Portals in Time 1

by Michael Beals

  “You just put your hand on the card. It registers your palm print.”

  Placing her open hand on the card which seemed to sizzle as she removed it, she gazed at the Sergeant. “Is that it? That’s all you need?”

  “No,” he said, pointing to what looked like a telephone booth. “We also need your photograph. Go and stand in that cubical and face the mirror.”

  Stepping into the booth, Kat found herself staring at her mirrored face, and it was a shock. She looked five years younger than she remembered, and her hair was short. The last time Kat looked in a mirror, she’d been tanned and had a small scar running down through her left eyebrow. The scar was now gone, and she looked like a college graduate. Expecting there to be a flash, like the new passport booths at airports, she waited, but moments later, Giselle was beckoning her.

  “You don’t have to wait. The photograph is instant. We can go.” Then she handed her a badge. “Pin this to your t-shirt.”

  Pinning on the badge, she followed Giselle out to the car again. The sun had set, and she was surprised to see neon signs advertising various products and curiously, perfumes. New York City was still New York City, even in Hell, but she couldn’t help wondering why people would use perfume. Without any sexual parts, why bother?

  “We’re going to a palace?” Kat asked as she climbed into the car. “What sort of palace? Who lives there?”

  “It’s where Hades lives.”

  “God Almighty!” Kat cried. “I have to meet Hades?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, He’s a lot nicer than that damn Sergeant. You might even get to meet Persephone. She’s an absolute sweetheart, unless you cross her, of course.”

  “So are we driving there now? We don’t even get to freshen up?”

  Giselle laughed. “We’re not driving to the palace; we’re driving to the airport. The palace isn’t anywhere near here.”

  “You have airports in Hell?

  “Of course we do. Hell is just like Earth, only bigger because there are so many people. This part of Hell is in the Americas, but Hades’ palace is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You mean like Hawaii?”

  “Oh, much further. Wait until you see it. It’s something else. Talk about Hollywood ranches. I wouldn’t mind betting that Persephone designed it.”

  “What, you mean like it’s got paddocks and stuff?”

  “It sure has. Hades breeds horses.”

  “He does?” Kat asked excitedly, suddenly feeling better. “What’s he like? Is he scary, you know, like the demons?”

  “No, he’s nothing like the demons. He looks just like a regular human. In fact, he’s the spitting image of a Hollywood movie star, and he’s got a wicked sense of humor. He even has God in stitches.”

  “He talks to God?”

  “All the time. They have a lot to talk about.”

  Kat stared at her in astonishment. Hell had been a surprise, right from the get-go, but the very idea that Satan talks to God seemed ludicrous.

  Kat asked Giselle, “If this is Hell, what the hell’s Heaven like for goodness’ sake?

  Giselle shrugged, “haven’t the foggiest. If you ask Hades or Persephone, they ignore you as if you hadn’t asked at all.”

  They were nearing the airport now, and she could smell the aviation fuel. She looked around at the other traffic. The cars were glistening in the overhead lights, but no families were heading for the airport. And then it hit her, of course, there were no children in Hell. There were no families.

  “Giselle… have you actually seen God?”

  Signaling to change lanes, Giselle glanced at her. “I think so, although to be honest, I’m not sure. I know Hades and God have regular meetings, and I’ve seen him chatting to some guy with long white hair, so I just assumed it was God, but Haddy will never admit it.”

  “Haddy? Who’s Haddy?”

  “It’s Hades’ nickname. We’re all very fond of him.”

  “Jesus Christ! How can you be fond of Satan?”

  “Because he’s not what you think he is. He and God organized Hell hundreds of thousands of years ago… although it’s always being updated. They set up Hell to protect people from each other. Can you imagine Jack the Ripper wandering around Heaven… all those beautiful women?”

  “Or Henry V111,” Kat joked.

  “Oh yeah, poor old Henry. He was quite agitated when he realized that all his manly equipment had disappeared.”

  Kat was about to crack another joke when she saw a plane takeoff, its shape clearly visible in the airport lighting. She’d expected to see a DC-6 trundling down the runway, but to her surprise, it was a de Havilland Comet. Hell was certainly full of surprises.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  K at had only been to Idlewild airport once before. Her cousin Harry had been living in New York City, and she’d been visiting him on a school holiday. The airport had seemed enormous, perhaps because she was a small child at the time. Everything looks big when you’re a child. But seeing Idlewild in Hell was something else. It still had its sweeping, futuristic ceiling and oval windows, but it really was enormous, like the vast interior of some gigantic galactic spaceship. Considering the number of people lining up at the check-in counters, it was also strangely silent, only the soft echo of voices. Of course, no children were running around, and there were very few old people.

  Kat had to laugh when she saw the ground crew. They were all female demons and were attempting to look like airline staff, with bright blue skirts over their reptilian legs, and little hats on their lizard heads. They were even trying to smile at the passengers as they loaded their bags onto the weighing conveyors, but with their pointed teeth, the smiles looked more like snarls.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Giselle said, noticing her amusement.

  “Are there pilot demons as well?”

  Giselle laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. No, they’re far too clumsy. We use humans who were pilots in their last life. Guess who’s flying our plane.”

  Kat wracked her brains for the name of famous pilots, but the only person she could think of was Amelia Earhart, and there was no reason to believe she’d been sent to Hell. “I don’t know… Herman Göring? I can imagine him ending up in Hell.”

  Giselle raised her eyebrows. “Wow! Not a bad guess. But no, he’s on the Berlin route. We’ve got someone far more famous. He’s slightly crazy. He nearly crashed the plane he was testing for Hades.”

  “So, who is it?”

  “We’ve got Baron von Richthofen… the Red Baron,” Giselle said, proudly. “He’s been begging Hades to reincarnate him because he wants to fly jet fighters and Hell doesn’t have any. But Hades doesn’t see the point. He’ll only get killed again, and if he’s killed anyone in the meantime, he’ll come straight back here.”

  Making their way to the fast track lane, they were soon going through security. Kat saw people placing luggage and personal belongings onto a belt that took their bags into a box; then, the bags came out the other side of the box. There were lizards watching TV behind the box as the items passed through. The people then walked through a structure that looked like a doorway without the door. “Giselle, what are those people doing?”

  “Airport security. Those machines check for metal and explosives. They’re supposed to be a deterrent for hijacking planes… We don’t need it, though. If anyone was crazy enough to try to hijack a plane, airport security would just call Hades, and he would simply erase whoever was causing the problem.”

  Kat was perplexed and asked, “Then why have security at all?”

  Giselle smiled at Kat and shook her head a little. “Hell has around 150 thousand new arrivals every day! Everyone works in Hell. No exceptions. Hell is constantly trying to think of ways to create jobs. The easiest job to create is security. Stuff someone into a uniform and tell them to look important and watch something. Hell has security everywhere. Banks, hotels, offices, warehouses, apartment houses, you name it, they’re there.”


  Neither Kat nor Giselle had any luggage when they reached the front of the line. They simply walked through the standing metal detector, and because they weren’t carrying any metal, no alarms went off. None-the-less, a particularly slippery looking demon wanted to pat her down.

  Kat waved him away. “Touch me, you little shit, and you’ll be going home without a tail.”

  The demon backed off, but he wasn’t happy. “Everybody gets checked. No exceptions.”

  “You had me walk through that door of yours, and no alarms went off. You don’t need to pat me down.”

  The security guard waved to a senior officer, but Giselle stepped between them. “I can vouch for her. We’ve been invited to the Palace, and she’s perfectly safe.”

  “You have passes?” the guard persisted.

  “I don’t need a pass,” Giselle said, indignantly, flashing a badge at the demon.

  The guard shrank back, and moments later, they were in the departure lounge. Kat was impressed. Giselle didn’t look like someone who could instill fear in a demon. She must have been in her early twenties and was so good looking; all turned to look at her.

  “Am I missing something?” Kat asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That lizard was afraid of you.”

  “Oh, that. I’ve been around for quite a while, so I carry different badges. The one I showed him was for the Elite Police. Demons are terrified of the Elites.”

  “So you are an Elite?” she ventured.

  “Good heavens, no. I left the Elites a long time ago. It was far too stressful.”

  Kat was astonished. “You used to be with the Elites?”

  “I was for a very short time. They used me as a spy, but I hated it. You’ve got to be pretty tough to be a spy, and I’m not at all tough. I like being nice to people. So they made me a guide.”

  Leaving the departure lounge behind, she followed Giselle down a series of passages, through doors that read No Exit, and suddenly they were outside. Rows of brightly colored de Havilland Comets were lined up at the gates, and baggage trucks were whizzing back and forth. An old DC-3 trundled by. It had sizeable red lettering emblazoned on the side that read, BAT OUTTA HELL DELIVERY SERVICE. It reminded Kat of her time in Benghazi, and the battle-worn DC-3 they had flown on the Desert Eagle mission.

  But as they walked across the tarmac, she saw something that was almost as exciting. Positioned in the doorway of a vast hangar, moonlight glinting on its highly polished jet-black paintwork, was another de Havilland Comet. Of all the planes she had ever seen, the Comet was probably the most beautiful with its four jet engines built into the wings.

  “We’re flying in that?” she asked.

  “We certainly are. It’s Hades’ private jet. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. It’s also huge compared to a Dakota, and a hell of a lot faster. Are we the only passengers?”

  “Yep! We’ve got aircrew, but there are no other passengers. Wait ‘til you see the inside. It’s even got a television.”

  Climbing the steps, they were welcomed by two human stewardesses. But they weren’t like normal stewardesses. Although reasonably pretty, they wore black uniforms with lightning bolts on the lapels and reminded Kat of NAZI uniforms. They were even wearing knee-high, patent-leather boots.

  “Ignore the uniforms,” Giselle whispered, as they took their seats. “It’s one of Hades’ little jokes. He likes to scare people.”

  “He succeeded.”

  The inside of the plane wasn’t like a normal passenger plane. It was more like a luxurious sitting room with upholstered chairs and a color television mounted on the bulkhead. A Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie, Road to Morocco was playing, although frustratingly, the sound was turned down. There were earthly newspapers arranged on coffee tables, so Kat picked one up. It was the New York Times. Wall Street had crashed for the first time in twenty years, Elizabeth 2nd now sat on the British throne, a Polio vaccine had been developed. But what caught Kat’s eye was a new James Bond book that had been written by Ian Fleming. Kat always felt that Fleming had used her Special Operations Executive exploits as fodder for his James Bond novels.

  “How come you’ve got earthly newspapers?” she asked, tossing it on the table in disgust.

  “Haddy has them shipped in. They’re not available to the public.”

  “But how does he get them? This newspaper’s new.”

  “Ah! That’s why he invented artifacts. He has special couriers who trip back and forth between Earth and Hell.”

  Accepting a coffee and a cheese sandwich from one of the stewardesses, Kat settled in for a long flight. She had no idea how far Hades’ palace was, but even on Earth, the Pacific Ocean was vast, and apparently, Hell was more massive than Earth. At first, it was difficult to sleep because the Red Baron was playing games with the plane, swooping from side to side, or going into a dive, before climbing steeply again. But after Giselle went to the pilots' cabin and complained, the rest of the trip settled into an uneventful flight.

  Kat dreamt she was a little girl again. She was in Berlin with her stepfather, and he was acting horribly. They were walking through Alexanderplatz, and Kat wanted to see the horses, but her stepfather said that only silly children were interested in horses and made her sit in a café, while he smoked a cigar and drank schnapps. And then she was walking through the desert in a sandstorm. The wind was howling, her eyes stung, and her throat was burning. Jock was with her, and he kept telling her it would soon be over. Sandstorms don’t last very long. They’d be in Cairo before she could say, ‘pinch a peck of pickled pepper.’

  She woke to discover that her throat really was dry. She’d been asleep with her mouth open and needed a drink. Getting a lemonade from one of the stewardesses, she peered through the window. The sun was just breaking the horizon and glistening on a calm sea; she must have slept for hours. Expecting her to be asleep, she looked across at Giselle, but her guide was intently reading a Hollywood gossip magazine. And at that moment, she felt sorry for Giselle. She wanted to be a dancer again; she wanted to go to Hollywood, but she was stuck in Hell because Hades needed her. Maybe they could steal an artifact and escape to Hollywood together.

  Getting up and sitting next to her, she peered at the magazine. Grace Kelly was in a film called High Noon. It was then that Kat noticed a striking resemblance between Giselle and the actress she was reading about. It wasn’t hard to see why Giselle wanted to go to Hollywood.

  “How soon before we land?”

  “Not long. Are you getting worried?”

  “Just a little… well, more than a little. Will Hades turn me into a toad if he doesn’t like me?”

  Giselle laughed. “Good God, no. I think he wants your help.”

  “Me, help? How on Earth can I help? I’m a complete stranger here.”

  “You’re kind of spunky,” she said, tossing the magazine on the coffee table. “I think Hades needs that rebellious spirit.”

  Moments later, the pitch of the engines changed, the plane banked around, and when Kat peered through one of the windows, she could see a small island, although at the height they were flying at, maybe it wasn’t so small. She watched it as it drew closer, and it soon became clear that the island was vividly green. It was surprisingly hilly, although not mountainous, as Hawaii was. It reminded Kat of the phrase, the emerald isles, and she could imagine horses being happy there. She continued to watch, with her face pressed hard against the window. She could see the palace now, although it wasn’t what she would call a palace. In her mind, palaces had turrets and spires. The house she was currently studying, was more like a Hollywood ranch, with landscaped gardens, paddocks, and orchards. There was a small river that ran down from the hills and passed through the surrounding fields. It looked idyllic. Going back to her seat, she strapped herself in. With the Red Baron flying the plane, who knew what crazy things he might do?

  As it turned out, touchdown was as smooth as silk. The Baron was behaving himself
on Hades’ island.

  There were no security guards at the tiny airport. If you could call it an airport, it was utterly deserted. There wasn’t even a control tower, just a single building that the Red Baron parked right beside. Kat took her time to disembark, strolling across the tarmac, and positively dawdling as she walked through the tiny terminal. It wasn’t really a terminal as such. Cool, marble-floored, and full of potted palm trees, it was just a single room that exited onto a small parking lot. There were no offices or x-ray machines, and no lizards dressed up with little hats.

  An old Bentley pulled up as they stepped out of the building. It had a license plate that read, H and P.

  Kat and Giselle stood quietly while the chauffer climbed out. He was quite old, probably somewhere in his seventies, which was unusual for Hell. Wearing a chauffer’s uniform and hat, he was a typically outfitted chauffer. He sported a drooping walrus mustache, wasn’t very tall, and walked with a stoop. He could have come straight out of The Adams Family.

  “Miss. Wolfram?” he croaked.

  She glanced at Giselle, but Kat’s guide was smelling a rose in a nearby flower tub. “Yes,” she replied nervously.

  “I’m sorry,” the chauffer apologized. “I had to ask. I’d get in all sorts of trouble if I drove the wrong person to the wrong place.”

  “Why, is there a choice of destinations?”

  “Oh, yes. Not everyone goes to the main house.”

  “And am I… going to the main house?” she asked, hopefully.

  The chauffer cocked his old head. “Yes, you certainly are. The master’s been waiting for you.”

  This was it; she was going to meet Satan. Kat had fought the Waffen-SS and the Gestapo, enjoying every moment even under the worst of odds. Now for the first time in her life, she was terrified. It didn’t matter what Giselle had said about him, that he was just a regular guy, and bred horses. There was only one Satan, and he was in charge of Hell.

  “Calm down, Kat. There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s a lot safer here than it is in New York City.”