14. Denizens of Hell.
14
Denizens of Hell.
“As a State Exorcist, your physical condition is paramount. You must be in shape to fight toe-to-toe with possessed victims and demonic traders. Your endurance, strength, and speed can make the difference in life or death situations. Your mind must be alert and sharp. Regular physical training and a balanced diet are required of you during the duration of your employment by the United States of America. You will undergo a thorough medical examination on your arrival in training and regular visits (every six months) during your service. Physical injuries are part of the job, but you will have access to the best doctors and treatments of the country […]”
-Extract from the State Exorcist’s Manual , edition of 2047.
KETRON ISLAND, WASHINGTON STATE, 2042
Starting that first day when I arrived at Ketron Island, Robb took it upon himself to become my mentor. All the other exorcists in training either took me for a stupid kid or watched me with pity. No one expected me to last longer than a week. I was determined to prove them wrong. I didn’t see how I could just go back to my old life with a father who wanted nothing to do with me and no friends. It was a ride-or-die situation, and I saw no other way out than through the training or as a victim of an exorcism.
The second day after my arrival, I was called to the infirmary to do a health examination. My hands were clammy as the doctor on site checked my heart and blood pressure first. What if he could tell I was possessed?
But he announced I had the heart of a marathon runner, which was good, apparently. Then he warned me he was about to take a blood sample, and I almost panicked right then. I was doomed. They would check my DNA and notice the mutations. They might even tell me what kind of demon I had before using me as the perfect subject for field training for the other exorcists.
But the doctor only took a few drops of blood and put them in an electronic device. My cholesterol level came back excellent.
He then tested my eyesight and hearing, which were excellent, too. I was a healthy teenager, even if I looked sickly.
Until at last, he asked me awkward questions about my strange coloring. I gave him the same excuse I always used: trauma resulting in my hair graying at such a young age. He accepted my explanation and told me I would fit right in with the exorcists who had all survived similar experiences. Somehow, I doubted it.
They released me after an hour and asked me to join the others at the physical training grounds. They had been training for two hours already, and sweat covered all of them despite the frosty January morning.
The two instructors—a man and a woman retired from the special forces—welcomed me with dubious looks.
“Very well, kid,” said the woman, eyeing my slight frame. “We’ll do a typical run and you’ll join the last group. It’ll allow us to see what you can and can’t do. Try to follow.”
She blew on her whistle and the ninety-six recruits gathered in groups of ten. I was the seventh member of the last one. We watched the others do the run first, and my anxiety only grew as I finally realized that it was far from the PE classes in my old school. It was an intense military training for people who were intent on hunting demons. They had to sprint to climb a twenty-feet wall, crawl under barbed wire, hoist themselves up ropes and rocks, and jump great distances not to fall in a pool of frozen mud. I was severely out of my depth. I had spent most of my teenage years alone in the forest of my old home or hiding in my room.
“ There is nothing to fear, little human ,” my demon said, sensing my dread. “ You have the power of a higher demon in you. The troublesome part will be to contain your abilities .”
It was the first time he’d talked all day.
I took a step back from the others and whispered, “What do you mean?”
“ You can run faster, jump higher, and hit harder. You just do not know it yet. Try not to give yourself away. ”
My anxiety rose even more. It wasn’t the right day to experiment with the limits of my mutations.
The sixth group was doing the run. Some recruits lagged, and two fell in the mud. Robb, who had finished his own, walked to me. There was blood dripping from a shallow wound on his forearm. He’d missed a step while climbing the wall.
“Don’t worry, Jon,” he said. “You’re not the only fresh recruit this month. Some of them are still trying to catch up. The fast ones like me, we come from military backgrounds. We’ve been doing this for a long time.”
He wasn’t bragging; he was that good. He’d finished his run in less than a minute. His misstep didn’t even slow him down the slightest.
Robb had been in the Air Force before joining the State Exorcists’ training.
“Isn’t it a counterproductive way to see the recruits’ abilities on the first day?” I asked.
Robb shook his head. “If you break something and give up. Or if you balk in the face of danger, then you’re not cut out to be an exorcist. It’s also a psychological assessment.”
I nodded. It made terrible sense. Right on cue, a recruit—a woman in her twenties—fell from the rope and broke her wrist. She didn’t cry out; she just cradled her broken hand and walked away without saying a word to anyone.
“It’ll slow her training, but she’ll heal,” Robb says. “Half the recruits will give up before the end of our training and never become an exorcist. It’s a fact. This run? Trust me, it’s nothing. It’s our morning warm-up. Fighting demons is much worse.”
I believed him.
When it was my group’s turn, I had worked on my resolve. A powerful demon had inhabited me for years. I had killed a man and kicked a hellhound back to Hell. This was nothing.
I put myself behind the seven other recruits. One of them, a young man, smiled at me.
“You should go home to your mama before you break a leg, kid,” he said condescendingly. “Or worse.”
“My mama’s dead,” I answered, holding his gaze. “She got killed by a demon after she slit my throat to use me as a sacrifice.”
That shut him up. The others then watched me with understanding. I wondered what their stories were.
The instructor blew the whistle, and we started the run. I lagged on purpose to watch how the best of us did it. The wall was tall, but there were footholds carved into the concrete. Most tried to climb it in one quick succession of jumps, at the risk of falling if they missed a step. That’s what had happened to Robb.
I took a deep breath and imitated my betters. I sprinted with all my might and launched to grab the first handhold. The result was more than I expected, and I sailed to the top of the wall in a few seconds, getting to the front. A few recruits cursed as I caught up to them.
“ Easy now, little one ,” my demon said.
I listened and waited for the others before jumping down to the cold ground.
I followed them over an obstacle course, then we crawled under the long barbed wire fence. I knew I could be much faster if I wanted, but I tried to simply keep up with the first recruits. Some of them urged me on with friendly motivational speeches uttered between bated breaths.
My hair caught in the barbed wire as I rose too soon. I didn’t stop, and I winced as it tore a few strands. The doctor had told me I would need to get a buzz cut before the end of the week and that I could borrow an electric hair clipper. I understood why right then.
I caught up to the first recruits at the second obstacle course. The rope was a challenge. It took me a few seconds to understand where to put my feet and hands, but I reached the top in third place. Robb was hollering my name from the other end of the training grounds, and a smile pulled at my lips for the first time since I arrived at Ketron Island.
I raced to the last part of the run: the wooden posts over the pool of mud. The young man from earlier—who had talked down on me—was a few jumps ahead. But as soon as I reached him, he elbowed me in the face. I heard more than I felt my nose break. Taken by surprise, I fell into the frozen mud below us, but not before I heard his laugh. The impact and the cold knocked the breath out of my lungs. I struggled to rise, my face covered in mud and blood.
Rage overtook me. I ran on all fours to get out of the slush, then sprinted toward the man. Right before he could finish the run, I tackled him from behind. We both fell to the ground.
I was the first back on my feet, and I simply walked to the finish line, looking like a monster out of a bog. The other recruits watched me in silence. But, surprisingly, the instructor offered me a curt nod.
I kept an eye on the man I had thrown to the ground in case he wanted payback. But he didn’t get time to do anything; Robb ran to me to give me an accolade, putting mud on his sweaty T-shirt.
“ Well done ,” my demon said.
And I felt a misplaced pride in being praised by him.
They didn’t let me return to the facility to shower, and I spent the rest of the morning covered in dried mud.
That afternoon, I followed the other recruits—Robb was in a more advanced group—to my first class after lunch. Exorcists weren’t only required to be quick and strong. We also needed to know the enemy and learn how to do a proper exorcism.
The teacher—Agent McDougal—dropped a State Exorcist’s Manual on my table.
“This is your Bible,” she said to me. “It’s more useful than the real one, which only provides vague knowledge of Hell and its creatures. Your manual contains all the knowledge specialists have gathered on demons and rituals in the last seven years. It’s updated every month with new insights if needed.”
The book was remarkably thick. We knew more than I expected.
“ Interesting ,” my demon said.
The cover was entirely black, without a title or the writers’ names on it, and the pages smelled brand new. The first few chapters were on the species of demons. They had different names, borrowed from myths all over the world. Hydras, cerberuses, onis, imps, succubi… They sorted them by classes related to their power and the difficulty of exorcising them. They individually named some of the highest demons. Asmodeus, Belial, Azazel…
My demon laughed. “ At least they tried ,” he said as I turned the pages.
And I made a mental note to ask him questions later.
There was also a long list of case studies about the demons exorcists had faced. My eyes lingered on the page about the House Shaw Massacre, and the old wound ached.
My demon kept quiet.
Agent McDougal resumed the lesson from where they had left off, leaving me to catch up independently.
“Salt,” she said, “is the most important ingredient for a ritual. Our experts aren’t sure why yet, but they theorize it’s a major element that composes Hell, and so it facilitates the link between our worlds. Salt has now become the number one resource for demonic traders. Follow the trail of salt, and you’ll find them. Unfortunately for us, salt isn’t rare or difficult to obtain. The entire ocean is full of it. Countries try to keep a close eye on where their salt is going, but it’s often a fruitless endeavor.”
She went on like this for three hours, and we took notes. It felt strange to be back in class. Except on Ketron Island, I wasn’t the odd one like I had been in school. We were all a unique mix of weird and unsettled. The recruit sitting in front of me—the woman with the broken wrist—had a nervous tick. She kept repeating the same pattern by hitting her nails on the tabletop.
After our lesson, we trained with weapons used against demons. Holy water vials, chains, knives, clubs…
They taught us it was often better to cut a limb off during an exorcism than risk the demon escaping. I tried my best to not cringe visibly at the idea. Would they cut off my hands on the day when my demon would take over? It was a sobering thought. I was there on borrowed time. I needed to get rid of my demon on my own before it came to that.
By evening, I joined Robb in the mess for dinner. He congratulated me on surviving my first day. Then he agreed to follow me to the showers later and shave my head for me, to make sure I didn’t do a poor job and looked like an ‘ugly pigeon chick freshly out of the egg’.
A few recruits joined us and asked me questions. What sports had I done when I was younger? Who were my parents? They were trying to figure out how an unimpressive boy like me arrived first on most runs. I made up stories to satisfy them. Some also asked me bold questions about the day of the massacre. My answers were less satisfying. I was only a child when it happened. All I could remember was waking up on the hospital bed.
After the shower, I went back to my dorm room. My fellow recruits all went to sleep almost immediately; they were exhausted. But I stayed awake to read in bed. I wanted to understand it all.
I rubbed my shaved head absent-mindedly; it had been years since my hair had been so short. The State Exorcist’s Manual was open on my lap and the small lamp above my bed illuminated the illustration of a demon on the page. Descriptions and pencil drawings accompanied it, all based on myths and visions of the other plane. The creature was tall, with pale skin and long horns. The face was too alien to look human, with high cheekbones and slits for eyes. Its back legs curved like a feline’s. Two large, leathery wings spanned behind its back. The top of the page only said: Higher Demon , class-two .
The wind was howling outside, and the rain splattered the window beside my bed, so I dared a whisper.
“It has horns. Is that you?”
“No. Most higher demons have horns ,” my demon said. “ Mine are bigger .”
I snorted quietly. “I bet.”
“ Hush, puny human .” But there was no bite to his words. “ What you are looking at is a merlok—or an approximate representation of one.” He said the word merlok with a distinct accent. The R was heavier, almost like Arabic . “They live in the Chasm’s darkness and loathe the light .”
The Chasm. It wasn’t the first time he made an allusion to the deep pit of Hell. The days in his world were too hot; many demons lived underground.
I grabbed my pen and wrote merlok at the top of the page.
“Do you have wings too?” I whispered.
“ I do .” He surprised me by answering. “ But mine have white feathers. They are more resistant to the light, unlike most demons. ”
“Will I—will I grow wings?” I asked, a little scared.
He chuckled. “ It does not look like it .”
I sighed in relief. It was already painful enough to file the horns every two weeks. I couldn’t imagine how I could butcher the wings on my back without help.
“What kind of demons have feathered wings?”
I was shamelessly fishing for knowledge. If I could learn what species he was part of, I could understand the best way to send him back to Hell and finally be free.
“ I am the only one ,” he said. “ I am the last of my kind .”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
Why should I be sorry for the demon who was slowly preparing to devour my soul?
It was just that I understood loneliness too well.
He laughed faintly. “ You are a peculiar little human, Jonah Shaw .”
I spent the next hour reading from the manual, absorbing knowledge on Hell and its denizens. My demon often provided corrections. What we knew was always inaccurate. Holy water, for example, didn’t work because it came from holy places. It only had to do with the chemical composition of some springs found on Earth. It reacted with the mutating DNA of the possessed.
I wrote on the margins of the manual, and on every blank space I could find. Eventually, my eyes drooped, and sleep pulled down.
Until a scream echoed in the facility, guttural and haunted. I sat up in bed, drowsiness forgotten. Not one of my roommates stirred; it had been far enough to be a whisper over the wind.
I froze, wondering if I had imagined it, when a second sound overlapped the howling wind. I walked down the ladder and went to the door of the dorm room. The hallway was dark and empty. Another scream echoed through the facility.
I hesitated, wondering if I should investigate or wake the others.
“They brought a new possessed today,” a voice said behind me.
I turned to find the man sleeping in the bed under mine watching me.
“What?” I asked.
“They brought a new possessed today,” he repeated. “For training. They always get a little crazy on the first day; they don’t like to be restrained. But eventually, the host tires and they become dormant again. At least, until we try to exorcise them.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, unsettled.
“Go to bed. Nothing will happen tonight.” He turned his back to me.
I closed the door and climbed back up to my bed. I turned off the light and listened to the faraway screams of a possessed like me, locked up somewhere in the facility.