One hundred years after the undead swept across the globe, a man of unspeakable evil wields the power of darkness in his quest for ultimate supremacy.
Prologue
One hundred years ago, the war against the undead began. No one knows where it originated from, but a virus blossomed somewhere in the USA, spreading so fast that even trying to identify Ground Zero was a fruitless endeavor. The infected would lose all sense of sanity, their memories and feelings eclipsed by madness and a hunger for flesh. The disease took hold through access to the blood stream, most often through bite wounds, completely corrupting the host in a matter of seconds and robbing them of their humanity. From there, they would have one single mission: spread, spread sickness and death. They ignored all injuries, their absent heartbeat, even their own rotting flesh. While the human race tried to protect their egos by calling it a war, really, it was assimilation.
“Zombies”, pop culture had jokingly anticipated their arrival for decades. Countless movies, books, and videogames gave generations a glimpse into the horror that could be set loose if the dead walked. But contrary to cinema, the true undead could not be dispatched with something so simple as a bullet to the brain. Even after decapitation, the body moved in search of life, severed limbs crawling like insects. Dismemberment was the only option, followed by incineration for good measure.
Cities became bloodbaths, the threat bursting into people’s homes and feeding on their flesh. Highways turned into graveyards of abandoned cars, left behind during the panic. The steel boxes served as tombs for the stubborn and the fearful, those who had hoped that the undead clawing at their windows would grow bored and leave, only to succumb to infection or death. One by one, governments fell, the lights following suit and leaving everyone immersed in the darkness of night.
Twenty years and more than half of the world population later, the zombies died out, taking the last vestiges of stability and unity with them. Without the threat of the undead to unite mankind, the next thirty years were utter chaos, people fighting over the bloody and ashen remains of the old world. Warlords and religious sects ruled and madness infected the survival instinct. The old religions were either replaced or reinforced, faith both lost and given to those who had survived the nightmare of the undead. On altars made of junked cars, animals and humans were sacrificed in the hope of preventing another catastrophe, the rituals presided over by 21st century kings wearing broken Rolex watches and crowns made of CD shards. Sources of food and clean water became the subject of wars, with gasoline and ammunition worth more than their weight in gold.
But despite the bloodshed and madness, the human race could begin recovering and repopulating, and despite fifty years of chaos, the rebuilding process began. Drawing upon the knowledge of the old world from stories and records, humanity made the journey back towards the modern era, with former nations resurrecting one after another. Now, in America, mankind is walking the very same paths as in the 20th century, with people having to relearn and rediscover the knowledge and tools needed to establish basic commodities and infrastructure, while the rebuilt government works to settle the lands that remain without law and order.
A century after the occultation, human society is finally on an upswing. Cities are being reclaimed, ‘surviving’ being replaced with ‘living’, the future becoming a little less uncertain every day. But despite the fragile calm, the world is still engrossed in fear and confusion, and it is when chaos and order are in an equilibrium that evil evolves and a new nightmare takes the scene.
King of the Dead
There is no light of Heaven
Nor the raging flames of Hell
Only eternal darkness
In which the Old Gods dwell
=============
The man looked into his glass, watching the surface of the liquid shimmer from his breath. Through it, he could see all of the lines and scratches in the wooden counter. It was old, definitely prewar. A lot of the tavern had been renovated with the reclaiming of the town, but the new owner appeared to have taken a liking to the old counter, probably trying to give his bar some “character” that would draw customers. Despite a century of neglect, it had aged very well. There were several other people in the bar, all of them armed, a remnant of the apocalypse that humanity had survived. The last zombie died around eighty years ago, yet it was common in rural areas to carry a blade large enough to hack off a limb, as well as a gun to defend against any remnants of the chaotic years that followed.
There was music playing from an old stereo, classic rock. Though in this era, it was technically “antique” rock. In the corner, above the bar, a TV was showing the evening news. The news anchor was wearing a nice suit but missing a tie. Some things from the old world weren’t brought back to the new one. The man wasn’t watching the news, nor listening to the music. He didn’t seem to even notice or mind the stench of cigarettes and the taste of bathtub liquor. His attention was focused on a large silver coin he was flipping back and forth across his knuckles.
The man was in his mid-twenties with long, dark hair. He had a large build from a lifetime of brutal training, but a handsome face, a fitting canvas for the smirk he wore as he stared at the coin. It was a smug grin, the kind that would anger some, unnerve others, and attract a few. It worked, drawing a cute little number to the seat next to his. Short blonde hair, blue eyes, an inviting cleavage, she drew the attention of every man in the room.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before,” she said. She then ordered a drink from the bartender.
Seeing her, the man’s gaze sharpened with desire burning within. “I’m just passing through, heading north.”
“But there is nothing up north. You’ll only find backwoods savages up there.”
“Oh, there is plenty up there. It just depends on what you’re looking for.”
The bartender handed her a glass half-filled with an opaque liquid. She took a drink, leaving behind a smear of lipstick on the glass. “You might want to be careful flashing that silver here. The police won’t be able to help you if it gets taken.”
“I know how to keep it safe, but it’s not just the silver that gives it value.” He held it up, showing her the two sides. The coin had a glass lens pressed to its back. One side was a glistening mirror and the other was pure silver, engraved with a skull and incantations in a language that even before the war, few people knew about. “Without the glass, it’s just a piece of metal. Do you know how mirrors are made? A glass membrane is backed with a layer of a reflective substance, originally a mixture of mercury and tin. This is called silvering. Later, they were made using actual silver. In the modern age, the silver was replaced with aluminum.” The man eyed the mirror behind the bar. “That mirror is definitely aluminum.”
“I’m pretty sure the silver is the only reason anyone would steal it.”
“Only because they don’t know the true value of the mirror.” He then glanced up at the TV. It was a relic from the old world, but it still worked just fine. The news anchor was speaking with some government scientist about the possibility of the zombie plague returning. “Look at them, a hundred years since the undead rose and they still know nothing about them. They can’t even scratch the surface.”
The woman gave him an inviting look, knowing that there was more he wanted to say. She wanted to see if he had the courage to say it without needing to be asked and hoped it would be interesting.
The man smiled and held up the silver coin. “I know secrets about the dead. It was not a virus that allowed the dead to rise, it was the dead themselves. There is no light of Heaven, no flames of Hell, only the darkness of Purgatory, and when a hole is torn in that membrane, the dead pour back into our world. The “disease” that spread from person to person was really an ocean of spirits pouring into hosts. The darkness strips away all humanity. Once death has claimed you, your memories and feelings vanish, and you become an embodiment of hunger for that which you do not have: life.”
The woman rolled her eyes in disappointment. She had hoped he would be worth her attention, but he was just another religious nut. She looked back at him and she saw his gaze focused on her. The gleam in his eyes, that smirk on his face; they sent a shiver down her spine. The way he had spoken, it was not due to delusional beliefs or arrogant fanaticism; it was spoken in condescension, like he was explaining a fact to a child. He was indifferent to her reaction, or rather, it amused him.
“Relax, I’m just kidding.” He gave a hearty laugh, brushing aside her suspicions. “I love the different reactions people give when I start talking like that. It scares them, annoys them, or bores the hell out of him. Either way, it’s always funny.”
She laughed with him, and in her mind, laughed at herself for seeing things that weren’t there. He had just been smiling, that was all, and his sense of humor heightened her attraction. They began to chat, with more and more drinks being poured and consumed. The more she spoke, the more she drank, and the more obvious her intentions became.
“What do you say about getting out of here?” the man asked as the hands on his watch reached ever higher.
“You read my mind,” she purred. “I’ll call us a cab.”
“No need, I’m fine to drive.”
The man paid for their drinks and she followed him out to the parking lot, where light came only from the few lamps in the adjacent street. He led her to his pickup truck, built after the start of the reconstruction movement.
“I know of a nice motel nearby,” the woman said as she climbed into the truck.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Like a lunging snake, the man reached out and struck her in the side of the head with a solid punch. The force knocked her skull against the passenger door frame with enough force to draw blood. Her body became limp and the man bound and gagged her with a roll of duct tape. He then leaned out of the truck and jammed his fingers down his throat, forcing himself to vomit the alcohol he had consumed in the bar. He had only gone in there for a single drink, but in order to avoid her getting suspicious, he had to keep up with her. Of course, he had plenty of tricks to minimize the alcohol consumed—pretending to drink, throwing up in the bathroom, and even pouring his drink into her glass when she was distracted. It was necessary, as he needed to keep a clear head for what would happen next.
=============
As the man drove further and further into the wilds of northern Maine, signs of civilization faded. Even before the war against the undead, the upper half of the state was an untamed sea of wilderness, crisscrossed by some silent roads. After fifty miles from the coast, a state line, or the Canadian border, civilization all but vanished. That had changed when the war began. People fleeing the undead, and later, the warlords and their armies, headed into seclusion, hiding in the darkness of the trees. In the labyrinths of rolling hills and smothering forests of New England, humanity regressed into a Lovecraftian nightmare. Violent religious sects were born, inbreeding became common, and the line separating humans from animals blurred. These days, the towns were islands of civilization in an ocean of savagery, the forests filled with people who didn’t want to be found.
The man was still smiling, excitement keeping him wired as the hours passed. Frequently, he would stop to consult maps, but nothing else deterred him from his goal. After a while, the woman began to stir, slightly concussed from the blow she had received. Her wrists bound and her mouth covered, panic filled her and she gave a muffled scream. Without taking his eyes off the road, the ran reached over and grabbed her throat with a crushing grip. He never lost his smirk.
“Now, now, if you’re going to make a fuss, I can just toss you into the back and let the cold quiet you down. Sitting in the cab is a privilege that you should appreciate more.” Desperate for air, she gave in and became still. “Good girl. Now, how about you keep me company while I drive?” He pulled the duct tape off her mouth, and immediately she began to cry out in terror. The man again grabbed her throat, forcing her into submission. “There will be plenty of time for screaming later, but not in this confined space.”
He finally let go and she took some deep breaths. When she spoke, her voice was trembling. “What do you want from me?”
“I stopped off at that bar for a drink and you presented yourself on a silver platter. I decided that it might be a good idea to have some warm blood with me for where I’m going.”
“Where’s that?”
The man chuckled. “Do you remember what I said before? About the spirits of the dead? Heaven and Hell do not exist, there is only the darkness of Purgatory, and in that darkness, souls are stripped of their humanity and become wrathful specters. Your grandparents, your mother and father, your siblings, your friends, and even you yourself are eventually transformed into the wretched dead. The dead do not feel joy, they do not feel love, they do not feel hope. They are embodiments only of hunger and hatred, those feelings directed towards that which they are no longer: life. I could end your life right now, and in seconds, your soul, the very essence that made you who you are, would be trapped in a realm of eternal night, being twisted by madness and horror into an entity even less than a demon in all but maliciousness. You would be but a drop in an ocean of insanity, an eternal sea that expands beyond the parameters of human understanding.
One hundred years ago, an incident occurred, in which that sea leaked into our world. An arcane ritual was performed, several failed necromancers trying to resurrect one of the dead. Through a doorway they opened, that sea, that liquid horror, poured into their bodies and turned them into the undead. Chaos incarnate, a formless mix of the gluttonous rage of all the dead, it robbed them of their sanity and even basic thought and turned them into walking abominations. From there, they spread the disease, infecting others with that evil ichor.”
“How the fuck could you possibly know that?”
“I have my sources. Years ago, I learned of a cult that existed here in Maine. They believed that protection would come through appeasing the dead and that the only way to save themselves was to give the infected a proper burial. They hunted down the undead, dismembering them and transporting them back to a site they believed was sacred. In a mass grave, hundreds and perhaps even thousands of zombies were buried, their severed limbs still twitching, their teeth still gnashing. That is my destination.”
“What for?”
“You’ll see. Oh, would you look at that?”
The woman looked ahead. They passed by a burned-down house, one wall still remaining. A body was nailed to that wall, crucified. From the level of decay, the man or woman had been hanging there for years. Sightings like the corpse became more and more frequent the longer they drove. Cars, either burned or abandoned, were left on the sides of the road, many still caked with blood. Their sides were plastered with graffiti, either nihilistic or religious in nature, telling those who passed that they had to save themselves, or that it was already too late. Crosses and other religious symbols were plastered everywhere, many adorned with skulls and various body parts. When the dead started to rise, people realized there was no such thing as a merciful God.
There were traces of battles from the last hundred years, houses with their paint scraped off by the peeling fingernails of the dead, riddled with bullets, and marked with the emblem of whatever warlord ruled the territory at the time. Remnants of barricades were on every road, built to stop, and likewise destroyed, by both the living and the dead.
Then something changed. Traces of the fight against the undead could be seen, but no signs of the human conflicts afterward. No one had tried to stake claim over the area, no warlords or outlaws expanding their territory, even after the zombies died out. The land had simply been abandoned. Summer was just ending, but not a single leaf could be seen on any of the trees. They stood gaunt and lifeless, bare fingers reaching up to the stars. From above, one would see only a vast circle of gray and brown, like a cigarette burn on the flesh of Mother Nature.
Once the truck passed that perimeter, something stirred in the woman, piercing and cold. It was a fear that human words couldn’t properly describe, the sharpest fear she had ever felt, an icy razor slowly severing the muscle threads of her heart. Until now, she had been utterly terrified of the man next to her, afraid of what he would do to her, but she now felt safer in that truck with him than tossed out into this dead zone. Her most primeval instincts were telling her that she was in a danger like no other.
She looked to the man, her captor, and yet somehow the closest thing she had to a Guardian. She hoped to see that fear in him, to prove that she was not alone in feeling this oppression, but also hoped she wouldn’t, that he would be completely calm, showing that he still remained the thing that she should be most afraid of. She shuddered at the sight, a bloodthirsty grin on his face, eyes gleaming with ambition. He did feel what she felt, but he did not register it as fear.
Finally, the man pulled onto a dirt road. After a hundred years, it should have been overgrown, but nothing lived here. Life itself had left this place behind. He drove through the woods, coming out the other side into a clearing a mile in diameter. The women felt her sweat freeze, her lungs shriveling up. The land was cloaked in fog, but the moon above shone unhindered, and its light revealed a circular hill with a structure at the top. It was a ring of stone pillars, each one the size of a car, with huge arches, forming a perfect Stonehenge.
“This is the mass grave I spoke of. That hill is manmade, a thin layer of soil covering a mountain of corpses. Those pillars are the grave marker.” The woman wasn’t listening. She had her face pressed to the window, eyes trembling. She could see movement in the fog, invisible forms darting in and out of the darkness, leaving the vapor curling in their wake. “They are made of the spirits of the dead,” said the man. The woman looked at him. “But do not mistake that for a sign of humanity. I told you before, death strips souls of all that makes them human and twists them with darkness, leaving them as only malicious wraiths that feed on life itself.
What possessed all those people one hundred years ago, it was the collective will of the Sea of the Dead, a chaotic nebula of horror and madness without a single solid thought, save for the desire to eclipse life. What you are looking at are the resulting forms of that collection, demons made of the blended existences of the dead and formed within their human hosts. They are drawn to us because they sense our living bodies, our fresh souls.
Because so many of their vessels have gathered together and come undone, they are able to partially manifest themselves. I imagine they’ve killed everyone and everything within five miles of this grave.”
The man then opened the door beside him, showing no fear in forsaking the small security of the truck. He grabbed a large duffle bag from the back and slung it over this shoulder, then went around to the other side and dragged out the woman. She kicked and screamed, fear running through her veins like ice water. The figures in the mist were beginning to close in, their meal in sight. His lips curling into a smile, the man raised the silver coin, flashing them with the mirror side. Inhuman screeches were heard and the figures vanished, receding into the fog.
“Silver, their greatest weakness. As a universal conductor, it disrupts their flow of energy and causes them to lose shape, but that is just the start. Silver mirrors are capable of becoming doorways to the other side, their power depending on their age. For a mirror like this, any demon so much as caught in its reflection will be immediately cast back into the void from whence they came.”
He solidified his hold on the woman and dragged her towards the monument. She could see them still in the mist, shapeless, colorless, invisible specters watching from the shadows. With that coin in the man’s hand, they dared not come close. The man and woman passed under one of the archways of the monument, where a stone table had been placed in the center as an altar for sacrifice. Shackles and chains were secured in the four corners, binds for whatever poor soul was offered to appease the dead. They had rusted in the decades since the monument’s construction, but remained strong.
The man threw her onto the altar and drew a knife. It was coated with a layer of silver. First, he locked her ankles in the shackles at one end, then severed the duct tape binding her wrists so that she could secure them in the chains at the other. “Did you know that when the Bubonic Plague was ravaging Europe, people would have orgies in cemeteries? They did it to spit in the face of death. How better for me to get these beasts riled up?”
He then cut away her clothes, the knife slashing both fabric and flesh. The woman screamed in pain from the lacerations, thrashing and pulling at the chains that locked her to the cold stone. As her blood streamed freely, a noticeable tremor moved through the fog surrounding the altar. Every demon that had been slumbering was now awake, stirred by the scent of blood and spirit. They converged on the monument, but the man flashed the coin, scaring them back. They formed a perimeter behind the pillars, staring at the humans and waiting for the chance to strike. The woman lay on the altar, the moonlight shining on her naked body, her hot blood catching its radiance. She cried, the only thing she could do was cry, and wait for the sound of a zipper being lowered.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you feel pleasure. After all, death is the climax of life.”
He then lowered his head and kissed her, first a gentle peck, his lips merely brushing against hers, then joining for a longer bond. She tried to resist him, but he grabbed her chin and forced her to remain still, to receive his cruel affection. His tongue infiltrated her mouth, probing every corner like a serpent following the scent of its wounded prey. While one might think his attention was focused on her, his arm darted in all directions, pointing the coin at any approaching demons like it was a loaded gun. The mirror repeatedly reflected the moonlight, and that flash, no matter how small, bisected any dark wraith that it shined upon. Despite their fury and hunger, no demon dared enter the monument while he had that coin.
The woman soon gave in, letting the man have his way with her. No longer needing to hold her head still, he was able to send his free hand south and cup a warm breast. Had the night gone as she had originally expected, the two of them writhing in the twisted sheets of a motel bed, she would have welcomed the touch. His undulating grip, kneading her supple flesh, would have made her gasp, and his fingertips, coaxing her nipples to full erection and pulling them towards the sky, would have made her whimper from the blissful sting. Now, all they did was fill her with revulsion. This act of foreplay, was he doing it for his own amusement, to rile up the ghostly spectators, or simply to humiliate her with deceitful kindness? She knew she was helpless against him, he knew that she knew it, she knew that he knew that she knew it, and any pleasure he gave her was just a reminder of the power he held over her.
His hand moved farther south, slipping between her thighs. She again tried to fight him off, pulling at the chains and closing her legs, but she could still feel his fingers brush against her womanhood. They slid down, stroking the plump lips of the outer labia, then rose back up, tickling the exposed inner petals. His lips left hers and instead found her breasts. He pulled on her nipples with his lips and cleaned the blood off her flesh with his tongue. The cuts from his knife, his tongue stayed near them like a lion at a waterhole. She could hear them rumbling, the undead, growling and snarling in rage and envy as he gluttonously licked up her blood.
Against her will, a small moan escaped her lips. The man’s efforts were beginning to wear down her defenses. Between his fingertips, he was rubbing the very edge of one of her labia minora, and the kiss of both his lips and the brisk night air on her naked body was sending bolts of electricity up her spine. Her clitoris had become firm and now fallen prey to the strokes of his thumb. His fingers at last penetrated her, and try as she might, she could not contain her voice. It was little more than a soft squeak, but to her, it sounded louder than the trumpets of Armageddon. His fingers stirred inside her with dexterity she didn’t know was possible, like the tendrils of a lecherous demon.
Fresh tears fell from her eyes from the pain and disgust of this man inside her, violating both her flesh and her soul. The worst part was not the agony, but the lack of it. Her body was reacting to his touch, his fingers slick with her building arousal. Her mind knew and feared what would come next, but her body was beginning to crave it, these simple touches just appetizers to inflame her sexual hunger.
Finally, he pulled his fingers free and licked them clean. “My original plan didn’t include a victim, and I need to keep this coin raised to hold them back, but I suppose it would be rude of me to ravish you with the handicap of one of my hands occupied.”
She looked through her tears, seeing him retrieve the silver knife, but rather than bringing it towards her, he raised it to his own face. She began to scream, praying that this was just a bad dream, for the sight before her was cutting through her soul the way the knife had cut through her flesh. Without losing his smile, he dug the tip of the blade under his right eyeball. It was an effortless movement, the man prying his eye right of its socket and severing the nerve. She could see him shivering, his body surely reacting to the wound he had just inflicted, but his soft laughter told her that any pain he felt was nothing short of euphoric. He cast the eyeball aside, and in its place, he wedged the coin into the socket, the mirror side facing out. He looked down on her and she could see her own tear-streaked face reflected in the glass.
“There, now my hands are free and I can keep one eye on you and one eye on them—a figure of speech, of course.”
“You’re insane,” she hissed.
“On the contrary. Those who live in fear, those who break in the face of pain, they are the insane, as their minds are too weak to understand true control, true willpower. The gods bow to the power of fate, but fate bends to the will of man, and by my will, all of creation will be eclipsed. Besides, the loss of an eye is nothing compared to what I will soon gain.”
He then removed his clothes, and seeing him in the nude, the woman gasped. He was even more muscular than she first thought, chiseled, even, but from head to toe, he was covered in scars, burns, and permanent bruises. He climbed onto the altar, kneeling between her spread legs. The moonlight shined on his back, while she was kept in his shadow. He brushed his thumb along one of her cuts and then across her lips, reddening them with her blood like lipstick.
“Tell me, do you feel alive? Do you feel the power of your soul surging through you, the warmth of your blood permeating every cell? Do you feel the hardness of the stone, the bite of the rusty chains, the chill of the night air lapping at your skin? Savor those sensations, the bliss and the pain, for they are more precious than you realize.”
He then forced himself inside her, offering her no warning or mercy. She cried out from the brutal penetration, feeling like his manhood was poisoning her. The sanctum of her body had been violated, her will and freedom ripped away. Hours ago, she had hoped, desired, to feel his cock subjugate her, for him to take her as he would, but that was back when she just thought he was an interesting man. Now she couldn’t tell who the true monster was; the undead abominations circling around them, or the man with a soul blacker than she ever thought possible.
Once the man entered her, the demons around them gave shrieks that chilled her blood and gripped her heart, shrieks not meant for mortal ears. The arrogance of this human, it enraged them beyond measure, to fornicate before the incarnations of death and upon the bones of their broken vessels. They wished to strike, to extinguish the spark of life within him and teach him the meaning of despair, but a single glance into the mirror of that coin would mean banishment to Purgatory.
The man wasted no time in initiating a rhythm, thrusting into her with machine-like movements. She tried to stay silent, to maintain what little pride she had, but his impacts were stronger than she had anticipated. The force alone was crushing her, every thrust like the strike of a battering ram, and the speed left her no room to recuperate, but more than that, it was the precision in which he attacked her. His strikes were precise, hitting all the walls in perfect order like he was jabbing pressure points.
The man leaned down to steal a kiss, and this time the woman didn’t bother trying to resist him, even when his tongue again violated her. If anything, she hoped to trap him there, to bite his tongue off and let him bleed to death. It was agony, not just the humiliation, but the sight of her face reflected in the mirror. The face she was making, the way she blushed, was that really what she looked like? They could both see it, what he was doing to her. Her will was beginning to crumble, her body giving in and reacting to the physical sensations. She wasn’t sure how long she could resist him if he kept this up. Any more stimulation would break her.
It seemed that the man knew this. He sat up, not even pausing his strokes while he looked in all directions, forcing back the demons with the coin in his eye socket. His head then lowered once again as his lips returned to her breasts, striking her from two fronts. Like before, he focused on her cuts, licking away the blood like it was maple syrup. The feel of his mouth on her areolas, his tongue bullying her nipples, it was the last stimulus needed for her body to fully submit to him. She moaned at the top of her lungs as she climaxed, with tears streaming down her face from the shame.
“I promised I would give you pleasure, didn’t I? I only suppose it’s fair that you do the same.”
He got off her and unfastened the shackles on her ankles, then spun her around and flipped her over, leaving her bent over the altar with her wrists still bound and crossed in front of her. The feel of the cold stone against her nipples made her whimper. He mounted her like an animal, slamming against her cervix with a single stroke. She cried out, no longer able to contain her voice. He grabbed her by the hips and began brutalizing her with strength she had never experienced before. Every impact of his lap against her rear sent ripples moving through her flesh. Her body, now violated, looked so pale and weak, lacking the sexual energy it radiated before and becoming nothing more than a piece of meat for him to use as he saw fit. Was he trying to hurt her? Did he simply enjoy inflicting pain on her?
He raped her in various positions, having her stand up against the altar and let the moonlight shine on her exposed breasts, bend over and raise her leg so he could get better access, or pull her back so she would be bent over all the way, arms stretched out and clinging to the edge of the altar for balance. She would watch as her breasts swung like chandeliers from his thrusts, almost eagerly absorbing the force. One thing that was constant was the abuse. If he could afford it, if he could maintain his rhythm after partially giving up his hold on her, he’d release one hand and use it to smack her. The skin on her rear turned red from his cruel slaps, and she wanted to scream when he whipped her breasts, striking them as if they had somehow enraged him.
She didn’t know how long it continued, she simply closed her eyes and tried to block it out. Eventually, he came to a stop and she shuddered from the feeling of his hot semen being dumped in her body like toxic waste. He pulled out of her and she crumbled, leaning against the altar in the fetal position with his seed dripping out of her pussy. She might have climaxed a second time when he took her from behind. She couldn’t be sure, as her mind simply shut down at the time, but the humiliation was still overwhelming.
The man returned to his clothes and put them on, then took a deep breath and an insidious grin crossed his face. He covered up the coin in his eye socket with his hand, and in his other hand, drew his silver knife. He strode over to the woman and put it to her neck.
“Now for the real reason why I came here. I call upon the legions of the dead! Hear my voice! Take this girl’s life and answer my challenge!”
She gave one desperate plea for mercy before he slit her throat. A howling gale whipped around the altar, the army of darkness merging with the fog and forming a twisting pillar of unholy light with the man and woman in the center like it was the eye of a tornado. With her hands still bound, the woman could do nothing to stop the bleeding of her throat. Her terror was all that was keeping her conscious. Instead of falling to the ground, the blood was being pulled into the air, but this was not due to the movement of the air.
They were feeding on her, her blood acting as the medium through which they ripped the soul from her body. She gave a garbled shriek as her flesh began to deteriorate, every drop of blood pulled from her veins, taking her vitality with it. Her blonde hair turned to wire, her smooth skin wrinkled and grayed, and her muscles and organs shriveled up and dissolved. At last, her flesh was peeled away and her skeleton crumbled to ash. Her soul had been consumed and joined the ranks of the undead now swarming around the man.
They tried to close in, but he revealed the coin, keeping them at bay. They were raging like piranhas, their appetite burning after feeding on the sacrificed woman. They wanted him, they wanted him so badly that words could not describe their bloodlust.
“Join us!” they howled, their voices utterly inhuman.
The man began to laugh and pulled the coin out of his eye socket, instead holding it in his closed fist. “I have a better idea. How about you all join me?”
A tremor rippled through the spectral tempest, brought forth by confusion. Since the dead enveloped the earth, countless pathetic whelps had begged to be spared, endless cults and sects had formed in worship of the spirits in order to escape the horror they wrought, but those were all done out of fear. There was no fear in this man.
“Serve without question! Obey without resistance! Give me your powers and become my slaves!”
The twisting storm collapsed in on itself, the enraged ghouls swarming in, getting as close as possible with the silver just barely keeping them at bay. Despite the enraged and anguished faces and reaching hands surging around him, the man maintained his grin.
“You will suffer for your arrogance! We are slaves to no one!”
“Then I challenge you over the right to rule. If I am still in control of myself when the sun rises in one hour, then everything you are belongs to me. All of your power and knowledge will become mine. You will be my slaves until the end of time! But if my willpower breaks, then I will become your living subordinate. My body and soul will be your tools for you to do whatever you wish, such as bring you more sacrifices or unleash you again upon humanity. However, should I die or lose consciousness due to an injury you inflict and are unable to continue, the game ends without a victor. Do we have a deal?” There was no response. The sea of the dead continued to churn around him. “I’ll even give you a handicap. I won’t use the coin.”
Whether the idea of a handicap had enticed or enraged them, they gave in. On the altar, carved into the stone, were listed the rules of the challenge and the name of every demon participating. The man smeared some blood from his cheek and wiped it onto the stone in place of a signature. He then held the coin above his head and threw it aside.
“Then let the game begin!”
Immediately, the legions of dead closed in on him from all sides, slamming into his body like a tsunami. They were attacking all of his pain receptors like an electric shock, doing everything they could to torture him, to wear down his mental defenses with physical anguish. Normally, they would rip him to shreds, but his living body was a precious commodity and they couldn’t allow it to be damaged more than necessary. However, the man didn’t lose his smile, despite their efforts.
He could feel them, their power wiggling through his flesh like carnivorous worms, their voices whispering and shrieking in the back of his mind. They worked to infiltrate his consciousness, to infect his thoughts and memories with their own will, but despite their power, they could not get in. There were no cracks in his mind to slip through, nothing on the surface for them to use. Without any weaknesses to exploit, they couldn’t even get a foothold in his consciousness, let alone try to possess him. All they could do is read his thoughts and feelings, but he felt no fear. There was no hesitation in any of his thoughts.
Even with his body being tortured and his mind under assault, the man began to laugh. “Is this it? Is this all the might you can conjure? I’ve trained my whole life for this, don’t disappoint me! If you can’t win with your spectral forms, then fight me with your own flesh and blood! I give you permission to enter this world at full power, to raise your armies once more!”
They immediately scattered, the fog vacating the monument and sinking into the hill. He could feel it, movement beneath the earth. They were… collecting themselves. Fifty feet away, a skeletal fist burst from the soil with black tissue beginning to grow from between the joints like bubbling tar. The ghoul clawed its way free of the soil with its body generating flesh that was both alive and dead, a sort of unholy quasi-life. When the Sea of the Dead spilled into the world, the humans were infected with a liquefied mixture of different souls and energies without any real consciousness, but like molten metal cooling in a mold and solidifying, that raw power had taken shape and gained sentience, becoming demons. These demons, granted permission by the man to fully manifest themselves, could now reform their host bodies and act with their full power.
The entire hill was beginning to shake, the undead clawing their way up to the surface. Their forms were no longer human, their physical bodies changing to reflect their true appearance. Claws, tails, horns, wings, tentacles, the demons cried out to the moon as they were reborn. The man watched them from atop the altar, seeing the hill turn into a shifting mass of black forms, each one hungry for his soul. In his hand, he held his duffle bag, and from it, he drew a six-cylinder grenade launcher.
“Do try to put up a decent fight.”
He pointed it through one of the archways of the monument and fired, sending the first shell flying into the heart of the mass. It detonated upon impact with a demon with the head of a bull, but instead of simple fire and shrapnel, the bomb released a cloud of powdered silver. Shrieks of agony cut through the night as the silver burned the unholy beasts like white phosphorus. This much silver wasn’t nearly enough to actually destroy the demons, but it could disturb the flow of their power and cause their host bodies to deteriorate without the possibility of regeneration or even maintaining control. They were like robots hit with an electrical charge.
He kept firing, lobbing bombs into the crowds surrounding the monument. Each explosion wounded several demons, even crippling a few. After the six shells were fired, he reloaded and resumed fighting. A new shriek drew his attention, as from above, a winged demon swooped in to attack. He jumped off the altar to avoid its claws and discarded his empty grenade launcher. He drew an assault rifle from his duffle bag and opened fire on the demon. Silver bullets ripped through its flesh, causing it to shriek in pain and fall out of the sky. By now, the horde of demons had just about reached the monument. He fired at them with everything he had, aiming at whatever beast seemed the closest. As soon as he had used up all of his magazines, he tossed the weapon aside and pulled out a drum-fed shotgun. Several more demons attacked from the sky, but he easily downed them with a few rounds of silver buckshot.
The first demon had reached one of the archways. It had a human shape but was garbed in a black cloak that looked to be made of pure shadow. In place of hands, it had crooked lengths of bone growing from its wrists like bundles of wood. The man put a round into its chest and it fell back with smoke wafting from its flesh. Behind him, the second demon crossed the threshold. This one had a humanoid appearance, but with a mat of quills growing from its chin and three horns sticking out of its forehead. It lunged for him with clawed fingers, but he blasted its head off and then shot it in the kneecap for good measure.
He fired off every round he had and then threw the shotgun away. They were closing in from all sides, the horde passing under the archway. The man drew his last two weapons, a sword from the undead war, now coated in silver, and a pistol with extended magazines. He turned his gaze to an oncoming demon, humanoid but with all of its joints bending in the opposite way. He severed one of its arms with a swing of his sword while putting five rounds in its chest and head. Three closed in on him and he slashed them all across the chest while shooting back over his shoulder. He moved around the altar, slashing and shooting at any demon that got close, but every second, his circle of open space got smaller.
As he fired his last bullet, a demon with a bladed tail managed to whip him across the back and draw blood. He didn’t seem to mind the pain, but it threw him off balance. He fell to his knees and dropped his empty pistol, then drew his silver knife and hurled it at the demon, planting the blade deep in his enemy’s chest. Now with only his sword in hand, he resumed fighting the demons, hacking and slashing them with all of his strength. Limbs and heads fell and the specters howled in frustration as the strings of their puppets were severed, but inevitably, a black hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. There was no more room to fight, hands were closing in all around him, but still the man smiled, and when they threw him onto the altar and pinned him down, he laughed.
The demons thrust their talons into his flesh and injected him with the zombie virus, carrying their collected will. Now they could extend their influence physically for a more potent attack. The man could feel their venom running through his veins, turning his cells into undead tissue. It flowed into his brain, and at last, the demons managed to break into his consciousness, but still, the man laughed.
“Congratulations, you managed to get in, but now the real fight starts.”
They searched his memories, looking for something from his past to exploit, some fear to use against him. Even if they infiltrated this mind, they couldn’t take control as long as his will remained intact. In his memories, they found only disdain for all those around him, even from a young age. There was no love for anyone, not for family members or for friends, indifference given to all but those who had something to offer. They could not find any bad memories, no childhood traumas or the birth of any fears. Wait, something happened when he was a child, something that intrigued them. They sensed… darkness.
“Ah, I suppose it’s my turn again.”
A pulse of willpower erupted from the depths of his soul, thrusting the demons back to the edges of his mind. His willpower, they still could not find a way around it. He lay still on the altar, simply staring up at the sky with a smirk on his face, showing no fear of the unholy spawn around him. He was afraid of nothing, his confidence was resolute, forming an impenetrable wall. They forced their way back in, now desperate. Time was running out, the sky beginning to lighten. They once again searched his memories. That one memory that he had barred them from, they tried to read it, but to no avail. They looked ahead, trying to understand.
In the years since the “accident”, they saw the man preparing his body and soul, torturing himself in the most horrific ways. The scars on his body were remnants of his training to twist pain into pleasure, so that injuries would only make him stronger. He had prepared himself for this day, spent his whole life training to face these demons. Ambition, that was the force repelling them. A hunger that surpassed their own, a hunger that not even the world could satisfy, it was the essence of his being.
“I suppose I should clarify something. I didn’t come here with any belief that I might possibly lose. That simply was not an option. For pathetic beasts like you to defeat me is simply impossible. Did you really think I would hand over my body, my soul, to you? No, you misunderstand. Every single part of me, every single thought and cell, they belong to me and me alone.”
The tips of his fingers, having become black with undeath, were regaining their original color. The demons searching his mind were losing their grip on him and being forced out.
“My will is my existence; my resolve is law. I am either myself or I am nonexistent, there is no scenario in which I will compromise, which I give even an inch. I have no weaknesses, I have no fears. You are the incarnations of your hunger and hatred, but I am in the incarnation of my ambition, and my ambitions can never be overpowered!” His whole body was returning to normal, the demons’ venom being forcefully expelled as he retook control. “You are all nothing more than a means to an end, and I will use you however I see fit to reach my goals, no matter what lines I must cross to do so.”
A flash shined from the horizon, the sun breaking through the darkness. The demons shrieked as they saw it, felt its light on their bodies. “You should have killed me when you had the chance, because now, you are all mine!”
The carvings in the altar, the contract of their agreement, began to glow. A crimson light enveloped the man and the demons jumped back, experiencing true terror for the first time. They turned around and tried to flee, either on foot or taking to the air, many even abandoning their physical bodies and trying to escape in their spectral form.
“I’m not going to let you weasel out of our agreement. A demon must obey its contract.”
The man snapped his fingers and threads of light reached out from his body in all directions. They shot out like striking snakes, seizing the fleeing demons and dragging them back. The unholy beasts howled and tried to resist, but their power was no longer theirs to use. The demon that was closest to him swung its claws at his neck, trying to kill him before it could be assimilated, but the hand that touched the man simply vanished like a mirage.
“Like I said, now, you’re all mine.”
The demon gave one final shriek before it was pulled against the man, disappearing into his body. One by one, the rest of the legion were likewise absorbed. At last, the hill became silent. The man stood alone, watching the sunrise. His vision sharpened, as in its empty socket, a new eyeball spontaneously formed. Likewise, all of the man’s injuries were healing as he felt power rush through him. This sensation, it was like he had gained a million new muscles both inside and outside his body. In the back of his mind, he could hear the army of the undead crying out in anguish from their imprisonment, but with just a thought, he silenced them.
“Now, now, there’s no need to get fussy. I’ll put your powers to good use.”
Deep in the confines of his mind, a demonic voice begrudgingly asked, ‘what do we call you… Master?’
The man walked over to his discarded silver coin and picked it up. “From this point forward, my name… is Dominion, for in time, all of creation will belong to me!”
Hunting Ground
The house trembled from its shingles to its foundations, struggling to withstand the unholy force erupting within. A scream echoed down its halls and burst through its doors and windows, every molecule of air expelled from the victim’s lungs while his face became beet-red. It was two sounds mixed together, his own pathetically human cry of agony and desperation, and the enraged howl of the beast fighting for control.
“Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places!”
With trembling hands, the priest held the crucifix up to the bound man. The ropes holding him to the chair were frayed from his incessant pulling, while the wood itself splintered more and more with each passing second. The balding man gave another howl, the demon answering the priest’s challenge. Behind the priest, two women held each other in terror. The first was the man’s wife, her hair fully graying after months of fear and stress, fear of the beast trying to devour her husband’s soul.
It had started out with simple disturbances, bumps in the night and objects going missing. Soon enough, the eyes, eyes she never saw but felt on her at all times, shadows darting out of the corners of her vision, and silhouettes that could be seen only in mirrors. Then, a change in her husband began a new dark chapter.
“Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the Devil! The Holy Church venerates you as her Guardian and protector; to you, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into Heaven! Pray therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church! Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us; take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit that he may no longer seduce the nations!”
Beside her, the daughter prayed for the priest’s success, that her father would return to the way he used to be, that all of the bad could just be explained away by possession. At nineteen years of age, she should have been in the prime of her beauty, but her face was horribly bruised and scratched from endless assaults. She remembered the first time her father had snapped, just a few months ago. They were having dinner, and while saying grace, her father suddenly fell into a violent rage, screaming at his family and throwing plates and food against the wall. Grace was never again spoken.
“In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints! And powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the Devil! God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him! As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God!”
The yelling continued, every minor issue seeming to invoke his rage. Soon enough, he was beating her simply for not closing a door quietly enough. Following the war against the undead, patriarchal puritanism made its return as people sought stability and security. In areas still not fully reclaimed and rebuilt by the government, the man of the house was obeyed like he was God, and what happened in the home was never spoken of to outsiders. That was the way it was in the isolated communities, where the phrase “God-fearing” had become a badge of honor.
“Behold the Cross of the Lord, flee bands of enemies! The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the offspring of David, hath conquered! May Thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us! As great as our hope in Thee! We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies, and sects!”
It was when all three family members began receiving scratches from an unknown origin, long cuts in their flesh, always in threes, that the presence of something otherworldly could not be denied. The wife and daughter had tried to avoid the priest, as anything to do with the church would invite beatings, but when he found out about the scratches, he gave them an answer and promised to rid them of the demon possessing the man.
“In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb! Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat! The Most High God commands you, He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal! God who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth!”
The exorcism had been going on for hours, with friends of the man doing everything they could to keep him bound to the chair. The priest continued with his prayers, saying them over and over again in the hopes of driving out the demon. His words seemed to cause it pain, but nothing he said or did could actually pry it off the man’s soul.
“Christ, God's Word made flesh, commands you; He who to save our race outdone through your envy, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death; He who has built His Church on the firm rock and declared that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her, because He will dwell with Her all days even to the end of the world! The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith! The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head! The faith of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the other Apostles commands you! The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you!”
The man suddenly became silent, falling limp. Everyone wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but they knew it in their hearts that it was just a rouse. The silence was louder than any scream and even more dangerous. The whole house then shook like it had been hit with a wrecking ball, everyone shuddering from a crash loud enough to rip away their courage. The men holding the possessed were then yanked back as if drawn by invisible ropes around their necks. In that silent room, the cracking of wood was almost deafening, as without anything holding it back, the chair began to levitate, floating up six feet in the air. This had already occurred a dozen times over the course of the exorcism, yet everyone stared in horror at the undeniable presence and power of the unholy spawn.
The priest barely managed to regain his courage.
“Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by the God who so loved the world that He gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting; stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty!”
The man and the chair crashed back down, and in that instant, everyone was knocked back, bleeding from a hundred invisible punches. Every window and piece of glass shattered, the man now howling louder than ever.
The daughter, barely conscious and lying on the floor, looked up to a familiar sound. The front door had opened, yet that simple occurrence, for some reason, seemed louder than her possessed father’s screams. In the doorway stood a man with a long black overcoat and matching hair, and an insidious grin on his face. Once again, her father fell silent, but this time was different. Normally, when he stopped screaming, he’d go limp, like a puppet with its strings cut. Now, he was staring wide-eyed at the intruder, the demon inside him apparently seeing something she couldn’t.
“After all these years, you people still cling to your delusions,” the intruder said. “Christ, God, salvation, all that nonsense. Your bible is nothing more than fairy tales, a mythology of a god that never existed. The real gods dwell not in Heaven, but a realm of eternal darkness. That cross you wield is nothing more than a useless piece of wood. It is the will of humanity that allows exorcisms to work. Because you cling to your faith, even though it’s a lie, you’re able to shape and focus your will, pouring it into a symbol like a mold. If your belief is unshaken, then so is your strength, and you can counter the chaotic sentience of the undead.”
It happened in the blink of an eye. The intruder zoomed across the room without taking a step and grabbed the man by the throat, holding him off his feet without any effort. “But I do not need such insipid things. My will is absolute, and in time, even the Old Gods will meet their end at my hands.” He then dropped the man, but something remained in his grip, someone else. It was humanoid, but its body was jet black and covered in scars. Its grotesque face, boar-like, had twisted horns and misshapen tusks. He had ripped the demon from the man’s soul, revealing it for all the world to see. “I am Dominion, and you now belong to me.”
Everyone watched as the creature, held in Dominion’s grip, began to melt like a lit candle. Rather than falling to the ground, its liquifying flesh was being drawn towards his hand around its throat and absorbed into his skin. The demon shrieked in fear as its flesh and muscles peeled away layer by layer, its body consumed in a matter of seconds.
“You… you saved us,” the daughter gasped.
At her trembling words, Dominion laughed. “On the contrary. You were safer with the demon. Now that I’ve had dinner, it’s time for dessert.”
He held out his hand, and her father, semiconscious and lying on the floor, was once more lifted up into the air by an invisible force. He floated before Dominion, sending chills down the spines of everyone in the room. The power lifting her father was demonic, but they knew it was coming from Dominion. His grin sharpening, he plunged his hand into the man’s chest, his fingers tipped with claws that tore through flesh and muscle with ease. The two women shrieked at the sight, the man vomiting blood as Dominion pulled out his heart, still connected to the main arteries and pumping in his grip. He fingers sliced through all four chambers and the man’s blood sprayed out.
However, like the demon, it was all being drawn to Dominion’s hand and absorbed into his flesh. It took only seconds for the man to become a dried husk, and was then thrown aside like garbage, but more had been taken than just blood. Blood was the medium of life, and through it, Dominion had seized the man’s soul and devoured it no differently than he had the demon.
The priest staggered to his feet and held up his cross. “You’re just another demon!”
Dominion stood with his back to the priest. “Don’t compare me to those pathetic undead.”
The same force that Dominion had used on the man, he used to throw himself backwards at the priest, flipping through the air. He opened his mouth, his teeth changing shape to becoming sharper and needlelike. Zooming over the priest’s shoulder, he sank his teeth into his throat, then, landed behind him, lifted the priest off his feet, and gave a hard jerk that snapped his neck like a wolf catching a bird. Blood covered Dominion’s face as he drained the priest, adding yet another human soul to his collection.
Both the slain man’s daughter and wife were now screaming, their clothes peppered with blood splatters from the priest’s murder. One of the man’s friends, exhausted from holding him still during the exorcism, gathered what little strength he had left and grabbed a poker from the nearby fireplace. He gave a desperate scream and charged towards Dominion, still siphoning every drop of blood out of the priest. He jammed the piece of steel into Dominion’s back, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. The poker had been buried deep, enough to puncture a lung, but from the sight of inky black blood oozing the wound, the attacker realized how foolish the move had been.
It happened in an instant, the demon they had all seen get devoured, reappearing. It burst from the wound in Dominion’s back, fused with him like a conjoined twin and given shape by his blood. It attacked the man without mercy. He screamed in agony as it gouged out his eyes with its clawed thumbs, only to be silenced as it tore into his windpipe with its jaws and began stealing his soul. Like all the other demons that Dominion had enslaved, this newest addition had lost its free will, its every move now subject to its master’s whims, its powers to be used however he saw fit.
The second friend, seeing what was happening to the first, bolted for the door. In the face of this godless horror, there was nothing he could do. The two women were beyond his saving. He could only hope they had the strength to run as he did, and that the Lord would forgive his cowardice. He managed to reach the doorway, the sweat on his face evaporating in the chilly autumn air. He went no further.
Without even turning away from his meal, Dominion pointed his hand at the fleeing man. They came from out of his sleeve, three tentacles made of jet-black flesh, each tipped with a barbed stinger. They ran through the man’s chest like harpoons, the pain making him want to scream, but the blood filling his lungs and esophagus not letting his voice escape. He was lifted into the air and the tentacles immediately went to work bleeding him dry and taking his soul.
Having now devoured four souls, Dominion, at last, stood up. The tentacles retracted into his arm and the demon on his back receded into the wound, closing it as it vanished. He looked down on the two women, a smirk on his blood-caked face. His eyes fell to the wife of his first victim and he showed some faint annoyance.
“Meh, you’re a little too past your prime for me.”
He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her off her feet with his claws digging into her wrinkled flesh. Her daughter threw herself onto Dominion’s arm, an action not done out of hope, but frustration. “Mom! Mom!” she shrieked, trying to separate the two of them. Dominion pulled her away, holding her off the ground with his other hand likewise around her throat. The difference was that while he was draining the mother, he was simply strangling the daughter to end her efforts. She sobbed as she watched the life leave her mother’s eyes and all the color drain from her face. Once finished, Dominion tossed her aside and turned his insidious gaze on the daughter.
“Oh, you’ll do nicely.”
He threw her onto a nearby couch, and as she struggled to regain her balance, he threw himself on her. He ripped away her clothes, exposing her naked body. “Please no!” she shrieked, trying to hide her shame despite him keeping her wrists pinned.
Before her father’s possession, she had been planning her marriage with a nice boy from town. She had known him all her life, he came from a good Christian household, just as she did. Not even he had seen her like this. Her father’s erratic behavior had driven him away, but the idea of an exorcism gave her hope of reconciliation. Now, feeling Dominion’s cruel gaze licking her unclothed form, she knew that her fiancé would never take her back, not after what was going to be done to her.
Despite what she had seen, she tried to fight him off, but his hold on her was like iron. He grabbed her face and began to kiss her, filling her mouth with the blood he had stolen. Once her face was as red as his was, he finally pulled away from her, his eyes alight with a lust for violence, but his heartbeat never rising. He ran his bloody fingers through her auburn hair, then slid his hand down and cupped a warm breast. She squirmed and whimpered as he kneaded her flesh, having never been touched this way by anyone.
“Such a lovely girl, such smooth skin,” he hummed.
The talons that had grown from his fingertips retracted, and he moved his hands between her legs. She screamed and tried to kick him off, her skinny white feet swinging back and forth and the pale flesh of her inner thighs rippling despite her slender body. Dominion showed no mercy, he thrust his fingers inside her, drawing tears from her eyes and a scream of agony. He violently fingered her, shaking her whole body and leaving her pert breasts jiggling. The feeling of part of his body invading her womanhood, her fluids mixing with her dead father’s blood stuck to his skin, it made her want to vomit in revulsion. It was like he had pierced her soul with a venomous fang.
“Ah, a virgin. I love virgins. I get to show you a whole new world of pleasure and pain.” He pulled his fingers free and then jammed them into her mouth, forcing her to taste her own feminine essence. “How does it taste? Sweet, isn’t it? I have something else for you to savor.”
He then got to his feet and unsheathed his manhood, fully erect and ready to defile her. She stared at it in horror, but some part of her was also fascinated. She had never seen the male organ before, at least not one that didn’t belong to an animal. In anticipation of her wedding, her mother had given her “the talk”, explaining the mechanics of sex but at a Christian minimum. She only understood that it was meant to go inside her, but that was what made her so scared. She had been waiting to consecrate her marriage with the man she loved, but this monster in human skin was going to rip that away from her, just as he had her family.
“Now, open your mouth.” His words only deepened her fear, as she began to realize that he wouldn’t just stop at stealing her virginity. “Hold her down,” he then said. Just as she began to ponder what he meant, hands, clawed and covered in black scales, burst from the couch and grabbed her. It was just like before, when the friend of her father stabbed Dominion in the back but the demon from the exorcism came out of the wound and attacked him. Their talons cut her flesh, drawing flesh blood, which only seemed to excite them more and tighten their hold. She was forced to sit on the couch, facing Dominion as he undressed. Her eyes switched back and forth from his throbbing manhood to his merciless gaze.
“The more you resist, the more I’ll have to hurt you, and my pets are eager to hear your screams and taste your blood. And don’t bother praying to your false god,” he held out his arms, and blood, black as tar, began to pour from his wrists, “for I am the way,” he said, mockingly. He then strode over, hefting his manhood up to her tear-streaked face. She could do nothing but cry and pray this was just a nightmare. “Now, open your mouth, and if I feel any teeth, I’ll take one of your hands as punishment.”
“Please, just let me go!” she begged.
“Believe me, there is nowhere that you’ll be safe.”
He then grabbed her by the hair and forced his cock in her mouth. She gave a garbled scream and tried to pull her head away, but he kept a firm hold on her. It was all the way to the back of her throat, his balls resting on her chin. Her gag reflex, untrained, immediately began sending bolts of electricity through her nerves. She began heaving, her body trying to expel the mass that was choking her. Part of her wanted to bite down, but Dominion’s warning restrained her, and even if she could work up the courage, her body wouldn’t let her close her mouth, doing everything it could to try and open her airway.
He began to thrust into her, holding her head still while his cock banged against the back of her throat, each impact like a punch to her uvula. The taste of his manhood filled her senses, the smell of his natural musk making her lightheaded. She could taste the sweat and testosterone. It slid through her mouth and down her throat like a poison. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even think.
Her body gave in, a great wave rolling up her spine as she retched, ejecting the contents of her stomach but never being free of Dominion’s cock. He simply looked down on her and grinned, the sight of the frothy mess erupting from her mouth amusing him, running down his balls and pouring on her tits. Her tears were just another ingredient to the mixture. He continued to skull-fuck her, her face and chest becoming filthier and filthier each time she retched. If anything, his thrusts increased in speed and brutality. Only after several minutes did he finally pull out, then smearing his cock across her face and blinding her with her own saliva and vomit.
A brief moment of mercy, he gave her time to catch her breath. Her eyes were lifeless, her soul drowning in shame and disgust, but there was still so much more to do. Dominion gave a flick of his finger and the demon hands holding her still adjusted their hold. They grabbed her ankles and pulled them apart, exposing her virgin slit. This action shook the girl from her stupor, and fear once more rushed through her, as she knew what was going to happen next.
“No, please! Anything like that!”
“I’m sure you were told that when your virginity is taken, you become a woman, but that’s wrong. I’m not going to turn you into a woman. I’m going to turn you into a piece of meat.”
He threw himself on his victim, and in one fluid motion, he forced himself inside her down to the base. She shrieked in agony, her hymen shredded and her blood anointing Dominion’s cock. The feeling of him inside her, it was nothing short of evil. She felt herself corrupted, this man taking a rusty dagger and carving horrific profanities onto her soul. If there was a God, he must surely be turning his back on her in disgust, like Athena cursing Medusa as Poseidon raped her on the floor of her temple.
Dominion wasted no time, he immediately built up a rhythm and began slamming her with his full weight, his cock smashing her cervix and making soup of her insides. His speed, it was like there was a malice to it. Of course, everything about this was a display of how evil Dominion could be, but it was like his rate of thrusts had their own frequency of evil, like the rapid-fire clapping of flesh on flesh was some Mors code chant from Hell.
With every tear that fell from the girl’s cheeks, every smack Dominion made to her breasts, every squelching sound of her womanhood being violated, the possibility of ever living a normal life drifted farther and farther away. Every impact of his cock was like a chisel chipping away at her soul. Love, marriage, children, growing old in this God-fearing community surrounded by friends, she could feel those dreams crumbling away like sand as she was forced to stare at Dominion’s face. Funny, had they met under different circumstances, she would have found him quite handsome.
Then, without warning, he pulled away and stepped back. The girl lay there, her legs spread, her pussy bruised and bleeding from the rape. Her eyes had once again gone lifeless as her mind tried to recede into itself to escape this horror, but there was still so much more pain for him to inflict, so much horror for her to experience. He wanted to take everything from her, he couldn’t stop until he had robbed her of everything that made her who she was.
He returned and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up without the slightest grimace of effort. He threw her again at the couch, this time bending her over the back and showing him her ass. He stepped up onto the couch and grabbed her hips. She did what she could to brace herself, to prepare to feel him once again use her vagina as a receptacle for his cruel desires, but instead of her labia being parted, she shrieked as she felt a stinging pain in her anus.
The speed and technique Dominion used was nothing short of masterful, once again burying himself all the way to the base in a single stroke, but this time, it was in her back door. As expected, she was incredibly tight, but friction could stop him no more than being stabbed by that fire poker. Her asshole was now wrapped around his cock in a perfect seal, the ring threatening to tear from the brutal assault.
Dominion began hammering her with the same speed as before, raping her anus with seemingly inhuman strength and malice. He pulled back her hair, using it to hold her still and keep her looking up. She screamed at the top of her lungs from the pain and cried harder than ever in her life from the humiliation. Again and again, Dominion threw himself against her, inflicting an agony on her that she had never known existed, such an unholy torture that she felt herself forever ruined. There was no coming back.
She no longer wished to be saved, she longer hoped for mercy. Now, she just wanted to die. She had felt it break inside her, her ability to ever again feel joy. She didn’t want to live, just the physical pain making her want to slit her wrists. She was sure she was bleeding, Dominion simply using it as lubricant. She sobbed endlessly as he raped her asshole, her tears falling like rain.
He then switched, driving himself back into her vagina with the same brutal speed. It continued on for hours, Dominion switching back and forth from her pussy to her asshole, raping her without ever growing tired. He never gave her a break, and every time she went on the verge of passing out, he’d pull harder on her hair. He seemed to want to hear her wailing, taking amusement in watching her cry.
Then, he came to a sudden stop, his hands on her hips. She felt it. She had never experienced it before, but she knew what it was with crystal clarity. She could feel him emptying himself inside her, flooding her with semen. His seed inside her, it felt toxic, evil, like some kind of acid that was melting her flesh. It was like a poison infecting her soul, a disease searching for any fragment of her that hadn’t been tainted, any part of her that was still pure.
He pulled out of her and stepped back, stretching to ease his weary muscles. “So, how many times did you cum?”
She didn’t answer, just laying draped over the back of the couch like a blanket, with semen and blood trickling from her vagina and anus. She didn’t understand what that last word meant. Cum? Several times, despite her agony, she had suddenly felt a wave of pleasure surge through her, making her roll back her eyes and curl her toes. Was that what cumming meant?
“Please, just kill me,” she whispered.
“You were certainly as fun as I thought you would be, and now I shall give you the death you so surely crave. However, I guarantee you that there will be no peace.” He leaned over and sank his teeth into the side of her neck. She gave one last shriek of pain as he sucked her blood like a leech, draining it and her soul. With his face coated in fresh blood and six more human souls added to his collection, he leaned back and cricked his neck. “Ah, I think I could use some freshening up.”
‘Master…’
The voice came from the back of his mind. It was one of his pet demons from the mass grave.
“What?”
‘What is the point of all this? This is just another home you’ve attacked in the last two weeks. You promised us the world, yet you’re little more than a nighttime prowler.’
“I don’t recall giving you the right to criticize me. You are just a tool, and tools aren’t allowed to speak. But if you must know, it is because I still need to become stronger. I currently have 387 demons and 97 human souls, and while my powers are growing, I am not yet invincible.” He retrieved his pants and drew the silver coin from his cemetery battle. His flesh singed and smoked upon contact, the silver disrupting his powers like a neurotoxin. “With all of your power now within me, it seems I’ve inherited your weakness to silver. However, it is much less damaging now than it was just a week ago, meaning that its possible for me to someday be completely immune to its effects. Until such a time, I must stay hidden and cultivate my powers. And forgetting silver, while bullets and blades are no longer able to harm me, I’d rather not yet try my luck against a nuclear bomb. The American government will surely attempt to eliminate me once I make myself known.
Then, of course, there is the sake of enjoyment. I’ve spent my life as a man, and soon, I might become a king, and eventually, a god. But for now, I want to see what it is like to live as a monster. I wish to be a terrible nightmare that dwells in the shadows outside man’s domain, spoken of only in whispers, a mysterious terror that attacks in the night and leaves behind mosaics of horror and madness.
This is how I train myself, how I push myself to my limits to ensure the strength of my will. I was born to dance, and the line between insanity and civility is my stage. I must become the embodiment of savagery, a deranged sadist that lives to inflict pain on others and paint the world red with the blood of innocents, for my purpose to be the complete lack of purpose. I must then become the embodiment of focus, able to control my emotions and desires. I must be able to act as needed without a single distraction in my mind, to eliminate threats with a pinprick when others would need a bullet, and to stop myself at any edge, no matter how badly I wish to take the plunge.
I must again and again become addicted to madness and then break that addiction, moving from one end of the spectrum to the other as easily as breathing. I can brutalize a girl’s body until she begs for death, but how might I twist her mind until she begs for defilement? My goal will be fulfilled, but I must savor every step. I must take my time to explore every facet of my actions, to study my consequences and see the results all angles.
I don’t want to miss a thing.”
=============
In the town of Senner, built thirty years ago in the ruins of the old world, the mayor greeted the morning as he always did, sitting behind his desk with a sigh and taking a few moments to enjoy his coffee. Despite the town not being aligned with the government, it was still possible to get things like coffee, though getting gouged was often unavoidable. He then began leafing through reports and updates from the previous day and continuing anything that remained unfinished. He spent only his mornings in the office. The afternoons were spent working outside, meeting with people and making sure everything in town was running smoothly. It kept him fit and healthy as he aged.
One hundred years after the rise of the undead, civilization had yet to fully stabilize, even in America. The major cities, for the most part, looked no different than they had a century ago, first to be reclaimed during the fifty years of reconstruction. Out in the rural areas, towns varied wildly across the spectrum of advancement, depending on how close they were to major highways and cities.
All fifty states had been reclaimed, at least their capitals, but many rural towns and communities like Senner had broken away to become sovereign city-states. They were too small to cause trouble for the government, and eventually they would be reabsorbed back into the union, but until then, as long as they kept their heads down, they were free from taxation but on their own if disaster struck.
The town was small, but the people did live a relatively modern life. Without a national power grid, electricity came from wind turbines and solar panels, and most residents were farmers or ranchers, supplying a wide variety of food. Automobiles, medicine, and any tools that couldn’t be made would be bartered from outsiders, friends in neighboring towns that were aligned with the government.
Less evolved towns, lacking the technology to keep up, resembled the Wild West. With the rise of religious fervor following the war against the undead, the Amish way of life had spread like wildfire. For many, it was believed that technology, chemicals, and overly complex lives had turned people away from God and brought about the scourge of the undead.
Then, at the lowest level of society, were those who still clung to the post-apocalyptic way of life. They lived in hippie-like communes without any kind of power or running water, and violence and savagery were a daily part of life. Up in the wilds of northern Maine, it was these communes that held most of the population. Rather than grouped together in one area, the backwoods hicks lay spread throughout the wilderness in isolated cabins and farmsteads, a mix of hillbilly living and Mad Max dying.
These people avoided the main roads and coastlines, any areas where they might be spotted, despite no one looking for them. Senner sat in the middle of one of these swathes of wilderness. The townspeople had a truce with the wild folk that dwelled in the shadows of the trees. They often even engaged in trade, though a representative would be sent into Senner to negotiate, as few who lived in the wilderness wished to associate with outsiders.
“Harold!” His wife’s frantic voice broke the serenity of the morning as she rushed into his office.
“What? What is it?” he asked.
“It’s Father Donovan and the Clive family!”
The mayor’s face became pale. The priest had come to him yesterday and warned him that he would be performing an exorcism. He had spent the night praying for the priest’s victory in the battle against the demon possessing Jim Clive. “Are they all right?” He almost spoke the words, but the look on his wife’s face, the sight of her tears and sound of her frantic breaths, told him the question was pointless. The only real question he could ask was how bad it was, but his wife had only heard the news, rather than seeing the horror for herself.
He rushed out of the Town Hall and sped off in his pickup truck towards the Clive home. The town sheriff and his deputies were already there, their cars blocking the street and trying to keep as many people out as possible. The townsfolk stood outside in the brisk autumn morning, held back by police tape but trying to see inside. In this close-knit town, news that an exorcism would be performed spread like wildfire, and now everyone was curious about the result, despite already knowing it had taken a turn for the worse.
The mayor got out of his truck and forced his way through the crowd. The deputy manning the perimeter made an instinctive motion to stop him, but halted when he recognized his superior. The young man was deathly pale and looked like he was going to vomit.
“Sean, what happened?” the mayor asked.
The deputy began opening and closing his mouth, but no words were spoken. All the effort used for speaking was instead redirected into holding back tears. The mayor moved past him into the house and immediately felt his stomach lurch. The walls and floor were caked in blood like the workshop of a deranged butcher. Bodies lay strewn about, men and women alike, huge bite wounds in their necks like something had been feeding on them, Jim Clive and his friend looking like they had been shot through the chest with deer slugs. The daughter was up on the wall above the fireplace, naked and crucified. Four men, including the priest, and two women, all were shriveled and white as snow, completely bled dry.
The mayor couldn’t stop himself, he turned and vomited onto the floor, adding yet another puddle to the collection the police had already made. The sheriff and two other cops were in the room, empathizing with the mayor’s reaction. They had all witnessed death before, it came with the territory, it came with the lifestyle, but horror like this was unheard of.
“What happened?” the mayor asked.
The sheriff walked over to him, gray hair and heavyset, but a lifelong friend and reliable protector of the town. “We don’t know. I heard the priest was performing an exorcism. If there really was a demon in Jim, I can only think that maybe it caused all this.” He picked up the discarded fire poker, its tip looking like it was melted with acid. The muscles in his hand writhed as a chill seeped into his stomach. The threat was gone, but his instincts were still screaming for him to have his gun in his grip.
“A demon wearing shoes?” one of the deputies asked, crouching down and examining the boots of the man whose eyes had been gouged out.
“Say what?” the sheriff asked.
“Look there, a bloody footprint. The tread doesn’t match any of the shoes here. Someone is unaccounted for.”
“So there was a killer,” the mayor gasped.
“Or maybe someone taking part in the exorcism. They may be a survivor,” said the sheriff.
“Or both,” said the deputy. “Julia Clive was raped, there is blood and semen on her inner thighs. If there was a demon, it must have jumped into someone else and gone on a rampage.”
The mayor wiped the clammy sweat from his forehead. “Either way, if there was someone else here, we need to find them. Get these bodies out of here, have Doc perform an autopsy. I’ll start asking around the church, see if anyone else was supposed to be here. If there is a killer on the loose, possessed or not, everyone in town needs to be warned. I’ll probably have to send word to the woodsmen to watch out as well.”
“Too late.”
The mayor and sheriff turned and looked outside, where a large man was standing at the head of the crowd. He had long wild hair and an unkempt beard, and while his clothes were bartered from Senner, his coat was made of deer hide.
“Boyd!” the mayor exclaimed.
He was one of the delegates between the town and the wild folk.
“What hit your people already hit my people.”
=============
The conversation was moved to the mayor’s office, away from innocent ears. Both the sheriff and Boyd sat in chairs opposite Harold, stern and fearful looks on their faces.
“It started a couple weeks ago, we just thought it was maybe a rabid bear or some desperate coyotes moving in on our land. Bodies were being found in the woods, ripped apart and mutilated, men and women alike. All of them had been drained of blood. Some would manage to fire off a few shots, most never managed to reach their weapon in time. Then, the other day, I found my neighbor and his family butchered, his wife and oldest daughter raped. Not even his newborn son survived.”
“Jesus!” the sheriff hissed.
Harold wanted to tear into Boyd with all his might, for letting things spiral out of control. The town should have been warned, he should have been warned. However, he knew how unreliable the people in the forest were, a bunch of backward hicks and inbred savages. Not only did they barely communicate with the town, they barely even communicated with each other. There was no sense of community. They only knew the members of their own family, and whoever lived in the adjacent homesteads. Anyone who lived on their neighbor’s other side might as well have been on another planet. Boyd was a rarity, one of the few who actually put in the effort to know more than a dozen people.
“Any idea what it is now?” Harold asked, barely keeping his temper in check.
“Some kind of vampire.”
A hundred years ago, those words would have drawn scoffs and laughter and caused eyes to roll back. That was before the dead rose up and began feeding on the living. The old myths and folklores, at least those not forgotten, had made a strong return in rural areas. Almost everyone had a story in which they had claimed to see a vampire or werewolf prowling out at night. Many believed that the undead scourge hadn’t gone extinct, and that the infected had instead learned to hide and feed without gaining attention. There were a lot more exorcisms than before the war, the world teeming with demons born in the aftermath.
“But those bodies you found, they were out in the woods, right? Not in their homes? That meant they were killed during the day. Vampires can only go out at night.” The sheriff spoke the words with complete certainty, expecting no ridicule in response, and there was none.
“It must be some kind of undead,” said the mayor. “One that drinks blood and also lusts for women. Maybe it migrated here or maybe it’s always been here, hiding, sleeping. Whatever it is, we can’t let it roam free. Jeb, get the hounds ready and gather up the boys with weapons and ammo. I’ll let the people know that there is a dangerous animal on the loose. Nobody goes anywhere alone and there is a curfew at sunset. We can’t let this thing strike again.”
=============
Dominion sat in a tree in the woods outside Senner, his hand outstretched and a rock spinning above his palm, held in the air without any visible force or suspension. This was how he spent most of his time between meals, practicing with his abilities. He could levitate himself and objects, alter his physical structure, and summon his demon pets as extensions of his body, as well as consume spirits, of course. There were certainly more abilities within his reach. He simply needed time to discover and practice with them.
He was also experimenting on the souls he had taken, both human and demonic. Rather than simply a finite fuel source, each spirit acted as a perpetual motion device, a sort of self-charging battery producing unlimited power at a fixed rate. Even if he stopped feeding, his powers would never wane. An interesting challenge was keeping the stolen human souls pure. In death, the soul leaves the body and immediately begins to decay, losing all memories and feelings, becoming nothing more than the unholy embodiment of wrath and hunger. They become wraiths, the wicked dead, and once mashed together, they can become demons.
When Dominion stole the souls of those he fed on, they remained intact, retaining all their memories and feelings. Likewise, the power they produced was “pure” and untainted, a valuable difference for experimentation. The issue was that with human souls, the wraiths, and demonic entities sealed within him, it was tough keeping the former uncontaminated. Fortunately, this meant it would be easier to cultivate demonic power in a world occupied by the living.
Wait a second… He heard something. While beyond that of regular human hearing capabilities, he picked up the sounds of dogs woofing, and several feet stomping around close to each other. Ah, a hunting party! For them to work up the courage to try and hunt him down was admirable. How might he reward that courage? Should he just skip the foreplay and kill them all? Should he completely avoid them, letting them spin their wheels and taste the bitterness of disappointment? Perhaps he could play with them just a bit.
=============
Harold, Jeb, Boyd, and a dozen men from town moved through the forest as silently as possible, guided by a trio of bloodhounds following the scent of gore and starting at the Clive farm. Two deputies stayed behind and every home had a weapon for self-defense, so the safety of the town in their absence was not the immediate concern. Rather, it was what awaited them that shook every breath. These men were all seasoned hunters, but the mayor’s words and the scene at the Clive house extinguished all bravado. A man? A monster? The mayor himself admitted to not being sure as to what they were after. He only hoped that they would know it when they saw it.
The New England wilderness stole them from the civilized world, a sense of isolation forming a lump in everyone’s throat that could not be swallowed. Black bears and coyotes were a certain danger that they had all grown up accepting, but now there was something else in the woods, something far more dangerous. Every step they took, that might become a step they’d have to run when, not if, something happened. With every hill they climbed up, they pondered how fast they’d be able to scramble down. Every slope they descended became a question of stamina; would they have the strength to make it to the top and keep running?
It was midmorning, they had the promising sun and fullness from breakfast keeping their spirits up, yet that all disappeared when they came across their first body. It appeared to be one of the woodsmen like Boyd, impaled at the top of a dead tree. High above the forest floor, they would never have seen it, instead drawn by the smell of putrid gases and voided bowels. Blood should have been running down the aged bark like spilled paint, but every drop had been taken before the body was hoisted up. Days old, it was bloated and its flesh was sickeningly pale.
“Oh my God…” one of the men said.
Actually, all of them said it, but he was the only one loud enough to be heard at all, and he did it while trying and failing to hold back tears of revulsion and terror. He was Tim, the youngest of the group, just nineteen. Hearing his voice, all the other men wondered if he was still too young for something like this, but looking at the body, they realized that age alone wasn’t enough for someone to take this sight in stride.
The tree itself had been stripped of its branches by time, leaving it as a rotting pillar, but at a considerable height, the skewered body more than fifty feet off the ground.
“What could have done this? A bear, maybe? A mountain lion?” Jeb, the sheriff, muttered. “I heard that in Africa and Asia, leopards will drag their prey up into trees to keep it away from scavengers.”
“No animal on God’s green earth could do something like this,” said Boyd. “Whatever did, didn’t do it to preserve its food or anything like that. It did it to put it on display, to send a message of what it’s capable of.”
“With climbing gear, I’m sure a man could have dragged him up there,” said the mayor.
“And slammed him down with enough force to drive the trunk through his gut? The boy has an excuse to be naïve, but you don’t.”
“We’ll have to chop that tree down later to bury him,” said one of the men of the hunting party.
“Not until we kill this thing,” Jeb barked.
The hunting party continued, every member coated with a fresh layer of cold sweat. Not half a mile later, they found another cadaver. This one was a young woman, strung up by her own intestines. She was stripped naked, allowing the men to see how she had been raped and tortured before death. Her sickly pale body, seemed of all things, pathetic, to the men. When she was alive, she was probably quite pretty, but it was like that beauty had been tainted, leaving behind a limp… thing.
Her breasts, which would have lured the eyes of all the men around her when she was alive, now looked pitiful, decrepit, as if mocking the fertility that they had once symbolized. Her thighs and rear end, shaped by evolution to entice males, and toned by a life of hard work, now just looked like white tubes of fat, slowly rotting out here in the wilderness. Every sexual aspect of her existence had been taken away, reducing her to a grotesque homunculus.
Her head was askew, due to the intestinal noose around her neck. Her eyes, wide and glazed over, seemed to stare at the men no matter where they stood, condemning them for not being there to save her. The more they looked at her, the more her appearance changed, originally a sight of tragedy but then evolving into an avatar of evil. It was like she herself was cursed, her body turned into an unholy relic by some kind of black magic. Seeing her in these woods, to them, was like seeing a leaky car battery dripping acid into their drinking water. Her very presence poisoned the landscape. Once more, all the men muttered curses and prayers, many even crossing themselves.
“Come on, let’s get going,” the mayor said, but it was out of his desire to get away from the carcass, rather than continue hunting down the killer. The way his voice trembled gave away his true feelings.
The resumed marching, their hearts feeling heavier and heavier with each step they took. Half an hour later, they came across a house. Well, not really a house. It could barely even be called a cabin. It could have either been well made a hundred years ago, or terribly made the year before. It was sided with old plywood and rusty metal sheeting, but the windows were intact and the area around it was cleared. It was one of the homes of the people of the forest, the kind of place children would tell ghost stories about and dare each other to step inside. The house was silent, no signs of anyone.
“Should we check?” the mayor asked.
“We might as well. Hey, Potter, go look inside!”
“Screw that!” one of the men replied.
“Boyd, these are your people here,” said the mayor.
The man sighed and hiked up the hill towards the house, shotgun in hand with an itchy trigger finger. He came up to the front door and beat his fist loudly, calling for anyone to answer. After a moment of silence, he pushed the door open, peeked inside, and immediately closed it and ran back.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“What did you—”
“Let’s go!”
No one dared ask him what he had seen, but once again, the courage of the men took a deep hit. The trek continued, with morning giving way to afternoon. More and more bodies were found, the men slaughtered like livestock, while the women, the young, attractive ones, at least, were violated. Even the children had been murdered. They eventually stopped for lunch, having brought food in case the hunt dragged on. In this forest of death, no one had much of an appetite, but they still forced it down, hoping it would settle their stomachs and untwist the knots caused by stress.
Their eyes, originally focused on what they hoped not to be their last meals, were drawn upwards, as they found themselves immersed in gloom. Storm clouds were rolling across the sky with unnatural speed, so dark that the men expected soot to fall like snow. Upon having eclipsed the sun, the clouds halted, as the persistent autumn breeze ceased to exist. It was like the air itself had been killed, so utterly still that it was like it was frozen in time. It had to be in their minds, the sudden difficulty in breathing. Every breath they released seemed to cling to their faces, while the air around them, suddenly so viscous and heavy, had to be forcefully inhaled.
Sweat budded on the flesh of every man, mixing with dirt and dead skin and forming a pasty layer of filth that clung to them like a growing fungus. The men rubbed their hands together, trying to remove the oily sensation that dulled their sense of touch. At that moment, a bar of soap would have been more valuable than a bar of gold.
No one dared speak, terrified of breaking the silence. Desperate for auditory stimuli, their brains focused their hearing on their heart beats. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. They could each hear their pulse in their ears, hear how frantic it was. All eyes shifted to the dogs, beginning to whine. They too felt it, felt instinctive fear. They tried to get as low as possible and covered their eyes with their paws.
Snap.
The sound of a stick breaking forced the men to their feet all at once. Where had it come from? It was too loud for a squirrel or bird. In the opposite direction, another stick broke, followed by rapid footsteps in the brush. One of the men began shooting his gun towards the source of the noise, blasting the trees and ground with two others joining in their panic.
“Stop shooting! Cut that out!” the mayor shouted, though they didn’t stop until they had run out of ammo.
“Come on, go find it!” said Phil, the owner of the bloodhounds.
The dogs whined and refused, but were forced to give in after he kicked them onto their feet. The men followed the dogs on the scent trail, now running to catch up with the dark entity. Ahead of them, they could hear footsteps, sticks and branches being broken, and see an ominous shadow passing between the trees. The forest then ceased to exist, giving way to steep banks around a marsh. For a hundred meters in all directions, there was only waterlogged soil, black and stinking like beach silt at low tide. Some bushes and swamp maple were able to grow in the muck, but the forest was still a long-ways away from fully claiming the land.
All the men stopped, fearful of slipping down the steep banks and into the muck, but their eyes fell onto a pale shape, not ten feet away. It was a naked woman, lying flat in the mud. Only her head, back, and arms could be seen, her entire lower body swallowed by the marsh like she was submerged in tar. The filthy hair around her face shifted, moved by her faint breath. The men shivered, realizing she was still alive. They had to help her, but fear gripped their hearts and wouldn’t let go.
“Tim, go check on her,” the sheriff ordered.
“No way in Hell I’m going down there!” the young man shouted.
But his name had already been called, labeling him as the sacrifice. Someone pushed him and he went tumbling down the bank. He managed to stay on his back, and he instinctively held his gun up to keep it out of the mud. He came to a stop, just in front of the woman, his heart beating so fast that he felt like he was going to throw up. She slightly stirred, easing some of the terror. If they could save her, then at least this day would have some silver lining.
“Hey, lady, can you hear me? Are you ok?” he asked, slowly sitting up with his gun across his lap. She hummed and shifted her head an inch. “Lady?” he asked again, reaching out and touching her hair. She slowly raised her head up, groaning in pain, but her face was caked in mud.
Tim looked up to the men. “Give me some rope.” He was handed one end and three men grabbed the other, ready to pull him and the woman up the bank.
“I can smell it,” she whimpered.
“Smell what?” he asked.
She opened her eyes, revealing two empty sockets, each pouring blood. “YOUR FILTHY SOUL!”
Her jaw dislocated like a serpent’s and her cheeks ripped open, as from the depths of her throat, a clawed hand of black, scaly flesh reached out and grabbed Tim’s ankle. He screamed as it crushed his bones in its grip and began dragging him towards the deep mud. All of the men began shooting at the woman, their bullets ripping through her flesh, but she simply receded into the mud with the arm continuing to drag him. Up on the bank, the three men holding the end of the rope had become four, but it was like they were being dragged by a winch. Boyd jumped down and seized Tim, trying to pull him back.
“I don’t want to go! Don’t let me go!” he sobbed.
“I’m not going to let you go! Someone, get down here and help me!”
Harold answered the call, climbing down to the edge of the muck and proceeding to blast the hand at point-blank range. His shells did nothing to the unholy creature, its black flesh barely torn by the buckshot, and immediately regenerating like nothing he had ever seen before. It happened in the blink of an eye, something lunging out of the mud and knocking the shotgun out of his hand, breaking two of his fingers in the process. It was a tendril, shooting out like a frog’s tongue. It returned to the mud and shot out again, this time slashing Boyd across the face and gouging one of his eyes.
He howled in pain and his grip on Tim faded. The boy gave one last tearful scream before he was dragged into the mud, disappearing beneath the black depths like it was a portal to Hell. With Boyd and the mayor blinded by their agony, the men atop the bank were utterly stupefied, unable to comprehend what they had just seen. It had happened so fast, not even half a minute. Tim had been there, and then he was gone, and the forest, filled with screams and gunfire, was once more silent. What had taken him? Had they all just seen what they thought they had seen?
They stood like marionettes, their empty guns held loosely in their hands, realizing how impotent they were. Bubbling, it shook them from their stupor. It was such a soft noise that untrained ears would never have been able to catch it, but with only the sound of their own hearts beating, the men sensed it. Their eyes were drawn to the mud, thirty feet away from the bank. Something slowly arose up as if on an elevator, a head and shoulders, then the rest of the body. Muck poured off its sides, revealing the figure’s clothes. It was cloaked in nothing short of pure darkness, like some unholy god pulled out one of his hairs and wove the garment himself. Tall and slender, the figure stood atop the black water like something out of a nightmare, with its face hidden beneath its hood.
The men were petrified, having never encountered something like this before. They heard stories of the war against the undead, told by priests and other God-fearing bards that they were the Devil’s minions, meat puppets controlled by demons and brought forth by the sins of the modern world. This was no zombie. This was something infinitely worse.
Then, it raised its head, and under its hood, they saw the glint of its eyes. It happened in an instant, pain that wracked their bodies and souls in levels of intensity beyond words. Massive icicles ripped through their muscles and organs while their eyes were gouged out and their flesh melted with acid. Their bones shattered, crushed from all sides, while every light and happy thought in their minds was drowned in an ocean of viscera. It was bloodlust, that was the only word that could be used to describe it. The moment they looked into the creature’s eyes, it unleashed upon them a psychic wave, transmitting its killing intent.
They all dropped their guns, trembling as tears ran down their faces. Three of the men, the oldest, fell to the ground, struck with heart attacks. The rest ignored them, too engrossed in their own pain and horror. For Boyd, the loss of his eye didn’t even register to him, for he now felt like he had been run through a woodchipper. Then, the creature stepped forward, walking on the marsh like a tile floor. Upon seeing that movement, the remaining men all took deep breathes and then screamed at the top of their lungs.
They turned and ran like never before in their lives, with both Boyd and Harold scrambling up the sides of the bank. The men sprinted through the woods, their pants soiled in their terror. They shoved each other aside, hoping that anyone who fell would distract the unholy predator. They all been friends since they were kids, but that meant nothing. Had their own children been with them, they would have abandoned them without a second thought. This was a fear that went far beyond just a simple survival instinct.
Fifteen men had set out that morning to hunt down a monster. One was taken, three had heart attacks, and two never made it out of the forest, Boyd being one of them. From that day forward, the woods were forbidden, the men swearing to never enter the territory of the beast.
Encroaching Shadow
Dominion kept a low profile for the next several days, wanting to see the results of his fun. He sent his minions out into the town to observe how the people acted, seeing and hearing through them like drones. Invisible to mortal eyes, the unholy beasts were forbidden from interacting with the humans, all of them slaves to Dominion’s will. Word had spread of something unholy in the woods, a demon that violated and killed. During the day, small groups of people would gather behind buildings and in enclosed areas to discuss it with hushed voices, asking the same questions over and over again: What was it? What happened to the hunting party? What should they do?
The men of the hunting party were not the same people they were before they entered the woods. They were all gaunt, their eyes devoid of all light and courage, with their hair whitening at a terrifying rate. Tim’s mother wailed and wept for her missing son, while the mayor spent each day cooped up in his office, working on nothing but bottle after bottle of liquor.
Try as they might, the adults couldn’t keep it secret. Small details leaked to the children, becoming fuel for new games. When they played tag, whoever was ‘it’ became the monster in the woods. Stories would be made up, about how it would sneak into homes and children who didn’t say a special chant. They would huddle together at the edge of the woods, daring each other to go in. They had always been forbidden from entering the wilderness, their parents afraid of them falling victim to the lawless hill folk. Plenty of children had foolishly entered the woods on their own, never to be seen again, likely dead or enslaved. Now they had a new boogeyman to fear. The children would mark trees, seeing who had the courage to set the next record. When the parents found out, the children would be brutally punished, spanked and screamed at until they cried and even after, but it was terror, not anger, that fueled the parents’ reactions.
To Dominion, what was most entertaining was how the townspeople acted when night fell. The autumn sun fell earlier and earlier each day, with people rushing home as soon as it approached the horizon. No one dared be outside once the darkness arrived. Inside, every light, whether fire or electric, was active to immerse the inhabitants in illumination, while the shutters and curtains would be closed to keep the night itself out. Doors were bolted and locked, every gun and bible in town always within reach. Evening prayers were doubled, every grace fervent and desperate.
For the wild folk, it was life as usual. They were used to isolation, hiding from the world and trusting only a handful of people outside their own families. With so little human contact, few people actually knew about the murders. For the rest, they were either ignorant or already dead.
=============
“Harold?” his wife asked, knocking on the door of his office.
There was no reply. There was never a reply. She waited until she heard the clinking of glass before opening the door. She found him in his chair, the shades drawn but the sunlight still managing to slip in and gleam off the bottles scattered across the floor around him. His hair had turned white, but sleepless nights and constant drinking had darkened the skin under his eyes. His desk was cluttered with unattended work, the most attention it received just being shoved to the side.
“Harold, you have to get out of this room,” she said as she drew the blinds, finally drawing a reaction as his bloodshot eyes burned from the light of the sun.
She stood over him, looking at the pitiful creature her husband had become. When he first killed a man, a marauder from the forest, she remembered seeing him in the same state, but she had managed to pull him through the trauma. The problem was that this was something far worse. She knew that simply from his sickly appearance, and the fact that he wouldn’t tell her, no matter how much she pleaded. “There’s something in the woods, something evil.” Those words were all he told her.
With no other solutions, she decided to take drastic measures. With a powerful swing, she smacked him across the face. “Wake up, already!” He looked up at in her in shock. “I’m scared! The kids are scared! The town is scared! We need you to get off your ass and do your damn job! I don’t know what you found, but unless it ripped your balls off, there is no reason to be this pathetic! Take a shower, shave, put on some clean clothes, and get out of this damn office!”
“Ok! Ok!” he exclaimed. It had been days since he’d spoken to her. He rubbed his eyes and groaned in pain, seeming to finally come out of his stupor. Luckily, his wife had a cup of coffee in her hand. “Ugh, you know me too damn well,” he said as he gratefully took the hot brew.
She finally smiled. “After all these years, I should. By the way, that’s the last cup. Wilson is supposed to come by this afternoon, so we’ve been getting the shipment ready. I think you should definitely greet him.”
“Yeah, sure.” Harold tried to get to his feet but immediately fell back into his chair. “Jesus, how long has it been since I ate?”
=============
Hours later, a moving truck rolled up the long dirt road connecting Senner to the outside world. It was slow going, that truck usually being the only traffic that went through the area. The road could barely even be called that, mostly a dumping site for the stones in farmers’ fields. However, the driver was used to the terrain and managed to enter the town with little difficulty. He pulled up to the center, where several townspeople were waiting next to a pile of crates.
A jolly man stepped out, large with wiry hair and glasses. He looked more like an archeologist from some southwestern university than a merchant. Two other men also climbed out, both far more muscular than the first, and lacking the sunny disposition. They each had a rifle over their shoulder and two sidearms. They served as the first man’s security and labor. Ex-military, that much was obvious just from their hair and the way they walked.
“Harold! How’ve you been?” the driver asked that while getting out of the truck, but upon actually laying his eyes on the mayor, his smile vanished. He looked terribly emaciated, like he had just been liberated from a concentration camp. “My God, are you ok?”
Harold looked away, same with the rest of the townspeople. They weren’t sure if they wanted outsiders to know what was going on. Regardless, he tried to keep his tone upbeat. “I’m… I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Wilson. We’ve had a good harvest, so quit hogging your loot.”
“If you say so. Boys?” Wilson twirled his finger towards the truck and they went to work unloading it.
They brought out crates of special food and ingredients, ammo, medical supplies, batteries, and just about anything else that the town needed to thrive. Wilson was one of the town’s links to the outside world, a merchant on the modern-day Silk Road. He came often, as he only used one truck for deliveries. Any more would risk attack by marauders still operating in the rural areas of the country. His two hired guns were skilled and armed well enough to protect his merchandise.
Once they were done, they began loading the goods from the town. Senner had limited means of production and few natural resources to harness, but they managed to get by. Their main export was crops, moonshine, and marijuana. Most of the federal towns and cities had strict anti-pot and moonshine laws, along with other draconian restrictions, brought on by both the surge in evangelicalism after the apocalypse and the government’s desire to flex its muscles and prove it could maintain order. However, that just meant that small city-states like Senner had an exploitable market.
As Wilson’s crew and the people of the town exchanged crates, Harold pulled him aside, out of earshot. “Listen, Wilson, I need a big favor.”
“What, you need some Viagra or something?”
“No! This is serious. I need you to pass a message on to the governor. I think Senner might have to join the federal system.”
His friend was taken back, having never expected to hear those words, especially from out of the blue like that. For Harold to ask something like this, the situation must have been beyond dire.
“What’s going on? Some kind of viral outbreak? Are the woodsmen giving you trouble?”
“No, it’s a lot more serious than that. We need the National Guard out here, the army, anything. We need big guns and big tanks. Wilson…” Harold grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to stare into his bloodshot eyes. “There is something in those woods. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It might be something from the war, but it’s far, far worse. It’s been slaughtering the people in the woods nonstop, and just last week, it came to town and killed an entire family and a priest. There is no telling when it’ll come back and wipe us all out.”
His friend’s white hair suddenly made sense. Whatever he had seen must have scared him to within an inch of death. Wilson couldn’t help but wonder what Harold had seen, while also knowing it was better not to ask further. This was bad news. The town of Senner was a valuable customer to his business, and joining the country would mean he’d be obsolete. But if there really was something from the undead war roaming those woods, then his inactivity could let the flames of horror once more ignite and scorch the world. Senner could be the breeding ground in which the undead make their return.
“All right, I’ll head to the capital immediately. Just stay alive.”
“God bless you, Wilson.”
With the exchange made, Wilson and his men departed, having arrived with a full truck and now leaving with one. Harold stayed in the town square, watching him leave, his only hope scooting away and bouncing on the unpaved road. His wife stood next to him, switching her gaze from the truck to her husband. She knew what Harold had done. She knew it the moment she saw him pull Wilson away for a private word. They didn’t talk business, Harold would always discuss that in the open or in his office if the weather was bad. He had told Wilson about what happened in the woods, perhaps even asking him to get help from the government.
Despite the dire situation, many would condemn him for that choice. They’d say he’d sold them out, surrendering their freedom to beat one boogeyman he claimed to see in the forest. Those people hadn’t been in the hunting party. They didn’t see the bodies, see the black hand drag Tim into the bog, didn’t see the specter and look into its eyes. Hopefully, they would continue to hate him, ignorant of the horror just outside their borders, for the only way they would ever truly know its wickedness was for it to enter the town and make itself truly known. If that happened, it wouldn’t be a matter of how many people it killed, but how few it left alive.
=============
On the bumpy road leaving Senner, Wilson’s guards couldn’t help but notice the tense look on his face. Normally, he’d be happier than a kid coming home after trick or treating, but he said nothing about the great deal he’d made or future prospects. He was biting his lip and looking around nervously, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. Had the mayor maybe warned him that the wild folk might try to attack them? Perhaps he was anticipating an ambush.
“Boss, are you all right? What’s going on?”
“I just want to get out of this forest as quickly as I can. There’s been a change of plan, boys. We’re heading straight to the capital. Just don’t ask questions and I’ll pay you double.”
The two men looked at each other, having never seen him like this, certainly not this charitable. They instinctively gripped their weapons, getting the sense that it would be wise to keep a lookout on their surroundings. The one sitting in the middle of the cab looked ahead and exclaimed, “What the Hell?”
About a hundred yards down the road, a man stood, dressed in a black overcoat with long black hair. He had his arms crossed behind his back and a stoic look on his face, but they all knew he bore more than ill will.
“Shit, speed up!” the guard yelled as Wilson automatically put his foot on the break. “No matter what, do not slow down! Run him over if you have to!”
Wilson did as told, putting the pedal to the metal and running the truck as fast as he could down the bumpy road. Both guards readied their weapons, one keeping his gaze on the stranger and the other scanning the surrounding woods for any marauders. Despite the truck thundering towards him, Dominion didn’t step off the road or show the slightest expression. He was taking a break from his role as the unseen specter, giving up madness and theatricality and focusing only on business.
The truck was almost upon him, yet it spontaneously shut down, the engine falling silent and all the dashboard displays and radio becoming lifeless. It came to a halt and the men all swallowed the lump of fear in their throats. For the truck to suddenly stop, it had to have been tampered with. Was it when they were in town? Had the people of Senner set them up? This was a classic ambush tactic: have one guy play decoy, disable the transportation, and then his friends attack from the sides.
The guard in the middle climbed over Wilson towards the door. “Take my seat and get ready to run if I tell you!” He and his partner opened the doors and aimed their rifles at Dominion. “Show us your hands or we’ll drop you!”
Dominion obeyed, holding his hands out to his sides to show he held nothing, but he didn’t need a weapon. Both men jerked as they felt an invisible force wrap around them, lifting them into the air like puppets on strings. They screamed in terror at this unbelievable experience, but instinct took over and they aimed their rifles at Dominion and opened fire. Their guns exploded in their hands with the firing of the first bullets. Their barrels had been bent and twisted by the same force that bound them, causing a catastrophic jam. Both men were blasted with shrapnel and powder, leaving them peppered with cuts, but alive. It would have been better for them if they weren’t.
They turned their attention back to Dominion, and the blood drained from their faces. Something black was pouring from his overcoat like crude oil. It hit the ground but immediately rose back up into the air, floating like the men. The tar-like black mass doubled in size each second, changing also in its consistency. It seemed to be solidifying, turning into some kind of liquid muscle. It completed its transformation, becoming what could only be compared to as a massive head like that of a blue whale, made of jet-black flesh and missing its eyes. It was fused with Dominion, an extension of its body. It opened its mouth, revealing triangular teeth like the heads of shovels. The two men, robbed of their weapons and their courage, screamed at the top of their lungs as they realized what awaited them. The telekinetic force holding them tossed them through the air and into the giant mouth.
The jaws snapped shut and they were mashed, the crunching of their bones audible even to the petrified Wilson. The blood of the men leaked out of its mouth, the crimson clashing with the jet-black skin, but it extended a fat tongue to lick its lips clean. The head then shrank and was absorbed back into Dominion, and he turned his attention to the survivor. With a flick of his wrist, the windshield was shattered and the front of the truck ripped open as if by a giant can opener. Wilson was pulled to Dominion with the same invisible force, floating helplessly before him. The poor man was beyond afraid, practically foaming at the mouth as he awaited his gruesome death.
“I understand that you’re a man that knows how to get things. I have a job for you. I need a mirror, a silver mirror that’s as large and old as possible. Anything backed by aluminum is worthless. Do you understand? Nod if you do.” It took a moment for Wilson to process the situation, but he frantically nodded. “Good, then I’ll be leaving one of my pets to look after you.”
Wilson looked down, his eyes drawn to Dominion’s shadow. It was darkening, actually taking physical form. His shadow became a puddle of the same black liquid that had formed the giant head. The puddle slid over to Wilson’s shadow and he saw the gleam of two red, glowing eyes in the surface, like a reflection, then it faded away. “You have two weeks to find me the mirror. Should you fail or tell anyone of what transpired here, my pet will peel the flesh from your bones and return to me with your soul in tow. Am I understood?” Wilson nodded again. “Very good.” Dominion flicked his wrist and Wilson was returned to the truck. The destroyed windshield was reassembled, while the bent and torn steel of the front of the truck repaired itself, becoming good as new with no sign of the damage done. “Now get going. Your life depends on it.”
=============
The next day started out normally, at least, normal in terms of this new dark chapter. Most of the townspeople were farmers, so they had to get up before dawn to get to work. However, now it was stalled, no one daring to go out without the sun protecting them. The animals would just have to wait a bit before being fed and let out of their pens, but it wouldn’t kill them. Once the light came, everyone got busy. Shops and businesses opened and daily routines began, with most of the activity happening in the town square, around a statue from the old world. It depicted a soldier from the Civil War. Senner, his name was, and this town was rebuilt around him with that name. It was a part of the town, as much as the baker, sheriff, mechanic, or principal. So natural was it, that rarely did anyone actually pay attention to it, offering even the slightest glance. But someone did, and a scream followed that movement of the eye.
No one had noticed it in the early morning, when the town square was still in the shadow of the nearby mountain, but once the sun shined upon it with its full radiance, the bronze caught the light and gleamed, despite age having tarnished its exterior. That was because it had been glazed with fresh blood, kept from drying by the cold and the frost. The blood was coming from Boyd’s corpse. He had been impaled on the statue, the soldier’s bayonet going through his lower jaw like a meat hook. He had been mostly drained of blood, but there was still enough to leave a gruesome mess on the metal.
His office right next to the statue, Harold burst out at the sound of the scream. He saw the woman who had sounded off, still unable to contain her voice. She was pointing to the statue, and when his eyes fell to it, his stomach dropped. Not only did the horror and audacity of such an act destroy any confidence he had, he cursed himself for not seeing it earlier. He had been so preoccupied on his way to the office that he had somehow missed the dead body strung up in the center of town.
“Jeb! Jeb, get out here!” Harold shouted as he ran towards the statue. He kept shouting until his friend came out of the nearby sheriff station. He and his deputies gazed at the statue and prayed for salvation.
The mayor’s voice immediately shook him from his stupor and they ran over to help him hoist Boyd off the statue. Four men were struggling to climb up onto the frosted bronze as a crowd gathered around them. Harold and the others tried not to look down at the horrified faces, tried to ignore the gasps and screams. No children were in the crowd, and the school was down the street, thank God, but they had to get rid of this horror show before it was too late.
One of the deputies fell and nearly cracked his head open in the process, but they were able to lift Boyd off the bayonet and drop him to the ground. A man in the crowd pulled off his coat and draped it over the pale face, sparing the crowd from seeing the cavernous hole where his eye had been. The three men climbed down, and despite all being out of breath, they hoisted up Boyd and carried him off towards the sheriff station.
=============
“They’re all gone,” the elderly doctor muttered as he pulled the sheet over Boyd’s face.
The mayor, the sheriff, and the doctor were gathered in the coroner office of the sheriff department. Dr. Michaels was one of the founding members of Senner, but while he had kept the ravages of age at bay for the most part, right now, his hair had never looked whiter, his hands trembled, and his face seemed to have twice as many wrinkles. Performing the autopsy had done a number on him.
“What’s gone?” Jeb asked.
“All of his internal organs. His entire chest cavity is empty, not to mention he’s been bled dry.”
“Good God, you mean something carved him open and stole his innards?” the sheriff asked while gagging.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen a coyote do. Though this sure as hell wasn’t any coyote,” said Harold.
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“But we know it’s not a coyote.”
“No, you’re wrong about him being carved open. There isn’t a single scar or wound on the torso that could explain this. His chest was emptied without even being opened.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s not. Other than his missing eye and a broken hand, he doesn’t have any injuries. I have no idea how this could have happened.”
As the sheriff cursed in utter bafflement, the mayor stared at Boyd while feeling like his own body was even colder than his dead counterpart’s. The broken hand, he hadn’t suffered that injury because of the creature in the woods. When he and the rest of the hunting party looked into its eyes, they sensed death, not a violent death, like being shot or mauled by an animal, and not a peaceful death, like dying in one’s sleep. They sensed an unholy abyss, a meatgrinder that would tear up their souls and drown them darkness. The fear that overtook them was beyond words, and all the men had run for their lives.
Harold and Boyd had been down in the mud, trying to help Tim escape, and when they ran, they first had to scramble up the bank. Boyd had gotten ahead of Harold, occupying the only section that could be climbed, and he was moving far too slow. Harold did what he had to. He dragged Boyd back down, and when he tried to fight back, he stomped on his hand. He climbed up the bank and left Boyd to die, to be used as bait to distract that avatar of evil.
Looking at Boyd, covered in that sheet, he felt his stomach twisted into knots. He had condemned a good man to death. He had thrown him under the bus so that he could get away. The guilt made him feel sick. But there was also fear bubbling inside him. Had he not sabotaged Boyd, he probably would have ended up on this table instead. Death scared him, but dying at the hands of that thing was worlds beyond scary.
He was shaken from his thoughts by one of the deputies rushing in. “It’s Phillis Marvel, she had a heart attack. Her daughter is bringing her in.”
“Ben Marvel was in the hunting party. He’d had a heart attack and died in the woods,” Jeb muttered. “We can’t even collect the body.”
“That’s what caused her heart attack. She found him, sitting in his favorite chair.” The young man struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. “He had been dismembered.”
=============
Both Harold and Jeb had steeled themselves for what they expected to see, but still, it was revolting. They were in the Marvel home, looking at the corpse of one of their friends. They had both been invited over for dinner countless times in the past. After eating, when Phillis and their daughter would go up to bed, the three friends would talk in the parlor over glasses of moonshine. Ben would always take the easy chair, it was his favorite place in the world.
Now he was in it once again, but in pieces. They had been arranged, making it look like he was sitting in the chair, but the separations were obvious at a glance, just from the visible gore alone.
“This is inhuman,” Jeb muttered.
“It’s fucking with us. It picked this chair on purpose. It somehow knew he loved it and it’s doing this just to fuck with us. Jesus Christ, it was in this house last night. Imagine if it did to Becky what it did to Julia Clive.”
“Boyd and Frank never made it out of the woods, Ben, Thomas, and James had heart attacks, and Tim was taken. That means there are probably four more bodies around Senner.”
=============
In towns like Senner, there were no phones, cellular or landline, so all communication had to go through CB radios. Calls came in throughout the morning, the bodies of the dead showing up, placed intentionally in certain places. Frank was found by his son out on their farm. The scarecrow had been taken down, replaced with him, nailed to a cross. Luckily, he was already dead before the demon of the woods could move him.
Thomas, the town butcher, had been chopped into pieces and hung on meat hooks in his shop. Not since he died had any of his friends or family had the courage to go in there. Were it not for this search, there was no telling how long it would be until he was found. James had been skinned and hung from a tree near his house.
By noon, Harold was in his office with Jeb, the two of them drowning their sorrows in moonshine. Harold’s CB was on the desk, and they were waiting for one of the deputies to call in and say they had found young Tim. They didn’t have the strength to keep searching. The sight of their friends, desecrated so horribly, made them sick, feeling as though years had been shaved off their life spans.
“I told Wilson to tell the governor that we needed help and were willing to join the country.”
After countless minutes of silence, Harold just came out with it. He wasn’t sure why he did it. Maybe he did it to remind himself what it felt like to have hope for something. Maybe he did it to give his friend some of that hope. Maybe he wanted to be honest and get yelled at; it’d make a great distraction from their current predicament.
Staring down at his glass, Jeb flicked his gaze up and grunted in reply. In any other situation, he would have torn into his friend for hours, lamenting on the years of freedom and independence that would be given up, all the sacrifices made pointless. Regardless, like Harold, he welcomed anything that let him feel a glimmer of hope. In the face of this horror, things like freedom and independence weren’t worth much. What mattered was survival.
“Sheriff, it’s Dawson. We found Tim.” The voice crackled on the CB and both men gave a sigh of exhaustion.
“I’m guessing with a machete shoved up his ass or something?” Jeb groaned through the mic.
“He was in the dumpster behind the school. Oh shit! Sheriff, you’re not going to believe this, but he’s alive! Tim is alive!” Both men stared at each other in shock, feeling like this was a cruel joke. They all saw it, every man in the hunting party, they all saw Tim disappear into that mud like he was dragged down to Hell. There was no way he was alive. Even if that specter didn’t kill him itself, he should have drowned. “Sir, you’d better get over here! He’s lost his mind!”
“Evacuate the school! We’re on our way!”
They rushed outside and began sprinting down the sidewalk, though considering how much they had been drinking, it took great effort. It was probably better that they run instead of drive. Luckily, in a small town like this, all the important buildings were just a stone’s throw away from the Town Hall.
They heard the commotion before they saw it, heard Tim screaming like a spooked horse. The school was one small building, where only the young children learned how to read, write, and do basic math. Once they reached adolescence, almost all learning was done outside, all hands-on experience. They were fortunate, it made evacuation easy. Harold and Jeb ran past the fleeing children and went around back. Tim was there, the two deputies cornering him against the back of the school. Hearing the ruckus, people were starting to gather, and upon seeing Tim alive, the words “oh my God” were spoken in both relief and terror.
The young man was on his feet, pacing back and forth. The problem was that his ankle was broken, his foot twisted a full 360º and bent to the side. He wasn’t so much standing on it as he was the stump of his leg, where the tips of his shin bones were starting to tear through his flesh and dig into the soil. He was absolutely filthy from the marsh, and the skin underneath that muck was deathly pale. He looked like a corpse that had been fished out of the water.
There was a gruesome black crater on the side of his head, like a spoonful of gunpowder had been ignited on his scalp. He still had his shotgun, but it was caked in mud. With both severe frostbite and gangrene occurring in his fingertips, it was unlikely he could even pull the trigger, but the two deputies still kept their hands on their holstered sidearms.
“Ashes to ashes! Dust to dust!” he moaned, barely managing to stay upright.
“Whoa, Tim! Relax! We’re here to help!” Harold called out. He and Jeb joined the perimeter around him, trying to keep his attention away from the gathering crowd.
“1000… 993… 986… 979… 972!”
“Tim, just take a deep breath and tell us what happened!”
Finally, the boy looked at him. Though it would be more accurate to say he faced him. His eyes were rolling around like cue balls, moving completely independent of each other. “He told me things! He showed me things! Is this real? Are you real? You’d better he real!” he shouted while pointing his shotgun at the mayor.
“Tim! You don’t want to do that! I need you to put the gun down and tell us what happened!” Jeb barked. His eyes moved from the gun to Tim’s face, seeing the red of blood. Weeping cysts were forming, but they hadn’t been there a second ago.
“There are ants in my skin! Make them stop! They don’t die in the flames! I burn myself, but they won’t stop biting! How many more years do I have?”
“Tim, you’ve been gone for a week! It’s just been a week!”
Finally, Tim looked at Harold with the briefest spark of sanity. “Not for me.”
Staring at Tim, Harold felt his blood run cold. Something was wrong with the boy’s skin. The way his muscles were quivering, it’s like there was actually something inside him, like when an unborn baby kicks and pushes out against the interior of the womb. There couldn’t really be ants under his skin, could there?
“I want to die! I don’t want to die! I want to die! I don’t want to die! They can’t have my soul! They took my soul! They can’t have my soul! They took my soul!”
He had completely lost his mind. There was no way of getting through to him, and if they didn’t restrain him soon, this would end badly. Then, a familiar sensation enveloped Jeb and Harold. It was darkness. They looked up at the sky, watching inky-black clouds spreading out like a pool of oil and obscuring the sun. They had seen those exact same clouds before when they went into the woods.
“Make the pain go away! Why won’t you help me?!”
Tim pulled the trigger, his gun pointed at the mayor. His aim was off, putting a couple pieces of buckshot in the man’s shoulder and knocking him to the ground. The only thing louder than the tinnitus was the sound of gunshots as the sheriff and his deputies opened fire. Tim was riddled with bullets, all buried in his chest, save for one, which drove straight through his eye and out the back of his skull. He staggered back against the school to the sound of women crying out at the sight of this violence. Yet that wasn’t the end.
“Mama! Mama, it hurts!” Tim screamed, despite his lungs being turned into swiss cheese.
“Impossible,” Jeb and the deputies gasped.
With a squelching sound audible to the three men, but not to the deafened mayor, three tendrils of brain matter slithered out of the bullet hole in his eye. They reached out like roots in search of sunlight, causing one of the deputies to turn and heave the contents of his stomach.
“God is dead!” Tim yelled as he ejected the empty casing and fired again, this time at the vomiting deputy. His head was ripped off his shoulders to the horror of everyone around.
Out of bullets, Jeb and the other deputy tackled Tim before he could shoot again. They knocked him against the wall, but before Jeb could pull out his handcuffs, the gray matter tendrils shot forward and drilled into the deputy’s eyes. He managed to give a single garbled cry of pain as the tendrils scrambled his brain and ended his life. Then, death came for the sheriff. An arm burst out of Tim’s stomach and into Jeb’s. It was skinless and horribly deformed, yet it still had enough strength to punch through Jeb’s gut like a deer slug and leave a gaping hole.
By now, all the women were running away in terror, while every armed man took cover and began opening fire. Bullets ripped through Tim’s mutating body, but none of them seemed to do anything. In fact, it appeared to be hastening his transformation. A bone spike grew out of the knee of his wounded leg, as large as an elephant’s tusk but curled like a goat’s horn. It wrapped around his mangled foot and took his weight off it, acting like a mix of a peg leg and a brace.
“Coyotes in my head! Coyotes howling in my head!”
He aimed his gun at the mayor but a blast from a shotgun knocked him off his balance. As Harold ran away, Tim looked at the man who had fired. He was a farmer, crouching behind a rain barrel. The third arm growing from Tim’s stomach pulled out a handful of intestines, ripped them free, and then threw them with deadly accuracy. They struck the man in the face and burst into shreds, and while first he gagged in revulsion, that gag turned into a scream. Those shreds were burrowing into his skin, one forcing its way into his tear duct. Upon reaching his brain, they robbed him of his final breath.
Everyone continued shooting at Tim, not knowing what else they could do. Over the sound of gunfire, they didn’t hear the moan, a moan that had not been released in eighty years. The farmer, who had fallen dead, slowly got back to his feet, with his eyes glazed over and his mouth hanging open. He staggered out into the street and a nearby friend stopped shooting to turn to him.
“Jerry? Jerry, what are you doing?”
Jerry turned to the man, and with a ravenous growl, lunged and pinned his friend to the ground, his teeth soon finding the man’s throat and tearing through it. This act was not lost on the rest of the men.
“Jerry’s turned! He’s become a zombie and bit Fred!”
“Kill them! Before it spreads!”
Gunfire was directed to the two zombies, as well as the mutating Tim. However, they were running low on ammo. Most people only carried a full mag or cylinder, maybe enough for one reload. They all began to retreat, gathering up in the street while focusing their fire on Tim.
“Mama! Why are they hurting me? I’ll be a good boy!” he wailed as he blasted one of the men in the chest with his last round.
The sound of honking turned the men around, to the sight of Harold speeding down the road in his truck. Everyone ducked to the side as it rocketed past them. Harold had just enough time to jump out before it slammed into Tim and the two zombies, impacting with enough force to dismember them and spray viscera across the street. Yet while the shredded zombies could only wiggle on the sidewalk like worms, Tim, having been struck head-on and bisected, was beginning to pull himself together.
One of the men from the hunting party rushed over with a tank of gas. He emptied it on Tim and the slithering undead, but before he could light a match, Tim dealt with him. His spine burst out his back and struck the man like a scorpion tail, drilling into his chest and ripping out his heart. As he fell dead, another man managed to get a flame going, leaving Tim and the undead to burn.
“Get away! He’s still dangerous!” Harold yelled.
Tim was rolling in the flames, burning like a hay barn but still screaming. “Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?!”
The rest of the men came back, pouring more gasoline and firing more bullets into Tim. They didn’t stop until nothing but ashes remained.
=============
The Town Hall was deafeningly loud, as it was filled to the brim with almost every single adult citizen, all them voicing their fears and frustrations, often with an equal mix of profanities and religious declarations. Harold was up on the stage at the back of the room, leaning on his podium and waiting for the shouting to die down. Growing tired of the tirade, a man in the crowd drew his gun and shot it at the ceiling. While it succeeded in ending the yelling, everyone was more than a little tense, and that iconic crack drew fearful screams.
“Jesus Christ, Dale! Don’t shoot your gun in here!” Harold yelled.
“I’ll keep doing it until you tell us what the fuck is going on!”
“Yeah!” everyone else shouted.
Harold sighed and rolled his head, trying to ease the pain in his neck from jumping out of his truck. His shoulder hurt like a bitch as well, but at least the buckshot had been removed. “Last week, as you all know, Father Donovan went to the Clive home to perform an exorcism. They were all slaughtered, the whole family and everyone who took part. But it wasn’t the demon that did it. Something else came and killed them all. Many of you know Boyd of the hill folk. He arrived and told me that his people were being killed in the same way.
We formed up a search party to go hunt down whatever was killing people. We found the woods filled with death, countless bodies desecrated and put on display. Then… we found what was doing it. Don’t ask me what it was we saw. I taste blood every time I think back to it. Three members of the party died on the spot from heart attacks. Tim was taken away, we thought he was dead. Two more, including Boyd, never made it out of the woods.
Now, today, the bodies of the dead were brought back to the town, as some kind of message or warning. Tim was still alive, but something happened to him. He… transformed, became something unholy, something from the war. Six were killed trying to put him down, including the sheriff. Two men were turned into zombies in the process.
Yesterday, I told Wilson to pass a message to the governor, that Senner would join the country if we received aid and protection.”
More than half the crowd erupted in outrage. It went without saying that no one from the hunting party was in that group. Many of the defiant had even been present in the fight against Tim, but still held faith that the town could overcome this new threat with strength in numbers and proper organization.
“I know you’re mad at me, but I had no other choice. I have seen what we’re up against. I felt the evil inside it like heat from a fire. If help hasn’t arrived by noon tomorrow… I’m going to pack up my family and leave. I suggest the rest of you do the same. If we don’t get any help, we’ll all die. No bullet or cross can stop this thing.”
Countless families felt their blood run cold at the declaration. In a town with little access to parts or fuel, vehicles were a luxury. Bikes, horses, and walking were the main means of transportation. The mayor and the sheriff both had trucks, due to the nature of their jobs, but few others did. Most of the cars in Senner were communal, people signing a list and registering for a turn to use them. About half the town could be evacuated, and that was only with the clothes on their backs.
And even then, leaving was not a guarantee of survival. Winter was almost upon them, and ignoring the emotional pain of abandoning their homes and everything they knew to become refugees, leaving meant giving up their livelihoods without any prospects to speak of. Here, they had farms, livestock, and means to support themselves, earned through years and decades of hard work. Even in the rebuilt America, the protection of the law and social programs still paled compared to a century ago. If they left, they’d have nothing.
However, now that the mayor had made his announcement, the dominos were starting to fall. Once the first family left, an exodus would begin. Everyone who could leave would take off, abandoning the rest of the townspeople at the mercy of the wilderness, the people in the forest, and the unholy specter. With their numbers cut in half, the town would most surely die before the end of the year.
Immediately after the town meeting, every family went home to have the exact same discussion. Should they stay? Should they leave? Is it even possible to do either of them? The husband and wife would be in their kitchen, one sitting and one pacing, screaming at each other over a choice that could mean their deaths. The men’s eyes would sweep across the inside of their homes, homes they had built with their bare hands, while remembering every nail and piece of wood used, remembering all the scrapes, bruises, and sweat, all for the hope of a safe life for their family.
The women would look in the kitchens and living rooms, calling back memories of all the happy years they had spent, all the years they planned to spend. Every house had one, a doorway with notches carved into the wood to measure the children’s heights. Just that doorway was priceless, irreplaceable. Children wept as they heard the news, the possibility that they’d have to leave their home, their friends, and their whole way of life.
Two families made the decision to leave, and after what they had witnessed, they weren’t going to bother waiting. They loaded their cars with everything of value. Photo albums, family heirlooms, treasured possessions, and any silverware or jewelry that could be sold. All of their livestock were put down and their homes locked and boarded up on the off chance they’d have to return. If there was enough room for pets, they were brought along, so as not to meet the same fate as the livestock.
They pulled out town just in time. A snowstorm was brewing on the horizon.
=============
It was the middle of the night, the storm overhead blocking out the moon and stars and leaving everything immersed in utter darkness. Yet Dominion could see perfectly, his eyes no longer that of a human’s. He crouched down, examining the spot on the road where Tim and the two zombies had been incinerated. Snow fell all around him but it wouldn’t land on that spot, as if the flakes themselves were afraid of the cursed earth. While it pained him to waste a perfectly good soul, the experiment had been very rewarding. His goal had been to create something other than a zombie and study its characteristics.
Zombies were formed when the power and chaotic minds of the wraiths poured into the living, like scrambled eggs put back into their emptied shells. Their ability to move despite their rotting flesh was similar to telekinesis, every decaying cell tied with a puppet string. The twisting sentience erased all thought and feeling, leaving only basic coordination and the need to feed and spread the disease. So, instead, he kept Tim alive, and while torturing him with horrific illusions and nightmares, channeled unholy power into his body, without destroying his consciousness.
Rather than becoming a walking corpse, rotting with each step, the demonic energy mutated him, turning him into something both corporeal and ethereal, both living flesh and darkness given solid form. The fact that he kept some of his sentience intact was incredible. These results were fascinating, already giving him ideas on future experiments.
Then there was the matter of the zombies. They were an unexpected byproduct, but not unwelcome. Without being properly channeled into the vessel like Dominion had done to Tim, it seemed the power shredded the soul and turned the body into a low-level undead. What would they become if he used the same amount of power he had used on Tim, but without preserving the soul? Oh, so many possibilities!
Dominion walked away and entered the Town Square, strolling around the Senner statue. This whole town and the people in the woods had offered him immense entertainment and information. Two families had left, and they’d surely spread stories of his presence. His tale would waft through the land like a poisonous cloud, unprovable, but impossible to ignore, assuring that his entertainment would continue. But now, it was time to stop playing with his food.
In the back of his mind, the spirits of the evil dead and the demons were growling and screaming in hunger. Ugh, they were so annoying. No matter how many times he silenced them, as soon as he turned his attention away, they’d just resume making a ruckus. It seemed he still needed to practice controlling them. Oh well, he was almost done brainwashing the spirits from the mass grave, so things would get much quieter pretty soon.
He couldn’t blame them for being excited. They knew what was coming. Dominion cricked his neck and let slip a laugh. “Yes, my pets, I hear you. I know how hungry you are. Go ahead, run wild. Go FEED!”
He raised his arms and the snow around him was blown aside by hurricane wind. Black masses were shooting from his body and taking shape in the air. Granted physical form, the demons flooded outwards with their claws and fangs gleaming in the utter darkness. Wings, tails, tentacles, scales, multiple eyes, and other horrific appendages adorned their bodies, each beast looking like it had been shaped by the nightmares of madmen.
Among them were the wraiths, human souls that Dominion had stolen and then tainted. They were all humanoid, but horrifying nonetheless. Whether it was their malformed bones, emaciated muscles, or the absence of skin, they all embodied the darkness of the end. Regardless of whether or not they were from the town or the forest, death and malice had stripped them of everything, leaving them as nothing but violent spirits driven by wrathful hunger.
They swept through the town like a flood, either flying through the air or running on the ground like wild animals. They burst into people’s homes, hungry for the bodies and souls of the living. Every family was awoken by the sound of their windows breaking or their doors being smashed open. In many houses, the first target of the dead were the children, desperate to devour their life and innocence.
First shaken by the sound of entry, Harold and his wife jumped out of their bed upon hearing the bloodcurdling screams of their sons. They rushed down the hall and into the boys’ rooms, only to find the walls splattered with blood as the unholy spawn ripped them apart. Before Harold could do anything, the demon dismembering his oldest son, and the emaciated ghoul ripping out his youngest son’s throat, turned and attacked him and his wife.
Screams filled the night, along with the sounds of gunfire. Every man kept a gun by his bed, but no matter the size of the bullet, the dead felt no pain and took no damage. Men and women, they’d be ridden to the ground, the smell of their blood mixing with the stench of burnt gunpowder. Even the farming houses in the outskirts weren’t safe. Fires were started in every home, a means of eliminating the evidence. The midnight storm was illuminated by the sea of flames, the falling snowflakes evaporating in the air and the crackling overshadowed only by the howls of despair and agony. Nobody had the luxury of burning to death, every soul was claimed and brought back to Dominion to be added to his collection.
When the sun finally rose, the town of Senner had been wiped off the map. Every building was reduced to ashes, most still smoldering. Every corpse had been cremated, leaving no evidence as to how the townspeople met their end, but the outside world would eventually notice, and stories would spread. Dominion would continue to be a shadow dwelling outside the reaches of man’s domain, at least until he made his move.
He still had several days before he could expect Wilson to return with a suitable mirror, if he even found one. Luckily, the wilderness was still full of souls ready to be devoured. Having collected the last soul of Senner, Dominion climbed off the statue in the center of town and looked to the mountains. He had enjoyed his midnight snack, but now he wanted breakfast.
=============
Eight days since leaving Senner, Wilson was making his return. He had succeeded in finding a suitable mirror, and he wanted to get rid of it as fast as he could. For eight straight days, he had barely slept or eaten, his body riddled with terror like a cancer. When he did sleep, he had only horrific nightmares of what he had seen, how his two best men were lifted off their feet and devoured by the Devil himself.
But that was not all that scared him. At every moment of every day, the beast was watching him. With flesh as black as coal, curled horns like a goat, blood-red eyes, and a persistent growl in its throat, the demon that Dominion had attached to Wilson never left him in peace. He saw it in the corner of every room, in the reflection of every mirror. It stared at him, its gaze filled with indescribable malice. Each night, he did everything he could to look away, to not meet the eyes glowing in the dark like a pair of lit cigarettes. Whenever he stopped working, it would growl louder.
His wife and children had no idea what was scaring him so horribly, why he constantly shuddered and averted his gaze. They couldn’t see it, even when it stood right behind them when they all ate dinner. Wilson’s hair had turned white, his body was losing pounds by the day, and all of his fingertips were wrapped in bandages from biting his nails, a habit he had spontaneously picked up.
He had been working almost nonstop to find the mirror, pulling every string he had, using every connection, and asking favors from people he had never even met before. It would be 2:00 am, and he’d be calling a possible lead, begging them not to hang up and praying they had information. Massive silver mirrors were hard to find in this age, almost all mirrors using aluminum. When he finally tracked one down, he wept in relief. It was not cheap, but he would have paid any price.
The mirror in question had been found in the closet of a Connecticut mansion, seven feet tall and four feet wide with an ornate wooden frame. It was supposedly from the 17th century. Curiously, it was the one mirror that the demon would not appear in. Rather, it stood behind it, no longer growling. It seemed satisfied.
Now he was making the drive down the bumpy road to Senner, his erratic speed due to his inner conflict, rather than the rocks and potholes. He wanted to get rid of this mirror as soon as possible, to be rid of this demon, but no matter how well he had wrapped and packed the mirror in the back of his truck, one wrong jostle might crack it, and he knew his “client” wouldn’t be forgiving.
He at last broke through the sea of trees, but found nothing but destruction. The town had been leveled, the frigid winds blowing away the lightest ash and leaving the heavy charcoal in vast piles of blackness. The only thing that remained was the Senner statue in Town Square, with Dominion sitting on its base, having received word from his pet demon that the mirror was on its way. He had been feeding for the past eight days, hunting down every human in the wild and picking the landscape clean. His powers were now several times greater, but more importantly, the more souls and spiritual energy he could consume had also increased. The more he ate, the stronger he got, and the stronger he got, the more he could eat.
Wilson stopped the truck in front of the statue while trying to maintain what he hoped to be a safe distance. He got out of the cab, revealing the emaciated shell he had become.
“I… got the mirror, just like you asked. It’s perfect. So, you’ll let me live now, right?”
In reply, Dominion just gave a flick of his finger. Behind Wilson, the demon appeared, granted a full corporeal form. It sank its teeth into his neck. He gave a garbled scream as it rode him to the ground, but his voice was gone in seconds. Once it finished draining his soul, the demon began to melt, turning into an inky black liquid. It slithered across the ground like oil and disappeared into Dominion’s shadow. He then gave a snap of his fingers and the truck was ripped open like a rotten melon. Hard steel was shredded and bent, the entire cab looking like it had gone through a giant meat grinder.
Out of the destroyed trailer, the mirror rose into the air, wrapped in shipping blankets and a wooden frame. Those protections were ripped away and it floated over to Dominion. Despite his physical and emotional control, he couldn’t help but tremble in excitement. He rested it against the Senner statue and looked into it. Immediately, the ground began to shake, with all light refracting and distorting like a heat haze. Snow and ash began to rise from the ground, while up above, clouds as black as the night sky spawned from nothingness, and lightning bolts cracked with anxious fury.
Silver mirrors, possibly the strongest refractors of ethereal power. By simply being caught in their reflection, spiritual entities could have their energy disseminated, like cold water draining body heat. Just by looking into the mirror, Dominion’s power was being forcefully drained as if through a shunt. The light bouncing off him and into the mirror, and vice versa, was like the circuit carrying that power, and the mirror was scattering it into the environment, causing the distortions in reality. His reflection couldn’t even be seen, the mirror looked more like TV static as his power washed over it.
More important was the mirror’s second ability. A mirror’s spiritual refraction ability grew with age. His silver coin was powerful enough to even banish spirits to Purgatory. This mirror wasn’t that old, but its size compensated and multiplied the effect of its age. He placed his hand on the mirror and the shaking of the ground increased. Fissures were opening up around him, shards of bedrock bursting from the soil while a hurricane gale formed. The entire forest was being threatened with devastation.
“Now, open!”
He unleashed all of his power into the mirror like a battering ram. No mortal had ever managed to reach Purgatory, but with this mirror acting as the doorway and his power clearing a big enough path, even this feat was within his reach. A deafening thunderclap shook the landscape, and the glass vanished, revealing a tunnel through space and time. Black flames spun like a tornado, while at the other end, he could see it, a vast ocean of spirits, the Sea of the Dead, where every soul ended up after death, since the dawn of time.
Chaotic horror, that was all that could be used to describe it, an unholy star made of waves of corrupted consciousness and hunger, a galaxy formed of the wickedness of the dead, where individuality didn’t exist. Spirits were eternal, but their sentience could be purged. Every soul and demon were like cells, part of a collective consciousness that epitomized destruction. It was an evil power, an infinite power.
But Dominion’s gaze was focused even beyond that, to the horizon behind the sea, at the four titanic silhouettes staring back at him. Every aspect of their existence was beyond human de***********ion, from their power, to the vastness of their consciousness, to the depths of their evil. Yet knowing all that, and looking upon a sight no living organism had ever seen before, Dominion couldn’t help but laugh.
“The Old Gods, I’ve finally found you.”
He moved forward to take his first step into the portal, yet before he could pass through the wooden frame of the mirror, there was a flash, and an explosion surged out and struck him with the power of a hydrogen bomb, focused into a linear attack. Fire and demonic energy erupted from the mirror at near the speed of light, washing over Dominion and surging past him. Miles of the landscape behind him were erased, every organic substance incinerated, every complex molecule shattered. It was a wave of destruction easily visible from space. Dominion felt the full brunt of the blast, his clothes dematerializing and his flesh burning away layer by layer.
It lasted several seconds before fading out and falling silent. Dominion stood, having shielded himself with his arms. All his flesh had been burned off, leaving charred muscle and exposed bone. A normal human would have been completely annihilated, reduced to a stew of quarks. The attack had stopped, but even now, his body was still under assault. That blast was so powerful that it had ripped a hole in the ozone layer. Pure heat and radiation from the sun were pouring down on him like a waterfall and sinking deep into the soil.
Despite all of that, Dominion opened his one intact eye and stared at the mirror. The glass had shattered, and while the wooden frame was now burning under the full wrath of the sun, something remained. There was a web of runes in the air where the mirror had been, like a hologram. They were glyphs from Purgatory, just like on his coin. He couldn’t read them, but he knew what it was. It was a barrier, newly erected. With his body continuing to smoke, he stepped forward and touched it with his hand. The runes faded into nothingness, but he was able to gauge its strength. He currently had over a thousand souls within him and several hundred demons, but in order to break through that barrier, he’d need a collection in the billions.
He had failed to achieve his goal and taken a heavy hit in the process, but despite that, he began to laugh. It was hoarse, due to his charred lungs, and his face was too far gone to form a smile, but still, he was ecstatic. As he laughed, new flesh bubbled on his regenerating muscles. His body mended itself, strong enough to resist the solar winds, and he even created new clothes. Now fully restored, he threw his head back and cackled until his restored lungs ached.
True, this event had significantly stalled his ambitions, but it was fully within his expectations. Rather, he would have been disappointed if it had been so easy. Besides, a new path had been laid out before him, one long and winding that would let him bask in the scenery. To achieve his goal, he’d have to reshape the world. He had started as a man, he enjoyed his time as a monster, but before he could become a god, he’d have to become a king.
With the ozone slowly mending above him, he turned around and began walking towards the south, the ground undeath his feet having been turned to glass. It was time to make his move and come out of hiding.