In the heart of the city, a primordial evil awakens, its cyclopean hunger feasting on unsuspecting souls. Sergeant Jeremy Updike, a weary cop on the edge of burnout, stumbles upon a horrifying truth: a predator of unimaginable power lurks in the shadows, threatening to consume not just bodies, but the very essence of humanity.
As the city teeters on the brink of chaos, Jeremy races against time, forging unlikely alliances and uncovering unhallowed truths. Can he and his newfound allies decipher the origins of this monstrous threat and find a way to quell its insatiable appetite? Or will they, like countless others, succumb to the encroaching darkness?
He leaned forward in the old and beaten wooden chair. The old red vinyl of the seat stung slightly as it pulled against the clammy skin of the backs of his thighs. He rested his elbows on his bare knees and closed his eyes as he breathed in the cool air, which emanated from the door in front of him. The hairs of his nude body were standing on end as it wafted over his sweat soaked skin.
His breath was slow, heavy. Exhaustion weighed on him like the pressure of deep water. For an expanse of time, which likely was no more than a few minutes, he seriously contemplated leaping from the chair, through the open door and plummeting through that black expanse, landing with a wet thud on the concrete floor which sat below it. Dark, damp, cold. What relief it would be to just feel cold. He was always hot, always overheated. These days he only found minor and fleeting relief when he stood under the biting spray of a cold shower and even then, as soon as the water stopped, he’d find himself perspiring again.
His head hurt; he could feel the vessels below his temples, throbbing against the claustrophobic prison of his skull.
He opened his eyes. The door in front of him was nothing but an empty frame, long devoid of the door which it once held, removed by his own hand, back when this all began.
It was another life then, so long ago to him. He couldn’t even remember how long it had been. The frame had once been a bone white in color, but was now yellowed, and scuffed; dozens of furrows lined its edges, scraped free of paint by clawing hands, failed purchase of escape.
The light on in the kitchen to his left cast a dull and damp glow down the hallway in which he sat and to his right, the thick dust and dirt was so collected along the edges of the hallway floor that the path which had been worn down its center stood out with a stark relief by its sheer absence of detritus, ending in a darkly stained oak door. It had little window curtains that hadn’t been opened in a long time; it stood stalwart and thick, the stain almost looking black in the dim light.
He briefly thought about how every time he walked down the stairs how much, and especially lately it felt like a prison door - locked tight, barring him from any sort of freedom he could have or had once had.
He turned his head and looked again at the wide and empty door frame that stood yawning only a foot in front of him. The sloping ceiling descended below into the basement, devoid of stairs. Only barren zig zag braces remained on the walls, once the bearers of the flat steps which descended below.
Suddenly he stood, his sticky flesh lifting the chair enough that it lifted several inches before peeling free of his flesh. It rattled on its four post legs, until it clattered backward onto the floor behind him.
“No! No! NO! I can’t do it anymore, not like this anymore. You ask too much, you need too much! I refuse!” a slight hoarse scrape played the back of his throat as his words were thrust into the dark void beyond the door-frame.
He leaned forward bracing himself on the edges of the door frame. He was quickly overcome by vertigo, the sound of his pulse thumping in his ears, and throbbing fresh ache in the deep center of his skull.
He puckered his lips, as he exhaled a shaky breath,
“Just breathe” He took a breath and exhaled, still shaky.
“Just breathe” Another, less shaky this time.
“That’s it, breathe.” Another, throb subsiding, pressure relaxing.
The smell of decaying leaves fluttered up from the void below; an extra cold breath of breeze played over his naked lower legs, soothing.
A thick, wet, and viscous oily flexing creep-ed upward from deep down in the dark below, a languid movement, an unnatural flexing.
His mind began to swim. The vertigo came once again, but this time it brought with it, a receding balm of no throbbing ache, but the opposite. He closed his eyes and slumped right against the door frame. His penis prickled and tightened as a shiver passed through his body.
He knew what this was, and the anger returned. He pushed himself away from the door, his calf hitting the crossbeam of the chair legs. Bracing against the banister, he rushed with all he had down the hallway to his right and then up the stairs until he stood in the doorway of his dark bedroom.
He didn’t even bother to turn on the light. He knew the moldy off-white mattress was still on the floor in the corner of the room. He stumbled over to it on instinct, and as his feet met the damp saturated fabric he collapsed to his knees, his stomach, bouncing slightly on the mattress as he landed face first and splayed face-down on his bed.
With all the inner will that remained he pushed against the feelings - the cool, calm relief - and with strenuous success he fell immediately into a deep ragged sleep.
There was a gentle ringing sound in his ears. He couldn’t help but give his attention to it, as rather than be annoying he found it quite soothing.
For a moment he didn’t even realize where, or what state he was in until he was truly awoken to his reality. He didn’t have a headache.
This was rather odd, as his existence had become a consistent thrumming of pain beneath the walls of his skull. It had been so long that he hadn’t experienced consciousness without that light sense of unease resting upon the back of his mind.
He rolled over on his damp and dirty mattress, and bounced slightly as he re-positioned his body with a quick flip from his stomach to his back.
The side of his face was wet, and he wiped the collected saliva which had oozed out of his mouth while he slept with the back of his hand.
He lay there staring upward at the blackness of the ceiling. Long ago he had covered his windows in aluminum foil to entirely block out any traces of light. Light hurt his eyes; light turned the throbbing into slamming in his head.
How long had he slept? He didn’t feel rested, he never did. But he felt clear minded. He felt finally alone. It was incredibly strange.
He sat up in bed, turned and placed his feet on the wood floor. He felt some shred of clothing trampled flat against the bottom of his foot. Reaching down he peeled it off the floor. It had sat there for so long that it had a brief rigidity to it. Jeans.
He stood, slid the crusty jeans on his legs, buttoned and zipped them on his waist. They were cool, if somewhat moist feeling. He didn’t care.
He walked out his bedroom and down a few steps to the landing at the top of the stairs and peered at the window in front of him, covered in dog-eared and crumpled aluminum foil.
It was like looking at some sort of metallic landscape from above, like an alien planet devoid of foliage but covered in countless steep mountains, hills and valleys.
A rivulet here, a long dry river there, a convex crumple, a once snow capped mountain.
Ultimately, he imagined this world would be like that eventually, long after all of his fellow men were long extinct.
He laid his left hand flat against the tin foil on the window and squeezed his hand into a fist, gaining purchase on the foil, and then ripped it free of the window.
It was night time. The scene outside was dark but had ambient light from the street light out front. He looked out at the cream siding of the apartment building next door then down to the tops of his gnarled and stringy overgrown bushes.
He wiped his hand over his face; still no headache, he felt lucid. He walked down the steps, past that old locked wooden front door, and stood in front of the empty door frame and black chasm which stood through it. The basement. The Thing. The deeds.
He desperately wanted to reach down the front of his jeans, pull out his dick, and piss into the deep below. But he couldn’t chance it; it could easily push sway over him like it did last night. It had done it many times before. Why was it doing absolutely nothing now?
He listened - no movement, no presence.
“Fuck you,” he muttered.
Turning to his left, he walked through the dilapidated kitchen with its cream formican counter tops covered in refuse and discarded decay.
He reached the back door, quickly turned the dead bolt, and walked outside, his feet met the cold concrete sidewalk as he walked across the expanse of his overgrown backyard. He rarely mowed it; actually he couldn’t remember the last time he had.
He reached the single stall garage which butted up to the alley. The grass was overgrown next to it, but the wheel ruts from years of parking his truck there were still worn down in long concave ruts. The alley light cast a corona of unnatural brightness over the pockmarked tar of the alley way.
He opened the man-door and walked into the garage. Reaching up and right he turned on the garage light, a single naked bulb, which buzzed with that pre-LED golden hue.
There was a simple work bench which sat across from him against the wall. A length of rectangular sub flooring, with long four by four legs screwed to it. He had made it years ago, when he was a much younger man. An assortment of hand tools were laid in a pile on top.
He walked up to the bench and looked them over, then reached down and grabbed the handle of a carpenter’s hammer. Only small flecks of yellow paint still clung to its steel head and handle.
With the hammer in hand he walked to the end of the workbench and looked down at the table saw. It too was well worn, well used. He grabbed the blade guard which sat over it with his left hand, and lifted it off the large angrily toothed blade.
With three quick blows of the hammer, he broke the arm that attached the guard to the saw. He tossed the guard onto the floor where it bounced several times with a metallic clang.
He mentally checked himself: still no headache, no clammy fever. It had finally set him free.
He tossed the hammer with a thud onto the top of the work bench as he stood there. He bent his arms at the elbow, palms up and looked down at his hands. They were smooth now, rather smooth compared to how they had always been, back before all of this. Back when he had been a simple carpenter. What a life. What a sad but simple life.
A heavy feeling of disgust came over him as he looked at the trails, furrows and whirls of the creases and lines which had been worn into them by his work, both of his works.
“Dozens of lives ended by these hands,” he muttered low in his throat.
He turned, walked over opposite the table saw, and grabbed a old folding metal chair. Turning back again, he unfolded it and set it on the floor in front of the saw. He moved it around a bit a few times until he was satisfied, then took in a long deep breath through his nose. Tilting his head back and closing his eyes, the scent of loam and dampness was on the night air.
He opened his eyes as he slowly exhaled and stepped up and onto the chair. It let out a hollow groan as it took his weight. The back of the chair faced his calves and his front was to the table saw. With a quick bend at the waist, he reached down and pushed the power button.
As the high metal screaming whir filled the entire garage, he leaned slightly forward at the waist. With a bend of his knees and a bouncing push, the chair went skidding backwards, tumbling as he fell forward.
He landed heavily on the whirring scream of the circular blade, its shriek immediately dropping to a baritone pitch as it sheared into his solar plexus.
Its unforgiving teeth clawed and ripped through bone, muscle and tissue. Blood sprayed in a copious mist out, under and behind him as he bounced. The blade pushed his body backwards and chewed through his diaphragm and throat, dislocating his jaw before bisecting it in a crimson shower of eviscerated meat and bone. It tore his nose off in a chunk and found purchase with its toothy death within the caves of his nasal cavity below, pulling his face forward and down, burrowing through bone and brains.
Shooting him off onto the floor as it emptied the top front of his skull, his body fell onto its butt, tilting straight for a moment from the momentum. A light coughing chuckle escaped the valley of destruction which remained of his face. He slumped over and folded in half at the waist, onto what remained of his face. Blood poured out in hot streams from the jagged wound of his chest onto his thighs, and pooled outward into a widening pool of shiny maroon.
He was finally free.
The porcelain white of the alley light shone on as the sound of the infernal whine of the table saw, although muffled by the walls of the garage, continued to play a serenade to the the horror that had just taken place.
It was as if the night itself had held its breath; the overgrown grass didn’t move, no song of nocturnal insect played, nothing stirred.
Headlights appeared at the end of the alley and spilled into the street. They belonged to a spotless black sedan with deeply tinted windows. It pulled up slowly and then turned with equal patience into the worn down ruts that sat alongside the single stall garage.
The engine died, and the drivers door opened. A man emerged. Nothing to spectacular as male specimens go, he was wearing a full three piece suit of drab matte black, with shoes to match.
What did stand out was his head. It was hairless, bald as polished stone, and entirely gray. His lips were overly thin and pinched together, sitting below a long sharp nose. His eyes were milky white, pupils and all. He emanated an unnaturalness which only seemed to add to the stillness of the night around him. With a simple push he shut the driver side door.
He walked methodically into the garage through the open man-door and stopped, looking down at the mangled remains. Walking slowly around the pool of blood, he reached over it and pushed the off button of the screaming saw with a long gray index finger, the nails as milky white as his eyes.
He stood and stared at the corpse again. No twitching of his face to give any idea of what may be going through such a strange mind, and he just as methodically walked around the body and back out the garage’s man door. He pulled it almost shut but left a large enough gap, as if a small cat might want in later.
He turned and faced the house. The rear screen door was shut, but he could see that the back door hung wide open. He walked up to it over the pockmarked concrete sidewalk that cut across the center of the backyard and into the house, shutting the door with gentle care.
A human shape moved near the alley in the overgrown bushes. Dakota fumbled with his phone, unsure of what to do, he had taken up his hiding place when the disheveled man walked out and into the garage. After the whirring of the saw, and the terrible noise that followed, he had been frozen in fear. Then the strange and creepy looking suited man had rolled up only a minute or so later in his immaculately clean black car.
He looked down at the cell phone in his hands and pressed the button on the side. He started and quickly pressed it again as the screen lit up and he almost dropped it. The brightness of the screen pierced the morbid darkness which now surrounded him.
He knew he should turn and run, call the police, get the fuck out of here. But the very same morbid curiosity which had brought Dakota here to this house, to spy on the strange and creepy man day after day, was the same curiosity that now slowly pulled at him as he crouched and slowly toed his way toward the garages man-door.
He watched the rear door where the suited man had gone, and when he was a few steps out of cover he quickly and quietly darted in front of the black car and over to the man-door. His eyes peered through the crack.
On the floor lay what was obviously the disheveled man, though the front of his torso and head had been rent apart like a terrible red valley. What really grabbed his attention and startled him was the amount of blood which had pooled around it.
A dark, almost black, pool spread over the concrete floor, so wide that it disappeared easily outside of what the gap in the door allowed.
Dakota suddenly became very aware that he had not glanced at the rear door in quite some time. He darted his attention quickly to the rear door, his feet already moving him back towards the overgrown bushes where he had been hiding before. It was good that he did, because no sooner did he jump into the overgrown bushes, his eyes caught the form of what had to be the suited man walking down the hallway of the home to the back door.
Dakota didn’t hear the sound of the back door, so peeked through the tangled branches of the bushes as best he could. He couldn’t see the door that well, but he could see no one standing outside.
He reached down to his phone and pushed the side button. The screen illuminated again. He quickly thumbed down the screen to his best friend’s number and began to thumb type a message.
“Calvin dude! Holy fucking shit dude, that fucking creeper just offed himself man, I just fucking saw the body. And this fucking weirdo just showed up wearing a suit and tie, and he’s fucking bizarre looking! He’s all gray skinned and bald. Fucking crazy man!”
Almost immediately after hitting send, Dakota glanced up through the branches again. No gray man yet. He glanced back down. Three little dots in the bottom right of his screen jumped up and down slowly. Calvin was already typing.
A quick moment later his reply popped up on Dakota’s screen.
“You’re still there!? WTF get the hell outta there man! You got a death wish!”
Dakota began to reply when his hearing, heightened from all the adrenaline, heard the back door softly shut. He quickly stuffed his phone into his pocket, crouched down, and peered through the best he could at the gray man.
The gray skinned man walked across the yard. In his hand he held an old dark leather doctor’s bag. He walked slowly to the car and opened the trunk, setting it down inside, then shut the trunk carefully with barely an audible thunk. He walked along the driver side and out to the middle of the yard where he stopped, staring at the house.
There was a sharp smell of ozone that began to carry through the air. A strange static, like a thunder storm was about to strike, even though the night was cloudless and still.
A low, but distinct buzzing noise, like that of something old and deep began humming from above the man. There was a popping sound, then a clap-boom, and sparks rained down from the power line which ran from the alleyway to the house. Several softer pops came from within the house, and then smoke began to appear from the upper window of the house that faced out into the back yard.
The gray man turned and walked just as methodically as ever back to the driver side of the car. He paused, facing the door, but didn’t reach out and grab it.
Dakota held his breath. He was only about ten feet away from the horrible gray skinned suited man, whom stood now with his back to him. He hoped harder than he had ever hoped that the suited man hadn’t noticed him.
The gray suited man turned slowly and faced him. Dakota briefly made eye contact. The thing’s eyes had no pupils! No color, just a cloudy white like watered down milk.
Dakota felt his body seize up. Warmth spread down the inside of his left leg and the gray skinned man walked towards the overgrown bush, directly at Dakota.
Dakota’s mind had frozen up. He wanted to run, but his stomach knotted so tightly with terror that he thought he might faint. He turned his eyes away from the gray man, clinching them shut. He rapidly repeated in his mind.
“Don’t see me! Don’t See me! Don’t see me!”
The gray man stopped just inches from the bushes and stared within at Dakota. He reached into the inside of his buttoned suit jacket and emerged with a closed hand.
Standing still for a moment, he continued to stare, drinking in the thick and inky fear that emanated from the young boy behind the tangled bush branches.
The gray man bent his right arm at the elbow and lifted his hand slightly higher then his waist, turning his closed hand so that the palm faced down. He opened it, letting what he had retrieved from his pocket drop free to the ground.
The gray skinned man turned back toward his shiny black sedan, walked up to the driver side door, reached down and opened it. He stood still for a moment, poised to get in.
Smoke was now billowing from beneath the eaves of the second story of the house. The hairless, milky eyed, slate gray skinned man glanced briefly back to where he knew the boy hid. He smiled an overly wide, black toothed chitinous smile, then got into the driver seat, shutting the door.
Dakota, his eyes firmly shut, could hear the gray man breathing. He could feel his gaze. Then he heard a soft thump on the ground, a roll, then he felt a light weight tap against the toe of his left shoe.
He felt the gray man turn, heard the car door open, then a moment later close.
Dakota heard the engine start, and with the joined sound of the engine purring, and the wheels grinding against the gravel of the alley. He opened his eyes to see that the car was already down the alley way and turning onto the street.
He took off running as fast as his legs would carry him. He couldn’t think of anything but to get home, to get to safety, to get away!
As the slapping of his rapid steps echoed off the backs of garages as he bolted down the alley way, he hadn’t even realized that he had reached down and grabbed the small round object the gray man had dropped to the ground. It was clutched tightly in his hand as he ran.