The Inevitability of Evil

Chris Hooley, Ross Young, & Halo Scot

The Inevitability of Evil

A Sci-Fi Horror Novella

First published by Sulk Media 2024

Copyright © 2024 by Chris Hooley, Ross Young, & Halo Scot

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

First edition

ISBN: 9798227542625

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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To everyone who said, ‘There’s something wrong with those three…’

Preface

This novella is written in British English by three separate authors who each have their own distinct narrative voice. As such, you may notice some style changes chapter to chapter as we dance in the horrors of three diabolical brains. Enjoy the grey matter.

We Tip Our Hats to…

Our heartfelt thanks to the legendary, exemplary Anya Pavelle for her proofreading and support. We each owe you an organ and a blood sacrifice.

I

Part One

1

Where We Started

He’d walked down this path maybe a dozen times. The memory of his last visit was still fresh, but this time felt different.

The familiar crunch of gravel underfoot was the same, but the silence…the silence was new.

It was impossibly dark, and his flashlight couldn’t cut through the blackness. The dark wasn’t just an absence of light; it felt alive, suffocating like a giant tentacle, a thick black noose around his neck.

He had the growing feeling that he wasn’t alone in the darkness. He could sense a presence watching him stumble up the path, hoping to grasp a cold hand on his shoulder and pull him into a lifeless void.

He thought he could hear a little whisper on the wind: Closer…closer…

But he knew it was his tired mind fooling him. He couldn’t feel a breath on the back of his neck or in front of his face, but he got the skin-prickling feeling that it was there, just beyond the light.

His flashlight flickered, gasped, and died.

Now, Ward’s only guide to the house was a dim light illuminating the face of the broken figure on the porch. He knew, from snippets of light, that the face belonged to Joe McCain.

The house and its surrounding area was exactly how he remembered as a kid. Same broken fence panels. Same broken porch light that flickered as though it was haunted. And the stories? Well, they remained the same: The Sightings of Sparrow Road. Same broken couple inside, only Joe and Marie were the next generation. They say, History repeats itself and abuse has patterns.

Moving through the darkness, he felt the same gut-wrenching sensation he’d experienced the first time he walked up this path: ten-year-old Alex Ward, the boy who dared to knock.

A nervous smile broke across his face as he reminisced. How he’d stolen his first tentative kiss from Sandy Mildred for being…brave.

That was another time, a fleeting moment of bravery compared to how he felt now.

It was the silence.

The choking silence.

The never-ending silence.

Shouting and screaming were the usual chorus for this isolated monstrosity.

He carried on towards the house and away from the stale coldness behind him, fighting the urge to look back with every step.

Silence here held an eerie quality that was only amplified by being at the far end of the island, miles away from the next broken porch light.

You’re on your own, Ward, you brave boy.

An abrasive voice cut through the silence.

‘Wardy, you move slower than a man on the shitter trying to avoid the missus. Get your arse up here! Stop fucking around in the dark. Jesus, what’s got you spooked? Why, you look more startled than sheep when they hear a hungry wolf howling at the moon.’

Even though Ward could see Joe, his voice felt alien in the darkness, and it unsettled him.

‘You always had a way with words, Joe. Deb said Marie called in about the baby. She said something about a light in the sky? Anything else I need to know before I wake the whole town up?’

Joe McCain flicked his cigarette at Ward’s feet as he retreated into the house, his voice a low, haunting invitation. ‘Shit, I don’t know. Why don’t you come in and see for yourself?’

* * *

‘Marie, look alive. Ward’s here. You wanna tell him what you saw?’

Joe McCain moved towards the fridge, opened it, grabbed a beer, popped the cap, and then slammed the door closed. The noise it made jolted Marie to look up from her hands.

Joe threw the bottle cap in the direction of the sink.

It was dark, but Ward could see Marie had been crying into a dishcloth.

Her hair was matted.

Her fringe clung to her forehead and covered most of her left eye.

‘Why’d you have to go and bang that thing all the time? I damn told you about a hundred times,’ she said as she threw the dishcloth in Joe’s direction.

It landed on the wooden floor without making a sound, like it had seen this play out before and tried to keep out of it.

Joe ripped a chair out from underneath the table and threw himself onto it, slamming his beer down with enough force to send it spilling up and out of the bottle like the sinister tension that had burst into the room.

Frantic, foaming alcohol pooled around the bottom of the bottle; the fizz added an eerie quality to the silence.

‘Why don’t you tell me what happened, Marie, whilst Joe drinks his beer?’

Marie motioned towards the fridge. ‘You think he’s the only one who needs a drink around here, Ward?’

‘You watch your mouth, woman,’ Joe said. ‘Detective Ward’s a guest. You don’t speak to my guests that way. You understand?’

Marie ignored her husband’s efforts to put her in check. ‘My boy was taken…taken…by a beam of light and I couldn’t even…move…let alone stop it from happening.’

Ward opened the fridge, popped the cap, and handed her a beer.

Joe switched his beer to his left hand.

‘When you say a beam of light,’ Ward said, ‘do you mean…’

‘I know what I mean, goddamnit. It was a green light that dragged him to God knows wh…’ She broke off and the tears started to flow again.

Joe downed his beer and slammed it back down onto the table.

Ward moved closer to Marie, putting Joe out of his line of vision. ‘Ok, Marie. Look, I’m not here to judge. I just need to know what happened, is all.’

She knocked back half of the bottle before facing Ward. Her eyes told him she believed what she’d just told him. Believed it with every fibre of her heart. ‘The light took him and it wasn’t no miracle light. This light had evil to it. An evil I’ve never seen before and never wanna see again.’

Joe slammed his fist on the table. It made both Marie and Ward jump. ‘For God’s sake, Ma. What the fuck’s he meant to do with that?’ He rose and moved towards her like a tiger circling its prey. Joe gripped Marie’s face and forced her to look at Ward. ‘You’ll have the whole goddamn town thinking we fucking killed our boy. Green light, my ass. I bet your sister done took him. All part of your big plan to make me feel like shit for staying out last week with the boys. Now tell him the fucking truth, woman. Enough of this light shit.’

Ward stared at Joe. He motioned him to back away from Marie with two pleading hands held high. His stance said, This is your house and I respect that, but just bring it down a notch or I’ll have to bring it down for you.

* * *

The small, translucent frame of a child, with a glazed expression on its face, lent in the kitchen doorway.

Its eyes were bone-white, rolling back into its head, but there was no mistaking that it was staring at all three of them.

Waiting.

Marie spotted the child first and couldn’t find the courage to speak. She tried to raise her hand, but only the hairs on the back of her neck rose.

Covered in bruises.

Waiting.

She found little comfort in Joe’s firm hand around her chin. For a split second, she wished it would wrap around her throat and force her to look away from what she knew to be the soul of her dead child.

The room descended into anarchy.

In that moment, she knew death itself would be more comforting than what she was being forced to see.

Toes exposed.

Waiting.

Ward saw the frantic look on her face and followed her gaze. When he saw the child, he couldn’t comprehend it either. It was so far beyond what his mind was prepared to accept, that if he’d done anything other than stare, he would have immediately shut down, sending him into a world more unresponsive and darker than the one he knew.

His senses were fading and his mind was hurling into mayhem with each passing moment.

His breathing became uncontrollable and urgent.

Stay in the now. It’s not real.

He was one prolonged breath away from collapsing into a world where light, or anything close to it, simply