The Demon of Montreal

by A. Michael Schwarz

  Some faculty truer than retina and nerve cells viewed the universe now. He saw not walls and floors and ceilings, but the etchings of a million tiny bits all combined to make the whole. He saw not darkness and shadow, but the full spectrum of light and the essence of all color. He saw not flame, but the trillions of energized particles that burned within.

  Seeing it, he had mastery over it. Seeing the true form, not the illusion his human brain had favored, he could change it, create it. Destroy it.

  Merlin! he thought. Merlin, I understand the illusion now. I understand the lessons!

  He stepped forward. The door of his cell radiated heat, he could see it thermally. Heat was not the enemy now. Heat could no longer harm. The metal hinges groaned and split their middles as the cell door burst from its casing and crashed against the opposite wall.

  He’d willed it with the tricks taught to him by the old man. Tricks, nay…magic, true magic that was somehow heightened and enhanced through this new corporeal visage, neither dead nor alive, neither whole nor lame.

  A thing, he thought, I’m a thing on the verge of everything. A thing in the middle of worlds.

  His astonished eyes watched as the darkness took shape about him, as if it were a living entity, palpable sentient. The shadow knitted together a nocturnal weave and clothed him in a new skin made from the absence of things. From his shoulders, a cloak draped low, made also from that braid of night. He held up a hand amidst the cloud of thickening darkness and could see it clear as daylight.

  He stepped out into the hallway of doors. Something beckoned him, something in the filth and darkness wanted him, though he could not discern the source. He walked to it, a craving to find it fomenting inside him.

  He walked the burning halls in search of the one who beckoned him, sucking in flame and heat as he passed, quelling the conflagration wherever he could. He walked without hurry. Everything, every event had its own time.

  There were only purposes to be fulfilled now. His purposes.

  The Summoner called.

  He moved through the facility much like a tourist in a museum. He stepped down a row of blackened stairs. Stone steps that wound and turned into an open void below, the boiler room where the fire had begun.

  A vast pit lay at the bottom of the asylum, an apt memorial for a place that had harbored such sorrows. All was scrap and ash, but for one thing that remained.

  A juicy lump rested amidst the fire-burned decay. An electromagnetic sheen glowed about its periphery. Soft and spongy, it possessed the mulberry coloration of oxygenated meat, but it was sturdy and whole and fresh enough. He knelt down to it, took it in his hand. He felt the pulse of life still coursing through it.

  He knew at once, the living heart of Merlin.

  * * * *

  He walked out of the debris to the twilit courtyard where a woman waited.

  The Summoner. She sat on a blackened stone bench, soot about her face, clinging like lumps of carbonized toffee to the strands of hair that was not sheered.

  He felt her angst and trauma as he’d once felt an autumn breeze. Tears streaked her cheeks in muddy brooks, her body shook, but her eyes did not deviate from his being, her eyes did not look away from the darkness that walked.

  Her mouth fell open, words spilled out in a fount of self-deprecation: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! Please forgive me, monsieur!”

  The woman slipped off the bench and thudded to her knees. She was covered in a grimy gown stained from her own body, under a film of smoke.

  She clasped her hands together, prayers dancing from her trembling lips. She kneeled before him in the soot and decay.

  He did not judge her. He need not, for she had already judged herself and been found guilty of all charges. Her whispering tears begged for mercy. He knelt down, perceiving her more clearly than human senses dare. In the center of her, he saw the malignant cancer of her soul, the tarnished sum of misdeeds.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry…” she groveled.

  “Look at me,” he said, “Madam Laroux, look at me.”

  She obeyed, her eyesight became his and he saw inside her: the treachery, the deceit, the knife she’d used to slit the whore’s throat, the mop to soak up the blood, and the ruse to frame it all on him. He saw the events unfold inside her mind as one watches the ticking of a clock. Moment by moment.

  Her jealousy that one in her employ could escape to a better life fueled the plot. Her mind’s eye projected the detainment of his human self, bound and shackled, and dragged screaming from the estate. He watched her pacify the investigator with his choice of female flesh for the night, and as many nights as he wished thereafter.

  Time was not always the great healer. Sometimes time was a greater judge and, with her treachery, came her own brand of madness. A madness that led her here, to be imprisoned for a crime she would never be tried for.

  “Sil’ vous plait, Monsieur, do it now!”

  He touched the tears that dripped from her eyes, her nose—tears that sizzled at the touch of what his body had become. He felt compassion for her, love even.

  “Come,” he whispered and raised her to her feet, dignified as a lady should be. Then opened his arms to her and embraced her living flesh, and crushed her.

  She did not cry out, did not scream, her last breath but a sigh of relief that said, ‘Thank you’.

  He slipped his arms under her body and carried her out of the wreckage, away. City officials, firemen and a host of reporters gathered outside. Many carried patients from the rubble, both dead and alive. Some had become nothing more than living embers waiting for death. One freed inmate wandered about waving a newspaper proclaiming he’d discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Another, sitting on a pile of rubble, said it was about time that “Nun’s witch pit” burned to the ground and that “it’s been burning for years anyway.” Others untouched but bewildered and others still, jubilant.

  “We’re free! We’re free!”

  None saw the shadow between worlds walk amongst them. Not because the human eye was not designed to view such a visage, but because none even thought to look. None could conceive such a creature under God on this earth. He walked away, the carcass of Madame Laroux in his arms. The living, sloshing heart of Merlin gathered in the inner folds of his cloak bathed in blood, and the charred eyes of his former self.

  The time had come to prepare the world.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Abby stepped back from the demon. Her lower lip trembled. She touched the contours of his face. The coldness of his features bit into her flesh, but she did not withdraw. The images of his life receded like a cold, moonlit tide.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  He took her hand in his, the burn of his chill swept through her. She ached from his touch, yet delighted in it.

  “No,” he said. “No more sorrow.”

  Tears dripped. “But what you’ve endured,” she said. “The loneliness, the injustice.”

  “For the cause,” he returned. “All for the cause.”

  Abby shook her head. “What?”

  The images flooded out of him again, a swirling panorama of color and sounds, a movie strip of mind connecting with her soul and relaying another piece of personal history. Showing the newly-made demon hunched over a wooden desk selecting from a host of pointy-toothed files and curve-hinged calipers, a wilting slab of meat splayed out naked before him. The images coalesced, fast forwarded in time to that same putrefied hunk on the table only now it beat, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. Beating in the open air, no body to support it, no blood to feed it. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

  Beating? Or ticking? she wondered.

  The next deluge of pictures invaded her. The salvaged heart sloshed about in a metal bucket of coagulated blood, its beating stronger, thicker, louder. Blood spattered as miniature
geysers burst from its clenching chambers.

  The next sequence: slender brass rods grafted into the ever swelling muscle, connected to shapeless forms of living flesh. Something like a spine ladder extended below it, a flopping tail of bone and cartilage that had neither purpose nor function. The center of the crooked vertebrae supported a tiny toothy sphincter, opening and closing to a soft and pitiful mewling. It quivered and shook like some depraved infant taken with cardiogenic shock.

  There sat the demon, feeding glistening red lumps into its chomping, blood stained teeth, a soggy pile of bones beside him.

  “The tunnel beast,” she said. “You made it.”

  “Birthed it,” he said.

  “And fed it with—”

  “—the flesh of those about to disappear.”

  Abby’s mouth could not find words. The thought that she came so close to being monster mince-meat made her stomach turn.

  “But for what?”

  He did not answer.

  Abby grew impatient. “For what?” she demanded. “How many people have you killed this way?”

  Slowly the demon’s gaze met hers. Slowly, he shook his head. “I do it to save the world.”

  Abby laughed, couldn’t control a giggle on the edge of madness.

  His brow knitted. “I should never have told you. You could never understand. To you I am a monster, only a monster.” His countenance drifted downward. “Perhaps you are right.”

  “How can doing that save the world?” she asked, recovering.

  He stared into his own immaterial space and said simply, “I don’t know.”

  The statement held a finality that warranted neither mirth nor derision. Those three words told the sum of the demon’s existence.

  I don’t know.

  The words echoed off the confines of her soul. I don’t know.

  What terror existed in those simple syllables, what uncontrolled forces lurked behind those innocent letters? She got it then, a sickening flood of comprehension. He’d never known. All these long and lonely years. His purpose, a goad to action, his task a predestined course to some unknown destination, and for what? Until when?

  She heard the clock ticking in the far room, a mechanical heartbeat.

  “You really don’t.” A statement of fact.

  He simply shook his head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I find them,” he said, eyes drifting, “or they find me. I am not sure which. Those marked for extinction. It can sometimes take a very long time to find those who teeter between this world and the next.”

  “Like you.”

  “I assist them to disappear,” he said. “Give them purpose where before they had none. When they call to me, only when they call to me.”

  Abby thought of her own hunt into the Christ Church Cathedral. How badly she had wanted to die, until she’d been faced with the actuality of it. Then she had wanted to live with all her will. Had she really called to him as he said?

  “You trace them with fortune cookies?” the question seemed absurd.

  He turned to her, recognition lost on him.

  She shook her head. “How you found me? Don’t you know?”

  “You beckoned, I came.”

  She squinted not sure whether to believe him, though she had no reason to disbelieve. “You really don’t know how you find people for your…cause?”

  He waited for too long an increment of time and said nearly with a shrug, “Magic tricks.”

  A mental image of Merlin appeared in her mind. Magic tricks. A way to explain unknown phenomenon, an excuse for not knowing.

  The logic of it escaped her. She shook her head and stared at the ground, a breathy laugh working its way past her lips. “You slay innocent people because of misplaced tricks?” The question was more to herself than to him. Its seemed cruelty beyond tolerance.

  “It was magic set in motion at some time past. There are so many things out of our control. Slay the innocent? Each is a judge of his own soul. I care nothing of innocence or guilt, only purpose. Everyone has a purpose, even in death.”

  She waited before responding. Let the silence fill the gulf. If she had any notion of getting back to her life, now was the time. Go further into this dark maze and perhaps lose yourself all together. Perhaps go so far that you can’t come back, but Abby Winston didn’t do anything half-assed, now did she?

  “Well,” she said at last. “I have an idea.” The tone of her voice took on an almost deviant appeal.

  Part Three

  Rectifying a Structural Flaw

  Chapter Seventeen

  Crime Bust or Crime Wave, You Decide.

  Montreal, Tuesday. Crime statistics are lowest in history for seemingly every group except one: criminals. A recent investigation has revealed that multiple offenders are subject to a bizarre form of serial disappearances, because no bodies have yet been found…

  Streets Safe for the Innocent. Montreal. You don’t have to search hard for the string of kidnappings rocking across Quebec’s infamous Sin City these days. It seems media channels all across North America and Europe have caught at least some of the details.

  Evidence is mounting that a criminal record seems to be at least one prerequisite for the alleged victims…

  Kidnapping or Overdue Justice? Montreal. October 26. They’re calling it a blessing in disguise, instances of no less than thirteen adult disappearances all in the last month alone. But the disappearing act seems targeted at only one demographic: multiple offenders.

  Authorities refused Tuesday to confirm these allegations and have simply reaffirmed their original statement that they are doing all within their power to apprehend the nameless villain who, on the streets, they’re calling The Demon of Montreal.

  Morieu put the papers down, stacked them neatly on the edge of his coffee table. He tapped his cigarette on a rim of white porcelain. He needed a refill in his cup and another smoke. He stubbed out the first and lit a fresh one.

  He licked his lips.

  It was out of hand. A simple statement that required not such a simple solution. The news had been growing every day for weeks, but now hit critical mass. Something had to be done. Vigilance was heroic in legend and storybooks, but oh so misplaced in the real world.

  Demon of Montreal indeed. He sneered. No monsieur, the time of rogue justice is long dead. Those streets out there, they belonged to Morieu, not some fool with a poetic notion of purity.

  Morieu didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  Where to start? The clues are…everywhere. Morieu valued his method. Never once had his procedure failed him. Oh yes, he’d appointed a team already—the supposed best of the best. He waived a hand over the papers and exhaled a tope cloud of smoke. Fools, the lot of them. What did he have but a fist full of media headlines and jeopardized funding? The best of the best? He thought not. Better suited for the unemployment line or dreaming up jingles for the neighborhood market.

  Morieu poured another cup. Steam drifted under his nose in the morning sunlight and mingled with the curling smoke of his cigarette.

  Attack quick, save the questions for after the executions. The quote never failed to focus his attentions. It had been a long time since he’d taken an investigation into his own hands, but he hadn’t forgotten the click of logic, the sense of truth, the smell of blood.

  Oh no, his procedure never failed. He’d unmask this demon and anyone who helped him, and only when the executions were done would he ask the questions.

  * * * *

  Abby heaved on the rope. Could feel it digging into her shoulder. Muscle fibers strained to their limit. Deadweight. The word took on a whole new meaning.

  Below Montreal, in the dank tunnels, the scathing October winds could not blow, nor could the temperature sink so low
as it did on the surface. Abby was thankful for that. She had endured enough winters to toughen her up, anyone growing up in the province had, of course, but any respite from it, no matter the length, was welcomed.

  She stopped and, resting her hands on her hips, caught her breath. The body didn’t smell, yet. If she’d waited another day to ‘take out the trash’ it would’ve. She’d done that once and only once before. Then she’d learned the lesson: don’t wait.

  The demon didn’t mind particularly. Stimuli didn’t affect his senses the same way. He would have done the deed, dragged the body down, if she had asked, but she earned her keep in any way she could, even if it meant hauling the dead.

  There was another reason too. Perhaps the dominant one. The deed had the effect of redefining reality. Like staring into a Dali landscape of melted clocks or turning the next page in the horror novel. It assuaged her human reaction to things, kept her mind fascinated, lest she think too much about the deed itself.

  And go mad.

  She wanted a cigarette, but knew better than to light up now. She would need all the oxygen she could get in the next minutes. When I’m done, she thought. I’ll smoke a whole pack.

  She hauled on the rope, making painfully slow progress, until she reached the end of the corridor, where a wall of curled muscle flinched and twitched. To her continued astonishment the monster in the tunnel did not stink. Tethered together in the most obtuse construction, grotesque beyond reason, the monster smelled almost perfumed. Organic. Like flowers or a newborn baby…

  The thought revolted her.

  The creature twitched at her careful approach. She had not gotten used to this next part. She doubted if anyone ever could. She hauled the limp body of Jackson Lepeliur, Esquire, petty thief and two-time murderer.

  The creature’s arms unfolded, its knees parted to, thankfully, a genderless sex. No need for reproduction eh, big fella? Its enormous and mouth-deficient head turned its many-eyed gaze upon her. She swallowed. Surely, she was but a mite to the giant. Surely she, standing down below, looked herself an enticing morsel!