Welcome, my fiendish friends! In the same tradition as our beloved Christmas Special, the fine folks at M2K proudly present the very first Halloween Special. Check out the stories and please, leave some feedback on the message board. These guys work hard just for the fun of it and they deserve some words of praise.
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- Devil's Night - Featuring Daredevil! What truly motivates a person? For many it is an emotion that burns as brightly as a bonfire. But for one man, the protector of Hell's Kitchen, it is something else entirely. Written by Logan Polk!
- Blood Thirst - Featuring the Fantastic Four! Marvel's first family has tangled with every creature in the solar system, but what about the creatures that go bump in the night? It's fangs versus fire...oh, wait...scratch that. Written by Dale Glaser!
- Payne - Featuring Devil-Slayer! In these dark times we often turn to a greater sense of purpose. For one man, that purpose is spelled out pretty clearly. Written by Hunter Lambright!
- Soulless - Featuring the Zombie! A mindless brute or a lost soul? Bound by the dark magics that transformed him, perhaps the answer will forever be kept at a distance. Written by Bryan Locke!
- Wild Hunt - Featuring Nighthawk! An ancient entity from beyond this world has stirred, and terrorizes innocents. It will take a dark avenger with a new purpose to thwart the evil that resides behind deep shadows. Written by Anthony Crute!
“Do you know what mankind’s greatest motivator is?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say love.”
“What’re you, an idiot?”
“Why do you always get existential on me before we pull a job?”
“Just listen, man. Mankind’s biggest motivation isn’t love, or money, or any of that ridiculous Hallmark crap. It’s fear.”
“How do you figure?”
“Why do you get out of bed everyday? Why do people work their fingers to the bone just to keep their heads above water? Why does anyone do anything?”
“Okay, yeah, fear, we’re all afraid.”
“Its true man, the only reason people do anything…or don’t do anything, is fear. It’s a motivator, it’s a paralyzer; it’s everything.”
“Just shut up and let’s do the job.”
Becky Truman lives with her Mom in apartment 2A; she’s twelve. They’ve lived there for over a year now, ever since her father, James, left.
It isn’t a great place, not by any stretch of the imagination. The hallway smells like urine, and there’s usually a bum sleeping right outside the building doorway. But the rent is cheap, and on a waitress’ salary that’s a big draw.
Becky gets out of school every day at three; her mother goes to work at four. It’s a dilemma for which there is no solution. So, five days a week Becky walks home from school, and on Saturday and Sunday she rides with her mother to the restaurant and spends the day reading in one of the back booths.
Today is not one of those days. Today is Friday. Today is Halloween. Today Becky gets to hand out candy to any kids that happen up to the apartment. Since she’s pretty sure no kids are going to show up her real plan is to watch monster movies and eat the bowl of candy. It’s the same thing she did last year.
Unfortunately for Becky Truman, things aren’t going to go as planned.
As she sits down on the ratty old couch in front of the television she hears a noise outside the apartment. Then there’s some talking. She doesn’t think much of it as she turns on the television and digs into her bowl of candy. The first movie of the night is Dracula. It’s one of the versions she’s never seen before, one in black and white.
Her first candy bar is a Butterfinger, her second is a Kit-Kat; by the time she’s on her first Reese’s Cup she smells the smoke. It’s really faint at first, like someone outside is grilling a hamburger. By the time it’s overpowering the apartment it’s too late. She can hear the sirens outside and can feel the heat coming from the floor boards.
When the front door become engulfed in flames Becky Truman panics and runs to her bedroom. She lifts the phone off the hook and tries to call her mother at work. There’s no dial tone. Becky curls up into a ball and begins to cry. The flames are getting closer. The heat is all around her. Her bedroom door is open. She can see the television. It’s on fire. The living room is on fire.
She hears glass break. She sees a figure, a person…a man, in the flames. He steps through them and she screams. He’s not a man, he’s the devil.
To be the devil in Hell’s Kitchen, on a night like this…it’s all so literal. If he were perhaps a more jaded man he might find the humor in it, instead he finds it distressing and sad.
Every year the real demons of the city come out to turn the place into Hell on Earth. Every year he does his best to stop the madness. Every year he doesn’t succeed.
It’s starting early this year.
He picks up a 911 call, a low rent apartment building going up in flames. Most of the people escaped; there may be a few left inside. It’s only six o’clock.
From a block away he can feel it…hear it. It’s overkill. Someone wanted this place to burn. The fire is everywhere.
As he gets closer he can pick up the conversations of the firemen below. They’re doing their best to put the fire out and rescue those left inside. They’re not sure how many, but he can hear their screams…their heartbeats. He can pinpoint their locations, and he can sense the structural integrity of the building.
There are three of them, two on the fifth floor, and one on the second. He goes after the two on the fifth floor first. It’s relatively easy; they’re trapped in their bathroom. He goes in through the fire escape, the widow is open; he kicks the burning beam out of the way and helps them back to the fire escape.
The couple makes it down safely and he goes back up for the other person.
He has to break through the window. The fire is everywhere. The smoke overwhelms his senses; the heat makes his blood feel like its boiling. He can hear her heartbeat. She’s young, maybe ten. She’s in her bedroom. There’s a wall of flames between him and her. He leapt through the fire and the flames crackling in his ear were deafened by the young girl’s piercing scream.
The devil is walking towards her, arms out. She couldn’t stop screaming.
“I’m here to rescue you,” he says.
She swats her arms at him and tries to kick him away. He pulls her up in his arms as she struggles.
“I know you’re scared, this is all frightening, but if we don’t get out of here the building is going to collapse around us. I need you to take a deep breath and hold it. Can you do that?”
His voice is deep and soothing, and she believes him. She nods her head and closes her eyes. He holds her tight and runs through the fire. The heat bites at her, but it doesn’t last long. Before the fire becomes too much to stand the cool October air kisses her skin.
She opens her eyes again as the devil whisks her down the fire escape. She sees her home engulfed in flames. It’s an impossible feeling for her to come to grips with at the moment. The loss of everything she knows.
They reach the ground and the devil sets her on her feet.
“You’re okay. Those nice men over there are going to take you to the hospital and make sure of it.”
She nods at him again as an EMT comes running towards her. Again she’s scooped up, but this time she’s rushed to an ambulance. She tries to thank him, to thank the devil for saving her life, but he’s gone.
There must be more people to save, she thinks…on Halloween night, maybe the devil’s work is never done.
“If I had to guess, I’d say love.”
“What’re you, an idiot?”
“Why do you always get existential on me before we pull a job?”
“Just listen, man. Mankind’s biggest motivation isn’t love, or money, or any of that ridiculous Hallmark crap. It’s fear.”
“How do you figure?”
“Why do you get out of bed everyday? Why do people work their fingers to the bone just to keep their heads above water? Why does anyone do anything?”
“Okay, yeah, fear, we’re all afraid.”
“Its true man, the only reason people do anything…or don’t do anything, is fear. It’s a motivator, it’s a paralyzer; it’s everything.”
“Just shut up and let’s do the job.”
Becky Truman lives with her Mom in apartment 2A; she’s twelve. They’ve lived there for over a year now, ever since her father, James, left.
It isn’t a great place, not by any stretch of the imagination. The hallway smells like urine, and there’s usually a bum sleeping right outside the building doorway. But the rent is cheap, and on a waitress’ salary that’s a big draw.
Becky gets out of school every day at three; her mother goes to work at four. It’s a dilemma for which there is no solution. So, five days a week Becky walks home from school, and on Saturday and Sunday she rides with her mother to the restaurant and spends the day reading in one of the back booths.
Today is not one of those days. Today is Friday. Today is Halloween. Today Becky gets to hand out candy to any kids that happen up to the apartment. Since she’s pretty sure no kids are going to show up her real plan is to watch monster movies and eat the bowl of candy. It’s the same thing she did last year.
Unfortunately for Becky Truman, things aren’t going to go as planned.
As she sits down on the ratty old couch in front of the television she hears a noise outside the apartment. Then there’s some talking. She doesn’t think much of it as she turns on the television and digs into her bowl of candy. The first movie of the night is Dracula. It’s one of the versions she’s never seen before, one in black and white.
Her first candy bar is a Butterfinger, her second is a Kit-Kat; by the time she’s on her first Reese’s Cup she smells the smoke. It’s really faint at first, like someone outside is grilling a hamburger. By the time it’s overpowering the apartment it’s too late. She can hear the sirens outside and can feel the heat coming from the floor boards.
When the front door become engulfed in flames Becky Truman panics and runs to her bedroom. She lifts the phone off the hook and tries to call her mother at work. There’s no dial tone. Becky curls up into a ball and begins to cry. The flames are getting closer. The heat is all around her. Her bedroom door is open. She can see the television. It’s on fire. The living room is on fire.
She hears glass break. She sees a figure, a person…a man, in the flames. He steps through them and she screams. He’s not a man, he’s the devil.
To be the devil in Hell’s Kitchen, on a night like this…it’s all so literal. If he were perhaps a more jaded man he might find the humor in it, instead he finds it distressing and sad.
Every year the real demons of the city come out to turn the place into Hell on Earth. Every year he does his best to stop the madness. Every year he doesn’t succeed.
It’s starting early this year.
He picks up a 911 call, a low rent apartment building going up in flames. Most of the people escaped; there may be a few left inside. It’s only six o’clock.
From a block away he can feel it…hear it. It’s overkill. Someone wanted this place to burn. The fire is everywhere.
As he gets closer he can pick up the conversations of the firemen below. They’re doing their best to put the fire out and rescue those left inside. They’re not sure how many, but he can hear their screams…their heartbeats. He can pinpoint their locations, and he can sense the structural integrity of the building.
There are three of them, two on the fifth floor, and one on the second. He goes after the two on the fifth floor first. It’s relatively easy; they’re trapped in their bathroom. He goes in through the fire escape, the widow is open; he kicks the burning beam out of the way and helps them back to the fire escape.
The couple makes it down safely and he goes back up for the other person.
He has to break through the window. The fire is everywhere. The smoke overwhelms his senses; the heat makes his blood feel like its boiling. He can hear her heartbeat. She’s young, maybe ten. She’s in her bedroom. There’s a wall of flames between him and her. He leapt through the fire and the flames crackling in his ear were deafened by the young girl’s piercing scream.
The devil is walking towards her, arms out. She couldn’t stop screaming.
“I’m here to rescue you,” he says.
She swats her arms at him and tries to kick him away. He pulls her up in his arms as she struggles.
“I know you’re scared, this is all frightening, but if we don’t get out of here the building is going to collapse around us. I need you to take a deep breath and hold it. Can you do that?”
His voice is deep and soothing, and she believes him. She nods her head and closes her eyes. He holds her tight and runs through the fire. The heat bites at her, but it doesn’t last long. Before the fire becomes too much to stand the cool October air kisses her skin.
She opens her eyes again as the devil whisks her down the fire escape. She sees her home engulfed in flames. It’s an impossible feeling for her to come to grips with at the moment. The loss of everything she knows.
They reach the ground and the devil sets her on her feet.
“You’re okay. Those nice men over there are going to take you to the hospital and make sure of it.”
She nods at him again as an EMT comes running towards her. Again she’s scooped up, but this time she’s rushed to an ambulance. She tries to thank him, to thank the devil for saving her life, but he’s gone.
There must be more people to save, she thinks…on Halloween night, maybe the devil’s work is never done.
The dread lord of the creatures of darkness surveyed the carnage in the pit before him. Scores of bodies lay where they had fallen, eviscerated or decapitated by fang and claw. Blood, dark and sludgy and lifeless, oozed from the grievous wounds of the prone remains, slowly seeping down to the layer of stripped bones at the bottom of the pit. Standing upright over the tangle of unmoving corpses were four figures, eyeing one another warily, the most savage and indomitable of the feral vampires.
Like the multitude of victims beneath their feet, the four vampires still standing possessed forms just varied enough from human beings to seem a cruel mockery of life. Their bodies were lithe and sinuous, naked except for dirty rags wrapped around their loins, with hairless, rotting skin devoid of any pigmentation. Their eyes were jet black and abnormally large, their ears tapered, their mouths crowded with lethally sharp teeth. Each of them bore wounds across their maggot-white flesh, yet none severe enough to have finished any one of them. Still, they kept their distance from one another, because their dread lord had established the code of the melee with abundant clarity: fight until four remained. To flaunt the prohibition would lead to an unimaginably painful reprisal.
The dread lord rose from his throne of skulls to address the four champions of the dark tournament. He bore a superficial resemblance to them, except that he towered nearly ten feet tall, his skin was ebon, and his eyes were a baleful red. “Well fought,” he praised the four in a stentorian rumble. “You have each earned the right and the honor of serving my needs.”
“What needs of yours concern us?” one of the maggot-white creatures hissed.
“My needs are yours, and the needs of all things of shadows, as well,” the dread lord replied. “The need to bring mankind low, and restore the natural order of the world.”
“You would dispatch the four of us to wage war on all of mankind?” a second of the vampires demanded.
“I am no fool,” the dread lord snapped. “Nor is such a war what is required.”
“Then what?” a third creature pressed, claws twitching impatiently.
“In the ages when Day was weak and Night was strong,” the dark lord intoned, “our kind preyed upon humanity at will, because humanity knew nothing. We feasted on the blood of ignorant ground-apes who believed that the shadows could conceal and contain anything and everything. And because mankind believed it, the shadows did contain anything and everything. But mankind … learned. Superstition gave way to science, and where superstition had made us more powerful, science made us less. The shadows have been shrinking, and soon will not even be deep enough to conceal and contain we few who remain.”
“Do you bid us to make war on … science?” the fourth vampire growled skeptically.
“I bid you to win one battle,” the dread lord answered. “One victory in which the shadows triumph and science fails will open a crack in humanity’s belief in their precious knowledge. That crack will allow fear to enter them, fear which weakens them. Fear which gives us strength.”
“Knowledge has no flesh to rend and tear,” the first vampire objected petulantly. “Science has no blood to drink.”
“Science has champions of its own, champions of flesh and blood,” the dread lord explained. “Destroy them, and the result will be the same as tearing the beating heart out of the idea itself.”
“These champions must be learned men,” the second vampire sneered. “They will surely know of our weaknesses.”
The dread lord laughed, a sound possessing neither warmth nor joy. “They will know them. But they will find using that knowledge much more difficult than they imagine.” The dread lord waved an onyx-black hand over the four vampires. The bloody gashes scoring their arms and legs, chests and backs closed up in an instant, leaving no trace. Their hides became waxier, and skin that had formerly seemed akin to the sickly surface of pus-filled boils hardened to resemble blanched leather. “I give each of you this boon,” the dread lord said as the transformation was complete, “the Armor of the Caul. Neither spears of wood nor blades of silver can now pierce you. Even fire shall have as little effect on you as on a granite mountainside. Now, would you see the champions of mankind whose lives you shall claim for the shadows?”
The four newly cauled vampires hissed and howled their agreement, and drew closer to their dread lord as he opened a portal on a human city, its streets garish with artificial light. In the center of the sheer faces of gray steel and dark glass stood a tower of alabaster …
“Showtime!” Johnny Storm grinned as he flopped onto a couch and arranged himself in a comfortable lounging position.
“Yeah? Then where’s the blasted popcorn?” Benjamin J. Grimm grumbled, settling his massive body onto the opposite couch, which was specially reinforced to bear the weight of a slow, orange avalanche of the Thing’s body.
“Whoops,” Johnny shrugged. “Left it in the kitchen.”
“I’ll get it,” Reed Richards offered; he was seated on a third couch positioned between the other two, the last piece of furniture in the Baxter Building media room. Mr. Fantastic lifted his arm toward the media room door and began to stretch the limb in the direction of the kitchen.
“No, darling, I’ll get it,” Susan Richards countered. “It’s my year to pick the movie, so I suppose I’m the hostess.”
Reed smiled his acquiescence and retracted his arm. Sue got up from her seat beside her husband on the central couch and carried a DVD to the opposite wall, where she pressed a small button to open the player’s disc tray. A moment later three bowls of popcorn – one for each couch – floated through the door, held aloft by one of the Invisible Woman’s translucent force constructs. Sue was not a true telekinetic, but she could form and manipulate simple invisible shapes such as a large scoop. In her own home, she could mentally send such constructs through the hallways even while tending to another task, such as loading a movie.
Every year for Halloween – assuming that they were home and not dealing with extradimensional threats or hyperchronal menaces – the Fantastic Four set aside an evening to watch a horror movie after Franklin had gone to bed. They took turns year by year selecting the cinematic feature. Johnny tended to favor whatever recent release he might have missed in the theaters, especially when they featured attractive female leads, which they invariably did. Ben, on the other hand, was a Boris Karloff fan, though just as likely to choose “Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer” as a true monster classic such as “Frankenstein” or “The Mummy”. Perhaps predictably, Reed frequently chose movies centered on mad scientists, although after an incident of excoriating nitpicking over the pseudo-science in the Jeff Goldblum remake of “The Fly” Reed had been banned by his family from any more running commentary.
Sue picked the same movie every four years, and this year was no exception. She sat down and leaned on Reed’s shoulder, picked up a remote control, and pointed it at the far wall. The entire vertical surface was illuminated with the menu of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” DVD.
“Another year with Freddy Krueger,” Johnny sighed, munching on popcorn.
“An’ don’t forget a very young Johnny Depp,” Ben pointed out.
“True,” Johnny nodded. “You know, Sis, every time your Halloween comes around it gets a little creepier that you’re crushing on a twenty-one year old.”
“How many times do I have to tell you boys,” Sue defended herself, “I do not have a crush on Johnny Depp at present or at any age. I just happen to think Nancy is one of the best heroines in horror movie history and I never get tired of seeing her put Freddy through the wringer at the end.”
“It’s truly a fascinating premise,” Reed opined, “not only in terms of the core concept but also as a narrative device for a film. The psychological processes of fear as expressed through dreams …”
“Stretch, for the luvva Pete,” Ben groaned, “don’t make us gag ya. Just watch the movie and save yer theories for the next time ya run into Lenny Samson.”
“Fair enough,” Reed smiled amiably. “Sorry, old friend.”
Sue started the movie and soon the foursome was watching poor, doomed Tina Grey running through the boiler room dreamscape. The familiar rhythms of the movie carried them all along, until Ben rose from his couch, right about the time Rod Lane was being strangled by the bedsheets of his prison cot. “Gonna go get me a drink,” he announced.
“Want me to pause the movie?” Sue asked, picking up the remote.
Ben was already at the threshold of the media room. “Naw, that’s …” he began, and never finished his thought as a pale blur slammed into him and sent him tumbling backwards. The other three jumped up from their seats, Reed and Sue assuming defensive stances, Johnny erupting in flames and rising slightly into the air as the Human Torch.
The Thing gave a wordless, angry yell and tossed his attacker across the room, then began to slowly right himself. The creature that had knocked the Thing down bounced off the far wall and was on its feet again with cat-like quickness. At the same time, three more pale creatures appeared in the doorway of the media room as well.
“Your lives are forfeit, mortals!” the central figure in the doorframe shrieked. “Submit without struggle and your deaths will be quick!”
“Or fight us, if you dare,” another of the ghostly creatures gnarred. “But know that we vampires are capable of drawing out your deaths into nigh unending torments.”
“Vampires?” the Human Torch scoffed. “Oh, man, did you guys pick the wrong superheroes to mess with.” He flashed the palm of his right hand at the nearest vampire and unleashed a narrow column of flame, which struck the creature of darkness squarely in the chest and splashed off the sepulchral flesh without so much as marking it.
“Looks like they got themselves fireproofed, kiddo,” the Thing rumbled. The vampire that had first tackled him was closing in again, and the Thing balled his massive rocky hands into fists. The vampire leapt at the Thing, who threw a right cross hard enough to shatter steel. Instead of connecting with the monster’s skull, however, the Thing’s knuckles were engulfed in an impossibly wide mouth. “YaaaaOOOWWW!” the Thing bellowed, as a profusion of fangs sank into his stony knuckles. The Thing kicked the vampire away awkwardly, shaking his wounded hand as the vampire rolled lithely back to its feet.
“I believe a moment to regroup would be wise,” Mr. Fantastic said calmly. “Susan?”
His wife nodded and leaned forward slightly, her body mimicking the mental force of erecting an invisible barrier that swept through the media room, pinning the four vampires in the far corner. The Thing lumbered out into the corridor, followed by Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman at a run, and the Human Torch flying close behind.
“I thought vampires couldn’t come into your home unless they were invited,” Johnny pointed out as the quartet raced down the hallway.
“Guess these are the rude type,” Ben retorted. “Just our luck.”
“A critical component of that prohibition seems to be the physical threshold, where the outside world and the structure’s interior meet,” Reed theorized. “Many pieces of folklore and mythology deal with these liminal areas and give them great significance. The Baxter Building complicates matters, in that its front doors are unlocked and its lobby and several of the lower floors are open to the public. Although the upper floors are technically our home, the distinction is too fine to affect vampires, apparently.”
“Wonderful,” Sue sighed. “So we’ll have to show the vampires out ourselves.”
“One way or another,” Ben growled.
“Indeed,” Reed nodded, just as his body turned sharply at the midpoint of his torso, as he stretched from the ribs up into a room off the corridor. A moment later his arm was stretching back out into the hallway and beckoning his teammates.
The Thing, the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman followed the leader of their team into one of his many workshops. The walls were lined with blue metal shelves overflowing with boxes and loose spare parts. Many of the boxes were cardboard and marked in one way or another as EVIDENCE. In the center of the room were several workbenches, some with robotic tool-fitted arms attached, all supporting projects somewhere in the middle of their lifespans.
“This is your reverse-engineering room, isn’t it, Reed?” Sue asked.
“That’s right, darling,” Reed confirmed, extending his neck as he inspected the contents of the shelves in rapid, up-close scans. “I trust that somewhere amidst the toys confiscated from various super-villains we might have the ideal … ah, here.” Mr. Fantastic’s body resumed its normal proportions with a box cradled in his arms; on the lid of the box someone had scrawled CASE NO. 99533 S. SMITHERS.
“If Johnny can’t fry ‘em, and I can’t dent ‘em,” Ben said, as Reed withdrew a yellow-orange pistol with an almost spherical body between its handle and barrel, “ya think that pop gun is gonna make a scratch on ‘em?”
“Not directly,” Mr. Fantastic admitted. “Now, Susan, there’s two more things I need you to do.”
The four vampires had thrown themselves at the invisible wall with unrestrained fury, while “A Nightmare on Elm Street” continued to play unheeded on the opposite wall, until finally they were through it and scrabbling out the media room door. Like a pack of wild predatory beasts the vampires traversed the corridor, mindlessly clawing at the walls as they progressed. One of the vampires tore a gouge in the paneling deep enough to sever an electrical cable, and sparks flew from the ripped wall while the lights overhead stuttered. The vampires came to an abrupt halt at the doorway to the reverse-engineering room. The Fantastic Four stood in the middle of the workshop, two men and a woman in form-fitting blue and white uniforms, and an orange brute in blue trunks, all four looking expectantly at the invading creatures. The vampires entered the room and fanned out slowly; each one’s slavering mouth was opening wider and wider, long tongues undulating between rows of swordpoint teeth, glistening with putrescence. The lights near the ceiling flickered erratically, strobing the workshop with alternating shadows and light.
“You stand against us?” the lead vampire asked. “You choose an excruciating death on your feet to a merciful one on your knees?”
Mr. Fantastic raised his hands waist-high and curled his fingers in a rapid but decisive flutter, unmistakably urging the vampires forward.
The vampires obliged, springing at the quartet of heroes with murderous howls echoing through the workshop. Each of the creatures attacked a different member of the Fantastic Four, jaws distended to hook around the neck of their chosen target. Susan Richards arched backwards, Reed Richards attempted to sidestep, Ben Grimm brought up his arms to ward off the attack, and Johnny Storm ducked low, but each one was caught and held fast by the supernaturally strong arms of a vampire. A moment later, four sets of fangs bit deeply into the necks of the four heroes.
Sickly-sweet smoke began to rise from the puncture wounds, and the vampires stiffened abruptly, their muscles defensively tensing. Before they could pull away from their victims, however, Susan Richards dropped the effects of invisibility that had been concealing her teammates and herself, revealing them standing in street clothes just behind their uniformed duplicates. Mr. Fantastic’s rubbery arms shot out and wound tightly around the simuloids of himself and his wife, as well as the vampires that had been intent on feeding on them, and his limbs pinned the creatures in place. The Thing palmed the heads of the other two vampires and held them tight against the necks of his simuloid and Johnny’s. The vampires flailed and made horrifically pained guttural sounds, but could not free themselves. Once the creatures’ struggles ceased, Reed and Ben released them. The vampires fell to the floor of the workshop, utterly inert, their heads lolling on their necks like pale, used up jack-o-lanterns: wisps of smoke rising from their wide grimaces, and shriveled black tongues protruding like burnt candle wicks.
“Saved by Plantman technology,” Ben shook his head. “Whatta revoltin’ development.”
“Samuel Smithers may not have had the most illustrious of careers,” Reed observed, “but you have to admit that his invention served its purpose well tonight, allowing us to bypass the vampires’ invulnerable exteriors and attack them from within.”
“Okay, as long as you admit that ‘Vega-Ray’ is a really dumb name for a weapon,” Johnny countered.
“Granted,” Reed smiled, detaching the yellow-orange Vega-Ray pistol from his belt. He aimed the gun at the simuloid Fantastic Four and fired, bathing the quartet in strange energies. The simuloids began to shrink, and within seconds all that remained in their place were four bulbs of garlic, each one missing a small bite-sized chunk from one clove. “Thank you again for retrieving the garlic bulbs from the kitchen before cloaking us, Susan.”
“Luckily we had just restocked the pantry,” Susan replied. “Although garlic mashed potatoes are off the menu for this week.”
“I’ll take you out to dinner to make it up to you,” Reed offered.
“An’ I suppose Hothead and I just have to make do with pizza while you two are out paintin’ the town red?” Ben grumbled.
“Speak for yourself, gruesome, I can barely make time for all the dinner plans in my date book as it is,” Johnny boasted.
“Mommy? Daddy?” Franklin Richards stood in the doorway of the reverse-engineering room, rubbing one eye with a tiny fist.
“Franklin!” Susan said, vanishing the vampires’ remains from sight while she approached her son. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I wanted a drink,” Franklin answered guilelessly. “Did you finish your movie?”
“Not yet,” Susan admitted.
“Can I watch it with you?” Franklin asked.
“No, sweetie, it’s still just for grown-ups,” she declined.
“Maybe when you’re a little older, son,” Reed offered. “We’ll all watch it again.”
“Every four years, buddy,” Johnny added.
“C’mon, Franklin,” Ben said, holding out his hand, which Franklin readily took. “I was goin’ to get myself a drink, too.”
The Fantastic Four left the workshop, with Mr. Fantastic departing last, after he had keyed a command into a control panel near the door. As he walked away, small cleaning robots emerged from storage slots around the room and began to dispose of the fallen vampires fading back into view.
END
AUTHOR’S NOTE: For continuity purposes, this story takes place “a couple Halloweens ago.” In other words, it predates the official Marvel 2000 Fantastic Four series, and is set in the FF’s past, at a point when the roster was the original four and Franklin was under five years old. Trying to pin it down any more exactly would, in this scribe’s humble opinion, suck a lot of the fun out of it. Thanks for reading!
-DWG
Like the multitude of victims beneath their feet, the four vampires still standing possessed forms just varied enough from human beings to seem a cruel mockery of life. Their bodies were lithe and sinuous, naked except for dirty rags wrapped around their loins, with hairless, rotting skin devoid of any pigmentation. Their eyes were jet black and abnormally large, their ears tapered, their mouths crowded with lethally sharp teeth. Each of them bore wounds across their maggot-white flesh, yet none severe enough to have finished any one of them. Still, they kept their distance from one another, because their dread lord had established the code of the melee with abundant clarity: fight until four remained. To flaunt the prohibition would lead to an unimaginably painful reprisal.
The dread lord rose from his throne of skulls to address the four champions of the dark tournament. He bore a superficial resemblance to them, except that he towered nearly ten feet tall, his skin was ebon, and his eyes were a baleful red. “Well fought,” he praised the four in a stentorian rumble. “You have each earned the right and the honor of serving my needs.”
“What needs of yours concern us?” one of the maggot-white creatures hissed.
“My needs are yours, and the needs of all things of shadows, as well,” the dread lord replied. “The need to bring mankind low, and restore the natural order of the world.”
“You would dispatch the four of us to wage war on all of mankind?” a second of the vampires demanded.
“I am no fool,” the dread lord snapped. “Nor is such a war what is required.”
“Then what?” a third creature pressed, claws twitching impatiently.
“In the ages when Day was weak and Night was strong,” the dark lord intoned, “our kind preyed upon humanity at will, because humanity knew nothing. We feasted on the blood of ignorant ground-apes who believed that the shadows could conceal and contain anything and everything. And because mankind believed it, the shadows did contain anything and everything. But mankind … learned. Superstition gave way to science, and where superstition had made us more powerful, science made us less. The shadows have been shrinking, and soon will not even be deep enough to conceal and contain we few who remain.”
“Do you bid us to make war on … science?” the fourth vampire growled skeptically.
“I bid you to win one battle,” the dread lord answered. “One victory in which the shadows triumph and science fails will open a crack in humanity’s belief in their precious knowledge. That crack will allow fear to enter them, fear which weakens them. Fear which gives us strength.”
“Knowledge has no flesh to rend and tear,” the first vampire objected petulantly. “Science has no blood to drink.”
“Science has champions of its own, champions of flesh and blood,” the dread lord explained. “Destroy them, and the result will be the same as tearing the beating heart out of the idea itself.”
“These champions must be learned men,” the second vampire sneered. “They will surely know of our weaknesses.”
The dread lord laughed, a sound possessing neither warmth nor joy. “They will know them. But they will find using that knowledge much more difficult than they imagine.” The dread lord waved an onyx-black hand over the four vampires. The bloody gashes scoring their arms and legs, chests and backs closed up in an instant, leaving no trace. Their hides became waxier, and skin that had formerly seemed akin to the sickly surface of pus-filled boils hardened to resemble blanched leather. “I give each of you this boon,” the dread lord said as the transformation was complete, “the Armor of the Caul. Neither spears of wood nor blades of silver can now pierce you. Even fire shall have as little effect on you as on a granite mountainside. Now, would you see the champions of mankind whose lives you shall claim for the shadows?”
The four newly cauled vampires hissed and howled their agreement, and drew closer to their dread lord as he opened a portal on a human city, its streets garish with artificial light. In the center of the sheer faces of gray steel and dark glass stood a tower of alabaster …
“Showtime!” Johnny Storm grinned as he flopped onto a couch and arranged himself in a comfortable lounging position.
“Yeah? Then where’s the blasted popcorn?” Benjamin J. Grimm grumbled, settling his massive body onto the opposite couch, which was specially reinforced to bear the weight of a slow, orange avalanche of the Thing’s body.
“Whoops,” Johnny shrugged. “Left it in the kitchen.”
“I’ll get it,” Reed Richards offered; he was seated on a third couch positioned between the other two, the last piece of furniture in the Baxter Building media room. Mr. Fantastic lifted his arm toward the media room door and began to stretch the limb in the direction of the kitchen.
“No, darling, I’ll get it,” Susan Richards countered. “It’s my year to pick the movie, so I suppose I’m the hostess.”
Reed smiled his acquiescence and retracted his arm. Sue got up from her seat beside her husband on the central couch and carried a DVD to the opposite wall, where she pressed a small button to open the player’s disc tray. A moment later three bowls of popcorn – one for each couch – floated through the door, held aloft by one of the Invisible Woman’s translucent force constructs. Sue was not a true telekinetic, but she could form and manipulate simple invisible shapes such as a large scoop. In her own home, she could mentally send such constructs through the hallways even while tending to another task, such as loading a movie.
Every year for Halloween – assuming that they were home and not dealing with extradimensional threats or hyperchronal menaces – the Fantastic Four set aside an evening to watch a horror movie after Franklin had gone to bed. They took turns year by year selecting the cinematic feature. Johnny tended to favor whatever recent release he might have missed in the theaters, especially when they featured attractive female leads, which they invariably did. Ben, on the other hand, was a Boris Karloff fan, though just as likely to choose “Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer” as a true monster classic such as “Frankenstein” or “The Mummy”. Perhaps predictably, Reed frequently chose movies centered on mad scientists, although after an incident of excoriating nitpicking over the pseudo-science in the Jeff Goldblum remake of “The Fly” Reed had been banned by his family from any more running commentary.
Sue picked the same movie every four years, and this year was no exception. She sat down and leaned on Reed’s shoulder, picked up a remote control, and pointed it at the far wall. The entire vertical surface was illuminated with the menu of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” DVD.
“Another year with Freddy Krueger,” Johnny sighed, munching on popcorn.
“An’ don’t forget a very young Johnny Depp,” Ben pointed out.
“True,” Johnny nodded. “You know, Sis, every time your Halloween comes around it gets a little creepier that you’re crushing on a twenty-one year old.”
“How many times do I have to tell you boys,” Sue defended herself, “I do not have a crush on Johnny Depp at present or at any age. I just happen to think Nancy is one of the best heroines in horror movie history and I never get tired of seeing her put Freddy through the wringer at the end.”
“It’s truly a fascinating premise,” Reed opined, “not only in terms of the core concept but also as a narrative device for a film. The psychological processes of fear as expressed through dreams …”
“Stretch, for the luvva Pete,” Ben groaned, “don’t make us gag ya. Just watch the movie and save yer theories for the next time ya run into Lenny Samson.”
“Fair enough,” Reed smiled amiably. “Sorry, old friend.”
Sue started the movie and soon the foursome was watching poor, doomed Tina Grey running through the boiler room dreamscape. The familiar rhythms of the movie carried them all along, until Ben rose from his couch, right about the time Rod Lane was being strangled by the bedsheets of his prison cot. “Gonna go get me a drink,” he announced.
“Want me to pause the movie?” Sue asked, picking up the remote.
Ben was already at the threshold of the media room. “Naw, that’s …” he began, and never finished his thought as a pale blur slammed into him and sent him tumbling backwards. The other three jumped up from their seats, Reed and Sue assuming defensive stances, Johnny erupting in flames and rising slightly into the air as the Human Torch.
The Thing gave a wordless, angry yell and tossed his attacker across the room, then began to slowly right himself. The creature that had knocked the Thing down bounced off the far wall and was on its feet again with cat-like quickness. At the same time, three more pale creatures appeared in the doorway of the media room as well.
“Your lives are forfeit, mortals!” the central figure in the doorframe shrieked. “Submit without struggle and your deaths will be quick!”
“Or fight us, if you dare,” another of the ghostly creatures gnarred. “But know that we vampires are capable of drawing out your deaths into nigh unending torments.”
“Vampires?” the Human Torch scoffed. “Oh, man, did you guys pick the wrong superheroes to mess with.” He flashed the palm of his right hand at the nearest vampire and unleashed a narrow column of flame, which struck the creature of darkness squarely in the chest and splashed off the sepulchral flesh without so much as marking it.
“Looks like they got themselves fireproofed, kiddo,” the Thing rumbled. The vampire that had first tackled him was closing in again, and the Thing balled his massive rocky hands into fists. The vampire leapt at the Thing, who threw a right cross hard enough to shatter steel. Instead of connecting with the monster’s skull, however, the Thing’s knuckles were engulfed in an impossibly wide mouth. “YaaaaOOOWWW!” the Thing bellowed, as a profusion of fangs sank into his stony knuckles. The Thing kicked the vampire away awkwardly, shaking his wounded hand as the vampire rolled lithely back to its feet.
“I believe a moment to regroup would be wise,” Mr. Fantastic said calmly. “Susan?”
His wife nodded and leaned forward slightly, her body mimicking the mental force of erecting an invisible barrier that swept through the media room, pinning the four vampires in the far corner. The Thing lumbered out into the corridor, followed by Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman at a run, and the Human Torch flying close behind.
“I thought vampires couldn’t come into your home unless they were invited,” Johnny pointed out as the quartet raced down the hallway.
“Guess these are the rude type,” Ben retorted. “Just our luck.”
“A critical component of that prohibition seems to be the physical threshold, where the outside world and the structure’s interior meet,” Reed theorized. “Many pieces of folklore and mythology deal with these liminal areas and give them great significance. The Baxter Building complicates matters, in that its front doors are unlocked and its lobby and several of the lower floors are open to the public. Although the upper floors are technically our home, the distinction is too fine to affect vampires, apparently.”
“Wonderful,” Sue sighed. “So we’ll have to show the vampires out ourselves.”
“One way or another,” Ben growled.
“Indeed,” Reed nodded, just as his body turned sharply at the midpoint of his torso, as he stretched from the ribs up into a room off the corridor. A moment later his arm was stretching back out into the hallway and beckoning his teammates.
The Thing, the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman followed the leader of their team into one of his many workshops. The walls were lined with blue metal shelves overflowing with boxes and loose spare parts. Many of the boxes were cardboard and marked in one way or another as EVIDENCE. In the center of the room were several workbenches, some with robotic tool-fitted arms attached, all supporting projects somewhere in the middle of their lifespans.
“This is your reverse-engineering room, isn’t it, Reed?” Sue asked.
“That’s right, darling,” Reed confirmed, extending his neck as he inspected the contents of the shelves in rapid, up-close scans. “I trust that somewhere amidst the toys confiscated from various super-villains we might have the ideal … ah, here.” Mr. Fantastic’s body resumed its normal proportions with a box cradled in his arms; on the lid of the box someone had scrawled CASE NO. 99533 S. SMITHERS.
“If Johnny can’t fry ‘em, and I can’t dent ‘em,” Ben said, as Reed withdrew a yellow-orange pistol with an almost spherical body between its handle and barrel, “ya think that pop gun is gonna make a scratch on ‘em?”
“Not directly,” Mr. Fantastic admitted. “Now, Susan, there’s two more things I need you to do.”
The four vampires had thrown themselves at the invisible wall with unrestrained fury, while “A Nightmare on Elm Street” continued to play unheeded on the opposite wall, until finally they were through it and scrabbling out the media room door. Like a pack of wild predatory beasts the vampires traversed the corridor, mindlessly clawing at the walls as they progressed. One of the vampires tore a gouge in the paneling deep enough to sever an electrical cable, and sparks flew from the ripped wall while the lights overhead stuttered. The vampires came to an abrupt halt at the doorway to the reverse-engineering room. The Fantastic Four stood in the middle of the workshop, two men and a woman in form-fitting blue and white uniforms, and an orange brute in blue trunks, all four looking expectantly at the invading creatures. The vampires entered the room and fanned out slowly; each one’s slavering mouth was opening wider and wider, long tongues undulating between rows of swordpoint teeth, glistening with putrescence. The lights near the ceiling flickered erratically, strobing the workshop with alternating shadows and light.
“You stand against us?” the lead vampire asked. “You choose an excruciating death on your feet to a merciful one on your knees?”
Mr. Fantastic raised his hands waist-high and curled his fingers in a rapid but decisive flutter, unmistakably urging the vampires forward.
The vampires obliged, springing at the quartet of heroes with murderous howls echoing through the workshop. Each of the creatures attacked a different member of the Fantastic Four, jaws distended to hook around the neck of their chosen target. Susan Richards arched backwards, Reed Richards attempted to sidestep, Ben Grimm brought up his arms to ward off the attack, and Johnny Storm ducked low, but each one was caught and held fast by the supernaturally strong arms of a vampire. A moment later, four sets of fangs bit deeply into the necks of the four heroes.
Sickly-sweet smoke began to rise from the puncture wounds, and the vampires stiffened abruptly, their muscles defensively tensing. Before they could pull away from their victims, however, Susan Richards dropped the effects of invisibility that had been concealing her teammates and herself, revealing them standing in street clothes just behind their uniformed duplicates. Mr. Fantastic’s rubbery arms shot out and wound tightly around the simuloids of himself and his wife, as well as the vampires that had been intent on feeding on them, and his limbs pinned the creatures in place. The Thing palmed the heads of the other two vampires and held them tight against the necks of his simuloid and Johnny’s. The vampires flailed and made horrifically pained guttural sounds, but could not free themselves. Once the creatures’ struggles ceased, Reed and Ben released them. The vampires fell to the floor of the workshop, utterly inert, their heads lolling on their necks like pale, used up jack-o-lanterns: wisps of smoke rising from their wide grimaces, and shriveled black tongues protruding like burnt candle wicks.
“Saved by Plantman technology,” Ben shook his head. “Whatta revoltin’ development.”
“Samuel Smithers may not have had the most illustrious of careers,” Reed observed, “but you have to admit that his invention served its purpose well tonight, allowing us to bypass the vampires’ invulnerable exteriors and attack them from within.”
“Okay, as long as you admit that ‘Vega-Ray’ is a really dumb name for a weapon,” Johnny countered.
“Granted,” Reed smiled, detaching the yellow-orange Vega-Ray pistol from his belt. He aimed the gun at the simuloid Fantastic Four and fired, bathing the quartet in strange energies. The simuloids began to shrink, and within seconds all that remained in their place were four bulbs of garlic, each one missing a small bite-sized chunk from one clove. “Thank you again for retrieving the garlic bulbs from the kitchen before cloaking us, Susan.”
“Luckily we had just restocked the pantry,” Susan replied. “Although garlic mashed potatoes are off the menu for this week.”
“I’ll take you out to dinner to make it up to you,” Reed offered.
“An’ I suppose Hothead and I just have to make do with pizza while you two are out paintin’ the town red?” Ben grumbled.
“Speak for yourself, gruesome, I can barely make time for all the dinner plans in my date book as it is,” Johnny boasted.
“Mommy? Daddy?” Franklin Richards stood in the doorway of the reverse-engineering room, rubbing one eye with a tiny fist.
“Franklin!” Susan said, vanishing the vampires’ remains from sight while she approached her son. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I wanted a drink,” Franklin answered guilelessly. “Did you finish your movie?”
“Not yet,” Susan admitted.
“Can I watch it with you?” Franklin asked.
“No, sweetie, it’s still just for grown-ups,” she declined.
“Maybe when you’re a little older, son,” Reed offered. “We’ll all watch it again.”
“Every four years, buddy,” Johnny added.
“C’mon, Franklin,” Ben said, holding out his hand, which Franklin readily took. “I was goin’ to get myself a drink, too.”
The Fantastic Four left the workshop, with Mr. Fantastic departing last, after he had keyed a command into a control panel near the door. As he walked away, small cleaning robots emerged from storage slots around the room and began to dispose of the fallen vampires fading back into view.
END
AUTHOR’S NOTE: For continuity purposes, this story takes place “a couple Halloweens ago.” In other words, it predates the official Marvel 2000 Fantastic Four series, and is set in the FF’s past, at a point when the roster was the original four and Franklin was under five years old. Trying to pin it down any more exactly would, in this scribe’s humble opinion, suck a lot of the fun out of it. Thanks for reading!
-DWG
Payne.
It had become more than just his name. Eric Simon Payne had come so far, only to fall even further. He had once been a hero, a Devil-Slayer, and for some time it was the costume that had defined him more than his given name. Now, Payne defined him.
Eric grasped blindly at the nightstand, looking for the cheap lamp that stood somewhere on its cramped surface. The lamp weakly flickered to life, casting a pale orange glow on the ratty motel room. Eric was sure that the sheets he lay on hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, but more than anything, he didn’t care. He was just glad to have somewhere to sleep for the night.
He swung his feet over the side of the bed, his feet touching down on the gritty carpet below. Months ago, he had returned from what was supposed to be an eternal conflict and helped save the world with peyote, not that he ever told anyone that. It couldn’t help his image if he began telling people how he saved the world with drugs. The peyote had been meant to be a tool, to help separate the body from the mind enough to allow entrance to Hell.
Since then it had been a vice, and ultimately had led him to where he was now. He had nowhere else to turn to. His wife Cory was still in Illinois, and she hadn’t said a word to him since his latest disappearance and revival. He could understand why. Eric knew that he would have felt the same way if the roles had been reversed.
Eric reached for the well-thumbed Bible sitting on his duffel bag at his feet. He had fallen in and out of faith many times since his childhood. It gave him a reason to keep fighting when the times got rough, and he often fell out of it when times were good. It was an often-vicious cycle that he had grudgingly gotten used to over the years.
It wasn’t a yearning for spiritual fulfillment that had woken him up, though. It was a sense of inevitable peril. He had long been subject to random portents of doom, and they always had something to do with a demonic presence. Eric had worked out a system for dealing with these, as well as trying to understand where they were pointing to. He set the Bible on its spine, closed his eyes, and put his finger at a random point along the pages, letting the book fall open onto the small table. It fell open to Proverbs, and the first verse to catch his eye was 20:11: “Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.” He scribbled the verse down on a three-by-five note card, and shut the Bible.
He then pulled out a fold-up brochure of the United States and unfolded it, spreading it across the table. Closing his eyes, Eric flicked his wrist on the paper, sending it spinning. When he heard the brochure stop moving, he put his finger down on a random point on the map. It landed toward the middle-right side of Indiana, specifically on a city called New Castle. He had a feeling that if he got himself there, his sixth sense would be able to direct him more specifically.
It was settled, then. Eric placed the strip of paper with the Bible verse in his pocket and began to fish around in his duffel bag. He worked out the largest item, careful not to send the rest of his belongings flying in the process. As the fabric came out of the duffel, it expanded until Eric stood there holding a large, dark blue cloak with red accents and a yellow face mask. The cloak swept over his body, and Eric felt rejuvenated once more, his mission his relief.
The Payne inside was gone, and it had been replaced with a solid thirst for vanquishing the evils set loose upon the world. Devil-Slayer rode tonight.
Henry County Juvenile Detention Center, New Castle, Indiana
The facility had not been that hard to find. Eric had passed it as he drove the main road through New Castle. The sight of it set up on the hill, far away from the soccer fields that stretched out below, had sent chills down his spine, despite the fact that there was nothing so sinister in its appearance. Eric knew that this was where he was being directed, and, coupled with the verse, it made sense. For where else were children with poor conduct to be sent? The problem would be picking the needle out of the haystack.
Eric walked up to the front desk of the facility, eyeing a security guard as he walked past. The detention center held some of the least controllable teenage boys in the state, and the security was beefed up to match the volatility of the kids inside. The woman at the front desk looked Eric up and down. He was dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, and had thrown a white coat over it.
“Yeah, hi,” Eric said, “I’m Dr. Simons. They sent me here out of Indy, but they didn’t tell me anything, other than that, well, I’d be interviewing a special case here. Do you have anything for me?”
The woman eyed him skeptically, and Eric suddenly became very nervous about how well he had played out his ruse. “I can’t believe it,” she finally said with pursed lips.
Eric’s heart sank. “Look, ma’am, I’m sorry if—”
“They finally asked for someone for the crazy kid,” she finished, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’ll need to talk with the headmaster. You’ll take this hall on the right and he’s about halfway down, on the left side. It’s marked on his door.”
“Thanks,” Eric said. “By the way, what’s the boy’s name?”
“Hm? Oh, it’s Miles. Good luck with him.”
Eric turned and headed down the hallway. The wing he was in led away from the more heavily guarded area, which he could only assume was where the classrooms and dormitories were. Here, there was less tension already, and Eric assumed that this was where the center’s few teachers and other staff were located.
The headmaster was already standing outside his door when Eric turned the corner, alerted, he assumed, by the woman at the front desk. The man offered a firm handshake and introduced himself as Mr. Hubbard.
“I’m glad they finally sent someone,” said Dr. Hubbard with a chuckle. Eric played along, though truth be told he had only been acting on instinct and the clue as opposed to any information that might have led him to this point. “We’ve had some trouble, but everyone seems to believe that it’s only our imaginations talking.”
“What kind of troubles, sir?” Eric asked, though he had the feeling where this was going.
Hubbard shifted uncomfortably. “Shall we go into my office?” It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about this in the open. As soon as both were seated in the tight, spiffy office, Hubbard began. “It all began about three months ago, when Miles’ mother checked him in. Usually the schools and a judge have something to do with this, but Miles and his mother both said he’d, well, ‘been bad,’ so we took him in, as a trial run, you see. That was when we began to hear things. To the adults, Miles was never anything but charming and polite. The students, on the other hand, avoided him like the plague. Then, we had a series of…well, I suppose they’d best be called incidents.”
“What kind of incidents?” Eric inquired, leaning forward in his chair.
“Oh, small things at first, but things snowballed quickly. We went from nights where students would wake up screaming uncontrollably to others where they would wake up with their rooms completely moved around in the dark. The thing was, no one ever caught him doing it, but everyone knew. We would rush into his room and find him curled up in his bed, smiling in his sleep.” Hubbard paused to lean back in his chair and sigh. “It was one of the most disturbing sights I have ever seen in my life.”
“Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right,” Eric muttered under his breath.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Hubbard replied.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud,” Eric responded. “I was wondering if I could meet the boy. Do you think that would be possible?”
Hubbard frowned. “I strongly advise against such a course of action, but if you must, you must. I’ll call for him and we’ll get you set up in a meeting room. I’ll see what I can do.” He stood up and began to go to the door, then stopped and looked solemnly at Eric. “Dr. Simons, you may call me crazy, but I believe you may be the only thing on this earth that can save this boy’s soul.”
It wasn’t long before Eric was set up in a small meeting room with a table and a few chairs inside. He was sitting in his chair, twiddling his thumbs, when a guard led Miles in. The guard raised his eyebrows at Eric and then walked backwards to the door, only stepping out when he was sure that the boy wasn’t going to pull a fast one.
“Hello, Miles,” Eric said, breaking the silence that had settled as soon as the door had shut. “I’d like to talk with you about some things, if that’s okay with you.”
The boy was an average child, his dark hair and slim build doing nothing to set him completely apart from the rest of the boys at the place. It was something in his eyes, though, that set Miles apart, and Eric quickly caught on that it was hatred before the boy even answered his question. “Do you know why you’re here, Dr. Payne?”
“Excuse me?” Eric asked. He thought about trying to continue the ruse, but if Miles knew who he was already, it would do him no good to deny it now.
Miles leaned forward. “You know what I mean. It’s an easy question, ‘Doctor.” He said the last word with a sneer. “Do. You. Know. Why. You’re. Here?”
“I think I do, but why don’t you tell me,” Eric replied, folding his arms over his chest.
“You’re here, because somebody somewhere decided you need to pull your head out of your ass and get to work. I don’t know who, and I don’t know if I believe it’s who I think it is, but my friend doesn’t like it, and he’s going to do everything to stop it,” Miles said, rattling it all off quickly. “You don’t get it, though. I’m not bad. I’m not. I want to be good. He’s always there, though. He’s always making me do bad, bad things.”
Eric opened his mouth to reply, but a sudden change in Miles’ demeanor caused him to halt. The boy’s mouth hung open, and his eyes had gone wide. “I’m sorry!” he shouted. “Look—stop! Stop it!” Then, he reached up to his hair and began to pull it.
“Guard!” shouted Eric, jumping the table and pulling Miles’ arms away from his head. As the guards took over the screaming boy, Eric leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. That hadn’t gone well. No, that hadn’t gone well at all.
Eric didn’t have to ask a second time to get permission to take a look at Miles’ room from Hubbard. The headmaster was either that eager to do everything he could to get the boy taken off his hands or wanted to make up for the fiasco in the conference room. Either way, it had played to Eric’s advantage.
The room was inconspicuous on the surface. There was a bed, a dresser, and a small desk. Schoolbooks were neatly stacked on a shelf that rested on the desk’s wooden surface and there were no clothes strewn around the room like he had expected. Eric rooted through the desk and dresser drawers, but found nothing of any interest.
There was a cup on the bedside table, and, as the only thing that seemed even slightly out of place, it drew Eric’s interest next. There was a small residue in the bottom. Eric sniffed it, and his nose instantly burned with the smell of lemon juice. He remembered from years ago that it was used to messages in invisible ink. Drawing the blinds, Eric shut the light off and pulled out a penlight.
He scanned the whitewashed walls but found nothing until he reached a spot just over the headboard to the bed. It was small, but instantly recognizable. There were only two words and one number. Proverbs 20:11. Devil-Slayer.
Eric was beginning to get a bad feeling about this now. Somehow, Miles had known he would be here. He wondered what else the boy knew about him. He turned the light on in the room and got on his hands and knees to look under the bed. There he found only a book and an odd gold coin.
He stood up and nearly jumped out of his shoes. Standing in the room was a handsome redheaded man dressed in a brown suit. Despite the twinkle in his eyes, something about the man looked faded. “Sorry I startled you,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I’m Quentin Peters, a teacher here. I heard someone was checking up on Miles, so I stopped in to see if I could help. Have you found anything useful?”
“Nothing much,” Eric lied, though it was too late to hide the book and coin. “Just some old coin and a book.” He held it up. “See? The Turn of the Screw.”
“Really? Miles never struck me as the type who would read ghost stories. Create them? Sure. Read them? Nah, not really,” Peters rattled on, as Eric stood up. “Besides, half the scholars can’t agree on whether anything should be taken literally or if everything has a sexual double meaning. It’s all rather vague. Some even think the narrator was insane and imagining the ghosts in the first place.”
“English teacher?” Eric inquired.
“History,” Peters corrected. “They cross over enough, though, and I’d like to think I’m well read enough.” He laughed, as though there were some joke in there only for him. “Look, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. Miles is a bright boy. I’d hate for anything to happen to him.”
“Thanks,” Eric replied. “Looks like I’m about done in here, though. I was hoping I’d find some clues. You know, a journal or something like that would work. But, well, it doesn’t look like he did. I might see if it’s okay if I hang onto these, though, through the headmaster. I don’t know how good the chances are of Miles getting out of a straitjacket anytime soon.”
Peters frowned. “Well, best of luck. I should hope he will be out with a clean bill of health rather soon, however. No one seems to keep him around them for very long.”
Eric sat at a computer in the local library. He’d been forced to sign up for a library card before he could use the computers, but after filling out the paperwork, he was in. First things were first. It was obvious that the boy was possessed somehow, especially since the Devil-Slayer had become involved. Miles had somehow known he would be coming. Was it possible that the boy could have somehow reached out to him?
After a few minutes of weeding out the crank sites, Eric found an annotated site with sources of the history of demon possession. He quickly scrolled through the links and found the one he was looking for—the one on totems of possession. It was said, in the world of magic, that a demon could possess a person when parts of their souls, or lacks thereof, were interwoven and placed inside an object. There was not necessarily a possession totem in every case of possession, but it was a start.
Then, Eric went to Spark Notes and read the synopsis of The Turn of the Screw. The similarities were worrisome from the start. In the book, a governess took watch over two children, one of whom was named Miles. The boy was supposedly haunted by the ghost of a former inhabitant of the place named Peter Quint. The name sounded familiar, and Eric wondered fleetingly if he’d seen the movie.
The book ended up ambiguous, however, as to whether the ghosts existed or the governess was truly insane. He decided to call up the detention center for a second opinion. “Yeah, could I talk to Quentin Peters? I have a question to ask him about—oh my god. Never mind.” He hung up and cursed loudly enough to earn a harsh glance from several of the library patrons.
Who do you call to ask about Peter Quint? he thought. Quentin Peters. It was hard for him to figure out why he hadn’t seen it in the first place. The fact that Peters had never touched anything, and that he had laughed about the pun of being “well read enough” all made sense now.
It was a mistake, Eric realized, and he hoped he could rectify it to save Miles’ life.
Dusk had fallen on the center by the time Eric got back, which fit the occasion. He was dressed in his work clothes this time. The Devil-Slayer cloak swirled around him like so much black smoke. He mounted the front of the building with ease and navigated the rooftop to the psychiatric wing, where he was certain Miles was still under supervision. He then dove over the side and swooped into the open window.
It didn’t take long to find Miles’ room. Eric stepped inside and looked tentatively around, but saw nothing. The only light in the room came from the breathing monitor at the side of Miles’ bed. The boy’s breathing rose and fell in staggered gasps. He was fighting something in his mind, and his body was showing the scars.
Eric took a step closer to the boy, and the door to the room closed behind him, plunging the room into pitch blackness. He turned around and crouched, prepared for Quint to attack him, but no attack came. Instead, from behind the door, came a low deep voice that echoed with the remnants of the voice he had heard when he was searching Miles’ room. The room was lit suddenly as though by a black light, and Eric could see the demon standing across from him in the room, his skin a flush red color. Miles lay between them.
“Figured it out quickly enough, I see,” spat the demon Quint. “Caught me at last, have you? I daresay there’s nothing you can do.”
“Yeah?” Eric shot back. “You’re going to try to tell me that Miles is too far gone, but I won’t believe you. Especially when I have this.” He produced the copy of The Turn of the Screw from his cloak. “I can end your possession right here and now. All it would take is one solid whack.” With his other hand, Eric drew his mystical mace from the cloak.
“You’re mistaken, Devil-Slayer,” replied the demon. “Our pact lies outside any totem. The boy asked to be mine.”
“If what you say is true,” replied Eric, “then you won’t mind when I do this!” He threw the book to the floor and brought the mace down on top of it, reducing the book to pulp.
Peter Quint twiddled his thumbs, then looked up, as if he’d been waiting through a dull intermission. “Right, well, as we were saying, then, Devil-Slayer, he and I have an agreement.”
“What kind of an agreement?” Eric asked. He tried not to show his disbelief that the totem hadn’t worked. He’d expected Quint to be low enough on the tiers to require a totem for a complete possession.
Quint shrugged. “He would be my hands in the physical world, and I would be his batteries.”
“His batteries?” Eric asked, before ducking as a bolt of black energy flew from the bed. Miles sat up, his eyes glazed over. His hands were held out and steaming, but his breathing was even more out of control now. Something had changed.
“You’re doing this?” Eric asked, jumping in time to avoid a second blast from the possessed boy. “But why?”
Quint laughed. “That one’s easy, Devil-Slayer. Every single one of us is born to do something different. For you, it’s fighting people like me. And for me, well, I was born to corrupt children. I’m fairly good at it, too. It’s a calling, you could say.”
Eric was forced to duck again to avoid a shot of energy from Miles’ body. How could he help the boy when ending the fight would hurt him? Still, something bothered him about the situation, and he had one last gambit to make.
“You said you two agreed to this, Quint?” Eric asked, leaping again. He knew by now that Quint was no longer shooting for the kill so much as having fun watching him jump. He was going to have to count on that. “Well, if that’s so, why is he fighting you?”
Quint sneered. “Wouldn’t you fight, too? You would hate sitting there watching me be you all day, wouldn’t you?”
“Fair enough,” Eric said. “But again, if he’s unwilling, and you’re as much of a crap demon as I thought you were in the first place, then possessing him took a totem.” He produced the gold coin. “Chances are, I found it.”
“No!” Quint hissed. He channeled a barrage of energy blasts at Eric through Miles at the sight of his precious totem.
Eric threw the coin into the air and pulverized it into the wall with his mace. When the mace connected, the room became less dark. Quint was nowhere to be seen, his connection to the world of people destroyed.
Miles sat up in his bed and gasped for air. His story was just another turn of the screw. Eric went over to his bedside and embraced the boy, surprised that the boy did not recoil from the sight of his costume.
It was moments like these that reminded Eric why he didn’t give up, and why he always put his cloak back on no matter how retired he thought he was. At the end of the day, when he was done helping, it was with that mask that there was a little less Payne in the world.
If covering his face could end that hurt, could hide the Payne for awhile, then Eric would continue to do it, for better or for worse, for light against darkness.
It had become more than just his name. Eric Simon Payne had come so far, only to fall even further. He had once been a hero, a Devil-Slayer, and for some time it was the costume that had defined him more than his given name. Now, Payne defined him.
Eric grasped blindly at the nightstand, looking for the cheap lamp that stood somewhere on its cramped surface. The lamp weakly flickered to life, casting a pale orange glow on the ratty motel room. Eric was sure that the sheets he lay on hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, but more than anything, he didn’t care. He was just glad to have somewhere to sleep for the night.
He swung his feet over the side of the bed, his feet touching down on the gritty carpet below. Months ago, he had returned from what was supposed to be an eternal conflict and helped save the world with peyote, not that he ever told anyone that. It couldn’t help his image if he began telling people how he saved the world with drugs. The peyote had been meant to be a tool, to help separate the body from the mind enough to allow entrance to Hell.
Since then it had been a vice, and ultimately had led him to where he was now. He had nowhere else to turn to. His wife Cory was still in Illinois, and she hadn’t said a word to him since his latest disappearance and revival. He could understand why. Eric knew that he would have felt the same way if the roles had been reversed.
Eric reached for the well-thumbed Bible sitting on his duffel bag at his feet. He had fallen in and out of faith many times since his childhood. It gave him a reason to keep fighting when the times got rough, and he often fell out of it when times were good. It was an often-vicious cycle that he had grudgingly gotten used to over the years.
It wasn’t a yearning for spiritual fulfillment that had woken him up, though. It was a sense of inevitable peril. He had long been subject to random portents of doom, and they always had something to do with a demonic presence. Eric had worked out a system for dealing with these, as well as trying to understand where they were pointing to. He set the Bible on its spine, closed his eyes, and put his finger at a random point along the pages, letting the book fall open onto the small table. It fell open to Proverbs, and the first verse to catch his eye was 20:11: “Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.” He scribbled the verse down on a three-by-five note card, and shut the Bible.
He then pulled out a fold-up brochure of the United States and unfolded it, spreading it across the table. Closing his eyes, Eric flicked his wrist on the paper, sending it spinning. When he heard the brochure stop moving, he put his finger down on a random point on the map. It landed toward the middle-right side of Indiana, specifically on a city called New Castle. He had a feeling that if he got himself there, his sixth sense would be able to direct him more specifically.
It was settled, then. Eric placed the strip of paper with the Bible verse in his pocket and began to fish around in his duffel bag. He worked out the largest item, careful not to send the rest of his belongings flying in the process. As the fabric came out of the duffel, it expanded until Eric stood there holding a large, dark blue cloak with red accents and a yellow face mask. The cloak swept over his body, and Eric felt rejuvenated once more, his mission his relief.
The Payne inside was gone, and it had been replaced with a solid thirst for vanquishing the evils set loose upon the world. Devil-Slayer rode tonight.
Henry County Juvenile Detention Center, New Castle, Indiana
The facility had not been that hard to find. Eric had passed it as he drove the main road through New Castle. The sight of it set up on the hill, far away from the soccer fields that stretched out below, had sent chills down his spine, despite the fact that there was nothing so sinister in its appearance. Eric knew that this was where he was being directed, and, coupled with the verse, it made sense. For where else were children with poor conduct to be sent? The problem would be picking the needle out of the haystack.
Eric walked up to the front desk of the facility, eyeing a security guard as he walked past. The detention center held some of the least controllable teenage boys in the state, and the security was beefed up to match the volatility of the kids inside. The woman at the front desk looked Eric up and down. He was dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, and had thrown a white coat over it.
“Yeah, hi,” Eric said, “I’m Dr. Simons. They sent me here out of Indy, but they didn’t tell me anything, other than that, well, I’d be interviewing a special case here. Do you have anything for me?”
The woman eyed him skeptically, and Eric suddenly became very nervous about how well he had played out his ruse. “I can’t believe it,” she finally said with pursed lips.
Eric’s heart sank. “Look, ma’am, I’m sorry if—”
“They finally asked for someone for the crazy kid,” she finished, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’ll need to talk with the headmaster. You’ll take this hall on the right and he’s about halfway down, on the left side. It’s marked on his door.”
“Thanks,” Eric said. “By the way, what’s the boy’s name?”
“Hm? Oh, it’s Miles. Good luck with him.”
Eric turned and headed down the hallway. The wing he was in led away from the more heavily guarded area, which he could only assume was where the classrooms and dormitories were. Here, there was less tension already, and Eric assumed that this was where the center’s few teachers and other staff were located.
The headmaster was already standing outside his door when Eric turned the corner, alerted, he assumed, by the woman at the front desk. The man offered a firm handshake and introduced himself as Mr. Hubbard.
“I’m glad they finally sent someone,” said Dr. Hubbard with a chuckle. Eric played along, though truth be told he had only been acting on instinct and the clue as opposed to any information that might have led him to this point. “We’ve had some trouble, but everyone seems to believe that it’s only our imaginations talking.”
“What kind of troubles, sir?” Eric asked, though he had the feeling where this was going.
Hubbard shifted uncomfortably. “Shall we go into my office?” It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about this in the open. As soon as both were seated in the tight, spiffy office, Hubbard began. “It all began about three months ago, when Miles’ mother checked him in. Usually the schools and a judge have something to do with this, but Miles and his mother both said he’d, well, ‘been bad,’ so we took him in, as a trial run, you see. That was when we began to hear things. To the adults, Miles was never anything but charming and polite. The students, on the other hand, avoided him like the plague. Then, we had a series of…well, I suppose they’d best be called incidents.”
“What kind of incidents?” Eric inquired, leaning forward in his chair.
“Oh, small things at first, but things snowballed quickly. We went from nights where students would wake up screaming uncontrollably to others where they would wake up with their rooms completely moved around in the dark. The thing was, no one ever caught him doing it, but everyone knew. We would rush into his room and find him curled up in his bed, smiling in his sleep.” Hubbard paused to lean back in his chair and sigh. “It was one of the most disturbing sights I have ever seen in my life.”
“Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right,” Eric muttered under his breath.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Hubbard replied.
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud,” Eric responded. “I was wondering if I could meet the boy. Do you think that would be possible?”
Hubbard frowned. “I strongly advise against such a course of action, but if you must, you must. I’ll call for him and we’ll get you set up in a meeting room. I’ll see what I can do.” He stood up and began to go to the door, then stopped and looked solemnly at Eric. “Dr. Simons, you may call me crazy, but I believe you may be the only thing on this earth that can save this boy’s soul.”
It wasn’t long before Eric was set up in a small meeting room with a table and a few chairs inside. He was sitting in his chair, twiddling his thumbs, when a guard led Miles in. The guard raised his eyebrows at Eric and then walked backwards to the door, only stepping out when he was sure that the boy wasn’t going to pull a fast one.
“Hello, Miles,” Eric said, breaking the silence that had settled as soon as the door had shut. “I’d like to talk with you about some things, if that’s okay with you.”
The boy was an average child, his dark hair and slim build doing nothing to set him completely apart from the rest of the boys at the place. It was something in his eyes, though, that set Miles apart, and Eric quickly caught on that it was hatred before the boy even answered his question. “Do you know why you’re here, Dr. Payne?”
“Excuse me?” Eric asked. He thought about trying to continue the ruse, but if Miles knew who he was already, it would do him no good to deny it now.
Miles leaned forward. “You know what I mean. It’s an easy question, ‘Doctor.” He said the last word with a sneer. “Do. You. Know. Why. You’re. Here?”
“I think I do, but why don’t you tell me,” Eric replied, folding his arms over his chest.
“You’re here, because somebody somewhere decided you need to pull your head out of your ass and get to work. I don’t know who, and I don’t know if I believe it’s who I think it is, but my friend doesn’t like it, and he’s going to do everything to stop it,” Miles said, rattling it all off quickly. “You don’t get it, though. I’m not bad. I’m not. I want to be good. He’s always there, though. He’s always making me do bad, bad things.”
Eric opened his mouth to reply, but a sudden change in Miles’ demeanor caused him to halt. The boy’s mouth hung open, and his eyes had gone wide. “I’m sorry!” he shouted. “Look—stop! Stop it!” Then, he reached up to his hair and began to pull it.
“Guard!” shouted Eric, jumping the table and pulling Miles’ arms away from his head. As the guards took over the screaming boy, Eric leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. That hadn’t gone well. No, that hadn’t gone well at all.
Eric didn’t have to ask a second time to get permission to take a look at Miles’ room from Hubbard. The headmaster was either that eager to do everything he could to get the boy taken off his hands or wanted to make up for the fiasco in the conference room. Either way, it had played to Eric’s advantage.
The room was inconspicuous on the surface. There was a bed, a dresser, and a small desk. Schoolbooks were neatly stacked on a shelf that rested on the desk’s wooden surface and there were no clothes strewn around the room like he had expected. Eric rooted through the desk and dresser drawers, but found nothing of any interest.
There was a cup on the bedside table, and, as the only thing that seemed even slightly out of place, it drew Eric’s interest next. There was a small residue in the bottom. Eric sniffed it, and his nose instantly burned with the smell of lemon juice. He remembered from years ago that it was used to messages in invisible ink. Drawing the blinds, Eric shut the light off and pulled out a penlight.
He scanned the whitewashed walls but found nothing until he reached a spot just over the headboard to the bed. It was small, but instantly recognizable. There were only two words and one number. Proverbs 20:11. Devil-Slayer.
Eric was beginning to get a bad feeling about this now. Somehow, Miles had known he would be here. He wondered what else the boy knew about him. He turned the light on in the room and got on his hands and knees to look under the bed. There he found only a book and an odd gold coin.
He stood up and nearly jumped out of his shoes. Standing in the room was a handsome redheaded man dressed in a brown suit. Despite the twinkle in his eyes, something about the man looked faded. “Sorry I startled you,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I’m Quentin Peters, a teacher here. I heard someone was checking up on Miles, so I stopped in to see if I could help. Have you found anything useful?”
“Nothing much,” Eric lied, though it was too late to hide the book and coin. “Just some old coin and a book.” He held it up. “See? The Turn of the Screw.”
“Really? Miles never struck me as the type who would read ghost stories. Create them? Sure. Read them? Nah, not really,” Peters rattled on, as Eric stood up. “Besides, half the scholars can’t agree on whether anything should be taken literally or if everything has a sexual double meaning. It’s all rather vague. Some even think the narrator was insane and imagining the ghosts in the first place.”
“English teacher?” Eric inquired.
“History,” Peters corrected. “They cross over enough, though, and I’d like to think I’m well read enough.” He laughed, as though there were some joke in there only for him. “Look, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. Miles is a bright boy. I’d hate for anything to happen to him.”
“Thanks,” Eric replied. “Looks like I’m about done in here, though. I was hoping I’d find some clues. You know, a journal or something like that would work. But, well, it doesn’t look like he did. I might see if it’s okay if I hang onto these, though, through the headmaster. I don’t know how good the chances are of Miles getting out of a straitjacket anytime soon.”
Peters frowned. “Well, best of luck. I should hope he will be out with a clean bill of health rather soon, however. No one seems to keep him around them for very long.”
Eric sat at a computer in the local library. He’d been forced to sign up for a library card before he could use the computers, but after filling out the paperwork, he was in. First things were first. It was obvious that the boy was possessed somehow, especially since the Devil-Slayer had become involved. Miles had somehow known he would be coming. Was it possible that the boy could have somehow reached out to him?
After a few minutes of weeding out the crank sites, Eric found an annotated site with sources of the history of demon possession. He quickly scrolled through the links and found the one he was looking for—the one on totems of possession. It was said, in the world of magic, that a demon could possess a person when parts of their souls, or lacks thereof, were interwoven and placed inside an object. There was not necessarily a possession totem in every case of possession, but it was a start.
Then, Eric went to Spark Notes and read the synopsis of The Turn of the Screw. The similarities were worrisome from the start. In the book, a governess took watch over two children, one of whom was named Miles. The boy was supposedly haunted by the ghost of a former inhabitant of the place named Peter Quint. The name sounded familiar, and Eric wondered fleetingly if he’d seen the movie.
The book ended up ambiguous, however, as to whether the ghosts existed or the governess was truly insane. He decided to call up the detention center for a second opinion. “Yeah, could I talk to Quentin Peters? I have a question to ask him about—oh my god. Never mind.” He hung up and cursed loudly enough to earn a harsh glance from several of the library patrons.
Who do you call to ask about Peter Quint? he thought. Quentin Peters. It was hard for him to figure out why he hadn’t seen it in the first place. The fact that Peters had never touched anything, and that he had laughed about the pun of being “well read enough” all made sense now.
It was a mistake, Eric realized, and he hoped he could rectify it to save Miles’ life.
Dusk had fallen on the center by the time Eric got back, which fit the occasion. He was dressed in his work clothes this time. The Devil-Slayer cloak swirled around him like so much black smoke. He mounted the front of the building with ease and navigated the rooftop to the psychiatric wing, where he was certain Miles was still under supervision. He then dove over the side and swooped into the open window.
It didn’t take long to find Miles’ room. Eric stepped inside and looked tentatively around, but saw nothing. The only light in the room came from the breathing monitor at the side of Miles’ bed. The boy’s breathing rose and fell in staggered gasps. He was fighting something in his mind, and his body was showing the scars.
Eric took a step closer to the boy, and the door to the room closed behind him, plunging the room into pitch blackness. He turned around and crouched, prepared for Quint to attack him, but no attack came. Instead, from behind the door, came a low deep voice that echoed with the remnants of the voice he had heard when he was searching Miles’ room. The room was lit suddenly as though by a black light, and Eric could see the demon standing across from him in the room, his skin a flush red color. Miles lay between them.
“Figured it out quickly enough, I see,” spat the demon Quint. “Caught me at last, have you? I daresay there’s nothing you can do.”
“Yeah?” Eric shot back. “You’re going to try to tell me that Miles is too far gone, but I won’t believe you. Especially when I have this.” He produced the copy of The Turn of the Screw from his cloak. “I can end your possession right here and now. All it would take is one solid whack.” With his other hand, Eric drew his mystical mace from the cloak.
“You’re mistaken, Devil-Slayer,” replied the demon. “Our pact lies outside any totem. The boy asked to be mine.”
“If what you say is true,” replied Eric, “then you won’t mind when I do this!” He threw the book to the floor and brought the mace down on top of it, reducing the book to pulp.
Peter Quint twiddled his thumbs, then looked up, as if he’d been waiting through a dull intermission. “Right, well, as we were saying, then, Devil-Slayer, he and I have an agreement.”
“What kind of an agreement?” Eric asked. He tried not to show his disbelief that the totem hadn’t worked. He’d expected Quint to be low enough on the tiers to require a totem for a complete possession.
Quint shrugged. “He would be my hands in the physical world, and I would be his batteries.”
“His batteries?” Eric asked, before ducking as a bolt of black energy flew from the bed. Miles sat up, his eyes glazed over. His hands were held out and steaming, but his breathing was even more out of control now. Something had changed.
“You’re doing this?” Eric asked, jumping in time to avoid a second blast from the possessed boy. “But why?”
Quint laughed. “That one’s easy, Devil-Slayer. Every single one of us is born to do something different. For you, it’s fighting people like me. And for me, well, I was born to corrupt children. I’m fairly good at it, too. It’s a calling, you could say.”
Eric was forced to duck again to avoid a shot of energy from Miles’ body. How could he help the boy when ending the fight would hurt him? Still, something bothered him about the situation, and he had one last gambit to make.
“You said you two agreed to this, Quint?” Eric asked, leaping again. He knew by now that Quint was no longer shooting for the kill so much as having fun watching him jump. He was going to have to count on that. “Well, if that’s so, why is he fighting you?”
Quint sneered. “Wouldn’t you fight, too? You would hate sitting there watching me be you all day, wouldn’t you?”
“Fair enough,” Eric said. “But again, if he’s unwilling, and you’re as much of a crap demon as I thought you were in the first place, then possessing him took a totem.” He produced the gold coin. “Chances are, I found it.”
“No!” Quint hissed. He channeled a barrage of energy blasts at Eric through Miles at the sight of his precious totem.
Eric threw the coin into the air and pulverized it into the wall with his mace. When the mace connected, the room became less dark. Quint was nowhere to be seen, his connection to the world of people destroyed.
Miles sat up in his bed and gasped for air. His story was just another turn of the screw. Eric went over to his bedside and embraced the boy, surprised that the boy did not recoil from the sight of his costume.
It was moments like these that reminded Eric why he didn’t give up, and why he always put his cloak back on no matter how retired he thought he was. At the end of the day, when he was done helping, it was with that mask that there was a little less Payne in the world.
If covering his face could end that hurt, could hide the Payne for awhile, then Eric would continue to do it, for better or for worse, for light against darkness.
Miles in the wrong direction from New Orleans, Louisiana there’s a cemetery. Actually, there was a cemetery but it sank into the swamp a long, long time ago. Roots have churned the soil, and foliage has crept like over the place like a slow paralysis. Mist, thick no matter the season, reflects the moonlight. Animals and insects and reptiles together form a chorus in appreciation of the atmosphere. One can still see the graves, peeking over the bog like fugitives from a higher law.
It’s not hard to assume that a place like this would be abandoned. It looks that way. And why would human beings ever find a reason to visit such a hot, murky gloom? A man would have to be devoid of his very soul to brave these depths.
That truth is what brought you here.
Any evidence of your uneven trek has been erased by the very nature you disturbed. You haven’t threatened to do so again in days, perhaps weeks by now. You don’t care; time is no longer a concept to which you give attention. Indeed it is a concept to which you are immune! Lichen lines the shallow water that rises almost to your knees. If there was anything you could give the leeches, they would certainly be taking what they could. But they don’t trouble you. Life in general doesn’t seem to trouble you.
This is because, of course, you are a dead man. A lifeless human husk!
Isn’t that so? No—there’s something else going on in that decayed, sunken form. But what could that be? Perhaps something—anything resembling Simon Garth? Or are you forever the Zombie?
Standing so cold, so still like you are, a passing alligator poacher might mistake you for one of these sunken stone sentinels. But nobody ventures out this far, even for the massive lizards that occasionally brush past your ankles.
Darkness covers you much like the swooping brush of the cypress tree next to you. Despite the moonlight, the massive medallions hanging from your neck find their own light to reflect.
You don’t know that they’re called the Amulets of Damballah, but their power is known enough to you, in some instinctive manner. In some vague corner of that vestige of a mind, you can remember the lives killed by your own hand, obeying the whims of whosoever wields these medallions. Your fingernails have grown brittle with the blood of those murdered men and women. Still, you do not move to rid yourself of this weight from your neck.
How did they get there? A girl put them there.
You’re not remembering, nor thinking but there was a girl. A girl who can cause a stir in your undead flesh. Her image springs before your eyes now. She had a name as well, which you certainly can’t think of: Donna. She had some relation to you, didn’t she? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that strange compulsion that makes you do what’s next.
Your muscles cramp at the first signs of use in weeks. It doesn’t stop you, the Zombie, from moving anyway. Blood starts pumping faster, through some unknown means, since your heart has long atrophied and couldn’t pump even if it wanted to. Maybe by reflex, your eyelids open, to reveal yellow eyes rolled far back in their sockets.
You take a step. You have a wide gait, and your thigh cramps with a juicy ripping noise along your gracilis muscles. Then another step. And another. Your slopping noises through the wetlands disturb only stiff vegetation. Animals know enough to stay out of your way.
Minutes pass. Really there’s no telling how long it took you to get out of that sunken crypt, but you’re walking on damp soil now. But you’ll remember your way back, on instinct, if there’s no other word suitable.
Your feet have splinters from gnarly roots, and your toes have already become lodged in misshapen directions. The hill you’ve been climbing for what seems like forever finally gives way to a flat, paved road. And you stop.
Is that instinct again? You can feel that same compulsion, like you always get with Donna, like there’s someone of some…relation close by. There’s a kinship in the air. It’s telling you to stop.
There’re headlights in the distance. They get closer, and you’re not moving.
Maybe, Simon Garth, in your living days, you enjoyed automobiles. If you did, then you’d note the massive body of a 1967 Lincoln Continental convertible, in bright cherry color, roaring toward your own corpse at that very second. Probably around sixty-five miles an hour.
It shows no sign of stopping until it’s simply yards from you. White-walled tires turn and screech, scaring the bats from their branches and brunches. Rubber burns across the Louisiana black top in a smooth arc, before the Continental comes to a complete stop. The passenger side door opens in front of you.
Can your yellow eyes comprehend what stares at you? Can you understand the luscious red lips? Can you follow the curves of those bountiful, auburn locks, tied into a bun by a yellow ribbon? But cat eye sunglasses keep the color of her eyes a secret. Her pale skin absorbs the moonlight, and contrasts with the red (and the white polka dots) of the dress she wears.
She puckers her lips when she asks you, “Where’re you headed, stranger?”
Of course, you don’t answer. Your vocal chords have long eroded. You make no movement either. The medallions around your neck are brighter than the headlights.
“Oh, sugah, don’t you know what to say to a pretty, young southern girl when you see one? What kind of gentleman are you?” Her crimson lips pull into a smile.
She exits the car, the door slamming loudly like a gunshot. Her thick, black heels echo sharply off the pavement, and her dress blows through the humid wind, clinging to every curve of her body. Still there’s not even a twitch from you, dead man.
She’s close to you now. She runs a thin finger, and a sharp red-painted fingernail along your cheek. Her flesh is cold, like yours. Her finger continues downward, along your chest which heaves no heavier at her touch, before it stops at the Amulets of Damballah. “Oooh! Is this a present for me? Maybe you’re a finer man than I was lead to believe. My boyfriend never buys me nice things!”
With a flick of her wrists, one of the talismans leaves your neck, to its new place around hers. She cocks her hips before saying, “Baby, it’s perfect! How bout I give you a ride? To show my appreciation? I know someone who’s just dying to meet you!”
Now comes the part you actually can understand. Magic, if that’s the right word to describe it, pours through the medallions, like electrons through a thunderbolt, and your muscles start to move again, with much more power this time.
You enter the Continental, slamming the door behind you. “You better buckle up, darlin’.” And you do.
She’s back in the driver’s seat, and the engine roars as she slams her thick heels into the petal, keeping it tight against the floor. The Continental blazes down the road like a ghost escaping the clutches of Hell.
Wind whips through the hair that still clutches like weeds to your scalp. You don’t notice. Nor do you notice how thin the road becomes, after the sharp turns she makes down these lonely Louisiana swamp streets. Finally, the road isn’t paved at all, and steeps into a hill.
There’s a house at the top of this hill. It’s a massive, expansive thing, as beautiful in its architecture as it is morbid from abandonment. Stately white columns hold up three vast levels. Colossal double doors stand behind a sprawling front terrace. The upper balconies are embellished with iron railings. It was white once in color, but that’s faded and cracked to grey, or green if you count the moss and vines that cling to it.
The Continental tears up the mud as it halts in front of the portico.
“Home is where the heart is.” She whispers, as the engine is cut from life.
You open the doors, and step out of the auto. Your bare feet sink into the mud.
“It’s so dirty! Won’t you be a doll and carry me?”
You turn, with your arms outstretched. She leaps into your arms from the driver’s side. She squirms closer to you, and whispers, “Oh you’re so strong.” The talismans glow brighter in such proximity to each other.
You drudge up the few steps, and across the veranda, leaving muddy footprints across the cold concrete. Those titanic doors unlatch with an echo, and slowly, open as though they had a mind of their own. You’re inside.
In front of you there’s a grand, elliptical staircase with thin railings and tile bleached by time. There are doors and hallways around you, and who knows where they could lead?
“Honey, I’m home!” She calls from your arms.
A shadow stirs on the highest stair. Dull footsteps, from sullen boots, reverberate through the lonely hall. He takes his time descending these stairs, each step taken in careful consideration of the image before him. His clothes are in tatters, but he wears them like he’s proud. Even with the furred shawl over his shoulders, his massive frame is clear in the moonlight pouring through the cracked skylight. His arms bulge, his fingers crook, and his chest heaves. His skin varies color in patches, from yellow to pale to red to bloated purple. Scarred lips are smiling, and revealing teeth little more than nubs. Is he smiling at you?
He must be. Can he feel what primal instinct you’re feeling now? That same feeling of relation that awoke you from your slumber in the swamp? What does this man—if he is a man—have in relation to you? You know not. You care not. For there simply is relation and that is enough for your simple purpose.
“You’ve found him, Eva.” The voice is just as scarred as the throat that speaks it.
Eva leaps from your arms and scampers across the floor, her heels clacking with every step. She wraps her arms around this man’s neck, and kisses him. It’s long, and heavy, from one end of it only: hers. When she removes her lips, he doesn’t look impressed. He turns his attention back to you.
“Didn’t I do good, Adam?” she whimpers.
Adam pushes past her. “Don’t call me that!” His voice rages through darkness like a rabid wolf. “My father called me that!”
He approaches you, circles you like a shark. He gets closer with every round, observing with the intensity of an inferno. He too fingers at the medallion around your neck.
“And my father would be fascinated to see this.” Adam stops in front of you, speaking mere inches from your face. Surely he knows that his voice falls on decayed cochleae! But he continues, “He spent his life studying the science of biology, ignoring the very idea of magicks, to create life. Yet here you stand. Is it life that circulates through your veins? Something else perhaps, which science cannot possibly comprehend?” He gazes closer. “Can I comprehend it? I am a creature of science, a bastard of the laboratory! Does this make me immune to the perceptions of magic?”
Adam turns on his heel. He steps slowly toward Eva. She noticeably shudders at his touch, when he runs his backhand down her cheekbone. He continues down her neck, and then along her chest, until he fingers the dangling, glowing medallion.
With a sharp yank, Adam rips the medallion from her. There’s a small lurch inside of you when he does.
“Didn’t I do good, baby?” Eva purrs, and she tries to reenter his embrace.
Again, Adam steps away from her, to approach you.
The Amulets of Damballah grow brighter and heavier, not that either of you notice.
“What is it that can control these…things?” Adam wonders aloud, his voice harsh, yet echoing. “Their magic must be linked to something—something inside everything. Something that could be used as a conduit—or a battery. Something inconceivable to science, for that is what magic is and always will be. Something like…” His voice rumbles away, and he gets closer to you.
He whispers, “A soul?” His eyes judge you, up and down. “I’ll ask you the same question I ask myself, the same question I asked my damnable father…do you have a soul?” His fingers are misshapen and uneven, but they’re careful when the Amulet is put around his neck. He says sadly, “We are brothers in soullessness. Empty shells, freakish flesh, animated by something beyond our power. You, magic. Me…a lowly doctor called Frankenstein, who longed for a modern Prometheus…in this we are related. We are…brothers of unholy creation.”
Eva is shuddering behind you both, as though understanding what is about to happen.
“But maybe I’m wrong!” Adam shouts, though he is still inches from your face. “Maybe there is something these medallions grasp! There is only one way to find out…”
Adam spins on his heel. He points to Eva. He commands. “Zombie! Kill that orphan of science! Rid me of my disgusting offspring!”
There is nothing to stop you. Bones audibly creak with every step in the cavernous house. Your bare footsteps are dull when they slap the ground. And Eva…she does not move. She stiffens and falls to her knees. Her cat-eye glasses fall lamely to the floor.
If you could have seen her, Zombie, then you’d understand why she didn’t fight you, why she didn’t run. Her eyes are yellow and sunken like you own. Scars and stitches keep her flesh bound together like a withered quilt. Make-up and lipstick try hard to cover the monstrousness of her being, but she no longer cares. Her hair collapses from its bun, falling past her shoulders, with some falling in clumps to the floor alongside her glasses. Her lips and her eyes crack and flake, for there is no moisture either can produce.
You are standing above her now, and she stretches her neck to make it easy for you. But she’s not looking at you.
Eva says, “I love you, Adam. This is what you created me for. I’ll die so you’ll know what I always knew.”
Your hand slices downward like a tree cut by lightning. You crush her neck, bending it hideously sideways. The stitches along her jugular snap, and her head springs free, and smacks the floor. It rolls several inches before stopping.
And Adam laughs. “Eureka! Is it true? Could it be possible?” He runs up behind you. He spins you round to face him. Your amulet matches the brightness of his. “I controlled you, brother. And what fuels this magic? Could it be our souls? Could there be the same something left inside of you that was imbued inside of me?”
You have no answers. Indeed, you have no comprehension of the consequences of what Adam has proven. The Monster of Frankenstein slowly steps around you and circles the lump of flesh to which he had once given life. He picks up Eva’s head, and holds it in his palm, facing it to him.
“Alas, poor Eva.” Adam muses, “She was not human. Indeed how could she be? She understood the purpose of her creation, and the purpose of her death. If only humans could be as lucky—or as perfect as she. She would have made a lovely bride.”
Thumbing the medallion around his neck, Adam takes it off. He turns back to you, and, arms outstretched, Adam replaces the Amulet of Damballah around you neck. He whispers, “Thank you, brother. Now go home. May you find the peace I have this night.”
Echoes of long, short footsteps are all you leave Adam Prometheus, the bastard son of Frankenstein. Adam kneels over his fallen offspring, and that’s where you’ll last encounter him.
Your trail is long, winding. But the swamp is waiting for you. For it is your home. It is your sanctuary. You know this. You know this deep, within some primal instinct, deep within…your soul? Perhaps…
Perhaps you are more than just…the Zombie!
It’s not hard to assume that a place like this would be abandoned. It looks that way. And why would human beings ever find a reason to visit such a hot, murky gloom? A man would have to be devoid of his very soul to brave these depths.
That truth is what brought you here.
Any evidence of your uneven trek has been erased by the very nature you disturbed. You haven’t threatened to do so again in days, perhaps weeks by now. You don’t care; time is no longer a concept to which you give attention. Indeed it is a concept to which you are immune! Lichen lines the shallow water that rises almost to your knees. If there was anything you could give the leeches, they would certainly be taking what they could. But they don’t trouble you. Life in general doesn’t seem to trouble you.
This is because, of course, you are a dead man. A lifeless human husk!
Isn’t that so? No—there’s something else going on in that decayed, sunken form. But what could that be? Perhaps something—anything resembling Simon Garth? Or are you forever the Zombie?
Standing so cold, so still like you are, a passing alligator poacher might mistake you for one of these sunken stone sentinels. But nobody ventures out this far, even for the massive lizards that occasionally brush past your ankles.
Darkness covers you much like the swooping brush of the cypress tree next to you. Despite the moonlight, the massive medallions hanging from your neck find their own light to reflect.
You don’t know that they’re called the Amulets of Damballah, but their power is known enough to you, in some instinctive manner. In some vague corner of that vestige of a mind, you can remember the lives killed by your own hand, obeying the whims of whosoever wields these medallions. Your fingernails have grown brittle with the blood of those murdered men and women. Still, you do not move to rid yourself of this weight from your neck.
How did they get there? A girl put them there.
You’re not remembering, nor thinking but there was a girl. A girl who can cause a stir in your undead flesh. Her image springs before your eyes now. She had a name as well, which you certainly can’t think of: Donna. She had some relation to you, didn’t she? It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that strange compulsion that makes you do what’s next.
Your muscles cramp at the first signs of use in weeks. It doesn’t stop you, the Zombie, from moving anyway. Blood starts pumping faster, through some unknown means, since your heart has long atrophied and couldn’t pump even if it wanted to. Maybe by reflex, your eyelids open, to reveal yellow eyes rolled far back in their sockets.
You take a step. You have a wide gait, and your thigh cramps with a juicy ripping noise along your gracilis muscles. Then another step. And another. Your slopping noises through the wetlands disturb only stiff vegetation. Animals know enough to stay out of your way.
Minutes pass. Really there’s no telling how long it took you to get out of that sunken crypt, but you’re walking on damp soil now. But you’ll remember your way back, on instinct, if there’s no other word suitable.
Your feet have splinters from gnarly roots, and your toes have already become lodged in misshapen directions. The hill you’ve been climbing for what seems like forever finally gives way to a flat, paved road. And you stop.
Is that instinct again? You can feel that same compulsion, like you always get with Donna, like there’s someone of some…relation close by. There’s a kinship in the air. It’s telling you to stop.
There’re headlights in the distance. They get closer, and you’re not moving.
Maybe, Simon Garth, in your living days, you enjoyed automobiles. If you did, then you’d note the massive body of a 1967 Lincoln Continental convertible, in bright cherry color, roaring toward your own corpse at that very second. Probably around sixty-five miles an hour.
It shows no sign of stopping until it’s simply yards from you. White-walled tires turn and screech, scaring the bats from their branches and brunches. Rubber burns across the Louisiana black top in a smooth arc, before the Continental comes to a complete stop. The passenger side door opens in front of you.
Can your yellow eyes comprehend what stares at you? Can you understand the luscious red lips? Can you follow the curves of those bountiful, auburn locks, tied into a bun by a yellow ribbon? But cat eye sunglasses keep the color of her eyes a secret. Her pale skin absorbs the moonlight, and contrasts with the red (and the white polka dots) of the dress she wears.
She puckers her lips when she asks you, “Where’re you headed, stranger?”
Of course, you don’t answer. Your vocal chords have long eroded. You make no movement either. The medallions around your neck are brighter than the headlights.
“Oh, sugah, don’t you know what to say to a pretty, young southern girl when you see one? What kind of gentleman are you?” Her crimson lips pull into a smile.
She exits the car, the door slamming loudly like a gunshot. Her thick, black heels echo sharply off the pavement, and her dress blows through the humid wind, clinging to every curve of her body. Still there’s not even a twitch from you, dead man.
She’s close to you now. She runs a thin finger, and a sharp red-painted fingernail along your cheek. Her flesh is cold, like yours. Her finger continues downward, along your chest which heaves no heavier at her touch, before it stops at the Amulets of Damballah. “Oooh! Is this a present for me? Maybe you’re a finer man than I was lead to believe. My boyfriend never buys me nice things!”
With a flick of her wrists, one of the talismans leaves your neck, to its new place around hers. She cocks her hips before saying, “Baby, it’s perfect! How bout I give you a ride? To show my appreciation? I know someone who’s just dying to meet you!”
Now comes the part you actually can understand. Magic, if that’s the right word to describe it, pours through the medallions, like electrons through a thunderbolt, and your muscles start to move again, with much more power this time.
You enter the Continental, slamming the door behind you. “You better buckle up, darlin’.” And you do.
She’s back in the driver’s seat, and the engine roars as she slams her thick heels into the petal, keeping it tight against the floor. The Continental blazes down the road like a ghost escaping the clutches of Hell.
Wind whips through the hair that still clutches like weeds to your scalp. You don’t notice. Nor do you notice how thin the road becomes, after the sharp turns she makes down these lonely Louisiana swamp streets. Finally, the road isn’t paved at all, and steeps into a hill.
There’s a house at the top of this hill. It’s a massive, expansive thing, as beautiful in its architecture as it is morbid from abandonment. Stately white columns hold up three vast levels. Colossal double doors stand behind a sprawling front terrace. The upper balconies are embellished with iron railings. It was white once in color, but that’s faded and cracked to grey, or green if you count the moss and vines that cling to it.
The Continental tears up the mud as it halts in front of the portico.
“Home is where the heart is.” She whispers, as the engine is cut from life.
You open the doors, and step out of the auto. Your bare feet sink into the mud.
“It’s so dirty! Won’t you be a doll and carry me?”
You turn, with your arms outstretched. She leaps into your arms from the driver’s side. She squirms closer to you, and whispers, “Oh you’re so strong.” The talismans glow brighter in such proximity to each other.
You drudge up the few steps, and across the veranda, leaving muddy footprints across the cold concrete. Those titanic doors unlatch with an echo, and slowly, open as though they had a mind of their own. You’re inside.
In front of you there’s a grand, elliptical staircase with thin railings and tile bleached by time. There are doors and hallways around you, and who knows where they could lead?
“Honey, I’m home!” She calls from your arms.
A shadow stirs on the highest stair. Dull footsteps, from sullen boots, reverberate through the lonely hall. He takes his time descending these stairs, each step taken in careful consideration of the image before him. His clothes are in tatters, but he wears them like he’s proud. Even with the furred shawl over his shoulders, his massive frame is clear in the moonlight pouring through the cracked skylight. His arms bulge, his fingers crook, and his chest heaves. His skin varies color in patches, from yellow to pale to red to bloated purple. Scarred lips are smiling, and revealing teeth little more than nubs. Is he smiling at you?
He must be. Can he feel what primal instinct you’re feeling now? That same feeling of relation that awoke you from your slumber in the swamp? What does this man—if he is a man—have in relation to you? You know not. You care not. For there simply is relation and that is enough for your simple purpose.
“You’ve found him, Eva.” The voice is just as scarred as the throat that speaks it.
Eva leaps from your arms and scampers across the floor, her heels clacking with every step. She wraps her arms around this man’s neck, and kisses him. It’s long, and heavy, from one end of it only: hers. When she removes her lips, he doesn’t look impressed. He turns his attention back to you.
“Didn’t I do good, Adam?” she whimpers.
Adam pushes past her. “Don’t call me that!” His voice rages through darkness like a rabid wolf. “My father called me that!”
He approaches you, circles you like a shark. He gets closer with every round, observing with the intensity of an inferno. He too fingers at the medallion around your neck.
“And my father would be fascinated to see this.” Adam stops in front of you, speaking mere inches from your face. Surely he knows that his voice falls on decayed cochleae! But he continues, “He spent his life studying the science of biology, ignoring the very idea of magicks, to create life. Yet here you stand. Is it life that circulates through your veins? Something else perhaps, which science cannot possibly comprehend?” He gazes closer. “Can I comprehend it? I am a creature of science, a bastard of the laboratory! Does this make me immune to the perceptions of magic?”
Adam turns on his heel. He steps slowly toward Eva. She noticeably shudders at his touch, when he runs his backhand down her cheekbone. He continues down her neck, and then along her chest, until he fingers the dangling, glowing medallion.
With a sharp yank, Adam rips the medallion from her. There’s a small lurch inside of you when he does.
“Didn’t I do good, baby?” Eva purrs, and she tries to reenter his embrace.
Again, Adam steps away from her, to approach you.
The Amulets of Damballah grow brighter and heavier, not that either of you notice.
“What is it that can control these…things?” Adam wonders aloud, his voice harsh, yet echoing. “Their magic must be linked to something—something inside everything. Something that could be used as a conduit—or a battery. Something inconceivable to science, for that is what magic is and always will be. Something like…” His voice rumbles away, and he gets closer to you.
He whispers, “A soul?” His eyes judge you, up and down. “I’ll ask you the same question I ask myself, the same question I asked my damnable father…do you have a soul?” His fingers are misshapen and uneven, but they’re careful when the Amulet is put around his neck. He says sadly, “We are brothers in soullessness. Empty shells, freakish flesh, animated by something beyond our power. You, magic. Me…a lowly doctor called Frankenstein, who longed for a modern Prometheus…in this we are related. We are…brothers of unholy creation.”
Eva is shuddering behind you both, as though understanding what is about to happen.
“But maybe I’m wrong!” Adam shouts, though he is still inches from your face. “Maybe there is something these medallions grasp! There is only one way to find out…”
Adam spins on his heel. He points to Eva. He commands. “Zombie! Kill that orphan of science! Rid me of my disgusting offspring!”
There is nothing to stop you. Bones audibly creak with every step in the cavernous house. Your bare footsteps are dull when they slap the ground. And Eva…she does not move. She stiffens and falls to her knees. Her cat-eye glasses fall lamely to the floor.
If you could have seen her, Zombie, then you’d understand why she didn’t fight you, why she didn’t run. Her eyes are yellow and sunken like you own. Scars and stitches keep her flesh bound together like a withered quilt. Make-up and lipstick try hard to cover the monstrousness of her being, but she no longer cares. Her hair collapses from its bun, falling past her shoulders, with some falling in clumps to the floor alongside her glasses. Her lips and her eyes crack and flake, for there is no moisture either can produce.
You are standing above her now, and she stretches her neck to make it easy for you. But she’s not looking at you.
Eva says, “I love you, Adam. This is what you created me for. I’ll die so you’ll know what I always knew.”
Your hand slices downward like a tree cut by lightning. You crush her neck, bending it hideously sideways. The stitches along her jugular snap, and her head springs free, and smacks the floor. It rolls several inches before stopping.
And Adam laughs. “Eureka! Is it true? Could it be possible?” He runs up behind you. He spins you round to face him. Your amulet matches the brightness of his. “I controlled you, brother. And what fuels this magic? Could it be our souls? Could there be the same something left inside of you that was imbued inside of me?”
You have no answers. Indeed, you have no comprehension of the consequences of what Adam has proven. The Monster of Frankenstein slowly steps around you and circles the lump of flesh to which he had once given life. He picks up Eva’s head, and holds it in his palm, facing it to him.
“Alas, poor Eva.” Adam muses, “She was not human. Indeed how could she be? She understood the purpose of her creation, and the purpose of her death. If only humans could be as lucky—or as perfect as she. She would have made a lovely bride.”
Thumbing the medallion around his neck, Adam takes it off. He turns back to you, and, arms outstretched, Adam replaces the Amulet of Damballah around you neck. He whispers, “Thank you, brother. Now go home. May you find the peace I have this night.”
Echoes of long, short footsteps are all you leave Adam Prometheus, the bastard son of Frankenstein. Adam kneels over his fallen offspring, and that’s where you’ll last encounter him.
Your trail is long, winding. But the swamp is waiting for you. For it is your home. It is your sanctuary. You know this. You know this deep, within some primal instinct, deep within…your soul? Perhaps…
Perhaps you are more than just…the Zombie!
It was at a crossroads of an old kingdom where the two kings met. They were each coming from their separate battles. Their soldiers and men ordered to halt while these two great leaders of men came together on neutral ground.
One was Herla. He was a king of one of the ancient kingdoms which now make up Great Britain. He was a massive man with a shock of red hair which stretched messily down his back. His large bushy and shaggy beard mirrored it down his neck and chest.
He rode a large black stallion which was a brave creature and carried him well through many battles. It was at the moment shifting between serenity and unease from moment to moment.
The second king was much smaller. He was only the size of a child and yet his long black beard which glinted silver spoke to some extent to his age. He was much older than either Herla or any of his men would expect even with the silvering beard.
His beard almost touched the brim of his stomach which was small and round and stuck out below his beard. He had dark black eyes to match that colour of his hair…the fur and hooves of his feet matched them perfectly too. His little yellow horns seemed to shine in the darkness of the night.
He sat well below Herla as he balanced perfectly on the back of his small grey war goat. He was a ferocious goat who had killed many warriors of the giant race of what is now Wales in the battle which they were returning.
He stood at many heads smaller than Herla on his horse and he wore no signifying regalia but it was obvious to anyone who looked upon the two that they were equals as kings.
They spoke there that day of peace and friendship between their kingdoms and swore a pact with their blood.
They each drank a swig from each others finest wine they carried about them and returned to their men. The massive armies they led never met that night, the army of man heard the songs of the strange ones. The songs of mourning and victory so beautiful it drove the weakest of the army mad as they trudged on by in the night.
The years passed and the battles passed and the king grew older. He was a warrior king to be true and a great leader to all who lay within his land but he had yet to complete his final duty as ruler.
So it was that he sought out a wife from the neighbouring kingdom, their most beauteous princess. The wedding was a glorious occasion for unlike so many such marriages of convenience the two were actually beginning to fall in love.
The feast which followed was the largest since the great feast thrown by Herla’s father on the occasion of his birth. The royal and noble families from all of Britain’s kingdoms which were not at war with him came bearing great gifts seeking to gain good will with this new powerful kingdom.
It was halfway through the feast which the great horns began to be heard. The king left his celebration and went with his army to meet whatever invaders were encroaching uninvited upon his lands.
He was ready to give the orders to attack as the strange bunch of beasts and creatures came into view. There were creatures made of trees, of earth and of water. There were giants and bird men which circled above them. Lights flickered and flitted through the air and at their head rode the small king on the back of his trusty goat.
The two kings greeted each other with great joy. Herla had nearly forgotten their pact, it was the pact which brought the king of one of The Otherworlds. He was to bless the wedding of his friend and ally.
They returned to the feast. The nobles of the kingdoms marvelled at the Otherworlders who preformed magic to the delight of the crowds. They performed on the order of their kings and the noblest of them joined the human conversations and games.
They brought gifts of gold and magicks to aide the new kingdom on its way to greatness.
The collection of humans and inhuman beings celebrated past the sunrise and sunset. The sun began to rise again and the partygoers began to depart to their own homes as was the custom of royal weddings of humans at the time.
Years passed again and Herla’s wife provided him with the heir Herla the second. He was a strong boy and was sure to make a fine king.
Herla sat one day with his wife who he loved very much and his child who he loved and was proud of when a small golden bird unlike any he had ever seen landed close to them in their personal bedchamber. It seemed to show no fear of the humans.
Herla as well as a great warrior was a great hunter known throughout the land for his skill and massive hunting parties. He used his skills and crept silently upon the bird, the bird even if it had known he was there would not have moved.
His hands brushed it’s feathers for the first time and it began to sing. It sang in human tongues and issued the invite to the wedding of the Otherworldly king. Herla considered for a moment before nodding his agreement, the bird inexplicably bowed and flew away again through the window.
It returned the next day and sat patiently in the gardens of the castle. It sat there silently for two days before hopping back to the kings bedchamber. He knew it was now time.
He gathered his things and his men and set off following the little golden bird. He had not the magicks like the other party nor did his land have foods and wines which compared to those brought to his feast. He took with him a fortune in gold and a party of a hundred men, his finest hunters and their dogs. He could not offer much the king would not already have but he could show him the finest hunt his land had ever seen.
They followed the bird for days across the country until they reached the coast. The bird led them slowly along it’s edge to a large gaping hole of a cave set into the very side of the country. He flew inside and they followed.
They followed in darkness led just by the glow of the golden birds. Their horses and their dogs were unafraid and unstartled…unlike some of his men.
When the darkness all around them broke it broke suddenly and they found themselves in The Otherworld. The world of fairies, gnomes, elves, giants and dragons connected to Britain and Britain only in their world by the thin string of magic and the knowledge that the two used to be one place.
The massive sparkling castle and city to which they headed was visible form the moment they broke into the light. It was indeed all they could see. They were greeted warmly and joined the celebrations like long lost brothers as they witnessed the merging of two of the great kingdoms of the long lived ones.
On the third day of the celebration the hunt began. They spent the day from sun up to sun down riding wildly through the woods of the worlds. They hunted Griffon and Dragon, pixie and piskie, giant hawks fell to their arrows and winged shape changing foxes were dragged down by their gods.
King Herla when the time came bid farewell to his friend. The tiny king stooped low and whispered to one of the dogs used in the hunt. The dog nodded and leapt onto the back of the king Herla’s horse.
The tiny king spoke. He told Herla the path back was tricky and he could not lead them back. The dog however had been given the sacred duty and upon returning to their world they should not alight their horses until his first leapt down. Herla understood and set off on his way.
They trekked through the land and back through the cave…this time his animals all but the dog behind him whimpered and whinnied even as they reached the other side. The dog remained seated as they began to trek home.
It took a day till they came across someone. He was an old Shepard leading his flock along the path. He looked at them with shock and confusion. Herla and his men spoke to him but he could not understand them.
He apologies to the Britons as best he could in his Saxon tongue and told them he had not heard their words in many years since he was a boy and the British tongue was all but dead even then.
Upon the question of where they were and why his soldiers were not guarding any borders the old man told them that old king Herla vanished over two hundred years before and his line and his kingdom were all gone.
Upon hearing the sacrilege of this nonsense Herla’s closest friend in the hunting party leapt from his horse to accost the foolish Saxon. The second his feet touched the floor he became nothing but dust and ash.
The king and his men knew in that moment and could feel themselves change. They were no longer who they had been three days ago.
To this day it is said that Herla and his hunting party can still be seen and heard in the nights of Britain as they fill their afterlives with the sport they loved thundering through the sky with their hounds and horses until the dog which lies behind Herla will alight and they can go to their final rests.
‘Or that at least is the dream I had’ thought Kyle Richmond. He remembered times when he used to dream of big breasted women and champagne on his private yacht and then wake to find big breasted women and champagne on his private yacht.
Since the ‘gift’ of the eyes of the devil however he had been having no such dreams. His dreams now were dark and evil. They showed him wrongs which had to be righted and things of evil he had to fight. Each was terrifying and bruised his spirit and soul whenever he saw them.
It was for this reason he now found himself sat in the local library on a rainy Monday afternoon in a small town in Britain. The library was filled with colourful shelves near the front stacked high with children’s books.
Closer to the back where he now sat any attempt at making it welcoming was gone. Past the children’s books, romance novels and popular fiction, past the reference books and into the history section. He sat at the microfiche whirling through the years.
He had arrived in the country three days earlier and from his five star hotel in London began to search. Britain was a relatively small country but a massive place to search by himself without knowing for what he was looking.
He searched every news paper and internet site he could scouring the news looking for any sign. The only thing he could ascertain was that the British economy was in as much trouble as the American one and something called a ‘hoodie’ was the latest social demon being warred upon by the press…obviously the upper-class as well. The media seemed to walk the thin line, everyone with too much money was a bad person and everyone who did not have enough and was common was also a bad person. Everyone it seemed was trying to stick between the two. He wondered how they would view him an eccentric millionaire who funnelled his entire fortune into fighting magical evil…which no one knew so it seemed it just vanished.
His search finally came to an end on Sunday morning. He had several possible leads and links up till that point but when he read this final one he knew instantly that this was the place to go.
In a small new town (a town built on the outskirts of an already existing city) in the north of the country having a whole new ‘wing’ added to deal with the housing crisis and inject new business into a run down area. Since the ground had been broken in turning the old and overrun wilderness into a new housing estate there had been a series of deaths.
He found the latest on the front page of the local paper website ‘The Echo’ reported how a father of three returning home from the pub where he had been with friends had been killed. The death was in the most bizarre of forms. It seemed a giant pole or spear of some sort had been thrust through him and into the ground for several feet before being pulled out. Smaller incisions… ‘like those of the teeth of a big cat’ were found across his body. The sixth in as many months. Locals apparently heard nothing because of a massive localised thunderstorm.
It was because of this report which Kyle found himself now in the small town moving through the reels of information looking for any similar occurrences before six months ago. It seemed there wasn’t.
There was however something he was expecting. Since the inception of the paper and according to the report for several hundred years before there had been a high number of reporting of The Wild Hunt across the skies.
The rumbling of the horses and hounds as ghostly figures gallop across the skies above the surrounding villages and cities. The vision had been seen in most areas of the country but there was a high number in this particular area.
That however seemed to be it, that was interesting. Since gaining his gift Kyle had travelled the world to battle the things he saw and in all places, all reports and history books there were stories of demons and ghosts. Local legends of spirits and monsters. Britain was packed from head to toe with different monsters and ghoulies…but not this area.
Looking through the reports and the local history books there was no mentions of ghosts. No slaughtered woman who haunts the town hall, no haunted theatre, ghostly children or women standing at the sides of the road. It seemed other than the hunting party in the clouds this area was completely flat of all paranormal activity. It sent up a red flag for one as experienced as him, it was something he had never seen.
He thought for a second perhaps The Wild Hunt kept their numbers down hunting the spirits in someway, perhaps now the usual abundance there should have been had died out and they were forced to move onto the living? But he couldn’t help but think that wasn’t the answer.
Kyle grabbed up his long brown coat and checked his watch, the sun had been down for about an hour. He began to leave.
He had already managed to put two and two together based on the news reports and the visions he had been having in his sleep. He remembered a time in his youth when he didn’t believe in ghosts and found them silly, how he hated the past version of himself and envied him at the same time. The Wild Hunt was led by king Herla’s spirit forever seeking rest, the breaking of the ground on the new housing estate ‘luckily’ managed to disturb the ground where they had lost their friend as he alighted his mount. It appeared they were not happy about it.
He got in his car and fired the engine up and set off towards the building site. He found it of course given the late hour and weather conditions completely deserted. He sat in his car with the lights out and the heating on.
It wasn’t the usual modus operandi of superheroes to sit in a parked car but he no longer considered himself as such. He wasn’t really the same Nighthawk he had once been. He didn’t fight Hydra or bank robbers, he didn’t even wear his costume to hide his identity. He did the jobs that the others couldn’t do, he saw evil wherever it was and sought it out. He did them for the most part without quips of big speeches, the dead and evil spirits he tended to come across weren’t impressed or interested in it.
He was helped in his quest by the curse of his gift. He could see evil but the eyes of the devil seemed to shine out from beneath his human flesh to all manor of spectre and demon and draw them to him like a beacon.
It was something he was both counting on and dreading tonight. He let the hours pass until they slowly reached midnight.
Midnight was naturally the hour for supernatural occurrences. The witching hour where one day passed into the next and provided a psychic nexus in time for things to bleed through.
The rain was letting up by now and despite the late hour Kyle was not tired. His body was surging with adrenaline as he tried to prepare himself for whatever was to come. He had not even managed to figure out a way to stop the killings.
One option was obvious. He would have Herla and his men freed from their curse by getting the hound to leap from the horse but how to do that after all these years was not something he new how to do.
The second and in all honestly the most likely one was that he would end up in some fight most probably with the king himself which would result in his dissolution when Kyle after taking a large beating found the right charm he had collected to loosen their grip on this world.
He opened the car door and prepared to climb out. He expected it wouldn’t be long until his ‘powers’ brought the band of hunters down on his head. The second his foot touched the curb he heard the horn blasting above him. He swore.
The barking of the dogs was all around him. They sounded wild and savage, hungry and angry all at the same time.
The thunder of the hooves which could easily be mistaken for true thunder was the next thing he heard filling his ears. The air shook around him under the power of the hooves which were roaring across the skies.
The dogs, the hooves and the horns were deafening around him. The darkness of the night was near complete as the street lights suddenly cut out around him.
It was only as the clouds parted above him letting the full moon shine down that he realised it had stopped raining. He looked on that as a piece of good luck. The hounds suddenly broke through the cloud line above him and began to charge down.
King Herla and his men mounted on their horses followed shortly behind separating the cloud translucent in the moon light as they charged towards him weapons and teeth gleaming.
The dogs were the size of large lions, their chops covered in their own drool and the blood of the things they had killed. The horses the size of elephants and the men the size of giants.
The legends of The Wild Hunt increased the psychic energy of the ghosts and thus increased their power and size.
Kyle fixed the lead dog with as icy a stare as he could…the devils eyes could add nothing to such a feat to scare a ghost animal. Normal animals yes most certainly but enchanted creatures such as these Kyle very much doubted.
He waited until it crashed towards him. It’s fangs bared and then he leapt into the air. His coat burned away as he fired up the jet pack he wore under it and let his cape billow out behind him like wings. He may have retired himself as a superhero in his mind but he would not deny the things he used in his previous career were still coming in handy to this day.
The creature snapped and snarled beneath him as he rose out of it’s grasp. The dogs behind it changed their camber however and charged up through the air towards him. Kyle circled away from them as best he could. “Clifford, was most F*$king misleading to giant dog’s temperaments,” he thought with a growl.
The barrage of ghostly arrows which began to rain upon him from the heavens were not making it any easier. The ground and buildings they struck seemed to explode as they were driven into the human structures below and then evaporated leaving just their destruction.
He circled behind a row of the under construction houses hoping to escape the dogs and buy himself time but they simply bounded through the walls of the structures and gained more ground on him as they gave chase.
He let out a scream as the dog closest to him snapped it’s jaws shut at his heels and forced his ankle down before he managed to pull it clear just as the ghostly jaws snapped shut.
He altered his course. He was going to try something he had no idea why he thought it would work but he had to try something. He span in the air on all three axis and then let his jet pack kick in once again at full strength.
Herla was facing him down and charging towards him across the skies. Kyle hurtled back towards him with equal speed. The dogs which were giving chase ceased their barking and scattered. Trained not to run at the horses lest they be shot with an arrow or be trampled it seemed their training continued into the afterlife.
Herla held his spear in one hand and his sword in the other as he spurred his horse on to move faster. Kyle gripped the long string of charms which was attached to his belt and wrapped it around his hand like a knuckle duster. He stood his fists out way in front of him and wished he had something a little more offensive.
The two prepared to meet in the air.
Kyle gritted his teeth as Herla raised his sword and then they collided. Kyle passed harmlessly into the giant forms of the horse and the king. He wasn’t sure which charm was of use but he thanked God silently and quickly that one of them had been.
He moved his eyes from his hand and almost did a double take at when he could see. The world was different now before his eyes. Different to what it had ever been even given his new type of vision.
It glowed and pulsated with some kind of energy. All of the land and all of the buildings. Only himself and the ghosts remained the same.
A vortex stretched up from the ground in the far distance almost like a tornado glimpsed on the horizon. It arced in the air like a rainbow and came down in the centre of the new town where they stood.
The ghost of the king quickly passed through Kyle who had come to a halt simply hovering in the air as he viewed this new world.
He dove away from the followers of the hunt who were right behind the king. He pulled up out of his low dive to suddenly notice that he was in fact not being followed by either man nor dog ghost.
Herla regarded him and bowed his head. Kyle wasn’t sure how but as he’d passed through the ghost he’d gained some new vision and it seemed Herla had gained some perspective. If he had to guess he’d say the king now knew what Kyle was trying to do.
Kyle for the most part knew what he had to do too…though the details were sketchy. He moved through the air so he hovered before the king’s face and bowed his head. He had seen much of the king during his visions, he was a good king and a good man.
“Ah the classic good guy fight eh? Now we team up to solve the problem…never thought it would happen with a ghost.”
Kyle began to move away and the king and his men followed slowly behind their horses trotting gently through the air now rather than thunderously galloping. They were silent.
The ‘rainbow’ was now only just in front of them. Kyle pressed his hand against it and felt it’s power. He turned back to Herla who sat waiting patiently it seemed that they were unable to see the energy as he now could.
He thrust his arm inside of it and was swept away in an instant. The hunters gave chase.
The next moment Kyle was spat out. Water lapping at his side. He sat bolt upright and found himself lying on a beach. He was miles and miles from the new town whose lights he could only see on the horizon several miles inland.
The king and his men were lined up behind Kyle while their dogs sat at the horse’s feet. They each pointed ahead of them.
The cave which they pointed too glowed brilliantly with the energy Kyle could see. He recognised it as he guessed so did the ghosts. He had seen it in his vision, it was the gateway to the otherworld.
He began towards it and started to pull out something from his utility belt. He had all manor of potions and charms he had managed to buy and collect which were useful fro different things…it was none of these he removed.
He reached the mouth of the cave and began to set the C4. Explosives had often been the answer to many problems in the past and he prayed the small portion he had would be enough.
He moved back unwinding the small spool of wire as he went. He pushed it into the detonator and ducked behind some rocks as he flicked up the protective catch and pressed down on the button.
There was a flash of light and noise...the second carried on as the rocks began to tumble down. He looked up to the sky and watched as the arc of energy began to dissipate.
Kyle suddenly heard the horn again. He turned to watch as the hunters charged off back in land. He fired up his jets and launched into the air. He was hoping that blowing the cave and severing the link to The Otherworld would have been enough to free them from their curse.
He swore under his breath as he saw what now hovered over the new town and it’s surrounding area. It was some many tentacled beast…as these inter-dimensional beings seemed to be.
The ghostly hunters grew in size and solidity as they grew closer to it. The dogs were upon it first and then the hunters who slashed and stabbed at the beast.
The beast roared and lashed out with it’s many tentacles. It’s physical impact was more than Kyle’s. He saw several f the giant hunters fall from their horses and explode into massive storm clouds of dust and ash.
The beast seemed to absorb them into itself and just grow in size and ferocity as it slashed at them. Their power and their legend feeding it well.
Kyle wished there was something he could do to aide his new found friends but the battle was too far and in all probability too grand for his particular brand of supernatural violence.
There was a flash of light and a scream from the beast as the final thrust from Herla finished the beast. Kyle watched as the beam of light shone into the heavens. He could see the individual souls rising into the heavens released from within the beast.
Kyle finally understanding what was going on. When they had went to Otherworld all those years ago something else had came through. It had kept the gateway open. It was something which absorbed spirits and souls which was why there was no other ghost stories in this area. They had all been absorbed upon their deaths.
If the men leapt from their horses the same would have happened to them and they would never have found peace this was why the hound had yet to alight.
The hunters turned and began to gallop back towards Kyle. They dragged behind them the carcass of the beast which they had killed in what would be their final hunt. The King and his hunters stopped next to Kyle.
They all turned to look at the hound which lay on the back of The King’s horse. He lifted his head and sprung to the ground. The other dogs greeted him with great enthusiasm and then began to fade from sight until they were gone all together.
Herla and his men smiled and dismounted themselves. They each began to fade from sight. They each bowed their heads and raised their swords in salute of their comrade who had helped them after all these years before they finally vanished from sight.
Herla remained a few moments longer than the rest and sunk his blade into the sand before him as he began to fade. The sword remained.
Kyle looked to the heavens for a moment and watched the last disperse of energy from all the freed souls. He walked across the wet sand and pulled the ghostly white but solid sword from the sand.
“I’m getting way to old for this,” he sighed as he shook his head and turned back inland. He didn’t even manage to take his first step before his next vision began to play behind his eyes. The next mission, the next evil to fight.
The End.
One was Herla. He was a king of one of the ancient kingdoms which now make up Great Britain. He was a massive man with a shock of red hair which stretched messily down his back. His large bushy and shaggy beard mirrored it down his neck and chest.
He rode a large black stallion which was a brave creature and carried him well through many battles. It was at the moment shifting between serenity and unease from moment to moment.
The second king was much smaller. He was only the size of a child and yet his long black beard which glinted silver spoke to some extent to his age. He was much older than either Herla or any of his men would expect even with the silvering beard.
His beard almost touched the brim of his stomach which was small and round and stuck out below his beard. He had dark black eyes to match that colour of his hair…the fur and hooves of his feet matched them perfectly too. His little yellow horns seemed to shine in the darkness of the night.
He sat well below Herla as he balanced perfectly on the back of his small grey war goat. He was a ferocious goat who had killed many warriors of the giant race of what is now Wales in the battle which they were returning.
He stood at many heads smaller than Herla on his horse and he wore no signifying regalia but it was obvious to anyone who looked upon the two that they were equals as kings.
They spoke there that day of peace and friendship between their kingdoms and swore a pact with their blood.
They each drank a swig from each others finest wine they carried about them and returned to their men. The massive armies they led never met that night, the army of man heard the songs of the strange ones. The songs of mourning and victory so beautiful it drove the weakest of the army mad as they trudged on by in the night.
The years passed and the battles passed and the king grew older. He was a warrior king to be true and a great leader to all who lay within his land but he had yet to complete his final duty as ruler.
So it was that he sought out a wife from the neighbouring kingdom, their most beauteous princess. The wedding was a glorious occasion for unlike so many such marriages of convenience the two were actually beginning to fall in love.
The feast which followed was the largest since the great feast thrown by Herla’s father on the occasion of his birth. The royal and noble families from all of Britain’s kingdoms which were not at war with him came bearing great gifts seeking to gain good will with this new powerful kingdom.
It was halfway through the feast which the great horns began to be heard. The king left his celebration and went with his army to meet whatever invaders were encroaching uninvited upon his lands.
He was ready to give the orders to attack as the strange bunch of beasts and creatures came into view. There were creatures made of trees, of earth and of water. There were giants and bird men which circled above them. Lights flickered and flitted through the air and at their head rode the small king on the back of his trusty goat.
The two kings greeted each other with great joy. Herla had nearly forgotten their pact, it was the pact which brought the king of one of The Otherworlds. He was to bless the wedding of his friend and ally.
They returned to the feast. The nobles of the kingdoms marvelled at the Otherworlders who preformed magic to the delight of the crowds. They performed on the order of their kings and the noblest of them joined the human conversations and games.
They brought gifts of gold and magicks to aide the new kingdom on its way to greatness.
The collection of humans and inhuman beings celebrated past the sunrise and sunset. The sun began to rise again and the partygoers began to depart to their own homes as was the custom of royal weddings of humans at the time.
Years passed again and Herla’s wife provided him with the heir Herla the second. He was a strong boy and was sure to make a fine king.
Herla sat one day with his wife who he loved very much and his child who he loved and was proud of when a small golden bird unlike any he had ever seen landed close to them in their personal bedchamber. It seemed to show no fear of the humans.
Herla as well as a great warrior was a great hunter known throughout the land for his skill and massive hunting parties. He used his skills and crept silently upon the bird, the bird even if it had known he was there would not have moved.
His hands brushed it’s feathers for the first time and it began to sing. It sang in human tongues and issued the invite to the wedding of the Otherworldly king. Herla considered for a moment before nodding his agreement, the bird inexplicably bowed and flew away again through the window.
It returned the next day and sat patiently in the gardens of the castle. It sat there silently for two days before hopping back to the kings bedchamber. He knew it was now time.
He gathered his things and his men and set off following the little golden bird. He had not the magicks like the other party nor did his land have foods and wines which compared to those brought to his feast. He took with him a fortune in gold and a party of a hundred men, his finest hunters and their dogs. He could not offer much the king would not already have but he could show him the finest hunt his land had ever seen.
They followed the bird for days across the country until they reached the coast. The bird led them slowly along it’s edge to a large gaping hole of a cave set into the very side of the country. He flew inside and they followed.
They followed in darkness led just by the glow of the golden birds. Their horses and their dogs were unafraid and unstartled…unlike some of his men.
When the darkness all around them broke it broke suddenly and they found themselves in The Otherworld. The world of fairies, gnomes, elves, giants and dragons connected to Britain and Britain only in their world by the thin string of magic and the knowledge that the two used to be one place.
The massive sparkling castle and city to which they headed was visible form the moment they broke into the light. It was indeed all they could see. They were greeted warmly and joined the celebrations like long lost brothers as they witnessed the merging of two of the great kingdoms of the long lived ones.
On the third day of the celebration the hunt began. They spent the day from sun up to sun down riding wildly through the woods of the worlds. They hunted Griffon and Dragon, pixie and piskie, giant hawks fell to their arrows and winged shape changing foxes were dragged down by their gods.
King Herla when the time came bid farewell to his friend. The tiny king stooped low and whispered to one of the dogs used in the hunt. The dog nodded and leapt onto the back of the king Herla’s horse.
The tiny king spoke. He told Herla the path back was tricky and he could not lead them back. The dog however had been given the sacred duty and upon returning to their world they should not alight their horses until his first leapt down. Herla understood and set off on his way.
They trekked through the land and back through the cave…this time his animals all but the dog behind him whimpered and whinnied even as they reached the other side. The dog remained seated as they began to trek home.
It took a day till they came across someone. He was an old Shepard leading his flock along the path. He looked at them with shock and confusion. Herla and his men spoke to him but he could not understand them.
He apologies to the Britons as best he could in his Saxon tongue and told them he had not heard their words in many years since he was a boy and the British tongue was all but dead even then.
Upon the question of where they were and why his soldiers were not guarding any borders the old man told them that old king Herla vanished over two hundred years before and his line and his kingdom were all gone.
Upon hearing the sacrilege of this nonsense Herla’s closest friend in the hunting party leapt from his horse to accost the foolish Saxon. The second his feet touched the floor he became nothing but dust and ash.
The king and his men knew in that moment and could feel themselves change. They were no longer who they had been three days ago.
To this day it is said that Herla and his hunting party can still be seen and heard in the nights of Britain as they fill their afterlives with the sport they loved thundering through the sky with their hounds and horses until the dog which lies behind Herla will alight and they can go to their final rests.
‘Or that at least is the dream I had’ thought Kyle Richmond. He remembered times when he used to dream of big breasted women and champagne on his private yacht and then wake to find big breasted women and champagne on his private yacht.
Since the ‘gift’ of the eyes of the devil however he had been having no such dreams. His dreams now were dark and evil. They showed him wrongs which had to be righted and things of evil he had to fight. Each was terrifying and bruised his spirit and soul whenever he saw them.
It was for this reason he now found himself sat in the local library on a rainy Monday afternoon in a small town in Britain. The library was filled with colourful shelves near the front stacked high with children’s books.
Closer to the back where he now sat any attempt at making it welcoming was gone. Past the children’s books, romance novels and popular fiction, past the reference books and into the history section. He sat at the microfiche whirling through the years.
He had arrived in the country three days earlier and from his five star hotel in London began to search. Britain was a relatively small country but a massive place to search by himself without knowing for what he was looking.
He searched every news paper and internet site he could scouring the news looking for any sign. The only thing he could ascertain was that the British economy was in as much trouble as the American one and something called a ‘hoodie’ was the latest social demon being warred upon by the press…obviously the upper-class as well. The media seemed to walk the thin line, everyone with too much money was a bad person and everyone who did not have enough and was common was also a bad person. Everyone it seemed was trying to stick between the two. He wondered how they would view him an eccentric millionaire who funnelled his entire fortune into fighting magical evil…which no one knew so it seemed it just vanished.
His search finally came to an end on Sunday morning. He had several possible leads and links up till that point but when he read this final one he knew instantly that this was the place to go.
In a small new town (a town built on the outskirts of an already existing city) in the north of the country having a whole new ‘wing’ added to deal with the housing crisis and inject new business into a run down area. Since the ground had been broken in turning the old and overrun wilderness into a new housing estate there had been a series of deaths.
He found the latest on the front page of the local paper website ‘The Echo’ reported how a father of three returning home from the pub where he had been with friends had been killed. The death was in the most bizarre of forms. It seemed a giant pole or spear of some sort had been thrust through him and into the ground for several feet before being pulled out. Smaller incisions… ‘like those of the teeth of a big cat’ were found across his body. The sixth in as many months. Locals apparently heard nothing because of a massive localised thunderstorm.
It was because of this report which Kyle found himself now in the small town moving through the reels of information looking for any similar occurrences before six months ago. It seemed there wasn’t.
There was however something he was expecting. Since the inception of the paper and according to the report for several hundred years before there had been a high number of reporting of The Wild Hunt across the skies.
The rumbling of the horses and hounds as ghostly figures gallop across the skies above the surrounding villages and cities. The vision had been seen in most areas of the country but there was a high number in this particular area.
That however seemed to be it, that was interesting. Since gaining his gift Kyle had travelled the world to battle the things he saw and in all places, all reports and history books there were stories of demons and ghosts. Local legends of spirits and monsters. Britain was packed from head to toe with different monsters and ghoulies…but not this area.
Looking through the reports and the local history books there was no mentions of ghosts. No slaughtered woman who haunts the town hall, no haunted theatre, ghostly children or women standing at the sides of the road. It seemed other than the hunting party in the clouds this area was completely flat of all paranormal activity. It sent up a red flag for one as experienced as him, it was something he had never seen.
He thought for a second perhaps The Wild Hunt kept their numbers down hunting the spirits in someway, perhaps now the usual abundance there should have been had died out and they were forced to move onto the living? But he couldn’t help but think that wasn’t the answer.
Kyle grabbed up his long brown coat and checked his watch, the sun had been down for about an hour. He began to leave.
He had already managed to put two and two together based on the news reports and the visions he had been having in his sleep. He remembered a time in his youth when he didn’t believe in ghosts and found them silly, how he hated the past version of himself and envied him at the same time. The Wild Hunt was led by king Herla’s spirit forever seeking rest, the breaking of the ground on the new housing estate ‘luckily’ managed to disturb the ground where they had lost their friend as he alighted his mount. It appeared they were not happy about it.
He got in his car and fired the engine up and set off towards the building site. He found it of course given the late hour and weather conditions completely deserted. He sat in his car with the lights out and the heating on.
It wasn’t the usual modus operandi of superheroes to sit in a parked car but he no longer considered himself as such. He wasn’t really the same Nighthawk he had once been. He didn’t fight Hydra or bank robbers, he didn’t even wear his costume to hide his identity. He did the jobs that the others couldn’t do, he saw evil wherever it was and sought it out. He did them for the most part without quips of big speeches, the dead and evil spirits he tended to come across weren’t impressed or interested in it.
He was helped in his quest by the curse of his gift. He could see evil but the eyes of the devil seemed to shine out from beneath his human flesh to all manor of spectre and demon and draw them to him like a beacon.
It was something he was both counting on and dreading tonight. He let the hours pass until they slowly reached midnight.
Midnight was naturally the hour for supernatural occurrences. The witching hour where one day passed into the next and provided a psychic nexus in time for things to bleed through.
The rain was letting up by now and despite the late hour Kyle was not tired. His body was surging with adrenaline as he tried to prepare himself for whatever was to come. He had not even managed to figure out a way to stop the killings.
One option was obvious. He would have Herla and his men freed from their curse by getting the hound to leap from the horse but how to do that after all these years was not something he new how to do.
The second and in all honestly the most likely one was that he would end up in some fight most probably with the king himself which would result in his dissolution when Kyle after taking a large beating found the right charm he had collected to loosen their grip on this world.
He opened the car door and prepared to climb out. He expected it wouldn’t be long until his ‘powers’ brought the band of hunters down on his head. The second his foot touched the curb he heard the horn blasting above him. He swore.
The barking of the dogs was all around him. They sounded wild and savage, hungry and angry all at the same time.
The thunder of the hooves which could easily be mistaken for true thunder was the next thing he heard filling his ears. The air shook around him under the power of the hooves which were roaring across the skies.
The dogs, the hooves and the horns were deafening around him. The darkness of the night was near complete as the street lights suddenly cut out around him.
It was only as the clouds parted above him letting the full moon shine down that he realised it had stopped raining. He looked on that as a piece of good luck. The hounds suddenly broke through the cloud line above him and began to charge down.
King Herla and his men mounted on their horses followed shortly behind separating the cloud translucent in the moon light as they charged towards him weapons and teeth gleaming.
The dogs were the size of large lions, their chops covered in their own drool and the blood of the things they had killed. The horses the size of elephants and the men the size of giants.
The legends of The Wild Hunt increased the psychic energy of the ghosts and thus increased their power and size.
Kyle fixed the lead dog with as icy a stare as he could…the devils eyes could add nothing to such a feat to scare a ghost animal. Normal animals yes most certainly but enchanted creatures such as these Kyle very much doubted.
He waited until it crashed towards him. It’s fangs bared and then he leapt into the air. His coat burned away as he fired up the jet pack he wore under it and let his cape billow out behind him like wings. He may have retired himself as a superhero in his mind but he would not deny the things he used in his previous career were still coming in handy to this day.
The creature snapped and snarled beneath him as he rose out of it’s grasp. The dogs behind it changed their camber however and charged up through the air towards him. Kyle circled away from them as best he could. “Clifford, was most F*$king misleading to giant dog’s temperaments,” he thought with a growl.
The barrage of ghostly arrows which began to rain upon him from the heavens were not making it any easier. The ground and buildings they struck seemed to explode as they were driven into the human structures below and then evaporated leaving just their destruction.
He circled behind a row of the under construction houses hoping to escape the dogs and buy himself time but they simply bounded through the walls of the structures and gained more ground on him as they gave chase.
He let out a scream as the dog closest to him snapped it’s jaws shut at his heels and forced his ankle down before he managed to pull it clear just as the ghostly jaws snapped shut.
He altered his course. He was going to try something he had no idea why he thought it would work but he had to try something. He span in the air on all three axis and then let his jet pack kick in once again at full strength.
Herla was facing him down and charging towards him across the skies. Kyle hurtled back towards him with equal speed. The dogs which were giving chase ceased their barking and scattered. Trained not to run at the horses lest they be shot with an arrow or be trampled it seemed their training continued into the afterlife.
Herla held his spear in one hand and his sword in the other as he spurred his horse on to move faster. Kyle gripped the long string of charms which was attached to his belt and wrapped it around his hand like a knuckle duster. He stood his fists out way in front of him and wished he had something a little more offensive.
The two prepared to meet in the air.
Kyle gritted his teeth as Herla raised his sword and then they collided. Kyle passed harmlessly into the giant forms of the horse and the king. He wasn’t sure which charm was of use but he thanked God silently and quickly that one of them had been.
He moved his eyes from his hand and almost did a double take at when he could see. The world was different now before his eyes. Different to what it had ever been even given his new type of vision.
It glowed and pulsated with some kind of energy. All of the land and all of the buildings. Only himself and the ghosts remained the same.
A vortex stretched up from the ground in the far distance almost like a tornado glimpsed on the horizon. It arced in the air like a rainbow and came down in the centre of the new town where they stood.
The ghost of the king quickly passed through Kyle who had come to a halt simply hovering in the air as he viewed this new world.
He dove away from the followers of the hunt who were right behind the king. He pulled up out of his low dive to suddenly notice that he was in fact not being followed by either man nor dog ghost.
Herla regarded him and bowed his head. Kyle wasn’t sure how but as he’d passed through the ghost he’d gained some new vision and it seemed Herla had gained some perspective. If he had to guess he’d say the king now knew what Kyle was trying to do.
Kyle for the most part knew what he had to do too…though the details were sketchy. He moved through the air so he hovered before the king’s face and bowed his head. He had seen much of the king during his visions, he was a good king and a good man.
“Ah the classic good guy fight eh? Now we team up to solve the problem…never thought it would happen with a ghost.”
Kyle began to move away and the king and his men followed slowly behind their horses trotting gently through the air now rather than thunderously galloping. They were silent.
The ‘rainbow’ was now only just in front of them. Kyle pressed his hand against it and felt it’s power. He turned back to Herla who sat waiting patiently it seemed that they were unable to see the energy as he now could.
He thrust his arm inside of it and was swept away in an instant. The hunters gave chase.
The next moment Kyle was spat out. Water lapping at his side. He sat bolt upright and found himself lying on a beach. He was miles and miles from the new town whose lights he could only see on the horizon several miles inland.
The king and his men were lined up behind Kyle while their dogs sat at the horse’s feet. They each pointed ahead of them.
The cave which they pointed too glowed brilliantly with the energy Kyle could see. He recognised it as he guessed so did the ghosts. He had seen it in his vision, it was the gateway to the otherworld.
He began towards it and started to pull out something from his utility belt. He had all manor of potions and charms he had managed to buy and collect which were useful fro different things…it was none of these he removed.
He reached the mouth of the cave and began to set the C4. Explosives had often been the answer to many problems in the past and he prayed the small portion he had would be enough.
He moved back unwinding the small spool of wire as he went. He pushed it into the detonator and ducked behind some rocks as he flicked up the protective catch and pressed down on the button.
There was a flash of light and noise...the second carried on as the rocks began to tumble down. He looked up to the sky and watched as the arc of energy began to dissipate.
Kyle suddenly heard the horn again. He turned to watch as the hunters charged off back in land. He fired up his jets and launched into the air. He was hoping that blowing the cave and severing the link to The Otherworld would have been enough to free them from their curse.
He swore under his breath as he saw what now hovered over the new town and it’s surrounding area. It was some many tentacled beast…as these inter-dimensional beings seemed to be.
The ghostly hunters grew in size and solidity as they grew closer to it. The dogs were upon it first and then the hunters who slashed and stabbed at the beast.
The beast roared and lashed out with it’s many tentacles. It’s physical impact was more than Kyle’s. He saw several f the giant hunters fall from their horses and explode into massive storm clouds of dust and ash.
The beast seemed to absorb them into itself and just grow in size and ferocity as it slashed at them. Their power and their legend feeding it well.
Kyle wished there was something he could do to aide his new found friends but the battle was too far and in all probability too grand for his particular brand of supernatural violence.
There was a flash of light and a scream from the beast as the final thrust from Herla finished the beast. Kyle watched as the beam of light shone into the heavens. He could see the individual souls rising into the heavens released from within the beast.
Kyle finally understanding what was going on. When they had went to Otherworld all those years ago something else had came through. It had kept the gateway open. It was something which absorbed spirits and souls which was why there was no other ghost stories in this area. They had all been absorbed upon their deaths.
If the men leapt from their horses the same would have happened to them and they would never have found peace this was why the hound had yet to alight.
The hunters turned and began to gallop back towards Kyle. They dragged behind them the carcass of the beast which they had killed in what would be their final hunt. The King and his hunters stopped next to Kyle.
They all turned to look at the hound which lay on the back of The King’s horse. He lifted his head and sprung to the ground. The other dogs greeted him with great enthusiasm and then began to fade from sight until they were gone all together.
Herla and his men smiled and dismounted themselves. They each began to fade from sight. They each bowed their heads and raised their swords in salute of their comrade who had helped them after all these years before they finally vanished from sight.
Herla remained a few moments longer than the rest and sunk his blade into the sand before him as he began to fade. The sword remained.
Kyle looked to the heavens for a moment and watched the last disperse of energy from all the freed souls. He walked across the wet sand and pulled the ghostly white but solid sword from the sand.
“I’m getting way to old for this,” he sighed as he shook his head and turned back inland. He didn’t even manage to take his first step before his next vision began to play behind his eyes. The next mission, the next evil to fight.
The End.