But this one would do very nicely. It might even bring her up to the altar stone itself and kill her. It could do it right here, of course, but something about returning to the original scene just seemed so damned poetic.
He wasn’t an expert on human births by any means, but this one seemed to be going particularly slow. And he was getting impatient. He could remove the child forcibly-but that would end the innocence. But if something was wrong and the baby killed her mother, that would destroy the innocence as well. He’d just have to be patient and watch very closely, he thought. It wouldn’t be unlike the mother to try to trick him again. Of course she was probably in too much pain and under too much stress to even think of a plan, let alone use it. But still, something told him not to ever trust this woman.
He watched as the woman screamed in pain and tried to control her agony with some sort of regular breathing method, which her son was coaxing her through. It was almost comical. He wondered why these people feared hell at all-there seemed to already be so much pain and suffering on the earth that there really didn’t need to be a hell, in its humble opinion. No, take that back, it thought. Humility was definitely not one of its trademarks. And neither was patience, for that matter.
Fortunately, fascination was one of his strong suits, and he had to admit he was fascinated by this birth concept. He’d seen and had taken part in the end of countless numbers of lives. But this was the first time in all of these millennia that he had ever seen a new life being born. This was something different, worthy of study.
No, he wouldn’t rip the infant from the womb, though he was quite capable of doing so. Instead he would wait this thing out and see how it went. He expected that as an added bonus, she’d learn about suffering as well. The mother would surely suffer when her newborn was killed. She might be able to keep it together until she learned that the demon was going to steal her son’s body, and that she would have to take him home and care for him as her own child.
That moment would show what she was made of. She might react in any of a few different ways. She might just blank the entire incident from her mind and pretend her son was normal, and that none of this had happened. She might refuse to accept the boy as her son, or try to put up a fight, in which case he’d simply kill her and be done with it. Or she might just lose her mind, which might make for an interesting scenario of its own.
It really didn’t matter how she reacted. It would all work out the way the demon wanted it to. It would be able to inhabit the body of this boy for as long as it wanted, and return to the earth. When it became tired of being human, it could return to its demonic form again and pick up exactly where it had left off. Now that the meddlers were permanently trapped here in hell’s waiting room, it had nothing left to worry about.
Now all it had to do was wait for the baby to be born. And from the looks of it, the wait wouldn’t be long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
1
The last of the sand finally collapsed enough to where Erik and Johnny Dovecrest could crawl out of the sand pit and back to the surface of this strange world. Erik got to his feet and helped pull his friend up. Then, suddenly, he jumped back as he noticed that the place was very different from the way it was when he was unconscious. There were people everywhere.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
Dovecrest shrugged. “I’m not sure why, but I think we can see them all now.”
“See them all? Who?”
“The damned. The souls of all those who were sent to hell.”
“Oh my God…,” Erik said.
They were everywhere, looking pathetic and empty and completely without hope. He could hear them now, too, as they moaned and wailed. There were hundreds of them, no, thousands of them, stretching off as far as they eye could see. There were young and old, men, women, and children, in all sizes and shapes and from all races and cultures. They weren’t people, really, but were shades, ghost-like and yet human at the same time. They were all dressed in their burial clothes, which had rotted away to rags on their bodies, and now hung from them like moldy laundry.
They did not seem to be aware of one another as they ceaselessly wandered, searching, it seemed, for something.
Then, all at once they stopped and turned towards Erik and Dovecrest. The two men looked at one another, and with sudden realization he knew what had happened. The shades couldn’t see each other, but they could see them. In a single moment of realization, Erik understood. He could tell that Dovecrest did, too, and sudden terror flooded his soul.
All of these damned souls were searching for someone, for anyone in this place of utter desolation and aloneness. There must be billions of them here, and they couldn’t see one another. They’d been alone since they died-some of them had been here for thousands of years. All of them damned, from serial killers, rapists, murderers, and child molesters, right down to liars, cheats, and unbelievers. They were all here, searching for someone to interact with. And now suddenly Erik and Dovecrest had appeared, as if out of nowhere.
“We are so screwed,” Erik said softly.
It took a moment for the scene to register, but when it did the hundreds of damned souls nearest to them reacted as one. Erik could see their faces lighting up. They thought it was merely a vision, at first, a mirage. But then he could see the realization dawning on their faces.
There were three of them closest to him, an old woman, a middle aged-man, and a teenaged boy. They stepped forward, coming towards him, and leading a swarm of hundreds more that followed. They held their hands out to him and began to touch him, grope him. He staggered backwards, but more were surrounding him now. He looked over at Dovecrest and saw that he, too, was being overrun. The voices were everywhere, almost blending into one.
“Help me!” the teenager screamed. “Mom, please help me.”
“Betty, is it you? Is it you at last?”
“Oh, Harold, hold me!”
They all thought he was their loved one. And they all wanted a part of him. They swarmed like an army of ants, knocking him down, climbing on him. Their bodies melded into one another, and still they weren’t aware of the shade next to them, the shade that had actually melted into them….
So this was how the demon had really imprisoned them, Erik thought. He’d trapped them within a mountain of damned souls. He’d buried them in a sea of ruined, lost souls who were searching for something that he couldn’t give them….
“Leave me alone!” he screamed. “I’m not your mother! I’m not your wife!”
But still they came, an endless tide that overwhelmed him, suffocated him with their needs. He could hear their thoughts, feel their despair. Their misery was infinite; their wretchedness was endless. And he knew he was now doomed to endure their agony and despair forever.
“This isn’t fair!” he screamed. “I wasn’t sent here! I’m not one of you! I don’t belong here!”
Their need suffocated him as more and more of them came, like vultures to a rotting carcass. They buried him so he couldn’t see. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he desperately gasped for air that didn’t even exist in this nocturnal place. His mind, his body, and his soul were crushed beneath them. Even as their mass was without weight, their need was so very heavy. Their voices were deafening. Their smell was stifling. They grabbed him touched him, squeezed them against their formless bodies.
He felt like Jesus must have felt when the crowds of deformed and sick and diseased had come to him, swarming upon him to heal them.