“Are you finished packing the tablets?” Mrs. Everly -I really need to figure out what her real name is- asked. Her eyes darted towards the darkness of the cave’s depths, clearly wishing to be gone.

  “Just about.” Gabe answered. Specifically we were looking for a hammer or convenient rock to knock the nails back in the crate. Mrs. Everly sniffed, tapping her foot. Whatever was in those files was enough to push her demeanor towards irritable.

  “Don’t worry about that, I’ll get it.” She snapped her fingers. Or tried to. It was more of a pathetic “thwip” but she nodded in satisfaction over it all the same. Still a bit twitchy, but satisfied.

  “Any idea what we might be dealing with?” Jeff asked what I had been thinking. I knew a little bit from that game, after all.

  “Whatever it is, it’s clearly Mesopotamian, but that should have been obvious already. All I can say for sure is it’s not Gozer.” She chuckled. Clearly the theme for the weekend was the Eighties.

  “So…”

  “At least I don’t think it’s any of the big name one, but ancient Mesopotamia has a lot of them. It could be everything from the gallu to the lilin, at quite frankly I’m not an expert in demonology. That’s why we need to get those crates up to the base camp. The sooner we can get someone to work transting them the better.”

  “But the nails…” I started to say, turning to the crates. But the nails were all firmly hammered in.

  “We don’t want them breaking during transit.” She said.

  But how did they- No, I probably just bnked out for a bit or got distracted by the weirdness of discussing ancient Sumerian demons. I don’t even want to think about how they reached the conclusion “demonic” from the kind of government folders that you only see in movies or reports about presidents and secretaries of state and congressional staffers mishandling them. I just don’t want to deal with any of this. The nails were nailed in while I was in shock from all the other weird shit and that’s that.

  “Well should we get going?” Gabe asked, thankfully derailing my churning thoughts. “If the three of us each take a crate we should have it done in one trip.”

  “Yup, way ahead of you.” I answered, hoisting up the lightest of the crates. I needed to get out of this cavern. It was having a bad influence on my thoughts.

  I was eternally thankful on the walk back that the floor had been cleared into a path, since the heavy crate blocked any chances I had of watching my footing. Liah, I’m certain that’s her real name now, led from the front while Mrs. Everly brought up the rear to make sure none of us tripped. As she put it, she didn’t “feel like assembling an ancient jigsaw puzzle on top of the rest of [her] work”

  We paused at the entrance of the cave to put away the comms gear, and to bance it between the crates on the cart. Thankfully I didn’t have to pull it this time; Gabe took over the pack-mule duties on the return trip while I was given the important task of making sure nothing fell off.

  Anne and Chris -I still don’t know her real name yet- seemed shocked by our sudden arrival. Come to think of it, we forgot to radio to them that we were returning. The awkward distance between the two of them as we entered the tent with its monitors was as telling as if we’d caught them in the act. Seriously, things are bad enough as it is, we don’t need more horror movie tropes.

  Mrs. Everly exchanged a few words with the blushing Chris, but from the way her embarrassment rapidly faded it didn’t seem there were any issues with her, uh, recent conduct. The speed with which she dug out a battered notebook from a pack was mildly concerning. She was taking this as seriously as the rest of the regurs were.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the van being driven off further into the darkness. A fsh of fear that we were being abandoned died down with the engine shutting off. I heard some rattling noises met with the sound of metal hitting metal.

  “What’s with that?” I asked Chris.

  “She needs to get in contact with our boss.” Was the curt response.

  “Can’t she just call?” My question was met with ughter.

  “I won’t expin the details, I’m pretty sure I can’t, but this isn’t the kind of thing that can be discussed over a cell phone.”

  That made sense, actually. She could have phrased it nicer but it made sense. Those were some pretty official-looking mani folders, but how that kind of thing was actually handled was just never something I put thought into before.

  “Now, if you two could keep an eye on the monitors, I have something I need to talk about with Mrs. Thorne.” She said curtly, a finger marking a spot in her notebook as she walked out. She stopped for a moment, left her cell phone on a table, then went out into the night.

  “Paranoid bunch, aren’t they?” I had just come here to hunt for ghosts. Watch monitors, listen for EVP’s, maybe do a séance. None of this cloak and dagger James Bond shit. I’d never been the best at dealing with stress in the first pce and while I could tolerate something as nebulous as “there may be spooky stuff in the night” actual conspiracy is just…bleh.

  “They aren’t that bad.” Anna said, a slight smile on her face. Of course. Her taste at the best of times is “questionable” and at the worst is just downright awful. She’s friends with me, after all. Always a fan of “projects.” The kind of woman who looks at a wreck and thinks “I can fix her.”

  I snorted. She knew I knew her type. And maybe this Ms. Chris P. Bacon might be retively normal behind the surly anti-socialness. But the rest?

  “So what do you think of this paramilitary we’ve gotten ourselves caught up in?” I asked. Anna was fiddling around with a pack, a piece of her Revolutionary War reenacting gear she liked to use as a daily use bag.

  “That seems like a bit harsh of an assessment.”

  “Harsh? They’re running around with body armor and assault rifles! They have military-grade radios and sniper rifles! And grenades!”

  “Who am I to judge?” Wow, was she that down bad for Chris?

  “Wow, are you that down bad for Chris?” I should call it as I see it.

  “She’s cute, isn’t she? And her name’s Sandra.”

  “You know, she doesn’t really look like a Sandra- Wait, that’s not the point!” I sighed, then walked over to the tent fp, pulling it aside to look out into the night. The night sky was full of an impressive array of stars, scattered across the inky bckness and providing enough light, on its own, to show the van in its new spot.

  It stood there, surrounded by circur rows of barbed wire like an angry hedgehog. There was no light from the van, but I could swear I saw one of the guys walking around towards the back with the bulky night vision goggles silhouetted against the white of the van. They turned it into a fucking compound.

  Sighing yet again -that seemed to happen a lot- I turned back to my friend. I may have my own issues, but her taste in women at times make me look like a paragon of normalcy. Not that there’s anything particurly bad about being strange and unusual in and of itself, but everything in moderation.

  “The ‘not-a-paramilitary’ just turned the utility van into a mini compound with armed guards.”

  “I’m sure they have their reasons.” Irritation began to rise up. Was it just irritation? Was it also annoyance? The two, while not exactly synonyms, certainly have the same root. She was being incredibly bsé about all this weirdness.

  “Grenades!” No, I’m not being the irrational one here. Seriously, what the hell?”

  “…are you jealous?” She smiled teasingly.

  “You know I don’t swing that way.” She’s incredibly handsome when crossdressing, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not the same as liking her in that way.

  “That’s not what I meant.” She said, her teasing smile fading. “I’m not sure if you’ve realized this, but at times you can get a bit, er, needy. Not that I can bme you. In the past, with the three of us, things were a bit easier, but when she…”

  “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “I know… you really should consider seeing a therapist.”

  “I did in the past, it didn’t help.” It did the opposite. They accused me of lying, tried pumping me full of neuroleptics, and it was only my guardian stepping in that saved me from the loony bin. It made middle school absolute hell as well, since the initial story was in the papers.

  “That was before- no, it’s not my pce to interfere. But I’m not going to disappear on you.” A small corner of my mind doubted that, but she had a way of helping, a reassuring manner.

  I knew she was right about me being, well, what’s the clinical way of describing it? “Sensitive to real or perceived abandonment?” I know not to read too heavily into descriptions in the Big Purple Book of Self-Diagnosis: Text Revision, and, considering the etiology, the average doc would be leaning more towards the psychosis side anyways, but it describes it well enough. A fear of yet more things being taken away.

  Though for a friend who’s normally insanely empathetic, my current concerns outside of what she just brough up are pretty fucking valid. Don’t make me shout “Grenades” again.

  “My concerns about you picking up another project aside, there’s no denying that they’re a pretty sketchy group.”

  “Please, I’m not that clueless, there’s clearly weird government stuff going on. And, hey! She’s hardly a project, she’s super cute.” Yup, she’s hopeless. Is it the dark eye circles? The unkempt hair? Is it some sort of opposites attract thing? I should have long ago given up on figuring this out but I can’t help but theorize about her taste.

  “She’s very clearly smart, doing this job and going to school full-time at the same time. And there’s just something about her, it makes you want to pet her. Sure, she looks like she could get more sleep, but that level of commitment to work is admirable. And don’t even get me started on-“ She stopped as the tent fp rustled behind me. A strange look appeared on her face, her eyes wide with terror but fascination at the same time.

  I knew better. It’s never good when this happens in movies. I absolutely knew better, but I turned anyways.

  It was dark. That’s all I could see. Darkness. Not the inky darkness of the night sky, not even the ominous darkness from under the stairs, but just…void. It was vaguely humanoid, somewhat, but with an enveloping feeling that suggested wings. And eyes. I couldn’t see the eyes, but I could feel them, watching, staring through me. With the same piercing gaze one would attribute to owls.

  This was not something for human eyes. This was not something that should exist. This was the antithesis of life. The primal part of my brain, from back before humans evolved, was screaming at me to flee. Fight seemed off the table to it. But the rational part of my mind interfered, choosing to curl up in a corner and rock back and forth weeping. I tried to scream, but my voice caught in my throat and all I could manage was to stare in terror. This was evil, come in the night to kill me and eat my young. This was-

  A loud crashing noise rang out, and I was only half-aware of the strong smell of sulfur as I finally managed to scream.