by Jerome Sitko
Joey returns to where the other kids are waiting. Other than a headache, he’s fine and assures all of them that he can drive. He leaves out the part about the voice ordering him to mutilate Carter’s body.
Lance is the only one that notices a difference in him. It’s the same feeling he had following Joey up the stairs in the Thriftway Building Center the night they met Charlie. He doesn’t say anything, but he knows Charlie is back.
All the kids and Bear pile into the van and continue west toward Baker City.
The police won’t find Carter’s body for another three days and they will never find his killer. Four years later, in 1988, they will match his DNA to two murder–rapes of adolescent boys that disappeared in Oregon.
As soon as the kids turn down a dirt road with tall dead trees flanking both sides and a decrepit barbwire fence, Joey can see the huge fading ranch style sign high above the road that reads, PINK HOUSE SWINE PROCESSING FARM, in pink letters, he starts in.
CHAPTER 5
Slaughterhouse Blues or Sin City
"Hell no, Lance!” Joey blurts out, “don’t tell me we’re going into that creepy fucking place.” Pointing, dry blood still spattered on his arms.
“This place is abandoned,” Joey says, as he surveys the slight rolling hills peppered with small, neglected wood buildings that are capped with rusted tin roofs. All of them brandish barely visible building numbers, painted long ago in white. The road leads to the main slaughterhouse that sits atop the hill. It was once the pride and joy of the large operation, now it’s relinquished to mother nature’s brutal mood swings. Its shell is a mix of aged wood and tin sheets used as patches through the years, all of it held together by rusty nails. On the side of the building is a ginormous playful pink pig winking at all who enter. The roof is the same as the smaller buildings, and it has four cement loading docks and several chutes to herd the little piglets inside. If all of that isn’t enough to convince Joey not to keep going, the black clouds and crack of thunder in the east do the trick.
Visibly sweating and agitated, Joey is trying to rub the itchy, dried blood off his arms as he continues his contentious argument that Lance has yet to join.
“It’s going to be morning soon and I don’t think any of us want to be here at night. Plus, it’s going to rain. Why don’t we wait for light?” Joey asks looking around, pleading with anyone who will agree.
Bear is the only one that seems the slightest bit interested and walks over to Joey and lies between his legs to try and calm him. Reno and Jeremy don’t speak but they also agree with Joey; this place is creepy and will only get creepier when the storm hits.
Lance wants to agree with Joey and leave this place until morning now that they know where it is, but where will they go? Plus, he knows that the portal Emma told him about might not be here in the morning.
It’s not like they can get into their comfy beds at home and start again tomorrow. No, they are already here and the quicker they can find the portal, the better.
“What do you guys think? Should we go in tonight or find a place to park and sleep until light?” Lance queries the group. “Remember, we’re runaways in a stolen van and the owner is back there somewhere hurt.”
He doesn’t know Joey murdered Carter, none of them do.
Joey has an epiphany and changes direction mid-stream, guiding his canoe in the same direction as Lance.
Damn, he’s right, what if they find the chomo? The gory image of Carter’s bloody body with his balls crammed into his eye sockets is branded into his mind.
“We can’t chance it. As much as I want to wait, we can’t chance it. If Carter finds help and turns us in the police will know we were heading to Baker in his van. Let’s go in,” Joey says as he cringes inside, his stomach revolting the way it did last summer when a double-dog dare was laid at his feet to jump his Diamondback bike off the steep cliff by the ponds.
“It’s settled then. We keep going.” His spidey senses are tingling. Joey murdered Carter and is lying to them. There’s more, Lance just hasn’t figured it out yet.
They slowly creep up to the main building, the van’s headlights shine a dreary yellow to match the mood of the occupants inside it.
Below the kid’s feet, the rough, cracked concrete floor meant to keep the pigs’ blood from soaking into the environment is stained with the tens of thousands of swine that met their final, inconsequential fate in this very spot.
Lance and Reno’s flashlights are the only source of limited light dancing in front of them as they sweep the haunting room and the light brings none of them any comfort as the imaginary killer clown in their heads is handing out free passes to this nightmare. As if on cue, Thor crashes his hammer down on the rusty tin roof producing a thunderous clap followed by a torrential downpour. All of the kids jump out of their skin and Lance drops his flashlight. The rain flowing through the countless rusted holes in the roof forming small puddles inside the building. Bear is barking and whimpering, frightened by the deafening noise.
A sweeping chill fills the room and engulfs the kids as Joey’s specter leads them to the portal. The same apparition that Carter saw in the rearview mirror. Joey is the only one that knows they have company.
“Come on, follow me,” Joey yells in his best big boy voice. He is following his new friend as it calmly directs them past the scald tanks and scraping tables toward the back of the room. The others are oblivious to the fact that there is something else in the room, well almost everyone.
Lance is trailing behind the group. He took a few extra seconds to try and find his flashlight, no luck. When Reno’s light passes over Joey, Lance can sense something is leading him. He is almost sure he sees a figure, but isn’t certain. The room is too dark and the angles from the rain reflecting off the light beam distorts his view.
They follow Joey up a small flight of metal grate stairs into an office overlooking the kill floor. The windows are long gone but at least there is no rain in here. They have to speak loudly; the rain has not let up its battering crusade to finally break the roof’s spirit.
“Holy shit, good God, it’s got to be a sign. He doesn’t want us here,” Jeremy says as he tries to shake the water from his body imitating Bear.
Still upset that he lost his flashlight Lance fires back, “It’s not a sign. Don’t be ridiculous.” He turns his attention to poor Bear. His dog is cold and has to be hungry, but he’s a trooper and will follow Lance until he can no longer stand or simply falls over dead.
“Does anyone know where the portal is in here?” Jeremy surveys the group. “Why couldn’t we just use the same one Charlie took us through at the Thriftway Building Center?”
This time he’s specifically speaking to Lance and Jeremy.
“Emma told me the Thriftway portal moved. She said the portals are not permanent and that’s why we had to hurry here to this one. But I don’t know exactly where it’s at,” Lance answers.
“How will we know when we find it?” Reno wipes the cold rainwater off her forehead.
Lance looks out the glassless window down onto the kill floor and hopes that the animals that died, died without pain. It makes him contemplate never eating meat again.
“It has to be a door or entry, or something. We have to stick together. If we split up and randomly start opening doors one of us might cross over and the rest of us will never find them,” he finally says.
“Sounds like a plan,” Reno answers. “Should we wait for the rain to stop before we go traipsing around a slaughterhouse?”
“I vote yes,” Joey says with his hand raised like he’s in Mr. Tolsen’s math class, in no hurry to leave the relative safety of the office. The others all nod their head in agreement.
While waiting, they all take time to reflect on what they’ve done so far and what might be before them in Sheol.
“Explain to me again about Charlie and this other wo
rld we’re supposedly crossing into—Sheol?” Reno asks no one in particular.
Jeremy and Joey automatically look at Lance.
“Shit, what do you want to know?” Lance asks.
“Everything.”
Lance details how Sheol is somehow a parallel world to theirs and that something evil (Erebus) wants to control both worlds and they are using Charlie to do it. He explains that Charlie was a murderer when alive and was handpicked by Erebus to converge the worlds.
“Charlie is a strange fellow, strange looking and acting, but don’t let him fool you. He gets in your head and has some kind of charm that makes you want him to like you. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except himself.” He looks at Joey with sorry eyes. “He made Joey kill Ryan right in front of us and laughed. He has powers, powers to make people do things they don’t want to do and power to change things in Sheol.”
Both Joey and Jeremy remember the horror Charlie put them through the last time they were in Sheol. If Joey was not so good at compartmentalizing his emotions, he would be in a nuthouse.
For Jeremy, it’s even worse; he killed himself in Sheol and his once confident, strong, self is now as fragile as an eggshell. Internally, he’s been trying to pull his former self out of a dark, locked closet in his mind. He can hear himself pounding on the door from the other side, but each time he tries to open it, it’s deadbolted shut and his current self doesn’t have the strength to free the real Jeremy. But Jeremy is a warrior and sooner or later he will break that damn door down.
Reno is hanging onto Lance’s every word, and stealing glimpses at Jeremy and Joey who both look solemn and small. She notices that they both subconsciously worked their way to the far corner of the room up against the wall as if they are expecting Lance to yell BOO and scare them. Reno backs up and sits on the edge of the only desk in the room and crosses her legs, still listening intently.
“Sheol is another story. It’s really weird. It looks like our world except everything has an orange tint. Charlie took us through an endless red desert and he could make a building appear out of nowhere. He has an army he calls grouplings. They aren’t alive, but he can make them look and act normal. We watched them spoil and rot right before our eyes. Oh, and he can read your thoughts so he knows what you’re thinking or about to do. The last time we were in Sheol, the ground started caving in all around us and his grouplings were everywhere… I forgot to mention the vultures,” he says with a slight tinge of fear that was more noticeable than he wanted. “He has huge black vultures, the size of a short bus, but they don’t have any feathers. Their bodies are black, cracking, and bald. Their heads, oh, their heads! No eyes. Only black sockets where their eyes should be, and they have row after row of sharp, long teeth. They remind me of shark teeth. He calls them whenever he wants and they come out of nowhere and swoop down to take people away somewhere, but we don’t know where. I heard him call them highwaymen, but they’re not human at all.” One thing Lance has not been able to figure out is how Jeremy committed suicide in Sheol and returned to their world, Adamah, normal (sort of). If Ryan was murdered in Sheol how come he doesn’t return to “normal” when he crosses back over? The only thing he can figure is Jeremy killed himself and Ryan was killed by someone else.
After Lance finishes talking and the room is silent except the rain striking the roof, Reno reflects on all that she has learned, the story in the cabana and just now.
It can’t be real, she thinks.
She half expects them to run around this slaughterhouse for a few hours and then go home. Up to this point, she has not seen any grouplings or highwaymen, so she has no reason to believe any of it. But she did steal her sister’s car, and drove all night to get here… So…maybe?
The rain suddenly stops as if Thor turned the handle to the faucet off. It was instantaneous and catches all of them by surprise. At first none of them say anything or move from their spots. Lance knows they have to hurry and find the portal, but does not want to move.
Reno says what the boys fear, “Sounds like the rain stopped. Should we get going? Who’s in the lead?”
“I’ll lead,” Lance says as he moves toward the door of the office, flinging his backpack over his shoulders. Since they had time to think, Lance has been trying to figure out where the portal could be in this place. He knows it’s here. Emma would not lie to him.
They all follow him out, Bear in the lead, and Jeremy in the back. There’s a promising looking door on the other end of the kill floor, which is unlike any of the other doors. This one is painted red and from a distance it looks like someone threw a bucket of blood on it. The path to the door is not a straight shot; they have to bob-and-weave around upturned stainless-steel tables, saws, puddles, and broken boards littering the floor. Once in front of the door, Lance stops and turns around even before trying the handle to see if it’s locked.
“If this is the portal, prepare yourself,” he says to all of them. He scoops Bear into his arms and turns back around and turns the handle. “Damn it, it’s locked.” He hands Bear to Reno so he can use both hands and wrestles with the door for a couple of minutes. Joey is standing beside him with a large rusty iron pipe.
“Let a real man give it a shot, sonny,” he says as he slams the pipe down onto the handle. The handle gives with ease and Joey gets a shit-eating grin on his face as he turns around waiting for the commoners to applaud his heroism. He gets none.
Lance pushes past him and rushes into the room. The others follow. They all stand in the center of what looks like a supply cage, bewildered.
“I thought for sure this was it,” Lance says with a baffled look on his face. The room is barely big enough for all four of them to stand and all four walls have chain link fence around them. An old three-shelf storage rack runs the length of the back wall, leaning, ready to fall over. This is definitely not the portal.
They all back out of the room and as soon as Joey clears the door, he’s jogging up the metal steps to another door that appears to lead to the outside. It’s a metal double door.
“Let’s try this one guys,” he says once he reaches the top of the steps and looks back.
They all follow him and once everyone is in place, he turns the handle and kicks the door open. Nothing, but it does lead to the outside.
They try two more doors before Reno says, “I don’t think it’s here. At least not in this building. Maybe, we should try some of the smaller buildings we passed on the way up here. What do you guys think?”
“It’s here, I know it is. Emma wouldn’t tell me it’s here if it wasn’t,” Lance replies, understanding the urgency. If they give up and leave, all of them will want to go home, so to placate Reno he says, “Okay, let’s go check some of the other buildings, but if it’s not there can we come back and make sure we didn’t miss anything?”
They all nod in agreement and start walking toward the same door they entered during the storm. When they’re about ten feet from the entrance, they hear a howl from outside; it sounds like a coyote or a wolf. All of them jump and then freeze, frightened by the sound. Bear leaps from Reno’s arms, barking as he runs toward the swinging door, the handle long ago rusted and broken, ignoring Lance’s commands to stop, to come back. They chase after him and plow through the door.
It’s the portal and they all just crossed the threshold. Before anyone has a chance to say or do anything, Lance remembers how it happened with Charlie. The portal was the same door they opened to get to the roof of the Thriftway and when they came back through to escape the cowboy, they were in Sheol. It’s not the door per se. It’s being in the right place at the right time and crossing back the same way you enter.
S
At first, Reno thinks she’s walked into a fire. The sky is orange and there is a sweltering dry heat prickling her skin and smacking her in the face. The sky is so bright that she shields her eyes as she shakes her head trying to clea
r it, dazed and confused.
What the hell just happened? she thinks as the terrifying realization overcomes her that it happened. She’s in Sheol. Please let this be a dream, please let this be a dream, she says to herself or maybe to God.
When the boys cross over, they are overcome with mind-bending flashbacks of their last visit; the part of their brain associated with fear memories, the amygdala, is on fire. It is so emotionally overwhelming that they are physically drained of energy. All of them can feel the evil surrounding them. It feels like walking too close to a powerline and hearing the hum from above and electricity in the ground.
Lance is impacted the most. When he crossed over, he also had his first real vision of Ryan even if only for a second. It was like watching from a hidden camera in a ceiling.
Ryan was sitting on a dirty mattress next to a girl with his arm around her like he’s consoling her. He leaned into her almost touching her head with his, her right hand on his thigh. What Lance did not know is Ryan just gave the girl a lethal dose of heroin and is waiting for her to expire; she will be a groupling.
Ryan looks up and for a brief nanosecond, Lance and Ryan lock eyes. Ryan is seeing his friend for the first time since his turning and it shocks Lance out of his vision. Ryan doesn’t know what it means. He didn’t even recognize Lance; his state as a groupling does not afford such luxuries.
“He’s alive. Ryan is alive. When I went through the portal, I had a vision. He’s sitting in a room with a girl, but I don’t know where.”
The other kids, either too tired or too scared, barely acknowledge him.
Joey had his own vision when he passed through the portal, but his was much darker. It was Charlie, and Charlie only said, Bring them to me.
