Hell's Vengeance

by Max Jager

  "I don't need to go to church, kid." Jeronus said. The car rumbled in front of the thin apartments and the small skeletal metal stairs that rattled with the footsteps of the other renters. There was a woman on the second floor cleaning her rug, dropping dust and grime a top of Jeronus's car. He could hear the small specks like the nimble tap of rain.

  "Yes, you do." Berok said. He was sitting in the car with his backpack to his feet, both hands crossed on his chest to hold himself.

  "And why is that?" Jeronus asked.

  "Because it'll make you feel better."

  Jeronus rolled his eyes and blew his nose outside the car window.

  "A priest won't do shit for me. If you don't believe me, I don't expect him to. And if he doesn't believe me, how the fuck will his talk help anything?"

  "I never said I didn't believe you." Berok rocked back and forth.

  "Bullshit. I know you don't, no one does. Who believes in monsters?" Jeronus held his head with his hand.

  "Kids believe in monsters and I believe in you." Berok stared at his small boots. "That's why we need to go and see Daddy. You've got things to say to him, you know."

  "He's dead. Fucking dead. There's no telling him anything because there's no one to hear anything."

  "That's not true." Berok's nostrils widened as he took a deep breath. "He can hear us. The church people said so."

  "Fuck the church!" Jeronus slapped his steering wheel. The car honked. "Those patronizing pricks. All of them. Those fuckers don't know pain, they don't understand. They just pretend to."

  "They'll help us." Berok whispered. He repeated it like a mantra. Help us, help us. Jeronus looked to his rear at all the people looking his way. He didn't think there were so many eyes so clustered together on those steps and rails. He began to feel that needle-prick in his stomach again, the pop of his gut and that burning sensation as if his inner acid was spilling, disintegrating him.

  "Alright kid." He conceded. "I'll go right now. So get out of the car."

  "I'm going with you. I want to talk to daddy."

  "I don't get it, is this for me or for you? I told you I'd go. But myself."

  "I'm not leaving the car." Berok stomped on the floor of the car. He rubbed the mud in his shoes inside the carpet.

  "I'm going to drag you out if you don't leave." Jeronus opened the door on the passenger seat. The winds blew it open, almost tearing it off.

  "If you drag me, I'll scream. And that'll get you in trouble, won't it?" He closed the door, muting the sound of the banshee wind. Jeronus just stared, almost impressed at the small child, some odd twelve years old, and his capacity for stubbornness.

  "You really are like him." Jeronus said. He nodded his head and drove into the frenzy of cars. It looked like a foray and he couldn't tell whether it was mass immigration or mass emigration. He only knew that people were moving, fast.

  It was a few minutes after seven-twenty that they finally made it to the church and to the heavy doors that looked down at Jeronus. There were angels, the Virgin Mary, kings, all carved into the varnished wood. To his side were the white steps and a handrail stained and rusted, past that, in the yard, was the plastic grass and the plastic plants and the avians dancing in their ceramic bird baths. All white. Fake white, like a papier-mâché Hollywood set, so fragile as to shatter at the touch. But that was a deceit.

  Jeronus put his hands on the handle and could barely push. It truly was heavier than it looked. It took his tackle, his shoulder, to nudge the doors and to scare the nun behind them. She glared at him, he didn't care as much as the boy who looked down and tugged at Jeronus's pants.

  "You're the one who wanted to come here." Jeronus said. The boy tried to look up. He took a meek step forward before he put his hand in the holy water font. He (Berok) looked like a bird, Jeronus noted. Jeronus did the same. Put his hands inside and dressed his forehead with the wet cross.

  They went up towards the rotunda and the pillars and the people already praying on benches. Jeronus stood, watched the cross and looked at Jesus high upon the wall. It became unbearable, the weight, the look. So he looked down at the tile and tapped his foot against the pillar. His eyes wandered before they were dragged back. Berok tugged on him and pointed to the bench.

  "Let me do it my own way." Jeronus said. The boy tugged (it actually looked more like a pull). Jeronus sat and feel dragged the knee guard down with a slam and knelt before the cross.

  And he closed his eyes and thought for a moment. And it was pleasant, almost. The scent of burning candle, the wet feeling of his forehead, the silence. And the memories. They came like rounds in a slide show, a snapshot in a catalog or a gallery. He felt his chest swell, he felt his nose swell. And he opened his eyes to find himself with with his back a bit bent and curved. He was oddly light, though he hadn't asked or spoken as much as remembered. He opened his eyes, facing Berok. Berok who had both his hands together in front of him.

  He confirmed it, yes, he was lighter. And perhaps, if forgiveness was a thousand mile long trek deep in the trenches, then at the very least, Jeronus could confidently say, he had taken a step forward. Maybe two.

  "What're telling him?" Berok whispered.

  "Nothing. I'm not saying anything."

  "Well, you better. Don't waste his time, he's probably busy up there in heaven."

  "What would he be busy doing up there?"

  "Police stuffs with God. Like catching bad angels and stuff."

  Jeronus nodded his head. He smiled. The boy had taken the death better than Jeronus or maybe he just didn't understand it as terrible as it was. Whether ignorance or youth (if they were any different), Jeronus admired the boy.

  He looked around, the smile still on him. There were some odd fifty people here, some in black, others with pictures of the dead, some just here to be here. And it felt good to be united, even if just in suffering. It felt warm, all of it and suddenly he felt the urge to speak to someone. Not to Harde, someone else. Jeronus set his eyes on Jesus on the cross, so he rose from his bruised shins. His heart pounded. He hadn't felt religious for fifteen years, but now, like no other time, he felt that deep need to speak. He took a step forward but stopped.

  Someone had beaten him to the front.

  What seemed like dozens of hooded figures. What seemed like the plague manifest in all black and yellow and white. The odd, ugly folks with the veils and the suits and the yellow flowers, and the jeers and the rage and the horror.

  They came through two doors on the side of the main room of the church, past the choir stands, past the organ left of center from the cross. Past flowers, past candles, past nuns who looked at themselves in confusion hoping the other had the answer to this accost.

  No one knew. All the guests looked curiously as the cultists reared their heads around the pillars and wrapped around the room in what seemed like a long chain of black. It was a mockery. One of them had the thurible and flung it in circles and threw it at a picture of Saint Michael the Archangel that hung next to the confessional that was to the right. The thurible began to smoke as it lay broken on the floor.

  The boy stood now. He tugged on Jeronus, Jeronus looked behind him at the closed doors and started for them. He felt two pairs of hands grab him and drag him to the side of the room near a pillar.

  "Get the fuck off me." Jeronus threw his head back. He hit someone and himself. Then he felt another hand grab his neck and hold it still. They faced him forward, towards the cross, the stand, the center of the room.

  His eyes opened. He nearly gagged on his tongue as he gasped at what he saw. There was a body upon a small rectangular plane, and he saw that plane carried by four people. They had on them purple gloves. And behind the body, behind the people was someone he did not know but to you, reader, I will say whom.

  He saw Aleistar coming up, masked and garbed. He saw his bloodied rags drag upon the floor and the false vestment he wore in gold and black and the mask upon his face, glued almost. The body was set at the top of the stage. Eve
ryone now stared, wide-eyed, they all looked at Aleistar's hands. On one, a book, on the other, a knife. He opened the book and with that bold, booming voice said in cheer:

  "I'm glad for you to join us." His faced dragged from one corner of the room to the other. "Let's begin then? With what though? With what I wonder?"

  He turned the pages. Ripped them, threw them like feathers into the air. The other churchgoers took offense. They stood, some. They were beaten, hit on the temple with canes or the candle sticks or the busts of statues. It didn't seem to bother Aleistar though, that helpless screaming and rioting. He kept turning. Turning, turning until he stopped with flair. He slammed two hands on the podium. He leaned in and let them all; Jeronus, the boy, the fifty odd people, absorb silence. When there was nothing but mumbling groans, he spoke.

  "Yes. Here we are." The drool was coming off his mouth, it dribbled onto the podium. "Of Man's disobedience, his original sin."

  And they fell into it, a fever-dream. A nightmare, though the didn't know it just yet.

  8:09 PM

  Ajax

  August 5th, 2017

  8:09 PM

  Ajax had to run all the way back, through the fires and the fanning fumes that dressed half a miles radius worth of city with the choking smog, he had to climb and to suffocate and call, over and over, until at last, Darr answered. And they spoke and they met, a top a rooftop far from the fires that ravages. Ajax saw his colleague, his hands bruised and stained, his mask blackened some, his eyes unmoving and his whole body still. He didn't bother to ask how it went, he knew it from the poor posture that Darr stood with, how he bent and how he collapsed on his rear and undid his mask and put his face down to his thighs to coddle himself.

  Ajax watched Darr's soot-covered sweat drop, he wanted to touch his shoulder but had nothing reassuring to say so stopped midway. He retracted, looked out to the horizon and the swirling mass of clouds above as if hell descended from the skies.

  "We need to go back." He said, rather stern. "It was all a part of their plan, they dragged us out. Distracted us."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know why they wanted us away. We should go regroup at the church. It's at the epicenter, we'll be able to move more efficiently if we get th—"

  "Why were there so many bodies? Why were they all burning?" Darr's voice was eerily calm. He did not blink, did not even seem to breathe as his chest was not going up and down like Ajax's exasperated body. He neither looked tired, nor distressed, which may have been the biggest warning that he was distressed. Just forcing it down, deep down into his spirit.

  Ajax tapped him. Nudged him but did not exchange words. After a while, perhaps out of boredom, Darr stood, looked at the black mask in his hands and jumped. A cable antenna snapped from the strength of his gallop across to the other roof, it fell near Ajax and scratched the floor with a shriek.

  They came to the church or rather the low rooftop near the church on some apartment block across from it, they noticed the crowd and removed their masks as they slid down a fire ladder to the side. It was effortless, the conversion of Veron to man as they supplanted themselves inside of the crowd now growing larger. The tops of heads shook, the whole crowd vibrated like a colony of bees distressed at the honeycombs death.

  Ajax outstretched his neck. Being taller had its benefits, he thought. He looked to the broken glass around the church, then to the hole and the purple smoke coming out of it. The crowd was beginning to scream, most of them had their phones out and repeated to an emergency service. It didn't help, Ajax knew it wouldn't. Everyone who could have helped was too busy with the other fires, with the other bodies and the other sufferings. So he took it upon himself to drag the catatonic Darr through the crowd, shoving and pushing down many a people as they made it past, into the parking lot and into the graveyard on the backside.

  There were some people waiting there too, with their faces wedged between the gap of black bars and the bits of brown burned and dried leaves coming at a crawl at their feet. Ajax ignored them, climbed over the pointed black fence and walked through the gravestones now blowing ashes from their tops. He began to run and looked for the door into the back entrance. Darr found it first. Well, he found the graves keeper first. And with the grave keeper, the dull face and the door. It was them three, Ajax noted, and two of them wore the same dead expression like their eyes were looking past objects, at something imaginary and far in the horizon.

  Ajax bit his cheek. He tried nudging the doorknob. Shut.

  "I have the key." Ajax moved to his pockets. Darr kicked the door open. It broke, some screws and steel flew into the wall and stayed stiff and interred. The metal door was at a bent angle, they walked over it and heard it squeal.

  Darr disappeared in the smoke.

  Ajax ran through the fumes, coughing most of the time and covering his face with his hand as the purple exhausted out the door. It seemed to burn his eyes, whatever it was (and it was not smoke, for it did not carry that ashy smell) that contaminated the air. It was a bit denser than smoke too, it sat near ground level, especially as he reached the center of the church where it was strongest and appeared as a large purple cloud, roaming and dwindling out. It was not the time for the center though, not yet.

  Ajax went past a hall, most of the pictures and vases and statues were broken into shreds, some stained red. He stepped over a Virgin Mary, blackened and dressed with a reversed latin cross. It made him anxious. He came past a storage room where a little slit showed light, he peered his eyes and almost immediately removed his head. There was a corpse there, bisected it seemed, from left shoulder to right hip. It was a nun, he remembered seeing her face.

  He walked past her, into the principal office. Darr was already waiting in there, looking down. Ajax saw him from the door frame and saw his looming figure that stood with the listless face. He stepped up to Ajax, to the corpse laid out in front of him like skinned carpet. He was behind the desk, that Priest. He laid there, feet crossed, arms outward. Dead. Eyes open and staring back, dead. Grey. He had a wound on his neck. Ajax inspected the body with bent knees.

  "Stabbed straight through the heart from his neck. Then stabbed some more." He mumbled and closed the eyes on the corpse. He looked up - stood up - Darr was staring down. His face hadn't changed since recovering from the fires. And Ajax felt dread for him, or rather guilt for removing him from one fire and into another.

  He groaned.

  "J-just stay here." Ajax walked away. Nothing would have filled the silence in that room, not the screaming of the crowd outside, not the breaking wind of helicopters above. Nothing filled that room but Darr and the body.

  There were more on the path there, to the center. There was also a voice inside of him, insecurity or sanity, one of those two that screamed retreat, retreat. It was that sharp voice that made him shiver at the feet, that made his head feel empty. He nearly collapsed some steps away from the ceremony room, he did not know whether it was the purple smoke or the feeling of disgust. Or his arm, his arm that felt like the surface of the sun. He rested his had on a wall, a defiled buttress whose painted glass sat below his feet in pieces. The picture of the three kings, dead and fractured on the floor. He looked at them, his eyes rolled back and he felt at last the limit of his stonewall spirit.

  Ajax vomited.

  He spat and faced forward with the spittle still dangling from his face, strings he cut with his sleeve. All along the halls were scattered bodies or scattered glass, cut in clean vivisections like surgery.

  He made it to the church room, the post-Morten congregation. There were bodies here too, much more animated too. He heard breathing from one of them and ran. It was a man, no older than forty with a fedora knocked over to the side, stepped on. There was no boot print, rather a tri-forked footprint. The stamp of the devil.

  "What happened here?" Ajax asked. The man looked up to him, he had a missing eye and his mouth could not form sentences.

  "Hands." He repeated." Hands, hands everywhere. Han
ds hands hands hands—" So on and on he went in that mantra. He settled down on the floor, one of his arms was missing, one of his foot had been cut along the two skinniest toes. Bits of his flesh along his waist, gone. The dank air was strongest here, the purple aura made it a slog to walk through, but walk he did. He brought his gaze to the many dead and or few moaning, to the edges of the room where the black-suited cultists had died as well. Many of them; cultists, normal people, dead or missing with nothing but a purse or flower or picture frame to show that they were ever here. And was worse, Ajax felt, to not only die but to disappear.

  Most of them were dead, facing upwards, with their hands to the sky or their hands scratching along the floor as if to struggle against a pulling current.

  Ajax could only imagine what it meant.

  He nodded his head and walked, at last, to the very end of the room. A goblet sat on the steps of the stage, he grabbed it before it could roll down. It sat next to the foot of a man.