Trespass - Part Two

Demons flew past me, mocking my futile attempts to prevent the symphony of eternal condemnation from reverberating in my head while reaching out to me with clawed hands and feet. The sights I witnessed alone would have driven anyone else to the brink of insanity -- and over. I felt my grip on reality begin to slowly perish when my collar was ripped from the hands that clenched it as the girl pulled me back inside the car, seemingly with ease.

"Who was that?" she screamed as soon as I had slammed the door. A roar sounded outside the car. The hands that held fast upon my clothing were caught and severed when I had closed the door. The clawed hands lie on my lap as they wriggled around, free from their master. Marisol screamed at the top of her lungs as one made for my throat.

"Open the window!" I commanded, fighting one of the claws. She did as I said, the glass lowering while I struggled with the severed limbs. Mustering all of my strength, I gripped the hands and tossed the severed limbs through the opening. Not wasting any more time, I started the engine and pulled back onto the highway as quickly as possible.

My breathing was ragged and my heart beat as fast as it could. I was in desperate need of water. The static on the radio was reaching a volume peak so I quickly turned the knob as fast as I could to the left. The switch stopped just short of turning off the radio due to a faulty wire, causing the light to stay on but allowing the radio to be almost silent. The quiet static reminded me of mad whispers I heard while attempting to sleep. It took a moment for me to notice my passenger staring at me, shivering from either the cold air coming from the vents or from fear.

"You're bleeding." Her teeth chattered as she spoke.

"What?"

"You're bleeding. Look." She pointed to the rear view mirror. I twisted it to see my face without moving. Indeed, what I thought were tears running down my eyes was in fact blood. It had dried swiftly, making clean-up that much more difficult.

"It was real," she said after a long silence. "The story you told me really happened, didn't it?"

I looked at her with eyes full of knowledge about Hell and those who served it. My gaze shifted back to the asphalt. "Every word."

"Tell me again. I was half-asleep last time. I'm pretty wide awake now." She snorted a laugh.

"All right, if you wish. We have a long way to go and nothing to do with it, so here we go. When I was younger by about ten years I stumbled across a supposedly haunted house. Now, at the time I was a paranormal investigator, so it was my job to check it out. The crew and I, of course, went in cynical and disbelieving, thinking it was just another way to get publicity to another roadside bed and breakfast. What we found was, to put it mildly, unbelievable.

"It was a portal to Hell itself.

"It didn't look like a shining vortex like you see on TV or one of those portals from cheap movies; it was a door. Just a door. But opening it was the biggest mistake we ever made. For the rest of them, it was the last. I was able, somehow, to retain my sanity as they tortured me endlessly. Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they kept my mind from breaking just to relish in it. The things I saw would have made even the most sound of mind lose it instantly. But I didn't. And because of that fact, I was able to escape. I stumbled around in the dark fires until I fell out of the hole. I must have brought some of it with me because that house burned down in a matter of seconds. As it turns out, that's how long I was gone.

"I grabbed the gear on my way out and studied the film. Most of the visions we saw while exploring the house didn't show up on tape at all, as though we had all imagined the same thing. The time from when we entered the door to when I came barreling out was only six seconds. Six seconds plus change. Take a guess."

A bus on the side of the road looked as though it had reached the end of its life, although the lights inside of it were still glowing. As we passed, I could see that the windows were covered in a red liquid and a lone, balding old man was swinging his cane downward in a rapid, brutal fashion. I sped along.