Chapter ???- The Escape!

Whether this was real or not is irrelevant. What's real is that they are out there and they want in. They want him. And what they want can't be good.
Adam can hear the hammering on the door, the rhythmic pounding echoing in the small room designated by the lodge for use as an office. He's standing on the sole chair in the room, the little wheels on the legs rolling slightly every time he shifts his weight. He's unscrewing the plate to the air vent with his pocket knife, he's got two screws off and dust falls into his eyes tearing him up. "C'mon...c'mon... c'mon you fucking whore" he mutters under his breath trying not to strip the screws with his shaking hands. Then it hits him. The silence. He stops for a second listening.
Nothing.
He trys not to but ends up remembering that it's only been a little over ten minutes since everything got shot to hell- literaly. The ritual began like all the others. The wharehouse that served as temple, school and living quaters for some of the lodge was all done up for the event. Candles lit, circle drawn in white chalk across a concrete floor, Enochian tablets set in the four corners of the wide room, some kind of etheral music on the sound system, pentegram & hexagram banishings given by one of the officers(a seedy metal head whose name Adam keeps forgettting). Then badly pronounced Latin & Hebrew chanted from Darryl the lodge "Master" sets the tone, the officers of the directions take their places in a slow gait, respond to their cues, give gestures, secret handshakes and stage whisper code words, nothing different or out of the ordinary really, to him these things didn't strike him as especially mystical or "Magickal". No they seemed more like one of the heists you see in movies- only the "Crew" was trying to break into some kind of primal reality instead of a vault or a bank. Though he enjoyed the theatrics of the ceremony, this time he was bored really, he's been in the lodge Geburah almost a full year now and still hasn't shown any real intrest in progressing beyond "Probationary" status. He stands there in the "Chorus" with the other newbies: pseudo-pagan party girls & Crowley fanboys trying to get laid with the before mentioned party girls. He looks over at one of them, a Tech student, who looks kinda silly with his thick black rimmed glasses and acne poking out of the hood of his robe. He listens to the high pitch wail of the call of Pan "EEEEEEAAAAOOOOOHHHHH" and inwardly wished for a cigarette thinking "This shit ain't real"...
A large crack shatters his revelry as the wooden door buckles suddenly and the shock throws off his balance and he finds himself grasping at the lip of the vent to hold on to. The Fuckers are trying to batter down the door now. He shakes it off- the urge to piss himself, the urge to scream, the urge to crawl into the corner and cry. A lesson his old man beqeuathed to him the philosophy of the Battle ship- "If you can't outfight it- out run it!". He starts working on the third screw with the quickness- focusing on keeping his hand steady and wincing from the dust and sweat cascading into his eyes.
"This shit only works in the movies..." a doubting Thomas huffs in the corner of his skull.
Another crash-louder- and a crack begins to grow in the middle of the door as the third screw hits the floor.
"Yeah. Well all this other shit only happens in the movies so why not --this!" he answers back to himself.

Outside the door the RIDER looks through the eyes of a dozen dead men, black hole chakras whirl in fresh corpses and IT(they) are/is traveling through their(ITs) memories. Gliding down the tendrils and branches of the nervous system, reanimating them in it's wake, traveling through thought clusters and activating the pain centers until it finds a word... no not just a word something more (IT/they) shift their awareness through Darryl's(now theirs) frontal lobes sifting through images and concepts until it finds a name... and the members of the lodge Geburah speak with one voice through their shattered larynxs and slashed throats.
"Ahhhhh--DAAAAA-EEMMMMM"
They/It gurgle and hiss. IT/They access the memories of talking and conversing and try again.
"Ahhhh-Dum" Yes that sounded right "AHhhDam Khhhum Ahhout and plaaahh with ahhus!" They(IT) wait for a response- a muffled shout comes from behind the door.
"YEAH FUCK YOU!"
IT(they) translate the words and grammar... and the RIDER smiles across twelve lifeless faces, smelling fear and defiance coming out of the room- a sweet scent of burnt tires and pine needles. Yes he'll be the one. They(IT) resume their seige striking at the door with a ceremonial podium as the ram. The RIDER smiles drifting through Darryls memories - there is no way out of the ..."House" no... he roams through the language centers ah yes... there is no way out of the "room", Adam is trapped in there.

And the vent plates falls to the floor with the fourth screw. And Adam breathes in deep praying the vent shaft can hold him.

December Lightning

I'm waiting for it.
The clouds are drifting in like a lost fleet across the night sky. A sweeping wall of battleship gray bursting flashbulb yellow in barks of heat & electricty. It's coming now in a slow wave. Cold rain firing down on Beaver Ruin Road, drilling down harsh across Lawrenceville Highway, on Chamblee Tucker road the pitter patter of a million chattering drops play the pavement like a toy instrument.
Then it stops.
As sudden as it started. Clear sky heavens. Little sudden streams are gliding down the snake turns of Foxford Drive, puddles become lakes reflecting the streetlamps like dim minature moons in the potholes along Eaglerock, cars swish by and sound like swords being unsheathed and hiss out riding the doppler echo only to disappear into the next sword being drawn at fifty odd miles an hour.
"It's end of the world weather" my buddy nods sagely.
I smile and offer a rare silence. Nicky the Akita sits by me in the wet grass scanning the horizon with us. She's smiling. "That's the way the Akita smiles" my friend says in imitation of a line out of Platoon.
Heh.
So I ask her.
"Is this end of the world weather baby?"
She just looks up at me with that grin. She knows.