There’s a chill in the air as the sun goes down outside Valley Lodge, Montana. It’s the kind of smoky bite carried on the wind that tells you colder days are yet to come, the kind you get when October’s almost over and autumn along with it, with nothing left but long November nights and the cold harsh winds that blow across all that empty space. It’s not a bitter cold, it’s not harsh enough to be bitter yet, just the promise of bitterness that makes you thankful there’s still a little bit of warmth left in the world, even as the vast slate grey clouds swirl across the sky and the sun slips below the long, flat horizon.
The last lights cut across the vast corn and wheat fields of the little farming community now stripped bare and waiting for the next year’s planting. Life moves in cycles in Valley Lodge- plant and harvest, spring and fall, new generations raised up in the fields till they became the old timers sitting on porches telling stories about when they were young, it’s a place that values its continuity and its traditions, traditions like tonight, October 31st 1938- Halloween.
Yes, Halloween, the one time of the year when things look the scariest and the whole world doesn’t look quite so frightening in comparison. Even in the days of the dustbowl when they could see the huge storms blow to the South Valley Lodge found a place for this day, a single day to choose to be afraid. Without homemade pastries and homemade costumes they’d sit under the flickering electric lamps and tell ghost stories late into the night about the old abandoned church on the way out of town, the lost mine somewhere in the foothills, and the scarecrows around the edge of the town. That was last year though, not this year, this year prosperity had come back to Valley Lodge and things looked a little brighter as ghosts, witches, skeletons, and monsters prowled the streets asking for candy under the dimming sky.
Cat Curtis watches from her window as the sun went down and the children navigate the town as the street lights buzz to life, the sky fading to a deep purple offset by the warm amber at the edge of the horizon line. Soon, she’ll be heading out as well, she thinks to herself as she turns away from the window, fiddling with her costume- a red jumpsuit and black cape. She falls back on her bed, her wooden devil’s mask sliding neatly into her side, its static face grinning outwards towards the darkening gloom.
It’s been almost a year since she found the mask in the basement of the curiosity shop where she started working evenings, almost a year since she started wearing it and became Valley Lodge’s very own superhero. Kid Brimstone the papers called her, a 15-year-old teen devil that fought crime and all manner of other things that go bump in the night. The old folks always said Valley Lodge had someone looking out for it on account of all the weird tales the town had survived, just most folks had figured that “someone” was a teen girl turned teen demon.
Standing up, mask in hand, Cat slowly pressed it to her face, feeling the slight tingle through her body as the air began to crackle around her. Slowly, the mask fused to the young girls face, the wood softening into tough skin over her own as her body twisted as well, her legs crooking, her toes fusing and solidifying into hooves, her fingernails jutting further and further out into claws, she could feel the horns of the mask fusing to her forehead when fire engulfed her entire body, completing the transformation from Cat Curtis, high school girl, into Kid Brimstone, defender of the night.
Perching herself on the windowsill, the twilight breeze cool and refreshing across her now demonic face, she leapt forth with a powerful thrust of her hooves, loping from branch to branch through the grove of trees that backed her family’s home, till eventually, she landed on the roof of the town church. Skittering her way up the imposing steeple, she reached the top and paused, gazing out over the entirety of the little town of Valley Lodge, seeing it all laid out in front of her as the twilight finally gave way to the night and the street lamps formed the rows and columns that made up the small town.
Most places like this wouldn’t see much trouble, even on Halloween, but Valley Lodge isn’t most places, it’s a weird place where weird things happen, the kind of places where things you can’t explain tend to fill up all the empty space that is America, and on this Halloween night weird things were definitely afoot. It began with a scream on Chestnut and Main, by the hardware store. Cat could feel the thing before it happened, the crackle of otherworldly malevolence through the still fall air that only a demon could sense, even if it didn’t help Old Man Wilson any.
As fast as she was, Kid Brimstone didn’t get there till the old time was just a puddle on the soft dirt of the Montana country road. Her eyes glowing with infernal fire as she scanned the scene, Cat could hear the soft wailing of Valley Lodge’s only police car approaching in the distance. After a year of her appearances the Sheriff and the townsfolk had come to accept her as a guardian, even if she did look exactly like the kind of thing you learn to fear in Sunday school. It helped that she was the only one who could help in the strange cases, like how does a man fall to his death in the middle of the street?
By the time Sheriff Arnold got there a crowd was developing, Kid Brimstone always brought a crowd whenever she bounded through the streets and Mr. Wilson’s screams had been hard to ignore. Cat knew the sheriff could handle the details- deputizing men to clear the area, sending someone to find the town doctor, that he would look to her to explain what happened, to make it right. She could see him moving through the crowd, intent on her position when a second scream rang out in the night.
Unwilling to wait for the Sheriff, Cat leaped into the air, a ring of brimstone fire left in the middle of the street where she took off. Landing on the roof of the hardware store, she peered through the absolute blackness of the sky above the town, her infernal vision lighting the way. Through the depths of the blackness, near the old Peachtree place, she could make out a shape, a vast thing that glowed in her eyesight, the way only evil does when you look through the eyes of hell, and though its shape was unclear, in its claw-like hands Cat could make out the soft blue that marked an innocent life.
In a second she was off, leaping from roof to roof towards the Peachtree family farm, eyes locked skyward as the thing circled overhead. As she got closer the thing began to take a more definitive shape- it was big, big as a truck, but shaped like a man, though the proportions were all wrong. Its arms were thick but it had no hands, only claw-like spikes from each forearm, and its legs turned into talons at the thigh. It had no head but a thick shoulder muscle extending across its top, with a single lidless eye set in its vast and a drooling maw at the middle of its chest, with huge leathery batwings keeping it aloft in the Montana night. Cat searched her mind for what the creature could be, from where it might’ve come, in her demonic form she knew all that hell knew and could find any answer, though there were some questions she dared not ask.
With a hard thud Kid Brimstone landed on the roof of the Peachtree farm, the old tiling of the roof bending under her hooves as she scanned the skies for the thing. She spotted it in the Northwest corner, headed towards the old railway mail station, and in its claws was Danny Peachtree, 8 years old and dressed like a cowboy. Exhaling as she bent her legs, hands clenched into tight fists of devilish power, Cat summoned up all her strength and in a single leap launched herself into the creature- ramming it square in the back.
The horrible thing let out a monstrous cry, like a train derailing but somehow much deeper. Instantly the creature dropped the boy and he began to fall. Digging her claws into the thing’s back, right at the joint of the leathery wings, Kid Brimstone angled herself downward and launched herself into the night after Danny- catching him in mid-fall. The boy was terrified- taken by some alien creature and now rescued by a literal devil from hell, it was all Cat could do to hold onto him. She didn’t have the free hand to use her cape to glide downwards and couldn’t risk the creature taking the opportunity to attack her from behind, so she curled her body around the struggling boy, holding him tight and trusted in gravity to do the hard work of getting them down.
The two hit the ground hard, though Danny took the landing a lot better thanks to Cat than he would’ve otherwise. In her demon form nothing could truly damage her but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be hurt, and falling about 4 stories straight down definitely hurt. Shaking the pain and the dust from her horns, Cat slowly rose to her hooves, surveying her surroundings. The town was behind her, not too far, with nothing but barren fields and flat Earth surrounding them.
In the distance she could make out the water tower of the abandoned railroad mail station…and there atop the tower was the thing, looking right back at her. As soon as it saw Cat the thing began to howl, low and guttural yet also metallic, the kind of sound that cuts right through you as plain and truly wrong. Looking down at Danny, the frightened little boy she just saved who still looked terrified, she said to him in her least demonic tone “Get Behind Me.” The young boy did as he was told, shuffling behind Kid Brimstone’s cape as planted her hooves to face in the direction of the thing.
In one smooth motion, the thing took flight off the water tower, its massive batwings sending dust whirling through the air as it began to circle its attacker. Kid Brimstone’s eyes started to burn as her mind whirled through infernal knowledge. Cracking her fingers as she began to whisper arcane tones, ancient and infernal symbols forming in the air around her hands when, in one motion, she clapped them together and pulled them forth, red energy arching between them then settling into the form of a pitchfork which she grasped firmly.
She’d finally been able to place the creature, it was a being of chaos- primordial magic, the kind of weird anti-geometry that’s hard to work and even harder to control. That gave her an edge, knowing what the creature was…and knowing what it could do. She braces herself, pitchfork held outward in both hands defensively as the Chaos Beast circled closer and closer, its pink outer flesh glistening wetly in the moonlight while the deep black cartilage of its claws disappeared against the inky blackness of the night sky. All at once, its single eye began to glow a sickly green, energy pouring forth from its maw and then its entire body until finally a bright beam of pure chthonic energy shot forth from its single eye.
The beam hit Kid Brimstone square in the pitchfork, splintering on impact as the crimson fire of her staff deflected the otherworldly blast. All around her the dust and dirt of the Montana countryside was beginning to give way to the chaos energies unleashed by the thing- odd angles twisting out of the dirt, dust that was one second made of flesh and then diamonds before settling back to dust again. This fight had to end quickly, the longer the Chaos Beast was allowed to roam free the more it would twist the world to resemble its own. Taking a deep breath and waiting for the creature to glide close to her, Kid Brimstone took aim and breathed a massive jet of hellfire directly into the thing.
The Beast was caught off guard, screaming as the unholy flames covered it, its eye blasting forth that green beam in any direction it could to try and stem the tide of flames that consumed it. Taking advantage of the Beast’s distraction, Cat pulled back her arm, taking aim with her pitchfork and whispering a new spell into her weapon before hurling it directly into the Beast’s chest. It hit with a loud wet thump, embedding itself deep in the pink flesh of the Chaos Beast, before shooting forth burning red chains from the handle, staking themselves to the ground and pinning the Beast to that spot.
Cat knew the chains wouldn’t hold the Chaos Beast for long, turning to Danny behind her, who now seemed far less frightened of his devilish rescuer, she said “run!” and sent the boy racing back towards the welcoming lights of the town. With Danny in the wind, Cat turned back towards the railway station, leaping towards it as the Chaos Beast shrieked and wailed and raged against her binding spell. Cat knew whatever had brought this creature into the world had originated at the rail station, that it was still keeping the Beast in our plane, and that if she could destroy it- this would all be over.
The station wasn’t large, just a single building and the water tower, but the track had been used as a railway graveyard ever since being abandoned nearly a decade ago. Nearly a dozen abandoned and broke down rail cars now peppered the land beside the rail station- engines that had exploded, end cars that broke and rolled off the tracks, and the boxcars you just couldn’t use anymore. One of them had to be where this was coming from, Cat thought, as she sailed through the air, scanning the yard with her infernal vision. It turned out she didn’t need magic eyes to see the source of her problems: at the far end of the yard was a single boxcar, covered in rust and overgrown, out of which poured that same green glow as from the creature. Landing hard on a nearby caboose with a shattered frontend, Cat could hear, in the distance, the last of her infernal chains snapping and the triumphant bellow of the Chaos Beast as it took flight and headed towards her.
Kid Brimstone sprinted for the boxcar as fast as her hooves could carry her, the dense flapping of bat-wings getting closer and closer with each second. The wood of the car’s closed-door splintered as she dove into it, somersaulting across the floor as she landed. There in the car she found what she was looking for- a corpse. It looked to be the corpse of a drifter, some nameless hobo who’d posted up in the boxcar.
Something had happened to him though, something bad: both his eyes were gone and a weird geometric pattern had been formed on his chest- partly it had grown forth from inside him in the form of splintered bones and partly it had been carved onto his chest by some unknown blade. The old tramp’s body pulsed in its own unnatural glow, his face frozen in terror at whatever thing had taken his eyes and made him into a doorway to someplace that couldn’t fit this world.
For just a second Kid Brimstone hesitated, wondering how she could possibly close this door, searching her mind for what infernal tool could fit this task when suddenly the roof of the boxcar was torn upwards. The black cartilaginous talons of the Chaos Beast ripped through the metal of the roof like it was nothing, hurling chunks of the disused boxcar into the nearby fields as it dug deeper and deeper trying to reach its tormentor. Panicked for a moment, Cat dropped to the floor, pressing herself as far below the Chaos Beast’s grasp as she could. The frustrated cries of the Chaos Beast filled the air as it tore and rent downwards; till the roof of the boxcar was removed enough it could press its eye to the hole.
It fixed Cat with that eye, deep and unnatural green, impossible shapes swirling within its pupil as chthonic energy filled the car. The Beast was only a few feet away from Cat now, she could hear the crackle of energy from its eye, feel the heat of its ragged breath from that slavering maw, she knew it was preparing to burn her with its gaze, to render her down to pure chaos and remove her from this plane, so in one swift motion she brought her claws through the remaining box car metal- scratching across the Beast’s eye.
The thing’s shriek was so loud Cat could feel blood spurt from her ears. She had bought herself a few seconds as the Beast recoiled, its deadly eye no longer fixed on her, and in those seconds Cat knew what she had to do. As she readied herself, searching for the right spell, she suddenly felt the boxcar lurch and shift under her. The massive talons of the Beast burst through the far wall and suddenly the entire car was on its side as it began to lift into the air. Scrambling out the hole in the ceiling, Kid Brimstone watched as the ground quickly faded off as the Chaos Beast flew her and the boxcar higher and higher, the moon in full ascendance framing their flight when suddenly- the ascent stopped and she began to fall.
Digging her claws into the roof of the car and trying not to panic, Kid Brimstone pulled herself out of the car, planting her hooves in the rusting metal and riding the falling hunk of machinery downward, even as the corpse door rattled within. Shouting her incantations loudly and defiantly against the rushing wind of her fall, she moved her hands quickly in the air, hell’s amber glow and infernal runes forming as she drew the symbol of her spell. On the ground, just below Cat and her boxcar chariot, a circle of flames began to form, spinning faster and faster till the ground fell away beneath it revealing a vast crimson inferno- it was hell, a portal to hell that Cat had summoned.
High above, she could hear the cries of frustration and dismay from the Chaos Beast as it swooped downward, now desperate to stop its missile from plunging into the hell mouth. Grasping the metal roof as hard as she could, Kid Brimstone turned to face her attacker, its vast pink form a blur of oncoming motion. Allowing a quick smirk to cross her lips, even as the Beast drew nearer, she drew in a deep breath and a jet of fire shot forth from her mouth- engulfing the creature and propelling the car down even faster.
Finally, with seconds to spare, she kicked herself free from the car, her black velvet cape spread wide to catch the wind as she sailed free of the otherworldly boxcar. Turning back as she drifted through the air, she could see the green glow within fade as it tumbled into the waiting hell mouth, which closed shut almost immediately. Its connection to its own geometry shattered, the Chaos Beast’s body began to fall apart in mid air- its pink skin evaporating into a dark green dirt, the crackling energy of its eye fading to a dim grey, its final shriek of defiance caught in its quickly decaying throat till soon it was nothing but dust on the October wind.
Landing gently at the foot of the railway water tower, Cat allowed herself to finally relax, leaning back against the ancient wood of the abandoned structure. The Chaos Beast was vanquished but the mystery of who unleashed it using that poor drifter as a corpse door still remained but that was tomorrow’s problem, for now, she would savor her victory before returning home to her family and bed and returning to the form of Cat Curtis- another spook bites the dust thanks to Kid Brimstone.
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