He couldn’t make out the words, though he tried. Eyes closed, lips moved to the noise, repeating the unintelligible words that blew into his head. It was so close. Someone had to be there. He opened his eyes. It sounded like it was coming from beneath him. One of the wild bushes lining the walkway, maybe. He bent down, knowing he wouldn’t get back up after, accepting the fact that he’d just lay on the rough concrete until someone found him, or worse, he died.
But as he got lower, the source of the noise became clearer. And he reached down into his pocket.
There was the key in his hand like a living thing. It glinted, catching the rays of the sun like a chrome bumper of a fifties Cadillac. Except the key was death metal black and dull. How it caught the sun was beyond Harold. He held it closer to his ear, trying to comprehend the words.
Nothing.
A warmth radiated from the thing, hotter than before. Even Harold’s burnt-up, cauliflower ear perked up once it felt the wave of heat. Then something happened, weirder than a dying man talking to him then being ripped out of this world by black claws, weirder than Harold waking up with more than half of his body scarred and throbbing. The key, in his hand, blazed. It turned a bright orange, then fiery red.
Not more fire, he thought.
Except he felt no pain, not even the blaring whisper of the phantom pain. And he couldn’t drop the key anyway, if he had. The key absorbed into his skin, sharp tip up to the base of his middle finger and the rounded end at his wrist. He felt it spread into him, under him, drilling the bones, fusing with his very soul.
He screamed, despite it not hurting. And when it was gone, his skin sizzled like water being splashed onto a hot frying pan. An afterglow of orange and red, shaped like the jagged key, hung on his skin for a second.
He stared with eyes nearly bigger than the sun itself. Breathed heavy. An icy calm rippled through his body. The only thing he could liken it to were the few seconds of nothingness his mind held on to before waking up from a deep sleep. That kind of calm. That kind of peacefulness.
No more phantom pain.
Only whispers, the demonic voices.
CHAPTER 3
No one was in sight.
Harold’s head swiveled around and around like an owl on Speed. Not a single person. The key had vanished. The only discernible thing that had happened was that Harold was going into shock and hallucinated. That was always at the back of his mind, when the homeless guy talked to him, and even when the dog barked at him.
That’s all it was.
Craziness.
He was going crazy. The voices proved it.
Except he could make these voices out. Overlapping. Some stronger than the other. Men’s voices, women’s voices. The voice of a child, even.
The words were not identifiable, though. It was like they were layered. Like someone played ten different songs at once. He’d catch snippets here and there. Pleas for mercy, for salvation. All crammed into Harold’s brain like a tornado in an air duct.
He looked around again. No one, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if a tumbleweed blew across his field of vision right then. It didn’t. And unless he was in Texas, the saner part of his brain knew that’d never happen.
He kept on, went past a long abandoned food cart covered in graffiti. Beyond that was a parking lot and a few buildings. The back of the brick structures were also graffiti-covered with signs and symbols his brain couldn’t comprehend. No one in sight, like a ghost town. Above him, the sky swelled with clouds, threatening a thunderstorm. One he’d welcome with open arms.
He took an alleyway, thinking it’d be a shortcut into the main city, or at least a place where the other humans were. Something clanked, echoing off of the walls. Like the lids of metal trashcans mashed together trying to wake a sleeping giant.
Harold froze in his tracks. A bin lay on its side, rolling back and forth, hitting the brick wall then knocking against another trashcan. A ripped black bag hung over the lip. Shredded pizza boxes, crushed aluminum cans, wet newspapers, and beer bottles flew out of it. Causing all of the commotion was a dog. At least, that’s what it looked like at first glance to Harold. But if it was a dog, it was the weirdest looking dog he’d ever seen, unless things had changed since he was last awake. That seemed unlikely — him oversleeping into another evolutionary age.
The thing stopped doing whatever it was doing — eating the garbage, mating with it, he wasn’t sure — and looked him dead in the eyes.
Harold’s stomach twisted. The tight grip of fear held his ankles and wouldn’t let go. Concrete boots, as the gangsters in his favorite movies might’ve called them. He saw the thing in full force now. How it was about as big as a full-grown raccoon. No fur, only bumps and warts and skin like that of some reptilian creature. Saliva hung from the yellowish fangs poking through the rough lips in thick clumps. Half a Butterfinger wrapper stuck to its bottom lip and somehow the teeth were yellower than it. The sun broke through the clouds overhead, yet the creature’s eyes glowed like it was the dead of night.
If it was a dog, it was not a breed Harold knew the name of. Hellhound, maybe. Mutation, even.
Harold stared back, the follicles of where hair used to be on the back of his neck tried to stand at attention. A way of telling him to get out of there. The tattered shirt that hung over his chest swayed with the thumping of his heart.
The creature growled, then went back to its feast of garbage and dirty diapers. Harold should’ve taken this as a sign. That there might really be a god and he might not be a cruel god after all, despite burning a good portion of his body and leaving him in the middle of some place he hardly recognized, despite all the tricks he’s played on Harold’s mind, despite it all.
But no, Harold didn’t take this as a sign of divine intervention. Instead, he crept closer to the thing. Just enough to get a better look at it. The city — all cities — he knew of, conjured up lots of weird stuff, but the monster eating out of the garbage was among the weirdest he’d seen or could conceive of. Besides, deep down, Harold really wanted to die. Maybe this thing could give him the mercy whatever god hung above his head couldn’t.
He inched closer, now, feet scraping against the concrete of the alley. A large dumpster pressed up against the building to his right acted as his refuge about half the distance from the creature.
The sounds, the wet squishing of mashing garbage, and the smell made Harold gag. He had to look away, but couldn’t. It was like a bad car accident you can’t pry your eyes from on the highway. The ridges on the thing’s back, the swollen belly, tufts of fur. It belonged in some lab for experiments.
Not too hot yourself, Harold, he thought. Gotta remember that.
It wasn’t that big up close. Not really. Just frightening and unnatural. Unbelievable, but real.
He’d seen this thing eating garbage like a starving man at a buffet. It existed, whatever the Hell it was, and as long as he didn’t ever have to see another one this close again, he’d be alright knowing about them. Good. Enough. Get the Hell outta here, flashed in his mind. When he got up from his squatting position, he misjudged the tightness of his body. Leg muscles that are normally loose and ready to pump at a moment’s notice weren’t so limber once they’ve been blackened by fire, even with whatever power absorbed into his skin. And he stumbled, nearly falling, but caught himself on the lip of the metal dumpster. The force of his body hung there. He tried to regain balance, jerked the lid atop closed. It fell with weight and Harold couldn’t move his fingers in time. He wailed as it slammed down, then bounced up and slammed down again. The metal vibrated, echoed off of the brick walls. His face screwed up in a twisted mess. Hand pulsed. He’d be surprised if his fingers were still attached. A couple deep breaths. Then all was silent except for the buzzing of a generator located on the back of the buildings. No more monster eating garbage.
Next came the clicking of fingernails against the concrete. A low growl, deep in the monster’s chest.
Harold’s face bunc
hed up with pain. His heart rate picked up again. He had no choice; he had to run for it, back the way he came. He pushed off of the garbage can, didn’t think about anything else, and went.
The running came easily now. He felt his skin stretching where it had been burned, like an old leather belt around the waist of a man who wasn’t as thin as he was in his younger years. But Harold zoomed regardless. Problem was the creature was just as fast. He heard the panting breaths at the back of his heels as he turned the corner, running through a thin strip of concrete only big enough to fit one car through. At the end of the strip was another building, taller than the others but not by much.
Harold risked a glance over his shoulder. He saw the thing still there, slobber spraying in every direction like a malfunctioning hose. Back in front of him the brick wall loomed.
Dead end.
To the right was a fence on top of a low brick parapet. The fence looked about as sturdy as dust, all covered in rust, ready to flake and crumble at the slightest bit of pressure. He jumps up there and he’s back down on the ground, wheezing and ready to be eaten by the thing for sure. Not a good idea.
An image of some old martial arts movie came across his mind. The kind where you can see the wire attached to the actor’s backs when it came time to do the high flying stunts. The kind where a brick wall meant running up it, defying all of gravity and backflipping over the opponent, then jump kicking them in the back and through the very wall they’d just climbed.
That would be crazy. But what other option did he have?
He slowed down, trying to measure the distance, his breath exploding out of his lungs.
Bad idea. Hesitate and die, but hey, hindsight is 20/20, right?
The creature snapped at his leg, caught a piece of his boot. And Harold tripped, sliding across the pavement like a hockey puck. He stopped when he hit the brick wall, his head knocking into it with an audible thump.
The creature jumped on him, jaw snapping open and shut with a sound that reminded Harold of a slamming casket. Flecks of spit sprayed on his face. He thrust his forearm up, trying to push the thing away. It was even smaller this close, really no bigger than a dog, but it came at him with so much force that he couldn’t do anything about it besides fold.
He yelped as it dug its fangs into the soft flesh of one of the burn wounds on his arm. It pulled, but the flesh wouldn’t come free. Pain like nothing he’d consciously felt before exploded in his arm, like something hesitated to break free from his very bones, from his skin.
He swung his other hand, bashing the thing’s skull hard. It didn’t budge, teeth sunk deep. The world started to fade again, the pain too unbearable.
Then someone whistled.
CHAPTER 4
“You look like a zombie’s asshole,” the girl said.
Harold still laid on the concrete, blood welling in tiny balls where his skin had been punctured by the creature, more annoying than painful. His mind raced, coming back to the present.
Now the creature sat by the girl’s side, wagging its worm-like tail hard enough to fan a few pieces of garbage away from it.
The girl was a couple years younger than Harold. Twenty, maybe twenty-one, tall and ridiculously skinny. Hair the color of the last glowing embers of a bonfire.
“Sorry about my dog,” she said, shrugging. “He gets a little excited when it’s lunchtime.” She knelt down, scratched behind the thing’s raggedy ears, said: “Isn’t that right, Slink?” in a playful voice.
“Dog?” Harold said, scrabbling away from the girl and the monster at her side. “That’s not any dog I’ve ever seen.”
“What are you talking about? Never seen a Beagle before? You know, floppy ears, stubby legs.”
“That thing doesn’t even have hair,” he said, pointing to it with a shaky finger.
The girl’s eyes narrowed, hands went to her hips. “What do you mean it doesn’t have hair? Are you high, man?”
“I mean the thing looks like it crawled straight out of Hell. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Slink, the supposed dog, slunk down to the ground, head stooped and ears hanging to the concrete.
“It’s like you fed it after midnight or something. Goddamned Gremlin.”
“Wait a second…you can see that?” the girl asked. Her lips parted, eyebrow raised.
“Kind of hard not to, and if I couldn’t see it, I sure as Hell could smell it.”
“Well you ain’t no spring chicken there either, pal. If anything you’re worse off than poor Slinky is.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“But how can you see?” she mumbled to herself, looking away, then looking back. Her eyes ballooned. She reached behind her, pulling out a notebook from her back pocket, flipping the pages, lips mumbling whatever was written on paper. She looked from Harold to the paper, back and forth a few times, then gasped. One more reach to the back of her jeans and she pulled out a gun.
Harold scrambled up, hands in the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the Hell?”
“You’re one of them, huh? Burnt by Hellfire, sent here to get the key back.”
Slink perked up, teeth bared, ready to pounce again. The tendons and muscles poked through his gray, leathery skin.
“One of who?” Harold said, barely a whisper, the fear choking out the decibels. “I-I just woke up like this, okay? I don’t remember much. I was drinking. Then the homeless guy. They cornered us, then shot him…burned me. I just wanna go to the hospital, okay? I just wanna get home to my fiancé and get fixed up. Please.”
The girl’s lips parted like she was about to say something, then the gun fell slowly. Slink still growled, a deep warning vibrating in the throes of his chest.
“Homeless man, huh?” she said. “Did he kinda look like a Wizard? Long white beard, deep lines on his face.”
Harold put his hands down, cocked his head. “Uh, how the Hell am I supposed to know? He looked like a drunk homeless dude. Don’t mess with me, alright? Wizards aren’t real.”
She motioned to the thing at her feet, “Neither are these, right?”
Harold blinked a few times, expecting the two bodies to disappear, for him to wake up in his bed on a lazy Sunday, Marcy cooking him pancakes, listening to that god-awful country music. But when he opened his eyes, they were still there. And she made a fair point.
“You’re looking at him right now. You see Slink in his true form. Not many people can do that, not unless he wants you to. So either you’re a Ghost, Vampire, Werewolf, or a Demon and you’re not telling me the truth. And if that’s the case, I’ll have to put you down, pal.”
She pressed the gun harder into him, pinning him to the brick wall.
“You mentioned the old man. You talked to him? Where is he?”
Harold didn’t say anything, letting a few moments pass to gather the information and clear his mind.
She stepped closer, waved her hand in front of his face. “Hello? Earth to Zombie’s Asshole.”
He grabbed her hand, threw it away from his face. “You’re not too polite, are you? You want information, you’ll take me to a hospital, get me looked at. Then I’ll talk.”
Slink lunged after the girl took a few steps back, but the girl caught him with her foot and he instantly backed up, sat on his haunches. Harold pressed himself up against the concrete embankment trying to shimmy, heart pounding. His muscles tensed in preparation of the beast’s oncoming bite.
He noticeably exhaled when Slink backed off.
“I’m assuming you’re Sahara, right?”
When the girl didn’t say anything, just furrowed her brow, withdrew the gun, and crossed her arms, he expected he was right.
“Yep, your buddy told me to seek you out, said you’d help me. But it looks like you’re the one who needs my help. So let’s do a fair trade. You get me treatment and I’ll spill the beans.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“345 Grove Street. Apartment 722.”
She fle
xed her jaw, grinding her teeth together. “Congratulations, you figured out how to use Google. That doesn’t mean anything. You could be a stalker for all I know. You certainly look like the kind of creep who’d break into my bedroom and sniff my panties or some weird shit like that.”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t go near your panties,” he said, but the words sounded funny — came out an obvious lie.
She took a step closer, gun still in hand. Her fingers flexed hard over the metal, knuckles showing white. “I wouldn’t go near your panties, either.” She eyed him closer. Pupils traced the harsh burns on his face. “Those don’t look like burns any regular old doctor could fix. Sorry. A hospital won’t do you any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those are Spell burns. That stuff is for life. Bet it hurts like Hell, too. I’m surprised to see you even up and walking. Wait a minute — ”
“Did hurt like Hell,” Harold said.
“He gave you the key, didn’t he.” She shoved the pistol into his face, touching the cold metal against the sizzling red skin of his neck, choking him. “Where is it?”
Harold couldn’t talk even if he tried, but with the gun pressed against his Adam’s apple, there wasn’t a chance of any words squeaking out.
“That’s not just any regular key. Not some souvenir you can go pawn for crack money. Give it to me or I’ll shoot.”
Harold didn’t doubt she’d shoot. She shook with a visible rage. Her eyes, tiny black balls, focused, then she licked her lips ready for the kill, oddly stirring something primal inside of Harold. Of course, Harold didn’t have the key, didn’t know where the the thing had actually gone. One minute it was in his hand, the next it had vanished. As much as he tried not to think about it, his mind couldn’t help but tell him it was somehow inside of him, like he absorbed it into his burnt skin like sunblock or lotion. He didn’t want to die over this. Even looking like he did. There was still hope. Hell, Marcy might still love him. Take one look at him, see the pain he endured trying to do the right thing, and like a three-legged puppy at an animal shelter or a cat missing an eye, she’d accept him into her arms because no one else would.
Hellbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 1) Page 2
