“Why’s that?” April asked.
“My organization can protect the darkest secrets but we can’t ask a government to shut down a train station for a day while we perform a cleansing ritual. As long as the ghosts remain here, they’re beyond our help.”
“There’s so many of them, though.”
“It’s a tragedy and it obviously takes its toll. There’s no sadder spirit than one who is waiting on a train that’ll never come.”
In that moment, April decided that no mistake had been made. She felt a closeness to Talbot that she had not felt in many years with any other person.
April took Talbot’s hand in hers and squeezed it tight as the river of dead washed over them.
Chapter Six
Lime killed a cow and drank its blood—didn’t taste anything like a steak. He threw up in the woods until he was noticed by a couple of hunters. He broke their spines and ate their legs while they watched. They tasted better than the cow.
He walked down the center of the road in small town Indiana, covered in blood from head to toe and constantly fixing his slicked, wet hair.
The cops took him to lock up and asked if he’d killed the legless hunters.
“I ate a little bit if that’s what you mean,” Lime said, “but they were alive when I left ‘em.”
They beat on him with clubs until they were too winded to continue. Lime pretended not to like it.
A psychiatrist was called in to determine just what kind of monster he was.
Lime broke the doctor’s neck within seconds of him entering the cell.
The cops washed him with a fire hose. It stung worse than the clubs but he jerked off anyway, much to the chagrin of all the people watching.
They strapped him in irons and chained him to the bars of his cell.
They taunted him, saying, “Just you wait till those FBI boys get here. Just you wait.”
Lime waited. It felt like days. He tried to remember who he was but could only recall darkness and the cow.
He then remembered the Devil’s tits and swallowing the dark spirit whole.
He remembered he wasn’t himself. He remembered his name used to be Ronald Lime.
And slowly, like recalling a film seen in childhood, details of his true life returned to him, and he screamed like a beast until they gagged him properly.
I am not who I am.
Lime twisted like a snake in chains, biting at the bars with gagged lips and trying to crawl upwards, upwards, upwards.
He meant to hang himself, whoever he was. He wanted death and he wanted it now.
Lime broke his arms and whimpered. He twisted himself around backwards so that the shattered limb would wrap around his neck, then he threw his own feet out from under him.
He dropped quickly and he heard bones in his neck break. . . and then break again as they came back into place.
The cops rushed to his aid and took him out of the chains. They threw him into an interrogation room and watched from behind the glass as he spun around in circles, splashing blood onto the walls and crying out.
“I am not who I am!” he wailed. “I am not who I am. . .”
When the FBI arrived, Lime had beaten himself to a bloody pulp. They put him in a chair, locked him in tight, and mopped up the floor of the interrogation room while the FBI put the questions to him.
“What’s your name?” they asked.
“I am not who I am,” Lime said.
“Why’d you kill the hunters?” they asked.
Lime shrugged. “They tasted better than the cow.”
“Cow?”
“Moo,” Lime said and giggled.
“Have you partaken in cannibalistic behavior in the past?”
“I only recently acquired the taste for it, I’m afraid.”
“Do you use any drugs, sir?” the FBI asked.
“Drugs are for pussies,” Lime said.
“Do you belong to any cult, sir?”
“Pussies are for cults.”
The FBI threw him in the back of a car and carted him off to some hospital for the criminally insane to better understand his madness.
The doctors there were so nice!
They gave Lime pills and asked how he was feeling and if he’d like a moist towelette. Lime tried his best not to injure them too badly.
The doctors put him in solitary and asked him questions from behind the door after he dislocated the jaw of one of the nurses and tried to eat her tongue.
“Nurse Carmen is hurt very badly,” the doctors at the nut house said. “Why’d you hurt Nurse Carmen?”
Lime stared blankly at the door and said, “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
When they said ‘lights out’, they meant it. His cell entered complete blackness and he was left with his thoughts.
The walls were padded, which he appreciated, even though he had no further intention of running up against them to get attention.
In that pitch black a burning spirit of hate visited him and Lime recognized him as the same thing he had previously swallowed—that ugly pill that resided somewhere in his gut, polluting his soul.
Satan said, “Do you understand yet?”
Lime frowned and wondered if what was currently occupying his body was also speaking to him now, and if that meant that by replying, he would be talking to someone else or to himself, whoever he was. It was all very confusing.
He chose to say nothing for fear of contradicting the laws of the universe.
Satan said, “You are me and I am you. My darkness is yours and yours is mine.”
Lime thought that sounded eerily like a dark Beatles song but refused to comment.
“You will soon be visited by a Frenchman,” Satan said.
“France?” Lime asked.
“Kill him and his family and I will set you free.”
Lime could almost cry. “Truly?”
Satan said, “It’s a fair trade, don’t you think?”
Chapter Seven
Talbot told April that their ‘home base’ was in Rome, but he took her to a church in Tennessee instead. He claimed she wasn’t ready for Rome.
April thought she wasn’t ready for Tennessee.
It was a little church fond of neon messages of salvation. It appeared closed and dark. Talbot took her through the back entrance.
Now inside the dark church, they went to a door and Talbot knocked five times.
“Speak,” said a voice behind the door.
“Jameson Talbot. 32688.”
The door opened and two burly men with guns stepped out. They seemed to recognize Talbot, but they treated April with distrust.
April backed away slowly, uncomfortable in the presence of guns.
“She’s with me,” Talbot said. “Tanner, Gabe, I want you to meet Ms. April Frausini. She’s new.”
Tanner and Gabe nodded and said, “Ma’am,” in unison.
April smiled shyly. “Hi.”
“Can we go down?” Talbot asked.
Gabe nodded and stepped aside. “They’re expecting you,” he said.
Talbot guided April to the door. Beyond it was a long staircase leading down, lit solely by a single red light bulb.
“Don’t trip,” Talbot said.
April descended the stairs with either hand reached out to the sides, tracing the bumpy walls all the way down.
The next door opened and a middle-aged man with rough features greeted them.
“Is this the new kid?” he asked.
“This is April,” Talbot said.
“My name’s Harvey,” said the man. He looked like a janitor but there was the unmistakable bulge of a gun at his hip.
“Hello,” April said and shook Harvey’s rough hand.
Harvey laughed. He reminded April of her grandfather or perhaps a vintage 1980’s Ernest Borgnine.
“Did he take you to the train station classic, or did he think you were more the modern gal and take you to an airport instead?”
&
nbsp; Talbot sighed. “Harvey. . .”
April smiled. “Union Station, Chicago. It was quite something.”
“Wait till you get a load of these freaks, girlie,” Harvey said.
They entered the basement which was as dark as the universe and just as silent. The darkness seemed to stretch on for miles. April found herself tripping over her own feet as they walked out into the black.
Harvey explained. “Just in case someone gets past the gorillas, we keep this section dark, that way the intruders have little choice but to head back to the stairs. But I know the way, so just follow me and we’ll be fine.”
“What about flashlights?” April asked.
“A good question,” Harvey said. “It wouldn’t work. What you’re seeing isn’t darkness for lack of light, but rather an enchantment. Light a candle or carry a lamp, it makes little difference, as neither will put off light in this chamber.”
“An enchantment?” April asked. “You mean, magic?”
“Magic is as good of a word for it as anything else,” Harvey said.
“Do you practice magic?” April asked.
Harvey laughed. “Not me.”
“Rare members in our Order are born with such gifts,” Talbot said. “But most of the time we use the services of a witch or a warlock. They can perform an enchantment for us in return for a lighter sentence.”
“You lock up witches?” April asked.
“They’re not all bad,” Talbot said. “But most witches and warlocks can’t help but abuse their power. They bring too much attention to the supernatural. Just last year there was a witch in California telling random civilians how they were going to die.”
“She was a bitter peach,” Harvey said.
“Everything she said was the truth,” Talbot said. “The police force thought she was involved with a death cult when some people she had talked to started dying. We took her from their custody and she’ll now spend the rest of her life underground until it’s clear she won’t return to her old tricks.”
April asked, “She could really see how people were going to die?”
Talbot said, “According to her, I’m going to die in the rain. I put tape over her mouth before she could tell me more.”
April felt a hand on her shoulder a second before she went stumbling into a brick wall. She reached out, touched the wall, and wondered if this was something like being buried alive.
Harvey said, “Here we go.”
Blinding light entered the dark chamber as Harvey opened a door on the dark wall.
April followed Talbot and Harvey into the whiteness beyond, finding herself in a cold environment of research and religion.
Priests worked over ancient texts side by side with scientists studying artifacts and mysterious biological materials.
One lady in a white lab coat was holding up a jar of red goo to a light. She tapped the jar and the red substance reacted violently inside, as if in a fit to get free.
A priest spoke passionately, seemingly to himself, about the dangers of werewolves to the nation’s economy.
A technologically inclined young man was trying his best to hook up an angry cat to a computer.
In a glass office to the left, a naked woman was courting a goat. The goat seemed more content to chew its way through all the paperwork on a nearby desk.
It was crowded and it was busy. There seemed to be no reason to any of it, just random madness masquerading as research.
“Welcome to the world within the world,” Harvey said.
April wondered if she had joined the circus.
Talbot took her past researchers and to a quieter section of the underground complex. There was a water cooler and a table with a pot of hot coffee. Sitting at a nearby table was a man and a woman about April’s age, debating whether vampires should be considered an endangered species.
April looked back at the spectacle of eccentricity and whispered to Talbot, “What was that?”
Talbot waved off the question. “It’s nothing,” he said. “They like to think they’re making important discoveries, but no one ever discovers new worlds while stuck in the basement. I wish you would’ve had a different first impression of my colleagues, but well, there it is.”
April nodded in disbelief. “There it is.” She pointed aggressively back towards the researchers in the other room. “It’s like a crazy comic book convention in there but nobody seems to realize it.”
Talbot smiled. “Some of them are a bit eccentric, I guess. Did you see the naked woman and her goat?”
“Yes, I saw the naked woman and the goat. . .”
“She’s been trying to woo that goat for years.”
“Why?” April asked.
Talbot frowned. “I’ve forgotten.”
April took a deep breath. “I think I’m about at that point where I walk back past the crazy people and go home.”
“I understand.” Talbot nodded and gestured to the doors leading deeper into the complex. “Before you do, though, can I ask you to follow me to the next room? I think that once you’ve seen what I actually took you here to see, you’ll forgive the peculiar welcoming committee.”
April eyed the exit over the shoulders of scholarly lunatics, then took a good look into Talbot’s eyes. They were a trusting set of blue and in them she saw goodness. However messed up Talbot might be for associating with people like these, his intentions were good enough.
“Show me,” April said.
Talbot led her to an electronically locked door. He swiped a card through the lock. It blinked green and a heavy mechanism inside granted them entrance.
Humid air hit April in the face like a sweaty palm across the cheek.
“We have to keep it like this in here or he’ll start to crumble,” Talbot said.
“Who?” April asked.
April came to stand before a Plexiglas cell, guarded by men with holy water and shotguns.
Inside the cell stood a beast ten feet high. Its head was reptilian and covered with tattoos, laced with piercings, and adorned with the horns of a bull. It had the body of a man, though far larger, and wore shimmering, golden armor, which caught the light in alluring ways. Behind is wide shoulders were beautiful, feathered wings.
“His name is Haagenti,” Talbot said.
April felt something similar to drunkenness take hold of her and she was soon swimming inside her own head.
The creature loomed closer to the glass. It snorted and said, “Does she bring dinner or is she tonight’s meal?”
April’s eyes fluttered and she was falling. She felt Talbot catch her and then the world went dark.
Chapter Eight
April awoke to the demon Haagenti’s snorting laughter. Talbot brought a glass of water to her lips. April pushed the glass away and sat up from the cold, linoleum floor.
“She faints like a heavy woman,” Haagenti said between laughs.
April tried to find the words, but she was at a loss as she looked upon the caged monster in golden armor.
April managed to say, “What. . .”
“Haagenti’s a demon,” Talbot said as he helped April to stand up. “It’s said that Haagenti is the one demon that all human eyes can see.”
“It’s the gold,” Haagenti said with pride. “Man cannot look away from gold. Greed overpowers everything, even the supernatural.”
April swallowed hard and said, “It’s not real.”
Haagenti snarled. “That’s not nice.” He banged his powerful fist on the Plexiglas wall. “She’s not nice, Jameson Talbot.”
“It knows your name,” April said, slowly backing away.
“Of course,” Haagenti said, “we’ve worked together for years.”
“We don’t work together,” Talbot said. “He works for me.”
“Human technicalities,” Haagenti said, flapping his wings and littering his cell floor with feathers.
April asked, “Are there more? I mean, more of them?” She could barely look at the beast an
y longer and put her questions to Talbot directly.
Haagenti pounded his chest and said, “There is only one Haagenti.”
“There are many demons,” Talbot said.
“We outnumber the living and the dead,” Haagenti said.
“Most of them are trapped in Hell, but sometimes they enter our domain,” Talbot said.
Haagenti nodded. “I came to watch your Battle of Normandy and once the show was over I couldn’t find my way back home.”
Talbot said, “Even those with the gifted sight normally can’t see demons. But everyone in the order of the Gatekeepers is entrusted with keeping the demons in line and sending them back to Hell if possible.”
April shook her head. “I don’t think I want to be here,” she said.
Haagenti laughed. “She’s scared of me, Jameson Talbot.”
“You were brought here because you’ve already seen a demon,” Talbot said.
April pointed at Haagenti but did not look at him. “No,” she said. “I think I would remember seeing something like that.”
“Not just any demon,” Talbot said. “The night before I met you, you crossed paths with the Devil himself.”
Haagenti went quiet. He sat down on his haunches and observed from his cell in silence.
“Satan?” April asked, barely a whisper.
Talbot said, “He walks among us sometimes, always as a precursor to tragic events. We monitor his spiritual signature on computers, but it’s like predicting a natural disaster and not knowing whether to prepare for a tornado or an earthquake. You saw what he looked like, maybe you even have some idea of what or who he’s interested in. With our training, you’ll be able to spot the Devil and his minions more easily. Together, we can save many lives, April.”
“This is crazy,” April said, shaking her head and closing her eyes.
“You were chosen because you are special,” Talbot said.
“I don’t want to be special,” she said. “I thought you were going to help me learn to control it, to maybe one day suppress it—not make my ‘gift’ stronger.”
“Your gift is honorable,” Haagenti said. “It was given unto you by God. Your charge is honorable, also. You would be wise not to ignore it.”
April felt a tear forming in her eye and she wiped it away before anyone could see.
Talbot put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s a strange new world, but you’re not alone in it. You have many friends here and we’re all looking out for you. But of course, if you’d rather not stay, you can fill out a form and go back to your life today.” He nodded. “It’s your choice.”