Chapter 26
In the flesh of the earth, someone was singing.
“While I draw this… fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall… close in death, when I soar to… worlds unknown… see Thee on Thy… Judgement Throne.”
Penelope Chalmers’ voice barely echoed in her cell. As the last note lingered, her teeth chattered to create an unwitting staccato effect. She closed her eyes, lowered her voice, and whispered “Rock of Ages… cleft for me…”
There was no response, no space for hiding. The demons whispered still.
“You need to give in.”
“Your rescuers have been taken hostage.”
“Look, here he comes.”
“The ‘man’ sent to save you.”
The demons had begun to soften. They sounded almost… empathetic now. Or maybe their horrible words were working, drilling deep into her mind. Either way, this break in the torture that had her singing for hours was incongruous enough that she decided to see this rescuer.
Penelope stood. It took some time. The cold had settled so deep into her bones that she imagined it had become integral, that her frame would melt if she ever thawed. Her muscles barely responded, filled with ice crystals as they must be, and her constant shivering made every movement uncertain. She had to slide up the constantly-spewing wall to right herself. The river of foul yellow mucus splashed across her clothes but that didn’t seem so important now; she could not get any more filthy.
This miracle achieved, the demons said “Close your eyes.”
“This light is coming.”
“We don’t want you to be blind.”
“We want you to see him.”
Penelope did as directed but only to avoid unnecessary pain. As it was, the bright flare made burning spheres of her eyes and tore into her lids. She tried to scream but it was a mere croak; her voice was still hoarse from Mahrey’s last visit.
Thinking of Mahrey made her whole body shake uncontrollably. Such episodes had become more and more common since… recently. Penelope worried she was close to earning a nervous condition. Not that she could do anything about it.
“Pass me not, O gentle Saviour,” Penelope sang to try and calm herself, her only defence against her trials. Her voice had aged over the past few days; she was sounding more and more like her Grandma. “Hear my humble cry. While on others Thou are calling… do not pass me by.”
This time, someone was listening; her fear subsided almost immediately and so did the shakes.
“Come on,” said the demons.
“He’s nearly here.”
“You need to see him.”
Penelope opened her eyes and, after some initial fuzziness, saw her cell in the approaching brightness. Only the shameful corner of her room had changed; it was now a shameful quarter. She would soon have to curl up into the opposite corner to sleep. She then took the opportunity to examine herself; her hands were stretched skin over vicious bone and her clothes had descended into an off-brown. Her leather boots were splashed with grime. If she could see herself now, she imagined she’d see an emaciated ghost, a haunted and wasted being.
Her light was coming from a grate in her door at about eye height. It had not opened while Penelope was awake, she’d never even seen its outline, and yet somehow it was open now.
Penelope pushed herself along the wall until she reached the door. Clasping the smooth metal grate, she looked out into the corridor; it was a subterranean passage, something too deliberate to have been dug by the Lord’s grace, with blazing torches stationed at twenty metre intervals. It was bright enough to see a good distance down either way, which made her wonder what ingenious method the demons had used to prevent this light entering her cell before.
As an act of defiance, she slipped her fingers through the grate. The corridor was much warmer than her cell, almost boiling by comparison, and her fingertips greedily ate up the heat. Just this brief act brought tears to her eyes. She wiped them away with warm flesh.
Penelope couldn’t take any more of this. She was at her breaking point. Her faith in the Lord had been strong, there had surely been none stronger for her to have lasted so long, but He had not come to help her. He had left her here to rot and shiver. If there truly was a rescuer coming down the corridor… She didn’t know how she would react.
From the ascent of the corridor, three people appeared. Two were worn and poor, a woman and a man. They led a healthy brute wearing clean clothes and defeat. These were the first people she’d seen in days who weren’t looking to torture her and the sight felt almost cleansing. She examined them closely and, as the skeletons dragged their captive closer, she saw that the healthy man had a hefty iron collar on, one with deep and vile-looking characters etched into it.
“There he is,” the demons whispered.
“The Wanted Man.”
“Your Father sent him.”
“And we have taken him.”
Penelope shook her head. She gripped the grate tighter. “It can’t be.”
She scrutinised him for any evidence that the demons were lying. All she saw was a fighter covered in scars.
Then the demons said “Look!”
“His neck!”
“Look at his neck!”
Penelope strained her eyes and caught a glimpse of the man’s neck as he was dragged part her cell; there, as promised, a tattoo of himself writhed, struggling against some unseen restraints, roaring silently in frustration that he could not be freed. Only one person had a moving tattoo of themselves. It had to be the Wanted Man.
She took a step back. The grate slammed shut, drowning her in darkness. The shaking began again, this time more viciously than before. The demons had been right; somehow, her father had convinced a living legend to rescue her and yet he too had been captured. What hope did she have now? What could possibly save her if the Wanted Man was not strong enough? God? But God had not intervened. Or maybe He had and He hadn’t been strong enough to overcome the will of That Which Sins. What if That Which Sins was more powerful? What if She were the one true God?
Penelope sang I Love To Tell the Story to calm herself but the shaking continued. Then she tried Fully Persuaded. Nothing. Then It Is Well Within My Soul. But her self-control would not return; the words tasted like ash.
The convulsions spread to her feet. She lost balance, tumbled to the floor like the Tower of Babel and crashed with just as much force. There she shook, shivered and convulsed and could do nothing about it; no prayer, no act of will, would give her control of her body.
Terror rose in her. What if this wasn’t a mere nervous condition but a permanent disability? What if she would be this horrid, twitching mess for the rest of her life? And what damage could she be doing to herself and her mind in this state? Though she could think clearly for the time being, she didn’t know how long that would continue for.
She had no choice. Praying to Him was not working. With limited control over her tongue, she stuttered “That Which Sins. Help me. Please.”
A deep bass tone responded and then the shivering stopped. The room warmed, almost like it had never been cold, and the grate slammed open once more. Light poured in but it didn’t burn this time; it was warming, inviting, like a summer’s day.
Penelope lay in the warmth and felt… joy. It was a direct joy she had never experienced before, acceptance and love and celebration. There could be only one explanation; That Which Sins had responded to her. That Which Sins had saved her from her treacherous body.
Still, it felt… weird to have broken the covenants of her Lord. A stabbing guilt settled on her like a thick blanket; she had been raised better than that. Her father and her mother had raised her Christian, as had the priests hired to educate her, and she had forsaken them and the countless hours she’d spent, knees bent, praying to Him.
But her mother was dead, killed by a drunken fall. The Lord had not helped her then. She herself had been captured by a cult of another god but He had stayed his hand. And her father had somehow moved Heaven and Earth to get the Wanted Man to search for and save his only daughter but, still, the Lord had not involved Himself and had allowed her rescuer to be captured.
Could an all-powerful and loving god allow that to happen to one of his subjects? And would a supposedly vile and horrible demon show any mercy?
This state of confusion, this back and forth between her years of education, her faith and the reality of her situation, persisted until someone banged on her cell door. She was so deep in thought that the great, echoing booms didn’t move her the first time.
Her visitor knocked again. “Hey, girly, you hearin’ me?” he said.
Penelope looked up and saw a thin-moustached guard peering in through the grate, the one who had been dragging the Wanted Man. He smiled, a gesture he probably thought was kind but which actually looked forlorn and sad.
“Good. You’ve been summoned, girly. Time to get your ass upstairs.”
Upstairs? The Bacchanals! Penelope was surely being brought to one of those events as there hadn’t been one since she last woke. The demons and the cold had disappeared the moment she had called on That Which Sins so they must think Penelope ready to take part.
Revulsion rose in her but she immediately questioned it; after all, it was only her education and her faith that told her that free sexuality was wrong. But even that challenge was immediately challenged; what about the beasts she’d heard taking part, she asked herself? What about the monsters and demons? There was a difference between a man and a woman fornicating and a woman and a vicious creature.
The thin-moustached guard unlocked the door, interrupting her inner dialogue. He stepped inside and helped her to her feet, the first friendly touch she’d felt in days.
“Hup we come, girly. Don’t keep people waitin’.”
She allowed herself to be led out into the corridor, a bright passageway with dozens of other cells carved into the walls. Each one was absolutely silent so she couldn’t tell which were full and which were empty.
The guard handed her a bladder that sloshed with liquid. “Here, drink this first.”
Her throat was so dry she didn’t question what it was. The cool liquid went down like honey, welcome as a long-lost relative.
“Excuse me?” she croaked as she handed back the bladder. “May I ask a question?”
“Now ain’t you polite! Fire away, though I may not be able to answer, you know?” he said before cackling and leading her up the corridor. “We’ll walk and talk though.”
“What day is it?”
“Why, it’s Friday the thirteenth.”
Four days. She had been in that cell for four actual days. With her sleeping pattern and the torture and the constant darkness, it’d felt longer. She cast a glance back toward her open cell and felt her body try to descend into shivering again. It took an act of will and the thought that she was free to suppress another episode.
“And what time is it?”
“Nearly midnight, I reckon. Mahrey likes to have the special ‘uns at midnight.”
They carried on up the winding trail. It curved back on itself twice, following some strange design. The cells became bedrooms, the doors becoming cheap and wooden and their locks disappearing. Some rooms were open, revealing people coupling or tripling on rough beds or cooking strange substances that didn’t smell edible. Some of the closed rooms had loud occupants who were hopefully enjoying what they were doing.
After some time, Penelope saw the sky. The corridor levelled out into a junction with another corridor one way and a large kitchen area the other. She was led into the kitchen with its barbecue pits and rough stone surfaces for butchery and food preparation. Primitive chimneys had carved out of the ceiling. Rain fell from dark clouds above them and was caught by large canvases that funnelled it into a series of barrels. And it was through a hole in one of these canvases that she glimpsed the dark and dismal sky.
Penelope just gazed up. She’d taken the sky for granted before, this ultimate ceiling which meant you were close to freedom. A tear of joy formed in her eye. She would always cherish the sky, regardless of what happened.
“C’mon girly,” the thin-moustached guard said. “We’ve gotta keep movin’.”
“Okay,” she said.
The guard led her down a set of stairs carved into a deep plunge cut near one of the barbecue pits. Descending made her warming muscles stiffen and her empty stomach spin like a top, but she could hardly refuse now so she went into the bowels of the earth.
At the bottom of the stairs was a great chamber, wide, tall and deep as a cathedral. A chandelier made from bones and covered in dozens of candles dominated the room, the only source of light and a powerful presence that seemed to throb. Each candle burned a different colour, filling the room with bright wonders. But not the edges. The light could not reach there.
Beneath the chandelier was Mahrey, naked and triumphant on a throne of living flesh. She sat at the head of a circle of cultists who hummed loudly and wore thick, velvet robes with deep-set hoods. The material hid their faces and bodies but some were so short they had to be children. Others’ robes were distended or fit so tightly that they could not be human.
At the centre of the circle was a neatly-cut rectangle of white marble. Unadorned and unspoiled, it sparkled in the multi-faceted light. Whilst it was impressive, Penelope’s eyes were drawn to the floor before it where a sluice allowed whatever dripped from the altar to flow below. It was as she’d suspected; the foul yellow substances in her prison had come from these events.
Mahrey rose to her feet. “Penelope. Welcome.” She flung her arms apart in joy, her enormous form wobbling with the motion. “I am so glad you made it in time for tonight’s event.”
Someone stepped in beside Penelope and grabbed her arm. “I’ll take her from here,” he said in a soft voice. “Hello Penelope.”
Penelope looked up and saw the dark man. Her icy muscles became stone, though her throat was loose enough to emit a whimper. There he was. Silver eyes and a black mask over white skin, a grip that would best a running freight train and the air of someone who could kill you with less effort than it took to greet you.
The thin-moustached guard stepped away and practically ran out of the room. Penelope envied him.
“Bring her before the group!” Mahrey almost sang, exulting in Penelope’s arrival.
“I’m glad you remember me,” he said, his voice low enough that only she could hear him. “Then you’ll remember what I’m capable of. If you choose to join That Which Sins, remember that you are mine regardless of what she says.”
They started walking toward the circle of cultists, slowly but purposefully. A deep intonation rose from the revellers, words in a guttural language Penelope had never heard. The Bacchanal was warming up.
“I am the one who took the Wanted Man single-handedly,” the dark man continued, his grip on her strengthening momentarily. She moaned in pain. “I am the foremost agent of That Which Sins. Remember this.”
Penelope nodded. If there were some power struggle between Mahrey and the dark man, she knew which side she would take; if he wanted, the dark man could slaughter everyone in this room with barely a second thought. And he claimed to have captured the Wanted Man on his own. There was no contest.
The dark man led her to the altar and then let her go. Mahrey nodded her thanks and he melted away, apparently not a part of this Bacchanal. Penelope wondered if he ever took part, how he worshipped That Which Sins.
“Penelope, my dear, do you know why you’re here?” Mahrey called over the deep chant.
“I… I asked That Which Sins for help.”
Mahrey smiled. “And did She not grant it?”
Penelope nodded. Disgust and a fledgling love rose in her at the same time, duelling forces vying for control of what she would do next. The torture had been That Which Sins’ fault in the first place but at least She’d taken an interest in Penelope…
The obese priestess stalked into the centre of the circle, talking at each person in turn. “Unlike Yahweh, That Which Sins cares about her followers. She loves us. She knows that we are creatures of pleasure, that we just want to indulge ourselves whenever we can. That is what She allows us, and implores all others, to do. That is what She wants from each of us.”
Their chanting became a little louder, slightly more fervent.
Mahrey smiled and turned to Penelope. “And that is what She wants from you, Penelope Chalmers.”
This rhetoric was akin to what Christian priests had echoed to her; an all-powerful deity that took interest in her personally. The only difference was the level of rules imposed, with That Which Sins supposedly just wanting her to enjoy herself.
Flashes of her body’s reactions when the Bacchanals were in full flow, of Mahrey’s strange brand of torture, came to mind. There were deep wells of pleasure to be found in herself, ones that she had longed to explore for some time but hadn’t and couldn’t because of her faith in the Lord. But, if He existed and wouldn’t help her, was He worth listening to? And what if He didn’t exist at all?
Mahrey stepped closer and put an arm on Penelope’s shoulder. No magic came with it this time. “I can see you have doubts; there’s someone here who might be able to… convince you to make the right decision.”
Mahrey snapped her fingers and pointed behind Penelope. Penelope turned and saw the dark man reappear at the edge of the darkness. He was bringing someone with him. The dazzling lights made it difficult to see who it was.
Penelope nearly fell over when she saw it was Eleanor Naismith. Eleanor was relatively clean in a rough cotton dress that she wouldn’t normally even touch. Her tied-back hair was dishevelled, many of the strands snaking away from the main bunch, and she looked scared. She couldn’t have been captured too long ago as she still looked healthy, well-fed.
The dark man led Eleanor into the circle of cultists and dropped her off, this time roughly and without ceremony. Penelope imagined he didn’t like being summoned by Mahrey if there were some power struggle between them.
Once more he disappeared but Penelope wasn’t paying him any attention. “Eleanor?” she asked.
“Penny!” Eleanor shouted before rushing over and embracing Penelope.
Weak though she was, Penelope hugged her back fiercely. The girl did not reek like Penelope; she’d definitely only been captured recently.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Eleanor whispered. “Are you?”
Penelope nodded, tears in her eyes.
Her friend, the last person she would have expected to see here, pulled away. She patted Penelope on the shoulder and gave her a bright smile, incongruous and worrying. “Good. I am so very glad that you have decided to join us, Penny,” she said.
The chanting grew louder. Penelope blinked. “Pardon?”
“Well, I say us; I do not worship That Which Sins. Omnis is my deity.”
Penelope took a step back and out of her friend’s reach, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Eleanor, you’re…?”
Mahrey stepped behind Penelope and put a hand on her shoulder. “Eleanor is a sister worshipper of the Triangle,” the priestess said. “She had been helping us in a… certain matter.”
Eleanor stepped forward and grabbed Penelope’s hands. “Penelope, I know what you are going through right now. I was dubious and conflicted when I was first presented with proof of Omnis’ power, of its grace, and I too compared this intervention against the relative laziness of Yahweh. My education indoctrinated me to believe in him and reject this new, wondrous being. But I made the right decision.”
“For you,” Mahrey hissed.
“For me,” Penelope nodded. “Omnis is not for everyone. Besides, you have already taken your first step to worshipping That Which Sins and I wish you would take the next one. It is not permanent; you can repent and go back to your former life. But Penny…”
Eleanor reached up to her cheap dress, which Penelope noticed was barely held together, and undid a clasp just below her throat. The material fell to the floor, revealing Eleanor’s lithe naked body; a body covered in complex and unholy tattoos that made Penelope feel ill.
The naked girl, this cultist, stepped forward and cupped Penelope’s face. “Trust me when I tell you that you will never want to turn back.”