Parker started to open his mouth, to try to defend his position, but Woods was already saying something else. “Look, man. Hold up that pen you’ve been playing with, or anything else. Hell, go get something from another desk, if you like.”
Goddamn. Going to have to put on a fucking dog-and-pony show before I can even get to the important parts, Damien thought. He wondered if there was some way, something he wasn’t seeing, to get Parker out of this. His skepticism was admirable, but it was liable to get him killed if he pulled that shit on the Warden. When Parker came back—he’d claimed a tennis ball from one of the drawers in an unoccupied desk—and held his prize aloft. Woods just shook his head.
“All right. Hold on tight then. Watch as the Amazing Creskin amuses all of you. Then shut up and listen.”
He turned his concentration on the ball, feeling it with what remained of his psychic senses. There wasn’t a lot of sensation to it, and Damien wasn’t sure he’d be able to move it, but as tight as Parker was holding the ball, he should be able to feel something at least. Then he felt his mind flex, the sensation similar to what he thought a bodybuilder might feel like if his biceps had suddenly atrophied.
The pain sank into his mind, ripping barbed wire across exposed tendons and dropping off a little tetanus for good measure. He felt his chest tighten, and his lungs cried out from the internal pressure. He hadn’t expected much, but his irritation with Parker had apparently given him a shove that pushed him just enough.
The ball didn’t come out of Parker’s hand; instead, Parker was yanked forward, ball and all, fighting to keep his feet and avoid tripping over the desk in front of him. His eyes widened in shock. Drakanis and Brokov both gasped, their eyes almost bugging out of the sockets as they tried to figure out how Woods had done it. Parker just stared, while Woods slumped back in his chair, groaning.
“How the fuck did you do that?” Parker demanded, his voice sounding unsteady.
Woods didn’t reply immediately, and when he did, his voice sounded far away, lacking much of its usual vigor. “Mind… over matter,” he mumbled, rubbing at his chest and trying to get his breath back. “Now… shut up… and listen.”
“Out of all of them…”
. . . He was the only one who seemed to have any real power, any real inkling of what was going on in the world the rest thought was just a hair’s breadth away from what they knew. He never made a big deal about it, never ribbed them about it or boasted about it—what was the big deal being able to read a person’s basic vibe or slam a door from five feet away anyway? For the most part, they really weren’t aware that there was anything odd about him at all—except for Sheila, of course; she knew and noticed, but never made a big deal about it. She just asked him once not to snoop in her head if he could help it, a promise he quickly made and faithfully kept.
Then came the day the other members of their group got it in their heads that they should try to call something up. One of them had found the name of some goddamn thing or another in a book he’d gotten off an old lady at a rummage sale for fifty cents and was eager to try it out. If what the book said was true, he told them, they could have just about anything they wanted—money, women, fame—as easily as saying, “I wish.”
Damien had been outwardly skeptical, even more so when Sheila had bowed out, citing a headache. Had he been willing to break his promise, he would have known that she had noticed the look dancing in Damien’s eyes, that hungry I-Want look. Here it was, the chance to make everything okay, the chance to not have to worry about their supervisors, their paychecks, or whether they’d have to share the cat’s food this week or not. Here was the chance to forget about the rest of the world and just have each other in perfect harmony. His apparent apathy was merely masking that desire.
She’d smiled at him and stroked his cheek, calling him a dreamer. He told himself over and over that she couldn’t have known what was going to happen, hadn’t seen it coming, that none of them could have seen it coming. So when she sent him off that night with the touch of her hand still warm on his cheek, he tried to ignore the pressure in his chest, the sense of dread blooming in the back of his head where he wouldn’t let it be seen by his conscious mind. He told himself it was just nerves or that he caught a bad lunch at Jack in the Box that day. He knew the lie for what it was now, but it had taken him years to admit it to himself. Just a bad burger, not a premonition, he thought, and so he went with them.
The black sense of impending doom didn’t dissipate as the night wore on; it only grew stronger as they donned the robes, which Michael had made for them, stronger yet as they took their places around the circle that Ted had carved into the floor, and reaching fever pitch when they began to chant the words that had been carefully transcribed and translated over the past few weeks.
Still, he did not stop; he did not stand up and tell them to stop, tell them that what they were doing was wrong, not in just the religious or moral sense, but in the way that suddenly making gravity go up would be wrong. He continued to believe he just had a bad burger—a blot of mustard or perhaps a bit of underdone potato, as Scrooge supposedly had on that long ago Christmas—and continued playing his part in the rite.
None of them—Damien included—knew when it went bad. There was no sense of what was truly coming until it was there. He could not describe to his associates, even now, what he saw then, the thing that came rushing out of the darkness, pouring through the hole that had opened in their circle, though he tried. He saw a horn, twisted and curling on itself like that of a mountain goat, and breasts capped with steel spikes instead of nipples; there were faces, dozens of them, all of them screaming in pain and agony, and each one seemed to be his own. The others all fell from their places, breaking the circle, and a massive claw—easily the size of a large man’s chest—fell to the floor, digging deep gashes into the stone as it applied pressure, apparently trying to pull the rest of the thing’s body from its prison. Damien held his place, still chanting, for he knew that to do otherwise was to invite death; some part of him knew, even then, that the bargain had been made, that his soul had been traded to even see a glimpse of this creature, but at the same time, he thought that life was preferable.
It had dragged itself even further from the hole, and he could see that whatever else it was, it was massive; the head of it—or what he assumed to be the head—was level with his, yet it had sloping shoulders and innumerable appendages dangling both above and below. The face was the size of a semi’s front end, and its winged shoulders were brushing at the eight-foot ceiling, as it roared at him. The force of wind coming from its mouth was nearly enough to knock him over, but Damien fought it, leaning his body forward and trying to remain still, while his mouth moved on its own, calling up the words that would end the ceremony.
The face before him—thankfully not his face on this one—twisted in rage, the gleaming catlike eyes slitting and blinking twice each, once in the way anything normal does, vertically, and then horizontally. Sores blossomed and exploded on that horrid face, spraying him with gore and a thick white substance in which worms and maggots crawled, all of them trying to find some way to burrow into his flesh.
Some distant part of his mind could hear the others screaming, though he couldn’t count their voices; they seemed far away, unimportant. So far as he was concerned at the moment, there were only two players in this scene, himself and the beast. The creature dragged another arm up and out of the abyss in the center of the circle, swiping at him with the seven hands—each appearing to be made of a different substance—but not coming close enough to harm him.
In the dark corners of his mind, Damien knew somehow that this thing could not hurt him; it might have marked him, and his soul might be forever forfeited, but so long as he remained standing true, it could not physically touch him. As he realized this, he felt his resolve growing, his fear of it lessening, and he even advanced on it, one hand snappi
ng up to grab at one of the taloned fingers of the claw it had buried in the floor.
Touching it was agony. The thoughts of the thing flooded him, overloading his mind and pushing him so far into the realm of insanity that he feared he might never escape. At the same time, he refused to let go, for he knew how it must be done. He could taste its thoughts and feel what it felt; there was no question of what to do: continue and hope that it could be banished.
How long he continued, he did not know; far longer than any of the scripts he had been provided with should have lasted was all he knew. But eventually, the words seemed to take effect, and the beast seemed to diminish somehow. He could feel the mental rape of its thoughts over his own beginning to fade and his own mind taking command again. The shoulders began to slump, the faces ceased screaming and pulled back into the tumorous flesh from which they had sprung, and the eyes in the main face seemed to lose some of their hideous, toxic glow.
Finally, even the part of it that he had a hold on began to fade; it was like trying to grab onto something made of smoke. As his fingers began to close together, the remaining parts of the beast seemed to fold inwards, reshaping themselves into something that looked almost human.
Almost was the key word, of course; nobody would mistake what was standing—floating, actually—for a human being unless they were blind and deaf. The face was half rotted away, the eye on that side remaining a cancerous green and gleaming with hateful intelligence; on the other side, the flesh was perfect and flawless, more like porcelain than skin, with one bright blue eye. The curved ram’s horns remained in place, protruding from thick blond hair that hung to the creature’s waist. Its teeth were sharp and metallic, like the casts some folks took of wolf jaws, and clacked together viciously, as though it was trying to bite the air itself. Unfurling from its back, the wings remained, the left a tattered thing that had more in common with a rotted ship sail made of leather than anything a natural creature might fly with, while the right was a magnificent display, dove feathers spread out to make it appear much taller than it really was. The rest of the body was hazy and indistinct, hard to make out, and Damien thought that he was lucky to not have to see it; he was somehow sure that looking at the rest of it, even in this form, would not only push him to the gates of insanity but send him tumbling through completely and permanently.
Incredibly, the thing—quite obviously in pain and rage at the one who had dared to defy it—was laughing, though no mortal throat could make such a sound, and mortal ears couldn’t truly hear all of the sound that it was making. There were layers underneath that horrid, clotted laughter, and there were words in those places, but they were words that no one could hear or understand and not ones that any sane person would want to, regardless.
Then it began to speak, and Damien almost wished that he had gone deaf; it spoke the same way it laughed, on many levels, and not all of them were saying the same thing. The one he could make out was likely the worst of the batch though. It gave him prophecies of death and destruction and told him a dozen other things besides.
In the years since that night, he had thought often of what the creature spoke of and more often than not had found it proved correct.
He didn’t remember what happened after that, not clearly; only that it spoke its prophecy and then dissipated into nothing but smoke, fading away in a stinking cloud that was pulled apart by a slight breeze coming from somewhere above. By the time it was gone, the hole in the floor, along with the symbols and markings they had placed there had dissolved into the ether as well, leaving no sign of what had occurred.
Damien stayed in that amnesiac fog all the way home, glad to be alive and daydreaming about Sheila’s waiting arms.
Chapter 27
5:00 pm, December 22, 1999
The four of them sat still in the nearly deserted homicide office, forming a rough circle with their chairs. If someone were to peer in at them, they might have the impression of overage Cub Scouts, swapping scary stories before lights out. They only needed a campfire in the middle of the room to complete the image.
Damien stopped, took a deep breath, and then knocked back the last few dribbles of alcohol in his bottle. He stared down at the surface of the desk, pushed the blotter around aimlessly, and did not say anything else.
Brokov was the first to break the silence that had fallen when Woods had stopped his tale. Sounding breathless and perhaps too curious for her own good, she asked him, “Well? What happened to her? Something sure as hell did.”
Woods nodded, not looking at her. He didn’t want to lie—to lie about this part was perhaps to make the whole rest of the story a lie, and he’d prefer to avoid that if he could—but he also didn’t feel up to explaining to these three strangers what he’d done. The story up to the end he had told without becoming too involved in it, telling it like he felt like he had lived it, as an observer rather than a participant. But telling them what he’d found when he had come home—and worse, what he had done—was just coming too close.
The lie came easily enough to his lips, even though he no longer had his talents available to make it more believable. He simply said it, not looking at any of them, not even to see if they bought it. “She was dead. Twisted, like she was going to transform into the thing in the basement. But she was dead already. Whatever it was, she couldn’t live through it.”
He swallowed, and all of them heard the hard click in the back of his throat.
Parker gave the silence another beat before breaking it with his own questions. His voice was rough, and his head was throbbing like it did when he had bypassed eating for too long. “What was it? The thing you… called up, or whatever. A demon? A ghost? What?”
Woods opened his mouth to answer, but Drakanis spoke first, sounding confident and certain, which wasn’t surprising. Damien thought that the cop’s heritage was finally beginning to peek around the corners; if he could get just one more shove, then maybe he might be ready for this after all. He hoped so, at least.
Drakanis even smiled as he said it. “It was whatever lives in the Talu Shar.”
Brokov and Parker both shot their eyebrows up; if they’d done it any harder, Woods thought they might have flown right off. The image touched him in a way the story hadn’t, and he broke out laughing, drawing their attention to him. He shook his head at their questioning looks and then pointed at Drakanis, nodding as he tried to regain control of himself.
“He’s… he’s absolutely correct.”
Drakanis just nodded, settling in his chair and wondering if he should be counting himself lucky. As horrible as what had happened to Gina was, at least she’d still been her when she died. How much worse was it for Woods, who had to see the one he loved turned into some half-human thing? How much worse to have had to actually face the god or demon that apparently called the shots? Drakanis wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“So, you’re telling us that you summoned it?” Parker’s tone was accusatory. He’d gone from disbelief to blame in a remarkably short period of time, Woods thought, even as he shook his head and raised a hand to get the big cop to shut up for a second.
“Look, I made it physical. Or rather, we did, back then. But not for long. Just one bit of mischief and it was gone again.” Drakanis just nodded again, and Damien wondered how fast his latent powers were blooming. He was catching on almost too fast, and that might be dangerous. Brokov just looked confused.
“Well, whatever’s going on, it seems to me like something is fuckin’ physical here, and while I got no problem buying into this whole demon-painting bullshit, I have a fucking large problem with you knowing so much about this crap and then telling us you pulled it up out of a goddamn book like some D-and-D nerd’s fantasy, but oh, don’t worry, I put it back, all is cool.”
Parker looked liked he was about ready to begin frothing at the mouth, and Drakanis didn’t appear to be in a mood to leap in
and defuse it this time, so Woods stopped him cold by giving him the answer they’d really come for anyway. “Karim’s your man. Now shut the fuck up.”
While it didn’t defuse the situation any, it turned the focus away from Woods and any guilt Parker was about to lay on him. Parker immediately turned heart-attack purple and began sputtering, while Brokov’s eyes turned inward like she was turning it over in her mind. Drakanis, again, simply nodded.
“That’s why you two were in the closet. He’s not really as dead as he was supposed to be, is he?”
Drakanis’s voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. Woods supposed the man had shut it out, pushing it to the side so he didn’t have to think about how close they had all been to the one who’d turned his wife into cold cuts. He didn’t have any real answer to that beyond the one the girl in his dream (Fugue? Memory?) had given him, so he just spread his palms and raised his shoulders.
“The body was dead. Whether he is, I don’t know. Whether the body still is, I don’t know. I think the answer to all of those is no. I think he woke up about the same way I did and then cleaned out the morgue.”
Parker had put his head in his hands and was shaking it slowly. Now he raised his face, still rubbing at his temples, and stared for a moment.
“Why?” he asked. “Better yet, how?”
Woods turned to him. “You were about ready to chop my head off because I know too goddamn much, and now you’re asking me for all the answers? Christ, I don’t know. I think the talu`shar brought him back, somehow, put a time-out on what I did to him. Shit like that doesn’t come easy though, and there’s always a price. I think he waxed the coroner and his assistant because he needed juice. What he did with the corpses, I don’t know, and frankly, I’m not sure I want to know. As for the how, you saw the report, and Brokov relayed some of it to me. Cut up and drained of blood, same as all the others. The corpses, their blood spread all over the goddamn room and the bodies themselves missing. My guess is that he tore them all up, looking for whatever it was he needed out of them—life force, the soul, maybe just plain meat—and then got rid of them, probably by sending them to wherever the painting lives. But that’s just a guess, and I don’t know how he did it. I never had that kind of power, and I don’t think he ever did either, unless he got a supercharge or something. I think the thing in the painting did that part.”
Darkness of the Soul Page 16
