Jack L. Chalker And the Devil Will Drag You Under

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Or witchcraft ritual, perhaps?
He reached the church, which, he noticed, had no cross on it. As he expected,
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when he opened the massive doors there was no chanting, no people inside at
all.
He turned, pistol still in hand, and walked around to the side of
the building. The service, naturally, started up again and sounded very,
very real, if a bit eerie.
To one side was a small graveyard. He approached it and tried to make out the
inscriptions on the crude wooden slabs. Again no sign of crosses or of Stars
of David or of any other known religion adorned them.
He cursed under his breath. Naturally the inscrip-tions were in a language he
couldn't read, even an alphabet that looked very odd indeed.
He sighed and was about to return to town when he thought he heard movement
off to his left, further inside the cemetery. That perked his interest and put
him more on guard. For the first time he had the sensation of something
living, something physically present, lurking there somewhere between the
tombstones, watching him.
He flicked the small lever on his pistol to stun and walked slowly to the side
of the cemetery nearest the church, then carefully started moving past rows of
wooden tombstones. He could see nothing, but it wasn't well lit here, anyway.
Nobody burns lights in a graveyard, and the uniform twilight with its lack of
a light source prevented shadows from any natural source. He considered that,
reached out his left hand, and materialized a small burning torch. Its light
was not the best,
but it was an improvement. The flicker-ing flame's shadow-making ability,
particularly among the slabs and against the church wall, gave the scene an
even more eerie cast.
Suddenly a small, dark figure bolted from behind a slab just as Mac was
approaching it.
"Hold it!" Mac shouted and aimed the pistol. The figure did not
heed his warning, so he pressed the trigger, using the pencil-thin beam to
find its mark. It struck the figure just on the other side of the
grave-yard and bathed it in an eerie reddish glow. The stun worked;
the figure collapsed in a heap and re-mained still. Mac almost broke
a record getting to the figure, then gasped when he reached it and
turned it over.
It was a girl. Not a woman-type girl, a small one of perhaps nine or ten,
barefoot and dressed in an ob-viously handmade shirt and pants. Her hair was
cut short, her complexion was dark, and her features were vaguely Chinese or
something similar.
He sat and waited for her to recover, planting the torch in a recess in the
ground that he had ordered and holding the pistol lightly. The church service
continued. He wondered if they ever stopped chanting.
He'd waited perhaps five minutes when he suddenly cursed himself again. He had
no idea how long "stun worked-he hadn't specified it. On the other hand, she
had been knocked down by a
"
weapon of his own will, so that meant she could also be brought around in
the same way. He stared at her and his mind ordered her to wake up.
She stirred, groaned, sat up, and shook her head, looking confused.
Then, suddenly, she became aware of him and her head turned slowly to look
at him for the first time under these conditions. She gasped; her
expression showed abject terror.
"
Don't be afraid," he soothed, glad to find another living being. "I won't hurt
you."
Confusion reigned again on her face, although the look of terror was not at
all diminished.
"Bu kasha liu briesto,"
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she rasped through a fear-constricted throat. It seemed to be a plea.
"Oh, boy!" Mac Walters said aloud disgustedly. There had never been any reason
to expect that someone here would speak English. He fervently wished he
could understand her and she him.
"Bu kasha liu harm,"
she said in that same pleading voice.
Suddenly his head came up.
Harm? Then maybe .. .
"
I'm not going to hurt you," he told her again.
She plainly didn't believe him, but at least now she understood him. Please,
master, I did not
'
"
mean to come to your holy place," she explained desperately. "Duru, my
chicken, he got away today and I was just looking for him, just trying to find
him, and accidentally came here. This was a forest yesterday, not a town." She
started to cry.
Mac realized suddenly that he was able to under-stand her. This was
a strange world. He relaxed the pistol a little. "I don't have anything to
do with this town," he told her as gently as possible. "I don't know as
much about this place as you do. And I'm nobody's master but my own."
Still, he thought, if this was a forest yesterday and is a town today, it is
somebody's doing.
Abaddon? Almost certainly-but where?
At any rate, she still didn't believe him. She waited to see what he was going
to say or do next.
"
Where are you from?" he asked her. "I didn't see anything but this town
anywhere."
She looked, if anything, even more fearful and certainly hesitant.
"I'm from Brobis," she explained, as if that told him anything.
"Never heard of it," he admitted. "No matter. What do you know of this place
here? I mean, where are the people?"
A little of the fear lessened in her and she looked at him curiously. You
really dont know? You
"
'
arent just playing with me?"
'
"I'm perfectly serious," he assured her. "I never saw this town until a few
minutes ago, and I
certainly have no idea what or where a Brobis is. You're the first living
thing I've run into since I
got here."
"I still think you might be a simulacrum or a demon in disguise," she warned,
but if youre not, "
'
you'd better put out that torch and get outta here quick as you can. There's a
demon here, and hell
'
hex you and steal your soul and use you for his toy unless you do."
He decided to take a part of that advice and nulli-fied the torch in his mind.
It ceased to exist.
Her terror was back. You
"
are one of Them! she whispered fearfully. "Oh, I wish I had listened
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"
to Daddy!"
Again he felt the need to calm her down. "No, Im not one of Them, whoever they
are. Not a
'
demon, anyway, and I was born of real people just like you. You might call me
a . . . magician, let's say.
"
"
Magicians get their power from demons, she re-torted. "Same thing."'
"
In a way she had him there. Without Mogart he wouldn't be here, and he bore
Mogart's brand on his palm. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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