Protectors of the Veil

by Dawn Matthews

  “Officer Jones is on duty today. I can set it up so that a man robs a bank, then you come in and shoot from afar. It will look like the robber killed her,” he said.

  “Why don’t we just have the robber kill her?” Sam asked more out of curiosity than anything else.

  “He’s not a good shot and we need to make sure there are no errors. Watch that rookie, make sure you are ready to take the shot when that one fails,” he said.

  Shit, Sam thought, good people are hard to come by in the IVA. “I’ll make sure the job gets done, sir.”

  “I know you will and we’ll take care of the rest. The robber will be using a handgun, a Glock .38. You do a good job,” he said. He tipped his hat to her and put her back in the closet.

  Sam unlocked the door and made her way back to the office, thinking about what Atum said about the rookie recruit. She would try to make him take the kill, but she would also be prepared to do it herself. She was also not fond of Glocks. Her gun of choice was a Kimber Combat Commander.

  Sam picked up her phone and dialed, saying, “Anderson, tool up, then meet me in the garage in ten minutes…that is one-zero minutes. Do NOT make me wait for you.” She thumbed her phone off, and slid it into her pocket. On her way to the garage, she stopped by her office and changed into attire more suited for field operations. A black wool sweater, some broken-in OD green BDU trousers (olive drab military pants), an old baseball cap in the same color, and a pair of tan desert boots. She reached into her desk and pulled out her old Kimber .45 ACP pistol, along with two magazines. She slid one into the grip, and racked the slide back, chambering a round. Sam then slid the pistol into the waist of her pants at the small of her back. Before heading to the garage, she stopped by the armory to pick up Anderson’s gear, including the Glock .380 that was identical to the weapon the robber would be using. She glanced at the G-Shock on her right wrist. Nine minutes…Anderson was right inside the garage. She walked over to the machine that would arrange their transport and placed her finger on the fingerprint reader.

  “Good afternoon, Samantha.” The military side of the IVAs didn’t really need briefing. The machine pulled up a car immediately.

  Anderson hurried to join her. The general was not someone you kept waiting. If you kept in her good graces, she’d fight the Devil himself for you. If you disappointed her, you went missing. “Good afternoon, Samantha,” Anderson said.

  Sam nodded. The military operations side of IVA’s house was informal, on purpose. As they waited, a transport regulator pulled up a car immediately without another word between them. Sam got in the driver’s seat while Anderson rode shotgun.

  Sam started the car and turned to Anderson, “I’m only going to say this once, kid. This is your job, you’ll get all the glory. You pull this off by the numbers and your future here is bright. Cock it up and I’ll be disappointed. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “What do I have to do?” He asked.

  “When we arrive on sight, you will await my signal. When I give said signal, you will eliminate Officer Jones. Clear?” she said.

  “Eliminate?” he repeated. “You mean I have to kill her?”

  “No, Anderson, we’re taking her for coffee and doughnuts. Yes, fucking kill her! That’s why you were hired, son. It’s what we do here,” she said.

  Not another word was spoken, but Anderson looked a bit green. The car teleported onto the roof of the bank. The bank had a decorative shape on the front that obscured the car. Sam quickly exited the vehicle, signaling Anderson to follow. She opened the trunk and removed his pistol and ammo. She watched him as he cleared the pistol and checked it before loading it. His hands were shaking. Not a good sign.

  “Wait for the robber to come out. When he brings his weapon to bear, you will sight on Officer Jones, then you will shoot her in the head. Copy?” Sam said.

  Anderson nodded, visibly swallowing hard. It would not be a difficult shot for a trained individual, less than ten meters. Sam was more worried about the choice of caliber. A .380 was not prized for its accuracy at this range.

  The sound of a door being slammed open shook her from her train of thought. It was go time. She slapped Anderson on the shoulder. The robber came out and aimed, firing one shot. Anderson did nothing. He was frozen like a deer in headlights. Sam cursed under her breath and took the pistol from Anderson. Shifting to the left of the sign, she saw Jones fumbling with her own holster trying to draw her weapon. Good. Sam brought the Glock up in a modified Weaver hold, concentrating on the front sight. She fired two rounds in less than a second. The first round was high, grazing Jones’ scalp. The second round caught her just under the left eye, dropping her immediately. Jones’ fellow officers immediately opened fire on the robber, killing him. Sam hissed out a held breath, but all the loose ends were nicely tied up and the matrix was safely preserved.

  “Get in the fucking car, Anderson!” She threw the gear into the backseat. Anderson moved quickly to comply, as Sam entered the driver’s seat. When she started the car, they blinked into existence in the middle of a desert.

  Anderson looked around nervously, “Where are we? What are we doing here?”

  “Debrief. Come on, get out,” she said.

  They both got out of the car. Anderson was looking around, trying to see anyone or anything that would explain why they were there. When he turned around, Sam had her .45 aimed at him. She fired once, hitting him in the mouth. He dropped to the ground, twitching. Sam turned and took two steps towards the car, stopped, then turned back around. Anderson’s body, including all the blood and bits, were gone.

  “I need a drink,” Sam said aloud to no one.

  CHAPTER 2: GODS AND DEMONS

  Samantha made her way to the elevator, and the Muzak version of “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” started to play. The Muzak version just didn’t do the song justice. The elevator stopped a few times to let people in and out, and by the time she made it to the top floor, the song was nearly over. When the doors opened, Bertha was standing on the other side.

  “Hey Bertha, how’s it going?” Sam asked.

  “Busy, as always, how are you?” Bertha responded.

  “I got to waste a few people, so not bad. I do think we need to switch this Muzak shit out for some real music,” Sam said.

  “Oh yes, I fully support that,” Bertha said. “Write something up and I’ll make sure it gets done.”

  “Will do,” Sam said. “Later.”

  “Later,” Bertha said as she waved and stepped into the elevator. “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” was replaced by Devo’s “Whip It.” Again, Bertha found herself dancing and singing, even though the words to the song were missing. It always seemed like when the song was good, the elevators were in more of a hurry to get to where you were going. The elevator doors opened half way through the song. With a sigh, Bertha walked onto the fifth floor again. She yelled, “Banner!”

  Aiden Banner jumped from his chair and walked as fast as possible to Bertha. “Yes!” He really loved his job.

  “You’re up. We need someone disciplined for this one.” She handed him his case number and turned to catch the last bit of “Whip It” in the elevator.

  Aiden made his way to the garage, had his index fingerprint read, and punched in his case number. The car appeared, saying, “Good afternoon, Agent Banner.”

  “Good afternoon…car.” He got in the driver’s seat and shut the door.

  “Lev will be your partner today. He knows the case, so I will fill you in before he comes. He has more to tell you on the subject when he gets here. This is the story from the mind of Ray Spangler:”

  “THE EXORCIST HOUSE”

  I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic. Science was my religion. I always swore that there was no incident that couldn’t be explained by science with enough investigation. That was my motto, at least until I had an experience that I couldn’t explain. That’s how I ended up in this asylum.

  My friends were always trying to challenge me and my “reli
gion of science” they called it. We had gone to a few supposed haunted places, most of which were easily explained or nothing happened at all.

  One of my friends became so interested in the paranormal that he started his own paranormal investigation company. He had started bringing me along on some of his cases. I’ll admit that we had several encounters that I could not even begin to explain. These experiences definitely opened my mind to the possibilities. Eventually, I became a full-time employee, as my second job, of course. I provided any scientific information I could and helped weed out the hoaxes. It was our last case that landed me here.

  We had a huge opportunity to investigate the house where the true story that the movie The Exorcist was based on in Cottage City, Maryland. Everyone was pretty excited, including me. I had seen the movie, though I knew that was not exactly like the real story. Everyone in our group had seen the movie. It was probably contributed to everyone’s interest in the paranormal. This was like the holy grail of paranormal cases. We felt like we won the lottery. We were fools.

  Upon entering the house, every one of us felt the heaviness. There was a sense of foreboding. I had felt it before in some of our other cases, but this was more than I had ever felt. We all felt it, and knew it would be a very active case. We had no idea just how active it would be.

  We set up all our equipment, which I also helped with since I was science and technology guy. I had plugged in all the batteries for the equipment the day before and charged them for twenty-four hours. I always did this job to be sure there was no error when the batteries became drained by some unknown force. This is what happened. As soon as we were done setting up, every battery went dead, even in our phones. Luckily, I kept two sets of back-ups for just this kind of situation, but unfortunately, not for our phones.

  I went to the van and grabbed another set of batteries. When I walked back into the house, I said, “Okay, we know you’re here and you drained our batteries. We are here to document your existence for the world to see. We can help you get whatever message out to the world that you want, but we have to have our equipment charged.” I didn’t want to spend all night changing batteries. Usually, if they take energy from batteries, it’s to use it against us. I knew this, but I also knew that they usually really wanted the attention they got from us. They fed off our fear, and I think somehow they’re able to affect people that watch the footage we get. Once I got all the batteries replaced, we turned the lights off and began our investigation. Besides me, there was Joseph, Phil, and Rob walking around the house. We had three guys, Jake, Kurt, and Will, manning the main controls and watching all the cameras.

  My friend Joseph, asked, “Is anyone here with us?” And a vase flew off a table and crashed into the wall right beside him. He was very shaken and almost left. He ran out of the house and we talked him into staying. Since he would never get another chance to do this again, he mustered up the courage to stay. He was terrified and it smelled his fear. When he walked back into the house, we heard a maniacal cackle. It was chilling.

  With cameras set up all around the house, we just walked for a minute. We could hear phantom noises: footsteps, things dropping or being thrown, but nothing could be seen on the cameras…at first.

  We decided to go to the second floor, but before we made it to the stairs Kurt called us on the radio. “Hey guys, I just saw something in the second bedroom. Go check it out.”

  “Copy, Kurt,” Phil said. “We’re on our way.”

  Normally, we split up, but this time none of us mentioned splitting up. It was like we all silently agreed to stick together. We made our way to the second bedroom and we all took a deep breath before entering the room. We saw it immediately! It was a huge black shape. While there were no details that we could see, but in my mind I saw a man with huge horns. The image was so solid that I couldn’t even see anything else. I heard screaming and shook the image from my head. When I was able to see again, I saw Joseph on the floor, bleeding. There was a piece of glass sticking out of his head. A mirror had hit him in the head. The other three were staring at him in horror. Then his eyes opened. The figure was gone…or appeared gone.

  “Joseph? You probably shouldn’t move,” I said.

  “FUCK YOU,” he said in a demonic voice. At the same moment, some force slammed me against the wall. I must have blacked out a few seconds. When I regained consciousness, Phil was dead on the floor and Rob was being held in the air by Joseph. He snapped his neck and turned his black eyes to me. I could hear the other guys screaming at me to get the hell out of there on the radio.

  I looked back to Joseph, “Who are you?”

  “I am Pazuzu, of course,” he said. “I possessed the child, and the story still strikes fear into you monkeys. Many of you have forgotten. Go spread this story and everything you’ve experienced tonight. Perhaps I’ll let your three friends outside live, or maybe I’ll take them, too.”

  Joseph’s body went limp. He was clearly dead. I ran out to the others as fast as I could. Will was possessed. He had killed Jake and thrown his body with so much force, it landed on top of the house. Kurt and I ran as fast as we could to the van and sped away. Neither of us knew if Pazuzu would possess the other and kill us. He wanted us to tell everyone. That’s what we did, but he wasn’t done with us. He possessed me in my sleep and killed my entire family. I had been staying with my parents. I woke to his laughter in my head, covered in blood and a knife in my hand. The police were breaking the door down. That’s how I got here.

  END OF STORY

  Some of the orderlies that work with him are beginning to believe him. There is one doctor that is also questioning the validity of his story and starting to think it’s more than insanity.

  “Good day, gentlemen.”

  “Let us go,” Lev said.

  Aiden nearly jumped out of his skin, “Why do you do that to me? You pop in without a sound or any indication that you’re here and just start talking.” He grabbed his chest.

  “I did not mean to startle you, Aiden,” Lev said matter-of-factly.

  “Okay, now that I know you’re here and my heart is beating again, why would Set even bother with a bunch of paranormal investigators.?” Aiden said.

  “He wouldn’t. The one that showed up was not Pazuzu, who is also Set. He doesn’t show up to random people. You must be worthy for any part of him to make an appearance. It was the other side trying to scare people. The one called Ray had potential. Had he searched for the Elder Gods, he could have succeeded. The other ones wanted to scare him away from ever finding the Elder Gods. Thus, they succeeded,” Lev explained.

  They were sitting in the parking lot of the asylum, and Aiden wasn’t even sure how long they had been there. “You think it was Satan?” Aiden asked.

  “No, he isn’t that high up. While his name is known, he is not even one of the children of the Elder Gods. Just one of Satan’s lower demons,” Lev said. “Are you ready?”

  Aiden asked. “Aren’t there many that don’t believe in the Ancient Ones that belong to them? One of you told me this before.”

  “This is true, but they follow the philosophy of the Ancient Ones. Religions, for the most part, are a mix of both sides. Even occult practitioners are both sides. There are those that tend to align with the Elder Gods and those that go to the other side. This is true everywhere,” Lev said. “The Elder Gods are about free will, love, passion, respect, among other things. Don’t get me wrong; you go against them and they will flay the flesh from your bones and make you suffer insurmountable pain before obliterating you. If you are aligned with them, then they will do everything to help you. It’s not so easy to fall in line with them for humans. You constantly have the two sides pulling you. The others are good at making their side look like love, passion, respect, and free will, but it is a scam.”

  “How do you mean?” Aiden asked in confusion.

  “Take the current leftist movement, social justice and globalism. On the surface it looks like they are all about love, p
assion, respect, and free will. However, if you look deeper, you will see that it is a lie. They are trying to outlaw free speech, because everything is offensive. They are trying to take guns away, blaming them for violence. They will slowly chip away at all of your rights until you have none left, and the government will be free to control every aspect of your life. It’s speeding up now. People are beginning to see what is happening, this is threatening their hold. It’s not just in this country, but around the world,” Lev said.

  “How can religion be important if it’s not even all true?” Aiden asked.

  “It is both true and not true. You are most familiar with Christianity, so I will use that as an example. There is a Christ and an Anti-Christ. People think the Anti-Christ is Satan, but they are wrong. There is a Satan and a Lucifer. People think they are the same, but they are wrong. There are always two sides, it’s just not the two sides people think,” Lev said.

  “If the Anti-Christ isn’t Satan, then who is he?” Aiden asked.

  “It’s complicated. Let’s just say he’s an infection. You know we can’t tell you everything, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. Everything is really just part of the One, the Self-Created One. Belief in nothing else is sort of a denial of oneself,” he said.

  “I guess that makes sense. I suppose my main concern is that I’m not going to make it,” Aiden said.

  “I can’t tell you that. I can tell you this existence will split into four pieces, two belonging to Chaos and two belonging to Order. One dimension of Chaos will be for the Gods, or the Great Old Ones (including the Self-Created One, Dawn, and her husband, Chris, their children and families) and the other will be for other creatures of Chaos, including the humans that are now aligning with them; the same for Order,” Lev said. “Did that help?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “It helped, somewhat. Are you saying atheists can’t be on the side of the Ancient Ones?” Aiden asked.

  “Yes and if you have nothing of the Ancient Ones, you’re doomed. If you look at the SJWs, nearly all of them are atheists. None of them take responsibility for their actions. If one does not have enough Chaos, they will be obliterated,” Lev explained.