Diabolical

by Hank Schwaeble

  Hatcher said nothing.

  “And for another, how do you know that security guard’s not one of ours?”

  Hatcher stopped walking. Edgar’s words swirled in his head. At first blush it seemed far-fetched to the point of paranoid fantasy, but then he realized the only reason that was so was because he assumed they couldn’t possibly know he’d be going there. Yet obviously, they did know, otherwise Edgar wouldn’t have shown up.

  Edgar looked back at Hatcher after a few more steps and waited. His eyes caught just enough moonlight to glisten wanly. His face was barely visible, and stayed that way for several seconds, until the whites of his teeth flashed.

  “I’m just fucking with you. I never saw the guy before.” He turned and resumed his pace. “C’mon. Not much farther.”

  Watching Edgar pull ahead, Hatcher realized he could get back to the car and take off, leave the man out there with a long walk back to his bike. But he could have done something like that a number of times, could have run Edgar over on his bike, or at least knocked him off and left him stranded. Then, as now, it wouldn’t have accomplished anything, so he decided to keep following. As much as he hated to admit it, Edgar had piqued his curiosity. The little shit.

  The trail inclined, ascending into the hills. They walked for over a mile, closer to two, before Hatcher saw Edgar climb up toward a ridge and crouch just below the ridgeline.

  He urged Hatcher to join him, whispering forcefully and waving him closer.

  After a moment’s deliberation, Hatcher climbed the slope, set himself down on his elbows a couple of feet away, and peered over the edge of a berm.

  Edgar pulled out something that looked like a cigarette case. When he slid a lever along the side, the top and bottom expanded to reveal a pop-up set of binoculars. He handed them to Hatcher.

  “Take a gander,” he said, his voice low but audible.

  Though they looked like a child’s toy, the heft indicated he was holding expensive equipment. Hatcher gave them a once-over, then raised the upper half of his head over the edge of earth. There was activity about half a click away. He put the lenses to his eyes.

  Serious optics, that much was obvious. Strong magnification. Image stabilization. Good brightness. The features combined to provide a crisp visual, allowed him to see clearly in the low light.

  But he was having trouble figuring out exactly what he was looking at.

  There were men. At least a half dozen of them, though it was hard to tell exactly how many, because they kept moving in and out of view from behind utility trucks with trailers. Athletic, well-proportioned group. They were carrying things, boxes and crates. Setting them down one at a time near a large opening in the ground at the base of a hill.

  “Okay, I give up,” Hatcher said.

  “What do you see?” Edgar asked.

  “I see a bunch of guys unloading a couple of moving vans.”

  “What else?”

  “A cave, or cavern, or something.”

  “What else?”

  Hatcher looked over at Edgar, feeling the side of his face contort in disdain, then raised the binoculars again. Everything looked the same.

  Before he could speak someone emerged from the opening, head bobbing up into view. Somebody not too tall but solid, an authoritative bearing to him. Gray hair a shade that seemed to adore the moonlight. The man kept glancing at something in his hand, checking it every few seconds.

  “It looks like Bartlett,” Hatcher said.

  “That’s because it is.”

  “What’s he up to?”

  Edgar ignored the question. “What else do you see?”

  “Will you just tell me what the hell I’m supposed to see?”

  “Let me ask this another way, what don’t you see?”

  Wagging his head, Hatcher peered through the lenses again. Same image. Guys in T-shirts, walking between trucks and hole, moving through the horizontal spray of brightness from the headlights of the trucks, Bartlett watching over them.

  What don’t I see? I don’t see much. I can barely see—

  Then it clicked. Snapped into place like a molded part.

  “I don’t see their legs. I mean, I do, but not very well.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “I don’t see them,” he continued. “Because they’re camouflaged.”

  “And?”

  “They’re camouflaged because they’re all wearing battle dress trousers.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Recent stuff, too. It’s dark, but I can see a bit when they cross through the headlights. I’m going to guess MultiCam.”

  “And who wears MultiCam?”

  Hatcher turned and slid down below the ridge. “Special Operations. Stateside, at least.”

  “And why would guys like that be out here with a retired general?”

  “Because,” Hatcher said, piecing it together as he spoke, “he’s not really retired. He’s gone black. And SOCOM unit COs would be among the handful of people he could call to borrow some muscle, because they’re one of the few who know units like his exist.”

  Edgar held out his hand for the binoculars, grinning. “Very good. I might even have to give you extra credit.”

  “There could be other explanations,” Hatcher said.

  “Like?”

  “Anybody can order them. Or he could have swiped them from a supply depot.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  Hatcher didn’t answer. If those trousers each guy wore were full waterproof MultiCams, he guessed they’d cost almost a hundred bucks a pair. The MultiCam boots they were wearing, probably another hundred at least. That’s not including tops, jackets, and headgear. Outfitting even a few guys with that would cost thousands. And stealing them sounded a lot easier than it actually was. And why the expensive stuff? Simpler camouflage made of good material can be found for a lot less money.

  “Mind telling me why you’re showing me this?”

  “Maybe you’re not the only one he’s tricked. Maybe he recruited guys like me without telling us the whole story. Maybe—”

  “Maybe you can cut the crap.”

  “I have my reasons. I just thought you should know.”

  “What about Isaac?”

  A few beats of silence, then Edgar crinkled his eyes. “Who?”

  “My nephew.”

  “I don’t know where he is. That’s the truth.”

  Hatcher dragged a palm down his face. “So, what now?”

  “Now, you know.”

  “What did he tell you you were signing up for?”

  Edgar twisted away, raised his head above the ridge and put the binoculars to his eyes. “I think we’ve had enough revelations for one night.”

  “Listen, I’m getting sick of—”

  “Ah, perfect.” Edgar passed the binoculars back to Hatcher. “Take a look at the mouth of the cave.”

  Hatcher peered through the lenses. Two men set down some boxes, then stepped out of view. The cave entrance was just a black hole. Wisps of dirt and dust and debris, illuminated by the car beams, danced in the space in front it.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Adjusting the focus, Hatcher panned left, then right.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  The silence seemed to echo, broken only by the faint scraping of wind. Hatcher snapped his head around, shot glances in every direction, almost immediately he realized his mistake, knew there was no point.

  Edgar was gone.

  But he couldn’t have gone far. Several thoughts flashed. The car, the head start, the motorcycle. Hatcher patted his jeans. Keys were in his pocket. Would he try to hot-wire it? He couldn’t have more than a thirty-second lead, and without the car, how would he make it back to his Harley?

  Unless someone was waiting back where they parked, ready to pick him up.

  Hatcher burst into a sprint, negotiated the path in the low light. He crested a hill in time to see vehicle lights in the distance. He pi
cked up his pace for a few seconds, then slowed to a walk and caught his breath. There was no chance. Running was a waste of time.

  When he reached the car, he saw he’d been right. A flashlight was on the ground, bulb burning bright, pointed at the rear passenger tire. A knife handle protruded from the sidewall.

  The flashlight came in handy as he changed the tire. More than a half hour had passed by the time he got to the convenience store. He pulled along the side of the building, drove by where Edgar had parked the Harley. The headlights illuminated a white rectangle on the ground.

  Hatcher got out of the car and picked it up.

  The note inside read, Maybe next time.

  THE INSIDE OF THE CHURCH WAS QUIET ENOUGH THAT EACH footstep seemed a cavernous, amplified clomp, jarring enough to make Morris wonder how resounding a scream might be in such a place, feeding his imagination with fantasies of terrified shrieks bouncing off all the hard wood and marble. It was such a solitary place, dark and still. He paid special attention to whether he could hear any other footfalls, ones more subtle than his own, uncertain if his guardian demon, as Deborah had called it, was able to enter such a place.

  But, why wouldn’t it be? The place was nothing but a building. Just because demons may actually exist, it didn’t mean there had to be a God.

  He walked the aisle, scanned the rows of pews. He stopped a few feet from the altar, stared up at the stained glass beyond it, the colors softly glowing with moonlight. Twenty-four women, and not once over the years did he ever think of killing any of them in a church. That was something he was going to have to add to the list. Maybe even before he was done with this venture.

  Treated like a god, she’d said. That hand is godlike, and so shall be the bearer of it.

  It was his destiny, according to Deborah.

  She had promised him it wouldn’t be much longer. He looked down at the bulge in his jacket, thinking, it had better not be. It had been a couple of months, and now he was long overdue. Three months, that was the max it could wait. He pulled his Hand from his jacket pocket and scratched the back of it. The skin covering it was tough and smooth, never quite dry, but often peeling. And when he went a while without indulging it, it started to itch. Like it was now.

  Oh, but how just plain fucking beautiful it was. Holding it up to silhouette it against the stained glass, he flexed and scissored the twin appendages that were his fingers, a pair of enormous, curving digits that extended outward in a crustacean motion. The fused bones of those digits made the skeletal structure incredibly dense, and the confused biology had resulted in abnormal growth. The length from the bend of his wrist to the outermost tip at the longest point was a hair over fifteen inches. No thumb, no fingerprints, just two massive, prehensile phalanges connected to a padded section of bone that was harder than rock. Long, and strong.

  He’d lived with it all his life, but he still couldn’t get over how much he loved it. It never let him down.

  And there was nothing like the sensation of running it down a woman’s body. Nothing. It was as if the senses of touch and smell and taste combined to form some inexplicable sensitivity, one that filled him with awareness and feeling and excitement, every moment of contact mainlining a powerful drug directly to his brain. The silky warmth of their flesh, the salt of their sweat, even their fragrant aromas were more than just felt, they were absorbed by each and every touch, flooding his consciousness until his mind was awash in them, with that added bonus of pure delight sizzling through his nerve endings, the experience that made it all so irresistible—the tactile taste of fear.

  How indescribably delicious it was, how literally mouth-watering. His marvelous extremity—an extremity in every sense of the word—sliding over their beautiful bodies, the sight and feel of it creating waves of terror that his own, special flesh could actually ingest, a taste it chemically identified like a tongue slathering over something oh-so-sweet, oh-so-sour, a tanginess that reached up and tingled through his taste buds even as it bathed some magical part of his brain. It was the very best part of him, and always had been. By the time he was four, maybe even younger, it was something he knew made him unique, something he couldn’t imagine being without.

  But he also knew that while his limb was a many-splendored thing, it was thrust upon him against his will, and he was not surrounded by those who appreciated such exceptionalism. By kindergarten, it was obvious he was never going to be accepted as normal, and yet his mother kept talking about surgery? To remove the only thing he cared about? What should have been a gift was treated like a curse. His mother had made him this way, and he was still a boy of fifteen or so when he decided she would have to pay. His Hand was a thing of wonder, but everything bad he suffered, the taunting, the names, the constant stares, the looks of such utter disgust from girls, those were all her fault. She had not equipped him for childhood, had set him up to be tormented. The Hand made him special, but she had made him different. Yes, she would have to pay.

  And pay she did.

  Morris was thinking about that, remembering the rush of touching her with It, the sexual thrill that coursed through him as he held the knife to her throat, the surprise of finding It running over her breasts, almost with a mind of Its own, the dizzying cocktail of sensations, culminating in the satisfying crunch as he tightened those tentacle-like digits around her throat, recalling all the vivid snapshots of memory, reliving each moment, especially that one—that special, all-important one—when he realized he could use the hand on other women, women like those he had spent all those hours sitting and watching at the mall, dreaming of those legs, of It running up the silky interior of their thighs, burrowing into that special opening . . . no, not just women, mothers . . . that was the epiphany. Young mothers, young mothers with young children, children who would grow up suffering, damaged, always and forever tortured inside. Always different. It all became clear to him, not so much knowledge but understanding, not so much a thought but a feeling, an orgasmic convergence, where he saw the color of ecstasy, saw it, felt it, comprehended it. It was the red of his mother’s blood, and the yellow of a school bus filled with children, children staring hopelessly, robbed of their childhoods like he had been, a color emerging from this epiphany, swirling inside him, painting itself over his brain as It indulged in a feast of sensations from his mother’s body, his mind drowning in it, it and all it stood for, that brilliant, rapturous shade of orange . . .

  He stiffened. Someone was there, next to him. The presence abruptly registered, jolting him out of his reverie.

  “How long have you been here?” the man asked.

  Morris whipped his Hand down and back into his jacket, blading his body to block the view as best he could until It was concealed. This had to be the guy, the one he was supposed to meet. He didn’t have a description, didn’t even know his name. But who else could it be? Before he could say anything, the man started to walk away.

  “Follow me,” the man said, tossing his arm ahead of him, gesturing forward.

  Yes, Morris thought, had to be the guy. He looked like some businessman, all gussied up in a suit and tie, black trench coat hanging open. Not what he expected, but what, exactly, did he expect? Horns and a goatee?

  “Where are we going?” Morris said.

  The man stopped at a large wooden door, opened it with a tug and a long pull.

  “Downstairs.”

  As soon as the man finished saying the word he was through the door, descending into a dark stairwell toward a faint spill of light. Morris watched him, watched the top of his head bob downward, swallowed by the shadows in long, slow gulps. Then he followed.

  Seconds later, Morris stepped into an impressive basement, spacious and finished with an institutional look: functional floor tiling, a corporate shade of eggshell wall paint, fluorescent lighting. A hallway stretched back beneath the church. He could make out a doorway to what looked like a classroom.

  A few steps ahead of him, his guide headed to another door in the oppos
ite direction, this one leading to an unfinished storage area, rough concrete flooring cluttered over with many years’ cumulation of junk. A yellow bulb cast an uneven light from the ceiling, leaving most of the perimeter in a dusky mélange of indistinct shapes. The man picked up a flashlight from the top of a nearby box, Morris realizing a beat later he must have left it there himself to retrieve. He flashed it toward the far wall. The beam shone down a narrow space that cut between crates and boxes and stacks of chairs that had been pushed aside. The makeshift path led to another door, an old, imposing piece of antiquity, solid planks of arched wood that looked like railroad ties, secured to each other with wrought-iron bands bolted through. The man headed straight for it, then gave it a solid tug. It swung slowly.

  The air was thick as they descended, like the darkness had substance to it. The faint light cast down from the open door pulled away, growing smaller with each downward step. The man pointed the flashlight ahead into the pool of inky blackness, illuminating their path. Morris noticed a few empty metal torch mounts tracking the stairs along the right side, but there was little else to see.

  The beam glanced across walls of stone to each side that curved in front of them, but those soon gave way to rough swaths of vertical earth. The air grew more damp and cooled steadily as they progressed.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “By the time I explained it, we’d be there.”

  They continued down the stairs for another minute or so, until the last step deposited them onto a rocky landing, a chamber carved out of the substrate.

  The man crossed the area to a door that was a bit smaller than but just as imposing as the last one. It was coated with dirt, its features obscured except where some recent hands had been at work. He strained it open, leaning back with his body to keep it moving. The hinges groaned as it drew, an almost nautical sound, deep and scraping. The void behind it came into view like a puddle of crude, thick and opaquely black.