Rebecca Lim - Fury

It’s such an unexpected thing that we both just stare at it for a moment before taking in the person that’s joined to it. It’s a man in a dark uniform — dark trousers, dark shoes, dark vest — and a white shirt. He’s pale-skinned, clean-shaven, bespectacled, unremarkable. There’s a cloth badge picked out in black and gold upon his shirt-sleeve, and a sprinkling of grey through his short, black hair.

He doesn’t say anything to us; just gives us a view of his partner standing behind him — younger, similarly turned out — and inclines his head sharply to indicate that he wants us to follow them. Both men are Japanese, of average height and build, and both are sweating heavily in this overheated room. I can see their perspiration gleaming beneath the lights. The energy they give out seems muted, but it’s indisputably human.

Still, it seems odd that they don’t try to talk to either Ryan or me, or even to each other, though both of them are staring intently at Ryan’s face, as if they’ve seen him somewhere before.

Ryan and I glance at each other edgily, and he picks up his backpack from the floor. The official grasps his shoulder more tightly in his gloved hand and begins to walk so that Ryan is forced to follow, our bag trailing from his fingers.

‘Uh, I’m sorry, but you must have me confused with someone else,’ he says. ‘I’m not boarding a flight or anything. Uh, excuse me, sir? Sir? ’

The men don’t acknowledge me at all, so all I can do is follow behind as they take Ryan through a set of automatic doors that immediately cut us off from the overcrowded waiting area. We’re in some kind of processing area now, filled with machines that look like giant, shiny steel portals. It’s virtually empty.

A couple of middle-aged Japanese women in uniform are seated near the gleaming portals. They nod deferentially as the officials gesture curtly that they’re going to walk Ryan through one of them.

Ryan drops the bag at his feet in resignation. ‘You’re not going to find anything,’ he says under his breath.

One of the women beckons Ryan forward with her gloved hand, and the man pushes him through one of the metal portals with unnecessary force. A small square light on the side turns green. I’m standing just behind the woman’s shoulder and am startled to see a ghostly human outline appear on the electronic screen she’s positioned in front of. I realise that I’m looking at an image of Ryan, right down to the phone and papers in his pocket, the shape of his body beneath his clothes. The whole set-up is some kind of scanning device, and I lean forward, fascinated, as the woman taps at some keys.

Also fascinated is the official who propelled Ryan into the machine in the first place. He’s moved back around the front of the machine and is now leaning in to study the image on the screen over the woman’s shoulder.

She points out a couple of places in the image before shrugging and saying, in Japanese, ‘Nothing. No threat. Clean.’ She beckons to Ryan again, indicating he’s done.

Ryan gives the silent official standing beside me a steely, reproachful glare as he moves through the portal. He reaches around the machine to retrieve his pack, and hesitates for a moment before shrugging it back onto his shoulders, as if afraid it will be confiscated. But nobody seems interested in the bag.

I’m watching Ryan walk towards me, when the second official comes up from behind and propels me forcefully into the metal portal. There’s a strange noise as I stand there for an instant, before moving straight through it, outraged at being manhandled without warning.

Ryan turns towards me as the Japanese woman taps a few more keys, then looks at the man standing framed in the portal behind me and says apologetically, ‘The machine must be malfunctioning, sir.’ She turns to the other official, the older man, who’s still standing beside her and indicates her screen. ‘See, nothing here but clouds.’

Time seems to freeze at her words, before recommencing again.

Ryan shouts, almost in slow motion, ‘Mercy! Behind you .’ I turn to see the younger customs officer crumpling silently to the floor. Something vaporous and pale, at least eight feet tall, rises up out of his body, towering over me. It’s vaguely humanoid but it lacks any distinct features, and the energy it gives off now is less human, more monstrous, setting off a sick, gingery feeling in me. It’s swaying a little where it stands, as if testing the air, or getting ready to move.

I can’t identify what it is, but I know that it’s ancient and capable of possession. And it is cunning: it used its human host’s energy to disguise its own strangely part-human energy. This thing is family in some way, but so many times removed that my wariness is in overdrive.

Even before I turn and look at Ryan, I know what I’m going to see: a second creature of vapourrising up out of the motionless body of the other man now slumped at Ryan’s feet.

The female customs official gives a terrified whimper.

I startle everyone and everything in the room by raising my hands and clapping them loudly together in front of my face. Instantly, the two creatures of cloud and malice sway in my direction, their eyeless faces searching me out. As they shamble forward, the outline of each shredding and re-forming continuously, I say calmly and quietly in Japanese, ‘Madam, move away now. Do you hear me? While I have their attention.’

I clap again, and the spirit-creatures let forth a wordless howl that makes me clutch at my head in pain. I realise that what I’m hearing is that horrific, wordless language I’d first heard in Milan: the common language of the daemonium .

The woman is still frozen in her seat, weeping and terrified.

‘ Go! ’ I growl at her. ‘Move!’

She nods tightly before dropping off her chair to the floor and crawling away rapidly, still whimpering. She leaps to her feet some distance away and runs from the room, taking the other woman with her.

Ryan’s horrified gaze meets mine through the vaporous outline of the creature standing between us.

‘Run, my love,’ I say quietly. ‘Live a long, full life. You’ve endured enough.’

I see him hesitate, then take one step backwards as if he would flee. As he moves, the monster between us turns and lifts one of its vaguely arm-like appendages and pierces Ryan through the shoulder with it. He screams in agony as the thing pulls him close, shrieking into his face in cold fury. Then it wrenches its claw free, throws him over its shoulder and bounds away.

For a moment, I’m so shocked, I can’t move.

The other creature gazes at me through the scanning portal with its eyeless face, as if taunting me, before turning and leaping after the other.

They sweep furniture, machinery, cordons out of their way with their long, shapeless limbs as they cross the immigration zone, back towards the empty, silent lounges that would usually be full of passengers disembarking from planes. I sprint after them, hurdling fallen chairs and plastic trays, rubbish bins and metal signs, my eyes fixed on Ryan, who’s hanging like a rag doll over the shoulder of the demon in front, struggling wildly.

A siren starts to wail somewhere overhead, but I keep running: past cringing maintenance workers, past uniformed men who appear out of nowhere, pulling their weapons, screaming in Japanese that they will shoot. But we leave them all in our wake as we pelt at inhuman speed towards the deserted passenger lounge at the far end of the building. The demons don’t hesitate at the sight of the locked double doors near the silent ticket-processing machine — they just wrench them off their hinges and leap out into empty space. I hear Ryan yelling as the monsters fall through the air soundlessly.