The God Killers

by David Simpson

  His only chance came from that fact that God couldn’t directly manipulate what happened on Earth. Father Hurley had explained the rules to Cipher years ago. Whatever God was, He was not omnipotent on the First Plane—aka the mortal plane. He had agents working for him and was more clever and connected than anyone realized, but He couldn’t send a thunderbolt down to Earth and fry anyone. Apparently, however, He had the ability to regurgitate spirits—a new trick.

  Charlie remained still, frozen in time, staring at his son for several seconds that felt like hours. Cipher desperately wanted to close his eyes but was afraid to make any movement. It was as if he was a teenager again, waiting for his father to unleash his rage upon him. Cipher always felt powerless in the presence of his father; he often thought if he could see his father again, he would abuse him as a feeble old man the way that his father had abused him as a boy, but this entity that stood before him had not aged, and it was equipped with all of the uncanny powers of the Third Plane at its disposal. It was just like old times. Charlie was the master.

  Cipher waited for Charlie to make the first move. He knew there was no point in provoking it. Spirits almost always got their way in the end, and Cipher had been caught completely off guard. The ghost’s face twisted in agony, but the gaping mouth never closed, and it made no attempt to speak. The blood continued to drip and ooze, and Cipher remained locked in an unwholesome staring contest with his dead father, the man who’d attempted to murder him, and the man who’d opened Cipher’s eyes to the nauseating realities of the universe.

  In an instant, it was upon him.

  Charlie sprang forward and flew the distance between them in less than a second, his hands outstretched and reaching for Cipher’s throat, his eyes and mouth locked in an expression of rage. Cipher closed his eyes and slammed his back against the trunk of Han’s car before crumbling to the ground. He held his hands up to protect himself from fingers that never reached his throat. His back throbbed as he quickly stood to his feet and realized that he was alone—at least for the moment. It was only the first salvo from Heaven.

  “I’m in Hell,” he whispered to himself as he grabbed the car keys from where they’d fallen out of his hand, and then he sprinted toward the front door of the apartment building. He fumbled with the keys, just as he knew he would, the adrenaline shaking him violently; in true B-horror-movie fashion, he missed several times before finally getting the key into the hole and turning it. As soon as he entered the lobby, he heard his father’s voice whispering next to his ear.

  “Andrew. Useless.” The whisper repeated and became louder as Cipher lifted his eyes and saw himself surrounded by his father. Charlie Marlows—multiple Charlie Marlows—stood in a circle surrounding their son, mouths open and unmoving, even while the whisper continued. “Andrew. Useless.”

  The blood from their exit wounds pooled on the tiles, then ran toward Cipher, so much of it that it slowly lapped against the sides of his shoes. He wanted to collapse on the ground again and hold his arms over his head, but he knew submission was not an escape. He bolted toward the entrance of the stairwell and knocked one of the Charlies aside. He entered the stairwell and began the long, arduous climb to the twenty-third floor.

  The first five floors disappeared in a blur, Cipher’s adrenaline carrying him. The next few floors, however, proved to be an insurmountable challenge. Cipher’s heart had been through a terrible trauma only an hour earlier, and he knew he could not possibly climb all the way to Han’s apartment.

  After accepting this terrifying fact, he exited the stairwell and stumbled to the elevator on the eighth floor, clutching his chest as his heart burned in protest. He hit the elevator button and waited for it to arrive, meanwhile drowning in the agony of terror. God knew where he was; He could strike at any moment, and Cipher wasn’t prepared to fight back.

  When the elevator arrived, he held his breath as the door groaned open. It was already occupied. Inside, his father stood, the exact same expression still painted across his face, his mouth open, his muscles twisting in agony.

  Cipher had no choice. He got in.

  8

  Charlie twisted his demonic head slightly, keeping his coal-black eyes locked on Cipher. Cipher lunged to hit the button for the twenty-third floor, and the door slid closed behind him; the elevator lurched, then began to rise. The air in the elevator was frigid, and as Cipher stepped back, his spine pressed against the furthest wall from Charlie, the cold burning through his coat and sending pain throughout his body.

  In an instant, Father Hurley’s explanation of the true workings of the world flashed before Cipher’s eyes: “The Third Plane is the way things really are, the world that the human mind refuses to see—that it would be driven mad by if it did see. To continue existing in a state that humanity considers sane, one must develop a willingness to be blind and cultivate it throughout his or her life. This talent isn’t something people develop consciously, but it is necessary for the unconscious mind to learn to block out those things that surround it and every other human mind—those things we find horrific. It takes time to develop this skill, and this is why children suffer the most from the uncanny elements of the Third Plane. Nightmares, imaginary friends, and the bogeyman are all real, my son. It is our built-in self-preservation mechanism—our imagination, that allows us to pretend they are not. Those who have had a near-death experience lose the ability to block out the Third Plane. Seeing the truth for one’s self overrides the abilities of both the conscious and subconscious minds to block out reality.” This explanation had been the key to Cipher’s life; without it, he would have been lost, doomed to spend his life in a mental institution. Indeed, Cipher had been seeing ghosts ever since he was revived at the hospital thirteen years earlier, as had Father Hurley and Han after their own experiences.

  It was important to ignore them; ghosts were used to being ignored and would leave one alone if they assumed one didn’t see them. However, Cipher was well aware that if one made the mistake of staring too long at one of the more ghastly ones and they noticed, or if her or she made the mistake of not recognizing that they are seeing a ghost and communicating with them, then the ghost would stick to that person like glue, staying with them forever. Of course, there were ways of getting rid of them, like exorcisms and spells, but that was always an unpleasant, nasty affair.

  This situation was like none other Cipher had ever encountered. Never before had a person from his past—let alone, the most important person from his past—deliberately sought him out. Making the situation even more unexpected was that Cipher’s father had been pulled into Heaven by the angels, and Cipher was not aware of any circumstance in which a person had died, been consumed by God, and was then sent back to the Third Plane.

  The Third Plane was usually reserved for spirits that were diseased in some way that made them unpalatable to God. Just like a fruit that spoils, it was possible for a spirit to change in the last moments of its Earthly life, rendering it a reject, of sorts. If a person, for instance, was being murdered by a loved one or executed by a corrupt government and their last thoughts were What sort of God would allow this injustice? God would be repulsed by their tainted spirit. Most of the souls who die each day travel to Heaven willingly, and their energy is more than enough to sustain God; it discards anything that isn’t purely ignorant. It was for that reason that Cipher often felt sympathetic toward those trapped on the Third Plane.

  His father, however, didn’t fit those criteria—he was not a regular inhabitant of this realm.

  “How can you be here?” Cipher asked his father. “You were consumed.”

  The ghost’s face continued to twist in agony. The mouth still did not move, but the whispery voice of his father replied nonetheless. “Consumed? Yes. I’ve been confined all these years. We don’t move, and we don’t think. We are in Heaven. It is eternal.”

  He had been consumed, and yet somehow he had returned. The Resistance had mistakenly presumed that a consumed soul would cease
to exist as an individual. If the being before Cipher really was his father, however, it meant that souls continued to exist, even after they were consumed. Death was eternal torture. Reality was even worse than Cipher had thought it to be.

  “If it is eternal, then why are you here?”

  “I made a deal. You’ve been a very bad boy, Andrew, and your father is here to punish you.”

  Cipher’s heart continued to ram itself against his chest, beating at excessive speeds like a heavy metal drum solo behind his ribs as his father’s words sank in. “How?” he asked, though he wasn’t eager to hear the answer.

  For the first time, his father’s mouth closed. The corners slowly pulled back into an impossibly wide grin, revealing white teeth glistening with what appeared to be freshly drawn crimson blood. An instant later, the phantasm held a gun, trained on Cipher’s face; without another word, he pulled the trigger.

  Instinctively, Cipher jerked aside to protect his face as the shot blasted past him and through the metallic paneling of the elevator. He opened his eyes as soon as he realized that the shot had missed its mark; he also found himself alone in the elevator. The only sign that anyone had been with him was the smoking hole left in the wall. Though ghosts were often frustrated in their attempts to harm those who could only see on the First Plane, they were free to engage those on the First Plane who’s third eye was open and capable of seeing them. Cipher’s father carried a gun with him, likely an exact copy of the one he had used to kill himself thirteen years earlier, and he could use it to kill Cipher anytime he chose.

  “He’s fucking with me,” Cipher whispered as the elevator came to a halt and the doors groaned open once again.

  Shaking, sweating, and gasping for air, he tumbled out of the elevator, his eyes wild as he searched the hallway for his dead father. On legs of jelly, he sprang toward Han’s apartment and nearly pulled the door off its hinges before bursting forth into the front hall. A cursory glance of the premises did not reveal Han’s whereabouts. He’d expected to see him catatonic and clueless on the couch.

  “Han!” Cipher shouted.

  But there came no reply.

  “Oh no.”

  Cipher swept through the apartment, frantically looking for his friend. The bedroom was empty, as was the kitchen. Suddenly, he noticed a cool nighttime breeze wafting across his skin. The balcony doors were open, the drapes moved subtly. “What the hell?” Cipher bolted through the curtains and looked out over the city as it twinkled peacefully. Han was nowhere to be seen. He looked over the edge just to make sure.

  Then he noticed something.

  It hadn’t rained in nearly three weeks, yet the balcony was drenched. There seemed to be wet footprints. It was difficult to tell the size in the darkness, but they appeared too small to belong to Han.

  Cipher took off running through the apartment, this time toward the bathroom. The door was open, but the room was dark. He pushed the door open and immediately noticed the moisture in the air. “Shit!” The shower curtain was pulled, hiding the bathtub, but water vapor had condensed on the curtain and was running slowly down it, forming a small puddle on the floor. Cipher pulled back on the curtain and saw what he feared he might: his friend, lifeless under the water, his eyes and mouth wide open.

  9

  Han died during his birth.

  Twice.

  Miraculously, he was revived both times.

  There had never been a time in Han’s life when he didn’t see into the Third Plane of existence. As a child, he had a particularly acute sense of other dimensions; and the young Han’s third eye tormented his parents as much as it tormented the boy himself. Even as a toddler, Han would burst into tears, and moments later, the lights in the room would flicker, sometimes even bursting into a shower of sparks and glass. It didn’t take long for his parents to realize that spirits haunted their child.

  They did as most Hong Kong parents would in that situation and bought charms to protect their son and consulted priests and spiritual guides. As Han grew up, the spiritual encounters lessened in frequency, but they remained powerful nonetheless. One such encounter occurred when Han was only ten years old. He’d been having trouble sleeping for weeks, but he didn’t report it to his parents; he was old enough to realize the stress his curse put on them so, as much as possible, he tried to bear the burden alone. He was slowly learning the rules of engagement with the Third Plane. For one thing, he knew it was important to ignore ghosts as much as possible. He knew if he could convince them that he didn’t see them, they would leave without harming him. He had put that theory into practice, and it had served him well, but something was happening outside his bedroom window every night, and he found it impossible to ignore.

  He didn’t know it at the time, but eighty years earlier, the empty warehouse across the street had not yet been built. The grounds had served as a soccer stadium at that time, and there had been a fire. On that fateful, windy, cloudy day, the stadium was packed to capacity when someone tossed a simple lit cigar into a trashcan, and ten minutes later, the wooden frame of the stadium, dried out by the rays of the scorching sun, was burning like a pack of matches. The wind-fanned flames had created a perfect storm—a perfect inferno. Half the people had burned to death, while the other half had been crushed in the stampede to the exits, their corpses left to char. 17,000 spectators went into the stadium that day, and only a little more than half of them made it out alive.

  The several thousand souls who had been left behind walked out onto the field every night and lined up in orderly fashion. Then, one by one, they began to run a circle around the perimeter. Then, slowly, as they trotted joylessly and more souls joined the parade, they would ignite and begin to scream. Every night, burning bodies ran circles around the field. They ran so fast that they seemed to fly and formed a ring of burning agony. The sound of the crowd picked up and roared as more and more souls joined the flaming throng. Han watched that horrific spectacle for nights and nights on end, peeking an eye out of the blanket he held over his head. Then, one night, the ghosts saw him.

  There was no warning. The circle of flame and the screaming of the fans were at their apex when, suddenly, two shooting stars of light burst away from the ring, directly toward Han’s window. In an instant, they took the form of a young father and his son, both wearing white, and both expressionless. Han didn’t know how they managed to see him, as only his eye had been peeking out of the blanket. He could no longer breathe as the father and son stood outside his window and spoke to him.

  “Why don’t you come out and join us?” the ghostly voices from the past offered.

  Even if he’d wanted to, Han couldn’t have answered. He wet the bed, and every muscle in his body tensed up until his legs began to cramp.

  When a hand touched his shoulder gently, he screamed.

  “It’s me, Han,” said Katie, his fourteen-year-old sister. Han lashed his body around to see her, then jumped into her arms. Katie was staring out the window, and Han suddenly realized that it had not been his eye peeking out of the blanket that the phantoms had seen; rather, it had been his sister’s.

  “It’s time for us to go to bed,” she said calmly, before carrying her little brother out of the room and into the bathroom so she could help him clean up. The siblings did not speak to one another, but minutes later, Han was safe in Katie’s bed, delivered from evil.

  10

  Repulse Bay.

  Two years had passed since the night when Han first realized his sister could also see—or at least sense—the Third Plane. They’d never discussed that night with one another, but there existed a silent knowing between them. The knowledge that he was not completely alone was a comfort to Han, and he began to adjust to normal life. It was amazing, but the simple fact that someone else had validated his visions gave him the strength he needed to move forward in the world, confident that he was not crazy. He began to make friends at school, joined sports teams, and to have fun like a normal kid.

  Their c
hild’s remarkable progress relieved Han’s parents of a massive burden. They could finally enjoy their family, and they planned healthy, normal activities as often as their busy work schedules allowed. One early July day, they took their teenage daughter and her little brother to enjoy a day at the beach at Repulse Bay.

  Han’s mother suffered from eczema, so she and Han’s father dropped the children off on the sandy beach for a day of fun in the sun, then headed to the gargantuan shopping mall nearby. Katie slathered herself in sunscreen, as Han’s eyes remained glued to the dark, blue water. “Remember to come back and reapply every twenty minutes,” she cautioned her younger brother. He nodded, breathlessly waiting for her word that he was free to leave her side and enter the endless ocean. “All right,” she smiled. “Go play. Just don’t drown or mom will kill me!”

  Han broke into a sprint and charged at the cool waves. He had recently learned to swim at his local pool, courtesy of lessons from his father, but this was his first time in the ocean; it made the pool seem so dull and artificial in comparison. The ocean was magnificent, huge, dark, and mysterious. When his feet first left the dry sand and touched the waves, he realized that the water would be much cooler than his heated pool; he found the chill exhilarating. He ran even faster, submerging his ankles, then his calves, and eventually his waist beneath the cool water. He splashed water on his chest and dipped his head into the waves—it felt as though he’d waited his whole life to do so.

  The day had been sunny and hot, but a large, dark cloud moved quickly across the sun. The water suddenly became a dark shade of gray.