Infernal

The big dog reached Richard, knocking him to the ground and bowling him over. They both rolled over twice in the honeysuckle and dirt while tears coursed down Richard’s cheeks. His heart soared.

“Charlie?” Richard laughed, prone on the ground with both hands full of fur as he pet and grasped the dog. He realized he was laughing and crying at the same time and did not care. He loved on the big dog as Charlie nuzzled and squiggled against him, his great tongue lapping Richard’s face as if to remove the skin from it. The dog’s enormous tail whisked bees, dragonflies, and foliage about as if all were caught in a gale. “Can it really be you, pal?”

As if in answer the St. Bernard sat back on his haunches, tail still busily whisking the earth, and let Richard have a good look at him.

Richard sat up and took the big dog’s ears in his hands. Looked into his big brown eyes. This was no Mirror dog, if there was such a thing. This was his Charlie, through and through.

“Son of a bitch, it is you!” Richard said, throwing a hug so fierce on the dog that he grunted in response.

“But how?” Richard asked, as if he hadn’t seen more than his fair share of impossible in the past week. “Oh, shit, who cares?” he said and hugged his dog again.

“Jesus, Charlie,” Richard said, finally sitting back and solemnly looking the dog directly in the eyes again. “I’m so sorry about Kansas. I let you down.”

Not let Charlie down.

When the voice came it so stunned Richard that he scooted away from the dog. It seemed to him later that he hadn’t merely been surprised that the dog had spoken, but that the dog had spoken in the very voice Richard imagined he would have had he been able to speak. A soft and easy, yet strong and thoughtful voice. Like that of someone far more intelligent than they liked to let on.

Richard buried his hands in his face and laughed hysterically. Rips, multiple Earths, ghosts, giant spiders, angels, and faeries. Sure. Why not talking dogs, too? Resurrected talking dogs, he corrected himself. He ran his hands through his hair and tried to find some semblance of sanity.

Richard upset?

Richard looked up as Charlie walked over and sat beside him. The big dog nuzzled his ear.

“No, pal,” Richard said, scratching the dog behind one great ear as if conversing with a dog were the most natural thing in the world. “I’m not upset. Just a little bit off-kilter.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“How is it you can talk?” Richard asked, now rubbing the brown smudge between Charlie’s eyes.

Not talk, Richard heard. Thought. They make it so Charlie and Richard think together. Make Charlie…more. When they send Charlie to Richard.

“They?” Richard asked, noting that Charlie indeed wasn’t speaking per se. His lips weren’t moving across his teeth like a CGI dog in a children’s film. He really was hearing Charlie’s thoughts. Or maybe he’d just gone mad and the dog, the faeries, and this Earth were simply figments of a psychotic imagination. “Who are they Charlie? Who made you more? Who sent you to me?”

They. The ALL. Sent Charlie to Richard to make Richard understand.

“The All?” Richard said, pondering the appellation. “What the hell is the All?”

No. Not All. ALL.

The thought was accompanied by a mental image of the word in ten foot tall capital letters, glittering, gleaming, and gilded in gold.

Infernal is ALL. Charlie and Richard ALL. Everything ALL.

“The Infernal is All?” Richard said. “Everything is ALL?”

Richard considered this for a moment, trying to make sense of the information. And never mind that he was getting that information from a previously dead dog. If the ALL is everything; every person, every animal, every single thing down to the smallest particle of dust and photon of light, then what Charlie was really talking, or thinking about, was balance. There is no night without day, dark without light, etc., etc. So the Infernal must be the evil counterbalance to the ALL. It must exist, else the ALL, as a presumably benevolent entity, could not.

Richard understand. Some.

“You heard what I was thinking?” Richard asked.

Yes. ALL make Charlie more.

“Then what am I thinking now?’ Richard said.

The big dog’s tail went from slowly whisking the ground to powerfully stroking it.

YES! Charlie love milk-bone. The dog’s tail slowed. Richard not have milk-bone.

“Sorry, pal,” Richard said and began stroking the dog’s back.

“So,” Richard said a few moments later, “if the Infernal is just another manifestation of the ALL, what’s the problem? Why doesn’t the ALL just straighten all this out for Itself?

Can not. God not straighten out Devil. Is same.

“But God banished Satan. Threw him down from the heavens.”

Yes.

“Where he’s been screwing around with man ever since,” Richard finished the thought.

Yes.

“Are you telling me that the ALL is God, and the Infernal Satan?”

No. Yes. Maybe. Charlie not know.

“I still don’t understand,” Richard said, working his hands around to the dog’s flank. The big dog sighed happily and rolled over, presenting Richard his belly. Richard obliged. “The war between God and Satan has raged for thousands of years, if not longer. God always comes out on top. What’s so different this time?”

Rips.

“What? Man found the Rips and started using them, so the ALL, Infernal, whatever, gets all pissy?”

Charlie snorted as if disgusted and rolled over, gaining his feet.

ALL not care about man. Man like termite. Pest. Serve purpose, but not important. In past, Infernal only influence man. Kill. Have greed. Make war. Until man ally with Infernal. Now Infernal threat to ALL.

“Man like termite.” Richard repeated, then: “Termites are only unimportant until they start eating your house. Then they’re a real problem. So what you’re saying…sorry, thinking, is that before the Infernal were just running around mucking things up for man. Influencing pedophiles like McCormack and serial killers like Bundy and Gein. Starting wars and putting lunatics in power like Stalin and Hitler.”

That and more.

“But now,” Richard continued, “they’re not just working against man. They’re working with him. To upset the balance. To bring down the ALL.”

Yes.

“You’re thinking about BanaTech.”

Yes.

“But how could a group of people, even a corporation as large and powerful as BanaTech, threaten something as powerful as the ALL?”

Not people. Just one.

“One man is going to upset the balance of the ALL?” Richard said, incredulous.

Open Focal Point. Make Rips converge. Chaos happen everywhere. Every Earth. Every planet. Every Universe. ALL can not fix. Multi-verse be destroyed.

Richard looked around. At the flowers, the insects, and the clear blue sky. The warm sunlight, the forest in the distance, its untouched trees giving off the clean, fresh air. He thought of the faeries, and the beauty surrounding him. And the other beauty and wonders this Earth must contain.

“This will all go away if the Focal Point is opened. Not just here, but everywhere.” Richard said. A statement. Not a question.

Yes. Richard now understand.

“And I can somehow stop it.”

Yes.

“How?” Richard groaned.

Richard Prime,” Charlie responded. Richard Keeper.

Richard sighed. He’d heard the word before. Over a decade before when he’d killed the pedophile McCormack. At the time he’d thought the man—or the thing inside him—had said ‘keep her,’ but Richard had long since questioned the phrase.

“You go on, Keeper,” he—it—had said. “I’ll just move along somewhere’s else.”

“There never was another path for me, was there?” Richard said to the dog. He was thinking of McCormack, the first Sophia, and his encounter at the William’s house all those years ago. “This has been my course all along.”

Every living thing has choice, Charlie mimicked Eralah.

“And every choice has consequences,” Richard finished the thought.

It struck Richard then. There was no going back to his simple life in Kansas. He’d been born into this. Born for this. The answers he’d sought throughout his childhood and adolescence, his intensive studies into religion, philosophy, and human psychology. The plain and simple “Why me?” The answer was here. Delivered by a dead dog from another Earth.

Richard Keeper of ALL, Charlie said.

“Richard thinks that means he’s a conscript in someone else’s war,” he mumbled to himself. To Charlie he said: “And how does a Keeper stop BanaTech from opening the Focal Point?”

Charlie lay down, resting his head in Richard’s lap. Charlie tired. Too much think. Richard go. See Messenger. Messenger tell Richard how destroy Key.

“Destroy the Key?”Richard exclaimed. “You mean kill the child?”

Yes.

Richard pulled Charlie’s head up until their eyes met.

“You listen to me, fur face,” he said with every ounce of sincerity he could muster. “I will not kill a child. Not for you. Not for the Universe. Not for the ALL.”

Then all is lost.

“It most certainly is not,” Richard said. “If I’m a Keeper as you say then I’ll find some other way. I will find the child and hide her. Fight to the death if necessary. But I will not kill her. I will find the Seraph and this Messenger, and then I’ll figure something else out.”

Richard already find Seraph.

“What are you saying?”

The big dog got up, trotted away a few steps, and then sat. Without warning a light of blinding intensity flashed out and Richard saw Charlie—his pet, his pal, his friend—transformed. The loveable, good-natured St. Bernard he’d lived with, played with, and shared meals with, was still there. Massive head erect, tongue lolling as usual, that colossal tail busily whisking dragonflies senseless as it cut the air. But over this—beneath? he thought—was something else. Like one image superimposed over another in a photograph.

In that instant Richard saw the true Charlie. What he was now, and perhaps had been all along.

The creature closely resembled a lion, if lions grew to be nine feet tall. It had eyes all over its body; across its broad and powerful chest, throughout a mane as thick as steel cables, and down muscular legs tipped with claws the size of table legs. Six sets of wings sprouted from its expansive back, rising above and to the side of the creature. One set was folded at its sides, feathers as big as boat oars rustling in the light breeze. An enormous tail, also covered in eyes, rose from behind the creature. It busily whisked the air in time with Charlie’s tail.

More, Richard heard Charlie’s thought. And both dog and Seraphim winked in unison.

Richard swallowed the lump of awe that had formed in his throat before speaking:

“You are the Seraph?”

The light faded away and with it the image of the Seraphim.

Charlie Seraphim, Richard heard as the dog trotted back to his side. Richard reached out, hesitated, and then stroked the brown smudge between the dog’s eyes. Richard wasn’t burned or electrocuted. The magnificent beast did not reappear. He felt nothing but Charlie beneath his trembling hand.

“Have you always been Seraphim?” Richard asked. “Even when it was just you and me back in Kansas? Before all of this? Before you…” the last word died in his throat, “died?”

No. Yes. Always Charlie but Seraph there. Seraph too big for always.

“You mean the Seraph has always been a part of you, but you’re still just Charlie most of the time?”

Yes. Richard understand. Charlie tired now. Charlie go back soon.”

“Go back?” Richard said, dismayed at the idea of losing his friend for a second time. “Go back where?”

“Home. To ALL.”

“No.” Richard said in a small voice. Tears of sadness clouded his vision and he buried his face in the warm fur of Charlie’s neck.

“Charlie not belong here.”

“I know,” Richard said. And he did. He had all along.

“Richard not belong here. Not yet.” Charlie said and got to his feet. Color brighter than the sun cut through Richard’s eyelids and he opened his eyes to see a Rip had formed a few yards away.

“Come,” Charlie said.

A shadow fell over them and Richard looked up, expecting to see some sort of bird. What he saw instead made his breath catch in his throat. A long, horned head passed no more than fifty feet overhead, followed by a mottled grey underbelly sandwiched between four scaled and claw-tipped legs the size of large trees. A great black tail, dozens of times longer than Charlie’s trailed behind, dipping and lifting in opposition to the powerful thrust of immense, leathery wings. The air around them was stirred as if by a helicopter, leaving behind a scent of sulfur and brimstone.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Richard said as the dragon turned its head mid-flight and cast the pair a baleful glare, it’s eyes full of hunger and venom. Teeth the size of a man’s leg stuck out of the creature’s mouth at odd angles as if it had too many of the razor-sharp tines growing in there. To Richard’s relief the dragon did not slow or change its flight path. Simply turned its head away and continued on towards the foothills behind them.

“You will be eaten,” Richard said, shivering at the memory of the faerie’s warning. As he and Charlie made their way to the Rip he wondered why the dragon had passed them by.

Not hunt in fields. Richard heard, and would have sworn the dog was laughing. Allergic to faerie dust.

At the Rip, Richard knelt and hugged his dog for what he feared would be the last time. Tears welled up again—he was starting to feel like a real crybaby—and he wiped them away on his sleeve.

“You really can’t come?” Richard asked.

Charlie finished. Richard go to Messenger. Richard then understand. Charlie must go home.

“Well,” Richard said, “wherever you’re going, I hope there are fields just like this one, teeming with rabbits for you to chase all day long.”

And piles of bones just for Charlie.

“Yes. That too.”

Richard destroy Key.

“No, pal. I won’t kill her.”

Then Richard die.

“Maybe,” Richard said. “But the Key will not. Not by my hand.”

Charlie Richard’s friend.

“I know, boy,” Richard said, tears threatening again. “I’m your friend too. I’ll miss you.”

As Richard turned and stepped into the Rip sunlight flashed across his face and in his eyes blurring his vision. He again saw the Seraph with Charlie, full of fire and holy light. This time he felt the incandescence as well as saw it. A pure, cleansing radiance that filled him with peace and clarity.

Richard’s path was chosen. And now, purified by the Seraph, he was whisked into the Rip beyond which the Messenger awaited.