Marker of Faith

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

The man violently pushed back from his desk and stood up awkwardly, knocking over a pile of folders onto the floor. Startled by the commotion, his coworkers looked up quickly.

"Are you all right?" a middle aged and matronly looking woman with short gray hair asked him as she started to get up. He glared at her and she froze.

"They are calling me," he whispered menacingly. Joe - Average Joe as his coworkers at the accounting firm called him behind his back - took a lumbering step forward and tripped over his garbage can. He went down with a hard thud, the hair from his comb-over peeling back like antennae for madness. Everyone in the small office jumped up and rushed over to help him. Someone reached down to grab his arm and help him up, but Joe slapped the offered hand away, rising up instead with a snarl. His eyes were crazed and feral.

"Don't touch me!" he shrieked. "You can't touch me anymore!"

Spinning around wildly, Joe picked up the chair from behind his desk and threw it through a large plate glass window that faced the street. It smashed through the glass, careening off the sidewalk and into a parked car; the alarm shrilled in sonic little beeps and horn blats. A woman in the office screamed, and Joe snapped his head in her direction. She froze, the scream dying in her throat as he smiled, a long bead of drool dangling down his chin. He poked his tongue out and licked his lips slowly as she whimpered in fear.

He'd always been such a nice man, pleasant and easygoing. What was happening?

Through the cacophony of the car alarm there was another sound. A dull thrum, a pulse of something malignant with hidden whispers, filled the air around him, and Joe cried out in ecstasy.

"Yes!" His mouth was foaming. "We are apostles of the Void."

The words acted as a catalyst and the office workers divided into two groups: some covering their ears and crying out in terror, others staring curiously at the madman before them. As if in a trance, two of his male coworkers stumbled forward and Joe locked arms with them. Their faces were slack, like whoever lived in those minds moved unexpectedly, evicted by madness, and he pulled them towards the shattered window.

Outside, the morning summer sun went dark with swirling mist. Little tendrils of gloom wound their way into the office and headed towards Joe. The mist roiled and seethed, as if alive, and it wrapped around the three acolytes in slow menacing coils. Joe, who looked like madness incarnate, and his two converts went rigid with the contact; their eyes bulged and their faces contorted in agony.

Something came back to one of the men's minds and he grimaced in revulsion as the mist touched him again. He cried out, struggling to break free of Joe's vice-like grip, but was trapped; held in thrall by the susurration of those dark whispers. The mist rolled up his body and surged into his mouth. His eyes rolled up in their sockets as shadows boiled over him and spread to the other man beside him, who was laughing maniacally.

Lem stepped out of the mist and reached towards Joe with his mangled hand, his bandannas whirling madly in the melee as he placed the hand on Joe's forehead, briefly leaving behind an oily stain in the shape of a twisted cross. The hum intensified and now everyone in the office was screaming in pain, terror and madness. Joe started babbling hysterically and leapt through the window, a jagged piece of glass stabbing his shoulder as he passed. Blood jetted out into the office in his wake, showering the two dazed and corrupted men behind him in the warm spray. With a blood-curdling shriek Lem yanked them through the opening into the swirling hell.

"The time has come! We bring the chasm!" he bellowed.

The mist surged into the office and enveloped the writhing, screaming office workers huddled on the floor, silencing them in a vacuum. It pulsed forward and then receded, like a rip tide out the window, taking more of the workers with it as it folded in on itself with a slurp.

Sunlight filtered in over those left behind. They were sobbing, but alive; shells filled with the seeds of insanity and chaos waiting for the harvest to come.