by J. R. Rain
“How did you know I was texting my kid?”
“You had an appointment to pick up your kids. I assumed you were texting one of them—”
“Or I could have been texting my sister to pick them up,” I said. “You lie to me again and I get up and leave and you can go back to hell.”
The smile returned, creeping slowly up his face. “Yes, Sam. I lied.”
“You can read my texts.”
“I can read most things.”
I caught the meaning of his words. “Including minds?”
“Mortals, yes. Immortals, not so much.”
“Why are you smiling like that?”
Indeed, his smile had grown bigger than ever. He looked like a cross between Jack Nicholson’s Joker... and Heath Ledger’s Joker. Only more insane. A woman coming out of Jamba Juice paused when she saw us, then looked sharply at me, then hurried into the parking lot.
“The smile is an unfortunate side effect.”
“An unfortunate side effect of what?”
“Possession, of course.”
I nearly texted everyone I knew at that moment to come here, like now. Suddenly, Allison’s needy texts didn’t sound so needy. They sounded heavenly, reassuring. Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed. Maybe I should have gotten up and left. But two things kept me here: First, I wasn’t entirely convinced he was the devil. Second, he needed help... whoever he was. I would at least hear him out. Lord help me, I would hear him out.
I reached into my purse for a packet of cigarettes. Talking to the devil seemed to warrant a smoke. Fitting, somehow. I noted my hands were still shaking as I lighted up the flame.
“But why the smiling?” I asked, inhaling and expelling a long plume of smoke. “And why so big?”
“It is a natural—and human—reaction to temporary possession, Samantha.”
I exhaled another cloud of smoke and noted my bouncing knee. Okay, the smiling made sense. In a way, I was possessed, too. But I was possessed permanently. As in, I was Elizabeth’s permanent host.
“So, this man is only a vessel...”
“Indeed, Sam. A temporary host.”
“And temporary hosts always smile like fools?”
“They tend to, yes. It is a physical reaction to possession. The body doesn’t know how else to respond. And the possessor—in this case, me—can only control so much.”
“So, you’re saying you have no control over the smiling?”
“None at all.”
“This is just too fucking weird.”
“I suspect you have seen far weirder, Samantha Moon.”
He had me there. Still, I didn’t like that he seemed to know that I had seen far weirder. Then again, wasn’t I continuously being watched by the demoness within? Wasn’t Elizabeth highly aware of everything I was doing, everything I saw or heard or thought? She was, and I didn’t like that either.
“So, who’s the host?” I asked.
“A willing participant.”
I caught the meaning. “He’s a Satanist?”
“He prefers to call himself a Theistic Satanist, but it’s all the same to me, really.”
“They worship you,” I said.
“Oh, yesss. With all their little, dark hearts.”
I caught the lisp. A lisp that was all too familiar to me.
“But you see, Samantha, little do they know that when they worship the devil, sometimes the devil comes a-knocking.”
“Sometimes you possess them, you mean.”
“Sometimes I do what I want with them, yesss.”
“And what will you do with him?” I asked, gesturing to the possessed bad boy sitting across from me.
“We’ll have some fun, Sam. He’s a good-looking enough fellow. We’ll meet some women. We’ll get drunk and do drugs and get fucked up. I’ll have more sex than even he can handle. Then, I think, we’ll ride off into the sunset. Or over a cliff. I haven’t decided which.”
“You can possess anyone who worships you?”
“Anyone, any time.”
“And you can do with them as you please?”
“Yesss. I like the way you say that. Say it again.”
I ignored him. “And let me guess,” I said, gesturing to the sleeping serpent, “the dragon is your calling card. Yes, you might jump from body to body, but the tattoo sticks with you.”
“My, aren’t you a clever little girl.”
“I might be little. But I’m no girl.”
“No, of course. You’re a full-grown vampire who has my full interest.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
The narrow eyebrow bunched up, perhaps even comically so, as if the creature animating the human was sort of overdoing it on the facial expressions. “Why, no, Samantha Moon. It was supposed to intrigue you. Perhaps even entice you.”
“Um, no.”
“Worth a shot.”
The afternoon shadows were shifting with the moving sun. My right leg was now exposed to the direct sunlight. Although I was wearing my day ring—forged from a much bigger medallion—sunlight still felt uncomfortable, at best, even through my jeans. I re-crossed my legs out of the sun. My movement caught his attention.
“Your rings are very useful,” he said.
“Sure are.”
“But not perfect.”
“Good enough,” I said.
“The magic that forged them is strong, but the entity within you resists them, as it will do for all time, forever more.”
“What’s your point?”
“I can help you defeat her.”
“That’s a big nope.”
“Or I can give you more power than you’d ever dreamed—”
“If you can give me the power to clean skid marks out of a teenage boy’s underwear, then we are in business. Otherwise, give it up, I’m not interested.”
He did give it up, and seemed amused by my reactions. “You are okay with the thing living inside you?”
“For now. We have an agreement.”
“Which is?”
“None of your business. So, what does the devil want with me?”
He grinned, and he kept on grinning, bigger than ever. “Like I said, I’m looking for a man, and I want you to find him.”
Chapter Three
I wished like crazy I could report that this had been nothing more than a dream. Or that I might be lying in a hospital bed in a coma. Or banging around in a padded cell, my brain too far gone to know reality from make-believe.
Terrible as it was to say, one could hope.
For now, I said, “Only immortals lack an aura.”
“This is the case, Samantha.”
“I was led to believe the man sitting before me, the man whose body you currently possessed, was recently a human, a worshiper of you, in fact. An aura, I am told, is a soul’s spillover. As in, there’s more soul than the body can contain. But once immortality takes hold, a soul retreats into the body, caged forever more.”
“Not quite right, Sam. Once immortality takes hold, a soul is cut off from its source.”
“You mean from God,” I said.
“You said it, not me.”
“Is the man sitting across from me immortal now?” I asked.
“He is, in a way. But I do not choose to retain this body and I will do away with him sooner, rather than later.”
He was, in essence, temporarily immortal, which sounded like a helluva oxymoron.
“Can he hear you now?” I asked.
“He can, somewhere.”
“Does he know he will die soon?”
“He does.”
“Does he regret allowing you inside?”
“Oh, yes. He’s realizing now that it will prove to be a most catastrophic mistake.”
“Is there a chance you will let him live?”
“None.”
“And you are given free rein to murder humans?”
“Only the humans who invite me in.”
“Because they asked for it.�
��
“Something like that.”
We were silent. I had long since dashed out my cigarette. I asked, “How does the devil lose someone?”
“It doesn’t happen often. Then again, you can’t lose something you never had.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the person I was expecting never arrived.”
“Expecting in hell?”
“Yes, hell.”
“But there is no hell,” I said. I knew this, believed this, was told this over and over again during my quiet moments of automatic writing, moments when I asked questions of the Universe... and received powerful messages.
“A common misconception, Sam. Truth was, the religious leaders of yesteryear had it right. The authors of the Bible and other holy texts had it right. The Renaissance painters who painted such frightening images of hell had it right. Your movies and books have it right. Your TV shows have it right. Hell is real, Sam Moon. I am a testament to that.”
“Or you’re a crazy piece of shit who needs a serious ass-kicking.”
“Oh, I’ve needed an ass-kicking for quite some time, Sam. The problem is, there’s no one to do it.”
I found myself feeling a bit dizzy, disoriented, but I powered through. It was important I power through, and it was also important that I hear him out, whatever or whoever he was. I couldn’t go the rest of my life wondering if I really had met the devil or not. He was here for a reason, that much was obvious. He needed me for something—to locate a man—that much was obvious. But why he did, I didn’t know. And who that man was, I didn’t know that either. Admittedly, how said man had escaped the devil fascinated me.
And it also fascinated her. As in, Elizabeth, the entity within me. But she was not clamoring to get out, oddly enough. No, she was watching from the shadows of my mind, curious, cautious.
More dizziness swept over me.
Too weird, I thought. Too weird even for me.
Finally, I asked, “How could a God of love punish his children in hell for all eternity? That’s the problem I have with hell. That’s the problem anyone has with hell.”
“I said the writers and painters of yore had it right. Same with your modern visionaries as well. But I didn’t say they had all the details right.”
“So, hell is real, but just not how it was imagined?”
“Oh, it’s exactly how it’s imagined. Down to the fiery T.”
I caught the slight emphasis. The tattoo dragon was watching me closely, black eyes unblinking...
“It’s how they imagined,” I said. “Imagine being the operative word here.”
“Indeed,” said the entity across from me, bowing his head slightly.
“Everyone imagines hell differently, I assume,” I said.
“You assume correctly, Sam.”
“Hell is not a singular place.”
He nodded again. “On the surface, yes. To those who find themselves there, yes. But, in fact, it is a multifaceted, multifarious, multi-layered, multidimensional destination that’s large enough, complex enough, rich enough, expansive enough to accommodate each and everyone’s very own version of hell.”
Okay, now my head was really spinning. In fact, I wanted another smoothie. Hell, I needed another.
Instead, I heard myself asking, “And how do these individual versions of hell come into existence?”
The entity sitting across from me cocked his head a little. So did the dragon on his forearm. “Through the imagination, Sam. Thoughts are things. Even hell.”
“Then how do you fit in?” I asked.
“I came forth to fulfill a role.”
“Because enough people believed in the devil.”
“Even if the belief was subtle, Sam. Just giving voice to it, giving words to it, giving stories to it, is enough to call me into existence, as well as you and your kind. A millennium ago, there were no vampires.”
“But where did you come from?” I asked.
“I’ll answer your question with one of my own: Where do you think you come from, Sam?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I assume from God.”
He spread his hands a little.
I blinked, absorbing the implications. “You’re telling me that you were born just like anyone else and, what? One day you found yourself the devil?”
“No, Sam. I am only telling you that I, too, am from God, although my role in this life, this universe, is far different than yours. From anyone’s. As such, I am not made of the same things, so to speak. Take your planet Earth. Gaia is a living, breathing thing, with a soul far more powerful than any would believe, with a role very different than your own, but yet, not so different, either. She, too, is from God, and she, too, will evolve in her own right.”
“So, you’re telling me you are here to fulfill a role,” I said.
“Yes, Sam.”
“To be the devil.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I assume you perform your job well.”
“You have no idea.”
I drummed my fingers on the metal table, which had been slowly heating up with the angling sun.
“And you need my help?”
“I do.”
“Because you lost someone.”
“In a word, yes.”
“Who did you lose?”
The devil blinked and waited and grinned.
“It’s someone I know, isn’t it?” I asked.
The devil said nothing, although he leveled his full stare at me, which was terrible. Just fucking terrible.
“Someone who thought they were going to hell,” I said.
“Very good, Sam.”
“But never made it there.”
“Correct again.”
I thought about it, thought about it hard, which was damn difficult to do with this bastard sitting across from me, staring at me, when it hit me, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I gasped. Nearly palmed my forehead.
But I didn’t. Mostly I kept myself under control when I said, “You’re looking for Danny.”
And now, the smile began creeping up again, and it kept creeping up when the devil said, “Danny Moon has been a bad, bad boy.”
Chapter Four
“But I don’t understand,” I said. “Danny died two years ago.”
“This I know, Sam. I also know that he haunted the cavern he was killed in. But I’m not looking for his ghost. No, I am looking for him, his true self, his soul, his spirit. Not his discarnate memory.”
“A ghost is a memory?” I asked, just to ask something, just to give myself some time to wrap my head around what I was being told.
“I am surprised you do not know this, Samantha.”
“I’m, ah, still relatively new to this,” I said. Danny was missing? What the hell did that mean, anyway? I swallowed, composed myself. “And no one has explained ghosts to me; at least, not really.”
“A ghost is a funny thing. We mentioned that you, as a vampire, are cut off from the greater part of yourself, yes?”
“Yes.”
“A ghost operates similarly. It is a memory that is cut off from the soul, as well. As a memory, it can behave like the person. It can even try to manifest and live and act as it did in life. Or it can sit around and do nothing. Eventually, it will fade into oblivion, for even a ghost will forget its true nature. And once it forgets, it ceases to exist. As you might suspect, I have no interest in ghosts.”
“But you have an interest in Danny Moon?”
“Oh, yes, Sam. I have a special place in hell reserved just for him. In fact, you could call it his own private hell. You see, he was particularly creative in his ideas about hell, and I am eager to see his expectations through to the end.”
I shuddered, and discovered I had broken out in a cold sweat. Yes, I sweat. Sometimes, profusely. Yes, Danny was a shit, all the way to the end, in fact, but he didn’t deserve to be tortured in hell, did he?
“What end?” I asked.
“The end of his
time with me, Sam. However long that may be.”
“What does that mean exactly?” I asked.
“Yes, it is true that many create their own private hell, but their time with me is limited, sadly.”
“Limited to how long?”
“Oh, that is based on many factors, Ms. Moon. Belief is the key here. If they believe they will be with me for all eternity, I give them a taste of that experience. Although they are with me for only a short period, I provide them a sense of eternity, so to speak.”
“But they are not with you for an eternity...”
“It will seem like it for some. Or damn close to it. But each experience of hell is different. Each is unique, and most are very, very terrible, I must say. Our motto is to over-promise and over-deliver. Rarely do I disappoint.”
“I get it. You’re a creep and you like hurting people.”
He shook his head, his eyes flashing. Literally. “You misunderstand, Sam. I am fulfilling a role. I have literally been summoned into existence by humans to perform this role. I have been created to be of service.”
“The service of torment,” I said.
“The service of expectation. I did not ask mortals to create hell. Nor did I ask them to create the devil. But they did, and here I am.”
“Looking for one lost soul who skipped out on his own version of hell.”
“Exactly.”
“And how is it that you are aware of his version of hell?”
“Thoughts are things, Sam. Hell is real, if you believe it. Demons are real, if you believe in them. The devil is real, if you believe in him. You have a saying in your world: ‘Build it and they will come.’ In my world, we say, ‘Believe it and they will come.’ And they do come, nearly every time.”
“Nearly?” I asked.
“Some slip through the cracks of space and time.”
“Like Danny?”
The devil nodded once, curtly, and didn’t seem capable of hiding his irritation. I wasn’t sure if I should be happy or sad that Danny boy had figured out a way to elude the Prince of Darkness himself.
I asked, “And for those who believe in heaven? Worthy of love and peace?”
The devil cocked his head. “Oh, I never see them, Sam. You could say they aren’t even on my radar. Religion has been both a blessing and a hindrance to my cause. Although religion has helped proliferate hell and the devil, humans also find salvation within temple walls.”
