17: SWEETNESS_TO_THE_RAIN

Adelaide awoke in the same place she'd collapsed not so long ago. Rainmaker was still in the same spot as he had been when she first fell down. Nothing really seemed to have changed. He stared at her with the exact same expression as he also had when he watched her collapse and did not help. The same stupid expression which was too cowardly to run, yet too afraid to commit to helping her. Indeed nothing around her had changed even the slightest. As though her entire fit had been only a moment.

At the same time, despite nothing changing, there must have been some epiphany– because the world felt different. To Adelaide, at least. She felt she was seeing through different eyes. And perhaps it had only been a moment. Some moment of clarity which had struck her as divine inspiration struck the classical artist slaving away in a lead filled atelier. Adelaide could move, she could think, she could speak– so what had that fit been? She glanced down at her wound. It couldn't be seen– not when it was pressed under her shirt and some putty-ish layer of flesh cheese.

She sat herself up– and found it to be no more difficult than it had been before she'd been injured.

She glanced at Rainmaker, and stared at the extent of the damages she'd left behind. She contemplated for a moment– what to say, what to do. But no answers came to her. She just knew something was off about how she felt now– though she couldn't place how.

So for the time being she got to her feet. And as she stood, the chain around her neck burned. It burned like the coals of divine fury placed on the body of a witch to make her confess. Adelaide would not confess now– she would not be able to for a good amount of time. But certainly, something had shifted, and she herself barely knew what it could've been.

"We need to get going. There's demons nearby."

"Let them come to us. They can kill us." Rainmaker's voice felt so distant now. It was the same whining from the same hairless cat as always, yet it felt so far from her now that she had to blink, just to check if he was actually there, and she was not simply deluding herself. Adelaide reached out to touch his face, and was almost shocked to find real flesh waiting for her. Real, human flesh, damaged of course by radiation, but no less real.

"We're not going to lay down and die. Not yet."

A vision of Jisako appeared once again, beckoning them to the other side of the hall. Adelaide looked down at Rainmaker. His expression once again shifted to one of fear and guilt and shame. But he stood up, and there was not a thing to be done other than to pursue the ghost to the ends of the Earth.

They walked further in– and there was nothing to do but walk toward Jisako's spirit. As they walked, Adelaide and Rainmaker passed door after door. Places that must've led somewhere– was it a hotel? An apartment building? Adelaide couldn't be sure.

As they wandered closer to Jisako, some of the doors began to rattle. The ghost moved backward, and out burst a horde of demons, their bodies twisted into strange ape-like forms. Furry, but with large, sharp canines, and strangely muscular bodies. They ran toward the pair– prepared to maul the both of them. Adelaide kicked at them, but they were a sea of dark, hellion fur. It was impossible to separate one from another, or to guess what it was she had just hit.

The sea of them shifted around them for only a few moments, before soon those hellion beasts descended upon them.

The creatures charged, and they were too hard to fight. Teeth tore into Adelaide and Rainmaker– claws and fangs and screams. Some human, some demon. What sound belonged to what was a mystery. Several grabbed onto Adelaide's arms, hanging on for dear life and making it damn impossible to move, but attacking, and attacking repeatedly. They clawed– her sleeve tore- she threw some off, but on jumped several more.

Rainmaker close behind her was having the same trouble. For every one he managed to hit, several more popped up. These were all young demons, but they were large in their number and stronger than their average fellows. Adelaide looked around desperately for some escape route, any way out that might've been possible to use, but she saw nothing despite all her efforts to look. She stared in dismay until she noticed an elevator. The doors were half pried open. Adelaide stepped closer.

Adelaide grabbed Rainmaker's hand, as best she could– ripping the little devils off of her as she pushed. They took her flesh with them. She dragged them both. Some of the demons realized what she was doing. The smartest jumped. The dumber ones were pulled off. Rainmaker tried to pull his hand back, but her grip was firm and final.

They jumped down.

She lost her grip on Rainmaker almost instantly. The elevator shaft was thin, but the drop was steep. They went rocketing downward, grabbing wildly at cables and the wall, desperate to slow their fall. Adelaide grabbed onto one of the elevator cables. The speed she was going down as she grabbed it ripped off one of her fingernails, and left massive, ugly red burns on her palms and the insides of her fingers. Rainmaker grabbed at the cables as well.

Above, the monkey demons made a screaming ruckus as they slid downward. Adelaide was surprised when her feet landed on something. That thing made a strange groaning noise. She looked down, trying to parse what it was in the darkness. In the end, she was actually quite relieved. It was the elevator. She planted her feet as firmly as she could, and moved to open the hatch. "We can climb in," she said.

Rainmaker hesitated, before nodding at her. She jumped down into the elevator, and he followed not too long after her. "Do you think we could pry the doors open or something?" he asked.

"I think so," Adelaide replied, with a stiff nod. "The both of us can work at it at once. Then, we can get off on whatever floor we want," she said.

The young man seemed a bit skeptical. "What if this place falls?"

"Demonic magic is holding it up. Whatever holds is going to hold forever, I'm sure." She was talking out of her ass, frankly. But she didn't know what else to tell this kid. She didn't want to discourage him, she didn't want to make him panic, and she didn't want to have to browbeat him again.

Another scream in her ear. She grimaced. "We should move quickly," she added. "Those things above can probably climb down once the shock wears off."

Rainmaker nodded hollowly to her. His eyes weren't entirely devoid of understanding, but he wasn't entirely bursting with it. She had killed something deep inside. Once they stood inside, the elevator began to descend. At a normal speed, at first. But then it began hurtling downward, speeding to the bottom. Adelaide's cross burned white hot against her neck again.

Strange symbols, written in blood, began to appear on the walls. Adelaide looked at Rainmaker. "Don't say anything. Don't look at anything. Close your eyes," she commanded.

"Sovitas," he answered.

"Yes. It's another instance. A sovita." She didn't know what a sovita was. It was her bad to have cheated so thoroughly on her exams. But that was neither here nor there. What she understood was that the instance was bad, and needed to be ignored. A trap set by a demon, which risked your very soul if you dared make the mistake of acknowledging the trap's presence at all.

But she had no idea who had set it. Had Jisako trapped them?

She didn't want to believe it. Why would Jisako, the infinitely sweet, and if not sweet, then fading presence want to go out and do harm to them? She wanted to believe that her bride would never take that sort of cruel act.

The doors to the elevator opened, and in entered a strange, aberrant creature. Its head was snapped sharply to the side, like the victim of a violent hanging. The beast was covered in bruises. It smiled a big, toothy grin at them, despite missing most of its teeth. "Pleasure, souls," it said.

Adelaide faked a smile back. "You look dashing today, Sir."

"You children are too kind," it said, leaning in close, pressing its ugly mug only a few inches away from her face. She continued to smile innocently. It wanted to scare her. It would take her soul then. That was how it always worked. It wasn't a demon, it couldn't be killed. It was just a grumpy spirit that refused to just sleep.

The spirit stayed there, breathing down her neck and dragging its teeth across her cheek. She stayed still, not looking at it, not angering it, nothing. She smiled, even. "New gum?"

The monster hissed, releasing a foul miasma from within itself, which spread throughout everything around her, before finally leaving her be. It went over to the other corner to sulk in its misery. The man had killed himself at some point because he was angry that the married woman he'd been sending love letters for several months had never replied to him. So now he haunted married women.

Adelaide had to wonder why he couldn't just rest, seeing as the woman he'd 'loved' had also died. Did their ghosts haunt each other? Rainmaker regarded the presence of the creature with more nervousness. Though he understood how it would be best to behave, the thing still spooked him. He didn't have to deal with it before. He was neither married, nor a woman.

Thankfully, the creature ignored him, and it eventually staggered off. Shambling to continue moping about its rotten luck elsewhere. It let out a loud shriek and groan, trying desperately in some final attempt to Adelaide looked out into the empty hall– and decided to step out herself. Adelaide grabbed onto Rainmaker and pulled him along. He just kept his eyes to the ground and let himself be pulled along.

The hallway was narrow. Adelaide decided to take a chance and peek into one of the rooms through a peephole. Unfortunately, it was covered in blood from the inside, so all she could see was some odd mass of red. The pair of them continued down the hall, until the hall opened up into a sort of main atrium.

It was an area which had fallen into disrepair. The furniture was tossed every which way– and strings of flesh hung from above, like streamers for a birthday party that would never happen. Stronger demons– large, beastial things which were neither resigned to a limited strength nor a sense of fear. Not to anything but the symbols of the hanging man. Adelaide grimaced. They had none anymore.

Rainmaker moved closer to Adelaide. He couldn't hide his discomfort being so near to her, but he also didn't want to be alone in this world of beasts. It was a catch twenty-two for him. Adelaide looked at him– and she decided, she knew what she had to do, even if it was a hit to her pride.

She leaned close and whispered words of apology. Words she'd never given to Jisako, and never would be able to. The words weren't real. They were what she knew she needed to say, and said despite her irritation at the mere thought of them. But Rainmaker wanted to believe, so he looked at her with big, doe-ish eyes, and nodded. He was still frightened and stiff, but he was young and he was hopeful that the woman meant what she was saying.

So then Adelaide gave him words that were more real. "We need to find a cross," she mumbled. "Do you know where to find crosses?" she asked, softly.

"They leave bibles in hotel rooms sometimes. Visitors. We'd have to go through a lot of doors," he whispered.

"Did they ever teach you how to sense the presence of one?"

Rainmaker nodded at her. The woman smiled at him– a thin, stretched smile done begrudgingly. To make him feel better about himself.

The pair of them snuck through slowly. Adelaide wasn't a believer. She didn't believe, so she couldn't sense the presence of the hanging man. Rainmaker was adamant he believed– but it took him a long time to find what they were looking for. Adelaide decided against commenting on it. There was no point in it. Beating down on him wouldn't do much other than make him retreat in again. And she knew from experience: the first apology always meant the most. No subsequent one meant much of anything.

They did eventually find a cross– and some sort of book, which also bore the image of the hanged man. She stared for a moment, amazed.

The items had been inside one of the rooms– one which they had snuck into upon realizing there wasn't a single creature guarding it nearby. The both of them began their attempt to sneak out, but the worst of the worst had yet to come– and they had failed to realize the true threat posed unto them.

They assumed they could escape– a fact which they were mistaken about. They tried to find an exit– a window they could break, anything– but instead, they ran across the beast. It eyed them at first. It had the head of a human– in some form. Though its eyes were insects now. It had a scarab on its head. A crown made of broken bones. It was dressed like the royalty of the damned.

It waltzed closer, and leaned toward Adelaide. Its flesh burned at the presence of the poorly made metal cross they'd dug up. They needed metal. Wood would only burn up. Still, the creature leaned in close, putting a hand under Adelaide's chin, forcing her to look it in its wriggling eyes.

"Jisako?"