Free A Thousand Fiendish Angels: Stories Inspired By Dante's Inferno by J.F. Penn Page B

I have done. With no self-indulgent pleasure bloating a soul to feed upon, she must sink back to the depths from which I summoned her. I have hidden the book so she will have to sleep again. It is buried, and I am finished, but perhaps this last act will earn me a sliver of redemption.

    The diary page was signed with his name and yesterdays date, the handwriting measured, sane and deliberate, but the words read like one of his novels. Was he living within the realms of fantasy when he passed so violently into the next world? Yet as I looked over again at the man's horrified face, I knew that his agony had not been mere imagination.  
    My eyes were drawn out the window to the church, for he had sat here looking at it when he wrote those last words, and I felt a prickle of sensation, as if those murky portals called to me. Could he have buried the strange book within? Something dark began to uncoil within me and I felt compelled to delve deeper, for I knew that I would exchange much to experience the riches this man had enjoyed.  
    Running back down the stairs, I called out to my partner that I had to investigate further evidence outside. He shouted after me but I ignored him, caught up in the sensation that I must get to the chapel, and that time was of the essence. Part of me wondered at this desperate insistence but I felt possessed by something beyond my control.  
    As I stepped outside, the light rain that had been falling morphed into icy sleet and the heavy purple clouds above me split open with lightning. Thunder rolled across the desolate space between the house and the church and I was buffeted violently as opposing winds clashed all around. I pulled my coat tighter, fighting against Nature, as if I was pushing a great weight ahead of me into a squall sent from Hell itself to tear this sombre valley apart.  
    Each step across the open ground was a huge effort, but when I finally made it to the lych-gate at the entrance of the tiny churchyard the storm had eased a little, the rain lighter now, although the wind still howled around me. The church was old and partly ruined, with stone blocks that had fallen to the grass below, and eroded gargoyles hanging skewed from the edges of broken masonry. The present facade seemed to be built upon a more archaic structure, stones that had perhaps been worshipped as pagan gods in the days before Christ. I had imagined that I was running to sanctuary but now I felt that the miasma of the place was oppressive and malevolent. Yet I still wanted to enter, my curiosity deeply roused to search for the mysterious book.  
    Stepping carefully along the overgrown rocky path, I noticed that the plants in the churchyard were withered, all color leached from them. Yet they still covered the earth thickly, rising up from around the edges of tombstones as if growing from the bones beneath. The fury of the storm surged again, crackling with energy, wind whipping round in tornado spirals, lifting the heads of strange albino flowers to the sky. Dust and ashes blew into my eyes, painting the scene with the desolate grey of mourning. I rubbed them frantically to clear my vision and hurried into the porch, my face brushing against something soft as I stumbled out of the wet gloom. I reeled back to see a dead crow hung by the neck above me, blue-black feathers still adhering to decaying flesh, its eyes open and unseeing.  
    Pulling at the great door, I found it opened with a sigh, as the wind was sucked inside, filling the void with the desolation of chill air. I stepped through, my footfall stirring dust from the floor, the noise echoing around the deserted building, which absorbed the sound hungrily. The light inside was an amethyst haze from the heavy storm clouds that barely penetrated the nave through intricate stained glass windows. Looking up at them, I discerned the images of tortured saints, martyred in the most ingenious ways for the glory of their God. This place seemed to venerate