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SINCE IT WAS SUCH A BIG HIT, the nastiness continues! This is another scene written especially for the (now cancelled) Underland Press edition of my novel A VERY FAST DESCENT INTO HELL. Phelan, the Hollow Priest, labors under the command of the all-powerful and mysterious Ryder! Watch as Phelan toils to discover the SECRET! Of LIFE! ITSELF!!!
Heh. I should note that this scene takes place in the 1950s, per the clunky technology…
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The months and years ticked. Phelan labored. Ryder watched. Victims bled, suffered, screamed, died. Phelan made notes, both written and mental. He realized that his earlier investigations had been somewhat addled by his bloodlust; he had come closer to piercing the veil of immortality than he’d previously thought. Ah Eros, enemy of logic! Did Phelan still enjoy his dark pleasures? Occasionally. Now it was different. Now it was work.
Still, there were tantalizing results. Often perplexing but always of interest.
One experiment explored the use of cryogenic freeze. Phelan hypothesized that if the flesh was brought to a baseline of absolute zero, the volatility of the serum might be lessened, controlled. No mutation, he thought. Brain damage? Mmmm… Probably. He’d cross that bridge when he found it. First Phelan had to find a speciman in more or less perfect health and do his very best to rein in his black lust: there could no trauma, and no trauma meant no knives. Even if the test subject experienced an accelerated heart rate, the outcome could be compromised. “Peace,” Phelan whispered to himself, pacing in his lab, thinking aloud, envisioning snow falling soft. “Peaceful. Like going to sleep. Peaceful…”
He chose a young woman who ran. Later generations would call her a “jogger,” a “health nut.” She ran every day, using Phelan’s church as a geographical stopping point, breathing heavy and stretching, stretching on the church steps.
“Lemonade?” Phelan offered one afternoon.
“No thanks,” she panted with a smile. “Too many chemicals.”
“Ah, but this is fresh. All natural,” Phelan lied. The drink was laced with a sedative strong enough to knock out a gazelle. “Not even sugar!” He smiled.
“Well… it is hot…”
“Hot!” Phelan agreed.
She drank thirstily, and seconds later the young woman began to swoon. It was child’s play to guide her into the church. “Hot,” Phelan breathed into her ear. “I have a place that’s cool. Nice and cool.”
The cryogenic chamber was already at a temperature of minus ten as Phelan secured her naked body upright in the metal tube with a single glass window, IVs and needles in place, black leather straps drawn tight across her wrists, her chest, her tanned and supple neck. The young woman’s eyes fluttered open. “What… what… hot?”
“Nice and cool,” Phelan told her, as gently as possible; he didn’t want to get too excited and lose it, start dicing her up. “Nice and cool,” he told her again, and closed the cryogenic chamber. He spun the black wheel for an airtight seal, he glanced through the rapidly frosting glass window. The young woman’s eyes fluttered as the cold mist rose.
Phelan moved to his makeshift control panel. He flipped on the big tape recorder. The plastic reels turned. He studied the crude lights and dials of the panel, he bent toward the humming microphone. “Test subject B12, female, approx 20 to 25 years, caucasian, excellent health. Heartbeat and respira- tion normal. Chamber temperature falling at 2 microbars per second…” Phelan activated the cryogenic chamber’s interior mic. The woman’s sleepy voice crackled, ghost words in the snow.
“Ah… so hot… where… my… daughter…”
“Subject still cognizant at minus-15,” Phelan said, his voice calm, but inside he raged. Daughter. Jesus. She’d given birth! This might throw everything off, the metabolic rates, everything. Why hadn’t he chatted with the bitch just a little more?!
Fuming, Phelan watched the young woman freeze to death behind the frosted glass. At flatline plus three, he hit the juice. “Lot code YUKI is go. Flow rate normal…”
He watched the clock. He studied the dials. Within the chamber, the white mist swirled. Phelan waited, waited. Nothing. The injection of the elixir should have done something. But no, not even a twitch. Damn it!
He wrenched open the cryongenic chamber, bent close to the cold blue corpse. The woman’s eyes were open, her face flecked white.
“Just had to have a baby, didn’t you?” Phelan snarled, and he stalked away, disgusted. He would clean up later. He needed a drink.
•
That night, Phelan woke to the cacophony of breaking glass.
He rushed from his bed, raced down to the lab.
The dead woman stood swaying and brittle amid by the shattered pieces of the cryogenic chamber, her naked flesh transformed to what looked like glass, glossy blue. She moved agonizingly slow, an animated mannequin of ice. Her eyes were flat and blind.
“Baaa,” the ice woman said. “Ba-burn-ing.”
Shuffling, she advanced on Phelan.
“You’re… what?” Phelan demanded. “Can you hear me?”
“Ba-burn-ing. Ha-hot…”
Her cold hands fell on Phelan’s shoulders. His shirt erupted in flames. Phelan yelped in surprise and pain, tried to push her away, but the moment he touched her his hands were instantly locked, frozen to her forearms as if he’d gripped two shafts of dry ice. Phelan grimaced, desperately tried to free himself.
“Maa-ma,” the ice woman said, “maa-maa’s… here… baby…”
Phelan’s hair caught fire, crinkling with a horrible stink.
“Ka-keep… you… wha-warm…”
Phelan screamed, lifted the ice woman up and smashed her against the wall. Her body shattered in a million crystal pieces, fell musical to the stone floor.
“God! God! God!” Phelan cried, swatting at his smoldering head and burning shoulders, his hands bloody and encrusted with shards of frozen flesh. When the fire was out and Phelan made sure every piece of the ice woman was “dead,” he reached for his cigarettes and thought, Definitely scratch the cryogenics.
Ω
