The Angel of the Abyss

by Hank Schwaeble

  “I'm not a lunatic, Mr Hatcher. I've examined the possibility of hallucinations or delusions. What I'm describing is not the product of some psychological disturbance. I don't even seem to wake from them. It's like I merely switch places. I'd much rather be insane.”

  “I won't torture a little girl.”

  “It's not a little girl. She is gone and not coming back. I hate that word, but I don't care what method you use. I only want you to do what it takes to find out. I doubt there will be another opportunity like this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the spells, the rituals, the magic, whatever you want to call it... when you summon something like this, it only tends to work once. And there simply aren't that many of them out there. Known spells or rituals that work are rare. This one was taken from a book written on a parchment of human skin, bound in the flesh of a willing sacrifice, some seven hundred years ago. That page of vellum had to be burned as part of the summoning. It would be easier to find pirate treasure than it would be to find another book like the one that came from, and a spell that could bind a demon in just this way. The ritual had to be commenced two to four nights before a blood moon, so it could not wait. That's why I had to get you here. I don't want to keep it down there forever.”

  Blood Moon, he thought, hearing the words spoken in Sahara Doyle's voice. Not a coincidence. The girl on the monitor remained still. Hatcher watched her. If what Micah was saying was true, whatever it was inhabiting her body certainly might have vital information. Just not necessarily the kind his host was looking for. Whatever was really going on in Hell, Hatcher figured it would be likely to know. Everywhere had some version of a water cooler.

  But there was still the issue of Micah. Hatcher switched his view from the screen back to this enigmatic person who claimed to be a child in a man's body. Micah held his gaze, patiently waiting for an answer. Whatever was going on, whatever it was that Raum had challenged him to find and stop, he was having a hard time imagining Micah not being involved. Somehow. Yet Micah was the one who sought him out, brought him here. By force, no less.

  I'm saying, you can't trust anyone.

  “Suppose I agree. How is this going to work?”

  Micah hitched a shoulder, glanced at the screen. “I'll have Jonah show you the way down there.”

  “Where will you be? Here?”

  “No, I will be in a room on the other side of the compound. Felicia will tend to me.”

  “Tend to you.”

  “If you must know, I'll be locked in a room and strapped down, a bite guard lodged between my teeth, so that I can't react to anything you do. It's important Jonah not know certain things, Hatcher. And that means I don't want him to know what I may be going through. You can't let him get close enough to it that he can hear anything. I'm having a hard enough time with him as it is. That thing will make sure he finds out, use the information to prey on his mind, forge divisions and dissension. That is what they do. Do not underestimate the intelligence opposing you. Or the cunning.”

  “I already told you, I'm not going to be torturing anyone.”

  Micah nodded. “I don't care how, that's up to you. Just find out whatever you can. And no matter what, do not hold back on my account.”

  Hatcher turned to the monitor again. He started to say okay, he would do it, but stopped. The second he had committed to the idea, before he'd been able to speak, the little girl on the screen swung her head to face the camera. Her eyes bulged like someone was pressing her skull inward from behind and her smile was too wide for her face by several inches.

  He looked at Micah. “Take me down there before I change my mind.”

  “Okay,” Micah said, his mouth tightening into an expression of somber satisfaction. “But first, there are some things you need to know. There are some minor rules, and two major ones. First, releasing the demon without a pact will allow it freedom you don't want it to have. There weren't many explanatory notes, and the information it did provide was far from clear, but I could discern that much. No matter what, you can't release it without a pact that it will withdraw any claim it may have on you by virtue of contact and with the condition it proceed straight back to whence it came. Perhaps the first part doesn't apply so much to you, but the second part most definitely does. I inferred from the text that whatever restrictions on harming living souls such a creature may normally be subject to, summoning it to this plane and trapping it may create a loophole if it is freed from the binding while still here. I don't know.”

  Micah slid a look at the screen again, then back to Hatcher.

  “I was able to boil the rest down to a jumbled set of cautions intended to guide the interrogator's approach. The spell was written in Latin, so some of the translation is rough, but there were some things that stuck out. One was that you must get it to tell you its name. Apparently, it will do whatever it can to avoid that, but the effect of the spell on its ability to resist is unclear. The name, therefore, is key, for once you have the name, you are allowed five questions.”

  “Five?”

  The man shrugged. “That translation was rather straightforward, though it’s not without ambiguity. For five questions answers may be had, should the spirit respond to them.”

  “Should the spirit respond. Some spell you got there.”

  “Like I said, certain aspects were unclear. Don't underestimate the spell's power simply because our understanding of its contours is incomplete. We have a demon at our mercy, more or less. Now you see why I thought it necessary to have someone like you handle this.”

  “Maybe the real reason is because you're not sure if it's really at our mercy, or the other way around.”

  Micah peered into the monitor. “Perhaps you're right about that. But I certainly hope you're wrong. I wish I could let you read the spell for yourself, but I can't. I had to burn it, and it would have been rendered useless if I wrote any of it down prior to doing so. I can, however, tell you that I was able simplify the rest of the notes into two rules.” Micah turned to face the screen, crossing his arms. “These really are critical points to remember. Rule number one is, if you step foot inside the wax, you are in its realm. Rule number two is, to get it to talk you will probably have to do just that.”

  * * *

  Jonah and Felicia were waiting outside when Hatcher left Micah. Felicia was holding a tray with cups and a wooden pitcher. She went with Micah, and without comment Jonah led Hatcher up a trail that wound around structures that were artificially diverse, conceived to convey a variety of period details in a manner someone guessed would appeal to religious tourists. Some were open-front spaces, like a stone-age garage, others were squat dwellings with faux-thatch roofing. In the light of day, Hatcher could see the park wasn't all that big, maybe twenty-five buildings spread out and positioned along looping pathways to give the impression of more substance. He imagined souvenirs and t-shirts being sold out of the structures with large entries, men in natural-fiber cloaks hawking shirts with inspirational messages on them and wood walking sticks like Moses might have used, hats with the park logo on the front and Biblical themed toys to get the young ones in the spirit. Maybe local teens and college kids hired to walk around as Roman soldiers and slaves and Pharisees. A daily showing of a wiry, long- haired man with a beard dragging a cross up the hill.

  The girl on the video monitor was below a small hut near the highest point of the hillside.

  Jonah stopped a good twenty yards before they reached it. The only door Hatcher could see was made of dark planks and barricaded with a crossbar suspended by thick brackets. There were three men visible around the hut, with Hatcher presuming a fourth on the far side, corners of a perimeter being maintained. The three in sight all wore similar floppy pull-overs of rough material. Each had a long shaped piece of wood, hickory, maybe, slightly angled, sanded smooth. Axe handles. The only other thing semi-modern were their sandals, which wer
e thick with black rubber soles.

  “They don't know what's down there,” Jonah said, his voice low.

  “Do you?”

  Jonah looked away, toward the hut. “I'm going to tell them they are to let you in, then to notify Micah when you wish to leave.”

  “In other words, I'm not free to go until your brother says so.”

  A chuff, then Jonah stared straight into Hatcher's gaze. “You can leave right now if you want. I'll walk you down a back trail over there, you can scale the chain-link and it's only a mile or so to the highway.”

  Hatcher held the young man's gaze. He didn't like the idea of being told when he could and couldn't come or go, but he had to admit it was a strange way to keep him prisoner. Jonah wasn't in a position to do much to stop him, and Micah would certainly know that those men around the hut, armed with sticks, would not be much of a deterrent if Hatcher really wanted to leave.

  “You're not on board with your brother's plans, I take it?”

  “I didn't want you here in the first place. I told him you'd be nothing but trouble.”

  “How would you know, one way or the other?”

  “Because I'm the one who was put in charge of tracking your movements, so we could find you. It wasn't hard to see the kind of chaos you caused pretty much everywhere you went. Everybody who'd heard of you seemed to think so.”

  “This from a guy who helped send people to kidnap me?”

  “Like I said, I never wanted you here. I'd just as soon see you leave right now.”

  “And how would you explain that?”

  Jonah shrugged. “Not your problem, is it?”

  Hatcher held his gaze another moment, then gestured with his chin toward the hut. “Tell them whatever it is you're supposed to tell them and let's get this over with.”

  They walked to the front of the tiny structure, barely larger than a kiosk, its walls textured to resemble a compilation of mud and straw. Jonah didn't hide his disappointment. After a few exchanges with one of the men, followed by a confirming shout to the others, the young man turned and left. The nearest man to Hatcher, thirty-something and on the short side with a patchy beard and scraggly hair, lifted the cross bar and opened the door. Then he gestured for Hatcher to enter.

  The inside was windowless, a single candle providing light. One room, with an earthen floor. In the center of the floor, a circle of stones surrounded a sizable hole. The hole was a couple of feet wider in diameter than the wooden gondola lift suspended over it. A thick length of braided rope hung from the ceiling to the basket's suspension frame, which consisted of an enormous dowel threaded through planks of 2x8 attached to the basket's sides. A brass bell on a swivel was screwed into the dowel, a sturdy tentacle of twine descending from its center and disappearing into a small hole at the bottom. The rope fastened to the dowel stretched up to where it cornered through a pulley on an S-hook set into a ceiling beam, spanned across to another pulley, and down to a pallet. There were sandbags on the pallet. A counterweight.

  An orange extension cord draped over the edge and down into the hole, Hatcher's eyes following it to a spot on the back wall where someone had punched a hole, fed the cord through, and plugged around it. The location of another generator, perhaps.

  Behind him, the thump and scrape of the bar being put back into place.

  Hatcher stepped forward, inspected the rig. It seemed sturdy, if a bit rough. There were no levers, no controls. Only a wood-framed box with an opening in front, like some antique prototype for a Ferris wheel cab. He put a hand on the edge and pressed. The car swayed lazily, swinging away from him, but didn't move downward. He steadied it with both hands, thought about it for a moment, then climbed through the opening into it.

  The palette shifted and started to rotate slowly, one way then back. He saw it lift just as he felt the car start to drop and the ground begin to rise. He was going down. The descent began to accelerate, only to stop abruptly after a few feet. The car pendulumed in varying directions, the wood and rope creaking.

  He was in a tunnel. The dank odor of fresh dirt filled every breath, particles in the air tickling his nasal passages and throat. Straight ahead, he could see a faint light; behind him, nothing. He waited for a sound, looked for signs of movement. Nothing. A few feet above him, the hole shone with the spill of candlelight, illuminating him in a faint spotlight. He stepped out of the basket. It leaped into the air and stopped just above the hole, swaying randomly. He reached out into the space it had occupied, fanning his hand until he felt the twine graze his wrist. He slid his fingers along it, thinking, ring the bell, they lower the basket. Seemed simple enough.

  He waited an extra few moments for his eyes to adjust, then began to walk toward the light. It occurred to him this light at the end of the tunnel wasn't quite in line with the meaning of the expression.

  The tunnel brightened as he drew closer to the opening. The walls were rounded, still bearing shovel marks. Support beams of rough lumber were wedged crudely in place every few yards. He could see the orange extension cord running along the side of the floor, terminating where it plugged into another identical extension cord that continued the path and extended through the opening ahead and beyond.

  Hatcher paused at the threshold to the opening, then stepped inside.

  It was nothing but a space dug out of the earth, perhaps fifteen feet by twenty. It was possible some of it was a natural formation, tapped into from above, but he doubted it. The chamber was too room-like. The dirt seemed freshly churned, probably within the last month or two. The same kind of support structure was in place here as had been slapped together in the tunnel.

  There were some crates stacked against one earthen wall. A few spare boards and wood scraps in stacks. A sledge hammer, a handsaw and a few other tools had been tossed in one corner.

  Mounted to his left, high on one of the support studs, was a camera.

  In the middle of the room, facing the far wall, sat the girl from the monitor.

  Her back was to him. She was in a plain wooden chair made of dark reclaimed lumber, the kind too sturdy to be furniture, with legs cut from four-by-four posts and thick slats for the seat and back.

  The kind of chair he'd picture on death row, with a phone to the governor's office nearby. Surrounding the chair were four candles, each the size of a loaf of bread and about the same shape, set in shallow recesses carved into the ground. One sat at each corner of a square, about three feet from the chair. They were each connected by a channel dug to create the perimeter, filled with wax the same color and texture as the candles. The wax line seemed to be connected to each candle, formed by melting, with no separation where they met. They were all the same dull sandy color, with a faint swirl of red in some parts. A single flame guttered on each wick.

  The girl in the square stared without moving, her head and body still. Hatcher slowly circled the chair, keeping a distance, careful not to get too close to the candles or the wax moat. He remembered the rules.

  She wore a hospital gown, tied off in little bow knots on her shoulder and at points along her side. Above her, corkscrew florescent bulbs were set in sockets screwed into the cross beams. They bathed her in a sanitary white light, bleaching out much of the color. He wondered if it was what made her skin look so gray. Then he realized, no. It wasn't that at all.

  Her eyes shifted to pick him up the moment he stepped past some imaginary plane of her peripheral vision. The rest of her remained still, continued to remain still until he settled on a spot in front of her. She took in a deep breath then exhaled. The odor reached him a moment later. A moldy, fishy stench, wet and putrid.

  “I've smelled worse,” he said.

  She looked to be twelve or thirteen. Her hair was flat and tangled, long and thin and of indeterminate color, hanging down in stringy tails around her face. Her wrists were fastened to the armrests with leather cuffs, buckled tight. T
he same kind of cuffs held her legs in place at the ankles.

  A wide, thick piece of leather crossed her lap, like a seatbelt. Each strap had a set of symbols scrawled on the leather, the smudgy swirls of lines painted by fingertips. Painted in blood, judging by the color.

  She crinkled her nose, tasted the air with it as she eyed him. “I haven't,” she said.

  Her voice was like a sharp whisper, a smooth edge that cut his ears. The distant echo of a shout, slicing the air. Or a scream.

  The voice slithered around his lobes. He had to resist the urge to shiver himself loose of it.

  “I could use a shower,” he said.

  Her eyes – dry, icy shades of platinum – slashed his for several seconds and he let them, forcing himself not to blink. Before long those eyes settled into a hypnotic stare, apparently satisfied with what they'd seen. There was a hint of smile to her lips, which were as gray as the rest of her, a dark streak of dried blood tracking the cleft of her chin.

  Hatcher retrieved one of the crates from the nearby stack and set it on its side where he'd been standing. He pressed down on it a few times to test it, leaning most of his weight. A little short for a stool, but it would do.

  He sat, resting his forearms across his knees. “Anything you'd like to talk about?” he asked.

  “Talk?” She tipped her head suddenly from one side to the other. “My kind have devoured souls like yours, chewed on them and swallowed them and shit them out only to start all over again, since Adam was fucking his daughters.”

  “That's a long time.”

  “It's the shudder after you take a piss compared to what's in store for you.”

  “I guess that means my reputation precedes me.”

  “I can smell it on you. On your tainted soul.”

  “All this insight about me, and here I don't even know your name.”

  “You expect me to tell you my name? You, whose endless thirst will be answered with the pus and vomit of his tormentors? Your arrogance will disappear with your flesh.”