Sanctuary

by Joshua Ingle

  Another bullet through the window, and this time it left a mark in the ceiling, too.

  “Crystal, what are you waiting for? Do you love him?”

  Two more bullets. A large fissure appeared in the windowpane between two of the bullet holes, which whistled as a strong wind beat against them from outside.

  “Thinking of you was what saved him from drowning, Crystal. He realized he wanted a life with you more than with anything or anyone else.” As more bullets pierced the glass, Virgil strained to get to his feet. “Quickly, into the bedroom.”

  •

  The window in the living room shattered just as Thorn slammed the door to the master bedroom shut. He cursed himself. In the span of just fifteen minutes, he’d gone from a temporary victory back to true desperation.

  “Are we safe in here?” Crystal asked.

  “No.” Unfortunately, every room in this infernal place had a window—the master bathroom, the service hallways, even Cole’s closet—and they were all too large or oddly placed to effectively barricade. Thorn wished he’d thought to look for a windowless hiding place sooner. Crystal’s bathroom might have worked, but it was on the other side of the condo. And the elevators might have worked, but demons had certainly infested them by now.

  Now the demons would use Heather’s corpse to shoot out any window in any room where Thorn tried to hide. How many clips did the officers have? I should have broken more of their fingers. I should have focused more on the humans’ choices from the beginning. I should have let the Judge get caught by the demons instead of letting him into the car. There were many things Thorn should have done but didn’t—not only tonight, but throughout his entire life. Nothing kindles the fires of regret more than impending death.

  Thorn wondered if telling Crystal and Cole about the nature of Sanctuaries had been a wise choice. Perhaps their choice would have come easier had they not known. Or perhaps it was merely breaking the Second Rule—after a fashion—that felt strange to him.

  All was silent. Thorn met Crystal’s weary gaze. “We have about three minutes. Do you love Cole? Will you stay with him?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. I love Cole and I’ll stay with him.”

  “Are you being genuine?”

  “Yeah.”

  In her fatigued and wounded state, Crystal was hard to read, but she seemed honest enough. “Then that’s not the choice,” Thorn said to her.

  Love was something that the Enemy prattled on and on about, so Thorn had hoped that love would be the nature of the humans’ choice. But both had declared their love for each other and both were still here. What else could their choice be? Thorn’s mind, usually so sharp, was fraying. He was too frightened to think straight. He’d fought so hard, so resolutely… and now he’d finally reached an impasse. All he could do was lean Virgil against the wall and slide sluggishly down it until he sat on the floor with the humans.

  “Choose,” he said to Crystal and Cole.

  That was the moment that Thorn gave up all hope.

  With his head leaned back against the wall, he caught a glimpse of Virgil in a mirror in Cole’s closet. He looked… dead. Purplish-white skin, blood everywhere, eyes as dry as stone. You’ll be with me soon, the corpse seemed to say to Thorn. Thorn turned away.

  “I wish we had more time to think,” Crystal said. She cringed as she rubbed her wounded stomach.

  Cole slowly shook his head and placed an arm around Crystal. “I’m sorry for everything,” he said. “Stay with me?”

  In answer, Crystal pulled his arm all the way around her and nestled herself underneath it. She leaned against him affectionately. Cole ran his other hand through her hair.

  “If we do have to die, and if it makes any difference, I’m glad I’m with you now,” Cole said. “You know, Brandon always told me that when he was a kid, he wished he’d die in a car wreck, or a tornado or something. Because if you die young, for a few weeks after your passing, your life would actually become important to everybody. Everyone who’d never cared about you would suddenly care. I always liked that thought. But now it just seems stupid. I’d rather live. I’d rather live with you.”

  He rested his head on top of Crystal’s. On the other side of the bedroom, a bullet pierced the window. Crystal started to cry.

  Thorn had always expected his death to come unpredictably and violently, not gradually and gloomily. He decided that this way was worse. But as tears pattered softly against Crystal’s blue-green dress, Thorn thought that perhaps he could at least console the humans, here at the end. He spoke as tenderly as he could through Virgil’s dead larynx.

  “In three months, Crystal, you get a job pushing paper at a mental health clinic. It doesn’t pay much, but the insurance is good, and it gets you through childbirth. Things are difficult for a while, so you and Cole sell the condo and move out of the city, to a small town. You find community there. Your daughter makes friends. And she grows up. Eventually, you and Cole get married. You get involved with a local charity, which is never a huge success, but it means a lot to the people you help. You settle in, you grow old together. You die of a heart attack at age seventy-nine. Over five hundred people attend your funeral. Because you will have lived a meaningful life.”

  It was all lies, of course. Lying was what Thorn did best. But for all Crystal knew, this supernatural Virgil character could tell the future. She gazed at Thorn skeptically… but her tears stopped. “Is that what happens if we survive?” she asked.

  “It’s one of many possibilities. And so is this.” He gestured at the room, at the condo, at the Sanctuary around them. For all Thorn knew, that part was true.

  Two more bullets shot through the window, fracturing the glass closer to the point of breaking. Listlessly, Thorn speculated on whether Marcus himself would be in Heather’s broken body on the ground outside, shooting at the large windows far above, or whether he’d be one of the first demons to charge in through the shattered window, making a beeline straight for Thorn. Serpentine wind hissed through the holes in the glass. It was only air coming in—for now—but behind it lay a hurricane of devils, hooting and cackling wildly during these last few seconds before they could finally butcher their prey. The window even started to shake, vibrating fiercely as the eager horde pushed against it.

  And to think, just three months ago, I was on top of the world. I was one of the greatest living demons. An entire city was mine to control. Thorn wasn’t sure if his search for answers had been worth the trouble in the end. It had led him only to doom.

  “Virgil…”

  Thorn looked over to Crystal as several more bullets ripped through the window.

  “Yes, Crystal?”

  “What if this Sanctuary isn’t just a test for us? What if it’s a test for you, too?”

  The window burst into a thousand fine shards, soaring through the gales that engulfed the bedroom.

  15

  More than a thousand demons had crowded into Cole’s living room. Thorn could scarcely see more than a foot in front of his face, let alone walk through them. Yet somehow he managed to hold on to Virgil’s body through it all. At last a small clearing opened up ahead of him.

  Marcus and the African leader floated together in the center of the condo. Cole’s abstract painting of flames had been unceremoniously flung at their feet by the ravenous wind. Brandon’s long-forgotten playing cards fluttered around like hungry insects. Had Marcus and the Africans formed an alliance for this? For the end?

  Crystal walked to Thorn’s left, her hand grasping Cole’s tightly, utter terror in her eyes. Roaring wind whipped at her hair, and as Thorn watched, a demon clasped its hands around her head and started whispering to her. Her eyes glazed over in a trance, as did Cole’s when another demon took hold of his mind.

  When Thorn turned back to Marcus, he found his familiar adversary standing less than arm’s length in front of him, the hate of two millennia radiating off of him. “You’re going to watch,” Marcus said.

  They took t
he main elevator downstairs; the demons coerced Crystal into pushing the buttons. On the ground floor, smears of dried blood led in winding trails away from the elevator. Marcus, the executioner, floated at the rear of the group.

  Crystal and Cole smiled faintly, both in their own little worlds—worlds the demons had made for them. This death march must have been Marcus’s way of rubbing in his victory, since he wouldn’t be able to savor Thorn’s pain after killing him. And this was painful. This is what total failure feels like. Everything I sought to accomplish, I’ve failed at. And now I’m going to die.

  The grim procession ambled through the lounge, out the back doors, down some steps, through a gate in the white plastic fence, and finally into the vicinity of the condo’s swimming pool. Four mutilated remnants of bodies waited there for them: Brandon, Heather, and the two policemen. The mangled corpses could do little more than flop along the ground, but all were puppets to demons, and all gazed upward expectantly, with disturbing intelligence buried behind their lifeless eyes. The rest of the demonic host stretched up into the heavens, circling the large pool, eager for a morbid feast. Perhaps most haunting of all was the Judge, who stalked silently on the far side of the water, a lone wolf somberly watching the proceedings.

  Beyond Miami Beach in the distance, the first violet tendrils of early dawn crept above the horizon.

  Marcus led the humans to the pool’s steps. Crystal and Cole stepped nonchalantly into the water, as if going for a casual afternoon swim. Demons from the horde began diving into the pool’s murky depths as well.

  “You’re better than this!” Thorn yelled to Crystal and Cole as they entered the pool. “You’re better than whatever they show you!”

  “No they’re not,” Marcus said. He nodded to the African leader, who pointed to three of his followers, and then to Thorn. The three followers swooped down to Thorn and attacked him, beating him savagely, raking his spirit with wound after wound. Thorn lost his hold on Virgil’s body, and it dropped to the ground like a limp marionette. The demons dragged Thorn down to earth as well. Yet through his agony, he kept his eyes locked on Crystal and Cole.

  They were waist-deep now and heading toward opposite sides of the pool’s deep end. The demons were separating them. Naturally. Marcus is afraid they’ll break each other out of their trances, like Crystal did for Cole in the tub.

  Indeed, Crystal seemed to notice Cole just as her head submerged.

  •

  Crystal could tell that something was wrong… but so much was suddenly right!

  She stood in the living room of her mom’s house on a bright Sunday afternoon. Everything was clean! The paper piles that had been drowning the piano bench were now sorted neatly in a filing cabinet. The carpets had lost their usual speckling of crumbs, and the windows had been opened all the way, letting sunlight shine through the dust-free air and fall against Crystal’s skin. Most surprisingly, all of her mom’s Vodou stuff was gone: she couldn’t find a single statuette of Papa Legba or Erzulie Freda anywhere.

  The front door squeaked on its old hinges. Crystal turned to see her mom, who’d skipped church this Sunday in favor of spending time with her family. She held a huge paper bag from the grocery store in one hand, and was gingerly opening the door to make way for…

  … for Crystal’s daughter.

  She was about seven years old, with Crystal’s hazel hair and brown eyes, and was hefting a bag the same size as her grandma’s through the door. The poor thing could barely carry it! Crystal ran to help her.

  Crystal exchanged some friendly words with her mom and her daughter, although she wasn’t quite aware of what was being said, even as she said it. She just couldn’t stop beaming at how her mom had changed into a mother she could admire, or at the daughter she loved and would do anything for.

  The perfect moment was spoiled only by the stuffy air in the house. It was a little hard to breathe.

  Something was wrong. What was it? Crystal walked to the door to see if it was something outside.

  •

  The sun was rising quickly in the Sanctuary. The sky’s lavender shades from just minutes before had been replaced by reds and oranges as brilliant as the pain that burned through Thorn while the African leader beat him maliciously. A short distance away, Marcus officiated the humans’ demise from beside the pool. He seemed more interested in Thorn’s suffering, though. “Shazakahn, are you almost done?” he asked.

  “My turn first, then yours,” Shazakahn said. He plowed a fist into Thorn’s midsection.

  Thorn dreaded his inevitable death, yet at the same time, he found that he couldn’t feel hatred for Marcus anymore. Because now Thorn knew. Or perhaps it was only a dying hope rather than outright knowledge. A strong, joyous suspicion. As he reached out toward Marcus, he thought of Xeres, who had journeyed to a Sanctuary. Who had become an angel.

  Thorn stretched his metaphysical hand toward Marcus, and Shazakahn beat him even more ruthlessly. Marcus gestured for him to stop.

  For once, Thorn looked upon Marcus not as an enemy, but as someone else he could save. Weakly, Thorn drifted toward him, and was a beggar once more—a Rat at the foot of a demon lord. With a feeble croak, he spoke the most important words he’d ever said to his old foe:

  “The Sanctuaries are for us.”

  Marcus furrowed his brow at Thorn’s groveling and backed away from him.

  “God tests us here. Us demons. All the demons who didn’t come back from the Sanctuaries… they’re the ones who passed His test. He wants us back. He wants us back.”

  Thorn blacked out for a moment as pain took him. When consciousness returned, he whispered again:

  “The Sanctuaries are for us.”

  •

  Crystal’s daughter was just a baby now, in a crib in Cole’s study, which had been converted into a nursery covered in pastel pink. No cameras or video equipment were in sight—no evidence that porn had ever been produced here. Best of all, Crystal and Cole lived alone in the condo. She faintly remembered someone else having lived with them at one point, someone she hadn’t liked. But he was gone now, and Cole was all hers.

  She could feel Cole’s soothing breath on the back of her neck. He slid his arms around her, and it was the best feeling in the world. She smiled.

  “I’m fully yours, Crystal,” Cole said. “You’re the most important person in my life.”

  Crystal turned to face him. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and khakis, his usually shaggy hair now perfectly straight above his stunning blue eyes. He gazed right into her eyes, into her soul, and said, “I’ll always be here for you.”

  Crystal was in heaven. She had the perfect life, the perfect romance, everything she’d always dreamed of.

  But the real Cole would never have said those things.

  •

  Thorn’s gaze met the Judge’s, silently pleading with him from across the pool. Step in and save the day, Judge. Use your influence. Do something! Help us! The Judge had heard Thorn’s assertion about the Sanctuaries as well as Marcus had, yet he didn’t act. He just continued pacing restlessly, drifting back and forth above the patio chairs. Is he really that apathetic, or is he just too afraid to take action?

  “I’m through arguing with you about the Enemy,” Marcus said in response to Thorn. “He wants us to suffer. And suffer you shall, just as all humanity will suffer after you. I will conquer. Demonkind will conquer. Everything burns.”

  Thorn glanced toward the pool. Cole was lost deep in demonic temptation, but Crystal struggled, twitched; she seemed to be seeing through the illusions, at least partially. Still, they’d been underwater for over a minute. Hundreds of demons surrounded them, and thousands more stalked above the pool. The sun would soon peek over the horizon. But they still have time, however brief, to make their choice.

  Again, Shazakahn violently kicked Thorn. Other demons joined in, and agony pierced Thorn’s spiritual body. In spite of the pain, Thorn reached for Virgil’s corpse…

  •
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  In the nursery, Cole caressed Crystal’s face. His eyes were loving, alluring, and a subtle euphoria was begging Crystal to let those eyes consume her attention, but she was more concerned with his hair, which was drifting up from his scalp and waving around his head. Like he’s underwater. The curtains, too, had taken on a bluish hue and drifted strangely out from the windows, defying gravity.

  Then she saw the real Cole on the other side of the pool.

  Pool? She wasn’t in a pool. She was in the baby’s room and it was daytime and everything was perfect. Cole took her face in his hand and kissed her softly on the lips.

  But it wasn’t the real Cole! And she hadn’t had the baby yet. Am I still in the Sanctuary?

  Crystal was suddenly aware that she couldn’t breathe. She started to inhale, but only water rushed into her mouth, so she spit it out and held on to what little breath she still had. She shoved the fake Cole aside and swam out the open window…

  Into dark water. An endless void. It had a bottom, but no surface above as far as she could tell—no way to get air.

  Cole lay on his back at the bottom of an incline, staring blankly upward. As Crystal swam to him, various scenes flashed before her eyes: happy occasions with her mom, with her daughter, or with Cole, none of which had ever happened, and none of which ever would. She ignored them all and dived deeper.

  Brandon now swam near Cole. Why hadn’t she noticed him before? He glided between the two of them, his eyes blazing with fury, warning Crystal not to come near.

  But Brandon had died. Was this Brandon real? Crystal decided he wasn’t, and pushed past him. He followed her—grabbed for her, even—but he was just a hallucination. He couldn’t intimidate her anymore. She wouldn’t let him.

  She grabbed Cole’s hand.

  •

  Everything burns? Even what I’ve done for Crystal and Cole? Must that be as temporary and as meaningless as everything else I’ve done in my life?