by Hunter Shea
Muraco shakily picked up the gun before a shadow swooped down and slammed him into the opposite wall, hanging him just above the fireplace.
“I have to go down there,” Judas exclaimed and made for the door. As he passed into Sharon Bolster’s spectral body, he was filled with a chill so intense his exposed skin stung. He quickly jumped back.
Jessica stood up and took his hand. “You have to stay here with us,” she said soothingly.
Frustrated, Judas strode over to the boarded-up window and spied through a crack in the wood. His blood froze when he saw Millie standing in the yard, her eyes locked on his. He was struck mute with fear. He watched helplessly as a pair of shadows coiled from their station at the side of the house and whirled around Millie’s stark white spirit form. She looked like she was screaming but he couldn’t hear through the howling of the wind and the madness downstairs. She was torn to pieces by the shadows, the shreds devoured by the black horde.
When she was gone, the shadows returned to their assault on the house.
Judas dropped to the floor and buried his head in his hands.
Jessica had never felt more scared in her life, though somehow she was able to control her fear. Mostly, she was scared for her father. Her stomach twisted when she tried to think of what he was facing. To think too much made every cell in her body hurt.
I love you, Daddy.
I love you, Daddy.
Please come back to me.
Erica was lost in a void of limitless, stygian emptiness, trapped in a dream of infinity. Even if she wanted to scream, she was no longer sure if she had lungs or a throat or a mouth.
This is what it feels like buried alive, she thought in a panic.
What had Gary done? What had their fathers and mothers and grandparents done to create such evil?
She could feel anger and betrayal and fear, yet none of these emotions were her own. She was swimming in the collective vibrations of dozens of murdered men and women.
White men and women.
People killed because they were different. Not just their skin color. They were decent people, workers for a common good, vanquished by an amoral cabal because they wanted to right what had been wrong. For some, it was simply a matter of taking the wrong turn into a town desperate to keep its secret.
And now the sins of the founders of Shida were being paid in full. Their rage, now that they had fully emerged like a genie from a bottle, would continue until it fizzled into the nothingness they had been cast into.
Unsure whether she was alive or dead, Erica prayed for forgiveness.
“Fight it, Muraco. Kill me. Kill me now!”
John couldn’t believe the words coming from his own mouth. The face of the now lifeless sheriff pressed into the side of his own while the shadowy vise tightened. It was getting harder to breathe, and this time it wasn’t due to a panic attack.
Urgent voices whispered in his head.
“No more life. No more life. It’s cold in here, sooooo cooooold.”
“Shut up!” he shouted.
“Sooooo dark, sooooo cold.”
And in a moment of piercing clarity, he remembered the words George Bolster had passed on through Jessica.
“Don’t be afraid.”
He had been using fear as a weapon against himself for five years now.
He loved his family. And of all the tools and gadgets his money could buy, it was the only thing that could save them. He looked towards Muraco, hoping to will the man the strength he needed to end this madness.
Muraco managed to raise his arm while the shadow trickled up his arm like jade mercury. He pulled the trigger, shooting wide. The bullet passed harmlessly through one of the shadows.
If Muraco didn’t hit him with his next shot, it was over.
“Shoot him, man!” Wadi wailed. “Move your hand up and to the right. Up and to the right.”
The gun wobbled in Muraco’s hand as he fought the wraith’s tug. Wadi was directly across the room, acting as his gun sight. His vision was starting to fail and the thought of just dropping the gun and letting the ixitqusiqjuk finish their job was so inviting. So much easier. So much…
“Now! Now! Now!”
Wadi’s screams yanked him back into the living room.
John stared into the barrel of the gun.
Muraco’s finger twitched and the gun roared to life.
John never saw the bullet, nor did he feel it as it entered his forehead, ricocheting inside his skull, turning his brains to mush.
The weight of his fear of the inevitable was finally lifted, because all things must die, even dreams and ideas, love and hate. The malignity that had festered in this town, in these woods, fertilized by the fruiting corpses of good men and women, was finally going to perish today. He’d make sure of it. Jessica’s life depended on it and he would not fail her.
A white man’s soul, given not in hate. The black power of the ixitqusiqjuk forever reversed.
He felt his spirit ascend from his body like a vaporous cloud and hissed one word before the light dimmed in his eyes.
“Anne.”
Suddenly, the phantasm of Sharon Bolster lit up like a white hot spotlight. Jessica, Eve, Liam and Judas slammed their eyes shut and shielded their faces with their hands. The room became exceedingly warm and the hair on their bodies stood straight up.
When she sensed the light was gone, Jessica opened her eyes.
The woman was no longer there.
In the middle of her prayers, Eve saw a brilliant flash of light. It was the closest thing to being a front row spectator to a supernova.
Her senses returned to her.
She felt her knees smash into something hard and the wind was knocked out of her lungs. Liam was unharmed, still cradled in her arms. When she looked up, she was back in the living room.
The light was breathtaking.
Muraco watched John Backman die.
Something sinewy and white vented from the bullet wound in John’s head. At first it looked like smoke, a dense column of alabaster. The tiny balls of light that had been bouncing around the room converged around the shadows that held John’s and Sheriff High Bear’s bodies. They flew into the smoke and became one with it.
It was like detonating a flash grenade.
The entire room was permeated with intense light. Muraco had to avert his eyes, his neck straining against his spirit captor. As the light bathed over them, the shadow instantly began to lose its strength and intensity. It faded, going from black to gray, and finally to the purest white he had ever seen.
He was released from its grip and fell to the floor. He looked across the room and saw Erica, Ahanu, Wadi and Mai also on the ground.
John’s and the sheriff’s bodies were still pushed together, except now they were held by a glimmering lasso of fluorescence. Every one of the shadows had been transformed into brilliant starbursts, the heat they radiated so intense, it melted the snow that had piled into the house.
Their bodies slowly lowered to the floor and the now ivory shapes churned around the room like a whirlpool, faster and faster until their light began to fade.
Muraco feared they were going to return to their sinister forms, but that fear was short lived.
In moments, the shapes were gone. The room was littered with dead and wounded bodies.
There was a hole in the ceiling, and sprawled beneath that hole was Backman’s family. He looked up and saw Eve burst into tears. Judas was there, holding her steady.
He was so damn tired.
The ixitqusiqjuk thought they could whip his ass. If he had the strength, he would have laughed.
Before he let sleep take him away, he saw the girl take John Backman’s lifeless hand.
She smiled, and a silent tear fell from her cheek onto her father’s.
Epilogue
Thirteen years later
The tent was large enough to sleep four people comfortably. Luckily, there wasn’t any rain in the immediate forecast, thoug
h fast-moving storms that brought brief showers weren’t uncommon this time of year.
An owl hooted somewhere in the canopy of trees.
It would be getting dark soon. A cool breeze carried the warning that the cold season would soon be here.
“Okay, it’s all yours.”
Her voice sounded so alien in the midst of the silent, deserted forest.
She tapped some commands into a laptop computer the size of a paperback and adjusted the wireless microphone.
“Oops, I almost forgot.”
With a grunt, she rolled over on her back and grabbed one of her nylon packs. After rooting around for a few seconds, she pulled out a transistor radio, placing it next to the microphone. She turned it on, fiddling with the digital tuner until she found a channel of pure white noise. She set the sound to medium and tapped the microphone.
The wind snapped the open tent flap. Walking on her knees, she zipped the tent shut.
“Now it’s just me and you and Mister Owl.”
Jessica sat listening to the hiss of static. It comforted her.
The nearest living person must have been forty miles away. Her boyfriend told her she should at least bring a shotgun to protect herself from wild animals.
“I never brought a gun before,” she had retorted.
“That doesn’t mean you’ll never need one,” he’d said.
He didn’t know. If there was any place in the entire world she was safe, it was here.
All traces of the house were gone. Her aunt Eve had seen to that. In its place was a perfect field of grass, grown wild over the short spring and summer. It took her almost an hour to hack enough space for her to set up her tent.
It was hard work and it felt good to flex her muscles. After college, she’d decided to devote herself to the family business, so to speak. Eve had been dead set against it, and though it hurt to go against her wishes, she knew it was the right decision. Working in an office seemed far more terrifying than picking up where her father left off.
Jessica slipped into her sleeping bag and turned the powerful halogen lantern off. She drifted into sleep, the hissing radio providing her lullaby.
Dawn came and Jessica was quick to unzip her sleeping bag. Yawning, she turned the radio off and tapped some commands in the computer while unplugging the microphone cable from the back.
“Good morning,” she said aloud.
A host of birds filled the morning air with song. She went outside to pee while the computer went through its preprogrammed routine, bars of light rising and falling on the small screen.
After a pot of terrible coffee made over an open fire and a breakfast of bacon on wheat bread, she went back into the tent. Numbers flashed on the computer.
03:15:25 — 03:15:38
Thirteen seconds.
Jessica counted her blessings in seconds every year. Some years she was more blessed than others.
Thirteen seconds.
Sighing, she plugged headphones into the laptop and sat cross-legged on the cold floor.
She took a few breaths. Cleared her mind.
She clicked play.
At first there was just static.
Then it came. His voice, distant, but here with her all the same.
“I love you mucho much.”
A slight pause.
“Squeak-pip.”
Thirteen seconds to confirm eternity.
Jessica smiled, wiped away her tears, and set about decamping.
About the Author
Hunter Shea is the author of too many short stories to count. His work has appeared in Morpheus Tales, Tabard Inn, The Harrow, and Ethereal Tales, just to name a few. Check out his website at: www.huntershea.com.
Look for these titles by Hunter Shea
Coming Soon:
Evil Eternal
Only one priest can battle the ultimate evil!
Evil Eternal
© 2012 Kevin Sheehan
An evil as ancient as time itself has arisen and taken root in New York City. Father Michael, the mysterious undead defender of the Church, answers the call to action from the Vatican, while Cain, a malevolent wraith that feeds on fear and blood, has taken the life and form of the city's mayor and readies a demonic army to ignite the apocalypse.
With an unlikely ally, Father Michael will prepare for the grim confrontation as he grapples with his sworn duty to God and the shreds of humanity left beating in his immortal heart. The time is ripe for Cain and the fulfillment of dark prophecies. Father Michael must battle Cain and his horde of demons in a final showdown that could very well herald the end of mankind.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Evil Eternal:
Cardinal Gianncarlo walked briskly to Pope Pius XIII’s office, his black robe billowing behind him. The sound of his quick and heavy footsteps echoed across the vast, marbled hallway. The day was bright and filled with promise, in stark contrast to the roiling cloud that had descended upon his fluttering heart.
The Cardinal was normally a stern man, authoritarian to those beneath him, unflappable in his sense of duty to the Lord. His parents, Italian citizens who had made the mistake of openly sympathizing with the Jewish plight during Word War II, had been murdered before his very eyes. At the age of seven, he had been placed in a Nazi death camp, managing to survive two years in brutal captivity until the Allied forces freed them all. He vowed to live the rest of his life in service to God and had done so with unequaled integrity and passion, earning the confidence of the leader of his blessed church.
The email from the lone priest of a small Vermont parish had turned his skin the color of spoiled milk when he had been urged by his secretary to open it just minutes ago. With a knot of dread cramping his stomach, he sped off to the Pontiff’s study. Time was of the essence. Time and—
He reached the library that doubled as the Pontiff’s main office and study, and with unsteady hands rapped loudly on the massive oak door. Like the architectural design of the entire Vatican Palace, the door was a study in elegant simplicity. The wizened voice of Pope Pius XIII beckoned him to enter.
“Sorry to disturb you, but something urgent just came in that I think you should see,” Cardinal Gianncarlo said with a slight stammer.
The Pope looked at the Cardinal and knew. The exact details of the message were still a mystery to him, but the outcome, of that he was sure. The Cardinal thought he detected a slight flickering of the light, the fire that had made him one of the most dynamic popes in centuries, behind his old friend’s eyes.
Pope Pius XIII unfolded the printout with trembling, liver-spotted fingers and read the extensive message. When he was finished, he looked up at his old friend. Deep lines of great sadness etched across his brow.
“So, the inevitable has come back to hound us,” the Pope said.
“As much as it pains me to say, yes.”
With a heavy sigh, the Pope slumped back in his chair.
“How long has it been since the last appearance? Twenty, thirty years?”
“Nothing since Jonestown. Well over two decades of praying the evil was finally gone forever,” the Cardinal answered.
“What has no life can never die, my friend. I had hoped to have passed on to our Father’s arms before this office was faced with such a situation, but we both well know life is never quite what we plan it to be. I’m an old man now. Do I have the strength to go through this again?”
The Pope shrugged, the weight of time and responsibility bearing down on his brittle, sagging shoulders. He had served the office of pope for over thirty years, no small feat. He recalled his days as a young man, fresh from the seminary in his first parish in Bergamo, Italy. That young man would never have even dreamed to be what he would one day become. And no one could have guessed the true secrets that lay in store for his discovery when he ascended to the papacy.
“Would you like me to get Father Michael?”
Cardinal Gianncarlo had to resist the urge to pull him close, offering comfort for a man who ha
d dedicated his life to bringing peace and comfort to millions. They were different men the last time, when the beast within Jim Jones was sent to hell, but not before so much had been lost; terrible choices forced to be made, too many lives lost. It had changed them, added years and unbearable pain to their souls.
The old Pope shook his head.
“That is my duty. At my age, it will surely be my final call. Let the burden of the nightmares rest with me. I only ask that you sit and pray.”
The Cardinal settled into a plush leather chair and the Pope offered his hand across the large, neatly arranged desk. In silence, the two men prayed while life outside his windows carried on, ignorant to the dark shadows gathering at the earth’s edge.
Forest of Shadows
Hunter Shea
The dead still hate!
John Backman specializes in inexplicable phenomena. The weirder the better. So when he gets a letter from a terrified man describing an old log home with odd whisperings, shadows that come alive, and rooms that disappear, he can’t resist the call. But the violence only escalates as soon as John arrives in the remote Alaskan village of Shida. Something dreadful happened there. Something monstrous. The shadows are closing in…and they’re out for blood.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
