Ashes - The Special Edition: The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

  Peering through the trees was Darius, dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, observing from afar the funeral of his victim. He had waited outside of the Cathedral of the Gardens church, smoking a steady stream of cigarettes, as the funeral mass drone on to almost two hours. He leaned against the hearse and exhaled a cloud of smoke. He thought about how much work it was in modern times to gather followers; and how easy it had been years ago, when he had made Antoine, to make a kill.

  Certainly hundreds of years ago, there was not the forensic investigation as there was today. The encounter with the police just made matters worse. He was definitely taking some time getting used to a new society and culture – all made apparent when the flashlight shone in his face after he dropped the young man’s body to the ground.

  Shaking his head as the crowd began to disperse from the graveside service, he ventured away from the hearse and waited patiently in a network of trees until everyone had left. As he heard the purr of the last car engine fade into the distance, he emerged.

  He stared straight ahead, looking at Jean Carlo’s casket, lying in the middle of a sea of Astroturf and flowers lined by small, white folding chairs on either side. Any minute now the grounds keepers would be returning with their beat-up, rusted pickup to take away the chairs and bury the casket.

  He had little time.

  You’re going to rise out of that casket soon, Jean Carlo. That’s right my friend, it happens every time. It happens every time I make a kill. I do that, I do just that. I make a kill and then they come back. Why, you wouldn’t believe how many of you there already are. Let’s see…one or two a night, that equals to quite a lot.

  I remember seeing you waiting. I remember seeing you sitting in the car, looking over at me looking at you, walking out and heading over to me.

  But you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into – you couldn’t have possibly.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  The voice broke the trance. His gaze had been fixed on the casket, waiting for the correct moment to open it and let Jean Carlo free.

  A short, paunchy older man stood in front of him, grinning a toothless grin. Darius looked over towards the small path that cut through the center of the cemetery. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts, he hadn’t even heard the truck pull up.

  “Still paying your last respects?” the man asked as he started to fold the chairs. Darius moved closer to the grave. The grounds keeper continued: “Family’s all gone. Everyone left about ten minutes ago. We just gotta get these here chairs in the truck and get this in the ground.” He gestured back to the casket with the thumb as if he were a hitchhiker.

  Darius sighed.

  He certainly did not want them to bury the coffin yet. If they did, he would have to come back at night and dig it up. That most certainly was not appealing. He had to get rid of this old man.

  The silver-haired man continued talking as he folded the chairs, one by one, carrying them over to the rusty grey truck. “Yeah…this is an old cemetery all right. Not rich either. Most people here don’t have any money. No crypts, that’s for sure.”

  Darius sat in one of the chairs. “What I am interested in is right here.” He gestured to the casket.

  The grounds keeper stopped. “Of course sir!” he said. “You are family? A friend? I saw you at the funeral. Over in the trees. Why didn’t you come up here?”

  “I suppose you could say that I am a friend.”

  “Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit?” The grounds keeper placed a folding chair against the side of the truck. Darius said nothing, but continued to stare at the casket.

  “That’s fine man…I will just go the other side of the truck for a bit and have me a Winston. You just take your time sayin’ your goodbyes.”

  He retreated around the back of the truck and he was out of sight, and Darius didn’t move until he detected the sweet smell of cigarette smoke wafting through the air.

  He knelt next to the casket and felt the underside of the lid for the lock. As the old man would be coming back from his cigarette break in moments, he had to act fast.

  He pulled the lock open with ease, yet the crack and splinter against the quiet afternoon alerted the old man.

  “Everything ok over there?” the old man called over. Darius stopped what he was doing suddenly. He looked behind his shoulder; the man was standing in front of the hood, looking over expectantly.

  “Just fine, thanks…” Darius croaked, clearing his throat.

  “Oh, I see….I’m sorry sir, I will give you some more time,” he said backing away.

  Darius heard the click of the cigarette lighter as he slowly opened the lid to the casket. Gradually, the daylight seeped through the opening to the casket as the space between the lid and the base grew, revealing Jean Carlos’ body.

  There he was, lying in the satin as if he were asleep. His hair was slicked back with gel and he seemed to be nothing more than a lifeless corpse.

  “What the fuck?” Darius heard the old man exclaim as his head turned around. The grounds keeper was standing a few feet behind him, cigarette in hand and mouth gaping open.

  Darius stared the man down, his eyes beginning to transform to a pale pink, the color deepening to a dark red. He growled at the man.

  The old man gasped, his mouth opened wide and his cigarette fell to the ground, in a shower of bright red sparks. He stepped back cautiously.

  Darius stood in rage.

  His fangs elongated from his mouth and his fingers lengthened; they became spiny and sharp pointed, like weapons. He grew in height and muscularity, shredding the dark suit that he wore in his human form. His skin changed from light and fleshy to a dark green.

  He lunged forward, and the man turned to run, screaming for his life, tripping over the stones on the path lined by trees – just wide enough for a car to get through.

  The man fell face first to the ground, terrified of what Darius had become. It did not matter that he was a simple old man who kept cemetery grounds for his simple living; Darius saw him as a threat regardless.

  And for the thrill of the kill.

  “You like what you see?” Darius asked.

  The man rose from the gravel he lay briefly in a heaped mess upon, leaving a dark red stain on the stones below his face. His nose had broken when he fell, and blood poured down through his mouth.

  “What – are you?!?” he cried, as droplets of blood shot away from his mouth like saliva.

  “I am your last vision.”

  The man turned and tried to run again, but he could not escape the grip of Darius’ muscular arm, which reached forward and grabbed the man’s shirt.

  Pleading for his life, Darius wrapped his demonic arms around the grounds keeper squeezing him tightly. He squeezed him so tight that the cracks of the bones in his arms resonated against the otherwise silent afternoon.

  The man screamed. “Please!!” Darius did not listen. His arms continued to squeeze with an evil intensity causing the veins in his arms to engorge with blood, and the old man’s eyes began to bulge out of his sockets. The man could no longer scream. His lungs were being crushed and the air was forced out of them.

  His ribs crushed with a crack and the man lost consciousness, his head drooping to the side like that of a rag doll. Darius had almost made it through the limp body. Squeezing tighter, he ripped the body in two, as bright red blood poured onto the pavement. Shortly after came a shower of grayish colored intestines and digestive organs.

  But Darius let the body drop to the ground. And then it became eerily quiet once again, as if nothing happened.

  Staring at the ground, he saw what a bloody mess the man had become. The thrill now gone, Darius began to back away from the mess and decided to return to the grave. He immediately lost interest in the man once he was dead.

  There was a loud crash from back towards the grave. Darius turned around, but the truck was behind him blocking his view.

  What caught his attention was the n
oise coming from the direction of Jean Carlos’ grave.

  It hadn’t sounded like a small twig snapping, or a car passing by. But it had been eerily quiet and the crash didn’t sound like a branch falling to the ground – it sounded metallic like a casket falling off its runners.

  Dressed again in his dark suit, he slowly walked around the truck, keeping cover.

  Jean Carlo…I know you are over there. I heard you get up. I heard you rise from your coffin after I tore that old man to shreds. Don’t think you can hide from me. I am here to bring you back to where you belong. I am sin and you are a sinner. And now, welcome to hell.

  Darius checked himself the in the side mirror, slicking back his hair with his hand. Glancing to his right, he peered through the glass font cabin of the truck and confirmed his suspicion: the casket was lying on its side. The pillow was on the ground next to the coffin. And there was no sign of Jean Carlo.

  He walked slowly over to the gravesite. He knew that Jean Carlo was alive and immortal. He stood and scanned the area. There were several thick trees that he could be hiding behind.

  The afternoon sun was beginning to set, and the cemetery faced the west. So the shadows might soon reveal Jean Carlos’ location. Perhaps.

  If he really was hiding behind one of the trees.

  Darius walked up towards the casket, straightening it back on its runners and placing the pillow back at the head. He walked back towards the mess of the old man, scooped up the remains with a shovel and dumped them into a wheelbarrow that he found not far from the pickup truck.

  He dumped what was left of the old man into the casket, staining the white satin red and pink, and shut the lid.

  Looking up towards the sky as his foot turned the switch to lower the casket in the grave, he wondered if Jean Carlo was watching everything. It did not matter. Jean Carlo did not matter. He was out there now, out as an immortal. And he would be out there unless someone turned him to ashes. Darius grabbed a shovel, ripped the blue tarp off of the nearby mound of dirt, and started to toss the dirt on the casket.

  As he shoveled the last of the dirt into the grave, the old man was given a place of rest.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Asmodai stood above Antoine, looking down where he lay. Antoine was huddled on the ground under the collapsed tree, shielding his eyes from the wind and falling debris. Asmodai would not let him leave so easily. Antoine knew it was time to finish the ritual; and Asmodai knew it was time to collect a soul. But Antoine’s soul was the burst of energy in question, and many times, Antoine doubted if he still had a soul left to give.

  Antoine felt that when he had been born, when he grew into a boy, and when he started leaving the small house early each morning to work in the blistering sun in the coffee fields, that, then, he still had a soul. But he quickly fell down the path of corruption, and by the time he met Darius, it was questionable if his soul was even still there. Still, when he sank his teeth into the heart in the cemetery, his fate was sealed. The first moment that his shovel hoisted dirt from the ground, he sold his soul. And even if his soul was hiding somewhere faraway…it was in danger. Asmodai knew it and Antoine knew it without a word being spoken.

  It was time to find a way to bring Darius back. Because now Antoine needed him.

  Antoine knew, from reading Les Livres Des Vampires about the process of reanimation. There was no turning back. Besides, Antoine needed Darius to helm Sacrafice, there was no way that Antoine could do it alone.

  When Antoine spit the blood out, it did nothing to lift the curse. Now it was time to pay.

  Antoine slowly and carefully crawled through the foliage and into the cemetery clearing. The demons stood still, as if all pieces in an enormous game of chess waiting command for the next strategic move. Asmodai returned to his place near Darius’ grave, trudging through a legion of loyal demons; for a moment he turned and stared intently at Antoine. It almost looked as if Asmodai smiled; Antoine could not determine for sure, but he thought he saw the edge of his mouth rise slightly. Asmodai knew he had won. But even when he stood above the grave, waiting to complete the ritual, his eyes never lost focus on Antoine’s moves.

  “Come,” Asmodai called across the sea of gravestones, each monument raising a cement obituary in an ocean of grass. “Let us finish the ritual.”

  Antoine rose to his feet and proceeded slowly over to the grave where Asmodai was waiting.

  Asmodai issued a command in his own dialect to the demon standing closest to him. The demon bent over and reached into the nearest grave, shoving a muscular arm into the dirt, and ripped buried casket from the ground. He took the coffin into both of his arms as dirt cascaded off of the sides, sending a shower onto the grass.

  He dropped the casket on the ground with a thud, tore off the rotted lid, and with one arm, lifted out a severely decayed corpse. This body had to have been buried for much longer than the last one – the skin was completely dried and flaking, and almost entirely rotted away. It was heavily deteriorated, with many visible bones and rotted masses of old flesh that hung off the body like fabric.

  Antoine reached into his pocket and felt the meaty warmth of Darius’ heart when he reached the graveside. Taking it out, he handed it to Asmodai - slowly and carefully - as if it were the forbidden fruit.

  Asmodai took the heart and raised it up to the sky.

  The winds stopped for a moment, debris suspended in mid-air, and the clouds directly above them opened up and glowed a fire-like reddish orange in a circle that was like the eye of a giant hurricane.

  Asmodai spoke in his own dialect, and then turned to Antoine.

  “Remove your shirt.”

  Antoine obeyed, dropping his clothes to the ground. Upon reading the ritual, he lay down next to the rotted corpse without any instruction needed to do so.

  The demon that unearthed the corpse bent over and ripped the dried and rotted heart out of the body, and threw it into the woods aside.

  Asmodai then took Darius’ heart and shoved it harshly into the chest of the corpse. “This body will come forth, it will rise as Darius, and it will be raised immortal once again, brought forth with the blood of his son.”

  Asmodai drew his sword from its sheath.

  Antoine closed his eyes, and drew in his breath deeply as he felt his skin break. He exhaled and looked down, as the sword was carving a hole in the center of his chest. Asmodai dug through layers of skin, muscle, and pierced Antoine’s ribcage. The blood that was beating in his heart started to flow out of his chest, spilling down the front of his body.

  “Now get up,” Asmodai commanded as he withdrew the sword. “Lower yourself onto the body and bring forth your maker!”

  Antoine at first struggled to his feet and almost fell backwards, his energy drained. The wound to his chest was a piercing pain that throbbed and would not let go. He could feel the cool night air flowing through his body. Looking down, he saw his torn chest – crudely dug out with the demon sword, his skin, torn with hanging flesh and muscle; his heart, beating as had been for so many years inside of his chest. Antoine did as he was instructed. He mounted the corpse, one leg on either side of the torso, and brought his chest up towards the face. He raised his body; above the carcass so that the fresh, oozing wound in his chest was in alignment with the remains of the mouth, and aimed several bright red drops on the lips.

  “Let it drink! The blood must be directly from your heart!”

  Antoine squeezed his chest muscles together, milking the puncture in the center of his chest creating a flow of blood that dripped into the mouth of the cadaver. Slowly his blood drained, sending waves of pleasure throughout his body that he had not experienced before, and then, not before long, he felt a warm and livery tongue begin to lap at the hot flowing potion.

  All of his veins were writhing in orgasmic bliss; the intensity of his pleasure was accentuated by the warm mouth forming beneath him. He shivered and he shook, as if reveling in the pleasures of his creating a new life. The blood flowed and
flowed, and instinctively he squeezed his chest muscles harder together, causing the flow of the blood to increase.

  “Feed him until you are near drained,” Asmodai said. “You must give him all of your blood!”

  Wincing and grimacing his face as if he were climaxing, the intensity of the pleasure was almost too much for Antoine to bear. The pleasure came in waves of altering intensity, however when a crest hit it became body-shakingly awesome. Several times Antoine felt as though he could not go on – that the pleasure was simply too intense and too much for his body to bear. But every time he turned his head up to Asmodai, he barked, “all of it!”

  The corpse beneath him started to fill out – the flesh started to live and grow again; forming flesh, fresh blood, fresh skin. The feel of the mouth that suckled on the wound in his chest - which at first had felt dried out and papery, started to take a new, more lively form. The tongue would penetrate his body; the lips would caress his wounds. Each time the tongue entered his chest and massaged his beating heart, it became fleshier and felt more and more… alive.

  Soon, the tongue felt animated and warm, like it was dripping with saliva. The rotted flesh began to ooze off the bones, collecting in a pile of oozing mess, amidst dusty, dried out body parts. The organs underneath revived and repaired themselves, creating veins and a flow of blood that started out slowly and became faster and faster as the skin began to generate.

  Asmodai stood above and looked on in approval.

  Antoine’s blood started to fill the body, giving it life. Further and further, the blood drained out of Antoine and dripped into the mouth, permeating the corpse, fulfilling dark scripture.

  As the skin regrew, and as the body filled out with newly grown organs and muscle, there seemed to be a hint of movement underneath Antoine. He had finally done his duty and given life back to Darius.