Hitler's Price

He looked into the cave and shuddered. Something was looking back at him, and he knew it. All the men standing nearby knew it too. Why had he volunteered to go in after the creature? They didn’t even know what it was. ‘Me and my big mouth,’ he thought as he moved to enter the cave. An old gypsy woman pressed a silver-headed cane into his hand then withdrew. He felt revolted by her very existence, but she was only there to help. He stepped into the blackness.
The place reeked of death and decay, but there was something strangely pleasant about the stench. His eyes adjusted slowly in the dim light. They adjusted too fast for his taste as he moved deeper into the earth.
All along the walls, paintings of faces, ghastly and terrifying glared at him. Not inanimate blobs of color, they seemed alive, like they could jump off the stone and devour him. Skulls of all kinds littered the floor, but there was some order to them that he could perceive but not understand. Under foot, the bones of lesser creatures were crushed to dust. But as he moved further into the cave, all those images were shoved from his mind.
On a throne that seemed to have grown out of the cave floor, the creature was stroking what appeared to be an emaciated gray cat. Above the creature’s head, a bejeweled inverted pentagram with a ruby swastika in its center seemed to glow with an otherworldly light. Distorted skulls, almost stylized in their nature, grinned at him from the arms of the throne, while twisting serpents wound their way around the dead stone, living, immobile, unmovable.
The cat moved and leapt from the creature’s lap. Every movement clattered. He saw then that the cat was merely an animated skeleton. Merely living, moving bones! He dropped the cane. Silver was no use against the Devil himself.
The creature clapped his hands together, bringing jets of flame up from the floor. He fell to his knees, scared of the burning streams. He pried his fingers away from his face and looked at the creature he had come to confront.
It had the form of a man, broad of shoulder with thick arms, all muscled and veined as if they were currently exerting themselves, even now. The massive chest was rough scaled, and glistened in the firelight. The brawn arms ended in three curving, bulky jointed talons and a thumb like a straight razor. Cloven hooves with spines running along them, blood red intermingled with ashy black, like a burn wound left untreated. But the face. The face startled him, revolted him and drew him to the creature.
It had the appearance that it had once been a wonderful face, the face of an angel, now twisted and bulbous and grotesque. The eyes bulged from their sockets, slash pupils in poison green irises. The brow was heavy, like that of an ape, refined and powerful in nature. The curve of the nose pronounced authority and commanded respect. The cheeks, though marked, were sunken and covered in short stiff whiskers. These whiskers encircled the creature’s entire head, giving it a mane, framing its ram’s horns, knobby and twisted Its mouth was full of teeth that could have been perfect had they been whole. Now, they were broken and jagged.
The mouth opened and the creature spoke to him. The power of a blizzard came from its lips, with all the majesty of the stars and the intimidation of the grave.
“Adolph,” It said, “Why are you here?”
He stopped breathing for an instant. His entire body seemed frozen. This creature knew his name. What else could it know? He gathered his nerves. “What do you mean?”
The creature postured, like it was an obvious question. “Why are you here, Adolph, instead of pursuing your dreams of art school?”
“They wouldn’t accept me, they didn’t like me." He was gaining confidence, even though this creature knew things that no one else knew. He had told everyone that he was home on vacation.
The creature leaned forward, eagerly. He stepped back, startled. “Who wouldn’t accept you, Adolph?”
“I don’t know what you mea-”
“The Jews, you fool!” The creature leapt from its throne, the flames surging around the room. It as screaming. “So blind, my friend, the Jews, they hate you, they kept you from having the future you were meant to have! They hate you, Adolph, they hate your people, but they hate the Germans more. They will do anything to bring you and them down.”
Adolph was slowly backing himself against a wall. “What can I do, I’m just one man? I’m Austrian, not a German, they’ll never listen to me.”
The creature put his hands over his face and growled, exasperated. “Adolph, you have the potential to reclaim the honor of the German people, create a super race, and win back the honor they stole from you.” The rock walls vanished, replaced by images of the ancient Germanic glory days, heroes and armies. They seemed to phase out and alternate between ancient times and a more modern, stiff-legged green-uniformed military. “I can help you restore the Aryan pride and surpass it.” The creature pointed a razor-sharp talon at him. The images changed to a crowd of athletic, strong-looking men and women, all blond and blue-eyed, bowing before a statue of himself. “And you can punished the Jews for the despair they caused your people. You can exterminate them once and for all and rid this world of their filth.” The creature stood next to him and waved his clawed hand in front of him, in a sweeping motion. “Torture their bodies like they torture your spirit and your country. Let their blood be the paint for your mural, marking the rise of the German Empire!”
Jews in cattle cars. Jews, corpses piled in long trenches. Jews being shot, whipped, clubbed, raped. He smiled, watching one old man- no, not a man, an old Jew- convulse as a German doctor sent electricity flowing through his body. Jews being punished for ruining his own life, for ruining Germany after the Great War, for marring the human species.
“Give me it, give me what I need to bring about Justice.”
Now that he thought about it, the bunker he was hiding in resembled the cave his Third Reich had been born in. The dirt covered floor, the bodies of his attendants and his mistress lying on the floor, blood everywhere. A single bulb burned across the room, casting haunting shadows around him. He raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Fiery jets shot up from the floor, just as they had years before. The creature placed a taloned hand on his shoulder. He looked up, fearful, angry, hopeful. Had it come to save him from this final defeat?
‘I’m very sorry to say this, Adolph,” it said, looking wistfully at the woman’s body on the concrete floor. “But you failed the Cause.” Its claws burned like fire as they dug into his flesh. “We gave you all the help we could, all those brilliant minds from our ranks, the power, the control over the nation, and you still failed. You’re a complete failure, Furher Adolph Hitler.”
He shook, tears streaming down his pale face. “Please, my master, tell me, it isn’t so? I...” He was trembling so bad he couldn’t think of a reason for his incompetence. He scrambled for something, anything that could redeem him. “I ordered al the Jews Killed! I rebuilt Germany! Isn’t that the Cause?”
The images of shattered Berlin mocked him. “Rebuilt Germany? It’s worse off than ever before.” Visions of American and British soldiers freeing the Jews from the concentration camps tormented him. “You ordered all the Jews Killed? Then who are these men setting free?” The creature laughed and buried his barbed fingers in his shoulder. “You couldn’t complete the work, pitiful human, you had weaknesses, one being ambition and an overachieving spirit. You failed to think ahead, and failed utterly. You’ve had your chance at power, and now, its time to pay.”
He twisted around, sending needles of pain through his upper body. “What!” He was sweating now, his eyes darting around the room. “You told me I was immortal and would rise up again, after I died in this life!”
The creature smiled and shook his head, as if he was dealing with a child. “It wasn’t I who told you those lies, that was what you created inside yourself. Oh, you’ll be immortal, all right, Adolph,” He gestured to the images of the concentration camps and the ruined cities. “Your legacy is here and will always be remembered. But everyone’s got a price to pay, sooner or later. Your debt is to the Master, and he wants to collect now.” It snapped its fingers.
The floor opened up and he felt the bullet fly through his skull. He felt his body hit the floor, but he kept falling. Falling, falling and burning, never consumed, never relief by the wind whipping past him in his descent. Fire crawled over, under, through his body, agony beyond measure. Always falling, always burning. The creature stood on his back, his guardian, forever on his shoulder, tearing him apart with his claws, screaming over and over, “Power has a price, whether or not you complete the task for which the power was intended.”