Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades (19 page)

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Authors: Jeffrey Thomas

BOOK: Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades
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"Yes. As your friend there said, this is Hades. Welcome to it. That poor dear boy is suffering. And I’m in as much torture as he is, just knowing it. But in a few days, he’ll be released. He’ll heal. And we’ll take him back here, and care for him as best we can…as we have been doing."
"Fuck that." Michael confronted Iblis Al-Qadim again. "I am not waiting any few days, while my son is torn apart in that thing out there. I want you to do something, you son of a bitch…there has to be something you can do! Put me in there. Put me in his place."
"Impossible. An Angel, tortured? It could never be…"
"I’m being tortured
now
!"
The giant Demon half turned, seemed to sway. Propping himself with his halberd-like staff, he took on that distracted, unfocused aspect again, that Michael had observed in the carriage. "Things are…very confusing at this time. An Angel…wanting to be tortured. An Angel…who I am ordered to deny. My flame…drawn away from me." The creature staggered before he caught himself again. In a tone that almost sounded hurt, he said, "I am betrayed…"
Michael remembered what he had overheard the Demon mumbling inside the carriage.
"Because I walk upright? Because I have two arms, two legs? Now I am just a human, too?"
As distantly human in appearance as the governor was, could it truly be that his kind was one of those slated to be eliminated, for being too much like men? Because one particularly human-like Demon race had begun a growing rebellion, a genocide was being waged against other strains the Creator deemed a potential threat. Even this creature’s barely anthropomorphic species, as well? His loyal service, up to now, no longer taken into account?
"I am betrayed,"
 he had just said.
He saw Iblis Al-Qadim go more rigid, regain his composure. But Michael was aware now what was happening. That parasite, affixed to him, was wrestling back the control that had momentarily slipped away from it.
When Iblis Al-Qadim turned his imposing frame in Michael’s direction again, it was to see the Berreta rising.
"Wait!" cried Roger, half starting up from his chair in alarm and disbelief, even as the room thundered with the enclosed sound of three gunshots in rapid succession.
The projectiles tore through the bulbous, sack-like head of the mollusk being, green-glowing muck splattering out of it. As it collapsed upon itself like a burst balloon, its wings stopped beating and its tentacles came slithering out of the holes they had burrowed into the host Demon’s neck and head. It oozed down his shoulder, hit the floor with a splat like wet leather. Iblis Al-Qadim stood oddly naked, swayed again. Then, he tottered back, fell against the wall behind him, and slid into a broken pile of insect-like skeletal limbs.
"I am…freed," he rasped.
"Now—free my son," Michael told the Demon.
The crumpled entity gazed up at the Angel with his remaining eye glinting inside that pit of a socket. For several moments, Michael felt hypnotized, as when the globe-headed Demon had rummaged inside his brain. And then, he and the others in the room heard a booming thud from outside, in the city. It rattled the one window in its frame and sent a vibration up their legs through their soles.
"What’s happened?" Davina asked.
"I have…contacted the Skull," Iblis Al-Qadim said. "I have brought it down for you, sir."
Michael swept to the window again, looked out. He could only see a bare crescent, the very top, of the vast bone sphere this time. It had lowered, crashed, all the way to the street.
When he looked back at the Demon, he saw that both eyes were black and empty now, and no more emerald fire flickered inside the miter atop his head.
Michael then faced the two lesser skeleton Demons, lingering by the door to the flat. He was prepared to raise his gun and aim it at them if they surged forward, but they did not move, as if they awaited instructions from a new commander.
"I need more guns," he told them.
6: Tortures
While the two creatures were off on their errand to the Demonic station where Iblis Al-Qadim had consulted with the Baphomet, Michael and Roger wrapped the dead governor’s surprisingly light scarecrow of a corpse—and that of his parasite—in several blankets for the departed underlings to take away with them, later.
They returned promptly. Though Demons generally preferred swords and other such primitive weapons to firearms, they used them occasionally or stocked them for the use of vacationing Angels anxious to do a little hunting of the Damned. Thus, the two Demons came back with their bony arms laden. There was a knapsack heavy with various types of ammunition. Michael had asked for an M16 with a grenade launcher beneath the barrel, but he had to make do without the grenade launcher. Before the silent pair had left, Michael had asked Roger, "What kind of guns are you familiar with, if any?"
"Why?" Davina had spoken up.
"I can go alone," Michael said, his eyes remaining on Roger. "But I thought you might want to come with me."
"You’re an Angel," Davina said. "They can’t do much to you. But Roger is Damned. If they catch him, they could lock him into one horrible torture for
centuries
."
Ignoring her comment, Roger replied evenly, "I was a soldier…killed in what I’m told you people now call the first World War."
Michael smiled. It was the first time Roger had seen the expression on him. "I was in the Gulf War."
"The what war?"
Michael snorted. "I’ll tell you another time. So…a simpler gun for you, huh? I recommend a shotgun; very good for close combat."
Combat
, Roger’s mind echoed, with a quaver.
"Roger, please, please don’t." Davina held onto his arm. "They’ve already taken my child…I can’t lose you, too!"
"He’s my child," Michael spoke up. "Mark is my son—just so you know."
Davina flashed her eyes onto him, blacker than twin gun muzzles. "He’s as much our son as he ever was yours."
"Listen…" Michael began.
"I would prefer a .303 Enfield," Roger broke in. "But a shotgun would do."
Michael again showed Roger that little smile, then turned to instruct the Demons.
And so, it was a 12-gauge pump-action Ithaca that the Angel took from one of the Demons and passed into Roger’s hands. He was seated as he examined it, but his severed leg had already almost fully reconstituted. "I suppose I expected a break-open style shotgun."
Michael reclaimed the weapon, showed him how to work the slide, and fed a series of shells into it before he handed it back. "You just stick close to me. I’m hoping they’ll be too afraid to oppose an Angel. But…they may have the attitude of that octopus thing, and think this isn’t for us to interfere in. And then they may try to stop us."
Roger rose from the chair, and looked past the Angel at Davina. "I can’t bear the thought of it either, my love. Our dear boy inside that thing. In their hands…"
Her lower lip was trembling badly and she turned to face the wall, arms tightly crossed as if to hug and console herself, but said nothing more. And a moment later, she gave a little nod.
"Hey. Can you really do this?" Michael asked.
"Yes," Roger said without hesitation, sounding a bit insulted, but Michael persisted.
"It’s been a long time for you."
Roger held his stare, took in a long breath. "There was a German soldier…maybe ten years younger than I. We found ourselves face-to-face. His Mauser was covered in mud; had jammed. My Lee-Endfield had run empty. But I still had my bayonet, and he did not. As he tried to clear the round, I sort of thrust the rifle at him without aiming. The bayonet went into him directly under his right eye. It forced the eye out, onto his cheek. The blade slid out and he sort of turned away, stunned…and began shrieking. My German isn’t very good, but I know the word ‘Mutter.’ He just staggered off holding his face, crying that word again and again like a child. Which he was, really."
  "And what did you do?"
"I walked after him…and I stabbed him in the back. He fell, and I stabbed him again. And the crying stopped."
"Yes," Michael said, nodding. "But—did you kill him then because you hated him, or because you pitied him?"
Roger flicked his eyes away, and to Michael that was enough to answer the question. The story, meant to illustrate his toughness, had betrayed his compassion—simply in the fact that he recalled it so vividly at all. But he muttered, "These things aren’t men. They don’t even have mothers." He thought of the way his Davina had been used. "Not really…"
"Yeah. But they have a Father," Michael said. "And I could care less." He hadn’t taken his eyes off the other man. "So—are you ready to get our boy back?"
The British man met the American’s stare again, startled by his phrasing.
"Let’s go," Roger said.
««—»»
As they started off down the street, Roger and Michael glanced back to see the two skeleton beings carrying out the mummy-wrapped package of their fallen leader, to load upon the animal-drawn metal carriage. Roger felt relief that the things were not remaining with Davina, while Michael felt a funny twinge of regret. Had the Demon helped him out of sympathy, or merely out of spite for his Father? Either way, the Demon had been judged to be too human-like…and in doing so, his Creator had only proved Himself right, by pushing the creature into a human-like act of vengeance.
It wouldn’t have been unusual for an Angel to be seen walking along the streets of a city in Hell carrying an assault rifle in his hands, but to see a Damned man striding beside him (with a faint limp) openly carrying a pump-action shotgun would be quite the shock—had there been anyone on the street to witness it. The citizens were still keeping themselves out of sight, though the Skull’s crew seemed to have taken aboard all the prisoners they intended to. But Roger glimpsed a figure ducking behind the edge of a second floor window, and realized he was at least being peeked at around makeshift window shades, and through cracked doors, by his bewildered neighbors—perhaps alarmed by his actions, perhaps stirred.
"That brand on your forehead," Michael said. "It stands for your sin…"
"Atheist," Roger stated.
"And your wife…uh, girlfriend. H?"
"H is for Hinduism."
"Does Mark have one on his head?"
"Yes. A U—unbaptized."
Michael made a hissing sound. "His mother—my first wife—wouldn’t allow it. I could shoot myself for listening to her. Not that it would kill me, now. It’s my fault…my fault, for giving in."
"As you said, we don’t make the bloody laws. You mustn’t blame her. Or yourself. It isn’t his father’s fault…it’s his Father’s fault." Roger nodded his head upward, as if at something hovering unseen above them. "Anyway…if it’s anyone’s fault that Mark is inside that place now, it’s mine. I didn’t protect him well enough. I shouldn’t have let him go into that alley ahead of me. I should have said we’d stay in the alley for an hour or so, until the Skull’s crew had finished rounding up their prey."
Michael looked over at him as they strode side-by-side. "Now it’s you who’s talking shit…because it seems to me, you and your lady back there have been doing a very good job of looking after him. Thank you."
"Guilt," Roger mused aloud. "Yours. Mine. His. He torments himself, you know, over what happened to you and your second wife. The fire he caused."
"He torments himself," Michael repeated, making a wincing expression. "I’ve got to reassure him. I have to show him that Dawn and I still love him—could never blame him for that." After several more steps he said, "When we first got to Heaven, I guess my wife and I were…humbled. We tried to accept our fates, our Father’s judgment…to trust in the system. We settled in a town called Nepenthe. I chose it because it has features that reminded me of places Mark loved. A park, with trees. A mall. Huh. Heaven’s full of shopping malls. Anyway…it wasn’t any solace. It only made my loss sharper, until I couldn’t take it any longer. How can they call it a Paradise, when I’m grieving every day because my only child is trapped in Hell? How can I call that place my home for eternity, without him?"

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