Demon realm, p.1
Demon Realm, page 1
Demon Realm
Tracy Lauren
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Tracy Lauren
© 2020 Tracy Lauren
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by U.S. copyright law.
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Chapter 1
Angie
Morning light peeks through the half-open blinds of my bedroom window. I come to consciousness, staring up at the ceiling, registering the start of the day despite my grogginess. I feel restrained, bogged down in some way, and realize I’m tangled in my thick comforter. Wildly, I kick free. It’s getting too hot for such a thick blanket, I think to myself. Soon it’ll be time to pack it away. The thought sticks with me, oddly resonant. Haunting even. I should pack everything away. I have a feeling I won’t be needing it anymore. Though I can’t really remember why...
I glance over at the clock. The thing is practically archaic—a boxy, old digital thing. Used to belong to my dad. The whole face is lit up. Looks like nothing but eights. I squint at it, trying to figure out what’s wrong. Maybe it’s finally broken? Regardless, it seems late, judging by the light at least. Odd though, I don’t hear Teresa up. She’s always up before me, but today the apartment is eerily silent.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know this is wrong…something about all this is wrong. Yet I keep going through the motions.
Pushing myself out of bed, my bare feet touch the chilly wood floor. It’s so deathly quiet—I might as well be the last person on Earth. The only sounds I can hear are those of my own footsteps padding toward the kitchen.
I turn on the coffee pot and pull a mug down from the cupboard. The clank of setting it on the counter sounds like a gunshot going off. It echoes in my mind and I lose track of my thoughts. The scent of coffee permeates the air and I breathe it in, smiling. I should check on Teresa, I think. Knock on her door at least. Instead I fill my mug, watching the steam curl and vanish.
Most days I can hear the world going on outside—a steady flow of cars, indistinct conversations, dogs barking. Today there’s nothing.
Coffee in hand, I head back to my room. I don’t bother shutting the door. Curiosity is drawing me and I move to the window, looking out at the street below. The apartment building across the street is gone. As a matter of fact, all the buildings are. My mug warms my hands and I breathe in the steam.
I look out on a sea of half-demolished buildings and rusted-out cars—they litter the landscape. It should feel wrong, but it doesn’t. It feels familiar. Like this has all happened before…and I know what’s going to happen next. Something inside me knows that the longer I look, the more danger I’m in. For if I look too hard, I’m going see something I don’t want to know is out there. Something that I’m scared of. Yet despite all logic, despite what my insides are screaming for me to do, I just can’t look away.
And sure enough—I see it! Blinking in and out of existence. It’s like a shadow…a void in reality. And every time it blinks back into this world, it’s a little bit closer. Whatever it is, it’s trying to hide, that much is apparent. It slinks, like a hunter, behind the hollowed-out wreckage of cars and debris, coming ever nearer.
I watch it silently, my heart pounding in my chest. I should get away from this window. It’ll see me and when it does, it will come for me. Still…I make no effort to move. But I do bring my cup to my lips, ready for the coffee’s warmth to soothe my mind. My gaze breaks from the thing outside and I focus on my coffee. It’s filled with writhing worms.
I suck in a gasp of horror, dropping the mug. Watching as it shatters on the floor. Coffee splatters on bare legs. A creak from behind startles me and I spin to face the door.
He’s here.
The thing is in my apartment, not 10 feet away from where I stand. I can’t make out his features, but he’s tall and his shoulders are broad enough to block the doorframe. I open my mouth—to speak, to scream, I don’t know what. But he flickers and that’s when I wake up.
Chapter 2
Angie
Morning light streams into my room. I glance over at half-open blinds, feeling a lingering sense of foreboding. Must have had a nightmare. I kick the blankets off my legs and glance at the clock, 7:03. If I don’t get my ass up I’m going to be late for work. Out in the living room I can hear the TV. Teresa’s up. I hope she’s made coffee.
Pulling a pair of lounge shorts on over my underwear, I pad out of my room. Teresa’s on the couch, hunched over, intensely watching whatever’s on TV. “Morning,” I call, stepping into the kitchen.
“My God, Angie. You have to see this.”
I grab a mug, filling it. “What’s up?”
“There’s been a terrorist attack.”
My heart drops. “Where?”
“Some college on the east coast. In Massachusetts, I think.”
I hurry to drop down on the couch beside Teresa, a white-knuckle grip on my mug. There’s a woman on the news. Behind her I can see what look like army tanks and rows of soldiers. There’re police and firefighters—all types of first responders. It looks like utter chaos.
“How many people were hurt?”
Teresa looks me in the eyes. Hers are red and wet. “They’re estimating upwards of 600,000.”
I nearly drop my coffee mug. I can barely form words. “What? How?” My voice cracks.
Six hundred thousand people?
Teresa shakes her head. “They don’t know. All they know is the epicenter is that college. MIT, I think they said”
I look back at the screen. A banner runs across the bottom. Possible terrorist attack leaves hundreds of thousands unaccounted for.
“For safety reasons, military personnel is not allowing journalists any closer to the border of the incident…” the woman on television is saying. I set my mug down and hurry to the kitchen counter, grabbing my cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Teresa asks.
“Googling. What was this? A bomb?” I type the question into my search engine. Teresa answers me just as Google does.
“No, there’s no evidence of anything like that. All the people are just…gone.”
Google agrees—hundreds of thousands missing. The world apparently woke up this morning to find a two-mile radius around a college in Cambridge, Massachusetts completely vacant. There’s no damage to any of the structures, hinting at what could have happened, but all the people who lived there are simply gone.
“How is this terrorists?” I ask.
Teresa frowns, looking contemplative. “Maybe it’s some kind of new weapon? Those people could have been vaporized or something.” Her phone rings. “It’s my mom,” she tells me, rushing to take the call to her bedroom and I’m left alone with the news and Google.
Teresa and I have been roommates for about eight months. We’re friendly, but definitely not close. She works in HR for some kind of engineering company. I’m over at a geoscience consulting firm that tests water and soil for construction projects. Her job is only slightly sexier than my own dull one. Sometimes she gets to plan fun company events. I mean, they’re for engineers, so they can only be so fun regardless of what she plans.
I, on the other hand, work in a lab and eat lunch over a microscope every day. It pays the bills, even if it’s not the passionate science I thought I’d be doing when I went to college. What I do is indiscriminate. Whoever hires us has an objective for their building projects and they ask us to find scientific evidence to support their company’s claims. So we do. Doesn’t matter about the environment or whatever other factors are in play. We simply find evidence to support our customers. Not that we’re significantly harming the environment. We just say whether it’s safe or not to build a housing tract on a patch of land that a mechanic in the 1950s used to dump oil on. Spoiler, my firm says it’s fine.
Maybe I thought I’d be changing the world, like the people who go to colleges like MIT do. But all I’m really doing is making a living…or just getting by.
I watch the TV, taking in the words of the woman on the screen. But what it comes down to is this: they don’t know anything. That’s when I catch sight of the time. Seven thirty-six. Fuck. I’m going to be late.
Chapter 3
Angie
“Call me if you need anything, Ang. I’ll keep you posted on the news.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Take care of yourself.”
I’m deep in my thoughts when I step out into the hall, locking the door behind me. My mind goes to the 9/11 attacks and what that day was like for Americans. I was in high school, just a kid really. Still, it felt like the world changed that day. Feels like that now too, even though whatever’s going on is shrouded in mystery. Someone’s got to know something. I wonder how long it will take for the conspiracy theorists to start pitching their ideas? I’m so lost in these thoughts that I nearly bump into one of my neighbors on the stairs. He’s a big burly guy. I recognize him, but I don’t know his name. Sometimes we say hi, but today his expression is so grim I look down at the ground as I pass him instead.
Out on the street I immediately notice a stark difference to the world as I know it. It isn’t bustling like it normally is on a weekday. Usually, there are swarms of people—walking dogs, cycling, a long line of cars down either side of the road. But this morning there are only a few people out. I notice two men across the street. The older one is wiping his tears and the younger pulls him into an embrace. I can’t hear their conversation, but I know what they’re talking about. Part of me is more interested in what their relationship is. Are they family or just neighbors who actually know each other’s names?
I’m unlocking my car when an unsettling sound makes me freeze in place. It’s the eerie echo of a woman’s heels as she walks down a barren sidewalk. It’s loud. Reverberant. Like gunshots. Any other day and the sound would be drowned out amongst the noises a city makes as it goes about its business. Today though, the world is at a near standstill.
In my car I turn on the radio. There’s no music today. Just reports. “Families of the missing are looking to social media to help find their loved ones…” the announcer is saying. How could they all be taken, I wonder, without a single person making it to their cell phone in time? No one sent out a final tweet warning the rest of us? Suddenly, Teresa’s mention of some horrible new vaporizing weapon doesn’t sound so far-fetched.
But the thought makes me sick. It’s one thing for those people to be missing and unaccounted for. It’s another for them to all be dead.
With hardly any cars on the road, the drive to work is quick. But I’d take traffic any day over whatever’s happening to the world right now. I pull into the parking lot. There aren’t a lot of cars here either, I notice, as I find a space close to the building’s glass doors.
A few minutes behind schedule, I hurry to get in. But as I walk toward the building, I get this strange feeling. It’s like I’m a child and afraid of the dark. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. And despite the fact that it’s early morning, the sun is shining, and there’s not a soul in sight, I still quicken my pace as this strange sense of trepidation tingles down my spine.
My fear amplifies when I swipe my keycard and the pad doesn’t respond. I swipe it again, almost frantically, looking behind me, feeling as if something is coming. Finally, it works. The light flashes green and I push the door open, shutting it quickly behind me. I gaze out the doors, but the parking lot, the street, it’s desolate. I let out a sigh, feeling foolish, and scrub a hand over my face.
“Hello?” I call, once I get into the lab. The lights are on, but no one is at their work station. It reminds me of something…a nightmare, maybe.
“Hey, Ang, we’re in here watching the news.” I startle when my boss, Gene, pokes his head out of the breakroom.
“Yeah, of course,” I say dumbly, regaining my composure. I follow him inside, noticing only about half of the staff is here today. “Sorry I was late.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve all been a little off this morning, considering the circumstances.”
No one looks away from the TV, but Stacy, the office clerk, scoots over on the beat-up old couch, making a space for me to squeeze in.
“Anything new?”
“They’re going to show footage from a security camera inside the affected area.”
“So people have been in then, to the college campus?”
Kevin, one of the other lab techs, shakes his head. “No, they’re accessing the camera from offsite. Military’s still scanning for radiation. Channel Four showed a bunch of guys in hazmat suits though, right along the border. I bet they’ll be going in soon.”
“Scanning for radiation.” Stacy scoffs. “It’s not like a nuclear bomb went off. All the buildings are still there.”
“We don’t know what went off, Stace,” Gene tells her. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“It’s like the damned Bermuda Triangle just set up shop in a new location,” Kevin says.
“Shhh!” Amy, another lab tech, hushes us. “They’re going to show the security footage.”
“The images you are about to see were recorded today, at 8:12 a.m. eastern time…” the anchorman tells us, “…what is being considered Zero Hour. This footage has not been altered in any way.” He goes on, talking about the location, street names, things that don’t matter as much as what’s on that recording. All of us lean forward, on the edge of our seats. We don’t even dare to breathe when the video comes up.
It looks like it’s showing us the outside of a grocery store. The footage itself is a bit grainy, but clear enough to see people walking the sidewalks and cars on the road. We watch in silence for a few seconds and my eyes follow a man wearing red sneakers, his hands shoved into his pockets. One second he’s walking and the next second he flickers like a candle and then blips out of view. He vanishes. The cars slow to a halt, and suddenly, everyone who was there only a moment before is utterly gone.
“My God,” Gene exhales. Stacy covers her mouth and Kevin throws his body back as if he’s been struck. Amy gets to her feet.
“I’m sorry, I think I need to go home and be with my family,” she tells Gene.
“Yes, of course, Amy. Let me drive you, okay?”
I look up and see how ghostly white Amy’s face has become. She looks as if she might faint. Smartly, she takes Gene up on his offer.
“As a matter of fact, why don’t we all take the rest of the day, and tomorrow too. Hopefully by Monday this is all sorted out and we’ll have some answers.”
Everyone nods in agreement. People gather their things, purses and keys, and we all head for the exit together. But the whole time, I can’t get that image out of my mind. That man…just flickering out of existence.
“It’s like something out of a horror movie,” Kevin says.
Or a nightmare…
Chapter 4
Angie
“I’m home!” I shout to Teresa, warning her of my unexpected arrival.
“Hey,” she answers flatly. She hasn’t moved from the couch.
“I got take-out. Didn’t think either of us would be in the mood to cook.”
“Thanks. Did you see the security footage?”
“Yeah.” I don’t want to think about it. I never want to witness such a frightening sight again. But even from the kitchen I can see the news stations have it running on a loop.
“It’s so sad, Ang. Families of the people lost are starting to show up along the border.”
I stand behind the couch, unable to look away from the screen. There’s a mother and father holding up a sign with a picture of their son. He just started his freshman year of college. When he didn’t call home to wish his little sister a happy birthday, his parents knew something was off.
