But the point really is: Now that journey is over. There are no more roads to take. No more inventions to see. We have arrived back at the pages where we met; or rather at the device that first made such pages. It’s such a tight little circle in the end.
And I’m trapped in it. You’re not.
So go. Go on, while you can, having seen more perhaps than you expected to see.
And as you are leaving, tear these pages out and toss them into a little bonfire you’ve made. Then get about your business and forget me.
I’m trying hard to be generous here. But it’s difficult. You’ve rejected every offer I’ve made to you. It doesn’t matter how much I open up my heart and soul to you; it’s never been enough to satisfy you. More, more, you always want more. There’s only one other person in my life who’s hurt me as profoundly as you’ve hurt me, and that’s Quitoon. You’ve changed me so I can hardly even recognize myself. There was kindness in me once, and boundless love. But it’s all gone now, gone forever. You killed every particle of joy that was in me, every scrap of hope and forgiveness, gone, all gone.
Yet, here I am, somehow finding it in me, the Devil alone knows how, to reach out from these anguished pages in one last desperate attempt to try to touch your heart.
The fireworks are over. There’s nothing more to see. You may as well move on. Find yourself some new victim to corrupt, the way you’ve corrupted me. No, no, I take that back. You weren’t to know how much it has hurt me, how much deeper my bitterness is, to be made to walk again the sad roads I walked to get here, and to confess the feelings that moved through me as I moved through the world.
My journey ended in the prison from which I speak. I’ve given you plenty of stories to tell, should the occasion come up when it seemed appropriate to tell. Ah, the tales of damned souls and darkness incarnate.
But now, truly, there’s nothing left. So get it over with, will you? I have no desire to do harm to you, but if you keep playing around with me I won’t be so ready to end your life with a simple slash of my knife across your jugular. Oh no. I’ll cut you first. I’ll slice off your eyelids to start with, so you won’t be able to close them against the sight of my knife cutting and cutting.
The largest number of cuts I ever made on a human body before its owner succumbed was two thousand and nine: that was a woman. The largest number I ever made on a man before he died was one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three. It’s hard to judge how many cuts it would take to bring you down. What I do know is that you’ll be begging me to kill you off, offering me anything—the souls of your loved ones—anything, anything, you’ll say, only kill me quickly. Give me oblivion, you’ll beg, I don’t care. Anything, so I don’t have to see your entrails, purple, veiny, and shiny wet, appearing from the little slices I made in your lower belly. It’s a common mistake people make, thinking that once their guts have unraveled around your feet that the happy prospect of death is in sight. That happens to be true, even with a weak specimen of your kind. I murdered two Popes, both of whom were cretinous from the diseases their depravities had given them (but who were still pronouncing dogmas for the Holy Mother Church and its believers), and each took an inordinately long time to die, for all their frailty.
Are you truly prepared to suffer like that for want of a flame?
There’s nothing, my friend, left to gain by reading one more word.
And yet you read.
What am I to do? I thought you still had some life to live when we were finished with this book. I thought you had people out there who loved you, who would mourn you if I took your life. But apparently that isn’t the case. Am I right? You’d prefer to go on living this half-life with me for a few more pages and then pay the fatal price.
Have I understood correctly? You could step off the ghost-train even now, if you chose to. Think hard. The midnight hour approaches. I don’t care if you’re reading this at eight in the morning on your way to work, or at noon, lying on a sun-soaked beach. It’s still much, much later than you think, and darker than it seems.
But you’re unmoved by my desire to be merciful. Even though it’s getting later and later, you don’t care. Is there some profound metaphysical reason for this? Or are you just more stupid than I thought?
The only profound thing I hear is the silence.
I’m obliged to answer my own questions, in the absence of any reply from you. And I choose . . .
Stupidity.
You’re just willful and stupid.
All right, so much for my gift of mercy. I won’t waste my time with any further gestures of compassion. Just don’t blame me when you’re watching the contents of your bladder spurting into the air, or when you are invited to chew on one of your kidneys, while I dig out the other.
You can’t imagine the sounds you’ll make. When you’re being really hurt by somebody like me, who knows what they’re doing, you’ll make such noises you’ll scarcely believe it’s your own throat that is producing them. Some people become shrill and squeal like pigs being ineptly slaughtered. Others sound like animals fighting, like rabid dogs giving throat to guttural growls and ear-tearing howls.
It’ll be interesting to find out what kind of animal you sound like, once the deep knife-work starts.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Your kind like stories, don’t they? You live for them. And you—my noxious, stubborn, suicidal friend—are apparently ready to die just so you can find out what happens when the siege of the Gutenberg house comes to an end.
Doesn’t it sound a little absurd when you hear it put like that?
What are you hoping to find? Is it that you’re looking for a story that will have you in it? Is that it?
Oh Lord, it is, isn’t it? And all this time you’ve been hoping that when you found that book you’d have a clue as to why you were born. And why you’ll die.
This is that book, as far as you’re concerned.
Am I right? After all, you’re in these pages too. Without you these words would be black marks on white paper, closed up in the dark. I’d been locked up in solitary, talking to myself, probably saying the same things over and over: Burn this book. Burn this book. Burn this book.
But as soon as you opened the book, my madness passed away.
Visions rose up out of the woven pages, like spirits conjured by an invocation, fueled both by the need to be heard that is felt by all confessors, even humble stuff such as my own, plus your own undeniable appetite for things uncanny and heretical.
Enjoy them while you can. You know the price you’re paying for them.
Back to the Gutenberg workshop, and then, we’ll see what last visions I can find for you here where the air carried the sinus-pricking stench of ink.
There comes a time in any battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell when the number of soldiers becomes so great it’s no longer possible for reality as it is perceived by Humankind to bear the weight of the maelstrom raging in its midst. The facade of reality cracks, and however hard Humankind has labored not to see what is all around them, their effort is no longer the equal of the task. The truth will be heard, however strident. The truth will be seen, however raw.
The first sign that this Moment of Truth had arrived was a sudden eruption of cries from the street. Entreaties from the citizens of Mainz—men and women, infants and Methuselahs—all apparently saw the veil that had concealed the battle snatched away at the same moment, and hysteria instantly ensued. I was glad to be inside the workshop at that time, even if I did have his grotesque Excellency, the Archbishop, along with Gutenberg and his workmen for company.
The instant that the cacophony from the street started up, Gutenberg, the soft-voiced genius, departed, and Gutenberg, the loving husband and friend, took his place.
“I think we have trouble,” he said. “Hannah? Hannah! Are you all right? ” He turned to his workmen. “If any of you fear for your own souls or those of your families, I urge you to go now, and quickly, before this gets any worse.”
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“There’s no riot going on out there,” the Archbishop said to the men in the workshop, some of whom were already untying their ink-stained aprons. “You have absolutely no need to fear for the safety of your wives and children.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“I have my sources,” the Archbishop replied. His smugness nauseated me. I dearly wanted to forsake my impersonation of a man at that moment and unleash Jakabok Botch, the demon of the Ninth Circle. I might have done so, too, had it not been for the fact that Hannah’s voice answered her husband’s call at that moment.
“Johannes! Help me!”
She came up into the workshop from a direction other than the one the Archbishop, Gutenberg, and I had used earlier, through a small doorway at the far end of the room.
“Johannes! Johannes! Oh Lord!”
“I’m here, wife,” Gutenberg said, starting towards his breathless and frantic spouse.
Rather than being relieved of her terror by laying eyes on her husband, Hannah’s state grew still more desperate.
“We’re damned, Johannes!”
“No, my dear. This is a God-fearing house.”
“Johannes, think! If there are demons here, then it’s because of this!”
She went to the nearest of the tables laid out with letters, and using her not inconsiderable bulk to aid her natural strength she overturned the table, scattering the trays and their meticulously arranged alphabet over the floor.
“Hannah, stop!” Gutenberg yelled.
“It’s the Demon’s work, Johannes!” she said to him, her face still wet with tears. “I have to destroy it or we’ll all be carried off to Hell.”
“Who put that foolish notion in your head?” Gutenberg said.
“I did,” a voice I knew said.
And who should come up the shadowy staircase that Hannah had used but Quitoon, his demonic features presently hidden by the hood he was wearing.
“Why have you been scaring to my wife?” Gutenberg said.
“She’s always been easily frightened.”
“I’m not imaging this!” Hannah yelled, seizing hold of another table where the numbers, blank spaces, and punctuation were arrayed. This she overthrew with as much ease as she had the first table.
“I’m afraid she’s overwrought,” Quitoon allowed, striding from the door to intercept Gutenberg, who was still softly calling to his wife as he made his way towards her.
“Hannah . . . dearest one . . . please don’t cry . . . You know how I hate to see you cry.”
Quitoon threw back his hood, showing one and all his demonic features. Nobody remarked upon it. Why would they, when he and his like were visible from the window, locked in bitter battle with their angelic counterparts.
In truth, there were members of legions on either side that I had never seen before, even in manuscripts illuminated by monks who painted forms of angels and demons that were entirely new.
Massive creatures, some winged, some not, but all clearly bred, raised, and trained to do exactly what they were doing: make war. Even as I watched, one of the war-demons, caught in a fierce struggle with an angel, seized its enemy’s head in both hands and simply crushed it like a huge egg. There was no blood in the divine anatomy of the thing. Just light, which erupted from its broken skull in all directions.
Now the war-demon turned, and looked through the window into the workshop. Even for one such as myself, who’d seen plenty of freakish forms of enemy wandering in the garbage of the Ninth Circle, this demon was of particular vileness. Its eyes were the size of oranges and bulged from red-raw folds of tender flesh. Its gaping mouth was a tunnel lined with needle teeth, from which a black serpentine tongue emerged, weaving back and forth as it licked the glass. Its huge hooked claws, dripping with the last of the slaughtered angel’s light, scraped at the glass.
Gutenberg’s workmen could keep their terror under control no longer. Some fell to their knees, offering up prayers to heaven; others sought out weapons amongst the tools they used to discipline the press when it was willful.
But neither prayers nor weapons did anything to avert the creature’s gaze, or to drive it from the window. It pressed its face to the imperfect glass, releasing a shrill sound that made the window vibrate. Then the glass cracked and abruptly shattered, spitting shards into the workshop. Several of the pieces of glass, smeared by the demon’s spittle, were now under its control, and flew with unerring accuracy to shed blood in the workshop. One of the long pieces of glass drove itself into the eye of the bald workman, another two slit the throats of both the men who’d been setting the type. I’d seen so many death scenes over the years that I was beyond feeling any emotion at the sight of this. But for the human witnesses it was an invasion of horrors into a place they had been happy, and the violation made them unleash cries of grief and frustrated rage. One of the men who was still unhurt went to help the first of the demon’s victims, the one stabbed through his eye. Ignoring any danger that the proximity of the murderer presented, the unharmed man went down on his knees and cradled his wounded companion’s head in his lap. As he did so he quietly recited a simple prayer, which the dying man, his body a mass of tics and spasms, knew and attempted to match his friend’s recitation. The tender sadness of the scene clearly revolted the demon, who used his bulging gaze to examine each of the glass shards that his will had arrested in midflight, until he had selected one which was neither the longer nor the largest but had the appearance of strength about its shape.
He used his will to turn its point towards the ceiling, and it rose obediently. It turned as it ascended, so that its sharpest end pointed downwards. I knew what was coming next, and I wanted to be a part of it. The shard was directly above the man who had knelt to take his wounded colleague onto his lap. Now it was he who was about to die. I stepped in and caught hold of the weeping man by his hair, turning his face up for him just in time for him to see his death rushing down upon him. He had neither the time nor the strength to fight off my hold. The glass knife plunged into the man’s tear-welted cheek, just beneath his left eye.
The demon’s will had failed to drive the weapon very deep, but I knew if ever there was a moment to demonstrate my devotion to unrepentant villainy, it was here and now. I held the man’s head back tight against my belly. Then I seized the sliver of glass, indifferent to its slicing my palm, and drove it deep into the man’s face. His sobs of sorrow became moans of agony, as I worked the thick glass up under his eye, pushing his eyeball out of its socket from below. It hung from the bloody hole where it had been seated, and lolled there lazily, still attached by a root of tangled nerves. I pressed the blade up into the meat of his thoughts, enjoying immensely the music of his suffering: the sobs, the fragments of prayer that he uttered, his begging for mercy. The latter, needless to say, went unanswered by me, his torturer, and the loving God in whom he’d put his trust.
I leaned over him as I stirred the blade in the pot of his skull and spoke to him. His moan died away. Despite his agony, I still had his attention.
“I am of the Demonation,” I told him. “The sworn enemy of life and love and sinlessness. There’s no bargaining with me, nor any hope of hope.”
The man managed to master the convulsions in his maimed face long enough to say:
“Who?”
“Me? I’m known by all as Mister—”
I was interrupted by the Archbishop.
“Botch,” he said. “Your name’s Botch, isn’t it? It’s an English word. It means a mess. A muddle. A completely worthless thing.”
“You should be careful, priest,” I said, digging out a sizable portion of cranial matter and casting it down on the floor of the workshop. “You’re talking to a demon of the Ninth Circle.”
“I quake,” the Archbishop said, utterly indifferent to my claim. “Do you do anything else besides torment dead men?”
“Dead?” I looked down and found that the mourning man had indeed died in the short time I’d been talking t
o the Archbishop. I let go of the corpse and it slid onto the tiled floor.
“Was that your idea of pleasure, demon?”
I stood up, wiping the blood off onto my clothes.
“Why would you be interested in my pleasures?” I asked the Archbishop.
“I must know Hell’s every trick if I’m to protect my flock from your depravities.”
“Depravities?” I said, glancing at Quitoon. “What’s he been telling you?”
“That you have insinuated yourself into the wombs of women who are hours from giving birth, and terrify the infants to death before they even see the sky.”
I smiled.
“Did you do that, demon?”
“I did, Excellency,” I replied, smiling as best my scarred face allowed. “It was my sodomitic friend Quitoon who suggested it. He said I should be in a woman at least once in my life. But that was small stuff. Once, with an ancient grimoire whose owner’s entrails we used for the working, we brought back to life all the corpses in a churchyard in Hamburg, and then visited each of the dead in the earth, telling them one by one that the End of the World was at hand, and that they must immediately dig their way out of their graves—we had cracked open the earth to make it easier for them—and dance. Dance and sing, however corrupt their condition.”
“The Hamburg Dance of Death was your doing?”
“Yes. Of course.” Now I was smiling so hard it hurt. “Did you hear that, Quitoon? He knew about Hamburg! Ha!”