Dark Exodus

  The torments she, as well as the world itself, might have suffered.

  They were trying to cover her . . . to suffocate her with their mass, to snuff out the light coming from her body.

  And with the light extinguished . . .

  Layer upon layer of demonic nastiness fell upon her, pushing her farther and farther down into the darkness. She could hear their terrible voices screaming at her to give up.

  That eventually they would win.

  That eventually they would have her.

  Even as a child, she’d hated when people told her what to do.

  She used her anger to feed the fire of the markings upon her flesh, fanning them hotter and higher with her rage.

  And the demons burned, their gibbering and profane words quickly turning into little more than shrieks of pain and agony as they experienced the flames of her conviction.

  Theodora Knight pulled herself up from beneath the burning bodies, climbing atop the screaming and the wretched to ascend.

  To stand atop the monsters that would try to drag her down.

  Victorious.

  For the moment.

  • • •

  Theodora swam toward the waking world, the pain of what she had experienced wracking her body in the physical world as well. She could tell that the demonic influence had begun to seep from her psyche, twisting her body to manifest some of the horrific physical attributes of the demonic denizens imprisoned within her.

  At times these physical changes could be beneficial, but at this moment they just proved to her the seriousness of her situation.

  Theodora screamed as she opened her eyes, feeling the painful effects of a body twisted by demonic possession.

  She was attempting to sit up as the door swung open, and the little girl entered.

  Little girl?

  Theo had no idea who this child was or why she was barging into her room, but she saw the fear on the child’s face begin to grow.

  And could she blame her? She must’ve looked a sight.

  She tried to speak, to perhaps calm the child, but the teeth had more than tripled inside her mouth, making it nearly impossible to do anything but drool and growl.

  The child looked as though she was about to scream, and Theo was doing everything she could to speed up the transformation back to her normal form, when the most unusual of things occurred.

  She watched as the child stepped back and extended her arm, pointing her outstretched hands toward her. At first, Theo didn’t understand, but then she felt the change of pressure, a mysterious breeze of humid air appearing out of nowhere, ruffling her hair as well as the child’s curly blond locks.

  And then there came the sparks from the tips of the child’s fingers, sparks that turned to flames, that turned to fire.

  Shooting from the child’s hands to engulf her.

  • • •

  The monster was burning.

  Alarms were sounding as thick black smoke filled the room, and Cassie Royce wasn’t sure that what she’d done was right.

  “Cassie?” she heard her father’s voice calling from the first floor, and she didn’t answer him, instead choosing to watch the monster as it burned, rolling around on the floor as it was completely covered and consumed by flame.

  “Cassie!” her father’s voice called again, this time much closer than before.

  “Daddy!” she called out over the shriek of the fire alarms. “I’m up here!”

  She moved toward the door, still keeping an eye on the burning shape. The fire had begun to spread, and she knew that it wouldn’t be good to burn her new home down on the first day she was there, so she used her talent again.

  Concentrating on the fire, she extended only one of her hands this time, calling to it with her mind like she would call to a puppy, and it leapt from where it had been burning, into her hands, and into her body, until the fire was gone, and there was only smoke.

  “Jesus Christ!” somebody said, as Stephen and her father charged into the room.

  It was Stephen, and he was carrying a fire extinguisher, and started to spray the room and smoldering monster body with the white foam.

  “Cassie . . . oh God, Cass. What did you do?”

  She ran to her father, throwing her arms around his waist. “There was a monster, Dad,” she said. “There was a monster, and I burned it.”

  He hugged her tightly, trying to understand, staring at the body on the floor covered in the white foam.

  “Oh God,” was how he responded. They both watched as Stephen stared down at the blackened remains of the monster, letting the fire-extinguisher canister drop from his hands to the floor.

  “What did you do, Cassie?” her father repeated, hugging her tighter.

  “It was a monster, Dad, honest,” she said.

  Stephen knelt beside the blackened remains, reaching out with a trembling hand to touch its face when . . .

  The burned body twitched, and a cracking sound filled the air as some of the charred skin flaked away, falling to the floor.

  “The monster,” Cassie said, holding on to her father tighter. “The monster is still alive.”

  The body twitched again, and the figure beneath began to cough.

  “Theo,” Stephen said, pulling her up into his arms, breaking away the pieces of burned and blackened skin to reveal fresh and lovely-looking skin beneath.

  She didn’t look like a monster anymore, Cassie thought. She was a beautiful lady.

  And that was when she began to realize that she might have made a huge mistake. That maybe this wasn’t a monster at all but something else entirely.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said, as the woman continued to wipe away the soot and burned skin. Her clothes had burned away as well, and she was very much naked.

  Cassie noticed the strange black markings that covered the pale flesh of the woman’s body.

  “It’s all right, child,” the woman said, as Stephen helped her to stand. “It was all a misunderstanding, but what talents you have.”

  Looking at the pretty lady standing there, Cassie was reminded of her mother, and how her own so-called talents had been used against the woman.

  “You have talents, too,” Cassie said, holding on to her father all the tighter. “I wish my mommy’d had your talents.”

  2

  It was just over a three-hour drive from the Price home to the house where it had all happened.

  Where everything had changed.

  He pulled up in front of his destination and parked. Taking out his phone, he checked for messages, and seeing none, dialed his wife. He wanted to hear her voice before going in.

  John got his wish, but it was only her voice mail. It would have to do for now.

  “Hey, it’s me,” he said, imagining her listening to the message later. “Just got to the Gorham place. Will probably be going in shortly and just wanted to touch base.”

  He paused, realizing that he didn’t have all that much to say and just wanted to speak with her.

  “Anyway, I’ll try to give you a call after,” he told her. “Hope you’re doing well. Love you much. Bye-bye.”

  He hung up and held the phone against his thigh as he gazed at the house through the window of the rental car.

  John had learned that the nondescript ranch at 145 Westview Lane in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was scheduled for demolition that very week. It had taken him half a day to track down the Realtor, then the buyer, and another two hours to convince the buyer to let him have a look around before the house was taken down.

  It had been business as usual last Halloween—they’d done live Ghost Chasers broadcasts before. He remembered how anxious they’d been. The live stuff was always hard, and like most paranormal investigations, completely unpredictable. John smiled as he thought of how fellow investigator and dear f
riend, Becky Noonan, had joked about throwing a sheet over her partner, Phil Reynolds, if things got too boring.

  But that certainly hadn’t been the case at all.

  John felt a slight chill run down his spine as he sat, looking at the home squatting like some hideous toad on the overgrown lot.

  The demolition team had already brought their trucks and bulldozers. Before the end of the next morning, the house would be nothing more than rubble.

  A blight upon the Earth erased.

  But first, John wanted another chance, another opportunity to determine why it had happened to them. Had it been intentional? Had they been set up by the home’s owner, a man named Fritz Gorham?

  A man who seemed to have disappeared from the face of the Earth, much like what was about to happen to the house he’d asked John and his team to investigate.

  John wanted to find that man. He wanted to find that man very badly.

  He got out of his rental and was almost to the walkway leading to the front door when he heard another car door slam. He spun around to see a short, round woman with an enormous smile rushing from a parked van toward him.

  “John?” she called, waving an overstuffed keychain that jingled like a Christmas bell.

  “Yes, hello!” he said, starting to walk toward her.

  “Flo Wiseman,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Good to see you, Flo, and thanks so much for coming out on such short notice.”

  Her hand was warm and moist. It was like shaking hands with a sponge.

  “No problem at all,” she said cheerily. “When John Fogg calls and asks you to do some readings, how can you refuse?”

  “Very easily, actually,” John replied with a chuckle. “But I really do appreciate it.”

  “So this is it,” she commented, turning her attention to the house. “Doesn’t look like much, which is probably why it ended up givin’ you such a hard time.”

  “That’s an understatement,” John said quietly as he studied the ranch.

  “You have to be careful with those gas leaks,” Flo said.

  He glanced at her then, and the look on her face told him that she knew very well that what had happened in the house had had nothing to do with anything natural.

  John slowly nodded, then gestured toward the house. “Shall we get started?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.” Flo pushed past John and began to head up the walkway, her chubby hands out to her sides as if walking on a tightrope. “I have to say, I’m really not picking up much of anything.”

  Flo Wiseman was a psychometric, gifted with the unique ability to see the history of an object just by touching it. John hoped that Flo would be able to offer some insight to what had happened to Fritz by reading any residual energies left inside the house.

  The new owners of the property said that they would leave a key along the top of the doorframe, and they were as good as their word. John found the key and opened the door, allowing Flo to enter first.

  “I’m picking up some small stuff, nothing of any real significance.” She was touching the walls, rubbing the flat of her hand across the wallpapered surface.

  “I think we’ll have our best luck in the basement,” John said. He actually experienced a physical reaction to the thought of going back down there.

  It had been awhile since he’d last felt it—fear. He hadn’t been really scared in years. But as he stood in front of the door that led to the cellar, a very large part of him screamed to leave it alone.

  “I’ll get that,” Flo said, reaching around him and grasping the glass doorknob. “Oh,” she said, eyes widening behind her large-framed glasses. “That’s odd.”

  “What?” John asked.

  “Everything around us has something . . . some lasting impression. But this doorknob has nothing . . . like it’s been wiped clean of psychic fingerprints.”

  John said nothing. He already knew that the ghosts in this house had been silenced—silenced so they couldn’t warn his wife of what had awaited them downstairs.

  “Are we going down?” Flo asked.

  “Only if you feel up to it,” John said.

  “Let’s do it,” she said, pulling the door open and starting down, holding tight to the wooden railing.

  John pulled a flashlight from the pocket of his jacket and illuminated the stairs in a circle of white light.

  “That’s better,” Flo said, and giggled. “The railings have been scrubbed clean, same as the doorknob,” she said. She reached the bottom and stopped, looking a bit unsure as she waited for John to join her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “If this is too much, we can go right now.”

  “No, no,” she said with a shake of her head. “I know this is important for you, and I can guess why.”

  John said nothing.

  “I met some of your crew,” she continued. “Phil Reynolds was a really nice guy, when I heard what happened to him . . .”

  “Phil was a nice guy,” John agreed, remembering the good-natured man and his dedication to legitimizing the study of the paranormal.

  “I want to do this not only for you, but for him and the others who died . . . and your wife.”

  John felt the clash of two powerful emotions: a love so intense that it physically hurt, and fear—fear of what his wife had become and fear for her future.

  “How is she?” Flo asked. “I heard she was hurt pretty badly . . .”

  “Healing,” John said with a deep breath and a steady nod. “It’s going to take time.”

  “Good.” Flo turned back to the cellar and began to walk slowly into the dark and damp space. “Back to work then.”

  John held the beam of his flashlight a little higher to light her way. She was holding her hands out again, feeling the air.

  “Static,” she said. “It’s the only way I can describe it. Bad static.”

  They were getting closer to where the vessel had been discovered, the jar that had contained two thousand demonic entities—until it had exploded.

  Like a demonic WMD.

  The entities were relentless, and John was certain that he would have died with his crew had it not been for his wife’s sacrifice.

  Had she not taken the demons into herself, trapping them within her own body.

  “Something really bad happened here,” Flo said cautiously. “The images aren’t here, but the feeling is . . . like a bad smell.”

  She was standing where Phil and Becky had placed the jar, turning around in a circle, her arms extended like antennae, picking up on the room’s nasty vibe. Her sneakered foot caught on a rock, and she stumbled, lurching to one side.

  John reached out to steady her, sending the flashlight beam spinning crazily around the dark and dusty space.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Flo replied. “Shine your light over there again,” she said, pointing toward a far corner of the room.

  John did as he was ordered, sending the beam of the flashlight into the shadows of the corner.

  “Did you see that?” Flo was nearly swallowed up by the darkness as she headed into the corner. “A reflection . . . right around . . . here,” she said, dropping down to one knee with a grunt. “Oh boy, you’re going to have to help me up when we’re done.”

  “No worries.” John chuckled as he stepped up behind her and shined the flashlight on the ground around her. “What have you found?”

  “This,” she said, reaching toward the loose, dry dirt as his beam of light glistened on something smooth and coppery. Flo plucked it up from the ground, and her reaction was immediate.

  “Oh, God,” she said, the terror in her voice palpable.

  “Flo, what’s wrong?” John asked. “Flo?”

  She had begun to convulse, falling backward to the dirt floor, nearly knocking Joh
n over. She was still holding on to her discovery, squeezing her hand so tightly that blood dripped from between her fingers.

  John dropped the flashlight and grabbed her wrist, prying her stubby fingers open to reveal a jagged fragment of the jar. He took it away but continued to hold her hand as her body bucked and thrashed. “Hang on, Flo,” he encouraged, stuffing the fragment into his pocket and removing his phone with his free hand. “You’re going to be all right,” he told her as he punched in 911.

  It was only a matter of minutes before police and fire arrived, but to John it seemed like hours as he sat on the dirt floor of the basement and held on to Flo. The police officers led him outside while the paramedics attended to the woman. He explained what happened as best he could, leaving out the fact that a piece of a jar that had once held thousands of demonic entities had triggered a grand mal seizure in a psychometric.

  As the paramedics brought Flo out from the house on a stretcher, John watched, his hand in his pocket, moving his fingers over the coppery shard as if trying to experience some of what Flo had endured. But he didn’t have the gift.

  “Excuse me,” John called, crossing the grass to the ambulance. “Is she going to be all right?”

  One of the paramedics turned, and John caught the familiar look cross his face, bracing himself for what he knew was coming next.

  “You’re that ghost guy, aren’t you!”

  The man’s partner glanced from the paramedic to John. “What are you talking about?” he asked before John could explain.

  “He’s on television with his wife,” the paramedic told his partner. “They investigate all kinds of freaky shit!”

  “Really?” the partner asked. “Were you investigating now?”

  “Just doing some research, you know,” John said.

  Both paramedics nodded as if they did.

  John used the opportunity and stepped closer to Flo on the stretcher. “Would it be okay if I had a quick word with my friend?”

  She was awake, but her glasses were gone, and her eyes above the clear plastic oxygen mask she wore were hooded and sleepy. He felt terrible, but as ruthless as it seemed, he had to know if she had been able to learn anything useful.