The Basement

by Tom Clarke

  I started to laugh, thinking about the naked woman that I had just shoved into the parking lot of the strip club. There was some sort of irony there, had to be. At least she and the others that Nico took out the back door were going to be safe.

  As I laughed a group of my attackers started moving towards me again, I looked at them as best I could with one eye swollen shut and the other with blood in it.

  I spit a mouth full of blood and raised the handgun, as best as I could. I would expend the last three rounds and then use it as a blunt instrument from there. Suddenly they stopped, they just stood there, hunched forward at the shoulder, snarling like a pack of animals, and staring at me there on the floor.

  I heard Stevie’s booming voice and then saw them start to move. Stevie stepped to the front of the pack, “Jimmy, look at you. Looks like it hurts, does it hurt?” Stevie said as he walked closer to me.

  I looked up and was able to speak as I started spitting blood, “Stevie, brother, are you in there?” I said.

  Stevie started laughing, “Jimmy, you, all of you” he said pointing around the room, “you are nothing but cattle to us….food. Your friend Steve, he was, shall we say, dinner with a purpose.”

  I started to go limp, I just couldn’t hold the handgun up anymore. I brought it to my side, my breathing started to become labored as I tried to sit up.

  Every breath got a little bit harder to complete. The blood from my knife wound was pooling around me, I was in bad shape.

  As Stevie got closer to me, I heard the other voice, booming with an almost echoing effect, saying something in Egyptian. Stevie stopped and moved aside, the second figure then walked forward. I had a hard time focusing but all I was able to see was a dark, human shaped mass.

  As I looked up at the second figure I started to see his eyes come into focus, they were dark grey, then he smiled and I could see teeth. Not the teeth of a person, but the teeth of an animal. Then he spoke, “Hello again Jimmy.”

  That voice! Despite the pain I was in I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine and through my soul as I recognized it. It was the voice from my childhood nightmares, “Why Jimmy, so nice that you remember me….I remember you too.”

  I didn’t say a word, I just looked at the figure that was taking shape in front of me.

  “Jim” Stevie said, “you have been a lot of trouble for us for some time now, longer than you know.”

  With my breathing now becoming shallow and labored, blood running down my face, and pain welling up across my body I turned and looked at Stevie….and smiled a crooked smile.

  Stevie stepped closer, kneeling down next to me, “He thought of you guys you know” Stevie said, “You, Keith, the rest of your crew. Steven did, as I consumed his soul. You are food Jim, we were created first, we predate your civilization and we will be here when you are long gone.”

  The second figure stepped closer and knelt down in front facing me, “You don’t have to fear us Jimmy” he said in an almost hissing sounding voice. “You showed yourself to be strong as a child when first we met, even now, beaten defeated, you are still strong.” “You need only ask me Jim, I will make your pain go away. You are in so much pain, I can see it, I can feel it, please Jimmy let me help you!”

  As I looked into the dark grey eyes of the thing in front of me I started to think about all the times that my wife had tried, in vain, to get me to go to church with her. I remember the look she would have on her face when she would come home from Sunday service, or a church function, she looked, happy.

  I looked up and muttered, “How about a little help?”

  “Jim, please, God? He cannot help you!” the demon hissed at me in an aggressive voice. “You think he loves you, he doesn’t give a shit about you! Look around Jim” the figure said as it stood up.

  “Look around, is God here offering to take all of your pain away? God doesn’t want you in his house Jim, look at you!” My field of vision started to collapse, all I could see was those grey eyes and teeth right in front of my face, so much pain I started to think.

  I reached down and touched the knife wound to my side, then the wounds to my head and face that were leaking blood into my one eye that was not swelled shut….so much pain.

  “I can make it all go away, like it never happened” the demon said with a sense of enthusiasm in his voice.

  I looked up as best as I could, smiled, and spit a mouth full of blood onto the floor, “FUCK You! It’s only pain.”

  Stevie bent down and shoved his finger into the knife wound to my side causing me to grind my teeth and growl in pain, nearly passing out. “It’s only pain huh? I hope you enjoy it because we are going to keep you in it for a very long time” Stevie said.

  “Jim” the creature in front of me said, “You don’t need to suffer! Ask me and I will make the pain go away, you will be like new, and the power….Jim I will give you power like you have never known!” Power? I thought, that must be how they ensnared King, all they had to do was mention power and that little worm came running to them as fast as he could.

  I looked up and stared right into the grey eyes of my tormentor, suddenly it was as if I was looking into the darkness. The pain in my body was starting to numb, the darkness was enveloping me like a blanket on a cold night. All I could see were those grey, dead eyes and the teeth, smiling at me, beckoning me to come to them. All I had to do was ask.

  He spoke to me again, “Come on Jimmy, I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, come home….just reach out and take my hand.”

  I remember the fear that I felt as a child, but along with that fear I also remembered thinking how great it would be to be able to instill that kind of fear into others. Power, fear, pain, all the ideas were colliding within me.

  Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and I heard Nico’s voice, “You may not believe it Jim, but God is with you.” I looked into the grey eyes staring at me, beckoning me from the darkness, I grit my teeth and stared right back.

  “Pain” I muttered, “Yes Jimmy, pain” the voice replied with a hiss. I looked up at the monster in front of me, smiled, and said, “I gladly take the pain so others don’t have to!”

  With the last burst of power in my body I reached out and grabbed Stevie by the hair with my left hand, I put the handgun I had to the side of his head and pulled the trigger, killing Stevie’s body instantly. I then leveled the front post of the gun on the teeth of the monster that was now roaring at me, and I fired the remaining two rounds of ammunition.

  I dropped the handgun and started to fight to my knees, I grabbed the knife I had and from a kneeling position with my left hand on the floor, I prepared to make one last stand.

  That’s when I heard it, the best sound I had ever heard, the sound of salvation, the sound of empowerment, the sound of my fellow Officers who had come in the back door and through the kitchen yelling POLICE, then the sound and bright light of a flash-bang.

  The last words I heard before my world went black was Keith yelling, “Jimmy, he’s over here….Jimmy, I got you brother” then darkness. My pain was gone, the darkness once again closed in around me like a warm blanket. I looked into the darkness and could still see those eyes and teeth, now in the form of a large wolf, smiling, and saying “Soon, Jimmy….soon.” Then nothing, the darkness was all that was there and I collapsed onto the floor next to my friend.

  13. Retirement

  I awoke three days later, slowing crawling my way out of the darkness to the sound of my wife’s voice, “Jim, can you hear me?”

  I opened my eyes as best I could and there sitting next to me was Shelly, smiling, “Welcome back” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

  I looked up and standing in the back of the room was Rick and Keith. As I reached up and touched my wife’s face I looked at Keith as asked, “Darrel?”

  “He caught one while he was pulling me out of the SUV crash” Keith replied. “He’s going to be okay though, in fact he’s two rooms down the hall from you pissing off all the nur
ses.”

  I grabbed Keith’s wrist, smiled and said thank you. “How did you guys find me?” I asked.

  “911 hang-up” Rick said. “First Officers on scene saw all the bikes, called for backup, and then bumped into a bunch of half-naked women and a very agitated Swedish guy.”

  “Is he okay?” I asked. “Yeah, he’s fine, and so are the women you guys saved.”

  Rick looked at Shelly and Keith and said, “I hate to ask this but I need a few moments alone with Jim.” Shelly smiled, took a very deep breath, and said, “We’ll be right outside.” She and Keith waked out and shut the door behind them.

  Rick looked at me and said, “Jim, two days ago the bodies of FBI Agent John Dudson and DSS Agent Mike Monroe were found in the port city of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Sea. Their heads had been chopped off.”

  I looked at Rick, not knowing what to say. He continued, “Apparently, they had been on leave, no one is really sure what they were doing there, or how they even got there. The really strange thing is that apparently Dudson showed up at the ATF office the other day, said he was looking for Steve Oso.”

  I started to speak but Rick held up his hand, “Jim, when we went into Rocket’s there were dead people all over that shithole. Human heads arranged on the floor, some weird torture chambers in the basement, some serious shit! We found several members of the LW’s, some we knew and some we didn’t, a lot of prospects, all of them dead. We hustled over to their clubhouse to seize it for a search warrant only to find it burning to the ground. One of the first arriving Officers swears he saw a very large dog running into the woods.”

  “Rick” I asked, “at Rocket’s, did they find any large stones with a circular pattern on them?” Rick looked at me and replied, “No, we did however find Steve Oso, shot once in the head.”

  Rick walked over and sat down next to my bed, “Jim, they are calling this a meth fueled Satanic cult massacre. Now before you say anything I want you to know that I had a very long and exhausting meeting with some nice folks from the State Department, your friend Nico, and a high-ranking member of the Vatican, if you believe that.”

  I looked at Rick and said, “Rick, I’m sorry. I should have come to you right from the start.”

  Rick looked at me, smiled, and replied, “Jimmy, after talking to those mouth breathers at the State Department and the church, I am nothing but thankful you did not! Now get better so you can get back to work, you have one hell of an investigative report to write.”

  “Rick” I said as he started to walk out of my hospital room.

  “Yeah Jim.”

  “As of today, I’m officially retired. The only thing you’re going to see from me is how fast I can clean out my desk.” Rick smiled as he opened the door to call Shelly and Keith back in, “I will have the paperwork waiting for you.”

  It was a week later when they released me from the hospital. I was still very sore, had several stitches from knife wounds, and was bandaged up. After helping me into the passenger seat of our car to drive me home Shelly handed me a manila envelope.

  “Keith wanted me to give you this” she said. I opened the envelope and inside there was a copy of our local newspaper with the headline that read ‘Satanic Cult Kidnaps and Tortures Narcotics Agent.’ Stuffed inside the newspaper were some pictures of 1414 Hollow Crest….burning to the ground.

  “So now that your retired what are you going to do to fill your days?” Shelly asked as she started to pull out of the hospital parking lot.

  I smiled to myself as I put the pictures back into the envelope, “I thought I would start with us having a coffee on the back deck.”

  THE END