King of Hell (The Shadow Saga)

by Christopher Golden

  "Please," Phoenix said quietly. "He's my dad."

  The corpse lurched again and the hospital Johnny rode up her father's thighs and stomach, baring his lower belly. Something pressed against that sickly pale flesh from the inside, and Phoenix screamed at the sight of it. A terrible new sound filled the room, like paper tearing, and then something punched through the sallow dead skin of her father's stomach from the inside.

  Claws. Long black, spindly fingers like a spider's legs. A second hand pushed up beside the first and they tore her father's corpse open wide from within. The nurse fainted with a soft whisper of nylon and her head hit the floor with a clack. Phoenix could only stare and scream as her father's remains were torn open further and something began to emerge from inside of him, a hideous birth. It leveraged itself up from ribs and organs amongst which it could not possibly have fit, but she knew from one glimpse of it that this thing had not been hiding inside her father — it was merely using him as so many spirits had, as a medium. A passageway. Professor Joe Cormier had become a doorway into another place, and from the look of the thing ripping out of him, that place could only be Hell.

  A crown of bone shards jutted from the scaly, crimson-black flesh of its face, dozens of them in an array of lengths. Broken and jagged, they seemed more as if they'd been stabbed into its skin than like horns. Its eyes were multi-faceted arachnoid things and its thin mouth curved up at the ends nearly all the way to the edges of its eye sockets, so that when it opened its mouth to speak, the lower half of its head seemed almost to come unhinged. Behind its lips were jagged, uneven teeth that matched its crown, jagged shards of bone planted in its gums, its fat black tongue darting around in back of those teeth like a serpent.

  Phoenix stood frozen in horror and denial. Her father had just died, but what had happened to him now was so much worse than death. Enormous body halfway out of her father's corpse, smeared with his blood and gray viscera, the demon turned those yellow spider's eyes upon her. Demon, she thought. Yes, of course that was what it was. When she'd thought of Hell she had not been thinking literally, but she saw now that had been a mistake.

  "Why, hello there," it said in that same dreadful rumble, the words filling the room. "What's your name?"

  Her mouth opened but no sound came out. There were no more screams inside her; fear had crowded them out. Had she never encountered impossible things she might have simply stood there while it completed its entrance into her world or fainted like the nurse. Instead, she turned and fled, full of hatred toward the thing that had made her leave her father's remains behind.

  Phoenix careened into the hallway even as Dr. Song came racing back down the corridor with a couple of nurses, an orderly and a single security guard. An old man with a rolling IV drip had paused in the hall to watch them go by and a nurse snapped at him to get back to his room.

  "It's not just him," Dr. Song said as he ran up to her. He looked sweaty and frantic and more than a little lost.

  "What?" Phoenix managed, her body screaming at her to run even as she forced herself to stop and listen. "What do you —"

  "I just heard that there are others in the morgue," Song explained. "Others with the voices coming out of them."

  The nurses stopped outside the room, let the orderly and the security guard go ahead of them. The orderly paused just inside the door and looked back.

  "Dr. Song . . ." the orderly said.

  Song looked reluctant for a moment before he started after them.

  Phoenix knew she had to run. More in the morgue? So there would be other demons coming through. But Dr. Song had been kind.

  "Wait," she said. "It's not just voices —"

  Someone — the orderly or the guard — cried out from inside the room, followed by the sickening sound of bones breaking and flesh tearing. Phoenix had moved down the hall a ways but even as that angle she could see something moving inside the room, and then Dr. Song erupted from within as if he'd been shot from a cannon. He flew across the corridor and crashed into the opposing wall with a wet crunch before he flopped to the ground, dead on impact, eyes wide and staring as blood leaked from his nose.

  "Screw this," one of the nurses said as she bolted down the hall in the opposite direction.

  The other nurse had a different instinct; she ran to Dr. Song and touched his neck, checking for a pulse though his lifeless eyes declared him unquestionably dead. His body bucked as if in the midst of some glorious necrotic orgasm and Phoenix saw what was about to happen even before the doctor's body opened like a set of jaws and a thick, taloned hand shot up from the mess of his viscera and grabbed the nurse around the throat. It snapped her neck, claiming its first kill in this world even before the demon, its flesh bruise-purple and its many eyes a bright violet, began to emerge.

  The monster that had crawled from her father's corpse stepped into the corridor from his hospital room, black hooves clacking on the tiles.

  "Oh," it said. "This world is ripe."

  Part of a torso hung from the dozens of bone shards on its head. It had gored the orderly, or maybe the guard, like a bull, and torn the man apart.

  Phoenix found herself running without realizing she had begun. Really, she didn't know why she had stopped, except that Dr. Song had been so kind to her and she had not wanted him to die. Shock, she thought now. I'm in shock. Her thoughts seemed muzzy and her heart fluttered inside her, a caged bird, frantic and terrified.

  Others ran past her, responding to the shouts and violence before they knew precisely what it was they were running toward. Their screams of discovery and then of death followed Phoenix down the corridor as patients and visitors came out into the hall. She had a glimpse into one of the patients' rooms and saw the wan late-day sunlight streaming in and it seemed incongruous to her. Evil had come into this place and it seemed to her that it ought to have come at night, not on a gentle October afternoon.

  She reached the stairwell door, hit the emergency bar and flung the door open. It clanged against the wall as she grabbed the railing and sped down the steps two at a time, the echoes of horror and death still resonating throughout the fourth floor behind her. Halfway between the third and second floors, she heard others on the stairs above her, a panicked evacuation, and she wondered how many wouldn't make it out.

  The first demon, with his bone crown, had come from her father's corpse and the one with the many violet eyes had emerged from Dr. Song. But what about the security guard and the orderly? What about the other orderlies and doctors and nurses and patients who were not going to be smart enough or swift enough to get out of there before something terrible befell them? Would demons rip doorways into the world through their corpses? Phoenix thought they would.

  The morgue, she thought. It's happening down there, too.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, she heard the screams and shouts coming from below and the sound of many feet coming up the stairs from the basement. She arrived at the first floor landing only a few steps ahead of the first of those who were coming up from below. Four people in a cluster, and among them was Ronni, the nurse she'd chatted with in the smoking area outside not long ago. Ronni spotted her as well.

  "Why are you . . ." Ronni started, and then realization struck her. "It's happening up there, too?"

  Phoenix grabbed the latch and flung the door open and then they were all barreling into the lobby. Ronni caught up with her, grabbed her by the wrist as they ran for the front doors. The receptionist shouted something at them and two security guards were milling by the door.

  "What the hell are they?" Ronni asked.

  Phoenix tore her hand away, refused to look into her frightened eyes.

  "Hold on right there, folks," a fat-bellied young guard said as he blocked their way. "We're in lockdown until the police get here."

  "Screw that," a morgue attendant growled. "Well be dead by then."

  The guard scowled and reached for his baton, confident and slow, sure he could calm them all down. The morgue attendant slammed
into him, knocked him on his ass, and they all kept going. The other guard had his keys out, on the verge of locking the doors, and now he looked up in alarm.

  "If you're smart," Phoenix said to the skinny old Asian in his ill-fitting guard's uniform, "you'll run."

  Then they were moving past him, the doors swooshing open.

  "Phoenix," Ronni called as they ran into the parking lot.

  The autumn wind whipped across the parking lot. Leaves skittered on the pavement and sidewalk as the sun sank beyond the trees and cast an unearthly glow on the choppy surface of the Hudson River in the distance.

  Ronni shouted her name but Phoenix ran on. She knew only fear now, the thundering of her heart and the rush of blood to her face and the shame of having left her father's corpse behind and oh, daddy, I'm so sorry and —

  "Phoenix!" Ronni snapped, and grabbed her hand again. Spun her around, pretty brown eyes wide and desperate and haunted with the new knowledge they had both acquired today. "I took the bus to work. Do you have a car? Can I come with you?"

  Shaking, Phoenix stared at her, taking a moment to play back the words, unable to understand them the first time. The wind kicked up again and her cheeks were cold and only then did she realize that tears streamed down her face.

  As Ronni released her wrist, Phoenix took her by the hand. "Come on!"

  Then they were running side by side as Phoenix pulled out the keys to her beat up Mazda Miata. She let go of Ronni's hand as they reached the car and she ran around to the driver's side, clicking the key fob to unlock the doors. They piled in and Phoenix jammed the key into the ignition and turned, the engine roaring to life.

  "What is this?" Ronni asked. "God, is this another Uprising?"

  "No," Phoenix said as she slammed the car into the reverse, backed out of her space and then popped it into drive. She hit the gas and the little car leaped forward, gunning for the exit.

  "Whatever this is, it's so much worse."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Westminster, London, U.K.

  Octavian listened to the muffled music coming up through the floor from the Black Hart pub, looked at the now empty scotch bottle and the remnants of his takeaway curry dinner, and wondered if he would ever return to the world of his birth. It surprised him how little the thought troubled him. He had been born here, lived and loved and died and lived and loved again. He had been a hero and a monster and an ordinary man. The sun had risen and set and storms had raged and there had been a great deal of laughter between the grim and bloody battles. He would miss the laughter, he supposed, or he would have if there were anyone around with whom he could still have shared a laugh.

  There was nothing left here for him. No anchor. The compass of his life spun and spun, with no true north except for the salvation of the friends who had stood by him whenever they were called.

  "You ready, Pete?" Squire asked.

  Octavian nodded, but it took a moment before he could tear his gaze away from his surroundings. He had left a mess for the owner of the flat — broken furniture and scratches on the floor that hadn't been there before — but he had paid enough for the privilege.

  He turned to Squire. The ugly little hobgoblin stared up at him with narrow yellow eyes. The bright lights Octavian had brought in had been turned to focus on the kitchen door, a heavy oak piece that swung in either direction. Squire had propped it halfway open and positioned the lights so that they shone on the outside of the door, which turned the space between door and wall into the darkest of shadows.

  "I'm good," Octavian said. "Time to go."

  "Y'know," Squire replied, "I'm surprised you never tried this yourself . . . getting onto the Shadowpaths, I mean."

  "I considered it," he admitted. "I even found a couple of spells that might have worked, but you and I both know that if I'd gotten in, I'd have been lost in about thirty seconds. Without a guide, I'd be trapped in there forever."

  Squire smiled, his shark-like teeth turning the look into a gruesome grimace. "Well, then, I guess you better stick close, huh? Don't want you wandering off somewhere."

  The hobgoblin went first. Guiding Octavian behind him, he stepped into the deep shadows between the door and the wall. Octavian studied the texture of the wooden door and the paint on the wall, stared into the shadows, looked down at the back of Squire's head, and wondered how the hell it worked. He and the hobgoblin had allied themselves in the past and he had seen Squire quite literally diving into shadows as if they were pools of water. Squire could step through into the Shadowpaths without working any magic — no words or gestures or rituals. Octavian had never seen magic more subtle, more simple and innate, than this.

  Maybe it's not magic at all, he thought, and frowned at the idea. The dimensions were all there. Perhaps hobgoblins were born with the ability to see the curtains drawn between worlds and find the gaps between. The thought intrigued him.

  Squire's next step was into darkness. It enveloped him completely and Octavian found himself reaching into the shadows, his right arm missing halfway to the elbow. Invisible to him, already gone, Squire gripped his hand and tugged and Octavian knew he could not let go. The shadows seemed to blur at the edges of his vision and then Squire came into focus again, just a shape in the dark, yellow eyes gleaming.

  The Shadowpaths.

  The first thing that struck Octavian — aside from the utter darkness — was the silence. The flat in Maida Vale had been full of noise that his conscious mind had barely registered, from the music in the pub and the growl of passing traffic to the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of a clock. On the Shadowpaths, the loudest thing he could hear was the beating of his own heart.

  "Dark, right?" Squire said.

  Octavian laughed. "Yes. It's dark."

  The hobgoblin whacked him on the arm. "Then why don't you shed some light? All that magic you were braggin' about, I'm sure you've got a simple illumination spell in your arsenal."

  Octavian let go of Squire's hand and turned his palm upward, a ball of golden fire igniting. It rose into the air and became a sphere, the flame-like ripples smoothing until the orb glowed brightly, floating just a few feet away. The light did not reach very far. It turned the shadows at their feet to a gray smoke and the nearest dozen feet of darkness to a rich indigo. But the dark went on forever in here, and the paths were the only safety. There were monsters in the dark, waiting there for travelers who lost their way. Not so different from other worlds, Octavian thought grimly.

  "As you wish," he said.

  "As I wish," Squire repeated. "I don't need the light, pally. I can see just fine without it. You, though . . ." He turned and began to stride along through the darkness ahead, along a path that Octavian could barely make out. "Fuck's sake, use your noodle, Pete. I can't think of every damn thing."

  It amazed Octavian that Squire continued to be able to get a smile out of him in spite of the gravity of the journey he had just begun and the uncertainty that lay before them. As they walked the Shadowpaths, they shared some of the events of the long years since they had last been together, both the pleasant memories and the painful ones. But when it came to the most recent years, which Squire had mostly spent on a parallel Earth quite like Octavian's, the hobgoblin became reticent and they soon fell silent, letting the haunting quiet of the darkness envelop them. Even their footfalls made very little noise, the sound absorbed by the strange, shifting ground.

  Even breathing had an odd quality about it, Octavian thought. There must be air in the dark or he would have suffocated, but it seemed to him as if he were breathing the darkness itself, taking it into himself and becoming a part of it in some way. Somehow this was not as unnerving a thought as he would have imagined. The darkness must have hidden all sorts of dangers, but he felt as if it cloaked him and cradled him and he took peculiar comfort in that.

  The orb floated along with them as Squire led him along a labyrinthine route, turning left and right, climbing and descending slopes. At one point they heard a deep, rhyth
mic groan off to the left, as if some huge beast lay in wait, rasping its hungry breath, or a some great factory loomed in the distance, its machines moaning, stacks belching smoke into the shadows.

  "What is that?" Octavian asked.

  "A Black Well."

  "Which is?"

  "Black hole," Squire replied.

  "Meaning?"

  Squire halted and turned to look at him. The light from the orb cast odd shadows on his face, deepening the wrinkles there. It should have made him uglier but instead those dark crenellations added a profound solemnity to the hobgoblin's face. With all of his profanity and sarcasm, Squire made it easy to forget how intelligent he really was. Studying his bright eyes, Octavian hoped never to make that mistake again.

  "You think this place goes on forever," Squire said. "And I guess it does, in a way, but even forever has its limits. Even eternity isn't really eternal, is it? There's a before and after to everything. You travel far enough on the Shadowpaths and you're going to come across a Black Well. Like black holes in space, their gravity is dragging at the shadows all the time, pulling matter in. Half the reason it's so impossible for most anyone to find their way here is that the paths are constantly warped by the drag from the wells. You go one way now and an hour from now the path is completely different and you end up wandering off into the dark and that's it for you."

  Squire set off again, turning down a curving slope.

  "These wells —" Octavian began.

  "You fall into one and you're going to be falling a long time," Squire interrupted. "Until you're not. Then you're in the Hollow, which is basically a big nothing, the bottom of the wells. And nobody and nothing is getting out of there."

  Octavian nodded, grateful for the knowledge. The Shadowpaths were unknown territory to him and he wondered how many other worlds he had still to discover.

  Infinite, he thought. Infinite worlds.

  "So, stay on the path, then?" Octavian said.