The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set

by Peter Meredith

  He jumped up and pawed at Will. "Hey don't go. We were just talking... hey, I got an idea! Maybe you could take me with you."

  Will shrugged him off. "Why would I want to do that? Look at you! You don't know who you are or what you're doing. You don't even have clothes on for goodness sake."

  "Neither do you!"

  It was a shock to look down and see that the man was correct. It took the steam out of his anger, "You're right...I never noticed." For a while, he could only stare at himself and couldn't help but think that something wasn't quite right. His skin was grey and pale, but other than that was unblemished and appeared as it always had. Holding his hands up he examined them front and back, noting that other than his wedding ring no longer wrapped about the ring finger on his left hand they appeared normal. He flexed them and balled his hands to fists, they stretched and curled in a completely ordinary fashion. And that was the problem.

  Two of his fingers on that left hand should have been shooting pain from the small movements, since only the day before they had been dislocated defending himself from Talitha. Yet they were completely healed, as were the ribs that he had heard snap when the demon had grabbed him. A quick check of his head and face, had his puzzlement complete. There was nothing physically wrong with him.

  He should have been glad for that, but his spirits couldn't reach that far. Wasn't hell supposed to be all about pain and suffering? One would think that his pain would have been greater not gone altogether. He pondered on this for some time until the unnamed man interrupted his thinking by grabbing his hand suddenly.

  "Hey...uh, mister? So what do you say, can I come along with you? I'm so lonely...no one's talked to me at all since I got here, except the demons that is." On his knees, the man pawed and touched, stroking the skin of Will's hand as if he were a king. Will yanked it away, disgusted by the sin-filled feel of the man.

  "Don't touch me...don't ever touch me!"

  How quick his emotions leapt to mountainous rage. Inside Will, the urge, the want, and the need to hurt the man bloomed like the deadliest flower. The man saw it in his eyes and began to back away with his hands out in supplication, but Will couldn't hold his anger in check and if he had a belt, he would've whipped the man bloody with it, just as if he were his own child. His hand came up to strike and a belt appeared looped in his palm, it whipped back in a fine satisfying imitation of cat's tail.

  Will paused just as the belt slapped against his own back. There was a slight pleasurable sting to it, almost an erotic feel. Suddenly he recalled what Talitha had told him in the parking lot of the church back in Maine, I like hurting people, I get off on it. You see in the Void, there is only one pleasure allowed and that is the pleasure in causing pain.

  Desire and cold reasoning split Will in two. To give in to this lust and whip the man who had done nothing wrong seemed absurd, but a part of him couldn't help rationalizing—clearly the man had done something wrong, he was in hell for a reason after all.

  "What are you here for?" Will asked.

  The man was anxious to please. "Because you chased me here."

  Will's hands fists became as stone. "No, I meant what are you in hell for? What did you do to get here?"

  "You don't know? Really? You haven't heard? No one told you? Then it was nothing... uh, uh, uh, it was nothing. An accident is all it was. And...and, I didn't even do that, I was framed, right? I was framed, that's what happened. It was an accident and I didn't do nothing, and I was framed...so I didn't do nothing."

  This only piqued Will's curiosity all the more. "I don't believe you. You did something. What was it?"

  Deathly pale as he was, the man suddenly went flat white and looked as if he was close to being sick. "Like I said, it was an acci...I mean I was framed. I wasn't..."

  Rage washed over Will, and he reached out taking a hold of the man's hair and forced him to his knees. The belt was back in his hand, but this time the buckle was huge, it would shred the man's face with barely any effort on his part.

  "You are a liar!" Will filled with self-righteous fervor seethed at the man, "And a murderer! I can smell the blood all over you. The blood of innocent little girls. What do you have to say for yourself?"

  "It's not what you think... if you had seen them flaunting it. They wanted it. And besides they weren't that young, ten isn't young..."

  The fire of hatred burned out of control in Will and he silenced the man using his belt. It felt so good. After a dozen lashes, he paused to see the ruin he had created. It was a good start, but the man certainly deserved more.

  "No please, please stop," the man entreated. "I didn't do nothing wrong."

  "Nothing wrong? Look around you jack ass, you're in the black pits of the great Void. You had to have done something to belong here." Will's logic was impossible to deny and the man didn't try, instead he sidestepped it and threw Will into turmoil with a question of his own.

  "What about you? What did you do? You're here too, so you must have done something."

  How dare the man question Will! He wanted to rip the man's smug face off with the belt, but just as he brought the belt back again, a perfectly preserved memory came to Will. It was like movie it was so clear. In fact, it was better than a movie, he could feel the cold biting at his exposed skin, and he felt the air whistling by, snatching at his hair. There he was in the attic of their house on Governor's Island and there was the gate to the Void and beyond that was the demon, Ba'al Zubel. He could see it all just as it happened eight year ago. There was Adrina Fortini and he hid behind her like a coward and he could feel her bony, old lady shoulders as he pushed her forward, against her will. She shivered in tremendous fright. He could hear plain as day, her pleading with him, begging for her life, begging not to be killed in so horrible a manner.

  And he watched as he shoved the lady at the demon and he stared as her limbs were rolled up, crackling and popping, breaking in a thousand places. Her face was the perfect rendition of pain...and he saw every terror writ line etched deep upon it.

  It was all such a clear crisp undeniable memory that he was thrown down by his guilt. The man came and towered over him and judging by the look in his eyes, somehow he seemed to know all about what happened. Will went to his knees beseeching the man for understanding and compassion.

  "No...that was the way it was supposed to be. She wanted me to... to... she was supposed to face the demon. She wanted that."

  "Oh right! Sure, she wanted to be killed in such a horrible manner. You're as guilty as the rest. You're the one that should be punished." The naked man now held a whip of his own. Its many heads glinted and gleamed with the razors attached to the ends. It was a very menacing thing and Will began edging backwards away from it.

  "Really you don't understand. It had to be that way..."

  The man lashed out with the whip, it came flying at Will and there was no way it could miss. He tried to scramble away, but the many heads tore into him. He screamed, surprised at how bad the pain was.

  As the man drew back the whip again, he asked, "What about the witch, you nasty bastard? Smashing her head into the wall? Was that fun for you? Do you enjoy torturing people, you sick, sick bastard?"

  The man's words dredged up a full clean memory that Will had long ago suppressed. He saw himself carrying the prostate body of Henny Harris and he heard the vile words coming from her possessed lips. Mountainous goose bumps covered his skin and he could feel the complete revulsion that had turned his face into a mask of horror. He watched as the memory played itself out, how he slammed the woman's head against the wall. It was sick. Far more grotesque than he could ever have imagined and it paralyzed him long enough for the man with the whip to strike again.

  Will screamed in pain, but also in misery over his terrific guilt. He fled into the shadows with the man hot on his heels, but Will wanted to hide and the dark took a hold of him and soon he was nothing. Black on black. Ages he hid, reliving his sins. How many and how enormous they seemed to him. They were anch
ors around his neck and for a long span of timelessness, he could do nothing but dwell on their every detail. And always in his memories, the great demon, Ba'al Zubel, lingered about the edges as the ultimate cause, and Will affixed all of his sins to the fiend.

  At first, he raged in defiance, "It wasn't me! It was Ba'al. It was all its fault!" Yet despite the rationalizing and the blame, the weight of his transgressions never grew less, they swelled even greater and brought him lower in spirits. As the rage wilted, he became covered over in the dark matter that made up the Void. It was like the web of a great spider and in its wicked strands, he became entrapped. Struggling did nothing, nor did crying, yet he couldn't help himself and did both, fluctuating between harsh anger and pitiful blubbering over the injustice of his predicament. The tears that fell from his eyes were pure globes of misery and as they rained down on the shadows, the shadows fed upon them and grew even greater about him, binding him so that all movement was impossible.

  Panic over his virtual imprisonment now added its grip on his soul. He began screaming for help, "Is anyone out there? Hey! Anybody? I'm stuck, please...I need some help. Anyone? Please, I can't get out of these..." Will's voice trailed off as movement caught his eye.

  Distant shadows appeared to sway like the tops of trees billowing in a storm as something vast brushed them aside. It was a terrible something, a ponderous leviathan of tremendous proportions and it ranged about the gloom. Its size dwarfed the man making him feel tiny and weak so that instead of struggling to free himself of the shadows, he now burrowed deeper into them, purposely covering himself over. Only his eyes could be seen and they were large white circles in his pale face, they watched in horror as the thing circled about, searching. Even compared to the perpetual dark of the Void, the thing was deep, deep black and it made all the shadows seem lighter than they were.

  It was the purest evil. An ill wind flowed off of it and brought with it a horrid stomach-churning stench that Will recognized. The creature was Ba'al Zubel. It was out there, searching, hunting for the soul that had dared to say its name. This was the way it was and this is the way that it is. The Void is infinite. Its boundaries all but unknowable, and a soul could lose itself forever if it wished, but to think on a demon, or worse, to say its name was an invitation. Or in some cases, like to that of the greatest of demons, it was a challenge.

  No being in the Void ever spoke the name Ba'al Zubel. No one dared.

  Cowering in the rat's nest of his own making, Will began to understand what a fool he was to have said the demon's name. Deeper he slunk, trying his best to be small and inconspicuous, but all the while the beast drew closer. Nearer it came, until it stood nearly above him and the black steel of its clawed feet rung out as if they had clashed metal against metal. In the greatest fear, Will quaked and trembled. Fear defined him. Fear of the demon. Almost too late did he realize that his fear of the demon was what was had drawn it in. He was still thinking about Ba'al Zubel.

  Yet how could it be otherwise?

  How could he not think about anything else? Especially since it was so close. In desperation, Will tried to push his mind away to another topic, but always the demon forced its way into his thoughts. He could feel what passed for its mind prying about the shadows for him. It was like a dentist probing in a rotten tooth. He could think of nothing else and he knew that he was doomed. He had called the prince of demons to himself and he deserved the fate of a fool.

  What an idiot! He chided himself in silence. If only he had called out to a different demon, he might've stood a chance, he had escaped the other demon after all. Perhaps it wasn't too late. Perhaps he could still call one and maybe they would fight and he could make a run for it. Nervous excitement had him breathing again and he bent his mind on a demon and wished so hard that it bordered upon praying. He wished for it to come to him with all possible speed.

  Zoderath, Lord of the Chrystal plain, please come to me. Zoderath! Zoderath! His mind sung out with the repetition of religious fervor. It felt blasphemous in the extreme, but just then, Will couldn't have cared less. Over and over, he called to the demon, but in vain.

  Zoderath did not show itself. The plan was stupid, Will concluded, feeling fresh tears bind him to the shadows. No demon probably had ever attempted to come between Ba'al Zubel and its victim. No demon, except perhaps his sister, Ba'al Fie-ere. She had defied the great demon once and earned her name. It was at least a hope.

  Ba'al Fie-ere! Ba'al Fie-ere! Come to me. His mind intoned.

  Above him, he felt the shadows suddenly swirl about, it was similar to smoke in a wind. Looking up he saw Ba'al Zubel raking back the layers of shade, searching. With tremendous fortitude, Will bit back the childish scream that rose to the top of his throat. He ducked his head and closing his eyes, pictured Ba'al Fie-ere at the second he had sent her back to the Void. It was a moment he would never forget. Her look of hatred snarled her pretty features, turning her brown eyes to black pits and her white teeth into fangs.

  Ba'al Fie-ere! Ba'al Fie-ere! Come to me.

  Ba'al Fie-ere did not come either, however, the more that he thought about her, the more the shadows loosened around him, until finally, he felt himself drop. Through many murky layers of the Void he passed, seeing bizarre half-formed images before finally he landed. Again, it seemed as if he was under ground and he stood in a rough-hewn tunnel of black earth. Above him and far away, the great demon, perhaps feeling him slipping away, roared in a fury. The sound was tremendous and was still too close for Will's liking and so he began jogging down the passage that seemed to take him most clearly away from the beast.

  As he ran, he put thought to his many problems. The first being that the tunnel he was currently jogging through very likely would bring him either to Zoderath, Lord of the Chrystal plain or to Ba'al Fie-ere. Neither destination appealed to him, and so he stopped and stood wondering what he should do. He was supposed to be looking for the soul of the gypsy Henny Harris.

  "Henny Harris, Henny Harris," this he took to chanting to himself and with the picture of the witch in his mind, he set off once again down the tunnel. Soon the tunnel branched, which gave him a spark of hope that he was heading away from the two demons, but then he came to another spot where he was forced to choose a left or right tunnel. To make it simple, he went right and for the next few minutes he came to series of forks in the passage and always he went right and as he did, the tunnel grew less rough and eventually, it became made up of dusty heavy square stones.

  This all made him very nervous. It felt as though he was walking along in a sprawling dungeon and the feeling became a certainty when he came upon a large iron gate. It very nearly blocked the passage, but it was open enough to allow Will to slip through if he wished. Yet Will did not wish it. He was quite certain that if he were to walk through the gate that it would close behind him and for a long time he stood indecisively just outside of it. Finally he came to the conclusion that the gate represented too much of a risk and he turned away from it.

  A second later, it clanged shut behind him. The noise sent Will's heart into his throat, yet he was for the moment relieved at his decision, thankful that he hadn't been trapped on the wrong side. Going back to the gate, he gave it a hard shove just to satisfy himself. It didn't budge. A heavy breath of relief escaped him, but it was a momentary thing.

  "Oh jeez!"

  From where he stood, he could see a trail of footprints in the dust. They had been made by a human and he didn't need to match them to his own bare feet to know that he had left them. Somehow, he was now on the wrong side of the bars. In a flash, he spun around and stared down the passage, but he could only see into the gloom so far.

  "Henny Harris. I want Henny Harris," he whispered. Henny Harris came whispering back. It seemed too clear to be a proper echo, and he froze in place with his back to the bars, expecting to see something coming at him. Nothing did. He was alone with his fear and his heavy breathing.

  " Henny Harris," this came out barely above the
sound of his breath and when he had waited many seconds and no echo was returned, he was able to relax the tiniest amount. Next came the hard part, letting go of the bars and heading down the corridor. This took a while, but once he did, he scurried forward and didn't look back. The stone hall went on straight for a very long time and ended eventually in a T. Will looked both left and right and was surprised to see that in both directions there were doors leading from the hall.

  Going to his right once again, he went straight away to the nearest door and high up on it was a small set of bars so that he was able to look into a room. The door was thick and the lock and hasp that sat upon it were constructed of heavy metal so that even before he looked in, Will knew he was about to see into a prison cell. It could be nothing else.

  In the room, lying on its side was a creature that was vaguely human in appearance. It was mottled grey in color and had a long sloping pig nose and very small black eyes. These looked at Will with what he took to be deep suspicion and for a time both stared at the other. There were other doors to look into and Will glanced away first, feeling slightly rude for having stared at the thing for so long. With quick light feet, he crossed to the next door and saw that the lock of this one was undone, unsurprisingly the room was empty. The next held the remains of some poor creature and since the stench was so overpowering Will stayed only long enough to wrinkle his face.

  After that, he found one that held a human, a man. He was in his early thirties, blonde and blue eyed, tall and broad, he was strikingly handsome. Looking at him made Will feel inadequate and he subconsciously touched his face where he had been beaten by his sister so badly, however the swelling had disappeared altogether. This gave him a slight boost to his confidence.

  "Excuse me? I'm looking for a woman named..." Too late he recalled how no one had names in the Void. "Uh... she was a witch and she lived in New York. She was a about five and half feet tall..."

  The man interrupted, "What did she do to you?" His chiseled features had formed themselves into an unpleasant knowing smile. He even raised an eyebrow in anticipation of a juicy story of murder.