Demonworld

by Kyle B. Stiff

  That is why to this very day in the Valley of Ebon people say, “Mordecai is a stand up man, for his ways are right with the Lord of hosts.”

  ***

  Marlon stared into the eyes of the monkey. The creature was like a little man covered in blazing red tufts of fur. It returned the stare, eyes fixed and body rigid.

  “I don’t trust it,” said Iduna.

  “He’s like a little robot,” said Marlon. “Except we can eat him. And we might have to, since Peter went and lost all our milk.”

  Peter grunted as Iduna tightened a strip of cloth around a gash on his knee that he’d earned while running from the ferry. “It was all I could do to not get killed,” said Peter. “As if you weren’t drinking it all up, anyway.”

  Marlon turned to him but Iduna said, “Gentlemen, please. Peter has a point. We’re all lucky to be alive.”

  “All of us?” said Marlon.

  Iduna winced, said, “I meant... all of us present.”

  The monkey rose and walked among them. Marlon shook his head, then laid down. Saul said, quietly, “Marlon, what about the others?”

  “What others?”

  “You know, Wodi and Jules.”

  Marlon sighed heavily, said, “Saul, man.” He paused, then laid his arm across his eyes to block out the light. Iduna and Peter laid down near him. Saul looked at Hermann. The doctor idly rolled in his hands a few strips of cloth that Iduna had cut to use as bandages. He had not helped in cleaning the wound, and even now he was distant and ignored Saul. He suddenly laid back against a patch of moss and closed his eyes. In a minute, all were still and silent. Saul looked at the monkey, who turned about in a slow circle, then resumed its rigid pose, legs angled wide. Saul moved away from the others. He looked back, saw that Marlon made no move to stop him, then continued on.

  He found a small glade and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. The sun had just begun its descent into the West and was still bright. He saw a patch of pink berries clinging to a creeper vine, picked one and licked it, then thought better of it and threw it away. He scratched a pattern into the dirt with his spear. He strolled back to the others and sighed loudly, waited, then sighed again. Seeing that everyone but the monkey was fast asleep, he turned and left them again.

  He was shocked to find a brown-robed girl sitting on the fallen trunk. He gasped and backed away, and the other did the same.

  They looked at one another in silence. The hooded girl slid from her seat and pressed her back to a tree. She gripped the trunk, and Saul saw that her hands were pale and delicate.

  “You’re… human!” he said.

  The girl slowly raised her hands and dropped her hood. Her features were rounded, soft. Her green eyes were full of mistrust, and she eyed the spear in Saul’s hands.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said. He lowered the spear and opened his palms to her. Her lips parted in a slight smile. “Can you understand me?” he said. She shook her head slowly.

  Saul sat on the fallen trunk and eyed her calmly. She waited, then sat down beside him. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m nothing to be scared of. Do you live here? Do you have friends here?”

  She looked at him, then looked down and smoothed the folds in her black robe. She repeated the movement a moment later.

  Saul started to rise, said, “You want to meet my friends?”

  The girl backed away, eyes wide. Saul thought of Marlon throwing a fit if he was woken prematurely, thought of Hermann eyeing her like a creep and saying nothing, thought of Peter probing her with questions – then pawing at her with his beefy, greasy hands. He said, “Okay, it’s okay, we’ll just sit here, then. Just you and me.”

  They sat for a while, then the girl produced a long red pipe which she packed with one large, unbroken black leaf. She held the pipe in her mouth, then parted her robe a little to remove a necklace that hung low between her breasts. The necklace held a rounded stone, which the girl rubbed vigorously. After a time she touched the stone to the pipe and inhaled deeply. She dropped the necklace to the forest floor, where it smoldered and died.

  “That’s a nice trick,” said Saul. The girl flashed a smile of crooked teeth and handed the pipe to her new friend.

  He sucked the pipe and the leaf hit him quickly. The world became a series of broken images, and his hundred aches melted into a warm butter that ran gently under his skin. The girl studied his hands in hers. He was content. She rose, and Saul followed her.

  ***

  Where they walked, time did not follow. The light dying in the treetops and the chirp of insects – both were one, and Saul felt them for the first time. He was hypnotized by the sway of the girl’s hips, the way her roundness pressed against the robe. There was fog and the light dimmed but occasionally the girl would turn and flash burning green eyes at him. A wink, a promise. They came to a river. It was sluggish and so wide that he could not see the far side through the mist. Stars revealed themselves overhead.

  Another robed figure stood nearby and the girl took Saul’s hand and led him onto a ferry that bobbed under their feet. They sat on a bench in the middle of the ferry. The robed ferryman joined them and stooped over to work a long paddle with his thin arms. Saul leaned over to see his face but the girl took his hand and placed it on her hip. She was plump and warm and Saul ignored the gurgling ferryman and forgot about the terrible battle that had already taken him over this same river once before.

  The night was dark as they made their long, slow journey to the distant shore. The girl moved Saul’s hand to her inner thigh and giggled against his neck and he looked up at the stars in the night sky. He remembered the great, ancient tree, he remembered the cave he had explored with Wodi, he remembered running through a field with his brother back home wearing cat masks and laughing when the stars were the same as tonight. All of it mingled in the smoke of burnt memory and he wondered what he would do with the girl once they reached her dwelling.

  They reached the shore and soon came to a grove lit by an ethereal pink light. Crystals grew from twisted trees and Saul heard a flute that the girl hummed along with. They came to the end of the forest and he saw the thick intestines of a leviathan rising from the earth and stretching far overhead. Blood ran up and down the living sculpture. The girl stepped into a great pool of blood and walked across the surface – then the scene changed and the intestines were replaced with towers and arches of crystal glowing like a grand cathedral of light.

  He saw the girl sitting on a squat crystal altar with her robe pulled down to her waist. The red light and shadow danced on her as if filtered through water. She laid one hand over her face. Aching to see her once more, he approached. Drawing near, he saw her breasts were peaked with scarred flesh. She was not a creature that could ever suckle life. Something in the air changed. The drug receded and fear crept to the surface. A shadow passed over Saul. Before he could turn, the girl removed her hand – Saul saw a distorted, bony brow, jutting cheekbones, a horrid overbite, and soulless black eyes. He gasped and stepped back, then something heavy slammed into his back and pressed him against the ground like a vice. Saul lifted his head and saw a shadow stretching away from him; his mind referenced something like bull’s horns, something like a twitching octopus, before his head was jerked and his face was pressed flat against the warm glass floor.

  Wild panic crashed through Saul’s mind, throwing open doorway after doorway that led to terrible illumination. Worst of all was the feeling that his people had betrayed him. How could the people of Haven go about their lives when there were monsters that ruled the world? How could they not churn out guns and planes and bombs and rush out in a frenzy and blast them all to smithereens? How could they take someone like him and rip him away from his carefree life and abandon him in this nightmare world? How could –

  Saul’s thoughts were interrupted by something like a hand forcing its way into his mind and sifting through its contents. He heard something like static from an open radio channel, then a pig’s nose sniffing a
nd snorting. Images were dragged from him. He saw his friends confronting the large demon with the glowing belly and the ghouls on the riverbank, and the other presence hissed in anger and flung the thoughts aside. He saw the monkey that followed his friends; the image froze and, for an instant, Saul saw a strange black eye open behind the monkey’s forehead. He saw the girl leading him here, her true face masked by a cloud of pheromones, and the other presence laughed at his pornographic fantasies. The name Bilatzailea flashed in his mind, then these thoughts were tossed aside as well. He saw Marlon and Wodi speak of their plan to escape the valley through the mines in the north, which brought a smile from the other presence.

  Saul felt the monstrous girl jerking his pants free behind him. Her strength was incredible. He felt frigid hands grasping at him, then his attention was pulled away when another image was torn from him: Haven.

  He saw the University, saw students gathering around uneven rows of gray-stone buildings and the flowers in the green pentangle at the beginning of spring. He saw the tall tower of the Senate, saw blue-robed and blue-painted men in masks blowing horns to announce the death of old senators and coronation of new senators. He saw the gray cobblestones of Gear Street, the shops and open vendor stalls, the smell of greasy carnival food and his favorite… rich cinnamon sweet peetle-pie! He saw posters hanging up in his childhood school, several propaganda pieces idolizing armored Guardians and urging the youth to join them when they were of age.

  The other presence in Saul’s mind gave the impression of its jaw hanging open. Overcome with shock, it sifted through the memories, one after another, horrified and entranced. After what seemed like hours, Saul felt the fingers and snouts work themselves into a frenzy, probing and digging for some ultimate answer. Where? Where was this awful, unspeakably evil hive of monstrous humans? Saul felt the memories of his capture and plane ride ripped from him, examined from all angles, then tossed back at him in frustration. It wasn’t enough! Over the sea to the north, possibly, most likely, maybe – but where?! Where, exactly, now!

  Saul shook his head and felt wet limbs tighten, constricting his air. Saul felt the blind other-presence communicate something to the un-woman thing grasping him from behind. She was to finish what she was doing. Saul felt that the other-presence wanted to swallow Saul’s very soul and, somehow, become one with him. Saul renewed his struggle but the hot glass floor and wet limbs of iron were without mercy. In horror Saul felt the thing that was not a girl take his member into her mouth from behind. He felt a tongue and sharp, uneven teeth. Something like fingers at the back of its throat. There was a sharp jerk, one instant of powerful suction, and then an awful blast of pain. Bilatzailea crawled backwards, swallowing and sorting Saul’s seed and a great deal of his flesh within herself.

  Then Saul felt something like oversized, blubbery lips attach to the back of his skull and neck. Little tongues crawled through his hair, probing and latching on. Saul felt the other-presence of Blindness promise that he would make him a god, make him immortal. Saul refused violently, but still the lord Blindness secured himself. There was one more blast of suction, the back of his head opened wide and his body danced senselessly, freed of its mind. He felt himself travelling through a long, black tunnel. He spiraled upward to a distant point of light. He heard a host of voices, ghoul and human and even animal, singing to him, screaming at him, welcoming him to his new home, his new body.

  ***

  Blindness secured the brain inside his holding sac. His inner fingers attached to the thing, securing and reading and merging this identity with all his others. He reacted violently. This brain was wholly unlike any other in the valley! Sharpened by education, not weighed down by a lifetime of fears, not streamlined by disciple, not limited by a broken ego… this brain was a prize beyond measure.

  Blindness coughed and flung the empty body aside, then shot an order at Bilatzailea. She saw a carefully ordered plan, a whirlwind of chaos and violence. In a flash she knew what Blindness wanted. She squatted on all fours and ran to the north, to brother Eragileak and the monster Serpens Rex.

  Chapter Nine

  The Sacrifice on the Hill

  Before Saul’s journey to the eastern end of the valley and his ascension into the mouth of Blindness, Wodi watched the ghouls from his perch while Jules crouched below.

  “Where you think them sons of bitches is goin’?” said Jules.

  “The only thing I can imagine,” said Wodi, “is that they know where the others are. How, I don’t know. But they’re out for blood.”

  Jules muttered something inaudible.

  “This might sound crazy,” said Wodi, “but I think we could follow those ghouls and find the others.”

  “That’s not crazy,” said Jules. “It’s downright stupid.”

  “No, listen,” Wodi said, leaning over the rock. He saw the old man look up from a shadowy niche. “If those things are on the trail of our friends, then we should help them, right?” A pause while the old man considered. “Don’t you think we’ll need the others to get out of here? We need Marlon in a fight, we need Hermann when we get hurt. Peter’s got our food. And if we make it all the way back, Iduna and Saul might be pretty useful when it comes to getting to the bottom of why we were put here in the first place.”

  Jules shook his head, said, “They’d kill us, too.”

  Wodi rose and tightened the leather cord that held the sword of the dogman pup sheathed and secure on his back. “We fought them before, when there were a lot more of them. And we can follow them because they’re making so much noise that we can hear them, but they won’t be able to hear us.”

  Wodi clambered down the high rock. Jules poked his head from the crevice, said, “They’ll find you, boy! Get back here!” Wodi ran down a stony slope that descended into green. Jules shouted behind him, “And what if they aren’t after the others? What if they’re out looking for more o’ their kind?”

  “Then at least starving to death will be the least of our worries!” said Wodi. He laughed and disappeared into the woods.

  “Damn you,” said Jules, scrambling from his hiding place. “Don’t leave me behind!”

  ***

  The four came to a hill of broken, twisted mounds that looked like mud giants huddled next to one another. The sky burned deeper and deeper orange. Their eyes followed high rock walls that jutted from the spine of the hill and cast long shadows on the black moss that padded the entire hill.

  “Let’s keep moving as long as there’s light,” said Marlon. He picked a path up the hill and continued on.

  “Maybe we should stay up here tonight,” said Peter. “You know, make our stand against that… that thing, if we have to.”

  “You didn’t see it good enough,” said Marlon. “We don’t want to tangle with it if we don’t have to.”

  Iduna pulled Hermann behind her as she walked up the steep hill. “Thank goodness for that monkey,” she said. “It saved our lives!”

  “I saved our lives,” said Marlon. “The monkey was an unwilling participant, believe me.”

  “Do you think that thing you saw was the demon that took Saul?” she asked.

  “Probably,” said Marlon. His fingers nervously played with the handle of his club and knife.

  They stopped at the top of the hill. Formerly obscured by the dying light, it was now clear that the ruined structures had been raised by human hands. The leaning walls of cut stone were riddled with bullet holes and a plague of black moss. Small stones marked dirt mounds, the beds where cold bones slept forever. Marlon’s eyes locked on a chipped yellow helmet that rested in the dirt.

  “Peter, look,” he said. He dug out the discolored helm and brushed it clean. The eye guard was shattered, the lining rotted out. “It’s an old model, but definitely one of ours.”

  Peter sighed, then nodded slowly. “Guardians were here.”

  “It’s from your day?” said Marlon.

  Peter nodded.

  “You know anything about this?” M
arlon said loudly.

  Peter shook his head quickly.

  “What the shit,” said Marlon. He threw the helmet into the dirt.

  “I mean,” said Peter, “there were times in the past when the Guardians… ranged out into the wasteland… but that’s all a matter of public record!”

  “I knew the Guardians were involved,” said Iduna. “There’s probably more out here, waiting to kill us.”

  “Uh, for one thing,” said Marlon, “those weren’t Guardians that sent us here, and for another thing, I think it’s pretty obvious that they made some kind of stand out here, a stand against demons.” Marlon stood, then said, “So shut your goddamn mouth already!”

  Hermann laughed and scratched his ear raw.

  Peter stepped forward, said, “Now, Marlon-”

  “No!” Marlon shouted. “I see you guys sending dirty looks when you think my back’s turned! You think I had something to do with this mess, but then when it comes down to a fight, who do you depend on to get you out alive?” Hermann began laughing. Marlon continued, said, “You think Peter’s gonna help you, Iduna? He can’t even hold onto a bag of food that’s already strapped to his back! And that psycho doctor over there? Why not point a finger at him, if you want to accuse someone of being worthless?”

  “You can’t bully us!” said Iduna. “Your brash attitude got Wodi and Jules killed! And you didn’t do much to that lizard monster that probably took Saul. We’re not children, Marlon, and we don’t recognize the authority of the badges and ribbons you have hanging up back home!”

  Marlon started forward. Iduna backed away, but her voice rose and she shouted, “You’re a trained brute! A thick-headed goon! You don’t have any authority in this place and we-”