Torment_Caulborn 6

by Nicholas Olivo

  Nathan frowned and rubbed his forehead. “That’s part of my punishment. I wanted to know everything, and now that’s what I’m getting. Every day, some new knowledge or fact or theory gets stuffed into my head, overwriting whatever was already there. In time, all the memories of my life will be gone, replaced with random information about cricket gestation periods, or the names of Thomas Jefferson’s great-grandchildren, or the history of underwater basket weaving.” His eyes went distant. “There are pieces of my life that are already gone. I remember I had a sister, but I can’t remember ever playing with her when we were kids. I do remember being at her wedding, but nothing before that.” He wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and barked out a mirthless laugh. “I remember most of my time with the Caulborn, though. Those memories will probably be the last ones they wipe away, because they want me to remember for as long as possible why I’m down here.” He looked at me, his face a mask of pain and regret. “I really did want to make things up to you all. But then those civatateo got me in Ashgate. And Galahad’s dead now, too.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  Nathan’s expression was incredulous. “Are you kidding? A paladin of Christ falling is a huge cause for celebration down here. They threw a party the likes of which you can’t even imagine. It made me sick. I made some bad choices in my life, but I never wished harm to Galahad Eleven. He was a good man.” Nathan waved a hand. “Bad news travels fast down here, man. And there’s been a lot of it lately. The Pit was buzzing earlier this week because some demonic vessel got broken, but the demon that was bound to it didn’t return.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what it sounds like. There was this demon named Croatoan who was imprisoned in a sort of sphere, stuffed inside it and then cast out of Tartarus. The way this sphere thing worked was that if it ever broke or if Croatoan’s spirit ever became unmoored from it, he would immediately return to the Pit. They say his moorings broke last week, and he didn’t show up.”

  I rubbed at my chest. My ribs were feeling a little less angry. “You know an awful lot for a prisoner.”

  “Pff. Vincent, it was my business to learn things. Besides, these demons don’t see me as any kind of a threat, so they don’t see a reason to be tight-lipped around me.”

  I did some math. “Okay, walk through something with me,” I said. “Last week, Inquisitor Xavier led Jake and me into Hockomock Swamp. We had Croatoan with us.”

  “What in the hell were you doing in that swamp? And why would you take a demonic sphere with you into a place like that?”

  “Long story,” I said. “And we didn’t know it was demonic at the time. But the upshot is that Croatoan acted as an early warning system for extradimensional events,” I said. “While we were in the swamp, Treggen got hold of Croatoan. Today, Xavier brought Croatoan into the office, but it wasn’t Croatoan inside, it was Treggen.”

  Nathan whistled through his teeth. “Treggen pulled a soul swap? Wow, that asshole is way more powerful than he let on.”

  “No kidding. So, let’s say that Treggen did what you said, somehow displaced Croatoan’s soul and took up residence in the sphere. Where did Croatoan’s soul go?”

  Nathan rubbed his chin. “If it didn’t come back here, then it would’ve had to have been transferred into another container. A soul jar or phylactery or something like that. Do you think Treggen and Croatoan were working together?”

  “They do share a history, but I don’t get the impression that they were all that friendly. And from what Xavier told me, Croatoan had been inert for a long time. So no, I don’t think they were working together. But that implies that there just happened to be some other vessel capable of storing a soul nearby in the swamp. What’s the likelihood of that?”

  “Vincent, some seriously fucked up shit happens in that swamp. This one time, Miguel and I fought a…” He trailed off, his eyes distant. “It was a…” He made motions with his hands and clenched his jaw. “Mother fucker. I had nightmares about that thing for a month.” He banged his fist against the table. “Well, the point is, that even though it sounds far-fetched, it’s entirely possible that a relic like that might have been present in the swamp.”

  My legs felt strong enough to try standing. I grabbed onto the desk, got a splinter, and heaved. My legs wobbled, but I remained upright. Nathan folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair. “I think about that asshole every day, you know. Treggen, I mean. It’s not his fault that I’m down here; I made my bed. But in hindsight, I see just how bad he was, just how much of a threat he poses to the world. I regret that I didn’t stand up to him, or even that I didn’t double-cross him, betray him to the Caulborn.” He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Galahad might’ve let me stay out of Ashgate if I had.” He shook his head. “Talking to you like this, it’s almost like old times. Almost like we’re working a case together again. I know they’re letting us have this time because it’s going to remind me of everything I lost, or will lose. And they know it’s putting dread into you. Still, it’s been good to talk to you, Vincent. The folks down here aren’t much in the way of conversationalists, and when I lost Smoke…”

  Smoke, Nathan’s fylgiar, was a sort of invisible dog that had effectively been by his side for Nathan’s entire life. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to lose something like that. “Well,” Nathan said, “let’s just say it hasn’t been pretty. But I’m glad I got a chance to talk to you. Are the others okay?”

  “Kristin’s dead.”

  Nathan looked away. “Damn. Miguel, Kristin, Galahad, you… Is there anyone left in the office?”

  “The office blew up. Jake, Gears, Mrs. Rita, Doc Ryan, they’re all still alive. But the city’s not protected anymore.” With that, my legs buckled, and I collapsed back to the floor.

  Nathan ran a hand over his face and let out a breath, and then sat forward. “Alrighty then. Enough reminiscing. Up you go, Vincent. I’ve got a tour to give you.” He extended a hand, which I took, and tottered back to my feet.

  “So what are you going to show me?” I asked. “Where the bathrooms and the cafeteria are?”

  He snorted and beckoned me to follow him out of the room. “Hardly. You won’t need to eat down here, unless they decide that’s part of your punishment. No, you’ll just feel hungry all the time. Not severe hunger pangs, just that irritating I-need-to-eat feeling. As for toilets, well, there are bathrooms of a sort. You’ll squat over a hole and your” — he paused for a moment, as if searching for a word — “waste will drop onto the heads of other damned individuals.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Welcome to the Pit,” Singravel said with a sneer. “Did you think it’d be five-star accommodations down here?” He waved me off before I could respond. “Vincent, the place I’m taking you—” He broke off and his voice became mechanical again. “In 2009, after Disney released The Princess and the Frog, fifty children were hospitalized with salmonella poisoning after kissing frogs.” He gave himself a shake. “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. “The place I’m taking you— In English-speaking countries, Max and Molly are the two most popular names for dogs.” He ground his teeth and shut his eyes. “They’re just fucking with me now,” he growled. After a moment, he opened his eyes and continued. “The place I’m going to show you is the place where all the forgotten gods go.”

  We’d been navigating corridors that all looked as though they’d been carved of red marble. The doors were like what you’d see in a classy hotel, each one printed with a number on it. Nathan stopped at one, 41376.

  “Can they really be forgotten if we’re about to see them?”

  “Always a smartass,” Nathan said, shaking his head. “Ever watch old movies, Vincent? Like from the 1950s?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do the names Joe Mantell, Ed Wynn, or Gig Young mean anyth
ing to you?”

  “No, should they?”

  “They were all Academy Award nominees in their time. They were something in their day, extraordinarily talented actors. I personally haven’t seen their films, but I had all the Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nominees’ info stuffed into my head two days ago. Thing is, if you watched those films now, you’d see them in action, but it wouldn’t make an impact on you because you don’t know who they are. They’re of no significance to you today.” He gestured to the door. “It’s the same thing with what we’re about to see here. These gods were once powerful and revered. Now… well, let’s just go inside.”

  The door swung open at Nathan’s touch, and we stepped into a cheerily lit room with potted plants, a handful of chairs, and a reception desk. “Nathan, sweetie,” the female demon sitting behind the desk cooed in a voice that sounded like she had a three-pack-a-day habit. “Lovely to see you again.” She wore a blue cardigan sweater with a necklace of shrunken human heads, and her smile was so bright it was literally painful to look at. She pulled a pen from a collection in her blonde bun and clicked it a few times as she spoke. “You must be Corinthos,” she said, pointing a black manicured nail at me. “This’ll be your home soon enough. We’re just waiting on the specifics of your situation from Lord Orcus.” Without pausing, she turned back to Nathan, “Come to give him the tour? Only show him one forgotten god today, all right, hon? We don’t want him to get desensitized to things down here too quickly. You should start with Lashimia, or Theoxis or…”

  “Don’t worry, Cheryl,” Nathan said, giving her a wide smile I’d seen him use a dozen times on people who were irritating him to his limits. “I’ll take care of it.” Nathan took me by the elbow and led me to a frosted-glass door a few yards past Cheryl’s desk.

  “And don’t leave the doors open,” Cheryl called. “The AC is broken in one of the units, and it’s letting off smoke. Smoke’s bad for my skin.” Nathan all but pulled me through one of the doors and slammed it shut behind us.

  “Cheryl,” he said, “the nosy busybody secretary from Hell.”

  “Is everything so cliché down here?”

  “Clichés are tiresome, Vincent, and tiresome is another form of torture, so yes. Hades and his crew have done everything they can to make this as miserable a place as possible.”

  “And they don’t want you to show me too much today. Is that so every day will be a fresh horror for me to experience?”

  “Yep. Even if your brain did shut down because of the atrocities down here, they’ve got people who can pull you out of a catatonic state. It’s not pretty.” He shuddered. “Anyway, let’s treat this like pulling off a Band-Aid.” He gestured me down a dimly lit hallway. It had the same blue, industrial carpet as the room I’d been put in, and was lined with plain, wood-panel doors. We stopped at one marked “Mormo.”

  Nathan gestured at the door. “So Mormo here was a goddess of death, a friend to Hecate, who I think you’re at least familiar with?” I nodded, and he opened the door and ushered me inside. We were standing in a room with a window into a sitting room. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting shadows around the stone room. Simple furnishings were scattered around the place — a circular woven rug, a wooden rocking chair, and a small bookshelf.

  The sitting room’s sole occupant was a woman, dressed in a shapeless black robe. She knelt on the rug, pressing her hands against the side of her head. Nathan gestured at her. “She promised her followers that her bite would grant them immortality, like vampirism. But, that wasn’t exactly the case. She bit them, sucked out their souls, and gained strength from their life force. She didn’t believe she was breaking a promise to them, because technically” — he made finger quotes — “they would live on in her.”

  Through the window, I watched the woman’s head expand, and while I couldn’t hear anything, her mouth opened as if she were wailing. “It’s soundproofed,” Nathan said. “And this is a one-way mirror. She has no idea we’re here.” I stepped closer, pressing my forehead against the glass as the distinct outline of a hand appeared on Mormo’s forehead. A hand that was trying to push its way out of her head.

  “Can you guess what her punishment was?” Nathan asked.

  “Her followers do live on in her,” I said, “and they’re always trying to get out.”

  “Not just trying,” Nathan said, holding up a finger. As if on cue, the hand exploded out of Mormo’s head, and a person began clawing his way out, pushing her face apart. Gore and blood splattered against the glass, and I jumped back and yelped, in spite of myself.

  “They get out once a day,” Nathan said. “Mormo feels all the pain of every escape. She’s still conscious and aware right now, you see.” A man dressed in gore-covered rags dragged himself from Mormo’s body and then reached back inside her. A moment later, he was helping haul a woman out from within. “Those were two of Mormo’s clergy. They committed some pretty heinous atrocities in her name, so they get to be part of her punishment, too. Imagine, always being just a moment or two away from freedom, and then…” Nathan checked his watch. “Any second now…” A pair of red-skinned demons in coveralls entered the room from a door on the far wall I hadn’t noticed before. Armed with cattle prods, they shocked the man and woman into unconsciousness, then began stuffing them back inside Mormo. Once that was done, they gathered up the bigger chunks of Mormo’s head and pressed them back onto her neck. Then one of them took out what looked like a container of spackle and filled in the gaps and cracks in Mormo’s skin. The other produced a roll of what looked like duct tape and wrapped Mormo’s head back together. Mormo’s skin seemed to absorb the duct tape, and her face reformed a moment later. Then she was back to holding her head. The demons ducked out and closed the door behind them.

  “That’s sick,” I said.

  “That’s Tartarus for you. The thing about this place, Vincent, is that the demons play the long game. They’re here to break you, physically, spiritually, emotionally, you name it. But they do it slowly. In Mormo’s case, it was decades before the first one of her ex-followers broke out of her. Now it happens daily. Eventually, it’ll be multiple times a day, until finally, she’s constantly experiencing the feeling of being burst apart like an overripe melon.”

  “How poetic,” I said flatly.

  “What can I say?” Nathan replied. “I had the entire works of Lord Byron stuffed into my head just before they came and got me today.”

  “I don’t think Byron was into bursting melons,” I said.

  Nathan only shrugged. We walked in silence back to my temporary quarters. As we stepped inside, Nathan spread his hands and said, “There you are, Vincent. Day one of the tour. Tomorrow, we’ll do it again. And the day after that, and the day after that, until they decide exactly what to do with you. And then, you’ll be part of the tour yourself.”

  I shook my head. “Nathan, I’m going to find a way out of here.”

  He laughed. “Vincent, you crack me up. You always did.”

  “I’m serious. Treggen got me down here on a technicality, but I’m going to find a way out. When I do, I’m going after him.” Nathan gave me an incredulous look. “Come on, you said you regretted helping him, said you see how big of a threat he poses to the world. Tell me what you know about the asshole, and I’ll get him for both of us.”

  Nathan laughed again. “You know what, why the hell not? If it helps you, if you do manage to get out of here, then go for it. I’ll tell you what I know.” He took a seat and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “For starters, Treggen’s got a history with the Chroniclers. You know them?”

  “We’re acquainted,” I said flatly.

  “Okay. So the Tempus and Treggen go way back, and it wasn’t always a happy relationship. The two of them had different ideas about how time was supposed to flow, and about how much the Chroniclers should
get involved with shaping history. Treggen tried a coup at one point, tried to supplant the timestream itself, and essentially install himself as Tempus for a new breed of Chroniclers. The Tempus got wind of it and stopped him. But that’s always been his end game, usurp the Tempus, and take control of time. When he was messing around with the paranormals in Boston for Project Imperium, it was with that goal in mind. He wanted soldiers to take realms, to gain resources, to ultimately mount an assault on the Chroniclers’ Citadel and wrest control of time itself from the Tempus.”

  “That’s friggin’ insane,” I said, eyes wide. “The ramifications of that… the sheer logistics of it… seriously? He wanted to attack the Citadel? That’s like attacking Fort Knox, or the Bat Cave, or Courage Point.”

  Nathan nodded. “He didn’t exactly ask my advice on that particular course of action, mind you. This was stuff I picked up while I was in contact with him, stuff I figured out later. If I’d known this back then, no way would I have gone along with it.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Treggen wanted as many paranormal soldiers as possible, figuring that their innate powers and talents would help him overpower the Chroniclers. He was especially fixated on your Urisk. He was convinced that they’d be able to compel the Chroniclers into fighting one another, essentially take control of the Chroniclers’ minds and use them like puppets.”

  My mouth went dry at that. “A being named Sakave used to use the Urisk for exactly that,” I said, thinking back to the extinct clan of dwarves Commander Courageous had shown me. “Treggen and Sakave worked together, so he’d know about that trick. And he must’ve been thinking that Herrscher, that Nazi you guys found on ice, would be able to compel the Chroniclers, too. Christ, ah—” I cried out in pain as blood burst from newly formed sores in my mouth.

  Nathan sucked air in through his teeth. “Yeah, that happens if you blaspheme down here.”