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Are you scared?
Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.
I'm posting this from a masked IP at a public location. I don't want to be traced for reasons
you'll soon understand. I won't give my name, and I won't give my alias; it's too easily
recognized in certain circles. I don't want this making its way back to my doorstep in
any way, shape or form. You can call me X. Generic, I know, but that's
the point. I was a contract killer, one of the best guns for hire on the east coast,
and I had the clientele to prove it. Greedy skimmers, stonewalling employers, blackmailers,
rats, moles, kingpins, even cheating husbands — I've done it all, and at a high price
my customers were more than willing to pay for a job done right.
I was professional and precise. Methodical. No names, no personal information. No face-to-face
contact. No wire transfers, cash only. Anonymity, plausible deniability, and no personal involvement.
These practices kept me alive and in business, and they were the reason my name was in such
high demand. When I got the call six months ago that started
all of this, I handled it the same as all the others. This is the transcript. I keep
an encrypted database with a kill switch protocol; you never know when the info could save your
skin. Now, it just serves to remind me of my mistake.
Date: XX/XX/2013, 7:13 PM: Tony's Greek Diner and Deli. Takeout or delivery?
Delivery, please. House or apartment?
Public. Um....Parson's Place, that's it. Hello? Location?
Yes, am I speaking to Mr. ? Listen, my name is—
No names. Location? Hotel. 10th floor, room. Tomorrow night, 8:30
PM. Description?
He's an ex-minister from Saint, excommunicated for—
Physical description. Uh...yeah, ok. Ok, he's about six feet tall,
mid-fifties. Thinning, gray hair, slightly overweight and walks with a bit of a limp.
He wears glasses, has a scar over his left eye. He—
Twenty thousand in unmarked fifties at the drop point, four hours. Your contact knows
the place. Be discreet, don't be late. Understood. Listen, this is important. You
have to know— Leave special instructions with the drop.
I can't stand chatty people, they're bad for business. I don't want to know you, and you
don't want to know me. Some people seem to have a hard time grasping this concept. Jesus,
I shouldn't have even taken the call. When he fumbled on the password, I should have
just cut the line. I wouldn't be in this mess if I had just cut the god damned line.
I could say hindsight is 20/20, I could blame the whole thing on the questionable and the
unknowable, but I can't say that I wasn't warned. I just didn't listen, didn't care
to know more than necessary to the task at hand. When I collected the payment, I found
more than the usual neatly stacked banknotes in a briefcase.
I showed up at my contact's place of business that night, whose name I also choose to withhold,
after hours in a safe room below his hardware shop where the real money was made. Shady
dealings by the light of a low-hanging lamp — you'd be surprised how many people need
a squeaky clean middleman who can keep his mouth shut, and I was one of his most loyal
business partners. He slid the package across the desk toward
me, a slightly stained gym bag lumpy with its contents. No marks for class or professionalism,
but I'm sure it didn't attract any undue attention; I had to give it that much. The condition
of the bag did not belie the crispness of the currency, either, ruffled and frayed from
who knows how many tumbles and turns. Beneath it all, I felt something heavier and
more rigid. I dug around and pulled out a small book bound in something that looked
like leather and felt like stone, a dusty thing with pages yellowing at the edges and
blackening at the corners. I held it up to the light, confused.
"What the hell is this?" I asked. He sat back and lit up a cigarette. "Hell
if I know," he huffed, "but I think you need to be a little more careful with the jobs
you take. The guy was a whack job, all nerves, and a real liability," he paused for a long
drag on his cancer stick. "Not worth the paycheck, if you ask me. No disrespect, mind you, I
just hope it doesn't come back to bite you in the ***."
I listened with one ear as I thumbed over the book. It was full of crude drawings, symbols,
and a lot of it written in a language I didn't recognize. A letter fell from beneath the
front cover as I fanned through the pages, enclosed in fine stationery and sealed with
wax like something out of the 18th century. I broke the seal and unfolded a note written
on some kind of thick parchment. It read:
"Mr. (CENSORED), We sincerely apologize for involving you in
this grim affair, but we have tracked Father (CENSORED) too long and too far to fail now.
We require an artful hand and a certainty that only you can afford us.
That man's intentions are a profound betrayal and a dire sin, and his death matters more
than your life or mine. There exists a world in the shadow of our own, a world of those
who would do us harm, who seek a dark eternity for us all. He would loose them upon us.
Please know that yours is a vital task, and that a much grander fate rests in your hands.
No matter the outcome, we humbly thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Go with
God, and may your aim be true. With admiration,
(CENSORED)"
"This is some cult ***, man," I almost laughed. "Is he serious?"
"People don't leave massive bags of cash lying around when they're joking," he replied with
a shrug. Shaking my head, I tossed the cryptic items aside and got back to business.
I gave the cash my usual once over, a quick flip-through checking for serial numbers and
signs of counterfeit, then tossed him a small stack of large bills for his trouble. I didn't
bother with a meticulous count; that was his job, and I trusted him. We'd had a lucrative
arrangement for several years, and he wouldn't jeopardize the loss of my business, let alone
his life, over such a petty sum. With a mildly annoyed tip of the hat, I took
my leave to make preparations. I almost made it to the front door before he tried to sell
me on a new line of garden shovels he had gotten in stock that morning. You know, just
in case I found myself in need of a quick disposal. He knew that part wasn't my job
or my problem, but it never stopped him from trying to make an extra buck at my expense.
In fact, his sales pitches had become a routine part of my visits, as had my refusals.
I decided to make my post at a nondescript office building two city blocks from the hotel,
one of several I had identified and favored for their easy roof access and lazy, contracted
security. I showed up an hour early, enough time to set up shop and account for the typical
human lack of punctuality. The sun had already nearly set, and the cover of night was a boon
of which I always took full advantage, given the opportunity.
I walked through the door in a mild gray suit and tie, slight five o'clock shadow, false
mustache and a salt-and-pepper wig, the visage of a middle-aged, constipated stiff opting
for a late night at the office to avoid sharing a bed with his hag of a wife. My medium-sized
briefcase didn't so much as raise an eyebrow as I approached the guard at the front desk.
I passed him the doctored security pass I'd lifted off of a careless employee earlier
that day. I also took the time to make small talk, some *** about being transferred
in for the week on a joint venture project and hating the hours. I find that friendly
conversation usually instills more trust than a badge.
I made my way straight to the roof, prepared to cover the security cameras, of which there
were none. I found no use for my lock picking set with the unlocked door, stepped through
and found a good corner spot with no safety railing and a clear view of the hotel's west
wing. The landlord was just begging for a lawsuit when some idiot wandered up for the
scenery and took a fall, but that carelessness was exactly why I chose the place.
I opened the briefcase's polished latches and pulled the parts from their black foam
inserts one at a time. The folding thumbhole stock clicked tightly into the upper assembly.
I fitted the lower receiver and trigger housing to the forward grip. I slid the scope onto
the mod rail and tightened the clamps. I screwed in and secured the barrel, then ported the
sound suppression jacket. I slid the bolt into the upper assembly.
I paused for a moment and considered what I was doing. The note and book had scarcely
left my mind since the night before, and the more I thought about it, the more I chastised
myself for taking such a stupid job. A lot of what I did relied on the confidentiality
of people who had the common sense to keep our business to themselves. My contact was
right — this guy was clearly out of his mind, and I was taking a huge risk by involving
myself in their affairs even at an anonymous level.
I mean, was I really about to clip a holy man over some delusional fantasy of spiritual
warfare? Did this man really have to die out of fear that he may summon some kind of demon?
I knew better than to let any moral conflict bother me, I knew it was just a job, but this
was ridiculous. Did I really want to get involved with these nutjobs? What the hell had I gotten
myself into? I guess it wasn't my place to judge. Sure,
there may have been better reasons to end a life, but I was just the hired hand. A car
washer doesn't question a man who brings in his clean ride for a detail, right? A pharmacist
doesn't question a thin woman buying weight loss supplements. Besides, I had never backed
out of a job before, and I didn't plan to start. If my reputation was going to take
a hit one way or the other, I had might as well make good on my end of the deal.
I checked the feed mechanism and loaded the magazine. Six rounds, .308 caliber, modified
charge. I focused the lens and scoped my range. I closed and locked the bolt, and the round
was loaded. The recoil pad sat firmly against my shoulder, and the weight of the rifle balanced
on the bipod. I rested my thumb over the safety. I took a deep breath, and I waited.
As I stared through the scope into the room, the last rays of sunlight provided just enough
clarity to make out a few important details. Clearly, the guy had occupied the room for
some time, and he'd been busy. Just about every inch of the walls had been covered in
the same gibberish from that book, written in what looked like permanent marker. He had
torn up the carpeting and covered the floors in all manner of pentagrams and other circular
symbols. At the center of each sat a variety of objects, including candles, piles of plants
and rocks, and bowls filled with a number of different liquids.
Last, but certainly not least, was the bed. It had been stripped down to the mattress,
which had been painted over with one last, incredibly intricate pentagram, and thick,
iron chains and shackles trailed from the bedposts. Sick ***. The scene was almost
cartoonish, really, the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a bad horror film or a haunted
house. I wasn't keen on the idea of harming the mentally ill, but I figured he'd be better
off if I put him out of his misery. Before I had much time to admire his work,
my mark stepped through the door, lighting enough candles on his way in to give the entire
room a flickering, orange glow. He looked neurotic, fidgety and sweaty, and he constantly
darted his gaze over his shoulder. I had a clear shot, and I should have just taken it,
but I was struck with morbid curiosity. So, I followed his movements about the room,
the crosshairs constantly hovering over his eye. I watched his deranged ritual unfold,
watched as he fretted over the minute placement of the random items around him, watched as
he rubbed his hands together and gnashed his teeth in nervous anticipation. I watched as
he muttered prayers into the open air from a book that looked much like mine, and watched
as a laughable practice of mad obsession turned to true horror.
As the ritual pressed on, I began to feel the goings-on in that room for myself. And
I mean that it in the most literal sense. Something had gripped me, something otherworldly,
and the scope of my rifle became a portal of forced witness to the blasphemous and obscene.
The cool breeze around me turned to the musty heat of candles and sweat. The scent of a
gritty urban summer turned to the stench of his labors and the filth of the room. And
the sounds of the roaring traffic below turned to his muffled mutterings and the banging
struggle of someone or something behind the bathroom door. Though at a great distance,
and though the crosshairs still marched over his left eye, I was suddenly there.
I watched as he dragged the source of the noise from the bathroom, heard his grunts
and his victim's muffled cries through the duct tape over her mouth as he dragged her
to the bed, and heard the rattling of the shackles as he unbound her limbs one by one
only to restrain them once again. She lay splayed out across the mattress, donning a
wrinkled and stained nightgown, likely the nightwear in which she was abducted. She was
to be some unseen something's sacrificial meal, and the candle flames wafted and dimmed
in the growling breeze of its hunger. My vigil's hold released me, but only for
a moment; long enough to feel my index finger lightly caress the curve of the trigger, long
enough to slow my hastened breath. I watched him press his hand against his mouth and pace
about the room as he considered the gruesome next step. I could hear the anxious skittering
and shuffling of the demons now, seeming to come from the very shadows on the walls, and
many shrill voices chattered pleas for their feast. They grew irritated with his hesitation.
I saw the terror in his victim's eyes as she caught the sheen of a blade drawn from his
belt, a brutal dagger with a serrated edge, and she struggled against her shackles until
her skin began to tear and bleed. I watched him approach her slowly with a look of sorrow
and remorse upon his face, apparently an unwilling prisoner in this deed. My finger gently pressed
the trigger as I watched him raise it over his head, poised for a downward thrust. The
creatures in the shadows hissed and moaned their approval.
He stayed his hand for several moments, as did I, until his resolve crumbled. He stumbled
back and dropped the knife, and he covered his face in tears of personal disgust. The
creatures from the shadows wailed and shrieked with fury, and the room began to quake around
him, shaking cabinet doors open and tossing aside the objects about the floor. The candles
flared and raged. My panic released my mind, hurtling back to
my own body, and adrenaline coursed through my veins. The sound suppression jacket made
a harsh thump of the gunshot, and the left side of the priest's face shattered into a
cloud of red mist as he fell limp and went crashing to the floor. Just as his head made
contact with the hard wood, the candles extinguished in unison with one violent flicker, and silence
and darkness befell the room. I cycled the bolt, and the jingling of the
bullet casing against the cement became the only sound I could hear for miles. I kept
watch through the scope, and a thin beam of moonlight shone through the broken window
to show the unbloodied half of his face. I stared into his unblinking eye for what seemed
like hours, trying and failing to slow my heartbeat, and then it happened. Slowly, soundlessly,
a hand like a long bundle of twigs crept from the shadows, wrapped its gnarled talons over
his face, his eye still visible between them, and dragged him off into the darkness.
"*** this," I stuttered to myself, "*** this." I disassembled the rifle as quickly
as I could and returned it to the briefcase. I rushed down the stairs and headed for a
back entrance, stashed the rifle and disguise in a hidden compartment beneath my car's back
seat, and peeled out of the parking lot into the busy traffic. I would be leaving the city,
disposing of the disguise, the badge and the bullet casing, and never looking back.
Less than a week later, I read about the priest in the papers. Their description of the crime
scene erased any doubts I might have had about the reality of that night. They said that
they found his body gnawed near to the bone. They said that the damage was so severe that
they had to identify him by dental records, and the gunshot wound was far from the focus
of the story. Strangely, they also mentioned nothing about the ritualistic scene or the
state of the room. The girl, apart from slight bruising and a state of shock, had apparently
been left untouched. I thought I'd be safe if I could just run
far enough away, but fleeing did me no good. I pulled quite a few jobs since that night,
all across the country, never inclined to stay in one place for too long, and all of
my marks shared the same fate. I poisoned a slumlord in New Jersey, and I heard about
his vicious mauling on the evening news the following night. I slid a knife between the
ribs of a heavy-handed *** northern California a month later, and I watched the hands claw
him from my grip and into the shadows before he even took his last breath. I heard them
devour a mafioso's ex-wife in her own bedroom; I can still remember the smell that followed.
You see, I kept that book, and I've tried many times to make sense of what happened
that night. I don't understand much, I don't know what they are or what they want, but
I have come across a damning revelation. Apparently, apart from the summoning, the ritual was just
a formality. These things only require a mortal, any mortal, to take the life of another in
their presence. They feed not on the dead, but on the murdered. And once fed, they follow
the hand that fed them, demanding sacrifice again and again until the killer's life is
done. The priest had defied them, and they were
not pleased. I, however, did not, and they collected their meal by my hand. He invoked
their wrath, and I don't know what would have become of him had I not pulled the trigger.
However, his death was my first act of unwitting service, and now I don't know what will become
of me if I stop. But I just can't send anyone else to that horrible fate.
Until recently, I killed only for money. I justified my actions with the banality of
evil, the idea that such things had become an inherent state of normality in society.
I profited from death, but so did coffin salesmen and life insurance agents. People would kill
one another with or without me, they'd *** each other for vengeance, petty theft, or
their own self-righteous brand of justice. What made me so different? There was no guilt
in the ordinary. Now that I've witnessed true evil, I can't
justify my lifestyle that way anymore. I've seen what horrible things prey on us in life
and in death. I've seen the dark forces that count on us to send each other to the grave,
to do their work for them, and who hunger for us. I've seen what may await us in death,
and I can no longer take a life so lightly. In living as I have, I wonder just how many
I damned. I wonder if I ended the priest's suffering, or if I only sent him to an even
worse torment. I can feel them growing restless. They're
angry, but I have fed them for the last time, and I will no longer run. Whatever comes for
me now, I can't help but feel deserving. For all those lives I have ended, I can think
of no other way to make amends. God, forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.