Ray...
Ray...
Ray…
The voice pounded against Raymond's consciousness, dragging him awake. He immediately tried to surge upward, but it was too late. He was tied up, bound tightly to a wooden chair. His chest heaved as he struggled for air, tears glistening in his eyes. His mind was wrapped in the fresh, piercing agony of Jubril's death. Timidly, yet violently, his eyes darted around. He was in a dilapidated Israeli parlor, defined by its retro architecture and neglected walls.
Then, the voice came again—closer than before, and violent.
VOICE: Ray, can you hear me? You sick.
Raymond froze. He realized the voice sounded exactly like his own.
RAYMOND: (Fear) Who's there? ...I'm not on a call right now.
In the shadows before him, a figure was etched into the gloom. It was a sharp, elegant silhouette of a man, but with weirdly broad shoulders and pointed ears, casually smoking a cigarette in the dark. The man gazed at Raymond with a cold, deep stare.
Then the voice called out again, grimly.
VOICE: Ray, you coward. Looks like we're looking at the devil. He's staring at us. Let... me... out.
RAYMOND: (Shock) So you're real?
VOICE: Of course, idiot.
The figure stepped regally out of the shadows and into the sliver of natural light. It was Snape, a slight grin playing on his lips.
FIINN!
He whipped out a knife, approaching Raymond.
SNAPE: (Sinister scowl) What do you think?
Just as Snape raised the blade to plunge it into Raymond's chest, he paused.
WHACK! VUUGDCH! GIGIGIGIGI!
Heavy, chaotic sounds erupted from the hallway on the other side of the door.
VOICE: Someone's coming…
The struggle abruptly stopped. Then, a sudden sound.
KNOCK! KNOCK!!
SNAPE: (Fear) Who's there?
The door creaked open. Heyes walked in, but he wasn't alone. Dinah was right behind him, her arm gripping his neck in a chokehold while her other hand pressed the muzzle of a gun hard against his head. They moved slowly into the room. Dinah's hardened gaze locked onto Snape, while Heyes stared deep into Raymond's eyes.
Raymond let out a breathless sigh of relief.
RAYMOND: (Grin) Looks like you're not that scary after all.
HEYES: (Cold, intense fury) You're dead.
Dinah tightened her grip, digging the gun barrel into Heyes' temple. She glared at Snape.
DINAH: (Intense anger) I'm this close to blowing his brains out.
SNAPE: (Cold gaze) Then do it. I don't care.
Heyes' eyes widened, looking at Snape in intense confusion and betrayal.
DINAH: (Smirk) No, he's been through a lot... but that doesn't mean I can't kill you, Heyes.
She shoved Heyes forward toward Raymond, keeping her aim shifting between Snape and Heyes.
DINAH: (Intense) Loose him.
WHACK!
Heyes viciously slapped the back of Raymond's head.
RAYMOND: (Frightened shock) Yah!
With spiteful arrogance, Heyes boastfully began untying the knots binding Raymond.
DINAH: (Tolerance) Heyy, ptsss... I'm going to allow that.
Inside Raymond's mind, the voice spoke up again.
VOICE: Ray, someone's staring at you from the window.
RAYMOND: (Whispers) Who's speaking?
Raymond shifted his attention to the window. Through the gap in the curtains, he saw the blurry, half-obscured face of a blue-skinned man staring right at him, eyes wide. A violent chill shot down Raymond's spine.
VOICE: Bhoor. He missed me.
BANG!
Without warning, Snape raised his gun and shot Heyes in the head. Heyes died instantly, his body dropping cold and heavy to the floor, eyes wide open in shock.
SNAPE: (Smirk) Well... he hasn't been through enough.
Dinah flinched in shock. Snape swiftly pivoted, aiming his gun at Raymond to finish the job, but—
BANG!
Dinah fired first. The bullet tore a hole straight through Snape's palm. His gun clattered to the floor. Snape dropped to his knees, gripping his bleeding wrist and roaring like a wounded lion.
SNAPE: (Intense fury) HAAAAAAAARRRGG!
DINAH: (Intense) He's mine.
Snape clutched his ruined hand, blood dripping onto the floorboards. Raymond was completely untied now, but remained paralyzed by the sudden, brutal sight of Heyes' corpse.
Then, suddenly…
BEEM! BEEM! BEEM, BEEM, BEEM!
The heavy, rhythmic thud of massive footsteps began drawing closer to the room. Dinah looked at the door, her face draining of color.
DINAH: (Shock) I thought I killed you…
Raymond stared at the doorway in pure terror. The voice in his head chimed in.
VOICE: Tie ba e (You are doomed). It's the bogeyman…
The booming footsteps grew louder, faster.
SNAPE: (Prayingly) Come fast. Come fast…
Dinah spun toward Raymond.
DINAH: (Shout) Run, Ray! Run!!
VOICE: Oya, let's go! You'll get us killed…
Raymond stood up, but a terrifying realization washed over him: he couldn't control his own limbs. The entity had taken over his body. It forced him to sprint toward the open window. Raymond's mind screamed in panic as his body threw itself out of the second-story window.
RAYMOND: (Fear) HAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
He braced for the impact, but landed perfectly on his feet, shocking himself that no joints were shattered.
RAYMOND: (Disappointed) Let me guess... it's you. The man behind the phone calls.
VOICE: Ode, you're just knowing that now?
RAYMOND: So you can control me now? Oh my God…
He looked up and noticed the blue-skinned man again. He appeared to be Indian, dressed sharply in a red suit with a habibi scarf wrapped around his neck, staring down at him from the top of an adjacent building.
RAYMOND: (Inquisitive) Who is Bhoor?
Before he could get an answer, the sickening sound of heavy blows echoed from the apartment upstairs. Raymond panicked for Dinah.
RAYMOND: (Fear) DINAH! I'M COMING!!
He tried to run back, but the Wordsmith seized control of his muscles again, forcing him to turn and sprint away.
VOICE: Oga, she can take care of herself. Move!
Raymond began running like an Olympic athlete—swift, fluid, and impossibly precise. He tore through the rough, narrow paths of the Jewish market streets.
Suddenly, the brick wall of a nearby building exploded outward. Mahalel broke through the rubble, charging after Raymond like a freight train. But Raymond was at his absolute physical peak. His hijacked body somersaulted over stalls, sprinted, and ducked, navigating the market with flawless parkour. Mahalel simply smashed through everything in his path, wiping away civilians and market stalls like sackcloth.
Behind them, the roar of an engine ripped through the alley. Dinah was chasing after them on a power bike. As she sped up, impressed by Raymond's unnatural agility, she noticed the blue Indian man—Bhoor—sprinting effortlessly across the rooftops, leaping from building to building in pursuit of Raymond. She cranked the throttle, trying to close the distance as they headed toward the highways.
Running alongside the busy highway, Raymond saw a man climbing into a parked Jeep. Without warning, his body moved on its own, violently yanking the man out of the driver's seat and taking the wheel.
RAYMOND: Stop na, don't steal his car...
VOICE: Dey play!
Raymond's hands spun the steering wheel with fluid, reckless precision, merging violently onto the road. In the rearview mirror, he saw Mahalel. The giant was hanging off the side of a massive oil tanker truck. Behind the wheel of the tanker was Snape, accelerating the massive rig directly toward Raymond's Jeep.
Raymond glanced out the side window. High above the chaotic traffic, Bhoor was still keeping pace, leaping across the tops of buildings overpasses—fluid, relentless, and completely unreal.
As Snape's oil tanker roared closer from behind, Mahalel launched himself off the truck's grill. He leaped like a massive bear, his heavy frame crashing onto the roof of Raymond's Jeep. The sudden, immense weight caused the vehicle to swerve violently, forcing Raymond's hijacked hands to wrestle the steering wheel in a desperate, reckless drift across the highway.
BUUNGCH! BUUNGCH!!
Mahalel began to mercilessly pound his fists into the metal roof of the Jeep, denting the ceiling inward with every brutal strike. High above the chaos, Bhoor was still in motion. Flipping effortlessly from one building top to another, the blue-skinned man snatched a heavy flagpole bearing the Jewish flag from a parapet. Without breaking his stride, he hurled it down toward the highway like a javelin, bolting it straight through the windshield of the car driving directly in front of Raymond's Jeep.
Inside the Jeep, Raymond panicked as the violent blows rained down from above. With one final, earth-shattering strike, Mahalel's massive fist tore completely through the metal roof. Terrified, Raymond wanted to slam on the brakes, but the entity controlling his body had other plans—his hands only gripped the wheel tighter, speeding the Jeep up even as Mahalel began tearing the cabin apart to get inside.
Suddenly, the voice in his head roared, snapping Raymond's attention back to the road.
VOICE: LOOK OUT, FOOL! LOOK OUT!!!
RAYMOND: (Shock) HAAAAAAHHH!
PEEEEEEEEEEEMM!
A blaring, desperate car horn pierced the air.
The car that Bhoor had impaled with the flagpole had lost control and was now a savaged, somersaulting wreck of metal, rolling violently backward directly into the path of Raymond's speeding Jeep. It was terrifyingly close before Raymond even fully processed it.
In a split-second reaction he didn't command, Raymond's body unbuckled the seatbelt and threw itself out of the driver's side door, tumbling onto the hard, unforgiving asphalt.
A microsecond later, the somersaulting car slammed head-on into the Jeep, taking Mahalel with it in a booming, catastrophic explosion of twisting metal and fire.
Raymond stared into the billowing flames of the wreckage. The heat washed over him, but his expression softened into a solemn, heavy mask of disappointment.
RAYMOND: (Sad) I need to hand myself over to the authorities...
VOICE: (Energetic) Lai lai, not a chance!
RAYMOND: (Annoyed) Noooo! So that you can fully take over me and continue the killing spree? I'd rather rot in jail...
VOICE: (Disappointed) All I do is for the greater good... you'll see...
RAYMOND: Playing God never ends well. Check history...
VOICE: Unless they live long enough to finish the job.
RAYMOND: Unless they never do…
Then, suddenly…
DINAH: (Confused) Who are you talking to?
Raymond startled and out of words, now let's out…
Raymond snapped out of his internal argument and turned. Dinah was sitting astride her parked power bike just a few yards away, watching him with an intensely confused expression.
RAYMOND: (Confused) I don't know... nobody. If I told you, you wouldn't believe me...
DINAH: (Sad) Oh my God... Jubril. He was the most loyal man you could find in a lifetime. Too bad he died...
RAYMOND: (Consoling) Yeah…
Dinah slowly turned her head, her grief hardening into a look of absolute, bitter disgust as she glared at Raymond.
DINAH: (Rudely) You barely even knew him, right?
RAYMOND: (Guilt-ridden) Well... I know he was a good man. He saved my life...
DINAH: (Bitter smirk) But do you even know why?
RAYMOND: (Stuttering) Why? Tell me why... I don't know why...
DINAH: (Pissed) Jubril would have been at home, chilling, watching Netflix with his wife and kids. But then that news broke... the news that your goons nuked us in Haiti...
RAYMOND: (Confused) What nuke? (A sudden, dreadful realization) Wait...
DINAH: (Sad, fighting slight tears) The Great Nuke of Haiti... I... I was there.
RAYMOND: (Shocked) Really?
DINAH: (Tearful, desperate confusion) Do you even know you had a daughter?
The statement hit Raymond like a physical blow. His eyebrows shot up, his face freezing in pure, unadulterated shock as the weight of the words crushed the air out of his lungs.
Then, suddenly…
WOUWOUOWOUWOUWOU!!!!!
The wail of police sirens tore through the air. The Israeli police department was swarming the scene, and riding along with the convoy were Ṣeun Aristotle and Gerald Tumbuktu, their eyes peeled in their relentless search for Raymond.
Raymond sprinted toward Dinah.
RAYMOND: Let me drive…
He didn't wait for an answer, vaulting onto the front of the bike and sliding Dinah back to the passenger seat. He gunned the engine. The Voice immediately seized control of his reflexes again, pushing his driving to an absolute, terrifying peak. He wove through the chaotic highway traffic, missing other vehicles by mere millimeters—0.1-centimeter margins that felt fluid, calculated, and impossibly scary.
Clinging to his waist, Dinah's suspicion flared.
DINAH: Now I'm starting to think you've been pretending all along...
RAYMOND: Trust me, this isn't me…
The police convoy caught up, sirens blaring as a full-blown pursuit ignited on the asphalt. But trailing just behind the speeding squad cars was Bhoor. He was running on foot at an unnatural, horrifying speed, keeping exact pace with the vehicles.
Catching up to the rear police cruiser, Bhoor seamlessly ducked, lifted the back of the heavy car with his bare hands, and hurled-kicked it forward into the cruiser ahead of it. The catastrophic impact instantly ignited a massive ball of fire that swallowed both vehicles.
Inside the lead pursuit car, Ṣeun and Tumbuktu watched the explosion in the rearview mirror. Thick, intense fear etched across their faces in utter disbelief. Up ahead on the bike, Dinah saw it too in her mirrors.
DINAH: (Fear) Freak...
RAYMOND: (Suspicion) You know him?
DINAH: One of your enemies. Probably your arch-enemy, in case you really forgot. His skin isn't actually blue—he's just an Indian fanatic…
Meanwhile, inside the surviving police car, Tumbuktu had finally had enough of the supernatural drama. He gave a sharp nod to Ṣeun, who was white-knuckling the steering wheel, and somehow hauled a massive bazooka up from the floorboards.
Ṣeun's eyes bugged out in sheer panic.
ṢEUN: (Shocked) Lai lai, no, no, no! Don't you dare... there are pedestrians on the streets!
TUMBUKTU: (Hardened) I've got eyes on the prize…
Tumbuktu shoved his upper body out of the passenger window, the heavy weapon resting on his shoulder. He checked the chaotic street behind them—the civilians had scattered, leaving a clear line of sight. He locked onto Bhoor and pulled the trigger.
BLLOOMMM!
The bazooka rocket slammed into the asphalt right at Bhoor's feet, the concussive blast neutralizing the fanatic in a massive cloud of smoke and debris.
Without missing a beat, Tumbuktu dropped the empty launcher back inside the car, drew his service pistol, leaned back out the window, and took dead aim at Dinah's power bike.
BANG!
The bullet pierced the rear tire. The rubber blew out instantly, sending the bike fishtailing wildly before violently crashing, throwing Raymond and Dinah hard onto the unforgiving pavement.
Through dizzy, stress-blurred eyes, Dinah—her temple bleeding slightly—struggled to push Raymond to his feet. They staggered together, practically falling into a narrow, shadowed alleyway as Raymond winced, touching his bruised cheek.
Suddenly…
BANG!
A warning shot echoed off the brick walls.
ṢEUN: Let me see your hands! Both of you!
Their faces fell into expressions of bitter defeat. Recognizing the voice, they slowly turned to find themselves cornered. Standing at the mouth of the alley were Detectives Ṣeun Aristotle and Gerald Tumbuktu, alongside an Israeli detective, Arad Ayelet, backed by a wall of heavily armed police officers.
Arad stepped forward, his gun raised.
ARAD: Yedi'im lema'ala! Shnehem, achsav! (ידיים למעלה! שניכם, עכשיו! / Hands up! Both of you, now!)
Defeated, Raymond and Dinah slowly raised their hands into the air.
Then, suddenly…
BANG! BANG!! BANG!!!
Tumbuktu didn't hesitate. He opened fire—but not at Raymond or Dinah. He shot right past them. Standing at the far, dead end of the alley was Bhoor. With terrifying, fluid reflexes, the fanatic effortlessly dodged the incoming bullets and called out over the gunfire.
BHOOR: Raymond!
Both Dinah and Raymond whipped around. Bhoor stared back at them, a weird, highly sarcastic smile stretching across his face.
BHOOR: (Smirk) You miss me?
Raymond stared at him in intense, paralyzing shock. And then... the world violently glitched. His vision shattered like a broken television screen, static roaring in his ears, and he lost all consciousness.
BANG! BANG!!
The deafening sound of gunshots jolted Raymond awake. He was standing on his feet, his arm raised mid-air, a smoking gun gripped tightly in his hand. The Voice echoed loudly in his skull.
VOICE: (Annoyed) This one don come again ooooo... Be gone from my dwelling space... you... boyscout…
Raymond's breath hitched. He couldn't believe his eyes. The alleyway, Dinah, the detectives, Bhoor—they were all gone.
He was in an entirely different place. It was a deserted, grimy basement. Directly in front of him, tied to a wooden chair, was an Arab mercenary. The man was dead, a fresh bullet wound in his chest. Raymond looked down at his own trembling hand. He had just shot him. Panic seized his chest in an intense, suffocating grip.
He quickly looked down at himself. He was no longer wearing his previous clothes. He was draped in a long, black leather jacket, with a habibi scarf wrapped elegantly around his neck. Trembling, he reached up and pulled a Mossley felt trilby hat from his head. His eyes widened in absolute horror. This was the outfit from the CCTV footage.
Desperate for air, he spotted a ladder leading out of the basement. He scrambled up the rungs, threw open the cellar doors, and sprinted outside.
The hot sun hit his face. To his utter bewilderment and terror, he was standing in the middle of a bustling, dusty street in Egypt. The hostility in the gazes of the local men passing by made his blood run cold.
Then, he noticed a heavy weight sagging in the inner pocket of his leather jacket.
Slowly, dreading what he might find, Raymond reached inside. He drew out the object. It was a red theatrical mask. The exact mask of the "Smiling Demon."
An enormous, suffocating fear etched itself deep into his lungs. He stood frozen in the Egyptian sun, as the air around him seemed to hum with a high, tense, sinister orchestral chant.
TO BE CONTINUED…