Silas and his family are not holding up very well. It’s early October but there are no plans for a Halloween party later in the month; no decorations, no invitations to neighbors. There hasn’t been a Halloween party in two years, not since Illuminatos opened up and changed the world. Since then, Silas’s affluent neighborhood has been on lockdown, like the entire cul-de-sac of Mcmansions are under strict quarantine. Of course there is no way to quarantine from the spores of Illuminatos and many families went crazy behind the barricades on their windows and doors and victimized one another. In many ways, Silas’ neighborhood is the exact opposite of most of the world at large where people victimize random strangers and roam the streets looking for violence, making travel alone unsafe.
His neighbor Tyler and his family have survived the times, but they are the neighborhood’s most vicious perpetrators of violence. Tyler has presided as the leader of the neighborhood since Night One, claiming the title through brutal murder of interlopers and rallying others to join him as his army. He has kept the neighborhood safe from outsiders, but he has no interest in protecting them from themselves, though there have been times when he has stepped in to solve disputes between houses and he divides up supplies to households that contribute to his post-apocolyptic army. They call themselves the HOA, and they have kept up the appearance of the neighborhood, though it’s clear that the world is harsher because there are half burned or destroyed structures mixed into the picturesque ones with neatly mowed lawns. The world at large in the Nights of Illuminatos is in a much shabbier condition.
Silas has been petrified of Tyler since Night One, two Halloween’s ago at the last party that Silas hosted, when Tyler revealed himself to be Azazel, the demon that would meet Silas when he went to Hell in his dreams. He hasn’t gone to Hell in his dreams since before Night One, but the Alia had shown herself to him and she promised to bring Hell to Earth; Silas assumes that his demon guide from Hell possessing his neighbor, and then the spreading of the Illuminatos spores that crippled society and brought normal function to a relative stand still, are proof that the Alia is a ghost who keeps her word.
Silas is afraid of Azazel, but he sees him everyday when the HOA convenes, about thirty or so men and a smaller number of women in tattered and grundy clothing that they’ve been forced to hand wash because of the unreliability of electricity and indoor plumbing. Silas is Azazel’s right-hand man and the only reason that he continues to possess the body of Tyler for as long as he has is because the two of them have been coaxing the Alia to return to her position in Hell. She only appears to torture Silas and much less often than before, and Azazel keeps him close so that when she appears, he can plead with her to return to their father.
“That thing is not my father,” the Alia said the last time she appeared when Silas and Azazel were enjoying a secret stash of beer that they had taken from a band of rowdy teens that they slaughtered about a year ago. It was a justified slaughter from the point of view of Silas’s neighborhood, the teens had banded together from neighboring towns and looted homes and communities in the area before they arrived at Silas’s cul-de-sac.
“He helped you realize your amazing powers,” Azazel said with Tyler’s mouth in Silas’ fenced-in backyard. “He showed you that you have a connection to all of the souls of this world.”
“He kepted me bitter for his own stupid plans that even he has forgotten by now. I won’t go back there. There is no need for it.”
“Can you stop what Illuminatos has done?” Silas asked and Azazel glared at him with Tyler’s eyes that were very mean on his large frame. Silas ignored it. “The world is bad. Even doing our best, we’re still savages. If you can help…”
“This is what the world deserves,” the Alia said. But then she stopped before she continued. She looked like a goddess in the yellow and white robes that draped her tall form that was only a spirit with no physical body. “I have traveled a lot since I left Hell. I have daughters. I would help them.”
She disappeared and Silas has not seen her since, and he is relieved because she always brings him night terrors for weeks after their encounters, but Azazel has been angry with him for not helping him to take her back to Hell.
Today, as the sun sets, Silas sits next to Tyler in the cargo bed of a truck as they return to the gates of their community. It is manned by five men with large guns and they stand like soldiers as the truck approaches.
When they are close, Tyler stands and leans over the roof of the cab to soak in the admiration of his soldiers who smile like children as the truck slows to a stop.
Silas watches him. How is it all even possible, he thinks to himself bitterly. How did the world go to Hell and why is this demon following him?
The curse of his ancient ancestor, that’s what the Alia had told him and he curses his own DNA.
He wants to kill Tyler, wipe Azazel’s smug smile off his face, maybe everything would snap back to normal in his absence. But killing Tyler would only make all of his neighbors look to him and Silas can’t handle that. And maybe killing Tyler would only free up Azazel to take another body; he wouldn’t return to Hell until the Alia agreed to go with him.
Tyler hops down from the back of the truck and the men gather around him like a god and then they open the gate and Silas stays in the back while the truck continues into the community. Tyler watches him among the crowd as the truck makes its way to the home of the designated butcher who would hack up the three deer carcasses the two had found on their daily hunt for distribution to the houses loyal to Tyler.
Silas helps to unload the carcases and carries them to the backyard of a house that is in shambles from the outside, though inside, the first floor is outfitted like a traditional meat market that reeks of old blood that hadn’t been properly cleaned.
The backyard is worse. The smell is oppressive and there are swarms of flies around the discarded bones and various pieces of animal carcasses strewn around. There is a shed where the butcher works that is refrigerated with makeshift rigging that someone in the neighborhood had managed and when Silas enters it, he can see his breath and feels the chill prick the hairs on his arm.
The butcher is an older man who had grown up on a farm somewhere in rural North Carolina, and in the Nights of Illuminatos, he has mostly channeled his rage into butchering animals to maximize the food for the people of his community.
“We are stocked up pretty good,” the butcher said standing next to hanging carcasses of two horses, a cow, and four deer. He wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, three other men had helped Silas to carry the carcasses into the shed and now they are waiting for him to ask for help.
“We are doing good,” Silas says nodding to interrupt the silence. “Let us know how we can help you.”
The butcher chuckles.
“Load one up on the table there. I only need enough help to lift up and off the table. The rest of you can go. Silas, how is life beyond the gates?”
He says it almost playfully, but so few of them actually leave the community, and if not for the random radio broadcasts, they would have no connection to the outside world; tv and internet seemed to have been shut down or they couldn’t figure out how to continue receiving it.
Silas and another man lift the carcass onto the table and the butcher approaches it with a large knife.
“It’s like the old days, I imagine,” Silas says to the butcher. He watches him remove the head and limbs. “The old old days, before the civilization any of us recognize. It reminds me of the world in a western. It ain’t bad all the time, sometimes it’s nice to come to a quiet place and just see nature, you know. The outdoors. But then you never know what’s around a corner or over a hill. It’s brutal out there. It’s hard to forget that.”
“So, the same as yesterday,” the butcher says, concentrating on his work while he lets the blood drain into a bucket.
Silas nods. “The same as Seven Hundred Eleven.”
“How much longer, Silas?” the butcher asks him sincerely and looks up into Silas’s eyes as he holds the carcass in position to drain into the bucket.
Silas is taken aback. They have the same conversation every time Silas returns and helps him. He tries to change up his wording to make it interesting for the old man, but when the world changed on Night One, it was set, like it was encased in an amber scene of chaos that is unchanging.
“How would I know?” Silas asks.
The butcher shrugs.
“Aside from our fearless leader, you’re the man with the most answers. Just thought I’d ask.”
“Why you say that?” Silas is curious about the man’s perception of him.
The carcass is situated now so that it will drain without need of his attention, so the butcher stands in front of the table and eyes Silas.
“You and Tyler keep this place running and if not for y’all stepping up, then it would be the wild west in our little community too. If you was trying to not be a leader, then you messed up son. Cause it’s hard to see you as anything else.”
Silas shakes his head. It’s a compliment, but that cemented it for him. Even if he could kill Azazel in Tyler’s body, he wouldn’t. He didn’t need that responsibility.
When he leaves the butcher, the Alia appears to him. He is walking the sidewalk toward his house and then he feels her walking next to him. He doesn’t break his stride.
“I have made a decision,” she says to him like the two are casual acquaintances chatting it up on an afternoon stroll.
She doesn’t continue until he acknowledges her so they walk a few blocks before Silas works up the nerve to talk to her casually.
“What were you deciding?” he asks.
“Whether to intervene as a force for good for this world. You know that this fate is one that humanity brought on itself? There are cults that gather at the trees of the beast and feed on its pollen. They brought him here. That evil is man’s nature and this is the world that man would inevitably make.”
“We deserve it and you won’t help?” Silas asks, mostly to contribute to the conversation.
“You deserve it, but I am determined to rid this world of that dank weed who uses a name that is more fit for me. Silas, descendant of Ssi who betrayed and slayed me, I will rid this world of its darkness, but you must use the powers of your ancient father to help me. Swear your loyalty to me, bow before me as my everlasting servant, and I will stamp out Illuminatos. My word is truth. Yours means nothing and I will require a piece of your soul to secure your end of our bargain.”
Silas let’s the words of the Alia wash over him. It is all so esoteric, practically it means nothing. He is living at the end of humanity, after spending about a decade visiting hell in his dreams, nothing can really baffle him now. This spirit of an ancient woman who hates him is humanity’s last hope and he would gladly give a piece of his soul, whatever the hell that means, to see the world brought back to the normal he was used to.
Silas stops and faces the Alia on the sidewalk. He kneels before her, because that’s how you submit.
“Take whatever you want from me, just end this.”
PRL Serials 