Ashes - The Special Edition: The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

  His hands were clasped together, and he had a hard time moving them, but he managed to pry them apart. Something rubbed his hands that felt like a necklace with many beads, but he heard it fall to his side.

  Reaching his hand up, it stopped. It stopped on some sort of low padded ceiling that was only inches above him.

  And then he stopped.

  Enter me now, Jean Carlo! Come inside and make me feel so good like you made all those gays feel through all of your miserable fucking life!

  Curiosity took the best of him. It was now or never. He opted to find Jonas, who he had not heard a sound from since he had entered the mist. There was nowhere for him to go. Heading back down the stairs would only trap him.

  He still didn’t understand this strange society that existed below the city. He felt like he could trust Jonas, but then again, the society just seemed so odd. And the Metatron – what were those contraptions? The mist was the unknown, and he sensed evil – an uneasy sensation which overtook him the closer he got to it.

  His stomach felt uneasy.

  But at least the mist offered something that going back downstairs didn’t seem to – a possible way out.

  CHAPTER FOURTY-EIGHT

  The last thing that Roberto could remember was the flaming stone room. The hot bright flames and the silver casket.

  Running.

  Where was he?

  Why, Roberto? Why do you ask such a question? Certainly you don’t know where you are? Or where you have been?

  Or what you have done…

  The room that he found himself in, the room that collapsed towards him was where he was; the flames that were trying to reach for him and burn him alive, which would boil the skin off his body, as it bubbled and dripped off his bones.

  But did it really happen?

  There he was. Once again.

  But the halls were no longer made of the earth.

  At least, from what he felt, he did not believe that to be the case. The floor felt hard, like he was standing on wood or concrete. But it was black, pitch dark black, the kind of black that you would open your eyes as wide as they can be opened, but see to no avail. He could not see a thing in front of him. Not a sliver of light.

  He turned his head around, in the direction that he thought was the stone chamber with the casket, but he could not tell for sure.

  He heard something. A grating, like stone moving against stone. And in his mind, he saw a vision.

  Hernan.

  Lying dead in that coffin.

  And then he closed his eyes. He saw the silver casket as is he were observing from standing in the corner of the room, just feet away; he saw the casket being placed on the stone slab by two tall, broad shouldered men in dark black suits, but when they turned towards him, they had no faces.

  Just skin.

  Plain, flat skin.

  Once the casket was in place, the two men turned and looked at Roberto. They each cocked their heads to the side. They each took a few steps forward, they came closer and closer to Roberto, to the point where their faces seemed to be right in front of his.

  And then they turned back around.

  They returned to the casket, and stood over it. One of them gestured for Roberto to come over and to come closer.

  He did.

  Roberto felt himself moving forward, like he could not control it. He felt himself gravitating towards the casket, as one of the men opened the lid. He opened it just ever so slightly, just enough to let some light in and see the reflection of flesh…

  And then stopped.

  Roberto opened his eyes, still only seeing the blackness and blueness of the dark surrounding him. He was breathing heavily. He mopped his forehead with the side of his forearm.

  Who was in that casket?

  He leaned up against the wall, and exhaled. But when he was running possible solutions through his mind, how to get himself out of the situation he was in, as he dropped ever so slowly down into a sitting position with his back pressed to the wall, he felt a hard, round object jutting out from the wall.

  It didn’t erect itself from the wall and prod into his back. Roberto felt that the door handle had been there all along, but he did not notice it until he had slinked back onto the wall and started to ease himself down. And then he felt it.

  A door.

  Instantly turning around to face this mysterious door, he felt out with his hands and determined that, yes, there was a door. He couldn’t remember if it had been there before and he didn’t care.

  Was the building beckoning him in farther? Or was this the door that he originally entered through?

  It was too dark to tell.

  All he could do was feel the mysterious surfaces with his hands, and when he ran his hands out in front of him, he felt the smooth grainy surface of the wooden door; he caressed the cusp of the woodworking on the frame, and the sharp transition to a rough rocky mountain range, where the stone wall fought against the streamlined woodworking and reached outwards.

  He drew his hands back downwards, and rested his right hand on the cool, smooth and rounded knob. He paused for a moment. He clicked the knob to the left.

  He turned his head back once more, straining his eyesight to see anything, anyone that might have been back in the stone room, but he saw nothing.

  But it was what he felt…and what he heard…that said otherwise. There was definitely someone or something there in the room with him.

  *~*~*

  Roberto heard a faint cry – not like a scream, but more like a squeal. Far off in the distance, but moving closer.

  And then Roberto could make out what the woman was saying. The moans – so methodic and mesmerizing – started to sound familiar. And then he realized.

  He saw that night again.

  Roberto…oh, Roberto? Where have you gone? What have you done to me?

  And then standing there dead still with his hand still clutching the doorknob, he heard it. Right in front of him.

  “Roberto! Listen to your mother!”

  He closed his eyes, as tight as he could shut them. So tight they ached. Tighter than he could ever remember, since he was a little kid sitting up in bed with the covers drawn up to his chin thinking there was a monster in the closet – so tight that his face wrinkled up.

  “Roberto! Look at me! You abandoned me! You left me…and my face was smashed against the cabinets! And now here I am, I am the demon-seed whoring myself in hell! You sentenced me to this! You fucking bastard!”

  He didn’t look. He didn’t want to. “No!” he screamed.

  But she didn’t have to speak.

  It didn’t matter what she said. Oh Roberto! You are so much better than your father! Such a strong young man taking care of me!

  Oh I love you Roberto!

  He turned the handle and the walls started to crumble. He could not see it, but he felt crumbling rocks assaulting his arm. Wincing at the pain, he tried the knob again. The whole hallway shook, like an earthquake.

  Roberto! Open your eyes! Come and save me!

  The door wasn’t budging. So he turned and opened his eyes.

  There was his mother, just as he remembered her; the shoulder length brunette hair, the pretty youthful face; the glistening smile. She even had all of her teeth. So this must have been from years ago.

  But something was different.

  “You’ve been dead and gone for years!” he screamed to her.

  That’s no way to speak to your mother. You see I have all my teeth, right? Remember when I had to get the dental implants? And what did we tell the dentist? I am trying to remember.

  Her smile faded. “Is this the kind of welcome that I get? I have been waiting here for years now, watching the world and waiting, waiting for you to come and join me, and now here you are!”

  She jumped forward and put her arms around Roberto in a motherly embrace. She took her hand and caressed his cheek.

  “Yes…” she said, “You see this? Look around. Try to ignore the r
umbling and falling rock.”

  Roberto looked around and could see. He saw the crumbling stone was falling around them, like a crumbling city. The hallway began to glow white, bright white and upon looking outwards, he saw the stone crumble and fall to reveal the same stone room with the casket.

  “Don’t think about going back there,” she said, snapping his chin back in position to look at her face dead on. “You’re not dead yet. That is your father’s destiny. Not yours. Yes, that is your destiny.” She pointed to the door behind him, which would not budge.

  “What is my destiny?”

  “You go through that door,” she said, “you will have made your choice. Look around you. The walls have crumbled. It’s like a cave. This place is a sentence! But that door…is what can save you.”

  He turned around, now seeing the door clearly outlined in a wall that was a mixture of moss and earth and leftover fragments of stone. But the door looked perfectly wooden; it actually looked out of place, like it was intentionally built just for him.

  Roberto.

  Roberto! You were never like this when you were my son! You loved me, yes you did. I never doubted that. But when I got the cancer, when I began to submit to my punishment and my destiny, you deserted me. You slimy little faggot! You took it up the ass every night! What happened to you?

  And then I died.

  I remember dying, lying in my hospital bed, alone. I could barely open my eyes and look around the room; I saw the bright lights filtering through from the hallway.

  But the room was dark.

  I saw shadows in the ceiling. They moved across the ceiling and hovered over my bed. In the corners where the wall met the ceiling and another wall…there was a laughing demon waiting for me. They seemed to say, ‘That’s right Eva, come on girl! We know in just a few short minutes you will be ours! We’re here waiting for you! It’s just a matter of time now!’

  And then I died.

  And you were out somewhere getting fucked. And who knows where Hernan was.

  As soon as I died, I got up out of bed. I rose out of bed like I would any other time that I rose out of bed, but this time I did not feel tired or weak or needing a few minutes extra of sleep.

  I felt nothing.

  As I stood up, I looked back down.

  There I was, lying in the bed, eyes closed, a look of peace on my face. But I knew that peace would not last into this realm. That’s right Roberto.

  Those demons that were waiting for me in the dark corners of the room – guess what they did? They came up and stood in front of the door. I couldn’t see them. They were out of focus like silhouettes – but they made it clear that they had come for me.

  I knew what I had done. My guilt has consumed me. And now, here I am, sentenced to eternity to this hell! I cannot forgive and I cannot forgive myself!

  She stood in front of Roberto, smiling like she always did as his mother. She gazed upon him with love and affection. “You see, my son, I have many regrets. And I believe, that perhaps…just perhaps…that we shouldn’t always regret what we do in life. Because we are all imperfect. But they came for me my son. They came for me because I of what I didn’t do in my life.”

  “What didn’t you do?”

  “I wasn’t there for you…as your mother. I expected so much from you…to protect me from the poor choices I had made. And even so, I never regret marrying your father, even despite what he did to me, because he gave me you.”

  Roberto felt his face twitch for a brief moment.

  “And what I regret most is what I forgot,” Eva said as her gaze fell downwards.

  “What was that?”

  “I forgot that you were my son. And I should have never lost sight of that.”

  She smiled wanly, for a fleeting moment, as her youthful face contorted in pain and distress; her hands tightened their grip on Roberto’s forearms, squeezing them until the flesh turned red, causing him to cry out.

  The skin on her face began to drop off and liquefy, revealing the muscle and bone beneath. That began to rot and fall away as she cried in defeat. “I’m sorry Roberto…”

  Each exposed patch of skin on her body shrived and dried and began to fall off, and then her head dropped back and her grip loosened on Roberto’s arms. He dropped her rotted corpse down to the floor.

  It was time to go through the door. Wherever it led, he was meant to go there.

  It was time.

  CHAPTER FOURTY-NINE

  Dawn.

  As Sheldon stood in front of his small bedroom window overlooking Ponce De Leon, the sunlight crept through the rust colored cross-hatched pattern in the glass, warmly casting small yellowish squares on the cranberry colored rug.

  Today was the day.

  He had lost Anthony to Antoine and Darius, and did not know of his fate. Paula was long gone. But that did not matter to Sheldon. Antoine had sunk into the underworld of Demons – somehow he managed to embroil himself in their evildoings. But Sheldon could not put his finger on it – on how he got involved with Asmodai.

  When he first had discovered Antoine, he was still a student in Boston, studying theology at Boston College. The year was 1965. Antoine had kept a relatively low profile throughout most of the twentieth century; he did emerge into the public eye as a spiritual leader and healer until the 1990’s, during the end of the century when the world began filling with hate and chaos.

  During the period that Sheldon attended school in Boston, he read of Antoine one evening while at the campus library, stumbling upon Les Livre Des Vampires. Sheldon always held a deep fascination with immortals.

  The young, twenty-something Sheldon Wilkes was a much leaner and trimmer, athletically built man with a full, thick head of dark brown hair and a trimmed beard covering most of the bottom half of his face - contrasting greatly to the round and paunchy older man with the silver-haired receding hairline, horn-rimmed glasses and three-piece suits he was destined to become. He was wearing large, round rimless glasses framing his face and making him look rather scholarly – and in Boston, he pretty much blended into the scholarly crowd.

  There it was, staring at him through the columns of books of varying degrees of thickness and height, it was standing on the shelf, as if it appeared brighter than the others – like it was highlighted by some unknown aerial light source.

  LES LIVRE DES VAMPIRES:

  THE BOOK OF THE IMMORTALS,

  the spine read. He slowly and reverently pulled the book from the shelf. It was the first time he had laid his eyes on the volume, not knowing then that it would be a great part of his life for the remainder of his days, and not knowing that the book before him would develop into an obsession.

  Holding the book respectfully as if it were the Bible, he slowly padded over to the closest table in the library. He sat down next to a large picture window, overlooking a well-kept garden. He placed his backpack in the center of the table, and sat in the wooden chair. Setting the book gently down on the table, he sat upright in the chair and settled himself. He opened the binding carefully, for the book seemed to be quite old.

  Parchman’s Press

  Boston, MA

  1864

  the title page read, at the bottom. Above it, it bore the title again, in the center of the page.

  He leaned forward, reached for his backpack, unzipped it and fished out a yellow legal pad and pen.

  This is perfect, he thought, folding back the first few pages with scribbling on them in blue and black ink. This can be a topic for my thesis. Sheldon had long been toiling with the decision of what topic to address for his senior thesis, and he was already behind on his research. The book of the vampires was an impressive find. Although his professor may or may not accept a paper that presented the mysteries of the immortals, Sheldon could certainly conjure the question that he would pose in the dissertation: how can immortals integrate themselves into everyday society? He jotted down the question on the yellow legal pad, at the top of the page, underlining it twice for
clarity.

  He began to read, and he read and he read – page after page of detailed accounts of immortals – revealing their vampire origins hundreds and thousands of years ago to modern-day immortals who posed, sometimes, as public figures. He read about Claret, a young girl in the times of Christ that was rumored to be an immortal. Several drawings accompanied her story – one of her in her apparent mortal form, looking like an innocent girl of no more than ten or twelve.

  According to the synopsis, Claret disappeared from her bed one night. There was no noise made, no evidence of a scuffle – and it was apparent the next morning when her parents arose to see her bunk empty.

  Claret was gone.

  She had gone off wandering into the night. Perhaps wandering the streets of Jerusalem searching for Jesus Christ – she was always infatuated with Him – but then again, why would she do it? Her mother shook her head, crying on her husbands shoulder unaware of where her child went.

  But the truth was never revealed, except in the excerpt that Sheldon was reading before him, all while taking notes furiously. Claret never wandered off. She was taken, right under the sleeping noses of her parents and siblings. In a one-room clay hut on the outskirts of Jerusalem, through the doorframe covered simply by sheepskin, Claret could see a spiny hand pull the covering back from the doorframe, slowly.

  Like any child would, she lay in her bunk frozen still and unable to move, covering her eyes with her fingers – watching through her fingers the sheepskin curtain pull back from the door and reveal a man with long, flowing black hair, wearing a black hooded robe. He entered silently, and headed towards Claret. She pulled her blanket over her head in a childish hope for protection and lay there motionless with a racing heart until she felt a hand grab her arm, pulling her out of bed.