“ID!” shouted a soldier.

  She gave him the badge that had been in the envelope. He scanned it with a machine.

  “Intern? That explains it. There is an alarm in the building. You have to clear the building now. Follow me, we'll take you out to the back.”

  As she left the building, she saw more than a dozen demons lying dead on the main road, along with a few injured soldiers. She saw Henderson had been captured and was being tied up. Before she could say or do anything, he was thrown in a black van, and the van drove away.

  “Move, intern! Go to your designated area. If you stay here any longer, you will be shot as well.”

  Rose walked away from the Unit 7 headquarters and no one stopped her.

  She kept walking for hours and hours, confused and dazed about what had happened. This was the first time she had used story magic independently, and it had worked brilliantly - far too brilliantly than she would have expected.

  But now she realised, had she and Henderson been tricked? Was it a trap? If so why had she been given a fake badge to help her escape? She had no doubt that if it hadn’t been for that fake badge, she would have been arrested like Henderson and vanished.

  Even though the note had burnt up, she knew exactly where to go. It was an empty graveyard at the outskirts of town, a place nobody went to, a place that was allegedly haunted by zombies.

  Henderson was gone; she couldn't believe it. He was a bit crazy, but he always knew what to do. He always had an answer. But now she was alone. Could she trust the person who had sent her this note? Did it matter?

  It was not like she had a choice. After all, if the person had wanted to kill her, he could have done so easily in that room.

  It was almost dark when she reached the graveyard. As expected, the graveyard was completely empty. Not even the night birds like owls were flying around, and there were no crickets or mosquitoes or anything. It was like even the whole wildlife had been killed here.

  The place was, as the cliché said, dead silent.

  Right in the middle of the graveyard was an open grave with a very big floodlight surrounding it. The sort of light Hollywood movies used when they were shooting a movie in the night. That light brightened up the whole area which was otherwise dark and foreboding.

  And sitting right next to the open grave, on a chair next to a small table was a kindly looking woman in her 50s. She had that kindly, grandma look with curly silver hair. Rose could almost imagine her knitting a sweater as she waited.

  “Oh dear, you are here. Come have a seat. Henderson didn't follow you did he?”

  Rose was surprised; she recognised the woman. “You are the one who saved me in Iraq. The one who helped me get away. Why? Who are you? Are you Henderson's contact in Unit 7?”

  “I am,” she said kindly, “Here have a seat. Do you want some tea and cookies? My name is Edith Colvert, but you can call me Eddie.”

  She took out a thermos flask and poured tea into two small cups. One of which she offered to Rose, along with the spare chair she had.

  “I also have them jam cookies if you want to try them, they are great. By the way, dear, you didn't answer my question. Did Henderson follow you? Remember our agreement, if he turns up, I leave.”

  “Henderson was captured by Unit 7. Last I saw, they were beating him up and pushing him into a van. I couldn't help him.”

  “Oh, do not worry about him. He has been in much worse situations and always gets out. Do try that jam cookie, dear, it's yummy!”

  Rose did, and it was.

  “If you are his contact, why do you not want to see him?” she asked. “And why did you trick us by having me breaking into Unit 7? Why go to all the trouble when you could have just passed me the message directly?”

  “I do not wish to see him today because we have had some disagreement. We had a big fight the last time we talked and are no longer on speaking terms.

  As for you breaking into Unit 7, I wanted to see if you have any balls. Unit 7 is full of castrated and cowardly men. And I want somebody who has more balls than them, which you seem to do, my dear.”

  They sat there, in that early night next to an open grave, drinking their tea and eating their biscuits.

  “I have so many questions,” said Rose. “I don't even know where to start. First, why here? Why is there an open grave? Are you planning to kill me?”

  The old woman laughed. “Oh no, dear. Why would you say such a terrible thing? If I wanted you dead, I would have done so in Unit 7. I could have killed you there or let Unit 7 capture and torture you.”

  She looked at the grave. “This grave has a poor history. The man who was buried here keeps rising and has to be killed over and over again. I hired two local young men called Blue and Shakespeare, of all things, to take care of the zombie. But he still keeps rising from his grave.”

  They sat there silently, Rose scared, stared at the open grave with a slight apprehension now.

  “Oh, do not worry dear. He has been killed yet once more, just a few nights ago. He won't be rising again for weeks or months. At least.”

  “As for why I wanted to see you here, it is for a deeply symbolic reasons. This open grave is like our society - the same problems keep coming up over and over and over, and the men who rule our country do not have the courage to fix them. So it's been left to women like me to do something about it.”

  Rose stared at her in confusion. “Sorry, who are you again?”

  “Edith, but call me Eddie. I'm a friend of Henderson's, although he hates me now. I don't know why.”

  “If he hates you, he must have a reason. Henderson may be a little crazy and a bit insane, but he does have logic to everything he does.”

  “Does he now?”

  The woman gave her a kind smile, but Rose could see hard steel in her eyes.

  “Has he told you the truth about everything? For example, why does Unit 7 hate him and want him dead?”

  “Because he doesn't agree with them or their methods.”

  “Yes, and neither do I. But that's not it, though? Is it? There are hundreds of people even within the Unit itself who don't. But that doesn't mean Unit 7 wants them dead. But enough about that. We are here to talk about your mother - your lovely and innocent mother.”

  The last sentence was said with a bit of sarcasm, and Rose felt her skin tingle with anger and frustration, like she was getting ready for a fight. “Why are you talking like that about my mother?”

  “I liked your mother dear. I'm the one who told her about the Iraq dig. I told her where to dig, and I told her who and how many people to bring with her. We reached a deal. Your mother and me. That's another reason Henderson is angry with me. He feels I shouldn't have interfered.”

  “What did you do?”

  The old woman just smiled and took out some newspaper clippings. “It was really hard to preserve these. I had to use impossible magic to keep them in the original state. But you will admit it's worth it.”

  She passed the newspaper clippings to Rose. The main article was about a terrorist attack that had occurred more than twelve years ago, in which dozens of people had died.

  “What about it?” asked Rose. “What's so special about this attack?”

  “Read the whole article, please, especially the part which mentions your mother's name.”

  Rose did, and her whole body froze. Her blood went cold. Her breathing stopped, and her eyes felt unfocused and hazy.

  “This is nonsense. This is impossible. It's a lie.”

  “It is not. Read it again.”

  The article said, right in the middle with a photo of her mother:

  Lady Henderson lost her only daughter, Eve in the attack.

  And next to it was a photo of Eve when she was 7 years old.

  “This is clearly nonsense. Eve didn't die in that attack. She was with me in Iraq.”

  “Was she now? Are you sure?”

  Rose got up. Her previously cold blood was now boiling with anger.

  “You manipulative bitch,” she said. “I don't know what game you're playing, but I can see why Henderson hates you. I'm done with this. I'm not playing your games anymore.”

  She turned around to leave.

  Eddie wasn't perturbed. She just smiled.

  “Did you know that Henderson and me created Unit 7?”

  Rose stopped where she was. She was still facing away from Eddie, but her curiosity stopped her from leaving.

  “We were the first agents and its original operatives. We called it Unit 7 because the first six organisations we tried failed, for one reason or the other. It started off as a private enterprise before the government got interested.

  At first, we were happy with the government involvement. They gave us a lot more money and allowed us to buy special weapons. It was a great partnership. The government could provide us with resources while Henderson and I went around killing every demon, cultist or witch who threatened the territorial integrity of Britain.

  But like all good things, it didn't last. Soon the suits from Oxbridge took over and they started introducing paperwork, unnecessary rules and regulations. Politics came in - it was no longer about protecting Britain but about protecting the current government and making the opposition look bad.

  A few demonic attacks were allowed to go ahead because it made the opposition look bad, and it mostly killed people who hadn’t voted for the ruling party. Unit 7 became a secret police to ensure the government stayed in power.”

  “That’s bullshit. The government wouldn't get away with something like that.”

  Eddie just smiled as she put her thermos away. “Wouldn't they know, dear? Look up at the sky. What do you see?”

  Rose did so and saw something that shocked her. There were two moons: one was blood red, the other was shiny bright blue. What the hell? That didn't make sense. She remembered her school science class. Earth only had one moon.

  “What? How?” she managed to mumble.

  “There are two moons because the portal to hell has been opened. Most normal humans will not be able to see the second moon, which is technically speaking not in our world, but in a parallel dimension.

  But because the veil between the worlds has been weakened, a few people - psychics like us - can see the second moon as well.”

  She reached under her table and brought out a clunky looking machine. It was one of those machines that look like an 18th century steam engine with lots of valves and gears spinning as it made whistling sounds.

  “The reason millions of the undead haven't streamed into our world is because of this machine. It is keeping the portal contained, but it won't work forever. This is where I need your help, Rose. Join me like your mother did.”

  Rose certainly felt very scared - like she didn't want to hear the answer. “What did my mother do?” she asked with great trepidation.

  “Read the article again. The part I underlined.”

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Lady Henderson had only one daughter named Eve, who was lost in the attack.

  “Only one daughter? What about me?”

  “Your mother was pregnant with you, but you hadn't been born yet. That attack wasn't a terrorist attack; it was a demonic attack that the incompetent people at Unit 7 failed to prevent, even as they have failed to prevent the cult from opening the doorway to hell.”

  “None of this makes sense. I’m leaving.”

  Rose started walking away when Edith said behind her, “If you leave now, you'll never know the truth.”

  “I don't care, you are a liar.”

  Eddie’s next words shook her world.

  “Your mother was one of the cultists. She opened the portal to hell in Iraq as well. She sacrificed the 250 people there to bring Eve back to life. Not you, because she had forgotten about you. Even your mother didn't care about you.”

  Rose turned, her face and fingers clenched in anger. “How dare you? How dare you? I will kill you for this. I don't care if I go to prison, but I will kill you.”

  “Tsk, tsk, child; what un-lady like behaviour.”

  “My mother was not a cultist or a demon worshipper.”

  “She wasn't. Sit down. Now. I will not repeat myself.”

  There was a command in her voice that forced Rose to sit down.

  “Your mother worked for Unit 7 but only occasionally. She knew about the secret world but kept quiet about it. It was her who discovered that there was a city in Iraq that had a special magical charm. A charm that could bring dead people back to life; for a price, of course. If you were willing to sacrifice a few people, you could bring one person back to life.”

  “That's a lie. My mother would never kill innocent people.”

  Eddie burst out laughing. “And how would you know that?” she said. “She wasn't even your mother. Rose, you weren't even born. The magic went wrong. The sacrifice rules clearly said there had to be at least ten children in the sacrifice. Your mother couldn't bring herself to kill any innocent children. And so she messed up the ritual. Instead of bringing back Eve, the magic brought you back, but in Eve's body.”

  “You are lying. This is all a lie. My mother would not do such a thing.”

  “I can sit here and argue with you all you want. The woman you thought of as your mother never existed, because you never existed. The magic brought you back with fake memories.

  Did you not wonder why your father refuses to see you? Because a part of him knows that you don't exist, just as Eve didn't exist. These are all magically created memories, but they are fake.

  That is why none of your relatives will see you-- because they know at a deep subconscious level that you are wrong, that you shouldn't exist. You are imaginary.”

  Rose couldn't take it anymore, she pushed the table away with her left hand and with her right hand she went for a face punch. She was sure that she could take this old woman easily.

  She was wrong.

  Eddie easily blocked her punch with her left hand and used her right hand to punch her heart in the stomach, causing Rose to go sprawling back into the open grave.

  She landed on top of her recently deceased body and could feel the disgusting squish as his bodily fluids leaked. Disgusted, she got up and tried to climb out, but the grave was too deep.

  “Like I said,” said Eddie, “I could spend hours arguing with you, but I won't. I'll just prove it to you. Here, look at this paper.”

  She passed the paper down to Rose, and Rose took it. It was an empty paper, a blank paper with nothing written on it.

  “Henderson told you about the three rules of magic, didn't he? Don't worry, I am the only other person he told. I agree with him that the third law should be kept secret, because it is too powerful for Unit 7.

  But Henderson doesn't understand the third law himself, which is why he's still a fool; hiding in abandoned cottages when he should be with me fighting this corrupt organisation.”

  Rose turned the paper around. There was nothing written on it. It was blank.

  “Do you know what the most scary thing for a writer is? A blank page. Writers hate the blank page because it shows them that their story has blocked, and that they don't know what to write next.

  Look at this blank paper, Rose: That is your story. It has blocked. There is no way forward for you: Because you don't exist. You are a character in someone else’s story.”

  Rose looked at the blank paper again, and the paper took a life of its own.

  She saw the real world for the first time in her life.

  Her mother, taking her older sister, 7-year-old Eve, shopping.

  A demonic portal opens in the middle of the street, and demons streaming through, killing half the street, including Eve.

  The next scene: Her mother going to see her uncle Henderson, asking for his help. Rose clearly remembered that she was with her mother when they had gone to see Henderson, but now she understood why Henderson had been surprised when she had told him this.

  She had not been there.

  Her mother had gone alone to beg Henderson to use some black magic to bring her daughter back to life. Henderson had looked at her sadly and told her that it was impossible.

  Her mother was sad and alone, crying in a closed room, while her husband left her to marry another woman. She not only lost her two daughters, she lost her husband and her whole life.

  Eddie spoke from up on the platform now. “I agreed to help your mother if she agreed to help me.”

  “You agreed to help her with dark magic to bring her dead daughter back if she helped you in whatever twisted experiments you were doing,” said Rose.

  “They were not twisted experiments. I was trying to understand how these portals opened and how to close them. Unit 7 has gone completely corrupt and has no interest in these. All their attention is focused on threats like witches, psychics, vampires and werewolves, which while they look scary, are not very dangerous on the big scale.

  Yet, Unit 7 is run by fanatical types who hate supernatural creatures, including people who know magic like me and Henderson. They want to wipe us out. Completely ignoring the bigger threat.”

  She reached into the grave and pulled Rose out. “And so I decided to create my own shadow unit to fight the corrupt Unit 7 and stop these portals from opening.

  I am a scientist, and I realised the only way to understand how the portals work is to open one and then close it - that was the only way I could understand the physics behind it.

  Your mother was willing to help me because of her grief; she too hated Unit 7. She found out they had known about that demon attack but hadn't acted in time. Your uncle Henderson had been fired just a few weeks earlier. If he had still been in service, he could have prevented the attack and saved your sister’s life.”

  Rose was still staring at the blank sheet in shock. “But if my mother was still pregnant with me when she was attacked, that means I was never born.”

  “Unfortunately, yes, we messed up the ritual. Like I said, we got back your sister's body and your mind. With some fake memories. But it wasn't all a failure. I understood how the portals work now, and that's why I'm stopping the current one from opening. But I need help. It is too hard for me. I am losing the battle and the war.”

  She sighed. “In a way, both Henderson and I failed. He thought he could fight Unit 7 by being independent, and I thought I could change it by remaining inside it. We were both wrong. This organisation is a monster that cannot be changed, only destroyed.”

  Rose looked at her hands; they were vanishing, as were her feet. The piece of empty paper fell from her ghost hands and fell to the floor. She looked down at her body to see it was becoming translucent, like she was a ghost.

  “I’m not even real; I am just a fake memory.”

  She felt herself go.

  Felt ready to vanish.

  It wouldn’t be death for she had never been born.

  No, she would just vanish. Like tears in the rain.

  That’s when she felt someone new enter the graveyard. Someone limping badly.

  He picked up the piece of paper that had fallen on the ground and started writing on it. Rose turned to see it was Henderson, bleeding from his stomach.

  “And then I played with my little nieces, Rose and Eve. Eve sat on my shoulders, while Rose sat on my lap as I sang a song for them. We sang until little baby Rose was so tired she went to sleep,” he wrote between coughs that were vomiting blood.

  “Uncle Henderson! Are you okay?”

  “I've been shot. Remember I told you the 10% chance of my magic failing? They were 10 of them and they all shot at the same time. By simple probability, I could dodge 90% of the bullets, but that meant I still got hit with one.”

  “You fool,” said Eddie. “You should have stayed there. I would have rescued you.”

  “I don't need your rescuing,” he said, as he continued scribbling on the piece of paper.

  Rose looked at him in surprise. “What are you doing, Uncle?”

  “He is creating fake memories for you, dear. So you don't vanish. But it won't work, Henderson. The memories are tied to you. If you die here or if you lose your memory, Rose will vanish.”

  “Don't care. I'll try my best.”

  He collapsed on the cold ground holding his stomach. “I can't do it anymore,” he said. “I think it's time for me to rest.”

  Eddie gave him an injection, and Rose looked on in surprise. “What did you give him? Is it poison?”

  “Relax, my child. It's only adrenaline. It'll keep him alive until I can get him to the hospital. Remember, if he dies, so do you.”

  And then she roughly pulled Rose away. “Now listen to me. The reason I brought you here. You must help me with my experiments. It is the only way to save humanity.”

  “You're a murderer. You killed 250 people in Iraq.”

  “Let me remind you, it was your mother who did that, not me. And anyway, the portals have been opening by themselves over the last few years. Would you have preferred that one had opened in London and killed a million people?

  We couldn’t stop the portals from opening, not with these cultists carrying out their horrible sacrifices. All we could do was control the location and how many people died. We killed 250 but saved a million. I think that's a good deal.”

  Henderson coughed up more blood from the ground.

  “And that's why I don't like you, Eddie. You're thinking just like the cultists, that’s the exact same excuse they use. Kill a few thousand people to save humanity. What's the difference between them and you?”

  “We've had this argument before, Henderson, and I don't have time for it. So I want you to shut up while I talk to your niece before she vanishes.”

  Rose was pulled violently away from Henderson until they were out of hearing distance from him.

  “You don't have much time, Rose. The cultists have opened the portal, and while my device is stabilising it, it is temporary. My device will fail because it doesn't have enough energy to work indefinitely. You must help me to find a proper solution. Your mother understood this. That's why she agreed to help me.”

  Rose still couldn't reconcile the fact that her mother had opened a portal to hell and sacrificed 250 innocent people to bring her back to life. Was her life even worth it?

  “We are fighting a losing war, Rose. We can't keep doing this. At this rate, humanity will be wiped out in five or ten years at most. We need a more robust solution. That's why I'm building a new group, The Shadow Order, to do the work that Unit 7 cannot or will not do. You either join me, or I will destroy you. It will take me ten seconds to wipe Henderson's memories and erase you from existence.”

  “It's not like you give me a lot of choice. Auntie Eddie” said, Rose with as much sarcasm as she could.

  “It's okay, you don't have to like me. I am not here to win the most likeable person in the world competition. I am here to save humanity, and I am willing to kill anyone who gets in my way. Now, do you want to save Henderson or not? Because he will die if he doesn't get proper medical attention in the next few minutes.”

  Tears came to her eyes, but when she tried to wipe them, they weren't there. The tears were like shadows, like ghosts, like her. She was still vanishing, in spite of Henderson’s effort.

  “Please help him.”

  “Good, but there will be a price. Part of Unit 7 has figured out my plans and they're planning to kill me. You must kill them first. Kill them, and I'll save Henderson for you.”

  “Kill them? How?”

  Eddie went back to the table and took out a suitcase from underneath it.

  “Many Unit 7 operatives are injured by the portal that Henderson opened. It was a great idea, by the way, but he was too cowardly. He should have opened a full portal and killed everyone there.

  Doesn't matter, you will finish the job for me. Unit 7 has its own hospital where all the injured people are resting. You will go there and place his bomb. It has a timer of 10 minutes. You will then wait and confirm to me that the whole building has burned down and everyone in it is dead. If you fail to do so, I will kill Henderson myself, and you will vanish with him.”

  She gave Rose the suitcase. “There are almost 300 Unit 7 agents there. I don't know which ones know about me, so we'll play safe, and kill everyone.”

  She gave Rose a pat on the cheeks. “Congratulations Rose, you're just like your mother. She would be so proud of you.”

  Rose felt her stomach acid rise to her throat, and she wanted to vomit.

  She saw Eddie pick up Henderson and carry him out of the graveyard. Her car was parked outside the graveyard. They put Henderson in the back, and Rose sat in the front with the suitcase.

  Eddie dropped her off at a non-descript building which he said was the Unit 7 secret hospital.

  “The badge I gave you will get you inside. But you won't need it, because you're already vanishing, and most normal people will not be able to see you. Place this bomb in the basement so the whole building comes down.”

  “Why do you want to kill all of them? What does it matter if they know about you?”

  “They are traitors who failed to protect humanity; who failed to protect Britain from all threats-- internal and external. That's the oath we took, and they betrayed that oath. So I will punish them for it.

  Besides, I cannot fight Unit 7, the cultists and the demons at the same time. Three enemies at once is too much, even for me. So this is my thinning out my enemies.

  Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now, my child. Do you want to save your uncle or not?”

  “I do.”

  “Good! I'm driving your uncle to the hospital, but I'll stay in the car until I receive your message. If I don't get it within 15 minutes, I'll dump your uncle in the woods and leave.”

  She put a hand on Rose's shoulders.

  “I'm not a bad person, even though you probably think I am. I took an oath to protect this country. I will do anything to save it, and I'll kill anyone who gets in my way.”

  She drove off, leaving Rose alone on an empty street in the middle of the night. Rose stood there for almost 2 minutes, thinking about what to do. Then she remembered that she was on a timer and ran to the building.

  Her badge let her inside the building and she noticed that it was empty. There were many wards with dozens and dozens of injured people and a few security guards, but everyone was tired and sleeping. Rose found her way to the basement and put the suitcase there. She pressed the activate button, and as quickly as she could, she left the building.

  Ten minutes later, the whole building came crashing down in a ball of fire.

  I'm just like my mother, thought Rose to herself. Except, I'm not even real.

  ***

  Eddie kept her promise, and Henderson was put in the best private hospital with his own private room and a full-time nurse dedicated just to him. The nurse had left as it was almost midnight, and Rose sat by his bed crying quietly to herself.

  “I don't know what to do, uncle,” she's sobbed into his chest as sirens of army police vehicles were heard outside.

  “I'm not even real. I don't even exist. It's only the fake memories you created that are holding me here.

  And I've just murdered more than 300 people. Who may have been corrupt, but did they deserve to die?

  Did I do wrong, uncle? Am I a villain? Like my mother? Like Eddie?”

  Outside she could hear the army shouting orders on a microphone. A curfew had been declared for 48 hours and anyone caught outside would be shot. The news on the radio said some race riots had broken out between white supremacists and an illegal immigrant gang. That's why the army had been forced to step in.

  “Don't panic,” a government PR officer said. “It is all under control.”

  Is it? thought Rose.

  Rose stroked her uncle's hair. “You taught me story magic, Uncle. But what is my role in the story now? How can I fight the story if I’m not even real?”

  Outside, the sirens kept wailing. A dozen machine gun opened fire – relentless, like the enemy wouldn’t stop coming.

  End of Casefile 3

  Next casefile: Murder at the Impossible Hotel

  Royce must solve another murder-- one that will happen in a few hours. At a hotel that vanished 30 years ago...