by Alan Baxter
‘Thanks, Gabriel. I owe you one.’
‘Yes, you do. Mind your eyes.’
Isiah turned his back to the perfect angel. He heard Gabriel’s melodious voice, ‘Come on then, Hellspawn.’ The demon’s scream was horrible as it was plucked away. Isiah almost felt sorry for it. Almost. The intense light burned for a second, then darkness but for the soft orange flicker of the oil lamp. Isiah slumped to the floor, sitting cross legged, elbows on his knees, face in his palms. He took a few minutes, gathering himself, mentally getting his breath back.
He was as ready as he could be now. When he sent his astral self into Hell he could take any image he chose. The demon’s image was not hard to create. He also had a blueprint of the demon’s consciousness which he would lay over his own, disguising his mental and psychic presence. Satan himself would see through it, but the subterfuge should hold for anything else he might encounter. With a bit of luck it would anyway.
And now he knew more or less where to go as well. When the demon had referred to the ‘very Pit of Hell’ he had meant Satan’s own homeland in the Realm. The twisted, terrible place where the Devil himself actually lived. Not any of the sub-Realms, not any of the various Planes of Hell, or any of a million other options. Typical. Even so, the Pit of Hell would be a huge, incomprehensible dimension. Isiah had never been that deep before, but there was no choice.
He sighed deeply, then closed his eyes and began mentally constructing his disguise.
Carlos slewed the jeep in a wide slide out the front of a rickety wood and tin house, deep in the foliage of a remote, quiet area of the Guatemalan jungle. Orange light glowed through dirty windows, flooding dimly across a broken wooden porch. As Carlos killed the engine, silence dropping heavily around him like a shroud, a wedge of light spread across the rough road. A bulky silhouette broke the shaft of light, broad shoulders, large head. A bottle of clear liquid glinted as it was hefted in a wave of greeting. Carlos hopped from the jeep, wincing slightly at the pain lancing through his still tender leg, stiff from sitting so long. As the subtle buzz and susurration of the nightlife rose again he raised a hand in return. ‘Good to see you, Rat.’
‘It’s been too long, Carlos. Way too long.’
The two men clamped each other in a rough embrace on the porch. ‘Come in,’ Rat said, his large, muscled arm draped over Carlos’ shoulder, guiding him through the door. Inside large fans rattled noisily, dirty tablecloths flapping. It was a welcome relief after the humid heat of the night. The large main room was full of all kinds of furniture, in various states of decay, dirty crockery lay around, crushed beer cans littered the floor. The tidiest area of the room was a large table with various forms of electronic equipment, radios, radar, television, neatly arranged. Rat pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth, took a long drink. He sucked air through his teeth, lips pulled back, as he swallowed, handing the bottle to Carlos. ‘It’s fucking harsh stuff, my friend, but it eases the pain!’
Carlos laughed, taking a long swig himself. He winced as it burned down his throat, lava and nails. ‘You’re not joking! Is Esme around?’
Rat pulled a sour face. ‘No, man. She fucked off a couple of weeks ago. She’ll be back in time, the whore.’
‘So you been alone for a while, huh?’ He pushed some dirty clothes from a camp chair onto the floor, slumped down.
Rat sat on a wobbly stool opposite him. ‘Yeah. It’s not so bad really. You gonna stay long?’
Carlos shook his head. ‘Not too long, man, I got business to attend to. Tomorrow I’ll have to sort out some stuff, I need hardware.’
‘No problem, my friend. You know the score, whatever you need.’ He pointed to the bottle in Carlos’ hand. ‘Not planning on rising too early are you?’
Carlos grinned, swallowing another mouthful. ‘No. You got more of these?’ Handing the bottle back.
‘Of course. More than enough!’
‘Then tonight we drink. Tomorrow I’ll prepare some things and leave early the next day, okay?’
‘Sure. So what exactly do you need?’
Carlos leant back, thinking. ‘I’ll need a good rifle. Russian?’ Rat nodded, a slightly knowing smile twitching his lips. ‘Good. Plus a couple of handguns, semi’s, plenty of ammo, grenades, silencers for the pistols, a few more bits and pieces. Nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘The standard itinerary, huh? We can organise all that tomorrow.’ He slapped at a mosquito feasting on his bulky forearm, then took another swig from the bottle. Handing it back, ‘Where you gotta go?’
Carlos shrugged. ‘North, up nearer the border. Got a score to settle before re-establishing my position in the game.’ The fire water was beginning to warm his belly and numb the pain in his leg and head.
Rat raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘It won’t take you long to get back in the thick of things, Carlos.’
‘Of course.’
There was a few moments silence, but for the buzz of insects. Both men took turns on the bottle which was rapidly running low. Rat wandered over to the kitchen area, sink overloaded with dirty dishes, came back with a fresh bottle.
Carlos smirked as Rat came back. Rat looked at him questioningly. ‘What?’
Carlos laughed. ‘Look at this place, man! The dishes, the clothes. The place is a fucking pig sty! You said Esme been gone, how long? A couple of weeks?’
Rat laughed in spite of himself. ‘What can I say, man? I need a good woman to take care of the little things.’
‘One little thing in particular, choir boy!’
Rat swung at Carlos, missing. ‘Fuck you, iron man! What would you know anyway? Have you ever had a woman?’ Rat sat down and opened the second bottle, taking a swig then passing it over. Carlos looked at him, his gaze level, penetrating. After a moment Rat looked away. ‘All right, man, all right. You never talk about the personal stuff. Your choice.’
Carlos took a long draw from the bottle. The numbness was spreading to his senses now, affecting mind and body with the cotton wool security of inebriation. ‘Aw, Rat. You’re my brother, you know that.’
‘I know, I know. I shouldn’t ask you personal shit.’
Carlos handed back the bottle. ‘I’ve had women. I take what I want, when I want it. Often in the jungle, you come across these little settlements along the logging roads, by the rivers. There’s plenty of women there.’
Rat moved from the stool over to a small, cracked leather sofa. Pushing clothes and papers to one end he slumped down in the gap. He was nearer to Carlos now and more relaxed. The bottle passed between them again. ‘That’s different,’ he said quietly.
‘Different? How?’
‘Well, you know, man... rape is more like power than sex. I raped a girl before and it felt good, but it didn’t feel like making love. You ever really made love?’ Rat looked up sharply as the last words left his mouth, his eyes wide, wondering if maybe he had gone into territory too personal.
Carlos didn’t look at him, stared instead at the neck of the bottle in his hand. He was quiet for a few moments. Eventually, ‘I thought I loved a girl once. Maybe I did. When I was young, first in the game.’
‘You made a name for yourself real young, huh?’
Carlos nodded. ‘I was still a teenager when I led my first team. There was a girl in our camp. She was beautiful, man. You know, real beauty. Strong and cold, but beautiful. One time I took out a team and she came too. When I saw her kill it was amazing. Such efficiency. So ruthless.’ He barked out a short laugh. ‘A girl after my own heart, eh?’ He passed the bottle back, looking up from his reverie.
Rat smiled. ‘So you and her? Made for each other?’
‘I was bitter man. Even then. I’d had a life of pain and killing. It was all I knew, all I cared about. All I believed in. I had no intention of falling in love. I mean, seriously, that’s gonna cramp your style, right? Too many emotions. You let your emotions carry you away and you lose focus. You fuck too much, you get weak in the knees.’
Rat watched Ca
rlos quietly, sipping from the bottle. After a moment, Carlos staring silently at nothing, Rat passed him the bottle back. ‘So you never..?’
Carlos looked up sharply. ‘Yeah, we did. That’s how I learned what I just told you. I got emotional and lost focus. I fucked day and night and got weak. One day it nearly killed me, when our camp was raided. I was weak, off guard, lying there with her.’
‘What happened?’
‘We fought back and we were okay in the long run. But it was close. It was the closest I’d ever come to being killed by the enemy and I didn’t like that. I knew that there was no way that I could function if she was still a part of my life. I love the kill, Rat, you know that. If there’s one thing I can’t live without, it’s the kill. Being with her was compromising that.’
‘So what’d you do?’
Carlos looked up, pinning Rat with his dark green eyes over the top of the bottle. ‘What do you think? I killed her.’
Rat stared back silently for a moment, then dropped his eyes to the floor. ‘Fuck, man, that’s cold!’
‘There’s no greater glory. I’ve never found a killing rush quite like that since. That was something beyond, man. A lesser man would claim he got close to the divine at that moment.’
‘A lesser man? You don’t think it was a divine moment? Seems a little outside the realm of the holy, I guess!’
Carlos grunted. ‘There’s no divine, Rat. The greatest, clearest rush of all is when a man, mind and body, is in absolute synchronicity with the universe, right at the moment of the kill. When life and death meet in the space of a heartbeat.’
Rat sat silently, shook his head. After a moment he asked, ‘How did you kill her?’
‘You really don’t want to know, my friend. And I don’t want to tell you. You keep hold of your Esme if she ever comes back. If you can enjoy love, then make the most of it. For me it’s too rough, too confusing. Like clay mud in a clear stream. I gotta keep my stream clear, my focus to a pinpoint.’
‘You’re a driven man, my brother. Couldn’t you one day just settle down and chill out? Finally relax. Maybe then you could find love again.’
‘I don’t want it. I don’t want to settle down. I don’t want to stagnate. I live for the game, Rat. Without it, there’s nothing.’
‘One day the game might kill you, Carlos. I mean, you’re the best there is, everybody worth shit knows that. But one day, you know... maybe...?’
‘Can you imagine the mean-ass motherfucker that could take me out?’
Rat laughed. ‘Jesus, no! It’s beyond my imagination!’
‘This game isn’t killing me any time soon, Rat. I’m the god of what I do. Everybody else worships at my altar!’ He laughed, loud and cruel.
Rat laughed too, shaking his head in bemusement. He nodded at Carlos’ outstretched leg. ‘So what’s up there, man? Where you been?’
Carlos sneered, running a hand gently over his thigh. ‘Let me tell you about this idiot German I had to work with.’
7
As Isiah’s consciousness formed in the deepest planes of Hell the sensation of dread was like a heavy overcoat, pulling him down, constricting him. He immediately began constructing the visible form of the grotesque demon that even now was thrashing in the holy bonds of Gabriel’s making. The form felt bulky, cumbersome, as he crouched low, hiding. When the form was correct he immediately began weaving the copy of the demon’s persona over his own, within his own, masking his mental presence. Beings outside the normal, mortal sphere of existence could see another beings’ consciousness as clearly as they could see the physical form.
He worked quickly but so very carefully. He could not afford to get this wrong. The thought processes of the demon began to run with his own, its memories interweaving with his, disgusting him, scaring him, an eternity of horrifying suffering, millennia of torturing others, delighting in their pain, fear, hopelessness.
What he did was dangerous. He fought to maintain control, keep his own thoughts clear and alert, as the horrors of a demon’s mind threatened to rip the sanity from him. He let the demon’s twisted desires rise in his mind and then suppressed them with his own will power, his own identity. He cried out as he fought, refusing to let the demon’s consciousness overpower his own, demanding his own mental presence to contain the alien entity within his mind. Then he hid within that grotesque identity. When he was sure that the process was complete he solidified his presence, stood up slowly, opened his eyes, continuing to fight for control.
He looked out through replicas of the demon’s cruel eyes at a stark, barren landscape, stretching as far as he could see in every direction. Black, sharp rock, thrusting up through the ground like distorted, broken trees. The ground itself was cracked, uneven, slatelike, rent in places like gangrenous wounds oozing vile, poisonous pus and ichor. The sky above was purple and red, ragged black clouds scudding over him, twisting and contorting, hinting at a million terrifying images.
Constantly, at the very edges of his vision, the ground and sky, the air itself, twisted and convulsed in impossible, nauseating patterns, never still. Looking quickly left, right, it was impossible to see it properly, never moving out of his peripheral, yet always surging, waxy, liquid. In the distance the landscape slowly degraded into inconceivable shapes, more than three dimensional, less than enough to be understandable, complete.
Isiah staggered, stomach constricting, his mind refusing to comprehend what it saw, as it fought with the demon’s contamination on the inside and the impossible world without. He was in an extremely vulnerable position, dangerously close to losing his. Dangerously close to losing his grip on what he knew he was as his mind fought the sure knowledge that he was a demon, that he was more ancient than even he could truly perceive, that he was more evil than anything the human mind could consciously conceive. Gritting his teeth, wincing against the mental agony of maintaining himself, he began repeating in his mind like a mantra, I am Isiah, I am Isiah, quietly, beneath his disguise.
A hot, dry wind scoured the land, burning his throat and lungs as he sucked in a deep, trembling breath, trying to breathe evenly. The wind carried with it screams and wails of pain and horror, bloodcurdling, the sound of souls in eternal torment.
He stood there for a long time, trying to remain calm and focussed, get used to the surroundings, letting his stolen personality settle. Eventually he began to win the battle. After a while he slowly turned on the spot, his subconscious just managing to ignore the impossibilities, hanging onto what he could recognise, looking for something different. The view was the same all around, broken, twisting emptiness.
He chose a direction at random, began to walk uncertainly. It was important to simply keep moving, get used to where he was. If anything saw him right now he would be in trouble, stumbling, dizzy, obviously alien, like a fish out of water. Every so often the ground heaved under his slimy, taloned feet, making him stagger, yet as soon as he tried to right himself it seemed that the ground had not moved at all. He walked as if drunk, his eyes not able to focus properly at any distance.
He looked up again at the fiery, bleeding sky. High up, in amongst the hideous clouds, he could just pick out the silhouetted forms of grotesque creatures, flying swiftly, large black wings slicing the hot air. As he looked more closely, forcing his eyes to comprehend, he realised that they were all heading in vaguely the same direction. He looked that way, but it seemed to be the same as every other, twisting into impossible distortion before any sense could be made of it. Still, it was his best option. He flexed his swollen, corded shoulder muscles, unfurling the large, leathery wings of the demon he impersonated. This creature was so similar to the little minions that had been sent against him, yet so different. So much larger, more powerful, older. He was disgusted at the feel of the borrowed body, slick and slimy, bloated, twisted.
He pumped the wings, the action coming easily to the body designed for it, and leapt skyward. The black, broken, convulsing ground dropped away as he flapped up toward the
searing clouds. He made a point of remaining at a distance from any of the other horrifying creatures flapping and gliding across the sky. As he rose higher he benefited from a panoramic view of the Realm around him. The ground below was like a churning sea, never still. The clouds seemed to drag and snatch at him as he flew, trying to fold him up in a cloying embrace.
He could see, miles in the distance, a huge mountain of sharp, black rock, broken and cragged, shimmering like a gelatinous flame, rising up toward the bloody sky, thousands and thousands of feet high. Fires burned, dancing, flickering, in a myriad cracks and razored valleys. Dark, purple smoke oozed from the huge mountain, drifting up into the sky, mingling with the twisting clouds. It was a terrible image, reinforced by screams, clearer now, carried by the burning wind. It must be Lucifer’s palace, his citadel. Isiah flapped inexorably toward the imposing edifice, wondering where he would begin his search when he got there.
It took an unreasonably long time to reach the mountain, the distance not obeying the basic laws of space that even he was used to. As he got nearer he could hear screams rising up from the ground below. Thousands upon thousands of people, writhing on the black, churning ground, sliding over one another in an endless perverted orgy of pain and debauchery.
When he was finally within a few hundred yards of the base of the huge mountain, several hundred feet high, he paused, hovering in the hot air above the slithering, wailing masses, his leathery wings slapping like sails behind him. There were innumerable openings in the rockface before him, orange fire licking the broken surface. The sloping walls seemed to swell and breathe. The wails and screams were loud, echoing. They tore at his soul, forsaken, hopeless suffering. He did his best to ignore them. Leaning back in the air, he looked up toward the top of the mount. If this was Lucifer’s palace, it was likely that he sat at the top, lording over his hideous subjects. If that was the case, then it was also likely that Samuel was being held somewhere near there, within easy reach of Satan’s evil hands. Isiah tried to force his mind to work in this disorienting, panicking environment. Think, damn it, think!
