Ascension of the Damned

 

 

 

Chapter 2 – The Ghosts of Wish House

The interior of the alleged orphanage was exactly as the outside of the structure implied. The place looked like it had been abandoned for years. Old furniture was haphazardly strewn about the main room, most of it crumbling from extensive decay. A fine layer of dust covered everything in sight, and spider webs were present in the corners of the cracked, discolored walls. 

Chris stepped through the clutter of the living room, examining the scattered objects for anything useful. It appeared that strange guy in the rain coat hadn’t completely lied to him after all. There was plenty of evidence that children once lived here in the form of old drawings depicting an assortment of things; flowers, people, and a few imaginary monsters. There were also a few very old, worn out toys. 

He picked one up off the ground. It was an old stuffed doll, stained and dusty, reminiscent of a little mouth-less gray alien. He stared at the doll. There was something odd about this toy. He was almost certain he had seen it before.

A curious sensation began to take hold of him the longer he stared at the doll. And little by little, the images began to arise…

~

The room was a very different place. A stark contrast to its previous state of decay, the furniture was all neatly arranged, and there were no toys in sight. Fourteen young children sat in a group in the center of the living room, watching with rapt attention the figure pacing in front of them, holding an old leather-bound book in her worn hands.

The woman paused to survey the children with her yellow eyes, making sure they were still paying attention. She didn’t have bothered. Everyone here knew that to not pay attention to this particular teacher was to suffer a very painful punishment.   

Satisfied that all eyes were on her, the woman continued on with her lesson for the day, a sermon culled from the scriptures she held. Her voice was reverent in tone as she droned on about God and the duties of Her servants, including the young ones gathered here today. She smiled slightly when she spied the two children and one scrawny teenager lurking at the back of the group at a small, yet noticeable distance from the others.

Their expressions were different as well. The little brunette girl was barely focused, looking somewhere between sullen and bored. No surprise there. Her pale blonde companion was a different story. Unlike her friend, she was absolutely fascinated with the speech. The brunette stared glumly at her with obvious pity in her eyes. But it was the third individual that caught the woman’s interest.

The boy that lingered near the two girls shared neither the brunette’s moroseness not the blonde’s enthusiasm. He stood back from the girls in a corner of the room, towering over the others like a gargoyle overlooking its victims. He was not a part of the main group, that much was clear. Eyes fixed straight ahead, he looked on with an almost blank expression, as if he were bored like his brunette ‘friend’. That was far from the case. Beneath the vacant stare, the woman knew he was absorbing every word she preached.

These were the best type of followers, the woman knew; the ones who neither fanatical nor reluctant to learn. They simply learned quietly and intensely, immersing themselves in the teachings, almost like a machine.

They were dangerous. He was dangerous. Age mattered not, the woman realized. Often times, the trends that would end up defining us as adults were set early on in our childhoods. They shaped our personalities, molding us into individuals who were usually very resistant to change. The Order was aware of this, of course, which was why she and its other figureheads worked hard to ensure that children like these were given the most thorough introduction possible into their religion. It was the only way they could be certain that this next generation of follow would not be easily swayed from God’s will by outside forces. They would carry on the traditions faithfully, as those before them had for over a century, remaining devoted servants of God.

And if the signs she was already seeing were any indication, the boy would be a truly great member of the Order. Perhaps even their greatest ever, superior even to the chosen Mother of God.

The woman ceased her pacing. She stared hard at the assembled children, her lips thinned in a thoughtful frown. When she spoke, her voice was dry with ill-disguised contempt.

“Alessa,” she announced loudly. The brunette girl in the back looked up sharply.

“Come up here and read the next passage.”

The little girl stared at the woman. The teacher almost laughed – the distaste was plain on the girl’s face. Such a recalcitrant student girl…it was nearly a shame they would have to break that spirit for the good of the Order.

Little Alessa seemed to ponder what the teacher wanted. Then, her simple response shocked the entire class.

“No.”

The assembled children gasped. The pale blonde girl, in particular, looked at her like she was insane. Alessa paid them no heed.

“What did you say?” the woman calmly asked her.

Alessa hesitated. But then she glared at the instructor with smoldering dark brown eyes.

“I said no,” Alessa said defiantly, eliciting another gasp from the group.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. She slowly made her way through the children, who quickly moved aside to let her through. They were frightened of her already, and they knew what it meant when she got that look on her face. The woman stopped right at Alessa’s feet.

  “Why?”

The question was deceptively simple. Alessa wasn’t fooled. She knew what the woman was really asking. ‘Why do you resist? Why don’t you fall in line like everyone else?’ And as always, her answer was strikingly clear.

“Because I hate it.”

Her pale friend’s eyes widened in horror. The other children were stunned as well. Only the boy with a head full of shaggy blonde hair remained unmoved, unflappable as always.

The woman towering over them looked hard at her obstinate pupil. “What?” she demanded warningly, daring Alessa to elaborate. If the little girl registered the threat, she paid no attention to it.            

“Because I hate it,” she reiterated, and for good measure added, “I hate you.”

The other children sucked in their breath in unison. They could not believe what Alessa had just said to their headmaster. Again, the pale little girl looked downright horrified. The odd teenage boy remained unperturbed.   

Inside, the woman was smiling. However, appearances demanded that she give the impression of being outraged.       

“How dare you?” she muttered quietly, letting the anger slip into her tone. Her eyes hardened in a way that made everyone shudder, including Alessa. And then, to everyone’s astonishment, her hand flew across the little girl’s face. Alessa barely had time to react as the instructor’s hand struck her face, resonating with a loud smack. The little girl fell to the ground. Tears came to her eyes from the burning sensation in her cheek, though she didn’t allow them to fall. She only sat there dazed from the slap, cupping her cheek where a red handprint was rapidly forming.

“Insolent brat! How dare you talk that way about us?” the woman burst out, causing several of the children to start trembling. She roughly hauled Alessa to her feet by one of her forearms, forcing her to make eye contact.  

“We give you an outlet for your gifts, and this is how you repay us? With impudence and blasphemy?”

The little girl didn’t respond. Everyone winced when the woman slapped her again for good measure.

“This is your life, Alessa. This is what you’re destined for, whether you like it or not. You know what the other children at the commoners’ school think of you, and I assure you, it only gets worse from there. Bigoted adults are far more evil than closed-minded children, who act solely out petty ignorance.”

The woman’s words were bitingly cruel, drilling into Alessa’s soul. And as much as the little girl tried to resist, it was times like these that made her wonder if things would be better if she just accepted the Order’s teachings. Because if nothing else, they were right about the outside world. It was filled with vicious, evil people who treated you like trash for being different, even the kids. At least the people here knew she was special.

That didn’t mean what they did to her hurt any less. 

“You have a choice, Alessa,” the woman stated coldly. “You can either accept your place here as the chosen Mother of God, as is your birthright, and be treated with the greatest of respect. Or…” the woman paused, giving Alessa a disdainful look, “you can keep up this disobedience and continue to receive the appropriate punishments.” Her face took on a threatening expression. “And rest assured, we will send you to the Tower if necessary.”

A wave of fear swept through the room. The children knew all about the Tower, and the things that went on there. For a brief moment, Alessa’s eyes showed the same fear. But then, the emotion in her eyes turned into one of deep seeded hatred. She stared hard at the instructor, focusing all her inner turmoil into a single malevolent thought. 

I wish you were dead.

When she saw Alessa’s intense facial expression, the woman nearly laughed. She leaned in close to the girl, giving her a knowing smirk.

“Your powers don’t work on me, girl,” the woman whispered mockingly in Alessa’s ears. “The Lord protects me from your childish wrath.”

As roughly as she had hauled her up, the woman pushed Alessa to the floor. Alessa sat on her knees, rubbing the arm she was almost sure was hurt while she stared up with spiteful eyes at her tormentor.

“Take a lesson from our little would-be heretic here, children. Never, ever, say that you hate anything to do with our Order, especially not the sacred texts. Understood?” the woman said, her stance as unyielding as steel. Satisfied that she had gotten her point across, and stirred just a bit more hatred inside Alessa, the woman returned to reading from the bible in her hand.

As her lecture continued, the children went back to their regular positions. The pale little blonde girl once again focused eagerly on the teachings, while Alessa continued to stew sullenly in her corner. Meanwhile, the teenage boy next to them continued to observe the sermon, his eyes vacant as always. 



It was a typical day at Wish House.

~

The old rag doll slipped from Chris’ hands. Gradually, the sense of reality returned to him, and he found himself once again in the messy, dilapidated living room of the now abandoned orphanage. He shook his head, trying to get some sense of what just happened.

“What the…?” he muttered, dazed from the vivid images overtaking his mind only seconds before.



What was that? Who were those people? It was obvious they were no ordinary set of kids and their teacher. And how did they suddenly come to his mind just like that? It almost seemed like a flashback of some sort, except…he was sure he had never witnessed that in person. No one had acknowledged his presence in any way, and it felt like he was somehow looking in from the outside.  

He was startled by the door getting kicked in. He turned around to face a familiar sight – Daniella, making her way through the mess of toys and furniture.



“You again?” Her gun was aimed straight at Chris.

Chris let his guard down. “Yeah. Nice to see you too.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are, I’m guessing. Just checking out this place.” He raised a dark eyebrow. “You gonna put that gun down anytime soon?”

Daniella frowned, feeling a little silly. She lowered the weapon. “Fine. You find anything?”

“We’re working together now?” Chris asked sardonically.

“Don’t shortchange me, asshole. Answer the question.”

Sigh. “Nothing so far. Only memories.” He certainly wasn’t going to tell her the truth. She’d probably think he was crazy. Not a good thing considering she was an armed woman with a very quick temper.

Daniella was intrigued by the response. “You mind telling me what that means?”

“Nothing you would care about,” Chris said truthfully.

“Hmph.”

“Have you checked upstairs yet?” Daniella asked after a moment of silence.

“No, not yet.”

“You going to?”

“No, I was thinking of just standing here for the next three hours. Of course I’m going to check upstairs,” Chris snapped sarcastically. He wasn’t quite sure why he said it. Maybe it was this whole set of circumstances that had him traversing through a strange forest in the middle of the night, with no idea where he was going or what he was supposed to do. Surely he could be excused for being frustrated in light of that.

Or maybe this woman was just a big pain in the butt.

She certainly has an attitude problem, Chris reflected, staring at the blonde as she gazed at the clutter with an air of disgust. He could hardly believe that she was supposedly a police officer. Why was she so…harsh, for lack of a better term? Was it just because she caught him trying to steal from her, or was she this way with people in general? And if so, what could have happened to make her that way?

Daniella stared at him with thinned eyes. “Fine. Get to it, then,” she clipped.

Chris held back a slight grin. She could dish it out, but taking attitude from someone else was a different story.

“All right. But before I do, you mind answering a question for me? What is this place?”

A shadow seemed to fall across Daniella’s face. She hesitated, and Chris guessed that she was possibly wondering what to tell him, or how much.

“It’s called Wish House,” she finally answered. “It used to be an orphanage, a long time ago.”

“Yeah, some guy outside told me that. He didn’t mention the name.”

“Wait a minute. What guy?” Daniella inquired.

“You didn’t see him?” Chris asked rhetorically, though he was curious whether she had encountered that weirdo.



“I haven’t seen anyone except you around here,” Daniella shook her head. She gave Chris an odd glance. “Can you describe him?”

“Well, he was very…unkempt, is the word, I guess. He had on this dirty blue rain coat and some really stained pants and shoes. He had long blonde hair, and he was very pale, too,” Chris explained.

“Hmm,” Daniella considered, looking down thoughtfully. “Did he give you a name?”

“No. I asked him, but it was really weird. All he said was that he didn’t have a name.”

“You’re kidding,” Daniella scoffed. She shook her head dismissively. “Must be on drugs or something.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. He certainly looked like it,” Chris said. “You said this place is called Wish House?” He recalled somehow knowing that name in that strange vision.

“Was, as far as I know,” Daniella corrected him. “Of course, I haven’t been here in years, so what do I know?”

“You’ve been here before?”

Daniella’s face took a strange look. “Uh…yeah, I have, actually. A few years back, I suppose,” she stammered. Chris glanced curiously at her. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear she was nervous about something. Was that bit of info about her being here before a slip of the tongue she didn’t intend to reveal?

“Were you on an investigation?” Chris pressed on.

“Um, yeah, that’s it actually,” Daniella said. Chris thought she almost sounded panicked. “It was just a routine investigation. Nothing major, really.”

“Ah.”

“Aren’t you gonna check upstairs? You know, see if there’s anything suspicious around?”

“Yeah, sure,” Chris nodded, and noticed that Daniella was more than a little relieved that he dropped the issue.

She was hiding something. He was sure of it.

 

However, now wasn’t the time to ask her about it. Maybe later, on the off chance she became more comfortable with his presence. But not now, while she still distrusted him, and was liable to defend herself, very likely physically, if he chose to press the issue. 

He headed upstairs to where he assumed the bedrooms were.

The dormitory was unexceptional in the same way the living room downstairs was. Two rows of bunk beds were neatly arranged along the walls. There was a semi-comfortable bathroom nearby; perhaps the “Master” preferred that the kids not venture downstairs after lights out. Some of the beds had toys or scribbled drawings and coloring books on them. All of them were sheathed in a fine layer of dust. So was the floor. Little clouds of dust rose with each step he took. Chris was careful not to breathe in too deeply; there was enough grime to cause serious choking. He could taste the staleness in the air each time he inhaled.

At the very back of the room was something that immediately set his nerves on edge.

It was the symbol; the same one from the altar way back in the forest. Chris noted morbidly that it appeared to have been traced with blood.

This couldn’t be a coincidence. An ominous feeling took hold in the pit of his stomach. Something was going on here, and he thought back to that weird man he had encountered outside. Was he part of this? Almost certainly, considering what happened when Chris tried to stop him from leaving. The question was – what exactly was going on? Unless he really had lost his mind, all of this reeked of something supernatural in nature, but that couldn’t be true, could it? What kind of force could be operating out of an orphanage in the middle of the woods?

He thought back to that bizarre vision he had downstairs before Daniella arrived. There were numerous mentions of something called “The Order”, and that teacher’s hideous cruelty certainly lent an air of constant abuse to this place. A cult seemed like the obvious answer. But, if there was really a town nearby, how would the headmasters keep it a secret? And even if that were true, how did it explain those bizarre creatures roaming around outside?

Suddenly, he wished he wasn’t too afraid to ask Daniella if she had seen them too. While she said she hadn’t seen anybody, they’d been talking about a person, not an inhuman monster. And if she had in fact seen some of those same things too, would she be upfront about it? Or was it possible that she was simply doing the same thing he was: keeping quiet out of fear that he would think she was crazy?

Just as he decided to call the police officer and show her what he found, the emblem on the wall began to glow with a dim ethereal light. Suddenly, the window panes next to the beds shattered in an explosion of glass as rusted iron bars appeared out of nowhere. Chris instinctively drew his forearm over his face to protect his eyes from the flying shards. When it was over, the windows were completely barred off from the balcony outside. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of grains of glass littered the floor and the mattresses. The demonic-looking emblem was still illuminated on the wall, but now it was raining down little rivulets of red onto the floor.

“Time to get the hell out of here,” Chris muttered, watching as the small pool of blood began to form on the floor.

He rushed for the door, but was met with an unwelcome surprise. The door was locked; the doorknob wouldn’t budge. 

“Shit,” Chris swore, slamming a fist on the door. To his surprise, he made a minor dent on the surface. Apparently, the wood had already begun to rot away. He considered using the pipe to break through. The wood looked old enough; he could probably do it with enough force.

Suddenly, he heard an unsettling noise that sounded like moist slowly cracking open. He turned to search for the source of the disturbance, steel pipe ready in hand.

And that was when he saw it. Or rather, them.



They were clawing out of the beds, out of dark red fissures than resembled a mass of pulsing veins. They weren’t human, that much was clear. Their skin was pale, decayed, and emitting a foul stench of dead, rotting flesh. A repulsive assortment of bodily fluids dripped onto the mattresses with every movement the creatures made. The guttural sounds they uttered were like a groan, gasping, choking, and an odd clicking rolled into one. He soon saw why. Every one of the creatures had its throat torn out or slashed. And yet, as incredibly horrific as this was, that wasn’t the worst part of their appearance. No, there was something far more disturbing.

These were children.

Not actual children, granted, but that was that they blatantly resembled: grotesque, mutilated dead children. And just like that, the weird man’s statements outside took on a new macabre meaning.

They came at him in pairs. Chris felt his heart stop when he saw what they were armed with. Some carried sharp blades in their hands, while others possessed clawed fingers that looked absolutely deadly. In such enclosed quarters, both eclipsed vastly the pathetic steel pipe he was armed with. Chris hurried to break out of the room, but to his disbelief and despair, the door was too thick to be torn down in a few seconds.

“Daniella!” he called out at the top of his lungs, knowing she was his only hope of getting out of here alive. “Daniella, get up here!”

No one answered. Chris wondered whether she’d actually left him alone in here, or whether she too was being attacked by these things. Not that it made much difference. Either way, he was in deep trouble. The demons were mere inches away.

Left with no choice, Chris chose to go down fighting. He charged the pack head on, and with all his strength, swung down his weapon on the skull of one creature, shattering it instantly with a sickening crunch. The demon fell to the ground, where Chris stomped hard on its twitching neck, snapping the brittle bone. One of its companions took a swipe at him with its knife, but Chris avoided it and retaliated with a hard swing of the pipe that struck the monster with vicious force, snapping back its head and breaking its neck.

More of the beasts attacked, eager for revenge. Chris fought them off equally determined. Demon after demon was brutally tossed aside or had its skull bashed in. He used the beds in his favor, turning one over to crush several of the monsters and form a protective barrier between Chris and the remaining fiends. He didn’t go completely unhurt by their attack; a couple of the monsters were able to slash at his legs with their blades and talons.

Chris fell to his knees as the creatures tried to climb over the makeshift barricade. He kept striking at them with the steel pipe, holding them back through sheer force of will. But just when it looked like he might have a chance of escaping this threat with his life intact, an all too familiar sound came to his ears.

The piercing blare of air sirens emanated over the surroundings, and just as with the confrontation outside, an agonizing headache brought him down, crippling his defense as he struggled against the throbbing in his temples.

It was more than enough for his aggressors. The monsters didn’t hesitate. The four of them that were still alive swarmed onto their human prey, swiping and stabbing at his body with voracious intent. Chris struggled to push them back, but it was just too much. The pain of their weapons rending the flesh on his limbs was the last thing he felt as he lapsed into unconsciousness.