Hellraiser- The Toll Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Epilogue

  Hellraiser: The Toll Copyright (c) 2018

  by Clive Barker and Mark Alan Miller.

  All rights reserved.

  Dust jacket illustration Copyright (c) 2018

  by Brandon Mahlberg.

  All rights reserved.

  Interior illustrations Copyright (c) 2018

  by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  Print version interior design Copyright (c) 2018

  by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-59606-850-6

  Subterranean Press

  PO BOX 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

  Special Thanks: Jose Leitao and Ryan Danhauser

  The founders of a new colony, whatever utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

  —Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Prologue

  I

  FOR ALL THE PRISONERS who’d passed through the walls of the colony, the Big House had been a grand and permanent place. It was, however, all an illusion. The ground floor was framed using old timbers brought from the mainland for that specific purpose. It was ugly but strong, with wood panels used to create an illusion of sturdiness.

  The island upon which the faux fortress stood had been named twice. First by the missionaries who had discovered them as they fled the leprosy and the insanity of the mainland. There, finding refuge from the consuming disease that had almost destroyed them, they had named it Salvation Island in honor of the escape from death the rock had afforded them.

  But the Salvation the island offered had only been temporary. Just a few years later, the land was once again deserted and prepared for its second baptism. In the middle of the nineteenth century the French government, looking for a place to ship the country’s most vicious and unrepentant prisoners, had elected the name Guiana, effectively turning the land into a legitimate part of the French Empire.

  Having failed with the honest, Mother France was obliged to turn to the dishonest. In 1852, the government under Napoleon III built a penal colony, with its administrative offices on the mainland, that left the island as the ultimate place of exile, punishment, and if all else failed, execution.

  The island was a little piece of Hell, or so those who ended up there testified. Every day, great flocks of black birds rose up from the trees as the sun turned bloody and started to sink away. It seemed that the birds were forever buying into some grand delusion; that the sun was dying away forever, and once it was gone, the island would permanently belong to the night and so then to the maker of night: the Devil. Fitting, for it was he who had given his name to that rock, of course. What the missionaries had once called the Salvation Island, was now deemed the Ile du Diable: the Devil’s Island.

  II

  THE PENAL COLONY WHICH was built into the damned rock did not last. Though the French government did what it could to disguise the atrocities there, word got out. The horrors of incarceration on Devil’s Island became news; and soon the governments around the world were demanding that the French act like a civilized nation, and purge this filth from their judicial system in the name of honor. The last prisoners left the island in 1953. That is to say, the last living prisoners. Thousands remained behind, buried in shallow graves of the pungent earth of the Island’s cemeteries. The dead had each been marked by simple wooden crosses when they’d been buried, all except the suicides. The crosses had mostly gone now—rotted away into the same earth where those whose names had once been painted upon them were also rotting.

  But the island was not deserted. Shortly after its closing, tourists with a taste for the macabre began visiting the island. Realizing there was some money to be made from their handmade Hell, the French government helped the rehabilitation of the island. The places of shame—the tiny cells where prisoners had been kept in solitary, seeing no human face nor hearing a human voice sometimes for a year or even more—were hosed clean and the heavy doors re-hung, so that a visitor might get to pretend what it felt like to be locked away in such tiny, airless confines, with not even a Bible for solace or distraction.

  It was surprising how many men, having been in the cell no more than a minute or a minute and a half, were suddenly overtaken by panic. It was a sight that might have offered some bitter entertainment for the ghosts of those who had once endured the real solitude of those cells, decades before. But in truth, very few phantoms wandered the island. There was another spirit that had driven off the remains of other, simpler souls. He had been one of the prisoners there, for a time, though nobody was entirely certain what he’d done to earn his years of punishment amongst the damned. There were some who spoke of him having the same name as that of a famous toymaker, Philip Lemarchand, even though the toymaker in question had been born in 1754. But no definitive record of his demise had ever been located, which served only to fan the flames of conspiracy.

  The question did not much vex the minds of those who studied the period and the men who defined it. Lemarchand was simply a maker of whimsical toy mechanisms; scarcely worthy of the kind of discussion that a Napoleon might have deserved. When his name did occasionally come up in debates over the politics and entertainments of this period in French history, it was usually to speak of the bizarre rumors that had brought the man down.

  Lemarchand had been a golden boy, almost literally—his mechanical birds and animals usually forged from gold at the expense of his noble patrons. But those rich men of influence who had bought Lemarchand’s gilded singing birds and boxes for their mistresses could not defend him from the rumors of satanic dealings. These were, despite the rise of Reason, still times haunted by superstition, and no man—especially one as skilled and rich as Lemarchand—could escape the accusing fingers of his jealous competitors.

  There was nothing in the reports that emerged from the agents of the ever-changing powers during those years that clearly told of Lemarchand’s fate. In one court document he was recorded as condemned to life in prison for dealings with unholy powers. In another, there was an account of his being freed from imprisonment by the very mechanical birds that had raised him to such heights of celebrity. But none of this was certain except that an even deeper question lay beneath these uncertainties: what use could a maker of songbirds have had for the Devil? Or more strangely still, what use might the Devil have had for him?

  What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.

  —Sarah Vowell

  Part 1

  I

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE letter in the morning mail. It was addressed to Christina Fidanza, which was the name she had been using since she’d had her problems with the Cenobites that had pursued her from the Wastes through Paris. Even though she’d become as expert as any criminal in the means by which a fugitive moved undetected around the world—she had two dozen passports, some exceptionally realistic, others only good for a quick glance, plus the encoded addresses of eleven safe houses around Europe and North America; all sanctuaries from pursuers—she did not believe for an instant that she was safe.

  Her pursuers were likely to be able to come after her using the most sophisticated of means, which somewhat paradoxically meant the most ancient; reading her whereabouts not on images sent by satellites, but by far more arcane methods. Methods grotesque and cruel. Since she ha
d first encountered the workings of Hell, in a house on Lodovico Street, not more than two miles from the flat she now occupied, she had become knowledgeable in the ways that worked behind the skin of the world (ways to find someone such as herself, for instance) that were so coldly cruel that even now, nearly thirty years later, she still woke most nights, drenched in sweat, the somber voice of The Cold Man with the nails in his face echoing in her ears. Somehow, twice, she had escaped his grasp, and the grasps of his acolytes. But no matter how far she fled, they were always with her. And she knew, if they ever wanted her back—really wanted her—they would have her.

  In the end, there was only one who might one day choose to finish the business which had begun when Frank Cotton had come back to Lodovico Street.

  She had barely looked at the letter that had been addressed to the woman she’d become since departing Paris. As happened so often, a drizzle of memories had quickly become monsoonal, and she was blinded to the present by pasts she’d either lived or dreamed she’d lived. Had she truly spoken to the demon with the cold touch all those years ago?

  She forced herself back to the letter she held in her hand, leaving the demon’s bitter breath somewhere behind her—and somehow also ahead. The letter was several pages long, handwritten with a pen that was swiftly running out of ink. From the letterhead, she saw that it was from somebody she’d never heard of, a Doctor of Theology in a midwestern university by the name of Joseph Lansing. But her ignorance of him did not reach in the opposite direction.

  All my life, he explained, I have had an abhorrence of cliche. And yet here I am writing what will almost certainly be my first and last letter to you, and I find that no words suit better my present predicament than those of the weary cliche:

  ‘Burn after reading.’

  Christina Fidanza, born Kirsty Cotton, glanced back up at the letterhead: at the plain authoritative design and address, all of which suggested that however strangely this letter had begun, there was a good chance the man who’d written it was indeed a Doctor of Theology. This fact, of course, guaranteed nothing by way of sanity. And often quite the opposite.

  Kirsty reigned herself in from her wandering thoughts again.

  “Read the damn letter,” she said to herself.

  If you are reading this, then I am dead, he’d written. Or at least I haven’t long to live.

  As her eyes traced the words on the paper she was struck with a feeling of deja vu, and her mind began a journey back to her childhood, when a handwritten letter of a different nature had also made her feel profoundly uncomfortable.

  AT THE AGE OF six and a half, Kirsty remembered, along with the other half-dozen kids in the Sunday school Miss Pryor taught at St. Patrick’s on Germaine Road, Kirsty had written a letter to God. Miss Pryor had said it was very important that they say what they felt. It wasn’t right for anyone else to tell you what to say to God, because everything, even a letter, was a prayer, and they were between you and God. But, there was one thing she wanted them all to make sure they put in their letters. They should all be sure to ask for something for Mankind.

  “And why should we ask for something for Mankind?” she had asked. “Kirsty. What about you?”

  Kirsty had shaken her head. She remembered it very clearly, because she’d done it so violently. She’d wanted it to make a muddle of her thoughts so that she wouldn’t remember too well what Miss Pryor had said, and then she wouldn’t have to lie to her Sunday school teacher. But no, the thoughts had stayed all neat and tidy. And when she stopped shaking her head, Miss Pryor was still staring at her with those pale-lidded eyes of hers, and said:

  “I think you do know, Kirsty.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Because, you told us what to tell God, Miss Pryor, even though you said nobody should do that. Does that mean you’re going to Hell?”

  Kirsty kept staring at those pale-lidded eyes, knowing that she had caught Miss Pryor in her own trap. She saw the teacher try to pull her eyes away from Kirsty’s gaze, but Kirsty refused to give them up. She was aware, even though she was staring straight into Miss Pryor’s eyes that her teacher’s face was getting blotchy-red. Her cheeks, parts of her neck, even her forehead.

  “Alright, Kirsty,” she said. “I think we’ve all had enough of that. You can stop it now.”

  “Stop what, Miss?”

  “You know.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Yes you do!” Miss Pryor said, and she hit Kirsty so hard across her face that she knocked her out of her chair.

  KIRSTY CUT THE MEMORY off there and finding herself halfway through the letter with no idea what she’d read, started reading the letter from the beginning.

  I know it must seem strange, getting a letter out of the blue from someone you’ve never heard of, but don’t worry; all of your secrets are safe with me. I had a lot of your secrets in my files here at the University, but they’ve all been shredded now. I realized I had to do that. And I just wanted you to know, if any name ever comes up in the future, and one of these sons of bitches starts to tell you the things they heard from me, it’s all bullshit, because they heard nothing.

  I know how those bastards work. They tell you that they know stuff when they don’t know shit. Excuse my language, but I learned early on in my dealings with Hell that a familiarity with the scatological is essential. Excrement is the language of the Wastes, is it not? The damned place is called the Wastes, after all.

  My apologies. I truly don’t seem to have been able to hold on to a single coherent thought for more than a moment without it slipping away from me. It’s the strangest thing.

  Let me return to my reason for writing to you in the first place. I am cognizant of the situation I potentially put you in by making contact with you given that certain parties are tracking my mail. But I assure you that if they are, then all of your correspondences are also being tracked. They know where you are. The only question is where do we stand on their list of priorities?

  Apparently neither of us stands higher because we are still alive to tell the tale. Or in my case, to ask the question, which is this: What do you know about the last years of the life of Philip Lemarchand? I’m sure we’re both familiar with the same basic details. The man was a brilliant craftsman, worked in gold a lot, created songbirds for several of the monarchs of Europe, uncannily life-like, and that at some point in his career he was commissioned to fashion puzzle boxes, which became known as the Lament Configurations.

  The puzzle boxes made music just as the birds did. But they did something else too. They opened the door to that desolate part of Hell called the Wastes, where the labyrinth of the Cenobites stood. And that thing worked a monstrous magic, by all accounts. I know you witnessed one of those doors opening. I never did. I only read descriptions of how Lemarchand was able to turn his hand to working with beauty and melody…

  The letter lost coherence, such as it could be called, after that, as Lansing once again fell before the whim of his arbitrary thoughts.

  There was only one other thing of any importance in the letter, and that was casually dropped within the last of its seven manic pages. There are other ways for the demons to cross a threshold, Lansing had remarked, besides solving some antiquated puzzle box. And the way he heard it, one of those ways was going to become apparent very soon. If his information was correct then, the thresholds would be uncovered by whatever means were going to become available. And it wasn’t going to be long before a lot of curious, but presumably wicked souls, were going to be utilizing them. The message was clear: the world was going to change very quickly, unless Kirsty was willing to help.

  II

  KIRSTY WANDERED THE HOUSE for the next several hours, her thoughts even more chaotic than they’d been of late. Eventually she decided to bite the bullet. She wouldn’t normally entertain such manic missives, but Lansing knew things about her that she couldn’t ignore. She would call Lansing and find out whether he even existed. And if it proved to be another one of Hell�
�s house calls, she knew how to make herself disappear. It was the only life she had known for decades.

  She dialed the number on the letterhead.

  The recorded voice, that of a woman in her fifties, Kirsty thought, provided little information.

  “Hello, you have reached the offices of Doctor Joseph Lansing. If you wish to leave a message, please press—”

  Kirsty hung up the phone. It was only when she’d put the phone down that she realized she was clammy with sweat, and her heart was hammering. She felt a little ridiculous now. So what if a total stranger had sent her a vaguely apocalyptic letter? It didn’t contain any information of great urgency, nor did she perceive any kind of threat. Certainly nothing to explain why she had become so agitated. Was it that someone had found her, and seemingly knew of her past? Was it simply the fact that she dialed the number that had stirred her up, as though by calling this stranger about some rumor of an ambiguous possibility, she was somehow lending this whole fiction a veracity it did not deserve, or worse yet, leaving herself vulnerable in some way she had not yet fathomed?

  She tried to distract herself from Philip Lemarchand and the puzzle box by doing some mundane work around her apartment. There were bills to be paid, and various unanswered correspondences to be dealt with. But her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t keep her mind focused on the purpose in front of her. Her thoughts were returning to that house on Lodovico Street where a hunt had become the unwelcome subject of her entire life thereafter.

  It was love that had troubled her, love that had shown her the road to Hell. It had been her profoundest hope that the road was one she would never have to walk again; but Lansing’s letter had cast doubt on that hope. So now her mind’s eye went back and back to Lodovico Street, and to the last man she had loved without conditions—her father; the man whose life had been lost there, under circumstances she still had difficulty making sense of. The man was Larry Cotton, married to a beautiful, terrible woman by the name of Julia. Julia had never loved her husband. Kirsty saw the contempt his own wife felt for Larry every time Julia glanced at him. But Larry never saw it. He worshiped Julia. She could do no wrong. When she’d sickened and refused to tell Larry what was wrong with her, he’d turned in desperation to Kirsty. Could she not speak with Julia one day, and maybe get the truth out of her?