Hell's Vengeance

by Max Jager

  Berok ran at him again.

  "And then what?" Berok asked. "And what changes when he dies? The people go on, the world turns. Nothing changes. Nothing but you."

  He pulled him back from walking.

  "You're not doing this for me. You're doing this for you." Berok tugged his pants. "And I'm telling you, I know, that killing him would hurt you in a way...in a terrible, permanent way. I feel it."

  "How do you know?"

  "I just feel it. I just know."

  "Then what's the right thing to do?" Ajax asked.

  "I can't tell you that. That's too hard for me to think about." He said. "I just know that when the world is so mean and cruel, that it doesn't take much to be mean yourself. It's easy work. Killing him is easy work, wouldn't it be? And if that's easy it can't be that good, right? It just can't be. Being good is hard. It should be hard. I just know it."

  "That's a stupid argument. Nonsensicle." Ajax said. "There are plenty of people I've already killed. What's one more?"

  "Isn't that the problem?" He looked up. Ajax looked down "The fact that you're asking what's one more?"

  He was silenced. The whole room was. Nothing but a lonely wind passed over them, a whistle that passed itself through every broken cornice and every broken window and every broken brick. Aleistar came forward, only feet away from Ajax.

  "Just do me in. Or leave me here." He said.

  "Either way you'll rot." He said. "Spending eternity in Hell, pretending your suffering can pay for your crimes. "

  Berok looked up at Ajax whose face shook with silent rage. Whose eyes, glowed a vibrant red.

  "That wouldn't be enough, would it, kid?" Ajax let go, not of anger, but of something much worse that had taken hold of him. Something the Hyena had tried passing onto him.

  "If I killed you, if I left you, you'd waste away. That would be God's justice." Ajax said. Berok shook, afraid.

  "But that would not be man's judgment." He said. "And you owe Horston much more than you owe God."

  "Just kill him." The Hyena blurted. His fangs showed.

  "The Priest, The Old Officer, The Little Girl." He counted with his fingers. "Mothers and fathers, lovers and patients. There are too many people you owe and that you might not pay back. But you're going to try, whether you like it or not. I'm bringing you back with me."

  "No, no, no." Aleistar took a few steps back. Ajax kicked his left leg inwards, so that he fell, clutching his knee. He screamed, in pain. And to the boy, that was a better sound.

  "You're going to bring back every corpse too. You and I, together. So that dead will be buried. I'm sure you can do that, you know a bit of magic, don't you?"

  "Don't take me back, please." Aleistar pleaded. "Leave me here."

  "You won't die just yet, not like your son or wife. No, you'll live on, regretting them. Repenting, as the Catholics say."

  Aleistar turned over. He rolled around, holding the broken bones sticking out of his knee.

  "To fall victim to an ideal. Oh, pity." The Hyena nodded left and right.

  "I listen to no man. I answer to no God, and I don't play well with filthy dogs." Ajax shouted back at the Hyena. It almost made the creature smile.

  "And how do you expect to get out now?" He asked. "Or to take those bodies back as you seem so obsessed about."

  "With this."

  He pointed to the cup on the floor somewhere near Darr.

  "That cup worked half as effectively only because of the nature of its victims. Human souls produce better results, we're not on earth anymore, boy."

  "How much blood?" Ajax quickly added. "How many demons would I have to kill to even make up for the equivalent of one, human soul?"

  "Hmm, that's hard to quantify. It'd be a great number and an even greater effort though."

  "How many demons did you see outside, those that showed up to this carnival freak show?"

  The Hyena smiled.

  "Enough."

  "And I wonder," Ajax looked down at the moaning Aleistar. "How much would I need to hurt you for you to do what I want?"

  Aleistar looked up at the large red eyes. His face losing color.

  He tried to stand and found himself limping away from Ajax.

  Ajax sighed, picked up Astrix's helmet and threw it Aleistar. He fell. Flat to the floor, and slept there, unconscious.

  "Deja vu, fucker," Ajax said.

  "Are you sure you want to do this? You could just make things easier by killing him." His tongue stuck out. He faced Berok. "Or the boy."

  "I've already decided on it. I'm not changing my mind." Ajax said. "And after we're done, we're going to have a long talk, you and I."

  The Hyena landed flat on the floor.

  "Well, most things didn't go as I wanted them to. But there's some fun in that too. At least you did kill the poor mad boy." He looked at the corpse still bleeding on the floor. The hole in his chest, budding and sprawling out like a spring rose. "And what a good kill it was. A tiring one, I'm sure. And if that's the case, how do you expect to live, let alone fight-"

  The Hyena stopped. Even he seemed disgusted, or perhaps impressed, when Ajax took the heart of Astrix to his mouth and raised his mask and ate it sloppily, every sound and mastication more pronounced in the echo chamber of the church. The demons (the few who stuck around) watching, ran in full and wide strides outside. They looked shepherded, that large motley crew reduced to frightened instinct.

  The boy waited a bit until Ajax was done and watched him put down his mask on his red, covered chin.

  He picked up the cup and handed it to Ajax. Ajax put his open palm to him.

  "Take a drink and let go of it. That's all you need to do."

  "And you?"

  "Weren't you paying attention," Ajax said. "I still need to fight."

  Berok looked down at his feet. He put them close together and tried to straighten himself out.

  "Do you promise to stay alive?" He asked.

  "It's not a good quality to be too worried about other people. It'll turn you into a very nervous adult. Worry about yourself." Ajax said. "But yes, I will be alright."

  The demons, still running out the front door, blocked and stepped over each other.

  "Promise me." He stuck a pinky out.

  Ajax laughed.

  "Alright." He closed with his own finger.

  Ajax lifted the cup then. He put it to the boy's lips and tipped it over and waited. Berok swallowed, whatever it was that tasted bitter. He cringed as it went down to his stomach, and felt it swash around inside of him. A gross feeling, this feeling of nausea.

  Trepidation made him worry for a moment. He looked at Ajax, who grinned behind his mask. It was an unpracticed, unsociable, ugly smile. But it was authentic.

  And after a while his worry went away, when the darkness came to take him, when the last thing he saw was himself falling down, down to a black abyss, from a red ring of fire.

  And it felt good, in a way.

  Epilogue

  August 23rd, 2017

  The smaller corpses were the first to rise. They came in pairs, thirty-five in total, all mutilated and wrecked; gashes, bites, bludgeoned skin and torn muscle upon them.

  Berok saw them as he came up from that darkness, each passing body a blur in his peripheral. The water burned his eyes. His limbs were weary. His lungs painfully exhaling as he staved off a collapsing consciousness. He felt a fog come over his eyes and brain. It made everything blurry. His body felt light, weightless even and for a moment he felt the pull, a pullback down to a Hell that waited for him.

  And at last, with the last of his air escaping, at last, he broke the top.

  He shivered along the waters and drifted through the corpses, each one passing him by or rubbing on his skin.

  It made him scream out loud, to a boat off at the distance and the Fisherman standing on it, spitting water out of his mouth.

  "Help." The boy screamed. "Help me, please."

  The Fisherman raised his head up to the
edge of the walls and looked down at the child who swam towards him. He was afraid, for a moment, that the boy was just another body. But a constant flailing and desperation made him reassess. Just a boy, the fisherman thought.

  He looked for throw-ring in his boat, the hope shaped like a white circle, and tossed it at the boy. The boy, who grabbed it with his small, scarred hands.

  He came onto the boat, struggling. The cold shaking off of him. A fresh blanket came over him, it stuck to his skin. He looked away from the bodies, down to the pink water spilling through the boat boards. His body closed off, shoulders coming inward, face coming down to his knees.

  And in his ball, with the Fisherman standing shocked and worried at sharp end of his boat, he cried. Alone.

  The Fisherman gave him room to. He turned the boat around and away from the gruesome scene of corpses and drove. The engine sputtered two giant walls of pink, before they zoomed off into a roar.

  The boy cried as loud as he could, as loud as he wanted, for the engine overwhelmed everything.

  It was thirty minutes before the police arrived, who believed the call (and for a very brief moment, the scene itself) a prank.

  A volcano of dead people. The Fisherman had yelled into the telephone.

  Two police officers arrived, green and young. They vomited at the sight of the corpses circling around the water surface and left a trail of their green and brown particles back, as they retreated to the cop car. Ten minutes later, three boats arrived and a legion of cop cars. A few moments after, the water surface became cracked and shook by the intense spinning of helicopter blades hovering over. News stations, mostly.

  They littered the lake with sounds so heavy they shook the boy.

  Berok was left inside a small shabby shack next to the lake, his face plain looking as the police officers went over him. Asking him questions such as; When did it happen? Where did it happen? What happened?

  Too long ago. In a place with too much evil. Things that should not be spoken.

  He stayed catatonic, not out of the trauma of the whole event, but out of a stubbornness towards the strangers.

  And they begun to rub their faces when they realized the boy would not talk. And one by one they left the small shack, disappointed and annoyed and growing more nervous as the bodies continued to rise above.

  An officer came around after some time, offering coffee and a call from his mother. He put the phone up to her, her pleading "It's been weeks, oh my god. Bart, is that you?" (Really, just two weeks? It seemed longer). Him saying nothing, just a solemn "Hello". Her saying, "she thought he was dead". Him thinking, a part of him was.

  The voice said, at last, in between joyous tears, "Is that really you Bart? It doesn't sound like you? Oh, please tell me, it's you."

  He looked at the phone receiver and his arms and the small cuts and bruises decorating him like military accolades.

  "Yeah, mom. It's me." His voice, calm and collected and worn and tired.

  He put the phone away after his mother suggested her to pick him up. Then he looked outside to the police officers who circled the building, suspiciously, muttering the words, "It's that dead cop's kid."

  They annoyed him more than the beeping of buttons and the dead static noise from the radios amongst the shack.

  He stood up and away from all the officers and all the sound around him. They didn't seem to mind, some even preferred it.

  He went out, observing the newest fleet of cop cars, they must have gone through four different groups of police officers. A whole rotation. Most of them couldn't tolerate the image or the smell and most of them ran away crying or vomiting.

  Berok came to the dark waters, standing on a boarded walkway. The creaks and whining loud below him. His mother would be here soon, the day was coming to an end and his reflection was molded behind the color of the dying sun; a hazy red.

  He took a deep breath. It was over, he knew it. And he exhaled easy.

  Behind him, an officer approached, in the midst of his meditative state. A seasoned man whose white beard hid a sympathetic frown.

  He walked up gently, waited a bit for the boy to pay attention and knelt down to him when did.

  "Did anyone else survive?" The officer asked.

  Berok looked down at the water, his hair still wet and weighty. He looked onto that bleak surface, at the center of the heart of darkness where the red sun glared its reflection across the waterfront.

  "Yeah," Berok said. "Yeah, I think so."

  "Can you tell me who?"

  "No, not really."

  "Alright." The officer pulled down his hat to nod. "We'll keep searching then."

  Of course, they wouldn't find them. But he was confident, as he stared into that dark abyss, with a long-lasting grin stuck on his face. Confident of what? An idea, a small feeling, one that would help him through the days and weeks and months and years to come, an idea, somewhere in the crevices and annals of his mind that would sate his tears and sighs and silent trauma, an idea that in this giant dark lake there lived a light.

  And maybe, just maybe, it wasn't so dark after all.