The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 14. Chapter 14

Even two doors down and with two doors shut between them, Brad could hear the anger and authority Jaffe Curry's voice. He carried the authority with him everywhere he went, wielding it like a flaming sword. He's probably threatening to sue someone, Brad thought. Or maybe he was arguing with his wife, Tiffany. Excuse me, soon to be ex-wife. You couldn’t pick up a goddam newspaper without seeing something about Jaffe and his multimillion-dollar divorce. What was the point in looking at a story when you already knew what the outcome would be?

For the past three hours he'd been struggling over the blueprints for a park - as if Roc City needed another damn park; the homeless and unwanteds of the city would turn it into their own art project anyway; a waste of millions of dollars in Brad's opinion, not that anyone was asking.

Only the more he tried to focus on his actual job the more his mind kept getting pulled back elsewhere. The squares, lines, and curves that were meant to serve as a play structure, sand box, and swing set kept turning into the spires and mines of Inferno. A project far more important than anything Jaffe would assign him. The old man was just fighting the inevitable. Everyone knew this city was swirling down the drain one worthless soul at a time. He glanced at the clock. Sighed. Still another three hours to go.

“There’s always one way to pass the time,” Leonidas said from over his shoulder, ever the black voice of corruption.

“I told you not to talk to me while I’m at work,” Brad hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s very distracting when you stand about and whisper in my ear.”

Leonidas cackled as if Brad had just given him the punchline to a raunchy joke. “I’m practically a fucking ghost. I can do whatever the hell I want. Suit yourself.”

Leonidas went quiet.

Brad knew he wasn’t really gone. It wasn’t in his nature to keep up on his promises. Like the school yard bully he lingered about. Pestering, provoking. Too busy enjoying the attention Brad tossed his way like scraps of bread; even if that bread had long since grown stale and was being devoured by worms.

If he closed his eyes and let the sounds of Roc City fall away from him, he could sense the streets of Inferno. It was here; it was there; it was close by; and it was far away. One only had to peel back the thin layer of foil that separated this world from the one just beyond it. Once human beings had the ability to traverse the plains with a single thought but somewhere along the way they’d lost the gift. Only with the death of Christ had they begun to remember just exactly what they were capable of.

Slowly but surely Brad was beginning to realize what he was capable of.

This is only the beginning. Your place is elsewhere, not here drawing lines with a pencil and ruler.

He reached into the pocket of his slacks. The Zippo was of course. But there was always that split second of heart stopping fear when he imagined that it wouldn't be. What would he do if slipped out of his pocket one day while he was scrambling across the street the way objects - coins and pens and other trivial things - sometimes did? What would happen then? Would Leonidas and his nepharites vanish from his life like a distant dream or would they truss him up like a turkey and flay his flesh from his bones?

Chokmah's lighter sat in the palm of his hand like an old friend.

The city of Inferno awaits you.

He rose to his feet. He crept towards the door, feeling like a student trying to tiptoe out of class before the teacher caught him. He could still hear Jaffe going on his tirade. Just to be safe he closed the door and clicked the lock. A hollow thudding sound made the wall next to him vibrate. He stepped away, the Zippo pulsing in time with the excited fluttering of his heart. Ten seconds passed, and then half a minute. Nothing happened. He felt the first sinking feeling of disappointment. Had he imagined it or simply missed a golden opportunity?

He pressed his ear to the wall.

“No, no,” he whispered. He kissed the wall, rubbed it affectionately with the palm of his hand as if it were a woman who could be swayed. “Give me another chance. Please, just give me one more.”

The tremor beat against the wall. And then a second and a third until the wall beat continuously against his hand. He almost wept with relief. That's the lifebeat of Inferno. Every city has its own heartbeat if you listen long enough.

Light from the Zippo traced a line from the tip of his middle finger to the starting edge of his wrist. Reacting on an alien impulse that was not his own, Brad pressed the palm of his hand to the living wall.

The wall shifted, then parted, sinking back into shadow. A small voice in the back of his mind that still insisted on clinging to the rational. On the other side should have been a seven story drop through empty space to the pavement below…not a staircase that dipped down into Stygian darkness.

He thought of the squatter church and almost turned away from the darkness. As always Chokmah's Zippo acted as a second source of strength, an encouraging hand on the shoulder. He pulled out his cell phone, turned on his flashlight. He glanced back timidly at the door. "Just a few minutes max and then I'll be back," he said to his empty office chair.

He paused as another slipped its way slyly into his head. What if I didn't come back all? What if I climbed all the way down to the end of the steps and just kept going?

Something else niggled at his mind. A face. Two faces. Heidi and Little Annie. He knew they existed, would be waiting for him to come home and exchange stories about their day.

It's better that they're not with you. There is no place for them in Inferno.

Their faces blew away like dandelion seeds scattering to the wind.

Brad began to descend the steps leading down into Inferno.

The steps were steep and misshapen no double from the ghosts of many intrepid travelers who had braved the darkness, over the years, centuries, and eons. His breathing came out in rapid, harsh wheezes. He kept a hand braced against the wall as a guide. An unpleasant memory of crawling after Dan Anderson through the crawlspace of his childhood home played out in his mind.

“There ain’t nothing in there that’s less afraid of you than you are of it.”

Brad shrieked. He jumped so suddenly he almost dropped his phone. He whirled around, falling back so that the grooves in the wall pressed into the flesh between his shoulder blades. Dan Anderson wasn’t really there of course. The voice he’d heard had simply been a conjuration of the mind…or something else. Someone or something intent on playing games with him. “Fuck you,” he heard himself say in the wavering, uneven voice of pubescent boy. “I’m not afraid. There’s ain’t nothing down here that’s less afraid of me than I am of it.”

He laughed then. Not just from mounting hysteria because the sentiment was truly funny.

Another voice echoed through the throng of darkness. This one was different: High-pitched and agonized. The song of a tortured soul. Brad licked his lips and pressed onwards.

It was hard to say how much time passed before he reached the bottom of the long and winding staircase. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours since he'd stepped through the magical passageway that had appeared in his office. The fact he didn't care was more worrying than the passing of time itself.

When he looked up and saw the boiling red sky above him, Brad felt his lungs expand. Cracks of yellow lightning struck the sky that did little to illuminate the living shadows that crept out of the entrances of ancient temples and dusty libraries. The turgid air caressed the clammy pallor of his cheeks.

This time he did not have Leonidas or the nepharites to accompany him. He was grateful for the opportunity to explore at his own pace without Leonidas' caustic remarks to distract him. He didn't need them. Though no one street looked the same and there seemed to be no definable logic to their layout, there was a familiarity to them he couldn't place…or question.

The voice he'd earlier screamed again. It was closer this time, more shrill. It was coming from the open mouth of a temple at the end of the current passage. Somewhere a bell began to sound, the summons before mass.

Black clad figures dressed in robes that had been worn down to strips of cloth pelted out of the alleyways and unseen corners of the city. Brad thought of roaches scattering away from the light. There were men, women, the malnourished faces of children who had grown up knowing nothing but the filth and horrors of Inferno. Their faces were round and cherub-like, their mouths rotting at the gums. Rays of pale light danced through the doors of the temple. Voices rose in excitement, speaking in foreign tongues.

At first Brad could only stand there, watching in open-mouthed fascination. So much was happening around him. More than the most verbose writer could imagine. More than details than the eye could describe or fathom. It was like playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends again. Those long five hour sessions in the basement of a friend’s house over pizza while life continued above their heads. But as long as they were in the basement, among each other, they were the kings of their own little world. They galloped on horseback amongst elves and orcs. Nothing in Inferno called to mind an adventurous romp through fictional continents but there was plenty of splendor to be had here, even if each and every wonder was garbed in the dressings of a nightmare. A nightmare that Brad knew he had always figured into; at last the missing puzzle piece had been returned to its box.

The crowd of people trickling into the temple had slowed down to a crawl. Brad realized he could barely hear the bell. It hadn't stopped, not yet, but each ringing throng sounded further apart. The temple doors, great slabs of stone that rose half a dozen stories into the air, gave a mighty groan. Ancient gears that had been in operation millenia before human beings discovered the ability to make fire spun into motion, churning behind the archaic stonework.

The doors were starting to swing shut. Once they did, who knew when they would open again, when he would be permitted entry? His lungs tightened. His heart seized in his throat. He shot forward like a bull bursting out of its stall. Clouds of dust drifted into the air in his wake. He was the black sheep falling behind while the last of the denizens sauntered through the shrinking entrance into the temple. A closing entrance that would crush Brad into dust if he didn't haul ass.

Like an underdog ending the race with a strong finish, he put on a burst of speed. It was a close call between the closing gap in the rock. The ground thundered at his feet. Hooded faces watched him curiously as he skidded to a halt. Inquisitive murmurs rose in the air, but no one approached him or tried to ask him a question. Did they sense that he was an outsider from the surface? For a second Brad was tempted to show them Chokmah’s Zippo. What was the point if they posed no danger to him?

The crowd began to file deeper into the temple.

Brad had no choice but to follow: The temple doors had clamped shut tight as an Egyptian tomb. What if they were stuck in here, closed in the tomb to starve to death or cannibalize each other in a bid to survive? Whatever the answer may be, Brad was about to find out one way or another.

Brad entered a large amphitheater with rows of seats that went back as far as the eye could see. It was here that the denizens sat, whispering in barely contained anticipation. He had the feeling he had wandered onto the start of an event - a show perhaps - and that he should not be standing in the center of the room like a wandering idiot. He sat on the closest bench on the bottom row. If I’m going to see a show I want front row tickets, he thought. His stomach rumbled happily with excitement.

While he had the time to do so he took a hasty look around the room. He found it strange that no one was looking at him. Did they not see he wore different clothing from them? Did they not see that his skin was clean, that he was well-fed, considerably healthier? Or did they simply not give a damn? In that regard they wouldn’t be much different from anyone on the surface, where everyone pretended to be oblivious to the suffering of others. Perhaps Chokmah’s lighter acted as a talisman of protection. Mosquito repellant for the damned. He resisted the urge to pat the pocket of his jeans.

The doors at the front of the room opened with a soft swishing sound. Two men pushed a metal gurney on wheels into the center of the room; another man, this one an Astorathian, had been strapped to the table and gagged.

The men who pushed the gurney were dressed in white aprons, with rubber surgical gloves pulled over their bony wrists. Medical masks covered their mouths, yet their attire did not hide the fact neither men were quite human. Their skin was pale to the point of translucency, so that Brad could see the dark webwork of veins that started at the top of their heads like the lines marking roads on a map. Their eyes were a milky white; Brad wondered if they were blind. They didn't seem to be, but it was impossible to tell for sure.

The Astorathian did not move or protest against his captors. His eyes were wide and alert, afraid. He knew what was going to happen to him more than Brad did. His gargantuan arms, rich with veins of muscle, the red skin so thick the Astorathian might have been carved from stone or brick, and yet still he did not move or struggle.

“He’s been drugged,” a familiar voice said beside him. “Not enough that he can’t feel what they’re doing to him. Just enough so that he can’t put up a fight. No, I’m afraid he’s going to feel everything. Almost makes you feel sorry for the poor bastard, doesn’t it?”

Brad turned his head and found himself staring into Jack Leonidas’ pale eyes. Here in the city of Inferno the man seemed more solid, more alive, than he had in the middle of Brad’s house. What is he? Brad wondered. Is he a man? Is he a spirit? Or is he something in between? What keeps him alive?

“I never miss a showing,” Leonidas said. He leaned forward; his eyes flashed with something that might have been glee. “I’ve seen it a million times…probably more than that if I’m being honest.” He rubbed his hands together with enthusiasm. “It never gets old. Never.”

“Why are they doing it?” Brad asked, watching the doctors work. One of them held up a large tray of surgical utensils: scalpels, saws, needles. The tools one might use to dissect a frog and see what it’s inside.

Leonidas scoffed as if the answer was perfectly obvious. “Because they can. Because there’s no one to stop them. Why else?”

Except for the sounds of the doctors prepping for surgery and the occasional commentary from Leonidas, the room was completely silent. "What are they?" he asked. He meant the doctors.

"I don't know the collective name for them down here below the surface…probably something unpronounceable as fuck…so I just call them Shrinks." Leonidas barked out a harsh laugh. "And they will too. They'll shrink you down to your most basic form."

Sure enough one of the Shrinks held up a scalpel. It ran the tip of a long, gloved finger along the sharp edge of the blade ponderously.

"Are they male or female?" Brad asked. The more he asked the more he wanted to know.

Leonidas sighed. The first sign he was growing impatient. That didn't take long, Brad thought - as far as their interactions had gone thus far it never did. "The less you try to make sense of this place the better. The folks who built all this" - Leonidas lifted a hand into the air to encompass all this - "don't think the way we do. Our brain design is not the same as theirs; not even close. Those things…" Leonidas hooked a thumb at the Shrinkers. "They're just doing what they're designed to do: fuck shit up in the most meticulous, most beautiful way possible. Quit yacking and see for yourself. What they do is an art."

Brad took his advice and stopped yacking. The Shrink on the right - for convenience's sake Brad nicknamed them Thing One and Thing Two and therefore were hermaphroditic until evidence proved the contrary - began to draw the blade along the Astorathian's broad forearm. The Astorathian's tail, which had been relaxed up until this point, raised itself off the stone floor and curled up into a ball; apart from this single movement, the patient gave no other sign that he felt pain. In his state of complete nudity, the nature of the Astorathian's sex was not in question. Brad was fascinated to see that the size of the male Astorathian's genitalia would make any human male on the surface envious and any female…Brad knew there were plenty of such fetishes.

The scalpel must have been very sharp for it parted the Astorathian's flesh as easily as silk. A white substance not unlike milk seeped from the wound. The stench of antiseptic made Brad's nostrils flare. As Thing Two started to saw into the Astorathian's arm, Thing One made his initial cut, drawing his blade down the valley along where the breastbone would be. The Shrinks communicated with a series of clicking sounds that made Brad think of mandibles snapping together.

Before long a river of white blood seeped along the floor, dripping down into a drain. Where did the blood go? To what purpose was it collected? Brad tapped his fingers against his mouth in excitement. The not-knowing was just as thrilling as the knowing. The Astorathian could offer no window into his experience beyond making a deep rumbling sound in his chest that subsided into defeated, whining whimpers. Any pity Brad might have felt for the creature was comforted by the steady beat of Chokmah’s Zippo.

With a pair of steel tongs not unlike the ones Brad used when he brought the grill out during the summer, the Shrinks pulled back the flaps of the Astorathian’s chest so that the mysteries of his anatomy were exposed. The Shrinks patted him affectionately on the arm and crooned over him; they rejoiced in his suffering.

Brad felt his gorge rise when the Shrinks’ gloved hands plunged into the steaming mass that were the Astorathian’s guts without hesitation. Intestines were pulled out like strings of pasta and set into steel bowls for future purposes. There was nothing that would be discarded or unused. Leonidas was right about one thing: as grotesque as the Shrinks might be, their surgical exploits indeed were a work of art.

When Brad emerged from the tunnels of Inferno back into his office some hours later, it was as if a spell had been lifted. Or rather, a switch turned on in his head. He found himself sitting back in his office chair as if he’d never left.

He looked at the clock on his computer. It was five o’clock. Exactly three hours had passed. He mopped the sweat from his face with a wad of napkins. Where had the last three hours gone? He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking when he reached for his briefcase.

Out in the hallway he heard laughter. The sound was triumphant, bridging on a level of hysteria; it was unexpected enough to draw Brad’s curiosity. Jaffe Curry’s door was open a crack. Brad inched towards it cautiously. Why was he afraid of this man when there were far more terrifying far more cruel things that existed just beneath his feet? He knocked softly on the door.

“Who is it?” Jaffe snapped.

“Uh…it’s just Brad.”

"Brad? What are you still doing here? I didn't know you'd even come in today."

Who do you think brought you in your coffee? Or your lunch, you smug bastard? "I've been here since nine just as always, Mr. Curry." He managed to say this with a perfectly self-effacing smile. “I just wanted to peek in before I headed out for the day. Is everything alright?”

Curry ran a large hand through a mane of hair that was now more silver than red. There was a melancholy expression on his face Brad had never seen before. In all the years Brad had worked for him Jaffe had always advertised himself as the ultimate businessman: good-looking, charming, confident, and all the other class-acting bullshit that went with it. Brad had always known it was all a cover up for the real thing, but this was his first real peek. Forgive me for wanting to revel in it.

It seems like I’m getting all kinds of juicy showings today.

“The divorce has been finalized,” Curry said. “It’s over.”

“Oh,” Brad said. He didn’t know what else to say other than Oh.

“We’ve been separated for a while,” Curry said as if this news was new to Brad; it wasn’t. “She’s been staying at this place…These apartments called the Wishwood Suites…And we’ve always talked about doing it, the same way you might talk about staying in Florida for the winter. I guess now it’s final. The crazy thing is I know it looks like I’m laughing, like I’m joyous on the outside, but the truth is I’m not. And you know me, I’m not into that touchy feely bullshit. Touchy feely just isn’t a thing from the when I come from. But the truth is I feel like shit. I feel like someone took something vitally important from me and I don’t even know what it is.”

“Do you miss her?” Brad ventured cautiously.

Jaffe looked down at his hands as if the question had caught him off guard. After a moment he said, “Yeah, I guess I do. Even after everything we put each other through.” He chuckled. The sound came out gravelly and weak, like he actually might burst into tears. “You know, Brad, I’m going to do what I should have done to save my marriage in the first place: take some time off. I’m going to be taking the rest of the week off. Maybe you should do the same, spend time with your family.”

Brad smiled but the smile did not reach his eyes. “Sounds perfect, sir.”