Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  “Because … Jean, just come with me. There is something you need to see.”

  She took me to the other side of the lighthouse, where I saw a shimmering darkness that hung suspended in the air, like some sort of optical illusion. The shimmering portal didn’t make sense. For one thing, I should have been staring at the ocean, not some dark hovering cave. And for another, it constricted and expanded in an unnatural way—like a curtain suspended in place, but still subject to the air around it.

  “Penemue?” I asked again.

  Judith nodded. “I saw Penemue make this. And then I watched him walk in.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Judith nodded again.

  I examined the portal. I knew enough about these things to know for certain that this was a doorway to somewhere else. A forest, to be precise, but although this place had trees and bushes and earth, it was unlike any forest I’d ever seen before. For one thing, it was impossibly eerie. Eerie is a misused word—I know that now—because “eerie” is something we say to children when we want to tell them a scary story without actually scaring them all that much. But as I stood in front of the portal that led onto a forest path, I suddenly understood what eerie really meant.

  When you say “The forest is eerie,” what you are really saying is that you can sense danger but have no idea where or what it is. All you know is that it is real, imminent and terrifying.

  And this drab forest was nine shades of eerie.

  “What is this place?” I muttered to myself.

  “Hell,” I heard a voice from within say.

  I immediately went on full alert, my sword out and ready. “Who said that?” I demanded as I looked into the gloom.

  In the distance I saw a shadowy figure approach. I couldn’t make out any of this creature’s features other than to say that it was a she and humanoid in shape. As it drew closer it said in a soft voice, “When Sinbad died, Penemue was so overcome by grief that he wanted to punish himself for failing the little warrior pirate. And because the Creation Crystal is so close, he was able to create this place.”

  “And what is this place?” I asked.

  “Hell, Jean. Penemue’s Hell. Seems he modeled this place after Dante’s epic poem.”

  “Dante’s Inferno,” I said. “His favorite poem. It’s about a man named Dante who traversed the nine circles of Hell to retrieve his dead wife.”

  “Indeed,” the figured chuckled in a forlorn way. “Penemue’s Inferno.”

  She still hung in the shadows, but the more she spoke, the greater a sense I got that I knew her. “Who are you?”

  “In the poem, Dante is guided through Hell by the poet Virgil. I guess you can say that’s who I am, Jean. Your Virgil. I’m here to help you get Penemue back.” The figure stepped out of the shadows and for the first time her face was illuminated by the ambient light. I heard Judith gasp as my head swirled with the impossibility of who I saw.

  Rubbing my eyes, I took a step forward. “Bella?” I said. “Is that really you?”

  Penemue’s Inferno

  Part XIV

  Hell

  EONS AGO—

  There is a Book of Life.

  And a Book of the Dead.

  And many concerning Good and Evil.

  The Torah, the Quran, the Bible—to name a few—and the angel Penemue knows each and every one of them.

  As well he should … He wrote them all.

  Well, he didn’t exactly write them. The twice-fallen angel did not put pen to paper, nor did he outline them or even consult their authors. But he is responsible for the written word.

  The written word: his chief achievement … and his greatest sin.

  And it for that very sin that the angel Penemue now sits in chains, awaiting his punishment.

  ↔

  The council of angels float above Penemue. Before them sits the Scale of Justice, where each angel will place feathers—evil to the left, good to the right. Penemue’s life, quite literally, hangs in the balance.

  Each angel will use their special ability to examine Penemue.

  Haniel, the angel of joy and intent, will uncover Penemue’s motives, while the archangel Gabriel will weigh Penemue’s past deeds against his current infraction.

  The angels Raguel and Miral will weigh justice against mercy, and the archangel Michael will peer into Penemue’s soul, ensuring that there is only the one sin he should be punished for … and not more.

  Unfortunately, there is only the one sin. A great sin—in the eyes of the angels, at least—and Penemue knows that there is nothing he can say or do to help ease this punishment. Resolved, he silently waits for their judgment. And should the judges deem his infraction great enough, they will snuff out his life force without a second thought, and Penemue will cease to be, living on only in the memories of his fellow angels.

  Haniel floats next to him and, touching the symbol on her neck—a tattoo that symbolizes all she represents.

  She removes it from herself and places it on Penemue’s forehead. The symbol stamps itself on him as though it had always been there.

  The transference is complete, and by placing her symbol on him, she becomes him. And in becoming the angel Penemue, she is able to experience his deeds and motivations as if they were her own.

  “Good,” Haniel hums. “Now show us why you taught the humans the written words, and pen and paper, when such knowledge has been expressly forbidden to them.” Haniel opens her palm, and from it projects a hologram of the angel Penemue and his past.

  “Show us,” she purrs again.

  Show us.

  ↔

  Like a blossom, Penemue’s history unfolds. Over the eons, he frequently traveled to Earth to spend time with the mortal creatures known as humans. He descended to learn from them, to see the gods’ prized beings up close.

  But it is more than that; Penemue is obsessed with these mortal beings. Why wouldn’t he be? Because of his role in their creation, he is in tune with everything written on their souls. And thus, if a human commits good or evil, their deed is written in the Book of Souls.

  A book Penemue knows intimately, as well he should. After all, Penemue is the Book of Souls.

  One morning he flies down to the Fertile Crescent, landing by the River Euphrates. He is meeting his friend, a young boy with a particularly bright soul.

  The boy waits by the river, intently drawing in the sand with a stick.

  When he sees his angel friend, he waves. Then, pointing at the ground, he shows Penemue what he has drawn in the earth: the same symbol over and over again. It is the symbol tattooed on Penemue’s neck—the written representation of the angel’s name.

  “Look,” the boy says. “That’s you.”

  Penemue looks and, sure enough, the boy has copied the symbol perfectly.

  But the boy has done more than copy it. He changed it slightly, adding a line through the center and a crescent over the head. The boy points to his new symbol. “And that is my name.”

  Seeing the boy’s writing, Penemue scuffs the earth with his talons and picks him up. In a harsh and rushed tone, he says, “You must never draw that again.”

  The boy starts crying.

  “Never again. Do you understand me?”

  The boy nods.

  Penemue puts the boy down and says in a soft voice, “I am sorry. It is just that such symbols are forbidden to humans. The gods do not allow it.”

  Through moist tears, the boy bows his head. “I only wanted to draw our names.”

  “I know.” Penemue embraces him. “I know, but you mustn’t.”

  “Why?”

  Penemue does not have an answer. The truth is, he does not know why the gods forbid humans such knowledge.

  ↔

  They spend the morning together and as the sun rises high into the sky, Penemue bids the child farewell.

  The boy waves to the angel. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Of course.” Penemue unfurls his wings.

&nbs
p; But the boy is still unsure; he upset the angel only hours earlier. Penemue sees his doubt. “I will see you tomorrow. I promise.”

  The boy giggles and jumps up, climbing Penemue’s wings until he is level with the angel’s head. Then he gives Penemue the biggest, hardest hug he is capable of.

  ↔↔↔

  Penemue sits in the Celestial Library, doing what he always does: reading.

  Humans are writing their deeds into the Book of Souls, though one particularly harsh deed is currently being written. A human father is with his boy. They are walking into a cave far from their village.

  The father tells the boy that he saw him by the river with the angel. He asks the boy why the angel was angry with him.

  The boy explains as best he can, but alas, he does not fully understand what he did to upset the angel Penemue. All he knows is that it was forbidden.

  The father nods and asks his boy to lie down on the hard stone. The boy does so.

  Then the father pulls out a hunting knife and—

  “Oh my,” Penemue says, flying out of his stoop in Heaven and down to Earth.

  ↔

  The boy from the river is dead, sacrificed to gods who are indifferent to his death. Sacrificed because his father has seen him with an angel and assumed the gods wanted this.

  Because he believed his son was marked.

  Picking up the boy’s body, Penemue washes him, preparing him for burial. Tears of light stream down the angel’s cheeks as he carefully prepares the grave, and slowly, with the tenderness of one who truly loved the boy, lowers him in.

  Standing over his friend’s empty shell of a body, Penemue covers him with sand and rocks. Then, using a bit of magic, he removes his tattoo from his own neck and marks the boy with his name.

  “Your name in writing,” Penemue says to the departed boy. “To carry with you in the next world. I am only sorry that I did not give this to you sooner.”

  ↔

  Penemue wonders how it is that the boy’s own father could do such a thing. He reads from the Book of Souls, determined to find a reason.

  There is no reason.

  No logic.

  No sense to the deed.

  But from his research, Penemue has gleamed a theory born from thousands of souls, millions of pages of research.

  Humans are afraid.

  Afraid of the seasons—and how the spring and summer months may not provide another harvest for them to survive another winter.

  Afraid of the thunder and lightning—believing them to be the tantrums of angry gods, and wary of the burden they must bear if such a tantrum were directed at them.

  Afraid of what they have no control over—famine, drought and disease, certain that such burdens are divine punishment for some misdeed or insult.

  Why would they think otherwise? They are ignorant to the natural order of the world.

  Of course they are afraid.

  And what do humans do when afraid?

  Lash out in violence against anything and everything they believe may have caused that fear.

  And so Penemue travels to the four corners of the Earth, where he selects a handful of disciples in each location and begins the arduous task of teaching simple creatures the power of language and its written form.

  He teaches them so that they will trade superstition for science, destructive emotions for logic—fear for knowledge.

  ↔

  “Enough,” the archangel Michael booms. “His sin has been displayed for all to see. His intent is clear. It is now up to the council to determine his fate. Raguel—judgement.”

  The archangel of justice nods solemnly. “Guilty. He had full knowledge of his crime and still committed it willingly.” Raguel sets a handful of feathers on the scale, tipping it toward Penemue’s oblivion. Should the scale tip fully to the left, Penemue will be destroyed. To the right, and he will be absolved and forgiven.

  “Gabriel,” Michael summons. “Are his past deeds enough to offset his crime?”

  Gabriel shakes her head. “Only his connection to the Book of Souls speaks in his favor. But that is worth just a monogram of weight to offset his sin.” Then Gabriel places several feathers against Penemue, plucking only a single feather from the pile and placing it on the right side of the scale.

  “Agreed,” Haniel says. “He knew what he was doing, and did so for sentimental reasons. Sentiment does little to counterweigh Divine Justice.” She, too, places her mound against Penemue, again only taking a single feather to place in his favor.

  “Very well, then,” Michael says. “Oblivion shall be—”

  “Hold,” Miral says. “Mercy has yet to speak.”

  Michael growls at Miral’s intervention. “Very well, then. Miral, Angel of Mercy, how plead you?”

  “The angel Penemue defied the gods—there is no doubt of that. But he did so for the only reason that supersedes Divine Justice.”

  “And what reason is that?”

  “Love, Archangel Michael. Love.” And with that word, Miral places a single feather in his favor, and the scale balances. Such is the power of mercy.

  The Scale of Justice. To the left, death. To the right, salvation.

  But balanced … that is another matter altogether.

  “Very well, then,” Michael bellows. “He lives. But he is not innocent, and thus condemned to the only place suitable for marred angels.” And before Penemue can say a word, Michael floats down until he is level with the rebel angel and kicks him.

  Out of Heaven.

  And into Hell.

  ↔↔↔

  But that was eons ago. Now the gods are gone.

  And with their departure, Penemue has fallen—again. And again.

  His first fall was to Hell.

  His second was to Earth, the day the gods departed.

  ↔

  Just before his third fall, Penemue lost his dear friend, another child by the name of Sinbad.

  Sinbad was more than his friend—she was his second chance. A second chance to help a being in need, undo some of the wrong he’d done, finally do something right … if only for one person.

  When she dies, something within the angel breaks. And because, as the fates have it, he stands next to a Creation Crystal, he creates his own hell, his own inferno, so that its flames might punish him from now until forever.

  Walking through the portal, Penemue falls once again. And as he does, he wonders if there’s a limit to how many times one can fall without breaking.

  As the fiery ground of the hell of his creation rises up to meet him, he thinks he knows the answer, for Penemue believes with every ounce of his being that this time—this fall—will be his last.

  Portals to Hell and Dead Wives

  “There is this girl whom I love very much.” That was what I said to Bella the day I got down on one knee and, handing her a twist tie—the only ring I could afford at the time—proposed.

  “There is this girl whom I love very much.”

  Awkward, I know. But the truth was, I was lucky I could say anything. Even on one knee, my leg like a kickstand propping me up, I trembled. So much so, I thought I would fall over and finish my marriage proposal flat on my back.

  She looked down at me and said, “Awkward.”

  Was that her answer? “Awkward?” Had I blown it because I couldn’t keep my shit together long enough to hand her a damn ring?

  But before despair could seep in, she jumped up and down, screaming and stomping her feet and crying out, “Good thing I’m into awkward,” before falling on me and taking me into her with everything she was.

  That night I ceased to be who I was … For I was no longer the weird, scrawny seventeen-year-old with an unhealthy obsession with 1980s toys.

  I became someone else.

  Someone better.

  Someone complete.

  That night, I became Bella’s—my whole heart and soul.

  That night I vowed that I would, in this life and the next, love her forever.

>   ↔

  That night was almost fifteen years ago, and time had done absolutely nothing to dampen those feelings or to dull the yearning ache for her that burned within me.

  I’d loved her from the day I met her, and I’d loved her just as much every day following—even after she died.

  Especially after she died.

  So seeing her standing before me, a vision of life and health … I found myself utterly and completely wrecked, overwhelmed with joy that she was there.

  And terrified that this was an illusion. “I believe our love can make anything happen,” she had said to me that one, brief time I’d seen her in Heaven. But when she’d said anything, I couldn’t have imagined she meant … this.

  Bella stood in a portal that divided two worlds, Earth and Hell.

  “Bella, is that you?” I took a step toward the magical rift between our worlds. As I drew nearer to her, I found my steps quickening. Fuck it—if this was an illusion, then I would let it wash over me and hope I died before I saw through the façade.

  A few more steps and I’d be by her side.

  Bella did not extend her arms toward me. She just stood at the divide like she was standing on the other side of a window pane. Not that I cared; if some kind of glass or shield or whatever separated us, I’d smash through it.

  I would smash through anything and everything if it meant feeling her embrace one more time.

  A strong hand stopped me as a voice shattered, “No, Jean!” I was thrown back with such force that my body tumbled several feet away from the shimmering portal.

  Getting to my feet, I saw that General Shouf had stopped me. Where the hell did she come from? I thought.