“I don’t know.” Julian’s balls hurt so badly he couldn’t think.
“What states?”
“Maybe Alabama? Arkansas? Mississippi?”
“Good boy, those are some of them. Which states had the most poor? Which states had the most homicides? Which states had the most abortions? Which states had the lowest standard of living?”
Intuitively, he knew the answers.
No!
“What states?”
“The same ones.” Julian answered.
“What countries are the most Christian?”
“I don’t know!”
“Which?”
“The ones in Africa, and South America?”
“Close again. Which are the worst off?”
No. It can’t be.
“Which ones?”
“The same ones,” Julian said.
“Did Christians in the United States of America go to jail at higher rates or lower rates than non-Christians?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which?” she demanded. “You know the answer.”
“Higher,” Julian hoped this was a lie, but it felt like truth.
“Did Christians in the United States commit more murders or less than non-Christians?”
“More.”
“Why, if that God is good, are all who follow him cursed? What is the name of the Devil?”
“Satan.”
“WHAT IS THE DEVIL’S REAL NAME?”
“Lucifer.”
“WHAT DOES LUCIFER MEAN?”
“Lightbringer.”
“SAY IT AGAIN!”
“Lightbringer!”
“What is the name of the God of Light?”
“Ahuramazda.”
“What is the name of the God of Darkness?”
“Ahriman.”
“What is Yahweh’s real name?”
“I don’t know,” Julian said, tears coming to his eyes, but he knew the answer.
She did not relent. “Why are there so many Christians in Hell, Julian?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why? All of us here were Christians, before Maab saved us. Everybody you knew in Harpsborough was a Christian, weren’t they?”
“No. That’s not true.” Julian shook his head, trying to find some way to deny the words she was saying.
“What is Yahweh’s real name?”
“No! You’re lying to me.”
“I can’t lie, you know that. Everything I tell you I believe to be true. What’s Yahweh’s real name? He claimed it was a sin even to say it, to pronounce it. He did his best to keep it secret, but now you know what it is . . . say it!”
Don’t make me say it. Don’t make me say it.
“What was it?”
Julian felt the pressure of her will bearing down upon him. He tried to believe that she was lying to him, that all of her talk about the forgeries and the lies of his fellow Christians, past and present, was a deception. Surely his own priests would not have hid this information from him. If they were to have done this, to have so misled so many people about so many things that were so important, they must have been evil. They must be considered liars. Not priests. Or if they were priests, then they were dark priests. Priests of . . .
“Say it!”
“No!”
“Say it now! What is Yahweh’s real name?”
“Ahriman.” Tears were running down Julian’s face. “Ahriman is Yahweh’s name.” Making the admission felt the same as receiving a blow. “I’ve been tricked by the Devil, the real Devil, by the God of Darkness. Ahuramazda is the God of Light. He is the Lightbringer.”
The priestess was exultant, caught in the throes of religious ecstasy. Her voice reached a fever and power that the more reserved Klein could never have hoped to match. “That’s why you’re here Julian. That’s why you’re in Hell. Not because you did something wrong, but because you put your heart and faith in Jesus Christ, the messiah of Ahriman, God of all that is evil and wrong. That’s why the countries which serve Jesus are the most stricken by poverty and crime. That’s why his priests are so full of lies and deceit. That’s why you’re here. You did make it to the afterlife you prayed for, it just turns out you were following the wrong God.”
Julian’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t know. How could I have known?”
“But it’s not over yet. This place is bad, but if you follow Maab, Mithras will save you. He’s being born of the rock even now. He’s going to come and lead all of our mighty hosts out of Hell and into the Land of Light where we belong. It is NOT too late, child. It is not too late. Repent! Give up your sins. Give them away. Say it with me now. Say it. Say ‘fuck Jesus Christ.’”
It all made so much sense. God was the devil. Julian wasn’t in Hell because he had been a bad person. He had been tricked. They had fooled him, taken him in. And of course it was a trick. His own people, his enslaved ancestors, must have known the truth so long ago. His people, ripped as they were from their native land by the white devils who were worshiping the God of darkness, being told that an all merciful and loving God would somehow condone slavery and order them to serve their masters. And isn’t that Bible the Bible one would expect it to be if it were written by an evil God? This God who ordered genocides and the stoning of children. Who would slay His own Son? Of course God was the Devil. They had all been tricked. All those hundreds of years, wasted.
He shouted his heart out. “Fuck Jesus Christ!”
But hadn’t Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. been Christian? Hadn’t he followed in the words of the Lord? Hadn’t he led his people to freedom by quoting from that book: “Let my people go!” No. He had to think this through logically. He couldn’t get blinded by emotion. She was going to cut off his dick. She could tell if he was lying. Even if he was lying to himself. He couldn’t afford to not be clear headed. No white Priest ever preached for his people’s freedom. And A. Phillip Randolph, he didn’t believe in any God. He was the one who led the march on Washington.
Of course they would let his people free after they had accepted the dark messiah.
And it was no wonder the Anti-Christ never came. Christ was the Anti-Christ. Mithras was the true savior, and he had already come. It was Christ who was the copycat. Christ who was the servant of the Devil, the servant of Ahriman.
“Again!” the Little Lady screeched, her voice in pitched ecstasy, “Deny evil. Say it again.
“Fuck Jesus Christ!” he shouted it so hard that he hurt his own balls, but he didn’t care anymore.
The priestess had her hands raised into the air. “Oh Mithras, take this child into your bosom. He has rejected Ahriman. He is coming home. Again! Again! Say it again!”
The words built up behind his throat. The burning in his balls and groin muscles disappeared. He could say it. He could deny Christ. Jesus had turned his back on him. He didn’t deserve to be in Hell. He’d died young. That time he’d shoplifted from the neighborhood Seven Eleven didn’t count. He was just a boy.
Tears welled up in his eyes as he tried to find his voice. He searched his memory for the devilish workings of the church. For the horrors they had committed upon his people. For all the HIV they had helped spread. The poverty. The genocides. The slavery. The crusades. If he could just feel those offences, he could deny Jesus again. He could shout those words again. He could. He knew he could.
He tried to think of these things, but he could not. Instead all he could think of was his mother’s white hat. The one with the pearls and the lace net which reached down around her hair. The one she always wore to church. Of his sisters as they fought while they got into the car. Of the dirt and gravel parking lot they would walk across. Of how the dust would settle on his polished shoes. Of the soft feel of the silky white gloves his mother wore while she held his hand and walked with him towards the loving house of God. Of the sweat that beaded up on her forehead in the humid summer morning.
As they’d approached, the people inside were already singing. His
family was late this time, the time he remembered best, and the music was pouring out, rising with the mirage of heat waves from the rocks of the parking lot and up, up, up, into the heavens.
All he could remember was its joy. All he could remember was the ecstasy of prayer as he raised his hands to the rafters, knowing that there, beyond that roof, was a Father that loved him in the way he deserved to be loved. Was a Father that was willing to give His life for him. A Father that would literally withstand torture and mutilation to make sure that he was okay. Who would make sure Julian would receive the love that was so badly missing in this world. The Father that reached down on that day, on that service he’d been late for, and sent waves of spiritual electricity down through Julian’s outstretched arms and into his beating heart.
All the wrongs would be righted. Every tear would be dried. Every twinge of pain would be soothed. God loved him that much. God so loved the world—that much.
He could smell the food they’d eat soon, cooking in the kitchen. The platters of mashed potatoes and barbeque pork and fried chicken. The green beans and collard greens. His sisters would soon be laughing, chasing each other around the white tables—his mother would watch them—and one time she was crying as she did so.
But why was she crying? He’d tried to help her. To offer her a tissue.
No, honey. Not those kind of tears. It’s the good kind. The thankful kind. The kind that come from God.
No.
He wouldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t deny Christ again.
The Little Lady raised her sharp stone in a lightning quick motion that sent her blonde hair swirling about her. He could see a drop of liquid coming down from the bladed edge of the rock. It must be that liquid which would ensure that the permanence of his mutilation. His testicles tried to pull in again, struggling uselessly, weak as they were, against the ties that bound them. He looked down at the pathetic excuse for a shriveled dick that lay there, so vulnerable, in the depression of the stone.
“Again!” she shouted, her voice full of lust.
Jesus wouldn’t want to hurt him. Jesus wouldn’t want him to go through this.
“Fuck,” Julian sputtered the word, and the rock paused in the air. He felt his soul break. “Fuck Jesus Christ!”
The priestess collapsed, sated, back into her seat. The rock fell from her hands. She wiped sweat from her flushed forehead.
The door opened and the Carrion soldiers came in. They unbound him, first the shackles at his ankles and then the string about his cock. He curled up into a ball, his ripped groin muscles sending waves of agony into his brain. He felt a hollow ache where his manhood still remained.
They dragged him back to his cell and left him there, all spit and snot and tears, lying on the cold stone.
That’s why. That’s why He sent me here. He died for me. He faced the cross. And I wouldn’t do any of that back for him.
Sobs, so loud he feared they would call back his captors, escaped from him, but he could not keep them quiet. He couldn’t stem the tide. It was too much.
I did the right thing. I did. I did.
He kept lying to himself as he clutched protectively at the wounded little lump of flesh between his legs.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry Jesus. I’m so sorry. Take me back.”
But the joy inside of him had died. He writhed on the floor, pounding his head into the stone.
Julian had never been so damned.
This is the last time. I won’t come here again. I promise.
Ellen knew she was lying to herself, but the lie eased her guilt a bit. Her fingers seemed so white against the stone. It had been a long time since her skin had seen the sun. She wondered idly if, maybe, in one of the other Hells that her soul could go to, there might be another sun.
The stones lain by Rick and the people of Harpsborough seemed so much less ordered than the ones lain by the Devil. Rick’s bricks were not all exactly the same, and there were scattered chips in them. Hell’s natural wall was so much more symmetrical. So much more perfect. She closed her eyes and let her senses dim. There was a thrumming in the stone, matching her heartbeat. She imagined her soul leaving her body, racing through the rock, seeking out Arturus.
Rick’s care was the best that could be hoped for. She could wish for no more from that man. This was a life worth living . . . or it would have been, were Turi here.
Ye swore, ye swore.
Behind the thrumming, though, she began to think she could hear something. Something so far away and faint that she wasn’t even sure she was really hearing it. It was as if someone was singing to her. She shook her head and tried to listen, but there was nothing. Nothing at all.
Her thoughts slowed and sobered.
I can’t keep coming here. I have to move on.
She heard the crunch of a footfall in the detritus Rick and the Harpsborough hunters had left behind. Her hand immediately jumped to her gun. The motion brought a smile to her face. Galen would have been proud of her.
“I’m sorry, Rick,” she said aloud, her voice echoing down the corridor. “I just hope, sometimes. I imagine that I’ll hear their voices and . . .”
The footsteps continued, but Rick did not answer. She spun around.
Coming down the long corridor was a corpse. She started, and her finger clamped down on the trigger.
Her safety was on.
She flipped it off and leveled her muzzle at the corpse. She waited for it to get close so that she would not waste a bullet. It was moving particularly slowly.
The corpse continued forward, step after step. Blistering pustules of rot were sprinkled on the right side of its face. Dried, grey, peeling skin covered its throat and peeked out from behind the holes in its shirt. Its eyes were milky as if covered by cataracts.
This was a person, once.
“I wish you could hear me,” she said, surprised at how strong her voice sounded. “I wish that your body could tell your soul, wherever it might be, what I’m saying. If you can hear me, if you can hear me at all, and you are in the Hell after this one, will you do something for me?”
The smell of it hit her hard, and she felt bile rise in the back of her throat. She did her best to ignore it.
“Can you deliver a message for me?”
Another step, and another.
“If you find someone named Turi, in that Hell of yours, tell him not to die again. Tell him to wait for me. Tell him that someday I’ll find him, and that I love him, and that we’ll be damned together. Like we were meant to be.”
Step. Step.
She gritted her teeth.
“Sorry,” she told the corpse.
The thing tripped and fell. Slowly, it pulled itself to its knees and raised both of its hands. “Please,” it begged, “save me.”
Ellen’s breath left her in a rush. Her gun fell from her hand, clattering on the stones.
“Please,” the thing repeated.
Dumbly, she nodded.
Rick stared at the corpse from across the table. He did not look happy. The corpse twitched suddenly, arms jerking. It hit the table, causing the woodstone to tilt off of its supporting blocks. Then the corpse stopped moving altogether.
Ellen felt guilty about the mess it was making.
Rick didn’t react to the corpse’s movements at all. He had a hard look in his eye that Ellen didn’t like. It reminded her of Galen.
Rick addressed the corpse. “You’re still hallucinating, aren’t you?”
It nodded.
Rick put his hand on Ellen’s shoulder. “We need to restrain him for as long as the hallucinations last. Go into the forge room and get some rope.”
She ran, feet crunching on gravel, and grabbed the rope. She returned as quickly as she could, panting slightly.
Rick still hadn’t moved. “How long since you last had corpsedust?”
It tried to answer. Its mouth opened. Ellen could see that its tongue was rotten inside its mouth. Parts of the mouth were p
ink, though. She looked away for a second to keep from vomiting.
“Two . . .” was all that it managed to say.
“You told me corpses weren’t people,” Ellen accused.
“They’re not,” Rick said. “He’s a corpse eater, not a corpse. Corpsedust gives hallucinations. It also causes you to rot, from the inside out. Then you do become a corpse. This man’s right on the edge.”
Rick stood up and took the rope from her. He began to tie up the corpse eater, taking no pains to make the act a gentle one.
“He could die,” Rick said, pausing to cinch a knot. “Or he could recover.”
“What can we do to help him?” Ellen asked.
“We,” Rick said firmly, “are going to do nothing. If Harpsborough wants to nurse him back to health, then so be it.”
“But they won’t want to!” Ellen said. “They don’t have any food there. They’ll just let him die. We have to help him.”
Rick shook his head. “They have good reason.”
“What reason?”
“He has friends,” Rick finished the knots and then lowered his head to the level of the corpse eater, staring into his eyes. “Don’t you?”
He nodded.
“And those friends killed some people, didn’t they.”
There was pause, and then, to Ellen’s horror, another nod.
The stone skulls returned to harry Arturus’ peripheral vision. He tried to cock his head to one side to keep their dim shapes in better view—hoping that he could see clearly that they were only stones. At first it worked, but as they traveled farther, the light grew dimmer, and the task became impossible.
It was as if Hell was watching him through those empty eye sockets.
How long will we go on pretending that we can live? How long until we all admit aloud that we’re going to die?
Galen stopped suddenly.
Arturus’ hand shot down into his pocket and he drew his razor. It was such a pitiful defense. The other hunters froze around him. Johnny was so scared he was shaking.
Arturus was unsure as to what his father was worried about. Even the echoes of the dyitzu claws had faded away. Perhaps they’d been detected, and the dyitzu were just stalking them quietly. Arturus tried to empty his mind, and he closed his eyes—using again the trick he’d learned in the river. The ambient sounds of the other hunters filled the room. He tried to gauge the distance between himself and each of them. But beyond the hunters, he could hear nothing.
Knight of Gehenna (Hellsong Book 2) Page 9
