“The Hereafter Hours”

By Samuel Hayne

“We are here.” 

Manuel shook the locked door again. He took out his keys, immediately found the one that unlocked the backdoor and threw it open.

“Where the fuck are you hiding?” His shout echoed through the entire building. He cocked his head toward the darkness listening for movement. But there was only silence.

“Damn,” he whispered. “Why’d I leave my flashlight in my truck?” He fumbled along the shadowy wall, moving farther from the door and deeper into the room searching for the light switch.

“Where are you?” A male’s voice, thick with a Texas accent, whispered from the shadows.

Manuel stopped moving. His eyes scanned the impermeable darkness. Frustration spread through his body. His jaw tightened and he clenched his teeth together so hard they squeaked. His knuckles ached from squeezing his fists into tight balls at his sides.

“I know someone’s in here,” he shouted. Cold sweat materialized on his forehead. “I hear you. Kyle, is that you?”

It had been six weeks since Kyle disappeared from Manuel’s life. He still couldn’t believe that his lover of five years vanished without an explanation. He came home one morning and found the apartment as bare as a mausoleum. He had no idea of what was going on, but overheard the landlady gossiping to another tenant about how sad she was about Kyle and Manuel. They were her favorite tenants and she didn’t like losing them. Manuel thought of approaching her to find out what she meant, but figured Kyle owed him the explanation. So he left and never returned. Kyle was the first man Manuel ever loved. After years of dating women and one failed marriage, Manuel realized that Kyle was the only person who ever made him feel good about himself. But with him gone he didn’t know who he was anymore. Since Kyle had disappeared, he felt like he had disappeared too. All he did was work. He didn’t see any of his friends anymore and, having been rejected by his family years ago for being honest about his relationship with Kyle, he didn’t have them to turn to for support.

“Where are you?” The wispy voice asked again.

Manuel reached out, his fingers finally stumbling across a light switch. He exhaled; his shoulders and chest relaxed a little and he flicked on the lights. The illuminated room revealed no intruders, only empty cocktail tables, lonely booths and a barren dance floor. The smell of cigarettes and spilled drinks hung on the stale air. Manuel flicked the lights on and off several times in an attempt to flush the prowlers out of hiding or at least scare them into making a noise. A scream shot out from the direction of the bar, a short high-pitched shriek, followed by a voice, this time distinctly young and feminine.

“GO AWAY.”

Manuel sprinted across the room, sliding to a stop at the end of the bar. It was empty. His eyes darted from one end of the room to the other, scanning for intruders. He turned off the lights.

In the center of the room, alongside the dance floor, the darkness coagulated into vague shapes. It was impossible to tell what they were doing or distinguish anything more specific about them other than they numbered three and they were vaguely human shaped. They didn’t notice him. They also didn’t appear to be doing anything, other than squatting there. They were real, but dark, darker even than the shadows. Manuel listened but they spoke in muffled voices. He dared not move or lose the element of surprise. He kept his back planted firmly against the wall, and remained silent. He kept his attention on them, wondering what they were doing. Why didn’t they acknowledge his presence? They must have seen him turn on the light. Their dulled features began to sharpen and the darkness around them seemed to take on a brighter more vivid glow. He could see there were definitely two males and a female. All three appeared to be small in size, probably teenagers. He took a small step towards them.

“Over yonder…” The voice with the Texas accent returned. Manuel turned to look and was startled to see two faint, shadowy shapes in the room. He combed his fingers through his coal-black hair, covering his eyes with his hands for a moment.

In God’s name, what the Hell is going on? The question echoed off the walls in the great tomb of his imagination. He needed to clear his head and think about what was going on. First and foremost, there were intruders in the club. Manuel uncovered his eyes and stared at the obscure duo. He imagined his refusal to back away would be intimidating. But as he focused his attention on them the darkness slipped away. A beautiful golden aura formed around them and their vague, shadowy images sharpened and solidified. The trio of teens faded from his peripheral vision and into the blackness of the room.

One of the men, the bigger of the two, stood in a corner of the room. He sported a yellow coat and brown shorts. He stared directly at Manuel. He was young, but his head was bald and he wore a grim expression on his face, the likes of which Manuel hadn’t seen since his own father’s funeral. The shorter of the two men stepped forward alongside the first, and, as if walking onto a stage into the spotlight, his image became more clear and vivid as well. Manuel saw that he wore a yellow coat too, but everything else about him was different from his companion. He was definitely older with a lanky frame, and his demeanor seemed friendlier. Wide, round eyes and a broad grin greeted Manuel

“Are their friendly ghosts?” Manuel remembered the image of the balloon-headed cartoon character, Casper, from his childhood and laughed.

“Come to us.” One of the boys spoke from the darkness. Manuel turned toward his voice. A brilliant golden aura, building in radiance, surrounded all three teenagers. The light was beautiful, and Manuel was compelled to reach out to it, but there was something troubling him about it too. The light allowed him to see more details. The girl’s hair was shoulder length and blonde. The two boys were dark haired. They all wore pajamas and kneeled on the ground in a triangular arrangement. Their attention was not on him, but rather on something in front of them. They didn’t seem to notice Manuel at all. The girl was crying and shaking her head. She seemed scared. Were they ghosts? Were they playing out some past event?

Before Manuel could study the situation further something suddenly moved on his left. A shadow that hadn’t been a shadow at all moved out of the darkness and slinked up to Manuel’s leg. He didn’t move, but surveyed the room, his keen eyes scanning slowly for other movement. He didn’t wait long. To his right, another creature crept out of the shadows. Manuel made the sign of the cross – forehead to breast, left shoulder to right. Both of the shadow-things were roughly two feet tall, but crawled around the room in frenzied, erratic and totally random paths, like carrion beetles scavenging for nearby dead flesh that was just out of reach. Manuel watched as they carelessly circled the room with no apparent purpose, crawling up to this table and that chair like hungry dogs sniffing for food scraps. He noticed that after a few minutes their macabre dance took them closer and closer to the teenagers. His first instinct was to move forward and put himself closer to the three youths who apparently didn’t see the stealthy approach of the shadowlings. But this was so utterly unknown to him that he was robbed of both his strength and his will and neither body or mind would respond as he stared in disbelief. 

One of the creatures suddenly stopped its inane fluttering around the room and slowly crept toward the girl. Manuel watched, still unable to move, as it reached out, wrapping its ebony talons around a tuft of her wavy blonde hair. Whatever power doubt held over him, Manuel revolted against it and rushed into action. He leaped forward, pushing away from the safety of the wall, fully intending to engage the shadowling, when something incredible happened. A single black, tendril of shadow uncoiled from the darkness shrouding the ceiling. It stretched across the expanse of the room, reaching into the shadows along the north wall forming a solid, strong tendon. Another tendril cautiously lowered itself into the room, but this one quickly shot across to the east wall. Within seconds, several more followed in succession until great sinews of corporeal shadow crisscrossed the entire room forming a dense malevolent muscle. In a single, fluid action the tendons pulled away from the walls and ceiling, coalescing into a single entity: a third, gigantic, shadowling. Manuel stopped with only a few feet between himself and the beast. He felt so helpless and insignificant he might as well have been an ant under the foot of a child. It stood on two legs towering over Manuel. Two large, membranous wings, like black sails, unfurled from its back.

Everyday of his life Manuel believed in demons. Even as a doubtful Catholic he still believed Satan sent minions to Earth to create strife for humanity. As a gay man he believed demons were the secrets kept and lies told to hide the truth about himself. But he never feared facing the demons. He did his best to always confront the evils of life headfirst and with as loud a voice as his spirit could rouse. So as Manuel stood before this winged fiend born from sinewy shadow, he looked directly up into its empty black face.

“Hell will not stop me.” Manuel said. He took a step nearer to the beast, closing the few feet between the two of them. Its round, featureless head bubbled and churned like the hot blackness of a hellish tar pit, deliberately arranging itself into a dog-like facade with overly exaggerated, sharp pointed ears. A muzzle baring brown and yellow fangs dripped ropy, almost gelatinous, saliva that pooled at Manuel’s feet. Two solid white orbs, the size of human skulls, oozed through the viscous tar of the monster’s face settling just over the snout. It looked down upon Manuel. A ferocious snarl escaped from deep inside the beast as it situated itself between Manuel and the teenagers. The beast slowly lowered itself until it saw eye to eye with its adversary. There were no pupils. Only blank white spheres buried in black ooze like two full moons in a starless midnight sky.

Manuel’s throat tightened.

The fiend sneered at him, revealing row upon row of razor sharp incisors.

Manuel’s mouth lubricated with saliva.

A crimson tentacle, cleaved at the tip, slithered from between the first rows of pointed teeth and carried the stink of a corpse.

Fearing for his immortal soul, Manuel dropped to his knees, humbling himself. He kissed the gold cross on the chain around his neck before fear could work its way up his esophagus and defile the holy symbol. And he prayed.

As he knelt there, the gold crucifix pressed to his lips, Manuel heard a new voice.

“Manny,” soft and peaceful, the voice floated close to him on a breeze,

“Get…out.” a warm breeze, like a tender touch, carried away the air of death,

Manuel lifted his head from his hands and turned to the see a silhouette standing amidst a golden pulsating light. Time seemed to stop. Manuel was not afraid of this specter. There was a familiarity to the voice and to the sweet aroma it brought to the air. The golden light brought with it a sense of courage and hope. Manuel rose to his feet, ignoring the fiend.

“You need to leave this place,” the man’s voice was substantial less airy than the others.

Manuel felt lifted up by unseen hands as he realized the voice belonged to Kyle. Kyle, who had mysteriously abandoned all they had accomplished, stood only a short distance away from him. He looked different. He looked older with shorter, graying hair. Manuel reached out to him, the man he would forever love, no matter what had transpired between them.

“Over here,” the Texas accent called from Manuel’s left again. Manuel turned and as he looked away from Kyle’s gold ringed image, it vaporized into nothingness.

There was a brilliant flash of light followed by a lingering glow where the specter of Kyle had stood. Manuel rubbed his eyes, momentarily blinded.

“Kyle,” he called out. “Don’t go.” But he was gone. Only the sweet aroma remained as a reminder of his visit. Manuel took a deep breath, his anger rising. Heat rushed into his face and his fists balled up at his sides, but Manuel couldn’t contain the fury. This was the only contact he’d had with Kyle since his disappearance and not one question was answered. Manuel grabbed up a nearby chair and marched across the dance floor. He lifted it above his head and with all his rage, swung in a wide arc slamming it against one of the shadowlings. The creature let out a sharp, oscillating, almost electronic screech as it cut through the air and vanished into the darkness.

“KYLE…” Manuel dropped the chair, raising his fists to the sky. “Whatever I did…I’m sorry. Please come back.” The giant shadowling was moving and coming for Manuel. Hot tears burned at his eyes.

“What’s your name?”

Manuel looked down at his feet and was amazed to clearly see three teenagers huddled over a rectangular piece of wood. He was exhausted and thought he might just fade into the shadows himself or let the monster gobble him up.

“My name is Manuel Guerrero. My friends always called me ‘Manny’.” He felt empty inside. A dark shadow loomed over the children and Manuel knelt down to their level. “I don’t know how you kids got in here, but you need to stop what you’re doing and get out.” He shouted at them.

“What’s it saying?”

“Shut up, it’s hard to read in this light. ‘Manny–I–don’t–know–you–in–here–stop–get-out.’”

“His name is Manny.”

“Is it angry?”

“How the Hell should I know?”

     Tears stung Manuel’s eyes. “I’m here. Look at me. Talk to me,” he shouted as they kept their fingers pressed to piece of white plastic that danced around the board. “I’m here. Standing beside you. You need to leave before something bad happens.”

     “‘Look-I’m-beside-you.’” The three teenagers slowly looked around the room, their eyes passing over him several times.

     “HERE!” Manuel kicked the rectangular board sending both the white planchette and the board flying across the room crashing against the wall, making a loud CRACK as it split down the middle. A brilliant light streamed from the broken board bathing the room in a heavenly, white-gold aura. The enormous shadowling vaporized as the beams of brilliance sent the shadows fleeing. The three adolescents screamed in terror, running out of the room. Manuel fell to his knees again and cried. His moans echoed throughout the room.

The room. It somehow looked different. The walls and decorations of “The After Hours Club” changed. Everything was tinged with a white halo as if an early morning fog had rolled into the room. The miasma obscured his vision, but it looked as though the walls around him were now closer, like a smaller room. The dance floor vanished and in its place were the trappings of a luxurious home; hard wood flooring with a vibrant violet rug in the center of the room. A brown sofa and two leather chairs faced Manuel. His head spun like he just stepped off a roller coaster. He took a few steps back toward the wall and felt heat on his ass. The source of which was a blazing fire in a hearth. The two spectral men from earlier stood only a few feet away. Manuel tried to get their attention, but a sudden flash of white light filled his sight and the intense brightness blinded him again.

George and Wayne snapped their heads up from the monitors as the moan echoed from the direction of the fireplace. George checked the thermometer. The temperature had dropped 5 degrees in the last 30 seconds.

“I think we can rule this out as a residual haunting,” he made a few notes on his clipboard.

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” Wayne, the taller of the two with a Texas accent, lifted the digital camera and took three photos of the fireplace, the flash from the camera filling the darkness like some heavenly beam coming to collect a soul.

“We’ve been here every night for the past week and had consistent contact with the spirit, but each night his pattern is different. Residuals are like tape recordings of an event that play over and over again with no deviation.”

“Ok, so what type of haunting are you classifying this as, George?”

“The spirit of Manuel Guerrero is a typical haunting. He died on January the fifteenth, nineteen seventy-six from a gunshot wound to the chest while doing his security rounds. I believe Manuel Guerrero is still carrying out his duties to keep the nightclub secure. Even years after the nightclub is gone and a house is built in its place, Manuel completes his nightly rounds. Last week I interviewed Kyle McLeod, Manuel’s lover, and he said he visited the nightclub after Manuel died. He saw Manuel at the club and told him to leave and crossover.”

“I guess he didn’t listen,” Wayne chuckled.

“Apparently not. The owner of this house told me that a few months ago his kids brought out their Ouija board and made contact with a spirit that identified itself as ‘Manny’.

THE END