Immortal From Hell

by Gene Doucette

  “I take your point to be that sometimes the ordinary has to be dressed up into something extraordinary, or we all go to war.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I appreciate you giving me the short version of that story. I have a feeling the longer one would have taken us to mid-afternoon.”

  We finished docking a few minutes later. Getting off the boat was a modest challenge because we weren’t supposed to be on the boat at all, and smuggling passengers into any sovereign nation comes with complications, even when we’re talking about two European countries during peacetime. We disembarked while inside a box, basically, and didn’t get released from that box until we were on the other side of customs.

  From there we met a driver in Jacques’ employ, who had a large SUV, and who could take us to Exeter, which worked fine, because that was the part of Devonshire I was interested in.

  I would describe the drive down, but I slept through most of it.

  “Adam,” Mirella said, sometime later. “Wake up; we’re here. Did you have anywhere in particular you wanted to maroon us?”

  “Here?”

  “We’ve just entered the town limits.”

  “Right. Right.”

  I sat up, and spent several seconds trying to remember why I wanted to go to Exeter in the first place.

  “A church,” I said. “Have him drop us off at a church.”

  “Any particular one?”

  “One in the middle somewhere.”

  “In the middle. Right.”

  She shook her head, then relayed the information to the driver, after interrupting the imp in the passenger seat who was either talking to keep the driver awake or to keep himself awake, or some combination of both.

  The driver was one of those people whose nationality remained entirely ambiguous until he spoke. I hadn’t heard him speak yet, but for all I knew, he didn’t understand a word Thelonius was saying.

  Mirella leaned back again.

  “All right,” she said. “Is that all? A church.”

  “Yeah, any one will do. Oh, and I need something to write on.”

  Fifteen minutes later, and I was ready for some food and a cup of coffee, and a bathroom, so I sort of wished I’d asked for a church that was near a café, assuming they had street cafés in Exeter. It was my first time there, so I couldn’t be sure.

  “Here you go,” the driver said. Caribbean island accent. I wasn’t good enough at those to pin down which island.

  He pulled over in front of a church. We got out, stretched for several days, and then I took the pad of paper and pen the driver handed over.

  “I just need one page and then you can have it back. Hang on.”

  Using the hood, I drew a quick design that could best be described as a triskelion, if drawn by a child. Art was never one of my skills.

  I handed back the pad and the pen, keeping the drawing, and sent the driver on his way.

  Mirella stood at the curb as the SUV drove off, our bags at her feet.

  “So,” she said. “You appreciate we have only the cash in your suitcase, and the only parties offering us assistance to America have taken us as far as Southern England.”

  “I know.”

  “Which is not a part of America.”

  “I know this too.”

  “You also know that walking to Chicago from here is neither timely nor feasible?”

  “I do. But I have this!”

  I held up the drawing.

  “Yes, it’s a lovely doodle, Adam. What are we doing here?”

  I looked up.

  “Going to church. Except not this one. Wrong kind.”

  “Is there a particular denomination you’re looking for?” Thelonius asked.

  “Not really. I’ll know it when I see it. See any steeples?”

  “There’s one over there,” Mirella said.

  “Great, let’s go.”

  There was a diner halfway between the first church and the second, so I got my food and coffee and bathroom, and Mirella got to be loudly grouchy for a while, which was what she wanted.

  “I would just like it if you told me what we’re doing here, rather than waiting for me to guess,” she said, over a plate of eggs.

  “I don’t expect you to guess,” I said. “I just…okay, I’m not supposed to tell you. It’s a secret.”

  “You are as annoying as he is,” she said, pointing to Thelonius. He was busily devouring a steak with his hands, for some reason.

  “I am perfectly willing to await the grand reveal, Adam,” he said, “in the event my input is of use here.”

  “I’m sure you are,” she said, before turning back to me. “The problem is that once you’ve committed to one of your plans, there’s no room for anyone else to say, hang on, that’s a stupid plan. It was all right back when I was your bodyguard and you were my client, because you were paying for everything and were welcome to do as you pleased. That’s no longer the case. Now, what kind of secret is it? Is there a single living person who would care if you told us what this secret was, or are you honoring yet another oath to dead people?”

  “It’s a little of both. Put it this way: if I’m only honoring an oath to dead people, we really are marooned here, so let’s hope I’m not.”

  “I see. And when we get to whichever church in this place meets your criteria, do you anticipate blindfolding us, or some other nonsense?”

  “You usually like blindfolds.”

  “I will kill you with the knife the imp isn’t using,” she said, although she was smiling. “What are we looking for? On these churches.”

  “A symbol. And there won’t be any blindfolds. You’ll both just have to swear the same oath of secrecy.”

  Then we were both staring at Thelonius,

  “I can keep a secret!” he said. “And if you must know, steak tastes better this way. Would you like to know why?”

  “Absolutely not,” Mirella said.

  We reached the church a few minutes later, and walked around until we came across a side entrance. Above the entrance was a window with a carved-wood circular design.

  “There it is,” I said.

  “The bunnies?” Mirella asked.

  “Hares. I don’t actually know the difference, but I’ve always seen them described as hares.”

  “I’m underwhelmed,” she said.

  “Why, I’ve seen this before!” Thelonius said. “This is splendid!”

  The image was of three hares running in a circle. It was perfectly normal in that regard, except that their ears didn’t make sense. Each appeared to have two ears, but there was a total of only three. The ears formed a triangle in the middle of the image.

  “Why is it splendid, imp?” Mirella asked.

  “Because I know of four different stories involving the hares. They are all completely different, largely contradict one another, and are each absolutely true. I would love to learn a fifth!”

  “As long as you keep it to yourself,” I said. “Come on.”

  We went inside. It was one of those great old wood churches, with dark browns everywhere offset by light through stained glass and pews too narrow for people on a modern diet. We entered through the side, meaning we came in on one of the cross arms, where the layout of the church approximated a cross from a bird’s eye perspective. It was modest compared to most, but that was fair given we were within walking distance of another five that probably looked just like it.

  I thought the place was empty, until a priest popped up from the room behind the altar.

  “Hello,” he said, in a weighty local accent. “Can I help? Confession times are afternoon.”

  “I hope you can,” I said. I held up the piece of paper with the spiral doodle. “Zurgaan gurvan ni neg yum.”

  There was a long pause, as the priest considered what I’d said.

  “I’m sorry, is that supposed to mean something?” he asked.

  “Evidently not. Is there a…more senior pastor on hand?”

&
nbsp; “Father Bates, you mean? I’m afraid he’s taken ill. It’s just me for the mo’. Can I…? Not sure what you’re asking of me.”

  “Never mind.”

  “That went well,” Mirella said. “I think you had him until you started talking in gibberish.”

  “It wasn’t gibberish. And we’ll just have to keep looking.”

  “What did it mean?” Thelonius asked.

  “It’s a saying. Come on, I thought I saw another steeple down the road.”

  The third church had the three-hares symbol, but its doors weren’t open. The fourth was both not open and had no symbol. By the time we reached the fifth—open, and appropriately adorned—it was late afternoon.

  I don’t actually know what priests do, and what churches are for, outside of holy days, because I’m not really a guy that goes to church as a matter of habit. This has a lot to do with being older than all the religions—and to be honest, each of them was a little silly and cultish at the start—but also, I find I’m less compelled to look to deities for things when I have no expectation of dying one day.

  My point is, walking into these churches, I didn’t know whether to expect to come across a lot of people, no people, or a small gathering. I also didn’t know when or if to anticipate a ceremony of some sort. Do they hold mass every night? Do weddings happen during the week? How about baptisms? Or exorcisms, if that’s still a thing?

  It was an instructive little mini quest, I’m saying. Or, I took it that way, even if Mirella didn’t.

  “Paris was prettier,” she said, under her breath, as we walked the aisle of the fifth church. It was the biggest one we’d been to yet, and it was the most architecturally impressive. It wasn’t the Hagia Sofia or anything, but it was okay.

  “People were trying to kill us in Paris, dear,” I said.

  “Yes, and wasn’t that fun?”

  “I think Thelonius has a parable about boredom to tell you.”

  I waved down a passing priest who looked as old as the church itself, which I thought was a good indication that I was talking to the right guy. But when I showed him the symbol and spoke the phrase, he looked as perplexed as the last one.

  “I’m sorry, are you selling something?” he asked. This was directed at Mirella, in case she could explain me.

  “No, it’s all right, thanks for your time,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.

  “Whatever this is,” Mirella whispered, “it isn’t working.”

  “We’ll find the right person.”

  “During my lifespan? Or yours?”

  Thelonius, meanwhile, was trying to get our attention from the back of the church. We headed over to him.

  “I would like you to meet Oscar,” he said, barely containing his excitement at having met Oscar. “Do you know, he’s eighty-two years old this week?”

  Oscar was a bent old man who was using a push-broom to keep himself aright.

  “Is that so?” I said. I couldn’t possibly match Thelonius’s enthusiasm, and didn’t try.

  “Yes sir, eighty-two this week,” Oscar said. “And I been cleaning this holy place sixty-eight of them years. Started when I was wee. Time off during the war, but mostly straight ahead. Oh, the things I could tell, yes sir.”

  “I told Oscar here that we’re looking for someone just like him, for a special project!”

  “Special…? Okay. Oscar, can you see this?”

  I held the doodle up under his nose.

  “Course I can. Eyesight’s always been perfect, they say. Why this is…hm.”

  He looked like he might actually recognize it, which was a reaction we hadn’t gotten from anyone else.

  “Zurgaan gurvan ni neg yum,” I said.

  He went very pale.

  “Zam neegdene,” he muttered, entirely on autopilot.

  It was the right response.

  “Can you help us?” I asked.

  Oscar looked ready to drop dead, which would be terrible; we’d have to go find another church and do this all over again.

  “I never… they taught me, but I never expected anybody to come. I mean, at first, it was made out to be a big… but nobody ever…”

  “Can you help us?” I repeated.

  “Yes.” He snapped out of whatever reverie he was caught in. “Yes, of course. Yes, follow me. I’ll bring you down.”

  He took us around the pews and into a side door, which led to the church’s green room, I guess, where the priests warmed up before going out to hold their ceremony. (I’m sorry, like I said, I know a lot about the history of religion because I lived through it, but I know almost nothing about church services themselves. Is there still a goat sacrifice? I’m really asking.) From there we went to another door, and then to a staircase that looked as old as I am, and a lot less stable.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Oscar fiddled with a set of keys, while we acquainted ourselves with the smell of mildew and the steady drip-drip sounding out in the dark. There was a sense that we were standing at the edge of a large room. Probably a boiler room. Or, an old Inquisition dungeon, but that was less likely to be the case in Britain.

  Oscar unlocked the door and held his hand on the knob.

  “I call it a storage closet,” he said. “I’m the only one who ever goes in.”

  “What’s it really?” Mirella asked. The only light we had was what came down the stairs behind us, but I could tell she was fixing me with a glance at the question. She really hated it when I didn’t give her all the information I had as soon as it became relevant. The problem was, we had different ideas of when something became relevant.

  “A storage closet,” Oscar said.

  He opened the door, threw on a light inside, and beckoned us through.

  Calling it a closet was unfair, because it was easily large enough for the four of us to stand in. However, it did look like a yard sale for discount religious artifacts, so the ‘storage’ portion seemed accurate.

  “At last,” Mirella said, “we’re saved.”

  “You’re not impressed?” I asked.

  “We could perhaps corner the marketplace on used thuribles,” Thelonius said.

  “You are both a great disappointment to me,” I said.

  Oscar, meanwhile, had begun moving things away from the back wall of the room.

  “Do you need help?” I asked. He really looked like he was about to fall over, permanently, now that he was no longer being held upright by a push broom.

  “No, no, this duty’s mine. My own fault, I put this junk here, didn’t I? Never figured to host someone on the Path.”

  Mirella looked as if she’d just figured something out. She stepped into the center of the room and spun in a circle.

  “Unless I’ve become turned around, this room is smaller than it should be,” she said.

  “That’s better,” I said.

  Oscar crouched down at the corner, and began extracting a brick. The wall was a patchwork of what had to be the original stones—varied in size and shape—and the more modern red brick variety. It was the latter type that he pulled out of the wall. It slid out cleanly and loudly. He placed it on the floor and then went back for the next.

  “Oh my goodness, Oscar, don’t be ridiculous,” Thelonius said.

  “It won’t take long, I promise,” the old man insisted.

  Thelonius jumped in to help anyway.

  I wondering if Oscar meant to take down the entire wall. It soon became clear he only had to open a small passage, though, which was a few minutes of brisk work and that was all.

  Notwithstanding the dirt and dust, no masonry had been done on that part of the wall; the bricks were loosely stacked so that it appeared otherwise. Basically, an extremely low-tech secret door that could be foiled by anyone who bothered to lean on that part of the wall, whether they meant to find it or not.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s back there, or make me wait?” Mirella asked.

  “I don’t know exactly, because I’ve never been to this location
before. I have a rough idea, but they’re all a little different. Probably not a cask of amontillado, if you had any hopes.”

  She laughed.

  “I had no such hopes, but you raise a point, intended or not. We don’t know what we will be eating or where we will be sleeping tonight.”

  “One thing at a time.”

  Once Oscar cleared up a wide enough space for a man to step through—albeit a very short man, or one in a deep crouch—he disappeared through the opening. A moment later, he reappeared, his hair thick with dust and cobwebs. He had a torch in his hand.

  “Can I trouble someone for a match? I’m afraid this side was never wired for electricity.”

  Thelonius had a book of matches. Soon—after working through a number of non-trivial concerns regarding ventilation and the potential lack thereof—we were all on the other side of the wall and staring at a space that hadn’t been stared at in decades, by torchlight.

  More than anything, it resembled one of those family burial temples they have all over the place, where there’s a bunch of small squares in a wall, with each square containing—either in fact or only in spirit—the remains of a member of the family. The squares in this wall had no names on them, however, just symbols. They didn’t have cremated remains behind them either, or if they did it was because somebody fundamentally misunderstood the function of the Path.

  Opposite the wall of squares was a wooden table and a couple of chairs, a leather-bound ledger, and an old rotary dial telephone.

  Curious, I picked up the receiver. Dial-tone. It still worked. They may not have run a line for power, but a phone they were good for.

  “Have you ever done this before, Oscar?” I asked.

  “Only once, sir,” he said. “In my training, when I was a lad. Will you be wanting the wayfarer’s standard or…?”

  Instead of finishing his sentence, he nodded at the squares. He was somewhere between nervous and excited. My fellow travelers had landed firmly on confused and tired.

  Oscar was asking whether I was a simple traveler on the Path or if I was a legate. That was what we called the owners of those boxes. It was an outdated phrase that made a ton more sense when the Path was first established, but there are a lot of old titles humans stick to long after they no longer make sense.