“Fuck you!” Charlene screamed with all the savagery her tortured spirit was able to muster. If she couldn’t hurt him, or these fiendish creatures, she was not going to play into their twisted plans. She turned the pointed end of the splinter towards her throat. Then with all her might she jabbed it straight into her throat, hitting her mark. She even twisted the splinter around to ensure she hit the proper arteries. Blood gurgles up from her mouth and sprayed out like a hose from her self-inflicted wound.
“Not so fucking fast, you bitch!” Dennis roared down at her.
Just as consciousness was about to leave her a huge wad of black ooze splattered onto her torn throat. The Bradley thing had spit the same slime that had healed her nearly severed leg, this time upon her neck wound. It began to close up immediately, the splinter was pushed from the place it had been rammed into and fell to the ground by her legs.
Charlene tried to scream in protest, but the splinter had shredded her vocal chords, this black ooze obviously only cared to heal her just enough to keep her alive so they could finish their plans.
Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. The throat was not the right place, while her death would have come in seconds, she needed something more instant, so that these horrible creatures would not have time to heal her wounds before the life left her body. She gripped the splinter once more. Her flesh was tearing apart around her torso and more of that strange, blue light was seeping out from the wounds. She felt as though she were burning alive from the inside out, she was sure that she only had seconds before there was no more hope.
She jabbed the splinter as hard as she could into her already sliced eye ball, she was attempting to reach the brain, causing an instant kill.
She was just short of her mark, the splinter jutted from her eye socket as blood gushed from the wound. The creatures seemed to go even crazier and now hissed and squealed maniacally while they circled her. Tentacles sprung up from the ground and wrapped around her arms, pinning them forcefully behind her, leaving her unable to grab the splinter that stuck from her eye socket and make a second attempt. The creatures made no attempt to heal this grotesque, albeit non-lethal wound. They were visibly relishing in the additional suffering she had inflicted upon herself in her desperation to end her pain before they could have their way.
Bur Charlene did not need her hands, she put every last ounce of her will into action and arched her back behind her as far as she possibly could. She let out the most primal of battle cries, the large splinter of wood now pointing from her head up into the clear night sky. She then flung herself forward with a savage quickness. She rammed her head into the dry ground with all her might, which in turn shoved the splinter completely in through the eye socket and into her brain. The very last thing Charlene heard was the wood scraping against the bone of her eye socket, then it was over. Her pain ended and death was finally able to wrap its merciful arms around her.
~
Dennis looked down at Charlene’s corpse with disbelief. “No,” he whispered, “No, you were supposed to be mine. You were the Gateway.”
Dennis knelt down and felt for a pulse on her neck but found nothing. All life was now gone from Charlene’s body, and Dennis’ masters would not be able to make their grand entrance through a corpse. If it were that easy then he would not have gone through all this trouble of terrorizing, torturing, and violating her.
Dennis was extremely disappointed, but not quite devastated. He knew from his longtime relationship with his mighty Lord that another vessel for the final gateway could be found, but he had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for his master just so that The Lord would allow him to take Charlene for the task.
Dennis’ father, Stephen Henderson, had explained to him many years ago, when Dennis was just a young boy on his tenth birthday, how the Great One lived up in the dead patch of grass up on the ridge that overlooked the valley of their family ranch. The Great One was the name Dennis’ father had used, and while it was suiting, the fact was that it had no actual name and had Dennis always thought that “The Great One” was rather unoriginal and terribly cheesy sounding. Now, it preferred to be called God, or Lord, and Dennis found this much more fitting.
This change in preferred identity seemed to happen right around the same time Jenny Wilkerson had gotten sick from emphysema; about four years or so back it was. Dennis was aware that The Great One could hear her desperate prayers for her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to watch over her poor Clarence after she was taken to Heaven. It heard her beg her God to take her darling Clarence under his wing after she passed since she knew how scared and lonely he was going to be without her. The Great One could hear all the cries of anguish and sorrow from around the area of The Bear Creek Ranch and a short distance beyond, and while Jenny’s God seemed unwilling to answer her prayers, it was more than willing.
So from then on The Great One became God, although it only chose to communicate back to a select chosen few. Dennis learned on his tenth birthday that once per generation a prophet of the Great One would hear its mighty call, and that call demanded sacrifices as testament to the prophet’s faith.
Dennis could still remember the strange feeling of excitement he had when his father, Rick, had explained this darkest of secrets to him that day as he led him up the steep hillside and all the way up to that dead patch atop the giant rocky, ridge. He remembered how, even though as a ten year old he should have been completely terrified, he felt absolutely no fear, and never would at any moment from then on for the rest of his life. This was the first gift of the Great One, and when they reached the top of the ridge, Dennis saw that the sacrifice he was meant to pay tribute with in return for this first gift was already prepared.
A couple hours earlier, Dennis had been brought to tears when he learned from his father that his best friend in the entire world, Jacob Giddens, was not going to be able to make it to the party. He was not given an explanation besides that Jacob’s parents had decided to take him off on a random vacation.
But there was young Jacob Giddens, who was himself just a month shy of his own tenth birthday, tied to a post that was sticking straight up from the very center of the dead patch of ground. He was balling, screaming for help as soon as he saw them walk over the ridge and towards him. His parents had obviously not taken him anywhere. In fact, Dennis’ father told him as he handed him a large hunting knife, Jacob’s parents had each taken a shot gun blast to the face as they slept last night before Rick moved on to the children’s room where Jacob and his twelve year old sister, Emily shared bunk beds. Both children were taken, but Stephen explained to the birthday boy how the girl had already been used up last night so that his father could satiate his own appetites and make his own gift to the Great One.
Dennis from that moment on knew anything that the Great One desired him to know. At that moment on his tenth birthday he gripped the large knife and cut into his squealing friend’s belly, the slicing made young Jacob’s cries for help turn into a high pitched scream of pure pain and terror. Dennis became aware at that moment that the Great One had been here since a time long before man had even crawled out of the trees and lost his tail, long before even the dinosaurs themselves had roamed this planet. And he knew that it was stuck with only one small part of itself in this realm, for it had been a traveler of universes and dimensions since time immemorial, but as it tried to force its way into our world it had met the resistance of the very soul of the Earth, a strange power driven by the ever-reaching energy of nature and life on this planet, it even drew this power from the vast expanses of the cosmos far beyond the sky above. There was something about the forces in this universe that kept it imprisoned right in the spot of earth it had tried to force its way through in its attempted invasion.
So for countless ages it was trapped right there, only able to influence those who came within its shallow reach, and until humans arrived, this was nearly impossible. The animals and plants here held a special power that the Great One was unable to conqu
er, however, when humans came with all their hate and pain and war and sadism, the Great One was finally able to inch its way into our world. It found that so much of these humans’ ways went counter to the forces and directions of energy that all other living things here moved through existence with a curse of their highly evolved brains. This curse brought with it the type of motivations that became the gateways through which the Great One would be able to invade, and eventually annihilate, these filthy monkeys that called themselves humans along with all the bothersome forces of nature that had imprisoned it. Then as the centuries rode by, it was delighted to see that humans were already doing half the work on their own! The more they grew, the more the forces within the Earth that prevented its entrance weakened as the humans killed off their own planet beneath their very own feet.
With that, the Great One found his means to influence these humans throughout the ages by soaking up every last sweet drop of their pain and rage. It fed off their sorrow and hate and corruption, slowly building its strength until the grand day of the Final Gateway. The Final Gateway would be brought into this world through the terrible suffering of one final sacrifice, and ten year old Dennis Henderson knew that when that day finally came he would take his place by his new master’s side as the new Messiah of Suffering. For it was through the most heinous torment and suffering that the Great One gained its strength and through this suffering it would be brought through the Final Gateway, and one day that gateway would bring forth the Grand Entrance.
Dennis could still remember the sounds and smells that came from his best friend, Jacob as he sliced his belly open and began to reach in and slowly pull the boys bowels out, wrapping the intestines around his arm, elbow to wrist like his Dad had taught him to wrap up the garden hose after watering the plants in the orchard.
The ground below Jacob began to bubbling up like boiling tar as more and more blood gushed from his disemboweled abdomen. The pole began to sink down into the bubbling tar-like soil, Jacob was still screaming in agony as he disappeared into the ground, Dennis tossed the large coil of intestines in after him and began licking all the blood from his small hands.
That was only the first of many tributes paid to the Great One. Over the years Dennis would lure many a child up to the ridge, and when he became older he would often pick up prostitutes, both male and female, from truck stops along the dusty Eastern Washington highways or sometimes from over the mountains on the streets of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Once he had them in his truck all it took was a stun gun and some duct tape and he was on his way back to the family ranch. And so he would continue until the day the Great One would call him for the night of the Final Gateway. When that call came to him all these years later, he was happy that the Great One now had become God. The name “Great One” was simply a title that Dennis’ father, and his Grandfather, Rick, before him, had bestowed up this mighty force and Dennis felt that God, or Lord, was a much more fitting title, in fact he had always thought “the Great One” was not a fitting name for something that would soon, for all intents and purposes, actually be God.
Any sort of human sexual desire was never really part of Dennis’ psyche, he was beyond disgusting mating rituals with filthy primates. He had, however, long been obsessed with his brother’s wife, now ex-wife, Charlene. She was indeed very beautiful, but that was not it exactly.
Dennis could feel an intense power radiate from her since the very first time he had met her, it was like her very soul was made of fire! He prayed to his mighty Lord to allow her to serve as the Final Gateway, he knew that whomever became the gateway would be bound to a life of eternal suffering far beyond the grasp of even the most sadistically twisted mind’s blackest nightmares, but it would be such an honorable sacrifice! For through the Final Gateway the one true and great almighty Lord, God of all Gods, would forever be able to join both worlds together as one, a gateway of suffering that would bring forth all of his God’s children to come forth into our realm and make The Lord’s reign eternal, and Dennis, the new messiah, would feed from the suffering of the Gateway just as his almighty father had fed off the suffering of humanity as he welcomed the new rulers into the world and they would all bow before the feet of The Lord’s one begotten son.
~
Dennis stood up and looked around at the snarling, spitting creatures that stood over Charlene’s dead body. He could see that their savage elation that had them whipped into their blood lust was starting to turn into a vicious rage. They knew that tonight’s grand finale was cancelled and they were becoming more and more agitated.
Dennis was starting to worry they would turn on him at any moment. Although it’s not as if he were defenseless, not in the least, his grand master, the one he now called God and his Lord, had bestowed upon him the precious gift of re-creation. With this gift came such wonderful endowments, the type which made Dennis quite a formidable opponent to any creature, man or monster. He was not so sure, however, that even with his newfound powers he would be able to fend off the four creatures all at once. He decided to play it safe and stepped a few yards back from insubordinate beasts as they hissed, roared and shrieked not just at each other, but most furiously at Charlene’s bloody corpse.
Then, to Dennis’ surprise, the tentacles which had wrapped themselves around her arms in an attempt to prevent her suicide began to slowly pull her body backwards into the soil. The earth around her corpse began to move and turn as if it were transfigured into a bubbling tar pit exactly like the soil his best friend, Jacob had been pulled screaming down into all those years ago.
Dennis was suddenly aware of the fact that his Lord was not speaking to him. He strained his mind for any word as to how to continue from here, but there was only dead air. The sudden silence lacerated his soul.
“Father!” Dennis shouted loudly into the air, “I know I’ve disappointed you, but I promise you I will find another gateway! Your will shall be done!”
A deafening roar came from right behind Dennis, sending a hot breath across his pale, wrinkled flesh. He turned to see the towering beast that just hours earlier had been his only Daughter, Elizabeth. The thing stood at least twelve feet in the air now, its jaws were easily wide enough to nearly swallow a man whole. Its knife-tipped tentacle arm flailed wildly up above its enormous head.
“Get back, you vile, fucking worm! I am your master, God damn it!” Dennis punched the beast square in its massive jaw, which spun the beast around and off its feet, sending the creature tumbling to the ground with a thunderous crash.
“You cannot stand against me!” He managed to calm his tone from a vengeful yell to a disdainful near-whisper before continuing, “Forget who you serve again and I will send you right back into the nether regions you crawled out from.”
The beast managed itself back to its feet with surprising nimbleness for a behemoth of its grotesquely malformed shape. The others immediately joined it and stood staring at down at Dennis, obviously completely un-waivered by his attempt at asserting his authority. The Bradley creature hissed, the Alyssa thing let out one of her piercing cries as the eel-like creatures jutting from each of her eye sockets squirmed into the air in front of the creatures face, and the thing that was Clarence shambled over and howled at Dennis, the giant sack which clung behind the beast was now popped and had left long stretched sheets of flesh covered in greenish-yellow ooze as if it were an enormous blister that had been lanced or popped on his back.
“I don’t have time for this.” Dennis said dismissively and turned back towards the wreckage of the demolished ranch house. He had much to do, and at the top of his list of priorities was finding another offering to be the Final Gateway, and he certainly did not care to be fraternizing with the help.
He saw, however, that the giant mass of squirming tendrils that had burst from the house, the same mass of flesh that had invaded the house when the Clarence thing had vomited it up while Charlotte had waited unknowingly in the tub on the third floor, was writhing up into the air at
least thirty feet above his head. Then two massive tentacles shot down and seized Dennis by each arm so tightly that his ghostly pale and terribly pruned skin ripped apart where he grabbed, the pain shot waves of fire up his arms and caused him to cry out in panic for the very first time since he had turned ten years old.
This was all wrong!
The Lord had granted Dennis a life beyond pain, it had granted him dominion over all of his children in this world as the invasion commenced. Yet Dennis still heard nothing from his almighty father as he cried out for his God to answer.
“Unhand me! You are my servant! This is blasphemy!” Dennis screamed with all the rage of Hell’s mighty fury in his voice, “You will be cut down by The Lord, for I AM THE MESSIAH!”
“No, you are not.” A thunderous voice roared out from behind him.
It was a voice that sounded as though a thousand voices were all speaking in unison, but when the tentacles that had his arms spun Dennis around to see the source, he saw the voices were all coming from one person, it was Charlene.
Her body was no longer torn and bloody. There was no sign of the terrible things which had befallen her during her trails this horrible late summer night. There were changes though, and they were anything but subtle.
Charlene was somehow elevated about four feet from the ground. She floated with her arms outstretched to her sides. Her naked body looked much more like that of a statue than a human being, as if her skin had been turned into porcelain-white stone. Her hair did not fall at her shoulders, but rather seemed to float out into the air even though the wind was not blowing, like she was enveloped in some sort of invisible water. Her eyes were gone, and that soft blue light shined brightly out from the sockets, as it did from her open mouth. When she spoke, her mouth did not move, it was more like her voice, or a thousand echoes of her voice, was simply being projected from within her, from deep within that glowing blue light that emanated from her.
Becoming the Gateway Page 21
