room, guiding the demon away from Laura’s hiding place. If he could just lure Abiku far enough forwards it would give Laura a chance to get away. He had to keep Laura safe. It had been a mistake, he realised now, to bring Laura here but it was too late. She was here and he had to get her out. The plan was failing and there was little chance he’d make it out of this so he had to do everything he could to help Laura. She was all that mattered.
Abiku lunged again at Connor but he somehow managed to evade her grasp. The demon sighed with a note of impatience, if such a human characteristic could be applied to a creature as evil and alien as Abiku.
Abiku took another step closer and as Connor prepared to duck again, she paused and turned back towards the sofa. Then with almost a casual acknowledgement Abiku swept over to where Laura lay terrified in her hiding place. Connor screamed his denial as Abiku reached down and picked Laura up by the neck. Her legs kicked out frantically from beneath her Goofy nightdress. The demon didn’t pause as she flicked her wrist. The muffled wet sound of snapping bones was like a vice on Connor’s chest. He cried his anguish but it wasn’t enough. No sound would come and the sudden explosive grief threatened to burst through his constricting throat. He couldn’t move in his shock and Abiku flowed back over to him. There was no point, his body had given up and as the demon took him in her arms… Connor snapped back to the present.
He was standing at the foot of the stairs, Laura still in his arms and the mad crash of bloody desperate fighting was still audible from upstairs. While the dead were fighting the demon Connor had regained control of his doorway and he had used it to look out upon the future. The only obvious course of action that he could take would end in cruel violent tragedy. He needed he pull off a new move.
Laura’s head was spinning. The room was jumping around her. She had been in bed and then something had happened. Someone had broken into the house, into the bedroom!
They had hit her!
What about Connor? She was relieved to see he was next to her.
“Connor?” her voice sounded strange, distant as if her ears were blocked. She didn’t know what was happening. Connor was talking but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Her hearing was muffled. They were downstairs now and she wondered, briefly, how they had got there. Her head hurt and when he touched it the stinging paid lanced through her. She felt groggy, almost hung-over and wondered if she was concussed.
Connor was still talking. His arms were flying around wildly as If he was urgently trying to explain something. She needed should probably try to listen to him but as she tried to concentrate the realised he wasn’t talking to her at all. He was talking to someone else. She followed his gaze up the stairs but there was no one there.
“… infil. plan? I don’t know if I can do that” he was saying. He paused as if listening, nodding, then shook his head.
“I couldn’t control the doorway earlier and what if it doesn’t work?” he continued. It was as if he was talking on his phone and Laura was only hearing one side of the conversation. Connor never took his eyes off the top of the stairs but his voice was rising, becoming more urgent. There were sounds, footsteps coming form up there. Something crashed, an object falling from a shelf. She jumped and more scuffling sounds filtered down from across the landing. All the doors she could see up there from where she stood were closed but she had no doubt that person who had broken in was still up there.
Connor’s expression was pained, tense and grim. He didn’t react to the phantom noises but surely he must hear them as well. Was there someone up there? They needed to get out of there.
Then the mental fog cleared and she understood. The freezing realisation drilled down her throat into the pit of her stomach. Connor’s demon had actually come. That was what was making the noise. So why weren’t they running? They had to get out of there!
When Connor had first told her about Abiku she had believed him but she hadn’t really expected it would ever happen. It was something she tried not to think about, partly because it was so bizarre and strange and partly because it sounded so frightening. But now here it was. A sudden urge to open the front door and flee into the night filled her body. Only she couldn’t leave Connor here to face it alone. She had told Alicia that whatever happened to Connor they would face it together.
“Damn it, let’s do it” Connor suddenly announced to no one in particular. No one that Laura could see anyway and finally it all clicked into place. The demon was here and so was his dead friend. Laura shivered violently, backing away from her boyfriend as she realised who and also what he was talking to.
There were dead people in the house! She felt the skin on the back of her head shrink and her spine tingled as if a hundred spiders were running over her bare flesh.
She backed up against the front door, fumbling with the door handle when things become even more unreal. Maybe it was a light and she hadn’t noticed earlier. That had to be it, because from where she was standing it looked as if a long black sword just appeared in Connor’s hand from out of nowhere.
Connor turned to her and she saw the usual warmth of his eyes had gone.
“Get out”. His voice was cold, hard. This wasn’t the Connor she knew. As much as she longed to be with him forever, in that moment she wanted to get as far away from him as possible.
They had to use the infill plan - the backup plan Connor and Captain Blake had discussed had to be enacted. Connor realised it was the only chance he had to end this but the recklessness of the plan would probably end him anyway.
Captain Blake threw the spare blade he had been carrying down to Connor who caught it in his right hand. The Captain paused for a second to look at Connor before nodding and charging back into the mealy still raging in his bedroom. This was something Connor had dreaded but if it bought enough time for Laura to get away he had to do it, no matter the cost to himself.
Laura was by the front door. The look of terror and desperation on her face pained Connor but at least she had a chance of escape now.
“Get out” he told her. His guilt and fear for her made his voice catch in his constricted throat and the words came out sounding more like a threat than a request.
There was no point hiding or even going anywhere to do what he had to do next. If the plan failed, and there was a huge chance it would do, Abiku would kill him without even touching him.
Connor didn’t waste a second, didn’t even look at Laura. He closed his eyes and pictured his psychic doorway once again. He had to execute the infill or infiltration plan. He had done this before but that had been on a human. He’d never attempted to open a doorway into the mind of a demon before.
The ghostly image of the doorway shimmered in his mind. Unlike Dale Tanner where Connor punched a doorway from the thug’s mind into the Afterlife, Connor only had to open the doorway outwards into the warped alien mind of the greater demon. Only that was more dangerous than anything he had ever done before and there was nothing that could have prepared him for what lay beyond.
He was immediately immersed in a riot of alien desires: Lusting cruelty, violent hunger, the exquisite pleasure of torment all entwining in a rolling mass of pain and hurt. It was everywhere. It immediately corrupted his senses: Connor could taste it, he could smell it. He could feel the sick alien awareness turn upon him. The essence of evil loathing bleached his soul, burning through him to his mental core.
He screamed.
It was too much. Again he felt he couldn’t breathe. He felt he was in a sewer drowning in filth as the walls closed in around him. His mind was at the edge of an abyss. His head spun and he was falling. Greedy noxious flies seemed to fall upon him and he was falling. Darkness hiding horrors his mind could no longer comprehend swept all around him and he knew he was lost. He would never find his doorway again. He’d be trapped here forever - Alone.
As the roots of despair pulled him downwards away from the light and away from his doorway Connor felt something next to him. A figure em
erged and he was no longer alone. Others were with him: Friends. Connor struggled to see but he knew he was not alone in this utterly cruel and perverse mind. His doorway was floating before him and through the open portal the souls of the dead rushed through again.
The survivors from the assault in the bedroom had returned through the doorway back into his mind just before he opened it into Abiku’s dark psychotic mind. All around him the dead hacked and slashed with their demon hide weapons. They could, no doubt, do little damage to the demon from the outside, but attacking her directly in her own mind they could inflict catastrophic damage. Connor watched through the doorway as the silent dead army waded through in all directions, cutting and hacking at everything before them.
Connor sudden scream chilled Laura to her very core. It was an inhuman scream filled with anguish and torment. She had never heard anything like that before; the sound of pure terror. Her hand had fallen away from the door and she rushed to his side. He stood swaying against the banister at the foot of the stairs. His face was pale and sweaty. His features twisted in an agony she couldn’t hope to comprehend.
“Connor, what’s wrong? Wake up” she shook him. “Connor, can you hear me?” For a moment she thought if she kissed him he