The Altar

by James Arthur Anderson

  “Ok, Todd. You’ve got to help me. You know how Dad would count along with me when I practiced?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well you’ve got to do that now too.”

  “Ok.”

  “And one other thing. When the baby comes, I’m going to need you to help take her out.”

  “Mom, I can’t deliver a baby. Why can’t he do it?”

  “Todd, do you really want a demon delivering your little sister? You don’t want that, do you?”

  “But I don’t know what to do.”

  “Have faith. You will know what to do. Just do your best.”

  Her breathing started again, erratically this time too.

  “Slow down, Mom,” he said. “Just listen to me and follow along.”

  He breathed the way he’d seen his mother doing when she was practicing, and his dad had been helping. He had listened to these breathing lessons for the last three months until he literally knew them by heart. His Mom and Dad had practiced them in the next room, and he’d thought it was fun to listen in at first. After awhile, though, it had become boring. Todd had learned it better that either of his parents and had used it on himself late at night when he was having trouble sleeping. It was ironic that he was so good at this and his parents were the ones who took the lessons.

  His mother looked at him and forced a smile through her pain and he saw that she was watching him. Already her breathing was getting stronger.

  3

  Erik had never worked so hard in his life. His body couldn’t die here in this place, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t feel pain. He had Dovecrest scratched and dug at the sand around the pit for what seemed like hours. All they had to use were their bare hands. The sand scraped painfully and lodged under their nails until their fingers bled.

  “This is not any fun.” Erik said. “What I wouldn’t give for a shovel.”

  “I’d settle for a teaspoon,” the Indian replied.

  Still, they appeared to be making progress. The hole slowly filled in around them, allowing them to stand on the new sand as it fell in. Just a little more and Erik knew he would be able to stand on Dovecrest’s back and reach the edge of the pit. Then he could push in more sand from the top with his feet until he could reach in and pull his friend out.

  “What time do you think it is?” Erik asked.

  “I don’t think this place has time. Though if we were still back home I’d guess it would be the middle of the night.”

  “My watch stopped working when we got here.”

  “There’d be no way to keep time here anyway. There’s no sun. No moon or stars either.”

  Time did seem to stand still here, he thought. It was never light or dark-everything was simply black and illuminated by an unchanging reddish glow. He wondered if that was how the mythology of the black and red colors of evil came about.

  “No days of the week here,” Erik said. “No Mondays. That’s probably the only good thing about this place.”

  “Definitely the only thing. If I never see another grain of sand in my life it will be too soon.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to the beach again.”

  They continued the small talk for some time, mostly to keep their minds off their misery.

  “So,” Erik asked, “How do-or did-your people view heaven and hell?”

  Dovecrest laughed. “That’s a very complicated question. I don’t know if I have a simple answer.”

  “There is no simple answer to anything, is there? That’s why God made the world so complex. So we’d have things to worry about.”

  “In that respect, the world of my people probably is simpler than your world. My people-and most of the tribes of this land-never thought of themselves as powerful people, as conquerors. My people were simple. They lived off the land and prayed very simple prayers. For a good harvest. For a mild winter. For plentiful shell fishing. For health and fertility. We consider ourselves to be humble, pitiful people whose lives depend upon the creator’s mercy and bounty.”

  “That sounds like a very Christian way of life.”

  “That depends. I know of your history. Your crusaders thought of themselves as Christians.”

  “Good point. But Christ preached humility. The meek shall inherit the earth.”

  “Yes. And so they shall.”

  “So what is your concept of hell?”

  “Since my people are God’s people, they would not go to hell.”

  “Yet you believe in demons.”

  “Yes, demons spawned by the evil one.” Dovecrest laughed. “Do you know: the greatest demon that the tribes spoke of most was the white man. The ‘white devil’.”

  “I guess I can understand that.”

  “No, you probably can’t understand that. But I appreciate the attempt.”

  The Indian was right. He had no idea what it must have been like. He felt suddenly ashamed of himself and of his race. Even if he hadn’t been personally involved, he was ashamed of what had happened just as a fellow member of the human race.

  They were getting very close now. As they dug and filled in the hole, the outer rim widened, making the angle less steep. Erik figured that they’d soon be able to crawl their way out.

  “Looks like we’re almost free of this pit,” he said. “What’s our plan once we get out?”

  Dovecrest stopped digging and looked at him directly. “My friend,” he said. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  4

  The demon sat back on its haunches and watched, fascinated by this whole birthing process. The ritual it had begun had been interrupted by the two intruders, but that was no matter. It could finish the ritual later, as soon as the baby was born. It wouldn’t work to complete it until the victim was ready, so it would be better to wait. This baby didn’t look like it was in any great hurry to be born. Actually, given the details of where it was about to begin its life, the decision to come late was a rather good one for the baby’s sake.

  The baby would sure have a quick entry and exit from the world. It would take its innocence immediately, before it had the chance to become corrupted by earthly sin. Taking a blameless, innocent soul was always a victory, and he felt about to be victorious now. The blood of an innocent was sure to sharpen any spell and take it to the limits. The trouble was, there weren’t many innocents left in the world. His colleagues on the sin team had been victims of their own success. Now the pure material, needed for only the most powerful spells, was very scarce, almost extinct.

  But this one would do very nicely. It might even bring her up to the altar stone itself and kill her. It could do it right here, of course, but something about returning to the original scene just seemed so damned poetic.

  He wasn’t an expert on human births by any means, but this one seemed to be going particularly slow. And he was getting impatient. He could remove the child forcibly-but that would end the innocence. But if something was wrong and the baby killed her mother, that would destroy the innocence as well. He’d just have to be patient and watch very closely, he thought. It wouldn’t be unlike the mother to try to trick him again. Of course she was probably in too much pain and under too much stress to even think of a plan, let alone use it. But still, something told him not to ever trust this woman.

  He watched as the woman screamed in pain and tried to control her agony with some sort of regular breathing method, which her son was coaxing her through. It was almost comical. He wondered why these people feared hell at all-there seemed to already be so much pain and suffering on the earth that there really didn’t need to be a hell, in its humble opinion. No, take that back, it thought. Humility was definitely not one of its trademarks. And neither was patience, for that matter.

  Fortunately, fascination was one of his strong suits, and he had to admit he was fascinated by this birth concept. He’d seen and had taken part in the end of countless numbers of lives. But this was the first time in all of these millennia that he had ever seen a new life being bor
n. This was something different, worthy of study.

  No, he wouldn’t rip the infant from the womb, though he was quite capable of doing so. Instead he would wait this thing out and see how it went. He expected that as an added bonus, she’d learn about suffering as well. The mother would surely suffer when her newborn was killed. She might be able to keep it together until she learned that the demon was going to steal her son’s body, and that she would have to take him home and care for him as her own child.

  That moment would show what she was made of. She might react in any of a few different ways. She might just blank the entire incident from her mind and pretend her son was normal, and that none of this had happened. She might refuse to accept the boy as her son, or try to put up a fight, in which case he’d simply kill her and be done with it. Or she might just lose her mind, which might make for an interesting scenario of its own.

  It really didn’t matter how she reacted. It would all work out the way the demon wanted it to. It would be able to inhabit the body of this boy for as long as it wanted, and return to the earth. When it became tired of being human, it could return to its demonic form again and pick up exactly where it had left off. Now that the meddlers were permanently trapped here in hell’s waiting room, it had nothing left to worry about.

  Now all it had to do was wait for the baby to be born. And from the looks of it, the wait wouldn’t be long.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  1

  The last of the sand finally collapsed enough to where Erik and Johnny Dovecrest could crawl out of the sand pit and back to the surface of this strange world. Erik got to his feet and helped pull his friend up. Then, suddenly, he jumped back as he noticed that the place was very different from the way it was when he was unconscious. There were people everywhere.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  Dovecrest shrugged. “I’m not sure why, but I think we can see them all now.”

  “See them all? Who?”

  “The damned. The souls of all those who were sent to hell.”

  “Oh my God…,” Erik said.

  They were everywhere, looking pathetic and empty and completely without hope. He could hear them now, too, as they moaned and wailed. There were hundreds of them, no, thousands of them, stretching off as far as they eye could see. There were young and old, men, women, and children, in all sizes and shapes and from all races and cultures. They weren’t people, really, but were shades, ghost-like and yet human at the same time. They were all dressed in their burial clothes, which had rotted away to rags on their bodies, and now hung from them like moldy laundry.

  They did not seem to be aware of one another as they ceaselessly wandered, searching, it seemed, for something.

  Then, all at once they stopped and turned towards Erik and Dovecrest. The two men looked at one another, and with sudden realization he knew what had happened. The shades couldn’t see each other, but they could see them. In a single moment of realization, Erik understood. He could tell that Dovecrest did, too, and sudden terror flooded his soul.

  All of these damned souls were searching for someone, for anyone in this place of utter desolation and aloneness. There must be billions of them here, and they couldn’t see one another. They’d been alone since they died-some of them had been here for thousands of years. All of them damned, from serial killers, rapists, murderers, and child molesters, right down to liars, cheats, and unbelievers. They were all here, searching for someone to interact with. And now suddenly Erik and Dovecrest had appeared, as if out of nowhere.

  “We are so screwed,” Erik said softly.

  It took a moment for the scene to register, but when it did the hundreds of damned souls nearest to them reacted as one. Erik could see their faces lighting up. They thought it was merely a vision, at first, a mirage. But then he could see the realization dawning on their faces.

  There were three of them closest to him, an old woman, a middle aged-man, and a teenaged boy. They stepped forward, coming towards him, and leading a swarm of hundreds more that followed. They held their hands out to him and began to touch him, grope him. He staggered backwards, but more were surrounding him now. He looked over at Dovecrest and saw that he, too, was being overrun. The voices were everywhere, almost blending into one.

  “Help me!” the teenager screamed. “Mom, please help me.”

  “Betty, is it you? Is it you at last?”

  “Oh, Harold, hold me!”

  They all thought he was their loved one. And they all wanted a part of him. They swarmed like an army of ants, knocking him down, climbing on him. Their bodies melded into one another, and still they weren’t aware of the shade next to them, the shade that had actually melted into them….

  So this was how the demon had really imprisoned them, Erik thought. He’d trapped them within a mountain of damned souls. He’d buried them in a sea of ruined, lost souls who were searching for something that he couldn’t give them….

  “Leave me alone!” he screamed. “I’m not your mother! I’m not your wife!”

  But still they came, an endless tide that overwhelmed him, suffocated him with their needs. He could hear their thoughts, feel their despair. Their misery was infinite; their wretchedness was endless. And he knew he was now doomed to endure their agony and despair forever.

  “This isn’t fair!” he screamed. “I wasn’t sent here! I’m not one of you! I don’t belong here!”

  Their need suffocated him as more and more of them came, like vultures to a rotting carcass. They buried him so he couldn’t see. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he desperately gasped for air that didn’t even exist in this nocturnal place. His mind, his body, and his soul were crushed beneath them. Even as their mass was without weight, their need was so very heavy. Their voices were deafening. Their smell was stifling. They grabbed him touched him, squeezed them against their formless bodies.

  He felt like Jesus must have felt when the crowds of deformed and sick and diseased had come to him, swarming upon him to heal them.

  “Dear, sweet Lord, help me!” he screamed. “I can’t heal them!”

  2

  The demon knew his prisoners had escaped their sand trap when the hordes of doomed souls stopped their aimless wandering and all turned in one direction, like a massive herd of animals all driven to one central point. There were billions of them. Surely those meddlers now faced the ultimate hell. This was worse than if they had been damned themselves, it thought. To be overrun by the needs of a billion lost souls.

  The sand pit had been a diversion. They thought they had escaped, but in reality they had gone from bad to worse. The sand pit was for its amusement, really. It was designed so they’d be able to dig out rather quickly. It would give them hope. Giving hope in the hopeless place was the most fun thing to do. The portal actually did say “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” but no one took the oath seriously. If they had, they would be better off. But in reality they had been given their chance and had not accepted it. So now they were consumed with false hope for things that were never going to change. They’d led their lives the wrong way, but somehow they thought that God would show up one day and say, “Ooops, I made a mistake about you, Jack the Ripper. You don’t belong down here at all. You’re a good man, just ridding the streets of those evil women. You need to be upstairs with me. Besides, I understand you’re a great cook and do extraordinary things with kidneys.”

  No, God didn’t make mistakes. If you were doomed to be down here, it was for a reason, a very good reason, and you knew damned well what it was. There would be no stay of execution here. No slap in the wrist and just don’t do it again. You had a whole lifetime to make things right and you couldn’t be bothered. Even after you did, you had a chance to plead your case. No one did. They just didn’t think hell was real. They’d be sent off to some summer camp to play.

  But the shock of hell was all too real. Still, most of them kept their hope, which was ironic about the sign, for they really needed to ab
andon it. Hope just did not exist in this place. Their search for something that was completely lacking made their existence all the more unbearable.

  It was a very cruel joke. But this one belonged to the creator. This time God was having the last laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Todd said. He’d been watching the demon closely. Very closely.

  “Don’t worry, son, you’re going to get to know me like the back of your hand in no time flat. We’ll be best buddies, you and I. We will be a force to be reckoned with.”

  “I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” he sneered, “All I want to do is get my Mom out of this terrible place and then to never see you or hear from you again. Isn’t that simple?”

  “You have a well-developed mind for one so young. Unfortunately, you don’t understand the one cardinal point of this whole game.”

  “And that point is?”

  The demon laughed. “The point is that I’m the demon and you’re not. That means I have the power and you don’t. In other words, I call shots and you don’t. I give the rules and you follow. I’m the brains and you’re the body.”

  “And if I don’t follow the rules?”

  The demon laughed. “You ask some very interesting questions. Let me help you to understand. Suppose for a moment that I had an itch on my face just above my left eye. What would I do?”

  “You’d scratch it.”

  “That’s right. I’d scratch it. I would do that by commanding my hand to come up to my face and scratch. And my hand would obey.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would the hand not obey?”

  “Only if it couldn’t. Like if it were paralyzed or something.”

  “But if it could, it would. The hand doesn’t concern itself with good or bad, right or wrong. The mind does that, does the thinking and the evaluation and the moral thing. The mind decides it’s ok and the brain just does it. It doesn’t have a mind, a conscience of its own. It just does what it’s told.”