Umbereth - 1. The Umbereth

Weak child. So weak. No strength. A wasted thing. A pointless thing. Good only as food. Food for the Master!

My charge cuts into him deep! The child sucks in his breath and gags at the sudden searing pain! The hellacious pain that only a child can feel! His dying in agony is so sweet! I hate him! I hate that he is alive and I am not! Soon he will be here with me in this Death!

Sweet boy. Sweet, sweet weak boy. So stupid! So stupid to go into the alley with my charge! What a fucking hapless butt-raped slut!

He's begging! Calling on a deaf god! A god who is deaf to his pain and will probably suck the boy up to the Judgement Box so that his weak, foolish, ‘faithless' soul can be condemned for things. Things he could never have known were wrong.

Such delicious ‘justice!' Heavenly justice. The same justice Ryan McAlester was given when he was weak. So weak. So pointless. So powerless. So without help or hope when Koral hanged his young body from the rafters, inserted things into him, broke them inside, cut him from the inside out until the screams wouldn't come anymore. Days, and days, and days, and days of it that turned Ryan McAlester into ruin. The last day turned his soul inside out! His body was destroyed, as was his mind, along with his soul! He was made a victim of God’s Law of Holy Justice! The cruel Law that makes the innocent guilty, turns the guilty black, and turns the blackness into The Darkness In Which All Life Dies!

How fine! My charge, his name is ‘Caine'! I doubt it is his real name. Caine was the first murderer and just like the old Caine this new Caine is black inside with remorseless sin. He is reprobate unto the Behemoth! He is Leviathan's tool. Master Dagon, The Leviathan! The Devourer of the Innocent! The Master who saved Ryan and condemned him!

But Ryan was weak, so weak . . .

Caine is one of the Slayers of the Innocent, a priest to Lord Dagon! Much like, and perhaps even worse than, Koral was. Ryan McAlester met Koral on the road to Ryan‘s comfy home. The safe road away from that cunting fuckshop of sodomites and whores that was his ‘school'! His old ‘school' where he learned weakness and despair early! The Safe Road home was sunny on sunlit days and charming in golden autumn and Christmas pretty in the cold days of winter. It always invited him back to his false happiness!

Ryan McAlester was stupid beyond redemption in his ‘happiness'! He should have learned from his school that pain and its horror is the only true reality. The Safe Road home was a sick illusion a pathetic little boy made up so he could keep the tears away on his way home to his room and his record player. Tears he wanted to hide so as not to upset his dear, overworked Mama. How precious! How sickeningly weak!

Koral became the final teacher in the ways of utter hopelessness. He, Ryan thought, was his maestro of despair as he taught Ryan new and ever-evolving ways to suffer! He taught Ryan, with the sublime agonies of his torture rack, that life on Earth was only the beginning of God's joke on His failed creation! Thereafter, Death would bring a greater sting than even a broken glass sound in Ryan's dick-hole! He would know the Cold of the Void as he is cast out! The Void does not sting. The Void aches! FOREVER!

My one joy in this Death is knowing that others will suffer as Ryan once suffered! That we can all laugh at the joke of their screams as they die bleeding slow out onto the ground. The shock and awe of their life-force being ripped out of their mangled bodies only to find the Void waiting! The sucking vacuum of God's displeasure embodied and defined as eternal Hell! Not only are they tortured to Death but in Death, there is no hope of rest! They are set to wander, aimlessly, as God laughs at their loneliness in the aching cold of Nothingness!

Dagon found Ryan after his body finally could no longer entertain Koral anymore. Koral hitched Ryan with a knot and loop around his neck and let him hang himself ever so slowly. Koral watched Ryan as if he were a TV as he struggled to lift himself on the cross-beam upon which he was tied with no leverage! How Koral laughed at Ryan's struggles! How he slapped Ryan across his numbing prickling purpled face! How he ridiculed Ryan's weakness in not being able even to lift himself to breathe! Ryan slowly strangled for three days! Ryan could feel the cold void creep upon his dying limbs as he lost feeling in everything save the cutting of the rope into his neck that only got sharper and sharper as it cut deeper and deeper!

Shortly after becoming a lost soul thanks to God, Dagon found Ryan's Ghost and gave Koral to him! Dagon told Ryan that he would help him cast a situation so that Koral could be made as dead as he had made Ryan! Once dead, Koral's soul would become Ryan's new skin and his life-force would become the power with which Ryan could continue to avenge himself upon humanity with Great Dagon as his guide! Ryan's guardian demon! His black emancipator! He'd be able to strangle Koral for eternity within the confines of Ryan's eternal hatred!

Revenge! It is my only joy! The only warmth I now know in this darkest Darkness

Dagon showed Ryan the way to subtly influence people who were still alive! There were subtle ways Ryan could seduce them into doing his bidding! Making certain songs come on the radio! Moving important items to make them paranoid that they were being stolen from! Filling a room with the reality of Ryan's torments so that dreams became nightmares and thoughts turned to violence!

Naturally, teenagers, like Ryan had been, were easiest for him to influence. His favorite was to use the music on the radio! He'd be sure a certain lyric or a certain nasty riff would pop up on the radio when his ‘subject' would first turn it on! The early 70s were great for finding rebellious reprobate music to persuade teenagers to commit atrocities and suicide! So much angst and viciousness rocked out of the radio at that time! Ryan's subject's name was Wayne. He was a stoner and one of those ‘delinquent' kids at Wayne's school. Wayne's school had not been too far from where Ryan McAlester's school had been. Wayne was very pretty and very stupid and supremely easy to manipulate. Ryan made sure that Wayne and Koral met and that Wayne would so impress that faggot boy-cunt stabbing monster that he would make Wayne his ‘apprentice' rather than ripping into him forthwith.

Dagon fed off of Koral for a while longer as Ryan's Ghost guided Wayne into participating in Koral's malevolence. Because of drugs and his latent psychopathic homosexuality, Wayne was a perfect thrall for Koral. With Wayne's help, Koral became twice as ‘productive' as he had been in previous years. Many more died. Ryan's Ghost attended each torture and Death, reveling in the suffering the stupid boys experienced! Their souls were sucked up to Judgement! Ryan knew the Angel of Death would make great sport of them! The boys should count their torture as exquisite pleasure next to the spiritual hell the Destroyer had planned for them in the name of God's ‘holy' justice! What a deliciously cruel ruse on those dead souls to bring them to Hell through a golden shaft of the ‘Light of God'!

Eventually, according to plan, Wayne fell in love with one of Koral's potential victims. Well, perhaps ‘love' is too strong a word for it. Wayne fell in ‘love' with Jeffrey who was twelve. I'm not entirely sure that Jeffrey felt the same way, but Wayne certainly enjoyed Jeffery's prepubescent asshole and managed it with uncharacteristic gentleness. Usually, Koral insisted that blood be the only lube, as it were. But, Wayne loved to make Jeffrey cum his spermless water so some vaseline came in handy to keep the buggery somewhat less painful. Jeffrey even stopped crying once or twice during his ordeal as Wayne kissed him! Isn't that just the sweetest thing?

Koral caught this one day and got jealous and decided to string both boys up by the neck so that they could die together slow. Just like he did with Ryan and a lot of others he'd masturbate to as their eyes bulged out of their sockets. While Koral was turning to get his gun to threaten Wayne with, Wayne got to one of Koral's lovely mortician's knives first. Wayne managed to get the best of Koral before the filth could put bullets into his gun. Wayne, very nearly, took Koral's head off with that shiny sharp mini-sword! Teenagers can be amazingly fast and strong when they are so motivated! Ryan's Ghost also helped a bit by managing to trip Koral psychokinetically, a trick Dagon had taught him using electricity from light bulbs.

Ryan howled in ghostly laughter as Koral's gore sprayed the walls painting them with crimson Pollack-style artwork! So weak! So pitiful! So pointless and ruined! When Koral’s filthy, rotted, disgusting soul spurted out of his dead body, Koral was the very picture of pathetic!

When Koral saw Ryan, he had spirit enough to rant at Ryan for letting this happen to him! Even as a damned soul the fool was the very model of hubris! Ryan answered him by ripping Koral’s etheric body to shrieking shreds. Ryan then drew from the sheets of screeching spirit-flesh their very life essence. The power Ryan's evil spirit felt was orgasmic! It was a feast he hoped his Lord Dagon would allow Ryan to have time and time again! As he drained the life-energy from Koral into himself, Ryan also absorbed all of Koral’s sin and evil! Koral truly was a vile being! Ryan added Koral's wretchedness to his own and then cloaked himself in the depleted black voids of Koral’s drained spirit.

Then and there Ryan McAlester was finally destroyed! The weak fool was crushed out and reborn into a far greater being!

I emerged! I became Dagon's Umbereth! His chosen herald, steward, and extension! Dagon came into me then! He spirit-fucked me and I loved it! It burned worse than fire and the intensity of my Darkness deepened until I became a sucking void blacker than black! A true Shadow of Death! Dagon's will forced itself through my spirit-eyes and the Spirit World turned red as blood and I could see all evil about me! Every black intention and every sucking nexus of ruin! All were mine to see and through my new eyes, they were Dagon's to see with as well! His vast wisdom and power he would then work through me from that point forward!

I would be his prime servant! I became his possession!

Immediately, he tasked me with finding a worthy replacement for Koral since that tool had ceased to be of use to either of us!

It did not take long.

We ranged to the West of the United States! We loved this country because it bred some of the most outrageously evil people in the world! Fortunately, it also had enough ‘Christian' weaklings that the Black Loci of these potential ‘Priests' of Dagon shown like black polka-dots in a nauseatingly bland backdrop of mediocrity.

Other parts of the world had populations older in time and tradition than the United States. They were steeped with the blackest of most ancient of evils and so finding particular subjects to exploit was much harder. Places like Europe, Africa, Asia and South, and Central America had peoples who had been steeped in evil for so long that it had become genetic!

The good ole' USA was a perfect hunting ground! The nodes of evil were sparser but more intense! It was almost like the collective evil of the surrounding populations would find preternatural focus in certain individuals. Dagon worked best using one or two individuals at a time to procure the child sacrifices that he wanted to enjoy. He invested them with demonic power to avoid capture and to hunt down and kill children one by one and by means delicious and desecrating. I am Dagon’s demonic investment! I become the ‘guardian demon’ for these black priests. I become their familiar.

Dagon wants the innocence bled from his victims! He wants them to break in spirit before they die so that their torments can continue after Death! Dagon is my hero and I love him so! I hate him more and he loves my hate best of all!

So, we come to the matter of my current charge, Mr. ‘Caine'.

I knew better than to question Dagon's ancient wisdom on who he should choose as one of his ‘priests,’ but this locus of darkness he chose out of all others was strangely off-putting to me. Caine was so . . . plain ‘vanilla,’ I suppose is the word. He is even worse now he has become so boring! But, I learned from my Master that this makes for a perfect predator of the young! An older man who looks like their teacher, or better still, their uncle or even grandpa. A man so blah that he'd be the last person you'd think of as being Dagon's evil incarnate. Like the chameleon or the octopus, his predatory nature makes use of blending in, creating a sense of safety that calms the victim, even getting the victim to trust him, and then SNAP! The trap snaps shut and the blood can gush and the screams can begin!

Alas, Caine, as desirous as he was to begin his quest to annihilate innocent life everywhere, was very inept at it and was relegated to the banal perversions of being a child molesting predator particularly around places where boys would hang out. He was and is a pederastic ephebophile, which was Dagon's fancy way of saying he like teenaged boys. Such prey was very easy for a ‘child' molester to seduce. In the mid to late 70s, all it took was a reefer and a song to get most boys to allow themselves to be sucked or fucked by anyone, even dirty little men like Caine.

Caine wanted so much more, though. He was and is a natural predator and his just fucking the High School set with a little light bondage was not going to be enough for Caine. So Dagon sent me to help the cankerous filth ‘do better' as Dagon put it.

Caine was just insane enough to where Dagon gave me leave to manifest myself to the creature. If he ranted and raved about me to all the friends he'd never have then they would just see him as crazy and put him in the nuthouse along with all the rest of the Planters Peanuts.

I did manifest, which naturally frightened the filth into soiling himself. His sheer terror and inability to escape me made for a delightful evening of psychological torment! By the time I was done with him I had cracked his mind open like an egg! I had opened him up sufficiently to start pouring in all the ideas that would make him useful to my Master. It was a proud achievement! He was ready to take the next step into becoming a full-fledged child rapist and murderer after our one session that night!

How did I do it, you ask? By making him live through my entire murder! He lived every moment of it and loved every moment of it!

By that morning, I had allowed myself to fade away with the dawn, but not from Caine's thoughts. That very night, we found his first! A thirteen-year-old boy in the park trudging home through the dark. Caine chloroformed him first at my Master's suggestion through me. After that, the boy was kept naked in a crate and brought out to play with after being plied with drugs to keep him under control.

Caine first marked his signature style with this first victim. When he was done with the boy, he took him out in the woods, cut his dick off, and left him to bleed to death after slicing through his Achilles' tendons so he couldn't run away. As luck would have it, no one even looked for the boy because he'd run away or rather been driven away by his ‘family’. No one ever bothered that he was missing! He skeletonized in less than a month since he was just left out in the open for all the world to eat. From then on I knew the prey we needed him to hunt. Male runaways, especially drug addicts and prostitutes. Young men no one would miss because the world had condemned them already! The Forgotten Ones! It was a mercy. All those Caine culled would have been dead or worse than dead in a year anyway. They would have killed themselves with drugs, run away STDs, or street violence. If they were picked up by the cops their fates would have become worse than death inside State juvie halls and then within the revolving door of the ‘System’. In and out of incarceration until their short lives would come to a usually brutal end.

Caine proceeded this way for a handful of years. During those times I cleaned up his messes and got him out of problems that would have gotten him caught early. Dagon promised me his soul just like he'd done with Koral, but only if he remained useful for a period of time. So it was in my best interests to keep Caine going for as long as Dagon had use for him. By doing little things like rearranging and disposing of possible evidence, misdirecting detectives, causing ‘accidents' that put eager parents and community members off Caine's scent, I kept the little cunt out of captivity or death. There were a few times when Caine himself would become problematic. He'd start to ‘regret' his actions and I would have to manifest a little to remind him who was really in charge here! His soul belonged to Dagon! He would fulfill his purpose or . . . suffer!

One time I had to do a real ‘miracle' to save the fool! He'd climbed into a little boy's room intending to abduct him right from his bed. I had attempted to tell him not to do it because it was too risky but his hubris had gotten the better of him. I allowed it if for no other reason than it might have proven to Dagon that Caine was of no further use to us. But, no . . . Dagon continued to want the use of Caine and that I'd have to wait longer for my meal of his decaying soul.

In any case, the boy screamed bloody murder (how appropriate) and Caine had not calculated the risk that the boy’s parents were right in the next room not ten feet away. Usually, he was smarter than that. He'd case a place for weeks before committing to a plan of action, but, he'd gotten sloppy and he was horny that night. Boy-flesh was all that was on his corrupted little mind. Daddy heard his son's wails, came charging into his son's room, saw Caine, and aimed his shotgun right at Caine's barreled chest!

It was a close call, but I managed to swat the shots away from Caine and still not manage to hit anyone with my unholy intervention. If my actions had hurt or killed either father or son then Dagon would have cut me loose and leave me for the Angelic Powers to deal with! A prospect I did not and do not relish! It is not for me to personally kill anyone, unfortunately. Such are the rules of this game of God's, Dagon has taught me.

I managed to drag Caine from his stupidity before ‘Pops' could load another shell. I think all concerned were stunned at seeing, first a point-blank shot from a 12-gage shotgun completely MISS its intended target and then see the 180 lb sack of shit being dragged by an unseen force back out the window he came and then mysteriously disappear before reaching the ground.

I had to rest for a week after that one! It is very taxing on a spirit of any kind to use such vulgar displays of power! It also attracts unwanted attention. Dagon had us all stay low for all that same month after the mistake. I punished Caine every night of that month with small smarting scratches I'd make to his body that would mysteriously appear on him by morning. I think he got the picture not to defy me or Dagon again!

A year after that mess, Caine and I were hunting game and found just the perfect young blond out on the streets of West Hollywood where many male runaways go to turn tricks to make ‘burrito money' as they used to call it. I learned his name was Chris. It would be a name I'd learn to rue later! I did not usually bother to find out the names of victims I was casing for Caine, but Dagon took a special interest in this boy so he learned his name. I had to admit that there was something exceptional about Chris but I couldn't place it. I hated it that I couldn't place it and it made me hate this Chris all the more! I felt . . . threatened by him somehow! I felt jealous!

Chris, exceptional or not, was a very easy catch. Caine only had to proposition him for sex, have him get into the back of his van where Caine then clubbed Chris over the head with a rubber sap. I thought this a very undignified way of treating this ‘special boy' and enjoyed the ignominy of it all! The boy didn't even have a chance to fight his fate!

After stripping the boy naked, Caine drove him to an alley and there tied the unconscious Chris to a trashcan. This was another delicious ignominy for such a ‘special' person! I watched as the boy awoke to the horror of his situation, experienced the torment of Caine's knife and then the torment of Caine's dick. At the apex of all of this, Caine did his signature move and completely pared Chris's dick and balls right out of the kid while he wailed in agony! I was concerned that this excess would make too much noise in an urban area as Chris's understandable screams of unbelievable torment were loud and full-throated.

Caine had proven his growth in skill with his ‘art', however. He knew that in that part of Los Angeles at that part of the night, no one cared what they heard. They'd keep to themselves no matter how blood-curdling the screams might be. No one wanted to get involved. It was isolation even better than the woods or desert! The perfect kind of isolation where no one hears because no one listens and no one listens because no one cares! The banality of this evil warmed my icy black heart to no end!

Gurgling and whimpering in continued gut-clenching agony, Chris, the Wonder Boy, could not help but to hold tight onto the spurting bloody stump where his cock had been. It was to no avail, though. Caine, by this time, had learned exactly how to perfect his ‘unkindest cut'. He'd been sure to knick the Femoral Artery near Chris's groin. The boy, twitching and seizing and finally bled his entire blood volume on to the surrounding cement. Caine then covered the dying body up with the surrounding trash in the alley and made to stay and gloat while enjoying a marijuana cigarette. Hearing a commotion coming from up the street and coming closer, I snatched the cigarette from Caine's hand and made him run away before the people could come and discovered his ‘art piece'. This is how I must have missed Chris's spirit rise and enter into Judgement in the Light, which is always my favorite part of a death! I should have stuck around after getting Caine safely situated. I might have been able to prevent what Chris's spirit would do later on in the following decade.

Over the next ten years, my existence as Caine's ‘Guardian Demon' became onerous and monotonous. Caine was not the least bit imaginative which should have worked against him. But, his mode of murder and his care with evidence made him very difficult to catch for the Police. It really became impossible with me helping him avoid certain situations where a detective could corner him or discover something damaging. I was constantly at work frustrating the efforts of one particularly tenacious young detective by the name of Albert Cummings. Caine called him ‘Bertie' with affection. Albert was very good at his job. Too good. So good in fact that I had to make a special project of having Albert transferred up to San Francisco so that he would be out of our hair! Through whisperings and conjurings in dreams, I convinced ‘Bertie's' superiors that he had become ‘too obsessed' with the Chris case and would accept a transfer if he didn't desist with that cold case so that he could work on more important cases. Cases like drug gangs banging each other en-mass. Banging in the getting shot way rather than the more boring sexual way. LA, at the time, was on the verge of a major meltdown and the depredations of one simple serial killer were beneath the notice of the Mayor and City Council of that time. It was particularly pointless if he was a predator of gays and of drug users who were a problem LAPD couldn't get a handle on at all. The fewer junkies to deal with the better…particularly gay ones! This was the reining policy! I could not have concocted a more perfect evil myself if I tried! It was institutionalized so that we could go about our ‘business' unaffected for years more! To that effect, Detective Cummings, due to his stubbornness, would not give up Chris’s case and was summarily transferred from the LAPD to the SFPD well out of our way. My project had been a success!

However, things could not continue to go smoothly for long. To my dismay, Caine had picked up a nasty new habit which made things more difficult for me. He started revisiting the sites of his more favorite kills. His age was catching up with him and it was getting harder to cajole him into taking new victims. I figured he was coming to the end of his usefulness to Dagon, but Dagon persisted with using him or rather allowing him to continue. Dagon was rather distracted from his usual enjoyment of watching children die horribly. He seemed preoccupied by something more pressing, but never let me in on the details.

Today, the idiot Caine is returning to the site of Chris's murder . . . again. This particular site bothers me because I can always feel someone or something watching us as Caine does his jerk-off show on the bloodstains left by Chris. The fact that Chris's blood remains on the concrete where it was spilled ten years ago bothers me even more! It is a familiar phenomenon with spirits that have yet to move on. Some aspect of their physical form remains that ties them to a place. This indicates that Chris is still around and possibly active. This could get annoying if Chris wants vengeance somehow.

It is then that I begin to detect the build-up of some monumental psychokinetic energy suddenly filling the air. I feel a pull like a sucking or a tugging at my abysmal void-shadows that surround the ‘real' me.

Caine senses it too and his perception, oddly, is better than mine which I find extremely confusing and disconcerting! I sense the build-up of energy surrounding a trashcan lid in the corner of ‘Chris's Alley' as Caine has come to name it since my telling him what the boy's name was. Caine almost acts like he is in love with the boy! Like he wouldn't mind fucking the blood-stained concrete with his erectile deficient noodle! He mutters something about ‘Sunshine Boy' and God's leaving him stranded here. He does not realize he is provoking a response!

~ NOW! GET HIM DOWN, NOW! ~ Dagon shouts into me telepathically! The command sends me into the alley and I push down on the fool with all of my spiritual might! The effect is to make Caine appear to duck quickly just as the rattling trashcan lid sails right over where Caine's balding head had been! The strength at which the lid was flung could have easily ripped Caine’s head clean off!

An electrical transformer explodes and then I see Christopher. I am shocked by what I see! He eclipses me, now, in my shadows as he rises in his own shadow and flame! An infernal mockery of his boyish form looking like the personification of the Day of Wrath itself! With a wave of his hand, I see rats come into the alley nearly screaming with their many squeaks in terror as they run scurrying underfoot! Caine, general klutz that he is, nearly falls into their swarming jaws as the rats swirl around Caine's feet like a disgusting brown river of fur and fleas!

My cloaks fade and so my relative invisibility to other spirits lifts as I concentrate all my strength on getting Caine clear of this nightmare! He must not be killed before Dagon is finished with him! Caine stumbles over the gnashing rats, but I steady him, the fool! I look back at what has caused this and see Chris's wrathful form scintillate with hot-white strands of fire occluded by a breathing shadow of smoky blackness! Out from this whirling tornado of darkness, I see two bright pinpoints of light that cut right through his smokey shadows. These twin burning pinpricks are his eyes staring right back into mine! My Red Glare is cut off by those two fiery searchlights that seem to pierce right through me! Chris is not evil! This form is not my kind of Darkness! This terrible darkness is the very wrath of God itself staring back at me, angry and seeking eternal justice! For the first time in years, I fear someone more than Dagon! My terror rises as out from behind Chris two black and smoke fletched wings extend from his back! Now he does look like an avenging angel ready to strike! I push my idiot charge faster and for the first time since the first day I began haunting him, Caine hears my twisted voice:

"RuUuUunnn, YooUu FaiThleSS SwIIIIINe!" I grip his terror-stricken body and drag him to safety once again! Though, now, I don't know if there can be any safety for us! Perhaps, the rules have changed per Dagon's reckoning. Perhaps, God has had enough of our games and has sent one of his wrathful angelic warriors after us! Would Dagon be able to contend with that being? Is that what Chris has become?

~ Stay with Caine. I shall deal with this . . . boy . . . myself. ~ I hear the icy calm of my Master's voice in my essence. He has seen and has understood! Now Chris will see what TRUE power is!

Then I sense something in Dagon’s presence. Rather I sense a lack of his powerful presence within me! The sudden emptiness brings a powerful doubt into my mind.

Perhaps it is I who has been deceived? How will Dagon ‘deal' with the Infernal Chris? My suspicious nature gets the better of me and yet I know Dagon knows my every thought and every feeling. Certainly, he would not . . . replace me?

~ Heh heh ha ha ha haaa ~. It is the only answer I get!

No! NO! GrrrrraaaAAARRRRgh! I have been deceived and now betrayed!

I abandon Caine who is sweating ferociously and gripping at his chest. Hopefully, the old fool dies of his apparent heart attack and goes to Hell where he belongs! I have bigger fish to fry!

I am the Umbereth! I will not be replaced so easily! Not by this upstart! I have suffered and destroyed and perverted and ruined too many lives to be so easily replaced! Dagon will understand that no newcomer could replace my infinite hatred! I am the Darkness In Which All Life Dies! I am the Void! I am the very cold end Dagon fears for himself! He knows this! He will never be rid of me!

I will myself instantly back into Chris's haunted alleyway. I prepare to do battle with him! He may have strength on his side! He may even have God on his side! But, I'll claw out his sparkling eyes first before going down! My vengeance is eternal! My pain never ends! Neither will HIS!

But, alas, he is gone! I go to search for him, but cannot even find a trace! I search the surrounding Spirit Realm finding every ghost, demon, vampire, ghoul, and so many black pinpricks of evil humanity as to boggle the mind! But, I cannot find Chris. I cannot for he is not evil! He is beyond my sight!

Someone inside me cries. Someone inside me causes my eldritch darkness to shudder with wracking sobs! Shut up! Shut up, you weakling! You were the one who wanted this! You were the one who needs this! Ryan McAlester was weak! He is now the Umbereth! He is supreme evil he is . . .

~ Dagon, help me! I have become . . . confused!~ I reach out to the only form of comfort I know now! All I get back is cold, cold silence! He really has abandoned me!

I am now only another lost soul drifting in this Nowhere of Death! But . . . at least I have one thing I can hold on to! I know Christopher will be returning here. He must! For there is one thing my spirit's ‘ears' can hear all to well and it is the one thing I have left to hold on to! It is Chris's wailing death scream that never ends here! His blood! It never washes away! It keeps calling him back here! So here I will wait. For years I will wait if necessary . . . for him to return so that I can have my last fete of vengeance before succumbing to my Judgement and going to Hell where I belong!

Much to my delight and much to my dread, Chris returns far sooner than I thought he would. He has returned to his cute little ‘normal boy' form again. Such a lie! But, who is this that he has with him?

No! IMPOSSIBLE!

The little living boy that follows him! He sees Chris! A medium! How in all the Nine Hells did he find a true medium and there behind him! A PRIEST? A PRIEST OF GOD? Nooooo! This cannot be allowed! I will not be denied even this last bit of satisfaction!

They all are discussing Chris's blood like they are all alive together in the world! The little boy repeats back to the priest all that Chris says, so I, at least, know that the priest is not capable of discerning Chris in any physical way. So it will be that the priest will not sense my attack!

Quickly! I must summon all of my shadows and all of my stealth while they are all distracted! It may be my only chance!

~* He is not forgotten *~ A voice thrums through me nearly shaking me apart! But, I ignore it and unsheathe my spectral claws with which I can rend other spirits to screaming tatters! Just like I did to Koral!

The voice must have distracted the little boy, the one I now know is named Simon, for he definitely heard it! He quickly turns and sees me!

"CHRIS! DUCK . . . OR SOMETHING!" Simon says! AAARRRGH!

My first swipe misses Chris as he does duck and pivot to stare right into my hellish gaze! I must end this quickly before he powers up!

"yOu sHoULd hAVe sTAYYYYEd FORGOTTEN!" I exclaim as I ready another rending blow! Soon Chris will be part of my darkness! His soul can join Koral's as part of my shadows! Chris's pain will become my pain and mine will torment him in turn! His great power will be mine and then I will DESTROY DAGON MYSELF!

~ HAHAHAHAHAHA! No, you won't ~ Dagon mocks me? He MOCKS me? He . . .

Searing anguish! Unspeakable pain! Like white electric fire spreading through my entire etheric being! Then there is an aching, thrumming, sound that permeates and impossibly intensifies the anguish!

"In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti." the voice is clear, calm, without fear, and is spoken with complete faith and belief! The sound is a prayer and a statement of true power! The Priest has found me!

Another wash of agony as diamond bright droplets of the purest holiness strike my corruption! It reminds me, somehow, of the terrible sting alcohol has when it is applied to a festering wound! I suddenly feel disconnected from the pain! Able, now, to analyze it like it isn't a part of me at all!

"EEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!" The shadows around me scream as they are torn away! They absorb the pain and the pain no longer touches me!

I fall through a hole in time and space and find myself adrift in the blackest of voids! Oh no! NO! The priest sent me here! I am in HELL!

But no, about me drift other souls that are bright and shining! Something pulls at them like a current of light! I turn to see from whence the streamer of shining rainbows comes!

I am dazzled by the brightest of Lights that spread out like the petals of a million flowers of every color imaginable and some, perhaps, that have no names at all! I shiver because I know to Whom that Light belongs!

"P-pplease! H-have Mm-Mercy! PLEASE!" I call to Him, pleading! I am before the Judge! Dagon warned me of the Vestibule of Heaven! It is the place where souls are judged and then cast down into eternal separation from this perfect beautiful vision now shimmering before me! The true Void! The perfect of all Hells! Eternal separation from the Love if feel pulsating from the Light!

But, instead of searing righteous flame reaching for me, I see the same rainbow streamers that have attached themselves to all the other souls around me. Gently, the ray of Love cradles me and I begin moving gently towards the Light as if it is gathering me up into its arms!

"Don't be afraid, Ryan! It will all be ok now. You are finally free! Your captivity is over! Now come into My healing arms and know, My Beloved, that I am GOD!"

The Eternal voice that Dagon lied to me about. It is not the Voice of a stern and vengeful monster! It is the Voice of Perfect Love that accepts me for as He made me and wants, at last, my long torment to end.

I am Ryan McAlester again! I was the victim of a horrific crime. I was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by another broken soul in need of much healing. I was captured by a devil and made to serve him for years. I thought that shadow of death was me! But, those shadows were only my prison.

Unfettered, I glide freely into the Love of God so that I may live again and to do so happily forever after as a being of perfect light! No shadows remain for me! I am free!

Amen!

UMBERETH