Allison reluctantly exited the van.
Two of the three agents who had brought her here exited the van and took hold of her arms, flanking both sides of her. One of the agents who had ahold of her, the guy on the left, was a big white guy with slicked-back black hair. He was wearing a black suit, a white button up, a black tie, shiny black dress shoes, and a pair of black shades across his nose. The agent on her right was a big black guy with short black hair dressed in the same getup, but other than the opposite colors of their skins, they might as well have been the same person.
The third agent was waiting at the wheel of the unmarked white van she had just ridden in, a brown man of unknown ethnic origin, but he was dressed like the other two, and his personality was just as devoid of…personality.
They were like robots, human-looking things without souls, but what could she do? She was stuck with them for the moment.
“Come on,” grunted the big white guy.
“Do I have to?” whined Allison.
She really didn’t want this. She’d been suckered into the life of a political escort, an elite call girl to some, a whore to everyone else. That life had been bad enough, having to force her body to sleep with God-knew-what congressional or senatorial uggo every week, but at least she’d understood that life…This, though?…This was too much.
“Get moving,” grunted the big black guy.
She was dragged forward without her consent. She stumbled for a moment and then forced herself forward, but the truth was, she didn’t want this. She just wanted to be free, not forced into another role of someone else’s choosing.
Allison considered herself attractive, so it wasn’t like she had low self esteem over her looks…It was everything else that bothered her.
Today she was dressed in her formfitting sleeveless black high-hem dress that showed off her contours quite nicely, though truth be told, she would have been fine in blue jeans and a T-shirt. Her gorgeous face was ringed in a winged bowl cut to match her dark eyes, and a string of fine pearls was hung about her neck like an albatross, though what that bird-imagery referenced, she did not know…She’d heard it somewhere.
She had on her black pantyhose, and her perfectly pedicured feet were thoroughly wrapped in her good black heels. All in all, her outfit plus makeover cost around two thousand dollars, but that was the norm for an elite political escort, and that was nothing compared to over a hundred K some billionaire wives sported. She knew that price because some of these billionaires had hired her…as had some of their wives.
But none of that mattered now. Ever since she’d been implicated with that huge list of political figures…well…now it was officially hiding time. Now she was a target to hit, a problem to remove, so here she was in protective custody.
The big guys surrounding her walked her to the small glass door of the small brick building ahead. These guys were not gentle, either. She protested a little, but the squeezing around her arms of the blocks of meat that consisted of these agents’ hands shut her up right away.
She was going to have bruises later.
They walked through the door and into a butcher’s shop.
Allison nearly wet herself.
“Wh…What is this?” she asked.
She was young, only twenty-four, and she was ignorant of a lot of things, but she was not stupid.
“Shut up,” said the big white guy.
The small butcher’s shop was white inside with black and white tiles over the floor. There was a long red-covered seating bench on the east and west sides of the room, and behind the long back white counter hung various meats, big tubes of sausages and links of such, but it was the big guy behind the counter, another big white guy, who caught her eye.
This new big white guy also had short black hair, but his face was a weathered block, and he wore a clean white apron along with a white short-sleeved shirt and black pants. He wore one of those folded paper cafeteria hats that looked like they should have died out in the 1940s, but it was the big butcher’s cleaver in his right hand that made Allison nervous.
“What have we got here, boys?” asked the butcher. “Is this her?”
“Yeah,” grunted the big black agent. “Dropping her off.”
“She’s a looker,” said the butcher. “She a secretary or somethin’?”
“F.O.” stated the big white agent.
“You gotta be effin’ kiddin’ me, right?” asked the butcher. “What’s she gonna do, throw her heels at ’em? She looks like a good sneeze would blow her over.”
“Not our problem,” said the big black agent. “Just take her in back and deal with her.”
Allison felt her dark-brown eyes well up with tears…So this was how it all ended.
“Awright,” said the butcher. “You two mooks get outta here. I’ll usher her on back.”
The butcher walked out from behind the counter, and Allison was roughly pushed into his meaty arms. He had a firm grip on her right arm, so there was no escaping this animal.
The two agents turned and left the store, but Allison could distinctly hear one of them say a curse word and then “Blackbirds.”
“Come on,” ordered the big butcher.
He dragged her forward toward the counter, and Allison nearly screamed then.
“P-Please don’t hurt me!” she begged. “I won’t say anything! I won’t tell anyone!”
“Darlin’, I ain’t gonna hurt you,” said the butcher. “And I already know you ain’t telling nobody squat, or you wouldn’t be here. Now as for me, I used to be an ass grabber, and you definitely gotta ass worth grabbing, but I told Father Bran I’d be good, and I ain’t broke that for six months now, so you came in at the right time.”
Allison relaxed a little, because this big bear of a man did sound sincere, but she still didn’t like where this was going.
“I don’t know what they’re thinkin’ up there in recruitment, but you don’t look like no field operative ta me,” said the big butcher. “Ah, but you take what they gives ya…Shame though. It’s like throwin’ Kobe to the wolves.”
He dragged her around past the counter, opened up a big steel door at the south wall behind the various hanging meats, and then pulled her on through it.
“I’ll send ya to Martin,” said the butcher in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’ll know what ta do wich ya.”
They walked through a little shop of horrors. There was a huge wooden table back here, blood stains all over it, a drain in the tiled floor beneath it, meat everywhere, meat in various states of chopping, and hopefully, it was animal meat.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” protested Allison. “I swear! I was just an escort girl! I’m just an overpriced call girl! I didn’t even want this life! One of my friends got me into it when I was sixteen! She basically sold me out to a—”
“Well, that’s a shame there, darlin’,” said the butcher as he cut her short. “But I got nothin’ ta do with that. Someone must wanna flush ya, but that’s why I’m takin’ ya ta Martin. If anybody can keep that pretty head on your shoulders, it’s him.”
It was cold in this chopping area, and it was about to get colder still.
The big butcher man led her to another big steel door in the south wall of this chopping room, and as soon as he opened that door, she was hit by a wave of cold.
Allison tensed up as her nipples instantly hardened to fine points.
“Not wearin’ a bra, huh?” asked the butcher. “You’re gonna wanna do that around here. Emery’s a handsy one, way more than me. He’s the kinda guy that’ll bend’jyou over a table, honey, and lookin’ atch you, I can see that comin’. Now, he won’t force himself on ya—he ain’t that kinda guy—but there’s somethin’ about him that women love, and you don’t wanna get caught up with him. Makes things awkward around here…
He led her through a long meat locker, pushing past big hanging slabs of beef and pork on their way through.
Allison clutched her bare arms from the sudden severe drop in temperature.
The big man who held her in his firm grip punched some numbers into a keypad of a thermostat on the south wall of the meat locker. The big metal shelves in front of them rattled backwards as the entire southern wall moved upon grooves in the floor until there was enough room to reveal another metal door leading east.
He dragged her to the door and punched in a button on the east wall, and this door split in twain as it slid open. It did not take a genius to see this was an elevator that led…somewhere.
“Now, Father Bran, he ain’t actually bound here like the rest of us, but he does good work,” said the butcher. “He’ll see ya through. You won’t be goin’ ta Hell with him around…He’s a good man.”
“Going to Hell?” asked Allison with wide eyes.
She was shoved into the elevator as the butcher stepped in front of her to keep her from leaving. There was only one button in this elevator, and the big man pushed it. The doors closed, and the elevator began moving downward, which was never a good sign.
“Yeah, you gotta watch out for your eternal soul around here,” said the butcher. “Well…I guess you gotta do that whether you live here or not.”
“Live here?” asked Allison.
This was only getting worse.
“Well, Martin’ll set you up,” said the big man. “It’s been a while since we had a female other than Stacy here, but Stacy ain’t no field operative. She’s a darned good doctor, though. You lose an arm or a leg, and she can darned near stitch it back on. She’s gettin’ real close to being able to do that…Darned shame, too. We’d still have some good operatives if that were the case.”
“What?” asked Allison.
She felt like hyperventilating.
“Now, Martin’ll take care of you,” said the butcher. “Don’t worry, though, ’cause he ain’t the handsy type. He ain’t like Emery. No, he lost the love of his life years ago, and he won’t touch another woman because of it. No, that succubus is still under his skin, but that’s only on account of the fact that he can’t find her. But that’s somethin’ for him to tell ya, not me…not that he would anyway.”
The doors slid open, and the big man spun, picked her up like she was a doll, spun again, and placed her outside the elevator.
“Anyway, I gotta get back up to the store,” he said with a slight smile. “This meat don’t sell itself.”
That smile turned into a concerned frown a second later.
“And whatever you do, don’t ask Martin about his kid,” he said as he shook his head. “It’s not a good idea.”
The doors closed, leaving Allison with a joint feeling of being now bewildered yet still frightened.
She turned to see a long dark hallway lined with green tiles. Upon further inspection, the tiles were a light green, and they bedecked the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, old white grout caked between those interlocking rectangles and squares. There were old-fashioned wooden doors on both sides of the hallway, the kinds with the frosted glass set within them. Forest green lockers spread and interspersed between those doors, old things that had seen better days.
Dim fluorescent lighting spit its non-existent warmth everywhere, the shadows from such poor fluorescence abounding within corners and crevices. Some of that lighting flickered on and off, and that sputtering of luminescence immediately set her on edge.
“This is like the high school from Hell,” whispered Allison to herself.
A man walked out of an open doorway farther down the hall. Allison tensed as the man drew closer with determined and steady steps, but what she was going to do or where she was going to run if he were hostile? Of that, she had no idea.
“So…you’re here,” said the approaching man.
He walked through dim lighting and spread shadows until he stood before her.
This man was the same height she was, around 5’ 10”, a white man, a middle-aged man with greying hair at his temples. He had short brown hair with the aforementioned greying, dark-blue eyes, maybe grey—it was hard to tell—and a ringed short beard with a mustache. He wore an open dark-blue navy peacoat along with a black button up with a closed ringed collar a priest might wear, black jeans, and black outdoorsman boots.
Much like herself, he did not look like he belonged here.
He was handsome in his own way, but there was something about him that disturbed her on a deeper level, though she could not put her finger upon what that “something” might be.
“H-Hello?” she asked.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said in a flat tone, a matter-of-factness to that disturbing tidbit of information he’d just thrown her way.
“Wh-What?” stammered Allison.
Heart-thumping terror struck her without warning. This was exactly what she had feared, an execution, and now it was coming to pass, right now, right at this very—
“As of now, you are no longer Allison Morrow,” continued the man. “Allison Morrow is officially dead. Your new name is Susan Blackbird. This is not an identity given to you in the same manner as the Witness Protection Program. This is who you are now.”
Or maybe not. Apparently, he had meant something else, but he could have at least framed what he’d been about to say in a less terrifying way.
“Wait, what?” asked Allison. “I don’t under—”
“You will in time,” said the man. “I see Joey escorted you down. That’s good. He gets uptight sometimes, but new people and new things perk him up…I’m Martin, by the way…Martin Blackbird. Now that you’re here, Susan, I’ll show you around.”
“I’m…but…” sputtered Allison. “I don’t…”
“Now, first things first,” said this “Martin.” “On your left, my right, is the Main Office. We occasionally use it, but not that often. It’s mostly Stacy who uses it.
“On your right is Medical. Stacy’s in the Main Office right now, but she is our resident doctor, so most of the time she’s stationed in Medical. She’s excellent at what she does. She’s older than I am, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know who we’re going to get to replace her once she’s gone. Right now, she’s all we’ve got in the ‘saving lives’ department. She’s always said she’d stop working here once she’s dead, and I believe her.”
He spun on his heels and then motioned her to follow.
“Come on,” he said. “Close that open mouth and follow me.”
She closed her mouth after realizing her jaw had dropped wide open, and after a few seconds of agonizing hesitation, she followed him.
They walked farther down the hall until he led her through an open doorway with no door. This entrance led into what looked like a rectangular room full of old green lockers lining the walls. There was another rectangular doorway with no door in this room that led into another room, and considering the drains upon the green tiles in here and the sound of running water in the next room, it was clear this was a public shower room like one would see in a gym or rec center.
“This is where you’ll clean up,” explained Martin. “Just keep your clothes and gear in a locker and head into the showers when you need it, and considering our line of work, you’ll need it a lot.”
Allison still had no idea what that “line of work” actually was, but that train of doubt was interrupted by the nude man who walked out from the shower area and into the locker area where they were currently standing. He walked in as bold as brass, completely nude, and his presence was a noticeable one.
He looked kind of short, about 5’ 8”, but he was all athletic muscle with some very visible scars on him, a white man in his thirties, hazel eyes, cute in the face, with short dyed-blond hair cut nearly to his scalp.
This nude man walked across the room to a locker and then opened it.
“This the new girl?” asked the naked man.
“That’s Emery,” frowned Martin. “He was a field operative, but now he’s our armorer. He’s not allowed to be a field operative anymore, but he’s good with guns and ammunition.”
This guy, Emery, the man “Joey” had warned her about, turned around and gave her a quick flash of a grin. Allison’s eyes widened at him, because to be fair, he was shaved down below, and that style, combined with his nudity, good looks, and athletic muscle tone, made him look like a porn star, a category of individual she’d not actually had partaken of during her previous “career.”
It certainly beat the senatorial, congressional old men she’d serviced.
Nevertheless, she remembered Joey’s warning and made a silent and resistant vow not to “try” this one. Plus, she doubted “sexual harassment” or even “human resources” was a thing down here.
This “Emery” pulled up a pair of grey boxers over his nudity and then took to putting on a grey tank top.
“Yeah, yeah,” replied Emery. “You blow a few things up, and then you’re suddenly blackballed. Anyway, is this the Susan girl? She’s supposed to be my replacement?…I don’t like the idea of that. Is she a kung fu master or something?”
“No,” frowned Martin. “All of us are going to pitch in and train her, though.”
“We’re all technically field operatives,” snorted Emery. “So we can all train you…It’s just that F.O. is all old Marty, here, knows how to do.”
“I’m also the archivist,” said Martin.
“Only ’cause we lost John,” replied Emery. “Don’t you know, Susie? Ol’ Marty here’s the best.”
Martin sighed, shook his head, and then motioned for Allison to leave.
“Come on,” he said in a tired voice.
She followed him out of the open doorway. Across the hallway was another wooden door with a frosted glass pane.
“That’s the gym,” said Martin. “Brothers is in charge of that. Brothers is our bulldog.”
“A bulldog?” asked Allison.
“It’s a job term,” said Martin. “He’s our transporter and our info guy. If we need him to lean on someone, he’s very good at that.”
“Lean on someone?” asked Allison.
Martin simply stared at her as if she were stupid.
Yet again, Allison’s eyes widened at this revelation.
“Oh,” she replied after a few tense seconds.
“Joey’s our butcher,” nodded Martin. “You’ve already met him. He’s also our xenobiologist, xenobotanist, and our forensics guy. He works in the lab after the shop closes. He’s extremely handy with chopping blades…Oh, and I doubt he mentioned Brothers. He and Brothers are in a feud right now.”
“A feud?” asked Allison.
“It’s football season,” shrugged Martin. “Happens every year.”
Allison noted that, mainly because it was normality placed squarely in the center of all the weird.
Martin once again directed her attention down the hall.
“We’ve got the kitchen and the mess across from each other,” explained Martin. “Those two doors there. The larder’s in the kitchen area.”
“Okaaaay,” said Allison in wary reply.
“Those two doors after the gym and the showers are the restrooms,” said Martin. “The showers room has a toilet and some urinals, but I don’t think you want to go in there where guys walk in and out all of the time. If you can pee standing up and you have no concerns about your own nudity, I guess that’s fine, but personally, I think a lady should have her own privacy.
“Now, down the hall is the chapel on your left and the armory on your right. Those two rooms are our war rooms. At the end of the hall is the library. I’m in charge of that too. Right before the library—those doors at the end that are across from each other—those are the archive and the lab. The archive is also where mundane storage lies, but not everything in there is mundane. The Vault’s in there. We’ve got some dangerous stuff in there, so come find me if you want in either room, because the lab is dangerous too.”
“More dangerous than a room full of guns?” asked Allison. “And why is the chapel a war room?”
Martin once again stared at her as if she were stupid.
“I’m not stupid,” frowned Allison. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Uh, huh,” said Martin. “Well, right now you don’t need to be in either room.”
He nodded in the direction of the door he had claimed was “the chapel.”
“Right now, you need to meet Father Bran,” continued Martin. “Father Bran Blackbird isn’t technically bound here like the rest of us, but he stays because he believes in the cause. Also, I’m pretty sure he’s a spy for the Vatican, but he’s a good man, so I don’t care.”
He motioned for her to follow him to the chapel. She followed, this time more out of curiosity than fear, and that was good, because fear had ruled her up until this point, but if Joey the butcher had mentioned anything, it was that this “Martin Blackbird” would protect her, or at the very least, teach her how to protect herself, and that was better than just being executed or tortured to death…far better.
Allison couldn’t understand why anyone would want to kill her anyway. She was nobody, no one of consequence, but it was clear now that someone, somewhere, thought differently.
Martin opened the chapel door and ushered her in. Inside this large room was indeed a small church with pews and a large back window in the shape of a cross, that window lit by what looked like daylight, even though that was impossible down here. She had no idea what was lighting it.
A man, presumably Father Bran, stood in order to greet them. This man was a white man in his late twenties or early thirties, bald, wearing glasses, dressed in a priest’s black outfit along with the traditional white band behind the black neck collar. He had been sitting in a wooden chair with a dark-green cushion and backing. That chair was toward the north wall. The back of the room with the cross window faced east.
Allison made a mental note of these things, though the layout of this underground facility was sketchy at best.
Father Bran stepped forward with his right hand outstretched. Allison gingerly took his hand and shook it. The holy man stepped back after that, taking a step back to give her a once over.
“This one is steeped in sin,” said the clergyman. “She needs confession right away. I sense mainly lust, but also pride, greed, and envy. I’ll give her last rites after that.”
“L-Last rites!” choked out Allison. “Why do I need last rites! And…And I’m not sure I believe in God anyway.”
“Irrelevant,” frowned this “Father Bran.” “He believes in you. If he didn’t, you’d be at the bottom of a lake somewhere.”
“Father…” said Martin with a sigh.
The bald priest held up his left hand as if to silence Martin, and then he continued on with his diatribe.
“You need confession, communion, and last rites, young lady,” said the holy man. “My duty is to keep your immortal soul from burning for all eternity in Hell.”
“I…this…” stumbled Allison. “L-look, I don’t know what to think right now. This is all a lot to take in. I’m not even religious.”
“I know,” frowned the priest. “I can tell that lust is your primary sin, but I can also see that, though lust has always been a part of you, this life of sin has been forced upon you, and that is an egregious crime in the eyes of the Lord. Such a life should never have been yours without your explicit say in the matter.”
This was indeed a lot to take in.
“Y-yes…” said Allison warily. “How did you know that?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have my own gifts,” nodded Father Bran. “Your soul needs salvation, and it’s my duty to show you the way, especially here and now in this age of darkness.”
“He can be a little intense, Susan,” said Martin matter-of-factly. “Why don’t you do as he says for now. If anything, his counseling is also a form of therapy. Maybe you could use a little of that right now.”
“I don’t know…” said Allison. “And my name’s not Susan.”
“It is now,” said Father Bran. “You may not like it, but this is how things have to be. I want you to live a good and full life, Susan. A happy one. Sometimes, that means sacrificing the past.”
“How can it be a sacrifice if I don’t even have a choice ‘in the matter’ like you just said?” asked Allison.
“That’s what we’re going to discuss,” said Father Bran. “Come with me, child. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Go ahead,” nodded Martin. “The confessional’s over there. It’s not going to hurt, and it’s better to have something and not need it than to not have it when you most need it.”
Allison thought about this, and considering everything else that had gone on recently, this nonsense was better than being shot point blank in the head.
“I guess,” she said unhappily. “But I’m not a child…and you’re barely older than me anyway.”
“That’s pride talking,” said Father Bran.
“Yeah…” replied Allison. “It turns out I actually have some.”
*****
“Come on,” said the muscular black man in front of her. “You can hit harder than that.”
Allison threw a right straight, and the man intercepted the blow with his left pad. He then immediately smacked her on the left side of her face with his right pad.
“You got to move, shawty,” warned the man. “Slip or sway, just like I taught you. With jabs and straights, you wanna slip. With hooks, you can slip or sway, and with uppercuts, you wanna sway. Now that’s just the basics, but you’ll learn, you’ll learn.”
This man, Brothers, had way too much faith in her. Allison knew she wasn’t a fighter of any kind, but according to Martin and the others, this was now what she was going to have to learn.
“Does everybody have to do this?” she asked in a pseudo-whine.
“Naw,” said Brothers. “I’m the boxer. Marty’s got some weird Okinawan karate he uses that I can’t even begin to pronounce, and Emery does the B.J.J. Joey’ll tell you to watch out for Emery, but he’s a pro when it comes to training. He’ll only grope you if you ask. Now, that fat bastard, Joey, is a straight up wrestler, and Stacy—who was probably around when Moses parted the Red Sea, but don’t tell her I said that—practices Aikido and Tai Chi. Don’t ask me what Father Bran does, ’cause I’ve never seen him fight, at least, not physically.”
This was overwhelming. Not only was she stuck with these people, but now they wanted to turn her into some badass Mary Sue girlboss. It was too much.
Brothers must have sensed some reluctance in her, because he took a step back and lowered his pads.
“Let’s take a breather,” he said.
They were in the gym right now, but it certainly wasn’t much of one. There were weights and some exercise machines in here, and there were a couple of hanging punching bags, but that was about it.
Brothers, himself, was built like his job title. He was about 5’9”, broad shouldered, and all muscle. His jet-black hair was cut extremely close to his head, much like Emery’s. His skin was a dark brown, a little darker than she was used to, but he was handsome in the face.
Today, the man was wearing black boxing shorts, laced red boxing shoes, and a sleeveless red hoodie with the hood down. He looked like every stereotypical pro boxer she’d ever seen, though he was a little short (in her silent opinion) for that sport.
Right now, he was wearing a pair of red boxing strike pads, but he slipped those off as the door to the gym opened. Martin walked in a second later, and by the shift in the atmosphere, Allison already knew something was up.
“We’ve got one,” said Martin firmly. “This one’s just an info gather, so it should be safe for a little training run.”
“I don’t know, man,” said Brothers. “This is her first day. You know how some of these jobs turn out.”
“Unfortunately,” frowned Martin. “Well, that’s why we’re here. We teach her, and we shield her for the time being. With that being said, we need the van up and running.”
“It’s fixed,” said Brothers as he tossed the training pads to the tiled floor. “Got the undercarriage back up. Also, that turn signal’s good.”
“All right,” said Martin quickly. “Let’s get moving then.”
“We should hit the showers first,” said Brothers.
“Wait…Both of us?…Together?” asked Allison.
It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable with the thought of showering with a man, it was just…he was a stranger, and—
Brothers laughed as he shook his head no.
“No,” he chuckled. “Go get in there. I’ll guard the door to make sure Emery doesn’t try to get in.”
“Emery’s in the armory,” said Martin.
“That won’t stop him,” grinned Brothers. “That man’s like a ninja when it comes to tail.”
“Brothers…” frowned Martin.
Brothers continued grinning as he shook his head no, and then he turned that grin upon Allison.
“Come on, shawty,” he said. “We got ta get movin’. We got a job to do.”
*****
Allison sat quietly in the back of the van. This old junker was the “Operational Van,” but honestly, she had very little faith in it. It really looked like a piece of crap, with obvious rust here and there along the bottom of it, this white van with the faded label of “BEEBIRD’S PEST CONTROL” displayed in red on the side of it. There was the logo of a smiling crow in overalls on it, his feathered right “hand” holding up a bee’s nest.
Beebird’s Pest Control?…Cute. B. Bird. Ha, ha.
Martin and Brothers had led her through the Main Office, and she’d briefly met Stacy there. The older woman had handed her some clothes that had been obtained on short notice, so now Allison was in a black tee, a pair of black cargo pants, and a pair of black outdoorsman boots.
It was all very…black. Definitely a fashion faux pas. For one thing, it reminded her of a funeral, an impromptu funeral for a hiker who had suddenly fallen off a cliff.
The older woman, Stacy, was kind of gruff, but she wasn’t outright mean, though she was not nearly as old as Brothers had suggested she was. She looked to be around her mid-sixties, so not exactly ancient. Nevertheless, the older woman had chastised Allison about not having any panties, because—Surprise!—Allison hadn’t been wearing any when she’d been dropped off, and Stacy hadn’t ordered any, because assumptions were pretty much the dagger of the day out here.
You didn’t wear panties in her line of work. That was an unnecessary barrier to entry.
Stacy was a white woman with dyed-brown curly hair, and she kind of looked like or, at least, reminded Allison of that woman from that really old show Lambchop’s Play-Along, only Stacy wore thick glasses and dressed in paisley and bellbottoms.
Allison suspected this woman was an ex-hippie. Did Lambchop’s Play-Along run during the Vietnam War?…She had no idea, but it seemed kind of hypocritical for the older woman to scold her about going commando when Stacy had probably engaged in free love and psychedelics herself…probably to the opening theme of Lambchop’s Play-Along.
Not everything was terrible, though.
Her talk with Father Bran in the morning had actually been therapeutic. She didn’t know exactly how talking about her life and the “bad” things she’d done while saying some prayers and then eating a little wafer made anything better, but at least the holy man had listened, so…
She’d probably talk to him again. He had, at the very least, listened to her. He’d helped her through some prayers, too, because praying was not exactly something she did on a regular basis…although she had called out God’s name on a couple of occasions while in the throes of her previous “career.”
Father Bran had also given her “last rites,” and this still bothered her. It set her on edge.
Exactly how dangerous was this life the Blackbirds lived?
Well…now they were all in the van, and the “garage” was just a small concrete room that—Surprise again!—was still underground. You had to go through the main office to get to it, and it led to a dark concrete tunnel that went straight ahead into pitch darkness.
This, of course, begged the question as to how they were going to get out of here.
“Is there an elevator up ahead?” asked Allison.
Brothers turned from his driver’s position to look at her and shook his head no.
“No, we’re shadow jumpin’,” he said matter-of-factly.
WTF was “shadow jumping”?
“Just hang tight,” said Martin from the front passenger’s seat. “Take a deep breath. This is where…well…things are about to get strange.”
She didn’t like the sound of that.
“How strange?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” said Brothers.
He started the engine and slowly pressed on the gas. This once-white hunk-of-junk rolled forward, the engine rumbling as they headed toward the darkness of the stark concrete passage before them.
Of course, Allison was immediately concerned.
“Aren’t you turning on the lights?” she asked. “Where does this go? Up a ramp? Shouldn’t we have lights?”
“We’re not going up; there’s just a wall up ahead,” said Martin. “Just hold your breath.”
“We’re going through the Umbra,” warned Brothers. “Don’t breathe until we’re through it. Evil can sense your breath.”
“Wh-What?” stammered Allison.
“I don’t want to be mean,” said Martin, “but just shut up and hold your breath.”
The van was subsumed into darkness.
The hair on the back of Allison’s neck stood on end as goosebumps blazed over her in a flashfire of dread. She instinctively held her breath as the temperature dropped, a lowering in ambient heat as cold as when she had entered the meat locker from the butcher shop.
She heard a whispering at the back of her mind, voices, many voices, sibilant, ancient things that called to her, baited her, but all she could do was sit and tremble in her own skin.
And then it was done.
Brothers flipped on the headlights, and Allison’s dark eyes widened yet again as she peered out the windshield at the night sky and the gravel road they were suddenly upon, not to mention the many trees lining that road.
“How close are we?” asked Brothers.
“Mile out,” replied Martin.
“Damn!” said Brothers. “I think that’s the closest we’ve hit.”
Naturally, Allison felt like freaking.
“Wh-What just happened!” she choked out. “Why is it nighttime! It was only 2:30 when we left!”
Brothers flipped a switch, and Allison heard the sound of this old junker’s defroster turn on.
She just now noticed the frost around the edges of the windshield.
“We took a shortcut through the Umbra,” explained Martin. “Death’s realm. Since time and space are relative, the time it took for the drive was factored into the trip. That’s why it’s night.”
No, that explanation did nothing. No, no. She was still freaking.
“Y-You’re not making any sense!” protested Allison. “What is the Umbra! Is that Roman? Is that one of those Roman words?”
“Do you mean Latin?” asked Martin. “Yes, it’s Latin. It means ‘shadow.’”
“That…That tells me nothing,” frowned Allison. “Is this some kind of a prank? Did you drug me? That must be what this is…This is some kind of weird intimidation thing, isn’t it…You drugged me, didn’t you!”
“I wish…” said Brothers. “Wait…that came out wrong. No, if we were on drugs, this could all go away by getting off the drugs. Nah, this is all real. It’s what we do.”
Oh, she felt like hyperventilating now.
“It’s what you do!” she practically screeched. “It’s what you do! What in the hell do you actually do!”
“We take care of problems the government doesn’t want the rest of the world to know about,” said Martin. “And by the way, it would just be easier to kill you than to intimidate you. Making you permanently disappear would be far easier.”
That was cold, truly cold, but unfortunately, his logic was sound.
“This is real?” asked Allison. “Really? We just went through darkness like that and ended up somewhere else? I’m not tripping on salvia?”
It was clear she was in mild shock, because even she didn’t trust the sound of her own voice.
“How is this real?” she asked. “How did we get from underground during the day to…to out in the middle of the woods at night? Is this some kind of alien technology the government has?”
“Nah,” said Brothers. “It’s the van…just this van…this particular one.”
“We don’t know how it works or the origin of it,” said Martin. “Someone put two stereos in this thing, and neither plays music, but when we stick in the coordinates, latitude and longitude, into the stereos…”
“You just drive into the dark and pop out where you want to go,” finished Brothers. “Well, approximately. You got to come out another dark place. Looks like we came out of an old wooden covered bridge this time…Shoot, if we knew how it worked, we’d have a new van and not this old piece of crap.”
None of this made any sense.
“I don’t understand that at all,” said Allison. “I don’t really know anything about maps, but how can you get accurate coordinates from a couple of stereos?”
“You turn up the volume for positive numbers,” said Brothers, “and you turn it down for negative ones. That’s for the FM. For the AM, you just ignore the actual numbers, because where the actual numbers are is where it gives you a hidden number you add or subtract from the FM. That’s where it gets dicey, ’cause you got to know what the hidden numbers are or you could end up someplace you really don’t want to be.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to end up in Grise Fiord again,” said Martin.
Now that really made no sense. No sense at all.
“How…in Hera’s butthole…did somebody figure that out!” asked Allison in growing exasperation.
“We didn’t,” said Martin. “The old man who owned this before us figured it out and wrote it all down in a notebook. He ended up dying in an asylum, the poor bastard.”
“Yeah, we got no idea how he came across this junker, or why it even works,” said Brothers.
“Why don’t you just take the stereos out?” asked Allison. “Just take out the stereos and put them in a new car.”
“It’s ’cause this van has no engine,” stated Brothers. “Oh, it has one, but it hasn’t worked in forever. This thing don’t run on gas, shawty. We don’t know what makes it go. We do know the battery has to be replaced, though, or it won’t start…Weird, huh?”
“Weird” was an understatement. “Weird” was a vast, vast understatement.
“I…I can’t even…I can’t even deal with this right now,” replied Allison.
“Well, you’re going to have to, because we’re here,” said Martin. “Pull up next to this fence, Brothers. Susan and I will investigate the field.”
“What’s the score?” asked Brothers as he parked the car. “You said something about a field?”
“Facebook post,” said Martin. “The mother’s Facebook post.”
Well, that was appropriately vague. Martin was clearly terrible at this.
“That…That tells me nothing,” said Allison. “Who is ‘the mother’?”
“Stacy stumbled across it,” said Martin.
“That’s part of her job,” said Brothers.
“And?” asked Allison.
“Mother, father, two kids, one eight-year-old girl, one six-year-old boy,” said Martin. “Younger couple. The mother has the feeling her husband is cheating on her.”
What was this about? Why was he being so guarded?
“That still tells me nothing,” said Allison. “What does cheating on a spouse have to do with a field?…And whatever it is you guys do, it’s clearly very dangerous, so I would like some actual information. For example, why do you keep calling her ‘the mother’? Just tell me her name.”
“He can’t,” said Brothers.
“Why not?” asked Allison. “Do I have to have some super top-secret clearance or something?”
Martin turned and gave her a grave stare.
“It’s because I don’t know it,” he said unhappily.
“What?” asked Allison.
Brothers turned and shot her a sympathetic look.
“The reason we keep calling you ‘Susan’ is because that’s your name now,” he explained. “You know your original name, but the moment you become a Blackbird, your real identity is…is uhhh…What’s the word, Marty?”
“Obfuscated,” frowned Martin.
“That’s it, ‘obfuscated,’” said Brothers. “It’s part of being a Blackbird. Father Bran has a ceremony that strips your identity from the world. I don’t know how he does it, though.”
“No one will remember who you are except for us and the few government officials who pull our strings,” said Martin. “People you may have known will look at you, and they may think you seem familiar, but they won’t know who you are.”
“Your old self is basically dead,” said Brothers. “Wait…not dead…It’s more than that. Your old identity is erased.”
“E-erased?” asked Allison.
Oh, this really was too much. A strange fury and panic struck her all at once over this little bit of strange lore.
“Why would you do that to me!” she shrieked.
“Calm down,” ordered Martin. “It’s not permanent. It can be reversed.”
“Yeah,” shrugged Brothers. “I’ve never heard of anyone having it reversed, but it is possible.”
“Calm down,” said Martin. “The way you’re breathing, you’re going to hyperventilate and pass out…Listen, we do this ‘erasing’ so no one can track you…in order to kill you.”
Allison took in a couple of deep breaths and forced herself to calm down.
“O-Okay,” she said after a few seconds. “I can see how that’s use…Wait…Are you guys putting me on?…This sounds like B.S. to me. I don’t want to be called ‘Susan Blackbird.’ That’s not my name. I can see using that name in public, but when it’s just us, you can call me by my real name, Susan Blackbird…Wait…”
She shook her head a couple of times in order to get her brain back on track.
“T-that…That’s not my name,” she stammered. “My name is Susan Blackbird.”
Allison’s eyes widened for the umpteenth time as her breathing quickened again.
“I…I’m Susan Blackbird!” she said in a sudden panic. “My name is Susan Blackbird!…What the fu—!”
“You’re just gonna keep sayin’ it,” said Brothers with a shake of his head. “Marty’s right. You need to calm down.”
Allison closed her eyes and took a swallow of her own saliva. She had tears welling up in her dark eyes, but she didn’t want to look weak, so she nodded her head and wiped away those growing tears.
“That’s the reason I don’t know this family’s name,” grimaced Martin. “In order for the process to work, we now don’t know anybody’s name except for the other Blackbirds.”
“Wh-What!” cried Allison.
“I know your real name, Allison,” said Martin. “Your name is Allison Morrow, so don’t panic. That should prove the process is reversible.”
“Yeah, Marty, here, has been around long enough to have some resistance,” said Brothers. “Me…I can’t remember anybody’s name to save my life. But this family…”
“I don’t know their names,” said Martin. “We don’t have to know their names. All we have to do is investigate this field…Now, nod your head if you understand.”
Allison sucked in her breath and nodded a few times. She was feeling better now, steadier anyway.
“I’m not a child,” she said unhappily. “You don’t have to baby me. Just give me the information you do have…Why are we at this field?…Wait, is that corn?…Wait, where are we even?”
“We’re in Iowa,” replied Martin.
“Iowa!” exclaimed Allison in disbelief. “Holy…So…So, let me get this straight…We drove through this ‘Umbra,’ and we popped up in Iowa, but time caught up with us because of the distance, so several hours have gone by, and that’s why it’s nighttime?”
“That’s about right,” answered Brothers. “It’s something like that. It’s not an exact match between time and space, though. It looks like it took us a little longer to get here than it should have…That may have been my fault. I was driving a little slow. I didn’t want to panic you. We were driving into absolute darkness with no headlights.”
“And you think that wouldn’t panic me?” asked Allison. “Think about what you just said.”
Martin waved her off.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. “If you want the actual information, the mother said her husband reported to her that he had a dream where he had a sexual encounter with a beautiful woman and then he woke up naked in this field. Now she’s worried that he’s actually confessed to having an affair and that he’s made up this story because he’s afraid he’ll get caught. That’s why we’re here…We’re just going to do a little investigating.”
“Marty…” sighed Brothers. “Not this again. It’s not her, cuz. It’s not her.”
Martin simply gave the man a grim stare.
“I got this from Stacy,” he said firmly. “We’re on this job to show Susan how this works. We’re just here to prove there’s nothing going on here.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Brothers. “That…Yeah, that makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” asked Allison. “We’re just here to prove that some guy is cheating on his wife?”
“In essence…yes,” said Martin. “But I wanted to take you out on this field trip to show you the ropes.”
“It’s good practice,” said Brothers.
Field trip. Field of corn. Funny.
“Okay,” frowned Allison. “Okay, let’s get this over with…Do we get, like, special equipment and stuff?”
“Something like that,” said Brothers.
“I’ve got my pistol, and we’ll take a couple of machetes with us,” replied Martin.
“That’s…not what I meant,” said Allison. “Look, I don’t know what all of you have been thinking, but my primary talent in life has been between my legs. I’m a rodeo girl, understand? I ride the stallions…In other words, I can’t fight. I’ve never fired a gun before, and I sure as hell don’t know how to fight with a machete.”
“It’s for the corn,” said Martin. “It’s to cut down corn in case we have to…And you’re not getting a gun yet. You won’t be issued one until you’ve been properly trained by Emery.”
“We have a practice range in the armory,” explained Brothers.
“Oh, well, that makes things soooo much better,” said Allison as she rolled her eyes. “And what if there is something out there, huh? What if there’s a psycho, or a…a witch, or a boogeyman, or…or the Bride of Frankenstein, huh?”
“You gotta learn somehow,” shrugged Brothers. “We’ve got your back anyway.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” said Martin. “I won’t let it.”
“Pffft…” said Allison as she shook her head. “Let’s just get this over with. Let’s just go out there and put me out of my misery when the farmer’s wife sees me out in the field and then decides to fill me full of buckshot because I’m ‘the other woman.’ That’s what I’ve always wanted for Christmas…My big beautiful ass full of buckshot…I’ll have to get a new ass. An ass transplant is what I’ve always wanted. Thank you, Santa.”
Brothers guffawed and shook his head.
“She’s got a point,” he chuckled.
“Brothers, you stick with the van,” said Martin as he gave the man a sideways glance.
“Yep,” said Brothers. “Same old, same old.”
Both Martin and Brothers exited the vehicle after that. The back doors to the van opened a few seconds later, and Allison was eager to hop out, mainly to see if all of this madness was actually true…
And it was.
The van was parked on a dirt and gravel road, parked on the side of it, though which direction that would be, she had no idea. It was nighttime, there was grass in a culvert next to the van, beyond that grass was a wooden pole fence with boards across it, and past that fence was the field in question, a big field full of growing corn.
“Maybe this is like the Star Trek simulator…” she said quietly. “I know…I’m strapped into some machine, and this is actually The Matrix.”
“Nah, this is Iowa,” said Brothers from off to her right. “This is some white-bread, cornfed shi—”
“Come on,” said Martin. “Let’s go investigate.”
Allison turned and nearly ran headfirst into the hilt of a machete. She snatched the tool/weapon from out of Martin’s outstretched hand and shook her head in irritation.
“Give me that,” she frowned. “Try not to break my nose with it.”
Martin shook his head, a hint of a smile on his normally stern lips.
“We’ll hop the fence here,” he said firmly. “Don’t get lost after we enter the corn.”
Thankfully, the night sky shone down with a moon and stars that were bright enough to see somewhat, and there were large lit lights on telephone poles? Power poles? There were some lights shining down in the distance beyond the field, probably over someone’s house, probably over the farmer’s house.
Martin handed her a small plastic blue flashlight and then turned on one of his own.
Allison turned on her newly given flashlight and followed him. The older man climbed over the old wooden fence, so she quickly imitated him. They were in the corn after that.
“We’ll head across the field and then head to the house in the distance,” he said.
They trudged through rows of dark corn until they passed between two scarecrows, each in a line about thirty feet apart.
“Scarecrows,” said Allison quietly.
“Not a fan,” said Martin in a hushed tone.
It was easy to see why. Each scarecrow was slung across a wooden cross, both dressed in old farmer’s clothes, flannel and jeans, both with burlap sacks for heads, old work gloves on their “hands.” One even wore a pointy straw hat with holes in it.
“Creepy,” said Allison.
“Just watch out for dogs,” said Martin. “They’re every farmer’s alarm system. This is still someone’s property, and we’re trespassing.”
“Yeah,” said Allison quietly.
After moving in straight line and shining their lights here and there through rows of identical corn, they exited the stalks without warning, entering a large barren circle a couple of minutes later, a circle absolutely devoid of said corn.
“Hey, what’s this?” she asked. “Is this one of those crop circles you always see on the news?”
Martin shone his light around her feet. He spun back around and shone his light all around for a few seconds, and then he responded.
“Not quite,” he said. “Look at the ground…What do you see?”
“I see dirt,” said Allison.
“What else?” asked the older man. “What’s missing?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “The corn?”
“Yes, but why?” asked Martin. “Normal crop circles are considered weird, but the corn remains, just flattened. This is just…dirt. There’s nothing in it. There are no leaves, no roots, no anything. What else is missing?”
Allison thought for a second, and she knew something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I really don’t. What is it?”
“Ruts,” said Martin. “Ruts where the corn was planted. The earth’s exposed, like it’s been tilled, but it’s as if someone just yanked up everything in the area. I’d say this crop circle is about…sixty feet in diameter. That’s a pretty big chunk of corn to be missing in this field, but for it to just vanish…”
“There’s a rut,” said Allison. “There’s one right there.”
She shone her light along a rut that ran diagonally from where they had entered the circle. In fact, there were two ruts interconnecting toward the edge of the circle.
Martin shone his light along some ruts on his side, and then he gave her a stark warning.
“Stay close to me,” he said quickly.
“What?” asked Allison. “Why?”
“These aren’t just ruts,” said Martin. “They’re lines connecting a five-pointed star…We’re in a giant pentagram…Which means in the center of it is…”
He shone his little light toward the center of the huge circle.
“Is that another scarecrow?” asked Allison.
They trudged through barren earth until they came right up to the “scarecrow.” They shone their lights upon it, and Allison winced at the sight of it.
There was another wooden cross here, but it was inverted, upside down. Upon it, bound to it by old and dirty ropes, was what looked to be a man, bound upside down, but what kind of man this was…?
The man was naked, complete with genitals, but the “skin” of his body looked waxy, almost melted, and the color was somewhere between brown and purple. The face was a skull with lips removed or gone or whatever, covered with that same wax, the teeth yellowed and grimacing or grinning—it was hard to tell with the thing being upside down—and the orbital sockets were without eyes, just carved holes with black wax in them.
Within each of this thing’s hands was a black feather, the feathers standing straight up, so if the body had been upright, the feathers would have been held straight down.
“That’s not horrifying at all,” breathed out Allison. “What is this? Some farmer’s demented art project? This thing is gross…You’d think they’d stick to carving stone…This is like some Children of the Corn stuff. I mean Halloween’s next month, so maybe—”
“That’s no art project,” said Martin quietly.
“‘That’s no art project,’” mocked Allison with a roll of her eyes. “You remind me of that old guy from Star Wars who said ‘That’s no moon.’ I was forced to watch that stupid movie when a defense aide turned it on in the background. He wanted to watch it while I gave him some…uhhh…let’s just say ‘service.’ Well…I heard most of the movie, anyway. I was on my knees for most of that time. I got to watch some of it when he turned me around, though.”
“First of all, I didn’t need to hear that,” said Martin firmly. “Secondly, this is no art project, and we need to get to that house.”
“If it’s not an art project,” asked Allison in growing confusion, “then what is it?”
“Witchcraft,” replied Martin.
Upon his reply, the feathers held within the “art project’s” hands shot upwards into the night, both suddenly aflame, both shooting up with twin zipping noises like bottle rockets.
Allison shrieked as Martin grabbed her and roughly pushed her back the way they had come.
“RUN!” he shouted.
She took to running without further coaxing.
She ran about twenty feet before Martin tackled her from behind. She fell forward face down in the dirt, and she looked up just in time to see two flaming swords rocket overhead, both at about head height if she had been standing.
She spit out a chunk of dirt as she watched the flaming weapons split off from each other, both making that zipping noise one heard from flying bottle rockets.
The flaming blades buried themselves in the chests of both scarecrows in the field. Flames ran over the fake watchmen, both figures burning like effigies in the night, and then the flames went out, dying down to nothing until they were completely gone.
The scarecrows remained untouched, undamaged, nothing to indicate that they had ever been on fire, though there were now two black machetes where the flaming swords had been, one machete buried in each scarecrow’s chest. Allison knew this because Martin’s little light flashed from one scarecrow to the next.
“What the…” trailed off Allison.
The ropes binding the fake watchmen made of sticks, clothes, and straw were no longer binding the scarecrows to their wooden crosses, those ropes gone, burned away when nothing else had, but that wasn’t alarming. It was the sudden movement of the inanimate men that caught Allison’s breath in her throat.
Both scarecrows reached over with their right hands and pulled the machetes from their chests, and both hopped down into the field of corn after that, hopping down from their respective crosses as if they were teenage boys who had simply been playing a prank.
“Oh, shi…” began Martin, but he cut himself short as he yanked Allison up from off the ground.
They came running out of the corn a few seconds later, just in time for Allison to find her footing.
Martin switched his machete to his left hand, drew his pistol from its holster with his right hand, and then fired at the charging scarecrow on their immediate left. It was hit three times, slowing down to nothing as the bullet holes in it began to puff forth a strange smoke.
Allison had no time to see what kind of effect the bullets had inflicted upon the left scarecrow, as the scarecrow on the right was in Martin’s face in nothing flat. The older man was forced to drop his gun as he deflected a blow and danced backwards to avoid a machete swing aimed at his left knee.
He took a quick look at Allison, and for whatever reason—maybe it was instinct—she handed him her other machete, of which, he yanked out of her right hand with his own now-empty right.
She backed away as the homicidal scarecrow attacked Martin, but this time, with dual machetes, he parried each blow, parrying three strikes in all, parrying the final blow aimed at his head by forming an ‘X’ with both blades. He then pushed the blade to his own right as he spun to his left, slashing out at the same time with his right machete. The weapon put a large gash in the back of the burlap sack that made up the scarecrow’s head, but the only thing that came out of that large gash was straw.
Allison bent, picked up Martin’s pistol, straightened back up, and then took aim. She’d never fired a gun before, but now was as good a time as any. This thing was heavy, and it looked like an old-timey Western piece, the kind that cowboys used, but she took aim anyway.
Martin backpedaled out of the way in order to give her a clean shot, and she gripped the handle with both hands and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired, the piece flipped up from the recoil, and the sound was incredibly loud. Nevertheless, in spite of all that, the bullet impacted center mass upon the animated horror, and the psychotic thing staggered backwards as a strange smoke puffed out of the bullet hole, not just from the chest, but from the back as well. The bullet had gone straight through it.
The scarecrow staggered backwards as a light emitted from the holes, a bright golden light that disintegrated the terrible thing as that strange luminescence spread throughout its straw-filled body. It was gone after that, evaporated like so much steam, the whole of it, and the only thing left was a single black feather that floated to the black earth below.
Martin handed her back her machete as he gingerly removed his pistol from her trembling hands.
“Nice shot,” he said.
“It…It just vanished,” she said shakily. “The other one…It’s gone too.”
“That’s because these bullets in my gun are crucifix bullets,” said Martin. “They’ve got crosses etched into them, and they’ve been blessed by Father Bran. They’ve got to be balanced properly or they tumble when fired. These machetes, on the other hand, haven’t been blessed. I’ll have to remedy that.”
“Those…Those were real…” said Allison. “Those scarecrows came to life and attacked us.”
“Come on, we’ve got to get back to the van,” said Martin. “Shake it off, because we’ll have to run. We’ve got to get to that farm house. It’s faster for us to drive up to it.”
Allison picked up her flashlight from off the ground. She must have dropped it in order to use Martin’s pistol. She couldn’t even remember doing that.
She waved the beam of light around, but that beam of light from the small plastic device landed on something that immediately disturbed her.
“That…That…That thing…” she verbally stumbled.
“What thing?” asked Martin.
“That a-art project,” said Allison. “It’s gone.”
“What do you mean it’s…” said Martin, but his voice trailed off as he comprehended what she was saying.
The body, art piece, whatever it was, that had been bound upon the reverse cross had vanished, gone, as if it had simply gotten down and walked away, and knowing what she knew now, Allison could only assume that this was exactly what had happened.
“That can’t be good,” frowned Martin. “Let’s hoof it back to the van.”
“W-We have to go through the corn for that,” stammered Allison. “Won’t it…Won’t that thing jump us in there?”
“Yeah, but we’re going to run, and we have both machetes and my pistol,” he said. “As far as I can tell, it’s unarmed. Come on. Let’s head back to Brothers. I’ve got to fill him in.”
He pushed her forward as he started jogging, and when she was slow to start, he grabbed her right arm with his left hand and roughly pulled her forward.
“Hey!” protested Allison.
“Come on!” he ordered. “Keep in front of me!”
She wanted to give him a piece of her mind; she wanted to finally say something that wasn’t along the lines of begging or panic, but plunging into the rows of corn shut that mental process down in a hurry.
It was the dark and the smell, the oppressive night along with the pungent scent of earth and corn that caused her to tremble. It was the fact that that thing was in here somewhere with them, hiding in the rows of corn, and that did not sit well with her at all.
“Keep moving!” barked Martin as he pushed her forward. “Keep in front of me!”
“Hey, quit it!” exclaimed Allison. “I can barely see anything!”
He rushed her through the corn like a madman, and she stumbled more than once over the clumped earth.
“Move!” ordered Martin as he continued to push her. “Don’t slow down! Stay in front of me!”
Her last nerve was just about frayed.
“Dammit, stop push—!” she began.
It came out of the corn on her right, a horrifying face that held the distinct impression of melting wax, two dark and empty orbital sockets combined with grinning teeth.
This time Allison screamed.
There was the gleam of a machete in the frantic narrow luminescence of their flashlights, and then that thing went screeching off into the corn, the sound coming off it somewhere between a shriek and a howl, something inhuman and entirely grating upon the psyche.
Allison stopped moving as Martin laid his hands upon her shoulders. Both of them stood for a second and just took in some quick breaths.
“That’s why you need to be in front,” he warned her. “It’s so that damned thing doesn’t grab you while you’re behind me. If it does that, you’re gone for good. I won’t know you’re missing…Haven’t you watched any horror movies?”
“I just peed a little,” breathed out Allison.
“Get it together,” said Martin. “It’s headed toward the van.”
“We…We have to warn Brothers,” she replied.
“If it’s headed toward the van, it’s bitten off more than it can chew,” said Martin. “Still, we have to hunt that thing dow…Wait a sec; hold still.”
She looked over at her right arm as Martin gingerly pried the strange waxy fingers from off of her, waxy brown and purple fingers attached to a bodiless left hand and arm…
She hadn’t even known she’d been grabbed.
Martin held up the bodiless arm and shook his head.
“I don’t think we have to run,” he said firmly. “It’s only got one arm anyway…Let’s just make our way back to the van.”
Allison stared at the severed limb. It definitely looked like a human arm and hand covered in wax, but for some odd reason, Martin held onto it.
“Aren’t you going to drop that thing?” she asked.
“No,” he grunted, and that was that.
If he wanted to keep it, she wasn’t going to argue with him.
They made their way back to the van, but by the time they had exited the corn and had jumped the fence, the situation had been made clear.
The waxy corpse was laid out upon the ground in front of Brothers. It was missing its left arm, of course, but it was also missing its head.
Martin bent over, picked up the head from the grass of the culvert next to the wooden fence, and then unceremoniously tossed it to Allison.
She caught it without thinking, and suddenly she was staring down at the leering wax-covered skull that had nearly given her a heart attack mere minutes before.
She immediately dropped it and hopped backwards as it rolled around her feet.
“Pick that up,” ordered Martin. “We’re taking all of it back to HQ.”
“Eww…” replied Allison as she reluctantly picked up the severed head.
Brothers opened up the back of the van, and Allison quickly tossed the head in as Martin tossed in the arm. He and Brothers then picked up the body and tossed it in as well, tossing it in like it was a big sack of potatoes or something.
Allison stared at Brothers in shaking disbelief.
“H-How did you kill that thing?” she asked.
The young man held up both fists. Wrapped around each fist was a pair of shiny brass knuckles, crucifixes engraved into the metal of each protruding knuckle.
“Gave it the ol’ one-two,” he said proudly. “Knocked his block off with my sweet bling. This right one here is ‘Thunder.’ This left one is ‘Rolling.’ They bring the pain, baby.”
He kissed the metal knuckles on each hand out of some irreverent internal glorification.
This, of course, broke her brain.
“‘Thunder’ and ‘Rolling’?” she asked in mild disbelief. “Why not Thunder and Lightning?”
“Nah, baby,” grinned Brothers. “That would be…uhhh…What’s the word, Marty?”
“Cliché,” replied Martin.
“Yeah, cliché,” said Brothers.
“I guess,” said Allison.
She was barely with it anyway, so why not?
“What happened in there?” asked Brothers. “I heard this dude before I saw him. Wasn’t expecting a naked man-candle to come running out the corn with his junk glued to his crotch pocket. As soon as he cleared that fence, he rushed me, shrieking like a banshee…What the hell is this thing, anyway?”
“It’s a zombie,” said Martin.
“Never seen a zombie that looked like that,” said Brothers.
“A-A-A zombie?” stammered Allison, but they ignored her.
“That’s because it was made by witchcraft, not necromancy,” explained Martin.
“I didn’t think witchcraft could do that,” said Brothers.
“I’ve seen a couple of these before, but it takes a really powerful witch to make one,” said Martin.
“Yeah, yeah, all right,” said Brothers. “All right, I see that, but you didn’t answer my question…What the hell happened in there?”
“There’s a big pentagram carved out in the dirt in that field,” said Martin. “We ran into a magical trap…I think it was deliberately set for us.”
“So whoever walks in sets it off?” asked Brothers. “Why do that?…That’s just some mayhem shiz.”
“No, I mean the trap was set for us,” said Martin. “They knew we were coming.”
“How is that even possible?” asked Brothers. “I thought we were hidden.”
“Angels can find us,” said Martin.
Allison had been trying to comprehend this discussion, but with that last explanation, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Angels?” she asked. “Why would an angel do this?”
“He means the fallen kind,” said Brothers.
“Do you mean demons?” asked Allison. “So, it’s not witchcraft?”
“A witch communes with demons through a pact,” said Martin.
“I thought witches did crystals and incense and stuff,” said Allison in growing confusion. “They do like…like tarot and herbs and sage-burning stuff.”
Martin and Brothers simply stared at each other for a second.
“We need to get to that house,” said Martin.
“Let’s go, chief,” replied Brothers.
They hopped into the van, though Allison did not like sitting in the back with the waxy corpse. Nevertheless, she said nothing this time as Brothers started up the strange vehicle.
They drove up the road until they hit the gravel driveway of the large two-story farmhouse. The lights were on in the house, so someone had to be home.
“We’ll keep the van running,” said Martin.
“You don’t have to tell me, chief,” snorted Brothers.
“I know,” said Martin.
He turned toward Allison and nodded his head toward the house.
“Brothers will keep the van running while we investigate,” he said. “If they turn hostile, we’ll run back to the van, and Brothers peels out.”
“Oh…Okay,” said Allison.
“These are still civilians, and we don’t have much authority over them,” said Martin.
“We’re not your typical G-men,” added Brothers.
“There are some exceptions for self-defense, but we’re not supposed to get involved with human affairs,” said Martin.
“Wait…What do you mean ‘human affairs’?” asked Allison.
That sounded really weird AND alarming.
“He means normies,” chuckled Brothers. “Marty, you really gotta work on your people skills.”
“Come on,” said Martin as he opened his own passenger door.
He opened the back of the van a moment later, and Allison hopped out in order to follow him. They walked up to the front door of the house after that, and Martin rang the doorbell.
“It’s good to have a woman on the team,” said Martin quietly.
“What?” asked Allison. “Why?…I mean, this is pretty dangerous work.”
“I know,” breathed out Martin. “But women have advantages in situations like this one. You can do the talking.”
“I can?” asked Allison. “What should I say? I mean, what can I even say…What am I going to say?”
“Just tell them you heard some screaming while we were headed down the road,” said Martin. “We were on our way for some late night ‘pest control’ when you heard some screaming, so we pulled over to see if everyone was okay.”
“Yeah, okay, that works,” said Allison. “I guess I do have people skills. I guess my previous ‘career’ has some advantages here…Don’t take this the wrong way, Martin, but your people skills need some work.”
He said nothing in reply to that.
But their planning was in vain, as no one came to the door.
They waited for a minute before Martin rang the doorbell again…but no one came. They waited another minute before he rang the doorbell a third time, but once again, no one answered.
Allison shook her head and laid into the doorbell with her thumb.
“This’ll get their attention,” she said.
But there was nothing…No reply.
“Come on, we’ll go around back,” nodded Martin. “The lights are on inside, so we’ll just take a quick peek, see what we can see.”
They walked around the house until they came to a couple of large glass doors set with slatted wooden frames. These doors were windows into a brightly lit kitchen, and the left glass door was already open.
Martin opened the door with his left boot and entered without warning or permission, and to be fair, the reason was obvious…
The place looked like a true-crime murder scene.
Allison walked in behind Martin, but her blood pressure had already spiked before she had stepped onto kitchen tile.
There was a long kitchen table in here, the table set with a clean summer cloth, white with green-leaf print, the plates and silverware set out as if for ready eating.
At the end farthest from them was the mother, her body pitched forward, arms and hands on the table, her head neatly set upon the white china plate in front of her, the eyes glassy, rolled up, partially blue, the severed neck upon spotless white, blood everywhere.
The eight-year-old girl was also pitched forward, deceased, but Allison could not look at her. She could not look at the little six-year-old boy, either…That was too much.
She felt tears well up in her dark eyes, though she did not want them. These were strangers, true, but it was not like TV. To see it in real life?…She did not understand how police did their job.
Somehow, this bothered her more than the monsters out in the dark.
Martin walked past the table and stared at the kitchen wall above the beige stove and white kitchen countertops. There was writing there on the pastoral wallpaper, writing in blood, large reddish letters smeared, and Allison could not help but read them out loud.
“Roses are red,” she began.
She swallowed hard and then continued on without prompting.
“Roses are red,” she continued, “v-violets are blue, Mr. Blackbird…I…C…U.”
She took another swallow and shook her head once.
“Wh-What does that mean?” she asked. “Are you telling me a witch did this?…I.C.U? How can they see us?”
“I.C.U.,” repeated Martin. “It can also mean ‘Intensive Care Unit.’ It might be a clue.”
“A clue to what?” asked Allison.
“To playing the witch’s game,” replied Martin.
“What are you talking about?” asked Allison. “How do you know it’s a witch? Aren’t there men-witches?…Uhhh…Male witches? It’s probably a man.”
“That would be a warlock,” said Martin. “I don’t know yet. I don’t know what this means…I suspect it’s a riddle or a message of some kind.”
“Oh, it’s a message all right,” said Allison. “Look, we have to call the police.”
“We will,” frowned Martin. “Right now, we need to leave. Touch nothing, though your fingerprints won’t be in any database, it’s still good not to leave any behind. Still, we’re getting out of here.”
“If this is a riddle or a clue, I wonder what it—” began Allison.
There came a child’s whine from behind them, and both she and Martin spun to look at the same time. The little boy at the table twitched slightly, a pitched whine from him, his bloodied face turned to the side from Allison’s point of view, his short dark-brown hair matted with dried blood.
Martin moved like lightning unleashed. He snatched up the boy in both arms and was out the door in a flash. Allison hurriedly followed him, changing her flagging steps to a dead run as Martin bolted to the van.
“Get in the back with him!” he yelled without looking.
Allison hopped into the back of the van as Martin handed the boy to her. She cradled the boy in her arms, and thankfully, she could feel weak but steady breathing from him.
“Get us to the nearest hospital now!” barked Martin as he practically ripped open the passenger door.
“On it, chief,” said Brothers grimly. “Looking up the coordinates now.”
The young black man had out his phone and was looking up the location before Allison could even wrap her head around what was going on.
“What happened in there?” asked Brothers.
“She knows!” spat Martin. “She left him alive on purpose. She left him alive to let me know she knows I’m still alive, Brothers. That’s what happened.”
“Maybe,” replied Brothers.
The man fiddled with the knobs on the stereo.
“I’m getting us out of here,” he said. “It’s back the way we came. That covered bridge is about a mile away.”
Allison cradled the grievously injured little boy in her arms. She did not know what to do, so she simply waited for further instructions, but one thing did occur to her that did not sit right with her.
“What about the father?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we be looking for him?”
“What?” asked Martin.
“The father,” repeated Allison. “We only found the mom and two kids. Where is the father? Where is he?”
“He’s in the back with you,” said Martin.
She stared down at the dismembered, waxy-looking corpse at her feet and grimaced.
“Oh…” she said unhappily.
Brothers backed up the van, turned, and motored out the way they’d come. Once they hit the bridge, Martin’s earlier warning took effect, and Allison held her breath without having to be told.
It was clear that all of this was real, not their delusion and certainly not hers, not after everything she’d experienced, so she wasn’t taking any chances.
They plunged into the darkness of the covered bridge, and after a few terrifying seconds, they drove out into dim lighting, the dim lighting of an unknown parking garage. They had emerged from some dark corner of a parking garage packed full of cars.
“Where are we?” demanded Martin.
“Chill, Marty,” said Brothers calmly. “You’re not thinking clearly…You said to get us to the nearest hospital, but we’re shadow jumpin’, remember? We don’t need to go to the closest, because everything’s the closest. We need the best, so I took us to the children’s hospital in the city. We must have jumped into their parking garage, which is lucky for us…Well, lucky for that little boy.”
“Yeah,” breathed out Martin. “Park us so we can get him to emergency.”
“I’m already on it, chief,” said Brothers. “But hey, look on the bright side…Now we’ve officially hit the closest mark ever. Pinpointed it this time.”
*****
Allison sat down in the “main office” of the Blackbirds and breathed out a long and tired sigh.
Martin had just left, Brothers was in the garage cleaning out the van because Joey had come and taken out the waxy-looking zombie, so the only person in here with her was Stacy.
The woman had fixed things with whatever agency she had contacted. A group of “cleaners” was headed out to that farm house to make what was left of that poor family disappear, or at least, the supernatural part of it. They were staging the place to just look like a regular true-crime murder scene. It was all rather disgusting in Allison’s opinion, but contacting these people and setting things up was part of Stacy’s job, ugly as that was.
The older, mid-to-late-sixty something white woman was dressed in a paisley long-sleeve blouse and bellbottoms, the same style she had worn earlier, only with different articles of clothing. Her frizzy hair was a depressing grey to contrast the wild colors of that clothing, though her thick glasses, allied with her elderliness, helped to bring her a little more down to earth.
Nevertheless, Allison did not really want to deal with her or anything else right now, but the older woman held a different opinion over the matter.
Stacy stared at her and sighed.
“It’s four in the morning,” said the older woman. “You should go get some rest.”
“I don’t even know where I’m supposed to go,” admitted Allison.
“No one showed you your room?” asked Stacy.
“No,” replied Allison. “It’s been go, go, go since I got here. I didn’t even know I had a room…There are rooms here? Like apartments?”
The older woman shook her head a couple of times and sighed.
“I’ll take you there,” she said unhappily. “You go out into the hall and take the first door on your left. Those two doors on the left and right after the office and medical…those lead to our own personal quarters.”
“I didn’t know,” frowned Allison.
“Well, you could use a shower and some rest,” said Stacy.
Allison took in a breath and then released it. She still didn’t know what to make of all of this insanity.
“Look, I don’t know what to think of all this,” she said firmly. “Some guys in black came and got me, and then I ended up here. I don’t even know why I’m here. I’m not…This just isn’t my life. I’m not the kind of person for this Sam and Dean Supernatural stuff.”
“It’s because somebody wanted you to disappear, honey,” frowned Stacy. “You were a threat, but they didn’t want a scandal on top of a scandal, so you’ve been replaced with someone they can work with…a plant.”
“A plant?” asked Allison.
“Someone they’ve already coached for the situation,” explained Stacy.
“Why not just kill me then?” asked Allison.
It was a morbid statement, but it was true.
“Because that would leave a body,” said Stacy, “or a missing one…That’s too suspicious…When you’re here with us, you don’t exist out there anymore. They just want you gone…Why else do you think you’ve been assigned field operative?…It’s to quietly get rid of you.”
“So, how long do I have to be here?” asked Allison. “Until I’m dead?”
“We’ll figure that out,” said Stacy. “Not everyone who’s left the Blackbirds has taken up residence in a graveyard. The last person to get out was John, and Martin made sure he vanished. He’s officially listed as dead, but Martin’s still in contact with him.”
This was news. In fact, this was good news.
“Oh…” said Allison in surprise. “There’s a way out? I didn’t know that.”
“Not officially, but like I said, we’ll work on it,” said Stacy. “In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on you. The government certainly is. That’s why Martin is actually dragging you out into the field. It’s not to get you killed. It’s to make sure he has something to report.”
“Huh…” said Allison. “I guess there’s more to Martin than I thought…He needs to work on his people skills, but he’s really good out there…Emery called him the best…He really must be the best.”
“That was an insult, hon,” said Stacy. “Emery called him ‘the best,’ because he’s all we have left.”
“Oh,” said Allison.
Apparently, this existence had a shorter life expectancy than she had first anticipated.
Chapter 1: The Blackbirds Copyright © 2026 bloodytwine.com Matthew L. Marlott
Note: The image for this story was generated via artificial intelligence courtesy of OpenAI.
