ARMAGEDDON

13: Family

I woke up in the barracks, thinking in a panic that I was late for a daily drill. Then I remembered I was given the day off. Malice was still in no shape to talk, and I had nothing to do. So, I decided to go off and back into the real world. Earth. The Hall of Legends had an intricate system regarding portals. It is extremely simple to learn though, and doesn't take much thinking.

Basically, you bring a recall device with you so that you can come back. The portals themselves are metallic structures, able to conjure powerful energies that will take you to where you want to go. I was really wanting to go to Hawaii, but for some reason, that didn't happen. When I was awash in the energies of the portal, the thought of my whole family being dead popped into my head. So instead of Hawaii, I was back in Texas, at my parent's house.

The house was condemned, boarded up by plywood and covered in police tape. But honestly, that wouldn't keep me out. I quietly ripped the plywood off of one of the first floor windows, and silently click bed through the broken window. The house was a mess. Any furniture that was left was covered in canvas, but besides the couch and a few chairs, the house was barren. The carpets were still stained a dark red by blood, and the air smelled of iron and mold.

Jesus, the paint peeled so much. The front door was nonexistent. Only the door frame told the tale of a missing door, but the frame was shredded, and the walls near the door were covered in scratch marks, when the demons had burst in. I was numb for a long time after the death of my family, and the whole business of finding answers and killing demons had kept my mind off of absolute grief. But now, I was brought to my knees, breathless. Tears burned my eyes and left hot streaks on my cheeks. I bolstered myself, and decided to go upstairs to my sister's room.

The crib was gone, but blood was crusted in the carpet and the walls. They killed my baby sister. She was only four months old.....

Her name was Rose, and I loved her so much. She was a quiet baby, she never bothered anyone or anything. She was just a baby. My mind felt like it was unraveling, and I was on the edge of madness and grief. I went back downstairs and bawled my eyes out like a baby in what was left of the kitchen. I was quietly whispering "I'm so sorry.." to my long gone family. I was doing this for at least an hour until I felt the whole house go cold. I mean I felt the whole fucking place turn frigid, like a meat freezer.

Then I heard slow footsteps upstairs, making the ceiling above me creak. Something was in here with me. Against my better judgement, I went back up the stairs. But I was slow about it. Every step I took, the worse my fear got, and the bigger the knot in my stomach. Why the fuck am I scared? I'm a Hell Walker, things worse than me are afraid of me. So why am I scared?

When I got upstairs, I saw my bedroom door open. It was boarded shut before, but now the doorway was open, and an infectious blackness was seeping out of it. Malevolent curiosity grabbed my legs, and made me walk towards my door. I stepped inside my former room, and I saw the thing from my dreams. It was standing in the corner, with it's weird v shaped head, and the deep blackness of it's body. And the darkness was the deepest in that corner, it was coiling  around me like smoky tendrils.

It was staring at me, even without eyes. And I could hear it breathing. Slow, methodical. Living, but not living at the same time. It pointed at me, and whispered in some language I didn't know. Black specters with the body shape of my grandfather, my parents, even my baby sister formed around me.

They all chanted "You failed us. YOU failed US."

I muttered softly "I'm sorry.."

The specters cried out "YOU FAILED US!" and leapt at me, shrieking like banshees. I turned towards the nearest window, and I busted through it with all my strength out of raw terror. While I was midair, I pulled out the recall device and pressed the button. My heart was pounding as the specters drew closer and closer while I was bathed in a warm light.

I landed hard on the pearlescent marble floor of the Hall of Legends. The wind was knocked out of me, but seeing that I was still alive, I shouted out with joy and kissed the floor. I heard a female voice say "What in the nine circles?"

I looked around to see I was in one if the infirmary rooms. I looked up to see Malice sitting up in her bed. She was covered in electrodes monitoring her vitals, she had an IV in her arm, a heart rate sensor on her index finger, and her chest, hands, and feet were covered in bandages. She looked like shit, but she still had that demonic charm about her.

I grinned at her awkwardly.