In front of an audience of famous politicians, celebrities, actors and singers, a man with a black executioner’s hood led a ragtag group of people in chains. All of the prisoners were dirty, wearing rags. I saw women who had cried so much that the only clean part left on their bodies were the streaks beneath their eyes, men with panicked eyes who frantically pulled at their metal chains and, watching it all with glee, the cheering, grinning faces of the rich and powerful.
“Hail Lucifer!” the man in his black executioner’s hood yelled in a deep baritone. The audience responded with rapture, some of them standing, their eyes shining, as they cried, “Hail Lucifer!” The voices of so many combined into one powerful echoing boom.
The sounds were muffled slightly during an out-of-body experience, as if I were hearing them through water. The colors and shapes also seemed to shimmer and vibrate more, giving the clear, crisp lines of everyday reality a much more fuzzy look. Even though I was only there by astral projection, I still shrunk back into the corner as much as I could, trying to hide from the madness and evil all around me. Little did I realize, I had seen nothing yet.
I thought about retreating to my body, parked in a nearby RV, and trying to call the police, the FBI, Homeland Security, anyone- then I saw the police chief and various Senators and Representatives in the audience, and gave up any hope of that idea. If I called a dispatcher, they would probably send in a hitman to kill me and make it look like a suicide, as I heard rumors they had done so many times before.
So I stayed as the ritual began, and it was the worst decision of my life. The chain-gang of prisoners were led to an inverted pentagram laying flat against a wall of stone and flickering torches. Within the pentagram, I saw shining obsidian forming the background, diamonds and opals embedded into the white gold that formed the star and circle. As they were led forward, some of the prisoners fought back, trying to pull their arms free, but they would ultimately receive a shock from a cattle prod for their efforts.
“What is wrong with you people?” the first woman in the line of prisoners cried, her eyes frantically searching the crowd for a single sane person to help her. She found nothing but coldness and insanity reflected there. The audience was deathly quiet, reminding me of old pictures I had seen of medical students surrounding a dissection. They had a kind of clinical detachment that was disturbing in its own right. Some of their eyes shone with excitement and rapture as the woman was strapped into the leather cuffs of the pentagram, forcing her legs and arms into a V shape, like the Vitruvian Man in DaVinci’s art.
The head executioner turned to the audience, bowing his head as if he were a simple entertainer.
“The ritual will begin,” he said brusquely. There was murmuring and the shuffling of random objects as the crowd stood, each pulling out a black book out with silver words embossed on the front. Floating slightly above the ground, I moved as close as possible to a beautiful woman in her early thirties in the back corner of the audience. I recognized her as a famous movie actress, countless diamonds and rubies shining on her body in an ostentatious display of wealth. The book read, “Codex Moloch.” The audience opened the books to the first page and read out in Latin as one, the screams of the woman imprisoned within the pentagram being the only sound that broke the monotony.
Returning from the back of the stage, the executioner poured gasoline over the imprisoned woman’s head. She moved her head from side to side rapidly, straining, tears pouring down her face as she pleaded and cried.
When the chanting reached a crescendo, he pulled a torch from the nearby stone wall and threw it at her feet with an almost indifferent, nonchalant motion. She went up instantly, the flash of light too bright to stare at, her screaming intensifying into something that didn’t even sound human. The smell of burning meat filled the auditorium, like pork scraps roasted to a black crisp over an open fire.
The audience responded by chanting louder and faster as her face began to melt off, small beads of fat dripping off her nose, her eyes liquefying under the intense heat. She was rapidly losing energy now, her voice turning into groans and moans that sounded like, “Uuugghhelp… uggh… gu…” I wanted to fly away, but the horror of it all kept me chained there.
Her skin turned black and split as her screams became quieter and she fell forward, straining against the chains and, thankfully, losing consciousness after what seemed like an eternity. The prisoners in the chains were shocked into silence, then they all began wailing and screaming at once. But it wasn’t for long.
Out of the charred wreckage of her body, I saw a dark shape beginning to appear. The chains snapped open with a soft clinking sound, and the blackness rose into a shape eight feet tall. It had the same charred, blackened skin as the human sacrifice, but underneath I saw bulging muscles and enormous strength as it moved forward. Its powerful legs had feet like an elephant, its hands lengthening into bone-white claws, but its face was the most disconcerting part of all. Its eyes were alive, flickering like the embers of a dying fire. Its mouth had the purest-white teeth, each one looking like a pointed dagger within its black gums.
The audience kept chanting, but it seemed to die down rapidly as the creature walked forward, and soon stopped altogether as it scanned them with its fiery eyes.
Then, it looked right at me, trying to make myself as small as possible in the back corner of the massive auditorium, and it started smiling wider. I knew, in that moment, that it had seen me.
The demonic entity turned to the chained prisoners and began ripping into them with its claws, biting their necks and sucking their blood. The first man had his heart ripped out, the creature popping the still-beating organ into its mouth and sending spurts of blood dribbling down its chin as it chewed. The rest of the prisoners tried to get away, but with them all being chained together and trying to move in different directions, they only ended up getting tangled and falling over.
I saw a few of the audience members getting up as if to run away, to get out of the auditorium, but the others in the audience shook their heads at them, saying something I couldn’t hear. No one ended up leaving, which ultimately made the death toll worse.
I didn’t stay the entire time, but I saw, once the prisoners were all dead and eaten, the beast turned to look at the audience once more.
“Hail Lucifer,” it said in a rusty, echoing croak, before jumping from the stage into the middle of the crowd, crushing a few people to death underfoot instantaneously. Without hesitation, it sent its arms out, pulling off people’s heads and drinking their blood, eating their hearts, cracking their ribs open like pistachios- and that was when I fled.
The last thing I saw on my way out was a stampede as all the famous actors, politicians and celebrities tried to leave, but how many actually survived, I will never know. I had seen enough.
Floating through the walls, out into the clear desert air, I returned to my body, parked a couple miles away in an abandoned campground in my little RV. As soon as I awoke, I ran to the bathroom, vomiting up my dinner, the dripping fat of that burning woman’s nose and the sound the hearts had made when the creature bit into them repeating in my mind like an endless loop.
***
After I had told all this to my friend Chris, he simply shook his head in wonder.
“Wow,” he said to me. “And you’re sure this wasn’t a dream?” I held up the newspaper, stating that a famous political talking head on a news channel had been found dead of an unexpected heart attack.
“I saw this guy get ripped apart,” I told Chris. “He was in the audience. He was one of the devil-worshippers.” Leaning back in his chair, Christ pretended to stroke an imaginary beard, giving me a long sideways glance. Then he jumped up.
“Well, we have to get this up on the blog,” he said. He was the technical guy for my blog, and the one who recommended I do it in the first place. We were old childhood friends, and when I told him I could astral project, he jokingly said I should use it to go into the White House or other restricted areas and put down what I saw on an internet blog. I had done so, and the blog had exploded. Hundreds of thousands of people now read it on a weekly basis.
Chris had a lot of experience with computers, so he had used encryption and VPNs to make it harder to track us- “in case this weird-ass shit is all real,” he had told me, cracking a sly smile.
I finished my beer as Chris got packed, grabbing a few things for the journey back to my house on the other side of town. Within a few minutes, we were headed out the door. As soon as I stepped foot on the driveway, I knew something was wrong.
Both of our cars had our tires slashed. There was no public transportation in our little desert town- hell, there was barely even a downtown here, mostly consisting of a gas station, a 24-hour diner and a police station. Without a car, there was simply no way to get the ten miles over to my house.
Chris was breathing fast, his face covered in a sheen of sweat as he looked at me.
“You don’t have any psycho ex-girlfriends, do you?” he asked hopefully, and then a shot rang out. Jumping up, I began to run back into Chris’ house.
“Come on!” I yelled at him. He had a blank, shell-shocked look in his eyes. Backtracking, I grabbed his arm, yanking him hard. It was just in time. Another bullet rocked past where he had just been standing, smashing his front window and sending tiny shards of glass all over the front lawn.
We were back inside within seconds. I slammed the door, turning the deadbolt before spinning back around to look at Chris. He was covered in sweat, his pupils dilated, his breathing far too fast. I thought he might pass out if he didn’t stop hyperventilating.
“It’s OK,” I said, walking up to him slowly. “We’re going to find a way out of here.”
“My gun,” Chris said suddenly. “We need it. It’s downstairs in the basement.” He spun on his heels, pushing open the basement door and barrelling down the stairs. I followed close behind. As soon as I reached the last step, I heard a tremendous bang come from the front door, followed by slow, steady footsteps as someone walked in the house.
Chris was opening the gun case, his hands still shaking. I quickly walked over, putting my finger in front of my lips in the universal sign of “Don’t say a goddamned word” while I grabbed the 30 odd 6 from the case. He looked as if he would protest for a moment, then he snapped his mouth shut again. As quietly as I could, I unloaded the magazine, saw it was full of bullets, then clicked it back into place.
It was just in time. At that moment, a huge foot kicked the basement door in. With a sound like the cracking of thunder, the door fractured into pieces. Then I heard the rapid descent of steps.
The man who had been shooting at us was just an old farmer with a straw hat, denim coveralls and a rifle. I shot him in the center of the chest as he sprinted, causing him to fall down the last six or seven steps, sending droplets of blood flying in all directions as he turned. I saw it like it was in slow motion. He fell heavily, still holding onto his rifle. My ears were ringing from the tremendous cacophony of shooting a rifle in such a confined space. I ran up, putting my foot on the farmer’s rifle and pointing the gun directly into his face.
“Why are you shooting at me?” I screamed at him. He shook his head.
“Not… you…” he said, blood bubbling from his lips as he spoke. “The other one… kidnapped my daughter…” He pointed to Chris, his movements getting weaker.
I started to turn around, but a hammer came down on the back of my head just then. Looking up, I saw Chris standing there- but now he had a black executioner’s hood on his head. The same one I had seen on the stage where the devil-worshippers gathered.
“You should have minded your own fucking business,” Chris said to me, raising the hammer again to bring it down on my face. Without thinking, I took the rifle, pointing it up at his head and pulling the trigger. The hood flew off his head as the left side of his face exploded, and he fell back.
Gurgling blood, he stared at me with his one remaining eye, a kind of intense hatred and evil there that I had never seen before.
“Lucifer saw you…” he said to me. “Your days are numbered, scum. Hail Lucifer!” That was the last thing my friend said before the awareness faded from his eye and his choked gurgling stopped.
As I crawled towards the old farmer, blood streamed down my scalp from the hammer wound. I pulled out my phone and called for help- vowing never to astral project into forbidden places again.