Fall From Grace, page 6
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
Both wrists collapsed inward as blood oozed outward, like squeezing a thawing fudge popsicle in your fists.
Try as he might, the demon was unable to wriggle free from Lily’s grasp. All he could do was sob, knowing he was about to die and be sent to Sheol.
Letting go of one wrist, the free hand blurred inside the demon’s chest with a heavy, wet crack.
A hand coated in gore slowly pulled free a still beating heart which Lily proceeded to show to the wide-eyed demon.
“Tell me,” she cooed as the heart struggled to understand why there was a sudden breeze, “is this really your heart? Or is it a mental projection that represents an organ that angels and demons don’t actually have? I’ve always wondered.”
In response, the demon’s reptilian eyes fluttered before slowing and then closing one last time.
Dropping the heart with a bored sigh, Lily stood and stepped back, anticipating the inevitable ectoplasm melting that she had grown accustomed to over the years of slaying demons which had dared to cross her path.
Nothing happened.
“Hmph,” Lily exhaled through her nose as she slung off the gore that still coated her hand.
Looking around, an idea came to her, and Lily just kind of pushed the demon back into the darkened corner of the soul’s mind. Using the bottom of one foot over and over, she left behind a thick trail of dark demon blood.
Lily couldn’t help but to see it as a form of poetic imagery; though the demon inside the mind was defeated, it would always remain in the shadows.
Crossing to the other side of the room, Lily stopped beside the nightmarish dentist’s chair and undid the straps holding the soul in place.
As she worked, Lily couldn’t help but think about the fact that she had never been inside a mortal’s mind and actually seen their mental representation within the part of the body John referred to as the control room.
“Why did you do that?” the woman demanded with panic edging her voice toward hysteria.
“Excuse me?”
“Now I’ll have to start all over or be thrown in with the others!”
“I…” Lily struggled to find the right words as confusion clouded her thoughts. “I just saved you.”
“No, you didn’t!” the woman screeched. “They are going to hunt me down and-and-and turn my suffering into food!”
The snake demon’s words flowed back into Lily’s mind.
Become the hunter…or remain the hunted…
“You wanted to become a demon?” Lily asked in disgust.
“It’s better than having my pain be food for the monsters! And now I have to start all over again with another demon, if they’ll even let me! They might decide to punish me instead! Even though it was your fault!”
Lily scowled at the panicked woman, but quickly decided she couldn’t possibly comprehend what the soul was going through.
“No one knows what happened. So you have choices.”
“What choices?!”
“You can run and hide or pretend like nothing happened. The choice is now yours.”
The woman seemed to consider her words as wild eyes stared at the air between the two.
While the soul was busy determining their future actions, Lily moved to the eyes and took control of the woman’s metaphysical body. Unlike John, who needed a steering wheel to commandeer a body, Lily could simply will it so.
Now in the driver’s seat, Lily stared at a computer screen that had an obvious coloration issue, as well as several clusters of dead pixels.
“What the hell computer system is this?” Lily asked with the woman’s voice.
Greg, who was standing nearby, recognized what was happening and carefully stepped past where Lily was standing motionless with an arm outstretched toward the mortal woman.
Looking at the old CRT monitor, Greg chuckled in disbelief and said, “It’s Windows Vista.”
“Well, I hate it,” Lily added while searching through the desktop icons sporadically placed without any discernible pattern.
“That would appear to be the universal consensus,” Greg replied, still chuckling at the operating system that ran Hell, or at least this part of it. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a form of torture.”
“Let’s try this one,” Lily said as she tried to double-click a desktop icon labeled Map.
Nothing happened.
“Try—” Greg began before Lily grunted in frustration and double-clicked the mouse even harder.
“It’s not working!”
“Try to select it and then hit enter.”
Lily flicked her eyes up to Greg before returning her attention to the screen and doing as he suggested.
The program opened with an audible protest from the large, off-white computer tower sitting under the desk. Both Lily and Greg could hear the actual processing of the ancient machine as the screen displayed a layout that looked like it belonged in some sort of video game.
“So, what are we checking for?” Greg asked, moving to stand behind Lily.
“I don’t like it when people look over my shoulder.”
In response, Greg took an exaggerated step to the side, making sure to respect Lily’s pet peeve while simultaneously maintaining his view of the screen.
Lily clicked around until she found what she was looking for, using the soul’s memory of the system as a divining rod.
“We are almost to the exit,” Lily explained while dragging a fingertip over the screen as she followed a path. “Then we head for the center of the city, and to Ulric.”
“City?”
“Tartarus,” Lily answered coldly as she clicked the map to the city and began to zoom in to have a better grasp of the scale.
It seemed to go on forever, to the point that Lily began to question if she had been mistaken, because no city could ever be this big.
Already committed to the action, Lily continued to zoom in until the building they were in filled the screen.
“Jesus…” Greg drawled as he attempted to comprehend the scale of the city.
“Unfortunately,” Lily exhaled in response to Greg’s comment, staring at the screen, “the son of God is not here.”
9
MAGNI
After slamming the door to the orphanage shut, Magni scrambled backward with whimpers of fear. Rubber soles squeaked across tile, leaving black scuff marks behind.
When the giant hand didn’t collapse the entire building, Magni shot his head toward the nearby windows…which allowed streams of light through from the midday sun.
In an instant, Magni’s whimpers and gasping breaths ceased as if the off switch on his panic mechanism had been thrown.
The sounds of children talking mixed with a tiny stampede of footsteps, making Magni push himself onto unsteady feet. But something was off.
There was a muffled delay that didn’t match the speed of the kids. It was as if the visuals had been sped up, and the audio sent in the opposite direction, slowed down noticeably.
Disbelieving eyes took in the orphanage full of uniformed children moving between classes. A few adults monitored the hallway until the bell rang, making the remaining kids kick it into high gear to make it to class on time.
Magni cringed at the bell, as it sounded more like a dual-tone tornado siren with the notes not quite an octave apart, giving it an eerie quality that the human mind screamed was not right.
Then the hallways were empty, all the doors seeming to close at once with forceful slams that made Magni rock back in surprise.
Confusion scrunching his face, Magni cautiously walked to the nearest classroom and peered through the glass window on the door.
A tall, thin teacher dressed in a white button-up, brown slacks, and a vest the same color appeared to just be standing at the front of the class, staring at his students. Everything about him was a little too long, like a human-shaped piece of stretched taffy.
Something was off about him, and Magni squinted at the face, which was slightly turned away from the door.
Curiosity took control of his gaze and turned it toward the identically dressed children who sat motionless as they stared at the teacher…but they didn’t have eyes.
Magni gasped, and two dozen featureless faces snapped toward the door. There were no eyes, noses, or mouths on the faces of the children, though they had either perfectly groomed brown hair or blonde pigtails atop their heads.
The tall, thin teacher was suddenly just on the other side of the door, peering down with a face that belonged on a mannequin.
Magni jumped backward as he yelped, his heart banging in his ears loud enough that it sounded like his head was inside of a metal band’s bass drum.
In a flash of inspiration, Magni remembered his training and jerked to the side, choosing to flee the unknown rather than engage.
He sprinted down the hall, passing classroom doors filled with featureless faces that followed him the whole way to the stairs.
Knowing the dorms where the faceless children slept were upstairs, Magni made the choice to go down…to the basement. It wasn’t until he burst through the heavy door at the bottom of the stairs that he realized a terrible mistake had been made.
Magni, as all children of the orphanage were, had been expressly forbidden from going to the basement where the groundskeeper’s office was, along with several of his tools. Being an exceptionally old building, there had also been a boiler room behind one of the handful of doors. Magni had found it one night when he and the other kids were playing hide-and-seek. He’d known no one would find him downstairs, where they were forbidden from entering. He had been right.
To a child’s mind, the boiler room resembled a living creature with steaming pipes for arms, eyes made of white gauges, and a mouth of metal that held hungry fire. With palms covered in sweat and hands that fiercely shook, Magni had been unable to open the door.
It might have been seconds, minutes, or hours, but to Magni, it had been an eternity later when the groundskeeper had finally opened the door, the child’s fingertips bloody and missing fingernails from clawing at the old metal exit.
He had never played hide-and-seek again.
The door slammed shut behind Magni, making him whirl around and grasp a knob that refused to turn no matter how hard he tried to force it.
“This isn’t right,” Magni pleaded out loud, trying to gain control of the situation. “There was a hallway at the bottom of the stairs, not this stupid room.”
Heaving breaths began to slow as his mind agreed with the assessment right as a plume of hot air, accompanied by the deep whoosh of a roaring flame, crashed into Magni’s back.
The heat robbed him of his breath as he dropped to one knee, shielding his face with both arms as he turned to face the unknown threat.
But it wasn’t unknown. Magni knew exactly what was waiting for him.
The immense wave of hot air receded, leaving Magni covered in a sheen of sweat. He slightly lowered his arms until just his eyes were exposed.
There, where the boiler had been when he was a child, sat an identical machine…but this one was alive.
The metal indicators of the gauges stood straight up, like the pupils of a predator, while the grate holding the fire opened and closed menacingly.
The metal pipes that snaked all over the ceiling of the room were yanked free from their supports, gyrating like several dozen serpents. Steam spewed from their mouths in anticipation, filling the room with a hot fog that burned Magni’s lungs and eyes.
Paralyzed with terror, Magni let out a whimper as the flaming mouth became the only thing visible through the fog. And it was moving closer.
10
JOHN
The church was devoid of sound, except for the wind that sought entry through every crack and crevice that the doors and windows of the building held.
About to face the mentor who had pulled me from my own depression countless times before, I slapped on a silly face, deciding the time for self-pity was over for now.
With my right arm cocked and ready for a karate strike, my left hand held the wrist of my deadly weapon as I pressed up against one of the pillars attached to the front landing.
Peering around, I swept my kung fu hand around like a soldier clearing a room, all the while humming the theme to GoldenEye 007.
“Dun-dundundun-dun dun dah, dun-dundundun-dun dun dah, BAH-DAH, BAH-DAH-DAAAAAH!”
As I crept up the landing, stepping over the John On! permanently marked in the concrete, I placed my back against the door and then knocked three times hard enough to be heard from probably anywhere in the church.
While I continued to hum the Bond theme, I may or may not have posed in various action stances with my karate chopping action arm.
After about a minute, a muffled voice called out, “Who is it?”
“Cook. John Cook,” I said in an ultra super cool voice.
“Hello?” the dampened voice called again from behind the thick wooden door.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have basically whispered my name like in the movies.
“COOK! JOHN COOK!” I said again, all of a sudden not feeling as cool at almost having to yell my secret agent name.
There was the sound of a locking mechanism being engaged, followed by the door creaking open.
Realizing someone was about to lay eyes on me, I quickly dropped my karate hand and stood up straight, trying to adopt an I’m-so-cool-I-don’t-need-to-pose…pose.
The person that stood in the doorway made my jaw drop open as my purple eyes flew over the—dare I say—young man before me.
Father Thomes was wearing his traditional priest attire, complete with the typical white collar and an ultra-awesome robe that looked like it belonged in a Matrix movie.
But that wasn’t what made my jaw drop.
Gabriel hadn’t been using hyperbole when he explained about Father Thomes’s reversed aging.
“Papa T?” I asked, stepping forward to grab my friend’s shoulders while making a show of looking him up and down.
Letting my grip slide down his arms, I grasped his wrists and lifted them to see normal hands. No liver spots or painful signs of arthritis.
“Hello, John,” Father Thomes greeted in a voice that instantly reminded me of the time we first met in 1990 on the banks of my favorite body-disposal river.
The priest had first happened upon me when I was feeding some crocigators, because I honestly can’t tell the difference between alligators and crocodiles. Anyway.
My mortal friend and mentor looked to be in his mid-to-late forties, or maybe early fifties now. Stark-white, thin hair was now fuller, with a mix of pepper with the salt. A growing hairline was creeping back into place, making it look like the shore after a wave pulled back.
He noticed me noticing his renewed youth and pulled his hands from my grasp to run up and down his torso.
“Had to pull this old uniform from storage,” he said with barely contained joy.
It was at that moment that I noticed he was almost as tall as me without his hunch.
“You’re…you’re okay…with this?” I hesitantly asked, not wanting to put a damper on something that brought my mentor obvious happiness, or at the very least, relief. “I just freaking saw you, like, yesterday or something! I honestly can’t remember because of the whole, um, time travel thingy.”
“I had a long talk with Gabriel on the matter,” he stated as unfocused eyes stared at the air somewhere behind me. “He convinced me that I will need to be at my strongest for when…”
“For when I open the gates of Hell,” I somberly finished for him.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, John,” Father Thomes said playfully. “The future is always uncertain until it happens. But if you were speeding down the highway and an accident that you knew for certain you couldn’t avoid happened right in front of you,” he explained with a knowing smile, “you would still slam on the brakes, would you not?”
“Ah,” I let out, grabbing my hips as I nodded in understanding. “I get ya.”
Though I understood, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the fact that Gabriel had facilitated my mortal friend’s reversal of age with the sole intent of having him in prime fighting condition. Especially when considering that the reversal had been slow at first and now had jumped ahead, taking decades off my friend’s life instead of just years.
“You know what he’s doing though, right?”
“As I said,” Thomes repeated, placing a hand on my shoulder, “Gabriel and I discussed this matter for some time. I understand fully what his reasoning is, and I agree with it.”
That took me by surprise.
“I think you are forgetting that I was considered quite the formidable warrior back in my day.”
“Oh-ho, I…I remember, alright,” I chuckled while recalling our first interaction. He could have cut me down without breaking a sweat if he had wanted to.
After a few moments of silence, the wind picked up again as if to remind me of more pressing matters than fond-filled reminiscence.
Father Thomes moved from the entrance, and I followed, closing the door behind me.
“Look,” I started, “I’m not sure how to say this. Wur-sta-shure? Whore-chest-er-shire? Wrrshrrshrr?”
Knowing exactly the kind of person I was, Father Thomes began a healthy chuckle as he moved toward the cathedral where we used to have our pow-wows in.
It was at that moment that Thomes Philseep’s miraculous reversal of health became real for me.
We hadn’t sat in the pews in so long due to the wood hurting my mentor’s frail back and presumably thin buttocks. I say presumably because I made it a point to never smack his ass when he wasn’t looking. Knowing my luck, I would have es’ploded his senior body into fine dust, like hitting a full vacuum bag with a point-blank blast from a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Thomes confidently sat at the end of one of the pews, and even crossed his right leg over his knee.
I couldn’t help but feel something in my chest that I wasn’t able to put my finger on. Pride, maybe? Or perhaps it was relief that the good man who had suffered for so long had been awarded a well-deserved reprieve from his pain.
