Chapter 4: Hell's Little Girl

14/02/1994 San Francisco

"Valentine Day..."

It was three weeks since she and Johan split up. One one-nightstand from her side and he dumped her. But he knew her, he knew her needs, her desires and her morels. Or the lack of these morels. She sits naked in the fauteuil, looking at the puzzle she recently obtained. This orb presents her dilemma. She and Johan promised each other that if one of them found a box, they would call the other. So they could travel both to that world. But on the other hand, they were no longer a couple. She was nothing like him. Her father was dead and her über-Christian mother had thrown her out the house when she was 13 years old, after being caught masturbating. At the age of 14 years she discovered the sweet release that heroin brought her. But everything comes with a prize and everything had to be paid in some way. She became a heroin whore: sex, domination and submission, pleasure and pain... It was all so familiar to her, like breathing. And just like to the heroin, she got addicted to that all. Some blame it to her childhood, to her mother... She didn't blame anyone. What should it matter? But Johan never really understood that. How could he? Raped by a priest, beaten by his Christian father for confessing it. A priest didn't do something like that. Yeah, right. Years later he was driven over by the priest in an attempt to shut his mouth for good. A more then failed attempt as Johan not only survived the attack, he killed the priest years later, by nailing him to a cross and castrated him. But the accident shattered certain parts of his spine, causing a certain immobility as he limped sometimes with his left leg. Another result of his shatter spine was that a big part of body had become numb. He was only able to feel things like pain when they were really intense. He could burn his hands on hot plate and only noticing it when his hands started to blister. Their Christian inheritance, their interest in sin and their taste of music were only thing they had in common.

She stands up and bends over to pick up the orb. Her slim fingers encloses the orb. Still dealing with the dilemma, she brings the orb to her face. She was libertine nymphomaniac as she told him. He was just a loser. Just a loser she fell in love with. She throws the puzzle on the table. She haves taken her decision and grabs her guitar. Ironically the guitar was a gift from Johan. She sits back down and started to play a melody. The melody the Engineer, who gave her the box, hummed. With her eyes closed, she plays it and the box starts to change. She don't need to see it, the excitement she feels rushing through her veins, it tells her complete books. She's getting wet, stands up and put the guitar away. As she opens her eyes, she sees a bright light, forcing her to close them a bit. Three cenobites have appeared before him. The one of the middle was Elliot Spencer. Lemarchand had told them about Captain Elliot Spencer. Nicknamed Pinhead. Several who escaped the forces of Hell, had encountered him. The most famous of them was off course Kristy Cotton. Hunderd others had fallen before him and pulled in hell or executed on the spot. Years of servitude had turn him in a Hell's favourite. The other two she didn't recognize, but she couldn't care less. After all, she should come to know them very good soon.

"Amy Bell, finally we meet."

"Indeed, my captain."

She looks with joy how the cenobite smiles, slightly surprised by her knowledge of his former identity. As his past was revealed to him by Kristen Cotton, his original name was never again erased from his mind. Leviathan saw it as a gift for his loyalty and feared the chaos his servant should cause once he would be unbound again by someone splitting his soul again. His eyes keep looking at her face without twitching or looking down to her naked body. She was impressed, most time she almost had to beat the men of her when she wore clothes. But then again, he was not a man, not anymore.

"We are explorers of experiences beyond your comprehension."

She walks towards him and looks him straight in the eyes. "You should be impressed how much I can comprehend, Knight of Leviathan." She did another step towards as now she almost could touch him. "I've only one request, Pinhead." She picks up the puzzle box. "Can you let someone bring this puzzle to Johan Granger. I promised him we should make this journey together." As Pinhead smiles again, the four disappears to the domain of hell.

3/05/08 New Jersey City.

"You have to pay, Charlie, time to pay!"

"Please, give me more time! I need more time!" The blond boy is begging for his life as Frank 'Big Boss' Malroni and his thugs have come to visit him on payday. "The only thing I can give you, is this. Give me another week and I shall return you your money." He's chained to a chair in the basement of his parental house. He nods to a small black cube on the table.

"No deal, Charlie. I'm really sorry but I have a reputation to think off. Boys? Please don't make it too messy. One of the thugs grabs a chainsaw and as the other lawn mower. He walks to the door but turns around as Charlie really starts to scream. Max, the thug with the chainsaw lowers his weapon to his crotch. Maniacally laughing, he pushes his chainsaw into the genitalia of their victim. Sick bastards. His eye falls on the black box and takes it with him as he leaves the house of Charlie. The black wooden box was decorated with mysterious figures and symbols. He enters his car and commands his chauffeur to drive away from this scene. The car stops before his office and before Frank leaves the car, his chauffeur turns around and looks at him: "What's your pleasure, sir?"

"For the last time, I'm not gay, George!"

Back in his office, he lowers the shutters. It was always a bad day to lose a customer, but if they don't pay, they deserves some punishment. But not all things were bad today. He had this strange box. He looks at the cube in his hand and places it on his desk. "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie... You should have be more careful with my money, not spending it on things like these. This are made for the rich."

Curious, he looks it up on the internet: 'Mysterious black box'.

Most hints are articles about mysterious airplane crashes. He tries something else: 'Mysterious ANTIQUE boxes'.

This time he haves more luck, he find a satanic site with an image of the box. According to the site, the box was no box but a puzzle. Made in 1834 by the mysterious Phillip Lemarchand. "Never heard off..." he murmurs to himself. This puzzle even had a name: Demise of the Maker. According to the site, the box could be bring the solver an unimaginable riches and knowledge.

"That's interesting..."

He starts to inspect the box and finds a little silver circle on the bottom of the cube. He presses it and the box starts to move. The 4 squared symbols on the 6 sides of the cube, started to turn around, revealing a white square. The box forms two stars with each 8 arms that twists separately from each other. Forming several forms before returning back to his normal form. A bright light enters his room, through the shutters and suddenly his office is filled with a thick fog. Three creatures have appeared before him, or were it four. The one on the right was a Siamese twin or something that at least look like that. They were the twice as large as a normal human being and looked like two heads sharing one body. The right face was forced to smile as the left face looked sad, being a perverted parody on the mask of Comedy and Tragedy. The one on the left was a woman. She wore a dominatrix leather suit but was bare feet. Long, thick pins were driven in her feet to her ankles and a leather hood was sewed in to her skin. Their leader was no better. His face was covered with grid, cuttings deep into his flesh. On each intersection of this grid, a nail penetrated his skull. He smiles at him and congratulates him: "Hello, Frank. So you opened the box, didn't you? Curious to look inside, to look what's behind the curtain. Don't you know curiosity killed the cat?"

"WHO THE FUCK are you!"

"Angels to some, demons to others. I sense you were quite anxious to find the secrets the box reveals. And yet, you looks disappointed by the result. Maybe, you aren't worthy after all."

The female cenobite steps forwards to Pinhead and interrupts him: "He may lack eagerness but I can think of a rank for him."

Pinhead looked at her, slightly angered by her lack of respect but also little amused as he understand what was referring to.

"No higher rank suits this one, yes!"

He screams in agony and the fog disappears. His secretary storms into his office, only to find the Demise of the Maker on the floor of the empty office...

17/11/12 Salt Lake City

9 days after the destruction of the military facility in Nevada, Grayson was happy to be home. For the Hell On Earth Project he had checked in a hotel in Vegas, but now two players were dead, the game was over. They never should have start messing with that kind of power. They needed his experience with paranormal activities and he warned them, they should be very careful with it. Warnings that had fallen on deaf ears. They asked him after reading his article about the Deaders' Cult in Eastern Europe. As second problem was, he couldn't used it for one of his articles. It was confiscated information of the government and that were powers you shouldn't be messing with. Lucky enough, he had another subject, coming from Russia. Circus Necrotica. It was an one-of-kind show of horror, terror and paranormal activities. The performers were ex-torturers, criminals, psychopaths and other freaks and their talents were so unique, he had travelled to Russia, to see it with his own eyes. The show was morbid and extreme but somehow unreal. The things they did couldn't be performed by normal people. A famous act of them was the electric chair in which the ringmaster sits and gets electrocuted with 230 V. To prove the chair was real, they use animals who die by the electrocution. Mordog, as that's how the ringmaster called himself, survived it every time. He was able to hold a TL-tube between his hands and light it while sitting on the chair. Another famous tricks were the Girl and the chainsaw in which she juggles with the rotating saw and even licked it. Open arm surgery by a torturer and 'artists' who were tortured in medieval torture devices without the regular screaming, normally caused by this atrocious machine. They're resistance to pain was unbelievable, inhumane.

He himself has to search for it for 6 months. Many people have stated the events through but no one had prove. He on the other hand had pictures. This was no simple circus this was paranormal. Something even confirmed by Mordog himself.

He's busy on writing the article about the circus: "For a prize of 10,000 dollar, he told me about the deal they had with creatures from the Great Chasm. The only thing they had to do for these new supernatural durability and stamina, was given them each 10 years their tall man."

"Daddy?"

"What, honey?"

His little girl enters the to the room. "There's a man by the door..."

"I'm coming, honey."

He presses 'Save' and stands up. He closes the document and lefts the office. He opens the door and sees a cop. The man shows his ID and with this, he makes a fatal mistake. "Inspector Asmussen, what brings you here?"

"I have found this box on a crime scene. Presumably suicide as we found a farewell letter. But in this letter, he mentioned your name."

"Can you wait a second. I have to say something to my daughter."

"No problem."

"I'll be back in a second."

He walks to a little cabinet in his hall. Walker had told him about this man. How he was given the Atlantean Tetramorph. After searching for a while he finds what he was looking for. He picks it out the cabinet. "Honey, I'll be away for a quarter, OK."

Now he returns to the officer: "You were saying?"

"He mentioned you as he had stolen from you and asks the one who found him to give you this box." He hands him the red tetrahedron.

"Not here!" He points the gun he took out the cabinet at the cop. "Step in your car, passenger side, please."

Under the threat of the gun, Asmussen had no other choice then follow his command. Grayson steps in the car.

"Car keys?!"

The cop drops them in his pocket and angered he pulls them out his pocket by the ring it was connected to. Then he drives away with the cop. During the ride Grayson keep pointing the gun at Asmussen while keeping eye on the road, giving Asmussen no opportunity to do something stupid. He stops in a back alley and forces Asmussen to leave the car. "Why are you doing this?"

"Like you don't know!"

He shoots him in the stomach and drives off. Before he returns home, he drives to the canal and dumps the car in the canal. He walks back home with a light feeling. He dumped the box on the bottom of canal, the officer was dead... Nothing to worry about... He was wrong. After a walk of 3 miles from the canal to his home, he searches for his keys. But in his pocket, not only his keys could be found. The officer had tricked him. When cop put his keys in the pocket, he also placed the light weighted box in his pocket.

"Bastard!"

In the back alley, Asmussen was coughing up blood as he tried to crawl away. Suddenly a door on his left opens and an Afro-American appears. "Oh, great..."

"Oh my god, what happened here!"

He runs to Asmussen and grabs an handkerchief to staunch the wound. "Who did this to you, was it a gangster, are you robbed."

"Yes, by a white man. Can you please call an ambulance"

"No problem, man. Jesus, they have hit you good."

He pushes the key in the keyhole and turns it, while he keeps looking at the tetrahedron. He runs inside, thinking about what he had to do. He didn't open the box, not yet. So he had a change to destroy it. Returning to the river was idiotic and what if one of those mechanics or engineers or whatever they were called, retrieve it from the bottom of the river. No, he should burn it. His little girl, Caroline, was never to be found, most likely she was upstairs in her room. He enters his living room and walks directly to the fireplace. He places the box on a little coffee table and takes several logs from a metal basket by the fireplace. He places them in the fireplace and starts searching his matches. "Ha, there they are!" He sees them laying on the left side of a huge decorative candle on another coffee table. He reaches his hand and... "Boo"

His little girl jumps before him as she was hiding behind the fauteuil, close to the table with the candle. "Goddamn it! How many times did I have told you not to do that!"

"Sorry, daddy. It was only joke."

"Your joke nearly gave me a heart attack!"

He sees how she's sorrowful but he don't care. He had no time for this nonsense. He had to save his family for a real threat. He grabs a news paper and looks at the front page. Mysterious death of a doctor. The death of James Todd. He throws the news paper in the fireplace and ignites a match. Then he throws it in the fireplace and he watches how the picture of James Todd disappeared by a burn hole who's radius only increases until the complete news paper was consumed by the fire. "What's this?"

Shocked he turns around and sees his daughter holding the Tetrahedron. "Don't touch that."

He smacks her on her hands and surprised and hurt by this hit, she drops the box. "Never touch that again, you hear me!"

Crying, she runs upstairs. "Oh for the love of..." One day she would thank him for this. He picks up the box and throws in the flames. Later that the night, his daughter didn't return. Slightly concerned, he goes to her room. She's sleeping. She has just fallen asleep. He walks to her and undresses her gently. Then, he dresses her with her pyjama and puts her carefully under the blanket. As silent as possible, he leaves her. He watches TV as the fire goes out. Happy about how he solved his problems and goes sleeping too. Tomorrow, he should look if the box was destroyed. He believes so, as he had burned it and the logs around it were turned to ash.

He turns the TV off and goes sleeping. Unknowing that Caroline is awake. As she hears the snoring noises of her father, she crawls out the bed and sneaks downstairs. "Where was that little thingy daddy didn't want me to have?"

She searches the living room but without success. He have put it on a bookcase, so she could reach it, she thinks a bit disappointed. Suddenly she something blinking in the fireplace. She crawls towards and picks up the box, covered with ash. She starts rubbing over the box and suddenly a bright light enters the room. She drops the box as she hears a beautiful sound. She stands up and walks towards it. She sees a curtain that she has never seen before. Behind the curtain someone was playing on a cello. She pulled away the curtain and saw a young woman. She looked a bit strange, her outfit was too tight for her, she though. She wore a hood and had strange lines in her face. "Did you have a car accident?"

The woman looks at her, her head tilt. She had stopped playing.

"My mom had an accident too. She's now in heaven, says daddy..."

The woman stands up and the instrument turns to red sand. "Did you like the music, Caroline..."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I can teach you how to play like that, come with me."

"Daddy, told me I shouldn't trust strangers."

"Didn't your daddy asked to not touch puzzles?" she asks laconically, yet friendly. She smiles at the girl and she smiles as well. "Are you a nun?" She points at the hood. The woman smiles even wider as she reaches out her hand. The girl grabs it and together they enter a crack in the wall who closes after they had passed. Only the last question of the girl could be heard. "Are you a nun?" and the reaction of the female cenobite: "No..."

He runs through a labyrinth made of ancient stone, bounded by flesh and blood. He looks back as he hears the hissing noises of his predator. A white shadow follows him and he runs harder. Right, left, left, right. He have no idea where to go and how to lose that hellish creature. He stops by an intersection and looks back. The predator is nowhere to be seen. He looks around and hesitates. How did he end up in this place. A sudden hissing noise behind him, surprises him and he start to run again. He decides to go left and follows that path. "NO!" The path leads to a dead end and traps him. The beast appears before him and behind him stands a woman. Neither the woman or the beast looks like they came from this Earth and yet both has something human. Both were once human. The monstrosity that chased him, wears a collar and the woman was holding the leather leash. The woman was tall, slim and unnaturally white. Two deep scars marked her face but her clothing was even stranger. She wears a skin-tight dominatrix suit with a hood like a nun, while she's bare feet. The hood was sewed in her skin and her feet were mutilated to resemble high heels. But more shocking then her own appears was her pet. The beast was once a man but now... He had a human face but with deep scars in his forehead over the rest of his bold scalp. His nostrils were cut loose, folded up and sewed to his nose. His lower jaw was split, causing him to drool constantly while sitting by the feet of his mistress. He only wears a leather pants, the rest of his disfigurement shown to the outside world. Two very deep cuts were made in its back and the skin and muscles between the were mostly removed as well, exposing his spinal cord. His hands looked even worse as his remaining fingers clawed over the floor. He sees that on both hands the index finger and ring finger were removed, the wounds cauterized. His feet were split in two, eliminating the middle toe, making them look the feet of the Wadoma tribe in Zimbabwe. "Attack!"

The beast jumps to him with his horrible mouth with open, showing him that he misses his tongue.

Grayson wakes up in shock and looks around. The bed is wet from his sweat and he jumps out his bed. He doesn't know why but he haves a bad feeling. He know what these creatures were. It were the cenobites. But how had they find him, he didn't open the box. Unless... "No, that can be!"

He runs to the room of Caroline and sees that door of her room is open. He looks inside and see an empty bet. He screams her name as he runs down the stairs. He sees the box he had tried to burn yesterday. "No, no, no!"

Before the box, he falls down on his knees, crying for his daughter. "Why?! Why?! Why did she solved the puzzle. Why?!"

There was only one way to her back. Solving the box himself. He grabs the box and pushes on the button on one of his sides. The puzzle starts to shift and change. A bright light shines through the window, even as it's night. As the bright light dims, four creatures appears. The woman and her pet who had appeared in his dream, stands on the left to her leader. On the right side of the leader stands Arctic Cenobite. The leader was the cenobite from of Granger. He recognized certain of his facial features from the picture, Lemarchand had show them. "Where is my daughter!"

"In Hell, she was quite curious. She was mad about you screaming to her, curious why she wasn't allowed to touch the box..."

"Please, give her back. I'll do everything."

The leader smiles by the suffering of the father and answers him: "Even if we had something to say about it, we shouldn't. But this is a decision that lay by Leviathan, not you."

"I can bring you Lemarchand, just give her back, please!"

"NO!" The leader reacts angry and gets clearly impatient by his pleas: "We don't need your help to find him, we will find him. And for you, your execution is planned for today."

"Please, bring me to her. Drag me to hell but bring me to her. Let me join her."

"Tempting but no, you'll never see her again. You should be indeed a worthy cenobite but Leviathan's will is execution for your crimes against the gash!"

Beaten by the cenobites and knowing he will never see his daughter again, he starts to cry with his face down. The female cenobite loses the leash of her pet and take stand before their victim.

"No tears, please..."

Grayson lifts his head and looks at her with a face, contorted with rage and still crying as he screams at her: "DO IT!"

She raises her metal whip and lashes at him several times. Cutting of his arms, legs and head as well bisecting his torso vertically.

The now red-coloured whip is rolled up by the Female Cenobite and they look at the remains of the tormented father. The leader opens his mouth: "Only one more to go."

Asmussen lays in his bed and looks around. "Was it all a dream?"

He had dreamed, he was shot by Roger Grayson, an American Occultist from Salt Lake City. He looks at his stomach and sees a large hill under his blanket and the sweet tongue of his wife pleasuring him orally. He closes his eyes, enjoying what he was receiving. Suddenly he opened his eyes. This couldn't be her, she was away again for an expo in Germany. He pulls away the blanket and sees the female cenobite, he met when he accidentally opened the box, crawling around his crotch. She smiles at him and continues what she was doing but an agonizing pain starts from him crotch and paralyzes the rest of his body. She stands up and sits on her knees, opening her mouth. She holds his glans between her teeth and shocked he looks down to what she have down to him. He wakes up in a hospital bed and looks around. Sweat had formed pearls on his forehead. As he moves his body, a severe pain orientated by his left side above the hip, shivers his body. With his right hand he checked his penis. He sighs relieve as it's still intact. It was only a very bad dream. He quickly lays his hands above the cloth of his bed as a nurse comes in. "Ah, mister Asmussen, you're awake. I have to say, you were lucky. Not everyone, survives such a shot."

She opens the curtains, looks at the infusion and steps to the door again. Before she leaves, she turns around again and comes to him. "I'll almost forgot, someone brought me a present and asked if I could give it to you."

She hands him over the Atlantean Tetramorph...