Will Wilder #2

by Raymond Arroyo

  “My emotions are completely in check. I was trying to train that—” Baldwin glanced over the ledge and began laughing. “Look at your great leader-in-waiting. Even with your assistance he’s struggling.”

  When Will grasped the staff, the stones of the platform began to sink. He didn’t know where to stand with stones disappearing into the flaming water by the second. One of his feet descended toward the pool while the other remained on a high stone. He quickly shifted his weight and stepped up—placing one foot atop the other. Spotting the stone with the hole in it, near the rear wall, Will lunged.

  He drove the staff into the cavity on the floor with great force and used it to keep himself from falling backward. All at once, the wooden catwalk at his rear straightened itself, the stones surrounding him moved back into place, and the cannon on the ledge before Baldwin disappeared into the ground.

  Will did a little dance on the platform, throwing punches into the air. “What happens now?” he asked jubilantly. “Do I get a prize? A trip to Hawaii?”

  “You win a first-class trip to a true demonic battle,” the abbot said, walking across the wooden path. “For your first time on the Purgatorial Course, it was not an embarrassment.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Will muttered, shaking the water from his red high-tops.

  “Very, very good, Mr. Wilder.” Tobias Shen applauded, appearing at the bottom of a staircase hidden by a stalagmite. “Why don’t you head up to Bethel Hall? We need to speak privately with the vicar for a moment.” From Mr. Shen’s face, Will could tell the chat was not to be a friendly one.

  “Can’t I stay?” Will asked, hoping to watch Baldwin get a good dressing-down.

  “It would be best if you went upstairs,” the abbot said, directing him to the metal door where they had entered.

  “I miss all the fun,” Will said, shuffling out.

  The dying sun threw pink light on the piles of gnat carcasses and dead frogs surrounding the Perilous Falls city jail. A deputy swept the remains into neat piles on the edge of the front walkway. Heedless of his work, two swift figures tromped through the stinking mounds.

  “Hey, watch where you—” The deputy changed his tune when he recognized one of the stompers as the mayor. “Oh. Sorry, ma’am.”

  Ava Lynch slowly turned her head in his direction. “Are you guarding the prisoner this evening?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Take us to her, Deputy,” she said imperiously, removing her gloves.

  The mayor and her companion were escorted down a hallway of empty cells.

  “Miss Lucille, you’ve got some guests to see you,” the deputy announced loudly.

  “Thank you, Deputy,” the mayor whispered. “We can take it from here. Give us your keys and some privacy.”

  The young man hesitated for a moment, tugging at the sides of his belt. Then in a rush he mumbled a “yes, ma’am,” handed over the keys, and vacated the lockup.

  Lucille Wilder sat on a metal bed attached to the wall of her cell. Her wrists were bound in chains fastened to the floor. At the approach of the visitors, she bolted upright. “Who’s there?”

  The answer came in the form of keys clanging against the lock of her cell door.

  When she saw the mayor enter, Lucille darkly asked, “What do you want?”

  “Now, is that any way to greet an old friend?” Lynch loosed a throaty laugh, striding to the center of the cell. “Thought I’d come by for a little visit.”

  “Ava, you’ve got to free me for the sake of the town.” Lucille took a jagged breath and hung her head. “There are dark forces at play and they have to be stopped—now! I know we’ve had our differences, but you have no idea what is out there. I can help.”

  “Oh, I bet you can. That’s why you’re in chains, sugar. Didn’t want those little hands of yours getting too close together. You’re responsible for all of this.”

  “You know that’s a lie. We may not agree on much but I—” Lucille stared at the Ammit pendant hanging from the mayor’s neck. “Do you even know what that is, Ava?”

  “It’s protection from people like you. It was given to me by my friend and our town spiritual advisor.” The mayor wrapped a bony hand over the amulet, clutching it over her heart.

  Lucille smiled knowingly. “Pothinus Sab is a deceptive con man, and you have become so bemused by the Darkness that you can’t tell day from night.” She pulled at the chains in frustration. “Let me out of here.”

  “Oh, stop being so ornery. With all your chatter, I almost forgot. I came here to make an introduction.” She raised her bangled arm in the air. “Pothinus, honey, come in and meet Lucille Wilder.”

  When Pothinus Sab stepped into the cell, Lucille’s mouth dropped open. She physically recoiled, steadying herself against the cinder blocks behind her.

  “Miss Wilder, I have been so looking forward to our meeting,” he said, his black eyes glinting. He placed a weathered leather bag on the floor and bent at the waist, his hands on his knees. “You must be very thirsty, no? Are the guards hydrating you properly?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How about a nice refreshment?” He reached for his bag.

  “I would rather drink sand than whatever you’re offering, Mr. Sab,” Lucille snapped.

  He emitted a stifled giggle. “Aren’t you amusing?” He lifted a flask of green tonic from the bag. “But charity demands helping those who won’t help themselves. Isn’t that true?” His voice suddenly flattened, and its usual music disappeared. “We have many methods of administering our tonic, Miss Wilder.”

  He drew a lacquered box from his white suit. Opening it, he delicately pulled out an insect that could have been an angry centipede with pincers. “Miss Mayor, if you would hold Miss Wilder’s head to the side, we can share this specially brewed refreshment with her immediately.” He dropped the earwig into the tonic bottle and held it directly in front of Lucille’s eyes.

  “It won’t be long now,” Sab said with a sympathetic smile. “You will be the first to taste the regeneration that Amon intends for all.” Then he whispered, just for her, “You are ready for death—I mean regeneration—aren’t you, Miss Wilder?”

  Mayor Lynch immobilized Lucille Wilder’s head, holding it to the side. Lucille yelled, but no one could hear her. She fell into silence and shut out the horror of the assault to come by closing her eyes tightly. Sab, as if administering a lifesaving drug, pressed the mouth of the tonic bottle to Lucille Wilder’s ear.

  She struggled, yanking against the chains. All the while the earwig, swollen with green liquid, its pincers snapping, climbed up the bottle’s neck toward its final destination.

  After clobbering the Purgatorial Course and proving himself to Baldwin, Will resented being sent upstairs to Bethel Hall. He trudged up the broad staircase of the north tower. Making his way through the training wing, he could hear the Brethren’s best tumbler, Brother Pedro, flipping off the padded walls behind one of the closed doors. Will’s pace slowed as his glance fell to the floor. Levitating black feathers were strewn across the hallway.

  Just as he approached the door leading to the courtyard garden, a “pssst” struck his ear.

  He turned around. Not a soul in the hall, just the black feathers.

  “Psssst.”

  It came from a nook in the wall several steps back.

  A small potted tree filled the alcove. “Who’s there?” Will asked.

  “It’s me.” Valens parted the branches of the tree with his hands and poked his head through the leaves. “I was hoping you’d come by. I didn’t want Baldwin to see us talking. I don’t trust him at all.”

  “Me neither,” said Will.

  “Has Tobias or Bart or Lucille ever mentioned the Malleus Diabolus?”

  “The what?” Will said.

  “It is a book your great-grandfather rescued from a burned-out monastery in England. I was thinking that it could be of great assistance to you. I’m sure Lucille would want you to see it. It supposedly describes scads of demons�
��a very ancient text. Bart thought that Jacob might have made his own notations in the book.”

  “Where is it?” Will asked, fascinated.

  “That’s the problem. None of us have ever seen the Malleus Diabolus. Bart or possibly Lucille would know better than I—but the legend is: when the chosen one lays hold of an angel’s leg, the book will present itself.” Valens had mischief in his eyes. “Now, I have been all over this museum. There are only a handful of stone or marble angels. One of which is that statue over there.” He pointed across the hall to a tall white marble angel, her wings at rest, standing atop a pedestal.

  Without so much as a breath, Will marched over and grasped the angel’s leg.

  “It’s probably not this one,” Will said, releasing the statue after several seconds. “Where are the others?”

  Valens ran two hands over his longish hair, parting it in the middle. “There is a much better candidate. See those columns?” There were six pillars on each side of the hall. Capitals at the top depicted saints and smiling angel heads with no bodies. But one capital featured a roughly chiseled devil, its arms held back by an apprehensive angel.

  “It’s kind of high up, but that one seems a good possibility.” Valens pulled a wooden high-backed chair from the wall. “Do you want to have a go at it?”

  Will leapt up on the chair and reached for the angel’s leg. “How long have you been looking for this Malleus Diab—whatever it’s called?”

  “It’s just a hobby of mine. You know how the mind sometimes fixates on things, then you’re lolling about and—”

  Will clutched the angel’s leg and the entire column turned on itself. A hollow passage opened.

  “Hullo! That was easy,” Valens said. His blue eyes scanned the hallway. “Shall we go exploring, then?”

  Valens and Will climbed down a very tight staircase, which gradually widened as they got lower. With his flashlight, Will could see a desk piled with books and a large solitary shelf behind it. A blanket of dust covered everything. There were crossbows, spears, swords, and other instruments of warfare leaning against the walls. Others teetered off the edge on the uppermost shelf.

  Valens found a switch that lit a large gas lamp in the center of the room. He immediately ran to the cluttered corners of the octagonal space.

  “Look on that shelf, Will. Do you see a heavy book with a metal cover? I think it’s silver with a series of crosses carved into it.” Valens madly tossed weapons and canvases aside, hastily scanning the artifacts.

  Will rubbed away the dust from the book spines. There were multiple cracked leather tomes and papers bound in twine, but nothing metal. Then in the middle of the lower shelf, his finger ran along a black book. The paper on the spine tore away. Silver glittered beneath.

  He yanked the book off the shelf and peeled away at the black cover like he was unwrapping a gift. The heavy volume had one large cross and a smattering of smaller ones cut into the silver cover. “This must be the Malleus,” Will said excitedly.

  The discovery did nothing to slow Valens’s search. “Put it on the desk. It should open at your touch,” he ordered, preoccupied.

  Will hesitated, holding the book at arm’s length. “Don’t you want to see, Mr. Valens?”

  “I’m trying to help you, Will,” Valens said with an edge in his voice, still ripping through the objects scattered about. “Has your aunt Lucille said anything about Aaron’s staff? It belonged to Moses’s brother.”

  “The prophecy said I needed to find—” As the words escaped his lips, Will immediately wished he’d said nothing. “I need to find Moses’s staff. What’s Aaron’s staff got to do with anything?” Will faked ignorance.

  “Aaron’s staff is supposed to be more powerful than Moses’s rod. Your great-grandfather definitely had it. I saw Aaron’s staff on one of our old inventory lists. But it’s nowhere in Peniel. I’ve looked.” He was now on a chair, going through the items on the top of the bookshelf.

  Will carried the silver volume to the other side of the room. It had book spines on each side and no visible pages. As he laid the book on his lap, he absently glimpsed the ring he wore, the one Aunt Lucille had given him earlier. Inside the sealed glass capsule, the crimson-red blood of St. Januarius bubbled as if it were boiling. Am I in danger or is Aunt Lucille? Before he could really ponder the question, one of the spines of the book on his knees unlatched and the volume opened. Tall calligraphy announced Malleus Diabolus by Martin Del Rio. Will flipped the page and saw this:

  Leviathan

  A great wriggling serpent with seven heads and tentacles rises from the depths…

  Will was too frightened to read any further. Visions in his mind’s eye of the horrid creature riding the waves of the Perilous River forced him to quickly turn the page. A wooziness ambushed him. He licked his dry lips and made himself read on:

  Amon

  This demon is the hidden one. Amon is known as the local deity of Thebes, an Egyptian god venerated since the Old Kingdom. Exulted in the 11th Dynasty, the plumed regal figure in statuary and throughout the Egyptian empire is not Amon’s reality but a cunning mask of evil.

  In its true form, Amon appears with a raven’s head, its large beak baring canine teeth. The creature vomits flames, spitting wrath upon all who encounter it. It has the body of a wolf and the slithering tail of a serpent hatched in the bowels of hell…

  There was much more, but Will’s eye went to a note scratched in the wide margin of the parchment paper. It was Jacob Wilder’s handwriting. Will recognized it from having read his great-grandfather’s diary. The note read:

  From the moment I arrived in Egypt, I began seeing paranormal raven feathers invisible to the others. The demon sheds them wherever its power is most intense. Wily and loath to reveal its true face, Amon comes in many guises. The Staff of Moses had been temporarily lost and a host of plagues was loosed upon the Brethren here in Cairo. Following my arrival, we successfully used holy water, oils, and relics to defuse the plagues. Though there is no protection from the last plague; the coming of the so-called angel of death. According to an ancient scroll the Brethren showed me, the last plague when called forth by a demon is an event “outside of nature.” Unlike blood, frogs, or gnats, the thing that comes to claim the firstborn is not of God. It is a denizen of the pit that ascends to strike its victims.

  While battling the plagues, the Brethren in Cairo and I uncovered a plot by some priests of Amon. Clinging to the old ways, they attempted to physically summon the major demon into the world. They believed they could raise Amon from hell by ritually offering him one of his own: the possessed Pharaoh Tuthmosis II.

  Tuthmosis may have been the pharaoh who barred Moses and the Israelites from leaving Egypt. That would make him the same stubborn pharaoh God delivered the plagues upon.

  Using both the staffs of Moses and Aaron, I finally repelled Amon. The Brethren stopped Amon’s priests from executing their plan and we secured the mummy of Tuthmosis II. This mummy, the staff of the Prophet, and that of his brother should be closely guarded and never allowed to leave our care. The disciples of Amon may attempt to raise the demon again at some future time. The Sinestri never sleep. Neither should we. Deus Vult.

  JW

  September 1955

  That’s why my great-granddad stored the mummy at Peniel—to keep the Sinestri from using it! Will tried to turn the next page just to see what other demons might be described. When he tugged at the page, it felt as if it was glued to all the others. He couldn’t pry them loose. In frustration, he slammed the volume shut.

  “So what did it say?” a sweaty Valens asked, dabbing his brow with a silk handkerchief from his vest pocket.

  “Nothing much. Some stuff about Leviathan. It didn’t make much sense.”

  From the worried expression on Will’s face, Valens could see he was withholding something. “Did it say anything about the Staff of Aaron? Where it might be found?” Valens closed in on Will, opening his graceful hand. “Might I see the book
?” He licked his lower lip.

  Will pulled the Malleus close to his chest. “You’re not supposed to see it, Mr. Valens. It’s meant for me.”

  “Why are you being so ungrateful, Will? I took you here.” He smiled tensely, flashing his pearly teeth. “Let me have a look.” Valens reached for the volume. The whole room suddenly shook. Dull explosions could be heard in the distance as the walls rocked back and forth.

  Valens tumbled over the desk. Will stumbled sideways into the staircase. From the shocks, it felt as though bombs were falling on Peniel. Will pounded up the slim staircase to see what was happening aboveground.

  “Will, come back here! WILL!” Valens yelled, staggering to his feet.

  The bulging earwig crawled onto the lip of the tonic bottle in Pothinus Sab’s hand. Mayor Lynch held Lucille Wilder’s head tightly against the bottle, anticipating the moment when the bug would slip into Lucille’s ear and end their decades-old rivalry.

  “Goodbye, Lucille,” the mayor murmured, staring down at the strangely serene woman.

  Lucille Wilder, her eyes closed, paid no heed to any of it. She continued silently mouthing something under her breath as she had since the mayor first laid hands on her.

  “Regeneration comes swiftly, Miss Lucille,” Pothinus Sab said.

  Whatever he said after that was lost in a terrible noise.

  A tremor hit the jail, causing the ground to shift violently. The mayor was hurled against the wall while Sab and his tonic bottle crashed against the cell bars. Had Lucille Wilder not been chained to the floor, she might have hit the ceiling. Instead the jolt threw her high into the air and she used the chains to land on her feet.

  The dazed mayor was the first to see the hail, like flaming charcoal briquettes, falling from the sky outside. “Pothinus! Pothinus! There’s fire! Fire’s coming down!” She pointed at the small window above Lucille, her skeletal face contorted in anguish.