Dr. Clarence Valis knew he was one shell away from death.

Dr. Clarence Valis knew he was one shell away from death. Spluttering blood and saliva, he desperately tried to reign in his quaking hands and fingers just long enough to ram in his last remaining shell into the sawed-off shotgun. He could not command his fingers properly and the blasted shotgun kept jumping and weaving around. Icy rain sluiced over his head, through his clothes, and pooled into his glasses, making it even harder to see through the gathering gloom and focus on the task at hand.

But all of that, even combined, was mere child's play when it came to his concentration when one factored in the creature that was slithering it's way toward him. Valis finally got the shell into the chamber and snapped the single-shot weapon's barrel into place. Terrified, he crab-crawled back away from the lurching, scuttling, slimy thing--at least it was lurching, that meant the other shots had done something, right--and tried desperately to make himself seem like just part of the refuse-and-garbage-strewn alleyway.

The disconnected, cold, and logical part of Valis was pretty sure that hiding from this thing would be utterly fruitless. He was pretty sure that it did not even see using the visible light spectrum anyway, but the terror-saturated part of the Doctor's mind told him to hide hide hide Hide Hide HIDE HIDE HIDE!!!

Still the monstrosity kept sliding towards him. The long, proboscis-like tentacle-tongue was questing forward into the darkness now, like a snake tasting the air. The three red gashes that the Doctor assumed were eyes began to emit a soft, bloody glow that reflected off the wet concrete.

"Matt! It's getting closer! Are you ready?" Valis screamed, his water-and-blood filled eyes scanning the rooftop in desperation. If he had been a praying man, he would have prayed at that moment that his fellow Orbis Observer co-worker had escaped the other creature and made it to the rooftop. Then, if he had been a praying man, Dr. Valis would have considered praying that "Mad" Matt Olsen's plan was going to work.

The alien horror seemed to key in on his voice and threw itself in a massive lurch towards the Doctor. The beast's movement seemed to betray desperation, pain, and hunger all at the same time.

"MATT!" Valis screamed, pulling the trigger.

In that instant, Dr. Valis really regretted not having ever been a praying man.

Art Source: "The game is not over" (c)/by MorkarDFC

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #MattOlsen, #OrbisObserver, #DrClarenceValis

The room shifted from light, to dark, and back to light again in the span of a couple of blinks.

The room shifted from light, to dark, and back to light again in the span of a couple of blinks. Matt yawned, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. He could smell the rich, earthy and spicy scent of the brewing coffee from down the hall and prayed silently that the machine would hurry up and finish.

Clarence droned on about his presentation—something about free-roaming Class IV entities that he’d found some records of in the New York City Public Library—but Clarence was all about research. It was all theories and postulations to him, nothing real, nothing solid.

Nothing solid. Matt snorted at his own joke.

Ray took my internal snort as a outward laugh and Matt felt the blazing eye of SauRay fall upon him. He felt like Sam and Frodo cowering in the plain before the Black Tower. Ray zapped him with question. “You got something to add, Olsen? Or are you just so ready to begin your presentation that you’re ready to interrupt Dr. Valis?”

Matt yawned, stretching theatrically. “Sure, Ray. I can go if you need me to. Clarence was just putting me to sleep, that’s all.” Matt shot a wink to the presenter to let him know that this was about zinging the boss and had nothing to do with him. “But what’s new?”

Ray chomped down on his tongue—a habit so severe that Matt had often wondered if the man would bite his own tongue off one day—and ground his teeth. “You’re up, Olsen,” he spat.

Matt stood and pulled up his presentation with a couple of clicks. “Cool.” A single slide appeared. The slide was filled with images, an artist’s compiled conception of an odd-looking, fantastical creature. It appeared small and vaguely bat-like, but it was bipedal and clothed. All in all, it looked like something that Weta Workshop would have a blast building and bringing to life.

Eyebrows around the room went up.

Matt didn’t even notice. “Goeblins,” the words hit the table like a stack of flapjacks.

“Goblins? Really?” Ray sighed, ripping off his glasses and tossing them on the folder in front of him. “You expect me to send you off on some wild goose chase looking for a goblin just because you dreamed up this goofy image of one?”

“Not goblins, goeblins. And I didn’t dream these up, Ray. This is an image that an eyewitness produced—an artist in Mortain, France—after seeing these creatures first hand. Two weeks ago, a rash of sitings occurred and I have over thirty eye-witness accounts, all pretty much describing the same thing. Swarms of these guys,” Matt jerked a thumb towards the screen, "ransacking small isolated towns, stealing supplies and then vanishing almost as quickly as they appeared.”

Ray was silent now, which was exactly where Matt wanted him. It was time for the coup de grace.

“And here’s the kicker, Ray. All of these reports come from a two-mile radius around an ancient site in France. A site known as the Gap of Goeblin.”

Matt was on a plane headed east two hours later.

Art Source: "enemy_creature_design" (c)/by christopher onciu
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #MattOlsen, #OrbisObserver, #Mortain, #France, #goeblin, #GapOfGoeblin, #Matt, #Ray, #Clarence

I walked in to see rug in the center of the tent filling up with all manner of weapons.

I walked in to see rug in the center of the tent filling up with all manner of weapons. Spears, knives, axes, shotguns, Colt .45's, several pounds of shells and ammunition, even a cross or three. Barnabas and Matt were taking turns throwing weapons into the growing pile and strapping on body armor. I frowned.

"Those are not going to help you" I said, drawing startled looks from the two of them.

"Tenet!" yelled Matt. I noticed his right hand was resting tentatively on the pistol's handle that dangled on his hip.

"Who?" Barnabas asked, his dark face scrunched up into a frown. He, too, was white-knuckling the hilt of a saber that protruded from his gold and black striped sash.

I chuckled and looked Barnabas squarely in his dark eyes. "My name is Tenet and I mean you no harm. However," I motioned to the weapons lying on the sandy rug. "Those are not going to help you against the creature you're hunting."

"How do you know about the ghūl and that we seek it?" still suspicious, Barnabas probed.

"Accept that it is my gift to know such things, just as I know that this creature is not to blame for the horrendous acts you seek to avenge."

Matt and Barnabas looked long and hard at one another. Matt shrugged meekly to his dark-skinned companion and then his eyes again fell on me. Something changed in his face, which was harder than when I'd last seen him. There was a strength about him and deep within his eyes, there was a glimmer of Light. I was glad to see how far he had come since we'd first met, long ago in Southeast Asia.

He approached me and his jaw was set. "I'm not exactly sure what or who you are Tenet, or how you knew we were here, or what in the world we were doing, but I do know that I know a thing or two about things and this thing is evil!"

I nodded. "This ghūl dwells in a graveyard, yes?"

Both men nodded. Barnabas added, "Far from town, there is a tower. It is an ancient thing. The ghūl lives within that tower and comes out at night to feast upon the living and...do worse things." The man's bright eyes fell. His honor would not allow him to speak of such things, and it pained him to even think on them.

This was good. He would need that purity and virtue if he was to face our real Enemy. "And why would such a graveyard exist, so far from town?" I queried.

They were shocked at the question. Neither had thought that the location of the graveyard was important. However, with most things, all of the details are not only important, they are critical to understanding...to knowledge...to Truth.

I continued. "I see. And the graves, they were marked with a symbol, yes?"

At this, Barnabas leaped, as I knew he would. "Yes! They are marked with a single word, in Arabic. 'Iblis' is the word and it means-"

Matt jumped in, "Satan! The closest translation to the word into English is Satan, Tenet! Your Enemy! See, this thing is evil."

"And there were no other marks?" I asked.

Both men looked dully at one another. They had no answer.

I continued, "If you would have looked closer, each stone was marred, the Arabic word scratched through, as if someone--or something--was trying to remove the word from its presence. Also, why would someone mark the gravestone of a loved one with a word that glorified the Evil One?"

The men were utterly silent.

"They would not, as you have ascertained. You see, these stones were not gravestones, they were warnings, placed by superstitious humans that knew no better...much like yourselves. These warning stones were offensive to the creature that lived in that tower, a creature who is, in fact, a Fallen, but has aligned itself with complete neutrality. It wants nothing to do with the Great War, it wants only to be left alone.

"Now, however, you have pulled it into the middle of this conflict. Despite being ignorant of the situation, you two have made it far worse. That is why I am here. Now, gird thy loins, men. We have a battle before us which is against a much greater enemy than this ghūl. However, we now need its help if we are to survive..."

Art Source: "34-PLEASE DON'T TOUCH YOUR UNCLES..." (c)/by mir-ahmad
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #Tenetstales, #ArabianKights, #Barnabas, #MattOlsen, #Matt, #Sector7, #TheOrbisObserver, #ghūl, #Iblis

The darkness was pierced by a brief flicker of light and then the next slide appeared before the gathered throng.

The darkness was pierced by a brief flicker of light and then the next slide appeared before the gathered throng. It was an unusual image. It depicted what appeared, at first glance, to be a young girl of indeterminate age with long blue-black locks. Just about the time that thought registered, however, the realization that this was anything but a young girl hit us like a ton of bricks.

“Is this what I think it is?” Matt asked, leaning forward, his elbows on the table like a hungry man getting ready for the turkey to be sliced at Thanksgiving.

Carter, the fellow in control of this little presentation, said nothing. The slight twitch of the end of an eyebrow was telling, however.

“This has got to be ‘shopped, folks. I would not get all worked up about it.” Thomas (true to his name-sake) poo-pooed the whole thing outright and immediately. He’d barely even looked at it, of course.

“I don’t know, it looks legit to me,” Ginger sounded off. She was the newest member of the Observer; that fact, and that she self-identified as a “workplace oppressed female” made her desperate to have her opinions heard and validated.

Matt Olsen, senior reporter of the yellow rag known as The Orbis Observer, stared intently at the image for a long time. His eyes roved over every fragment of the picture, like a ravenous scavenger picking clean the bones of a carcass.

If the image was real, it was a doozy. What had appeared to be a girl was actually some form of free-ranging specter. The thing had no legs—its lower form vanishing beneath tendrils of floating ethereal cloth—and her visage was lacking some major anatomical features, namely a nose and eyeballs with irises and pupils installed. The thing—we referred to it as a she—had hands, but they were blunted and ended in oddly glowing orangey-yellow fingernails that were a matched set to her blocky, donkey-like teeth.

She wore one of those unusual oriental necklaces that appear to be made of giant spheres (no one knew the name of them) but these seemed to be crafted of jade, or some other exotic-looking green stone. Beneath the billowy, gauzy robe, her torso seemed to be covered in old yellowed funereal wrappings from the base of her skull all the way down to…well, nothingness.

The picture had been snapped at night, and there were three strange orbs of yellow-white fire floating in the air around her. The orbs were in no way supported by anything that could be discerned with the naked eye.

Carter let the fuzzy whirr of the projector fill the room for a few moments and then cleared his throat. “I can see you’re all stumped. Well, this is what I pay you Journalism School Drop-Outs for, ain’t it? This picture was taken last night in Chinatown at eleven fifty-six in th’ PM in an alleyway between a Chinese takeout joint called Hong-Fong’s Happy Tummy and a Buddhist Temple whose name I’m not even going to try and pronounce. Get out there and see what’s what, people. MOOVE!”

The room was empty before “MOO”.

Art Source: "Ghost" (c)/by Vaejoun
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #tenetstales, #Tenet, #TheOrbisObserver, #MattOlsen, #Sector7, #ghoststory, #ghost, #paranormal, #investigator