CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The Root Cage

 

HIS HEART BREAKS and reforms all in a single moment: there stands Alison. Contained within the exposed roots of a tree, the twisted bark tendrils forming the bars of her cage. The tree itself is a blasted dead thing, rising into the forest ceiling, the bark stripped away and bitten into as if lightning has clawed its way through. The ground inside the cage is an ankle-deep pool of brackish, dirt-flecked water.

Alison is beaten and bloodied—eyes ringed in puffy purple bruises, capillaries burst in her eyes and her cheeks, bottom lip split, the chin crusted with black blood. Someone hurt her, and when he sees that he wants to find whoever that is and break their bones inch by inch until their skin is just a sack for a shattered skeleton.

But then she smiles and it washes away the anger. Like an antiseptic poured on a wound to clean away the infection.

“Al,” he says, almost crying. Cason drops the bag he’s been carrying, slams himself up against the root cage. He reaches through, touches her hand—she pulls herself toward him and touches her forehead to his.

“I... I don’t know how long I’ve been here,” she says. “It feels like forever.”

“I’ll get you out of here.” He draws a deep breath. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” She blinks back tears. “Someone brought me here and... please get me out. Please.”

He grabs at the roots, pulls with all his might. Agony assails the muscles of his arms, his back, his hips and legs—and still the roots remain.

Again, it strikes him, the realization coming faster than before.

You control this place.

The roots are just part of the forest.

He calms his heart, stills the flutter inside his chest and gut. Zeroes out any of the noise in his mind as he leans up against the cage, feels the craggy dry bark scraping the calluses on his palm and fingers, feels the faint throb of life still living inside this tree.

Then he grabs that tiny pulse and pulls it like a fishing rod.

The bark cracks, splits—

And two of the tendrils pull free of the earth, dirt raining from fine roots at the base. Then those two tendrils curl up into tight spirals, opening the way for Alison’s escape. She gasps, weeping—

Cason feels her wrap her arms around him. It all feels right.

But something smells wrong. Literally. A stink crawls into his nose.

The smell of smoke and burning. Lit match-tips. Charred leaves and ashen bog.

There’s a flash of light—

Cut to his retinas, imprinting a silhouette on the backs of his eyes—

Cason is thrown backward, into the root cage.

The tendrils drop, uncurling and thrusting down deep into the earth.

Alison no longer stands outside the cage.

Instead: it’s a man. Tall, lean, bare-chested, the chest laced with a network of dark scars. Head a mane of salt-and-pepper hair. At a distance he looks older, but his skin is smoother than plastic. Untouched, unmarred. No lines at all.

Cason’s seen him. In his dream. On the glass throne.

The man grins. Cinches up a pair of dirty jeans. Dries his toes on the mossy ground.

“Freedom,” the man says, sucking air between his teeth. He stretches out his arms, spins around in a giddy circle. “Sweet, glorious freedom. I have to tell you, that cage? Not pleasant. I don’t recommend it. And yet—there you are. You’ll see. Sometimes, these bugs come? Chew your skin off? And then other times, it rains, but the rain—you can’t drink it. You’re thirsty, so you’ll try, but it’s bitter as anything and it’ll strip the meat right from your throat-hole.” The man waves a hand. “Ooh, sorry. I’m over here ruining all the good surprises.”

Cason stands. Dusts himself off. “I don’t know who you are, but you just made one hell of a mistake.”

“Hell of a mistake. That’s funny.”

“This forest is mine.”

“Is it, now?”

“That’s how I found you. Because I control this place.”

Cason stalks forward. Puts his hands on the roots. Feels for that pulse and again pulls it taut.

The roots don’t move. Not a quiver. Nary a tremble nor a twitch.

He growls, tries again—reaches deeper, feels his eyes rolling back in his head—

Nothing.

“Now, think about it,” the man says. “What kind of cage would it be if the person inside could get out? You had the key. You were the keykeeper, one might say. But not anymore, Cason. This cage is built right. I should know. I’ve been in it for...” He checks his wrist, where no watch exists. “About fifty years, now? Feels like an eternity. And I should know eternity.”

“Who are you?”

The man grins ear-to-ear. “Shoot, you know me, hoss. I’m the Devil. Satan. Lucifer. Sammael, the Thorn of God. But you might want to call me...” He lets that dramatic pause hang in the air like a sword dangling from a tiny string. “Daddy.”

The Devil brays with laughter.

 

 

TUNDU SITS.

It’s been about five hours now.

He sits there in the Dodge, drumming his fingers. He wants to listen to the radio, but doesn’t want to burn out the battery. Thing is, it’s quiet out here. Freaky quiet. It’s not like the city. The city is—well, the city is noise. Honking, tires, construction work, yelling, laughing, crying, music. Even if you turned all that off there’d still be the sound of the city itself: the wall of white noise. In the ground, in the buildings. The hum of every traffic light, the thrum of subways and sewer gases.

Out here, though, it’s dead still, and that drives Tundu crazy. Makes him feel itchy, like he’s got ants between his ears.

His mind wanders into bad spaces. Spaces where he feels worry and fear over this new world he’s discovered: a world of beings well above the station of man. It makes him feel small, and it makes him worry about his family. He wanted to have kids someday of his own, too—his nieces and nephews are a real pain in the ass, sure, but he still wanted to have a couple himself, raise them up right. Now he’s not so sure. What would it be to bring kids into a world like this? A world where he knows that the nightmares really exist?

It’s then he hears a sound.

A scuff of a shoe.

Then—

At the window. A face. Lidless eyes, lipless mouth.

Frank.

He waves, waggling his bright red lobster fingers, and then mimes rolling a window down. Nobody ‘rolls’ them down anymore, but the gesture is universal. Tundu complies.

“What the hell, Frank?” Tundu asks. “How’d you get here?”

Frank just shakes his head, then shows his other hand.

In it, he holds a stubby-barreled nickel-plated revolver.

He thrusts it in through the window and shoots Tundu twice in the chest. Tundu feels his body shudder with each hit. He tries to say something, but it comes out a whistling squeak. The back of his tongue tastes blood. He coughs.

“Sorry, T.,” Frank says.

Then he walks away.

 

 

“YOU,” CASON SAYS. “You’re my divine parent.”

It starts to add up.

He’s adopted.

They used to call him The Beast.

The gods wanted him out of the way, so they arranged for the accident and the subsequent indentured servitude to Eros.

The Devil laughs again. “You ass. I’m not really your Daddy. Relax.”

“What? But—”

“I’m your grandfather.”

Cason presses his face against the roots. Shows his teeth. “Now you’re just playing with my head. Who the hell—”

“I told you for real this time. I’m the Devil. I’m your granddaddy.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“What’s that, you said? You’d like me to tell you a story, young whippersnapper?” Lucifer stoops, snaps up a thin green tendril up off the ground, uses it to tie back his hair. “I guess I got the time. My coming out party can wait another five, ten minutes—besides, isn’t that the thing? To be fashionably late?”

“I don’t want to hear the story of some two-bit angel—”

The Devil scowls. Kicks the roots. “Angel? Fuck you. Angel. I’m no angel. I’m the real deal, kiddo; a certified god. When the Big Boss with the Heavenly Hot Sauce kicked my can out of His little sky-country, I plunged through the worlds and into my very own special Hell—and there I became its King. Angel.” He spits on the ground, and it sizzles. “I’m no angel. I have a whole religion around me. I’m in movies. Comic books. More stories are written about me then they are Him. So don’t you sell me short, you little pissant. You give your elder the respect he deserves.”

“I don’t want to hear any story you want to tell me.”

“Too fucking bad, kid. I want you to see just where you come from, because it’ll burn your ass real good. Mmkay? Mmkay. Now. About your mother? Lydia, oh, Lydia. Say, have you met—? No, I guess you haven’t. Gods, what a crazy, sexy bitch your mother was. Like, genuine nuts, you know? Her head was a can of broken cashews. Well, as I mentioned, I had quite the following—still do, but it really peaked in the 1970s, you know? Great time to be the Devil. Fond memories. Whatever. Point is, Lydia was a beloved proselyte of mine. I heard her prayers and felt her energy from across the miles—the praises of the most devoted, I could hear all the way down here in the dark. Like I was a radio and they were the only frequency I could get.”

The Devil leans back against the cage. Relaxing. Looking up, wistfully remembering. “Well. Lydia was one of the strongest signals to hit my antenna, right? And I thought, hey, I’ll try to talk back to her. So I tried and tried and squeezed all my evil muscles together and one day—pop!—I got through. And I told her my situation, I said, honey, this is the Devil hisownself, and I’m trapped down in a prison made just for me by a bunch of petulant snot-nosed tricky-dicked deities—right? Bunch of bullies who think that just because I’m the Devil, just because I’ve got some of the same ‘divine matter’ as that giant celestial jerk who locked them out of their own homes, that was a good enough reason to lock me away in this place until the sun and stars flicker to ash.

“But I’m a guy with a long view of things. And a way to see through it all, to see how the dominoes tumble into one another, again and again. So I said to her, to Lydia, I need your help. And I told her what to do.”

Here the Devil chuckles, shakes his head like he’s real pleased about what’s coming. Still facing away from the bars, all the while.

Cason inches closer. Hands flexing.

“She did just as I asked. She came out here. Found her way into the installation, down through the forest, and all the way to me. We kissed—just once through the cage roots, and it’s then I tasted it. She was my own daughter!” He claps his hands. “You believe that? I mean, once upon a time I got around here on Earth, but really, most of the time my diabolical seed didn’t take. It’s why there aren’t a lot of half-god hybrid babies running around—it’s rare that our divine swimmers or little demon eggies manage to sync up with the oh-so-very-vulnerable human body. Hell, most times it’s just a miscarriage—and usually one that splits the mother like a tomato. Ugh. But I guess at one point my goo found a home and... well, ta-da. Lydia Cranston.”

Cason lunges.

Hands around the Devil’s neck. He gets his arm through, wraps it around Lucifer’s neck, starts to squeeze. Choke him out the way he’d choke out an opponent on the mat.

Cason grits his teeth. Puts his back into it.

The Devil cranes his head back and cocks an eyebrow.

“You finished?” Lucifer gurgles.

Cason gives it a couple-few more hard shakes. Then quits.

The Devil says, “I don’t really breathe, you know.”

“I’ll kill you somehow,” Cason says.

“Unlikely, kid. You don’t know what’ll do me in and even if you did, you won’t get access to it. Tough titty, said the kitty. Now, back to the story—so, Lydia leaves my company and meets, as you did, the sentinels of this place. Ugly little chimerae. And with them comes Mister Antlers, the Lord of the Hunt, the Keeper of the Forest Maze, Cernunnos. Big dick swinging. He’s the Green Man. Hard as a knob of cypress wood, and she, fertile as a verdant island valley. She offered herself to him. On my command. And he, being the horny old stag that he is, took her right there.”

He smiles a sweet smile. Like he’s remembering the perfume of a first date.

“And then, she did as I asked. She left. Fled her new lover. Gone, gone, and nine months later, you plopped out, and she was of course a total fuck-up—like I said, crazy—and she gave you up for adoption not knowing what kind of creature she gave birth to and... well, fast-forward a bit to the part where the gods eventually suss out that someone with my diabolical heritage is wandering around the country punching people in the head and choking them out on mats inside octagons and they figured it was high-time to corral that unruly horse. So, they arranged for your little... situation. Ah, but one thing they did not arrange for—and here is where I stepped in again—I tweaked their magic just a touch. I’m the one who made it so your wife and son hated you, wanted you dead. That wasn’t them. That was all me, kiddo. Because I needed you mad. Mad enough at them to think about revenge.” He sighs. “And that took longer than I thought. You got fat. Complacent. So I sent my man along—good ol’ Frank—to tweak the equation a little.”

“Why? Why have me kill those other gods?”

Lucifer shrugged. “That was mostly an added value for me. I’m not a fan of theirs and I’m happy to get rid of the competition, so. And Frank really wanted it, and if that’s what hooked him... hey, I figured I could let that go as long as it needed to. Long as the road led you here to let me out. Because you’re the key, kiddo. Your Daddy is the one who made this prison, so that means you could open the door. And you got my blood, too, which means the cage thinks it has the right prisoner and nobody knows different.”

“So you’re the one who broke my family apart.”

“Guilty! Of this and so many other things.” Lucifer winks. “Anyway. I gotta hoof it—although your Daddy’s the one with the hooves, I guess. Point is, I’ve got a Heaven to overtake with my charm and might.”

Cason sneers. “I thought God kicked all of you out.”

“Oh, he did. But I know a little secret: God’s gone. Packed up His shit and high-tailed it out of Heaven. Same time that a host of the father gods left—Zeus on his boat, Odin on that horse made of fire, Ahura-Mazda in that Casa Luz pit. He’s gone. And the throne is open. So, since I’m kinda next in line for the job, I’m pretty much gonna kick open the door and take it while nobody else knows the position is open.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

The Devil shrugs.

“I don’t think you have much choice, kid. Sorry we couldn’t have had dinner. Played a little catch, maybe.”

“We still can.”

Lucifer smirks. “Oh?”

“There’s an apple. In my bag. Last thing I’ll get to eat in a long while. You throw it to me and I eat it. Two birds with one stone: dinner and a round of catch with my grandpappy.”

Lucifer eyes up the bag. Picks it up, empties it out. The apple drops on the ground with a thud. The Devil rolls his eyes. “Oh, fine. Anything for my dear old grandson. I do spoil you, sometimes.”

Then he kicks the apple in through the cage bars and walks away, laughing.