Chance Damnation

by DeAnna Knippling

  Theodore chuckled.

  “I know, right?” Aloysius said.

  The wall behind them was collapsing toward them, individual chunks of clay in the wall seeming to push toward them in a hypnotizing ripple effect.

  “Wake up, Aloysius.” Sebastian punched him in the shoulder. “We’re going to be slow going up that hill. We need to get ahead of the wall.”

  Aloysius was about ready to let the wall catch up to him and push him up the hill.

  “All right,” he said.

  They ran down the tunnel, hit the upslope, and started crawling.

  Chapter 35

  Jerome watched the demon from behind the pile of junk and waited. The demon charged the nearest junk pile (not Jerome’s) and snuffled around it, then moved to the next pile.

  Whatever he’d just picked up had cut him, and blood was dripping down his hand. The demon would find him eventually even if he wasn’t bleeding; he hadn’t washed for days. Or however long it had been. With Celeste Marie involved, it was difficult to say whether anything was what it seemed.

  He glanced down. He was holding another piece of metal with the three blades on it, by one of the blades this time. He was lucky not to be covered in cuts; the things were all over the stack of junk in front of him.

  He changed his grip so the blades were pointing out. The blades were long enough and sharp enough, he thought.

  The demon came closer, stopped in front of Jerome’s junk pile, and took a deep whiff. “There you are.” The demon circled toward the wall. Jerome drew back the blades. His arm was shaking, but he didn’t think his aim would fail because of it.

  The demon saw him and snorted. As it reached for him, Jerome threw the blades like a baseball. His aim was true.

  The demon howled and fell back, and Jerome picked up another blade. The demon pulled the blades off his face: they had, unfortunately, turned slightly as they flew (as he had anticipated, but he couldn’t throw the blades as hard if he was holding them by the cutting edge), and had mostly struck the bony ridge above the demon’s eye. The flat part had struck the demon’s eye solidly, however, and between being struck directly in the eye and the blood running into it, the demon was half blind.

  Again, Jerome’s aim was true. But this time, he didn’t have a chance to adjust his grip, and the junk struck the demon on the flat side on the ridge above its other eye and bounced away harmlessly. But it kept the demon distracted, and Jerome wiped his hand on his pants and threw again. This time, the demon batted the blades away with the back of its hand. He stumbled forward, and Jerome had to retreat a few steps backward, skipping over the junk, to the narrowest part of the gap between the wall and the junk.

  He threw again, and the demon turned his head, getting the blades stuck in his ear-chains. He roared, which Jerome thought was foolish. If his ears were that easy to hurt, maybe he shouldn’t have stuck so many chains in them.

  The demon reached into the pile of junk and shoved a heap of it toward Jerome. Jerome screamed as the blades came toward him, falling backward. He was somewhat successful, but his boots were trapped under a heavy bar. The demon shoved again, and more junk toppled toward him. He still couldn’t pull his boots out. Well, at least he was going to die giving Celeste Marie a few minutes of peace before the demon hurt her again. The junk toppled toward him, the blades cascading loosely over him as the heavier bars fell toward his head. He screamed again, all the rage in his body lashing out at the demon’s eardrums. It was all he could do.

  His scream cut off abruptly as something heavy landed on his chest and knocked the wind out of him.

  Before he could take another breath, the demon was on the other side of the mound, poking the top of his head. Jerome held his breath, let the demon flop his head to the side, and stared sightlessly beyond the demon with his tongue dangling out of his mouth. It had worked on Peggy numerous times.

  The demon grunted in satisfaction and walked away.

  Jerome forced himself not to cough or gasp or struggle until he almost passed out from giving himself so little breath.

  He heard Celeste Marie scream, raspy and deep-voiced, almost like a man’s scream, but quieter. She must have been screaming a lot. Then the demon made a contented “huh” noise to itself and left.

  Jerome waited, taking shallow breaths and listening to Celeste Marie’s moans crackle in her throat. When he was reasonably certain the demon was far enough away that it wouldn’t hear too much noise, he started to work his way out of the junk pile.

  With a shrug of his ankles, he took off his boots and slithered out from under the bar on his legs. It felt like he’d been kicked in the shins by a lazy horse; from the way his legs moved, he didn’t think anything was broken. He’d probably have a dent in one of his shins or the other, though.

  He pushed the blades aside as best he could and slipped sideways from under the weight on his chest. If he got out of this alive, he knew that Peggy would do even worse, probably crushing him to death. But thinking about Peggy just reminded him of Liam, so instead he thought about how soon the demon might come back. As soon as he was out from under whatever had landed on his chest, it slid down further and pinched him on the waist. He turned and slid some more, getting pricked in the backside for his trouble.

  He gave up on his boots.

  It took longer than he expected, but he extricated himself from the pile of sharp-edged junk and stood up, brushing his hands across his pants. He was cuts and bruises and scratches all over, especially his hands, and his pants had two long, bloody smudges to show where he’d wiped his hands. He walked through the piles of junk and climbed up the short dais next to Celeste Marie’s cage and the machine.

  “Can you hear me?” he said.

  If she had looked dried out before, she looked almost like what was inside of a mummy now. Her skin had turned darker, with deep, jagged grooves in it. She was undeniably alive, still tossing back and forth, but he was running out of time.

  Jerome touched one of the shiny, gold-colored bars of the cage lightly, to see whether it would shock him to death. It didn’t. He put his arm through the bars and reached as far as he could, which turned out to be almost all the way through. If only his head were smaller, he could have gone into the cage with her.

  He could touch the hammock easily, but he couldn’t reach Celeste Marie. The hammock was soft and almost intangible, like the dripping elevators that had brought him down to this level. He stripped off his blackened socks (Peggy would beat him if she saw them, anyway) and tried to reach Celeste Marie with his stinking foot.

  He could reach her shoulder, anyway. With his toes, he crept his foot along her shoulder and up her neck until it was under her nose. If there was anything that could wake her up, the smell of his feet would do it.

  She moaned and rolled over but didn’t wake. He wondered what nightmare his foot had just introduced into the world.

  He pulled his foot back and worked himself out from between the cage bars. The door of the cage was locked with a kind of lock that (not surprisingly) he didn’t recognize and couldn’t get open. Next he looked at the machine.

  It was full of dials, which were indented in the middle and ridged on the outside like gears, so the demons’ big fingers wouldn’t slip. Jerome looked at his ragged-ended, dirty hands and wondered whether the demons were amazed at the delicacy of human hands, how easily they could manipulate delicate objects. Probably not. After all, he wasn’t walking around, admiring the demons’ ears, how big they were, how admirably suited they were to flicking away flies and dangling with extra gold chain.

  Jerome took the biggest dial and turned it the smallest amount he could manage; the dial had more resistance than he was used to, and it spun almost a quarter-turn. Celeste Marie screamed. Jerome quickly tried to turn the dial back, overshot the mark, and she screamed again. With both hands, he slowly returned the dial to where it had been, and Celeste Marie sobbed. Not that one.

  Not any of them. Any one of them might kill her.


  He was going to have to force the demons to let her go.

  How, he didn’t know. Pain? Threat of death? He considered the ways in which other people had forced him to do things, but they were mostly based on the threat of Liam’s displeasure. Or the honest displeasure of any of his family, really. He didn’t mind annoying them, but to actually disappoint them would have been heart-rending. Except where Celeste Marie was concerned; he was right and they were foolishly wrong, and that was all there was to it.

  He didn’t know how the demons felt about their families, but inflicting pain on a family member was also an option. Maybe he could hide and watch the demon torture Celeste Marie some more, until he got a feel for it.

  No, he decided, even if there was any wisdom to it, Celeste Marie was in such bad shape that he couldn’t risk such a dirty trick.

  He was still trying to make up his mind—he’d almost talked himself into risking the machine again—when the demon Granata reappeared out of nowhere, on the platform next to him, right on top of his abandoned socks.

  The demon had just died, by the look of it, that is, he wasn’t breathing and was still leaking blood from several bullet holes, one of which had gone straight into the eye that Jerome had partially blinded.

  Something flashed out of the corner of his eye, and Jerome looked up. Something had changed on the machine’s control panel, but he couldn’t tell what it was for a second. Then he saw that a yellow light had turned blue and was flashing.

  In the cage, Celeste Marie started humming. He looked over at her and saw that the bars of the cage were glowing. He reached toward one and had to pull his hand away before he touched the bar; it was too hot. The hammock was rocking back and forth, and Celeste Marie was visibly getting worse. Her hair was falling out. Her fingers went from mummy fingers to almost bare bones.

  The demon brushed his leg, and Jerome almost jumped out of his pants. Its wounds were healing, the eye reforming.

  Jerome jumped over the demon and flipped, turned, and slapped all the buttons. It didn’t do any good, and just made Celeste Marie shriek out her tune at the top of her voice, which didn’t amount to much.

  The demon sat up and shoved Jerome aside. Jerome fell off the dais and into a (thankfully, not sharp) pile of junk. The demon worked at the panel for half a minute, then turned toward Jerome and bellowed at him.

  Jerome fled.

  Chapter 36

  Sebastian was slowing them down.

  “You okay?” Aloysius pulled the light out of his shirt pocket and squashed it between his fingers. “We’ll drag you if we have to.”

  Sebastian’s face was pale, but not startlingly so. Aloysius had only seen one guy die of blood loss in the Army (bad accident at training camp; it was always ironic when a boy died before he’d seen combat, or so the Sergeant had said), and the color of his face had been unmistakable. Sebastian wasn’t that pale, and he still had a facial expression, still looked aware of his surroundings.

  “Knock it off!” Sebastian shouted, holding his arm up in front of his face. “You’re ruining my night vision.”

  “You take the light, then,” Aloysius said.

  Sebastian resumed crawling, Theodore now behind him, ready to catch him if he fell.

  “You don’t want to talk about it, keep a stiff upper lip, fine.” Aloysius put the light back in his shirt pocket. “Just keep in mind that we’re not leaving you behind. And if you deliberately roll down the hill and throw yourself into that wall because you don’t have the strength to keep going, God help you, because I will roll right down after you and kick you all the way to Hell.”

  “Ha, ha,” Sebastian said.

  It was the kind of thing that Aloysius had said to him all the time as a kid, after all. And Aloysius, while he’d never been gentle as an older brother, had never actually done any serious damage. Sebastian had always been more easily made to toe the line using threat of embarrassment, anyway.

  Sebastian passed him going up the hill, and Aloysius and Theodore followed.

  The wall was still behind them. They could hear it moving toward them with a hiss like wet snow on dry leaves. Halloween snow. They had some time before they would find out whether they could make it to the top of the slope or get swallowed up by whatever was happening behind them.

  Aloysius risked a quick look behind, using the light: it was close.

  “I told you to stop it!” Sebastian shouted.

  “Keep moving or I’ll pinch you on the cheek.” He put the light away before he could let himself get tempted to look again. He crawled a little faster and passed Sebastian, elbowing him as he passed. Sebastian shoved him and slipped a little.

  “Oops,” Aloysius said.

  “I hate you.”

  “Almost there.”

  Finally, they pushed over the edge and took a few deep breaths.

  Aloysius looked behind them. “Shit.” The wall was almost directly behind them. They hustled forward, slapping each other on the arm, nagging, spitting at each other’s feet to keep their legs moving forward.

  Ahead of them, light was flickering, and they could all smell the smoke.

  “Hell,” Aloysius said.

  Sebastian muttered, “You’re probably right.”

  But the wall was coming up behind them. What else could they do? Aloysius came across a loose rock on the floor and threw it into the wall, not ten feet behind them. The rock disappeared without a sound or a ripple, and the wall seemed to move faster toward them.

  “Try to stay down,” Theodore said.

  Aloysius hunched over as he scuttled forward and got a cleaner breath of air. He hadn’t realized that he was taking in so much smoke; his head swam with the extra air for a second, then cleared.

  The air was sizzling hot, hot enough to curl the hair on his arms. Aloysius looked at Sebastian, wondering whether he would run forward into death or backward into—something. Which would be the more painful?

  Well, if he ran forward into the fire, he’d at least have the hope of whipping up the back stairs and outside before the demons could catch him. They thought the humans were all dead, after all; they had a chance.

  Then Theodore fell.

  Aloysius heard the thump, looked back, and watched the wall swallow up his brother. He was gone.

  Aloysius and Sebastian ran faster, erupting into the burning basement like two circus performers out of a cannon, hitting the opposite wall with a double smack.

  Aloysius jerked Sebastian down to the ground and started crawling toward the back stairs.

  Sebastian coughed, “Good thing Theodore didn’t see this.” Aloysius looked back and saw Maeve lying on the pile of dead, her throat slashed across twice and her dress covered in blood. Nick was right next to her. Connor, a hole in his chest and another double slash across his throat—how had they made the cuts so neatly parallel?—was a few bodies away.

  The bodies weren’t burning so well, but the ceiling was a black cloud of smoke with flames leaping out of it. The walls were burning in places, and the heat was a heavy weight that crushed him to the floor. Aloysius had the feeling that if he tried to lick his lips, his face would have split apart and gone up in flames.

  Aloysius kept crawling, pulling ahead of Sebastian. He couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the fire but thought he did and looked over his shoulder.

  The moving wall had passed over Sebastian and most of the pile of bodies. Aloysius kept crawling; he couldn’t seem to help himself. He touched the bottom stair, which was carpeted with green plastic turf, and the wall closed over his boot. He didn’t feel a thing.

  Aloysius gasped and a rough hand clapped over his mouth. He felt himself being dragged. He caught a glimpse of Theodore’s shirt and went limp.

  It was dim, hardly as dark as the tunnels had been. He was being dragged across slippery linoleum, and there was ceiling tile overhead. He was dragged through a doorway and recognized the kitchen of the Fort Thompson church around him by the cupboards; he’d sneak
ed down here often enough with Honey, either to steal food or kisses.

  Theodore’s face appeared in his field of view, his finger crossing his lips but no sound coming out. Aloysius nodded, and the hand came off his mouth. Aloysius sat up. Sebastian was next to him with his mouth open, staring out the serving window.

  The Maeve-demon was walking across the other side. She looked inside at them as if she didn’t see them, then walked into the pantry. Theodore followed her, and then Sebastian and Aloysius.

  Aloysius shut the pantry door behind him. The room was lit by a single bulb and was renowned among the local kids for being a haven for big, fat, nasty spiders. It was true that the place was dusty.

  Theodore wrapped his arms around the Maeve demon and kissed her. It was hard to watch. Sebastian turned away, clearly disgusted, but Aloysius forced his face to stay blank (which was probably as obvious as Sebastian’s reaction, as he came to think about it). Aloysius had never seen Theodore act the same way with the real Maeve, who, Aloysius had to admit, had never struck him as being anything other than a practical, businesslike woman. No wonder they’d never had kids.

  “You were dead,” Sebastian said. “Granata sent some kind of bomb that burnt everyone to death and piled them up in the basement. You tried to help save us. Theodore shot down Granata, and we ran off. When we returned, you were dead. Two slices across the throat.”

  Maeve came up for air and said, “He can do that.”

  “What?”

  “If he dies. He’s got things set up back home so that if he dies, the world-story returns to a place, a time, something. He starts over.”

  Theodore kissed her again.

  Aloysius saw her tongue against his, and his stomach flopped. “What are we going to do?”

  They all stared at him, and he sighed.

  “Well, first we need to find out how much time we have. Has the massacre started yet?”

  Maeve nodded, her head falling forward to her chest and staying there.