by Erik Lynd
Speaking of which, a couple of patrol cars were pulling up, sirens blaring. Time to go. Silas didn’t fear the cops, but he didn’t like them. They could be very annoying when he was trying to do his job. He stood and made his way to the motorcycle. He sucked up the pain and hid the limp, no use drawing attention to himself with the boys in blue nearby. Mort shut the laptop and grabbed his bag to hurry after.
“Silas, we need more time to debrief,” Mort said.
“Debrief? What are we? In the CIA? You’re watching way too much TV,” Silas said.
He swung his leg over the bike and fired up the engine. It roared to life and instantly Silas felt a little better, a little more relaxed. He sighed in pleasure.
“Just have the funds transferred into my account, Mort,” Silas said loud enough to be heard over the exhaust.
Mort opened his laptop, supporting it with the palm of one hand and ran his fingers over the keys with the other.
“Of course, after we deduct a fee for the damages I will be happy to transfer the money, if any is left, to your account.”
“Fee? For damages? I almost got killed back there,” Silas said. “What was I supposed to do? That thing threw me through the windows and walls.”
“Nothing proper planning might have avoided. As per section 741 subsection J sub paragraph three of the Infernal Binding Contract, or IBC, we may deduct damages and expenses above and beyond…”
Silas didn’t hear the rest, his demon spirit raged and he revved the engine to drown out the sound. Christ he hated priests. There was no bargaining with Mort, he followed the Vatican’s rules to the letter and those old codgers could give a rats fucking ass about what Silas went through. What the fuck had he been thinking when he agreed to that summoning and signed that contract? But he knew what he was thinking, he was thinking about the world above, the world beyond hell. He was thinking about the lusts, the passions, the drinks, the air, the meaning, and the life of this world. It was the most seductive of drugs and he was an addict.
With a grunt he throttled the bike, leaving rubber on the asphalt and exhaust billowing around Mort as he tried to yell at Silas over the sound. In his rear view mirror he saw that Mort had inhaled some exhaust and was coughing.
That, at least, made him feel a little better.
2
“Doug,” Father Delentante called out, sounding shriller than he intended. He couldn’t help it. They were going deeper and deeper underground. First they had entered the subway and from there a small access tunnel, which Father Delentante felt wasn’t strictly legal for them to use. That access tunnel had led them to old train tunnels where the homeless watched from deep in the shadows as they passed. They moved through this area rather quickly as though Doug realized there was danger in those tunnels. At least the young man had some sense.
Doug might have been an urban explorer, as he liked to call himself, but he was still young and reckless. If Father Delentante hadn’t known him all his life, he had christened him as a baby, he would never have followed the young man down here. Although if he were honest with himself, that might not be one hundred percent true.
They shared a love of the past, Father Delentante as a historian and Doug as an anthropology student. When Doug had come to him asking Delentante to follow him under the city, telling him that he had discovered something extra ordinary, it had been the passion in his voice that had tugged at Father Delentante. He trusted Doug and whatever the boy had found must have been significant. So it had been part love for Doug and part selfish curiosity that drew him down here into such a foreign place.
But this was getting ridiculous; they had been walking a long time, deeper than even the homeless travel. He would be surprised if some of these tunnels had seen anybody for thirty years. When they passed the sewer tunnels originally built in the 1800s he had had enough.
“Doug,” he called out again.
Doug paused twenty feet ahead of him and turned back. Father Delentante thought he looked distracted, but they only had the lights of their flashlights to see by. He wondered what they would do if their flashlights went out. He couldn’t find his way out of here without Doug, let alone if there was no light. He tried not to think about it.
“Yeah Father Del?” he asked.
“You didn’t say we would be journeying to the center of the earth to see this interesting find of yours. I am not sure we should be going much further, it is getting dangerous.”
“But it is just a little further Father Del. One more tunnel I think.”
“Doug, this is foolish. We could get trapped down here or even accosted. Can’t you just tell me what you saw?” Father Delentante asked.
“I can’t tell you, because I am not sure what it is. A little further, please Father Del. Up the tunnel a little more,” Doug said and turned. He started walking again without waiting for a response.
The Father looked down at his feet. His boots were caked with mud and soaked to the bone, he was sure his clothes and face must look as grimy. All the city’s refuse found its way here, they were at the bottom of the New York trash can. With a sigh Father Delentante followed him.
After another bend in the tunnel he noticed that the tunnel walls were no longer brick, but appeared more natural, hewn from rough rock. Where the hell were they?
Father Delentante’s flashlight was pointed at the walls so he almost walked into Doug before he realized that Doug’s flashlight had stopped moving. The young man had pointed his light at the opposite wall washing the surface in a bright yellow light.
“Here, this is what Lily and I found a few days ago,” he said.
Father Delentante looked at the wall illuminated by Doug’s light. Pictures were carved and dyed into the rock wall. They were old, very old. The carved edges had worn smooth and the dye had mostly faded and flaked off, it was hard to make out the original colors. He stepped closer and ran a finger gently against the carvings.
“Careful Father, this could be an important archaeological find,” Doug said.
Father Delentante nodded. The pictures, the style of art, he recognized them.
“This might be the work of the Lenape nation,” he said quietly.
“So it is Native American?” Doug asked.
“Yes I believe so, but old, very old. I can’t be sure it is the Lenape, but it is definitely Native American art and the Lenape were in this area. They were like the grandfather tribes for the other Native American people in this part of the country.”
“I knew it. How old? I knew this was a good find. Is it like pictographs?”
He smiled, Doug was excited like a child discovering a new animal or seeing a magic trick.
“It is not pictographs in the traditional sense. They didn’t really have a written language, most Native American people didn’t. But like any culture they used art to tell stories.”
He ran his fingers over one of the pictures again. It was of some sort of large animal, perhaps a lizard. Its eyes looked as though they were closed. Men stood above it spears and clubs at the ready. The animal was surrounded by an image commonly used by the Lenape to symbolize evil.
“Is that animal’s eyes closed?” Doug said.
Father Delentante almost jumped he had been so engrossed with the pictures that he hadn’t noticed Doug come up behind him.
“Yes I think so, it must be dead,” Father Delentante answered.
“Or sleeping,” said Doug.
“Perhaps, but see these men above it? I think they are hunters and have killed something they perceived as evil,” Father Delentante said and pointed to the ring of men above the beast. A line separated the two images. The ground maybe, since they were underground now.
“Or they are watching it, guarding it. See how their clubs and spears are raised as though ready,” said Doug.
Father Delentante was about to ask him why he was having such dark thoughts when he heard a noise. Doug heard it too and they turned to look up the tunnel.
It was a quiet shu
ffling noise and it faded quickly.
“Rats?” Doug guessed.
“Kind of big to be a rat,” Father Delentante said.
“Well they grow them big here under the Big Apple. Do you know what the pictures mean?”
Father Delentante looked for a moment down the hall from where the noise came, but there was nothing. Perhaps Doug was right and it was a big rat. The desire to examine this amazing discovery overcame his concern.
“Well,” Father Delentante said turning back to the picture. “This is going to require a lot of study by minds far better versed in the Native American cultures that existed in this part of America, but I would guess it is either a picture celebrating the end of a great hunt or, as you pointed out, a depiction of warriors guarding against a monster or evil thing. In that case perhaps it was created as some sort of lesson?”
“Or warning?”
“Perhaps. Who knows what they were…”
The sound came again, louder. This time the shuffle was followed by what sounded like a moan. Then the light clink of metal on stone.
“That doesn’t sound like a rat,” Father Delentante said quietly.
“What’s that?” Doug asked.
His flashlight splashed against the other side of the tunnel, the side that had been behind their backs while there were studying the carvings. Words were sprawled across the stone in bright red ink. The ink looked new. It took Father Delentante only a moment to realize that the words were written in a modern phonetic alphabet of the Lenape language.
“It looks like Lenape, at least the modern way it is written,” Father Delentante said. He had forgotten the sound up the hall, he stared at the words slowly sounding them out.
More noises came from the tunnel. Grunts followed by the occasional moan and heavy footsteps echoed from the walls.
“Ummm, Father Del? I think we should get out of here,” Doug said.
“Just a minute. I almost have it.”
And he did almost have it; the words were on the tip of his tongue. It had to be important, being across the tunnel from the ancient writings. The old and the new juxtaposed together. The key was here.
A cry from the darkness, vaguely human, but animalistic echoed down the tunnel.
Doug grabbed his arm and pulled on him.
“Father Del, we have to go. There’s something coming.”
And then he had it.
“The monster wakes,” Father Del whispered.
“What? Come on let’s get out of…” Doug started.
A figure emerged from the dark of the tunnel. It shot forward, a massive human with clothes torn on its body exposing glistening skin with a metallic sheen. It became a blur that slammed into Doug, throwing Father Delentante against the wall. Doug screamed as he hit the ground and the man was on him.
It was more creature than man. Its massive body strained at the clothes covering it, half of its head seemed disfigured as though its cranium grew too large causing its face to enlarge and distort. From its back sprouted bony structures like the spikes of some prehistoric monster.
Doug screamed and squirmed underneath it, but its weight as it crouched on his torso held Doug in place. It wore a human shape, but it was no human. Father Delentante wanted to do something, wanted to save the boy, but he could only lay there, body akimbo shaking his head in a silent scream as the creature grabbed Doug’s hair and looked at Father Delentante casually ignoring the writhing person underneath it.
The creature’s eyes glowed in the near darkness. If Father Delentante thought there was any humanity left in this poor thing, it was dispelled the moment those eyes found his. They were slit like a cat’s and the pupils flickered and waved as though burning on the inside. Doug’s flashlight had fallen when he was struck and it now rocked back and forth strobeing its light across the monster, treating Father Delentante to fleeting glimpses of a melted face and bony facial structure. And teeth, teeth like a canine, if that canine were a hound from hell.
With a sickening tearing sound it ripped Doug’s head from his body, its eyes never leaving Father Delentante’s. He was vaguely aware the creature had turned, he had become its new target, but still he couldn’t move. That was when he must have passed out for a moment, because the next thing he knew, there was a man standing over him.
The creature was still there, but Father Delentante was free of the eyes. He gazed up at the stranger. He was a Native American. He wore simple jeans and a button up denim shirt, but his hair was pulled back by a leather strap and feathers intertwined with his locks.
The creature still crouched over Doug’s body and looked thoughtfully from Father Delentante to the man standing over him. Surely this creature could tear them from limb to limb if it so desired, but it hesitated. Then Father Delentante noticed the club in the man’s hands. The thick piece of hardwood glistened as though recently oiled. The tip was banded in knotted leather and tapered to a hand grip at the other end. Intricate carvings wove around the entire shaft. An impressive weapon, but against this inhuman thing it looked like a toothpick.
The man held it aloft and the thing flinched back, like a vampire confronted with a cross. With a deep growl, the monster rose and had to hunch over to avoid hitting its head on the ceiling. For a moment Father Delentante thought it was going to charge them, but then it turned and ran off down the tunnel.
The man stood poised for a moment ready for the thing to come charging back down the tunnel. When it didn’t he looked down at Father Delentante and silently offered him his hand.
“Thanks,” Father Delentante said and he grasped the hand and hauled himself up. “What the hell was that…” his voice trailed off as growls and roars echoed through the tunnel. There were more of those things.
“We had better get out of here,” Father Delentante said.
The club moved so fast all Father Delentante saw was a blur as it streaked towards his head then it was all gone, swallowed by sweet oblivion. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was the stoic look on the Native American’s face.
Cardinal Julian looked at the clock on the wall, the big hand clicked into place at one o’clock. He had been waiting here for over an hour. He glanced at the priest behind the desk, Father Moreales’ secretary. For the entire hour and fifteen minutes Cardinal Julian had waited the priest had not looked up at him. He had worked studiously at his computer and phone pausing to eat a few bites of the salad that made up his lunch. Cardinal Julian did not have a salad. Cardinal Julian was starving.
The secretary had successfully ignored Cardinal Julian’s glowers and frowns for over an hour. If he had not announced himself when he had entered the room and stated that he had urgent business with Father Moreales he would have thought the priest didn’t even know he was there. He sighed loudly, coughed and exaggerated the uncrossing and crossing of his legs.
Nothing. The impudent little bastard.
“Do you suppose you could see if he is ready for me?” Cardinal Julian finally asked.
“He is not. I let him know you were here, however, he is not done with his lunch,” the priest said.
Cardinal Julian hated this and he hated Father Moreales. The bastard thinks he runs the Vatican. He thinks that just because he has the ear of the Holy Father he can insult the cardinals. Cardinal Julian had to talk to his holiness about this. He didn’t know why the pope put so much trust in Father Moreales, but it was becoming unbearable. It was one thing to ask for his advice on occasion, but it’s inappropriate that he looks the other way when Father Moreales was engaged in practices bordering on blasphemy. Investigation of the Miraculous my ass. Moreales was a step away from the “exorcists” the church appoints. As if demons really could possess people… hell as if they even existed. Sometimes Cardinal Julian wondered if the church was tied too much to the superstitions of the past.
He would not even be here if it were up to him. If it wasn’t for the silly report in the folder he carried, he would right now be dining in his own office. But
his Holiness had let it be known that any reports of the supernatural or miraculous had to be quickly turned over to Father Moreales for “archiving”. Whatever the hell that means. Out of spite, Cardinal Julian chose to interpret ‘quickly’ in his own way. He had sat on this particular report for over a week.
The phone rang with a digital shrill. The thin, pinched secretary picked up the handset and listened.
“Yes, of course sir,” he said and put the phone down. “You may go in now Cardinal. He is done eating.”
The little prick didn’t even look up. With a huff he stood, smoothed his cassock and strode through the door.
Father Moreales sat at a rather small desk in the middle of a very large and very opulent room. It had to be at least fifty feet long and almost that wide. The floor was marble interlaid with mosaics. Against the sides of the room intricate statues stood from different time periods. Paintings and prints of ancient maps were tastefully integrated with the renaissance murals covering the walls.
“Can I help you Cardinal?” Father Moreales asked without looking up from the document in his hand.
“Yes you can Father…” Cardinal Julian stumbled over his words as the secretary slipped past him. The secretary quickly began gathering the plate and silverware from Moreales’ desk. Once he had them in hand he did not leave, but stood off to the side of the room.
“I have a report for you. You know, the type that we were asked to deliver personally when they showed up?” Cardinal Julian didn’t bother to hide the sneer in his voice.
“Ah, very good. Thank you, please put it on my secretary’s desk on your way out.”
The Cardinal’s mouth dropped open.
“You mean I could have just… you mean I didn’t have…” he sputtered and looked at the secretary. “You didn’t tell me I could just drop it off.”
“I am sorry sir, but I did not know the reason you were here. As I recall your exact words were; is Moreales in? I have to speak with him immediately,” the secretary said.
