James Axler – Circle Thrice

Ryan thought about the whip with its blood-clogged barbs lying on the altar, and he knew that life for both of them was hanging here by a hair. If there was a glimmer of a quarter chance, then to miss it would be to die. He’d known plenty of cold-heart killers in his lifetime in Deathlands, and Father Sandor was right up there with the best of them.

Or the worst of them.

“We’ll go down into the crypt, pilgrims on the highway to celestial suffering.”

He gestured with the scattergun, pointing them toward the front of the church, by the altar.

“Behind the pulpit, outlanders.”

As they moved slowly forward, Ryan noticed that the figure of the crucified Christ that hung at the farther end of the church was sheathed in coils of razored barbed wire.

Father Sandor stayed a safe six paces behind them, not giving them a ghost of a chance to jump him.

“Ring in the floor. Lifts easily with the aid of the gods and a good counterbalance. Find a lamp and some self-lights just inside it and some steps down. Get the lamp going and walk down the steps. Go straight to the far wall and wait there for me. Don’t thee move or speak.”

Ryan stooped and tugged on a wrought-iron ring set in the stone floor close by the altar. He heaved on it, surprised at how easily it swung open.

“Gaia!” Krysty gasped in horror at the noxious miasma that floated up from the black hole.

And Ryan knew instantly what the smell had been that he’d first noticed in the church, clinging to the person of gross Father Sandor.

It was death, spilled blood, fresh and old, putrefaction of human flesh, ancient and modern. The vault below the aisle was nothing more or less than a charnel house.

Ryan hesitated at entering the pit, and the priest grew angry.

“Now or later. Matters not a jot to me, outlander. But most of my parish find breath oddly attractive and cling to it. Longer than one would have thought possible.”

“I’m going.” Ryan lighted the oil lamp and adjusted the wick to give a steady, golden light that showed him a narrow flight of steps that wound down into a deep cellar.

“I think the time has come for thee to lay aside the weapons of unrighteousness, brother and sister. The two blasters can go down on the floor, at the top of the stairs. Perhaps that crooked stick, as well.”

“Can’t walk without it. Got a bullet in my leg. Can’t even stand.”

There was a long, menacing stillness, and Ryan knew that the monk was considering the option of blasting him in the spine. But the first option of having them both untouched in his crypt finally won out.

“Very well. But thy automatic and thy double-action Smith amp; Wesson, daughter of ungodliness. Very slow and very careful. Lay them down, pilgrims.”

Ryan and Krysty obeyed the soft, oily voice, gently putting down their handblasters.

“Now thee may creep into my crypt.”

THE CELLAR was unbearably hot, with two coal fires burning in iron braziers, one at each end, casting a fiery, crimson glow across the space that heightened the images of Hell.

Rows of torture instruments were hung on strong metal hooks probes, files, hammers and pokers; whips in all shapes and sizes; knives, razors and cleavers; a rack and thumbscrews; chains and loops of thin wire, manacles and iron collars with padlocks.

It was a fully equipped torture chamber, like an engraving from an ancient tome about the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.

And it was occupied.

Ryan and Krysty immediately saw the body of a young person, hung from one of the hooks like a rejected side of meat, so mangled that it was impossible to tell its sex or its age.

The corpse had been torn and battered in a hideous manner that screamed of endless hours of unimaginable pain and suffering.

Father Sandor was all too obviously a man who enjoyed his own skills.

“Ah, that,” he said, beaming again in the light of the oil lamp, the fires casting a sweating sheen over his jowls. “A local youth who helped me with a service for good crops for the ville. A successful operation, but the patient, sadly, died.” He laughed at his own humor.