was not away from the conflict, but into the danger of battle itself.
I looked forward, into the Admittance Room just in time to see his knee connect with the jaw of the closest creature. While the first creature was still recoiling from the blow, the second was rising up to engage with their assailant. A malignant, clawed hand raked outward, tearing through the hospital gown, and exposed red lines of blood and flesh.
I gasped, realizing that this savior of mine was both mortal and supernatural at the same time.
The fight continued, and I watched as my savior delivered a roundhouse kick to the creature that had struck out against him. The kick connected, and I watched as the body that I had been so terrified of was projected into the wall of the Admittance Room. The body sank after impact, and then growled in defiance. Where the body hit the wall, there was a crater, and pieces of pastel decorative tile crashed to the ground around the nightmare.
While his attention was focused on the one by the wall, the other had recovered and dove toward me. The demon's teeth reached outward in obvious greed and hunger for my flesh. If it could not work its dark magic, then it seemed obvious that a taste of my body would make a suitable substitute. In spite of the cold, I flinched to the side and thrust myself out of the Admittance Room, and into the main hall of the facility.
The world around me appeared to be in stasis. Though I could not see any of the other patients, or Louise, I got the sense that somehow, they were being protected from this encounter. Perhaps the same magic that had isolated me with the two demons had an effective counterpart. Perhaps that magic prevented those already outside of the area of engagement from suffering the violence of the cold and fire.
There was no way I could begin to understand the experience around me.
My thoughts were interrupted as the body of Patient 888 was thrown out from the Admittance Room. The door however, was not the means by which he exited. The creatures within the room had adapted to him, and had given the Clinic a new hole in the wall. I watched in horror as the injuries of the man fully dawned on me. He was bleeding from the side of his head, and the wounds caused by the claws of the creature dripped blood down onto the white tile below.
One of the monsters leaped out at him with all four claws outstretched, ready to rend his body into nothing more than a pile of stripped meat. I gasped in horror, then watched as the Patient grabbed a nearby IV stand, and thrust it upward, like a spear, into the mouth of the creature. The head of the creature was cleanly severed. As the other creature roared, I watched the head transform into the head of the old woman.
I grew dizzy, and vomited my lunch out onto the floor in the opposite direction.
While I was choking on my own violent response to the situation, I heard what sounded like the felling of a mighty tree trunk. The sound pushed my nervous system into shock, past the point of revulsion and I was forced to look to the source of the sound.
Patient 888 had snapped the neck of the other creature. The demon, in death, revealed himself to be the man who had reached out to shake my hand, not fifteen minutes ago.
A surreal element of disbelief took me then, as I wondered what it meant to truly live outside of time. The thought was not conscious, but a byproduct of the realization that fifteen minutes of hell was long enough to last a lifetime. While these thoughts swam in my mind, I watched the two bodies in the hall turn into shadows and melt away.
The temperature warmed up so quickly that the condensation and humidity shifted, causing it to rain inside of the room. I felt the stasis end, though the destruction of the incident remained. The rain felt as though it washed away the nightmare, and cleansed this place of the evil that had penetrated the facility.
Patient 888 walked up to me, tearing his shirt off, and applying a hand to his wounds. I watched as light emanated from the palm of his hand. His mouth uttered words of prayer, and his face held the countenance of a saint. The blood which dripped from his side slowed and stopped. In amazement, I watched the skin mend toward itself, healing the places where the nightmares had left their mark. Scars remained, and when the healing was done, his eyes cleared, and he regarded me with utter sincerity.
"Roma," he said, his eyes narrowing in focus. "What have you done to anger the Devil?"
10
Roma
Just then, as though waking up from within a terrible dream, I realized that nothing around me made any sense whatsoever. After the initial shock, I began to calm down. When I was no longer struggling for my life, the cold rationality of a scientific framework came back into my thoughts.
What I had seen was not real. The bodies, which I had seen so graphically destroyed, were not real either.
To prove the point, I ignored the man standing in front of me and walked past him to see the places where the last shadows were dissipating into the floor. But things weren't so simple; I had experienced a full break in the perception of my reality.
The wall to the Admittance Room had been collapsed into the main hall of the facility. Rubble was still strewn about in the hallways that only an hour before, had been vacant and sparkling clean. What's more is that the room in which I stood held a man who should have been brain dead. It was all too much for me to manage. I did what any reasonable person would do in that circumstance.
I fled.
In little more than a second, I let out my most abusive and ferocious cry toward the man standing in front of me. Shocked, he took a step back. In that critical open space, I dove toward the Admittance Room. With a leap, I cleared the pile of rubble that had spilled out into the hallway, and jetted past the scorch marks on the carpet. I had to try and flee faster than the thoughts about my responsibilities to work. I had to abandon the memories of the events which had just transpired. Nothing could enter my mind except for putting as much space between myself and the Clinic as possible.
I reached the car, and pulled the key from the bungee carabiner at my waist. Fumbling for a moment would have been a common response in that sort of situation, but my mind was on high alert. I made no mistakes in my movement, as I was keen on getting out of there as quickly as possible.
In record time, I pushed the key into the ignition, and brought my tiny, piece of shit car to life. As though the car itself, understood the urgency of the situation, the clutch gave me no troubles this day. I gunned it, and gas flooded the engine, sending a cloud of exhaust and burnt tire tracks into the lot behind me.
"The management can figure out this shit," I said out loud, venting to myself. "They can find staff members who don't mind putting up with these sorts of experiences if they want to have paranormal phenomenon running wild at their place. I can find another job. Your life is worth more than dying at the hands of some freaks in the admittance room."
All of those thoughts hit me at once. Frankly, I'm surprised I was able to drive home with that much anxiety driven noise floating around in my head. They came at me like incoherent ramblings — all useful and well-informed opinions, I’m sure.
I got home faster than usual, because I was speeding. My thoughts actually cause the trip to go faster than normal, because I was thinking at an incredible speed. Every doubt and fantasy in my mind had been reeling in front of my vision. Frankly, I’m surprised I made it home in one piece.
When I got there, the door to the house was slightly open. I turned off the car, and walked over to see what was going on. I was sure that the only reason was because Dale was home, but after what I had just been throug
h, I couldn’t afford to be too careful.
“Dale?” I called out, yelling from the front yard, before opening the door.
I shook my head out of the darkened space I was in, and walked into the house. The rest of the outside world could continue forward in its obscure patterns of madness, but I didn’t need to get sucked into that, or bring it home with me. I took a deep breath, and began the process of unwinding.
“Dale, you around? You won’t believe what just happened at the clinic.”
I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a craft beer out of the fridge. The way the bottle cracked open seemed to do a number on alleviating my stress without my needing to even take a sip. Of course, that first sip pushed me into a place where I was thinking about nothing except the bitter spike of the alcohol. The sensory focus shifted immediately to the brisk carbonation pouring into my body.
“Oh god,” I gasped, wiping my mouth and setting the half empty beer on the kitchen counter.
I took another breath, and made my way into the bathroom down the hall. The beer felt good, but I was still flushed with heat and sweat. I needed to take a shower, or at the very least wash my face.
I turned on the faucet, and began to strip my clothes off. Without thinking, I closed my eyes and dipped my face down to the sink. The water felt refreshing, in a clean and revitalizing way. Lavender soap suds washed off of my face and I just sat there for a minute, feeling the cool water run along my temples.
After I had thoroughly indulged myself, I let out a long sigh of relief, and then opened my eyes.
There were two marks on my chest that weren’t there this morning.
Where the burning sensation had been, back in the Admittance Room, there was now a fresh scar shaped like two circles overlapping one another. I poked my chest to feel it, and they were still tender to the touch. Pain shot through my chest cavity, and I nearly fainted there in the bathroom.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 297