Feature Writer: Sage of the Forlorn Path
Feature Title: BLACK STIGMATA 9
Published: 22.10.2015 / Copyright© 2015 by Sage of the Forlorn Path
Story Codes: Erotic Horror / NC, Reluctant, Rape, MC, Paranormal, Incest, Sadistic, Anal, Violent, Cannibalism
Synopsis: A college student comes into contact with an ancient evil, an inhuman force which seeks to drown the world in horror
Black Stigmata 9
“So how did your parents take it?” Christi asked, speaking to Jason through their cell phones.
He was sitting in a snowy parking lot in Portland, having just filled out his fifth job application. In front of him now was a McDonalds application. Damn, his parents had always told him to study hard and get into a good college so that he would never have to flip burgers. Thanks a lot, Black Stigmata.
“I can’t really say, I went to bed as soon as I got home and left before anyone else got up. Actually, I just hid in my room and kept rereading the manual until I finally fell asleep. You should have seen my mom when I stepped through that door. She was like the old woman from Legion but taller and younger. Luckily, my story was so outlandish and unbelievable that they couldn’t even continue yelling.”
As he spoke, he blew into his hands for the umpteenth time. He would have to start up the engine and turn the heat on for a couple minutes before the car became an icebox. He missed Australia.
“I can’t blame them, I still can’t believe it’s all true. So will you please tell me what you found or where you went?”
“Nelson was already pissed off at himself for saying we were leaving for Australia in front of you. I shouldn’t have even told my family about the Black Stigmata and the BSC. If I tell anyone anything, he’ll rip off the top of my cranium and use it as an ashtray. Those were his exact words. Listen, I will tell you someday. Let’s just say that what we found will revolutionize everything. We may finally able to stop the Black Stigmata or at least fight back.”
“I sure hope so, I don’t feel safe leaving the house anymore.”
“I can’t say I blame you. Listen, I’m going to keep looking around for any places hiring, then I’ll head over.”
“That might be a bad idea, then you’ll have to explain to MY parents where you were.”
“Well I’ll just tell them that I had a very vivid dream of a music festival somewhere and I felt that I HAD to attend. I’ll say it had something to do with my PTSD.”
“Why didn’t you say that to your parents?”
“Even if I tried to milk the PTSD thing, they still would have beaten the shit out of me. Colleen wouldn’t be the only one in a wheelchair.”
“If you say so. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye.”
After turning on his car for a brief few minutes to enjoy the warmth of the heater, he finished the last of his job applications and put aside his pen with an achy hand. He had been sitting in his car for more than an hour and he wanted to get up and move, even if meant walking through the snowy November weather. Having lost the heightened endurance to cold from his coma, he got out of his car and started walking with the job application forms held tightly under his arm, shivering with every step. If he remembered correctly, the bookstore was closest to his position. Trekking through the falling snow on the filthy sidewalk, he noted the absence of people out in the streets. It seemed that Christi wasn’t the only person afraid of leaving their home. With all the chaos going on, there were probably more cops and BSC agents than civilians outside at the moment.
But it could also have been the weather keeping everyone inside. This November was exceptionally raw, and the snowy wind did not make it any better. So much sand and salt had already been laid out to fight the endless layers of snow and ice that the lines on the road and even the bricks in the sidewalk were no longer visible. As he turned his attention away from the first car to drive by in over five minutes, he spotted a piece of paper stuck to the ground with something written on it in pen. Normally not drawn to pieces of garbage, he felt compelled to see the scribbles. It was a receipt, probably dropped earlier that day or the day before, listing for two coffees and a bag of cinnamon rolls from Dunkin Donuts. Drawn on the back in pen was a line of symbols from the Black Stigmata. This was clearly the work of a Host. Jason had always felt a nearly overwhelming urge to write down the symbols of the Black Stigmata when he was in his prison cell.
Pulling out his cellphone and his wallet, he checked his BSC ID card and typed in the number on the back.
“Operator,” a woman on the other end of the line announced.
He had read this in his instruction manual; BSC receptionists did this to make sure that the person calling was a fellow employee, and not someone who had made a mistake or were just messing around on their phone. Funny, it reminded him of The Matrix.
“This is Jason Stevens, intern in Section 8. My ID number is 6347H2I9Q2.”
“Welcome to the office of the BSC. How may I direct your call?”
“I’ve identified a possible Host in or around the Portland area in Maine. The name is Michele Donovan, that’s all I know. From what I understand, she’s starting to see the symbols,” he answered, squinting at her name on the receipt.
“A search is now underway, thank you for the information.”
“Happy to help.”
Jason then turned off his phone and stowed it, his wallet, and the receipt in his pocket. ‘I wonder how long it will be before I get a promotion… ‘
“So what would you say are your best qualities?” the man asked, sitting across his desk from Jason in the medium-sized office. Having returned to the bookstore to hand his application form, he was lucky to be called right in to the manager’s office for an interview. The manager was a scrawny man with pale skin and thinning hair. He seemed very tired and sported distinct bags under his eyes.
“Well I consider myself quite charismatic and a hard worker. I also work very well with others.”
“And what kind of position are you looking for?” the manager asked, skimming through Jason’s application while yawning frequently.
“I will take anything you can give me. I’ll work cashier, I’ll stock the shelves, I’ll mop the floors, I’ll clean the toilets, and I’ll even shine your shoes and bring you your coffee. Just sign my paycheck and I’m all yours.”
“And how open is your schedule?”
“I have very little going for me right now but there may be times when I will have to leave for business. Times like those should be rare, so other than that, I can work any possible shift.”
As he spoke, he watched the manager roll a pen around in his hand. The tip was poking against his thumb, which already had a blister on it. Jason remembered doing the same thing in jail when he was doing homework. He still had the small round scar on his thumb to prove it. Was this guy… ?
“Alright, once I review the other applications I’ve received, I’ll call you if you get the job. But from what I’ve heard, you seem like the best candidate.”
The manager stood up with a yawn and extended his arm to shake Jason’s hand. Grasping the manager’s hand Jason decided to test his hypothesis.
“Trouble sleeping?”
“What? Oh … uh, yeah,” the man shrugged.
“Yeah, I had that same problem. Bad dreams?”
“You could say that. They keep waking me up.”
“I know what you mean. I would always be surrounded in darkness with voices screaming in my ears and a bright red light overhead.”
The manager’s hand came to a dead stop and he pulled it free from Jason’s grip. “Huh … that sounds … pretty creepy.”
“What are your dreams like?”
“What? Oh, I never remember them. Now if you would please excuse me, I have work to do.”
“Oh course, of course.”
Turning to the exit and about to grasp the doorknob, Jason stopped.
“Oh, before I go, there is something I want to ask you…”
He then reached into his pocket and drew the receipt he had found out in the street. “This is some kind of puzzle I saw, and supposedly there is a hidden image or message only certain people will see. Can you just take a quick glance at it and tell me if you see anything? I’ve been staring at it all day and can’t figure it out.”
He handed the receipt to the manager, and as soon as his eyes swerved across the scribbled symbols, the paleness in his face became like that of a frozen corpse and he began to tremble. He took a step back, nearly losing his balance as he stared at the symbols. Bingo.
“Do you have it with you?” Jason asked, dropped the façade.
“Have what?”
“The nail. Do you have the nail with you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
‘It’s just like Nelson said; Hosts are compelled to lie in order to protect their possession of the nails. I lied because I took the nail as evidence, but he’s lying because it’s twisting his soul like Gollum and the One Ring.’
“Achieve death. Do those words mean anything to you?”
The phrase struck the manager like a slap and he staggered back his face eclipsed with fear.
“Who are you?! Have you been watching me?! Are you some kind of spy?!” he demanded, almost foaming at the mouth.
“No, I haven’t been watching you. Until this meeting, I had no idea you even existed. But I am probably the best person for you to meet today. Listen, you aren’t the only person with a nail like that, but if you hold onto it, you will meet a horrible fate like them! That nail will ruin your life!”
“Stay away form me!” the manager screamed, jumping over the desk and shoving Jason aside.
Ripping open the office door, he sprinted down the back corridors with Jason chasing after him. Mentally scolding himself for not yet setting it on speed-dial, Jason typed in the number on the back of his ID card into his cell phone.
“This is Jason Stevens, intern in Section 8. My ID number is 6347H2I9Q2,” he panted, running through the halls and seeing the back door close as he rounded a corner.
“Welcome to the office of the BSC. How may I direct your call?” the receptionist asked as Jason sprinted through the dirty back alley, following the manager’s footprints in the fresh snow.
“I’m in pursuit of a host on Congress Street. He’s a skinny white guy with thinning hair, early to mid forties. His name is Michael Roy.”
“Mr. Stevens, stop what you are doing right now.”
Jason skidded through the snow with the phone still pressed against his ear.
“What, why?!”
“You are only an intern, correct? Chasing him down now will only draw attention to the two of you, and unless you have received proper training, you will be unable to defend yourself if he turns violent.”
“But I can catch him! I can stop him!”
“You’ll just get in the way. You’ve identified him and that’s more than enough. It’s time for you to stand down.”
“There has to be something I can do!”
“You’ve already done all you are capable of. We will freeze his assets, put lookouts at his home and friends’ homes, and send his image to the media and local police. Your job is done, now let us do ours.”
Jason sighed. “Very well.”
As he turned off his phone, a thought entered his mind. Was it possible? Returning to the bookstore, he entered through the front door and walked right past the cashiers, ignoring their questions as he strolled into the back of the building and found the manager’s office. After pulling out and putting on a pair of surgical gloves, he searched through the manager’s desk for the nail. Receiving no promising results, he turned his attention to the manager’s coat, hanging from the back of his chair.
Reaching into the right pocket, his blood became like cold mud in his veins as his fingers brushed up against the solid iron of the Black Stigmata nail. Even with latex separating him from the smooth surface, Jason felt like the nail was fusing to his fingers. He gripped his skull and cursed, the Black Stigmata’s will weighing down on his mind like a lead collar. The relic was trying to re-establish its hold on him, but the damage his mind had received in the coma had left him as an unsuitable Host and given him some immunity. Regardless, Jason now felt like he had just reached into the den of a Black Mamba and its tail was writhing against his fingers.
Taking a deep breath, he drew the nail from the coat pocket and examined it in the light. Its appearance was exactly like the nail he had found in his neighbor’s home and the nail that had triggered the prison riot. Regardless of age and regardless of their existence as separate objects, these nails shared a hive mind that transcended the logical realm. In his hands, he was holding the very same force that had ruined his life. He was holding the nail that had killed that cop, that had raped his sister, and had forced him to torture and eat an innocent woman. He felt like a child holding the weapon used to murder his parents.
Shaking aside these troubling thoughts, he quickly left the bookstore and walked back to his car. Once inside, he opened up his sealing canister, submerged the nail in the interior water-filled capsule, and secured it in a hovering vacuum, thereby locking away its influence. Once again, Jason drew his cellphone and typed in the thirteen digit number,
“This is Jason Stevens, intern in Section 8. My ID number is 6347H2I9Q2.”
“Welcome to the office of the BSC. How may I direct your call?” a woman asked.
“I have found a Black Stigmata nail. I’ve locked it up in my canister and now I just need someone to pick it up.”
Jason arrived home just before midnight, happy with the knowledge that his family had gone to bed. In the fridge, he found a plate of leftovers from dinner, but no note or anything. It seemed like his parents weren’t even comfortable with one-way communication. He ate the food cold and went upstairs. His evening with Christi hadn’t been as restful as he had hoped; he had been unable to take his mind of the escaped bookstore manager. As he entered the bathroom to brush his teeth, the activation of the light shined down the hallway and passed through Colleen’s open door.
Awoken by the fluorescent beam, she rubbed the tiredness from her eyes and checked the time. Jason must have come back. She hadn’t seen him since his arrival home the day before, and he had left her with more questions than answers. Every moment since his arrival had been spent wondering if he was telling the truth. Now was the best time she would have to confront him. Still unable to fully walk on her own, she pulled herself out of bed and balanced herself on her crutches. By the time she was up on her feet, Jason had left the bathroom and gone to his room.
Wanting to avoid waking her parents, Colleen moved down the hall as silently as she could, approaching Jason’s door. It was open just enough for her to poke her head through and see Jason sitting on his bed. His alarm clock and the moonlit window shades were the only sources of illumination. Sitting there, Jason was unable to keep his mind away from that man. What had happened to him? Had he escaped? Had he been found? Was he still trapped in the Black Stigmata’s web? Had he even degenerated into the psychotic stage or possibly begun performing the steps to create new nails? Would Jason have done the same thing if he had possessed his nail any longer? Would he have freaked out when the cop tried to take it from him? He had found a nail and identified two Hosts … but he felt hollow.
About to make her presence known, Colleen hesitated when Jason’s phone began to ring. It was Nelson.
“Professor?”
“I heard you had a busy first day.”
“It’s not like you to be so concerned.”
“I’m not, I’m calling to scold you. I heard that a receptionist had to talk you down from a Die Hard adrenalin rush? You were supposed to have gone through proper training before even SPEAKING to a host.”
“It wasn’t like that! I just didn’t want him to get away! He was in my sight! I could have caught him! I could have stopped him! I was right there! I’ve read everything I’ve been given over and over again! I’ve memorized every page! Doesn’t that count for anything?” Jason shot back as he stood up and turned to the window.
“Well what could you have done then, Jason? What could you have done? Would you have taken him down with some fancy martial arts or shoot him like Jason Bourne? What could you have possibly done other than get in the way and get yourself hurt or killed?”
“I could have done SOMETHING! I could have actually made a difference! I got his nail but I didn’t get him! For all I know, he could be out there killing people because I couldn’t catch him!”
“Learn your place and learn your role. It’s far too early for you to confront Hosts, let alone chase them down. Crazed targets have killed better members of the BSC than you, you wouldn’t last a minute if you tried to go out on your own without weapons and training. Give it time, you’ll get the proper training and experience soon enough.”
“Damn it, Nelson, there isn’t time! How can you expect me to wait when the people around me are slowly burning in this Hell on earth?! I don’t care if I get hurt, I don’t care if I die! I just want to protect people from the same cursed life you and I have been forced to live, and save them from being victimized like my sister! The people of this state can’t afford to wait for me to slowly figure this out over time! I’ve been selfish and indifferent my whole life, and now I’ve finally found something to give my life for. If I died tomorrow, I would be happy, as long as I died knowing that I had saved someone from this curse instead of just standing on the sidelines as some useless intern.”
Colleen watched him standing by the window with her heart racing. Ever since Jason had come back from the rehabilitation center, he had been far quieter and more stoic than his usual self. He never joked, he rarely laughed, and he always seemed like he was skeptical that the world around him was real. When he had first walked towards her on that cold autumn day, she had seen something but never really gave it much thought, even in the months that passed. But now, seeing him with his back to her, she finally realized that his shoulders were much broader than before and his build was like that of an actual man and not some dopey college student.
With a smile, she turned away from his door and slowly and silently made her way back to her room. Her questions could wait, and now she had a new question: when did her big brother suddenly become so grown up?
Jason stared down the barrel of the gun with a straight face, his heart beating not in fear of what was happening, but excitement for what was about to happen. With every muscle in his body acting simultaneously, he ducked his face down as if to bow, reached up and grabbed the woman’s hands, and kicked her just above the kneecap. Trying to stay on her feet, the strength in her arms wavered enough for Jason to force the gun into her stomach and then yank it from her grip. Taking a step back, he aimed the gun at her and smiled as the teacher began to clap.
He was in a Krav Maga class, having signed up for the earliest course from independent teachers and instructors in Portland. In actuality, he was signed up for many self-defense courses throughout the day, all with different teachers and classes. Refusing to wait for the BSC to give him the training he needed, he was taking matters into his own hands. Jason was not the only student here; countless people of all ages had come to learn self-defense moves in order to protect themselves in the growing chaos gripping the state.
There was one window to the studio and it was open, fighting the radiating heat of all the students. One wall of the room was lined solely with mirrors and the floor was covered with protective mats. The gun he was holding was of course fake, as well as the other guns his fellow students were using for practice. As per the teacher’s instructions, he moved over to the woman he was partnered with and held up the gun to her face, as if in the process of mugging her. As he had done, she ducked down out of the line of fire, pushed the gun upwards, and kicked Jason in the thigh. The hard impact to the already bruised muscle nearly made him gag, so the woman had no trouble in prying the weapon from his grip.
The woman had a tight body with black hair tied back into a ponytail. She reminded him of the woman he had killed, and it was this mental torture that was driving him to continue throughout the day.
Keeping his head low, Jason blocked the oncoming swing with his arm, making sure that both his armpit and elbow were bent at 90º angles and his partner’s punch was being blocked with the lower portion of his forearm, in order to preserve his leverage. Knowing that to pull back his arm for a counter-punch would take up too much time, he used his free hand to grab his partner’s collar and pull him downwards just enough for him to slam him in the stomach with his shin. His instructor had told him that if he were in a real fight, he would instead finish with a kick to the groin. He could certainly understand why all of his teachers avoided that impact site when practicing. Even though he and all the other men were wearing athletic cups, it would only take a few hits to bring them down and make it a very short class.
Jason reached out and grabbed his teacher’s wrist, watching intently for her reaction. With auburn hair cut short and sporting a pink workout bra, she grabbed his hand and twisted his arm around, bending his wrist in the process. The moment both his wrist and elbow were bent to 90º, she pushed down with elegant force and a bolt of electricity shot through his nerves. Wincing in pain, he was given a second to shake the aches from his joints. Now on the offensive, she reached out and grabbed his wrist. Wanting to match her speed, he grasped her hand, twisted her arm around, and bent her wrist while pushing down until she let go.
‘I can use this… ‘
Three classes were done, and he had three hours until his next lesson. Wanting to give his body a break, he ate lunch and then spent some time at the local gun range to practice his shooting. With a pair of earmuffs to cancel out the sound of gunfire and safety glasses shielding his eyes, he pumped round after round into the paper targets. He used a variety of different firearms, from revolvers, to semiautomatic pistols, to hunting rifles, to shotguns. Half of the time, he aimed for the head and heart, and for the other half, he focused on the limbs. He didn’t have a gun of his own, but he wanted to be prepared for any situation in which one was available, whether he was facing a swarm of cannibalistic puppets like in the prison, or simply trying to subdue a crazed Host.
This continued on for weeks, with Jason pouring his life savings into his lessons. No matter how bruised or beaten he became, he attended every possible class and worked his body to the limit. He needed to master these tools of information as soon as he could. He didn’t know what it was, but he could sense something on the horizon, something bad. If he was going to survive, he needed to be ready.
Having finished his last class of the day, Jason drove over to the community college to pick up Christi. He had decided against signing up for spring classes, something that his parents didn’t understand at the time and didn’t agree with, but kept their mouths shut about. Anyway, at least now that he was once again spending his days in the city, he and Christi could go back to their usual “routine”.
“Hey, long day?” Christi asked with a smile as she climbed into his car and kissed him on the cheek.
“Eh, it’s been alright. My body is adapting to the stress, but damn, I hit the bed each night like I just worked an eighteen hour shift.”
Pulling out of the campus parking lot, he raised his eyebrows in surprise as she felt Christi’s hand move onto his thigh.
“What’s the occasion?” he chuckled, trying to keep his focus on the road.
“Oh come on, you should know how a woman’s mind works. You’ve always been neither buff, nor fat, nor scrawny. Always so normal. Well I can really see the muscle you’ve been putting on and I must say, I really want to see them in the bedroom,” she purred as she leaned down while unzipping his pants.
“Right now? Are you sure? I haven’t showered yet and I’m all sweaty.”
“What girl wouldn’t want to jump her man when he’s literally dripping with testosterone?”
Jason smiled and fought to keep from looking down. Maneuvering the Portland streets, he squirmed in his seat as Christi’s hand drew his manhood from his pants and stroked it into a throbbing tower of muscle. True, Jason had spent the whole day working his body to its limit, but that was one area that would never tire. Giggling, she held it up straight and ran her tongue up the shaft slowly, licking off the salt like it was a giant pretzel.
Coming to a stop at his fourth or fifth stoplight, Jason scanned the area to make sure nobody could see into his car. All the while, Christi moved back and forth across the shaft with her warm, wet tongue, teasing him deliberately. Fruitlessly brushing back her long blonde hair, she brought her tongue to the mauve head of his hammer. Running her tongue through the slit, she took pleasure in the sight and feeling of him jerking in his seat, even though he was driving in a crowded city where pedestrians had the right of way and could jaywalk for some fucking reason he would never understand. She continued toying with him, trying to push her tongue into the slit as far as she could without using her hands.
When Jason finally turned onto the highway out of the city, she began running her tongue around the head itself, licking it like she was trying to reach the core of a tootsie pop. Once she had licked the head clean, she took the whole mass in her warm mouth and thoroughly soaked it. She didn’t move her head; she simply lowered herself down onto it all the way and held herself with the head pressed against the very back of her throat. She tried to maintain that position as long as she could, but it was agitating her throat and one of his pubes was tickling her nose.
At last she pulled her head back, gasping for air with a thick wet sheen coating Jason’s prick. Once again brushing her hair out of the way, she returned to the grindstone and resumed sucking him off. Deciding to pay her back, Jason risked holding onto the wheel with his left hand and used his right hand to reach over and slip his fingers into Christi’s pants. Knowing what he was going for, she unbuttoned her slim-fit jeans and his fingers found her vertical lips. With his middle finger skimming the very interior, he used his index and ring finger to stroke the luscious plump lips.
Christi writhed and squirmed in her seat, trying to find a way to lie on her back in the cramped space. Forcing herself to contend with the parking brake under her back and the gearshift jammed into her shoulder, she curled herself up in her seat so that her head rested on Jason’s lap while her feet were pressed against the ceiling. Damn, it’s a good thing they weren’t doing this in the city…
Her body now curled up like a shrimp and her ass basically sticking up in the air, Jason was able to finally dig deeper into her wetness with his fingers. As his probing became more aggressive, she sucked on his cock harder and harder, working up such a powerful vacuum that it was as if she were trying to draw out his semen like poison from a snakebite. When Jason leaned back in his chair to let her get a better angle, she saw a way to tease him further. Reaching down and around, she jammed her finger into his asshole and nearly made him swerve off the road.
“Damn it, Christi! I’m doing 70 right now!” he cursed, jerking as she felt her finger wiggling in his sphincter like a bony eel.
Deciding to pay her back, he replaced his fingers in her slit with his thumb, and forced the wet digits into her own asshole, all three at once. As her finger wiggled in his ass, his fingers plunged back and forth into hers, and the harder she sucked his cock, the harder he worked his thumb in her cunt.
“Oh god, Jason! I can’t stand it anymore! I need you to fuck me!”
“Ok, hold on a minute.”
Getting off at the next exit, Jason drove into the nearest large parking lot and looked for the most obscure and isolated spot. Parking at the very fringe of a Wal Mart lot, he set his seat back in recline while she washed off her finger outside with her water bottle and scrubbed it with some hand sanitizer from her purse. As soon as she was ready to go, her jeans and panties came off in the blink of an eye and she was in his lap, bouncing on his cock like she had just taken a hit of ecstasy. Having spent all of his energy working out all day, Jason didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie there. Christi didn’t seem to mind; she was slamming her luscious ass down onto his lap without a care in the world, all while sticking her tongue down his throat. Every time her body fully lowered, her thighs would clap against his and the sound of wet flesh rubbing against wet flesh would ring out like gum being chewed.
The longer they fucked, the hotter and wetter Christi’s pussy became. As the minutes passed, her body turned into a furnace burning with eroticism while she drowned Jason’s cock in her juices. The windows of the car soon fogged up, and in time, Jason’s strength returned. Once he had a spark of energy, he grabbed Christi’s ass and began slamming her down on his lap with all of his strength, brutally fucking her while she moaned in bliss from the rapid and brutal penetrations into the deepest recesses of her body.
“Oh yes, just like that! Harder! Faster!” she begged as her body went limp on top of Jason.
Taking over, he began bucking his hips and thrusting up into her with enough strength to almost toss her into the air, only for him to slam her back down as hard as he could. With each impact, her ass jiggled and shook, prompting Jason to resume fingering her tight asshole and using it almost as a handle.
“Oh god, I’m cumming!” Christi screamed.
As her body shook like a vibrator turned inside-out, Jason emptied his reserves into her without hesitation or control, using her womanhood as a blank canvas to wildly splash with his paint. With semen dripping out of her slit and running down her thigh, Christi rolled off him and back into the passenger seat.
“Goddamn, you’re an animal,” Jason panted as she sucked him off.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Goddamn right it’s a compliment.”
“What are you doing?” she asked as he opened the door.
“I need to stretch my legs. I feel like my muscles are tied in knots,” he replied while stowing his deflated manhood back in his genes.
With how warm and stuffy the air in the car had become, the chill outside hit him like the paint can trap from Home Alone. He walked around for a minute, letting the cramps in his legs ease themselves out. That was the problem with car sex; he couldn’t move his legs when his muscles started to burn. Goddamn he was tired. He could barely keep his eyes open. Maybe it would be better for Christi to drive…
After a quick but thorough stretch, he placed his hand on the handle of the driver-side door, only for his attention to immediately be taken. A man was shuffling towards him from the edge of the parking lot, pale complexion with an unshaven face and a hood protecting him from the cold. From the moment Jason laid eyes on him, his blood became as frigid as the pavement beneath his feet. He could sense it, that malicious intent.
“Stay where you are,” Jason ordered, getting between the approaching man and the car.
Still slowly lurching forward like a zombie, the man cracked a grin of dementia and began to laugh with his eyes darting from side to side within their sockets. “You can’t run from it. You can’t hide. The world will drown in blood and tears and be crushed under the weight of pure sin.”
‘He’s definitely in the psychotic stage, no doubt about it. He’ll murder me and rape Christi without any hesitation.’
“Jason, what’s going on?” Christi asked, poking her head out of the car.
“Christi, stay in the car and lock the doors. Turn on the engine and shift out of park. If I tell you to, you drive away from here as fast as you can.”
Reaching into his pocket, the man drew a Black Stigmata nail. “We’re all going to burn within the horrors of eternal death!” he laughed, stepping towards Jason.
Reaching into his own pockets, Jason took out a pair of surgical gloves. He always made sure to carry a few pairs with him at all times. Even though he was no longer a viable Host, he could still get trapped in a nightmare if he made contact with the nail. Widening his stance, Jason prepared himself for the confrontation. A minute ago, he had been barely able to stand, but now he felt like he had the strength to take down a squad of Spartans. In his mind, he was replaying every lesson on Krav Maga and other forms of martial arts that he had attended. All those hours spent getting pummeled had been leading to this very situation. Watching from the car, Christi stared at Jason intently. Even without being able to see his face or his eyes, she could sense a massive change overtaking him. He looked calm and focused, but also brimming with the will to win.
Laughing like a madman, the possessed Host lunged towards Jason with the nail in his hand, aimed for Jason’s face. Raising his hand, he deflected the attack while making sure that his joints were at right angles and the lower part of his forearm was bearing the pressure. Without missing a beat, he grabbed the host’s collar and pulled him down, then finished with a knee to the groin. Such an attack would have brought down any regular person, but just as Jason had seen in the prison, the host only staggered back with some slight decrease in his speed.
He came again with the same bloodlust, trying to deliver another stab but this time towards Jason’s gut. Instead of trying to grab the man’s wrist, Jason jerked his hips back while again deflecting the attack with his forearm. Now with leverage, Jason used the position of his hand to wrap it around the man’s wrist, then use his other hand to pull downwards on the back of the man’s neck and thereby completely twist his arm until it could no longer be used. Before the man could counter with his other arm, Jason slammed his knee into the man’s chest until he finally let go of the nail.
The man pulled free of Jason’s hold and lunged to retrieve the nail, but Jason stopped him with a solid strike to the nose with his palm, shattering the bridge and disoriented him without any harm to Jason’s hand. Before he could take a step back, Jason continued with a hard slap to the side of the head, sending a high-pressure burst of air straight into the ear canal and immediately rupturing the eardrum. Barely able to stand up, the man was about to crumble. Wanting to make sure he stayed down, Jason grabbed the man by the collar and pulled him straight into a hard swing against his elbow, succeeding in completely knocking him out.
Once the man fell to the ground, Jason sat on him to make sure he wouldn’t wake up and try anything. His heart beating wildly, he took out his cellphone and dialed the number for their office. “This is Jason Stevens, intern in Section 8. My ID number is 6347H2I9Q2. I have just apprehended a Host and now have him and his nail in my custody. I request immediate pickup. I’m in the Wal Mart parking lot on Forrest Avenue.”
“We’re on our way. Please keep the host restrained and the nail kept in isolation until we arrive,” the receptionist replied.
“I will.”
After hanging up, he checked to make sure the man was still unconscious and looked over to the nail, seeing it right where he had left it on the ground.
“Hey Christi, can you get the canister out of the back seat of my car? Christi?”
He looked back at the car and saw Christi staring at him through the driver’s window, her eyes as wide as dinner plates. “Jason, get back in this car and fuck me! I am so horny right now!”
Three months, it was three months before Jason received acknowledgement from Nelson. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s passed by without so much as a text message. Jason had encountered another half-dozen hosts since returning from Australia, but he was always able to take them down with the skills he had learned. Since he hadn’t taken the proper BSC training, we was still technically an intern, but he slept soundly at night, counting the nails he had confiscated.
Christi was on her back in bed, holding her breasts together and smiling coyly as Jason slid his cock between them, the shaft lubricated with her spit. The two of them had never tit-fucked before and were wondering now why it had taken them so long. Christi’s melons were perfectly sized and shaped, and the softness was beyond description. Sensing that more wetness was needed, Christi opened her mouth, signaling Jason to put it in. He let her suck him off for a few moments, lathering it with saliva. Now nice and slick, he put it back between her breasts like a hotdog in a bun and resumed thrusting. Christi kept her mouth open and her tongue sticking out, licking the head of Jason’s cock when he moved forward.
“Oh jeez,” he grunted, moments before a ropey string up cum shot across Christi’s face.
Normally she would be pissed, but instead, she simply laughed. Pulling away, Jason emptied himself onto her breasts, glazing the glorious mountains with his seed. He then used his flaccid manhood as a brush, rubbing his sperm across her tits like suntan lotion, as if trying to soak it into her skin. Finally he finished by pressing the end of his penis against her nipples, dotting them each and making the two of them shiver. He fell back and the two teens simply lay still, waiting for their breath to return.
About to speak, the buzzing of his cellphone woke him up.
“Hello?”
“It’s Nelson. I’ve booked you a flight path for tomorrow morning.”
Jason jumped out of bed. “You decoded it?!”
Christi looked at him in surprise, wondering what he was talking about.
“Yes, and you aren’t flying to Australia. You’re meeting me in Antarctica.”
“Huh, this isn’t half bad,” said Jason, standing at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole airport, in the very heart of Antarctica.
The heart of the station was a massive metal-plated building up on stilts, boasting 80,000 square feet of space, equal to a strip mall. The former base, a dome that led underground, neighbored it. He had been pleasantly surprised when he looked up the weather in Antarctica, finding that February was actually late-summer. The temperature had to be in the high fifties, barely deserving of a fleece compared to the winter cold in Maine. It was a good thing he was in the center of Antarctica, as the ocean breeze kept the coastal stations below freezing.
Damn, he was actually in Antarctica, the cold white basement of the earth! It was hard to believe he had traveled so far. He had been flying nonstop for a week, but this was definitely worth it. Walking away from the plane, he was approached by Nelson, chewing on a cigarette as always. He had been standing by a black helicopter, already manned by a pilot.
“Welcome to Antarctica, you’ll get sick of it soon enough.”
“Endless daylight with continuous weather in the high fifties? I may buy a winter home out here.”
“Well then I hope you like wet socks. Come on, there is something you need to see and hear.”
Readjusting his duffle bag over his shoulder, Jason followed Nelson with a slight spring in his step, excited for the answers he was about to receive. Plus, he would be riding in a helicopter for the first time in his life. Though to be honest, he would have preferred to stay on solid ground for a while.
It was a two-hour flight to whatever location it was that Nelson wanted Jason to see. Not a single word was spoken by Nelson during the entire flight, though Jason frequently asked him questions on what he had found, only to be denied an answer. Nelson seemed even more tense than usual and refused to give up any secrets. Accepting that he would have to be patient, Jason resigned himself to the view outside. Fields of glistening platinum under the deep blue sky, Antarctica was truly an awe-inspiring place. Jason just wished he could have come in winter and seen the Aurora Borealis. Or, as one of his fellow passengers had corrected him on the flight from South Africa, the Aurora Australis.
The flight ended when the helicopter reached an isolated camp out in the middle of nowhere. It was situated not on the geographic North Pole, but in the center of the largest unbroken stretch of open land. Tents, trailers, and mobile offices were littered around a single metal shack, but the camp was clearly under the possession and jurisdiction of the BSC. Experts in all fields of study from paleontology to geology were rushing back and forth throughout the camp like frightened ants, clearly excited over some source of information.
“Come with me,” Nelson grunted, climbing out of the helicopter and walking over a trailer stationed by the metal shack.
Jason followed him inside, finding rows of lockers along the walls. Opening up a pair of lockers, Nelson revealed two airtight suits with glass face panels. They actually looked like repurposed space suits, complete with oxygen tanks.
“Put this on, you’re about to see the coldest, darkest place on earth.”
“I feel like Neil Armstrong in this thing. Seriously, if this were night and the gravity was weaker, I would swear I was on the moon,” said Jason, walking out of the trailer and back out into the camp. The suit he was wearing was snug and had been difficult to put on. Already he was overheating and had to keep the glass face panel of his helmet open to prevent fogging.
“Get all the jokes out now, because our radios won’t work once we go down and our helmets will have to be sealed.”
“Go down where?”
“Down there,” Nelson answered, pointing to the metal shack in the center of the camp, just as two people in similar suits stepped out.
Next to the tiny building, Jason spotted a large humming generator and saw that the door was actually watched by two armed guards. Approaching the guards, Nelson and Jason both had their IDs scanned and were granted access. Measuring twelve by twelve feet, the sole purpose of the shack was to hold a large cast-iron elevator, mechanically controlled by a winch hooked up to the generator outside. With open sides and a dingy exterior, it looked like a relic from an old coal mine, and in the back of his mind, Jason wondered if it was really safe.
“Grab me a mortar and a round from that box over there,” said Nelson, pointing to a metal crate set in the corner.
Wondering if he had heard the professor right, Jason opened the crate and looked down at a row of small mortars, right out of old war footage. They were smaller than the kinds that soldiers would use, able to be carried in one hand, with the bombs being about the size of a water balloon.
“What are these?” Jason asked, carefully handing one of the strange crafts to Nelson and climbing into the elevator.
“It’s a special kind of flare, the only kind we use down here.”
He pressed a button on a control panel on the side of the door and the winch gave a soft whine and the elevator began to descend, dropping below the surface.
“I’m surprised you people use this shaft. It’s summer, isn’t it? We’re in a tunnel made of ice. Doesn’t it seem like a bad idea when the temperature outside is almost double the freezing temperature?”
“Don’t worry, this ice doesn’t melt, at least under normal circumstances.”
His tone was strange, devoid of the bad mood Jason had detected before. When he spoke, it was in a calm matter-of-fact way. Pressing the control panel in the elevator door, he turned on an overhead light in the skeletal frame.
“Doesn’t melt? What are you talking about?”
“To put it simply, energy is forbidden from entering this space. That law strengthens the farther down you go, so drilling this tunnel became slower and slower as we descended. You’ll sense it soon, the dropping temperature in the air. Look at the ice around you, notice anything?”
Jason glanced around at the smooth ice shooting up past them.
“It’s not disappearing, no matter how deep we go. We’re already well below sea level but there is no bedrock,” Nelson answered for him.
“How is that possible?”
“It’s possible because Antarctica is not frozen due of its geographic location, and neither is the North Pole. There is an axis running through this planet, an abomination that defies all logic and science. It manifests itself in arctic temperatures at the highest and lowest points of the planet. That axis was left behind by something. Think of it as like a vacuum.”
“Damn it, will you please just make sense and tell me what you found in Australia? Why the hell did you bring me here?”
“We found the answer to the origin of the Black Stigmata. We know where it came from.”
“And it came from Antarctica?” Jason stammered, shocked by the revelation he knew was imminent.
“In a manner of speaking. Tell me, do you know about the World Tree mythology?”
“I must have skipped that class.”
“It’s probably the most ancient mythology in human history, and unlike other myths and religions, it has been found in all corners of the globe, believed by ancient peoples who were incapable of worldwide contact. The legend speaks of a tree that holds this world together, binding heaven and earth, as well as binding every living thing within creation, acting as both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.”
“Tree of Knowledge? You mean like in the story of Adam and Eve?”
Nelson cracked a grin. “While it was been greatly changed over the eons, that story is quite true. 65 million years ago, dinosaurs walked the earth simultaneously with humans. The “humans” weren’t Homo Sapiens of course, but everything is relative. They lived peacefully with all life, a far cry from the way we destroy anything that crosses our path in the name of progress. Anyway, at this time, all of the continents of the globe were joined together to create Pangaea, the single landmass that stretched between the north and south poles. Humans had spread to all corners of Pangaea, united in their worship for the World Tree, which manifested itself in the north and south poles.
The World Tree was the origin of all life, the entity from which the first primordial organisms came into existence. It ruled the world as a mindless yet divine force, commanding the respect and adoration of all living things within its domain. Every creature big and small knew never to hurt the tree … or to eat its fruit. It was a law engraved in the DNA of every organism and was an instinct as powerful as the will to live. But as everyone knows, the very definition of being human is the ability to defy one’s primal instincts.
Whether it was a man or woman, we do not know, we could not get an accurate translation. We got a slightly masculine description at one point, so we refer to it as a man, who we named Adam. According to the inscriptions in the Australian cave, Adam was a being of unparalleled evil. He was a sadistic psychopath who would kill anyone who got in his way and did whatever it took to get what he wanted. Compared to all other life on the planet, he was an abomination. He was the embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins. I’m paraphrasing of course.
Believing that it would grant him immortality, Adam harmed the World Tree by plucking one of its fruits, and defiled it by consuming its flesh. In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the Apple of Knowledge gave mankind awareness of immorality and original sin, thereby corrupting them. The truth is that the opposite occurred … Whether it was the blackness of the man’s heart or just the darkness of such a blasphemous act, he corrupted the World Tree when he consumed its sacred fruit. Imagine the biggest and most powerful computer in the world and then give it the most crippling computer virus capable of being written.
The knowledge within the tree was eternally corrupted and became the essence of sin. The World Tree, which had originally been the beacon and symbol of all life, transformed into the omen of eternal death and horror. The most destructive traits in the human soul contaminated the tree and brought about a cataclysmic event, the likes of which the earth had never seen. The volcanoes of the world vomited liquid flames, tsunamis washed across the landscape, toxic gas and ash blocked out the sun, Pangaea was split open like a skull struck with an axe, and plagues of unholy wrath eclipsed the world in rotting despair.
The wrath of the World Tree was set loose upon the world in its act of self-destruction. At the polar ends of the earth, the World Tree sunk into the bedrock and encased itself in a demonic chill, draining the very energy from the environment so that everything around it would be bleak and empty. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. We’ve developed a nickname for the event: Ragnarök, referring to the apocalypse of Norse mythology.
As for the person who started it all, he received a deserving fate. Having been nibbled down to a slender core, the fruit of the World Tree that he had consumed became the first Black Stigmata nail, transforming into a spike of unholy and lifeless iron and containing all of the knowledge of the World Tree after its corruption by Adam. Now knowing nothing but wrath, death, suffering, and horror, the power of the World Tree that he had coveted turned on him. It forced Adam to perform the ritual on himself, ending his life and making him both the first Host and the first Homunculus of the Black Stigmata. Then from that nail and the two he had created, it spread.
After Ragnarök, mankind was driven near to the brink of extinction, and the earth was barely able to recover. It took a long time for mankind to come back from the edge. Considering it took 65 million years for extinction to no longer be a fear, I’d say humanity was cursed by the Black Stigmata and had to suffer on the fringes of existence. It’s likely that the endless creation for new nails continuously whittled down their numbers until there were only enough to keep the species alive.”
By the time he was finished speaking, the elevator had descended several miles below sea level before finally coming to a stop. A passageway had been carved into the ice in front of the elevator door, but looking down through the metal grate floor, Jason saw that the vertical shaft still went much deeper.
“Why aren’t we going further down?”
“We made that mistake the first time. Trust me, you need to keep the elevator at a safe distance. From this point forward, keep your suit shut and make sure you’re getting oxygen. We won’t be able to communicate and our vision will be severely limited. Just a head’s up.”
Nelson turned on the light on his helmet and sealed his faceplate, then turned the nozzle on the air tank on his back. Mirroring the same steps, Jason sealed himself up in his suit and followed Nelson into the narrow ice corridor, trying the control his breathing while his heartbeat thundered in his ears. The distance was only about fifty feet and it went around a slight turn, but Jason was brought to a dead stop with the sweat seemingly freezing to him at the sight. It was not a door, he knew that much. Nor was it a tarp, barricade, window, or any kind of hard surface. It was black, black as the coldest recesses of space. The corridor was suddenly cut off with this darkness blocking the way like a curtain, as if reality itself had been severed. The lights of their helmets shined on it like solid material, unable to pass through it but also seeming … rejected by it. It was not like it was reflecting off something, more like the light was unable to pass by. A metal rod had been secured into the ice wall by the entrance to the abyss.
This darkness was unnatural; it was unwholesome. It weighed down on Jason’s mind with indescribable dread, the same dread he had felt when he watched that plane plummet from the sky before striking the prison. They should not be there. They had to leave! They had to get out of there now! Turning to Jason, Nelson unhooked the end of a spool of wire hitched to his belt and secured it to Jason’s, then locked the spool with a length of ten feet.
“Watch your step and do as I do. But first, secure your wire to that rod,” the professor instructed, speaking through a radio in his suit.
Jason nodded, and with the mortar under his arm, Nelson approached the vertical field of darkness. About to enter the threshold, he got down on his hands and knees and moved into it backwards, with his lower body instantly dropping as if he were hanging from a cliff. As he lowered himself down, any part of his body that passed that black field became completely invisible to Jason, as if Professor Nelson were entering a portal from a sci-fi movie. Giving Jason one final nod, he lowered himself all the way into the darkness, with his light immediately disappearing as if he were passing through a waterfall.
The tightening of the wire told Jason he had to follow, even though every fiber of his being was telling him to run. Taking several deep gulps of oxygen and checking to make sure the wire from his belt was tied securely to the metal bar, he did as Nelson had done and lowered himself into the darkness backwards, feet first. As his feet passed through, he felt the ground beneath them vanish. Even more terrifying, a deathly chill seemed to saturate every cell that had passed the barrier, as if he had submerged his bare foot in liquid nitrogen. He wanted to pull his foot back out, but three tugs on the wire told him that Nelson was getting impatient.
He slowly pushed himself in, wincing and gaging as the unnatural cold passed through his suit and assailed him. Actually, it wasn’t quite the cold entering him, but the warmth leaving him, essentially being ripped away like layers of flesh. He had felt this cold before, back when he was on that mountain in his dream. He couldn’t go through that again, he couldn’t! He would rather die than experience that!
Deciding that he needed some “positive reinforcement”, Nelson’s hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed onto the back of Jason’s suit and he yanked Jason into the abyss. Hitting the solid ground, Jason felt the indescribable cold rip the air from his lungs. He couldn’t see anything; there was only total blackness. Even the dim lighting from the corridor had vanished. It was as if he had been cast into an empty dimension devoid of even a single photon.
He felt Nelson give him a rude kick, as if to say, “What are you waiting for, your slippers and a cup of hot coffee? Get off your ass!”
Jason got to his feet, but struggled on the slanted ground. His blindness certainly didn’t help. But as he stood up, a bright light suddenly ignited high up in the distance. It was the flare he had taken from the shack, launched from the mortar. Shooting through the air, the bright ball of light struggled to remain lit, looking more like a candle in a persistent breeze. What was going on with it? Regardless of its struggle, the sphere was able to light up the environment, leaving Jason breathless.
He was standing in a tunnel five hundred feet in diameter, stretching onwards into eternity. In one direction, the tunnel seemed to expand, while in the other direction, it seemed to fork out into smaller tunnels. It was … breathtaking. But as he looked down at the ground, he noticed something that chilled his blood more than it already was. Every square inch of ice, otherwise smooth as glass, was inscribed with a symbol from the Black Stigmata. With the days he had spent, forced to see those goddamn symbols glowing in front of him like neon lights, he would recognize them anywhere. There had to be trillions of them in this cavern alone! Hundreds of trillions!
Up above, the light further dimmed, and Nelson grasped Jason’s shoulder and guided him back to the exit. Holding the wire he had secured outside, he pulled himself up out of the ice cavern and back into the corridor. Upon leaving the darkness, the deathly chill left his body so quickly that he actually began to overheat. Glad to be out of the abyss, he got to his feet and pulled on Nelson’s outreached arm, helping him climb back into the light. Without speaking, he and Nelson walked back to the elevator and began the trip back up to the surface.
“So that tunnel, that was…”
“A cavity left behind by one of the branches of the World Tree before it completely destroyed itself. I believe you saw all the symbols in the ice?”
“Do you have any idea what those symbols are now?”
“Ideas have been tossed back and forth. Some think it is the language of some ancient alien race that placed the tree here. Don’t you even fucking start. Others suggest that the symbols are a form of Feng Shui, used by the tree and the Black Stigmata to manipulate energy for their own purposes, sort of like antenna for receiving and transmitting power. Personally I find that idea to be the work of drunk theoretical physicists, but I can’t deny that it makes the most sense out of all of them.”
“So what was the deal with that flare?”
“In any other situation, that flare would have blinded you if you looked at it, even from a distance. It was made from phosphorus, thermite, and other gifts from the baby Jesus to produce the most volatile and energetic burn. I told you, energy is essentially forbidden in that zone, so we have to make every reaction ten times more powerful to get at least one tenth of the normal result. Going completely overboard with that flare was the only way to provide any sort of illumination. No other light sources work down there. Why do you think we have to wear these suits? They’re to try and keep us from bleeding to death of the energy of our bodies.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Well we’re still working on figuring out the actual meaning of the symbols. We’re certain that the humans who lived before Ragnarök understood the language of the World Tree. Using the information we’ve gained so far from the cave in Australia, we’re able to begin decoding the sequence of symbols needed to turn victims into viable incubators for new nails. Once we understand the code, there is no telling what we’ll be able to accomplish.”
“But what should I do?”
“Go back home and keep doing what you’re doing. I’ve heard about the number of nails you’ve collected, and while I should call you a dumbass for picking fights with Hosts while still being just an intern … I will admit that you are doing well. How is the situation back home?”
“Everything is going to hell. Mass shootings and murders are becoming daily problems and everyone is losing their minds.”
“It doesn’t surprise me, I had a feeling things would get worse while I was gone. This same effect is being seen around the globe. The Black Stigmata is growing in strength and I don’t see anything good on the horizon.”
“Do you know when Jason is coming back?” Colleen asked, watching a movie with Christi.
“He said he would be back in a few days.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you where he was going.”
“That’s his job. He may just be an intern, but he takes it seriously and doesn’t spill secrets.”
“He’s been getting checks in the mail, and guys from that company keep showing up to ask him questions.”
“It’s not a company. It’s the BSC, sort of like Interpol.”
“You’re the only person he talks to about this stuff. He won’t tell me anything, and I doubt it’s because of confidentiality.”
Christi hesitated for a few moments, choosing her words carefully. “He wants to keep his work life and his home life as far apart as possible. He doesn’t want you or anyone else getting dragged into it like he was.”
“He still blames himself, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, and he probably always will. That’s why he’s working so hard. He’s trying to make up for it.”
“Mom and dad don’t understand anything that’s going on. They’ve stopped asking questions and don’t even bother talking to him anymore.”
“Nelson said that members of the BSC, especially former Hosts, are never the same and never really come back. I’m just doing whatever I can to keep him from disappearing.”
“Ready?” the guard beside Nelson asked.
“I’m ready.”
With another two guards behind him, Nelson walked down the sterile white hallway with a roll of papers under his arm, similar to an architect’s blueprints. The facility he was currently in was one of a BSC jurisdiction and had been established in Siberia. While every surface of the corridor was bleach-white, the guards wore dark-grey uniforms with BSC stitched onto the chest pockets and IDs hanging on their shoulders. Walking past the endless line of heavy locked doors, Nelson strained his ears to hear the prisoners inside. Their mutterings were incessant and consisted of all the world’s languages.
This building was a cross between a mental health facility and a prison. The inmates? Hosts who had undergone the drug treatment but failed to break free of the Black Stigmata’s control. When someone underwent the treatment, those who survived were divided into three categories: successful subjects like Nelson and Jason who now had free minds, brain-dead vegetables who would spend the rest of their lives drooling, and Hosts who would forever be slaves to the Black Stigmata. It was a probable ending to the treatment, in which the drugs and the Black Stigmata shatter the will of the recipient, and the Black Stigmata, which would normally be shaken off like a rodeo cowboy, instead secures a hold so deep in the Host’s psyche that they will never be free. They could be a thousand miles from the nearest nail but still act as though one were lodged in their frontal lobe.
For Hosts that fell into that last category, this building would forever be their home and their grave. Once someone was considered a failure, they were forever locked up in this frozen wasteland, kept away from the general public. Had Nelson or Jason failed, they would have ended up in padded cells with their limbs locked in straightjackets or tied down to their cots. Most of the subjects were forever in the psychotic stage, always gnashing their teeth and cursing, having to be tied down and fed through an IV while catheters took care of their bowls and bladder.
The rest had the tiniest semblance of sanity, but were obsessed with the Black Stigmata. Without their straightjackets, they would scribble the symbols onto the walls of the cell in their own blood, over and over again until every surface was covered in a thick red paste. They weren’t even allowed to use toilets, as many inmates had drowned themselves in the water or cracked their skulls open. They just crapped on the floor and the cell would be hosed out with a drain in the corner to channel away the waste. Nelson often wondered why the BSC bothered taking care of these people. They might as well just be put down like sick animals. In the back of his mind, he wondered if the real reason why the inmates weren’t allowed to ever use their hands was because it was just easier than having to clean up the blood.
Coming to a stop, the guard leading Nelson unlocked the cell door in front of him. Inside the padded chamber, a bald man sat on the floor with his back to the wall, rocking back and forth while pulling at his straightjacket ceaselessly.
“Antoine Jacques?”
“Who wants to know?” the Canadian replied, speaking in French.
“Someone who needs your help,” said Nelson, switching to the same language.
Antoine turned back to him. “I smell death on you. I smell blood.”
“No, that’s just the smell of cigarettes.”
“What do you want? What’s in it for me?”
“You want to write, don’t you? You want to write the symbols?”
Antoine looked away. “They’re screaming at me, begging to be written! I must see them written! I must create them and fulfill them! Just one finger, if I could use a single finger!”
“Well then, you will be able to write to your heart’s content. However, only under the condition that you do THIS.”
The professor then unrolled the large modern-day scroll and held it out in front of Antoine. Even with the only light source coming from behind Nelson, Antoine stared at it with wide eyes, as if gazing at the blueprints for a time machine made by both God and the Devil.
“What is this? How can this be possible?!” Antoine stammered, having both no idea what he was looking at but also feeling crushed under the weight of its meaning.
“It’s your instruction manual.”
The sky was burning like a pool of lit gasoline while an acrid breeze blew across the landscape. The crumbling remains of a city lay strewn across the landscape like severed grass blades on a mowed lawn. All color and nutrients had been bleached from the soil, making it look like the surface of Mars. Bodies had been scattered in all directions like seeds, each one completely untouched by bacteria. Decay did not exist in this world; there wasn’t even enough life to support the recycling of death. These corpses would remain until the sun devoured the planet, forever etched with grins of demented sadism or shrieks of horrific agony.
Jason stood with his whole body trembling, staring at the towering structure before him. Reaching up into the vacuum of space and with a base as wide as a mountain, a spindly tree of black iron dominated the horizon. Its needle-like branches reached out to every spot where the barren landscape met the burning sky, and skewered on the tip of each pike was a human used for the creation of nails.
“What is this? What the fuck is this?! I’m supposed to be free of you!” he swore, feeling more terror at this very moment than at any other time in his life, even all the other times when the Black Stigmata had reared its ugly head.
Just as he had heard it time and time again, a crashing sound like the pulverization of a billion skeletons rocked Jason’s ears, seemingly coming from the tree itself. Jason bolted up in his bed, drenched in sweat. What the fuck had that been? How was it possible for the Black Stigmata to still give him nightmares!? Could it have been the nail from the parking lot? Did he make contact with it without knowing? Had his mind somehow been contaminated? What he didn’t know was that every single Host across the planet had just experienced the same vision. Cured, active, or subjugated, they had all just witnessed the same nightmare. Those who had been awake at the time simply passed out where they had been standing or sitting. In Siberia, at the host detention center, the inmates were screaming like wild apes, shouting curses and prayers to the Black Stigmata.
Having just gotten off his flight in Los Angeles, Nelson was approaching his next boarding terminal when he passed out. Once he regained consciousness, he found himself being examined by a medical crew in the terminal. Considering his new appearance, they had probably assumed the worse.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he grunted, waving them off.
Reaching into his coat pocket, he took out a cigarette and cracked a grin. ‘To think that something as pure as the World Tree could be corrupted by a single soul … We really are out of our league.’
About to light the end, an airport security officer pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. “No smoking in the building. And it looks to me that smoking put you in your condition,” the short woman nagged.
The sun reached its highest point in this unusually warm March day, lighting up Portland and beginning the war against the snow that encrusted the hemisphere. After a freezing winter, people were looking for any reason to go outside and enjoy the warm rays like cats in windowsills.
Sitting between a morbidly obese man in what wouldn’t surprise him to be a diabetic coma and teenage girl on her ipad, Nelson stared at his watch intently, counting the seconds. The plane would be landing in Portland in a few hours.
With no classes on Thursday for Christi and Jason deciding to take a break from his self-defense lessons, the two young lovers were roaming the city with nowhere in particular to go but both having a strong desire to get as much sunlight as they could. They were happy, smiling, and glad to have such a beautiful day.
The woman sobbed as she carved the symbols into her neighbor’s flesh. The forty-three year old woman had her unwanted victim tied to her table, trying to scream through the stitches holding his lips together and the layer of duct tape covering his mouth. With a steak knife to cut away at the flesh and a butter knife heated with a candle to cauterize the wounds, she begged for forgiveness as she was forced to turn his body into a canvas for the Black Stigmata.
The sun was halfway to the horizon, but its warmth remained unflinching. Picking the sunniest spot, Jason and Christi were having lunch at a table out front of a popular deli. Christi was nibbling on a ham sandwich on white rye, while Jason was gorging himself on a platter of different animals stuffed between two huge slices of wheat bread. The stack of meat was so large that he felt like his jaw would dislocate every time he tried to bite into it.
Nelson could see the ground below the plane beginning to magnify. The flight had passed the halfway point and now the stuffy vessel was beginning its steady decline. Taking out his phone, he began texting the BSC. “This is Nelson, fill up a cement truck and have it ready in the city.”
In her apartment building over Congress Street in the center of Portland, the woman continued to sob as she carved symbol after symbol into her neighbor’s flesh. With each completed mark, a slip of skin fell down to the floor like a red slug. She had known this man for years, but now the Black Stigmata was forcing her to torture him. Every scratch and cut with the steak knife was perfect, as if she were a puppet on strings. But while the Black Stigmata steadied her movements to ensure there were no flaws, the exertion and effort were all her own, made in order to avoid the psychological wrath of the nail. She was almost done; soon the incantations would be complete.
The sun was touching the horizon as softly as a balloon sinking to the floor days after its inflation. The warmth was gone and the people of Portland had gotten their fill. Now all that was left to do was finish the work they had procrastinated all day against and go home.
Nelson rushed through the Portland jetport, drawing looks of curiosity and shock from the people he passed by. When he wasn’t looking to the exit, he was looking at his watch. He was running out of time!
Jason and Christi strode out of the movie theater with uncomfortable expressions on their faces. With the warmth of the sun gone in the late afternoon, they had decided to see the new Indiana Jones movie that had just come out, the fifth of the series. (That’s right dear readers, this is still a horror story.) Suffice to say, they should have just quit while they were ahead. It was time for them to go home.
The sun had almost completely sunk below the horizon, with just the thinnest bar of light shining through the apartment window. The woman stood over her creation, trembling and unable to produce any more tears. She had just finished the last symbol and had slit her neighbor’s throat, destroying his Adam’s apple. She had seconds to act until he bled to death, and the Black Stigmata was screaming in her brain to add the last piece of the puzzle. Contemplating her fate in Hell, she raised the steak knife and butter knife she had used earlier and plunged them both into the man’s eyes. The knives disappeared into his head at the exact same moment the sun fully disappeared. The sound of the two blades sliding effortlessly through gelatin and flesh was the last sensation the woman experienced.
In a single instant, a two-dimensional shockwave erupted from the woman’s building like a ripple in a pond. Her apartment was reduced to dust simply through its proximity, but the damage didn’t end there. Like a samurai’s blade, the shockwave sheered through every building three stories high or above. It spread out across Portland without anything stopping it or holding back, and not a single structure in its path survived without being bifurcated like road-kill. On the ground around her building, every car in the street junction was sent skyward as their gas tanks spontaneously combusted.
Having been driving down Congress Street, Jason crashed into a parked car and dived to protect Christi as the top floor of the nearby building poured down into the street like an avalanche. Throughout the city, buildings were falling apart like houses of cards and filling the street with rubble. At the very epicenter, just down the road, a bright red light was shining within a cloud of dust with the newest incubator of the Black Stigmata hovering in its center. In the sky above, storm clouds as dark as onyx were stirring and expanding, slowly consuming the heavens in a black maelstrom.
“Christi, are you hurt?” Jason asked, coughing through the dust.
“No, I’m fine. Thank you for saving me,” she replied as he looked around.
His car was covered in bricks and cinderblocks, but they certainly weren’t buried.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said, pushing open his door and helping her outside. People stood like statues on the road and sidewalk, staring out across the open space of the converging streets. Their eyes were fixated on the crimson light, hypnotized by it.
“What’s going on?” Christi asked, looking around fearfully.
Jason was just about to respond when he felt a drop land on his nose. Wiping it away, he stared at the smear of blood on his fingers.
“Oh my god,” he gasped as more and more drops began to fall, each one a liquid ruby made of human DNA.
“Blood … It’s blood…” Christi murmured, staring up into the sky as drops of red pelted her face.
The rate of the downpour increased by the second, with a thunderous downpour soon washing Portland in liquid horrors. Soaked in gore, the citizens began screaming, but it wasn’t in fear or disgust. All those who had stared at the red light broke out into savage violence, having been twisted by the crimson aura. Screaming without end, men and woman began beating, stabbing, and even shooting each other like it was the end of the world. But in the back of his mind, Jason had a feeling it was.
“Christ, get in the car and lay down on the floor. Keep the doors locked and don’t open them for anyone!”
“I’m not going anywhere without you!”
Jason took one glimpse into her eyes and decided against trying to change her mind. “Very well, but stay close and don’t look into the light.”
With their hands locked tightly together, Jason and Christi ran through the street towards the source of the madness. With every step, hundreds of drops of blood showered upon them, with Christi having to stop more than once to throw up. After everything he had been through, a mouthful of blood didn’t bother Jason in the slightest. But they had to be careful, for the chaos that had been born around the red light was spreading like a wildfire. Those initially infected swarmed outwards in all directions, destroying everything in their path and killing everyone they found. Those who survived the onslaught or simply hid as the mindless lunatics rioted were not immune. By simply being within the general area of those infected, the citizens of Portland became contaminated by the Black Stigmata like a zombie virus spreading telepathically.
Reaching Ground Zero, Jason stood in awe at the flameless bonfire before him. The crimson light shining from the dead Homunculus wasn’t just glowing like the radiance light bulb; there was an actual atmosphere of bloody plasma around the twisted carcass. A thick membrane of condensed light swirled around the corpse, forming an undulating prism as large as the building it had replaced. Christi did as Jason told her and kept her back turned to the light, but Jason could not take his eyes off it. He would not allow the Black Stigmata to send him into the psychotic stage, but it was certainly trying. The inhuman dementia was weighing on his consciousness like a bloated corpse, pushing his mind and his immunity to their limits. He wanted to join the mindless creatures flooding the city; he wanted to take part in vandalism, arson, rape, and murder, but as long as he was able to control himself and make the choice for himself, he would never fall to that depth ever again.
“What the hell is going on?”
He didn’t know what he should do or what he even could do. Who was he supposed to call? Could the BSC even handle a situation like this? The roaring of a diesel engine broke him free from the Black Stigmata’s spell. Looking south, he saw a cement truck thundering down the street towards him, knocking aside burning cars and running over rubble without hesitation. Reaching the wide-open heart of the city, the truck finally came to a stop, and out of the cab appeared Professor Nelson. His appearance was strange, as his head and hands were completely wrapped in bandages. From the looks of it, his whole body was bandaged beneath his clothes.
“Professor, care to explain what the fuck is going on?!”
“Quite simply, it is the end of the world,” he replied calmly, leaving the cement truck to continue spinning its mixer while he walked over with a cigarette between his lips.
“What do you mean?” Christi asked.
“I know it was confidential, but Jason, I hope you broke the rules and told your girlfriend about the World Tree, because I do NOT have the patience to retell the story. Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of time, but I hate repeating myself.”
“Yeah, he told me.”
“Well then I can skip right ahead. Right now, the World Tree is in the process of recreating itself. When Adam ate the fruit of the World Tree, he forever corrupted it with the darkness in his soul. His malicious will contaminated all the knowledge of the tree and caused it to essentially self-destruct, leaving behind only a single part of it. As you know, that part was the original Black Stigmata nail, which transformed from the core of the fruit Adam ate.
For 65 million years, the World Tree has been trying to reclaim its former strength, feeding on the misery of the world and the souls of people used to create new nails. Every time a nail is created, the Black Stigmata’s power grows. Quite simply, it has now amassed enough energy and created enough nails to begin reconstructing itself. Think of that poor soul up there as like the trillionth customer of a store. In this case, a trillion could actually be an understatement.
When the World Tree originally stood, its root system engrossed the entire planet, from the surface to the core. Those roots may be gone but the cavities remain, and the World Tree is going to use this resurrection to access those cavities and give birth to itself. Think of it as like Jesus Christ using his own corpse as a catalyst to trigger his revival. Once that is done, it will recreate the world in its own image. Originally, the World Tree was the avatar of life for this planet, so it reached out to turn planet earth into an Eden. Now that it has been corrupted into an omen of horror, it will turn this planet into a lifeless husk of bleak destruction.
This is the origin of the phrase “achieve death” and why it was always listed with the steps to create new nails. The Black Stigmata was giving us orders to create new nails and then telling us what would happen afterwards. Achieving death means the extinction of all life on earth.”
“Did you learn this from the cave?”
“Nah, never believe predictions painted on a cave wall. We figured it out by completely decoding the language of the Black Stigmata. Along with equations for the creation of new nails, this prophecy is written into the bodies of every human incubator. Now watch, the show is about to begin…”
In Antarctica and its northern twin, the polar ice caps erupted like Mt. Vesuvius, hurling millions of tons of ice into the air while whiplashing strands of black lightning sprayed forth from the ancient cavities of the World Tree like geysers of oil. Like the storm over Portland, swirling black clouds spread out from the North and South Pole, powered by the ominous cracks of light shooting endlessly from the depths of the planet.
In repurposed mines and toxic waste depositories, vaults and nuclear flasks were ripped open and their cargo set loose. Guarded mountains exploded into mushroom clouds as storms of cursed nails and Homunculi flew through the air like possessed comets. Around the globe, Black Stigmata nails over sixty million years in age were being pulled up from their hiding places, while the quarantined Homunculi were set loose from the ancient pits they had been locked away in by early humans. Bodies that had been butchered and unsuccessfully cremated to try and dispel their evil flew across the sky in pieces, reforming and joining together into the original carcasses. Not a single Homunculus had aged a day; they had all been perfectly preserved by the malicious will of the Black Stigmata forever imprinted into their bodies.
High in the atmosphere above the city of Portland, the nails collided with each other and began to fuse into a solid mass while pushing away the bloody storm that had heralded it. Even after 65 million years, there were not enough nails to fully recreate the World Tree, but there didn’t need to be. As more and more nails joined the morphing metal conglomerate, raw iron was materializing out of the thin air and allowing the mass to grow. It was as if the nails were made of cells, all multiplying to increase their numbers. As the tree began to reach its full size, the Homunculi were skewered onto the tips of its branches, decorating it like a Christmas pine without a single branch or corpse left out.
At last, the transformation stopped, with the final touch being the absence of roots. The very bottom of the tree was instead a long four-sided spike, exactly like the original nails but with the very tip missing. The god-like tree hung over the planet like the sword of Damocles but on a cosmic scale. There was only one piece left out: the corpse that had triggered it. The man whose body had been used to trigger the tree’s resurrection hovered still in his womb of red light, the nails in his eyes failing to move even a millimeter.
Slowly, the tree began to descend, and as its tip dropped below the cloud cover, the corpse twisted and jerked. With a disgusting chorus of squishing and crunching, the body was crushed in midair by a physical force. The limbs were crammed into the torso and the head was sucked in with the nails fully absorbed into the skull. With the force of a black hole, the body was compacted into a solid mass of indescribable density, while measuring the size of an apple. Upon its completion, the flesh of the apple was burned away, revealing it’s core: a nail of no material known to man, but one so dark that light could not escape it. The red light that had originally driven the people of Portland insane could no longer exist around it. It hovered directly in the path of the descending tree, about a foot off the ground.
“The nail, the iron tree, and the cavity from the old tree: these three forces form an unholy trinity that will beckon the end of the world. The cavity represents the World Tree’s body; specifically, it’s corpse. The iron tree represents its mind, and all the knowledge it’s gained since it began its war with mankind. The nail represents its soul, and the unparalleled evil contained within it. In truth, the evil of Adam was nothing compared to this monstrosity, but when he consumed the World Tree’s fruit, he committed the ultimate sin, and the tree transformed to become pure sin. Its reason for existing is simple: to be the horrific end to everything on this planet. It’s like a computer programmed with an insidious will that knows only its own purpose.
Once that nail joins up with that tree, the only thing stopping it from resurrecting are the layers of earth between us and whatever root cavity lies deep beneath our feet. It will pierce the earth like a nail through an eyeball. You know, in BSC records, you’ll find that at least one Host has had a vision of a tree similar to this before each and every tragic event since WWII. At first I thought it was a sign that the Black Stigmata was playing a role in these events, but I realized it was something much simpler: it predicted the horrors about to be set loose and became excited. Every nightmare Hosts had about trees was simply the Black Stigmata being as giddy as a schoolgirl. Considering the frequency that this tree was envisioned, it’s clear that the Black Stigmata was simply excited about its own resurrection.
It’s fitting that it picks today to recreate itself. This is the Spring Equinox and spring is the time of rebirth,”
“Damn it, Nelson, isn’t there any way to stop this? Anything that can be done to save this world?” Jason demanded angrily, infuriated by how little the professor seemed to care about the situation.
“Anything you can do? Hell no. But there is something I can do…” he hummed as he walked over to the nail hovering over the ground.
As he approached it, he pulled away the bandages covering his head and left Christi and Jason awestruck. His head had been shaved bare and every square inch of skin had been inscribed with the symbols of the Black Stigmata. But they were … out of order?
“What did you do to yourself?” Jason gasped.
With his back to Jason, the professor answered. “With the language of the Black Stigmata decoded, rewriting the equations for new nails was easy. I rearranged the symbols and had a Host cut them into me. The original equations were for replicating the Black Stigmata, but these new equations are for sealing it.”
“You don’t mean…”
“I do. I’ll seal the Black Stigmata within my body, the entire sentience. This is my penitence.”
He then turned to Jason and Christi with a sad smile on his face. “I never told you, did I? When I was a Host, I tried to defy the Black Stigmata’s order to create new nails. As punishment, it sent me into the psychotic stage and I ended up butchering my wife and son. I wanted to kill myself as soon I realized what I had done, but the Black Stigmata would not let me end my life until I fulfilled its desire. Every time I sleep, I’m haunted with either the faces of my family or that poor girl.
I know I always told you that what you did while under the nail’s control was not your fault. To be honest, I was saying that more to myself than I was to you. Whether or not I am guilty for my actions, this body of mine was still used to torture and kill my wife and son and an innocent child. I can never forgive myself for the crimes that this body performed. I guess that was the reason why I underwent the procedure without anesthesia.”
With the flat tip of the tree just a hundred feet above his head, Nelson picked up the nail hovering at his feet.
“It’s time for humanity to be freed of this “original sin” and be given a clean slate.”
He took off his glasses, and before Jason could stop him, the professor swung his arm and buried the nail in his right eye. Immediately, he released a cry of agony and blood poured down his face, but he refused to stop and instead pushed it all the way in. Upon the nail’s insertion, a deafening scream filled the air, forcing Jason and Christi to their knees with their hands over their ears. Throughout the city, every piece of glass was shattered by the ungodly whistle, while in the North and South Poles, the crackling ribbons of black lighting curled back on each other and twisted themselves in loops like snakes being assailed by driver ants. In a thunderous clap, the iron tree overhead exploded like the Death Star and a blinding curtain of light engulfed the entire city, freeing people of their madness. The light eventually faded and Jason looked up at the professor. He stood with four inches of unholy matter piercing his brain, yet he remained on his feet with haggard breathing.
“How ironic. Adam ate the fruit of the World Tree because he wanted immortality, but all he had to do was write sealing incantations on his body. It seems that by trapping my own soul in my body with the Black Stigmata, I’m incapable of dying. No matter how broken an battered my body will become, my soul and the Black Stigmata will never be able to break free of it.”
“So … is it over?” Jason dared to ask.
“No, not yet. I weakened the Black Stigmata but I can feel it regaining its strength and clawing at the inside of my head. I can maybe hold it back for a couple minutes before it completely takes over and my body becomes its newest puppet. That’s why I brought the cement truck, I’ll seal myself up in the mud inside, and once it dries, both it and my body will forever be this curse’s prison. I got the viscosity perfect so it will immediately start to harden as soon as the mixer is deactivated.
After that, the BSC has arranged with the American government to re-open the space program and hurl me out into the cosmic vacuum in the direction of the sun. Hopefully gravity will take affect and I can drag this unholy evil into the nuclear pyre and free mankind forever. Now come over here and help me.”
His whole body shaking, Jason walked alongside the professor to the cement truck and watched as he climbed up onto the back of the cab.
“Turn that lever when I say so,” he instructed, pointing to a control panel.
He then gave the order and Jason pulled the designated lever, stopping the mixer when the side hatch was rolled up to the top.
“Ok, be honest. You’ve been using me as a surrogate for your son, haven’t you?” Jason asked, deciding to be a smartass one more time.
Crawling across the tank of cement, the professor opened up the hatch and sat down on the edge. “What are you, high? If my son was even half as stupid and thickheaded as you, I would have disowned him,” Nelson scoffed with complete honesty.
He then reached into his pocket and drew a cigarette and his lighter. Lighting the end, he took a long puff and looked up at the sky. When he looked back down at Jason, even with blood running down his face from the huge nail skewering his brain, he had the most authentic smile Jason had ever seen on him.
“But even though you spent half my classes with your head on your desk and a puddle of drool soaking your notebook, I’ll admit … you weren’t a half-bad student.”
Nelson and Jason gave each other one final nod of farewell and then the professor dropped himself down into the thick concrete, letting it envelope him and become his tomb and the Black Stigmata’s prison.
One month later:
Jason and Christi were sitting in Jason’s living room, watching the news. It was a live broadcast of the newest shuttle launch for the temporarily-opened space program. As far as the public knew, it was just a quick mission to repair a number of satellites that had supposedly been damaged in the “meteor shower” that bombarded the North and South Poles. A stray rock was even being blamed for the damage to Portland, since nobody at Ground Zero could remember what really happened. What only Jason, Christi, and the BSC knew was that in the back of the shuttle, a car-sized block of concrete sat, waiting for eviction from planet earth.
“Do you think he’s aware of what’s going on?” Christi asked.
“I doubt it. He may be immortal, but oxygen and water deprivation has to have left him in a coma. I just hope his soul isn’t rattling around in his head and serving as the Black Stigmata’s punching bag.”
They were both silent as the rocket thrusters ignited, sending out thick clouds of smoke moments before the metal craft launched itself into the sky.
“Goodbye,” Jason said under his breath.
“Huh?” Christi asked.
“Nothing.”
In the next room, he heard the front door open and close and his sister walked into view without the slightest limp.
“Jason, you got mail,” she said, handing him one of many envelopes and moving into the kitchen.
“Thanks,” he said, waiting for her to leave before opening.
“Who is it from?” asked Christi.
“The BSC. Since the Black Stigmata is no longer a danger, I was told that the remainder of their budget would be divided up into severance payments for all employees. I guess this is my last paycheck.”
He pulled out the check, and as soon as his eyes fell onto the line of zeros, his jaw hung slack.
“Holy shit! You could pay for the rest of your college education and still come out well set!” Christi exclaimed, reading it over her shoulder.
“Yeah, there’s enough here even for … maybe a wedding?”
Christi stared at him with wide eyes, and in a single powerful movement, she pounced on him with enough force to send him tumbling to the floor. Jason tried to laugh, but it was hard with Christi sticking her tongue down his throat. They kissed for several minutes before Christi finally stopped and held herself over him with a tender look on her beautiful face.
“I love you,” she murmured.
“I love you too,” he replied.
They resumed kissing, while up in the sky, Nelson’s shuttle became little more than a fading twinkle of light in the clear blue sky.
THE END OF CHAPTER NINE