The Altar (26 page)

That moment would show what she was made of. She might react in any of a few different ways. She might just blank the entire incident from her mind and pretend her son was normal, and that none of this had happened. She might refuse to accept the boy as her son, or try to put up a fight, in which case he’d simply kill her and be done with it. Or she might just lose her mind, which might make for an interesting scenario of its own.

It really didn’t matter how she reacted. It would all work out the way the demon wanted it to. It would be able to inhabit the body of this boy for as long as it wanted, and return to the earth. When it became tired of being human, it could return to its demonic form again and pick up exactly where it had left off. Now that the meddlers were permanently trapped here in hell’s waiting room, it had nothing left to worry about.

Now all it had to do was wait for the baby to be born. And from the looks of it, the wait wouldn’t be long.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

-1-

The last of the sand finally collapsed enough to where Erik and Johnny Dovecrest could crawl out of the sand pit and back to the surface of this strange world. Erik got to his feet and helped pull his friend up. Then, suddenly, he jumped back as he noticed that the place was very different from the way it was when he was unconscious. There were people everywhere.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

Dovecrest shrugged. “I’m not sure why, but I think we can see them all now.”

“See them all? Who?”

“The damned. The souls of all those who were sent to hell.”

“Oh my God...,” Erik said.

They were everywhere, looking pathetic and empty and completely without hope. He could hear them now, too, as they moaned and wailed. There were hundreds of them, no, thousands of them, stretching off as far as they eye could see. There were young and old, men, women, and children, in all sizes and shapes and from all races and cultures. They weren’t people, really, but were shades, ghost-like and yet human at the same time. They were all dressed in their burial clothes, which had rotted away to rags on their bodies, and now hung from them like moldy laundry.

They did not seem to be aware of one another as they ceaselessly wandered, searching, it seemed, for something.

Then, all at once they stopped and turned towards Erik and Dovecrest. The two men looked at one another, and with sudden realization he knew what had happened. The shades couldn’t see each other, but they could see them. In a single moment of realization, Erik understood. He could tell that Dovecrest did, too, and sudden terror flooded his soul.

All of these damned souls were searching for someone, for
anyone
in this place of utter desolation and aloneness. There must be billions of them here, and they couldn’t see one another. They’d been alone since they died—some of them had been here for thousands of years. All of them damned, from serial killers, rapists, murderers, and child molesters, right down to liars, cheats, and unbelievers. They were all here, searching for someone to interact with. And now suddenly Erik and Dovecrest had appeared, as if out of nowhere.

“We are so screwed,” Erik said softly.

It took a moment for the scene to register, but when it did the hundreds of damned souls nearest to them reacted as one. Erik could see their faces lighting up. They thought it was merely a vision, at first, a mirage. But then he could see the realization dawning on their faces.

There were three of them closest to him, an old woman, a middle aged-man, and a teenaged boy. They stepped forward, coming towards him, and leading a swarm of hundreds more that followed. They held their hands out to him and began to touch him, grope him. He staggered backwards, but more were surrounding him now. He looked over at Dovecrest and saw that he, too, was being overrun. The voices were everywhere, almost blending into one.

“Help me!” the teenager screamed. “Mom, please help me.”

“Betty, is it you? Is it you at last?”

“Oh, Harold, hold me!”

They all thought he was their loved one. And they all wanted a part of him. They swarmed like an army of ants, knocking him down, climbing on him. Their bodies melded into one another, and still they weren’t aware of the shade next to them, the shade that had actually melted into them....

So this was how the demon had really imprisoned them, Erik thought. He’d trapped them within a mountain of damned souls. He’d buried them in a sea of ruined, lost souls who were searching for something that he couldn’t give them....

“Leave me alone!” he screamed. “I’m not your mother! I’m not your wife!”

But still they came, an endless tide that overwhelmed him, suffocated him with their needs. He could hear their thoughts, feel their despair. Their misery was infinite; their wretchedness was endless. And he knew he was now doomed to endure their agony and despair forever.

“This isn’t fair!” he screamed. “I wasn’t sent here! I’m not one of you! I don’t belong here!”

Their need suffocated him as more and more of them came, like vultures to a rotting carcass. They buried him so he couldn’t see. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he desperately gasped for air that didn’t even exist in this nocturnal place. His mind, his body, and his soul were crushed beneath them. Even as their mass was without weight, their need was so very heavy. Their voices were deafening. Their smell was stifling. They grabbed him touched him, squeezed them against their formless bodies.

He felt like Jesus must have felt when the crowds of deformed and sick and diseased had come to him, swarming upon him to heal them.

“Dear, sweet Lord, help me!” he screamed. “I can’t heal them!”

-2-

The demon knew his prisoners had escaped their sand trap when the hordes of doomed souls stopped their aimless wandering and all turned in one direction, like a massive herd of animals all driven to one central point. There were billions of them. Surely those meddlers now faced the ultimate hell. This was worse than if they had been damned themselves, it thought. To be overrun by the needs of a billion lost souls.

The sand pit had been a diversion. They thought they had escaped, but in reality they had gone from bad to worse. The sand pit was for its amusement, really. It was designed so they’d be able to dig out rather quickly. It would give them hope. Giving hope in the hopeless place was the most fun thing to do. The portal actually did say “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” but no one took the oath seriously. If they had, they would be better off. But in reality they had been given their chance and had not accepted it. So now they were consumed with false hope for things that were never going to change. They’d led their lives the wrong way, but somehow they thought that God would show up one day and say, “Ooops, I made a mistake about you, Jack the Ripper. You don’t belong down here at all. You’re a good man, just ridding the streets of those evil women. You need to be upstairs with me. Besides, I understand you’re a great cook and do extraordinary things with kidneys.”

No, God didn’t make mistakes. If you were doomed to be down here, it was for a reason, a very good reason, and you knew damned well what it was. There would be no stay of execution here. No slap in the wrist and just don’t do it again. You had a whole lifetime to make things right and you couldn’t be bothered. Even after you did, you had a chance to plead your case. No one did. They just didn’t think hell was real. They’d be sent off to some summer camp to play.

But the shock of hell was all too real. Still, most of them kept their hope, which was ironic about the sign, for they really needed to abandon it. Hope just did not exist in this place. Their search for something that was completely lacking made their existence all the more unbearable.

It was a very cruel joke. But this one belonged to the creator. This time God was having the last laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Todd said. He’d been watching the demon closely. Very closely.

“Don’t worry, son, you’re going to get to know me like the back of your hand in no time flat. We’ll be best buddies, you and I. We will be a force to be reckoned with.”

“I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” he sneered, “All I want to do is get my Mom out of this terrible place and then to never see you or hear from you again. Isn’t that simple?”

“You have a well-developed mind for one so young. Unfortunately, you don’t understand the one cardinal point of this whole game.”

“And that point is?”

The demon laughed. “The point is that I’m the demon and you’re not. That means I have the power and you don’t. In other words, I call shots and you don’t. I give the rules and you follow. I’m the brains and you’re the body.”

“And if I don’t follow the rules?”

The demon laughed. “You ask some very interesting questions. Let me help you to understand. Suppose for a moment that I had an itch on my face just above my left eye. What would I do?”

“You’d scratch it.”

“That’s right. I’d scratch it. I would do that by commanding my hand to come up to my face and scratch. And my hand would obey.”

“Yeah.”

“Would the hand not obey?”

“Only if it couldn’t. Like if it were paralyzed or something.”

“But if it could, it would. The hand doesn’t concern itself with good or bad, right or wrong. The mind does that, does the thinking and the evaluation and the moral thing. The mind decides it’s ok and the brain just does it. It doesn’t have a mind, a conscience of its own. It just does what it’s told.”

“So what’s this got to do with me and you? You’re not a mind and I’m not a hand.”

“Ah, not yet. But we will be. We will become very close. Inseparable. You’ll be like the hand and will be able to have all the fun. And I’ll be the mind and will tell the hand what to do. It’ll be easy and it’ll be fun. You won’t have to worry about that right and wrong nonsense they fill you up with. You can let me decide that for you.

The boy stopped and looked at him for a long moment. “You’ve really got this demon thing all figured our, haven’t you?”

“Well, I’ve had a lot of years to practice.”

“You forgot just one thing, though. Why would I want to help somebody who killed my Dad?”

The demon laughed. “No, son, you’ve got it all wrong. You won’t have any choice but to serve me. You’ll be part of me, like the hand and I’ll be the brain. If the brain tells the hand to make a fist, it really doesn’t have any options not to, don’t you see? You’ll become my little puppet, and I’ll make you do whatever I want you to do. Play your cards right and you might even enjoy it. Many of them do.”

“What if I hate it?”

“You’ll get over it. And if you don’t, too bad. But you’ll obey because I’ll control the nerves.”

“I think I just want to go home,” Todd said. “I just want things to be back the way they used to be.”

“Well, you will be going back home soon enough, though I don’t think things will ever be the way they used to be. But you’ll get used to it in time. You’ll enjoy being the most powerful kid on the block. You’ll be able to do things you couldn’t do before.”

Todd just shook his head. All of that might be ok. He wasn’t sure and there was something about it that made him want to wet his pants. But even if it did turn out cool, he’d still rather have his father back.

-3-

Johnny Dovecrest was overwhelmed by the weight of the doomed souls that smothered him from all directions. There were hundreds of them already, with thousands and thousands more on the way. They stank of death, decay, sin, and evil. Their wants pressed horribly upon his soul. They demanded the love and intimacy they had been denied for so long, and they thought that he was their loved one. It was more than he could bear. Especially for a man who had grieved for his own family for almost 300 years.

But at least they were not here. They were with the Creator. And now he would be trapped here forever, never to be with them again.

He knelt on the ground and wept bitterly, for himself and for all of these miserable, wretched souls. But mostly he wept for himself.

His entire life had been dedicated to watching for the demon and protecting his tribe from it. He had not chosen this task. It had been thrust upon him. He hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t wanted the long life that went along with it. He would have been content to die with his family and move on to a better world. He’d done his job, led a good life, believed in the Creator, and still, after all that, he found himself in hell, overwhelmed by countless damned souls who all wanted a part of him.

“Go away!” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”

He struggled and flailed and tried to escape, but they held him down, not by the weight of their shapeless bodies, but by the weight of their needs. Their desperation was crushing. Dovecrest just wanted to die, but not even that option was possible.

“This isn’t right!” he screamed. “I’m not supposed to be here. Dear God, help me! I’m not supposed to be here!”

-4-

Erik closed his eyes and curled into a fetal position on the black sand. He put his arms over his head and drew his knees to his chest. But he couldn’t blank out the awful sounds of the pitiful, wretched souls who crushed down against him. They were suffocating and smothering him so badly that he couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t breathe. Hundreds of millions of plaintive wailings mixed together as one awful cry, with only bits and pieces even recognizable.

“Mary! At last! I’ve found you!”

“Billy! It’s me....”

“Mommy, where are you?”

And so it went. It was the weight of a hundred million souls upon him.

He was just about to give himself over to the desperate despair when it happened. They all stopped and froze where they were, as if time itself had been suspended. The voices stopped, and there was only silence.

Erik became aware of a gradual lighting; the brick red glow slowly turned orange, and then yellow. The shades dissolved around him, backing away from him as if he had become some fearful, frightening creature.

Erik noticed that the light wasn’t coming from around him, but from
inside
him, as if he himself had been illuminated from within. He could feel the radiance warming and refreshing him. He felt rejuvenated, as if he had taken a cool, refreshing shower on a hot summer’s day, and had been given a magical potion of energy and life.

To the damned souls around him, though, it was as if he had become poisoned. They retreated from him now, holding their hands and arms over their eyes in distaste and terror. He could no longer hear them—their voices had become mute to him—but he could see their lips moving as they cried out in fear and loathing. Whatever he had become was hateful to them.

He slowly crawled to his knees and looked over at his friend, Johnny Dovecrest. The Indian had also become transformed. His whole body was lit up, as if he had a strong fire burning inside him. The effect reminded Erik of paintings he had seen of angels, where the artist had somehow embodied them with a magical, mystical glow.

The doomed souls were moving away from Dovecrest as well, slowly backing away and holding out their hands as if to ward him off. The swarm had stopped completely and was now moving away from them both. It backed up against itself like a traffic jam as the shades melded into one another, and then slowly, almost with a delayed reaction, turned back the way they had come.