Fall 2016

WWWeb

Wild, Weird, Wonderous , Exotic and Bizarre

INSIDE Tales of terror with The Portray Protocols Be careful of what you create! - The Imaginarium is everywhere Agent Coffin discovers old wounds and even older horrors in “For it Suffices Only to Wish” Mexican myths and a man of bone

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WELCOME I took a stroll down the digital memory lane. And I came across old friends.

Truly sincere and well-tested friends of mine who have long lived in zeroes and ones, on dead trees and in the corridors of my heart and soul. There were monsters, men who fought monsters, aliens, robots and half-animal, half-human creatures all who have been with me throughout my life.

Sure, some such as the Monster Man, the Black Parakeet or the pirates of the Requiem have seen their red carpet release into the world. But there have been others – those that have been secluded, hidden away not because of shame but because of how they fit or didn’t fit with other tales. And because they had not yet grown into full length novels of their own.

So these disjointed stories, these oddly collected friends yearned to see daylight. And that is ultimately what brought them altogether – misfits who gained strength in numbers, stories that you needed to finally see.

Enjoy the dark fantasy, the science-fiction and everything in-between. Let go and get caught up in the WWWeb.

The Portray Protocols: “Inside the Closet and Under the Bed”

Chad

The Portray Protocols: “Inside the Closet and Under the Bed”...3 Imaginarium: “As She Thinketh”...15 Coffin: “For It Suffices Only to Wish”...20 Marigolds & Calacas - “Break the Branches”...34

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Something in the shadows struggled, bleating like sheep with blades under their neck.

There was the rhyme…

Jonathan Portray, under the gray-and-black body armour, slicked over in a sheet of sweat. His strength, the

Inside the Closet and Under the Bed

servo-motors and the suit’s systems pulled as he continued the conflict.

That is what the monster said

The creature pulled its opponent closer.

Bone white needle teeth flashed

“Brian, time for bed!!!”

Whatever resided at the end of the rot-green arm bit at Portray. Mammoth jaws clamped, snapping repeatedly

Brian Walsted finished brushing his teeth much against his eight-year old wishes. He would do whatever he

at the metal shell. The Parannihilator ducked and backhanded the attack. Titanium and porcelain shell struck

could to not go to bed tonight. He would even lean on sore tiptoes over a hard sink. He would even brush

something slippery and sinewy.

long enough that the stalling would cost him in blood running from his gums; dripping into pink splotches and

The armoured man did not let go. The twisted hand struggled still.

swirling down, washing away.

In the dreary light of the closet, Professor Jonathan Portray battled with a myth.

“O-okay, mom…” he answered back. Each stammer in the boy’s voice birthed more fear. And each labor

Portray was clad in billion dollar armour with servo motor strength and mainframe/multi-layered operating

cracked open with peering eyes and greedy talons.

system.

Brian’s mother prepared him for bed, not noticing the gut-wrenching terror inside him.

His opponent was a child’s fears and the war was in its favor and it was always that way.

For most adults never noticed the fear.

Whether they howled at a full moon or slid from a coffin and grave, the things Portray hunted were legends and

Brian pulled a book from under his pillow. He wrote that his parents didn’t understand his fears. He wrote that

myths.

they did not see the things he was afraid of. The boy wrote feverishly that he did not want to go to sleep, he did

Jonathan was only a man.

not want to be in his room. Most of all, he wrote a declaration to protect his little cousin who was spending the

“PA-1, SIT-REP!” Nancy Portray, adorned in black coveralls and flak jacket, spoke into a wireless

night.

communication system from the hallway outside the child’s room. It was an innocent place, a suburban home

Brian swore to defend Ronnie.

where Little League pictures hung on walls. It was a quiet house where family portraits smiled back and vases sat on tables.

The young boy stood at the doorway, watching his mom go downstairs.

It was also a battleground where her brother fought for his life.

He turned facing the bed.

In the field, Nancy called Jonathan by his active designation but even with the armour, the weapons and the

And what seemed like miles between it; between he and the bed.

training, a sister’s heart, even an adopted sister’s heart, still skipped a worried beat.

And to face what was underneath.

The female Portray held the SIG Sauer P226 tightly in her hand. Special advancements made the cold and gray weighted metal a weapon to kill myths and superstitions. Behind her, Andrews and two other agents knelt with

There was the reason -

firearms identical to hers.

Inside the Closet and Under the Bed

Andrews had secured the house. The family was removed with a woven story of loose exotic animals from

They like to dance with children dead

a local collector. The Portrays’ government liaison blinked once as Nancy looked back at him waiting for Jonathan’s reply.

“TELL ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!!!!”

“PA-1! SIT-REP! I REPEAT – PA1! SIT-REP!”

The armour was running at high.

“ONE SEC, PA-2!” Portray answered with his digitized voice. His words rose over the bleating and mewling.

Servo motors were supplying Jonathan with enhanced strength. He stood his ground, reaching into pure

Jonathan’s eye-shields returned the thing he held tight in clear hi-definition. What little he could see in between

darkness inside a closet. Nothing seen save for a hand, it was long; twice the length of a human arm and it

shadow and darkness, he saw clear with wetness and green vein.

pulsated in pustules with wet flu-ill green skin. Claws clicked in the bedroom air while an armoured glove held

“TELL ME!!!!” the metal man demanded. He pulled and was pulled in the same breath. The Parannihilator

tight.

slammed boot heels that dug into plush carpet. Action figures flew about as tables and desks were rattled.

Red eyes simmered and beat down upon the man under a charcoal gray shell of metal.

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“NEVER!!! IT WILL NEVER TELL!!” the voice gurgled under the surface of some dark water covered with stink and growth. It was words atop hissings, lisps and coil slides in the dark. “INSSSSIDE THE CLOSSSET AND UNDER THE BED---!”

“DON’T YOU!!!!” Jonathan retrieved a weapon from a side holster. It was a hand cannon – large with a dark silver glint; a metal cylinder with gripped handle and lights running in sequence on the barrel.

It hummed, pointing into the shadowy area, the barrel placed squarely between two red eyes.

“NO!!!” the thing shrieked, still held and still bound, “It will tell!!! The next one hasss left to feed! IT WILL TELL!!! IT WILL TELL!! Do not kill it---do—not kill---it!!!” Whatever it was, it feared for its life.

Under the armour, Jonathan narrowed his blue eyes, sweat running in them. He spoke through gritted teeth.

“Tell me and IT will NOT DIE! I promise!!”

The woman nodded. Silence swelled in the small hallway. It ran down stairs and swirled between banister rails.

“Nancy,” the agent continued, “I’ve been around you two long enough to know when something’s wrong. That phrase “Inside the closet and Under the Bed…”” “It set him off,” the female Portray interjected, looking out in the direction of her brother’s exit.

Andrews narrowed his eyes. “Is Jonathan good to go?”

Nancy breathed deep. “It was a rescue mission before we hooked up with you and the project. We didn’t even log it with your people.”

The government liaison folded his arms. “I’m not happy about information missing from our logs, Nancy.”

“I know and I’m sorry we kept this one in the dark. It was a mess. No cover stories, no memory wiping. It

In the hallway, Nancy and Andrews heard the specific crack of the armoured man’s weapon.

The Parannihilator walked from the child’s room.

The closet inside the room smoldered with the left over discharge of the holstered hand cannon. A splash of thick green dripped down the nearest wall. The fluid ran down a poster of sports heroes and over a nearby lamp.

Nancy and Andrews came to the metal man’s side.

“We heard the next attack,” began Andrews, “A UH-60 Blackhawk is prepping as we speak.” He slid a hand to the side of his head, guiding agents over the com-unit in his ear and in his collar.

The Parannihilator nodded and began walking to the hallway window. Lightning cracked outside the glass and rain started to pelt the window. Wind blew branches of leafless trees, shadows seemed to claw and reach at Portray. The professor prepared to leave out into the night the same way he came in.

“Jonnie,” Nancy started, off to the side and stopping her brother’s exit, “How’re you holding up?”

was…horrible. That phrase about the closet and the bed? It hits Jonnie hard because he’s heard it before.”

Nancy started her own path to exit the home. Her liaison followed behind, an eyebrow raised.

“Heard it before? From one of these things?”

Portray stopped. “Yes.” The agent stayed rigid in his stance. His team continued wiping the house of evidence. “Heard the words when he killed one of these monsters?”

She paused in a moonlit doorway leading out the house. “No. Jonathan heard it when he lost a little girl to one.”

Inside the Closet and Under the Bed, That is what the monster said.

“I’m good.” A sheet of rain slapped against the window and the side of the house. Lightning flashed blue and

###

white as thunder followed seconds later, rolling along the rooftop. Hi-resolution digital coating made the armor automatically darken from the sky’s sudden brightness.

Nancy stopped. Her skin caught moonlight from the window.

“Uh-huh. Now stop lying to me.”

Somewhere, in a gray, hazed place, something swam through layers of ether. Something slid and crawled, prowled and swung from child’s fear to child’s nightmare. It could feel the terror, the shaking body and tensionsoaked nerves of a young boy and his oblivious cousin. It could feel the boy; it could taste him – warm, moist

The male Portray turned metal head towards his sister.

“It was--- just like before. I got emotional…I got sloppy… “ “You want us to take point? Andrews would understand,” Nancy returned.

“No…no…but thanks, sister. I wouldn’t get any rest.” A slight hum of the body armour as the operative perched up on the window’s seal. “And neither would she.”

Lightning flashed leaving a white crack in the purple sky.

Portray was gone.

Andrews moved up beside Nancy. “We’re set. No one saw anything so there is no need for the mind-wipe solutions and light-show. Clean up crew is on their way up. Wheels up in ten.”

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and sweet. It was near the doorway, either the closet or the bed.

Brian Walsted went to Ronnie, sleeping quietly on the little cot his parents had made for her.

It was a cot thought Brian, a cot not a bed so they were safe by it.

It was even away from the closet.

But, he knew, that when It came for him, It would want her too.

And he loved his cousin like a sister. And he would protect her.

Walsted continued to write. More promises to keep Ronnie safe.

The plastic toy sword in his hand shook as much as he did. He was glad he had gone to the bathroom before.

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He and other children knew the truth.

They just knew.

And then they grew up and forgot as his parents must have forgotten. But that was if they grew up at all.

He entered his bed.

His toy sword ready.

His mind raced, trying not to think about the story of the little girl.

The little girl in Chicago that the whispers say they took.

Underneath the bed, far beneath, the shadows began to move. ### Jonathan Portray’s mind raced back to years before. When it was only he and Nancy hunting, before the government had ever found them.

He was stretched out on the carpeted floor of a child’s bedroom.

Stuffed toys cast about.

Nightlights flickering on the wall near his sweating face.

Jonathan’s jaw was tight and the deep scratches on his cheek welled up with red. His blonde hair tossed about and mixed with blood.

Jonathan was clad in paramilitary black and the mask that hid his face was next to him, shredded down the side. Portray was struggling and his neck showed muscles and tendons, looking as if to tear soon.

Portray’s right hand griped onto a nearby table.

His left held onto to a little girl.

She was crying, eyes running with salted water.

The child held onto him with one small hand. The other hand disappeared, wrapped underneath the sickly green grasp of something reaching from under the bed.

Eyes peered out from the shadows and fangs locked in a smile.

Jonathan lurched forward as the girl slipped away.

Tears in his eyes, Jonathan Portray screamed.

That was Chicago.

“Jon?” The professor lifted from his slumber on the plane.

He and the team were half-way over the country by now.

The armour was locked up with engineers running diagnostics. The illuminated buttons and displays of the plane’s overhead lights mixed with the coloration of the armour’s transportation casing. Together, the lights cast a green glow on Jonathan.

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“Andrews,” Portray answered, rubbing his face, shaking his head. “Hey…yeah…what’s up?”

Brian Walsted was frozen in bed, large-eyed and unmoving.

“ETA is fifteen minutes. You’ll have an acquired drop zone. A ground unit will clear out the parents with a

He waited for it to come. The arrival would raise the hairs on the back of his neck. Its smell would fill his nose

gas leak cover. Mission equipment includes two enhanced firearms, one titanium hand-and-half sword and one

with the stink of rotting leaves like the woods outside his house; eight-year old skin would crawl like a hundred

adapted explosive, C-4 mix, remote detonation and shaped charge.”

worms.

“Thanks, G-man.” Jonathan rose up and began the unlock sequence on the armour’s housing. Engineers gave

He had seen it before. It had toyed with his fears and left marks on his arms and legs. It was marinating the

him several simultaneous nods notifying Portray the suit was ready.

child in his own terror and dread.

Andrews went to walk away and stopped. “Jon, I don’t need to tell you about collateral dam…about losing

Brian knew that first he would hear its whisper.

innocents in our line of work. I talked to Nancy. You did what you could.”

Portray nodded in return.

Inside the closet and under the bed…

“I let that little girl slip away, Andrews. I failed. She died. It comes down to that…”

“You’re wrong and you need to get that through your head. You’re half-assed on this mission and you can’t

Then he would feel the claws.

save another child because you haven’t let the Chicago case go.”

His mother and father always missed seeing the scratches.

In the cockpit, the pilot’s helmet shined with the sudden light snapping on to her left. She ran her fingers over a

Unable to sleep, waiting for his legendary opponent, the boy turned onto his side.

keypad near the new light and a red pulsing took over the LED recently come to life.

He stopped; his breath held. Ronnie’s big eyes and long hair was nearly in his face.

The pilot came on over the intercom.

Brian, I gots scared by myself…so I hopped into your bed!”

“Sirs, we are upon the drop-zone. Per procedure, I will need the verbal mission code and passphrase. Should

The little boy’s mouth fell open with frightened realization. She was a fly ignorantly in the web. She was a

you not give the correct code, this plane will detonate, wiping out everything onboard. All data concerning

lamb drinking a swipe’s distance from the wolf.

Project: Wivestale will be deleted. Any parties associated with the project will be reassigned or wet worked.

Now in the bed alongside him, Brian’s cousin Veronica “Ronnie” Dawson was no longer safe.

Do you understand?”

A hiss of fetid air spread out from under the bed. It dissipated at the ends of a thick fog.

Andrews nodded in reflex. “Yes, we do, captain.” Jonathan was slipping into the flexible layers of his

Something bubbled and popped. Blood red eyes lit in the bedspread’s shadows.

protective body armour. It hissed as it secured around his body.

Fangs shined to life.

The pilot continued. “Give me the code, sir.” The myth-hunter flexed his hands in the enhanced grip of the

“Brian Walssssted and Ronnie Dawsssson,” The words out. The voice was like roadside rot, gutted fat and

suit’s gloves. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the digital overhead display.

slick. “Time to come with ussss.” With its last word, the hand, green and clawed, rippling and tapping,

Portray answered, the helmet sliding down his head. Beeping and clicking as it locked and sealed. “Pass code:

stretched out on a thin arm, reaching out from under the bed.

Bravo, Delta, Charlie, Seven, Eight. Passphrase: ‘Inside the Closet, Under the bed.’”

“N-no!!” Brian held to his littler cousin, putting himself between she and the wanting thing.

There was the usual pause. Nancy now walked up alongside her brother in the back of the plane.

The room burst with a gust of wind and a spray of shattering glass. The Parannihilator crashed through; his

The pilot returned over the communications. “Confirmed. Good luck, Professor.”

weapons drawn and pointing at the bed. Moonlight flooded in with him. The armour’s operating system

The sister touched her brother’s shoulder. The metal man nodded.

reported back sensor sweeps of the room and house. The firing controls focused main power to the weapon

The plane’s door opened with a slice of air quickening to a roar.

systems and determined targets in the area.

The Parannihilator leaned out. He threw a look at Nancy and Andrews who were locked into their seats.

“DO NOT TOUCH THEM.” The voice rang with a digital echo.

“Let her go, Jon,” Andrews said.

The shadowy intruder shifted its attention with a bulging of the nearest eye to the Parannihilator.

Wind howled inside the cabin. Clothes and hair billowed with ease.

“Wait…It knowssss you, metal man. It…It rememberssss you well….”

Suited up yet bound in regret, Jonathan Portray leapt forward and disappeared into the night.

“KIDS---“ Portray began. Brian and Ronnie responded to the metal man’s impending direction. They held one another and waited on his words.

###

The thing under the bed smiled wide. “It rememberssss you…yessss…”

“---MOVE IT! NOW!!”

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“…Chicago.”

Brian Walsted looked at the hungry shadows.

The Parannihilator fired several bursts of specialized blue and white weaponized energy under the bed. The

He looked back at his shining knight.

unseen entity roared like metal coils sliding in sparking conflict. Brian Walsted moved to get Ronnie out of the

Portray sweated behind the featureless helmet. Armour hydraulics and servos compensated and increased

room just as something wet and cold clamped onto her leg.

enhancement to his hold. However, the on-board computers warned: the boy would pull apart.

She fell, a five-year old thud onto the floor.

Chicago ran through Portray’s mind: a dead girl somewhere in this thing’s belly.

Brian crashed with her. His toy sword fell to the ground.

Under the bed, the thing smiled at the sudden tug-of-war.

Ronnie looked back. She screamed.

“WE’VE DONE THISSSS BEFORE!”

A green hand glistened, holding onto her leg. Young skin shivered against the crawlspace cold flesh.

“Not quite like this, you son-of-a-bitch!” Jonathan reached into his backpack; he ruffled past Andrews’ mission

“Damn it---! “Jonathan fired once more, striking the child-killer in its veined arm. Blackish-green and jellied

loadout.

splashes burst from the impact of the bluish-white shots. It howled again and exchanged one arm for another.

The creature could not see all happenings; the boy was in the way. It was content to continue pulling and

Not losing an inch of the adolescent meal attempting to escape.

pulling.

Before his next shot, Jonathan found his opportunity blocked by the boy. Without hesitation, Brian Walsted

The protector attached something to the boy and then let go.

had thrown himself onto his littler cousin.

It had the boy. Brian Walsted slid quickly to the bed.

“BRIAN!!!” Ronnie called out; her voice cracking and tears in her eyes.

And then his abduction stopped.

“RONNIE!” Brian answered back.

“What?”

“BRIAN?!?!” Ronnie’s big eyes looked up with heavy tears, light hair hung in the girl’s face. “I’M SCARED,

The Parannihilator stared into the dark abyss where an elongated arm held a young boy. “If you think that is

BRIAN!!”

what you’re afraid it is,” Jonathan began, “You’re right. It’s a bomb. A big one. Specially designed. So go

“It’s okay, Ronnie!!!” The Walsted boy turned his gaze to the red eyes under the bed and to the wet teeth

ahead. Take the kid…but you won’t get to enjoy him.”

gnashing with growing speed.

Fangs went from a smile to clenched rage. It let the boy go but not before Jonathan could grab the fleeting arm.

The Parannihilator shifted his firearm for a better shot but pulled back his aim. The children’s constant motions

Portray placed his hand cannon to the set of illuminated eyes. “With your last thought, warn the rest of your

made his attack impossible. Another barrage of cursing under his breath and Portray moved to grab both

kind: There are two places that are not safe anymore: one is inside the closet…!”

children.

It snarled.

“You….” Brian began, speaking to his nightmare spat out in vein flesh. “Let her go---please… “ he begged,

“The second is under the bed!”

holding onto his cousin. The creature’s one arm was wounded.

The Parannihilator fired his weapon point blank.

It could only hold one child. Brian was a bit bigger and that meant boy was a better meal. ###

“You come in her place…”

“HELL NO---“ Portray moved to slide the gun under the bed. The beast moved Ronnie in its guard. “…Okay…” Brian let slip. The word was soft but damning.

Brian and Ronnie held each other in the corner.

“NO!!!” Portray called out. Ronnie slipped from the grasp; Portray ushered her out of the room. The monster

The Parannihilator ran vitals on the children from across the room. Besides some bruising and lacerations, they

reached for Brian, felt his warm hand.

were fine.

“Yessss.”

“PA-1 to Ground Mobile Base, target neutralized. Civilians safe, no casualties. Prepping Memory-Wipe.” The

It touched the boy.

on-board operating system began to initialize the protocols for memory tampering. It was a dangerous science

“Feelssss nice…”

but one that had proven a necessity in the business of creature-killing and horror-hunting. With the proper blend

It had the boy.

of light-based, optical rhythms and epidermal-contact drugs, the hypothalamus and amygdala proved malleable.

“He feelsss---What??!?!?!”

Red eyes and clawed-terrors became foggy memories and believed stories of gas leaks or exotic animals. Even

The Parannihilator was on the other end of the boy; Metal gloves held tightly to the boy’s free arm.

torn apart family members became accident casualties or murder victims.

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The tall, shiny man moved silently over to the children. He knelt down.

After multiple security checks, the metal man removed the C-4 explosive device from the boy.

He had won: one war in a child’s room.

“Who are you?”

The Parannihilator knelt down. Agents began to fill the room.

The eye-shields on the armoured man illuminated. Then, the gaze began to blink slowly at first and then faster and faster with a strobe light effect.

“Not important, kid. Just keep this between you and me, ok?” Brian and Ronnie nodded. Jonathan Portray, clad in gray and black, placed the palms of his gloves on the sides of the children’s heads. Porous apertures released beta blocking chemicals directly into the temples.

“Just hold still you two. And keep looking at my eyes, okay?”

The children nodded and their gazes began to haze.

“Hey…hey….mister, they say,” Brian started, slowly and sluggish in his diminishing speech. “They say that--that once, one of them took…took a little girl…took a little girl away.”

The Parannihilator paused.

The Imaginarium - “As She Thinketh”

“Yeah, but next time someone talks about that little girl, you tell them about how one of those monsters lost tonight.” It was a moot statement. Brian Walsted and Ronnie Dawson would never remember Portray’s words.

The light show burst one last time and the chemicals settled. The wipe was over. The children would sleep for the rest of the night and well into the day. They would awaken to the feeling of bad dreams only. And fading bad dreams at that.

Agents were restoring the room, cleaning the greenish gel from the battle. The Parannihilator strode past.

“PA-1 to Ground Mobile Base. Message to Liaison –I let her go.”

THE END

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Whomever she was, she had reached the end.

She was beautiful in normal circumstances, but now, she was red, sweaty and disheveled from what appeared to be a long and breathless chase. She stood at the edge of the window sill, the city stretched out before her. Even though her world was huffing and puffing with pains in her chest, Chicago at night cared little.

She turned, her dark hair swirling about her thin face. The Windy City lived up to its name, whipping brunette tresses about her eyes.

“You don’t have to run…you don’t.” The man behind her spoke with a slight quickening of breath himself.

“Trust me, Beatrice. Just follow me, okay?”

“And be shackled by the Imaginarium?” she said with breaking words, cracking with teary eyes. “How can you work for them, Executor???”

The man lowered his eyes for a second. “If you only knew, Beatrice…” he whispered to himself.

The young woman closed her eyes and the air between she and the man suddenly roared with blaring sound and burning lights. Beatrice shut her own gaze away and focused hard, her normal marvelous abilities of music, sound and airborne artistry was hurled at him in attack. The unfinished open floor vibrated feverishly. The Executor held his ears and blood ran from between his fingers.

Over the light show, he spoke, focusing hard still, past her assault. “LOOK, I CAN HELP YOU! It won’t be like you think! Registration isn’t that bad. Then it’s over…and you’re free, Beatrice. Free to go back to creating.” The word hung in the air with a sense of caress and hold.

The woman’s attack faded away as quickly as it came to life. She looked at the man. He looked at her. The world around them hung still for a moment. And the Executor reached out his hand to Beatrice. For a second, she may have been reaching out in return.

Suddenly, the moment shattered. In the night skyline, above the glittering skyscrapers and the few hover-cars out this late, a competing strobe of lights blasted the unfinished floor where the two minds had conflicted.

“FREEZE, THIS IS THE IMAGINARIUM! YOU WILL REMAIN STILL AND UNTHINKING UNTIL YOU ARE PROCESSED AND REGISTERED!” The sky-ship was a silhouette in the backdrop of its bright white lights. Even obscured, however, it was a well-armed shadow as many Creatives had found out to their chagrin.

“Bastard!” Beatrice hissed at the man who had pursued her for half a city and two nights straight. She then spun with her physical eyes closing and mind’s eye opening outside her body. Before she could hurl any thoughts or creations towards her would-be captors, the sky-ship fired. The plasma pulse superheated the air and erupted the portion of building just beneath Beatrice’s footing.

She screamed out and fell.

“NO!” The Executor hurled himself nearly out of the hole and thrust his hand out. With his own eyes closed this time, he pushed beyond the confines of his head; outside his body and down through the steel, glass and towards the dropping woman.

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He reached out and Beatrice’s fall stopped. The very fabric of the building warped, molded and bent to catch her gently while stopping her terminal descent.

She was still – unconscious from the attack or the fall but she was alive; resting in the twisted, bed of glass and steel.

Imaginarium agents moved in to retrieve Beatrice Jefferson, singer, mathematician, genius, unregistered Creative - walking time bomb.

The man who had saved her was Archytas Imhotep Ibn Neumann, but to people who knew him, he was simply Tas. He would be twenty-four his next birthday and he could simultaneously write a symphony, play ten chess games, write two masterpiece novels and speak twenty languages. He could also bend physical objects with his mind, manipulate solid matter, control his metabolism and defend Creative attacks.

Tas Neumann was an IRISS Executor for the Imaginarium, the world’s leading body in handling Creatives.

When five years ago, one man walked into his job and literally exploded after his co-workers laughed at his music, the governments of the world needed someone to understand the sudden awakening of powerful mentally gifted individuals.

Neumann was a child when he was drafted to work for the agency. As an IRISS Executor, his job was to Investigate, Register, Inspect, Survey and Secure when need be. As an IRISS Executor, he had been trained to do things that few other Creatives could.

But he was still just a man and a young one at that. Were it not for his own need to control his abilities and for the benefits of the Imaginarium’s employment, he would not be here. He would have been running like Beatrice.

But were it not for the agency, Neumann would not have his sister. Maria Gaetana Neumann or “MG” was eleven years old and her mind was strong enough that she once telekinetically built a city overnight and devastated it by morning.

Neumann turned from the broken window and the sight of the Imaginarium. He turned and walked away.

THE END

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Outskirts of Germany.

1945.

There were six of them at first.

Young men.

More like boys.

They remembered school; remembered playing. Remembered chasing girls because they liked them but never saying so.

Six of them.

Two wanted to be soldiers. Another a banker. One wanted a farm and he promised to share with the other who wanted to raise horses.

The last, Erick, wanted to be a writer.

He wrote down everything. All the exploits of these six good friends.

Now, there were four of them.

One died running. Shot in the back as his legs pumped and lungs cried out.

Another died in a camp much like this one.

The remaining four never saw how he died only heard. Through whispers. Through teary testimonials of mothers and grandmothers.

Coffin: “For It Suffices Only To Wish ”

Even through the sobbing faces of men. And that always stuck with young Eric. He had never known days when the proud and square jawed men cried too.

Now. Everyone cried. There were days, unspoken days, when the atrocity touched everyone. There were days when Erick Gershaw even saw some of the German troops, not much older than he, cry.

Alone.

Where no one could see them.

Where the idea of following orders was not strong enough to hold them from the worst humanity could offer.

And that was a monster that none could escape.

At night, in a crowded structure for prisoner sleeping, Erick Gershaw rested. He hugged himself for warmth as the black sky poured in with breath-chilling moonlight. “Erick.”

The boy, barely a man, turned in his sleep. The voice was a dream.

“Erick,” it continued, “I can give you what you want.”

Erick still turned. Still tussled. The papers he scribbled on for his sanity’s sake crushed tightly in his hands.

The sleeping quarters were cramped. Dark. Cold. Filthy.

“Wish, Erick. And you will have all you want and more.”

“I want…” Gershaw said, partially awake, halfway asleep. No one else could hear the conversation.

“Yes, tell me what you wish. Do you want all of these soldiers who bind your people dead?”

20

21

The boy turned silently.

and overall, the government operative was exceptionally handsome.

“Do you want the strength to tear the fences from around this camp of death?”

“Save the Mr. Mystery crap,” she snapped back. The gum popped in her mouth. “You got that look.” “You

The shanty bed creaked. Young Erick let slip in between slumbering breaths. “I want….to be free.”

manage to see past the ton of mascara?” he replied. Lucretia Vanderstock was the dictionary reference for the

It was not a wish for family or friends. So long in the camp that even these notions left him. Left him at his basest

word “gothic.” Jet black hair with nails and lipstick to match. With her signature short mushroom cut hair, she

and most primal. When all he wanted was freedom.

was a pretty girl. And she was a spitfire, hard ass as well.

“Yes, your prosperity will start there. I have talked to the others, Erick. Thomas. Lawrence. Fitzgerald. They

“Bite me,” she returned. Woodrow ran his tongue against his incisors. They were human again.

all want what you want. I shall give you freedom and much more. And all I want in return…”

“Maybe later…but not now.” His brown eyes and caramel skin were normal. But, yesterday, he was a blood-

Erick inhaled.

drinking immortal, dancing in a pool of blood when he killed a nest of nosferatu by himself.

“…is your life.”

And there was that smile again. That smile that unnerved everyone on his team. From the guards at the Presidio

Erick breathed. Just then the door burst in. Allied troops had taken the camp. Freedom was at hand.

in San Francisco to the scientists and techs that had studied him for decades. The smile was the only thing that

A wish had been granted.

never changed on Coffin.

A deal had been struck. A favor owed.

Corpse. Ghoul. Demon. He had been them all and more.

That was almost seventy years ago.

And even when he was human-like again, the smile always pointed to the fact that the man and the monster shared something. ###

Vanderstock narrowed her eyes at her friend. He turned back towards peering outside.

“We’ve got something, people.” The proper British voice belonged to Jackson Marsterby, former British

Now.

intelligence, now the coordinator and lead agent for Coffin and his team. He walked from the cockpit clad in

The blade was at the immortal’s throat. Her blood sacrifice interrupted.

mission operative dark colors and uniform. Marsterby had short dark brown hair and clear blue eyes as if he could

Coffin held the weapon tight. His eyes were red. His skin was a pale brown. His teeth were clenched fangs.

look through someone. His features were defined and there was a touch of elegance and procedure to the man that

“You should understand…” she said through gritted jaws of sharp teeth, “You are---one-of-us!”

made him appear to have leapt from Ian Fleming’s best work.

The man smiled. “Only today…” he said.

“Powers that be have reassigned us,” Marsterby continued, “Mid-air refuel and redirect.”

“I finish this sacrifice, anything can be mine…” she said, bound tightly in his grip. “Yours…”

“What’s up, Jack?” Coffin asked. Lucretia leaned against the plane wall next to him.

He said nothing. The blade remained.

“Mr. Hassan, please bring us up to speed.” Behind Jack was a young man - Raja Hassan. Big, dark eyes with hair

“We know about you – hunter, killer, shape-shifter. Maybe we know more than you know about yourself…. what

to match and copper skin, he was maybe a year or two older than Lucretia. Born on the streets of the Middle East,

would you want, man called Coffin? Power? Knowledge….?”

he was a technical wizard and master of cultural and historical information. Raja was also Coffin’s biggest fan.

He remained silent.

Wood often fought a losing battle about being called “mister” or “sir”.

“What would you wish for?” she hissed.

“There have been disappearances, Mr. Coffin” Raja began.

The blade cut.

“Four affluent and beloved pillars of Jewish communities have disappeared all within two weeks of each other.

They have just suddenly left their families, their jobs, everything. No signs of struggle. No signs of trouble---“ ###

“Hold on, Raj,” Woodrow interjected, “Jack, how did we get pulled in on this? Why not normal authorities?”

“These men are important enough for our higher ups to want them found. Second, one of the possible victims

“How’re you holding up?”

left a note for his wife. She brought it to local law enforcement but they dismissed it. In the letter he mentions

Lucretia walked over to Woodrow Coffin, who was leaning, staring out the window of the military transport plane.

owing a debt. Having to pay a voice, an entity that freed him during the second World War. We believe that we

The craft was empty save for Coffin, his team and the plane’s crew. The engines had a soft hum as the wind cut

may have found information about the last man to disappear.”

over the wings. The blues, orange and purples of a dawning day crept in through the windows.

Marsterby handed a photo to Woodrow.

Woodrow smiled with only silence as his answer. He was tall and chiseled in build. His jaw square, his hair short

“His name is Erick Gershaw.”

22

23

Erick closed his eyes. Teary. “Yes, it is.” ### ### The concentration camp had been bombed out decades ago. The ground leveled and no one desired to build back upon it. Despite the generations of nature that had grown over it, this was still a desolate spot.

The back of the plane whined.

A huge crater coated in the blackest earth and ash was all that was left.

There was very little metal that separated the inside of the plane from the roar of the sky and winds mere inches

No brick walls with bullet holes.

away.

No barbed fencing. No spotlight sweeps, smells of death and no soulless guards.

It was cold. It was dark. Coffin swiped the tablet and the file of Erick Gershaw including his concentration camp

There was now, only a memorial erected next to these grounds. In memory of those that had never escaped the

experiences.

horrid place that once stood proud, defiant and evil.

The night-creature’s words from a day ago came to Woodrow again. What would you wish for?

Erick walked. Now grayed and older, he moved about aided by cane. He pulled his overcoat together. His scarf

No one knew who or what Woodrow N. Coffin was. His history classified. His origins obscured. The government

whipped around his body.

operative played with a sliver of wood in his hands. Would he wish to know his past?

This wilderness that was still there.

“Find anything?” Lucretia asked. She was running final preparations on the communication systems.

The day was gray.

“No,” he answered back, moving once again through the documents, “The note to his wife was very cryptic. This

The air cold.

voice he mentions…There’s a great deal of debt to it…Cross-check those attributes against the European block

Long dead trees reached up still. Like silhouetted dancers frozen for all time. The ground was hard and cracked

bestiary. I want to know what we may be facing.”

with the cold and slight sheet of eternal frost.

“Copy that, I’ll even call my grandma Nikita,” she leaned over and her fingers danced on the keyboard. She

Gershaw walked to the edge of the leveled camp.

paused. “Feeling ‘monster-y’ yet?”

He closed his eyes.

Woodrow paused and looked the young woman in her dark eyes.

He had not visited this place in half a century; partially out of fear and more so out of guilt.

“Nothing yet. Still human. Do me a favor – run all the data about the concentration camp Gershaw was at.

He could hear the dead; the angry dead - those that did not make it out.

Everything from the other prisoners even to the guards.”

Was it simply that they did not wish?

The young woman in black nodded. “Copy that,” she said.

“I am…here,” Gershaw said out to the open.

Vanderstock looked at the piece of wood in Coffin’s hand. It spun in his grasp. It turned over in his fingers.

Nothing. For a second, he thought maybe he had imagined it all. A dreamer within a dream. He could go back

“That’s a piece of it, isn’t it?” she asked.

home. Dismiss this insane trip as a delusion. He could rest in his wife’s arms again.

The man nodded. “One of the only pieces of the pine casket I was found in over forty years ago. Alamagordo,

Then, the air stopped around him. Stopped. Paused. And the ground breathed.

New Mexico. Army base goes up in a ball of fire. Twenty-three dead. Only thing left in the debris is a wooden

“I missed you, Erick. I missed you very much.”

coffin with a baby inside – me.”

He heard it. More so felt it. And his body tingled with fear. In his nightmares, in his dreams gone bad, where his

The young woman played with the numerous metal studs in her ears.

wife of many years was not there to strengthen him. Where his children, grand children and great grandchildren

“I always say you don’t look TOO bad for your age.” The two laughed a bit. But Lucretia knew that Coffin

were not there to love him. In his nightmares, the voice was there. Waiting. Knowing that the book deals, the

would forever appear to be in his late twenties while she would grow, age and die. She would not be the first in

money and influence Erick Gershaw had to better his people had all been given.

Woodrow’s life to know that particular end.

“Where are the others? Thomas? Fitzgerald? Lawrence?”

“I grew to adulthood in two weeks. And then the government found out about my…skillsets. They think they let

“You will see them soon. I promise. After all, you got your wish and now I get mine.”

me stay and live within the government. For their control. They don’t like to think that maybe I let THEM stay

Erick breathed out. The breath from within trailed straight ahead in a vaporous trail. To the voice. Dead center

with me and that I let them believe they had control.”

of this foul place. A unseen devil in the dark.

Woodrow went back to playing with the wooden piece. The plane hummed. Silence fell between the goth tech

“A deal is a deal,” it said.

and the shape-shifter.

24

25

“Maybe there’s no creepy-crawly involved then?” Vanderstock said. She tried to hide fear with her defensive

thing tell you what stories to write? What words to use?” Coffin moved towards Erick. “Hell, did this thing

attitude.

even buy a book?”

“I ran ops with the Army and various Allied forces here during the war. I saw big men with big boasts and all the

“No…” Erick’s head stopped in its lowering.

bullets and guns you could want. I saw them walk into the liberated camps and the death-houses and bloodied

“Who are you?” And the unseen entity had lost its sound of manipulation and flavor. Now it had an obvious ring

fields. I saw big men break, Lucretia.”

of annoyance. “What are you?”

Coffin held the tablet in his hand. Images of skeletal survivors with dead eyes; documented details of the horrors

Coffin grinned slightly. “That tends to be a long story. And we’re short on time.”

delivered to Gershaw and so many others ran through Woodrow’s mind; man’s inhumanity to man.

“You can hear my words to Erick. You feel strange to me. You are not human.”

“I find it pretty unlikely there’s nothing out there waiting, Lu. There were monsters here once…”

“Sometimes.”

There was a pause in the cold air. Then a feeling as if something exhaled.

###

“And you are arrogant,” the voice added.

“All the time,” Coffin retorted, now smiling wide.

“Mr. Gershaw,” the operative continued, “Did this voice tell you where to go everyday to avoid accidents and

“You’ve led a good life, Erick,” it said coming from the dark crater. It was soothing yet not without the feeling

injuries?”

that comforting was a role played. The words echoed in the dead forest; the dirt sifted in the bombed out former

“No…” Erick’s gaze lifted a bit.

death-camp. Something moved underneath the loss of life and the wretched history.

“Did this voice guide you to leading your community and how to better your people?”

Gershaw nodded. “Yes…yes, I have…” he thought of his wife. Her smile. Her eyes. How they had grown older

“No…” Erick’s head was almost straight. Almost eye to eye with Coffin.

together. His children and their children.

“Who did, Erick?”

Erick could not help but smile.

“I…I did…”

Then shadows fell over him. More so from inside than the setting sun.

“You made yourself, Mr. Gershaw. We all make ourselves. Heroes…or monsters.” Woodrow took a step towards

Erick could not help but lose his hope.

the old man.

“You wished for freedom and I gave it to you. Do you regret that?”

Just then, from the ground, they rose with a quickness. Dirt erupted in man-sized geysers. Rock and rubble

“No…no, not at all…I have much…had much…” Gershaw’s smile left him.

sprayed about. Gershaw covered his face from the debris. Coffin stood unaffected.

He took a step towards the crater.

In the dissipating dust and dirt, they stood still.

Some were once prisoners.

“MR. GERSHAW!” His name being yelled froze the old man and turned him quickly on his heels.

Some were once officers.

Gray skin hung to exposed bone. Unfocused eyes swiveled around slowly. Teeth showed through emaciated jaws

Coffin moved from the forest. Clad in his standard black one-piece uniform of pockets and weapons, he walked

and shattered faces.

out a clearing not far from Erick. Behind Woodrow, a dark parachute billowed in the trees and branches.

Uniforms of varying rank were all but tattered rags. Now, they – once prisoners and officers were now only the

“Sir, people are looking for you,” the agent continued, “You should come with me.”

dead - all equal. Their bodies lurched forward in unison, shambling to stop Woodrow from reaching Erick.

“Young man!” Gershaw became animated, a fear in his eyes, “Get out of here! Now!”

Coffin moved to action, firing his sidearm repeatedly. His uncanny aim and speed were still apparent even when

“I cannot do that, Mr. Gershaw. Not without you---“

he was human.

“I MUST DO THIS!!!”

Gray skulls burst open. Chests exploded. Legs tore. The barrage of dead continued forward - surrounding

“Why?!?” Coffin asked. “Because you believe you owe someone, something out here?”

Woodrow and herding Erick Gershaw.

There was silence.

“You ain’t a monster yet?!?” Lucretia yelled over the comm-system in the operative’s ear.

“Yes….” Gershaw said meekly. His shoulders dropping,

“I WISH it would but it hasn’t revealed itself, Lu!” The dead continued their attack. “This thing, whatever it is,

“Mr. Gershaw,” the government operative continued, “You are a writer, correct? A best-selling author? Did this

it’s very good at hiding.” Coffin resorted to hand-to-hand fighting.

26

27

“Do not admire it, Mr. Coffin,” Raja said back innocently, also in the communication, “It is a monster.”

corpses atop him. “I---wouldn’t have---figured that out…”

Coffin smiled. Despite the dead moving through his attempt to push them back.

Vanderstock “Legend says it lies, Wood! It says it offers wishes but it---!” Lucretia was cut off by the bellowing

“Aren’t we all?” The corpses overtook Coffin. Normally, Woodrow could easily slaughter a squad of the best-

sound of the beast. “I took Erick and the others from certain death!” the Wunschgerber proclaimed, speaking

trained with his bare hands but the dead outnumbered him greatly. They pinned him, driving him to his knees. It

from a mouth that could not possibly work, only move in ghastly mimic. Its bulk heaved and shuddered with

was not zombies behind Gershaw’s debt. Is this plan was of the walking dead, Coffin would be a moving corpse

every word it spoke.

by now. And he would be fighting them and fighting the urge to devour Gershaw’s brains.

“I took Erick and the others and made them great men of importance!!!” Its head was adorned with dozens of

The dead were merely puppets. The master was still behind the curtain.

black eyes swiveling wet and loosely. Coffin could see himself reflecting within them.

A curtain of Erick Gershaw’s pain.

“They wished. I granted.”

“COME---ON!” Woodrow called out. His voice echoed against the silence. His body pushing steadily back

“LISTEN, Gershaw,” Coffin argued, “Those allied troops were coming regardless!! You and the others, you made

against the vice grips of the resurrected who were atop him. “SHOW---YOURSELF! You can’t--- have--Erick

yourselves! You became survivors! This thing did nothing to help you!!!”

Gershaw’s---LIFE!”

“I gave them their hearts’ wish!”

“Have his life? But I built it…” the voice said.

Coffin felt the change.

And then it revealed itself. The crater sifted and turned over.

“And now you’ve given me one of mine…” Suddenly, Coffin threw his captors away with more strength than

In the dark of the soil and the gray of the ash, there it was. At first, one had to get beyond the smell of pure rot;

he normally possessed. Equally as spontaneously, his body twisted and turned. His brown skin turned to a slate-

flesh ran over with decay and foliage liquefied and ran dark green wet.

gray. Tentacles erupted from his back and sides. His sheer body size pulsated and throbbed until it reached nearly

The ground trembled and shook as if a terrible birthing was upon the burned out concentration camp. Huge

three times his size.

growths – moving and wriggling slowly – rose up from beneath the earth. Like horizontal trees and man-thick

His eyes rounded and coated over in black. A skeletal nose set on his face and two fleshy appendages erupted

vines pulling free.

from the sides of his mouth.

Finally, it showed itself entirely. The creature was huge. It was easily twice the size of any structure that stood

The ground around Woodrow spun up in an isolated storm of rock and debris.

in the camp decades ago. The gluttonous form set deep within the crater; possibly it always rested in this place,

Erick shielded his eyes from the violent transformation.

so deeply burrowed, it was never discovered. Whatever it was, it consisted of massive gray and fleshy tentacles

The nearby dead were now deceased and unmoving once more.

and a bulbous head.

Quickly, the shifting of shapes was over.

The face was skeletal; a twisted skull set within a cephalopod body. Its mouth was a maw of hanging flesh.

The monster, the Wish-Giver, deep within the crater was now mimicked. What was once Woodrow Coffin was no

“Have his life? It is already mine.”

more. Another beast, another Wunschgerber, stood in his place. And its eyes lit with life.

“Gershaw,” the operative said in a tremble of control and beast, “Move!” ###

Woodrow hurled himself into the sedentary skull and tentacled beast.

The two monsters clashed.

Back aboard the plane, Lucretia burst into a small meeting room. Information in her hand.

Coffin’s hands were now clawed and dug into the German abomination. His tentacles thrashed about, striking

“I’ve got it! COMING THROUGH! COMING THROUGH!!” She rushed past Raja and Marsterby, heading for

the much larger entity with ferocity. Woodrow was drawing blood from the beast. The Wunschgerber hissed

the communication connection with Woodrow.

and lashed out hard, sending the shape-shifter crashing into nearby trees. Over the breaking of tree trunks, the

“It’s a Wunschgerber, Woodrow! Folk tales call it a ‘Wish Giver’! it says it grants favors to those in mortal danger

cracking of the government operative’s bones echoed.

in exchange for life!!! Feeds off life energy! Death force is its power. It’s big – really big - and its supposedly

“You are MINE, ERICK!!!” the first monster roared, “YOUR LIFE IS MINE!!!”

really powerful!!!”

Gershaw dropped to his knees. His face in his hands.

Woodrow looked at the corpses holding him on both sides. Looking before him at the large, mammoth harvester

“God help me…it speaks the truth…”

of death and false hopes.

Renewing his attack, Woodrow leapt from the forest and onto the side of the Wish Giver’s skull-face. Coffin tore

“Thanks---for the---update, Lou,” he threw back sarcastically while struggling against the crushing waves of

into the creature, ripping out as many of its eyes as he could.

28

29

“You would be dead were it not for me, Erick!” The beast threw Coffin in his monstrous form crashing down hard

in his ear, blood ran from his multiple wounds and exposed bone.

onto the other side of the crater.

“W—wish….” Woodrow eked out weakly.

“You remember the dead, don’t you!?!”

The monster halted the dead’s approach to it. Its eyes swiveled towards this once man-like thing now interrupting

The ground erupted.

its feast.

“They remember you…” the octopod giant hissed.

“You…” the Wunschgerber began, “You cannot wait your turn to be devoured?”

“God…Noooo…. please….”

The agent coughed and

“Three imparticular.”

“I’m---about to---die…don’t you---owe me---a wish?”

Erick’s hands were grabbed, his legs pulled, by three more dead. Not just other prisoners he saw in the lines.

The Wunschgerber turned its attention to the wounded attacker. It wondered how this shape shifter would taste.

These were prisoners that he once knew well.

How long would it savor his body and soul?

Thomas, Fitzgerald and Lawrence.

“Wish,” it began, “And you will have all you want. Before I feast.”

They were above ground now. Eye to eye with their old friend. Dead with pale, discolored flesh. Dirt in their

“Promise?”

eyes. Insects hanging fat from their skin. They had kept their part of the bargain and now Gershaw was next.

“I promise.”

“Erick, you are man of your word, are you not?” it began.

“I wish I had the chance to kill you…” Coffin said.

Coffin stirred in the crater. He was bleeding. His body ached. Even with the change upon him, he was no match

The thing laughed and the sound was like graveyard water – cold and foul.

for the actual abomination which had rested underneath the camp.

‘Didn’t think---that would---work. Had---to---try.,” Coffin said.

“Did I not give you freedom?”

“Wish again,” said the Wunschgerber.

Gershaw did not counter the entity’s argument.

“I wish---Erick---knew-the-truth!”

The dead trio began guiding their friend in life to the crater’s edge. To the great beast at the center.

And the great Wish Giver roared, it had promised. While it mixed supposed wishes with lies, this time, it had been

Its maw began to wet over. The fleshiness over his mouth flapped eagerly. The black orbs for eyes glistened and

caught up in its own web. It would grant the shape-shifter’s wish. Fighting with all the reluctance that its victims

reflected the approaching meal of guilt and gratitude.

had shown in their final moments, the Wunschgerber opened itself up and poured into Erick Gershaw’s mind.

The monstrous Coffin rose up, attacking once more.

The old man heard Coffin recount Lucretia Vanderstock’s words in his ears.

The Wish Giver slammed him back to the ground. Dark fluid ran from Coffin’s new body.

He grabbed the side of his head as images of his time in the camp flashed through his mind - the suffering; the

A copper taste filled what was his mouth – albeit transformed and hideous.

cruelty; the death.

His right arm and left leg were nearly twisted in their opposite directions. What he had for lungs, used or not at

The midnight offering from a disembodied voice.

the moment, had all but burst. A catalog of bones was broken and a fever and chill simultaneously ran up and

The liberation by soldiers who had not been sent by the horrid thing under their feet.

down Woodrow’s body.

Erick Gershaw heard Coffin’s words and saw all the truth through the tricked Wish-Giver.

He felt a tinge of death pulling on him; a sense of calm on another side from here.

One last outcry from both the old man and the tentacled grotesque before him.

Would he wish for peace after all this time?

The air paused.

The cold seemed to get even colder.

“COFFIN! Can you hear me?!? Do you still even have ears?” Lucretia began, “LISTEN - I went over data on

The transformed-Coffin held himself as he bled and shambled.

the concentration camp – there were others who wrote about wishing themselves out of there. But the camp was

With tears in his eyes, Erick Gershaw looked up at the Wish-Giver.

already scheduled to be liberated by Allied forces. There really were no wishes involved! The Wish Giver is a

It heaved as if it could not catch breath – if such a thing even breathed.

liar! If you’re going to kill this thing – it has a weak spot under its jaw but Gershaw HAS to let it go! He’s like

“You,” the old man began, his voice trembling and cracking. “Damn.You!”

a shield to it right now! Gershaw has to give it up!”

Gershaw’s cheeks streaked with the release of his guilt. Though old and in need of a cane, he shook his fist with a force that seemed as if he could kill the inhuman liar himself.

The blend of Wunschgerber and Woodrow Coffin looked up with jerking motion. His teammate’s words echoing 30

“You.gave.us.NOTHING! Damn.You.To.HELL!” 31

“’Young man,’” Marsterby started. “If only he knew…Good work, Woodrow. If only all of our cases ended like “I would say he just let go,” whispered Coffin to himself.

this.”

The Wunschgerber screamed out and titled its cadaverous head. Gershaw covered his ears once again.

Coffin turned, walking away. The thoughts and ghosts of the day rolled over and crept up from craters within the

Coffin’s ink-black eyes searched the beast over and saw it – a glowing, throbbing vein where it was vulnerable.

shape-shifter.

The operative thrusted one of his recently added tentacles hard, piercing the.

“I wish.”

There was a thunderous boom from the blow.

Blood sprayed in a geyser as the Wunschgerber cried out in a great noise that people would hear in their nightmares

THE END

for miles away.

The dead collapsed.

Released. Freed.

Their strings of reanimation cut.

Before blacking out, Coffin saw his world changing. He watched his proportions shifting to familiarity. And he saw Erick Gershaw on his knees - on his knees sobbing away decades of a survivor’s guilt. ### A team of agents were sweeping the area. The crater was sectioned off and being combed over by men and women with computerized tools and taking equally digital notes. The concentration camp site had not seen such traffic since a few years after the war was over.

The remains of the Wish Giver were gone. The body had returned to the ether from whence it came. Such was the case with the unnatural more often than not.

Woodrow Coffin and his team rarely had evidence of what they did and what they fought. What evidence they did have typically was only scars – both of the body and the mind.

“Coffin?”

Dressed in another set of dark clothing, the government operative stood human once more. Five fingers. Two arms. Etc. His wounds were gone. After seventy years of horror and hunting, it was documented that wounds dealt in Coffin’s other forms healed once Woodrow was human again.

Jack Marsterby was next to him with a medic. Coffin always found humor in Marsterby having him looked over after a mission.

“Someone would like to have words with you. He is quite insistent.”

Coffin stood as the British agent stepped back and allowed Erick Gershaw to approach.

The old man, cane and all, had something new about him. It was more like there was something missing from him – a weight that was hanging around him for far too long.

“I do not know who you are, young man, but if I owe anyone my life here today – it is you.”

Coffin watched Gershaw leave.

32

33

“They say you know of it. Tell me about the tree.”

The Viejo sat at the small bar. The Hombre sat next to him. He put the bottle to his lips and paused.

“Leave the tree alone.”

The Hombre put money on the bar top. Even in American dollars, it was good money. In pesos, the old man would be well off for quite some time.

With his white beard and cloudy eyes, he shook his head again. “No.” There were tears in the younger man’s eyes. “I know tonight is the only night. I’ve heard it can heal the sick. I’ve heard it can...it can bring back the dead.”

The Viejo looked down at a leather strap wrapped around his left hand. It was wide and covered his palm.

“Leave the dead where they belong, boy. In Heaven. In your heart and in the ground.”

CLICK. Next to the money was a gun. It was old. Rusted and clearly in little shape to show the younger man was a criminal of any kind. The pistol instead showed he was desperate.

“Tell me about the tree...” the man said, his voice broke. His hand uneasy on the pistol’s trigger. “Please.”

The Viejo shook his head and flexed his hand. His cloudy eyes fell onto his covered left hand.

“It is at the edge of town...”

Marigolds & Calacas - “Break the Branches”

# It was huge. Immense.

The Hombre stood before it and looked.

It was huge. At this time of day, sunset, the giant tree dwarfed the odd little fence that was placed around it. At this time of day, dusk, the giant tree threw a shadow so large over the cemetery in which it grew that the darkness nearly slammed with a sound.

The fence had been replaced for decades. Its metal gates and pieces were mix-matched and odd.

The Hombre stood before it a looked.

“Are you the tree?” he said.

At this time of day, darkness, the streets of this neighborhood of Guadalajara were empty.

There was nothing but silence.

The Hombre exhaled and pulled a small pocket-knife from his jeans.

There was a noise of metal through softness as the blade pulled across the man’s palm.

He clutched his hand. A small rain of fat red drops fell onto the tree’s roots.

The Hombre watched.

The red circles were pulled within suddenly. There was a sudden whoosh like a deep breath inhaled from all around.

34

35

A dog howled off in the distance.

Then it was an arm.

The night buzzed suddenly and into silence. Like a throat crushed.

Thin. Sinewy. Like a starving man. Like a begging one.

“Are you the tree?”

Its nails were sharp yet broken - like cantina glass in morning alleys.

“...”

“BREAK THE BRANCHES!” came screaming from the tree. “Hurry! While the moon is fat! While witches

“...I am...” And the voice was weak. The voice was wounded.

cook and angels sleep!”

The Hombre swallowed hard. Tears welled up in his eyes.

The Hombre reached for another piece of the thickened root.

“They say...they say you can heal the sick?”

Until suddenly the warm Mexican night turned ice cold.

“...I can...” the voice answered. And it was eager. “I can turn boils to bad memories. I can turn fever to cool skin.

Far off, an owl called out.

I can set bones, return vision...I can bring back your dead.”

Far off, Guadalajara stopped - somewhere between the seconds.

“What...” the Hombre began, wiping his eyes. “What are you? An angel?”

“...no...” hissed the tired arm, the trembling gaze from within the Mexican tree.

“...no..”

The Hombre turned to look at something looking at him. He felt it.

“God, are you the Devil?”

At the end of the street, it looked like a man only he was nearly a man and a half tall. And he was thin, impossi-

“...No...”

bly thin with spindly limbs like the trees roots.

“Answer me.”

The thing moved from the shadows. Moved without moving but slid. Stilled but not unlike a puppet on stiff

“Break the branches and set me free.”

strings.

“Answer me first...please.”

It wore a traje, a formal suit like those of the mariachi. It wore a hat, a large circular hat with black bolos hanging

Silence. But a sound of breathing. A sound of wanting.

from its edges.

“What are you?”

“Not...him...” hissed the tree.

“...a savior...”

And when the moonlight hit the tall thing’s face, it showed what was there. Or what was not.

“WHAT?”

It was a round head and it was death white. Only two large black ovals gave the thing features, gave the thing a

The voice answered back. “...El Sediento.”

face.

“Not him...” hissed the tree. “So close...” #

The tree was now a giant shadow over Guadalajara.

#

The Hombre stood in its wake. He stood near its breathing.

The Hombre stood with broken branches in his hands.

It had said what it was. El sediento. The Thirsty.

A dead thing’s arm reached out from a wet wound in a black tree.

“Break the branches and set me free,” it begged. “I can do miracles. Set me free.”

The dead thing begged.

The Hombre paused then he reached for a branch.

At the end of the street was a thing, a man who looked to be of pure bone. Dressed in formal black. Dressed for

The wooden limb pulsated.

formal proceedings.

The wooden limb throbbed.

The dead thing hated him.

The Hombre pulled and it broke in his grasp.

“What?” whispered the Hombre. “What is that?”

The man nearly gagged in the spray of dark moisture that hissed out.

The tree snarled. The arm pulled at branches in vain.

It was slick.

“Devil take him!” it said. “El hombre de hueso! Calavaca! El protector de los muertos, guardián de los vivos!

It smelled like copper and rot.

Maldito sea! hombre cráneo. Hecha de hueso y cosida por las leyes!” And the tree’s words were hateful. El Sedi-

Something reached out. “...yesss...” came from the tree.

ento spat his venom.

At first it was a oil black sharp tendril. Then it was burst of dark butterflies.

“FREE ME!”

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37

The Hombre reached for another branch. The night air cracked with the echo of a gunshot.

The man jumped back from the bullet striking the tree directly in front of him.

He turned to see the bone-man, the thing policing the tree and things like it. The white headed thin man clad in black held a smoldering pistol in one long bony hand.

The Hombre had been warned.

A rooster crowed.

“NO!!!!” cried the tree. The dead arm and its red eyed stare went into frenzy.

“TOO LATE!” “NO!” said the Hombre. “I NEED YOUR HELP!” He reached for another branch.

Another crack of the pistol. Except now, after the bullet’s echo, was the Hombre’s scream.

He clutched his left hand.

A hole was in it.

It bled down his arm.

The tree cried out in a noise that was not man. Not animal.

And the roots stretched back out.

The broken hole the man had created was gone.

The thing in the tree, the thirsty thing, was sealed away again.

The Hombre turned to the bone man.

The Hombre’s eyes ran with tears.

“HOW COULD YOU--???” he said, his voice trembled. “I NEEDED HIM TO GET HER BACK! I NEEDED---” Suddenly the ivory-headed thing was upon the man. The air around him was cold. Freezing like death itself hugged him from the back.

He expected another gunshot.

He expected to leave this world.

Instead, the creature creaked as it point to up to the sky. Then to the man’s chest and then to the cemetery.

The Viejo’s words came back to the man. “Leave the dead where they belong, boy. In Heaven. In your heart and in the ground.”

The Hombre wiped his crying eyes.

The man of bone was gone. # The Viejo sat at the small bar. The Hombre sat next to him.

The Hombre’s left hand was bandaged.

He held a picture in his other hand.

The Viejo nodded and patted him on his shoulder.

EL FIN 38

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