This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Underneath
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Cover Art: Daniel Wesley Hawkins
Copyright © 2011 Daniel Wesley Hawkins
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Underneath
By
D.W. Hawkins
Special Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Daniel Wesley Hawkins
Underneath
He had been human once. His eyes had been blue and bright, his stride long and confident, and his voice deep and resonant. He had been strong, not body-builder-strong, but the strength of healthy youth and vigor. He had a family, once.
But that had all been before.
That was before he had taken the Creed, given his life to another purpose greater than himself. It was before he had begun living anew, away from the everyday concerns of the One-Worlders he walked among. His life was no longer so simple.
Now, his eyes saw the hidden, the meanings of things, the secrets, the lies. Now, his stride was careful, purposeful, and his feet walked in two worlds. Now, his voice could break men, make women swoon with desire, or kill for no other reason than it was his wish for them to do so. His family was long since dead.
Devil, demon, evil spirit, all of these things and more he had been. Different names for different places and times. His favorite was stregoi, some old Transylvanian word that meant something like evil spirit or demon. The word rolled from his tongue like wine from a bottle and tasted like power to him. If asked, that was what he told the One-Worlders.
He was stregoi.
He still looked like a normal, everyday person. He was tall, around six feet, and had sandy blonde hair that was cropped short on the sides and back, but had a little touch of length in the front. He kept it gelled a bit so that it wouldn’t sit lankly on his forehead, and because he kind of liked the look of it. He still had the body of a young, strong man, and he wore jeans and a tight fitting red tee shirt with a smiley face design on it. He wore a black belt and black ankle high boots. He blended in perfectly.
His human name he had long since abandoned and forgotten. It had been weak, empty, and lifeless. He called himself Damascus now. Damascus, he thought, was a name fit for one like him, a name that was powerful enough to be uttered in any tongue and rouse something from inside. It was a name that was fit to walk in two worlds beside him and wrap him in its fearsome embrace. He deserved that name, now. The name deserved him.
He was a soldier-an elite weapon on one side of a war that had been going for millennia. Hell, for longer as far as he knew. He hadn’t been there from the start, by all clocks that turned Underneath, he had joined up recently.
Still, he lived his Creed and believed in his cause. It had swept him along to fight many battles in many places. He had survived, and fought on without pause or doubt. It was for his Creed that he stood now in some southern backwater, waiting for his moment.
A small Baptist church was the object of his silent scrutiny. A squat, almost non-descript sort of place, it had one white steeple surmounted by the cross, as many churches did. Its red brick sides were adorned with four large frosted glass windows, which captured the twilight from the dusk and splintered it into watery patterns. It sat by a recently repaved road too small for dividing lines, at the crest of a squat hill overlooking a trailer park and a textile mill. The small parking lot was pregnant with sedans and minivans, and more than a few old, sturdy trucks. A lighted sign with a giant, yellow, glowing arrow pointing at the church stood alongside the building. It looked like it would be more at home at a used car lot than at a place of faith. “Berryton Baptist Church,” it read, and “Come Home to Jesus” underneath that.
It was hostile ground.
Wednesday services were in full swing, and the softly flowing sounds of a hymn and a piano accompaniment drifted to his otherworldly ears like a breeze through mist. He could imagine the scene inside; a well dressed and portly fellow presiding over a house full of mill workers and grandparents in their Sunday best, all singing with a mechanical familiarity the songs they had sung again and again.
A blind shepherd leading blind sheep. Damascus smiled and shook his head at the thought.
For some reason the one who had named himself God had paid certain attentions to this small place in nowhere, Georgia. The intelligence all pointed to it; crosses of light appearing in the frosted windows, apparitions appearing in the pews in photographs, the statue of Christ bleeding behind the altar. Such things were telltale signs of Above activity. The winged ones were hiding something here, and he had been sent to investigate.
The One-Worlders did not see him when they emerged from their church services; he did not wish them to. He watched silently as mothers herded their children into the minivans and grandparents hobbled weakly toward their gas-saving sedans. He watched the parking lot empty and watched the preacher wave from the footsteps of the front door before he locked up. Damascus waited for his moment.
The preacher disappeared through the double doors and Damascus heard clearly the click as the deadbolt was thrown. His time was nigh. Damascus took a step forward in the One World, and the World Below.
His connection to the World Below allowed him to pass through the One World, the human world, like light through a window. The physical barriers of the One World were no bar to him if he wished them not to be. So with the ease of stepping forward, he passed from the shelter of the pines outside the church to the lane between the pews. He was inside. The only noise he made was a hollow thudding sound as he emerged into the church.
“Good evening, reverend,” Damascus uttered.
The preacher was indeed a portly man. His hair was clipped short and styled in a conservative manner, combed to one side like a boring helmet. He wore a dark grey jacket and pants with a red tie, and Damascus thought for a second that he looked more like a politician than a preacher. It was hard to tell the difference between the two these days, anyway.
The man was looking at him in surprised disbelief, wondering how Damascus had escaped his notice when he was locking up; sure that he hadn’t been there a second before but disbelieving his instincts at the same time. His thoughts and his fear rolled off of him like steam from a piping hot bowl of stew, and Damascus read him like a book. Damascus’s eyes saw in two worlds, after all. The preacher began to speak, but Damascus cut him off.
“Trust your instincts, preacher-man,” he said, mockingly and encouragingly at the same time, “you didn’t see me in your service. You’ve never seen me before. I don’t come from around here.” Damascus giggled at his little joke. The preacher did not.
It was of no matter, anyway.
“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” The preacher began, “just who are you and what are you doing here? How did you get in here?”
“My name is Damascus, and I’m here to nose around a bit. I have a few questions that need answering,” he answered amiably. The preacher eyed him nervously.
“You’re a policeman? An authority of some sort, then?” the preacher asked, looking doubtful. Damascus laughed quietly and shook his head. How the human mind always tried to explain things in terms it found “normal” never ceased to amaze him. He knew the preacher could feel that something was off, that something wasn’t quite right with his guest.
“I’m no policeman,” was his reply.
The preacher began to back slowly toward the double doors at the front of the church, but Damascus stopped him with a raised hand. “I mean you no harm preacher-man. My quarrel is not with you. I’m sure by now that you’re feeling that there’s a little something more to our meeting than an after-service chat. Have a seat and let’s talk,” Damascus implored, but the preacher was having none of it. He broke for the doors at a dead run.
In the time it took to blink an eye Damascus stood between the doors and the fleeing reverend.
“Stop. Sit,” Damascus commanded, and this time he used the Second Voice. The sound seemed to echo hollowly within the deserted church and the preacher obeyed without realizing what he was doing, halting and planting his rear in a pew near the door. Damascus sighed and perched on the pew behind the man.
“What…what are you?” the reverend squeaked. Damascus had to laugh at the question, having been asked it too many times to count, but he shook off the urge to scare the man. That would come later, if it was needed.
“You have been visited by what you people normally refer to as angels,” Damascus stated, and a sick realization began to fill the preacher’s eyes. Damascus knew he was right by the look in the preacher’s eyes and the thoughts rolling off of him. Nothing hid from Damascus’s preternatural gaze. “I know they have been here. I want to know why and what they were doing. You are going to tell me.”
“You will get nothing from me, demon,” the reverend spat. That was brave of him, if misguided.
“Spare me the insults and denouncements, preacher-man,” Damascus groaned theatrically, “Braver men than you have shouted and cursed at me and here I sit before you, still alive. I don’t have the time to play ‘the-power-of-Christ-compels-you’, so leave your dogmatic rants inside your weak little skull. Again, I’m going to ask you, who has been here and what have they done?”
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” the preacher began, and Damascus sighed and rolled his eyes. He would get nothing out of the faithful dog, but he had known from the start that he would not. There was some small part of him that always wanted to try, though. He uttered another command and the preacher fell silent.
“Stay here,” Damascus commanded, and again the sound of his voice echoed with the sound of the World Below. Damascus rose and left the preacher sitting in the pew by the door. Yet again he would have to rely on himself rather than outside information.
The church was a small building, like many of the churches that dotted this region like pimples on the face of a teenager. It was of the simple design, the altar at the back and the pews lining the floor on each side of a narrow walkway that led up to the dais on which the sermons would be delivered. Damascus turned and gazed toward the front of the church where he spied a balcony that could seat maybe ten or fifteen people.
There were two doors on each side of the altar that led to rooms in the back that were probably used for Sunday school and such things. Children would fill those rooms on Sundays, where they would study bible stories from pamphlets with watercolor pictures that depicted people in robes with their eyes turned upward in faithful wonder. He knew the truth behind the stories and the entire dogma. He shook his head and reached out with his mind.
There was a great power somewhere in this place. He could feel it, like a pulsing heartbeat somewhere near to him. He could not tell the direction, but he knew something was here. He began to walk toward the altar when something strange caught his eye in one of the windows - a reflection of a swirling light behind him.
“Ah, Damascus,” said a voice that was not the preacher, “So good to see you again. What brings you to the house of the Lord? Come to get baptized, have you?” Damascus turned and looked upon a young man with striking shoulder length red hair and deep blue eyes. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a white tee shirt with a pocket over the left breast. He held a simple white handled knife in his right hand, point back. The stink of Above clung to him like a cheap cologne. Damascus knew him.
“Come now, Malachi,” he greeted, bowing mockingly, “You and I both know that baptizing is a useless ritual, why don’t you inform your faithful servant over there what his reward will be when he is gone?”
“The Faithful shall be rewarded in Heaven,” stated Malachi, but his eyes told the lie for him.
“Right,” Damascus breathed slowly, “but you and I know the truth of it, Malachi. Let’s dispense with the formalities, shall we? What are you and yours hiding here?”
“That’s none of your affair, Damascus,” Malachi threatened, “I think this time that you have tread too sharply on my toes. I’m going to have to kill you.”
“You’ve tried that before, old boy,” Damascus quipped, “It didn’t seem to work out for you the last few times. Are you sure you want to give it another shot?” Damascus pulled his own knife from thin air, reaching into the World Below for where he kept it. It was a simple knife, the blade and handle were a flat black and it was eight inches long.
Instead of replying, Malachi suddenly rushed forward with great speed. Damascus stepped Below and appeared behind him, but Malachi was just as fast. Their blades gave a slinking sound as they slid off of each other, Damascus parrying a weak slash at his side, and the two of them spun apart, facing each other and crouching low.
Malachi had a snarl on his face; etching lines deep into his brow and his eyes had gone completely blue. Angels’ eyes did that when they were drawing on the power of Above, filling their bodies with the essence of their own world. Damascus’s own eyes would be jet black by now, as he was filling himself with his own power.
Malachi came on again, slashing and stabbing and feinting to try and get a good hit in, but Damascus managed to turn his blows and slashes aside. His own attacks were turned aside as well, though, and he was gaining no ground with the Angel. They moved faster and faster, until to the preacher they would appear to be nothing but blurry shapes and colors rushing around each other. Damascus and Malachi moved with the strength and speed of other worlds.
Malachi raised his hand and set a searing light into Damascus’s eyes, causing him to falter and grunt in frustration and anger. When he opened his eyes, Malachi’s knife was milliseconds from his guts. Damascus stepped Below to avoid the killing stroke, but when he came out behind Malachi, he felt a searing pain along his back. Alarm rang out in his mind and he stepped Below once again, coming out on the balcony above the Angel and the fearful priest.
Malachi’s laughter met his return to the One World. The Angelic bastard had shattered the windows behind Damascus before he had stepped Below, and baited him into the flying shards of glass with that knife thrust. Damascus grunted and used his power to push the painful shards out of his back. They fell to the carpet with a pitter-pattering noise.
“Clever little bird,” Damascus taunted, “you’ve grown up a little since the last time we faced each other.” Malachi’s laughter turned into a grimace. He was ever a prideful bastard.
“Come down and play, then, Demon,” challenged the glowering Angel, “I should have killed you long ago, but tonight is as good a time as any.”
“You’re not good enough to kill me, Malachi. You should run and get one of your big brothers.”
“Die!” was Malachi’s reply. Damascus gave him no warning, and instead of charging the Angel he drew on the World Below and reached out with his power. Two pews flanking Malachi flew together and crushed the Angel between them. Malachi cried out in pain and surprise and used his own power to throw them aside, but Damascus had leapt from the balcony and was upon him before he could react.
He drove his blade into Malachi’s shoulder between his collarbone and his neck. The knife made a dull thudding sound as it met the Angel’s flesh, and Malachi roared in pain. In that moment of Malachi’s weakness, Damascus summoned his power once again and drove Malachi into the air and slammed him into the wall behind the altar, right into a plastic statue of the Crucifix. Malachi fell weakly onto the floor, and Damascus strode towards him to finish the job.
Malachi surprised him by flying from behind the altar and throwing a powerful kick into his gut. Damascus let out the air in his lungs and his vision blurred as he flew into the double doors and slid onto the floor next to the seated reverend. He got his hand up just in time to grab Malachi’s wrist, blocking a killing blow to his heart. He thrust his own knife toward Malachi’s guts, but the Angel grabbed his wrist in turn. They wrestled for a moment like that, but Damascus proved the stronger and was able to gain his feet, still locked in the deadly grapple with Malachi.
Malachi brought the power of Above to bear against Damascus, but Damascus met it with the power from Below. Both Damascus and Malachi were fully committed to the struggle now, bringing all of their powers to bear against the other. Malachi began to glow with a bluish light, and Damascus seemed to pull the shadows in the room toward him, until it seemed like the two struggling figures were the meeting points of a great struggle between light and dark.
Malachi, however, was grievously wounded, and soon his strength began to flag. Damascus forced him down into a crouch, and then onto his knees. The grimace on Malachi’s face grew fiercer and fiercer as he struggled against Damascus, but it was no good. Damascus was the stronger.
“Reverend Marcus!” shouted the Angel in his own Second Voice, cracking Damascus’s hold over the man, “The time is nigh to serve thy God! Help me banish this Demon from the earth!” It was a last-ditch effort, and they both knew it. Malachi was lying to the preacher; he would be dead as soon as he got close to Malachi, his soul lending power to the Angel. A smirk played upon the edges of Malachi’s face. Damascus knew what would happen, and he could not let the Angel take the soul of the preacher.
“He’s lying to you, preacher-man!” shouted Damascus, still locking his gaze with the Angel, “You’ll be dead as soon as you reach us! Stay where you are and no harm will come to you!”
Reverend Marcus was up from his pew, but appeared unsure of what to do. He looked nervously from one form to the other, clutching a Bible to his chest and uttering some prayer under his breath. He took a step forward, and then another one back.
“Do not listen to the foul lies of Devils, Reverend Marcus! His master is Satan, Lucifer, The Morning Star! You have given your life over to the service of God, and now he calls to you! God will grant you the power!”
The Reverend stepped forward, raising his Bible.
“There is no God, preacher-man!” Damascus implored, “It’s all a lie! You’re condemning yourself to annihilation if you reach out to the Angel! Stay back!”
Reverend Marcus had made his decision. He reached out toward Malachi, and Malachi smiled ferociously at Damascus. Their hands were inches away from touching when Damascus made his decision. The next few seconds seemed to take an eternity.
Kicking at Malachi to distract him, Damascus abandoned his struggle and threw himself at the preacher, hugging him close. Malachi regrouped his power, and as he was gathering for a strike, Damascus turned in mid-stride, still hugging the reverend to his chest. He could see the hungry and hateful gleam in the shining all-blue eyes of the Angel as he raised his arms, hands crackling with the power of Above. He also caught the surprise and disbelief on the Angel’s face as Damascus loosed his black knife directly at Malachi’s chest, but only for a split second.
Damascus stepped Below, pulling the preacher-man with him.
They came out once again on the balcony above, safely away from the discharge of Malachi’s power. It had taken only an instant, and Damascus felt the release of the Angel’s fury as the church shook from the energy. Malachi’s screaming voice echoed in the church, but a swirling light was all that was left where the Angel had been. Damascus’s knife thudded into the podium beside a wooden relief of the cross. He let the reverend fall to the floor.
The portly man was singed head to toe, his whole body smoking and the edges of his garments and hair frayed from the contact with the World Below. He rose up on all fours and began to cough from deep in his chest, and breathed hard as if for the first time ever. He was alive, at least.
“What…what did you do to me?” he spluttered between deep breaths and fits of coughing.
“Saved your life,” Damascus retorted. He left the preacher on the balcony and jumped down to the ruined church floor. The pews were now scattered about in the nave, and Damascus had to pick his way through them to retrieve his knife. He sent it Below once more.
Malachi had escaped to the World Above, of that he was certain. He was too badly wounded to continue the fight, and he would have to rest awhile in his own world before he could come back to the One World to face Damascus. He was free to continue his investigation.
Damascus walked up to the dais where the altar and podium stood. He took in the scene gravely, searching all the while for the source of that pulsing power that he had felt before Malachi had interrupted his search. He examined the Bible under the podium, but it was nothing special. The statue of the Crucifix on the wall hung askew from where Malachi had slammed into it, but it was just plastic, and a cheap rendering, at that. Damascus saw nothing here that could be causing that strange feeling, so he moved on.
He checked the Sunday school rooms, and found nothing of interest. There were more of those watercolor pamphlets, small multicolored plastic chairs, and posters displaying this lesson or that verse. Nothing that had touched the Above, and certainly nothing that had touched the Below had ever been in these rooms.
He moved on down the hall and found another door, one that he hadn’t noticed before, leading outside. He touched the lock and it clicked open at the whisper of power he directed through it. Opening the door, Damascus came face to face with a tiny outbuilding that he hadn’t seen from his vantage point in the pines.
Paydirt.
He opened the door of the outbuilding and saw stairs leading down into darkness. There was a light switch on the wall to his right, and he clicked it to the on position. The stairs were bathed in yellow, electric light emanating from uncovered light bulbs screwed into sockets that were spaced at regular intervals down the passageway. The stairs led down and around a corner to his left. Damascus started down.
His feet made scuffing noises on the stone steps, and tiny dust clouds rose at the passing of his booted feet. The place smelled of dust and old junk, the kind of smell you would find in an attic somewhere. That pulsing beat thrummed in Damascus’s chest here, like a great drum with a note so low that you can’t hear it, but only feel it. At the bottom of the steps there was a small landing, and a white door.
The door was wooden, and old. The paint was peeling off of it where it wasn’t sinking into the crags of the old wood. There was no mark upon the door, but Damascus could feel the power emanating from the portal as sure as if it had a neon sign. It was warded.
To touch that door would certainly be painful for one such as him, and it may even be fatal. There must be something very important behind it for the winged ones to place such protection upon it. Damascus stopped to think, and that’s when he heard the footsteps coming down the passageway.
Reverend Marcus descended onto the landing beside Damascus and regarded him with a strange and questioning look. “You never once tried to hurt me,” he stated, as if saying it to himself.
“No,” replied Damascus.
“I felt sure that if I was ever to come face to face with a Demon, I would feel the evil. I don’t…I don’t feel any evil coming from you. You just feel…different.”
“Preacher-man,” Damascus sighed, “there is no good and evil, at least not in the way that you think there is. There are just two sides, and I’m on one of them.”
“I’m on the other.”
“Not quite in the same way,” Damascus objected.
“That may be true, but I have served my faith for as long as I can remember, and now something just doesn’t feel right about it,” Reverend Marcus mused.
“We can talk about this later,” Damascus dismissed, “In the meantime, can you open this door?” The reverend stared at him as if he was fighting some personal battle inside. Damascus could see the intellectual roiling that was happening with the priest, but he didn’t have time for that right now. For now, there was only the door and what was behind it. Coming to some inner conclusion, the preacher stuck a key in the lock from a large key-ring in his pocket and turned the knob.
As the door opened a sound like wind through chimes seemed to flow out of the room, and Damascus realized that it was a preternatural sound, and only he could hear it. It was a relatively small room, made even smaller by the shelves that lined each wall. The shelves were filled with odds and ends; old Bibles, stacks of those pamphlets, packaged reams of white printer paper, and even boxes of pens and pencils. It was just a regular storage room, except for what was sitting in the middle of the floor.
It was a large, glass bowl filled to the brim with still water. The water itself was likely blessed by a priest, though such things actually mattered little. Sinuous lines and symbols traced out from the bowl in a circle that extended out three feet from the bowl on all sides. Damascus could sense many presences inside the water, screaming and howling in dismay and fear. The water, it seemed, should have been bulging with the efforts that those presences inside the water made to get out, but it sat still as glass. The sight of the thing filled Damascus with loathing.
“That…Angel…brought it here,” explained the reverend, “He said it was a blessing from God himself.”
“He lied,” Damascus said simply.
“Well how was I supposed to know? He was an Angel! An Angel!” pleaded the preacher, but Damascus just shrugged his shoulders in reply.
“I’m not here to punish you or some nonsense like that,” Damascus replied, “I’m just here to find out what was going on. Now that I see this, I have to destroy it.”
“Destroy it? Why?”
“Reverend Marcus,” Damascus began turning toward the preacher, “let me guess how this thing happened. First, Malachi appeared to you in your dreams, praising your faith or some such nonsense. Then, he came here to you, and only to you, and dropped this thing off. He performed a few miracles, made some virgins bleed or something, and your congregation grew and grew.” The Reverend nodded, his eyes narrowing. “Then, something happened. An accident or something, killed a fair number of people in your church, huh?”
“A fire, down in the textile mill,” Reverend Marcus uttered.
“You all prayed together and a few months go by, then something else. A virus maybe, cancer, or a car accident. However it happened, more people died in your church.” The Reverend nodded, with a confused and dreadful expression on his face. “But the miracles just kept on happening, keeping everyone here happy and your congregation growing like weeds. Have I missed anything?”
“No,” Reverend Marcus whispered.
“Meanwhile, more people died; someone here of old age, someone there of an infection, then someone in an accident. It didn’t happen overnight, mind, but over months and months, so that you wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t looking for it. Plus, you kept getting new members to take your minds off of the dead ones.”
“And the…the Angel was doing this?”
“Probably not alone, no, but he was part of it, I promise you that. That bowl of water in the middle of the floor, Reverend, is a soul-well.”
“A what?”
“You heard me. All of those dead people, your entire congregation that passed while going here were tied to this place by their memories and the prayers of your church. This thing in the floor here is designed to trap their souls on the journey Elsewhere.”
“But why? Why would an Angel do something like that?”
“Reverend, don’t tell me you’re that dense. That’s the whole point of it all…your soul,” Damascus explained, “First of all, you’re going to have to drop that dreamy-eyed notion that Angels are all good and God is your big-brother-in-the-sky. It’s just not true.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, I know this is hard for you and all, being a man of the faith, but to tell you the truth I don’t really care, so just listen up preacher-man. God doesn’t exist, at least not in the way that you think he does. God is just a jumped-up angel, a leader of angels, and he has an agenda. He didn’t create you, and he didn’t create me. He didn’t create this world, or any of the three worlds.”
“Three worlds?” Reverend Marcus echoed.
“That’s what I said, and I thought that I was the one doing the talking. There are three worlds: this one, the One World, home to all humans and material beings like you; the World Above, home of the angels; and the World Below, where me and mine all come from. Now, everything was fine and dandy for a long, long time until one day some poor soul died and wandered somehow into the World Above.”
“Heaven?”
“No, did I say Heaven? Damn it Reverend, for an educated man you have a hard time learning things being taught to you. Listen. Up there, in the World Above,” Damascus paused and fixed the preacher with a meaningful glare that dared him to contradict the story, “They realized that the soul of the one who died granted them more power, more influence. The more souls they ate up, the more power they had to do incredible things beyond their normal scope. So, they got together and had a little angel party, and decided to come down here to the One World to see how many souls they could scare up. It didn’t work for them, though.”
“Why not? Couldn’t they just…take…souls, if they wanted them? They’re powerful enough, aren’t they?” Reverend Marcus asked.
“That’s just it, preacher, they can’t,” Damascus informed, leaning closer to the preacher, “No one is powerful enough to take a soul against its will. A soul has to come by choice, it must be given, you see? The angels realized this, and so they needed a new tactic, a strategy. They needed a clever story to dupe multitudes into giving over their souls freely. Do you see where this is going, Reverend?”
“Y-yes…,” the preacher stammered, finding it hard to come to grips with Damascus’s story.
“That’s where my side came in. See, power can twist you, right? Twist you into something you’re not, or were not originally, and souls are made of powerful stuff. Its Ambrosia, Elixir, the Water of Life, get my meaning? Once you’ve tasted it, there’s no going back. You’re addicted. The Angels, who were once really sort of benign beings altogether, were now addicted to the high, and none more than their leader, the one you think of as God. First, we tried to reason with him, Yahweh I mean, your God, but he was already too far gone. He needed the souls now, and would do anything to get them. He had a plan, an end-game, and we were none too happy to hear about it.”
“What was his plan?”
“To gorge himself on souls until he is powerful enough to undo the Order of Worlds; to remake the very fabric of existence so that every soul would come to him instead of journeying on their own. He would have an endless supply of his Elixir, and an endless supply of power. It would be an abomination. My own master swore to prevent this, not only for our side, but for everything.”
“What do you mean everything?” Reverend Marcus asked, now obviously intrigued.
“See, no one really knows where souls go when they depart these worlds,” Damascus explained, taking a seat on the dusty steps, “you humans are the only ones who can pass through all three worlds, and beyond, to a place we call the Elsewhere. Since neither we nor the angels can journey there, we have no idea where they go, why they go, or what purpose their going serves. Upsetting that balance could very well cause disastrous effects, just as the polluting of a river can kill hundreds of fish. Everything that lives follows patterns and lives by a system, from the smallest particle to the Infinite. Fuck it up, and who knows what could happen?”
Reverend Marcus sighed and plopped his large behind down on the step next to Damascus and ran a meaty hand through his singed hair. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and an orange lighter and offered one to Damascus. Damascus shrugged and accepted the preacher’s offer with grunted thanks, pulling on the tobacco and sighing out a cloud of grey smoke. He didn’t usually smoke, but it wasn’t like he could get cancer.
“So,” the Reverend began, “If all of this is true, then why would the angel be gathering souls here, if they were going to go…up there…anyway?”
“Because the souls that wander there of their own accord are snatched up at random most likely, either that or Yahweh has the angels all running around collecting large amounts for him to eat. Soul take-out,” Damascus giggled. Again, the Reverend found it none too funny. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. I can’t go Above, only here and Below.”
“So if you destroy this thing, what happens to the souls inside? What if they go up there anyway, all by themselves?”
“At least they had the choice”, Damascus said quietly, “my guess is that these wells are simply a more secure means to obtain souls. In the old days their strategy worked quite well to garner up souls, but I think these days their hold is slipping a bit. Science is blowing holes in their story and they’re getting a little anxious, so they turn the deception up a notch. This is far from the first one I’ve seen, as I’m sure you realize. In any case, the why of it doesn’t really concern me as much as the where, so that I can seek them out and destroy them.”
“So what is it that you…demons,” the reverend still seemed to be having trouble with accepting the whole thing, “want out of all of this?”
“Self preservation, preacher-man,” Damascus answered simply, “there’s no place for us in Yahweh’s new world. We don’t exist there, so it’s sort of in our interest to make sure that he doesn’t succeed, wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess so.”
The two of them sat quietly on the steps for awhile, puffing away at their cigarettes until they were smoked down to the butts. Damascus, crushing his spent cigarette under his boot heel, rose and sighed. The ordeal tonight had tired him a bit, and he was ready to leave this place. The Reverend looked up at him in a mixture of confusion, wonder, and despair. His whole life had been turned upside down tonight, but that wasn’t really Damascus’s concern. He was ready to go.
Lifting his hand, Damascus reached out with his power and clenched his hand into a fist. The bowl shattered, spilling the water upon the dusty floor. Damascus heard whispers as the souls inside were set free, sounds like silk curtains rubbing together as they left the One World one by one. He didn’t know where they went from there, but maybe some of them got out in the right direction. One could only hope.
“Take it easy, preacher-man. Try not to think too hard about it, you were only doing what you thought was right. The important thing is what you do from here on out.” With that, Damascus strode up the dusty steps and into the balmy southern night. Crickets were singing somewhere in the dark, and Damascus could hear the noise of cars driving down a distant highway. Lights were on in the nearby trailer park, throwing orange pools of light onto small grass lawns, and someone had their door open as a news report droned loudly from their television.
He walked back into the tree line where he’d been earlier, under the cover of clean-smelling pines. A few pinecones crunched under his feet, but he paid them no mind. He turned once more to gaze upon the scene before he left this silent, southern hamlet.
The church was on fire.
“Good for you, preacher-man,” Damascus giggled, “good for you.”
He stepped Below, leaving Georgia behind.
About The Author
D.W. Hawkins lives in Savannah, Georgia. He has a son on the way, a beautiful wife, and a Pit Bull puppy who is convinced that she is actually a fifty pound Chihuahua. He loves writing, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, playing guitar, and his family. He is the author of The Seven Signs, an epic fantasy series.
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Also available now from D.W. Hawkins
The Sentient Fire
The Seven Signs, Book One
“A breath of fresh air to the genre…”
“I was unable to put it down.”
In one short night, Dormael Harlun’s life was changed forever.
Tired and half drunk, Dormael stumbled upon Shawna Llewan, a beautiful young woman, wounded and near death. What he didn’t realize was that his decision to come to her aid would be only the beginning of his unwitting role in a labyrinthine and perilous game.
Suddenly, Dormael and Shawna find themselves surrounded by enemies bent on their destruction. All avenues to safety are closing rapidly, and their only hope is to find the key to a dangerous secret lost to antiquity. With every ally a potential foe, they can rely only on Dormael’s brother Allen and his cousin D’Jenn to escape the will of a tyrant, the designs of a traitor, and the attention of powers beyond their imagining. Dormael has never been much for games, but destiny has rolled the dice for him and irrevocably placed him in the middle of a deadly game he must desperately play for keeps. Should he lose, he will forfeit not only his own life, but the lives of the ones he loves.
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