Dark Exodus

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  A tear escaped one eye, but she quickly wiped it away as if she didn’t want him to see her emotion. “Daisy told me . . . showed me what he did.”

  John remained silent, allowing her time to finish her story, but she’d eaten more than half of the chocolate lava cake before she finally continued.

  “He touched them,” she said, watching him intensely as he brought the steaming coffee to his mouth, blowing on it before he took a sip.

  “Touched them?”

  Nicole nodded, putting another huge biteful on her spoon, bringing it to her mouth.

  “He petted them, but as he did, he was taking something from them. . . the more he touched, the more he took until . . .”

  “A psychic vampire,” John said.

  “Get the fuck out,” she said, looking at him surprised. “Now vampires are real?”

  “Not the bloodsucking kind,” he explained. “These feed off the life energies of the living . . . the life force.”

  She shook her head, doubling down on her dessert. “This shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

  “And more dangerous,” he told her.

  “Yeah, what’s your point?”

  “That you might not want to be involved any further,” John told her. “Fritz is a dangerous character, maybe even more dangerous now that the whole psychic-vampire thing is in the equation.”

  “I’ve been tracking this guy for a very long time,” Nicole said, scraping at the crumbs and chocolate sauce on her plate. “In fact, I’d been watching the house for a few days when I saw you sneaking around it.

  “And maybe it’s time for you to stop all this.” John finished his coffee, waving off the eager waiter trying to give him more.

  “And what?” she asked. “Let a professional take over? A real live paranormal investigator?” She did the air-quote thing, and John just rolled his eyes.

  “It’s got nothing to do with that,” he said. The waiter dropped off the bill, and John snatched it up. They’d eaten enough for four. “I just don’t want to see anybody else get hurt.”

  She nodded slowly, and he began to think that he might’ve gotten through to her, which was good. If Fritz was as dangerous as he was starting to suspect, nobody without an intense background in the supernatural should be allowed near him.

  “So, what’s next?” she asked him.

  He glanced back to his coat and the jar beneath. “I take this back with me to Massachusetts, and I see if I can extract anything useful.”

  “Harvard Yard?” she teased, putting on a thick Boston accent.

  “Marblehead actually,” he said, starting to get out of the booth.

  “Thanks for the chow,” she told him, gathering up her coat and zipping her hoodie.

  “My pleasure,” John said. “Can I drop you off anywhere?”

  “Naw, I’m good,” she said, putting on her overly bulky military-style coat.

  “I’m going to pay this,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  • • •

  Nicole stood there with a full belly, figuring out what she was going to do.

  Adjusting the collar of her jacket, she turned around to see the family with the sad little boy packing up and getting ready to leave.

  The dog was still at the boy’s side, tail wagging as he looked up at him, as much to say, Hey, I’m down here. I love you.

  Looking at the table, she saw that he hadn’t eaten much of the hot dog and looked as though he was about to start crying again. The family walked toward where she was standing, and she watched them.

  The little boy looked in her direction briefly, his eyes red and watery, and she felt her heart ache painfully.

  “Hey, you,” she said, and he continued to walk, looking over his shoulder, unsure if she was talking to him.

  “Yeah, you,” she said. “C’mere.” She motioned him over.

  His parents hadn’t heard her, going to the counter to pay their bill. He tentatively came toward her. Nicole could see the dog closely by his side.

  “Did somebody you love very much leave you?” she asked him.

  His eyes immediately began to tear as he nodded vigorously.

  “Well, I’ve got a message for you,” she told him, squatting to be at his level. Nicole then reached out, petting the spirit of the mutt that looked as though he might’ve been part Corgi, and part twenty other kinds of little dog. He was adorable.

  She ran her fingers through his ghostly body, experiencing a wave of love so intense that it made her gasp.

  Brody. The dog’s name was Brody.

  “Brody says he doesn’t want you to be sad that he’s gone,” she said, whispering in the little boy’s ear. “He wants you to know that he isn’t really gone.”

  She’d lent Brody some of her strength, some of her power, and the dog leaned its pointy snout into the boy’s hand and licked his fingers.

  The boy gasped as he felt his dog’s loving affections, his eyes bulging, as a smile erupted across his face.

  “He’s right here with you as long as you need him. Okay?”

  She smiled at him then, and he smiled back at her.

  The boy’s parents called to him from the checkout counter, and he started back to them, turning around to give her another smile and a wave.

  Brody faithfully by his side.

  • • •

  John had finished paying the bill and threw a few bucks onto the table for the tip.

  “Everything all right?” he asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Everything’s great.”

  She started toward the exit without saying another world. He had seen her talking to the boy and guessed what she had done. Yeah, for right this minute, things were pretty great, he thought, following Nicole out.

  • • •

  The thing wearing the skin of Caroline Rayland needed to know things.

  Certainly, it had acquired some knowledge as it had lain dormant during her lifetime, grafted to her soul, but there were still so many things that it did not know.

  And it knew just the place to obtain this knowledge.

  It rose from the woman’s deathbed and strolled from her room. It was very early morning, and the halls of the convalescent home were empty of bodies.

  The demon enjoyed the permanent control it now had over the physical shape it wore, the times that it manipulated Caroline Rayland’s actions few and far between.

  It had been a long time coming, and it was going to be sure to enjoy each and every moment that followed as it undertook its mission.

  The room that it was looking for was down below, in the basement of the old, run-down structure. Finding the doors to the stairs, it descended the two flights, to the place where all the information it would need could be found.

  Opening the door onto the basement level, the demon’s newly awakened olfactory senses smelled the scent in the air at once. Its facial muscles twitched into something that humanity would perhaps call a smile, or maybe a grimace of extreme agony.

  It was, in fact, an expression of pleasure, for now it knew that its next endeavor was not going to be as difficult as it had feared.

  The demon knew of mankind’s technology, of its computers and the Internet. The woman whose body it now owned had some basic knowledge of these technologies, but the demon feared that this was not enough to obtain what was required for its mission.

  It was going to have try on its own.

  Or was it?

  The demon walked down the short corridor, the smell of burning tobacco much stronger the closer it got to the room that it sought.

  The computer room.

  The demon peered around the doorframe to see a lone figure sitting in a chair in front of a glowing computer monitor, a cloud of cigarette smoking roiling above her head.

  The woma
n was playing a game of solitaire. The computer was winning.

  “Shit,” the old woman growled, clicking the mouse to turn over her next card.

  The demon moved into the doorway, the shuffling sound of her callused, bare feet making just enough noise to alert the old woman, who spun around in her chair to look.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed again, stamping out her cigarette on the bottom of the computer desk. “I know I’m not supposed to be smokin’ in the building, but since nobody is up . . .”

  The demon came into the computer room farther.

  “You’re Caroline, right? From the first floor?” the old lady asked. “You feelin’ better? I heard you were pretty sick.”

  The demon hadn’t attempted speech since obtaining possession and felt that this was as good a time as any.

  “I’m fine,” the demon said, its voice dry and sounding like a croak.

  “Good,” the old lady said. “Nice to hear. Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come down here and play a few hands of solitaire. Do you play?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, waste of time really, but when you get to be our age, what else is there to do? Only so many infomercials you can watch before you start climbing the walls.”

  The demon was now standing directly behind her chair, eyeing the computer screen and keyboard on the desk before her. All very intimidating.

  “Can you work this?” the demon asked her.

  “What? The computer?”

  “Yes,” it answered.

  “Yeah, I can do the basics. Mostly play the games, though.”

  “The . . . Internet?”

  “Yeah, I can do the Internet. Use it to talk to my grandkids and . . .”

  The demon drove the five fingers of its left hand into the back of the woman’s head, breaking through the skin and into the base of her skull. It wriggled its fingers inside the woman’s head, the tips touching the brain stem and almost reaching the brain itself.

  It pushed its hand a little bit more, feeling the ends of its four fingers sinking into the warmth of the old woman’s brain matter.

  “Ahhhh,” the demon said, feeling what it was searching for, tickling its fingertips.

  It began to manipulate the woman, using the knowledge inside her brain as its own. It moved its fingers around inside the woman’s brain, and she began to twitch, her arms to flail. It took but a moment to gain control, her hands flopping onto the keyboard.

  The demon saw how it was done, what would be needed to seek out the information that it felt it would need, moving the old woman’s hand to grip the mouse at her right, clicking onto the search engine, then onto the Internet.

  “Oh yes,” the demon grumbled with pleasure, fingers not its own moving with increasing speed across the keyboard, a world of knowledge opening up to it.

  And the information began to flow.

  • • •

  Elijah had had this nightmare before.

  Naked, totally exposed, on a cracked and barren plain, a hellish landscape where the sky is filled with fire, roiling black smoke, and lightning that cuts the air like a surgeon’s scalpel.

  Sounds of screaming replace the voice of the oncoming storm, and he finds himself afraid.

  Off in the distance, he can see them coming, their movements toward him kicking up clouds of thick, choking dust, and dirt.

  Elijah wants to run, but his bare feet are frozen to the bleached and lifeless ground, and the horde grows ever so much closer. He can make them out at this point, see their terrible shapes as they come at him. Such a variety of horrors that gibber, and jabber, shriek and wail as they run, crawl, slither, and bound across the desert of Hell.

  For that is where he is, Elijah has no doubt. He is in Hell, and the denizens are coming for him.

  He considers fleeing again, but as before, he just doesn’t think it would matter. They are a wall of terror, a tidal wave of loathsome savagery that stretches miles on either side. Many are holding weapons, swords and knives, axes and clubs. He wonders which will take his life, will he be stabbed or slashed, or perhaps bludgeoned to death.

  Or could he even be crushed beneath the inexorable stampede.

  Elijah doesn’t remember.

  He knows that he should fight—that he can fight—but the ancient words are so very hard to find here. It is as if this place, this Hell, were preventing his thoughts from jelling, from coming together to form the proper incantations and spells that could harm them.

  They were so much closer now.

  The ground vibrates beneath the fall of their terrible feet, their choking stink now carried on the wind. It is the smell of death, of despair and sadness.

  It is the smell of the end.

  But whose?

  The thought confuses him as he stands there, facing his inevitable fate. How could there be any question as to who was dying this day—this very moment?

  He wants to say a prayer as he is about to die, to pave the way if possible to the afterlife and an eternity with his Lord and savior.

  But the words will not come.

  He cannot remember the prayers, and again he curses this hellish place and instead hopes that the Lord of Lords is somehow with him this moment and knows how faithful he has been.

  How he had always served the light of Heaven.

  The demons of Hell are upon him, and there isn’t even a moment to prepare. It’s so much like life, he thinks as he braces for the coming of pain and agony; you always believe that you’ll have the time to be ready for what is thrown at you . . . for what is coming for you.

  But it’s always there far quicker than you realize. You’re never really ready for it when it arrives.

  He wants to close his eyes. Does one really want to see the thing that ends it all, that takes away the precious gift bestowed upon each and every one of the Lord God’s creatures at that moment of conception?

  Elijah does, trying to look in the faces of each and every one of Hell’s denizens as they come at him.

  I am ready, he thinks, braced for his end.

  But it doesn’t come.

  The horrors are there, he can smell their stink, taste their foulness mixed with the dust of Hell’s brutal landscape upon his tongue. They do not fall upon him, slashing with their blood-encrusted knives and swords. They do not beat him with their clubs fashioned from the bones of previous victims. They do not bite, or claw, or crush or trample.

  They avoid.

  Moving around him as if he were a rock in the center of a flowing stream.

  He attempts to scream, to draw attention to himself, perhaps even reaching out to grab hold of one of the passing abominations.

  And then it dawns on him. They are not running toward him at all. His arrogance has blinded him to the reality of the moment.

  Here he was, thinking that they were drawn to him, to his holiness and purity, wanting to crush and destroy a beacon of goodness in this godforsaken place.

  But that wasn’t it at all.

  Perhaps they noticed him standing there, caught a whiff of this man of God, standing naked in the gardens of Hell, but he was the least of their concerns.

  For they were not coming for him at all.

  They were running away from something.

  Elijah stands unmarred, covered in a fine coating of dust kicked up by their retreat. He finds himself turning, to watch them as they leave, running away to the farthest reaches of Hell to be away from . . .

  What?

  Elijah is perplexed. What could possibly drive the hordes of Hell to flee in such a way?

  Slowly, he begins to turn, to look away from the receding legions and turn his attention whence they’d come.

  To what lay ahead.

  There is only darkness.

  And in that darkness, Elijah thinks he catches a glimpse of
something . . .

  What could be so terrifying that it can scare pure evil? he wonders as he stares into the wall of oblivion moving across the hellish desert toward him.

  What could be more frightening than Hell?

  And then he glimpses the answer in the void before him. The answer is—nothing.

  Nothing.

  5

  The demon’s hunger for information was satiated, but now it had to feed to keep its new body strong.

  It was still early morning as it wandered the halls of the nursing home, slipping into sleeping residents’ rooms and helping itself to sustenance. Their old bodies were like vine-ripened fruit, ready to be plucked. One by one, the demon climbed into their beds and, fastening its mouth to theirs, sucked away their life force.

  Leathery skin and bone were all that remained when it was finished.

  Leaving the room of an old priest named McDevin, a pedophile with a long, secret history of child abuse, whose life force was particularly vile, and quite delicious, the demon encountered its first obstacle.

  “Caroline?” the nurse asked, coming around the corner from the nurses’ station at the back of the floor. The demon hadn’t a chance to feed at that trough yet.

  The demon just stared, considering how it should act and deciding to let its food come to it.

  “What are you doing out of bed, girl?” the nurse asked calmly, crossing the hall to gently take her arm. “How are you even up? Are you feeling okay?”

  The demon smiled, happy that this would be easy. It swung the nurse into the room behind them, the heavyset woman flying across the room to land atop the bed where the pedophile priest once slept.

  The nurse was stunned at first, flailing around, realizing that she was lying atop the old priest’s desiccated remains.

  The demon could see that she was about to scream and sprang across the room with a leap that would have made an Olympic athlete weep with envy. It landed astride the woman and firmly covered her mouth with its own, stifling her screams. The nurse thrashed beneath the demon, but her struggles were short-lived.