Chapter 7

"Since you won't listen the reason and just sit quietly in a cell for a month or two, we have to go with Plan B," Professor Nelson stated, for once lacking his character cigarette.

"And what part of me being in a rehab clinic could possibly pertain to this legendary and awe-invoking Plan B?" Jason asked, pulling at the straps securing him to the bed in the small, white, padded room. With him were a heart monitor and an IV rack, and sunlight streaming through the tiny window above and a red light blinking from the security camera up in the corner.

"Because—you little smartass—this is the one place where you can scream until your larynx bleeds without bothering anyone, but of course being safely monitored. And trust me, you're going to be doing a LOT of screaming," the professor chuckled, using his choice of words to get some vengeance for Jason's comment.

"Ok, so what is the plan?"

"Tell me, Jason, how do you kill a cancer?"

"Uh ... chemo and radiation?"

"In essence?"

"You poison yourself and kill the cancer itself before the cure can kill you. It's a biological game of chicken."

"A biological game of chicken, very well put. That's essentially what we're going to do with you in regards to the Black Stigmata. We are going to twist and poison your mind so badly that the Black Stigmata's influence will be shaken off you like a cowboy bucked off a rodeo bull."

"How do we do that?"

Professor Nelson held up an IV bag. "This is lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, psilocin, and a dozen other extremely concentrated hallucinogens mixed in with a saline solution and a high-strength tranquilizer. It's essentially LSD and shrooms with chloroform. I'm going to put you in a medically induced coma and let your mind run wild for the next 48 hours. Of course, being unconscious, you know what will happen..."

"I'll be caught in a Black Stigmata nightmare the whole time, unable to wake up," Jason cursed while immediately becoming drenched in a cold sweat.

"Not only that, but the LSD will further heighten the vividness of your dreams. The Black Stigmata can already stimulate pain receptors with pinpoint accuracy when you are asleep, making the pain you suffer in your nightmares just as potent as any injuries you might suffer in real life. The LSD will augment that pain or even make you feel like it is affecting more areas. The Black Stigmata can show you the most horrible images imaginable and even twist your memories. As you know, it can rob you of control of your body. It can torture you and coerce you into doing things that you would rather die than commit. It can even twist you through trauma and psychological poking and turn you into raving lunatic, painting the walls in blood and laughing to yourself, while still being in control.

If you haven't figured it out, the one bastion you have during a Black Stigmata nightmare is that you maintain your sanity. You are fully aware and can rationalize. That's why a bad drug trip can be one of the worst experiences imaginable: Your mind is incapable of anything but fear or pain and you are a victim to your delusions in every sense of the word. The Black Stigmata thrive on invoking madness and the insane are the most easily manipulated.

However, the Black Stigmata cannot directly manipulate your thought processes the way drugs can, because the usage of drugs means the introduction of outside forces into the equation. The nails' influence stretches only as far as your biology and the chemicals in your brain. Drugs are a whole new ball game. It's a way to fight back. Essentially, the Black Stigmata's insanity has to fight the drug's insanity over control of your soul.

If you do this, you'll suffer for 48 hours, robbed of your only mental foundations and caught in a war between a drug trip and an inhuman will of unparalleled evil. There are no words to describe the pain you will endure, because no human mind can even begin to comprehend what you'll experience. Even while in a drug-induced coma, you will likely experience so much pain that you will scream and thrash. That's not even counting the chances of success. Based on trials by the BSC, you have a 17% chance of coming out of this alive and unscathed, a 41% chance of becoming an eternal slave to the will of the Black Stigmata, a 20% chance of just ending up a vegetable for the rest of your life, and 22% chance of dying.

Now, are you sure you don't want to just go back to a cell and sit quietly for a month or two?"

Jason bit his lip, turning his mind over and over again in this precarious decision. "While I was sitting quietly in a cell, my baby sister came into contact with my Black Stigmata. Because of it, she was brutally raped by three other women. She can never have children and it will be a long time before she is even able to walk. Her mind is an unrecognizable mess in which she begs me to rape her because she thinks she deserves it and needs to be punished for being a disgusting whore. If I had taken this route before, I could have maybe reacquired the nail from her so that she would never have suffered. She was getting raped while I was sitting on a prison cot, doing homework because I was unsafe to be out in the public.

If I hide again and something bad happens, I'll never be able to forgive myself. Oh who am I kidding? I already can't forgive myself for all the things I've done. No matter what you say about me not being responsible for what I did while possessed by the Black Stigmata, that doesn't change the fact that my body was used to torture, rape, and kill. If I should die because of this, then that will just have to be my penitence."

"All right, but don't say I didn't warn you..." Nelson sighed as he walked over and hooked the IV bag to the rack beside Jason's bed, then plugged the needle into his arm.

He then reached into his pocket and drew a small half-circle case. Opening up, he revealed a rubber mouth guard. "This will prevent you from actually biting off your tongue. Boy, the BSC sure learned THAT the hard way."

Fearful, Jason opened his mouth and Nelson dropped it between his teeth. As the concoction began to drip into Jason's bloodstream, Nelson walked out.

"Good luck."

As soon as the doors closed, Jason's eyes were forced shut and his mind drifted off into the delirium.

With Jason now taken care of, Nelson had work to attend to. He was no longer a teacher; in fact, he was more like a student, because now, he had a mountain of studying and research to mine through. In that bus station bathroom, he had experienced a Black Stigmata nightmare, the likes of which he had never before encountered. A god-like tree made entirely of iron, each sharp spindly branch tipped with a Homunculus. Normally the hallucinations of the Black Stigmata consisted of simple torture, the listing of the steps to create nails, or orders for horrible deeds to perform. But that brief trance ... it seemed more like a direct message from the inhuman will of the Black Stigmata.

Sitting at his desk in his dark home-office, Nelson's computer was shining its pale light on his face and the stacks of books on either side of him. Drawing his cellphone, he dialed in a thirteen-digit number.

"This is Chris Nelson, chief consultant in Section 8. My ID number is 8362F9IT7M4."

"Welcome to the office of the BSC, Professor. How may I help you?" a woman on the other end recited, speaking with a computer-like tone.

"I need to see the synopsizes for all recorded Host nightmares. I have the proper clearance level."

"This information has a 24 hour viewing limit. Please log in to the BSC server and release all privacy settings. Until we can remotely wipe your computer, you will not have access to any information."

"I'm already logged on."

"Very well sir, I will begin uploading."

"Thank you."

In the bottom-left corner of his browser window, a downloading icon appeared. The computer he was using was closely monitored by the BSC. At any moment, they could see who he was talking too, what sites he was on, what information was entering and leaving his system, and completely wipe the hard drive of every bit of data in an instant. He couldn't even use a USB flashdrive or take a screenshot without them knowing. Though that wasn't to say he didn't have privacy. This was simply the only computer in which he could access BSC data from. He was free to get his own for personal use.

It took several hours for the download to complete, but considering the size of the file, it was a real testament to Nelson's Internet speed. Over the decades, tens of millions of detailed statements by Hosts had been recorded as to the nightmares and hallucinations they suffered due to the Black Stigmata. The BSC was always in search of clues or hints that might be found in the minds of the hosts, information that might lead to actual understanding of the nails. Cases like Jason Stevens were very common, and most often, nails could be recovered before the ritual for replication could be performed, but only as long as the hosts did something that got them arrested and their symptoms could raise flags.

Upon opening up the gargantuan PDF, Nelson gave a slight grunt of annoyance. Something had gone wrong in the transfer and all the files were out of order chronologically. Pushing aside the thoughts of the brief obstacle, he clicked on the word-search application and typed in "tree", "root", and "branch". Immediately, several points were highlighted. The first file mentioned was July 15th, 1945, reported by a Brazilian host under BSC custody. Actually that was one of the earliest records for the BSC. The division itself was founded in WWII originally to fight Hitler, due to rumors that he was trying to harness the occult and supernatural for his desire to achieve world domination. It later branched off to become an international agency like Interpol. The host in Brazil said he saw tentacles of fire reach out across the sky and scorch the earth, as if a colossal burning tree were trying to block out the sun.

"July 15th, 1945..." Nelson hummed as he lit a cigarette.

Moving over to his browser window, he brought up Google and typed in the date. Nothing really important happened on that date, aside from Italy's spat with Japan during WWII. Though that didn't seem like the kind of thing that would correlate with the Black Stigmata ... Nelson then checked the day before that, and as expected, the only events were the usual goings on of the World War 2. But if the dream wasn't happening after something...

The Trinity Test, that was the first result of the Google search for July 16th, 1945. That was the day that mankind truly entered the nuclear age by setting off the first atomic bomb. Was it possible that the host's dream of flaming tree branches blocking out the sun was actually a cross between the iron tree that Nelson had seen and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust that was born on that fateful day? Was the Black Stigmata attempting to predict the future?

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds..." Nelson muttered.

The next date in the unorganized list was August 7th, 1969. Bound in a straight jacket, the woman in Ontario claimed she saw a tree drenched in blood with claw marks carved into the side. The event that followed the next night were the Tate murders by the Manson family, with the claw marks referring to the Black Panther symbols painted on the walls in the victims' blood. These killings shocked the nation, both in their brutality and their reasoning. It was the birth of a new threat: the cult.

"Helter Skelter ... the apocalyptic race war..."

Nelson continued looking through the dates, each nightmare preceding some kind of horrific event that caught national or even worldwide attention. Genocides, famines, the discovery of AIDS, civil wars, riots ... Was it possible that the Black Stigmata had played a part in all of them? No, the work required for many of these events was far too controlled and complex for the madness of the Black Stigmata. True, it was impossible for the presence of nails to not be involved in at least some of these events, but these were all brought on by acts of mankind. So what was the correlation between the iron tree and these events? Nothing big had happened the day after Nelson received his vision, but he knew in his gut that the image of a tree in each of these events was important.

Jason was plummeting through a bottomless chasm, made solely of scarlet clouds. He was wrapped in barbed wire like a gothic mummy and his eyelids were pulled back to keep him from blinking. Over and over again, black lightning cracked across his consciousness with deafening volume. With each strike, pure unhindered fear rushed through his blood like snake venom. The fear was of no force or object in particular, but simply potent dread and paranoia, like after consuming too many energy drinks.

He did not know how long he had been falling; seconds felt like years and years felt like seconds. After a measure of time that had no name, he at last burst out of the cloud cover. He was high up above a hellish landscape, filled with mountains and lakes of fire. Burning 747s and bolts of black lightning plummeted out of the bloody clouds, while in the distance, cities melted as if they were made of ice. The mountains were blanketed with people, all torturing and eating each other. The mountain closest to him was literally the scene of a gargantuan brutal orgy, with thousands of men and women all getting raped while simultaneously raping each other.

Looking around as he fell, Jason screamed in terror as a skeletal pterodactyl dropped out of the clouds above, swooping towards him and laughing like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. Its body was devoid of flesh and muscles, and instead of feet, it had a long serpentine tail made of braided hair, the end of which was tied into a noose. Shooting past him, the undead beast looped the end of its tail around Jason' throat, and upon the instant whiplash, the taste of death filled Jason's mouth. It was like gurgling the blood of old road-kill mixed with the dust of an ashtray.

With the pterodactyl pulling him across the sky, Jason watched in terror as the world below him began to shake with biblical strength, as if nuclear bombs were being set off in the planet's crust. With a roar like that of a waterfall, a fissure cut across the landscape and sliced through the mountains themselves, throwing the insane masses into the air and casting them down into darkness. From the sides of the fissure, gargantuan sheets of bedrock were heaved into the air and pulled aside, as if the planet itself was having an autopsy performed and the rib cage had just been busted open.

From the depths of the earth, a creature rose up with a godless snarl. Tens of miles long, a Japanese dragon revealed itself with the light of the scarlet clouds glistening on its obsidian scales. Its antlers burned with hellfire and thick tar poured from every building-sized tooth. Reaching out, it slammed its hands down onto the tops of the mountains, crushing them like plastic cups beneath its talons. Turning to Jason, the dragon released a roar of such volume that it instantly made him deaf with blood pouring from his ears. He could feel the sound waves pounding his body like a thousand sledgehammers. Like hurricane winds heavy with broken glass, the vibrations washed over Jason and tore away at his flesh, sending strips of skin and coagulated blobs of gore flying off behind him in a gruesome storm.

The dragon was rendered silent just seconds after its roar began. Closing its jaws, it began to lurch forward with a repeating dry-heave, like a dog that had been eating from the compost pile. Reopening its mouth, the dragon revealed an inflamed eyeball pushing itself out from its throat. Tearing itself on the monster's back teeth, the orb of swollen blood vessels squeezed its way in between the monster's jaws. Its pupil trembling and skirting around in all directions, the eye looked across the landscape with a hungry tinge to its bloody hue. With the eye in place, the dragon leaned back like a cobra about to strike, raising itself up until its head hung just below the cloud cover. From its back, two wings burst out in foaming eruptions of blood, each membrane sail large enough to eclipse the sun and live a city in darkness.

Just as the monster was about to release another roar of fury, a thunderclap echoed across the landscape and the scarlet clouds were pushed aside. Like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, a Black Stigmata nail broke through the cloud cover, hurtling across the sky so fast that it was cloaked in fire from the friction of the air. Larger than the Chrysler Building, the colossal nail struck the dragon in the head with pinpoint accuracy. Skewering the eyeball between its jaws, the nail left the dragon moaning in agony, while the life poured from its body by the truckload. Collapsing, the dragon was nailed to the earth by three more Black Stigmata, each one striking its body like a lawn dart.

Falling over dead, the dragon's flaming antlers expanded and consumed its whole body like a phoenix cremating itself. Giving off more heat than ten erupting volcanoes, the dragon's body burned like a mountain range of pure powdered thermite. Having recovered from his earlier wounds, Jason's eyes stung from the intensity and brightness of the flames, as if he had just put in contact lenses soaked in lemon juice.

Having been originally been pushed back to the farthest corners of the horizon by the falling Black Stigmata, the scarlet clouds returned to dominate the sky, now being fed by the thick acrid smoke of the burning dragon. Answering the flames like a sprinkler system, the clouds unleashed their payload in the form of a downpour of blood, more intense than any natural rainstorm. Jason spat over and over again as the waterfall of blood assailed him, getting into every orifice and hitting him like waves on the stormy sea.

In minutes, the landscape was flooded like in the story of Noah's Ark. Even the tallest mountains hung deep below the churning red surface. Had the entire planet been consumed by an ocean of blood?!

But just as that thought crossed Jason's mind, a Black Stigmata nail, large enough to reach into the vacuum of space, burst straight up from the surface like a shark catching a seal and then dropped back down. As if it had poked a hole in the planet itself, the retraction of the nail brought with it the formation of an epic maelstrom, stretching across the horizon and boasting a size equal to that of the state of Maine. The swirling waves were so intense that they looked like they could obliterate mountains and sweep continents off the face of the earth, while the eye of the torrent seemed to lead to the deepest and darkest crevasses of the underworld.

Having only seconds to stare with a hanging jaw at the godlike whirlpool, Jason's stomach dropped as the pterodactyl carrying him reached down with its long beak and severed its tail, letting Jason plummet out of the sky like a duck during hunting season. Shouting in terror, Jason struggled against his barbed wire restraints with new vigor, succeeding only in tearing up his flesh as he fell. Hitting the blood on his side, Jason felt all of his bones simultaneously shatter as if he had landed on concrete, than reform instantly. He didn't know if the breaking or the repairing hurt more, but he was in too much agony to scream.

Sinking down below the blood, the barbed wire seemingly melted away, and the pins holding his eyes open disappeared. At last able to blink and move, Jason scrambled for the surface, drinking more than a liter of blood in the process. Breaking free of the heavy waves, he took a few grateful gasps of air and pulled off the noose around his neck. The power of the current was unbelievable! Just staying above the surface was like trying to swim through gasoline with a pair of concrete shoes.

"Holy shit!" Jason exclaimed as he felt a hand snap around his ankle.

Kicking off whatever had grabbed him, he turned around wildly at the sound of a splash. One of the people he had seen earlier had surfaced and was grabbing at him. He couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, as its body was horribly emaciated and jet black, while the flesh itself was molten and decomposed. The fingernails were elongated and discolored like an elderly smoker's, the teeth were twisted and split up, and the eyes were replaced with two fist-sized craters in the skull. With an inhuman scream, the ghoul grabbed onto Jason and sank its teeth into his flesh. Yelping in pain, he lashed out and punched the creature in the face as hard as he could.

Falling back into the red torrent, the ghoul was replaced by two others, screaming and clawing at Jason desperately. Hysterical with terror, he beat them off with all of his strength, but each foe that was repelled only triggered the arrival of reinforcements. In less than a minute, more than a dozen ghouls surrounded on all sides and his lacerated flesh attested to their ferocity and the sharpness of their teeth and claws. Feeling the current around him only increase as he and his opponents approached the eye of the whirlpool, Jason yelped as he was dragged down below the surface by a hand around his ankle.

As dark and viscous as the blood was, Jason could see what lay below him. All clambering over each other, a pyramid of hundreds or even a thousand ghouls were all reaching towards him; their fingers curling, their teeth barred! Struggling against them, his mouth opened and blood poured down his throat. The bitter iron taste made him want to throw up, but his stomach didn't have the force to expel anything that wouldn't just get forced back in. As soon as his stomach was filled, his lungs were next, and he began to drown.

Unable to fight back, Jason was pulled into the ghouls' midst. Over and over again, they clawed at him and sank their teeth into his flesh. He could feel it so clearly: the skin being ripped from his body, his muscles being severed cord by cord, his veins being pulled out him like shoelaces, and soon his organs turning into scratching posts for their jagged nails. He couldn't scream, he was incapable of releasing even a single bubble of air or create the tiniest decibel of noise. Somehow, no matter how much he blood he lost or how long he drowned, he was incapable of dying. He could only suffer.

As a crude finger dug into his left eye socket and pulled the gelatin sphere from its hold, the blood around him disappeared and the hands fell away. Looking around, he found himself cast out of the torrent and into the air above the eye, straight above the chasm of blood formed through centrifugal force. It was beyond massive, able to swallow Mt. Everest without a single pebble or speck of ice touching the sides of the maelstrom. Falling deeper and deeper into the darkness, he was able to utter a single scream of terror as a massive ghoul lunged out of the very heart of the lowest level of the eye. Roaring as it threw itself upwards, the ghoul opened its jaws and Jason dropped down into its dark gullet.

Jason cried out, feeling the sharp stone pierce his torso and shatter his spine. His body had once again been restored, and the only damage now was the large triangular stone that had broken through his torso. The hole it had punched in his body was almost foot in diameter, nearly splitting him in half. Cold, the air was so cold. His body was still retaining its heat, but he could feel the warmth bleeding away against the powerful breeze against him. The stone that had run him through felt like it was made of ice that was incapable of melting, and outstretched around him, his arms and legs were laying in snow.

He was atop a mountain, having fallen and impaled himself on the knife-like summit. The sky was dark, the wind brutally strong, and there was nothing around him but similarly lifeless mountains. Lying on his back, he looked around for something to use. He had to get off this stone. His fingers already numb from cold, he managed to pull a sharp rock out of a nearby pile of snow. Taking a deep breath, he raised the stone high and slammed the edge down onto his side. The impact bloodied his hand and tore his flesh, drawing a cry of agony. Swinging again, he struck his side a second time, tearing through the soft tissue and inching closer to the fat pike that had run him through. Two more strikes were all it took, and with a shift of his body weight, he managed to tear himself free of the stone edge.