Armageddon

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Maybe after we tell my mom?” he suggested.

  The air close by seemed to momentarily catch fire, but it did not concern them in the least. They’d grown quite used to Gabriel’s habit of appearing in a flash of divine fire.

  “We’re going to have babies!” Vilma screeched, dropping to the floor to throw her arms around the Labrador’s thick neck.

  “That’s wonderful,” the dog answered, but Aaron could sense from his tone that something was wrong.

  “What is it, Gabe?” he asked.

  Vilma leaned back from the animal.

  “There’s something that I have to tell you,” Gabriel said, his gaze and voice both filled with emotion. “It’s about your mother.”

  * * *

  Lucifer Morningstar sat upon his throne, deep in the bowels of the earth, and dreamed about redemption.

  It was not yet time for him.

  After all the atrocities he had been responsible for, he’d always known it would be a long road to forgiveness.

  But it was not up to him to decide when he got there.

  Shifting in his seat of rock, Lucifer asserted his control, not only over the Hell that had been created in the sprawling subterranean habitat, but also the Hell that existed inside him.

  Reaching out with his mind, he could sense the world that he’d created; every nook and cranny filled with darkness, every jagged peak and blasted plain of rock, every lake of fire and all the twisted abominations that were capable of living in a place such as this.

  This was their home now—their prison.

  And he was their jailor.

  The ancient evil that he now kept imprisoned inside him stirred, again making an attempt to reassert its dominance. It took all that the Morningstar had to keep it in check, and he prayed for the continued strength to be able to maintain this level of control.

  To maintain his hold over both the physical prison that he’d created, and the mental one as well.

  There was movement upon the rocks below, and he turned his gaze to a small, red-skinned creature.

  This one was named Scox, and he had served the dark entity when it had held possession of his body.

  “What is it, imp?” Lucifer Morningstar asked, annoyance dripping from his words.

  “I’ve come to serve you,” the red-skinned demon said, wringing his hands.

  “I have no need of your service.” Lucifer dismissed the creature with a wave of his hand. “Go away.”

  But Scox did not leave.

  “I can help you, master,” the creature insisted. “This place. It is so big, but I see things that you do not see.” He placed his hands over his eyes, making circular spectacles with his fingers, and looked around.

  Lucifer just wanted to be left alone to his misery and his penance.

  Maybe this is part of it, he mused. A wry trick by the Lord God to see how I deal with the most annoying creatures.

  “I see all that I need to see, Scox,” Lucifer said, standing up and spreading his black-feathered wings. He dropped down before the scarlet imp.

  “Trolls erecting a statue in honor of some long-forgotten troll god in the hopes that the ancient deity might grant their wish and set them free of this loathsome place,” Lucifer said as he strode closer to Scox.

  “Goblin assassins using their special skills to make weapons to challenge the supremacy of their current lord and master. That would be me,” Lucifer said, placing an armored hand to his chest plate.

  Scox backed away as the Morningstar continued to advance.

  “A pack of demon hounds, hunting at the base of the fissure, about to feast upon a poor creature unlucky enough to—”

  Lucifer stopped.

  “Yes?” Scox asked, the hint of a smile forming upon his bloodred face. “What do you see? Something out of the ordinary, perhaps?”

  Lucifer opened his senses, taking in more of the hellish place than he cared to, but he needed to see this. . . .

  The hounds stalked something that did not belong, something that did not stink of the pit, but instead seemed to glow with a brilliant inner light.

  A characteristic that this Hell did not have.

  A soul.

  “I saw her too,” Scox said, gleefully clapping his hands. “I saw her as she climbed down from the surface.”

  Lucifer spread his wings wide to push off against the air, sending him rocketing skyward, the cackling laugh of the red-skinned imp receding below him. He could sense where he needed to be, hoping that he was fleet enough to reach her before it was too late.

  Is it possible? he wondered, as his mighty wings pounded the air, propelling him upward. A part of him didn’t dare believe it was true, but he had to know for sure. Perhaps it was a trick of one of the foul beasts that he held captive.

  And pity upon any who dared rouse his anger in such a way.

  The evil entity inside him laughed, waiting to take strength from Lucifer’s misery.

  The Morningstar flew around the towering black peaks and above the rivers of fire, closer to the base of the chasm wall. His eyes scanned the surface, his vision temporarily obscured by clouds of foul-smelling gas that erupted up from the cavern floor.

  And it was within the fog of this viscous stink that he saw movement, and descended.

  Lucifer did not hesitate in his attack. With a cry of war, he swung his blade of fire, striking down the lion-sized beasts that had trapped their prey in a dark cavity, too small for their large, muscular bodies to enter.

  Enraged by their inability to reach their prey, the demon dogs turned upon him in frustration, oblivious of whom they were attacking.

  And what their fate would be for doing so.

  The pack came at him as one, snapping jaws and slashing claws, and Lucifer met their assault with equal ferocity. Roars of rage and savagery quickly turned to wails of agony as his sword of fire bit into their taut, muscular flesh, opening them wide to the harsh environment of Hell.

  Standing knee deep in the viscera of his foes, Lucifer Morningstar readied for further attack.

  Hearing a noise behind him, the Lord of Hell spun, and watched as the monster’s prey emerged from the inky blackness of the tiny cave.

  Though his eyes told him it was true, he could not believe them, and found himself stepping back and away.

  It has to be a trick, the evil thing trapped inside him proclaimed.

  Could the dark entity be right?

  “Sam?”

  And he knew.

  It wasn’t a trick of this hellish place, or of the powers that he fought so hard to keep locked away inside him.

  It was something more.

  She came at him, running into his embrace, and he put his arms around her, feeling her warmth even through his thick armor.

  And Lucifer Morningstar knew.

  His Creator believed that he was truly sorry for his crimes, and that he would continue to make penance until he was fully forgiven.

  Lucifer kissed Taylor Corbet and felt his inner strength grow, the darkness that had threatened to overtake him stamped down so deeply that he could barely feel its presence.

  Love was the way that his God acknowledged one such as he, guilty of all crimes, but worthy of some compassion.

  A show of sympathy.

  Sympathy for the Devil.

  BENEATH EVERY BEAUTY, EVIL STIRS. . . .

  UNDER THE CAFETERIA TABLE, MY RIGHT KNEE BOUNCED LIKE A jackhammer possessed. Adrenaline snaked through my limbs, urging me to bolt, to hightail it out of Rocquemore House and never look back.

  Deep breaths.

  If I didn’t get my act together and calm down, I’d start hyperventilating and embarrass the shit out of myself. Not a good thing, especially when I was sitting in an insane asylum with rooms to spare.

  “Are you sure you want to do this, Miss Selkirk?”

  “It’s Ari. And, yes, Dr. Giroux.” I gave the man seated across from me an encouraging nod. “I didn’t come all this way to give up now. I want to know.�
�� What I wanted was to get this over with and do something, anything, with my hands, but instead I laid them flat on the tabletop. Very still. Very calm.

  A reluctant breath blew through the doctor’s thin, sun-cracked lips as he fixed me with an I’m sorry, sweetheart, you asked for it look. He opened the file in his hand, clearing his throat. “I wasn’t working here at the time, but let’s see. . . .” He flipped through a few pages. “After your mother gave you up to social services, she spent the remainder of her life here at Rocquemore.” His fingers fidgeted with the file. “Self-admitted,” he went on. “Was here six months and eighteen days. Committed suicide on the eve of her twenty-first birthday.”

  An inhale lodged in my throat.

  Oh hell. I hadn’t expected that.

  The news left my mind numb. It completely shredded the mental list of questions I’d practiced and prepared for.

  Over the years, I’d thought of every possible reason why my mother had given me up. I even explored the idea that she might’ve passed away sometime during the last thirteen years. But suicide? Yeah, dumbass, you didn’t think of that one. A long string of curses flew through my mind, and I wanted to bang my forehead against the table—maybe it would help drive home the news.

  I’d been given to the state of Louisiana just after my fourth birthday, and six months later, my mother was dead. All those years thinking of her, wondering what she looked like, what she was doing, wondering if she thought of the little girl she left behind, when all this time she was six feet under and not doing or thinking a goddamn thing.

  My chest expanded with a scream I couldn’t voice. I stared hard at my hands, my short fingernails like shiny black beetles against the white composite surface of the table. I resisted the urge to curl them under and dig into the laminate, to feel the skin pull away from the nails, to feel something other than the grief squeezing and burning my chest.

  “Okay,” I said, regrouping. “So, what exactly was wrong with her?” The question was like tar on my tongue and made my face hot. I removed my hands and placed them under the table on my thighs, rubbing my sweaty palms against my jeans.

  “Schizophrenia. Delusions—well, delusion.”

  “Just one?”

  He opened the file and pretended to scan the page. The guy seemed nervous as hell to tell me, and I couldn’t blame him. Who’d want to tell a teenage girl that her mom was so whacked-out that she’d killed herself ?

  Pink dots bloomed on his cheeks. “Says here”—his throat worked with a hard swallow—“it was snakes . . . claimed snakes were trying to poke through her head, that she could feel them growing and moving under her scalp. On several occasions, she scratched her head bloody. Tried to dig them out with a butter knife stolen from the cafeteria. Nothing the doctors did or gave her could convince her it was all in her mind.”

  The image coiled around my spine and sent a shiver straight to the back of my neck. I hated snakes.

  Dr. Giroux closed the file, hurrying to offer whatever comfort he could. “It’s important to remember, back then a lot of folks went through post-traumatic stress. . . . You were too young to remember, but—”

  “I remember some.” How could I forget? Fleeing with hundreds of thousands of people as two Category Four hurricanes, one after another, destroyed New Orleans and the entire southern half of the state. No one was prepared. And no one went back. Even now, thirteen years later, no one in their right mind ventured past The Rim.

  Dr. Giroux gave me a sad smile. “Then I don’t need to tell you why your mother came here.”

  “No.”

  “There were so many cases,” he went on sadly, eyes unfocused, and I wondered if he was even talking to me now. “Psychosis, fear of drowning, watching loved ones die. And the snakes, the snakes that were pushed out of the swamps and inland with the floodwaters . . . Your mother probably experienced some horrible real-life event that led to her delusion.”

  Images of the hurricanes and their aftermath clicked through my mind like a slide projector, images I hardly thought of anymore. I shot to my feet, needing air, needing to get the hell out of this creepy place surrounded by swamps, moss, and gnarly, weeping trees. I wanted to shake my body like a maniac, to throw off the images crawling all over my skin. But instead, I forced myself to remain still, drew in a deep breath, and then tugged the end of my black T-shirt down, clearing my throat. “Thank you, Dr. Giroux, for speaking with me so late. I should probably get going.”

  I pivoted slowly and made for the door, not knowing where I was going or what I’d do next, only knowing that in order to leave I had to put one foot in front of the other.

  “Don’t you want her things?” Dr. Giroux asked. My foot paused midstride. “Technically they’re yours now.” My stomach did a sickening wave as I turned. “I believe there’s a box in the storage room. I’ll go get it. Please”—he gestured to the bench—“it’ll just take a second.”

  Bench. Sit. Good idea. I slumped on the edge of the bench, rested my elbows on my knees, and turned in my toes, staring at the V between my feet until Dr. Giroux hurried back with a faded brown shoe box.

  I expected it to be heavier and was surprised, and a little disappointed, by its lightness. “Thanks. Oh, one more thing . . . Was my mother buried around here?”

  “No. She was buried in Greece.”

  I did a double take. “Like small-town-in-America Greece, or . . . ?”

  Dr. Giroux smiled, shoved his hands into his pockets, and rocked back on his heels. “Nope. The real thing. Some family came and claimed the body. Like I said, I wasn’t working here at the time, but perhaps you could track information through the coroner’s office; who signed for her, that sort of thing.”

  Family.

  That word was so alien, so unreal, that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him right. Family. Hope stirred in the center of my chest, light and airy and ready to break into a Disney song complete with adorable bluebirds and singing squirrels.

  No. It’s too soon for that. One thing at a time.

  I glanced down at the box, putting a lid on the hope—I’d been let down too many times to give in to the feeling—wondering what other shocking news I’d uncover tonight.

  “Take care, Miss Selkirk.”

  I paused for a second, watching the doctor head for a group of patients sitting near the bay window, before leaving through the tall double doors. Every step out of the rundown mansion/mental hospital to the car parked out front took me further into the past. My mother’s horrible ordeal. My life as a ward of the state. Daughter of an unwed teenage mother who’d killed herself.

  Fucking great. Just great.

  The soles of my boots crunched across the gravel, echoing over the constant song of crickets and katydids, the occasional splash of water, and the call of bullfrogs. It might be winter to the rest of the country, but January in the deep South was still warm and humid. I gripped the box tighter, trying to see beyond the moss-draped live oaks and cypress trees and into the deepest, darkest shadows of the swampy lake. But a wall of blackness prevented me, a wall that—I blinked—seemed to waver.

  But it was just tears rising to the surface.

  I could barely breathe. I never expected this . . . hurt. I never expected to actually learn what had happened to her. After a quick swipe at the wet corners of my eyes, I set the box on the passenger seat of the car and then drove down the lonely winding road to Covington, Louisiana, and back to something resembling civilization.

  Covington hovered on The Rim, the boundary between the land of the forsaken and the rest of the country; a border town with a Holiday Inn Express.

  The box stayed on the hotel bed while I kicked off my boots, shrugged out of my old jeans, and jerked the tee over my head. I’d taken a shower that morning, but after my trip to the hospital, I needed to wash off the cloud of depression and the thick film of southern humidity that clung to my skin.

  In the bathroom, I turned on the shower and began untying the thin black ribbon around
my neck, making sure not to let my favorite amulet—a platinum crescent moon—slip off the end. The crescent moon has always been my favorite sight in the sky, especially on a clear cold night when it’s surrounded by twinkling stars. I love it so much, I had a tiny black crescent tattooed below the corner of my right eye, on the highest rise of my cheekbone—my early high school graduation present to myself. The tattoo reminded me of where I came from, my birthplace. The Crescent City. New Orleans.

  But those were old names. Now it was known as New 2, a grand, decaying, lost city that refused to be swept away with the tide. A privately owned city and a beacon, a sanctuary for misfits and things that went bump in the night, or so they said.

  Standing in front of the long hotel mirror in my black bra and panties, I leaned closer to my reflection and touched the small black moon, thinking of the mother I’d never really known, the mother who could’ve had the same teal-colored eyes as the ones staring back at me in the mirror, or the same hair. . . .

  I sighed, straightened, and reached behind my head to unwind the tight bun at the nape of my neck.

  Unnatural. Bizarre. Fucked up.

  I’d used all those words and more to describe the thick coil that unwound and fell behind my shoulders, the ends brushing the small of my back. Parted in the middle. All one length. So light in color, it looked silver in the moonlight. My hair. The bane of my existence. Full. Glossy. And so straight it looked like it had taken an army of hairdressers wielding hot irons to get it that way. But it was all natural.

  No. Unnatural.

  Another tired exhale escaped my lips. I gave up trying a long time ago.

  When I’d first realized—back when I was about seven or so—that my hair attracted the wrong sort of attention from some of the foster men and boys in my life, I tried everything to get rid of it. Cut it. Dyed it. Shaved it. I’d even lifted hydrochloric acid from the science lab in seventh grade, filled the sink, and then dunked my hair into the solution. It burned my hair into oblivion, but a few days later it was back to the same length, the same color, the same everything. Just like always.