Free Kingdom of Shadows by Greg F. Gifune

right before our eyes.  Many ancient cultures, from Native Americans to countless tribes of people worldwide—people we considered largely inferior savages—already possessed the process we’d been searching for.  These peoples used it to commune with paradise, to find nirvana, God, peace and transcendence.  And they all used mind-altering substances to achieve it—roots, leaves, plants, things of the Earth—ingested before these journeys were taken.  It’s precisely that angle I studied and brought to the project.  There were numerous formulas over several years that used pieces of these various concoctions from different cultures.  And of course, as a chemist, I implemented my own mixtures, including LSD derivatives and other mind-altering substances.  Many did nothing more than standard hits of LSD.  The initial versions were far too strong and brought on brain damage, permanent insanity, even death in a few cases.  Eventually we were able to isolate the aspects we required and produced what I believed was the perfect elixir for The Kingdom Project .  Once the right formula was found the challenge became finding proper test subjects.  No one sane would knowingly volunteer for such a thing, so we were forced to utilize subjects that hadn’t volunteered.”
    Rooster tightened his grip on the gun but left it in his lap.  “You forced people to take a mind-altering drug you cooked up in a test tube?”
    “We did.  And the results were interesting.  Not what we’d hoped for, mind you, but very interesting.”  He twirled the fork around strands of spaghetti, brought it to his mouth and chewed.  “Many subjects experienced something,” he said, “but it wasn’t the darkness we were searching for.  Many believed it was nonsense, false near-death and other psychotic episodes brought on chemically.  But I knew this was different.  We were so close.  The problem, you see, was not with the drug, but the subjects.  I began to more closely study the nature of evil, the various interpretations of it in different cultures and varied religions, and though they were often vastly different, I uncovered one consistent thread throughout.  According to every doctrine, evil was partly voluntary.  One had to embrace it in a sense, allow it.  The Devil, if you will, could not simply snatch you up in the dead of night and carry you off to Hell to do with you what he liked.  Nor could his minions—demons—attack without provocation, their powers were limited as well.  One had to let them ‘in’ so to speak.  Simply put, if the road to Hell truly existed, one could not be dragged there.  One had to voluntarily walk that path—through either conscious decision or even outright deception—but one had to allow it.  Without that consent, evil could control no man, and no man could find or tap into pure evil.  What we needed were not subjects forced into service but rather test subjects that had already embraced the darkness.  We tried various subjects that practiced black magic and evil—Satanists and the like—but again met with failure.  Evil, it seems, does not want those who so enthusiastically want it.  So we began searching prisons.  And that is where we found you, Mr. Cantrell.  It’s where we found all of you.  You and your crew were chosen from thousands of potential candidates.  You were all condemned, all paying for the horrible crimes you’d committed, all hopeless.  If damnation was real, you were all headed straight for it.  Murderers, thieves, rapists, terrorists, destroyers of innocents, you were perfect pieces to a larger puzzle of absolute darkness and depravity the likes of which even this hideous world could not begin to comprehend.  You were the best of them, granted, the best of the worst, but the best just the same.  As it turned out, you were also, however, a rather large fly in the ointment.”
    Heart smashing his chest, Rooster attempted a deep breath.