Madisonville Murder, Part 5
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I tried to escape from Marchosias and the fried remnants of Christopher Marlowe, but there was no escape. Everywhere I turned, I saw them. Around us, the flames of hell grew hotter, and I felt my lungs filling with smoke.
I knew what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling had to be an illusion, but I couldn’t seem to wake up from this particular nightmare. I had no idea of how to escape from a demon who had dug his claws into my mind.
“Submit to me, and I will spare you any further torture,” said Marchosias. “It would be so easy to end all of this.”
“That would only be the beginning.” I had meant to shout at him, but my voice came out more like a whimper.
“Chris!”
That was Gavin’s voice, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. Honestly, I didn’t know if I wanted to. If he somehow got into my mind, could he get trapped here as well? I couldn’t take that kind of risk.
The flames blocked every possible path away from Marchosias—not that there was any way out. I could become conscious again, but then Marchosias could use my body to do unspeakable things. That would be worse even than this vision of Hell.
“Chris!”
How was Gavin speaking to me? I had no idea. But I still didn’t respond because I didn’t want him to end up suffering with me, and I didn’t have a clue how any of this worked.
Marlowe’s charred remains continued to recite Hero and Leander. I did my best to keep my eyes off of him. That wasn’t too hard, considering how much my tears were blurring my vision.
How could I be crying when what I saw around me was literally all in my head? For that matter, how could I feel the heat from the flames or smell the smoke? If I could figure that out, I might have a chance. But I couldn’t focus easily with my heart beating too fast and my lungs struggling against the smoke—neither one of which I should be able to feel.
“Chris!”
I tried to think back to stories from my old Catholic school days. Exorcism hadn’t been part of the curriculum in religion classes, but there were references to demons. I couldn’t think of anything I could use in my current situation, though. Nor could I think of anything I’d read more recently that would be helpful. I’d never seen a word written about how a possessed person could break free from the inside.
My neck. The little sack with my rowan and dill mixture was still hanging around my neck. I knew this only because Marchosias hadn’t used my hand to rip it off. Supposedly, he could bypass its protection because of the words I’d read in Cynthia’s date book, but that shouldn’t have made a difference. My special blend should have made it impossible to possess me, at the very least.
Maybe it still did. I wasn’t just bluffing when I was talking to Marchosias. I knew intent mattered in interactions with demons, and I hadn’t intended to let him in. Perhaps he wasn’t in all the way, not really. Or maybe I was just grasping at straws. I had to find some way of testing that idea.
“Margaret of Antioch.”
That was Alma’s voice, and the name sounded vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure in what context I’d heard it before.
Marchosias continued to taunt me, but I managed to stop listening to him and to the charred Marlowe’s horrendous poetry recitation. If I could become conscious, maybe I could test the idea that I wasn’t really possessed. Gavin would be with me, and he was strong enough to keep me from escaping and committing terrible acts.
I closed my eyes and tried to become aware of my body. If I could feel something—anything—that would support the idea that I might have more control than I realized.
Rope. I felt what I thought was rope binding my wrists and ankles. That made sense. Gavin would have tied me up, just in case.
“Listen to me!” Marchosias’s voice had become a deafening roar. The flames around me felt a little hotter—but not much. It appeared he could frighten me, but he might not really be able to inflict physical pain. As soon as that thought occurred to me, my breathing became less labored.
Something cold was in my hand—my physical hand. Could it be? Yes, it was the handle of a hammer. I shifted my fingers a little. It appeared to be a club hammer. But why would Gavin, who knew I had a demon in me, give me a hammer?
Over the smoke and the smell of burning flesh, I smelled apricots and cinnamon. I felt fingers touching my forehead. Alma was anointing me with her homemade holy oil and my agrimony.
I didn’t have enough faith to be confident that using holy oil would work—but she did.
I suddenly realized where I had heard Margaret of Antioch’s name before. She was a saint—the patron saint of people suffering from demonic infestations, among other things. In fact, she was called the vanquisher of demons, though I doubted that the stories about her had much historical value. In one, she beat a demon into submission with a hammer.
The hammer in my physical hands—Alma or Gavin had placed it there to remind me of that story. But why?
I felt the impact of Marchosias, still in wolf form, slamming into me. I fell, and I opened my eyes reflexively. The wolf had me pinned to the hot rocks beneath me.
“You will do as I command!” said the beast. His breath came with a shower of sparks, but they fell on me without burning me. The illusion was starting to lose its grip on me.
“I won’t do a damn thing you command!” I said, looking him right in his red eyes. My own eyes were clear now—no more tears.
Much to my surprise, a hammer fell out of the darkness above and clonked Marchosias on the head. He threw back his head and howled.
He didn’t seem to realize that the hammer had come to rest right next to my right hand.
What was happening? I didn’t have a clue. But I decided I might as well go with it.
I grabbed the hammer and smashed it right into Marchosias’s leg. My physical body wasn’t that strong, but in this mental world, I delivered enough of a blow to make his leg crumple beneath him and force another howl from his lips.
As he toppled, I smacked him with the hammer again, this time right in the face. I heard bones crunch, saw blood spatter. Marchosias threw himself off of me and tried to hobble away.
As I stood up, I realized that I could no longer feel the heat of the flames nor smell the smoke. I could still see the hellscape, but it looked pale, like a faded photograph.
I thought I knew how to break out now. I ran after Marchosias. He cracked his snake tail at me like a whip, but I smashed its head with my hammer, and it went limp. I grabbed it, cold and slimy as it was, and pulled Marchosias back toward me.
In the physical world, I couldn’t have done anything like that. Here, I hadn’t thought about the physics of the situation. Probably, there weren’t any physics, and my normal physical weakness didn’t matter.
Once I had Marchosias in reach, I struck him again and again. Blood spattered everywhere, though strangely, none of it landed on me. His howling deafened me. When I finally let him go of his tail, he collapsed like a bag of broken bones onto the stone floor, his body distorted beyond recognition.
I knew I hadn’t killed him. Demons couldn’t be killed anymore than a human soul could be. But I had injured him enough to break his illusion. The hellscape, Marlowe, even Marchosias himself faded into darkness.
I was relieved—for about fifteen seconds. Then I realized that I was standing alone in the dark, with only my imaginary hammer for company.
I had expected I’d become conscious if I beat Marchosias. After all, I’d been feeling what was happening to my physical body. I must have been close to consciousness even then.
But now, I was in a black void with no obvious way out.
Madisonville Murder is related to the Soul Salvager trilogy. (The action falls between the prologue and chapter one of the first book.)
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