3vil Page 4

  A wall of broken crates provided shelter for us. We quickly slid behind the barrier, then cautiously peeked out into the madman’s lab.

  Amidst a sea of strange machinery - all buzzing with electricity and pumping iridescent fluids - sat the Professor. His back was to us, but before him was a table covered with strange clutter: some odd metal shapes, some old pottery, a pair of open books. Whatever it was that occupied him, his hands moved feverishly while sounding tiny clicks and clacks.

  With Jurgens before us, we could all see his hand clenched tightly around the hilt of his blade. He turned to shush us, though we were all deathly silent. We were ready to follow him to the assassination.

  But then we heard a noise behind us. It was an unearthly kind of howl, like a rush of air and a woman’s scream all at once.

  When we turned, we saw a glowing green cloud round the corner and speed right towards us. It approached too quickly for us to even react, leaving us paralyzed with fright.

  But it zipped past us and flew right to the Professor’s table.

  The strange old man barely did not react to its arrival. But we all chomped out lips tight to muffle the alarmed whimpers and wails that sought to scream from our frightened souls.

  Floating above the scientist’s table now was the specter of which Kimble spoke.

  Drifting in the murky ether was a green female. Perhaps it was like the Professor was having a smoke, and the lady was the cloud he exhaled. While her form would shiver and sway, her gorgeous appearance was unmistakable. Her face had exotic features that could have placed her within any earthly nationality. Her long hair floated about as if she were underwater. She glowed in a bright hue, like a tropical algae in the summer sun.

  “It has been done, my love,” cooed the apparition. “The thief has been subdued.”

  Not even acknowledging her with eye contact, the Professor grunted curtly as he continued his work.

  “Though I can see the rest of the crew now gathered behind you,” she said. The woman spoke lazily as if she were bored and tired.

  Our eyes widened with terror at our mentioning.

  The apparition continued, “If they attack, then they will be slain as well.”

  The coward Baker scurried away in haste from the rear.

  “Kill them,” said the Professor. “Destroy those fools in the foulest way you can.”

  Before we could react, the green lady said, “No. I cannot. We need them.”

  Though she spoke of us, her empty eyes continued staring only at the Professor.

  He muttered to himself before spitting out, “Fine.”

  “Then I will see you tomorrow, my love. I am excited for the event.” The woman’s vapors dissipated slowly until she had vanished completely.

  Smith boldly advanced forward. “Let us strike,” he whispered.

  Jurgens caught him by the arm. His cold eyes did not agree with the aggression. “Not now. We will wait.”

  “What for?” challenged Smith. “His poltergeist is gone. He is vulnerable now.”

  Jurgens bristled at the remark. We could see the murder in his angry gaze. “She knows of our presence, but said we are safe. We. Will. Wait.”

  Whether to be killed by the Professor’s entity or by Jurgens’ ire, there was no more discussion to be had. We softly retreated back from the room and returned to our quarters.

  Once there, we only found restless sleep and vile nightmares.

  Yet we survived to see the morning. This time we were awoken by the harsh ring of the Captain’s bell.

  After grumbling about the clamor, we quickly changed into our work clothes and rushed our weary bones to the deck. The Captain’s bell was only rung in times of great importance.

  The weather outside was not pleasant. Perhaps the climate too was grumpy to be disturbed at such a dreadful hour, for the sky was a dark mix of black cloud and emerald light. The sun was the softest sliver on the black horizon.

  We all arrived topside to find something quite unusual on our deck. Somehow between the dead of night and the break of dawn, the Professor had reassembled his entire laboratory atop our ship.

  Large columns of metal crackled with electricity. Mysterious gears and pistons whirled and crunched. Vials of strangely colored liquids sloshed and mixed with one another as this hellish contraption moved in an erratic but steady pattern.

  “Dead God,” gasped Jeremiah.

  Some of our companions were already moving about, assisting the madman with his fiendish experiment. We cast sullen stares upon those traitors.

  “There you lazy brutes are,” said the Captain from atop his perch. Jones stood obediently at his side. “Get to work moving those barrels for our esteemed patron.”

  The Professor addressed us too. “Get to work, you animals!” His voice was urgent and feral. “You must spill their contents overboard quickly. Now!”

  We were tempted to split him open on the spot.

  “The man’s a maniac,” cried Dalton aloud.

  “We saw him commune with the Devil,” spoke Jeremiah.

  “You know nothing of this world,” shouted the Professor. His blind eye began weeping as he spoke. “I will show you everything, the whole truth of our universe, once you complete my process. Now move!”

  The Captain chuckled as he drew his gun from his waist. Jones snapped to attention with a rifle as well. Both firearms bore down on our hesitant pack.

  “Mad, insane, demonic,” sighed the Captain, “the man is rich.” He clicked back the barrel on his revolver. “So you will do as he says.”

  We always listened to the man with the gun. It would not have made any sense to mutiny now. We tried to comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the Professor’s dark arts could have claimed us all many times before, yet had continued to spare us.

  We began to lug the barrels to the starboard rails as instructed.

  A team of men went to tilt a barrel on its side to roll it over. “No, no, no!” cried the Professor. “They must remain upright for my process to work.”

  It made the cruel task even more difficult. Yet still we managed to move the first batch to the lip of the boat.

  The heavens became angry at our work. Lightning and thunder began to break throughout the sky. The wind picked up as if trying to sweep all us vermin into the ocean.

  Once the barrels reached the side of our ship, the pry bars were passed around to crack off the lids.

  When they opened, we gasped at the contents.

  The barrels were filled with a strange substance, a milky pink fluid that moved as slow as cold molasses. But inside the stew were the corpses of men. Rotten limbs and dissolved faces greeted us from the muck. They smelled like a putrid and long-spoilt medicine.

  “Oh, no!” wailed Smith. “It’s Hardy!”

  Sure enough, when we crowded around for a view, it was daffy old Hardy’s decapitated head staring back at us. His eyes were open and filled with pity at our weakness and woe.

  By now the horrors could not become any more shocking or grotesque. Having become numb to even this newest revelation, we covered our noses and held our breaths to pour the dead into the water. There was work to do.

  Then we heard a clatter and a splash.

  “Jurgens don’t!” cried a voice.

  We turned to see Jurgens stomping away from a spilt container. With knife in hand, he pounced on the oblivious Professor from behind.

  One hand wrapped around the victim’s neck like a python. The other plunged the dagger in and out of the old man’s chest as if pumping for oil.

  The Professor made no noise of protest as the blood spouted from his heart. Once Jurgens was satisfied with his rampage, he dropped the lifeless body to the deck.

  The killer only remained triumphant for a moment before a gunshot sounded. From our perspective, we watched a flower of red gore spray from the side of Jurgens’ head.

  The murderer fell dead upon his victim.

  “Damn you!” cried the Captain, holstering his p
istol as he hopped towards the bodies. “He’d only paid us half!”

  We were mute but for the wind, the water and the Captain’s scurrying boots.

  Then Delgado said, “Dibs on Jurgens’ share.”

  Though the Captain was distraught, and his first mate Jones was too loyal to betray any other emotion than his leader’s, the rest of us laughed with glee.

  Delgado’s latest barb was hardly so hilarious. Yet we stomped our boots, did little jigs, and even embraced one other, so glad were we to be rid of the damned monster.

  “You bloody idiots,” cried our distraught Captain. “We needed that money.”

  “Not as much as our lives,” said Jeremiah.

  We dumped the Professor’s cursed containers into the sea to rid ourselves of them.

  “Toss the damned bodies overboard too,” grumbled the Captain. He gave Jurgens’ corpse a swift kick to the stomach before he marched away.

  We each grabbed a limb of Jurgens, and lugged him to the edge.

  “Good work, man,” said Munoz to the fallen soldier.

  With a mighty heave, the killer sailed through the air before colliding flat onto the water. His body did not sink, but floated face down in a widening pool of blood.

  “Should we avenge him?” asked Dalton.

  “Meaning what?” said Vale.

  “Get the Captain. Jones too while we’re at it.”

  “What for?” replied Friedkin. “Then we’d never see a dime for this bloody expedition.”

  When we went for the Professor, he awoke. We jumped in horror at his reanimation.

  “Please,” he stammered. “Please.”

  “Please what?” asked Early.

  “Put me,” he gasped and wheezed, “in the ocean.”

  “With pleasure,” said Delgado.

  We dragged the Professor’s carcass towards the railing.

  A few of us began to jeer him while we lifted the dying scientist overboard.

  “Wait!” cried Smith above our merrymaking.

  “Why?” asked Svenson, still clutching an ankle while awaiting an answer.

  “Maybe that’s exactly what he wants,” offered Smith. “Maybe he has some sinister intentions to be buried at sea.”

  We looked about each other at the thought.

  “Go to hell,” sneered Rawlings.

  If the generally quiet Rawlings was speaking to the cautious Smith or the deceased scientist, we knew not. But the emphatic sentiment won us all over on the spot.

  Our mob cheered with delirious abandon as we threw the old, salty bastard into the sea.

  “Wait a minute,” said Billings.

  His alarmed voice gave our merrymaking pause.

  “Where’s all the other junk we threw in the water?”

  We all looked over to examine the waves. Despite the gallons of painted filth and jumbled body parts of which we had recently disposed, there was not a shred of evidence to their existence.

  “Look,” someone cried, though we already knew where to focus our attention.

  While Jurgens remained a flat dingy in the water, the Professor’s body was spinning slowly in circles. The two being so close to one another presented a stark and eerie contrast.

  Then the Professor began to drift downwards beneath the surface, eventually disappearing from view beneath the black currents.

  But Jurgens remained topside like a human buoy.

  “That cannot be good,” said Jeremiah.

  “Good riddance,” chuckled Delgado.

  None of us laughed.

  A rumble from above directed our attention to the sky.

  Black clouds swirled about us now. They mirrored the same lazy spin as the Professor’s body, yet on a monumental scale. The dark sky was a widening hole that grew to be over a mile in size. Thick, bumpy clouds surrounded a smooth, dark-green breach that was a vortex to the top of the universe.

  The waves below mirrored the abnormality above. As the sky became darker, turning into a nascent tornado, the water became equally choppy. Soon giant waves began to swell, shifting us about as if a giant child had decided to splash around in our ub.

  We rushed to take the necessary precautions with our boat. “Move, you maggots,” cried our Captain while we sped to our stations.

  Our girl Glorianna hastened to escape, but nothing truly travels so fast on the sea, save for the elements.

  With our distance from the dark heart of the storm minimal, the pandemonium augmented exponentially around us. A light mist became a heavy rain. Monstrous waves only became mightier where each one pounded us hardier than the last.

  Suddenly a piercing noise began to howl, like the shrillest air whistle announcing the end of a shift. As we covered our ears in defense, we were then unsure of how to shield our eyes at the same time. A brilliant flare of green blinded us in accompaniment of the harsh screech. We wrapped our heads in our arms as if we were trying to crush our domes like ripe grapes. But there was no evading the vicious onslaught of sight and sound.

  We watched a giant column of green light descend from the black sky above. Exploding in a boom like the fire from a hundred cannons, the fluorescent tower reached down to the sea. Its epicenter was precisely where the dead scientist had vanished.

  “Move, damn you!” bellowed our Captain. We saw a fright in his eyes we had never seen before. Then we realized that same lost and hopeless expression covered all of our faces too.

  Try as our noble Glorianna could, she could not motor away from the hellish tempest.

  The waters of the ocean began to spin us dizzily in a circle. The small whirlpool grew in enormity, soon becoming like a giant drain into which the whole world would empty.

  From the midst of the green rod of light appeared a shape. It appeared from the depths of the sea but was now floating upwards into the clouds. As we were drawn closer to the chaos, we could see that the shape was actually two shapes, a pair of silhouettes embracing each other.

  One was the gorgeous she-demon from the night before, still as radiant and lovely as ever.

  The other figure was a man, a physical equal to the woman in youth and fitness.

  The two stared lovingly at each other while engaged in conversation.

  Despite the howling mess obliterating our ship, we all paused our futile efforts to hear the exchange. Our vessel advanced ever closer to them by the whirling suction, which also facilitated our eavesdropping.

  Once we heard him speak, we recognized the timber of the Professor’s voice instantly. While before his words were always spoken with gruff impatience, now he spoke in a kind and delicate tone. His words resonated with an unearthly vibrato.

  “At last we are together again,” he said.

  “It has been too long, my love,” said the woman.

  The pair held each other tightly, levitating up through the light and ascending into the sky.

  “Do you feel bad about what you’ve wrought?” she asked him.

  “For you, never. As expected, their evil led them to murder me, as required or my process. They were already all damned men long before I ever had to goad them on. And damned they shall remain.”

  At this last remark, the twin poltergeists turned to stare at us. We could feel their merciless judgment radiating from their blank eyes. “I provided the required souls of which the spirits had asked. Now these men will be cursed forever so that we may live into eternity.”

  His last words were punctuated by a horrific crash. The rear port corner of our vessel had made contact with the beam of green fire. Our ship crumbled at the touch, splintering and breaking loudly as if being torn apart by a spinning saw blade.

  The power of the destruction sent our front bow dipping upwards.

  Both the Captain and Jones were catapulted through the sky to collide with the heavenly beam. There were incinerated instantly like snowflakes falling upon a campfire.

  The few of us who weren’t violently slaughtered by the flying debris fell into the sea. The column of light had open
ed a giant vortex into the water. We could not see what lay at its bottom other than a dark green void.

  Some men were pulled down instantly, vanishing from the earth into the roiling depths of the angry sea. Others floundered futilely against the currents where only their desperate limbs remained visible. Some were aided by drifting debris and wreckage to stave off death for another few moments.

  We who survived the initial destruction were graced with the opportunity to watch the pair of lovers disappear happily up into the sky.

  Then one by one we were swallowed into hell, to suffer an oblivion far worse than any mortal death.

  Samhain

  “This sucks.”

  Even with Chloe’s impossibly high standards, her assessment of the party is impossible to dispute.

  In the corner of this incredibly lame get-together, the three girls are all huddled tightly together. With their wagons circled, they are ready to fend off any attacks.

  Unfortunately, no one will attack them.

  Chloe gripes, “I can’t believe I spent over 40 bucks on this hoochie outfit, and none of these fucktards give a S.” She tugs her stockings up, then tugs her top down. Her “slutty police officer” outfit is at maximum skank.

  “I don’t know,” counters Jenna, “it’s not so bad. There’s, like, chips and beer.” Across the brightly lit room, a pair of gangly boys graze on the few bags of chips next to some untouched stacks of six-packs.

  Chloe knows her friend is just trying to be upbeat about the disaster, but her foul mood still decides to lay into the girl. “See? Right there, you said it. No real party has any food. Just booze. And look at all these seats and bright lights. Super lame.”

  “And no dudes,” sighs Maya, their third. She is fixated upon her phone and is clearly not enjoying herself either.

  Jenna has not been to many parties since the start of college a few months ago. So even if her veteran party-crashing friend says otherwise, Jenna is still quite grateful to be here. Accordingly, she is impressed by the elegance of the affair.

  This soirée was billed as a house party, though it is in a large apartment. Small groups are huddled together in conversation, and everyone seems more interested in the people that they aren’t talking to. The tiny factions are precisely spaced from each for maximum distance, as if they are all the same polarity of magnet. Jenna cannot fault them for any shyness.