Pandemonium

Part 1- Whisper in the Darkness 

by Mark Anthony Pritchard (aka Rorshach)



I woke with orders screamed into my ears, ‘Get out, get out, get out,’ and before I knew what to do, where I was, or who I was, I obeyed.

Terror makes you do that, follow orders, blindly, unthinkingly, as the genetic instinct to preserve body, heaven let us not speak of the soul, kicks in, and we the animal, care only, for the moment, and the potential for pain, or worse, to come.

Cold and naked, I scrambled for my clothes, found them on the dark floor, put them on, haphazardly, my jeans loose without a belt, and my T-shirt inside out, shoeless, adrenaline crazed I cared for nothing but escape.

I saw a light, and that was my destination, helped along by the screamed cries that beckoned me to follow, already distant as they rushed ahead to save themselves, but from what?

I was shortly about to find out.

A drumbeat of terror enveloped the room in further alarm, as screams of the unfortunate cried for mercy, their location the floor below my own, and I ran, finding myself heading towards an open window, a fire-escape, with steel steps leading to the rain-soaked pavements on the ground below.

Searching for that initial voice of warning, hoping for recognition, a friend, anybody, I found nothing but scurrying human forms, wet hair, panic, the people half-naked, like myself, falling over themselves in a desperate bid to escape.

A lady in front of me, aged and weak, crumpled to the floor, and, to my eternal shame, I did nothing to help, but stepped over her prone form, throwing myself down the rusty steps, and the haven of potential safety below.

Hitting the wet pavement bare feet bleeding and sore, guilt kicked-in, and I paused, for a second, and turned back, thinking of the fallen lady, only to witness a vision of the horror that we were escaping from, and as self-preservation returned, I turned again, and shamefully, ran.

I did not get very far.

Inexplicably, my legs began to fail me, and the paralysis of fear was fast shutting me down. Freezing up, I searched for a place to hide, quickly, and found one, fifty yards from the building, behind a dumpster spewing a stench of rotting meat, a vantage point where I will shiver in fear, and watch as events unfold.

From behind my rank hiding place I see the squat dark shadows of our pursuers emerge from the building, and feel a sense of almighty relief when instead of descending the metal steps to pursue us further on the ground below, they remain, stationary, on top.

From the high vantage point of the fire escape stairs, their yellow eyes briefly scan the darkness below, piercing white beams from soul-less orbs lighting up the murky streets below, but they miss me, their scan being merely perfunctory, and they turn their attention to their captured, elderly prey.

Shivering in the wet gloom, the cold rain splattering painfully through my barely dressed form, confused by remnants of sleep that have morphed into a world of horror that is all too real, my attention is immediately fixated upon the nature of the creatures themselves.

There is a simian aspect to their forms, standing as they do, on two legs, their bulky torsos leaning forward, with unnaturally long arms that almost touch the ground, muscular appendixes that seem designed for pursuit on all-fours, at tremendous speeds that are beyond human capacity.

In colour they were black, unclothed, as the beasts that they are, and as the rain fell on their broad shoulders and backs, the moonlight revealed a fur-like texture, almost a coat, but patch-bare, like a moulting animal suffering from a terminal disease.

Two of them were on the floor, securing their elderly prey, one at her neck, the other at her feet, holding not to kill, but to control. They appeared to be waiting, and I could heard strange grunted conversation emanating from the four creatures that circled around their grounded companions, discussing something perhaps, but in a form of language that was unrecognisable from anything that I have ever heard before.

As the horrifying pursuit lulled into a temporary lull, a flash of lightning crashed through the dark night sky, and for one horrifying moment I saw the facial features of one of the creatures clearly, the horror enough to drive a sane man into unrecoverable madness.

How to describe such figures of inhuman cruelty? How to convey the monstrous aspects of the form that I was witness to? How to describe what surely cannot be described?

Heaven preserve my sanity as I try to reconstruct, in mere words alone, the grotesque horror that was revealed to me by that strike from the heavens.

The face, that appeared black as night in the shadows, was as pale as death in the light of electric revelation. Hairless on top, bulbous of frontal lobe, the eyes were set cruelly deep, black orbs with pins of fiery damnation burning with a hell-fire intensity of nihilism realised. The mouth was too big for the face, stretching from stubbed ear to stubbed ear, a wicked joker grin of malicious intent, lined with jagged fangs, teeth designed to rip and tear. The nose was that of a tracker, large, drooping downwards, designed to sniff, hunt down, and capture the scent of it’s prey. But as demonic as the face indeed was, there was something all-too recognisably human about it as well. Perched atop the body of a simian monster, with eyes and mouth of intense cruelty, it was the smirk on the face that scared me the most, as it was a scarred reminder that the most sinister and evil creature in existence, is, often-times, as history shows, humanity itself.

Swallowing down the urgent need to vomit, I steadied my nerves, and struggled to regain my composure in the wet filth of waste, the stench becoming a background inconvenience as the horror before me continued to unfold.

My initial theory, that the monsters, for monsters they most certainly were, had paused for the arrival of a higher authority, was confirmed in an instant. Another figure, with a body like the rest, only larger, emerged from the shadows of the building, barked what had to be orders at the standing members of the group, and approached the grounded figure of the elderly lady, still held securely in place by two of the creatures.

Releasing their grip on the lady, the two creatures nodded in supplication to their commander, and returned to the building, leaving just two forms at the top of the fire-exit, the largest monster of them all, and an elderly human who I could now hear was gently sobbing in fear.

Seeing just the two of them there, something akin to my old courage began to manifest, and I felt anger rising within me, and the urge to rush back up the metal steps, and engage the creature in hand to hand, mortal combat.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ whispered a voice from behind me, anticipating my desire to intervene, and I turned to see the face of a child, a young girl of no more than ten-years of age, blonde of hair, and inexplicably fierce of attitude and demeanour.

Her lack of fear instantly confused me, and I was about to question her when a terrible scream erupted from atop the fire escape. Turning back, expecting to see the bloody demise of a human being that I had stepped over just minutes before, I instead was witness to a bizarrely supernatural spectacle that was too unreal to be real.

Electricity concentrated in a circular form around the elderly lady, and she floated high in the air, twenty yards above the kneeling figure of the monstrous creature, on it’s knees now, it’s long arms raised high in what appeared to a religiously inspired supplication to a power greater than itself.

In a language of guttural moans, screams and impishly malign evil incantations, the creature offered up the suspended human sacrifice, with a voice that rose and rose and rose, until finally, an answer for what must have been cries for recognition, arrived.

Invisible evil screeched through the black, rain drenched night sky, creating a white noise din of terror that knocked me back from the safety of my observation post. The impact upon the suspended lady was as a hammer on a fly, terminating the electric charge that surrounded her, as all trace of the lady herself disappeared into the ether of the night.

Stillness hit the cold air, as some unspeakable deed had been completed. The monster at the top of the steps paused, roared a deep sigh of self-satisfaction, and re-entered the building.

Paralysed by fear, my body fast shutting down in frozen disbelief, I felt a small hand on my shoulder, and turned to see the face, once again, of a fearless young girl.

‘Come on mister,’ she snapped, a chord of irritation in her tone, ‘Sort yourself out mate, it’s time to go.’

Pandemonium is an ongoing series. Part Two will be released next week. If you enjoyed the story, please share on social media. Thank you.