The Messenger (2011 reformat) (4 page)

Abducted?
Illicit party?

No. This would
never be something he could ever "accept."

Surely,
Belinda, traumatized by the crash and witnessing her mother's death, had gotten
out of the car in a state of shock and was seen by another passing motorist.
Not an illicit party. Just some normal decent person who'd seen the wreck and
spotted a little twelve-year-old girl in the road. He'd picked Belinda up and
taken her to a hospital. Surely, Carlton would hear from the authorities that
Belinda was safe, recovering, and soon to be returned home.

After a couple
weeks, part of Carlton knew that that was not the case. And after a couple of
months, another part of him suspected that he'd never see his daughter again.
She'd been abducted by an illicit party. For God knew what purpose.

Eventually the
authorities apprized him of the worst possibilities, but Carlton didn't listen.
He could not think about his precious daughter in such terms. Instead, he clung
to the best possibility. That some otherwise decent people had taken Belinda, because
they couldn't have a child of their own. "I mean, it's possible,
right?" he'd practically begged the FBI agent. "Something like that
could've happened. Right?"

"Of
course, sir. Things like that happen every day..."

That's all
Carlton needed to hear, and that's where he'd left it. He'd left it all with
that stray hope and no reason to believe otherwise. And then he'd put it all
aside, to the best that any man in the same horrible situation could.

Until now.

Until he'd
come down into this dark old basement to clear out a bunch of twenty-year-old
boxes that posed a fire risk.

Oh, Belinda.
Please be alive. Please be okay. Please be with people who are taking care of
you.

He'd read
about things like that all the time, and seen it on television. Otherwise
well-meaning couples who were miserable because they couldn't have kids. So
they'd take someone else's. And in that situation? Seeing her mother killed?
Crawling out of the car in a state of shock? It was feasible that Belinda
would've blacked the memory out. The new parents would tell her that not only
her mother had been killed in the wreck but Carlton too. Or maybe she wouldn't
remember anything of her past, including Carlton. Delayed stress reaction.
Amnesia. Things like that. Carlton could only pray that that's what had
happened.

Belinda, came
the final thought.

One last box,
full of clanky sorter parts. Carlton dragged it out, huffing, filthy in dust.
That's it. The last one. He sleeved some sweat off his brow, then shone his
light down the crawl space to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

Something
glimmered.

I wonder what
that is.

No more boxes
remained in the cubby. But something-he was certain-glimmered on the floor when
he angled his flashlight in.

Oh, what the
hell? One more trip won't kill me. And it ain't like I can get any dirtier.

Carlton
crawled back in, the end of the cubby blooming with light as he neared the end.
But his eyes bloomed too. The object that glimmered was a bracelet...

A bracelet
that looked very familiar.

Carlton picked
it up.

And stared.

This is
impossible.

It was a
silver-chain bracelet ringed with shiny dolphins. It looked exactly like the
bracelet he'd given Belinda seven years ago, on her twelfth birthday.

Impossible.

Maybe it was
just his imagination. Yes, that had to be it. It was just some old bracelet laying
there, and because he'd been thinking about Belinda, he was subconsciously
convincing himself it was the same as his daughter's.

That had to be
it.

His hands began to tremble
when he flipped over one of the silver dolphins and saw the inscription:

TO BELINDA,
FROM DAD.

Then he heard
it...

Carlton's head
shot up.

He was looking
right at the butt-end of the crawlway, which appeared to be nothing more than a
square of Sheetrock.

But there was
a sound...

What the...?

...a sound
coming from behind the sheetrock.

Scratching.
Scratching.

It sounded
like someone on the other side, scratching on the sheetrock with their
fingernails. Carlton put the flashlight right up to the corner and saw that the
square had been chalked into the frame. He pressed his opened hand against it,
pressed a little harder, and the panel gave a little.

Hair on the
back on his neck stood up.

The scratching
on the other side grew frantic.

It's...probably...a
rat or something...

Carlton gave
the panel a hard thud with his palm.

Thump!

The corner
nudged out another inch, and then the scratching stopped and gave over to rapid
taps.

Not a rat. A
rat couldn't do that.

But a person
could. A person rapping their knuckles against the other side of the panel.
Carlton couldn't deny what he was observing.

There's
somebody behind this panel!

"Who's
there?" he shouted. "Is someone there?"

Finally he drew
back and rammed his fist against the Sheetrock, banging the panel completely
out of its frame. Darkness swallowed it, and foul air gusted out of the
opening.

"Is
somebody there? I KNOW there's someone there! I can hear you!"

He picked up
the flashlight, meaning to thrust its beam in the hole, when-

Darkness fell
on him like an avalanche.

Carlton froze.
The flashlight had died in his hand. He smacked it in the most cliched
desperation, hoping it would snap back on, but it didn't.

Blind now, he
thought of crawling backward out of the cubby. It would be easy. He could do it
quickly. He could be back in the light. But he didn't.

He didn't
move.

"Is
somebody there?" he whispered into the dark.

He already
knew the answer, before the faint but familiar voice replied:

"Hi,
Daddy. It's me. It's Belinda."

Carlton's
heart didn't seem to beat as much as squirm in his chest. The foul air
continued to eddy into his face, evil fetors like rotten meat and bodies
unwashed for weeks. Again, part of his senses thought to back up, get out of
the cubby and be away from this hallucination or nightmare or whatever it was,
but his muscles wouldn't respond to the commands of his brain. He simply
remained there on hands and knees, staring into the rank darkness.

"You
should see where I've been, Daddy," his daughter's voice flowed.

"It's not
like in the Bible."

"What?"

"But I
can only be here for a few minutes. He let me come up, to talk to you."

He?

"He's the
Messenger. He wants me to tell you some things." The pretty voice seemed
to dip up and down. Carlton wasn't sure but as his eyes were acclimating to the
darkness, he thought he could make out the dimmest shape just beyond the
opening, an indistinct silhouette.

"Who is
... he?" Carlton croaked.

"I can't
say. His name's a secret, and someone like me isn't allowed to speak it."

"Someone
like you? But you're just a teenaged girl. What do you mean,someone like
you?"

"I'm just
a low-level myrmidon, Daddy."

Myrmidon?
Carlton had never heard the word.

"I'm,
like, a sexual acolyte. There's lots and lots of sex down here, Daddy."

"But
you're not even twenty! You're just a teenage girl!" Carlton bellowed back
into the insanity.

"Not
anymore. I might as well be ten thousand years old, Daddy. I'll live forever
down here. You know where here is, don't you?"

"You're
my daughter! You're an innocent little girl! This is a trick! It's stress! I'm
hearing things and seeing things because of the stress of your mother being
killed and you being taken! I know you're alive somewhere, being cared for by
good people, people who couldn't have a child of their own but wanted one so
much they took you!"

"Oh, I
was taken, all right, Daddy. But not by people who wanted a little girl to
raise. When Mommy crashed, some men pulled me out and put me in their car. They
drove me to Baltimore. They got me on crack right away, so I'd do anything they
wanted. They tricked me out mostly, and made me be in movies. The scat movies
were the worst but after a while it wasn't so bad. I got used to it, just as
long as I got my rock. And they used me for a lot of kink Johns, special jobs,
stuff like that."

Carlton's
mouth hung open.

The tiny voice
in the dark continued. "Then I began to wear out from all the dope,
started to look beat. Shit, in that business once a girl's past sixteen, she's
no good for kiddie flicks and pedophiles. So about a month ago, the guys were
shooting another movie, a four-way, and one of the stuntcocks got a little
carried away. Fuckin' asshole was big as a rolling pin to begin with, and he
was all methed out. Anyway, I had a massive hemorrhage and died."

Carlton's eyes
felt lidless.

"And then
I came down here."

Did she
giggle?

"Now I'm
an odalisque, Daddy. That's what they call a prostitute down here. I'm kept by
the wardens of Grand Duke Belarius of the Drakonia Prefecture. He commands four
legions-that's about 12,000 conscripts. There's a big war going on now in the
Lowlands, so I'm in the field a lot. We have these big tents that they cycle
the troops in and out of-you know, for sexual relief. Sometimes I'm on my back
for a week at a time, one conscript after another, until the campaign's over.
There's no sleep here, either. It's an endless night, and that's all I do. Like
I said, Daddy, there's a lot of sex down here. That's pretty much what it's all
about in hell."

"You're
not in hell!" Carlton roared so loudly he nearly blew his vocal cords.
"You're an innocent teenage girl! Even if you did die, you wouldn't have
gone to hell! You'd have gone to heaven!"

The responding
giggle fluttered, then seemed to be absorbed by darkness.

"Are you
sure? Things aren't always as they seem. Mommy's down here too, but she's not
an odalisque. She works on a chain gang in one of the waste furnaces in the
Industrial Zone. Everything's recycled here, Daddy, including shit. They bake
it in furnaces and turn it into bricks. That's where Mommy works, and she'll
continue to work there until the end of time."

"This is
a nightmare! That's all it is!" Carlton shrieked, spit flying off his
lips.

"Think
what you want. I have to go back now anyway. This is only a partial
discarnation. But there's a reason why he let me come here today, even for just
a few minutes. He sent me to tell you something."

He, Carlton
thought again.

"He sent
me to give you a message. This is the message: Behold the Messenger. The
arrival of the Messenger is at hand."

Now the
darkness seemed to howl.

"I have
to go now, Daddy. It's been nice talking to you. But before I go, I want you to
look in here. I want you to see me as I am now. I'm not a teenage girl anymore.
I'm a seasoned odalisque."

Carlton's mind
was spiraling. All he could make out was the splotched silhouette. "I
can't! It's too dark!"

Suddenly the
flashlight snapped back on. The light blared all around him.

Then he
screamed when he pointed it into the hole.

Belinda was no
teenage girl now, she was a mature woman-a woman, yes, and more. She lay naked
within the recess, her sleek body and long legs stretched out lazily over what
first appeared to be a couch but as Carlton let his vision focus he saw that
the couch was formed of severed hands. Some of the hands appeared to be human,
some clearly were not. Some sported more than five fingers, others had just two
or three. Some were taloned. Some were flaked with snakelike scales, some covered
with tumors, mold, or nameless filth, while still others were mummified or
decomposed down to bone.

Then Carlton
noticed something else: the hands were moving. This demonic couch of hands was
alive.

Belinda's
heavy breasts sat flawlessly erect even though she was lying down. Sweat coated
her body thick as glycerin; her pore-less perfect skin shone white as summer
clouds, a stunning contrast to large, blood-red nipples and flame-orange eyes.
Her hair seemed luminous, hanging in yard-long, sun-blond tresses off each
shoulder. She moaned, closed-eyed, grinning like a cat. Her buttocks, legs, and
back squirmed in the most erotic luxury-it was the hands, all those severed but
living hands caressing her from underneath, kneading her flesh.