Gods of the Dark Zero

Some apocrypha for longtime readers

The following is an excerpt from a book that will never see the light of day. It was a collaboration between me and another author. He and I are on different paths—creatively and personally—so our project was abandoned. No ill will—life just sometimes takes unexpected turns. That said, I am quite proud of the work I did on it, so I decided to share some of it here. This piece will appeal to fans of my book Gods of the Dark Web and internet horror in general.

As always, if you enjoy what I do here, be sure to grab a signed copy of one of my books, and don’t forget to subscribe.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

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In Avalon Lake—the town that shouldn’t be a town, the town that hadn’t been a town until the day it glitched into reality without warning or precedent—a couple of teenaged boys approached a screensaver maze full of cultural detritus. It lay within the woods, beside the lake, and beneath the abandoned water treatment facility. The boys didn’t know they were approaching it, but it knew the boys were approaching. Its pixelated walls wheezed with anticipation. The scattered shards of broken electronics—some from the past, some from an as yet unrealized future—began to glow. Vivid tangerine and neon green and colorless colors before unseen by human eyes flickered, flashed, and pulsed, a synchronized pattern in the dark, dizzying hallway, like fireflies with synthetic bioluminescence.

The boys walked into the maw of the woods, a dirt path bulging with roots and stones, branches edging into the walking space. They entered unaware of the stirring entities below, spared thus far on their life journeys from the knowing hell of inevitability.

“So, what is it?” the one called Douglas said. “It’s not cigarettes again, is it? Mom will kill me if I throw up on another pair of shoes.”

“I told you: we gotta go in a little further,” his brother Jake said. “You’re gonna like this. Trust me.”

“And it’s not gonna make me puke?”

“Definitely not.”

“Guess I’ll take your word for it.”

Jake only laughed, not even pretending to hide the deviousness in it. He was the oldest of the two, only by a year, but he acted like the gap between them was much larger. In addition to the cigarettes, which he’d found in a full pack someone had dropped in a gutter in front of the town’s only church, he had also given his little brother his first sip of beer. The beer he’d stolen from their father’s minifridge. Jake had thought it tasted like cat piss, and Douglas had agreed. Maybe one day, they would swipe one of their mother’s Smirnoff Ices. Those at least looked fun-tasting, almost like alien lemonade or a weird type of soda. Not today, though. Today, he had something extra special planned.

As they went deeper into the woods, sounds from the lake came into earshot. The purr of a speeding boat. The gentle splash of its wake against the shore. Laughter of children in the distance. All the activity came from the opposite side of the water body. The Avalon Lake town side sorely lacked open spaces, save for some small clearings where someone could go fishing. Few people did.

Jake stopped next to a felled tree and unslung his backpack.

“I think we’re far enough in,” he said.

Douglas licked his lips and eyed his brother expectantly as the backpack came down.

Jake hugged it to his chest like some kind of protective garment and looked for a place on the log not covered in damp moss or knobby mushrooms. He sat on a dry patch with the bag on his lap and unzipped it. Douglas’s eyes widened and a smile split the lower half of his face when Jake brought out the plastic-wrapped magazine.

“Let me see it!” Douglas said.

Jake withheld the magazine like a treat from a misbehaving dog. “What do you say?”

“Please!”

Jake smirked and handed over the goods.

The cover showed a topless woman wearing silky red shorts. Her hands were clutching her considerable breasts, hiding the nipples. She had smooth legs and a flat stomach. Her hair flared in the wind, and her face wore a seductive expression. It was a teaser image, designed to entice someone to open the periodical for a full reveal.

Their parents always said not to judge a book by its cover. Jake never understood this. He did it all the time, and judging by the times he and Douglas had accompanied them to the Video Val-Holla, their parents did too. Something drew them to choose one DVD box over another. It was always the cover art, and though DVDs were not books, the same principle applied. The publisher of Nudie Cutie understood this fundamentally.

As Douglas sat on a stone and precariously opened the pages, Jake fished out an issue of his own. This one was a little trashier, its title Sexy and Expecting. Its cover showed a cartoonishly pregnant woman wearing a matching pair of lacy bra and panties.

The boys paged through the magazines. Jake took the backpack off his lap to make room for his swelling crotch. Something about seeing these naked babes with protruding bellies aroused him in a way no erotic dream or accidental glimpse of a neighbor in a skimpy bikini ever could. If his little brother wasn’t around, he would’ve unzipped his jeans, if only to give his growing hard-on some wiggle room.

“Jake, look,” Douglas said with a chuckle.

Jake looked up as Douglas turned the open magazine toward him. The centerfold, the same woman from the cover’s teasing image, sat spreadeagle on a gaudy sofa. Her fingers were at her crotch, making an upside-down V as she used them to hold open her pussy lips.

“Gross, man,” he said, averting his gaze. His boner all but deflated. As much as Jake loved the female form, something about those shots inside the vagina, all fleshy-pink and cavernous, gave him a churning feeling in his guts. “Put that away,” he ordered with a childish groan. The pitchiness of his voice made him cringe harder; he had thought his voice-cracking days were behind him.

“What? I think it’s neat!”

Douglas turned the magazine back around and gazed in wide-eyed wonder at the open birthing cavity. The expression on his brother’s face reminded him of how the kid used to look at fireworks. There was still an innocence to him that almost made Jake feel a little bad for corrupting the little fucker.

“You would, you little pervert,” Jake said.

He flipped to a page of a very pregnant woman sitting naked in a grassy meadow, the sun a brilliant sore on the horizon. He imagined himself holding those firm, tan-lined tits in his hands, then moving down to massage her beachball belly. His hard-on began stirring back to life.

“Hey, fuck you. I’m not a pervert.”

And it was gone again.

He looked up with another smirk. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Of course!”

Jake shook his head and turned his attention back to the naked mother-to-be.

“Well, what do we have here,” someone said.

Without looking up to see who it was, Jake scrambled to stuff the issue of Sexy and Expecting into his backpack. To his dismay, some of the pages tore in the process.

“Fuck!” he spat. Their father would know they had gone through his collection now. If that happened…

“Jake,” Douglas said.

Jake finally looked up. Douglas had stood and now held the Nudie Cutie behind his back. He was wide-eyed still, but now with unease that bordered on terror. Jake followed his brother’s frightened stare.

And spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

She was tall and slender, with hair the color of black soot and eyes to match. All the angles of her face had a sharpness to them, but none compared with the sharpness of her fingernails. Filed into points and painted chrome-silver, they resembled ten tiny knives. She was considerably overdressed for the balmy afternoon, though the tightness and black shine of her one-piece outfit added to her allure. The high-heeled boots, though inappropriate for the treacherous trail, completed it. This woman was otherworldly and sexy as hell.

“You like looking at naked women?” she asked with the cock of a perfectly manicured eyebrow.

“No,” Douglas said. His cheeks had gone raspberry-colored. “This was Jake’s idea.”

He tried to hand the magazine back, but Jake didn’t move to take it. He was utterly transfixed by the beauty before them. No one in a magazine or a movie or real life could compare. She was the living, breathing embodiment of the word stunning, having stunned him into immobility.

Never mind that somehow neither boy had heard her approach.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Dougie,” she said and took the magazine from him.

She glanced at the centerfold image. Her right eyebrow remained cocked. She smiled but kept her lips shut to conceal her teeth. Jake imagined them sharp, filed down like her nails or naturally jagged like the jaws of something demonic or vampiric. He could hardly contain the shudder that vibrated through him. He was turned on but frightened, like he had been the first time he saw possessed Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters.

He shifted his posture and licked his lips. She turned her attention to him.

“What about you?” she asked.

He could see her teeth better when she addressed him directly. Though they appeared completely normal, save for their uncanny straightness and shine, he felt no less tense in her presence.

“What?” he asked in a dry croak.

“Do you like looking at naked women?” she asked again. “It’s clear your brother does…”

“I don’t!”

“You do, and it’s okay. Well, Jake?”

“How do you know our names?” Douglas asked. “How do you know we’re brothers?”

“Where I come from, there are no strangers,” she said.

What does that even mean? The question sounded like a scream inside Jake’s head, but he gave no voice to it.

“So?” she said, still staring holes into Jake with those black, beautiful eyes.

He cleared his throat, straightened, and tried to sound as cool as possible when said, “They’re okay, I guess.”

Her eyes gleamed as she smiled again without showing teeth.

“Want to see something even better than what’s in those magazines?”

She took them down to the lake’s edge. The water was placid. All sounds of playfulness had ceased, and it occurred to Douglas that in all his times looking out at the lake, he had never actually seen anyone in or on the water, not even on one of the opposite shores. Sometimes he didn’t see anyone even if he heard the usual sounds of people enjoying the lake. It was as if the sounds had come from some invisible radio, stashed deep in the nearby woods.

This realization made him follow this strange, darkly dressed woman more slowly, less assuredly.

He hadn’t wanted to follow her at all, but Jake seemed pretty determined to go with her and Douglas couldn’t let his big brother go on alone. If something bad happened, how would he explain it to Mom and Dad?

Still, the sand felt harder to trudge through, as if it, too, didn’t want them to go.

Still, nervous nausea swirled in his belly as the woman turned and headed for the trail several dozen paces ahead. The one that led from the beach to the abandoned water treatment facility.

As far as he knew, the facility had always been abandoned. But he also believed his town had been here long before him. He had memories and people older than him had memories and he had little choice but to believe these memories were reliable. What other choice was there?

These were strange thoughts, no doubt inspired by the strange woman leading them to some unknown fate. Something about her disturbed him above all other aspects of this situation. He didn’t even want to think it, let alone give voice to it, but the fact could not be denied: this black-clad enigma who had come upon them looking at nudie magazines looked like their mother. Not their mother now, but their mother in old photos. Their mother before them. Before one too many bottles of Smirnoff Ice.

How could Jake not see it?

“So … what’s your name? Jake asked.

He glanced back at Douglas, expecting his little brother to snicker at the way his voice wavered in the presence of this lady, but Douglas was pale-faced and staring at the sand as he shuffled slowly forward. Jake began to frown with concern, but the lady in black’s voice pulled his attention forward.

“It’s Christa,” she said.

They were still several yards from the trail that led to the sanitation plant. The water was mostly still, save for when it rippled in the occasional gentle breeze. The sun hammered on the back of Jake’s neck. Everything smelled like mud and foliage, but he did detect something else under the earthy tones, something synthetic, vaguely reminding him of the time he’d tossed an action figure in a bonfire. The stink of the miniature Stone Cold Steve Austin melting in the flames had made him woozy especially as he watched the features facial features of his favorite wrestler bubble and liquefy. The smell was too faint to make him woozy now, and there was no upsetting visual to accompany it, but he did find himself noting the smell, wondering what might be causing it.

“What?” Christa asked. “Do I look more like a Brenda?”

Brenda was their mom’s name. He shook his head ferociously, not wanting to think of his mother and this incredibly sexy woman in the same thought.

“No,” he said too quickly. “Christa is a nice name.”

She gave him a wink over her shoulder.

“I’m glad you think so,” she said.

The sudden playfulness struck a sharp contrast against her so far mysterious demeanor. He must have shown his confusion over it on his face because she gave a light shrug and said, “I contain multitudes, my dear boy.”

She turned onto the new trail, and the boys followed.

If she had let them, Jake and Douglas would have seen the wires snaking up the trunks of the trees lining the path, the mushrooms that pulsed like malformed hearts and flickered like Christmas lights.

The sanitation plant had always given Douglas the creeps. Seeing it now with this woman who looked like a younger version of his mom, a woman who called herself Christa, who Jake looked at like the most stunning woman to ever walk the face of the earth, made any apprehension Douglas already had about the place multiply by a hundred.

And yet, he went forward. Not out of stupidity or loyalty or because Christa had somehow hypnotized him but because deep down, he believed that no matter where they were or who else they were with nothing bad could happen to him with his big brother around. Jake would protect him. Jake had protected him on numerous occasions. From taking the rap for something that upset their dad after one too many beers to fighting schoolyard bullies, Jake had his back. The attempts to corrupt him were just for kicks, and Douglas liked these misadventures because it meant his increasingly too cool older brother still wanted to spend time with him.

So he followed. Creeped out, wary, but ultimately, trusting.

Jake only knew the crumbling structure surrounded by waist-high grass and covered in moss and vines was a sanitation plant because his parents referred to it as such. To him, it was just an old, broken-down building. A structure leftover from a time before he was born, forgotten and left to ruin. One that became a relic, a totem stashed in this wilderness only to be visited by adventurous children and older kids who needed a place to drink or deflower their high school sweethearts. It had seemingly always stood here in this state, cinderblocks weathered and windows boarded-up or bashed out. A hole in the roof. Broken bottles and cigarette butts sharing the surrounding grounds with dead rodents, puddles of stagnant water, and misplaced piles of excess asphalt. On some of the walls, people had spraypainted all manner of symbols, familiar ones like pentagrams and swastikas, and unfamiliar ones with multiple points and several overlaid circles. There were also names like DREK and VIVIV, as well as declarations of love from star-crossed teenagers. It was a temple to white trash occultism, a holy place for the unholy side of dying small-town America.

The synthetic scent was stronger here, but Jake couldn’t pinpoint its source.

Christa stood in front of the door, a dented monstrosity of peeling paint, hanging halfway off its hinges.

“Here we are, boys,” she said.

She gestured to the dark gap between the damaged door and its frame. She had that gleam in her eyes again, and when she smiled now, she showed her teeth. Almost gameshow host-like, which seemed wrong in their surroundings and with her enigmatic getup.

“I dunno,” Douglas said.

He sounded much younger than his not quite ten years, and it almost made Jake shut this whole excursion down. All he had to do was turn toward Christa and tell her thanks but no thanks, and then they could go home, stash the magazines back in Dad’s storage closet, and forget this whole thing ever happened.

But when he made eye contact with Christa, he couldn’t bring himself to reject her proposition. Her expression, now less game show host and more seductress, made his resolve and any desire to resist melt away like his toy in that fire.

“Come on, Doug,” he said, waving his brother over. “It will be fine.”

Douglas waited a beat, then sighed and joined Jake and Christa at the door.

Inside, a damp smell smothered the odor of burned plastic and the earthy notes from outside. What little light there was splashed in from the hole in the roof and the few uncovered windows. It painted everything with thin layers of sepia and gray, almost like a pathetic attempt to colorize an old movie. Or to de-colorize reality.

The brothers looked at their drab surroundings. Jake frowned at Christa, not getting the joke.

“So, what about this is better than girlie magazines?” Douglas asked.

Took the words outta my mouth.

“It’s not here,” she said. “Well, not exactly. This is only the borderland, the transitional space. We need to go a little farther.”

“I dunno,” Jake said, suddenly feeling anxious.

He didn’t know what threat Christa could pose. It didn’t look like she had a weapon, and he was sure they could outrun her. Especially in those heels.

So, why did he feel so tense now?

Because this whole thing is weird.

“You don’t know?” she asked. “What’s there not to know? You’re looking for experiences, yes? Something to share with your little brother?”

“I mean, yeah, but I guess I’d like to know more.”

“Jake…” Douglas began.

Jake looked back at his brother. He looked so small, standing there in the dark with his hands folded in front of him. In the shadows, it was hard to tell, but he thought he read worry in the boy’s eyes, like their first Halloween. They had visited a house with a ragged scarecrow dangling from the overhang in front of their neighbor’s door. Every time a kid walked past, its face lit up pumpkin orange and it shook and laughed maniacally. Douglas had eyed it with trepidation, not wanting to proceed but also wanting to seem brave for his big brother. Overcome with equal parts fear and fascination.

“It’s okay,” Christa said in a clinical way that reminded Jake of a doctor about to give him a shot.

He looked from her to his brother. He held out his hand to Douglas. Sure, this was weird, but at this point, Jake just had to know what this lady was talking about, what she was promising. His desire to see her naked had taken a backseat to sheer curiosity.

“It’s okay,” he echoed, flexing his hand and urging Douglas to take it.

Douglas tiptoed forward and laced his fingers with Jake’s. His hand was clammy. Jake squeezed it and faced Christa.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what you have to show us.”

Christa gave them a curt nod and led them down the murky hallway.

It was full of discarded equipment, some Jake recognized, others he did not. Shards of broken glass glistened in the faint light like fallen stars strewn intermittently across the concrete floor. Some of them crunched under their feet.

There were several doors that lined the hallway. Some were shut tight while others hung open on rooms of opaque darkness. Christa walked past them all.

Jake flexed his hands into fists, not sure what to expect but ready to deck this bitch if necessary. He knew hitting a woman was wrong, but if she meant to hurt him and Douglas, he would do whatever he could to defend himself and his brother. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He still harbored a sliver of hope that she would show him something he wanted to see.

They reached the end of the hallway. It was a dead end, save for the vent at Christa’s feet.

“Okay, so…” Jake started.

Christa nodded toward the vent.

“Uh-uh, no way,” he said.

“It will be fine,” she said. “Trust me.”

“Fuck that,” Douglas said.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to agree with my little brother on this. Sorry, but…”

She held up one hand, palm facing the boys like a traffic cop’s.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but we’re well past consent.”

Before Jake or Douglas could ask what she meant, before they could turn and run, the ground gave way, and both boys tumbled into a chasm, black but for neon green glyphs dotted across the shaft’s walls.

After the floor sealed itself over the screaming boys, it rippled with a satisfied purr. Christa’s chrome fingernails glimmered sleek and silver as she bent to run them gently over the fleshy floor, rewarding the space for a job well done.