by Lee Thompson
He worked his way closer to the light, more afraid than he’d been in a long time. But not for himself. As he’d told Wylie, he wasn’t sure anything could kill him, and part of him worried over it because in a way he and Boom Stick and Lucas shared a common quality that he didn’t understand. And he liked understanding everything, to know how things were stacked up, where the lines fell. But experience had taught him that you can’t know it all, and he’d learned to be grateful when he’d catch nothing more than a glimmer.
Mike tensed. He tried to identify the impulse that caused it but failed.
He waited a moment, motionless in the darkening crypt as angels wept nearby, whispering damnation.
* * *
Red said, “You still there?”
Silence greeted him.
“Pig?”
His flashlight had gone out as if the batteries had died suddenly, or someone had flicked the switch, though he knew that hadn’t happened because his thumb had been on it.
“Hello?”
Something moved, quickly followed by a soft scraping sound, a rat-a-tat-tat, a raven’s startled cry. Red fidgeted, unsure which way to turn. He pulled off his gloves, hoping he could find strength in what had once caused him intense pleasure and irreparable grief. A soft blue glow emanated from the snake bite in his hand. He could still see her face clearly, after all these years, feel the sudden heat and pain as he seized Leonora’s snake nest hair and threw her off the ledge, and she’d struck back instinctively, unaware of the gift she’d given him.
Pig said, “Don’t think about her, please.”
Red turned toward his voice. “I thought you were gone.”
“I was only messing with you.” His voice sounded distant. The wind pressed against them, hot and dry. Pig said, “We have to keep going.”
“I know.”
Pig said, “The sisters are anxious.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you?” In the glow emanating from his hand he watched Pig’s brow furrow. Pig said, “Because they don’t know what to make of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you confuse them. You have this good heart but do nothing with it. And you were always like that, Red. This big heart and incredible imagination and what have you done? Buy a hardware store in your twenties and live above it, alone for the rest of your life, for what?”
Red had never really thought much about it. Anytime his self-inflicted prisons imposed questions he tended to look the other way. Be brave, he thought. That’s it. He nodded to himself and took Pig’s hand and together they moved through the dim tunnel. Red said, “I was afraid. Just fear. Afraid I’d never love anyone like I loved Amy, afraid I’d hurt those who trusted me, afraid I had little to offer.”
“John’s just like you.”
“I know. Better like me than like his father. And he’s better than me because he could never be as egotistical as I was when I lost everything that mattered.”
“You’re human, Red. But you’ve isolated yourself to protect yourself and wasted so much of your life and potential.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“Yes you do.”
“No, I admit it. I’ve been working on getting ahold of it the past six months.”
“And now here we are. You’re doing something.”
“Doing something right, I think,” Red said.
“The best a man can hope for.”
“Agreed.”
Pig squeezed his hand.
Red squeezed back.
Together they neared the end of the tunnel and a large cavern loomed before them, bringing back memories of the place below Mr. Blue’s shed, in another world, another time, when they’d shared defining moments, and stumbled into fate.
Red looked up a set of stone stairs that led to an altar littered with yellowed bones. He whispered, “I don’t like the looks of this place.”
“Got a bad vibe,” Pig agreed.
Red let his hand go, in case he needed both of his at a moment’s notice, thinking that maybe he was learning to be a fighter after all.
Drops of blood beaded like sweat from the walls. Women and men’s faces stretched out from the rock. They stepped forward, dragging chains, a dull, empty look in their eyes. Above them all, from the altar, the sisters clapped their hands together and sat among the ruined remains. They seemed amused, smiling smugly, and Red didn’t like them much for it.
Those of Nutley’s group circled in, men and women and children, their fingers ready to rend, their teeth black and yellow, lips peeled back.
Red said, “You take care of the children.”
Pig nodded.
Seven dirty, blank, and heartless faces searched his.
Red drew his hands back and roared as wind gusted from nowhere and the cavern walls blazed with fire.
Pig raised the .22 pistol and fired into the first three to break rank and they hit the ground squirming, holding their chests with pale hands as the bullets bounced around inside, tearing everything to hamburger. The remaining four spread out, grabbed rocks from the ground and whipped them. He recoiled, raising his arms to shield his head and one rock caught him in the stomach and knocked the wind from him, another glanced off the side of his knee and searing pain tore up his leg and nearly made him vomit. Red stepped to his side. He picked him up and held him with one arm as he raised the other, palm out. The air thickened. Red whispered something fiercely, and it scared Pig, and it scared Red, but something tore the remaining four children from where they stood and smashed them against the burning walls. Red looked up, saw the sisters smiling to themselves, and he thought that they’d been waiting for him to come into his own all this time, to forgive himself and be who he was. The thought evaporated quickly as Nutley’s followers charged. Red stood his ground, holding Pig tight to his side.
Pig feigned a moment longer after the pain passed, when the first two were nearly on them, a man and a woman, both their mouths open in primal screams, their hands shaped like claws. He jabbed the gun forward and pulled the trigger. Blood dotted their foreheads and the cavern echoed with the shots. Their ears rang and the smoke made their eyes water. Red bashed two others together, their heads knocking, and he ground them together until their skulls cracked, afraid for a moment that he was enjoying it too much.
Blood gushed. His confidence rose. The others, more alert now, as if coming out of a trance, blinked and stumbled back.
A trick, he thought.
The sisters leaned forward on the altar of bones.
Pig said, “They’re no match for you, Red. Destroy them.”
Red nodded as God’s Lost Children looked up, noticing the sisters for the first time, their skin paling further. Red wondered what they saw, but didn’t have to think on it long because Pig said, “They see Death on his mount, and he carries a book of blood bearing their names.”
Red shivered while the others were turned away and he let Pig go and reached deep inside to do something horrible, to make them regret every moment of their selfish existences. The air tickled his fingers. There were around a dozen of them, frightened and distracted, looking as if they might bolt for the shadows, and he didn’t want that. He imagined Amy in Boom Stick’s arms and bile rose in his throat and his blood raced through him, and he seized their molecules, bent their forms from the inside out, a deathly screech ripping from their lungs as their flesh tore in jagged lines and their guts spilled over their feet, their bones gleaming in the firelight, peeking from pockets of ruined meat.
They fell, knocking bloody shoulders, and the cavern stank of piss and shit and rage.
Red gasped, trying to catch his breath. He gazed a while at the carnage, part of him wishing he’d been strong enough to do the same to Boom Stick all those years ago when one was still a boy and the other a young man.
Pig tapped Red’s back, said, “How did it feel?”
Red’s hands trembled. He had to fight just to return his breathing to
normal. He shook his head. “I still don’t like it.” He slipped his gloves back on and stared at the sisters as the walls returned to slick black rock, all of the fire gathering among the bones, lighting the inside of hollow skulls and casting the sisters in dancing shadow. They clapped and the room disappeared as if a dark curtain dropped between them. To their far right, Red saw a dim light. He took Pig’s hand, held it in his gnarled fingers, the arthritis paining him suddenly and exhaustion weighing on his spirit. Red said, “Let’s find John.”
* * *
Mike followed the tunnel until it ended in a large room with golden walls. The floor was glass and slick with an oily substance. He tested it with his foot. It seemed solid, but slippery. He whispered, “John?”
A click echoed.
The glass vibrated.
He stared at the center of the room where a shadow form knelt and wiped a hand across the glass, staring through the floor at whatever lay beneath. He aimed the rifle, tried to get his eyes to focus, but everything seemed smeared as the shadow nodded to itself and stood, too dark to distinguish any of its features.
Mike thought, I know you…
Fear stung his heart, the whip of a scorpion’s tail. He tried to search his memory but the accumulation of events and joys and sorrow all seemed lost in the murk.
The shadowman jerked forward as if every step took a tremendous amount of effort. He raised his head, eyes bright blue, thick hands close to his knees. Too long, Mike thought. His arms are too long.
A light hummed inside the creature’s chest, throbbing and throwing shadows and shafts of energy along the walls, causing dust motes to sparkle and other things in the deeper blackness to cower. He thought, This is how it goes when you see the face of God, when words fail because the light and darkness are so intense and so entwined.
The shadowman had barely taken three steps when he stopped and cocked his head, listening to a sound that eluded Mike. He knelt again and wiped murk from the floor, recoiled from his own hideous face, the visage of the damned, burned dark and mouth full of ash, knowing the greatest Hell was separation.
It glanced up and said, “At last you’ve found me.”
He knew that voice.
It’s my voice.
Yet it sounded so strange and out of place parting someone else’s lips.
He aimed at the floor, but hesitated, something he rarely did, thinking that if he followed his instincts he might have to retrace his steps, putting him further from John, Red and Wylie.
His shoulders hurt. He took a breath and forced himself to loosen his grip, to think fluidly, his mind jumping through possibilities and creating counterattacks before they even took place. He shuddered as the thing before him smiled and stood. It beckoned him with the curl of finger, the flick of tongue and ancient words that echoed around the room until his ears bled.
Mike said, “Where is John? What do you want from us?”
It whispered, “I can take you to him. Follow me.”
Follow me…another demon said, I can show you. It stepped from the shadows to his left, its feet carved of bronze, tapping hollowly on the glass floor. Its back was hunched, its head a mass of knotted bone and eyes like burning buildings, depravation, disease.
“Follow me…” the shadow said.
Beyond them another form moved through the gloom: a tall, lanky man with a pale face and green eyes, his hand winding a crank over his heart. He moved silently, Mike uncertain if he was friend or foe. Like the sisters, they mirrored divinity: father, son, and power.
The first two bowed between Mike and The Silent One.
“Patron Saint…” the first said, cupping a small set of scales in his left hand.
“…of Infinite Sorrow,” said the second, a sword in his right hand.
“Save us,” whispered the first as the scales creaked and tipped.
“From all Evil,” said the second, tapping the blade against his deformed back.
Mike aimed at the floor and pulled the trigger, knowing on an instinctual level that he had to do something before they completed their ritual. The glass cracked, gave way in large chunks, and two roared as they fell into the darkness beneath but the Silent One walked across thin air and clapped his hands and the room exploded, rock and glass carving grooves in Mike’s face, blinding him. He stumbled back, arms raised, but too late, he knew, because blood coated his cheeks and his temples throbbed, and somewhere far away he heard Wylie scream his name.
TWENTY-THREE
Wylie pulled the knife from his leg and spat blood in the dirt. Lucas shifted above him, drove his fist down into Wylie’s right ear, nearly tearing it from his head. Jesus, I have to get away from him…Please God…He begged, he reasoned, he searched for any way to stop the pain and the torment of hopelessness swelling in his heart. He didn’t remember how he got here. His head buzzed and vision spotted. He remembered being right behind Red and the kid, and then it was as if he somehow took a turn and ended up in this place, this dungeon smelling of rotten corpses.
He coughed and Lucas hit him again.
Wylie curled into a ball, trying to protect his head.
Somewhere close by, a voice said, “Enough.”
Footsteps sounded, softly clicking, then louder, closer, and he braced himself for a shoe to stomp on the back of his neck, to kick his arms aside, and he hated himself for feeling so powerless, because he’d been strong once, not really afraid of anyone or anything, but somewhere down here in the dark that had changed.
He pleaded.
The voice above him said, “Who are your friends?”
Wylie sobbed. He heard but couldn’t answer. He didn’t know what they wanted to hear so he waited for a clue, so he could tell them and the torture would end, because he needed to get out of here. Dizziness swam through his head and he knew it was from blood loss, the wound in his leg gushing and painting the cool rock floor with heat.
He cringed as bones creaked and the form above him knelt, placed a hand on his wrist and said, “Stand.”
He didn’t think he could.
He didn’t want to open himself up for another attack.
Just need a minute to catch my breath, he thought. A moment to get it together.
A hard, cold hand snatched his hair, knuckles digging into his scalp as the man lifted him. His face looked deformed at first, as if assembled of several, none of their edges meeting up right, until he blinked tears from his eyes and the spider on the man’s forehead twitched as he frowned. Boom Stick said, “Who are your friends?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Boom Stick held his hand out and Lucas slapped the machete’s handle in his palm.
Wylie smelled flowers, so sweet and so perfect, remembered good things, drew from them, but Nutley swung the blade and Wylie raised his arm to shield himself and his left hand hit the dirt, freshly turned, and he realized he stood upon a grave, blood jetting from the stump where his hand used to be, and he stared at it in horror, shocked, wishing the shock would linger because what he felt was nothing, the whole world pointless, every decision he’d ever made little more than grains of sand on an endless beach.
He sobbed again and pressed the stump against his stomach, his blood soaking his shirt, hot against his skin.
“Don’t cry,” Boom Stick said.
“Fuck you.”
Boom Stick slapped the flat side of the blade against Wylie’s face, so suddenly and with such force, his jaw instantly swelled and the vision in his left eye flared brightly then went completely black. He shivered, wishing for death.
“Who are your friends?”
Wylie’s head sagged and Boom Stick pressed their foreheads together as if he could extract meaning and knowledge by osmosis.
Wylie whispered, “One of my friends is a bad motherfucker. And right now he’s killing your butt buddy.”
* * *
Mike wasn’t sure how long he lay unconscious, but as he came aware of a bright light over him, he thought, Fuck. I wa
s wrong.
He’d stared death in the face plenty of times. There were moments when he’d wished it would take him, and now, with his flesh so cold, and missing the beat of his heart, the hum and wonderful rhythm of blood coursing through his veins, a sureness draped a thick, black cowl over his shoulders.
He shivered and tried to stand, bringing a hand to his face, feeling ruined meat, sharp fragments of rock jutting from his forehead like horns, and he thought that fit, that he was as much a monster as anyone else.
He placed a hand to the wall, afraid he’d pass right through it, that the bright light overhead would consume him, the way time fails to waver, constant and relentless in its course. He shook his head, trying to clear it. The sisters whispered, And he dies to bring hope.
Mike blinked, searched for them as his vision cleared and the darkness lifted and he found himself on a closed beach, police tape glowing near the edges where hills rose above the pocket tucked away in some undiscovered part of some other world. The underworld, he thought, glancing upon the still, crystal-clear water, the moon high above, and swimming on the glass surface, and he remembered—Follow me—and angels falling into an abyss as a third, unknown quantity treaded air and clapped his hands, while the sisters watched and waited.
He scanned the dark beach. He didn’t see his rifle.
A voice rung in his head: Follow me…
And another voice, more shattered, longing, in pain: Patron Saint of Infinite Sorrow…
Wylie screamed again as the sisters knelt near the water, fixing a seam that had torn between water and beach, and Mike squinted, realizing that the light came from behind whatever prop they’d constructed, a truth beneath the illusion. He said, “Take me to Wylie.”