Thirteen Specimens

by Thomas, Jeffrey

  One Kilcrop dashed to the far end of the row, the other to the nearer. They reached to a clasp system on each, and the lids of the sarcophagi began to swing open. An adolescent black girl crawled out of one like a spider, fell to the floor. Roger managed to help her up while still pressing his chest. She started to flee from the room in a panic, her eyes crazed, but Roger held her at the elbow and croaked, “Stay with us, dear...we’ll all go out together.”

  Michael almost wanted to push past the emerging children to get a better look as the pair of Kilcrops converged at the center to unlock the last two chrysalises.

  From one of these, Mark rose into view. His eyes flicked from the robed Angel quickly to Roger. Michael saw recognition dawn on Mark’s face then, and it was a piercing realization – that his son had recognized his surrogate parent, but not him. The boy hadn’t expected to see his father come to this place to rescue him. When Mark spotted Roger, a grin opened in his tear-crusted face. “Dad!” he cried, clambering down from his cocoon. He darted to the man but came short of hugging him, seeing how badly he was injured. Roger smiled, and released the traumatized girl to slip one arm around Mark’s shoulders.

  Tears flooded Roger’s eyes. Tears of love, and relief...and pain. Twice now, the boy had called him “Dad”. But he felt that when Mark finally turned around and saw who it was that had accompanied him here, the child he thought of as his son would never call him by that name again.

  Only when his arms were slipped around Roger did Mark glance at Michael a second time – Michael, who stood momentarily wordless, helpless as if paralyzed. At last, the boy understood who he was seeing. “Dad?” he said. There was a leeriness in his tone, mixed with disbelief and delight. This obvious confusion of feeling pierced Michael again. He could tell the boy was a little frightened of him. The gun in his hands, the blood splashed across his robes. He was still afraid his father was angry at him for causing his and Dawn’s deaths.

  “Mark,” Michael said, his own eyes wet and agleam. “I came for you.”

  “Daddy,” his son whimpered, face crumpling, regressing into an even younger child.

  “Go to him,” Roger whispered, and kissed the top of the boy’s head before releasing him.

  Mark took a timid step forward, and Michael closed the distance – swept him into the curve of his free arm, clenched him against his body.

  “I thought you hated me,” Mark sobbed.

  “I love you,” Michael told his son. “I love you, forever...”

  Blinking at his tears, Roger glanced around at the faces of the eleven other children, ranging in age and race but all of them ragged, all of them waiting for the adults to give them some sort of guidance. “Children,” he told them, “you stay with us.”

  “Come on – we’re out of here,” Michael said, moving back toward the doorway, his arm still around his son’s shoulders. “Roger...can you walk?”

  “We’ll help him,” said another boy, and he and the shivering black girl took Roger under both his arms.

  Out through the bone wall, across the catwalk littered with cracked and draining tick bodies, one or two with a limb still twitching. Down the spiral staircase. Michael had the shotgun in his hand, at the ready should one of the bodies spring up alive, but none did. He had passed his Beretta to Roger, easier to manage in his condition. Through the steam-filled corridor into which the three flayed faces stared, the children held hands in a chain. Michael saw a Kilcrops dart across the end of the corridor, but didn’t fire at it.

  Under the dozen hanging cocoons. “Is that you?” the familiar voice called down. “Did you find him? Hello? How about us, huh? Please? Hello? Hey!”

  “Can’t save them all. Not every soul in Hell,” Roger whispered into the ear of the tall black girl, “can we, my love?”

  Down the bone corridor. Suddenly, candles and burning incense sticks spilled out of several of the organic-looking sockets in the walls and two ticks emerged, dropped into the hallway, charged with flailing jagged limbs...but before they could pick up speed Michael had let go of Mark and leveled the shotgun, and Roger had pushed the black girl behind him and pointed the Beretta. The children flinched and covered their ears, but it only took a few short bursts from both men to bring the ticks down, and a few moments later the party was advancing again.

  The entrance to the Skull was near. Here was where corridors, ramps, doorways branched into numerous directions. And as the party moved toward the main entrance, scores of ticks flowed out of these hallways and thresholds as if coordinated by a silent command, scampered down the clanging metal ramp, descended a ladder fixed to the wall. In just seconds, the humans’ path was blocked by what looked like a hundred of the greenish creatures. They gave off an insidiously low chittering, but it quickly rose into a metallic buzz-saw sound. Again, the children clamped their hands over their ears. “Dad!” Mark cried.

  Michael looked back the way they had come. He saw the light going out in the bone corridor as more and more candles were knocked out of their hollows by ticks emerging through the walls. Soon, the corridor would go completely black, masking the advancing rear army.

  “Here,” Michael said, passing Roger the shotgun. He saw Roger stand as straight and steady as he could so as to accept the weapon. In turn, Roger handed the Beretta to the black girl, the oldest child. Her eyes were still wide and half-frenzied, but she accepted the pistol. Michael took his M16 off his shoulder and leveled it grimly. “Roger...will they dare to stop me?”

  “These things? I think they will. They may not hurt you, but they’ll disarm you. Incapacitate you, until they recapture the rest of us. Until they can repair this machine. Then they’ll let you go...and they’ll fly this thing so far away you might never find it again.”

  “I’m not going to let that happen. They’ll have to hurt me.” Michael took a step forward. He saw the ticks at the fore of the group shift back ever-so-slightly, either the gun in his hands or the look in his eyes filling even their robotic minds with fear. He took a second step.

  From the left, then the right, two Apsaras appeared. A third, and a fourth. One held a curved sword, and the others carried metal spears. Their movements as eerily graceful as stylized dance steps, their forms beautiful in a nightmarish way, they positioned themselves at the front of the mass of ticks. At first Michael expected them to lead the battalion forward...but they extended their spears at waist-level and turned their nearly nude bodies slowly, using the weapons to urge back the teeming arachnid warriors. The creatures seemed reluctant, but complied. Michael realized what the human-like Apsaras were doing: parting the ticks, opening a path for him – the Angel.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. There was just enough guttering candle glow left in the bone corridor for him to see another of the blue-fleshed succubi standing with her arms spread, a sword in each fist, her hair lapping the air. Ticks fidgeted restlessly behind her, but none tried to push around the fearsome Demon.

  Facing forwards again, Michael slowly advanced. The children followed meekly, Mark holding onto his father’s robe. His chest wound healing even as he staggered along, Roger kept the shotgun ready...but none of the divided assembly of ticks surged around the Apsaras and the weapons they had used as if to create invisible barriers. Michael entered this living corridor first, expecting it to close around him at any second. It didn’t. He glared defiantly into the ranked, expressionless faces as he passed them.

  He turned and guarded the entrance to the Skull as the children cleared the gauntlet, ducked out the doorway and sprinted down the ramp into the city of Apollyon. Its burning blue air had never seemed inviting to them until this moment. He saw them scatter in all directions. The black girl had his Beretta still in her fist but he didn’t call her back. A rebel in the making, maybe. She could not grow up, but she could mature, harden...like a stone sharpened into a spear head.

  At last, only Michael, Roger and Mark stood in the doorway, looking back into the Skull – meeting the gaze of all those glitterin
g black eyes, and the more human eyes of the Apsaras.

  “I’m immortal,” Michael said to the Demons, like troops gathered for his inspection. “You’re not. If you ever touch my boy again...if you ever go near him, or try to take revenge on this man,” he nodded toward Roger, “I’ll spend eternity killing every last one of you motherfuckers.”

  And with that, the two bloody men and the boy between them stepped wearily out of the Skull.

  9: The Family

  The child slept on the little sofa they had purchased from a shop in the city, where the Damned manufactured crude furniture, and he was covered under a quilt Davina herself had sewn together from scraps of cloth she’d collected. She sat on the very edge of the sofa, lightly caressing his forehead, her brown fingers trailing over the raised U branded there...a wound his body hadn’t been allowed to regenerate. She had told him it stood for “Unbelievably Cute”.

  Roger sat in a chair opposite, shirtless. The groove in his chest was raw pink with puckered edges, but no longer an entrance to his interior. He watched his lover’s face, the way her uncanny huge eyes glistened. Still weak, he used the chair’s arms to push himself to his feet, crossed to her, took her head against his chest and stroked her thick hair. He heard her sniffle, felt her kiss his healing scar.

  “He won’t really stay, will he? He says that now...but don’t you think he’ll change his mind?”

  Roger knew the man better than she. “No, my love. I think he means it.”

  “But he won’t be allowed to, will he? Aren’t they told how much time they can spend here? Isn’t there a limit?”

  “I don’t believe there is. I think he can stay here as long as he wants. Forever, if he likes.”

  “But his wife won’t want to, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, that’s the only thing. She isn’t the boy’s natural mother.” He regretted the words the moment he said them. Davina’s head lifted, as he knew it would.

  “Neither am I, his natural mother. But she may love him enough to remain here, too...do you think?”

  “I don’t know her, my dear. We haven’t met her. We can’t say.”

  “I hope she doesn’t love him as I do.” Davina looked down at the boy again.

  “That isn’t a good thing to wish, Davina.”

  “But do you want to let him go? After all you went through to get him back?”

  “I went through that to take him from the hands of Demons, who meant to torture him. But these are the hands of his father...who loves him enough to leave behind the Paradise most of us down here will yearn for, forever.”

  “I don’t begrudge him,” Davina moaned. “How can I hate the man my son loves? And I thank him, for what he did. But I only wish...I only wish he would go home. Just come back to visit from time to time.”

  “I know, love.” His hand slid down and inside her veil of hair to stroke her wet cheek. “I feel the same way. We just have to wait, and see...”

  * * *

  After his experience inside the Skull, Michael and Dawn would not enter into the administrative building of the Demons, with its Art Deco winged baboons flanking the front steps, until a carriage arrived in Apollyon bearing an Angel accompanied by two Celestials – an androgynous heavenly race, almost ghost-like in their silence and with their empty stares, but wearing all-too-solid swords in scabbards.

  The Angel had been a priest in life, so in the afterlife had been given a position of some authority. When he and his guardians stepped down from the carriage and the couple moved forward to meet him, he pushed back the hood of his white robe and beamed a smile, extending his hand. Michael felt a kind of disgust for him already. Weren’t the Demons better, in a way? They didn’t hide their hatred for the Damned behind bright grins. Well, except for the Kilcrops...

  “So nice to meet you,” the man said, next pressing Dawn’s hand between his two. “I’m Reverend Worthy.” In life he had been called Father Worthy, but in Heaven there could only be the one great Father. “Shall we go inside to talk?”

  Finally, Michael consented to enter the building that he hadn’t been in since Iblis Al-Qadim had taken him here to consult the goat-headed Baphomet. He saw that entity watching them from across the foyer as Worthy led them to a doorway. A corridor beyond, but no Demons waiting to ambush him, no ticks springing from holes in the walls to slash at him. They entered a small office, where Worthy seated himself behind a black marble desk. The Palladinos sat in front of it.

  “So...” began Reverend Worthy.

  “So,” cut in Michael, “my son...Mark. I’d like to take him back to Heaven with me.”

  The former priest’s smile rippled at the corners. “Ohhh, Mr. Palladino...I’m so sorry, but that is utterly out of the question. It’s impossible – just not allowed.”

  “Maybe because no one has persisted before. Maybe the Creator could make an exception.”

  “You must know...many people have persisted before. But the Creator can make no exceptions; it would be against the very reason that Hades, and more importantly Heaven, exist. But I am truly so sorry.” He spread his hands, which Michael had found too soft and puffy.

  He saw Dawn look over at him, as he lowered his head and nodded. “I understand. I didn’t expect you to say yes...but I had to ask, anyway.” He didn’t add that he had promised his wife he would try. That it had been her idea to ask. But he was actually relieved, in a way, by the Angel’s words. How could he think to take his son into Paradise, away from the two people in Hades who adored him? Could all the replica Disney theme parks and replica McDonald’s burger stops and glittering shopping malls in Heaven replace those two Damned souls?

  “Well,” Reverend Worthy said, “I’m told you were considering remaining in Hades, then.”

  “Yes.” Michael raised his head, but was afraid to meet the eyes of the woman seated beside him. “It’s my choice to do so.”

  “It’s...something you are allowed to do. But do you know how very awful it is in this place?”

  “I believe that’s been well illustrated for me,” Michael said ominously.

  “Yes...of course. Well, as I say, it is permissible. An uncommon request, but not without precedent. And you...Mrs. Palladino?”

  At last, Michael summoned the strength to look over at her, but now it was she who lowered her head and murmured, “I won’t be staying.”

  The former priest nodded slowly, looking suitably pained by their dilemma. “I see. But you know you can visit your husband here any time you wish...and he can visit you, without his son, as often as he likes.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Will you be returning with me, then, to the palace?” It was the palace where the governor Iblis Al-Qadim had resided, also housing the portal through which these Angels had entered into Hades.

  “Yes, Reverend. I just...I just need to talk to my husband alone, first.”

  “Of course, of course.” Worthy floated to his feet, out from behind the desk. Michael hated the perfumed proximity of him. “I will leave you two alone to talk for as long as you wish. In the meantime I will be speaking with the Baphomet, Mr. Palladino...to instruct him that you are not to be interfered with.”

  “And my son. And those two Damned.”

  “I can not guarantee that any Damned soul will not be punished...all I can guarantee is that you will not be opposed, if you step in to protect them.”

  “However you want to phrase it,” Michael said darkly.

  “A devoted parent, to be sure. You are to be admired.”

  “If only the Father of all children were as devoted...eh, Reverend?”

  “Michael,” Dawn whispered.

  The former priest’s smile faltered more than before. “I know your pain makes you...unaware of what you say, Mr. Palladino.”

  “I am only too aware of what I say. And maybe now you think Hades is the place I should have been sent to all along.”

  “I would not think that. The Father, in His great love for you, judged that y
ou should be in Paradise.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint Him, in not wanting to be there any longer. Then again...He’s been a disappointment to me, too.”

  For several moments Reverend Worthy looked horrified, as if afraid to be consumed along with Michael should a lightning bolt crash through the ceiling just then. But there was no sign at all that the Creator was even in attendance, and now it was Michael who reached to shake hands, squeezing the other man’s filmy silk handkerchief of a hand in his own firm grip.

  “Goodbye, Reverend.”

  * * *

  There was a knock on their door, and Roger went to it with his shotgun ready. He let it droop when Michael crossed the threshold.

  “You won’t need that anymore,” he said, gesturing at the weapon.

  “I’ll still feel better to keep it.” Roger tilted his head toward the sofa behind him. “He’s sleeping.”

  Michael stepped close to the sofa to gaze down at Mark’s gentle profile, his mouth open against a pillow. The room’s stinging blue light made it appear as though the boy had fallen asleep in the glow from a TV, as when he had been alive. “Let him sleep,” he whispered, then he looked up at Davina – who had risen to her bare feet. “Thank you, for taking care of my boy.”

  She nodded, but crossed her arms tightly.

  “Back at the Demon outpost, there, I acquired a lot of the money you people use here, when I told them I’d be staying in Hades.”

  “I don’t want your money,” Davina told him.

  “I didn’t mean it the way you think, Davina. What I was going to say is, I paid your next door neighbors, over here, to move to another apartment...so I can have that one.” He turned to study one of the room’s walls, rubbing his goateed chin. “We could put a door right there, don’t you think? So Mark can go through it, any time he wants?” He shifted his eyes to meet Roger’s. “So that one house is no more his house than the other?”

  Roger’s eyes began to fill. “Thank you,” he managed.