But that fear no longer exists within me. I’m free.
“You ever wonder why they wear name tags?” Saul asks, interrupting my thoughts.
It’s a simple query, but shocking in the fact that I hadn’t considered it much until now. I’m aware of the demon’s quirky attire, obviously, but the implications behind it had never really crossed my mind.
I don’t know the answer, and I’m not sure Saul really expects one. He’s grappling with the same thing I did after locking Willow’s demon in my flaming car, coming to terms with the intrusion of something truly bizarre within our own concrete reality. It’s one thing to believe in a collection of intangible supernatural forces floating through the ether, looming just behind the curtain of our world like ghosts, but these demons are not that.
These are mortal beings. While the things they wear and do may seem utterly bizarre, their oddities still weave together in a very real system of rules, regulations, and yes, name tags.
“I don’t know,” I finally reply. “Maybe they’re at work.”
After a long beat, Saul finally turns and begins to move back through the towering metal structures, making his way to the lookout while I follow behind. We move in silence, eventually arriving at a ladder that leads up to the platform above.
The two of us climb quietly and slowly, processing these events at our own pace.
Reaching the top, we find Saul’s extra-large computer monitor and a humming processor tower next to it. He was perched up here for a clear sightline of the hangar down below, but in the sudden darkness this extra effort was nullified. Even his vast assortment of wireless cameras were less useful than we’d hoped.
“Everything crashed when the power surged,” Saul informs me, unusually deadpan as he goes about his business.
He sits down in his chair and gets to work, sorting through a cascade of potentially corrupted files.
Video clips pop onto Saul’s screen, half-finished recordings from various cameras placed around the hangar. I see one from the main entrance of the large metal building, and another directly trained on the trap. Yet another view is angled down a hallway between towering metal shelves.
Saul plays this clip and we watch closely, the lights flickering as a tear in reality begins to appear before our very eyes. Onscreen, the camera is trained directly upon the shimmering line of blue light that quivers in the air with strange, erratic motions.
This is the second time I’ve witnessed this phenomenon. The first was back at Camp Damascus, albeit through a haze of vague memories that wash in and out of my conscious mind.
The tear grows wider and wider until I can see right through it, a stone chamber lurking behind. Somehow, the extremely low temperature of this otherworldly location can be visually observed, a clear shift in the air before the mysterious opening. When Pachid steps through the slit, a faint icy mist billows from her nostrils and mouth.
Pachid exits the wormhole and stops abruptly, smiling as she gazes off into the empty space before her.
The video feed goes dead as the file corrupts.
“That’s where we lost power,” Saul explains.
He opens another recording and presses play. This view is positioned at a random corner of the hangar, far from the action.
“Some of the cameras were picking up intermittent signals,” Saul continues. “You know how horror movies love to have TVs with random creepy imagery? That trope could’ve evolved from a very real phenomenon.”
“I’ve never seen a terror film,” I retort.
Saul frowns. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me. I think demons innately amplify transmissions from … hell, I guess. These aren’t just random images, they’re intercepted audio and video feeds.”
I watch as static begins to overtake Saul’s recording, two sources transposed over each other amid the visual snow. Eventually, the feed finds clarity in a location that’s distinctly familiar.
My breath catches in my throat as I’m transported back to Isaiah’s birthday party, instantly recalling the grotesque imagery that appeared on television while we were playing truth or dare. The recording I now watch is nearly identical, featuring the same shaky handheld camera and blunt lighting.
This video feed offers no sound as it creeps through the darkness of another world, slowly making its way over frigid stone walls in a seemingly endless labyrinth of chambers.
Saul and I are entranced by the transmission, our eyes glued to the recording as our hearts pound away within our chests.
The camera view tightens in on one of the walls, very slowly rolling across the topography of the rough surface. Up close, frost is clearly visible in the space between faded stones.
Eventually, tiny pink roots come into view, hanging across the cold surface and covered with a glistening wet sheen that reflects the light of the camera. As the view moves from root to root, the network rapidly becomes more complex, a cascading pattern of tendrils laid out next to one another and growing in thickness as they drift upward to a central point.
I start drumming my fingers against my leg in a familiar repeating pattern, instinctively struggling to release some of the pressure within as the camera continues onward. Something horrible is coming. My reptilian brain knows this, but I’m too curious to look away.
Movement sweeps across the roots, the quick, repetitive motion of some strictly timed machine. It moves past the camera once, twice, three times, every stroke scheduled to perfection. Meanwhile, the transmission reveals these tangled pink tendrils are pinned to the wall in certain places, a handful connected to plastic tubes of some unknown liquid.
Higher the recording drifts, until finally something familiar and human emerges into view at the top of the screen. It’s blurry and over-lit, but I immediately recognize this pale form as a severed human neck, the bloody carnage exposed while various black tubes push deep within. The roots extending downward are not roots at all, only the stripped-bare web of a fully revealed nervous system with no flesh or bones to protect it.
A startled gasp escapes my throat as the camera pulls back to reveal a writhing, squealing head. The eyes have been removed from their sockets and the mouth is sewn shut, but the subject is very much alive as a macabre contraption pulses back and forth across their exposed nerves. Who knows how long they’ve been hanging here.
The file suddenly glitches and freezes up, our recording interrupted by the power surge.
I stagger back, feeling the powerful urge to vomit as a wave of disgust and nausea washes over me.
“What the … heck are they doing to these people?” I sputter.
“It’s hell,” Saul offers flatly, staring at the frozen screen. He doesn’t need to elaborate any more than that.
* * *
I emerge from the hangar to find myself surrounded by the glorious Montana evening. A breathtaking sunset is already well into its nightly bloom, oranges giving way to deep indigos as the gloaming arrives. The vastness of this world is overwhelming, especially now that I have the freedom to explore it.
It’s a picturesque sight, almost enough to scrub the horrific visions of a literal hell from my mind.
Not quite, though.
I don’t look back as I make my way past abandoned vehicles and pristine, refurbished luxury cars, eventually arriving at the front door of Saul’s old farmhouse. He stayed in the garage to continue fine-tuning our gear.