Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  The pain was horrible; tears came to John’s eyes as again he experienced the insatiable urge to scream out in agony.

  “Chin up, John.” The stranger stabbed the knife deeper and began to pry something loose. Dark fluid ran down the blade and dripped onto his fingers. “This isn’t…damnit.” He dug even deeper with the knife—and something metallic brushed the tip of John’s tongue.

  “Perfect!” The stranger grinned. With a violent heave, he wrenched the blade upward and dug the fingers of his free hand into the loosening bark.

  There was an agonizing sensation of something tearing away from John’s face, and quite suddenly he was aware of a faint wind blowing against his bloody lips. He greedily sucked in a lungful of air.

  “Well, that’s the face.” The stranger tossed aside the handful of bloody bark—a few scraps of John’s flesh still clung to it. “Now comes the rest of the body. Shit, this is gonna be a pain.”

  The metal taste of blood rushed into John’s mouth. It felt as though the entire bottom half of his face was bleeding from every pore. He opened his lips to suck in another gasp of air—and at last his tortured mind could no longer take it. He screamed, louder and louder, for an entire minute as the despair and horror finally burst to the surface.

  He finally had to stop from sheer exhaustion, and began to sob. “T-thank you,” he gasped out in a faint voice.

  The stranger rolled his eyes. “Christ, you’re loud.” He stabbed his knife into the trunk just below John’s face, and another stab of pain shot through John’s body. Without another word, the stranger began to pry away and tear at the thorny scraps of bark once again.

  “Who are you?” John asked. “Where am I?”

  “We are in the Forest of Suicides, in the Seventh Circle of—” The stranger paused to rip off a massive piece of bark, eliciting a howl of pain from John. “Well, I think it’s fairly obvious where we really are, don’t you, Reverend?”

  “It can’t be true,” John whispered to himself. “No, I must be in—”

  “A dream?” The stranger chuckled. “‘I must be dreaming’, ‘This is a coma’, ‘I shouldn’t have dropped that acid.’ Always with the excuses. You want my advice?” He tapped a bloody finger on the tip of John’s nose. “Don’t try to run, Reverend. It only makes it hurt worse when they finally catch you.”

  “Are you…” John couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  The man raised an eyebrow expectantly.

  “Are you…the Devil?”

  The stranger laughed. “Not yet, John. Not yet.” He scratched at his right hand, and for the first time John noticed on the man’s palm an ugly raised circle of flesh that slightly pulsed under the blood that had stained it red. “Besides, I have more advanced interests than that rotting corpse. Damn all humanity for all eternity? Boooor-ring.”

  John did not understand. “Who are you?” he repeated. “What do you want with me?”

  “I’m your Virgil,” the man said cheerfully. “I’m your Sacagawea. I’m your Nyarlethotep. You see, John, I’ll be your guide on this little journey of ours. I’ll be that little nasty voice in your ear, helping you through all your trials and tribulations, and at the end…” His smile grew. “Well, we’ll see.”

  The madman standing before him seemed to have a gift for using a multitude of words to say absolutely nothing at all. “What?”

  “Forget it.” The stranger sighed. With that, he went back to work on prying John’s body free of the tree trunk. The pain of having the bark torn away was not as bad as it had been on his face, but the torture was still hellish. The conversation quickly died as John had to concentrate all his willpower on not passing out.

  Over the next hour, the stranger carved out first one leg, then another, then both of his arms. “Don’t move,” he warned John when he tried to pull his arms free of the trunk. “We need to be very careful when doing this. Here, let me…” He put his knife away and took a firm hold on each of John’s shoulders.

  With a massive heave, he suddenly jerked outward, ripping John’s upper torso completely free. The pain before had been only a drop; now John felt as though his body were tearing in two. For a second, his vision went black as the stranger wrenched his right arm from the tree—it was though a butcher were peeling the flesh away from his bones. “Come on, you son of a whore,” the stranger growled. He placed his feet against the trunk of the tree and gave one more massive pull, and at last John’s limp, tortured body tore out of the tree and collapsed onto him.

  The stranger shoved John off him and got back up to his feet. “Damn, you were in there!” he exclaimed when he saw the bloody man-shaped hole John’s body had left in the trunk. “Well, looks like we got most of you out.”

  Even if John weren’t facedown in the dirt, he would have been utterly unable to reply. Every inch of his body screamed out in agony. His muscles twitched and spasmed like a dying animal, making him unable to even turn over.

  The stranger knelt and, with a little sound of disgust at the state of John’s body, turned him onto his side. “You should rest. There are big plans for you, Johnny.”

  “Wh-wh—” John struggled to speak, but the words simply wouldn’t come. His flayed back felt as though it were at once freezing and on fire.

  “You’re going into shock.” The stranger grimaced. “In that case—” He laid his hand over John’s mouth, and John instinctively let out a moan of primal fear as the repulsive patch of raised flesh on his hand brushed against his lips—and then the blackness finally swallowed him up.

  John finally came to a few hours later. “Where am I?” he mumbled to himself as he sat upright. The pain of his earlier wounds was still there, but greatly diminished, like the afterthought of a horrific nightmare. He clutched at his blanket and stared up into the dark sky.

  The stranger’s grinning face immediately appeared above him, blotting out everything else. “The Forest of Suicides—didn’t I already tell you that?”

  John jerked back in surprise, yanking the blanket with him, but now he saw that it wasn’t a blanket that was draped over his aching body, but the strange man’s dark cloak. He balled it up and tossed it aside, reluctant to have the man’s dirty clothes touch his naked body.

  “You shouldn’t do that—” the stranger warned, but it was already too late.

  John gazed down in horror at what had been his body. He had thought himself a prisoner of the tree which he had been entombed in, but the reality was so much worse. Scattered patches of his red, bleeding skin were still visible, but over half his body was encased in the hideous, thorn-coated bark that he was all too familiar with. A handful of small dead-looking branches extended from his arms and legs, and his feet had become little more than gnarled tangles of barks and roots.

  He frantically clutched at himself with his mercifully unaffected hands and succeeded in prying a large piece of bark from his shoulder—and then let out a howl of pain as blood spat out of the resulting wound.

  “Like pulling off a scab,” the stranger noted. “Interesting.”

  John bolted for the discarded cloak and wrapped it around his shameful body, not willing to look at it any more than necessary. “What am I?” he pleaded. “What did you do to me?”

  “I only healed your wounds.” The stranger shrugged. “But your body—you did that yourself, John.”

  “Oh God,” John groaned. “Can…can I be fixed?”

  “Maybe.” The man made a mock thoughtful expression. “Maybe, just maybe, if you pray reallllllly hard, Christ will descend from on high and heal your hideous body and broken soul.”

  “Truly?”

  “No, dumbass. For the third time, you’re in the Seventh Circle of Hell. You think God’s coming down here? Especially for people like us?” The stranger’s smile grew even wider. “Ain’t no salvation down here, Johnny.”

  “Salvation,” John croaked out. “I must…it can’t be…”

  “It’s a little late for that, John,” the laughing man said
. He drew two pieces of what looked like flint from the pocket of his ragged trousers and knelt to a pile of branches someone had placed up against one of the moaning trees. “You had your shot and you blew it. No refunds on life—especially not for suicides like you.”

  “No,” John pleaded. “God’s love—”

  The stranger reached out and, before John could react, snapped a branch off his wounded shoulder and tossed it onto the pile. More blood dripped onto the ground.

  “Love?” The laughing man put on a mock face of utter surprise. “You think love is gonna save you, Johnny?” He chuckled to himself as he crashed the two pieces of flint together. A tiny spark sprang out onto the pile of branches, and a hint of a flame began to emerge. He carefully blew on it, nursing it to larger life. “If you’re going to be that stupid, maybe I should’ve gotten someone else. There’s no more love in your story.” The flame grew and the man fed the bloodied stick to it. “Not that there was ever much to begin with.”

  “No…” John breathed. His shoulders slumped in despair. “No…”

  “Chin up, Johnny.” The man slapped a hand on John’s still-bleeding shoulder, spattering blood onto the ground. “I’ll give you something much better than that. Freedom.”

  “Freedom?”

  “Oh yes.” The man smiled. He poked a large stick into the fire and patiently waited for the flames to latch onto it. “For the first time, you’re in a place where there is total, unlimited, absolute freedom. We’re all damned anyway, so why not have a little fun?” He sighed in disappointment at John’s confused expression. “Here, let me show you.”

  The strange man leapt up to his feet. He brandished the burning stick before him like a sword that he sliced through the air. “Like Prometheus before me, I come bearing a gift for humanity,” he announced melodramatically. “I give you FIRE!”

  He lazily flicked the makeshift torch into a woodpile that had been placed against the base of a nearby tree. The pile immediately caught fire, and the flames quickly began to lick at the base of the tree trunk. Somewhere high above, a muffled groan echoed through the forest.

  For a moment, the man stood to survey his handiwork, grinning as the flames swiftly traveled up the tree, through a maze of branches, and then on to the next tree. And the next. And the next.

  He truly is insane, John decided as he watched the flames reflect off the man’s pale skin and gleaming teeth. “Why?” he yelled up at the man over the crackle of the fire and the moans of the trees.

  “Because I want to,” the laughing man said. He reached into the fire and pulled out half a dozen more burning sticks. “I aim to burn this entire forest down, John, so we need to get a move on.” Without looking back, he strode off into the trees, pausing only to light another pile of leaves on fire.

  For a moment, John hesitated. It would be so easy to turn and run in the other direction, to flee from this devil of a man…

  “Reverend,” the stranger said softly. He turned to give John a piercing look. “Do you really think I’m the only one who’s going to come looking for you?”

  The witch. Fear gripped John’s heart, and his choice became abundantly clear: he had no choice at all. Without a word, he stood and followed the smiling madman.

  Behind them, the forest of the damned burned.

  11

  The creature holding him in a deathly embrace was not Amaury, after all. The nose was a little too long, the eyes a bit too blue—even Simon, for all his faults as a parent, remembered what his son’s face looked like. The thought was still of little consolation to his drowning lungs. The choking, filthy water, polluted with the guts of the bloated things, burned like Hellfire as it rushed into his chest. This is where I die. He had never doubted that he would face death with anything but heroism and maybe a healthy dose of rage, but now that it was finally here, he was ashamed of the cold terror clawing at his gut.

  The face of not-Amaury suddenly split in half as something sharp and blindingly fast pierced it, hurtling through it to impale itself through Simon’s shoulder. Even with death clawing at his lungs, it still hurt. He had barely any time to register the pain before the thing in his shoulder jolted upward, bringing him with it. The bloated bodies clawed at his ankles, trying to bring him back down, but the upward motion was too great. The rope attached to the metal spike embedded in his shoulder pulled, and Simon shot up with it to the surface.

  I’m saved, he thought in utter relief as the light of the sun above came closer and closer. If he wasn’t underwater, he was sure he would have been weeping. Thank God, I’m—

  He exploded through the surface of the water, utterly blinded by the light—and then kept going. Something abruptly smashed against his body, so powerfully he swore he could feel his ribs crack. He instantly came to a stop, and the pain of the spike in his shoulder increased a hundredfold as it suddenly became the only thing supporting his weight. He blinked filthy water from his eyes to see that he dangled a dozen feet above the waves below.

  “European male, one point eight five meters, ninety-two kilograms,” a voice rattled out.

  Simon turned his head to see the creaking deck of a ship swarming with activity. His vision was still blurred by the water and the light, but enough of it remained to make out the outlines of sailors hoisting sails, adjusting ropes, and pulling in lines from the waves.

  “This one looks fresh, Captain.”

  He had only enough time to see the owner of the voice—a bored-looking thin man leaning against a wooden railing and examining him with a critical eye—before another voice rang out. “Bring it aboard.”

  “Right-o.” The thin man jerked on a rope.

  Simon heard the creak of wood above him, and suddenly he was spinning above the crowded deck as the crane he realized he was attached to shifted. The metal spike in his shoulder slowly retracted and then was torn out by his own body weight, and he landed with a painful thud on the wooden deck.

  Before he could move, a heavy boot slammed into his stomach and then he was flipped onto his back. A bearded sailor reached down for him, and even in his confusion, Simon recognized the reflection of light off the manacles in the man’s hands. “Wait,” he pleaded, raising his hands just above his head.

  The sailor ignored his protests and seized one of his wrists in a powerful grip as he adjusted the manacles with the other. Fool. Simon abruptly jerked his hands back down, throwing the bearded man off-balance and pulling him downward—just in time to slam his nose against Simon’s headbutt. The crunch of cartilage was delicious. The sailor staggered back with a cry and slammed into the deck with a scream as Simon’s foot broke his shin.

  “Help!” the thin man cried out. He clumsily tried to kick down at Simon’s face, but Simon easily intercepted the feeble attack, seized the man’s boot with both hands, and violently twisted. Something popped and grated inside the man’s leg, and he toppled back against the ship’s railing, inadvertently helping Simon up to his feet. After that, it was a simple matter to give the crying man a hard shove and send him tumbling into the waves below.

  Simon turned to see that the entire deck was staring at him in utter shock. There were at least two dozen of the sailors, and just as many naked, shivering captives, soaking wet and bound in chains. One of them was still hoisted halfway out of the water, dragged upward by the harpoon and the crane it was attached to. What is this? But that question would have to wait. He scanned the deck around him for a knife, a sword, any sort of weapon.

  “He ain’t no bloater,” one of the sailors drawled.

  “Rush him, you idiots,” someone barked out, and as a group they charged him.

  Simon fought like a devil, cracking skulls and bones with every one of his frantic blows, but there were far too many of him, and he was still weakened from his time in the waters below—every inhalation burned his chest like fire. At last they knocked him down to the deck, raining blows down on his body as he vomited up what felt like a gallon of the filthy water.

  “Enough,�
�� a voice commanded. “That’s enough.” With a few last cruel kicks aimed at his groin, the mob drew away from Simon, leaving him to weakly continue to gasp and throw up on the deck. A strong hand seized Simon by the hair and dragged his gaze upward to an unsmiling man. “Now who might this one be?”

  “I am Lord Simon de Montfort, Count of Toulouse, Duke of Narbonne.” Even with the pain of his body, the proud words still came instinctively to Simon’s lips. He continued on, heedless of the drool that dripped from his shaking lips and the other man’s blank stare. “Enemy of heretics, hero of the capture of Constantinople, servant to God—”

  The other man released his hair, causing Simon’s head to thud back into the ship’s deck. “Did you hear that, lads?” he asked in a dumbstruck voice. “This man’s a servant of God! What do you think, Ishmael?”

  A bit of spit landed in Simon’s hair and dribbled down his cheek.

  “I dunno about that other shit,” Ishmael mumbled. “But a servant to God—I reckon he’s Jesus, Captain.”

  “Well shi-yit, maybe he’ll give us a regular Sermon on the Mount,” the captain exclaimed as a pair of manacles were clanked onto Simon’s ankles and wrists. “We have no water, Your Holiness—think you could turn piss into wine instead?”

  “Blasphemy,” Simon snarled in rage, but his word of defiance earned him nothing more than a kick in the balls. He instinctively curled up into the fetal position and emptied his stomach once again.

  “Throw him in the pit,” the captain ordered. “A mean bastard like that is exactly what the Kingdom’s looking for.” Simon was dragged back up to his feet and forced farther along the deck until he reached the edge of a small opening in the wooden planks. Nothing was visible in the blackness below. “Oh, and Lord Sally,” the captain called out as the crew forced Simon closer and closer to the edge, “you may want to avoid that ‘God’ talk. It’s not very polite to mention such things here.”