by Bryan Smith
Chad glanced around, saw no one watching, and tossed the leg irons away.
Three other slaves were shackled to the rail. One was a black woman of Cindy’s approximate age. The slave closest
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to him was a frail young man. Chad’s stomach clenched at the sight of him. He was dying. There was a wound of some sort along his side, a raw lip of swollen flesh. It pulsed with infection. He was feverish and glassy-eyed. He laughed, mumbled, and swatted at bugs that weren’t there.
Hallucinating, Chad realized.
The last slave was tethered at the far left end of the rail.
A small girl child.
Six, maybe seven years old.
Chad ground his teeth. A single word hissed through his clenched mouth: “Evil.”
The word captured the attention of the dying slave. For a moment, a moment Chad sensed would be all too fleeting, the man’s eyes were clear and focused. He looked right at Chad and said, “You’re new.”
Chad nodded. “I am.”
A sad smile touched the man’s face. “I’ve been here four months.” He frowned, and his eyes went momentarily dull before clearing again and locking on Chad. “Or maybe four years. I forget. Don’t have a lot in the way of advice to give you, friend. You’re pretty much fucked.”
Chad laughed. “I figured.”
“Just keep your head down.” The man nodded, affirming the truth of his own statement. “Whatever they do to you, don’t fight back.” He lifted an arm and gave Chad an unobstructed view of the wound that was killing him. “Ain’t worth it.”
Chad looked away. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“And you have to see Lazarus.”
Chad frowned. “Who?”
But that was the extent of the conversation. The
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doomed slave went back to swatting invisible bugs and mumbling half-coherent condemnations of God and, obscurely, Johnny Carson. Chad stopped listening to him and took in his surroundings.
So this was Below.
The place where The Master’s banished people were forced to live out what remained of their bleak existences.
Below was a huge cavern. The ceiling, high above him, was like an earthen sky. The place was lit by dozens of klieg lights. The rutted track that served as a road for the transport trucks was bordered on this side by the parking lot, the SCD building, and a scattering of other, vaguely official-looking buildings. Across the road was a row of more primitive-looking edifices. He heard a buzz of voices beyond those buildings.
The carnival whistle sound came again.
As did sounds of strange commerce and conflict.
There was a lot wrong with this place-a colossal understatement-but he realized it was a functioning community with a social order and, probably, some sort of rudimentary economy. It would fascinate a sociologist.
Chad, however, was repulsed.
Cindy emerged from the building thirty minutes later, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
The incongruous smile had a contagious quality that reminded him of…
Dream.
Chad blanched.
He’d been trying not to think about Dream. He hoped she was safe in a hotel somewhere, snuggling in for the night, blissfully unaware of his dire predicament. Logic
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told him this was probably the case. They had a car. They would be safe in the car.
He had to believe this.
Anything else was too dreadful to contemplate.
As Cindy drew nearer, he noticed a glint of silver at her throat. When she reached the hitching rail, Cindy turned her neck up, displaying a necklace to him. “You like?”
A piece of metal fashioned to resemble the fifth letter of the alphabet dangled from the necklace, glinting in the artificial daylight.
The dying slave was staring at Cindy, his gaze riveted to the necklace. Lucidity again touched his feverish visage. “Cunt. Emancipated cunt.”
Cindy hit him in the throat and he went down, folding faster than a glass-jawed stumblebum absorbing a blow from the heavyweight champion of the world. He lay unconscious on the ground, his arm dangling from the hitching rail.
Chad gaped at her. “My God …”
Cindy unlocked the chain shackling him to the rail. “Had to do it.” Her voice was low, barely audible. “I start accepting disrespect from slaves, we’re both in trouble.”
She led him across the rutted track. He stepped in a puddle of engine oil, winced, and shook oil from his sandal, then he joined Cindy on the sidewalk-like path of polished stones on the opposite side of the road.
He caught up to her and asked, “That guy back there, the sick slave, he said something about a guy named Lazarus.”
Cindy stopped abruptly. She put a hand on his chest, stilled his next question with a forefinger to the lips. “I’m taking you to Lazarus now.”
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Chad frowned. “But who is he?”
Cindy’s answer only deepened the mystery. “I don’t know who he really is, Chad. I only know his real name is something else.”
She smiled. “Some people, Below’s more gullible denizens, think he’s God.”
God, Chad thought.
What a perfect irony.
He was in hell.
And God was here with him.
What might that mean?
And what was this strange, niggling feeling at the back of his mind?
He thought of a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces, the pieces slowly, slowly fitting together, revealing long hidden secrets, pointing the way…
Out of here, Chad thought.
And followed Cindy around a corner.
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Eddie couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You must be kidding. We can’t kill that thing.”
Giselle’s smile hinted of secrets unrevealed. “But we can.”
She was at her writing table again, still nude, gloriously nude, and he wanted her again. Oh, how he ached to be inside her again. Eddie forced his gaze away from her body. She too easily distracted him, and he did not want to be distracted now. What she was proposing was madness. He couldn’t do what she wanted. He just couldn’t. Couldn’t she see it was tantamount to suicide?
And Eddie wanted to live.
He hadn’t come this far, struggled this much, to voluntarily lay down his life. So tell her that, he thought. Be blunt. Lay your cards on the table. He paced the room, puffing intently on one of Giselle’s handrolled cigarettes.
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“I don’t want to die!” he told her. He knew what it sounded like, but he didn’t care. “Call me a coward, go ahead. You won’t hurt my feelings. Goddamn, Giselle, you don’t survive Below without developing one bad motherfucker of a self-preservation instinct.”
He stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the table. He made himself look at her face, not the slopes of her breasts or the breath-quickening swell of her hips. No, better to seek sanctuary in the relative safety of her face. Her lovely, exquisite face. “I’m just a man, Giselle.” His voice was quiet, solemn, devoid of the previous agitation. “You send me up against that thing, you’ll be writing my death warrant.”
Giselle finished rolling a fresh cigarette. She licked the end of the paper, pressed it shut, and struck a match. She puffed the cigarette to life, exhaled, and said, “It’s true, Eddie, you may die. There is risk involved. Great risk.” Another slow exhalation of sweetly aromatic smoke. “That I can’t deny. But I can assure you of this-if you attempt to flee this place, you will certainly die.”
Eddie groaned. “Jesus, Giselle.”
Her gaze sharpened. “It’s true, Eddie. Remember what I told you about The Master’s mind? This place we inhabit, this shadow realm, is more than a corruption of reality. It’s a prison, Eddie. Once you enter The Master’s domain, you cannot leave. There is no exit. No early parole.” She smiled a little. “No escape.”
She opened her mouth. More smok
e plumed away, perfect O’s floating up toward the ceiling. The smell was strange. Sweeter, more pleasant than tobacco. But it wasn’t marijuana. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he really
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wanted to know what they were smoking. It would be something freaky, wouldn’t it? Something like powdered bone or magical herbs. Essence of speech-impaired old man, perhaps.
Why not?
Look, he told himself. She’s a great lay. Strike that. A mundane term like “great lay” didn’t do this lady justice. She was light-years above and beyond anything he’d ever experienced, and he was a fairly experienced guy. He wasn’t King Stud, but he’d had his share of very nice sexual experiences, a great many of them certainly falling in the “great lay” category. And none of those women, not one, was fit to carry Giselle’s garters. She was ecstasy incarnate. Transcendence. Bliss. She could give you those things. Her body could take you to places beyond sensation, beyond orgasm, a place within the body, to the root of the pleasure centers deep in the muck of brain matter. And she could manipulate them with a precision a neurosurgeon would kill for.
Yes, she could do this.
He knew.
She had done it to him.
He was effectively enslaved to her now. There was no more need for ropes and discipline. He could never leave her, would never think of it, not now that he knew what she could do to him. He accepted this as fact and chose not to expend any energy struggling against it.
She owned him.
End of story.
But knowing that did not erase some very grim facts.
Giselle was a killer. A vicious killer.
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And she was a sadist.
Bad things. He didn’t approve of any of the fucked-up shit she had done, let there be no mistake about that. Still, he’d surrendered his immortal soul to her. His immortal fucking soul, ladies and gentlemen, and you know what?
He’d do it all over again.
Without blinking a goddamn eye.
Which was why this act of resistance was so momentous a mental struggle. There was only one thing so awe-inspiring in its power that it rivaled the hold Giselle had over him, and that was The Master, a creature he’d bet the house on in a no-holds-barred death match against Satan and all his hellspawn.
“No escape?” Eddie threw up his hands. “So we’re just fucked, right?”
“No.”
“No?” he repeated.
Well, at least she said it with conviction.
“Let me tell you some things, lover.” She patted the seat next to her. “Have a seat.”
Eddie opened his mouth, but no words came out. Getting next to her was dangerous. Proximity would weaken his ability to argue. But he had no choice. It was a command, not a request. He sat down, gulped as he watched her legs uncross, and shivered when she propped an ankle on his knee. His strong hands went immediately to her foot, and his thumbs began to gently massage the soft pad of her sole.
Eddie sighed.
That’s it, he thought, it’s over, I’m screwed.
She made a sound of pleasure. “Mmm, that’s nice. When
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I’m done telling you what I need to tell you, we’ll make love again. Won’t that be nice?”
Eddie gulped.
It was another statement of fact. No need to comment.
She exhaled a final stream of smoke, stubbed out her cigarette, and stared at him with an expression of serene confidence. “Some things I can show you, Eddie. You can see with your own eyes some of the things I know, some of the things I can do. The power of ritual. The power of magic.”
Eddie recalled his vision of the bloody sliver of excised flesh disappearing down her throat, and he shuddered.
Giselle smiled. Her gaze drifted to the ceiling. She appeared to be looking beyond the speckled white surface, at something, or some place, far away. She looked stoned. There was a good reason for that-she was stoned. Eddie realized he was a little buzzed himself. Shit, it had to be that stuff they’d been smoking. He felt light-headed, not quite himself, but it wasn’t like a ganja high. He didn’t feel… fucked up. This was the opposite of that. It was a real high, in the purest sense, an elevation, an expansion of the senses. This was what proponents of lysergic acid were always claiming as the drug’s great miracle, but Eddie had done acid a time or two when he was younger, and he knew that was a bunch of shit.
Acid wigged him out, made him doubt his sanity.
This stuff…
Jesus, this shit made him … see.
He reached for the unlit cigarette in the ashtray, but Giselle deflected his hand. “No more. Any more will be too much. It’s still working its way into your system.”
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“What is it?”
“It’s not important.” Her foot slipped out of Eddie’s grasp, insinuated itself along an inner thigh. “Just close your eyes and listen to me.”
Eddie did as she bade, leaning back in the chair and shuddering at the enhanced physical sensation of her foot on his bare flesh. Something surprising occurred to him. He wasn’t aroused. He should be. His cock should be straining toward her even now, but it was not. Then he realized she was regulating his physical response. She wanted him attentive. Focused on her words instead of her body.
So he listened to her.
And she said, “There are many things you will have to take my word for, things I can’t show you in the physical world. There are other planes, Eddie, and I’m not talking about the kind that fly. I’m talking about other levels of existence. Places inhabited by beings beyond man’s comprehension. Gods, Eddie. Immortals. Yes, they do exist. Notice my emphasis on the plural form. When you understand, Eddie, when you see, the idea of one great, omniscient God will make you laugh. These gods do wield some influence on events in our world, the one beyond this tainted place, but mostly they stay out of human affairs. These beings are powerful, more powerful by far than The Master, who is not a god, and who is not immortal.
“You need to know this about The Master-he is flesh and blood. As such, he is vulnerable. He has always been vulnerable, Eddie, but because he is powerful, and because he is careful, no one has ever been able to exploit that vulnerability. We will be the first. And the last. We will kill him.”
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The conviction in her voice riveted Eddie.
The drug, this odd elixir that invigorated the mind and senses, made him believe it.
She said, “I have communed with the gods, Eddie. Even some of his gods. Not in the metaphorical way humans ‘talk’ to God. I have had exchanges with them. They have told me things, shown me things, all the sweetest wonders of existence, as well as its darkest terrors. They have shown me the truth about The Master. They’ve shown me how to kill him.”
Eddie’s heart rejoiced.
Yes!
He can be killed!
“He is the last of his race, Eddie, and I know some things about his kind even he does not. They did not originate on this world. His ancient ancestors came here in a ship. A disabled vessel. It crashed on our planet. Only a few of them survived. The Master was born here, birthed by an alien mother. She died when he was young, and the others dispersed about the planet, using their unique abilities to blend in with the primitive peoples that inhabited our world then.
“They lived as Gods, became kings and idols, and some of them became dictators, the worst despots the world has ever known. Our Master could have followed in their footsteps, but he chose a different path. He was exceptionally gifted even for his kind, and he chose to use his rare abilities to create a different kind of kingdom, to exist beyond the prying eyes of the modern world. I’ll tell you something astonishing, Eddie. This place, this corrupted terrain, is but the latest in a series of kingdoms. He builds them,
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fills them with wayward souls, then, eventually, he crushes them and moves on. That will not happen here, Eddie.”
Eddie shivered. His eyes remained closed. “
The gods told you that?”
“They showed me how to stop him. He is weak, Eddie.” She laughed, a wicked, conspiratorial sound that thrilled him. “He, too, communes with the gods, but do you want to know a secret? The gods don’t like him.” Laughter pealed out of her now, melodic, intoxicating. “His gods are the death spirits. Parasites that feed off suffering. Powerful spirits. They know he is weakening. They laugh at his offerings, his pitiful attempts to appease them, these laughable sacrifices.”
Eddie laughed.
To think that he’d never seen it that way-that sacrifice was laughable!
It was amazing!
He laughed at the idea of killing people to make gods happy.
What an absurd concept!
Giselle said, “He doesn’t understand the true power of ritual, of symbol. The tongue I ate was a symbol, Eddie. The gods appreciate that. I honor them in ways that appeal to their sense of humor. Have you ever heard a god laugh, Eddie? It’s the most wondrous sound. …”
Eddie tried to imagine it.
He was almost there, could almost hear it-with the aid of this amazing drug-but the sound remained just beyond the range of perception. …
“The Master knows he is a mortal being. He has lived a long time, and he knows his time on this plane grows
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short. I’ll tell you something else, something to make your heart palpitate, Eddie. His power, while still great, has greatly diminished.”
Eddie swallowed hard. “It has?”
Her foot slid away from him and she stood up. “It has.” She took his hand. “Open your eyes, Eddie.”
His eyes fluttered open. He stared up at her, slackjawed, his heart thrumming in his chest like a high-tension wire. God, this drug, it was amazing, it did the impossible-it made Giselle seem even more beautiful, even more desirable. She guided him toward the bed, and he numbly followed, sliding beneath the rumpled covers with her.