Christopher Moore - Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“We need to go. Now.”

“You don’t think that did it?”

“Did you hear anything hit bottom?”

“No,” I said.

“Neither did I,” she said. “We had better get going.”

We’d left the water skins at the top of the plateau and Joy wanted to grab some from the kitchen but I dragged her toward the front entrance by the collar. “We need to get as far away from here as we can. Dying of thirst is the least of my worries.” Once we were in the main area of the fortress there was enough light to negotiate the hallways without a lamp, which was good, because I wouldn’t let Joy stop to light one. As we rounded the stairway to the third level Joy jerked me back, almost off my feet, and I turned around as mad as a cat.

“What? Let’s get out of here!” I screamed at her.

“No, this is the last level with windows. I’m not going through the front door not knowing if that thing is outside it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it would take a man on a fast horse a half hour to make it around from the other side.”

“But what if it didn’t fall all the way? What if it climbed back up?”

“That would take hours. Come on, Joy. We could be miles away from here by the time he gets here from the other side.”

“No!” She swept my feet out from under me and I landed flat on my back on the stone floor. By the time I was on my feet again she had run through the front chamber and was hanging out the window. As I approached her she held her finger to her lips. “It’s down there, waiting.”

I pulled her aside and looked down. Sure enough, the beast was looming in front of the iron door, waiting to grab the edge in its claws and rip it open as soon as we threw the bolts.

“Maybe it can’t get in,” I whispered. “It couldn’t get through the other iron door.”

“You didn’t understand the symbols all over that room, did you?”

I shook my head.

“They were containment symbols—to contain a djinn, or a demon. The front door doesn’t have any on it. It won’t hold him back.”

“So why isn’t he coming in?”

“Why chase us when we will come right to him?”

Just then the monster looked up and I threw myself back from the window.

“I don’t think he saw me,” I whispered, spraying Joy with spit.

Then the monster began to whistle. It was a happy tune, lighthearted, something like you might whistle while you were polishing the bleached skull of your latest victim. “I’m not stalking anyone or anything,” the monster said, much louder than would have been required had he been talking to himself. “Nope, not me. Just standing here for a second. Oh well, no one is here, I guess I’ll be on my way.” He began to whistle again and we could hear footsteps getting quieter along with the whistling. They weren’t moving away, they were just getting quieter. Joy and I looked out the window to see the huge beast doing an exaggerated pantomime of walking, just as his whistle fizzled.

“What?” I shouted down, angry now. “Did you think we wouldn’t look?”

The monster shrugged. “It was worth a try. I figured I wasn’t dealing with a genius when you opened the door in the first place.”

“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Joy chanted behind me.

“He said he doesn’t think you’re very smart.”

“Tell him that I’m not the one who has spent all these years locked in the dark playing with myself.”

I pulled back from the window and looked at Joy. “Do you think he could fit though this window?”

She eyed the window. “Yes.”

“Then I’m not going to tell him. It might make him angry.”

Joy pushed me aside, stepped up on the windowsill, turned around and faced me, then pulled up her robe and peed backward out the window. Her balance was amazing. From the growling below, I gathered that her accuracy wasn’t bad either. She finished and jumped down. I looked out the window at the monster, who was shaking urine from its ears like a wet dog.

“Sorry,” I said, “language problem. I didn’t know how to translate.”

The monster growled and the muscles in its shoulders tensed beneath the scales, then it let loose with a punch that sent its fist completely through the iron skin of the door.

“Run,” Joy said.

“Where?”

“The passage to the cliff.”

“You cut the ladder.”

“Just run.” She pulled me along behind her, guiding us through the dark as she had before. “Duck,” she shouted, just a second after I realized that we’d entered the smaller passageway by using the sensitive stone-ceiling-sensing nerves in my forehead. We made it halfway down the passageway to the cliff when I heard the monster hit and curse.

There was a pause, then a horrible grinding noise so intense that we had to shield our ears from the assault. Then came the smell of burning flesh.

Dawn broke just as Joshua and Balthasar rode into the canyon entrance to the fortress.

“How about now?” Joshua asked. “Do you feel the demon now?”

Balthasar shook his head balefully. “We’re too late.” He pointed to where the great round door had once stood. Now it was a pile of bent and broken pieces hanging on what was left of the huge hinges.

“What in the name of Satan have you done?” Joshua said. He jumped off his horse and ran into the fortress, leaving the old man to follow as best he could.

The noise in the narrow passageway was so intense that I cut pieces of cloth from my sleeves with Joy’s dagger and stuffed them in our ears. Then I lit one of the fire sticks to see what the monster was doing. Joy and I stood there, gaped-jawed, watching as the beast worried away at the stone of the passage, his claws moving in a blur of speed, throwing smoke and dust and stone shards into the air as he went, his scales burning from the friction and growing back as fast as they burned away. He hadn’t come far, perhaps five feet toward us, but eventually he would widen the passage enough and pull us out like a badger digging termites out of the nest. I could see now how the fortress had been built without tool marks. The creature moved so quickly—literally wearing away the walls with his claws and scales—that the stone was polished as it was cut.

We had already made two ascents up what was left of the ladder to the top of the plateau, only to have the monster come around and chase us back down it before we could get to the road. The second time he pulled the ladder up, then returned to the interior of the fortress to resume his hellish digging.

“I’ll jump before I’ll let that thing get me,” I said to Joy.

She looked over the edge of the cliff into the endless darkness below. “You do that,” she said. “Let me know how it goes.”

“I will, but first I’ll pray.” And I did. I prayed so hard that beads of sweat popped out on my forehead and ran over my tightly closed eyes. I prayed so hard that even the constant screeching of the monster’s scales against the stone was drowned out. For a moment there, I was sure that it was just me and God. As was his habit with me, God remained quiet, and I suddenly realized how frustrated Joshua must have been, asking always for a path to follow, a course of action, and being answered by nothing but silence.

When I opened my eyes again dawn had broken over the cliff and light was streaming into the passageway. By full daylight the demon was even scarier. There was blood and gore all over him from the massacre of the girls, and even as he relentlessly wore away at the stone, flies buzzed around him, but as each tried to light on him it died instantly and fell to the floor. The stench of rotting flesh and burning scales was almost overwhelming, and that alone nearly sent me over the side of the cliff. The beast was only three or four cubits out of reach from us, and every few minutes he would rear back, then throw his claw forward to try and grab at us.