It had been two days since the disappearance of the college students from Orono, but it had been far beyond those six alone who had vanished. Frank Mason, a detective in the Augusta area, was now embroiled in case files of countless people who had vanished at an alarming rate, with more reports coming from the North describing more of these mysterious disappearances.
"Another case coming your way, Frank." Came the voice of his partner, Dan Peters.
"Jesus, who is it this time?"
“Hmmm...looks like another family of four on the I-295.” Dan said, tossing the file onto Frank’s desk as he passed him towards his own office around the corner. “That’s the fifth report today, and there is no guarantee that there aren’t more coming in.”
Frank sighed, bracing his head in his hand as he rotated the folder in front of him, absent-mindedly flipping it open on his desk to see the four faces in this new disappearance. The report came just a few miles off of the exit to Waterville, a roughly 20 minute drive to Augusta, where a family of four tourists were travelling south from their time up in Bangor, where they had been enjoying camping and hiking in the vast northern wilderness.
“Damn shame…” Frank mumbled to himself, looking through the papers as he called out to Dan. “How many is this now? Ten?”
“Fourteen, Frank.” Dan’s voice came back from the other room. “The Fourteenth case in two days...yeah, it’s that crazy.”
“Not just crazy. Impossible.” Frank replied, flipping through a few more pages before standing up from his desk, walking behind his chair to a nearby corkboard, a map of Maine plastered upon it with a series of thumbtacks upon its highway. Frank snatched another loose thumbtack from the desk, firmly jamming it into the newest known incident in this long line of possible kidnappings. “In the span of two days, over thirty five people have gone missing across five different towns.”
“Well maybe it just wasn’t one guy.” Came Dan’s voice amongst the usual background chatter and ringing phones in the police station. “Maybe this was a group...some kind of gang or something?”
“But there’s no motive, none of these victims are connected in any way.” Frank replied, running his hand along the thumbtacks. “No familial connections, no job similarity, barely any of them even live in the same area, why would a gang just be picking people off of I-295? And how would they do that with nobody noticing?”
“Well, to be fair, they weren’t all on I-295, a few were in the respective towns.” Dan replied. “Orono, Old Town, Bangor, Waterville, the list keeps expanding. The other fact of the matter remains, with this much going on in two days, this cannot be the work of one guy.”
“Maybe not one normal man…” Frank responded, taking his mug of lukewarm coffee from the desk and pressing to his lips in a quick sip. “With all that’s going on in Lost Haven, I don’t doubt it’s some kinda...meta or something.”
“Frank, c’mon.” The sound of Dan’s hands hitting the table echoed through the hallway. “Just because these disappearances seem weird on the surface, doesn’t mean it’s some kinda flyin’ goober that shoots laser beams from his eyes.”
“I’m serious, Dan.” Frank sat back at his desk. “With the world as it is, we can’t simply pass off the idea of metahumans anymore.”
However, as Frank spoke, he noticed a shift in the air, as if it had thickened in response to his words. His eyes drifted to what was originally daylight, but now had begun to descend to darkness. He had originally thought that it was just a storm coming in, possibly a fog, but it typically did not get this dark as fast as it did, not to the point of the lights coming on in the station. On that note, Frank now felt unmistakably aware that all the chatter in the building had become unreasonably silent, almost as if the entire police force had just left the building.
“Dan?” Frank asked, getting up from his chair. “You agree with me...right?”
No answer.
“Guys? Anyone?” Frank said, scooting around his desk, hand now dancing lightly over his pistol as he crept out of his office, moving down the hallway to Dan’s nearby office. “I-Is anyone there?”
As he turned the corner, he noticed the original darkness was much denser than he had originally suspected, now getting a view of a nearby window, it was clear that the outside of the building was shrouded in complete darkness, had everyone just gone home? Did nighttime creep up on him that quickly?
His answer came when he turned into Dan’s office to find his body slumped in his chair with a shadowy humanoid jabbing a long tendril down his throat.
Almost immediately Frank drew his weapon, bullets singing from it almost as soon as it cleared the holster. Judging by its interest in murdering his partner, the figure had no interest in surrender. Nine shots rang out as Frank emptied his clip, all grouped at the head and chest of the creature. Its smoky frame buckled and shook as the bullets entered its body, each shot meeting its pinpoint mark.
However, the creature simply turned in response, the obsidian darkness reforming into its humanoid shape almost as quickly as it was lost. The two white dots on its head, presumably eyes, now staring straight at Frank as it took a few casual steps out from behind Dan’s desk, the tendril sliding out of Dan’s body and withdrawing back into the being as it advanced. As it walked, it extended an appendage, forming what looked like an open palm parallel to the ceiling, the nine bullets appearing in its hand to Frank’s apparent dismay.
“Are these what you use to stop criminals?” The creature asked, holding out the bullets.
“Tiny bits of metal? That’s all you need? Humans keep getting more and more pathetic with every passing second.”Frank could not find the words to answer the entity, and before Umbraxis could give the man another comment, Frank was sprinting as fast as he could from it, ready to warn the others of their new intruder.
However, it was far too late, as soon as Frank entered the main room, he found himself slipping on a pool of the new secretary’s blood, her body cut open and flung against a nearby wall. The cubicles had been turned into a slaughterhouse, bodies strewn all over the tile floor. He recoiled in shock at the parts draping the room, unmentionable pieces flopping to the floor.
“Like my work?” Came Umbraxis’ voice as it strolled around the corner, calmly striding along the floor to the terrified cop.
“I made sure to soundproof you and your partner’s room with Dark Matter while I sorted this out, I really wanted to see the look on your face when you witnessed what I had done before I consumed the bodies.” Frank’s jaw dropped as all color left his face, his eyes in fear as he continued to make space between himself and the shadowy creature.
“Ah! That’s the look right there!” Umbraxis said, pointing at Frank’s face.
“I am really enjoying that look on you humans, it suits you.”“W-w-w-w-why?” Frank said, motioning around. “Why are you doing this!?!”
“What, kill everyone here? Or all the disappearances that your office was looking into?” Umbraxisa asked, cocking its head slightly.
“To answer both questions, it is delightfully entertaining, and I learn something more with each kill.”“But you...you’re human, right?! How could you do something like this to your own kind?”
“Ohohoh, well aren’t you just straight to the point? It’s no wonder they made you a detective.” Umbraxis teased, now close enough to grab the lapel of Frank’s collar with its smoky, formless fingers, lifting him off of his feet as if he weighed nothing at all.
“I am many things, but human I am not.”“T-t-then what...what are you?”
“I am your end.”With those words, Umbraxis tossed Frank across the room with a simple flick of its wrist, the man crashing through a cubicle and landing in a pile of his former co-workers before sliding along the floor into a nearby wall. The creature again advanced without a care in the world, slowly striding along the ground, each passing step caused more of the room to be covered in a void, an impenetrable mass of darkness now enveloping the room.
Frank, now barely conscious, struggled to raise himself to a sitting position. The entity had thrown him hard enough to shatter ribs, now causing the detective to struggle with his breathing as he propped himself up against the wall. Once he got his bearings, he found himself starting at the void once more, the humanoid figure now surrounded by a swarming mass of flailing black tendrils, swirling and grabbing for him as Umbraxis came ever closer.
“Well, whatever you are, you made a mistake comin’ here!” Frank sputtered out, shortly thereafter coughing up a chunk of blood.
Umbraxis made an audible laugh, leaning down to meet the man eye-to-eye.
“Really? I made a mistake?” It scanned the room, its arms crossing as it spoke.
“You’re going to have to elaborate on that, as everyone you have ever worked with is now dead.”“Y...yeah, but it’s not in us that you made the mistake!” The shaky, wavering voice of the detective belied his tough guy speech. “There are cameras all over this place, they’ll see what happened here, others will know who you are!”
“Oh, those, yes. I wanted those to see me.” Umbraxis replied.
“W...wha?!?”
“Oh come now, human. As fun as it is tearing you normal folk apart, I do eventually want to see what this planet has to offer. Your kind is beginning to bore me, and I’d hate to see my travels wasted only to discover that people like you are the best of this backwater planet.” Umbraxis glanced up to the camera, giving it a short wave.
“I do hope it has audio, I think it helps present what I am capable of...if you can hear the amount of screaming.”“You sick sunuva--”
“Ah ah ah, no need for vile language.” A mere gesture from Umbraxis’ hand wrapped a long tendril around Frank’s mouth, once more lifting him into the air.
“If the world wants to know what I am, they’ll see me on my terms. To formally introduce myself on camera, I am Umbraxis the Destroyer, and I am making an example out of you and your little...police force you had here.” The other tendrils began to wrap around Frank, his screaming muffled by the tendril around his face.
“But, I’m also here to have a bit of fun. I haven’t figured out everything about human physiology yet, so bare with me here, how many bones do you think I can rip out of you while you’re still alive?”Frank, of course, could not respond due to the tendril.
Umbraxis, merely toying with the rhetorical question, merely shrugged.
“Oh well, looks like we’re going to answer that question together.”
