The Scarlet Gospels

by Clive Barker

  I am weak, Lord.

  I am fearful—”

  “It’s not another ‘Lord’ we need in here,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a goddess.” And so saying, she began her own entreaty:

  “Honey-breasted art thou, Neetha,

  Call me daughter, I will suckle—”

  while Felixson continued the thread of his own prayer:

  “Save me, Lord,

  From fear and darkness.

  Hold me fast

  Against your heart, Lord—”

  Heyadat interrupted this battle of supplications with a bellow that only a man of his considerable proportions could have unleashed.

  “I never heard such naked hypocrisy in my life. When did you two ever have faith in anything besides your own covetousness? If the demon can hear you, he’s laughing.”

  “You are wrong,” said a voice from the place out of which the cold light came. The words, though in themselves unremarkable, seemed to escalate the wall’s capitulation. Three more blocks began to grind their way forward while another two dropped out of the wall and joined the debris accruing on the mausoleum floor.

  The unseen speaker continued to address the magicians. His voice, with its glacial severity, made the harsh light seem tropical by contrast.

  “I smell decaying flesh,” the demon said. “But with a quickening perfume. Someone has been raising the dead.”

  Yet more of the blocks toppled to the ground, so that now there would have been a hole in the wall large enough to allow the entrance of a man of some stature, except for the fact that rubble blocked the lower third of the space. For the entity about to make its entrance, however, such matters were easily resolved.

  “Ovat Porak,” it said. The order was obeyed instantly. The rubble, listening intently, divided in a heartbeat. Even the air itself was cleansed for him, for as he spoke every particle of cement dust was snatched from his path.

  And thus, his way unhindered, the Cenobite entered into the presence of the six magicians. He was tall, looking very much as he did in those volumes of notable demons that the magicians had pored over in recent months and weeks, vainly looking for some hint of frailty in the creature. They had found none, of course. But now, as he appeared in the flesh, there was a distinct sense of humanity in his being, of the man he had been once, before the monstrous labors of his Order had been performed. His flesh was virtually white, his hairless head ritualistically scarred with deep grooves that ran both horizontally and vertically, at every intersection of which a nail had been hammered through the bloodless flesh and into his bone. Perhaps, at one time, the nails had gleamed, but the years had tarnished them. No matter, for the nails possessed a certain elegance, enhanced by the way the demon held his head, as though regarding the world with an air of weary condescension. Whatever torments he had planned for these last victims—and his knowledge of pain and its mechanisms would have made the Inquisitors look like school-yard bullies—it would be worsened by orders of magnitude if any one of them dared utter that irreverent nickname Pinhead, the origins of which were long lost in claim and counterclaim.

  As for the rest of his appearance, it was much as it had been depicted in the etchings and woodcuts of demonic listings for millennia: the black vestments, the hem of which brushed the floor; the patches of skinned flesh exposing blood-beaded muscle; and the skin tightly interwoven with the fabric of his robes. There had always been debates as to whether the damned soul who wore this mask of pain and its accompanying vestments was a single man who’d lived many human lifetimes or whether the Order of the Gash passed the scars and nails on to another soul after the labors of temptation had exhausted their present possessor. There was certainly evidence for either belief in the state of the demon before them.

  He looked like a creature that had lived too long, his eyes set in bruised pools, his gait steady but slow. But the tools that hung from his belt—an amputation saw, a trepanning drill, a small chisel, and three silver syringes—were, like the abattoir worker’s chain-mail apron he wore, wet with blood: confirmation that his weariness did not apparently keep him from taking a personal hand in the practicalities of agony.

  He brought flies with him too, fat, blue-black flies in their thousands. Many buzzed around his waist, alighting on the instruments to take their share of wet human meat. They were four or five times the size of terrestrial flies, and their busy noise echoed around the mausoleum.

  The demon stopped, regarding Ragowski with something resembling curiosity.

  “Joseph Ragowski,” the Cenobite said. “Your suffering was sweet. But you died too soon. It pleases me to see you standing here.”

  Ragowski tensed. “Do your worst, demon.”

  “I have no need to pillage your mind a second time.” He turned and faced the five quivering magicians. “It’s these five I came to catch, more for closure than the hope of revelation. I’ve been to magic’s length and breadth. I’ve explored its outermost limits, and rarely—very rarely—I’ve mined the thoughts of a truly original thinker. If as Whitehead said, all philosophy is footnotes to Plato, then all magic is footnotes to twelve great texts. Texts I now possess.”

  Lili Saffro had started to hyperventilate a little way into the demon’s speech and now reached into her purse, digging frantically through its chaotic contents.

  “My pills. Oh Jesus, Jesus—where are my pills?”

  In her jittery state she lost her grip on one end of her purse, and its contents fell out, spreading across the floor. She went to her knee, found the bottle, and snatched up her pills, oblivious to everything but getting them into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed the large white tablets like candies, staying on the ground, clutching her chest, and taking deep breaths. Felixson spoke, ignoring her panicked outburst.

  “I have four safes,” he told the demon. “I’ve written down their whereabouts and their codes. If that’s too much trouble for you I’ll fetch them myself. Or you could accompany me. It’s a big house. You might like it. Cost me eighteen million dollars. It’s yours. You and your brethren are welcome to it.”

  “My brethren?” the Cenobite said.

  “Apologies. There are sisters in your Order too. I was forgetting that. Well, I’m sure I own enough works for you to pass around. I know you said you’ve got all the magic texts. But I do have a few very fine first editions. Nearly perfect, most of them.”

  Before the demon could respond to this, Heyadat said, “Your Lordship. Or is it ‘Your Grace’? Your Holiness—”

  “Master.”

  “Like … like a dog?” Heyadat said.

  “Surely,” Felixson said, wanting desperately to please the demon. “If he says we’re dogs, then dogs we are.”

  “Well stated,” the demon said. “But words are easy. Down, dog.”

  Felixson waited for a moment, hoping this had just been a throwaway remark. But it was not.

  “I said down,” the Cenobite warned.

  Felixson began to kneel. The demon went on.

  “And naked. Dogs go naked, surely.”

  “Oh … yes. Of course. Naked.” Felixson proceeded to undress.

  “And you,” the demon said, extending his pale finger toward Kottlove. “Elizabeth Kottlove. Be his bitch. Naked as well, on your hands and knees.” Without further prompting, she started to unbutton her blouse, but he said, “Wait,” and walked toward her, the flies rising up from their blood-clotted dining places as he moved. Elizabeth flinched, but the demon merely reached out and placed his hand on her lower belly.

  “How many abortions have you had, woman? I count eleven here.”

  “Th-that’s right,” she stuttered.

  “Most wombs would not survive such unkindness.” He clenched his fist, and Elizabeth let out a little gasp. “But even at your advanced age I can give your abused womb the capacity to finally do what it was made to do—”

  “No,” Elizabeth said, more in disbelief than denial. “You couldn’t.”

  “The child will be here soon.�
��

  Elizabeth was out of words. She simply stared at the demon as though she could somehow make him take pity on her.

  “Now,” he said, “be a good bitch, and get down on all fours.”

  “May I say something?” Poltash said.

  “You may try.”

  “I … I could be very useful to you. I mean, my circle of influence reaches to Washington.”

  “What is your offer?”

  “I am simply saying, there are a lot of people in high office who owe their positions to me. I could make them report to you with a single phone call. It’s not magical power, I grant you, but you seem to have all you need of that.”

  “What are you asking in return?”

  “Just my life. Then you name the names in Washington you need at your feet and I’ll make it happen.”

  The Cenobite didn’t reply. His attention had been claimed by the sight of Felixson, who was standing in his underwear, with Elizabeth beside him, still preserving her modesty. “I said naked!” the demon snapped. “Both of you. Look at that belly of yours, Elizabeth. How it swells! What about those tired tits? How do they look now?” He pulled off the remains of her blouse and the brassiere beneath. The dry purses of her breasts were indeed growing fuller. “You’ll do for one more breeding. And this time you won’t be scraping it out of your womb.”

  “What do you think of my offer?” Poltash asked, vying for the demon’s attention.

  But before the demon could respond, Heyadat interrupted. “He’s a liar,” he said. “He’s more of a palm reader than an advisor.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth, Heyadat!” Poltash said.

  Heyadat continued. “I know for a fact that Washington prefers that woman Sidikaro.”

  “Ah. Yes. I have her reminiscences,” the demon said, tapping his temple.

  “And you pass it all on to your Order, right?” Heyadat inquired.

  “Do I?”

  “Surely, the other members of your Order—”

  “Are not with me.”

  Heyadat blanched, suddenly understanding. “You’re acting alone—”

  Heyadat’s revelation was interrupted by a moan from Elizabeth Kottlove, who was now on all fours beside the Cenobite’s other dog, Theodore Felixson. Her belly and breasts were now round and ripe, the Cenobite’s influence powerful enough to already have her nipples leaking milk.

  “Don’t let that go to waste,” the Cenobite said to Felixson. “Put your face to the floor and lick it up.”

  As Felixson too eagerly bent to his task, Poltash, who had apparently lost all confidence in his offer, made a mad dash for the door. He was two strides short of the threshold when the Cenobite threw a look into the passageway from which he’d come. Something glittering and serpentine there sped from the other side of the wall, crossed into the chamber, and caught Poltash in the back of his neck. A beat later three more came after it, chains, all of them ending in what looked like hooks big enough to catch sharks, wrapping themselves around Poltash at the neck, chest, and waist.

  Poltash shrieked with pain. The Hell Priest listened to the sound the man made with the attentiveness of a connoisseur.

  “Shrill and inexpensive. I expected better from one who lasted this long.”

  The chains rent themselves in three different directions, trisecting Poltash in the blink of an eye. For a moment the magician stood there looking dazed, and then his head rolled off his neck and hit the mausoleum floor with a sickening plop. Seconds later, his body followed after, spilling his steaming intestines and stomach, along with their half-digested contents, onto the ground. The demon raised his nose and inhaled, taking in the aroma.

  “Better.”

  Then, a tiny gesture from the Cenobite and the chains that had ended Poltash’s life snaked across the floor and slithered up the door, wrapping themselves around the handle. Tightening themselves, they pulled the door closed and raised their hooked heads like a trinity of cobras ready to strike, dissuading any further attempts at escape.

  3

  “Some things are better done in private, don’t you think, Joseph? Do you remember how it was for us? You offered to be my personal assassin. And then you shit yourself.”

  “Aren’t you a little tired of all this by now?” Ragowski replied. “How much suffering can you cause before it fails to give you whatever sad, sick thing it is you need?”

  “Each to their own. You went through a phase when you wouldn’t touch a girl over thirteen.”

  “Will you just do it already?” Ragowski said.

  “Soon. You are the last. After you there’ll be no more games. Only war.”

  “War?” said Ragwoski. “There’ll be nobody left to fight.”

  “I see death has not made a wise man of you, Joseph. Did you really think this was all about your pitiful secret society?”

  “What then?” Heyadat asked. “If I am to die, I’d like to know the reason!”

  The demon turned. Heyadat looked into the shiny darkness of his eyes, and as if in answer to Heyadat’s question the Cenobite spat a word in the direction of the open wall. A flight of twenty hooks, trailed by glinting chains, came at Heyadat catching him everywhere—mouth, throat, breasts, belly, groin, legs, feet, and hands. The Cenobite was bypassing the torture and interrogation and going straight to the execution. Lost in his agonies, Heyadat babbled as the hooks steadily worked themselves deeper into his three-hundred-and-fifty-pound body. It was hard to make much sense of what he was saying through the snot and the tears, but he seemed to be listing the books in his collection, as though he might still be able to strike a bargain with the beast.

  “… the Zvia-Kiszorr Dialo … the only … remaining … of Ghaffari’s Nullll—”

  The Cenobite then called seven more chains into play, which came swiftly, sweeping around Heyadat from all directions. They hooked themselves into his shuddering body and wrapped themselves so tightly the fat man’s flesh oozed from between the rusted links.

  Lili edged herself into her corner and covered her face with her hands. The others, even Kottlove, who appeared now to be eight months into her term while Felixson hammered at her from behind, looked up as Heyadat continued to chatter and sob.

  “… Mauzeph’s Names … n-n-names of … Infernal Territories…”

  All twenty-seven chains had now secured themselves in the man’s body. The Cenobite murmured another order and the chains proceeded to tighten further, pulling on Heyadat’s body from several directions. Even now, with flesh and bone under unbearable stress, he continued to list his treasures.

  “… oh God … Lampe’s Symphony, the … the … the Death Symphony … Romeo Refra’s … Romeo Refra’s—”

  “Yellow Night,” Ragowski prompted. He was watching Heyadat’s torment with a dispassion perhaps only a dead man could have worn.

  “… yes … and—” Heyadat started to say.

  There the list stopped, however, as Heyadat, only now comprehending what was happening to him, unleashed a stream of pleading cries, all rising in volume as his body was subjected to the contrary demands of the hooks. His body could not withstand the claims made upon it any longer. His skin began to tear and he started to thrash wildly, his last coherent words, his entreaties, overtaken by the ragged howls of agony that he now unleashed.

  His belly flesh succumbed first. The hook there had gone deep. It ripped away a wedge of bright yellow fat ten inches thick and some of the muscle beneath. His breasts came next: skin and fat, followed by blood.

  Even Lili watched now through her fingers as the spectacle escalated. The hook in Heyadat’s left leg, which had entered behind his shinbone, broke it with a crack that was loud enough to be audible above Heyadat’s screams. His ears came off with scraps of scalp attached; his shoulder blades were both broken as the hooks there pulled themselves free.

  But despite the thrashing, the screams, and the reflecting pool of black blood below his body now so large it lapped against the hem of the Cenobite’s vestments,
the demon was not satisfied. He issued new instructions, using one of the oldest tricks in magic: Teufelssprache.

  He whispered instructions and three new hooks, larger than any that had come before—their outer edges sharp as scalpels—flew at the exposed fat and flesh of Heyadat’s chest and stomach and sliced their way into his interior.

  The effect of one of the three was immediate: it pierced his left lung. His screaming stopped and he began to gasp for air, his thrashing becoming desperate convulsions.

  “Finish him, in mercy’s name,” Ragowski said.

  The Cenobite turned his back on his victim and faced Ragowski. The demon’s cold, lifeless stare caused even Ragowski’s stiff reanimated flesh to prickle.

  “Heyadat was the last man to give me orders. You would do well not to follow in his footsteps.”

  Somehow, even after experiencing the hand of death itself, Ragowski still found himself afraid of the calculating demon who stood before him. Taking a deep breath, Ragowski conjured what courage he could.

  “What are you trying to prove? Do you think if you kill enough people in the worst ways imaginable they’ll give you a name like the Madman, or the Butcher? It doesn’t matter how many abhorrent tortures you devise. You’ll always be the Pinhead.”

  The air went still. The Cenobite’s lip curled. Quick as a flash, he reached out for Ragowski, seized the dead man’s scrawny throat, and pulled him close.

  Without taking his black gaze off Ragowski for an instant, the demon lifted his trephine from his belt, activating the device with his thumb as he brought it to the middle of Ragowski’s upper brow. It fired a bolt through Ragowski’s skull and then retracted.

  “Pinhead,” Ragowski said, undeterred.

  The Cenobite made no reply. He simply hooked the trephine back on his belt and put his fingers into his own mouth, seeking out something that lodged within. Finding it, he drew the thing out—a small, slick, blackened hunk, like a diseased tooth. He returned his fingers to the hole in Ragwoski’s skull, inserting the object and letting go of Ragowski’s throat in the same moment.

  “I’m guessing I’ll be dead soon, right? To paraphrase Churchill, I’ll be dead in the morning, but you’ll still be Pinhead,” Ragowski growled.