James Anderson - The Altar

But his mother didn’t look all right. She was pale and gray-looking. His hands were clammy and she was having great trouble breathing.

“Mom, remember how they told you to breathe?”

“Yeah, Todd. I do.”

“Well you’re not breathing that way, Mom. It’s not sounding the same. You’re gasping for air. You’re not breathing it.”

“Ok, Todd. You’ve got to help me. You know how Dad would count along with me when I practiced?”

“Yeah.”

“Well you’ve got to do that now too.”

“Ok.”

“And one other thing. When the baby comes, I’m going to need you to help take her out.”

“Mom, I can’t deliver a baby. Why can’t he do it?”

“Todd, do you really want a demon delivering your little sister? You don’t want that, do you?”

“But I don’t know what to do.”

“Have faith. You will know what to do. Just do your best.”

Her breathing started again, erratically this time too.

“Slow down, Mom,” he said. “Just listen to me and follow along.”

He breathed the way he’d seen his mother doing when she was practicing, and his dad had been helping. He had listened to these breathing lessons for the last three months until he literally knew them by heart. His Mom and Dad had practiced them in the next room, and he’d thought it was fun to listen in at first. After awhile, though, it had become boring. Todd had learned it better that either of his parents and had used it on himself late at night when he was having trouble sleeping. It was ironic that he was so good at this and his parents were the ones who took the lessons.

His mother looked at him and forced a smile through her pain and he saw that she was watching him. Already her breathing was getting stronger.

Erik had never worked so hard in his life. His body couldn’t die here in this place, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t feel pain. He had Dovecrest scratched and dug at the sand around the pit for what seemed like hours. All they had to use were their bare hands. The sand scraped painfully and lodged under their nails until their fingers bled.

“This is not any fun.” Erik said. “What I wouldn’t give for a shovel.”

“I’d settle for a teaspoon,” the Indian replied.

Still, they appeared to be making progress. The hole slowly filled in around them, allowing them to stand on the new sand as it fell in. Just a little more and Erik knew he would be able to stand on Dovecrest’s back and reach the edge of the pit. Then he could push in more sand from the top with his feet until he could reach in and pull his friend out.

“What time do you think it is?” Erik asked.

“I don’t think this place has time. Though if we were still back home I’d guess it would be the middle of the night.”

“My watch stopped working when we got here.”

“There’d be no way to keep time here anyway. There’s no sun. No moon or stars either.”

Time did seem to stand still here, he thought. It was never light or dark-everything was simply black and illuminated by an unchanging reddish glow. He wondered if that was how the mythology of the black and red colors of evil came about.

“No days of the week here,” Erik said. “No Mondays. That’s probably the only good thing about this place.”

“Definitely the only thing. If I never see another grain of sand in my life it will be too soon.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to the beach again.”

They continued the small talk for some time, mostly to keep their minds off their misery.

“So,” Erik asked, “How do-or did-your people view heaven and hell?”

Dovecrest laughed. “That’s a very complicated question. I don’t know if I have a simple answer.”

“There is no simple answer to anything, is there? That’s why God made the world so complex. So we’d have things to worry about.”

“In that respect, the world of my people probably is simpler than your world. My people-and most of the tribes of this land-never thought of themselves as powerful people, as conquerors. My people were simple. They lived off the land and prayed very simple prayers. For a good harvest. For a mild winter. For plentiful shell fishing. For health and fertility. We consider ourselves to be humble, pitiful people whose lives depend upon the creator’s mercy and bounty.”

“That sounds like a very Christian way of life.”

“That depends. I know of your history. Your crusaders thought of themselves as Christians.”

“Good point. But Christ preached humility. The meek shall inherit the earth.”

“Yes. And so they shall.”

“So what is your concept of hell?”

“Since my people are God’s people, they would not go to hell.”

“Yet you believe in demons.”

“Yes, demons spawned by the evil one.” Dovecrest laughed. “Do you know: the greatest demon that the tribes spoke of most was the white man. The ‘white devil’.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

“No, you probably can’t understand that. But I appreciate the attempt.”

The Indian was right. He had no idea what it must have been like. He felt suddenly ashamed of himself and of his race. Even if he hadn’t been personally involved, he was ashamed of what had happened just as a fellow member of the human race.

They were getting very close now. As they dug and filled in the hole, the outer rim widened, making the angle less steep. Erik figured that they’d soon be able to crawl their way out.

“Looks like we’re almost free of this pit,” he said. “What’s our plan once we get out?”

Dovecrest stopped digging and looked at him directly. “My friend,” he said. “I have absolutely no idea.”

The demon sat back on its haunches and watched, fascinated by this whole birthing process. The ritual it had begun had been interrupted by the two intruders, but that was no matter. It could finish the ritual later, as soon as the baby was born. It wouldn’t work to complete it until the victim was ready, so it would be better to wait. This baby didn’t look like it was in any great hurry to be born. Actually, given the details of where it was about to begin its life, the decision to come late was a rather good one for the baby’s sake.

The baby would sure have a quick entry and exit from the world. It would take its innocence immediately, before it had the chance to become corrupted by earthly sin. Taking a blameless, innocent soul was always a victory, and he felt about to be victorious now. The blood of an innocent was sure to sharpen any spell and take it to the limits. The trouble was, there weren’t many innocents left in the world. His colleagues on the sin team had been victims of their own success. Now the pure material, needed for only the most powerful spells, was very scarce, almost extinct.

But this one would do very nicely. It might even bring her up to the altar stone itself and kill her. It could do it right here, of course, but something about returning to the original scene just seemed so damned poetic.

He wasn’t an expert on human births by any means, but this one seemed to be going particularly slow. And he was getting impatient. He could remove the child forcibly-but that would end the innocence. But if something was wrong and the baby killed her mother, that would destroy the innocence as well. He’d just have to be patient and watch very closely, he thought. It wouldn’t be unlike the mother to try to trick him again. Of course she was probably in too much pain and under too much stress to even think of a plan, let alone use it. But still, something told him not to ever trust this woman.

He watched as the woman screamed in pain and tried to control her agony with some sort of regular breathing method, which her son was coaxing her through. It was almost comical. He wondered why these people feared hell at all-there seemed to already be so much pain and suffering on the earth that there really didn’t need to be a hell, in its humble opinion. No, take that back, it thought. Humility was definitely not one of its trademarks. And neither was patience, for that matter.