Issue #5: In Through The Out Door

Rain lashed down that night. The dreary streets of New York, the air cold and the rain rushing down the roads, and there they stood, the three of them, old friends. Dancing this dance like they had every decade since... they could remember. Richard clutched his chest, the blood seeping like an unplugged leak. Rose looked up at the demon, his body flickering, demon to human, human to demon, in the pale light of the street lights, and she spoke low and soft. "Let him go."

"Why should I, Rose?" the demon laughed. Shards of glass smashed against his vocal chords. He held the damp, beating heart in his clawed hand, and thrust it up into the air. "I have won!"

She moved her hair out of her eyes. The demon just laughed, that sound... She shivered, and not from the cold. "Because you can have me. Let him go, Yeter'el."

The demon flickered again. Forked tongue licked fanged teeth, then lips smacked as human visage was returned. "You would give yourself to me, in place of your poor, arrogant husband?"

"I would a thousand times over. And you've got to follow the rules, don't you? A soul for a soul."

The demon huffed. "I suppose."

"Yes, you do, don't you?" Rose stepped forward, and crouched down before her husband, who was gasping for breath. "I love you, Richard. I love you with all my heart and soul."

"Nuhh... Noo..." He looked up, his eyes stained red with blood. "Rose, please... Don't..."

"This is what people do when they're in love, Richard. They do crazy, stupid things." She leaned toward his ear, and whispered something that the demon Yeter'el could not hear. Following that, she kissed his forehead, her fingers lingering over his wound for a moment, and then stood again. "You. Yeter'el, formely of the Nephilim. Do your worst."

"A thousand agonies await you, Rose Psychic. All for this one man." Yeter'el laughed. "An existence that will soon become one of pain and suffering. You will forget your husband, you will know only agony. Tell me, is it worth it?"

Rose looked at the fallen angel, the demon Nephilim known as Yeter'el and smiled. "Completely."

He squeezed the heart, and Richard screamed, until it simply vanished into nothingness. Richard gasped, his agony over, and then, still weak, he looked up from the rain drenched pavement he was lying upon. "No!"

Yeter'el opened his arms, and a thousands lengths of chain shot out from his body, engulfing Rose. She did not cry out. She was dragged toward the demon, who continued to laugh, haunting the streets of New York with that cackle for years to come. "Come to me then, Rose Psychic! Come to me and live!"

Rose reached the threshold of Yeter'el's chest cavity, that gaped inside and down, through reality and down into hell. Richard tried to drag himself up, but Yeter'el glanced his way, and he was pushed back, pinned to the ground, trampled underfoot. Rose looked up at Yeter'el, his eyes black voids, and then smiled. "You remember the rules, d-don't you?" The chains tightened, preparing for the last descent. "A soul for a soul?"

"Why, of course, Rose. I did agree to them, didn't I?" He licked the side of her face with his forked tongue, and Rose's hand lashed out, grabbing it, squeezing it betwen her fingers. "Hhhhffg"

"A soul for a soul." Richard's blood entered Yeter'el's mouth, and Rose began to chant, even as she was dragged down by the chains of Hell. Yeter'el's chains shot out toward Richard, and then, as Rose vanished into Yeter'el, the demon himself was dragged toward Richard. Even as Rose was engulfed, the chanting could be heard, intertwining with the sound of the raindrops, echoing out toward the world. Richard was suddenly standing, and Yeter'el was bound tightly to Richard's chest.

"What has she done, Occult? What has she done?!" Richard grimaced, the pain of these two men being driven together by the razor sharp lengths of chain indescribable, and he just shook his head. "WHAT HAS SHE DONE?!"

Richard grabbed Yeter'el's head, and drew it upwards, his own eyes welling with the tears. "Damnation's Flame." And with that, Yeter'el's body vanished into Occult's own, and the scream joined the laughter and the chanting and New York was haunted for the years that followed.

Machines made noises to show that the teen they were hooked up to was still alive. If this existence could truly be called a life. His skin was punctured by tubes and needles, the sterile stench of the hospital permeated through the private room. "Any change?" The doctor looked at his clipboard, his pen tap-tap-tapping on the edge. "Any at all?"

"He's been in a coma for ten months. And it's all the fault of, would you believe it, the Flash and Superman." The nurse shook her head. "Poor child." She wiped his brow with a damp cloth, and then sighed.

"Well as long as they're footing his bill, Nurse Reynolds." The doctor smiled. "As long as we get paid for our troubles."

A hand grabbed his wrist. "Now is not the time to be thinking about monetary gain. Now is the time to be afraid. It comes, Doctor, it comes." Kid Eternity's eyes blazed. He hadn't moved for ten months. Not since the Flash's rash decision made his situation worse without consideration. Accelerated healing had brought Kit round for a few minutes, but without the proper setting of bone and without the patience to wait for swelling to go down, he had fallen in a coma that he had as of moments before, not woken up from.

"Son, g-get off me!" The doctor stumbled back, as Kid Eternity climbed out of the bed, pulling tubes out of his body and then cringing as he realized his catheter was still connected.

"Oh, well... Uncool." Before he could go two steps he collapsed, his legs not holding his emaciated weight. "Ggghhh..." He groped at the bed, and dragged down his bed sheet with him. His throat was burning for water, his muscles screamed not to be used, and as blackness consumed him, the Nurse loomed over him, forked tongue licking at fanged teeth.

"Time to get you back into bed, Kit!"

"I hate Gotham City," Detective Thomas Lane, on the night shift, was standing outside the Fine mansion. Randall Fine had been a mad old coot with a lot of mad old coot friends, and he'd not been seen for months now, and because of his mad old coot ways the GCPD had been reluctant to go visit. He had a habit of these vanishings, traveling across the world in search of eternal life, a new deity to worship, so they weren't worried about him particularly. What worried them was the fact that people were going missing nearby and that they needed to go onto the grounds. They had a warrant (they found a particular flimsy judge, presented the facts that all these people had gone missing near and around these grounds and that the mansion was empty. They had to search the grounds, didn't they? It was their obligation).

Thomas lifted the old brass knocker and rapped the door twice. He waited a minute. No reason to go in eager for something that isn't there. Behind him, Detective Gerald Clancy was standing awkwardly, waiting for Lane's word. "Alright, there's nobody in. Let's split up, you go round back, I'm going to, unfortunately, break some windows."

The two men parted ways, and Lane elbowed his way into the main lounge, smashing through a pane of glass and fiddling with the clasp to open the window all the way. He tumbled inside, and was met by a terrible smell that nearly made him vomit. "Ghhh..." He took another step forward, rotting vegetables and old soil permeating into his skin. He pulled out his sidearm, and kept it low. Clearing every room, he realized the sheer immensity of this place, the sheer size of the building, and when he was done with the bottom floor, and was waiting for Clancy to meet up with him, he heard a smash, a clatter of glass falling upon the floor, and froze. He grabbed his radio, and began to talk. "Gerry? Gerry, you there man?" There came no reply. "Sonofabitch."

He rushed out of the mansion and into the garden, only to be hit by a blast of cold air that made him freeze in his tracks. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up; his gut, the one thing he thought he could trust was screaming at him to run away, but he couldn't. The wind subsided, and he looked around, his flashlight piercing the veil of darkness and exploring the garden. A trail of dead grass lead down to the old greenhouse down at the bottom of the estate, and overarching trees guarded the small building. Lane could barely see what was down there, his flashlight faltering just as he brought it up to see what was down there. There was a rustle of activity, and Lane brought up his weapon and began to march down to the end of the garden, following the dead grass that wound down to the greenhouse. "Stop where you are." He brought his radio back to his mouth but all he could hear was static. "Control? Control?" He looked at it, the static whining out of synch and then fading to black. "Sonofabitch!" He took a breath. He was trained for these kinds of situations. He should have run, followed his gut, but Clancy was down there, he must have been, and if he wasn't replying to any of his shouts or warnings, then he must be injured-- or worse. "One last warning." The door that lead to the greenhouse was open. And yet, inside, Lane could not yet see what was in store. "One last warning!" The strength in his voice was gone. There was a sound behind the open door, a slithering, a slathering, wet and sharp, snapping in the darkness. His hand moved toward the door handle... "One... Last... Warning..."

He opened the door, and hovering meters off the floor was Gerald Clancy, held aloft by tentacles bigger than tree trunks, black, damp and crushing the life out of him. And behind him, thousands of dead eyes stared, all piercing the darkness, searching for weakness to exploit, and they began to turn their gaze toward Lane. The tentacles writhed over Clancy, entered his mouth and ears, his nose and eyes, wet snaps echoed out as the lengths pushed against and through cartilage and bone, muscle and flesh, and then, as Clancy screamed silently, unable to make a noise for the obstruction in his throat, blood erupted out from the detective's head, dribbling down with the caustic ooze that was slathered upon the creature that had him.

"Oh, God."


"Not... Your... God..." He clutched his head, the voice pulsating into his skull. "Your... God... Is... Dead..." He was frozen in place, and as he looked up, his eyes tearing up, his nose dribbling with blood as the sheer enormity of the psychic voice inside his head began to grow. "Long... Live..."

"Hello." Doctor Occult stepped into the room, his Sigil of Seven held high in his hand. "You're a loose end. Grown fat off the flesh of those you drew here with your whispers. I'm here to end you." Red and black magic swirled up around the Sigil, sparkling light emanating out from the center and spiraling out. The creature, its body taking up all but a few square meters of the greenhouse, vibrated, sparked as cracks began to form in its hardening flesh, and then it erupted, dying a thousand times over in one instance. Occult's magical barrier prevented himself and Lane from being drenched in ichor. He looked down at the detective, before the two of them was a burning hole in reality that was shrinking every second that they breathed. "Call this... 'Justice League' I've heard so much about. Tell them that Doctor Occult is handling this situation, but the entire estate should be locked down."

"M-My partner!"

Richard shook his head slowly. "Is dead. I'm sorry. But you have to go now. Before this crease in reality folds inwards completely and becomes useless." He began whispering to himself. Chanting. His hands weaved about, sewing a spell, and his chants got louder.

"What are you doing?! Who are you?!"

"Like I said, I'm Doctor Occult.." His body shimmered, red and black, flashing like a kaleidoscope of monotone, "... And I'm going to Hell." He vanished, folded inside himself and shot through reality like a bullet, and the shimmering hole in-between this realm and the next sealed shut behind him.