Into The Abyss
The Shadow Hound series follows the events leading up to the opening of a hell mouth and one family's struggle as they are stalked by and then try to escape the demons that are released.
Book 1: Shadow Hound (Complete)
A delve into suburban horror as seen through the eyes of a family dog who thinks it is a human child. The pampered pooch narrates events as evil stalks and hunts its new family. Only the pup can see the Hellmouth opening in the backyard. What's a dog to do? "My adopted Mom listens to everything I say except for one thing...there is something in the backyard. Something dark. Something ugly. It's down deep. Below the storage shed."
Book 2: Into The Abyss (Ongoing)
Daniel's got a crush on one of his coworkers. Like really bad. Follow her to hell and back bad as he tells his buddies. When he agreed to help her with a problem, Daniel didn't think he'd actually get his chance to prove his words with actions. Now possession, fighting demons, and yes, closing Hellmouths look like they are on the table. How far will he go to impress the woman he thinks is "the one"? "Into the Abyss" is a campy romp in urban horror and the sequel to "Shadow Hound"
Book 2
CHAPTER 1
I’ve got a thing for this girl at work.
Alright. Alright. She’s a woman, not a girl. Gotta remember I can’t call her that in this politically correct world. We only cross paths during our breaks in the lunchroom since she’s one of the eggheads over in accounting and I’m one of the jarheads that do the actual work our security firm gets paid for. Maybe if I was better with numbers, I could see more of her.
Anyways, I like the way her eyes sparkle with mirth when she pretends she ain’t listening to me share trashy jokes with the boys around the water cooler. When she smiles and hands me a fresh cup of coffee before I have a chance to pour one for myself, I would say it melts my soul but in general she has the opposite effect on certain parts of my anatomy. What? This is me being “PC”. It’s as clean as my mind is ever going to get.
That’s how I find myself pulling up in my beat-up clunker Chevy at dusk, it’s an old P.O.S. but it gets me where I gotta go, to her place unannounced like a fucking stalker. She’s been upset at work for a few days and I finally…kind of…cornered her in the parking garage and got her to tell me what was wrong.
Yeah? You got a problem with that? Well fuck you! If I had people skills, I’d be married already and at home playing with my kids while my wife is getting dinner ready instead of being a perpetually horny bachelor pushing forty-five walking nervously up the driveway of a chick who doesn’t know I can’t stop thinking about her.
Whatevah! I offered her my services – not that kind of services you perverts. Just…you know…I work in security…she’s having a security issue…sorta. Or she might be having a my-kid-has-mental-health-issues kind of issue. We don’t know yet. That’s why I’m here.
The point is, she works for a God Damned security firm. The second someone who lived in her home thought someone or something was breaking in, she ought to have enlisted some assistance from our firm. It’s like, literally, what we do. Maybe not have made an official request, in case the kid really was losing it, but at the least, somebody could have passed her a wi-fi security camera on the DL.
But we never got that far in our conversation. I did manage to pass her my cell digits and told her to text or call if she needed any help and we’d get her hooked up with some surveillance if she wanted it. She never showed up at work today and I heard…okay fine…I didn’t hear, I investigated and got someone from HR to tell me that she had called out for a personal day. Fuck! I’m just diggin’ that ‘stalker’ hole bigger as I go ain’t I?
I was afraid that maybe I had scared her off. It’s not unusual for me to have that kind of effect on women…and just about everyone else. I’m a dumb guy who’s kind of big and scary. I’m so big and scary that it became my job to be the Big Scary Guy. Yeah, that is capitalized. When a customer tells my boss that they want someone ‘Big’ and ‘Scary’, my boss goes, ‘Daniel Adams is your guy.’
So, I was kind of thrilled when the girl, I mean woman, I had the hards for texted tonight to let me know the kid said it had happened again. Somebody was supposedly in their house last night without waking her up. To be clear, I wasn’t thrilled because of what happened, I was thrilled because she texted me. And wasn’t, ya’ know, avoiding me. Ah ha ha. Shit.
They weren’t going to stay at the place anymore which meant I could hook up cameras to see what was going on and it wouldn’t be pervy that she never actually gave me permission to do it. I mean, we had talked about it… Yeah, no! I know that wasn’t going to fly in court if she decided that she didn’t want me to do it and I got caught. I’ve had to testify against stalkers as part of my job enough times to know that for sure.
Yet, I was determined to do some’n to help out and this was the kind of thing I am best at. When I found out who was scarin’ that kid, if there was anyone at all, I was gonna pop that mo-fo hard before I let the local LEO’s drag his sorry ass off.
Because I Was Thinking With the Wrong Head
CHAPTER 2
I didn’t expect her to be home when I got there, but her gas-efficient, ugly-as-sin hybrid mom-car was parked out front. Guess they hadn’t left yet, or maybe she’d decided to stay. I swear I was gonna just leave, pretend like I’d never shown up. But I’d come there to work, and when I heard the shriek from the backyard my work-brain overrode my common sense and had me running for the side gate I could see from the driveway.
“Oh Sweetie, you scared me so badly.” Came that voice that tightened up my neither regions every time I heard it. The gate was locked but I could see between the fence pickets as my Sammy stepped off the back porch and bent over to pick up a fluffy cute little dog in cute little doggy pajamas. OMG!
My first thought was that maybe I wasn’t so into this chick anymore because dogs are dogs, not babies. But as I looked at the dog approaching her with a happily waving tail, I noticed something…off…about it. It was blurry. Like there were two dogs overlapping the same space and sometimes the bodies went out of alignment.
Rubbing my eyes, I looked harder and I swear to God, I could see something else behind the dog.
“Oh my fucking God!” Horror made my words come out in a whisper. I had to be seeing things. There was this tentacle behind the dog. Like, comin’ out of a hole in the ground next to the shed. I had to be losing my mind. My girl was much closer than I was. If there was something there, she would have seen it.
I knew right then that I needed to leave and maybe get to a hospital because clearly, I was having a stroke. Yet I felt compelled to stay. To watch and confirm that my mind was playing tricks on me the way I knew it was. Then the blurry dog made contact with my girl and as she straightened, the blurriness forced itself into the woman holding the dog.
Her body convulsed and I watched as her…her soul? God. Please no. Don’t let it be her soul that slumped like a dead body onto the ground displaced by the shadow-stuff that now corrupted the body I’d so admired.
“Come Sssweetie,” the thing inside my girl hissed. “Let’s go get Caleb from grandma’s houssse.” The thing turned toward the gate I was behind, the body’s movements jerky and uncoordinated as if it was fighting the commands the thing inside it gave.
Now, I wouldn’t consider myself religious per se. But like most men who have seen combat, I’m fairly superstitious. I wear my cross my mama gave me like a good Catholic boy, but you won’t see me in church, and the only time I’ve prayed since my Sunday school days ended is when I was stuck in a trench under enemy fire. And I wasn’t the only one praying then, believe you me.
I didn’t pray because I believed that someone might be listening. Faith like that is kid shit. I prayed because it made me feel like I was doing something to help my situation like it was good luck. It was a way to personally fight off the despair and exhaustion while I was fighting the evil of men. Mankind spreads a lot of evil; I’ve seen more than I care to remember.
Despite this, never in all my life had I ever actually considered that evil, the kind of evil I saw walking toward me across a lush suburban lawn, existed. I always consider the tales of hell and demons to be a kind of myth to…like, teach lessons about how evil people can be. Like, once someone commits a certain amount of evil they can be considered inhuman. You know, like…like an allegory. Yeah. That was the word. Fuck. Just fuck my life.
F*ck My Life
CHAPTER 3
I could see my girl’s spirit on the ground and tentacles from the pit coming for her. How the fuck was I supposed to fix this? Long-buried memories of Sunday school classes talking about how exorcisms used to be commonplace in the past but were no longer done nowadays came unbidden to my mind. There was nothing useful was coming out of those recesses of my head.
The thing was almost at the gate, and I was rooted to the spot. If it touched me, I’d be shit out of luck and the pit would have another soul to take and another body to control. One thought kept running through my mind. Something out of a cheesy horror film I’d watched years ago.
Shrugging off my jacket I wrapped it over my arm and hand, completely uncertain as to whether or not it would do anything to protect me. Then I pulled the crucifix I wore more for bling and to make my ma’ happy over my head and wrapped the chain around my jacketed hand so that I wouldn’t lose the damned thing by dropping it from my cloth-encumbered fingers. It had been a gift from ma’ after all. The gate swung open with a violent slam, the squeaking hinges almost screaming. Pulling back my arm I punched the crucifix into the ghoul’s chest and shouted…
“May the power of Christ compel you to get the fuck out of that body!” I winced and turned my head away hoping for something to happen but not sure what to expect. When a slurpy, hissing growl started, I peeked to see my girl’s body glaring at me menacingly, the shadowy form that had possessed her still there. My hand had landed on the dog she was clutching to her chest.
There was no shadow possessing the dog’s body anymore. That shadow slid down my girl’s legs and rippled over the grass back toward the pit it had slithered out of. The creature possessing my girl grabbed my extended arm and, luckily, nothing happened. My guess was right, and it needed to have direct skin contact. Or maybe it was the cross in that hand that protected me. I don’t actually know.
It took a wild angry swing at my torso with its free arm as I jerked myself from its grasp. In the process, it dropped the now-empty dog body. Dodging and weaving away from its attacks, I tried the crucifix trick on it a few more times.
Each attempt to come in contact with it looked like some kung-fu comedy shit as I hid behind the gate, tossed gardening supplies that had been conveniently stacked against the fence at it, stepped in a bucket which I then kick-threw at it, and used a garden hoe as a makeshift defensive staff weapon. All the while I’m repeating like one of those obnoxious talking children’s toys with a broken voice controller with each exorcism attempt…
“May the power of Christ compel you. May the power of Christ compel you.” Fighting mostly one-handed while trying not to hurt the body I was fighting against was a serious disadvantage for me against a thing that just needed to touch me once. I was also trying to avoid stepping on the dog or having the creature step on the dog because hey, it might still be alive, and it would score me points with my girl. Not if she’s dragged into the pit of hell, moron. My brain chided me.
“Fuck. Just give that damned body back. You. Piece. Of. Shit.” I grabbed the dog and sprinted into the yard where I could see my Mamacita being pulled toward the pit. None of the training I’d ever received had covered Hellmouths or how to sever pit tentacles. My garden hoe just sort of phased through the thing without any effect. Hoping that my crucifix could be a kind of hellspawn cure-all, I ran it over the tentacle and….yes!
The tentacle was severed where the crucifix touched it. It shrieked a dark-evil-gurgling shriek and zipped back into the expanding pit while the severed end unfurled itself from around my girl’s ankle and started slithering away looking for some other lifeform to possess.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Lunging after the slick nasty thing, I impaled it on my crucifix and tossed it into the pit it had come from. There was something closer to the pit that looked like it needed help. “Git your ass back in there.” I shouted after the disgusting tentacle as it plopped out of sight.
“Danny?” A weak cough followed, and I looked down at an unsubstantial and terrifyingly translucent woman. I didn’t know souls could cough. And that was a totally not useful inane thought.
“Yeah, Sam.” Shit. She didn’t know that I called her by that nickname in my inappropriate fantasies about her. “Um, I mean Samantha. I came by to check on you and…”
“Baby…” Yess! My heart leapt with momentary joy and I did a little internal fist pump despite the seriousness of our circumstances. Did she just call me… “You have to help Baby. It’s pulling her into…it’s got her.” Damnit! My joy shattered into disappointment while I tried to focus on the here and now.
“What baby? Where is it?” Samantha pointed toward the pit.
“Baby is what Caleb named our dog. She’s being pulled down into the pit right now.” Oh fuck. I could see the lump of translucent fuzzy cuteness whining softly and looking at me piteously. Puppy eyes. Steeling myself against their power I resolved that I was not going to risk my life for a dog. Glancing back at spirit Sam I found her gazing at me with the same pleading piteous look as her damned puppy.
“Oh, God.” I shook my head in disappointment at myself as I stood and stalked toward the Hellmouth armed with a crucifix and a garden hoe. “I’m really about to brave the depths of hell and rescue a puppy to impress a chick I like. Like a dumbass.”
Kung-Fu Buckets
CHAPTER 4
Whack-A-Soul
The dog was so cute.
Jeez. I didn’t know they made dogs that cute. This was not a guard dog breed. Even though the thing was translucent and incorporeal, I could tell it wasn’t gonna be any good at deterring strangers. That was for damn sure. Unless the way it guarded its home was by killing strangers who trespassed with adorwable fuzzy fluffiness.
Edging toward the pit as quickly as I dared, I kept an eye out for any tentacles. It was a good thing that I was looking because I could see not just the one that had Baby – Who names a dog Baby anyways? Not now, focus man. – but also new tentacles sliding up around the sides of the pit and questing blindly in slow undulations for victims to possess.
It resembled a messed-up sea creature. One of those things that clownfish liked to live in. An enemy? No. Anemone. Fuck! A tentacle suddenly elongated and slapped out to snag at me and I had to jump over it then tuck and roll to dodge another trying to take advantage of the distraction.
They’d made like they couldn’t reach much beyond the pit until I was well inside their radius like the tricky little demon assholes they were. Focus you, dummy! I scolded myself sternly determined to live in the moment and pay attention to what was happening right now.
Forcing myself to look at the pit tentacles as a single opponent with multiple arms rather than multiple opponents working in concert, I managed to avoid getting whack-possessed. Like a hangry flailing toddler in an arcade, the thing was out to hit me in the most effed-up game of whack-a-soul ever. The pit was getting pissed. Its tentacles thrashing in angry frustrated undulations.
I swear, I must’ve looked like an idiot hopping from side to side and wiggling to dodge shit. Because I realized that Sammy hadn’t been able to see this pit and tentacles until after she’d been possessed. Maybe most other people wouldn’t be able to see it either? Made me glad that it was getting dark.
It also, made me distracted since I automatically started wondering why I could see the demons and the pit, and the tentacles but Sammy never had. Was this what her kid Caleb was telling her he saw, and she had no idea was here? And what had been coming into the house?
So far everything I had to deal with didn’t seem capable of moving on its own without a body. My mind just kinda blanked out for a second.
So far. Everything. Needed. To take over. A Body.
Shit!
Where was the thing that didn’t need a body?
Did it know that something hadn’t gone according to plan up here? Was it on its way now? Was it coming? Would I be able to fight it, or would it be immune to my crucifix? What would happen if the tentacles touched me? My mind threw questions around faster than the tentacles were coming, and it wasn’t helping my concentration any.
“Arg! Fuckshitdamn!” I shouted out with pain and anger as I discovered what would happen if one of the tentacles touched my bare flesh. It burned. A lot. I could smell a burning brimstone and sulfur scent…and…cooking pork? Did people smell like pork when they got cooked? Why did I smell like pork?
I almost vomited right there. At least I would have been aiming for the pit. But the poor puppy whined, and I doubled down my efforts. The hell with this dodging shit. I would just kill anything I could with my cross. That was just about all I could do. With a lunge, I slashed through three tentacles. One landed on me as it fell, and I gritted my teeth to avoid shouting again.
It tried to burrow into my unprotected chest, and I stabbed it with the blunt cross in my hand before tossing it also back into the pit. That became my method of destroying the tentacles; cut one off, then toss it in the pit. And still Baby – Who names their dog Baby? – kept sliding closer and closer to the pit in little tugging jolts.
CHAPTER 5
This is NOT Good
Finally, I managed to create enough free space around Baby that I could safely cut her loose and throw the tentacle attached to her back into the pit with its friends. Before I could even wonder if the sweet pup would be able to move on her own, she rolled quickly away from the edge she had nearly been dragged over.
She stood and shook her whole body the way dogs do to dry off. This time though, I think she was trying to get the creepy feeling of pit-a-cles…see what I did there…off of her. Smirking at my pun, I backed out of the reach of the pit as Baby hurried over to Samantha.
“Oh,” Samantha oofed as the little doggy soul launched itself ecstatically at her and landed heavily in her open arms. “That’s a good girl.” She cooed like the dog was a child. Oh, Christ! I moaned silently. Dogs are dogs. Not babies. But clearly not in this family. In this family, the dog was definitely a child. “Okay, girl. Let’s go get that thing and keep it away from Caleb.”
Yep.
The heroics weren’t done yet. We needed to go and save Caleb. How were we supposed to do that?
“But first we need to put you back in your body, Baby.” Sam’s words jolted me. How in the world were we supposed to do that? I didn’t know. Was returning a disembodied soul to its original body a thing that everyone knew, and I just hadn’t realized was a ‘thing’? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d missed something huge like that.
“I don’t know about you…” I tried to keep it casual because I didn’t want it to come off as me mansplaining to her, “…but I have no idea how to do that.” The ghostly woman cocked her head to the side with a shrug and sucked some air thoughtfully through her teeth.
“I’m not really sure either,” she giggled nervously “I was really hoping that just getting her close to it would work. If her body is still alive that is?” Her questioning tone felt a little too steady as if she were afraid to be too hopeful.
“She’s alive.” And the completely overwhelming relief she felt was obvious in the way she visibly relaxed. Like every muscle in her body had suddenly untensed. Her shoulders, which I hadn’t noticed her hunched up around her ears, lowered to more normal shouldery positions.
“Good. That means if we can get that thing out of me…” An almost giddy giggle escaped he lips and I could tell that she was on the verge of going manic from the stress. Like she was one more Hellmouth surprise away from a full-on psychiatric emergency. I didn’t want to watch my crush’s mind fracture under the stress of encountering the paranormal for the first time.
“Then your body is still alive too and we might be able to put you back in it.” I interrupted her quickly to keep her from having to think too hard about it. Also, I was super excited about the prospect that Samantha’s body was still alive and possibly resisting that greasy demon inside her. “That’s what I was thinking. I’m absolutely certain that you were still breathing while I was fighting you…”
We both giggled a little at how messed up the whole concept was as my thoughts trailed off. When her laughter ended, Sam walked over to Baby’s unconscious body. Baby’s soul trotted alongside her happily as if her recent ordeal with the Hellmouth had never happened and she was having a regular normal stroll down the block with her mom.
But she balked away from her body when she got close to it. She growled and snarled at it a bit. So, Sam had to reassure her precious pooch.
“It’s okay Baby. See, it’s saf-”. The hand she had reached out to stroke the physical dog-body passed right through it. “Well, fiddlysticks!” The exclamation was something she clearly said often and instead of more expressive curse words since she was, ya’ know, a mom who didn’t want to cuss in front of her kid. Though I could very much hear the intended ‘well fuck’ she wanted to say through the intonation of the word. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and high pitched, her eyes looking up at me round with panic. “This is not good!”
CHAPTER 6
There IS Such a Thing as Dumb Questions
“Let me try.” My voice came out more gruffly than I wanted it to sound. I wasn’t really a calming presence to anyone. I knew that. Yet, I was trying to help Sam, so I knelt beside her and the doggy body and put my hand out to stroke its fur.
I hadn’t noticed this earlier because I was preoccupied with preventing my body from being stolen and inhabited by the denizens of hell but…It was so soft. The dog, not my body. My body was hard. (What? I work out.)
Like, man, I did not have anything to compare the feeling of this dog’s fur with. Silky smooth while fluffy and warm at the same time. Not gonna lie, I was little bit worried that I might accidentally squish the thing by petting it too hard, so I was super focused on being careful with it.
Sam soothed the dog in her incorporeal state. Petting the little doggy soul, which she could do since they were both incorporeal, she gently coaxed it toward its body. And once it was close enough, she got it to lay down inside its own body. Never thought I’d be thinking that phrase ever in my life. Also, talk about a well-trained dog. AmIRight?
I kept stroking the little fluffer as Sam kept stroking the incorporeal fluffer and something strange happened. With little twitches, parts of the soul doggy started snapping into alignment with the physical body the way a good session at the chiropractor gets all your vertebrae back into the proper place. Before I knew it, Baby had chiropracted herself back together again.
She jumped up with a happy little wiggle, her butt shaking in time with her tail. Wigglebutt! Freak! She was cute. Baby tried to jump back into her mom’s arms but ended up sailing right through her and landing haphazardly with her head and front paws sticking out the back of Sam’s shins.
“Eeeeww!” Sam exclaimed with a shudder. “I can feel her slobber in my soul.” Deadpan. Straight-faced seriousness. Covering my mouth, I snorted at how funny it was. Then I lost it and laughed. Bent-over, knee-slapping, tears-in-my-eyes laughter erupted from my chest. And here I was worried that Sam might crack? Sheeze. Did I call that one wrong!
“It’s not funny.” Sam hissed at me. Her foot stomped in aggravation, but I could see the beginning of a smile quirking the corners of her lips.
“No. No.” I cleared my throat and tried to be serious but lost it again when she sniggered at me. “It’s…not…funny.” I managed to gasp between chortles. She stuck her tongue at me making it even harder to not laugh. “Fuck! Stop making me laugh.”
“Come on.” She turned saucily on her heels and headed for the driveway. “We need to get to my mom’s place before that thing gets there and kick it out of my body before Caleb sees it.”
I jogged to catch up with Samantha who was suddenly all business. The second I thought that; I realized that I was too. The idea of that creature wearing a Samantha coat wreaking havoc in suburbia was sobering. I did not like it. I did not like it at all and I briefly considered calling some of the boys from work for backup.
What would I say though?
Hey, grab the gear you’ll need to fight Hellmouth demons and remove them from a possessed body? Does anybody know how to seal a Hellmouth? They’d call the cops on me for a forty-eight-hour psychiatric hold and my boss would give me my pink slips when my blood tests came back negative for drugs, is what they would do.
The gate had swung mostly closed after I had rushed in to the rescue. Sam walked right through the fence gate and the garden supplies I had strewn about the front yard and driveway in my haste. I, like the corporeal lug I am, had to open the gate and then pick my way carefully through the catastrophe I had left behind.
“Should I pick some of this up before we go, in case we need to get through here quickly later?” Spirit Sam turned slowly. Her face was eerily blank as she blinked at me.
“NOoooo.” One eyebrow arched as she said the word without emphasis or emotion. “We are going to get my son first without any delays.” The very concept of slowing ‘The Quest for Caleb’ -- that was what I was calling this whole adventure in my head -- was nonsensical to her.
“No. You’re right.” I reassured her as I jogged up to the car having finally extricated myself from the chaotic carnage of her once neat and tidy suburban lawn. “That was a dumb question.” I reached a hand into my pocket and fished for my keys. Shit. My keys?
They were nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 7
The Quest for Caleb
“You took the time to lock your car?” If I didn’t know better, I would have said that Samantha seemed a little miffed.
“In my defense,” Ah there they were. Those little key bastards had managed to slide their way around to the top front of my pocket where they had stuck themselves into a tight corner. “You didn’t actually need rescuing when I got here. I heard you in the backyard and saw the thing jump into you from Baby just as I was walking up to the gate.”
She nodded thoughtfully while I unlocked the car, manually because that’s how old it was. Then I got in and reached across the seat to unlock the passenger door for Sam. Which was silly since she could have just walked right through…
With sudden realization, I looked up and watched through the window as Sam’s hand passed through the door handle. She giggled at herself nervously and slapped a hand to her forehead for forgetting that she could pass through solid objects. But I knew she hadn’t realized the worst of it yet.
Still giggling, Sam stepped into the car and stood in the passenger seat. I sat up as she moved into place, giving her room so that I wouldn’t pass through her as Baby had. Then she tried to sit down. And she went right to the ground. The top of her head was only just visible over the seat.
“We seem to have a problem.” Her voice was muffled as it was coming through the foam and stuffing of the car seat.
“Yeah!” I agreed wholeheartedly. “This is a big fucking problem.” For a few stunned seconds, I just stared at the ghostly crown of Samantha’s head thinking about how many times I’d dreamt about her head at right about that level in my car doing something completely different. And yeah, I’m not gonna lie. I had a first-rate, selfish mini pity party in my head about the fact that I would never get to feel her touchi-
“Feeling!” The word stumbled blindly out of my mouth, squinting dazedly at the brilliance of my unusual moment of inspiration.
“Huh?” The island head in my passenger seat rose and exposed a face that had been, if not crying, then on the verge of tears.
“You said you could feel Baby’s drool when she went through you, right?” The idea was half-cocked and cockamamie but if it worked…
“Well, yeah.” Sam moved higher up. She must have been kneeling. “It was kind of gross.” Good, good. Maybe we could work with this.
“Did you feel anything else? Holding my breath I hoped against hope that there was something we could use.
“I could kind of feel her…” She cocked her head to one side the way she did when she was thinking “…her dogginess. I guess.”
“Yesss!” In a rare moment of intellectual triumph, I indulged in a fist pump. “I think that means you can possess me.”
“What?” A choking cough met my idea. But my theory hadn’t been proven wrong yet so… “You want me to possess you?”
“Yep. I don’t see any other way to get you to grandma’s house before the big bad demon.” She shrugged her slim shoulders fatalistically.
“Fuckit! Let’s do this shit.” As Sam stood, her head went out the top of the car and I couldn’t see it anymore. Her slim legs and hips sidled closer to me than they’d probably ever been and I was so sad that the extent of my game was ghost ass in my face as I was about to be possessed. Really plump, bootylicious, badonkadonk ghost ass, but incorporeal and therefore while thrilling, was not quite as thrilling as it might have been.
As her soul settled into my body, I felt a chill run through me, followed by a tingling warmth. I shuddered. Then my hand moved. But I wasn’t moving it.
“Sweet!” My mouth exclaimed, yet I wasn’t the one talking. I really wasn’t expecting that to work.”
‘Holy shit!’ I tried to talk to Sam, but I couldn’t move any part of my body. ‘Crap. How was I supposed to talk to Sam?’
“I can hear you.” My voice assured me with a laugh that was not nearly as gruff as I usually sounded. “Perhaps we should continue the ‘Quest for Caleb’?” There was a lyrical lilt of amusement that just sounded wrong coming out of my lips.
‘Yeah. Sure. That sounds great!’ My thoughts were a little distracted because I didn’t remember ever telling Samantha the ‘Quest for Caleb’ thing I’d thought up not more than a few minutes ago.
“You didn’t tell me.” Sam paused for effect, giving me time to realize that she was implying that... “I…uh…noticed that you like your jeans a little bit on the tighter side. Is that for showing off your assets or for hiding the effects that badonkadonks have on them?”
‘God damnit! You can read my mind? That’s not fucking fair!’
CHAPTER 8
Off to Grandma's House We Go
“Oh…Goody.” Samantha cooed softly in my definitely masculine voice with a tone that fully indicated that it was not damned well good. “Manual transmission. Why do men always have to be playing with their sticks? Huh?”
‘That’s not what’s actually going on with…’ I shut down that train of thought as quickly as I could since the hottie in my body could read my mind. Didn’t want to piss off the driver in control of the car and myself.
“Too late for that buddy.” My mouth mumbled under Samantha’s control as she briefly familiarized herself with the particulars of my car. With expertise that must have been born from years of practice, she angry-shifted smoothly through the gears as she took off into the dark of night.
“Oh My GOD!” The words exploded out of my mouth to fill the interior of the vehicle with their pressure. “Stop worrying about my driving. I know how to drive your shitty old car.”
'Sorry,' I meekly mumbled-thought at Sam as apologetically as I could. Sure I’d been kind of in the back of my mind sorta worried about– Yeah. Crap. I’d fully been doubting her ability to handle all the little quirks that came with my super old vehicle.
But the determined mother currently – I can’t believe I’m about to even think this – possessing my body as a disembodied spirit, was a remarkably good driver. Like, better than I was. She had been pushing the line between going over the speed limit to be the speed of traffic and outright speeding as she charged through suburban streets.
When she hit the freeway on-ramp though, all bets were off. The transmission slammed into the highest gear with a whine and a clunk that made me wince, and her foot smashed the gas pedal into the floor. She swerved at high speed through the greater-than-expected-for-this-time-of-night traffic.
“It’s Friday, in Summer. It’s always busy late into the evening on Fridays, in the Summer.”
The statement came around gritted teeth as a sudden down-shift slowed us just enough to avoid pancaking into the rear of a semi that was speeding in the wrong lane. They were going fast, but not as fast as we were. If I’d been in the passenger seat in control of my own body, I would have been one of those jackasses that step on imaginary brake pedals and grip the armrest with a fully tensed body.
I forced myself to relax so that I wouldn’t be a distraction to the driver. To occupy my mind, I tried to focus on sights other than the vision directly in front of me. When the head and taillights of other vehicles seemed like streaks going past, travel was definitely too fast. No, we weren’t going that fast, but my imagination was playing with my anxiety. Maybe the whole situation was finally having an effect on me.
So, my mind sought out the familiar outlines of the city skyline. Cities were nice at night. I liked nightscapes. A soft glow always need to surround them and I didn’t give a damn that it blotted out the stars. But there was something off about my city that night. Something dark about it.
Because I couldn’t control the movements of my body, I couldn’t turn my head. I could see everything that Sam saw, but I wasn’t sure if she had caught sight of what was freaking me the fuck out. The pit tentacles were all over the city, reaching up into the sky questing.
“I see it.” The hiss caught my attention. “I’ve seen it since I lost my body.”
‘Ah!’ There was probably more I could have said but – We hit the off-ramp at speeds that my car was never intended to exceed…and launched probably five feet into the air at the top of it. ‘AAHHHhhhhh!’ I could feel my face grinning maniacally with Sam’s exhilaration.
The nose of the car was aimed toward the sky and I couldn’t see the ground but Sam was cool as a cucumber despite the fact that we might be dying at any moment. At least, I might be dying at any moment. With a soft almost sensual sigh, Sam breathed ironically.
“Off to Grandma’s house, we go.”
CHAPTER 9
Possession Does a Body Good
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ I was trying to hyperventilate but couldn’t. Sam, in my body, lost her breath as we hit the ground. Hard! ‘My baby!’ The car bottomed out, and I knew there was probably some really expensive damage to fix. Was it wrong that I had started calculating how many paychecks I was going to have to save from to afford repairs when there were bigger issues at hand?
“Oh, Christ. You man child.” Despite circumstances, Samantha was laser-focused on her objective. “I’ll pay for the repairs. I have excellent credit with high limits on my cards.” Both of us had thought we made it through the whole bottoming-out incident without too much damage. But the acrid-greasy scent of cheap gasoline – yeah I buy the cheap shit – soon made us aware that there was a leak.
The car started sputtering. Instead of ranting and railing ineffectually with rage, Sam smacked the steering wheel in frustration and managed to pull us over safely just as the old girl sputtered to a stop. She took a deep calming breath and ran a hand affectionately over the dashboard.
“You did good girl. We’ll come back for you. Your daddy would lose his mind if we didn’t.” Yes. I was Fond of my car. Very fond of my car. Maybe I was more fond of it than I had thought I was. And definitely fonder than was apparently normal from the way Sam was responding to my thoughts.
Good. I would finally get control of my body back now that being in the vehicle wasn’t required. However, that’s not what happened. Instead of vacating my body and letting me exit the car, Samantha opened the door and stood up in my body.
“Sorry, Daniel.” She whispered with a tone of regret that sent a chill through my soul. “I’m going to need your body for a little bit longer.” She swallowed convulsively sending my Adam’s apple bobbing in my throat. “You run faster than I can and have better reflexes.”
She grabbed the gaudy crucifix I had replaced around my neck and slipped it over my head. Her glance around revealed that there were a lot of pit tentacles reaching up into the night highlighted against the sky-glow of city lights. None were particularly close but from the grim way she wrapped the chain of the crucifix around my hand and gripped the cross tightly, I could tell that they must be blocking our way to Grandma’s house.
With a sigh, my body started walking. Slow hesitant steps gradually increased as Sam’s confidence in controlling my larger form grew. From a brisk walk, we progressed to a jog. Then a slow run. Then an outright gallop.
Sam was pushing my body faster than I had since basic training. And she was doing it with a skill and expertise that told me she had done this before. The running part. Not the possessed body part. Or…my mind blanched with horror at the unbidden thought. Maybe she did have experience possessing bodies.
“No.” A snort of angry laughter escaped my lips. “I have never possessed someone before. And this was your idea if you remember.” In the confines of my mind, I grumbled half-heartedly an indistinct protest that it was only supposed to be for the duration of the car ride. But Sam’s iron will left no room for me to vocalize my discontent.
“Don’t worry,” My possessor assured me with my own fucking voice. “I’ll take good care of your body.” We were running swiftly through another set of suburbs when a pit tentacle came out of nowhere to swipe at us. Gotta admit. I would have pissed myself if I’d been in control.
However, my girl Sam dodged and slashed it to bits without hesitation. She ran on, jumping over or dodging the obstacles of the pit tentacles when she could. When Sam couldn’t avoid a fight, she was quick and ruthless.
“You have incredible stamina.” It hadn’t occurred to me before she mentioned it, but yeah, my body was working like a freight train and showed no signs of slowing. Sam didn’t even have trouble talking while running all out.
This was not normal for me. Yeah, I’d done the ruck marches and all that stuff that was required of me back in the day when I was enlisted. But I was not a marathon runner. Not like this. Who would have thought – ? Wild laughter ripped from my chest as Samantha read my thoughts from my possessed body and increased our speed.
‘Possession does a body good!’
CHAPTER 10
Holy Water Spray Bottle
‘Hey, Sam.’ I hesitated to speak since I knew Samantha was able to read my mind while she was possessing my body. Since Sam wasn’t talking much I thought maybe I would have to be the level-headed one for once and broach the crucial subject at hand. ‘What’s the plan to deal with the demon possessing your body?’
“I figured I’d do what you did to get Baby back. Oh shit – ” We skidded to a stop. “I totally forgot about the dog.” To be honest, I had too. Samantha swayed back in the direction of the abandoned and wrecked car, then back in the direction of her mother’s place and her son who was in imminent danger.
“Damnit!” She cursed in my voice and for the first time since she had taken over my body it actually sounded like I was speaking. “She’ll just get possessed and dragged into the pit again if we don’t go back for her.” The heart rate in my chest increased with anxiety that wasn’t my own.
It was dark in the spaces between streetlights. The wind blew and rustled the leaves of trees that lined the street making me worry about what unseen things might be snaking through the night to get us. The Hellmouth demon tentacles that we had already encountered multiple times tonight were the thing primarily on my mind.
Samantha sighed. She’d been staring at the ground thinking furiously, debating what action to take. Go rescue the dog she knew was in immediate danger or go help the family who was in less danger but who were closer and more easily rescued.
My eyes closed then opened as Sam raised my head turning in the direction of the car and her home. Then my face smiled. From the direction we had come, was a knee-high bundle of fur galloping toward us. Baby’s long fur fluffed out to the sides along with both of her floppy ears with each lunge forward she took.
“Baby!” The dog leapt into my outstretched arms and Samantha shouted with joy. “Oh, you good girl. You must have hopped right into the car with us and I didn’t notice because I was freaking out about being an incorporeal spirit.” Good grief it was weird listening to someone else speaking with my voice.
Now that she said it, I realized that Sam was correct. Baby had jumped into the back seat when I opened the door to get in my car. It had completely slipped my mind because I was petrified by Samantha’s driving.
“You ass.” My body had started jogging again, holding the cute dog bundled protectively against my chest. “That can’t possibly be the scariest trip you’ve ever been on.” Yet again, she reminded me that she could read my damned mind. Because yeah, I’d been thinking that it was the most terrifying vehicular experience of my life.
We ran in silence after that. We ran far faster and with less effort than it would have been if I’d been in control of my body. After a few blocks, Samantha turned us down a cheerful-looking street where there were no dark spaces between the streetlights.
This was a nice neighborhood. Behind large fences and gated driveways, the expansive lawns were expertly manicured, and the trees were well-trimmed. Not that I was salty or anything, but the gardens looked like they were professionally landscaped by people who were paid more per hour than I was.
“They are.” I was assured gruffly and I was immediately defensive.
‘How do you know th-?’ Once again, I’d forgotten the whole mind-reading issue.
“I work in accounting.” Came Sam’s reminder. “I know how much everybody at work makes.” Her reply was distracted as she scanned the quiet street looking intently for something.
'What are you looking for?' I whispered internally while kicking myself for the silliness of whispering when the only one who could hear my thoughts was Samantha.
“I’m looking for my car.” She answered as she crouched behind a bush and began stealthily walking down the street. “I don’t see it on the street, so either the thing that possessed my body hasn’t made it here yet, or it got my mom to let it drive in the gate. OR…,” she realized angrily, “…the damned thing just used the key in my pocket to unlock the gate and let itself into my mother’s property. Also, you should ask for a raise.”
'Really?' For someone who had never worked in my line of work, Sam had been keeping an unrealistically cool head. She’d also been thinking of stuff that I would have been doing if I were in her situation. The ‘raise’ comment had caught me off guard as I was marveling at her blasé fair attitude toward the whole Hell is real and demons are possessing her body issue.
“Yeah.” Her clipped whisper-hissed at me. “Management is screwing you.” Then she was silent as she reached the pedestrian gate to a large and lovely home. She peeked around the hedge planted between the driveway and the pedestrian gate to see her practical fuel-efficient vehicle parked behind an expensive BMW. Her sharp intake of breath indicated that Sam was not happy with what she saw.
'Mom’s got expensive taste.' I snarked to keep her focused and not panicking.
“You should see the mid-life-crisis-mobiles that my dad drives.” She quipped back as she carefully placed the now subdued pup next to our feet.
'Mobiles? With an “s”? Like, more than one?' Briefly, I wondered what it would be like to make that kind of dough.
“He didn’t handle the divorce well.” Sam was busy adjusting the crucifix chain around my hand. “You ready for this?”
"Do I have a choice?' It was rude snark. I know. But I was getting pissed that my body was continuing to be possessed by a certain someone else passed the point in time that I thought it would be.
“You know that we are stronger together. Do you want to fight that thing again with regular Daniel strength and agility?” She was pissed and I fully appreciated why. And Sam had a point too about the strength part, but...
'I’m pretty sure I fight better than you do.' Sam punched in the code to unlock the pedestrian gate, then opened it and stepped through.
“Your right.” Sidestepping, I felt her leave my body with the same chill and tingling warmth she had entered. “Have at it then.” We jogged up to the front door together and I paused with concern when it swung open under my knock.
“That’s not normal, right?” I glanced at Samantha’s spirit self and watched her arch an eyebrow at me. “Your mom doesn’t usually keep her front door open like that?”
“No, dear. That’s not normal.” When she called me dear with that angry dominatrix look on her face, it made my insides quiver.
Damnit. I was downright turned on and thought maybe, just maybe, I might be able to get a kiss, or a date, out of this if I played my cards right. Maybe it was a bad idea, but I’d already forgiven Sam for hijacking my body and running through the streets like a crazy person in her quest to find her kid.
“Shall we do this?” She questioned in her slow warm voice.
“Let’s do this.” I confirmed and entered the house. Walking carefully through the entry, I skirted overturned furniture. Shoe racks, coat stands…there was a whole herd of purses scattered across the living room... Is that what one called this room in this kind of house? Fuckit. I don’t care. We continued my careful stalk through the, really, nice home. Like, the walls and –
“Ahh!” A small screaming woman with curly white hair jumped out from around a corner. And…shot me with a water gun? The squeak of the air pressure pumping action continued as the heavy stream of liquid slowly dribbled to a halt. When she’d chilled out I went after her with the crucifix.
“No. Mom.” Sam jumped between us. “Daniel, can’t you tell that she isn’t possessed?”
"How the fuck would I be able to tell that? I thought at her with frustration, but she just stood there in her ghostly form looking concerned and aggravated at me. Ah. She couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore now that she wasn’t…inside me. I shivered at the thought I never thought would cross my mind.
“No?” Finally, the question slash statement came out of my mouth. So, I took a moment to look more closely at the woman. She didn’t have that dark aura that Baby had had while she was possessed or that Sam’s body still had when it took off to go after Caleb.
The lady was also not supernaturally aggressive…
“Does that say, ‘holy water’”? The yellow bottle cartridge attached to the water gun (more like a water automatic weapon) was neatly labeled with blue embossed printed labeling tape with the words ‘HOLY WATER’ in all caps.
Her hair was tied back with a lacy handkerchief Rambo-style and she had a bandolier of grenade-shaped water balloons slung haphazardly across her shoulder. A toy gun double holster was strapped around her waist. One side held a small water pistol and the other a shaker of salt. From her neck hung an ornate gaudy crucifix like mine, but classier.
“Who the Hell are – Oh, my God. Sammy?” Sam’s mom had intended to interrogate the stranger in her home, that stranger being me, but was interrupted by the fact that she could see her daughter’s soul wandering around without a body.
“Heeeeyyyy…, Mom…” Sam waved hello and then scooted around to hide behind me. What the…?
“That’s how it works, huh?” The elderly woman took a few careful steps back, watching where she placed her feet and making sure not to disturb what looked like a line of sand on the ground. With a flash, I realized it was salt, like from the shaker in her holster, and wanted to smack myself on the forehead for not realizing it. “They have to kick you out so they can get in?” No answer came from Sammy so I glanced at her. Seeing the stricken look on her face, I took the liberty to answer.
“Yep.” Grandma nodded sagely as if this made total sense to her. Which was good. Maybe someone could finally explain to me what was happening. “The good news is that you can put souls back into a body once you kick those wretched things out of them.”
“Grandma,” A young voice called from the room behind Sam’s mom. “Is it safe to come out yet?” She turned toward the voice and motioned for us to come into the room. Just as carefully as grandma had, I stepped over the unbroken line of salt protecting their haven. Baby sniffed at it warily but hopped into the room cheerfully. Samantha though, not so much…
When Sam tried to walk through the doorway behind me, there was a flash of light that rippled from the floor to the top of the doorway. She could not get through. The salt had created some kind of spiritual wall in the way. Even when she tried to go around the doorway and walk through the wall it didn’t work.
I could see then that the line of salt was unbroken around the entire room. Grandma and Caleb had even used glue to create lines of salt in areas where the line would have been broken by vertical walls and cabinets. The empty bottles were tossed hastily on countertops and one was still open, oozing its contents in a trail down the cabinet door to puddle on the floor.
“Hang on.” Grandma got out her saltshaker and grabbed the oozing bottle from the counter. “I’ll let you in, then close it up as soon as you cross.” She got down on her hands and knees and I kept a lookout in case the thing in Sam’s body showed back up. “Go now!”
As grandma hissed the command, Sam’s body jumped into view on the other side of the living room. The shadow stuff of the pit creature that occupied the body eddied around its form. It started stalking toward them with an undulating, almost seductive, walk.
“Come to mommy, Caleb.” Otherworldly and clearly evil, its voice sounded like it belonged to many as opposed to a single being.
“Heck, no!” Caleb shouted back. He’d been hiding further back in the room until Sam had crossed the threshold. Upon seeing his mom’s soul he’d run to her and tried hugging her. It was touching. Really it was. Sam had gingerly hugged him taking care not to make her incorporeal arms pass through her son’s body.
“Hurry up, Grandma,” I called out with just a touch of panic as I saw pit tentacles start rising through the floor halfway between the thing inside Sam and where we stood. Grandma was busy laying down a thick layer of glue and shaking the salt frantically over it.
But she wasn’t fast enough. The pit tentacles coming up through the floor darted through the gap in the salt and snagged Caleb, jerking him away from his mother.
“No!” Sam sprinted right back through the barrier that had just been lowered to let her in. I wasn’t sure what she thought she could do in her non-physical state, but it didn’t stop her from trying to grab her son’s hand.
The pit tentacles slid horizontally through the floor dragging poor flailing Caleb after them. Though Sam’s body tried to stop her, the woman plowed right through it with a shriek, whether it was anger or pain, I couldn’t tell. The two shapes seemed to sort of have trouble unmeshing from one another as they separated again.
“Here,” Unnoticed by me, Grandma had grabbed something off the counter and thrust it into my hand as I prepared to chase after Caleb and Sam. “Take this.” She urged. I glanced down and saw more of the blue label tape declaring that the spray bottle in my hand contained more ‘HOLY WATER’. The all caps on the label made the words sort of shout in my head as I read them. Chuckling, I shook my head.
“I love this family.” I muttered somewhere between sarcasm, despair, and genuine humored affection. This was the most excitement I’d had in a while. But it was time to work. Sam was going to need her body back if we were going to save Caleb.
Raising my arm, I rushed the hell creature possessing Sam’s body. Holy water hissed into a cloud of steam as I sprayed the thing. It screamed. A haunting unholy howl that really did sound like it came from the depths of hell, grating on the soul with unpleasant reverberations.
“The power of Christ compels you to get the fuck out of that body!” My crucifix landed on the bare skin of Sam’s arm. I’d learned from my previous attempt that the crucifix wouldn’t work if it landed on clothes. It had to come into direct contact with the body that was possessed.
An amorphous blob shot out the back of Sam’s body and the body collapsed to the floor. I caught her before she hit and lowered it the rest of the way. Didn’t need Sam’s soul to come back to a broken bone in her body or some other injury on top of having gone through the whole ordeal of this evening.
As much as I wanted to stay with Sam’s body to make sure it wasn’t repossessed by something else. I had to deal with the thing that had just left it. If it didn’t get back into Sam’s body it would just go after someone else. And I had a plan.
Something I had noticed when I skewered the thing that had possessed Baby, was that the creature was diminished by repeated contact with a crucifix. Maybe it was hopeful thinking, but maybe, just maybe, I could kill it. Advancing on the creature, I sprayed it tentatively. It howled again, but the cry was weaker, muted.
The substance it was made of sizzled and bubbled like hot tar. Holding my cross defensively before me, I continued spraying it, pulling the trigger like my life depended on it, because somebody’s life was going to depend on getting rid of this thing. The more I sprayed the more it hissed and bubbled. But it was getting smaller. The holy water was evaporating it with righteous wrath apparently, or something was.
Sam hurried back into the living room just as the last piteous screeches died away and the final bubbles of the thing were popping into steam. She stopped dead in surprise.
“What’s that?” Her question was a bizarre kind of normality in the fucked-up night we’d had. I glanced down at the bottle and held it up for her to see the words neatly labeled on it. She smiled as I spoke.
“Holy Water spray bottle.” I hesitated a moment then asked the question I already knew the answer to. "Where's Caleb?" Sam frowned, trying not to burst into tears.
"They went into the abyss that the pit tentacles come from."
