Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Copyright © 2016 by Daniel MacKillican

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, undead or from another plane of existence, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Published, 2016

www.DanielMacKillican.com

For my mother

Chapter 1

Death at last, Jason thought, as the rope tightened around his neck. He accepted the pain as a minor inconvenience, an unfortunate discomfort he had to endure while his life came to an end. He hoped his attacker possessed the resolve to finish the job, before a guard had a chance to stop him.

The prison chaplain once said that Emily would be waiting for him in paradise, a belief Jason didn’t share and thought was nothing but tired nonsense. A fairy tale for the bereaved that he wanted to be true but knew wasn’t. The preacher’s hollow words of comfort had no effect on the sickening sting of grief. Jason had concluded that the universe was indifferent to life, and of death, no doubt, cared even less. It wasn’t through a lugubrious veil of depression with which he saw the world; this was an unequivocal acceptance that life was abhorrent with no meaningful purpose, so why put off the inevitable. The eternal void was in the next room, and he had no intention of keeping it waiting.

Even though he wanted to die, he couldn’t stop himself groping at the rope around his neck. Failing to pull away from its suffocating embrace, he reached back over his head and grasped for his attacker’s face. These were just reflex actions, an uncontrollable primal instinct for self-preservation. If he could stop choking for a moment, he would apologise to his attacker for making it so difficult for him. He wanted his life to end without too much fuss, so he tried to persuade his body to be passive, but it still fought for breath as his brain screamed for oxygen-rich blood. Relax, his diminishing consciousness called to him. Stop fighting, it will be over soon.

A wave of euphoria rolled over his body, giving him a means to float above the pain. Beautiful, he thought, as rhythmic lights passed before his eyes. Streams of vibrant colour wiped the sparse walls of his cell in and out of view. Hypoxia detached his mind from his body and quelled his instinctive reaction to fight. His heartbeat became a distant drum, its final declining beats echoing from afar and counting down the last moments of life.

Jason’s hands fell to his sides, and his legs crumbled beneath him. His body became limp and moved at the whim of his frenzied attacker. He watched with helpless resignation as the hard cell floor rushed up to meet his face, his nose and left cheekbone breaking on impact. A crimson haze coated his fading vision as blood vessels ruptured within his eyes. A knee fell hard onto the nape of his neck and the rope went slack. The attacker paused his assault to gain a stronger grip, before snapping it back into position with renewed savagery. The fibres of the rope tore into the soft tissue of his throat.

He felt one last vague sensation before leaving this world as a bone in his neck cracked.

Jason’s mind fell silent.

Chapter 2

Jason stood with his back to the twenty-foot-high perimeter wall of the prison. His hair moved in gentle waves in the warm summer breeze while his eyes remained closed in serene contemplation. An exquisite sense of freedom pulsated through his entire being as he became aware he could at last walk away from that hellish place.

It’s not a prison, one guard had told him, four years ago on his first day of incarceration. A brick tomb for your mind, maybe, but not a prison.

Built a century ago as an asylum for the insane, for a moment in time it gained prison status. This home for the deranged was now known as “the hospital”. Regardless of classification, it stood as a red-brick monument to the darker side of the human psyche. A mansion for those with broken minds to be studied, and a vault to lock away the toxic effluent of British society. A place for the instigators of real-world nightmares to lay their malevolent heads, to rest, and to plan for a day when they might be unleashed once more. Jason held to the belief, then as now, that his actions should not have entitled him to a room at the hospital.

The last four years of his life had to be written off, but at last he had his freedom back, and for this blissful moment he felt human again. He tried to hold on to this mood of serenity for as long as possible, but it soon gave way to a more familiar feeling of stagnant anger—a monster in all but visceral form.

The monster had been his constant companion for the last four years, taunting his confused waking thoughts and whispering to him through the cracks of his diseased dreams. His mind had become a chaotic maelstrom of disjointed memories and uncontrollable emotions, a boiling caldron of absolute love for his daughter, Emily, mixed with violent hatred for his wife, Zoe. They were once the ingredients that gave his life substance and meaning, until his wife became the poison that brought death and psychological destruction to their door.

These memories spun on an unrelenting loop and always showed the same unbearable scenes: Emily’s blood-glazed eyes looking back at him from her tiny broken skull and Zoe’s throat being ripped open by his own hands.

“Now, you have nothing,” she said with her last breath.

While in the hospital, these turbulent thoughts always brought him to the edge of emotional paralysis, where he teetered until plied with enough drugs to drag him back from the brink.

Although his decaying sanity had been explained to him many times by the various doctors, he couldn’t understand why imprisonment resulted from his actions. Yes, he had killed her. He had murdered his wife in a barbaric way. There was no question about what he had done, and he hadn’t tried to argue otherwise. But, in his mind she had to die: he had justification for murder; the barbarism of the act was unfortunate but incidental. There was no madness guiding his hands.

The judge and jury hadn’t seen things the same way though. For doing what he thought had to be done, he received an indefinite number of years of psychiatric evaluation at the hospital. This involved daily cocktails of brain-dissolving drugs, until he became as docile as roadkill, and hours upon unending hours of talking it through until his brain became numb. As if there was a mystery to what had happened. There was no mystery, and there was no insanity either; his wife had killed his daughter, so he had killed her. Being sent to a prison for the insane was the only mystery.

“Not a prison, Mr Drake, it’s a hospital,” recalled another voice from the past.

“Well, you bastards, I’m out now, and with my brain still intact.” He enjoyed the warm summer sun as it continued to kiss his face, while a light breeze caressed his skin with soft undulating honeysuckle hands. He opened his eyes and tried to focus. Darkness dissolved into a blurry mass of flickering lights. His eyesight registered a meaningful vista as colour and definition filled out the scene before him.

A tree, he thought. A handsome old tree.

He watched the graceful branches of the old oak swaying in a hypnotic soiree with the passing light wind. Sporadic clumps of leaves fluttered in excited pulses as they vied for the affections of the radiant sun.

He took in a deep breath, and then exhaled with slow, practised control.

In with the good and out with the bad, as one of his hippy-drippy doctors used to say whenever Zoe became the topic of conversation. The mere mention of her name always ignited a fire in him, and that fire always became an inferno. The doctor used to cut his angry outbursts short with various words of psychiatric babble. No, he would say, take control of your emotions. Mark the bad ones and then flush them away with a cleansing breath. In with the good, Jason, and out with the bad. Clean and pure in, diseased and rotten out. Clean and pure… Clean and pure…

The doctor’s voice faded from his mind as his gaze fell upon a scattered patchwork of beautiful flowers. The flowers flaunted themselves to the eager bees, which hovered and flew between the colourful nectar-rich landing pads. He watched as Mother Nature’s perfect story played out before him. For a moment, he became a child again, with his senses wide open to let the wonder take hold. Spectacular flora stood proud on a thick carpet of lush green grass, a banquet of colour bowing with majestic elegance in the lazy breeze as a rippling ocean of evening dew sparkled off into the hazy distance.

He had a sudden urge to rip off his clothes and run naked through the long grass, laughing as he jumped about like a madman. He smiled to himself instead. “Time to move on good buddy,” he told himself. He surveyed his surroundings, deciding where to go from here.

The picturesque English countryside extended out in front of him. Far-reaching fields rose and fell with the elegance of feminine curves, while low-hanging trees beckoned him to come and explore. As he walked, he saw explosions of colourful bloom erupting at random points throughout the landscape. A bright spectrum of roses announced themselves to his senses. The vivacious colours enticed his eyes, while potent aromas enthralled his nostrils.

Emily would have liked this, he thought. She loved playing with the flowers, making buttercup bracelets and daisy chain necklaces, causing a fright, from time to heart-stopping time, when she stroked the furry little bees. Stripy bears with wings, she used to call them. Emily had been a spirited six-year-old and fearless in her innocent little adventures.

An energetic robin flew past with its beak clamped around a juicy, fat worm. Jason presumed it made for a twig-woven home and imagined the hungry mouths jostling for the wriggling food dropping from above. Rabbits hopped here and there, deliberating on which tufts of grass were the freshest, unconcerned by this new creature strolling through their domain.

His shoe clipped a congregation of ripe puffball dandelions as he passed, sending their cargo of seeds on an accommodating wind. The tiny carefree fairies ascended in an exquisite spin, shimmering as they danced towards the cloudless sky.

He felt a slight sense of unease. At first he couldn’t understand why. Everything looked so perfect, but the nagging voice inside his head continued to fret. There were no houses, cars or roads. There were no signs of civilisation at all. Anxiety crept into him.

Although retaining a relative measure of English country charm, he knew the town beyond the hospital’s walls had had its fair share of twenty-first-century urban sprawl. He had seen the evidence for the human virus from the windows of the prison van on his journey to the hospital all those years ago. The sky should also be criss-crossed by the ethereal scars of aviation. He remembered watching the many planes fly over from the small window of his cell. But the evidence, or lack thereof, remained clear to his eyes. Apart from the repugnant wall behind, obscuring the psychiatric tomb beyond, there were no cars, houses or roads. And the firmament hung unmolested, save for the resplendent sun melting into the smouldering horizon. As long as he didn’t look back towards the wall, he could be forgiven for thinking he was the only person in a world where people never existed.

He continued strolling across the uncut sea of green, dismissing his itch of unease and feeling sure the peace would be broken soon enough by the human irritation. To hell with the whys and wherefores of my solitude, he thought. Don’t know and don’t care to understand. “I could do with a pint, though,” he remarked to another passing robin. “That would be the cherry on top.”

The field descended into a shallow valley, and Jason caught sight of a cottage on the level ground at the bottom. Not just a cottage, he soon realised, but a cottage pub. He quickened his pace.

As he drew nearer to the pub, his delight grew as he observed its rustic nature: a single-storey cottage with white stucco walls and a thick dark grey thatched roof, with a smoking chimney protruding through the thatch. On an evening like this, he wondered, it must be baking in there. Two large windows formed the happy eyes of the pub, each flanked by dark wooden shutters. In the centre, positioned between the two windows, hung a large wooden door. He strained through squinted eyes to see the name of this gladdening sight, which was on a sign hanging from the left corner just below the thatch. He was still too far away to read it. It’s an old country pub, he thought. It’s perfect, whatever its name may be.

When married life was still a happy affair—a faded memory that may never have been so—he enjoyed dragging Zoe around dusty old second-hand shops. Old photographs were his quarry, simple snapshots of chocolate-box cottages just like the one standing before him now. He framed and adorned the walls of his own modest home with these pictures. “One day, babe,” he used to say to his wife each time he balanced a new picture upon the wall. Make enough money to move to the country; that was the plan before it all turned to shit.

He stopped next to a rusted iron bench, its wooden seating beams long since rotted away. This must be the beer garden, he mused. He looked up at the sign and marvelled at the painted image upon the wooden board. It looked more like a work of art than a simple pub sign.

A naked and beautiful woman stood in a graceful yet strong pose, with a large snake entwined around her goddess-like curves—as if the two were sharing an intimate, almost erotic, dance. The woman’s fiery red hair was hanging down in long loose curls, reaching just below her alluring waist. Jason felt his penis twitch.

He read the name inscribed on the wood, just below the picture:

Lilith’s Folly

Perfect, he thought. Would Lilith be behind the bar, ready to pour his drinks with a flirtatious smile and a seductive glint in her eyes? He laughed to himself. At least I’ll be able to get that drink.

Chapter 3

Jason turned the brass hoop handle in the centre of the door and pushed; a loud creak broke the tranquil evening air as the solid oak door stuttered open. He hesitated. Keep calm, he thought. You’re not in the hospital anymore; there will be normal average Joes in there. He stepped into the pub.

A generous open fire crackled in a twisted iron grate on the right. The flickering illumination from the burning logs created a dance of shadows upon the rough lime-washed walls. Even though the open fire burned in full splendour, the interior seemed to be cooler than the outside air—almost freezing.

An old man sat on a rocking chair next to the fire, his back hunched as he leaned forward and stared into the pulsating flames. A large dog lay on the slate floor next to the old man’s feet. The dog looked to be a German shepherd. Jason stood on the threshold of the pub and considered the dog. It was a magnificent creature but striking in its immensity. If it was a shepherd, it was at least twice the size of any other he had seen, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the creature, either. The dog’s sculpted muscles looked both impressive and intimidating through its sleek black fur. The dog raised its head, aiming its snout high, and with rapid thunderous breaths, it tasted the air. Its moist lips rippled in waves over large canine teeth. The moment the dog’s dark, penetrating eyes locked on Jason, it stopped sampling the new scent and became a terrifying freeze-frame.

“Don’t worry ’bout old Hobs, son, he’s not hungry yet,” said the old man in the rocking chair. “I’ll be feedin’ him soon.” He reached out with a jittery hand to stroke the dog but halted a few inches from its fur. He returned the apprehensive hand to the arm of his chair.

“Good to know,” Jason replied, while his eyes remained concentrated on the dog.

He liked dogs, the big breeds most of all, but there was something about this one that ignited the hairs on the back of his neck and made his throat itch. That the hound’s eyes glowed red for a moment added more jitter to Jason’s nerves. With an uneasy hand, he shut the door. The dog’s eyes simmered to a less terrifying black.

“What can I getcha?” a jolly voice called out from the well-stocked bar.

The dog lowered its head back to rest and closed its eyes, and the old man resumed his intense visual search of the burning logs. Jason decided it would be safe to continue with his quest for a drink, so he made for the bar. He kept a respectful distance from “old Hobs” as he passed.

“Hi,” Jason said, as he surveyed the drinking options. One beer, in particular, stood out as the appropriate choice. He was about to order but stopped, realising he’d better check his financial situation. Searching the pockets of his jeans, he found a twenty-pound note and pulled it out. “A pint of Old Asylum please.” He looked again at the money in his hand and corrected himself. “Make that two pints and a double of your best whisky. Thanks.”

After being unable to enjoy a drink for the last four years, he had no intention of wasting time easing back in with moderation. He considered jumping off the sobriety train faster by dispensing with beer altogether and sticking to straight whisky, but experience had taught him that beer made for a softer landing the next morning. That he was an alcoholic on pause played little on his mind. He had started his quest for the perfect drink about a year before his daughter’s death—it was the only way he could cope living with the bitch wife from hell. Now, after four years festering in the hospital, consumed with thoughts of the past and unable to wash them away with a simple drink, he had no care to live another day without alcoholic lubrication. Time to fill a few glasses and push the play button on his vice once more. How close to personal oblivion can I get on twenty quid, he wondered. Not very, but at least it’ll get me moving in the right direction.

“Ice in the whisky?” the grotesque and obese barman asked through a yellow smile.

“Only if you put it in a separate glass, my friend,” Jason replied. He tried to make the crumpled note in his hand look more presentable before passing it with blatant enthusiasm across the counter.

“Huh? Oh, separate glass. Yeah, I get it. Witty fuck.”

Jason watched, his fingers tapping on the counter, as the barman progressed through the motions of pouring his drinks. Disgusted fascination drew his attention to the rolls of fat oozing out from beneath the barman’s skin-tight shirt. The colossal belly rolled and stretched for a moment before it caught fright and disappeared back up under the shirt again, a shirt with a kaleidoscope of stains from various and dubious origins. Jason tried to hide the revulsion writing itself across his face as he debated the wisdom of drinking from any glass given to him by this man. Don’t worry, he thought, the alcohol will kill any bugs that might want to jump ship from that toxic monstrosity. He forced a congenial smile but, after catching his reflection in the mirrored wall at the back of the bar, realised it looked more like a petrified grimace.

The barman passed the drinks across the sticky counter—spilling a sip or two with his clumsy bulbous hands.

Jason motioned with a nod towards the twenty. “Thanks.”

The barman gave a perfunctory wave. “Oh, that’s okay. We’ll sort out what you’ll pay later. Looks like you’ve got some serious drinking to do first. Don’t want to bother yourself with the economics of it all.”

“A bar tab, cool idea. Thanks.” Jason looked down at his dishevelled note on the counter. “That’s all I’ve got, though. Let me know when I hit it.”

A slight but unsettling expression took hold of the barman’s face. Jason wondered if the man was trying to look into him instead of at him. He could almost feel someone scratching around inside his head. Get a grip, he told himself. He also wondered if the barman had once been a bare-knuckle fighter and had had the shit kicked out of him on more than a few occasions. An assault course of bumps and jagged scars covered his ill-fitting face. Some bizarre boils of purple and greenish hues mingled with the bumps. His crooked nose appeared to be an afterthought thrown onto his face. Jason’s gaze fell to the barman’s slimy anaemic lips and watched as they slid over the yellow and black of his sporadic teeth.

The barman’s lips parted, leaving two fine strands of spittle in their wake as he released a weak laugh. “Don’t worry yourself about that. Life’s too short.”

“Well, okay then. Thanks again.” He pocketed the twenty, picked up his drinks and turned to locate a place to set up camp. He wanted a quiet place to drink and think. The old guy was still gazing into the open fire, with Hobs the mutant wolf asleep at his feet. On the other side of the room were two rickety looking tables, each with two accompanying chairs. At the table nearest to the bar sat another old guy—this must be the Friday night bus pass club, he thought. As he made for the empty table, Jason considered how he could kick-start his life again. Visiting Emily’s grave would be the first stop tomorrow—since he was in police custody and had been refused permission to attend the funeral four years ago.

“This is your last chance to repent,” announced the solitary man as Jason passed his table.

“What?” Jason exclaimed in surprise and spilt more precious beer. “Shit!”

“Off he goes,” the barman said, chuckling to himself. “Got to jump right in, ain’t ya, Peter? Why are you spoiling the fun?”

The old man, Peter, glared at the barman. “Mind your place, Sam.”

Jason ignored the man’s offer to converse with the Almighty. He wanted to get to the empty table as fast as possible and to try to blend in with the nineteenth-century decor. As he made himself comfortable at the empty table by the window, and was about to continue his mindful plans for the future, Peter broke his train of thought once again.

“You’re no longer alone in your thoughts. There are many eyes watching you, and your poor soul is about to be judged. These despicable creatures of filth, these demons, want your judgement to be harsh.” He raised his hand and pointed a gnarled and bent finger towards the bar, where Sam was polishing glasses and placing them with careless abandon on a shelf above the counter. The accusing finger moved its aim towards the old man by the fire, but the finger’s final target wasn’t the old guy, but the dog at his feet. A moment later, the loaded finger withdrew. He held out his withered hands towards Jason. “I can lead you away from this place but you have to repent your sins.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. But I’ll pass.” Jason offered a placating smile instead. His smile was met with a face of stone, so he returned his gaze to his drinks. He positioned the three glasses into a line, like a trio of old but not forgotten friends, ready to welcome him back into their liberated fold.

A hearty laugh erupted from behind the bar. “Leave him be, Peter,” Sam said while pouring himself a shot of whisky. “He doesn’t want to hear your jabberings. Nor do I, for that matter.” He lifted his glass towards Jason in a drinker’s salute. After draining his glass, he continued, “Don’t mind the old fool. He’s like this with all new arrivals. Thinks he can save everyone. You would’ve thought he’d given up trying by now, but no, off he goes again.”

Jason lifted his glass and, with a half-hearted nod, returned the salute. He downed the whisky and enjoyed the comforting warmth as it coated his throat. It’s been a while my friends, he thought. Time to cool the fire. He took a pleasing sip of beer. After waiting a minute or two for the atmosphere in the room to feel a little less charged, he stole a look across at Peter. The old guy was leaning back in his chair, gazing up with wide vacant eyes at a precarious-looking ceiling beam. A faithful congregation of one, Jason thought. Waiting for the word that’ll never come. He looked back at the silky white head of his drink. If this situation was on the road to getting any weirder, he didn’t want to be sober when it arrived. He raised the glass to his mouth and paused, relishing the tingle of the delicate bubbles on his top lip before taking a loud gulp of the fermented nectar.

He looked across at the old man by the fire. He was rocking slowly back and forth in his chair, and the chair creaked in time with its motion. Jason remembered some of his compatriot inmates at the hospital, those whose brains had travelled to a land of drug-induced apathy while their flesh remained planted to a plastic chair. A few of them used to while away their days head-banging to the beat of their own wasteful demise, as their inner demons feasted on the remnants of their lives. The old man also looked emaciated. His translucent skin stretched smoothly over his skull, cheek and jawbone almost visible as they pushed back against the old canvas. Crinkled strands of grey hair fountained out in confusion from the back of his otherwise bald and liver-spotted head. No doubt death stood a step away from the old guy but waited until the cruel picture of decay had painted itself, before it would step forth to take him.

If I end up like that in thirty-odd years, Jason thought, I’ll be throwing a noose over the nearest beam. He drained his first pint.

The old man stopped rocking and leaned down to pat Hobs, but again he stayed his hand at the last moment. He crooned to the dog, “You hungry yet? I’ll feed you now if you want.”

Hobs’ ears twitched, but the dog’s apparent enthusiasm for the old man’s offer stopped there.

“She won’t be happy if you feed her mutt when she ain’t here, Vermis,” Sam advised, pouring himself another drink.

Vermis? Jason thought. There’s a name you’d thank your mother for.

“No, I know,” Vermis replied. He rubbed his deep-set eyes and returned his gaze to the flames. Without looking away from the fire, he asked, “How long will she be?”

“Not long,” Sam answered. “When Peter fucks off, you’ll know she’s here. Then you can feed it.”

Jason lifted his second pint to his mouth but didn’t drink. On overhearing Sam’s words, voyeurism became the taste on his lips. He looked over his drink at Peter, who was still looking skyward with no apparent reaction to Sam’s comment. I might stick around for this, he thought. Better than a television soap. Hope my twenty quid lasts, though, because I could do with another round. He put his drink down and dug deep into the pockets of his jeans for backup to his dwindling twenty; there might be more money hiding away in there among the lint.

“You look like you’re ready for round two.” Sam placed two new pints and another double whisky on Jason’s table.

“Whoa, didn’t see you coming. Thanks. You read my mind.” Jason gave up on his futile search and pushed his two empties across the table towards Sam. “So, Lilith is a real person? Not just the name of the pub, I mean.” Although tempted, he refrained from also asking if her folly was running a pub in the middle of nowhere.

Sam’s cold studious eyes fixed on Jason. “Oh, yes. Lilith is real. Real as real can be. She’ll be here soon.”

Jason sipped his whisky, and then asked, “Does she look like the picture?”

“Picture?”

“The one on your sign.”

Sam laughed: a guttural explosion that sounded as though thick mucus had moved up in the world. Jason retreated his drinks to his side of the table, away from any incoming pollution.

“That’s a sexy picture, ain’t it?” Sam replied. He rubbed his nose with the back of one hand and then continued, “No, not quite. That picture loads my gun, but Lilith, the real Lilith, she’s the one who fires it.”

Jason wished he hadn’t engaged Sam in a conversation. The man was a slobbering fool and resembled a giant slug.

“It’s a good pic, but it misses the mark when it comes to my Lilith. Ain’t got that devilish sparkle.” He belched with pride and thumped his chest with a fist, dislodging something sticky in his throat, which he hacked up and then swallowed back down again.

“Your Lilith? She’s your wife?” Jason couldn’t help sounding surprised. The ugly ones always get the stunners, he thought. Another mystery of the universe. Although, devilish sparkle could be like saying someone has a good personality; she looks like crap but can be fun to pass the time of day with, and after a few drinks, who knows.

Sam laughed. “No, no. We were together once, a long time ago, but no, she’s not my wife.” He lowered his voice, put a hand on the table to steady himself, and then leaned in closer to Jason. With a croaky whisper, he continued, “I sure would like her to grease my pole again, though, from time to time. Y’know, those times when I ain’t got no other flags worth flying. Don’t tell her I said that, she’d rip out my tongue and ram it up my derrière.” He barked out a dry laugh.

An acrid odour hit Jason’s nostrils—a sensory assault that felt like a red-hot poker being rammed up his nose. He looked up at the slimy ogre who stood, far too close, before him and wondered what sort of woman could tolerate this man’s company while she was still in anything resembling a living state. Sam’s occasional other half, he mused, probably looks like a haggard witch with a side order of violence. Jason’s memory flashed to thoughts of Zoe.

Zoe had been a beautiful woman, small and elfin-like in stature, with long silky black hair that gave Jason a titillating rush every time she flicked it in his direction, always followed by a playful glance and a knowing smile. He had fallen in love with her the moment they met. In the early years she had been a gentle and loving person, with a passionate and seductive streak she used with natural elegance to drive him wild. But everyone has a darker side, a festering inner twin that hides somewhere deep within. Sometimes it never raises its ugly head. For an unlucky few, though, it takes hold of the delicate and fragile being it inhabits. Zoe’s darker twin became apparent soon after Emily came into their lives. The doctors said the fiery moments were down to postnatal depression and assured them it would pass in time. But it didn’t pass. And as the years went by, her sudden outbursts grew more violent. Jason believed he was, and would remain, the only target for Zoe’s venom. He had never considered the possibility she could lash out and kill their daughter, discarding of her body in such a callous way.

He tried to push the memory of his wife from the forefront of his mind. He knew travelling down that particular memory lane always ended in a dark place he would find hard to return from. He wanted this fat disgusting man to go away, but he needed to guide his mind away from toxic thoughts about Zoe—chit-chat with fat Sam the barman would have to do. He leaned back in his chair in a futile attempt to distance himself from the noxious fumes emanating from Sam. “Who is Lilith? The one on your sign?”

“Adam’s wife.”

“Adam?”

“Yeah, you know, God’s grand plan.”

“Oh, that Adam.” Jason looked down at his drinks but saw Emily’s broken and bloodied face staring back at him. He held her in his arms, his hands covered in her blood… Need to think about something other than the violent past, he thought, but not religious claptrap. I can’t deal with a discussion about the guy in the sky who loves to play with his human ant farm. And how we’re all screwed from the start because of Adam and… “Hang on, Adam’s wife? That was Eve. That much I remember. Adam and Eve.”

Sam exaggerated a sigh and then asked, “Have you read the Bible? Have you seen the words with your own eyes?”

Jason rolled his eyes and looked up at Sam.

“It’s playing with you,” Peter interrupted. “Like a cat pawing at the crippled mouse. Don’t let it distract you.”

“Have you read it?” Sam asked again, waving Peter off with a brisk hand.

Jason’s attention became drawn to the dog. Hobs sat up and looked back at him with luminous ruby-red eyes. He wondered if it came from somehow crossing a wolf with a bear. This dog was enormous.

Vermis leaned forward, his face an inch from Hobs’ ear. “I want to feed you, my glorious beauty, I do, but Samael, he says no I can’t. I got to wait for...” He turned and fixed his smoky bloodshot eyes on Jason.

“Well?” Sam said, crossing his arms tight to the northern hemisphere of his gargantuan belly.

“Many moons ago, yes,” Jason lied. He had considered reading the Bible in the past. From time to time. More out of curiosity than any religious inclination, and to see what two thousand years of fuss was all about, but he’d never got around to it. Zoe believed that every child should have a Bible, so she’d bought a small leather-bound one for Emily. She had placed it on Emily’s bedside table. Soon after, Jason had moved it to the bookshelf and placed it between Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh—a joke not well appreciated by Zoe. He threw back his whisky. “And I’m sure it was Adam and Eve the Bible talks about, not Adam and Lilith.” His head spun for a moment as the spirit hit his stomach with a harsh bubbling heat.

“Shit on a stick,” Sam said. “Hang on.” He reached for his back trouser pocket. His enormous weight and apparent lack of dexterity made this a monumental effort.

Jason watched as droplets of sweat rolled down Sam’s face. The flowing yellow beads mingled with grease and dirt and created a small tide of grime. The disgusting brew hung from his chin for a moment before dripping onto his shirt. That explains one stain, Jason thought. He reduced his three pints to a pair as he continued to watch the curious discharge exuding from the barman’s face.

“Let there be light,” announced Sam, as he pulled a small Bible from his pocket.

“You’re kidding?” Jason said, and then thought, careful Jase, the locals could be stoking the fire for the heretic.

“Kidding about what?” Sam used his stubby unwashed thumb to swipe with reckless disregard at the dishevelled pages. “Here it is!”

“If you’re about to read the Genesis story to me, don’t bother, I’ve heard it before. God pulls out Adam’s rib, and—voilà!—creates a woman.”

Sam gave Jason a disdainful glance and stabbed at the Bible with another dirt-encrusted digit. “No, not that part, not Eve. That’s Genesis 2:21, I’m talking about what happened before that, in Genesis 1:27.”

Jason could see the fat man preparing to read. “Okay fella, you don’t need to…”

Sam cleared his throat and preached. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Sam stabbed at the pages once more. “Male and female created he them. Male and female; man and woman; at the same time. Adam and Lilith, way before that submissive slut, Eve, came on the scene.” He kissed the Bible.

“Take it easy there, big guy. I could almost hear the choir. I don’t care either way, but I’m sure Adam’s other half was Eve.” Jason didn’t know why he enjoyed goading this fat obscenity of a man. In the past he had tried to avoid confrontations, but he felt a thrill at the prospect of making Sam angry. Maybe it was because he had no time for religion, or those who preached it. Jason felt an urge to take a mouthful of his drink and spit it into Sam’s face—a long phlegm-rich burst smack into that fat… ugly… excuse for a face. He didn’t spit, as he slayed the beer duo down to one.

Sam threw the Bible down in front of Jason. “Are you sure? Read it for yourself. It’s there. In all its cryptic glory. It doesn’t mention her by name, but it’s talking about Adam and Lilith. Not Adam and Eve.”

Peter slapped his hands down hard on his table and yelled, “Stop this, Sam. This isn’t a game.”

“What? I ain’t doing anything I shouldn’t. I’m just talking to this guy. Getting to know what’s going on in his witless head.” Sam chuckled. “It is a game, Peter. A splendid game. You’re just bad at it.”

“No, Sam, you foul creature, it’s not a game. The immortal life is not a prize. He must have this chance to see his mistakes, and you will let him.”

Sam threw his hands in the air. “Yeah, yeah. You old… Go on then, give it your best shot, but you won’t get this one. He’s not listening to you.” He headed back to the bar with Jason’s empty glasses.

Jason had heard, but not listened to Peter and Sam’s little discussion. His attention was drawn to the small tattered Bible that Sam had left on his table. A cold chill ran up his spine, and a sudden urge to vomit churned around in his stomach. With escalating horror, he realised the Bible Sam had pulled from his ass pocket and thrown onto the table in front of him was the same one Zoe had given to Emily. His expectation of throwing up increased when he flipped the pages back to the inside cover and read the name scrawled in a child’s handwriting. He could hear his dead wife’s voice as clear now as he had heard her speak back then.

“When you’re older you can choose what you want to believe. It will be your choice. But this book will be there for you if you want it, or if you need it. Write your name in your best wormy writing, Em, and make the book your own.”

With a careful studious hand, she wrote:

Emily Drake

Laughter exploded from behind the bar.

Jason glared at Sam. “What the hell is this? A trick? That’s it, isn’t it? A bloody pub trick. Not funny, pal. How did you get hold of this?” He held up Emily’s Bible and waved it with evangelical energy at Sam.

“No magic, and you’re correct, it’s not funny,” Peter said. “It’s all very real. More real than anything you’ve ever known. Repent now, before the judgement is made. Or you’ll go to a place of eternal pain and suffering.” His voice became more urgent as he pleaded. “Please, before it’s too late.”

“Look, I respect your beliefs an’ all, but I don’t share them. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God.”

Sam laughed. “No? God don’t believe in your worthless ass either. You’re an atheist, you say? Well, God don’t give a shit.” His laugh became a roar.

“Don’t listen to it,” Peter said. “Sam is but a loathsome creature of no consequence. Its only purpose here is to get inside your head and draw out your anger. Don’t let it. God is here and His light is upon you. But, your time is short in this place. Show God the regret you hold for the things you’ve done.”

“Things I’ve done? What the hell do you know?” He felt his hands shake. They know nothing, he thought, they don’t know that I murdered my wife. How could they know that? Sure, Sam had somehow got hold of Emily’s Bible, but… This is just a stupid trick… Or something? The Bible has just, somehow, worked its way into Sam’s possession. They’re just small-minded religious shits having fun at a stranger’s expense. Let’s get him all worked up and on his knees, fearing for his immortal soul, and then laugh our asses off at him.

“Your wife, Jason,” Peter said. “Ask God to forgive you for killing your wife. Tell Him that you regret that part of your life.”

Jason looked at the old man, stunned, and then declared, “Okay, mindfuck over.” He poured the final beer down his throat in one, and then stood and pulled the twenty-pound note from his pocket. He threw the money down next to the Bible and glanced across at Sam. “Keep the change, you fat fuck, if there is any.” He lowered his gaze and looked at the Bible. Intense sorrow welled within him. It can’t be the same one, he thought. No way it’s the same book. Jason left it on the table and made for the door.

Sam called after him, “You can’t leave, fuckwit.”

Jason cringed, remembering how Zoe used to call him that, screaming her twisted thoughts in frenetic bursts of verbal poison and always postscripting her insults with either violence or lyrical name-calling.

Jason grabbed the door handle and turned it. The door remained shut, and his aggression towards the handle had no effect on this fact.

“Jason, you can’t leave,” Peter advised. “You must be taken from this place. Either by me or...”

Jason cut Peter off with a loud grunt as he pulled hard on the door handle. He threw his weight against the door, shoulder first, trying to loosen the hinge, lock, or whatever barred his exit. It remained shut. He looked at it with contempt and then glanced at the windows either side. Unsure what to do next, how to deal with this situation, anxiety and fear clamoured over his thoughts. He had just spent four years living behind locked doors he had no keys for and would not be passive while forced to endure another moment of imprisonment. He considered breaking a window with a chair or using Sam’s face to smash the glass. Without turning round to face the bar, he said, with seething calm, “I suggest you open this door, Sam.”

“No, I don’t believe I will,” Sam replied.

“Is Lilith here yet?” Vermis asked. “I don’t want to disappoint. I made a promise I must fulfil. He will punish me if I don’t. Please let me balance the scales.”

“Shut up, Vermis,” Sam answered. “You’ll be able to feed Hobs soon enough.”

Jason turned and came face to face with Peter.

He looked into Jason’s eyes with an unnerving intensity. “Don’t listen to Sam. He’s in your mind and has been since you first came, playing with your memories, your emotions, and he’ll use them to cloud your thoughts.”

“Look, I don’t know how you know what you know, and, to be blunt, I don’t give a shit.”

Peter grabbed Jason’s shoulders. “Do you regret killing your wife? You don’t understand what’s happening here and you’ve no idea what will happen if you don’t repent. Regardless of your beliefs, both heaven and hell do exist. If you don’t show regret, now, you’re going to the latter.”

Sam interjected, “He has to mean it, Peter, don’t forget that bit, and you know the simple-minded shit don’t. He can’t just say it. You can’t have him unless he means it.”

“Hold your tongue, Samael,” Peter hissed back. “Or I’ll ignite your foul breath and let you burn for a thousand years.”

Jason knocked Peter’s hands away. “No! No, I don’t regret killing that evil bitch, and I’d do it again with relish if I had the chance. So, fuck off, and leave me alone.”

Peter lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Jason.” A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“Don’t sweat it, old man.” Jason pushed past and made for the bar. He grabbed the empty pint glass as he walked by his table. He felt an anger growing inside, a rage he hadn’t felt before. Different even to that which drove him to kill his wife. That was an uncontrollable response to the death of his daughter. This was a pure sadistic desire to inflict pain on a complete stranger. Many unknown voices burst into his mind.

“Cut his throat out.”

“Slam the glass into his face.”

The voices taunted him.

“You’re a coward if you don’t kill that disgusting, fat piece of excrement.”

“Are you a coward, Jason? Are you a weasel of a man?”

“He is. He’s the discarded afterbirth from a rancid whore.”

Jason could hear laughter but knew not from where or whom it came.

Hobs’ eyes tracked Jason as he passed. The dog then turned to Vermis and licked the old man’s eager face. Vermis began unbuttoning his shirt while a gap-toothed smile grew across his face. “Okay, my beauty, I am for you.” His arthritic fingers fumbled and twitched as he worked to open his shirt.

Jason stopped a few feet from the bar and tried to fix Sam with his best “Don’t fuck with me” stare. He knew it was more like the wide-eyed stare of a rabbit just before being squished by an oncoming truck. Shame washed over him as he considered what he might do next: was he prepared to smash the glass into Sam’s face? Anger had been his biting companion for so long, twisting his perception of the world, and the people living in it, into a disjointed and chaotic mess. Maybe anger could be his ally now. He would make the threat and hope he wouldn’t have to act on it. Although he did feel a thrill at the prospect of cutting Sam’s face open. He raised the glass, making his intention obvious, and then spat his order at Sam. “Open that fucking door.”

The dregs in the glass dripped out and splashed onto the slate floor. Sam stared at Jason for a moment, smiled, and lifted a hinged section of the countertop. He squeezed his enormous gut through and joined Jason on the public side of the bar. Jason took a jaded step backwards. Sam’s smile widened and he laughed into Jason’s face, his breath potent with the smell of rancid putrefied meat. Jason’s moment of bravery diminished. The provoking voices within his head fell silent. The glass in his hand descended back to his side. His attempted hard-man stare was now nothing more than that wide-eyed rabbit waiting for the oncoming truck.

Sam’s mocking laughter abated. “Go ahead. I’m done with this body now, anyway. It’s dead, and the decaying flesh of your kind offends me.”

“What?”

“I used it like you’d use a car, and when I’m done, I’ll find another.”

“I… What?”

“Time for a new one, methinks. Who knows, maybe I’ll go ride your daughter for a while.”

“Emily… Emily’s dead… Don’t talk about my daughter.”

Sam moved to within inches of Jason. “Is she? You think you know what life and death are? The comprehension for the eternity of things is far beyond your grasp. A pathetic creature. An insignificant parasite. You’re lost in a stagnant pool of filth. Swimming in circles of shit as the pure ocean of existence is about to wash you away. You should have listened to Peter, Mr Jason Drake, because you are now fucked.”

“I… I want to leave.” Jason took another step backwards. You coward, he thought. If mice could talk, one just did.

Sam’s tongue slid out and moistened his cracked lips. Then he asked, “Before you’re taken to hell, tell me something. Do you think your daughter’s decaying body will still be juicy enough to grease my pole?”

Jason smashed the pint glass into the side of Sam’s head, shards of glass cutting deep into the pale skin of his ear and cheek. Sam winced and his balance faltered, but he didn’t fall.

Jason glared at the fat man. There were no schizophrenic voices directing him this time, just pure fury now burning within. He glanced down at his own hand, and the cuts he’d received from the broken glass. Deep lacerations smiled back at him from his slashed skin, but no blood. He looked at Sam. No blood flowed from his wounds either. Sam’s left cheek hung in torn strips. The lower half of his ear dangled from the side of his head by a thin shred of skin, but there was no sign of blood flowing. The flesh below his skin looked more pink than red and was mottled with dark spots, which might be congealed blood, but nothing at all resembling a fluid.

Sam grinned at Jason’s obvious confusion. “It died a while back. Oh, but wait, so did yours. But you and I are still walking and talking. Hmm… How’s that work then? Bit of a mindfuck, you might say. Pain? Yes, you betcha there’s pain. You better get used to that because you’ve got an eternity of it ahead of you. Pain upon soul-crushing pain. Like nothing you’ve ever known before.”

Jason cocked his arm back, preparing to ram his fist into Sam’s face, but a sound from behind broke his concentration: a short rip and then a wet splattering thud. Jason spun round. He expected to see Peter standing there, but Peter had gone.

Jason gasped and then stumbled back against Sam, fear transforming his body into a trembling mass. His brain was at odds with what his eyes were telling it. Jabbering thoughts filled his mind as his eyes widened, trying to take in more of the horrific and disturbing scene before him.

Vermis hadn’t moved from the fireside, but he was naked from the waist up. The pallid skin of his belly was cut open in a vertical cut from button to breast, his bowels trailing out from the open wound and being devoured by Hobs. Jason watched in terror as Vermis jerked forward when Hobs tugged on the human sausage a little too hard. A contented smile rested on the old man’s face while he continued to feed himself to the dog, piece by glistening piece. Vermis appeared happy, even ecstatic, to pull the contents of his own belly out and offer them to the hungry, oversized wolf. Unlike Sam and himself, Vermis had blood, lots of blood, which poured from his open belly.

“All… for you… my beauty.” Vermis eased out more of his bloody entrails for the ravenous dog. His words became mere murmurings as his life ebbed away with the dog’s every gluttonous mouthful. “You can… have it all.”

Jason’s shock and confusion grew as he looked upon a new figure in the room and realised that Vermis might not have cut himself open.

A naked woman stood next to the bloody carnage. In her right hand, she held a foot-long dagger, its handle and guard dotted with sparkling gemstones, its blade dripping with blood.

Jason tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “Who—?”

“I told you Lilith was real. Real as real can be.”

Sam’s voice passed over Jason without recognition.

Chapter 4

Lilith looked to be in her early twenties. Not dissimilar to the woman depicted on the pub’s sign, but with a more remarkable beauty. An exquisite sexual quality that captivated Jason, compelling his attention away from Hobs and its human feast.

Her silken hair fell as long loose curls and lapped against the outline of her glorious curves, flowing around her ample breasts in luminous waves. But not red like the woman’s hair depicted on the pub’s sign. In fact, not any singular colour that Jason could distinguish. Her hair shimmered through a spectrum of burning shades, tender flames licking her bare porcelain skin, her astonishing sapphire-blue eyes sparkling from deep within the fire.

After a heavy breath, Sam gushed, “Isn’t she magnificent? Wouldn’t you like to slip between her thighs? And if she resists, like you hope she will, hold her down and slither over her like that snake.”

“You must be Jason Drake,” Lilith said while wiping the bloodied blade of the dagger against her thigh.

“Oh, God.” Jason’s body trembled as his mind became a broiling cauldron of fear and lust.

“No,” Lilith said. “You are one of my toys now.”

Without the slightest drop in her gaze, or perceptible effort, she swung the dagger out in a wide arc and decapitated Vermis in one unbroken move. The old man’s head flew back in a spin as a jet of thick blood spurted out from the exposed flesh of his neck. The head bounced off the pub’s window with a dull thud and came to rest beneath it. Hobs dragged Vermis’s remains from the chair to the floor and tore at the corpse with teeth and claw.

“Your thoughts are delicious,” Sam whispered. “Never mind Vermis, focus on Lilith’s beauty. Go on, feed your desire. Dominate her. Drag her to the floor and have her. Rape the succulent bitch!” He pushed Jason forward, towards Lilith.

Jason could see nothing but Lilith. She became a drug for his eyes and a provocateur to his desire. Her perfect lucent skin and toned physique exuded potent nubile vigour. She held his gaze with a tangible, yet unseen, force. She enchanted him.

As Jason’s eyes traced the outline of Lilith’s nakedness, a sudden impression of unrestrained depravity fixed in his consciousness. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but he wanted to destroy this beauty with his domination of her. The feelings of lust grew to feel like suffocating vines around his morality, possessive and fierce, a burning intent to have her in all the depraved ways he could, to devour her. He could feel his sanity decaying as cascading thoughts of conquering her filled his mind and became lucid visions before his eyes, a vivid image of sexual violence that grew in brutality. He watched himself stabbing at her with his enormous erect penis as he slid with rapturous ecstasy in the steaming blood and shredded remains of Vermis. The visions became grotesque with exaggeration. He forced his elephantine penis into her as talons replaced his fingernails that tore at her flesh. In his waking dream, he was clawing at her body, tearing at her meat until claw scraped bone. He pulled her further onto him, subjugating her, ripping the skin from her belly and thrusting his pulsating penis into her lustrous flesh. The visions flickered and then faded away.

He stared at Lilith in stunned silence.

She wore an elegant smile while teasing her aroused nipples with the point of the dagger.

Jason squeezed his eyes shut as his mind raced again. It’s a nightmare, he thought. Or an hallucination. The drugs. I’m still in the hospital. The bloody doctors have just given me a double dose, that’s all. It’s not real. Thank Christ, it’s not real… It’s not real!

She laughed with childlike exuberance. “Your thoughts are amusing. No, Jason, you’re not in prison anymore. You’re dead. You died in your cell. I’ll let you have that memory back soon enough. You get one death in that world, but you’ll have many within mine. I’m here to take you home with me.”

“What? I’m not dead. I wanted to die. What the hell is going on? I’m still here. No… Not here. I didn’t die. I’m not dead… How are you hearing my thoughts? It’s the drugs, that’s all… You’re the Devil?”

Lilith giggled, and then she stroked Hobs’ head with a tender hand. It looked up at her, flesh hanging from its fierce jaws. A moment later she stopped her caress and Hobs resumed its meal, crunching down on a splintered leg bone. “No, Jason, I’m not the Devil.”

“She’s far more beautiful than that pathetic creature,” Sam simpered.

Hobs turned its head and fixed Sam with glowing red eyes, the old man’s leg still held tightly between its jaws. Hobs released a low, deep growl which reverberated through the slate floor. Its hackles rose, and a wave of silver flashed across its fur.

Lilith threw the dagger down and towards Sam’s feet. “Samael, leave Jason’s mind, and then cut out your eyes for me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Sam crouched down and picked up the dagger. “But… I want to use these eyes to watch. Please, let me use the fat man’s eyes.”

“Cut them out, or I shall pluck them out myself.”

“No! My queen… I will.” Sam plunged the tip of the blade an inch deep into the corner of his left eye. He turned the dagger and then levered at his eyeball with the flat side of the blade. He continued this self-mutilation until the gelatinous mass popped from its socket. It hung down on his cheek by its fibrous optic nerve. Sam grabbed at it and pulled, ripping the eyeball and nerve from its mooring. He repeated the barbarous procedure with his right eye. Once he had finished, he held out both eyeballs, offering them to Lilith. “There, my queen, for you.”

“You’re a bore, Samael. I’ll play with you later.” Lilith waved her hand with dismissive nonchalance.

Before a word of protest could pass his lips, Sam turned into a vaporous apparition of his former self. His body rose a few inches from the ground. The dagger passed straight through his hand and fell clanking to the floor. Sam’s translucent body writhed in an agonised rejection of its sudden transformation. His body stretched and deformed. He reached out towards Lilith with the eyeballs still in his hand, as intense pain carved itself upon his aeriform face. His arms twisted until the bones broke with an audible snap. His skin ripped and more bones shattered. Jason winced at the sound of Sam’s body tearing itself apart, but he couldn’t look away. The mutilation continued while it hung unsupported in mid-air. One by one his fingers peeled back and broke. Ribs cracked and tore through his exorbitant flesh and then through his shirt, shredding the material as his chest tore open. His internal organs liquefied and then oozed from the open cavity. And still no blood came.

Jason looked on with sickening awe as Sam’s body was turned into pulp. Then his gaze shot to Lilith and he saw ecstasy burning within her gemstone eyes. He was in no doubt that she had a power with which she orchestrated events with expert and composed control. She, and she alone, was the artist of these macabre proceedings.

A few tortured seconds later and Sam became a vague confusion of ripped and broken body parts, only held together by the tattered rags of his clothes. Sam’s mangled, translucent body hung motionless in the air.

Jason’s balance failed him. He fell back against a table which slid away from him. His arms sprang out for a chair to steady himself and he pulled it over with him as he went crashing to the hard floor. With feverish fear, he picked himself up and then launched himself into an uncoordinated dive towards the dagger on the floor. A moment later he wrapped his right hand around the dagger’s handle. A sharp sting shot up his arm as the metal of the dagger’s handle touched the exposed flesh of his cut hand. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the pain. Once he had a good grip, he pulled back and away from Sam’s floating pulpy mass. He stood up and held the blade out towards Lilith in a shaky defensive posture.

Lilith closed her eyes and let out a satisfied moan. The floating concoction that was once Sam imploded without a sound into nothingness. With a sigh, she opened her eyes and smiled at Jason.

“Love can be such a violent affair.” She moved with elegant steps towards Jason, a practised seductress moving in on her virgin prey. “Now, I’ll show you how sweet my love can be.”

Without taking his eyes off her, he retreated at speed until his lower back crashed into the bar’s countertop. He held out the blade in timid defence towards the approaching woman. “Wait… I don’t know what’s going on here, but stay the fuck away from me.”

Lilith stopped and glanced down at the dagger. “That dagger has ended many, but it cannot end me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jason said in a tremulous voice, as he tightened his gripped on the dagger’s handle.

Lilith placed a finger against the tip of the blade. “Don’t worry, Jason, you won’t. You’re a simple thing, and I like to play. So, shall we play?”

Jason’s mind raced as he looked for any possible way to escape this terrifying place.

Lilith pushed her finger against the blade. “Ancient and pretty, but, from what you once were, you must return.”

“What? I don’t…”

“Dust.”

Jason’s hand snapped into a fist. He looked at his fist in disbelief and then opened it. He now held nothing but a handful of dust. A wispy grey ribbon rose from his palm.

His flight response took over, forcing him to move. He slid backwards along the edge of the countertop and scrambled to the corner of the room, raising his hands in defence. “No… No. Wait… Why am I getting special treatment? There are people who’ve done far worse than me.”

With a quizzical look, Lilith watched as Jason skittered across the room. “Special treatment? You aren’t special, Jason, you’re no more significant than the dirt upon this floor. I like to play with all who come my way.”

“Who are you?” Jason asked, as he tried to push himself further back into the corner of the room. The path to all exits passed too close to this demon in female form.

“Well, let’s just say I was the first to walk from the shadows.”

“Lilith? Sam said your name is Lilith,” Jason asked, trying to buy time.

“I have many names, but Lilith is as good as any other. You can call me that if you like. Many do. I think I’ll enjoy hearing you scream it when I excite your senses. Many do that, too.”

“Excite my senses? No, wait… What are you?”

“So many questions, Jason. Okay, I’ll play along. If you believe in God, I am the one creation He will not undo. But I know you don’t believe in all that nonsense. So, who am I? Who indeed? Peter knows who I am, but you didn’t want to listen to him, did you. Well, he has returned to his God, now you’re leaving with yours. Shall we go?”

“Peter? I thought he was just another religious nut. How was I to know? Where is he? I’ll listen to what he has to say. I didn’t know.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. I have an eternity, but I don’t feel like wasting too much of it here with you. So, time for us to go home.”

Jason fell to his knees, with hands and arms held tight to his bowed head. Self-respect and a willingness to fight were no longer in his possession. Forced humility was driving him to the cold, hard ground. He cowered, expectant of the torture and destruction he had seen inflicted on Sam. As he stared at the floor, he heard Lilith’s soft footsteps. Jason remained in a kneeling foetal position as the footsteps drew nearer.

Lilith’s bare feet stepped into Jason’s view. A long moment passed and then her dainty feet had company. Two enormous clawed paws stepped into view. Vermis consumed, Hobs took its place by Lilith’s side.

Lilith spoke, as a loving mother to her frightened child. “What’s wrong, Jason? Why are you so sad? You should be happy because I can see Emily. Don’t you want to see her, too?”

“My daughter is… dead,” Jason answered. Fear was still holding his gaze to the ground.

“No, she isn’t. Not yet anyway. If we’re quick, you can see her again. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Yes.”

Blood-laced drool dripped from Hobs’ mouth, splattering the ground and splashing up into Jason’s spiritless face. The creature’s steaming breath was thick with the nauseating smell of its recent meal.

“Together we shall go see your daughter and watch her innocent, playful ways. Then we’ll watch as your wonderful wife smashes her skull, ending a short and pointless life. I think that would be a magical thing, don’t you?”

Jason snapped his eyes shut. He heard a loud gut-wrenching sound. A sorrowful cry of pain. The sound of an animal caught in a snare and calling out its anguish.

Jason’s throat became rough and burnt, and the sound faded.

Chapter 5

Jason’s house was a modest three bedroom semi-detached, with a short cracked concrete drive at the front leading to a small garage. There was just enough room on the drive for his small car, just enough room in the garage for two bikes, a lawn mower, and other disorganised junk. A square of plain suburban lawn next to the drive was overlooked by the living room window.

He knelt, head in hands, on the short grass in his garden, unaware that he no longer cowered upon the floor of the old pub, the sudden transference from there to here happening without motion or recognisable moment.

“What’s happening to me?” he asked the palms of his hands.

“Daddy!”

His eyes shot open at the sound of his daughter’s excited voice. “Emily?”

Emily stood in the open doorway to the house, the soft flicks of her long auburn hair framing a glorious smile alight on her face. She bounced on the spot, her bright yellow summer dress fluttering as she moved, waving her hands with infectious vivacity. His heart jumped at the sight of his beautiful daughter, and then plummeted again with the realisation that her excitement wasn’t for him.

“Hello, Angel,” a familiar voice called out to her.

The voice came from behind, and he wanted to turn and look to see who had called to his daughter, but he already knew. To Jason’s growing confusion, he recognised the voice as his own. He heard the sound of a car door close behind him, and a moment later a man walked across the grass in front of him. A doppelgänger, exact in every minute detail: looks, voice and troubled demeanour. He watched himself take Emily’s hand and continued to watch in dumbfounded silence as they both walked into the house together.

His mind flashed back to the day when events had resulted in the death of his daughter, a moment in time that had been burned into his memory. She had worn that yellow dress then, too. He remembered something else about the dress though: it was covered in her blood. But she’s alive, he thought. Here and now, Emily is alive. The dress is yellow, with no blood. Unblemished. Just a happy shade of yellow. And, thank God, she is alive. He jumped to his feet, determined to keep his daughter the way she looked right now, and ran for the front door.

“Wait! Baby, wait.” He reached the door and grabbed for the handle to open it again, but before his hand could touch anything more substantial than air, he found himself standing in his old kitchen. “What the hell?”

“Oh dear, what’s happening now?” Lilith said with a giggle from the other side of the kitchen’s central dining table. She was no longer naked. Instead, she was wearing an exact copy of his daughter’s yellow summer dress. “Do you like it, Daddy?” She moved her hands suggestively over the material.

The sight of this demonic creature wearing his daughter’s dress, while deriding him with perversion, enraged him. He looked at her with disdain.

“Well of course you do,” she continued. “As much as you’d hate to admit it. Eat, shit and fuck. And when you’re not doing any of those things, you’re killing each other. You glimpse the splendour of life, but all you know and want to know is death. You are stupid, selfish creatures. The gift is wasted on you.”

“We are what we are… Gift? What are you talking about? What gift?”

“What. What. What. Nothing but questions, with answers you wouldn’t understand. Life! Life is what I refer to, Jason. Soon I’ll show you what life is, and what your actions have done, but for now we must watch your defining moment again.”

“Why have I got to see this? How will this help anything? Unless it’s for your sadistic enjoyment.”

“Sadistic enjoyment? No, that comes later. Think of this as a seed, a seed you planted, from which the flowers will grow. You did it once in His world, now you must do it again in mine.”

“Flowers?”

“Yes, flowers. My flowers.”

Jason’s attention became drawn to raised voices coming from the living room. He could hear his wife shouting at his past-self. He remembered the silly argument he and his wife had had that day. He felt sick when he remembered that Emily had died a short time afterwards; she had less than an hour to live. Could he stop this from happening again? Was he being given a chance to put things right? Was this some kind of a fucked-up Scrooge moment?

Jason rushed through the kitchen’s open door and into the hallway. In a second he reached the archway leading into the living room. He stood at the entrance to the living room, looking at the back of his doppelgänger. Zoe was screaming at him, animated in her violent rage. Waving her arms and jabbing a finger at him. Emily sat cross-legged on the oversized black leather sofa, watching in bewildered horror as her mum exploded at her daddy.

“You fucking waste of good air,” Zoe screamed, as she jabbed a finger into the doppelgänger’s chest. “How could you forget? Fuck! One thing. I asked you to get one damn, bastard thing!” She turned her stabbing finger into a fist and slammed it into his nose.

Jason lifted a hand to his own nose. Although his past-self took the hit this time, he remembered how it had felt. Zoe hadn’t broken it, but it had brought tears to his eyes and a slight trickle of blood from both nostrils.

“Jesus, Zoe. It’s just garlic. Calm down,” the doppelgänger said, clutching a hand to his nose.

“Calm down… Just garlic… How the bastering fuck am I going to make bolognese without garlic? Well? How? You stupid shit.”

Emily held out her hand with an offering. “Mum, look. I made this for you.”

Jason looked across at Emily. In her tiny open hand lay a bracelet formed from entwined buttercups. Her hand was shaking.

“I used buttercups because they match my dress,” Emily said with tentative enthusiasm.

Jason remembered what was about to come next, so he moved back and away from the archway—attempting to open doors had whipped him from the garden to the kitchen in an instant, God knows what would happen if he dared to touch one of the living. The living? This all happened years ago, and two of the “living” were now dead. The other one watched himself in the past. What the hell is going on?

Zoe snatched up the flower bracelet. She looked at it with cold eyes, closed her fist around it, and then threw the crumpled flowers at the doppelgänger. “Maybe I’ll use that instead of garlic.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” The doppelgänger grabbed Zoe by the wrist and, before she had time to protest, dragged her from the living room.

A moment later they both stood in the hallway by the kitchen door. He had tried to take her to the kitchen and keep the rising conflict between them away from their frightened daughter’s eyes and ears. But Zoe had pulled away from his grip.

Once free, Zoe continued her verbal barrage. “What are you going to do now, fuckwit, hit me? Now you’re out of earshot of your precious little Angel.”

“No! No, of course I’m not. What the hell, Zoe?”

“No, of course you won’t. Because you’re too much of a fucking wuss. I will, though. I’ll cut your motherfucking throat when you’re asleep.”

“Shit, Zoe. You don’t know what you’re saying. Look, just try to relax. I’ll go to the shop and get garlic, and a bottle of wine. I’ll get that really good one, you know, the same one we had at the restaurant on your birthday. Can’t pronounce the name,” the doppelgänger snorted a nervous laugh, “but I remember what the label looks like. Please, Zoe, we’ll sort this out.”

Zoe looked at him without expression; the cogs freezing for a moment before the machinery in her head turned once more. “Okay, that would be nice. Don’t be too long though.”

She turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving the doppelgänger standing in the hallway looking perplexed and, as Jason remembered, scared for his wife, their marriage and any possible future they might have together. But not for a second had he thought she could harm Emily. Or maybe he had refused to believe that she could do such a thing.

“Don’t leave,” Jason said to his doppelgänger. “Don’t you fucking leave Emily alone with that evil bitch. Not again.” He watched as his mirror image walked down the hallway towards him.

“I’ll be as quick as possible,” the doppelgänger called over his shoulder.

Jason backed up against the front door and watched as his past-self entered the living room once more.

“What’s wrong with mummy?”

The doppelgänger leaned over and picked up the scattered petals from the floor. “It was a lovely gift,” he said, kneeling down in front of Emily. “I’ll give it to mummy later, when she’s feeling better.”

“It’s broken now.”

“I’ll fix it, don’t worry.”

“Okay, Dad.” She looked at her hands. “Was it me? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, Angel. Mummy just needs lots of love at the moment, that’s all. Lots of cuddles from her little miss, too. But it wasn’t anything you did. Don’t ever think that.” With delicate hands, he placed the flower bracelet in the breast pocket of his shirt.

“No, not again,” Jason said, with tears in his eyes.

“Can I come with you?” Emily asked, already getting to her feet.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the doppelgänger wrapped his arms around Emily’s tiny body, and then stood, lifting his giggling daughter with him.

“Okay, Angel. Why not.”

Jason watched as his mirror image held Emily in his arms. He tried to reason the moment. Another man was embracing his daughter. But it’s not another man, it’s you, Jason. Just you from another time, a time before your world fell apart.

“Can I buy some sweets, Dad?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he joked. “Have you got enough money?”

“D-a-d.” Emily grew a mischievous grin and then buried her head into the doppelgänger’s neck.

Although Jason could do nothing but watch as his daughter snuggled with his past-self, he felt her embrace as he once had. The memory made it real for him again. Jason could smell her soft hair against his face. He could feel her warm breath on his neck.

“Sure, Angel. We’ll get some sweets.” He headed for the door with Emily in his strong arms. Hercules and the entire British Army couldn’t have pulled her away from his embrace. But Zoe was a different matter.

“Keep going. Don’t stop,” Jason said. His memory kept reminding him of how his world would soon fall away beneath him.

“Hang on there, you two,” Zoe called from the kitchen. “I need little miss to stay here with me. She can help me in the kitchen. You want to help me with dinner, Em?”

Emily squeezed her father’s cheeks and pulled his face closer to her own. When their noses touched, she closed her eyes and said, “Sure, Mum.” She pursed her lips and wrinkled up her little nose.

The doppelgänger tried to hide a laugh.

Jason’s eyes clouded over and then ran with tears.

He lowered Emily to the ground. “I won’t be long, Angel.”

She looked up at her father with excited eyes. “You’ll still get the sweets, won’t you, Dad?”

“Don’t worry, I will. Be good for your mum while I’m gone, okay.” He turned, opened the front door and left.

“No-No-No. Stop!” Jason reached for the handle of the door, then stopped himself, turned, and made a grab for Emily. His fingers touched the fabric of her dress as he heard the front door shut and its lock click into place behind him. For a moment, he believed he could stop his daughter from walking towards the kitchen and certain death. That belief disappeared in an instant when his muscles seized up and an excruciating lightning bolt of pain shot through his entire body. Jason fell, paralysed, to the floor. He lay, unmoving on the floor, with eyes wide and fixed, and watched as Emily disappeared into the kitchen.

Lilith stepped into Jason’s field of vision. She looked down at him and then moved to stand over and astride his rigid body. As she studied him, her body pulsated. A few moments later the pulsing stopped. She sighed and then looked at him with a wide smile. “Look, don’t touch. They can’t see or hear you, and you can’t change anything. If you try to interfere again, this pain will return. But, you should also know that the pain will increase tenfold with the next digression, and I don’t want you to die again just yet. Now, shall we go and watch some motherly love?”

Die again? he thought, as the pain relented and his muscles came back to life. Am I dead or what?

“You can and will die many times before I’m done with you, Jason.”

Is this bitch hearing everything that goes on in my head?

“Your thoughts are mine to hear and your deeds mine to view. Past and present, your wasted life is an open book for me. Now, your daughter’s death is about to be served up. Let’s go see.”

Chapter 6

Emily sat at the table, watching her mother who stood at the worktop by the window, slicing mushrooms on a small marble chopping board. The sound of a classical piano came from a small portable radio on the windowsill—a melancholy melody that pulled on Jason’s already breaking heart. He sat on the floor, in the corner of the room by the door leading to the hallway.

He didn’t remember sitting down. In fact, he couldn’t even recall coming into the room. He tried to move, to stand, but his legs and arms refused to cooperate. His body felt numb. He watched as Emily swung her legs back and forth under the table. He called to her.

“She can’t hear you, Jason,” Lilith informed him. “I’m sure I’ve already told you that.”

He called to her again, pleading for her to hear him.

“Can I cut the mushrooms, Mum?”

“No, baby, the knife’s too sharp. You can help me make eclairs later though. You can do the chocolate bit.”

“Yes!”

“Thought you might like that.”

Lilith stood on the other side of the room from Jason. She swayed with the slow rhythm of the music, her dress splaying with the motion of her hips.

“Haven’t you got better things to do?” Jason asked. “Other people you can go torment?”

“Yes, plenty, but I enjoy all who come my way.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Oh, the pathetic one-off killers, like you; serial psychos, obsessed with their kill tallies; power-crazed dictators who orchestrate the slaughter of millions. The list is endless because the thirst your kind has for death is never quenched. I have an appetite for you all, and my plate is always brimming. I don’t like to miss a morsel because sometimes the scraps are as tasty as the main course.”

“You’re putting me on a list with serial killers and the likes of Hitler?”

“Death is death; kill one or kill a million, numbers mean little in the infinite. You may come to understand. Then again, you may not. It doesn’t matter to me whether you do or don’t, but I do like to watch the confusion. To enjoy the moments, the little things. It’s intriguing how you all stumble from one moment to the next, such fragile creatures, and never knowing when your time is at an end. Take this moment, for instance. Look. Emily is so happy, spending time with her mother and waiting for her father to return home with a sugary bounty. She doesn’t know what her mother is about to do to her. In fact, her mother doesn’t even know what’s about to happen, either. It’s exciting.”

“My daughter’s death is not exciting, you evil bitch, it’s a tragedy. And you’re making her go through it again. If I get the chance, if I can find a way, I will kill you.”

Lilith smiled. “I call legions of demons to heel, Jason. What do you believe you can do? You wouldn’t be the first to threaten me with your wrath. I like the Roman emperors most of all; they have strong wills and offer the most amusing threats.” She laughed. “Latin obscenities still coming from the mind of one as I pulled the last bone from his gelatinous body. You can’t imagine how funny his thoughts sounded. Lying on the floor of his palace like a bag of vomit, unable to talk and still believing his wishes held sway. Some people just can’t grasp how powerless they are. I like the spirited ones. Most of the time you hateful creatures throw yourselves into submission—weak-minded and feeble. Breaking the broken is no fun at all. Now,” she put a finger to her lips, “hush.”

“You twisted—”

“One more utterance from your lips, you puerile speck, and I’ll make this worse for you.”

“How can this get any worse? I didn’t see this happen back then; I don’t need to see it now.”

“No, you don’t need to see it, but it pleases me when you suffer. But if you’re going to fuss, I shall rip the head from your neck and place your skull on the table next to Emily, where you can witness forthcoming events ringside.”

Jason lowered his gaze to the floor. How do I stop this? he thought with a growing sense of desperation. A real demon bitch from hell. This can’t be real.

“Daddy.”

Jason raised his head. Emily now stood mere feet in front of him, looking at his dumbstruck face. Lilith and Zoe had vanished. He was alone with his daughter.

“Daddy.” She stepped closer to him.

“Yes, Angel?” he replied with a smile. This isn’t happening after all, it’s just a dream. Thank Christ, it’s just—

Emily slapped her father, hard, across his face. “Shut up, she wants to watch me die.”

In the blink of an eye, Emily appeared back at the table, swinging her feet as if nothing had happened. Both Lilith and Zoe had also reappeared in the room. The demoness glared back at Jason while waving a finger from side to side.

His body came back to life. He felt pins and needles on an epic scale, but control of his body was coming back to him. A plan skimmed across his thoughts: throw yourself hard and fast at Zoe. Lilith will try to stop you, but once in motion you’ll fly. It might be enough to knock Zoe against the counter and, with any luck, out cold to the floor. Do it now, before Lilith reads your mind and reacts. Get your ass up and do it. Now!

He shot a glance at Lilith. Her eyes were on Emily, so he jumped to his feet, staggered, and then launched himself at Zoe. With his first step he made it as far as the table, but then the momentum stopped as a searing fire flashed through his veins. His vision blurred and then faded to black. Every nerve in his body was shocked into life with cascading intensity. Muscles contracted, followed by the excruciating pain of tendons being ripped from their skeletal connections. His heart pumped with a tremendous rhythm, each rapid beat thumping against the inside of his chest. Jason could feel his ribs cracking with every beat.

“No, not again,” he screamed, as his mind tried in vain to push back against the escalating pain. “Please, I regret killing her… I take it back… P-l-e-a-s-e… No.” His jaw snapped shut with teeth-shattering force. A bubbling sensation ran over the entire surface of his body as his skin pulled tight and blisters formed in an effervescing frenzy. Thoughts became listless and dissolved into the pain.

Chapter 7

The immense pain relented and Jason collapsed to the ground. His vision came back in a flash of brilliant white light, which faded to torrents of grey. He checked himself for any cuts or broken bones. The pain Lilith had inflicted on him had been so extreme, so brutal, that it should have left marks on his body as evidence, but he found none. He stood up.

The ground was soft, no longer the vinyl floor of his old kitchen. It was… sand? He squinted and tried to discern his new surroundings through a harsh wind. A raging sandstorm whipped up, rushing past in a turbulent wash, blasting and cutting into his skin.

He yelled into the wind, “Send me back. You…” He spat out sand. “Bitch! You fucking twisted bitch. Send me back to my daughter.” He closed his mouth and felt the sand grinding between his teeth. With no idea where to go or what to do next, he crouched down and made himself a smaller target for the violent storm. He brought his hands up to his face to protect his eyes from the thrashing wind.

As he waited for a revelation about what to do next, he wondered who or what the demoness was. He knew little of Biblical history but was sure that hell—if this was indeed hell—was supposed to be lorded over by the Devil: Lucifer; Beelzebub; Satan. An unmistakable character who spends his time spit-roasting the damned over lakes of fire. Not a woman called Lilith. She might be a mere messenger, or a guide of sorts, with the Devil and the delights of hell still to come. He felt a moment of relief as he wondered if this might just be a nightmare, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced before, but no more than that.

But this was no mere nightmare, and as the storm continued to rage around him, a moment of clarity emerged from deep within his mind. Lilith had told the truth about giving the memory of his death back to him; it flooded back in full, with the fervour of a friend relaying a dirty piece of gossip. He recalled the last moments he had spent in his cell with unmistakable lucidity: I was looking out the window, he remembered. I was watching a bird, a hawk flying over the hospital grounds. A sound from behind… Footsteps… A rope around my neck… Oh, Christ.

The knowledge that his life was over shocked him, but the realisation that death wasn’t the end filled him with dread. Instead of eternal nothingness, God had judged him and sent him to hell. Jason’s mind became as frenzied as the surrounding storm.

Emotions he couldn’t discern rose within him until they stampeded all at once. He pleaded to the storm, “I have nothing more to give. You’ve taken everything.” He inhaled sand and coughed, then shouted, “You can’t make me suffer any more than I already have.”

The storm began to abate. He looked down at the sand beneath his feet and leant over and scooped up a handful. It looked and felt like sand—grainy and rough—but it was dark grey. Volcanic ash? Jason looked about. Vague shadows flitted into existence, dancing with the wind for a moment before becoming part of the rush. His surroundings took on solid form and the rushing sand became nothing more than a smear across the emerging landscape. A desert landscape. His gaze fell upon a human silhouette emerging from the receding storm, about thirty feet away.

He opened his mouth to call out to the figure, but caution tripped his tongue. The figure remained motionless. The wispy waves of sand were still enough to obscure any discernible detail.

He walked towards the figure in slow, cautious steps. He looked up. The sandstorm raged overhead in turbulent monotone, still close but climbing fast. He returned his gaze to the figure and stopped walking. The solitary figure became two, three, then six figures. As the storm receded further and further away, more and more figures appeared, all looking the same as the first, standing with the same passive posture: arms hanging relaxed at their sides, with heads bowed. Jason could see one hundred or more figures now, and as the landscape gained perspicuity, more and more came into view. He looked on in bewilderment and a growing sense of unease as the hundreds of figures became thousands. All were facing the same direction. Jason looked to his left, to see what they were all facing.

About a mile away, a wall of rock appeared from within the receding storm. A moment later the rock became the biggest mountain Jason had ever seen, an almost sheer face stretching high into the sky, its peak hidden by fast-moving sand. He gave a quick glance to his right and saw a vast canvas of dunes stretching off to the distant horizon. Small at first, then rising in size to high static waves across the landscape. He could see that he stood on a plateau between the high dunes and the mountain. An army of people stood with him on this otherwise featureless terrain. He walked towards the figures once more, curiosity quelling his fear and driving him on.

As he drew nearer, he could see that these weren’t living beings—not people—but stone statues. Although more feminine than masculine in shape, he couldn’t be sure of the artist’s intention for their sex; there was no hair carved upon their heads and no impression of genitalia either. The statues stood about six feet tall. He stopped a few feet from one and looked at it for a moment, still expecting its eyes to open. Then he reached out and touched its face. He was expecting his fingers to touch hard stone but, although it felt rough and cold, it depressed like human skin. He could also feel the bones beneath its skin.

“Hello,” he said, and then wondered why he had spoken at all. He watched its chest, willing it to move but hoping it wouldn’t. It did not breathe. As Jason continued to study the grey figure, a sudden explosion of sand hit him. He turned in time to see a grey ribbon of sand ascending in an elegant spiral. He backed away and moved up onto a nearby dune—a small one, compared to others in the distance—raising his height mere feet above the heads of the statues, but high enough to enable him to see deep into the crowd. The people—the statues—all stood in regimented lines, hundreds of rows, stretching far off into the distance. Grey human forms, too numerous to count, all bowing in silent meditation to the mountain.

Jason turned around and saw many more uniform, regimented rows. “There must be millions of them.” Not an army but a nation stood with him on the plateau, and they all maintained the same passive posture. He watched as more of the strange figures exploded and began a graceful journey skyward. This transformation of a stable solid form to a spiralling column of sand continued at random points among the multitude without pause. One moment a grey human figure, the next a spray of sand heading upwards.

A hand grabbed Jason’s arm.

“Do ye know where it be, friend?”

“Jesus,” Jason exclaimed, turning in surprise to see whose was the hand now gripping his arm. “Who the… Who are you?”

“Didn’t mean to scare ye, chum. I is a daft fool for jumping up on a fella like that, but I won’t do thee no harm. Did ye find it? Oh, tell I ye found the thing.”

The man looked about the same age as Jason, although his life appeared to have been a lot harder, judging by the dry flaking calluses on his hands and crags on his leathery face. His hair sat atop his head in an uneven mass of black greasy waves. His oversized shirt and baggy trousers hung as a patchwork of unrelated materials, stitched together with thick brown thread. More of the same thread held a piece of leather around each of his feet, formed into makeshift shoes.

“Found what?” Jason asked.

“What I be seeking. What thee be seeking, too, I imagine. What all us dumb fools be seeking. Dead rabbits says more. Some found it, I is sure of that. God smiled on them. He vomits on me.”

“I was trying to help my daughter, but… I can’t stop her.”

“Stop who? Yer daughter?”

“No, my wife. Need to stop her killing my daughter. But, Lilith…”

The man let out a nervous laugh. “Me dumb club foot. Ye can’t stop Lilith. Lilith is… Well, I got no knowledge of who she be, but I does know she can’t be stopped. No reckoning with the old beast woman. She’ll put yer innards on the outside for jollies. Did it to me, so she did. Tore off me manhood too and gobbled it down, right before me bulging eyes. She gets in yer head, sees right in there, and tells ye to do things.” He tapped the side of his head. “Sees it all, everything ye got upstairs, like a clear day in the fields. No hiding away from Lilith. Pig shit in yer head if thee raises it up to her.”

“I don’t want to fight her. I’m just trying to save my daughter… I was in hospital… I know I’m dead now, but…” He wiped sand from his eyes and noticed his hands were shaking.

“Hospital? What ye blathering about? Feast on thee own shit this morning, or bang yer head against a rock? Aye, thee in hell.”

The man considered Jason for a moment, and then smiled and announced, “Derwood is me name, chum.” He grabbed Jason’s hand with a firm grip and shook it. “At the bottom of God’s cesspit, so ye are, with His fat ass bearing down.”

“I don’t believe in hell,” Jason said without conviction. “I mean, I didn’t… This makes no sense.”

Derwood looked thoughtful for a moment as he looked off towards the mountain. A moment passed and then his gaze shot back to Jason. “Belief’s got nought to do with it, me daft chum. Thee in hell and there be no way yer getting out. Not unless ye finds it.”

“Find what? There’s a way out of this?”

“Aye, there be a way out. Find the thing Lilith left here for us, that be how we get away. Ain’t ye been listening? Lugholes full of dead moths, or what? Says it be in the dunes by that big old thing.” He pointed towards the mountain. “Looked everywhere, dug till me hands were raw bone, but nothing. Even died a few times, too, when I got too close to the silent folk. The caretakers don’t like it when ye touches ’em, see. But even then, there be no peace. Caretaker turns ye to black ash and then back y’all come, and the game goes on, and on, and on. Even searched over there by the…” Derwood’s face dropped again, as he pointed once more into the distance with a tremulous finger, towards the mountain.

“The mountain,” Jason offered.

“The cave at the bottom of it. Lilith says it be by the cave entrance, somewhere. She says there be one for each of us to find. Don’t like it over there though. Hear the screams and howls, so ye can. Flowers me ass. Someone must have moved it or something, maybe lost, because tis not there no more. I’ve been looking for a long, long time.”

“The caretakers can kill you? But we’re already dead, aren’t we? Who are the caretakers?”

“They be like ghosts, but they can be solid like us, too. A lot stronger though. Break ye like a twig, they can, then they burn ye.”

“This is madness.”

“What’s yer name, chum?”

“Jason.”

“Jason. Good name. Strong name. I like ye, Jason. Yer not like the other daft fools around here. Yer eyes still seem straight and yer mind still seems to be turning. But thee should know, yer in hell now. Damned, just like the rest of us. What did ye do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What ye did to get sent here. Caught me a thief, so I did. He were trying to steal old Gert.”

“Gert?”

“Gert, me old hen. Caught him with old Gert in his hands. She were not happy. Flapping her feathers all over the place. No way I be standing by like a dumb post while someone steals old Gert. So, I cut him with me old axe. Meant to give him a scare, tis all, but the bastard bled out. Now those flowers are growing. Flowers! Me aching arse. They’re not like any flowers I’ve ever seen.”

“The flowers? Lilith said I had planted a seed and flowers would now grow. What did she mean?”

“Aye, tis right. So ye killed someone. The flowers—that’s what the beast woman calls ’em. Can’t get me head round it. Lilith told me the fella had children, but I knew him, that bastard thief, I knew him well, and I know he had none.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, I got a fuzzy head over it, too. But I got to find the thing Lilith left here before the flowers die.”

“Why? What happens when they die?”

“Oh dear. Ye got to get away before they die. If ye don’t get out of hell before then, yer never leaving. The mountain is always too far, and ye have to get back here before the first one dies. If one goes, the next will be quick to follow, then another, then another. Just keeps getting faster and faster—the dying—faster, until ye end up with a…” He looked off into the distance again, towards the mountain.

“How long have you been here, Derwood?”

“Don’t know. There be no sun, and no night nor day either, to count the days by. Would keep a tally of the times I slept, but...”

“But what?”

“There be no sleeping in hell.”

“What year do you think it is?”

“Tis an odd question. The same year ye think it be.”

“What year?”

“There be no dung heap in me head. Don’t ye be calling me a fool.”

“I won’t call you a fool, Derwood. I’m just curious about something. Please, what year?”

“I didn’t know that before I came here. Never had a reason to know the years. Just know when to plant and when to dig a plateful. The weather told me all I needed to know.”

Jason thought for a moment, and then asked, “Have you ever used the net, Derwood?”

“No. No need to. The sea was a ways away and I don’t much like fish, anyway. Used me friend’s funny-looking basket to catch an eel once, in the river, but it tasted much like it looked: a soggy turd. He laughed when he saw me trying to catch the wriggling thing, but that was all right.” Derwood scratched his head, as if corralling a wayward family of lice. “I don’t mean harm to no one and I wish I hadn’t killed that man. If I can find the thing Lilith left here, then maybe I can make things right again somehow.”

They both flinched as a statue exploded a few feet away.

“What are all these statues about?” Jason asked, as he watched the spiralling cavalcade of sand.

“They not be statues, Jason.”

“They’re all turning into sand.”

“Aye, they do that. Puff, and then they’re gone.”

“Why do they do that?”

“They have their time, and then they die.”

“They die? You mean they’re alive right now?”

“Aye… Well, no.”

“No?”

“No. They appear, and at some point they die, that’s when they goes puff, but they don’t get the bit in the middle—the alive bit. All they do is stand there in the desert. Never get to open their eyes and see anything. Like I said, I can’t get me head round it. The mad woman says she knows what it’s all about, but she be… well, she be mad. A lifetime of emptiness, so she said. Get more sense from one of these here statues.”

“Mad woman? Can she help me? Where is she, Derwood?”

“Over there, by the mountain. She lives in the temple, a temple in the middle of an enormous hole in the ground. But I’d stay well away from her if ye knows what’s best, because she’s mad as that damn eel. Sings to the grey folk, so she does, and when they goes puff, she cries. Thee needs to watch out for the strange ones down here in hell, Jason. There be dark wonders everywhere.”

“Can you take me to her?”

Derwood’s face became fearful. “Don’t ye be going. Please, stay awhile.” He reached out for Jason’s arm.

“I’m not going,” Jason said. Then he looked down at his arm and realised he was going. He watched as Derwood’s hand passed through his own. His hand had become translucent, as had the rest of his body.

A blinding white flash of light seared his eyes.

Chapter 8

“Just a glimpse, Jason.”

He found himself in his old kitchen again, sitting on the floor as before.

Lilith continued, “I wasn’t going to show you that just yet, but then I thought, why not? Just a glimpse, though. You’ll see it all soon enough. Don’t try to stop your wife from enjoying her moment again, because I won’t stop your ride next time. I’ll let it take you all the way. By the way, I paused the show for you.”

Jason looked at Emily and her small body frozen in time, her legs in mid-swing under the table, her hands working a can opener in freeze-frame, midway through opening a tin of tomatoes. Zoe remained motionless, too, slicing into a mushroom as she stared out the window.

Jason looked across at Lilith. “Please stop this.”

“Ready to go again?” Lilith clicked her fingers, and the world moved once more.

“Shit!” exclaimed Zoe, after cutting the side of her thumb with the knife.

“Mum?”

“It’s okay, baby. Mummy is being clumsy. How are you getting on with those tomatoes?”

“Almost done,” Emily said. Her tongue was sticking out from the corner of her mouth as she strained to turn the mechanism of the can opener. “Oops! Oh…” she squeaked, as the tin shot from her grasp. It skimmed across the table, falling over the edge and down to the floor. Tomatoes and juice splashed across the mock-slate vinyl floor. “Oh! Sorry, Mum.”

Zoe turned round, her face placid. “Oh dear,” she said with cold composure. “Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up later. Get another tin from the cupboard.”

“It’s okay, I’ll clean it up.” Emily jumped down from her chair. She picked up the wayward tin from the floor and put it in a small bin by the side door, and then grabbed a few sheets of tissue from a roll hung above the bin and set about cleaning the mess from the floor. A minute later the floor was clean again. She moved to the cupboard beneath the counter, next to her mother, to claim another tin of tomatoes.

Zoe looked down at Emily, a sharp stare that fixed on a watery red blotch on the hem of her dress. “For heaven’s sake, Em. Look…” She used the knife to point at the small imperfection.

Emily grabbed a new tin from the back of the cupboard and stood up. She looked down at her dress and the small patch of tomato juice. “Should I go change, Mum?”

“No.” Zoe’s response was riding on a hard sigh. She tapped the cutting board with the tip of the knife as she looked out the window once more.

“Oh, isn’t it a beautiful thing,” Lilith said, excitement bright upon her face. “Your wife’s monster is waking up.”

“Please stop this,” Jason pleaded, as he struggled to climb to his feet, his body still weak. “I’ll do anything.”

Lilith looked at Jason for a moment, as if looking at a bug she would soon squash beneath her foot. She returned her gaze to Zoe. “I know you would, Jason. Now, be a good boy and observe in silence, like stone, you might say.”

Jason tried to move but couldn’t. A cold chill ran through his veins, turning to ice as it reached his muscles.

Emily returned to her seat at the dining table and set about opening the new tin.

“A new dress,” Zoe said, still staring out the window. “It was a beautiful new dress. Yellow like the sun, like the buttercups my daughter picks. Beautiful and pure. Now, it’s dirty. Shit like everything else. Fit for nothing but the bin.”

“Mum?”

Zoe sighed. “Into the bin with the other rubbish. That’s where I’ll put it. It can be right again. Jason said we’ll sort it out; we can start again.”

Emily jumped down from the table, walked over to her mother and placed the open tin on the countertop, next to the cutting board.

“Thank you.” Zoe picked up the tin and poured its contents into the sink.

“What are you doing, Mum? Don’t you need them anymore?”

“No, it’s shitty rubbish.” Zoe’s demeanour resembled the calm surface waters flowing over a known undertow.

Jason tried to close his eyes. I can’t stop this, he thought, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch. His eyes remained open.

“You’re already damned, Jason,” Lilith said, “and you are going to watch it all. Anyway, I thought you’d be happy. You didn’t get to see this bit first time round but you’re going to be able to witness it all this time.”

Jason tried in vain to close his eyes. He could feel his eyes drying out, a mere blink no longer possible.

Zoe picked up the mushrooms and threw them one by one into the sink, where they joined the splattering of tomatoes.

“I’ll go watch TV, Mum, and wait for Dad to come home.”

“Okay, dear. But, can you see how dirty it all is? It wasn’t always like this.”

Emily stopped, looked at her mother for a moment and then walked over and stood by her side. “What’s wrong, Mum? Why are you saying those things?” Emily reached up and put her tiny hand on her mother’s arm.

“It’s all dirty. It’s all disgusting, shitty and…” Zoe looked down with tearful eyes at Emily. “Your beautiful dress is ruined. It’s all ruined.”

“I love you, Mum.”

Jason’s thoughts screamed. The garden. Yesterday. I remember. We were in the garden. Emily was in the garden with me.

“Can I do anything to help, Mum?”

In the back garden. She was chasing the bees. She was talking to them, naming the furry little bastards. We were laughing together, in the garden. She was playing… In the fucking garden.

Lilith giggled.

“No, it’s all right. I’ll tidy it all up. I’ll clean away all the rubbish and make it all perfect again.”

Emily turned and made to walk away.

Zoe gripped the cutting board with both hands and raised it above her head. Her face remained blank, devoid of expression or any sign of emotion.

What’s that? Can you stroke them? No, don’t stroke them baby. Aren’t they beautiful? Those busy little bees, aren’t they…

Zoe brought the block of marble crashing down.

The sound punched Jason in the gut, while the sight burned his eyes. The marble cracked in two on impact with Emily’s head, and the two pieces of stone followed the child to the kitchen floor.

Zoe looked down at Emily’s twitching body, her eyes following the stream of blood emanating from her head. A dark pool formed on the floor. Zoe’s reflection grew upon the bloody mirror as she watched her daughter’s life ebb away. The blood soaked into Emily’s dress. “Oh, Em, look at your beautiful dress.”

Jason was released from his paralysis. Although now able to move and speak again, he said nothing. He thought nothing and didn’t move. He stared at Lilith as Zoe dragged Emily’s lifeless body out through the kitchen’s side door.

Lilith made to follow the trail of blood and then looked over at Jason and asked, “Don’t you want to see what she does with the body? But then, you already know, don’t you.” With a slight but perceptible skip to her step, Lilith followed Zoe out the door.

Jason felt a cold shudder as he heard the sound of the wheelie bin at the side of the house being opened, its lid falling back against the outside wall.

“How could you do that?” Jason asked the empty room. “To our precious little girl.” When he heard the sound of Zoe dumping his daughter’s body into the bin, Jason threw his hands up to his face and screamed into them with a primal fury. He squeezed his hands into fists, ripping at his face with his fingernails.

Chapter 9

“They didn’t have the one you liked, Zo, so I got this one instead. The guy in the shop said it’s similar. Cost a bit more, but hey, if I can’t treat my lady once in a while, the grass won’t grow.”

Jason stood next to the large widescreen television in his old living room. He watched as his unknowing past-self walked through the archway and into the room, waving a bottle of wine like a white flag.

“You’re too fucking late, you stupid bastard,” Jason said to his doppelgänger. He was speaking to the mirror image of himself, but he felt hate for the man waving the bottle of wine like a fool. “The grass won’t grow? Zoe was right, you’re a useless loser.”

Zoe sat on the leather sofa, gazing through the living room window, her blood-soaked hands gripping her knees. Lilith sat next to her, a wild smile beaming out from her face while her cold eyes observed the frailty of the human condition.

“Shit… What happened, baby?”

Jason watched himself run across the room to Zoe.

The doppelgänger dropped the bottle onto the small coffee table next to the sofa. Then he took Zoe’s hands into his own. “Oh God. What have you done?” He turned her hands over to check her wrists.

“It’s not mine,” she said, looking at her husband’s face with a quizzical expression.

“Not yours? Whose?”

“I’ve made it better.”

“Where’s Emily, Zo?”

“Emily.” Zoe spoke as if pronouncing a new word for the first time.

“Yes, Emily.”

“I’ve made everything new again. Like it used to be.”

“What have you done?” The doppelgänger dropped Zoe’s bloodied hands and ran from the living room, shouting for his daughter. “Emily, baby. Where are you, Angel?”

Jason remembered how, after running from the living room, he had gone straight to the kitchen. His mind replayed what he had seen that day, as his doppelgänger spoke the words.

“No… No, baby. Oh God, no.” Jason remembered the blood on the kitchen floor. “What have you done?” He had followed the bloody smear on the floor to the side door. “Call for an ambulance, Zo. Call a fucking ambulance!” He’d followed the bloody trail out through the kitchen’s side door and then seen the blood splattering on the side of the bin, realising the trail ended there. As he’d gazed at the bin, the possibility of what might have happened was a thought he dismissed. Why would Emily be in there? He opened the bin.

Lilith’s obvious excitement increased. She slid forward to the edge of the sofa and looked across at Jason. “Now it’s time for your monster to show its head.”

Helpless and dejected, Jason replied, “Yes, I know.”

Lilith’s smile widened, as she scoffed, “Civilised beings? Millennia come and gone, and the only conclusion I can come to is that your kind should have stayed in the trees.”

Jason didn’t respond. He was replaying the past event over and over in his head, remembering how he had pulled his dead daughter’s body from the bin and brought her into the kitchen. He had placed her on the floor and tried to revive her, tilting Emily’s head back and choking down tears as he felt the pieces of broken skull move under her skin. He put his lips to hers and blew. A second later he pulled his head back; a web of saliva and blood still connected father to daughter.

“Call for an ambulance!” he yelled, while pressing down hard on Emily’s chest in a rapid succession of four bursts. Was it four or five, or was it ten? Fuck! “Call someone, Zo, please.”

Jason and Lilith listened to the sounds of deep despair emanating from the next room. Zoe seemed to hear nothing at all—her mind appeared to be detached somehow, as she looked out the window.

Lilith leaned her head back and let out a delicate sigh. Then she turned to Jason. “Oh, how wonderful it is to taste your pain, but it’s not enough.”

A moment later, Jason’s doppelgänger stood in the archway, tears falling from his face, hands shaking and stained with Emily’s blood. He lunged for the phone, jabbed three numbers into the keypad and slammed the cordless receiver to his ear. His words came fast. “Ambulance! Yes… My daughter… She’s killed my Emily, my daughter, she’s… Oh, God, my Angel. What do I do?”

“Never mind that,” shouted Zoe, now on her feet and glaring at the doppelgänger.

He spun round, dropping the phone.

“Did you get the garlic?”

“What?”

“Did you get the fucking garlic? I see you bought wine, you pathetic alky, but did you get the bastard garlic, you shitty little fuckwit?” Zoe let out a hysterical laugh, spitting at him as she expressed her deranged levity.

“She’s dead, Zoe. You killed our little girl.”

Zoe pushed past and headed for the kitchen. The doppelgänger fell to the sofa, next to Lilith, who looked at him with excited and studious eyes. The doppelgänger leaned over and picked up the phone again. He had just put the receiver to his ear—the operator was talking but all Jason heard was his own confusion—when Zoe returned to the living room, a six-inch kitchen knife in her hand.

“Our daughter is lying on the kitchen floor, did you know that?” Zoe asked. “She’s dead, you bastard. She’s dead and you killed her, didn’t you? And you’re not having another one. You can’t make me have another…”

Her words trailed off as the living room walls lit up blue, coming from the pulsating lights of the police car parked outside. The police told Jason, later that day, while interrogating him and discussing infanticide over tea and biscuits, that a neighbour had watched Zoe bundling Emily’s lifeless body into the outside bin. The neighbour had then called the police.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Police, come to the door.”

“She’s got a knife,” an officer called to his colleague, as he peered in through the window.

“Go round the back and check the bin,” the other officer replied.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Come to the door, now. It’s the police.” The sound of breaking glass followed the police officer’s call as he smashed the small window in the centre of the front door.

The doppelgänger grabbed the bottle of wine from the coffee table and then stood up. Without a moment’s pause and with no consideration for the knife Zoe held in her hand, he swung the bottle at her head. It slammed into her left cheek but didn’t break. The blow sent her sprawling to the ground as the knife flew from her hand. It hit the back wall and fell behind the sofa. He jumped on top of Zoe. As he knelt astride her legs, he smashed the bottle against the frame of the archway. Red wine and shards of glass erupted from the point of impact. He held the neck of the broken bottle, placed his left hand on her chest and leaned down hard, pinning her to the floor. Then he held the broken bottle to her face.

“Get in there quick,” the police officer at the front door shouted to his colleague while he reached in through the small broken window, fumbling for the latch. “Jesus, get in there.” Unable to reach the lock, he removed his arm from the hole and landed a heavy boot against the door.

The doppelgänger removed his hand from Zoe’s chest, grabbed a handful of her long hair and yanked her head to one side. His right hand tightened around the neck of the broken bottle.

A distraught voice came from the kitchen. “There’s a young girl here, she’s… Her head… It’s crushed.”

The officer at the front door called back. “Get in there quick, for fuck’s sake!” He landed another heavy foot against the door.

Another police car screeched onto the scene of family breakdown.

Jason watched with unrepentant eyes as his doppelgänger rammed the broken bottle into the exposed neck of his wife, severing her jugular vein. Blood sprayed out from the wound, splashing the sofa and walls with deep red streaks.

Zoe coughed blood into her husband’s face, and then asked, “Why would you do that?” She coughed up more blood. “Now you have nothing.” She reached out with both hands towards his face. He released his grip on her hair and then let go of the bottle, leaving it embedded in her neck. He looked up at the police officer who had appeared in the archway.

Jason watched as the officer rendered his doppelgänger unconscious with a ferocious kick to the head, the officer’s boot catching him on the chin and whipping his head backwards.

“And that’s that,” Lilith said.

Jason moved towards the archway, stepping over the spread-eagled and unconscious body of his past-self, then crouched down next to Zoe. He observed for a moment as the officer worked to try and stop the blood still pumping out through the broken glass in her neck. Jason’s gaze moved to her wide, searching eyes. He leaned in closer and spoke clearly and slowly, “I’m glad you’re dead, Zoe.”

Zoe’s eyes stopped searching the room and locked with his. Then she whispered, “I love you.” She had a terrified expression as she lifted her hands and reached out to grasp for something that wasn’t there. A few seconds later, her hands fell limply to the floor.

The police officers and Jason’s doppelgänger vanished into a cloud of vapour with a wave of Lilith’s hand. Jason stood in his old house with his dead wife and daughter, alone, except for the company of Lilith, who appeared to be happy with the bloody mayhem that had just played out before her. He watched as she perused the carnage with excited interest. He wondered how this creature could exist; why would God create such a thing?

Lilith: a creature without pity, remorse or compassion. A demonic entity, frivolous as she plays with life and death, who seems to have unrestrained dominion over both time and space, with capricious disregard as she travels from here to there and now to then. The fabric of existence her open playground to do with as she pleases, without the weight of regret to give her pause. Pure and unequivocal evil. “I call legions of demons to heel,” she had said, and Jason could see no reason to doubt her boast. The queen of all demons now stood in his living room, a bright smile beaming out from her face as she looked down at his dead wife’s body. Why would God create such a thing as Lilith?

“What are you?” he asked. “This… This pleases you?”

Lilith looked up from Zoe’s corpse. “The genocide of millions or a simple family slaying, both are sugar upon my tongue. Yes, Jason, this pleases me.”

Chapter 10

Jason felt like an empty shell as he sat on the doorstep of his house. If he were to move from this step, he believed he might shatter. After Lilith’s little show had finished, he’d walked out, leaving her to enjoy the aftermath. He could neither stop her nor reason with her. She held possession of power beyond his comprehension or control. He’d opened his front door, stepped out, and then dropped to the step. He sat and watched with a vacant gaze as thick clouds of black smoke rolled along his old street, towards his house. Maybe these are the fires of hell, he thought. If so, let it burn me to ash and be done with it.

The smoke consumed the other homes along either side of the road, until it reached and surrounded the border of his garden, where it stopped. Jason’s world now appeared to end where his front garden met with the pavement. The houses and the street beyond lay hidden within the smoke—if his old street still existed at all. His body whined and seemed to weigh a ton as he stood and walked towards the end of his garden and closer to the wall of smoke. Although it didn’t encroach the boundary of his home, the smoke rose on all sides of his garden and then rolled over his house, a few feet above the apex of the roof. Within seconds, a rough cube-shaped bubble became Jason’s world. Is this to be my prison? he wondered, this house and garden now the limit to my wanderings? The rest of eternity spent surrounded by memories of the family I once had?

The smoke had no effect on the level of light, though. Jason’s new claustrophobic world should have been pitch-black, without any observable sun or source of light, but illumination came from somewhere. It was a dim light, but enough for him to see. He turned back to his house and looked along the front wall, to where the neighbouring home had once joined the side of his own. The neighbour’s house had gone, leaving nothing as evidence that his house was once semi-detached. It had been cut away from the adjoining home with surgical precision, leaving nothing but bare brick a metre from the wall of smoke.

He saw Lilith standing in his living room. She smiled back at him through the window. He wished he could remove the broken remains of the bottle from his wife’s neck and use the glass to cut the smile from the face of the demoness. He walked back into the house and past the archway to the living room, ignoring his wife’s corpse and the beautiful yet demonic creature standing next to it, proceeding on and into the kitchen.

A minute later, he walked back out of the house, with his daughter’s dead body in his arms. He laid her down on the yellowing grass in the centre of his garden and then walked over to his garage to retrieve a spade.

Inside the garage, it appeared to be as he remembered it: an unorganised jumble of accumulated do-it-yourself crap. Yes, Zoe, of course I need to buy that, was Jason’s well-used mantra. Yes, Zoe, I do need to buy this spade with the extortionate price tag. I’ll use it to dig a hole and plant a tree, and maybe dig a vegetable garden too and, oh yes, I’ll need it to bury our daughter in our front-fucking-garden. He located and grabbed the spade, and then swung it against the shelves on the left-hand side of the garage. Tins of paint came crashing to the floor. Without missing a beat, he swung the spade against the right-hand wall. Bamboo canes clattered and snapped under the assault. As the destruction settled, he saw a familiar face standing against the back wall. He ran at the grinning monstrosity, holding the spade out in front of him; no longer was it a simple spade but a bayonet affixed to the end of a rifle. A moment later, a two-foot-high plastic gnome became half a foot shorter, its head guillotined by the blade of the spade.

“You stupid-looking fucker,” he said to the shattered pieces of plastic.

The cracked head of the gnome rolled back and forth on the concrete floor for a moment before coming to rest. It looked up at him with a bright red smile upon its garish face.

Chapter 11

Jason stood in the front garden, leaning on the spade, and looked down at the small empty shell that was once his daughter. He felt a cold chill run down his spine as he saw the large jagged indentation just above her temple.

I don’t care what happens to me now, he thought, but if I could take this back for you, Angel… Make it better somehow… I’d do it. I’d do anything for you, my beautiful… precious... baby. Jason crouched down, laid the spade on the ground, and combed Emily’s blood-matted hair away from her eyes with tender hands. He looked up at the rolling smoke. “Please, God,” he asked, for the first time in his life. “Please take this back. Change this. Forget about my worthless soul, but not hers. Not my Angel. She didn’t deserve this.” He looked down at Emily.

“And you the atheist.”

He turned and saw Lilith standing in the doorway, watching him. Ignoring her, he stood and picked up the spade and then looked down at Emily once more, before digging a hole next to her. Four years ago, the judge had refused his request to leave custody for an hour to go to his daughter’s funeral. The judge’s decision had been influenced by one pre-pubescent, acne-ridden doctor, who said it would be “Too much of a risk to Mr Drake’s fragile state of mind.” This time he would dig the grave and bury her himself. And no schoolboy with a Ph.D. would stop him.

“What are you doing?” Lilith asked, mocking curiosity in her tone.

“You can read my mind, work it out.”

“You realise that you’re burying your daughter in hell, don’t you?”

“Just let me do this one thing, just this one thing! Then you can go back to tormenting me as much as you want.”

“Don’t worry. I have no intention of stopping you from digging that hole. Stick it in the ground if it makes you feel better.”

“Emily! Her name is Emily.”

“No, her name was Emily. But she won’t answer to it anymore, will she? So now she’s just decaying flesh and not worthy of a name.”

“Why did she have to die?” Jason thought aloud.

“Because your wife killed her. Are you having trouble keeping up with current events? Your wife smashed her head in with a slab of marble.”

“At least tell me that my wife is down here, too. Burning in a lake of fire or something?”

“Lake of fire? There are no lakes of fire here, Jason, and hell is not below ground. Hell isn’t anywhere you would understand.”

“My wife, is she here?”

“No.”

“What? She killed my… her daughter.”

“And she felt remorse. Zoe asked to be forgiven, and so she was.”

“But… Murder. Isn’t that a fucking sin? She killed someone.”

“And you killed your wife. But you have no regret, do you? You took a life and all you have in your heart is anger. You and your wife had a chance for forgiveness; she took it, you didn’t.”

“You bitch!” Jason yelled, as he launched the spade.

The projectile headed, straight and true, towards its unflinching target. Then it vanished.

Lilith’s gemstone eyes smouldered as she said, “She’s gone with your next breath.”

He looked at her for a moment, fearful and perplexed, and then he realised what she meant. “No!” He looked down just in time to see Emily’s tiny body become stone. A web of small cracks shot across the surface of her face and then her entire body crumbled. A moment later, Emily disintegrated into a fine powder and took to the light wind, leaving nothing but a blood-soaked yellow dress lying on the ground next to an empty grave. His shoulders dropped. “No more. Please, no more.”

“But we’re just getting started. I have more for you, much, much more. You’ll know the essence of true pain before I cast you aside. This is just self-pity you’re feeling right now, which does nothing for me at all.”

“Derwood,” Jason announced in despair. “Derwood said there’s a way out of this place. You’ve left something by a mountain for us, and if we find it you’ll let us go.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask about my little game.”

“Game? Was Derwood right or not? Is there a way out of here? Or is he yet another fucked-up soul? Another toy for your amusement.”

“That’s better, Jason. Anger is so much more interesting than self-pity. Yes. He was right. You all get a chance to play my special game.”

“And what will I win? Three wishes, which will all turn out to be not quite what I expected? Make a deal with the Devil and don’t act surprised when you get burned.”

“I’ve already told you, Jason, I’m not the Devil. You’ve met the Devil, so why are you having trouble distinguishing us?”

“What? When?”

“You watched him eat one of those who made a deal.”

“The dog?”

“Hobs, Jason. The Devil is very much alive, so worthy of a name. Although, like me, he also has many names and cares not which one is used when he comes to collect.”

“Vermis?”

“You’d be surprised how many worms want to make a deal with the Devil. For a small piece of gold in life, they’re willing to give so much in death.”

Despondent and with no other options, he asked, “The game?”

“The game is simple enough, and if you win, you get that which you most desire. No tricks, no misunderstandings.”

“How can I trust anything you say?”

“Well, I suppose you can’t. But what’s a game without the gamble. Play, don’t play, it’s up to you, Jason. I’ll get what I want in the end, anyway. This is simply a chance for you to get something you want, too. For my amusement, I like to make a game of it. You still don’t understand how insignificant you are, do you? As I stand here and tell you this, I’m also with a million other people, having a million other conversations similar to this one. Your wishes, the prize I’ll give should you win, is of no consequence. You, and the millions of others like you, mean little more than a passing sigh to me. Do you understand? Let me put it another way...” She brushed something from her dress with a flick of her hand and then continued. “When you were twelve years old, you once walked across a field to go fishing in a nearby river. Your mother and father had been arguing again, and you wanted to get away from them. I can see that memory, can you?”

“Arguing. That’s one way of putting it. A violent bastard who couldn’t keep his hands…” Jason shook his head. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Do you remember all the cows in that field? How frightened you were by those big monstrous beasts, but you marched on. Through those scary creatures. As you continued on your way, the cows came closer and closer. They were curious about you. You ran across that field, away from the approaching inquisitive monsters. Until you fell over something—do you remember that?”

“A fox.” The memory came back to Jason as if it had happened yesterday. He remembered the fox, and its whimpering struggle, and how the sight had sickened him.

“Yes, a fox. Someone had shot it with a crossbow. The bolt and the fox’s shattered leg bone protruded from a festering wound.”

“I didn’t shoot it and I don’t know who did. I wouldn’t hurt an animal, then or now.”

“No, you didn’t shoot it, but you did stand there and watch as that poor creature struggled to drag itself across the field. You watched the creature for a few minutes until it moved no more, its fight for life all but done. Then you watched as a multitude of flies gorged themselves on that once majestic and beautiful creature. Watched as those flies fed upon the open wound. You watched until your curiosity had waned, and then you left that field, the cows, and that dying creature with its swarm of disgusting ravenous flies. An hour later you pulled your first fish from the river. How happy you felt to catch that fish, the earlier events unimportant to you and soon forgotten.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Jason, you’re like one of those flies. Buzzing around an open, festering wound.”

A long moment passed, before Jason asked, “How do I play your game?”

“First, I want you to meet someone. Follow me.”

Chapter 12

Jason stood on the doorstep, looking into the house. He watched as Lilith walked along the hallway and through the arch into the living room. He hesitated to follow her, struggling with his desire to get the game over with and save Emily, and a fear of what Lilith might do next.

I could run, he thought. But where to? Into the smoke? This black fog surrounding the house? That ends who knows where? Maybe the street is still there, somewhere beyond?

He turned his head and looked back at the black wall of smoke, its liquid movement rolling against an invisible barrier at the far edge of the garden. He looked up and saw that the same held true for the smoke above. The dense blackness was threatening, but never passing, the boundary of his old home. Where are you going to go? he asked himself. Play her game, get it over with and get out of this place. He stepped into the house.

The air inside had become stale, and he strained to draw breath. Dust hung before his eyes without the faintest movement. His old house had become lost within an atmosphere of sinister gloom. The sparse light fought a losing battle with the shadows. The darkness seemed to be a living thing, enveloping the inner decor and consuming the things he once held dear. Shadowy fingers crept across the photographs of his family and his pictured dreams for the future. The house had died with his wife and daughter.

He walked towards the archway and then froze as he heard the sound of slow, deep, rumbling breaths. The sound came from something in the living room. His body shuddered with each breath he heard. He feared that Lilith had manifested Hobs again, and it waited by her side—Vermis digested and now ready for dessert. Get it over with, Jason told himself. He walked through the archway.

“This is your caretaker.”

Jason’s hands leapt from his sides to steady himself against the wooden frame of the arch. “Jesus! What the hell is that?”

“As I said, this is your caretaker. He’ll take care of the flowers for me.”

Jason prepared himself to run but feared his legs might fail him if he did. The spark to his fear was the nebulous human form now standing next to Lilith. The caretaker, a ghost, stooped its vaporous head against the ceiling, its empty black eyes staring down at him. The ghost gained more substance until Jason could no longer see through it.

“My… caretaker?” Jason said, not looking away from those deathly eyes. His grip on the arch became painful.

“Yes. Isn’t he beautiful?”

The caretaker’s jet-black leathery skin appeared to be covered in scars. Some were mere scratches, while others were deep gouges a foot or more in length. The creature’s mouth opened and became an obscene gaping hole, its lower lip a foot or more distant from its top, with its chin pressing against its muscular chest. It had no teeth, nor a tongue. Its mouth contained nothing but an empty void. The caretaker’s eyes narrowed to mere slits.

“He’s eager to get started. Time to twist your perception of reality even more, Jason. Are you ready?”

“No. I’m not ready. Why are you doing this? Please… I see now. I understand. I did a terrible thing, but it wasn’t me. Not who I was. I killed someone, yes, but I’m no Hitler. I was never a cruel person. Why do I deserve hell for my actions? I want…” He released his grip on the arch and held up his hands, erasing his demand, then continued. “I mean, I’m asking for forgiveness. Isn’t God merciful?”

Lilith laughed. “No, Jason, He’s not. Anyway, back to the point in hand. Zoe would have had another child, in fact, she would have had many. More than you can possibly imagine. But we’ll start with the first line you broke and progress from there.”

“But, she’s dead.”

“Yes. She is. Oh, how I love the confusion that comes before the pain.” Lilith touched the caretaker’s arm and then ran her gentle fingers over its abused skin.

The caretaker let out a fierce cascading roar. Jason fell back through the archway and against the hallway wall. The sound made the air ripple before his eyes. It looked down at Zoe, studying the lifeless body for a moment, and then fell to all fours, its head and gaping mouth hanging over the corpse.

“Oh, Christ, no,” Jason said, reaching out towards his wife’s body.

The caretaker’s head jerked up. It was inches from Jason’s face as it growled once more.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Lilith advised.

Jason withdrew his hand. “What the fuck’s it doing?”

“You’ll see.”

The creature sniffed at the body, its head twisting from side to side as it inhaled. A hypnotic moment passed, before it started a rapid succession of deep breaths. The sound tore at Jason’s ears. Zoe’s flesh became black and flaked away. Within seconds, her body became ash, and the creature continued breathing it in. It took one last, long, deep insufflation and Zoe’s entire body disappeared, consumed by the caretaker. A veil of shock fell over Jason as he stared at the carpet where his wife’s body had lain moments ago. The caretaker’s hands reached out and closed around something that Jason couldn’t see. It stood and turned to face Lilith.

Jason looked on in bewilderment as the caretaker held out the object for Lilith. She inspected the offered hand.

Lilith’s appearance changed in an instant. She radiated with a softness—a glow—that pushed back against the gloom of the room. Her hair also stopped pulsating through an array of colours, settling on a silky shade of dark red.

The caretaker bowed its head. Although towering many feet above Lilith, it seemed to be afraid of her. With awkward movements, it cowed before her.

“No pain.” She put a hand on the creature’s head and caressed it. “Look after my flowers for me.”

“Yes, Mother,” the caretaker replied.

The creature didn’t articulate words from its mouth. The deep, reverberating sound came into Jason’s mind and raked aside all other thoughts. When the caretaker spoke, it was a terrifying rumble of thunder, a sound that entombed Jason’s will.

The caretaker turned and looked at Jason with sharp eyes. It made to walk towards him, both hands still holding something.

“In time.” Lilith’s words instantly stopped the creature’s advance.

It turned and blurred its form, becoming a ghost again, a fluid silhouette which moved, without hindrance, through the front wall of the house. The glass of the front window was bowing but not breaking as it passed through and out into the front garden.

Lilith flashed Jason a smile. “Not one for doors. Do you want to see what he’s going to do with my flower? It’s a glorious thing.”

“Fuck no!” Jason picked himself up as fast as he could and ran down the hallway. He flew into the kitchen, crashing into the door frame as he entered and then knocking over one of the dining table chairs as he raced for the side door. He grabbed the door handle and then stopped to look back at where Emily’s blood should still have been smeared across the floor. Like Zoe, all evidence of Emily’s death had vanished. Jason opened the door and looked into the wall of black smoke swirling a few feet from him. “Oh Christ, Jase,” he said to himself, “you’ve got nothing to lose. Don’t think. Just do it.” He ran into the smoke.

Chapter 13

Jason ran like a blind man within the smoke. The ground was soft sludge beneath his feet, and with no visible reference to maintain a straight line, he let hope guide his path. He ran until his muscles became alight with fatigue, and then stopped to let them cool and to catch his rampaging breath. He knew that he could run for at least five miles before his muscles and lungs felt like this, but he had doubts as to whether he had travelled any distance at all. His screaming muscles told him he had, but his eyes told him nothing. He could feel a light wind and see its mild turbulent effect on the smoke, creating swirls of grey within the blackness.

He smelled the air. He had expected it to have a smell of burning wood or sulphur, but it didn’t. When he first ran into the smoke he’d noticed its strange odour, but thoughts of escape had consumed his mind so he paid it little attention. The smell became more nauseating with every breath. It smelled like old, stale perfume. He breathed through his mouth to keep the stench away from his nose, but the repulsive scent persisted. An odd sensation brushed over his skin. His anxiety rose. He felt as though unknown eyes were now watching him, faceless minds debating him. He held his breath for a moment and listened. He could hear whispering, chattering voices coming from somewhere within the smoke. With a sudden increase in volume, the voices became more distinct.

“Get on your knees,” one voice ordered.

“No,” said another. “Get on your belly and squirm like the maggot you are.”

Yet another voice called out, “Prostrate your flesh and let the sodomites have their fun.”

Manic laughter erupted from the many voices.

Jason launched himself into a staggering run once more.

Keep moving, he encouraged himself. There has got to be a way out of this. This can’t be how it is when you die; there must be a way out. There’s no way this is it. He could hear many voices now, rushing up to him as he ran. They were all talking at once in a cacophony of derision interspersed with more laughter. The book of Jason’s life was now open, the pages being ripped from their bindings and devoured. His life’s misdeeds and character defects were being vomited back at him by the faceless entities within the smoke.

“Pissing on your father’s grave, instead of facing him when blood still pumped through his veins. Too frightened to stand up to him when he was still alive. Too much of a coward to protect your mother from him. You were a worthless son, Jason.”

“A kid, you bastards. I was a fucking kid when all that happened. What could I have done?”

“Your mother died alone, Jason. Her last breath choked by her tears. Was that one-night stand worth it? Fucking a woman you’d never see again while your mother’s cancer took its final bite. You knew that would be the night she’d die. Shit on the heel of a discarded shoe has more worth than you.”

Jason stopped running, tears now adding to his blindness. “I cared for her. By her bedside for a year. Day and night. One night that’s all. For just one night, I wanted to think about something other than death. I… I… I know she died alone.”

“A pathetic spectator to your wife’s growing madness, weren’t you? You knew what it would lead to, yet you did nothing. Waited for the inevitable to happen and then killed her for it.”

Jason fell to his knees and laughed back at the voices, hysteria in his voice as he screamed, “You won’t get to me that way. You’re too late. You say I’m pathetic. You say I have no worth. Well, you’re at the back of a fucking long queue, with me at the front. So, if that’s all you’ve got, you’re wasting your time.”

The smoke cleared. To his dismay, he realised he hadn’t travelled very far at all and now knelt on the dead grass of his old garden again. He looked up and saw a familiar face looking down at him.

“Self-pity again?” Lilith said. “You should give yourself a slap, Jason. Get off your knees and look at what your caretaker has for you.” She pointed to the spectral being standing a few feet to his right, its hands held out, offering something to him.

A deep raking sound emanated from the caretaker’s chest. Then its words exploded into Jason’s head. “Take it.”

Jason got to his feet and looked at the caretaker’s open hand. “Take what? Your hand’s empty.”

“Take it.”

“Before you do,” Lilith interrupted. “If you still want to play my little game, the mountain is over there.”

Jason turned to see where she was directing, and realised that his old house and garden now stood in a vast desert. His house sat upon a high plateau looking out over an immense ocean of grey dunes. He watched for a moment as wafting peaks marked the gradual progress of the dunes in their slow waltz with the indecisive wind. The cloudless sky appeared grey, although a shade or two lighter than the sand of the desert. A dark smudge on the far horizon separated the desert from the sky.

“That’s it,” Lilith confirmed. “At the foot of that mountain is a cave. If you go into that cave, you’ll find it.”

“What? What will I find?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a game if I told you that, now would it.”

“Derwood said it was by the entrance to the cave.”

“Derwood, like so many here, is weak-minded. I told him the same thing I tell everyone who wants to play my game: go to that mountain, find the cave, and then follow it. If you do that, you’ll win the game. But, if you’re too scared to explore the cave, you’ll find nothing but an unbroken eternity of pain and suffering.”

“Has anyone won this little game of yours?”

“Oh, yes. Many have played, and many have found the prize. In fact, Derwood is about to work up the nerve to enter that cave. So, he will find it soon, too.”

“How do you know that?”

“Jason, have I taught you nothing. I am everywhere and anywhere I want to be: here and there. This is my world and I see all.”

“What do I get if I win the game?”

“You’re tiresome, Jason. Find that which I have left for you and I’ll grant you your true heart’s desire. I’ll give you a long and happy life with your wife and daughter. I’ll give them both back to you.”

“My wife! I don’t want...”

“Yes you do, Jason. You want it to be as it once was, and I’ll give that to you. The last four years of your life will disappear from your memory, and I’ll place you in a time before it all went wrong for you. Your wife will get better. She’ll not kill Emily, and so you’ll not feel the need to kill her. You and Zoe will stay together, in love, well into old age. Emily will grow up and have children of her own. They will all love you and make you happy. Then after living your lives together, Zoe will die one year before you do, at peace in her sleep. One year to the day after your wife, at the grand age of ninety-one, you too will go to bed and die in your sleep. A guarantee of a long happy life is what I’ll give you if you go to that mountain, go into the cave and find that which I have left for you. Now, if you want to play, take the flower from your caretaker.”

Jason looked once more at the dark smear on the horizon and then glanced back at Lilith. She no longer smiled. She held his gaze with a seriousness devoid of sadistic levity, hitherto unseen by him. He turned to the caretaker and looked up into its dead eyes, then reached for its empty open hand.

Chapter 14

Jason felt an immense sensation of love and compassion, although he could see nothing.

“It’s a girl, Sue. A beautiful girl. Ah, she’s gorgeous. Makes me want to have another.”

“A girl? A girl.”

“What are you going to call her?”

“Sarah. It was its mother’s name. She thought he was a real shit for walking out, too.”

Jason felt sorrow and loneliness, but then a faint impression of hope. The feelings and voices melted away into the emptiness.

Chapter 15

Jason’s eyes burst open as he called out, “Sue.” Who the hell is Sue? he wondered, and Sarah?

He lay flat on his back, with his left hand hanging over the edge of the empty grave while his right hand rested on the foot of a grey statue. Snatching his hand away from the foot, he looked up at the figure. It stood in the centre of his garden facing his house.

Jason got to his feet and looked around. Lilith and the caretaker had gone. He looked at the statue again and studied it for a long moment before reaching out a hand towards it. With delicate and cautious fingers, he touched its face. It looked and felt the same as the one on the plateau by the mountain.

Flowers! Me aching arse, he heard Derwood say again. They’re not like any flowers I’ve ever seen.

“What are you?” Jason asked the motionless figure, as he rested his thumb on its left eyelid and tried to raise it open. Before he had a chance see if there was an eyeball beneath, he rose a foot from the ground and then hurtled backwards against the front wall of his house. His vision became blurry after the impact with the wall, and a throbbing pain shot up his back.

“Don’t touch them,” a deep voice growled.

His vision returned in time to see the caretaker disappear into a web of black vapour.

“Son of a bitch!” Jason got to his feet and tried to rub away the relentless pain in his back. He staggered to the edge of the garden, where the yellow grass decayed into the grey of the desert. He looked out across the sand in the direction of the mountain, but his view had become obscured. His house now lay in the valley between two large dunes, with more high peaks further out to his left and right. He wondered if his home was sinking into the sand.

He gazed at his old Volkswagen Golf parked in the driveway. Don’t be stupid, he thought, there’s no way it’ll start, let alone carry me across hell. The temptation was too strong, though; he had to try it.

The front door to the house was ajar. He pushed it open and went straight to the silver key tray, which sat atop a small wooden table in the hallway. In the tray was an old halfpenny piece, a blue stone button, but no keys. The doppelgänger had the car keys, he remembered. The doppelgänger who had vanished with a wave of Lilith’s hand, taking the keys with him. Jason thumped the wall with the side of his fist. He could try to hot-wire the car. Who am I trying to kid, he thought, I took half a day changing a bloody headlight bulb. He remembered the second set of keys and ran to the kitchen.

“She always had it with her,” he said to himself, scanning the kitchen for Zoe’s handbag. “Where the… Gotcha.” He took the small red leather bag from where it sat next to the microwave and tipped its contents onto the dining table. Lipstick; a purse; two credit cards; several screwed-up receipts; the keys! He grabbed them and ran through the side door and around to the car.

“You’ve never let me down before, don’t be a bastard now.” He held out the keys towards the car and pushed the unlock button on the key fob. Nothing happened. He pushed the button again. Still nothing. “Shit!” He slammed the key into the door’s keyhole and tried to unlock the car. When he turned the key, he didn’t hear the sound of the locking mechanism disengaging. “Shit!” He tried the door handle. The door clicked open. He pulled the key from the lock and jumped into the driver’s seat. Then he slid the key into the ignition, paused, and turned it. The engine remained silent. The car remained uninterested through another five attempts at starting it. Slamming his foot hard on the accelerator pedal and hammering his fists on the steering wheel and dashboard also had no productive effect.

“You didn’t expect to drive your old car across the deserts of hell, did you?” he asked himself.

He stepped out of the car and looked across at the high dunes, fearing the mountain may have moved too. His house no longer sat on a high plateau, and maybe the mountain might not be where it once was either. The peak of the nearest dune seemed to be no more than half a mile away. I’ll get my bearings from up there, he thought, then I’ll come back and get some stuff together before I head off for that bloody mountain. He walked away from his house and into the desert.

***

The sand was solid beneath his feet, although it did slide upon itself as he climbed the steeper section of the dune. He believed it would take no more than an hour to get to the top, but hours seemed to have passed before he reached the peak, at which point he sat atop the dune and wished that he’d brought water. The desert wasn’t hot, but he still felt he could do with a drink.

Derwood had been right: there was no change in the level of light. The landscape was grey and bleak. From his position, perched on the dune, he could see the mountain again in the far, dim distance.

You can do this, he told himself. You’ll do it and be with Emily again. It could all be a lie, though, a game Lilith likes to play with the damned, but you have to try. What else was there to do? Sit among the dunes as your house sinks into the sand? And what happens when that human statue—Lilith’s flower—dies? Derwood seemed sure that wasn’t something you’d want to be around for.

He observed the horizon line to the left and to the right of the mountain, and could make out other mountains, but none as high as the one he needed to get to. He got to his feet and made his way back down the dune and back to the house.

The journey back was easier, being downhill most of the way, but he still needed a drink. He chided himself as he neared his house. Walking into a desert without water—you bloody fool. He glanced at the statue as he walked by, being careful not to get too close to it. He walked past his old car and garage, moving in skittish steps, and along the side of the house and into the kitchen through the side door.

He grabbed a large glass from the cabinet above the countertop, held it under the cold water tap and turned it on. When no water came, he dropped the glass into the sink, where it shattered. The broken glass joined the discarded mushrooms and tomatoes in the sink’s basin. Looking across at the fridge, he asked, “Why do you buy that stuff, Zoe, it’s the same thing that comes from the tap.” Then he walked over and opened it. Among other food and drink that would soon spoil, there were three one-litre bottles of spring water. He removed one and then righted the chair he had knocked over in his rush to escape Lilith and the caretaker. He sat down, opened the bottle and took a large gulp of water.

As soon as the water touched the inside of his mouth he jumped from the chair, dropped the bottle, and spat out the water. It was boiling. He spat again, and again, trying to rid his mouth of the scalding liquid.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he exclaimed, as his tongue and the lining of his mouth blistered.

The bottle lay on its side on the floor, its contents draining out. He picked it up, studied it, and poured a little into his cupped hand. It felt cold. He sniffed it. It smelled of… nothing. It was just water. Not acid, not boiling, not even warm, just plain water. He tongued the blisters in his mouth and placed the bottle on the tabletop. He dipped a finger into the small puddle he held, hesitating for a moment before touching his tongue with the wet finger. It fizzed and burned on contact with the inside of his mouth.

He fell back into the chair. “Great. So, that’s the catch. Get to the mountain and your dreams will come true, but the mountain is on the other side of a vast desert… And, oh yeah, the water will boil in your mouth if you try to drink it. Food?” He picked up a juicy-looking red apple from the generous fruit bowl at the centre of the dining table, studying it for a moment before taking a small, careful bite.

He chewed once and then let the apple fall from his hand. The apple hadn’t burned his mouth like the water had, or caused him any physical pain whatsoever. He dropped the apple because of the immobilising despair that overwhelmed him as he chewed.

He spat out a glob of grey sand.

Chapter 16

Thump… Thump… Slap.

The loud sounds coming from the front door jerked Jason out of his stupor. He jumped from the chair, grabbed a knife from the block on the kitchen worktop, and then froze, his ears straining to hear any further sounds.

Slap… Slap… Thump… Slap…

He moved to the hallway door in slow, quiet steps. With the knife held in a firm grip, he peered out into the hall and looked towards the front door.

Another thump. Then a gurgling, spluttering scream.

He focused his gaze on the small rectangular hole in the centre of the front door—the hole that once had a pane of glass until the police officer had smashed it. He could see the grey of the desert beyond. Something flashed past the hole. It looked like a hand, but he couldn’t be sure. He edged his way down the hallway, towards the door.

Slap… Slap… Followed by more gurgling sounds.

He reached the archway to the living room and leaned his head forward to peer in. The living room was as he remembered: large TV, leather sofa…

A hand slapped against the front window, causing Jason to jerk his head back. The fingers of the hand looked broken and pointed in opposing directions. A moment later, the hand fell away as the bruised head of a man bobbed up into view, one bulging and wild right eye glaring into the living room, a mere black empty socket where the left eye should be. The man’s head twisted to its left, and then it snapped over and lay flat against his shoulder.

His neck looks broken, Jason observed with wide-eyed fascination—morbid curiosity quieting his fear for a moment. How is this guy still moving?

The man’s head bolted upright once more, and his solitary eye fixed on Jason. A pregnant moment passed and then he dropped back down and out of sight again. Jason held his breath and let it out in a burst as the man reappeared once more. The man headbutted the window. A small crack shot up the glass, which then forked into three further cracks across the pane. Another tremendous whack from his head, and the window turned opaque and then shattered into a myriad of translucent white cubes, which all came cascading to the living room floor.

Jason restrained his urge to run. Stay where you are, he told himself, in case that bloody freak tries to climb in. He shouted to the man, “Get the fuck away. I’ve got a knife.”

“Help me,” the man yelled. “Why is this happening?” His every word sounded as though it were an immense and painful effort.

“I can’t help you. Oh, Christ! I can’t help you. Just… Fuck off!”

The sickening sound of hard retching came from the garden. Then the man screamed, “You… Bastard… Help me.”

The man’s head appeared in the hole in the front door, pure terror radiating from his framed face. The head moved back a few inches from the hole as two of his broken fingers found purchase within the empty eye socket. His hand pulled away in a sharp, quick motion, wrenching the fingers from the socket. He screamed and then forced his head back into the hole while he slapped and thumped the door. He smiled at Jason. Then he frowned, grimaced, scowled, and smiled again, all in agitated succession.

The man cried out, “What’s happening to me?” The cry became a gasping, salivating voice. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong with me? Help me? I can see you in there, you fuck.”

Jason raised his knife and wondered if the blade would be capable of piercing the man’s skull. The man’s one twitching eye fixed on the threatening blade. Jason dropped the knife and ran to the door, throwing his fist at the manic face staring back at him through the hole. His knuckles cracked as he punched the man back and away from the door. He opened the door and watched as the man rolled back and forth on the lawn, his arms and legs flailing about in all directions.

“Cunt! You fucking cunt!” the man shrieked. Then he slapped the side of his own head with one hand while again forcing the twisted, gnarled fingers of his other hand into his empty eye socket.

“What… What are you doing?” Jason asked as he tried to make sense of why this man was attacking himself. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

The man stopped slapping his head and focused on gripping his skull by the barren eye socket. His head flopped from side to side as he tugged and pushed at it. “Can’t… stop… it,” he said, chewing on his tongue in-between gasped words.

Jason fell to his knees next to the man and then cradled his head while also trying to restrain his thrashing arms. “What’s your name?” he asked through his struggle.

The man made frantic panting sounds as his tongue jabbed in and out in sporadic bursts. He was wearing what appeared to be suit trousers and a blue silk shirt, which hung from his body in tatters. He had no shoes or socks, and his toes, like his fingers, looked broken and twisted. Jason continued to cradle the man’s head and tried to block his hands as he punched, slapped and ripped at himself. His muscles tightened, released, then tightened again with incredible speed. Jason could hear bone grinding against bone within the man’s juddering body.

“I… I… I’m...” The man bit down hard on his tongue then screamed out in pain. “Cunt!” His head bucked, thumping hard into Jason’s arms and chest.

“Wait… Shit… Hang on, I’ll get something,” Jason said as he laid the man down.

The man continued to twitch and convulse with sharp, brutal movements. Jason got to his feet and ran back into his house and then into the living room. He questioned his decision to try and help the man.

The cubes of glass from the shattered window crunched under his footfalls as he walked to the sofa. He grabbed one of the large leather seat cushions, and then turned and threw it through the window and out into the garden. Just give him the cushions, he thought, then leave him and be on your way. He grabbed another cushion and turned to face the window again. He was about to throw it into the garden when a familiar growl stopped him dead. He could see the grey statue in the garden. Next to it stood the caretaker. The terrifying creature was looking down at something by the statue’s feet. Jason dropped the cushion and ducked down.

While keeping low, he moved towards the window. He slid his feet across the floor, pushing the cubes of glass to one side, although he doubted any sound he made would be heard above the screams of anguish now coming from the garden—rasping yelps which escalated to piercing feral screams, which caused pain to Jason’s ears and bile to rise in his throat. He reached the side of the window and stood up, keeping his back as close to the wall as possible. He took a deep breath and then peered around the frame and looked out into the garden.

The man still lay upon the ground and was now floundering from side to side. The caretaker looked down at him. Its jaw opened inch by inch until it hung agape to a foot or more. It watched the man with malevolent eyes.

The man’s body jerked, jumped, and then rolled to the left and to the right. With each turn to his right, his body bumped up against the foot and leg of the statue. Every time he touched the statue, the caretaker snarled and the skin around its mouth rippled.

“Christ, buddy,” Jason whispered. “Move away from it. Move… away.” For a moment he thought he could see pleasure on the caretaker’s face, amused by the pathetic sight of the man rolling around on the ground at its feet. The diabolical creature seemed to be relishing the sight of another being in obvious and unrelenting agony—look how the slug squirms within the salt.

In an instant, the caretaker became a blur—a mere liquid shadow—as it dropped to all fours. Solidity returned to the creature as it moved towards the man, its gaping jaw dragging along the ground next to the man’s quivering body. The prey let out a shrill cry as the predator pinned him in place with one colossal hand. Its long slender fingers crept and searched over the man’s face while it sniffed at its terrified quarry, first in rapid bursts, then with long deep breaths. The man’s skin turned black.

“L-l-let me d-d-die… P-p-please… j-just let m-m-me die,” the man stammered.

Jason watched as the man continued to writhe beneath the caretaker’s effortless hold. The man should already be dead judging by the bone protruding from his neck. In fact, it looked as though every bone in his body had broken, yet he still moved, he still spoke, and he still screamed. Somehow, he was still alive. Whatever “alive” meant now.

Lilith’s words echoed within Jason’s mind. “You’ll die many times before I’m done with you.” He realised the torture of the damned had a more subtle edge, too, something that would chip away at the soul. It was impossible to quench your thirst, as water would boil within your mouth, and food was also useless, as it would turn to sand with the first bite. Food and drink was no more substantial than a memory, a teasing recollection of past culinary pleasures while sand grinds between your teeth. He felt thirsty and had hunger pangs. Maybe the pain is all there would be from now on—pain, but no death. But the man was disintegrating with the caretaker’s every breath. Soon, as had happened to Zoe, there would be nothing left of him. What then?

“You’ll die many times before I’m done with you.”

As Jason continued to watch the man being turned into ash, he wondered if this was what happened when Lilith had finished with you; the caretaker comes along and cleans up. If so, he considered, could he provoke the caretaker into finishing him off too and give him the oblivion he was expecting in death? A moment of pain and then nothing? The thought was brief, though, as the memory of his daughter stamped on his desire to be cast into the void.

Jason was sure he could traverse the desert and get to the mountain, even with no water and no food. Unless Lilith decreed it so, he presumed he wouldn’t die from dehydration or starve to death. He had a chance to get to the mountain and win Lilith’s sadistic little game.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he looked away from the garden, turning his back on the harrowing sight of the man and the horrific creature that was consuming the charred body with its every breath. He backed away from the window and crept through the archway. Once out of the living room, he bolted for the stairs.

Chapter 17

Jason could still hear the cries of anguish coming from the garden as he removed a small black rucksack from his wardrobe. As he fumbled with the bag, the sounds became no more than weak moans. He felt wretched for leaving the man to his fate, but as he had done four years ago after arriving at the hospital, he knew he must cast aside his humanity and become closed-off to any sense of empathy. “You better leave your humanity at the door with the rest of your possessions,” one inmate had advised him, “or you’ll become prey to monsters watching you from the shadows.”

He looked at a small picture frame on his bedside table—a photograph of Zoe, Emily and himself stood next to the prehistoric stone monument of Stonehenge. That was a good day, he thought, as he picked up the frame and removed the picture inside. He tore it in half and discarded his wife without a second glance, then looked at the remaining picture. “Whatever it takes,” he told Emily’s smiling face. He put the picture in the back pocket of his jeans.

A few minutes later he stood in the kitchen with the rucksack on his back, its contents grabbed as he ran through the house: a large kitchen knife; an old rusty hammer; a pair of binoculars. The two lighters he had found were out of fuel, so he threw a box of matches into the bag instead. The last two things to go in were the remaining plastic bottles of spring water, not to drink, but the water might still be useful. He also grabbed his Swiss army knife. It was a present Zoe had given him a few months after they met. “For my armchair survivalist,” she had said. He also pocketed the small blue stone button from the key tray.

He opened the side door and looked out at the blankets of sand—nothing but grey rolling dunes across an otherwise barren desert. He looked along the side of the house, towards the front garden. Although the screams of the man and the growl of the creature had stopped, he wasn’t about to check to see if they were still there. He stepped out and made his way to the back garden.

My paradise in the making, he thought as he scanned over his once determined, yet unfinished, attempt at a barbecue oasis. Decking and beams of wood lay scattered on a patchy carpet of uncut grass. Various flower beds edged the garden, although they had all withered under the encroaching sands of hell. How long until the house also became covered by sand? he wondered.

Remembering something he had once seen on a television programme about surviving in a desert without water, the same thought that had advised him to take the object in the first place, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the small blue stone button. He looked at it for a moment. Will it boil or turn to sand? he asked himself, or will it… “Fuck it!” He threw the button into his mouth. It didn’t boil, nor did it turn to sand, but remained as it had always been, a small blue stone. He flipped it over in his mouth with his blistered tongue. The saliva will come, he assured himself. Think of it as a mouth-watering sweet and keep sucking it—a succulent water-melon-flavoured sweet. Keep sucking and the saliva will come.

He took a deep breath and then stepped from the garden into the desert and walked in a straight line away from the back of the house.

Chapter 18

Once he had traversed the first dune and could no longer see his house, he arced around to the right so his direction realigned to the mountain again. This manoeuvre had added more time to his journey, but he thought it prudent to avoid other people and any situation that might bring him into contact with the caretaker. That thing had seemed to take pleasure from watching the man in his garden suffer before turning him to ash. The caretaker might also think it amusing to cripple him too.

After five or six hours—he had no way to tell for sure—he reached a ridge between two of the larger dunes. He surveyed the landscape. The sky remained as a cloudless canopy above the imperceptible motion of the desert waves—a view of nothing more than a desolate and miserable wash of grey.

Thirst and hunger became painful. His mouth felt rough and dry, and his lips had cracked and felt as though they were on fire. The mother of all headaches rampaged within his skull, and he experienced stomach cramps that came like a needle-toothed creature trying to escape his belly.

He slipped off his rucksack, opened it, and removed a bottle of water and the binoculars. Then he dropped the bag and knelt down. A desire to take a sip grew as he opened the bottle, but the burning sensation coming from his lips and the sores inside his mouth halted the temptation to try for a drink. He lowered his head and poured water over the back of his neck instead. It had a cooling effect but didn’t abate his thirst. He recapped the bottle and returned it to the bag. Looking towards the mountain, he raised the binoculars to his eyes.

Jason had bought the binoculars to help ponder the universe and enjoy the rare wildlife visiting his garden. He had also used them once or twice, with a mild sense of shame, to enjoy his exhibitionist neighbour’s body; she who had a desire for an all-over tan devoid of bikini lines. The binoculars should enable him to see with a magnification of ten, but for some unfathomable reason the lenses had the same effect as flat glass, with no improved clarity to his view at all. He checked the magnification dial on the bridge and then looked through them again. The view remained distant. He put the useless object back in his rucksack. Looking at the bag for a moment, he considered the unwanted weight and then removed the binoculars again and dropped them onto the sand.

He looked towards the mountain once more and became overcome by a sense of purpose he’d not felt before. He saw Emily standing beside him, a glorious daydream that gave him strength to stand up. “Stay with me, Angel.”

He threw the rucksack onto his back and continued on.

Chapter 19

“Hey there.”

Jason’s head jerked up and he looked towards the top of the dune. This was one of the steeper ones he’d climbed since leaving his house and he’d made it halfway up when the voice broke his concentration. A man with wild shoulder-length hair stood at the top and looked down at him. The man’s hair stuck out from his head in all directions, like jagged black sparks, while his wild eyes fixed on Jason with apparent delight.

“Hello,” Jason said. Congenial pleasantries between two men in hell struck him as comical. He spat out an abrupt laugh.

“That’s it, friend, don’t let it get to you,” the man said. “It can’t get any worse, hey, can it? Come on up, come join the fun that is my illuminating abode. Many wonders lay within.” He disappeared over the other side of the dune.

Don’t follow him, Jason told himself. Stick to the plan and avoid all interactions. But, he may be able to help in some way. Traversing these dunes and navigating this damn desert is proving harder than I thought. And anyway, even if he is a dangerous screwball, what could he do? I’m already dead. He’s not a caretaker, and he’s not Lilith. As he said, it can’t get any worse. Caution spoke once more. Don’t follow him…

“You coming or not?” called the man from the other side of the dune.

Jason’s muscles screamed with fatigue as he pulled himself up onto the crest of the dune. His eyes widened in wonder as his gaze fell upon the surreal site of the building standing in the valley between this and the next dune: a castle complete with four towers, gatehouse, and a dry moat. Corrugated steel sheets bridged the narrow gap across the moat, leading to a large arched stone entrance. Familiar grey statues surrounded the castle—one hundred or more that Jason could see—all facing the castle’s granite walls.

“Not bad, hey? Welcome to my pad,” said the man, gesticulating to the castle. “Oh, shit, where are my manners. My name is Xavier Smith. Stupid name, I know, but what can you do?” He snorted a short burst of hysterical laughter and then continued. “At least the unusual balances the mundane, as dear old Nana used to say. Come, come, check it out.”

“This is your home?” Jason asked.

“Well, yes… I suppose it is.” Xavier turned and looked at the castle. “Whatever a home can be in this place. This was where I—in life, I mean—this is where I did the business. And when I came here, the castle followed me. Not a bad deal. The moral of the story, I suppose, is if you’re going to kill someone, do it somewhere nice.” More hysterical laughter. The laughter came to a sudden stop as he turned to Jason and jabbed a finger at him, asking with stern seriousness, “What did you pay?”

“Pay?”

“Yeah, you know, what did you do? You didn’t get sent here because of a parking ticket. Lilith’s grand ride has an entrance fee. What did you pay?”

“I killed my wife.”

“Bedroom dancing for another man, was she?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Fucking whores. You got to jump on that shit. Can’t have the little woman with her slut mouth sucking on another man.”

“No. She… She…”

“Twelve-gauge up her promiscuous juicer, that’s how you sort that shit out.”

“No! Look, I’m just trying to get to—”

“The mountain,” Xavier cut in. “Yes, I know. I know. Everyone is trying to get to that bloody mountain. But, why would you want to leave this place? I don’t get it. You all say the same thing: must get my life back; must play the bitch’s game. Why? Hell is a complete trip. As long as you stay away from the sandmen, you can do anything you like. You’ve been given a free pass to a wonderful fantasy land for the weird and seriously fucked up, if you ask me. Okay, so you can’t shag anything, which is a bummer. Found that one out soon after being dumped here. Like trying to jack-off with a piece of my old Nana’s Sunday afternoon jelly. But hey, fun can be had in other ways.”

“I’m glad you like the place, but I want out. Is the whole desert like this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are other people… well… living in houses like mine, and,” Jason flashed his eyes towards the castle, “places like yours?”

“Yep. Scattered all over. Walk in any direction for long enough and you’ll find someone,” Xavier sniggered, “or something. Like I said, weird and wonderful. Never know what you’re going to find. Loads of freaks out in the sandy wilderness. Got to watch out for that shit, though, or you won’t get very far.” He studied Jason for a moment. “If you’re serious about getting to the mountain, you need to know a secret. You won’t get there unless you know.”

“Know what? What secret?”

“Come,” Xavier said, while making an exaggerated ushering motion with his arms towards the castle. “‘Come into my lair,’ said the spider to the fly.” He looked at Jason’s stony expression for a moment. “Just a joke. A joke. Jeez. Come, and I’ll tell you how to get there.”

“You’ve got a secret that could help me, that’s great. I’d appreciate any help, but tell me here.” Jason let the rucksack fall from his back, catching the shoulder strap in his right hand as it fell. If this meeting was about to turn sour, which the voice in his head seemed to think it might, he wanted something to swing at this guy.

Xavier gave the bag a glance and then looked back to Jason. “What are you, hitch-hiking across the outback or something?” When Jason didn’t respond, his head and shoulders slumped. “Look, I’m sorry if I come across as… well, you know, weird. I’ve not seen anyone in a while, apart from those sandmen, and they don’t say shit. You end up going a bit screwy, you know?”

Jason relaxed his grip on the rucksack.

Xavier continued, “Not much to do. Time is a fucker. Most people you meet here are fucking creepy, kinda like in life, but with the gloves off—if you know what I mean. Nope, just me and the bats.”

“There are bats here?”

“No. Made that bit up. You better lose the gullibility, friend, or you’ll get fucked up worse than a blind man with a chainsaw.” His face lit up. “Wow! What about that Lilith? She’s something else, don’t you think? Holy shit… She’s out there, on another fucking level, in fucking orbit. What did she do to you?” He didn’t wait for Jason to answer. “I think I pissed her off big time. She brought my gran and gramps back to life. Fuck me! Looked like a pair of worm-ridden jizz bags, but then so would you if you’d been in the ground for ten years. I ain’t going to tell you what she made the oldies do to me. Let’s just say that it was fucking wrong… just fucking wrong. Like two gorillas on acid. Sort of thing that’ll turn your therapist’s hair white. She likes to play, that girl Lilith, likes to play her weird fucking games. Sure would like to tie her down, though, and play some of my own games, if I could just get my jelly dick to play ball.”

As Xavier had been relaying his thoughts about Lilith, Jason had just watched the man’s agitation flare. His eyes were sparkling like simmering embers, a sleeping heat that could burst into flames at any moment. Jason was trying to work out what was going on behind those eyes. Something had slipped off the man’s plate at some point, that was obvious, but then everyone was missing a screw or two. Of more concern was whether he could be dangerous? Xavier had admitted that he was a killer, Jason continued to reason, but then, we’re in hell. This place will be full of them. Some whom circumstance made into reluctant killers, while others had become murderous pleasure seekers still addicted to their craft. What was Xavier? Jason couldn’t decide whether he was mad Mary the eccentric cat lady, or Ed Gein—I want to wear your skin—crazy. And then there was the secret he mentioned. A lie? The cheese to trap the mouse? Xavier was a mountain of a man. Jason thought he might have a problem if he had to fight the guy.

Jason had faced several physical confrontations with other inmates during his time at the hospital and had quickly realised his lack of fighting ability. He’d learned that avoiding those situations, as much as was possible, was the better tactic. Cowardice and bravery were things to contemplate later, from the safety of hindsight.

Xavier turned and descended the dune, heading towards the castle. Without looking back, he said, “Hey, I won’t force you, friend, but I hope you decide to come in. We can shoot the breeze and play some cards if you like. Be good to talk to someone new.”

A simple test might appease my paranoia, Jason thought. “How long have you been here?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Xavier replied. “Seems like years, but I can’t tell.”

Jason dropped his bag. “I’ve just got here… least, I think I have.”

Xavier stopped, turned and asked, “How many dunes have you gone over?”

Jason open his rucksack, feigned thought for a moment, and lied, “About five, I think.” It had been more like ten. He removed a bottle of water, making sure he gave Xavier time to see what he was doing. He unscrewed the bottle top and then lifted the bottle towards his lips.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Xavier advised, pointing to the bottle.

Jason lowered his head and poured water over the back of his neck. Okay, he thought, so he didn’t stand by and watch as I burned my mouth. A possible freak, but not a sadistic one.

Xavier laughed. “Fuck me, glad you’ve already worked that one out. Life’s a bit fucked up now, as twisted as a prostitute’s knickers. So many things to get used to. Dick’s as useful as a politician, and you can’t drink or eat. You could smoke, I suppose, if you could get fire to work.”

“I’ve got matches,” Jason said. He rummaged around in the rucksack for the box.

“Have you tried to light one yet?”

“No.”

“I’d chuck’m. Excess baggage.” Xavier resumed his walk back to the castle.

Jason removed the small box of matches from the bag, slid the cardboard draw open and pulled out a match. He struck it against the rough side of the box. Nothing. Not even a spark or sizzle. He struck it again, still nothing. On the third attempt the end of the match snapped off. He tried to light two more, with the same result: no fire. He threw the matchbox away.

He watched the crazy-looking man walk towards his castle and then removed the penknife from the bag and opened the main blade. He picked up his bag and followed Xavier down the dune and into the castle.

Chapter 20

They walked through a large latticed iron gate, across a dusty courtyard and through a door on the right which led into a large room. Jason proffered his right hand and imparted his name. Between his left hand and the material of the bag, and hidden from Xavier’s view, he held the Swiss army knife. Its three-inch blade was ready, should it be needed. Not a massive or intimidating knife by any stretch of the imagination, but it would be enough to give Xavier something to think about should he need to escape in a hurry.

“Oh, yeah, of course.” He grabbed Jason’s hand with a crushing grip and shook it twice. He didn’t make eye contact again until their hands had departed company.

Floor to ceiling bookshelves lined the left-hand wall of the room, interspersed by rosewood cabinets. A burl-wood conference table with blood-red swirls dominated the centre of the room, complete with twelve chairs positioned around its edge. A large oak writing desk, with a black leather work surface, stood at the far end of the room. The wall behind the writing desk was the solid canvas for an immense mosaic of dancing nymphs pouring wine from large jugs to reclining goddesses in scant attire.

Standing in each corner of the room were life-size angelic marble women standing on gold plinths. Gold leaf also enhanced their loose-fitting robes, which hung open and allowed for a glimpse of their pert breasts, reminiscent of ancient Roman or Greek decadence. The room appeared to be a shrine to female beauty and carnal lust.

Jason looked back to the bookshelves lining the walls. Several angel figurines, carved from ivory or bone, stood at random points along the shelves. Two beckoning angels stood before a row of red leather-bound books, the titles of which appeared as extravagant and illegible gold script. On another shelf, two angels danced between two large books with purple velvet covers, their titles in a more basic silver text. The title of one read Photography Volume 8: Submission, and the other, Photography Volume 4: Punishment. Previous and successive volumes were nowhere to be seen. The room’s decor looked gaudy in the extreme, a tasteless and unimaginative attempt at erotica, raising a derisory smile more than a pulse.

“Whisky?” Xavier asked, as he opened one of the rosewood cabinets.

“No water, but you can drink whisky? I can live with that.” Jason released his grip on the knife and let it fall into the bag.

Xavier sniffed. “Not quite.” He removed two small elegant glasses and a matching whisky decanter from the shelf inside the cabinet. He filled each glass and handed one to Jason.

Jason put the bag on the floor between his legs. “Thanks,” he said, while reading a plaque below a bamboo cane hung on the wall above a cabinet:

Exquisite Pleasures

“It’ll have the same effect as water, so don’t drink it,” Xavier warned as he gazed into the amber liquid of his own glass. “Anyway, there’s more to a good whisky than just drinking it. Let it dance awhile with your other senses—taste it with your nose.”

Jason raised the glass to his nose and inhaled. The delicate smoky aroma awoke his memory, and Zoe’s playful voice came clear and slow from the back of his mind.

“Not much of a whisky drinker are you, Jason?”

“No, but I could get used to this.”

He was back in his first flat. A dingy one-bedroom affair that he shared with the cockroaches, encroaching mould, and other assorted household wildlife. But the first time Zoe had come to his home, his flat had lost its depressing veneer and become a palace in paradise. One of those simple yet rare moments that becomes woven into memory. The long years since, and the emotional hurricane that had blown upon the later years, had hidden that memory until now.

Zoe’s sultry voice came back to him once more. “Drink up lover boy, I want to fool around.”

“Take your time with it,” Xavier said, holding his glass an inch from his crooked nose. “Don’t let it become familiar.”

“This is good, but damn, do I want to throw it back.”

Xavier laughed. “I’ve got something else you might like. Were you a smoker?”

“Sometimes, yes. Wish I’d taken up the habit on a more permanent basis. Since something will get you in the end anyway, it might as well be an enjoyable vice that hammers that final nail.”

Xavier moved over to the desk, opened a drawer and removed a wooden box. He opened the box and offered its contents to Jason. “They’re Cuban. Rolled by real virgin thighs.”

Jason reached in and claimed a cigar. “Thanks. Is that true?”

“Doubt it. But in my mind there was a little virgin somewhere, sat in the sun with her short skirt hitched high, rolling this thing against her warm, sweaty thighs, and then using it as a dildo before wrapping it up and sending it to me.” He put the whisky down on the table, closed his eyes, and then ran the cigar under his nose. “Thank fuck my imagination still works.”

“This is a helluva cool place you’ve got here. What were you in life?”

“I was a groundsman, but this wasn’t my place.”

“Oh?”

“I know we’ve just met, Jason, but credit me with some taste. This is where my cunt of a wife ran off to. The guy she banged lived here. The fucker was my boss, and old enough to be her grandfather. A total perv, just look around at all this junk. Decrepit old fuck. Like I said, you got to jump on that shit. So I did.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I killed them, of course. Had to be done. Funny, now I think of it. She was sucking him off. I expect that was all the old guy could manage. Anyway, they were both upstairs, in the main bedroom. He sat in a chair and she knelt between his legs. He looked so fucking stupid sat there, his trousers around his ankles. Looked like the old git was taking a dump. And she, that slut bitch, sucked on his old cock.”

“I can understand that riling you. What did you do?” Jason asked, as he rolled the cigar under his nose and enjoyed the aroma.

“Shot ’em. They saw me come into the room. ‘Let me write you a cheque,’ he said. Motherfucker thought I could be bought. He tried to stand, but his legs were wobbling all over the place, silly old sod. She went to stand up, too, but I pushed her back down. No dear, you stay there, I said, and put that slut mouth back where it belongs. The old guy was still trying to get to his feet, but the butt of my shotgun soon put him back in place. And once they were both ready, I put the barrel against the back of her head and fired. U-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e! What a fucking mess. Blew a hole right through the bitches bonce and shredded the old fuckers rinky-dink, too. With one motherfucking shot. The old bastard didn’t die right away, though, took about an hour before I heard his death rattle. I sat on the bed and watched him. What a piece of art.” Xavier saw the look of shock on Jason’s face. “Let’s not get all judgemental about it, buddy. You killed your wife, too, if I heard you right.”

“No, sorry. You’re right. Just a helluva thing, that’s all. How long were you in prison?”

“Prison? I didn’t go to prison.”

“No?”

“Fuck no. Once the old guy breathed his last, I put the barrel in my mouth and took a toke myself. Amazing! You’d think it’d be all dramatic and shit, blowing your own brains out, but it wasn’t like that at all. Just a light squeeze on the trigger and that was it. No flash, no bang, no pain at all. Just peace. Until it all went fucking weird when Satan’s daughter turned up. Fucking twisted bitch.”

“Who is she? I know her name is Lilith, but who… What is she?”

“I don’t know. All I know is she does whatever she likes, and there’s no way to stop her. Believe me, I’ve tried. And she doesn’t look much like a woman if you try to push her either, I’ll tell you that for nothing. She turns into a hellish storm of violence. She can make your fears come to life; fears you never knew you had.” Xavier looked distant for a moment and then continued. “Some twisted shit, she pulled. Even those bastard caretaker things are scared of her, and they’re pretty well indestructible. They grovel to her like she’s some kind of fucking queen. I presume you’ve met them already.”

“Yes, I’ve had that pleasure. What about the statues?”

“The statues? Oh, Lilith’s flowers. They can’t hurt you. Not unless you try messing with ’em. But it’ll be the caretakers that’ll fuck you up. The statues don’t do fuck all.”

“No, I mean, what are they?”

Xavier laughed. “They’re the people you’ve killed. They’ll surround you. Multiply like fucking rabbits, too.”

“Killed? But you said you killed your wife and your boss.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s at least a hundred statues out there.”

“Nope, some are covered by the desert. There are over three hundred out there. Circling this castle like they’re laying siege or something. So, no one’s told you about that little shocker yet? I was here a while before I found out about it myself. And it’s a gem. It’s not who you killed in life. They’re done and dusted. It’s the ones you’ve stopped from having a life.”

“I don’t follow.”

“You killed your wife, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“If you didn’t knock her off, she would have had children. And not just her own kids, but the ones she would have caused, too.”

“Caused? What the hell does that mean? And what if she had no more children? I mean, we planned to have one, Emily, and that was it. I didn’t want any more, and I’m sure Zoe didn’t either.”

“No, you’re still not getting it. Look, life ain’t as simple as you think it is—the point of it, I mean. We’re given life to experience things. Love, wonder, passion, all that good stuff. But it was a mistake, because with the good shit, also comes the bad.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Xavier? You sniffing something else other than the whisky?”

“I wish. No. Stick with me here, Jase, because it’s a horse’s kick to the gonads, but you need to know it. You and your wife may not have had any more rugrats, but every moment of your life, with every decision you make, another you is spawned into existence. One of the other versions of you may have had more kids. The same goes for your wife. But you killed her, and in doing so, you also killed all the possible spawned versions of her, too. And not just them but any life that would have come into existence from your wife’s interactions with anyone else. Because if life can exist, it will and does exist. But if the chain is broken, it fucks up the cosmic machine. We’re a paradox throwing a banana at the feet of old Father Time.

“I should have listened to Peter.”

“Who the fuck’s Peter?”

“He was in a pub after I died, and he said if I asked for God’s forgiveness I’d go to heaven.”

Xavier barked out a rasping laugh. “Oh, shit. Don’t believe that crap. You say you saw a guy called Peter after you died?”

“Yes. In a pub.”

“Well, I saw my best friend after I blew my brains out, on a tropical beach. I was walking along the same beach. How did I get there? I don’t know, and at the time I didn’t care, either. I’d just sucked on my old twelve-bore pipe in this place and then I was walking along a beach somewhere, with no recollection of pulling the trigger. This castle was in the middle of the countryside, miles away from any beach. But I didn’t question that, didn’t even question that my best friend was there too. He had died a year before—wrapped his car around a tree. Yet, there he was, sitting on a poncey deckchair, a big smile on his face. ‘How ya doing?’ he asked. We talked for a while and then he asked me if I regretted what I’d done. ‘No fucking way,’ I said. Anyway, that chafed me for ages after. I wondered if I should have repented and got a first class ticket away from here. I like this place now, but back then I whined to myself about it. Kinda like you’re doing now. What a pussy I was. This place is fun on an epic scale. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.”

“Still, I think I should have listened. I’d be with my daughter in heaven right now.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“No?”

“No. Lilith was fucking with you, friend. I used to think the same way you do, and even took up the challenge. Lilith’s little game, what a joke. I almost made it to the mountain, too. Then I met a guy who knew everything. Russian fucker.” Xavier ran his fingers through his explosion of hair. “What’s his name? Fuck it, I can’t remember.”

“Everything about what?”

“Just… everything. That was his punishment for not giving a shit in life. When he died and came here, he received knowledge about everything.”

“How is that a punishment? I wouldn’t mind knowing everything right now.”

“Not that kind of knowledge, you wouldn’t. There are all kinds of shit inflicted on the damned here in hell. You and me are killers, so we’re surrounded by the sandmen. Shit, what was his bloody name? Anyway, he was a man with power and influence but chose to ignore the suffering going on around him. When he died, they asked him why he’d done nothing about it. His reply was that he didn’t know. Well, now he knows everything. Doomed to see and experience all the pain going on around him, but now he can’t do a thing about it, even if he wanted to. The big guy in the sky has a sense of humour, don’t you think. Anyway, he told me it doesn’t matter what any of us had said, whether you regretted your misdeeds and ask for forgiveness or not. You’re fucked, no matter how much you grovel at Lilith’s feet. It’s all part of her fun. She likes you to believe that you had a shot at paradise if you repented. Twisted bitch, hey?”

“Sent to hell for not giving a shit… Apathy… Sloth?”

“Sloth?”

“One of the seven deadly sins.”

“You know your Bible, hey? Good for you. It won’t help.”

“No, I heard it mentioned in a film once.”

“Oh, right. No, that list is a human invention. God don’t care about all that crap. True, if something you do causes pain or death for someone else, you’ll get sent here. But, what are the other ones? Isn’t lust and gluttony on that list, too?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Well, God wants you to enjoy your life as much as possible. As long as you don’t hurt anyone, He doesn’t give a shit. Steal a million in gold and fuck a hundred prostitutes while licking champagne off their bare titties, and God will smile as the pearly gates are opened for you. But if anyone gets hurt, the gates are shut and Lilith comes out to play. Suffering, killing, and cutting innocence short—those are the only things to avoid.”

“Innocence? You mean children?”

“Yep. You know, that part of life when you still think the fat man is coming down the chimney once a year or the pink bunny will leave you chocolate eggs. God loves the naive wonder we have as children, and he fucking hates it when those innocent eyes are closed too soon. That’s another one the caretakers deal with.”

“How can you enjoy being here, Xavier?”

“I don’t know, but I do. Like I said, your dick shrivels up like a slug on a hot day, so you can’t get your kicks that way, but there are other pleasures. You wanna see?”

“See what?”

“How I spend my time.”

“No. Thanks, but I’m still heading for that mountain. I want out of this place. Do you think Lilith will honour the deal? Or is it another way she gets her kicks?”

“What did she offer you?”

“My life back, with my wife and daughter. Without all the shit that happened.”

“Oh, yes. She’ll give you that, all right. But it ain’t as straightforward as you think, and besides, the mountain is a long way away, with lots of weird and wonderfuls on the path.”

“You said you knew something that would help me, what is it?”

“I’ll do better than that, my friend, I’ll show you.”

Xavier put his whisky and cigar on the table and then walked to where a large-breasted angel was looking down from a high shelf. He reached up for the angel and looked over at Jason with beaming excitement. “Welcome to the perv palace.” He pulled on the angel. There was a click and a secret door appeared in the lower section of the bookshelf. Xavier pushed the door open and stepped through. A moment later, his head leaned back into the room. “You coming or not?” Then he disappeared again.

Jason reached into his rucksack and checked where the hammer and knife were. Making sure he wouldn’t fumble, should they be required in a hurry, he walked over and stood by the door for a moment.

It opened onto a narrow stone corridor. He watched Xavier make his way to the opening at the far end, about sixty feet away, and wondered how far he would let his own stupidity take him. He knew he should turn and run; he also realised that naivety was reigning supreme with his judgement at the moment. Get out of here, he thought, this man’s brain is off kilter. Why take a risk by following him any further into his lair?

Xavier looked back and called out, “Come on. It’ll be clear as day when you see. I need to show you first. Then I’ll tell you something so simple you’ll kick yourself for not realising it before. But you have to see this first. Then you’ll know how to get to that mountain.” He was nearing the end of the corridor, and a moment later he disappeared into a room beyond.

Jason felt a moment of relief. At least it’s level, he thought, and not going down to some hidden dungeon somewhere beneath the castle. If Xavier wanted to attack, he could have done it already. He’s a big guy and could’ve kicked seven bells of shit out of me at any time. Why would he bother going through all this—the whisky, the cigar—unless this is part of his new-found fun he was talking about? Shit, Jason, you’re paranoid. He checked the bag once more. Would his makeshift armaments be enough against this guy? Calm down, he’s okay. Mad as a box of frogs, but okay. Keep your distance, though. Jason stepped through the secret door and into the corridor.

Emblazoned depictions of men and women in outlandish sexual positions appeared on the sandstone walls, carved deep and polished to a high shine. Jason thought the Kama Sutra had been the inspiration for the wall art, but as he walked along the corridor and studied the many scenes, he realised, inspired or not, these depictions had come from a depraved and twisted mind. Women hung from, and lay strapped to, contraptions constructed for sadomasochistic domination. Moments of forced submission and sexual deviancy called to Jason’s eyes, inviting him to explore the spectacle, examine what a degenerate human mind can conceive. The further along the corridor he walked, the further from mere fetishism and closer to outright torture and murder the depictions became, all glistening in the rare light.

He ran curious fingers over the cold stone thigh of a woman who lay upon a banquet table, her naked body visited upon by the feverish eyes of twelve men and an enormous bull who all sat along the far side of the table. The bull sat in the centre between the twelve men. An inscription below the carving read:

They are but food for your pleasure, so eat well.

After a minute or two, he reached the end of the corridor and stepped into a room so bizarre in its construction it caused him to stop dead in wonderment.

Xavier had a look of bubbling madness as he said, “Perverted fucker, hey? This is how the rich spend their money.”

Chapter 21

The room looked to be about twenty feet across, the same in width, and another twenty high. An odd feature of the room’s height was that half of it was above a glass ceiling. The glass was divided into four sections, each supported by steel beams spanning the entire width of the room. In the centre of the room, below the glass ceiling, stood a cream leather recliner chair.

“What the—?”

“I know, weird as fuck. The old bastard used to lie back in that chair and enjoy the sights going on above.”

“Sights?”

“He paid people to party up there, to fuck each other’s brains out while he sat back and watched from down here.”

“A bit on the weird side, but I suppose it takes all sorts.”

“Not when one of the sorts is your wife. She used to disappear for hours. So one night I followed her.”

“And she came here?”

“Yeah, the bitch came here. I stood in that corridor—in the fucking shadows. The old fuck didn’t see me—he was too busy watching my wife getting spit-roasted by the men above. One of them even looked down and saw me, saw me watching him like a pathetic rat in the shadows, his cock in my wife’s ass. Don’t mind if I bugger your missus, do you? That’s what that bastard was thinking while he looked down at me with a big fucking grin on his face. All the while the old git sat there, sipping wine… watching, like the parasite he was. That’s when I decided to end him. Cool set-up, though, don’t you think?”

“Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“No. Well, not quite. We need to go up there. Then you’ll see it.” Xavier sniggered. “It’ll become clear as glass from up there.”

Jason walked into the room and towards the leather chair. He looked around, apprehension causing him to contemplate every footstep. The room below the glass ceiling was a wooden box, with no visible way out other than the corridor. There were no windows, either, just floor to ceiling wood panelling. The room above the glass floor looked the same, apart from a large skylight allowing for a view of the unchanging grey sky above the castle. He looked for a means to get to the upper level but saw none. “How do we get up there?”

Xavier stood across the room from Jason. He turned to face the wall and, with a theatrical wave of his hands, said, “Open sesame.” Then he thumped his palms on a wooden panel, which opened out from the wall with a loud click. “There are loads of these all around the castle.” He walked through the new doorway. “Few obvious doors in this place. The old bastard liked his secrets.”

Jason paused for a moment and allowed himself a smile at the room’s potential for perversion, as Xavier walked through the door and climbed a narrow staircase. Jason followed, being careful to keep his distance from him. At the top of the stairs, Xavier opened another panel door and walked out onto the glass.

A moment later, Jason also stepped out onto the glass. He looked down at the recliner chair below, and then across the transparent floor at Xavier. “So, what is it? Can you help me or not? No offence, but I’m getting a little creeped out by all this.”

Without looking away from Jason, Xavier slapped the palm of his right hand against the wall behind him. A click, and yet another door opened out from the wall. “It’s through here.”

Jason walked as if crossing a frozen lake, expecting the ice to crack at any moment. The glass felt firm beneath his feet. It didn’t crack, didn’t even bow under his weight. He’d reached the second section of the glass floor when Xavier spoke.

“Do you think I’m dumb, Jason?”

“What? No. Of course I don’t. No more than I am, anyway. Although that’s not much of a compliment.”

“Okay then. Do you want to hear the secret first, or do you want to see what I have to show you?”

“I’m not in the mood for games, Xavier. Just tell me what this simple secret is that’ll help me on my way.”

“You point your body towards that huge rock in the distance and put one foot in front of the other. Keep putting one foot in front of the other until you reach it. Your bottle was half-empty, Jason.”

“What?”

“You already knew not to drink the water, didn’t you? I saw you smile. You stupid fuck. If I’d laughed when you drank the water and burned your mouth you wouldn’t have trusted me. But if I say oh no, don’t do that, you’d think I was all right. Then you’d follow me into a castle. A castle in the middle of a fucking desert in hell.” Xavier laughed. “You’re one dumb shit, Jason.”

Jason looked at him with narrowed eyes. Then he glanced down at the glass floor and his eyes widened again as he realised his precarious position. “Yes, I am,” he said in a dejected whisper.

“Don’t feel bad, though. You were number sixty-two to sniff the whisky and Cuban slut’s dildo. They were all dumb shits, too. You’ll see them all soon. What’s left of them, anyway.”

Jason reached into his rucksack and removed the hammer and kitchen knife, letting the bag fall to the glass floor once he had a firm grip.

Xavier clapped his hands together and exploded with laughter. “Oh, fantastic. Just fucking beautiful. You’ve got a knife and a… hammer? What are you going to do with that? A spot of DIY? You’re cracking me up, Jason.”

Jason backed away. Keeping his tone as calm as possible, he said, “I’m going now. Thanks for the tour. You stay right there and don’t move, and we’ll part on good terms. Okay?”

Xavier took a provocative step forward. “I’ll tell you what, if you can get out of this castle, I’ll let you go. I can’t give you a better deal than that.”

“Take another step and I’ll knock your teeth through the back of your head.” A long moment passed and then Jason spun around and ran towards the stairs.

Without warning, the floor opened and Jason fell through.

His left knee shattered and his right ankle broke as he impacted with the wooden floor below. Cold, sickening pain shot through his legs. He let out a yell and his breathing became short, sharp bursts as he tried to pant away the pain. He looked up. A section of the glass floor above hung down and swung back and forth in a gentle motion: a glass trap door. He could see Xavier working a crank mechanism behind another panel in the wall.

“Do you like my addition to the perv’s castle? A bastard to set up with no power tools, but well worth the effort, don’t you think?”

Jason watched as Xavier winched the glass back into place. He looked about for his hammer and kitchen knife and soon located them, but both were out of reach. The bag and penknife were also beyond his grasp. Every attempt to move towards them ignited the pain in his legs and sapped his strength.

Xavier closed the panel in the wall that housed the crank mechanism for the trap door and swaggered down to where Jason now lay crumpled on the floor.

“My legs,” Jason whimpered.

“Don’t fuss. I’ll deal with your legs in a minute. Damn! I didn’t think the fall was high enough to break so many legs. You know, just ten people have survived that fall without breaking anything. Oh well, you learn something new every day.” He moved over to the far wall and opened another panel.

Jason couldn’t see what he was doing. “What’s that? You sick bastard. What are you going to do?”

“Need to sort you out and then you can meet the others.”

Jason bit back on the pain coming from his twisted and broken legs. “Look, just let me go, all right? So I can get out of this place. My daughter, please…”

“Don’t whine, Jason. Be a man, for fuck’s sake. I’d like to say that this will all be over soon, but it won’t. That’s one of the curious things about hell. No matter what I do to you, you won’t pass out and you won’t die either. You’ll get to feel pain in all its intricate complexities. Don’t believe me?”

“Yes! I believe you. Just let me out of here, you fucking freak.”

Xavier picked up the hammer and walked over to Jason. “Look, I’ll show you what I mean.”

“No! That’s okay, I believe you.”

Xavier crouched down and looked at Jason’s broken and shaking legs for a moment.

Jason yelled, “I believe you! I fucking believe you. My daughter, I need to save my daughter. I have a photo, look, hang on, it’s in my pocket. Wait!”

A ferocious and determined look took hold of Xavier’s face as he lifted the hammer. His lips peeled back to reveal gritted teeth, and he swung the hammer down with a heavy blow, smashing it into Jason’s right knee. He raised and smashed the hammer down again, and again, and again, each blow producing a dull thud, a muffled cracking sound and searing pain.

Jason screamed. He flung out his arms and hands, trying to block the attack, but the hammer came crashing through his defence, breaking his right wrist and various fingers on its unstoppable journey to his legs.

Xavier gripped the hammer with both hands, raised it high above his head, and brought it down onto Jason’s shattered legs one final time. A shard of bone shot out from a tear in Jason’s jeans. Xavier flinched as the bone projectile flew past his head.

“See. You should have passed out by now. And if that didn’t do it, this should.” He threw the hammer across to the other side of the room, stood, grabbed Jason’s right foot and yanked at it, as if pulling on a stubborn tree stump.

As he pulled, Jason slid across the floor towards him. “Stay the fuck there,” he said, as he forced his right foot against Jason’s groin for leverage. He resumed his pulling, wrenching and twisting. The broken leg wouldn’t be torn away from the rest of Jason’s body.

Xavier stopped and looked down at him. “I’ll cut it off later. You know, it amazes me every time. That must have been painful, but see, you’re still with me. And no blood either. I’d have preferred a bit of blood, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. You won’t even go into shock. There’s no escape from the pain. Fucking awesome shit, don’t you think?”

Jason tried to steady his trembling lips as he said, “Just kill me… Just…”

“Haven’t you been listening, Jason. You can’t die anymore, you’re fucking immortal, friend. I bet immortality isn’t quite what you imagined it would be, though, is it?”

“The… hammer. My head. Use the… hammer… on my head…”

“Oh, I see. No, that would just turn you into a screamer. Well, I call them screamers, but they don’t actually scream, or make any sounds for that matter; they just gawp at you like dumb goldfish.” Xavier laughed. “Nope, not turning you into one of them. Speaking of which, I’m going to have to do something about those bloody whimpering sounds you keep making. Can’t abide that noise. The only downside to breaking bones—the bloody noise people make. Rabbits! You ever heard a rabbit in distress? I must have squished hundreds of the little bastards under the wheels of my old Land Rover, and if you don’t finish them off in one, they scream like fucking banshees. Miss that old Land Rover.” He snorted a laugh then sniffed. “Anyway, you sound like one of those bloody rabbits. But there’s something I can do about that.”

Xavier moved to a position behind Jason’s head. He leaned down, hooked his arms under Jason’s armpits and lifted. A moment later he hauled him up and onto the recliner chair. Jason’s protests were weak from pain and no obstacle to Xavier’s intentions. In less than a minute, he’d strapped Jason to the chair—one strap was pulled tight across his neck, another over his chest; one strap held both arms down by running over Jason’s left arm, under his back, and then over his right arm. Yet another ran over his midsection. Xavier used two more straps to hold Jason’s legs in place: one over his knees, the other over the ankles. He pulled hard on the straps and snapped them tight.

“Just your head, and then we can get started.”

Xavier disappeared from view. A moment later he returned with a large metal vice. Jason shook his head in a frantic motion, but once the vice slid into position beneath his head and Xavier turned the screw a few times, Jason’s head moved no more.

“Stop! Please, you don’t need to do this. Stop. I can help you catch other people. You can do this to them. Not… me. I’ll help you.”

“Do I look as though I need any help? I think I’m doing okay on my own. But thanks for the offer. Now, where did I leave it?”

He’s not going to listen to your pleadings, Jason thought, you’re weak to him. He’s getting off on domination. You messed up before you even got started, you bloody fool. He’s going to torture you for shits and kicks. You should’ve known better. You spent the last four years surrounded by twisted fucks and you let this inbred freak sucker you in. “Okay, you dumb shit, get on with it or let me up. You spineless shit. Come on, untie me and we’ll go at it. What’s the matter, you fucking coward? You. Me. What’re you afraid of?”

“If you could’ve, Jason, you would’ve. I like a good session, but you’re not in any fit state to put up much of a fight anymore.” He laughed. “Mind you, you were pretty weak to start with.”

“I can see why your wife went off with another man. Why waste time with a pathetic loser like you when she could enjoy herself with someone else… Multiple men, wasn’t it?” Jason tried to force a mocking laugh. “And one of them was a decrepit old bastard. You fucking loser.” He saw Zoe’s bloodied face looking down at him. She was laughing while blood dripped from her lips and onto his face. But he didn’t feel her blood. Instead he felt a nauseating sensation as his nose broke beneath a blow from the hammer.

“You fuck! You… You… motherfucking fuck.” Xavier smashed the hammer into Jason’s chest and let it fall from his hand to the ground.

“Come on,” Jason screamed. “Come on, you dickless inbred, is that all you’ve got. Your wife is laughing her ass off at you, and so am I.”

Jason tried to move his head, but to no avail—the vice held him firm. In his restricted field of view, he could no longer see Xavier. His gaze was fixed on the glass floor above and through to the skylight beyond. He heard a strange sound: a sucking, intermittent choking sound. Xavier… crying like a child?

“She was beautiful,” Xavier said between sobs. “Beautiful, and she knew that everyone noticed her. She wanted those disgusting men to use her.”

“Zoe was the same. They’re all the same. You try doing your best for them, but…”

“Yes,” Xavier agreed.

“Those people took advantage of you. Your wife and those men. All took you for a fool.”

“Yes.”

“It was the same for me. But, you help me and I’ll help you. We’ll put things right. You’re right, hell is an incredible place. Do whatever we want, with no repercussions. I see now how it could be fun. We can work together.”

Xavier’s face loomed into view. Jason smiled, but the pain from his nose and legs washed the smile away as soon as it formed.

Xavier was no longer crying. “Still a dumb motherfucker, ain’t we, Jase. I have more to show you, but you’ll want to scream when I do, so I need to do this first. Sorry if it stings, but needlework isn’t my thing.”

Jason watched in horror as Xavier threaded a thick needle with black thread.

“Oh Christ, Xavier, you don’t need to do this. I won’t scream. Lilith made me watch my daughter die. I didn’t scream then, I won’t scream now.”

“I doubt that. I bet you screamed like a girl losing her cherry to a twelve-incher. Anyway, some of what I’m about to show you is what I’ll be doing to you soon too. So yes, you’ll want to scream.”

“You said you have a secret,” Jason blurted out as he watched the needle coming towards his lips. “This secret of yours, what is it? You said you’d tell me.”

“Oh, that. Thought you would’ve worked it out by now.”

“No. No, I don’t know. What is it?”

Xavier pinched Jason’s top lip, stretched it out, and then plunged the needle into the soft flesh. With indifference to the screams, he stitched his lips together. “If you want to get to the mountain, Jason, trust no one. That’s the secret. No matter what, trust no one. Told you it was simple. But it doesn’t matter now because the mountain is no longer where you’re going.”

Chapter 22

There were no visible doors within the castle, just endless wood panelling. Doors would click open when Xavier pressed his palm against specific points along the walls. Sometimes he seemed to forget where he had to press to disengage the various locking mechanisms and he punched the walls, instead, until the doors opened.

“When I first came to work for the old bastard, it took me months to find all the doors,” Xavier said as he dragged his unwilling guest along.

Corridor to corridor and room to room, all the while Jason’s legs trailed behind as swollen, broken lumps of useless flesh. He flung his arms out in frantic confusion as he tried to stop his journey towards the unknown. Through a large banquet hall, on into a library, through another corridor adorned with paintings of curvaceous blindfolded women in provocative poses, and then through a wide door which led to a courtyard behind the castle. The courtyard had a six-foot-high wire mesh fence surrounding it. Jason’s face stretched in horror as he realised his fate.

On the right-hand side of the courtyard stood a row of six metal cages. Each cage housed five to ten people, each person battered and maimed. All of them had suffered barbarous and unrestrained sadistic cruelty. Legs and arms hacked off or hanging from their respective bodies by the merest shreds of skin and sinew. Eyes were gouged out. One man had a finger sewn to each eyelid, which flapped about over empty sockets. A few vocalised their rage towards Xavier with muffled moans and rattled the shackles that held their arms to the roof of the cages. But most of the prisoners hung from their restraints in silence, with a look of sorrowful resignation upon their faces.

“Welcome to your new home,” Xavier said, as he pulled Jason past the first cage.

When Jason saw the decapitated heads scattered around the courtyard’s dusty ground, he screamed against the stitches holding his lips closed. The heads looked on with despairing eyes as he went by—they were still alive. Some opened their mouths as if trying to speak, while others twitched and chewed on the remnants of their tongues. He could see that each head had once also had its mouth sewn shut, the threads hanging from their lips like clumps of pubic hairs.

“See, no matter what, you will not die. Fucking amazing. Look, Jason, they’re saying hi.” Xavier kicked one of the heads away from his path. “Don’t worry, I won’t be doing that to you just yet. Not much fun when you’re just a head. But, in time, you’ll join my headless crowd, once I’ve had fun with the rest of your body first. Hang on, that’s not right, a head is all they’ve got now. So, I should say, the bodiless crowd. Yes, that’s what I meant to say.”

He dumped Jason against the door of the cage at the far end of the courtyard. “I’ll have to make some new kennels. It’s getting crowded around here. Hey, do you want to see a screamer?”

Jason shook his head, his eyes almost bulging from their sockets.

“Sure you do. Hang on.”

He watched Xavier walk back towards the castle, but his gaze stopped at four crosses leaning against the back wall, two either side of the castle’s arched doorway. The crosses appeared to be formed from twelve-foot-long scaffolding boards. Each of them had a man tied to it with rope, and the rope was fastened around their wrists, ankles, waists and around their chests. Large nails held each of their hands in place and still more nails pierced their bodies at many other points. As Jason looked up at the men, it became obvious to him that crucifixion hadn’t been enough to appease Xavier’s cruelty, as their limbs had also been severed, still held in place by the various nails. The head of one crucified man bobbed up and down. He had no eyes and had a plaque chained around his neck, and the plaque read:

This man has seen the light.

Jason rolled onto his side and dragged himself away from the cage and towards the fence at the back of the courtyard. He could see a gate midway along the fence. Please be unlocked, he thought. The fence was about ten feet from him, although it seemed like more than a hundred as he inched himself along the ground. His legs pulsated with excruciating pain as he moved, scratching at the hard crusty ground and pulling himself forward with his one good hand while his broken hand flapped around as a useless appendage. He moved his upper body in a snake-like motion, and thoughts of the possible torture he might soon endure gave him the impetus to keep moving through the pain. He had made it to within a few feet of the gate when he heard Xavier call from behind.

“Hey, where are you off to?”

Jason lunged forward and managed to touch the gate with a hand, but it was Xavier that opened it.

“Go on then. I’ll go get a head. Good thinking, though, don’t want any bloody screamers too close to the castle. Ruin the whole ambience.”

Jason scrambled for the open gate, clawing at the ground as he went, dragging himself through the opening. Where are you going to go? he asked himself. A few metres from the gate was the dry moat. He could see a row of statues from the waist up as they stood on the shallow moat bed. Beyond them, he saw nothing but the foreboding desert. A desert sure to be full of more sick bastards like the one that had just smashed his legs and stitched his mouth shut. He had fallen at the first hurdle, and now the game was over. Despair took hold as he imagined himself as nothing more than a helpless amusement for Xavier. Was he destined to be tortured by that madman and then decapitated? Waiting for a death that would never come.

“There you go.” Xavier dropped a decapitated head in front of Jason. “That’s the Russian fucker I was telling you about. Still knows everything but can’t say a damn thing about it anymore.”

Jason recoiled from the head, as swollen, bruised, pleading eyes watched him. Its mouth moved as if it was speaking, but nothing audible came from it.

“You ready?” Xavier positioned himself on the other side of the Russian, across from Jason. He gripped a pickaxe in both hands, a demonic grin spread across his face as he raised it above his head. “Keep watching, and prepare yourself, because it’s gonna pop.”

Jason stared at the head, and his eyes bulged in shock as he watched the Russian’s lips moving faster and faster as he tried to speak. A moment later the head shattered under the falling point of the pickaxe. Pulverised pieces of brain sprayed in all directions as the brutal tool rendered the head unrecognisable as human. Jason screamed through the stitches holding his mouth shut. He blinked skull and brain debris from his eyes and screamed again. A stitch tore free from his lower lip with his vocalised terror. He looked up at Xavier, who was backing away from the smashed remains of the Russian.

“Here it comes, get ready for the pop.”

Jason looked away from Xavier and back to the remains of the skull, just in time to see a fountain of black smoke burst ten feet in the air from the white, grey and pink fragments.

The smoke swirled for a moment and then coalesced into an apparition, a translucent human form rippling within a black flame. The figure raised its head and arms towards the sky, and a moment later it looked down and fixed on Jason with its empty obsidian eyes. Jason pushed at the ground with his hands in a frantic effort to put distance between himself and the vaporous apparition, but his broken legs hindering his retreat.

“Don’t worry, Jason,” Xavier said. “It can’t hurt you. A caretaker will come around soon enough and take it away. They sniff the screamers up like a line of coke. A beautiful sight, though, don’t you agree?”

The apparition looked up to the sky once more, its mouth opening in a wild and twisting motion. It was silent but looked as though it was in immense pain, a continuous, unrelenting, hopeless and silent scream as it burned within a black flame.

Jason focused on the apparition’s agonised motions, feeling its despair. He didn’t notice the pickaxe being raised and then swung down again. This time, its sharp point forced its way through his thigh and embedded itself in the ground beneath, anchoring him to the spot. Three more stitches ripped free from his lips as he called out in shock and pain.

“I feel that we’ve connected, Jason, and I want to do something special for you. I’ve been working on something new. It’s quite messy but I think you’ll like it. Be right back.” Xavier ran off, back through the gate and towards the castle.

Jason took hold of the pickaxe with his one good hand and tried to pull it free from his leg. The slightest movement made the pain rise in intensity, sapping what little strength he still had left. He fell back. The ground felt soft, comforting somehow. He looked up at the apparition, which still reached and screamed to the sky. It flickered as it hovered above the remains of its skull.

Just let it go, Jason thought, you need to rest… For just a minute, rest. He closed his eyes and let his mind escape the horror and dissolve into the past.

***

“It’s a bit of a shit-pit at the moment but I’m planning to fix it up.” He was back in his flat with Zoe.

“Jason, you’ve lived here for over a year. If you were going to fix it up, you would’ve done it by now.”

“I know, I know. It takes me a while, but I’ll get there in the end.”

“If you say so. I could help you, I suppose, or you could…”

“The landlord wouldn’t appreciate me burning the place down, Zoe.”

“Or… you could move in with me. You know, if you want to.”

***

“No!” Jason screamed. The strain of his jaw ripped more stitches free. He raised his shaky hand to his mouth and tried to pull the dangling thread away from his lips. This proved futile. It felt as though a row of angry wasps sat upon his lips, injecting their venom with every touch from his fingers. He sat up and tried once more to release himself from the point of the pickaxe, but it was heavy and cumbersome. He remained anchored to the dusty ground.

He turned and looked back through the wire mesh fence and at the castle across the dry earth of the courtyard. Xavier was nowhere to be seen. One cage shook as a woman slammed her feet against the mesh of her small prison. Her wrists were shackled but her legs hung free and she used them with vigorous energy. She kicked out again and again as she moaned against her own stitched mouth, staring back at Jason with her eyes ablaze. She was nodding at him and looked as though she was trying to direct him to do something. He looked up at the apparition, which was still swaying in the wind, and then looked around himself—what was she trying to say? A few metres away, the castle’s encircling line of grey figures stood in silence. He looked back at the woman. She nodded her confirmation and then her head fell and hung at rest.

The memory of the struggling man flailing about in his garden came to the forefront of his mind, and he now understood what the woman was telling him to do.

Chapter 23

Jason reached out and grabbed a fragment from the shattered skull, took aim, and threw a piece of bone. It hit its intended target in the chest and bounced off without effect. The caretakers don’t like it when you mess with the sandmen, he thought. Well, I hope this really pisses them off. He selected another, larger fragment and chucked it with more aggression, but missed. Threw another and hit its arm. Threw another, and yet another… The caretaker didn’t come. Jason tried to force his jaw open, straining against the thread of the stitches. “Come on!” he yelled, ripping enough stitches from the soft tissue of his lips to be heard clearly. “Come on, you son of a bitch. Where are you?”

“Hey, not a good idea, friend,” Xavier called, as he emerged from the castle’s back door with a set of shackles in one hand and a long pole in the other. He held up the pole. “Bet you can’t guess what I’m going to do with this, but it’ll be fun.”

Jason ignored Xavier. “Come on, you fucking bastard.” He threw the remaining fragments of the skull at the human figure. Still nothing. He had thrown the entire remains of the head at the figure with no effect. He looked up at the screamer. The phantom in the black flame—the Russian—remained as a beacon of silent torment, flickering in the melodious wind. Where is that hideous creature? “Come on, you fuck, where are you?” Jason yelled. Then he looked around for anything else he could use as a projectile. He tried to grab a handful of the black earth, but the ground was solid and too hard to dig his hands into. He leaned forward and attempted to remove his shoes, to use as a projectile, but couldn’t stretch far enough because of his impalement.

“Shut the fuck up, you dumb shits,” Xavier shouted at someone in one of the cages. He kicked the cage as he walked past, and then threw the pole to the ground in the middle of the courtyard.

Jason wrapped his one unbroken arm around the pickaxe. He embraced the metal head and wooden handle as if trying to squeeze the life out of it, and then he pulled.

“Hey, Jason, do you want me to cut your legs off now, or later?” Xavier called as he neared the gate.

The pickaxe moved. “Come on, you fucker, move!” Jason screamed through gritted teeth. It moved a little more. He twisted it the other way and pulled. At last it came free from the ground. The metal grated against his shattered femur bone as he lifted it free from his leg. Without pausing to acknowledge the pain, he grabbed the end of the handle and swung it to his right—to get a sense of its weight—then with all his remaining strength he swung it to his left and launched it towards Lilith’s precious flowers standing in the moat. Xavier’s foot came crashing into the side of his head, knocking him flat to the ground before he had a chance to see if his throw had been successful. He looked up and watched in a daze as Xavier’s smiling face loomed into view. Jason felt a rumble in the ground beneath him. Xavier looked up and over to where Jason had just thrown the pickaxe. His smile dissipated into a quivering look of fear.

“No,” Xavier cried out. “Not yet. I’m not ready. I’m not…”

His words were cut short as a black cloud slammed into him, knocking the big man off his feet and throwing his sprawling body back against the fence. The caretaker materialised and raked its long fingers down the fence, down towards Xavier’s slumped body. The wire mesh tore apart without effort. Its fingers didn’t stop their downward trajectory and soon sliced into the top of Xavier’s head, cutting deep into his face. Jason watched without emotion as the creature tore at the body in a wild frenzy, tearing away strips of flesh, muscle, and broken chunks of bone. Once Jason saw that Xavier could no longer move under his own volition, he rested back and looked up at the grey sky.

Jason lay broken on the dusty ground. His journey—his mission—was over. “Sorry, Angel, I failed you again.” He thought of his wife’s body and the man in his garden being absorbed by the caretaker. True oblivion was a provocation away, he thought. He breathed deep and slow, closed his eyes, then as loud and clear as his withered body would allow, he called out to the unholy creature, “It was me. I threw it. And if I could, I’d spit on it. Piss on the damn things. Do you hear me? You son of a bitch, it was me. It was me!”

The sound of ripping flesh and breaking bones ceased. A growl began to build again. It gained intensity until the sound attacked Jason’s body. It felt as though a swarm of chattering insects were stinging and biting him. A brittle dryness enveloped his body. His skin cracked and then split apart. The growl, the roar of the beast, evaporated into the background noise of the passing wind. He felt a burning breath against his cheek.

“Do not speak to me,” the caretaker said. Then it inhaled.

Jason felt a raging furnace of hot coals being poured over his body. He saw neither flames nor hot coals, but he did see the caretaker’s face inches from his own. The emptiness of its eyes drew Jason’s gaze. He couldn’t turn away. Its mouth melted open with nothing but blackness within. Jason tried to move, but couldn’t. His vision faded as his eyes burned away. He felt the creature’s breath pulling at his skin, broiling the flesh from his bones. He tried to call out, but no sound came. He wanted to reach out, but he had no hands and no arms. The pain he’d felt a moment ago disappeared as his body became naught but ash.

Chapter 24

“I love you, my little sunflower.”

A painful, crushing feeling of love.

“Your mum is coming over later. I tried to put her off, but there’s no stopping Attila…”

“I hate it when you call her that. She just wants to help. Anyway, come over here and meet your new son. Our beautiful boy.”

Love. Fear. Fading light. Emptiness.

Chapter 25

Self-loathing. The sound of crying. Hate.

“I don’t want him. I can’t… I… I don’t want you. He… He…” Words drowned by uncontrollable tears.

Confusion. Emptiness.

Chapter 26

“He raped me,” Jason called out. Then he sat up and opened his bleary eyes. “He raped me?”

He found himself once again sitting on the dead grass of his front garden, next to the feet of his familiar garden ornament. He looked past the statue and saw two new additions, identical in every way to the first. He now had three of Lilith’s flowers for company. The lives I’ve killed? he wondered. Is that what these dreams, these visions are? A moment of a possible life; someone who may have lived until I erased that possibility from existence?

“…it’s a gem. It’s not who you killed in life. They’re done and dusted. It’s the ones you’ve stopped from having a life.”

He looked down at his legs and realised he was naked. He rubbed his knees: no broken bones, and there were no marks to show there ever had been. He felt his nose and mouth. No cuts, no stitches. No souvenir to show he had suffered at the hands of Xavier, and no evidence of being cremated by the caretaker either. He felt sick as he realised a truth about hell. If you died here, or, to be more precise, if Lilith or a caretaker killed you, you’d be reset like some kind of nightmarish game. The only way off this eternal merry-go-round is to get to the mountain. To stand a chance of getting to that mountain, he had to avoid any more of hell’s resident freaks.

“You damn stupid fool,” he said, thinking about his time at Xavier’s castle. He staggered to his feet like a drunk from a city gutter. The dead grass felt rough beneath his bare feet. Wind and sand blew past and bit at his bare skin.

He looked down at himself, hoping Xavier was wrong about… The bastard was right, it shrivels away to nothing. The shock of his apparent emasculation, and seeing a mere polyp where his penis and testicles once hung, was brief. Or was shock something that no longer carried much weight? Fear, or any emotion for that matter, was just a millstone that would slow him down, autonomous purpose now blocking out any emotional obstacle. Or were his senses and emotions forever lost, burned away with his body by the caretaker? Get to that mountain, he told himself with spiritless resolve.

He walked into the house, his mind quiet and unclouded as he passed family photographs without a fleeting glance. Memory triggers lay hidden in drawers, cabinets, and boxes. He felt no desire to open them and reminisce. His mind became a tunnel, with the light from one objective the only thing in view.

From his bedroom wardrobe and bedside chest of draws, he removed a pair of boxer shorts, black cargo trousers, socks, and a black hooded top. He put them on and then went downstairs. From the cupboard under the stairs, he retrieved a pair of leather hiking boots and a tartan scarf.

He thought about what he could arm himself with this time and wished that he had taken up archery as a hobby. Or clay pigeon shooting. No, a shotgun would be of little use here. If lighters and matches wouldn’t ignite, he doubted shotgun cartridges would fire, either. A bow would be useful though. Stick to the point, he urged himself. Make use of what you have in the house and get moving.

He moved through his old home like a burglar on steroids. Shit! Everything looks so bloody domestic, he thought, as he ripped drawers from their runners. His mind raced again, panic muddling his thoughts. There must be something other than kitchen knives he could use as a weapon. He grabbed another knife from the kitchen’s knife block anyway, and then holstered the blade between his belt and the material of his trousers.

“The garage. Of course, my toolbox.” He ran out the kitchen door and along the side of the house.

In the garage he found another spade. It was smaller than the one he had used to dig Emily’s grave, but still too heavy to carry across the desert. The grinning face of half a gnome looked up at him; he kicked it away. Bamboo canes, a plastic watering can, a lawn mower, and a rake lay in disarray. He soon located his small plastic toolbox. He pulled the two flip-up metal clasps and opened the box.

“What are you going to do with that? A spot of DIY?”

He removed a carpet knife and put it in the side pocket of his trousers. A large flat-bladed screwdriver joined the kitchen knife holstered in his belt. A small hacksaw? “No.” He dropped it back into the box. Then he remembered Xavier’s cages. How many more whack jobs are out there among the dunes? he wondered. This would be useful to cut the wire mesh or bars of a prison. He picked up the hacksaw once more and unclipped its blade. Then he used black electrical tape to cover the blade’s toothed edge. He used more tape to fasten the blade to his leg, beneath his trouser leg, then continued to rummage among the contents of the toolbox. He removed a pair of plastic safety goggles and hooked the elastic strap over the handle of the screwdriver in his belt. He decided nothing more would be of use and, giving the garage one final quick glance, made his way back into the house through the front door. Looking this way and that, he wondered when the next desert-dwelling aberration would appear.

He stopped in the hallway as his thoughts descended into chaos. Images of Xavier’s cages flashed before his eyes. The people in those cages, shackled to the bars, and the decapitated heads scattered about the ground in the courtyard. He remembered the fear in their eyes, and their mouths opening and closing with silent words, screams that would never be heard. And he thought of the dismembered men hanging from makeshift crucifixes. The woman who had helped him flashed front and centre into his mind. She had experienced Xavier’s twisted perversions, yet, as she hung from the bars of that cage, she had tried to help. If it hadn’t been for her directing him, would he have thought to throw the pickaxe at the statues, thereby summoning a caretaker?

You can help her, he told himself. You can go back and free her, and the other people in that bastard’s castle, too. Xavier can’t hurt you anymore; he’s out of action, thanks to that creature. But had it finished him off or left him crippled? If the caretaker had also reset Xavier’s life in hell, he could be waiting once more, like a spider waiting for its prey to set foot on its web. Why risk crossing paths with that sick fuck again. You’re no hero, so don’t pretend to be one. You came close to spending an eternity in hell as a plaything for a sadistic lunatic. But you escaped, got away and now have another chance to get to the mountain and give Emily life once more. Don’t screw it up by trying to be heroic.

He tried to refocus his thoughts and dismiss any ideas of going back into that den of torture, but the woman’s face was still there in his mind’s eye. I could go back, he thought, and look from a safe distance. If Xavier is still by the fence at the back of the castle, and if he’s not moving, I could help the woman. He relished his additional thought of ramming a screwdriver into the side of Xavier’s head and turning him into a “screamer”. He resolved that, as long as the psycho was still by the fence and not moving a damn muscle, he would try to help them.

He opened his front door and looked out at the desert. A shiver of dread overcame him. His stomach bubbled and turned. He fell to his knees and retched. The crippling spasms forced him to double over. He wanted to release whatever was trying to force its way out of his stomach, but nothing projected from his mouth.

“Keep it together. Don’t lose it now,” he said between retches. Another explosive urge knocked him off his knees, and he fell hard against the wall in a crumpled heap. He rested in the hallway for a moment until his stomach calmed, staring at the wallpaper—a horrible flower pattern Zoe had picked. He closed the front door again.

“Don’t give up now,” a soft voice whispered from behind him.

He felt warm breath on the back of his neck. “No… Please, no.” He turned his head, expecting to see the Devil’s bride. But he was alone. His eyes darted back and forth. Dust hung in the air as a delicate silken mist. Did he imagine her voice?

A slight, almost imperceptible vapour moved towards him from the far end of the hallway. The fine mist stopped a few feet away. It moved back and forth, the motion building and becoming more substantial. Fleeting glimpses of yellow shot across his vision like a comet’s tail, or… was it a yellow dress? Threads of shimmering red came into existence and whipped past his cheek. Lilith’s face materialised inches from his own, close enough for him to see his fear reflected back from her glaring eyes.

“One bone shall I remove for every second you remain here.”

Jason scrambled to his feet, wrenched open the door and sprinted out. Once past the statues, he stopped, turned, and looked back at his house.

The front door stood open, offering an empty hallway, with Lilith nowhere in sight. A moment later, Jason ran into the desert.

Chapter 27

Jason wrapped the scarf around his head as he ran, making sure to cover his nose and mouth. Then he unhitched the goggles from the screwdriver in his belt and put them on. For added protection against the razor-sharp wind, he put his hood up and pulled the drawstrings tight. Gloves, he thought. Damn! The sleeves of his top weren’t long enough to be pulled down over his hands so he ran with his hands in his pockets instead. This worked until he ascended the first dune, at which point he needed his hands for balance as he climbed. The wind seemed to know when his skin was unprotected and became tortuous out of spite, the sand slicing at his hands as it hurtled past.

When he reached the top of the dune, he looked back at his house. At any other time the sight would be comical: a house, complete with concrete drive and car, in obstinate defiance of its placement on the otherwise desolate landscape. My suburban tomb, he thought. He looked back towards the mountain and debated which direction to take.

The last time, he had set off from the back garden and arced around to the right. From that point on he had kept to a straight line across the desert. He concluded that Xavier’s castle should now be somewhere on his left. He continued to reason that if he walked to the first dune at a slight angle to the left, then straighten up again, he should find it. And if not, at least he would still be heading in the right direction for the mountain. He adjusted and tightened the scarf, checked the makeshift weapons wedged in his belt and then set off down the dune.

He kept his pace at a slow run and soon wished he had found a replacement for the blue stone button. That had taken the edge off his thirst and helped take his mind off the hunger pangs too; or had it been a placebo effect? The boots were painful to run in, but at least the sand felt hard beneath his feet in the valleys between each dune, although his feet did sink into the sand as he climbed towards the various peaks. He picked up the pace once more on the descent by moving in clumsy hops. Some dunes proved too steep and impossible to climb—each step up followed by sliding three or four back down again. He had to work his way around these until the ground became more accommodating. These diversions took him off course and messed with his sense of direction. He had to wait until he climbed to another high peak to see the mountain again and adjust his direction accordingly.

***

At the top of the tenth dune, he collapsed with fatigue. His breaths came in short rapid bursts and his heart was beating fast, which he found curious. If he were dead why was he breathing at all? And what was he breathing? Also, if his heart was beating, why did he not bleed? He left this futile train of thought and sat up.

The mountain lay hidden by a distant sandstorm, but he believed he was still heading in the right direction. He looked from dune to dune and valley to valley. Nothing but desert. Where the hell was Xavier’s bloody castle? It should be somewhere nearby.

For a moment he watched the shifting sand and streams of glistening grey lifting from each of the peaks. Then he looked back at the path he had trodden into the sand, tracing it as far as he could see before it became obscured by the previous dune. It appeared that, so far at least, he had maintained a straight line towards the mountain.

He stood and was about to start his descent when his foot sank and fell upon something hard beneath the sand. He lifted himself free, knelt down and reached into the hole left by his boot. A moment later he pulled a familiar object from the sand and realised the castle must be somewhere close by. He dropped his old binoculars once more and set off down the dune.

Chapter 28

Jason moved in lumbering jumps down the dune, digging his hands into the sand to control his rapid descent. Once disturbed, however, the sand had fluid motion and threatened to consume him beneath the deluge. Halfway down, he lost all control of his descent and rolled with the arid surf to the valley below, coming to rest flat on his back.

He sat up and looked across the flat ground towards the next dune. He was thankful it looked a lot smaller than the last one. For a moment, he listened to the wind and its unsettling aria. The song soon died to a monotone soliloquy of muffled words and phrases. Although unintelligible to Jason’s observing mind, the desert spoke to his fear with perfect clarity.

While dusting himself off, he realised he had lost his goggles, kitchen knife and screwdriver during the fall. Looking about himself, he saw the glint of metal in the sand a few feet away, scrambled towards it, and reclaimed the screwdriver. He looked up and scanned the scar his fall had left down the side of the dune. The sound of distant voices jerked him away from his search for the knife and goggles.

He was sure he had heard a male voice, coming from somewhere over the next dune… Xavier? The next person who spoke reminded him of the man in his garden. But this was a woman struggling to speak.

“No… stop… this. Please!” she pleaded.

“Dance for me, baby,” the man shouted in a bullying tone. “Wave those hands, you sexy minx, and kick those feet. Oh, yeah, that’s it. Dance, bitch.”

It wasn’t Xavier, Jason thought with a slight sense of relief. He walked towards the next dune and the origin of the voices, straining to hear any further sounds.

A gurgling and hissing sound came over the dune, and then another male voice. “You… bastard… boy… I’ll… kill… you.”

“Shut your mouth, old man, and dance with the lady.”

A burst of hysterical laughter from the man sent a chill through Jason. He ran to the foot of the dune and threw himself against its steep side. What are you doing? he asked himself. Get out of here…

“That’s it, bitch, rip your skin off. Rip it off and I’ll wear it like my Sunday suit.”

Jason skirted the base of the dune. The voices and screams became distant as he moved. He climbed, using the screwdriver to aid his ascent by stabbing the point deep into the sand and hauling himself up. The voices became louder again as he neared the peak.

“Wow. Look, bitch, the old guy’s going to bite his fingers off. Go on, old man, no one will stop you.”

There was a loud shriek, followed by choking, gagging, and sobbing.

“Stop this,” the woman urged. “You’re just a boy. Please don’t do this.”

“I’m not a boy, I’m fifty-three. Fifty-three years old. Understand? You dumb bitch. Now, shut your mouth and dance for me.”

Next came a hard thud, then another, and another.

“No! Stop… Please stop… Leave him… alone.”

Thud. Thud, and then the sound of something breaking, something cracking.

Jason kicked his feet into the sand and forced his way up and through the tumbling waves. The terrible sounds of anguish drove him on. I can’t ignore this, he told himself with unfamiliar conviction. I can’t…

Thud. Thud. Crack.

The screams had stopped by the time he reached the top. He peered over. On the other side, the dune had a gradual decline to the flat ground of the valley below. No more than thirty feet from the base of the dune, he could see a young man who appeared to be in his late teens. He stood on the far side of a well. The well looked to be at least six feet in diameter and surrounded by a low cobblestone wall a foot in height from the sandy ground. The man held a baseball bat, which he banged against the wall, a tormenting beat of wood against stone for whoever lay within the well. A woman’s head came into view; she stood in the well, her head coming just above the top of the wall. She held onto the stone with one hand while reaching out with the other to the young man. She was pleading with him.

“Please… Please stop,” she said.

Jason grabbed a handful of sand as he pushed himself to his feet, then he called out to the man, “Hey! You little shit. What the fuck are you doing?”

The man looked up. His look of surprise was brief and soon replaced by a broad grin as he caught sight of Jason. “Looky, looky. We got a voyeur.” He lifted the bat high above his head.

“No!” Jason called out.

The bat impacted with the woman’s left hand, crushing her fingers against the stone wall. She cried out in pain before being forced into silence by the second swinging blow from the bat which caught the side of her head and knocked her back into the well.

“You evil shit,” Jason shouted as he ran down the dune.

The man swaggered around the well to meet him, readying the bat with both hands.

Jason ran hard and fast at him. Six feet from the man, he threw the sand into his face and jumped, thrusting his legs out before him as he flew. The man swung the bat, hitting his arm, but Jason continued on course. His feet landed dead centre on the man’s chest, knocking him off balance and sending him tumbling backwards. The bat fell from his grasp the moment the back of his head hit the ground.

Jason also landed hard on his back but returned to his feet without pause. He jumped on the man and rammed the screwdriver into his chest. “You little bastard,” he yelled into the man’s face, as the tool sank deep into his flesh.

The man had a disconcerting smile. Jason withdrew the makeshift weapon from the bloodless wound and stabbed him again. The man cried out, but his grin remained.

“Go on, turn me into a pincushion if you like. But, when you tire, I’ll use that bat to break every bone in your body.”

Jason grabbed the man by the throat and pinned his head to the ground. He fought against his restraint, but Jason held him in place with little effort. The man’s arms were shorter than his, and he was weak. I could rip his throat out, Jason thought. He saw Zoe’s face as his fingers tightened around the man’s windpipe. Although he looked young, Jason thought there were more years behind the man’s eyes—he had told the woman he was fifty-three. An old man in a young body? The body he’d had when he committed his sin?

Jason removed the screwdriver from his chest and then put the flat tip of the tool against the fifty-three-year-old boy’s forehead. His demented smile dissipated into a look of panic and he shook his head, but Jason held him firm. A moment later Jason embedded the screwdriver in the man’s skull. He got off the man and took a few steps backwards.

“Here it comes, you little shit. Get ready for the pop.”

Thick black smoke erupted from the man’s body. The smoke bellowed ten feet into the air and then became a flickering black flame. Jason watched with satisfaction as a middle-aged man screamed back at him from within the pulsating, hypnotic blackness. He couldn’t hear the man’s agony, but the sight was deafening.

Jason walked over to the well and peered over the low wall. It was a shallow dry well, about five feet from base to the top of the wall. An old man lay at the bottom of the well in a battered heap, his quivering body a grotesque mass of broken bones, some of which jutted out through his bruised flesh. He was missing all the fingers from one hand and was now chewing on his thumb. A woman of about thirty-five knelt next to the man and was ripping the skin from her own naked body. She looked up at Jason with pleading eyes. Her mouth moved as if she was trying to speak, but her limp tongue hung out through her shattered teeth.

Jason reached into the well and took hold of the woman’s hand. Her bones made a sickening cracking sound as he pulled her up and over the wall. He laid her on the ground and tried to make her comfortable upon the sand. The woman’s hazel eyes filled with fear as she stared up at the apparition of the man in apparent agony.

“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “He can’t hurt you anymore.” He winced as he looked at the woman’s body and the devastation written upon it. Deep scratches and cuts covered her skin, and in various places her flesh hung off in long strips. Her scalp lay on the ground at her feet as a pile of blonde ringlets. His gaze moved back to her face. Her eyes fixed on his with palpable intensity. She tried to speak. Her mouth moved while her tongue twitched, but the only sound that came was incoherent gurgling from her cracked lips and a nasal hum from her broken nose. “What did you do to deserve this,” he asked, wondering how much of her pain came from hell’s torment and how much from the bastard with the baseball bat.

She reached out with slender fingers and touched his cheek.

Jason closed his eyes, banishing the horror from view. He felt a surge of self-loathing as the woman caressed his cheek. He hated himself for enjoying a moment of tenderness from a woman who lay helpless, battered and broken. Do something, a voice screamed from within. Help her! He turned and looked up at the screamer, and wished he could hear the man’s cries of agony; he wished for audible proof of the man’s suffering. The contorted expression of pain on his face wasn’t enough. Jason wanted to hear his misery as he rippled within the silent boundaries of the black flame. Jason lowered his gaze to the corpse beneath.

He prostrated himself and crawled towards the body while making sure not to touch the thing floating above. Then he stopped for a moment to look up, wondering what would happen if he did touch it. He stood and studied the look of terror on the man’s face; his torment radiated from the smoky blackness. The man’s eyes looked as though they were melting down the sides of his face. In fact, the man’s entire face seemed to be dissolving. All the while, his mouth stretched open in a continuous and imperceptible scream.

Jason remembered what Xavier had said about the screamers, and then he stepped closer and yelled at it. “They sniff you up like a line of coke. And it burns. Can you hear me, you sick fuck? It burns!” He reached out and put his hand into the screamer.

He was expecting to feel pain, or a shock, a burn maybe, something, but nothing happened. He ran his hand through it as if through the flame of a candle. The screamer continued to flit and flicker, and the apparition within the black flame—the man—continued to mime pure unrestrained despair. But Jason’s hand had no effect on it, nor it on him. It was as if it wasn’t there at all. Jason knelt down and removed the clothes from the corpse: blue jeans, complete with a leather belt; white T-shirt and black trainers. He pulled the screwdriver from the skull, left the body with just a pair of red boxer shorts and returned to the woman.

As he had done for the man in his garden, he attempted to restrain the woman’s self-flagellation, but to no avail. She scratched at herself with savage hands and bit herself with her few remaining teeth. Her legs kicked out at demons Jason couldn’t see. Her fingers stopped raking at her flesh and clawed at her eyes. He kept her hands at bay until her body bucked with such violence that she knocked him away, giving her possessed fingers time to rip the eyes from her head.

Jason moved away with helpless acquiescence as she tore herself apart. He became numb as he watched the woman deteriorate into an obscene mutilation of the human female form. And even after skin had peeled away from flesh and muscle had detached from bone, he could see that her torment didn’t end. Her head rolled to one side, and the memory of her beautiful hazel eyes stared back at him from empty sockets. Her mouth opened and closed—as if trying to cry out. Jason wanted to rip out his own eyes… He wanted… He turned away.

Through his tears he hoped the caretaker would soon come and reset things for her as it had done for him. The pain had been excruciating, but he had come out the other side with a renewed body. Where would she be sent back too? How far from here?

He put the screwdriver on the ground next to the wall of the well and covered it with sand. Then he placed the bundled clothes on top of the planted weapon. He knelt next to the woman and spoke in a whisper. “Find this place again, this well. There will be clothes waiting for you here and something below the sand. Remember to look in the sand.” He couldn’t tell if she could hear his words. He wanted to do more for her, but not for reasons of compassion—empathy be damned. He wanted to help her, to know he wasn’t yet lost to hell’s malevolent will.

He picked up the baseball bat, looked at the woman once more, then walked away and towards the next dune.

Chapter 29

Although there was no way to be sure, Jason felt that many hours had passed since leaving the woman by the well, and yet the mountain seemed no nearer. It sat on the horizon and taunted him. Sometimes the great rock would disappear for a while, when a sandstorm washed it from view. It seemed to be conscious of him and reappeared whenever he wandered off course, not in an effort to help with navigation, but to renew the derision.

Since leaving the well, he tried to steer clear of any further interactions with hell’s other inhabitants. Screams and shouts of despair would come from far off among the dunes, causing him to panic. The moment he heard anything he ran until the sound was behind him. This worked for the most part. Once, however, he almost fell over a man lying on the sand, a man named Alex. Alex looked to be in his twenties, although he said he was ninety-five. He was wearing a three-piece suit, shoes polished to a high shine, and a bowler hat. He also had a black umbrella lying on the sand next to him. Alex said he had no intention of playing silly games and would stay put until the nurses came to wake him up. He was adamant “those pretty fillies always come at seven, sharp, every morning,” and “this was all nothing but a ridiculous dream”. Jason had wished Alex luck and moved on.

Whenever the ache in his muscles became unbearable or the baseball bat became a lead weight, he would stop and rest. He tried to keep the stops few and far between, and only if he were perched on the peak of a high dune, so he could see any approaching danger. It was a good plan until he reached a vast plateau in the desert, with no raised vantage points for miles around. He walked across the plateau until his legs gave out and he collapsed.

A persuasive urge to drift off convinced him to stay put. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come. But Derwood was right, there’s no sleeping in hell. He decided to lay still and give his throbbing muscles time to rejuvenate. He would have remained in his pseudo-sleep for a good deal longer, had it not been for the sound of children laughing.

Chapter 30

Jason jumped to his feet, but his muscles weren’t ready for movement yet so he lost his balance and faltered. He would have fallen back to a horizontal position had it not been for the gravestone he grabbed to steady himself.

“What the fuck?” He looked about and realised with rising confusion that he was standing in the centre of a graveyard. The many and varied headstones protruded through cracked black earth—weeping marble angels mingled with less ornate granite blocks with gold epitaphs. At one end, thirty or so graves away, stood a small church, complete with bell tower. The church appeared to have taken a battering from the desert winds as all the windows looked to be broken and the roof beams could be seen through large holes in the slate roof. “This wasn’t here…”

The innocent and contagious giggle of a child caused him to spin around in surprise.

“Hello,” the little girl said, looking up at him with a beaming smile.

Jason relaxed his grip on the baseball bat. “H… Hello,” he responded, bewilderment causing his brain to freeze for a moment. The girl looked about six years old. Her long blonde hair hung down over a pink satin dress—the dress looked like something a young girl from the nineteenth century might have worn, with lots of frills and black lace. She looked immaculate and showed no sign of having experienced any kind of distress. She looked happy and excited. “What’s your name, Angel?” he asked while crouching down to the girl’s height. He didn’t want to frighten her and make her run off. He felt protective of her… as he had with his daughter. She’s not Emily, he cautioned himself. You can’t even look after yourself… She’s doing fine. Leave her and get moving…

“Emily,” she said. “My name is Emily, but I’m not an angel, I’m a girl. What’s your name?”

Oh God, Jason thought, she even sounds like… And… She looks like… Emily doesn’t have blonde hair, though… Did… Does she? He tried to think about his daughter, but all he saw was this girl’s face shining out from the murk of his memories. But why was she here? He was glad he had found her before someone like Xavier or the freak by the well had. “How are you, Angel?”

“Emily, Emily, Emily,” she sang, as she danced and skipped around a headstone. “My name is Emily.”

“Emily?”

She stopped dancing. “What’s the matter? You look sad. Why are you sad?”

“I’m… It’s okay.” Jason forced a smile. “I’m not sad. Are you here by yourself?”

“Oh, no. My friends are over there,” she said, pointing towards the church.

Jason looked to where she directed but saw no one. “Your friends?”

“Yes, we’re playing over there. Will you come and play, too?”

“You shouldn’t be out here, there are some… You could get lost.”

“Oh, no. I won’t get lost. This is my home. We play out here all the time. We used to like playing with the funny man, but now he always runs away and hides from us.”

“Funny man?”

“Yes, he is funny. I always wear my prettiest dress for him, but he looks away. I’d like him to play with me, but he won’t. Why does he look away?”

“I… don’t know. I need to go.”

“Emily is a nice name, don’t you think? You can stay here with me for a while. We can play together.”

“Is your mother here too?”

“My mummy is over by the mountain.”

“That mountain?” Jason asked, pointing across the graveyard and past the church to the shadow on the horizon.

“Yes, but…”

“You’ve travelled here from that mountain?”

“Yes. I go back there sometimes and watch my mother. I like to see her, but,” she drew an arc in the dry, dead earth with the tip of her bright red shoe.

“But what?”

“She’s very sad. I wish she was happy again like she used to be…”

“How did you… I mean… It’s a long way. It must take you a long time to get there.”

The girl giggled. “No, silly. It’s just over there.”

Jason pointed once more. “You’re talking about that mountain, aren’t you? The one way over there?”

“Yes. It has a cave at the bottom. Funny sounds come from that cave. We like to play there, too, sometimes. Would you like to play with me and my friends?”

“I’d love to, but I need to go…”

“We can all go together,” The girl said with animated enthusiasm. A little jump and then a clap of her tiny hands sealed the deal.

“Together? To the mountain?” Jason asked, wondering if this little girl had a means to travel back and forth from the mountain as if it were a trip to a local park. He had met with brutal violence not long after leaving his house. But this little girl had no noticeable scars or signs of having struggled to survive in this place at all. She looked radiant with summer health. She wasn’t just surviving here, she was thriving. There was something wrong, though, he was sure of that, but all he felt was innocence. The little girl exuded it, like a mountain stream high above the pollution below: pure, untainted innocence. Open wonder sparkled from the girl. Happy in this moment, without a care for the next. She was enchanting.

“Yes. Let me get my friends and we’ll all go together.” She reached out with one tiny soft hand, taking hold of Jason’s, and led him towards the church.

“Why are you and your friends here, Emily?” Jason asked as he let himself be guided by the girl.

“Mummy did a bad thing, so we had to come here.”

They stepped onto the stone slabs of the arched entrance to the church. Jason looked at the large wooden door and for a moment thought he heard something scratching at it from inside. He looked at the door’s immense iron hinges. The door also had no handle. The sound of scratching came again, and then the sound of someone, or something slapping the door. He stepped closer to the door, and the little girl let go of his hand.

“See, I told you he’s a funny man.”

“Who is he?” Jason asked, not taking his eyes off the door.

“He’s the funny man. I want to play with him, but he won’t open the door for me anymore. Will you open the door for me, Jason?”

A man cried out from behind the door.

Jason stepped back. The girl grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the door again.

“Funny man, funny man,” The girl sang. “Please open the door so we can play. Look, don’t you think I’m pretty? The prettiest, most special little girl in the world.”

“Oh God, no!” the man screamed. “Leave me in peace, you damn demon. You child of Satan.”

Emily tugged on Jason’s arm and then motioned for him to lean down. When his ear was inches from her lips, she whispered, “Open the door so we can play with the funny man and I’ll show you the path to the mountain.”

Chapter 31

Jason placed his hand on the door and pushed. It opened a little and then slammed shut again; someone had pushed back on it and now held it closed.

“Keep away!” screamed the man inside the church.

Emily tugged on Jason’s arm. “You’ll need to push harder.”

“No. He doesn’t want to open it, and I don’t blame him.”

“Yes, you do blame him. He’s in your way. Now, open that door for me.”

A sudden and immense desire took hold of Jason; he wanted something that lay on the other side of this door. He didn’t know what it was, or why he wanted it, but he had to have it. All else faded from his mind. Damn! His life depended on it. His daughter’s life depended on him opening this door, and no one would stop him, even if he had to rip it from the iron hinges with his bare hands. He ran forward and punched the door, ignoring the pain that shot up his arm as his fist impacted with it. He swung the baseball bat at the door; the reverberating crack from the wood stung his ears. He swung it again, and again, and again. “Open the door, funny man… Motherfucking funny man, open the door and play with me.” He took a few steps backwards and then ran at the door, throwing his weight without concern or restraint. The door burst open as his body crashed into it and he went careering into the church. He tripped and came to rest flat on his face in a pile of rubble. He pushed himself up onto his knees and looked around at the slate tiles and worm-ridden wooden beams that lay scattered across the stone floor; torn Bible pages covering the debris—it looked like a bomb had gone off inside the church. He reached up and grabbed the backrest of a pew and used it to help climb back onto his feet.

The man had shut the door again and now sat with his back to it.

Jason had no recollection of what he had just done, or why he now stood inside a church ruin looking at a guy wrapped in a red sheet. The man pulled the sheet around his otherwise naked body and put his head in his hands, mumbling to himself.

Jason opened his mouth to speak, but confusion took the words from him.

“They’re demons,” the man said. “You blithering fool. Demons! And they’ll lie and deceive to get what they want. You need to listen to me…”

Jason needed a moment to reassemble his thoughts. As he thought about the little girl who had led him to the church door, his skin crawled; it was a similar feeling to the one he had after seeing Hobs in the pub. He looked for something to jam against the door and made to grab for an upturned table.

“That won’t work. The moment you look away it’ll return to where it was. I must stay here, by the door.” The man reached a hand out to Jason. “Please listen, I have to tell you something…”

Jason ignored him and dragged the table towards the door. “Get out of the way.”

The man stood up but didn’t move away. His demeanour irritated Jason. He let go of the table and grabbed the man by his red toga and forced him aside.

“Get off me and listen. Please, for God’s sake…” the man screamed in protest.

When Jason let go, he could see the man making to run back to the door, so he punched him hard in the stomach. The man fell back and collapsed to the ground. Jason went back to the table and continued to drag it to the door. That should be enough to hold it closed, he thought. He looked over at the man, who was lying on the floor, doubled over and holding his belly. He walked towards him. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

The man jabbed out his finger, pointing towards the door. “See!”

Jason turned around and saw that the table wasn’t where he’d just left it. It was back in its original position, upturned a few metres away from the door. The man was up on his feet and running. Jason stood aside and let him pass.

“They won’t come in if I stay here,” he said in a soft, effeminate voice. He gave Jason a cold stare as he sat down once more. “You didn’t need to punch me.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Jason said without sincerity. “What are they? There’s no way children could survive here.”

“I told you, you bloody imbecile, they’re not children.”

“No, I’d figured that much.”

“They’re demons.”

“Like the caretakers?”

“Yes, like the caretakers. They don’t hurt you in the same way though. These demons…”

“These demons, what?”

“Torment you, they… get in your head and work on you from the inside. I bet you’re not the sort of gent who goes around kicking church doors down, are you?”

“No…”

“Well… You just did. And I bet you can’t remember doing it either, can you?”

“Well… no.”

“No. That’s what they all say. Right before they hurt me.”

“Hurt you? I don’t know you. Why the hell would I want to hurt you? I need to think for a minute, and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

“They won’t let you go until you’ve done what they want you to. They tell lies and torment you, picking at you like vultures until you break. Then… that vile monster comes.”

“Who’d you kill?” Jason asked as he stepped up on a pew beneath one of the broken windows. His head came just above the sill, enabling him to see out into the graveyard. “I said, who did you kill?”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” the man shouted back. “Not murder. It wasn’t murder.”

“Okay, what did you do then?” The moment Jason spoke, he noticed Emily step out from behind a headstone. She smiled back at him. Along with that smile came a voice. Not out loud, but like the voice that tells you to turn left or turn right, or reminds you about doors you haven’t locked or ovens you forgot to switch off. This voice wasn’t giving directions, though, or causing paranoia, this voice spoke of… “A priest… A fucking paedophile priest,” he announced, not taking his eyes off the little girl outside. She—Emily—was laughing as she jumped and clapped with apparent excitement. Two more children joined her: a boy and another girl.

“Don’t listen to them. Please, don’t listen… They’ll lie to you…”

“You forced a young girl to have sex with you.”

“No! No, no, no, I didn’t. I didn’t have sex with her. She was… Oh God… It’s all lies.”

“I had a daughter, a little girl.”

The man shook his head and mumbled into his hands, “I shouldn’t have done it. It was a terrible thing I did but… she was so young, I didn’t think she’d remember.”

“Yes, she remembered. She recalled every sordid detail for the rest of her short life. Right up to the day she hung herself, one week after her sixteenth birthday.” Jason knew about the little girl called Amanda and how the priest had played on her fears to coerce her into performing for him. He knew about the priest and little Amanda because the girl dancing around the gravestones had told him so. “If I thought you had any, I’d cut off your balls, right here and now.”

“No… She is… I was a flawed man. I had urges. A lapse in judgement, that’s all. Oh Christ, forgive me. But it’s not what you…”

“You told her that God would send her to hell if she spoke of it, you also told her that her parents would die if she told anyone. How does it feel, priest? Being the one now in hell? I hope the caretaker takes its time when it burns you.”

“I’m not a… I didn’t say any of that. They won’t let me explain. I told you they’d make you hurt me…”

“Why would I bother? You sick fuck. You’re in hell, being tormented by a little girl. I don’t know what she’s doing to make you suffer, but I’m sure it trumps anything I could do.”

“She’s not a little girl, you fool.”

Jason looked back out the window and watched the girl dancing and jumping around with her two friends. Then he thought out loud, “If she is a demon, why doesn’t she, it, break the door down?” He turned to the man. “The caretakers aren’t stumped by closed doors, you know.”

“It’s a game… a damned evil game.”

“A game? I’ll put my chips on that girl getting the better of you. A bet I’d be happy to put my mortgage on.”

“You sanctimonious shit. You’re in hell too, but oh, I’m sure your sin tips the scales less than mine.”

“Keep leaning against that door, priest, and I hope you’re warm enough in your toga.”

“It’s a curtain!” the man said, and then sobbed.

Jason stepped down from the pew and looked around the decaying church. He noticed a door to the left of the altar and walked over to it. He found that it led to the vestry, which appeared much the same as the rest of the church. More Bibles and other books lay strewn over the broken remains of a simple writing desk. He looked up at the window. A crack ran across the pane, but it was still in one piece. A red curtain hung on the right-hand side of the window; the hoops for the left-hand side hung bare. Jason looked to the right and froze. He watched as desert sand blew in through an open doorway. The door itself was nowhere to be seen. With slow, cautious steps he backed out of the vestry.

“You know there’s an open door in there,” Jason said as he walked back into the nave of the church.

“They won’t come in that way.”

“What, sacred ground or something?”

The man snorted a laugh. “Sacred ground… No. It’s all part of the twisted game they like to play with me. As long as I keep this door shut, they’ll stay outside… Oh God… I loved her… I never meant for that to happen… My special little girl…”

“Shut up, you sick bastard.” Jason looked back at the door to the vestry and wondered why he hadn’t used it; the demon, if that’s what she was, hadn’t attacked him. She wants this pathetic priest. She wants the funny man, not him. Yes, he is funny, isn’t he. Funny man, funny man, I want to play with the funny man. Jason reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the carpet knife. He slid the switch and watched the shiny blade appear from the tip of the handle. Yes, Emily, you can go play with the funny man.

“No!” the man screamed.

Why is the funny man crying? I want to play with you. Look, I have a new toy.

“No, please… Do what you like but don’t let them in… Please, God, don’t let them in.”

Listen to the swish, swish, swish sound it makes when I draw pretty patterns on the funny man’s face. Swish, swish, swish…

“No! God, please forgive me…”

Daddy, I want to play a new game. Okay, Angel, what shall we play? This game is called kick the man in the face. That’s it, kick him, and again, and again. Now stamp on him. Stamp on the funny man. No, harder than that, silly. That’s it. Stomp, stomp, stomp.

No more words came from the man.

Swish, swish, swish. Your turn. Stomp, stomp, stomp. I like this game, Daddy. I do too, Angel.

Jason grabbed one of the man’s arms and dragged him away from the door. He continued to drag him down the aisle. The man reached out towards the pews, but his hand kept slipping away from the wood as he went by. Jason dumped him halfway to the altar. He took hold of the man’s left leg and, without a moment’s hesitation, used the knife to cut his Achilles tendon. Swish. The blade snapped halfway through the cut, but Jason was happy that it was enough. He let go of his leg and threw the broken knife away into the rubble. Then he walked to the front of the church and sat down on the pew closest to the step of the altar.

Jason didn’t turn when he heard the creaking sound of the door as it swung open, and he thought little of the light footsteps coming into the church. His mind swam in cloudy confusion. He could hear voices, the voices of three children, he was sure of that much, but they all talked at once, in monotone and without emotion. He tried to make out what they were saying, but nothing made any sense; it was no more than incoherent chatter. There was something moving like a snake across the floor, but it wasn’t a snake, it was a naked man. Jason wanted to move. He wanted to help him. Who was he? Jason’s memory left him. His thoughts were like the tide lapping against a beach. They would come, vague and distant somehow, and then roll away again.

The man reached the step of the altar.

“Watch now, Jason,” a young girl said as she walked by.

“Can I help him?” Jason asked. “He looks like he’s in pain.”

“This isn’t pain,” the young boy following the girl replied. “What comes next will be his pain.”

Jason felt a hand touch his arm. He turned—the world blinked in and out of existence as he moved his head—and tried to focus as he looked at a beautiful young face, a familiar face of someone he loved. “Emily?” he said to the girl now standing by his side. “How are you, my Angel?”

“I told you, you wretched ape, I’m not an angel.”

Jason’s confusion grew like cancer across his consciousness. “No… That’s right, you did. And… your mother is by the mountain. You’ll show me the path to the mountain. Who’s your mother, Emily?”

The other children stood motionless next to the man sprawled upon the altar, looking down at his crippled and cowering body.

“Lilith is our mother. We are all her children, Jason. You, me, even that worthless meat over there.” The girl left Jason’s side and joined her two friends at the altar.

Jason felt a rush of air, and then realised a fourth figure—a strange-looking creature—had joined the children. It leaned over the man. There was something else, something weaving with purpose between the creature and the man, a phallus of extraordinary proportions. The man let out a high-pitched screech and clawed at the ground. He tried to pull himself away, but the creature put one of its large hands onto his back, forcing him flat against the ground. Then it dug its long clawed fingers into his flesh. The man screeched again as he fought without effect against the creature’s total domination over him.

Jason’s mind became quiet, serene even, an apathetic spectator to the events unfolding before him. He didn’t care that the creature impaled the man with its penis as the children tore the skin and flesh from his body in a wild frenzy. Jason didn’t flinch as he listened to the screams and sounds of carnage that echoed from the old stone walls of the church. The creature raked its claws across the man’s head and torso, tearing into his body. The children set upon his flesh, claiming great slabs of bloodless meat. They feasted as the man screamed far beyond the point where death should have quieted him.

Once the children had had their fill, they stood back from the remains. The man’s body looked shredded from head to toe, as much skeleton visible as flesh. But he wasn’t dead. His head, which remained attached to the rest of his body by a slight thread of twisted sinew, rolled onto its side. The exposed skull tapped and jittered against the stone floor.

The children stood and watched as the creature set about devouring the remains. The corpse turned first to black, then to ash. A moment later the motes of ash danced in the still air before the creature breathed them all in. All the while, Jason watched as if hypnotised by the macabre performance, yet feeling no sense of horror or disgust. Not until Emily came and sat beside him did his senses return, and then he felt fear.

The little girl no longer resembled his daughter. She had become salt in his eyes and acid upon his skin. He could sense the teetering rage within her, a contained fury that might break free at any moment. He expected this demon to lunge forward and consume him too.

“It’s time to play with you,” she said.

Jason tried to move, to run, but his body remained still.

She put her hand on his arm. “Amanda used to come here, sometimes, after school to be with her daddy. She loved him very much. He was a funny man and liked to make his daughter laugh and giggle while he looked after the church for the priest, doing odd jobs and tending to the grounds. One day she couldn’t find him. She tried the main door but found it locked, so she searched the grounds and happened upon an unlocked door at the back of the church. Can you guess what happened next?”

Jason stared at her with wide, fearful eyes. He didn’t answer.

“She saw her daddy and a woman on that altar. They were praying hard, and talking in tongues, until they both had an explosive revelation together. This made Amanda sad, because the woman wasn’t her mother. Things like that can affect a child’s mind, don’t you agree? She never thought of her daddy as a funny man after that day.” She kissed Jason’s cheek and then continued, “Thank you for playing with me, Jason. Your path to the mountain is behind the church. I want you to stay, so we can play some more games together, but mother wants you to move on. I’ll keep watching you though.”

Chapter 32

Jason gazed up at the plain wooden cross above the altar and thought about God, wondering why He would punish his creations in this barbarous way. Why give us free will if hell awaits those who screw up? Why create such a thing as life in the first place? What is the possible purpose behind creating a realm of uncertainty and fragility? It seems like a pointless endeavour for Him and a tightrope for us. God may move in mysterious ways, but it would make more sense if He gave us a heads-up about the things to avoid. And not through the obscurity of faith, but face to face; how are the students supposed to learn, if the teacher never turns up for class?

The man had been crying for a long while, but Jason had no words of comfort for him; any attempt to find some would be like handing an empty glass to a thirsty man. And anyway, he had his own torment and pain to deal with. He felt sorry for what he had done to him and wished that his memory had remained cloudy about it, but the demon girl’s parting gift to Jason was clarity. A simple word was all he had for the man, and “sorry” wouldn’t cut it. There was one other thing he could do for him though before leaving. Jason stood and walked over to the vestry.

He stepped over the broken table, reached up and unhooked the one remaining curtain. After folding the red cloth, he took it back into the nave.

“Here,” he said, holding the curtain out to the naked man.

The man knelt by the door and scratched at the wood with his fingernails. He had no marks on his body as a testament to the carnage that had befallen him a short while ago; his ride on hell’s eternal wheel had been reset and now continued. “How long will this go on?” he asked.

Jason put the material on the ground next to the man.

“I loved her so much,” the man said without looking away from the door. “After her funeral I hung myself with the same rope. I wanted to go where she’d gone, to be with her again… My little Amanda…”

There was a knock on the door and the demon girl called, “Funny man, please open the door and play with me.”

Jason left him kneeling by the door and walked back to the vestry, picking up the baseball bat from the church debris as he moved. He untangled the scarf from his neck and wrapped it around his face, covering his nose and mouth, and then walked out onto the grey sand.

At the back of the church, he found the start of a path through the desert, about twenty feet wide and cutting a straight and level line through the dunes. Far off in the distance he saw the mountain. It looked as far away now as it had from his garden. As he walked away from the church, he heard the demon sing once more.

“Oh, funny man, funny man, I want to play with you, funny man.”

Chapter 33

The path cut a canyon through the mountainous dunes; enormous waves grew from each side in an almost vertical climb and reached hundreds of feet in height. The path, or road, looked deliberate, a cleared passage for travellers made by man and machine. But as a large section of one dune broke free with the shifting sand and splashed across the path and a moment later was brushed away by a gust of wind, it became evident that man and machine played no part in its construction. The wind continued its housekeeping with fastidious zeal, maintaining a mirror-smooth surface. Something that should be chaotic, was not. It almost appeared as though the wind played a joke on the damned by keeping the way clear towards distant salvation; your eyes can fall upon it, but see how far you must travel before you reach it. Was the mountain even there at all? Or was it nothing but a provocation for madness projected onto the shimmering view of hell’s boundary? A mere illusion for the desperate and weary. Hell’s grand backdrop, which there was no hope of ever touching.

He had been walking for what seemed like hours, and the tedium had become as painful as his cramped muscles, lizard-scale lips, and the furnace raging within his throat. An irresistible urge to scream into the wind welled within him, to vocalise his contempt for God’s grand plan with a barrage of pointless profanity. He cried out through gritted teeth instead. His cry became a hiss as the cracks in his lips split further.

The wind gained momentum, and within seconds an angry sandstorm buffeted him left and right. He raised his hands to protect his eyes from the rush of the wild wind, and then he moved to the left-hand side of the path, stopping when he felt the rising gradient of a dune beneath his boots. He dropped to the ground at the edge of the path and lay in a foetal position, embracing the baseball bat as a child would a comforting toy. He was sure he could keep to the path and keep moving in the right direction, regardless of the storm, as the difference between the hard ground of the path and the soft sinking sand of the surrounding desert felt obvious beneath his boots. But fatigue became an impassable wall. He adjusted the scarf so there was just a narrow slit for his eyes. I’ll rest for a while, he conceded, and let the storm pass, and then I’ll get moving again. Rest came for his body but not for his mind, as the malevolent storm had other ideas.

Spectral forms moved and stalked from the corner of Jason’s vision before melting away again into the ferocious wind when he tried to focus on them. Paranoia pushed forth ghouls with disturbed intentions, watching and plotting, waiting for him to drop his guard. The caretakers were there, too, Jason was sure of it, waiting to burn him once more and send him back to the beginning. He squeezed his eyes shut. Let it be a trick on my eyes; I need to rest. The howl of the wind wasn’t all Jason could hear, either. A rhythmic lumbering sound joined with that of the wind.

Jason gripped the bat tighter, but he didn’t move from where he lay. The memory of Lilith appearing in the hallway of his house came to mind: “One bone shall I remove for every second you remain here.” He tried to relax his painful grip on the bat. He also tried to push the thoughts of Lilith and other possible monsters from his mind. If there was anything here, he assured himself, it would have attacked me by now. It’s just the wind. But the lumbering sound persisted, and it was getting louder, coming closer.

Jason pushed and twisted himself back, burying himself in the sand. He scooped more sand over himself with one hand and then settled, waiting for whatever was causing the sound to pass on by. If it stops, he told himself, come out swinging. His grip on the bat became painful once more. He tried to form a mental image of the unseen from the sounds. There was also the sound of wood creaking, and… panting? And… the sound of metal grinding on metal… wheels?

Crack!

He froze at the sound of a whip. A wave of sand hit him as something went by at a running pace. He wiped the grit from his eyes and stared at the back end of a nineteenth-century carriage. Jason rolled out from his shallow grave but remained flat to the ground. He read the words painted in red on the back of the black carriage:

The Devil’s Taxi.

The carriage dissolved into the storm.

What, who and why didn’t matter. It was heading where he wanted to go, and his exhausted body told him he needed it if he stood any chance of getting there. Gaining control of the carriage became paramount. He jumped to his feet and ran after it.

Chapter 34

Jason caught up with the carriage without much effort, and he had to slow his pace so he didn’t get too close. He maintained a distance of about ten feet, from where he could see the driver’s head over the carriage roof and watched as his top hat bobbed up and down. One guy in the driver’s seat, he thought. But how many were inside the passenger compartment? Don’t take any chances. Don’t mess this up, because you need this ride.

Another crack of a whip caused him to stumble and add more distance to the chase. He adjusted his grip on the bat, readying for the attack. In his mind, he saw himself running up, pulling the driver from his seat and then smashing his skull and taking possession of “The Devil’s Taxi” with a few ruthless swings. I need it, he thought, if I’m to stand any chance of getting to that mountain.

What are you thinking? he asked himself. A little girl just took possession of you and forced you to brutalise another man. Who or whatever is driving that carriage could be ten times worse than that demon girl. And what if there is more than one? There could be four or more inside. Don’t be stupid; don’t be reckless. Jason stopped. He watched as it moved away at a steady pace. Another crack of the whip teased his weak resolve.

A shout from beyond the dune on the left drew his attention. He gripped the bat with both hands, readying to swing it at whoever or whatever came over. He heard a guttural voice calling out in anger. A metallic clattering joined the virulent call. He looked up at the wispy dune. It was a low one, reaching no more than thirty feet above him. Come on, you bastard, he thought. Come on! He swung the bat in a practise swing and then re-cocked his readiness.

More ferocious verbal anger could be heard, and then sand exploded from the top of the dune as a man in clattering armour jumped over it. The man lost his footing and rolled down, coming to an undignified rest a mere six feet away. The man looked up and yelled, his face sharp and menacing. Jason realised he was about to go toe-to-toe with a Roman soldier, an intimidating sight in full military regalia, complete with a gleaming short sword. The soldier got to his sandaled feet, glancing at Jason for a moment, but more interested in something that might be following him.

“Come on, you fucker,” Jason yelled, preparing to swing the bat.

The Roman ignored him and looked around as if waiting for the ground to swallow him, a petrified look on his bronzed, chiselled face. A moment later, he ran to the other side of the path and scrambled up the opposing dune.

Jason watched him climb, and then looked back up at the ridge from where the soldier had come. He saw the motionless silhouette of a caretaker. It watched the man scamper away. The moment the soldier disappeared from view, the creature’s form took to the air as a black silken stream, shooting from one side of the path to the other—following its prey. The defiant aggression of the Roman thundered out once more and then fell silent, replaced by a ground-shaking growl.

Jason resigned himself to taking the carriage for his own, no matter how stupid and reckless it may be. He ran as fast as he could. The carriage couldn’t be too far ahead of him. While he ran, he thought about the Roman soldier. Seeing someone who appeared to be from a time long ago was bizarre enough, but something about the man confused him. Each time you got burned, disintegrated and then snorted up by one of those creatures, you appeared back at the start, minus your clothes. The Roman must have been in hell for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and must have been reset many times. So how did he still have his clothes? He thought about Derwood, and how he appeared to have come from another time too. Are we all plucked from life’s infernal merry-go-round and thrown into the mix, regardless of where or when we came from? Lilith had showed her ability to control time. Although, maybe he’s not from ancient Rome after all, maybe he’s just an actor from the twenty-first century in costume. Just an ordinary guy from modern times who committed a sin while wearing the outfit of a Roman soldier. He’d said nothing, no words in Latin or any other ancient tongue. He’d just vented his rage with a torrent of animalistic shouts. Jason brushed off this futile train of thought as the carriage came back into view.

He focused on how he would take it from its current owner. Did he have enough aggression and strength to rush up and batter the driver and any possible passengers with the bat? A brief thought came to mind: just ask for a lift. There might be reasonable people in hell, people who have no desire to inflict pain and suffering on everyone they meet. Are you prepared to take that chance? he asked himself. They’ll be bloody sadistic psychos. Take that carriage by force and turn anyone who gets in your way into a screamer.

Chapter 35

He moved to the left of the carriage and tried to look in through the side window as he ran, but a wooden board sat in place of the glass. He eased back and ran to the other side, keeping an arm’s length from the large wooden spoked wheels spinning in a blur, and found the same true for the window on the right-hand side. The horses kicked up thick grey clouds, which made it hard for him to see anything. The carriage continued to roll along at a jogging pace.

He was sure there was one person at the front, driving the horses; it was the potential passengers within the carriage that caused him to hesitate. The driver could be caught off guard and pulled from his seat, and then a swift blow from the bat would deal with him. As he schemed, Jason’s legs started to fail him and his breathing became laboured. It’s now or never, he thought.

He swung the bat at the left-hand side of the carriage. It impacted with a satisfying thud. The noise went unanswered though. He swung again. And again. A crack formed in the wood from the assault.

“Whoa there,” the driver called to his horses. “I said, whoa! Damn you.”

Jason ran to the edge of the path and dove into the sand, then scooped more over himself. The carriage slowed and stopped. As it dipped to the left when the driver made to disembark, Jason remained motionless and watched.

The vague impression of the man in the top hat came into view through the swirling clouds. He studied the crack left by the bat. Jason held his breath as the man looked in his direction. A long moment had passed before he breathed again. The man was wearing a three-quarter-length black jacket and large round glasses. He leaned on the silver handle of a black walking cane. No one else appeared from the carriage to join him. He looked around once more before disappearing from view as he walked back to the driver’s seat.

Jason leapt to his feet and ran towards the carriage, listening for any voices as he went, but all he heard was the storm rising again. He had to act now or his ride would fade into the grey wash once more. The man raised his foot to the metal rung of a short stepladder to climb back aboard. Jason swung the bat at the man’s other leg and swiped it away from beneath him. The man lost his hat and glasses on his journey to the ground. He looked up at Jason with cloudy eyes.

“What d’you do that for?” he asked through his obvious pain.

Jason raised the bat high, readying to bring it down on the old man’s head. He paused and stared into his old eyes. The man looked to be at least eighty and appeared to have not one straight bone in his scrawny body.

“Don’t get up, old man,” Jason said. “I’m sorry, but I have to take your ride. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have, but if you move I’ll smash your skull. You understand?”

The man laughed, winced with pain, and then said through a crooked smile, “Umm, yeah, okay. If you think you’ve got the balls, you go right ahead. But I’m sure you’re soft as cow shit, and my horses won’t move for soft as cow shit.”

“They’ll move. Now, just stay there and don’t fucking move.”

“You’ve busted my leg, moron. I can’t move.”

Jason stepped over him and climbed up into the driver’s seat. He grabbed the silver-topped cane, which lay on the wooden seat, and threw it over the side. It landed a few feet away from the old man.

“You heartless bitch,” the man spat back.

“Yeah, well. Like I said, sorry.” Jason picked up the leather reins that hung over the foot bar. He noticed a coiled whip below the seat. I’ll get them going with the reins first, he thought, placing the baseball bat next to the whip. He had no experience with horses, and as he looked to the front and watched the sandy veil disperse, he realised with sickening horror that it didn’t matter, because horses were not what drove this carriage. The leather reins fell from his hands.

The man laughed. “Not so easy, is it? I was right about you—soft as shite.”

Through the dissipating fug, Jason saw twelve abused faces staring back at him. Six on either side of a long wooden beam. They had their wrists tied with barbed wire, which bound them to the beam. More barbed wire, wrapped around their necks, connected each man to the front of the carriage. Another man stood at the head of the human train, untethered and looking past the others and at Jason. The bare-chested man rippled with an obscene amount of muscle mass.

“Can I, Pops? Can I break this one?” the enormous man asked without looking away from Jason.

“Yes, my boy, you can. But Lee…”

“Yes, Pops?”

“I want to hear this one curse louder than the others.” The old man looked up at Jason and asked, “So, what’s it gonna be? You a fighter, or a nancy-boy faggot? I hope you’re not a whore’s pussy, because my son likes the ones who fight back.”

Jason picked up the bat and jumped down from the carriage. As he stood over the old man with the bat raised high, he called out to Lee, “One step and you’re picking your dad’s brains up with a spoon.”

“It’s better if you let him, Lee, he’s busted my leg anyway. Make sure you don’t crack his skull, though, I want to tow this one.”

“He’ll be waiting for you, Pops, don’t worry.”

Lee walked with an awkward, limping swagger. He held another whip, which he let trail out beside him as he lurched towards Jason. This whip wasn’t like the single-tailed one which lay under the driver’s seat; the whip Lee held had four braided tails, about six feet in length, with thick fishing hooks fastened to each end.

Jason looked down at the old man.

“Oh, are you in for a whipping now, boy,” the old man said.

If I smash his skull, Jason thought, he’ll come back. He’ll turn into a screamer, a caretaker will come and do its thing, and the old man will come back. The old bastard knows this. But where will he return to? Is the carriage where his sin took place. A mobile return destination? A useful tool for insidious hunters in hell. Jason raised the bat, smiled down at the old man, and then brought the bat down on the kneecap of the old guy’s good leg.

“You bastard whore!” the old man screamed as he jerked upright and reached for his busted knee.

Jason stepped away from the old cripple and backed away from his son—the approaching mountain of muscles.

“Don’t worry, Pops, I’ll crack your head once I’ve caught me this dumb old fish. You’ll be good as new quicker than snot.” Lee stepped over his father.

“Make it quick, my boy, this does hurt me some.”

Jason stood level with the back of the carriage and held the bat in a solid grip with both hands. No chance he was going to turn and run. He wanted, no, he needed this carriage. He pushed the thoughts of the men in barbed wire bondage from his mind and watched Lee preparing the whip for flight. He expected Lee to make a lavish display of using the whip. He waited for the giant to swing his arm back, which would be followed by a swift forward motion, guiding the working end towards its intended target. At which point he would jump aside from the fast-approaching hooks and club him down. That was what Jason was expecting and was preparing for, but the lavish display never came. He saw a fleeting flick of the big guy’s wrist, followed by a glimpse of the leather braid and a flash from the hooks in flight. Before he could dodge out the way though, he fell crashing to the ground. All four tails had wrapped around both his legs, with one of the fish hooks sinking deep into his calf muscle. Lee had caught his fish and reeled it in.

“Ah, shit, it’s a tiddler. It does wriggle though. Look, Pops.”

Jason grabbed for the carriage wheel as he was dragged by, and his fingers touched the wooden spokes, but he couldn’t get hold of them. He kicked out against the embrace of the whip and reached for the hook embedded in his leg, but it was too late. He lay at the feet of the towering man. Jason swung the bat from his unfortunate position, catching Lee on his thigh, but it had no effect on the man. He swung the bat again, but Lee caught it before it hit and pulled the bat from Jason’s hands with little effort. Then he threw it over his shoulder.

“Stop messing around,” the old man yelled. “Get him tied, and help me. I want to break this bitch in.”

Jason pulled his legs back and then kicked out into Lee’s knees, causing him to stumble backwards and trip over his father. He fell and landed on the old man’s legs. Jason freed himself from the whip and pulled the hook from his flesh, then he rolled underneath the carriage and out to the other side, grabbing the whip and taking it with him.

“Get off me, damn it!” the old man howled. “Get off, you dumb lump.”

Jason jumped up onto the driver’s seat. He picked up the reins with one hand while holding the four-tailed whip with his right. He snapped the reins. “Move!” he shouted to the men up front. “Fucking move!” He snapped the reins again.

The men didn’t move. They looked back at him with pitiful, deep-set eyes.

He looked down at the old man and his son. Lee staggered back to his feet, and the old man rolled from side to side, moaning as he caressed his smashed and crushed legs. Jason tried to use the whip to motivate the twelve men, but the four tails became caught up in the barbed wire. He retrieved the other whip from beneath the seat and attempted to make it crack over their heads, but it was harder than he expected and didn’t make a loud crack as he had hoped. The single tail glanced the head of one, causing the man to flinch, but still they didn’t move.

“Shit,” Jason exclaimed. He looked down at Lee, who moved towards him once more. “Shit!”

“Round two, little fishy.”

“Come on, you steroid junkie gym rat,” Jason yelled as he jumped from the carriage and onto Lee, ploughing his elbow into the man’s nose with shattering effect. He took hold of his adversary’s globular head and pressed livid thumbs into his eyes. Lee swung his fist without aim, catching the side of Jason’s chest with insignificant force. While still gripping Lee’s head and pulling him forward, Jason thrust a knee into his solar plexus, causing him to stagger. Lee gathered himself, reached forward and grabbed Jason by the throat with a crushing grip and lifted him up. While swinging inches above the ground, Jason kicked Lee in the groin—with no result whatsoever. Lee threw Jason to the ground and rubbed his bloodshot eyes, cringing as he touched his broken nose.

Jason climbed back on his feet with little delay.

“What are you doing, Lee?” The old man croaked. “He’s a bug, squash him.”

“Shut it, Pops. I’m working on it.”

Jason backed away, giving himself a moment to ponder the value of this situation. He wasn’t sure if he could force the twelve men to pull the carriage, or whether he could even try. They’re people, he thought. People just like me. Not horses, not cattle. I can’t use them. I could free them… Jesus, Jase, you’re weak and stupid. I should have let it pass on by and not started this. Not got involved. I should run...

Lee came at Jason once more, a look of pure hatred writ large across his bug-eyed face. “I’ll enjoy ripping that damned tongue from your head.” He launched an unstoppable right fist, this time with a good aim. It slammed into Jason’s ear, knocking his head to one side and into the door of the carriage. Jason collapsed in a daze. Lee leaned over and grabbed Jason by the hood of his top and lifted him back to his feet. While still holding him up, he leaned in closer. Jason felt Lee’s stale breath on his cheek as he said, “I collect them. I like the way they still twitch after I rip them out.”

Jason brought the palm of his right hand up at speed to meet Lee’s chin. With a crack, the big man’s head jerked back. Without thought or pause, Jason lunged for the exposed throat and sank his teeth deep. He bit down as hard as he could and wrapped his arms around the back of the man’s head, holding him in place while he chewed on his Adam’s apple. He could feel Lee’s flesh turning to sand within his mouth.

Lee punched and pushed, over and over again, until he knocked Jason away. He threw one final hammer blow and knocked Jason to the ground again. Then he stumbled backwards, clutching at his throat and making a shrill sound.

“What the buggering Alice are you doing, Lee?” the old man yelled.

Lee sounds like a pig at a slaughterhouse, Jason thought. This gave him hope the man-mountain could be beaten. He climbed to his feet, spat out a mouthful of sand and also a couple of teeth, then he ran at Lee and planted his elbow in the gaping throat wound. He stood back and looked at the man’s bulging eyes, then kicked out and landed the sole of his boot flat on his washboard stomach. Lee teetered, almost tripping over his father’s legs again. Jason ran at him once more, shoulder first, slamming into Lee’s chest and sending him toppling to the ground. Sand billowed out from beneath his body as he landed. Jason stood over him, the triumphant gladiator—no time for a call of mercy though. He remembered the poor man in the church and the demon girl’s voice in his head telling him to, stomp, stomp, stomp. He stamped on Lee’s face once, twice… “Break!” Jason screamed. “For fuck’s sake, break.” He stamped again and again. Lee gave little resistance as his head jerked from side to side with every blow. Jason imagined the head smashing apart like a melon beneath his boot, but this was no melon and it wouldn’t crack… A sudden realisation stayed his foot in mid-fall: if his head does break open, he’ll turn into a screamer, and the big bastard will come back. Cripple him instead. He glanced around, looking for the bat. It lay at the edge of the desert path, about ten feet away. He was about to run to get it when he felt a thump and searing pain in his left thigh. The old man had stabbed him with a large hunting knife and was now looking up at him with a broad grin.

“Playtime’s over, boy.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jason exclaimed, grabbing the handle of the knife. He tried to pull it free, but it had stuck fast and every touch of the handle increased the pain. He collapsed to one knee.

“You can keep that one, I have another.” The old man stabbed Jason in the foot with another, identical, hunting knife. “Hurts some, don’t it.”

Jason dragged himself away from the old man’s reach and fell against one of the carriage wheels.

“Come on, Lee, I winged him for you,” the old man shouted as he crawled after Jason. “Get to your feet and finish the hunt. You can’t leave the animal wounded. Damn it, boy, get up.”

Jason leaned over and took hold of the handle of the knife in his leg. He bit down on the pain as he pulled it free. He breathed fast and hard while he removed the one from his foot too.

Lee whimpered and clutched at his throat with both his enormous hands.

“Never mind that, you bloody abortion,” the old man yelled. “Get over here and bash this one down. Hurry, boy...”

Jason cut the old man’s cries short as he pushed him over onto his back and fell on him, plunging both blades into the old man’s scrawny chest. He coughed and reached up for Jason’s face.

“Hurts some, don’t it, you fuck,” Jason said with cold, sadistic pleasure. He pressed down hard on the butt of both knives, forcing the two blades deeper into the old flesh. At that moment he realised he could and would make those twelve men pull the carriage.

Brutal thoughts rose within him like weeds that’d hitherto lay dormant below abandoned soil, wrapping their searching tendrils around any glimpse of compassion he might have left. If this was his soul in the afterlife, wandering the grey deserts of hell, then his soul had atrophied, without the slightest rumour of empathy remaining within the decay.

He looked over at Lee and watched him wince every time he touched his open throat; the damn fool sat like a sullen child, poking himself. Jason looked back down at “Pops” and, while kneeling on him for leverage, pulled both knives from his chest. He held the blades crossed against his throat like a pair of shears ready to cut through a troublesome vine. In one swift motion, he pressed down hard and pulled the blades apart, slicing deep into the sagging old throat. It took six more slicing cuts to remove his head. You were right, Xavier, I would have preferred a little blood, too.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a figure in the distance, running along the ridge of a dune. He would have to act fast, The Devil’s Taxi had other interested parties. I’ll finish the bastard son off, he thought, then—

Jason felt a blow to the side of his head and collapsed next to the old man’s headless body. He rolled over and looked up. The man-mountain stood over him with the baseball bat in hand. Jason pushed himself up onto his elbows and tried to sit up, but Lee knocked him flat with a swift kick.

Lee grabbed Jason by his legs and dragged him to the back of the carriage. He lifted him to his feet and punched him to the ground again. He did this a further three times, then walked back around to the side of the carriage.

Jason had a broken nose and his left eye had swelled, almost closing over and reducing him to monocular vision. He reached for his good leg, but couldn’t focus and fell back, his strength all but spent. Stretching once more, he managed to grab his trouser leg, pulling it up as he fell back again. He bent his knee to bring the lower half of his leg closer to his reaching hand and then fumbled at the black electrical tape. He found a loose end and pulled. The hacksaw blade soon came away from his leg, and he worked to remove the tape from the serrated edge. Once it was free of the tape, he held the blade in his palm and waited for Lee to return.

The carriage rocked from side to side as the big man move around inside. A moment later the carriage door slammed shut and Lee walked back to where Jason lay. He held a large pair of pliers and one of the hunting knives in one hand and a roll of barbed wire in the other. He unravelled the barbed wire and tied one end to the baggage rail on the roof of the carriage. Once secured, he wrapped the other end around Jason’s legs using the pliers to make the knot tight.

Jason tried to move, but he had no strength left. Just wait and rest, he thought. When the carriage starts to move, I’ll cut the wire.

The next moment, Lee was on him, his knee impacting Jason’s chest and holding him flat. He punched him about the face with many rapid blows and then placed his left hand over his face, covering his eyes and pinching his nose closed. He pressed the head of the pliers against his lips.

Jason grabbed Lee’s arm and then pulled the hacksaw blade across his wrist, causing him to let out a high-pitched squeal and drop the pliers. He reached up with a feeble hand to cut his face, but Lee knocked the approaching hand away with ease. Lee grabbed his head, lifted it a few inches from the ground then slammed it back down again. He did this again and again until Jason’s flailing arms went limp and he dropped the saw blade. Lee picked up the blade and put it against his throat.

“Ram it up your ass, dipshit,” Jason heard himself say, his own words sounding as though they came from a long way off. Maybe he just thought he spoke, he wasn’t sure. The world was spinning as he looked up at the sky with tunnel vision. He heard a sharp crack but felt nothing. He looked at Lee’s face and watched in wonder as the big man’s eyes rolled back, white. Jason looked back to the sky.

He felt soft hands touch his battered face.

“Hello again.”

Jason’s fuzzy perception focused on beautiful hazel eyes. “Glad you found it.”

Chapter 36

The woman helped Jason free himself from the barbed wire, then to his feet, and supported his balance as he hobbled away from Lee’s body and the screamer floating above. He couldn’t put any weight on his wounded leg so resorted to moving in small hops. He looked around as he moved and noticed the storm had lost most of its anger and the clouds of sand were settling.

“I didn’t have time to thank you,” she said.

“For what? I didn’t help, I couldn’t…”

“You wanted to, though, and you tried. Most people you meet here don’t give you a second glance unless they want to attack you. Like the kid back at the well.” She brushed golden hair from her eyes with a frightened hand. “A fifty-something kid.”

“What about the man in the well with you?” Jason asked as he sat on the edge of the path and leaned back against the soft rise of the dune. “Do you know if he’s okay?”

She joined him but didn’t lean back. At the slightest sound or movement, her eyes would blaze with anxiety and dart to find the cause. Even though her fear was apparent, she held herself with an elegant poise. Jason couldn’t help but be captivated as he watched the relaxed waves of her hair glance her shoulders.

“I don’t know. I found him wandering near the well. He’d just arrived here and didn’t understand where here was. I tried to help him… Then the man with the bat came and… But you stopped him, and you left his clothes out for me. You’ve no idea how grateful I am for some clothes.”

“You’re welcome. I thought the trainers might be a little too big for you,” he said, watching her bare feet push into the sand—as if the two were enjoying a lazy moment on a beach somewhere far from here. “And you found the screwdriver. I’m glad you heard me.”

A tear trickled down her cheek. “You can hear and see everything while… it happens.” She wiped the tear away.

Jason thought of the man in his garden. “I’ve seen the same thing happen to someone else. Why does that happen to you?”

“Because I didn’t raise a hand to help. That’s what that evil woman told me.”

“Lilith?”

“Yes, Lilith is one of her names, although she has many: Lilit, Lilitu. I’ve also heard her referred to as a screech owl… Whatever that is.”

“How long have you been here?” he asked, and then smiled through his pain as he added, “Jason, by the way.”

Her eyes sparkled and her face shone a beautiful warm smile back at him. “Lucia. My God, it’s a long time since I’ve said my name aloud. It’s good to meet you, Jason.” She looked over at Lee’s soul burning within the black flame and winced. “All I know is I went to sleep in a hospital bed—I had a rather angry little tumour—and woke up here, looking twenty years younger. Since then I’ve been on this road six times. I keep going for as long as I can until my body… stops working.” She leaned forward and rested her head on her knees.

“Because you didn’t help?”

“My husband had an affair… well, multiple affairs. One day that promiscuous bastard fell down that well…”

“The well is where you return to each time?”

Lucia nodded. “I said he fell, but pushed would be a more accurate description. The well was in the woods near our house. Stupid, dangerous thing.”

“You pushed him down a well.” Jason couldn’t stop a smile escaping.

Lucia returned the smile. “No. My brother, Anthony, pushed him. He never liked my husband, and when he found out how his little sister was being treated, he pushed him down the well.”

“I don’t understand. Your brother killed him, but you’re the one being punished?”

“My brother is in hell too, according to that bitch, Lilith. But when I was in the hospital, he was still alive. He used to come and visit me. So I don’t understand what she meant.”

“Time doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” Jason thought aloud. He looked over at the men tied to the carriage. They were all motionless. Why don’t they try to escape? he wondered. Why don’t they fight their captivity? He felt anger for the twelve men. How can they be so broken, so listless within their plight?

“I’m here because I listened to my husband’s cries for help without doing something about it; the fall didn’t kill the stubborn bastard right away. In life, the well was a lot deeper, not like it is now. He must have landed on his head.”

“And now… What is it that happens to you?” He could see sadness returning to her face with his question. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s okay,” she said, placing a gentle, yet shaky hand on his. “Lilith told me, because I didn’t choose to help my husband, I’d only have peace for as long as he took to die. Then my body would choose for itself what to do. It always chooses to do what you saw it do.”

“How long did he take to die?”

“A day and a half.”

“But you do have a chance to leave this place, don’t you?” Jason asked as he sat up. “If you get to the mountain, I mean.”

“Yes, Lilith said I could leave if I can get there, so I keep trying, but… I think it’s just a cruel joke. I get so far and then...”

“Then we need to move. One question, though, why a well?”

“That’s where he proposed to me. It was like his heart, he said, full of love for me… It was a dry well; I should have seen that as an omen.”

Chapter 37

Lucia ran over to the carriage and retrieved the old man’s walking cane, and then hurried back and gave it to Jason. She helped him to his feet.

He leaned hard on the cane. “Thanks. We need to get moving before one of those damn things comes to claim him,” he said, pointing to the screamer with a nod as he walked towards it.

He picked up the hunting knife lying next to Lee’s body and removed the screwdriver from his head. He stood and looked at the screamer for a moment, studying Lee’s pained expression—a happy witness to his agony—before stumbling back to the carriage and around to the remains of the old man.

They both looked down at the decapitated head and watched as the lips moved with unheard obscenities.

“How is that possible?” Lucia asked. “He’s no longer connected to the rest of his body, but he still looks as if he’s breathing and… Oh, God, he’s trying to speak.”

Jason smiled. “Told you I’m taking your ride, Pops.”

“I’ll help you. We don’t need to ride there. It’ll be slow going, but together we’ll make it.”

“I’m sorry, Lucia, but I won’t make it. Look at the state of me. I’ll either drop a mile down the road or get picked off by another bloody freak. I have to do this.” He hobbled towards the carriage door, turned the latch and pulled; it swung open with ease. Inside, he found the collected treasures of the two men. It appeared the vulturous pair had spent their time picking over the possessions of everyone they met. He scanned the interior and saw: a bundle of assorted clothes on the floor next to a gold clock, a diamond-studded gold crown sat upon a marble bust of a stern-looking man, and a scattering of coins from various nations mingled with assorted gemstones within a felled forest of rifles and shotguns. His gaze lifted to the many human tongues hanging from the ceiling; torn flesh held in place by large nails. He felt sickened, not by the grotesque sight but by how little it shocked him. A black sheet edged with gold tassels covered a large box on the leather seat. He pulled the sheet away and saw that it wasn’t a box but a rusted metal cage tied to the seat with thick rope. “Oh, dear God,” he exclaimed, looking at what was trying to remain unseen within the cage.

“What is it?” Lucia asked, peering into the carriage.

“It’s all right, son,” Jason assured the quivering creature.

In the cage, covered in dirt and curled up like a frightened dog, was a small naked boy, shivering, with a fearful expression upon his young strained face. His eyes were wide and flitted back and forth between the two shocked onlookers.

“Oh, you poor dear,” Lucia said, as she reached out towards the cage.

A feral scream burst from the boy’s tongueless mouth as he scrambled away from her approaching hand.

“He can’t be more than eight.”

“Get him out of there,” Lucia urged.

Jason climbed into the carriage and found a large padlock holding the cage door shut. He pulled at the rope, trying to move it from the seat, but it was too thick and as malleable as steel cable. “It’s okay, we’ll get you out.” He looked around for the keys but saw none.

“I’ll check him.” Lucia ran over to the old man’s body and searched his jacket pockets.

Jason tried to bend the bars by pulling and pushing on them, but they didn’t give.

“He hasn’t got any. I’ll see if the other one has the keys.” She ran to the rear of the carriage.

Jason remembered the hacksaw blade and called after her to get it. The boy watched with quizzical eyes as he searched again for keys or anything else he could use to force the cage open.

Lucia returned and handed him the saw blade. “He hasn’t got the keys either.”

Jason worked on the bars, but the saw kept slipping over the tubular metal. “We haven’t got time for this.”

“Our belts,” Lucia said as she removed hers.

“Our belts? What do you—?”

“Hurry. Take your belt off.” She jumped up into the carriage.

Jason unbuckled his and watched as she tied hers loose around the midsection of four vertical bars. He understood her plan. “I was just going to suggest that,” he said with a smile as he followed suit, removing his belt and tying it around the same bars. He picked up a rifle and slid the barrel into the loop of both belts and began to turn it. The leather creaked as the garrotte tightened around the metal. A moment later, the bars started to bend.

“It works,” Lucia said. “I wasn’t sure if it would.”

“It’s okay, kid,” Jason said to the boy. “We’ve got a Houdini in our corner.”

“Houdini?” Lucia asked.

“The escape artist…”

“Before my time.”

“You youngsters today,” he said, and then shook his head and tutted twice.

The middle of the four bars had come together and created a bigger gap either side. He unwound the barrel and untied the belts, and then repeated the procedure on the next four bars.

“Thanks, but I was sixty-two when I died. This is how I looked twenty years ago.”

“Forty-two?”

“Yes… come to hell and have twenty years of lines and sagging vanish. Not how I’d choose to regain my youth.”

Jason thought of Derwood and the Roman soldier and wondered which century she came from. “I’m forty-two. What year was it when you—?”

“Died?”

“Yes.”

“Thirty-two.”

“Nineteen thirty-two?”

“No. Twenty thirty-two.”

“What?”

The boy slipped through the gap in the bars, pushed Jason over, ducked Lucia’s reaching arms and ran from the carriage.

“Hang on, we’re not going to hurt you,” Lucia called as she jumped down and ran after the boy.

Jason crawled to the carriage door, slipping and sliding over the gemstones. He reached the door and fell out onto the hard ground. Lucia had hold of the boy’s hand and was encouraging him to stay with them. The boy was trying to pull away from her.

“Twenty thirty-two?” Jason said to himself as he watched them. For some reason he found it more of a shock to meet someone from the future than the past. Maybe it was because she had confirmed her century whereas he remained uncertain about Derwood and the Roman.

“Stay with us,” she encouraged the boy. “We’ll keep you safe. We’re going to leave this place.”

Her voice was soft. Her voice reminded him of how Zoe’s once was.

The boy jerked his hand away from her grip and then ran towards the nearest dune and climbed. Lucia ran after him. Jason got to his feet once more with the aid of the cane. Within moments, the boy was over the dune and gone from sight. Jason watched as Lucia ascended the dune too.

“We can help you, please come back,” she yelled, fervent despair in her voice as she looked off into the desert from the peak about sixty feet up.

After putting his belt back on, Jason leaned over and picked up the old man’s glasses and put them on too. “You can keep the hat,” he said to the gawping head. With slow painful moves, Jason gathered the pliers, the two hunting knives, the screwdriver, and the baseball bat. He threw the bat up onto the driver’s seat, put the knives in his belt, and threw the rest into the carriage and shut the door.

Jason looked down at the old man. Decapitation meant he no longer had the use of his body, but the man retained his ability to see and hear all. And judging by the frantic horror on his face, his mind remained in working order too. If his skull remained unbroken, Jason wondered, how long would he stay this way?

The low rumbling call of a caretaker took dominance over the wind. Jason moved to the back of the carriage and saw the ethereal creature on all fours by Lee’s corpse. It looked like a wolf about to howl at the moon. But what came next wasn’t a howl. An ear-shattering screech emanated from the creature as it consumed the screamer with one long inward breath, extinguishing its black flame. Jason watched in nervous awe as the creature’s mouth opened and exposed the void within. Its head moved this way and that over the corpse. A moment later, the body disintegrated to nothing, and the caretaker became a mere vibration in the air, before it vanished into the wind.

“Oh, crap,” Jason exclaimed, as he realised what would happen next. “Lucia, get down here quick,” he shouted. He opened the carriage door again, and then stepped back and pulled one of the knives from his belt as his eyes scanned the carriage, inside and out. He ducked down and checked below. “Lucia. Shit. Hurry!” He looked along the human train, readying himself to act as fast as his battered body would allow. The moment Lee appeared again, he would pounce on him before he had a chance to open his eyes.

“He won’t survive out there,” Lucia said as she rejoined Jason.

“The creature, did you see it?”

“Yes, but it’s gone now.”

“And it took Lee with it…” Jason flashed his eyes at her to coax understanding.

“Oh… Where?”

“I don’t know,” he said, pulling the other knife from his belt and handing it to her. “Take this…”

“Are you sure he’ll return here?” She took the offered knife.

“I’m not certain, but I think they used it in some way when they did whatever they did to get sent to hell. I get reset to my old house, you to the well, and them to this carriage.”

“I’ll check the other side.”

Jason dropped the walking stick and reached up to reclaim the baseball bat from the driver’s seat.

“He’s not here,” Lucia called out.

“Come on, you bastard, where are you?”

“There,” Lucia screamed. “He’s over there, at the front.”

Jason looked along the line of men at the front of the carriage. Lying on the ground a few feet from the man at the front of the line, Lee began to stir. Jason staggered as fast as he could towards him.

Lee sat up and was immediately set upon by the two men at the front of the line, who pulled at their wire restraints and kicked him with their blistered and bruised bare feet. Jason raised the bat as he lumbered towards his target, until he came into range and swung the bat with all his might, catching the side of Lee’s head and knocking him flat again with a satisfying, immobilising thud. Jason fell on him, pulled the hunting knife from his belt, and rammed the blade into Lee’s renewed and undamaged throat. He pulled the knife out and then plunged it back in, over and over again, until the connection was cut and the head rolled free from the body.

Jason looked at the two men who had helped him. They smiled back through quivering lips as they offered their bound wrists. The wire had dug so deep that it had worn an inch-wide gouge into them, and the metal barbs scratched against unprotected bone. They tried to speak but all that came out was unintelligible moans and hissing—their tongues removed, and no doubt added to the carriage’s inner decor.

This is it, Jason thought. This is where you pussy out and fail because you’re weak. You won’t make it on foot… He shook the disparaging voice from his head. No! I’m not weak. I will go through with this. I’m in hell, nothing matters anymore and nothing ever will unless I…

With unacquainted composure he instructed the men, “Don’t fucking smile at me. Your work isn’t done, you just have new hands holding your reins. You’ll pull that carriage and take me to that mountain, or,” he looked down at Lee’s head and the panicked eyes staring back at him, “or you’re all going to end up like these two dumb shits.”

“What are you doing?” Lucia asked with fear and a growing sadness in her voice.

Jason hobbled as fast as he could to the old man, picked up his head and then returned to the front of the human train. He dropped the old man’s head next to Lee’s—father and son together again. He used the knife to dig a hole next to the two heads.

“Just leave them,” she pleaded. “You don’t need to do anything more.”

“If I leave them in the open someone might come along and finish them off. I don’t want to have to deal with them again. While their skulls are still intact, they won’t be going anywhere.” He leaned over so he was nose to nose with the old man, and then he yelled, “Do you hear me? You fuck. I hope time is slow for you both, down there beneath the sand.” He heard himself laugh.

Once it was deep enough, he placed both the heads into the hole so their terrified faces looked up at the sky, and he watched their mouths moving with silent words of antipathy. He covered the hole with sand until nothing of the two heads remained on view. Then he stood and watched as the wind blew the ground smooth again. A moment later there was no evidence a hole had ever been dug. He turned to face the twelve bound onlookers, meeting each and every hopeless gaze with hard contempt. “Stamp down hard as you march over them. And you will march, or I’ll dig twelve more holes.”

“Please don’t do this, Jason.”

“Are you coming?”

“Not like this.”

Jason moved to the carriage, slammed the side door shut and then climbed up onto the driver’s seat. After putting the walking stick and bat on the seat next to him, he picked up the reins.

Lucia stood next to the carriage and looked up at him.

He looked down at her and thought he saw pity in her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.” He snapped the reins.

Chapter 38

The Devil’s Taxi moved along at a slow pace and it was a long time before Lucia faded into the distance. Jason turned to look back twenty or thirty times before he couldn’t see her anymore. He wished she had come with him.

The pain in his leg was sharp and throbbing, as was the discomfort in his face, but he thought little of it. He looked at the twelve men and their dusty grey clothes which hung from them as rags, flapping in the light wind as they jogged. They had terrible cuts on their backs from the two whips. Jason didn’t use the whips on them, nor did he touch the wire that connected each man by the neck to the carriage, but he did use the reins to snap more enthusiasm into them. The reins were connected to leather harnesses buckled around the chest of each of the two men in the lead position.

A good man no more, Jason thought to himself—if ever I was. He tried to push away the shame which had begun to suffocate his thoughts. But his actions wanted to feed on him now, gnawing on the remains of his conscience. He snapped the reins. “Faster! The quicker you get me there, the quicker you’ll be free of this. Faster!”

Up ahead, about fifty feet away, three twisted bodies rolled down a dune and across the path. Their broken arms and legs stuck out from their withered forms like crooked branches and moved with vigorous madness in all directions. As the carriage drew nearer, Jason watched the three figures twitch and jerk as they moved along like tumbleweed. They would stand and then fall, over and over again as they edged their way across the path. Behind the three walked another man, holding a long stick, which he used to keep the three moving. He was shepherding his tortured flock.

“Is this not fun?” the shepherd called out to Jason. “A dozen club sluts and a bag of coke couldn’t bring me off like this does.” He tapped the side of the carriage with his stick as it passed by. “I like your style, chief.”

Jason ignored the man, his attention instead fixed on the human tumbleweed struggling to get out the way of the carriage. He stood and looked over the side, making sure none fell under the wheels. He watched the men and considered their hideous predicament. It appeared to be the same affliction the guy in his garden had gone through, and the same suffering he had witnessed Lucia going through back at the well. It was like a rapid degenerative disease ripping any bodily control from them until their muscles pulverised their bones through rapid and violent contractions. Sorrowful moans and brief piercing screams resounded with a chorus of bones breaking and flesh ripping.

He forced his gaze back to the distant mountain. Don’t look at them, he thought. Forget about them. Don’t think about Lucia either. Why was she so prevalent in his thoughts? he wondered; he didn’t know her. But in this place of abominations, she had cared. If it were not for her, he would be one of these poor souls by now, pulling this carriage. The woman in Xavier’s cage and Lucia had both helped him, and he had left them to their fate.

He couldn’t steady his mind and guide his thoughts away from where they now lingered—with the women he had left behind, one a plaything for a sadistic lunatic, the other a victim to her own failing body. She’ll go through that again, destroying herself. And she’ll be alone when it happens. Or found by someone else. Someone like Xavier or the boy by the well. Or like the shepherd he had just passed… You left them… You left her…

“Stop!” He dropped the reins and climbed down from the carriage, steadying himself against one of the large wooden wheels for a moment. He opened the carriage door and grabbed the pliers, and then set about untying and untangling the men from the barbed wire. The sharp points cut and slashed at his hands as he worked in a remorseful frenzy to release them.

Once free, the men didn’t wait. Within seconds they had all left the path and disappeared over the dunes and into the desert. Jason noticed that one man had used a spike from the wire to scratch something into the carriage door before running off. He read the message:

The mountain will not end your suffering.

It did not end mine.

Chapter 39

Jason sat and reclined against one of the rear wheels of the carriage, looking back along the path and watching the wind as it formed pirouetting columns of sand, erasing all footsteps and lines left by the carriage wheels. Any tracks left by predators would also be removed before they could give fair warning. He expected Lilith to appear and force him to keep moving, but she didn’t come. Muffled screams and desperate calls came from far off over the dunes.

Aching thoughts sat with Jason and infected him with lethargy. He would never reach the mountain. And even if he did, could he escape all this and be with Emily again? The message scratched into the carriage door proclaimed he wouldn’t. It was foolish to believe a demon would give him a chance for redemption. The mountain was Lilith’s mirage of hope in her desert of futility.

“Hey there, friend, shame ye got no horses to complete the set.”

Jason turned. “Derwood?” He was sure it was the man he’d met before, even though his clothes were different. He was wearing a baggy white shirt, black trousers, and brown boots, with no thick thread holding it all together and no loose leather around his feet.

“How’d ye know that? Have we met before? Me memory’s a bit fuzzy most of the time now, so don’t take offence if I is a bit sketchy ’bout things.”

“Yes, at the mountain. We met at the mountain. Gert! You were telling me about Gert, your chicken.”

“Hen.”

“Your hen, yes. And you were looking for something.”

“No.”

“Yes, it was you. Your name’s Derwood. It’s good to see you again.”

“I haven’t got to the mountain yet. I is on me way there now. Moths in my head, no doubt about that, but I think I’d remember if I’d been there. Is ye going too?”

“I was… We have met. We were talking and then I disappeared. Don’t you remember?”

“Sorry, chum, no. Yer not gonna get all violent, is ya? I’ll say far thee well if ye wants. Ain’t interested in getting into any more scuffles.”

“Me dumb clubfoot,” Jason said. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Aye, me dumb clubfoot. Madness here, the bizarre wandering free. Managed to avoid a fair few, but not all. When they get me good, I wakes up back at me old farm. Well, what’s left of it anyways. Think this is the furthest I’ve been so far. Thee looks pretty harmless, though, so thought I’d tip me hat. Ain’t got no hat, I knows, but ye gets me meaning. Gets awful lonesome here.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Derwood’s me name, friend.”

“I know.” Jason started to climb to his feet. “Jason.”

“Hang on there, I’ll give ye battered soul a hand.” He helped Jason up and gave him the baseball bat that leaned against the wheel. “Looks like ye taken a fair beating or two.”

“Thanks. Yes, not at my best.”

“Yer still here though, so me thinks the other guy is sure to look a lot worse,” Derwood said with a laugh. “I’d offer you me flask, but water seems as evil as everything else around these parts.”

Jason opened the carriage door and picked up two gemstones from the floor. A ruby and a large yellow diamond.

“Here.” He dropped the ruby into Derwood’s hand.

“No need to pay me, Jason. I just helped ye up, tis all. Not worth anything in this place anyhow.”

Jason smiled. “Put it in your mouth. Don’t swallow it though. It’ll help with the thirst.” Jason threw the diamond into his own mouth.

“Oh, aye.” He looked at the gemstone in his hand, a dubious yet curious look upon his face. “Have the cows been smiling at thee much?”

“It works, trust me.”

Derwood popped the ruby in his mouth. “What should I do with it now?”

Jason laughed. “Nothing. Just let it do its thing.” He offered him the hunting knife. “For the bizarre wanderers.”

“Me legs seem to be the best weapon in this place. Run like a scoundrel at dawn. Me fast pins got me out of more than a few scrapes in life, and here, too.” Derwood took the knife. “For the time when me old legs cramp up.”

Jason looked back along the path and then down at the ground.

“What’s up, chum?”

“I made a mistake.”

“Hey, I’ve stacked up a few of those. No point ye be going for a swim in the murky waters, as me dear old wife used to say, ye can drown in regret.”

Jason smiled at Derwood. “A wise woman.”

“Aye, her mind was a bit scattered most of the time, but when her moths flew, she was sharp as the morning sun. Make a rancid rabbit fit for the king’s table, too. Wonder of nature how she could do that. Pretty as a summer rose, so she was.”

“A good woman,” Jason said, thinking first of Lucia and then Zoe.

“Aye. Tricked the Devil, so I did, when she came me way. Must’ve had the sun at me back and me club foot in the mire. I loved her… Still do.”

“How far do you think it is? The mountain, I mean.”

“Oh, it not be far. Used to walk further after me old sheep when they’d go off a-wandering. I think they were off wandering when God handed out the smarts because they got none. Sheep ain’t too bright. Taste good and keeps ye warm, but dumb as the landlord’s son.”

Jason looked to the mountain. It seemed no closer. He must have travelled thirty or more miles since leaving his house, yet the land remained unchanged. The far off remained far off.

“If we can see it, we can get to it,” Derwood assured him.

Jason took a final look back along the path and then they both started walking.

“If we can see it,” Jason reaffirmed, “we can get to it.”

Chapter 40

“Had me an eel once, but—”

“It tasted like a soggy turd?” Jason interrupted, as he limped along, using the baseball bat for balance and support.

“Aye! Aye, you got the rabbit right between the eyes, a soggy turd. Aye, that’s what it tasted like. Not that I ever ate a turd, soggy or not. Had me a pigeon once… Angels kissing yer lips when there be a pigeon on yer plate…”

“Derwood, I’m happy to let you go on about food, but my stomach is about ready to jump out and throttle you.”

“Sorry. I does go on a bit. Likes me food… Liked me food, is what I meant to say. It’s all up here anyway.” He tapped the side of his head with the blade of the hunting knife. “Johnny told me that.”

“Johnny?”

“Aye, Johnny. Daft bugger he were. The local poacher. Not much good at it, mind.” Derwood chuckled and then continued, “How he kept his life fer as long as he did I got no idea. Anyways, he spent a few nights as the landlord’s guest, after taking a pheasant or two. They caught him and chained the poor sod up in one of the lower rooms of the big house. The landlord thought it would be fun to throw week-old scraps at him, maggots and all. Johnny told me he’d hold his nose and eat everything that got thrown at him, and while chomping down on all that filth he’d think of a banquet table full to overflowing with all manner of glorious food.”

“Did it help?”

“Aye, so he said. Looked pretty healthy when he told me the story. Although they did hang the silly bugger a week later. The landlord thought a second turn as his guest wasn’t going to be enough for trying to claim one of his deer, so they hung him out for all to see from a tree by the road. Old Johnny dangled from that old oak till folk could hear the local children tapping their sticks on his bones.”

“For stealing a deer?”

“Aye. Deer is good meat, hard to come by unless thee don’t mind decorating a tree… Wonder what the old crows thought about while they ate old Johnny. Tis what I be getting at, see. It’s like sucking on these things, I suppose.” He spat the ruby into his hand, looked at it for a moment, and then put it back in his mouth. “All in yer head.”

“Suppose it is. Pizza, chips and a good bottle of red, that’s what I’m thinking of.”

Derwood scrunched up his nose and had a quizzical look.

“Bread with various meats and vegetables scattered on top.”

“Oh, aye. Peat’s chips?”

“Pizza. The chips are just sliced up potatoes.”

Derwood looked at the knife in his hand and then murmured, “Ye better have this back.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want it no more.”

“Friends are hard to come by, Derwood, in life and more so here. If…” Jason corrected himself, “When we run into another problem, another bloody freak comes our way, I’ve got your back, like I hope you’ve got mine.”

“Ye mean that? We be friends? I never had a friend before. I call everyone friend, but nobody ever called me one before.”

“You hold onto that knife, Derwood, and we’ll both get out of this place.”

“Don’t think I’ll ever be leaving…”

“Yes, you will. In fact, I know you will. That bitch Lilith told me you will; in fact, she said you did. Hell and time travel, what a mindfuck.”

“I did?”

“Like I said, we’ve met before, Derwood. You don’t remember. I don’t know why you don’t remember, but we have met, and soon after, Lilith told me you worked up the nerve to go into the cave.”

“She be evil like I never knew. Telling such lies, and does things to ye… Horrible… Poking the fear inside, until ye agree to do her bidding.”

“We’ll get out of here, Derwood, I know we will. I know you do, so it follows that if I’m with you, I’ll get out of here too. Stick together, watch each other’s backs, and we’ll beat this.”

“Wish I’d spent more time talking to God, praying and such...”

“Forget about God. I didn’t like him much when I didn’t believe. I like Him even less now that I know He’s real. What kind of God would allow something like hell to exist? He doesn’t give a shit about us, so why should we care about Him? If we get out of hell, it’ll be because of our doing, nothing to do with God. Just as in life, you want something to happen, you make it happen. Supreme being? Supreme shit…”

“Don’t like God much, does ye, Jason?”

“Are you kidding me? With all the shit He allows to happen in the world.”

“I once asked a holy man about that very thing, and he asked me if I be blaming the father for the sins of the child…”

“You’re damn right I would,” Jason snapped.

“I don’t know. How free would we be if God interfered?”

“Okay, maybe, but why punish us like this when we screw up. It’s like giving a box of matches to a baby and then getting mad with the kid when your house burns down. There are children here, Derwood. Children are in hell. I found one locked in a cage. How is that right? I know kids can do bad things too, but… hell? It makes no sense to punish people like this. What would be the point? If anything, it makes us more sinful and barbaric. When I think of some of the things I’ve seen and… things I’ve done since coming here.”

“I don’t understand all this, no spark for the whys and wherefores. I thinks that, maybe, if I had tried to talk to God and listened really hard, me head wouldn’t be so fuzzy about it now.”

“You make it out of here, Derwood, I know you do. Although, I can’t help thinking there is more torment to come for me… I wasn’t with you when you went into the cave, so…”

“So, it be a mind doodah. Me and thee will walk into that cave, and our footprints will be side by side. Ye said it yerself, Jason, we be watching each other’s back now. I won’t let my friend down.” Derwood looked at the knife and then at his feet. “Before, I… but… not now. I won’t do what she asks.”

“Do what?”

“What would thee do, Jason, to be with yer daughter again?”

“Anything. Anything at all. What’s the matter, Derwood? What did she want you to do?”

“Nothing… A bad thing… I just wanted to get to the mountain and leave this place, tis all. But… every time I get close, something happens… Someone does something to me and I have to start this nonsense all over again. The beast woman said if I… If I did something for her she’d take me straight to it. She said it would amuse her, that’s how she put it, it would amuse her—she’s an evil witch. Well, I ain’t going to do it. Ye better take this back. I’ll just cut me self with the damn thing anyhow.” Derwood held the knife out, handle first, towards Jason.

Jason didn’t take it. “What did she want you to do?”

Derwood shook his head as if being bothered by a wasp. “It don’t matter no more, because I ain’t doing it.” He threw the knife to the ground and then looked up and shouted at the sky, “I ain’t going to do it. Ye hear me, old hag. He’s not hurt me, he’s me friend. Ye be nothing but a dead crow, able to peck at us no more.”

Jason leaned over and picked up the knife. “She wants you to send me back to the start?”

Derwood looked at Jason with tearful eyes. “I’ve been here for so long, please don’t think bad of me for telling her I would.”

Jason heard his name on the wind. He looked back along the path and could see someone running towards them. A moment later he turned back to Derwood and smiled. “Three. There are three of us now.”

They both watched as Lucia drew near.

“I saw the carriage back there,” she said with a bright smile. “You let them go?”

“I’m sorry I left you,” Jason said as he embraced her.

Lucia held him tight for a long moment. “I’m just glad you let them go.”

“I should have come back for you…”

“Damn fool if you had. Not the place to play hero. Our paths have crossed again, and that makes me happy.”

“Me too, Lucia. Me too.”

Lucia smiled at Derwood. “Hello. Another stray joining our little band in paradise?”

“This is my friend Derwood. He was thinking about killing me, but he’s a good man, so he’s decided not to.” Jason handed the knife back to his friend.

“Good to hear. Hello, Derwood.”

Chapter 41

The slow melodious rhythm of the desert wind formed a landscape of dark beauty in perpetual flux. Possibilities for the poetry of form would settle for a moment before being washed from the vast page. A chaos of fear to the left and right while the path wrote an unnatural and unchanging solitary verse through the desolation. The band of three continued to walk along the path, their footsteps remaining for a mere moment before the wind smoothed them away.

Jason looked at the ground as he hobbled along and noticed Lucia and Derwood also walking in quiet contemplation of their feet. Was the mountain also the instigator of pain for them too, a great jagged rock sitting on the horizon as a taunt to those who would dare to gaze and were foolish enough to hope.

“Why don’t we bleed?” Lucia asked. “I mean, I can understand not being able to eat or drink—we’re supposed to suffer in hell—but no blood? That just confuses me.”

“Maybe that’s the point, to confuse us and make us feel unsettled,” Jason answered as he thought about his missing penis—this made him feel nauseous.

Derwood shook sand from his hair. “The pain still comes but gets no easier to bear. I had pain in me back from lifting sheep out of streams and pulling tree stumps all day, but after a while the pain became part of the background. Here it seems new all the time, ye never numbs to it.”

“Like what you said about food, Derwood, maybe it’s all in our heads. Maybe none of this is real, not in the sense life was, anyway.”

“Like a dream?” Lucia asked. “I hope so, and we will all wake up soon.”

“I wish this was just a dream. No. I mean, this is just our consciousness, our bodies are left back in some physical realm, while our consciousnesses are detached and reside in this metaphysical one.” He saw that Lucia and Derwood were staring at him. “I read it somewhere.”

“Where be all the sheep?” Derwood asked.

“And all the other animals,” Lucia added. “Is hell exclusively for humans?”

“How does a sheep commit a sin? Or a penguin?” Jason joked, although he found shallow humour in his musing. The lack of other animals was curious. Whales, elephants and some other creatures are capable of complex emotions, on a par or equal to humans—possibly even on a higher level than our own—so they too could commit acts that could be considered sinful. They could, he wondered, but do they? Or are humans the only creatures that…

“A penguin?” Lucia laughed.

Jason chuckled. “I had a cat once, I’m sure he’ll be here somewhere. Evil little bastard.”

“A penguin?” Derwood asked.

“Like a chicken but swims in the sea,” Jason answered with a grin.

“Taste good?”

“If you can catch ’em—slippery little suckers.”

The three walked on, sometimes in silence, and sometimes they would try to talk as they once had, in their former lives. They heard no other voices, no screams of anguish, and saw no one but each other. From time to time, the bank of a dune would fall across the path, but the wayward sand would be removed by the wind with prompt efficiency, returning the way to flat and level ground, devoid of hill or dip. The view of the mountain remained unchallenged as a tantalising view for the damned.

***

Furious sapphire eyes watched through flaming hair as the three figures approached.

Chapter 42

Derwood stopped walking.

“What’s up, buddy?” Jason asked, looking at the distress contorting his friend’s face. He placed a hand on Derwood’s shoulder and followed his gaze. “What did you see?”

“Please, no!” Derwood yelled. “Don’t hurt them.”

“Who’s he talking to?” Lucia asked. “What does he see?”

“I don’t know.” His friend still looked towards the mountain, but somehow Jason knew that wasn’t what he saw. A sense of dread washed over him.

Derwood backed away from Jason and Lucia, and away from whatever seemed to be advancing on him. “No, I didn’t do it, ye damned witch.” He raised the knife, as if readying himself for battle.

“It’s all right,” Lucia assured him, reaching out to the terrified man’s hand. “Tell us what you saw.” She whipped her hands back to her chest and fell backwards, scrambling away from Derwood. While gasping for breath, she screamed, “It’s her. She’s here. Oh God, she’s here.”

“Lilith?” Jason gripped the baseball bat with both hands. “Shit! I can’t see her.” He stepped forward and stood between Lucia and Derwood.

“I can’t anymore. But… I saw her. There.” Her hand shook as she pointed a few feet in front of Derwood.

“Aye, I be a failure,” Derwood whimpered as a flood of tears fell from his eyes. “I couldn’t do what ye asked… I won’t do ye bidding… He’s me friend… Me… friend.” He held out the hunting knife. “Ye leave them be, or I’ll be gutting ye like the hog thee be,” he yelled as he jabbed the knife forward.

The knife faded from his grip as the shimmering steel turned to dust.

Derwood’s shirt ripped open and his screams fell silent as his chest caved under unseen pressure. His eyes shot wide as strain laid claim to his noble face. Jason and Lucia both gasped as they watched their companion’s heart float out from his open chest.

For a moment Jason thought he saw a woman’s hand holding and squeezing the heart which floated a few feet in front of Derwood. It fell apart into shreds of pale, veined and bloodless gloop. Derwood turned to face his friends, and then his head twisted with a violent motion and came away from the rest of his body. It hung in the air as his body fell to the ground.

Jason lunged forward, swinging the bat above and below the hovering head but hit nothing.

“Do you see me, Jason? No, but you do hear me, don’t you? Like those pathetic voices in your head.”

Jason looked at Derwood’s head as his friend looked back at him. Deep impressions formed like bands across his face. Fingers materialised over the impressions. A slender hand, then an arm, a body, and then long red hair. A moment later, Lilith stood before him, her yellow dress rippling in the wind while she held Derwood’s head like a ball.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Lucia said through her tears as she got to her feet. “Why? He was a good man.”

“A good man?” Lilith sniggered. “Yes, he had his moments of humility, I suppose. Oh, well.” She walked towards Jason with swift and determined steps, passing through his body like a ghost.

Jason spun around and watched as Lilith held Lucia’s face with one gentle, caressing hand. Lucia stood transfixed by fear, looking into the demon’s eyes. She raised her knife, but it became dust in her hand the moment the blade touched the yellow dress. Jason swung the bat, but it too became insubstantial particles on contact and took to the air. Lilith leaned forward and kissed her trembling lips, and then, with no apparent effort, she tore the head from Lucia’s body.

“No!” Jason yelled.

She turned and stared at Jason, holding Lucia’s head with one hand and Derwood’s with the other.

Jason’s legs failed him and he fell to the ground. He mumbled, trying to speak, but no coherent words came from the ruin of his mind.

“I like what you did to those two men. How long do you think their heads will remain below the ground? How long will their minds be locked within the darkness as people walk over them?” Lilith knelt and then plunged her arms into the ground up to her elbows, the sand giving way as if it were water, and planted the two heads deeply. She sat back on her heels and smiled. “How long?”

Jason watched as the wind worked with feverish resolve to cover his friends’ faces with sand.

“I’ve done this to each of you. Lucia and Derwood have both been where you are now, watching as I bury their compatriot’s heads in the ground. Lucia offered to take your place, and so did Derwood. Will you offer your head in place of one of theirs?”

Jason looked at the flat ground between them. He imagined the oppressive darkness below the ground, their covered faces unable to move, speak, or even scream. He tried to imagine the horror of time: the hours, days, years, the millennia. Never knowing if he would ever be released from the sandy grave and brought back into this realm of torment. He imagined having his frightened thoughts for company until his mind echoed with insane murmurings. He thought of Lucia and Derwood, and then he bowed his head and acquiesced. “Yes.”

“Well, well. You’re not such a coward after all.” She applauded with a light clap of her hands. “How wonderful. You’re full of surprises, Jason. But I’m not done with you yet, so they can stay where they are for now.”

“You’ll never let me go, will you?”

“That depends on what you mean.”

“The mountain is a lie; the prize is nothing but a lure to get me to play your horrible game.”

“Oh no, Jason. The mountain is real, and if by prize you mean your old life, or a perfect version of it, then yes, that’s real too. The prize is still there for you to have, but you better get moving.”

“I don’t believe you. If making me suffer is how you get off, you’d better get on with it. Fill your boots, lady, because I’m sitting this one out.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want to do, you sit this one out. But you can’t wait here. I have a special place for the idle.”

“I’m sure you do. Now, fuck off. You’re making my skin crawl and spoiling my peace.”

“That’s the spirit, Jason. That would be quite impressive if it wasn’t for the fear and madness I can hear inside you.”

Jason lay back and closed his eyes. “You still here?”

“Lie still, Jason. Lie quietly. When you open your eyes again, a place of rest will be waiting for you.”

Chapter 43

Jason tried to move his hands but couldn’t. He attempted to move his legs, but they too held fast. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing but darkness. He heard whispers.

“Do I have company?” someone asked. “Ooh, I do. I do. I can hear you.”

Jason tried again to move, but he couldn’t lift his hands. He knew he was on all fours and his straining eyes told him the darkness was absolute. Whoever just spoke was close, maybe mere feet away. It was a male voice, although high in pitch. Jason said nothing.

“The itches come like insects,” the man in the dark said. “Biting and nipping at you, but you can’t scratch them. Oh no, you can’t scratch them. I pulled my arm free, but my hand stayed behind… Look! Oh no, you can’t look. You can’t see. I can’t see. I try to scratch, but my stump is awkward.”

Jason heard a tapping sound followed by manic laughter. He remained silent.

“Why don’t you speak? I know you’re there. I… can… hear… you… breathing. Yes! Yes, I hear you breathing. You’re friends with the darkness, be friends with old Jake too.”

“Where are we, Jake?” Jason asked, expecting to be attacked at any moment.

“Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. That’s me. Are you a lazy retch too? Lazy, that’s me. That’s what I am. So stay here is what I do. Remain in the dark, Jake. So that’s what I do. One down, though, three to go. My arm has escaped. She thinks I can’t, but I can. I did. Look! Oh, no. No looking, no seeing. But three more and I’m free.”

More laughter and more tapping.

“Jake, where are we?”

A woman’s voice called out in the darkness. “Jason?”

“Zoe?”

“Jason, it is you. Where am I? I can’t move. Oh, God, I can’t move,” Zoe screamed.

“Yes, scream,” Jake said. “She likes it when we scream.”

“You’re in hell, Zoe. Why did you do it? Why?”

“Hell? What did I do? Oh, baby, what did I do?” She screamed again between her tears. “Jason, I can’t move. Help me!”

Jason felt warm breath on his face, and he could hear panting. “You know what you did. Christ, Zoe, you killed Emily. We’re here because of what you did.”

“What? Emily? Who’s Emily? I haven’t… I haven’t killed anyone. What are you saying?”

“You killed our daughter, Zoe. Madness or not, you know what you did.”

“Our daughter?”

More tapping, then Jake said, “Not long now, and the other one will be free too. Oh, yes. You beauty. Come on now. Up you come.” Tap. Tap. Then a crunching, grinding sound.

“Jason, please, help me. I’m scared. I love you, baby. Please. I don’t know where I am. Why can’t I move?”

“Welcome to hell, Zoe. Don’t worry, it gets worse from here on.” He no longer felt the warm breath on his face but could still hear something panting. No, not panting, something was sniffing… It sounded like… Hobs.

Zoe screamed, “There’s something touching me… No!” Her voice became frantic. “There’s something touching my stomach… Our baby. Oh, God. My baby… I can feel its teeth.” She gasped and then screamed again. “Help me!”

Jason’s right arm broke at the wrist as he attempted to free himself.

Chapter 44

Creepy keeps creeping across the cold cobbles. Watch how he creeps and be sure he hasn’t crept up on you.

Grub had neither hands nor legs anymore; he had pulled himself free from the stone floor a long time ago. Since then he could be found jabbering and quivering in the corner up against the stone walls. He still taps on the ground as he moves, when he moves, with the shards of bone protruding from his wrists and thighs. The flickering lights brought forth shadows that surround Grub. Jason thought the shadows were tormenting the poor fellow, but he was glad they favoured Grub and not him.

The flaming torches hanging from the walls had alighted a while ago, allowing Jason to see his small stone cell and see that his hands and legs were embedded into the rock floor. He couldn’t remember when the light came. It was a long time ago; he knew that much. One of the first things he remembered seeing was Grub creeping around. He had changed Jake’s name to Grub not long after the silly sod bit his tongue off and could no longer protest his new name. It amused Jason to watch the man wriggle across the ground. Creepy keeps creeping across the cold cobbles. Watch how he creeps and be sure he hasn’t crept up on you. Creepy is a funny man, a strange yet funny little grub.

They both laughed a lot. Well, he laughed and pretended Grub was laughing along with him. Pain always accompanied the laughter and had become a song that his body sang with monotonous fervour. Sometimes he would twitch in time with a plodding melody, and sometimes a heavy thunderous beat forced his undivided attention. The orchestra played without rest.

“Hey, Grub,” Jason called out. “Look, my arms have escaped too. We’ll both be grubs soon. We’ll be able to creep around the floor together. One day, we might turn into moths, spread our wings and fly away from here. Does a grub turn into a moth? No, that’s a larva. A beetle! Maybe a bird then, or an owl, something with wings, anyway. Hey, Grub, what comes from a grub?” He laughed at this for a long while.

He looked up at the iron frame hanging from the ceiling. A few bones remained fastened to the metal. Something had been fastidious about eating all the flesh though; he still remembered the chomping and chewing sounds. He tried not to think about those sounds too much as it made him feel sad. The bigger skull had fallen somewhere behind him and he couldn’t turn far enough to see where it was. But he could see a smaller skull lying a few feet away by the stumps of Grub’s hands and legs, which still stuck out from the hard ground. Although the thing in the dark hadn’t touched Jason or Grub, it had eaten well that day and picked the bones clean. But that was a long time ago.

Jason wanted to be close to the small skull but he couldn’t reach it, so he’d taught himself a game that would bring them together piece by piece. He didn’t ask Grub to join in because he was slow and seemed more interested in scratching at the walls with his bony protuberances. So Jason played by himself. He snapped his jaws shut over and over again until a piece of tooth broke free. Then he’d spit it out at the small skull. The aim of the game was to get it as close to the skull as possible but not hit it; hitting it would be a terrible thing. If he did hit it, however, he had to pay a forfeit and bang his head against the ground as hard as he could. Now that both his arms were free he could lean further back and gain more momentum before headbutting the ground. The small skull told him that something wonderful would happen if his head broke, so he tried as often as he could, but most of the time he found himself in a daze after five or six goes at it. He wondered how Grub had ripped himself free from his legs. Jason had pulled himself away from his hands, but his legs seemed nigh on impossible to leave behind. He didn’t like his legs anymore, so he stopped talking to them. One hip had dislocated, he was sure of that, and he had scratched a fair portion of the skin away from the top of his legs, but they still anchored him to the spot like petulant bastards. Maybe he had always been this way—growing out of the rock. Maybe he was mould, or a fungus of sorts, a growth from the diseased stone. “Hey, Grub. When I’m an owl and you’re a moth, I’m going to bite your wings off.”

Jason didn’t know how long she had been there, but he became aware of a woman with yellow wings looking down at him.

“Are you ready to continue?”

“Hey, Grub, look. We’re not alone anymore. There’s a beautiful butterfly in the room.”

“Although slow-witted,” she said, “Derwood was right.”

“Derwood,” Jason said with a giggle. “The butterfly thinks you’re a worm. Don’t eat Der-wood, Grub.”

“It’s all in your head, Jason.”

***

Jason opened his eyes and saw that he was kneeling in sand. He looked around himself and saw that he was alone on the path, which ended a few metres away at the start of a vast open plain—a plateau—in the desert. Less than a mile away, the mountain jutted skyward. Thousands of grey statues, Lilith’s flowers, stood on the plateau facing the great rock.

He looked at his hands, which were both where they should be—at the end of his arms. For a moment, he remembered the years he had spent in the cell with Jake, but it felt like a dream and soon faded, leaving him with an empty space in his memory—a vague crushing recollection of empty time.

He tried to stand and winced in agony. The shooting pain in his leg reminded him of “Pops” stabbing his leg and foot. He took a few deep breaths and then climbed to his feet and hobbled forward towards the plateau.

Chapter 45

Jason thought he could hear the statues whispering to him, like many delicate breaths across the neck of a bottle, tangible voices but murmuring in unknown tongues. Were they watching him too? They didn’t turn their heads, but could the stones see him somehow? Could they see the scars etched into his soul, like the fine cracks upon their own stone forms? Jason tried to shake the feeling off, but paranoia continued to walk with him, a quiet friend, touching his shoulder with a cold hand, yet shying away when he turned to listen.

Up ahead, maybe twenty rows, something moved along the dusty ground, lumbering between the statues like a wounded animal, its head bobbing just above the sand as it moved. A body covered in tattered rags, arms reaching out with raw hands and digging into the sand, pulling itself along, two short white sticks trailing from beneath it. As Jason drew near, the man stopped and looked up at him.

“I’m in pain,” the man said. “You can see I can’t harm you, can’t hinder you. Will you return the favour?”

The man wore a military uniform, insignias of rank and country long since worn away or bleached by the sand. No doubt it had once been sharp in its tailoring and desired in its pomposity. Now it hung from the man as shredded cloth. The two white sticks were the man’s thigh bones, broken and jutting out from his chewed flesh. The man’s bones scraped two jagged lines in his sandy wake.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jason replied.

“Good. Thank goodness. Then will you help me, sir? Carry… Drag me to that damn rock.”

Jason walked past the man without further regard.

“Will you not help me?” the man screamed after Jason. “Damn you, man! Damn you, I say. And damn any that come from you.”

Jason passed six more desperate and wounded people as he got closer to the mountain, all but one pleading for help. The one that didn’t ask for help, a woman wearing a simple dark green hessian gown, knelt by the feet of one statue and sobbed.

“I understand,” the young woman cried, reaching out for, but careful not to touch, the figure. “Now I see I’m nothing. Please forgive me.”

The statue exploded into a wash of sand. It formed into numerous tendrils that swirled among the surrounding statues and then came together as a cloud before it headed skyward. Jason watched as it rose thirty feet, and then, catching the wind, it moved at speed towards the mountain. He looked about and saw more statues lose their solidity and become clouds of sand before setting off on their journey towards the mountain.

“I’ve seen her,” the woman said to Jason, still on her knees.

“Who?”

“In the mountain. She deserves her torture, as do you all.” She scooped up a handful of sand and held it out to Jason. “Our time to come is measured with this.”

“The cave? You’ve seen the… You’ve been into the cave?”

The woman lowered her gaze to the ground. “When I think of all the diseased minds whose names are now written in the dust, and how big their mountainous kingdoms must be… There must be so many…” She put her head in her hands and then continued. “And so many seeds for our own to grow.”

“You reached the end? You won Lilith’s prize?”

She jerked her head up and glared at Jason. “It’s no prize, you fool. Lilith has no prize to give.”

“But you can leave and go back to your life?”

“I can, but you’re not listening. Life is no prize. This is our home and always will be. Our lives are a mere blink of an eye. You can’t change anything.” The woman became hysterical, tears sparkling from the edge of her quivering smile. She screamed at Jason, “We’re all nothing but the sand, you see. Do you understand? We’re nothing and she weeps for us all. Oh God, she weeps for us, when it is she who deserves our tears.”

You’re wasting time, Jason thought. It’s not far now. Leave this woman to her ravings. It doesn’t matter how bad hell is, you’ll be leaving it soon. A second chance to make things right.

“Dust to dust, do you hear? Can you understand? With eternal tears, she loves us all.”

The woman’s words faded away as Jason walked to the base of the mountain.

Chapter 46

The mountain jutted from the desert like sharp flint through a vast leather hide, jagged at its base and then becoming a sheer, vertical wall of grey rock. It reached high into the dusty sky, disappearing into a simmering haze thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of feet above. Its peak was obscured by the multitudinous inbound streams of sand, many veins crisscrossing the sky and feeding into the rock.

Jason reached out a hand and touched it. He expected his skin to burn as he placed his palm upon the rock, but it felt cold, with a smooth yet powdery surface. He pulled his hand away and looked at the powder that had coated his skin. A moment later the dust lifted, as if caught by the wind, and returned to the rock from which it came, leaving no trace on him to wipe away. Dust to dust.

He walked along the foot of the mountain, looking for the cave entrance and using the immense rock as support, trying to take the weight off his throbbing leg. He didn’t walk far before the cave presented itself, although his ears were first to receive proof of its existence, not his eyes.

Screams came at him like an avalanche of despair. If a rock had fallen from the side of the mountain, it wouldn’t have crushed him more than the sound of those screams. The cries vanished into abrupt silence. He froze.

The silence died as an immense growl erupted from the cave entrance. The call of a caretaker amplified to a level that caused Jason to shudder and a sickening feeling to weave a prickling path beneath his skin. In an instant the screams came again and joined the creature’s demonic call, as sharp as before and with no build-up of momentum. Vocalised pain like nothing he had heard before. The sound infected his body, sapping his muscles of the strength to move, and became a disease vehement in its assault on his nerves. The sound of pure agony silenced his mind and chipped away at the few remaining fragments of his will. He fell to his knees, still holding onto the rock as if he were hanging from its face far above. He peered into the darkness. The sounds stopped.

A moment passed before the thunderous cacophony exploded from the cave once more. A deafening cry of utter hopelessness in a sickening duet with the call of the creature. Jason felt sure the cries were coming from a man. Although, what state that man was in gave him an icy feeling of trepidation. Was the man being cremated by the caretaker and then set upon again the instant he was reborn and had opened his eyes? An eternal loop of death, rebirth, and death, without a moment’s reprieve. He turned and looked at the statues a few metres away, and then up at the airborne sand joining with the mountain.

Did it start with one? he wondered. How many would it take to build this mountain? He thought of the statues in his garden. There was one, now there are three. How many more would appear? If he were to stay in hell, a mountain of his own would be sure to form in time.

He realised he was alone. The other pilgrims he had passed while crossing the plateau had disappeared. The statues remained as his only company, still and unmoved by the sound of sorrow emanating from the cave.

With great effort, he stood, getting to his feet proving to be a colossal act of determination. The screams coming from the mouth of the cave threatened to knock him back down again. This will all end, he assured himself, if he could find the nerve to go and find what Lilith had left in there for him. If he could venture into the cave and ignore the sound and probable sight of cruelty, he would be allowed to leave this place. The demon bitch was playing a game with his fear and counting on it stopping him from claiming victory. His life, the prize, was waiting for him. All he had to do was take these few final steps.

He took a step forward, paused, and then took another and another, until the darkness within the cave consumed him.

Chapter 47

The light from outside didn’t penetrate the cave for more than a few feet, and it didn’t fade into the darkness either, but ended in an abrupt line, as if banishment forbade it from entering any further. With skittish hands Jason fumbled and groped at the jagged unseen walls. He tried to relax his eyes as they stretched wide, hungry for any morsel of light but finding none. All the while the caretaker’s roar and the man’s screams of torment continued their loop of deafening horror.

Every time his nerve faltered he remembered what Lilith had told him. “Go to that mountain, find the cave, and then follow it. If you do that, you’ll win the game.” This became his mantra within the dark.

He tripped over the uneven ground as he fell from one side of the cave to the other. This already claustrophobic tunnel became narrower the further he ventured in, and he had to duck down to avoid the decreasing height of the rock above. He raised his hands to gain some sense of impending collision. The sound of pain had stopped and restarted six times when he saw a pinprick of light up ahead.

The horrific sounds are to instil fear, he told himself. Just another element of Lilith’s cruel game; an attempt to stop me reaching the end.

He stumbled as he quickened his pace. His gait became a lurching run as he stamped on the pain proclaiming its continued existence in his leg. His head slammed into a low-hanging rock and he fell. Getting to his feet, he felt sharp rock slice into his hands but gave it little regard. He was running again. The spot of light grew.

“Thank Christ,” he yelled. “I’m going to get out of this.” Just a little further. He sprinted towards the light and exploded from the cave.

The sudden transition from dark to blinding light caused him to lose his footing and go crashing to the ground of a cavernous chamber within the mountain. He scurried back against the chamber wall the instant his eyes focused on the caretaker. It was holding a man within the flames of a raging inferno at the centre of the chamber. The man’s black blistering body thrashed about as the fire consumed him. The smell of his burning flesh was nauseating.

The man was burnt beyond recognition and his screams filled the chamber. Even when reduced to no more than a skeleton and with his bones cracked and crumbled within the heat, the sound of his pain could be heard resounding from the rock walls. Only when he became ash did his cries cease, plunging the chamber into a moment of reverent silence.

“Now you see the flames,” Lilith said as she appeared next to Jason. “It’s not your body that will burn, but your soul. And it sings such a beautiful song.”

“But… I’ve played your game and won… I’ve won,” he pleaded.

“Not yet.”

“This mountain… This cave… Damn your lies. What more is there?”

His question hung in the still air as a man materialised in the far corner of the chamber. In an instant the caretaker was upon him. It dragged the struggling, petrified man over to Jason and Lilith and held him off the ground with one hand around his throat. It offered the man towards them.

“Now, the game is over,” Lilith said with obvious delight.

Jason looked at the man’s trembling chalk-white naked body and withdrew in fearful confusion. The man shook as his anguish radiated from his straining face. The sound of his suffering soul filled the chamber once more. Jason tried to scream too, but no sound passed his lips. He looked at the man and saw his own eyes staring back.

“Now, go and enjoy your life,” Lilith said. “This will all be waiting for your return.”

“He’s me? How can he be… me? I don’t understand.”

“Do you doubt your own eyes?” She dismissed the caretaker.

The creature took the man back to the fire and held him in the flames.

“If I live a good life,” Jason said as he watched the man’s skin bubble and burst, “can I avoid this?”

“You will live a good life, but it’s a life you’ve already lived. Well, a life another you lived—a replay of sorts. You’ll just be along for the ride. It’ll be a good life because you can’t change it in any way.”

Jason held his head in his trembling hands. “I don’t understand. I made a mistake, but I can make it better, put things right…”

“Each soul gets one life of choices, Jason. You had your go, chose your path, and in the end you messed it up. You can take a ride again, but as nothing more than a passenger, and when your body dies again, this time at the ripe old age of ninety-one, hell will be waiting for you.”

He shook his head and tried to assemble his thoughts, and then asked, “Will I know?”

“That hell is waiting for you to return?”

“Yes, dammit!” he yelled, slamming his palms against the sides of his head.

“No. You’ll be blissful in your ignorance, just like everyone else. Do you remember people referring to fate, a sense that things happen to them regardless of their intentions?”

“Yes! Yes, but…”

“Well, that’s because they’re also living a life that has played out once already, while on their journey back here. Déjà vu is another one. It’s funny how you creatures try to make sense of it all.”

“Ninety-one.”

“A long life from your perspective, and better than the forty-two you had, but nothing of note for this wonderful universe. I’ll see you soon, Jason. We can play a new game when you return.”

“This isn’t punishment, this is just pointless cruelty,” Jason whimpered, as he thought about Lucia and the man in the church. “People are here who haven’t killed anyone through a deliberate act. It makes no sense to punish us this way.”

“Punish you!” Lilith erupted into a rage. “This isn’t punishment for you.” She reached out and slashed his face with her black nails, and then became a flickering luminous entity without definite form. In an instant the demoness was everywhere at once and nowhere for more than a glimpse. The walls glowed and became lava beneath her touch. She grabbed the man from the caretaker’s hand and ripped his body into pieces within the flames. When the man’s screams died away once more, she swiped her clawed hand at the caretaker and knocked the creature against the glowing liquid walls of the chamber. The caretaker transformed into a vaporous figure and sank into the rock as a ghost, but, before it could make its escape, Lilith pounced and reached into the rock. She pulled the thrashing apparition back and mauled it without mercy. The caretaker lost its frightening presence under her vicious blows. It screeched and growled, but soon its struggle came to an ineffective end. Lilith stood and looked down at her work for a moment, and then she raised her head and glared at Jason. “This isn’t your punishment, you bag of poisonous pus.”

Jason scrambled for the cave tunnel and dove into the blackness once more. As he moved, Lilith’s voice followed him.

“I’ll be waiting for you, Jason.”

Chapter 48

Lilith must have let the caretaker live, because the horrendous sounds started again before Jason escaped the darkness. He fled the cave and didn’t stop running until he could no longer hear the despairing screams.

He didn’t know how long he had stood staring at the ground, listening to his confused and frightened thoughts, and only became aware of his lethargy when a woman’s voice roused his attention.

“Now do you understand?”

He raised his head and saw the woman in the hessian gown. He didn’t reply.

“Kill one, but many will die. The seeds of death we plant will grow, and the harvest will be a forest of these,” she said, pointing to the multitude of silent figures on the plateau. “Markers of those who should have been. In time the snakes will come and create a mountain for us too, and then we will burn for each and every one.”

“Snakes?” he asked, with a heavy breath.

The woman pointed to the sky and at the ethereal streams heading for the mountain.

She was right, he thought, they looked like snakes, slithering at tremendous speed through the air towards the mountain—his kingdom to come. The snakes had venom too, but it wouldn’t be they who would inflict the painful bite. The caretaker would be the one to strike at the behest of the demoness, Lilith. This is what waits for me. He looked at the woman and asked, “You accept this?”

“I used my gift for hate, so it doesn’t matter what I think anymore.”

He had a vague recollection of Lilith saying something about a gift being wasted. Then he wondered if this was the mad woman Derwood spoke of, and asked, “Are you the one who lives in a temple?”

“No.” She pointed off to his left and into the crowd of statues. “She’s the one who gave us the gift.”

“What gift are you talking about? Do you mean life?”

“Life came from the creator, but the gift came from Ama.”

“Her name is Ama?”

“No, it’s what she is. ‘Ama’ was the first word ever to be spoken with any understanding. It means mother.”

Jason was about to speak when a sweet sound brushed past his ears with the touch of a soft feather. He turned away from the woman and looked for the source of the beautiful melody.

“Ama sings to all life,” the woman said, looking off across the plateau. “The life that was, and the life that should have been. She loves us all.”

“Can she help us?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer, walking away and towards the sound. No pain came from his wounds as he weaved among the statues. The exquisite audible bliss drew him on. He realised he was smiling and felt euphoric as he listened to the woman. She sang a delicate song which pulled on him with angelic loving hands. He could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet as he ran to her. Tears of unrestrained joy fell from his enraptured eyes.

The song evaporated into the desert wind, and he stopped running. He saw a precipice, and then a great depression in the desert, and approached with caution. When he reached the edge, he stopped and looked down into the immense crater below.

At the centre, on the level ground at the bottom, stood two concentric stone circles, a simple temple made of limestone. The inner circle was formed from twelve enormous T-shaped stones, about twenty feet in height, while the outer circle of twelve smaller stones were each no more than three feet tall. The outer stones looked to be pedestals, each one with a small spherical white stone sat atop them.

He jumped down onto the gentle slope and descended into the crater. At the bottom he stopped when he noticed an old woman in the centre of the temple. She was embracing a solitary statue. Jason waited for a moment, expecting a caretaker to appear and attack her. It did not come.

The woman stepped back as the statue exploded. The cloud danced and swirled around her in a slow rhythmic motion before ascending into the sky. She looked forlorn as she watched it go.

Jason glanced around, checking they were alone, before walking towards the temple.

Chapter 49

Although the woman moved with youthful poise, the deep web of lines on her face alluded to her unfathomable age. Her long silver hair flowed like mercury, scintillating in the rare light as it hung down over her humble Victorian dress: a gothic gown of subtle crimson waves covered in tatters of black lace. “Hello, Jason,” she said with a gentle voice.

“You know me?” he asked, and felt sure he knew her too.

She offered a warm, honest smile, as she replied, “Oh, yes. I know you all.”

As her gaze met his and he saw a familiar flash of blue lightning in her eyes, recognition dawned. Although it appeared that ancient time had laid claim to her other features, her crystal-clear gemstone eyes shone through her disguise like beacons for his despair. There was no doubt in his mind that this old lady was the demoness. He wanted to run, but what would be the point; he was a bug and could be swatted by her anytime she pleased.

“Lilith,” he said, with dispirited resignation.

“Oh dear, she’s an awful horror, isn’t she.”

He saw no aggression in her demeanour and heard no malevolent intent in her soft voice. “You’re Ama?”

“Yes. That was the first word spoken by my flowers.” She studied Jason for a moment and then traced the rough contours of one of the large stones with a gentle skeletal hand. “They built this for me. They would call to me. Come, Ama. Come and see our children play. The little ones danced around these stones and sang to me. So happy, so beautiful… So long ago.”

Jason felt his thoughts slipping away from him as his memories became diluted and vague. He shook his head and wiped a hand across his brow. “Is that what you were singing? It sounded… hypnotic.”

The woman had a look of thoughtful melancholy. “They used to sing to call me, now I sing to call them.”

Jason fumbled with his stubborn thoughts. “Lilith, she is..?”

“My anger.” The woman finished his sentence for him. “Sorry to say. But let your fear sleep, Jason, because she won’t come here.”

“Your anger?” He shook his head again and squeezed his eyes shut as if this would force some understanding. “Your anger has its own body, separate from yours?”

“Yes. I cast her out long ago. I would have her depart the universe entirely, but her existence is not mine to determine. So now she wanders among the shadows.”

He looked at the raised relief of a crocodile on the face of the stone next to him and then looked at the other stones and saw more animals carved in simple splendour: small mammals, birds, and other creatures he didn’t recognise. He tried to speak, to think, but his thoughts came slowly and in a jumble. “I… Can you… help me?”

“Oh, my dear, no. I can’t do that. This is the way it has to be, to sort out all the chaos.”

“Chaos?”

“Yes. The disorder that came from my silliness. Silly, silly, so silly. I did something I ought not to have done and time is now tarnished. The universe was perfection, Jason, now it’s full of twists and turns, dead ends, and general foolery. It needs to be put right, and I’m to see that it is.”

“Hell is your fault?” he asked. Then he sat down and leaned back against one of the large stones; he felt dizzy and weak. With swimming eyes, he looked at the outer stone circle and realised that it wasn’t spherical white stones that sat atop the pedestals but bleached white skulls.

“Hell is the decay,” she continued. “A place for all the chaos to dwell until it’s sorted out. Time can’t have all these deviations.”

Derwood was right, he thought, she is mad.

“Oh, no. I’m not mad. I’ve been here a long time and talked to many people, people like you, and you all say the same things. It’s enough to drive you mad, but I’m not mad—as an eel or any other curious thing. If you could hear the voices I can hear right now… Well, let’s just say it would be too much of a deafening cacophony for you to bear.”

She is Lilith, he thought, and seeing my mind with more clarity than I am. He noticed that she was speaking again. How long had she been talking? He watched her mouth move, but it was a moment before his ears registered any sound.

“… Life was magnificent in its simplicity. It was such a magical thing—His greatest creation. I wanted your kind to see its beauty, that’s all.”

“This is all because of something you did?”

“Yes. You were part of something wonderful, but you couldn’t see it for yourselves.”

“If it’s your fault, why am I, why is anyone, being punished?”

“Oh, no. No, Jason, it’s not you who’s being punished. The atonement is mine. Hell is for me to see my mistake, to see the muddle I caused. God plays no part in your suffering.”

“Why then am I in hell? Why is your psycho alter ego doing her thing?”

“Jason, you and people like you are the mistake. Lilith torments you because she is… Well, she’s not very nice. Hell is not supposed to be a place of suffering, but she likes it that way.”

“I thought you said I was part of some amazing plan. Some magical thing. His greatest creation.”

“You were, until I gave you the gift. Then you became something else, analogous to a virus which proliferates its anarchic nature through time. Perfection cannot be unpredictable.”

“I’ve gone from God’s greatest creation to a virus, because of your… your silliness?” He laughed but soon stopped when it became a sob.

“I don’t mean to upset you, Jason, but lies don’t help things move along.”

Jason sniffed back his tears, and then sighed as he rested his head back against the stone. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to understand, but right now my mind seems to be part of the chaos.”

“That’s because your memory is fading.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a chance to live again, so you’re fading and will soon wake up in your new life. This is what happens before you go. I’m sorry this is happening to you. I wanted to share the universe with new eyes, that was my intention. Don’t you think life is wonderful, Jason?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, as his disintegrating thoughts fell away, leaving nothing but Emily within view.

“She’s a beautiful girl, Jason.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Jason. She is a beautiful girl, and she is a beautiful, loving woman. Like you, there are variants of her that have done terrible things, but there are so many more good than bad, again like you.”

He looked up at the old woman and wondered if his mind was playing tricks again, or whether she had just spoken complete gibberish.

“Life used to have such a simple driving force,” she continued. “Once born, it looked for food, it reproduced, and then it died. That was all it did and all it wanted to do. Beautiful simplicity. Then I let you choose for yourself what path you took, and that’s when it all went a bit awry.”

Jason became aware that he was leaning to one side like a drunk, so he pushed against the ground to straighten himself once more. “What are you talking about?” he asked, working hard not to slur his words.

“Everything that can happen will happen. Every life that can exist will exist. Complex but understood and expected. But when I gave you choice, I brought uncertainty to the universe.”

“I thought God knew everything.”

“He does, up to the point at which an original thought comes into existence. Which is why He never gave you free will; He would be unable to protect life from itself. God gave me the gift so I could love the universe as He does. I gave a vow that I would enjoy the splendour of life as long as I didn’t interfere. This was a promise I made and should have kept.”

“Sam told me you were Adam’s first wife?”

“Oh, dear me, no. You don’t want to believe anything a demon tells you. Lies are like food to them, and they are gluttons. They love nothing more than to play with you. Some are mischievous but harmless while others have evil intent and will work hard to destroy your soul.”

“Who are you then?”

“The most ancient of all demons.”

“Mischievous or evil? Don’t answer. Either way, I know I’m screwed.”

“I’m an exception to the rule, Jason.”

“So, I’m a mistake? All human life is a mistake?”

“From the moment I gave you the means to choose for yourself whether to turn left or right, yes. I did it with the best of intentions, but wisdom wasn’t there to guide me.”

“If you love us, why don’t you stop all the suffering? Why don’t you stop your other half, Lilith, from playing her sadistic games?”

“When your wife killed little Emily, why did you murder her?”

“I… I couldn’t stop myself…”

“You lost one life you loved, Jason. One life. One flower. I don’t stop Lilith because, like you, I can’t.” She walked to the centre of the temple.

As Jason turned his head to see where she was going, she began to sing. It wasn’t a song with words and rhyme, and it wasn’t a mere hummed repetition of sections of musical phrases. This was an intricate weave of pure emotion that teased the light as if plucking on the fabric of reality. A vocalised measure of absolute love. Ama called to her flowers, and soon one appeared before her.

Jason watched her caress its face. To confirm his assumption, he asked, “They’re people that should have lived?”

“Yes.”

“And the visions I had when the three appeared in my garden?”

“A remnant of the life they should have had. They called me Ama, mother, and now I watch the descendants of my babies die before they can open their eyes for the first time. You lost one, Jason; my loss is infinite. That’s why my anger is and always will be vengeful to you and others like you.” She caressed the passive grey face one last time, stood back, and watched as it became a sparkling cloud of sand. She reached out for it as it rose away from her.

“I murdered my wife, but I didn’t intend for more to die.”

“It’s my fault, Jason, which is why God has banished me to hell to see the ugly nature of humanity. But I like talking to you all, seeing your thoughts, and trying to understand why you choose to do the things you do. You bring interesting things with you too. This dress came from a rather misguided woman who thought it would be beneficial to poison her entire family—a rather strange thought process. But it’s a lovely dress all the same. I collect things while waiting for the light to fade.”

“The light?”

“Each soul who comes here also brings a caretaker with them—Lilith shouldn’t treat them the way she does. They’re precious spirits who illuminate and work to bring order to the chaos. At the end of time, their light will fade and hell will sink into the darkness from which it came. Once I can no longer see these stones, I can leave this place.”

“How many lives..? How many descendants did I—?”

“The moment a life can exist in the universe, it will exist regardless of whether there is a place in time for it or not. It will either live a human life with experiences and love, or live entombed within the void of these statues. The instant I gave humans free will, the branches for possible life became infinite. You ended one life with your hands, Jason, but countless more with your deed.”

Jason tried to speak, but all that came was a crumbling sigh.

Chapter 50

The snake looked at Jason as it clung to the stone while the long-legged bird above looked down at the snake. When were these colossal slabs carved and set in place? he wondered. Then his scattered mind jumped to thoughts of his companions on the desert path and their ruminations: where are all the animals, and how does a penguin commit a sin? Yes, Derwood, they’re like chickens that live in the sea—slippery little suckers.

“None of God’s innocent creatures come here, Jason. The only animals in hell are the ones my flowers carved into these stones, to show their appreciation for the wonder they could see all around them.”

He tried to focus as he looked up at the old woman. “How can so many result from one death? Even if Zoe would have had more children, it wouldn’t—”

“Your friend, Xavier, tried to explain it to you. Although he did sprinkle some of his colourful madness on the explanation.”

“My friend,” he scoffed.

“There are far worse souls than he in this desert. Evil has no bounds when the walls crumble.”

“Xavier talked about life Zoe would have caused.”

“Yes. Every time you use the gift to make a choice, you become two people, or more, depending on the amount of choices you’re confronted with. The number grows quicker than you could possibly imagine.”

“Hang on… So, you’re saying if Zoe chose to have beef instead of chicken for Sunday dinner, that would have some significant bearing on life, the universe and everything?”

“It’s interesting that you should use that as your example, Jason.”

“It is?”

“Yes. The weave of life creates an intricate pattern where every stitch is significant. Your example happens to be one of the threads. You see, Zoe stood in a queue, but she had salmon in her basket, not beef or chicken. It was a long queue, but soon enough, she returned home and cooked your favourite meal. She was trying to make up for a terrible argument you both had the previous day.”

“We had plenty of those… Arguments is an understatement, though. I think the bitch had lessons from your twin. But I still don’t—”

“Zoe was oblivious to the life she had brought about by the decision she made to go out and buy salmon for her husband.”

“Life? How?”

“Standing behind her in that queue was another woman called Susan.”

“I don’t know any Susans.”

“No, nor did your wife. But Susan was waiting for her turn to be served, and once she had been, Susan left and walked to a bus stop. She arrived in time to watch her bus drive off down the road. While waiting for the next one to come, a man joined her and they started talking. Two years later, Susan had her first child with that man. In fact, over the following years they had three children together. Their children had children of their own, and so on and so forth. All because Susan stood behind your wife in that queue and missed her bus.”

“That’s good, though, isn’t it? All those lives…”

“Your wife wanted to buy you salmon the day after you murdered her.”

“She… The day after I—?”

“Both events happened, Jason. The one where you killed your wife is the one in which Susan didn’t have your wife before her in the queue, so didn’t miss her bus. As a consequence, Susan never met that man, and they never had children together, and so on and so forth. This is one of an infinite number of such events that happen with every choice you make—every choice anyone makes. By ending Zoe’s life you also stopped all that other life from having a place in time to go to, so now they all stand among the dunes. I am to watch my flowers stand as statues while their souls remain within the void. This is my penance for a promise broken.”

“But she had killed our daughter… How could she be in a shop buying salmon the next day? She would have been in prison or something.”

“Zoe didn’t kill Emily because you stayed with her.”

A fuzzy head, Jason thought. Yes, Derwood, me too. “I’ve met people here who seem to be from another time: a woman called Lucia said she was from the future, and then there was Derwood. He didn’t recognise me the second time we met.”

“Hell is outside of any perception of time you had. The tick-tock of existence you accepted no longer applies—not that it ever did. That moments flow forward in a consistent way is a false human belief. I could explain why Derwood didn’t recognise you on the second meeting, or just say that I’ve had this conversation with you more times than the earth has circled the sun.”

Jason struggled to think while he rubbed sand from his eyes. “You mean... I’m not the only me in hell? There are more?”

“Yes, many, and for various reasons. None of you realise the evil you’re capable of. You’ve killed Zoe on several occasions, and murdered a neighbour too. You’ve also deviated to the rape and murder of two women. The twists and turns can and do lead in all manner of directions. You even killed your daughter—”

“Stop! Please stop. I understand.”

“No, you don’t understand and you never will, which is why you must be removed from the universe. Lilith has decided what you’ve seen in hell thus far. Among other dubious pleasures, she likes to choose who you meet and then play you off against one another. I reap no such joy from what needs to be done. When you return, it will be to a hell measured by my sorrow. You’ll take your place among the layers of other souls, squirming together like worms, and when one of my flowers takes to the sky, one worm will burn. This will be your world until the light from the caretakers is extinguished.”

“You’re not happy to do it, yet you refer to us as worms?”

“Sorry, but that’s what you all look like to me as you plead your regret. I should have chosen my words better, I suppose, but as I’ve already said, lies don’t help things move along. Hell is a crowded place, Jason. When you return, you’ll see things as I do and know that there are more souls here than there are grains of sand. Many faces… Many languages… And so many regrets…”

Jason’s arm began to sting and itch. He scratched and watched as his skin became dry crusty flakes that fell from his body. The fierce tingling spread to his neck and back. “Oh, Christ. What’s happening now?”

“It won’t last long.”

Blood started to seep from his skin as he continued to scratch at himself. “Blood! My blood?”

“Oh, yes. That’s another one of Lilith’s little quirks. She also likes to use confusion as a means of torment.”

“Quirks? Why am I bleeding?”

“Because your body is disintegrating. Soon your body will be no more and you’ll go on to live again. I believe you’re being given one that lives to ninety-one. That’s a good age for a human. Do you remember when your wife threw that bracelet Emily made at you?” She held out her arm and a flower bracelet materialised on her wrist. “Here it is. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Your daughter was such a creative girl.”

Jason ignored her as he tried to rub away the burning sensation from his skin. His blood-soaked hands felt more dripping from his nose and ears. He tasted iron as blood oozed from his gums.

“When you dragged Zoe from the front room,” she continued, “and once you had calmed her, you stood and looked at her. Do you remember what you thought?”

“What, dammit?” he yelled as he scratched through his skin. “What are you talking about now, you mad fucking demon bitch?” He screamed out in pain as his fingers touched moist muscle fibres.

“She thinks if you see blood it gives you hope.”

“Hope! Sweet Jesus,” he yelled, recoiling in agony. “What fucking hope?”

“If you see enough of your own blood you’ll think death will be sure to follow. And, with death, escape from the torment. She really is an awful horror, isn’t she?”

“Why… am… I… bleeding… now?” he asked with slow, feeble words. Weakness took hold of him and his hands fell limply to the ground next to his slumping body.

“Because you’re with me and outside of her influence. Blood or no blood, Jason, there’s no hope. Anyway, do you remember?”

Jason’s head dropped forward until his chin rested on his chest. He struggled to respond in anything more than a grunt.

“Oh dear,” she said, as she tilted her head and watched him for a moment. “I know you can still hear me, so I’ll continue to explain. When you looked at your wife, you feared for your future together. If you had stayed with her and continued to talk, instead of leaving to get garlic and a bottle of wine, she would never have murdered your daughter.”

Jason gurgled as blood filled his throat and lungs.

“You would have both continued to have problems for a while, but she would have learned to deal with her mental peculiarities. And in time, you would have become happy again. That’s the body you’re going back to. That’s the man who stayed behind and had salmon the next day. His choice led to many lives that were lived. Yours, on the other hand, led to many that exist but won’t ever be lived. He’s also the one who lives to be ninety-one. A grand old age for an ape.”

Jason no longer had the strength to hold himself upright and rolled over onto his side. He watched as the woman walked over to one of the pedestal stones.

“They brought their dead ancestors here,” she said, lifting up the skull. “Just the skulls of their most recent dead. They would put them on these,” she placed the skull back on the pedestal stone and then continued, “so they could watch the children, see the new flowers play among the stones.” She walked back to where Jason lay and knelt down beside him. Then, with a gentle hand, she smoothed his hair away from his bloodied eyes. “They lived in peace like this for thousands of years, coming to this temple to celebrate their lives. One day, however, a few of them decided to leave. Over the following millennia, that few became many and they forgot where they had come from.”

Jason convulsed and closed his eyes.

The old woman sighed as she drew a circle in the sand with a twig-like finger. “For no particular reason, their descendants returned and slaughtered everyone they found here. I listened and wept as these stones echoed with the screams of their children. After that terrible day, I watched as a thousand empty years passed by and buried this temple, and their bones, beneath the sand, knowing that I would never again hear my flowers call to their Ama.”

Chapter 51

I miss you, Zoe. It’s been a long year and I don’t manage well without you. The family has been good to me, though, Emily calling me at least three times each and every day. Even our granddaughter has gone out of her way to stop by at least once a week, and she takes me to visit your grave as often as she’s able. She’s turned into such a beautiful person.

My birthday was nice; so many people came. I even had a drink or two… Okay, I had three. Never thought I’d ever say this, but I missed that look you used to give me when I filled a second glass. I miss so many things about you, Zoe—things I took for granted. I hope I was a good man for you.

Everyone has left now, and I’ll be off to bed in a bit. I hate this part of the day, going up to an empty bed. I know, I know, stop with the sad face. But it’s so hard. Sometimes I wish I could close my eyes one night and never open them again. To be with you again, that’s my birthday wish.

It’s been a good life. Oh, we had some problems early on, and I did worry that we wouldn’t make it, but I’m thankful we turned it around. I know you don’t like it when I talk about those days, but I still remember the time you lost it over some silly little thing, do you remember? I laugh about it now, but wow, did you scare the hell out of me at the time. I don’t know why that’s stuck in my head. Thought you were going to kill me. I’m glad things got better after that.

From then on, it was as if life was on our side again. I never believed in fate and all that foolish nonsense. But thinking about things now, I think fate did play a hand in our lives. I don’t know, maybe it’s just the old cogs rattling around in my head, but it seemed that after that night everything started to go right for us, no matter what. Everything but… Well, I never told you about my recurring dream, did I? It confuses me why I should have such a dream. I thought everything was good, happy, so why I should have such a dream strikes me as a bit odd. It’s not a scary dream, not a nightmare or anything like that, it’s just strange. And it’s always the same. In fact, I’ve never dreamt of anything else.

Anyway, I’m off to bed now. Maybe I’ll get my birthday wish and see you again soon. I don’t think I’m being selfish to wish for such a thing. I’ve had a long life, and Emily is doing well. I don’t want to be any kind of burden to her. Sorry, I know, I’m doing it again, aren’t I. I miss you so much, my Angel.

I wonder who it is—in my dream, I mean. I can’t think of anyone I know who looks like her. Maybe someone from my past, but I can’t think who. Why does she look at me the way she does? In the dream, I’m in a dark place. Emerging from the dark is a woman in a yellow dress. She’s beautiful—No, Zoe, it’s not one of those dreams. She’s just there in the dark, with me, watching me with bright, unblinking eyes—remarkable sapphire-blue eyes. She seems to be waiting for something or waiting for me to do something. But I don’t do anything, and neither does she. The woman just watches me from the dark, and there’s the most hypnotic sound coming from the dark too. What does it mean, Zoe? What is she waiting for?

Anyway, I hope you’re happy wherever you are and are being treated well. Save a spot by the fire for me. Life has been good, Zoe, but now I want to be with you again.

The end…

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51