“No. I really should have studied more. Though I doubt very much it’s saying anything we’d want to know.”
Steam curled up around the long line of cars, thick and rancid, smelling of brimstone and bitter honey, blood and shit and sour milk. Kim pulled a face.
“What is that awful stench?”
“Trust me,” said JC. “You really don’t want to know. Wait a minute . . . you can smell that?”
“I can see and hear,” said Kim, defensively. “Why shouldn’t my other senses work as well?”
“I’m going to have to get back to you on that one,” said JC.
The doors slammed open, one after another, all down the long row of cars, sounding like firecrackers in Hell. Suddenly every car was illuminated from within by a fierce blood-red glow; and in that hellish light, demons glared out the windows and through the open doors, all their glowing eyes locked onto the living man and the dead woman. And then the demons laughed, a harsh, awful sound that hurt the ears of the living and the dead. They laughed and howled and stamped their misshapen feet, seething together in their packed cars like maggots in an open wound.
JC’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. His heart lurched in his chest, and he could barely get his breath. These were no traditional, medieval demons, with scarlet skin and barbed tails, claws and fangs and batwings. No simple distortions of Humanity, like those old familiar monsters carved into stone on churches and cathedrals all over Europe. These were the real thing, low-level demons made flesh and bone so they could operate in the material plane. The dregs of the damned, the gutter sweepings of Hell.
They wore forms calculated to horrify, intended to disgust. Shapes that held only a little Humanity, the better for Humanity to be mocked and insulted. Sin made plain in flesh and bone, stamped with the imprint of all the evil they had ever done. Monsters, in the flesh and in the soul, they all bore the mark of the Beast upon them. There were claws and fangs, cloven hooves and membranous batwings, distorted forms and exaggerated sexual characteristics, barbed tentacles and needle teeth crammed into round lamprey mouths . . . but that was incidental. All you had to do was look into their eyes to know all you needed to know. That they were evil, and they gloried in it. Some stamped impatiently on the floor, some scuttled along the windows, some hung down from the ceilings. And some crawled back and forth over and across the others like oversized insects.
Hell had come to town, looking to play.
They laughed and howled and leered at JC and Kim, held back only by some unheard command, some unseen authority. JC glared right back at them.
“Am I supposed to be impressed by this?” he said loudly. “Am I supposed to be intimidated by this halfarsed fun-house ghost train? I’ve fucked scarier-looking things than you!”
“Really?” said Kim.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good insult,” said JC.
“I see,” said Kim. “Something else for us to discuss later.”
“Look, I really am rather busy at the moment . . .”
And then Kim cried out, as the unseen force took hold of her again and hauled her backwards all the way down the length of the platform. JC ran after her, goaded by the awful laughter of the demons, but he couldn’t catch up. He was helpless to do anything but watch as Kim was thrown through the open doors of the front car, right into the midst of the waiting demons. They fell upon her, and she disappeared in a moment, swarmed over by vile and vicious things.
JC ran to the front car, and the doors slammed together in his face at the very last moment. He hammered on them with his fists, then hit them with his shoulder, but the doors wouldn’t budge. He pounded on the windows, but his fists made no impression. He pressed his face against one window and screamed Kim’s name, but if she made any sound, it was lost in the triumphant howling of the demons.
The train pulled slowly out of the station, not hurrying, taking its time, and JC ran alongside it, half out of his mind. He shouted threats and pleas and promises as he beat at the moving windows with his bare hands and tried to force open the closed doors as one by one they passed him by. The train sped up, leaving him behind. JC’s fear and rage turned cold, and a fierce, implacable purpose took over. He waited for the last car, then threw himself onto the end of the train, hanging on to the end door with both hands. The train speeded up and roared away, plunging into the darkness of the tunnel; and JC went with it.
The only light was the hellish crimson glow spilling out of the car windows and end door. The train rattled and swerved, as though trying to throw JC off, but he held on grimly with one hand while searching through his jacket pockets with the other. He finally pulled out a withered monkey’s paw that had been crudely made into a Hand of Glory, in defiance of all international laws and conventions. Just one of the many things JC wasn’t supposed to know about, let alone possess. Not actually black magic, as such, but close enough that you could damn your soul using it in the wrong way. JC was a great believer in all the modern technology the Institute provided; but sometimes you had to go Old School on your enemies, and to hell with the consequences.
The slender wrinkled fingers on the monkey’s paw had been made into crude candles, complete with wicks, and when JC forced out the exact Word of Power, they all burst into flames at once, activating the Hand. A properly operated Hand of Glory can undo any lock, open any door, and reveal any secret. The end door of the hell train was no match for it and sprang open so suddenly it nearly threw JC off. He hung on to the door precariously with one hand, the rails shooting by beneath his dangling feet. The turbulence of the racing train buffeted him viciously back and forth, but his grip held, even as his fingers screamed at him; because he knew that letting go of the door would mean letting go of Kim. And he would die before he did that.
He waved the Hand of Glory sharply to put out the flames and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket. Only then did he use both hands to grab the open door and haul himself forward into the car. The door slammed shut behind him, and JC took a moment to crouch on the rocking steel floor and get his breath back. His head was spinning, he was shaking all over, and his heart felt like it was trying to leap out of his chest. It was at times like this that JC really wished he went to the gym more often. Or at all.
He forced himself back onto his feet, and looked around. The car was empty, its light surprisingly normal. And then a bitterly cold wind blew up out of nowhere and slapped him bluntly in the face. The cold soaked into him, biting at his bare hands and face, stealing away all sensation even as it numbed his brain and slowed his thoughts. This was the cold of the space between worlds, untouched by the warmth of suns, cold enough to blast the soul. One of the many faces of Hell; a taste of what was to come. A slow certain knowledge came to JC then—that if he insisted on going on, if he persisted in his attempt to rescue Kim . . . he would die. And his soul would be trapped on the hell train forever, or at least until such time as the Institute sent a team to exorcise it and him. JC knew that, as surely and certainly as he knew anything, and didn’t give a damn. It might be true, or it might not; you couldn’t trust anything on a hell train. But even if someone he trusted had told him he was doomed, and damned, he would have gone on anyway. Because Kim needed him. So he thrust his face into the bitter cold wind, stamped his frozen feet, and forced himself down the length of the car, one hard step at a time. Forcing himself on, against everything the train could throw at him.