J. Gonzalez - They

He stopped, transfixed by them. A sharp gasp commanded his speech, the shock rooted his feet to the floor. “I see you’ve noticed my Bosch,” Samuel Garrison said, taking a step toward Vince. “It’s an original. Dates back to 1505. I paid half a million dollars for it back in ’64. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

Remarkable wasn’t the word Vince would have used. Ghastly would have been more appropriate. The painting Vince was looking at depicted a Madonna and child, the infant suckling at her breasts. In the background, demons cavorted, performing vile rituals and tortures amid the flames of hell. The Madonna was done in a style typical of that period, but the infant… oh, the infant …

Vince couldn’t help himself. He took a step forward to inspect the painting closer.

The infant had been captured as it paused from suckling its mother’s breast. Its face was turned ever so slightly toward the painter, giving the viewer a half-view of its features. The baby was normal in every way except for the faint nubs of horns underneath the skin of its head, just waiting to sprout.

But it wasn’t the horns that made Vince Walters want to scream. It was its face.

It had Vince Walters face.

“The piece is titled appropriately enough,” Samuel Garrison said. Vince could feel the old man take a step behind him, admiring the painting. “It’s called ‘The Coming of the Red Opener.’ ”

Vince glanced quickly at the second painting. It wasn’t the same artist—he was no art aficionado, but he could tell the styles were different—but the subject matter was similar. In this painting, something was coming out of the demon-child… something with tentacles, its suckers ringed with sharp teeth… and just beyond, deep in the center of the demon-child, something else. Something that looked like it had wings.

As he whirled around to inspect the rest of the room he noticed other subtle differences in the sculptures and woodwork that graced it, his panic rising because Brian’s house had never borne such decorations. Chandeliers laced with grinning, leering demonic creatures. Balustrades woven with Pan-like creatures cavorting lustfully. Across the room hung another painting, this one enormous, and even though he was too far away to get a good look at it, its dark colors suggested a similar ominous tone. Another wall was lined with dark cherry wood bookshelves crammed with volumes large and small. Then he noticed the floor and this time he almost jumped back.

Funny how you never noticed things like floors in houses. Especially when one’s mind was on other things, like trying to get to the bottom of two weeks of murder, torture and other dark crimes related to his upbringing. In the past, a very large throw rug had always occupied the center of the den. This time, the rug was gone, revealing pure marble. It was a creamy off-white color and had felt slick beneath his shoes. And it was festooned with two large, graphically rendered designs that took up a large portion of the den floor space. The first design was baphomet symbol; the five pointed inverted pentagram with the devil’s goat in the star. But the second… oh the second…

His mind flashed back to that day at his mother’s home when he’d seen that strange symbol scrawled on the wall. Similar to a pentagram but different, with weird circular shapes that twisted and turned within it. This one was markedly different. The words etched into the marble— M’gwli acht K’tluth K’ryon Hanbi e ’ghorallth liber daemonorum —rocked his brainpan, but the difference was the thing that had been etched into the design, seemingly a part of it. It was leering, winged, somewhat demonic in nature but also very alien looking, as if it had come from an entirely different world.

Vince looked up at the sea of faces, his panic rising beyond hysteria now. “What in the name of God is going on here?”

“What He’s planned!” This from one of the nameless men. He looked solemn, serious. “No more, no less.”

Vince’s eyes darted along the sea of faces, still not believing what was happening. How could this have gone on for so long and he not know anything? Brian and Kimberly Denison… Tracy Harris… he saw her now for who she really was; he saw that long ago lover he’d had in Diana Roberts perfectly in her. A change in hairstyle, a slight gain in weight, a change of clothing and make-up style.

“Of course, God doesn’t remember,” the old man continued. “He might as well not even exist. In fact, he hasn’t existed in many trillions of years. He was rendered old and blind and a babbling, senile idiot long before the creation of the universe set things in motion.”

“I… I don’t understand,” Vince said. “How…” He looked at Tracy, trying to comprehend what was happening.

As if reading his thoughts, Samuel Garrison said, “Diana was the test. We’d been looking for you for a long time, and when the Dark Father gave us Diana, we sent her out in the world to find you. And she did.”

Vince looked at the old man, his eyes widening in horror. “What?”

Samuel Garrison smiled, his face beaming with pride and satisfaction. “Obviously you thought she was a real woman. The Dark Father granted us a Succubus that He knew would draw you out, and it did. And once it found you we called her back… then sent her back out under a slightly different persona. You know this second version as Tracy Harris.”

Succubus? Wasn’t that a female demon? A demonic seducer of men ? Vince looked at Tracy, his face contorted in dawning shock and horror as she smiled seductively at him. “The hardest part was walking away from you and having to give you up for ten years.” She laughed. While her voice still contained the timbre of a normal laugh, there was something behind it that sounded inhuman, like the throaty laugh of a creature from the depths of hell.

“You can’t be serious,” Vince said, tearing his eyes away from Tracy and turned back to Samuel Garrison. His brain commanded his feet to move! Run ! But they wouldn’t budge; they were rooted to the floor.

“All the memories you have been reliving are real , Andrew,” Samuel Garrison said. “Everything that feels like it was a dream really happened. It’s your subconscious bringing them back to the surface; it’s your memory being allowed free reign again.”

“I don’t understand,” Vince said, his voice cracking as he looked at Brian Dennison, tried to see the friend he’d known and loved for eleven years. The man that Vince knew as Brian Dennison was long gone; either that, or the man he was now looking at, the man that now smiled at him with a look of malevolence, had been there the whole time, lying to him.

“Your mother took you from us years ago, Andrew,” Samuel Garrison resumed. “But we knew you would come back to reclaim what’s yours.”

“The Kingdom is yours, Andrew,” Brian said. His eyes were locked on Vince’s; his angular, handsome features were now menacing, yet triumphant. Kimberly beamed beside him. “You are the gateway. Once you’ve fulfilled your duty, you will be rewarded like no other human being on earth.”

Vince’s mind was a rustling vortex. He felt his emotions crumble. A tear slid down his cheek as he saw his memories rush by in a whirlwind; his mother, memories of his upbringing, his years in Pennsylvania, the fights with his mother over her increasingly strict Christian ways ( she knew, she knew the whole time and that’s why she turned so Christian, she knew what I was and she didn’t want to kill me, she wanted to save me, she thought that by saving me it would thwart His plans ), his flight to California, graduate school, his marriage to Laura, his friendship with Brian, whom he thought was his friend. More tears slid down his cheek. His voice cracked. “What’s happening? I still don’t understand.”