There are Old Things Trapped on Earth, I Work for The Government to Keep it That Way. My First Day was...not Hell but the closest I wanted to get to.
Before we begin, I think I should introduce myself, or at least the name I plan on using for these little posts. My name is Michael, just Michael for the foreseeable future, and the other names typed here won't be real either.
When you think of monsters, what usually comes to mind? Maybe a little goblin thing, a fierce dragon perhaps, one of the demons from Hell itself out to get you and your soul? Or maybe it's the dread of knowing that you're about to die and there's nothing you can do about it.
Well, that last bit was more or less personal to me, see this particular branch of the Government doesn't really...recruit, more like you're dragged into it one day and not allowed to quit. You see, I was briefly part of the FBI, not high on the hierarchy but high enough to be assigned to missing persons cases.
Which was fine, not why I initially joined, but well, I was doing some good work at the very least, found a few people, and...for the people I didn't, I gave the family some kind of closure. This case happened in 2020. I was sent to a place called Swan Falls, a small town next to a large forest, so plenty of places for a kid to hide and get lost in.
Sammy Roseland, a ten-year-old girl, was outside playing before she disappeared. Mom was in the Kitchen making breakfast or something, and Dad was still asleep. The parents didn't know she had gone missing until about two minutes later, when the Mom went to check on her. They spent an hour searching for her before calling the local Sheriff, who then got a whole search party out, and eventually it all snowballed towards my desk.
I was sent out to help the locals search for her. Now, this wasn't the first time I sent out for a missing or possibly kidnapped kid. This one thought was a bit weird. I arrived in town on a Monday morning, it looked like your typical small town, one Motel I could stay at with the occasional bug here and there, lots of mom and pop shops.
The town wasn't cut off from the rest of the world, had decent internet, and all but the road I took wasn't paved, so not a lot of tourists or out-of-towners. I did my best to do some research before arriving in town, a small place with some other disappearances in the past, but nothing that couldn't be written off as due to local wildlife.
The fact of the matter was, I wasn't sure this girl was maybe eaten by a Bear or something else, sad as it is, it does happen sometimes. Stepping out of my black Jeep, I was greeted by the local Sheriff, Martin, an older man, maybe in his fifties, with a small gray/white beard. He was wearing what you typically thought of as a sheriff's uniform, maybe the jacket he was wearing was a bit dirty, although my own jacket hadn't seen the washer in a bit.
"You the agent they sent?" He said in a gruff but somber tone, and I could immediately tell he had given up finding Sammy. It was sad seeing that look, no matter how many times I've seen it at this point.
"Yes, I am, Special Agent Michael, good to meet you, Sheriff, I'm guessing?" I said as I held out my hand for a handshake, and with a somber nod, he took my hand. He had a decent grip, but I could tell he was losing strength, or maybe losing hope would be a better way to put it. His eyes had bags under them, and I could see whatever light was in them fading quickly. Not that he was dying, but rather that he was losing hope, as I said.
We walked and talked with Sheriff Martin, explaining that they searched the more explored part of the forest for anything, even some torn clothes. He even brought out a map with a bunch of small red xs scattered all over it, showing teh areas they had explored so far, but that they still had plenty of ground to cover.
I also noticed this one little area, which, in all honesty, looked like a little light brown stain. Martin saw that I was looking closely at the stain. "That's an old mine, closed down in I think 1967, once the well dried up, the company in charge of it basically sealed it off, no way in, no way out."
Well, I immediately told myself that I'd check it out, see if it was actually sealed up or not, and if not, see if the kid was down there, maybe lost or pinned up a rock. Still didn't give me hope of finding them alive, but it was as good a shot as anything else. Thanking him for the talk, he gave me the map in case I wanted to join the search party, but said I didn't have to and could just wait out in my motel room.
Still don't understand why they called one of us down there if they felt they weren't going to find her. Might've been someone else and not a local or something, could be that the Government branch I now work for was looking for recruits or something.
Anyway, I grabbed the flashlight, some climbing gear I packed in the jeep, and made my way to the mines, wanting to take a look for myself. When I got deep into the forest, it didn't take me long to lose sight of the town and a few of the houses near the outskirts. The forest was huge, the grass nearly reached my ankles, and the trees towered over me like giants. I heard the distant chirping of a robin, I think, and the skittering of some small animal.
The weirdness started as soon as I got close to the abandoned mines. I started noticing that everything around it was dying. Fungus started to overtake everything. I felt like I needed a hazmat suit just to walk through it at some point. Animal bones and still rotting corpses were spread out, and the trees were starting to tear apart, with dozens of small to large branches scattered.
The whole place stank; it felt like my nose was burning and cementing itself in my nostrils. I'm not afraid to say that I was shaking at this point as I kept walking through the fungi forest, even though I was sure no child would ever willingly walk into such a place. Which meant that her being kidnapped was starting to look more likely with each passing second. I eventually reached the mines, and that place was...dead, there was no better word for it.
The whole place was slowly rotting away, even the metal was starting to rust through with a hole big enough you could fit a fat bear through it. Taking a breather, I approached the cave slowly, making sure no one was goign to sneak up on me as I brought my flashlight out and my Glock 17m, making sure the safety was on just in case there was a rabid animal in there or something else.
The pace was dark as expected and was basically just one large tunnel downward, with some old mining lights hanging overhead and well. On the side of the walls were various strange symbols I didn't recognize. I would've called them satanic, but the way they were drawn? No painted on the walls made me think it was more like a whole other language instead.
Going further in, the whole thing just got freakier as the symbols became more erratically painted on. Felt like I was going through the mind of a mental patient, pretty sure several of the symbols were drawn over each other several times as I went deeper in. Eventually, I came across a large...room? Yeah, room was the best way to describe the place, it was too nice to be an abandoned mineshaft and too...odd.
The whole place was circular and ritualistic, covered in dark grey concrete with several torches around the room still lit somehow. "What the fuck..." I muttered to myself as I went deeper, spotting a trail of blood leading to the center and dozens of bones in the center of the room. Some looked like old animal bones, others looked human, and in teh center of it all was a gigantic hole with strange iron bars covering it.
Now, when I say gigantic, I don't mean you could fit an elephant inside it; you could fit about five all at once if it didn't have the iron bars. The whole thing felt like a still-active satanic ritual spot, and the people who made it could come back any minute. Good news was the blood was old, and I mean old, just from a courtesy look at so that meany little Sammy wasn't here.
Still didn't explain what the hell was goign on here or who was still using this whole area for whatever weird occult ritual was happening. Making the stupid decision to approach the large cage, I shone my light down it and saw an endless dark hole with dry blood all over the walls and more of those same strange symbols, written more crudely than the stuff I saw before.
That's when a pale hand shot upward right through the bars. It was skinny and frail, looking like it hadn't seen sunlight for years. It had hair, but it was that long white one you'd see in movies, you know the kind that whatever it was on only had a few strands of. The fingers were the worst bit because it may have only one thumb, but it had dozens upon dozens of fingers.
It was nauseating to look at, and I am not afraid to admit that I puked seeing each of those little fingers squirm around the arm, trying to reach for me. It then began speaking in some strange language that I couldn't understand; it sounded...alien, like I was talking with a creature from another planet or dimension.
"Listen, I can't understand a word you're saying *Gurgle*, but I am asking you to calm down and to stop reaching for me." I said as I swallowed some vomit before taking a few steps back as the arm kept extending out of this-this thing's cage, revealing several small arms attached to it. That's when I saw it, oen of the arms had a...had a mouth on it, small with a few teeth and a whole tonuge, but it was a fully functioning mouth.
"Holy fuckign shit!" I screamed as I pointed my gun at the thing because it for sure wasn't human. Then two more smaller arms appeared, each one with eyes attached to it as they started looking me up and down, forming a fucking makeshift face.
"Ahhhh...such an odd tongue to use, oh Child of Adam, what has happened to the others, to the men who hide their faces?" It spoke with...it wasn't male or female, no, it felt different, like I was speaking with a thing that was a bit higher on the totem pole than me.
"You do not wear the leather of those odd black creatures, nor do you wield the weapons of Azazel that spray fire?" Yet it spoke with what I could only describe as an elegant nobleman, and...and that name Azazel, I didn't know it at the time, but I had heard it somewhere before.
Azazel was one of the fallen, one of the watchers who gave man warfare and taught us how to make weapons and stuff. Now I didn't know what the hell this thing was talking about at the time, but it didn't matter because I was terrified and shaking, just wanting to fire off a shot.
"No... No, you do wield one of those unwieldy weapons, smaller and weaker, yes, but the same." That's when I noticed the arm, no, the arms, as more started crawling out of the arm, none of them touching the iron bars for some reason. Each of them is just as monstrous and alien-like as the first one.
"What-What in the living hell are you?" I asked, stuttering as I continued taking more steps backward, unsure just what I stumbled on.
Then it started laughing, and it felt liek my soul was being torn apart as I could feel its malic pouring out of its cage. The arms started to slowly recede as it did, I-I don't think it was preparing to attack of anything like that. Like it knew it couldn't escape whatever the hell those bars were, but then it began speaking with a more demonic voice, the kidn yu'd recongize in a movie or TV show, except more...monstrous.
"I am that which destroyed the temples of Men, whom sullied the grounds of God itself and cause evil unbound by mortal laws, I am the son of Gadreel whom gave weapons to man and wage his own conquest wth you."
"I am the son of a Daughter of Adam, whom laid with my father not for love...but for pleasure and lust, sinking thyself into the domains of Hell."
"Nothing more than an abomination whom God sought to drown, weakened and imprisoned beneath the Earth and forever tied to the Mortal world till the End!" It shouted with such malice and evil I fell to my knees, thinking I was being choked by that-that monster.
Its hands around my throat, shouting in my ears as venom dripped out of its various mouths. The very Earth beneath us shaking as it moved, its prison far larger then I intially saw when I got close. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, shoving me upward and back to the entrance, forcing me away from that hellish creature.
Disorted for a hot second, I shook my had taking a deep breath as I felt like I could finally breath again. I then saw a man wearign all black gear and...riot equipment, it was the best thing I could compare it to at the time. Whoever they were, they were covered in various symbols each one from a different relgiious affiliation which I still don't know how it works. On the back in white letters were the letters P.R.C. At the time I was just thankful just to get away from the thingthat I didn't notice the rifle in their hand.
At least not right away, when I got a seond look at them, it didn't look like any weapon I had ever seen. It was sleak, and felt like I was looking at a piece of alien tecnology a hundred years ahead of whatever the military had. They got a radio out a second later and began speaking in a feminine voice, I think they were a bit older then me maybe in their late 40s or something close to that. Either that or they smoked a pack of cigs everyday for years or something but that didn't matter as the creature went strangely...silent.
"Command, we have a breach at site 067, I repeat a breach at site 067, seems like one of ours got a bit...What do you mean new recruit!" They shouted after pausing for a second, probably just as confused as I was.
They turned around after getting a quick check at the things cage, probably making it wasn't damaged by me being an idiot or if that thing somehow got a way to break through them. Afterwards tehy essentially dragged my ass outside, my face the picture of confusion, if you looked it up my face would be the first thing that popped up as I nearly shit my pants not minutes earlier and now was being rescued by some person in weird-looking tattical gear armed with advanced weaponrny.
"Alright then, I'm assuming you here for the littel girl that was reported missing in the area?" She said taking off her helemet, revealing an older woamn in her later 40s just as I thought, with short red hair adn a face littered with scars and an actual hole in her left cheek.
"Ye-Yes? Do you know where she is...did...did that thing eat her?!" I said both as a question and shocked/disgusted by the idea having not considered it earlier.
"No luckily for you and me she was found before the thing could drag her beeneath the Earth and do...God knows what none of us have any clue what they want."
"She's just being...have you ever seen Men in Black? Because right now her minds being erased of the experience before being set back here." She said taking a more relazed demanor taking a cig out and lightning it.
"Sorry about all this, usually we have someone from *Huff* our group introduce themselves before showing you all this." She gesturted to the cave entrance, god I could still smell teh sulfure now, just another stench etched into my mind same as the accurrsed fungi forest.
"Wh-Who are you people?" I said still processing all this new information, and the veyr idea fo the supernatural being real alongside Demons, Angels, and...and God.
"Well you had a hell of a first day even if you didn't know, Agent Michael you've been fired from the FBI and placed into the Paranomal Research and Contaiment divions of these United States."
So yeah that was my first day in my new job and my first into my descent into Hell and the monstrous things that were imprisoned and roamed this Earth.