by Richard Lee
“Rachael, if you have any idea...” Ami never finished the sentence.
“I don’t,” Rachael said. “Josh?”
Josh shook his head. “None, but I’m gonna look in the guard box and see if anything or anyone is there.” He led the way as the two others followed.
The guard box was a cheaply built, white painted, wooden structure. It looked larger inside then outside. It was filled with radio equipment and computer web visors. Yet, everything looked old, at least five years out of date. Even the two hover chairs had cracks in the armrests. At the far end of the room was a curtain with a sign above it reading: No Entry. And next to that was a door with a sign reading: Toilet.
Ami attached a visor. A holographic control board appeared. There were no signs on any of the buttons or levers.
She said, “I have no idea how to work this thing.”
“The only person who would,” Josh said, “would be Eric and he won’t get out of the car.”
From the guard box window, they could see Eric sitting in the car. His hands were on the steering wheel. He was looking straight ahead, almost the same as Penny.
“The pressure was too much for him,” Josh said. “He’ll be fine in a few days or so.”
Ami removed the visor set.
Rachael stated the obvious. “Something’s happened and everyone’s gone.”
“I think it’s fairly safe to drive around the guard box,” Josh said. “The only problem I can see would be—” He folded his arm across his chest and with a small smile said, “—we would be illegal aliens.”
“Easily fixed,” Rachael said.
“Really,” Josh said, “please tell us.”
“Registration office.”
Josh continued to smile.
“What is it, Josh?” Ami asked.
“Well, number one, we can’t use our credits or barcodes.”
“So?”
“So?” Josh mocked. “Think about it, you two. There’s another checkpoint up ahead, which will scan our eyes and barcodes. We won’t exist on that computer’s files.”
Rachael leaned against a grey panel, which projected the holographic control board. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply.
“Plus,” Josh added, “we can’t use our credits until we are reissued re-entry status.”
“Then,” Ami said, her voice full of worry, “what can we do? We can’t get inside our own houses and we certainly can’t buy anything like food.”
Both of them were staring at their leader. Rachael had no idea what to do next, but her team needed an answer. She said, “Let’s work that out at the next check point. There’s not much we could do until then. The computer will contact the authorities and we can hopefully get everything sorted out there.”
“What about our toys?” Josh asked.
“They are well hidden. We’ll get scanned, asked a lot of questions, keep to our story of Michael and everything will be fine.”
“You sound so confident,” Josh said, unfolding his arms. His smile was gone.
I have to be, Rachael thought, I’m your leader. As she turned to leave the guard box, she noticed the calendar. It hung on the rear to the front door. Large red crosses filled many of the boxes containing dates. She froze, counting the crosses one by one.
“That can’t be right,” she said.
Josh saw what she was looking at. “June the 16th. We’ve been gone three weeks!”
They were all silent.
“Three weeks isn’t so bad,” Ami said, breaking the silence, but her voice betrayed her words. “What about Michael?”
A roar rose in the distance. They heard it before the guard box started shaking. The windows rattled in the frames. Bottles dropped off tables and something heavy hit the floor with a loud thud behind the curtained off room.
As quickly as it had started, the shaking stopped.
Josh threw open the door and ran outside. He stared towards the city. The faint orange hue of the sun had finally departed the day, allowing night to creep into the sky.
“I see fighter jets,” Josh called out.
Ami joined Rachael at the doorway. She looked towards the dome. A slightly worried expression covered her face. “Why would fighter jets fly over the dome?”
Rachael shrugged. “We’ve been gone three weeks. We can catch up on the news later.” She looked at her friend and said, “Better get going.”
Ami nodded. “Let me use the toilet first, okay?”
“Sure,” Rachael said. She went out and joined Josh next to the car. Far in the distance, she could barely make out the shape of two fighter jets. The only thing she knew about fighter jets was what she had seen on web view television. And that wasn’t much. She knew what they looked like, knew they flew faster than the speed of sound, and knew that they were very deadly.
Inside the guard box, Ami screamed.
Chapter Fifteen
Peter was sitting against the wall when the rumble started. He knew something was about to start. An energy source had shot through his body, only moments ago. It prickled his skin, started his fingers tingling and his biceps twitching. Something was happening outside the dagger, outside his prison. And whatever it was, it involved fresh new blood. The energy source only came to him when blood was headed to the dagger. It was part of the thrill of killing.
He remained motionless as if nothing had happened and kept his face expressionless.
They were everywhere. All of them were either his victims or his wishes. They lined the walls and filled the gaps. One hundred and sixty two souls watched him endlessly. They never spoke nor came near him. When he moved, they also moved. Peter considered himself their God, a Devil-god, because they feared him.
The only soul he worried about was Terry. He had taken more from her than any of the other victims here. He had stolen her dreams to rule the world. But after all this time, she hadn’t made a move. In fact, he barely saw her. And that was good.
Maybe it had been wrong killing Terry and keeping the book for himself. Perhaps it didn’t work that way. Killing her had been a waste of time and energy on his part. The book would just have gone to the next person.
But if that were true, why did he suddenly have such a bust of energy? And why did his victims still fear him?
Because he had been right. He still had the power and the book, waiting for his return.
The rumble increased in intensity. He saw many souls move further from him.
A loud cracking sound echoed through the dagger’s hilt. The wall Peter leaned against split apart. Blood oozed through the gap. The warm liquid dripped on his head. The feeling was good. No, it was better than that. It was fucking wonderful.
The puddle overflowed and the blood rolled down his hair, circled the back of his right ear, moved along his jawbone, and dripped onto the side of his neck.
Peter smiled, overjoyed. Had the time of his release finally arrived?
Before him an image slowly appeared. It was faint at first but quickly took on a solid form. The figure of a man lay before him. He noticed the other souls push against each other in a feeble attempt to hide. This figure was a man, not a soul like the rest.
Peter stood up as a darker blood flowed into the prison. It pooled around his feet quickly.
Suddenly, something invisible touched him. It felt like wet fingers and it gently moved along his left cheek and then his right cheek, softly brushing his lips in the process. The fingers rested on his chin for a brief moment. In that moment the slight vibration of fear, which had started in his heart and moved to his lungs, vanished. In that brief moment he knew whom the fingers belonged to. His friend, the Meph-Man, was with him.
Today was a joyous day, but who was that on the floor before him?
Peter gently prodded the man with his feet. He did not awake, so Peter kicked him hard in the ribs. The man let out a howl of pain and clutched his side.
“Who the fuck are you?” Peter said as he slowly circled around the figure.
&
nbsp; The man rose to his knees, but the pain in his ribs caused him to double over. He hissed in a breath between clenched teeth.
The prison shook again, but only gently as the walls closed the gaps when the blood stopped flowing. Peter was amazed at the amount of blood. Had it all come from this one man? If so, he had yet to see the exit point.
The man raised his head, but his eyes were closed.
Peter grabbed him by the hair and tilted the head up to face him.
“Who the fuck are you?” Peter screamed.
“Michael,” the man replied, his voice barely a whisper. His eyes remained closed.
“Open your eyes and look at me when I speak to you.”
“I can’t open them.”
“Then I will open them for you.” He reached down to force the lids open, but they refused to part. The skin stretched as he dug his fingers into the bottom of the eyelid, felt the nails push through and tear the lid away.
The man did not scream or cry out. He knelt there quietly as if nothing had happened.
Peter tore off the upper lid to expose an eyeball, pure white with red scratchy lines surrounding the iris. The iris was a milky blue color, almost white itself.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were blind?”
“I’m not,” Michael said. Feeling the exposed ball he panicked, groping where the lid should have been. “What have you done?”
Peter looked at the souls in his dagger and said to them, “Take him, he’s not mine.”
The souls moved forward, edging ever closer. They stopped a few feet from Michael. There were so many grouped together, Peter could barely tell where one started and the other finished. It was like a large light dancing in the same spot.
“He’s the one who told me to kill you,” Peter lied.
Suddenly all the souls rushed forward, grabbed the screaming man and pulled him into a dark area of the dagger.
Peter heard sounds that made his skin crawl. The screaming was the worst. It was high pitched and the agony was almost visible. He didn’t want to think about what they were doing to him, so he took a seat again against the wall and waited. The blood was still warm as he sat in it.
Curiosity got the better of him and he slowly dipped his fingers into the thick dark red liquid. Gingerly he raised his fingers to his mouth and tasted it. It was salty and tangy. He spat it out as soon as it rolled across his tongue. He kept spitting until his mouth was almost dry. Fuck, it was horrible. He wondered how Elizabeth Báthory had ever bathed in this shit.
It had been a good idea to have the souls take care of Michael. Having two like him would have been bad. It would have showed the souls he wasn’t their only god and that might’ve caused a problem for his almost relaxed stay here. And besides, he needed to have complete control. He needed their fear to keep them away from him.
The screaming continued as he leaned his head against the wall and remembered the wonderful past.
Peter was so relaxed he was almost asleep when the souls started crying out for help. They were all staring at the zigzag cross markings of the dagger’s hilt. Slowly, he got up and went for a better look, and for the first time he could see out. The souls screamed for help. He watched a man run with his laptop computer and then slide on the floor into the elevator.
The view to the outside world closed. The site faded into black, a deep solid black; darker than night.
The souls turned as one and stared at Peter. One moved to within inches of him and he recognized the face, Terry. He knew better than to move back or show his fear. He tried to keep at bay the thought they could seriously fuck him up, and hoped they wouldn’t realize it.
But Terry was freaking him out and he knew she knew something. Still, he stared her down, smiled at the sliced throat and the slightly viewable tongue muscle. Slowly, she backed away, only a few paces, but that was good enough for now.
Peter noticed something crawling on the floor beneath the souls. The facial skin was almost completely gone. The remaining skin was either hanging off his cheeks or bagged around the chin. The dangling pieces jittered as he moved slowly forward.
The souls did not fear him as they had done earlier, before the commotion in his house.
As Peter studied the crawling mess, it suddenly dawned on him that he had seen this man somewhere before. The skinless flesh and missing eye made it harder to place yet there was something about him, something...
The television news the night he entered this prison. The ghosts ripping off the camera shop and his dream woman, the one person he would forever give to and receive from. This torn mass of throbbing moving flesh had been with her.
“Stop where you are, Michael,” Peter commanded.
The figure did not stop and Peter was forced to take a large step back.
“I want some answers.”
Now, the figure stopped and tilted his head up to stare at the man who had ordered the pain he had received. “You...want...some...answers?” The few remaining teeth were clenched tight as he spoke. “What...makes...you...think...I’d...answer...anything you asked?”
“I saw you break into a camera shop on the local news. How did you enter this domain?”
Michael stared at him a long while before answering, “You mean your time zone?” A few haggard breaths later, he said, “Time slip.”
“What?”
“Somehow we entered your time zone and wanted to have some kind of proof that we were there, and not mind drugged as a government test.”
Peter considered the answer.
“Our professor has been looking for you a long time.”
Peter arched his eyebrows. “Looking for me?”
“Everybody knows who you are. You created the only sales approach that truly works on any client. One hundred percent.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. The books he wrote were lies and untested possibilities. Had he somehow gotten the magic formula that everyone was looking for correct? Now, that’s what is called a fluke.
“Why are you laughing?”
Peter quickly changed the subject. “Who’s the woman you were with?”
“There were three women,” Michael answered slowly.
Peter could only remember seeing one.
“There’s Penny and Rachael and Ami.”
“The dark haired one,” Peter said.
Michael took a deep breath. It was raspy and didn’t sound like it filled the lungs. Instead, it sounded as if the air was passing through them.
“The dark haired one,” Peter repeated. He was growing bored with Michael and his slow answers.
“Then it’s not Penny. She’s blond and from the States.”
“Dark hair and kind of wavy near the neck and shoulders.”
After a moment, Michael said, “That’s Rachael. She’s the leader of our group.”
So, she was a leader. Peter smiled at that. Of course his dream woman would be strong and a natural born controller of those below her.
“Tell me about her.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Michael answered. He sounded tired.
Using his foot, Peter pressed down on Michael’s head, pushing it against the floor. Michael let out a short scream and his arms tried to push free.
“I said, tell me about her.” Peter removed his foot.
Michael laid still.
“In this realm, the pain you feel is double, my friend. So tell me before I let the souls take you again.”
Michael laughed. It was short lived. “You’ll let the souls take me again, huh?”
Peter nodded. “You bet.”
“You know, it’s funny you should say that.”
Peter didn’t respond.
“Because the so called souls are the ones who let me free.” More raspy breathing followed this. “Only the dead can get in here and when you’re dead, everyone’s your enemy.”
The tingly fingers of fear returned to Peter. He closed his eyes in defeat, knowing full well his rein was over. The bastard had told
them.
“You’re here, so you’re dead like the rest of us. And you can be hurt.”
Peter opened his eyes in time to see Michael leap to his feet and throw a wild punch. It connected with Peter’s cheek and knocked him against the wall. A second punch to the ribs followed and Peter dropped to the floor.
He clutched his side and through teary eyes saw the souls slowly moving forward, all their faces clearly visible now. The white blurred shapes took a solid-like form. Each an individual.
Michael dropped to the floor next to him, totally exhausted.
“Shit,” Peter whispered as the group inched closer and closer.
Chapter Sixteen
Ami screamed a third time before Rachael and Josh reached her. She had collapsed on the floor in front of the toilet door marked ‘Ladies.’
Her hand was against the closed door. She was about to scream again when Rachael placed her hands gently on her shoulders.
“What happened?” Josh yelled at her side.
Ami pointed at the door.
“What’s in there?” Rachael brushed Ami’s hair back with her hand and wiped tears of fear from her face.
Ami pushed away from Rachael and on hands and knees, she moved as far from the toilet door as she could. Near the exit, her back hit the wall and she stopped.
Rachael looked at Josh and he smiled, then said, “Okay, I’ll go.” He motioned to her to get with Ami and be ready to run if danger showed itself. He waited until she was crouched by Ami’s side and then gingerly pushed open the door.
The smell hit him first and it instantly reminded him of Peter’s place, only much worse. The door made an unbelievably large sound when it closed behind him. Josh knew it was only his nerves making everything ten times louder.
He was in a very short entranceway, which opened on the left. There was a large wall mirror facing him and below it were three washbasins. He could see the entire restroom reflected in that mirror. There were five stalls in a row with closed doors and the rest of the area was empty.
