Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  “All things are possible with the Master.” Plague’s voice was as ecstatic as it had been, but his eyes seemed different—just for a moment, a vastly different emotion flickered in them. “He led the Second Rebellion deep into the heart of Judecca and smote down Satan with his bare hands. The other devils were exterminated in a great cleansing, and for a brief, glorious time, all of Hell was united under his grace. And then”—he spat onto the ground in disgust—“then there was the great betrayal of the Third Rebellion.”

  John continued to stare down at the bag on Plague’s hip. The other man shook his head once, so subtly that it could have just been a trick of his mind. John rubbed his temples in confusion and decided to focus on something else. “How many rebellions have there been?”

  “Only three,” Plague said. “For now, at least. The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace hasn’t been around forever, you know. It won’t last forever, either. You and I will see to that.” He gave John a wink and continued walking down the beach. “Speaking of which, we have a very important appointment with a very important man. Let’s not be late!”

  With that, they continued down the beach once again. John dared to ask Plague a few more questions, but he received the responses he usually did—deflections, general statements, or vague references to people and places he had never heard of. He was beginning to suspect that Plague was taking a perverse pleasure in his mounting frustration. The madman burned down a forest of people—should I really be surprised? he chided himself.

  “There it is,” Plague said as the outline of a small wooden town came into view on the water’s edge. “Bromios.”

  “And the one we’re searching for is here?”

  “One of them, yes,” Plague said. “He was the Kingdom’s praefectus urbi here, last time I checked. I’d advise you don’t bring that up when we meet him; it’s a shitty job.”

  As they drew closer to the town of Bromios, John was struck by the odd familiarity of it—it looked just like one of the rough-hewn settlements on the edges of the Colonies, complete with a handful of intersecting dirt roads, several dozen wooden houses, and a few larger buildings that looked to be warehouses of some kind—no doubt filled with goods for the dock and the half-dozen cogs lying at anchor. “It’s a trading town,” he decided.

  Plague snapped his fingers. “That reminds me, pull your hood up and let me do the talking. They’re not fond of suicides around here.” Before John could ask for an explanation, Plague raised his hand and bellowed out: “Ahoy there!”

  A lone figure peeked out of one of the outlying buildings and emerged to greet them.

  “God damnit,” Plague swore as the man approached and his figure came into focus. “I hate Flagellants.”

  “What’s wrong?” John asked. As if in response, the man approaching them tripped and nearly fell on his face. For a moment, John thought the man had some sort of palsy—and then he saw the missing leg, and the crutch the man leaned on.

  “Shit shit shit,” Plague muttered. “This makes our job a lot harder, I’m afraid. All right, just follow my lead and stay silent. By the way, are you hungry?”

  “Starving, actually,” John confessed. He couldn’t even remember his last meal.

  “Get used to it. You’re in Hell. Just don’t eat whatever they offer you—and get rid of your branches, goddammit!” Plague tore off one of the branches that protruded from John’s shoulder, making him wince in pain, but he was able to make the rest of them settle down against his body beneath his cloak naturally—one of the very few benefits of this trip was that his control over them seemed to increase every day.

  “Welcome, brothers!” the crippled man announced as he drew closer to them. It wasn’t just his leg that he was missing—his entire left arm was gone as well, making him a strangely lopsided figure. “My name is Brother Antonio de Sotomayor. What brings you to Bromios?”

  “It is a pleasure, Brother Antonio,” Plague said in a serious manner, quite unlike his usual tone. “I am Guglielmo Borsiere, and this is my companion, Jacopo Rusiticucci. We seek passage across the Phlegethon.”

  “Those names…forgive me, but they sound familiar.” Brother Antonio smiled. “Did you live during the seventeenth century, by any chance?”

  “We dwelt in Florence in the thirteenth,” Plague lied.

  “Alas, then our paths never crossed.” Brother Antonio closed his eyes in sorrow. Plague used the brief moment to quickly roll his eyes at John. “But we must make up for lost time, my friends! Please, you must come and join my brothers and sisters in the faith.”

  “We would love to, but we are in a hurry,” Plague said. “We must catch the first boat—”

  “What luck! The next boat to leave is owned by the Church. There’s no better way to get to know your shipmates then by attending one of our services—which we’re having right now!” Brother Antonio gave them a curt smile; he had won, and they all knew it.

  Plague sighed and turned to John. “What say you, Jacopo?”

  It took John a minute to realize that the other man was talking to him. “Uh, that—” he started to mumble.

  “Perfect,” Brother Antonio interrupted. “The chapter will be thrilled to meet you. It isn’t often that we have visitors in this little town of ours. Please, follow me!” He turned and began to limp back to the town.

  Behind his back, John pointed at him, mimed slitting his throat, and raised a questioning eyebrow at Plague. The other man emphatically shook his head no. Don’t draw attention, he mouthed.

  “I don’t recall there being a Flagellant chapter here last time I passed through,” Plague said as they began to follow in Brother Antonio’s slow, stumbling, awkwardly paced footsteps.

  “The Church of the Fallen Father is ever-growing,” the crippled man said. “But yes, this is admittedly a rather isolated spot…we would have likely not come here had it not been for Brother Vaux’s visions.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, John saw every muscle in Plague’s body suddenly stiffen in shock. “Brother Vaux?” he asked in a voice that pulsed with tension. “Is he your chapter leader?”

  “Aye,” Brother Antonio said. His single crutch slipped on a small pile of rocks wet with blood from the Phlegethon, and he would have fallen had Plague not leapt forward and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Thank you kindly, stranger.”

  “What is Brother Vaux’s full name, if I may ask?” Plague said, his hands still clutched on the man’s shoulders even though he had long since regained his balance. “I may have known a man with a name like that once.”

  “Oh—aye,” Brother Antonio said hesitantly. “His full name is Brother Guy Vaux de Cernay, formerly a Frenchman of the Christian Church. Does that sound familiar?”

  Plague’s bright-auburn hair seemed to glow even fiercer as his face paled. A nervous laugh escaped his lips and he suddenly released Brother Antonio. “My mistake, then—I was thinking of someone else.” He began to adjust the collar of his robe, pulling the fabric up so that it partly blocked off his lower face from view.

  What has him so nervous? John wondered.

  Brother Antonio took no notice of Plague’s change in attitude. “Here we are,” he announced as they drew close to a larger building that stood apart from the rest of the dusty town. The few dirt streets about it were empty, but the unmistakable sound of singing could be heard from the dark-red walls. Something about the wooden beams that made up the building seemed vaguely familiar to John, but before he could think more about it, Brother Antonio stumbled up to one of the doors and awkwardly wrenched it open with his single hand.

  It took John less than an instant to recognize the interior of the building for what it was: a church. As a former man of the cloth himself, he immediately took notice of the bored, halfhearted singing, the pews crowded with sulking villagers, and the figure of a preacher at the pulpit. For a moment, he was back home in the Colonies, about to deliver a sermon to his flock—and then he took notice of the cripples crowding every corner of the church. So
me were missing hands, some feet, some legs and arms; a wretched few even had bloodstained bandages wrapped over their eyes. The man at the pulpit was the worst off of all—he had to sit in a chair, for he had no limbs save for a single withered arm that he angrily waved at the audience as his voice thundered through the music.

  “SILENCE! WE HAVE GUESTS!”

  Brother Antonio gave Plague and John a final smile and sidled off to join his fellow Flagellants. The other cripples (only now did John recognize their tattered garments as ill-fitting uniforms of the priesthood) quickly gathered about him and chattered excitedly. The men and women in the pews were not so welcoming; most of them turned around to give the newcomers a cold, assessing stare. John took some comfort in the fact that none of them appeared to be missing eyes or large pieces of their bodies like Brother Antonio and his friends.

  “Thank God,” Plague muttered under his breath, so low that John could barely hear his words. His eyes were fixed firmly on the preacher at the pulpit. “It’s not him.”

  “Brother Antonio!” the withered torso at the head of the church called out. “Who have you brought before me today?”

  “Two newcomers, Brother Taoiseach.” Antonio bowed low, an extraordinarily difficult feat for a man with one leg, one arm, and a poorly made crutch, but he somehow pulled it off. “They seek the salvation of the Fallen Father. Glory be!”

  “Glory be,” the crowd dully repeated.

  “Is that so?” Brother Taoiseach gripped the pulpit with one knobby old hand and pulled his misshapen body farther up so that he could take a closer look at John and Plague. He bore a striking resemblance to a perpetually disapproving schoolteacher John had once had. “In that case, I suppose I should start from the beginning once again.”

  A faint groan arose from the crowd.

  “God damnit,” Plague muttered out of the corner of his mouth. Raising his voice, he began to say, “Actually, we seek passage across—”

  “Where are you now?” boomed Brother Taoiseach in a voice with all the subtlety of a cannon.

  It took the two of them several long seconds to realize that the question was not rhetorical. “The town of Bromios?” John guessed.

  “Think bigger, brother,” Taoiseach said. “Where are you really?”

  “By the River Phlegethon, in the Seventh Circle,” Plague said impatiently. He mumbled something under his breath that included the words geography and waste of time.

  “BIGGER!” Brother Taoiseach bellowed. “Think BIGGER, damnit!”

  “For Christ’s sake, just say Hell,” someone whispered to them from the audience.

  “Hell,” John said firmly. “We’re in Hell.”

  Brother Taoiseach gave them the warm smile of a bloated toad. “Wrong,” he called out. “Wrong, wrong, WRONG! You claim to be in Hell, but do you know this? Do you have any memory of being cast down here by God? Have any of you even seen a demon, let alone the Great Deceiver?”

  John’s mind flickered back to the faces embedded in the trees in the Forest of Suicides. “You don’t think we’re in Hell?” he blurted out. “But that’s—”

  “We are not in Hell.” Taoiseach’s commanding voice crushed his argument before it even began. “But we are not in Heaven, either. No, my friends, we are somewhere in between—a place that we must emerge from ourselves. Our founder, the Fallen Father himself, saw this millennia ago when he was cast down into this very spot. He suffered as us, he bled as us, and he was trapped like us, but he escaped!” He pointed an accusing finger up at the rafters above. “He overcame his sin, and left this wretched place forever—as all of us can!”

  “What a load of shit,” Plague muttered. “Just nod, and don’t take the bait.”

  “How did he do that?” John asked, ignoring Plague’s dirty glare.

  “All flesh is sin.” Brother Antonio spoke up.

  “All flesh is sin,” the bored crowd dutifully responded.

  The next Flagellant to speak was a blind man missing half his tongue. “Catth your fleth away,” he lisped.

  “Cast your flesh away.” A woman in one of the rearmost pews yawned loudly.

  “Then you will be free,” said a third Flagellant. He seemed to be one of the more intact ones—he was only lacking two ears and a hand.

  “Then you will be free.”

  “Then you will be free indeed,” repeated Taoiseach. “The Fallen Father discovered this truth long ago: pain may punish sin, but the wretched flesh gives birth to it. The only way to truly ascend to Paradise is to cast off the last remnants of our earthly bonds, and so”—he raised his single hand up to the sky and nearly fell off the pulpit—“we shall fly!”

  The crowd of cripples and amputees let out a low moan of ecstasy at Taoiseach’s words.

  “So you cast aside your right eye to save yourself?” John asked doubtfully. Never had he pictured that verse being interpreted quite so literally.

  “Not just the right eye!” Taoiseach bellowed as tears of joy poured down his cheeks. “We give everything! So that we may fly! It is the only way to destroy the sins of the heart, once and for all! This form I have before you may seem withered and broken, but it is but a small price to pay for everlasting paradise! Lady Prophet Ellie has shown us this truth herself!”

  “Glory be!” Brother Antonio and the other Flagellants shouted.

  “Glory be,” the congregation mumbled.

  “I see, I see,” Plague interrupted. “I’m glad that we had this chance to discuss theology, Brother Taoiseach. Now, are there any members of your flock who would be willing to point us in the direction of the praefectus urbi here?”

  One of the Flagellants ran forward and used her sleeve to dab away the tears and mucus away from Brother Taoiseach’s face.

  “The praefectus urbi?” The preacher’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want with that one?”

  “An old friend,” Plague said casually. “He owes a debt and I have come to collect it. All in a very friendly way, of course.” He flashed the congregation a toothy smile.

  One of the men sitting in the pews leaned out in the alley and blew a spatter of snot onto the floor. “Antony ain’t got no friends,” he growled. “Ain’t got no debts, neither. The fuck you really want with him?”

  “Show some respect, sinner,” Brother Antonio chided. “These men are our guests—”

  “No, they aren’t.” This time the angry rumble came from a beefy woman who stood up in her pew. Great veins and cords twisted and popped in her swollen arms as she pointed an accusing finger at John. “You. Take that hood off.”

  John immediately felt the bark on his torso thicken and tighten in time to the increased pace of his heartbeat. Somewhere in his right armpit, a branch began to form and gradually snake its way through his cloak down his arm. He frantically put both his hands behind his back to obscure the rustling of his cloak as Plague scornfully said, “Jacopo spent centuries locked in the darkness of Malebolge. To this day, light causes his skin great pain—is this really how you treat guests to your chapter, Brother Taoiseach?”

  “Enough of this,” Taoiseach snapped over the rising mutters of the crowd. Even the Flagellants looked disturbed—a few of them, including Brother Antonio, slipped out through a side entrance to the church. “Guests are to be respected in this house of worship—”

  As fast as they had disappeared (impressive, considering their lack of limbs), Brother Antonio and his small retinue of fellow Flagellants burst back in through the door they had left. At the sight of them, a vein began to bulge in Taoiseach’s forehead. “All of you are on report,” he snarled. “I swear by the Fallen Father that if I have one more interruption in my sermon—”

  “You should not take our founder’s name in vain, Brother Taoiseach.” The voice was thin and reedy, like that of a child. Brother Antonio clumsily lifted an infant-sized wrapping of linens from his breast and held it over his head as he strode to the pulpit. Taoiseach wilted before his approach and awkwardly fell back into his chair. The other
Flagellant did not pay any attention to him as Antonio placed the bundle of linens onto the pulpit and began to unwrap it.

  “Oh, fuck,” Plague softly groaned. “I know that voice.”

  “What does that mean?” John whispered.

  “Nothing good,” Plague said curtly. “Remember those soldiers we met earlier?”

  “The ones you tortured and disemboweled?”

  “Yes, well…” Plague looked sheepish. “Try not to become too attached to anyone else in this room.”

  “I give you Brother Vaux, founder of the Bromios Chapter of the Church of the Fallen Father,” Brother Antonio announced grandly. With a final flourish, he flicked away the last of the linen wrappings, exposing the hideous contents within.

  A human head sat on the pulpit before the entire congregation. It had no hair other than a few tattered tufts of white hair poking out haphazardly from its wrinkled scalp, no eyes whatsoever in its black empty sockets, and looked as though most of its nose had been cut away. Its skin was mummified, leathery and taut, and had torn away in a few places, exposing the raw muscle underneath. Mucus and blood constantly leaked from its severed neck, slowly soaking the wooden boards of the pulpit and dripping onto the floor below. The overall sight was one so grotesque that John had to briefly look away to avoid throwing up. Even Plague appeared to be slightly disgusted.

  And then the head spoke. “Guests should be treated with respect in the house of worship, aye.” Its lips smacked horribly as it spat out each word, as though the effort caused it great pain.

  I’m going to be sick, John thought.

  “But our house of worship is ALL of the Fallen Father’s domain, from the depths of Judecca to the River Acheron.” The muscles in the head’s cheek twisted and jerked as it pointed its tongue in the direction of Plague and John, directing everyone’s attention to them. “From the Forest of Suicides to the town of Bromios, too.”

  “The Forest of Suicides?” The stocky woman jerked in surprise, then gave a steely glare at John. “Brother Vaux, are you saying—”