Suddenly irritated, he tossed the statuette into a nearby pile of ash and thrust his swords back into their respective sheathes. He pulled out his hoodie from his backpack and tugged it on over his head. Only then, did he return to the statuette.
Without touching it, he gazed at it for a long time, unwilling or unable to tear his eyes away. It seemed somehow alive, almost shifting of its own accord in the bed of ash in which it nested. Eventually, he could resist the urge no longer. He picked it up, wrapped it in an old t-shirt and placed it carefully in his pack.
It wasn’t destined to stay there for very long. Willing or not, it seemed he and the statuette had a voyage to undertake.
Hell beckoned, and its pull was not to be denied.
Chapter Two
“ For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.”
The warm winds of Hell comforted him more than they should. The acrid odor of sulfur threatened to overwhelm his senses as he breathed in deeply, savoring the smell. It felt good to be back, even though by rights he knew he should hate this place because of what it represented; human suffering, pain, torture, torment.
Sam couldn’t remember how he got here which in itself was suspicious. He couldn’t just appear here at will — he’d have to carry out preparations and he certainly couldn’t remember doing any of those things. His gut told him that something wasn’t right — and Hikari had always told him to trust his intuition. If you smelled a rat, then it probably was a rat. Satan, The Morning Star — was bound to be involved somehow. Whenever something odd happened, it was usually due to the machinations of his father.
Sam smiled sourly. He’d find out soon enough. Like an overly keen schoolboy, his father was usually all too keen to reveal his hand and show off his cleverness to his son. He remained where he was, perfectly still on the black rock of Hell, ignoring the periodic blasts of fire that spurted from nearby crevices, content to wait.
Some time elapsed. How much, he didn’t know, but enough to make him restless and irritable with enforced inaction. He was about to concede defeat, reluctantly forced to admit that his father might have won the waiting game this time, when he heard it — a high pitched scream that rapidly descended into pitiful sobs. Sam cocked his ear and reached out with his senses, concentrating hard to pinpoint the source. It came again and this time he got a bead on it.
It was a woman’s voice. A woman in dreadful pain. It was a sound that could only be produced by torture. Something about the cry seemed familiar to him at an almost instinctive level, and a part of him knew the sound or at least the person who was making it — almost as if this whole scenario had played out before.
Sam burst into motion, his hands already flexing with the need to grasp his sword hilts. Almost immediately, he found an opening in the bleak landscape and darted inside. He knew that this was suspiciously convenient but he didn’t care. Urgency filled him and he wasn’t sure why, his actions controlled by a primal need to aid or end the suffering of the woman.
He found himself in a cave, almost pitch black save for a few flickering flames embedded within wall sconces. An emaciated figure in tattered rags crouched in the middle of the rocky floor, chained by ankle and wrist. Her head was down, tucked into her legs, and her body shook with sobs, now muffled.
A need for caution and self-preservation competed with a burning desire to rush over to the woman. His compromise slowed his pace so that he only trotted towards her rather than ran. Standing over her, he could see that her back was a mass of bloody wounds. An unpleasant stench of corruption wafted from her body, and Sam’s eyes widened in horror at the live maggots feeding on the living flesh.
He was about to reach down and gently lift the woman up when she raised her head of her own accord.
The upturned face was streaked with lines of blackened tears, the deep slashes on her face leaking a sickly combination of pus and blood. The long dark hair was matted and woven through with dead snakes. Despite all this, and the long, long moments since they had last seen each other, Sam recognized her immediately and he staggered back in shock.
His mother opened her mouth, her eyes beseeching. “Help me, Sam. Free me from this place. Please Sam. Help me!” She would clearly have said more but lost the power of coherent speech as another wave of pain washed over her. She started screaming again…
Suddenly, he was no longer in Hell.
He was sitting cross-legged on black soot, surrounded by blackened stumps of what had once been a pine forest. The view suggested he was high up in the mountains. And then he remembered.
He’d been dreaming, which was becoming more commonplace than he was prepared to admit. He tried not to allow himself to dream anymore. Dreams for him were dangerous and disturbing, giving his father access to his mind. That was the whole point of meditation — to stop himself falling asleep and thereby dream. He wished he could just sleep without the nightmares, but that was impossible without his protective pentacle.
Lately, whenever he let down his guard or was just plain exhausted, the dreams would come. They were — without exception — about only one thing. Or one person. His mother. And they were getting worse.
Doubts filled him. He knew he was being manipulated but that was beside the point. If there was any chance his mother was indeed suffering like his dreams suggested, he would really have to do something about it.
The statuette waited patiently in his backpack. His thoughts never strayed far from it. It was time, he realized. Some instinct told him that the Hellhounds would be birthing soon and with their birth, the means to his mother’s salvation.
In the decades the church had stood there, it had never looked so decrepit and run down. Sam paused just outside the grounds and stared sadly at it for a while, letting the enormity of it fill him. The once white-washed walls were now an ashen grey color. The crosses above the door and the steeple had fallen or been torn from the building to lie scattered and broken amongst the dirty weeds.
The landscape was even worse. Sam knew he was in Colorado and had long read about the beautiful landscape. He’d hoped it might have been spared the worst that the Tribulation could offer but he had been disappointed. It had suffered like every other place he had been to. Worse, in some cases.
The mountain range towering behind the church would once have had snow at this time of year. Beneath the snow line, fir, spruce and pine trees used to dominate the slopes, their verdant green competing for attention with the dazzling white of the snow. Now all Sam could see was a universal grey. The skeletal remains of the trees were shrouded with ash. It was a depressing vista.
That was why seeing the church, even in its current miserable state, gave Sam a vague sense of hope. It was his path to Hell and with it, a way to rescue those trapped there. Sam lowered his head, closed his eyes and rubbed both hands through his black hair, dislodging the hood of his sweatshirt. His fingers brushed the horns hidden within the unruly mass, but he no longer flinched. They were a part of him — a part that he resented, but was gradually beginning to accept.
He opened his eyes and stood upright. It was time to focus. He had things to do and couldn’t spare the time to dwell on the past. Focusing on the present, he contemplated the church in front of him.