by A. L. Mengel
Yes, Jonas stopped and did a double take when he realized that he was ascending a set of stairs that seemed all too familiar.
“What is it?” Jonas said, realizing that his partner had stopped mid track.
“I thought you said that going up there was forbidden?”
“Oh it is,” he explained. “But not for you. You see, what you didn’t hear in the briefing was that you and I were set to go out there tonight. The mist is coming – in fact, it’s probably already here by now – which means Asmodai and his army have already spread out and begun their assault. But we have to get the lost souls who are still out there. There are several. And you have a specific duty. It’s the whole reason why you are here in the first place, from the moment that you awoke in your coffin.”
“And what is that?” Jean Carlo asked.
“You haven’t figured it out?” Jonas asked. “You are destined to destroy Asmodai. You will face him tonight.”
CHAPTER FOURTY-FOUR
The Green Mist.
It swirled its ugly dark demonic faces, devouring each building; one by one it claimed each one – as it waited across the street, snickering and laughing at Paula and Anthony. As the two looked across the street, through the sea of strewn papers and crumbled aluminum cans, past the wrought iron benches that were skewed and twisted; they saw the darkness, they saw the green and they saw the mist, waiting for them.
Waiting to proceed across the street and devour them.
There wasn’t much farther to go to the Cathedral of the Gardens. They were getting closer, Paula could tell. Looking up towards the sky, she again saw the beacon of hope, the steeple which stood out against the dark sky.
“Come on, Paula, we have to hurry,” Anthony said as he walked over to where Paula had briefly stopped to stare at the sky. She closed her eyes for a moment, and drew her breath in.
They reached the end of the street and entered a small wooded patch, taking a path to the south in the direction of the steeple. When they emerged on the other side of the trees, the Cathedral was in sight.
Paula remembered her night with Antoine as she entered the main doors of the Cathedral. As were the other buildings in the city, the Cathedral was also in a state of destruction. The main doors didn’t even exist anymore. Both were hanging to the sides, off of the hinges, leading into the darkness of the church inside.
“How is this going to keep us safe?” Paula asked, as Anthony padded down the center aisle of pews closer to the altar.
“Oh, demonic forces will not enter the House of God. We will be safe here.”
The interior of the Cathedral was a stark contrast to the chaos and destruction outside. Even though the front doors were hanging to the sides, the interior of the church was relatively untouched. Each row of pews was neatly polished and all of the liturgy and song books were tightly tucked into the cubbies on the back of each row.
Approaching the altar, Paula looked up, and noticed the expansive ceiling, adorned with giant hanging light fixtures – but they were not like the elegant crystal chandeliers she saw at the hotels in Miami Beach, but much simpler and almost rustic looking.
The interior of the church was dark wood; the pews blended in with the floor and the walls, and sculptures of the passion lined the walls up towards the ceiling with small stone carved caricatures depicting the crucifixion of Christ.
Anthony entered a small door to the left of the altar, which must have been, Paula assumed, the vestment room. “Come on, Paula. I will explain when we get to safety. We need to get away from that mist.”
Paula looked behind her shoulder, towards the doors they had entered in on the other side of the church. The trees were gone.
Everything was…gone.
Just a dark, greenish cloud. Moving closer. Reaching inwards.
Swallowing everything up.
“Wha…?” she said, dumfounded that that mist had followed them so quickly. “I thought you said it couldn’t come in here!”
“There is no going back that way,” Anthony said. “Look around, Paula.”
Stained glass windows that lined the sides of the church shattered one by one as the mist billowed through them into the church.
The mist was already moving through the doors to the Cathedral. Its fingers danced in the doorway, slowly feeling its way down the center aisle.
Paula hurriedly followed Anthony into the dressing chambers, and Anthony closed the door. Anthony took all of the vests and robes out of the closet, revealing a door. He opened the door, and there was a set of stairs, leading down into a black abyss.
“Go,” he instructed. “I know it is dark as night down there, but it is safe. It’s an entire basement level under the church. We will be safe down there.”
Paula looked down the stairs uneasily. She couldn’t see more than three or four steps down, given the almost total darkness of the room. Looking out the door to the dressing room, she saw the worship area being devoured by the mist.
“You don’t want to go in that cloud, Paula. The cloud is certain death. This is our only option.”
She descended the steps. Anthony opened a small cabinet that was next to the closet. Inside were stoles, prayer books, and ceremonial candles. With some luck, he also found a pack of matches.
He lit one of the candles and handed it to Paula. She couldn’t help but notice the gold strip at the top, and remembered seeing similar candles when she attended church as a child. She outstretched her arm over the first few steps. It cast an eerie yellow glow on the stairwell. She swallowed hard. “Uh…”
The stairs were formed from dirt, as were the walls. It looked as if this were a well carved out cave, right underneath the church. Something, however, didn’t feel right. Even with the candle, she could only see a few steps ahead of her, and as she descended the stairs, with Anthony following close behind, she began to feel her skin crawl and develop goose bumps. “Anthony…are you sure about this?”
Out in the worship area, there was a loud, splintering crash.
“Those sound like the pews!” Anthony said. “We have got to go now! Go down the stairs Paula!”
“What’s happening to them?” Paula asked, as she snapped her head in the direction of the noise.
But as she turned around she saw, behind Anthony, intense red eyes, peering out from the mist. The cloud was closer now…swirling and entering through the door, only feet behind them.
Paula screamed. Anthony looked back towards the mist.
Seeing the eyes, Anthony’s greatest fear was confirmed.
He descended the stairs as fast as his injuries would let him; he still managed to knock Paula down. Both candles went out, and the stairwell was enveloped in total darkness. Anthony got up from where he fell over Paula, and struggled to continue down the stairs.
“Come on Paula!” he said, continuing down, using his hand to feel the wall, falling down the steps again.
Paula looked up and back one more time, and she wished she hadn’t. Since the candles went out the mist seemed black, and all she could make out were the intense red eyes, staring from the top of the stairs down at her.
CHAPTER FOURTY-FIVE
Antoine never noticed the Green Mist that overtook the city of Miami.
Even though the time that he spent crossing between the dimensions that he created, even though all those who came in contact with him eventually also came in contact with the mist, Antoine paid it no mind. For him, the coming of the green mist was a regular daily occurrence that happened precisely at the same time every night when the clock struck three hours into the new day, and more often than not, Antoine walked right through the mist, heading to his car and his home, and didn’t even care about or look at what the mist contained.
This time, however, Antoine was affected differently.
He saw from his illuminated confines of the bubble, he saw it creeping in and under the doors of the passage that he had been sitting and waiting for hours for his captor to appear. As the time had p
assed, he lay down, seeing the dark passage outside like looking through a smeared film, each object taking a glossy appearance.
He even thought he fell asleep for a while. Waking up, covered in sweat, reminding him of his mortal days, he paused to remember.
Digging.
His shovel hit the dirt hard, and hoisted it over his shoulder, as he dug and he dug and he dug, deeper and deeper into the moist, caked cool dirt, digging deeper and deeper but not finding anything.
What was he digging for? He stopped for a moment. Leaning against the shovel, he wiped his brow. He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that he had to dig. And dig.
He looked up and above, out through the hole he was digging. He hadn’t realized how deep he had dug so far. He must have been six or eight feet below the surface, and he was standing so his head was still at least a good foot below the surface.
He looked up and saw stars.
The night sky and moon offered a pale light, and he saw the roots sticking out of the sides of the hole he had dug.
The night was silent. All he heard was his own breathing.
But something wasn’t right.
He had been here, digging and working up a sweat, feeling so much more like a mortal, more than he ever had since he had actually been a mortal, he felt small and scared and unsure of himself. He felt tired and weak and hungry and hot.
And then came footsteps. They weren’t deep and booming. They were small and determined and methodic, starting far away, that he could tell.
But steadily approaching. As each minute passed, the footsteps came closer and closer.
And stopped.
They stopped just above where he was standing, just above his hole.
But looking up, he saw nothing. He saw no one. But what he heard – what he stopped and stayed silent and strained to hear – was light breathing. Someone was up there, and someone was breathing.
Waiting.
Waiting above, and waiting for him.
Waiting for him to climb out of the hole, to rise above the edge of the earth and reveal himself to the mysterious stranger who stopped and stood above him.
And that’s when he didn’t have time to think. He didn’t have time to look above any longer, because the hand that grabbed his neck and plucked him out of the hole moved too fast for him to see it; and it had him dangling high above the hole, up in the air, and when he looked down at the ground below, he saw. He saw the grave that he had been digging.
But when he turned around, when he craned his neck back to see who or what was dangling him high in the air, he blacked out.
Was I digging my own grave?
And then he saw swirling green; the mist had filled the passage, swirling outside of his bubble, so deep and dark and thick that he could not see through it. But there was something there.
Antoine stopped.
It was time to get out of this confinement. It was time to face what was in the mist; it was time to face what was waiting for him.
He pressed against the edge of the bubble, trying to pierce his fingers through it, but all it did was expand outwards. It seemed to be some sort of gelatinous substance, but very elastic. It would not give, it would not break.
After several attempts at breaking the barrier surrounding him, Antoine sat. He sat and thought, pondering a way out of the bubble. But he didn’t have to think long. The mist began to press against the sides of the bubble, and the mist pressed harder and harder, desperately trying to get in.
Antoine darted his head back and forth, running through his mind possible ways of escape as the bubble began to shrink around him – the mist, forceful as it was, starting to crush and press its way closer and closer to Antoine…until the bubble burst.
And there he was, sitting on the floor, the mist devouring him, screaming at him, urging him to get up.
And then his mother spoke to him.
You stupid, silly little boy.
I saw you leave that night. I saw you go out and I saw you leave in the moonlight. I waited for you! I was waiting and waiting but you never came back! I needed you and you left me! I saw you leave and then he was gone, he was dead out in the stables! You left and he died! I waited and waited and nobody came!
Antoine screamed, and covered his ears.
His eyes were shut tight; he dared not look ahead, because he was afraid that he would see the face of his mother, his mother from so many years ago. He shut his eyes tight as long as he could, until he felt the mist pry them open.
And when he opened his eyes, his mother was there.
You left me to rot in that house. I sat in that rocking chair until it fell apart!
But it was not the mother that he remembered; it was not the mother that coddled him as a child or scolded him when he tracked mud inside the kitchen; it was not the mother that he grew to love.
It was she, yes.
He saw her brown hair framing her face. But there was hardly any of her face left. The flesh mostly eaten away, the blood long since dried up, she still had maggots swarming in and out of her eye sockets and crusty dried tendons dangling from her chin.
“You left me to die!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, as Antoine screamed, covering his face with his arm, falling backwards as the beast lunged at him.
“It’s time!” she screamed, standing up. She was an extremely tall rotted corpse, the skin half rotted and dangling from dry bones. She was still wearing a housedress and apron. “It’s time for your punishment! Get over here!” She reached out to grab him.
And then Antoine lunged forward.
Are you going to abandon me again?
He took his arm and swiped his mother to the side, and she was swallowed up in the mist without a sound. And in an instant, she was gone.
But he heard a voice. He heard a voice trying to speak through the mist in broken syllables.
“Annnnntooooiiinnneeee…..” it called to him, faintly.
It was far away. But it continued to call his name, and each time, the voice was closer.
When it got quiet, he listened again for the voice, but heard nothing. The swirl of the mist retained its silence and kept his blindness persistent. He felt like a vulnerable mortal, like he had never transformed and never gained any power; the feeling of being a troubled youth overtook his being.
And then he heard the voice of Darius. Calling to him. That was it. That was the voice. He knew that he’d detected a familiarity in the voice that was off in the distance. But now, as the voice continued, much closer, he knew it was Darius. No one possessed the distinct tone that Darius did.
“…Antoine…”
Darius sang out to him, but as Antoine strained to see, as he tried with every effort he had, all he could see was the green mist. And then the voice moved, this time it came from his left. And then it called him from behind.
“Antoine,” this time he spoke, mere inches from him. But Antoine still could not see him. The mist was far too dense.
And then suddenly he was there. His face projected through the mist, his loving face.
“Antoine, have you been so naive? Do you not know where you are now?”
Antoine got onto his knees, preparing to stand. “I know this, Darius. I have seen this before.”
“That is true,” Darius replied, “but did you not know that tonight the mist seems to have a directive towards you?” Darius smiled, his eyes looking around them, and chuckled softly to himself. “Oh, Antoine. Close your eyes for me. Do it, please.”
Antoine sat back for a moment, feeling for the edge of the passage, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
“Do you remember the night you came for me? I want you to think Antoine, I want you to remember. Think hard and remember even harder.”
How couldn’t he remember? It’s been a night that he could never forget. Antoine remembered entering the graveyard, he remembered digging the first shovelful of dirt, and he remembered being trapped in a cave filled with crystals.
“Now th
ink, afterwards – the next day. Do you remember that?”
Yes, it was still all with him. He had not forgotten.
Antoine had stepped outside of the casket he was using at the Chateau quietly and walked over to the dressing area. It was an elaborate stone room – stone floors and walls with large picture windows that overlooked a well manicured lawn. On the windows hung massive dark maroon colored drapes with gold cords tying the fabric back. It was dark and black outside, and Antoine could see his reflection in the windowpane as he peered out into the garden.
He had run his fingers over the healing wound in the center of his chest, and studied it in the reflection on the windowpane. It would most definitely leave a scar, a branding of sorts – like a tattoo signifying that he was the property of Asmodai.
The deal was sealed. There was a body in the next room which Antoine had gingerly placed in a casket for rest, and when Darius was ready to rise he would be ready – and then Antoine would have some explaining to do.
He had washed himself, and pulled a clean shirt over his muscular torso. After pulling up a pair of pants and slipping on some black boots, he had ventured out the door into the hallway.
Antoine’s door was in the center of the hallway – at one end the hallway spilled out into a gigantic foyer, while at the other end was the library. On the wall opposite of Antoine’s door was another door leading to a spare room with a casket in the center. Antoine carefully turned the doorknob – carefully to not make a single noise.
The door opened slowly, revealing the silver casket. It was the only item in the room – the room was cold, stone and windowless, and the casket almost blended into the stone surroundings.
The casket rested on a stone slab, which was just large enough to hold the coffin and nothing else.
And the coffin was closed.
Antoine stood at the door for a moment, replaying the events of the night before in his mind. He did not get a good look at the corpse that Asmodai had chosen for Darius’ resurrection. At that point in the ritual, Antoine had surrendered, accepted his fate and handed the heart to Asmodai. Antoine surrendered to the fact that Asmodai owned him now and would place demands on him and expectations on his actions.
