The Altar

don’t. In other words, I call shots and you don’t. I give the rules and you follow. I’m the brains and you’re the body.”

“And if I don’t follow the rules?”

The demon laughed. “You ask some very interesting questions. Let me help you to understand. Suppose for a moment that I had an itch on my face just above my left eye. What would I do?”

“You’d scratch it.”

“That’s right. I’d scratch it. I would do that by commanding my hand to come up to my face and scratch. And my hand would obey.”

“Yeah.”

“Would the hand not obey?”

“Only if it couldn’t. Like if it were paralyzed or something.”

“But if it could, it would. The hand doesn’t concern itself with good or bad, right or wrong. The mind does that, does the thinking and the evaluation and the moral thing. The mind decides it’s ok and the brain just does it. It doesn’t have a mind, a conscience of its own. It just does what it’s told.”

“So what’s this got to do with me and you? You’re not a mind and I’m not a hand.”

“Ah, not yet. But we will be. We will become very close. Inseparable. You’ll be like the hand and will be able to have all the fun. And I’ll be the mind and will tell the hand what to do. It’ll be easy and it’ll be fun. You won’t have to worry about that right and wrong nonsense they fill you up with. You can let me decide that for you.

The boy stopped and looked at him for a long moment. “You’ve really got this demon thing all figured our, haven’t you?”

“Well, I’ve had a lot of years to practice.”

“You forgot just one thing, though. Why would I want to help somebody who killed my Dad?”

The demon laughed. “No, son, you’ve got it all wrong. You won’t have any choice but to serve me. You’ll be part of me, like the hand and I’ll be the brain. If the brain tells the hand to make a fist, it really doesn’t have any options not to, don’t you see? You’ll become my little puppet, and I’ll make you do whatever I want you to do. Play your cards right and you might even enjoy it. Many of them do.”

“What if I hate it?”

“You’ll get over it. And if you don’t, too bad. But you’ll obey because I’ll control the nerves.”

“I think I just want to go home,” Todd said. “I just want things to be back the way they used to be.”

“Well, you will be going back home soon enough, though I don’t think things will ever be the way they used to be. But you’ll get used to it in time. You’ll enjoy being the most powerful kid on the block. You’ll be able to do things you couldn’t do before.”

Todd just shook his head. All of that might be ok. He wasn’t sure and there was something about it that made him want to wet his pants. But even if it did turn out cool, he’d still rather have his father back.

3

Johnny Dovecrest was overwhelmed by the weight of the doomed souls that smothered him from all directions. There were hundreds of them already, with thousands and thousands more on the way. They stank of death, decay, sin, and evil. Their wants pressed horribly upon his soul. They demanded the love and intimacy they had been denied for so long, and they thought that he was their loved one. It was more than he could bear. Especially for a man who had grieved for his own family for almost 300 years.

But at least they were not here. They were with the Creator. And now he would be trapped here forever, never to be with them again.

He knelt on the ground and wept bitterly, for himself and for all of these miserable, wretched souls. But mostly he wept for himself.

His entire life had been dedicated to watching for the demon and protecting his tribe from it. He had not chosen this task. It had been thrust upon him. He hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t wanted the long life that went along with it. He would have been content to die with his family and move on to a better world. He’d done his job, led a good life, believed in the Creator, and still, after all that, he found himself in hell, overwhelmed by countless damned souls who all wanted a part of him.

“Go away!” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”

He struggled and flailed and tried to escape, but they held him down, not by the weight of their shapeless bodies, but by the weight of their needs. Their desperation was crushing. Dovecrest just wanted to die, but not even that option was possible.

“This isn’t right!” he screamed. “I’m not supposed to be here. Dear God, help me! I’m not supposed to be here!”

4

Erik closed his eyes and curled into a fetal position on the black sand. He put his arms over his head and drew his knees to his chest. But he couldn’t blank out the awful sounds of the pitiful, wretched souls who crushed down against him. They were suffocating and smothering him so badly that he couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t breathe. Hundreds of millions of plaintive wailings mixed together as one awful cry, with only bits and pieces even recognizable.

“Mary! At last! I’ve found you!”

“Billy! It’s me….”

“Mommy, where are you?”

And so it went. It was the weight of a hundred million souls upon him.

He was just about to give himself over to the desperate despair when it happened. They all stopped and froze where they were, as if time itself had been suspended. The voices stopped, and there was only silence.

Erik became aware of a gradual lighting; the brick red glow slowly turned orange, and then yellow. The shades dissolved around him, backing away from him as if he had become some fearful, frightening creature.

Erik noticed that the light wasn’t coming from around him, but from inside him, as if he himself had been illuminated from within. He could feel the radiance warming and refreshing him. He felt rejuvenated, as if he had taken a cool, refreshing shower on a hot summer’s day, and had been given a magical potion of energy and life.

To the damned souls around him, though, it was as if he had become poisoned. They retreated from him now, holding their hands and arms over their eyes in distaste and terror. He could no longer hear them-their voices had become mute to him-but he could see their lips moving as they cried out in fear and loathing. Whatever he had become was hateful to them.

He slowly crawled to his knees and looked over at his friend, Johnny Dovecrest. The Indian had also become transformed. His whole body was lit up, as if he had a strong fire burning inside him. The effect reminded Erik of paintings he had seen of angels, where the artist had somehow embodied them with a magical, mystical glow.

The doomed souls were moving away from Dovecrest as well, slowly backing away and holding out their hands as if to ward him off. The swarm had stopped completely and was now moving away from them both. It backed up against itself like a traffic jam as the shades melded into one another, and then slowly, almost with a delayed reaction, turned back the way they had come.

Dovecrest, too, had crawled to his knees and he met Erik’s gaze. A small, smile parted his lips, and Erik smiled in return. The two men sat and watched as the doomed hordes moved away. They could still see the damned souls, but could no longer hear them, or feel their anguish. And they no longer attracted the damned, but repelled them.

“What happened?” Erik said, finally.

Dovecrest stood up slowly and shook himself off. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think our prayers were heard.”