Mask of the Bat God

Summer, 1999

Somewhere over the Atlantic

'They have absolutely no f***ing clue of what they're messing with,' Matt Olsen's jagged, angular cursive sawed across the clean, featureless landscape of the first page of one his trademark notebooks.    To the uninitiated, the text would be nearly illegible - nothing more than the disparate graphite scrawling of a cardiac monitor. To those that knew well the seasoned senior reporter of The Orbis Observer (the truth *IS* out there), they could see the utter panic underlying the text. 'Joseph should have listened to me, and left the artifact at Monte Albán. The inhabitants there will not be pleased.' 

Matt paused to toss a half-hearted nod and smile towards the plain-looking stewardess; she handed him the Scotch he'd ordered with a smile that did not touch her hazel eyes. Matt tried to keep his hands from shaking as exchanged his credit card for the glass, which he downed in a quick gulp and passed the empty back before the wan-looking lady had even finished pocketing the card. Her recently plucked eyebrows tried to crawl back up into her hairline.

"Keep 'em comin'," he muttered and went back to his serrated notes.

'Mask of the Bat God, indeed. This mask is much more than that. It's the phylactery of a spirit of an ancient vampire marquis. The moment Joseph moved it from the chamber which held it, that spirit has slowly been restoring itself. Soon, it will draw them out--all of them.'

Matt downed the second Scotch and finally felt the kick of the first one. If he'd have been thinking clearly, he likely would not have written the next words out of sheer professional pride.

'--and all of Mexico City will be overrun with thousands of Zapotec vampires.'

• Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth
• Art Source
• Inspired by
• References: 1, 2, 3, 4

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Halfway through the Hundred Days Offensive...

Halfway through the Hundred Days Offensive, the Germans finally became so desperate they decided to cry out to God for help.

We're still not sure who answered...

We saw the German prisoners, day by day, adding up and most of our boys said that the War would soon be over. Some boasted, thumping their chests, that by the end of August we'd clapped hands on well over 100,000 Krauts. What we didn't know then was that those poor men were merely a down payment. They were a mere drop in the bucket, a tithe to some Dark Power who was cooking up something far worse that we'd all soon be dealing with.

Apparently, it was a good deal for the Germans because who- (or what-) ever was in charge of the Axis now would no longer need just flesh-and-bone men to fight the War. Shortly after Halloween--Samhain--the first Communicants were encountered, and everything turned on a dime.

These hellish things were...massive...even the tallest of our boys, at best, was only staring into the belly of one of these scroll-skinned abominations. They were fast too...they could easily outpace our Calvary, even racing across the blasted, shelled-to-hell battlefields that pockmarked the flayed, bloodied face of Europe. In fact, some of our Eggheads (Intelligence types) spouted that the only reason the Communicant's legs were armored was to just deal with our mines. Their sheer speed protected them from just about anything except the farthest flung shrapnel from our anti-tank or anti-personnel landmines. Their arms and torsos, inscribed with infernal script that wriggled and writhed like frenzied tapeworms, were as tough and hard to pierce as the hide of a rhino.

We think the Communicants were none to bright, though. We're not sure, but each Shock (that's what we started callin' them, groups of thirteen...always thirteen) was always accompanied by another - we called 'em Rectors. These guys were just plain creepy...hooded and robed from head to toe...you could never see their face, and none of them were ever captured. No one ever saw them make a move, or a sound, or nothing. They would just stand on the edge of the battlefield, clutching their golden-glowing Cache as if was the most important thing in the world. Some of our boys thought that it was the Rector's that were the brains of the Shocks, controlling their movements and making sure their objectives were achieved. To make matters worse, on the rare occasion that we were able to blast one of those Rectors to hell, we never found anything left behind, though. No Rector body, no Cache - only the smell of sulfur, eye-watering, heavy, and as thick as fog.

Yea, we thought we had it bad when the Communicants showed up.

We didn't know nothin'.

• Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth
• Art Source
• Inspired by: Mike Franchina's concepts of: Communicants, Meta-Christ, Mendelist Monks, experimental communion, etc.
• References

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