The Devil's Side

The room resonated with an atmosphere that Jake had never experienced; if he had ever doubted the reality of the power that he faced, those doubts were now laid permanently to rest. This was, without question, completely beyond his previous expectations and his senses were overwhelmed.

The scene was opulent, dream-like, exotically sensory and filled with languor. He felt that he must be drugged to have achieved this sense but he knew that, in fact, he had not and what he was seeing and feeling was real. Although he was diverted and experiencing a host of new and unworldly sensations, he felt alert and comfortable. Casting his eyes around he gradually took in the scene that presented itself.

A discordant, but paradoxically harmonious, music like nothing he had ever heard before provided an undertone and the air was thick with a natural, or better described as unnatural, purple light, like the twilight of an Italian early Spring evening. He felt that he could reach out and brush it aside like the mist, on a mirror, in the bathroom after a steaming hot shower. It was as if he was within, or even part of, a kaleidoscope as the subtle hues of the purple mist continuously changed and ebbed and flowed; it swirled as if it were some kind of smoke and it seemed alive as it constantly changed hue and opacity, moving hither and thither in eternal restlessness. Otherwise there was no artificial light but he could see perfectly, indeed his vision seemed to be enhanced and more acute, despite the incongruity of the light.

The room, or space might be a better word as Jake could still not make out exactly the location, was bare save for a few rugs cast haphazardly on the floor, some chairs on which people were seated, and banners on the wall illuminated by especially bright examples of the ubiquitous purple light. He gazed at the banners, which ruffled gently in an unearthly breeze: one had Chinese characters written vertically; another had texts written in an ancient language that he did not recognize; this completed the sparse but striking furnishings. Chillingly, in the centre of the room, Jake regarded what could only be described as a makeshift altar covered with a deep, rich coloured cloth upon which a jagged inverted cross stood, in isolation, flanked by a bank of candles; but candles the like of which Jake had not seen before and which provoked in him a tingle of dread. Next to the cross, stood a large gold chalice studded with deep red stones that Jake concluded were giant rubies.

The candles guttered periodically in the breeze which sprang up, and then equally swiftly died, as it sighed with an infernal sussuration, they were black as pitch and gave off an ochre glow which melted into the miasmic purple; they burned most brightly at the edges to provide them with the eccentric illusion of a halo effect. Perturbingly, they gave off no smoke.