The Messenger (2011 reformat) (36 page)

I better not
be afraid of the dark...

His stomach
flipped when he began to step down. The darkness was so complete, it seemed to
soak up half the flashlight's power. Downstairs was a clutter of shelves and
storage bins. Columns of stacked boxes, in the shifting darkness, looked like
men standing in wait.

He was scared,
yes, but when his head began to hurt, he knew he was getting close.

There, he
thought.

The beam
hovered over a crawl space.

Dhevic got on
his knees and began to crawl in.

V

Jane walked to
the window in Steve's dining room, still playing over her thoughts. She didn't
know where to start, what to do next; too much had happened for her to assess
anything with any logic. "Good work," Steve was saying into the phone
in the kitchen. "I can't believe it. And he had some of Doreen Fletcher's
clothes in the car with him? That's rock-solid."

Jane's eyes
widened.

"I can't
believe we got him so fast," Steve said. "That psycho son of a bitch.
Book his ass and put him in the detention center. I'll be down shortly."

Steve hung up.
"Jane, great news. One of my mobile units arrested Dhevic a few minutes
ago. He was heading for the interstate-"

Then Steve's
look of confidence corroded into a frown of failure. He was looking directly at
Jane.

Jane had the
dining room phone to her ear. She slowly lowered it.

"Really?
And who told you that? The dial tone you've been talking to the whole
time?"

"How did
you know?"

"I never
specifically told you it was Doreen."

Steve sighed.
"Smart girl, stupid me. But I kept you strung along long enough."

Jane's heart
felt like it was twisting in her chest. "Why? You've been lying about this
whole thing from the start? Why?"

Steve smiled
sheepishly. "Well, not from the start. Just a few days ago, actually. When
I met the Messenger."

VI

The crawlway
was hot; cakes of dust stuck to the sweat on Dhevic's hands and face. A panel
at the end of the cubby was pushed out, leaving a maw of utter black. Would a
Rive be waiting for him? I'd be able to see it, he thought. Or at least I hope
so.

It was hard to
remain fearless; nevertheless, he crawled right up to the stinking opening and
reached in.

What would he
do if something reached back?

He closed his
eyes and felt around. Yeah, if they'd used the striker to open a Rive, I'd
definitely know by now.

There was
nothing.

Then his hand
landed on something: A box.

Don't count
your blessings, he told himself. He pulled the box out. It was just a standard
cardboard shipping box, oblong in shape. Its flaps stood open; Dhevic shined
the flashlight in, and...

My God. This
is it.

The iron
striker of the Cymbellum Eosphorus lay at the bottom of the box. Dhevic grabbed
it, kneed backward until he was out of the crawlspace.

But when he
stood up and turned around, he could plainly see that he was no longer in the
post office.

VII

Jane shrank
into the corner. I guess this is it, she thought with amazingly little fear.
This is the end.

"I was
looking around in your west branch the other day," Steve said, "just
looking for any clues or evidence, anything that might give me a lead as to how
your employees all became connected to a cult, and, well, I found it. I found
it in the basement."

VIII

The Rive
opened before Dhevic's eyes. He was standing at the threshold, that narrow
strip of anti-reality that exists between two worlds. To his back was his own
world, to his front a byway to the abyss.

Dhevic looked
across the blood-red sky, saw the black church in the pestiferous valley. Tall
pale things encroached, tumid sex organs swinging at their groin, enlarged
fruitlike heads, stick-thin limbs, all showing black veins beating beneath translucent-white
skin.

Dhevic stepped
back. Can they cross? he wondered, face glazed by sweat. Does the Rive allow
them to cross from there...into here?

"No, but
you can cross from here to there," a voice informed him from behind.

Hands latched
on to him; Dhevic couldn't jerk loose. The striker fell to the basement floor
and rolled away. Chuckling and shrieks of glee resounded about his head. Dhevic
was turned in place, forced to glimpse his attackers: all human, all dead.
Martin Parkins, Marlene Troy, Sarah Willoughby, Carlton Spence, and others he
didn't know. Inhuman traits

had infused
into their features-this close to the netherworld-tiny horns sticking out from
their foreheads, grins full of fangs. The clawed hands gripped Dhevic as surely
as chains.

Sarah and
Marlene and several other women were nude, breasts gorged from excitement,
nipples erect. As the men held Dhevic upright, the women's hands caressed
Dhevic's groin.

"Get his
pants off," Sarah urged.

"Let's
get it out," Marlene panted. "I want to bite it off."

"Save
that for the spermatademons," Carlton Spence ordered, gesturing with his
eyes toward eager things that waited just across the threshold.

Dhevic was
turned about again; a hand clenched in his hair pushed his face out, a
half-inch away from the plane. Beyond, the pallid creatures slavered for him,
some male, some female, some both. When Dhevic's head and shoulders were pushed
fully through, bone-thin arms wrapped round his neck and puttylike lips sucked
onto his. The cold demonic tongue

pushed through
his teeth then dropped like a live snake to the bottom of his belly.

More claws
grabbed him and pulled him all the way through.

He was laid
out on steaming earth, his shirt pulled open, evil fingernails scratching
crimson threads into his flesh, forming a campanulation.

The figures
huddled around him, intently kneeling. When his genitals were touched through
his slacks, they withered from revulsion. The tongue was retracted from his gut
and then a penis like a foot-long maggot was thrust before his face. Dhevic
squirmed.

Does a child
of God go to heaven if he dies in hell? he wondered. He closed his eyes, to
shut out the grinning, primeval faces above him, and then he muttered the first
intercession to come to mind, from The Gospel According to John, " 'God is
love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. There
is no fear.'"

The sudden
cannonade of shrieks threatened to implode his eardrums. The monstrous hands
flew off him, the equally monstrous bodies crawling away on their knees in
total horror. Some preferred to rip out their own throats and hearts rather
than hear holy words in the most unholy of places. Others crawled away,
vomiting black blood.

Dhevic stood
up and smiled at them, held out his hands. "I live to love and serve the
Lord on High. I am his unworthy servant forever."

Groans and
bellows, like surf, rose up. A final prayer finished them, from Psalms:"
'But truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my
prayer.'"

The creatures
that hadn't yet killed themselves died then, at those final words, their
bellies exploding, their eyes shooting out.

Dhevic could
feel his aura beaming bright around his head, when he stepped back through the
Rive.

Then the Rive
closed.

Dhevic looked
around, and...

IX

"Yeah, I
found it in the basement, Jane," Steve was explaining, stepping closer.
"That's where I met Doreen Fletcher, by the way, she came down to bring up
some vending supplies.

Cute little
thing, huh? Raping her and cutting her throat was fun, but it was even more fun
doing it in Dhevic's motel, so you'd think he was part of it, and so we had
dead-on evidence against him. We didn't even know where Dhevic was staying
until the state police gave us a line on his check card."

"So
Dhevic isn't part of this?" Jane said, lower lip trembling.

"No. His
only Lord and Master is God, and I'm going to send him to meet God very
soon."

"And now
you're in the cult."

"It's not
a cult." He kept stepping closer. "It's a congregation, Jane, a
joyous one."

"And
you're going to give a choice, right? I can join your congregation, or
die?"

"Unfortunately...
no. The Messenger has already made his mind up. For his message, Jane, his
message to the world."

"What's
the message?"

"Atrocity,
abomination, everything in the human heart that's black and wrong and negative.
Anything that exists as an antithesis to God. Simple. And tonight, you will
help serve the Messenger. You will be part of his next message."

"Is that
so?"

"Yeah.
When I strangle you in front of your kids, and then strangle your kids."

X

Martin,
Carlton, Marlene, Sarah, and everyone else lay dead. Foul steam rose off the
askew bodies. Dhevic  expected an onslaught when he stepped back through the
Rive, but my prayer, he realized. Just words, but words charged by faith. They worked
in both worlds.

So it was
over?

He picked up
the striker from the floor, hefted it in his hand. Then he gathered his things
and left the building. As he stalked back through the woods to his truck, the
familiar pinpoints of pain flared at his temples. Behind his closed eyes he saw
crackling fringes of bright white, and in his head came the rising sound of
something like rusty hinges-

And he saw one
last thing.

XI

It seemed as
though Jane had stopped breathing completely as she watched Steve step closer.
There was only one light on in the kitchen, over the range; the dimness
appeared to be merging with something- something immediately behind Steve.

A shadow?

No, it's...

But what was it?

Something was
tainting Steve's features-perhaps it was Jane's fear, or so many powers of
suggestion. She remembered little of what Dhevic had told her, some aspect of
possession, something called machination. Was Steve really being manipulated by
a bodiless spirit? Some entity that merged its mind and borrowed the
possessee's flesh? Could that really be happening?

It really is,
she knew now. Dhevic wasn't lying about any of this.

"Oh, I
forgot to show you this, didn't I?" Steve said next, the form deepening
behind him. He opened a closet to the side, one with a narrow door where one
might expect an ironing board. There was an ironing board inside, all right,
along with a dead body-or, as Jane discerned more clearly, pieces of a dead
body. Severed arms and legs lay about the torso. There was no blood, and the
wounds looked blackened. "Pretty good work, huh?" Steve said. "I
did the job with a welding torch, cut her up with the flame while she was still
alive."

The sight
dizzied Jane. A once-pretty blond woman she'd seen before. Over her bare
breasts, florid third-degree burns formed the campanulation of Aldezhor.

"She's
not my sister, by the way. She's a stripper from St. Pete I was fucking."

Jane jerked
her gaze away, feeling as though she were standing on a precipice.

When Steve
spread his hands out to explain further, so did the shadow-boned thing behind
him.

"For eons
upon eons, the Messenger has walked the earth through us. We fulfill his
eternal mission: to deliver the message of hell unto God's domain. It never
ends, Jane. It goes on forever."

The shadow's
hands were on Steve's hands now, urging them into a pocket, to withdraw a stout
folding knife.

"We're
going to take you back to your house, force your children to watch as we kill
you. Then we'll kill Jennifer, while Kevin watches. Then we'll kill Kevin. We
will spread the message. But first..."

There was
nowhere Jane could go; she was jammed in the corner. Fighting him would be
useless-her heart was faltering, and she felt about to pass out. He was right
up next to her now, and behind him Jane could see the other face: smokelike,
wavering in form, but she could see its bottomless eyes, its great horns, and
the wanton grin.