Empire of Living Shadows Excerpt

[NOTICE - Swearing and blood in the following]

Consumed


Her bones ached as she tried to pry her hand away. The flesh threatened to rip itself apart before breaking the magical bond adhering her appendage to the hidden altar below the floor where she crouched. A torrent of winds whipped her now-loose cornsilk hair about her, forming patches of red welts along her milky complexion. Her jaw unhinged for a scream that never surfaced.

It had only been an hour since they’d begun their task below the city proper of Seattle, Washington, in the long-rumored passageways of forgotten buildings built long ago. They had been hired as a paranormal-investigation group to explore and record any and/or all possible paranormal activity. The ultimate goal of any reputable agency was to gain a moment of “class A” evidence through hours of video and sound recording. This task was a long shot for any seasoned professional. Yet here she was, crouched amid a vortex after a paper cut, activating the altar with her blood.
The deep rumbling of laughter fell out of her in someone else’s voice. Her vision narrowed as she felt herself pulled deep down inside of her core…or was she being pushed? The sound of the laughter brought her back to just over an hour ago, when she’d asked, her voice shrill, “Why is the shotgun mic sticky again, David?” She scolded him frequently, but this was the first time after a drunken night of debauchery, about which her memory was spotty.
“Listen, Shannon, I told you I would clean it, didn’t I?”
“How about we don’t eat over the equipment!” she scolded back, unwilling to acknowledge the awkwardness between them both. David gave an exaggerated and confused sigh, flipping his two-foot-long auburn hair off his shoulder with a flamboyant flick of his wrist. He was portly yet confident in his own skin, even with his receding hairline, unapologetic about the fact that he was balding.
Shannon had crash-dieted her way down from two hundred pounds to one fifteen, which had turned her pleasant disposition sour and her pretty face gaunt and shallow. Her long ash-blond hair would glide behind her in the wind as she turned sharply away from him with her cheeks sucked in and lips pursed. She forced herself to take in a deep breath to soften her tone before she continued, “This isn’t the David show…remember?”
He gave a deep grunt. “Yeah, but without my connections this little paranormal group wouldn’t even exist…”
“Who the fuck do you think found this gig?!” she snapped back.
He gave an indignant “Oh!”
She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t I just tell you to get everything ready? You’re running behind, as usual… Fucking useless,” she said as she left him to do his work of connecting the tangled mess of wires and connections into their various electronic inputs and outputs.
When David was certain she was out of earshot he mumbled under his breath, “Go eat some bacon.”
From the other room he clearly heard her shout back, “I heard that!”
David winced as he cowered. “That’s why I said it out loud!”
As Shannon was the leader, she spared no expense, maxing out her credit lines to purchase any device associated with ghost hunting, instead of simply renting it. Setup had taken over an hour longer than anticipated, and they were cutting into their investigation time.
The Alternative Paranormal Group of the greater Seattle–Tacoma area had formed a few years ago, and this was their first paid gig. On the totem pole of paranormal researchers, they were the mud clinging to the very bottom. They had recently been hired to investigate the portion of the Seattle underground below a small thrift store catering to hipsters. Earlier that week they’d met up with the store’s owner at his home, amongst the small towers of boxes and newspapers piled high from the ground to the ceiling.


Once setup was complete, the group began to explore the dark and moist passageways under the city.
Ever the gossip, Shannon asked, “Are we not going to talk about his hoarder tendencies?”
David replied, “Good thing we aren’t recording yet, Shannon.”
She waved his comment off, saying, “Edit it out later.”
“Shouldn’t we be focusing on the assignment…our first paid assignment?” Jerry reminded them. He was the third wheel, always stuck in the middle of the two as they bickered, melting into the shadows. There was nothing noteworthy about him, really. Jerry was an average middle-aged guy with nothing else better to do with his spare time.
“‘C’mon! You had to have seen the way his neighbor walked by with her little girl; no one holds their children that tight walking by anyone's house without reason. The way his eyes glazed over, looking all dark, and his breathing got all heavy...”
Thirty minutes later they were knee-deep in their investigation of this previously un-investigated portion of the underground. It was clear few had traversed this area since the city of Seattle had ultimately been raised due to excessive flooding. New streets were built atop old ones, and the ground floors of its buildings boarded up and treated as basements. Eventually the lower portions fell into disrepair, and were used as basic storage.
Moreover, this particular building had once been the meeting place of a secret society who called themselves “Guard of Di Inferi,” a dark-aligned group veiled in several layers of secrecy. This had only recently been discovered during renovations.
The group was aware that this could be a hoax, as there was no documentation to back up the existence of this secret society. The owner of the building was a forty-something-year-old man who wanted to cash in on the recent boom of ghost tourism, as he had with hipsters. People would travel far and wide to scare themselves in reportedly haunted locations, whether it was a confirmed haunting or not. However, he thought it best to bring in a paranormal-investigation group to validate some of the things he had experienced after breaking through the entryway. He hadn’t gone into much detail as to what exactly had happened, but the intensity in the man was nearly overpowering.
The group had long dreamt of becoming world-famous ghost hunters with their own TV show, and we're going to use the funds from this investigation to create a pilot episode to pitch to a major network. Never mind that they didn’t know how to get in contact with anyone involved in the film industry, believing that getting a show was as simple as sending in a pilot episode.
When the building owner had first become aware of the entrance, not only was it bricked up, but an additional layer of wooden planks had been cemented shut in an effort to disguise the opening. The team had passed through the newly opened entrance and traveled down various tunnels for thirty minutes, the sounds of dripping water and their footfalls echoing back toward them. As far as paranormal anomalies, the area was dead silent. They utilized all manner of devices, including EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) burst playback recordings, asking questions to spirits who were clearly not present. No unaccounted voices were recorded. No video anomalies presented themselves on either their static cameras, on tripods that did not move, or their handheld cameras.
After about an hour through various tunnels and passageways they came to it. Through a seemingly nondescript Gothic-style archway the tunnel emptied into a thirty-by-thirty-foot room with a tall ceiling towering twenty feet high. An odd collection of Victorian-era objects were lined against the walls, including a Victrola, a highboy dresser, a coatrack, a writing desk, and the large articulated skeletons of an owl and a raven ready to take flight.
“Creepy shit,” Shannon boasted before losing her footing, sending her tumbling toward the other end of the room. Their attention was brought to the massive rug sprawled over the floor with its corner now kicked up, revealing a slightly faded sigil crudely drawn on the floor beneath.
“What is—” Jerry was interrupted as Shannon began barking orders to her investigators to roll the rug up and cast it to the side to expose the hastily drawn runes in a circular, spiraling pattern that radiated outward from the center of the room in faded white paint on the red brick floor.
“The fuck?” asked Jerry, to no one in particular.
David’s chest puffed outward, “See, this is the shit I’ve been looking for.”
“We,” Jerry reminded David, with dollar signs now in his eyes.
“Yeah!” Shannon snapped. “Besides, we all know it’s the ‘T&A’ that gets the attention anyway.”
Upon clearing and inspecting the area, they found a large square halogen construction light the previous crew had left behind in a rush. With the lights now on, they discovered that the spiral of runes extended to each wall. The smell of mold and mildew mingled with dust as it wafted in the newly disturbed air.
“Whoa.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Quick! Get me my backpack!” Shannon yelled.
“You mean that one?” Jerry said, pointing to her back.
Shannon rolled her eyes and snapped again, “Don’t be cute. You aren’t cute.”
After some quick fumbling, she retrieved a violet wax crayon and a yellowed loose sheet of paper. She laid the paper down and rubbed the crayon over its surface to reveal an embossed message saying in English, “DO NOT OPEN. IT WILL RESURRECT.” The English text seemed odd and out of place among the ancient Mesopotamian symbols, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Greco-Roman lettering.
“What the fuck?” said David.
Confused, Jerry asked, “Is that English?”
“It says not open,” replied Shannon.
David scoffed, “Wake who?”
She shrugged, and was looking more closely at the relief she’d just made when the stiff paper edge cut into the flesh of her finger.
The world narrowed and slowed as the tiniest of drops of blood fell to the floor. Suddenly the room was bathed in the scent of fine tobacco and brimstone. The blood began to boil in their bodies as it pumped furiously through their veins, mimicking the sound of crashing waterfalls in their ears.
Like water on a hot stove, the blood hissed before a cool green sheen swept over the symbols as they came to life and radiated outward along the spiral. The three of them looked back and forth, eyes darting in all directions as they heard the distant chanting of some unseen chorus in an unknown language.
Shannon scoffed, “Okay. Real funny. You got me.”
David held the camera as still as his shaking hands would allow and replied, “I didn’t do this.”
She rolled her eyes and looked at David. “You can cut the soundtrack. This is great theatrics, but we have an investigation to do. We need one big break before we can make it, and you two are fucking that chance up.”
Timidly David replied, “I don’t think this is theatrics.”
“This is class A…” Jerry whispered to himself.
Shannon was about to roll her eyes again when she was pulled to the floor, cut hand first, to the very center of the spiral. She pulled at her arm, but it was frozen to the spot. She willed her limbs to help her rise, but found, with increasing force, the sensation of her soul being sucked into the spiral. Panic set in with the shadows filling the room.
David shouted, “Shit! This is fucking it!”
“I’m stuck!” she shouted, but her words landed on deaf ears, as her comrades were lost in the sensation of the room energizing. Static popped in the air as the construction lights began to dim—or was it simply that the darkness was growing so dense that not even the powerful bulbs could illuminate it? Figures emerged from the shadows, encircling them outside the outer rim of the sigil, where they stood waiting.
“Holy FUCK!” screamed David, his slacks becoming moist as he watched the shadows materialize from the darkness, trying their best to retain the general shape of humans. He caught the scent of a very gentle breeze.
Tension built up in Shannon’s muscles, with lactic acid turning to lava inside of her. Tears flowed as she watched a deep inky mist radiating from under her palm.
“Sheep,” boomed an unfamiliar voice, deep and foreboding, from the entrance to the room. The man who’d hired them walked forward toward the three. His limbs began to go slack as the dark figure of a man seemed to escape his body. The three witnessed the fabled Victorian gentleman with a cloak and top hat materialize before them. “How easy it is to manipulate such inconsequential creatures with the hopes of monetary gain!”
David had forgotten the importance of the camera as it shook violently, his fear incapacitating him as he stammered, “Th-the H-hat-hatm-hatman!”
Since the formation of civilized society, the appearance of shadowy figures before some tragic events had been well documented, along with the figure of a man with a tophat and a gold pocket watch. Shadow figures would be seen in groups of three or five before or after the presence of the cloaked gentleman. Never had there been an appearance of so many in one location at the same time as the gentleman.
The scent of urine and feces flooded their senses. Jerry threw an accusatory glance at David, who was busy murmuring to himself, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
With a weary sigh, the Hatman reached into his inner breast pocket and pulled out his pocket watch, then tsked at his own inability to maintain a punctual schedule.
Shannon looked at his hard face, stern and disassociated, as he said softly to her, “I do apologize. I’m afraid I should have arrived sooner, but the point is that I am now here.”
Her breathing was ragged, but she had to know. “Who are you?”
A light smile warmed his face before he answered, “Oh, there’s no need for that. No time, I should say.”
He held up his index finger. “However,” he said, “it would be rude to not offer you my gratitude for aiding me.”
He made a small gesture for her to rise and some unseen force pulled her to standing, with her arms pinned to her sides, still unable to move of her own volition. “Allow me to reduce the noise in you to that of my own melody.” Instantly his gentleman façade disappeared as he turned to black vapor and invaded her nose, mouth, and ears.
The two men watched in horror as she dropped to the floor in a heap just as the shadow figures and the pervading darkness instantly disappeared. They were suddenly blinded by the brightness of the construction lights.
“I got—I got it all on tape. OH SHIT. Shannon! We got it! We are gonna be famous!” Jerry shouted, eyes on her. David, suddenly aware of his voided bowels, and rising embarrassment shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Neither man sensed imminent danger until she opened her eyes, two black orbs.
David stuttered, “Sh-shann-shannon?”
Worry flooded their senses when her jaw unhinged with a tortured moan before she smiled widely as the Hatman’s voice erupted from her mouth in an inhuman peal of laughter.
Her small, dainty hand crashed through David’s chest, removed his heart, and dropped it to the ground. She watched his face as his expression of shock wore off into betrayal before falling to the ground next to her. Before Jerry could react to the grim sight, she tore into his gut with claw like nails, ripping his torso open.