I blinked my eyes rapidly and tried manipulating my lips and cheeks to shake the flies free. Eventually it worked, but not before they’d left an itching sensation all over my face that was so uncomfortable it soon grew maddening. I was sure if I didn’t somehow get my hands free and scratch my face I’d die or go absolutely insane.
In time, the sensation lessened then finally left me. I was out of breath and weak in the way I felt after a beating. I thought back to the days when I’d boxed. It was the same way my body felt the day following a particularly tough sparring session in which I’d absorbed lots of punishment. A unique kind of exhaustion, nothing else felt quite like it.
There was no telling what was left of me, but whatever remained was fading fast. I had to break free of this or I’d be dead soon.
Perhaps as a means of defense, my eyes rolled shut, returning me to darkness.
I wasn’t out long, if at all, because I soon felt the ground vibrate and heard someone approaching. I opened my eyes to find a pair of feet and shins blocking the horizon. One foot was in a boot, the other a sandal. Holly Quinn. I forced my eyes up, trying to see the rest of her, but couldn’t quite manage it. Thankfully she crouched down so I could see her face. She was smiling inanely, and held a small wooden cup in both hands. “Here,” she said, pushing it against my lips. “I brought you some water, drink.”
I did, and it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever tasted. On the third or fourth swallow I choked and the water ran out over my lips and down across my chin, soaking into the dirt around my neck. “Thank you,” I said breathlessly. “Thank you.”
“I’ll try to get you some more later, OK?”
“What’s happening to me? I can’t move, I c-can’t breathe.”
She gave me a bright smile. “It’s only just started.”
“Get me out of here—please—get me out.”
“You know I can’t do that.” She pushed the water at me again. “Have some more and then I have to go. You’re supposed to be praying and in a state of deep reflection, just like Papá. When the time’s right, he’ll come for you, the same as it’s written.” She poured a bit of the water over my head, soaking me down. “I’m just so honored to be here to see this come to fruition!”
“Where’s Quid?” I asked. “The man I came with, where is he?”
“Isn’t it exciting?” Holly stood up, and again, all I could see was her legs. “To think that it’s really happening, it’s really happening!”
“Where is he?” I asked again. “What have they done to him?”
But she was already gone, headed back toward the church, her babbling growing softer and softer the farther she went.
Something tickled my eyelid. I blinked it away…a bead of sweat.
The sun was rising. I didn’t have much time.
* * *
I awakened to whispers. They circled me, low and guttural, like the growls of unseen predators. My eyes burned the moment they opened. The sun was above me, blinding me, and I could feel the intensity of its heat pushing against my face. I pinched my eyes closed. Involuntarily, the muscles in my cheeks twitched, creasing the skin and causing a painful radiating sting. Even blinking hurt, as burning needles pierced the corners of my eyes with each attempt. The skin beneath them and along the lids faired no better, and when I tried to open my mouth it felt like my lips had been weighted. I felt them split and crack, even as I pried them apart and managed to peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Dehydrated and barely able to see, I listened instead to the whispers.
Faces—drawn, pale, heads shaved and littered with scabs—passed before me, leaning in and gawking, whispering their hideous prayers and coming so close I could feel and smell their sour breath. They circled and scurried about like giant insects, possibly in the throes of some fanatical ritual, the manner in which they moved in and then away with such mistaken grace both unsettling and hideously captivating.
In time, the whispers stopped. The faces retreated, but for one, who crept up beside me and crouched down. In his arms he carried what appeared to be a very thin and odd tarp of some kind. He spread it out on the ground just to my left, smoothing it quickly before he hurried off.
I tried to swallow but gagged. A dry cough rattled through me, and it felt as if my chest might break apart. My eyes rolled about involuntarily, and a tingling sensation similar to a yawn swept across my temples and up over the front of my skull. As the coughing ceased I was able to regain control of my eyes and hold them relatively steady, but still had only limited control of my body. It was shutting down and I could do nothing to stop it.
Suddenly, much of the blinding sun was blocked.
I looked up and squinted in an attempt to better focus, but all I could make out was a dark and blurry silhouette looming over me. I tried to speak and ask for water, but could only manage a garbled moaning sound.
The silhouette dropped to one knee.
At first I thought it was a woman, because of the hair. There was so much of it, dirty blond, matted and thick, hanging down like a dirty curtain and covering the person’s face. When he dropped from one knee to a sitting position I was better able to make out the body and recognize it as male. Though thin, he wasn’t emaciated like the others, and while his clothing consisted simply of a grimy cotton robe, it wasn’t as bad as the rags the rest wore. On his feet, which appeared remarkably clean compared to the rest of him, was an old pair of leather sandals. He was close enough that I could hear him breathing. Had my arms been free I could’ve touched him without fully extending them, but the wall of hair still blocked his bowed face and reached to the ground, which meant when he was standing it was nearly to his waist. This wasn’t a large man, but he possessed the presence of one. I could feel it, tangible as the crippling heat.
“It’s a bloody business, salvation.”
His voice had changed. It was deeper and raspier than I remembered it, with a vague slur, as if something had been stuffed into the corners of his mouth. But it was him. In his current position he continued to block much of the sun, but one thin beam reached over his shoulder and burned into the right side of my face. I closed that eye, kept the other trained on him best I could. “Is that what this is?” I gasped, frightened by the frailty and distorted sound of my own voice.
“It’s all this is,” he answered, speaking to me from behind the wall of hair, “from that night until now, and everything in between. If it makes you feel any better, old friend, we never had a choice. It was all decided long ago, without our knowledge or consent.”
“Get me out of here, Martin. Please.” Every word tore at my throat like a jagged fingernail, each breath more and more difficult to draw. “I’m dying.”
“You won’t die.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“You won’t die.”
“Help me.”
“We choose suffering. So many wonder why it exists, why the innocent must suffer along with the guilty. It’s because we choose it.”
I wanted to strangle him, to claw my way up out of the earth and choke him until his body went limp in my hands and I’d never again have to hear him spew his dime-store bullshit.
The sun crept over the top of him, boring down, scorching and weakening me to the point where I didn’t even have the strength for anger, only a profound emptiness…a terrible emptiness hollowing me out like a husk.
Martin cocked his head and the hair parted enough so that I could see a single eye peering out. It looked to the sky. “There’s nothing up there. Nothing. It’s an empty house with empty rooms full of empty promises and empty lies.”
“Help me,” I whispered, not sure if he’d even heard me.
“You have so much to learn.” The eye slid back to me. Blinked. The hair shifted, covering it again. “I have so much to teach you. You will call me Papá and you will see. Now tell me, Phillip. Who am I?”
My lips had begun to tremble uncontrollably, and I wasn’t sure I could still speak. I tried again to whisper
. “Martin.”
He leaned closer, and I felt the rough skin on his hands touch my face, one on either cheek, holding me there, the hair hanging between us. “Let me teach you. Let me teach you to see what I see.”
His thumbs moved onto my eyes. I felt pressure and pain on contact. The skin was badly burned but he was gradually pushing harder, sinking his thumbs deeper into my sockets. The pain became excruciating as my eyeballs began to compress, and strange eruptions of color exploded before the dark backdrop, swirling and moving like liquid sunbursts. “Martin,” I said, “stop, p-please, please stop—”
“See what I see.”
“Martin—”
“You will call me Papá, and you will see what I see.”
Fire…rivers of fire…skies of fire…the world bathed in it…bodies floating in streams of molten lava…flashes of tortured and maimed faces held together with hooks and staples, horrible instruments of torture clamped on bloodied flesh and exposed bone…flaps of skin hung from nails and stretched like rubber…screams and moans of agony…people vomiting ropes of bloody intestines and maggot infested bile…eyes punctured, plucked from sockets and squashed in clenched fists dripping with pus and bodily fluids…things removed—chopped and slashed and snipped away—wounds festering and ghastly…
His thumbs went deeper, and I let out an agonizing cry. If he pushed any harder they’d go through my eyes, popping and leaving them a soupy mess.
“Do you understand now? You don’t need your eyes to see.”
Pain exploded across my forehead and into the back of my head. “Papá,” I said, hoping it was loud enough for him to hear. “Papá! Papá!”
He released me. The pressure and pain ceased. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t, and continued to scream the name he’d demanded I call him, my will broken, shattered like the rest of me. I felt moisture on my face, unable to tell if it was blood or tears. When it trickled into my mouth I gratefully realized it was the latter.
My eyes finally opened, but they were damaged, all I could see was shadows and what looked like traces of light at the periphery. My God, I thought, he’s blinded me. The shadows shifted and I heard a rustling sound. He’d stood up. I strained to see him, telling myself again and again my eyes were fine and that they’d return to normal if I just kept trying.
And slowly, they did. The light along the periphery began to increase, spreading gradually across my line of sight until almost all the shadow had been absorbed. I could see Martin standing over me, his hair still blocking his face, the sun glaring behind him, the strange tarp he’d been sitting on still at his feet. Despite the pain, I blinked and felt another tear squeeze free and roll across my burned cheek. I was surprised I had any left.
“Why is the world nothing but a series of wars?” he asked me. “Why is it designed to be so inherently awful? Dog-eat-dog…rat race…survival of the fittest…look out for number one…Have you ever thought about that, and why it was designed that way? Who would create such a world, a loving god? Would a loving god drop those he allegedly loves into a meat grinder then expect total allegiance with no hope for escape except through death, and no hope for survival except through something as flimsy and insubstantial as faith? All religion is there to protect us from the dark, to explain why we have to die and what happens when we do.” He reached down, picked up the tarp. “Why do you think people fight so hard to stay alive? Why do they kill, maim, torture and destroy in the hopes of prolonging life and gathering power? What’s the real point of it all? To stay alive. To survive. To keep death at bay for as long as possible. Why? People will do anything, anything, no matter how depraved, just to survive. Why? Is it because deep down we all know what death really is? Not a void or a realm of peace and love, but the last room in the slaughterhouse?”
My vision was almost back to normal when I saw him toss the tarp down in front of me, throwing it aside like trash before he walked away.
As it landed in a heap just inches from me, I saw that it wasn’t a tarp at all. One section had remnants of hair and the outline of a human face…the strands of hair bright blond…the features, a mask made from Quid’s face…
It was him. A sheet of him, from head to waist, sliced free then crudely sewn together.
They’d skinned him.
I screamed in horror and rage, unable to stop until I again fell away into unconsciousness.
NINETEEN
I dreamed of being smothered, my body convulsing with vicious seizures while Quid’s skinless remains slithered about nearby, slimy and moist, dripping with blood and scraps of dangling raw meat.
When I awakened to what I believed was night, I drew breath violently and with a loud gasp, sitting up and throwing my hands out into the darkness.
Desperately weak, I collapsed back and lay there, breathing heavily, body sore, limbs heavy and hard to lift or move. I worked up enough saliva to swallow normally then licked carefully at my mangled lips.
I can move, I thought. I’m out. I’m out of the hole.
I began to cry. I don’t know why. I’d like to think it was relief, joy or maybe just release, but once I started I couldn’t stop.
Some time later, even after my emotions were back under control, I remained still, breathing, listening and watching as the room around me slowly came into focus. It was a small area, stone floor, stone walls and a low ceiling. Void of furniture, the walls bare, it looked like a cell, and perhaps it was. My head lolled to the side and I saw a doorway a few feet away, an arched opening in the stone. I realized then I was on the floor.
Rolling onto all fours, I struggled to my feet. At first my legs trembled so badly I had to brace myself against the wall. It was much cooler here, and there was a bit of light coming through the doorway, but I was so dizzy and shaky I kept to the dark awhile. Eventually I was able to take a few steps. Rather than venture beyond the small room, I walked around inside it, following the back wall, which I could cover in five small strides. I kept at it, going back and forth over and over again until my legs were steady and my equilibrium had returned.
I walked through the doorway into a narrow passageway, followed it for several feet and eventually found myself in another room, this one larger and not quite as dark. In the center of the otherwise empty room, a single black candle burned, set in an ornate brass holder on the floor. Beyond it, a set of stone stairs led up toward a patch of brighter light. Maybe it wasn’t night at all, I thought, just dark here. I assumed I was in the bowels of the church, but they hadn’t bound me or locked me in, why was I just left here?
Shadows moved along the wall. A smell, rancid and familiar…
I wasn’t alone.
From the far corner of the room came a softly wheezing exhale of breath. I moved back.
A face punctured the darkness, seeping from the shadows and shuffling into the small pool of candlelight. A creature like those that had attacked us on the road watched me through flame, a man in rags, but not really a man, not anymore, its decayed, dead skin grayish blue and cracked like clay. Thick yellow mucus trickled from its mouth as if it were spewing sour milk, its eyes sick, diseased and moist amidst its dry, bloodless flesh. It raised a hand as if to shield some of the light so it could see me better. Its fingernails were the brittle claws of a being long in the grave, and it smelled like death and rotted flesh. The thing studied me awhile, raising its head and sniffing the air between us the way a dog might, then hissed and shuffled back to the dark corner from which it came.
There was nothing left of me to shatter. I was beyond the fear, shock and disbelief now. Those things still nested in me, but whatever power they’d wielded was all but gone. I moved through the doorway, up the stairs toward the light and away from the monstrosity squatting in shadow.
Confirming my assumptions, I stepped up onto a stone landing and found myself in the back of the church. The temperature rose significantly on the main floor, and light bled in through all the windows. I didn’t know for sure how long I’d been out, but
assumed it was still the same day, just later in the afternoon.
It took a moment for me to realize what I was seeing, and I stood staring as my mind gelled around it, confirming it.
At first I’d thought there were hideously disfigured people floating in the air above me, glaring down at me with demonic faces, but they were instead dead mutilated bodies suspended from the cathedral ceiling, hanging from a series of embedded hooks strung across lengths of chain like an enormous metallic spider web. In various positions and hideous poses, their skins were stretched to near breaking point as they dangled from the hooks, limbs bent and twisted at unnatural angles, raw meat hanging from bones piercing flesh, abdomens and chests ripped open and dangling entrails, eyes gouged out, faces decorated with slashes and hanging flaps of dead skin, the flesh beneath rotting and infested, mouths carved away to give each a leering joker-like grin of broken teeth and bloody gums.
Beneath their sightless gazes, I moved deeper into the church.
Martin was kneeling before an old wooden altar along the back wall, head bowed in prayer. Otherwise the church was empty. A bevy of chickens walked around undisturbed, and where once pews had sat there was now open space, the stone floor dusty, dirty and littered with animal waste and other smears and pieces of viscera. On the back wall, above the altar, a huge rendition of the sign of the Traveler had been drawn in blood. Lying atop the altar was a sword, the scarred man’s sword, and beneath it, his book. Black candles burned on either side of them, and various piles of internal organs had been placed there as well. Numerous symbols hastily scrawled in blood covered the area, and between the altar and Martin’s kneeling form sat a black iron cauldron filled with bones of animals and humans alike, all of it floating in a horrendous stew of black gelatinous fluid. The stench wafting from it was enough to gag me from several feet away.
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