Mister B. Gone

“I love you, son.”

I had to laugh. I’d never been so entertained by something in my entire life. And there was more to come; all priceless idiocies.

“We’re different, sure. I’m mean, you’re a little guy and I’m …”

“Not?” I offered.

He grinned. Clearly we understood one another. “Right. Not. And when you’re not, like me, and your son is, then it’s not fair for me to be slapping him around night and day?”

I thought I’d confuse him by playing the demon’s advocate.

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

His grin withered a little now, and panic infected his tiny glittering eyes. “Shouldn’t I be?” he said.

“Don’t ask me. I’m not the one who’s telling me what he thinks is——”

“Ah!” he said, cutting me off in his haste to keep a thought he’d seized from escaping him, “that’s it! It isn’t right?”

“Isn’t it?” I said, still sawing away at the rope as the banter continued.

“This,” Pappy G. said. “It isn’t right. A son shouldn’t kill his own father.”

“Why not if his father tried to murder him?”

“Not murder, boy. Never murder. Toughen up a little, maybe. But murder? No, never. Never.”

“Well, Pappy, that makes you a better father than it does me a son,” I said to him. “But it isn’t going to stop me cutting this rope and it’s a very long fall from here. You’ll break in pieces, if you’re lucky.”

“If I’m lucky?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t want you to be lying down in that refuse with your back broken, but still alive. Not with all the hungry Demons and Damned that wander around down there. They’ll eat you alive. And that would be too terrible, even for you. So maybe you should make your peace and pray for death because it’ll be so much easier to die that way. Just a long fall, and nothing. Blackness. The end of Pappy Gatmuss, once and for always.”

We had passed through several Circles as we’d talked and, to be honest, I’d lost count of how many remained before we emerged into the World Above. Three perhaps. My knife was becoming dulled from the labor I’d put it to, but the rope was now cut through three quarters of the way, and the weight it was supporting put the remaining strands under such tension that they began to snap with the merest stroke of my blade.

Now I knew we were close to the surface because I could hear voices from somewhere overhead; or rather one particular voice, yelling orders:

“Keep hauling, all of you! Yes, that means you, too. Work! We’ve caught something big here. It’s not one of the giants, but it’s big!”

I looked up. There was a layer of rock a few hundred feet above us, with a crack in it which widened in one place. It was through this wider portion of the fissure that the four ropes——the two supporting Pappy G. and myself and the pair that had held the bait, disappeared. The brightness through the crack was more powerful than anything I’d ever seen Below. It pricked my eyes, so I looked away from it and put all my energies into cutting the last stubborn strands of rope. The image of the crack was still burned into my sight, however, like a lightening strike.

Throughout these last two or three minutes Pappy G. gave up both his litany of insults and the absurd attempt to appeal to my love for him as his son. He simply looked straight up at the hole in the heavens of the First Circle. The sight of it had apparently unleashed a primal terror in him, which found expression in a spewing forth of entreaties, which were steadily eroded by the sounds I’d never have imagined him capable of making: whimpers and sobs of terror.

“No, can’t go Above can’t go can’t——”

Tears of snot were streaming from his nostrils, which were enormous I realized for the first time, larger than his eyes.

“——in the dark, down deep, that’s where we have to, no, no you can’t you mustn’t.”

He became suddenly crazed with hysteria. “YOU KNOW WHAT’S UP THERE, BOY? IN THE LIGHT, BOY? THE LIGHT OF GOD IN HEAVEN. THE LIGHT WILL BURN OUT MY EYES. I DON’T WANT TO SEE! I DON’T WANT TO SEE!”

He thrashed around in terror as he vented all these feelings, trying his best to get his hands to cover his eyes, though this was a complete anatomical impossibility. Still he tried, writhing around within the confines of the net, his terrified cries so loud that when he took one short break for breath I heard somebody from the World Above saying: “Listen to that thing! What’s it saying?”

And then another voice: “Don’t listen. We don’t want our heads filled with demon talk. Block your ears, Father O’Brien, or he’d talk you out of your mind.”

That was all I had a chance to hear, because Pappy G. started sobbing and struggling again. The rope of his net creaked as it was tested by his antics. But it was not the net that broke. It was the few strands of the rope that still supported him. Given how little there was to snap, the noise it made was astonishingly loud, echoing up off the roof of rock above us.

The expression on Pappy Gatmuss’ face turned from one of metaphysical terror to something simpler. He was falling. And falling and falling.

Just before he struck the layer of lichen-covered rock that was scattered over the ground of the First Circle he gave vent to this simpler terror that his face now wore, unleashing a bellow of despair. Apparently, neither rising nor falling was to his liking. Then he broke through the layer of moss and disappeared.

His bellow continued to be audible however, dimming somewhat as he dropped through the Second Circle, and still more as he fell through the Third, only fading away once he passed into the Fourth.

Gone. Pappy G. was finally gone from my life! After so many years of fearing his judgment, fearing his punishment, he was out of my life, dying by degrees, I hoped, as he struck each new ground. His limbs broken, his back broken, and his skull smashed like a dropped egg, probably long before he landed back in the canyons of trash where we’d first been baited. I had not been inventing horrors when I’d talked about how terrible it would be to be helpless in that place, crawling as it was with the most pitiful, the most hopeless of those amongst the Demonation. I know many of them. Some were Demons who had once been the most scholarly and sophisticated amongst us, but who had now come to realize in their researches that we meant nothing in the scheme of Creation. We floated in the void beyond all purpose or meaning. They had taken this knowledge badly; certainly worse than most of my fellows, who had long since given up thinking about such lofty notions in favor of finding amongst the tiny numbers of lichens that grew in the gloom of the Ninth a palliative for hemorrhoids.

But the scholars’ desolation was not immune to hunger. In the years I’d lived in the house in the garbage dunes I had heard plenty of stories of wanderers who had perished in the wastes of the Ninth, their bones found picked clean, if they were found at all. That, most likely, would be Pappy G.’s fate: He would be eaten alive, until every last morel of marrow had been sucked out.

I strained to hear some sound from the World Below——a last cry from my murdered father——but I heard nothing. It was the voices from the World Above that were now demanding attention. The rope from which Pappy G.’s net had hung had been hauled up out of sight as soon as he’d fallen. I slid my little knife into a small pocket of flesh I had taken great pains to slowly dig for myself over a period of months for the express purpose of hiding a weapon.

There was clearly great disappointment and frustration amongst those who were hauling me up.

“Whatever we lost was five times the weight of this little thing,” said someone.

“It must have bitten through the ropes,” opined the voice I recognized as the Father’s. “They have such ways, these demons.”

“Why don’t you shut up and pray?” said a third whinier voice. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To protect our immortal souls from whatever we’re hauling up?”

They’re frightened, I thought, which was good news for me. Frightened men did stupid things. My job was going to be to keep them in a state of fear. Perhaps I might intimidate them with my sickly frame and my burned face and body, but I doubted it. I would have to use my wits.

I could see the sky more clearly now. There were no clouds in the blue, but there were several dispersing columns of black smoke, and two smells fighting for the attention of my nostrils. One was the sickly sweet odor of incense, the other the smell of burning flesh.

Even as I inhaled them my racing thoughts remembered a childhood game that would perhaps help me defend myself against my captors. As an infant, and even into my early teens, whenever Pappy Gatmuss came home at night with female company Momma was obliged to vacate the marriage bed and sleep in my bed, relegating me to the floor with a pillow [if she was feeling generous] and a stained sheet. She would lay down her head and instantly be asleep, wearied to the bone by life with Pappy G.

And then she’d start to talk in her sleep. The things she said——angrily elaborate and terrifying curses directed at Pappy G.——were enough to make my heart quicken with fear, but it was the voice in which she spoke them that truly impressed itself upon me.

This was another Momma speaking, her voice a deep, raw growl of murderous rage that I listened to so many times over the years that without ever consciously deciding to try and emulate it I unleashed in private the fury I felt towards Pappy G. one day and the voice just spilled out. It wasn’t simply imitation. I had inherited from Momma a deformity she had in her throat that allowed me to re-create the sound. Of that I became certain.

For several weeks following my discovery of the gift my bloodline had bestowed, I made the mistake of taking a shortcut on my way home that obliged me to walk through territory that had long been the dominion of a murderous gang of young demons who liked to slaughter those who refused to pay the toll they demanded. Looking back on this, I’ve often wondered if my own trespass was not truly accidental as I’d told myself at the time, but a test. Here was I—Jakabok, the perpetually terrorized runt of the neighborhood——deliberately inviting a confrontation with a gang of thugs who wouldn’t think twice about killing me in the street outside my house.

The short version of how it went is easily told. I spoke in my Momma’s Nightmare Voice, using it to assault the enemy with an outpouring of the most vicious, venomous curses I could lay my mind upon.

It worked instantly upon three of my four assailants. The fourth, who was the largest, was stone deaf. He took a moment to watch the retreat of his comrades, and then, seeing my wide-open mouth he sensed that I was making some sound that had driven the others off. He immediately came at me, grabbing hold of the back of my neck with one of his immense hands and reaching into my mouth to pull out my troublesome tongue. He caught it by the root, digging his nails into the wet muscle, and would have left me as dumb as he was deaf if my tails——entirely without my conscious instruction——had not come to my aid. They rose up behind me side by side, then parted company, each speeding past my head and driving their points into my assailant’s eyes. They lacked the bone to blind him, but there was sufficient force in their gristle that the points still hurt him. He let go of me, and I staggered away from him, spitting out blood, but otherwise unharmed.

Now you have a full account of the weapons I took up in the World Above: one small dulled knife, my mother’s Nightmare Voice, and the twin tails I had inherited from my recently devoured father.

It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

So, there you have it. Now you know how I got up out of the World Below, and how my adventurings there began. Surely you’re satisfied. I’ve told you things that I never told anyone before, even if I was about to disembowel them. What I did to Pappy G., for instance. I’ve never admitted to that until now. Not once. And let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy confession to make, even after all these centuries. Patricide—especially when it’s brought about by dropping your father into the maws of hungry lunatics——is a primal crime. But you wanted me to sing for my supper, and I have sung.

You don’t need to hear any more, believe me. I’d been hauled up out of the rock, you can figure that out for yourselves. Obviously they didn’t put an end to me or I wouldn’t be sitting on this page talking to you. The details don’t matter. It’s all history now, isn’t it?

No, no. Wait. I take that back. It isn’t history. How can it be? Nobody ever wrote any of it down. History’s what the books say, isn’t it? And when it comes to the sufferings of the likes of me, a burned-up, ugly-as-sin demon whose life means less than nothing, there is no history.

I’m Jakabok the Nobody. As far as you’re concerned, Jakabok the Invisible.

But you’re wrong. You’re wrong. I’m here.

I’m right here on the page in front of you. I’m staring out of the words right now, moving along behind the lines as your eyes follow them.

You see the blur between the words? That’s me moving.

You feel the book shake a little? Come on, don’t be a coward. You felt it. Admit it.

Admit it.

You know what, my friend? I think maybe I should tell you a little bit more, for the sake of the truth. Then there’ll be at least one place where the misfortunes of a runty demon like me are put into words, put into history.

So you can put the flame away for a few minutes, while I tell you what happened to me in the World Above. Then, even though you will have burned the book, you’ll at least have heard the story, right? And you can pass it on, the way all stories worth telling get handed down. And maybe one day you’ll write a book, about how you once met this demon called Jakabok, and the things he told you about Demons and History and Fire. A book like that could make you famous, you know. It could. I mean you humans are more interested in evil than in good, right? You could invent all kinds of vile details and claim it was all just stuff that I told you. Why not? The money you could make, telling The Story of Jakabok. If you’re a little afraid of the consequences, then just give some of your profits to the Vatican, in exchange for a twenty-four-hour priest patrol, in case a crazy demon decided to come and knock on your door.

Think about it. Why not? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t profit from our little arrangement, is there? And while you’re thinking about it, I’ll tell you what happened to me once I got up out of the earth and finally saw the sun.

You should listen really carefully to what comes next, friend, because it’s full of dark stuff, and every word of it is true, I swear on my Momma’s Voice. There’s plenty in here for your book, believe me. Just make sure you remember the details because it’s the details that make people believe what they’re being told.

And never forget: They want to believe. Not everything, obviously. Flat earths, for one, are out of favor. But this, my friend, this venomous stuff they want to believe. No, strike that. They don’t simply want to believe it. They need to. What could be more important to a species who live in a world of evils than that those evils not be their responsibility? It was all the work of the Demon and his Demonation.

No doubt, you’ve had the same experience yourself. You’ve witnessed abominations with your own eyes, and I’m sure they drove you half-crazy seeing it all, whether you were watching a child torture a fly or a dictator commit genocide. In fact——oh this is good, this is a nice twist!——you could say that the only way you stayed sane was by writing it all down, word for word, exorcising it by setting it down on the pages, purging all that you witnessed. That’s good, even if I do say it myself. Purging what you’d witnessed. That’s very good.

Of course, there’ll be plenty of people who’ll put their noses in the air and pretend they wouldn’t be caught dead with a Book of Demonations in their sanctified hands. But it’s all a sham. Everyone loves a measure of fright in their stories; a revulsion that makes the release into love all the sweeter. All you have to do is listen to me carefully, and remember the horrors for later. Then you’ll be able to tell people hand on heart that you got it all from a completely reliable source, can’t you? You can even tell them my name, if you like. I don’t care.

But you should be warned, friend. The things I witnessed in the World Above, some of what I’m going to tell you about now, it’s not for the squeamish. On occasion you might find yourself feeling a little sick to your stomach. Don’t let the grisly details upset you. Think of it this way: Each little horror is money in the bank. That’s what I’m giving you in exchange for your burning this book; a fortune in horrors. That’s not such a terrible deal, now, is it?

No, I thought not. So, let me pick up my story where I left off, with me appearing from the World Below for the first time in my life.

It wasn’t the most dignified of entrances, to be honest, hauled up out of the crack in the rock in a net.

“What in the name of Christendom is that?” said a man who with a large beard and an even larger belly was sitting some distance away on a boulder. This large man had a large dog, which he held on a tight leash, for which I was grateful as it was clear the cur didn’t like me. It bared its teeth to their mottled gums and growled.

“Well, Father O’Brien?” said a much thinner man with long blond hair and a blood-stained apron. “Any answers?”

Father O’Brien approached the net, a wine flagon in his hand, and scrutinized me for a few seconds before declaring, “It’s just a minor demon, Mister Cawley.”

“Not another!” the large man said.

“You want me to throw it back?” said yellow-hair, glancing over at the three men who were holding the rope from which I dangled. All three were sweaty and tired. Between the rim of the hole and this exhausted trio was a twelve-foot-tall tower made of timber and metal, its base weighed down with several huge boulders, so as to keep it from toppling over. Two metal arms extended from the top of the tower, so that it resembled a gallows designed to hang two felons at a time. The rope to which my net was attached ran up and around one of the grooved wheels at the end of one of the arms, and back along that arm, thence down to the three large men who were presently holding my rope [and life] in their huge hands.

“You told me there’d be giants, O’Brien?”

“And there will be. There will, I swear. But they’re rare, Cawley.”

“Can you see any reason why I should keep this one?”

The priest observed me. “He’d make poor dog meat.”

“Why?” said Cawley.

“He’s covered in scars. He must be quite the ugliest demon I have set eyes on.”

“Let me see,” Cawley said, raising his wide rear from the doubtless grateful boulder and approaching me, the stomach first, the man some distance behind.

“Shamit,” Cawley said to the yellow-hair. “Take Throat’s leash.”

“She bit me last time.”

“Take the leash, fool!” Cawley bellowed. “You know how I hate to ask for anything twice.”

“Yes, Cawley. I’m sorry, Cawley.” The yellow-haired Shamit took Throat’s leash, plainly afraid he was going to be bitten a second time. But the dog had other dinner plans: me. Not for a moment did it take its huge black eyes off me, drool running in streaming rivulets from its mouth. There was something about its gaze, perhaps the flames flickering in its eyes, that made me think this was a dog that had a touch of the hell-hound in its blood.

“What you staring at my dog for, demon?” Cawley said. Apparently it displeased him that I did so, because he drew an iron bar from his belt and struck me with it two or three times. The blows hurt, and for the first time in many years I forgot the power of speech and screeched at him like an enraged ape.

My noise incited the dog, who began to bark, his huge frame shaking with every sound it made.

“Stop that noise, demon!” Cawley yelled. “And you too, Throat!”

Immediately the dog fell silent. I scaled down my screeches to little moans.

“What shall we do with it?” Shamit said. He had taken out a little wooden comb and was running it through his golden locks over and over, as though he barely knew that he was doing it. “He’s no good for skinning. Not with so many scars.”

“They’re burns,” said the priest.

“Is that your Irish humor again, O’Brien?”

“It’s no joke.”

“Oh Lord, O’Brien, put away your wine and think about the foolishness of what you’re saying. This is a demon. We’ve snatched it out of Hell’s eternal fires. How could a thing that lives in such a place be burned?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying …”

“Yes …”

O’Brien’s eyes went from Cawley’s face to the iron bar and back to Cawley again. It seemed I was not the only one who’d endured some hurt from the thing.

“Nothing, Cawley, nothing at all. Just the wine talking. You’re probably right. I should put it aside a while.” Having spoken, he did precisely the opposite, upending the flagon as he turned his back on Cawley and stumbled away.

“I am surrounded by drunkards, idiots, and——”

His eyes came to rest on Shamit, who was still combing and combing, staring wide eyed at nothing, as though the ritual had lulled him into a trancelike state. “And whatever this is.”

“I’m sorry,” Shamit said, snapping out of his delirium. “Were you asking me something?”

“Nothing you could have answered,” Cawley replied. And then, after giving me an unsavory glance he said, “All right, haul him up and get him out of the net. But be careful, you know what happens when you rush things and you give the demons room to cause trouble, don’t you?”

There was silence, but for the creaking of the rope that was now hauling me up again.

“Mister C. just asked you a question, you witless thugs,” Cawley yelled.

This time there were grunts and muffled responses from all sides. It wasn’t enough to satisfy Cawley.

“Well, what did I say?”

All five men mumbled their own half-remembered versions of Cawley’s inquiry.

“And what’s the answer?”

“You lose things,” Father O’Brien replied. He raised his arms as he spoke, to offer proof of the matter. His right hand had been neatly bitten off, it appeared to be many years before, leaving only the cushion of his thumb and the thumb itself, which he used to hook the handle of the flagon. His left hand was missing entirely, as was his wrist and two-thirds of his forearm. Six or seven inches of bone had been left jutting from the stump at his elbow. It was yellow and brown, except for the end of it, which was white where it had been recently sharpened.

“That’s right,” said Cawley. “You lose things——hands, eyes, lips. Whole heads sometimes.”

“Heads?” said the priest. “I never saw anybody lose——”

“In France. That wolf-demon we brought up out of a hole very much like this one, except there was water——”

“Oh yes, that sprang out of the rock. I remember now. How could I forget that monstrous thing? The size of its jaws. They just opened up and took the head off that student who was with it then. What was his name?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But I was on the road with him for a year or more and now can’t remember his name.”

“Don’t start getting sentimental.”

“Ivan!” O’Brien said. “His name was Ivan!”

“Enough, priest. We’ve work to do.”

“With that?” Shamit said, looking at me down the narrow length of his pimply nose. I met him stare for stare, trying to bring a few contemptuous remarks to my lips, to be uttered in my best condescending tone. But for some reason my throat wouldn’t shape the words in my head. All that emerged was an embarrassing stew of snarls and jabbering.