Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

that the detective was being rude. Behind his back, Shaw gripped his arm so that the sleeve of his jacket and shirt pulled up and exposed the blue and green edges of a tattoo on his wrist. Shaw's body art was so unexpected that it chased some of the fear away from my mind.
“What is going on with the closet?” Shaw spoke as casually and amiably as he could manage. He moved into a good-ole-boy persona that made him seem dumber and less threatening than he actually was. He even relaxed enough that his accent thickened and he sounded like he had been born closer to rural Tennessee than Atlanta. Two of the male lackeys were visibly relieved, as if the fact that they were all white, Southern men of a certain income meant that they were granted an automatic immunity from whatever threat Shaw posed. Studying Shaw, I saw that he had no intention of giving any of these people the benefit of the doubt simply because they came from the same social class. But he didn’t mind letting them think otherwise.
“It’s the entrance to the lower sanctum,” one of the black suits replied smoothly, fully expecting Shaw to believe the bullshit he was shoveling. “Many of the church’s most important personal rites of passage are held there.”
“Why was Miss Calden going in there then?” Shaw was still holding to the bubba stereotype, but it wasn’t easy. I could see the façade crack at the edges a bit as suspicion rose to fill the gaps.
“She was granted a ceremony to purify her to begin her journey on the path of God,” the man replied. Shaw glanced at me as if he didn’t believe that lie.
“Is that true, Miss Calden?” He asked me.
“More or less,” I replied nervously. What was I supposed to say? With Ryerson standing there glaring daggers at me, I couldn’t very well tell the detective the truth. Besides which, I had a geas upon me that prohibited me from talking about what was going on and compelled me to murder Ryerson at the next possible moment. It was a bad idea to let the cops know that you had a problem with someone right before you intended to kill them. It made them suspicious when the bodies were found. And there was no doubt in my mind that I had to kill Ryerson, geas or no. Whatever that thing was, it was evil and it would continue to make my life a misery until it was sent back to whatever pit of Hell it had been spawned from.
“I’d like to have a look at it if you don’t mind.” Shaw said it as an order. But Ryerson shook his head defiantly.
“No. The lower sanctum is for initiates only. If you want to see it, you’ll have to bring a warrant,” he replied coldly.
“I don’t need a warrant for probable cause,” Shaw snapped. He tried to push past Ryerson to get a better look at the closet, but one of his lackeys got in the way. Shaw stiffened irritably, but the fellow gave him a sheepish grin and shook his head.
“You don’t have probable cause,” the man said politely. “We were doing nothing wrong.”
“I came in here and saw you dragging Miss Calden into that closet in a manner that was clearly against her will. That is probable cause,” Shaw growled, stepping aggressively into the man’s space. He had dropped the bubba routine to emphasize the point that he wasn’t fooling around. “Now step aside so I can look around. If you’re telling me the truth then you don’t have to see or hear from me again.”
“You can stand outside the entrance, but we would appreciate it if you would refrain from going into our sanctum,” Ryerson said, interrupting the other man’s snarl. “You have not been initiated into our faith, and so your presence in our holy place will render it unclean. The process of purification is complicated and time consuming.”
“Fine,” Shaw growled, glaring at the man standing in his way. “Do you mind?”
“Mr. Dorman, please stand aside and allow the officer to peer into our sanctum,” Ryerson growled. “He can do no harm from this side.”
Dorman’s face stiffened with rage, but he did what he was told. I wanted to scream at Shaw to stop, to come away with me and stay out of this place forever. Ryerson was watching him like he was planning something sinister. As Shaw stepped past the threshold of the small space containing the hole, I saw Ryerson lift his hands to waist level and touch his fingertips together. They danced against each other in an intricate pattern, moving too fast for me to make out what it was that the man was doing.
Suddenly, the room was swept with a hot, unnatural breeze that carried the rotting stink of sulfur with it. The shimmering air over the hole grew still, and I saw nothing of the evil I had glimpsed before. I could still sense it though. Even from where I stood near the door, I could feel it lurking in the shadows of the deep hole.
I waited to hear Shaw scream as he was suddenly snatched by some hidden beast to be eaten or torn to shreds. He pulled a penlight from the pocket from the inside of his suit and shined the light into the darkness. When he saw nothing, he returned from the edge of the abyss with a troubled look on his face but gave no other sign of what he had seen. Ryerson made a low noise in his throat, and I met his eyes and found wickedness combined with evil intent sadistically curling his lips.
“I know you.” Ryerson’s voice violated the privacy of my mind to taunt me without the detective’s knowledge. “I know what you are, and I know how to end you. Your time on this earth is coming to an end.”
This seemed to be my week for new experiences. First, I discover that faeries exist and they’re as crazy as the stories say they are, then my brain melts because of a magic spell, and now I’m facing off against a creepy mind talker with a god complex. I was rapidly reaching the point where it’s easier to simply accept the new reality and deal with it than it is to pretend that there was a logical explanation for it. I was also becoming increasingly annoyed with it all.
“Bite me,” I growled at Ryerson so that Shaw couldn’t hear.
“Tell me, do immortals have souls? Or are you some ungodly thing without a place in the universe?”
This is why it’s stupid to talk to anything evil. They are sinister and crafty creatures that will do anything they can to torment you for fun. I had given the theological implications of my condition a great deal of thought in the past, but had stopped centuries ago when I could come to no conclusion about whether I possessed a soul and realized that there was nothing I could do about it if I didn’t. I had decided to be me, for better or for worse and let the metaphysical work itself out. Ryerson could throw the question in my face all he wanted, but he would get little to no reaction from me. I simply shrugged and gave him a bland look. I didn’t make it this far in life with the mental condition I am in by doing stupid things like arguing the existence of my soul.
“Alright Reverend, I’ve seen enough,” Shaw said, stepping away from the hole and returning to the office.
“Did you find anything out of place?” Ryerson smiled broadly and offered his hand to shake.
“No, everything looks to be in order.” Shaw stared at Ryerson’s hand as if he thought it might bite him, and then clasped it firmly. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“You’re simply doing your job.” Ryerson was being reasonable. Things were going his way. “I understand that you have to follow procedure and all that. Let me know if there’s anything else you need, Detective…”
“Philip Shaw.” Shaw frowned and tried to pull his hand free. Ryerson held onto it like an over eager date as his grin turned maniacal. I flinched with dismay and fought to keep from screaming. By giving his name, Shaw had unwittingly given the other man a near all access pass to his mind, body, and soul. Luckily, it is not common practice for people to exchange their middle names, so that last frail sound held the enemy at bay. I wanted to cuss a blue streak at the cop, calling him a fool and worse.
The mistake wasn’t really his fault, no matter how stupid it was. In the old days, the name by which your mother called you was the one thing that truly belonged to you. It was believed that those precious syllables were a map of your soul, and in the wrong hands, it could be used to manipulate your thoughts and actions. It was even said that particularly powerful witches and necromancers could use a name to condemn a man to the Underworld or use it to enslave him. To help protect against such wretched fates, ceremonies and rites of passage had been developed to shield a person’s true name and grant them a new one. It is through this practice that mankind’s fondness for nicknames and middle names developed. It made it harder for your enemies to get you where it truly mattered. I had grown to believe that the power associated with names were nothing more than quaint traditions born of silly superstitions. Now I was grateful that I could not remember the last time I used my true name, leaving one piece of me that Ryerson could not touch.
“Have a good evening,” Shaw said in a tone that implied that Ryerson might not have many good evenings left to him. Sadly, I didn’t think that Shaw would be the one who came out on top if the two went toe to toe. Shaw had to pry his hand out of Ryerson’s iron grip with an effort that wasn’t pretty. Unnerved, he took me firmly by the arm and hustled me out of the office, moving as fast as he could without running.
There a sense of something hot and angry pressing against my back, as if something hungry was clinging to my shoulders. I glanced back and found that Ryerson’s polite smile had twisted into a grotesque grin as he brought his fingers together in front of his lips. His lackeys were gathered around him in a semi-circle leering at us in triumph. My skin ran hot with painful pinpricks, like a swarm of burning mosquitoes was feasting on my blood. Something bad was forming in the growing space between us and them, and I wanted to be nowhere near here when it finally showed itself.
“Run!” I gasped.
“What?” Shaw’s voice was thin with growing panic he didn’t understand. His blue eyes were wide with fear so that the whites showed all around the irises.
“Run!” I didn’t wait to see if