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Blake's Ghost Hunters and the Web of Madness: Part Two
- Blake's Ghost Hunters and the Web of Madness: Part Two -
William Blake and his younger brother Johnathan had an appointment to keep. The older man wore to the occasion the only business suit he owned, a hand me down from his father, and his brother wore the fancy black dress suit he had previously worn for his wedding to his wife Tiffany. A young woman who was barely out of her teenage years, and yet who seemed inclined to stick around for the long haul. Her recent ordeal during the apprehension of a perverse entity at a certain college in Boston took a severely brutal toll of the entire family, a toll that Bruce's wife Marcia was trying to ease with the help of their receptionist June, since both women were skilled at psychotherapy. The worst affected had been Bruce, William's and Marcia's son, whom the entity had singled out for its' most terrible misdeeds. There was a part of John that was still mistrustful of Bruce after what had occurred, and yet he was doing his best at the moment to act as if everything was simply business as usual. The ghost hunting business was a very tough one, but it rarely took so cruel as toll as it had with these people of late. William and John drove out to Alvin's estate on the outskirts of what... prior to the decimation of the world by supernatural and demonic forces from beyond... had been the site where the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had once stood. Alvin's mansion was partly built atop the institute's ruins, and he had made a great deal of money selling surviving technologies to the highest bidder. Something that would have been illegal in the times when law and order still prevailed. But now, the world was a lawless place overrun by things not native to it, and there were horrors undreamed of gnawing away at what little structure remained. It was a dangerous and frightening time to be alive, and the lines between the living and the dead were at a point where it was fast becoming hard to distinguish the physical world from what lay beyond it. The opening of countless spiritual vortexes the world over was making things worse with each passing day, and stories of what chaos the vortexes were causing made the news and headlines, which still were yet things which were available for people. The current events and daily doings in the news were always a dreadful thing to hear... vigilante justice and private militias had replaced the police, and countries' own armies and national guards had to be often called in to restore a semblance of law and order to places where things had spiraled too far out of control for militia groups to be truly effective. But at the same time, there were wars between countries to be waged... as hostilities worsened with the advent of these apocalyptic events that were transpiring in ever nation regarding otherworldly forces. Ghost hunters all did their part to east the suffering caused by those inhuman forces, but it was becoming harder for them to be able to make a noticeable impact any longer. Some nations had such chaos tearing away at them that they had sunk into states of civil war, and never had the world been in a more dangerous place than it was currently. For this reason, the Blake family did not just keep ghost hunting equipment at home... but all manner of firearms and weapons, just in case human enemies should arise to be fought. It was a good thing that their home was in a remote enough location in Salem that troublemakers left them well enough alone, preferring to target communities and houses more within their stomping grounds' range. It was this business concerning the vortexes that William and John wanted to discuss with the man who was their most important benefactor, the wealthy occultist known as Alvin Crowley. Alvin's office and place of business officially was actually a small church converted into a workspace which was located in the town of Lynnfield, but on this occasion he had called William on the phone to tell him that he did wish for their meeting to take place at his mansion instead, which made for a longer drive out there. It was a peculiar choice, and something that made John feel uneasy even though his brother simply tried to explain it away as a product of Alvin's notably eccentric nature. “The guy's a bit strange, he likes to do things on a whim sometimes, and me I've always just rolled with it.” William told his brother as the drove their van out to Alvin's home. It was a clear day, and they left early so they'd be on time for their appointment. “I think Alvin's got some bats in his belfry.” John said, trying to make a joke of just how sinister the man always came off as being, at least to him. Already, William knew it was to go... badly.
The ruins of MIT were easy to spot from a good distance away, and the imposing fortress that served as the Crowley mansion rose up from the rubble like a hulking abomination. The estate itself did in full encompass all of the surrounding land outside the ruins' bounds, and the land thereabout was warped to such a degree that the trees that grew there had twisted shapes and an unhealthy, sickly look to them. It really did look a lot like the ground all around and about was accursed, and William could not recall to his memory precisely when he had first noticed the decline of these parts. He had known Alvin for so long a time, that he wondered if he had not allowed himself simply to not notice these changes in the environment surrounding the man's dwelling place, to ignore the decay, the rot, the warping that now it seemed was far too progressed into otherworldly horror to ignore any longer. John had noticed it, and he said to his brother as soon as their eyes caught sight of just how worse it had become: “Jesus, look at this place bro! You ever seen trees that fucked up before, or ground that swampy? Look, there's even a bit of flooding in places, and I don't remember there being a swamp like this here the last time we rode out this way! Or am I crazy?” William had to admit, it was strange, and he remarked: “Nah, I wasn't at all this bad... I mean, sure, it was getting bad, but nowhere near like this. I'll admit, I don't like it. Facts being, something about this feels really off to me all of a sudden. But Al wouldn't do us dirty, so we'd be crazy for real not to check in with him, especially after seeing this mess.” And the van drove down the road and pulled into the parking lot. The two men got out of the vehicle and approached the only door into the ground floor of the towering mansion. “This place looks bigger than I remember it being.” said John, and William nodded his head. “He must've been adding unto it all this time.” William walked up to the door, pushed the doorbell and banging on it with that type of pounding that police officers oft used to use. “Open up, Al! We're here, we're on time, let's chat.” bellowed William, knowing full well the man couldn't possibly hear him inside, given how thick the concrete walls of the ground floor were. And he had bricked up every single window! When had Alvin done that, and why?” Finally, the doors were unlocked and opened, and Alvin was there to greet the two men and beckon them to enter. He was as pale and unearthly looking as the two visitors remembered, his eyes just as intense and unsettling in the way they stared out from Crowley's face. The voice of the aged man was soft, insinuating, and like a serpent's voice would be if a serpent could speak. He said to the two men: “I had no trouble clearing my calendar for today, most of my business has been personal lately. It is good I've made my fortune early in life, since honestly business has never been worse than since the world has gone straight to Hell.” He chuckled a bit as his said that last bit, and John smirked before replying: “Hard not to agree with you on that... the world is neck deep in Dante's fucking Inferno, and we haven't got a Virgil to get us out of it.” And then Alvin said something strange, he said: “That's why I've been making... plans.” And William so asked him, eagerly: “What plans, Al? I mean... this shit going on seems pretty irreversible to me. Seen the news recently? Vortexes are opening up all over the world, and there's getting to be more and more of them... too much spiritual activity for most hunters to handle, and we had a bad experience during the last case we took on thanks to a vortex caused by an entity that did a real bad number on us.” John then added: “Our equipment was nearly useless inside the vortex, and two of our crew are... well, out of commission for a while. The entity was too strong, and way worse than what we normally face. It was a possessing entity, you see. A powerful one, almost like a demon.” Alvin seemed unmoved by hearing of this, as he motioned for the two men to follow him through the opulently decorated rooms that did so comprise the mansion's ground floor. “I had to seal all the windows to keep such... demons... out, and I am sure you two gentlemen have seen the warping of the landscape outside.” Alvin explained, as he so motioned towards the windows in the rooms they passed through. He stopped in one of them, and said to them: “I have made an... enemy. A powerful one, and it has given me a deadline to work within. I am unable to say more, but this enemy I believe is responsible for the vortexes.” William's face went pale as he heard that, and he asked his benefactor: “Al, if you know something spill it! This is serious shit.”
Alvin then picked up a piece of paper from a nearby table and handed it to William. “Here, have you a look at this, and tell me your thoughts.” It was a diagram, depicting ley lines, invisible spiritual currents of energy that run all across the planet like an enormous web, connecting various places. Along them, a lot of places of strong spiritual and otherworldly power are often found. It was not uncommon for those sensitive to such things to fall asleep at those sites of power and receive very strange dreams indeed. All manner of other paranormal activities could happen in those locations as well. John explained all of this aloud, and William told him that the explanation wasn't needed. “I'm not an amateur, bro, I know what ley lines are. Every kid who gets their feet wet dabbling in the paranormal knows about them, after all! But what do these have to do with the vortexes? Unless they've been popping up along certain points of the lines, in which case... we've got a serious problem. Well, a more serious problem, actually.” Alvin at that point nodded his head and explained: “The vortexes are opening at deliberate points along the ley lines, and my educated guess is that they are trying to create new places of power by so opening. There is intent behind that... since it would increase the flow of energy along the lines towards the places of power, massively breaking down the veil between our reality and what lies beyond in the process. My... enemy... is the being responsible for this, and he has made clear his intention to come through into this world physically. Which would be... bad. He has claimed that if I gave him what he desires he would simply take it and leave the world in peace, but if he is investing this much of his own power and ample energy into creating these vortexes, then there is no way he will simply stop. He has his mind set upon conquest of this plane of existence, and if he is not stopped then the Earth will become a place fit only for the living dead to dwell.” John struck his palm to his own face, and muttered: “Christ! Whatever it is you know that you aren't tell us, Al, you better give it to us straight. We're talking about the literal end of the world here! Who'd you piss off... God?” Alvin slumped down into a comfortable chair nearby, his face looking defeated as he said: “I was foolish, and for years have been in service to a being not from this realm of existence. I wanted three things from it... youthful energy, my youth restored to me, and to have the world become a peaceful place at last where there would be no more wars, suffering, or death of the needless sort. The being... wanted me to do something for it in return. I did what it asked of me, and it has stalled in fulfilling its' part of our bargain. It has... threatened me, saying if I do not give it the thing it covets the most, then it will manifest enough energy using the vortexes to create portals and so breach the veil between its' reality and ours enough to come through physically. If I do what it asks, I suspect it will have no further need to honor our bargain and at that point it will be beyond my control. Not that it isn't already! But if I do not do what it has dictated, it will continue to stall in doing what it promised me it would, and it will stall long enough to complete its' invasion plans of this world and so come through physically anyway. I made a devil's bargain, and I fear the world has suffered because of it... you see, I first made this bargain long ago, before the world became as it is today. The portals that have opened up thanks to the destruction of all the containment units kept in police stations and prisons all over the world... they were the first act of aggression of this being I speak of, and as you now know they will not be the last.” John's face went red with rage as he screamed; “Fuck! You mean all this time, bro, we've been working with the guy who screwed the whole world? That makes us what... freaking accomplices to the Antichrist or something! That's what it makes us. We should kill this asshole for the shit he's caused. God damn it!” William walked over to his brother and attempted to calm him, saying: “Look, bro... if we kill the bastard, and yeah for causing all this he is a bastard... who is going to try to reason with the big bad whatever the hell it is? We don't even know, what it is we're dealing with yet, and it looks like the old man here's been having second thoughts about unleashing the apocalypse. And on that note... Al, did you ever think that in your powerful pal's twisted mind this is how he's gonna be bringing peace to the world, and stopping war, and ending death and whatnot? Death won't mean shit if the whole world is populated by the dead, and there won't be anyone left alive to wage wars anymore.”
Then it occurred to Alvin that he had indeed been being used as a pawn all along. He sighed, and said at the last: “He'll make me young again, but in a world where life as we know it will be meaningless. It is a devil's bargain indeed! And I realize that now more than ever. We have to stop him... you have to be the ones to stop him. I must continue to play the part of the servant, lest he suspect my betrayal of him.” William then asked him: “What does he want from you, what did you do for him?” Alvin then said to the two men: “Follow me downstairs, into the cellar. All will be revealed there.” He then led the men on through the house towards the door to the basement, and down the stairs with a flashlight in hand that he picked up from a table next to the cellar door. It was otherwise pitch black down there. There was a horrible smell, and John coughed as he stated: “Oh my God! Al, what have you got down here, dead bodies or some shit like that?” Alvin shone his flashlight and showed the men the cages in which he was keeping various demonic hounds and other beasts from various planes of existence and dimensions beyond those known to human thought. The hounds were pale, reptilian, and had no flesh upon any of their faces, only bloody muscle tissue. These were the source of the horrendous smell. William asked of Crowley after seeing these sights: “You've been feeding them people I see... this is sick! You're sick. What are these things, anyway?” And Alvin answered: “Pets of the being I have been serving, the one I have warned you about. They are not what he wants from me, although I suspect he would be angry if he knew I had procured these from his realm for my own personal studies and experiments. No... he'd never invade a realm simply to retrieve a pet. But his own child! That is another matter.” John chuckled and stated half jokingly: “Oh no, Al! You're not saying you kidnapped some crazy demon god's kid, are you? That's got to have put you on his shit list!” to which Alvin explained further: “No, nothing of the sort... but somebody else did, a rival occultist and his allies, all of who are no more. I liberated the child from them, and I have been keeping her here ever since. Safe, behind protective runes, potent spells and binding wards so that her father cannot simply snatch her away though one of his agents, nor can she leave of her own accord. She is... incomprehensibly powerful, just on her own. Binding her so required serious sacrifices, that my people were able to see to for me. They were good people, right up to when they spilled the last drops of their blood. All for the world's sake, you understand!” He then shone forth his flashlight, illuminating piles of decomposed and decomposing corpses, all of them laying in dried pools of blood, all of them with their limbs hacked apart from their bodies. Then, he led the men to a metal door that he unlocked with a key that hung from a small hook on the wall next to it. As soon as he opened the door, he led the men into a beautifully decorated room filled with everything a little girl could want, or love. Toys including dolls, stuffed animals, and other things. Video game consoles, even a desktop computer and an android phone. Closets filled with beautiful clothes, and paintings so bright and cheerful that they seemed out of place given what lay just outside of this room's door. Sitting on the bed on the far wall was a little ten year old girl wearing a white one piece romper with a floral design on it. She was slender, smiling, and sweet looking with curly shoulder length blond hair, bright green eyes, and naturally reddish lips. She had a white beaded bracelet on her left wrist, and around her neck was a pearl necklace. Matching pearl earrings were in her ears. She was barefoot, and was playing with a handheld video game device that kept her full attention. As soon as she noticed the three men, she sat up more straight on the bed and put the game device down. She cleared her throat, smiled even more broadly, and said... with her face looking absolutely angelic as she did so: “Hey guys! So, what's up Al, you hear from my dad again, or what?” John laughed, and then said: “Okay... I'm not trying to be funny here or anything but... this is the daughter of a world ending demon god? She looks like she could be one of the kids my wife used to go to school with... well, back when she still had to go to school.” At which the beautiful little girl pointed a finger towards John, causing him to be lifted up off his feet as unseen hands clutched around his throat, causing him to choke and gasp for breath. The girl giggled as she said excitedly: “Oh, John! And yeah, I know your name. Never judge a book by it's cover! Okay?”
She then released him, causing him to mutter: “Christ!” under his breath whilst William said to Alvin: “Oh Al... how far you've sunk! Keeping a little girl in your basement now, are you? Hope you haven't been being naughty with her, man.” Alvin then smacked William across his face, and the force of it was powerful enough that William at first worried his jaw was broken, but it was not. The little girl laughed, then said: “Hey, what freaky shit we've been getting up to down here is nobody's business but ours! Al's been good to me... real good. I give him little rewards once in a while... naughty ones. Feel free to just use your imagination picturing what I'm talking about! I'm not the delicate flower I appear to be, more like a black rose that blooms in the dead of night.” Alvin's face was a mask of barely contained rage but he soon calmed himself and said to the child: “When I have my youth restored, I will be your consort, as your father promised to us both. But he has been less than forthcoming about keeping to the letter of our bargain. We need to get him out of the picture... permanently.” to which the little girl said: “Yeah, I know how dad can be sometimes, he's a bit of a prick to be honest with you! So, you want these two to take him out, stick him in a containment unit, and when his sentence there is up... just eject him into the pocket dimension that most containment units these days now use for disposal of troublesome sorts of beings such as ghosts, specters, poltergeists, demons, devils and other spiritual terrors. From there... it would take him at least five hundred to a thousand years to get back to his home dimension and by then I'll be the one in charge there and I'll slap the old man in chains so he can't ever tell me what to do again much less mess with this reality. Oh, an Al... you'll be young, and you'll be with me. So it doesn't matter if my father screws you out of your bargain, I'll make good on it. Everybody good?” To which William said: “I'll do you one better! No sentence period for this bad boy... it's the pocket dimension for him the minute we bag him. Can't risk him breaking free, since it's obvious he's taught other beings how to do that in the past. It's confine and eject for the likes of him. How's that sound, kid?” She giggled, then in a far more serious tone of voice she said: “We have a deal! Human.” Then, as Alvin locked the door and led the two men back upstairs he said to them: “She's very... spirited, you might say. Pun intended! She doesn't need to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. She's a lot of fun to be with though.” John then sighed, then told Alvin: “Look man, I get it! You like 'em young and this one's got you hot in your pants more than human kids do. Whatever floats your boat, there's no laws anymore so do as you will and all that. Just... when you two crazy kids cross over back to wherever the heck she and her dad come from... are you still going to be sending us clients sometimes and helping us keep our bills paid?” Alvin laughed, and told him: “When this is over, you may want to take up a side job, since my little paramour intends to close all the portals and vortexes that her father has opened once she is the one in charge back home. There will be a lot less troublesome supernatural beings troubling this reality once that happens. Maybe start up a law enforcement agency. Just go easy on guys like me, alright?” John said to him in a slightly exasperated tone of voice: “Just tell us what we need to do! The world is running out of time.” And so, after that, Alvin gave the two men a box with helmets in it that resembled swat team or military style helmets with clear plastic visors that could be pulled down over a person's face. He told them: “These will prevent you from becoming possessed. You and every member of your team... there's all sizes here so everyone in your group should be covered. I had each one blessed with protective spells, as well as a coating of holy water. The visors will make sure an entity cannot get into you through your mouth, so if you go fully covered, with gloves and boots as well, you will have nothing at all to fear from that sort of a being. Honestly? You should have had these sooner, but that is more my failing than yours.” William tried one on and it fit perfectly. “Cool! So, how do we stop the big bad?” To which Alvin laid out his plan in great detail: “I believe the very first, original, portal that opened in the ruins of Alcatraz prison where the oldest containment unit was tested and left prior to the incident that obliterated it... that has to be the original access point between this world and the plane of existence he dwells in. He can't come through into this world, so you have to go to his in order to capture him. Do it, and you save the Earth.”
John replied by stating: “Give us enough cash for a flight to San Francisco, and we'll head over to the Alcatraz portal and get the job done. Unless you have a private plane hidden somewhere, and a pilot's license?” Alvin reminded him: “I don't even have a driver's license, but I have cash aplenty and thank the dark gods... or at least the ones who aren't the one you're going after... that airports are still doing their thing. This will be doable, gentlemen! I and the little one will remain here, so that her father does not suspect anything. I check in with him on a weekly basis, and I have already done the contact ritual for this week. I can stall him at least a couple more times, so that gives you ample time to go out there and put a stop to him. Once you have done so, call me and I will remove the bindings that hold my love in check. She and I will ascend to the other plane of existence after that, so you will be leaving there and we will be going there, with everything proceeding smoothly. John chuckled and said: “Got it! We evict the asshole, so you and your kinky girlfriend can move in and take over her family's business. I'm great with this plan! Let's get to it and do it.” And following that, they received the money they needed and drove back to Salem to plan for their flight to California. Bruce and Tiffany both felt they were in decent enough shape to come along for the mission, and June decided to tag along with them in order to have a calming effect on Tiffany just in case. There was little time to discuss things in detail prior to the flight, so William and John told the rest of the family everything they had learned whilst on the way to San Francisco. Bruce complained, saying: “This is going to be one long-ass flight! I'll probably sleep through half of it.” and that said, he closed his eyes and succumbed to his boredom. Tiffany meanwhile was staring out the window she was sitting near on the plane with her eyes wide and her expression a tad bit vacant. She looked troubled, and June was sitting next to her holding her hand and smiling in a warm way whilst whispering in her ear: “Its' gonna be okay, Tiff! We've got this! It's not going to be a thing like the last time, you'll see.” And June hated to admit she was becoming infatuated with Tiffany more and more as time was going by. But she kept that to herself, just as she kept to herself the fact that she was a transgender woman. June was used to keeping secrets about herself, and adding one more to the list was not going to be a problem. There was a time she'd have loved to show Bruce everything, let him in on every detail of her body, heart, and mind. Now, she longed to let Tiffany into that space but at present she felt it was most important to help the young woman overcome the terrors that gripped her. After as lengthy a flight as had been expected, the ghost hunting crew rented a van and stashed all their equipment in it before suiting up and putting on their new helmets in addition to making sure that each person's hands and feet were covered with gloves and boots. Their visors were up at present. Thus clad in their jumpsuits, with their backpacks on and their spirit prods hanging from those packs by cords that kept them at the ready, with thin but sturdy cables linking reach metal prod to its' power supply in the backpack itself... they were at last ready to climb into the van and head out to the docks for the short boat ride to the island on which the Alcatraz portal awaited them. By the time they got there, the prods would be fully charged and able to be detached from their cables and used properly. June was outfitted the same as the others, and this was her first time taking part in a mission. She was nervous, but knew in her heart she could handle it. Tiffany rushed over to her, and kissed June on the cheek whilst smiling and saying: “Just for good luck, June!” John was resigned to the fact that he was fated to lose Tiffany... if it wasn't going to be to Bruce, it was going to be to June. He wondered if she would accept a divorce from him once all this was over and done with. He hoped she would be happy with June, and chastised himself silently for failing Tiffany as a husband in so many ways. That had happened just as June and Tiffany were climbing into the back of the van, prior to their departure to the docks. It was two in the morning, the worst time of the night for demonic activity especially. Any such activity would peak by three, and come dawn it would subside as much as it could. It was a dark night, a black night, one that boded ill for these desperate people who had become humanity's only hope against invasion from an awful cosmic entity with a mind bent towards conquest. “I've got a bad, bad feeling.” June remarked.
There were plenty of abandoned boats at the docks, and John was decent enough with boats so that he could pilot one in a pinch. They headed out to the island, the dark island on which Alcatraz prison, or what remained of it since time had not been kind to it, had once existed before it became a crater where now a massive blue, glowing portal of swirling energy not unlike a whirlpool existed in its' place. It was a literal rip in the fabric of reality that over time had become bigger and more gigantic in size. It filled the entirety of the crater, the rocks and chunks of the ruined prison all around it resembling absolutely gigantic jagged teeth. From out of the portal, arcs of energy shot and ethereal mists and vapors emerged in much the same way smoke rises from a chimney or a factory's smokestacks. Bruce was frightened, as he had never been in the direct presence of a portal before. “What is it going to feel like? Jumping into that thing! You are sure, we aren't going to get ripped apart or blown halfway across the universe unto some planet without any air to breathe or something? I mean... it could happen! Right?” And William assured him: “Alvin and I did a lot of research into these portals years ago, and we sent test subjects into a different one than this one, but the test subjects all returned in one piece except for one that did not return at all. So I am at least ninety-five percent certain it will not harm us to make this crossing.” Bruce freaked out then, shouting: “Ninety-five percent! Dad, that sucks. That means there's like a ten percent chance we won't be coming back from this. Why can't it be a hundred?” John clapped Bruce on the back and then said to him in a lighthearted manner: “Kid, that's science for you! We can never be one hundred percent certain of anything, unless we prove it by doing. Well... today it's time for doing.” They disembarked from the boat, then made their way to the edge of the portal. Strange howling noises that were not from any wind emerged from it, and spectral forms moved about within the portal itself. John dove into it first, followed by Tiffany and then June. William and Marcia went last, but only after Marcia pushed Bruce in since he had frozen in place out of fear. Everything dissolved into a haze of soft blue radiance, and the sights that met the ghost hunters' eyes were so bizarre, surreal, and inhuman that they had to close their eyes to keep from going insane from the enormously chaotic nature of it all. Time, space, and the confines of reality gave way, and the tunnel of blue swirling light that they passed through propelled them at speeds beyond mortal comprehension whilst their bodies became energy so they could travel faster than light. Finally, the light gave way to pitch black darkness as the family did find themselves of fleshly substance once again. “What the fucking hell was that! Where are we now, anyway?” Shouted John, whilst Bruce was busy throwing up. Tiffany was saying over and over again: “I was stupid! I opened my eyes towards the end, I saw... I saw... oh my God, it was too much.” June was there to calm her, and their eyes became acclimated enough to their new surroundings so that it did not appear pitch black any longer than for the span of a minute. It was now apparent to them that this reality was in a state of perpetual mid-autumn, with a fixed time of day approximate to late afternoon, when the rays of the sun shine golden through the trees... and they were surrounded by trees, within a vast forest that seemed to be the entirety of this world for as far as the eye could see. Through breaks in the trees, immense looming mountains towered overhead, against skies that appeared normal enough. It was daylight out here, not nighttime. Strange noises, likely what passed for animals and birds here, did fill the air... and the insects they could spot were strange and like no species they were familiar with. The air was crispy, cool, but not cold. There was a chill, but the first frost of the season was absent from the bark of the trees and the grass underfoot. Time held no meaning in this place, and so this season was not ever going to change. They all put their visors down over their faces, just to be safe, and John asked William: “So, which direction should we go in? It all looks the same... no roads, paths or trails. Just all endless woods, and not much else.” Marcia then yelled: “How about any direction opposite of... them!” for suddenly a pack of those horrible hounds like the one Alvin kept in his basement stormed forth with the intend of tearing these intruders apart. The ghost hunters ran for their lives, but John had sneaked in his backpack some grenades and tosses a couple behind him, which blew some of the hell hounds apart.
This frightened the other hounds, which retreated, but the family knew they could not rest easy so the six of them kept running in the direction they had been, and soon they saw in the distance a place where the forest seemed to thin and clear a bit. They headed towards it, and stopped to catch their breath only when they were clear of the treeline. What met their gazes next was a magnificent temple complex that was built at the base of several high, rugged hills. The grass of the forest gave way to barren sands at this point, which were not desert but rather simply dead earth and desolate soil from which nothing did grow, or could grow. The temple resembled a step pyramid with a large fortress on the topmost step, all of the steps of the pyramid being gargantuan in size, as if giants has raised the structure of old. Murals depicting ferocious dragons decorated the stone blocks that made up the pyramid, and these murals did seem to be painted a deep blue and were surrounded by gold frames. The eyes of the dragons were each two sparkling emerald gemstones. A long stairway of a normal size usable by those of human size did ascend the step pyramid in the very front of it. Burning braziers lit the way up those stairs, whilst the beaten path across the desolation leading up to the base of those stairs was flanked in places by tall crosses on which human-like forms were crucified and still living, in the utmost agony. Nearby to the crosses, were clusters of sharp wooden stakes on which impaled bodies writhed, unable to die. None of the creatures had a human face or countenance, and were almost reptilian to look upon. Some even had scales covering much of their bodies. Piles of skulls were heaped about the base of the stakes and the crosses, and some were even lit on fire to increase the agony of they who suffered thereby. “Oh good God! We're in Hell! This has to be some part of Hell.” said Tiffany, half mockingly and half seriously, to express the terror she felt at the sight of these horrors. William smirked and then stated: “No, this is not Hell but it is pretty close to it... well, close to one part of it anyway. See that pyramid? Hard to miss it! It's Sumerian, only... different.” John knew the architectural style as well, and realized the god that they were going after had to be a vastly ancient one, one that had been worshiped on Earth in the days of the most ancient recorded histories. “So, we just walk up the steps and say hello to what is probably going to be one angry, pissed off god before proceeding to taser the bastard so we can capture him. This is not going to go well at all!” John was the one who said that, to which Marcia replied: “Don't be such a pussy, John! It'll be fun... cross my heart and hope to die.” she made the motion to drive her point full home, which did nothing to improve John's clearly darkening mood. That out of the way, the six ghost hunters crossed the rest of the distance and ascended the stairs until at least... panting and pretty much out of breath... they arrived at the top of the pyramid, to stand at the base of the immense fortress that sat upon its' highest level. A mouth-like opening was before them, a curved archway that looked as if it was a monstrous mouth filled with fanged teeth. It was the only way into the fortress, which reminded William and John a little of Alvin's fortress-like mansion. Both men doubted it was a coincidence. “I've got a gut feeling we're being set up.” Said John, but William dismissed it. “Come on, killjoy! It's not as if we get to piss off an old Sumerian god every day of the work week.” Once they felt able to resume, the family entered the enormous maw of that frightful looking opening, and they passed into a hallway that was lined with torches on both sides of it, and hanging oil lamps. Colorful murals lined the walls, depicting scenes of the history of this world, none of which anybody recognized the significance of due to this being literally a different reality entirely than the one they came from. Some of the scenes were of a ghastly nature, and clearly depicted wars and battles between inhuman creatures. “If only my old history teacher from college was here to check this shit out!” said William, which John ignored, not at all caring. A grotesque, guttural, demonic voice boomed out at them from ahead, saying in as perfect English as you could please despite that: “Welcome, mortals! Come forward and meet with me, I have been waiting for new visitors for a very, very long time. It gets lonely here, without my daughter to be present to liven things up. She is so very creative, you know, at devising amusements! You saw some of her handiwork outside, I am certain.” And slowly, dreading what lay before them, the six walked along.
An immense throne chamber was before them now, surrounded by potted plants and ornate fountains. Thick draperies hung from the walls in places, and stained glass windows lined the back wall, each of those windows having abstract looking geometrical patterns upon them and being of a rainbow of all colors imaginable. The throne was in the shape of a gilded seat from which sprang six immense wings of gold, and seated upon a stack of cushions on that seat was a man wearing a black business suit of the type you might expect a Mafia don to be wearing, at least of the Hollywood movie variety. He had a red rose in his hands, and he was plucking the petals from it. Incense wafted up from burners near the sides of the chamber, and red-robed attendants with black shadows for faces beneath thick hoods did stand at attention as guards, no weapons in their hands and none needed. The man seated upon the throne was a pleasant looking person in his mid-30's, of indeterminate gender at first glance but most likely male due to everyone having referred to him as such up to this point. He was skinny, but not dangerously so, and his hair was long, black, and slicked back from his face. He was clean shaven, had sharp features, and a very prominent and hawkish nose. His eyes were solid red with no white visible in them, and may as well have been twin rubies the way that they sparkled and caught the light. He was pale in a way that was bone white, like that of a person who is an albino, and his lips were blood red. He had long claws rather than fingers, and those claws looked razor sharp. He had a wide mouth, and his smile showed a mouth filled with fangs rather than teeth. He was not tall, being of average height, and his voice when next he spoke was that of a proper English gentleman. His upper class British accent, was impeccable. “I say, welcome friends! Welcome to my humble abode, here in the realm where spirits of the dead go when they cannot quite reach their otherwise destined afterlives, or when they are simply unable to find the solace that normally comes from a good and proper eternal rest. Here, they are my subjects and are known as the Gidim. I do not believe we have been formally introduced! My name is Ukur, and I used to be in charge of things down in the Underworld, but that was a long time ago and I do not believe I am still welcome there any longer. Now, only a small vestige of me remains there, just to keep things balanced in the cosmic sense of such things, whilst I now flit away my endless hours in this beautiful place. Beautiful... but boring! I cannot wait to set foot once more upon the surface of your world, which I have not done in many thousands of years beyond counting. I wonder if people will like me! Well, you never know until you meet them. My servant Alvin doesn't seem to like me at all, and I daresay I think he means to double cross me. Bad form, that! He's keeping my daughter hostage... whilst attempting to bargain with me. I intend fully to keep my word to him, but he fails to realize that in order to keep my third promise to him I need to enter his world fully, physically, in the entirety of my power and glory. So... what brings you lot here?” John was laughing hysterically, after which he said loudly to Ukur: “Oh boy have you got a rude awakening coming! Look, pops... your little girl's been shacking up with Alvin and she is totally into him and vice versa. They want us to fuck you up so bad you won't be able to rule here anymore, so they can pretty much take over the place. Got it? What we get out of it is our world saved, all the portals and vortexes closed, and everything back to normal, or at least close to it. That's the plan in a nutshell, and me I'm sticking to it. How about the rest of you guys?” And William said in answer to that: “We're all on the same page, bro! Let's fuck him up good.” And everyone charged at the ancient god with their prods set to taser him. As soon as they went to connect one of their prods with the being's body, Ukur vanished and his guards all began to chuckle with his own demonic voice from before as if they were all vessels for his consciousness. He said through them: “You cannot fight a god, mortals! Only a god, can kill a god, and if you mean to kill me then you will most definitely all die. You cannot even lay a hand upon me, unless you will a form for me into existence that you can touch. Will at least one of you think of something appropriate for the occasion? In the meantime, I intend to slay the lot of you insects. Prepare yourselves!” and at once the guards manifested shadowy curved blades in place of their arms, and they charged at the ghost hunters with murderous intent. There was little hope.
The six ghost hunters were running about trying to avoid or evade their attackers, and there were far too many of these robed wraiths for them to even hope to capture. They had no weapons capable of a proper fight with such fiends, and all seemed hopelessly lost. That was when the little girl strode forth into the chamber, Alvin Crowley at her side. “We decided we couldn't wait for the party to be over, and it's a good thing too since it looks like things are just starting to get good!” the child said, unable to at all disguise her evident glee. Alvin chanted a spell, and various weapons made of light appeared in the ghost hunters' hands. “Now you can destroy these forms of theirs! Strike swiftly and true.” he said, as the family used their new weapons to turn the tables on the dark god's guards. Each one that was struck with one of the weapons of light was vaporized on the spot, and it did not take long for the family to put an end to the conflict at hand. That done, the weapons of light vanished, the spell having run its' course. Then, the demonic voice of the god returned, intoning: “Ah! I see none of you have chosen a physical form for me to wear yet. Such a pity! I've so many fun games in mind, and nobody wants to play with me.” That was when the little girl said: “He's actually a child of his species, all of this is just a game to him... whereas me, I am only a little girl in appearance. I am actually old enough that I could've been his mother. He adopted me, you see... without realizing my true age! Since he's a child, we should all think of him as such.” And think they did. After several silent minutes passed, the demonic voice of the child god then proclaimed jubilantly: “Ah! You have all chosen the form that I shall wear to destroy you in. Excellent! This will be a fun game indeed.” Suddenly... a gigantic dragon that was a child of its' species but still monstrous in size and dangerous to face appeared, filling the chamber from which the six ghost hunters and their two allies fled in a tremendous hurry. Bruce was hysterical, shouting: “Oh great! Just fucking great... now we can hurt him, but now he can slaughter the crap out of us a whole lot easier than we can do jack or shit to him. Who thought of a dragon! Was it you, John, just to be a dick?” John said, angrily: “I swear to Christ, I was picturing a baby.” The little girl then said, apologetically: “I am so sorry! It was me... see, I had a pet baby dragon when I as little and I loved it very much, so I did not think it would manifest in a form that could actually hurt us. But I guess that is the way this works, whatever we think of, however innocent, is going to appear and something horrible and try to kill us.” Alvin then said, out of breath already from running for his life... which everybody was still doing: “I have no spell that could harm a dragon. I mean, seriously! They aren't supposed to exist anymore, not on Earth anyway. Then again... this is not Earth!” The little girl then stated: “Alright, it's up to me to save the day then! Since I am a greater goddess, after all... I will just choose a form for myself that I can fight him in, and we should be good to go. Wish me luck, guys!” She then vanished, seemingly winking out of existence. The dragon was breathing fire down the hallways, which very nearly caught up to the fleeing individuals who were trying their best to stay alive and survive this whole ordeal. Along with the dragon was an entire host of ghosts, demons, and other unspeakable horrors, all following the will of their master. The ghost hunting family, and Alvin, ran so fast they finally reached the outside of the fortress and saw below them the stairs leading back to the desolation below. The sounds coming from behind them were a pandemonium of terrible shrieks, moans, growls, and other sounds. John was in the middle of praying, Alvin was resigning himself to his impending death, and Tiffany was screaming and finally succumbing to the wild hysteria that had been threatening to rob her of her reason for some time now. William and Marcia held each other tightly, and Bruce cried out to Tiffany: “I just want to tell you! I love you, Tiff.” and June realized she needed to step aside and let things take their course between the two of them, so June herself remained silent. Tiffany calmed herself enough to say: “I love you too! I always have... John is a lousy husband. The worst! If we survive this, John... I want a divorce so I can be with Bruce. Honestly, he and I are way closer in age anyway!” John said: “Fine, Tiff! Fine with me. I doubt we're getting out of this one alive anyway. So... we running for the woods, or what? Remember, there's those hounds there.” There was no safe place to run, and innumerable horrors were at their heels.
That was when the eldritch monstrosity with countless tentacles, eyes, and claws manifested itself in the entrance to the fortress behind them. It was the goddess, at last in a form of her own choosing that was capable of slaying the dragon that her adopted father had become. He, and every one of his truly nightmarish servants with him. She tore them apart, her claws able to rend spirit as well as flesh, so that the army of the dead and demonic were banished with the destruction of their assumed forms to a plane in which they would be countless lifetimes trapped in before being able to manifest in any form again. By then, they would have a new ruler... she who even now delivered her form of savage justice. Once she had dispatched all of them, she ventured into the fortress to face the dragon and there she tore the flesh of it asunder and consumed it, absorbing the god's soul and forcing it to become a part of her own so that he could never again be an individual being apart from her. She then used his power to close all of the vortexes and portals that he had caused spirits under his command to open... all around the whole of the Earth in every place where such portals had been. His power was her own now, added to hers, so that he commanded power of living and dead things alike. But in her ancient wisdom, she was capable of using it wisely! “I have left but one portal open, the one you came through. Run back through those woods, run back the way you came, and no hounds will hinder your flight. I will will the portal to take you home, and then it will be closed forever.” So the goddess spoke, and they could hear her even from outside the fortress, for her voice was everywhere in this reality, all around them. Alvin decided to thus remain behind, saying: “I love her, as you all know, and she promised to keep those promises that had been made to me by Ukur... well, all except the third one, which was unrealistic in the first place. It's a good deal, and it's all I want for myself for the rest of my life! And here... I can live forever since time does not flow here and I will need need to worry about dying. Take care of yourself, Bill! Everybody.” His body changed, so that he appeared to be in his early twenties, in the prime of his life. He was old no longer, and he rushed back into the fortress to be at the side of his beloved goddess, who even now had resumed her little girl form in order to please him. Together, they would rule this reality, benevolently. The ghost hunting family then ran back down the stairs and across the desolation, through the woods and as best and they could remember... back the way they had come. Back in the fortress, the beautiful little girl and her beloved Alvin smiled, embraced, and kissed passionately. At that very instant, the blue portal opened up on this far side and pulled the ghost hunters through it, with the journey back being as maddening and turbulent as it had been when first they entered the Alcatraz portal from it's earthly side. Only once they were through it and back on earth, with the Alcatraz portal now being closed at last, did they realize June was not with them. Meanwhile, back in the other reality... June approached the divine couple, and asked of the goddess and her lover: “If I agree to become your high priestess, and to serve you faithfully until the end of all time, if time's ending even could ever touch this place... would you let me become a woman, fully, without having to take hormones for the rest of my life? I'll never be able to get the surgery, for health reasons, so... this would mean a lot to me, if you could use your magic to just make it happen. What do you say, Al, would you and your girl be cool with this, or what? I really don't want a dick between my legs for the rest of my existence.” And they granted June her wish, remolding her body painlessly until it was entirely female in the human sense, with no trace of maleness to her in any capacity. They took her to a chamber with a mirror so she could remove her clothing and see what her body now looked like, and June... for the first time in her whole life... was pleased. Real breasts, no longer the implants she had before. And real everything else too. “Thank you so much!” she exclaimed. Back on Earth, months after their return... William Blake, his wife Marcia, their son Bruce and his girl Tiffany decided to look into starting their own private law enforcement business. Lawyers, and courts, were not a thing any longer, so John vocally divorced himself from Tiffany and went off to join a small mercenary company that was looking to see about stemming the violence plaguing the Midwest. Which was something he had in mind for years anyway. Ghost hunting didn't pay, anymore... which was good.
William Blake and his younger brother Johnathan had an appointment to keep. The older man wore to the occasion the only business suit he owned, a hand me down from his father, and his brother wore the fancy black dress suit he had previously worn for his wedding to his wife Tiffany. A young woman who was barely out of her teenage years, and yet who seemed inclined to stick around for the long haul. Her recent ordeal during the apprehension of a perverse entity at a certain college in Boston took a severely brutal toll of the entire family, a toll that Bruce's wife Marcia was trying to ease with the help of their receptionist June, since both women were skilled at psychotherapy. The worst affected had been Bruce, William's and Marcia's son, whom the entity had singled out for its' most terrible misdeeds. There was a part of John that was still mistrustful of Bruce after what had occurred, and yet he was doing his best at the moment to act as if everything was simply business as usual. The ghost hunting business was a very tough one, but it rarely took so cruel as toll as it had with these people of late. William and John drove out to Alvin's estate on the outskirts of what... prior to the decimation of the world by supernatural and demonic forces from beyond... had been the site where the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had once stood. Alvin's mansion was partly built atop the institute's ruins, and he had made a great deal of money selling surviving technologies to the highest bidder. Something that would have been illegal in the times when law and order still prevailed. But now, the world was a lawless place overrun by things not native to it, and there were horrors undreamed of gnawing away at what little structure remained. It was a dangerous and frightening time to be alive, and the lines between the living and the dead were at a point where it was fast becoming hard to distinguish the physical world from what lay beyond it. The opening of countless spiritual vortexes the world over was making things worse with each passing day, and stories of what chaos the vortexes were causing made the news and headlines, which still were yet things which were available for people. The current events and daily doings in the news were always a dreadful thing to hear... vigilante justice and private militias had replaced the police, and countries' own armies and national guards had to be often called in to restore a semblance of law and order to places where things had spiraled too far out of control for militia groups to be truly effective. But at the same time, there were wars between countries to be waged... as hostilities worsened with the advent of these apocalyptic events that were transpiring in ever nation regarding otherworldly forces. Ghost hunters all did their part to east the suffering caused by those inhuman forces, but it was becoming harder for them to be able to make a noticeable impact any longer. Some nations had such chaos tearing away at them that they had sunk into states of civil war, and never had the world been in a more dangerous place than it was currently. For this reason, the Blake family did not just keep ghost hunting equipment at home... but all manner of firearms and weapons, just in case human enemies should arise to be fought. It was a good thing that their home was in a remote enough location in Salem that troublemakers left them well enough alone, preferring to target communities and houses more within their stomping grounds' range. It was this business concerning the vortexes that William and John wanted to discuss with the man who was their most important benefactor, the wealthy occultist known as Alvin Crowley. Alvin's office and place of business officially was actually a small church converted into a workspace which was located in the town of Lynnfield, but on this occasion he had called William on the phone to tell him that he did wish for their meeting to take place at his mansion instead, which made for a longer drive out there. It was a peculiar choice, and something that made John feel uneasy even though his brother simply tried to explain it away as a product of Alvin's notably eccentric nature. “The guy's a bit strange, he likes to do things on a whim sometimes, and me I've always just rolled with it.” William told his brother as the drove their van out to Alvin's home. It was a clear day, and they left early so they'd be on time for their appointment. “I think Alvin's got some bats in his belfry.” John said, trying to make a joke of just how sinister the man always came off as being, at least to him. Already, William knew it was to go... badly.
The ruins of MIT were easy to spot from a good distance away, and the imposing fortress that served as the Crowley mansion rose up from the rubble like a hulking abomination. The estate itself did in full encompass all of the surrounding land outside the ruins' bounds, and the land thereabout was warped to such a degree that the trees that grew there had twisted shapes and an unhealthy, sickly look to them. It really did look a lot like the ground all around and about was accursed, and William could not recall to his memory precisely when he had first noticed the decline of these parts. He had known Alvin for so long a time, that he wondered if he had not allowed himself simply to not notice these changes in the environment surrounding the man's dwelling place, to ignore the decay, the rot, the warping that now it seemed was far too progressed into otherworldly horror to ignore any longer. John had noticed it, and he said to his brother as soon as their eyes caught sight of just how worse it had become: “Jesus, look at this place bro! You ever seen trees that fucked up before, or ground that swampy? Look, there's even a bit of flooding in places, and I don't remember there being a swamp like this here the last time we rode out this way! Or am I crazy?” William had to admit, it was strange, and he remarked: “Nah, I wasn't at all this bad... I mean, sure, it was getting bad, but nowhere near like this. I'll admit, I don't like it. Facts being, something about this feels really off to me all of a sudden. But Al wouldn't do us dirty, so we'd be crazy for real not to check in with him, especially after seeing this mess.” And the van drove down the road and pulled into the parking lot. The two men got out of the vehicle and approached the only door into the ground floor of the towering mansion. “This place looks bigger than I remember it being.” said John, and William nodded his head. “He must've been adding unto it all this time.” William walked up to the door, pushed the doorbell and banging on it with that type of pounding that police officers oft used to use. “Open up, Al! We're here, we're on time, let's chat.” bellowed William, knowing full well the man couldn't possibly hear him inside, given how thick the concrete walls of the ground floor were. And he had bricked up every single window! When had Alvin done that, and why?” Finally, the doors were unlocked and opened, and Alvin was there to greet the two men and beckon them to enter. He was as pale and unearthly looking as the two visitors remembered, his eyes just as intense and unsettling in the way they stared out from Crowley's face. The voice of the aged man was soft, insinuating, and like a serpent's voice would be if a serpent could speak. He said to the two men: “I had no trouble clearing my calendar for today, most of my business has been personal lately. It is good I've made my fortune early in life, since honestly business has never been worse than since the world has gone straight to Hell.” He chuckled a bit as his said that last bit, and John smirked before replying: “Hard not to agree with you on that... the world is neck deep in Dante's fucking Inferno, and we haven't got a Virgil to get us out of it.” And then Alvin said something strange, he said: “That's why I've been making... plans.” And William so asked him, eagerly: “What plans, Al? I mean... this shit going on seems pretty irreversible to me. Seen the news recently? Vortexes are opening up all over the world, and there's getting to be more and more of them... too much spiritual activity for most hunters to handle, and we had a bad experience during the last case we took on thanks to a vortex caused by an entity that did a real bad number on us.” John then added: “Our equipment was nearly useless inside the vortex, and two of our crew are... well, out of commission for a while. The entity was too strong, and way worse than what we normally face. It was a possessing entity, you see. A powerful one, almost like a demon.” Alvin seemed unmoved by hearing of this, as he motioned for the two men to follow him through the opulently decorated rooms that did so comprise the mansion's ground floor. “I had to seal all the windows to keep such... demons... out, and I am sure you two gentlemen have seen the warping of the landscape outside.” Alvin explained, as he so motioned towards the windows in the rooms they passed through. He stopped in one of them, and said to them: “I have made an... enemy. A powerful one, and it has given me a deadline to work within. I am unable to say more, but this enemy I believe is responsible for the vortexes.” William's face went pale as he heard that, and he asked his benefactor: “Al, if you know something spill it! This is serious shit.”
Alvin then picked up a piece of paper from a nearby table and handed it to William. “Here, have you a look at this, and tell me your thoughts.” It was a diagram, depicting ley lines, invisible spiritual currents of energy that run all across the planet like an enormous web, connecting various places. Along them, a lot of places of strong spiritual and otherworldly power are often found. It was not uncommon for those sensitive to such things to fall asleep at those sites of power and receive very strange dreams indeed. All manner of other paranormal activities could happen in those locations as well. John explained all of this aloud, and William told him that the explanation wasn't needed. “I'm not an amateur, bro, I know what ley lines are. Every kid who gets their feet wet dabbling in the paranormal knows about them, after all! But what do these have to do with the vortexes? Unless they've been popping up along certain points of the lines, in which case... we've got a serious problem. Well, a more serious problem, actually.” Alvin at that point nodded his head and explained: “The vortexes are opening at deliberate points along the ley lines, and my educated guess is that they are trying to create new places of power by so opening. There is intent behind that... since it would increase the flow of energy along the lines towards the places of power, massively breaking down the veil between our reality and what lies beyond in the process. My... enemy... is the being responsible for this, and he has made clear his intention to come through into this world physically. Which would be... bad. He has claimed that if I gave him what he desires he would simply take it and leave the world in peace, but if he is investing this much of his own power and ample energy into creating these vortexes, then there is no way he will simply stop. He has his mind set upon conquest of this plane of existence, and if he is not stopped then the Earth will become a place fit only for the living dead to dwell.” John struck his palm to his own face, and muttered: “Christ! Whatever it is you know that you aren't tell us, Al, you better give it to us straight. We're talking about the literal end of the world here! Who'd you piss off... God?” Alvin slumped down into a comfortable chair nearby, his face looking defeated as he said: “I was foolish, and for years have been in service to a being not from this realm of existence. I wanted three things from it... youthful energy, my youth restored to me, and to have the world become a peaceful place at last where there would be no more wars, suffering, or death of the needless sort. The being... wanted me to do something for it in return. I did what it asked of me, and it has stalled in fulfilling its' part of our bargain. It has... threatened me, saying if I do not give it the thing it covets the most, then it will manifest enough energy using the vortexes to create portals and so breach the veil between its' reality and ours enough to come through physically. If I do what it asks, I suspect it will have no further need to honor our bargain and at that point it will be beyond my control. Not that it isn't already! But if I do not do what it has dictated, it will continue to stall in doing what it promised me it would, and it will stall long enough to complete its' invasion plans of this world and so come through physically anyway. I made a devil's bargain, and I fear the world has suffered because of it... you see, I first made this bargain long ago, before the world became as it is today. The portals that have opened up thanks to the destruction of all the containment units kept in police stations and prisons all over the world... they were the first act of aggression of this being I speak of, and as you now know they will not be the last.” John's face went red with rage as he screamed; “Fuck! You mean all this time, bro, we've been working with the guy who screwed the whole world? That makes us what... freaking accomplices to the Antichrist or something! That's what it makes us. We should kill this asshole for the shit he's caused. God damn it!” William walked over to his brother and attempted to calm him, saying: “Look, bro... if we kill the bastard, and yeah for causing all this he is a bastard... who is going to try to reason with the big bad whatever the hell it is? We don't even know, what it is we're dealing with yet, and it looks like the old man here's been having second thoughts about unleashing the apocalypse. And on that note... Al, did you ever think that in your powerful pal's twisted mind this is how he's gonna be bringing peace to the world, and stopping war, and ending death and whatnot? Death won't mean shit if the whole world is populated by the dead, and there won't be anyone left alive to wage wars anymore.”
Then it occurred to Alvin that he had indeed been being used as a pawn all along. He sighed, and said at the last: “He'll make me young again, but in a world where life as we know it will be meaningless. It is a devil's bargain indeed! And I realize that now more than ever. We have to stop him... you have to be the ones to stop him. I must continue to play the part of the servant, lest he suspect my betrayal of him.” William then asked him: “What does he want from you, what did you do for him?” Alvin then said to the two men: “Follow me downstairs, into the cellar. All will be revealed there.” He then led the men on through the house towards the door to the basement, and down the stairs with a flashlight in hand that he picked up from a table next to the cellar door. It was otherwise pitch black down there. There was a horrible smell, and John coughed as he stated: “Oh my God! Al, what have you got down here, dead bodies or some shit like that?” Alvin shone his flashlight and showed the men the cages in which he was keeping various demonic hounds and other beasts from various planes of existence and dimensions beyond those known to human thought. The hounds were pale, reptilian, and had no flesh upon any of their faces, only bloody muscle tissue. These were the source of the horrendous smell. William asked of Crowley after seeing these sights: “You've been feeding them people I see... this is sick! You're sick. What are these things, anyway?” And Alvin answered: “Pets of the being I have been serving, the one I have warned you about. They are not what he wants from me, although I suspect he would be angry if he knew I had procured these from his realm for my own personal studies and experiments. No... he'd never invade a realm simply to retrieve a pet. But his own child! That is another matter.” John chuckled and stated half jokingly: “Oh no, Al! You're not saying you kidnapped some crazy demon god's kid, are you? That's got to have put you on his shit list!” to which Alvin explained further: “No, nothing of the sort... but somebody else did, a rival occultist and his allies, all of who are no more. I liberated the child from them, and I have been keeping her here ever since. Safe, behind protective runes, potent spells and binding wards so that her father cannot simply snatch her away though one of his agents, nor can she leave of her own accord. She is... incomprehensibly powerful, just on her own. Binding her so required serious sacrifices, that my people were able to see to for me. They were good people, right up to when they spilled the last drops of their blood. All for the world's sake, you understand!” He then shone forth his flashlight, illuminating piles of decomposed and decomposing corpses, all of them laying in dried pools of blood, all of them with their limbs hacked apart from their bodies. Then, he led the men to a metal door that he unlocked with a key that hung from a small hook on the wall next to it. As soon as he opened the door, he led the men into a beautifully decorated room filled with everything a little girl could want, or love. Toys including dolls, stuffed animals, and other things. Video game consoles, even a desktop computer and an android phone. Closets filled with beautiful clothes, and paintings so bright and cheerful that they seemed out of place given what lay just outside of this room's door. Sitting on the bed on the far wall was a little ten year old girl wearing a white one piece romper with a floral design on it. She was slender, smiling, and sweet looking with curly shoulder length blond hair, bright green eyes, and naturally reddish lips. She had a white beaded bracelet on her left wrist, and around her neck was a pearl necklace. Matching pearl earrings were in her ears. She was barefoot, and was playing with a handheld video game device that kept her full attention. As soon as she noticed the three men, she sat up more straight on the bed and put the game device down. She cleared her throat, smiled even more broadly, and said... with her face looking absolutely angelic as she did so: “Hey guys! So, what's up Al, you hear from my dad again, or what?” John laughed, and then said: “Okay... I'm not trying to be funny here or anything but... this is the daughter of a world ending demon god? She looks like she could be one of the kids my wife used to go to school with... well, back when she still had to go to school.” At which the beautiful little girl pointed a finger towards John, causing him to be lifted up off his feet as unseen hands clutched around his throat, causing him to choke and gasp for breath. The girl giggled as she said excitedly: “Oh, John! And yeah, I know your name. Never judge a book by it's cover! Okay?”
She then released him, causing him to mutter: “Christ!” under his breath whilst William said to Alvin: “Oh Al... how far you've sunk! Keeping a little girl in your basement now, are you? Hope you haven't been being naughty with her, man.” Alvin then smacked William across his face, and the force of it was powerful enough that William at first worried his jaw was broken, but it was not. The little girl laughed, then said: “Hey, what freaky shit we've been getting up to down here is nobody's business but ours! Al's been good to me... real good. I give him little rewards once in a while... naughty ones. Feel free to just use your imagination picturing what I'm talking about! I'm not the delicate flower I appear to be, more like a black rose that blooms in the dead of night.” Alvin's face was a mask of barely contained rage but he soon calmed himself and said to the child: “When I have my youth restored, I will be your consort, as your father promised to us both. But he has been less than forthcoming about keeping to the letter of our bargain. We need to get him out of the picture... permanently.” to which the little girl said: “Yeah, I know how dad can be sometimes, he's a bit of a prick to be honest with you! So, you want these two to take him out, stick him in a containment unit, and when his sentence there is up... just eject him into the pocket dimension that most containment units these days now use for disposal of troublesome sorts of beings such as ghosts, specters, poltergeists, demons, devils and other spiritual terrors. From there... it would take him at least five hundred to a thousand years to get back to his home dimension and by then I'll be the one in charge there and I'll slap the old man in chains so he can't ever tell me what to do again much less mess with this reality. Oh, an Al... you'll be young, and you'll be with me. So it doesn't matter if my father screws you out of your bargain, I'll make good on it. Everybody good?” To which William said: “I'll do you one better! No sentence period for this bad boy... it's the pocket dimension for him the minute we bag him. Can't risk him breaking free, since it's obvious he's taught other beings how to do that in the past. It's confine and eject for the likes of him. How's that sound, kid?” She giggled, then in a far more serious tone of voice she said: “We have a deal! Human.” Then, as Alvin locked the door and led the two men back upstairs he said to them: “She's very... spirited, you might say. Pun intended! She doesn't need to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. She's a lot of fun to be with though.” John then sighed, then told Alvin: “Look man, I get it! You like 'em young and this one's got you hot in your pants more than human kids do. Whatever floats your boat, there's no laws anymore so do as you will and all that. Just... when you two crazy kids cross over back to wherever the heck she and her dad come from... are you still going to be sending us clients sometimes and helping us keep our bills paid?” Alvin laughed, and told him: “When this is over, you may want to take up a side job, since my little paramour intends to close all the portals and vortexes that her father has opened once she is the one in charge back home. There will be a lot less troublesome supernatural beings troubling this reality once that happens. Maybe start up a law enforcement agency. Just go easy on guys like me, alright?” John said to him in a slightly exasperated tone of voice: “Just tell us what we need to do! The world is running out of time.” And so, after that, Alvin gave the two men a box with helmets in it that resembled swat team or military style helmets with clear plastic visors that could be pulled down over a person's face. He told them: “These will prevent you from becoming possessed. You and every member of your team... there's all sizes here so everyone in your group should be covered. I had each one blessed with protective spells, as well as a coating of holy water. The visors will make sure an entity cannot get into you through your mouth, so if you go fully covered, with gloves and boots as well, you will have nothing at all to fear from that sort of a being. Honestly? You should have had these sooner, but that is more my failing than yours.” William tried one on and it fit perfectly. “Cool! So, how do we stop the big bad?” To which Alvin laid out his plan in great detail: “I believe the very first, original, portal that opened in the ruins of Alcatraz prison where the oldest containment unit was tested and left prior to the incident that obliterated it... that has to be the original access point between this world and the plane of existence he dwells in. He can't come through into this world, so you have to go to his in order to capture him. Do it, and you save the Earth.”
John replied by stating: “Give us enough cash for a flight to San Francisco, and we'll head over to the Alcatraz portal and get the job done. Unless you have a private plane hidden somewhere, and a pilot's license?” Alvin reminded him: “I don't even have a driver's license, but I have cash aplenty and thank the dark gods... or at least the ones who aren't the one you're going after... that airports are still doing their thing. This will be doable, gentlemen! I and the little one will remain here, so that her father does not suspect anything. I check in with him on a weekly basis, and I have already done the contact ritual for this week. I can stall him at least a couple more times, so that gives you ample time to go out there and put a stop to him. Once you have done so, call me and I will remove the bindings that hold my love in check. She and I will ascend to the other plane of existence after that, so you will be leaving there and we will be going there, with everything proceeding smoothly. John chuckled and said: “Got it! We evict the asshole, so you and your kinky girlfriend can move in and take over her family's business. I'm great with this plan! Let's get to it and do it.” And following that, they received the money they needed and drove back to Salem to plan for their flight to California. Bruce and Tiffany both felt they were in decent enough shape to come along for the mission, and June decided to tag along with them in order to have a calming effect on Tiffany just in case. There was little time to discuss things in detail prior to the flight, so William and John told the rest of the family everything they had learned whilst on the way to San Francisco. Bruce complained, saying: “This is going to be one long-ass flight! I'll probably sleep through half of it.” and that said, he closed his eyes and succumbed to his boredom. Tiffany meanwhile was staring out the window she was sitting near on the plane with her eyes wide and her expression a tad bit vacant. She looked troubled, and June was sitting next to her holding her hand and smiling in a warm way whilst whispering in her ear: “Its' gonna be okay, Tiff! We've got this! It's not going to be a thing like the last time, you'll see.” And June hated to admit she was becoming infatuated with Tiffany more and more as time was going by. But she kept that to herself, just as she kept to herself the fact that she was a transgender woman. June was used to keeping secrets about herself, and adding one more to the list was not going to be a problem. There was a time she'd have loved to show Bruce everything, let him in on every detail of her body, heart, and mind. Now, she longed to let Tiffany into that space but at present she felt it was most important to help the young woman overcome the terrors that gripped her. After as lengthy a flight as had been expected, the ghost hunting crew rented a van and stashed all their equipment in it before suiting up and putting on their new helmets in addition to making sure that each person's hands and feet were covered with gloves and boots. Their visors were up at present. Thus clad in their jumpsuits, with their backpacks on and their spirit prods hanging from those packs by cords that kept them at the ready, with thin but sturdy cables linking reach metal prod to its' power supply in the backpack itself... they were at last ready to climb into the van and head out to the docks for the short boat ride to the island on which the Alcatraz portal awaited them. By the time they got there, the prods would be fully charged and able to be detached from their cables and used properly. June was outfitted the same as the others, and this was her first time taking part in a mission. She was nervous, but knew in her heart she could handle it. Tiffany rushed over to her, and kissed June on the cheek whilst smiling and saying: “Just for good luck, June!” John was resigned to the fact that he was fated to lose Tiffany... if it wasn't going to be to Bruce, it was going to be to June. He wondered if she would accept a divorce from him once all this was over and done with. He hoped she would be happy with June, and chastised himself silently for failing Tiffany as a husband in so many ways. That had happened just as June and Tiffany were climbing into the back of the van, prior to their departure to the docks. It was two in the morning, the worst time of the night for demonic activity especially. Any such activity would peak by three, and come dawn it would subside as much as it could. It was a dark night, a black night, one that boded ill for these desperate people who had become humanity's only hope against invasion from an awful cosmic entity with a mind bent towards conquest. “I've got a bad, bad feeling.” June remarked.
There were plenty of abandoned boats at the docks, and John was decent enough with boats so that he could pilot one in a pinch. They headed out to the island, the dark island on which Alcatraz prison, or what remained of it since time had not been kind to it, had once existed before it became a crater where now a massive blue, glowing portal of swirling energy not unlike a whirlpool existed in its' place. It was a literal rip in the fabric of reality that over time had become bigger and more gigantic in size. It filled the entirety of the crater, the rocks and chunks of the ruined prison all around it resembling absolutely gigantic jagged teeth. From out of the portal, arcs of energy shot and ethereal mists and vapors emerged in much the same way smoke rises from a chimney or a factory's smokestacks. Bruce was frightened, as he had never been in the direct presence of a portal before. “What is it going to feel like? Jumping into that thing! You are sure, we aren't going to get ripped apart or blown halfway across the universe unto some planet without any air to breathe or something? I mean... it could happen! Right?” And William assured him: “Alvin and I did a lot of research into these portals years ago, and we sent test subjects into a different one than this one, but the test subjects all returned in one piece except for one that did not return at all. So I am at least ninety-five percent certain it will not harm us to make this crossing.” Bruce freaked out then, shouting: “Ninety-five percent! Dad, that sucks. That means there's like a ten percent chance we won't be coming back from this. Why can't it be a hundred?” John clapped Bruce on the back and then said to him in a lighthearted manner: “Kid, that's science for you! We can never be one hundred percent certain of anything, unless we prove it by doing. Well... today it's time for doing.” They disembarked from the boat, then made their way to the edge of the portal. Strange howling noises that were not from any wind emerged from it, and spectral forms moved about within the portal itself. John dove into it first, followed by Tiffany and then June. William and Marcia went last, but only after Marcia pushed Bruce in since he had frozen in place out of fear. Everything dissolved into a haze of soft blue radiance, and the sights that met the ghost hunters' eyes were so bizarre, surreal, and inhuman that they had to close their eyes to keep from going insane from the enormously chaotic nature of it all. Time, space, and the confines of reality gave way, and the tunnel of blue swirling light that they passed through propelled them at speeds beyond mortal comprehension whilst their bodies became energy so they could travel faster than light. Finally, the light gave way to pitch black darkness as the family did find themselves of fleshly substance once again. “What the fucking hell was that! Where are we now, anyway?” Shouted John, whilst Bruce was busy throwing up. Tiffany was saying over and over again: “I was stupid! I opened my eyes towards the end, I saw... I saw... oh my God, it was too much.” June was there to calm her, and their eyes became acclimated enough to their new surroundings so that it did not appear pitch black any longer than for the span of a minute. It was now apparent to them that this reality was in a state of perpetual mid-autumn, with a fixed time of day approximate to late afternoon, when the rays of the sun shine golden through the trees... and they were surrounded by trees, within a vast forest that seemed to be the entirety of this world for as far as the eye could see. Through breaks in the trees, immense looming mountains towered overhead, against skies that appeared normal enough. It was daylight out here, not nighttime. Strange noises, likely what passed for animals and birds here, did fill the air... and the insects they could spot were strange and like no species they were familiar with. The air was crispy, cool, but not cold. There was a chill, but the first frost of the season was absent from the bark of the trees and the grass underfoot. Time held no meaning in this place, and so this season was not ever going to change. They all put their visors down over their faces, just to be safe, and John asked William: “So, which direction should we go in? It all looks the same... no roads, paths or trails. Just all endless woods, and not much else.” Marcia then yelled: “How about any direction opposite of... them!” for suddenly a pack of those horrible hounds like the one Alvin kept in his basement stormed forth with the intend of tearing these intruders apart. The ghost hunters ran for their lives, but John had sneaked in his backpack some grenades and tosses a couple behind him, which blew some of the hell hounds apart.
This frightened the other hounds, which retreated, but the family knew they could not rest easy so the six of them kept running in the direction they had been, and soon they saw in the distance a place where the forest seemed to thin and clear a bit. They headed towards it, and stopped to catch their breath only when they were clear of the treeline. What met their gazes next was a magnificent temple complex that was built at the base of several high, rugged hills. The grass of the forest gave way to barren sands at this point, which were not desert but rather simply dead earth and desolate soil from which nothing did grow, or could grow. The temple resembled a step pyramid with a large fortress on the topmost step, all of the steps of the pyramid being gargantuan in size, as if giants has raised the structure of old. Murals depicting ferocious dragons decorated the stone blocks that made up the pyramid, and these murals did seem to be painted a deep blue and were surrounded by gold frames. The eyes of the dragons were each two sparkling emerald gemstones. A long stairway of a normal size usable by those of human size did ascend the step pyramid in the very front of it. Burning braziers lit the way up those stairs, whilst the beaten path across the desolation leading up to the base of those stairs was flanked in places by tall crosses on which human-like forms were crucified and still living, in the utmost agony. Nearby to the crosses, were clusters of sharp wooden stakes on which impaled bodies writhed, unable to die. None of the creatures had a human face or countenance, and were almost reptilian to look upon. Some even had scales covering much of their bodies. Piles of skulls were heaped about the base of the stakes and the crosses, and some were even lit on fire to increase the agony of they who suffered thereby. “Oh good God! We're in Hell! This has to be some part of Hell.” said Tiffany, half mockingly and half seriously, to express the terror she felt at the sight of these horrors. William smirked and then stated: “No, this is not Hell but it is pretty close to it... well, close to one part of it anyway. See that pyramid? Hard to miss it! It's Sumerian, only... different.” John knew the architectural style as well, and realized the god that they were going after had to be a vastly ancient one, one that had been worshiped on Earth in the days of the most ancient recorded histories. “So, we just walk up the steps and say hello to what is probably going to be one angry, pissed off god before proceeding to taser the bastard so we can capture him. This is not going to go well at all!” John was the one who said that, to which Marcia replied: “Don't be such a pussy, John! It'll be fun... cross my heart and hope to die.” she made the motion to drive her point full home, which did nothing to improve John's clearly darkening mood. That out of the way, the six ghost hunters crossed the rest of the distance and ascended the stairs until at least... panting and pretty much out of breath... they arrived at the top of the pyramid, to stand at the base of the immense fortress that sat upon its' highest level. A mouth-like opening was before them, a curved archway that looked as if it was a monstrous mouth filled with fanged teeth. It was the only way into the fortress, which reminded William and John a little of Alvin's fortress-like mansion. Both men doubted it was a coincidence. “I've got a gut feeling we're being set up.” Said John, but William dismissed it. “Come on, killjoy! It's not as if we get to piss off an old Sumerian god every day of the work week.” Once they felt able to resume, the family entered the enormous maw of that frightful looking opening, and they passed into a hallway that was lined with torches on both sides of it, and hanging oil lamps. Colorful murals lined the walls, depicting scenes of the history of this world, none of which anybody recognized the significance of due to this being literally a different reality entirely than the one they came from. Some of the scenes were of a ghastly nature, and clearly depicted wars and battles between inhuman creatures. “If only my old history teacher from college was here to check this shit out!” said William, which John ignored, not at all caring. A grotesque, guttural, demonic voice boomed out at them from ahead, saying in as perfect English as you could please despite that: “Welcome, mortals! Come forward and meet with me, I have been waiting for new visitors for a very, very long time. It gets lonely here, without my daughter to be present to liven things up. She is so very creative, you know, at devising amusements! You saw some of her handiwork outside, I am certain.” And slowly, dreading what lay before them, the six walked along.
An immense throne chamber was before them now, surrounded by potted plants and ornate fountains. Thick draperies hung from the walls in places, and stained glass windows lined the back wall, each of those windows having abstract looking geometrical patterns upon them and being of a rainbow of all colors imaginable. The throne was in the shape of a gilded seat from which sprang six immense wings of gold, and seated upon a stack of cushions on that seat was a man wearing a black business suit of the type you might expect a Mafia don to be wearing, at least of the Hollywood movie variety. He had a red rose in his hands, and he was plucking the petals from it. Incense wafted up from burners near the sides of the chamber, and red-robed attendants with black shadows for faces beneath thick hoods did stand at attention as guards, no weapons in their hands and none needed. The man seated upon the throne was a pleasant looking person in his mid-30's, of indeterminate gender at first glance but most likely male due to everyone having referred to him as such up to this point. He was skinny, but not dangerously so, and his hair was long, black, and slicked back from his face. He was clean shaven, had sharp features, and a very prominent and hawkish nose. His eyes were solid red with no white visible in them, and may as well have been twin rubies the way that they sparkled and caught the light. He was pale in a way that was bone white, like that of a person who is an albino, and his lips were blood red. He had long claws rather than fingers, and those claws looked razor sharp. He had a wide mouth, and his smile showed a mouth filled with fangs rather than teeth. He was not tall, being of average height, and his voice when next he spoke was that of a proper English gentleman. His upper class British accent, was impeccable. “I say, welcome friends! Welcome to my humble abode, here in the realm where spirits of the dead go when they cannot quite reach their otherwise destined afterlives, or when they are simply unable to find the solace that normally comes from a good and proper eternal rest. Here, they are my subjects and are known as the Gidim. I do not believe we have been formally introduced! My name is Ukur, and I used to be in charge of things down in the Underworld, but that was a long time ago and I do not believe I am still welcome there any longer. Now, only a small vestige of me remains there, just to keep things balanced in the cosmic sense of such things, whilst I now flit away my endless hours in this beautiful place. Beautiful... but boring! I cannot wait to set foot once more upon the surface of your world, which I have not done in many thousands of years beyond counting. I wonder if people will like me! Well, you never know until you meet them. My servant Alvin doesn't seem to like me at all, and I daresay I think he means to double cross me. Bad form, that! He's keeping my daughter hostage... whilst attempting to bargain with me. I intend fully to keep my word to him, but he fails to realize that in order to keep my third promise to him I need to enter his world fully, physically, in the entirety of my power and glory. So... what brings you lot here?” John was laughing hysterically, after which he said loudly to Ukur: “Oh boy have you got a rude awakening coming! Look, pops... your little girl's been shacking up with Alvin and she is totally into him and vice versa. They want us to fuck you up so bad you won't be able to rule here anymore, so they can pretty much take over the place. Got it? What we get out of it is our world saved, all the portals and vortexes closed, and everything back to normal, or at least close to it. That's the plan in a nutshell, and me I'm sticking to it. How about the rest of you guys?” And William said in answer to that: “We're all on the same page, bro! Let's fuck him up good.” And everyone charged at the ancient god with their prods set to taser him. As soon as they went to connect one of their prods with the being's body, Ukur vanished and his guards all began to chuckle with his own demonic voice from before as if they were all vessels for his consciousness. He said through them: “You cannot fight a god, mortals! Only a god, can kill a god, and if you mean to kill me then you will most definitely all die. You cannot even lay a hand upon me, unless you will a form for me into existence that you can touch. Will at least one of you think of something appropriate for the occasion? In the meantime, I intend to slay the lot of you insects. Prepare yourselves!” and at once the guards manifested shadowy curved blades in place of their arms, and they charged at the ghost hunters with murderous intent. There was little hope.
The six ghost hunters were running about trying to avoid or evade their attackers, and there were far too many of these robed wraiths for them to even hope to capture. They had no weapons capable of a proper fight with such fiends, and all seemed hopelessly lost. That was when the little girl strode forth into the chamber, Alvin Crowley at her side. “We decided we couldn't wait for the party to be over, and it's a good thing too since it looks like things are just starting to get good!” the child said, unable to at all disguise her evident glee. Alvin chanted a spell, and various weapons made of light appeared in the ghost hunters' hands. “Now you can destroy these forms of theirs! Strike swiftly and true.” he said, as the family used their new weapons to turn the tables on the dark god's guards. Each one that was struck with one of the weapons of light was vaporized on the spot, and it did not take long for the family to put an end to the conflict at hand. That done, the weapons of light vanished, the spell having run its' course. Then, the demonic voice of the god returned, intoning: “Ah! I see none of you have chosen a physical form for me to wear yet. Such a pity! I've so many fun games in mind, and nobody wants to play with me.” That was when the little girl said: “He's actually a child of his species, all of this is just a game to him... whereas me, I am only a little girl in appearance. I am actually old enough that I could've been his mother. He adopted me, you see... without realizing my true age! Since he's a child, we should all think of him as such.” And think they did. After several silent minutes passed, the demonic voice of the child god then proclaimed jubilantly: “Ah! You have all chosen the form that I shall wear to destroy you in. Excellent! This will be a fun game indeed.” Suddenly... a gigantic dragon that was a child of its' species but still monstrous in size and dangerous to face appeared, filling the chamber from which the six ghost hunters and their two allies fled in a tremendous hurry. Bruce was hysterical, shouting: “Oh great! Just fucking great... now we can hurt him, but now he can slaughter the crap out of us a whole lot easier than we can do jack or shit to him. Who thought of a dragon! Was it you, John, just to be a dick?” John said, angrily: “I swear to Christ, I was picturing a baby.” The little girl then said, apologetically: “I am so sorry! It was me... see, I had a pet baby dragon when I as little and I loved it very much, so I did not think it would manifest in a form that could actually hurt us. But I guess that is the way this works, whatever we think of, however innocent, is going to appear and something horrible and try to kill us.” Alvin then said, out of breath already from running for his life... which everybody was still doing: “I have no spell that could harm a dragon. I mean, seriously! They aren't supposed to exist anymore, not on Earth anyway. Then again... this is not Earth!” The little girl then stated: “Alright, it's up to me to save the day then! Since I am a greater goddess, after all... I will just choose a form for myself that I can fight him in, and we should be good to go. Wish me luck, guys!” She then vanished, seemingly winking out of existence. The dragon was breathing fire down the hallways, which very nearly caught up to the fleeing individuals who were trying their best to stay alive and survive this whole ordeal. Along with the dragon was an entire host of ghosts, demons, and other unspeakable horrors, all following the will of their master. The ghost hunting family, and Alvin, ran so fast they finally reached the outside of the fortress and saw below them the stairs leading back to the desolation below. The sounds coming from behind them were a pandemonium of terrible shrieks, moans, growls, and other sounds. John was in the middle of praying, Alvin was resigning himself to his impending death, and Tiffany was screaming and finally succumbing to the wild hysteria that had been threatening to rob her of her reason for some time now. William and Marcia held each other tightly, and Bruce cried out to Tiffany: “I just want to tell you! I love you, Tiff.” and June realized she needed to step aside and let things take their course between the two of them, so June herself remained silent. Tiffany calmed herself enough to say: “I love you too! I always have... John is a lousy husband. The worst! If we survive this, John... I want a divorce so I can be with Bruce. Honestly, he and I are way closer in age anyway!” John said: “Fine, Tiff! Fine with me. I doubt we're getting out of this one alive anyway. So... we running for the woods, or what? Remember, there's those hounds there.” There was no safe place to run, and innumerable horrors were at their heels.
That was when the eldritch monstrosity with countless tentacles, eyes, and claws manifested itself in the entrance to the fortress behind them. It was the goddess, at last in a form of her own choosing that was capable of slaying the dragon that her adopted father had become. He, and every one of his truly nightmarish servants with him. She tore them apart, her claws able to rend spirit as well as flesh, so that the army of the dead and demonic were banished with the destruction of their assumed forms to a plane in which they would be countless lifetimes trapped in before being able to manifest in any form again. By then, they would have a new ruler... she who even now delivered her form of savage justice. Once she had dispatched all of them, she ventured into the fortress to face the dragon and there she tore the flesh of it asunder and consumed it, absorbing the god's soul and forcing it to become a part of her own so that he could never again be an individual being apart from her. She then used his power to close all of the vortexes and portals that he had caused spirits under his command to open... all around the whole of the Earth in every place where such portals had been. His power was her own now, added to hers, so that he commanded power of living and dead things alike. But in her ancient wisdom, she was capable of using it wisely! “I have left but one portal open, the one you came through. Run back through those woods, run back the way you came, and no hounds will hinder your flight. I will will the portal to take you home, and then it will be closed forever.” So the goddess spoke, and they could hear her even from outside the fortress, for her voice was everywhere in this reality, all around them. Alvin decided to thus remain behind, saying: “I love her, as you all know, and she promised to keep those promises that had been made to me by Ukur... well, all except the third one, which was unrealistic in the first place. It's a good deal, and it's all I want for myself for the rest of my life! And here... I can live forever since time does not flow here and I will need need to worry about dying. Take care of yourself, Bill! Everybody.” His body changed, so that he appeared to be in his early twenties, in the prime of his life. He was old no longer, and he rushed back into the fortress to be at the side of his beloved goddess, who even now had resumed her little girl form in order to please him. Together, they would rule this reality, benevolently. The ghost hunting family then ran back down the stairs and across the desolation, through the woods and as best and they could remember... back the way they had come. Back in the fortress, the beautiful little girl and her beloved Alvin smiled, embraced, and kissed passionately. At that very instant, the blue portal opened up on this far side and pulled the ghost hunters through it, with the journey back being as maddening and turbulent as it had been when first they entered the Alcatraz portal from it's earthly side. Only once they were through it and back on earth, with the Alcatraz portal now being closed at last, did they realize June was not with them. Meanwhile, back in the other reality... June approached the divine couple, and asked of the goddess and her lover: “If I agree to become your high priestess, and to serve you faithfully until the end of all time, if time's ending even could ever touch this place... would you let me become a woman, fully, without having to take hormones for the rest of my life? I'll never be able to get the surgery, for health reasons, so... this would mean a lot to me, if you could use your magic to just make it happen. What do you say, Al, would you and your girl be cool with this, or what? I really don't want a dick between my legs for the rest of my existence.” And they granted June her wish, remolding her body painlessly until it was entirely female in the human sense, with no trace of maleness to her in any capacity. They took her to a chamber with a mirror so she could remove her clothing and see what her body now looked like, and June... for the first time in her whole life... was pleased. Real breasts, no longer the implants she had before. And real everything else too. “Thank you so much!” she exclaimed. Back on Earth, months after their return... William Blake, his wife Marcia, their son Bruce and his girl Tiffany decided to look into starting their own private law enforcement business. Lawyers, and courts, were not a thing any longer, so John vocally divorced himself from Tiffany and went off to join a small mercenary company that was looking to see about stemming the violence plaguing the Midwest. Which was something he had in mind for years anyway. Ghost hunting didn't pay, anymore... which was good.
Published 5th Dec 2024
Author's Note
This was my attempt to write a dark and gritty take on the concept of Ghostbusters, with all original characters and a totally original plot that contains elements familiar to fans of that franchise. It is not a comedy at all and is a straight up horror story with some only occasional moments of humor.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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