by N. P. Martin
Mommy...
The little girl steps out into the hallway, shaking with fear. Every small step she takes toward her parent's bedroom is agonizing. She is terrified that the monster will come bounding out of the room any second to get her.
A splinter of wood from the smashed bedroom door pierces the soft skin of her foot, but the little girl doesn’t scream. She doesn’t make a sound.
She is too afraid to.
She can hear the monsters breathing in the room, the room she is only inches away from now.
Then behind her, a voice makes her jump and cry out, and she spins around to see her twin brother standing there. "I’m scared, Leia," he says.
The little girl goes to her brother, hugs him and tells him to go back to his room, to not let anyone in…as if he would be able to stop the monster if it came to his door, but she does not tell him this. He pleads with his sister not to leave him, but through her tears, she insists. "I’ll find you," she says. "Go!"
Shaking with fear, the little boy runs back to his room and closes the door. The little girl cries for a moment, then wipes her tears and turns around. She moves toward her parent’s bedroom again.
As she approaches, she hears another voice in the room. A deep, scary voice that stops the little girl in her tracks, turning the blood in her veins to ice.
"You made a deal," the scary voice is saying. "I am here to collect."
Then her mother screams, "Fuck you! Stay back!"
"You must be killed first," the voice says almost gleefully. "This will hurt, I promise you."
“Don’t fucking touch me you—"
The little girl's mother makes a strangled screaming noise that then abruptly stops.
Terrified, the little girl walks over the splinters on the carpet and halts at the threshold of her parent’s bedroom door…or what's left of it.
What she sees when she enters the room is enough to finish the job of shutting down her fragile mind. What she sees is a massive dog-like beast with red eyes standing over her daddy's bloody and torn body. What she sees is a monster who looks like a man—but who has horns and burning orange eyes—holding the limp body of her mommy. What she sees is her mommy’s still open eyes, hearing her say, "I’m sorry…" before the life goes out of them. Finally, what she sees is the monster-man smile before vanishing with her mommy into the circle of orange light in the floor, the great beast that had been outside her bedroom door, also disappearing into the light after one final snarl.
Deathly pale, her face frozen in shock, the little girl drops down suddenly to the floor, causing wooden splinters to penetrate the soft skin of her palms and lower legs. There, she curls up in a tight ball and doesn't move…
I awoke from the dream with a start, my face bathed in sweat, breathing heavily as I struggled to pull myself back into reality, or at least for what passed for reality these days.
The dream I’d just had was a familiar one, having plagued me for years after the deaths of my parents. I say deaths, but I’m still not completely sure if my mother is alive or dead. I’ve always had a feeling, though, that she is trapped somewhere. Not here on Earth, but in some other awful place.
Like Hell.
I didn’t know anything for sure. I just knew my father was dead and my mother was gone, presumed dead.
Josh was able to get past the incident. He saw nothing that night, only heard the screams and the sounds of the monsters. He didn’t see my father’s torn body, or my mother’s face as she was taken by the demon. In fact he was so terrified he stayed under his bed until the cops came some time later, after a neighbor had called them when they heard all the noise.
I saw quite a lot, though, including the demon and the beast. So for that reason, I could never let things go afterward. When I was old enough, I started researching demons and the occult, trying to find something that would fully explain everything that had happened that night. But after years of research, I found no satisfactory answers (except that the four-legged creature present that night was most likely a hellhound). Josh insisted I let it all go once and for all, for my own sanity if nothing else. So I did, until the demons invaded my reality once again six months ago.
Now I was once more consumed by a need to find answers, to the detriment of all else. If booze and drugs couldn’t keep the demons at bay, maybe knowledge would.
With a sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and stood in front of the full length mirror in my small bedroom.
Jesus Christ, I thought. Josh and Diane weren’t kidding when they said I looked like shit. My long dark hair was a tangled mess, my eyes were sunken with dark rings around them, and the once glowing whites now more in keeping with the pale porcelain of my skin. I seemed to have dropped several pounds as well that I didn't really have spare to begin with. A six month bender would do that to you.
I look like a fucking junky…
Shaking my head, I turned away from the disturbing reflection and looked around for clean clothes. The room looked even more pokey than usual because there was stuff everywhere. Keeping my room tidy wasn’t high on my list of priorities this past while. Diane kept the room tidy for a time, but eventually stopped right around the time she decided I was throwing my life away for no apparently good reason. Now the place was just a mess of clothes, books and charcoal-covered sketch pads that mostly depicted the faces of the demons I saw. There were two large sketch pads full to the brim with monstrous, hideous faces that I hoped never to see again.
I knew I would see them again, though. Maybe not those exact same demons, but plenty of similar ones. There was no getting away from the fact that I was being dragged inexorably down a road that was littered with the ugly bastards, and God knows what else. So you know, lots to look forward to.
I found a pair of faded black jeans with rips in the front and pulled them on. Not exactly the weather for ripped jeans, but it was the only pair that looked half clean. Finding a can of deodorant, I sprayed some under my arms to try and mask the moldy smell of my stale sweat. I needed a shower, but first I wanted to talk to Josh, if he was still here. Being a weed dealer, my brother set his own working hours, which was usually at night. His days were mostly spent training at the local MMA gym, or at home playing video games.
Today it was the latter, I discovered as I entered his room. Josh was lying on the bed with a games controller in his hands, staring intently at the widescreen TV mounted on the wall in front of him. "You’re up," he said, his eyes not leaving his game, which appeared to be some sci-fi looking first person shooter. "You didn’t sleep long."
I went and sat on the end of bed. "I got enough."
He glanced quickly at me. "I’d say you need more."
I gave him a slight smile. "We can’t all look like athletes, Mr. Vain."
"I like to look my best. So what?"
"You seem even more broody than usual. Does it have anything to do with what we were talking about earlier?"
Josh’s eyes never left the screen. "I don’t recall talking about anything. You must’ve been high still."
I frowned at him, wondering if he was serious. "Come on, Josh. There’s something going on with both of us. Are you telling me there isn’t?"
Josh sighed and shook his head, seemingly annoyed that I was distracting him from his game. "I’m fine, Leia. It’s you who’s having problems."
"Fuck off, Josh. It’s me you’re talking to. Why are you bullshitting me when you know I can always tell?"
He said nothing for a moment, then tossed the controller to one side suddenly. "All right, Leia," he said, sitting up. "Why don’t you tell me what you think is going on, since you seem to have all the answers?"
"I didn’t say I had answers, I just know something is happening, has been happening since we turned eighteen. Are you going to deny that?"
Josh covered his face with his hands for a second and rubbed his eyes. Then he shook his head as he looked at me. His face told me all that I needed to know. He was seeing the demons as well. But
what else had he experienced? Had he felt the power that I had? The light magic? When I told him what happened to me last night, and about my encounter with the demon out on the street, I caught the look of recognition in his face. "You’ve felt it, haven’t you?" I said.
He nodded. "I got jumped one night by three guys from Diaz’s gang. They all had knives. I don’t know what happened, but as soon as they started attacking me, I felt this surge of power go through me, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. When I hit the first guy, this white light exploded out of my fist like fucking…I don’t know. I felt like fucking Bruce Leroy from The Last Dragon, like I’d got the glow and shit…" He shook his head and laughed like he was experiencing the same power right now. "Those guys didn’t stand a chance, knives or not."
"When did this happen?"
"Two weeks ago."
My mouth dropped open. "Two weeks, and you didn’t fucking tell me about it?"
Josh shrugged and rubbed the dark stubble on his perfectly square jaw. "I didn’t know what to say, and you haven’t exactly been around much lately. Shit, I thought I was going crazy, anyway. I still do. All those fucking demons walking around out there. I feel like I’m in a horror movie of my own making."
I couldn’t help but laugh, as much to break the tension as anything else. "I know, right? I’m surprised I can even sleep at all after seeing that much hideousness."
"Sleep? What’s that?"
"Seriously?"
"I feel like I’ve got fucking PTSD or something. If it wasn’t for fighting and weed, I don’t know what I’d do."
I sat in silence for a few moments as I went over things in my mind, then I said, "There’s something I didn’t tell you about last night."
Josh frowned, looking like he was almost afraid to hear what came next. "Yeah?"
"It’s something the demon said to me before I, you know…he said I didn’t know what I was."
His frown deepened as he stared at me. "What does that mean?"
"I don’t know," I said. "But I want to know. Don’t you?"
"I don’t know. Maybe." He shook his head. "This whole thing is crazy."
"Which is why I’m thinking that if we looked for answers, things might become less crazy."
Josh snorted and shook his head. "I doubt that, Leia. I just know the further down this rabbit hole we go, the more fucked up and crazy it’s going to become. You telling me you don’t feel that, like you’re standing on the edge of an abyss?"
"Pretty dark imagery, but yeah, I do feel it. But I also know that we don’t have a choice, Josh. Whatever is happening to us, it’s making us a target for those demons running around out there. They know who we are now, and there’s no going back. The more we can learn about these powers or whatever it is we have, the better we can defend ourselves if need be. "
"I can defend myself just fine," he said.
"Really? Against one of those demons?"
"You put one of them down, didn’t you?"
"Yeah, but—"
"Look, Leia," he said, cutting me off. "I have no interest in becoming someone else, or going any further into this fucked up reality we’ve suddenly found ourselves in. I just want a normal life. So should you. Christ, you were supposed to go to college and you fucked that up for this shit."
"It’s not like I had a fucking choice, Josh, is it?" I said raising my voice in anger. "Same as I don’t have a choice now. This is happening, whether we like or not. I’d just like to get ahead of things before some demon fucking kills me, or takes me to fucking Hell the way Mom—"
"Don’t!" he said, holding out a hand to cut me off again. "Don’t go there, Leia. Don't make this about what happened eleven years ago. Regardless of what this is, and how you want to meet it, it doesn't mean you have to keep holding onto that fucked up shit. Don't you get it? It'll kill you just as surely as one of these demon things might!"
I stood and shook my head. "Don’t you see, Josh? What happened to Mom and Dad that night has something to do with what’s happening to us now. There’s a connection, and I intend to find out what it is."
"Jesus, Leia, you spent fucking years trying to figure that shit out. It nearly drove you insane, and now you want to go down that road again?"
"Yes, Josh. That is exactly the road I intend to go down again. Things have changed. You might not like it, but they have."
His dark eyes shone with barely concealed rage. "What are you going to do, Leia, huh? Are you going to go dig up our father’s bones, see if you can find any clues…teeth and claw marks perhaps? Conduct another seance to try to contact Mom, even though she’s as fucking dead as Dad?"
I turned away for a second as I struggled to contain my emotions.
He’s just worried and afraid, that’s all.
"Look," I said, keeping my voice level. "I’m doing this, whether you want me to or not, starting with going back to the house in Woodville."
Josh couldn’t hide his horror as he stared at me. "Why would you go back there? What could you possibly hope to find?"
"I don’t know, answers maybe. I have to start somewhere. I’d also like it if you could come with me."
Josh stared at me a moment longer, then he lay back down on the bed, picked up the controller and resumed playing his game. "I’m sorry, Leia," he said quietly. "You’re on your own."
How did we end up so different, I wondered sadly, when we used to be on the same wavelength? My bottom lip quivered, and I bit it to stop the tears that wanted to stream from my eyes. Knowing there was nothing more to say, I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. Out on the landing, I stood for a moment as I tried to get a grip on myself.
Looks like I’m doing this alone then.
Or maybe not.
In my bedroom, I found my phone and called Kasey. "Wanna go for a ride?" I asked her.
"A ride in what?" she asked, sounding groggy.
I smiled as I pulled on my boots and found my army coat. "Josh’s baby, of course."
Kasey perked up immediately. "Hell yeah! Come and get me."
Downstairs, I located the keys to Josh’s car, which were in the kitchen as always.
Thanks for being a creature of habit, Josh.
My brother’s pride and joy was his black ’67 Mustang, bought through his ill-gotten gains. He hated me driving it, and always told me so, to which my habitual response has always been that he shouldn’t have taught me to drive in the first place then.
I got inside the car and started the engine, knowing the noise would bring Josh to his bedroom window. Before I took off, I gave him a look that said he deserved this.
4
As I was driving out of the street and about to head toward town, I intentionally looked in the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following me, and sure enough, a black car pulled out at the end of the street and started to cruise slowly in my direction. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have given the car a second thought, but the demons had me paranoid. The car itself also raised my suspicions. Thanks to Josh’s long held obsession with classic American muscle cars, I had become familiar with nearly every make and model, especially ones from the sixties. The car a few lengths behind me was a black ’69 Dodge Charger. Josh considered getting one just like it before he ended up going with the Mustang. The Dodge wasn’t a car you seen very often. I had certainly never seen one around here before, which told me the driver was from elsewhere. Stopping at the junction, I purposely waited on the Dodge to come up behind me so I could see the driver clearly, but instead the car pulled up a side street further back and disappeared from sight.
So much for being followed, I thought, before shaking my head and continuing into town. Throughout the twenty minute journey, I kept a close eye on the rearview mirror, but I never caught sight of the Dodge again.
When I got to the Maze, Kasey was waiting for me on the steps leading up to the building where she lived. She all but sprang to her feet with a shit-eating grin on her face when I pulled up. "Well, holy shit," she said as s
he got into the front passenger seat. "I never thought I’d see the fucking day when Josh loaned you his car."
A wicked smile crossed my face as I pulled back out into traffic. "He didn’t."
Kasey drew back in an exaggerated fashion, her dark eyes wide. "You mean you stole Josh’s car?"
"Borrowed more like."
"Wouldn’t want to be you when you get home, but I’d like to be a fly on the wall." She leaned forward and opened the glove box to look for CDs, in the process finding a sizable bag of weed. "Well, what do we have here?" She held the bag up and shook it like she’d hit the jackpot.
"Take that at your own risk," I warned her. "I won’t be able to stop my brother from kicking your ass."
Kasey shook her head dismissively. "He hates me anyway, what’s the difference?"
"Josh doesn’t hate you, Kase."
"Oh really? Last time he saw me, he called me a skanky fucking cunt, then he told me to crawl back to the rats nest I came from. What would you call that? A bit of good natured banter?"
I couldn’t help but laugh. "He may have a slight superiority complex."
"He fucking hates me. Let’s just leave it at that." Kasey opened the bag of weed and took out a few of the buds, dropping them into the pocket of her tatty leather jacket. "I don’t care if he hates me because he always has great weed. That makes up for a lot."
Shaking my head, I said, "It’s your funeral."
"Not sure about his taste in music, though," she said, rummaging through the CDs in the glove box. "Fucking TuPac? Snoop Dog? Ice-fucking-T? I swear, your brother thinks he’s a total gangster. Does he know the nineties are over?"
"It’s all a front."
She waved one of the CDs at me. "You think?"
"Just put the damn radio on," I said good-naturedly as I stopped at the lights.
"Yes, let’s find some proper music to listen to, not that rap shit." She tuned the radio to one of the metal stations, and then smiled at me as she frantically bobbed her head, bouncing her jagged fringe off her face. "Yeah! Now that’s music!"
