A Thousand Fiendish Angels: Stories Inspired By Dante's Inferno (2 page)

Stepping carefully along the overgrown rocky path, I noticed that the plants in the churchyard were withered, all color leached from them. Yet they still covered the earth thickly, rising up from around the edges of tombstones as if growing from the bones beneath. The fury of the storm surged again, crackling with energy, wind whipping round in tornado spirals, lifting the heads of strange albino flowers to the sky. Dust and ashes blew into my eyes, painting the scene with the desolate grey of mourning. I rubbed them frantically to clear my vision and hurried into the porch, my face brushing against something soft as I stumbled out of the wet gloom. I reeled back to see a dead crow hung by the neck above me, blue-black feathers still adhering to decaying flesh, its eyes open and unseeing.
 

Pulling at the great door, I found it opened with a sigh, as the wind was sucked inside, filling the void with the desolation of chill air. I stepped through, my footfall stirring dust from the floor, the noise echoing around the deserted building, which absorbed the sound hungrily. The light inside was an amethyst haze from the heavy storm clouds that barely penetrated the nave through intricate stained glass windows. Looking up at them, I discerned the images of tortured saints, martyred in the most ingenious ways for the glory of their God. This place seemed to venerate death, rather than eternal life, and ahead of me, as if in homage, a life-size crucifix hung behind the altar. Christ's face was a skeletal version of the dead Faerwald, as if the Son of God could see what Hell awaited him beyond the veil.
 

My eyes dropped to the altar, draped in cloth that had once been pure white but which now hung in dirty, dismal tatters. As the holiest place in the building, it was the most fitting to bury such a book. I walked towards it, across flagstones carved with the names of the dead. The words ran into each other like the broken letters on Faerwald's body, a mass grave of victims who perished together in some ancient plague. I usually felt a calm peace within churches, a sense of something holy, but this place was malignant and hungry, taking each breath faster than I could exhale it.
 

A pair of candlesticks coated in melted wax rested on the altar, the gold of their surface dulled by dust. I could make out the twisted figures of crucified angels, tortured by the implements of martyrdom, their mouths open and calling to a God who had deserted them. This was a strange church indeed where such objects were venerated, but I was compelled to discover more. In the centre of the altar was a box, a tabernacle for the Host, the bread of the Eucharist turned into Christ's body for the consumption of the faithful. I pushed the lid open to see a mass of crawling maggots within, their swollen white bodies wriggling over each other to get at the crumbs of wafer, an unholy miracle of rotting sustenance somehow sustained in this unnatural place.
 

Sensing that the book was close, I knelt down at the altar and a momentary chink appeared in the madness that possessed me. My resolve wavered and I knew I should just walk away now, leave the church and be done with this place, but other thoughts intruded. My sordid apartment, the fighting neighbors who disturbed my sleep, the debts I owed at the bar and the need to top up my vodka supply ever more frequently. To walk away now was only to return to that life, but this book was something precious, valuable enough to be hidden here, a secret that perhaps I could unlock, or sell at the very least.
 

My mind made up, I crawled around the altar, examining the flagstones for any evidence that they had been lifted. The dust and grime of years layered my frantic fingers as I searched, but finally, I found a place that had been brushed clean. The flagstone was carved with a strange symbol, a curling filigree of loops ending in a forked demon's tail, crossed through with a shaft. It was cracked through the center, with a chink at the side, and as my heart pounded with excitement, I levered it open.
 

In the violet light that touched the stone with a sickly haze I saw the book. Immediately I felt a visceral desire to possess it, an emotional wave that overwhelmed me with infatuation. I lifted it from its resting place, pulling it to my chest like a long-lost child. The cover was soft leather, a patchwork of colors reminiscent of the varieties of human skin tone and it smelled of ancient herbs, a heady scent of rich tombs and incense disguising the darker note of death.
 

It opened beneath my eager hands and I tried to read the first words aloud. They were strange-sounding in my mouth, but within a few lines I could not hold back the torrent that flooded from me. It was as if the book spoke through me and as my voice grew stronger, it echoed in the nave of the deserted place, rivaling even the power of the storm that raged outside. As I reached the end of the powerful prayer, the world seemed to tremble and split as sounds of lamentation filled the air. I crouched down, utterly terrified, screwing my eyes tight shut, trying to block the cacophony with my hands. Words of agony assaulted my ears in horrible dialects with the sounds of pounded flesh, as tortured spirits howled like dogs on the hunt. Then all at once, it was over and I heard soft footsteps in the silence that followed.
 

Emerging from a side chapel, where I had thought lay only tombs, came the woman from the photograph who had danced with such abandon all those years ago with the young and handsome author. Her long silken hair hung loose, with flowers wound at the crown, as if she had just woken from dappled sleep on the banks of a sparkling stream. Her skin glowed with an internal light like the alabaster from Egyptian tombs and her full lips were a deep peony pink. I watched her tongue dart out to lick them and my breath was drawn from me by her beauty. Her eyes were blue as a cornflower meadow, languid like a summer day and, gazing into mine, offered pleasures beyond my imaginings. As she walked towards me, I could see the outline of her perfect breasts straining against the white gossamer of the long flowing dress. She exuded innocence with an edge of erotic knowing, and as she drew closer, I could scarcely draw breath. She pressed herself against me, her cool hand feathering down my chest to my belt.
 

"Through me, there is everything you desire in this life," she whispered, as her hand moved lower. "You only have to write it on your skin and it will be yours." Her lips touched mine, her tongue darting out to lick delicately at the corner of my mouth. "And there is only one tiny thing I want in return."
 

My lips opened against hers and I pushed all thought of Faerwald's bloated body from my mind, for surely his diary could only be the ravings of a madman.

##

Sins of Treachery

The priest intoned the Canticle Benedictus as the coffin was lowered into the hardened ground, frozen by the long winter. Simon watched as the solid oak casket descended, his eyes drawn to the gold tetragrammaton on the lid, his grandfather's final prayer. A silence hung in the air before Simon bent to pick up a handful of damp earth to throw on the coffin, but as he did so, he heard a thud as someone else performed the family honor for the dead. Simon straightened quickly, and when he saw who it was, the soil spilled from his hand.
 

Gestas, his errant twin, had finally returned, but only now, after the death of the man who had raised them. Simon felt a stab of anger at how Gest had stolen this final sacred moment from him, and a deep resentment for his years of desertion. Try as he might, Simon had never been able to take the place of the favored twin with his grandfather, in spite of his labor in the pursuit of the Great Work.
 

"Grant this mercy, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to Thy servant departed, that he may not receive in punishment the requital of his deeds who in desire did keep Thy will ..."
 

As the priest said the final prayers, Gest smiled thinly at his brother, his pale hazel eyes and high cheekbones a perfect mirror of Simon's own, yet somehow bearing an air of superiority and entitlement that set him apart. His black coat looked expensive and Simon was suddenly aware of his own threadbare clothing. At a superficial level, they were identical twins, but Simon had always felt like a pale imitation, a watery reflection of his brother's bright color. The old jealousy rekindled within him, a remnant of childhood rivalry, but he tamped it down.
 

"May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."

The gathered crowd responded in prayer and then began to move away from the grave. Simon shook hands and nodded appropriately as people spoke kindly to him of his grandfather. But his eyes kept straying to Gest, who stood silently by the grave, his taut energy repelling any who thought to approach him. Finally, when the last of the mourners had left, Simon walked to his brother's side and they stood looking into the pit, a reminder of where all must eventually rest.
 

"Why now?" Simon asked, his voice clipped, almost breaking.
 

Gest looked at him, his cold eyes serpent-like.
 

"He sent me a letter asking me to come. Said he had something for me, something you were unwilling to take to its conclusion. So, where is it?"
 

Gest put his hand on Simon's arm, his fingers gripping tight. Simon remembered the games of their youth, how his bruises and broken bones were always blamed on clumsiness, how Gest had been praised for caring so much for his little brother, the weaker twin, the slower twin, the twin less blessed. That hand was still able to crush and dominate.
 

Simon flinched, feeling the years peel away.
 

"It's back at the house."
 

***

The mansion would have been opulent once, but its grandeur had faded through many years of neglect. Gest strode into the dark entrance hall, his quick steps taking him into dusty rooms the brothers had run through together as children, hiding amongst the towering bookcases, their palaces of imagination.
 

"It really hasn't changed much," he said. "Seriously Si, how have you managed to live in this gloomy place for so long?"

Simon watched his brother's mercurial movements, the confidence in his stride, and recognized that he had ever been the saturnine twin, the dark side to Gest's golden sun.
 

"I've been helping Grandfather," he replied. "You know how much his research meant to him, and now to me."
 

Gest laughed, and Simon felt his years of intellectual pursuit dismissed in a heartbeat. He had heard rumors of how his brother had spent the last twelve years, his string of women and exotic travels funded by the wealth they were both supposed to inherit, his expensive tastes paid for by ever-dwindling funds. Simon knew that lust had also ruled his grandfather's early life, but the old man had wanted more as he grew older, searching for power and fulfillment beyond material things. Simon had succumbed to his own tug of desire for influence far beyond his brother's petty pleasures, but there were days when he still longed to lose himself in an orgy of flesh, and take intimacy to the realm of ritual.
   

"Well, how you live your life is your choice," Gest said. "But I want what he promised me, then I'll leave you alone in this melancholic place."

"His gift is in the lab." Simon replied, walking ahead through the dilapidated hallway and opening a metal door. "It's been extended since you were last here."
 

The neglected main house was in stark contrast to the gleaming laboratory, secretly constructed, where no one would have suspected that Simon and his grandfather continued to pursue the Great Work of the alchemists. It represented a mingling of cutting edge science with the occult, chemical formulas jostling for position with the symbols of medieval hermetics.
 

Gest idly picked up a round-bottomed flask and swirled the ruby liquid within.
 

"Careful with that," Simon snapped, snatching the flask from his twin and placing it carefully back onto its stand.
 

Gest moved around the lab.
 

"That's his book, isn't it?"
 

Simon turned from the bench to see Gest fingering his grandfather's most precious tome, open to a page of intricately detailed drawings and symbols inscribed with spidery handwriting.
 

"Actually, he gave that to me. It's not what he left you." Simon heard a childish possession in his own voice and he thought back to the night when he had ripped the book from his Grandfather's arms. The old man had begged to hold it once more, his arms outstretched in need, covered with the tattoos of words he had never explained. His eyes had been shadowed with dread as he reached for the book, sinister memories the man couldn't help but relive, but would never speak aloud. Simon had thrust the vodka bottle at him instead, for his grandfather's addiction had become the only way to quiet him, while he delved ever more deeply into the contents of the book.
   

Simon watched anxiously as Gest picked up the book anyway, desperate to tear it from his brother's irreverent hands. Its cover was a patchwork of different colored leather, sewn with cords and pulled tight like scars on a checkered board of human skin. The spine and pages were edged with gold, a work of art even without the precious words within.
 

Turning away as if he cared nothing for the book, Simon walked to a large print on the wall. Etched in pitch black upon a white background were intricately woven symbols of the planets, astrological signs and their alchemical metals. Simon's eyes were drawn to the iron of Mars, the god of war, next to Mercury's quicksilver, ruling planet of the twins of Gemini. He touched one side of the print and it swung from the wall to reveal a safe.
 

"So that's where the old bastard hid his treasures," Gest said, as his attention switched. Simon heard a thump as the book was dropped on the desk and a shiver of relief ran through him.