Issue #1: In My Time Of Dying (Part One of Two)

Hospital food:

“The ear. It’s an obvious entranceway, if you look. The wound is already healing; you can see the forming scar tissue… But still evident. Something slipped through his ear, pierced his eardrum and entered his body. His mind.” Doctor Occult nodded, and then turned back to the orderly. “What do you think?”

“Wh-Who are you?”

Richard smiled and takes out a piece of paper. “Richard Occult, doctor of whatever medicine you want me to be.” He waved his hand in front of the man’s face and clicked his fingers, causing the orderly to shiver and close his eyes. “Ok, Kid… What secrets do you hold within you…?” He looked down at Kid Eternity, resurrection maven, and victim of some unknown attack nights ago. It had been nine days since The Flash’s funeral, so nine days since the attack. Occult placed his hand on the boy’s head and his eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, and flickers of images filled his mind.

A man, shrouded in darkness, cane, hidden from sight, cannot see face… Hidden by a beard? Fake maybe? Don’t know… Pain in hand, fist full of anger… Of vengeance… Meaningless, doesn’t matter… Pain. The pain sticks out like a sore thumb. Electricity in the blood, wire in the blood and the agony… Oh how sweet it would be.

Doctor Occult withdrew from psychic contact with the child, and shook his head. He looked around at the machinery and grimaced. This wasn’t helping. “Why don’t they come for you, Kid? Why don’t your guardian angels protect you from all this?” He’d been in a coma since Barry Allen, in his haste and impatience, awoken him… Had that made it worse for the child? Who knew? He thought through the clues. A man clad in darkness, cane, and then the evident pain. There was only one man he knew with that description.

[/I]

It was a bitter taste in my mouth. Disappointment maybe. But bitter none the less. The Shade, Richard Swift, an old friend from an old time, some time an enemy, nowadays mostly a friend, an ally. But a coward? Really? No. Not Dickie Swift. Not The Shade. So he’s going to sit in his mansion, in God knows where, and sip his wine and tend his roses. I’m almost disappointed, but then I remember that before our friendship he tried to kill me more times than I care to remember. He’s a strange one. Changing his behaviour every other year, sometimes deadly, sometimes the trickster… Nowadays, mellow. Like a retired man, living his life. It’s a strange life we lead, and maybe… Maybe if Rose hadn’t… Oh, don’t think about the past, think about the now, and how you’re going to solve the mystery. That’s all that matters.

Son of a bitch.

He screwed me over. I stand outside a bar, except it doesn’t look like a bar, it looks like a condemned building, one where you’d expect its demolishing to be imminent, but no, it’s been like this for the past half a century, and no one seems to notice it, and the city council haven’t strolled down this street to check it out. Only those with eyes of magic can see it, and like Dickie said, I may not be up to scratch… But I can still see an entrance to another dimension when I see one. The door opens as I approach, and I stand inside, and then a hundred set of eyes gaze back at me. It’s a demon of some sort, I get that instantly.

“Who’re you?” It’s to my luck, and his, that he didn’t try and incinerate me when I entered. I must be emitting enough magical energies to have a strong enough aura to be an obvious being of magic.

I shrug. “Someone who wants a drink, and who has money for one.”

“Don’t recognise you.” He crosses his arms. Is this guy for real? Is it even a guy?

I smile. “How long have you been working here?”

“Ten years.” He spits the words. He doesn’t know where I’m going with this.

“I was last here ten years and thirty nine days ago. You’re lack of specifics is your undoing, because you’ve been here for ten years and thirty-seven days. You know how I know?”

“How?” He’s shaken a bit, I like this. I’m being the badass, a role I rarely take.

“Because I demoted your predecessor. Into something sub-demon. Something you inadvertently step on when you walk down a street. Because I can do that, and now you’re in the way of my getting a drink.”

He hesitates, and looks behind himself to the bartender, who nods slowly. “Sure, first drink on the house.”

“Why’s that?”

“The Doctor always drinks for free.”

I nod and head to the bar, and pull up a stool. I’m surrounded by all sorts of creatures, some I recognise, some I don’t. These aren’t real demons mind, these are the beings that have inhabited shells that they think best represent them. Nothing like Scratch, who contained his eternal darkness inside a homemade vessel of pure black will power. He was difficult like that. “What do you want, Occult?”

“Information. A friend of mine conveniently forgot how he could access his connection to the Lords of Order. You might have heard about it?”

“The Eternity kid.” The bartender nods. He’s your stereotypical devil, horns and red fur, and inside his suede shoes, I’m sure I’ll find hoofs. “Yeah, we all heard. Had a round on the house ‘cause of it. Never liked those human skegs getting a free ride by the Lords. Pisses off the wrong crowd.”

“I need a name. The name of whoever provided his attacker with the mnevore that he dropped in his ear.”

Mnevore. Little creatures, all tentacles and eyes, slip into your being and make you forget. Quite potent buggers too, make your amnesia so intense that your body rejects whatever would make you be reminded. In my case I would die I assume, my body being the receptacle of the power of Seven, a gift of my birth and eternal in my soul, and for Kid Eternity… His ‘metagene’ or whatever.

“Those things? There aren’t many guys who have the know how to conjure an old one, you know that.”

“But it’s possible.” He pours me a drink and I take it. “And it’s the only explanation. So I want a list, and I want it now, else I’ll banish your customers to… Ohio.”

The demons eyes widen, white specks in darkness illuminated. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would indeed, Toledo to be exact. So please, make this easy.”

“Fine! Fine… That’s the guy’s name!”

“That’s his name?”

”That’s what I told you, isn’t it? Randall Fine, he owns land in Gotham City, and he might be the one you’re looking for… This one’s on the house… This tip, just… No threats, ok?”

“I guess I owe you that,” I reply. Randall Fine. Gotham City. Ancient magicks loom large in that city. This was going to be fun.

The sight appalled him. He would have smiled, but the realisation that this was not an illusion or trick hit him like a kick in the crotch. They licked at the troughs, aching to reach and escape outwards. They can sense him, sense his presence, and they wanted to touch, all they wanted was to touch… And consume. And devour. Until nothing was left. Was Randall Fine so insane that he'd do what he's done? He would conjure up the seeds of demons and plant them in his garden? At the edges of each row of troughs were buckets full of thick, red liquid, bits of bone and flesh bobbing out of the gloom. What was this place?

Richard Occult's jaw dropped in comprehension. "He GREW them in his green house! Little Old Gods, all clambering for a chance to end the world! What kind of person does that? What kind of freak!?"

He stumbled out of the glasshouse and vomited onto the withered, dying grass, his being overcome by the stark horror of what he had witnessed. They were sucking out the life of the nature around the house. Sucking up the life from the flowers, the grass, the trees and the leaves, leaving a horrific abomination of nature in their places.

The tiny creatures, tentacles and eyes all peering out of the troughs, cried and moaned in inhuman voices. Tentacles slapped and slathered around the edges of the walls that contained them, blood and bone and flesh had been ground up into paste, and used to feed them as they grew into fully-fledged demons. They were like shrubs, little plants you place in a hanging basket, little plants that steal your soul and destroy dimensions. Richard Occult vomited some more and then collapsed onto the floor, his nausea like a sea of terror and fear hammering against his soul. The creatures were doing this to him, together, collective, all trying to conquer his being, their first victim…

Unwilling.

Richard tensed his soul and scrambled down the long garden, gasping for breath.

"I see you found my grand parents." The voice was slick like oil, evil incarnate and pure malevolence. "They were o-so wanting to visit my lovely new estate." The man's voice was jumpy, humorous, having a laugh at some cosmic expense. "You'd think that being trapped in a mortal shell, slowly dying each passing tick of a clock, I'd have no access to the immortal powers that I was blessed with as a demon of the lowest ring of hell. Oh how you were mistaken. Years spent drinking, nothing, and then, oh, one meeting with an old friend and I have power again. Access to the abilities you denied me."

Richard looked up, his eyes wide, sweat dripping down his brow. "Oh, no…" He struggled to move back, but the man was upon him in a flash, grabbing a spade and slamming it across his enemies jaw with a loud crack, causing the magician to collapse back down to the ground.

Scratch smiled a human smile, his arm covered by one of the creatures, its tentacles wrapped round his elbow and shoulder, it's eyes gazing into Richard's soul. "Oh, yes…" The former demon dropped the creature onto Doctor Occult, and as the tentacles wrapped around the magicians body and slipped into his mouth and ears, he tried to scream but the hurt became trapped within him, and the darkness… He welcomed the respite from agony. And that little voice, silenced by adventure, by adrenaline, it crept forward, stepped into the light, and uttered its words dipped in pain.

"I'm still here, Richard."

“I know why you came, you stupid flesh bag, you came to find out who I sold my ‘uncle’ to,”

(Uncle? Thought Occult, his ideas and dreams drifting like waves lost to the pull of the riptide, does he mean the Mnemovore that was used to incapacitate Kid Eternity?)

“But you aren’t going to find out, you little piece of shit. The information stays with me now and forever. He screwed over your little child prodigy, didn’t he? Screwed him over good and nasty. Now as your body becomes the incubator for my relative, it’s demonic pureness entering your every nook and cranny, I want this last thought to linger in your tiny mind. You failed. Failed because you’re a dreg. Useless. And you know why, fool.”

"No."

Scratch arched a well-tweezed eyebrow. "No?"

Doctor Occult tore the creature out of his mouth, blood spitting from the corners of his lips, dripping onto his sleeve, but he wrenched the creatures tentacles out of his throat, out of his being, and then threw it to the floor, then calmly proceeded to step on top of it, a squeal emanating from its tiny fanged mouth as he did so. "Exactly." Doctor Occult cringed as the squeal of death echoed from the green house, but then grimaced as his attention returned to Scratch. His fist clenched and he swung for his enemy’s jaw, connecting hard. "I was wrong that day, years back." He punched him again, blood dribbling out of the villains' mouth. "I thought I made you human. I gave a piece of myself to make you human and you still pull crap like this!" Scratch fell to the ground, and Richard kicked him hard in the gut, causing the ‘man’ to cry out in pain. "I've got a prescription for you." Richard dragged the man up to his feet and pushed him back up the garden, and then threw him inside the greenhouse. "You murder and destroy to feed your 'relatives', Scratch… I never thought you had it in you… Where do you find the help? Who did you sell that creature to?"

"Said I wouldn’t tell who I sold them too, you puissant, but who sold themselves to me… Ha, they… They volunteered, you sanctimonious son of a bitch!" Scratch coughed black and blood and then began to laugh, slowly at first, then louder and louder, the creatures squealing in delight at his words. "I offered the old and dying a passageway into something greater… Their flesh is now the flesh of the ones borne of my blood! Flesh becomes flesh through SACRIFICE! I didn't tell them that their souls would be sent to HELL for their part in the raising! A trade for a trade results in…"

"YOU PAYING!" Richard threw Scratch at the troughs, knocking some over, the creatures skittering across the concrete and bumping into cans of fertilizer.

"Oh, Richard, you knocked over Mr Fine!" Scratch stumbled up and picked up the trough, blood spilt across the paving slabs. "He was the first to go. Eternal damnation and he signed over his property to me. I present…" He motioned to himself. "Randall Fine the Second." He shook his head. "Or some such thing. See how plump his flesh is? Fatty deposits, fat cells in the blood, all mixing and coagulating in a seed of evil to make… Grand pappy Loveday." He stroked the creature and placed it back in the trough. "So what you going to do to me? Make me a demon? Make me a dog? A cat? A beetle? I'm evil baby, you can turn me into a one-celled organism and I'd come back as bubonic freakin’ plague. I'm contagious!"

"No, old friend, you're an unoriginal hack." A new voice entered the room, echoing in the glass room. "And Scratch, stop with the melodrama, it irks me." Scratch's eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and Doctor Occult span round, his sigil raised in defense. "Please Richard, all the years you have known me, when has your sign of Seven ever affected my shadow power?" The Shade smiled, and moved his cane around himself, his purple tinted glasses down the bridge of his nose. He surveyed the scene, a wry smile on his lips. "Does it make my darkness lighter? My power softer? I do not think so."

"Shade, old friend, do me a favour and kill this poor excuse for a human…" Scratch smiled as he spat the words, blood mixing with saliva and spraying from twixt his lips.

The Shade too smiled and pointed his cane at Richard. "Sorry, old chum."

“Wh-Why?”Occult was suddenly wrapped in shadow matter, his body thick with it, and then he quickly sucked into the ground, vanishing in a bubble and pop of living darkness.

"Now that that business is taken care of… You and I have a debt to settle."

Scratch froze for a moment. "W-What do you mean?"

"I know how you brought your family here, and I do not like the methods to your madness. You pierced the walls between their domain and the closest one next to it, the closest one that lead to this reality. You pierced the Shadowlands like you lance a boil and the Shadowlands does not like being considered so." The Shade stepped forward slowly, and then raised his hands steadily, the shadows coming to life in the room, beneath the troughs and surfaces, beneath paving slabs and people as he does so. "Being considered a boil." The room rumbled, and Scratch squealed, joined in chorus by his brethren. "That is lanced." The room was enveloped in the black, and then the black bubble collapses in on itself, only The Shade left standing in the void where the greenhouse once stood. "Tarah."