CHAPTER 7

A Brazilian military-grade helicopter with a searchlight is circling an infamous nightclub in Rio de Janeiro. The helicopter isn't looking for anyone. No crime has been committed, yet. The club owners paid for the helicopter. It costs more than parking a limousine out front, but it easily brings in more business per dollar spent.

The helicopter is a beacon above the city, lighting the way for partiers, tourists, and taxis. Anyone outside the club can find the helicopter above it. Anyone inside the club sees the searchlight as it comes through massive skylight window on top of the club.

The club is jumping tonight. There are good and bad dancers grooving all over the floor. There is an assortment of sexy ladies dancing near an eight-foot-tall hulk of a man. Some of them are attracted to the giant. More of them are attracted to the spotlight around the massive man.

The man, who could probably win both the shot put and the high jump at the Olympic Games, is named Mayakul. He is a man out of time and place. He is the size of a giant of legend. His trendy club clothes do not conceal his armor, which looks like it is from pre-historic times in South America.

The oversized man looks Brazilian, but stands out amongst the crowd because of his extreme height, hulking muscles, and the animatronic wings that appear to be affixed to his back. Aside from the wings, he's wearing armor and is covered in stylish club clothes.

Not everyone is happy with the big man. Some men are angry that their dates aren't as impressed with the one who brought them there as they are with the big man. Bouncers are upset that the owner let the man in wearing metal armor under his club clothes. It's against the rules, but Mayakul wouldn't take the armor off and the owners couldn't risk the walking sideshow attraction going to a competing club. It was a risk though. If there were trouble, nothing short of bullets would stop the beast. He seemed friendly though. The calculated risk was allowed.

The giant isn't the only thing supernatural in the building tonight. Slithering in through doors, windows, and vents, something is hiding in the shadows. Something alive. Something coordinated. A pack of some things on a mission. They climb walls. They coil and spring like snakes, but they have arms and legs like men. These shadowmares are reptoid in appearance and have long, skinny legs, and extra, extra, long skinny arms.

The pack of nightmare beasts is there for Mayakul. The mountain-sized man has not escaped their watch.

The reptoid masters of stealth go undetected. They hide in shadows when possible, and can expend energy on chameleon-like changes to blend in with color and texture, when not. The flexibility of their long skinny limbs could embarrass any yoga expert. There are now over a dozen of the shadowmares in the club. Each one is over one hundred pounds, yet none of them is seen. This is a calmer situation for everyone. These things get very hostile when confronted.

The target of the pack is Mayakul, but the method will keep them away from him. Unwilling surrogates will do all of the dirty work. Mayakul is dancing and having a good time while the shadowmares are building a matrix. The first target is a skilled dancer whose date is snubbing him. The snub has nothing to do with the big one; doesn't matter. Shadowmares are in a vent above the man and hanging on a wall beside him. They are all humming.

The humming gets louder. It's masking the vowel-only whispers of the shadowmares, chanting, "eh u ii aa, eh u ii aa." It's a vowel-only chant whispered into humming that get louder and louder until the dancer responds to the chant, which leads to him thinking, "Get the big man. Get the big man."

"Watch where you are going, asshole, before your wings get clipped," says the man with more frustrated disillusionment than righteous indignation.

"Sorry, Sir," then a chuckle, is Mayakul's response.

The next Shadowmare psychological operation is already underway. Another small group was surrounding one of the female dancers, heating the air, sending vibrations, speeding up and increasing the volume of humming, all the while whisper-chanting, "ee ii aa-ii aa ooo, ee ii aa-ii aa ooo." Eventually, the woman, who was dancing her sexiest in the spotlight in front of Mayakul, was obsessed with the thought, "He is laughing at you." The wannabe starlit was pissed off.

As the woman got agitated, the jolly giant attempted to calm her with a smile. It didn't work. She burst out at him, "You're laughing at me?" She pointed her finger. "You," she said, slapping Mayakul, "are laughing at me?"

Big Mike chuckled. "I'm smiling at a beautiful and fiery woman." She stormed off in anger, smashing a tray of drinks out of a waitress' hand, shattering glass all over the dance floor.

We have a lot of angry people now. The shadowmares, having slowly built up the volume, are now howling from every vent. They are loud and it is irritating people tremendously. However, they go unnoticed, due to how slowly but surely, they had increased their volume. They started with an imperceptible tremble of air, and then slowly and consistently increased decibels over time. One decibel at a time was added, never an amount that could be noticed by people already accustomed to the lower volumes. But, what escaped the consciousness of the partiers in the club, still hit their nervous systems and frayed their nerves. People were on edge, distracted by an invisible, coordinated, and direct attack on their senses.

Shadowmares move in packs with singular purpose. They know human psychology very well. They program it. That's how they avoid detection. People are afraid to look into the shadows where the shadowmares hide. People look away to avoid the horror the sight of a shadowmare brings.

No one who encounters a shadowmare will remember it. Their memory gets scrambled into something else. The horror is otherwise too much to bear. It might show up in nightmares, but not in memories.

. . .

There is a disturbing video posted to the Internet by a man that was fired from his maintenance job at a nursing home. The video contains supernatural, or at least crypto-zoological, horror. It also says something scary about human psychology and the nature of reality.

The video begins with an elderly woman, Mrs. Buttermark, making her way down the hallway of her nursing home. The security camera is at the woman's back. Something is rolling down the hallway in the opposite direction. The movement is in unison and appears as one object, or trick of light—like a light moving a shadow down the hall.

The darkness moves down all four surfaces of the hallway, the floor, ceiling, and two walls. When the dark, rolling ball on the floor hits the elderly Mrs. Buttermark, the ball unrolls into a human-like form, a seven-foot-tall shadow man with spider-like proportions.

A tall, skinny nightmare, with long arms, black reptilian skin, a dog-shaped head, and glowing red eyes is leaning threateningly over the 85-year-old woman. The beast shrieks a piercing, almost electronic, buzzing, vibrating sound. Mrs. Buttermark is petrified. The noise and shock has affected the woman similar to a military flash-bang grenade. Her senses have left her. The beast just wants to pass the hallway. The dear old woman is not the target. It's a mean creature though. The seven-foot tall, but only one-hundred-thirty-pound lizard torques his body for leverage and slings poor Mrs. Buttermark against the wall, breaking her hip. The video freezes as the frail old woman hits the wall.

Now, with an editing trick, the video simulates a rewind, and does a freeze frame and zoom in on the face of the screaming shadowmare. Another video editing gadget shrinks the frozen frame to a quarter of the video frame. Taking up the rest of the frame is Angel Gutiérrez. Angel is, or at least was, the overnight maintenance man at the nursing home.

The day after the attack, Mrs. Buttermark reported that she was walking down the hallway while Angel was rolling a garbage pail on wheels in the opposite direction. She said that Angel carelessly let the garbage pail roll into her, then he insulted her and shoved her against the wall, breaking her hip and leaving her crumpled in the hallway.

In reality, Angel found Mrs. Buttermark in the hallway and left the garbage can when he ran for help. It didn't matter. The nursing home administrators didn't press charges against Angel, or formally accuse him of anything. They did demand his agency remove him from the nursing home. They didn't need the hassle involved with either fighting with Mrs. Buttermark's family, or claiming to have found an alien species in their nursing home.

A copy of the video was given to Angel by a sympathetic security worker and friend from the overnight shift. Angel posted the video online to clear his name, though most Internet viewers assumed the video was a viral marketing creation for an upcoming horror movie.

. . .

Today, Mayakul is the target of misdirected anger provoked by the shadowmares. In small groups, the shadowmares have frustrated enough people, sending them all at big Mike. The club's bouncers are surrounding Mayakul now.

"You're too big for me to grab your head and escort you out. I'm asking you nicely to walk out the door," said one man, a bit older than the other bouncers and probably more of a foreman.

"I'm reminding you, that you're surrounded, and I wouldn't mind a goliath head mounted on my wall," growled another; this guy could be the head bouncer's son, age wise, though he's 100 pounds heavier.

Mayakul responds, while taking a step towards the door, "Do not test my naturally good humor."

Though the bouncers and Mayakul are all acting professionally, the shadowmares have already spoiled the air, literally. Humming, vibrations, heat, moisture, odd winds, vowel-only whispers. No one in the club that isn't a dog-faced reptoid feels comfortable right now.

The reptoids are happy though. Not much pleases them more than making humans fight each other.

After another step, the fancy dancer, with the not-amused girlfriend, attacks Mayakul with a knife. In the process of swatting the jealous insect away, the knife hits the older bouncer in the throat and blood spurts onto everyone within a 10-foot radius. The older bouncer is not going to make it. The younger bouncers are not going to take it.

More weapons come out, now from the bouncers. Mayakul is facing an angry crowd filled with people who had treated him as a hero before the slithering demons infested the club.

"You are dead," the younger, stronger bouncer, said, now with a baton in hand, "D-E-A-D," the letters punctuating each movement towards Mayakul.

Mayakul separated the bouncer from the baton. With one hand, he swings the 300-pound bouncer, clearing a lot of space. The bouncer's head hits another member of club security and both of the enforcers are knocked unconscious. Several other people are knocked around too. Though considering the potential, things are still quite under control.

With his right hand, Mayakul brings the baton to his mouth and bites the weapon to a sharp edge. The giant then flings the baton with a side back arm motion, and the sharpened stick takes off like a dart, and with a howling shriek of pain, the baton pins a now writhing black mass of reptile against the wall.

Along with the frightened masses, the shadowmares are now leaving the building. The beasts go through every conceivable exit, doors, windows, and vents. People are finally noticing the bizarre species as club patrons get knocked over by the retreating shadowmares. Some partiers get screamed at, thrown, and even slashed. They are nightmare beasts. Our psyches are programmed to forget them. Indeed, reports from bystanders describe a massive brawl, with broken bottles and other weapons.

There are no reports of reptoids or walking dogs to the police and emergency medical technicians now swarming the building and placing authority on the scene.

Before flying right up through the skylight, Mayakul grabs the shadowmare that he pinned to the wall with the sharpened baton that he flung like a dart. While flying out of Brazil, Mayakul snaps some limbs off of the shadowmare. The carcass is thrown at the military helicopter to ward it off. A shadowmare leg is snapped at the knee and separated. It makes a nice after battle snack.