The High Order

19. Down to Heaven

19. Down to Heaven

1. It was a windy night in Hell. Leaves rustled and the waves of the lava sea continued to pound the beachfront. Everything was as it should have been until Lucifer screamed in his sleep. Dan was woken up by the wail and ran through the palace to the second floor, where Lucifer was sitting up shaken in his master bedroom suite.

"what happened?" Dan came to the side of Lucifer.

"I think he's real" Lucifer grew wide eyes and shook like the leaves outside the walls.

"who? did you just have a nightmare?" Dan questioned.

"those white blank eyes, those talon-like claws for hands, that black shadow of a body, that was him. It was the Sleepyman" Lucifer realized.

"you had a nightmare about the sandman?" Dan asked.

"not the sandman. Trust me, he's not threatening, I went to college with him. This was the Sleepyman, a shadow creature that I thought up until now was a myth. He is said to live in Hell, dwelling in people's dreams and feeding on them. No creature in any realm would have the guts to haunt me"

"If he's in your dreams, how can we stop him?" Dan skipped over the monster as a mere nightmare one-off.

"at night, he shelters in people's minds. By day, I don't know. Maybe someone knows something, what's for certain is that he's real and out there somewhere. Waking up was the only way to make him go away, to find a new host" Lucifer regaled the story of the Sleepyman as a beast of darkness.

"tell you what. Tomorrow, I'll come with you so we can sort this all out. Maybe someone at your dad's citadel knows him" Dan offered to which Lucifer agreed.

"you could be right" Lucifer replied before he attempted to sleep again, and Dan left the room. In the morning, the two tired terrors flew across town to Satan's citadel, where they were notified of a banker who worked there, processing each demon's personal tax to Satan from an office in the dusty archives of the lower levels. The bespectacled small banker in a tie and slacks told the two that he had been recently been around to the supposed residence of a man who fitted Lucifer's description of the Sleepyman. The banker said he collected the Sleepy man's Satan tax from a rundown house along Baron way in the north of the district of Tartarus, so Dan and Lucifer sped off to trace their lead. They came to a boarded-up yellow two-floor building with blown-out windows and shattered glass everywhere.

"This must be the place. You say he comes out at night, so we just have to wait for him to come out, then we'll catch him and show him what for" Dan said as he and Lucifer took cover in the rusted remains of a car. The stakeout had begun for the two to track down the malicious night spirit. Dan had had many a nightmare before back in the human world, but he had no idea that the Sleepyman were all the people's nightmares in person, making him a monster that had to be stopped to safeguard Lucifer. The latter had to be in prime condition as Blood Moon Day grew ever closer with each passing hour.

2. Across town outside the Dark Council Lair, Alois Kelmer, presiding leader of the Council and Hell's Nazi party, was delivering a speech flanked by former German army officers still in uniform but bearing the scars of war.

"Danke Schön to everyone for coming out today. Very nice. On this day, I am announcing my official campaign for re-election to the Dark council. I promise to make Hell better for all the sinners who call this magnificent realm home" Alois finished his speech before being stopped from the crowd.

"Are you sure about that?" two east Asian men emerged from the gathered crowd wearing plain dark green uniforms with red badges and flanked by other demons in suits and black shade glasses.