For once, the evil hellions who had assisted Oliver and the demon in so many countless murders, rapes and kidnappings, and encouraged such hate and chaos for countless years, had finally met their match. They were the demon's counterpart; to rid the dream world of their vile existence would, most assuredly, show their demonic father that Elizabeth was something more than a pretty girl . . . she was a threat. The fact that she eradicated the children in a matter of seconds with her eyes closed and a smirk on her face was her own satisfying little bonus.
Elizabeth approached the demon. Her right hand grabbed the air in front of her and she pulled back her fist, yanking a dark red mist from Samuel's body. It floated midair, regrouped into a swirling ball of twisting vapor that nearly resembled the collision of two blood-red galaxies, intertwined from their own chaotic motion. In a dark flash, it dropped to the ground. As it shifted and spun, its color changed to solid black, then it rose, manifesting into a well-groomed Oliver Whitney, his hair parted and his spotless white suit, pressed.
Samuel's body hit the ground hard; Elizabeth watched the impact stun him, but he quickly took control of his limbs and scooted himself away from the danger. He collapsed back onto his back and held his chest.
Elizabeth studied Oliver; the crease in his brow ridge, those dark eyes, high cheek bones and thin lips were facial features that sparked a memory in Elizabeth's mind, a memory of the beast that ruined her life. But this skinny version before her would be no match for the former. Though eerie and most assuredly, a creep, the bulked-up porcelain giant she had come to know would squash this man like a bug, of this, she was sure.
Oliver winced at the young girl. "I used to eat girls like you for breakfast," he said and gave her a smile. "I'd start with their hearts."
Alex rushed over to his mentor and helped the man to his feet; Samuel used the boy's shoulders to hold him steady, then the hunter manifested a raging ball of fire. Samuel, Alex and Elizabeth watched its orange, yellow and red shimmering flames as the demonologist held it mere inches from his palm. The flames whipped in the wind, but the rain couldn't drown it out. When the heat became too much for Samuel's skin, he catapulted it at Oliver.
Of all the birthdays, sporting events, trips and celebrations throughout Elizabeth's life, there wasn't one that could have matched the anticipation she felt as that heavenly fire sailed; to watch this evil thing burn, to see it get what it deserved, even if only for a few seconds, had her praying to God its heat would rival pure hellfire.
The flame swept across the entity's face, stripping the skin from the muscle and burning off the hair on its head, leaving nothing but a bubbling scalp behind.
Oliver's mouth opened and spat a roaring fire of its own. The hot pulsing flame shot out as if launched from a flamethrower; its searing heat swept across Alex first, charring his body to a crisp black. The young man flailed about and screamed through the fire; he dropped to his knees and went silent, his remains face-planting into the grass. Samuel took the fire to his chest and face and when the raging inferno ceased, the man-of-God's blackened bones and cooked meat lay in a smoldering, steaming heap on the ground, while his eyeballs sizzled in their sockets like frying egg whites.
Elizabeth had seen a lot throughout her time on Earth, the worst being within the last few months, but two men reduced to globs of gooey skin and organs at the ground before her feet was quite a few steps beyond that of the blood and deep cuts that had haunted her mind for a time. She winced at the disturbing sight and held her fist over her nostrils to block the smell, but she didn't linger in the dismay for long. She used both hands and every bit of her concentration to lift Oliver from the grass, raise him high and hold him there in the rain. She sent a bright blue lightning bolt ripping across the sky and it struck the tall man right in the chest, lighting his pants on fire and sending a pulse through his body that made him look like a rag doll. The force of the shock dropped him back to the ground. He hit hard, snapping his left arm at the elbow.
The rage that came over Oliver's face was unlike anything the girl had seen before. His eyes turned a fiery bright red and his mouth opened, his jaw expanding like an overfilled balloon, showing hundreds of sharp yellow teeth within, and a sloshing mess of embers down his esophagus. The beast broke into a red mist, once more. The billions of tiny blood-red particles hauled toward the girl and she lifted her arms and stepped forward, but there wasn't enough time to conjure anything useful.
In an instant, the mist shifted back to Oliver's form and he hit the girl's body and sent her sailing up and through the air, where her back met the yellow siding of the farmhouse; she hung there, helpless, just below a second story window. The painted wood had snapped and splintered around her from the impact, and searing pain pulsed up and down her appendages.
Elizabeth tried to move, but a force stronger than her kept her planted. Oliver shifted again and the demonic fog lifted like a graveyard apparition; it hovered in front of her face and she watched raindrops slice through the mist like bullets through gel. A smile formed in all that dark red, and that mouth fell open and spewed acid saliva all over the girl.
Elizabeth's skin crackled and fried while she screamed; through her racing tears she watched as chunks of her flesh dripped from her bones and made the long drop to the ground below.
"You're useless," it hissed.
Since the slaying of her mother and father, Elizabeth had thought often of death. She had found herself wishing that her soul could permanently slip away in the night, away from the pain, the memory of murder and her thirty-five-year sentence at the mental institution. She had often wondered if a ruthless beating or slow torture was what she deserved. As the pain overtook her, she allowed herself to give in to it, to let it continue to hurt; it's what she truly believed she needed. As the acid worked its way down to the bones in her face, chest and hands, and turned the skin and muscle of her left leg into liquid mush, her screams blended with the demon's laughter; she let the pain be her punishment, her remedy.
As the young girl's lips and nose melted from her face, the mist slipped underneath her soaked, burnt and tattered dress. She felt her legs spread, and then the delicate flesh between them tore open like wrapping paper ... she felt fingers, a mouth, a tongue ... and then another searing eruption of acid bursting through it all, pumping into her, this time eating her flesh from the inside out, scorching her cervix, intestines and lower spine.
Elizabeth's screams were different now; they were like nothing she had ever heard before, not from any human or animal, and certainly never from herself. They were demonic, filled with her fear, pain and desperation. They rang in her ears like a fire alarm, murdering notes she never knew she could hit, and gurgled in her throat like a choking engine, her blood and pus ejecting like lava from what remained of her broken, melted mouth, and gushing like sewage from a broken pipe between her bare thighs.
Her left eye was gone, and her right eye saw only blurs of color. Through this burning torture and the constant fear that at any moment she'd drop thirty feet to the ground, she watched a black blob slowly rise from the grass.
"Let her go or I'll exercise you back to hell so fast your god will feel it," Samuel yelled over a burst of thunder.
"Little man," the demon replied, then slowly pulled away from the girl.
The searing prick of a hundred needles stabbing into her eyeball made Elizabeth's blurry vision go completely black; the acid had dripped onto her iris. Her legs, arms and head drooped, hanging lifeless like a scarecrow lynched in a tree. She heard a commotion, a few moans and a shuffle ... then, only the wind. It swooped and circled all around her, pushed against her ruined body, giving her a sway. It was as if she was finally alone, where she could let go and die in peace. In this moment, she intended to do just that.
A high-pitched battle cry—that could only have come from Alex—sent a shiver through Elizabeth that pulled her from limbo's gate and brought her back to the demon's reality; it was the only thing that made her realize she was, not only, still alive, but conscious, too. She heard a heavy patter of footsteps ... charging footsteps, mixed with quick breaths. It seemed to the dangling girl that Alex had finally had enough of the demon's abuse.
She heard a slap that was so loud it cut through the wind and grumbling thunder the way a chiming bell cuts through a conversation. "You want some of this, bitch!?" she heard Alex scream with such fiery determination, cutting through her daze as if those words were the piercing shriek of an angry hawks squawk.
Another commotion. A struggle. Then a loud bang and a furious heat blew over her.
"You little fucker!" the demon groaned, while Elizabeth, despite the immense, brutal pain, giggled ... an odd thing to do in such a state, but she couldn't help it. She figured if anyone could have witnessed the tiny laugh, they'd probably find it disturbing; she was basically a dangling corpse. But even in this terrible state, Alex, apparently, had a way of bringing it out in her.
Elizabeth didn't feel the drop, only the vibrating crash that comes from impacting the ground after such a fall. Had she sensed the vertigo, bracing for the hit could've saved her right arm from snapping in two places. Her body didn't move, her lungs barely worked, and her pain was so real, she thought at any moment she'd slip away into the darkness of death, and God, what a glorious darkness it would be, because with this kind of pain, there was no concentrating on anything else, not anymore.
"How 'bout I shove this up your ass?" Alex asked.
The demon was close by; Elizabeth could hear its growls and sharp, guttural breaths, its feet shuffling backward in the grass like a man trying to dodge falling debris. This meant it must have shifted back into Oliver's form.
"That won't fit," the demon said.
A quick patter of rising footsteps ... Alex's footsteps, she knew, charging again, sprinting forward with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever. "I'll make it fit, fucktruck!" Alex screamed like a crazed man wielding—what Elizabeth imagined to be—a jagged iron fire poker or an oversized crowbar of some kind.
She heard the demon grunt, then stumble to the side of the house. Alex raced by in hot pursuit. There were a few hard slaps, then a terrible deep moan, too deep to have come from Alex.
"Come here!" Crazed Alex quipped between breaths. "You want a wedgie, too?"
There was crying to the girl's left. No, not crying; it was sobbing. She was sure of it. Had someone else shown up? Was Samuel okay? The acid, for a bit at least, had put her out of commission, out of touch with things going on around her. Anything could've happened, she supposed. Whatever the demon did to cause the grown man to break down, must've happened while she was burning, or when she fell, or maybe she lost consciousness at some point; for all she knew, she could've been out for any number of minutes, tuning back in every so often like a loose signal on an old radio. Her spine had either shattered in the fall or disintegrated in the acid, maybe both. It was clear Samuel needed help, but Elizabeth, like that night in the forest, couldn't control the nightmare the demon had made of her; she was once again, helpless and alone.
As Alex let out another rage-induced psychotic scream, then yelled something about the demon taking his daily dose of iron, Samuel took in a deep breath, then started in again, sobbing like a boy lost at the market. Her heart broke a little for the stranger.
But when Samuel got louder, something in his tone shifted, or maybe something in her ear popped and the sound became clearer—she wasn't sure—but it was here that she realized, through the man's soft, yet desperate breaths for more oxygen, and the way his hand seemed to be smacking ... his thigh? and the clear-as-day smile the girl swore she could hear in his tone, Samuel wasn't sobbing, he was down on his knees laughing his ass off.
Elizabeth wiggled her fingers, then made a fist. She brought her fingers to her face and felt her soft lips, then her cheeks and even her long strands of curled hair. The pain dropped away in pulses, each one thinning out, allowing her to focus her mind and regenerate her skin, muscles and bone.
The searing, throbbing ache between her legs subsided, a sharp taste filled her mouth as her tongue reanimated between her teeth, and her arm, with nothing more than a shift from her shoulder, miraculously, snapped painlessly back into place. As her vision came back, she saw the storm clouds twirling into a dozen or so twisters, which tore up the distant forest; lightning flashed within the gray clouds above at a near constant rate, both of which indicated the demon was distressed. She saw she was alone now, and that her mind had even stitched up her dress and cleaned up the mud—not only the mud that had drenched her—but the mud around the perimeter where she lay, as well.
Looking ahead, about one hundred feet out, through the swaying grass and pouring rain, she saw Alex, Samuel and Oliver.
"Who are these guys?" she whispered.
Alex vigorously stomped after Oliver, trying like hell to actually shove a massive, rusted railroad spike up the tall man's exposed backside. He was making progress. Oliver, trying to flee, dragged Samuel—who clung, one-handed, to the tall man's leg—through the whipping and shifting grass; the demonologist gripped Oliver's britches with his other hand, as if his life depended on it, preventing the evil son-of-a-bitch from pulling them up.
As Elizabeth peered through the storm's downpour, she noticed that Samuel had bound some type of glowing twine around Oliver's left leg, right below the knee, and the demon-hunter was mouthing—what seemed to be—a repeating set of words; he spewed them so quickly she damn-near thought him possessed.
"He's using a binding spell to keep it from shifting form," Elizabeth whispered, quite fascinated. She giggled. "You're not going anywhere."
"Shove it on up there!" Samuel yelled to Alex, his distant voice cutting up a bit in the wind.
"You want this iron dick, bitch?! How dare you burn a little girl!" Alex belted out and followed his taunt with a wicked laugh and sparkling, darting eyes. Elizabeth couldn't help but burst out with laughter.
"I think you two are my heroes," she whispered, then stood and spun a single circle in the rain.
She heard a grumble and a choking, revving engine; she knew that sound. It was a summer sound, a city park sound, the kind she had always hated, but associated with blue skies and seventy-five-degree heat. By the time she looked up and confirmed her suspicion that Oliver had, indeed, manifested a chainsaw, both Alex's arms met the spinning chain and lopped off. Samuel's head went next, separating from his body like a hot slab of butter sliced from the stick.
While Samuel went limp in the grass, Alex flailed about, spurting blood like a rotary sprinkler. The binding tie slipped loose from Oliver's leg and fell to the earth, and as soon as it did, Oliver shifted to a bulky, muscular black wolf, then a crooked-legged massive red spider, and finally, a white-haired, pale-skinned speeder; Elizabeth had heard of their kind through late-night television horror stories of unsolved mysteries, which cited they carried out most of their murderous acts thought spells and rituals. The witch's mouth was puckered and when she spread it open, her lips split, both, horizontally and vertically; they rolled back, blooming like a flower of rotten flesh that curled around the lower portion of her face, revealing the sharp tips of hundreds of small metal hammering nails, protruding out like teeth and fangs, ready for a meal.
The old bat knelt and pulled the rusted spike from Alex's severed arm's dead fingers. The lad had since faceplanted into the grass and the witch leapt onto his back and stabbed deep into his spine with the metal's jagged point. It was a thorough and hard strike that impacted with a squish, a break and a thud, a grotesque sound Elizabeth had heard before ... and figured she'd never forget. The she-devil stabbed the boy repeatedly, taking little Lizzy back to the memory of her father's horrid surprise and her mother's desperate cries. Elizabeth watched as gobs of blood spat from the wound and launched into the air each time the spike pulled back; the thick beads drenched the entity's face and hands, all while the bitch seized such an opportunity, leaned into the blood and stuck out its tongue, catching the drops on its dried, wrinkled tastebuds, as if they were snowflakes.
The boy fought but had little will left to carry him to any sort of a victory, and when she rotated her body on Alex's back as if swirling on a barstool to face the boy's sneakers, it grunted, then tore away the denim jeans and plunged the spike down into Alex's exposed asshole. Elizabeth could no longer see much of Alex, as his body had since gone still, but she could hear his terrible, throat-ripping screams, muffled by the dirt and grass, yet louder than ever. The old woman didn't make love, she fucked Alex with the fire and fury of a pounding fist. As blood and shit spurted and rained, the entity leaned in and bit a chunk of flesh and meat from the boy's plump backside, tearing it away with those iron teeth and gobbling it down.
The eerie speeder turned toward Elizabeth and as their gazes met, it burst into that familiar dark red mist. It sped to her, shooting across the grass like a dart.
A head and eyes appeared within the red mist and those eyes examined Elizabeth. "I want you ... again," it said, its voice low. It studied her. "I want to make you do it again. You loved soaking in all that blood. You slaughtered pretty mommy and honest daddy with such delight. Their screams of terror and surprise made me laugh for days."
The red mist eased closer to her; it hovered over her chest.
"I'm going to take you over. I'm going to walk around in your flesh. I'm going to let the devil fuck you into the dirt. You never should have come here alone."
Elizabeth giggled, which wiped the smile from the red mist's mouth. She closed her eyes and thought of her parents, but not the bloody mess they had become; she thought of them as they had always been ... happy and loving. She saw her mother's smile and found pure hope in her father's stern, brown-eyed gaze. In her mind's eye, they stood together as they always had, hand in hand, completely whole.
"Why do you smile?" it asked, staring at her expression.
A glow of light followed by a fountain of sparkling orbs burst like a parade of piping hot sparks. Myah's shimmering blue apparition formed from the glistening light. "Because she's not alone, demon."
Elizabeth stepped toward the mist. "I suppose you're responsible for that. Your attack that night in the woods ensured that I'd never be alone again." She smiled. "I have a lot of sisters."
Like flashes of lightning, hundreds of twinkling apparitions appeared throughout the property. From the house, to the fields, to the surrounding forest's tree line, the translucent beings descended upon the farmstead and stood tall, as a union. Their heavenly color beamed out in flashes, illuminating the wetland and brightening up the gloom from the storm.
"Show me your true form," Myah said to the entity. Her apparition lost its shine and faded into a drab gray. As she gained corporeal form, the raindrops beat down on her rough naked epidermis. Her blue eyes turned black and stretched across her face like giant almonds. As long bony fingers extended from her hands, her nails transformed to black razor-sharp tips. Long black wings tore from the skin on her back and reached for the sky. They swayed in the wind and the long thick veins that stretched through them, flickered with a throbbing white light. She leaned close to the red mist and opened her mouth to reveal sharp diamond teeth.
Myah let out a scream so loud the world rumbled, shaking the distant trees, knocking siding from the house. The sound vibrated the red mist until blood droplets dripped from its cloud. Long arms extended out from the mist, then hooves and muscled legs, inverted at the knees, lowered to the ground. The beast stood eight feet tall and blood fell from its matted black fur. Its arms were bulky with defined muscles extending from its shoulders to its forearms. The demon's hands consisted of three meaty fingers.
When its head manifested, Elizabeth lost her breath for a moment. Its oversized yellow eyes examined the dark Shadow before it. A giant mouth dripping with drool and filled with black teeth and long fangs stretched to each side of its face. It had pointed ears filled with thick hair and two long twisting horns that protruded from its enlarged forehead.
Myah's scream died out and the rumbling world calmed. She looked into its large eyes and put her face against the demon's. "Demon filth," she whispered. "What is your name?"
"Mortem." The name slithered out of its mouth slowly.
"You have been free far too long." Myah applied more pressure, caving in a section of the demon's skull, causing one of its horns to teeter and lean.
The demon blinked and backed away, then exploded back into the red mist.
Myah held out her palm and a large glass container appeared. She popped the top and the many Shadows surrounded the angry mist and forced, shoved and squeezed its slithery substance into the receptacle. Myah closed the lid and secured its latch.
"Hear this, demon." Elizabeth tapped on the glass. "My sisters could destroy you now, but they will save you for me. One day, when I'm one with my powers, Myah and I will remove your existence from every realm there is. Until then, you'll be here, a prisoner in your own mind." She backed away. "As for me ... I'll do my time for the crime you committed, and I'll be a better person for it. I won't let what you did to my family ruin me. The asylum won't break me. After all, it's what we go through that makes us who we are. And I choose to rise above."
Elizabeth took notice as a rejuvenated Samuel, head and all, pushed himself from the dirt, rising out of the tall grass as if he'd crawled out of his own grave. Alex rolled onto his back, then sat up. His face was calm, his pain, seemingly, gone. He, too, stood, and brushed off fresh rainwater from his mended jeans.
Alex knelt and picked up his cracked glasses from the grass. He put them on.
"Alex, in here, you don't need those," Elizabeth said. "Keep working on the power of your own thoughts. Work on your concentration. This right here," she tapped a finger against her forehead, "is all you need. If you can strengthen your mind, you'll be far better off in all aspects of your life. I promise." She smiled.
"If you were here this entire time, why didn't you help the girl?" Samuel asked Myah.
Myah looked down at the young beauty beside her. "Because she forbade it. To suffer and heal is exactly what she came here to do. I could never take that away from her."
"Go back home now," Elizabeth told them. "Contain the body and we'll make sure he never wakes."
Before the demonologist could open his mouth to work out some sort of thank you. Myah waved her hand toward Samuel and Alex and they disappeared.
Elizabeth took the glowing red container and walked it into the house, set it on the kitchen counter and leaned into it. "Do you know the lore behind Faeries?" she asked the mist. "It says they're ruthless, powerful creatures that move like the wind, are fierce like petty warriors and stand strong, together. You will suffer at my hand, one day, when I'm a true Shadow, a true Faerie like my sisters . . . and mercy will not be given."
Elizabeth used her mind to darken the lights in the house. She rejoined her sisters outside where they manifested boards over every window and doorway, sealing the demon's container inside, then, removed the clouds from the sky, which stopped the rain from falling.
They controlled this place now.