Sophia sat in the art class alone. She held her phone in one hand and hugged herself with the other. She stared at the message from Aubrey. Her leg bounced like a jackhammer. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t simply attend school knowing that her friends were missing. What could she do? Who could she tell?

She put the phone face down then put her face in her hands. She felt anxious and fearful, but she also felt a certainty on what she was going to do. She was never the kind of person to go out looking for her friends who went missing hunting demons, but she felt compelled. She felt like this was her responsibility, taken on by a promise she doesn’t remember making.

Her hands opened and held her head up by her cheeks… It wasn’t a matter of whether or not she was going to do it. It was a matter of when. She could feel it in her bones. She was going to do something. She felt the determination as a gritty firmness in her jaw and teeth. She just didn’t know where to begin.

The school bell rang.

She couldn’t understand why, she just felt that she needed to do this. She needed to be there. It started as a small idea when she received the message from Aubrey, like an angel on her shoulder whispering to her. Over a sleepless night, it grew. Students started coming into the school building. Her leg bounced faster. Their noise was amplified in the corridors.

She put on her blazer, grabbed her phone and ran out of the class, leaving her bag behind. The corridors were filled with students walking side-by-side. Sophia shouldered her way through them all to get outside to her bicycle. She unchained it, got on and rode out of school. She was determined to uphold this promise that she never made.

______

I run. I do not know where to. Just wherever I can’t see the lights of other demons. Wherever the darkness takes me. Wherever others can’t reach me. I can’t see anything other than what this new sight shows me.

I’m not scared of them. I’m scared for them. I had seen myself kill people in a past life and I can see myself killing more in my near future. I trip over roots and run into trees on my way into the nothing. The plants aren’t powerful, and are part of the black space.

I feel cold, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the night air or because of the blurring of my senses. The black depths must feel cold if there’s no energy. It’s the sight of the coldness, of loneliness. I am running into it, letting it consume me.

I trip over something. A moment of flailing in the air and I hit a slope of rocks. The impact whips my head in a circle. I strike every joint on stone as I roll and I feel some of my scabs peel open. At the bottom of the slope I roll into moist ground. The sound of it squishing under my weight nauseates me. I want to get up and run, but I want to sleep even more. I’m hungry. Everything hurts. My head is throbbing.

Running doesn’t feel necessary anymore. How can I avoid humans, the dominant species? Am I going to run for the rest of my life? How will I sustain myself? Too many questions and mysteries; too little answers and facts… and sleep.

My eyes started to close as I laid in the cold mud, but before I could sleep, a call comes from the distance. No voice. A call of light. A soft purple glow on the horizon like the aura of an alien sun. I press myself up from the mud, my hands sinking into it. My knees ache. I don’t know which one anymore. I lost my sense of form. I feel like nothing but a bodiless entity being lured to the welcoming light and the pain at a point is a pain everywhere. Every movement I make is like blinking and breathing. There was no thought to it.

I limp towards the light, I think. It feels like I’m floating. The mud soaks my shoes and the scabs bleed again. The stink of sweat and moist soil fills the air around me and lingers on my path. The purple light on the horizon promises to make it all go away and I trust it like a friend; more than a friend.

I trek the distance uninterrupted. The purple glow becomes the aura that domes over a black space. I step through the curtain of energy and I hear the subtle sound of distorting space as I pass through some dividing plan. I expect the cold to attack me like a hungry beast, but I feel a warmth roll over me like a blanket. Nobody can get me here, wherever this is - another promise that the light makes.

I walk, treading carefully. I put my hands out in front of me in case I walk into a tree, which is what I’m hoping for. The light guides me with a purple tree. I walk to it and lay down between the roots as if it were a cradle. Nobody can get me here, but I don’t feel alone. This light that guided me has a fatherly voice. It’s here to protect me.

The thoughts of the horror that I am cloud my mind. It’s what I once was, and it’s what I am becoming again. I don’t understand why and I can only wish that I did or that more memories and dreams will reveal my past and help me understand. Maybe it’s as simple as me being a monster. Maybe I am the real specimen of a creature from a horror movie, born for the sake of terror. I am a hellish being feared by religions, opposing what’s considered moral.

Is this what it means to be a demon? An innocent person facing urges they don’t understand? Did the demons have a choice or shred of control over it? Are they simply inherently evil? That’s not truly evil.

And what about angels? Are they inherently good? What makes them so special? Do they oppose demons? Or are they opposing the shameful mess that they made? The mess that is the greatest flaws of themselves named sins?

Angels hate the shards of the pots they kick over and they tend to cut themselves picking it all up.

______

Other than Victor, Leech and Damien’s friends, what happened to Damien was a mystery. His parents were terrified, suspecting the worst while hoping for the best. Demon sightings were coincidentally on the rise across the country before Damien’s disappearance. To the police and Damien’s parents, the story ended with two dead students in the forest. Neither of them was Damien. Neither of them showed any obvious signs of what killed them.

Afterwards, Aubrey was gone too and her car was parked nearby. Everything after that was a blank page. Damien’s mother worried the most. One child lost before another child gained.

Sophia arrived at Jakobus’ home and ran for the door. She knocked hard and aggressively. Not too long after, the random mumblings of an obsessed genius arrived at the door and opened it.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I need help finding Damien,” she said.

“I’m not a detective, Aubrey’s friend. If the police can’t find him, neither can I.”

“The police do not study demons. Damien did not just go missing. A demon kidnapped him and now Aubrey and one of the teachers at school went missing trying to find him. You know how to find their portals.”

Jakobus was surprised and a joy rose in him. First, he got to meet a demon and now he was asked to help find a dimension of one, which unfortunately wasn’t within his capabilities.

“I’ve found many portals. I’d go as far as saying all, but I’ve never crossed one. I don’t know how.”

“It is fine. I will take what I can get. Once we find a portal, we can figure something out. We just need to know where Damien is and then figure out how to get to him.”

Jakobus looked at the ground to think.

He turned around and shut the door. Sophia heard the sound of zips opening and closing, metal objects hitting each other and a high-pitched ringing sound. Jakobus opened the door again with a backpack that he wore like a tortoise’s shell and a bicycle at his side. “Take this,” he said and handed her a thin metal pole with rubber straps coiled around it and insulation tape at the centre of its length. He had one of his own sticking out of his backpack. It looked like a simple pole taken from a broom, but it felt heavy. The two ends of it were sealed by what looked like window putty. Its steel surface had swollen seams where it was welded. It seemed as if Jakob performed surgery on the poles, building complex mechanisms within it.

“I do not think a stick will work against demons,” Sophia said.

“It’s not just a stick, you stupid girl,” he said in a cranky old voice. “It’s a special conductor I made myself. Anything a demon throws at you will be absorbed.”

“Are you sure it will work?”

“Theoretically… Based on my theory of demons, this should theoretically work. Let’s go find some demons and find out.”

Jakobus hopped onto his bike and rolled down the stairs. “Where exactly are we looking for your friend?” he asked.

“Aubrey told me that he was taken to a portal near the house we were staying at on the weekend.”

“Lead the way.” Jakobus put on his helmet. He was old, but he had the spirit of a child. Science, especially this fantasy science, was his raison d’être. Sophia laid the pole across her lap when she got onto her bike. For most of the trip, Jakobus sped past Sophia and then let himself fall behind her. She had never seen an old man as enthusiastic as Jakobus.

“You said a teacher got lost looking for Damien?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“One of the teachers at our school. It turns out he is a demon,” Sophia answered.

“Fascinating… What’s his name?”

“Nobody knows his first name. We call him mister Halliday.”

“Sounds familiar. Do you think he’s interested in sharing his knowledge?”

“Maybe. He’s a very nice person but I think a second life is something even he would want to hide.”

“I’ll take my chance. If there’s a demon with a career as a high school teacher, there could be many more demons just living among us.”

“I do not think demon is a suitable term. He seems too nice to ever be something evil,” Sophia said.

“We can ask him questions on that. What does it mean to be a demon? Maybe going to hell doesn’t mean you’re bad. It just means you’re a different kind of good. And that’s assuming Christianity is the real religion.”

“Stop here.” Sophia stopped her bike on the side of the road and at the edge of the forest. Just on the other side were large houses in each direction. “It’s strange to think that things like this can happen so close to some people’s homes. Even here in the richer areas,” Jakobus said.

Jakobus put his bike on its side in the leaves. On his belt was his energy detecting device. He turned it on and took out his own conducting pole. He held it at his side like he was jousting.

He was so excited he didn’t think his aged heart could handle it. He would learn how the demons and their world worked. That was his interest as a scientist, but as a person there was so much more to him than how it worked. There was a history, a culture, a geography and maybe even languages. It was more than a science. It was a new species. Meeting demons would be like meeting extra-terrestrial intelligent life.

“So where do we go?” Sophia asked. Jakobus turned some knobs on the device and a soft, infrequent beep sounded. “We go where the radiation guides us,” he said. He swung from side to side to check where it was strongest and started walking.

The deeper into the forest they went, the louder the beeps got. The louder it got, the more Jakobus noticed a subtle distortion taking place. He thought it was a second source that was interfering, making it sound as if it were swinging between near and far. “What does that device do?” Sophia asked.

“Picks up radiation.” He tapped the side of the device lightly and fiddled with the nobs. “You adjust the frequency sensitivity to pick up organic frequencies of portals.”

“And what is it picking up now?”

“Portals… I think… It should be, but it’s not picking up simple sine wave radiation.” He scratched what little hair he had on his head. “Either somethings distorting it or… nee.”

“So it is electromagnetic radiation?”

“No. No, not really.” He tapped the device again. He was convinced that something was wrong with it. “Then radiation from the sun and everything would interfere. The radiation travels on a different plane. The universe is made up of stacks of two-dimensional planes. The third dimension of a plane is zero, so you can stack an infinite number of planes in one co-ordinate on the third dimension. The radiation from demons and portals is travelling through a different stack of planes.”

“And you made a device that picks up this radiation?” It was a complex science explained in simple words. He knew his theoretical science well. Sophia grasped what he said with ease. “Do you think you can make a portal to it? The other stack of planes.”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think you should.” He turned in a circle, trying to identify where the second source was originating from, but he ended up facing his original direction. “It’s like if you’re in a car, and you want to make a portal into the engine. You’d just get grinded by cogs in the engine of the universe.”

Jakobus put the device to his ear. It hadn’t gotten any louder. It just swung back and forth between rapid and slow beeping. While he tried to figure out his device, Sophia looked around her. There was something familiar about the area they stood in. She recognised the way the trees were placed from the angle she saw them.

Then, she saw a thick black line scorched horizontally across some trees. Halfway between her and the trees was a dent in the ground. The image of an unconscious Damien laying there flashed in her mind.

Jakobus started turning in circles. The device’s beeping wasn’t getting any louder. “I think we’re here,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.

“At the portal.”

“But this is where the house is supposed to be.” She realised why the area looked familiar. Where she stood is exactly where she stood when she checked the window to see if they were followed. “I think we would know if there was a portal here.”

“Have you ever come to the house without Damien?”

“No… I’ve only come here once. You would have to ask Aubrey.”

“Well she would probably say something along the lines of ‘Yes I have and I couldn’t find it’. The house is in a dimension on the other side of a portal. Damien, the demon, is the reason you were able to get through at all.”

She was filled with a curious excitement. “Do you think he is in there now?”

“If there’s a portal here, the demon that took him may have brought him here.”

“I do not think other demons know about this portal. Aubrey and Damien said that they have come here for a long time. They have never run into a demon.”

Jakobus looked around. He gave his map to Damien, but he had it memorised. “The nearest portal is somewhere at the foot of the mountain. South. Over there,” Jakobus said, “That’s where he must be if not here.” He turned off the device and looked at the clearing where the house should be. “It’s just… strange,” he said, “I never knew there was a portal here. My device never picked it up, but I’ve passed this place before.”

“It’s not a portal your device is picking up,” said a deep voice, “It’s Damien.”

The two turned around. Victor walked down towards them with Aubrey at his side. Aubrey used Victor’s sword to help her with her limp. “You’re okay!” Sophia yelled and ran to Aubrey to help her.

“Are my parents fine?” she asked.

“Not even. Police are searching all over for you and Damien.”

“Mister van der Westhuizen?” Victor asked, surprised.

“Do I know you?” Jakobus asked. Victor took off his mask. “My word. Victor Halliday. You’re the demon teacher?”

Victor nodded and looked at Sophia. The nickname made it obvious that she revealed some things about him. Jakobus looked at Victor from the tip of his highest hair to the soles of his shoes. “You used to be a potato in school,” Jakobus said, “Fattest child in the grade. Now you look like you could wrestle a team of rugby players.” Victor had no response. Aubrey was too exhausted to find it funny and Sophia was too focussed on Aubrey.

______

Yelling and cheering. Filthy, harsh and unsympathetic animals. Every last one of them. Cruel creatures. Who should really be here in this fire, burnt at the stake? My own screams silence that of the woman next to me and the chants of the crowd.

Divine-ass kissers. Mindless fools and whores of fear. Shit of the world. All of you.

Every –

Single –

Last -

Fucking one of you.

A monster tears through them. I cannot see who, but it feels like I know him. A purple glow follows him - his essence. The crowd disperses in fear of this demon. The terror floods the people, but leaves the woman and me unharmed. The demon will not harm us. He’s here for us. Who are you? I can’t see your face, but I can sense your presence. Why do I feel safe knowing that you are here, even as I’m being burnt alive? I wish I could find out, but you are too late. The fire has eaten away at me for too long.

The crowd begins chanting a name… or something in the crowd. A familiar name. Damien. Who’s Damien? The name comes from the sky. Is it God? The name comes from all around me. From the trees, the ground, even the fire whispers it into my ears.

______

Damien opened his eyes - his physical eyes. He laid in a bed of dry leaves between two thick roots of a tree. He didn’t feel any different than when he slept in his bed. He still didn’t want to get up. The only thing forcing him was his smell. He never wanted to take a bath more. The clothes and skin were coated in mud and blood.

“Damien!”

He heard a loud call and jumped to his feet. He lost his balance when he stood, but caught himself against the tree. He swore he heard it, but with his recent experiences, the line between hallucination and reality was blurred.

“Damieeeen!”

He walked towards the call. “What the hell?” he whispered. He was at the small medieval house. “How did I get here?”

“Maybe he actually isn’t here.” Damien knew the voice.

“Just keep calling.”

Damien turned to the sound, but there was nobody. He knew the voices. It was Aubrey and Sophia. He walked towards the source. He started to lean towards it being hallucinations, but an instinctive knowledge knew otherwise. He knew that they were there. He knew that they were standing in a parallel space to him. Despite how desperately he wanted to call back, he knew that they wouldn’t hear him.

A red spot appeared and quickly turned into the figure of Aubrey walking away from him, being built in vertical layers of flesh, bone and organs. It was frightening to see, but somehow it just made sense. That was the science of his new world. Aubrey turned around and looked in Damien’s exact direction, but there was no reaction. She can’t see me, he knew. He walked up to her, stopping right before the boundary of whatever wall was hiding him. They were looking each other in the eyes, but it lacked eye contact. Next to Aubrey, Sophia formed in the same way as she walked past the boundary. Damien could hear other voices calling his name in the distance. It sounded like two men. He assumed they were police.

“Maybe you’re right. He should’ve found us by now, but mister Halliday said that he is here,” Aubrey said.

She felt like less of an enemy now. Damien didn’t know if he came to his senses or if it was the purple light that had something to do with it. As Aubrey and Sophia turned around, he stepped through the veil and revealed himself. Aubrey stopped when she caught him in the corner of her eye.

“DAMIEN!” she yelled. Despite his stench and dirt, Aubrey choked him with a hug. All the heads turned to them when they heard Aubrey.

“Aubrey I can’t breathe,” Damien said softly. Aubrey let go of him and said, “Sorry.” He smiled weakly. “I said you should tell us if you’re going demon hunting!”

She put her arm under Damien’s shoulder and said, “Come. Your parents are losing it because of this.”

“What about yours? You were there last night as well.”

“Mine too.”

Damien felt the hairs stand up on his neck and some kind of pulsing warmth hit his back. He looked over his shoulder to see where it was coming from. A rapid, hostile thought passed in his mind like just one frame in a movie.

“... What’s mister Halliday doing here?”

All except Jakobus looked at Victor. Victor waited a moment for the demon to come out, but it seemed that either the demon was gone or it didn’t recognise him without the mask. “It turns out that he’s a demon too and he wanted to help,” Jakobus said excitedly. Aubrey, Sophia and Victor glared at him.

“What? Was he not supposed to know?”

“It’s fine,” Damien said, “I think I’m fine now. Thank you, mister Halliday.”