III: Legion

Part III: Legion

This is some serious bullshit, thought Ricky as he sat on the hard wooden bench. He looked over at the bum sitting by the collect call phone in the big cell, muttering to himself ("spiders so many spiders bad spiders"). He looked over at the kid in the corner trying to sleep on the hard bench, using a toilet paper roll as his pillow. Ricky crossed his arms. The cops took his jacket before they fingerprinted him, and it was fucking cold in lock-up.

Here he sat in jail and the fucking pigs let the white-boy go, even though he started the fight. Ricky was just standing at the bar with Allie and the fucking puto comes out of nowhere and tells Ricky to go back to the hood where he belongs, to leave the girl alone so she could talk to a real man. Ricky was about to tell him to fuck off when Allie did it for him. The white-boy didn't like that.

"Fucking beaners should stay in the hood," said the white-boy before he walked away.

"Rich white-boys should learn to handle their booze," said Ricky. Allie jumping in on his side had calmed him down.

"What'd you say to me?" said the white-boy, his face turning red, "You wanna step outside, Pedro?"

Ricky laughed and said he was busy enjoying himself.

"Fucking chickenshit Mexicans," said the white-boy, apparently to himself but plenty loud for everyone around to hear.

Ricky didn't respond. He didn't need to. The bartender had come around and Allie was ordering them both tequila shots. The white-boy was still there, a few steps away, with one of his friends talking to him. He was still pissed, because he kept gesturing towards Ricky, but the friend was obviously trying to get him to forget it.

The shots arrived and Allie picked them both up and put one right in front of Ricky.

"Here's to you, Pedro," she said with a laugh.

Ricky chuckled and clinked the little glass with hers, and pulled the lime off the edge before slamming the shot down. He bit into the lime and, as he did, he heard the white-boy shouting again.

"Fine, if the hood-rat slut would rather hang out with a Mexican faggot, that's her problem."

Allie had just finished her shot too, and she froze when she heard it, face coloring with just a hint of red. Ricky pulled the lime out of his mouth and dropped it on the bar, his fists starting to clench by his side. The white-boy had just touched a nerve and he knew it. He and Allie had grown up in a rough neighborhood. Allie had been working her ass off for years, making sure she could get out, and helped out little Enrique, 4 years younger, the whole way. Allie was as sweet and chaste as they came, and the white-boy couldn't have said anything worse about her. Ricky knew it, too.

She put her hand on his shoulder, and said, "It's not worth it, Enrique, just let it slide." But she had a tear in her eye, and that tear made Ricky shake with anger. He shook her hand off him and stepped towards the asshole.

"You still want to step outside, cabron?" he looked right at the white-boy, who now had a grin spreading across his face.

"Oh, you wanna go now, Pedro? Let's go then!"

He followed the white-boy outside to the patio, then around to the side of the building where they weren't visible from the street. Allie was with him the whole way, telling him it wasn't worth it, begging him to stop. She reminded him that he was in there on a fake ID, he was only 17, and she didn't want him getting in trouble. She wasn't worried about him getting hurt.

The white-boy threw his jacket to one of his friends and said, "You ready, Pedro?"

"I don't like to fight," said Ricky, "but an asshole like you needs to be taught a lesson."

That pissed the white-boy off. Ricky was a little guy. 5'6" and about 140 pounds, and the white-boy was quite a bit bigger. But Ricky grew up in a very tough neighborhood, and knew what he was doing in a fight. The white-boy came forward too quickly, and threw a punch that Ricky ducked. As Ricky ducked, he punched the white-boy hard in the gut, and pushed him away. The white-boy was half bent over, but decided to charge at Ricky again. Ricky side-stepped the fist and brought his own in an uppercut to the white-boy's chin. The white-boy staggered back from Ricky and fell on his ass, just as the cops walked down the alley, breaking up the crowd.

And now Ricky sat in the drunk tank with some high-school kid and a fucking bum, pissed off and shivering. He knew how disappointed Allie was going to be. He knew he’d just blown his chance at proving to her that he could be more than her little brother. It wasn't FAIR!

"Hello, Little Soul..."

Ricky heard the low growl of a disembodied voice and it made him shiver again, nothing to do with the cold.

"The fuck did you say?" he said to the bum. The bum looked at him, surprised, a little scared, and then looked away and continued muttering to himself.

Ricky looked around. The kid was passed out drunk, and there were no cops around the cell door. He looked down at the floor and watched a spider crawl across the floor as he went back to his dark thoughts.

"Such a young soul..." he heard the voice again, and now he was getting pissed. He looked at the kid, still asleep, and looked at the bum, still muttering.

"Enrique Alvarez, I know your soul...” said the voice, like a chorus of menacing whispers, and Ricky jumped up off the bench, fists clenched again.

“Who the FUCK is that?” he said, louder than he meant to, “and where the fuck are you?”

“I am all around, little soul.” said the voice, and it did sound as if the voice was coming from every direction.

 “I said who the fuck are you?” answered Ricky, now feeling more than a little scared, and that pissed him off even worse.

“I am Legion,” said the voice, “for we are many.”

A quote directly from his mother's bible, he remembered. Jesus forced the demon to name himself, then banished him into a herd of swine, then drove them over a cliff.

"Fuck you, ese," Ricky said, trying to keep the edge of fear from his voice, "Where you hiding?"

Ricky was looking around, looking for speakers that someone might be speaking through, looking at the bum, who was muttering crazily now ("no more spiders! No no no!"), and the kid, who was staring at him.

"The fuck you looking at?" he said to the kid, who promptly threw his hands up, palms out, and laid back down on his toilet paper pillow.

"Little soul," said the voice, no louder, but clearly audible over the bum's rambling, "spiders... bad spiders."

"I am here to offer you a bargain, little soul."

"What bargain," Ricky heard himself say, "What are you talking about?"

The bum was nearly shouting now, and the kid in the corner was shooting nervous glances between Ricky, the bum ("so many spiders") and the door to the cell.

"I can give you power, little Enrique Alvarez, fourth son of Carlos and Camila Alvarez. I can offer you what you desire," the voice went on, sending chills through Ricky's body, "I can make you stronger than any man who would fight you. I can give you the cunning to become rich, the wiles to become respected and powerful... and I can give you her."

Images flashed through Ricky's mind of his fist sending the white-boy and all his buddies flying back. Images of the drug dealers and gang members in his neighborhood nodding at him with respect. He saw his brothers looking at him with respect, and his enemies looking at him with fear. He saw in his mind what he had wished for so many times; Allie, looking at him like she wanted him. But this was different. The respect from his brothers came with an edge of fear, the drug dealers' nods were too friendly, and the gang members' nods were too conspiratorial. Allie wasn't dressed like Allie, she was dressed in a skimpy dress, licking her lips seductively like Allie never would.

"STOP IT!" he roared, forcing the images out of his mind. Picturing Allie as she was, dressed respectably and smiling at him like a brother. He pictured his mother, with her bible, going to church every week and praying before dinner every night. He remembered years of Catholic school, before he quit, and tried to force the demon out. It didn't work, and the seductive image of Allie forced itself back.

"GET OUT!" shouted Ricky, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!"

Ricky had both hands on his head. He looked around and saw the spiders all around the room. The kid was shouting for a cop to come help. The bum was screaming now ("SPIDERS GET AWAY SO MANY SPIDERS RUN EVIL SPIDERS") and the noise of his shouts mixed with the kid's and the bum's and the noise was making him crazy. But the voice, no louder, but rather as if it was coming from hundreds of voices, cut through the noise.

"Do not fight it, Little Soul. I will give you what you want," it said,  sounding almost amused, "Just agree, Little Soul. Just let me in, and I will give you everything you want."

Then the jail cell seemed to fade, and it was like a background now, and Ricky saw the stacks of hundred dollar bills in front of him. Then he saw himself driving the Cadillac Escalade he had always wanted, with twenty-four inch rims. Then he saw himself with Allie, naked in his bed, her riding on top of him, crying his name. When his vision cleared and the jail cell returned with all its hellish racket, he wanted the images back.

"Just let me in, Little Enrique," came the voice, "just say yes, and it will all be yours, Little Soul."

Ricky tried to remember Allie as she was, tried to hold on to the image, but the bum's ranting ("Spiders so many spiders evil spiders demon spiders") and the kid shouting for the guards and the images he so wanted stopped him. He tried to think of his mother but all he could see was the car and the stacks and the woman he wanted more than anything, and Ricky's resistance broke.

"Yes," he whispered back to the voice, "I want it all."

"Just say the words, Little Soul," said the voice, and edge of tension in its tone, "you know the words. Just say them to accept the bargain, to seal the pact between your soul…… and us."

Ricky nearly asked what words, but then he knew them. They surfaced in his mind as if they were only covered by his resistance, which was now boiled away.

"I accept your bargain, Duke of Hell," said Ricky in a voice he didn't recognize, "for the terms you offer, I will share my body, share my mind, share my soul."

The demon voice seemed to sigh, and for a moment, the kid in the corner stared at Ricky with terror in his eyes, and the bum stopped his ranting, and just stared, shaking his head, as if disappointed. Then Ricky noticed the spiders.

Dozens, no, hundreds of spiders crawling towards him. He tried to move, to run away from them or climb up on the bench, but he couldn't move. They swarmed towards him, climbing up his shoes first, up his legs inside his pants on them, crawling up him, covering him in  an opaque black swarm. When they reached his face, he opened his mouth. He couldn't help it. He tried to stop. He just couldn't. They crawled inside him and he screamed.

Ricky fell on the floor, thrashing. The terrified teenager in the corner screamed for one of the jailers. The bum was jumping up and down, shrieking about the demon spiders.

Officer Davidson heard the commotion in the drunk tank, and snapped into action mode.

"Dobowski!" he shouted and waved the other officer to come with him as he jogged over to the cell. The two cops arrived and saw the Mexican kid they picked up earlier laying on the ground, writhing and thrashing and screaming.

"Call an ambulance!" Davidson shouted to the officer manning the desk before he opened the cell door and rushed in the room, Dobowski behind him. The two officers sped over to the thrashing kid, but when they arrived, they had no idea what to do. They stared for a moment in indecision. Davidson knelt down next to the kid, about to hold one of his arms down, and he was about to tell the other officer to try to hold the legs, but before he could, the body went rigid.

"Kid!" said the cop, "Hey kid! Can you hear me?"

No answer. Ricky laid stiff and unmoving on the ground, eyes shut. Davidson reached towards him to check his pulse. Just as his fingers touched Ricky’s neck, he saw a blur of motion, and felt a grip like a vice catch his wrist. The kid had grabbed his wrist. The shock of the grab made him freeze for a moment, but it wore off quickly, and he pulled back. But his arm didn't budge. The pain of wrenching against that grip shot up his arm, and he grunted in pain. As he did, the kid's head snapped towards his face and his eyes opened wide.

Black, reflective eyes locked with his, and Davidson couldn't look away. He stared transfixed and unmoving as the eyes bored deep into his soul. Then the kid's hand released him. Davidson just stayed there for a moment, motionless. Dobowski, who had been watching, confused, now asked him if he was okay.

"Fine," answered Davidson as he stood up. Dobowksi noted the dazed look Davidson still wore. Then he saw the kid stand up next to Davidson.

"I'm taking Enrique out," said Davidson.

"What?" Dobowski wasn't sure if he'd heard right. The bum was in the corner, muttering what sounded like the Lord's Prayer over and over again. He heard the bum mutter, "Deliver us from evil..." but then the kid shot him a look, and the bum huddled deeper into his corner, just whimpering.

"I am taking him out." repeated Davidson.

"To meet the ambulance?" ventured Dobowski, trying to make some sense. He looked over at the kid, and when their eyes met, Dobowski understood why the bum was now whimpering. It wasn't... quite... physical pain that coursed through his body when he met the kid's eyes, but it made him freeze in place.

A few minutes later, Ricky stepped out of the police station, Davidson holding the door open for him. He stepped into the brisk night air. Dobowski, who had recovered just in time to chase after the pair, called to Ricky as he stepped out.              

"Wait!" he shouted.

Ricky turned to face him. Even from this distance, which had to be ten yards, his eyes nearly froze Dobowski again.

"What are you?" it took all his effort to get the words out.

A smile spread across the kid's face. A smile that contained no happiness or humor. A smile that sent a cold chill down Dobowski's spine.

"I am Legion," said Ricky.

"For we are many." came the voice of Davidson, who wore a matching evil grin.

The demon turned away, and walked into the city.

Part II: Pistol Pink

Part II: Pistol Pink

I wake up and my head is throbbing and there’s a tube coming out of my arm. I look around and see, yep, shitty little hospital room. Probably Manhattan Catholic by the looks of the piss-yellow walls. There’s a stupid looking guy in scrubs looking at a chart right outside the open doorway.

“Hey,” I say to him. My voice is scratchy, like when you wake up with a hangover and you were obviously yelling like a drunken idiot the night before. He looks at me. It’s a look I recognize from dealing with some scary people. He’s trying not to look pissed, because he knows his pissed look scares people.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m Dr. Brown. How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a fucking truck,” I tell him.

“You didn’t,” he says, “You got jumped. An ambulance rolled up while they were kicking the shit out of you, and apparently they scattered like roaches.”

“Lucky me,” I say. I’m not normally this upbeat. 

“Damn right,” says Dr. Brown. There was a pause. He looked at me like I was annoying him.

“Well,” I say, trying not to sound annoyed, “am I gonna live?”

“You’ll be fine,” he says, “you have a concussion, some bruised ribs, broken nose. Your right hand has several fractures. One of the assholes must have stomped it pretty good. No internal bleeding. Overall I’d say you’re lucky. The ambulance driver said there were at least twenty of them. Any idea who they were?”

Just a cult that has the fucking Cloverfield Monster on speed-dial…

“No… Look, doctor, can I get out of here? I’ll leave my insurance card with you.”

“That’ll be fine,” says Dr. Brown, “we need the bed anyway. Lots of patients to admit.”

“From the Godzilla attack?”

“Fucking Godzilla attack.” He answers, shaking his head like he still doesn’t believe it.

Dr. Brown pulls the IV out of my left arm. My right arm is in a sling and my hand is wrapped in a plaster cast. While I get up I ask him how long I’ve been in here.

“About 8 hours,” he says, “You should get a cab. You’ve had some morphine, that was the IV, and the news says there are still quite a few looters and riots going on.”

He sounds exhausted. I nod and wish I’d had more morphine. My whole body is killing me.

“Thanks, doc,” I say to him. He nods and hurries to another room. A skinny guy with an afro walks up to me with a wheelchair.

“Ready to go?” he says, smiling.

“I can walk,” I tell him.

“Gotta bring you out in a wheelchair. Hospital rules.”

I don’t care enough to argue. The details of last night are coming back to me now, and I have no fucking clue what I’m supposed to do. I sit down, and the kid with the afro starts wheeling me toward an elevator. I decide to talk to the guy to get my mind off things.

“Any cute nurses around here?” I ask him.

“Some might have been cute when they started working here,” he answers, “back in the 70s.”

I don’t have an answer for this, so I keep my mouth shut. When we get to the ground floor, he wheels me to a counter and lets go, starts telling whoever it is that I’m checking out. Then he wheels me to the front door. Once outside, the afternoon heat hits me and I feel the morphine finally start to kick in.

“Thanks,” I say as I stand up. He’s already back inside by the time I turn around.

People walking down the sidewalk seem more on edge than usual, which is saying something for Manhattan. I see a teenager staring at his cell phone walking toward me.

“Hey,” I say, “Where’s the monster?”

He looks up from the screen and says, “East Village” and keeps walking.

I see the traffic is light, but not gone. A Ducati Streetfighter zips by. I think the rider is a curvy girl in full leather with pink hair peeking out from the helmet, but I’m starting to get goofy from the morphine, so maybe not. More cars pass. Not even fucking Godzilla can stop this city. I hail a cab and tell the driver to take me to the East Village.

“Can’t get close, man. Traffic over there is nuts. Everyone trying to see the monster.”

“Just take me as close as you can without getting stuck,” I tell him.

On the ride over I try to think about what happened, but the morphine cloud is in full effect now that I’m in the back seat of the cab, so I just watch the city. You’d never know something happened watching from here. Maybe more sirens and ambulances. I realize I don’t have my cell phone. Not a big deal. I needed a new one anyway.

The cab stops and I hand him a twenty, tell him to keep the change. I start walking down the sidewalk, and see more and more traffic. I follow the noise. As I make my way east, the traffic gets tighter and the noise gets louder. I see several horseback cops. Tons of people with cameras. That’s when I realize I have no fucking desire to see this thing. I’ve seen plenty of it. I vaguely wonder what it has to do with goats, and then decide what I really want is a drink. I saw a bar halfway down the last block, so I double back.

The bar is half full. Perfect. I sit down and order bourbon on the rocks. I don’t drink fast, but this first one was empty before I knew it, so I order another. People were talking loudly about how Godzilla only made it a few hours, it was way quicker in the movie. The thing was dead before half the city woke up.

I just get my third drink when I hear a few cat-calls and whistles. A girl must be walking in. I’m starting to get dizzy from the morpine/bourbon combo so I don’t even bother. My eyes are half shut. I hear a feminine, almost child-like voice next to me order water. I want to turn to look but by now I’m in a fog. Opiates and alcohol and whatever-the-fuck happened this morning have me paralyzed.

“Did you see the monster?” the bartender asks her.

“Yes,” she says, “it’s big and it’s dead.”

She sounds annoyed.

“…just a fucking statue…” I mutter to myself.

“What did you say?” says the girl.

“It was just a statue,” I say, staring at my glass and realizing I sound like a lunatic, “just clay and goats and a witch-doctor.”

I see a black arm shoot across my field of vision just before hands on both my shoulders spin my violently to my right. I felt like I was going to fall off my stool, but the hands were strong and kept me in my place. I look up.

What I see is some kind of anime cartoon. I see two huge eyes, so dark that the irises look black. Eyes so big they almost don’t look real. The face is pale with a small nose and mouth, framed in medium length hot pink hair. She’s wearing a tight leather jacket and leather pants, and on the bar next to her is a motorcycle helmet.

“Why did you call it a statue?” she asks me.

“Because it was a statue.” The morphine and booze nixed any hope of me coming up with a better answer.

She lifts me up off the barstool like I weigh nothing, and says, “You’re coming with me,” and pulls me in front of her, then prods me toward the exit before I can even process what’s happening.

As we’re walking out, I hear a guy say something along the lines of, “hey honey,” so I glance back. The guy reaches out to slap the manga-biker’s ass. Before he does, her hand shoots down and grabs his wrist. She holds it for a split second, then, in a blur, she pulls it back and drops down, sweeping her leg around and kicking out the legs of the chair the guy is sitting on. He comes down hard on the bar floor, the beer he was holding dumps out on his chest and face. By the time the he hits the ground, the anime-biker-ninja is back up and prodding me out the door. The whole thing took about four seconds.

She leads me outside where the Ducati I saw earlier is parked. She gets on the front and tells me to get on.

“I don’t think I want to…” I say weakly, thinking of how falling off a motorcycle, drunk, driven by a pink-haired ninja would feel on my skull and my ego.

“I won’t hurt you,” she answers, “now get on.”

I pause for a minute and think about the past 24 hours and that I might be going insane. Fuck it, if I’m going insane, there are worse ways to do it than on a Ducati with a hot ninja. I get on behind her. The seat is small, but she’s pretty tiny, so we both fit. I wrap my arms around her waist very carefully, thinking of the guy in the bar who is probably just now getting off the floor.

She doesn’t say a word and drives us several blocks away and pulls in between two cars, parking diagonally so her bike will fit where no car would. I get off the bike and look up at the building we’re parked in front of. There’s a white façade on a brick building, a black awning with white letters that say “Larchmont”.

She pulls me in the door, ignores the desk clerk, and we start up some stairs. We get to a room; she uses an actual key, not a slide card, to open the door. She pushes me inside. It’s a small room, but not cramped. There’s not a door for a bathroom. She motions me toward a chair by a desk, and locks the door behind us.

“Why did you call it a statue?” she asks me.

By now, my mind is a little less of a drug-addled train-wreck, but also double weighed-down by exhaustion. I look at the bed and imagine sprawling out and sleeping for days. I look up at the girl.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I say, “it was a statue that turned into… no, because it was still a statue. The monster came from the statue.” I say, realizing as it came out that it didn’t make even a little sense.

“I know it was a statue,” she tells me, “but how did you know it was a statue?”

“Well,” I say, deciding to start from the beginning, “it started when this group of wackos started predicting the end of the world…”

As I explain to the petite, pink-haired, anime-biker-ninja about the goat sacrifices, the witch-doctor priest, the clay sculpture, the kiln, and waking up to see the giant monster on TV, and shooting the statue with a handgun, and waking up to a doctor that looks like a cave-man, I start to look around the room.

An enormous geographical map of the world covered the entire wall. Covering the map was chaos. There were newspaper clippings, pages torn from books, writing in a dozen different languages, dozens of photographs. Every single item tacked to the map had a string tacked on, connecting it with something else, or directed toward a city or town or landmark, circled or highlighted or with something written below. It looked like a paranoid-conspiracy-theorist’s wet dream.

On another wall, there is one of those racks of three Japanese katanas, with a short sword on top, a medium-length one below, and a full-length sword on the bottom. So she is a ninja. Cool.

As I wrap it up, she stares at me for just a second, mutters something like, “Sobek,” then gets up and starts studying the world map. First she looks at Africa, and then follows a string to New York. Then a comforting thought hits me. Maybe I’m not going insane. Maybe it’s the rest of the world that’s going nuts. Either way, a nice, white, padded cell wouldn’t be the worst place to be right now. Maybe I can check myself into Bellevue…

“So, what’s your name?” I ask.

“Siri,” she says. I wait for her to finish talking to her iPhone, but she doesn’t say anything else. Then I realize she was answering me.

“You’re name is Siri?” I ask, “Like the iPhone.”

She spins around and snaps, “It was my name first!”

It was almost petulant. Like a little girl whining about the injustice.

“How…” I start, “How old are you, Siri?”

She cocks an eyebrow and keeps staring at me. The longer she looks at me, the more I realize how young she looks. Fuck, she’s just a kid.

“I’m nineteen,” she says, finally, “why do you want to know?”

I put my hands up, palms out. “Just curious,” I say.

She stares at me for a few more seconds, shrugs, and turns back to her map. After a minute or so of silence, I realize that I have absolutely zero patience for this bullshit. I want to go back to Jersey City, pass out on my bed for two days, then finish writing my report. Now that I think about it, maybe I’ll turn this report into a book. Can’t be more ridiculous that some of the books that will come out on this thing.

“Look, Siri,” I say, “I think I need to be getting home. I’m exhausted and I’m sure my car is still blocking traffic somewhere over in the Meatpacking District.”

“You can’t go home,” she tells me, with no further explanation.

“Siri, why can’t I go home?” I say, expecting my iPhone to answer, then remembering I couldn’t find it after leaving the hospital.

“Because you seriously screwed up a lot of people’s plans,” she says, “and they’re not going to be happy about it.”

“Wait, okay, whose plans?”

“Well, the cult of Sobek for one,” she says, “You killed their demon.”

“So…” my head is starting to hurt, “so you know about these people?”

“Not really,” she says.

“Okay, so the cult of…”

“Sobek.”

“Right,” I say, “Sobek. So who else?”

“Well, there’s the Fortuna Corporation. I’m pretty sure they were involved in this thing somehow. And then there’s Legion. He’s probably extremely pissed right now. Like, ready to rain down fire on you. That kind of pissed.”

“Um…” My head is throbbing now, “who is Legion?”

“He’s a Duke of Hell,” says Siri.

Okay, I was right. The world is definitely going crazy.

“So,” I say, “a duke of hell is waiting for me at my apartment?”

“Doubtful,” she answers, “he won’t be able to manifest this quickly, and it’s likely he’ll want to be closer to the action.”

“Maybe it’s just me,” I say, “but it doesn’t get much closer to the action than Manhattan during a Godzilla rampage.”

“It was Sobek, not Godzilla.”

“Oh, right,” I mutter, “a Sobek rampage then.”

“Anyway, it’s probably the Fortuna Corporation that will have guys at your apartment.” Siri says absentmindedly, still looking at the map.

“And Fortuna Corporation is…?”

She spins away from the wall to look at me. The look of hate on her face is shocking, especially because it makes her look even more like an anime cartoon.

“The bad guys.” She says.

---

I wake up on the floor at 5:30 and turn on the TV to make sure there’s no Godzilla attack going on. There isn’t, there’s just lots of coverage of the last one. I finally got to see the thing falling. I didn’t think it was so light out when that happened. The thing fell so hard, I’m surprised more buildings didn’t fall when it hit the ground.

Siri is still asleep on the bed. I think I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I put on my shoes quietly, tiptoe to the door, and undo the latch. It sounds like a hammer in the quiet room, even with the TV on. I start to twist the doorknob, and then here the actual sound of a hammer. I turn around.

Siri is pointing a gun at me. It’s a small semi-automatic pistol, and I swear to God, the entire thing is pink. She is pointing a pink gun at me.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Good morning,” she says back, still pointing the gun at me, “Are you leaving?”

“No, just going to the bathroom,” I say. The hotel room doesn’t have a bathroom. Just a men’s room and a ladies’ room at the end of the hall.

“Oh,” she says, lowering the gun, “okay.”

I walk out of the room and head directly down the stairs. I walk out the front door and hear a “twang” sound above me. I look up, and the flagpole coming of the building is vibrating. Then I hear a thump in front of me. I look forward. Siri is crouching, ninja style, with a samurai sword out, on top of a car parked in front of the hotel. There’s a hipster guy with a leashed dog on the sidewalk, staring at her.

“Um,” I say after a beat, “hi Siri.”

“Go back into the hotel,” she says.

I look back up at the flagpole. It’s still vibrating. I see the open third story window that… Siri… jumped… out of? This is getting ridiculous.

I look back at Siri, see the glint of the streetlight on the katana, see the passive look on her face. The way I see it now, I can do what she says, deal with this acid-trip of a situation, or I can walk away, and risk being A) decapitated by a teenage girl or B) killed by a pink gun. I never really wondered what Alice felt like falling down the rabbit hole, but it had to be pretty similar to this. I make my decision.

“You got it,” I say, giving her thumbs up. I turn back around, and head into the hotel.

Part I: The Death Statue

The Death Statue - Part I

Let’s get this straight right off the bat: I am not in Special Ops or Clandestine Ops or Black Ops… not really in ops at all. I’m a detective. I don’t have awesome ass-kicking skills and I've never shot anyone. I am good at figuring things out. It’s usually a simple job. Someone suspects this guy or that girl is involved in some kind of scam or anti-whatever group which might one day put a bomb in a school or mosque or meat factory. There are all sorts of crazies these days. So I go and stakeout the guy, follow him, find out who his friends are. Then I write a report. That is how I spend about half my time. Writing reports. What I do isn't usually dangerous, but I do have a gun. Yes, it’s a Walther PPK. Yes, I carry it because that’s what Bond carried. No, I don’t think I’m James Bond. I couldn't buy an Aston Martin with 5 years salary, and as for sex with hot ladies on the job? In my fucking dreams. Literally.

This time, however, I brought a gun. I’m on a job finding out what some group of end-of-the-world religious wackos are up to. Apparently they are predicting the destruction and ruin of the world starting in New York City, down to the exact date, which is this week. I haven’t seen anyone buying fertilizer or chemicals to build a bomb. I haven’t seen anyone with a gun or even a switchblade, but I did see some weird shit last night. I saw these nut-jobs sacrifice a bunch of goats. Where do you even get a goat in Manhattan?

I was able to see this because I figured out where their little clubhouse was (an old, boarded up church) and stuck a little spy camera facing through a hole in the boards across a window. It was weatherproof, the size of a matchbox and it broadcast live to my laptop at the other end of the block. What it showed me a bunch of seemingly normal bible thumpers change into animal skins and do a funky tribal dance while a guy wearing an alligator-head headdress sacrificed goats. I thought it prudent to bring the gun this time.

So now I am sitting in my car, watching more video of these Cult of Cthulhu wannabes. This time they aren't dancing though. They are on their knees bowing and scraping while the same alligator priest from the night before mixes goat blood with clay. I stare incredulously as block after block of clay is kneaded and turns pale red-brown with swirls of bright red. Then one of his assistants drops it into a wheelbarrow. Some more chanting ensues and then everyone stands up together. My boss is going to love this report.

The worshipers all seem to be leaving, but not the way they came in. I need to see where they’re going. I drive down the block until I see them. They’re leaving through a door in the narrow alley, but going straight across the alley and up the next-door fire escape. The next building is a warehouse, slightly taller than the busted old church. The warehouse is an artist studio / living space for a bunch of college dropout art students.

It looks like these weirdos are invading the second floor, and I‘m not going to get to see why. My report would have been enough to show my boss that these guys weren't planning on bombing anyone or kidnapping the mayor’s kids or anything like that, but by now I’m fascinated by these guys. Firstly because I still want to know where they got the goats, and second because you don’t get to witness the private weirdness of these places unless they go Waco.

I park the car and run up to a loading bay door. Locked. I pull out some lock-picking tools that I had only practiced with. It takes me about fifteen minutes to get the door open. Inside I see lots of crappy murals on the wall as I’m running through towards the only staircase. I try not to make noise as I go up, but soon I can tell it doesn't matter. The chanting was happening again. I get to where I can peek into the room and see that they’re all on their knees again, chanting while doing a creepy version of the wave. I see a smaller side room that is glowing like it’s on fire. And then I see what the glow is falling on.

Five men are giving the priest a bulky clay shell. Two are packing it on, and three of them are… what, sculpting? He is up to his waist already. The detailers have his legs and feet looking like some kind of dragon's with scales and clawed feet. Between the rhythmic ups and downs of the chanting, the pulsing red-orange glow from the small room, and the pure, unadulterated weirdness of it all, I’m hypnotized. I watch for a good hour from behind the throng. No one notices me.

When they get to his neck they stop, and the priest’s body is like a brown lizard man. Then two guys bring out his alligator head crown, except it’s covered in clay and has horns. Not many details added, but it looks mean. Really mean. They place it over his head and the statue is finished, complete with a warm and gooey priest center. Then they push him, apparently whatever he is standing on has wheels, into the small room. I don’t get it.  The chanting is now getting very loud and I go back down the stairs. I am dumbfounded and still partly hypnotized. I get back to the loading dock door and head to my car.

On the way home it hits me like a bucket of water. It was a kiln. They are firing the clay to make it a solid statue… with the priest inside.

What

The

Fuck?

I go straight to bed when I get back to my place in Jersey City. I can’t think anymore.

I wake up the next morning at five and wonder why I am up so early. I think I have enough for my report, but even if I don't, the cult doesn't meet until night. I turn on the TV and the first thing I see makes my heart freeze in my chest. The Statue. Except, now it isn't a statue. It's alive, it's moving, and it is fucking big. The shot is close enough that I can make out some details. Clawed feet, clawed hands, mean-looking alligator head. It's detailed enough, because it would have to be pointed the opposite direction to miss the thing. It towers over office buildings in the Brooklyn neighborhood it is currently turning to rubble. The thing looks like it could hop the East River like it was a puddle, but the really scary thing is the way it moves. In Godzilla, the thing just lumbered along causing lots of collateral damage. This thing is big and thick, but it moves like an NFL linebacker. Not graceful, but powerful, quick, and dangerous.

I’m not sure how long I've been staring at the TV in disbelief, but I watched long enough to see some serious shit. The thing swatted down fighter jets like flies, I saw at least fifty massive explosions hit the thing and it didn't even flinch. Or slow down. I saw it punch the middle of a skyscraper and the top half just fell.

I turn off the TV. That thing got hit by missiles and hardly noticed! I need to get the fuck out of here. No, shit, that’s what everyone will be trying to do. The highways will be jammed. Then it hits me. The statue!

I jump into my car and get to the highway as fast as I can. The streets aren't as bad as I expected, most people aren't up at 6 AM on a Sunday, even during Godzilla attacks. The 78 and the Holland Tunnel are at a complete standstill, but only outbound from the city. The words “Speed Limit” never even enter my thoughts as I rocket into the city. When I get stuck in traffic about 20 blocks away, I don’t even hesitate to throw it into park, jump out, and sprint the rest of the way. Fortunately I had grabbed the gun without thinking, because as soon as I get to the end of the block with the warehouse I hear a gunshot and see a hole appear in the pickup truck next to me.

Arms on the hood of the pickup, I aim and fire. Adrenaline must help you aim, because my 2nd shot took down one of the guys and my 7th took down the second. I empty the chamber and drop in a new mag. I knew there would be more guards so I sprint around to the loading dock. I start to hear explosions in the distance and an unearthly, unbelievably loud primal shriek, and I know the monster is in Manhattan. The door from the loading dock is still unlocked and I charge in. By the stairs are two more guards, but I come up so fast they don’t have time to react before I plug them both. With the explosions outside I don’t even worry about anyone else hearing. I come up the stairs and am standing behind the same crowd, still chanting, still groveling at the ground, and the Statue. The statue stands by the wall with an evil red glow. Fuck that.

I empty my last five bullets into the statue. The head bursts apart into dozens of clay fragments. One hit by the shoulder drops and arm to the ground where it shatters. The chest gets ripped into chunks that crash into the ground and break with obscenely loud crashes as the crowd is stunned into silence. They turn and there is an angry rumble coming from them now. I charge back down the stairs, and the last thing I hear before the crowd catches me is an earth-shaking boom. The sound of a falling giant.