Deception of the Damned

by P C Darkcliff

  “It’s a miracle, but the electricity hasn’t been cut off yet,” he concluded as they halted in front of the music shop where he worked. “Anyway, just keep going straight ahead, and once you pass the gas station, you’ll see it. Good luck, and say hi to Hrot if you find him.”

  The sun was high above her head when she finally found the old house. Anxiety squeezed her lungs and cut her respiration as she pushed at the door and entered the murky concert hall. A tiny teenage girl with tattooed arms and a pierced nose was stocking the fridge behind the bar with beer cans. An older girl with a crimson Mohawk stood by the stove. The smell of ham and peas floated in the air.

  “Hi,” Jasmin said as she came closer. “I’m—I’m looking for a guy . . . called Hrot.”

  The tiny girl gave her a blank look, and Jasmin realized she didn’t speak English. The older one, however, turned from the stove and said, “Oh, yeah, that clumsy Czech dude. Used to share a room with Helder. Doesn’t live here anymore, though. Left about two months ago.”

  “Oh, I see.” Jasmin once again shivered under that strange chill of relief and disappointment. She couldn’t even imagine what she would have done if Hrot suddenly appeared in the hall.

  “Helder’s on the top floor,” the girl said. “Might tell you where Hrot is now. Just call his name when you get up there.”

  Jasmin thanked her and walked up the murky stairway. “Helder?” she called when she reached the top floor.

  “Sí?” a pleasant male voice called from down the corridor.

  She followed the voice and peeked into a large room with a tattered sofa, two mattresses on the floor, two chairs, and a small plastic table. The table creaked under a stack of books and CDs. An old CD player stood on its head on one of the chairs. Helder must have been trying to fix it, for he was holding a screwdriver.

  He was in his early twenties and had dark skin, a snub nose, and raven black hair tied into a ponytail. He reminded Jasmin of her Brazilian friend from Juneau, whose name was also Helder. Although it was nearly seventy degrees outside and the room was likewise warm, this Helder was wearing a thick woolen sweater. She recalled the other Helder was also always bundled up and complaining about cold, even on the warmest summer day.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Hrot,” Jasmin said as she stepped in. She was so nervous she forgot to introduce herself.

  “Oh yes, Hrot,” Helder said with a grin. “He very cool. Clumsy boy, yes? But great friend. He in my country now.”

  Jasmin’s heart sank. So she’d hit another dead end.

  “Maybe it my fault,” Helder continued with a slightly guilty smile. “I say him a lot about the ocean and the beaches—so he decide to go and see. I teach he little Portuguese. Unfortunately, he never contact me. He no have mobile phone.”

  Jasmin’s heart sank some more. Ocean . . . Beaches . . . Portuguese . . . She had no doubt this Helder was also Brazilian. How was she going to get to Brazil? A ticket to the U.S. was around six hundred dollars, and flying to South America had to be even more expensive.

  Back in December, when she had gone to her hostel to pick up her backpack, she’d also found her debit card. Her balance had barely shown four digits, however, and then she bought the flight ticket to Spain and forced some money on Renata for letting her stay in her apartment. Jasmin wasn’t sure whether she still had more than five hundred dollars.

  And even if she found a miraculously cheap ticket to fly to Brazil, what was she to do there without a penny in her pocket? And how was she going to find Hrot in the fifth largest country in the world, a place that was bigger than the whole of Europe?

  “How did he afford to go there, anyway?” she asked.

  “He go by hitchhike.”

  At first, she thought Helder was making fun of her. “How could he have—” And then it dawned on her like a flash. “You’re not from Brazil! You are from Portugal! And Portugal is neighbors with Spain!”

  Helder gave her a bewildered look but then he grinned. “Yes! But people always thinks me Latino.”

  Jasmin smiled and sighed in relief.

  “I hope that you find Hrot, Jasmin,” Helder said with a wink. “Hrot talk about you all time!”

  Jasmin’s smile turned bitter. So Hrot was still talking about her. But she was sure he would never have the guts to tell anyone what he’d done to her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Even though Portugal was just a dwarf compared to Brazil, the chance of finding Hrot was still ridiculously slim. According to Helder, Hrot planned to travel along the whole Portuguese coast, which meant that Jasmin would have to comb almost six hundred miles of coastline, including large agglomerations like Lisbon and Porto. She knew it would be like trying to find a particular pebble on a long, rocky beach. And if she wanted to try, she had to work there so that she could stay as long as needed without running out of funds.

  She spent the end of January sitting in the Barcelona university library, looking for a suitable job all over coastal Portugal. Luckily, she got an offer to fill an immediate opening at an English school in the northern city of Porto.

  Jasmin started teaching the day after her arrival. At first, she felt like a bald man trying to sell his hair for a wig. She had no teaching experience, apart from a short volunteering stint at a Juneau school for immigrants, and she was afraid it would show. Fortunately, her Portuguese students proved extremely pleasant and patient, and she soon felt better.

  Having spent a few days in a hostel, she found a room in a shared apartment near the school. The rent was only two hundred euros, and she earned a thousand, and yet she was permanently penniless, for she spent all her money traveling around the coast and looking for Hrot. Assuming that he would shun the rainy north during the winter, Jasmin took a train south every Friday. There she combed coastal towns and fishermen villages until Sunday night, when she took the train back.

  Three months had passed since she signed the pact, and she couldn’t find a trace of him. It made her wonder whether he was in the country at all.

  One weekend near the end of March, Jasmin ran out of money. As she was forced to stay in Porto until the next payday, she decided to walk around the city’s tourist areas, hoping to spot Hrot. She crossed Liberdade Square and walked down to the wide Douro River, where colorful sightseeing boats sailed toward the Atlantic Ocean.

  The wet, gray winter was over, and crowds of tourists milled around the riverside promenade. Hrot wasn’t among them, however, and so she climbed back up toward the Gothic Sao Francisco church.

  Jasmin had never been inside because there was a fee to enter. Today, however, a large sign announced free entrance to the catacombs. Thinking that Hrot wouldn’t say no when the Catholic Church felt generous, she decided to go in.

  A shudder raced through her body as she descended into the crypt. But it wasn’t just the cold seeping out of the stone walls. It was the death.

  Death didn’t crouch at her feet as it would in an ordinary cemetery. Death was omnipresent here, lurking in the white tombs embedded into the walls, and from the pit underneath the floorboards where the bones of the poor rested in large heaps. Death seemed to slither through the air and coil under the arched ceiling. Whenever a board creaked under her foot, she felt as if an unfortunate soul trapped underneath cried out in pain.

  She froze when she saw a furry, porcine head carved deep into one of the boards. Wondering what it could mean, she carefully stepped over it. The ancient wood emitted a hideous grunt that made her gasp, yet the carving disappeared as soon as she turned her back to it.

  Jasmin went on to the end of the crypt, where a small grated aperture offered a glimpse at the ossuary below. As she peeked in, her entire body filled with hate and repulsion. It wasn’t the grayish bones and skulls piled underneath that made her wince, though. It was the feeling the Emissary was near.

  “What a splendid place to meet.” She heard that familiar, mocking and sickly-sweet voice behind her. “You have great taste, beautiful Jasmin.”

/>   “What do you want?” she asked, turning toward him. Tourists had been milling along the aisles only a few moments ago. As she now looked around, however, she saw the catacombs were empty.

  “How’s the hunt going?” The Emissary grinned. “You were extremely lucky to find that whore Marie and that loser Helder. But your luck has run out, hasn’t it? This is beyond a needle in a haystack. Your search is utterly helpless.”

  “What do you want?” she repeated.

  “Did you know that today is the spring equinox?” the Emissary asked. “Summer will be here in no time. Then autumn. And then . . . then you’ll be mine! Only nine months left, my beauty, nine short months. But we can yet change the pact.”

  He stepped closer to her and licked his lips. The stench coming from his mouth and body flushed her with nausea.

  “In my realm, you’d shrink and wither in a day,” he continued. “And it would be a terrible shame. I prefer to keep you here on this side, in all your beauty. If you acknowledge me as your rightful master, I’ll take Hrot to my realm right away and leave you alone. Well, I might occasionally ask you for a favor or two,” he added, eyeing her nipples, which had hardened in the cold air and poked nervously at her bra and thin sweatshirt.

  Jasmin took a step back and crossed her arms to cover her breasts. “Never!”

  “Don’t be such a pigheaded slut,” the Emissary said. He still managed to smile, but the veins on his face pulsated with fury. “You know you have no chance to find that bastard.”

  “I’ll find him!” she snapped, but despair had crept into her throat. “I still have plenty of time. I’ll find him.”

  “You know what form I assume on the other side,” the Emissary growled. “Do you want to be repeatedly raped and tortured by me and others like me over there? Wouldn’t you rather give me your flesh here, just a few times, and then be free forever?”

  A whirlwind of feelings rolled and crashed inside Jasmin’s mind. She wanted to bury her nails into the Emissary’s leering eyes, she wanted to pummel his sleazy lips with her fists and scatter his teeth all over the stone floor—and she wanted to fall down on her knees and beg him to tell her where Hrot was. These feelings made her mute and rigid. She only trembled and coughed as bitter bile rose up her throat.

  Seeing that she wouldn’t change her mind, the Emissary pointed to the ossuary and snarled, “You think these souls are unfortunate? Ha! Their fate was merciful compared to what’s awaiting you! I’ll send you a dream about all the things I’ve planned for you on the other side. I’ll send you a dream tonight and every night. So sleep tight, my beauty.”

  The wooden boards squealed and grunted all around. Darkness billowed from the floor like filthy smoke, and he was gone.

  Jasmin knew she’d lost—and she almost wished she’d accepted the fiend’s new proposal. She staggered toward the exit, half blind from all the tears in her eyes.

  Had she stayed a little longer, she would have seen a crimson, three-headed figure materialize from behind a column.

  The three pairs of Krverah’s eyes filled with anger at the sight of the filthy mist the Emissary had left behind. The goddess Krverah had an old score to settle with the monster. She had never forgiven the Emissary for killing Anath, her last surviving worshiper, and she was furious at the way the monster tortured and taunted Anath’s youngest living relation.

  Krverah knew what Jasmin only suspected: Jasmin was the descendant of Yasemina, Anath’s and Rudolph II’s daughter, whom the king had taken away after her birth. Royal blood flew through Jasmin’s veins, blended with the blood of one of the greatest sorceresses of all times.

  As she now watched Jasmin stumble out of the catacombs, Krverah felt the girl’s desperation. She knew Jasmin would never find Hrot on her own. The goddess decided to help her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  During his long imprisonment at the Ruins, Hrot had witnessed many of the changes mankind had been going through. However, he hadn’t been allowed to enjoy the comfort or luxury of a single new invention.

  Stalking the castle’s visitors like an invisible shadow, he saw them wearing increasingly comfortable outfits and hairstyles while his own hair tangled and his clothes fell into pieces. When he saw more and more people talking into small rectangular objects, he wondered which magic realms they were communicating with. Not until his release from the protective circle did he realize what a giant leap mankind had made since the times of Rudolph II.

  Hrot grew restless in sleepy Turnov, and so he traveled to Prague to inundate himself with the modern smells, noises, and inventions. Haunted by horrid memories, he soon left the Czech Republic for the Iberian Peninsula. As if to compensate for the centuries of misery and seclusion, he lived fast and adventurously, drinking life and freedom in deep gulps. Yet even the noisiest places and most exciting adventures failed to erase his feeling of guilt.

  A day didn’t go by without his thinking about Jasmin. A night wouldn’t pass without remorse eating at his heart like a tumor. Unaware of Jasmin’s return, Hrot continuously wondered how she was faring in his times. If his death could bring her back to the present, he wouldn’t have hesitated to slit his wrists or jump off the highest building.

  Having spent the winter picking oranges in the southern region of Algarve, Hrot moved to Lisbon in the spring, about two months after Jasmin’s arrival in Porto. He stayed in the Portuguese capital until October, doing odd jobs. Then he grew tired of the modern world, sick of everyone and everything, and disgusted with himself; he began to hate the clamor of the city so much that he had to leave.

  Hrot walked north to Aveiro, which took him about two weeks, and after a short rest he went on toward Porto. He always walked along the shore, camped on beaches, and foraged for shellfish.

  Toward the end of October, two or three days after he’d left Aveiro, Hrot was shambling along a town beach when he slipped on a rock covered with wet seaweed. Although he felt no pain at first, his ankle started to hurt and swell as he kept walking. He decided to hobble beyond the town and set up a camp.

  The ebbing ocean revealed large rocks that had been hidden underwater just an hour ago. Only now and then, a large, solitary wave still poured over the drying beach. When it retreated, water rushed down the rocks in wild currents. The tide was completely out when he reached a small, secluded beach, whose savage beauty reminded him of the shores of the realm of Krverah.

  Rocks and boulders were drying in the sun wherever he looked. Some of them were rough and jagged while others were smooth as stalagmites. The holes, fissures, and deep ruts scooped out by billions and billions of hungry waves made the rocks look like bizarre works of art. The rocks that stood closer to the ocean were black from hundreds of clams that stuck out like tiny daggers.

  Smooth pebbles covered the sand. Some were white, some were black, while others were speckled and banded like alien beetles. Prickly sea urchins and large black slugs crawled in pools in rocky cavities.

  This was a perfect spot to stay and get better. The place was quiet, with only a few distant houses to be seen farther to the north. He would have enough seafood for months, and he could get fresh water from the brook that rushed into the ocean through the nearby dunes.

  “This is not bad at all,” Hrot murmured as he sat on a rock and put his throbbing foot into a cool pool of seawater. “This place is just fine.”

  He took out a map of Northern Portugal to see exactly where he was. Apparently, the houses in the north belonged to a village called Granja. This beach bore the same name.

  “Granja,” he murmured and nodded approvingly. Granja was good. Granja was to become his new home.

  WHILE HROT USUALLY fell asleep to the murmur of the ocean and woke up to the call of seagulls, Jasmin’s nights were ridden by nightmares and her days filled with dread, tears, and creeping insanity.

  One night in early December, horrid dreams kept slapping her cheeks and pulling up her eyelids until dawn, when she finally fell into an exhausted sleep. She woke up a
few hours later, thinking she’d heard a noise.

  Her eyes shot open, sparkling with fear, and she listened. The downstairs neighbor was vacuuming, and water dripped from a leaking faucet in the bathroom. Otherwise, the apartment was quiet.

  “Catarina?” Jasmin called, but her flatmate had long left for work.

  The fear of falling back asleep made her get up. In her latest nightmare, the antlered Emissary had hung her naked upside down from a rotting tree and clawed her breasts away with his talons while his poisonous tentacles lashed her skin. Then he forced his reeking phallus into her mouth. The memory made her retch.

  Jasmin stumbled to the window and pulled up the blinds. The room brightened only slightly, however, as dark clouds covered the sky, and fog rolled along the cobblestone street below.

  Jasmin walked to the wall opposite her bed, where she had hung a map of downtown Porto. Near the middle of the map, a thick circle marked a bell tower called Torre dos Clerigos. She traced her forefinger around the circle, just as someone would run their hand around the lips on a lover’s photograph.

  “Soon,” she wheezed into the gloom of her bedroom. “Soon! But . . . where’s the—?” She rushed to her bedside table, opened the drawer, and yanked out a small envelope. She felt relieved when her fingers touched the two-euro coin she’d stuck in there. She put the envelope back into the drawer, right beside the damned scroll of paper that bore the deal with the monster.

  A wave of cold assailed her as she passed the corridor on her way to the bathroom. She turned on the dripping tap and collected some water in the palms of her hands to drink. Water was the only thing she was able to keep down these days. In any case, she had no money to buy food.

  Her contract had ended in June. Jasmin had found a few private students, all of whom eventually dropped out. She couldn’t blame them: her nocturnal terrors and diurnal worries made her alternately irritable and apathetic, and she was forgetful and absentminded around the clock. The students probably thought she took drugs. That would seem to be the only explanation for her erratic behavior, her dreadful loss of weight, and the ugly black crescents that had settled under her eyes.