It said, in tones quiet and soft—yet steady—that were neither male nor female, “We are Limbus. We stand on the edge. We stare into the abyss. We do not discriminate. We do not forget. We employ. The job is the seeker’s. The duty his, and his alone. To fail or to succeed, lies only on his shoulders. That is the contract. That is the promise. That is the bargain. There is only one.”
Ryan waited for the beep, but it did not come. Instead a soft click announced the line was dead. He cursed under his breath and dialed the number again, but this time, something even more unexpected met his ear—the recorded voice of an operator telling him that the number had been disconnected. Ryan sat there, on his bed, still naked, cradling the dead phone to his ear, wondering what had happened, how he had come to this, how he had found himself here.
The light still streamed through his window, a blue shade dimmer. And then he realized—it was not the rising sun that he looked upon, but one that was setting. It was this realization that sprung him to action.
Thirty minutes later, he was speeding up Route 1 in a rented car. The night had fallen quickly over the Massachusetts countryside, faster than he expected, faster than seemed possible even. He wondered at it, though not for long. His mind was filled with other thoughts.
The night was not so black after all. A gibbous moon had risen, holding sway over the sky and the earth in its fullness. Yet somehow it was not comforting. No, it was hate-filled, angry. And in its glow, Ryan saw nothing but death. It was as if that great orb cast down darkness over the land, not light.
He drove by feel. He had only barely noticed the path they had taken the night before, and by all rights, he should have been unable to retrace it. And yet, his hands knew the way, and the car seemed to drive itself to his destination. The terrain grew darker and wilder, the road more worn, the path less trod. He wasn’t surprised when he found himself on the narrow, winding gravel trail that led to the ancient church, though he marveled at how quickly he arrived. Nor was he surprised when he found no parked cars around it, as they had been the night before. But they were there, waiting for him. Of that, he had no doubt.
He left his car behind, but not before removing the 9 mm he had put in the glove compartment, his sidearm from what now seemed a lifetime ago. When he slammed the door behind him, the echo thundered across the hillside, rebounding through the cemetery and off into the forest. It was the only sound he heard. The normal life of the wilds was silent, and even the wind did not stir.
Ryan moved through the gravestones, training his gun on the rear entrance to the church. But there were no guards, and the door sat open, as if it had been locked in that position for all time. Ryan made his way inside, fishing the flashlight he’d bought at a Route 1 gas station out of his pocket. Somehow, the beam seemed even feebler than the last time he had come within this long dead house of worship, as if the air had grown thicker over the course of the day.
When he reached the false tomb, it was open, beckoning him, just as the door had been. He stopped for a moment and listened. And yet the silence held sway, though the eerie glow still floated up from below. Into that ethereal light he went, ducking low as he descended the spiral stair. When he reached the caverns, he paused. For the first time, from somewhere deep within the earth, Ryan heard something. It was a drumming, a throbbing, a pulsating beat, as if deep bass drums were pounding in regular rhythm. Somehow he knew it was nothing of the sort.
He stood before the entrance to the caverns, to the corridors that endlessly intertwined, that ran, as far as he knew, until the ends of the world. He could be lost forever in their depths, were it not for the preternatural sense that he knew precisely how he should proceed. For only a moment, he paused to consider what he was doing. Where this was leading him. Something was horribly wrong, something even worse than the young girl that had gone missing. She was only the beginning. But he couldn’t stop now. He held the dimming beam of the flashlight before him and raised his gun. Then he ran.
He plunged forward, running hard through corridor after corridor. Turning here, going straight there, passing from one low hanging stone archway to another. He ran as hard as he could, letting his legs carry him wherever they might. To anyone watching, he would have seemed as a man mad, rushing mindlessly to an untimely end. But Ryan knew the way. And still, he was shocked when he turned a corner and stumbled headlong into a scene out of a nightmare.
The room was lit by great torches, smoke billowing up into the seemingly endless vaulted ceiling above. The room was filled with people, though because of their hooded cloaks Ryan could not say if they were male or female. But it wasn’t to them that his eyes were drawn; it was to the naked girl tied to the ancient stone altar and the man who stood at her head, curved blade raised above her heart.
The assembled masses chanted and swayed to the thunderous beating drum that Ryan could not see but felt deep in his bones. So in thrall were they to whatever dark god they served that no one even saw Ryan. Not until he raised his gun above his head and fired a shot.
The booming roar died away much quicker than Ryan would have expected, swallowed up in the vast nothingness above. But it was more than enough to do the job. As the sound of the shot went silent, so too did the maniacal chanting. The congregation turned as one to face Ryan, and as the robed leader lowered his knife and looked up at him, Ryan recognized the face of Samuelson.
“Ah,” he said, “we were expecting you.”
“I can’t say I’m all that surprised to see you either,” Ryan answered as he pulled off his jacket, careful never to take his gun off the grinning madman. He stepped forward gingerly, making a mental note that no one tried to stop him. Even Samuelson stood quietly as he approached the quivering girl on the altar. He gestured to the old man with his open hand. “The knife,” he said. “Come on.” Samuelson flipped the knife around, holding it blade to hilt in both hands. He bowed as he offered it to Ryan.
“And so it begins,” he said. Ryan ignored him. He was far more interested in freeing the girl. The blade sliced through her bonds without any significant resistance; it was sharp, and would have cut deep into her heart with ease. As the last rope fell away, the teenager jumped up, wrapping her arms around Ryan.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” he repeated, though he wondered if it would ever be OK for her again. His hand tightened around the pistol, and for a good five second he considered ending Samuelson then and there. But he was no killer. Not up close, at least. He wrapped Angela up in his coat and slid the knife into his belt.
As he took her hand and backed towards the exit, Samuelson laughed.
“You can’t escape, Mr. Dixson. Of that, there can be no doubt. We will find you. You have chosen your fate, and now it is sealed.”
With that, Ryan and Angela started to run.
He heard the roar from behind him as the assembled mass followed, hot on their heels. But that was only part of his worry. His sixth sense, the one that had guided him so unfailingly through these caverns before, now failed him. He and Angela stumbled through the twisting corridors with nothing to guide them, lost and hunted.
As they spun into one of those endless hallways, Angela tripped and fell. Ryan stopped to help her, but the girl had already dissolved into tears. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, kneeling down. Even as he spoke, the sounds of their pursuers seemed to close in on them, though Ryan could not say from what direction they came.
“I don’t want to,” Angela sputtered. “I don’t want to do it. I want it to stop.”
“You have to, darling. You have to. It’s the only way.”
At that, the girl’s sobs suddenly halted. She looked up into Ryan’s eyes, and in that instant, he saw something click. Then there was a steely resolve that had been absent until that point. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Of course. You’re right.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Now come on.” He lifted her to her feet, but he also hesitated. He knew he should find some comfort in what he heard from her, that he shoul
d be pleased that she had seemed to regain her footing. But something was off. Something was wrong. He worried that if he couldn’t put his finger on it, that something could be fatal. But the booming sounds of chase were too close, and there was no time to consider alternatives.
In another instant, they were running again, dashing down corridor after corridor, and Ryan took comfort in the thought that the sounds of pursuit seemed to be dying away. But that comfort only lasted for a moment. As he and Angela rounded another corner, Ryan felt his heart sink—they had come full circle, returning to the vaulted chamber with its altar and its endless darkness.
“It’s OK,” Ryan said, but the words had barely left his lips when he knew that was wrong. From every entrance, robed figures appeared. Ryan spun on his heel, only to find Samuelson standing behind him. Ryan pushed Angela back towards the raised, stone slab, leveling his gun at Samuelson as he did.
“You cannot escape, Mr. Dixson. It’s time you accepted that.”
Ryan looked down at the girl beside him, and then back to Samuelson. He knelt low next to her, keeping his gun pointed at the deranged man’s heart. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, OK? Whatever happens, trust that. If they get to me, you run as fast as you can and don’t stop running till you find the staircase out of here. You got that?”
She nodded, and Ryan saw the same resolve as before. If she was scared, she wasn’t showing it.
From all sides, the robed figures started closing in.
“Climb up there,” Ryan said to the girl, gesturing to the altar. “We need to get to high ground.” He pulled the curved blade from his belt, handing it to her. She took it, and he didn’t need to tell her what to do with it. As the others surrounded them, they climbed onto the stone slab, and Ryan once again pointed his pistol at Samuelson.
“What are you going to do, Mr. Dixson? Shoot me? Do you think that will work? Do you think you can kill us all? Are you so delusional to believe you can play the hero?”
“I don’t have to kill you all,” Ryan roared. “But by God, I’ll kill you. I may not make it out of here tonight, but you damn sure won’t either.”
Samuelson paused, as if thinking on Ryan’s words.
“So you would die for the girl, then? You would lay down your life to save hers?”
Ryan didn’t answer, not with words, but the truth was written in his eyes. Samuelson nodded.
“I knew it was so. I knew it from the moment I met you.”
If what followed had not come to pass, Ryan might have pondered those words. He might have wondered what exactly Samuelson meant. But then he felt the fire, the explosion of pain in his back, starting between his shoulder blades, and then streaking like lightening down his spine. As the hot blood splattered on the altar, Ryan’s legs gave way and he collapsed to the stone slab below. His head hit hard on solid rock, but not so hard that he couldn’t see the girl standing above him, her hands covered in his blood, the knife slipping from them and clattering on the ground. In her eyes, there was inestimable pity, and Ryan, even through the pain, felt confusion.
There was a rush and rustling of cloth, and two figures came up to the girl and grabbed her shoulders. As they did, one of their hoods fell away, and in that moment, even though he had never seen her, Ryan knew that he was looking at Angela’s mother. And as they pulled her back, something else dawned upon him.
It was never Angela that was the sacrifice.
A terrible thought occurred to him then, as his life left him, that he had done more than fail himself this night. His death was meant to bring about something horrible, and even now, the world might be ending, and all of it would be his fault.
“No, Mr. Dixson,” Samuelson said as if reading his mind, all the malice and hate having melted away, replaced with what could only be called sadness, “it’s not that at all. Not at all.”
There was more movement, and then another face appeared above him, one he had never thought he would see again. But this time, the pale green eyes lacked their stormy fury. Tears had dimmed them.
“Oh Ryan,” Katya said, taking his hand, “you wonderful, beautiful man. I’m so sorry.”
As she spoke, the robed figures began to pull down their hoods, and in all their faces, Ryan saw the deepest sorrow. But as they closed in around him, none seemed more saddened than Samuelson.
“We live in a hard world, my friend,” Samuelson said as he knelt low so that he could look into Ryan’s eyes. Katya sobbed beside him, holding Ryan’s hand and stroking his forehead. “A world that calls for the worst kinds of sacrifice. Even now, in places far darker than this, evil men are gathered. They call to worlds unknown and unseen, and through endless darkness float their words. They gibber the names of black gods, and they sacrifice the innocent in an effort to bring them back to rule over all. The stars are right tonight, as they are only once in a century, if that. And if we were to stop them, we knew it would take the most powerful magic, the kind only blood can call forward. The blood not of innocents,” he said, looking up at Angela as she hugged her mother tight, soaking her robe with tears, “but blood shed by innocents instead. The blood of a hero. Only that can hold back the darkness. Many will never know your name, Ryan Dixson, but we shall never forget it. And the world will sleep safe tonight because of your sacrifice.”
Ryan couldn’t speak, but tears now flowed down his cheeks. He felt at peace, somehow. He looked up and into Katya’s eyes, and he even managed to smile. But he also knew that there was no coming back from this. Even if it wasn’t his place to die, he’d lost too much blood, and he felt himself slipping away.
Samuelson put his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and stood. He called out in a tongue that Ryan did not know, and yet understood. The congregation answered in one voice. Ryan stared up into the swirling blackness above, and as his life left him, suddenly, it was not so dark.
Matthew
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon when Matthew closed the book, and the thin fingers of light that had flooded through his windows had receded into shadow. He’d meant only to browse its pages, but he’d found himself consumed by the words, compelled to continue. He’d read two of the bizarre stories, and he’d found himself transported to a world of shadowy organizations with power and scope beyond his imagination.
He considered reading more, but the hour was late, and he’d promised to meet a friend at a bar on Hanover. At the entrance to his shop, he stopped to pull on a coat, casting one last glance back at the leather-bound tome that seemed to glow softly in the evening moonlight.
The door closed behind him, the jingle from the bell he’d placed above it tinkling into the darkness. He stepped out into a mist-filled night. The rain did not so much fall as it swirled about, dancing like snowflakes in the street light. But whereas snow might be comforting or romantic even, the tiny pinpricks of water in his face were only annoying. He pulled the jacket tight, zipping it to his throat.
Benefit Street was abandoned, and his footfalls seemed to echo like thunder down the slopping pavement. But with Hanover the silence was broken by evening revelers who made their way up and down the streets.
He met Jacob at a bar, the Florentine. It was a restaurant by day, but at night when the lights turned down and the music turned up, it was the kind of place the young Brahmins of Boston might be found, even if the bar had seen better days.
Jacob ordered two beers and paid the waitress before Matthew could even reach for his wallet. “I’ve been to the bookstore, Matt. I know things aren’t going great. This one’s on me.” It was true, even if it made Matthew feel like he should have just stayed at work. The two men sat in silence, both contemplating the bottom of their glasses, before Jacob finally spoke again.
“So what are you going to do about it? The store?”
Matthew didn’t have any siblings, and so Jacob had served as a sort of fill-in—the best friend who became more like an older brother.
“No idea.”
“Fucking internet.”
“Cheers to that.”
The two men laughed, and for a moment Matthew forgot about the store, and he even forgot about the book. But then something happened that made everything much, much worse.
“It’s funny, I was thinking about you yesterday and how you needed some extra cash. And I came upon this business card for an employment agency. Let me see if I can find it.”
Matthew felt the blood rush from his face. The world started to spin, and Jacob, who was now cursing and fumbling with his wallet seemed to fade into the background.
“I can’t remember what it’s called. Had a funny name,” he said, finally giving up the search with a “well shit.” Matthew wanted to just run away. “Nimble, Nimbus, something like that. I’ll let you know if I find it. Oh, and by the way. I saw the strangest thing today. I was walking through the park and I saw this little black girl, maybe ten or eleven, dressed in a business pantsuit, and she stared at me with eyes that were so bright green they could have been emeralds … hey, hey where are you going?”
Matthew stumbled out of the bar and into the street, nearly colliding with a man in what looked like a white butcher’s apron. Or it had been white, before red stains covered it. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” the butcher yelled, pushing him away.
Matthew couldn’t think. All he could do was get back to the store. He had to read. He had to read more.
When he reached his door, he had the sudden sinking feeling that the book would be gone, spirited away or simply vanished into thin air. But there it sat on his desk, a mangled mess of arcane writings. He pulled out his chair and sat down. Then he opened the book, and once again began to read.
One Job Too Many
By
Joseph Nassise
Recruiter 46795 stood in front of the window of his plush corner office on the seventy-eighth floor of the Hamilton Building, staring out at the rain that was trying to pound the city into submission. Where others might have seen it as a wet, dismal day, the kind of day where you stayed indoors with a blanket wrapped comfortably around your shoulders and a cup of something hot to drink in your hands doing your best to ignore the world outside your window, he saw it as a day full of opportunity, a day where just the slightest nudge might be enough to set the course of reality spinning off in a different direction. The right direction.
Limbus, Inc. Page 12