Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

The angel struck out with his free hand —a chopping blow to Psoglav’s throat. An awful gargling sound, and Psoglav fell silent. The angel spoke then, its words in the same tongue as the demon it questioned, but where the latter’s words sounded horrid and perverse, the former’s were melodic and wellmodulated —serenity itself.

Then, when Psoglav failed to answer, instead spitting at his captor’s feet, the angel ripped off Psoglav’s arm, which kind of put a damper on the Zen of the moment.

Psoglav roared in agony. I’m talking shook-thefucking-walls roared. I thought my ears were going to bleed. Thought the place was going to come down around me. But the angel didn’t even flinch. Instead, he smacked Psoglav across the face with his own severed arm, spewing gore across the cavern wall, and asked his question again.

Psoglav, now free of the angel’s wrist-hold on account of the wrist the angel was holding being no longer attached to him, picked himself up off the floor and launched himself at the angel —marshalling every ounce of strength and speed he had —his iron teeth bared for attack. If the angel had a face, I might’ve thought Psoglav aimed to bite it off.

But he never got the chance.

The fastest goddamn demon I’ve ever seen, and he didn’t even come close.

Oh, sure, he started well enough, rocketing off the ground faster than my human eyes could follow. But a funny thing happened on the way to biting his Chosen brother. Two things, actually. The first was that Psoglav slowed to a halt in mid-air, his snapping maw scant inches from its intended target. The second was that the angel, I don’t know, expanded —growing bigger, taller, brighter —until he seemed less a person than a tiny, white-hot sun.

It happened so fast, I nearly failed to react. Nearly. But when the corona created by the angel-sphere engulfed Psoglav and then collapsed back in on itself, I hit the floor, hiding behind my stalagamabob and burying my face in the dirt.

Then the angel loosed God’s wrath, which set the very air around me ablaze, its blinding white light searing my retinas despite their being protected by closed lids and rock and dirt, while my ears rang with the most beautiful and terrible sound I’d ever heard. Once upon a time, a girl with cause to know told me it sounded like a chorus of children, painful in its beauty, and that strikes me as close to right as anything I could come up with. But even that can’t do it justice, because the whole of human experience has yet to invent the words to describe such agony, such ecstasy —and given the animal terror with which I trembled upon hearing it, I pray they never will.

I pray they’ll never have to.

I pray this infant war between heaven and hell dies in childbirth.

Because the alternative is too frightening to imagine.

I’ve no idea how long I spent, curled fetal behind that stone outcrop and weeping like a child, but when I came to my senses, I was alone. Aside from the charred black husk I assumed was once the demon Psoglav, the cave was empty —deserted —and most of the torches had burned out. All was still and quiet —not just in the cave, but in the canyon beyond as well. After the hue and cry of war, I felt as though I’d been struck deaf, but what few torches remained lit cracked and popped as they burned through the last of their accelerant, and as I found my feet and staggered along the cavern’s gentle upslope, my shambling gait echoed off the limestone walls.

I walked without thought, without fear of discovery, with no intention but to be free of this subterranean hell and to feel fresh air upon my face. I suppose if I had the energy, I would have wondered who’d won, and whether I’d be greeted by a pissed-off Dumas or a legion of wrathful angels upon surfacing. I’d have wondered if it was day or night, or whether I’d been out an hour or twenty-four of them —the latter of which would leave me right screwed with regard to the bug-monster’s deadline.

But I didn’t wonder any of those things. I was too tired. Too sore. Too bruised and bloodied to even care. And God help me for saying so, but as much as my every movement hurt —as much as I wondered where I’d find the strength to even take another step —the momentary absolution from caring bestowed upon me by my pain was bliss.

For maybe the first time since I shuffled off the mortal coil, I felt free.

You know the problem with self-delusion? It doesn’t matter if your escape-hatch from reality is drug or drink or —in my case —exhaustion born of repeated brutal ass-whuppings; whatever the method, the comedown is a bitch. It’s a lesson I’ve been privy to plenty in my life, but damn if this particular comedown didn’t blindside me all the same.

Maybe if I’d stuck with the plan —get topside, feel the wind in my face —it could’ve been avoided. Though looking back at how it all shook out, sticking to the plan would’ve likely led to nothing more than two days spent wandering in the desert before Big ’n’ Buggy came to get me. But speculating now’s irrelevant. My plan went out the window the moment I saw the soul.

It was the flicker I was aware of first: a pale graywhite playing across the right-hand limestone wall just up ahead, like moonlight reflected off of water. As I approached, I realized the light was coming from across the hall, spilling through the doorway left empty by dint of someone or something tearing the heavy iron door that once sat there clean off its hinges.

The doorway, I realized, led to Psoglav’s little machine shop —the withered, pitch-black heart of Dumas’s whole operation. And that light was someone’s soul, left forgotten by the so-called good guys and the bad guys both.

But not by me.

I suppose on some level I must’ve known it was foolish of me to care. That even if I could lay the soul inside to rest, it was doomed to an eternity of torment —and Danny’s failed Gio-for-Varela bait-and-switch sure as hell taught me the point was moot, since my Deliverants wouldn’t accept it anyways. Still, I couldn’t just leave it there. A damned soul is still a soul; it deserved better than to be cast aside like so much garbage.

Inside, the room was dark and quiet. The soul was still seated in the spindle of the massive lathe, and cast long shadows of the nightmare machinery on which it sat. The diesel engine that hung above the work surface was cold and quiet, and reeked of motor oil and overuse. Its scent did little to mask the pervasive stench of sulfur from the cistern in the corner, and from the copper pipes that snaked away from it, dripping rotten-egg water in plinks and plunks onto the lathe at random intervals.

As I approached the soul, I noticed its surface was crosshatched with scratches, and around it, the work surface was littered with tiny, glimmering shards. A fine layer of vaguely iridescent dust blanketed the lathe, glinting dully in the grime-caked nooks and crannies of the machine’s many knobs and gears. Too much dust to’ve been kicked up by this one soul. A shudder ran along my borrowed spine as I wondered how many tiny human moments had been reduced to dust at the hands of that fucking monster and his machine. I wondered if those souls could feel the pain of those moments’ absence as they whiled away forever in the depths of hell.

I felt a sudden urge to destroy the implement that wreaked this havoc. It wasn’t enough that Psoglav had been reduced to cinder; I needed to ensure his subtle blade never parted memory from soul again. But as I cast about for it, I realized it was nowhere to be found. Not atop the lathe. Not on the floor around it. Not in the many pockets and loops that graced Psoglav’s discarded apron.

It was then I realized I was not alone.