Diabolical

by Hank Schwaeble

  Morris said nothing. One of the Carnates approached Sherman and unlocked the padlock securing the chains. The big man shrugged several times, wriggling his arms, before they finally rattled to the floor in a pile.

  Deborah leaped onto the platform and walked her high heels to the edge overlooking the circle.

  “You know the stakes.”

  Sherman rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You told me a bunch of times.”

  “The loser forfeits his life. And his soul.”

  “And all I gotta do is take him?” Sherman shook his head, his face barely able to contain his grin. “You gotta be kidding.”

  “Without your consent, the challenge has no value. Do we have your consent?”

  “Anything to get you crazy broads off my back and get the hell outta here.”

  “Do we have your consent?”

  A disturbing sensation crept down the back of Hatcher’s scalp, tingled along his neck. He eyed Sherman, his swollen frame, hard mounds of muscle curving between every joint.

  Don’t do it.

  “Yes,” Sherman said, snapping the word. In a lower voice, he added, “stupid bitch.”

  Don’t do it, you gigantic idiot.

  Deborah tilted her head with a shrug and dipped her chin sharply.

  A smug, self-satisfied grin spread itself across Sherman’s face. He raised his hands in front of him, palms out, like a wrestler.

  “You know,” he said. “I should feel bad about this. But there’s just something about your face that pisses me off. So I think I’m gonna enjoy it. Can’t say you will, though. Freak.”

  Sherman feinted, throwing his huge bulk forward, then drawing back. Morris flinched, but didn’t move.

  A hum filled the air, sounds of murmuring. At first Hatcher thought it was the Carnates, whispering among themselves. But they all were still, calmly watching the men in the makeshift ring. He heard a fragment of the sound right next to him, louder than the din, and realized it was the Sedim. They were making a noise in their throats, a harmony of deep, visceral growls, droning in unison as they watched the fight develop. The sound of dogs staring at a door, hearing something on the other side of it no one else could.

  Anticipating something about to happen.

  Hatcher tried gently to move an arm. The pain was instant. The talons dug in, the squeeze of a vise.

  Then, it was over.

  Sherman started to circle to his right a bit, then back to his left, then he pounced. He lunged toward the smaller man, ready to throw his enormous arms around him, only to be met in the face with the deformed Hand.

  The Hand slapped down in an arc, the flat of it over Sherman’s nose. The two long, tubular fingers spread wide, wedging Sherman’s head between them, circling the side of Sherman’s skull like ram horns, spiraling in a nautilus curl as if they were screwed into the man’s ears.

  Sherman grabbed at the arm, started to pull it away, only to stop. His body language abruptly changed. His hands drifted off Morris’s arm and hovered unsteadily in the air.

  A second later, maybe two, Sherman screamed.

  It was a piercing, shrill sound. A vocalization of something incomprehensible. Sherman’s hands shot to the sides of his head. He was grabbing at the phalanges on each side, trying meekly to tear them off, screaming that disturbing, inhuman scream the whole time.

  Then his hands moved down to his throat. No sooner did they get there than his head ripped off his neck, leaving his fingers to claw at the torn flesh and muscle and bone, a fountain of blood pumping out. His heart beat three more times, judging by the number of gushes. Pump, pump, pump. Then Sherman’s body collapsed to its knees and slammed forward to the floor.

  Morris held the head up high and started to walk forward. He stepped over Sherman’s body, the soles of his hiking shoes trampling through the spill of blood, and kept going. The Carnates moved aside, clearing his way. The Sedim’s growls were louder now, reaching a crescendo, and they seemed to be following Morris’s movements intently. Sherman’s head was still wedged between the tentacled curl of his two fingers.

  Hatcher suddenly felt himself being dragged again. The grip on each arm set his nerves on fire, forcing him up on his toes and making it impossible to resist.

  They moved him in the same direction as Morris, following in his wake. The man stopped in front of a large section of wall. At first it seemed like a darkened tunnel, completely black. But two Carnates stepped up to it, holding out torches, and Hatcher saw the surface was reflective. Some sort of black stone, like onyx, polished completely smooth. So smooth Hatcher could see vivid reflections mirroring back.

  Including the reflection of Sherman’s head as Morris held it out toward the wall. Morris turned his clawed hand over and unfurled his longer tendril fingers open until Sherman’s skull rolled level, pinched between two curled tips of those insectlike digits, facing its own reflection.

  Facing its own reflection, and still very much alive.

  The eyes were blinking, the mouth was moving. A silent scream, deafening to watch. Blood dripped from the base of Sherman’s neck like crimson rain.

  Morris stepped closer to the wall. He glanced over his shoulder, gesturing with his free hand, and Hatcher felt the squeeze on his arms again. Hatcher suddenly found himself bouncing on his toes and forced to scramble forward with the Sedim. They planted him next to Morris Sankey, still holding tight. He tested the grip, tried to pull free, but the pain stopped him dead.

  Morris looked at Hatcher with a sober face, but his eyes twinkled and his lips couldn’t resist a smile.

  “I never dreamed it had so much power. That I had so much power. Watch.”

  Hatcher said nothing. His arms were growing numb, his shoulders searing in pain. Sherman’s skull was a few feet away, suspended in midair, clearly visible in the reflection. Working its jaws. Trying to say something. Or maybe just still screaming.

  Morris walked forward until Sherman’s face was practically touching its reflection. After a brief pause, he took another step, stiffening his arm and pressing Sherman’s face against the surface. The wall seemed to ripple, like a vertical plane of liquid. Hatcher noticed Morris’s hand change color, turn a strange shade of green, as if it were glowing. Then it pressed into the reflection, taking the head with it.

  “Look!”

  Even though the wall didn’t show any sign of changing, the mirrored surface seemed to have disappeared. Now the section resembled an asymmetrical panel of smoky, charcoal glass. Transparent, though still a bit reflective. Hatcher could see Morris’s hand protruding through on the other side. Still glowing. Still holding Sherman’s skull.

  Hatcher could make out movement along the bottom, bright enough to see by, a luminescence, like water flowing over lights. No, not water. Molten rock. Burning bright and hot.

  Something approached. Something on the other side.

  A colossus of a figure, probably seven feet tall. It was cloaked in shadow, barely more than a silhouette. Hatcher could make out spired horns protruding from its head, a long face, the reversed legs of an animal.

  “It appreciates early delivery,” Morris said. “Not having to wait for a man like this to die years from now. He’ll be pleased.”

  The thing strode across the molten floor, coming into view with its last step. Its face was like a hide stretched over a skull, two sunken eye sockets, rimmed in shadow, a pair of teardropshaped nasal passages instead of an actual nose, a mouth full of teeth that reminded Hatcher of some sort of deep-sea fish.

  It took Sherman’s head from Morris’s hand, held it to the side, examining it. Hatcher could see Sherman’s face. It was still animated, eyes bulging in horror, mouth and jaw flexing and wriggling in an extended scream.

  Morris reached his other hand over and placed it behind Hatcher’s head, cupping the curve of his skull above his neck. Hatcher squirmed, but the Sedim maintained their painful lock on his arms.

  “In just the past few days, I’ve learned the beautiful, amazing th
ing about Hell. It’s all about customization. That was the word he used, when he explained it to me. Customization.”

  Hatcher felt Morris start to press his head forward. He held his breath and strained until the burn in his arms was unbearable.

  “You know, he told me all about you.”

  “Who?” Hatcher asked, gasping.

  “Your brother. He said you more than most would appreciate its ability to inflict torment like few others could.”

  Hatcher felt himself being moved toward the wall. He continued to resist as much as he could, but the creatures were too strong, the agonizing pain in his arms too much to bear.

  “Everybody’s experience is unique. Everybody’s eternity is their own. Same place, different worlds.”

  The wall was just a foot or so away now. The tinted-glass look of the surface became less and less opaque, more and more transparent the closer he got. He could see the thing on the other side with increasing clarity, seemed like he could almost touch it. Or it, him.

  It reached out a hand, a large, taloned hand, not unlike the one Morris stuck through the wall. Hatcher thought it was going to reach for him, push through the wall the same way Morris did, only in reverse. Place those claws on his head and drag him through, straight into Hell.

  But the hand didn’t reach for Hatcher. It took hold of Morris’s deformed hand, the claws of both interlocking, and as soon as it did, everything changed.

  The world threw itself into sharp relief. The wall obstructed nothing, because there was no wall. There was only Hatcher, Hatcher plunging a knife into the sternum of a sixteen-year-old Taliban fighter on a perimeter watch, Hatcher hooking a car battery and telephone to the genitals of an Iraqi insurgent, Hatcher hammering tacks through the fingernails of a man identified as having been the one in a video of cutting the head off a kidnapped American contractor with a knife. Seamless transitions from one scene to the next, more like a vivid, three-dimensional dream than a movie, realer than real, realer than life, Hatcher both observing and participating, seeing and feeling, over and over, atrocities perpetrated, atrocities forgotten. Atrocities enjoyed.

  Then the scenes began to repeat, same setting, same action, same sequence, only the subject of the treatment was different. The boy with the dagger plunged into his heart was now Amy, eyes wide with shock and betrayal; the electrocution was being performed on Susan, who screamed and pleaded for him to stop; the hammering through the fingernails was happening to Vivian, who cried and begged him to just tell her that he loved her, please, just once.

  Hatcher doing it all, Hatcher watching it all, Hatcher experiencing it both ways at the same time.

  It seemed to last forever, so many scenes of horror, so many third-world hellholes, so many blood-spattered floors, always the same, always different. Always torturing or killing someone. Always being tortured by it.

  And yet, he could tell what he was seeing was only a glimpse of this world. His world. For him, of him, by him. A world where every shadow, every crevice, every moment harbored an unbridled nightmare, ready to pounce.

  Then it was over. He felt himself snap back, like out of a daydream. He sucked in a breath, staring at his own see-through reflection coming off the shiny blackness of the wall, the burning eyes of a demon looking right back at him from the other side. His body felt drenched in sweat. He realized he was trembling.

  Morris was no longer touching the thing, his claw-hand sticking out there on the other side, empty. The demon drew back and turned, carrying Sherman’s head. The head was still trying to scream, its face red and burned and blistering, its eyes scalded but wide and moving. Sherman somehow still quite conscious.

  Slowly, Morris withdrew his arm, pulling it back out of the wall. It came out like it was oozing, small rings of disturbance echoing in tremors as it moved, waves radiating across a liquid surface. Finally, his deformed hand came through, and the wall instantly darkened. There was no hole where he’d inserted it, no blemish of any sort to indicate he’d put his arm through it. Just smooth, prehistoric blackness.

  The images were scorched into Hatcher’s mind. Sensations still pulsing through him, like aftershocks. Time had seemed not so much to stop but to disappear. As if he’d been adrift in an ocean, no sign of land in any direction, no breeze and no current. Surrounded by forever, lost in eternity. Nothing existed but the experiences, observed and performed at the same time, to be repeated over and over and over. No chance of relief. The brink of insanity, always to be chased, never to be crossed.

  Morris let go of the back of his head. “How did you like it?”

  Hatcher said nothing. He was still shaking. Tried to stop, couldn’t.

  “That’s what you have to look forward to. You know how they explained it to me? It’s like you have a lawn that goes on for miles and miles and miles, hundreds of square miles of nothing but green, like an entire continent. And a bird picks up a blade of grass from it and starts to fly around the world. By the time it gets about ten feet, that’s your life. The time you’re in Hell after that is that bird flying the rest of the way around the world with that blade of grass, then getting another and flying around the world at like fifteen miles an hour, then getting another piece of grass, and another, until it’s flown every blade of grass there is, trillions of them. And then the bird just starts over, bringing all the blades back, because Hell for you never ends. Pretty neat, huh?”

  Hatcher shut his eyes. He was losing control of his thoughts, his mind running wild. He had to clear it, had to focus on other things, things that would get him through this. There would be plenty of time for Hell later.

  The boy. He was there for the boy. He was also there to kill this creepy little abomination, though that was starting to look a lot more difficult than he’d anticipated.

  But the experience would not be pushed aside so easily. He could still feel himself there. In the past, but not the past. The future, but not the future. He could sense the flames of damnation, the pits of despair, even as he was immersed in other horrors. Like he was in multiple places at once. Torment in stereo.

  Focus on the objective.

  God, what a horrible feeling it was. Unbearable agony. Worse than any physical pain. The feeling that this was all he was, all he ever was, all he ever would be. An instrument of suffering. Inflicting it, experiencing it, watching it, projecting it, redirecting it, inflicting it on those close to him. Hating it, cursing it, fearing it. Enjoying it even as it terrified and agonized him and robbed him of all memories of joy. Every moment frozen, swollen with the knowledge that was all there would ever be.

  Perpetual torture.

  The boy. You’re here for the boy.

  All of it serving as proof, an unending verdict. His life had been a waste. Damnation wasn’t the result of contact with some demon in the flesh. It was what he deserved. No more, no less.

  Vivian died because of you. Don’t let it happen to the boy. If you can save the boy, it won’t be a waste.

  He bit down on his tongue, used the pain to scramble his thoughts. He breathed once, twice, then wrapped himself around those thoughts and buried them. Straightening his back, he opened his eyes.

  “You promised me you’d let me go,” he said over his shoulder, practically yelling.

  He heard movement to his rear, strained to see Carnates moving, clearing a pathway. Deborah strolled through them. She placed a hand on Hatcher’s head, stroked the sweaty strands of hair to one side.

  “And if I don’t, does that mean you’re not going to like me anymore?”

  Hatcher said nothing. His jaw tightened until he felt something pop beneath his ear.

  Deborah tipped her head back and let out a laugh. “You are so amusing, you know that?”

  She glanced at one of the Sedim holding him, then the other. A look heavy with meaning. Hatcher felt his arms suddenly drop to his sides, a rush of cold through them. Blood began to surge into his hands. The numbness started to give way to pins and needles, then waves of pain. It too
k him a few tries before he could flex his fingers with any strength.

  “I’m keeping my word, Hatcher. Now, before you leave, there’s something we should discuss.”

  Hatcher studied her face, filled with self-loathing over how he couldn’t muster the kind of anger toward her that he wanted to. She was simply too attractive, too beautiful. He didn’t trust her in the least. But her looks, her scent, her presence were so damn disarming his fury just seemed to dissipate. In its place brewed a storm of disgust. With himself.

  “Bartlett is not who you think he is,” Deborah said.

  Hatcher rubbed his arms. “Why doesn’t that surprise me.”

  “Let me guess, he’s told you that he wants to stop us from opening The Path.”

  “You’re saying he doesn’t?”

  “I’m saying that’s not the whole truth. He wants to have a say.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “He’s been negotiating with us, Hatcher.”

  “Why?”

  “Because like everyone, he has an agenda.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Because you want the tablet.”

  “Let me ask you something. What does it matter? What do you care if we open some silly portal to a place you don’t believe in?”

  Hatcher glanced over at the smooth black wall. “You’ve got a funny way of making me not believe in something.”

  “Oh, that. Sure, eternal damnation and all. But do you really believe there’s an actual Hell? A place where devils with pitchforks and goatees walk around? I would think a worldly man like you would chalk it up as a creation of the mind.”

  “I don’t know what I believe. I just know I don’t believe you.”

  “Fine. Then what say we just make this a straight business proposition. You deliver the tablet, we won’t touch the boy.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch.”

  “You didn’t go through all the trouble of finding him only to hand him over to me.”

  Deborah hitched a shoulder, tilted her head. “Okay, we’ll need a tiny bit of his blood. And his right hand. And an eye.”