by Noah Harris
A shadow moved in front of him, a silhouette of a man.
“Get out of my way,” Richard said. “I need to get to the altar.”
“You ain’t going nowhere, freak. What were you doing in that alley?”
Richard shaded his eyes, trying to see.
The first thing he noticed was that his pants were down and his slick, erect cock stood tall and proud for everyone to see.
The second thing he saw was a cop with a drawn pistol standing right in front of him.
The cop glared at him down the barrel of his .38 revolver.
“Mind telling me what you were doing down there, dirtbag?” the cop demanded.
“I, um…”
A crowd of looters charged past carrying televisions and stereos.
“Hey, stop!” the cop ordered, turning towards them.
Richard didn’t lose a second. He pulled up his pants and sprinted down the street, his focus back on the distant demon running away from him in the other plane of existence.
His mind reeled. How had that other demon manifested itself in the alley? Was that Richard’s doing? He knew he acted as a medium between his own world and that of the demons, especially when he got high and his sense of reality subsided, but before tonight, it had only been when he wanted it. Now, the demons were trying to distract him by slowing him down.
They were gaining in power.
It’s because of the chaos in the city, Richard realized, and whatever ritual Anton and his cult are performing.
As he pursued the Hooded One, he could now see where the demon was headed—to an old Native American ritual stone in the middle of Central Park. It was a large rock surrounded by bushes and trees, with a hidden path up the back of it. Most people, unless they happened upon the path by pure luck, wouldn’t bother trying to push through the thicket and scramble up the steep sides of the huge granite boulder, and so would have never suspected that it was flat on the top, a perfect place for a ritual. With the power out and looting all around, none of the criminals who usually made Central Park their home at night would be there. The cult would have it all to themselves.
He and Tyrone had discovered the truth about the stone while researching the area. It had been a black neighborhood back in the nineteenth century before the city government destroyed it and turned it into a park, and before that, it had been a Native American religious site. That stone had been used for rituals for centuries, perhaps millennia. It had been gathering power for countless generations. It was atop that ancient stone that one of Anton’s previous male models had been sacrificed. The cult had used the model’s blood in some black magic to open up the way for the Hooded One to mate with a virgin male and venture into this world.
That virgin would have been Richard, but he put a stop to that
Now, Anton and his cohorts had found another willing virgin male.
Richard could see him vaguely—an olive-skinned beauty with wavy, black hair. He lay stretched out on the stone, naked, as the robed cultists stood in a torch-lit circle around him, raising their arms in unison, their faces hidden by cowls. Richard could not hear anything, but he suspected they were chanting, calling forth the Hooded One.
Finally, the demon arrived. Richard could see the circle part for him, and the demon stand before his youthful victim.
The Hooded One had made it, and Richard was still two blocks away from Central Park.
There was no way he would make it in time.
Richard stopped, gasping for breath, barely aware of the partying crowds around him, getting drunk off of free liquor. Despair washed over him; he had failed. The ritual would be complete before he ever made it there. Even if he did get to the ritual stone before the Hooded One had seeded the virgin, he would never be able to fight all of the cultists. The last time, he had barely gotten away with his life, and he had three friends with him. Now, he was alone, and unarmed. He would have been a fool to even attempt it.
He had to try, though. He set out again, lurching into a painful jog as his lungs burned and his legs felt wobbly.
The scene wavered again. A strange prickling sensation came over him, and he realized he was going to peak on the acid once more.
The acid trip came upon Richard with greater strength than ever before. Panic overtook him and he started to tremble as the garish colors and warped shapes bombarded his senses. Trumpets, screams, and cackling laughter assaulted his ears. Then, his vision stabilized, and the demon realm became clear as it, along with his own plane of existence; melded. The street looked like the barren plain of bedrock, and a distant shop fire looked like the pit of lava. Those that danced before it could have been demons or human revelers, or perhaps both. Perhaps, they had, in fact, been both and he had been blind all this time.
Richard realized he had fallen to his knees. A figure approached him, maybe human, maybe not, with human clothing but distended features on a florid face. The nose was huge, and reddened by the broken blood vessels of a habitual drunk. The man’s smile bled off his face and portions of his lips dribbled onto the pavement.
“Have a drink, buddy,” his voice rumbled.
The man held out a bottle. With unusual clarity, Richard noticed it was a cheap, bottom shelf brand. This guy had looted a liquor store, could have taken any kind of booze he wanted, and had chosen the same rotgut he was probably used to swilling.
Richard snorted, shook his head, and climbed to his feet. The drunk briefly split in two before merging again.
“Maybe you idiots deserve to be taken over by demons,” he said.
Without waiting for a response from the drunk, Richard staggered towards the scene of the sacrifice once more.
It seemed impossibly distant, in both planes of existence.
But why would distance matter?” He wondered. He was seeing both planes at once, but he remained mostly in his own. He had to run another block to Central Park and the sacrifice site, while the Hooded One had to run across the blasted plain to the site of the portal from his domain into the human world, but why would distance have any meaning if traveling from one dimension to another?
Richard was part of both worlds, thanks to his own natural ability—which was why he had attracted Anton Black’s attention in the first place—and from the Hooded One’s seed inside him. It hadn’t been enough to break down the barriers between worlds completely, but it had been enough to put him more firmly in that strange space.
Why couldn’t he go anywhere he wanted?
Something the Knowledge Demon had revealed to him bubbled up to his consciousness, and the words repeated as if the inky creature himself was whispering them into his ear.
You are sensitive. The space between the world of men and the world of demons is not so far for you. You only have to let your mind go and you can connect the two.
He stopped. The fires were further behind him now and this portion of the street was darker. The demon realm, and the portal created by the Central Park sacrifice stone, stood clearer in his vision. The olive-skinned youth lay supine on the stone, his cock stiffly erect, his dark eyes open wide as he beheld the Hooded One standing before him.
The demon reached down and opened his robe. That massive, tempting organ emerged once more as Richard shuddered and licked his lips. He felt a surge of jealousy that the Hooded One would take another human consort. Hatred rose within him against this little slut offering himself to the demon realm’s greatest lover.
Immediately he stomped that emotion down and tried to temper his thoughts. The sacrificial virgin sat bolt upright, staring in awe and fear at that massive cock. For a moment, Richard felt some hope that he’d shy away, but after a brief hesitation a slow smile passed over the sacrifice’s lips, as he lay back down and spread his legs.
The sacrifice bent his knees and lifted up the lower portion of his body to show off a smooth, youthful ass. It looked small and tender. Would the sacrifice even be able to take someone as big as the Hooded One?
Did that even matter? The d
emon needed to take a virgin and fill him with his seed. Richard had heard nothing in any part of the ritual that stipulated that the virgin had to survive the encounter.
The Hooded One knelt down before the sacrifice as the surrounding cultists in their robes and hoods raised their hands once more. The light of the torches illuminated some of their faces. Their mouths moved in unison, chanting magical phrases to help bring about the union of the two worlds.
He had to get there. Richard’s mind still roiled with the confusion of the acid, and he didn’t know if what he was about to do was crazy or what, but the whole city had gone insane, so he might as well join it.
He faced the brick wall of a building, set somewhat back from the rest so that it lay in full shadow, sheltered from the distant glare of the fires. The vision of the sacrifice stood out as clear as a chalk outline on a blackboard. He focused on it…
…and sprinted straight for the wall.
He pumped his exhausted arms and legs, tried to ignore the pounding terror in his heart, and concentrated on the scene playing out in front of him.
Richard ran headlong into the brick wall…
…and burst through a strange invisible barrier that felt like a curtain of strong wind, or the shell of a great egg, or the membrane of a giant womb.
Then, he slammed face first into something.
That something wasn’t the brick wall, but the back of one of the cultists.
The robed figure toppled forward onto the flat top of the boulder.
Richard blinked. A circle of torches and robed men stood around the edge of the boulder. Fresh air filled his lungs. Above, stars twinkled in the night sky. He had made it!
The cultists all turned to face him. One pulled off his hood with a single hand and snarled.
Anton Black.
“It’s you! Kill him!”
Richard leapt forward before the two cultists flanking him could react. The Hooded One knelt just before him, grasping the bare hips of the sacrifice, ready to take what he wanted. The youth’s eyes were bloodshot and glazed. Obviously they had made him high enough to weaken his will.
“Look!” he shouted, and whipped off the demon’s hood.
The goat’s head bleated with surprise. The youth’s eyes went wide with terror and a sudden sickening sobriety. He pulled himself away.
“What are you?” he shouted in poorly, accented English. “Get away from me!”
The Hooded One rose up in rage, clenching his thick fists, defied once again.
Strong hands grabbed Richard from behind. He kicked out, and managed to hit the shin of one of the cultists, but the other got him in an arm lock. In his weary and drugged state, he couldn’t fight back properly. He lashed out with his foot again, but his warped sight caused him to miss. Within a few seconds he was pinned onto the cold stone, a knee pressed into the small of his back. His cheek ground against the granite, as his face turned towards the sacrifice.
Anton knelt by the trembling youth. It was difficult to tell which one looked more terrified.
“Let him take you,” Anton commanded, although it came out more like a plea. “Do not look at his face. See? He’s already put his hood up. You didn’t see what you thought you saw. It was just the drug. A bad trip, as you kids say. Look how big he is. Don’t you want him? No, don’t look at that idiot who disrupted everything. He’s just a common criminal. New York is filled with them. Look at the man in the robe. Sexy, isn’t he? You said so yourself. And remember what I promised you? Riches! Anything you want. You can have a penthouse overlooking this park. A Rolls Royce. Anything! Just let him have you.”
Anton was begging now, gripping the sacrifice around the shoulders as the youth shook his head and kept repeating “No” over and over again.
The Hooded One walked over to Anton. From his vantage point lying pressed against the rock, Richard could clearly see the hooves beneath the hem of the robe. He shuddered.
Anton rose before the demon.
“Master! We will try again. I will give him another dose, a stronger dose, and we—”
Anton’s words were cut off when the Hooded One cuffed him on the side of the head, sending him sprawling.
The Hooded One turned towards the sacrifice. The demon’s thick red cock hung over him like the sword of Damocles. The youth scrambled away, only to be stopped by one of the robed figures.
Clack clack. The Hooded One walked over to Richard where he still lay pinned to the rock, his arm twisted painfully behind him. Those glowing, slitted pupils gazed down on him.
“He has defied you too many times, master!” the cultist holding him down said. “Let me kill him for you!”
The man shifted his weight, and Richard felt the cold muzzle of a pistol press against his temple.
The Hooded One’s hand snapped down, clasped the cultist by the throat, and picked the man up off his feet. Richard crawled away a couple of feet before being stopped by another cultist. He turned and looked. The cultist in the demon’s grip dropped his pistol to the ground with a clatter. With an air of contempt, the demon tossed the man aside. He landed hard on the stone.
Then he turned to Richard. His cock still stuck out of his robes and Richard could feel the heat coming off of it as the demon approached him.
The circle of cultists fell silent and stared as the demon faced the man who could walk between two worlds. The torches took on a garish brightness and the scene shifted and distorted.
I’m about to peak again, Richard realized.
The cock was close to him now, giving off a musty odor. Richard realized it was the scent of his own ass. It had only been a couple of hours at most since their last lovemaking.
Lovemaking? Richard thought. Yes, in a way it is.
Richard looked up into those fiery eyes. The movement of his head made them leave tracers across the darkness of the hood.
“As much as I’ve stopped your plans, as many times as I’ve frustrated you, you won’t let them kill me,” Richard whispered. “This is more than just sex and power for you, isn’t it?”
The Hooded One didn’t reply, only took a half step closer to press his cock against Richard.
While he still wore his clothing, the feel of that thick shaft against his body sent a tremor of desire through him.
“No,” Richard said, shaking his head slowly. “You know I can’t.”
The Hooded One turned and faded. A moment later he winked out of sight.
Richard felt a terrible sense of loss. He had the sinking feeling he’d never see the demon again.
Then he saw the .44 caliber revolver lying near his feet where the cultist had dropped it.
He lunged for the weapon but a booted foot came down on it when his hand was only an inch away.
He looked up. A grinning cultist gripped a switchblade that gleamed in the torchlight.
The other cultists closed in, some carrying knives, others guns. The man who had been thrown off him by the Hooded One picked himself up and retrieved his pistol. Richard recognized him as David, one of the cultists who had been at the last ritual and who had tried to shoot him before. He was a short, stocky guy who looked Italian and not too smart. He glowered at Richard with a dull menacing stare.
“The Hooded One doesn’t want me killed,” Richard said, looking around the circle of murderous faces. He couldn’t keep his voice from warbling.
Anton Black stalked up to him with a sneer.
“Oh, we won’t kill you,” he said. “But you’ll wish we had.”
Two of the cultists grabbed him. Two others grabbed the sacrifice, who was still nude although no longer erect, and pushed them down the hidden path that wound around the back of the boulder. Behind them, a cultist doused the torches one by one.
Another minute passed, and they were walking with the entire cult through the darkness of Central Park. The city skyline was faintly visible against the starry sky, grimly silhouetted here and there by the baleful red light of dozens of fires.
“Beautifu
l, isn’t it?” David said. He held Richard by the collar and had his gun pressed up against the back of his head.
“It looks like the demon realm,” Richard replied.
David chuckled. “That’s what I meant.”
“W-what was that thing?” the sacrifice asked.
“A demon,” Richard said. “If it had cum inside of you it would have been able to walk this world at will.”
“Huh?” the young man stared at him. Richard couldn’t decide if the guy’s confusion was due to the drugs Anton had given him, his poor English, or the weirdness of what Richard had just told him. It was probably a combination of everything. Richard’s own mind remained a muddle, his own sight uncertain thanks to the acid Anton had slipped in his orange juice. He seemed to be getting better though. At least the vision of the demon realm had disappeared.
“You were a virgin sacrifice,” Richard told him.
The youth stared at him wide eyed and trembled.
The cultists led them down a path through some trees and across an open field. At one point, Anton ordered a halt and one of the cultists took the opportunity to give the sacrifice a bundle of clothes and he began to get dressed. The guy was so out of it, that he fell over while trying to put on his pants. The cultist who’d handed him the clothes began to help him. As he did so, Anton came over to Richard.
“An impressive trick you pulled,” the cult leader said. “Even practiced magicians have trouble walking between the worlds. Your talent is truly amazing. Someday, you could even learn to do it without using psychedelics as a crutch. And in case you felt tempted to try it again…”
Anton went over to one of the other cultists, who produced a thick silver bracelet from his pocket. Anton took it gingerly, as if it were a serpent or a spider, and snapped it on Richard’s wrist. He turned a little silver key in the lock and the bracelet gave a soft click. Anton pulled the key out and put it in his pocket.
“What is this?” Richard asked, studying it in the faint light and feeling its surface. It was covered with writing, but there wasn’t enough light to read it. Richard suspected it would be in some long dead language he couldn’t read anyway.