Die and Stay Dead

by Nicholas Kaufmann

  “You keep calling me Trent,” I said as we descended. “I told you, my name is Lucas.”

  She sighed in exasperation. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I was pretty sure she was rolling her eyes. God, she was infuriating.

  At the bottom of the steps, the stairwell opened into an enormous, pitch-black chamber. The air was as musty, cold, and stale as a tomb. Bethany held her glowing charm as high as she could, but the space was so immense the light barely penetrated its depths.

  “This must run under the entire library,” she said.

  “What the hell is this place?” I asked.

  We walked deeper into the darkness, our boots echoing on the smooth, stone floor. Up ahead, strange rectangular shapes seemed to float in the darkness. As we got closer and the light reached them, I saw they were actually huge cages. They hung from the darkness above us on thick chains. Inside them were the bones of creatures I couldn’t identify. In one cage, a bearlike skull tapered into the long, coiled spine of a serpent. In another was a six-foot insect carapace with an elongated, toothy, gatorlike skull and multiple limbs that ended in humanlike hands. In other cages were a winged giant with three heads, each of a different animal, and a goat as big as a horse, its tailbones ending with another, smaller goat skull. The skeletons were grotesque and utterly alien. I’d never seen anything like them.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  Bethany shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s with the cages?”

  She shone the light into another cage as we passed. Inside were the remains of something that looked like the love child of a giant spider and a komodo dragon. “I have a bad feeling about this place. Let’s just get what we came for and get the hell out of here. The fragment has to be down here somewhere.”

  She led the way deeper into the chamber. More cages full of enormous, misshapen skeletons loomed out of the darkness. A bird with thick, crablike claws instead of wings. A gigantic, rusted warrior’s helmet with hoofed legs and a spiny tail coming out of it. Eventually we came to an open, circular area about fifty feet in diameter. In the center of it lay a stone sarcophagus. Its surface was polished smooth and ornately patterned in gold leaf.

  “A coffin?” I said. “What the hell is a coffin doing here?”

  “And whose is it?” Bethany added.

  Situated roughly in the center of its lid was the shallow imprint of a hand. The gold leaf pattern seemed to focus there, with separate, gilded strands coming together in the palm. Curious, I put my own hand inside the imprint.

  “Trent, don’t!” Bethany yelled.

  Her warning came too late. Something sharp darted out of the stone under the tip of my index finger and pricked the skin. “Ah! Son of a bitch!” I yanked my hand back. In the light of the charm, I saw something small and needle-sharp retract into the stone. I shook my hand until the stinging subsided. “What the hell was that?”

  “Let me see it,” Bethany insisted. I held out my hand. She inspected my finger in the light. A small bubble of blood sat perched on my fingertip. “It doesn’t look infected. Do you feel dizzy? Light-headed? Does your hand feel hot?”

  I shook my head and pulled my hand back. “I’m fine. It barely hurt. It took me by surprise, that’s all.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief even as she glared at me sternly. “How many times have I told you not to touch things you don’t know anything about? You could have been poisoned, or put under a blood spell. Either one could have killed you in an instant.”

  “I told you I’m fine.”

  “It’s not just about you,” she pointed out. “You know what happens when you die, and I’m the one standing closest to you.”

  Shit. She was right. I hadn’t been thinking. I’d been distracted and reckless.

  I started to apologize but was cut off by a sudden, loud ka-thunk from inside the sarcophagus. The lid began to open on its own. Bethany shone her light into it. I expected to see a dead body inside, but there wasn’t one. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed about that. And yet, the sarcophagus wasn’t empty. A short, obsidian pedestal stood inside it, and on the pedestal was a piece of metal. Brass or some other copper alloy, it was roughly triangular in shape, with one side perfectly rounded and the other two jagged and broken. I moved closer for a better view.

  “Be careful,” she said. “This thing already got you once.”

  Strange patterns had been etched on the surface of the metal, crisscrossing each other at haphazard angles. There were words on it, too, written in a language I couldn’t read. Then it hit me. They weren’t words, they were names. Demon names.

  “It’s the fragment,” I said. “Putting your hand on the lid must be the key to opening the sarcophagus. But why prick me first?” I looked down at the drying blood on my fingertip.

  Bethany shrugged. “The equivalent of a blood sacrifice, maybe? Some kind of trade where you have to give up something important first before it lets you inside? I’m not sure.”

  “Usually you know everything,” I said. “When you don’t, I get nervous.”

  “That makes two of us.” She leaned in to study the fragment. “Calliope was right. The fragment was right where she said it would be, under the monument. Eternal voice and inward word.”

  I cleared my throat loudly.

  “Okay, fine,” she said, unimpressed. “You were right, too. The fragment was still in New York City. There’s no need to be smug about it.”

  “I do sometimes get things right, you know.”

  “Says the man who doesn’t know better than to go sticking his hand where it doesn’t belong,” she said. “Anyway, all we really know is that this fragment is here. The other two could still be anywhere.”

  “No, they’re all in New York. I’m sure of it,” I said. “Look at this place. It’s not a garbage dump, it’s a stash house.”

  “You think whoever hid this fragment meant to come back for it?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Maybe someone was after him, the cops, or another cult, or maybe Nahash-Dred himself. He would need a safe place to stash the Codex Goetia for a while, until everything blew over. Maybe he thought it would be safer in pieces. But why go through all that trouble unless he was going to come back for them? If you wanted to get rid of the Codex for good, why not just bury it in cement at the bottom of the ocean or the Grand Canyon? No, my gut says this guy was planning to pick up the fragments again. Maybe even put the Codex back together. That means he was keeping them close by.”

  “But if Erickson Arkwright didn’t hide them, who did?” she asked. “He was the only survivor of the cult. There was no one else.”

  As much as I wished I had an answer for that, I didn’t.

  I tried to lift the fragment off its pedestal, but it wouldn’t budge. I examined its edges for brackets or nails that might be fastening to the pedestal, but I didn’t see any. It was just … stuck. I dug my fingernails under the fragment’s edges and strained to pull it free. Finally, it came loose with a snap. I stumbled backward, fumbling it like a clumsy drunk about to drop his bottle.

  Bethany sucked in a nervous breath. “Don’t drop it! We need it in one piece!”

  “What the hell do you think I’m trying to do?” Still stumbling backward from the momentum, I finally managed to get a good, stable grip on the fragment. “There. See? I’m not as clumsy as you think, Bethany.”

  And with that, I backed into one of the hanging cages behind me. It jangled on its chains. Something inside it rustled and stirred slowly, as if waking from a long slumber. Hot breath touched the back of my neck, reeking of sulfur.

  A voice behind me said, “You have come at last, my lord. I knew you would.”

  I leapt away, tossing the fragment to Bethany. She caught it with her free hand and clutched it protectively to her chest. I spun around to face the cage, pulling the Bersa semiautomatic from the back of my pants. Within the cage sat a gaunt shape whose shriveled skin was pulled tight over his
bones. Wings drooped from his shoulder blades. His face looked almost human, though his eyes were too big and his nose was nearly a foot long, hanging off his face like a deli window sausage. Sharply pointed ears poked out of his messy gray mop of hair. Two long horns swept back from his temples like dull, twisted swords. As his enormous eyes focused on me, his face fell in disappointment. He stroked the small, bristly gray beard on his chin.

  “You are not the one I expected,” he said.

  I kept my gun trained on the creature. He blinked at me, clearly not threatened.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  He took a deep breath through his tumescent nose. He straightened up, squaring his bony shoulders. “Do you not know me, wretch? There was a time when you would have. I am the Mad Affliction. Once, I commanded legions and drove whole villages from the clutches of sanity. My name alone was enough to loosen the bowels of the fiercest warrior. But now…” He paused, and seemed to deflate. “Now I am caged like an animal. Caged and starving. I have not tasted flesh in so long. Even the rats have eluded me. There are so many of them, plump and juicy, some as big as cats—but they’re smart. They know to stay away from me.” He moved closer to the bars, his big eyes gleaming with hunger. “Let me taste you. Just one finger. One finger is all I ask.”

  He reeled back and threw himself against the bars, rocking the cage on its chains. I took a step back, keeping my gun on him.

  “Surely you won’t miss one finger!” he implored.

  “What is this place?” Bethany asked him.

  The Mad Affliction looked at her, his lip curling in revulsion. He turned away. “Ugh. A female. Awful thing. Get it away!”

  “Sounds like he’s met you before,” I said.

  Bethany glared at me. “Don’t encourage him.”

  The Mad Affliction harrumphed and spat in disgust. “The females of your species taste so bland, like flavorless pudding. Disgusting things! But the males … the males taste like the richest sweets.” He threw himself against the bars again, grasping for me. “One finger for my stomach! Just one! To the first knuckle only!”

  “Hey!” Bethany shone the light in his face to attract his attention. He lifted a bony, emaciated hand to shield his eyes. “I asked you what this place is.”

  “Surely the answer is obvious. This is a place of punishment. What other explanation can there be?” the Mad Affliction said. “I was summoned here, through the door between realms. We all were, all those you see caged here. The Walker in Nightmares. The Cruxshadow. The Dread Torment. The Queen of Tombs. He Who Strides Beneath the Waves. So many of us. One by one we were pulled through the doorway, only to be locked away forever.”

  “By who?” I asked.

  “Men like you,” the Mad Affliction replied bitterly. “Men who possessed the key that unlocks the door. They summoned me, but they could not bind me. They could not bind any of us. They did not understand the binding spell. But they had other spells at hand. Painful spells. That is how they forced me into this accursed cage. I have been here ever since.”

  “Is this part of the key you mentioned? The one that unlocks the door between realms?” Bethany asked, holding up the fragment. The Mad Affliction nodded. “Trent, the men who summoned him must have been the Aeternis Tenebris, Erickson Arkwright’s doomsday cult.” With her free hand, she shone the light around us again, taking in the enormous chamber of bones and cages. “It all must have happened right here, under the library. This was their sanctum.”

  The Mad Affliction nodded, his long nose bouncing. “Aye, the Aeternis Tenebris, they called themselves that. They’re the ones who summoned us.”

  “You’re a demon,” I said. Sometimes I was a little slow on the uptake. “All the things in the other cages, they were demons, too.”

  The Mad Affliction’s bony, nearly concave chest swelled with pride. “Of course I am a demon! Was there any doubt? Did I not strike such terror in your heart that there was no mistaking what I am?” He sighed, his shoulders slumping, his wings rustling against his back. “No, of course not. Not now. Not when I am reduced to this. Those men, they had the key, they opened the door, but they did not know what they were doing. They were amateurs. Tinkerers. They summoned the wrong one of us time and time again. Tell me, how long have I been here? A century? Ten centuries?”

  “Fourteen years, give or take,” I said.

  The Mad Affliction looked shocked. A shocked demon wasn’t something you saw every day. “Fourteen years? Is that all? Time passes so strangely in your realm. I would have thought it much longer, given that all the others have perished. Starved to death. The men caged us, but they left us nothing to eat. Nothing to do. I slept the years away, and now I am the last one. Perhaps that is fitting, as I was the last of their mistakes before they finally managed to summon the one they truly wanted.”

  “Nahash-Dred,” Bethany said.

  The Mad Affliction cackled. “Indeed! The fools sought the Burning Hand, He Who Puts Out the Stars, the Wearer of Many Faces. Spawn of Leviathan, brother of Behemoth. They sought Nahash-Dred, Destroyer of Worlds!” He glared at us. “Are you so foolish that you do not tremble at his name? Beware, imprudent humans. Nahash-Dred could be anyone, anywhere. He could be listening to you even now, and you would not know until you felt his bare hand tear the dripping spine out of your back!”

  “What do you mean anyone?” I asked.

  It was Bethany who answered me. “The Wearer of Many Faces. Don’t you see? Nahash-Dred isn’t just a demon. He’s a shape-shifter.”

  “There are demons that can change their shape?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said, as if everyone knew that.

  “Right. Of course,” I said.

  The Mad Affliction laughed at my ignorance, his long nose quivering. I was still holding the Bersa. I thought about shutting him up with a bullet between those big saucer eyes of his, but something told me a gun wouldn’t be much use against a demon. I put it back in the holster at the small of my back.

  “What happened when they summoned Nahash-Dred?” Bethany asked.

  The demon grinned at the memory. “The fools could no more bind my lord than they could me. Nor were their other spells strong enough to overcome one so mighty. And so he slaughtered them. Oh, it was glorious! Nahash-Dred took them apart with but a thought. Some tore like paper. Others burst like overripe fruit. A hand here, a foot there, a loop of gut. Blood streamed across the floor like a beautiful red river.”

  Bethany pointed the glowing charm at the floor. The smooth stone was mottled with big, dark red patches of long-dried blood. There were no bones, though; no clothing. The rats must have gotten to them long ago. Rats as big as cats, the Mad Affliction had said. I thought of them dragging the pieces of the dead back to their nests, and shuddered.

  “Oh, the hunger! My mouth waters just thinking of all that blood.” The Mad Affliction glared at me again. “Let me have your toe. Even just your smallest toe!”

  “Forget it,” I said. “What happened next?”

  The Mad Affliction sighed, annoyed. “When the slaughter was done, Nahash-Dred ignored our pleas to be released from our cages. Surely my lord had good reason why, though he did not share it with us. Instead, he left this place. But he will come back for us. I know he will. I thought you were him when you woke me.”

  “So Nahash-Dred killed the cult members and went back to his dimension?” I said.

  “Back? No, Nahash-Dred did not go back. When he left this place, he did so in the shape of a man. Not through the doorway between worlds, but out into your realm. There he remains to this day.”

  “What?” Bethany demanded. “He can’t be.”

  “What reason have I to lie?” the Mad Affliction asked. “I wish my lord had returned to our realm rather than stay in this forsaken one, and I wish he had taken me with him. But neither happened.”

  “Are you sure Nahash-Dred is still here?” I pressed.

  “I am as sure of it as I am of the hunger that racks my bo
dy day and night,” the Mad Affliction said. “I can sense him in this realm. I would not be able to were he on the other side of the doorway.”

  Shit. If Nahash-Dred never went back to his own dimension, then the demon was out there right now, hiding somewhere among the people of New York City. But how was that possible? In the footage Isaac showed us, Nahash-Dred looked a hundred feet tall. How exactly did the principles of shape-shifting work? Did the rule of conservation of mass not apply to demons? Could he be any size as well as any shape? Human? Mouse? Insect? And did it work the other way, too? Could he make himself two hundred feet tall? Five hundred? A thousand?

  Bethany shook her head. “This changes everything.”

  A strong contender for understatement of the year.

  “If Nahash-Dred can change what he looks like, then the Mad Affliction is right, he could be anyone, anywhere,” I said. “There are ten million people in this city.”

  Bethany shut her eyes, trying to stay focused. “He changed his shape. That explains why no one saw a demon escaping out into the streets.” She opened her eyes again and looked at the Mad Affliction. “Do you remember what Nahash-Dred looked like as a man?”

  “Like him,” the Mad Affliction said, pointing at me. “As a man, my lord looked as all men do. I cannot tell them apart.”

  “What color was his hair? How tall was he?” she pressed.

  The Mad Affliction shrugged. “Man is man is man. Can you honestly say you see any difference from one to the other?”

  Bethany groaned in frustration.

  “You’re telling me a shape-shifting demon just walked out onto Fifth Avenue and blended in with the crowd?” I asked. “Hailed a fucking cab after tearing everyone to pieces down here?”

  “Not everyone,” the Mad Affliction said. “Now that I think on it, he did not slaughter all of them. In the aftermath, one of the men was missing. He was not among the dead.”