Demonologist (41 page)

~ * ~

Bev paced quietly toward a single wrought-iron bed, perfectly centered in the barren space. Lying atop a bare mattress was a boy. Perhaps six years of age, he was curled in a fetal position, sleeping peacefully. Bev stood over the bed, peered down at the boy. Dark hair and complexion. Simple features: thin lips, smallish nose, thick eyelashes. His entire body was slender, ribs pressing through the veil of skin on his torso. His stomach rose slightly with every breath he took.

Bev took a deep breath of putrid air, then placed a gentle hand upon the boy’s shoulder
…

~ * ~

A loud crash jarred the room, lancing through Danto’s slamming heart. The beast Allieb backpedaled from Satan and collapsed to the floor, against the wall, spider-like appendages flailing madly, strings of gauzy web-like matter swathing his claws. Both monsters had gained some obvious injuries, black blood seeping from various wounds. Satan stood his ground, heaving laboriously, yellow eyes glaring at the beast that detained his minions.

The beast gazed back up at the Devil. It gagged, then frantically inhaled, dragging gulps of fetid air into its lungs. It tried to stand, but had apparently lost all balance, and slammed back down to the floor, like a shot elephant. Alongside him, perhaps ten feet away, a candelabra fell, its flames taking to the splintered wall; Danto thought it extraordinary that none of the other hundreds of candles had started a fire yet—many of the flames had been doused in blood. The beast Allieb twisted its head up toward Satan, and howled furiously.

And that was when Rebecca stood up, and ran toward it.

~ * ~

The boy’s eyes flickered, then opened. Stared up at Bev. Just a boy, Bev thought, an innocent pawn in such an evil game. Bev held out his hand. “Come with me.”

The boy leaned on one elbow and took Bev’s hand. Without a sound, he struggled up, and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at his banal surroundings with blank curiosity, then peered at Bev. Waited.

Now what? Bev wondered, waiting for Julianne’s voice to offer instruction. It did not come. “Follow me,” he said, seeing no other alternative. “We must leave here.”

The boy stood. Quickly, and rather miraculously, he followed Bev, who had to remind himself that his was the soul of the boy, and not his expended physical body. They exited the room into the blue granite hallway with its intricate architecture and dark circular engravings.

Slowly they began to pace back through the corridor, returning the way Julianne had guided Bev.

Suddenly, from above, he heard her screaming voice
…

~ * ~

“Open the doors, Bev! Release the demons!” she screamed, drawing stares from all those that still remained in the room, both beasts included. “You are safe now that the boy is awake!”

The beast Allieb shouted, “No!” in a singular human voice.
Is it losing its hold on the demons?
Danto wondered. Satan circled Rebecca, eyeing her suspiciously, but left her alone to perform whatever strange duty had been called upon her.

Rebecca screamed again, “Open the doors! Now!”

Allieb bounded forward, swiping her with a single pointed claw. She fell back, blood gushing from the open gash rendered across her chest.

Danto pressed his hands against his eyes, incapable of witnessing another atrocity. He cried out hysterically, head shaking furiously, his depleted mind trying desperately to shake the vision of Rebecca’s falling body—to come up with some sort of logic behind the madness.

He could reason nothing, just a tidal wave of hopelessness crashing down upon him: the monsters, the slaughters, the blood, the flames, the evil.

He thought,
this is hopeless. Utterly hopeless
.

~ * ~

Bev had heard her voice, firing loudly at him from the heavens like a message from God: “Open the doors, release the demons!”

Without waiting for any further instruction, he pulled the boy along the corridor and raced to the closest door. Without hesitation, he pushed it open, then backed away, holding the boy close to his chest.

Inside, just beyond the threshold, was a monster that was part swine, part human, a genetic splicing of man and pig that stood on two legs and pawed the air with a pair of massive hooves. Its dark pink body was coated in a mass of corkscrew-shaped appendages that
thrusted
fleshily
, in and out, coiling and recoiling in a mesmerizing display. Bev hoisted his gaze and saw that they enveloped its face as well, smaller in size but no less astonishing in their propelling movements. The demon returned Bev’s stare, then peered curiously at the boy with its glowing red eyes, its oily snout sniffing the air.

“Look no further,” Bev instructed, guiding the boy away from the pig-man, down the corridor. Fifteen feet away, on the opposite wall, was another nearly identical door. Bev placed a hand against its crude carvings and pushed. Inside, another beast, this a black-as-ebony dragon with wings the span of a small airplane and a tale aglow with dancing flames. It snorted fire, then plodded forward toward the open door, rocking its tail and leaving a trail of charred patches behind it. Bev and the boy screamed, both pulled their sights away from the monster, and quickly moved on.

They came to a third door. Pushed it open and at once stood transfixed with awe at the fiendish evil within: a leaping imp the size of a small dog with chattering teeth and barbed wire for hair. It quickly bounded from the room, intercepting Bev and the boy before they could turn away. It peered up at them with black bulbous eyes the size of eight-balls. “So…the boy is awake,” it offered in a thin, winey voice. “I must return to the master now. Oh dear, I can’t imagine the punishment he has in store for me!” It clapped its little hands, then leaped like a flea and attached itself to the wall like a spider, huge eyes still fixed on them. Like a chameleon, its skin turned the blue color of the wall, making it look like a cement gargoyle on a gothic manse’s ledge.

The previously released demons had settled in the corridor outside the doors leading into their sanctuaries. They remained quiet and brooding, staring at them, seemingly waiting for something to happen.

“Why aren’t they touching us?” Bev asked the boy, the air feeling suddenly warm. “Is Satan going to take them back now?”

The boy gazed up at Bev and spoke in Satan’s strident tone: “Because they are under my control now. Allieb has been defeated…yet again.”

Bev peered curiously at the boy, unafraid, knowing quite well that in Hell, anything can happen. “Will his soul remain here?” he asked, remembering the tale Danto had recounted in the rectory about the demonologist’s soul not being exorcised from the boy’s body all those years ago.

“This time I believe I’ll bring him with me. My demons would enjoy a human soul to play with.”

Then something unforeseen happened. One by one the released demons began to howl, shriek, and shudder. Their bodies turned black, then withered into inky billows of smoke that
geysered
up and away into the roiling heavens like blasts of steam. The remaining doors holding the other demons suddenly crumbled away from their arches, the demons within faltering out as though dragged by invisible hands, each one repeating the nightmarish conversion before vanishing into the skies as if caught in the furious winds of a tornado.

As this went on, all Bev could do was watch, and wait.

And wonder why one door had remained closed
.

~ * ~

The far wall fell victim to the leaping flames, black smoke beginning to permeate the room. The beast Allieb was undergoing a second transformation, this time ostensibly regressing back from the complicated monster he’d become, into a lesser beast, one taking on more and more of his original human form as the observable features of the demons inside him shrank away into mere hints of their former selves.

A grinding noise filled the room. Danto, hunkering over Rebecca, shot a wary glance toward the Devil. His eyes were closed. He was sitting in the corner of the room, chortling deeply, claws folded beneath his chin. A sudden wind sprung up, fanning the growing flames whose spires began to stroke the ceiling. Cracks ran along the wall beneath the fire, spilling out a blast of blinding white light. The wood beams in the ceiling splintered, glowing embers raining down on the shuddering beast. It reached up, its newly returned human arms raised high, grasping at the blistering air. The white light blasting through the flames swathed Allieb and started to absorb the warring souls escaping him. Harsh, tortured screams deafened Danto as he used his arms and chest to cover Rebecca’s writhing body, attempting hopeless prayers amidst the encompassing din.

“
God of heaven, God of earth, God of all creation, I implore you to protect us
...” Danto shouted, watching in near blindness the blackened shadows of the demons spilling from
Allieb’s
mouth and nose and ears and eyes, tangible forms winging across the room like soaring eagles, caught by extending bolts of white light, and wholly swept away until they were no more: eleven entities in all, yielding to Satan’s power.
Allieb’s
withering, damaged form jerked and jolted and
spasmed
, his body now free of eleven demons. Satan remained in the corner, now curled into a tight ball, head bobbing uncontrollably, thin beams of brilliant white light seeping from the cracks of his eyes.

The fire began to spread across the balcony. Danto dragged Rebecca over to Kristin’s location at the rear of the cathedral. Both of them: unconscious, and incapable of escape. The two men that had watched over Kristin were gone, as were many of the others. Danto considered fleeing himself, when he noticed Allieb standing up, nearly human in form—nearly. His eyes were still fully demonic, yellow and piercing, his skin blue-veined, virtually translucent.

The demonologist’s fiery gaze pinned the priest with incensed recognition.

Danto shuddered.

All of a sudden, Rebecca’s eyes darted open. In her agony, she screamed: “Bev! The last demon! Belial! He’s still inside!”

And all Danto could do at that moment was recall
Thorton’s
words:
Belial. Allieb. Close in name, they are virtually inseparable
.

~ * ~

“Bev! The last demon! Belial! He’s still inside!”

Holding the boy close, he stood before the last door. Pressed a hand against it. It wouldn’t budge. “How?” he screamed, searching the heavens for an answer. When none came, he cast his gaze down at the boy. “How do you play into all of this?”

The boy shrugged, filthy face silent, peering away embarrassingly. His hair billowed in the wind.

“You need to get your body back…how are we going to do that?”

The boy stayed silent.

From behind the door, a loud, jarring crash, followed by a hideous roar. Bev peered all around. They were alone; the demonic souls had vacated
Allieb’s
body.

“All the demons…they must be gone before I can repossess my body,” the boy said, staring away from Bev.

“How? How do we get this demon out?”

The boy peered up at Bev, eyes glassy, blank. “Exorcism. That, or…”

~ * ~

Allieb stood on trembling legs, his body now that of the man’s he once held prior to the drawing of the demons. Despite his awareness of defeat, the ire in his possessed face still aimed to enact revenge on those he felt responsible for his failure.

The priest. Danto.