Chapter 16: I Am The God of Hellfire, Part 16

Sam left the mansion grounds for the second time to set his plan in motion. Satan had given him total freedom with the next target or targets if he so desired, but if he wasn't able to obtain the key piece, it would be best to go after other people.

He would have to abandon the plan, or rather the vague idea. With his first three victims, he had improvised most of it on the fly; he was intelligent, not omniscient. He could never have foreseen that Evelyn's death would allow him to form a chain, dragging two others to hell.

Moreover, it wouldn't be worth the effort of devising a detailed plan if he then proved unable to obtain that piece, to put anything into practice.

Although he saw no reason why he would fail.

Compared to everything he had done in just a few days, what he was proposing was quite simple. He supposed that what made him a bit anxious was leaving the mansion grounds, the only thing familiar to him in this strange world.

He had had to leave them for the first time for Evelyn and Ivor's funeral.

Now he would return to the same place for the opposite reason.

He had wanted to go during the day, but he forced himself to be patient because it would have been too dangerous. At night, no one had to notice his absence or ask questions. Even if someone did, he had made sure the housekeeper would cover for him.

Sam arrived at the cemetery gate. It was locked. He could force it open with his telekinesis, but he didn't want to leave any trace. Many thieves visited the cemetery, especially when they had recently buried some noble gentleman or lady, those who had the most to waste even in death.

There would be nothing pointing to him, but he would prefer that the theft not be discovered anyway.

So he simply threw the shovel over the gate and climbed to the other side, slowly and carefully. If someone saw him, he would scurry away as quickly as possible. No one had to recognize him at first sight; he was wearing peasant clothes, not noble ones, and besides, it was night.

Transforming into a crow to pass between the bars or over the gate wasn't an option either.

He had discovered upon returning that for that power to work in the real world, he had to eat a real heart.

He should have seen it coming, otherwise it would be too convenient a power, but he hadn't been thinking clearly, just turning over the possibilities. He still hadn't been able to eat a real crow's heart, not even find the animal, but all in good time. This was much more important.

He found the grave he was looking for and began to dig.

It was unlikely that anyone would bother him, apart from the night watchman. That didn't worry him. If he saw him, Sam would take him out and bury him in the same coffin to get rid of the evidence. His mission was to massacre his false human family, but he didn't care in the least if there was some collateral damage. On the contrary.

He wouldn't waste time killing people who weren't involved, but if he was interrupted here, it could be a good way to vent. The pleasure of murder without having to think about the consequences, the next steps, and all that.

The work took him a couple of hours. At first, he tried with telekinesis, but he confirmed what he had already suspected. It was impossible to do it that way.

He had to control the grains of soil individually, so it was impractical. It required too much effort and energy.

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That's why he had bothered to bring a shovel and gloves from the beginning.

Tedious work, tiring, but in the end, it would be worth it. He opened the coffin and flinched, despite himself, seeing that Evelyn's face was intact.

They had made sure she looked presentable, even though it hadn't been an open casket funeral. Maybe they had done it to preserve her dignity or some such nonsense.

So many meaningless rituals in the name of the dead, when in reality they were only for the benefit of the living. Well, he shouldn't complain too much, it wasn't really that bad.

He had smashed her head, but now he could almost see the pain and fear in her eyes in the last moments. Almost, surely it was just an optical illusion, what he wanted to see. But that was enough.

Sam smiled at the corpse.

"Hello, Evelyn." His voice faded into the darkness of the night without going far.

In any case, there was no one who could hear them. It was a private moment, like the one they had shared up there, on the rooftop. The most intimate moment he had had with any person.

He remembered her eyes as she fell. The fear, the understanding.

The terrible resignation.

Sam jumped into the hole, crouched in the wet, freshly disturbed earth to give her a kiss on her cold lips. It should be like kissing a stone, but the act caused him a pleasant tingling.

Then he pulled back, separating his lips, and burst open her chest with the shovel to take out her heart. He ruined his clothes, but it didn't matter. He had given Annabelle another small task. To prepare a change of clothes for him.

He wasn't worried about her suspecting; no one had to know what had happened here tonight.

Even if he did it magically, sooner or later he had to risk her suspecting, knowing too much. Otherwise, he couldn't take full advantage of his influence over her. The lives of her mother and younger siblings depended on Sam. He was sure Annabelle would place her family on the right side of the scale. People were like that; strangers were numbers, the vague idea of a person. When it came down to it, people chose their own, those who really existed for them.

Sam took a deep breath, feeling Evelyn's heart pulsing in his hands. To remove it from her chest, his brute strength hadn't been enough; first, he had cut some valves with a knife, loosening it, so to speak.

He was many things, but not a cannibal. He wouldn't exactly enjoy this.

But he would do what he had to do without hesitation, without thinking twice. He wasn't a weak-willed person who constantly looked back, wondering if he was really doing the right thing.

He was a winner.

So he devoured the heart on his knees in the wet earth of that poor girl's grave, smiling with blood-soaked teeth.

——

Sam reburied her, taking a five-minute break to catch his breath only when his legs started shaking and he thought he might faint if he continued like this. He was burning with desire to set his plan in motion. The obvious victims were Evelyn's parents. Who else would care enough to suffer hallucinations from grief? Now that he had gotten Ivor out of the way, of course.

At first, he thought about taking off his blood-stained clothes and leaving them in the coffin with her, but he soon changed his mind. If someone happened to dig her up for whatever reason, it would be too good a clue that he was the murderer.

But the more pressing reason, to be honest, was that he didn't feel like returning to the mansion in his underwear at all.

It was a dark and cold night.

Satisfied with his work, Sam shook the dust off his pants and went back the way he came, shovel in hand, of course, he didn't forget it.

He still hadn't tried to transform into Evelyn, but he knew he would be able to.

Human beings were nothing more than animals with pretensions, after all. There was no logical reason why he shouldn't be able to. Speaking of logic, it should be easier to acquire another human form than to transform into a completely different animal.

Besides, he felt it. There was that supernatural instinct that told him he could do it.

He had no reason to doubt it. These powers were his. Not Satan's or anyone else's, just his, period.

His legs hurt by the time he returned to the mansion; he wasn't used to so much exercise. If he had known how much it would cost him to dig up the corpse, he would have seriously considered risking letting Annabelle do it for him.

Before entering the mansion, Sam plunged into a nearby river to minimize the possibility of going around leaving traces of blood.

Then he climbed up the wall to his room window; in the end, he was going to get used to it, to find it more natural than entering through the door like a normal person. Well, he thought, I'm not even a person.

He was a demon, and once again he had gotten away with it, desecrating the grave of a person he had violently murdered a few days ago to eat her heart, after attending the funeral and pretending to be grieving under the rain and the dark umbrella.

Sam laughed with pleasure as he changed into the clothes that Annabelle had prepared for him, washed, ironed, and neatly folded.

Then he got rid of the blood-stained rags by throwing them into the fireplace flames.

I Am The God of Hellfire, Part 16: END