Finally…an update…this is what i was working on for the past few weeks…inbetween work, life and cases, I haven’t had much time to sit down long enough and work on the story but here is your update lol, as promised a few weeks ago…hopefully its good. Lemme know what you think.
(yes this is directly after the last part i posted so i didn’t skip out on ya)
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“This is the Sherriff’s office?” Peter gawked, his jaw practically hitting the floor, dumb shock crossing his oddly handsome features as Egon pulled the Ecto-1 into a parking space and shifted the ambulance into park.
The building in front of them was two stories tall, made of the standard red brick that all government buildings seem to be made of. The ground floor windows to the right back quarter of the building were lined with thick black iron bars; they were painted a high gloss black to make it look like tempered steel, but no paint job could disguise the thickness of the metal or hide its strength.
They were bolted deep into the brick and mortar, and it was made clear that even though this was as small town sheriff’s office, the town meant business.
The second story apparently was office space and living quarters for officers pulling all night shifts. The windows up top were not barred but Peter could tell that they did have extra strength wire woven through the glass.
The building’s appearance, however, was aged, and faded, water and weather worn, as if it had withstood the tests of time and was only now holding up by the thin looking cement between the brinks. The parking lot was paved, and it too had a faded look; it was apparently a dirty brown during the day but the storm and pounding rains had washed away the dirt, leaving the lot a deep velvet jet black, and covered in a good half an inch of rain water.
On the right hand side of the entrance door, four cruisers sat lined up, all dark, their engines and lights off, sitting like relics. All of them appeared to be aging Ford Crown Victoria’s, white with dual green stripes alongside the car doors, with the town’s double eagle and pine tree emblem and the words NEWCOMB SHERRIFF’S OFFICE curving up under the emblem and along the right and left rear fenders the words “ To Protect and Serve” were emblazoned in golden curving strip.
Only one light burned in the entire building and that was in an office on the ground floor, where Peter only hoped the sheriff, whom he also hoped was not a cannibalistic shotgun toting madman, was waiting for them.
Peter had taken the time from the drive from the convenience store, while crunching on powered sugar donuts and semi flat Coke, he had Ray go over the details with him about the case that he had missed out on while snoozing on the drive up.
Having Ray nearly eaten by Fido was not something to take lightly. Most of the case could be summed up as simply missing persons…if it weren’t for the sightings of those footprints and weird dog monster.
Even after seeing the unnatural every day for the last four years, Peter was still a natural skeptic, but tonight had made a believer out of him. There was something dark in the woods in Newcomb and it took humans. Looking out the Ecto-1’s windows, through the rain streaked glass, watching the drops of water run in rivulets as they fell from the tumultuous sky, Peter couldn’t help the creeping notion that they were being watched.
He began to feel the ■■■■■■■ creep into his nerves and to combat it, he tried to focus on something else. Turning away from the windows, he looked up at Egon, who sat behind the wheel, not saying anything; Egon was normally not a fan of letting the engine idle, as it wasted gas and gas was expensive when it came out of petty cash.
Also, it was unnatural for Egon to zone out like he was currently, just staring ahead through the windshield, his blonde hair pompadour just barely scraping the roof of the old car. Peter became acutely aware that everyone in the car was looking at Egon.
Then Peter really looked at Egon.
Something was wrong.
Egon’s hands were on the wheel, but he was not just holding the wheel, no, he was clenching it hard enough for his knuckles to turn white and in the rearview mirror, Peter saw that behind his round red glasses, Egon’s blue eyes were unfocused, glazed over. Egon’s breathing was shallow and quick and a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead.
It was completely normal for Egon, many times during the day, to zone out. During these periods, he would be intently focused on his task at hand, whether it was working some ungodly complex equation, fiddling with some new and probably extremely explosive piece of equipment he and Ray had cooked up or deeply buried in research.
It was not normal, however, for him to look like he was about to pass out.
Winston and Ray had noticed it as well and quickly, Peter reached out and shook Egon gently by the shoulder. “Hey, Egon old buddy, are you with us?”
No response. Peter shook him harder. Egon’s arms felt like tensed steel, rigid and unmoving. Winston tapped him on the shoulder. “Egon?”
Worry crossed Ray’s boyish features and he reached across the front seat and snapped his fingers in Egon’s face. “Egon?”
Suddenly Egon snapped out of his daze and looked around, his eyes coming instantly into focus, relaxing his grip on the wheel. “Oh, sorry. What?”
Peter felt relief wash over him and he could see it in the other two Ghostbusters as well.
“You worried us there for a minute. We thought you had a gran mal seizure or something,” Peter said, letting his friend’s arm go and settling back into his seat.
“No, I’m fine, really. It’s nothing. “Egon said, and suddenly he was his old self again, as if the events of the last half a minute or so had never occurred.
Ray was about to inquire further, and press him for details, but Egon cut him off. “Looks like this is the place. Let’s get our gear and head inside. I don’t want to go anywhere unarmed after what happened,” and with that, Egon killed the engine and the lights, pocketed the keys and opened the door to the driving slashing rain and shut it just as fast, heading into the near gale force storm.
Peter watched dumbfounded.
“Like the man says, out we go,” he said, reaching for the door handle, and stepping out into the downpour. He was instantly soaked and his uniform didn’t stop the water one bit. “Should’ve brought my swim trunks…” he grumbled under his breath and ran with the other four men to the back of the ambulance, where Egon already had the rear hatch door open and swung wide, the proton pack rack slid out and unfastened. Each man grabbed their pack, a PKE meter, their flashlights, traps and two-way radios.
Once everyone had gotten suited up and Egon felt they were as ready as they could be, he slammed the door and made sure it was shut and without preamble he and the other four Ghostbusters bolted across the parking lot through the storm and made for the station.
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*“…………Over time I’ve come to feel
That everything must come apart it seems
From the little child to the man of power
From the beggar to the angel of my dreams
From the thinnest thread we are sewn together
From the finest string we dangle over time
From the highest wire do we walk through fire
Should our balance ever falter
Should our steps be unaligned……..
…………….shared each other’s sins….
……We all have dreams and nightmares….”
-----Oingo Boingo, Flesh and Blood.*</I>
The sky over the old Simmons house was just as dark and roiling as it was at the police station over in town, but there was something different about it.
A faint red glow began to pulsate and pervade the clouds above and around the property and scarlet lighting flared, hissing in the rain, leaving behind the faint stench of sulphur and if one listened hard enough, the thunder from these bolts were laced with the most whispered of screams and wails of agony, which came as fast as the hellish lightning that spawned them and rolled away, fading like the last waves of the ocean on a summer’s eve.
The old garage and the Buick that sat under the tarp did not care that just above the house, the sky was being ripped apart, as if giving birth to some fiend, and if it had had ears, it would have heard the earth scream as the house itself took on the red glow that had turned the storm clouds to blood; the light flowed and ebbed like the pulse of a living creature and then the house began to…change.
At first the change was imperceptible, but quickly it progressed. The wood itself seemed to warp and bend, and finally, the boards that made up the walls came alive, bucking off of their wood supports, the nails melting and turning to slag. The boards bent and snarled, writhing like snakes on a grill, and they seemed to hiss.
The air pressure began to increase and the air became thick, hard to breathe and if you had been standing there, it would have felt like you were walking through quicksand.
All around, the scream of the lighting, the roar of the natural thunder, the blood-red light that bathed everything and the hiss of the mutilated boards filled the world with sound, and nearly as soon as it began, the sound, all sound, stopped as if someone had shut off the volume. Around the glowing land and house, animals, deer and raccoons, birds and rats began to flee, fleeing for their lives, bounding away in leaps, never looking back as the pressure built and built.
The earth heaved and swelled, and finally it cracked, and that fissue spread, streaking towards the suddenly still house, its boards frozen in mid movement and within the span of a millisecond, the fissure hit the house and went under it and then the house seemed to breathe in, all the boards and windows, unnaturally alive as they were, bent inward, as if some underground giant had taken a deep breath, a sleepy yawn. Around the house, the red lighting flashed and sparked soundlessly.
In one terrible second, the house exploded from the very foundations, ripped apart in a violent outward explosion as the pressure wave that had been building finally broke, and above the sky again exploded with sound, with every sound coming back at once, in a single astounding scream of sheer force, boards and glass shattered like toothpicks and a fireball of red energy burst forth from the broken earth, as the house’s remains flew through the air, nothing so much as blackened dead timbers now, landing yards away, the thumps and tinkling of the glass and walls and boards lost in titanic surge of churning energy that now ripped from gaping hole that used to be the basement and joined the sky.
The sky seemed to open and drink the energy and for a moment, it flowed like ■■■■■■ water, filling the clouds and the lightning converged on a single spot in front of the ripped open foundation and with a single blinding flash, seared into the earth and then as suddenly as the unnatural storm began, it faded, leaving behind a smoking ruin of old man Simmons house and also leaving behind something else and only the blue white sheering of lighting and the low grumble of natural thunder provided any sound.
Otherwise, it was as silent as a tomb.
A shadowy figure stood where the lighting had struck. For a moment, it did nothing, and simply stood there. Then it outstretched its arms, and its feminine form began to shift, to melt and change.
The body elongated, the legs became more powerful, the arms lengthened and the fingers turned into wicked ones tipped in long black claws.
The chest barreled and shifted into a more masculine one, and finally all traces of the woman that used to be Janine Melnitz was gone as the head buckled in and then punched out into a wolf’s terrible snout lined with fangs, with black gums and a forked tongue flicked in and out, sniffing the air and dark gray fur sprouted and finally covered the creatures entire body in a silvery sheen.
Dark tiger-stripe markings came in and the ears stretched into almost horn like organs, ragged and ripped and the eyes deepened in their sockets.
The skin and flesh receded from the tip of the muzzle with the nose would have been, leaving only blackened bone, an open hole, horrid and gaping, from which tendrils of steam trickled and finally, the eyes opened and there, it was as if hell itself had vomited up its sinners and malice and cruelty and deception, all its cunning and dark intelligence, and most of all, its ancient unwavering knowing evil.
A deep red light shimmered in the sclera and the pupils were a deep black with yellow pupils.
Standing over seven feet in height, this canid monstrosity raised its right arm and snapped its ghoulishly long fingers once. Instantly its naked body was suddenly clothed in tattered ankle length black robes with a voluminous hood that raised of its own accord to cover the being’s head and cast all but the tip of its smoking snout in darkness and shadow, leaving only the sick yellow and black and red eyes to peer out like dying stars.
It lowered its arm and then it spoke, its voice sounding as if it had swallowed gravel, rasping and slightly metallic as if from disuse. It had a terrible timber to it, as if it were death itself speaking. It spoke, in English, having ripped the language from the woman’s mind, its words slow and halting.
“Guards of Irkalla, come to me, consumere de mors, attend me, Negral of Arali.”
It waited.
It did not know time as mortals did and felt no rush. It had waited over four thousand years; a few more moments were nothing.
There, in the darkness, inky black shapes began to slink from the forest’s edge, low to the ground, and predatory, they stalked, their heads lowered and their powerful bodies moving silently, their blazing red eyes filled with an animal hunger not of this earth.
One
Two
Three
Four….
Yes, they were all here. Four hellish hounds stalked out of the woods, leaving burning sizzling tracks in their wake, their jaws dripping blue acidic slime, their long tails whipping and an intelligent horrid gleam in their gaze. As a pack, the hellhounds, the eaters of the dead, circled the demonic wolf-apparition and stood at attention, making sickening laughing growls in their throats, their eyes rolling as their walked in tight circle around their master.
For a moment, the demon seemed to take pleasure in his soldiers, watching them and then finally he spoke again.
“My children, follow me. We have much work to do and we must begin. We must create the Portcullis then we build our army and lay waste to this mortal plane, and finally bring Irkalla out of the damnations of hell and here, where we will live forever, as we should have from the beginning, with unlimited souls to reap and to shape.”
The savage hounds parted their circle, letting the demon walk out of them, and it strode across the scorched earth, smiling to itself a sharks smile as it stepped effortlessly over the fissure in the earth that had buckled the foundation and split an earth made ramp down into the depths of what used to be the basement of the Simmons house.
Mounting this ramp, the demon in black moved like black water down, down, and he was followed by his hounds, deeper into the now gaping hole that led below the basement, into the Mounds, the mounds that, years ago, Simmons never knew he was building over. The demon walked past the shattered brick and earth and into a gaping wound in the earth.
The hole was more like a tunnel that sloped downwards, into a cave like space. The path wound down farther and farther; how far, it did not matter to the demon for every step was a step closer to the acquisition of the souls he hungered for, longed for, tasted every minute of the four thousand years of his imprisonment.
He barely looked at the walls, which were lined with skulls and bodies embedded into the earth and finally he vanished in the shadows and the hounds moved to follow but the demon held up a hand.
Speaking from the shadows, with only its hellish eyes visible, it spoke to its children.
“No. You have work to do. There are mortals who pose a threat to our plans. This vessel has shown me, albeit unwillingly, the truth of the danger they represent. They could undo everything we will work for,” it paused and reached out its hands, and the eyes of the hounds flared as something imperceptible flooded their predators brains, “find these mortals and kill them. Kill them all. Bring me their souls. You know now where to find them. Do not rest, do not stop, do not show mercy.”
The sick yellow eyes vanished into the darkness of the cavern and turned away, as the hounds, their sickening nearly hyena like growls became more frenzied as they turned and ran galloping slowly at first back up the ramp and out, back into the forest, and then loping, their long legs pumping, heads low and jaws open, with all the dark speed in their bodies, back to Newcomb.
