The Infernal Adventures of Damian Hunter

The flames leapt and roared through the darkness. Heat pressed against young Damian like the blast from an open furnace, stealing every breath as it devoured everything he had ever loved.

"Mom! Dad!" he cried.

No answer came—only the deafening roar of the fire.

His throat burned raw. Tears streamed down his face, vanishing almost as quickly as they fell in the blistering heat. He coughed, shielding his eyes with trembling arms as thick smoke rolled through the hallway.

Then he saw it.

A silhouette.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Motionless and seemingly unaffected amid the inferno.

The flames climbed the man's coat, curled around his boots, and rolled across his shoulders, yet he neither burned nor hurried. He simply walked through the raging fire as though it were morning fog.

He was carrying something.

Small.

Motionless.

"Cordelia..." Damian whispered, his heart refusing to believe what his eyes could plainly see.

The man never turned. He simply continued down the hallway, disappearing deeper into the flames with Damian's little sister cradled in his arms.

"Stop!"

Damian lunged after them.

The doorway erupted into a wall of fire. Heat struck him like a giant's hand, hurling him backward. His scream disappeared beneath the roar of the flames.

Damian Hunter awoke gasping, his lungs clawing for air that wasn't tainted by smoke. Sweat soaked his sheets. His bedroom was cool and dark, but for one disorienting moment he could still smell burning wood. Flames leapt and died behind his eyes.

The nightmare again.

Twenty years later, they still insisted there had been no man.

The social workers.

The therapists.

The fire investigators.

Everyone had the same explanation: trauma. A frightened ten-year-old's mind trying to make sense of the unimaginable. A drowning child's last desperate lifeline.

Firefighters had recovered three sets of burned remains from the ruins. There had been no evidence of an abduction. No footprints. No witnesses. No DNA.

Nothing.

Damian had heard their explanations so many times he could almost believe them.

Hell, he wanted to.

Almost.

He groaned and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress sinking beneath his weight. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing. One of countless exercises taught by one of countless therapists. Most had done little more than waste his time.

This one, at least, bought him a few quiet minutes.

His hand found the bottle of Basil Hayden's Dark Rye waiting on the nightstand. He uncorked it and took a long pull.

"Leche de Mama," he muttered to no one in particular.

He killed the bottle.

Dark rye always went down smooth.

Too smooth.

He made a mental note to refill that particular prescription later.

For now there was work to do.

He stood, stretched the stiffness from his back, and wandered into the cramped apartment. Empty takeout containers shared space with stacks of dog-eared case files. Books on theology, folklore, demonology, and criminal psychology competed for every inch of shelf space. A crucifix hung crookedly over the front door, and beneath it an aging answering machine blinked patiently.

3 NEW MESSAGES

Damian sighed. "Either somebody's possessed, dead, or trying to sell me a timeshare."

He pressed the play button.

A soft electronic beep sounded.

"Hey, Damian... it's me."

Despite himself, he smiled.  Claire.

"I know you probably won't hear this until sometime next week because apparently checking your messages violates some deeply held personal conviction, but I thought I'd try anyway. There's a jazz festival downtown Friday night. I bought two tickets." She laughed softly. "You once told me you'd rather wrestle a demon than listen to jazz, so I figured I'd call your bluff. Give me a call if you're interested." There was a brief pause. "Or just call so I know you're still alive."

The machine clicked.

"Regretably," Damian muttered.

Another beep.

"Damian, it's Tommy."

The humor disappeared from his face.

"You missed dinner again. Look... I know you'll tell me you're busy, but you've been 'busy' for three weeks now. I can hear it in your voice every time we talk. You're drinking too much." Tommy sighed. "I know what happened twenty years ago. I know you're still chasing it. But you're going to kill yourself before you ever find any answers." Another pause. "You don't have to carry this by yourself. Call me back."

The message ended. Damian stared at the machine for a moment before reaching for the delete button. His finger hovered over it, then drifted away. He let the next message play instead.

The third beep was followed by nothing.

Only breathing.

Fast. Ragged. Frightened.

"M-Mr. Hunter?" The voice belonged to a young man, perhaps no older than Damian himself. "Father Alvarez gave me your number. He said... he said if anybody would believe me..."

Damian's hand froze.

"There was a fire last night."

The room suddenly seemed very still.

"My wife..." The caller struggled to continue. "Everyone keeps telling me she died. The police. The firefighters. Even my own family."

Damian felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise.

"But I saw someone carrying her."

His heartbeat quickened.

"He wasn't burning."

The bourbon's warmth vanished from Damian's stomach.

"He just walked through the flames like..." The caller swallowed hard. "...like they weren't even there."

Silence.

"Nobody believes me."

Another long breath.

"Please..."

The man's voice cracked.

"Please tell me I'm not crazy."

The machine clicked.

Damian stood motionless for several seconds, listening to the empty hiss that followed. Twenty years of investigators, therapists, and police officers had all told him the same thing: there had been no man.

Now, for the first time in two decades, someone else had seen him.

The trail he thought had grown ice cold was now starting to thaw.

Damian reached instead for his keys.

He opened the door to his rust bucket and slid inside.  He reached over to the glove compartment to grab some essentials.  

His hand instinctively reached for the vape lying inside.

He stared at it contemptuously.  

"Seriously?"

The little plastic rectangle sat there innocently enough, all matte black and blue LEDs. It looked less like a vice than something a middle schooler had won at an arcade.

He sighed and stuffed it into his pocket anyway.

"Nothing says hardened occult detective quite like blueberry frost."

Damian rolled down the window and took a long pull from the vape.

Blue raspberry.

He hated blue raspberry.

He hated that he'd switched from cigarettes because everyone said vaping was healthier.

He hated that he'd become the sort of man who justified one addiction by replacing it with another.

Most of all, he hated that every morning, before coffee, before breakfast, before God Himself had a chance to speak, that stupid little piece of plastic somehow found its way into his hand.

He exhaled a cloud into the desert air.

"You're a grown man," he muttered. "You're addicted to robot candy."

He buckled up.  He may have had a death wish but he wasn’t suicidal.  He took another deep breath, trying to remain calm at the promise of his first real lead in decades.  He had some research to do.  A priest to see.  But first, he blessed himself.  It was more of an old habit at this point, but it brought him some comfort. And anyway, old habits are hard to break.  He turned the keys and the car sputtered to life like an asthmatic climbing Everest.  He was soon hitting pavement, the car awash in smog and blue raspberry vapors.

Damian pulled into the sprawling storage facility just after sunrise. Endless rows of corrugated metal doors stretched in every direction, painted the same forgettable shade of beige as if someone had tried to make anonymity into architecture.

He parked in front of Unit E-612..

For fifteen years he'd unlocked this same rusted padlock nearly every morning.

He rested a hand on the cold metal door.

"One of these days..."

The words trailed off.

One of these days he'd know enough to close it forever.

One of these days there would be no more missing persons files.

No more burned photographs.

No more maps with red pins driven into them.

No more newspaper clippings.

No more Cordelia.

But not today.

Today the trail had finally spoken.

He unlocked the door.

Inside, the locker seemed deceptively cavernous. He gave two sharp claps and the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, illuminating walls lined with industrial shelving. Every inch had been meticulously organized. Case files filled labeled archive boxes. Shelves sagged beneath books on theology, demonology, folklore, angelology, Church history, and forgotten languages. A battered oak desk occupied the back wall, its surface buried beneath maps, photographs, and handwritten notes. 

At the center of the room stood a small wooden table untouched by the organized chaos around it. Upon it rested a framed photograph of a little girl with an irrepressible smile and two missing front teeth. Fresh white candles burned quietly on either side of the frame beneath a simple wooden crucifix. Damian paused before it as he always did. Fifteen years ago, he had lit those candles for the first time, promising himself they would remain a vigil until he found her. Every morning he replaced them. Every evening he extinguished them before locking the door behind him. He prayed that one day he would snuff them out for the last time—not because hope had died, but because Cordelia had finally come home.

Lately, that prayer had felt increasingly foolish.

This morning, for the first time in twenty years, it didn't.

He stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. The familiar scent of old paper, melted candle wax, and aging leather settled over him. He closed his eyes and drew one slow breath, letting the world outside fall away. The apartment, the bourbon, the nightmares, the voicemail—they all belonged on the other side of the corrugated steel door.

He exhaled.

Time to get to work.

Crossing the room, he made a beeline for the filing cabinet where he kept the oldest and most desperate cases. The top drawer bore a simple typed label:

FIRES

Nestled among decades of unexplained blazes was the file he knew by heart.

Hunter, Cordelia.

The folder landed on the desk with a familiar thud. Damian didn't bother sitting. Instead, he opened it where he stood, turning the pages with the practiced indifference of a man who had read them thousands of times. The smiling family photographs and birthday snapshots no longer held him. They belonged to another lifetime, one before fire and unanswered questions had consumed everything. What mattered now were the reports.

Every official document told the same story. Incident reports. Fire marshal findings. Insurance investigations. Witness interviews. Psychological evaluations. Different agencies. Different authors. Different letterheads. Yet every page arrived at the same conclusion: accidental house fire, three fatalities, no evidence of foul play. Damian had spent twenty years trying to prove that every one of them was wrong.

As he turned another page, a single sheet of construction paper slipped from the folder and drifted onto the desk. He caught it before it reached the floor.

It was a child's drawing.

Four crooked stick figures stood hand in hand beneath a bright yellow sun. A square house leaned slightly to one side, its chimney puffing happy little clouds into a blue sky. The grass was impossibly green. The flowers impossibly bright. Across the top, written in large purple crayon with all the confidence of a little girl who had only recently learned her letters, were two simple words.

Our Family.

In the lower corner, squeezed beside a smiling stick figure with long brown hair, was a signature.

Cordelia.

For just a moment, the investigator disappeared, and all that remained was an older brother staring at the last picture his little sister had ever drawn.

He carefully slipped it back into the folder, smoothing the worn paper with the palm of his hand before closing it again.

"Not yet," he murmured.

There would be time to remember.

First, there was work to do.

This is the end of part 1. Part 2 to come…at some point.