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remember the final minute before the accident with abnormal clarity. Every second of it is frozen forever in my mind like a horrific dream that recurs over and over.
I can remember the glare of the sun on the dash, the coolness of the wind upon my arm which hung out the window. The stereo was blasting a classic rock station as my red firebird came to the intersection. I saw the other car coming and knew there was no way that it could stop. Everything started to happen in slow motion as a dreamy haze set in.
I remember the horrific expression on the other driver’s face as his tires screeched against the road. My life flashed before my eyes until a deafening sound of crushing metal and shattering glass interrupted. I shot toward the windshield and everything went black.
Then something very odd happened. My eyes opened. I pushed myself up off the pavement and stood up. My eyes caught the grisly scene of the mangled, smoking cars. All across the road shards of glass sparkled in the afternoon sun as people began to stop and get out of their cars. I heard gasps of “Oh, my God!” from a dozen strange voices talking frantically at once.
I looked at my hands and my body; I felt my face. Not a scratch, no blood or anything. It was impossible! Several men went to my crumpled car. They peered inside. I called out, “I’m okay! I’m over here!” But they continued to work at my smashed car door. “Come on, help him!” I yelled as I pointed to the limp body of the other driver. He was unmoving behind the wheel of his blue Saturn. The men didn’t hear. No one would answer or even look at me.
It was then that I saw something that nearly pushed me to madness. They pried the door open and reached inside of my vehicle. They were carrying something out—No, someone out from my car?
I gazed in disbelief. A scream escaped my trembling lips. In their arms, I saw my body. My face was bloodied and barely recognizable. They put me on the shoulder of the road began discussing what to do until help arrived. I grabbed my head and fell to the ground. My screams of horror were unnoticed.
A winding siren came from the distance. The frantic red and blue lights spun while the driver laid on his horn. Everyone backed off as the paramedics took over. The other driver was pulled from his wreckage. From the stone faces of the men, I knew there was no way he would make it.
I noticed an odd man standing away from everyone else. He was well dressed with a long black trench coat. He just looked on with a shocked look on his face. I could see a peculiar haze around his frozen form like an indigo stain as he watched the events unfold. His mouth gaped open and moved without sound coming from it as if he were trying to scream. My soul turned to ice as I realized he was the man they were dragging out of the car.
A scream finally escaped his mouth. He began to shake. The man sunk to his knees and buried his head in his hands. I tried to communicate with him, to ask what the hell was going on. Of course by now, I already knew.
He could not, or perhaps would not, hear me. I shrank away from him. He had run the light and crashed into me. He caused this. But strangely, I felt no animosity towards him at all. What was the point now?
We stood there, he and I, without speaking for what seemed hours until our bodies and our cars had been taken away. Only he and I remained there. Traffic passed by as if nothing had ever happened.
My perceptions of the world, of reality itself had changed. The sounds of cars coming and going sounded as if they were underwater. The world had taken on a sickening bluish hue.
A couple teenagers were walking down the highway on the shoulder laughing as they came toward us. The man looked up suddenly. He began to run to them. “Tell my wife—Tell My kids . . . .”
They walked right through him without noticing.
Their voices were muffled and warped. I could barely understand them. The man became enraged. He swung his fists through them. He cursed at them and pleaded. And then he just sank back down to his knees and cried.
Before I could get to him, I saw something . . . A rift seemed to open up right in the air between the man and me. It began as a black spot and it spread like a smoking wound in the very fabric of space. We watched in horror as a black, smoking figure, twice the size of a man, poured out from this opening. The only features on its face were two blazing eyes of fire. It had hideous claw-like hands, no legs; its lower body was a gaseous vapor.
When it moved, it seemed as if the creature had a difficult time obeying the very laws of physics. It was almost as if space and time bent around it . . . rejected it somehow. The black figure slowed down, then sped up. Sometimes it froze only to vanish and reappear in another place like a skipping movie frame. It clearly struggled to move in linear time. The vapor like body gave off sulphurous fumes that were almost overpowering.
Within a second of appearing it was upon the man.
He screamed in unholy terror as the thing ripped at him with its claws. He fell to the street. It began to drag him back to the small opening from which it came. The man tried to fight, but the large wraith like demon handled him like a child.
I took two steps toward them. The being’s head turned and its flaming eyes stabbed me freezing me with fear. I looked in disbelief as it threw the man into the black hole like a rag doll.
Several white arms shot out of the opening, and grabbed the man. He looked like an insect caught in a Venus flytrap. The man’s screams faded away to nothing as the hole closed and he vanished from sight.
I ran. I ran as hard and as fast as I could with that thing chasing me. It reached out with its grotesque knife-like fingers and slashed at my back. An unholy hissing came from the shape. It followed me through the oncoming traffic. Cars passed harmlessly through me as ran.
I ran past a teenage boy on the side of the road. His pale face was a mask of sorrow and confusion. His empty eyes were barren of all hope. I knew he was no longer alive.
I looked back as I passed him. The black shape had taken an easier catch. The boy didn’t even fight. A new hole stretched wide open like a hungry demonic mouth. A dozen hungry white arms shot out to snatch him.
I ran far from the highway toward the bright lights of the city. I did not stop until the sun had set.
As dusk came upon the bustling streets I watched the endless traffic. There was no where for me to go now. I passed by others like me, but they were different. Most were frozen in time like mannequins.
Some of the shadowy figures jolted suddenly as if my motion had suddenly disturbed them from a deep sleep. They began to slowly move like animated corpses or macabre puppets. I watched them grotesquely repeat the same simple movements over and over again. Some repeated the same words to themselves like demented mantras. A look of madness burned in their soulless eyes. I tried to ignore them.
As the days passed, I saw other trapped souls wandering about with confused looks of panic. A few seemed conscious. They walked about with nowhere to go. I still remember the hopelessness in their voices as they called out and pleaded to the living. I listened to their prayers that went unanswered. I watched them cry like abandoned children. I made a point to never approach them or catch their eyes. They had the same sickly indigo hue that surrounded me.
The more spirited ones were like rabid beasts. They lunged at everyone they saw in the living world. Their hands clawed and clutched, their fingers passed harmlessly through the living. They cursed at those who had warm life. Their eyes flared with a demonic madness, and their posture grew more twisted until they began to look like the things from the black holes. From their damned throats came the same hissing. Their consciousness had devolved into a cold reptile like awareness, sliding down the evolutionary ladder.
Most of the dead had simply given up. They sat down perfectly aware but frozen in apathy, their eyes never moving. A reddish black stain spread over them. It consumed them like spiritual cancer. When they were completely consumed by it, they dissolved away as if they had never been.
I wondered if they had stopped existing or merely fallen to some new and worse hell. Perhaps they weren’t the lucky ones.
I was on a particularly long stretch of highway where I had mercifully seen no one for many hours. The comforting darkness was only broken occasionally by a single car or two speeding along. I came upon a small child on the side of the road looking down at a spot on the ground. She was a little girl about four years of age. Her pretty blond hair curled about her young face. She seemed hopelessly lost.
She quietly sang an old Sunday school song to herself while she looked at a spot on the road where an old wooden cross with wilted flowers captivated her attention. It seemed that no one escaped the cruel indignities of the universe.
I decided to try to comfort her. “Hello . . . Can you tell me your name?” I smiled as I put my hand on her shoulder. She violently pulled away and spun around. Her face turned to me revealing the other side which was smashed in beyond recognition like a cracked doll. Hissing came from her tiny mouth. Her face stretched and twisted horribly as began to wail. Her piercing sound cut through my eardrums and shook my new spirit form as if her cry could shatter me like a glass. She continued to cry out in her rabid, unholy rage. Her little hands ripped at me. They seared me with a burning cold.
A great sinking feeling overcame me. I fell to the ground, unable to move. Blackness began to overtake the child and smoke came from her small body as it began to shake. But then a miracle happened. I found myself being pulled away by someone. The child’s rhythmic shrieks continued as she continued to shake. Then horrifically, she exploded in a strange black flash. The smoke faded into the air and she was gone.
I looked up at my savior. The man had light blue eyes and snow white hair. I looked at his collar. He was an old priest, one who had lost his way to heaven but appeared to be still in the business of saving souls. The good father lay me down on the grass were I eventually regained my strength.
“You’ll be all right. That was a close one,” he said.
I looked up at my fellow ghost. He smiled and spoke to me in a grandfather like tone.
“You have to be careful about those young ones. Their soul can’t take the horror of this . . . new existence,” he explained. He reached his hand out to me. I took it and shook it.
“My name is Charles Stanton,” he told me.
I had so many questions, as you might imagine. I had no idea where to begin. Charles looked at least 70 years old. He had a reassuring friendly smile. Still wearing his priestly attire, he moved through the nightmarish world with authority and courage.
“My name is Jacob,” I told him.
“So what happened to heaven, you might want to ask me?” he laughed. “Well, I suppose it is my business to know things like this, isn’t it? But I am afraid that I am a little short on answers, just like yourself. I do know why you are here. That’s obvious, right? It is a shame to leave the living at so young an age as yours. Have you a wife?”
“Divorced. No family. My parents are dead, so it’s just me,” I answered.
“Too bad. But at least you don’t have anyone depending on you. There’s not much we can do to help the living now. In fact, when the sun comes up we can barely help ourselves.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Charles sat down next to me as I finally gathered enough strength to sit up.
“Have you seen them?” he whispered.
“The other souls?” I asked.
“No. The . . . well . . . I call them the wraiths. The dark ones who hunt us,” He elaborated.
“Oh my God . . . those things? What the hell are they?” I asked.
“They come with each rising sun, and they leave with its setting. I believe it allows them to open doorways into our world. You’ll never see them at night though. They leave before darkness sets in,” he answered.
“Who are they? What do they want?” I asked.
“Again, I am not exactly sure. I have been this way for many years now, surviving a lone wanderer most of it. I have seen many terrible things. Sometimes God wishes to test your faith. Well, he has certainly tested mine. I only know what I have seen.
I consider them to be demons. Everyone will see them in their own way. They are cloaked figures to some people. Sometimes people say they are people they knew. I even had . . . had a friend who was alive in the concentration camps. He swore that they were Nazis officers.
But however you see them, if they see you it is nearly impossible to get away. They can . . . smell you, your fear and sadness. They track you by it. Those of us that retain some part of consciousness light up to them. They are relentless,” he told me.
I told him about what I had already seen. Charles looked down and I saw a look of fear on his face. It disturbed me greatly. I had been raised Catholic and I didn’t like to see one of God’s teachers showing such great fear. What I was seeing was not in the bible, and I was quickly starting to run out of faith.
“There are some rules you must remember . . . I will teach you what I have been taught by others. Listen close. Stay off the highways. Too many people die there and they are a hunting ground for the wraiths. Now that they have seen you, tomorrow there will be many more of them. They especially look for those of us that are still awake,” he warned.
“Are there any others like you and I?” I asked.
“Death is a very traumatic experience, and I have only met a few like you and I who somehow kept their sanity together. We can never be together in the day. They would find us quickly. I have already seen that happen,” he said with a frown. “Most of the souls you will see must be avoided. They are lost ones. They are like rabid animals who have lost the spark of goodness in them and have become perverse shells of their former selves. Locked into their own ego, they relive their lives and deaths over and over, never seeing or accepting what has happened to them.
The frozen ones among them are deadly. Their sickness is contagious. I have seen some, like you and I, infected by their mere touch. It is like leprosy spreading their despair to whomever brushes against them. It can cost you your mind.”
“What about the kids? Can we help them?” I asked.
He winced, “I wish that I knew a way to release them from their torment. But we can only pray for them. They cannot cope with the trauma of being trapped here alone. For a while, they wander looking for their parents, parents they will never find. All alone, no one ever sees them. Eventually, they too begin to know what has happened. Then they become more rabid than any of the others. They are far from harmless children then.”
“What do we have to worry about? We are already dead, right? What else could happen now? My God, I still can’t believe this!” I said.
Charles firmly gripped my arms. “We don’t have time for this, young man! What those devils want is souls . . . like ours, that can somehow survive that experience of death. They are hungry for them, for the warmth left in them.
Whatever is in those damned holes they open up, it has got to be worse than death. I have heard the screams! Dear God!”
He put his hand over his eyes for a second and continued. “One of the people who found me . . . taught me the ways of surviving. He sacrificed himself to save me. I’ll never forget his cries when they put him in that opening and sent him to God only knows where!”
I began to see traces of light in the horizon. “How is this possible? The sun just went down a few hours ago?”
“No. The perception of time is now different too, just like all your senses will begin to change. Time moves much more quickly now. As you are left behind, the living will seem to move about in a frenzy. They will go quicker and quicker until you can no longer see them at all. Then the dead will be the only other beings you will ever see,” he explained.
In the distance a wild howling called out. It was answered by several others from all directions like an army of wolves gathering. “We have no more time! Go now! I will meet you here tomorrow when the sun is down,” Charles ordered.
I watched the old man fade into the distance, not knowing where he was going, or if I would ever see him again.
From the east the sun arose; it pushed back the dreadful night and revealed an even more horrible day. The world, or rather my perceptions of it, had begun to speed up. Overhead clouds sailed across the sky as if a great wind drove them on. Cars sped by abnormally fast.
The living people I saw began to look like sped-up images in an old movie. Their faces looked less and less distinct; their features were blurred. I stared in disbelief at them hurrying on their way down the city sidewalks blissfully unaware of my eyes upon them. The living still had their sane world, unaware of the hellish existence to come. I hated it when they passed through me. I knew soon my visions of them would fade away all together. My mind would only see them as blurred forms of light.
Charles had warned me to stay away from public places where there were other lost ones. But I was sure that something had been tracking me, I could feel something watching me. If I were being followed, why not just come and take me?
Charles’s vague answer about what those things were had not exactly told me anything. Demons, he called them. They look more like predators to me.
I heard a wailing cry. It came from the window of a building above. A woman plunged from it to her death. She smashed into the sidewalk right next to me covering it with her splattered insides. She lay there broken and twisted, a pitiful moaning coming from her bloodied mouth.
I watched in fascination as she disappeared only to appear again looking out of the same window. I saw the macabre look of contemplation on her face as she studied the sidewalk below. Over and over again she fell. It seemed that suicides were damned to die forever. Her repeated screaming sickened me, and the stress of this shock nearly doubled me over. I felt my spirit body growing weak. A dark stain began to spread over it. I wondered what was going to happen to me as I stared at it.
Quickly moving on, I soon found myself being followed by a small young boy. “Hey, Mister?” he called to me. I was shocked to hear another voice.
“I have to be going,” I answered. He kept following and getting louder. “Can you help me?” The faint sound of hissing grew closer. There were four of them now moving through the streets. The child grabbed my arm. If he got any louder, one of them would surely see us.
I looked closely at the red haired, freckled boy. He was probably eight years old. He looked at me with his sad blue eyes and asked, “Hey Mr. have you seen my dog?”
“No, I haven’t. I have to go, boy,” I answered.
“Are you sure? He’s a little beagle. His name is Duke,” he added looking hopefully into my eyes.
I broke the stare and repeated that I had not seen the dog. He walked back into the street and continued looking for his dog. There was a loud crunching sound as his small body was knocked back by a car that was no longer there. He flew back about 12 feet and landed on the street. Although I knew he was already dead, it still gave me the chills. His body lay there motionless for a few seconds. I watched it fade away like smoke lost in the wind. Before I could even turn away, I felt a tugging at my arm again. There he was . . . “Hey Mr., have you seen my dog? His name is . . . .”
There was nothing I could do for him, so I left him without an answer.
I looked behind at the two more black shapes. They were coming my way. They stopped and watched the child. Uninterested, they walked by him. It seemed that they were very selective as to who they wanted.
As I left the city, one last soul reached out to me. A crimson stained hand gripped me. I pulled away from a young woman, around 20 with blond hair. She clung to me desperately. I noticed her wrists wide open, and she still held a straight razor in her pale hands. Her black eyes waxed with madness.
“Jesus is coming! I know he’s coming,” she laughed frantically. I pushed her away and began running from her as the shadowy forms turned to us. She began to preach to some of the living that passed her.
Mercifully, they couldn’t see or hear what was right in front of them. She waved her bloody arms and bellowed like a psychotic prophet. Her voice faded as I left her to her fate. |
With the rising sun I heard a familiar voice calling out to me. In the distance Charles was approaching.
“I see you have made it another night.”
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Yes, just had a rough night,” and then he laughed and put his hand on my shoulder. “You know,” he said “I feel sometimes like . . . I can’t go on,” he confided. I didn’t mention it to him, but I saw the same reddish-black spots growing over him like an unholy rash.
“Charles, you have to keep your faith,” I said, telling him what he needed to hear. We walked for hours, quietly looking for any trace of life left in one of the tormented souls we passed. We avoided the living. There’s no good in being reminded you are dead, that the world goes on without you and no one even notices you.
“Let’s rest for a while,” Charles asked me.
“All right. I have so many questions still,” I said. I followed him into a small wooded area. He bent down, under the godless sky and began to pray. His old voice cracked, his hands shook and he looked like a beaten man, more like one of the lost souls than a priest. I put my hand on his frail shoulder and tried to ignore the growing spots that were consuming him, eating his soul alive.
“Charles, maybe it’s the universe is bigger than we thought. Maybe God has a reason for those things.”
“I’ll never lose my faith,” he said in a matter that showed such resolution that seldom have I ever held anyone in more respect. This old gray-haired soldier of God was not throwing in the towel after all. His voice now grew stronger, sharpened by anger.
“Those things can’t get to the living. They wait . . . and when we are old or sick and pass out of our shells, no longer enclosed in our solid material bodies, we are unprotected from their wrath,” he told me.
“So, they take whatever is left after death . . . any spark of life or hope that they can get to?” I asked.
“It appears so. Almost as if they hunger for strong spirits. They slip into our world, our plane like snakes,” he paused.
I had a terrible pain in my chest, right over my heart. A horrific thought came to me as I looked at the growing black stain and watched it spread before my eyes. Soon I would be covered by the blackness, my eyes would no longer have the slightest glimmer of a soul. I pushed the thought from my mind. Charles frowned as he looked at the spot, but he didn’t say a word. We wandered for hours without speaking.
After a long time Charles spoke. “There is something I have not told you about those holes they open . . . .” he began to tell me. I motioned for him to be silent. There was chill in the air. I felt an overpowering nausea overcoming me as my nose caught an unholy stench. I realized that the sun had risen! From the shadows a dozen grotesque forms began to emerge. They were terrifying in their nightmarish motions.
Their rabid eyes had been watching us!
From behind I felt the cold tearing of a black clawed hand passing through my back. I fell to the ground and the thing hovered over me with flaming hungry eyes that burned like embers of hell.
Charles began to yell, “No! Take me! I’m the one you want!” He grabbed the creature from behind. Another one pulled him off. In seconds, they were all over him. I ran to him and began hitting the shadowy forms, but they gave me no notice as they carried him to the hole. I heard Charles screaming as he was put into it. I wondered what hells his eyes were seeing.
In a few seconds, his cries to God were no longer audible as he was swallowed up by the hole. It hovered in the air waiting for me next.
Two of them picked me up. I tried to fight, but it was useless. They were incredibly strong, and I felt the cold wound on my back draining my strength. I screamed as they threw me into the hole!
Inside there was a coldness unlike anything I had ever known. I floated in an endless abyss without any gravity or direction, drowning in the unending blackness.
“You are not real,” a thunderous otherworldly voice spoke.
“What?” I meekly asked, trying to see where the voice came from.
“You never were real,” it continued. “You don’t exist and you never did.”
A heavy silence fell upon me. I yelled out in defiance “I exist! I am real! My name is Jacob Campbell!”
But the voice only continued more firm than before. It thundered out, shaking my soul, “You do not exist . . . You are not real . . . You never were!!”
I began to see a small light in the distance. I was slowly being pulled to it as the hateful voice kept trying to brainwash me. I could hear the tormented screams coming from what appeared to be a dimly glowing planet sized ball. To my horror, I saw that it was composed of twisted forms of beings tightly interwoven together. They moved and fought against one another. I stared at the dark faded spirit bodies of men and women entangled around the glowing core of the demonic globe. The core pulsated as if it were sucking the light from them!
They called out to god, to angels and saints . . . they cursed and prayed . . . begged and sobbed as the globe slowly rotated in the cold, endless blackness. I struggled against the void as I was quickly drawn to the screaming shapes. Their cold hands flailed at me. Their mouths stretched open like hungry animals . . . hungry for the small warmth of another soul to be added to their infinite number.
Icy fingers wrapped around my leg. I felt a coldness that I had never known from their grasp. An ocean of arms shot up to receive me, to drag me down into their number. I screamed to God in vain. And as I felt their cold touch on my face I screamed, “This isn’t real! This is a dream! I have to wake up! I have to wake—”
“Jacob?”
The next thing I knew I was coming to consciousness in the hospital, surrounded by concerned doctors and nurses. “Jacob?” a doctor asked as I opened my eyes. A smile spread across his face. “It’s a miracle!” he said, turning to the nurses who looked at me in disbelief.
It seems that I was involved in one of those weird cases where the doctors pull someone back from the edge of death. I had faded in and out for weeks before lapsing into a coma. I had lain there for a month before waking. The nurses heard my screams and came to my room.
It was several months before I could walk and my face still has some scars, but it I feel very blessed to have survived.
I tried to tell myself that what I experienced was a cruel hallucination of some sort. For a while, I almost believed that myself. I never speak of the things that I have seen to her or anyone else. It is my own private hell to know what death shall one day bring, to know those unspeakable things that are around us at all times. I will not burden anyone with such hellish knowledge.
I am married now to one of the nurses who helped me learn to walk again. She is a beautiful German woman a few years older than myself.
Sometimes Anna will talk of her work in the hospital. I will listen to her talk of stories she has heard. She often tells me of terminally ill patients who wake up sobbing at night . . . from dreams of horrible dark cloaked figures. They dream that these beings have somehow slipped into their room when no one is there. The patients say that the shadowy beings are waiting . . . to take them far . . . far away. |
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