A Friend of the Devil

by David Beers

  And as if hearing her, it looked up to her spot in the air … and smiled again. The possum’s head flashed through Emi’s mind, small strings of flesh dripping from its toothy grin.

  The creature reached under the woman’s arms and lifted her, the strength it possessed unlike anything Emi had ever witnessed. It lifted her up, no strain across its face. Once the creature’s arms were fully extended, it paused, checking the distance between the woman and the meat hook, then it sort of tossed her up a bit—just enough so that it could take hold of her waist.

  No, Emi thought. No, no, no. Don’t make me watch this. Please.

  The woman’s chest was level with the meat hook, and Emi watched as the creature stood on its toes, and then with Herculean strength, swung the woman forward.

  Emi didn’t know how it was possible … the amount of force alone, especially from the creature’s vantage point—it simply couldn’t be mustered. The hook shouldn’t have gone through, muscle and then bone stopping it. Yet, she watched the hook plunge through the woman’s back as if she no more than a fish gill. It took only a moment, but the hook burst through the other side—its previously gleaming metal now coated and dripping with blood.

  The woman’s eyes opened slightly, but her mouth opened fully. Blood spouted from it like a fountain. The dark red liquid rained down on the creature, hitting its face and rolling down its body. The woman started making a loud sucking sound, but just for a second or two. More blood filled her throat and spilled from her mouth, not spouting this time but rolling down her chin in a gush.

  The creature stood still, watching.

  The woman’s limbs shook and trembled. More dark blood poured out, coating the hook.

  The sucking sound returned, sounding wet and bubbly, persisting for another minute or so—and then finally, blessedly, she was silent and still.

  The creature beneath never moved, only watched in grave silence, covered in blood.

  Even after the woman expired, the creature remained for another few minutes. To Emi, it looked like a robot whose power source had died. She wasn’t even sure it blinked. Only the slight up and down movement of the creature’s chest gave any indication that it lived at all.

  Finally it turned and stared at Emi. Its face was lax, no smile, no anger. Simply uncaring. The moon was the only light in the slaughterhouse, and in it, the creature wearing Demsworth looked almost black. As if coated by oil, instead of the blood that had drained from the woman.

  The creature stared for a few moments … and then it smiled again. Its lips curling back and revealing white teeth, things that looked like pearls in the surrounding black mess.

  A drop of blood fell from its top lip onto its upper front tooth.

  The creature stood like that for another few seconds …

  And then, it turned toward the man still lying on the concrete.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “That is your great-grandfather.”

  Abel was dreaming, or if not exactly, then something very, very close to it.

  Usually the dead pulled him here, pulled and pulled while he fought it. This time, there’d been a mutual agreement to come, though Abel was immediately regretting it.

  He stood in a warehouse of some sort. Rusted machines surrounded him and hooks hung above him.

  Next to him was the thin dead man wearing his baggy suit.

  “The suit fits so large because of what the man over there did to me,” the dead man said.

  The dead had spoken before in his dreams, but not like this—not really to him. It confirmed what he’d always thought; the dead could read his mind.

  “Did you ever doubt that, though?” the dead man asked.

  Abel didn’t look over, couldn’t pay any more attention to him than he could the rest of the building.

  Three people were across the room, on the other side of the crumbling building.

  Abel had seen pictures of his great-grandfather before, though not like most children probably did. His family had only spoken about Hans Albrecht in hushed tones. The man was not to be mentioned, for fear of …

  Of a lot of things.

  Societal rejection.

  Their own soul’s pollution.

  Suspicion of Nazi leanings.

  The pictures Abel had seen of the man came from news articles. A lot had been written about him in the past. Things with titles like ‘WHERE IS HANS ALBRECHT?’ or ‘NAZI LEADER EVADES CAPTURE!’

  Abel had seen the headlines and the pictures beneath. That’s how he’d come to know what the man looked like, not from family photo albums.

  His great-grandfather had never been caught, nor faced trial like his comrades. Though, he didn’t escape the Allies, at least not like the newspapers proclaimed. He hadn’t ‘evaded capture’—for Hans Albrecht, capture would have been preferable to what happened to him.

  “Go on,” the suited man said. “Go see what he’s doing. You might enjoy it. Your kind always enjoys the suffering of others.”

  Abel looked at the dead man, then, though his guide only stared forward. Shaved head and steel gray eyes, he was the model of what a concentration camp victim should look like—the only difference being the baggy suit he wore.

  Abel turned back to the people across the room. A man sat in a chair, wearing a cap and what appeared to be a German uniform. Abel knew that the same way he knew his great-grandfather’s face. He’d never held any sympathy for the man or those he served with. He had wanted nothing to do with him, using the same hushed tones as the rest of his family. If asked, Abel would have eagerly said he hated the man, though quickly closed his mouth after. To even speak of him brought fear that Abel didn’t want to consider.

  Yet, there he was, across the warehouse, sitting in a chair. Abel had never seen him in a dream before, and he didn’t know why. Hadn’t even considered it until now.

  “Go,” the man whispered and Abel understood he had no choice. Time was running out.

  The dead wanted him to see something here, and so he must.

  Abel walked forward, crossing the floor quickly. A man stood to the left of his great-grandfather, his hands at his sides, his body rigid. He also wore the German uniform, and Abel knew he was a soldier.

  The man that faced Abel’s great-grandfather looked very, very different. He resembled more of the man in the suit behind Abel, his body emaciated. Frail and wearing dirty, threadbare clothes, his skin was drawn so tightly across his body it looked like it might snap. Abel had seen thin before, but nothing like this. The man ….

  “That,” the suited man said, suddenly appearing next to Abel, “is dehydration.”

  And it clicked then. The tight skin, it held no water at all. It was flaky and dry, though Abel had missed that at first. He saw white specks of spit on the corners of the man’s lips, and at least one nail appeared to be about to fall straight off his finger.

  “There’s water. Drink,” Hans Albrecht said. Abel understood his great-grandfather would have spoken German, but he heard it in thickly accented English.

  The prisoner looked down at the glass of water by his feet.

  “You don’t want it? Is it too good for you?” Albrecht asked.

  The Jewish prisoner said nothing.

  “You want my glass, don’t you?” Albrecht said. Abel stepped forward so that he could see the man’s lap. He held another glass of water on it, and it was different from what Abel saw on the floor. Clear. Less cloudy.

  He looked back to the man, realization donning on him. The glass at the Jew’s feet was seawater. That’s all he’d been given to drink for Lord knew how long, and that’s where the dehydration came from. No food. No clean water. Only seawater.

  The prisoner licked his lips, and it sounded like two sheets of sandpaper rubbing against one another.

  “I’ll give you this water, if that’s what you really want,” Abel’s great-grandfather said. “But, I need something from you first.”

  He raised the glass to his mouth and took a small sip.
The prisoner raised his hand slightly, as if begging him not to do it. Not to drink any at all. He quickly put his hand back down, though, and said nothing.

  “Just tell me what I want to know and you can have it. Trust me, if you don’t tell me, one of your friends will. The vermin like you can’t wait to spill their guts for something as simple as a glass of water.”

  Another sip and Abel heard the man groan. A small thing and barely escaping the back of his throat, but audible all the same.

  “Where’s that diamond?” Albrecht asked. “I know it’s here. I know it’s being passed among you, hidden from my eyes, from the eyes of my soldiers. All I want is that diamond and then you can have this glass. Give me a name, a single name, and I’ll dispatch the man on my left. He will quickly ascertain the truthfulness of your name, and then, if it bears fruit, you can have this glass of water.”

  Another sip.

  “Tell me the name. Just a single name.”

  “Calev!” the man shouted. “Calev!”

  Albrecht looked to his left. The soldier nodded, turned, and then walked off across the warehouse, fading into the air until there was nothing left of him.

  “We wait,” Albrecht said and took another small sip.

  The suited man stepped forward, and as he did, the two behind him disappeared.

  “I have told my colleagues again and again that this is foolish. That we should bring you down to us as we have the rest of your family. There is your mother, of course, but she is only months away from joining us. It is you that hold out, and I tell them, my colleagues, over and over that we need to only focus on you. That this woman, this Emi Laurens, has nothing to do with us or our purpose.”

  He shook his head and looked down at his feet.

  “They will not listen to me, though. They are soft, and there is nothing I can do about it. My people, though. We stick together, unlike yours, so here I am.”

  He looked back up, his face solemn. “I have extracted something out of them for this, something that you have to give, Mr. Abel Ease.”

  “What?” Abel asked.

  “When this is done, you will go to your mother, and you will convince her to join us. I am tired of dealing with the woman, if I can be frank. Her insanity is … It is unbecoming, and I no longer want to go to her. My colleagues feel this is a fair trade, as she is ours anyway—it is only a matter of time. You will go to her, and you will convince her to take her own life, so that she can come down to us forever.”

  The suited man was silent for a second, letting his words settle across the now empty warehouse.

  “Do you agree to terms?”

  Abel swallowed.

  “Time is short. The time that we spend here passes the same as it does in reality. That law enforcement officer, he’s not very happy with you at the moment, and your friend … she will die, but first she will endure torture that even your great-grandfather could not have imagined. So hurry up and decide, young man, as I don’t enjoy your presence either.”

  “Okay,” Abel said, not truly knowing what he was committing himself to, only feeling the certainty of Emi’s death. “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” the suited man said.

  He turned around and looked at the warehouse, his head tilting slightly up toward the ceiling. “We are there with her now. She is in this building, or not this one, obviously, but one exactly like it.”

  “Where is it?” Abel asked.

  “I cannot tell you that, at least not as you wish. An address, right? That is what you are looking for? I do not have one for you, but I can show you how to get there.”

  “How?”

  “How?” the man scoffed. “You are both weak and stupid. It amazes me your Führer managed to do as much as he did. Surely it was only because the world doubted his insanity, as it is clear your kind have no brains or spine. How would you show someone how to get there?”

  “I’d go with them.”

  The suited man turned around, smiling. His grin was harsh, his face too angular—too thin—to show anything resembling joy. “Precisely, young man. And, if you want my advice, we should move quickly. Your friend has very little time.”

  Brett sat behind his desk, not moving. The lights remained off across the office, and the further into the floor one moved, the less light one had. The windows along the perimeter provided the only illumination.

  Brett had done three things after being plunged into complete darkness. He’d slowly navigated himself over to Ease, and then cuffed his hands behind his back. The man hadn’t moved at all as it happened, sat there as still as a large doll. Next, Brett had moved back to his desk, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark.

  He pulled his cell phone out then, remembering at the same time that he could use it as a flashlight.

  He tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. It simply looked back at him, the black screen matching everything around him. He pressed the side button repeatedly, but … nothing.

  That’s not possible, he thought. It’s not dead and it certainly didn’t break.

  Emi’s eyes came back to him, black ink filled.

  They hadn’t been possible either.

  None of this was possible.

  Brett put the phone down and looked out the window. This couldn’t last long. The power company would be working on a fix, because downtown Atlanta simply couldn’t go black without them knowing it.

  That’s what h thought, even as his eyes took in the city around him.

  None of the buildings were dark. They all had lights on, cascading up and down the floors from top to bottom.

  Brett had stared for at least a minute, until a single question presented itself: What if it’s just your floor?

  He’d done the third thing then, the thing he was currently doing. He’d sat down at his desk and waited. He looked at his watch and wasn’t exactly surprised to see that it was no longer running. Nothing was running. The moment the crazy man quit running, so did everything else. The entire floor had simply quit.

  It’s not possible, Brett thought, yet that didn’t really matter too much. Possible or not, it was right in front of him.

  So he sat and waited as seconds turned into minutes, arguing whether he should walk out onto the floor and then try going up or down to another one.

  He heard the hum of electricity before he saw it.

  One moment only darkness, then a relatively loud hmmmmmmm … and finally, the lights flashed on as if they’d never been off.

  Brett stood and squinted his eyes, his hand going to the butt of his weapon. The holster strap was off and he was ready to pull it, depending on what Ease did.

  It didn’t occur to Brett to ask why he thought Ease would be any different—no longer sitting as if in a coma. Why the man would have come back to reality just because the lights returned.

  Ease was back, though.

  He stared up at Brett from the floor, his hands still cuffed behind him.

  “I know how to find her,” he said. “We have to go now.”

  Brett kept his eyes on the crazy man for a second and then scanned the outer floor. The lights were on out there too. His phone was now showing the lock screen, the time sitting prominently right where it should be.

  Without moving his head, he glanced down at his watch. The second hand was ticking along again.

  “Do you hear me?” the man on the floor asked. “We have to go. Now. There isn’t any more time.”

  Brett said nothing. He walked briskly by Ease and out his office door. “IS ANYBODY ELSE HERE?”

  He heard his voice echo through the office, and he waited, but nothing came back. No one else had witnessed it. No one else had any idea it occurred.

  He turned back into his office. “What just happened?”

  “You’ve got to listen to me now,” Ease said. “There isn’t time. I can get us there, but we have to leave. Right now. She doesn’t have much longer.”

  Brett looked down at his watch, the time finally registering in his
mind now that he wasn’t just checking to make sure the damned thing worked.

  It was 3:00 in the morning.

  His mind ran through the options of what he could do with the crazy man, but leaving him in the office with pictures of dissected bodies wasn’t a possibility. Brett had already violated FBI protocol; he understood that, and if he messed up this next part, he could find himself in a lot of trouble.

  You’ve got to keep him with you, at least until tomorrow morning, then you can talk to Hartwell about it. Leaving him in a locked room … if the man somehow kills himself, you’re done.

  Brett had wasted all night with the madman, but he wasn’t going to do it anymore.

  “Just listen to me. Just for a second,” Ease said from the floor. “Just hear me out, and then if you don’t like what I have to say, do whatever you want. Will you listen?”

  Brett looked at him, his amphetamine fueled mind trying unsuccessfully to ignore Ease.

  “They talked to me,” he said. “They told me how to find her, okay? What do you have to lose right now? Put me in a car, hands behind my back, and I’ll take you to her. If I don’t, you lost what? An hour? And right now, what else do you have?”

  “They talked to you?” Brett said, his voice mocking Ease’s assertion. “The dead people talked to you?”

  “All you have to do is get in the car,” the crazy man said. “Just get me in the car, and I’ll prove it.”

  Brett closed his eyes and brought his hands to his face, rubbing his palms hard against his eyes. The exhaustion was wiping away, the amphetamines really coming alive now. This was absurd, that he was even listening.

  The lights went out, Brett. The lights went out, your phone died, your watch stopped working, and maybe … just maybe … Emi’s eyes actually went black. This whole thing is a level of absurd that ventures into the realm of unbelievable, yet this is where you are, right next to the crazy man on the ground. And he’s saying he can help Emi. You’ve done nothing. No one in the entire FBI has done anything. Open your eyes and look at the phone on your desk. Will you see any red beeping light, telling you that you have a voicemail? Any texts on your phone? Is there a damned thing that is going to help get Emi back right now, anyone even hinting at it?