by N. P. Martin
“That’s right,” Brentwood said, sounding like the enormity of the situation had just hit him full force as well. “Whatever you need, Creed.”
How about a different father? You got one of those handy?
“Sure. I’ll keep you informed.”
“I know you will. In the meantime, I have no choice but to declare a state of emergency in this city. The brass are breathing down my neck, asking how I’m going to fix this. You’re the only one I know who can do that, Creed.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but—“
“But nothing. The city is already in a panic and it’s spreading fast across the whole country. Just tell me what you need and it’s yours, Creed.”
“Okay, Brentwood. I’ll call you when I need you.”
“Make sure you do.”
Brentwood disconnected us, which pissed me off slightly because I wanted to talk to Leona again. What with the end of the world coming fast, I felt the need to hear her voice in case I never got the chance to again. At the very least, if all became lost, I wanted to be with her at the end.
“That some crazy shit you talking there, man,” the cab driver said. “Portals and shit? What you on about, man? It's fucking aliens, ain't it?" He slammed the steering wheel with both hands. "I knew it! It's those gray motherfuckers, right? The ones with the big eyes? What they want, man? You think I’ll still be able to drive a cab when they take over? Hey, maybe they let me drive one of their space ships instead, huh? Long as they pay well, who cares, right?”
I shook my head at the cab driver, wondering if everyone was going insane and if the portal had something to do with it. “Yeah, right.”
The cab driver shook his head as we finally made it into Freetown. “Fucking aliens, man.”
As we drove down a nearly deserted street in East Oakdale, my gaze out the window went to the gable of a building. Spray-painted on the bricks in red were the words: ABANDON ALL HOPE.
Outside the cab, the sky seemed to have darkened dramatically in the last five minutes.
When he dropped me off, the cab driver looked over his shoulder at me and said, "Hey, man. What do you think the aliens eat?"
“Us,” I said, staring back at him.
The driver gulped and drove off.
48
Dealing With The Devil
A SURPRISE AWAITED me when I got inside in the Sanctum, and not the good kind either. When I walked into the dark living room, I looked left into the kitchen to see Blaze sitting, staring intently at something in the living room, his hackles raised as if in response to a threat. "What's up, Blaze?" I asked him as I wondered what had his attention. His yellow eyes glanced at me briefly and he growled slightly as if to warn me of something. Frowning, I turned to see what Blaze was trying to warn me about, and I caught the outline of someone sitting in the armchair by the window. Assuming it was Sanaka again (as he was the only one who could bypass the locks), I flipped the light switch on the wall and nearly cried out in shock when I saw who was sitting there.
It was a man in a tattered and torn suit, and he looked like he had just been in some sort of accident. He was covered in blood, and his neck was twisted at an odd angle as if it had been broken. I was also horrified to see a jagged length of bone sticking out of one of the man's thighs. Blood dripped down his leg as it pooled around his bare foot. The other foot still had a scuffed black shoe on it. And to top it all off (as if he wasn't gruesome enough looking), one of his eyeballs was hanging out of its socket, resting grotesquely against his blood stained cheek. Hard to guess an age due to the damage to his face, but I put him in his late fifties. The balding head seemed to suggest so anyway.
All I could do was stand there and stare at the broken figure currently staining my armchair and floor with his blood. In a situation like that, it was hard to know what to say. “Who the hell are you?” just didn’t seem to cut it, especially when I wasn’t even that surprised that a man who looked like a walking corpse was sitting in my living room. Such was my life.
I was glad when he finally spoke first, although his voice didn't seem to match, as it was deep and gravelly like a lid grating on a stone coffin.
“August Creed,” the man said, smiling and showing me a mouth full of broken and bloody teeth. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I can see that. Who are you?”
The man smiled again, blood spilling out of his mouth as he did so. “Don’t you recognize me?”
I didn't until his eyes glowed a deep orange color and then, for just a second, the man was replaced by the demon I had summoned. Baal. ”You," I said, not knowing whether to feel relieved or keep feeling worried. “Why are you in that body?”
“It was the first hunk of meat I could find,” Baal said. “This man was killed by one of your metal machines. I will find a better hunk of meat when I leave here.”
I crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured myself a whiskey (and no, I didn’t even entertain the ridiculous notion of offering the demon one). “Why do you even need a human vessel?”
“It’s been a long time since I played here. Your summoning reminded me of the fun to be had here.”
“The fun? I can only imagine.”
The demon gave a throaty laugh. “Yes, you can.”
I sat down in the other armchair next to the fireplace and gratefully drank some of the whiskey. “There may not even be a world left to play in soon. I take it you know this.”
Baal nodded in his meat suit, or tried to, given the state of the man’s broken neck. “I am well aware.”
“Have you come to honor our deal then? Do you have a lead for me?”
Careful, Creed. Not so demanding. Remember who you’re dealing with.
"It's not a deal yet," the demon said, his eyes amber again, that unmistakable fire in them. "It becomes a deal when you submit to my terms."
"Which are?" I asked, sipping from my glass, trying to play things cool, which was difficult. The mere presence of the demon in the room was intimidating, to say the least. It could have dragged me right then to the Underworld if it wanted and there wouldn't have been a thing I could do about it. Plus there was that poor man's broken body. His soul was likely trapped around the scene of his accident, a rampaging ball of frustration in the knowledge that a demon had commandeered his body.
Baal rose suddenly but stiffly, horrible cracking sounds and limbs moving at odd angles accompanying that movement, these sights and sounds of rigor mortis telling me the actual owner died between two to six hours ago. Then he rushed toward me at a speed that shouldn't have been possible, zig-zagging across the floor in the blink of an eye. "What do you suppose I want, human?" Baal asked, looming over me as I continued to sit in my chair. When seated he hadn't seemed so tall, but his angry amber eyes now staring down at my still seated ass, reflected a greater accuracy with an intimidating form.
I shook my head, trying to stay calm. “Apart from my soul, I really wouldn’t know.”
Please don’t ask for my soul. I just got it back.
“Souls are plentiful. I don’t need your soul.”
Relief washed over me, though I didn’t show it. “What then?”
“I will need you to find something for me.”
I frowned. “What, like an object?”
The demon forced its neck forward with a horrible snapping sound. “A human.”
“Okay. You want me to find someone. Who?”
“I will let you know.” He continued to stare down at me as he licked his bloody lips.
“So the lead then?” I said, wishing the demon would step back away from me, which it didn’t. “I don’t mean to press you, but finding your human won't even be possible if either I'm dead or there's none of them left to look for, so you know... time is kind of running out here.”
"I can tell you where your daddy is at this moment. Will that suffice?"
“You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew it was my father.”
“Yes.”
I didn't ask Baal why he didn't think to tell me before. His tone made it clear that no justification would be forthcoming. "Where is the bastard?"
The demon leant over slowly, snapped his neck down another bit, so his eyes were level with mine, that busted face and dangling eyeball too close for comfort. Then he chuckled, a sound that made my stomach tense. “Your daddy dearest has been right under your nose all along, August Creed.”
"Where?" I asked, and he told me where my father was supposedly holed up. My stomach turned over when I realized I now had a location for Mr. Black, which meant there was only one thing left to do, and that was to finally confront the bane of my existence.
“You will hear from me again, August Creed,” Baal said as he limped out of the living room and into the hallway, leaving a trail of blood on the floor behind him.
“If I’m still alive,” I said, though I don’t think he heard me. A moment later, I heard the front door open and then shut again, the demon off to find a new body to have its fun in.
Blaze padded into the living room after Baal had left. He stopped by a large pool of blood on the floor, sniffed it, looked at me and then started lapping it up.
“Nice, Blaze,” I said, shaking my head at the wolf. “Real fucking nice.”
49
Final Goodbye
ACCORDING TO BAAL, Mr. Black was just a short distance away from the Sanctum, holed up in an abandoned building. He would no doubt be waiting on the source of most of his power, Rloth, to make an appearance, providing of course that he had done everything he had to in order to get Rloth here in the first place.
I stood in the living room for another few minutes after Baal had left. While Blaze continued licking up blood from the floor, I considered my next move, soon realizing that there was only one move left to make: to battle Mr. Black. There would be no use taking weapons with me as they would all be useless against him, as would any fancy spells. Mr. Black would block them all. He would be using raw black magic against me, unfiltered by any spell, directed by his will alone. That’s what it was going to come down to, I knew.
A battle of wills.
His against mine, a battle of dark versus light.
Only Mr. Black was more powerful than me, and I wasn’t even sure if my magic would be light enough to counter the darkness in his, especially because I allowed black magic into myself only a few days before. I could still feel it deep in my core like a dormant monster, wanting to feed and grow irrespective of whether I wanted to feed it. I could have gone to Sanaka’s and had him do a Purification Ritual, but there simply wasn't time for that. The only thing to do was to trust in my magic and hope it was enough to defeat Mr. Black.
Blaze was staring up at me, having finished with the blood on the floor, an expectant look in his eyes as if he knew something was about to go down. “No point telling you to stay here,” I said. “World’s going to end anyway if I can’t stop you know who.” Blaze raised his head and barked once as if to say there was never any doubt that he was going with me. “Gimme a minute. There’s a call I have to make.”
It was a call I wasn’t looking forward to making either. To Leona.
“Hello?” she said upon answering.
“You sound stressed,” I said.
“It’s chaos here. Brentwood has put the city on lockdown and people are going crazy trying to get out. Plus the President is breathing down his neck, demanding that he find a solution to what’s happening. The National Guard are here as well to try and maintain order in the city. You find out anything yet?”
“Eh, no, not yet.” I hated lying to her, but I knew how she would react if I told her the truth. She would only gather a small army and rush to back me up, getting everybody killed in the process.
“What about that demon?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.”
"Goddamn it. The portal is getting bigger. We have to close it, Creed, or…"
“I know, or we’re all doomed. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Sorry, it’s just…”
“Scary shit?”
"I don't scare easily, but this..."
“You’d be mad not to be afraid,” I said, wishing I could be there to see her, to hold her, one final time.
"What are we going to do, Creed?" She sounded like a little girl, and I closed my eyes for a second, trying not to let my emotions get to me. I had to stay strong, for her and everyone else.
“I’m about to look into something that might put an end to this whole thing. I’ll have to see.”
“What?” she asked hopefully.
“If it pans out, you’ll know. If it doesn’t—” I paused for a second. “If it doesn’t, you’ll also know.”
“You know where he is, don’t you?”
“I—”
“Creed, you have to tell me so we can help you. You can’t fucking do this alone.”
“I have to go. I love you, Leona. More than you’ll ever know.”
“Creed—”
I pressed the button to end the call and then turned off the phone completely, tossing it away onto the sofa, my chest heaving with the swell of emotion that had arisen in me. Screwing my eyes shut, I stood for a moment and took a few deep breaths, doing my best to refocus on what I had to do. My eyes opened again when I felt Blaze push his head against my leg. Crouching down, I smoothed the fur around his head and hugged him to me for a minute as he made small empathetic mewling noises. “Looks like its just you and me now, Blaze.”
I stood up, straightened my trench coat and placed a hand on top of Blaze’s head in preparation for teleporting us to Mr. Black's location. “All right," I said. "Let's go get this bastard, Blaze."
Blaze barked loudly in response, and then we were gone.
50
The Lair Of Mr. Black
THE DEMON WASN’T lying when he said that Mr. Black had been right under my nose all along. My father (I really have to stop calling him that…) was using an old, abandoned factory building as his base, which was just a few blocks from where I lived. I teleported Blaze and I to the expanse of waste ground on which the factory stood. In the unnaturally dark sky above the warehouse, a massive hole was forming and growing like a huge tornado might, swirling around and swallowing the sky as it sucked everything into it.
With horror, I watched a gigantic black tentacle extend its way out of the center of the maelstrom, dropping down like a giant worm. Then there was a massive roaring sound which came out of the portal, a sound that chilled me to the bone and made me feel insignificantly small and afraid like a child happening upon an angry giant. It was the sound of coming doom, the sound of Rloth’s approach; and contained within that roar was the promise of the unimaginable power that would soon be unleashed. A form of darkness so deep and all-consuming that no one who witnessed it ever lived to tell about it. Rloth is a being of pure destruction, spawned in a place that no mortal mind could ever fully conceive without utterly going mad in the process.
Mad like Mr. Black.
"Dear God," I said, staring up into the churning black sky. Even Blaze whimpered when he heard Rloth’s unearthly roar.
Suddenly my mission to stop all this from happening seemed utterly pointless. In the face of such monumentally insane odds, I felt like sitting on the nearest pile of bricks and waiting for the world to end, along with everyone else. I couldn’t conceive of anything stopping that thing from coming through to this world, not even if I managed to stop Mr. Black first.
As if to emphasize that doomed feeling in the pit of my stomach, Rloth bellowed that petrifying sound again, rattling me to my very bones. As the roar went on longer this time, it froze me to the spot, and all I could do was gaze up in horror at that gargantuan black tentacle slithering further out of the portal. The thing was mesmerizing in its size and otherworldly darkness. I had seen plenty of things in my lifetime that made me freeze with fear or sick with horror, but this thing above me was beyond comprehension, and thus it scrambled my brain just loo
king at it. God knows what everyone else was thinking as they saw it.
Speaking of everyone else, I had no doubt the city was in a state of terror as electrical energy got discharged from the portal and arced across the sky in thick reddish forks, striking some of the taller buildings in the city, exploding bricks and shattering glass. At the same time it seemed to knock out most of the power in the city, bringing on a total blackout just to add to the devastation. Also, while this was happening, a constant chorus of screaming could be heard as the city’s inhabitants no doubt ran around in a blind panic, probably thinking they were all going to die horribly. Which they most assuredly would, if I didn’t manage to stop Mr. Black.
It was only Blaze barking beside me that pulled me out of my trance-like state. He was standing just in front of me, looking toward the old factory in the center of the waste ground. When I followed Blaze’s line of sight, I saw a dark form that seemed to be hovering over the top of the factory. As I looked harder, I saw the form wasn’t hovering, but growing from within the factory itself. A huge, black mass on which stood a tall figure that could have been the silhouette of a demon with horns pointing out the side of its head. Only I knew it wasn’t a demon, but Mr. Black. He had transformed himself, become the physical representation of the darkness that lay within his soul.
That bastard is the cause of everything, I thought, as anger surged through me. Even if there was no stopping Rloth, I could still try to put an end to Mr. Black once and for all.
What did I have to lose anyhow?
Nothing, at that point.
Placing a hand on Blaze’s head, I teleported us both inside the lair of Mr. Black.
51
Grasping Hands
THE INSIDE OF the factory was warm and sickening in its suffocating humidity, which was entirely down to the thick, pitch black tar like substance that covered every wall and ceiling. The stinking, glistening residue of Mr. Black's dark magic, the same residue that covered Hans Belger's tower at the Devil's Playground. The continually undulating, shifting substance also gave off a stink that was stomach churning in its intensity. As soon as I entered the broken front doors of the old factory, the stench from inside seemed to jump straight down my throat to make a grab for my guts, churning them up until I had no choice but to vomit.