by Bryan Smith
“No, I’m not a junkie.” The hellhound’s voice sounded forced. Jack sensed an inner struggle that he could barely fathom. “Down that path lies madness, sickness, and death. It is a capitulation to the forces of darkness. A surrender. A weakness. One step in that direction and I would be doomed, Jack. I feel that potential for surrender within me. But I must strive to rise above that. Because I have a higher purpose, Jack. As do you.”
Jack snickered. “Uh...yeah. Look, Lucien, I like you. For a hellhound, you’re really a swell guy. And I’d like to help you out, but I’m not about to be roped into aiding some weird cause I know nothing about. I’m sure it’s worthy, but the only ‘higher purpose’ I have is getting myself the hell out of hell.” He hesitated. “That, and finding the girl in the picture.”
Now it was Lucien’s turn to laugh, but there was no humor in the sound. “You will not find her in hell, Jack.”
Jack frowned. “But--”
Lucien’s voice was gruff: “Enough. You have many questions. I cannot answer them all.” His voice softened. “Jack, it’s time you met a man named Herodotus.”
“What the hell kind of name is that? And who is this Herowhatsis?”
“It is a Greek name.” Lucien coughed. “And...well, I lied before when I said that about you and the hellspawn.”
Jack tensed. “Lucien, I trusted you, buddy, now you tell me you’ve been lying to me? Frankly, I’m hurt. Also, I’m about to turn and run like a motherfucker unless you say something reassuring within the next second or two.”
“It was a necessary untruth. I’m sure you’ll soon agree.” He redirected the flashlight beam so that it illumined his own face; his eyes glowed a fierce yellow. “Remember what you told me when I showed you the woman’s picture, Jack? Maybe you’d like to reconsider what you said.”
Jack’s smile was weary. He shrugged. “Maybe.”
The hellhound turned away from Jack and opened the door. He glanced back in Jack’s direction. “Come now, friend, and meet the only other living man in hell.”
Lucien stepped through the door and it began to swing shut. Jack hesitated. He watched the door slowly close and the light visible beyond grow ever more dim. He heard something shuffle behind him, something struggling to make its way toward him on withered hellspawn limbs. Jack’s stomach clenched. He had no desire to face a hungry hellspawn, conscience or no conscience. He rushed forward and gripped the door’s knob just as it finished closing and vanquished the light.
He opened the door and stepped into another strange place.
10.
This place was also dark, but the blackness here was less absolute. Pinpoints of flickering light shimmered ahead. The tiny flames looked like ethereal dancers waltzing across the cosmos. Jack was confused for a moment before realizing the effect was caused by candles carried by creatures whose outlines he couldn’t yet discern. More hellspawn probably, but this part of the ‘abandoned’ warehouse wasn’t imbued with the odor of decay that so permeated the shooting gallery. There was that to be grateful for at least, but Jack’s ongoing sense of unease failed to diminish.
As they journeyed deeper into this new area, Jack began to detect the susurrations of whispered conversations. He had the sense of being observed from all angles with every inch of progress, a feeling that made his scalp crawl and his jaw tighten.
Jack cleared his throat and spoke. “You know what I like best about my nine-millimeter handgun, Lucien.” Jack didn’t wait for a reply. “I like that I can fire ten rounds before I have to reload. I also like that I took those expensive shooting lessons from that retired marksman. That fella was one hell of a shot. He could shoot the wings off a fly from--”
Lucien cut him off: “Nobody here cares about your little popgun, Jack. So cease your prattling, ‘kay?”
Miffed, Jack considered going on to tell anyone listening about the (imaginary) belt of explosives cinched tightly around his waist. But good sense prevailed. Lucien was his only potential ally here and he didn’t want to alienate the guy.
The dancing points of light drew closer as Jack trailed Lucien around an assembly line so corroded with rust he couldn’t imagine it ever being functional again. He wondered what kind of goods might have been assembled in a warehouse in hell. He further wondered why production had ceased. “Say, Lucien...why would a factory in hell ever close?”
Lucien glanced backward. “Remember what I told you, Jack. Greytown is an outer borough of hell. By hell’s standards, it is one of the newer territories. Hell’s elite pay little attention to it. The renegade hellspawn faction you’ve glimpsed commandeered it and displaced, or ‘laid off’, the workers, who were absorbed by other factories. The ones who weren’t just killed outright, I mean.”
Soon they arrived at a smaller building within the warehouse. Lucien’s beam revealed a sign that read: SUPERVISOR.
Lucien tapped lightly on the door and a muffled voice replied: “Come in.”
Lucien pushed the door open and Jack followed him into a former office the current resident had converted into a living quarters and place of meditation. There were candles everywhere and stacks of old books with worn leather covers. The walls were adorned with paintings that reminded him of Native American art on cave walls. The floor was covered with many hand-woven blankets and Lucien placed a hand to halt Jack before he could set foot on one.
“Shoes off, Jack.”
Jack’s gaze was fixed on the old man near the back of the room. He was seated on a blanket with his back turned to them. The man looked thin in his white robe, and his long, silver hair hung over bony shoulders.
Jack kicked off his shoes. “This Herowhosit?”
The man’s voice was resonant in the room, a big, gruff presence that belied his frail physical appearance. “I am the one who calls himself Herodotus. The real Herodotus was a historian. As am I.”
Jack’s heart lurched. That voice...so familiar. He stumbled forward. “No. It can’t be.”
The man rose to his feet and turned to face them.
Jack gasped. “Dad?”
11.
“Son.”
Jack peered intently at the beloved figure he hadn’t seen in ten years. Was this perhaps an illusion, some elaborate and unspeakably cruel trick played on him by the devil himself? No. He knew that wasn’t true within moments. Despite the years gone by, he knew this man was his father. Each of his senses told him the truth of this on a level too primal to deny.
“You fell off a boat.”
Theodore Grimm’s eyes crinkled and the smallest of smiles touched the corners of his thin lips. “Indeed I did. And I swam a great distance prior to being picked up by another boat. To protect you and your mother it became necessary to feign my death.”
Jack frowned. “But...why?”
Theodore’s smile broadened a little. “I’ll explain what I can. Some things I cannot reveal, not even now. There were forces at work you would not have understood then. But you are here for other reasons, son.”
Jack was baffled. Beneath the incredible joy he felt at the revelation that his father was alive were high levels of confusion and even anger. His father’s sudden (and apparently fictional) demise had fueled Jack’s tendency toward self-destruction. He thought of all the grief and anguish he’d experienced and wondered how any loving father could put a son through that, regardless of his reasons. Perhaps more disconcerting than that, however, was the realization that some unseen force or forces had conspired to bring the two of them together in hell. He glanced at Lucien but could read nothing in the hellhound’s implacable expression.
Theodore Grimm beckoned his son to the rear of the room with a tilt of his head. There, Jack’s father resumed his cross-legged position on the floor. Jack sat opposite him while Lucien hovered in the background.
Jack searched his father’s face in the dancing candlelight, striving to divine hints of reason in that wrinkled visage. “I don’t understand any of this. Why am I here? Why are you here? You don’t
belong here. You’re too good to be damned.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as a queasy uncertainty welled within him. “Aren’t you?”
His father smiled. “I am not one of the damned, son.”
Jack frowned. “But--”
Lucien appeared in the candlelight off to the side. “Jack, your father is a great man. But he is no ordinary man. Even when you were young you knew that.”
Jack shot a puzzled expression at the hellhound, but snippets of ancient memory stilled the question that sprang to his lips. Pictures of his father in his book-lined study, reading from some ancient text. He saw himself as a little boy, listening at the locked door of the study as strange, whooshing sounds emanated from the room, the sound of galaxies colliding he’d thought then. Terrible, cataclysmic sounds. Yet, when his father emerged from the room after these incidents there was never any indication that anything at all untoward had occurred.
His father’s voice brought his gaze back to the present. “Jack, you need to remember. There are some things you’ve forgotten, am I right?”
Jack swallowed a hard lump in his throat. “Yes.”
Theodore Grimm produced something from the folds of his robe. He held it before him and it glittered in the mellow candlelight. A piece of dazzling crystal dangled from a filigreed silver string.
Jack’s gaze locked on it.
Theodore Grimm uttered a single, insistent word: “Remember!”
Jack flinched.
And he remembered.
12.
Jack is in the Sherlock Holmes Pub in Nashville again. The glass of whiskey in his hand is just his third drink of the night. He downs it and orders a fourth just as Andy O’Day slides onto the stool to his left. Andy has slicked back reddish-blond hair knotted in a small ponytail at the back of his head. He has a precisely trimmed goatee and a hint of Machiavelli in his blue eyes. Jack and his best friend exchange some banter before retreating to a booth near the back of the pub. Jack slams down his fourth drink of the night and signals a waitress with raven-black hair for a fifth while Andy tells him about a girl.
Andy speaks around the lit Kool wedged into a corner of his mouth. “A runaway.” He lays a picture on the table between them. The girl is pretty and very young. Fifteen. Maybe sixteen. “A buddy of mine, another private cop, was put on her trail by the family. He’s turned up nothing. But he knows your rep, Jack. He thinks this might be the kind of case only you can handle.”
Jack inhales smoke from a Lucky Strike and stares grimly down at the picture, the sort of glamour portrait done in malls across America. He looks at Andy. “Abducted?”
Andy nods. “But not by any of your usual suspects. Nothing you could handle as easily as a vampire or werewolf.”
Jack leans back in the booth. There’s another drink in front of him--he’s lost count of them now. “Is it a cult?”
Andy shakes his head. “Worse. Come on, let’s go for a ride.”
Andy pays the tab and they leave the pub. They leave the city in Andy O’Day’s black Jaguar and hop on the interstate. A while later they leave the interstate and wend their way through a bumpy series of back roads. Jack drinks whiskey from the flask from Andy’s glove compartment. He needs as much booze in him as possible to deal with the horror of what Andy is telling him. The girl, her name is Sally, is being held prisoner in hell. Only the damned, living or dead, can enter hell. Or so it’s said. Try as he might, Jack cannot imagine why a girl so young and presumably innocent could already be marked as damned. That’s bad enough. What’s worse is what Andy tells him next.
“You have to go after her, Jack. Find her and bring her back. Your soul has been marked for damnation. Only you can get her back.”
They park the Jaguar by a dark roadside and walk deep into the woods. They walk for maybe thirty minutes before Jack spies a strange source of light. It becomes dazzling as they near it. Then they step into a clearing and there it is. A shimmering circle of light containing shifting swirls of color.
“It’s a portal. I’ve made arrangements. Jack, you’ve got twenty-four hours to find that girl and get back here. Otherwise you’ll be trapped in hell.”
Jack nods. He walks toward the portal. Soon he is awash in light. The universe is only swirling shades of purple, red, and blue. Then he feels nothing. He is only incorporeal essence.
Then he’s standing on a street in Greytown. He takes a look around..
Then he sets out to find the girl.
13.
“I found her.”
Theodore Grimm’s expression was unreadable. “Yes.”
Jack’s body sagged. He felt exhausted, like a runner at the end of a marathon. The glittering crystal was gone, presumably returned to its place in his father’s robe. “What the fuck was that thing?”
“A key. It unlocks secrets of the unconscious mind.”
“Something like that could come in handy. I don’t suppose...”
His father’s voice was stern: “No. You need motivation to tame your darker appetites. A memory key would only grant you license to indulge them further. Now. Tell me about the girl.”
Jack sighed. “I’m sure you already know.”
“Tell me.”
Jack shrugged. “I found her in the basement of a nightclub not far from the Sundowner Inn. Nude and tied to a torture wheel.” Jack shuddered at the memory of the big smile on her sweaty face. “Hellhounds were lashing her with bullwhips. She was...she was...enjoying it.”
Theodore Grimm’s hands formed a steeple. He nodded. “She is there of her own accord. She’s in league with the powers we oppose.”
Jack felt a sudden chill--despite the warmth in the room. “I could see the corruption in her eyes. It was so total.”
Lucien said, “You left her there.”
Jack looked at the floor. “I did.”
His father said, “You had no choice.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. You are a flawed man, son, but you are a man of intelligence. You had the insight to recognize a battle already lost. And you had the courage to just walk away.” A hint of weariness crept into his voice. “There is valor to be gained in battle, but there are times when the bravest thing a man can do is to just walk away.”
Jack lifted his gaze from the floor and looked into the old man’s eyes. “Why did you walk away?”
“The reasons why will not be revealed to you today, but will become clear in the fullness of time. I serve a higher purpose now.”
Jack shot a quick glance at Lucien--the hellhound’s intent gaze was riveted to Theodore Grimm--before looking again at his father. “What purpose is that?”
His father’s expression became solemn. “The highest there is. At the heart of this dark domain lurks a force so evil it is almost beyond man’s ability to comprehend. And it is plotting a new war. A hell on earth. I am here to prevent that.” The old man’s gaze shifted to Lucien, lingered there a moment, then came back to his son. “What Lucien said before is true. I am not like other men. I am a mortal man, but I am gifted, or cursed, with abilities few other men have ever possessed. No other living man is as fit to wage the coming battle.”
The words made Jack’s heart ache. “Come back to earth with me.”
His father smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I cannot. I am needed here. And you are needed on earth. You are charged with a mission.”
Jack frowned. “What mission?”
“To redeem yourself.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He couldn’t imagine anything more difficult.
“Son, you are one of the hellbound.” Theodore Grimm’s voice became stern again, the way Jack remembered from when he was a kid and his father wanted his fullest attention. “You are marked for damnation. It is the reason you were able to enter hell. Because I have mastered certain forces, I am able to be here, but I am not damned. Son.” He leaned forward, his gaze growing more commanding. “Your redemption is the only way you and I can ever see each other again. I may succeed in t
urning back the armies of hell, but I will not survive the battle.”
Jack’s voice thickened with grief. “No…”
“I’m sorry, son. Redeem yourself.” The old man looked at Lucien. He smiled. He looked again at his anguished son. “The hellhound will accompany you. He, too, seeks redemption. But he seeks it for an entire race. For all the living creatures of hell. The hellspawn.”
Lucien spoke. “This is the real reason for your presence in hell, Jack. Your friend Andy sent you after the girl knowing it was a lost cause. He is allied with us. We have to go now, Jack. Redemption awaits. Come with me and fight the darkness in your world. That’s your path to salvation. You can do it. You will do it.”
Jack shook his head. “No. No, no, no.” He looked at his father. “I can’t lose you again, Dad. Ten years. Ten fucking years…”
Theodore Grimm nodded. “This is not how I wish things to be, but this is how things are. And now you must go.”
Lucien hooked a hand under Jack’s armpit and pulled him to his feet. He began to guide him to the door. The hellhound whispered into his ear: “Remember everything he said. This is what has to happen.”
Lucien opened the door. “Now, Jack. We’re almost out of time.”
Desperate voices of denial clamored in Jack’s head. He was going. Something within him was willing him to do what had to be done. The truth of his father’s words resonated clearly within him. But the primal need to stay, to cling to this resurrected piece of his past, was strong. “I’ll see you again, dad.”
And he heard his father say, “Stay strong, son.”
And then the door was shut.
14.
They were in Lucien’s cruiser, heading for Greytown’s dismal outskirts. The groupings of buildings became smaller and farther apart, disappearing altogether as they neared an approaching electric haze many miles from the heart of the city, an ominous dark wall that looked like a shifting mass of thunderclouds. It was still miles away, but the sight of it made the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stiffen. They were aimed straight at it, a turbulent, unstable realm where hell itself ceased to exist. Lightning bolt after lightning bolt emerged from the wall and stabbed the scarlet sky.
