Demonologist (34 page)

Danto eyed the entrance to the cathedral, gripping his cheeks and wiping the sweat from his lip. There would be no turning back now. The Legion of demons was about to commence, and he would be here witness to it. The only uncertainty was whether he’d
live
to tell of his experiences.

Quietly, they stepped forward and stopped at the end of the hall, just beyond the arch. Thornton turned toward Danto and Rebecca. Both remained frozen, Danto’s mounting fear and aversion keeping his feet glued to the wood floor. They adjusted their hoods, hiding their faces as much as possible. Thornton pointed toward the center of the room, mouthed follow me, then paced through the archway, his near-silent footsteps absorbed by the murmuring chant of the congregation.

Side by side, holding hands, Danto and Rebecca followed the minister into the cathedral.

~ * ~

In the acidic pits of Hell, Bev
Mathers
screamed and cried and wailed in immeasurable agony, his voice one of countless millions paying their respects to the prince of darkness. Above, he could hear the rustle of his body as it morphed into something otherworldly, his hands and feet altering, his body shifting bizarrely. When he gazed down at himself he saw a ghostly image of what his physical body had developing into; yellow claws, thick like daggers, bursting from the tips of his fingers, blood trickling form the lesions; skin, thick like leather, blue veins flowing like branches beneath the milky surface. He tried to scream, but his familiar voice had vanished, exchanged for a strident wheeze barely recognizable by his own ears. He felt his body rise up from the mattress, and the dizzying lumber of it as it staggered across the dark room: Satan, familiarizing Himself with man’s physical form. Bev couldn’t physically see through his eyes. Yet, he maintained a delicate link with his mind, hearing all that Satan could hear; seeing all that He could see; perceiving a thin account of His meandering thoughts as they formulated a plan to take Allieb down, and retrieve his twelve demon hostages. His body stopped. Bev listened. Beyond the moan of the wind, he could hear Satan’s steer-like breaths oozing from his lungs…and then, the deafening roar of the beast, a physical being now walking the earth for the first time in over two thousand years.

Oh my God
…

The first thing that struck Danto was the sheer size of the cathedral; he hadn’t expected the room to be so expansive. Roughly the size of his own church, the room ran at least two hundred feet from corner to corner—the nonappearance of furniture and other embellishments most likely exaggerated the room’s intimidating size, but also added to the dark, looming threat it sustained. Flat black paint covered every inch of the area, the floors, walls, ceiling, and columnar supports, creating a suitable camouflage for the hundred-plus black-robed attendees circling the midpoint altar. Dozens of perched candelabras were set up equidistantly throughout the room, igniting everything in a ghostly yellow radiance.

Unlike the rest of the house, the cathedral had been meticulously attended to. Along the opposite wall ran a balcony perhaps eighty feet long, etched columns at every six feet fitted with four-foot pentagrams. Lining the balcony’s edge at equidistant points between the columns were glossy black chalices, burning with sulfur, yellow smoke oozing from their rims like boiling milk. The altar itself was an impressive display: dressed entirely in black cloths, the platform it rested on spanned fifty feet from end to end, lined with burning candles whose black wax glowed eerily in their flickering glow. All Danto could wonder was,
who lit all these candles?
, then bore in mind that here at
In Domo
, Allieb doubtlessly possessed a crafty means of “making things happen.”

Thornton led Danto and Rebecca to the circle of hooded subordinates, breaking the line to allow them a connection. Danto grasped a woman’s hand to his left, her palm and fingers petite and calloused. His right hand held Rebecca’s left, who in turn latched on to the hand of another incognito member of
Allieb’s
cabal. No one paid them any attention, it seemed, and Danto and Rebecca both aimed their frightened gazes toward the floor, impersonating the postures of all those in attendance.

Danto clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering, realizing with trepidation that Thornton had already slipped away from the circle. Through his pursed lips, he took a deep breath and began whispering the repetitive chant: “
Magnus
es
,
domine
, et
laudabilis
valde
.” The congregation droned on and on, with no end in sight, and after every sixth repetition, they would stop and acclaim their loyalty to the dark side: “
Hail Allieb. Hail Belial
.” Every so often Danto would squeeze Rebecca’s hand to reinforce his support, but she would remain absolutely still, moving not even a hair’s breadth despite the frequent comings and goings of anonymous individuals.

Keeping his gaze down, he continued patiently with the event’s progression: a dark affair that seemed to last forever. He wondered how long it would carry on before the actual drawing of demons began.

Before all Hell breaks loose
…

The chanting commenced for an indeterminable amount of time, the Latin phrase repeated over and over again until it had embedded itself deep inside his head. Eventually, no one else moved into the locked circle, and no one moved out—the ring was complete it seemed, every member of
Allieb’s
cabal now in their respective positions. After an interval
eulogization
of
Hail Allieb, Hail Belial
, an unexpected roar abruptly broke the chant, pervading the cathedral as though a crash of thunder had found its way inside the house. Danto felt the floor vibrate beneath his feet, the harsh, multi-layered tone proving its possessor’s origins not of this earth.

Now Rebecca stirred a bit, her hand and arm trembling with noticeable fear. To Danto’s left, the woman remained motionless, grip cold and steady, head bowed, seemingly
tranced
and unaffected by the monstrous presence. A cold blast of air filled the room, tousling his hood, sending chills down his spine. The flickering candle flames swayed in all directions, showing no particular route from which the draft had come. The air seemed to thicken. His head began to pound, keeping him from falling deeply into the persistent trance. He waited in distressed silence, peering up through the tops of his eyes at the circle of black-hooded individuals who dutifully awaited the first phase of the drawing to commence.

~ * ~

Away from the cathedral, Thornton walked a narrow hallway leading toward the west wing of the mansion, its indirect length lit by only one exposed bulb in the ceiling. Although he’d traveled through this hallway many times in the past, he still managed to bypass the only door dividing its length.

Bathed in near darkness and easily overlooked, the door offered access to Thornton’s final destination.

The basement.

He stopped. Turned back, and faced the door. He folded his hands and said a prayer: this time to God, begging for His forgiveness.

He grabbed the rusted doorknob; a tiny shock struck his damp hand.

He closed his eyes.

Turned the knob.

He opened the door and peered down the length of steps, their distance steeped in murky darkness.

Without hesitation, he drew a deep breath, then proceeded down the stairs. About halfway down he noticed a vestige of red light being thrown up from somewhere below, enough to allow him sight of his feet as they tackled the rest of the wooden steps.

Given the circumstances, he thought the basement to be strangely silent.

He reached the bottom landing. Shuddered.

Then, turned into the basement.

In all his time at
In Domo
, he could only remember being down here once before, two weeks ago, upon
Allieb’s
capture of the first vehicle, a thirty-year-old man who carried the demon Belial. Thornton himself had escorted the man down here, locked him in a cage and hurried away before his remorse in doing so made him act out of character—a single tear or thought of regret might’ve raised the demonologist’s suspicions of him. Afterwards, Allieb demanded that he steer clear of the cellar and focus his efforts on the gathering of the vehicles.

He knew…he knew all along my intentions to destroy him. Why didn’t he stop me then?

The basement had once been home to
Allieb’s
array of torture devices, many of them utilized to carry his primitive experimentations to new horizons. Years earlier, an excess of chains, whips, racks, and swings had been installed at various places in the cement playing field, exploited during
In
Domo’s
untried years. If one looked closely, the ghosts of
Allieb’s
past debauchery could be seen in the bloodstains on the porous cement floor. Later, under anticipation of the drawing, Allieb had his workers mount cages against the walls, thirteen in all that would be used to detain the vehicles upon their capture; despite
Allieb’s
awareness that Satan wouldn’t allow His own vehicle uncomplicated entry into one of the cages, he placed it there anyway…a bit of wishful thinking, and perhaps brash confidence, on the part of the demonologist. Of course, the cage remained empty, alongside the enclosure that had once held the demon Belial’s vehicle.

The other cages, they were a different story.

Sighting them, Thornton put a hand up to his mouth in an attempt to stifle the scream trying to flee his lungs. There was an appalling odor in the air, a palpable discharge of feces and rot that assaulted him like a blow from a fist. The surging heat down here was intense, and yet, when he paced forward, deeper into the dungeon, pockets of icy cold air parted the heat like a knife through soft butter.

The basement was huge, nearly the size of the cathedral sitting directly above his head. The cages were staggered throughout, anchored to various places in the walls. The shadows within each of the cages were eerily silent and motionless.

He could hear them breathing, a chorus of tempered growls, like dozing animals in the zoo. Within a few of the cages, he could see the ghastly glow of their eyes contemplating him. In the others, dark misshapen silhouettes.

God help me
.

He paced to the nearest cage, on his left.

He peered inside.

His eyes fell upon a naked child, perhaps five or six years old, curled
fetally
against the cinder wall. He gazed at the twitching arms and legs that looked like whittled broomsticks: skeletal, and wasted; the head, bowed down between the folded legs, displaying a straggled mess of hair; the purple lesions covering the translucent skin like leeches. Despite the vulnerable appearance, the demon-child righted its head and spread its legs, revealing its long-lost femininity. She peered
ferally
at Thornton, then sniggered in a deep, masculine voice, emaciated hands clawing the rear wall, as though trying to get away.

“The wolf is mine,” she growled. “You…can’t…have…it.” Distrustful yellow eyes peered at him. She faced the wall, clawing more furiously. “No! No!
You can’t have it, you bastard!
”

Thornton made the sign of the cross. Behind him, all around him, the other demons began to stir from their slumbers, their untamed drones mounting into sputtering snores. He peered fearfully over his shoulder, then slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial of holy water. The girl-demon shot him a fierce glance, the eyes gleaming, pinning him in utter repulsion. She was now scraping at the wall ferociously, screaming: “
The wolf is mine! You can’t take it away from me!
”

“Who are you?” Thornton asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“I’m the pig that feasts on child!” The child’s lips were now cracked and bleeding, the mouth bowed into a grotesque frown, blood pouring from the nose in a stream.

Danto raised the vial, recited a prayer: “God, Lord of all creation, I call upon your might to cast this demon aside like a thorn, make it fall from Heaven behind your power. Strike terror in this beast laying waste in your firmament so that it may not arise again from its burning…”

The child howled. From behind him, a few of the sequestered demons snorted loudly, like a herd of unfed pigs. The ghostly red light in the room brightened, and Thornton could not establish the source from which it came—it appeared to emanate from thin air. He raised the vial of holy water, covered half the opening with his index finger, and sprinkled the contents at the demon.