Earlier this year, I won Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest Horror contest, judged by Joe R. Lansdale. It's always nice when someone of note thinks your work is passable. Since the May.June 2012 issue of Writer's Digest, has come out, I can now print the story in question. I hope you enjoy it.
DARVAZA
The
chilly October air clung to Andrei Radik’s shoulders, his breath creating a
small fog bank around him. He pulled his
cloak’s hood closer over his face and set out for the next group.
There
were about 50 of them, mostly from Western Europe and the United States, with a
smattering of folks from South America - true believers all. They huddled around the front steps of the
monastery, eagerly looking at Andrei.
“We have
a long trek ahead of us, my friends,” Andrei said. “The roads in Turkmenistan aren’t well
developed, so we’ll have to walk. I
expect the journey to take several hours, and we’ll arrive near sunset.”
They
nodded or murmured assent, and Andrei started down the path, a walking stick
his only aid. Only years of taking
religious tourists to the Darvaza Gas Crater kept him from snickering at them. However, at $200 a head, there was good money
to be made.
The
journey was mostly silent. Andrei could
see several fingering prayer beads or muttering nervously as they got
closer. Andrei had trouble understanding
the superstitious hubbub since he didn’t believe in any of this himself, but he
was an accomplished actor and could play the part of pious monk well.
The
crater wasn’t hard to make out as dusk fell.
It had been burning for years, ever since a drilling accident in the
early 1970s collapsed the ground and the old Soviet Regime tried to burn the
gas pocket underneath. Its pale orange
glow lit up the ground like a miniature sun trying to break through the Earth.
Andrei
stopped at the edge of the pit and turned to face the crowd. “This is the end of our journey – the Darvaza
Gas Crater, known the world over as the Gateway to Hell. Hopefully, this is the closest any of you will
ever have to get to the place of the damned.”
A few
tentatively stepped forward to take pictures, while others recoiled at both the
smell and the visage.
“Is it
true that you’ve heard the damned screaming from within?” asked a chubby red
haired woman.
“Yes,”
Andrei said somberly. “Many scientific
expeditions have lowered microphones into the hole and heard ghastly
sounds. It’s apparent that those are the
sounds of souls being tortured by Satan himself. Please listen to a copy of the recording.”
Andrei
pulled out an iPod and hit play. This
was always one of the parts he liked the best, where the gurgles and noises
frightened folks into silence. Andrei
thought the tape had been made on the set of a TV show, but they didn’t need to
know that.
Once he
shut off the iPod, a shivering man in a bulky sweater asked, “What temperatures
have been recorded in there?”
“Thermographic
imaging has shown temperatures ranging from 1800 to over 2000 degrees,” Andrei
replied. “That’s the hottest recorded
temperature on the planet and shows the agony that awaits those who stray from
the Word.”
Many in
the crowd nodded. Others just shook
their heads and mumbled in sadness about the lost souls who would never know
God. However, a muscular man with dark
stubble and wild hair spoke from the crowd.
“Are you
sure that’s the temperature of Hell?” he asked.
Andrei’s
brow furrowed. He was used to the
religious crowd simply gawking in wonder.
“I beg your pardon?”
“How
would you know the temperature of Hell unless you’d been there?”
“Of
course I haven’t been there,” said Andrei.
“But this is the gateway. We know
that from the screams of those trapped inside.”
“You
made that up,” snapped the man. “Those
noises were recorded on a sound stage.
They have nothing to do with the agony of the damned.”
Please don’t ruin my business, Andrei
thought. Aloud, he said, “How would you
know? You seem to be a skeptic who
doubts our Lord.”
A
pause. “Would you like to truly hear
their agony?”
Andrei
felt his heart flutter. “What?”
Another
pause. “Would you like to see their
faces as they’re twisted into all sorts of perverted shapes?”
The air
ran thick with silence. Andrei figured
that maybe he could reason with this skeptic and get him to stay quiet, or at
least not cause Andrei to lose face – there was a lot of money at stake.
Andrei
walked to the man and leaned in close.
“I don’t know what you’re pulling, but these people are trying to have a
moving experience, and you’re intruding on that. Please be quiet and we’ll refund half your
fee.”
As the
man’s voice came, Andrei felt a scorching wind against his cheek.
“You
understand nothing of Hell.”
As he turned to look in the man’s
eyes, Andrei drew a sharp breath. The
man’s(?) teeth were bared, looking sharp and needle-like through the beatific
smile. It reared back and tore a chunk
from Andrei’s neck.
Andrei gurgled and collapsed. A woman screamed as the crowd began to
realize what had happened. The brown
sands around the crater ran red, and the demon turned to face them.
“You can stay and die now, or you
can run and die later,” it growled. “But
know this – we have returned to reclaim our world.” It picked up Andrei by the hair and drug him
to the edge of the crater. Its voice
hummed on the wind.
“In
Inferno eieci te; nobis paritura mauris.”
As Andrei tumbled into the pit, his
body exploded in a shower of black dust that erupted into the sky. Heat from the crater rippled into the air and
a loud gong reverberated through the landscape.
Screams ran through the crowd as
they broke and tore into the surrounding darkness. The demon raised its clawed hands into the
air. “This is our world once again. Your pathetic and alien God has abandoned
you. Witness now our wrath.”
The demon shot chains from its hands
and impaled a dozen members of the group.
As the rest continued to run, the demon welded his victims together into
a tight ball and flung them into the smoldering crater.
“At last!” it screamed. “At last we’re free!”
The black dust rising into the sky
grew thicker and oily rain began to pelt the desert. Mushrooms sprouted spontaneously across the
landscape and the air shimmered with heat.
The crowd’s screams continued as the demon followed the rain into the
night.
----------
Cardinal Giuseppe Rossi looked out
at the Council of Bishops. His lined
face had hardened in recent days as reports from Turkmenistan poured in. The head of the Roman Curia, he knew he
couldn’t show fear, but it affected him just as much as it apparently did the
delegation that had assembled.
“We need to take a recommendation to
His Holiness,” Rossi said. “The decay
surrounding Darvaza has grown and we have no way of knowing the damage until we
send a team ourselves.”
The Archbishop of Paris, Julienne
Dubois, said, “Our presence in Turkmenistan is limited, but every report I’ve
seen talks of the demon influence spreading.
I suggest we coordinate with the Russian Orthodox Church and try to form
a coherent response before the situation gets out of hand.”
“It’s already out of hand,” said
Salvadore Batista, Archbishop of Rio de Jeneiro. “We’ll have to call the Hunters we’ve trained
and give them every tool at our disposal if we are to hold back the
threat. We should also consider
notifying the various governments around the world – if the situation is as
extreme as reports suggest, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“Notifying the world at this stage
is premature and possibly detrimental,” said Rossi. “Knowledge of the demons could lead to
societal collapse. As to the Hunters,
their expertise exists mostly in the realm of supernatural creatures that have
to mask themselves through humanity.
With this threat being more open, I don’t know if they’ll be effective.”
“What choice is there?” asked
Batista. “They may be able to buy us
time to develop a better response.”
“Do the Archives have anything that
could explain this?” asked Archbishop Keeler of Baltimore.
“Perhaps,” Rossi replied. “Several of the more ancient tomes speak of
demons swept away by God, but they are incoherent. Etchings taken during the Crucifixion make
little sense without context of the time.”
“Time isn’t a luxury we appear to
possess,” said Dubois. “By some
accounts, the plague is spreading 10 to 15 miles a day. The town of Darvaza has already been overrun,
and only its location has kept the western media from noticing. That won’t last.”
Rossi exhaled slowly and steepled
his fingers. Finally, he said, “Very
well. I’ll recommend to the Pontiff that
we send in an expedition of Hunters to buy us time while we scour the Archives
for better insight. We will also make
preparations to notify various governments in the event that becomes necessary,
although I pray God we won’t need to do it – the consequences of such could
forever alter our society.”
----------
Pete Rosenberg looked through his
binoculars at the town of Ghadazakh.
Across the top of the buildings, flames lapped the horizon, and the
screams were audible even at this distance.
The figures scurrying around the town were barely visible, but it looked
like someone had kicked over an anthill.
He handed the binoculars to Charles
Godwin, one of the other 40 Hunters the Vatican sent. Pete couldn’t recall the last time that so
many Hunters had been in one place.
“Think this is the real deal?” Pete
asked.
Charles put the binoculars to his
face. “I don’t know. They don’t call in such large numbers if it’s
not something big.”
“They’ve never called in such large
numbers,” Pete snorted.
“True. I hope our weapons will work. I’ve never taken on a demon in the open –
they’ve all been in possessed bodies.
I’m used to dealing with normal minions like werewolves and the like, so
this is a whole new ball game.”
Pete nodded and checked the clip of
silver bullets for his M4 assault rifle.
It was full. He also ensured the
water level in the tank of holy water on his back was full, which it was.
Charles stowed the binoculars and
said, “Let’s go.”
Their group made its way down the
mountain road and through an ever thickening oily rain. Pete felt like he was being caked in warm mud
and kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t swallow any. As they got closer, the screams got
louder. Pete could see people running
from whatever was in the town, including a woman who’d been stripped to nothing
but torn underwear and was bleeding from her chest.
It didn’t take long for them to find
the first demon. It was perched on top
of a fountain in the city square and hurling balls of fire at people as they
ran. Its needle-like teeth were evident
when it smiled, and steam came from pores in its skin.
“Time
to find out what effect we can have,” Pete muttered. He carefully shouldered his weapon, aimed for
the thing’s chest, and pulled the trigger.
It tumbled backwards over the
fountain. Pete ran through the crowd
with a tube in his hand, ready to rain God’s sweet nourishment on this hated
minion. It was unconscious and lay at a
distorted angle as Pete showered it with holy water.
He waited for the creature to
dissolve, melt away, or otherwise disappear as others he’d used this on had
done. However, it simply lay motionless
and dripping wet. Pete started to bend
down and find out if it was dead when he felt a sharp pain in his ankles. He looked at his legs to see the demon’s
claws piercing his skin. When he peered
into its face, he saw something that made his heart jump even further.
It had opened its eyes and was now
smiling at him.
“Surprise!” it screamed.
Pete could feel blood flowing into
his shoes as the demon withdrew its claws, stood up, and picked him up by the
ears. The last thing he remembered
before passing out was the ashy color of its eyes.
----------
“Wakey, wakey.”
Pete shook his head and tried to
clear the fog in his brain. The room was
dark except for a single candle in the far corner. There was a musty smell, and Pete felt a
draft from a nearby broken window. Ropes
dug into his arms and legs from the chair he was tied to. In the candlelight flickered a face from his
nightmares.
The demon had needle-like teeth and
stringy hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. It popped its knuckles and smiled, ashy coal
stare forcing Pete’s eyes to try and retreat further into his head.
“Where are my friends?” Pete
demanded.
“Oh, those losers you brought? Most are dead or running like scared rats. Did you really think that your little toys
stood any kind of chance against us?” It
chuckled. “Maybe you were able to banish
us or something when we couldn’t fully present, but the landscape has changed
my friend, and your superstitious nonsense no longer has an effect.”
“Others will come for me,” Pete
said, a little more bravely than he felt.
“Even if it’s too late for me, they’ll come for you.”
The demon’s voice was soft. “I really hope so. We need more blood to advance towards the
next gate at Karymshina. Let’s be honest
– Turkmenistan ain’t the best place to find sacrifice, but we didn’t get to
choose the location of the first gateway, so we’ll just keep drawing you in and
use your blood to fuel our assault.”
Pete shivered in a way that had
nothing to do with the draft. He
haltingly said, “God will stop you.”
Now the demon laughed hard and
long. “God?” he spat. “You really don’t know what’s happened, do
you?”
When Pete cocked his head at the
demon and furrowed his brow, it continued, “You should learn what lies in the
Archives of your Vatican. Our history is
etched in the Grimoire of Honorius Thebes, although probably of little
contextual value to you.
“This was our world long ago. We ruled the darkness, and creatures here
bowed their will to us. We’d even begun
evolving our own native master race until your usurper of a God threw a rock at
us and killed what we’d created. Then he
put you talking apes on top, and when we started showing you the way to greatness,
he sent a carpenter to block our access and sealed us in the pits. But you guys proved too much for even Him.”
“What are you talking about?” Pete
asked.
The demon smiled again. “He abandoned you. He finally saw that you were a useless failure
and not worth His time. He wasn’t native
to this world anyway, taking only what others had built. However, He’s moved on to other pursuits,
cracking the door for our return, which, of course, means the end of you.”
“I don’t believe you,” Pete stammered.
“That doesn’t matter,” snickered the
demon. “All that matters is the current
state of affairs. We still have a vision
for this world, and it only involves humanity at the edges.” It paused, firelight dancing in its
eyes. “Your souls will be the fuel used
in our engines to re-master Creation.
Even at the maximum rate of 50,000 per day, it’ll still take us several
centuries to undo the damage you’ve done to our planet. A fortunate few will be consumed quickly and
their suffering will be short, but those who aren’t yet ready to burn will wait
in Hell, marinating so to speak.”
It pulled out a blade from its
pocket and reared back. “At least with
God gone, you’ll know where your immortal soul is headed.”
Before the demon could strike, the
roof exploded and a brilliant white beam of light focused on the creature. It screamed, and the demon eventually
crumbled like a pile of burnt leaves. In
its wake, a gentle looking man with a large forehead and shimmering white robe
appeared.
The new arrival looked at Pete and
smiled. “I’m Stenorius, and I’m an
angel.”
Pete stared at the angel, his faith
returning. “Thank God,” he
breathed. “I was beginning to
worry. Can you please cut me loose?”
Stenorius waved his hands and Pete
was free. He wanted to rush over and hug
his savior, but Stenorius held up his hand.
"Don’t thank me yet. The infestation has spread further than we
thought, and there is hard work ahead.”
“What took so long?” Pete asked.
“Once God left, it took us a bit to
figure out that the gateway at Darvaza had been opened, and even longer to
determine the level of the demon advance.”
Pete felt his heart skip a
beat. “What do you mean God left.”
Stenorius looked ashamed but finally
spoke. “The demon wasn’t lying – God has
become disillusioned. He’s not so cruel
as to exterminate you, but he’s apathetic and no longer wants to be involved.”
“So He’s just going to let the
demons take us? I thought He loved His
children!”
“He does, but He doesn’t think He’s
having an effect any longer, that His experiment in creating intelligent life
has failed. Humanity’s actions have
given Him doubts, and He thinks that by continuing His association, your spirit
will infect Him further.”
"If God left us, why are you here?”
Pete asked.
“We’re here because we believe that
humanity still has potential, and because we believe that a full display of
that potential, as evidenced in this crisis, can draw God back to you. He defeated the demons once, and He can do so
again.”
“The demons mentioned something about
that. What did they mean?”
Stenorius looked back at the
door. “We need to go. The battle will soon be joined.”
Pete pressed. “Please.
I need to know.”
Stenorius exhaled and finally said,
“He’s not from your world. Your world
was abandoned long ago by an unknown creator and the demons moved in. But God saw what was happening and decided to
create a better place. He swept away the
demons and placed Man at the top.
However, despite repeated chances, you’ve strayed from what He wanted
and He has decided to move on. If we can
defeat the demons here, He may reconsider.”
Pete’s mind was swimming. He paused to catch his breath, but Stenorius
pulled him to the door.
“We need to go. My brothers will be stronger than the enemy,
but they have a great advantage of numbers.
We have to seal the first gateway and prevent others from being opened. There are six remaining doors to Hell located
around the world, from Toba to Yellowstone to Karymshina. If the demons reach those portals and bring
in more, the game is over.”
As they got outside, Stenorius
picked Pete up and they began to fly over the towns burning below and towards a
set of mountains in the distance.
“Where are we going?” Pete yelled,
wind rushing through his hair.
“To make our stand,” Stenorius
shouted back. “We’ve picked up as many
of your church’s Hunters as we could, but the towns here are lost. Once we slow them down, we can come back and
re-focus on Darvaza.”
----------
Pete waited in a rock crevasse and
watched clouds roll in on the horizon.
He could already see the oily rain in the valley below and the mushrooms
springing up in its wake. What looked
like a dust storm followed, but as it got closer, Pete saw it was thousands of
demons charging.
The angels concealed themselves in
rocks, clouds, even inside the Karymshina Volcano itself. As the enemy moved up the mountain pass
towards their objective, the angels struck.
A sheet of lightning came down at
the back of the demon’s formation.
Bodies flew into the air as the enemy fell. Next, angels hidden in the clouds hurled
spears, impaling hundreds. But they kept
coming.
Pete stared at the demon approach,
his heart plummeting at the sight of their numbers. The other Hunters had been armed with
technology beyond their understanding, and Pete knew they were mostly a
symbolic presence. Still, he’d take out
as many as he could.
With as much strength as he could
muster, Pete stood and hurled a golden spear at the approaching horde. It flew further than Pete knew he had
strength for and impaled a demon through the chest. He pulled another golden pebble from the
pouch Stenorius had handed him, watched it transform into another spear. Once again he hurled it again at the enemy.
However,
the demon numbers were simply too great and they scampered up the sides of the
mountain. Stenorius grabbed Pete by the
scruff of his neck and threw him into the air where he was caught by another
angel headed away from the battle.
In his head, Pete heard Stenorius
say, “We’re going to collapse the volcano and try to kill as many as we can,
but it’s going to take angelic sacrifice to create the necessary power. Rally your nations and prepare them to
fight.”
The last thing Pete saw before
Karymshina faded into the distance was a bright burst of light as the side of
the mountain caved in. A moment later
the sky lit up in bright orange.
----------
The battles had been long and
fierce, from Taupo in New Zealand, to Kagoshima in Japan, and across the Baekdu
Mountain in China. They were always
preceded by the strange oily rains and the mildew and fungus it created. Mankind rallied desperately to fight off the
advance but seemed like it couldn’t even slow down the demonic horde. However, in the waning days of the campaigns,
the demons just seemed to stop and melt into the Earth. Thunderous earthquakes shook the locations
around the remaining gates, but the supervolcanos nearby didn’t erupt. It appeared humanity had risen to the
challenge, and many dared hope that God Himself had finally interceded.
As the battles died down and the
demons appeared to be gone, the Pope announced he would hold mass in St.
Peter’s Square with an important message God signaled He would be sending.
----------
The Pontiff laid the Papal Tiara on
the stand in his room. He waited
patiently for God to appear. A nearby
stand of candles was the only light.
The Pope kneeled at his alter and
prayed, and he began to hear a triumphal chorus. Soon, bright light from a source he couldn’t
identify lit the Pope’s face. The light
coalesced into a shimmering ball of energy, and the energy took on the shape of
a kindly old man’s face.
“Souls of Man,” the light
intoned. “You have fought bravely. Your reward is at hand.”
The Pope gazed into the light. “Is this the voice of God?”
“I am your Lord,” the voice said
simply.
“What would you have me do Lord?”
“Draw closer,” it beckoned. “I have instructions for you. It is time we finished our work.”
The Pope gingerly approached the
light and reached out his hand. He felt
a gentle tug as the light leaned in close.
Its breath touched the Pope’s cheek but suddenly felt like a scorching
wind. When the Pope drew back, the new
face he gazed into wasn’t what he expected.
“Surprise!” said the demon through
needle-like teeth.
The Vatican exploded in a shower of oily black smoke, and darkness fell across the planet as the remaining gateways opened.
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