Malevolent

by David Risen

  The eldest sliced his long hand through the air like a knife. “Shut up, will ya? You’re gonna attract every bear and mountain lion in the woods!”

  No sooner had he said the word, a mountain lion rose from his haunches at the top of the rock formation growling low. Rider could tell by his posture that he was about to pounce.

  He sprang out into the clearing, and pushed his way in front of the children.

  The mountain lion leapt.

  But as soon as it contacted Rider, it dissolved into smoke.

  Rider looked about, dazzled.

  The clearing lay empty save for a few stray rocks and....

  Three skulls not far from his feet.

  Rider glared back at Lauren who gaped blankly from the trees.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  She sighed. Her lips said frustration, but her eyes said shame.

  “That wasn’t really the ghosts. That was just what they wanted you to see – a death echo.”

  “How do we get them here?”

  She took two steps out into the limestone clearing and stopped.

  “I can call them, but that’s not what I’m here for.”

  Rider squared himself before her – his eyes narrowing with resolve.

  She looked down at her feet. “You’re here to begin the end of the world. It’s my sacred obligation to stop that, if I can. But I do care what happens to you, so I’m not going to fight you myself.”

  Rider’s shoulders slumped. “You led me into a trap.”

  She shook her head. “My daughter lives in this world. I can’t let her or anyone else I care about die horribly, because you can’t control your temper.”

  “You’re a cunt, and I’m a goddamn idiot for hoping, despite all evidence to the contrary, that you were a cunt in remission.”

  Lauren looked past Rider’s left shoulder and her eyes flashed white.

  Rider felt the burning of eyes at his back.

  Lauren looked at him. Her expression was emotionless. Stern and intellectual like the studious gaze she might have given one of her students.

  “If you defeat them, you’ll defeat me. If you do that, I’ll call the spirits.”

  Rider craned his head over his shoulder and gaped at his opponents.

  Polly Rider, his mother stood in the center of three, flanked by the Ginger High Priestess he met in Darien and on the right, Claire Jacobs. All three of them were translucent and their auras boiled off them.

  Rider huffed. “What’s this, The Dead Bitch’s Society?”

  The ghost of Polly Rider drifted forward with a faint baleful smile curving her cruel lips.

  “Don’t Disrespect Your Mother.”

  Rider sneered. “I’m not afraid of you. You’re a ghost. Leave here and never come back.”

  She laughed. “That doesn’t work on me, you little brat. I’m a wraith, not a Celestial Spirit.”

  She flung her hand, and Rider flew backwards and landed on his back.

  Roots poked through the stone and coiled around his hands and ankles.

  Rider looked down to find that he was naked.

  Amelia Long clamped her eyes shut and concentrated hard on the plate that held her. On the back side, she felt a lock mechanism, and inside it, tumblers and gears that operated the silver shackles holding her wrists fast.

  “Whatcha doin?” Lucifer said.

  Her eyes popped open.

  He bunched his lips and nodded.

  “Struggling against your restraints?” he shrugged and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets.

  It was almost dark now. Amelia couldn’t sense Rider, and her level of panic grew with each passing moment.

  As if he read her thoughts, Lucifer’s eyes lit up as if he recalled something important that he wanted to tell her.

  “Your friend has done pretty well, so far.”

  “Why would I believe a word you say?”

  He glanced at her. “You know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, right?”

  Amelia pushed herself up straight in her restraints.

  “Of course.”

  Lucifer nodded. “But what most people don’t realize is that the three men who visited Lot weren’t angels. One was Father Fury, one was your friend the Son of Seafoam, and the other was yours truly.”

  He looked at her and laughed. “Sounds like a bad joke, right? The Devil, The Wrath of God, and Jesus Christ all walk into a bar....”

  “Why would you be included in that entourage?” she snapped.

  Lucifer gave her the same sad smile. “Because I’m the adversary, and it was part of the challenge that began with Job. Father stacked the deck in his own favor with Job, but I proved my point in Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  Amelia shook her head tightly. “What are you talking about? The things you’re speaking of happened hundreds of years apart.”

  Lucifer nodded. “But time doesn’t work quite the same way in the spiritual realm. I set out to prove my point to Father that the Children can’t be trusted to do the right thing until they had a bit more experience. Father attempted to show me that I was wrong.

  “In Sodom and Gomorrah, the challenge, as set forth by Abraham, was to find at least fifty righteous men, then thirty, then twenty, and so on. As we passed through, I tempted all of them, including Lot. Lot was the only man who remained true.”

  She glared at him. “Rider needs me. I promised him that I would not abandon him.”

  Lucifer paced right, and nodded again to himself.

  “You know what the problem with women is?”

  He looked at her and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “They coddle. Millions of children have been born into the world who could have been great if only their mothers hadn’t done everything for them. If you want your child to know how to succeed in life, you have to let him fuck up and get bruises.”

  She scowled at him. “He could die.”

  Lucifer shrugged. “And if he does, I suppose we’ll all have to wait another half century for all of this to be over.”

  Her mouth fell open. “How could you say that?”

  Lucifer turned his palms up. “Look, we’re on the same side here, but unlike you, I know my place. I can’t and won’t meddle in the affairs of the Celestial Shards – particularly not Father Fury. But if you want, I can tell you some things that you might find useful about yourself.”

  She huffed. “And it would all be lies.”

  Lucifer frowned. “I don’t have a reason to lie. The truth is worse. Sometimes, the truth is my friend.”

  Amelia shook her head. “You’re so full of yourself.”

  Lucifer held up his index finger. “For example, your real name is Anna Belton. You were born in 1789 to Samuel and Sarah Belton.

  “Your Father, despite trying as he did to be righteous, was a murderer twice removed and a liar. You had a little trouble coping with the harshness of your father’s denial and the reality of your rape, so you committed self-murder.

  “You actually lived in your own version of hell before your mate, Father of Compassion and Understanding, helped you free yourself.”

  She shook her head. “None of that rings a bell.”

  He shrugged. “Of course,, not. You remember nothing before you woke up on what used to be your own farm in 1932. Would you like to know Father Compassion’s given name?”

  She only stared at him.

  “Currently, he goes by Dr. Paul Ambrose Jr. You almost met him in Bridgeton, but you were two years late. Don’t worry, though. Once all of this plays out with Father Fury, I’ll help you find your way back to him. All of that is in my best interest.”

  “Why?” she snapped.

  Lucifer looked down at the ground. He seemed almost sad.

  “I’m lonely.”

  He looked at her. “I once thought that it was better to be feared and hated than loved, because fear and hate lasts longer, but now I know how empty of a path that is. I just want to start this over.”

  Amelia ga
ve him a shrewd look. “What you say sounds good, but everything you do drips with the opposite of virtue.”

  Lucifer’s shoulders slumped. “I wasn’t always like this, you know.”

  He looked back up. “Well, I’m slightly more human than usual, so I’m going to go lie down. If Father Fury isn’t back by morning, we’ll go find him.”

  The roots held Rider’s hands fast in each of the points of a glowing pentagram set forth on the rock.

  “Sister of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water present your offerings,” his mother cried.

  Claire Jacobs glided forward and grinned down at Rider.

  “Comfy?”

  Rider glowered at her.

  “This didn’t work the last two times you cunts tried it. What makes you think it’s going to work now?”

  She sneered. “We’re dead. You can’t hurt us, and you don’t have the power to stop spiritual magic.”

  She waved her hand. A glass, pyramid appeared by his right hand that seemed to be full of lightning. Rider looked right and found a similar container by his right arm full of water. He looked down and saw the same kind of ampule full of dirt.

  He looked back at the ghost of Claire Jacobs.

  She sneered again. “Have a nice trip.”

  “You’re gonna pay,” Rider growled.

  Claire cocked her head sideways. “And what are you going to do to me?”

  Without another word, she turned and floated back out of his view.

  Rider craned his head and spied Lauren standing just inside the clearing with her hands folded at her chest and a stressed look on her face.

  “You and I’ve got problems.”

  She looked down at the ground as if she was ashamed of herself, and then she eyed him again.

  “You created all of our problems by refusing to do the right thing.”

  Rider furled his brow. “You’d better hope I don’t get out of this.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. He turned his head back around and looked up to the darkening sky. He pulled hard at the roots binding his hands, but the motion only caused them to dig deep into the skin of his wrists.

  “Sister of Spirit and Fire, present your offerings,” Poly Rider called.

  The ginger nun that Rider first encountered below the Catholic Church in Darien floated forward and looked down upon him.

  She gave him a look of genuine remorse.

  “If you had just played the part of Nick Carcer, I would not be dead, Delilah would not be dead, your mother would not be dead, and we wouldn’t be here.”

  Rider huffed. “It almost sounds like you care.”

  She nodded at Rider’s left foot, and another pyramid-shaped glass appeared containing a flickering, green flame.

  She nodded at his head, and Rider felt something warm heating his scalp.

  He looked up to find a sphere-shaped glass containing foggy vapor.

  He glared back at her. “The problem with this is that you know better. Your torment is really going to fucking suck.”

  Rider looked back behind him at Lauren, who was consciously trying not to look at him. Chanting arose from the ghosts in unison as Poly Rider called out in a language that Rider had never heard.

  He looked back down beyond his feet and watched as Poly Rider approached him she snapped with a cloud of black dust, an Athame appeared in her hand – the blade crooked like that of a Bastard Sword.

  She bent low so that her ghostly face – much prettier than her physical face had been – was only inches away from Rider’s.

  “I just want you to know that I’ve never liked you. You were a bastard and a brat, and I often considered smothering you in your sleep.”

  Rider lunged at her, but she did not recoil.

  She rose slowly and straddled his stomach.

  She cocked the Athame over her head and began chanting again in the strange tongue.

  But Rider wasn’t in the clearing anymore.

  He was a little boy lying naked in the center of a pentacle painted on the concrete floor below Saint Michael’s in Bridgeton.

  His terrified eyes pointed at the stone, vaulted ceiling of the basement.

  A woman dressed in a red, hooded robe appeared over him. He recognized her.

  Shoulder-length brown hair.

  Pretty, youthful face.

  Musical voice.

  Sister Claire Jacobs.

  She held a black-handled Athame before his eyes, forcing him to look at the keen, shimmering blade, and then she pressed the tip of it hard into the flesh just above his left nipple.

  He shrieked as the skin tore and blood dribbled from the new laceration.

  With her other hand, she held a thin, silver wafer before his eyes with strange writing that he’d never seen etched into the metal.

  Then in one violent motion, she thrust it into the wound tearing the fatty tissue that held his skin in place.

  Blake Rider shrieked again and pointed his fearful eyes past Sister Jacobs.

  Standing in the shadows of the back of the basement almost out of the room, his mother’s pale face looked on smiling with sick satisfaction.

  Back in the clearing, the wafers beneath his skin positioned in his torso in at the points of an imaginary pentacle burned red hot and melted, and the beast within him rose.

  Amelia felt every tine of the gears comprising the locks that bound her shackles in place. She also sensed each of the tumblers that the key pushed down to activate the lock mechanism, and now she understood how it worked.

  She reached out with her mind.

  Her consciousness spread around the cabin like an aura.

  She felt the warmth inside the old building behind her and Lucifer sleeping in one of the metal bunks.

  Her face contorted as she concentrated hard on the lock mechanism behind her. She felt the tumblers moving ever so slowly – one centimeter at a time.

  Then, the shackles released with a sudden clack.

  She dropped to the rough, wooden floor.

  She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind once more.

  Inside the cabin, the beast remained perfectly still – asleep.

  She sprang to her feet and darted through the back door of the lean-to and into the darkness of the night.

  Lucifer opened his eyes and smiled gleefully as Anna Belton’s presence left the cabin. His task was almost complete. All that remained was to head her off back at the road. The horrors that he left along the way should sufficiently soften her up for the final deeds.

  He stood from his bunk, stepped over to the makeshift wooden table, and stripped his bomber jacket off the back of one of the wooden chairs. Then he pulled it on one sleeve at a time.

  Then he sat in the chair and laced his boots, removed his glasses from the rough, wooden surface of the table, and adjusted them on his face.

  Then he sat staring at the wood stove and the brief flickering of the embers within. He was most pleased. His torment in mortality was almost at an end, and he could rejoin his brothers and sisters in the Spirit World with all atrocities forgiven.

  Finally, he rose from the chair and took a sheet of paper from a legal pad – scribbling a brief letter to Rider. Then he leisurely ambled out of the cabin, taped the note to the door, and strolled into the woods after Anna Belton as calmly as a person who was merely taking a walk in the park.

  No cell in Lauren’s body wanted to watch the spirit of Poly Rider stab her estranged husband, but the wrongness of the spectacle mesmerized her.

  Poly cocked the Athame over her head the lines of the blade wavy like that of a bastard sword, and then she stabbed.

  That’s when the entire affair went horribly wrong.

  The blade shattered to ribbons upon impact. Polly stared blankly at Rider for a moment trying to determine what went wrong.

  Lauren smelled the acrid pall of wood burning as Rider’s organic bonds disintegrated.

  The ghost of Polly Rider flew backwards away from him in horror a
nd confusion.

  The Abysmal Patron rose – his red, orange, and yellow aura boiling off him like flames.

  Red electricity snaked around his right arm forming the abysmal spike – the spiritual version of the soul sword The Sisters of Divinity bound to him in such a distant age that it had passed out of all memory – all except of course the archives of the sisterhood.

  “We’re wraiths,” the spirit of High Priestess Rose Walden said. “You can’t kill us.”

  The Abysmal Patron glared at her.

  He pointed the Abysmal Spike at her, and her spirit burst into flames. She shrieked as the skin on her ghostly face blistered and then melted only to heal and do the same again. The spirit fell to the ground and attempted to roll the flames off to no avail.

  The wraith of Sister Jacobs stepped in front of Polly Rider.

  “You think your hot shit? Try me on for size, Abysmal Bastard.”

  The Abysmal Patron scowled.

  “I am Father Fury,” he growled.

  He pointed The Abysmal Spike at her. Her cheeks sank, her body fat melted away, and she fell to the ground too weak to stand.

  The Wraith of Polly Rider surrounded herself with a magical shield.

  The Abysmal Patron smirked. “You don’t think I can break that?”

  The Abysmal Patron grasped the hilt of his soul sword with both hands and planted it into the limestone ground.

  The Earth shook fiercely knocking Lauren off her feet.

  A deep fissure opened in the ground, and Sister Jacobs and Rose Walden instantly fell. The crack in the earth sucked the spirits down like a vacuum.

  Polly Rider clawed at the rock and dirt frantically trying to escape whatever horrid fate awaited her below, but then she slipped over the ledge.

  Lauren could still see the white glow of her dead hands clasping the edge of the fissure – holding on for dear life.

  The Abysmal Patron sauntered over to the chasm and looked down.

  “Rider,” Polly half-screamed. “Please don’t do this to me. I was your mother. I fed you, housed you, bought you Christmas every year, put you through school....”

  “I have no sympathy for you.”