Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

He rolled and kicked a leg, like a junkyard dog dreaming of glorious pursuit. His eyes flashed open, locked on mine. His hand lashed out and wrapped itself around my leg. Dark fire —the fire of the Depths —flickered across his arm, and the room seemed suddenly engulfed in their all-consuming flame. It spread outward from his being like the halo of soot from the candles across the room, fluttering like weightless silk as it expanded. Then his lids slammed shut, and the dark fire dissipated. The demon was once more asleep.

I pried my leg from his grasp and retreated to the hall. There was nothing for me in that demon’s room. I wondered if there was anything here for me at all. If I was a fool to have even come. But it was too late for such concerns —I was here. Committed. There was nothing else for me to do but see it through.

As I continued down the hall, I peeked into the rooms I passed, finding some empty, and others flush with three, four, even five demons —most of them foot-soldiers, leathery black and hideous. Some lay still in dream, while others swayed in time with the music, or gestured wildly as they conversed with whoever had a guest-spot in their skim-trip memory. Not a one of them showed any interest in me; occasionally, one would glance my way, but their gazes slid right off of me like I was furniture.

I couldn’t help but wonder what it was like: these fallen angels, these creatures of the Depths, subjecting themselves to human experiences, sensations, emotions, all in the name of feeling closer for a moment to the God that had forsaken them. And I wondered what it must feel like to come down from that, and realize you were once more removed from the light of God’s grace. It must be horrible —a shock akin to their initial fall. It wasn’t hard to see why they —or for that matter, Danny —might get hooked. Why they might keep on coming back.

At the end of the hallway was an empty doorframe crumpled outward at each side, as though something too large to pass through it had decided to force the issue. Beyond the doorway, a staircase led upward. Its banister was of dubious integrity, but the stairs themselves, bowed and scarred though they were, looked broadly feasible. They groaned and popped under my weight, but they held, and so I headed up.

As I climbed the stairs, the strains of music I’d heard below grew louder. Through the scratch and hiss of the weary old vinyl, I heard Patsy’s lament. … I’m crazy for trying, and crazy for crying… and I’m crazy for loving you…

Sounded like her week was going about as well as mine.

The entrance to the second floor was barred by a cave-in just inside the stairwell door; through the starburst pattern in the inlaid safety glass, I saw a pile of rubble four feet high. With luck, I thought, the third floor won’t be similarly afflicted.

It wasn’t. The third floor, like the second, still had a door —a heavy wooden affair inlaid with safety glass —but its top hinge had separated from the doorframe, which left it hanging at a nauseating angle that prevented it from latching. Slowly, carefully, I pushed it open, listening for any indication the movement had been noticed. Apart from a redoubling of the record’s volume, I heard nothing, so I slipped through the doorway, and eased it shut behind me.

The stairwell door opened into a broad room, from which a hallway like the one on the first floor extended. A pile of splintered timber along one wall looked like it had once been some kind of desk, suggesting this had maybe been a nurses’ station. There were candles everywhere —on the floor, atop the rubble of the desk, in the nooks created by the crumbling of the failing walls. An old Victrola cabinet sat in the center of the room, the Cline record spinning beneath its propped lid. Deep gouges furrowed its mahogany frame in sets of four parallel lines each, as though some demon had taken a swipe or two at it in a fit of pique. Apparently skim-trips weren’t all wine-androses after all.

I heard a low, huffing breath to my left, like a city bus laboring up a hill. Close —too close for my tastes.

I spun around. Behind me, hidden from view around the corner as I’d entered the room, was a demon. A massive demon, sitting beneath a jagged hole in the ceiling, through which poured a torrent of desert rain. Given the size of this monster, I couldn’t help but think that hole must be how it had gotten in.

The demon was maybe ten feet across, and standing no doubt would’ve been twice that high. Its skin was the sickly, glistening white of a creature raised belowground; its body was segmented and striated, like that of a grub. Thick horns of yellow-white protruded from its head on either side, stretching for several feet before curving slightly downward and terminating in two nasty-looking points that scratched the rainsoaked walls. Two rows of six eyes each, milky white in the absence of that trademark demon fire, were wet from rain and tears both. The creature sat with its legs hugged to its chest, rocking back and forth like a child. Its ropy neck flickered like the man-demon’s arm had flickered, indicating skim. In one hand it held a wildflower, brilliant purple in the candlelight.

As it turned its gaze toward me, its awful face broke into a smile.

It extended an arm toward me —an arm that nearly spanned the length of the room —and offered me the flower.

And with a voice as terrible as damnation itself, it said, “ Daddy ?”

Something in my meat-suit snapped then, and I tore out of the room at a sprint, leaving a puzzled child-demon in my wake. Animal panic coursed through my veins, obliterating reason. I ran like I had the devil at my heels, and as far as this hunk of meat was concerned, I guess I did. I ran past countless rooms like the ones I’d peeked inside downstairs. I ran past demons large and small, their utterances an awful chorus, egging me on. I ran until I reached the far end of the hall, and then my sock-clad foot came down on something sharp, and I stumbled, sprawling into a room brighter and warmer than those I’d seen so far. It was the mirror image of the one that I’d just fled, but this room was not in ruins. Its ceiling was intact, its walls unmarred, and, improbably, a fire crackled in an earthen fireplace along one wall.

I looked around in puzzlement at my surroundings, my heart still thudding in my chest. Beside me, atop an expensive-looking woven rug, sat a highbacked leather chair and a small side-table in the Mission style. A stained-glass lamp on the side-table cast colored shapes around the room, despite its cord dangling frayed and incomplete a foot from its base. Beneath the lamp was a snifter half-full of amber liquid, around which was wrapped a fat, bejeweled hand. The hand, in turn, led to a cuffed wrist, which led to a suit-jacket of bland gray. The jacket was wrapped tightly around a rotund, sweaty man, whose eyes danced with black fire, and whose mouth was curved into a predatory grin.

“Hiya, Sammy,” said Dumas. “It’s about time you showed up.”

“You —you knew that I was coming?”

Dumas snorted, and took a sip of his drink. “You think an operation like this, one that pisses off the Big Guy and the Adversary both, and we wouldn’t have any goddamn countermeasures ? Please —we’ve been monitoring your progress since before you even reached the canyon. Sweet ride, by the way.”

“If you knew I was coming, why didn’t you kill me hours ago? Why let me get this far?”

“I considered it, of course —but honestly, what would it have accomplished? You would’ve just wound up in another body and come back to pester us all over again, like the little gadfly you are. Besides, I’ve always had a soft spot for the souls I’ve corrupted —you little tykes are so adorable with your eternal suffering and why-me whining and your sad little puppy-dog eyes. So call me sentimental, but I decided this time I’d give you a pass.”