Out There: A Rural Horror Story

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Out There: A Rural Horror Story Page 22

by Cademon Bishop


  “Kinda, it’s like a place for where deities can meet. Floors are available, but most of them are taken by forgotten beings. It’s a sad thing, the forgotten ones, they just kinda fade out of existence. It’s sad to watch them go, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Michael moved his fingers. Yup firmly here, he thought as he held his hand to the overhead light like he were checking a dollar bill. “What’s heaven like? I know you’re stuck here, but you ever took a trip?”

  Jude turned to Michael and cocked his head. Though all Michael could see from his face was a blur of static, he sensed a puzzled eyebrow raise and a omnipresent smirk that only a being like him could create. “I don’t know, and I don’t think I ever questioned that in all of my existence. I’ve never had the need to. It’s something like this, from what I heard, but structured different, more divine, I suppose… I don’t know, and I don’t I want to? You get what I'm saying?”

  “Yeah…” The whole deconstruction of his idea of heaven made his heart feel meaningless, as if all his effort in church was a goose chase.

  Jude poked Michael’s arm with his elbow, “Don’t feel down about it.”

  “I ain’t down.”

  “I can read large parts of ya past,” Jude snickered. “I’m not human, remember? I can still read you. I know you are kind at heart, that you have a romantic interest in this girl that will have little to no interest in you, your sick often, feel weak and meaningless no matter where you go.”

  “Okay! Okay, I get it. Stop peelin’ me up like a potato. I know what I am.”

  “HM…” Jude bent towards him as if he were talking to a child, his chin resting in his thumb and forefinger, “For some strange reason you feel prouder with who you are. As if ya went off on your own.”

  Michael didn’t respond, the elevator shivered as it shot through the floors. The room numbers in red lights above the door changed like the seconds of a stopwatch. He watched room 413 to jump 434 on the small screen above the door.

  “I’m not mad… Toro told me everything.” Jude messed the top of Michael’s hair in an older brother-like gesture. Michael shivered at the icy touch of Jude’s thin hands, “You’re just a little cocky.” The elevator lulled. 621…643…then stopped on 665.

  The top floor looked like a sprawling red and gold office space; a room far too large to fit the building. A plethora of people of all tones and sizes filled the room. Michael had seen nothing more diverse in his entire life. In the center of this massive floor was a cylindrical shaped room with glowing blue walls.

  A man with a long gray beard and bat wings banged at his computer desk and black man in a white button up crossed 4 arms over the edge of a cubical on their right. Michael trailed behind Jude as he split a path between the crowd of deities. A circular door spun open on the central room.

  A gathering of beings sat around a floating disk inside the room. The only light inside flared from an intricate translucent blue map on the metal roundtable. A bird-like creature bellowed in an indecipherable language at Jude. Jude spoke back in the same tongue.

  A woman with fiery red hair and jet-black wings waved to Jude, “Where have you been? It’s been absolute chaos over here!” the woman called with a voice as smooth as a forest stream.

  “I had to pick up this man,” Jude pointed his skeletal finger at the woman. “Which you sent me to WALK to for your information!”

  “Things are absolute shit over in the transplanar space!” the woman blurted out.

  Jude walked back and forth, leaving Michael to take a step back and awkwardly fade into the darkness of the encircling walls. “Not that damn place,” Jude said. “Why can’t we just pluck off the whole knot in the system?!”

  “It isn’t that easy,” the red-haired woman stood, the feathers on her wings rustled as she slammed her fist onto the glass counter in front of her. “We don’t have to the power to kill people, and do you realize how much trouble that would cause?”

  “Well, one scuffle with the guys up there shouldn’t be an issue when this bloody thing has been going on for almost 20 years now.” Jude’s pacing in front of Michael went into short bursts of stop and go as he talked. “We agreed on putting the rain there, so why should one Innocent pluck be so bad!” Michael perked up and realized the map on the round table was of Joselean Springs.

  “It’s not within our power” The red-haired woman's turned away from Jude’s walking dance and smiled. “And that’s far from the main problem. The cracks in the whole plan have sprung up. Uncontrollable souls are loose.”

  Jude’s laps froze, “I thought we were able to get that patched up? You mean it somehow broke, the whole thing?”

  Michael crept back as Jude spoke. He eyed the group sitting around the disk to see if anyone would sense his fear. So far as he could tell, the mixed beings were glued to the fight between Jude and the winged woman.

  “I thought the same thing as well,” the woman said. “But some frightening fate pierced through everything. A hole to here opened up, and now, a hole up there has cracked opened as well. The heavens could lay threat to us at any moment… they have probably received the accidental opening as a threat.”

  Jude held his featureless face in his hands and shook his head.

  “May I offer a plan of action?” A woman in a black dress said. Her skin and her dress almost blended into the darkness. Her long dark hair draped over her figure, making her look like a statue of a Greek goddess. For all, Michael knew she could have been a goddess.

  “Sure,” the red-haired woman said, exhausted.

  “We have the forces of nature. Let’s use that to our advantage, strike down the Elder Ones, it can be a gesture to show the higher beings that we mean no harm and that we agree on a natural approach.”

  “We should support the people and envelop them with the power to withstand the surge. What about the barrier?” A creature with a goat’s head and a human body blurted. The man’s horns had a shine that reflected the map onto his gray fur face. “If we strike the Elder Ones, surely a fire will ignite and set the entire forest ablaze, releasing the unclaimed souls onto their land.”

  “That is a risk I’m sure we are all willing to take.” The dark woman responded. Michael’s heart clawed from his chest as he watched the fate of his town tossed like an unwanted toy.

  The red-haired woman smirked, then nodded, “Fair, fair… any who disagree?” The goat man’s gray fur hand-dipped above the table then retreated down. The woman smiled. “Then it’s settled. Fire away.” She strutted towards Michael as the group around the round table made a bustling exit.

  Jude stepped forward and nudged Michael, “Lilith, we have a guest?”

  “Ah, the young man who fell. Do you mind if we do a quick inspection before sending you back to where you were?” Before Michael could resist, Lilith grasped his arms and pushed him towards a circular door opposite from the entrance. The doorway split open. Jude tried to get close, but the doors slid shut the second he was in reach.

  “Where are we going?” Michael asked, failing to sound calm. Lilith’s shoes clicked on the metallic floor. The walkway gradually curved, soon bending into a ninety-degree angle.

  “Just a quick check-up, and we’ll send you back.” Michael tried to slip out of her grasp, but Lilith squeezed his arms, nearly clawing him with her long black nails. “Calm down, it’ll only be a minute.” A dark disk-shaped chamber opened at the end of the hall. Neon blue lights lit with their footsteps, revealing an odd ripple-like texture around the curved walls. Michael saw thousands of wires trailing down a hole in the dome’s center, a couple dozen strands stopped their curve mid-way on the ceiling and limped like a pole. An arched glass door stood at the end of the walkway.

  Lilith forced him in. “This will only be a second,” she said as she hovered up a hole where the cords spewed from. “Let’s see… Michael Brown, age twenty-one location thirty-three, forty-five… thirty.” She mumbled something Michael couldn’t catch. “Hang on.”
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  Red light pulsed down the wires, and a faint hum filled the room. Michael tried to heave the glass door open. The door wouldn’t budge. The lights stopped. Lilith flew out the hole and down to the entrance. He listened carefully and heard Lilith’s voice echo.

  “He’s from there!? You couldn’t have read his mind about that or something? That would have helped us out.” Michael turned around and noticed there was no wall behind him, only a black void.

  “I can’t read every single detail, only the surface ones.” Jude echoed alongside her.

  Lilith sighed. “I’m sorry… it’s not your fault you had no control over where he lived… there were no hints of his location in the slightest?” Jude kept silent. Michael watched Lilith soar back up the hall, her wide-winged silhouette vanishing into the wire crowded hole. “This is strange.” Her voice echoed from a speaker inside the disk-shaped room. “There appears to be a being merged with you. I can pull it out if you want, it’s like a thorn within your psyche.” Michael puzzled on this, then he remembered. Cassiel was with him this entire time.

  An unimaginable pain shot through Michael’s body. The red lights from the wires glowed on and off like a car’s turn signal. From the reflection of the glass tube, he could see Cassiel’s white iridescent hand prying through his chest. Cassiel slipped out of Michael’s body and shattered the glass door. The glow from the wires flickered, making everything in front of him look like stop motion.

  Cassiel’s glowing body remained within the dark frames of that film, “Let this man leave!” he bellowed.

  “Cassiel, it’s been eons, has it not.” She hovered out of the hole to see him. “You have no right to command after what you caused in that town.”

  “I’ll take him up by force if I must… you know I meant nothing from my choices, it was a mistake, and I learned from it. I know the hole that opened up was no fatal act. However, your lack of action on the living dead in the town, that is where I draw the line. You need to send everything you can up to the entrance and clean the area.”

  Lilith paused, pressing her fist on her chin, “We have our interest and methods… the town will only rot; it’s about time one of us does something and breaks a few rules.” Lilith shot back into the ceiling and flicked something on. The wires glowed in an iridescent jumble.

  “Lilith, what are you doing!?” Cassiel spread his wing and jetted up, only to be smacked back down by some invisible barrier. Radiant feathers fluttered as Cassiel’s wings flailed off the walkway.

  “Something I should have done a long time ago,” Lilith said as the tangle of light and color fizzled. “I’ll take our first shot and finally wrap up the shit show you caused.”

  Michael felt his weight drop, his arms melted and curled as if they were water. Then, with another click, Cassiel disappeared.

  Everything disappeared.

  The entire world shot out in front of him and faded into a shimmering bead of obscurity. Michael saw a white orb of light shoot towards him like a bullet through a chamber. Cassiel rose to meet Michael and then sunk back inside of him. Michael felt a shuttering, mind-throbbing feeling as Cassiel returned within him. The tips of his ribs bent for a fraction of a second.

  “I’m sorry…” Cassiel muttered, his voice vibrating within Michael’s head.

  “Sorry about what? Where were you?” Michael’s hair flailed in the dark. He thought about how strange it was to be shooting out into nothingness, how strange that it seemed normal. After spending the immersible about of time down there, flying through darkness seemed like a weekend stroll. His jacket flew off, exposing his thin arms to the wind.

  “I was glued to you. This isn’t my space to be, so I sunk myself deep in your psyche, it was the only way I could save you from falling. I became one with you and took most of the pain for the fall and-”

  You lied to me, Michael thought, knowing Cassiel could hear it. You told me you had no clue what was going on in town… I’m not mad. If you’re stuck with me, we oughta learn more bout’ each other, Right? Michael could feel something warm within him as Cassiel spoke.

  “I understand, we have a long trip to the first surface… I’ll tell you everything.”

  Chapter 12

  Side B Track 12

  Crippled, But Free

  “Ay Abe, what do you think that is?” Harvey tapped on his window. Abe sat in the passenger side seat of the BMW and huffed at Harvey. “Yeah, I’m a little worried too.” The gap of clouds was blatantly visible, as if god had made an accidental hole punch. Harvey’s hoped the late afternoon would bring a bright sunny sky, with a sunset that paints fields of wheat melancholy purple hues. However, all the afternoon brought was rain. Harvey sang along to the beat of a banjo on the radio. “Rain rain—go the hell away, come again some other gosh git gum darn day!” he put on the most revolting country ancient he could manage. Milking each A for all it’s over pronounceable worth.

  Harvey stopped by a gas station. While he touched the car door, he swore he saw a light shadow dip from the hole. Maybe a bird… but it was something much thinner and fasted. He brushed it off and went inside to pay for his gas.

  When he came back, he noticed Abe made a snail’s trail down the window with his nose. “Shit, Abe!” he scoured the backseat for a cloth to wipe the smudge with. Harvey picked up an orange sticky note stuck on the backside of his seat. He remembered tossing the note aside when he first opened the folder. Donald had written a note with a brief synopsis on it, including that name—the name of the devil.

  Harvey thought about looking back for the name deep somewhere within town hall but knew that he was far from welcome there. The name might be somewhere inside a library, and it wasn’t that late. If the gas stations open, hell, there might be some place that could hold this name, right? There’s gotta be some trail left behind somewhere.

  Harvey swept the town’s main streets for that somewhere. There was only one store on every other block that was open. The antique store he had got the phone book from lit murky yellow. Harvey thought about bringing Abe inside and having him rub his damp nose along all the vases.

  Harvey drove for twenty minutes, going up and down, back and forth, across roads and alleyways. The closest he found was a newspaper building. Harvey decided not to go to the press, knowing they probably already caught word of him by now from the mayor. He glanced at the man inside. Harvey thought about lonely it must be to be stuck reporting for this dull town, saying nothing, and being confident that every word you pressed was another shot in the dark.

  After ten more minutes, Harvey spun around another street corner, he saw the back of a person far off in the distance. A few times, in fact, he swore he spotted the outline of someone out in the dark and felt as though he were being watched in the deserted rain glossed streets. Harvey brushed off the worry. With Abe by his side, he could calm any superstition with a few head pats and a wag of a tail.

  Harvey tried to think that he wasn’t scared of something else out there, yet the head pat per block said otherwise. As Harvey turned out of the stores, he saw it again, like a light bulb blinking once in a dark room. The shadow of a person flicked somewhere in his vision as he turned from North Columbia to West Main Street.

  To his right were lanes of tombstones, like rows of teeth to the skeleton of a town. Do people even bury their dead here? Harvey thought, Or do they just toss them out like apple cores so they can wipe away any notion of grief? Harvey slowed down and stopped as he noticed Joselean Springs High School. If a place had records, this would be it.

  Harvey held an umbrella to shield him and Abe as they walked up the school’s stone steps. Abe gave little to no care about the coverage and pranced in and out of the rain. Harvey tried to tug Abe back, but he lost grip from the burning wet collar. Abe didn’t care for the rain. He bobbed his head towards the sky as he showered in the downpour. Harvey never thought about how the rain affected animals, and to Abe, it seemed like it gave no negative effects. In horrific anticipation, Harvey expected t
o see Abe bleed and melt somewhere, but Abe held together.

  Something flashed on their right. Abe’s head darted towards the light then reared back as an ear echoing rumble ruptured the sky. A second lighting strike followed.

  Harvey tugged at the metal bar on the glass front door, it was locked. Abe whimpered as he huddled nearby. Harvey looked back towards the street he came down and could see the stout skyline highlighted by the few functioning streetlamps. He waited for someone to walk out of the town and track him down—no one came.

  In the stillness, he smelt the air. Harvey always loved that sent only rain could bring. A fresh wet smell with… burning? Somewhere within the crisp scent of rain was a charred aroma. He brushed it off and wandered around the school. A metal door was on its back side. He tugged on the knob. It budged half an inch. He then heaved the knob towards himself. The door made a shrill nail on chalkboard sound as it scraped open. Rust dust rain down in the dim mustard yellow spotlight from the school’s parking lot. Harvey took one last look around the school before stepping in. The parking lot was empty, and every light was off in the building—not a single sign of life.

  The door led to a cramped gym. Thin strips of windows lined the top of the towering walls. He could hear echos of his screeching entry bounce around the room.

  Harvey’s feet squeaked as he crept over the gym’s hardwood floor, Abe’s paws made slow repeated clacks behind him. Lightning flashed through the sky, echoing a roar through the room. Abe scampered back in a foot clicking mess. Harvey tried to comfort Abe, but his hand stung the second he petted him. On their way across the room, Abe shook off the water. Spritz of pain shot across Harvey’s arms. Harvey clinched his teeth and shook off the pain. His instinct was to scold the dog but knew Abe didn’t know any better. To Abe, it’s just normal old rain… normal rain… His thoughts dipped into memories of home as he exited the gym.

 

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