Nachash

I thought I'd woke from a fever dream. Back in the motel room, alone, with sun just creeping past the sill. I cried out in relief, thinking the ache in my legs was just night terrors. I nearly danced out of bed, pulling the shades up to kiss the dawn, praising the morning for saving me.

But a white scar shone on my breast, under the dark lace of my nightgown. Suppressing a scream, I reached down between my legs to feel the black wetness that lingered. It clung to my fingers like oil. I fell to my knees and gagged.

"No," I whispered. My eyes were catacombs. "No way in hell did I do that!"

I frantically scanned my room. There was a rose at the head of my bed, stem charred as if it'd been roasted. It sat like a wicked promise.

Revulsion seized me and I ran for the bathroom. I hurled til there was nothing but bile.

I didn't leave my room for days.

I refused to return to the car, and so he came to me. Like a hospital ministry, he dropped food off by my door at precisely knocked intervals.

"Leave me alone, Death!" I screamed.

I heard sobbing outside the door, with love notes written on the silver platter. But outside, he was building a house of nightmares – deep in the woods. There were chops at midnight, coming from the forest around our motel. No one else could hear them. They were lighter than an ax, like the cutting of a scythe. Trees groaned as someone felled cedar.

I ran early in the afternoon to escape the hell in my brain in the trails by the parking lot. I kept my eyes on the path, thinking I'd be safe if I avoided the trees. It was like they were watching me, spies with eyes in their gnarls. Sometimes I saw tell-tale hoof prints and disgustedly turned around. They appeared on my roof the Saturday after the first snow-fall behind window-smudges shaped like his steed, Pallor.

The chopping sounds grew louder. My phone rang at odd hours of the night, and the caller ID registered a string of sixes. I ignored both.

One night, on a chill fall evening, the chopping started again.

The madness seized me like it used to, the calling to go to the woods. I fought it like a werewolf fights the moon. I couldn't focus, and with each thwack to wood, I felt like punching someone. Specifically him. I'd started calling him Morgoth in my ire. Taking a cue from Gogol, I'd used the sign of the cross against him. It didn't work in America.

The snow danced outside: I pressed my nose to the glass, hot cocoa Samael had dropped off still on my lips. There was a sound like bellows in the wood, and a red glow shone in the distance. I shuddered, remembering medieval pictures of chimeric devils shoveling naked sinners into the mouth of Hell. Some had had faces on their butts. Winged green pig-men with mouths on their butts. Good thing I hadn't inspected Samael's rear assets. I instantly regretted last semester's art history class and the Malleus Maleficarum online.

I pulled out the rosary Granna had given me, an heirloom from God-knows-when, and looked at it a bit guiltily. Of course I didn't believe in the prayers. I knew they couldn't protect me against Samael: he'd melted a cross with his tongue.

I shuddered at the thought of that tongue. That mouth. It wasn't right.

What revolted me most was the fact that I wasn't disgusted. By his actions, by him, by the way he treated me in the past life, by his big kahuna reveal as Lucifer, the whole Aligheri shebang. It was like The Inferno on acid. I was sure Samael would love to take ice baths in naked sinner popsicles in the lowest circle of Hell. Provided they were all bombshells and he had his floating chair, with some kind of old lady drink.

Martini umbrellas on fire. I grimaced at the idea.

I'd unconsciously been running my hands over the rosary. I'd slipped it onto my neck like an amulet, and the gold cross winked at my throat. I wore it like an evil eye. Bundled in jeans, combat boots, a black cashmere sweater and red trench coat, I slunk up to my motel room. After putting on gloves and my aviator hat, I grabbed my travel bag.

It was stuffed with my usual gear: a First Aid kit, a spelunker's head lamp, a lighter, and several additions. Samael must have brought it with him on the trip… always thinking of me. Like the Exacto knife I liberated from the art room. Noxious floral perfume. And a Disney Princess Nerf gun with pink darts. I'd added a Bible and a spritz bottle of holy water blessed at the National Cathedral this summer, just in case they actually worked. As a last measure, I synced up K-pop boy band songs on my phone in case they came in need.

Altogether, I was deadly. Wholesome and unafraid. Straitlaced Shannon, demon-slayer. I turned my flashlight on.

The woods behind our motel stretched on to the Black Forest, undeveloped and wild. No one lived there. No hobo to chop wood at midnight. Only one man… more demon than angel, chopping limbs of trees and trunks with his scythe.

I steeled myself at the edge of the motel parking lot, a rolling field that yawned out into pine so thick, light barely penetrated it. The land was frosted like a wedding cake with hard-packed frost that crunched under my boots. I came to the hill at the edge of the motel property that rose into deciduous forest of intimidating, old-growth trees. I followed its swell through a deer path. A falling tree moaned in the distance.

Why I was delivering myself to Morgoth- well, I wasn't quite sure. Of course he was trying to lure me. And I couldn't cast him into the fires of Mordor. He'd take that as a come-on. In the past weeks, I'd thought about calling Damien, but I knew that would degenerate into a hysterical sob-fest on my part. Hardly fair for the head werewolf of Hell, busy leading Arietta and his pack against the inevitable forces of darkness. I shuddered at the thought of Samael in his backroom arms dealer shop, running the whole thing like a mob boss.

Wolves howled in the distance. I froze. "It couldn't be?" I murmured. Maybe his pack was out. I felt a bit more safe.

My phone beeped. "Eh?" It was a text message. Thankfully not from 666. The Caller ID read Signor Da Silva. My heart lurched:

Smelled you on the breeze. Out hunting, sweetheart. We've missed you at the restaurant, where you been? Grim must be working you hard. We were sent here to prepare for the worse – heard by bird you had Jesus and Michael. Stay safe, bellisima.

A stone settled in my throat. So he didn't know. Of course he didn't. I didn't even know what had happened. I tried to distract myself with the thought of his paws texting. It didn't work. Instead, I responded:

Will you watch out for me tonight?

He texted me back a smiley face. It seemed a bit out of place for a middle-aged Italian bartender. But then, adults were always trying to be hip.

The bellowing sound came like a bomb exploding. I stifled a scream. My flashlight's bulb flickered. It was a bad sign, considering my first encounter with Samael.

The pine were thick as an army. I felt my way around their trunks. Fires flared far away, and I sought them like a moth. The deer path led to a ravine. I scrambled down it, holding on to iced rocks. Timber wolves yipped in the mountains, stirred into frenzy by Damien's pack.

Up and down the hills I went, the frost turning to snow and growing deeper, scaling the Alpine mountains, as the hour wore on. The bellowing grew louder and I was thankful for my hat's ear-flaps. The trees were thick and foreboding, gnarled and bent with age. I had to walk around some that formed walls with their claw-like branches. My legs caught on bramble thorns and dustings of snow fell from disturbed branches.

I felt utterly alone. Frost had formed in my hair, and I pulled my scarf up to my nose. I'd dressed for running away, not for the Arctic weather, favoring living over frostbite. Usually the cold didn't bother me, but this night, it seemed to seep into my bones. I half-expected my fogged breath to become a ghost.

A violent wind kicked up as the blizzard intensified. It knocked me off my feet, into a pile of snow.

"Thank you, weather gods." I shivered, my eyes wide in fear. It was like the storm was out to get me. The trees wailed, branches whipping against each other, and I said the Prayer of St. Michael as I pilgrim-ed forwards. Granna swore the Prayer worked every time. True or not, it distracted me from the cold.

The bellowing stopped. The flashes of light that had been growing gradually closer ceased with the awful sound.

"Oh god. That's not good."

I stood rooted in my spot, debating whether I should retreat. The playing field was snow-ridden and grossly uneven. Add in my mortal terror, and I had a potent cocktail of flee. What if it wasn't Morgoth? What if it was something even worse?

Who was I kidding. Of course it was the asshat. And skeletons or no, I wouldn't stand for this anymore. My nerves pushed me on edge, and I climbed the final hill before the mountains. The trees mercifully blocked the snow. At the hill's crest, the night was blanketed in white nothing. I paused to watch it, collecting my breath.

The strain of a violin came from the woods. It echoed impossibly over the wind, followed by a phantom orchestra. "What the heck is he doing?" I fretted, clutching my scarf. I almost had a breakdown right there. The music was ungodly, like a dance of the dead. I was mesmerized by it, knowing I'd heard it before. My mother blasted classical music when she tried to access her 'artist chakra.' Technologically impaired, I had to set up the playlists for her.

It was a piece by Camille Saint-Sans. The Danse Macabre

"Oh hell no. Not in my watch! The gall of that idiot. Ugh."

The violin's solo taunted me. It was an A and E-flat.

The 'Devil's interval,' in musical terms.

My face was stone. "Alright, if that's how you're playing." I got out the spray bottle of holy water. I advanced, prepared for anything. The deer path ended abruptly at a wall of snow-covered rose bushes. It seemed to stretch on without end. The wall of vegetation was like the thicket around Sleeping Beauty's castle.

I smirked, drawing out my secret weapon. It was a cheap machete Rosanna had picked up in Oaxaca on a visit to her uncle and given me for my eighteenth birthday. It was good for rope and underbrush. With a few thwacks I made it through the hedge. I fingered my petersword, anxious but brave.

I stopped dead in my tracks at the monstrosity before me.

It like an ancient British estate, with a manicured lawn labyrinth-ed by forbidding trees. Through the tangle of forest, a huge Gothic mansion sprung from a horror novel. It looked like Bluebeard's castle, made of dark wood and stone. The windows wept open; gargoyles yawned on the eaves. The terrifying music came from within, and I could have sworn a skeleton with a flute flashed past a window.

A few yards in front of me was a winding dirt road that wended through the property to the house. On it was a hearse piled with logs. Pine that could mast ships and cedar that smelled like memories. A skeletal blue roan trotted along, dragging the death-trap onwards. He wore a horse blanket dusted with snow. His car, finally, in horse form.

I must have breathed too loudly. Pallor stopped, mouth frothing as his eyes rolled back in his skull. Snorting, he dug his hooves into the ground and veered off the track towards me. I quickly got out my Bible. Pallor stared at it cross-eyed.

"Um. Back, demon horse thing." I waved the Bible around, then misted the air with holy water. Pallor licked his lips, eying the flapping pages. I sighed. "You'd think the Vatican could issue how-tos on exorcisms."

My fears of being trampled eased when Pallor began to plead. He kissed his lips, begging.

"What?" I asked, annoyed.

He stared at the Bible. I knitted my brows.

"You're a bookworm? Or are you a goat? You've got the brain of one." I tore out some pages, Exodus, and held them out as an offering. Pallor nipped them from my hands. He proceeded to eat Genesis and Revelation.

I wondered how stupid Samael's animals were, and if their combined intellect was higher than his. I petted the roan's bony head.

"Right. Good demon horse thing. Eat the Bible and be quiet." I put it on a snowbank and he continued to nom. The hearse stuck in a ditch. Shuddering, I peered inside, remembering the first night I'd encountered my abductor. The cut wood was obsessively arranged, each log precisely measured, stacked and sliced.

I reeled at the thought of a house built by his hands. It spooked me more than the fiddling skeleton. A smaller building winged the mansion, like a blacksmith's workshop. I wondered if the bellows had been him repairing his scythe. I remembered how he'd sold potions to Damien in hushed tones, concoctions in black glass that Damien hid in a safe. As the angel of poisons and drugs, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a laboratory or sold his creations. Lab or smithery, a haunting plume of smoke crept from its elegant chimney. Hisses came from within as I tread cautiously down the road.

I drew closer to the mansion itself, now a football field away. A nightmare garden swallowed it, drenched in snow and obscured by the night. I expected dragons cut out of hedges and a maze of poisonous plants. The vegetation towered stories into the air, and the driveway narrowed to a path wide enough for a single person, bound dead-center for the door. I almost screamed when I looked up to see the house had shifted.