by John Everson
“What does that mean?” Cheyenne asked.
“We’re fucked.”
CHAPTER 42
ROUGH HANDS LIFTED HER in the air and then flipped her around like a ragdoll. A short squeal of surprise escaped her mouth, and when Alex saw the owner of the arms that held her, his face was laughing. A demon held her two feet in the air. His face looked like a mask of tar with two sulphur holes; his flesh looked stretched and his eyes burned. When his mouth opened, she saw a row of teeth that looked more feral than human. They gleamed with wet hunger. Behind him stood three female demons. The one at the fore held one hand on a cocked hip and pointed with the other.
“You’ve given us quite the game of hide and go seek,” she said. Her voice sounded like a bird being strangled. High and harsh.
The demon holding her nodded. “But now the game’s over,” he said. “We win. You lose.”
One of the demonesses cackled behind him. “Oh yeah, you lose!”
The whole group laughed.
“What do you want?” Alex asked. She struggled to keep her voice calm. She did not want to show them fear. It’s what they thirsted for, that much she knew.
The fat-faced monster holding her answered. “Just your skin,” he said. “You can keep the rest.”
“What do you mean?” Alex said. As she said it, she knew she didn’t want to know the answer.
“We’ll show you,” the bird-voiced demoness answered.
“You won’t like it,” her captor added.
“Probably not,” Alex said. “But you won’t like this.”
As she said it, she drew back her leg and aimed a kick right between his legs.
Instead of connecting with his genitals, Alex suddenly found herself airborne. She landed a second later on her back. Her head cracked on the pavement and before the white flecks of pain cleared from her vision the demons were standing around her.
Bird-voice wagged a long, jagged fingernail at her. “Uh-uh,” she said.
“Naughty, naughty,” another added. The male demon lifted his foot and brought it down on her crotch, pinning her to the ground. He rested his weight on her and Alex stifled a cry. He was heavy. It felt as if he would snap her if he pushed, even just a little more.
“Don’t make me mar that perfect skin,” he said. “I don’t want to have to wait for it another day.”
“Let’s make sure we don’t,” one of the women said. Suddenly, hands grabbed and lifted Alex in the air. They walked with her a bit before entering a building. Somewhere inside, a woman was screaming. Her voice rose and fell in a disturbingly regular rhythm. And then, just as Alex began to ignore it, another voice joined the din. From the lower octave, it sounded to be a man this time. He sounded even more pained than the shrieks of the woman. His screams made Alex’s skin crawl.
A moment later, she was tossed unceremoniously to the floor.
“Welcome to your new home,” the male demon announced. He bent over and ran a smooth hand down the bare flesh of her leg. “I think you’ll be spending many long nights here.”
Alex rolled over, and saw the source of the screams she’d been hearing. There was a man tied to a wooden cross just ahead, and a woman shackled to the corners of what looked to be a gigantic doorway. Both were naked. And both were surrounded by demons.
The demons held something in their hands.
Something that flashed and glimmered in the light. Alex found herself squinting to see what they were holding, to see what they were doing.
One of the demons pressed the fingers of his left hand to his right and then, it suddenly clicked to Alex what they were doing.
The demon was fitting a ring onto his appendage.
A very dangerous ring.
The side near his knuckles extended outward in a short curve. A short, sharp curve.
As Alex watched, the demon moved his hand until that sharp steel curve connected with the right arm of the girl. Blood welled in slow motion. At first, there was just a hint. A faint red line. And then, as if the surprise at being cut suddenly wore off, the crimson began to well. It ran down the woman’s arm in a steady drip. Her voice cried out in a sharp squeal as the steel bit and pulled.
Alex watched, unable to tear her eyes away. The shiny steel disappeared into the arm of the woman and then slid easily upwards towards her neck.
She couldn’t look away, but her heart seemed to stop as she watched. The demon’s finger traveled up the woman’s body as if it were tracing a well-drawn patchwork design.
The red line quickly moved across the woman’s shoulder, and then slit its way up her neck. Another demon held her head immobile, as the blade traced a bloody line behind her ear and across the hairline before coming back down on the other side to open her neck and other shoulder.
Something grabbed Alex’s feet and dragged her backwards. A second later, her hair was pulled and she screamed involuntarily as she was lifted to her feet.
“We have a hook just for you,” the bird-bitch said.
Alex was suddenly airborne. Her wrists were quickly bound and she was attached, spread-eagle, to a wooden cross, just like the man and woman she’d been watching. When the demons stepped away from and she could see the other woman in the room again, her stomach clenched and threatened to unload.
The woman’s face was a silhouette of blood. Blue eyes stared out of a face with no eyelids, and a nose that was merely a stub of crimson flesh that lifted out from her bloody lips.
The demons had pulled all of her skin off. Her face was a ghastly mask of blood, interrupted only by the whites of her teeth and eyes when she screamed.
But the red didn’t end with her face. The demons, even as Alex watched, were steadily peeling the skin off her of belly. The result did not look real; she was like a hideous human doll made of glistening muscle and blood.
“Oh my God,” Alex whispered, as the siren of a never-ending scream filled the room.
“Don’t worry,” the male demon answered. He pressed his flat, horrible face toward hers until his nose touched her own. “They will do the same to you.”
“No,” Alex said. “Please. Don’t let them do that to me.”
“That IS what they do,” the demon said. “And thanks to what they do, we eat. Welcome to dinner. You’re the main course.”
“Please,” Alex begged, but the demon’s dark lips only parted to reveal a gleefully white grin.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll feel naked without your skin tonight, but you’ll wake up good as new tomorrow. Ready to strip for us again!”
He stepped away, and the “hook” demon stepped into her view.
“Don’t,” Alex said, shifting her elbow away from the wood she was bound to when he drew close. He didn’t blink. Instead, he drew one silky long finger down the white skin of her inner arm. It made her flesh crawl… and tingle. She had never felt more exposed and vulnerable, even in her father’s basement.
Because while her father had been cruel and horrible, the thing in front of her was a monster. And it was a monster that wanted to rape her skin.
It raised a finger and she saw the gleam of the metal barb attached with a ring to its tip.
Alex screamed.
But that didn’t stop the finger from descending. The demon pressed the blade down at the center of her palm and drew it slowly towards her wrist. Alex felt the cold bite of the steel but couldn’t see it until the demon had moved lower. He had three helpers that locked her arm in place with their hands, so the blade cut clean. A line of crimson opened up down the underside of her arm, and Alex pleaded for them to stop.
But the demons ignored her. Every few seconds they shifted positions, locking her torso and then her leg in place so the blade could outline a path around her body.
“Please,” she cried. “I’ll do anything. Please stop.”
Th
e blade slid behind her ankle and then cut into the side of her sole. One of the demons pried her toes apart, and the blade cut in and out, tracing the inside of her toes.
The pain slowly warmed from pinch to excruciating. Alex could feel blood pouring out of her, trickling down her back and legs. But the demons didn’t stop. They moved down one side and then drew the blade up between her legs.
“No!” she shrieked, as they cut into her most tender flesh. Her voice suddenly was gone, and she screamed with no sound from her throat.
But the blade continued. Down the back of her other thigh and around the toes of her other foot. And then up her remaining arm. When the demon pressed the blade to the top of her forehead, Alex closed her eyes. She kept sobbing as hands held her face rigidly in place, but no tears came out, even when the blade traced a bloody circle around her left eye, and then her right.
The cutting seemed to go on for hours, and Alex was barely there by the end. She’d closed her eyes and retreated inside, refusing to feel. Trying to block out the pain that consumed her like standing in fire.
Finally one of the demons spoke.
“Okay, it’s time to take it. Melter, hold her down. Dorado, you begin. We have one hour until Redemption, so let’s get this done.”
Alex felt cool fingers slide along the top of her head, and a blade slip up and beneath the skin towards her hair.
And then the demon pulled hard. That’s when the real pain began.
She screamed once, so hard and loud something ripped in her throat.
And then a weight was gone from her head, and the pain grew so bright, Alex felt as if she swam in white fire.
When the demon began to pull the skin from her face downward, as if removing a rubbery mask, Alex felt the light go out. There was a moment of blackness, and then there was nothing at all.
CHAPTER 43
“SO YOU’RE TELLING ME all of Santa Fe is being taken over by demons?” Cheyenne cocked a disbelieving eye at Joe. They had been walking in silence for the past few blocks, making their way across town to Joe’s hotel.
“Something like that,” he said. “How else would you explain what we just saw?”
“Maybe you can find one who will talk to you about that girl you were chasing,” Cheyenne suggested. “Maybe this is a good thing for you!”
Joe thought of the man letting his guts out over the face of his wife, and violently shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Once they’ve left the circle of the Calling and taken someone over, they aren’t vulnerable anymore. They can’t be sent back. At least not easily. Any of these demons we meet here in town? They’re not going to answer any of my questions at that point. They’re just going to try to gouge my eyeballs out for fun.”
Cheyenne didn’t say anything for a moment. They reached the corner of Guadalupe and Sierro, and waited for the light to change. Cars rushed by, and everything looked normal. But somewhere behind them, someone was screaming.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Well first, we get my car and take you to the hospital to get that bump looked at.”
Cheyenne shook her head. “Try again,” she said. “I don’t have enough money for the deductible. And I’m fine. It hurts, but I’m okay. What’s second?”
Joe studied her for a moment, trying to gauge if he really should let the medical visit go.
“Well?” she prodded.
“I need to drive back out to the mission.”
“And get possessed by demons?” Cheyenne asked. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “That sounds like a great plan.”
Joe shook his head. “I’m not going to just walk through the front door,” he said. “But I’ve got to go back and see if there’s some way I can isolate a demon before it’s fully loose. Before it’s possessed someone. This may be my only chance to find out if Alex is still out there somewhere.”
“So you’re not going to just walk through the front door. But what are you going to do?”
“I’ll figure that out once I’m there,” Joe said. “But if the door to the Curburide is still open, there has to be a way...”
He shook his head. “Look, I can drop you back at your place on my way. I just think this is it. Whatever is going on, this is my last chance to reach Alex.”
Cheyenne shook her head. “Oh no,” she said. “You’re not ditching me now. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. You’re clearly going to need my help.”
“With what?” he said.
“I’ll figure that out when you need it!” Cheyenne laughed.
Joe shook his head. “Suit yourself.” He gestured at the building in front of them. “We’re home.”
“Looks swanky,” Cheyenne said. “You didn’t tell me you popped for a Motel 6.”
“They leave the light on,” Joe answered.
“I hope they leave the showers on too,” she said. “After that walk, I need another one.”
“I think we can accommodate,” Joe said. “But I might have to join you.”
“In your dreams,” Cheyenne said.
“What, it’s not like I haven’t already seen you naked.”
He was rewarded with a slap to the shoulder.
“Seen and Shower are two different S words,” she said.
“Shit,” he answered. “There’s a third.”
After they both freshened up, separately, in the bathroom, Joe and Cheyenne walked back to the parking lot and found Joe’s car.
“It ain’t much,” he said. “But it runs.”
She slid into the passenger seat and made a face as her legs touched the fabric. It was throat-burning hot after sitting out in the sun all day. “I hope you have air conditioning.”
Joe nodded. “Yep, all four windows roll all the way down.”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes. “So much for my shower.”
“It’s not that hot out,” he lied. “It’ll be fine as soon as we’re moving.”
He started the Hyundai up and pulled out of the lot. A few minutes later, they were heading up the Santa Fe Trail and out of town. The faux adobe houses quickly thinned out and faded into the distance, as the view out the window turned to long rolling plains of tan earth dotted with the green of sagebrush and other small desert bushes and cactus that led to the hills miles away. Joe wondered how the desert could hold that much green when it rarely seemed to rain here. But somehow, some things held on and wouldn’t let go.
Kind of like me, he thought with a dour grin. Always chasing the impossible. Not really thriving, but surviving just the same.
“Lot of traffic out here,” Cheyenne said, as a car eased up behind them, and then pulled into the oncoming lane to pass them.
“We’re going 10 miles over the limit as it is,” Joe pointed out.
“Obviously that’s not enough,” Cheyenne said, as another car suddenly pulled up to their back bumper, hung there for a minute, and then abruptly shifted lanes and accelerated past them in the oncoming traffic lane.
Joe could see eight or nine cars ahead of them. As he counted, he saw a handful moving in the opposite direction, coming towards them. “It’s like rush hour,” he said.
“Yeah,” Cheyenne said. “Only, everyone looks like they’re rushing to go to the Birchmir.”
She pointed ahead, and Joe saw the glint of a line of cars far ahead on the small road that led off the highway to the old mission.
“I hate to channel old clichés,” he said. “But, I have a very bad feeling about this.”
“We could turn around,” she said. “Go back to my place, maybe watch a movie or something. Hell, I didn’t even give you the full tour of the place while we were there.”
Joe envisioned the tiny apartment, with the small living room, closet kitchen and bedroom with a connected bath. “Did you forget to show me a closet?” he asked. It earned him a punch in the sho
ulder.
He put on the turn signal to cut off the highway and down the small road to the old mission.
“Wouldn’t you rather find out what I forgot to show you than find out why all these crazies are headed to an old, falling-down abandoned building?”
Joe turned his head and met her eyes for just a moment before turning his eyes back to the road.
“I’m guessing that’s a no,” she said.
“You’re not curious about why all these cars are here?”
“Curious, yes,” she said. “I just don’t want to end up in the basement again.”
“We won’t go near the basement,” Joe said. “I promise.”
“Uh-huh.”
He eased the car into an empty space between a black Ford Explorer and a beat-up 1970-something blue Chevrolet. As he turned the engine off, Cheyenne leaned over and put a hand on his arm. “I’m curious,” she said. “But I don’t want to be dead.”
Joe nodded. “Me either. Why don’t you stay here and be ready to take off as soon as I come out?” He held the car keys out to her, but she pushed his hand back.
“My luck?” she said. “I’d be arrested for stealing your car.” She shook her head. “Let’s go see what’s up and get the hell back here as fast as we can.”
Joe nodded.
Almost as one, they pushed open the car doors and stepped outside. It was hot, but cooler than it had been in the car, Joe had to admit. Together they walked towards the Birchmir, but instead of heading towards the main entrance, Joe quickened his pace and headed around the side of the building to the entrance he’d used the first time. He didn’t want to be seen when he walked in.
The window was still broken, still open to interlopers. Joe didn’t hesitate. He gave Cheyenne a boost up to roll over the sill, and then pulled himself up and flipped his body into the cool, still air of the mission. When he stood up, Cheyenne was eyeing him balefully.
“I’m not going back to the basement,” she warned.
Joe shook his head. “I’m not getting you out of there again, either.”
