Helkey 17 — Gibbens Crane Ghosts Jet Blue

Gibbens Crane and his Nightmare roll like a fossil-fueled thunderstorm over I 35. Their oily procession provoking the blares of honking horns, stiff middle fingers, and shouts of road-rage anguish. Demons gather to slurp up the grief. To fan it further. Not far behind, a man on a Harley fingers his Glock and thinks about what he’d like to do to some hombres downtown, mass-murder glinting in his eyes. Big, black Nightmare-as-Hummer spews out a cloud that covers all four lanes. Confederate flag snapping its naked, hubris-fueled racism. Combustion engine pistons pumping out their angry staccato.

It’s a short, if raucous, four minutes to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Gibbens grins all the way. He’d forgotten how fun it is to punk humans. To get them all riled. The angry looks, loud profanity, and posturing is simply delicious. He sends an electric whip-crack to his captive wisps. Their anguished cries of pain add to his sadistic pleasure.

Coming, too-soon, to Presidential Boulevard’s departure lanes, Gibbons gives the Nightmare-Hummer one last coal-rolling gun of the engine, then cuts off a pair of newly-weds to get to the curb. Soot rains down on the, now miserable, couple. Gibbons pops the door, uncoils from his seat, and springs onto the side-walk. It’s early afternoon and the airport bustles moderately in anticipation of the late afternoon rush. Giving no care to bystanders, Gibbons cracks his electric whip again, summoning the orange transformative glow from his worbs. Nightmare melts back into a towering shadow as the Hummer simply vanishes. Onlookers gasp. But a fearful denial soon sets in as their fragile minds rationalize various explanations. The bad dreams are already forming. Many will spend the night tossing in mindless terror as the Nightmare grips them.

Gibbons and his Nightmare-shadow walk through the entrance. He pulls out a pack of Marlboro Reds. The kind that cut your lungs with fiber-glass when you smoke them. He lights up, glaring at a security guard approaching him. Orange light crackles in his eyes. The guard freezes in fear. Gibbons continues smoking even as masked passersby stare. Puffing like a chimney, he saunters up to the quick-pass line, cuts the five people waiting there, walks through the metal detector. There is a loud blare. Three TSA agents spring up as if waking from a stupor. Gibbons fixes them with his brimstone stare.

“You boys are doin’ bang-up work here. Keepin’ the natives from gettin’ too restless,” he says, taking a long pull on the cig and causing the cherry to glow bright red. “I think it’s time for a well-earned lunch break.” He cracks his electric whip. His captive wisps cry out in pain. A devil-magic spark leaps from the cigarette’s cherry and shoots through each TSA agent. They freeze in terror as they briefly glimpse various horrors of destruction swirling in Gibbon’s soul-eating gaze. Gibbons flicks his cherry on the stupefied supervisor and lazily walks by.

The concourse is only moderately trafficked. It’s disappointing. Gibbons has to work to get in people’s way. To force them to avoid him. He zig-zags against the flow of humanity — occasionally stepping on the odd toe or putting the occasional wimp on his ass. Each interaction spreading grief, rage, terror. He’s doing yeoman’s work for his liege here. But he can’t wait. Berlin is 13 hours away by normal flight. Not like this flight is going to be anything like normal. It’ll still take hours. His quarry won’t wait.

He plops down in a chair near his terminal. A silver-blue Boeing 777-300ER is parked just outside his window. Its graceful body swoops and tapers back to a tall, Jet Blue tailfin. This fossil fueled beast will suit his purpose just fine. He draws another drag from his cigarette, smiling as nearby passengers move away from him, complain to the steward at the gate, or haul away squalling brat kids. The steward approaches. Gibbons simply blows smoke in his face. The diabolical taint carried in that miasma puts the loser into a pathetic stupor. He stumbles off, briefly catches a glimpse of the Nightmare, then sits down in a fear-paralysis.

Gibbons barely notices as he swirls the smoke with his index fingers. The curling threads form a scene of Ivan the Wolf howling atop Furze Bank, Beatrice and Mori slaying Pride Eaters, then briefly exorcising the demon from Ivan. The scene — dancing and flickering with Hell-fire — draws a smirk from Gibbons. He can plainly see the deep wound made by the Pride-Eater’s claws in both Ivan’s body and wisp. A complete channel for demonic possession. This will make his hunt easier. It will also please his Lord. Ivan is already teetering at the edge of full transformation. What a pal.

The flight is starting to board. Gibbons doesn’t have a ticket. No matter. He cuts the line, ignores the orderly boarding procession, and struts down the jet bridge. A couple puffs of devil’s smoke confounds any protest from stewardess or pilot. It’s all just too easy.

Gibbons enters the filling plane and plops down in first class. The boarding will take a little while. He pulls his black hat down over his face and treats himself to a little shut-eye. Delicious Nightmare gathers through the link in his mind as he focuses on that beast of perpetual terror. It takes up most of the first class cabin. Its pall of fear dragging down each newly-seated passenger. This makes Gibbons’ smile widen as he gathers his wisp energy — meditating on a new Nightmare form. This one a possession.

“Um… Excusez-moi, tall, dark, and terrifying, but you are in my seat!!” The exclamation comes just as Gibbons finishes readying the path for his new devil’s magic. He tips back his hat. The newcomer is a pink-haired they with silver-painted long finger nails. Their androgynous face sports all the latest eye make-up. Gibbons attempts to blow smoke in the influencer’s face but discovers his cig has burned out. He pulls it out of his mouth, then flicks it on the interloper.

“Disgust!” they shout as they swat the butt away. Extending a finger, they tap Gibbons on the chest. “Learn to be less rude! How in God’s no-longer-so-green Earth did you get that cig on a plane, dear? Not that I wouldn’t mind one myself, but… Get out of my frigging seat! Oh!”

Gibbons has produced another Marlboro, igniting it with fire from his fingertip.

“Neat trick, dearie, what are you? Some kind of black magic man?”

Gibbons blows smoke in their face. They stumble off in a stupor, careening in disorientation through the cabin. “Ugh! I broke my nail!”

Gibbons’ smoke has now filled much of first class. This has a momentary pacifying effect on those sitting nearby. Some are confused by Gibbons’ smoke. Others brood over it. A few are intrigued. Then the dark, animalistic impulses born upon Gibbons’ miasma begin to take hold. Terror, rage, and various other dark passions bloom. The result is a general hubub as couples begin fighting, children shriek, and individuals either cower or engage in some form of mischief. Through it all, the poor stewards and stewardesses have their hands full. No one notices the smoking devil, spinning his black magic out of enslaved souls in torment, sitting among them.

The aircraft staff manages to get the unruly passengers under some semblance of control. The plane door closes. The cabin pressurizes. Gibbons feels a few bumps as the aircraft begins to taxi out onto the runway. They come to the markings showing the take-off pad — stripes of black and white stained brown by jet exhaust. The plane spins, pointing its nose toward the long strip of concrete and readies itself to launch.

Engines begin to rev. Their banshee wail fills the cabin. With a crooked smile, Gibbons flicks his wrist. The cries of wisps rise up to accompany the engine wail as diabolical magic courses out of Gibbons’ worbs, up his arm, along to the tip of his cigarette. It whirls there for a moment, then atomizes the cherry — bursting out in a split-flash of orange lightning that envelops the aircraft. With a spectral cry, Gibbons’ Nightmare is taken in by the hell-lightning. Its shadow expands to cover the body, wings, and engine of the aircraft. Silver metal darkens. Wings become serrated like those of a bat. A shark-tooth mouth design sprouts in the plane’s nose. Fins like those of a drake unfurl along its spine. The blue corporate emblem twists and flickers. It takes on various shapes — flickering between hammer and sickle and swastica before settling on the swastika. The engines enlarge. Their intake edges become serrated teeth.

Gibbons’ Nightmare now possesses the aircraft. Its engine revs louder. The banshee wail rises to a scream. Passengers add their own cries, white-faced, as giant gouts of flame shoot out from the jet engines, extend 300 feet behind, and ignite the grass. A man flails in his seat. Gripped by terror, his heartbeat gives way to full coronary arrest. The stewards are too shocked to notice — taken in by the spectacle of horror that is their kaiju aircraft.

Gibbons laughs out loud. Glorying in the chaos and terror. In the cockpit there is shouting as the throttle rams forward on its own, directly by a ghostly Nightmare hand. The plane rockets forward — born on a plume of smoke and fire. It howls down the runway. Engines open wide to spew their hellfire and black exhaust. The wings seem to flap and the beast-as-aircraft blasts into the sky. The shrieks of passengers grows louder. A poor child shits himself in terror. The stench and screams adds to Gibbons’ maniacal joy.

The plane climbs more like a rocket than an aircraft. Rising into the sky like some strange reverse meteor, it blows holes through clouds. Oil-thick spume falls from the smoke clouds behind it, raining pollution over the land below. It rises and rises, the sky darkens, clouds below seem tiny. The cabin pops and hisses with pressurization. A businessman points — exclaiming at the tiny dots of regular jet traffic passing far, far below.

Gibbons’ new Nightmare machine skirts the edge of space, moving far faster than a normal jet. They’ll arrive at Berlin Brandenburg in just 7 hours — about half the regular flight time. Gibbons puffs his cig as he takes in the shocked-to-silence passenger cabin, hears the pleas for assistance over the radio being transmitted by pilot and co-pilot through the closed cockpit door.

A passenger shakily makes his way to the lavatory. He opens the door, enters, and unzips. He sits down. But his momentary relief turns to terror as the Nightmare grips him with jaws that emerge from the toilet. He is clenched in the spectral maw, shrieking as he is shaken back and forth on the seat. Blood spouts from his nose, flowing down the front of his dress suit. A vessel inside his brain has ruptured from the Nightmare’s assault on body and spirit. His cries grow slowly weaker as he hemorrhages. A stewardess approaches the lavatory, ventures a glance inside, recoils in fright at the scene of the man gripped by spectral jaws. She musters some courage, grabs the man’s hand, pulls him. The jaws grip him tight as they struggle. At last, they relent and she falls to the ground with the dying man atop her.

“Help!” she yells to a second trembling steward. After a moment, some passengers aid her in carrying the Nightmare-stroke victim back to his chair. From that moment on, no-one dares get up to go to the lavatory. A number relieve themselves in their seats.

Gibbons continues to merrily puff away on his cig. There will be more sacrifices to the Nightmare possessed aircraft as they continue their swift passage. As is fitting. This dark new reality seems to have dawned on the passengers who stare out their windows in terror, hide beneath coats and blankets, or even crouch on the floor. Ghostly forms now run up and down the length of the passenger cabin — taking the shape of grasping tendrils, toothy maws, or wicked eyes. They are literally riding along in the belly of the beast.

Gibbons lets out a satisfied puff of pollution. He’s done his work for now. His Nightmare will handle the passage. Lowering his hat over his face, he settles in for a well-earned nap. His nap is not a human sleep. It is a fugue shared with his Nightmare as they feast together on the terror of the passengers. As they glory in each new life taken in terror for the sake of Hell.

Six hours into the flight and 13 victims later, Gibbons wakes from his feasting fugue. He leans over his seat, reaches down to a cowering passenger. With a rattlesnake strike of his arm, he wrests her cell phone from a clenched grip. She whimpers but offers no resistance. He lifts his new prize, a gleaming iphone, taps it, and infects it with one of his wisps. This one is a demon. A taken Pride Eater. One of a handful he keeps for a special occasion. The Pride Eater rifles through the phone as Gibbons whips it with his electric lash, readying for his call. A pentagram appears on the iphone screen. Orange devil’s script blossoms in a glowing circle around it.

“Ivan Volkov, prophet of Asmodeus,” Gibbons speaks into the pentagram. The screen vibrates as the Pride Eater seeks Volkov both on Earth and through the cellular network. Its demonic form surfing through each connection even as its senses locate Ivan sitting at the Mio Bar in Berlin. The Pride Eater shrieks its ecstatic joy-hunger as it causes the bar tender’s phone to ring.

“Hello, this is the Mio Bar, how may I help you?” the bar-tender’s voice crackles on the line in German.

“Yes, I’m lookin for someone at the bar. Name’s Ivan. Might I speak with him?”

“He’s here. Just a minute.”

Gibbons cracks his devil’s grin. There is a rustling as the phone changes hands.

“Da? Who is it?” Ivan’s voice crackles through the connection.

“It’s your good friend, Mr G. — representative for Mr A.”

“Don’t know you.”

“You see, that’s where you’re mistaken, old Ivan. We’ve known each other for quite a long time. And our recent meetings at the top of Furze Bank Tower have yielded great reward. We gave you the gift of power earlier tonight. Power to destroy the wretched folk who afflict you. More is on offer right now. All you need do is say ‘yes, I accept,’ and it’ll be yours.”

Silence and crackling sounds over the connection. An image of the bar-scene, carried to Gibbons by the Pride-Eater’s sight, flickers over the iphone screen.

“Come on, Ivan, what will it be. You want to let that negro continue to disrespect you? Or you going to show him who’s boss?”

There’s silence for just a moment longer, then Ivan says — “Da, I accept.”

Gibbons’ grin widens in triumph. “Very well! Now here comes the stuff!” Gibbons taps the phone and the Pride Eater flows down the line and into Ivan. Gibbons watches the screen with satisfaction as the Russian begins to transform. As he starts to attack Jonas Herrington. Then Beatrice and Mori are there, weaving their protections around Ivan, knocking the Pride Eater contact out of him. The Pride Eater shrieks with anguish as it flees back to Gibbons’ worb. The pentagram and diabolical writing fade from the iphone.

“Fucking jackholes!” Gibbons curses as he tosses the iphone to the ground. Its face-plate shatters. The girl in the next row whimpers but doesn’t dare reach out to retrieve her phone. Gibbons’ moment of rage soon fades. He has now scented them a second time. His quarry. And once he catches scent of a quarry, there is never hope of escape.

The Nightmare aircraft shrieks through the starlit sky as it plummets down its fiery tail toward Berlin. Airport a-bustle with siren wails as emergency crews gather. The pilots have at last sent their mayday signal ahead. A confused response team sprays runways with foam. Air traffic controllers track the aircraft swooping down on Brandenburg Airport like some dragon out of fiction. News media is all abuzz with talk of hijackers and terrorists. The sky looks like a meteor-fall.

Stewards and stewardesses are doing their best to prepare the passengers for impact. The plane is moving too fast. The landing gear won’t lower. Fire from the Nightmare envelops the craft as runway lights grow into focus before them. One of the pilots goes into shock and begins to hyperventilate. He passes out. The other tries to wrestle with the yoke which, possessed by the Nightmare, jerks back and forth, ultimately punching him — cracking his skull wide open.

The plane slams down onto the runway with both pilots incapacitated. It careens in a shower of sparks. Steel and titanium rend open, the jet twists, a wing flies off. Passengers are hurled in all directions — still attached to seats or ripped from them. The plan shrieks to a halt, jet fuel exploding into fire.

In the midst of the inferno, untouched by fire, Gibbons stands from his rent chair. He casually kicks away a large piece of debris that obstructs his passage. It must weigh about 1,000 pounds. It flies off like a child’s toy. He walks from the wreckage and onto the tarmac. Booted feet splash in the pools of burning jet fuel. He does a little murder-joy skip out onto the grass, waltzes to the fence. Lifting his hand, he calls his Nightmare back to him. The plane slumps and shakes, withering back to its original if now-broken and burning shape.

Fire engines and ambulances surround it — sirens blaring. Streams of flame retardant bathe the burning form. Rescue personnel comb the area for survivors.

“Asmodeus, lord, accept this sacrifice of mortals, call forth thy Terror Hounds to take what victims you will. For the glory of Hell!” Gibbons incants. At this last phrase, the hounds emerge — ripping wisps from the victims scattered through the burning wreckage and out across the runway.

Gibbons then grabs the fence. Peeling back a section of links, he steps through the gap and onto the road. With a whip-flick of his wrist, his Nightmare again transforms into a gigantic black Hummer. He mounts, then blasts off toward Berlin, eyes set to his quarry.

(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)

(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)

Posted by robertscribbler on December 7, 2021

https://scribblersfantasticalworkshop.wordpress.com/2021/12/07/helkey-17-gibbens-crane-ghosts-jet-blue/