STRANGE. No human was in sight.

     Judah Godling's mountain bike shrieked to a halt at the Nirvañana train station. The eleven-year-old boy slid off the saddle and held up the bike on one leg, looking about him with growing curiosity.

     "This is weird," he said.

     Starbucks and other establishments had invaded half the building, turning it into a shopping center bustling with people all the time.

     Not today.

     Like a dream, stillness hung over the station like a veil. 

     The light from the setting sun forced its way down the unattractive multi-level structures of the station, making dark shadows that filled the atmosphere with eerie impression.

     Judah gasped, feeling an unnatural tightness in his chest. His hands turned the front wheel away from the building, but his head turned to sneak a quick look inside.

     After a moment's hesitation, he shook his head to lose the bad feeling and coerced himself to disembark. He walked his bike into the station as he always did every day after school to get a can of his favorite imported Manila-Cola from the soda machine facing the railroad tracks.

     He stopped, his eyes widened, fighting the urge to turn back.

     The shops were open for business, but for some reason, the entire building was empty like some terrorist bomb threat had forced the people to evacuate the premises.

     Even the station's signalman whom he called Pops, the nice old guy who combed his loose blond toupee with arthritic fingers every two minutes or so in the soda machine's glass panel, was not around to greet him with a toothless smile and say, "Time fowr a ssshugar fihhx, kid.

     At the sight of the soda machine, Judah fished for a coin in his pocket. His hands were cold and clammy like they do every time he saw Regina Patriarcha, the most beautiful girl in school.

     Before he could drop the coin in the slot, the muffled sputtering sound of the soda machine reverberated rather anxiously against the walls of the building.

     Judah backed away open-mouthed, hand frozen in its position.

     The soda machine spewed out a can of Manila-Cola.

     An inexplicable feeling of frenzy wrinkled his face, and he flinched, a frozen finger traced out his spine.

     He could hear the blood pounding in his head.

     His breathing reduced to short shallow gasps.

     The air turned stale and stagnant, lifeless like a tomb. He smelled the unmistakable whiff of a cadaver in the air. Heshould know—he lived on Nirvañana's street of funeral homes. Dead bodies were as common as dead frogs to him.  He felt like someone invisible was standing close to him.

     Watching.

     Waiting.

     Breathing mouthfuls of air on the back of his head.

     Eyes narrowing with concentration, he peered at the vending machine's glass panel, half-expecting to see somebody else's reflection.

     A shadowy figure. Behind him. Or he thought.

     --His head snapped to look at it.

     --Nothing.

     Then Judah heard the uncanny tolling of bells from a distance, like the lifeless clunk of a hammer pounding stacks of ceramic plates to pieces--

     Crrrlaaang! Crrrlaaang!

     Crrrlaaang!

     He let out a lungful of breath, hearing church bells ringing, no matter how peculiar they sounded, brought him intense relief.

     Crrrlaaang!

     On impulse, he turned to the direction where it was coming from. He caught sight of a figure in black garb standing on the rail-

     A girl.

     Thin, black hair up to her ankles.

     Qamatayian.

     This time she had the angelic face of a seven-year-old girl. Her ashen face and body heavily tattooed with symbols Judah thought to be magical.

     Something in her grotesque form inspired the appearance of overmastering menace. Death's enigmatic half-smiling face recalled irresistibly one's forgotten childhood dread. Her dark, luminous eyes were fixed not upon Judah, but stared out into the coming train from New York.

     A disagreeable shudder creeps all over Judah, but he held his breath, scratching his nape without a thought, making a strong effort to pull himself together. Just then, there came a vague vibration in the earth...

     Slight turbulence in the air...

     Quickly changing into violent tremor...

     Now an oncoming rush.

     The sound of the rapid train drowned that of the tolling of church bells, heightening the boy's anxiety.

     Then everything happened very quickly. With the ghastly realization that the tattooed girl was out to kill herself, Judah dropped his bicycle on the ground, sprinted to the railroad, and grabbed the tattooed girl by the arm.

     Cold.

     It was colder than holding ice with bare hands; biting, burning cold that almost made him let go of her.

     He yanked her off the track.

     The train passed them and skimmed into the station.

     Crrrlaaang! Crrrlaaang!

     Crrrlaaang!

     The tolling bells grew louder the closer Judah got to the girl.

     Crrrlaaang!

     Instead of being grateful, the tattooed girl glared in abhorrence, spurning Judah's touch. Darkness came over the place as she opened her mouth to speak; instead of a child's voice, a loud peal of thunder came out of it, simultaneously with sharp veins of lightning that knifed the sky in the background.

     [Don't touch me.]

     Judah gazed at the fantastic apparition open-mouthed. He understood her.

     The girl shoved Judah with immortal force that hurled him several meters away. He crashed onto his back in a thicket of prickly wild blackberry. It knocked the wind off the boy and he blacked out for a few seconds.

     When he came to, the girl was already standing next to him. She was watching him with that strange expression that one could see on the faces of those hopelessly absorbed in re-reading an old newspaper, with perhaps a flicker of tired familiarity in her eyes.

     They had met before.

     Her eyes rolled to look at the train station. Still no soul was in sight, but in her eyes the reflection of the soda machine's glass panel revealed a fat balding middle-aged semblance of a man with glowing eyes in white sequined Elvis Presley impersonator outfit.

     It was Meph Dealmaker. A demon. Oozing with an aura as pleasant as a gas chamber. He was standing in front of the soda machine, grinning and taking a mobile phone selfie with Judah and Qamatayian in the background.

     A brief look of disquiet crossed the girl's face.

     Judah was mystified. His mouth contorted, and his tongue seemed paralyzed and unable to articulate a word. He felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from hot lava to freezing ice. 

     Death walked away and vanished into thin air as the tolling of the church bells died away.

     The augury color of the surroundings returned.

     Judah stood alone in a moment of irrational horror, his body shaking.

     Looking around, he found the place suddenly crawling with people. 

     Pops was now working his toupee at the soda machine.

     The ruddy sunlight that reflected from the glass illuminated Meph Dealmaker's face as he took photos of Judah. He was as invisible as a specter to the boy and even to Pops.

     The demon turned his gaze at the can of Manila-Cola lying in the soda machine's holder, he gestured, and like a tiny paperclip attracted by a magnet, the can flew into his hand.

     He blew a burst of breath onto the can, opening it, and drank, belching in horrifying squeals that sounded like humans and pigs being slaughtered at the same time.

     Judah remained standing still, trying to convince himself that nothing happened. Pure imagination. He shook his head as soon as the thought had crossed his mind.      

     But something was telling him his life would never be the same again.

     Meph Dealmaker was now talking on the phone, staring at Judah with eyes that reared a bastard brood of uneasiness.

     "One thing's for sure, the Infinit is back," the demon said.