Prodigies Of Evil / Chapter One

Prodigies Of Evil

Jon Bautz and David Byron

Prodigies Of Evil

Written by Jon Bautz and David Byron

All characters in this story are ones of fiction; any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.

No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted, photocopied, or stored in any information storage or retrieval system without the written permission of the authors/publisher.

Prologue

July 14^th, 1868

Purgatory, Texas

11:59 p.m.

The entity swooped down upon the sleepy little town of Purgatory, Texas, with a ferocious power, bringing with it a storm that only be compared with a hurricane in intensity.

Trees were uprooted and tossed about like matchsticks, buildings were torn asunder, water troughs were turned into mud by funnel-like clouds of desert dust. From within the storm’s cell which began to dissipate almost as quickly as it had begun – emerged the Shadowman.

The shadowman, formerly known as Sampson Faith – formerly known by many names – was currently going by the name of ‘’Jack.’’ Jack was a traveler; a time-traveler, to be exact. It was within these many travels – spanning out over a period of almost two hundred years now – that he learned the art of time travel, from a kind, sociable and very intelligent young British man named Herbert Wells, H.G. to his friends.

That is, before killing him, of course. Jack had also learned the art of murder during the course of his travels, learning the intricate – yet seemingly simple – art of murder from the best: Manson, Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer.

And of course, Jack.

Jack was the best.

His piercing, hypnotic eyes scanned the semi-darkness for any signs of life. A drunk lay nearby, the seat of his tattered, filthy pants resting in a pool of his own vomit, oblivious to the destruction around him. His body suddenly expelled a pocket of gas from his intestines, where the remnants of cheap whiskey had found it’s temporary resting place within his rotted guts.

The drunk’s eyes fluttered open, fixing upon Jack momentarily, then closed with a grunt of disinterest. He could not move anyway – didn’t want to move – but that was fine and dandy with him, all he wanted to do was take a nap for now. The condition of the buildings around them – the ones that had, inexplicably, been left standing – was one of a warped and peeled surface, the wood and paint having been cursed by mother nature and father time.

Jack knew a lot about time………

As of today, Jack was – in all reality – 267 years old, give or take a decade – and he’d fought as a foot soldier in the Civil War, had been bayoneted through the heart, then resurrected. He’d marched side by side with Hitler, smoked cigars with Stalin, and even dined on human flesh with Idi Amin. But it was Sampson Faith – Native American shaman and birth given identity – he longed so to get back to.

But for now – whether it be for two hours or two years – he was Jack. The Shadowman; immortal, time traveler, shape-shifter, murderer.

Patronizer and killer of prostitutes, respected artist and physician, and – otherwise – an all around nice guy.

Jack Danson; thief of hearts, a silver-tongued devil, a charmer. He had worn many masks, assumed many indentities, broken many hearts. But tonight, it wasn’t romance he sought; but the blood that pumped through the hearts in question. It had become like sustenance to him, like a quick fix to a drug addict, a candy bar to a diabetic. He’d been bitten by one of them – the prostitutes – and had infected him with the most vile and permanent disease known to man; immortality.

But enough of brooding over the past……Jack was thirsty.

The thought of feeding on the drunk – a tramp, really – repulsed him at first, then the gnawing emptiness in his belly, as well as the icy cold feeling coursing through his shrunken veins took over. Besides, he’d seen no one else around, no potential witnesses to catch him in the act. They were all hiding from the storm…….

Kneeling down to get a firm grip on the tramp’s leg – it was visible through a hole in his trousers – the stench was almost overwhelming. At first, Jack’s tongue just lolled uselessly in his mouth, and a gurgling sound escaped his throat as he choked back bile.

Taking a deep breath, he lunged forward, bit deep.

The symphony of pain that had gnawed away at his empty belly now began to subside into a vague numbness as he fed, the alcohol –fueled blood making him light-headed, but almost euphoric at the same time.

Now buzzing, flying high on life itself, Jack spied the saloon across the street.

A light was on.

Dim, but there nonetheless. And where there was light……

…there was life.

And……blood.

Darkness was receding. Flowing after it, filling his consciousness, was the inrushing myriad of sensation that was waking: a tickle in the back of his throat, the tang of copper on his tongue. His nostrils were filled with the cloying scent of meat and waste. Dimly, he was aware of a weight on top of his body. The dull pulsing of pain and ache in his muscles and ribs seemed as if it were coiled, gathering itself to leap into full pounding agony.

The tickle in the back of his throat clarified itself, became a trickle. Slow and warm, cooling, it felt gelid. He coughed, felt the pulsing pain in his ribs come to life with electricity and belched. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he pulled it slowly to rest between his bottom teeth. Copper again, maybe iron or steel. There was a decidedly metallic taste in his mouth and he vaguely recalled a time he had tested a nine-volt battery by placing his tongue across its leads.

Copper. Iron. Pain. Meat.

He became aware of the sounds of singing. No. That wasn’t quite accurate. He concentrated on the act of rising from unconsciousness, of becoming fully aware of his surroundings, of his condition. Music was playing, soft, muffled by a hiss and spatter that seemed to surround him.

There was a feeling of something moving against his leg, the fabric of his jeans brushed his skin below his knee. He was rushing toward wakefulness then, the recognition of sensations becoming thoughts. The song he was hearing was Crossroads, by Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony. It was playing on the aftermarket CD player in a late eighties Monte Carlo.

Crushed velvet interior. Bucket seats. Chrome piping.

He coughed again, shifted beneath the weight pressing against his body. He lifted a hand, hissed at the pain it shot up and down his sides, and laid a hand against cool flesh. It felt rubbery and slick.

Copper. Meat. Blood. Pain.

Blood.

He remembered then, in his last moment before waking, seeing the flash of chrome as John leaned forward in his seat. The bitter sinking emotion of realization as John had dropped his hand to the grip of that pistol. His own hand clamped over John’s wrist, the short struggle, a loud report as the gun discharged and the flash of brilliant pain in his abdomen.

He came all the way up, leaving the tendrils of sleep trailing into depths beneath him. It came with awareness, the awakening and angering of pain. Still without his eyes open, he listened to the sounds of the night outside the car.

Rain fell steady and cold outside. Mark listened to it strike the car, its beat against the sides and roof a drum that gave forth the syncopated rhythm of nature. Lightning flared, its brilliance cutting through the paper-thin tissue of his eyelids. He groaned, shifted beneath the weight on top of him and opened his eyes.

The dim illumination emanating from the overhead dome light cast the interior of the car in muted tones of burgundy. Mark rolled his eyes toward it and noted the sanguine fluid dripping form its convex surface. Lifting his head slightly, he stared into the lifeless eyes of John’s corpse and tried not to stare at the hole torn into its throat.

With a grunt, Mark heaved himself upward and rolled toward the door. Grasping the handle and jerking up, he managed to pop it open. The rain’s hiss filled the car, drowning out the song playing on the radio. He breathed deep of the cool air, felt the rain’s cooling touch on his hot skin and leaned into the night until he slid from beneath John’s weight and onto the ground outside.

Gravel pushed into his side, drawing a gasp of pain from his lungs. Hot agony seared through his abdomen. Torn muscles screamed. Blood oozed from the wound in his stomach, slow and hot. Gritting his teeth, he turned to his stomach and gathered his knees underneath himself and crawled forward, away from the car, toward the edge of the parking lot of the abandoned summer ice cream joint where John had taken him.

Wind drove into him, cutting through his sweatshirt and chilling his body. He shivered as the rain plastered his hair to his head in a tight helmet. Closing his eyes, he dug his fingers into the gravel and scooted his knees until he reached the grass at the edge of the parking lot where he lurched upward and managed to keep his feet.

Stumbling forward, gripping his stomach and weaving away from the dim light of the parking lot pole fixtures, he merged into the darkness of night as he entered the tree line at the back of the lot. Under the trees, the rain fell unabated through the barren branches and he slipped on the damp leaves underfoot. He grasped for the trunk of a maple, felt his fingernails slide along its bark, and then fell sideways.

He struck the ground heavily, felt his breath driven from his lungs. Groaning, he rolled onto his side and drew his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs and shivered. It seemed like the night was growing darker, the air growing colder. His throat clicked, a sound he had never heard before.

Closing his eyes and letting his head fall to the ground, he became aware of a coldness of apathy within him. Vaguely, he was aware that he was dying; the seeping coldness that seemed to radiate from his very core and travel to his extremities, the feeling of slowly descending into depths of swirling darkness. There was another rattle, a slight awareness of the rain falling against his body, and then, for a very long time, nothing.

It began with recognition, recognition and awareness. No upward ascent to consciousness, just a simple awareness of existing, and of a presence and will. There was no light. There was no feeling of ascending, nor any sensation of descent. If someone were to have asked Mark to explain it, all he would have been able to tell them was it was what he imagined being in the womb must be like and beyond that, he would be at a loss.

In a state devoid of sensation, darkness was the only recognizable form that Mark knew. He grasped it, held onto it with will and consciousness. For a very long time there was only the darkness and Mark. He still had his thoughts, his mind, his will. In some sense, he was aware that he was either dead or very near to being so.

Dead he thought. Oh Christ no I can’t be dead!

The thought could have chilled him but it didn’t. He wanted to shiver and couldn’t. Straining to open his eyes, convinced that he could, he failed. He tried to scream but his mouth wouldn’t open, wasn’t there. He felt empty and knew that was wrong.

No. Not empty. he told himself. Nothing.

The lack of sensation was complete and overwhelming. Without it, Mark could only think. His thoughts clicked along at a rapid pace like a train that kept switching rails. Myriad visions flashed through his mind. His wife after giving birth to their daughter lying on the hospital bed, the clouds over the cemetery the day his father was buried. He remembered giving CPR to his first wife when she had overdosed.

He heard something, a low keening. Straining to open the mouth he didn’t have, he tried to answer the sound and couldn’t. The unease he felt would have given him goose flesh if he had skin. Instead, he only waited, fearful and uncertain.

After a long time, it came. At first, Mark was grateful. It seemed he had been suspended in nothingness forever, for eternity, and when the sensation arrived, it overwhelmed his being. He was falling. He was falling and, had he the means, he would have wept his gratitude for the familiarity of it.

It felt as if he had ears again for that moment. It was, perhaps, the sense of equilibrium required for the sensation that led him to feel that way. He felt wind pass through his being and didn’t understand how he could feel something like that. Regardless, he started to become frightened as his descent continued unchecked. There was the sense that he was gaining speed, that he was plummeting toward some inevitable collision that would break his spirit if not his body.

If he had teeth he would have gritted them. If he had hands to ball into fists he would have done so and clenched them. But he only existed in that place of dark nothingness. So he raged with his thoughts and strained with his will against the binding darkness, against the pervading sense that he was dead. And he struggled against the whirling descent into the depths of the unknown.

Chapter One

Jack has just been dumped by his girlfriend.

Jack is also a psychopathic genius who is a master of mind control. He is not only a master of mind control, but also an affluent out-of-body traveler. He is also a prisoner in a maximum security prison.

He came back to his cell and floated effortlessly through the steel door. He peered coldly at his body, which sat limp in the corner of the cell, and stood there staring at the emotionless eyes of his dark soul.

He was sick of this shit.

Reluctantly, he entered back into his lifeless soul vehicle.

The word among the prison guards was that Jack had sold his soul to the devil, and any shadows seen around his cell were Satan himself, visiting Jack. What they didn't know was, the shadow was actually Jack's soul, stalking the prison corridors while his body slept.

A young guard on the night shift, Joe hill, walked by and peeked into Jack's cell. Suddenly, Joe's thought patterns were interrupted as he began to hear a voice inside his head. ''Open the door,'' the evil, menacing voice commanded. ''Go on, numbnuts, it's only a corpse.!!''

Joe placed his thumb on the door's keypad. ''Access approved,'' a computerized voice announced.

The door buzzed open.

Jack's soul silently floated into Joe's body.

His mind.

''Put out your hand,'' Jack ordered Joe from inside his own head.

Joe obeyed.

''Both hands,'' Jack bellowed.

Joe obeyed.

Then, Jack made Joe's right hand reach into his pants pocket, for the regulation knife Joe always carried with him on duty.

Pulled it out; flicked the blade open.

Joe's eyes widened in bewildered horror as his right hand pinned his left wrist to the cell wall, and began sawing the blade through his own wrist, the blade painfully grinding through layers of flesh and bone.

He didn't even scream; Jack wouldn't let him.

Moments later, the hand finally dismembered, Jack quickly exited Joe's body, watching it fall limply to the cold hard floor. ''Thanks for the handout,'' Jack snickered, mockingly waving the pale fingers at Joe. ''Gotta go now!''

Joe died.

Jack floated on down the hallway toward the guard station.

When he reached the door, he pressed Joe's dead thumb against the keypad.

The door opened.

Jack was outside.

Up above in the guard tower, a guard could have sworn he saw a severed hand waving goodbye to him. He shook his head, took another shot of Old Granddad, and took a nap.

Just up the road, a young woman sat in her car, listening to the radio and waiting for her new boyfriend to get off work. The driver's side door was suddenly yanked open by a bloody, severed hand, which proceeded to violently slam her forehead into the dashboard, knocking her out cold. Jack then tossed the hand into some nearby bushes, then took over the girl's body.

Her mind.

Blood trickling from her head, she - Jack - turned the key in the ignition, listening to the old familiar revving of the powerful engine. He felt such a rush of adrenaline, and he hadn't even killed anybody on the outside......yet.

But, no matter; there was plenty of time for that.

Her boyfriend wasn't even off work yet.

It would be two hours before Janice’s new boyfriend got off work. Jack knew this because he had access to her mind, to all of her mind. He knew that she had been cheating on him with David for months. Jack was furious, and need to let the rage out.

In Janice’s body, he drove into the city and into a bad neighborhood he remembered from when he was out in the world. It was the neighborhood he used to sell drugs in, and it was known for prostitution. A little revenge and a good killing was what was called for.

He operated Janice’s body out of the car and stood on the street corner, manipulating her facial features to look as sultry and desperate as possible. In was only a short amount of time before he was approached by a john.

“Twenty buck?” the guy mumbled. Jack nodded his head, and lead the man back to Janice’s car. They crawled into the back seat. The man quickly unzipped his pants and Jack grabbed his dick with one of Janice’s hands. With the other, he put it across the man’s throat.

Jack used his supernatural strength to rip the man’s dick off with his bare hand. As the man drew in breath to scream, Jack crushed his windpipe. It was quick and it was brutal. Jack took the dead man’s member and stuffed it into his open mouth. Smiling, he crawled into the front seat and started the car. The whole little murder had only taken fifteen minutes total.

Jack drove out to David’s place of business, a Wal Mart that was practically abandoned. As he drove, he made Janice take off her shirt. She played with her breasts as he drove to the Wal Mart and he could feel her revulsion deep inside of her. When he took over a mind, the other person didn’t leave. They were just thrust backward and could still feel and experience everything. Janice was terrified. Jack loved it.

The parking lot was dark and Jack parked away from the door of the Wal Mart. He had Janice remove the rest of her clothing, except her high heels, and he threw the clothes over the dead body in the back seat. When David finally came out of the store, he spotted the car and began walking over. Jack forced Janice out of the car, naked except for her footwear, and David’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“What the…?” he said as he saw Janice walk to the trunk.

She popped the trunk and pulled out a tire iron, Holding it in her right hand, she swung it around for effect.

“Come here,” David heard her say to him. He was compelled to obey, though he felt that something was wrong.

As soon as David was within striking distance, Jack made Janice hit him in the head with all of the strength of Jack. David went down like a sack of turnips, hitting the ground with a thwack. Jack stood over him in Janice’s body and laughed, thrilled to see his eyes roll up and his breathing slow to a stop.

Jack turned David’s body over and reached into his front pocket, taking out his cell phone. Janice was screaming inside her head, and Jack bellowed for her to shut up as he dialed 9-1-1.

The operator picked up and Janice’s voice, hysterical and out of control, cried into the telephone.

“I’ve just killed my boyfriend.”

Jack smiled. He gave their location to the operator and hung up the phone, tossing it to the ground and crushing it with his spiked heeled foot.

Your fingerprints are on everything, he said to Janice, who was in shock. They are on the corpse in the car and they are on the phone and they are on the tire iron. He laughed again.

You see, I don’t want to kill you. I want you to live like I’ve lived, in prison. A looker like you will get plenty of action in the slammer. But you won’t be able to escape like me!

Jack laughed again as he slipped out of Janice’s body. She fell to her knees, herself once more, and cradled David in her arms as the sound of sirens grew closer.

Jack was tired of his own body. Taking others was just too much fun. He left Janice with the two corpses as the police showed up, and quickly took over the mind of the arresting officer. He wanted to see this through until the end.

He’d make sure Janice would get life for the murders. And then? Anything was possible.