Sunday, July 1, 2018

D Is For Damien (Original Draft) Chapter 9

Chapter 9
[Untitled]


Early the next day, it began to pour rain. Several cars, namely Damien's, Kat's, and Amy's, drove slowly down the road. Two other cars, Father Damien's and Lucifer's hearse, followed. Soon they all pulled in at the old building.

"There's no one in sight," Amy said, getting out. The top had been put up on her pink convertible.

The door of Kat's vehicle slid open and Chernobyl fell out, laughing. "Man, I still can't think of what you see in that car!"

"That's simple," Amy replied smugly. "You can't think, period."

"Ha ha!" Choby said. "Very funny."

"This is it," Damien said. "This is where I dropped Luther off."

Kat got out, danced around, clicked her heels, and fluttered her hands. "Follow the yellow brick road, to find the emerald D!"

"There's no emerald D!" Damien shot back.

"Really! Are we going to meet the Scarecrow? Come on, Toto!" This she said in a singsong voice, and skipped into the building. [Note--Katrina is acting a little out of character in this story, IMO. She may be bitchy but she's not remarkably sarcastic.]

"Katrina, wait!" Father Damien said. But Kat paid no attention and disappeared.

"Let's follow," Damien said, going in. He made no effort to hide the silver D, and the others went after him.

All of them were then inside together--Kat, Damien, Father Damien, Choby, Harvey, Amy, Lucifer, Choby's pooh-bah (or whatever) Tokky (it was a nickname), and Esmeralda. They looked around. After a while Damon came in.

"I remember where the restroom is," Amy said.

"And I remember where they went," Father Damien put in.

"Let's find it, then," Damien said. "Ame, you lead."

Amy led them to the restroom near the storeroom, and Father Damien took over. "They went in this direction," he said. "They must have some kind of secret door."

"Devil worshipers are tricky that way," Damon said.

Choby looked at him blankly. "How d'you know? You still think Scorpio's a group of stars."

"Yeah but they have to be a lot like UFO terrorists." [Note--Damon featured heavily in another unfinished story of mine, Men In Black (no relation to the movie--way before it, in fact), and again in the more recent but just as unfinished True Believers--both about alien abduction.]

Choby sighed and turned away. "I suggest we sacrifice him, but I think the Devil'd return him in a flash."

"Found something!" Harvey announced. He set his squirt gun down and started prying on a heavy iron grate. Damien joined him and they managed to remove it.

"An air vent," Damien said. He stuck his head inside for a few minutes, then pulled back out.

"What?" Father Damien whispered cautiosly [sic], edging forward.

"I hear chanting," Damien replied. "And I see light down there. From what I guess, this vent must lead down to where they are. There should be a grille on the other side too. It doesn't look too deep. Do what I do and be quiet." He crawed [sic] in. When he disappeared, the others followed, one by one, except for Lucifer and Damon, who decided to stand guard. It was agreed that Esmeralda would keep hold of a string whose other end would be held by Damon, and jerk three times if something was wrong. Soon they disappeared as well.

After what seemed like an eternity of crawling, they finally reached the end. Damien peered out through the grille. They all waited in the narrow passageway, barely daring to breathe lest they be heard through the thin metal. Strangely [sic] as it seemed, right now they couldn't remember how they got there, or where they came from--only that they had to get the golden D.

After a while the others could stand it no longer. "Do you see it?" Tokky whispered.

Damien shook his head in the near-darkness. Little spots of light shone in through the iron grille enclosing the shaft, as he had said it would. "I can see a big group of people. There's a scorpion and the M insignia on a curtain, and a large tapestry of the devil. [Note--the M here should be the Scorpio symbol of the M with the tail--however, even in the original text, I forgot the tail, so it's just a cursive-looking M.] And there's a goat skull with two candles, one red, one black."

"What are they doing?" Kat asked.

"They're kneeling. I think they're worshipping the skull or the tapestry."

"Let me see," Harvey whispered, crawling closer. He leaned against the grille accidentally and everyone fell out when it suddenly cracked open. They all landed in a heap on the blood-red carpeted floor.

Slowly looking up, they saw about a hundred or so pairs of Satanic eyes staring at them.

They were definitely in trouble.

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