Using one hand, Thornton yanked open the rear door. Using every bit of strength, he and Danto heaved Bev’s body into the back seat. Once inside, Thornton clambered over him and pulled his twitching legs across the seat so that his entire body was completely inside the car. Danto climbed in, aided in seat belting Bev while Thornton fettered Bev’s wrists and ankles with the plastic ties, securing each one to the seat belt in the car.
Danto offered up a questioning glare upon his decision to do this. “Don’t we need him to fight for us?”
Thornton replied, “Satan cannot be trusted.”
Danto nodded knowingly, then told Thornton, “We need to get the girl. She has to come with us.”
“Who is she?”
“
Mathers
’ girlfriend. Rebecca
Haviland
.”
“She knows?”
Danto nodded.
Using an intercom built into the car’s rear dash, Thornton instructed the driver to “get the girl.” Without delay, the car swung around—Bev’s body bobbled, his upper half tilting over the shoulder strap, leaving behind a wet smear on the black leather—and halted before a rain soaked Rebecca. Danto pushed open the door. “Get in.”
She hesitated, shaking her head.
“C’mon!” he yelled.
She looked around, apparently seeing no alternative, then obediently climbed in and slid toward the front of the long seat, away from the two men and Bev.
Thornton opened up a small compartment in the bare wet bar and removed a small stack of hand towels. He tossed one to her. “Here…dry your face.”
Sobbing, she grabbed the towel and hid her face in it, rubbing her eyes vigorously, pressing her body against the partition dividing the car.
The limo sped out of the parking lot, back onto the roads leading toward Hollywood Hills. The first few minutes were ridden in thick silence, all eyes precariously glued on Bev’s form. His belly rose up and down like a balloon, generating murmuring growls as he breathed. His skin had paled into a colorless hue, features twitching madly. He made involuntary jerking movements that startled all those in attendance.
Rebecca eventually asked, “Where are we going?”
Her question was answered with blank stares.
“And what’s going to happen to me?” She closed her eyes and massaged her forehead, the look on her face one of unguarded abandonment. She drew in a lengthy, quavering breath, then was calm, eyes bouncing back and forth between Danto and Thornton.
Danto answered, “We’re going to need your help.”
“With what?”
A moment of silence passed between them. Then, Thornton answered, “We don’t know. Yet.”
~ * ~
Bev waded through the lava, its searing flow determined in guiding him forward. The depth of the lava had dropped from his chest to his ankles, the shoreline now only feet away. Eventually he reached the coast, burnt black sand sifting through his char-blackened toes. The Jake-demon’s body lay only a few feet away, washed up on the beach in a drift, its scales and feathers circling it like a foul moat, flesh partially decomposed, maggots the size of slugs twisting within the fleshy circles of decay. In each skeletal hand was a pig’s hoof, black and swollen and doused in fresh blood. The only unscathed ingredient on the Jake-demon was its face, its eyes peering up at Bev, rolling madly in their sockets. “I fucked her Bev, that little piece-of-ass daughter of yours. You
oughtta
try her, my man. She’s as tight as a strap.” Incensed, Bev lunged forward and slammed his foot down on the Jake-demon’s head. It burst like a piece of soft fruit, eyes gushing vitreous fluid, brain matter spurting from the crushed skull, pooling on the sand. He pulled his foot away. The flattened mass of flesh and bone wriggled and writhed. Ambling out of the eye sockets came two large beetles, followed immediately by a dozen more. And then, a dozen more upon those. They scattered in all directions like dropped marbles, shining blackly, legs flicking and kicking as they amassed in ranks, a few running up his smoking legs, others fleeing into the fiery surf, instantly perishing upon contact, thin trails of pungent smoke rising into the putrid air.
He turned away from the dead Jake-demon, running against the tide. Further along the beach he saw more bodies. He raced over to them. Kristin, Rebecca, Julianne. They were all here. Dead and rotting, their cadavers dismembered and twisted to outline a pentagram in the sand, arms and legs and torsos forming the star, their entrails circumventing it, shaping the perimeter.
“Bev.”
He darted around. Danto and Thornton were here, both dressed in black hooded robes, holding large rusted crosses. Beetles raced across their faces; they didn’t seem to notice.
“The time has come, Bev,” Danto said, a beetle emerging from his mouth. “The Legion is sound, but, so are you. Satan is your stronghold. The only thing that can destroy evil is evil itself.”
A deafening roar filled the air, the world around them shaking. The lava receded,
whirlpooling
like water down a drain, the black sands churning beneath them as a monstrous entity emerged, a hideous creature with dark flaring scales and glowing black eyes spotlighting the writhing braids of hair atop its head. Bev stared at the great black beast whose long yellow claws reached forward, dripping venom that sputtered as it hit the ground.
It grinned a mouthful of shark-like teeth, a bulking wart-ridden tongue lapping across them. “Legion,” it growled. From within its chest a face suddenly formed, a man who’d taken on the appearance of a snake, the face elongated, eyes like diamonds, the snout two holes in a single drop of cartilage. The face, breaking through the membranous skin, gazed at Bev, a black, forked tongue flicking in and out, tasting the air.
“The demons are joining us,” the black beast pronounced, petting the looming face in its chest. It sank back down into the blistering lava, releasing a vile howl that echoed throughout all of Hell
…
~ * ~
Bev awoke, his body lying prone to those who held him captive. Two silhouettes appeared in his blurred sights, nodding, talking to him. The words were muffled, unintelligible. A third figure emerged, shouting, crying, the barely audible voice higher in tone. Imploring. He tried to move a hand toward the voice, but was unable to even flinch. He felt the hand grasp his. Squeeze. It felt reassuring. Comforting.
He tried to move. Additional hands pressed down on his shoulders. Grabbed his wrists. Forceful, yet reassuring. He followed their lead and kept still.
Then closed his eyes, and fell back into darkness.
Slowly the limo made its way into Hollywood Hills, shouldering each turn carefully behind the muted span of its headlights. Thankfully the driver had been prudent in his technique—the storm had increased in intensity. Rain fell in relentless layers, sheet lightning igniting the environment every ten seconds, booming thunder riding its heated coattails.
Despite his swooned state, Bev had put on an alarming show of unrestrained movement for Danto, Thornton, and Rebecca, who herself had spent a good deal of time trembling and moaning. She’d complained of feeling ”sick as hell,” and had subsequently thrown up in the towels Thornton had given her. The car took on a sickening stench from Rebecca’s gorge and Bev’s perspiring stink of sulfur, forcing Danto to open the windows despite the slashing rain fighting its way in. He felt a pitter of sickness in his stomach, but was able to hold it down.
Danto looked over at Thornton, who himself, despite his experiences at In Domo, looked gray and greasy and about to heave. Danto was about to tell Thornton that he didn’t look well, when Bev started bellowing like an injured dog.
Bev’s eyelids darted open, revealing only bloodshot whites, webs of yellow pus oozing out from beneath the upper lids. He snarled, baring his teeth, tongue flickering in and out of his cracked and bleeding lips. He fought hard against his restraints, neck bulging, muscles and veins swelling like balloons.
“
Jesus Christ!
” Rebecca yelled, pressing herself against the partition. “
What’s wrong with him?
”
Danto shot a frustrated look at her. “Didn’t you hear a damn word I was saying earlier?”
“Is it…
Satan
?” she asked, cowering.
“It is Bev’s soul fighting the Devil’s presence, and the Devil is winning the battle.”
She sobbed uncontrollably, covering her face, peeking through her trembling fingers. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them despondently, staring at Bev.
Danto looked out the window, feeling desperate and weak. Rain and blackness met his nervous gaze…except for the large house on the corner whose pale red lights cut through the stormy night like beacons. The limo turned up the hill and stopped facing the imposing dwelling built of bricks and arches and spires. Iron gates and eight-foot hedges met the idling car like a faction of sentinels.
The driver reached out, fingered a keypad. The gates opened.
Bev bucked and thrashed and hissed maniacally, like a shrew in a mousetrap. He pulled against his restraints, the attached seatbelts allowing only a few inches of slack. The lights inside the car flickered, brightened, then went out. A tiny trail of smoke surfaced from the overhead lamp. Bev’s eyes rolled forward, green and radiant in the darkened interior, pinning them with an almost playful attitude, the corners of his mouth turned slightly upwards. Then his body stopped fighting, and suddenly, he was still: composed, alert.
He rumbled like a steer.
The car lurched through the gates. Wet gravel crunched under the tires. Danto heard Thornton say, “Oh my God,” and quickly shifted across the seat to where the minister was peering out the rain-spotted window. He lowered it, rain immediately pelting both their faces.
Alongside the driveway on the grass lay a man’s body. He’d been eviscerated, bowels strewn about his twisted body like streamers, white and bloated from the drenching rain. His jacket and trousers were shredded and bunched up around his neck and ankles, exposing his gutted midsection. His head was bowed toward them, the face untouched by his attacker, eyes and mouth
statued
in yawning circles. As the limo went by, Danto said, “I know this man. He’s a detective. He came to the rectory this afternoon.” He quickly closed his eyes and embarked on a hushed prayer, while Thornton fell back despondently against the seat.
“It is just the beginning of the sights we are about to see,” Thornton pronounced solemnly.
The car circled around the fountain to the forefront of In Domo, stopped. Without shutting the car, the driver emerged and raced lithely up the front steps, keeping his hooded gaze away from them. Danto, Thornton, and Rebecca watched as he opened the twin doors and disappeared inside. They glanced hesitantly at one another, then over at Bev.
Tense and waiting, the rock star stared back at them, hair a tangled mess, lupine eyes aglow in the crimson gleam of light from the house. Emotionlessly, he shifted his gaze out the window and began humming a slow, tuneful chant in Latin: “
Magnus
es
,
domine
, et
laudabilis
valde
.” His voice took on an eerily melodious and merry tone, contrasting the harsh, baleful gaze; the mucous seeping from his nostrils; the string of blood and saliva wavering from his lips. His head rocked tenderly back and forth, then, as the song ended, slumped down lifelessly, eyes rolling upwards into the sockets. His lids shuttered.
Danto saw Rebecca inching forward on the seat. “Whose voice was that?” she asked, her voice weak, troubled.
Thornton lowered his head and replied, “Satan’s.”
~ * ~
The lava receded far into the distance, clouds of ash rolling in from the blood-red skies of his bowels. Soon thereafter, black rain fell upon Bev, cutting burning holes in his skin like needle shots of acid. The bodies of those he loved had mysteriously vanished from the shore, now replaced by two massive iron ovens filled with bone and ash. Cauldrons the size of small cars surrounded the ovens, spilling over with the melted flesh of those boiling inside their rusted bulks. The piles of ash in the ovens shifted and dropped down onto the beach. Beetles emerged from within, showing the way for additional horrors: bloody arms, severed at the elbows, clambering out of the ovens, doused in gray ash, led by clutching hands whose fingers raked madly at the sand. Like crabs they circled the ovens and cauldrons, strings of tattered flesh and blood straggling at the detached ends like shreds of seaweed. They massed together, emulating hungry rats in a sewage duct, gray-coated and throbbing, rabidly falling over one another. Soon they stopped rising from the ovens. The hand-led arms immobilized. They stood on end, palms turned up, facing Bev in their
blindless
state, then began to sway hypnotically, giving him the impression that they were sizing him down. He stared back at them, dumbfounded. Without warning, the arms fell back down and came at him, fingers darting furiously across the sand with purposeful intent. He turned to move, but could not so much as budge—in what first appeared to be paralysis, he gazed down to find two sets of hands securing his ankles, locking him in place. More hands immediately reached him, clawing angrily at his legs, rendering his skin away in soft, gouging lumps, his seared flesh tightly wedged beneath the hardened yellow nails. His knees buckled and he fell, parting the black sand. Like rats on a carcass, the arms climbed all over him. He clawed at the drift, feeling every distinct scratch of pain. And, at the same time, feeling no potential for death in this alternate section of Hell
…