Madisonville Murder, Part 4
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“Are you all right?” asked Gavin, looking at me with concern.
“No! I’ve just been possessed?” I screamed—but the words echoed only in my own head.
“I’m…I’m all right,” said Satan or whatever demon he might have tasked to occupy my body. “I just need a little air. You guys start discussing next steps, and I’ll be back in a minute.”
It was a plausible imitation of me. The two women, who didn’t know me that well, didn’t notice that anything was off, but Gavin was wearing his suspicious face. He knew something was up.
I tried to twitch or make any other random movement that might confirm Gavin’s suspicion, but every part of my body was under as complete control as my mouth. My feet walked toward the front door. My hand reached for the knob.
Follow me, Gavin. Follow me.
But I heard no other footsteps behind me. Gavin was pondering what to do. I needed to find a way to slow the demonic presence inside me.
“You know you can’t keep me like this. Sooner or later, I’ll wear down your control.”
“Really?” replied a voice so deep that it rattled my bones—not Satan himself, but definitely demonic. “Are you going to break free? By all means, try.”
I knew when I was being mocked, but I tried to break free, anyway, mostly to test the nature of the restraints.
I writhed around in my own head as hard as I could, but I didn’t succeed in slowing my body’s continued movements. My hand twisted the doorknob. The door swung open, and my feet walked out.
“What’s the point of this?” I asked. “I’ll never do what Satan wants. By now, he must know that.”
“What the Master knows or not is not yours to judge. And you might be surprised what you will do—once you have the right incentives.”
Normally, that kind of statement would have sped up my heart rate, but my mind was so detached from my body that I seemed to have no physiological response to the implied threat.
My feet walked down the driveway, toward where my own car was parked on the street. Gavin had better hurry up, or I’d be gone before he got to the door.
My hand reached into my pocket for the keys. It clutched them and started to pull them out. I tried with all my might to make the hand let go, but I couldn’t. The keys were out, and my hand pressed the fob to unlock the door. I heard the click, and my feet started walking toward the drivers’ side door.
“Chris!” yelled Gavin, standing in the doorway. I couldn’t make my head turn enough to meet his eyes.
“I just remembered something I need to do,” the demon said through my mouth. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Gavin practically threw himself off the steps and raced down the driveway as if he had been shot out of a cannon, judging from the sound of his footsteps. I still couldn’t see him. I threw every ounce of willpower I had into slowing down the demon, who didn’t seem to be moving all that fast to begin with.
However, the demon must have been high level. When he finally looked at Gavin, he raised my left hand, twisted it to the side, and Gavin fell. Fortunately, he hit the lawn, rather than the driveway, but I still heard a thud that sounded uncomfortably loud.
I would have breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Gavin starting to get up, but I still had no control over my own body. The demon threw open the door, dragged my body inside, and slammed the door.
But Gavin, though the fall might have been hard enough to stun him if he’d hit his head, was already speeding toward the car.
“Tell him to back off, or I’ll kill him!” commanded the demon so loudly that he rattled my teeth.
In his haste, the demon had failed to lock the car doors, so Gavin was able to open the passenger door and throw himself inside.
“Get out, or the demon will kill you!” I yelled. I didn’t know what the demon had planned for me, but if he really killed Gavin, I wouldn’t be able to bear that.
“Not if the demon is unconscious,” said Gavin, who punched me in the face and then smashed my head against the dashboard, just to be sure.
I should have felt pain, but I didn’t. Judging from the howling in my head, the demon felt it.
I should also have passed out, but I didn’t—not exactly, anyway. At first, I was surrounded by darkness, but I didn’t completely lose awareness. I felt as if I might be dreaming rather than unconscious.
A red glow emerged from the shadows, growing brighter and brighter until I had to squint. If I hadn’t already had some encounters with demons, I would have jumped right out of my skin when a wolf with eagle’s wings and a serpent’s tail ran out of the glow, breathing fire in my direction. I dodged, though I wasn’t sure I needed to. This must all be taking place in my head.
“Now your friend will die!” announced the demon in a voice more like a wolf’s howl than human speech.
“Good luck with that while the body you’re occupying is unconscious,” I replied, trying to sound more confident than I felt. The idea of having such a creature inside me made my skin crawl. I would have run away if there had been any place to run.
The demon looked at me with the eyes of a feral beast. But if it had wanted to kill me, it could have done that much already. Most likely, Satan would rather have my soul than just my death.
It was an indication of just how dark parts of my life were that the idea that Satan was stalking my soul was actually encouraging. At least, it would force the demons to be more subtle—though they weren’t always good at subtlety.
“Perhaps I should just kill you now,” said the demon as if it had read my thoughts.
“You know you can’t,” I said. “Anyway, it must be…inconvenient to have a body you’re occupying die.”
“You may wish you were dead when I am through with you. Once I am conscious again, I will make your body do such things that just thinking about them will drive you mad. I will make you drive your car through crosswalks filled with school children. I will make you set your parents’ house on fire with them in it. I will make you—”
“You won’t do any of that,” I said. “I won’t let you. Just having me read words waiving all protection against Satan isn’t enough to let you stay here. I had no intent when I read that statement. Given time, I can will you away.”
The demon responded with a sound halfway between a laugh and a bark. “We will see about that. You’ve never faced one of us inside you before. You have no herbs to protect you in here.”
I forced myself to look closely at the demon, and I knew who he was. “You’re Marchosias, aren’t you? From my reading, I recognize the form you’ve adopted.”
That got his attention. It’s easier to deal with a demon if one can call it out by name.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. You are equally within my power regardless.”
Marchosias howled more loudly than before, and flames sprang up all around us. “Welcome to Hell!”
“You can’t take me to Hell,” I said, though feeling the heat and smelling what I was pretty sure was burning flesh shook my confidence a little. “Even if the statement you tricked me into reading had any real power, it said nothing about allowing you to take my soul anywhere.”
I wouldn’t have thought a wolf’s face could smile, but Marchosias did the best he could. “I know you’ve read Marlowe’s Faustus. Remember what Mephistopheles says about Hell?"
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must we ever be
“He also says before that point that he is in Hell no matter where he goes—as am I. I don’t need to take you anywhere in the physical sense to take you to Hell.”
For the first time, I felt my blood run cold even though I couldn’t really feel physical sensations. Of course, Marchosias was lying. Demons always lied. But I’d often thought that, if such a thing as hell actually existed, it would be much as Marlowe had described it. And if that were the case—
“Marlowe was an atheist, just like you. He burns somewhere nearby if you’d like to meet him.”
“I’m an agnostic,” I said quickly. “And I’m rethinking that viewpoint.”
If I’d been physical, I would have been shaking. If I’d had physical eyes, they might have been crying.
“Your ‘rethinking’ is a little late.” Marchosias sounded as if he were enjoying the whole situation immensely. “Your lack of faith will keep you in my clutches…forever, if I so choose. But you will crack long before that. You will beg me to let you do as Satan commands.”
The flames had made the space around us oppressively hot, and the smoke was making my breathing more and more labored. I was sweating as if I were in a sauna. But how could I sweat without a physical body?
The answer was obvious. All of this was happening in my mind. Machosias, who was in here with me, was drawing on my knowledge and on my fears to create a convincing illusion of Hell. That’s all this was—a vivid nightmare.
But if I couldn’t awaken from it, did it matter whether it was real or not?
“Ah, Marlowe, I see you’ve come to join us,” said Marchosias, looking at some point behind me.
Despite myself, I turned to look. Out of the flames had risen a charred thing, human in form but otherwise unrecognizable. In a voice that sounded more like the croaking of a frog, it begin to recite Marlowe’s Hero and Leander.
No, it wasn’t just reciting Marlowe’s poetry. It was Marlow.
The fear I’d been trying so hard to suppress dug its claws right through my heart.
I started screaming.
Madisonville Murder is related to the Soul Salvager trilogy. (The action falls between the prologue and chapter one of the first book.)
(All three books are on sale during the month of October.)
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