The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 10. Chapter 10

Tonight when Leonidas called for him, Brad found the acolyte and his nepharites waiting for him in the upstairs study; this time he’d brought two with him instead of one. Their towering presence made Leonidas seem small and shriveled, a child cursed to a neverending nightmare. Assuming that child didn’t already naturally come from the burning pit of some hell dimension as it was, Brad thought darkly.
Leonidas stooped forward to get a closer look at Brad's mural; the way each segment came together to form a larger narrative that could only be interpreted, never fully explained. The whistle of appreciation he let out made the darkness around them shake and vibrate. "This is a nice piece of work," Leonidas said. "Almost gives me chills just to look at it."
Brad said nothing. He knew…sensed…Leonidas' admiration for his work was anything but genuine. Leonidas looked him up and down, sizing him up. Brad was dressed all in black, in clothes that allowed him to move quickly. "I see you're dressed for the occasion," he said. "Good."
What occasion? Brad wanted to ask, but kept his mouth shut. He had the sense he would find out soon enough.
"Looks like you fashioned yourself a bridge," Leonidas said with a chortle. "One of the oldest tricks in the books. Mankind has been making doorways to other places about as long as they've known to make fire."
A bridge. A doorway. Yes, that was exactly what Brad had built. He could feel the black power of Inferno seeping into this world from the otherside of the paper. When he inhaled it was the smell of sulfur he breathed in. He thought he heard a distant voice cry out in protest. It could just be your imagination, he quickly reasoned with himself even as the anticipation in his gut reached peak levels. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. Only the fear of this all being taken away from him because he couldn’t hold onto his britches kept him in line. Letting Leonidas have a bit of fun was a small price to pay for what laid ahead of him.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Leonidas said in a tone that said he was ready to get to business. “As I told you the other night, you’re going to finish what you started. That man at the church: you rang him up real good. You even got a little corruption goin’.”
“Corruption?” Brad asked. He had the same disconnected feeling talking with Leonidas that he might with an immigrant who could barely string a few words together in English.
“You left Chokmah’s mark on his face. Let’s just say it didn’t take and it’s uh…how do I put this? It’s begun to spread. Not much, mind you, it’s only been a few days, but it will continue to spread until there’s nothing left and he’ll start to look something akin to these guys.” Leonidas nodded at his fellow denizens who seemed not to notice or care that they were being deferred to in such a way. Such was their lot in life or absence thereof it seemed. He’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t so damn displeasing to look at, like caricatures from a twisted children’s tale.
“If I thought you enjoyed what you did to that poor dog at the cabin in the woods…” Leonidas grinned so that the white of his teeth flashed like porcelain. “...and I could tell from the expression on your face that you did, then you will love doing this. And do not feel sorry for him or what you did to him, because face it at this point you’re just speeding up the process. To serve the forces of Inferno, to put your souls into their hands, is to be free of stupid, pussy shit like morality and shame.” Leonidas paused long enough to spit on the floor as if he couldn’t think of two more vulgar words like morality and shame.
No, for a man like Leonidas pussy and shit were far more appropriate Brad thought pettily and hoped Leoninda could not read his thoughts as he seemed able to do at times.
“Tonight is your lucky night,” Leonidas said . “You get to catch a little glimpse of Inferno.” He nodded at Brad’s artwork. “The great thing about Inferno is if you know where you are going, those narrow overcrowded passageways can make a great shortcut to get from one place or another. Figured if I started showing you the ropes now you might start taking initiative and making better use of your time.”
Better use of my time? Brad swallowed the insult that rose to his throat. He might be the new hot shot recruit here but Leonidas had seniority over him and he did not feel like testing the loyalties of the nepharites tonight.
“Let’s get started,” Leonidas said to his two companions. He did not bother to look away from the mural. “You know what to do.”
The creatures did not nod or bow or make sounds of affirmation; perhaps they were simply not capable of doing any of these things. They simply pulled a blade from their assortment of macabre torture devices and sliced at their scarred flesh until blood began to flow free, black and thick as tar. It splattered the floor, stinking up the room. Is it really there? Brad wondered, watching in fascination as the creatures bent to scoop up oozing puddles of their own blood. Is this really happening? If Heidi and Anne were to walk in the room, would they see what I’m seeing now?
The thought made him both want to laugh and pissed his pants, so he forced it from his mind. He believed Leonidas when he said they had no part in this…whatever this was. Brad believed him. He had to: it was the only way he could do any of this.
The nepharites were now smearing themselves against Brad’s mural, marking his work as their own; they did so with an almost orgasmic frenzy, arms twisted out behind them, clawed fingers splayed apart. He didn't mind. He was too fascinated by their repulsive nature to mind. As they continued to act out this twisted love scene of devotion, the mural continued to take on a hungry power that made the shadows shift and dance to the music of steel slicing into desecrated flesh and the moans of ecstasy that accompanied them.
The power of creation does not come free; it requires sacrifice of us all. Where had that come from?
It was true though. The city of Inferno was real.
Brad could only stare open-mouthed and weak-kneed as the city began to tear its way through the paper into reality. The walls that separated Brad’s foothold in reality to the hellish dimension that existed on the other side buckled and popped before the edge of a spire burst through like a rock shattering glass. He felt the entire house shudder around him as the city of Inferno devoured the simple picket-fence existence he’d fought so hard to build for Heidi and Little Annie.
This, he realized, as the rough hewn spires of Inferno continued to grow around him like weeds out of control, was what the world truly was. Not the unassuming, inoffensive cul-de-sac he'd planted his wife and four year old daughter in the middle of. He would balk at these thoughts later when the night’s deeds didn’t seem so far away.

He'd spent most of his adult life trying to extricate himself from the supernatural forces that had permeated his adolescent years; what a fool he'd been. He no longer stood in the study of his home but in the dark, twisting passageway of a street or avenue. Red, sulfurous light burned from the dusty-paned glass street lamps that guttered along the passageway; a light that couldn’t quite penetrate the gloom around them. The smell of mold, rotting garbage, and human excrement burned his nose hairs.
He inhaled, breathing in the smell of corruption.
From his right, Leonidas chuckled. Yes, of course, Brad thought. Even after an entire city burst through the fucking floorboards of my house, he’s still here.
“Inferno is like Disneyland for psychopaths, the worst filth in the world,” Leonidas said in the same tone he might use to comment on the weather.
Brad shot him a scathing look. “I’m not a psychopath.”
Leonidas replied with a grin that was all too knowing. “Not yet…but you will be.”
Brad felt an involuntary shiver crawl down his spine. He nodded ahead of him, silently urging the other man to lead them on.
The nepharites followed, never straying far from their charges. They always maintained a watchful space of a few yards, no more. Their pitted eyes searched the empty spaces of shattered windows and mocking alleyways that invited anyone foolish enough to venture into their shadowed depths. As he passed one such alley, an angry chitinous sound rose up from the darkness, hungry and insect-like. Though the creature was not yet visible, Brad could all too easily imagine the beast rising up on six (or eight if it was an arachnid; there was no reason to think it impossible that it could have more than eight legs, or a hundred) legs, its long scorpion tail lashing about wildly. He was so caught up in this horrid fantasy that he had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out when Leonidas’ bony hand smacked companionably down on his shoulder.
“I appreciate your childlike curiosity, but trust me when I say you don’t want to wander about like Moses in the wilderness right now. You’re safe with the nepharites because I told them you’re cool, but they’re smart like that. The way a really good guard dog is smart and does what their master tells them to do. Not everything in Inferno is like that. They will wait until you’re close enough they can taste the sweat coming off your pores, and then they’ll attack. And they won’t just eat you. They’ll play with your insides first.”
“You’re fucking with me,” Brad said before he could stop himself.
Leonidas did not offer further advice. He simply backed away with a shrug.
For a moment stillness and silence prevailed. Brad continued to parse the darkness from where he stood, too curious to turn away. He wanted to catch a glimpse of this strange beast, even if only to satiate his own child-like curiosity.
This time when he heard that chitinous trilling sound, it came from just inches in front of his face; close enough he could feel the hot breath of the thing on his face. He leapt back with a high-pitched yelp and scrambled after Leonidas and his pet nepharites.
Leonidas led Brad deeper into the streets of Inferno. The more they walked the more the city revealed its nature to Brad.
They descended down a large hill that spiraled around itself before unraveling to an end at the bottom. Moldy piped constantly leaked chemical waste that made Brad think of tainted wellsprings and ponds wasting away beneath the detritus of human apathy. Deep shafts dug pockets of darkness in the ancient, cracked rock. Staircases angled off and began at odd places only to cut off abruptly, or intersect directly in the middle.If there was a purpose for Inferno’s architecture, Brad could not see the significance, a skill he tried to use wherever he went.
This place is old, he reminded himself. Older than you, than your parents, or their parents. Probably older than Roc City itself. Who knows how many times its been expanded on, rooms tacked on like cheap plywood used to fill an empty space. And yet he admired the haphazardness of it all. Because he sensed there was a rhyme or reason, it was simply that his human mind could not yet fathom it. The warm glow of the lighter against the sweaty palm of his hand assured him he would not always remain ignorant, that ignorance was not a bliss, but a sin.
The mechanical whir of elevators that remained in operation without operators or passengers to ride them broke the silence; this or a far off scream, an echoing call for help that fell on the ears of the deaf and the careless. After an age of climbing - Brad realized he should have been tired by now; they’d walked miles over uneven terrain; but he wasn’t tired; in fact he felt better, more reinvigorated than he had in a long time - they reached the bottom of the hill.
Both of the nepharites raised their head and sniffed the air like dogs on the hunt for blood. One of them made a rattling sound in their throat that almost sounded happy. Not for the first time Brad found himself wondering if these creatures were capable of feeling anything like human emotion at all.
“We’re close,” Leonidas said in a hoarse voice. There was a sort of gleam to his eyes that hinted at excitement.
“Close to what?” Brad asked.
“A bridge,” Leonidas said as if this were all the answer Brad needed.
“To where?”
“To where you need to go. See? I told you this would make a great shortcut. Next time we’ll take the more scenic route.”
This was meant to be a joke but Brad didn’t see the humor in this. He was too busy watching the nepharites. They were definitely excited about something. They kept glancing back at Leonidas with expectant twitches of their head that tilted this way and that way. Leonidas ignored them.
They passed beneath a black stone archway into the dim recesses of a cathedral with slitted windows. Ancient tapestries hung down moldering walls; black filament seeped from the cracks in the archaic stone. The tapestries were vividly graphic, repulsive, and beguiling all at the same time. Surely no human hand could depict human suffering in such exquisite detail. In some of the depictions men and women were shackled to operating tables. Nepharites and other creatures every bit as horrific experimented on them with efficient glee, sawing them open to get at the jewels inside or sticking needles in their eyes. In other depictions demonic beings with massive phalluses; their pulsing erections with dripping heads and slitted glowing eyes only hinted at the carnal desires they intended to indulge with their victims.
“The power of creation does not come free; it requires sacrifice of us all,” Brad recited under his breath.
“Now,” Leonidas said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, “that’s art.”
Fuck you, Brad thought. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. It became a mantra, his own personal prayer.
The red light of Inferno's dawn seeped through the tall crystal glass windows. A tall mirror stood before the altar, its frame gilded in gold. Brad's reflection stepped cautiously into the paned glass. His face stared back at him, lips pursed in a look of utmost concentration. It took him a moment to realize the church in the mirror was not the same church he found himself standing in now; it was the church where he had been attacked; the church where he was supposed to finish the deed he started. The glass in the mirror shimmered as if to confirm this fact, beckoning him to step into the glass.
Brad felt a wave of doubt; the first wave of fear since entering Inferno with Leonidas and his acolytes. Here he was about to plunge into the abyss again while his family slept at home unaware. Unaware but safe, he told himself before the shame could begin to weigh upon him.
“Don’t worry, the glass ain’t going to hurt ya,” Leonidas snapped impatiently. He’d been tapping his foot impatiently on the dusty stone floor.
It’s a bridge, Brad to himself. It’s just another bridge like your mural.
Chokmah’s strength filtered through him, ebbing at the doubt that afflicted him. Without another second’s hesitation he reached into the glass, into the world on the other side.