Hellgate: Goetia

by Mel Odom

  The cages the mental patients had been kept in were horrifying. Many of them were still there. Skeletons occupied most of the cages.

  “Do you think they just left them here?” Danielle asked. The somber tone in her voice was unusual. “Just let them starve to death?”

  “They would have thirsted to death first,” one of the other Templar said.

  Gradually, the conversation fell to a close. Simon led the way through the first level into the stairway to the second. The underground sections were laid out in ovals that were basically circular tunnels with holes cut in the outer walls and rooms hollowed out of the center sections.

  The room they had come to find, the one that Macomber had insisted was there given the clue as to where the Goetia manuscript was, was on the second floor below. Simon took the steps and headed down.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  T he skeleton wrapped his bony fingers around Warren’s throat and squeezed. Black spots danced in Warren’s vision. He almost passed out at the shock and a sudden pain. His demon hand rose almost of its own volition and clapped onto the skeleton’s skull.

  “Back!” Warren rasped through his bruised throat.

  Shimmering force hammered the skeleton backward and broke its grip on Warren’s neck. Warren sucked in a deep breath and heard it whistle into his lungs. He stepped back as the skeleton lunged at him again.

  This time the chain around the creature’s ankle drew him up short.

  “Warren, are you all right?” Naomi asked.

  Warren took another breath before he answered. “I’m fine. Stay out of my head and let me work. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  With single-minded purpose, the skeleton lunged again and again at Warren. The undead creature’s naked palms and bony fingers snapped together like bare winter branches in a high wind.

  “Don’t stand back there, boy,” the skeleton snarled. Since it had no lungs or voice box, the effort was quite impressive. “Come closer.”

  “I brought you renewed life,” Warren said. It hurt to speak. “You will obey me.”

  The skeleton lunged again.

  Warren gestured and another wave of shimmering force slammed into the creature and knocked him back into the cave where he had died. Before the skeleton could get up, Warren gestured again. This time the slack length of the chain wrapped around the skeleton and pinned his arms to his sides.

  The skeleton cursed cruelly.

  “How are you able to think and speak?” Warren asked. Over the last four years of he and raised dozens of zombies to do his bidding. Most of them had served as guards and ended up getting destroyed by demons or the knights.

  “The same way I always have,” the skeleton answered.

  “How long have you been down here?”

  “Since Dr. Featherstone ordered me placed here under custody in 1923.” The skeleton’s efforts to free himself subsided. His strength was no proof against the steel chain.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “’Course I have a name. I carry me father’s name.” The skeleton’s Cockney accent showed a little now.

  “What’s your name?” Warren asked.

  The skeleton hesitated for a moment as if struggling to recall. “I’m Jonas.”

  “What were you here, Jonas?”

  “I was a guard for a time.”

  That fit with the authority impression Warren had gotten. “How did you come to be a patient?”

  “A prisoner, you mean.”

  Warren made no reply.

  “Dr. Featherstone decided he didn’t like the job I was doing. He accused me of…abusing some of the patients.”

  “Were you?”

  Jonas the skeleton lifted and dropped his shoulders. The chain loops rattled as he did so. “Maybe a few. Some of the women that were brought here was pretty. They wasn’t as friendly as they should have been.”

  Warren felt disgust rise within him. “While I’m here, you will acknowledge me as your master.”

  Jonas doffed an imaginary hat and his bones rattled with motion. “Of course, yer lordship. What will yer pleasure be?” His accent was thick and sarcastic.

  “You know your way around in this place.”

  “Of course I do. I lived much of me life here and seems like even longer in death.”

  “Cross me and I won’t just kill you all over again.”

  “And just what is it you’ll do, your lordship?”

  “I’ll leave you here just as you are. Alive. And chained in this cell.”

  Jonas kicked his leg and tested the chain links. “I don’t think this manacle will hold me forever.”

  “Your choice. But make it quickly.”

  “Then aye, I’ll come with you and be your guide, yer lordship. Just you mind your back.”

  Warren gestured at the manacle. The metal ring vibrated and shook to pieces.

  “Well now, that’s a fancy trick, it is. And where did you learn that?”

  “I thought you’d think being brought back to life would be more amazing.”

  Jonas regarded Warren with his empty crimson gaze. “And who’s to say I wasn’t just resting and waiting here for your arrival, yer lordship?”

  The thought chilled Warren. If the skeleton had merely come to life, that would have been expected. Kelli, after she’d died, had lost what little personality she’d had in life. Warren had heard stories about undead that were more than simply animated. Many of them maintained their personalities. But he had never before seen such a case.

  “Where is it that you wish to go, yer lordship?” Jonas asked.

  “Up,” Warren answered.

  “And what is it you’re looking for then?” Jonas turned on one bony heel and started forward. Evidently he had no trouble seeing in the dark.

  Warren followed. “A book.”

  “That’s good. Because we’ve always been a little short on treasure.” Jonas cackled at his own joke.

  The room Simon searched for was located on the left side of the circle on the second floor. They walked there without interruption or incident. He left button cams on the walls and ceiling as they passed. The vid relays provided constant overlapping fields of view.

  So far as he could tell, they were the only ones in the abandoned sanitarium. It looked as if Macomber had held true to his promise not to tell Booth or any of the other Templar about the manuscript.

  A brass plaque mounted on the stone wall above the gate and the cave entrance identified it as 213.

  “Thirteen, eh?” Nathan asked. “I’m not exactly superstitious, mate. You know that. But I have to admit I don’t like that number. Twice thirteen, that’s bad luck for anybody.”

  “Just be glad it’s not on the third or fourth floor,” Danielle commented softly.

  “I will then,” Nathan returned.

  A few of the Templar laughed.

  Simon tried the gate and found it locked. He crushed the padlock in his armored glove and let the pieces drop. They tinkled to the floor. The gate opened with a screech.

  “You’re sure this is the place, mate?” Nathan asked.

  “I am,” Simon responded. He held up his hand, activated the torch projector in his palm, and switched over to the light multiplier application.

  The inside of the cave became as bright as day. A skeleton, dressed in rags, lay on a thin, rat-gnawed pallet at the back of the cave. In its day, Simon had no doubt that the bedding had also been infested with insects.

  “Who was he?” Leah asked.

  “His name was Marcel Duvalier,” Simon replied. He knelt and surveyed the man.

  The body was nothing more than patches of skin wrapped around a bundle of bones. The face was a hideous, ill-fitting mask that gone gray and looked so thin that it could be read through.

  “Who was he?” Danielle asked.

  “A scholar. A linguist like Macomber.” Simon reached down and picked up one of the dead man’s hands. “Only something a little more.” He spread the dead man’s hand out for al
l to see.

  Marcel Duvalier had possessed six fingers on his right hand.

  “Birth defect, mate?” Nathan asked in the silence that followed. “Six fingers, six toes. Happened a lot among the royals due to all the intermarrying. The gene pool got thin.”

  “This wasn’t a birth defect.” Simon pulled on the second forefinger and it separated easily. “The finger was grafted on.” He held a finger up. “It also had three articulated joints, not two.”

  Leah knelt beside Simon. She took the forefinger and studied it. “This isn’t human.”

  “Macomber entered into a dialogue with a psychology student who was studying the journals of the doctor who treated Duvalier,” Simon said, repeating the story that the old linguistics professor had given him aboard the ATV. “When he discovered that Macomber was working on much the same project, the student contacted Macomber. Since he was a student, access to Macomber was fairly easy to get. Macomber said the student was fascinated.”

  “I’m fascinated, mate,” Nathan said. “Do you know what the chances are of them ever even meeting each other? Or even knowing they were working on the same materials?”

  “Astronomical comes to mind.” Simon looked at the forefinger in Leah’s hand. “Both of them, Duvalier and Macomber, had been studying the same manuscripts. And they had both continued their studies inside the sanitariums.”

  “Inside separate institutions?” Nathan asked.

  “The student kept papers and letters going back and forth between him and Macomber,” Simon said. “But Macomber felt certain that it was only this dialogue that existed between Duvalier and the student that kept him sane. They were both trying to solve the same problem.”

  “To interpret the demon language,” Leah said quietly.

  “That’s right,” Simon replied. He lifted his palm and shined the torchlight over the walls. Writing covered the irregular surfaces.

  Every square inch of space was overlaid by symbols and letters. The hand wasn’t always steady, but it had obviously been determined. Simon saved images of the writing through his HUD interface.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Nathan said, “I’d think a madman had been at the walls.”

  That drew only a few dry chuckles from the Templar. The atmosphere inside the cage was to somber and sad for much more than that.

  “Macomber didn’t know how Duvalier been able to translate as much of the demon language as he had,” Simon said. “The student at first had believed that Duvalier was creating an artificial language.”

  “The student thought Duvalier was only having on his doctors and contemporaries?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes. It was only when the student studied the papers Macomber had written before the professor had been locked away in the sanitarium that the student realized the language wasn’t just localized to Duvalier.”

  “Duvalier grafted the demon’s finger onto his hand.” Simon followed the haphazard columns of letters written on the walls.

  “Where did he get the idea for that?” Leah asked.

  “Macomber didn’t know. I don’t think he knew that Duvalier had grafted on this extra finger. At least not then. After he escaped the Parisian sanitarium, he saw some of the Cabalists in Paris that had demon parts grafted onto their bodies. He suspected then because it had been mentioned in the doctor’s notes that Duvalier had a sixth finger on his right hand.”

  “When did that sort of thing start?” Leah asked.

  “I don’t know,” Simon answered.

  “Transplants have always been a source of mystery and the medical field,” Danielle put in. “Some of the first things that were tried were teeth and larger body parts like hands and arms.”

  “Yum,” Nathan said sarcastically. “Nothing I like more than having this kind of conversation after battling a Grotesque while we’re stuck in a grotto of dead serial killers and mass murderers.”

  “They weren’t all serial killers and mass murderers,” Daniel replied.

  “Enough of them were, if you ask me.”

  Leah stood beside Simon. “These are Duvalier’s translations?”

  “Yes.” Simon studied the wall.

  “Duvalier isn’t exactly an English name,” Nathan observed.

  “It’s French,” Simon said.

  “Glad we got that cleared up, mate.”

  “Duvalier came to England to study some of the texts that were here. When he tried to steal them from the Royal Libraries, he ended up killing a guard. At his trial he talked about the demons and the need to protect humanity from them.”

  “It’s a wonder he didn’t get a trip to the gallows.”

  “The university he taught for preferred the idea of him being a madman rather than a murderer. A deal was worked out.”

  “What are we looking for?” Leah asked.

  “According to Macomber, Duvalier blackmailed a colleague into bringing a copy of the Goetia manuscript into the sanitarium. Duvalier also paid off guards to let him work on the manuscript. At the time, bribery was a major source of income for the police and guards.”

  “Besides Duvalier was just a mad Frenchman and it didn’t matter,” Leah said.

  “Either way,” Simon said. “There is supposed to be a copy of the manuscript down here.”

  “In this room?” Nathan turned to survey the walls.

  “The clues as to the location are supposed to be here,” Simon replied.

  “Mate, if you can make sense of this gibberish, then you’re a better man than I. If it’s written in code—and in French—we’re not going to—hello. What’s this?”

  Simon abandoned the wall he was looking at and went to join Nathan. “What?”

  “What did you say the name of that manuscript was?” Nathan asked.

  “Goetia,” Leah said as she joined in.

  “Okay, but it had another name, right?”

  “The Lesser Key of Solomon,” Simon answered.

  “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but this looks like a map of the underground section of the sanitarium.” Nathan rested his finger on three concentric circles drawn and in isometric scale so they were shown at a thirty-degree angle and 3-D presentation to the viewer. An arrow pointing upward was drawn to the center them.

  At first glance, the drawing could have easily been mistaken for some of the other writing Duvalier had done. The second concentric circle had a stick figure drawing of a man with a book in hand.

  But on the third concentric circle there was a small, unmistakable drawing of a key.

  “A lesser key, right?” Nathan asked.

  It was as good a guess as Simon could make. If it was wrong, they could come back.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  G o carefully in this place.

  Warren froze as soon as he heard Merihim’s warning in his head. Flattened up against the wall at the curve of the stairway leading to the third floor of the subterranean section of the sanitarium, he ordered the skeleton to halt as well.

  “What?” Jonas asked.

  A scritching noise could be heard in the darkness ahead.

  “Rats,” Jonas said. “That’s all it is. Nothing to get riled over.”

  “This place has been closed down for a long time,” Warren whispered. “There’s nothing left down here for rats to eat.”

  “Maybe you’re not as brave as you think you are.”

  Warren ignored the skeleton and quietly made his way up the staircase. He peered around the corner and saw movement in the shadows halfway down the hall. He enhanced his vision further and saw the monstrous shape prowling the hallway.

  Judging by the height of the hallway, assuming that it was as tall as the previous one, Warren guessed that the demon stood twelve feet tall. Since the hallway only went to seven feet, Hargastor had to lean forward and walk on his knuckles like an ape. The gait suited the demon, though. He was broad and blocky.

  Four horns stuck out from the sides of Harg
astor’s bullet head and flared slightly upward like a bull’s horns. His skin was muscled purple and black with threads of scarlet running through it. He carried a massive war hammer over one shoulder. Several Darkspawn trailed at his heels.

  Warren’s immediate impulse was to turn and run. He didn’t stand a chance against a group like that. He felt for Naomi and found her there. She called his name but he quieted her. But he readied himself to spring back across the distance that separated them.

  If you run, I’ll strike you down, Merihim warned.

  Regretfully, Warren stood his ground. You can back out of this anytime you get ready to, he told himself. He held on to that thought.

  You won’t live to regret it, Merihim warned.

  Plaintive cries sounded from one of the cells near the demon. Two of the Darkspawn lashed out with truncheons and battered pale faces that stood just behind the iron bars.

  “Please,” the hoarse voices croaked. “Please. We need water.”

  “No water,” Hargastor replied in a thunderous voice. “You’re here to die at my leisure. I want your pain writ upon these walls.”

  Warren stared into the cells till he could penetrate the darkness. Human vision was blind in the darkness and he knew the people inside the cell couldn’t see anything.

  “Hargastor lives to torment,” the quiet voice said at the back of Warren’s mind. “He’s no different than his master. Fulaghar has allowed him his pets.”

  Judging from the clothing worn by the fourteen prisoners and the nine dead ones lying at their feet, they were all London survivors. Five of the fourteen sat at the back of the cave cell and conserved their strength. Warren “felt” that they were military. A few of Great Britain’s police and military yet remained in the city as well. They listened attentively to the demons out in the passageway.

  “You’re wasting your breath,” one of the soldiers stated quietly. “There’s no mercy in any of those devils.”

  Hargastor laughed, and the sound of it filled the passageway. “You have meat to eat and blood to drink,” he rumbled. “The weaker ones among you have died and left you their pitiful offerings.”

  “We’re not cannibals,” a woman cried out.