The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead A Post-Apocalyptic Epic

by Peter Meredith

  Perhaps evil was a component of the spell.

  “Jaaaack,” Cyn said, slowly, drawing his name out and raising an eyebrow.

  Jack lifted off. He took a deep breath that did little to get the ugly feeling out of his head, and then cut Carl good and proper. Jack tried not to relish how easily the flesh parted and how quickly the blood welled.

  Carl tried to go crazy again, and Jack crushed him with his knee again. “Hold still. We should be done with the knife. The thing is, I need your blood and if you keep spilling it I’ll have to cut you again. So don’t move.”

  Cyn was tight-lipped but said nothing. She handed him one of the paintbrushes and her phone with the pictures of the glyphs already selected. Jack worked, phone in one hand, the brush in the other, moving steadily around the coffin and with each dab of the brush his stomach heaved and the strength in his arm grew less.

  The spells were draining something out of him.

  He had thought it would affect Carl, but the old man skootched along on his knees, grunting or flinching whenever Jack stuck the bristled brush into his wound. Cyn checked each glyph as they went and in twenty minutes they were done and it was only a matter of speaking the words to the spells. He spoke Cyn’s protection spell and there was a shimmer in the air that widened Carl’s eyes.

  But just as Jack started to speak the portal spell, he felt something catch in his throat. He could swallow but he couldn’t speak. Opening his mouth, he tried to force sound out and ended up only burping—the smell of it was eye-watering and the taste was acid. He pointed at his throat and shook his head.

  Cyn had been close enough to smell the burp; she knew something was wrong. “I’ll say the spell,” she said. “This is sacrificed blood so it shouldn’t matter who says it.” Jack wanted to say: be careful, but his throat was locked tight and growing tighter by the second; it was beginning to hurt.

  “Ok, I can do this,” Cyn whispered and then began speaking the words of the dead language. Her accent disappeared and her tone was flat until she came to the lettering that read Jonathan Dreyden and then her British sprang back. She repeated the words three times; the last with rising volume and her face cringed in fearful expectation.

  But nothing happened.

  The night was still cold. The coffin still sat there quietly. The blood began to dry. And Jack began to die.

  The choking sensation grew and now he could hear his breath start to whistle a high note through his nose. He snapped his fingers at Cyn and then pointed at his throat.

  “Why didn’t that work?” she asked. “That should have worked.” She went around the twin circles mumbling the words to the spell. When she got back to her starting point, she threw her hands in the air. “I said it correctly.”

  Jack was starting to see black spots. His knees buckled, so that he sank down behind Carl. He slapped the pavement with a feeble hand.

  “Jack! Holy Christ, Jack. You...you you’re so pale. It’s the spell, right? I could tell something was wrong.” She stared again at the circle and then asked: “What do I do?”

  He pointed to the circle, twirled his finger round and round, and then pointed to his mouth. “Say it again?” she asked. He nodded and she began a second time, walking around the circle with her flashlight pointing at each glyph as she went.

  After the first of the three repetitions of the spell, Jack knew she was wasting her time and killing him in the process. He was going to die. That was a fact. He wanted to yell at her. He wanted to scream profanities. That awful, angry feeling was coursing through him full bore—it was the only part of him that truly felt alive, as if the spell had energized it

  Jack threw the bloody brush at her with all his force. It zipped through the air and struck her on the throat, leaving a smear of red and making her cry out. The useless words of the spell died on her lips and she stood there looking at him in an infuriating manner. She had the appearance of innocent fawn.

  The look made the angry feeling inside Jack congeal into something worse.

  “Why’d you throw that at me?” she demanded.

  Because I want to live! he seethed internally. His fury was beyond him then and he saw next to Carl, discarded and half-forgotten, the knife. The blood on it was black as sin, while the steel glittered wicked and sharp in the night. He grabbed it, thinking that he would throw it at her as well.

  The handle was warm, strangely inviting and yet the blade was beyond cold. Jack put a finger to it and then jerked his hand back. He wanted to curse, but his throat was still locked up tight...and yet he could breathe again.

  And he knew why, just as he knew why the knife was the way it was. The knife was alive, or rather the knife held a part of his life within it. Perhaps it was his soul; he didn’t know for sure. He just knew he felt empty and he knew that there was only one way to get that part of him back. He had to make a trade. A life for a life.

  Blood was life and life was power.

  The thought came to him unexplained and yet he did not need an explanation. A blood offering wasn’t good enough to open the portal to the netherworld. That portal only opened when someone died. He would have to kill Carl.

  It wasn’t a surprise and it really wasn’t very distressing. He had his anger and his growing hate. Jack couldn’t feel love or compassion, not right then, and if he’d been asked, he probably wouldn’t be able explain what either word meant. The spell he had begun was purest evil and it had stained his insides good and black.

  It made killing Carl not only easy, but a pleasure as well.

  Jack took a handful of Carl’s grey hair and hauled back on his head. When he cut Carl’s throat it was with a long, slow motion.

  Chapter 28

  New Holland, Pennsylvania

  Carl spat blood from his neck. He vomited it out of his body in great pulsing gouts. It wet Jack’s hand and it was so hot that it burned.

  “Jack!” Cyn cried, horrified, stepping back, looking as though she was on the verge of running.

  He ignored her. The angry, evil fever of the spell was on him and he spoke the ancient words that opened the portal between the worlds. There was the awful tin ringing that went right up his bones and drilled into his ears. He cringed but couldn’t pull his eyes from the circles he had drawn. Within them and beneath the coffin the concrete seemed to melt into endless black, only deep, deep in that black were motes. They were souls or demons or whatever. They were things that had lived before and they were also the things that would live in a time that had not yet occurred.

  Jack stared into the black waiting. It seemed a long time and he finally croaked: “Jonathan Dreyden?” Then came another wait, an expectant one this time. His father was coming. A single mote among the countless motes grew in size until it was a light that took up the entire darkness. Jack threw an arm up to shield his eyes.

  There was a thump from the coffin and now Jack could feel again as he used to. He was himself once again and he felt like puking and crying and running away. He had killed a man, an innocent man. He had killed in the coldest of cold blood and now he was overwhelmed with grief and cried like a child.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he repeated over and over, his tears raining down. He crawled to the limp body of Carl and hugged it.

  He had his face buried in Carl’s empty chest when the lid to the coffin opened and a voice that was not created by human lips or tongue spoke: What did you do, Jonny? What is this? Why am I here?

  Jack was afraid to look up. The voice was cold and choppy, speaking in quick sentences, unadorned by the least bit of human emotion. It didn’t sound like his father, but no one else ever called him Jonny.

  “I needed you, daddy. That’s why I started the spell, but then it got out of control and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know it would be like this. I swear, I thought it was blood only.” These were poor excuses, especially the first: he hadn’t even tried to stop the spell; he hadn’t thought it was even possible. “I didn’t know that I had to kill. You have to
believe me.”

  His father said nothing, which was worse than if he had berated Jack. There were a few seconds of silence and then Jack summoned the courage to look up from Carl’s breast and saw his father sitting up in his coffin. Ten years in the ground had changed him. He was sunken and smaller than Jack remembered. His eyes were viscous pools the color of hawked-up snot. His skin was blackened by mold and sagged off his bones as though he was melting.

  You used the spells. That was wrong, Jonny. That was, oh so very bad. You read my note; you were warned and now there is trouble. It’s in the air. You were good. I remember you as being a good boy. What happened to you?

  “Mom d-died,” Jack answered, his voice hitching. “I-I don’t know if you know that. Sh-she was killed and the spells were stolen. That’s why I brought you here. Cousin Robert...he-he tricked me and now he’s opened a portal to the netherworld. There are demons, Dad. Demons and all sorts of undead monsters are now here. That’s why I used the spell. I need to know how to stop them.”

  I don’t know the answer to that. He lifted a blackened hand and pointed a finger at Carl and added: You have damned him for nothing.

  Jack wanted to apologize again and again, but what his father had first said dried his tears. “What? How do you not know?” he demanded.

  Knowledge is not magically acquired in death. There is much I do not know and much I do not wish to know. I was happy.

  “Can you tell us anything, Mr. Dreyden?” Cyn asked. She had inched back to the circle and Jack just noticed the 9MM in her hands—it was pointed at his chest. “Can you tell us about the spells? Are there more of them and do all of them involve blood?”

  I know only a little, he admitted, but I will tell you all I know. My grandfather and his father discovered the tomb of Rath-ara near the city of the dead. Rath-ara was a son in the line of early kings, of which very little is known. They were the witch-kings of Amanhaphala, ancestors of an earlier and much greater line called the Evean-na. They were sorcerers of great power. They had supremacy over life and death and could not be killed in the normal fashion. They reigned, father to son for eons. They built cities of fabulous wealth and were worshipped as gods but in truth they were not gods as we know the term. They were demon-like beings and lived for battle and they craved blood. They made war on each other, sometimes tearing the very fabric of existence.

  How they met their end, I do not know, but one by one their cities were turned to dust and their magic was destroyed when it could be or hidden when it couldn’t. Only a weak few of their kind lived on and the line of Amanhaphala were some of these.

  “But what about the magic?” Cyn asked. “What do you know of their magic?”

  The corpse of Jack’s father was silent for some time and then made a sound like a sigh. It was a long sound that shivered Jack’s bones. After another moment Jonathan Dreyden answered: Their magic is blood magic. They offer the dead and the dying to the Gods of the Undead in exchange for power. I do not know their spells and I do not ever want to know their spells. And yet one spell was my birthright. The spell to open the portal was given to my line...to you, Jonny, so that it would never be used. You failed this trust, Jonny.

  Jack hung his head; his chin resting on Carl’s stiffening shoulder. It was horrible to feel the corpse and smell it and to be so close to his victim, only Jack didn’t have the strength of character to lift his eyes. His shame was beyond his ability to cope with just then.

  “Thank you very much,” Cyn said with a weak smile. “That was, uh, helpful, only I guess we could use some more information. Anything at all. Anything about our cousin or his plans...anything?”

  I do not know. The world I left behind is insignificant to me now. It feels like a dream.

  “Well, uh, is there anyone else we can talk to?” she asked. “I mean anyone here that knows about this sort of thing.”

  No one among the living that I am aware of. These secrets are heavily guarded. If the answers are out there, they will not be given up willingly.

  Cyn and Jack shared an uncomfortable look. “Then I guess I should send you back,” Jack said.

  You cannot send me back because you cannot control me. Please, Jonny for the sake of your soul and your life, do not attempt to bring anyone back to this world of the living. The spell you have conjured is incomplete and had you made even the slightest error in my name, there would have been dreadful repercussions. The Gods of the Undead have been awakened and there are some who are angry at the loss of their souls, and they are vengeful creatures.

  “I won’t do the spell again, I promise. It was a big mistake, I know that now, and I...” Jack broke off suddenly as he felt a tremor of unease in the pit of his stomach. It grew slowly until he felt as though he was going to be sick.

  Cyn had a hand on her stomach; her eyes were misted over and far away, looking east. “It’s Robert. I can feel him. He’s far away but I can still feel him. He’s using the spell again.”

  Jack’s father turned his head and something in his neck popped, adding to Jack’s nausea. His father said: Robert is opening another gate. He is very foolish. He will cause much misery and pain.

  Jack laid Carl’s body down and stepped to the edge of the twin circles. “If I kill Robert, will that send the souls back?”

  I do not know this answer; however I doubt it. These souls he calls do not come from the heavens, they come from the world below and they will not willingly go back. They will have to be forced back into their shadow world. I wish I could be of more help to you, Jonny, but now, I am to leave you. I cannot go until I tell you how sorry I am that you have been put in this position. You were burdened greatly while still so young and so alone, and for that I am at fault and beg your forgiveness.

  “It’s ok,” Jack said. “I never blamed you.”

  You should blame me since my failings have led you here. But if you forgive me I am satisfied. Now, I must also tell you that your mother and I love you very much and do not wish for you to...

  “You’re with mom?” Jack asked, interrupting. “Don’t let her know what happened here, please. I don’t want her to know about him.” He pointed at Carl, lying in a puddle of his own blood. “With all my heart, I wish I hadn’t done this, but I can’t take it back and I’m practically drowning in guilt already without mom knowing as well.”

  I keep no secrets from your mother. I buried the secret of your birthright and look where it has led. Do not worry about your mother, she will understand. This world is darker than it had been and I fear it will only get darker, still. Now, burn my bones. I do not wish to be called again. Robert can force me against you and that would be a terror to me.

  “I will,” Jack answered. “Good bye, Dad.”

  Good bye, my son. Be strong.

  Beneath the coffin, a black hole appeared for a blink, there was a rush of wind and then the body of Jonathan Dreyden suddenly slumped and fell back into the coffin. Jack and Cyn stood there staring for a few seconds before they both turned away. Jack had tears in his eyes. He looked east where he knew Robert was drawing his symbols in blood.

  He felt utterly lost. He had murdered Carl for nothing. They hadn’t learned a thing and they had nowhere to go and Robert was only getting stronger.

  When he turned back to Cyn, he saw that she had crossed over to Carl. Unbelievably, she picked up the bloody paint brush and dabbed it into the pool of blood. Jack’s eyes bugged. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, hypocritically judging her for desecrating the dead…the murdered.

  She began painting over the glyphs, saying: “These are too dangerous to leave lying around for anyone to read.”

  “Yeah,” he answered still too swamped to give a better response. Buried in guilt, he bent to the task his father had left him; Jack would burn his corpse. He had no idea how. Sure, he knew fire would do it, but how big of a fire?

  Jack had never even barbecued a steak before, so his frame of reference was limited. He feared under-burning rather than over-b
urning and so he spent the next hour dragging over every log and bough he could find, until he had a great pyramid of wood twelve feet in height.

  Then he went to the grisly task of hefting his father out of the coffin he’d slept in for the last ten years. There was a harsh smell of death around the corpse that he hadn’t noticed before in all the excitement. It was too much. He had to walk away and even then he doubled over and blew out the dinner he had eaten hours earlier.

  Cyn pretended not to notice and only stood to the side staring eastward, with lines creasing her forehead. Robert was working on the next of his four sets of spells. Whatever he had planned was going to be big. When Jack finally stood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, she asked: “What are we going to do?”

  He wanted to answer: Whatever we have to, because that sounded tough and it was what a real man would say. Jack remained silent; the best he could manage was only a shrug. He had an anchor of guilt sitting square in his chest. Since he had sold his birth right for thirty pieces of silver, he had three times stolen blood and once stolen life.

  If anyone was as evil as Robert, it was he.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he answered in platitude and then went back to the dank coffin. His Adam’s apple jerked up with a click and then he bent to the body of his father. Jonathan Dreyden had been a big man in life, in death he was a shrunken, loose thing, no longer the tough as nails descendant of the original Jonathan Dreyden who had been famously brave and strong. In death, Jack’s father was sadly light. Jack cradled his lolling body, carrying it to the tall stack of wood.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” he said, and then heaved the corpse to the top.

  It took little to start the fire: some newspaper and a bit of kindling. In no time, the fire was reaching up to the stars and the heat baked into both Jack and Cyn. They stood close to each other, their shoulders touching. They took turns glancing at the other when they didn’t think they were watching.