Amerika

Randall Lewis didn’t feel good about having to address the city council. It wasn’t his sort of venue. It involved interacting with more than 3 people on a single day. It didn’t go well with his nickname “Captain Autist.” But he’d been invited, thanks to an obnoxious, oleaginous slime who wrote for AL.Com. It’s the sort of crap he occasionally got for loyally serving a client. God knows he didn’t have many of those, so he pretty much had to serve them all loyally.

His line of work matched his personality or lack thereof. He was a real-life Ghostbuster, an investigator of paranormal phenomenon. He had an actual diploma from The Miskatonic University. Cthulhu put them on the map, but their alumni also diversified into demons and other paranormal entities as well. He was somewhat on the savage, freak edge. He specialized in Revenancy.

Revenancy caused him to go past dealing with Casper the Friendly Ghost. It also caused him to associate with people that didn’t typically show up at City Council meetings if the city was particularly safe. His co-workers, “Guns” and Hannifred, got their job-related training shooting at Robert Mugabe’s North Korean trained commandos during his consolidation of power in Zimbabwe. They were a bit long in the tooth, but they did still file their canines into nice, sharp points. He also occasionally cooperated with and worked for law enforcement. He was Alabama’s go to guy on so-called “Halloween Cases.” The $PLC wouldn’t think kindly of them referring to the paranormals as spooks.

You see Revenants are unique in the Spook Community. They don’t just stop in saying Boo. If you see one, you then see the Great Big Game Over Screen in the sky. Survivors of Revenant attacks aren’t still compos mentis. They typically have to be spoon-fed their applesauce if their faces are still attached. All ghosts are still able to manifest in the corporeal world due to regret. The Revenants are spirits of angry vengeance who regret they haven’t taken along a busload of normies for their final ride.

Investigators in Randall’s line of work have run out of shotgun shells or Uzi mags before they ran out of Corporeal Manifestation which was not a particularly nice way to wind up your business practice. The typical aftermath of a corporeal manifestation is expensive to clean up and repair and not a very pleasant crime scene for the bubbas in CSI. The only positive thing about one of these horror show undeads is that they can only manifest in a form which can kill or be killed when they are triggered. Figure out the trigger and you can either avoid, or better yet, deactivate the revenant.

The unassuming town of Frederick, AL wasn’t famous for anything. It once had quartered a traveling party of German emigrés en route to Texas. They kept a couple of restored, old buildings with “GTT” carved on the door to scam Congress out of money for historic downtown renovation. Then afterwards a plantation house ran a few acres of slave-tended cotton patch. It was the Took Plantation that was now becoming a historical problem. They were now afraid they were about to get infamous for The Ghost of Malindar Took’s Field Hand.

You see Malindar Took not only owned human beings with one hand, he also sexually abused the twelve-year-old females he owned with the other. Then, if such a thing is possible, he used the third hand to hypocritically criticize Alabama as a backwater slave pen that didn’t deserve it’s statehood until it manumitted the very young women that prevented the perverted Mr. Took from leading a lonely, unfulfilled life. And then on the fourth hand, after a couple of decades of despicable, base moral turpitude, he had a few cotton-pickers out there who didn’t quite sport the same level of umm, suntan as the others.

And Good, Old Malindar would always chide and upbraid those other, uncivilized slave holders for how they treated their chattel. He’d make a point of criticizing them for not giving them a chapel to properly worship the Lord in. They were supposed to be properly grateful to nice people like Malindar Took. He was totally different from all the other people who deliberately imported the other and then forcibly race-mixed with their cute, little daughters.

There was this one big field hand on the plantation called Jacob. Jacob was not only obviously mixed, but he favored Good, Old Dad. Except of course that by the time he was fourteen, he could kick daddy’s rear end from tree to tree. In the “rather unfortunate” AL.Com article about Jacob’s Revenant, “Guns” had made the mistake of remarking in an off-the-record interview that “if evil the son-of-a-bitch were any bigger, Nick Saban would resurrect him and admit him to college to major in Defensive Line.”

Well, once that made it into a seemingly innocuous AL.Com article on hauntings of The Old South, SJW types made it detonate on Twitter and other Left Wing social media sites. Now hordes of nipple-pieced Antifa sorts wanted to see The Ghost Who Killed Rednecks. They thought the old slave plantation was a tourist attraction. Then, some of them screwed up, made Jacob manifest like it was fourth Down and Goal from the two Yard Line, and three packages of human sushi had been bagged up and delivered to the local morgue. The technician spent 15 minutes puking up his innards in a non-descript, steel trash can purchased from Alabama Industries For The Blind. Just think of all the money they could get out Congress for The Authentic Old South House of Supernatural Slaughter.

The Town Sheriff, Buddy Bartlow, knew all the crazy stories and wanted an expert who would drive a big, official van. The expert would then offload lots of sciency-looking nerd gadgets from the big, official van. The expert then would operate the gadgets in a manner reminiscent of the opening montage of Mystery Science Theatre and declare, herewith, and with utmost gravitas; that nobody older than the age of five really believes in ghosts. That hadn’t happened. What happened instead had now created a tornado of turds.

Lewis was hired to visit the old plantation and investigate the stories about Jacob’s Ghost. He rolled up in an unmarked, very unofficial Dodge Blazer. His instruments were of the sort typically got used in commercials that bash the NRA. His sidekicks were two grizzled, old White African mercenaries that would eat a prototypical science geek for breakfast, crap him out by 3rd period, and be hungry again just in time for lunch. They not only believed in ghosts, they had expended over 100 rounds of ammunition and had started a two-alarm fire at a newly-fashionable historical landmark in an unsuccessful attempt to expel one that had manifested. Lewis was now being called upon to go before the City Council of Fredrick, AL and lie in some convincing fashion to make people think the whole thing was nothing that involved, you know, a thoroughly pissed-off revenant that reminded leering leftists of a stereotypical narrative involving the past in Alabama. Too bad this task was given to Captain Autism.

Lewis stood before the packed meeting. Flashbulbs popped and telephones and recording equipment were held in the air like cigarette lighters at an old Skynard Concert. They were recording him, not demanding that he play “Freebird.” He testified as follows:

“Myself, Shalk ‘Guns’ Golander, and Hannifred Norberger arrived at the site of the old Malinder Planatation at 1930 hours on the 12th of October. The sun had set and we were met by a woman named Ms. Norah Drake who represented the interests of our employer who has requested anonymity in the course of tonight’s testimony. We entered the house, spent 45 minutes traversing the property and detected no trace of supernatural presence. We then went to a set of structures labeled as the plantation outbuildings. These would be more accurately described as an outhouse, a food preparation and storage place, an agricultural equipment shed and approximately 12 buildings that were domiciles to the plantation slave population during the period from 1834 until 1863 when operations ceased at the site.”

“Our initial indication that things would turn unpleasant came when we reached the smokehouse room of the food preparation and storage outbuilding. Here the door stood wide open; unlike every other door we had come to which had been closed and secured by two locks each. As we came closer, we noticed the door had forcibly opened in a manner that had deformed the doorknob as if it had been twisted in a crushing manner. The bolts of each lock on the door had remained shot and had been physically ripped out of their boltholes leaving parallel holes in the door frame, slightly larger than the width of each bolt.

“We should call someone.” Ms. Drake informed us. “This isn’t right.”

“Is that so?” asked Guns.

“Someone sure decided it was snack time.” Hannifred said under his breath.

“I’m outta here.” Ms. Drake announced and attempted to back away.

“If I’m paid to go in there, so are you.” Replied Guns. He assisted her into the room in less-than-gentlemanly fashion.

“Trigger. 12 O’Clock. 50 Meters!” Yelled Hannifred and all three of us were putting weapons to the ready.

“Read any passage of the Bible in which you see an angel, and the people getting the visitation initially react in mortal terror. Multiply that by about six and you get how Ms. Drake reacted when she got site of what had manifested in the form of Jacob. She emitted some sort of a whimpering sound indicating her fear of the corporeal manifestation of the spirit that was once Jacob.”

Guns put her down on the floor and stood over her to protect as he leveled his firearm and attempted to aim. I was firing as rapidly as I could replicate the trigger pull on my weapon. Hannifred was in simulated full-auto thanks to his bump stock and spent casings flew around like popping kernels at the State Fair Concession Stand. The creature didn’t yell. It only said. “She lies. I will have her.”

“Not tonight you Scumbag!” yelled Guns. He opened up a prodigious rate of fire worthy of his moniker.

Jacob was losing small, ochrish pieces as the rounds tore into him and through him. He didn’t lose any motivation. This was evidenced as he ripped an old wood stove out of its fixture and chucked it over towards Guns. Over towards Guns was close enough to scatter Hannifred and myself. I didn’t see what Guns managed to do, but he had somehow grabbed Ms. Drake and moved her and himself just in time to avoid wearing that old wood stove as a chest ornament. Jacob then stated. “She hates me. The liar.”

Hannifred remarked. “Nothing personal, but I’d rather not go on a road trip with you either.” He also slammed in the next clip and used the rounds to hose Jacob as the manifested revenant moved towards Guns and the fair maiden he was protecting. Jacob’s corporeal manifestation had also grabbed a piece of stove pipe and seemed like a kid about to play tee-ball with Guns and Ms. Drake. I pulled an old trick out of the unofficial manual of dealing with malignant corporeal manifestations.

The “Skunk-Can” was a standard aerosol can of stinging and burning liquid that also exploded when exposed to open flame. The trick involved taking the can in one hand, and ignitor in the other and spraying the cone of nasty towards the face of the corporeal manifestation so that you could temporarily back it down. I was in the process of running this game on Jacob when he caught me unaware and swung the pipe at me back-handed. It got my wrist just as I had begun spraying liquid towards the Bic-Lighter and then his hideous face. The combusting droplets flew at random, alighting on various flammable flotsam.

This, in turn triggered an explosion right next to Jacob. His entire manifestation became a mobile tiki-torch of unrequitable hatred. The flames stunk of corporeal manifestation composed of GodKnowsWhatium. The manifestation again came forward. Hannifred lost his professional cool and probably about five pounds of excrement. He was first to break contact in a random direction of rapid retreat. Guns was next, but he maintained enough professional demeanor to throw Ms. Drake over his shoulder and fireman’s carry her straight out of hell at a gallop.

I laid down a whole clip to distract and cover. Jacob was blubbering about “they don’t really want me to exist. They lie when they say they are different from my father.” I would have been more fascinated as he said. “They are evil like my father. I curse them for making me exist.” But I was too busy being scared out of my wits. I had no argument and not just because I was blocked now from the door and desperately looking for a good window to throw myself through like a projectile.

“You people pretend you don’t hate my kind. You do it to feel better than others of your kind. You are all secretly convinced I never should have existed. My own mother believed I was a demon from hell and was too scared to give me her breast. My father beat me and that woman you brought in only pretended to sympathize. She hated me just as much as the rest.” He continued his soliloquy of self-damnation as he advanced upon me for the kill. Then he stopped and turned his head to the side. It was just the margin I needed.

It was then that I heard the sirens as I picked my way through the minefield of burning matter on the floor in preparation for rapid egress through an old glass window pane. I shot myself through with inches to spare and little to protect myself from glass shear. I could swear I heard the stove-pipe fungo bat whoosh through the hot, smokey air inches above my posterior and legs. My dive would be scored poorly by the Russian Judge at The Olympics. It did, however, get me out of that building alive. The fire Department arrived soon after. Maybe their incident report, which has been delayed for some unforeseen reason; would tell you more.

Tags: demons, halloween, sodomy, wasteland