Geist Intermezzo by Fallon O'Neill

Author:Fallon O'Neill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Castle Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-09-05T15:01:59+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When his senses returned, Victor found himself in the studio backlot, the Inferno, again. Ingrid floated not far behind. The fog was thicker than ever, stinging their eyes. Victor pushed his doubts aside to focus on the task at hand. Beams of light pierced the darkening clouds, for the moon hung low against the parapets of the Inferno, leering like a monstrous orb of perpetual twilight, grim and grotesque, an omen of growing doom—nearly full.

“Is it just me,” he asked, “or are the surges becoming more frequent?”

Ingrid cocked her head. “You sense it as well?”

“Yeah.” Victor gazed into the abyss, between the grates. “I can’t help but feel like there’s something else going on. Something I’ve yet to discover.”

“Perhaps your harrowing of Hell will uncover that.”

“I hope so,” Victor said. “I want to understand it all. But…I’m scared.”

“Rightfully so.” The child soldier gestured ahead. “Come. We must find your ‘mentor.’”

Crossing a winding catwalk to nowhere, Victor felt a darker presence here—a presence he’d never felt before. Throbbing in the shadows, it germinated far above and below, sending chills down his spine. Regardless, Thaddeus was somewhere down there.

Victor was the only one who could save him.

As he carried on, the Music of Thaddeus’s soul echoed on the hot, dry wind, a bipolar fusion of warped guitars and Gregorian choirs. At first it was a classical canto, only to snap into industrial shredding and revert to a baritone solo. A pendulum of genres.

Rammstein and Mozart, a metal requiem to faith in D minor.

When the fog lifted, they beheld the Inferno’s latest incarnation. Perhaps it was once a citadel of great beauty, but those days were long gone. Its battlements were a fusion of castle and concentration camp, as iron and rust clamped onto its wan stone—metal on bone. The bell towers were laden with searchlights and smokestacks, tangled with barbed wires and cables. Lightning rained down from overhead, zapping those turrets with thunderous booms, blinding Victor with cruelest light. And upon its spiked gates, twisted font read LAZARLARGER.

Victor’s eyes widened. “That’s Thaddeus’s circle of hell?”

“So it would seem,” Ingrid said. “A citadel and camp that should never exist. Suitable. And this place, a reflection of his sin and memories, distorted by a mirror of regret.”

Victor raised an eyebrow. “Is it a shared memory?”

Ingrid said nothing, but Victor smelled the smoke on her sleeves.

“Listen,” he said. “If it is, I need to know. Is this a good idea?”

“I am fine.” Sickly green cinders wafted from Ingrid’s jacket. “Do not take me for a fool, Victor. I can control my emotions. And I will know the truth.”

Victor turned away. “This won’t be easy. And we have to go down.”

As the Music continued to play, like the anathem of a dictatorship, Victor listened to daemons germinating the darkness far below.

He led the way, walking past the iron gate, swaying in the ash and smog.

Ingrid glided after him. “Understood. I am by your side.”

#

Victor pressed into the prison courtyard, past its barracks and shacks, fresh out of a darkest regime.

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