Affliction (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 1) Read online

  PRAISE FOR SHAUN O. MCCOY AND THE HELLSONG SERIES

  "McCoy is a talented and bright young writer. Knight of Gehenna is a new kind of novel—a page turner in the truest sense—wrought from equal parts brawn and brain."

  —B. Butler, Author of Murder in Cairo

  "McCoy is a brilliant writer; insightful, intelligent, articulate, imaginative, and funny."

  —McKendree Long, Author of No Good Like it is

  "McCoy masterfully creates characters, scenarios and the Hell where they live. He writes with a passion, layering emotion on fantasy and science fiction, drawing in readers from beyond his genre."

  —Ginny Padgett, President of SCWW

  "If Hemmingway was a Boxer, McCoy is a Cagefighter."

  —Monet Jones, Author of Rehoboth

  "Shaun is the real McCoy."

  —Laura Valtorte, Filmaker, Author of Family Meal

  "Cris teaches us why it’s important not to stand between a shotgun wielding parent and their child."

  —Matt Michaelis, Author of Kids Summon

  OTHER WORKS BY SHAUN O. MCCOY

  HELLSONG SERIES: ARTURIAN

  Even Hell Has Knights

  Knight of Gehenna

  March Till Death

  Book IV (2015)

  HELLSONG SERIES: INFIDELS: CRIS

  Affliction

  Soulfall (Coming Soon)

  NOVELLAS

  Electric Blues

  Binary Jazz

  Infidels: Cris

  AFFLICTION

  SHAUN O. MCCOY

  SISYPHEAN PUBLISHING

  This is a work of fiction. The damnation portrayed in this novel is fictitious, and similarities between it and any actual damnation are strictly coincidental.

  Affliction

  Copyright 2014 © by Shaun McCoy

  All rights reserved.

  Editor-in-Chief: Gabrielle Olexa

  Associate Editors: Matt Michaelis, Justin Williams, Jody Mobley

  Consulting Editors: Jason Thrower, Nicole Breton, James Mobley, Clay Mcleveen.

  Title art: Thomas the Younger

  Title Layout: Kirill Simin

  A Sisyphean Publishing Book

  Http://hellsongseries.com

  ISBN:978-0692281727

  First Edition September 2014

  For Jennifer Humphrey

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Akira Kirasawa, like Sergio Leone before me, I eagerly await my letter.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  AFFLICTION

  From Neostoicism: Philosophia

  Fear not the humble man—he expects to lose.

  —Ares

  Theologian: If you can quantify, measure, and explain everything, then what’s left to believe in?

  Infidel: Everything.

  The Greeks told us of a Hell where lost souls wandered endlessly through fields of asphodels, drinking from the river of forgetfulness until they were robbed of their humanity. The Christians spoke of a godless series of caverns filled with fire and brimstone. The Norse thought of it as a battlefield where men engaged in ceaseless combat against strange and monstrous creatures.

  As it happens, they all hit pretty close to the mark.

  The Infidel Friend I met on the road told me not to come to Maylay Beighlay. It was too dangerous, he said. The place had gone dark, he said. You’ll go dark, too. As a rule, I listen to the infidels—but this time I don’t have a choice.

  The lighting of Maylay Beighlay comes and goes in smooth pulses. At its brightest, I can see the thatch roofs of the huts on the far side of the quarter-mile chamber. At its dimmest, I can only see a few feet in front of me. It hadn’t always been like this. This city used to be bright. Loose detritus crunches under my booted feet. It hadn’t always been like that, either. The entry chambers to Maylay Beighlay used to be clean.

  A woman leans up against a dilapidated stone hovel. As the light comes on strong, I see her clearly. She’s got the rot, bad. There’s a hole in her cheek where the skin has died away. Her eyes are bloodshot, and fresh pus is leaking out of her cheek wound and dripping off the point of her chin. Her eyes are a thousand miles away. For all I know she’s staring at Heaven.

  That Infidel Friend, he wasn’t lying.

  She’s not the only person left in here. A pair of children, a boy and a girl, bicker over a toy next to one of the houses. I can’t tell exactly what kind of trinket they’re fighting for, but at least they’re not too serious about it. When the light pulse comes again, I can see them better. They’ve got the rot too. The girl just looks mangy, but the boy might be mistaken for a corpse. She lets out a surprisingly childlike squeal during their tussle.

  I lean down to the woman and peer into her eyes. She doesn’t blink.

  “Can you hear me?” I ask.

  She nods her head.

  The light comes again. The girl has won the tussle and she’s running. The boy tries to chase after her, but his legs are so rotten that he can barely move. I’d put him out of his misery, but altruism ain’t worth the bullet. The girl clutches her spoils to her chest. It’s the boy’s hand. She kneels down in a corner and takes a bite out of it.

  I return my attention to the woman. “I’m looking for the Devil. You seen ‘em?”

  She nods. Slowly, like a sloth, her shaky arm unfolds. She points toward one of the exits on the far side of the chamber.

  I walk that way.

  Like all of the chambers of Maylay Beighlay, this one is lit by streaking veins of gold-flecked skystone which run through the ceiling like bolts of frozen lightning. That skystone flickers on and off like an old world fluorescent bulb, but it’s brighter in here than in the last few rooms. This isn’t one of the central chambers of Maylay Beighlay, not by a long shot. Still, I’m not exactly on the outskirts, which is why I’m surprised to see Q here. The tall, slender and black Infidel Friend leans nonchalantly against a tree covered with sinfruit vines. He’s watching a line of lepers as they wait for a turn at the well.

  I move beside him and take up the same vigil.

  The sinfruit hanging down around us is swollen and putrid. In Hell, things don’t rot—not unless they’ve been polluted with corpsedust.

  “Fruit’s rotten,” I tell him.

  Q nods, rubbing a hand over his shiny shaved head. “So’s the water, Cris, just to warn you.” He raises his chin for a second toward the well. “They’ve left the dead at the bottom. Helps keep the water full of corpsedust. Keeps them high.”

  The shaky arms of a half rotten female pull at the well’s rope.

  “I bet,” I say.

  “I ran into Dylan on the road. He told me he warned you, and that you wouldn’t listen.”

  The bucket cr
ests the well’s stone wall. The woman reaches out and grabs it. With great effort, she manages to remove the weight from the base of the bucket.

  “Q, you’ve been my guardian angel. You set me on her trail when I’d given it up for cold. You know I can’t stay away.”

  Q shakes his head. “This is too far. I know you hate Myla. I know she did you wrong, and I know that she’s joined with the devils, but this place is going black, Cris. The Infidel has given orders that all his people are to evacuate Maylay Beighlay. It’s time for you to let Myla go.”

  The leper woman’s leg gives way. She falls to one side, her bucket of water spilling out over the stone floor. I hear the echo of her crunching cartilage. She struggles to stand. She can’t. She probably never will again. The rot has taken her knee. Her leg is bent backward at the joint. Blood, some of it fresh and red, some of it black and coagulated, seeps out from the torn skin around the wound. She doesn’t shout in pain.

  She starts lapping up the water on the stones.

  Two of the lepers in the line behind her move forward. One picks up the bucket and the weight, the other bends down and takes a bite out of her ankle. She doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Let Myla go, Cris,” Q says. “It doesn’t get any better deeper in. They’re rotten. Maylay Beighlay’s rotten. If you don’t turn back, you’ll rot too.”

  “She’s got my son, Q.”

  Q shrugs. “Make another one.”

  Fucking infidels. Pragmatic, heartless infidels. Sometimes I wish I could be like them, sometimes I wish my feelings would stop, but I can’t abandon my only son. “Tell me how to hurt the Devil. You’ve got that Laws of Gehenna book that says how.”

  Q frowns. “Let her go.”

  I bite my lip and shake my head. “Prep me, Q. Pretend I’m an Infidel Friend. Send me on my mission. I need this, Q. I need it. I’m going with or without your help, so if you ever want to see me again, you better tell me what I’ve got to know.”

  Q runs his hands over his bald head again, his gaze locked on the poor leper with the broken leg. “Okay, Cris. You win. Here’s your prep. Maylay Beighlay used to be dark, before the ancients installed that lightrock.” He points to the flickering streaks of golden skystone. “At some point, an Archdevil managed to sneak inside, probably with Myla’s help. He claimed to be the Devil, convinced the people he was Satan made flesh—like a sort of backwards Jesus. Then began feeding them corpsedust—turning them into lepers. He told them it would see them through to heaven. They believed him.”

  I nod. “And you don’t.”

  He shrugs.

  The line of lepers moves forward. One man is standing apart from them, staring straight at us.

  I spit next to a fallen, rotten sinfruit. “You all should have stopped him.”

  Q shrugs. “The people of Maylay Beighlay let us defend them, but they never consented to be governed by us. Anyway, this Archdevil has found some way to undo the construction of the ancients. That’s why the light flickers everywhere. It gets darker every day, and when he’s finished, this place will be pitch black again.”

  “Q, how do I kill him?”

  “We think he’s vulnerable to lightrock.”

  “You think? You don’t know for sure?”

  Q nods. “That’s our guess. No infidel has fought him yet, or lived to report it anyway. All our accounts are secondhand. For all we know, he really is the Devil.”

  The exit to this chamber is on the other side of the line of rotten lepers. I head toward them. “I’ll let you know.”

  Myla told me I looked like a marble statue once. A Greek one. Who knows if she meant it. Maybe she just knew how to court my vanity. Maybe she thought that was the surest way to my heart. Maybe she was right.

  Have you ever loved someone that much? Loved them until you would take on the flaws they’d chosen for you? I loved Myla like that—until the end. There was this one flaw I just couldn’t bear.

  This chamber is the largest and the darkest so far. Weak pulses of light flow through the skystone like blood pumping in from a distant, dying heart. The waves of illumination pass slowly over the city, showing me row after row of broken stone buildings. I wait for a few of those pulses to go by, memorizing the cavern, searching for the easiest path across it.

  Scaffolding and stone latticework cover the back wall’s exits, rising to the chamber’s ceiling. In a brighter time they probably supported sinfruit and brineberries. I can’t see them very well from this distance, but whatever they support now is brown and dead.

  That’s where I’m headed.

  Near the center of the chamber, standing out from amidst a block of two and three story buildings, is a tower with a spire topped minaret. A flag hangs limply from the spire, though I’m not sure why—it’s not like there’s ever been wind here. An aqueduct, standing on shaky stone-pillar legs as if ready to topple, cuts through the buildings by the base of the tower.

  Closer to me along the main road is an empty reflecting pool, maybe a hundred feet long and ten feet wide. That’s where I’ll start. I wait for the light to come again just to make sure there’s no water in it.

  There isn’t. Maybe there’s some mud at the bottom, but nothing I’d like to drink.

  I take a small sip from my canteen. The pool’s water is probably polluted with corpsedust anyway. No point in adding the rot to my list of problems.

  I don’t see a soul, not a damned one, but they’re out there. I can feel them.

  I wait for a few more waves of light to solidify the images of this chamber in my mind. When I’m confident I can navigate it, I head on in.

  As I get closer, I notice there are corpses and lepers in the near-empty reflecting pool, crawling listlessly through the muck. I steer clear of them and start heading for the tower. Ruined stone buildings rise up around me, looming over me, blocking the tower from my view.

  The street’s fitted flagstones occasionally grind together under my feet.

  Some of the windows are still shuttered, but most of them yawn open, giving me glimpses into empty, looted buildings. Many of the shutters are broken, some are missing, and others have rotted away.

  Before the Devil came, people would have been proud to live in these houses. In those days, the newest citizens of Maylay Beighlay lived on the outskirts. They’d develop connections, trading partnerships, and then they’d try to buy or barter their way into the center of the city. There was no greater honor in Maylay Beighlay than owning a house in the Heart, which is what they called the central chamber.

  But it had been a tough world too, full of backstabbing power plays and social coups. The quickest way to make a Heart chamber property available was to exile or murder its previous occupant.

  It’s darker here amidst the buildings. Each time a light wave passes over me I try to memorize a snapshot of the street ahead. It helps me to walk, but it’s slow progress and mentally tiring. I hear flagstones grinding, but this time it’s not from my footsteps.

  When the next light pulse rolls by, I look behind me.

  A man is following me, maybe fifty feet back.

  I turn to face him.

  He doesn’t stop. I raise both of my hands, palms outward. He ignores them. His step is uneven, lurching. There’s a chance he’s not a corpse—he could be high from the corpsedust or he could be so close to death that he just doesn’t know where he is—but I doubt it. Corpses won’t attack lepers, so any of the people I saw back at the well could pass this man unmolested. I, on the other hand, am a little too fresh to ignore.

  I consider shooting him, but it might be too dangerous to make that much noise. It’s easier just to ditch him. I sprint, half blindly, down an alley, clutching the straps of my backpack to keep it close to my body. After a couple of turns I pause, crouching by a stone wall to listen.

  Nothing.

  The light comes and goes . . . comes and goes . . .

  The road here is particularly uneven. It might have been in bad repair even before the darkness ca
me to Maylay Beighlay.

  Still nothing.

  I rise, my knees popping. More flagstones grind as I walk forward, but I’m confident that I’ve ditched him.

  The buildings get taller as I continue. Most here are at least three stories, though many of their top floors have collapsed. The entire face of one building has fallen into the street ahead of me. I pick my way carefully through the waist high mess of jagged stones. This place is dead quiet.

  I make it to the far side of the rubble. A pulse of light washes over me, illuminating a girl’s face in a second story window. Her chin is resting on her folded hands, which in turn are resting on the windowsill. She’s maybe six years old. Her hair is just shorter than shoulder length, of a light color, and badly in need of brushing. Some of it’s missing, and there are a few blemishes where her face shows signs of decay, but otherwise she seems untouched.

  The light passes on. I feel warmth rising in my chest. There’s still a little life left in this city. I pause, waiting for my next chance to see her. I can barely make out her shadow in this dark moment.

  The little bitch throws a rock at me.

  She calls out, “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”

  Someone else, far distant, calls back, “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”

  More respond, some closer, others farther away. The shadows come alive with the darting movements of small children. Another rock skips by the flagstones at my feet. Another ricochets off the building behind my head.

  “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!” “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”

  “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”

  The stones start coming in like hail. One hits me in the forehead. I consider shooting them, but I’m no infidel. I can’t slaughter children.