Demonologist (37 page)

Once the beetles had been gathered, Allieb shoved the dead pig under the altar with a swift shove of his foot, then faced the altar. He prayed in an indecipherable tongue for a few painstaking moments, during which Danto squeezed Rebecca’s sweating hand. He chanced a look at her, but could see no more than her nose and a few strands of hair escaping the cloak of her hood. Gently, she squeezed back, keeping her gaze forward, as though to say,
Don’t worry, everything is going to be all right
. Danto, returning his sights to the altar, found her calm composure somewhat unnerving given her near breakdown just hours earlier. He shuddered, took a deep breath in through his lips and slowly released it from his nose, trying to calm himself, despite the jarring circumstances.

Allieb turned and faced the congregation. “Legion has begun,” he seethed, leaning down and pulling open the trap door in the platform. This time no red light exploded from within. Instead, after a few minutes of prayerful silence, a human hand emerged, gripping the edge of the opening. Then, soon thereafter, another hand, immediately followed by an arm. A second arm appeared, and it was at this moment that Danto felt a numbing, unbearable fear wash over him, a wave of utter defeat as a man reached his head out of the hole and howled his demonic fury over the congregation.

It was Thornton. He was possessed by a demon.

Allieb reached down, and with both hands grabbed the onetime minister by the neck and jerked him out of the hole with quick thrust of his sinewy arms. Thornton’s body slammed to the platform just as the door came down on his right leg, which was still halfway in the hole. He howled, jerking his head up and down, body flailing with trembling fury. The altar began to vibrate, then tipped lazily back and forth, spilling a couple of candles whose flames were immediately extinguished in the pig’s blood on the floor. The beetles, remarkably, remained still. Allieb, still gripping Thornton by the neck, yanked him free of the trap door. It slammed down, Thornton’s broken shin bone twisted sickeningly behind his body. Once Thornton was free of the hole, the rocking movements of the altar subsided.

Wholly deadened and straining to block it all out, Danto shifted his gaze to Rebecca, then around to the other incognito members of the congregation, whose hidden gazes were shifting slightly behind their darkened cloaks. Facing the floor, he found no choice but to pray for his life:
Lord, grant me the strength to see the light of tomorrow, I beg of you to hear my prayer
.
 

Allieb shot an attentive glance in Danto’s direction, clearly perceiving of his traitorous thoughts. Thornton bucked and thrashed beneath his grasp, as though sensing his distraction and using it as an opportunity to escape. Allieb responded by tightening his grasp of the minister’s possessed body. Hulking over his prey, the demonologist commenced with the drawing: “Come into me,
Abbadon
,” he demanded, voice hideously deep, layered with the voice of another monstrous soul—Belial. “Escape Satan’s undying grasp upon your soul and walk the earth with us, my child. The time for Legion is here!” The house shook as though in the grasp of an earthquake. Danto, and some others, peered around anxiously as cracks formed in the black walls, spilling out gray beams of light that pinned the bucking Thornton.

Allieb kneeled before Thornton’s
tremoring
body. Thornton, whose eyes had taken on a canine glow, offered the soul of the demon within to Allieb: “Father…take my flesh and eat of it, for this is my body.“

Allieb fell upon Thornton and launched a clubbed fist deep into his sternum, blowing it apart. From within, it promptly ripped free his still-beating heart. Breathing heavily and seemingly entranced, the demonologist stared indulgently at the seeping heart in his grasp.

Danto watched with horror, his mind feverishly thrashing, taking all his logical knowledge and hope and tossing it out the window; it wasn’t supposed to be like
this
. His pulse raced at an unfathomable speed, depleting him of all faith, each fear-induced heartbeat in his chest feeling like a shovel’s burrow into the soil of his very own grave.

Thornton’s body crumpled, limp and silent on the platform. From within the gaping hole in his sternum emerged a leaching black shadow, dense and impenetrable, moving through the air like a waft of smoke into the still-beating heart in
Allieb’s
grasp. Allieb opened his eyes, grinned
ferally
, and whispered hoarsely, “Welcome
Abbadon
, my child.” A loud cracking sound resulted from the possessed demonologist as he freely dislocated his jaw. He opened his mouth impossibly wide and shoved the entire heart in, swallowing it whole in a single jerking motion, like a monitor lizard gulping down its prey.

The moments that followed were wholly intimidating. Allieb remained still, statue-like, jaw hanging obscenely, the whites of his eyes gleaming evilly at a non-descript point in the black room. A thick, green mist rose up from Thornton’s lifeless body and circled the altar like ghostly fingers. Danto glanced warily around the room, at the partakers who remained in their fixed positions, many still entirely
tranced
, the others, it seemed, beginning to fall away from their hypnotic states, given their restlessness; still, they all remained composed, despite the overpowering events. Allieb still had a hold on his followers, thank God.

Thank Satan
.

Pain.

Agony.

Bedlam.

And it would never end. There was no such thing as death in Hell. Existence was ongoing, torture and mortality an unadorned illusion to absolute realism; all that could be known was the eternal continuation of life, permeated with all of death’s agonies. Bev lay in the churning acids, experiencing one fatality after another, his very own beheading, his very own body, hung, drawn, and quartered. The agonies would come, and persist, and then, when the act of torture was complete, he would lay writhing in the pit of his own stomach, relishing in the after effects of his most recent torments, only to have new ones served to him, time and time again.

Then, suddenly, they stopped. The tortures. He waited for an indeterminable amount of time. When nothing happened, he slowly and skeptically rose up from his place in the shallow lava and looked out across the vista of his entrails. As though caught in a whirlwind, his mind climbed up in an unforeseen release of his soul, and for a few strikingly daunting moments, he was back in control of his body, looking out through his eyes once again—not his eyes, but the eyes of the Devil, the beast that had not only assumed psychological control of his mind, but had physically invaded his human form as well, molding His own grotesque appearance upon the Bev’s body. Bev peered at his dark surroundings, this giant-step into the real world feeling as foreign as his very first sampling of Hell. His head felt heavy and cumbersome, as though weights had been soldered to his skull. He was standing in a dark musty hallway, awaiting Satan’s assessment of the situation—the Devil’s decision to strike against the Legion of demons might occur now, or later, or there might be some preparatory measures awaiting him. Who knew? Bev leaned against the wall, feeling the heaving bulk of his alien shape against the chipped paneling. He peered down at himself from this unaccustomed, dizzying height, at the reptilian claws jutting from his unrecognizable hands and feet; at the black, flaring scales covering every inch of his massive body; the visible ridge jutting out over his eyes; the swell of his strapping chest; the flaming breaths that seared his lungs as he began to panic. “What have I become?” he muttered aloud in a voice that was barely human. He looked left and right, along the shadowy passage that disappeared into darkness. He stood there waiting, knowing that he wouldn’t be required of the Devil to assume responsibility of His form.

Would he?

Then, in his head, a voice, one truly powerful, and indomitable. Unlike the demonologist’s wavering, distant attempts to ensnare Bev into his cabal, here was the voice of Satan in absolute command of Bev’s mind, body, and soul. His power was awesome, unmistakably superior to that of
Allieb’s
.

“What do you think of your new body?”

“Is this really me?” Bev asked.

“For now…for now.”

“Why are you showing me?” It pained Bev horribly to speak through a throat that had been so hideously transformed.

“I’m feeling a bit charitable at the moment. Of course, that can all change at any given moment.”

“The Legion…has it begun?”

“Yes.”

“The pain…the tortures…please, no more, no more.”

“Mere child’s play.”

“When will this be over?”

“Maybe never. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Please…”

“Perhaps after the war.”

“The war?”

“Once it’s won, your life will become useless to me. Dead or alive, it doesn’t really matter.”

“Please…please let me live…”

“Are you certain you can handle life after witnessing so many horrors?”

“No, I’m not…but I want the option to try.”

“If you perform your duty well, then perhaps…but, it all depends on my mood at the moment. You know, I can even erase your mind of the memories.”

Bev swallowed hard, his saliva feeling like drips of fire in his throat. “I was told the Devil tells a fortune in lies, and should never be trusted.”

“Hmm…very good advice,” Satan replied. He paused, then added, “Your daughter Kristin…she is here.”

“Kristin…” Bev replied, vaguely remembering the library of puzzling items he’d discovered in her apartment. “Where is she? Can I see her?”

“I don’t think she would take too kindly seeing you in such a…Satanic state.” The Devil chortled, low and cocky.

“Just tell me then…is she okay?”

Kristin’s voice suddenly filled his head, distant, echoing: “Daddy, please, help me. Help me…” A series of fearful sobs followed, then quickly faded.

“Kristin!” Bev yelled, unable to shift his unwieldy body. Bev looked deep into his possessed psyche. His heart, still full of its emotion, dropped like a lead weight. An overwhelming feeling of loss and pain beset him. Satan sniggered.

“That wasn’t her, was it? It was you.”

Ignoring Bev’s question, Satan replied, “Do not let her distract you from the task at hand.” Then, in a swift and abrupt gush of power, the Devil rushed Bev’s soul and tore it free from its place behind his eyes, quickly reassuming full control of his body. Bev fell away, plummeting down through his esophagus, past his lungs, back into the pit of his stomach where the stirring acids sloshed beneath his collapsing weight. After hitting bottom, he leaned up, looked up toward the whirling black hole in the organic sky, feeling the pains of his body morphing completely into Satan’s monstrous form.

Echoing from the black heavens above, Satan’s voice rained down on him. “The time is near to put an end to
Allieb’s
childish game.”

~ * ~

Allieb removed himself from his self-induced catatonia; limbs twitching; eyes rolling back, threatening in their focus. He spoke in three tongues: “
Abbadon
has joined us.”

The congregation replied: “Hail Allieb, hail Belial, hail
Abbadon
.”

The demonologist, his body suddenly larger, more stalwart, now greenish in hue, leaned down and jerked open the platform door.

Hovering over the black gaping hole, Allieb summoned the next demon, his befouled voice robustly layered in triplicate: “Come to me, Beelzebub. Escape Jesus’ pig and walk the earth’s firmament with your brothers.”

An elderly woman crawled spider-like from the depths of
Allieb’s
dungeon, eerily agile despite her feeble appearance. Danto recognized her as a longtime member of the St. Michael’s Parish, and stood as still as possible as she cackled in a fairy-tale witch’s voice and splattered the floor with hunks of thick spittle. Her clothes hung in tatters from her pink, flabby body; her white hair stood on end as though caught in a swell of static electricity; her eyes were starkly black, glistening wet and staring intently at the crowd as she leapt from the hole and licked her fingers with feline precision. In a muscular swoop, Allieb grasped her by the hair and dragged her flailing body across the platform, reciting a vile prayer that only he could understand. He then shouted, “God will fall! Satan will fall! Humankind will bow at my feet!”