I spent the last 40 nights in Hell, gambling with the Devil for my best friend’s life.
My name is Holly. I have a best friend named Jude. You may already be familiar with our story, but if you’re just now joining this party, here’s a brief rundown of what you need to know.
Two months ago we went down into the tunnels below Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois. I woke up at sunset five days later with a mysterious bloody staff and no memory of what happened in between. Something was coming up out of the tunnels after me. Jude was gone. In the following weeks, I was stalked by shadows and attacked by a creature that could mimic your loved ones and choke the life from your lungs. Within the staff hid a shadow that drank my blood and, in return, protected me as I ran from the monsters and searched for Jude. The ghosts of the land and the town rose up all around me, giving me few answers and more questions. I glimpsed Jude’s hand everywhere, in trails of yarn leading to strange clues, in writing on the mirror, in a mud-coated figure that stood between me and the face-changing demon that came for me in the night. She may be dead, but some part of her is alive and still fighting, and I’ve sworn to find and save her if I can. She spoke through me while I lay in a trance on a hypnotist’s couch, giving me cryptic instructions on how to open a secret door to find what was lost. I left messages and protections in place, hoping that if I didn’t come back, someone would find them and carry on the fight. Then I went to find the door.
Jude’s instructions were as follows.
“To find what was lost, rise in the dark of night by light of the full moon. Paint thyself with red of blood and black of soot. Adorn thyself with jewels as gifts for the spirits. Bring no weapon, for no weapon shall pass the first gate. Seek ye out the blasted tree in the village of the dead. Bring drink as libation to pour among the roots and nourish thine mother. Bring food as offering to burn and delight the nose of thine father. When the moon is at her darkest, knock three times upon the door, and the door will open.”
I thought about it hard while I made my preparations. Glowsticks, matches, Clif bars, bottled water, a notebook, a compass, the list goes on. I prepared like I was going into the wilderness for a month. The reality would prove to be closer to that than I would have liked, but I didn’t know that yet.
Loosely translated, I figured that the instructions meant that the process of opening the door would take two weeks, from full moon to new moon. The blasted tree in the village of the dead had to be the huge tree in the cemetery that got struck by lightning. I noticed it the very first time we went there, particularly the way the charred bark and dead wood resembled the outline of a door. If I was correct, an offering of unspecified food and beverage had to be made under the light of the full moon, and then in a couple of weeks when the moon was dark, three knocks would open a door in the trunk where the bark was blasted off. However, when I looked up the moon phases, I found a loophole. The full moon was due for an eclipse in the early hours of the morning. There was no way to be certain, but I was betting that I could get that door open in one night.
I walked to the cemetery in darkness that was broken only by the light of the moon and the occasional passing car. The streets were quiet. I took Wormwood with me. I wasn’t sure if the staff counted as a weapon, but I felt naked without it. My backpack hung heavy from my shoulders. I held Jude’s face in the front of my mind and told myself that no matter what happened once I passed through that door, I was going in the right direction.
My heart thumped in my chest as I climbed the hills that lay between me and the tree. Whether it was from exertion or fear or some mix thereof, I couldn’t say. I had a foil wrapped slab of roast beef, shining with rainbow oils, and a bottle of good merlot in my backpack.
When I got to the tree, I knew I was right. The air felt heavy, pregnant with promise. The outline of the door was even clearer in the moonlight. I could make out the seams of it sunken deeply into the wood.
I set down my backpack and took out the offerings along with a deep, calming breath. Then I poured the wine over the gnarled roots. The dry earth drank it in greedily, leaving nothing but a blood-dark stain and the sharp scent of fermented grapes. Then I took a lighter to the meat. I expected to have to hold it there, but it blazed up like dry tinder, and I dropped it quickly when it singed my finger tips. It was ash within seconds. The smell of roasting meat drifted up to my nose, making my belly gurgle. I couldn’t remember the last time I had fed myself. Too much to think about. Didn’t matter.
The ash drifted against the dead white wood and disappeared. That had to be a good sign. My offerings had been accepted. I stared breathlessly at the tree trunk. Then, like a lit fuse, a spark of blue appeared, tracing the outline of the door. Once it had made the whole circuit, the outline glowed gently, almost invitingly.
All I could do was wait.
The eclipse wasn’t until early morning. I had a long night ahead of me.
I decided to take a walk around the graveyard. The shadow of Greenwood had fallen so heavily across my life in the past month that I could hardly think of anything else, and yet I still had spent precious little time in the actual cemetery. I wandered up and down steep hills between towering monuments and silent mausoleums, watching me with gaping dark windows like empty eye sockets. I purposely avoided the steep hill overlooking the place where the tunnel entrance lay until I had exhausted everything else. I passed the Egyptian obelisk that towered over the Civil War graves and stood at the edge of the incline. The gap in the fence was cast in shadow, the new growth on the trees surrounding it and obscuring it from view. I frowned when I saw tiny lights dancing in the undergrowth in the tree line. Surely it was too early for fireflies to be out. And the lights were the wrong color, silvery blue instead of the warm yellow of the lightning bugs I had grown up chasing.
Once I had seen those, I saw them everywhere. They were all around, glowing in the treetops and out of nooks and crannies in roots and tombstones. They drifted like pollen on a summer breeze. They were beautiful. One floated right past me, and I followed it to a hollow in a tree where it lit and stayed. I moved softly so as not to startle it away, whatever it might be.
There was a tiny glass bottle nestled in the hole in the tree. The light danced around it. I reached out without really intending to. I just had the strongest, strangest desire to touch it…….
My trance was broken by a low, guttural growl coming from the sea of white gravestones behind me. I whirled, heart thumping. All was quiet for just long enough for me to think maybe I was imagining things. Then a twig snapped loudly from the opposite direction.
I clutched the staff. Dead leaves crunched softly. I caught the shine of an eye out there in the darkness. A hulking black shape moved swiftly from the cover of a tombstone to the cover of a tree. A low rumble ramped up into a full snarl, echoing off monuments. It sounded like it was right in my ear. I turned and ran.
Heavy footsteps thudded on the ground behind me as I fled through the cemetery, my backpack thumping against my back. The staff was warming up in my hands. I scanned frantically for somewhere to hide, something to climb. A tall stone shape loomed out of the night right in front of me, something grey and knobbly that towered over ten feet in the air. A bloodcurdling howl rang out right behind me, and I felt displaced air whoosh past my ankle with the audible snap of jaws just barely missing me. I flung the straps of my backpack off my shoulders, dropping it heavily. I heard a startled yip and a thump as it struck something solid, then I was throwing myself at the tall monument, fingers scrabbling for holds in the rough stone. I think I levitated by pure fear, because I was climbing onehanded while trying to hang on to the staff. Somehow my feet found purchase, and I scrambled up out of reach, making it to a flat place on top with Wormwood still in my grasp. I looked down.
A massive dark form leapt against the monument in a frenzy, bellowing and howling, claws scratching against the stone. It looked like an enormous dog, but it stood nearly upright on its hind legs, its shoulders huge and powerful, like some kind of wolf-man hybrid out of a cheesy horror movie. Only this was real. I slammed the butt of the staff downward, aiming for its head, but it turned and caught it with powerful jaws, nearly yanking me off my perch. The staff slid out of my hands. I had an awful second of panic, but then my arm went numb as a warm shadow flowed up my arm to wrap around my neck, shivering. Wormwood hid itself underneath the curtain of my hair, pressing against me like a terrified puppy.
The dog-like creature on the ground prowled around the base of the monument a couple of times before giving one last thwarted snarl and loping off into the night, dragging my staff in its mouth like an oversized bone.
I stayed on my perch. I was shaking as badly as Wormwood was. The thing I had climbed didn’t look like any tombstone I had ever seen. It looked, in fact, like a stone chair lifted ridiculously high off the ground on a pillar that was carved in the shape of a twisted tree trunk covered in vines. There were letters carved into the seat, but it was too dark to make them out.
Just when I began to consider climbing down, the smell of rotten eggs and burning plants drifted upwards and the ground at the base of the chair split open. Thick tendrils of something so black it absorbed the moonlight slid out of the cracks, twining around the trunk, reach upwards, creeping towards me. The stone where it touched turned red hot in seconds, glowing beneath the darkness that oozed up towards me. I desperately gauged the distance from here to the ground, weighing the likelihood of a broken bone against whatever would happen once those creeping things reached me.
The stone of the chair began to radiate an unpleasant amount of heat through the soles of my shoes.
I made up my mind to jump, but when I braced myself a tendril lashed upwards and wrapped around my ankle.
Then, pain.
It arced up my spine, lanced through my veins, burst from the tips of my fingers and my eyes and the ends of my hair. Ripping, tearing, searing pain as if I was being dragged out of my skin, flesh stretching and popping and rending around me. I screamed, over and over, but the pain did not stop or lessen. It grew. I couldn’t comprehend how it could get worse, and yet it did, sending wave after wave over and through me, scorching me, scouring me clean of anything but unending, unrelenting pain.
Then everything stopped, and I fell to the floor somewhere…..else.
I took a moment to catch my breath. My palms and face were pressed against a cool tile floor that was the color of a really good steak – red and marbled with streaks of white. I sat up. I could feel Wormwood hiding underneath my hair, clinging to the back of my neck. It felt like little sticky caterpillar feet against my skin. I looked around.
There was a boy standing at an elegant little bar against the wall, frozen in the middle of pouring something sticky and purple out of a crystal decanter, looking at me curiously.
He could have been anywhere from sixteen to thirty. He had one of those faces. Smooth as porcelain and just as pale, as if it had never been touched by the greedy rays of the sun. He was dressed in simple, tailored black clothing, the cut of which screamed
expensive. His dark hair was cut with razor precision in that fashionable style you see all the men wearing these days, sharply shaved sides fading upwards to a longer top that was swept to one side, a few wavy locks escaping to dangle over his high forehead. Cheekbones to die for. His hands and forearms were laced with abstract black lines inked into his white skin, and the flickering light from the nearby fireplace made them appear to be moving lazily. His feet were bare, covered in the same tattoos. His eyes were a startling shade of crimson.
He put down the decanter and spread his tattooed hands wide, his red eyes crinkling with good humor.
“Welcome to the Devil’s lair,” He said. “I do love unexpected company. Won’t you have a seat?”
I stared at him, ignoring the fireside chair he was pointing to.
“You’re a devil?” I asked stupidly.
He laughed. It was a rich, kind sound that invited me to laugh along with him rather than feel laughed at by him.
“My dear, I’m
the Devil. Capital D, if you know what I mean.” He dropped one eyelid in a roguish wink.
I gaped at him. He spun on his heel, back to the bar, still talking as he mixed himself a drink.
“In all seriousness, though, that would be my most oft-used nickname. Funny story, did you know that I’m where the term ‘nickname’ originated? Old Nick, that’s what they call me, among many other things. Some more flattering than others. Prince of Darkness. Lord of the Flies – that one’s just a fancy term for shit eater, you know. Morning Star, Mephistopheles, the Great Deceiver, the Father of Lies, Satan. Take your pick.” He danced over on bare feet, swishing a martini around in its glass, and gave me a courtly bow. “Lucifer. At your service.” He straightened up and plopped a whole eyeball into the martini glass, bloody pink stalk and all. He took a deep sip and closed his unnerving scarlet eyes, licking his lips with a contented sigh. “Ahh, that’s the stuff.”
The eyeball swiveled in the clear liquor and looked at me. It was cornflower blue. I gagged. I looked up to see him watching me with a twinkle in his own eye.
“Oh, where are my manners?” He asked archly. “Can I offer you a drink?”
I swallowed. The barely-there tickle of Wormwood at the nape of my nape steadied me. Reminded me to bite down and get my guard up. I was really in the lion’s den now. Everything leading up to this had just been practice.
“I had you pegged for more of a scotch guy,” I said. “I’ll have whiskey. Two fingers. Neat.”
His eyebrow lifted, and the corner of his mouth twitched. The overwhelming presence of him eased a little. I found I could breathe again, without ever having realized how hard it was before. I had the sense that I had just passed some kind of test. For what I had no idea, but I was betting it wouldn’t be the last. Okay. I could do this. It was just a drink. Just friendly drink with the Devil. No big deal.
I reached up underneath my hair to stroke one finger against Wormwood. It hummed reassuringly against me, warm and crackly like static on a scarf fresh out of the dryer. I took a deep breath and sat down in the less threatening of the pair of wing backed leather armchairs before the fire. While Satan himself clinked around at the bar and poured me a drink, I took the opportunity to take a good look around.
The Devil’s self-proclaimed lair looked remarkably like a rather classy gent’s study. It was spacious yet cozy, the fire on the massive hearth throwing warm light across the floor, the walls lined with leatherbound books. Apparently Lucifer was quite the reader. He had titles from both ends of the spectrum and all things in between. Machiavelli, Rowling, Darwin, Bukowski, Milton, King, Tolstoy, Chaucer, they all had their place on his shelf. Maybe this was where books went after they were burned. The ceiling was so high that it disappeared in shadows before I could tell where it began. One side of the room was taken up by a massive mahogany desk. The other was dominated by a four poster bed big enough for Andre the Giant to impersonate a starfish in.
“Try this,” The Devil said at my elbow, startling me.
He offered me an exquisitely cut glass that was brimming with amber liquid.
“I wasn’t sure whose fingers we were measuring by,” he offered by way of explanation. He crossed to the other armchair and seated himself across from me.
“I thought the Devil never sleeps,” I said, nodding at the ridiculous bed.
“It’s not for sleeping,” he answered. Deadpan, he lifted his refilled glass to his lips and licked a drip of clear liquor from the rim with a forked, very red tongue.
I flushed and took a sip of my drink. It was…..well, I think it probably ruined whiskey for me for the rest of my life. It tasted like you think whiskey will when you’re young, before you actually try it. All smoke and sin and fire. It tasted like Ireland in a bottle. It tasted like green hills and fog and the breeze blowing in off a restless sea. It tasted like whiskey ought to taste.
I gave an involuntary shudder of pleasure. My eyelids flickered shut as a delicious warmth crept through my veins and my tense muscles relaxed for what felt like the first time in my life.
When I opened my eyes, he was watching me with the smug look of a man showing off his first sports car.
“That’s some damn good whiskey,” I told him.
“And an even better chair.”
I looked down. The chair was nice, buttery soft leather in a color like coffee with plenty of cream. I rubbed my thumb across the arm and noticed a dark spot on it. I peered closer. It looked like someone had taken a permanent marker and drawn a heart with an arrow through it that said
MOM. You know, like one of those old timey tattoos. I froze. I remembered seeing a post on Reddit awhile back, a picture of a pair of gloves made by the infamous serial killer, Ed Gein.
The leather of the arm had freckles on it. I was sitting in a chair made of human skin.
I forced myself to stay seated. My skin was crawling. The Devil grinned broadly at me, and the sly glint in his gaze was clearer now. I felt a sharp pinch of anger somewhere underneath the fear and disgust. He was mocking me. Treating me like an honored guest while he garnished his drink with eyeballs and seated me on flayed human flesh. He was seeing what it would take to horrify me, to break my composure.
I tilted my chin up. I hadn’t come this far to run screaming now.
“The tattoo is a nice touch.” I told him, deliberately resting my hand on the inked spot.
“Would you like to see it better?” He asked, leaning forward and snapping his fingers. “Let me bring down the chandelier.”
My heart sank as something creaked in the shadows above. I looked up, bracing myself for the next tableaux in this little show of horrors. Two pale shapes materialized out of the darkness. Bare, motionless feet. Then dangling legs. A nude, still human body was descending from the shadows above the fireplace. There were smudges of dirt and crusted blood on the cold white toes. I didn’t want to see this. I focused on Wormwood’s warmth and forced myself to keep watching as the carcass was slowly lowered. When it finally swung into full view, it felt like a freight train to the chest.
Jude’s naked, very dead body hung above me. She was suspended from a meat hook that pierced the back of her head and protruded obscenely from her mouth. Her pink hair was tangled and matted with wax drippings from the crown of black candles that ringed her head. Her arms were outstretched, two smaller hooks piercing and lifting her hands like some gross parody of Christ on his cross. The candles burst into life, lighting up my best friend’s corpse in cruel, inescapable detail.
I lurched forward and puked violently, splattering the Devil’s expensive liquor all over his sickening furniture. When I was done I hurled the glass at his head.
“YOU
BASTARD,” I screamed.
Infuriatingly, the monster in the other chair was clapping his hands and giggling like a little boy, kicking his feet with glee at my reaction.
“There it is!” He cried. “I wondered, you shy little mouse, you drab thing! No one comes knocking on the Devil’s door without a spark of hellfire burning deep inside them. There’s a lion somewhere in there after all.”
I stood there, fists clenched, shaking, utterly speechless with rage. It only seemed to amuse him further.
“Ah, you’re much prettier with your dander up, darling,” He gasped, wiping a tear from eye. “That’s right, get that blood pumping. You’ll need it where you’re going.”
“And where am I going?” I bit off. Wormwood was responding to my anger, pulsing hotly against the back of my neck.
His mirth stilled as swiftly as it had come on, like a summer cloudburst, there and gone. He looked up at me, scarlet eyes suddenly cold and calm and ancient in that young face.
“Why, to the land of the dead, Holly Moses,” He said softly, almost sadly. “You ought to know that by now.”
My knees gave out. I slumped back into the chair.
“What do you know?” I whispered.
“Everything, little one. Everything you need to go down into the deep dark, all the secrets that you must wear as armor. I know the hidden ways to bring your friend back. I am the tree that bears the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, life and death. And I’ll tell you, too. For a price.”
I bowed my head and closed my eyes. Fuck.
FUCK. “Let me guess. You want my soul.”
“Oh, don’t be dull, sweetheart, that was what I was into last century. I like to keep things more interesting nowadays. I’ll make you a deal. Let’s play a game. I’ll even let you choose which one. If you come out on top, you get those answers you’ve been so desperately chasing. I’ll arm you with all the knowledge you need to set things right topside. You can save your beloved girlfriend, be her hero for once instead of trailing after her like the little grey shadow you are. But if you don’t, I get to keep you down here as my darling little pet for the remainder of your natural life. I have many more hooks hanging above that lovely bed you noticed earlier, along with a choice selection of whips and chains, gags and ropes, cats with nine tails and wonders the mortal world hasn’t even come up with yet. I’ll take you to dark places within yourself you never thought existed. It gets lonely, down here in the ninth circle. I can’t tell how diverting it would be to have a new toy to pull apart in my boredom. What do you say?”
I chose my words carefully. Each one felt like a heavy stone falling from my lips.
“I’ll play.” I said quietly. “But here are
my terms. If – no,
when I win, you answer every question I ask without lying, whitewashing or skirting the truth. You send me back home unharmed. You give me Jude’s body and one hell of an apology. You tell me how to bring her back. And I want my memories. Not from your shit eating mouth, either. I want my real memories from those five days down in the tunnels. I want them put back in my head so I can sort through them myself. Think you can manage that?”
His smile was so wide I thought it would split his face in half. He looked like a crocodile, half submerged in the water, about to snap up his prey.
“Without a doubt.” He said, and spat in his palm before holding it out. “Now, do we have a deal?”
I stared down at the Devil’s lily white hand, dripping with viscous spit, and I took it, and I shook it.
“We have a deal.”
*
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TO BE CONTINUED *
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CATCH UP ON YOUR READING HERE: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Check the wiki for previous chapters The mayor straightened his back and looked me square in the eye.
"Look," he said, "I know you don't owe me anything. I will tell you everything I know. I promise you I will. But, before we begin, can I please put some pants on?"
"I'd really appreciate it if you would," I said.
"Yeah, some of us just ate," Runs Real Fast Man added. I let the comment slide. He was angry and, well, it was a pretty damn funny comment. So, I just met the Mayor's annoyed glare and said nothing.
"Fine," he said and stood up to, presumably, go get clothes. His phone rang. He glanced at the number and frowned. He looked over at us and then put the phone on speaker.
"Yes?" he said.
"Sorry, sir," a tinny voice said from the desk phone, "But a superhero by the name of Runs Real Fast Man entered the premises a few moments ago asking to do a security sweep. He hasn't come out again. Should we investigate?"
"No," the mayor said, "That's all right. I ran into the, uh, gentleman and we were just discussing business."
He hung up the phone and glared at us.
"You came in through the front door?" he asked, voice overflowing with incredulity.
"I know!" I said, "I thought the same thing. I at least had the decency to come in all sneaky."
He looked at me and frowned.
"Did you come in through the ground?" he asked.
"Well," I stammered.
"You entered through the panic room, didn't you?" he asked me. He shook his head and rolled his eyes in annoyance.
"Did it ever occur to you that was just a bit too convenient?" he asked. He stabbed the button on his phone again.
"Security," the same voice said.
"The pressure sensors in the floor of the panic room went off," the mayor said, "I know it did not my weight. This was an error on my part as I moved a heavy cart in there. Please stand down the Lucifer Protocol."
"Of course, sir."
The mayor hung up. He then rummaged around on the floor for a pair of pizza stained sweatpants. All the while grumbling under his breath about working with amateurs.
In my defense I had no way of knowing the mayor was some polyhuman encyclopedia who had extensive knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses before I showed up tonight. Except, of course, for the fact that was precisely the reason I had come here.
Fine. So I'm an idiot. At least there wasn't anything anyone could say to make me feel worse.
"Wraith," Runs Real Fast Man whispered to me as we waited, "I just wanted to say 'thank you' for what you did back there."
"What?" I asked without looking in his direction. Truth be told, I didn't care what he had to say. My response was more just because I thought I was supposed to say something. I was busy thinking of something else.
"I was weak back there," he said with a sigh, "You kept me honest. Kept me a hero."
"What?" I asked again and then recalled the events, "Oh? When I stopped you from pulverizing the mayor? Corpses are just harder to question. You can let that one slide. I was just looking out for myself."
"Well that," he said, "But also with Fellacity. I mean, she could have enslaved me! I'd probably have gone off with her forever and you'd never see me again!"
What? Fuck! He was right! Goddamn it! Wait. No, it's okay. Yeah. Ward knew who I really was. I had to step in to protect my identity. My identity from a guy who still thinks I'm named Dennis and has the memory of a lobotomized goldfish fresh out of shock therapy.
Fuck! Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck!
"Run Real Fast Man?" I said through gritted teeth.
"Yes?"
"Shut up!"
His face fell and I resumed sulking. But not for long. The mayor returned to his seat and fixed us with a strange look. Then, even stranger, when he did speak he did so with a completely different accent.
"I suppose," he said with a lilting Irish accent, "Now that I've told you my real name there is no need to pretend with you two. It'll actually be a relief, I think."
I just blinked in surprise but said nothing. The Mayor was the most powerful elected official in the entire District. He was supposed to be a natural born citizen. I got the feeling, however, a change in accent would be the least of the shocks I was in for.
"I was born just outside of Galway," he began. That meant nothing to me. I guessed it was a town in Ireland but my knowledge of that place could be summed up on a box of Lucky Charms.
"I was eleven when the Cross Potent took place," he said, "My brothers, Morgan and Frank, they were 14. They were twins. We looked up at the sky. We all saw four glowing crosses coming out of the sun. But my brothers? They heard singing."
He smiled at me and shrugged. Now that he was no longer pretending to be Mayor Serrafil, there was something more relaxed about him. He seemed less of a political stuffed shirt and more like an overgrown high school nerd just trying to make do with the cards he had been dealt.
"I loved my brothers," he added, "Bloody worshipped them. So when they started talking about the singing I did something that seemed logical at the time. I lied. I said I heard it too. I wanted to fit in with them. I didn't want to be left out. For awhile that was all right, then. They talked about the singing and I would agree with them. None the wiser for my little fib. Then, one day some cunt went and told the entire world how to activate their powers."
He grinned at me.
"They tried to help me for awhile," he said, "Teach me the trick of 'completing the circuit.' That's when I first heard the idea that it wasn't an act of will, but more like a word. But neither of them could say their word and, from the way they talked, I don't even think it was the same word."
He shook his head and looked away.
"My brothers figured out I was lying," he said, "And things were never quite the same after that. But, still, they told me so much by then thinking I was one of them that they eventually felt comfortable telling me even more. Thanks to those two I probably knew more about Polys than any non-Poly on the planet."
Runs Real Fast Man stirred.
"Who were they?" he asked.
"Quill Bill and Hijinks," he said with a sad smile, "Heard of them?"
Runs Real Fast Man shook his head. I had heard of them, though. Still, I kept my mouth shut to see if I might learn something useful. Besides, mostly what I knew about them was that they were a couple of the first wave of superheroes and they operated mostly in the European area. They were unusual in that they tended to work as a team whereas most Polys are solitary by nature. Other than that I didn't know much about them. Not even their powers. Just that they existed, they worked together, and, oh yeah, they were very much dead. They were listed among the casualties of the first Scourge Initiative of the Organisation Internationale de Defense.
"Quill Bill," the Mayor nee Harvey Kline said, Irish accent still rolling, "Was the older one. He was what we would now call a Morpher 2nd class. His entire skin was made from an ultra hard metal and all along his backside there were these long quills. He could shoot them from his body with incredible accuracy. He was also a Brute and that skin of his could deflect bullets without so much as denting. Hijinks, my second brother, was a Teleporter 2nd class. He opened portals. I never really got a chance to figure out his range. He could jump to China and back again if he liked. He was only a 2nd Class teleporter because he needed to either be in line of sight or to have to have physically been someplace before he could open a portal to it. Both of them would have been considered Third Tier by today's thinking."
He shook his head.
"You know the second Axis on our rating system of Polys?" he asked suddenly, "That was mine. Good, neutral, and evil. I thought it made sense. Some Polys seemed to instinctively want to destroy. Others to protect. The rest? Nether one or the other. I was naive then and, truth be told, we've never dropped it because we can't think of nothing else. But the basic flaw is easy enough to see, isn't it?"
I shifted on the couch.
"No," Runs Real Fast Man said.
"Shut up," I hissed and then, in a louder voice directed at Klein, "Good and Evil are really about perspective. One's side hero is the other side's greatest villain. A corporate raider may be beloved by shareholders and reviled by the employees of the company he is gutting."
"Well, that is a flaw," he agreed, "But it isn't the biggest. The biggest problem is I was really trying to assess the Poly's Lock-In."
"Lock-In?" I asked.
The mayor frowned and glanced at Runs Real Fast Man.
"Have you told him nothing?" the mayor asked.
"I explained . . . the parts I understood," Runs Real Fast Man stated.
"So you told him nothing?" the mayor said as he rested his face in his hands, "Christ, this will be a long night. Fine. So be it then."
He looked up at me.
"How do you feel right now?" he asked.
"Confused and irritated," I said without missing a beat.
"Is that all?"
"Mostly," I said.
"Is that what you always feel when you are in your superbody?"
I hesitated.
"That would be a 'no,' then," he concluded, "A Lock-In refers to the default mental state of the brain of the superbody. It's like an obsession. Some emotion or concept it won't let go of."
I wanted to pretend like I didn't understand but that wasn't true. Even as he was talking I felt myself reflecting on that strange and overpowering anger I felt every time I switched bodies. An anger that, somehow, seemed alien to me.
"Ah," he said with a nod, "Then you know what I mean. You can fight it for awhile. After all, you're an adult and you've had lots of experience wandering around your own head. The superbody's brain is younger. Less experience. It didn't have a childhood of trial and error learning how to control itself. It just had an alien mind hijack it and force it to dance like a puppet. But the brain inside that body is not your brain. Just like the body can do more than your other body can do, it can feel more as well. You can fight it for awhile. A long while, maybe, if you're strong. But it wears you down. It gets to you."
I felt really uncomfortable now. I glanced at Runs Real Fast Man.
"What's his Lock-In?" I asked.
"Him?" the mayor said, "Duty, of course. His mind is being affected by his superbody. But his particular breed of insanity is a socially acceptable one. So we dub him a hero."
I glanced back at the mayor.
"And you're saying you believe these extreme emotions are what causes the psychosis?" I asked, "And that the reason they even exist is that the brain of a superbody has never had a real childhood?"
The mayor shrugged.
"It's as good a theory as any," he said, "What happens to your superbody when you aren't using it?"
Now it was my turn to shrug.
"Same thing that happens to my normal body," I said, "It seems to go into stasis."
"Exactly," he agreed, "Someplace else. Someplace where it experiences nothing. So the only time it is alive is when you are at the controls. It's never had an infancy. A time when it shat itself and was helpless to the world. Unable to use its own arms and legs. Never had to be helpless and rely on others. It never had a time when it had to learn the rules of right and wrong. Or how to stand and walk. All that was shoved inside it the first time you switched places and it was born. What would that do to a mind?"
"You think we drive our own Poly brains insane and that the psychosis comes from the damage we do to the brain inside?" I asked incredulously.
"And why not?" he asked.
"No," I shook my head, "Polys that stay transformed into their superbodies just go more and more insane. If it was a matter of giving the brain a chance to grow and have experiences then they should stabilize. They don't."
He sighed.
"For one thing," the mayor said slowly, "They're never really rid of their unwelcome passenger even in the most extreme cases. You'll always be a parasite feeding off that big lunk's brain no matter what happens. A bit of you will always remain because no matter how much time they've spent being alive, you've been around longer. That difference may grow less and less significant. If Polys really can live for centuries like some believe, that percentage may eventually be almost zero. What's 20 years out of five thousand? But, it is there. It exists and that same instinct for self preservation means it is going to be hard to shift you no matter what."
He hadn't been holding up his fingers before, but now he held up two of them as if he had belated realized he should have been ticking off points.
"For another," he added as he tapped his second finger, "They still don't have a proper infancy. They can walk and talk and wipe their own arses. They aren't helpless. The things that shaped you and made you part of this world don't exist for them. They're always separate from it."
After a brief hesitation, he extended a third finger.
"Lastly," he said, "I'm not sure their brains are all there to begin with. They may well just be damaged goods. We bring in our own sanity for a while and we can force it to act the part and pretend. But it has some missing pieces and it gets harder and harder to pretend they are really there."
I shook my head.
"What does this have to do with anything?" I asked.
"My brothers," he said, "Had a Lock-In of, well, call it 'fraternity.' They loved each other and, well, me as well. While in their superbodies they were protectors because that's what family does."
He shrugged.
"Now," he said, "That means, like someone else in this room, they were going crazy in a way that most folks were okay with. But that was just short term, you see. The problem with poly brain emotions is they aren't regulated like or own. It's all extremes. If you take something too far, even something noble, it becomes a twisted and terrible thing. That's why polys tend to become monsters. Most folk don't want to be monsters. Most folk, deep down at least, are good. They want to be the heroes. The ones to fight monsters. But, it does corrupt. If you don't fight that slide, even if it seems to be in a good direction, you will turn into something monstrous."
He chewed his lip and thought about it for a moment.
"My brothers," he said slowly, "We're monsters. Not yet. But they were on their way. Loyal to each other but not so much to everyone else. They fought the real villains but . . . they grew more and more accepting of the idea of collateral damage. That the ends didn't just justify the means, that there was little reason in justify them at all. The only price that mattered was brotherhood. Do you understand?"
I nodded. He tried to smile and failed.
"It was called Project Dresden," he said, "But that's not where it took place. The OID staged a no holds bar free for all with Polys over a little insignificant town in Poland. Some out of the way place where supers could have a knock down drag out while all the civilians were evacuated. Somehow, the OID managed to convince or goad almost a third of all polys in Europe to take part in this brawl. When they thought they had enough, the town was firebombed. Even the fireproof polys suddenly found themselves standing in the middle of a thirty mile zone with no oxygen."
He shook his head.
"They should have died," he said, "But my brother . . . Hijinks . . . he saved them. I heard a scream of pain from outside the door and I came running. My two brothers lying there on the ground still smoking from their injuries. Morgan . . . Hijinks . . . was covered with third degree burns and dying. His faced was half melted off the bones. Quill Bill was not much better off. The heat had melted the metal on his body and he was frozen in place. Frank switched back to a normal human so he could help Morgan. That must have been what they were waiting for. I saw Frank fall before I heard the first crack of the rifle. I heard the second one just as a portal opened in front of me and I fell in."
I blinked.
"Your brother saved you?" I asked.
"It was his Lock-In," he reminded me, "Probably didn't even know he was doing it. I don't know how anyone that badly burned was still alive. Much less how he activated his powers. I just know I was standing there one moment in a pile of my own brother's blood and muscle as they sloughed off his body. The next I was kneeling in the sand at Virginia Beach. We'd taken a holiday there two years before. He must have been thinking about it when he sent me away."
"So . . . , " Runs Real Fast Man said, drawing out the vowel sounds, "You're not really from Baltimore?"
I rolled my eyes in exasperation and glared at him.
"Seriously?" I asked.
To my surprise, Runs Real Fast met my gaze. Well, his helmet did. But he managed to somehow suggest that it was I, somehow, who was missing the obvious.
"I've read his biography," Runs Real Fast Man said, "It has interviews with his childhood friends in it."
I was actually getting ready to brush the entire thing off as being entirely beside the point. After all, what did the fact he was an Irish asshole versus a D.C. asshole really matter? But, to my everlasting shock, Runs Real Fast's words managed to sink in.
What he was suggesting really was impossible. I mean, I never read his biography but I did know he had a history. A known history that could be seen. His old high school asked him to be a guest speaker recently. Even his childhood home was known. Hell, people had supposedly even dug up his old yearbook photos. No assumed identity could be that flawless.
It was all lies. It had to be!
My anger flared and I looked back at the Mayor to see him cowering.
"I said no more lies!" I found myself roaring at him.
Something . . . happened. I don't know what, exactly. The shadows in the room started warping and bending once more. I was drawing them into me. But, it was different than last time. I still wasn't entirely certain what I had done before. But I could feel this was on a completely different level. Before I had been playing with matches. Now I was dousing the room with gasoline and breaking out a flamethrower.
The air around me grew colder. I swear I saw frost building up on the surface of the couch to either side of me. As it did it was as if all the light in the room faded. All, that is, except a tiny halo of light that circled Mayor James Serrafil. He was all I could see in that moment. All I could hear. He was the entire world and I was ready to tear the world apart.
I clenched and unclenched my hands. Darkness sparked off my fingertips. I can't explain it but that's what it looked like. The exact opposite of light. Flickers of pure blackness that swallowed the light where they flew. The couch groaned beneath me as if I had gained a few hundred pounds in the space of a few seconds. I was going to hurt this man. Hurt him for betraying us. Hurt him for wasting my time.
My rage kept escalating up and up. Past the point where I could comprehend language. My thoughts were now just blind emotions. Human speech was just grunting. I was not going to kill this man. I was going to annihilate him from existence. They wouldn't be able to find what was left of him with an electron microscope when I was finished. I was going to-
My face exploded with pain. Something moving faster than I could see had struck me. Struck me hard! I felt the bones in my face deform and crush. Then, almost immediately, they sprang back into shape. The moment of pain was fractional. A few seconds and it was gone. My regeneration abilities were running high. But that moment of pain was distracting and I needed to address it.
That distraction saved me. I needed to find the source of the pain. Something unexpected happened and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Of all the animals that have ever set foot on this planet, the one that was absolute best at this was a human being. Human beings run the best mental algorithms to extract meaningful data from the gigabits of data that assaults us every second. We're experts at determining what to pay attention to and what can be safely ignored. We extract patterns. Like, for example, I recalled feeling something like this from earlier in the day. Runs Real Fast Man had punched me.
That realization saved me. Not because of some sense of friendship or camaraderie. It was that for that fraction of a second I needed to make the correct inference from what had occurred, I was thinking like a human being again. An angry human. One consumed by passion and thirsting for revenge. But compared to the heat of the anger I was feeling it was an mid-winter ice bath in Siberia.
I blinked and the shadows snapped back in place. I was still burning up inside while the air around me was, paradoxically, freezing cold. But I had both hands on the tiller once more and I was bringing the ship around and back out towards calmer waters.
I unclenched my fists.
"-wake up!" Runs Real Fast man was shouting in my ear. It was weird. I knew that words must have preceded those, but I could not recall them. I looked at him again. He had his fist drawn back to punch me again. His glove was stained red. Blood. His blood. He hadn't just punched me. He'd wailed on me at superspeed. His own regeneration was healing the damage to his fist now. But before he had been pounding into my skull faster than his skin could knit back together.
"I'm back," I said to him simply. Slowly, he lowered his fist. As if doubting he could trust me.
"I am telling you the truth!" someone blubbered.
What? Oh yeah. The mayor. I was in his basement. I was mad at him for some reason. Why? I couldn't remember. More and more of the anger drained away from me . It seemed to be dragging my most recent memories with it.
Truth. James Serrafil existed. I knew that. So, why was this man insisting he was Harvey Klein?
I looked at the whimpering man curled up into a fetal position on his chair. He was sobbing like a baby. This wasn't fear. This was pure terror like I had never seen before. What the hell had I been doing? What had he seen?
I clamped down on more of my anger, more than I ever have before, and slowly forced the beast back into its cage.
No! My brain! My rules!
I took a deep breath and held it. When I spoke my words were calm.
"Harvey?" I asked, "Tell me what I'm missing? How can you be both people?"
He didn't seem to hear me at first. He just kept repeating the same words over and over again. Like they were a shield from some unimaginable horror. I was sure I'd have to repeat my words to him. But it proved to be unnecessary. Somehow, it got through to him. Maybe he just saw the light in the room return. A change in the temperature. Whatever the reason, he looked up and saw it was just me sitting on the couch again. Not that that was a particularly welcome sight, but he went along with it.
"James Serrafil existed," he mumbled at last, glancing over the top of the arms that covered his face, "He died five years ago. While he was still running for mayor."
That didn't make any more sense.
"You're saying, what?" I asked, "You somehow got plastic surgery and voice lessons so you would look and sound just like him?"
"Elocution lessons, yes," he said as his Irish accent faded away once more, "I couldn't go about using my real accent. But, no, I didn't have plastic surgery."
"You just happened to look like him?"
"Not even close," he said, "No, my real body looked nothing like this. It . . . it ended up being cremated at the city's expense. Just another unfortunate nameless soul left to die alone on the street. Dozens die every year in anonymity. No one noticed the addition of an extra."
"Still not following you," I said.
He sat upright and unfolded himself.
"I told you I knew more about Polys than most humans," he said, "Well, when I landed on this bloody shore all I could think about was getting back to Ireland and finding the people who did this to us. They knew who my brothers were. They were waiting for us. Came gunning for us. They knew the firebomb wouldn't stop them so they waited in ambush. I needed to find out how they knew and why they did what they did. I wanted to stand in front of my would be assassin's face and stare him right in the eye. All before I shot him."
"So you . . . became mayor?"
"Yes," he said, "I could tell even back then that Serrafil was going to win. He was campaigning on a policy of ending the Poly threat. People were voting with their hearts and not their heads. He was stirring up hate and unrest and riding the wave to glory. If I could be him I could be the most powerful man in one of the districts of the former USA. Who would see anything amiss with him going to Europe and looking into the affairs of like minded politicians?"
"That doesn't explain how you did it," I pointed out.
"I'm getting to that," he said, "I had, well, call them facts. Facts about how Polys worked. It allowed me to, well, extract data. I could make educated guesses about what Polys were out there and what their abilities might be. I never shared this with anyway. Not even the other members of SPITE."
"SPIT," Runs Real Fast Man corrected automatically.
The mayor ignored him.
"After nosing around for a few months I found out something that seemed to be impossible," he said, "I found evidence that there was an incredibly powerful Poly operating in this hemisphere that no one seemed to know about."
"How?" I found myself asking. The mayor shrugged.
"New clippings and a lot of statistical modeling," he admitted, "It's amazing what you can find at your local library if you are motivated enough. I found a lot of anomalies. Reports of miraculous healings or tragic deaths. Strange towns where the birth rate and the death rate were exactly the same and had not deviated for years. Odd reports from institutions where mad men claimed to be someone else. Taken individually it was meaningless. Taken together, I could see a pattern. A powerful Poly was at work. Experimenting with his powers. I plotted the anomalies geographically and found what I thought might be his stomping grounds. I set out with no greater plan than to find this Poly and to enlist his help. What sort of aid he might offer I did not consider. I was angry and assumed if I had a big enough hammer all my problems would become nails. Life, as it turns out, can play cruel jests on the unprepared."
"You found him?" I asked.
"He found me," he corrected me, "He wasn't being sloppy. He was laying out a trap. He wanted to see who might be looking for someone like him. He wanted to know how well hidden he truly was. He was looking for government spooks or powerful corporations. Instead he found a grief stricken teenager beating the bushes as if he were searching for Dr. Livingstone."
"Who?" Runs Real Fast Man asked. We both ignored him this time.
"Trust me when I say this, Wraith," he said, directing this last comment at me, "You terrify me in ways I cannot articulate. The thought of trying to stand up to you turns my spine to jelly. I have you listed as a Tier 2 but now that you are finally starting to show your fangs for real, I wonder if we might have estimated you. I want you to realize this so you understand that when I say 'I would sooner build a summer home and move in with you than spend another minute in the company of Thanatos' you will grasp the full magnitude of what that means."
"Thanatos?" I asked.
"That's what I called him," he said, "I never asked him for a name. I don't . . . think he realized he needed one. But, as my data had suggested, he had the power over life and death. A gift he exercised upon me quite freely over the course of several days. I confessed to everything. Who I was. What I wanted from him. Everything. But it was useless. He never asked me a single question. That was not why he did what he did."
I swallowed hard. Any lingering embers of anger were crushed as my imagination kicked into overdrive. What did he mean by power over life and death? Was he really suggesting that this Thanatos . . . killed him repeatedly over a course of days?
The mayor frowned.
"If such a thing could be said to exist," he said at last, "Thanatos was a Tier 0 Poly. He was the closest to godlike I have ever encountered and I do not want to repeat the experience."
"So he tortured you for, what, for fun?" I asked.
"No," the mayor said with a shake of his head, "He did it to give me exactly what I came for. He spent time working on me. Pushing me to depths I never knew existed. Making me despite myself and my own pitiful existence. I hated my body. Hated my weakness. Hated being me."
"Why?" I persisted.
"So that when he handed me a gun and pointed me at Serrafil I would not even blink," he said through gritted teeth, "He aimed me at my target and gave me permission to take this man's life. And I did. I felt the bullet tear through his chest. I saw through his eyes. Saw me, the man I had grown to hate, shooting me down. I was in both bodies for a moment. I felt myself dying. Again. And then it was over. I was alive and breathing. I was healthy and unharmed. The body that had been me lay there before me on the street. Dead."
"He swapped your bodies?" I asked.
"He did more than that," he explained, "He made me want this body over my own. To desire it. To detest my own flesh. I wanted to be Serrafil because I'd rather be anyone else than Harvey Klein at that moment. He made me murder myself. Afterwards he left. He never spoke a single word to me and I have never went searching for him again."
"Why did he help you?" Runs Real Fast Man asked. Leave it to him to ask the obvious questions. The ones I should be asking instead if I could think clearly.
"I don't think he did," the mayor answered frankly, "I think he gave me what I wanted. He showed me exactly what that meant. He made me execute this man and steal his life and gave me no way to back out. I believe he did it to me because he knew exactly what I was. A child consumed with thoughts of revenge. Too caught up in himself to see the bigger picture. He turned me into a life thief and left me to regret my insolence. To wear the skin of the man I slaughtered as a constant reminder not to meddle in the affairs of gods."
We fell silent for a moment. I didn't know how to follow up on that thought.
"But you formed SPIT," Runs Real Fast Man blurted out, "I mean . . . you couldn't have given up entirely if you did that. You must have still thought you could do something."
The mayor's lips twitched in an approximation of a smile.
"Funny how it is," he said mournfully, "When someone robs you of everything but revenge how that very thing becomes your anchor. What defines you. No, I did not give up. I grew more committed and I doubled down on my attempts to learn everything I could about Polys. To catalog them and learn their strengths and their weaknesses. Partially so I could defend myself against them. Mostly to find out who else was looking for the same information. SPITE or, well, SPIT grew in secret. I recruited some confederates. Like minded people and I took a backseat role so none would know I was driving things. When they looked for the head they might miss the heart of the beast. We learned much and even began feeding some of our information back to a select few. Like you, Runs Real Fast Man. But then the Outsiders came in."
"How did they find you?" I asked.
He spread his hands wide.
"Maybe we did not cover our tracks as well as we thought," he said, "Maybe I was betrayed by someone yet again. I honestly don't know. All I know is that we've had to supply them with a sacrificial Poly every few weeks or they go for the nuclear option. We've . . . started running out of Polys who inconvenience us. At least, ones we know their true identity. If it makes you feel any better, you were not our first choice. Or our second. You're the fourth former ally we've had to turn upon in the past week."
"Week?" I asked.
He nodded.
"They've accelerated their time frame," he admitted, "And, no, I don't know why. I half suspect they just want to see what we will do if we are desperate enough."
"You seem to attract sadists," I commented dryly.
He shot me a withering look.
"Present company included?" he asked.
Touche!
I half shrugged and looked around the room. A private sanctum, I now realized, for a fraud. A nerd pretending to be the man we saw on TV. It wasn't just imposter syndrome. He really was a completely different human being in private.
"Fine," I said, "So what can you tell us?"
For the first time, he spun his chair away from me. But not to avoid my gaze. He was shifting his focus to the computer behind him. He tapped a key and brought up a logon page. It was lightning quick unlike my work PC.
"Not much," he said, "They're good at hiding their tracks. I've had my sources in some of the conspiracy nets looking into it. But so far we've turned up little."
"Wait," I said as I held my left palm stiff and horizontal and touched it to my vertical right palm for form a "T" shape, "You visit conspiracy sites?"
"Visit them?" he muttered, "I moderate most of them."
"Moderate!" I stammered. What little respect I had been building for the man rapidly evaporated, "Have you read the garbage they write? I just read one today about a Poly plot from a secret district known as NevaZona!"
He shot a look over his shoulder and frowned at me.
"I'll have you know I put a lot of research into that one!" he snapped.
I frowned.
"You wrote it?" I asked.
"What?" he said, "You want me to prove NevaZona exists?"
"No," I commented dryly, "I'm just trying to verify you're really DamselInDisDress."
"Well I can't very well post as Mayor Serrafil, can I?"
"Moderator of 'Conspiracy Sluts?'" I added.
He rolled his eyes and sighed.
"Look," he said, "If you want to get to the bottom of a secret you have to learn how to be secretive yourself. Throw people off and hide in the last place they would ever look!"
He finally logged in and the computer chirped a greeting at him with a synthetic male voice.
"You have 1,023 new Dick Pics!" the computer said.
"Fuck!" he snapped as he slammed his fist into the table, "Get drunk one night, shave my ass, and post it on the internet and suddenly every pervert in the region thinks we've shared some private moment."
"Uh," Runs Real Fast Man stammered, "You're DamselInDisDress?"
"What?" the mayor asked as he glanced over his shoulder, "Yes, I just said I was. It's one of several pseudonyms I used."
"Oh God," Runs Real Fast man half said and half belched, "Uh, can you tell me where your bathroom is?"
"Down the hall," Serrafil replied as he went back to his computer.
The wind buffeted me hard enough to stir papers as a Runs Real Fast Man sized vacuum was suddenly left in the room. I looked back at the computer as Serrafil navigated his way to, well, something.
"Something wrong with our friend?" he asked in a way that indicated he was only half paying attention.
I thought about how best to reply.
"You know those moments," I said at last, "Where it's uncomfortable now but, years later, you look back upon them and just laugh and laugh?"
"Yeah?"
"This isn't one of them," I concluded.
He gave me a knowing nod.
"Ah," he said, "Ate too many nachos, am I right? Eyes bigger than his stomach! All that grease and cheese going right through him, I bet!"
I looked down the hallway and back again. I shrugged.
"Maybe if you play your cards right," I agreed, "Then, who knows?"
Serrafil, er Klein, shot me a puzzled look before returning to work on his computer. I decided not to elaborate.
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