Alizeh froze.
Her heart thudding in her chest, she pulled one hand free, lifting the offending digits to the moonlight.
The tips of her fingers had turned blue.
Quickly she rubbed at them, grateful to discover a strange dust shifting from her skin. Still, there was no relief. The friction caused more sparks to course through her fingers, the feeling not unlike flint striking against stone until the pain crescendoed and she cried out, nearly doubling over as she heard the wisp of a familiar whisper, the chokehold of a familiar terror –
Pain exploded behind her eyes, seared her throat. She nearly fainted from the force of it, sweat breaking out across her forehead as her body shook with terrible tremors. A scream was building in her chest, fear snaking through her veins.
This was the devil.
She knew this feeling, knew this slithering terror, knew these horrors, and yet he’d never come to her like this, never broken her mind with such violence –
Alizeh didn’t know when she’d fallen down, only that the earth was cold and damp beneath her face, tendrils of moss tickling the inside of her nose with every inhalation. Dirt and lichen nudged at the edges of her lips, but her head was leaden, immovable. She soon became aware that she’d injured herself in the fall – that there was a cool plane of rock wedged under her cheek where a separate pain had begun to bloom. Still, the discovery felt slippery; dreamlike. More present was a disembodied voice shrieking indistinguishable nonsense as her mind spun, sparks still flaring beneath her skin, pain expanding relentlessly inside her. She made only a pitiful sound as she lay there, pinned to the ground by an impossible gravity,when a single word finally separated from the noise. There was no doubt now that the voice belonged to the devil – but the sound was distorted, skipping as if caught in a broken loop, as if the rest of the sentence had been lost on the wind.
Eyes
Eyes
Eyes
Eyes
SIX
CYRUS MATERIALIZED AT THE SAGGINGmouth of a moldering cave, the smell of damp earth and cold air greeting him with the blunt force of a club. He drew in the heavy, musty scents as he stepped over a shallow pool of water, silt grinding beneath his boots. Ducking under a jut of rock, he was careful to touch nothing as he straightened into an antechamber, his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. The humble entrance had opened onto deep rooms of dizzying heights, the discrete spaces divided only by webbed columns of calcite formations. Coins of moonlight dropped through slots in the distant ceilings, casting spectral globes of illumination upon dripping stalactites and a set of crudely formed stairs that ascended, without end, into a smear of black.
Cyrus remained absolutely still.
He was no longer afraid of these visits – not the way he’d once been – but fear was a slippery thing. He’d been surprised in his green life to discover the manifold ways in which a person might experience terror, the creativity with which dread and horror might be provoked in a soul. He’d overcome one nightmare only to discover its child, outrun another only to encounter its twin. No matter his efforts he could not outsmart that which he could not anticipate, and his only comfort as he stared up at the familiar, sinister staircase was a cold one.
He eitherdidordid not.
He would not live by half measure.
Cyrus had learned this sobering lesson on his first visit to this particular rung of hell. He’d been tender and unseasoned then, so colonized by fear he’d broken into a cold sweat before even entering the abyss. He’d vacillated at the bottom of the towering staircase for nigh on an hour, cowed not only by indecision but by the hostilities of the cave itself. His skin pallid, his limbs occasionally locking in protest, Cyrus had wanted nothing more than to flee this den of horrors; it had been his only clinging thought as he slowly mounted the steps, each advance more tentative than the last. Always he glanced over his shoulder at possible escape, never committing to his footfalls, and he’d nearly made it to the top when his wavering finally cost him.
Cyrus had fallen from the precipice without mercy, without grace.
It was a fifty-foot drop to his death, and he’d slammed bodily against every jagged lip of stone on the way down, landing with an impact so severe he broke his back.
The young royal had lain there bleeding on the cold, damp ground, enduring an agony of incalculable depths. He could see that he’d snapped two bones in one leg, that a jut of rib pierced through his shirt. His vision blurred; blood pooled slowly in his open mouth; his chest spasmed with some unknown damage and still he smiled, for what he felt in that moment was nothing short of joy.
It was over.
He would not have to face this terror, for Death had come.He’d tried to do the right thing, but his efforts had come to naught, and now he could lie here until his blood ran cold and know no guilt. His world would unravel, countless innocents would die – but he’d be long departed by then, unaccountable for these tragedies.
He’d cried soundlessly, and they were tears of relief.
Cyrus couldn’t have known that Iblees would animate his shattered body with the ease of a puppeteer, articulating his broken limbs in a display of breathtaking cruelty the young man had never even thought to imagine. The devil, Cyrus soon discovered, would not allow his debtors to default on a contract.
Inch by harrowing inch Cyrus was made to ascend the stairs by way of dark magic, his own blood choking in his throat. He was half-blind as his severed bones scraped together, piercing organs and tearing flesh. It was a state of suffering so excruciating he’d lost consciousness over and over, only to wake up each time on the slick ground in a shallow pool of his own gore, and made to climb the stairs again.
That day, Cyrus had learned cowardice was a luxury.
Only the privileged few could afford to run away, to lock their doors and close their eyes to ugliness. The rest lived in homes without doors to lock, looked through eyes without lids to shut. They confronted the dark even as their hearts trembled, as their souls shook – for even strangled by fear, there was no choice but to endure.
No one would be along to slay their demons.
