Chance Damnation

by DeAnna Knippling

  Aloysius opened the door slowly and peeked out. He didn’t see any other demons. He edged half his face around the corner and saw Tekawitha, lying in blood, under the phone. A few steps showed him that the Bible study group had been mowed down at the far end of the room, and the machine was there again for the taking.

  There was something in the middle of the room, next to the tunnel. Not coming out of the tunnel, exactly, but looking like the ghost of a small boy coming out of a ghostly tunnel in a slightly different spot, a foot or two to the side.

  “Jerome?” he said.

  The ghost looked at him.

  “Jerome? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

  The others were standing behind him now.

  “What—” Sebastian started to say, then grunted, probably as Theodore poked him in the ribs.

  “Aloysius?” the ghost whispered.

  Aloysius walked toward the ghost. With every step, the ghost became not more solid, but more colorful. Still translucent. The boy reached out and brushed fingertips with Aloysius. It was like touching a corpse, solid but cold. Aloysius grabbed onto the boy’s hand and tried to pull him closer.

  Jerome shook his hand off and stepped back, turning pale again. “I can’t go out there. I’ll lose the tunnel to Celeste Marie.”

  “You found her?”

  Jerome looked at Aloysius as if he were stupid, which wasn’t too far off the mark. “Yeah.”

  Aloysius looked back at Theodore and Maeve and Sebastian.

  Maeve said, “The galuk can change it back and make it so it never happened.”

  “Granata doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to give up that easy,” Aloysius said.

  “If he doesn’t have, that is…” Maeve looked toward Theodore and Sebastian. “I don’t think he’ll be able to convince anyone on your side to make the same mistakes again. If you get her back, it’s over.”

  Aloysius looked at Sebastian and knew. “You bastard.”

  The taped-together Bible fell out of Sebastian’s hand.

  Theodore looked at the Bible on the ground and said, “What did you do?”

  Sebastian opened his mouth, and Theodore punched him. Sebastian fell backwards onto the linoleum and lay still.

  Theodore said, “Damn it,” and picked up Sebastian in his arms, flopped him around, and tossed him over his shoulder. He kissed Maeve on her cheek.

  She said, “I’ll never see you again.”

  Aloysius realized he’d gotten used to seeing the expressions on the demons’ faces, because it sure looked odd seeing Maeve without one.

  Theodore said, “You will. I’ll find you. Might take a while.”

  She nodded. He kissed her again. Aloysius turned away.

  “Can you take us with you?” he asked Jerome.

  “Probably. Jerome reached out his hand. Aloysius took it in his, then reached back and grabbed Sebastian’s leg.

  Jerome backed into the tunnel, which became darker with every step.

  Chapter 37

  “I think you can let go now,” Jerome said.

  Aloysius couldn’t see the nose in front of his face, but when he looked back, he could barely see Theodore’s silhouette behind him. “We should have taken the digging machine.”

  Jerome paused. “Do you think we should go back for it?”

  Aloysius was tempted. “How much sneaking around do we have to do?”

  Jerome sighed. “Probably a lot. This group of demons isn’t that big, but there’s another group of them that’s a lot bigger, and we don’t want them to follow us around.”

  Aloysius smiled at the sound of Jerome’s voice sounding like a pennywhistle, thin and a little shrill when he tried to talk louder than normal, piping out such adult-sounding statements, calm and more rational than most of his siblings would ever be.

  “Fair enough. We leave it,” Aloysius said. He let go of Sebastian’s leg, squeezed Jerome’s hand, and let go. “I’m proud of you, Jerome. You’ve done a lot better than we have.”

  Jerome didn’t say anything, probably because Aloysius’s pride in him didn’t mean much. Not that Aloysius thought Jerome didn’t love him, but it wasn’t in Jerome’s nature to care much what other people thought of him: he was going to do what he was going to do, regardless.

  “Are you in love with that demon?” Jerome asked. “I saw you holding hands with her and kissing her goodbye.”

  Theodore made an embarrassed noise.

  “I just wondered,” Jerome said.

  Jerome held his hand out, and Aloysius ran into it and stopped. “Careful,” Jerome said. Aloysius stuck out a foot and felt the edge of the slope.

  “What are we going to do with Sebastian?” Aloysius asked. “Roll him downhill?”

  “Sure,” Theodore said.

  “He might break something.”

  Theodore grunted, and Aloysius heard him put Sebastian on the ground. Aloysius reached into his pocket and felt around for the light-ball, but it was gone. But Jerome had one and lit it. It glowed under his chin with a steady blue light.

  Aloysius and Theodore knelt over Sebastian.

  “Try shaking him,” he told Theodore.

  Theodore pinched Sebastian hard between the nostrils, and Sebastian yelled and sat up.

  “I’ll have to remember that one,” Aloysius said.

  “Can’t carry you anymore,” Theodore said. “Aloysius won’t let me roll you down.”

  Sebastian looked around. “Where’s my Bible?”

  Every muscle in Theodore’s face clenched; he looked like a horse giving birth. “What did you do to that Bible? Satan’s work?”

  Sebastian stared at his fingernails. “I didn’t think I was doing Satan’s work. But maybe I was. I...wrote in it. Spells.”

  “You ain’t supposed to write anything in the Bible but your family.”

  “I know. I’ll destroy it.”

  Theodore cuffed him on the side of the head. “Destroy a Bible?”

  “Then I’ll lock it up and give you the key. You take it.”

  Theodore nodded. “We find that Bible, you give it to Aloysius.”

  “Me?” What the hell did he want that kind of temptation around for? “I’ll just read it.”

  Theodore nodded. “But you won’t use it.”

  “I might be tempted.”

  “But you won’t.”

  Aloysius shrugged. “I don’t want it.”

  “I’d use it to get Maeve back.”

  “Oh. Well, let’s go.”

  The four of them started scooting down the hill. Jerome put his light out. Aloysius found the darkness particularly hard to bear and found himself rattling off his mouth, without any thought to what he was saying.

  “You know what I want to know?” Nobody answered him. They’d all been around him long enough to recognize the signs of an incipient rhetorical question. “I want to know how all of this got started. From what Maeve was saying, it sounds like Sebastian did something that let them come here. But then again, now that I think about it, somebody said, I can’t remember whether it was you, Sebastian, or Father Dennis, that it was something that had been passed around for a long time, among the priests. The novices. The seminarians. Whatever. There was this connection between us and them, and you knew about it, that is, you at the seminary knew about it. Maybe it’s the whole Catholic Church. Whew, I don’t know if I wanted to have that thought cross my mind.”

  He wasn’t sure how long his brothers were going to be able to put up with him, but he couldn’t seem to be able to make himself stop.

  “Anyway, I don’t know if I can lay the whole blame on you, Sebastian.”

  From behind him, Sebastian said, “Yes, you can.”

  Aloysius suddenly noticed that his pants weren’t as torn up as they had been a few minutes ago, before the wall had passed over him.

  “Well, maybe in this case we can. But I’m sure that this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that people with the same knowledge that you have, and
we know that other people have this knowledge, will do the same thing. What did you do, anyway?”

  “I summoned them here.”

  “Well, all right,” Aloysius said.

  “Don’t you understand? I summoned them here!” Sebastian shouted.

  “Well, I might not understand, but I certainly can hear you,” Aloysius replied.

  “It’s all my fault!”

  “Look, you,” Aloysius said. “I don’t know what they teach you in priest school, to beat your breast when you’ve screwed up, but Jesus God Almighty, Sebastian, I won’t stand to hear you go on about what a terrible man you are, how you need to go to hell, how it’s all your fault, and so on and so on. I’ve seen you smirk at me through one too many beatings to be able to believe it. Anybody gets to go on and on here, it’s me. Or maybe Theodore. Theodore? You want to take over this conversation?”

  “No, sir,” Theodore said.

  “Thank you. Jerome?”

  “I have something to say,” Jerome said.

  “Very well, you may say it,” Aloysius said graciously. He was about worried enough to lay down flat and just roll down the hill till he hit bottom. There wasn’t grass or anything to slow him down; he’d probably work up quite the speed. He wondered whether a pan would slide down the hill, if he waxed up the bottom first.

  “I don’t want to be a priest anymore,” Sebastian howled through his teeth, as if he was trying to keep his voice sounding calm.

  “Don’t interrupt. Jerome?”

  “God’s will moved you to become a priest in the first place. If you had sin in your heart when you decided to become a priest, well, God didn’t mind. He decided He needed you, and that was that. He will do with you whatever He wants. He doesn’t care what you think about it. All paths do go to God.”

  Sebastian choked up and cried quietly to himself; Aloysius could tell from the way he breathed. “You’re the one who should be a priest,” he said finally.

  “I already have another job.”

  They climbed downhill some more.

  “Besides,” Jerome said slowly, “I would rather say confession to somebody I know has messed up more than me. If God can forgive you, Sebastian, He can forgive just about anybody.”

  Aloysius cracked up. He couldn’t help it. He laughed, more or less quietly, until they reached the bottom of the slope. It was better than running his mouth off the entire time, he supposed.

  Then Jerome hushed him, very seriously. “I thought of something else. Sebastian, whatever you remember out of that book, I want you to use it to help me get Celeste Marie free. I don’t care what you think about it. If you want me to forgive you, you better do your share.”

  Sebastian didn’t answer. Jerome brought out the light, and Sebastian nodded.

  Jerome glared at Aloysius. “And shut up, you.”

  Aloysius giggled.

  Chapter 38

  They reached the room through which the machine had tunneled.

  Jerome took out the light, lit it, and said, “Stop.”

  They stopped. Jerome looked back and forth among the doors. As far as Aloysius could tell, it looked the same way it had before: six doors, neatly stacked rubble.

  “Take the leftmost one, like I taught you,” Sebastian said.

  Jerome pointed at the third door. “It takes too long. That one is faster.”

  “Are you sure?” Aloysius asked.

  “I’ve been down here a long time.”

  The third door seemed identical to the others, as far as Aloysius could tell. No signs or markings to indicate which door went where, anyway. But if Jerome said he knew where he was going, he knew, or was so reasonably certain that it made no difference as far as Aloysius was concerned.

  Aloysius was known to get lost a time or two, especially when travelling in a new area. He didn’t dare go hunting on new land all by himself. He’d been separated from a group of bow hunters out in the Black Hills once—

  Jerome put out the light and said, “This way,” and Aloysius had to actually pay attention in order to follow him, he was so quiet.

  Jerome led them through the corridors for another ten minutes, taking lefts, rights, and forwards without hesitation or light.

  “I’m going to stop now,” he said. Aloysius stopped. Jerome put on the light.

  They were standing in front of a door. Jerome bent over (the shadows around them moved) and brushed his hand against something at the base of the door, then kicked it.

  “It’s stuck,” he said. “Would you push this lever down?”

  Theodore bent over, touched it with his fingers, and used the tip of his boot to press down a half-hidden switch near the base of the door. Then Jerome jumped on the groove in the floor, launching himself up to the upper grip. The door opened.

  Aloysius looked inside and saw a hole in the floor, black as night. “Good thing we didn’t fall into one of those before.”

  Jerome said, “Stand right there.”

  “On the hole.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No,” Aloysius said. Sebastian shook his head.

  Theodore shrugged, took a step forward, and sank, slowly, from view. The black hole in the floor seemed to sink under him and stretch.

  “Don’t go out,” Jerome said. “Just wait there for me.”

  Theodore nodded. Suddenly, he slid out of view and the blackness closed over his head, returning to lie flush with floor level.

  “Ugh,” Sebastian said.

  “Who’s next?”

  Aloysius said, “Hell. If that’s all it does, I’ll go.” He jumped into the middle of the black patch and sank even faster than Theodore had done. He tried to touch the stuff as it slid past him but found that his arms were pinned close to his sides. He wriggled his fingers and felt something go by that felt like the inside of his cheek, only not as wet. Then the stuff dropped him on a solid plate of what looked like tile. A hand grabbed him and pulled him to the side as he was reaching over his head, trying to feel the stuff above him.

  He and Theodore stood side by side and waited.

  Aloysius found a hangnail and chewed on it. “Maybe I should have made Sebastian go first.”

  They waited.

  Finally, someone else dripped out of the ceiling. Jerome said, “Let’s go.”

  “What about Sebastian?”

  “He’s a big baby,” Jerome said. “I told him we were going to leave without him. So let’s go.”

  “Give him a minute.”

  “Who’s in charge here, you or me?”

  “You’re in charge until you try to do some bonehead thing like leave your brother behind.”

  “You spoiled him rotten,” Jerome announced. “If you stuck to your word, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.”

  Which was probably true, although Aloysius was sure that Liam would have to hold up a greater share of the blamed than he would. “Nevertheless,” Aloysius said.

  They were prevented from further arguing by Sebastian dripping from the ceiling. He stumbled and fell when the stuff dropped him.

  “Don’t leave,” he said.

  “Come on, you big baby,” Jerome said. “We still have another level to go.”

  “Another one?”

  Jerome led them into the corridor and did the trick with the door again. “There’s probably an easier way to do this, but I haven’t had time to figure it out.”

  Aloysius went first this time, and spent a few moments bumbling around in the room—which felt oddly rounded—until he found another lamp and another bead of light. He pressed it between his fingers and watched Sebastian stumble again.

  Sebastian moaned and lay there.

  “You better move,” Aloysius said from the other side of the room, but it was too late. Jerome dripped down and landed on Sebastian’s stomach.

  “I told you to get out of the way,” Jerome said. “Roll over. Theodore’s on his way.”

  Sebastian rolled out of the way barely in time. Theodore la
nded with two quick snaps of his boots.

  “Lights out and shut up,” Jerome said. “We’re pretty close. Open the door, please,” he told Theodore.

  The door opened onto blindingly bright lights in the hallway. Theodore yelped and thrashed as dark shapes dragged him out of the doorway. Aloysius stepped back, blinking. The shapes—demons—grabbed Sebastian and Jerome as Aloysius faded backward into the shadow, then bent behind some cushions.

  A demon stepped inside the room, looked around, and backed out, closing the door behind it.

  Aloysius cursed under his breath. He stumbled through the dark (forgetting he had a light bead again) until he reached the door. He pressed his ear to the door, but it was too thick for him to hear anything clearly, and too well hung for light to come from underneath, either. He unlatched the door and pulled it toward him a crack.

  The light wasn’t as intolerable this time, and he was able to see that the immediate corridor, orange and rounded, was clear. He opened the door further and looked around. The demons were gone behind a turn of the oddly-meandering corridor, but there was a scratch all along one wall, with bits of plaster or whatever they’d used to make the walls on the floor. He followed the trail, such as it was.

  Aloysius followed the corridor until he reached a turnoff, then followed the turnoff and the scuff marks along the floor. He figured it was Theodore doing the work; neither of the others were strong enough to almost get away, damaging the floor and walls. Down the turnoff, he heard the sound of hooves; he was getting closer, although they must be moving along at a good clip.

  He trotted along, trying to be quiet, until he saw the tail end of two demons. These demons were a soft gray color, almost blue, and wore steel plates, one across the upper back down to where he guessed the kidneys would be, and another across the hips and hamstrings.

  There were six demons altogether, two in the back with steel axes, two of them dragging Theodore in the middle, one with Sebastian, and one with Jerome. The two demons in front also held spears that seemed to be steel their whole length, but not so heavy.

  Aloysius whistled, and the demons stopped and turned. The two in the back charged toward him, while Theodore used the opportunity to grab one of the demon’s axes and chop it in its face. Aloysius walked slowly backward until he thought the two demons were close enough, then turned and ran headlong.