Revels Ending

by Vic Kerry

  Ashe looked at Czernobog. “The first one is easy. It’s called a stereo. They’ve been around in America for a long time. Maybe in Soviet Russia, you didn’t have them.”

  “I am not Russian.”

  “In the Ukraine then.”

  Czernobog’s eyes burned into Ashe. He felt like the man was trying to kill him with a glare. “I need the device to broadcast a sound that is heard while delivering a hidden layer. It is easy to do with MP3 and headphones, but doesn’t work through stereo speakers.”

  “You’re the one who has been layering those songs.” Ashe felt a horrible idea crash into his brain. “You killed Marianne.”

  “I resurrected her as well.”

  He clapped his hands. It sounded like the popping of a bullwhip. The door to the office opened, and Marianne walked in. Her movements were stiff and artificial like the people Ashe had seen since being brought to the warehouse. Despite that, the woman was her.

  “Marianne,” he said. “How?”

  She looked at Czernobog. “Who is Marianne?”

  “You are,” Ashe said.

  “I am Ursula van Beckum,” she said.

  “You are Marianne and were my fiancée,” Ashe said.

  “My name is Ursula van Beckum, and I am no man’s betrothed.” She looked at Czernobog again. “Master, I do not understand.”

  “You are Ursula van Beckum, but your body once belonged to a woman named Marianne. She was this man’s betrothed before you took ownership of her corporeal vessel.”

  Ashe felt a streak of pain run between his temples. He squeezed his eyes closed and opened them again. Marianne still stood in the room, and Czernobog still sat across from him.

  “This doesn’t make any sense. Who are you? What is all of this? Is Archbishop Harrington trying to raise the dead or something?” Ashe asked.

  The other man laughed his deep otherworldly laugh. “The archbishop has nothing to do with this. Dr. Shrove, I am who you might call the Devil.”

  At that moment, Ashe realized that he was surrounded by madmen. The woman in the room couldn’t be Marianne. She had died. Even though he saw someone that looked like her leave the morgue, it could have been this Ursula dressed to look like her. As he stared at the woman, he thought she looked less and less like his fiancée and more like a mirage of Marianne.

  “Where are your horns?” Ashe asked.

  Czernobog lifted his hand into the air and squeezed it into a fist. When he opened it, flames shot up. A tongue of fire flickered for each finger with the main trunk of the hand being a large blue flame. Even as far away as Ashe was he could feel the heat of the fire. The light was more intense than any he’d ever seen, but the fire produced no smoke or smell. Czernobog wiggled his fingers. The fire moved just like flesh and bone.

  The man who claimed to be the Devil drummed his flaming hand on the desk. As he did so, the fire extinguished. Long thick talons clicked on the table. The fingers attached to the claws were covered with hard red scales. Czernobog ran the claws through his hair. When he brought his hand across it from back to front, the hand changed into a tentacle like that of an octopus. He reached out with it, and it grew longer and longer until it wrapped around Ashe’s neck.

  The tiny suckers pricked the skin on his neck. The slimy thing began to flex. The air entering Ashe’s body began to get less and less until it was cut off. Ashe looked at Czernobog and tried to speak. Nothing came out.

  “What was that? I cannot hear you,” he said.

  As Ashe tried to speak again, the tentacle was gone, and Czernobog sat with his fingers laced together. The words came out.

  “Please stop,” Ashe blurted out with too much vigor.

  He felt a little embarrassed by this. Had he realized that the tentacle would disappear he would have tried to control the volume of his voice to seem calm and under control.

  “All you had to do was ask.” The other man rubbed his forehead with both hands. Goat horns appeared where he had rubbed. “Horns, just for good measure.”

  Ashe looked deeply into the other man’s eyes. Somewhere in there he saw the flicker of a fire. He felt like it was not a normal fire but something greater and stronger than anything he would have ever encountered in his normal everyday life. Czernobog smiled. His small teeth now looked cannibalistic. Ashe was sure that he would be devoured like so many sticks of beef jerky. The Devil folded his hands and laced his fingers together again.

  “And so,” he said.

  “Prove to me that Cybil is safe and has not been turned into one of these.” Ashe pointed to the shell of Marianne with the name of a heretic.

  “I will do this.”

  A giant blue flame erupted from the floor less than two feet from Ashe. It put off no heat or smoke. The light from it was not harsh but almost pleasant. Inside it, he could see Cybil seated at a card table eating takeout. A man wearing a hooded sweatshirt stood just at the edge of the visible area that the flame showed.

  “You’ve shown me some amazing tricks,” Ashe said. “How do I know this isn’t one of them?”

  The Devil chuckled. “I do love humans. They never take anything on face value. Speak to her. She will hear and see you.”

  “Cybil.”

  As soon as he said this, she looked directly at him. Her eyes showed both joy and terror at the same time.

  “Ashe, where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m with Mr. Czernobog. Are you safe?”

  “So far, but I think it’s only because that man wants you to do something. If it wasn’t for that, I’m sure I wouldn’t be.”

  The man in the hooded sweatshirt turned to face Ashe. He pulled the hood away from his face. Rogers beamed. His smile looked almost as ravenous as Czernobog’s.

  “She’s probably right,” Rogers said.

  Before Ashe could say anything else, the flame disappeared. He looked back at the Devil with an appeal on his lips.

  “That was enough. I believe you get the point,” Czernobog said.

  “So you offered Erik a psychological law named for him in exchange for his soul?” Ashe asked.

  “No. He found the engrams on his own. I offered him something far more personal for the exclusive use of what he found, and the ability to record them.”

  “I figured that out,” Ashe said.

  “Did you now? How did you come up with the idea?”

  “Brainstorming.”

  “Liar.” Czernobog slammed his hand on the desk. The whole room shook. “You dreamed it up, literally. One night you dream about the schematic and all the programming needed. I could give you a detailed account of that dream. Do I need to?”

  Ashe looked at the floor. Somehow Czernobog knew exactly how it had happened. He’d tried hard to keep that aspect of his discovery a secret mainly to keep the media and other scientists from downplaying his idea.

  “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am, I gave you that dream. I put all the pieces together for you because you’d never figure it out yourself. Mortals are easily distracted by the noise of life.”

  “I didn’t sell my soul to you,” Ashe said.

  “Not yet, but there is always time.”

  “It will take more than promising me a law for me to do that.”

  Czernobog smiled and flourished his hand at Marianne/Ursula. She disappeared in a puff of smoke. In her place, another blue flame flared up. Ashe watched as Rogers pulled Marianne’s pants down. They began to have sex on the table that Cybil had just been eating at.

  “Why are you showing me this?” Ashe said, almost crying.

  “To show you what your friend sold his soul for.” Czernobog appeared to enjoy the horror that Ashe felt. “You can blame him for Marianne’s death and yourself for her resurrection.”

  “I didn’t bring her back,” Ashe said.

  “Your
invention did and mostly so that Erik Rogers, PhD, could do that to her corpse.” The flame disappeared, and the Devil leaned across the desk and stared into Ashe’s eyes. “If you don’t want him to do this to Cybil’s very alive body, I suggest that we get down to the brass tacks.”

  “So I have to build these machines, and you’ll let her go,” Ashe said.

  “Yes, and you will have your freedom as well, barring me owning your soul.”

  “Why can’t you do this yourself? You are the Devil,” Ashe asked.

  “I am not an engineer. I can only unleash people’s hidden ability. They reap the benefits.” He smiled. “I can, however, kill people at will.”

  Ashe thought the threat proved that the Devil felt vulnerable. Times when he’d dealt with people with limited abilities, they’d always seemed to try to intimidate people. Apparently, the Devil could only do so much. “How quickly do you need these things done?”

  “We have a very short deadline to work with, by Mardi Gras.”

  “That’s only a few days from now. There’s no way I can get it done,” Ashe said.

  “You will be given all the help you need.” The Devil broke his horns off. One turned into an old fashioned quill; the other to a scroll of parchment. “All you have to do is sign this.”

  Ashe looked at the quill and at the contract. Czernobog smiled at him, but the thought of Cybil safe, away from them was the most important thing he could think of.

  “This is all so that you can bring Hell to earth?”

  “That is an indelicate way of saying it, but you get the gist,” the Devil said.

  Ashe shook his head. “I’ll build these things, but if I do, you don’t need my name on a contract to get my soul. I’ll be damned forever.”

  Czernobog raised an eyebrow. “How do I know that you will keep your word?”

  Ashe returned the look. “I suppose we’ll have to trust each other.”

  The Devil laughed. “It has been many a century since I entered into a verbal agreement. I look forward to this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By the time the van from St. Joan of Arc Church got to the island, Smalls’ pant legs were dry, and the salt from the gulf’s water clung to the skin beneath. He raked his fingers over his ankles as the interning priest from the parish drove down the wide lanes of Rangeline Road north toward the city. The trail from his nails formed white lines down his leg. The priest who drove had said nothing since picking him up from the island. Archbishop Harrington hadn’t sounded very happy when Smalls told him that he’d been dumped on Dauphin Island, but he also didn’t ask any questions. The archbishop simply said that he would send a van for him.

  “Where are we going?” Smalls felt he needed to know. If he was going to see Harrington, he needed to get his story in line to make sure he detailed everything.

  “Archbishop Harrington wants to see you,” the priest said. His voice was flat but had tinges of French to it.

  Looking at him, Smalls thought he was probably French Canadian. “Are we going to St. Mary’s-by-the-Bay?”

  “He wants to see you at St. Joan of Arc.”

  “Why?”

  “Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die.”

  The words rattled around in the older priest’s head for a moment. Then they sank like lead to his feet, pulling his guts down with them. Paranoid thoughts began to turn over and over. He only got a blurry half-dazed look at the van that stranded him on the island. Although this priest was not one of the large men who assaulted him and Cybil at Ashe’s house, he could just as easily be part of the whole thing. Smalls licked his lips. The van had just gone through a series of red lights at Tillman’s Corner near the Walmart. They were turning to head down Government Street. Enough traffic lights stretched down this street that bailing out would be easy and might not cause much injury. He slid to the end of the bench seat close to the sliding door.

  “What do you mean?” Smalls slipped his hand under the door handle.

  “I always say that when I don’t know why I’m supposed to do something. It is from a poem by Tennyson,” the priest answered.

  “I’m familiar with the poem. It just seemed like a strange response to an easy question,” Smalls said. “You have to understand that I’ve had a stressful day, so talking about dying doesn’t sit well with me. By chance you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to my friends, would you?”

  “I don’t know anything, Father Smalls, except that I was supposed to pick you up from a gas station. They didn’t even tell me why you were there.”

  “Kidnapped.”

  “You should have called the police.”

  “I did. They took my story down but wouldn’t bring me back. Probably because I just got out of jail.”

  The priest turned around to look at him, disregarding the traffic down the busy street. “What?”

  “I was falsely accused of murder and rape,” Smalls said. “Please watch the road.”

  The younger priest turned back to driving. “They did know you were a priest, right?”

  “Yes, but I looked like the suspect they had caught on one of the street cameras downtown. When it comes to the law, it doesn’t matter what profession you are.”

  “Is that why someone kidnapped you?”

  “I don’t know. I just know someone wants me and my friends out of the way. So maybe now you can see how your quote from Tennyson was bothersome.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The younger priest said nothing else. They drove down Government Street past the old motels that would have been nice during Mobile’s heyday, but had grown old and sketchy as the years passed. The neighborhood St. Joan of Arc Church was in was much the same as those no-tell motels: it had known better years. The van stopped, and the young priest looked back at Smalls.

  “I’m supposed to let you out here,” he said.

  Smalls looked out the window toward the church. Light from the open church door haloed Archbishop Harrington. He opened the van door and climbed out. The driver gave just enough time for the door to close then pulled away. The archbishop stepped down the stairs from the door to the sidewalk. Smalls walked toward him.

  “It’s good to see you, Father Smalls.”

  “It’s good to be here, I suppose.”

  The two priests met in the middle of the sidewalk. Smalls tried to enter the building, but the other took him by the arm and led him into the yard of the church.

  “I don’t really want to talk inside,” Harrington said. “Out here I’m sure that we will not be heard.”

  “Has the church been compromised?”

  “You know that we must always leave the doors open to those who wish to enter. I just feel safer here.”

  They stopped under an old live oak tree. Tendrils of Spanish moss hung from the limbs and blew in the breeze. The sky through the limbs looked brown under the lights of the city. The air smelled like a mixture of diesel exhaust and brackish water. It was an unsettling perfume.

  “What’s happening?” Smalls asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it seems that the powers of evil have descended on this city, and for some reason have chosen to come after you and your friends.”

  “Why us?”

  “I thought maybe you would know. You have looked these people in the eye if they kidnapped you. Didn’t they talk on the way to the island?”

  “They knocked me out. The last thing I remember there was a huge man in Ashe’s living room. He looked unreal like a living corpse, not a zombie like in movies, but his eyes weren’t right.”

  “I believe it may be demons possessing people,” Harrington said. “That book you had Dr. Shrove looking for has been stolen with a few other volumes of your heretical texts.”

  “How could they steal them from the basement of St. Mary’s? Surely demons cannot cross over
into a church.”

  Harrington leaned against the tree. His hair blew in the breeze and blended in with the swaying moss. He rubbed his face. Smalls heard the scratching sound of a stubble beard. In the low light around the church, he’d only been able to make out the grosser details of the archbishop’s face.

  “One of the books you sent Dr. Shrove for talked about possession. It postulated that demons cannot possess humans since the death of the last disciples who were given the miracle of casting out demons.”

  Smalls nodded his agreement. He’d wanted that book more than any other. “I needed that one the most. I almost have my finger on something, but needed to reread it.”

  “It said that demons cannot possess people because they cannot handle humans’ past memories. Once they enter, they stay only until they are so overwhelmed by memories that they must flee or perish.” The archbishop looked at Smalls. The priest tried to hide any emotion from his face but knew he must look amazed that the other had read the text. “I wanted to see why the book was considered blasphemous.”

  “I remembered that, but if you remember when I talked to you the first time about Ashe we discussed that his fiancée supposedly rose from the dead and walked out of University Hospital’s morgue. Maybe the demons have possessed the dead,” Smalls said.

  “Only Christ is the king of dead,” Archbishop Harrington said. “Satan cannot rule over a dead body, and that book postulates it is because demons must have emotions to exist.”

  “Dead people don’t have emotions,” Smalls said as if he’d suddenly been given this as an epiphany.

  “I do not know what is going to happen, but I’m not sure we can resist it. Ash Wednesday is upon us, and I fear that something bad is going to happen before it gets here. The Devil is the strongest during this period of temptation.”

  “What happened to Ashe and Cybil?”

  “Dr. Shrove’s house burned to the ground. There was no sign of Cybil or him there, so I don’t know.”