Deception of the Damned

by P C Darkcliff

Hrot thanked him and tucked in. So absorbed was he in the food that he didn’t even notice how dark the restaurant grew. Only when he had devoured everything in his reach did he realize that heavy rain pummeled the windows.

  “Filthy weather, huh?” the owner called from behind the bar. “It’s so moody and changeable here on the coast, just like my old lady was, the poor one.”

  The drenched windows groaned under the pressure of the violent wind. It was dark outside, as though the sun had set five hours earlier than it was supposed to. A car crawled past the restaurant. Its lights were on high beams and the windshield wipers flapped madly over the fogged glass.

  Hrot realized that his sleeping bag had to be soaked through. His tent wouldn’t be much drier: it had been leaking ever since he’d ripped it with a knife while trying to open a sea urchin. When he tilted his head, he could see one of Granja’s abandoned houses in the corner of the window. He decided he would not return to the beach.

  THE RAIN POURED DOWN the rest of the dark day, and it wouldn’t rest even when real night alighted on the coast and most people went to sleep. The tide roared in, and the gale added to the ocean’s awesome force. Colossal waves crashed into the rocks and spilled onto the sand with a furious hiss. Trash, palm leaves, and branches tossed madly in the berserk waters and rolled onto the shore. Water ran in wild streams along the streets and plummeted into bubbling sewers. But Hrot was safe from the elements.

  The house he’d found shelter in was old and crumbling. Most of the windows were broken, and cobwebs hung in filthy strands from the moldy ceiling. And yet it seemed to be a mansion in comparison to the hovel in which he’d grown up—and to which he’d condemned the woman he loved.

  The front door lock was broken, and the house had been obviously squatted before. Hrot had found a candle, two blankets, and several empty cans and bottles. However, the squatters’ footprints, which had once disturbed a thick layer of dust on the floor, were nearly buried under a new film of grit.

  Very little had been left behind by the owners, apart from a few pieces of furniture and several boxes full of clothes, tools, and utensils. On the second floor, though, Hrot found an old bed, and dozens of books heaped in a broken laundry basket. The book covers were rotting, and the pages were moldy and yellow, but they were a treasure that would distract him from the guilt and remorse that always crept at him at night.

  He lit the candle and lay on the bed with a hard-cover copy of Coelho’s O Alquimista. He got halfway through the novel, which was challenging in the original version, when he perceived a flash in the corner of his eye. When he lifted his head, he saw lights coming on in the house that stood across the street.

  “How strange,” he murmured as he blew out the candle. “I thought the other house was also abandoned!”

  Plaster and debris crunched under his feet in the dark as he crept to the nearest window to look outside. The light from the neighboring house showed him that the downpour had finally dwindled to a drizzle. The drenched street was quiet.

  A slender silhouette appeared in one of the neighboring windows. It had three conical heads. Recognizing the goddess Krverah, Hrot gasped for air. He took a few steps back when he saw her raise her hand and admonish him with her forefinger. Was she berating him for pushing Anath into the claws of the Emissary? But why had she waited four centuries to do so? What was she going to do to him?

  The lights went off, and the silhouette disappeared. A moment later, a triple growl skulked through the darkness of Hrot’s room. Hrot screamed and rushed to the staircase. He slipped at the top of the stairway, and he took the stairs head first. Disoriented, he staggered down another flight of steps and opened what he thought was the front door.

  The darkness he stepped into was nearly tangible. He stood there wondering why he couldn’t see any lights when he realized he’d just walked into the basement. Hrot cursed and ran back up. He found the real front door, pushed it open, and rushed past the overgrown garden and through the broken gate.

  The drizzle was over, and the night was silent. The neighboring house was dark again. Not a sound came from the house he’d just left, and he was starting to think he’d fallen asleep, and that the growling and the apparition had been nothing but a dream. A vague yet acute fear kept him from re-entering the house, however, and so he returned to his camp.

  His sleeping bag wasn’t on the shrub where he’d let it to air, and Hrot wondered how far the wind had blown it. To his surprise, the tent was still somewhat upright. A thick layer of wet sand covered the floor, but he was too tired to sweep it out.

  Hrot crawled in and reached for his backpack to find more clothes. He frowned when he saw the backpack was unzipped. He always made sure to close it before he left the tent. Perhaps he’d been in so much hurry to get to the restaurant that he’d forgotten? He went through the backpack and found that everything was there—except for his ten- inch folding knife.

  Hrot tried to remember when he’d last seen it. Two days ago, he’d used the knife to dislodge limpets from the rocks. Had he left it out there?

  Cursing his forgetfulness, Hrot covered himself with all the clothes he had in the backpack. They were all cold and damp. As he lay down on the wet sand, he decided to leave Granja before winter came.

  He would never dare to return to that house or any other house in the village, and camping in this weather was irksome. Besides, he was growing tired of the ocean and its whims. He was tired of being perpetually chilled, sticky, and itchy from saltwater, and the mere thought of seafood made him sick.

  As he was debating where to spend the winter, he thought he heard a noise outside. Hrot lifted his head and pricked his ears. A gust of wind occasionally ruffled the tent, but the night was quiet. The gentle hum of the ocean told him the tide was going out. He calmed down. It was probably just a seagull or a stray dog he had heard.

  The night grew a shade brighter when the moonlight finally conquered the clouds and streamed faintly through the tent’s roof. The pale light showed a black shadow on the canvas. Someone was right outside the tent.

  With his heart beating madly, he sat up, pulled up the zipper, and stuck his head out. He screamed when he saw Jasmin looming above him.

  Hrot recognized her instantly, even though she was the last person on earth he would expect to see. Jasmin was skinnier than he was, and her hair hung over her face in a damp mass as if she had just emerged from the ocean. But it was definitely her. She stared at him with a blank expression that made him wonder whether she was an avenging ghost.

  She held something in her hand. When he looked closer, Hrot realized it was his knife. He winced at the sight of the sharp blade. His fingers embraced her ankles as if they were a holy icon. He was about to beg her to forgive him when he noticed she was saying something.

  At first, he thought she was speaking to him, but then he realized she was talking to herself. He could understand only fragments of the low murmur: “ . . . before the same winter solstice, I swear to kill the traitor . . . I will be allowed to remain in my times . . . and to rest in peace . . . ”

  Hrot listened, the way a convict would listen to a judge handing out a death sentence. Again and again, she repeated the oath. The knife’s sharp point hovered inches above his head.

  I swear to kill the traitor . . . Understanding that Jasmin had made an oath to kill him in order to regain her life in her times, Hrot let go of her ankles. He knew the apparition of Krverah had not been a dream. It was the goddess’s will that his long and miserable life ended tonight. And it was his will as well. He would not beg, he would not resist. He would not try to parry a single stab.

  After all, this was what he’d been wishing for. Jasmin was back and alive. And dying at her feet was nothing but poetic justice.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A tremendous earthquake rattled the Emissary’s realm that winter solstice. The rotting earth burst and cracked. Trees crashed into the river, which ran reeking and steaming through a misty valley. When the ri
ver burst from its banks, its acid torrents devoured the tree stumps with a hiss. The worms and insects that crawled under the roots screeched when they got caught in the lethal flood.

  A sickly-yellow cloud rose from the river. Traveling across the filthy sky, it wallowed over the nearby amphitheater, where dozens of hogs butchered a throng of naked humans.

  Once the spectacle was over and the hogs had left, a troop of monsters rushed in to feast. They resembled large hyenas that had learned to walk on their hind legs. Their muscles knotted under their spotted skin as they tore mangled human flesh with their large, yellow fangs. Fighting and gorging, gorging and fighting, they soon reduced the remains to white bones.

  A legion of growling beetles rushed up from every crevice. They crawled over the cooling bones, chipped them with their powerful claws, and devoured them with their whiskered mouths.

  The Emissary laughed as he rode past on the back of his giant sow. He galloped along the river and into the heart of a rocky wasteland, where the mouth of a cavern grinned like a flesh wound.

  The muffled groaning and screaming of thousands of humans greeted them on entering the cave. The rubbery walls stretched under the hands of those who had been trapped behind them. Green slime oozed from the low ceiling and fell on the travelers’ heads, where it hissed and sizzled even long after they’d left the cavern behind.

  The giant sow tossed her head and grunted angrily as the Emissary led her to a bubbling morass. She squealed when she sank up to her knees into the steaming mire, but the rider’s poisonous tentacles made her plow on.

  A flock of gray, featherless birds came over screeching. The air turned dark under their wings as they circled the travelers and plunged on the sow’s head to peck out her eyes. They only disappeared when the Emissary roared and waved them away.

  The croaking of six-legged toads ushered them out of the marshland. The sun had burnt through the yellow cloud. The temperature rose as they reached the foot of a high mountain. The parched ground cracked. A cloud of dust followed them as they struggled up toward a tunnel that would lead them into the world of the living.

  AFTER TWO DAYS IN GRANJA, Jasmin was back in Porto. The sun had also returned to the city, after nearly two weeks of fog and rain. Shining with surprising strength for the last day of autumn, it drank thirstily from the puddles and the drenched leaves that mottled the streets.

  The downtown area resembled a giant beehive; it was as if the whole city had decided to leave their homes to do their Christmas shopping or bask in the nearly forgotten sunshine. English, French, Spanish, and other languages blended with Portuguese along the drying sidewalks. Crowds of foreign visitors who were lucky enough to already start their Christmas vacation strolled around the historical center and down to the River Douro.

  Jasmin also spent the whole day walking up and down the busy streets, trying not to look at the Clerigos Tower, which loomed above every other building. She knew the Emissary had arrived. She could feel his unclean presence in the air. Soon he would show his leering face, and she didn’t want to be alone when he did.

  Jasmin had been trailing behind a large group of Asian tourists, and when they disappeared into the fortress-like Se de Porto cathedral, she decided to follow two Spanish couples, who’d just come out. Across the cathedral plaza they went, and down a maze of medieval alleys that led to the river. The lane they took was increasingly steep, but a flight of stone steps occasionally facilitated the descent.

  Nobody else was around, and Jasmin felt vulnerable. Then she realized that not even the biggest throng could restrain the Emissary from doing whatever he pleased.

  Laundry hung from windows and balconies and flapped above their heads. An old woman in a dirty apron and worn-out slippers stood in one of the portals. She stared at the Spaniards as if they were the first tourists she’d ever seen. When they passed, her curious eyes flew to Jasmin, who walked just a few yards behind them.

  And another pair of eyes was watching Jasmin from behind. A pair of feet followed her every step.

  About halfway between the cathedral and the Douro, Jasmin involuntarily steered into an even narrower alley. The two couples kept walking down toward the river, but an unknown force dragged her forward between two rows of crumbling houses which she had never seen before—and which seemed to be utterly abandoned.

  Currents of negative energy scurried up and down the alley. The houses were low, and the view of the cloudless sky was broad. And yet, the midday sun had disappeared, and restless shadows alighted on the cobblestones. Wind pressed against rotten shutters, making them grunt. Drafts squealed in empty rooms above her head. The alley got narrower with every step until it became a mere slit between the decaying buildings, not much more than a yard wide.

  A shadow moved under a medieval arch that spanned the lane. The shadow was the Emissary.

  He knows about Hrot, Jasmin thought when she got close enough to see him sneer under his mustache. He knows, he knows, he knows!

  But he didn’t know everything.

  “I can’t wait to explore all your curves and holes,” the Emissary said by way of a greeting. “You can’t even imagine the new games I’ve thought of. You probably won’t like them, but nobody will ever care about what you think, for you are eternally damned.” The fiend stepped closer to her and licked his lips. “You failed. You are forever mine!”

  Jasmin took a step back, but her face was calm and composed, her eyes fierce and challenging. The Emissary stared at her for a while and then he lifted his eyes and looked over her head. “Where is he? Where is the wimp and traitor who’s been trailing behind you the whole day like a beaten dog?

  “Ah, here he comes!” the monster exclaimed when a hunched figure appeared down the lane. “Here’s the other damned.”

  The newcomer approached them with a lurching limp. It was Hrot, alive and unscathed.

  “Did you enjoy your three years as a free man, fluffy chin?” the Emissary asked with a leer. “Do you think it was worth the eternal tortures that are awaiting you?”

  Hrot said nothing. He looked much less scared than the Emissary had expected.

  The fiend scowled and turned back to Jasmin. “And you, you stupid weak bitch. You had him at your feet. You had that whore Krverah backing you. You even had a knife in your hand—and you weren’t able to stick it into his heart?”

  Jasmin looked him square in the eyes. “You really thought I was going to kill Hrot, didn’t you?” Her voice was nearly taunting. “But I only took that knife because I felt vulnerable on that dark beach. I didn’t even realize it was in my hand when I confronted him.”

  “But merely confronting him wasn’t part of the pact, was it now?” the Emissary sneered.

  “No, it wasn’t,” she said, and something like a smile played on her lips. She had been preparing for this for a year, and she was ready. “But neither was killing him.”

  “Of course it was!” the Emissary snapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’ve got the pact here.” She took the scroll of paper out of her pocket. “Read it.”

  “I don’t have to read it!” The Emissary shook with fury. “I’ve sealed it with my own blood. And I know it specifically stipulates you kill this wimp.”

  “Just read it one more time, carefully,” she insisted. “I’m telling you that the pact—or at least a part of it—is invalid. If your brain is half as big as your malice and arrogance, you’ll find out why.”

  The Emissary raised his hands and spread his fingers as if to strangle her. Then he tore the scroll out of her hand, broke the string, unfurled it, and read:

  I, Jasmin Bierce, swear a solemn oath to hunt down Hrot, the son of Lesana, before the next winter solstice. And before the same winter solstice, I swear to kill the traitor who has knowingly condemned me to a decade in the dreadful future. In exchange, I will be allowed to remain in my times unmolested until my natural death, and to rest in peace forever after, never to see the Emissary again. In case I
fail, I—along with Hrot himself—will become the property of the Emissary and will be forever subjected to him in his realm on the other side. May our blood serve as a seal of the pact.

  The Emissary lifted his head. “There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re mine. Both of you.”

  “No, we’re not,” Jasmin insisted. “There’s an erroneous element that makes the second part invalid. It also makes you lose your power over us forever.”

  A peal of victorious laughter rang above their heads. It seemed to come from three different mouths. The Emissary’s angry eyes scanned the surrounding buildings before alighting back on Jasmin. “Explain yourself!”

  “Look!” She snatched the scroll out of his hand and pointed to the second sentence. “Here it says, ‘I swear to kill the traitor who has knowingly condemned me to a decade in the dreadful future.’

  “So what?” the Emissary growled. He wasn’t smirking anymore. His eyes had grown bewildered, and perhaps a little scared. A deep growl escaped through his lips when he noticed that even Hrot was grinning.

  “Hrot has never even suspected he came from the future,” Jasmin explained. “On the contrary, he has always thought he was a primeval tribesman. When you sent me through the portal to his times, he genuinely believed that you sent me a bunch of centuries to the past. That means that the adverb ‘knowingly’ makes the second stipulation void.”

  The veins on the Emissary’s face turned purple. His eyes glistened with murder. A triple laughter rushed down the lane like a mocking wind.

  “I have found Hrot, as stipulated in the first sentence,” Jasmin continued. “And the rest of the pact is invalid. Nobody has knowingly condemned me to a decade in the future; hence, there’s nobody to kill. And if someone has to be destroyed, it is you, as you knew all along where your magic and treacheries were going to land me.”

  “You cunt!” the Emissary roared. He wanted to leap at her and rip her to pieces, but something restrained him. It was as if his blood, some of which he had so foolishly used to seal the botched pact, had frozen in his veins and paralyzed him. He had lost.