Hell's Rejects

Paranoia

If you see someone running for their life, pleading for help; run the other way. If you help them the shadows will get you too.

I thought about that as I got off the couch to check the salt line. I’d surrounded the perimeter of my house with a fat line of salt to keep them out. I saw on a TV show that it might work. It didn’t matter if it was true or not because it made me feel safe. The salt drove me nuts at first because it kept blowing away but then I started mixing it with Elmer’s glue. Now the salt’s there forever. Doesn’t stop me from checking it, though, out of habit.

My cameras were recording and my heat sensors pointed all around the house. We didn’t know if the temperature dropped when the shadow people came but I figured it was worth the investment. If a sensor chimed, I’d just get up and run for my life. I had no other options yet. I had no way to defend myself against them.

But I was studying. I’d always been fascinated by the occult and this was some occult shit, for sure.

Slow Apocalypse

Life wasn’t always so crazy. To get you up to speed, let me explain how awful this place has become.

I can’t tell you when the world went to shit because it happened so gradually. I heard all of the gruesome stories that defied logic but none of them seemed to be connected in the beginning.

One of the first stories to come out was about a guy who lost his leg skiing in Aspen about five years ago. He didn’t hit a boulder or succumb to frostbite. No, it just came off and he nearly bled to death. According to him it was torn off by some sort of invisible monster. He was lucky to survive.

The family of a convicted murderer was found dismembered, including distant cousins and half siblings who barely had any real-world connection to him. The police tried to interview the murderer only to find out that he too had been killed in prison by his cell mate a week before the other murders occurred. If he’d done it, he did so from beyond the grave.

In a single day in Chicago over a thousand people launched themselves through the windows of their high rise offices and apartments to their deaths. There were rumors that the suicides were screaming for help as they fell. Now no one works in high rises.

We’re living through an epidemic of unexplainable murders with no end in sight. The survivors of these vicious attacks all have the same story; that something invisible tried to kill them.

No one’s safe anymore.

We were forced to accept the truth when President Wilson gave his State of the Union address. That was when the absurd became real for us. Wilson was his usual uncomfortable self, trying to portray a confidence that he didn’t possess. His hands were gesticulating as he demeaned his viewers with arrogant nonsense. He seemed possessed and as if to verify that, his head ripped noisily from his shoulders, hovered in the air for a second and then launched itself at the camera, knocking it over.

The camera fell to the floor and Wilson’s head rolled into view. His eyes blinked furiously, his brain trying to adjust to the realization that his life had ended in the weirdest of ways, and then something invisible pummeled his severed head. The head twitched as it flattened. The eyes of Wilson stirred no more.

No one saw the entire thing except those watching it live at the time. I saw it. The bones in his cranium cracked and overlapped as his head received that invisible trauma. It was bone and mush by the time the news station had the common sense to cut the feed. He didn’t deserve that. No one does.

His VP resigned that same day citing emotional trauma but I knew he was just a coward. He didn’t want to end up the same as Wilson. I guess I don’t blame him.

That’s when we knew we were screwed. Nothing was as it should’ve been.

A chilling video surfaced the next day. It was Wilson’s speech seen through some sort of camera filter that made the image green-hued. Right before his head came off, dark figures, without any real definition appeared to surround him. They looked like smoke or faint shadows. The filter changed and the view became black and white, this time the figures were more clearly defined. They were people, but not in any way that made sense. They were silhouettes with bright white dots where their eyes should’ve been and through the filter they almost looked solid and real. Those dark beings pulled Wilson’s head off like a hunk of meat and then they threw it across the room.

It was so obvious what had happened now, now that we saw it with our own eyes. But that answer only raised more questions. Like, who were they and why did they do it? I’m sure there are people out there who wanted Wilson dead. There’s always some lunatic that wants to kill the President but no one would be vicious enough to pull his head away from his body and then stomp it flat, would they?

The video was verified as authentic and then the theories spread like a virus. It was demons. No, it was aliens. Maybe it was physically manifested karma of some kind. No one knew but we started to ask the right questions. Like, if they are evil and capable of killing us at will, how can we stop them? That was the question I kept asking myself.

I had no idea what to do so I hid and hoped for the best while the attacks increased around the world, unopposed.

We knew what they wanted. They wanted to harm us. But we didn’t know what they were. We’d gotten no closer to the truth or a solution.

I assumed it was demons, ghosts, or something similar that had no name yet. I’d heard the term ‘shadow people’ tossed about. Scholars referred to them as ‘anomalous beings’. But mostly we just didn’t know enough to apply a moniker.

Some even suggested that they were astral projections; that enemies of the United States had found a way to sever a man’s soul from his body and then send that freed soul on assassination missions. It wasn’t as far fetched as most theories but I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. That’s why I have thermal sensors and a line of gluey salt around my house; because I’ve made my mind up that they’re ghosts.

Dave

My buddy Dave came over. He wears a pink tutu nowadays. It’s not for fashion. He sewed salt packets from Wendy’s into the bottom hem so that he’s always surrounded by salt. He looks ridiculous but I might look for a tutu of my own pretty soon. Otherwise I’m housebound if I want to remain safe.

He also carries a bible with him wherever he goes even though he has never once gone to church. If you get him drunk enough he’ll admit that he’s an atheist. The hypocrisy doesn’t matter to Dave, though; that bible is like a clutch purse to match his tutu. It never leaves his side.

Dave and I have known each other since kindergarten so we’re able to put up with each other’s quirks like an old married couple. He used to live right around the corner from my house so either I spent my days at his place or vice versa. In a way, we both had two moms and two homes. We went to the same schools, sitting on the same seat on the bus and at the same school lunch table. We’re like brothers.

Allow me to describe my friend Dave: He’s taller than I am, although he stoops so it’s hard to gauge his true height. He shaved his beard off a few days ago but now he looks like a dork so I bet he starts growing it back pretty soon. He thinks his black hair is glorious so he lets it grow out, only cutting it when I make fun of him for looking like a Chinese woman. His tattoos have nothing to do with the art or his beliefs; they’re all about creating a look to attract the ladies. Somehow he pulls it off, maintaining his vibrancy despite our hellish surroundings.

As for me: I’m six feet tall with my shoes on. I’m pallid because I don’t go out much anymore. Right before she dumped me my last girlfriend told me I looked better with my clothes on. I’m awesome in other ways, I hope.

We have a unique friendship that I wouldn’t trade for the world, despite the fact that we’re very different people. He’s the kind of friend I need during the apocalypse, even when he pisses me off.

I Die

I turned my video game off and replaced it with the local news so I would seem like less of a loser to Dave.

I opened the door and nodded. Hey.

Dave made a show of leaping over the salt boundary and through my doorway. He had a case of Budweiser’s dangling from the fist that wasn’t holding the bible. He looked around and asked, Do you need some help taking care of this place, Jack?

Jack’s my name, by the way. Welcome to my world.

I said, It’s all good, man. I’m living the single life.

He chuckled. You always will if you don’t clean this dump up.

He wasn’t wrong. The house was left to me when my mom died last year. All I had to do was pay the property taxes and utilities and clean up after myself. I failed to do any of that. Luckily no one gave a damn about bills or taxes nowadays. But one day, when this was all behind us, I would lose this house.

Dave cracked four beers and handed me two of them. He plopped himself on the couch opposite the one I always sat on and asked, Did your cameras get anything last night?

Nope. They never had, actually. I lied once, that they’d registered something unusual, but that was because Dave made fun of me for buying them. Now he asks me about them every time he comes over.

How ‘bout the heat sensors?

Nope. Nothing. But I think the salt works.

Dave leaned forward like he wanted to tell me a secret, but when I heard the trumpet blast of his fart I remembered that this was Dave, for better or worse.

Then, he did tell me a secret. A stinky secret.

He said, I met some guys a few nights ago. I didn’t want to tell you about them until I was sure they were legit. They found a way to lure the shadows to them.

Bullshit. Dave was full of far fetched stories and sometimes outright lies. I don’t think he tries to impress me. Rather, I think he’s just trying to amuse himself. It could get old after awhile.

It’s true. They showed me.

How do they lure them? The reason I couldn’t believe this was that we’d already discussed this sort of thing a million times before. It was all garbage because even our so-called experts hadn’t found a way to interact with the shadows. If they couldn’t do it, we sure couldn’t either.

With sound.

I laughed to myself. That was nonsense. Dave saw the disbelief on my face and said, It’s not regular sound. The noise is, he paused, searching for the right word, it’s imbued with something that allows it to be heard on the other side.

The other side of what? I asked it even though I knew what he meant.

The other side, dude. Of reality. Of our known existence. Where those shadow fuckers live.

So what is the sound imbued with? I put an English accent to the word imbued, just to show that I thought he was being a snob.

Dave shook his head as though he knew better than to tell me. Then he said it anyway. It’s given a soul. Then the soul is torn away and sent to the other side.

This time I shook my head so he continued, The sound is a non living entity so it has no soul. But if you weave a false soul onto it and then take the soul away, it will naturally drift to the afterlife.

Oh, naturally, I said sarcastically.

Listen, we know it’s not aliens, right? We know it’s not demons. We’re pretty sure it’s ghosts, yeah? So what is a ghost, but a released soul?

I was listening, but barely.

He chugged his second beer and said, "We know that death is the natural process that transports a soul to the other side. We know it happens the moment the soul is no longer anchored to this plane of existence. That’s what the shadows are; dead assholes.

But souls are only attached to living beings so to get inanimate objects over there requires something special. The only way to get sound to permeate to the other side is to create a fake soul for the sound and then separate it so it goes over there where it can be heard by the shadows.

He would only get more long-winded as the beers flowed. I nodded for him to continue. He shrugged and said, So that’s what they did. They surrounded the sound waves and the speaker that was emitting the sounds with a manufactured soul and then separated it to send it over.

All bullshit. I just wanted to get back to my video game.

He continued, The shadows heard it and rushed to the source of the sound. They completely destroyed the speaker. You should’ve seen it. There was smoke everywhere.

I played along so he wouldn’t know I was tuning him out. How did your new friends get away?

Oh, they weren’t even in the same room as the speaker. They do it all remotely.

I followed with, How are they creating souls?

Dave chuckled like an imp. That was a bad sign. It meant that the answer was so stupid that it even amused him. He said, They used an ancient spell. Apparently the Egyptian priests used to use it all the time. They’d say the spell to create a soul for the Pharaoh’s stuff and then, when the Pharaoh died, they’d use a second spell to separate the soul from his possessions, thereby allowing the Pharaoh to take all his shit with him into the afterlife. That’s why their tombs were full of stuff like furniture, pottery, and gold.

So it’s hocus-pocus, then, I sighed.

Yep. But it worked. I saw it myself. You can give an inanimate object a soul and then release the soul so it goes straight to the other side. It’s crazy but it’s true.

I opened my second beer and took a long pull so I didn’t have to respond.

Dave leaned all the way forward and I held my breath, getting ready for another blast but instead he whispered, I copied the spells. I want to try them out.

Shit. I was gonna need a lot more beers for this. I chugged the one I had and snatched two more up before asking, Why do you think I’d ever want to lure those shadows here? I hate to admit it but I was starting to believe. Dave had a way of making the impossible seem doable. He’s gotten us both into a lot of trouble that way over the years.

To test your salt line. And if they get past the salt then to see if we can capture their images on camera. He waved at my cameras as he said it.

No thanks, man. Just like every other sane person in the world, I’m trying to avoid interacting with the shadows. You should too. But I knew he wouldn’t listen to reason. This was going to end one way: I was going to cave into Dave’s pressure, just like I always did. I was lazy like that.

Dave said, I already used the first spell. I wove a soul into this gun. He pulled out a pistol and grinned. I flinched and hunched down, just in case but he put it away and said, When they come I’m gonna use the separation spell and shoot them dead. That was just stupid so I told him, You’re fucking stupid.

He grinned wider now and said, The bullets have souls and when I rip the souls away with my spell, they’ll pass into the afterlife and hopefully pass through a few of those shadow bastards too.

It was clear that he’d put together this plan whilst on a drunken bender. Unfortunately sobriety hadn’t cleared his mind.

He pulled out a small leather bound diary. He flipped it open and then started to say foreign words that meant nothing to me. I doubt he even knew what he was saying. When he was done, he said, See. That was the first spell. That’s the soul-giver. The second spell takes the soul away. He turned my TV up and said, I’m gonna direct the separator at the sound waves coming from the TV and that way they’ll pass to the other side. It should be loud enough to attract nearby shadows.

I sighed. This was how I died, I just knew it. Dave was always going to be the death of me.

I said, The salt will keep them away though, right?

Dave looked away. I knew what that meant. It meant he’d done something bad. It might but I chiseled a little bit of your salt line away before I came in. I need them to get in here so I can kill them.

Dave, I don’t want to do this. I used his name to