Vengeful Demon

Chapter Nine

Ralph thought he heard wrong when a different voice issuing from Laura's lips finished her final words. What the hell was she trying to do? Scare him? Turn the table around? She was in for something big if she thought her faking several horrible voices was going to make him stop all these and let her go.

Her voice sounded like one of the voices he had heard while watching an exorcism movie, kind of demonic. He had seen how possessed victims could do wierd things. How they spoke in several voices in unision. How they levitated and how strong they also were.

Well, Laura wasn't levitating and she was a weakling, she must have been a good actress in high school but he wasn't buying such bullshit the Hollywood fed the ignorant viewers. Such things were just made up to thrill and sell. Laura looked a mess and she was definitely scared enough, so he was resolved not fall for her ploy.

He was already believing himself when she spoke again, in stronger rough voices, like three drunk men combined.

"You raped and killed your seventeen year old girlfriend when you were about going to college." Laura began to slowly rise, her hair still hanging like a curtain around her face.

"Her name was Audrey Martinez, you defiled her innocence and buried her at the back of the cabin right under the tree swing where her body was never found." She continued in gruff distorted voices, five this time.

Shocked at the turn of events, Ralph staggered backward. No one was there that evening, no one knew what happened that fateful day, no one had even known that they were dating. They had tried their very best to keep it a secret.

He remembered Audrey quite well as if it was yesterday! A beautiful coy girl, brown hair, hazel eyes and a good player of soft ball. He had been a senior at his looking forward to the oncoming graduation and that was when he had noticed her during a game rehearsal. They had been dating for four months with a few kisses and hugs but he had wanted more than that.

He had asked her for sex several times but she always whined that she was not ready. He had gotten admission into college and would leave soon and somehow he couldn't bring himself to go off to college without getting laid with his girlfriend. They had agreed to meet in an old meeting spot in the woods. Hoping she would oblige him this time. He had lured her into a deep romance but at the last moment, she had turned him down. Her staunch refusal was both frustrating and irritating.

He had gotten angry and feeling rejected, forced himself on her. He had pinned her to the floor by her neck while he mercilessly defiled her, ignoring her cries, pleas and screams. He knew no one would hear her out here but little did he know that while lost in his world of ecstacy, he was choking the air out of her.

When he was done, he expected her to still be crying then he would just give a series of remorseful apologies like he had planned like telling her how he didn't know what got into him and that if she chose to end the relationship, he would understand and he presumed that if it didn't go that way, that she would probably jump to her feet, run out of the room and never see him again but she remained on the floor, motionless, her face was pale, her eyes were bulging and staring blankly at the leaking ceiling above them.

When he went on his knees and placed his ear on her chest after trying in vain to shake her back consciousness, thinking that she had only passed out out of shock, he heard no heart beat.

Out of frustration and desperation and fear of being discovered and arrested, he had panicked and had then resulted to bury her body in the backyard right under her favourite spot- the tree swing. He had wiped all traces of his ever being there by setting the old cabin on fire, but that was ninteen years ago. Nobody ever knew what happened.

"Who...wh..o... What are you?" He stammered, already cold with fear.

Then Laura looked up at him. Ralph almost screamed in terror, only, no sound came through his lips when he parted them. Laura's face was contorted, her blue eyes were now a dirty milky-white. Her face was full of welts and her gaping mouth was bloody, the insides of it were inky black like a black mamba's.

The gash on her head where he had struck her with a bottle began to close and heal up and her blood on the floor suddenly turned to black steamy stains then dried up into patches before being swept away like dust.

"I'm your worse nightmare." She said in distorted voices.

"I'm the Pandora of all evil, a black Fade and you..." She pointed a crooked finger with a long sharp claw at him. "...like the others shall dwell in me."

Her long lumpy tongue snaked out of her mouth to lick his face, leaving a slimy trail in its wake. "I'm named the dwell-in Pandora because I..." The room began to shake and files and papers began to fly here and there as if a tremor was occuring. "...host thousands of souls in this human body I've possessed. All these tattoos on my body aren't drawn, they are faces of mortals who are forever dwelling within me and subjected to a slow painful death. Men who have brought pain upon others in anyway. Men who have always taketh by violence shall meet their doom..."

Ralph began trembling as his office continued its tremor and the papers flew around, creating a minor whirl wind. He fell to his knees. "Please, I beg you to spare my life and I shall hurt no woman no more, please do spare my life." He replied in a choky and teary voice.

"The hooker you pummeled to death in an alley pleaded with you for mercy." The distorted voices of the black fade said.

"Hooker?" His confused gaze strayed as if he had forgotten or didn't know what she was talking about.

She placed a long wrinkled finger on his forehead and said in a hoarse whisper. "Remember..."

His eyes suddenly went milky white and the image of a club, seven years back, flashed into his mind...