The Devil's Equinox

by John Everson

  He put his head through the arch.

  There was a black crib at the end of the small room. Candles guttered from every place you could think to look. They flickered and bathed the room in faintly moving shadows. Austin could see Ceili lying in the crib atop a black sheet. But before he could move farther into the room, a man in a black robe carrying a long staff with a curved blade set atop it stepped in front of him.

  “No one may pass until the Equinox is upon us,” the man said. “The child must not be disturbed.”

  “I just hoped I could see the baby before the festivities,” Austin said.

  “None shall pass!” the man said again.

  He didn’t have a pipe handy this time. And the guard had a very dangerous-looking staff. Austin needed a new plan.

  He nodded and backed away. “I’ll see you in the Sacristy,” he said. And began to walk away. He could feel the man’s eyes boring into his back. It took everything in him not to look back, but he kept his eyes straight ahead.

  Once he was out of sight of the room, he stopped and leaned back against the corridor wall. So, he’d found Ceili. Now what? He apparently had an hour to think of a way to get past the guard and get her out.

  He needed a weapon. And help.

  He needed Father Vernon. The priest had to be nearby, chained up again no doubt just as he had been when they’d first met. The plan clicked into place like a gear. He would find Father Vernon, who would help him find a way past the guard.

  There was suddenly a renewed fire of hope in his chest, and Austin began to walk hurriedly down the corridor. He stopped and opened every door, peering inside of each room and quickly backing out when he found either nobody…or groups of people performing decadent rituals that he did not wish to become part of. He had no idea where they had locked up the priest, but he had to find him. And fast, before they realized that Austin himself was loose again.

  In his mind he could picture a giant clock with its minute hand clicking steadily toward the toll of midnight. He could almost hear the seconds ticking by.

  When he’d exhausted all of the corridors of the level he was on, he found a narrow stairway that curled around and up.

  “I’m coming for you, Ceili,” he whispered to himself. “Just hang on a little longer. Daddy’s going to get you out of here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  He knew where he was almost as soon as he left the stairway. He’d been here before, with Regina. He recognized the painting of a coven holding hands in a circle around a burning fire. He knew the one that depicted a nude woman lying spread-eagle on an altar. Another woman, with an unfastened black cape and a knife tucked like a phallus between her legs knelt above her with her arms in the air. The blade of the knife curled upward to its tip – a deadly penis ready to slide inside the woman on her back. The kneeling woman appeared ready to fall forward to embrace the woman below her. It would be a deadly embrace for the girl beneath.

  Austin remembered the first time he’d seen that painting and how nonchalant Regina had reacted. “Underground art,” she had said. “People here like to push the envelope.”

  At the time, he’d thought it was kind of cool. Dark fantasy. But now he knew that for the people in this building, those paintings were depicting reality. Those things actually happened here. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

  He moved faster down the corridor. Despite now having a ‘costume’ that should protect his identity, he still didn’t want to be seen. And sooner or later, an alarm was going to go out when they discovered he was gone – or once they found the guy he’d left in the broom closet.

  Austin passed the hall to the front bar; as he did, he could hear the thumping bass of whatever the DJ was playing to draw people to the small dance floor. He was sure the room was crowded; it was prime time on a weekend night. And while everyone wouldn’t be clued in to the ceremony that was happening in the bowels of the club tonight, there were surely more people here because of that than usual. Certainly, the sounds of laughter and chatter were at a higher pitch than usual; the buzz of dozens of conversations rode the air above the music like a haze of smoke.

  He passed by the corridor quickly and remembered the rooms on his left and right just ahead. He’d seen people gathered in those places before. And he knew that just to the right he’d find the entryway to the Sacristy. But he didn’t want to go there just yet. Father Vernon wouldn’t be there. Most likely, he’d be chained up in the ‘prison’ area that Austin had found him in before. And that was down a side path at the end of the hall. He stepped quickly past the Sacristy, noting a loud buzz of voices from inside there as well. And then he came to the museum place. There were three nuns inside. They stood near the coffin at the front of the room. Austin hesitated, and then entered the room anyway. He couldn’t stay waiting in the hall outside, so he moved to the far end of the room and pretended to be studying one of the display cases with what looked to be the bones of an infant on black velvet inside. He could hear the women talking but could not quite understand what they were talking about.

  “…after the frileu the Mother will come out…”

  “…and the ninth Resurrection will bring us the gentrilex!”

  “Only if you are bad enough,” one interjected, and they all laughed.

  “Define bad enough,” another said.

  “Bad like this?” the other said, and Austin snuck a look over his shoulder to see one of the women bending forward to suckle the breast of her friend through the translucent habit.

  The woman pulled her close and gave out a loud moan before the third sister slapped the suckling woman on the ass.

  “Save it for later,” she said. “I want to get another drink.”

  A moment later, the trio filed out of the room and Austin grinned and began to walk to the back door into the chamber he knew lay beyond.

  He stepped through the doorway fully expecting to see the priest chained to the wall as he’d been the first time they’d met, but when he stepped inside, he found that the dark room held only empty chains.

  Damnit.

  He’d been so sure. He looked around the dark room and felt helpless. He didn’t know where to look next; he hadn’t thought of a backup plan.

  And now he felt the pressure of the clock ticking…the night was moving on and he was wasting time. He had to find Vernon and get Ceili out before the ceremony began. Austin threaded his way back through the display cases and out into the hall. There was a throng of people now in the main hall, and he turned right and followed a group that way. If he had to check every room of this place for the priest, he would.

  He followed two into a small side room where there was a bar and a myriad of red lights. The place glowed like hell. A woman mixed drinks, wearing nothing but a headdress that looked like butterfly wings and a set of chains that crisscrossed her torso and cinched through her crotch to hook somewhere across her back.

  The occupants were watching a stage show. There were two men on a small elevated platform. They were naked but armed. Each held a small leather whip. The straps were only a few inches long, but had silver hooks at their ends. The men had to get close to hurt each other…but if they could connect without taking a counter blow from their opponent, they could rake a nice gash across the other’s flesh.

  As he stopped to watch, he saw one with dark black hair and a pot belly slap hard at the other, aiming for the man’s midriff.

  He connected, and the hooks ripped across the man’s belly. One caught the skin of the other man’s penis and blood suddenly darkened the hair around his belly button and glistened across his wild pubic patch.

  The wounded man screamed in anger, but instead of moving away, he grabbed for the other and drew him into a bear hug. Austin thought it a weird move – hug another man while naked and bleeding? But then he saw the strategy. The proximity allowed him to slap his opponent down the ba
ck. The hooks of his whip caught his opponent – a silver-haired man with deep brown skin – in the ass. In seconds, there were rivers of blood flowing down the man’s back and ass, and the first wounded man released his embrace and jumped back.

  The crowd cheered, and some lifted their drinks in honor. Austin shook his head and started to back out of the room.

  “Hey friend, don’t leave now. We’re almost ready for the main event.”

  Austin looked at the man standing beside him. The guy was in one of the ubiquitous black priest outfits, only, since it was made in part of the same material as the nun’s habits, he could see that the man’s chest was crisscrossed in leather straps. There were three that led from a silver ring on his chest to connect with another circle ring that hooped around his bare cock and balls. Austin closed his eyes for a moment, trying to erase the image. He knew instinctively that this was not a guy he wanted to get to know better. Not his scene.

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” the man said.

  Austin shook his head. “Thanks, but I was just leaving.”

  At that moment, a hand grabbed him by the arm. “Nobody leaves now,” another man’s voice said. “It’s the time of the final act.”

  Austin looked to his left, and a large burly man with gray hair and silver skull earrings stood at his side, staring ahead to the stage.

  “I need to meet a friend,” Austin argued, but it was too late. Even as he said it, the large wooden door at the back of the room closed, and he heard a heavy iron lock snap into place.

  “What do you drink?” the leather strap man asked.

  “Beer,” Austin said. “IPAs usually.”

  “I think we can set you up,” the other man said, and flashed him a grin that made Austin’s cock shrivel. The man turned to the bare bartendress and a moment later handed Austin a pint. “Cheers,” he said, and clicked the rim of a martini glass filled with something clear and an olive against Austin’s pint.

  “Cheers,” Austin said and took a sip. The bitterness of the hops slid down his throat with a welcome jolt, as in the front at the stage, the men who had been wrestling now lay down on the floor.

  “It is the time of the becoming,” a voice called.

  At that, a man in a tall black bishop’s hat walked onto the stage. “In just a half an hour, in the Sacristy, we will celebrate the Devil’s Equinox. But here, in the next few minutes, we will witness the dark joining that will bring the Devil closer to our midst. The men are the beginning. The child is the end.”

  Austin considered the words. They seemed to omit the women, however, the men on the stage, in all honesty, did not seem to need a woman. Bloody and glistening with sweat, they were no longer trying to rip each other open. At least not with whips and barbs. The silver-haired one held the other down on the floor with his hands on the other’s wrists and threatened anal defilement as he straddled him with an obvious erection.

  Austin looked away. The two men who had kept him from leaving before now flanked him, and each of them pressed close. He was their meat sandwich and it was making him very uncomfortable. They clearly did not intend for him to leave and he didn’t want to make a scene…but he needed to go. The sound of the lock he’d heard on the doors behind them also led him to believe that leaving would be difficult at the moment. He guessed they were locked in for the current show. There were moans now coming from the small stage in the front of the room, and nearby a flurry of catcalls grew all around.

  “And the winner was…” a voice nearby called out.

  “Bartholomew!”

  The crowd cheered and the dark-haired man looked around with an angry scowl. “No way, I scored more than he did. Look at his back.”

  He pushed for the older man to turn around, but a half dozen men streamed onto the stage from the bar and grabbed at a series of chains with hooks that hung from the ceiling. Hands held the man’s legs and arms as the others grabbed at the chains and pulled them to bring the hooks into strategic positions. And then, one by one, they pressed the hooks to the loser’s flesh. He screamed out with each one, as barbs infiltrated the flesh of his palms, his calves, his ass and his back.

  The worst was when one long thin chain was brought around to his front, and a grinning blond man slid the barb beneath the thin skin of his penis and yanked it forward.

  “Raise him up,” a voice cried, and that voice was quickly followed by a chorus of men. “Raise him up!”

  And suddenly a team of men stood on each side of the hooked man and pulled on the chains. In seconds, his body floated up and off the ground, suspended by all of the hooks in his flesh. Austin had to close his eyes when he saw the skin stretching from each place where the hooks dug deep beneath the skin, especially the man’s penis, which was yanked to his left, his cock head stretched sideways. The man shrieked with the first pull, and then cried again with the second. But when he was three feet above the floor, he stopped crying, and the other man took a stance between his legs.

  “Let it begin,” a deep voice called, and with a thrust and a groan, it did.

  Austin took a deep swig of his pint, refusing to look forward. And after a few minutes, he realized that his ‘friends’ had become entranced by the foul acts performed on the stage to the hanging man. He felt a hand slip across his back and work its way down to cup his ass. And then another moved across his chest.

  Austin swiveled, pirouetting out of the embraces of the two men beside him.

  “I’m sorry, but no,” he said, and started walking toward the door.

  “You can’t leave,” the leather strap man insisted.

  “I can’t stay,” Austin insisted and walked to the door as behind him a horrible shriek came from the stage. A crowd of men cheered and then a shriek came again, this time with a heavy, guttural undertone.

  When he reached the door, a man wearing only chain mesh across his chest and waist blocked his path, but Austin wasn’t having it.

  “I have to leave, I’m sorry,” he insisted. “Let me go.” When the man stood fast, Austin pointed to the door lever. “I have to prepare for my part in the Devil’s Equinox ceremony. Let me go.”

  The man looked surprised, but then nodded and opened the door.

  Austin slipped into the hallway and took a deep breath of cool air. Then he gave out a sigh of relief and began to walk toward the end of the hall. He still needed to canvass the rooms and find Vernon, and the hour was growing late. He looked at his cell phone and the clock on the home screen read 11:33.

  He was running out of time.

  Chapter Thirty

  The torches flickered and crackled as he walked down the empty corridor. With each room that he poked his head into, his panic grew. He was going to have to turn back, and try to save Ceili himself, without help. But he knew that was going to be a losing proposition. There were too many of them. There was no way he was going to get the baby out of here alone.

  Austin stopped and took a deep breath. He could keep walking for the next hour and not find anything but empty rooms. This was an industrial complex; he could wander forever.

  He considered turning back, but then said to himself, One more room.

  And just after he did, he heard footsteps in the hall behind him. There was a room a few yards ahead and he moved toward it, turned the handle and ducked inside. He didn’t want to deal with another situation like he’d just escaped from.

  “So they set you free?” a voice asked from the dark.

  “Father Vernon!” Austin cried out. In the shadows, he could see the priest, stripped to the waist, chained to the wall.

  He hurried over and ran his hand up the chain, looking for the lock.

  “The key is over there,” the priest said, gesturing with one cuffed hand.

  Austin followed the priest’s direction and quickly located the key on the wall. In moments, he’d set Father Vernon free.

 
; The priest pulled up the back of his vestments and slipped his arms through the sleeves. Then he rubbed his wrists for a minute, shaking his head. “I’m getting too old to be chained up like this,” he complained.

  Austin laughed. “Have you had a lot of experience?”

  The priest smiled. “Some would say I’ve been in chains since I joined the priesthood. But I don’t look at it like that.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” Austin said, and then abruptly switched subjects. “The Devil’s Equinox ceremony is in just fifteen or twenty minutes…we need to get Ceili away from them before it begins.”

  “Whatever you need,” Father Vernon said, still rubbing his wrists. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “She was downstairs, before,” Austin said. “I was hoping we could get her from the room they had her in before they took her to the Sacristy. You could be a distraction while I grab her.”

  “Well…then we’d better go.”

  Austin nodded, and led the way out of the room. They turned left and started walking down the hall. The priest seemed to be limping slightly, hanging back.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Did they hurt you?”

  Father Vernon shook his head. “I’m just old and stiff,” he said. “Keep moving, I will keep up.”

  Austin began to walk faster, leading the way. They turned the corner, and ahead of them, he could see a stream of black-robed people filing into a doorway.

  The Sacristy. They were already gathering for the ritual.

  Austin put up his hand and they stopped, watching the men and women streaming through the doorway. There was actually a procession here – he could see a bishop’s hat down the line, and the staff with an upside-down cross on it not far away.

  “I think we’re too late,” Austin said.

  They stood and watched for a moment, since the people made the hallway impossible to pass anyway.

  And then the cross came into view, and Austin saw the blond nun behind it, long curls cascading out of the headdress of her false habit, her breasts bobbing obscenely beneath the black silk, a baby cradled in her arms.