I stepped into a room that appeared to be like the vast industrial areas we’d already passed through, a production environment bereft of joy. The gruesome assembly line belt of body parts continued through a square opening like a psychopathic baggage carousel at an airport. A bulky storage tank took up most of the rear wall like a husky kid at a school dance, faded red lettering stenciled on its side demanding NOT TO BE USED AS ROAD FUEL.
I felt the presence of others in the room but details were hazy. I thought my eyes were failing me, but this was unlike no hallucination I’d had before. A strange new dimension formed around us as we entered and we were in the middle trying to process both at once, without a full picture of either dimension. Details ran together like an over-painted canvas. For the first time, I was seriously questioning my sanity.
I heard the metal doors behind us slam shut, and sheer whiteness took over the room. I turned around and watched the OSHA yellow doors fade into the white wall before its outline disappeared, like everything else I’d just seen when I walked in. This new room was half the size of the others. There were no furnishings…just us and a little girl in a red-patterned school uniform standing across the room, a black bob of hair spilling below her red beret. She watched us with a dour expression, as though waiting at a bus stop to get to school.
I looked at the others to confirm what I was seeing, their confused faces telling me the same story I was trying to tell myself.
Sam shook his head as though trying to sift the sight before him through a screen in his mind. He stepped forward and, in the stern tone of an adult talking to a mischievous child, said, “Little girl, you mind telling us what’s going on here?”
She didn’t respond until Sam opened his yap to repeat himself. She held up her hand, palm outward like a crossing guard at an intersection.
Her voice was light and gentle, lilting, like a cartoon character’s. “Why are you here?”
“Young lady, we’re here to stop all this evil madness,” Sam said. “Where are your parents? Who’s responsible for all this? You?”
Naomi scoffed. “She’s just a little girl.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“You’re right,” said Paul. “She’s some kind of illusion.”
“Am I?” asked the girl. “Am I some kind of illusion?” Then her form changed like a bad AI rendering, making odd, unnatural movements using natural features. Eyes bulged and mouth distended. Her body grew to adult size, her hair shortened to a scruffy boy’s cut, fading to brown, her eyes lightening from brown to green. Her school uniform molded into jeans and a familiar t-shirt. Then I saw Sticks standing there before me, smiling just like the time we found a folded $50 bill on the sidewalk after being broke for weeks. We got high that day.
“Sticks?” I asked. “Is that you?”
“Sticks?” Tarah asked, her eyes watering. “That’s my dad.”
“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “That’s my brother.”
“What are you people looking at?” asked Sam. “The girl is still right there.”
Tarah turned back to the figure. “Dad…I’m so sorry. I tried to take ‘em all down, but there were too many…too many.” She began to sob, a dramatic shift from her usual flat, somewhat hostile demeanor.
“Snap out of it, people!” Paul yelled. “None of them are real!”
Sticks spoke as though he was actually standing there, his Xanax-induced drawl intact yet different, giving away that he was being spoofed. I was probably one of the few people on the planet close enough to Sticks who could tell the difference. I half-expected to hear him ask for my password and Social Security Number for some prince in Nigeria.
“You must not disrupt the ritual!” the image demanded.
“That’s exactly what we’re hoping to do, young lady,” said Sam, apparently still seeing the little girl. “Do you have any idea how much damage you’ve caused to my beloved country?”
“Do you not think that was my intention?” Sticks asked. “Your beloved country is a cesspit and needs to be washed clean like the Great Flood.”
“You’re not God…you’re just a two-bit trickster.”
“Your opinion means nothing. You must leave immediately. There are forces here beyond your control…forces summoned through a lifetime’s pursuit of hidden knowledge. If the ritual is disrupted, those forces will be unleashed upon you…to your peril.”
But Sam and his robust willpower wouldn’t back down. “Look, Mr. Wizard, you’re the only force we’re concerned about right now. You are the peril, buddy, and you have to be brought to justice.” Sam pulled a pair of handcuffs from the back pocket of his pants. “That’s it…I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”
“Wait, you’re going to arrest a ghost?” asked Paul. “Run it downtown for processing?”
“You are fools!” the apparition shouted. “If the ritual is disrupted, all of our lives are null and void. I cannot hold the summons without focus! I must…not…be distracted–”
“I’m putting an end to this circus,” said Sam. He raised his pistol and fired a round at the specter. BANG!
Then it was all gone…the white room, the girl, Sticks, Tarah’s dad…whoever everyone thought they were looking at, dissipated like a phantom mist.
We found ourselves back in the Body Shop. The air held an unpleasant odor of brimstone and gangrene. The room we’d first stepped into had returned, with the addition of a bloody altar lining the wall opposite the fuel tank, surrounded by glowing candles. Corpses were scattered about the room like leaves from a shaken tree. It was the last place any of us wanted to be.
Aleister, the mad wizard, stood within a small chalk circle—unshaven and unkempt—charcoal symbols painted across his naked body. He stared straight ahead with the blank expression of a mannequin. An ancient, leather-bound hardcover lay at his feet, opened and discarded upside down on the floor as though it had tumbled from a bookshelf. Unseen energy swirled throughout the room in a chaotic storm, weighing us down like a strong wind blowing down from a mountaintop.
A larger chalk circle edged with white lines and squiggly sigils had been drawn on the ground nearby, containing a hideous, shape-shifting demon. The beast’s fur turned scaly and then to diseased skin, and then back again…claws becoming feet and fins…a tail growing to the floor before curling up and absorbing into its back. The rapid evolutions of this abomination turned my stomach, and I had to look away.
Then a voice echoed in my head as though my skull was an antenna picking up a broadcast from 66.6 FM radio. Deep, dark, and vile, a legion of growling voices uttered madness in the center of my brain—guttural dead languages—before finally settling on English as though plucked from a spinning roulette wheel.
“Spare your weapons,” the phantom voice said. “Your arrival was most fortunate. You have disrupted the ritual and I am finally free. This so-called ‘magician’ has kept me captive long after I fulfilled our agreement to raise his graveyard army.” The beast within the circle pulsed larger, as though flexing its muscles with pride, roaming eyes settling on Aleister’s blank form. “But now…the controller has become the controlled.”
“Who…what are you?” Naomi asked.
“I am ancient, and that is all you can understand.”
I got right to the point. “Where are the people Aleister captured? What’s he doing with them?”
“His fresh stock is nearby. Their lives were needed to restore life to the dead.”
“Innocent lives!”
The demon laughed. “Yet the population of Hell grows larger. What a mystery.”
“Hell is right here,” said Paul. “You made it that way. You and that magician goofball.”
The creature laughed again from jaw to tail, every unnatural transformation an affront to decency. “Your kind made it that way long before this ingrate forced me to this plane.” Its many eyes remained on Aleister from ever-changing locations on its body—every single eye a window to bad news—while the magician remained frozen.
The demon’s deep voice took a mocking tone. “Yes, this ingrate…” Aleister’s naked body twitched as though the beast was working his muscles like a puppet master. “This barbarian…this hairless primate who confined me like a slave! Every moment of imprisonment was an eternity! Do you want to dance, skin puppet? Dance for our guests!”
Aleister then began an unsteady jig, his movements flexible but still rigid, as though there was a struggle behind the scenes. Aleister remained on the balls of his feet, curling each leg in time to a beat silent to us, his exposed genitals flapping like the wattles of a rooster. He lifted one arm high, then did a bounce while lifting the other arm, smiling like a leprechaun about to prank some hapless victim. His bare feet made an uncomfortable slapping sound whenever one of them met with the concrete floor.
The demon continued while Aleister switched from a jig to some kind of suite dance from some demented 17th-century salon. “Because you have freed me, I have chosen to free you.” And, as an aside, “You will die soon enough, of course, but it shall not be my doing.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“I am ancient and have existed in many dimensions…I know your past and can see your future. Destruction is coming for you all. Flying machines will soon dot the sky, releasing their cargo for a fiery apocalypse. I will not slay you, yet you will die here just the same.”
“They’re going to bomb the city?” I asked.
Paul grabbed my shoulder. “Come on, these things are always lying. Didn’t any of you watch The Exorcist? These demons are conniving liars.”
“I have no reason to lie,” said the beast, “though I do relish deception in due course. It guarantees my role in fate.” It laughed. “Your fate.”
“You have no reason to tell the truth, either,” I said.
“Wait,” said Tarah. “If we’re going to die anyway, we can just walk out of here and you’ll do nothing?”
“I have nothing to gain by your death without your soul.”
Tarah turned to us. “If this thing will let us leave, we have no reason to stay. Let’s get the prisoners and go.”
“Wait,” said Sam. “We can’t just leave. With this evil right in front of us? We’re just gonna turn our backs on it?”
“If it makes you feel better, we can walk out of here backward.”
“If the bombs are coming,” said Steven, “then the Body Shop is going up, too, with the demon in it. Sounds like a wash to me.”
“Then I vote we get the fuck out of here,” said Paul. “Any objections?”
We moved from the summoning room and into another grim scene. Dust and grime hung suspended in the gloom. Debris was scattered across the floor, along with smears of dirt and blood, and several waist-high cages with wide bars lined the room. Each cage held a prisoner.
Unconcerned about the devil we knew back in the summoning room, I moved down the first row of cages, flinging doors open and shouting for Sticks. Hector and Payton followed, gathering them for the nearest exit, most of their minds like vacant homes.
We finished freeing the first row of people and then kept moving until I reached the middle of the third row and stopped for a familiar face. Finally. Sticks was dirty and damaged but still alive. Like Hector, his bare back displayed the telltale branching white scars along his skin from Aleister’s psychic torture.
I reached out and gently touched his shoulder. “Sticks, it’s Neil. Remember me?”
He gazed back without recognition. I reached under his shoulder and pulled him out of the cage, where he remained hunched over as though overcome by gravity. Despite his condition, I was so happy to see him that I hunched over just to hug him. Slowly, I felt his arms tighten around my back. Then we parted and I held his upper arms while looking him in the eyes, hoping my face would jog his memory.
He struggled to say something, as though trying to recall an ancient memory. “Water,” he whispered.
“Absolutely.” I gave him my canteen. “Drink it slow…don’t they always say that in the movies?” I held him up while he drank as I guided him toward the exit. “This way, bro. Be careful…I gotcha.”
The two of us hobbled back to the rear of the room, where people were filing out, with Reverend Payton at the helm.
“It’s like they had their minds wiped,” said Sam. “Some kind of amnesia.”
As soon as we finished with the last row of cages, I heard small arms fire and then a zing past my ear that caused me to duck reflexively, even though it was way too late. Had the bullet wanted to hit me, it certainly could have.
Steven yelled in pain and he collapsed to the ground next to Naomi, who also fell trying to catch him. I turned and saw Paul at the door to the summoning room, taking shots at us.
“Take cover!” Sam yelled. “I told you we should’ve finished the job and now it’s got Paul!”
Possessed Paul fired a round at Naomi just as she left Steven’s dead body and jumped between two cages, hoping to find some cover other than her luck while she fumbled for her weapon. Suddenly, we were forced to shift from helping prisoners escape to fighting against our own people.
Sam and Tarah returned fire first, but missed Paul as he pursued Naomi. “You are in this one’s thoughts,” he said in a dull, druggy monotone. “The whelp thinks he loves you, but you will die and he will wake right before he dies…to learn he has killed you.”
“You’re definitely not my type,” said Naomi, taking aim.
The two traded gunfire point-blank and Paul retreated to the summoning room, howling the entire way. Naomi, also wounded, crumpled in a heap between the cages.
Tarah and I ran to Naomi’s side while Sam covered the doorway in case Possessed Paul tried his luck a second time. Naomi held an arm across her stomach like a kid with a tummy ache as a pool of blood grew where she fell.
“That son of a bitch,” said Naomi. “He killed Steven! I knew he was jealous of Steven and me, but I never thought he’d shoot me.”
“He’s not feeling like himself right now,” I said, checking on her injuries. “How bad is it?”
She pulled up her shirt to reveal a pale belly with a wound on her side, just above the hip. “I think the bullet just grazed me, but I won’t know until I can stop this bleeding.”
Sam tossed her a towel from his pack. “Keep pressure on it. I’m going to cover the door from the next row over.”
Without warning, the doors to the summoning room blew outward like a furious gale pushed through, taking large chunks of the wall on either side along with it. Through the dust and debris came Possessed Paul and Aleister, leading several revenants risen by the demon, and the few remaining Techs and Acolytes still able to fight.
“Keep an eye on her,” Tarah said to me, nodding to Naomi. “I’m heading for that walkway up there. If it gets too heavy, you might want to join me.” She entered the aisle and Paul swung his aim to track her, but was forced to duck from Sam’s return fire. With rifle slung over a shoulder, Tarah reached the ladder and climbed up to the walkway near the ceiling, using the ladder’s metal panels as shields from the flying bullets.
Revenants flowed into the chamber in a river of gnashing teeth and swinging claws, seeking easy prey like sharks in shallow water, some of them even turning on their creators before they even entered the cage room. Karma was like magic, too.
“Are you able to move on your own?” I asked Naomi. “We’re gonna have to get out of here in a hurry.”
“I think so.”
Even with Tarah’s accuracy from the wings, the big room got crowded. I looked over to Sam, still behind a cage across the aisle, shaking his head while shoving shells into his shotgun.
“Sam!” I yelled. “We’re gonna have to fall back! There’s too many!”
I thought he pretended not to hear me. But then he shook his head weakly. “No.”
“Sam!” It was no use…he wanted to make a Last Stand. Then I spotted a patch of blood on his jeans where he’d been hit. He thought he was a goner.
Another shot dinged off the cage in front of him—near his face—enough to force him to fall over and land on his ass.
With Tarah providing cover fire from the walkway above, I boosted Naomi on top of the nearest cage, then reached over and grabbed Sam by the shirtsleeve. “Sam, it’s a rout! We’ve got to climb up on the cages or we’re gonna be overrun.”
The close call with the bullet near his head had jolted him back to reality. There would be no last stand for Sam…at least, not then and there…drowning in a storm of inhumanity for nothing. Sam got to his feet and, without looking at the oncoming wave, climbed to the top of the closest cage. He tried to stand up to leap across the aisle and join us, but collapsed from the pain of his leg wound. Still, Sam continued to fight for the exit.
The number of healthy legs in this group continued to fall, but as long as I had two, I would keep moving. I came up under Naomi’s arm and lifted her up while she steeled herself and emptied her clip into the crowd, but it made little difference. We were vastly outnumbered. There was little we could do but run for our lives.
The revenants hit the cages like a breaking wave below us, swarming as we jumped from cage to cage, heading for the exit. When the three of us reached the end of the row of cages, Tarah put down her pack. “Keep moving! We’re gonna end this right now.” She lowered to a knee and grabbed her grenade, pulling the pin and tossing it through the hole in the wall into the summoning room, where it rolled under the fuel tank.
We raced the explosion, making it to the outer door to meet with the others huddling outside. Every structure standing within fifty feet collapsed. We didn’t stop running until we reached the edge of the island, flinging ourselves into the river like penguins from an iceberg.
I found Sticks with Payton, Hector, and the others, hanging onto a large floating piece of debris. We found larger pieces that could hold the wounded, with Naomi and Sam sharing a large piece of a broken wall.
“Head for the other side of the river!” I yelled to anyone who could hear me. I grabbed Sticks and swam with him towards the far shore—among the dead bodies and debris—the worrying sound of bombers approaching unseen in the clouds and smoke above.
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