“I guess a phone number's definitely out of the question, then.”
“Step into this square, then you'll discover my name. In fact, you'll never forget it.”
“I'm good for now, thanks.”
Her lips peeled back, a tendril of bloody saliva threaded between them. “You wouldn't be here if you were good.”
“Since you brought it up, why am I here?”
She bent forward, leaning her upper body as much as the restraints would allow, and parted her lips. Her jaw opened and stayed that way, like she was about to speak. Her eyes hooded closed and her tongue weaved out, extending as far past her mouth as it would reach, curving down like she was trying to touch her chin with it.
Her teeth clamped shut. Her tongue squirmed and she shook her head once, twice. Then the tongue dropped onto her lap, twitching.
Hatcher tried to control his reaction. It wasn't easy. He swallowed hard and blinked his eyes wide several times.
She hummed a laugh, a syrup of red-black gel seeping from her clenched teeth and oozing over her lip. He was about to say something when he noticed the tongue on her lap was still moving. It wriggled back and forth, a worming motion, the tip twisting, causing it to rock. Then the tip curled down and pressed against the cloth of the hospital gown, the body of it contracting then stretching, and it began to inch toward her knee. Undulating movements, leaving a cherry black smear on the fabric.
It reached her knee and picked up speed as it rippled down her leg. It crawled over her foot and then crossed the dirt in Hatcher's direction. He was about to move back when he saw it stop at the wax line. It was filthy, its underside caked with dirt and a sludgy film. Its tip probed the air and gingerly touched the wax. It snapped back, twitching. After a moment, it went still.
“Cute. But if you don't clean the cage every day, the house starts to reek.”
More grunty laughs, each like a stifled retch. This was not starting off well. Hatcher stared at the girl – or whatever it was – then at the tongue on the ground. Okay, he thought, let's say this is really a demon stuck in a young girl's corpse. Why would it bite out its own tongue, making it impossible to speak? For shock value? He didn't think so. This seemed more designed to end the questioning before it even began, an evasion. But why? A possibility occurred to him, one he was inclined to dismiss.
But it wouldn't quite go away.
For five questions answers may be had, should the spirit respond to them.
“You're scared of me,” he said.
The girl's icy eyes widened, then she threw her head back, her body bouncing with laughter that gurgled through her mouth.
“You're scared of me,” he repeated. “Because you can't hurt me. You're not allowed to, are you? Something to do with the spell.”
More convulsive laughter, head tossed back. Quite a show, Hatcher told himself. A performance, trying to sell it.
“No, I'm right. You wanted to make sure I knew you wouldn't talk, couldn't answer my questions, prove it in a way that would be indisputable, irreversible. You would only do that if you were scared of being interrogated. Which makes me wonder... why would a demon be scared of a few questions? Especially ones from me, who you think of as falling somewhere between a speck of dog crap and a pimple on a gnat's ass?”
The girl's head bobbed back, still laughing, but he saw it. Just a hint of hesitation. A tell. If a demon could have one.
“Know what I think? I think there are ways of making you talk, that you're not capable of simply keeping your mouth shut. Something to do with being in that body, being on this plane. The effect of the enchantment holding you here. And you know it.”
She tilted her face forward, smiling that unnatural, filthy smile, and opened her mouth wide, leaning toward him. The wet, gristly stump of her tongue throbbed up and down.
“Yeah, I got that. But you know what else I think? I think the reason you're still scared is, you don't need that to talk.”
Her mouth closed and she pulled back. Another smile, but Hatcher sensed it was forced. Hatcher watched the demon stare at him. He was ready to accept it wasn't a child, not anymore.
Not with skin the color of meat left on a counter for days and eyes like two pieces of dry quartz. And definitely not when it can muster the will bite off its own tongue like it were clipping a fingernail.
That last part bugged him. Anything willing and capable of that was not a good candidate for pain compliance. Involuntary fear response, maybe. If his instincts were correct, this demon was certainly capable of some kind of fear. Fear was an emotion that gave off a scent, a vibe. Triggering it, however, could be tricky, with every subject being different.
And then there were The Rules. Micah had been open in admitting he didn't know much, little more than the steps the spell involved. But those steps had to have meaning, and Hatcher could see now that one of them was to adorn the restraints with symbols inked in blood. He scrutinized them. Some looked like primitive swastikas, others like hieroglyphs. One seemed to be the moon.
He dropped his eyes to the wax perimeter, the candles burning at each corner. The tongue on the ground, inches away, unwilling to cross.
The demon was still staring at him, fake smile worn like a mask. Hatcher stood and stared back. Then he stepped over the wax line.
The moment his foot touched down, he knew he'd traveled a lot farther than a step.
Hatcher hung there in mid-stride, hesitant to pull over his other foot. The girl was still there, only a couple of feet or so in front of him, her mouth still spread in the same rictus, seated in a large wooden chair. Only it wasn't the same chair, and she didn't seem to be strapped to it. This one was more traditional. Handcrafted. Antique.
He was in a room, spacious, like a theater, with an upper level gallery overlooking it behind a semi-circle half wall. Directly in front of him there were rows upon rows of seating, a throng of spectators beyond a waist-high rail of paneled wood with a swinging gate at the center. All the aisles and rows he could see – upper and lower – were occupied. Jeers and taunts howled from every direction. He scanned the unruly crowd. They looked like people, only not quite. Everything about them seemed exaggerated. The eyes were all too wide, the brows too sharply curved, the scowls too severe. They were screaming and shouting at him, gestures hammering the air, hands forming megaphones. Some were standing with a lean like they were trying to launch themselves over the ones in front of them and attack.
The sharp crack of hardened wood on hardened wood, a steady triplet banged out once, twice, three times, quieted things down.
Hatcher twisted to look. Seated high behind a bench, sat the girl. She was dressed in a black robe, a white powdered wig flopped on her head, holding a gavel. Same graying skin, same black-cherry blood on her lips and chin. Same iced quartz glaze to her eyes.
He spun back to the chair he'd first seen. She was still there, too, sitting and grinning.
“I've heard of people acting as judge and jury,” Hatcher said, turning back to the bench. “But judge and plaintiff?”
More cries and shouts from the gallery. The girl sitting as judge hammered the gavel three more times.
“Jacob Nathaniel Hatcher,” she said. Her voice hissed and rattled, a booming gargle. “This court has heard testimony and has determined there is ample evidence to find you worthy of damnation, with punishments ranging from the outer to the innermost circles of Hell, to be applied in perpetuity and in graduating order. Do you wish to present a defense?”
Hatcher stared at the snarling grin of the girl in the wig and robe, then took in his surroundings in a sweep of glances. It was modeled after a courtroom, no doubt, but not a modern one. For one, it was relatively vast, a design from times when trials were a combination of public entertainment and civic participation. Balcony viewing for spectators, witness stands that took the term literally, with no chair or even room for one.
A place for public inquisitions.
Someone shouted for the judge to pronounce sentence, and the gavel cracked again. Hatcher looked over to the jury box. It was filled with skeletons dressed in old-fashioned frocks and cravats. Some had powdered wigs like the judge's. Others had hair and mustaches colored onto the skulls in black magic marker. Lifeless, all. Beyond them a large pair of windows presented a drive-in screen view of a devastated landscape under a lugubrious red sky. It smacked of annihilation, an urban area after a nuclear strike. Shells of structures large and small amidst mounds of rubble and the twisted, charred remains of things now unrecognizable. Winged creatures with tentacled limbs soared above, swooping into view then out again as the crimson sky flashed in cascades of distant lightning. Fires burned like beacons, visible at various points through empty windows in the scattered buildings. Shadows danced, silhouettes of figures doing unspeakable things, or having unspeakable things done to them.
Another smash of the gavel. “The record shall reflect the Defendant did not present a defense. This Court is now ready to pronounce judgment.”
“And what if I refuse to recognize your authority?”
A brief moment of silence, the crowd sputtering to a hush, then the entire courtroom broke out in roars of laughter, punctuated by chortles of profanity.
“You will find out soon enough when you see the proof. Proof of the authority we have over you, and will continue to have for all eternity.”
“Okay,” he said, thinking aloud, stalling until he could figure out what the real game here was. “Speaking of proof, you said you heard testimony. What testimony? Who testified?”
The little girl in the judge's robe templed her fingertips and settled down into her chair, the back of it twice as big as she was.
“Who testified?”
She swept a hand from one side to the other. “Who didn't?”
Hatcher looked back to the gallery. The faces, caricatures of scorn and rage, now seemed to take on more meaning, identities slipping in and out of focus. Men he had left groveling on blood-soaked floors, widows he had left moaning in sorrow after raiding their dwellings and snatching their terrorist sons. Some were men he'd killed in battle. Others were people taken by the war, but broken first by him.
Something caught his eye and he snapped his gaze up to the balcony. He saw a man leaning on the rail, peering down. Brahmin nose under smoky hair, impeccably arrayed. Demetrius Valentine, his purported half-brother. The man turned his palms up and gave half a shrug. What's a fella in Hell to do?
There were more he recognized, all of the crowd taking on visages he recalled, one by one, until he finally stopped looking. His step-father, his face twisted into a weapon of hate. Davis, the guy who'd killed himself after Hatcher's after-action report pointed to his fuck-up as the cause of a massacre. Edgar, the one who'd come after Hatcher in California to avenge his lover's death.
One large man was holding his head between his hands and separated it from his shoulders as he made eye contact. Hatcher recognized him. Valentine's henchman, Lucas Sherman.
“Do I have a right to counsel?” Hatcher said, thinking, maybe Raum could put a stop to this bullshit.
“Absolutely.” Another sweep of her hand. “Anyone in this room.”
Hatcher nodded. “I think I'll waive my right, in that case.”
The judge raised her gavel once more. “Splendid! I'm ready to hand down your sentence. You, Jacob Hatcher—”
“Wait. You asked if I wanted to put on a defense.”
The girl drummed her fingertips. “Yes, yes. Bore us all, if you must. As you can see, there are plenty here to testify. I'm sure they won't mind going again, considering they have nowhere else to be and all the time of the damned to get there.” She spread her lips into another deathly grimace. “Just like you.”
Hatcher turned to look at the gallery. Generic faces of rage, shifting in and out of recognition. The little dead girl doing double-duty sat in her chair almost close enough to touch and beamed her Cheshire cat grin up at him, displaying teeth caked in blood.
He tried to remember something Raum had said. When Hatcher had asked him if what he was seeing was real, or just in his head.
Does the Internet take place on your computer? Does it make the page you visit any less real because you're not transported somewhere else?
The mob began to grow loud again, shouting at him and pounding fists. Spit and gobs of slime rained down from the upper deck. He waited for the room to quiet down.
Over his shoulder, he said. “If I put on a defense, I can call anyone in this room as a witness? Ask questions?”
The little judge girl sighed. “If you wish to prolong the inevitable, yes. Then again, I suppose we do have forever, and that's why we're here, isn't it?”
“Okay,” he said. He lowered his gaze to the little girl in the chair in front of him with the bright dead eyes and rotting skin. He pointed his finger. “I call you.”
There was a grunt from the crowd, a collective hiss. Yelling and screeching. Hatcher barely heard it. He stared into the girl's icy gem eyes, past that death mask smile.
“What is your name?”
She lunged forward in the chair, teeth bared, biting the air between them. The room exploded in hues and cries, but they were more distant, muted. Loud, but in the background. Fading.
“What is your name, damn you? Answer me. That's what all this theater is about, isn't it? A distraction. You have to answer me because of the spell, so you tried to avoid the question, the prime question, the one that makes you incapable of lying for five more after that. You tried first by biting off your tongue, then by staging this show trial. But you can speak here, can't you? That's why you acted like you wanted me to cross into the square, because you were hoping that I wouldn't. Briar-patching me.”
She hissed at him again, another lunge. But she didn't leave the chair. She couldn't, he realized. Still restrained, even if she pretended otherwise.
“Now, tell me, damn it. What the hell is your name?”
“Valaal!”
The word came out like a shriek. Hatcher winced at the sound of it. The windows bulged outward then imploded, a barrage of glass peppering him. He covered his face with his arm, crouching until it stopped.
When he pulled his arm down, she was still there, in the chair, glaring at him with those crystalline eyes but no longer smiling. She was panting, a growl escaping with each breath. The fossil remains of the courtroom surrounded them, ancient ruins, strewn with rubble. The roof and most of the walls were gone. No balcony, no spectators. No judge. A bombed-out husk, in tune with the rest of the wrecked urban landscape surrounding them, open to a blood red sky. The tentacled creatures with wings still glided overhead, circling. Demonic vultures.
“Okay, Valaal. Now that we've gotten past the formalities, how about you answer some real questions. For instance, Micah... what the hell is he really up to?”
Chapter 23
Hatcher sat back on his haunches, uncertain how much of what this demon said could be believed. “So, you know nothing about Micah's plans. And let's be clear here – that's not a question, it's a clarification.”
The side of the girl's upper lip twitched. “No. His plans are irrelevant. As are yours. You are both consigned to the flaming pits of hopelessness and despair, forever.”
“Tell me about his demon. The one bound to him somehow.”
Those icy eyes ratcheted up and down, like she was thinking about how large a bite to take.
“Does she know?” The girl's voice slithered out of her mouth in a serpentine scrape of sound.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
“And I'm only repeating another of your questions, one you've asked yourself so many times. Does? She? Know?”
Hatcher stared impassively. A fundamental requirement in any interrogation was to remain detached, i
n control. You couldn't afford to let yourself get mad, couldn't allow yourself to be baited. Anger not only clouded judgment, it blurred lines. Lines that sometimes couldn't be uncrossed.
“The demon. The one with a connection to him. What does it want?”
She pressed her lips shut.
“That spell requires you to answer five questions. Otherwise you wouldn't be talking to me.”
“Here's the answer to your question,” she said. “Yes. She knows.”
Avoidance. Hatcher scratched his chin, thinking. When subjects avoided, it usually meant they were afraid of lying, of getting caught in one. Most people, the vast majority, dodged outright lies as much as possible. They instead picked their words carefully, if they couldn't evade answering completely. They wanted to mislead, without actually lying. A guy guilty of stealing cash from his employer might vehemently assert how he's never taken anything that didn't rightly belong to him, failing to mention he'd decided the company owed him for not having approved his overtime.
Hatcher knew he lacked much of an understanding of demon psychology, but his best guess was, her focus on made-up questions was the same kind of evasion. That meant she didn't want to answer the ones he was asking. And since he doubted a demon had any compunction about dishonesty, that meant she, or it, likely couldn't lie, due to the spell. For five questions.
But that didn't mean it wanted to answer them.
“I'm going to ask you one more time. Who is the demon connected to the man I know as Micah, the one who summoned you, and what does that demon want?”
“I'll answer your other question again. She knows.”
Hatcher took in a breath, stood. He looked around the area, weighing his options. He was going to have to force her to answer the question posed, but how do you coerce something willing to bite off its own tongue?
On the other hand, he had to try something, and anything involving pain would require an implement. There was scattered debris, slivers of petrified wood and glass, various chunks of stone. How far could he move? Was the entire room – or what was left of it – within the wax perimeter, some trick of scale, or illusion?
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