SOMETHING'S IN THE BASEMENT...

The Amulet: Homecoming Part 2

2012-01-15T11:48:00.003-05:00

I paused a moment to clear my throat and take a sip of our dwindling water supply. It wasn't fresh, that's for sure, but boiling it (I had learned a few things from TV years ago, my friends) made enough of a difference to at least keep us from getting painfully ill. But it still tasted flat and all together harsh. But water was water... Where was I?
I took a sip and looked at Danny. His wide, cornered-doe eyes pleaded for me to continue; but the fear poorly hidden just below their shimmering surface told me that he was also quite frightened, indeed. I shrugged my shoulders; I asked if he was sure he wanted me to go on. He knew about the Amulet: everyone has at the very least seen its symbols. He nodded. I continued.

I held up the metallic disk to the waning light coming up from the open attic door. It glinted, horrifically in the dimness. Its runes played a angry rose hue across the surface that met in the blackish-rouge 'eye' in the center. There was a sickening vibration that emanated from the thing that I could feel so deeply it almost shook my bones. I was immediately revolted by it; it's shape, its feel, its antique hieroglyphics... all of it. Yet, at the same time, I was oddly attracted to it. It spoke to me. It called to me. And just then I had the overwhelming urge to throw it back in the box and never set eyes on it again. A hand touched my shoulder and I could have sworn my heart stopped.

Danny let out a yelp. It was weird because he never talked. Hadn't ever spoken word one since we'd met. But when he called out, I knew he had to be scared. I set my hand on his knee and comforted him. I smiled; even chuckled a little because I knew what was coming. It wasn't bad. Not yet.
Not yet.
I went on.

Selah stood just behind me. She burst into laughter as she obviously saw that I had turned ghostly white, and my mouth hung open; breathing like I'd just run a mile. I gathered myself, and looked her in the eye. She saw the box I had open, and asked if she could take it downstairs. I cringed a little, and took the glass of iced tea she offered. I didn't know what to say even after she asked a second time. I just stared at her, and the box, dumbfounded. I didn't know why I was hesitating; just a box with a... what? And Amulet of some kind? Why was I worried? And that's when I finally told her: Sure, go ahead and take it. It might have been the worst mistake I have ever made.

Danny hissed in his throat; ya know that sound you make when something startles you and it sounds like you're drinking really quickly from a straw? That sound. I didn't laugh this time. I think he finally understood that what I had found would eventually become why the world we know had become... the world we know.
You see it was that very Amulet that brought on the Scourge. An epic cloud of devastation that slowly, agonizingly coated everything with fixers. The fixers were like some kind of psychotropic drug; a drug so insanely powerful that everyone who ingested was 'fixed', or completely under the control of The Scourge. Then they -the very people we had come to love, and know in our daily lives- became twisted, gnarled, and feral. And they were called The Scourers. They were sent out on nightly patrols, when the sun wasn't piercing through the now unpredictable atmosphere (some days it would intensify the sunlight, others it would block it out completely and the earth would literally freeze) and the Scourers were pulsating with fixers and they would search, relentlessly for survivors. They would devour you whole, and spit back nothing but a shambling carcass of your former self. A new Scourer.
All of this because of the Amulet. The Amulet I'd let slip away.
I let Danny nestle into me, and I continued.

You see, just then I had only a vague notion of the gripping control of the Amulet. I had held it, and gazed upon it; and were it not for my precious Selah arriving just when she had... well, who knows. Worse things were yet to come, but just that minute I gripped its cloying terror in my hands... well I knew. I just knew that this thing was a culmination of every evil, vile, wretched thing imaginable. And Selah was carrying the box in which it lay right down the attic steps. As much as I knew -deep down in my soul- that I had to stop her; had to grab that box and destroy it in any way necessary, as much as I knew this: I let her go. Even then it had a hold on me that I never even conceived. It had already set into motion its own plans. As ridiculous as that sounds, and even though I had no earthly idea how it had come into my possession in the first place, the gears were were already turning. The Amulet was about to spread its disease.
She disappeared below the doorway and into the garage. And I just knew that thing was about to change hands.

Danny once again peered up at me; this time through misty eyes that had begun to run with tears. His lip quivered, and he sniffed a little. But worse yet was his trembling: he felt like a little motor, running silently but churning. He was petrified. And so was I. But I'd learned to push my fright deep down inside. I had spent years telling myself that it couldn't have been my fault; that I was only indirectly involved. I knew this, but it took a long while to accept it. Danny had just found out, and yet, even as he shuddered with horror, he didn't pull away. He didn't flip out and run screaming (I bet he could scream if he wanted to) into the night. Maybe he understood, too. I don't know.

-- To Be Continued--

The Amulet: Homecoming

2012-01-14T13:25:00.000-05:00

We sat shivering in the basement of the old, burned-out American National bank. A few cans of unlabeled vegetables and beans sat opened and half-eaten near our small fire. We'd managed to find what used to be a pretty good sized wok in a dumpster across the street where the Joy Fong had once stood, and now the saute pan served as a portable stove of sorts. Burning it it now was a bunch of warped chop sticks, also procured from the derelict Chinese food eatery. They seemed to burn longer after we soaked them for a bit in a soured tub of old cooking oil. Danny sat with his back against the vault wall and sighed; something he had done often after a day of scrounging and pack-ratting everything and anything we could find of value. For a boy of twelve, he had tremendous reserve and a will that nearly never quit. But it did, right around the same time every evening. And that was fine, because my forty-year old tenacity wasn't as limitless as it once was.

Danny and I met about a month earlier. I had lost my family a few years ago, to the horrors you see, and I was traveling as best I could on my own. I was lonely, of that fact there was no doubt, but I never tried too hard to find anyone else, because most of the remaining human race had either gone completely insane -thanks in part to the Fixers (I'll tell you about that another time)- or had been devoured by the horrors; the creations brought on by the Scourge of the Amulet. So, there were very few of us left. But I found Danny... or should I say Danny found me. I was kneeling, lost in thought, over a dead deer carving off good meat with a sharpened comb handle. Most of the carcass had gone off, but a bot, near the head, was still okay... provided I cooked the hell out of it. Which I'd planned to do anyway. And it seemed Danny was just as hungry as I was. He'd found the decaying animal, too. But Danny had a gun. A gun, it turned out, that wasn't loaded. But it scared me just the same.

I wanted no part of a bullet, so I dropped my tool and the meat, and Danny just scrambled up to the carved pile and began shoveling it into his mouth; no cooking necessary. I calmly told him that were he not to char the dickens out of that meat he was going to be puking up his shoes by the end of the night. I offered to build a fire and make us dinner. Danny glanced at me with fresh juice dribbling down his chin, looked at his gun that was now a few feet away (I kicked it just to be safe) and not only did he nod, but he burst into tears. I don't think he'd seen a person in a very long time. Especially a person who wasn't under the influence of The Fixers. He ran to me, clung hard, and wept into my filthy sweater. That was all it took; friends for life, we were, after that.

Danny and I had found the bank vault a few days ago. I had to chase a lady who was just lousy with The Fixers; gibbering and swollen, fistulas and pustules oozing grey liquid, her left eye dangling, forgotten, from its socket... she was a sorry mess, and wasn't long for the world. I finished her misery with a jab to the back of the head. A quick search of her meager possessions only provided a small tack hammer and a rusty bucket. But the vault was a fine place to hold up, and so Danny and I brought in much of our findings before the Scourers began their nightly hunt, and we felt relatively safe.

Danny sighed deeply again, and rubbed his eyes. I sat down beside him and rubbed his filthy hair. He smiled; his eyes deep with sorrow, regret, and an aching sadness that threatened to bring tears to my own eyes. I smiled back, and offered him a piece of a Dolly Madison snack cake we'd found a few days before. He shook his head, and mimicked opening a book with his hands. I shook my head, momentarily not quite understanding... until he did it again, this time mouthing, "story". My face lit up with recognition: Danny wanted a story! Hey, I could do that for the kid. Besides, I had quite a few. Especially since I had seen The Amulet just before it destroyed everything.

The Tale

Eight years ago, I was married to an amazing beauty named Selah with twin daughters named Joy and Faith. Yes, we were Christians and very involved in our local Church. Our friends were there, our love was there, and our lives were there. But the hand of darkness wasn't far off. But we didn't heed the warnings. We believed we were as safe as we needed to be. Even our Pastor -Paul Easton; a wonderful, if naive, man- refused to acknowledge that trouble was simmering just on the horizon. Of course, this particular trouble wasn't Biblical... it just was.

The time had come to move. Our house was just too small, and with to growing daughters and the distinct probability of more children to come, it made sense to find larger dwellings. But before the packing, it was time to part with as much of our unneeded sundries as possible, so we had a garage sale. My job was cleaning out the attic; a feat that was made all the more difficult by the fact that it hadn't been done the entire time we lived there. Eleven years of boxes just shoved up there willy-nilly. So, needless to say, I had a full weekend ahead of me. As I went through stuff, Selah would take what she deemed sale-worthy, and set it aside. The rest got thrown out. Things were going along swimmingly; we found old China, baby toys, decent clothes, shoes, books, VHS tapes, and oodles of things we no longer used. But then I found it. Deep within the recesses of the musty attic, in a box that held nothing but a moth-eaten drop cloth; it was metallic, the color of pewter, with runes strewn about the surface. I had, as far as I knew, never seen it before in my life... and I wish right now that I'd never laid eyes on it then.

-- To Be Continued --

The End

2011-09-22T18:59:00.000-04:00

THE END

Waves lapped at the little wooden dock like hungry tongues exploring the remaining bits on a corndog stick. The old lumber was rotted and spongy, but it held through the years and the seasons on the shore of the aged fishing cabin in Connecticut. The inlet was relatively secluded and didn’t often get either the human traffic or the battering waves of the Atlantic, so the dilapidated timber that securely held the old launch a few feet above the water line never got more than just splashed repeatedly rather than drown.

Until now.

It was Sunday. James Wickford was eyeing his kayak as he nibbled on a bologna sandwich. He knelt and flicked at a pretty plump spider that meandered around the boat’s bench. It looked clean enough, and James was ready for his regular Sunday jaunt into the sea with his fishing gear. From the peripheral vision of his left eye he caught motion and a series of concentric circles indicative of ripples. This wasn’t anything unusual, there was always something swimming by or moving around down there… but this time, something seemed immediately different. A mound slowly rose to the surface; drab green and flecked with mud and slick with a substance that reflected streaks of sunlight. The mound rapidly grew larger as water rained down and muck slid off the oily object and hit the suddenly churning water in heavy plops. James Wickford dropped his sandwich, shivered where he stood, and began to howl with crippling fear in the back of his throat. His legs only worked a little and he physically shook as he worked them to back up. But his journey was short lived, and he tripped over an exposed stump and flopped to the damp earth.

The mound became a massive ribbed and horned mountain. The newly exposed humps and knobs that attached themselves to the original mound surfaced just under the little dock, and proceeded to shatter it to bits of wet wood with a wet, coughing crunch. The planks that attached themselves to the shore peeled up like loosened teeth, and then they too twisted and snapped. From the hidden inlet, the otherwise calm and peaceful fishing spot became a churning, torrential maelstrom. And then, what was once but a filthy hulk, now stood forty feet tall, dripped feverishly with water and some kind of thick, oily mass, and looked around both curiously and uncaring at its surroundings. The creature’s head was free, and James could hear its raspy, soggy breathing. He’d never seen anything so big in all his life, even having once been whale-watching. He fought to stand; his brain fought to get him moving, fought to get him to run back to the house and speed away in his truck, but his legs refused to respond and so he sat, and he felt his bowels release.

Its snout gouted putrid, green fumes and a deep, guttural thrum echoed from somewhere far within the beast. Its nothingness-black eyes surveyed the landscape and spotted just below it the quaking form of something… something showing tremendous fear. The beast slowly leaned forward, arms broke the surface of the water, but they were arms like none other ever seen. Where elbows were, attached to an upper arm –as gigantic as a tree trunk- were not one arm (radius and ulna) but two complete sets both ending in horrific talons, freely dripping with fetid slime. The immense beast pulled itself forward and bent down to come face to humongous face with the cowering thing on the ground. James began to scurry backward, catching his pants on gnarly bits of fauna, and pulling them free, smearing the ground with feces. But the beast continued forward, suddenly stretching its incredible jaws, jutted on every inch with crusty, rotting teeth. The cacophonous belching howl that spat forth from the opening mouth split the heavens with its tone, and the frightened being dropped dead to the ground.

The rest of the creature excised itself from the little cove and stood erect, but not on legs. The beast, now nearly a hundred feet tall, spread apart several trees with its claws, and called out again with a terrible, echoing squeal. Just below its waist was the rest of its body; coiling and writhing like a massive snake. It was riddled from front to back with gleaming barnacle-like thorns, each oozing freely with reeking and viscous fluid. The beast inched forth as sticky slime coated its trail in a thick veneer, and the run-off slowly dissipated into the earth and everything around it. As it touched the dead body of James Wickford –the body that was scared and deafened to death by the incredible monster- the corpse twitched. The thick mucous spread across the body of James. He suddenly jerked and jolted… and slowly stood, gaping into the void.

Eric Watson lowered his cupped hands and listened intently to his own echo reverberate through the Northern Michigan forest. He and his crew –Aaron Phelps, Kevin Marrick, and Danielle Furst- the NMSA (Northern Michigan Sasquatch Association) had spent the better part of the last four days hiking camping, and otherwise scouring the forests of Marquette, Munising, and Ishpeming setting laser-site traps, night-vision camera perimeters, and basically globally positioning every piece of land they could in an attempt to once and for all prove the existence of Big Foot. So far their efforts had more or less come up fruitless, often only hearing possible calls, spotting and casting slightly iffy footprints, and seeing occasional deer bones scattered about. But they were stolid in their drive, and relentless in their work, so they kept up their collective spirits by making every little find a huge deal. So far, it appeared to be working.

“Nice call, Eric! I could hear that one clearly way over here! Over…” Aaron said into his walkie-talkie as he squatted a few hundred yards away from Eric and Kevin.

The return report crackled through the radio, “Thanks. That one was built on pure adrenalin. I’m getting a little worn out. I mean it’s, uh… pushing four a.m. We’re gonna lose daylight here pretty soon.”

“Word. We’ll start making our way toward you guys, maybe we— “

The last bit of Aaron’s words caught in his throat. A few feet to his left he could make out the crystal clear sounds of something approaching very quickly. Twigs snapped under the footfalls and a deep, hollow breathing huffed with each movement. Aaron froze where he stood. He slowly reached to his right and yanked on Danielle’s thick jacket. Aaron turned to look at her and she, too, was standing, mouth agape and wide-eyed, staring in the direction of the sounds. She nodded slowly, and swallowed heavily with an audible click that seemed to echo all too loudly. Aaron and Danielle stared into the cold, inky blackness as what they were tracking methodically stomped through the underbrush and nonchalantly pressed its way through low tree branches, sometimes snapping a few, letting them fall to the ground. The noise got ever closer; Aaron and Danielle heard nothing else but the ruckus that was occurring just to their left. The pine trees rattled, the forest floor rumbled, and the darkness line suddenly got just that much darker. The overpowering odor that wafted through the cloying, resinous pine was horrifying. Aaron and Danielle did all they could not to vomit on the spot. It smelled like putrid, rotting flesh, dead fish, and wet dog.

The slowly rising sun lit the dead black night like luminescent, white ghost. In the extremely dim glow, Aaron and Danielle could now make out a hazy silhouette of the creature that towered before them. It was nearly ten feet tall, covered skull to ankles in thick, course fur, and had a slightly primate-like face. Its oval head was bare, but splotched with burrs and bits of twigs. Its visage hung long as its nostrils yawned with every throaty, wheezing breath. It snuffed, tested the air, and at first looked right over the heads of the two petrified shapes standing directly in front of it…

Until one of them let forth an ear-splitting wail.

Aaron recoiled just slightly as Danielle bellowed a scream that could only have come from the depths of her very soul. The hulking beast took a step back, snorted, and howled with a throat-wrenching call that sent birds chattering out of the trees.

Suddenly the two-way radio clipped at Aaron’s belt barked to life, “Wow, guys! Those calls were amazing! I thought we were calling it a day? Over.”

The hairy creature eyed the black box from which the voice came, stared directly at the two beings standing like statues, and by its own instinctive nature, shot out its sinewy, muscular arm and grasped the first thing by the throat, lifting it to its feet.

Danielle squealed, almost inaudibly, in the back of her throat as she was instantly lifted from the ground by her neck. The sasquatch’s hand was the size of a baseball glove; roughly furred and studded with filthy, black nails. She was brought face to face with the beast as he explored her with a side-long, curious look. The monster’s mouth burst open. Flecks of warm spittle spattered Danielle’s face as she saw massive fangs like dirty steak knives. And then it came at her throat.

Paige Wilson drank the last few gulps from her umpteenth can of pop, belched triumphantly, and chucked the empty into the collection box. The array of terminals at which she was currently staring glowed in front of her like a battalion of readied robots; each empty, unblinking eye awaiting orders from their human master. Paige worked for a small company sanctioned by a hush-hush Government subsidy that spent sleepless nights gazing into the cosmos for any and all signs of potential life. The crew- including Paige herself- were all secretly certain that there really was nothing out there, but a big fat paycheck was a big fat paycheck, regardless of the dullness and utter pointlessness of the job itself.

The little concrete building that sat above ground, and marked the actual entrance to the company, was built in Baltimore, Maryland and was marked, rather inconspicuously, TBIRC –Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point. This rather lackluster acronym stood for The Baltimore Inter-Galactic Research Society. The company sat underground as to distance itself from as much of Earth’s own interference as possible and used twenty-four satellites strategically placed throughout a six block radius. It housed a group of scientists hand-picked through a government program back in 1992 to scour the skies every night for any cough emitting from any distant location in space. Besides Paige, there were sixteen others, each at their own set of screens staring intently at their own quadrants of the void. So far, there had been eight incidences of potential white noise coming from huge distances, and, sadly, each had been debunked as either outer-planetary interference or, oddly, the sounds of dying solar systems. So, basically, over the past 20 years, the persistent crew had found nothing.

Until now.

Paige began sipping the fresh foam from another opened can of soda, when a very unusual anomaly appeared on the top row of eight screens. She swallowed, as such surprise was known to bring on unwarranted spitting, shook her head thinking false alarm, and stared anew at the rather quickly moving hash mark. Not only was it still there and still approaching a vector very near Earth, but it was also moving at a clip she’d only seen in meteors and comets. And it didn’t look at all like a piece of space detritus or a dirty snow ball. In fact, it looked sharply angled and… metallic?

Paige immediately angled her head-set mouth piece, pressed the call button, and hailed her superior, Dr. Runjeet Ashraff. Fifty yards down the hall, Dr. Ashraff’s remote communications display showed a blinking light, and he begrudgingly set aside the unspooled pages of read-out data and left his office.

“Miss Wilson, I was alerted to your communication. Is something amiss?” Dr. Ashraff inquired in his still-quite-thick Indian accent.

“Yes, sir!” Paige replied hurriedly, “Take a look at this! I’ve been tracking its trajectory for a few minutes now and it appears as though it is heading directly for Earth!”

Runjeet bent at the waist, dropped his glasses from his head to his face, and stared intently at the top row of display screens. After only a few seconds it appeared that what Paige was referring to was exactly correct.

“It certainly doesn’t appear to be any form of cosmic debris. We haven’t been tracking any sort of off-track meteors or comets, have we? No… no. That’s impossible…” Dr. Ashraff traced his finger along the projected path of the oncoming object.

“As you can see, Doctor, the object appears to be sharply angled and even made of some kind of metal. It almost looks like a US Military Stealth Fighter in many ways, except it isn’t black and there might be… yes! Look! Are those lights blinking? My God!” Paige turned to look at a stunned Dr. Ashraff who had quickly begun to sweat on his balding scalp.

“Security Code Alpha Zero-Zero Tango,” Dr. Ashraff instantly tapped one of the many communication outlets on his mobile device and was immediately put through to the supporting Government section in charge of the TBIRC, “This is Dr. Runjeet Ashraff of the TBIRC in Maryland, Colonel. Yes sir, it appears we have discovered some kind of incoming anomaly just outside the distance of the sun, sir. Yes sir, it does appear to be on a course for Earth. No, sir, we are as yet unsure of its size. Yes, sir we will keep you informed. Yes sir. Thank you.”

Soon a crowd of scientists nearest Paige’s readout were ogling the display and offering their own insight as to what it might be. Dr. Ashraff alerted everyone to return to their stations and switch their displays to the same quadrant Paige herself was studying.

Runjeet turned to Paige, his face ashen with fear, and continued following the path of the UFO.

Towering, fifty-foot conifer trees toppled like stacks of lose cards. Oaks and elms were carelessly felled like models made from toothpicks, and the very ground itself sighed and retched as the ambling beast slithered across the landscape bound for nowhere. The small forest parted and revealed a freeway that led to the deeper parts of town. Trees dropped across the asphalt like slain soldiers and lay about, damming up traffic. The rapidly collapsing flora proved too much for the speeding cars; no one could brake in time and the resounding squeals and wrenching, broken metal sent arcs of flame into the early morning sky. As drivers and passengers began to slow at the realization of a massive accident, it became all too apparent that something horrible and ghastly was moving across the twisted wreckage. The onlookers, some young children and others with weak constitutions, wailed the call of the damned into the air and fainted dead away. Others scrambled free of their cars, leaving them running, and fled hollering into the woods. The monster paid no mind, and retained its path to wherever it was headed.

As the creature slid remorselessly over the carnage it caused, its barnacles leaked ceaselessly about the gnarled metal and the hideously slaughtered bodies therein. It’s vile, tacky slime drenched the corpses, thickly coating them in a fluid veneer. The dead twitched, released themselves from their steel coffins, and joined the march behind the winding beast. One by one, each and every slain man, woman, and child dug itself free from the terrible chrome and aluminum madness, and shambled forth dropping severed limbs and broken parts on the way as they fell in line behind the others.

Those still alive and watching in icy horror saw first-hand the reanimation of bodies they’d once witnessed die in ghastly wrecks. The living looked on as a parade of the most impossible of nightmares ambled forth.

Lynn Harper –with her three-year old daughter, Anna, cradled in her shuddering arms- stepped from her still-intact car (having missed the last vehicle in the long line of destroyed autos by mere feet) and stared, dumbfounded as only thirty yards away, hitching, puppet-like corpses meandered out of their contorted, stannic coffins. The scene was just too overwhelming.

Lynn exploded with a deafening scream that startled her daughter and set her, too, into fits of braying weeps. Thirty yards away, with the immediate suddenness of an instant, one of the dawdling cadavers stopped short at the sound of human noise. Lynn snapped her mouth shut and instinctively put a cupped hand over her daughter’s mouth. Others had gathered behind her and were pointing ahead at several of the moving dead now changing course at the sudden realization that there were living humans not far away. Without missing a beat, Lynn hugged her child closer, and began shoving her way out of the gathering crowd of motorists.

Now within twenty yards, several of the dead were scrabbling their way across the wreckage.

The obscured, opaque slits that were Danielle’s eyes struggled to focus. She could hear crunching and feel slight tickling as she wiggled her body so she knew she was lying flat on the forest floor. She slowly took in a comforting, steadying breath and blinked the blur out of her vision. It was early morning, which made sense considering the last time she could remember anything the rising sun had just begun tinting the horizon with its milky glow. Birds were twittering in low branches and Danielle felt as though she could hear something small pattering across the underbrush. Then the sun went black and Danielle caught her breath.

Standing above her was a tall silhouette with its hand extended.

“You alright?” It was Aaron. He knelt and offered his hand.

“Dunno… guess so…” Danielle said as she struggled to a sitting position. “Wh… uh… what ha-happened?”

Aaron unscrewed the top of a water bottle and handed to Danielle as she swooned a bit and bobbed her head. “I, uh… can’t seem to remember much myself. Well, everything up until the ‘squatch picked you up, I can. After that: nothing. Do you even remember that?”

Danielle stared intently at Aaron for a very long minute and eventually shook her head in both amazement and complete puzzlement.

“A sasquatch picked me up? You mean like…” Danielle animated being lifted as though in a cradled position.

Aaron shook his head and sat next to Danielle. “Nope. He got you by the neck, babe. Lifted you right off your feet. With one hand…” He trailed off as he looked off into nowhere.

“Well I guess that explains why my neck and head… shoulders too… are killing me. Did he just drop me and run off?”

Aaron shook his head again. “I don’t know. I remember seeing you, you were screaming and… I went to punch… ya know, hit the thing… and that’s the last I remember. That’s it.”

Danielle took another swig of the cooling water and pressed the half-full bottle to her throbbing neck. She sighed, looked around instinctively –worried something might still be out there- and leaned her head on Aaron’s shoulder. “So where’s Eric and Kevin?”

“They caught up with us just as I was getting up, a few minutes ago. They ran back to the truck to get a few supplies and call an ambulance. They –well me too- thought you were…” Aaron touched Danielle’s leg and smiled.

“Well that’s very chivalrous of them. Maybe you should radio and tell them I’m okay.” She returned the sentiment and put her hand on Aaron’s.

“Can’t,” Aaron said as he fished it from his pocket. “Broke. Must have happened during the scuffle. Oh well, you should probably get looked at anyway.” He stood, returned the damaged radio to his pocket and stretched with audible pops.

“I suppose. I feel like I got hit by a bus. And…” Danielle pulled the now sticky water bottle away from her neck, “It looks as though I’m bleeding. In two spots…”

On the right side of Danielle’s neck - just below her jaw- were two, centimeter-diameter, punctures, both still weeping with clotting blood.

Paige Wilson ticked a few strokes on her keyboard and watched the screen zoom in closer to the unidentified object making its way toward Earth. Her heart was beating so hard and fast that she could hear it in her ears. Her eyes were glossy and a lone tear escaped across her cheek, but she wasn’t sure if it was because she was so overwhelmingly excited at the current circumstances, or scared beyond all comprehension. Either way, she swiped at it, took a deep breath to steady herself –this was no time to start breaking down- and checked the count-down to when the object was due to enter the atmosphere.

1:24:37 – Less than ninety minutes.

Dr. Runjeet Ashraff recognized the clear signs of Paige’s emotions, because he, too, shared the same feelings but was surely not going to show his cracks to his crew; they relied on him to lead, and to do so without jumping for joy or especially breaking down. So he stared with renewed interest at the screen as Paige zoomed in further showing the anomaly still on a bee-line for Earth. And he, too, saw that there were less than ninety minutes until its potential entrance into the sky. Thirty more minutes and he would have no choice but to contact the higher authorities at the White House. But for now, he had no choice but to watch… and wait.

Up until now, the UFO was little more than a tiny, possibly metallic blip on the screen, but just then something happened; something no one could have possibly expected. The object suddenly expanded to nearly three-times its original size and appeared to sprout nodes from all of its three sides. What was once a perfect triangle was now more similar to an odd, molecular-type structure: a three-sided craft with four outcroppings on each side each ending in a smaller, round ‘polyp’. It now began to take o more of an organic shape than just a straight-sided triangle. Paige gasped and began to shiver. Dr. Ashraff could no longer hold back and he, too, let out a moan.

1:19:19

As you enter the town of Candlebrook, Connecticut, the first thing you notice is the quaint little shop owned by Marg Fields called ‘Olden Times’. She and her husband, Carl, bought the run-down building back in 1964 and immediately began stocking it with bits and pieces of their own personal collection of gathered things from years past: rocking chairs, cabinets, China sets, baby clothes, old pictures, and any number of other forms of bric-a-brac. Since then, it has become the most well known and deeply cherished stores in the burg. It was the first to be reduced to crumpled timber and felled bricks. In the creature’s wake the building looked like a smashed model. And the bodies of Marg and Carl shuffled behind it smeared with a slick sheen.

Danielle looked, stunned, at her palm. It was tacky and bright red. Aaron raised an eyebrow and stared, concerned at Danielle’s face. She sighed forth a gruff laugh and wiped her hand on her pants. Aaron shook his head with a wry little smile, and kneeled, anew, at Danielle’s side. She coyly grinned, stared at the ground, and lifted her hand once again to her neck. Her middle finger lightly prodded the puncture wounds, feeling them run slightly with thin rivulets of blood, slowly clotting. Aaron tore off a piece of his under shirt and began to fold it into a bandage. Danielle raised her gaze, peered longingly at Aaron as he gingerly leaned forward ready to wrap the make-shift dressing around her neck, and their eyes met.

Aaron and Danielle had never been anything more than just great friends. Sure, there were moments between them that were often misconstrued as flirty situations, but nothing ever went further than fawning and almost brotherly-sisterly fooling around. Last summer, they almost decided to date; they each discussed the possibility with their cadre of friends, everyone already assuming that something was, in fact, going on. Their friends were thrilled and wondered how it hadn’t happened long ago; citing their years-long friendships and secret love for one another. But nothing ever materialized and they just went on being friends… good friends.

As Aaron put his arms around Danielle’s neck –gently avoiding bumping the wounds- she tilted her head to the side and gasped, with a moan, letting him take her in his embrace.

Aaron got as far as placing his hands on Danielle’s shoulders, working the compress around her neck, when he felt her warm breath just below his throat. Her soft lips grazed his flesh and he immediately exploded in goose bumps. He inhaled sharply, pretending to ignore the feeling he had lancing through his body: ecstasy, joy, desire… the feelings he’d always secretly hidden from Danielle; hidden behind walls of play and childish goofing. The warmth of her mouth pressed into Aaron’s neck and worked its way down nearly to his shoulder, and then back up. Aaron did all he could to concentrate on sealing Danielle’s wounds under the cloth, while at the same time only thinking of the torrent of fluttering feelings arcing through his suddenly too hot body. He groaned, deep and fulfilling in his throat. It was a groan that had been pent up for years, longing to be released in Danielle’s passionate embrace. He shuddered, dropped the torn bit of T-shirt around Danielle’s shoulders, and let himself fall into the feelings he’d never known…

Danielle’s fangs pierced deeply into Aaron’s jugular, and his elation blocked out all the pain.

Eric Watson and Kevin Marrick stepped out of the woods and off the two-foot drop onto the shoulder of the road. Their SUV sat parked, secluded by a few trees and blanketed by a Navy-surplus camouflage net that looked remarkably like loose leaves and low-hanging branches. Eric snatched the leading edge of the false-flora tarp and yanked it free from the hood and the windshield.

“So, do you think Danni and Aaron saw something back there?” Kevin asked as he began loading his gear into the back seat, “She sure looked pretty banged up.”

“Yeah, she did. I dunno… I guess.” Eric laid the net on the ground and began haphazardly folding it up, “I mean I want to believe… I want to… well I guess it doesn’t matter, the point is she is banged up. We should probably get to the nearest…

The trees just past their vehicle began to shudder and sharp snaps emitted from the footfalls of some approaching thing. The saplings along the woods edge spread mere feet from where Eric and Kevin left them moments earlier, and a sudden, penetrating wall of odor hit the two men waiting fearfully by the SUV.

“Son of b…” Eric began as he continued stuffing the tarp into the back seat. “Oh… oh man…”

Kevin stared at the approaching thing, still buried in shadow. He slowly began to slide into the driver’s seat and watched, completely dumbfounded as a towering sasquatch strode into view. In ear-splitting screams, the man-beast let forth a cry that startled the men so completely that they shook and covered their ears and squinted their eyes. Suddenly, the front of the SUV dipped down sharply as the bigfoot, now close enough to touch, pressed on the hood and shoved it to the ground. The metal crumpled, the window split and spider-webbed, and the bumper exploded from the frame and clunked to the road.

Kevin fumbled the key into the ignition, turned it to fire the engine, and immediately slipped off the fob as the front end was once again pressed rapidly toward the ground. Once again the world was broken by the deafening scream of another call as the beast climbed the vehicle and stood, howling into the sky. Kevin froze as a filthy, fur-coated fisted hand burst through the windshield and snagged him by the jacket. Eric reached across his lap, turned the key completely, and the engine roared to life. In the dirty grip of the monster, Kevin managed to focus just for a minute and slammed on the gas.

The SUV remained in Park and the engine revved as the wild sasquatch tore free the ruined window, climbed into the front, and fed.

10.

1:15:45

Paige Wilson drummed her pen against her chin nervously. The UFO, that had previously been making a direct course for Earth, had completely stopped moving. The side of Paige’s screen ran with numbers that gave approximate distances and even an area of the craft within inches of its actual size. From where it was currently stalled, it measured a radius nearly the size of a standard city. It was far bigger than anyone had anticipated from its earlier location: yes, it grew some as it change shape, but no one could have guessed that it had gotten big enough to dwarf a small town. And Paige could do nothing more than stare at the hovering, slowly rotating object.

Dr. Runjeet Ashraff was in the middle of his fifth phone call to the White House. He had yet to be directly connected to the President, but he knew that it was imperative that it happen very, very quickly. Finally, he heard a click on the other end and a voice break the silence.

“This is Secretary of State Parker. I will be speaking to you, Dr. Ashraff, along with President Haynes on a three-party line. Please, doctor, tell us exactly what you’ve discovered,” The Secretary’s voice was indifferent and surprisingly calm.

“Yes sirs. At about 18-hundred hours, the TBIRC –that is to say Paige Wilson of the TBIRC- discovered an anomaly on a direct course for Earth coming from deep space. We immediately determined that it wasn’t categorized as any form of space debris or commonly known cosmic occurrence,” Dr. Ashraff continued to the highest officials in the free world.

“Was the object exhibiting any kind of offensive maneuvers?” This was the President’s voice, and Dr. Ashraff suppressed an urge to blurt out a child-like ‘hello’.

“No, sir. It was merely –as far as we could ascertain at the moment- just heading toward Earth. However-“

“However?” The Secretary interrupted.

“Uh… y-yes sir. However, the craft did… change. In mid flight. Sir.” Dr. Ashraff wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and snuck a sip of water to quench his suddenly killing thirst.

“Did you say it ‘changed’? How did it change, doctor?” The President once again inquired.

“Well, sir… it appeared to… grow.” Runjeet sat back in his chair and looked side-long at Paige.

She turned to Dr. Ashraff with a look of shocked horror plastered across her face. “And, uh, doctor… still growing.”

11.

Beth Tennant sat bolt-upright in bed and tried desperately to focus on the bed-side clock. She was coated in sweat and shuddering, even as she sat absolutely freezing. The nightmare she’d been jostled from was ferocious, but it was the sound like an ear-shattering—

Explosion…

There it was again: the sound of a distant explosion. Oh no! Was it happening again? She’d been far too close to the September 11^th attacks that the slightest noise of something blowing up –that wasn’t happening on July 4^th- jarred her terribly. She leaned over the side of her bed and stared out her bedroom window. Her single-bedroom, sixteenth-floor apartment had a pretty awesome view of the city and she was able to get a good look at much of the horizon. It was three fifteen a.m. and the inky black night coated the entire city only broken by slight halos of street lamps and 24-Hour store fronts.

In the distance, perhaps a few miles south, came another muffled whump followed by a shower of sparks. The object immediately silhouetted against the plume of sparkling flame was unimaginably enormous. For the split second Beth saw it, the hideous form of the thing was etched in her retinas forever. And then she heard it, too.

Over the deep, echoing boom of the next fountain of firey bursts, Beth distinctly heard a throaty wail that vibrated through to her very core. Beth’s eyes took in the horror once again and could plainly make out a body, and large, scrabbling arms attached to… a writhing snake body? Beth was now sure she must still be asleep. There was no way what she was seeing could possibly be real. Another blinding flash flowered even closer to Beth’s apartment, maybe only a mile away this time, and it shook the ground so violently that she was knocked precariously from her bed and fell, painfully, to her knees on the floor. Suddenly her clock winked out and the bathroom light she always left on went pitch dark. This was definitely not a dream.

As scared as she was, Beth couldn’t tear her view away from the catastrophe happening to her city. Noises she’d apparently blocked out as she was waking up to the awful sights began to flood her ears: cars were blasting their horns, sirens were crying out from any number of emergency vehicles, and the sounds of panicked screams carried throughout the night. Peril was setting in and she once again watched helplessly as madness gripped the town.

So close it rattled the teeth in her skull, the thing that was laying waste to everything Beth loved barked a shrill, guttural call into the sky. She instinctively slapped her hands over her ears and scooted back against her wall, no longer interested in seeing the hellish reality playing out before her like an all-too authentic horror movie. Her mind had taken in all it could handle, and all Beth could do was sit back and add her fearful screams into the cacophony of the dying city.

12.

As the deep ochre sun gave up its last gasp beyond the edge of the earth, the waxing moments of early dark spread their cloaking deep blues across the forest.

Aaron and Danielle held each other, suppressing the onset of shivers that come with the approaching night. But this time, the chill of the air meant nothing to them as their embrace was of passion and desire, and not that of warmth. Aaron looked to the sky and grinned; it was a grin of enameled daggers and of opalescent, feral needles. He parted his fangs to take in the scents and breathe deep the clean night air, but for the first time since the very moment he cried as a birthed infant, he felt no need to inhale. In fact, his body showed no signs of even having the suffocating want to perform such natural habits. It was a curious feeling, but not all together unpleasant; though there was a tinge of fear somewhere deep in his psyche, it soon faded.

He looked down at Danielle and she, too, smirked up at him and he noticed that her chest as well did not have that familiar rise and fall of a human’s respiration. And the answer to his unasked question suddenly became all too obvious: Danielle and Aaron were no longer the standard definition of human.

“Wow. Is this… is this magic?” Aaron asked as he gently released Danielle and moved to stand.

Danielle giggled a little and shrugged her shoulders, obviously just as shocked as Aaron, “I don’t know. Maybe? But what I do know is that is feels… free!”

“Yeah… that’s the word I was trying to find, ‘free’. Boy, for a day spent searching for creatures of myth and legend, who would have guessed that we’d end up as entirely different creatures of myth and legend!”

Danielle laughed harder this time and stood as well, “I can feel my teeth. They’re so sharp! Oh, and I’m really sorry I bit you… I mean, I guess I could have warned you first.”

“Oh, no… don’t apologize… don’t apologize at all! This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’m glad it happened with you, Danni.”

“Me too. I think I might… love you, actually.” Danielle leaned her head onto Aaron’s shoulder and kissed him gently on the cheek.

“Well,” Aaron asked as he returned his affection to Danielle, “Now what do we do? Should we try to find Kevin and Eric. I bet they’d just love this! Oh, and I’ve always loved you… but now, somehow even more.”

Danielle’s eyes suddenly got brighter, more erratic. She furrowed her brow and leered at Aaron, “Now that is a good idea… besides, I’m suddenly really hungry… but it’s not a stomach growling kind of hunger…”

“Now that you mention it… it’s almost like a, I don’t know, a longing for something…” Aaron confirmed as he absently wiped and the slowly congealing blood that clung to his neck.

In a blink, Danielle’s mouth was enclosing Aaron’s blood-dampened fingers and a low, animalistic slurping escaped her lips.

Aaron sighed, licked his incisors, and nodded, “It’s blood. That’s what I want… blood!”

Danielle continued to lap up the last stains of red from Aaron’s fingers, “Let’s go get it!”

13.

The trail of death left in the wake of the towering, rampaging creature grew in vast numbers as every minute passed. The monster slithered like an enormous eel over the bricks and mortar, the flattened metal and glass, and the demolished homes, schools, businesses, and churches as it continued its unabated trek through city after city. But the dead didn’t stay dead, for as the nightmarish beast trampled humanity with every twist and turn of its incredible bulk, it also oozed its unnatural slime like some kind of hell-spawn slug.

The gloppy, dripping opaque paste fell upon everything, including the bodies that lay crushed and mutilated by the unearthly thing. And as each became covered in the wretched cocoon, they began to violently shudder, scream out with the continued death-knells they fell proclaiming, and begin to walk anew. And now the marching masses of the once dead numbered in the thousands. Their chittering, gibbering mouths yawned and flexed with gore… and hunger. The dead that followed the monster without thought or hesitation began to search, on their own, for prey; their insatiable feasting spread further from the lumbering parade that once stuck close to the massive hulk, and now moved out to attack those left alive after the initial devastation fell upon the cities and towns. The starving, gaping maws of the somehow living corpses fell upon those that stopped even for a second to see the unimaginable horror unfold before them. Children were wrenched from weeping parent’s arms; the pleading parents were then, too, engulfed by the encroaching hordes of the unnaturally fixated cadavers that ran freely through the war-torn streets.

And the unstoppable terror that tore the undefended land asunder continued without a thought. Perhaps it was possible that the hideous giant had no thought; perhaps it was possible that it had no clear course, but just to move on as it always had on the lands and places from whence it came. But in its aftermath it left smoldering ruins, unfathomable destruction, and army after army of the traveling undead.

14.

Dr. Ashraff stared at the monitor. It was the same monitor he’d been examining for the past several hours, and up until now nothing had really changed much. But as he watched with a new chilling fascination, the metallic craft that had hovered just outside of the earthen atmosphere began to literally unfold into something entirely different; something that –even as it shifted and eerily morphed- fluidly became an entirely new shape. What was more or less a triangle with individual nodes sprouting from its three sides suddenly and without warning became a much more of an octagon with an attached circular ring outlining the perimeter.

“Dr. Ashraff! What is going on!” It was the Secretary of State’s voice echoing tinnily from the speaker of the phone that hung limply in the doctor’s hand, “Doctor! Answer me, dammit!”

“S-s-sir… y-y-yes sir, I’m sorry… I, uh, would suggest that you show Mr. President the, um, special monitor we ha-“ Dr. Ashraff was suddenly cut off.

“No! Doctor you know damn well that that knowledge is completely privileged! What gives you the right to-“ The Secretary, too, was broken up in mid speech.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary,” The President began, “Am I missing something here?”

“Sir, not a thing, sir. Dr. Ashraff was mis-speaking. He has no idea-“

“Mr. Secretary, you will keep your mouth shut until I am through speaking to Dr. Ashraff. Doctor, please continue… you were saying something about a ‘special monitor’?

“Sir, yes sir,” Runjeet began as he swallowed hard and continued focusing more of his attention on the UFO reforming in front of his face, “The special monitor was installed by our corporation previous to your administration. It is specifically used –and most strictly- for occasions such as this… uh, sir.”

“You mean to tell me, Mr. Secretary, that I have had a monitor the entire three years I have sat as President and I am now –during a potentially incredibly dangerous situation- just finding out about this? Please tell me this is not what I am –failing- to understand.”

Secretary of State Parker breathed heavily into the line. He was audibly upset at both Dr. Ashraff’s outburst, and at President Haynes’ irritation. He had been sworn not to announce the presence of the monitor that would keep the President –he of strict honesty and over-zealous information giving- completely in the clouds. That is, he angrily had to admit, unless something just like this were to happen. He had no other choice.

“Yes, Mr. President. That is the truth.” Secretary Parker begrudgingly admitted with a deep sigh.

“I see. Well then, what I want –what I want right now- is for you to make this monitor available to me. Please hang up your end and go do as I ask. Now. And as for you, Dr. Ashraff, I’d like you to hold the line while I transfer phones so you and I can finally look at this thing together. Is that okay?”

“Absolutely, sir. It is my pleasure to share with you any and all information I have found.” Dr. Ashraff admitted as a little smile danced across his face.

Paige noted his rapid change in facial features and turned quickly back to the screen that she, too, had been staring at for what seemed like forever. And as she did, the newly shaped craft began to once again move toward Earth.

15.

Cradled in the mottled hairy arms of the lumbering sasquatch dangled the limp bodies of two human men. The nearly human big foot walked on to its forest nest as confused as a little child, and not really understanding why it had the bloodied and battered corpses of two male people draped over its furry shoulders. It had encountered people before, but always from a distance and it had never, under any circumstances, come into close contact with them. But lately, for some reason, all the gentle giant wanted to do was to find them, touch them, and destroy them. But why didn’t the other two stay dead? It could not comprehend why, though it had bitten the woman severely and strangled her, she continued to live? It had no real reason to hurt people, it had no carnal want to harm humans… but here it was just the same: people were bad; people were the enemy and it had to kill.

Movement against the beast’s chest startled it and it stopped in its tracks. It snuffed in surprise and dropped the bodies just as one began to twist his head and open his eyes. The sasquatch stepped back and grunted a confused bark. From the damp forest floor, the humans stirred and moaned, shifted and stretched.

“Uh… what… what’s happening?” Eric pleaded as he slowly groped at the darkened wet leaves.

The towering ape-like creature ducked into the deep black shadow of a tree and, as were its natural instincts, remained absolutely still and deafeningly quiet. He watched in what to it was similar to a human being flabbergasted as the people writhed and spoke on the ground in front of him. He was, for the first time that his unknowing mind could fathom, absolutely frightened.

“Wow… I, uh… I dunno. I don’t even know where we are? Last thing I can remember… weren’t we in the car?” Kevin replied as he, too, fought to regain his consciousness.

Eric rubbed his quavering hands over his face and neck, and they came away tacky with what could only have been drying blood. He opened his palms and even in the deeply darkened night, it was still obvious they were coated with sticky blood.

“Why… why am I all bloody?”

“Yeah, and look at me!” Kevin cried as he held up his own open, splayed fingers.

As Eric leaned in to examine Kevin in the shrouded early night, his tongue just naturally snuck out as it would anyone in any kind of concentration… and that’s when he felt them: his teeth were finely-pointed daggers. He immediately flung open his mouth and began to explore his new found fangs with both his tongue and his fingers, at the same time momentarily intrigued by the residual clotting blood still coating them. “Thweet Jeethuth, Kev… are…are your theeth tharp, too?”

“Are my wha—“ Kevin began as it quickly dawned on him what his friend was trying to say, “What the…”

Though the sasquatch only understood a few small English words -much like a dog or a primate would comprehend a few- it could tell just by how they were probing each other’s mouths in utter fascination that something highly unusual was playing out before it. It was now so scared it began to cry and softly wail to itself.

In unison, the boys looked rapidly in the precise direction of the big foot, and in the shadowy eve, they both grinned the grin of the hungry.

16.

The terrorized people of the city of New York fled in panic as the mammoth, hideous creature laid waste to everything in its path. Though the monster had no clear direction and was seemingly only wreaking havoc at random, the barrage of walking dead –corpses shimmering in the early morning light with a patina of viscous slime oozed upon them from the beast itself- were suddenly realizing that they needed, perhaps wanted to feed. And feed they did: as the large city’s inhabitants scurried, awash with horror and blinding fear, the shambling carcasses that were once human citizens snagged them in their tracks and bore down upon them with ravenous and insatiable appetites.

***

“Channel 9, Action News, this is Frank O’Brien with a special report.” The interrupting signal of a bulletin broke into every station, both local and those like CNN and CNBC, “The city of New York is once again under attack, however in a completely different, seemingly more horrifying –and certainly less understood way, today. For on the horizon behind me you can plainly see some kind of towering creature demolishing everything it its path. Authorities have just been made aware that this –thing- for lack of a better term made its way inland from a small cove in Connecticut. What it is, where it came from, and why it’s here are all, as yet, unanswered questions.

As you can also see, circling above it are numerous military helicopters and we have just been informed that more vehicles are en route including tanks and armored Hummers with members of the Armed Forces ready to, hopefully, stop this creature before it continues further inland destroying anymore cities in its path. We will be staying with this story as it develops. For now, let’s send it to Les Warren—“

***

Choppers buzzed the creature’s head and heedless attempts to communicate with it fell on deaf ears. Though it moved with a sickening, writhing grace through the city, continuously toppling buildings and crushing anything that stood in its way, an attack by the military had yet to commence. Perimeters were created from cul-de-sacs of concrete pylons, but the monsters tremendous bulk and perseverance just shoved them aside like a child’s building blocks. And always, following in its rear, were battalions of zombies trudging through the aftermath, scouring the wasted grounds for victims on which to feed.

It had become horrifically obvious that these rampaging cadavers could not be killed as many of the armed citizens and military personnel understood from watching many movies. Head-shots were useless, knocking them down and chopping off their heads was a fruitless venture. However hard you fought to bring the reanimated dead to a stop, no matter how powerful the weapon, nothing seemed to break the grip of the sludge that clung to them like webbing. It incased them and held them together as they pressed on consuming the living, leaving nothing but gore in their wake.

New York had once again fallen to terrorists, only this time the nightmare was incomprehensibly unreal.

17.

Paige felt a tap on her shoulder. Her attention was, as it had been for the better part of a day, firmly held by the images that played out before her on the monitors: a UFO was only moments away from entering Earth’s atmosphere. They had less than a half hour. “What is it? Oh, oh sorry… yes, Tom… what have you got?”

Tom Andrews was one of Paige’s assistants who often picked up a few extra hours on various shifts so she could knock off early and get some sleep. If anyone in the TBIRC was monogamously attacked to his job with loving fervor, it was Tom. He loved Sci-Fi, all things horror, and was a huge fan of the creepy, crawly bug-type movies that featured monster-sized insects rampaging through cities. And it was these thoughts that immediately coalesced in Paige’s mind as she saw Tom’s ashen face and saucer-sized eyes. “I-I-I think you might want to call Dr. Ashraff over here and see this…”

Tom looked exactly how you’d describe someone who has just seen a ghost: pale features, lidless, gaping eyes, and an air of sickening pallor all over his face, “O--K… what’s going on?”

Tom grabbed Paige’s sleeve and led her to another set of monitors on the opposite wall. And there, right in front of her playing out exactly like any given monster movie, were live feeds from several news channels reporting an attack on New York in the grotesque form of a gigantic creature. Paige’s brain wouldn’t allow her to register what she was seeing. How could it even be remotely possible that at one end of the building they were watching the potential first invasion of an alien space craft in modern records, and on the other they were witnessing New York being reduced to smoldering rubble by an impossible terror… and now a new reporter inside a separate box next to the first was going on about… the walking dead? This was too much for Paige, and she slumped down in Tom’s chair and gasped for breath.

Dr. Ashraff saw that Paige was no longer behind him as he waited for the President to get to his monitor at the White House, and began searching frantically for her. He found her at Thom’s desk, slouched in his chair as Tom pressed a cool washcloth over her head. He ran over to her and before he even had time to ash how she was, he saw on the screens before him the chaos that had befallen New York. He was frozen and had to physically force himself to turn away. “Mr. President… glad you are back! Ha-ha-have you seen… have you seen what’s happening in—“

“In New York. I have just been made aware. In fact I was talking to my head officials while you were on hold. In my wildest nightmares I have never, ever, imagined something like this happening. Never. Tell me you have some kind of good news on this Unidentified Flying Object of yours.”

Dr. Ashraff, in a mild panic (momentarily having forgotten what was happening above the Earth rather than on it) ran back to the monitors showing the movements of the UFO. He drooped with a heavy sigh. The moment he’d been waiting for was finally happening, “Sir… the craft has just penetrated our atmosphere. Sir… it’s directly above the United States… and still approaching.”

18.

The sky unfolded like a clouded blanket. Roiling cumulous swirls cascaded and burst into hanging gray blobs. For a moment, the sun was utterly in the blocking spherical shape of the metallic object that appeared directly overhead. People on the go halted suddenly in their tracks and peered skyward: day instantly became night, and then just as quickly the warmth of the mid morning returned as the shadowed craft approached closer to Earth. But no one moved. The vision of a hovering octagon encircled by an outer ring hovered in the heavens. It was eerily silent as the collected populous of the US stared up at the now motionless object, each lost in his or her own moment of frozen fear. The craft hung in the sky like the attached toys on a baby’s mobile, and in that instant a pulsating ring of lights ignited and began to chase around the outer ring. What followed was an audible hum that broke the deafening quiet, sounding not unlike a turbine whirring as it performed some unseen function. Still the unidentified object remained completely motionless, except for the glowing circle of lights that continued to increase in velocity.

Abruptly, darkening storm clouds began to build all around the object. Crashing thunder echoed across the land and forks of blue lightning split the sky.

19.

The only sound was the slight wind gusts whistling through the pine boughs. Eric and Kevin sniffed the air like animals searching out prey, which was -in effect- precisely what they were doing. Newly discovered wild instincts seethed through their bodies; coursing from vein to artery to every fiber of their being. The men slowly stalked the grounds taking in deep breaths of the surrounding air sneakily ferreting out their prey: the very beast from which they’d gained their brand new hunting, vampiric, monstrous personas. The men were thirsty and they hungered for a meal that no human food could quell. Deep within them burned a desire so wanton, so heated that nothing stood in their way as during their search they tossed aside huge, dead logs, wrenched massive boulders from the earth, and leapt from one branch to another.

The sasquatch remained dead silent as he watched the feral humans hunt it. He had never known fear like this.

But it had to move. It knew it wasn’t safe where it sat; crouched behind the stump jutting from a rising mound. Eventually the men –now more beastly than ever, apparently made so by its own horrific mauling just hours before- would smell his presence and attack it. And this idea made it more afraid for its own safety than anything ever had in its life. Even as a hunter by its own livelihood –daily making necessary kills for its own existence- the sasquatch was unaccustomed to fearing for its very life from its own prey. And yet, this new prey that it had –albeit inadvertently- somehow changed into creatures it had never known, created a shuddering panic that triggered in it a need to run and hide so powerful that at the moment, it could do no more than sit, frozen; watching.

It forgot itself for just that moment, and the humans were on it like ravenous wolves. It howled as pain like it had never known ripped through its core; teeth piercing its tough hide as though they were razor-sharp daggers. The darkness began to swirl as flashes of light burst before its fading vision. And then there was nothing.

20.

Danielle and Aaron crept lightly through the underbrush and hanging fir boughs, stepping, feline-like, without making a single sound. Their senses were aflame with scents and odors wafting all around them; animals settling in to rest, flora alive with soft, lilting richness, and, of course, the cloying tinge of a fresh kill. They knew they were close.

Open ground spread before them, and Danielle and Aaron saw in their crisp night vision Eric and Kevin at feast. Flowing around the prey like a giant darkening stain was the last vestige of its life; the sour, coppery nose of newly spilt blood filled the chilled air. It was immediate: Danielle and Aaron lost all control and trampled the last few feet to the dying creature, thinking only of satiating their gnawing desire to feed. They both grunted and lowered their heads, as though their animalistic behavior had completely taken over. Eric and Kevin looked up with sinister grins played across their faces, and returned the guttural snorts allowing their friends to join them in the fantastic feast.

Soon, the four friends who had once been nothing more than human, nothing more unusual than regular people going about their day trying to debunk myths and prove theories, were gathered around a creature no other human could really ever explain or really ever solidly identify, feeding on its flowing life blood like piglets at suckle.

They drank until they were full. But their metamorphosis continued unabated.

21.

High above the eastern seaboard of the United States, deepening gray storm clouds were gathering like a swirling hurricane. The darkening sky, that minutes before showed the rising sun and the wakening of a new day, now looked ominous and foreboding as the building, towering thunderheads piled upon one another like angry dams of dirty snow. In the eye of the storm hovered the impossible craft; spinning repetitiously, pulsating with illumination, somehow –beyond all human understanding- creating the massive front that collected just outside of its metallic perimeter. Tremendous booms of thunder echoed through the atmosphere followed almost immediately by sinister forks of steel-blue lightning. Then the rain began to fall in vicious maelstroms.

For a moment, the enormous beast stuttered in its step, and turned its curious gaze skyward. It knew, and it understood, what was happening hundreds of feet above its head. It was the first to feel the rain drops as they cascaded from the immense thunderheads in drenching sheets. It could remember and realize that far too many times in its eons-long existence the very same thing occurring: its pursuers were, once again, attempting to cleanse the planet on which it trod of its destruction. It had millions of memories from countless other times on innumerable other worlds of the very same moment and the very same result. It was never afraid, it had never set out to wreak the havoc it undoubtedly had, and it had no intention of ever becoming the fugitive it had so long ago become.

Deep within its cranial recesses, like the still waters of long ago forgotten well, the creature’s most ancient knowledge bubbled ever so lightly to the surface. It somehow understood that the very ground over which it traversed even now, the age-old Terra Firma on which it currently stood, was oddly familiar to it. From within itself came a feeling; a shivering recognition that it had, a millennia ago, walked these very same grounds.

It also knew that it had never been captured, or destroyed completely by the beings who always sought to punish it for taking actions it scarcely understood. Yet here it was again, just as it had been over time immeasurable, locked in a moment with those who spent eternities hunting it down like some kind of frightened prey. And it knew that it somehow had to make this time’s end result… different. It was done running.

The Heavens were torn asunder and the black-clouded sky let forth a torrent like humanity had not seen in hundreds of years. Rain fell so hard and fast that there weren’t individual drops anymore, just gushing floods like soaking waterfalls. Thunder deafened, lightening blinded, and the storm surge raged.

22.

It was a time when evolution had yet to make its first great strides into becoming creatures that would, eventually, over countless generations, become even the most basic recognizable forms of intelligent life. The planet -much later to become known as Earth- was a roiling, steaming, constantly shifting desolate wasteland. Craggy outcroppings of unworn rocky plates jutted forth like the scales of a forgotten dragon. Pools of sulfurous, fetid water constantly gurgled and spat forth toxic fumes that spewed out in acrid bubbles from the open fissures of the planet’s core. A low-hanging cloud of deadly gas and particulate debris slowly meandered across the world, blocking out the life-giving sun and holding the frozen planet in a death grip that would still be years away from exposing its treasures. And one solitary creature emerged from a great lake of putrid stench and stepped, for the first time, onto the arid crust.

It opened its eyes and surveyed the strangled grounds; completely void of life as far as it could see. Yet it knew, a distance from where it stood, things stirred and lived. It began its journey in search of three creatures that it was born to assist; a trio of things that would remain on the planet over millions of years, eventually giving in to the power of legend and myth. This creature was already ancient; having been born before even galaxies… and even then it had been given a task. It’s entire existence hinged on locating and teaching a small collection of living beings their ultimate destinies. Each was as different from the other as any three things can be and still tread similar paths.

The first was a gentle giant. It would soon call primeval forests its home. It would have a modicum of intelligence and hold guardianship over nature. But it also held a deadly secret. It was to be called Sasquatch.

The second was to be two things, but never at the same time. Its life was in constant turmoil revolving solely around the waxing and waning moon cycles. It was a balance of both friend and foe, and often the scales were to tip in opposite directions. It was to be called Lycanthrope.

The third, and perhaps the most frightening of the three, was a creature of such incomprehensible terror that its very name would one day strike cold, wicked fear in the hearts of all who heard its utterance. There would be only one, for that was all that was needed. It would command the impenetrable shore on which it survived, and it would be a worthy audience for even the eldest Gods of the universe. But, it would one day be summoned to punish the very creature that gave it life. It was an unbreakable circle that would take eons to be finally be made whole. This monster would be called C’thulu.

Thus the creature continued on its path. It had time, but not much. The internal struggle within its brain had already begun to fight free. There was work to be done.

23.

Paige Wilson and Dr. Ashraff sat in the highly illuminated basement of the The Baltimore Inter-Galactic Research Society; their collective attentions adhered to the digital readouts portrayed on the monitors around them. A new day had dawned since their first discovery of the alien space craft. Originally it appeared as a tiny blip moving through space, but the several hours since had shown vast changes and the pictures they now witnessed were of a cyclonic object aggressively creating an incredible storm. Though they were at least forty feet below the substrate, they could plainly hear the torrential rains buffeting the concrete building above their heads. The winds moaned and threatened to sheer their earth-bound antennae from their moorings, and each scientist secretly prayed against such possibilities lest they lose their feed… and as it was, their screens had begun to flicker ever so slightly in the raging maelstrom.

Adding insult to injury was the more recent discovery of a titanic creature trampling through New York City like some kind of long-extinct, prehistoric dinosaur. And, oddly, it was this –not so much the bizarre UFO- that sparked to most panic in the research facility’s inhabitants. When balancing between two completely unbelievable occurrences, the mind seems to latch on the least credible and it begins to weigh the heaviest, tipping the scales and igniting a new kind of fear: the possible impossible.

“Mr. President, I am at a loss as to what to either recommend or what to do at this point,” Dr. Ashraff coldly admitted. “This is something neither of us has ever seen, let alone ever imagined.”

“I understand, doctor, and thank you for your candor. I must prepare for a public address right now, but I do want you to continue communications with my staff, so I will leave you with David Barnes, my Secretary of the Interior. He is also my chief ‘science officer’, if you will, and likely… well, ‘understands’ more about things like this than anyone. Thank you, doctor.” There were audible clicks and movement as President Haynes switched his headset to his replacement, Dr. Barnes.

“Good morning, Dr. Ashraff. It is my pleasure to speak with you. I have been updated on all the current goings-on and will be with you as things continue.”

“Welcome, Dr. Barnes. I have read your theses on the possibility of Ancient Aliens on Earth and I found them very informative and well written,” Runjeet said as he rolled his eyes in a gesture of his true feelings. “So… with what you seem to understand, does any of this make any sense to you?”

Dr. Barnes reclined in his chair and moved his gaze between two 55-inch, flat screen, High-Definition monitors, each scrolling with figures and numbers as well as the dual images of the circulating storm and the craft, and the rampaging beast that now seemed to be staring skyward. He snuck a glance around the small office and found he was alone, aside from a set of security guards posted at the door. He reset himself in front of the action, nodded in readiness, and spoke into the head set.

“Well, Dr. Ashraff… yes, yes it does. Let me tell you about a find we unearthed just five years ago in the Outback of Australia. A find that literally shows the very indescribable acts we’re all witnessing. And the key to its undoing.”

24.

The acrid, vile stench of decay and sour meat hung in the humid air like an unclean butcher shop. Wafting through the trampled ruins of what was New York City was the sickening odor of death and those who reeked of it: the living dead. Hunger begat slaughter; slaughter begat death; death begat horrific rebirth; and the beast that ran with a never ending flow of the toxic sludge that re-animated deceased tissue marched the march of destruction. Corpses shambled through the ravaged streets stopping only to tear living flesh from the citizens as they attempted to flee. Blood, viscous and rank with its coppery scent, sluiced like red syrup throughout the city, trailing the rampant and unholy murders brought on by the cadaverous demons. Citizens lay screaming along the roads, grasping at the fountains of gore that erupted from their killing wounds. People trampled madly past flattened cars, crumbled buildings, and the multiple bodies that, for one moment, lined the curbs, and another bounded forth searching for another human victim. The devastation was incalculable; no one could even imagine the cost of livelihoods, let alone the towering cost of human lives. Multitudinous numbers of the dead rapidly became a scourge of zombies causing the vicious circle to repeat itself infinitely. New York City was a terrifying wasteland.

Peace began to fall in the quenching form of precipitation. Drop by drop; soon sheet by sheet, the cleansing rain began to pour. The swirling, charcoal-gray cloud formation that hung far above let loose its collected payload, and the impending storm broke. The deluge soon built to a crescendo and started to rapidly flood the city. And the marauding dead suddenly ceased their mindless shuffling, falling to the ground, unmoving.

25.

The ones who lived sought shelter in what was left of the buildings still standing in the whole of New York City. Most were either demolished to flattened husks of their former glorious forms, or else looted to the point of looking like picked over skeletal remains. But it was those that the remaining populous flocked to. Hundreds packed into the lower floors of gutted office buildings, even more scrambled to emptied shops and stores, and still others found evacuated homes on the outskirts of town and temporarily inhabited them. Anywhere, it seemed, was deemed safe just as long as it was as far off the open streets as possible. The people were being forced from their own city as inhumanity ravaged the streets, devouring any stragglers left alive. That was, until the storms came.

Those closest to windows peered out in a mixture of confusion and amazement. Though they felt overwhelming sensations of loss and crippling fear, there was something soothing and comforting about the sky opening and enveloping the horizon in a Biblical downpour. They watched as the streets ran like rivers tainted with the blood of the innocent. Bodies of the victims bobbed along the raging torrent like damming logs and were followed by even more of the city’s detritus and debris. The cleansing weather front felt like a saving grace, but no more so than when the survivors finally began to see the buoyed cadavers that were once the scavenging dead. They flowed down the flooded roads like ghastly flotsam, some clogging against parked cars and fire hydrants like engorged blood platelets in a gigantic artery. The stink was overwhelming; the sour tinge of old meat and wasted flesh hung in the air like a muggy blanket. And the rain continued, pouring down without pause, as it slowly rid the city of its befouled predators.

26.

Before them lay the desiccated, exsanguinated husk; its matted, fluid-soaked fur becoming clotted in the warm evening breeze. The gentle giant’s life now extinguished by the very monsters it unknowingly created. Leaves rustled ever so lightly; the night’s noises were surprisingly mute, save for the rhythmic, sonorous rasps rising from the four once-humans. With their feeding complete, the friends all fell into a satisfying coma and literally dropped where they fed. Their faces and hands, the fronts of their shirts and jackets, and even smeared in red wisps through their hair, was an impressive abundance of coagulating blood. Were it not for the very clothes on their backs, they’d go completely unrecognized as the former people they once were not twenty-four hours prior; mud and bits of flora clung to their rapidly growing hair, their crimson snouts protruded from misshapen faces like a nightmarish amalgam of beast and man, their triangular ears jutted from the sides of their slightly more compressed canine heads, and terrible claws pierced through their gnarled fingers like corroded nails in twisted wood. But they remained bipedal, for this was not a transformation that made them fully animals. No, this was a transformation that made them something that no human from the ancients till now had ever laid eyes on. The beasts that now slept, satiated and bloated, were of imaginations so vast and incredible that to call them lycanthropes was to only scratch the surface of an ever spreading horror. What they had become was something new, something outside comprehension… something that should never be.

***

The night was crisp. Fall had certainly taken hold, and after the scortcher of a summer they’d had this year, it was none too soon, either. Hunting season hadn’t strictly begun in Michigan just yet. Sure, bow was just around the corner, but Terry Ferguson was always a rifle man. And no, Terry Ferguson didn’t always follow the letter of the law, and so this brought him out on this cool, slightly bitey morning in search of maybe some wild turkey or, if he was really lucky, a nice buck. Terry was lovingly familiar with these woods; he was reared just ten miles south, having grown up in an old logging house raised by his daddy. It was always just the two of them; daddy would head off to the mill and Terry would fend for himself for hours a day, exploring the woods, setting small game traps, teaching himself to hunt like a man, and always bringing something interesting home for supper: coons, pheasant, woodchuck, and even the occasional deer. Daddy died in ’68, and Terry was sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle in Marquette, not too far for his home grounds, and now that he was pushing thirty, he wanted nothing more than to be back home, scouring the forests and stalking the wilderness.

Another reason for his decision to skirt work today and take to nature was the news coming out of New York City. Terry had heard some unbelievable garbage in his life, but word that there were attacks by a gigantic monster, an alien space craft, the living dead, and a wicked storm was just too much to handle for one morning. He stared at his television for about twenty minutes trying to absorb all of what he was hearing and seeing; chaos, fear, demolition, visuals straight from horror comics… it was enough. Terry had to get out and get away from reality… or, unreality, for a while so he called into the plastics plant, feigned sickness, packed a few odds and ends –including his trusty hunting rifle- and headed out into the early dew.

The light tendrils of fog curled across the damp foliage like phantom fingers. The air was heavy with moist earth and the approaching sunrise, bringing with it the promise of a wonderfully sunny day, all the more perfect to hang out among the firs and maples and take in the bounty. But another scent caught Terry’s attention, too. It was sour, foul, and ripe with decay. He couldn’t be sure where it was coming from, but it did get stronger the further north he pushed into the trees.

Cresting a small hill, Terry’s stomach lurched and his eyes spread open in stunned terror. In a clearing about fifty yards ahead lay the body of what might be a bear surrounded by four smaller bodies each clothed but –even at this distance- not at once resembling anything human. Terry was frozen somewhere between gripping fear and a tugging curiosity. It was when one of the forms surrounding the bear stirred that Terry’s legs finally decided they’d move under their own accord, and he slowly, silently, crept forward.

Within twenty yards, another of the bizarre beings that lay around the –sleeping?- beast began to make groaning noises that were far to feral and guttural to be anything human, and Terry once again found himself unable to walk any further. A call echoed from the mouth of the creature, a call that fired itself into Terry’s mind and carved a path of abject fear straight down his spine; it was a disgusting mix of wild pig and a rabid dog. Terry felt a gorge rise in his throat but swallowed it away without a sound. He knew he was breathing rapidly and was surely going to reveal his position unless he got himself under control.

The second of the four creatures sat up and began to sniff the air like a dog being led outside for the first time. He quickly shook his head in an attempt to locate whatever it was that caught its olfactory senses. Terry had a sneaking suspicion that it was him they were smelling, but he wasn’t about to wait around to find out.

Shaking off his strangling fear, Terry slowly raised his rifle to his sight line, eyed in the target with the scope, and popped a shot directly through the back of the creature’s head. As he quickly lowered the gun, the other wakened creature sprang to his feet and leapt to his friend’s side. He emitted a mournful low and raised his glance to look around him. His eyes locked on Terry and the red-stained forms of his fangs were bared in anger. But it was too late.

Terry had his rifle poised for another shot the second the beast was on his feet examining his friend, and as soon as those beady, sinister eyes were on him and those ghastly teeth were flared, another shot rang out in the misty morning hitting the second creature right between the eyes. The beast stiffened, yawed a little to the right, and pitched to the side landing directly atop his friend. The ring of the gunshot stirred birds and some little mammals from their resting places, yet it did not even budge the two remaining creatures that lay, just breathing beside the –it wasn’t a bear after all- furry mound. At this realization, Terry ventured forth even closer with his gun at the ready.

Upon closer inspection, it became very clear that the large creature was decidedly not a bear after all, but something far more simian-like. Terry could do little more than stare at it rolling over in his head the simple fact that it might just be a sasquatch. He’d heard of such giants patrolling acres and acres of Michigan forest, making themselves seen to a select few who, in turn, regaled tales of the massive monsters and their storied myths. But Terry had never –nor thought he’d ever- see one, alive or dead. But here it was; its fur was tacky with congealed blood, bite marks dried with deep red stains all over its body, and the look on its face was of utter panic and frozen fear. Terry felt a small sense of sorrow for this beast. He knew it was the creatures –two of which still breathed- that did this to it, and it just somehow felt very unnatural. In fact, his entire day had felt completely unnatural.

Terry turned to the two creatures that lay on the matted earth, resting, as it now seemed, enveloped in each other’s arms. The picture was grotesquely unimaginable; snouts pressed together both caked with gore, clothing shredded in places that allowed for more intimate closeness, thick mounds of fur protruding from their faces, arms, feet… backs, stomachs… It was hideous. Terry could only bare to look the length of time it took to aim, and to fire.

Two more shots radiated through the waking forest. Terry looked around and said a silent prayer to a God he –up to this point- never really bothered to speak to, and removed a collapsible shovel from his pack. He dug into the early afternoon, neatly burying the four creatures in one single hole, covering it with wet leaves and fallen needles to hide the carnage as best he could. As for the sasquatch… he left it be. Somehow it felt more natural that way; nature had birthed it and it would be nature that would waste it away. Feeling satisfied, Terry looked one more time at his work, packed up his things, and began the long walk back to his home.

When night fell, and Terry was sound asleep in his bed with all six of his doors locked, some of the dirt shifted just a bit… the dirt that topped the unmarked grave that held the bodies of four once-humans.

27.

The President’s Chief Science Officer (also his Secretary of the Interior, which meant even less than normal at this particular moment) climbed into the armored limo carrying with him the only conceivable means by which to destroy the rampaging monster that even at this very moment was moving –albeit slowly- south from New York City. Rain pelted the car’s windshield and the buffeting winds threatened to tear it from the road, but Dr. Barnes sat staring into space, undeterred by the weather’s vicious attack, yet silently concerned at the unmoving UFO that seemed to be the cause of it all.

A large Halliburton briefcase sat next to the Secretary, and rattled slightly as the stretch slipped and jagged at the wicked bursts of wind. Dr. Barnes was intimately familiar with its contents. It was 2006 and a small, ragged group of Paleontology students were busy carving out and mapping a new dig in the Australian Outback. A new species of dinosaur had been discovered, one that was slightly smaller than a T. Rex but every bit as terrifying a predator, and with the exception that this one –according to the fossil imprints- was covered with fine feathers. This discovery alone was enough to shake up the scientific community; the prospect that many of the already discovered dinosaurs may have had feathers and eventually evolved into modern birds was still a hotly debated notion, but here it was in all its glory. Sadly, this discovery had to be kept tightly under wraps –literally as well, since it was to be transported to the Smithsonian in D.C.- until the collected heads of certain specific scientific groups could make closer examinations. Dr. Barnes was asked by the President to make the trip to Australia high priority to oversee the final unearthing and transporting. His arrival was met with high approval -and even a bit of fawning considering actions like this were hardly routine at dig sites, But Dr. Barnes took it all in stride and even began to feel a little out of place still dressed in his suit and tie. Luckily, he brought with him two of his closest colleagues, both vastly more prepared than Dr. Barnes himself, and it was them he’d sent to assist with the remainder of the dig. And it was later that same afternoon that the hollers of delight and discovery echoed from the chasm as something else was unearthed.

It turned out to be more like ‘somethings’, since what appeared to be, at first, just a rune-etched slab crusted with eons of rock and dirt turned out to hold with it the most important piece of the mythical puzzle: The Amulet. No one was really sure if that was actually what it was, considering most amulets are worn much like brooches or necklaces and this disk was roughly the size of a tea saucer. But, according to what could be deciphered from the glyphs, the ancient sigil-engraved artifact was indeed used as an adornment. Be that is it was, the round, metallic item was as horrifically grotesque as it was strikingly beautiful. Though it had sat encased in its earthly tomb for untold centuries, it came free nearly unworn and untouched. The surface held an almost crystalline sheen; a polish as though it had taken on a veneer deep under the ground rather than lost a luster like most other objects. The center resembled an unblinking eye in both a metaphorical sense and in the fact that it was an almond shape with a deeper center like a pupil, all of which was of the angriest hue of blood red anyone had ever seen. Emitting from the epicenter and scrolling outward toward the edges were unreadable writings carved and inked in the same damnable shade. Surrounding the crimson, bisected in four parts by the writing, were symbols and hieroglyphics in a tongue completely baffling to all of those who looked upon it; all of those present with enough combined linguistic knowledge to span the entire modern globe, as well as those languages considered dead. It was terrible to look at; a wretched piece of the ancient occult. Yet, it was impossible not to gaze upon; an object of untold power and opportunity. And thus it had to be locked away until a time when others could decipher its hidden passages.

A year passed until enough information was gathered to make a more educated pass at the stone slab and its accompanying Amulet. After a few months of painstaking research and breaking down of a language so ancient and unused that it hadn’t been even heard of since the Macedonian era, a reasonable recovery of the lost text was made. It told the tale of a great being who traveled to Earth far pre-dating almost any life, and how the being gave its vast knowledge to three creatures that would carry with them the secret to a time in the future when they would be called upon for very different reasons. The time was to occur in 2011, a mere three-and-a-half years away, when the being would once again return to Earth and rend it asunder. There was but one of the three creatures that could be called upon to stop it, though it was not as an assist to the race that inhabited the Earth, it was just because that was its destiny. The writings made no indication of humans –apparently having no idea of what race would be the wisest- nor did it actually spell out the year as 2011. In the latter case it was more of an obscure mathematical method that worked out to be that precise year. And in the former case, it literally didn’t mention any race at all.

The information struck those involved as almost too ridiculous to be true. However, there were those –the Secretary being one of them- who knew better than to discount something so random and so believable –at least in his own eyes- and so he kept the objects locked away in the sub-basement of the Smithsonian under the guard of a revolving set of armed men until the time was right to do what was necessary.

As the limo pulled into the TBIRC parking facility after its remarkably short journey, Dr. Barnes sighed, relieved to finally release the secret he’d kept hidden for far too long. He popped the latches on the case and peered inside at the metallic disc that sat before him. The center eye pulsated in time with his heart beat.

28.

Dr. Ashraff responded to the request from security that the Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Barnes be allowed to enter immediately. He expected the Chief Science Officer’s visit and nearly met him at the door directly. The two exchanged pleasantries, passed greetings to one another and the Secretary’s escorts, and made for the information bunker stationed below the Earth’s surface. Business was of utmost concern, and the matter at hand was taking a decidedly terrible turn for the worse. They sat, and stared at each other in momentary silence not quite sure where to take the next step.

“Dr. Barnes,” Dr. Ashraff began by shattering the stagnant silence, “You spoke of something you had discovered that could potentially end this madness.”

Dr. Barnes shifted in his chair, still a little uneasy about sharing knowledge he had kept so close to himself for over four years. But, in the end, the survival of a nation depended on his decision to relinquish something held so closely by only a scant handful of people. “Yes, Dr. Ashraff, it is true. However, what I’m about to tell you will more than likely force you to see me in an all together different light. Can you accept that?”

“Well, Dr. Barnes, since I have no Earthly idea what it is you are about to tell me, then yes, I suppose whatever reaction you assume I will display might just fall under the category of a ‘different light’.”

“Fair enough, Dr. Ashraff. Fair enough. Well, since our precious little amount of time seems to be dwindling faster every second, I suppose I ought to regale you with the tale.”

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Dr. Barnes told the story of The Amulet. Dr. Ashraff sat in stunned and utterly confused and disbelieving silence. And in the war room, Paige Wilson stared at the display as the alien craft turned the storm it had created into a Category 2 hurricane. The monster, in all its seemingly lost persistence, pushed to the south terrorizing town after town.

29.

“But it says that this… uh, R’yleh is somewhere… hm… I guess that’d be in the South Pacific, right?” Dr. Ashraff inquired skeptically as he gave a sidelong glance to Paige who had since been called into the private meeting; more to do with her initial discovery than her actual knowledge of the situation.

“Well, that is indeed where the archaic directions point, for sure,” Dr. Barnes continued, “But it also states at the time of its purpose it will have repositioned itself somewhere near… oh…”

“Oh what, doctor?” Paige interjected, just a curious as her colleague.

“Um… oddly it states that it would be somewhere between a reigning Old Kingdom and a Newly Formed Kingdom. I’m guessing that it means… off the coast of America in the Atlantic.”

Dr. Ashraff had to chuckle a little at the even odder notion that an entire location, however difficult to believe on its own, had the ability to relocate just because that was its destiny. “Look, I’m going at this whole thing with a few grains of salt here, Dr. Barnes; the simple notion that this amulet has the power to raise an abomination to thwart an already rampaging abomination is blatantly absurd. But now you’re asking me to take this already baseless piece of artifact and - just on assumption mind you- believe that the locale spelled out in the glyphs can move just because it’s supposed to? I’m sorry, doctor… I really am, but…”

“I understand doctor, I really do. But just imagine for one second that this ancient text is completely true. Are you willing to drop it like fiction just because it doesn’t sit well with your notion of what can and can’t be believed? Do you think anyone thought Dinosaurs could have existed in their presently known forms over fifty years ago? Of course not, they would have been called crazy to do so. Do you think that the Christian Faith would be as solid as it is, were it not for the written teachings of The Bible? Absolutely not, Dr. Ashraff, and this circumstance is no different,” Dr. Barnes explained with a palpable feeling of passion everyone in the room felt.

“Okay. Let’s just assume that this writing is, well, a kind of eminent instruction manual from thousands of years ago. It doesn’t make any difference what any of us believes, what matters is are we going to put all of our eggs in this one basket and just hope beyond hope that it works? I mean we’re talking about raising a potentially nightmarish beast to destroy one we already have… what if it doesn’t work? Being no worse off than we already are, in this instance, is to concede to our own deaths!” Paige proclaimed as her rising guile filled the room.

The two sides stood in gnawing silence. They were all right, of course: there wasn’t any proof this would, or could work, the ramifications of its insanity were not lost on any of them, and any amount of bickering wasn’t going to change it. Dr. Barnes looked around and accepted the fact that he might have to go at this alone. He alone; the guardian of The Amulet.

Dr. Ashraff broke the hastening silence, “I’m as skeptical as you can possibly imagine, but I’m taking all of this on your word.”

Paige nodded in agreement, staring blankly at her hands. The necessary agreements were made, and now it was only a matter of finding the correct location. Dr. Barnes gestured to his limo, and told the driver to head toward the coast.

30.

The bathing downpour drenched New York City, flooding streets, drowning those caught out in it, and washing away any signs of the evil scourge of the zombie invasion. The marauding monster knew it would happen; he’d seen it time and again and the result was always the same. Something about his physiology seemed to reanimate dead tissue regardless of its make-up, provided it was carbon-based and reasonably intelligent. It turned its gaze once again to the craft that remained aloft just at the cloud line, generating the wicked winds and sopping rain, and scowled; nothing new to it at all, though it still had trouble understanding how it fit into all of this. Still the beings powered up the hurricane and spilled its cleansing contents across the already devastated city.

And there, deep within the ancient recesses of its mind, it understood where its path lay: it was going to finally be vanquished. After countless eons of empty travels to innumerable worlds doing its one, soul predestined duty, it’s time had finally come. And though it felt a small tinge of remorse and disdain that what it had been created to do was once and for all concluded; it was mostly at peace. It was time to go home.

Finally.

31.

The limo sped to the Maryland coast following a path that no one could understand, yet Dr. Barnes somehow felt was right. He held the steel briefcase, peered longingly and terrifyingly inside, and watched… and listened… and felt. The reddened center of The Amulet pulsated more quickly the closer they got to the shore, and that pulsing, in turn, followed the metronomic pace of his heart.

Dr. Ashraff and Paige Wilson sat on the adjacent bench in the rear of the limousine, both staring out their respective windows. Neither was completely sure what was happening, and both were still riveted and equally stunned at the occurrences that had gone on over the past day and a half. It had been a day that no other human had even dared dream was possible. Even curious and overly-imaginative children and Sci-Fi authors could not have even come close to describing the brutal horror that they’d watched unfold. And now –and this was perhaps the most insane part of all- they were headed to an unknown cove to summon a creature that would, somehow, put an end to the madness. No; it was all madness begetting more madness. Neither had any inclinations that this was going to end well for anyone, yet neither could even devise a conceivable outcome. It was, after all, madness.

Suddenly, Dr. Barnes barked into the intercom for the driver to stop. The limo had arrived at an old fishing dock. Wooden piers sat crumbling into the unforgiving sea, overgrown weeds and saplings choked the boat entrance, and what appeared to be years of neglect and avoidance turned the once pristine boating slip into a slowly dying tenement. The doors were opened by Dr. Barnes’ armed escorts, and the group of scientists stepped out onto the soggy ground.

No words were exchanged as Dr. Barnes immediately set to work, almost as though he’d done this on a regular basis. The case was unlatched and The Amulet was gingerly removed and set on the hood of the limousine. Next to it was placed the ancient rune stone with its nearly unreadable glyphs and carvings. Dr. Barnes looked out to the calm sea, and breathed deep the salty air, steadying himself for the performance he’d waited four years to act out. He was as ready as he was ever going to be.

Dr. Ashraff and Paige took a side-step to give the doctor his needed room, neither understanding why it was even necessary, but letting the compulsion move them regardless. They watched in abject curiosity as Dr. Barnes began reading the incantation in a dialect neither had even dreamed existed. It seemed there were many steps to the proper ceremony, and the doctor seemed to know every step flawlessly. They could have sworn that just then the wind picked up just a touch; a chill that bit to the marrow was in that wind and it conjured fear throughout the spectators. Out at sea, a slow roiling erupted from the surface, churning into a frothy boil. Paige and Dr. Ashraff found themselves in one another’s arms, holding themselves against the coalescing terror that was rapidly whipping about them. Gusts buffeted the trees, curling them side-long against the attack, and even shook the stolid limo on its wheels. The icy nip built to an almost frigid crescendo and stung them to the core. When it at once seemed like they could no longer stand the maelstrom, Dr. Barnes bellowed what was to be the final words written on the ancient stone out at the tempestuous ocean:

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!”

32.

A city rose from the churning waters; a city carved entirely –innumerable eons hence- from solid stone. It was towering in it enormity; blocking out the sun and scraping the very bottom of the Heaven’s themselves. With it came a cacophonous roar that seemed to emanate from within the stone fortress itself; it echoed across land, sea, and sky, dropping all who heard it to the ground, writhing in agony and fighting to stave of what was thrumming right through their skulls. Adorning the massive throne that sat at the helm of the gigantic, floating island were rows of circular disks that looked remarkably like The Amulet used to raise it; each pulsating in rhythm like a hundred heart beats. And yet it was what sat upon the throne that created nightmares and turned away even the demons.

The horrific leviathan that perched upon its earthen chair was of such indescribable loathing that even the mere sight of it scarred visions and burned its visage forever into memories. Hued a shade of sickly, unnatural gray-green, and splotched throughout its ghastly form with writing and gibbering sores like wretched barnacles, the lamentable abomination surveyed the surroundings like an angered God.

And so it was.

Grotesque, abhorrent, nauseous… the brutish thing sat wheezing in ire at its tower door. Tendrils of ocean steam spat forth from its maw over which hung a bulbous mass of threshing tentacles, each layered with knobby protrusions and angry spikes. Its serpentine fingers viciously contorted as its wicked talons dug feverishly at the craggy arms of the throne. Pustules gouted ichor, and open fistulas ran freely with rivulets of phlegmy sputum. Sprouting like giant, water-logged umbrellas from its back was a set of leathery and severely chapped wings; both hung limply down across its shoulders, neither looking that they had any strength to create lift. Its entire skull throbbed with the choking breath of oxygenated air; individual sacks like bellowing bladders struggled to maintain breathing. The immoral redolence that hung in the air like a wet sack was gagging and palpable.

It slowly leaned forward, bringing to bear its entire face. An ancient, putrid cough burst forth with a sound like misfired torpedo, and then it spoke.

Gargling bass erupted from its mouth; the sound split the eardrums of the onlookers. Only a single phrase was uttered as the six assembled, cowering humans screamed into the sky:

“The end.”

The Amulet XXI - The Stairs

2011-05-19T14:03:00.000-04:00

Tendrils and wisps of the remainder of the early morning fog streaked the ancient stone like the fingers of some long forgotten ghosts. Eerie tails of opaque white curled among the lichen-strewn rocky outcroppings and looped over the dew droplets that clung to the spears of timothy. The air was thick and cool; the morning sun had been shut out by the encroaching gray clouds, yet the wetness of the humid air felt cloying and dank. The pebbled surface of the decrepit masonry was slick with damp moss and ran freely with tiny rivulets of moisture that had collected in the exposed crags and loosed rock. The stairs angled upward into the weighted cloud and disappeared into the spectral gloom of the slowly receding morn.

II.

Ages ago the stonework steps were built as a pathway to enlightenment. Their creators and masons were monks, who desperately searched for a way out of the valley they inhabited. For the valley had fallen to an evil so unspeakable and horrid that they had little choice but to escalate themselves skyward toward the hand of the God they'd prayed hadn't forsaken them. And so they constructed. They meticulously and laboriously unearthed and drug stone and rock from the river at the base of their valley home. They toiled day and night perfecting their last path to salvation. Yet for them, it was too late. They soon fell as the blanketing repulsion suffocated them. And so the staircase stood, as a reminder to what could have been.

III.

At closer glance, the fine scroll-work that ran the length of the ancient and crumbling steps was quite impressive. It also spoke volumes of what the monks who created the massive stairs were working toward. From the moment the sadistic sickness befell their civilization, their lone goal became escape. Their God promised sanctuary, but the people were made to earn it. Freedom from the oppressive bleakness would not come without sacrifice and offerings; their lives wouldn't be preserved, and therefor spared, without a total and complete giving of themselves. And the etchings that looped and whorled up and across the surface of each eroding rise was a true testament to their undying devotion.

IV.

Piece by piece, slate by slate, boulder by boulder, the steps slowly and with painful precision fell into shape. Decades passed and the tower of fitted rocks grew ever higher, just as people gave up their lives and plead to their God as they fell. The colony gave up much: celebrations, livelihoods, daily freedoms; all for the defiance of the sinister and the quest to achieve salvation. They lived and died by their powerless struggle between good and evil. But the evil had strength. And the evil was in the earth itself. It seethed, it writhed, it gnashed, and it fought the people every single step of the way... and every way of the steps.

As the afternoon sun burns away the remainder of ghastly fog, the slithering tendrils that caress the exposed roots hanging languidly from the depleting stone evaporate into ethereal nothingness. A step back reveals the perfection of the rising hill. Its corners; perfect. Its angles; uncompromised. Its rises and falls; works of art. And the edging that showcases the precision script winds its way up either side cascading from the top-most stone to the very bottom. The encroaching wind echoes with the broken spirits of a thousand buried voices as it whirls up the steps. The haunting drones of eons past -living with the long dead calls of ancient voices- ebb and flow through the haunted, overgrown valley.

VI.

The population slowly died away. The evil of the valley had manifest and entered the spirits and very souls of the adolescents. It crept in and strangled the life out of the righteous; the blank slates who devoted their lives to constructing the stairs and reaching the hands of their loving God. The children began to hate. They began to thoughtlessly punish. They began to commit hateful crimes and destroy the builders of the stairway. With recklessness and deviant amorality, the young overpowered and eradicated the old. But even with the elderly falling, the steps eventually reached completion, much to the behest of the strangling horror from below.

VII.

The cryptic designs that ran the length of upward stairwell did not sit idle. Their circular etchings vibrated with a deep, guttural thrum. And they pulsated a dark, haunting red hue that ebbed in rhythm with the beating hum. Each connecting hoop-shape looked exactly like an amulet of sorts. They were roughly the size of saucers with even more intricate artwork; tribal in nature, that encircled a center 'eye'. And it was this eye that truly emitted the most horrific shade of blackened red. Anyone who stood long enough at the stairs, or who made the decision to walk its seemingly endless path, would begin to understand what the long deceased civilization was attempting to reach. And one would be unable to understand how feelings this dire and terrifying could be misconstrued as anything other than pure and complete evil. Maybe it was the Gods within the valley who were the actual true amalgams of truth. Many have fallen as their understandings were shattered. And many have followed the path of the amulet.

Nightmare: Tales Of The Amulet IV

2011-05-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

Something was there. Right in the corner... I could almost feel it.

My breathing came in swift bursts. I consciously tried to regulate it; there wasn't much point in huffing and puffing myself into a heart attack. But the fear was in the driver's seat and if it wanted to tighten my chest in crashing agony... well, it was going to whether I liked it or not.

I don't scare easily; I've been a rabid consumer of the horror genre (TV, movies, books... et al) for nearly as long as I can recall. But damn it, when there's something in the room --right there in the corner-- the terror is as palpable as taste.

I think it moved. I start shuddering breaths again as I try --like a child in rapture at a TV show tries-- to tear my focus away from the... whatever it is... in the corner of my room but I just can not look away. It might leap if I'm not looking.

I feel and hear my throat catch and click as I try to swallow myself back into the fact that it's just a room and whatever that shadow is is not going-- shit, it moved again. Damn it. If I can move my legs a little maybe the sound will make it twist a bit so I can... It moved again.

My legs don't want to work. It seems my unnatural fear has usurped my limbs for itself and is insisting on holding me down like some kind of flailing hospital patient. I don't like that at all. I need to move... I need to jostle myself back to my room and not this gaping, shadowed tomb I find myself stuck in. Movement is the key and it always seems to knock a little non-fiction back into one's head. I gotta try that again...

With a whole lot of conscious effort I managed to shift my feet back and forth, making little, soft whisks under my sheet like a couple of anxious animals. And the corner shadow did more than move; it vibrated. I swear, it looked like it was in two places at once and it rotated between the two; back and forth, back and forth like a other-worldly pendulum. It was in the shadows, and then it wasn't... and then it was. All I could do was stare. And I began to cry! Not in the saddened, heart-felt weeping of a sorrowful situation, but out of absolute and all-encompassing fear. I was literally frightened to point of tears.

But why? I knew it couldn't be real... right? It couldn't possibly be a thing and not just a something... a something right from my room like a shirt or... it moved again. This time I'm almost sure it --what?-- slithered? It undulated and gesticulated like an eel! Oh shit, it really is a thing, isn't it? I' questioning myself at this point... myself and what I know to be sanity and insanity...

And then I heard noises. From the living room I could hear what sounded like the television: monotonous, muted gabbing the way a blocking wall can make it sound. Somehow I was only slightly more comforted...

Because I live alone...

The shadow coughed. A throaty, deep-crawed, guttural cough. And then it chuckled...

I can't lie here and write anymore... I need --

The Amulet XX - Errant Desires

2011-04-27T13:51:00.000-04:00

The desperation he felt had weight. The sorrow coated him like a sodden blanket and wrapped him so tightly he could feel its suffocating grasp. Every breath was a shuddering, wheezing fit wracked with hitching sadness and the never-ending flow of tears. But worst of all --the thing that held him in a vice grip of shame and misery-- was the guilt. Why had he even given in? Why had it become acceptable with him? Why hadn't he seen it coming? The tumult of questions beat at his head like a progression of angry drums.

And alone he sat. He'd allow his mind freedom to wander without even remembering giving it permission. It would trace the trail of shock and revelation backwards through the days. It would trip over visions, stumble headlong into occasions, and fall head first into moments just as it had the first go round, only this time witnessing each with the outcome first. And sometimes his unconscious would stick and repeat like a movie frame caught on a fleck of broken film. He'd relive those monstrous memories over and over, always knowing how each would end but praying nonetheless that this time... this time he could effect them for the better. But never. And then he'd jostle his head, shake himself free from the torturous thoughts, and snap himself back into the now. The now that was flooded with grief, unanswered questions, and dark, vast, endless sorrow.

And his desperation had a weight like a revenant's chains. They slowly, methodically drug him lower and lower to where, in all actuality, his head languidly lay on the ground. And he wept. The seething guile he knew was finally exposed ratcheted through his mind like a thousand connecting cogs. And he'd lifelessly beat at his head in a harmless attempt to knock loose the thoughts that sought nothing more than to consume him in a fit of ravenous madness. Fear would bubble to the surface and send his teeth to chatter, just as his wanton need to project his weakness on anything else would push away the terror and try to take control. Wrath won out all too often and he felt as though his blood would scream, super-heated from his veins causing him the forbidden comfort of bleeding to death as he bawled for what he'd lost.

Though it was she who brutally trod on his heart with her deceit and blatant duplicity that ultimately reduced him to a fragmented husk, it was always the thing that began it. He'd long since forgotten how it came to them; never was one to hang onto stories about objects. But it had come to them and it had brought with it the immoral, disastrous, fiendish misgivings that gradually forced a wedge between them, culminating in her desire to insult him and make him suffer. She fell under its mesmerizing charm. She succumbed to its morbid revulsion, and with it she fed. She became a glutton on the negativity it poured forth, and she eventually turned... into something else. Her actions were deplorable and her explanations despicable. She buried her thoughtless words and actions into him like daggers.

He was done. He saw no road ahead, no distant, glimmering horizon. He was done. His life had sloughed from him like a layer of dead flesh; she removed that cleanly. He was done and he knew it. No silver lining, no darkness prior to a better dawn, and he could care less how much greener some other pasture might be. Nothing mattered. Nothing worth anything remained.

The hull-grey .45 sat desolate on the table. He stared at it for a bit. He licked his lips wondering how the metal would taste and if it would shatter his teeth before darkness fell. He fingered the trigger and scooped up the gun. It felt icy in his cradling palm; icy but somehow inviting. He glanced down one last time at the pulsating, undulating rouge hue that swam across the surface of the amulet as it hung, and hummed, from is neck.

He was done.

Face Time Continued : The Amulet Part XIX

2011-04-20T19:41:00.002-04:00

Continued From HERE...

Tim yanked out a bar stool and collapsed up to the soda counter. Grizzly made a bee-line for the Men's room whistling a Steppenwolf tune.

"Hey buddy, how about a couple cold Cokes for me and The Griz?" Tim said as he sloughed off his steamy hide vest and draped it over the neighboring chair.

"You betcha, mister! Hotter'na raped ape out there, ain't it?" The kid behind the counter proudly announced as though it were the first time he was actually able to use the epithet.

Tim chuckled (mostly to humor the kid) and smacked the counter in approval. As he shook his head relishing the humor, two sweating glasses of Coke were carefully dropped to the veneered surface. The kid nodded, returned to his stocking duties, and laughed a little himself, proud of his little comment.

Grizzly appeared from the saloon-style doors, announced his appearance by erupting with a fierce belch, and resuming his whistled rendition of 'Magic Carpet Ride.' His eyes lit a bit as he saw the glistening glasses of soda and he, too, sidled up to the bar and raised his glass in a mock toast.

Erin absently wiped at the irritating itch of a drip that clung to the lip of her nose. She sniffed up some of the blood, wiped at it again, and never once even thought twice to examine the red liquid stain that smeared across her hand. She inhaled a few times, swooned, coughed a bit, and all the while glared with woozy fascination at the plate-sized disk she held in her grip. She admired --no, she ached at the touch of --the surface; it's roughed chrome... but more like a smooth pewter (nothing was quite as it seemed... nothing), the gleaming steel... but more like the dulled metallic sheen (it seemed to rearrange itself at every touch), and that horrid (beautiful) red eye in the center. It hummed; but it pulsed. It changed; it didn't. It was sickening; it made her gorge rise with every thrum. But it was also, somehow, everything she ever wanted. The amulet sang in her grasp and the song was something between desire and agony.

Tim and Grizzly sat among idle chatter and slowly nursed Coke after Coke. The icy drinks offered them just enough lost humanity after so many miles on the dry, arid road. They spoke on and off to the counter man (who, as it turned out, was named Earl and who was, happily, from right there in town), and they occasionally meandered through the aisles of the store picking out a few items here and there with which to survive the rest of their day-long trek. And though they shed every inhibition, they still clung (however slightly) to their natural skittishness... but nothing could prepare them for the girl who wandered in with a glare in her eyes like a cornered, angry animal.

The store's door whisked open, setting off the sleepy chime, and Erin stood there, not unlike any other day she was scheduled to work... except for the fact that she looked like a trapped beast facing off her predators. Even Earl caught his words in his throat. He'd seen Erin hundreds of times, but never with the ghastly pallor she cast and never with the hyper eyes of something inhuman and feral. All they could do was stare... until Erin leaped...

To Continue...

The Amulet: Business

2011-01-22T20:30:00.007-05:00

High atop the mountain range in New Los Angeles sat the hospital known as Te' Luma Health Systems. Since 2110, the corporation had provided a way to reverse the onset of natural aging. For hundreds of years prior, getting older was just a way of life and the complete result of it, but Te' Luma discovered the secret.

Locked inside every human is a very simple trigger lying dormant in a very specific set of amino acids. When each is triggered in a specific sequence, they begin to systematically reverse the effects of aging. Mental acuity is reestablished to its twenty-year plateau, physical prowess becomes that of a typical, moderately fit thirty-year old, the standard signs of aging such as wrinkles and graying recede almost completely, and the person nearly wholly returns to an age where ageing is never even an issue. It's nothing shy of a miracle. But how did Te' Luma find this God-like cure-all? It depends on who you ask.

Local legend tells of a man by the name of Martin Derrick, a man, who it seems, is coincidentally the great grand father of Te'Luma's founder, Ivan Derrick. From stories pieced together over the years it is known that Martin, sometime in 2021 was out plowing his farmland just before planting season. He was tilling the soil when suddenly his machine grinded to a halt. As he stopped to investigate the source of his troubles, he discovered something foreign lodged in the tilling disks. After some finagling, Martin was finally able to remove the piece. The item he held in his hand was a pewter-colored (albeit filthy) circular object roughly the size and shape of a tea saucer. After some cleaning in curiosity, he held the disk to the sun and noticed runes and hieroglyphics scrolled across the surface of the outer ring. The center hummed and lit with a dull crimson phosphorescence that spread like blood-filled veins into the writing. It shook, almost unnoticeably, with a numbing thrum that seemed to set off all the nerves in Martin's hands as he held the amulet... yes, that's what it was: an Amulet. And it somehow beckoned. Beckoned to him.

As the years passed, Martin began to regain some of his youthful fervor. He tended to daily tasks with a bit more aplomb and whimsy than his age would let on. He was up at four, tending to the animals and the land, in by noon for a hearty brunch, and back to work till sundown. This was daily, and he thought nothing of it, especially as he kept the amulet with him at all times. It wouldn't let him have it any other way. And Martin was content. But he couldn't help thinking, as he said his prayers and kissed his wife, that there was something else he could be doing with his new found vitality. And there was, at least one thing: his wife bore him his first and only child, Emmit.

As Emmit grew and began to take on likes and dislikes of his own, it was clear to his father that farming was not in his boy's blood. Emmit was adventurous, daring, risky, and far too scatter-brained to focus on tending the Earth, so, when he turned eighteen, Martin helped his son pack -including the Amulet hoping beyond hope that it would impart the same luck and youthful exuberance it had for Martin, though at the same time quite reluctant to see it go- and sent him on his way to make his fortune in the city. A fortune that would become the basis for the end of death as we know it.

To be continued...

The Amulet: Kindred II

2011-01-17T10:03:00.003-05:00

Kimmy and Molly lay curled up on the couch. It was a little after three a.m. and neither had slept. Tanner arched his eyes restlessly at the girls as though begging them to give him some purpose... something to do. For tonight, even the dog was an insomniac.

The girls had spent several hours writing. They found some paper and a few Sharpies and set about coming up with some semblance of a plan. They had to leave, of this there was no doubt. But where to go? Kimmy knew that she had an uncle who just lived about ten miles away out past the mall, so they had thought about going there. But that would require quite a bit of walking, an exercise neither was to thrilled about. Molly suggested they head to some place like her church, which was a little closer to town, and was full of food and things. They considered this option, too, until the conversation got weighed down with the constant numbing pull of a recent past filled with, of all things, their now dead parents. Then they just sat, silently wept, and stared, with hollow emptiness, into the room. And so it went.

Kimmy stretched, reached out and patted Tanner on his ignorant head, and smiled, sadly at her blissfully unaware dog.

"Tanner... you have it so lucky. You're just a dog... you have no idea what's happening and you have no reason to care," Kimmy choked back a sob and swiped her sleeve across her face.

Molly nodded, sighed, and yawned. She wished just a little that she could be Tanner, too.

"Kimmy... I'm really hungry. What's left here to eat?"

Kimmy and Molly raided what was left of the decent food in the fridge consisting of half of the cherry pie they'd begun last night, a bag of carrots, two plastic cups of yogurt, and some very cold -and probably a little old- lemonade. They found quite a few cans of food in the pantry along with several boxes of crackers and other snacks which they decided would be best saved for their trip neither really wanted to discuss. Tanner sniffed, muzzled, and knocked over his kibble and lapped up a few pieces feigning hunger more than fulfilling any real desire to eat. The pink elephant in the room hung around like an impending piece of terrible news; Kimmy and Molly had to get down to the business of forming a cohesive plan. I was time to go.

Kimmy went to her parent's bedroom closet and found a small suitcase on wheels and a tennis duffel bag. She spread the bag open and unzipped the luggage on the floor. The girls filled the duffel with all the canned foods they could conceivably carry along with the much lighter crackers and snacks. Kimmy, in turn, found a few outfits in her room, including a few she'd just outgrown that would likely fit Molly, and may just be a bit baggy. She asked Molly if she'd brought a toothbrush to which Molly literally guffawed a big, boisterous laugh. Kimmy laughed, too, and found a spare that had never been opened from its package. They glanced at the medicine cabinet and felt it best to only take things they were sure about and decided on Band-Aids, bandages, cotton balls, a bottle marked Aspirin that Kimmy knew was for aches and pains, and a package of her mom's pantie liners. She hadn't begun her period yet, but there was no sense in tempting fate without some kind of protection. After another thorough check for anything they might need, Kimmy tossed a kitchen knife and the meat tenderizer into the bag. Then she shut both, handed the handle of the suitcase to Molly and slung the heavier duffel over her own shoulder. She leashed Tanner (just in case), snatched the hatchet and slid the handle into her belt. Molly decided against the cumbersome pitchfork and instead opted for the kitchen cleaver.

The girls stood at the door. They stared into the open expanse of the world beyond. Under Kimmy's shirt, dangling from her neck, the amulet slowly pulsed.

THE AMULET: Memory

2010-12-26T22:19:00.003-05:00

The last thing she remembered saying was, "How did we hit it that hard?"

Dana Marts lay in her hospital bed staring, unblinking at the ceiling. The white tiles mocked her from twelve feet away. The monotonously cheeping box beside her monitored her fragile life; fed her fluids and kept the tube attached to her face chugging in the life-giving oxygen. Dana let a tear fall down her cheek at a weird, forty-five degree angle. She really had no other choice. Her chest lifted every six seconds as her lungs inflated and emptied the air from her frail being. Her lips were cracked with chap as the hung, swollen in the room. The blanket was draped over her, innocuously, collecting the dust that hung in the solemn air. No one sat in the chairs, no one paced the room in pregnant anticipation, and no one monitored the machine and took notes with alacrity. And the heavy metal amulet draped off the edge of the bed-side table and thrummed with its beating, amber hue. The last thing she remembered saying was, "How did we hit it that hard?"

The Amulet: Origins

2010-09-22T12:40:00.002-04:00

The full moon hung in the cloudless sky like a wide-open, grey eye. It's surface features were as brilliant as the surrounding landscape; craters visible creating a simulacrum of a human face, winking yet indifferent. The chill in the air was thick and cloying, numbing bodies to their bony core. Warm clouds of exhaled breath wafted in the light breeze, spewing constantly from the collection of cowled adults gathered in a complete circle around a hundred candles and a chilly stone tablet set atop a marble altar. Though the atmosphere was brittle, the heat radiating from the chanting men and women could almost be seen as shuddering waves cascading into the night. Chanting, low and murmuring, rose in a baritone crescendo. United ancient words melded together in one, coalescing tone into the brisk, crisp air. And on the pedestal, in the center of the tablet -undulating in rich, deep reds and chromatic pewter- sat an amulet; pulsating, thrumming, beating... alive.

Six men, six women. Their circle complete. Their order was offset; one woman, one man, one woman. Each wore a black, woolen robe with a hood that completely concealed their faces save for their chanting, moaning mouths. Underneath their robes, they wore nothing, as was the way and the law of the Sayer. The Sayer had many rules: each member must be united with the next, and he united with her, and so on until all twelve had become, essentially, one; and each single member, though afforded a meager dwelling, had to spend every sixth night with another member. Often times, this meant several with one, so said the Sayer, and all believed this inter-mingling to be an accepted way of life. The sixth month, on the six night, for six hours beginning when the moon was high in the sky, the twelve returned to their sepulcher and prepared the Amulet for 'The Variance': the combining of their souls into the 'Eye of the Sayer'. The formed their circle, they repeated their chant, and they lost themselves to The Sayer and its Eye

Each of the twelve was a respected member of the society of their village: Engruu. They all held lofty positions in the hierarchy including judge, treasurer, chief hunter, village elder, and war general. Each, as well, was a receptacle for pure evil. They willingly opened themselves to darkness, sorrow, hatred, disrespect, anger, and callousness. They each became a vessel for each and every feeling and desperate act that would otherwise cripple the village. And so, imbued with these feelings, they led their tribe and waited, patiently, to purge themselves at the Sayer's Eye. For days, weeks, and months, the twelve absorbed every ounce of evil, and every bit of deviltry only to expurgate in the circle. And so the Amulet; the 'Eye of the Sayer', supped at the people's negativity as it ebbed and flowed into it like a tide. The Amulet grew into an object of such unspeakable horror and ghastly repugnance that it soon began to extrude its consumed power over everyone and everything in Engruu.

It was time to find others.

THE AMULET: Kindred

2010-09-02T14:34:00.002-04:00

Kimmy stared at the door. She breathed, and paid close attention to her heart as it pounded rapidly in her chest. She sniffed, rubbed her nose, and thought to herself for just a second that maybe she'd imagined-

knock knock knock

Tanner's low growl steadily built its crescendo erupted into a series of sharp barks. Kimmy jumped a little at he dog, and slowly patted his head. She almost felt like screaming herself. She swallowed and turned to Tanner.

"What'll we do, boy?" She whispered harshly.

"Hello? I-i-is anyone h-h-here?" The tiny voice from the patio said.

knock knock knock

The voice certainly didn't sound as threatening as Kimmy's mind was attempting to make it. She scooted off the couch with Tanner immediately at her heels. She tip-toed to the front door, cupped her hand, and pressed it and her ear to the wood.

"My n-n-n-name is Molly. I-I-I-I've been walking a really long time... with this pitchfork. I'm really tired and lost! Hello?"

knock knock

She sounded to Kimmy like she was on the verge of tears. Kimmy sidled over to the curtain and slowly pulled it back just enough to see the porch. There, in denim overalls, without shoes, filthy and obviously exhausted, stood a little girl maybe twelve years old. And next to her on the concrete was, as she said, a huge pitchfork. The tines were tinted with what could have either been dirt or, possibly, blood.

Kimmy watched with a bit of sorrow as Molly plopped on the porch, hiked up her knees, and began to sob. She knew there was literally no way that Molly was any kind of threat. Kimmy turned to the door and saw Tanner jump u to his hind legs and begin to whimper. Somehow even the dog knew that this little girl was as innocent as could be.

"Okay boy, get down. We'll check it out. But we'd better be safe about it..."

Kimmy stepped to the table and grabbed the ax. She returned to the door, and slowly turned the handle. There, on the stoop, was the sad sight she'd seen from the window, curled into a shuddering ball before her.

"Hi. I'm Kimmy." She said lowering herself into a crouch.

Molly shot her head up and instinctively covered herself with her arm. This, in turn, threw her off balance and she basically spilled onto her back. Molly scurried to her feet and quickly snatched up the pitchfork that was obviously far too heavy for her to handle with one hand. Kimmy just stood silently with a side-long grin on her face.

Suddenly the door flew from Kimmy's hands and the large do that would no longer be corralled lunged forward, barked once without a hint of malice, and wagged itself up to Molly and began licking her hands and face.

"Whoa!" Molly gasped with a hint of a laugh and tried to swipe away the dog's fluttering tongue.

Kimmy giggled and called back her dog. "His name is Tanner and I think he's made a new friend!"

Molly let him finish licking until he leaped to Kimmy's side and obediently sat at her side.

"As I said, I'm Kimmy. I live here with my..." She choked a little as the word 'parents' caught in her throat. "I-I live here..."

"I'm Molly. I live... over that way." She pointed east toward the more rural section of the outskirts of town where the farms and acres of land stood spreading into the horizon. "I had to get out. I had to k-k-kill my daddy..."

Suddenly weeping again, Molly did the only natural thing a girl her age could do. She dropped her pitchfork and ran into Kimmy's waiting arms. They both stood on the patio in the setting sun and cried into one another's caresses. Molly, between hitching breaths, told of how she had to murder her father because of an evil coming from an amulet. Kimmy nodded in complete understanding and relayed her own tale of death and destruction and how she, too, had an amulet. Neither one understanding just how much worse the situation had gotten. Not yet.

THE AMULET Part 1: Continued

2010-08-26T12:34:00.004-04:00

Kimmy's parents were among the dead. She felt the tightness of guilt and the numb fluidity of sorrow grip her and threaten to take hold, but it was a temporary feeling and she absently batted at a rolling tear as she stepped over them.

It wasn't really them. It wasn't really them...

She took a big step over the gored corpses and began making her way to the front door. Something stirred behind her and she froze. Her heart thrummed wildly in her chest and she could feel its pulses in her throat as it created its customary clicks of fear. Kimmy felt herself snatching quick, whistling breaths as she swallowed past her fright and slowly turned around.

She was pelted from the side. The dip of her neck where it met her right shoulder was suddenly muzzled by a warm wetness and the unmistakable feeling of a tongue licking her. Kimmy sighed and a grin creased her bloodied face as she reached around and caressed the furry jowls of Tanner, her St. Bernard.

"My God, Tanner... you almost made me throw up! I'm so glad to see you, boy!"

Tanner panted and stared at her as he resumed lapping up some of the dried blood spatter that had coated her during the recent debacle. He dropped his paws onto one of the bodies, that of Kimmy's dad, and he began to nuzzle and sniff the familiar odor of the man he'd lived with for years.

"Don't. He's dead, Tanner. He might smell like dad, but he definitely wasn't a minute ago..."

Tanner cocked his head sideways, sneezed, and resumed his frantic panting. Kimmy completed her wide berth of the massacre on the kitchen floor, and headed anew for the exit. Tanner bounded the mess, landed a tad awkwardly in one of the rapidly congealing pools of blood, and trundled after Kimmy leaving an odd pairing of red paw-marks in his wake.

Kimmy slumped on the couch. She needed to reorganize her thoughts. She needed to come up with some kind of plan; someway to get out and get going without calling too much attention to herself. In one hand she still gripped the sodden ax. She set it with a heavy clunk on the coffee table and examined the object she held in her left hand: the amulet.

"What is the deal with this thing? Why did it turn everyone into a raving... loony?" She began to softly weep.

Tanner flopped on the couch; an area he was unaccustomed to being, and dropped his snout into Kimmy's lap. His eyebrows arched with a false look of sadness; a look every dog has mastered whether its honestly showing feelings or not. He huffed, nuzzled a bit deeper into Kimmy, and closed his eyes. Kimmy absently petted him with long, careful strokes as she stared into space and slowly swung the horrid, metallic disk in a languid pendulum.

********

Kimmy's eyes fluttered open and she inhaled deeply, bringing herself out of the terrible nightmare from which she was suffering. Thanks to being a horror movie fan coupled with the events of late, her dream featured zombies in various forms of decay surrounding her as she and Tanner hung on to chimney. She was unsure how she managed to get her sixty-plus pound dog up there, but it didn't matter since their safety was in jeopardy anyway. Kimmy shivered, in turn waking Tanner; his head bolting from her lap and a low growl escaping his throat as a low woof.

"It's okay, boy. I guess we fell asleep. I wonder what time..."

She glanced at the glowing numbers on the cable box. They showed 7:15, which made sense as the waning bits of the sun shown orange and deep ocher through the kitchen windows. Lighted, criss-crossed squares highlighted the heap of bodies still laying motionless on the tile. The visuals brought forth other senses and Kimmy suddenly became aware that she could smell gone off meat and the acrid tang of blood. She shook her head and wondered if Tanner was suffering far worse, as she'd read somewhere once that dogs had a way keener sense of smell than humans. Probably.

And then the knock came.

TO CONTINUE...

Face Time : The Amulet Part XIII

2010-07-19T14:41:00.006-04:00

Prologue

Tim and Grizzly mounted their respective choppers and peeled out of the Stop-N-Go parking lot spraying gravel and plumes of dust into the scorching Arizona air. Tim's bike had the sidecar. He typically loaded it up with their crusty duffel bags and other sundries they'd gather along the way, but today it featured something -rather, someone- a little unusual: Erin McAllister. But she wasn't along for a joyride through the sizzling desert, rather she was roped, duct taped, and masked and currently unconscious and coated with tacky, drying blood.

Erin's day began not unlike any other: alarm jolting her from sleep, shuffling to the shower, dressing in her cleanest (and often shortest -customers appreciated it) shorts and Stop-N-Go T-shirt, brush the hair and teeth, and head out the door. Her mom would smile and wave with a blown kiss from her home office across the family room, barely acknowledging, and Erin would slide out the mobile home's screen door and begin her half-mile trot to work. This was the standard procedure every week: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. She padded past her only two neighbors along County Road 560: Bev and Harold Shumaker (elderly, always complaining, but more than willing to share their all-but unused pool), and Dr. Albert Marx and his son, eight-year old Gus (he who was obviously hitting puberty a tad early) and followed the gentle curve to where the rocky road met I-40 right at the Stop-N-Go. But today, Thursday July 29th, Erin saw something out of the corner of her eye.

The dirt road itself always fairly glinted and sparkled with detritus from ages-old car accidents and broken bottles, but this particular Thursday Erin saw something just a bit brighter and somehow more odd than anything else. It gleamed to her left and made her stutter a bit in her jog. She skidded and caught her breath tossing up mini clouds of rain-parched dry earth. Just off the side of the road buried about half-way up was something round and grayed with dust and age. It jutted askew and shone in the early morning son. Erin crouched near, as it appeared sharp and somehow dangerous; she balanced between wanting to touch it and knowing she shouldn't, teetering precariously between somehow right, and also very wrong. But often times curiosity actually does, as they say, kill the cat. Her outstretched hand brushed the rough surface of the metallic object and a dull thrum lanced up her arm feeling... well, not entirely unpleasant, actually. She snatched her arm away and rubbed it as she furrowed her brow, giving the object a cursory glance. And then the object's color began to change.

Tim Ames and Dexter 'Grizzly' Adams slowly arced into the parking lot of the Stop-N-Go just off interstate 40, cruising their Harley's into adjacent spots. Following on their wheels blew in wafts of tire-thrown road dust and mini twisters. The dirty ghosts of the road past meandered and furled past the men as they dismounted their hogs, unlatched their helmets, and patted clods of brown, caked-on filth from their leathers. The men breathed deeply, took in new air that wasn't muggy from helmet glass, stretched loudly and languidly, and waltzed slowly to the doors. The bell dinged slightly as Tim pushed it into the air-conditioned interior, and he and Grizzly sighed a little at its comforting embrace.

Erin crouched, her backside nearly touching the calloused earth below her, and gingerly stroked the shimmering, and now red-glowing, metallic object poking from the ground in front of her. It occurred to her just then that more of it was below the ground and so she went about considering options for its removal. Nothing shy of her actually pulling it free made any sense at all, and so she did. She tenderly gripped the rim, all the while taking in its constant vibrating hum, and pulled. It came free like the decay of a rotted tooth; no resistance as the parched ground around it rolled away in loose bits. In her had appeared a disk the rough size and shape of a small dessert plate. She'd seen things it's ilk before; her mother had a collection of inherited China sitting in a small cabinet in the family room. Emily brushed off the dirt and dust and stared at the rune's intricate loops and whorls, etchings and textures, reliefs and carvings... it was ornate to say the least, but it was surely the dead center where the pulsating red originated that held her attention. She absently swatted at a few flies that had begun to gather, ignored a runnel of sweat that trickled down her back into her shorts, and never even felt a small rivulet of blood that dropped from her nose...

Stay Tuned For Part 2

The Amulet XII: Soul Stealing

2010-04-22T15:15:00.004-04:00

Joe sat back heavily on his butt and let out a wet, desperate sob. Angel was gone, as he'd always known she would be; one day sooner or later, he knew she'd breathe her last and so would end an ordeal in both love and terror.

He sat in the grass for a while longer, staring through eyes like wet church glass and just inhaled steadily while his heart beat; a broken and worthless instrument.

Joe sat up on his knees, smiled and mouthed his undying love for his long suffering bride, and stood with a moment of vertigo. It was time to go home. Time to go back to the house that was now an empty, cavernous shell, just like his own life, now. Angel was gone, and Joe had one thing left to do.

In 1997, Joe Porter met Silvia Angel at a bar. Often meetings based around mutual love for alcohol and pool rarely got beyond one night stands, but somehow, some way, the two had clicked. Time soared for the next two years and before they knew it the couple were shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond for wedding gifts. The wedding itself was a stunning, unforgettable affair with a royal air and everything lovers of the Medieval enjoy: costumes, period-specific food, horses, swans, crowns... regal to say the least. The nuptials and reception party lasted well into the following day until everyone finally succumbed to weariness and went their separate ways. Joe and 'Angel' (she hated Silvia and took to being called to her now former surname) went home and spent the evening opening gifts and consummating their new relationship.

The gifts were all unwrapped, save one. It was neither the biggest nor the most unusual, but, at the same time, it seemed to be the one they collectively avoided without really realizing it until the very end. It was round, roughly the size of a tea saucer, and tightly wrapped in nondescript, white paper. Yet, even with all the commonality about it, it resonated with something neither could quite explain. And they didn't. No one spoke, but Joe held it up, rolled it over in his hands with a quizzical expression, and shrugged as he began to separate the tape from its moorings. Angle stayed his hand with a look of fearful dismay and quickly shook her head. Joe smiled, and gave her a solemn cock-eyed glance and removed the remainder of the paper. In his hands lay the most unusual piece of (what, artwork?) that he'd ever seen. Angel then seemed to physically pull away from the disc-shaped object as an invisible cloak of fear enveloped her.

It wasn't precisely ugly, but it surely wasn't something either would consider beautiful or even very cool, but it was a gift from -well, this was the odd part: neither could find an attached tag or card announcing from whom it came. Despite that fact, they still decided to display it lest the giver come over at some point and ask about it with undesirable results. It was given a small stand like a picture and set over the fireplace on the mantle. They stared at it longingly yet fought to tear themselves away. It's etched runes that ran the circumference of the disc seemed to thrum and pulsate with a deep, horrible red; a red that nothing of this Earth should rightly be hued. It was a dull, unpolished pewter elsewhere and had an almost unkempt, filthy quality about it that, for all intents and purposes, made the casual viewer feel ill and dizzy and not right at all. Yet, they were prodded -somehow- to keep it. And so they did.

As with many lucky couples, Joe and Angel fell even deeper in love. They spent as much time together as they conceivably could. They were able to find jobs with matching schedules, 9-5, and never let an evening conclude without love making and sharing of one another. They stole long, passionate kisses in public places as they coyly darted their glances at those not nearly in as deep of love as they. They began to skirt danger by having sex in locations where it was even a little more than just taboo: airliners, restaurant washrooms, friends bathrooms and bedrooms, public parks, and darkened bars in corners where no one could see them. They were rebellious, but neither cared and they began thriving off the thrill of the spot. Joe seemed to be the most adept at securing a location that seemed just out of the views of prying eyes. But even so, they still enjoyed the simple fact that they could, at any time, be caught. And so it continued, as often as it could, the sex where shadows only dwell. And little by little, things began to change.

Angel began getting sick a fair bit more often than, say, a normal person of her typical health. She felt weak, drained, older... she took to far longer stays in bed when she wasn't at work. A chore in and of itself. Angel made several trips to her OBGYN and was told that there was nothing discernibly wrong with her. The only thing she was told was to change her diet and pick up her exercise routine. But nothing helped and her failing health and rising ills turned her into but a shell of her formal self. Her and Joe's sex life began to slowly fade. It was too uncomfortable. Even their kisses seemed lifeless and drab. Especially those offered by Joe in the candle light of the family room. Especially those felt by the disc above the fireplace. The disc that pulsated with the rapidly declining heartbeat of Angel.

Yet, there was another change going on, and it was within Joe. Just as Angel was aging and slowly succumbing to the ravages of her failing health, Joe seemed to be something of a 'Super Hero'. He had begun a standard, low-impact workout routine to be there with Angel as she attempted to fix herself. But as her results only sided with the worse, Joe began to bulk up, add muscle mass, and generally become a guy he'd never in a million years suspect he'd become. His health was just as impressive: lower cholesterol, little to no fat, and the cleanest bill hes ever seen. He was stronger, faster, and felt years younger. But it was all useless and just as meaningless as he could do little more than watch as his beloved soul mate, Angel, became a ghastly husk. Joe still loved kissing his wonderful wife, and often, as he did in front of a crackling fire made to keep Angel warm -even in the summer- he swore he saw, from the corner of his eye, the strange disc vibrate and glow with that sickly, bloody red.

It became all too obvious to Joe and Angel as he held her in his arms and gently, softly pecked her lips. Joe knew, now where this evil had originated. Joe knew, now that the gift, the amulet, in their family room was responsible. But Joe was defiant if he was anything else, and Joe had no intention of letting the amulet win without a sucker punch.

Angel was thin -better to say she was emaciated. Her illness had leached every useful bit of muscle from her weakening body. Her skin had gone ghostly pale and as thin and fragile as rice paper. Even at its surface, the blood that still, barely, scarcely, pumped through her dying veins could be seen in hues of purplish blue. Her lips sloughed away from her rotting gums that still held onto the last of her diseased teeth. Her arms and legs hung limply from her atrophied form as they spilled like limp jelly from her nicest dress; a dress Joe had long since given up on seeing her in again regardless of just how much he loved her in it... so very long ago. And now Joe intended to make love to his wife one final time. He could feel her slight heart giving up, giving in to him. For it was Joe; Joe and his kisses, his love, his sex, that stole from her. Joe robbed Angel of her very life.

And the Amulet was the catalyst. The evil. The pure, horrible evil that dwelt within the amulet made Joe its slave. Each and every time Joe professed his love for his bride physically, and even mentally, he would unwittingly steal from that which kept her alive. He would steal from an Angel's soul.

Joe and Angel -against their most basic emotions- fought the devil that dwelt inside the amulet and they made love. They bonded together for the very last time. As Joe came, and as he felt Angel give all that was left of her once beautiful form, the repugnant disc flashed a ghastly red, and then shone nothing but the deepest gray. Angle died in her husband's arms just as it was meant to be... though it was far, far too soon.

The Amulet XI: Endless

2010-01-14T10:19:00.004-05:00

Commander Davitz sat at the observation deck of the U.S.S. Vista, arms folded across his chest, staring blankly at the anomaly that hung, motionless in space directly in front of the ship: just where it had remained for the past 74 hours. Davitz twiddled his thumbs, sighed defeated, and tapped his control panel. Up sprung a complete readout of the past three days with folders, files, and lists detailing everything he and his crew had tried in an attempt to communicate. The info hung in the air like a formless computer screen and the Commander was able to manipulate the 'desktop' with mere movements of his hand; he did just that with fluid, dreamy flicks and twists once again mulling over every piece of info he'd already seen a hundred times.

Strangely all he and his entire crew knew was what was directly in front of him: the mysterious object was disc-shaped (that was obvious), but beyond that it was layered with undulating runes of a completely indeterminate origin that ringed the inner surface. It was a dull silver, like brushed chrome that had been left to slightly corrode. The center (or 'eye' as it had come to be known) was round and of such a deep, blood red that it was almost frightening to look at. The color was one thing, but the fact that it also pulsated like a heartbeat was even more disturbing. In fact, not 'like' a heartbeat, but matched precisely to whomever sat in the chair looking out into space. Right now it was thrumming in rhythm to Davitz's own. That was eerie like nothing else.

The chimes that announced a visitor blooped.

"Come." Davitz announced both bored and irritated.

The First Officer, Captain Andrea James marched in stiffly and regal, "Sir. We have some new information on the structure."

Davitz's brows furrowed, "I bet. Let me guess: something else painfully obvious, Captain?"

The Captain frowned, belayed by the smile in her eyes, "No, Sir. In fact, you actually have to see this to believe it. It caught us a bit off guard."

The Commander looked slightly more interested and beckoned his Captain forth.

Captain James took position to the left of the observation chair, touched a few buttons on the control pad, and the info display was replaced with an audio conversion program. Within the program were several digital dials and sliders used to adjust pitch, volume, vocal depth, and the standard bass and trebles. On the top of the simulated screen were the words: Cannibal Corpse.

"I'm confused Captain. What is this signifying? And, while I'm at it, what is a 'Cannibal Corpse'.

The Captain grinned, "This is an audio readout and adjustment program we use to understand foreign and alien audio. But, it can be used to play selections as well."

The Commander nodded, losing interest rapidly.

"As we... the science officers and technical operators... spent some time attempting to throw different types of communication at the anomaly, we eventually stumbled -quite accidentally and on a mere whim- on something. It seems to respond to a specific type of music from the 20th Century called 'Death Metal'. Watch..."

Captain James offered headphones to the Commander, but he waved them off to a 'suit yourself' shrug. The Captain punched the button that began the track and horrific sounds belched from the internal speakers. She then tapped the button that would force sound waves out from the frequency scrambler on the ship straight to the disk. What happened was both breathtaking and absolutely revolting...

To Be Continued...

Waiting -- The Amulet Part X

2009-10-04T10:56:00.005-04:00

Sadly, Ben hadn't moved in two days. The tepid dampness that clung to the cushion and to the bottom of his sweat pants spread over the easy-chair's edge and dammed up near the foot rest. Ben wet; he'd thought about trying to get up and run to the bathroom many times in his mind -hell, he'd formulated plans and methods- but all in all, it was just easier (and somehow less dangerous) just to wet himself. And so he did. His fingers had scraped ruts into the curved edges of the armrests; back and forth, back and forth, curling under with nervous anticipation. His mouth was pasty from lack of anything real to drink. Fortunately, Ben was a bit of a slob so several half-drunk cups of liquid sat gathering dust all around his chair either on the end table or sitting on the floor... so, he did have those. They were nasty: flat soda, stale iced tea, beer cans with nothing more than warm beer-flavored backwash sitting in congealing pools in the bottom. Yes, he had a modicum of sustenance, but few things that wouldn't make him retch, not to mention no food at all. Ben was coated in a slick sheen of perspiration. It had gotten rather humid in the room since he'd first sat down, and none of the windows were open. Ben's eyes hurt. They burned and stung. It had nothing to do with allergens, but it did have to do with trying hard not to blink. He stared ceaselessly straight ahead, and only blinked when the agony turned to screaming numbness. And even then, he'd only blink once. Ben's legs had atrophied sometime in the middle of the night and all he could feel of them was kind of a ghostly, deep-seated ache if and when he attempted to switch his position or wiggle his toes. There was no denying it: Ben was trapped. Ben was trapped by something sitting, stolidly, on the doorway carpet.

Thursday night, Ben Anson gathered a plastic cup of Diet Coke, snatched up is remote, and plopped down in the tan Lay-Z-Boy he'd called 'good old mama' since he found it perched longingly on the curbside of a house whose inhabitants were moving out three years ago. It had some tape on it, one side of the cushion was a bit lower than the other, and it did, on a hot day with no circulation, smell a bit like a wet dog. But none of this mattered to Ben, because at the end of the day, it was really the only comfortable thing he had, and pretty much the only thing he owned that still, in a weird way, reminded him of his dead wife. She'd passed a week to the day after he found the chair. She died in it, in fact. Ben wanted something comfortable to use for his wife's final days as she slowly succumbed to the ravages of colon cancer. She passed quietly in her sleep, and was removed by the EMT's not an hour later. 'Good old mama' was Ben's chair, and it was also his wife's chair, and between the two of them and their mutual attachments, the chair stayed and slowly faded into a sort of living comfort. Ben plopped down, flicked on NBC, and fell into fits of typical laughter as he watched the humor fall in spades. But then the door opened and closed as the darkness walked in.

Ben didn't often lock his doors until he was literally pacing the house just before bed. So, it surely wasn't odd that the front door was basically open to whomever decided to just turn the knob and waltz in. And so, during The Office, it did. Ben had known the squeak that the door emitted like he knew the house itself. It always sounded like it was sighing the word 'tin', so when he heard the all-too familiar noise, Ben bolted upright in his chair and glared over to the front door that sat directly across the room from him. Two seconds later, the door shut behind whatever it was, and echoed it's lone word: 'tin'. And there, in the dark shadow provided by the stairwell, stood... something. It didn't move, didn't flinch, and didn't make a sound. Ben called to it, not so much angrily but out of surprise and question, but it didn't respond. Ben waited, tried to get a better idea of what it was by squinting, sitting up a little, and finally calling out yet again, this time with a bit more baritone and ire to his voice. Still, nothing. But something just the same. A quick metallic flash arced across the mid-point of the shape and Ben could just make out a ring of deep red dully illuminating a large disc-shaped object. It was right then Ben became frozen in absolute fear to 'good old mama'.

And now, two days later, Ben was sitting in a rapidly growing puddle of his own urine, fighting back the gnawing growls of his suffering hunger and slightly less annoyed thirst. His voice was dry, but Ben finally gathered together all the strength he had and decided to call out to the unflinching, stone-solid shadow that stood firm at his doorstep.

"I-Is there something y-y-you w-w-want?" Ben barked in a voice that sounded horrific in his own ears.

"I do," came the slithering, gibbering cackle that belched from the shape, "I want you to wait... longer."

Ben felt not only a frozen flash crawl its way from his dead legs all along his spine to his scalp, but also, in contrast, another flood of warm pee spill out onto the chair. Ben's breathing came in short rasps and he could feel his already frantic heart immediately turn into a off-pace drum beat hammer through his whole being.

"W-w-why me?" Ben found himself whimpering into the stale air.

But it didn't answer. Never again. And eventually, thanks to strong odors permeating the air both in and outside the house, Ben was finally found, slightly mummified, by his dead wife's sister who'd decided to stop by for a surprise visit. Ben had been dead for nearly a month. As she stood in the doorway of the oddly unlocked house, even before the stench of death made her vomit onto the patio, she discovered something metallic and disc-shaped hanging by a chain from the stairway.

THE AMULET: It Begins

2009-08-24T13:33:00.003-04:00

Though in the beginning there was Heaven and Earth, there was also Hades. God, in his omnipotent wisdom and merciful grace, was the Lord of his Heaven. Around him stood limitless columns of clouds, vast expanses of beauty, and complete un-Earthly forever as far as the faithful could see. This was perfection; this was what those who truly believed and honestly expected would find after they shuffled their mortal coil. It was to be All; it was to be Life Anew. It was Heaven, and it was breathless, exalted, and pristine love in all its completeness. But not all who knew and understood and believed would be granted admission.

Some had to be punished. Some had to learn from their mistakes. Some had to know Heaven only as an unachievable respite to their Purgatory in the insane depths of what only their most wicked nightmares to remotely conceive. For they had to be sent to the fires. They -the ones who turned a blind eye to the words of the Lord- must be tossed asunder to suffer endlessly in the burning, searing, relentless pits of the House of Hades. All hate, all wanton desire, all evil... it was thrust upon them as they lay about crying, weeping, pleading... it was forever. Even God; the Holy Spirit and embodiment of all things light and right, had to turn his back and let the ones who rightfully deserved to rot like fetid meat do so. And so Hell took on a population of its own.

He Who Sits On Ashen Throne; He who is called Satan... He looked upon the inky, smoldering depths of his inhuman home. His place as ruler of Hades was written long before there was a choice to make. But his Hell had grown fat with writhing, sinning, blasphemous, wretches and he had to make a choice. He would send forth an Army. A battalion of Hell Spawn to swarm about the Earth destroying lives and sending those innocent lives above, to where God had to deal with them. But how?

An amulet. A trinket of such outstanding and awesome power as to turn man and woman alike to quivering, lifeless husks. He would imbue it with all of the essence; all of the foreboding, filthy, anger of Hell and he would arm his minions with it. And they would scour the Earth, wreaking havoc as they marched their ill will throughout. And so the Amulet was born.

Daddy - The Amulet: Continued

2009-08-02T13:31:00.003-04:00

Daddy used to get home at 7:30 every night. Without fail, in fact; every night, like clockwork, at 7:30. I'd have dinner ready. Daddy wasn't picky; as long as he could eat, he never really cared what it was. When we could afford something better: ham, a chicken... of course that's what he really liked. But nearly every night, we ate soup. Luckily we kept enough bones on hand to flavor our soups, or else Daddy was forced just to enjoy the vegetables we grew outside. Much of those, too, were kept frozen. But Daddy made life good. Mostly because Mom had died when I was two, so Daddy took over both responsibilities. For a few years, our neighbor from a mile down the road would walk to our house and keep an eye on me while Daddy was at the docks. But none of this really matters; none of this is what this tale is really about.

Daddy was a wonderful man. Though he had no real reason to ever raise a hand to me, he never even did it just because. He was kind, quiet, often withdrawn, but always gave of himself and found that extra hour of the evening to spend time with me. And the best days -the days that I did my best around the house and spent a little extra on making our soup perfect- were Wednesdays. Wednesdays were the days when the Maligned came in. The Maligned was a crab boat that spent a week at a time out on the water landing pots (those, Daddy said, were like big baskets) and pots of crab. Though Daddy could never afford to buy a crab (however, on rare occasions, the guys would give him a little one), the captain of the Maligned always brought Daddy a gift to give to me. The captain, a Mr. Leland, had a daughter of his own back at his home across the sea, so he felt a special connection to me. And that is why Wednesdays were the best days.

One week, I was given an old, rusty diving bell. Another time: a still-functional compass. A few times I'd gotten a bottle with a slip of paper in them, but I'd never gotten up the guts to open them and read the notes. Something about the helplessness and the thoughts of the likely long-dead writers... Anyway, they went in the collection. The gifts were great, all of them. But the part I really liked was the stories Daddy told with them. Were they truth? I never knew and I never cared; Daddy embellished every one with wonderul tales of the object, to whom it supposedly belonged, and just how it came to get landed by the fishermen. I can still recall every story from each of my special items like the backs of my hands. But, Daddy only told them once, the memory was up to me.

One Wednesday, things were different. Not in the way that Daddy forgot the gift, oh no, he remembered it alright. But this time, the gift itself was bad. I can't describe it any better than that: it was bad, bad, bad. Daddy brought it home in a sack. The bag was just a typical bait bag: burlap, thick, scratchy... but this time, it was the bag that was keeping the bad thing quiet. Until I opened it.

It was the size of a saucer. It was round, weighty, and exquisitely ornate. Etched on it's surface were designs I'd never seen (Daddy called them 'runes'), but I knew right away I didn't like them. They... well, they glowed. The deep-red surrounding the marks, laid out in gem-like rings, hummed to the beat of my own heart. I couldn't touch it. No: I wouldn't touch it. And that's when Daddy got bad, too. I had never once seen my Daddy like that: fear, anger, rage... his eyes ebony with hate. He came after me.

Fortunately I am faster.

I buried Daddy two weeks ago. I have the... what, 'amulet' I guess, wrapped in three bedsheets and locked in my jewelry box. I am sad, yes, but the way I'd seen Daddy... well, I know he's better off. I wish I had the pitchfork back, though. Because I've seen things...

Just outside.

Shoes - The Amulet: The Next Chapter

2009-07-25T17:35:00.004-04:00

David and Sally sped down the darkened highway. The shoulders as far as either could see were slightly overgrown with trees whose canopies arced across the pavement like a arboreal tunnel. David hated roads like this; in fact, one of his scariest and most livid nightmares was getting lost on a night highway just like this and getting forced to wander. Alone. He glanced over at Sally who was pondering over a puzzle book equipped with a little Book Light so David wouldn't be quite as effected by the glare. She smiled, peered over the top of her reading glasses, and made a cutesy, kissy face with her lips. David tried to return the grin, but just then his gaze was stolen back to the road by a set of glowing yellow dots mere feet in front of the minivan. He tensed, inhaled in preparation of having to slam on the breaks, and shivered with a nod as a speedy raccoon bolted across the road within just a few inches of the bumper. Fortunately, David had slowed enough. The little animal stopped, peered with fright and question at the piercing lights, and quickly continued his journey to the opposite side. David breathed easier and Sally just chuckled in her chest and patted him on the knee.

The desolate and infuriatingly straight highway cut its flora-lined path through the forest. Only every so often was there a sign indicating speed or which freeway they were still presently on.

"Want me to drive?" Sally asked as she sipped from a half-full Snapple bottle.

"Hmm?" Asked David, "Oh, no... no, I'm good. But I could use a stretch. My damn knee is acting up a bit."

"And where, specifically, do you think we should stop? There's nothing out here but trees and more trees?"

David laughed a little, slowed the minivan, and eased onto the little dirt strip just off the pavement. "I guess this'll have to do. I gotta pee anyway."

They opened the doors, stepped out into the surprisingly muggy and thick air, and bent themselves into twists enough to sound off pops.

"David. I know we're on I-79, I saw the sign back there, but did you have any idea it was this... I don't know, scary?"

"Scary?" David asked in a laugh, "Yeah, I know. It's pretty lonely and boring out here. But the last time I was up this way... Jeez, back in '02... it was just as bad. But, that was during the day. What time is it anyway?"

Sally pressed the button on her watch that lit the face, "9:45. It sure doesn't seem to be getting any cooler out here... its just fuggy!"

It was July 15th. David and Sally had vacation coming from both of their jobs and they managed to coincide with each other's. David thought it might be time to show Sally the little town of St. Winsmuth where he grew up. They'd been married just two years now; David had met Sally at the local Barnes and Noble both enjoying a latte. They hit it off right away and began dating. Sally was from town, so her parents were within the limits, but David was from out of state from a very small, very out-of-nowhere village and Sally had always been curious. So, with a printout from Map-Quest in hand and a weekend's-worth of luggage, they set off for St. Winsmuth.

David finished relieving himself on a sapling, stretched again, and slid back into the driver's seat. Sally, begrudgingly using an empty foam drink cup from the last gas station, poured it's warm contents all over the same tree, and climbed back into the minivan.

"Okay, well, I guess we're off," David said as he cracked his knuckles. Sally hated that.

"Gross," She flinched, suppressing a gag, "Okay. I'm gonna try to sleep a little. What do we have left, an hour?"

"Ninety minutes tops. Rest well, I'll wake you when we're within the county limits."

David looked around for oncoming traffic, naturally, before pulling back onto the road. Realistically he could have peeled out and spun a few donuts and no one would have even taken notice. But he didn't. They resumed their drive.

The encompassing grip of the sprawling tree-line held the freeway like a never-ending set of fingers. It was so dark. David sometimes had to slow down just because he thought he saw things; lights, eyes, figures walking in the inkiness... but there was nothing. Then, not a half mile ahead, a steady glow of what could only be a street light appeared from the nothing with an almost blinding halo.

"Hey baby, wake up," David softly rubbed his wife's shoulder as she stirred.

She yawned, blinked a bit as she readjusted her glasses, and smiled, "Is that really a street light I'm seeing or have we gotten lost in the Twilight Zone?"

"Nope. That's the first light you see when you enter Macomb County. I'm home, honey."

The glow of the road lamp came into view and slowly passed over as they burst free from their leafy tomb. David audibly sighed.

"I knew it: that stretch of road bothers you, too!"

David sighed again and shrugged.

But Sally saw it first and it physically made her jump.

Hanging from a wire stretched across the road coming from the second street lamp in town was a half-dozen shoes knotted together in pairs. A few sneakers, a set of boots, and at least two pairs of lady's Keds.

"What the hell?" Sally gasped.

David slowed, stopped, stepped out into the night, and looked up, mouth agape, at the lynched footwear, "Huh... that's a little bizarre."

"David, you know it's just probably a joke. Maybe a last-day-of-school thing. Let's go. I'm getting hungry."

David leaned his head into the door, "Sally. I can just see ahead with the next light. There's more shoes. I don't know, maybe twenty."

Sally shook so hard her hair stood up, "David you had better tell me your kidding--"

David slid in and shut the door. He just sat for a minute. Two minutes. "That is so weird."

Sure enough, the next wire that spread across the street was absolutely festooned with shoes. So many so that they weighed the line down. And the next wire after that, and the fourth, and fifth, all the way into the town of St. Winsmuth were positively slung with more varieties of footwear than a shoe store. They swayed ever so much in the ebb and flow of the incoming breeze. Their shadows literally danced across the lighted spots on the road. David and Sally crept through town staring at each as though a new discovery. David flinched as he quickly and suddenly smashed the break pedal into the floor. Ahead, across from an empty storefront sat a form. Hard to make out from where the minivan sat, it was obviously human. A human sitting in a chair. At a table.

The town was dead. No one was out, no lights were on -save for the street lights with their tennis-shoe gallows- no cars drove by, and, oddly, the three local taverns showed no signs of life at all. The otherwise flickering and lit neon that announced their openings and closings were lifeless. But the figure yards ahead of the mini van's headlamps was moving. In fact, it was gesturing.

David and Sally stared at the human, blinking, each positive that what they saw was a mirage.

"David," Sally began, "Please turn around. I'd rather face two more hours in the woods than here. Please."

David just glared ahead. He blinked, squeezed his lids, and almost comically shook his head. But the figure stood and beckoned for them.

"David," Sally interjected again, "Let's please go... I really don't like this."

David again just looked straight ahead, almost in a trance. "I think I know that kid!"

"Kid? That's kid? Oh Jesus, David! Please turn around!"

"Really. That's Jason, the Miller boy. He was maybe 12 when I was here last. One of the leaders of the church youth group. I wonder what he wants?"

Sally's eyes burst open at the mere notion of David's inquisition, "You are not going up there, David!"

"Sally, I really doubt there's anything to worry about. I'd at least like to know what's going on here... where everyone is."

"I'll tell you where everyone is: out looking for new shoes."

"I promise, we'll just drive up and see. If it looks bad, we're out of here."

Sally sighed and wrung her hands. "Fine. but I'm not getting out of the van."

They slowly drove ahead to the figure who now appeared to be waving to them. He sat in an old steel fold-up chair behind a card table. On the table was a glass pitcher full of liquid and ice cubes. Next to it was a stack of plastic cups, a shaker of sugar, and a what looked like a ball. In the jug was a long spoon. In front of the glass was a tented cardboard sign. As David and Sally approached it was clear it read, "LEMONADE - .50"

David stuck his head out the window, "Jason? Jason Miller, is that you?"

"Yes! Hello Mr. Hanson! Your mom spoke about your visit at church last week! How are you?"

Jason seemed genuinely glad to see David. His face betrayed no ill will or rancor, he offered no air of fear or mistrust. He reached out his hand as an honest gesture of greeting and friendship.

Though Sally was immediately apprehensive, David stuck out his arm. He and Jason shook hands.

"What, ah, what are you doing out here so... late?" David asked as his arm was let go.

"Selling lemonade, of course?" Jason giggled as he deftly slipped a cup from the stack and poured.

"Okay, I can see that. But why... at, wow, eleven thirty, are you selling lemonade. On the street, of all places?"

Jason placed the filled cup on the table and moved on to another, obviously meant for Sally, whom he'd yet to meet, "Well I'll tell you. People get might thirsty around here. Even at close to midnight. I do this all the time!"

Jason's matter-of-fact reply actually made David grimace a little as he looked over his shoulder at Sally who was, for lack of a better term, cowering behind the blanket she'd had with her.

David put on a phony smile and turned back to Jason, "Okay, sounds good. Um, so where all are your customers... where is everyone?"

Jason offered both cups to David through the mini van window. He took them, but merely sat them on the dash.

"Have a sip! It's my mom's recipe and you know her, she can make some lemonade"

Jason was right. David knew Miranda Miller and yes, her lemonade was stuff of local legend. David nodded to Sally and they both hesitatingly lifted their cups.

Jason stood smiling with his arms folded, "Go on! I know you know you love mom's lemonade! Sweet, just tart enough... man, it's so good!"

David thought back to years ago when he'd drink his fill of Mrs. Miller's lemonade at the neighborhood functions and the village socials... he loved it. And so, as he nodded and mocked a toast to Sally, they both took long drags of the cool, sweet and sour liquid as it quenched their thirsts completely. And it was, as he remembered, delicious.

"So yeah, about the townsfolk," Jason began, "They were here. They were here and they were bad. Yes, God spoke to me and said that it was so. The town was rotten and callus; it was dark, it was evil, and God asked for its cleansing."

David just stared as Jason continued his diatribe. Sally choked on her drink and coughed.

"God spoke to me through this..." At that, Jason reached into his shirt and drew forth a large pendant attached to a heavy chain. It was roughly the size of a compact disc and it was as black as the night itself. Arranged in a ring embedded in the amulet's material were several deep-hued red gems. David could feel its pulsating, thrumming, heart beat split the air. "God said cleanse the village; destroy the evil ones and lay it to ruin. Oh, and worry not, your mother cried your name as she fell."

From under the table came Jason's right hand grasping a pistol. David and Sally stared in awe at the dangling amulet as it's horrible reds and blacks swirled in hypnotic waves. The gun fired twice into the night.

On the first lamp wire in town, dangling like the limp bodies of an odd sacrifice, hung a new pair of Keen hikers and a set of blue Chuck Tailors.

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM - The Amulet Redux

2009-05-22T12:40:00.002-04:00

I glance up at the clock: 1:45

The stack of papers neatly piled on my desk are easily an inch high.

Test papers.

The kind of test where you have to slit open the tab on the side of the envelope and follow along precisely with the instructor as you neatly shade in little dots on the answer sheet.

An 'Aptitude Test' they're called. 'Aptitude' is such a subjective term since no one is all that clear as to what criteria the instructors go by to 'grade' your answers. And this is why I hate them so much; why I generally just shade the ovals in to vaguely resemble a shape of some kind. Today it will be a penis.

I look around at the other students eagerly awaiting the arrival of the professor to launch us into a frenzy of dot-filling and brain-wracking. They sit stolid, motionless; some chewing gum -an offence as I understand it, another smiling as she texts someone on the other end of her phone. No one seems particularly thrilled over all to be here, but, alas, no one has a choice.

The door swings open with a whisper and a tall, lanky man sidles in carrying an armload of paperwork, a pair of small glasses, and what looks like an apple.

He quietly sets each object on the big wooden desk at the front of the test room, daintily clears his throat, and sets the pair of spectacles on his nose.

"Good afternoon, students," He begins as he turns away from the class with a fresh stick of chalk in his hand. His light German accent belays him, "My name is Doctor Holle. In ten minutes we will begin the Aptitude Test,"

I glance at the clock again: 1:50

The chalk makes gritty scratches on the board. Dr. Holle turns to us with a playful, almost sneering grin on his face and sets the chalk on the desk. His name is scrawled in jittery Cursive on the board. It becomes obvious that he's a lefty as some of the last bit of the last few letters are smeared.

"Many of you are no doubt wondering exactly what this Aptitude Test aims to prove. Am I correct?"

The majority of the class nods in a kind of eerie unison. I, not especially interested, roll my Number 2 pencil through my fingers like a rocker's drum stick

Dr. Holle suppresses a faint cough with a balled fist and continues, "As you are all aware, in the coming weeks, you will begin looking for employment outside of your studies. Unfortunately, a vast number of you will either be unable to secure a position of your primary choice, or else be ill suited to do the same. So many children now-a-days are so naive in the ways of the outside world and in how all the little interlocking gears and cogs fit within one another. I say this because, those of you who... shall we say, fit into the lesser half of the Aptitude outcome may be forced to make other, more fitting, decisions."

I am listening. Something about this man's diatribe strikes me as a little odd. What are, 'more fitting decisions?' Does he mean that we can't just sign up for a career and hope to be trained?

"Furthermore," Dr. Holle continues as he absently removes his glasses and begins wiping them on a hankie, "Since fewer and fewer job opportunities are making themselves available to the new batch of graduating youth, another, newer option has risen; an option I am hoping several of you might see a potential interest in. It is called, 'Dream A Little Dream'..."

Some of the class chuckles at the light-hearted name and the professor, with that wry grin on his face, calms them gently with arm gestures.

He covers another cough, this time more forceful, with the handkerchief, "Despite the name, it is a most excellent choice for those of you seeking an alternate path from a career you are likely not suited for. Since so few jobs are becoming available, training for those that remain is in, unfortunately, less demand. Ergo, just the hope that you could be trained to fill an available, more specific position, is false, at best. With the new, 'Dream A Little Dream' openings, your future is far more secure."

Somehow he'd only been speaking for less than five minutes. The clock moved slowly on from 1:55.

A hand went up behind me. I had seen the guy a few times in the halls, but since I had seen many people in the halls each shouting to be heard, I had no idea what his name was.

"Yes, there is a question?" The Doctor asks as he slips his glasses back onto his nose.

"Right. Yes... sir. Um, Dr. Holle..." The boy stammers as he flushes and trys to hide his embarrassment, "Is there any more information about Dream A Little Dream that might persuade us to join... you know, like incentives or what it actually offers?"

Dr. Holle nods and clasps his hands together, "In fact their is. However, since the test is to begin in sixty seconds, I will quickly usher those interested to the door where they will be met by a Mr. Gabriel who will take you to a separate room."

I stand. The boy behind me stands. All told, eleven seats empty as their occupants rise to their feet. We are quickly told to leave our test booklets and pencils, as we won't need them. Dr. Barnes opens the door, bids us all a fine afternoon, and we're all met by Mr. Gabriel. He is dressed as though he'd been teaching at a college: tan sport coat with elbow patches, a loosened tie over a denim shirt, and corduroys. Yet, the oddest thing about him is the large, fascinating amulet that swings from his jacket pocket. I might be wrong, but there's just something about its beauty. Something I can't quite place...

THE AMULET PART VI

2008-12-29T21:27:00.003-05:00

Jack and Dianne were 80 and 83 respectively. They were happy, as healthy as one can be at this advanced age, and perhaps just a bit more peppy than one would otherwise expect. By all accounts, they were normal, regular, run-of-the-mill folks. But it wasn't this that was so unusual. No, none of this was anything to write home about, unless you understood the simple fact that the two of them, the Morrisons, had always been 80 and 83. Respectively.

Jackson Renee Morrison and Dianne Leslie Stevens bought their first home after their matrimonial union in 1951. It was a ranch, it was complete with 3 bedrooms (one wold become a den), a huge basement (this, too, would serve as entertainment for their two boys), and a sizable bathroom as well as an attached 2-car garage. The Morrisons couldn't have found a more perfect deal or location if it had been handed to them. And, as it turned out, it was. Well, it wasn't as though the realtor had any idea just what he was selling when the newly wed couple jumped at the chance to own their first home. No, he had no clue that wedged deep within the crawlspace in the boilerroom of the basement was a item of such unearthly evil and unimaginable deviltry that its power could stop time itself. No, this was never a selling point. But there it was just the same: a teacup plate-sized metallic amulet sat wedged in the deepest corner of a tight, completely ignored concrete shelf giving off its horrid, sickening ruby glow. But that, though the cause and effect of the Morrison's lack of aging, was never noticed but to those who knew them best.

The Morrisons had two boys a few years into their happy lives: Grant was first in '55, and then Marcus in '58. They grew normally, lived regularly, and moved on just as children eventually do. Of course, at this point, Jack and Dianne had yet to reach that point in their lives where the process of aging dropped along the wayside and the odd occurrance of living life as a breathing wax statue took over. But, time shoved them all along and years down the line, Grant went on to have three kids of his own with his wife and then, as the years unfurled like a wind-whipped flag, they, too, had children. And it was then that the Morrison's, now honestly reaching the ripe old ages of 80 and 83, respectively, just stopped needing birthdays.

Yes, people indeed noticed but they were always laughing at their own unbelievable ideas about such nonsence especially since -though aging was now a pointless factor- illness still reared its ugly head time and again. This, above anything else, made most realize that the couple was moving on in life just like the rest of the outside world. However, it became increasingly more obvious to the family (as well as to the Morrison's themselves) that remaining in their first and only home was literally not going to let them die. And so went the terrible power of the Amulet: Hell itself.

THE AMULET PART FIVE

2008-12-16T19:50:00.003-05:00

Zev walked alone. His thoughts -exploding, dangerous, wicked- kept him company but often ordered his string-tied body to convulse or twitch uncontrollably. He was a slave to all he'd seen: all he'd done. He was a conduit for the old adage of every action having and equal but opposite reaction. He was a criminal, an exile, a devil. He shuddered, though not cold, beneath his tarnished and frayed trench coat beneath which he still wore his white collar and black Nehru-esque Parishioner's shirt. His filthy pants; they were tacky Chinos nearly gray with miles of road dust and too much grime kicked up from running so often, long ago lost their cuffs to time and tribulations. And on his feet clung the only pair of shoes he could rummage from a local garbage bin as he hid among the shadows and darkness on his way out of who remembers which town: leather sandals nearly split through the soles.

Split through the 'souls'. If there was ever a way to describe how this once-man felt right now as he plodded down another dirt road, that was surely it. Zev stopped. He glanced around shielding his eyes from the bright heat of the early morning as the sun erupted from the mist. He had no idea where he was, but it didn't matter: the Amulet did know. Around Zev's neck -more closely his throat, perhaps- dangled the enormous weight of the Amulet: cursed, hated, and every centimeter of its disk shape evil and rotten. Often it would reverberate through his chest like a low, sorrowful call of some un-human monster. And when it knew where the man -Zev- would stop next, it would glow a sickly, deep, ruby red around its edges and he -Zev- would feel the tug, perhaps a yank, in the direction the Amulet wanted (nay, needed) to go. This was symbiotic relationship between man (former man) and the Amulet; this was how Zev was cursed and forced to live by the cause and the slavery of it. And now, as the sun slowly crept higher in the sky and radiated its warmth the land over, Zev was once again prodded in a new direction to a town he could not yet see. He often thought of fighting it; he would yank the horrid, demonic article from around his neck and toss it asunder and run, run away as fast as he could leaving the Amulet alone for the next poor victim to stumble upon its terror. But, alas, Zev was as powerless as the babe and could do no such thing.

Now, as Zev could see a church steeple rising over the horizon, his heart began to dance near to bursting in his chest. Zev knew, with aid from the unearthly Amulet he wore in punishment around his person, he would eviscerate the poor hovel from stem to stern spilling its collective blood till the roads ran red with it. Zev began to cry in earnest.

THE AMULET: PART IV

2008-12-10T20:35:00.003-05:00

I was told about the grave stone when I was little more than eight by a friend of mine who lived for nothing more than to scare the Hell out of me. He was older, therefore he was expected to act like the older sibling I didn't have. His name was Barry and he lived in the neighborhood that butted up against the one I grew up in and so it was easily within walking distance. We hung out all the time, and I really did see him as a brother. He was the one that told me about the grave stone and what was supposedly buried underneath it.

We sat around a little fire he'd built in his backyard back when burning leaves and twigs within the confines of your own property was still considered acceptable. He danced around the subject for a while as I brought it up; I'd asked a bit coyly if he'd heard about the 'thing' that was buried beneath the Virgin Mary head stone at the Methodist Church grave yard. He shrugged, nodded a bit, and popped another bit of jerky into his mouth. I'd told him that I guy I knew at school (at the time I was a full 2 grades below him, so, to me, he was always the source of my fantasies, if you know what I mean) had said something about it a few days ago and that he and his sister and a friend were going to go try to dig it up. Barry then looked at me with saucer-sized eyes and barked a laugh that was more nervous than humorous.

Barry conceded and launched into his story. As he was told... "a very important Church parishioner had died back in 1936 when the church was originally built. He'd come from another community bringing with him much of the ideals and teachings he'd used and put them into action to his own Church staff. Some folks were a bit taken aback by the new methods, but most fell in line and soon the Church became the most fully attended in town. Anyway, this guy... Father Terrence passed on and nearly the entire town had shown up for his interment. At that same time, one of the more boisterous anti-church townsfolk shoved his way to the front just as the dirt was being shoveled onto the casket, shouted a few incoherent curses, and tossed a plate-sized amulet into the ground. Well, he was ushered away and held down as he spat forth various bits of gibberish and, after that day, was never heard from again. Anyway, it's this Amulet that is said to give the unresting spirit of Father Terrence his haunting ability and why, it's said, the church itself is lousy with his spirit. So, there ya go."

I chuckled a little at its silliness, but somewhere deep inside it all sounded so plausible. How hard would it be to get ahold of that amulet, really? I had to know.

THE AMULET: Part III

2008-11-20T13:07:00.005-05:00

Ted pulled into Kalamazoo at 3:15 a.m. and eased his Jetta onto Westnedge Avenue from I-94. He was tired, there was absolutely no doubt of that. In fact, he'd spent the last three hours struggling to keep his road-weary body from swerving off the freeway. He'd never been a consistent smoker, but he heard that keeping a burning cigarette between your fingers would not only offer up its gag-inducing odor, but also potentially burn down enough to singe your fingers if you nodded off. The tunes remained cranked to a station featuring an evening of nothing but Metal, the passenger-side window was as open as Ted felt comfortable with despite the frigid, twenty-degree air, and the heat remained as low as it could be while still able to keep the windows frostless. All of these things ought to have combined to make a volatile solution for staying awake, but in fact, all they did was make his mind wander off into near-dream land. Frustration and irritation got the better of him, and eeking off the highway was his only safe recourse.

Ted was hungry; not for fast food, but for something a bit more forgiving to his stomach. He was here for the weekend at the Radisson just a few miles downtown, but his stomach was protesting even the minor jaunt to a more comfortable location. So, it was time for a little snack to while away another fifteen minutes to bed time. Just past the off-ramp on the right was a local 24-hour grocery and sundry supply chain called Meijer. Though they were all over the central states, Ted had only heard about them since his travels brought him from Arizona, where such a store didn't exist. The parking lot was a wasteland of sporadically parked autos, a few orphaned shopping carts, and a small group of -what, kids?- trotting through the lot.

Ted shrugged, pulled into a spot, and stretched the stretch of a thousand miles as he cracked and popped his frame free of the car. He sighed deep, hollered a bit as he arced and loosened his spine, and made his way to the eerily-lit front entrance. The low thrum of the automatic glass partition spread open belching free a torrent of stale heat. Ted walked in, and was immediately overwhelmed with the sudden realization that this store was just far too big for a simple snack search and rescue mission. He stopped, looked around, and just barely heard a greeter bid him welcome as she nonchalantly went back to her magazine. Well, one thing became obvious: the food was off to Ted's left. He smiled distantly, and made his way to an aisle with on-sale chips for its end cap.

Ted loomed at the end of the row as choice after numerous variety offered itself like an eager hand. Ted walked past potato chips of every flavor nature never intended, Doritos from spicy to cool, and all the way to good old tortilla chips. He snatched a bag of Tostidos and a jar of medium salsa from the accessory rack just beneath, and quickly retraced his steps back to the junction. He wasn't especially thirsty at the moment, but with his munchie choice, he surly would be soon enough. Ted opted for a 2-liter of Brisk iced tea, and slowly, awkwardly, stuttered to the front check-out. A quick transaction with the only open lanes: automatic for your convenience, Ted left the hugging comfort of the toasty store and seethed a little as the blast of chilly December air punched him in the face.

Ted marched to his car to excise himself from the chill as quickly as possible. He pressed the unlock on his key chain with its characteristic double-honk, and opened the passenger door.

"Excuse me, mister? Could I help you with that bag?"

Ted whirled around as he left the pavement in a panic. He was quick to hold onto the plastic bag's handles and the glass jar of salsa would have certainly broken otherwise. Standing close enough to Ted for him to clearly see his face from under the giant, humming fluorescent lights, stood a boy of maybe ten.

"I can help you load your things for just a ride home."

Ted was speechless. Another glance over the boy's far-too-small-to-be-out-this-late features made him shake his head and gesture a little toward his one, small bag. But the most odd thing about the boy was most certainly his voice. Possibly a product of the cold air, maybe shivering, he sounded empty, hollow, lifeless even. It had risen the hair on Ted's neck to even listen to it and certainly had no intention of doing it again.

"N-N-no thanks, kid. I've got it. You really ought to run along home, it's really late."

The boy just stood there, not even flinching one way or another. Then, it really struck home and Ted felt an icy hand tickle from his ass to the top of his head: the boy's eyes were black. Not just the iris or the pupil: all of it. The boy's eyes were solid, deep, black. No trick of the light here. No optical illusion could have created such possessed and grotesque eyes on a child. No reflection, no glimmer from the lamp, just solid, dead, black eyes. And around his neck hung the weight of a CD-sized necklace. No, an amulet of some kind. It let off just enough of a glow to easily discern its deep, bloody hue.

Ted took a step back, and the boy, forward. Ted dropped his back to the floor of his car, quickly slammed the door, and sprinted to the opposite side. The boy was there before Ted could even recoil.

"I just need a ride mister... just a ride."

The white-yellow protection of the light crackled and burned out. A man; displaced, exhausted, and alone, wailed into the frigid night.