A Summertime Journey

Joey is concentrating on the road in front of us, trying not to crash and does not answer.
Charlie seems unfazed and turns to me and says, “Don’t worry, kiddo, it’s all to be expected. We’ll be there in a jiffy.” He then gets a smirk on his face and says, in his best flight attendant’s voice, “You might want to buckle up; it looks like we’re going to hit some turbulence.” The sky fills with the overgrown vultures, almost completely blocking any remaining light. Joey violently swerves, and I bang my head against the inside of the car. I regain myself and look out the window. Joey is swerving to avoid sinkholes that suddenly appear in the road, and now he is trying to avoid people, too. Out of the side window, I see hundreds, maybe thousands, of people walking. Like a colony of obedient ants, they are heading to the same place: the factory.
“I’ve asked my grouplings to join us,” Charlie states proudly. “And quit fucking swerving, just run them the fuck over,” he yells at Joey. This is the most excited I have seen Charlie. Joey obeys, and for the last couple of minutes of our ride from hell, we slam person after person with a thud. I turn and look out the back window and see mangled bodies littering the road behind us before being swallowed up by the ground, and I think of Jeremy.
The Camaro skids to a stop at the base of the factory, feet from a crumbling retainer wall. Charlie and Joey thrust open the doors and exit the car like kings surveying a battlefield. I, on the other hand, am more apprehensive and so slowly, cautiously exit. I peer down onto the dirt, and I’m relieved that there are no body parts. I step onto the swaying ground and place one hand on the roof of the Camaro for balance. “Thank you, Joey, for getting us here. You may join the other grouplings now and rest,” Charlie says. Joey obediently ends his life without a word using his trusted pocket knife. I watch as four kamikaze vultures turn and descend toward us. I let out a scream and lunge toward him, still off-balance, and Charlie grabs me. “Leave him alone; you’re coming with me,” he says, tightening his grip on my arm. His hands are cold, leathery, dead feeling, not at all what I expected. All my power and will immediately release from my body, and I’m powerless to fight back.
Inside the factory, the grouplings fill every hall, stairwell, and room. There are men, women, tall, short, dark-haired, blonde. Some are wearing pants, some shorts, some dresses, and some nothing at all. At first glance, they look like regular people. If you filled an auditorium with them, it would look like parents at a JV basketball game. That’s until you look at their faces. Their eyes are soulless, and you can see the blue-green flesh rotting away around their mouths, eyes, and ears. And the smell in the factory—I thought the smell in the Camaro was terrible, but that wasn’t anything compared to this. The pungent smell that invades my nose and clings to my clothes reminds me of rotting earthworms. There’s an eerie quiet, and no one is talking; I can hear our footsteps against the metal grates of the stairs and Charlie quietly humming to himself, “Sympathy for the Devil,” a Rolling Stones song. We keep traveling down for what feels like an eternity, and we’re in a room that does not belong to the factory. I know this because all of the places in the factory are steel, wood, and square. This room is brick, stone, and oval, with nothing in it except one other door on the far side. The door has a design in its center, but I can’t make it out. It looks like a phoenix flying out from behind a shield. I realize where we are now: back in the room Emma brought me. “You’re correct, Lance, this is the room. Now pay attention to what is going on, trust in me,” Emma says. I can feel the evil emanating from every pore of every brick-and-stone in this room. This room is pure hatred, amplified by centuries of the most disgusting mass murderers who ever lived, focusing all of their evil on this one spot. It’s alive, not merely a room out of place in a factory in a different world. No, this room is alive; I can feel its heartbeat and excitement as we stand on its floor. Charlie is now in the center of the room and raises his arms toward its ceiling, leans his head back, and starts chanting. He is chanting a hymn to free Erebus. The grouplings standing in the balconies that surround us mimic Charlie in unison. I can feel Charlie’s power swell until it feels like he will burst, and his feet lift off the ground, and he ascends into the center of the room, suspended by the curses of all the murderers who have ever lived. His human shape transmutes and the image I briefly saw in the rearview mirror reappears, replacing his cheekbones and dimpled chin. It’s grotesque, loathsome. Words can’t detail the contorted inhumane figure before me. I’m so terrified I can’t move, and suddenly Joey and Jeremy appear out of the darkness next to me. They look like my friends, but they’re not. They’re grouplings now. I’m confused and don’t know what to do. I don’t know how or why my friends are back by my side. I want to be happy they’re here, but I know it’s a ruse. Their shells are standing next to me, but not them. Charlie begins spinning above us as the chants reverberate in the room. The stone beneath our feet starts shifting and cracking until a fissure appears, leading to the center where a portal begins to emerge. How do we end this? How do we escape? Where