Ghost Shadows

by Thomas M. Malafarina

  Both of his wrists were secured to the top of the heavy arms of the chair buy two large rusted spikes driven down through them, essentially crucifying him to the arms of the chair. He thought again about his wire crown, about Jesus Christ and the blasphemy portrayed in Winston’s own painful crucifixion. In the mirror he could see that his fingers, which were curled around the front of the arms, had been relieved of all of their flesh and most of the musculature, leaving only skeletal remains, which he was strangely still able to move although doing so only caused him increased pain.

  As if that was not bad enough, he could see that the area behind his wrists and up to the tops of his forearms had suffered the worst of the damage. Strips of bloody flesh perhaps a half inch wide had been peeled back the length of his arms and curled up into rolls that were pierced and held together with long tarnished pins.

  Each forearm had ten or more of these crimson coils of flayed flesh and Winston could see his own exposed red glistening muscles dripping with blood reflecting in the light. To Winston, it didn’t matter that what he was seeing was not physical because the agony he felt most certainly was.

  He prayed for this particular session to soon be over long before the real pain began, yet he knew his prayers would go unanswered as they always did. Hell was no place for prayer. Winston also understood, once his time in this particular torture chamber was over there would be another, even more unbearable period of pain waiting somewhere further up the Path.

  “How you like me work? Good job, no?” Winston heard an ominous guttural voice, not possibly human in origin, say from behind him. Like most of the hideous beings that were responsible for inflicting pain, this one was no doubt another moronic monosyllabic beast whose sole purpose for existence was to exact untold levels of agony. Winston slowly pulled his eyes away from his throbbing arms and looked into the reflective stone to see an incredibly heinous looking demon standing behind him. This abomination stood over seven feet tall and was rail thin but sinewy with ropy muscles. Its fingers were long and bony and had great yellowed talons. Like the rest of the creatures Winston had previously encountered, its face was pig-like in appearance with a pushed up snout and a large slobbery mouth from which long fangs jutted both upward and downward. Its cat-shaped eyes bugged from the sunken sockets of its skull and it had two long ram horns curling back from its forehead continuing over top of a long mane of greasy black hair. It stank like a filthy barnyard animal and its grayish flesh, sporadically adorned with long, rat-like hairs, glistened with sweat adding to its already obnoxious stench.

  The horrifying thing grinned sheepishly at Winston in the reflection and slowly lifted its right clawed hand upward toward the area atop Winston’s head where his vulnerable brain had been stippled with so many pins.

  “Humm.” The horrid creature said, “It have too many pins. You don’t feel ‘nuff ouches.” With that, the creature began to meticulously extract one pin after another from Winston’s brain. With each pull of a pin the level of pain intensified until it reached its crescendo and Winston once again found himself blessedly, albeit temporarily unconscious.

  ***

  When he started to regain awareness again, Winston suddenly recalled the details of what he had just been through and reflexively grabbed for his head and arms, certain he would find them still ripped and exposed. But they were not. He was whole once again, still naked, outside of the room where he had just endured one of the worst sessions to date. He was also momentarily free of pain and he knew he would have to enjoy whatever small amount of blessed relief he might have. It wouldn’t last long, although it seemed time, at least as Winston understood time, was without meaning in this place.

  Long ago, a demon in one of his many intervals of torment had mentioned to him that in Hell, a thousand years of pain could take place while only a few seconds passed in terms of earth time. Likewise just a few moments in Hell might be a century on the other side. Although the creature was not intelligent enough to articulate what he wanted to explain, Winston was able to take the beast’s grunts and half sentences and turn them into what he thought might be a cohesive representation of the concept. He deduced that in Hell, the relationship of time was not linear; neither did it always go forward. Sometimes time stood still and sometimes it might even move backward depending on the particular need.

  As Winston sat peacefully on the Path he knew exactly what he had to do next; he knew the routine. He was never allowed to sit for very long. He would have to eventually get up and begin walking to whatever door he was supposed to find next. Failure to do so would mean more severe repercussions in the next room. He also knew he could not go backwards and would not even consider attempting to do so. He had made that mistake once shortly after his arrival and discovered he was forced to go through every single agonizing second of every torture he had previously encountered all over again; from the beginning. That was only after five or six sessions. Now with literally thousands of periods of torture behind him he didn’t want to even look behind him let alone try to go backward.

  He stood up and looked out in the distance. Although he could only see for about fifty or sixty feet ahead of him in the dimly lit cavern he instinctively knew that the Path was endless. Spaced irregularly along both sides of the Path were doors made of large, heavy wooden planks bolted together with huge rusted iron hinges. The doors had no windows and were mounted into the stone cavern walls providing the only access into or out of each chamber. Winston learned shortly after his arrival that the rules of Hell were simple; walk forward on the Path and look for the next open door.

  As he slowly made his way along the Path, Winston heard screaming of other unfortunate souls from behind those doors that were closed. The large main cavern was ceaselessly resonant with the unending shrieks of the damned. But despite the screams of the multitudes, Winston never met anyone else either in Hell or on the Path. That was another apparent rule of Hell; he was always alone except for those times of immeasurable suffering when he was in the capable hands of a vile demon.

  Next to each of the doors hung a candelabrum formed from a real once living human hand, their withered gray fingers pointing upward as if reaching to catch some unknown object falling from a nonexistent sky. Melted fast to the cupped palm of each hand was a thick blood red candle; the hot wax dripping down forming puddles in the palm before spilling over and sliding along its shriveled forearm. The candles never seemed to burn down.

  Not long after his arrival in Hell, Winston had been naturally curious and reached out to touch one of the hideous appendages, thinking them cast from stone because of their veined appearance, and was frighteningly greeted with the icy chill of dead, rotting human flesh. Then the hand had actually moved, ever so slightly; just enough to send chills down Winston’s spine and to teach him one of his first of many lessons. It seemed to him as if almost every single minute in the horrible place he was learning something new whether he wanted to or not, and each new lesson was more horrifying than the last.

  Winston kept the gruesome sconces in his peripheral vision as he slowly walked along the Path, among the howls of the countless damned, searching for the next open door; which he unfortunately saw up ahead. He understood the opening was meant for him and as such, was to be his next destination. Dutifully but reluctantly, Winston stepped through the doorway and was once again thrust into complete darkness to blindly face whatever fate awaited him inside. He heard the thick wooden door slam shut behind him as he had heard a thousand times before. Then he stood in the blackness of the room where he awaited his next torture.

  Suddenly the room burst into light and Winston had to shield his eyes from the blinding brightness. After a few moments, when he became accustomed to the light, he looked around and was shocked to discover he was not in another stinking fetid cave filled with devices of inhuman anguish as he had anticipated, but was in a room; a real room like he recalled from life.

  He was standing in a brightly lit office very similar to what he
recalled his own office looking like back before he died. In fact, it was his office, he was certain of it. Winston was no longer naked, but was dressed in a casual shirt, dress pants, and expensive shoes. The office was decorated exactly like his office had been and had his same large mahogany desk and comfortable leather manager’s chair positioned behind it. Winston turned to look at a certificate hanging on the wall. He was shocked to see it was his own college diploma.

  “You are Mr. Winston Peter James, is that correct?” a voice said from his left. He turned to face the desk once more and saw that the chair was no longer empty, but was now occupied by a peculiar looking sort of man. The man was dressed in a business suit and sat up in a manner that appeared straight and proper, almost as if he were posturing and assuming what Winston supposed was the man’s interpretation of how a businessperson should appear.

  He was not however doing a very good job of looking the part he was trying to portray as his suit didn’t seem to fit him well and was somewhat rumpled and disheveled. He appeared to be about middle age, slightly built with a full head of thick brown hair, which was graying somewhat at the temples, giving him a slightly distinguished look despite the issues with his attire. He wore a pair of round wire-framed glasses, which sat askew upon a long thin nose. He had a pencil thin mustache and no other facial hair. His hands were folded and resting on the top of the desk, giving Winston the impression that the man was unsure what to do with them.

  Besides the obvious incongruity of the office itself being recreated in its entirety in Hell and the presence of the odd looking character behind the desk, Winston noticed there was also something else that was very wrong. It was the man’s eyes. For starters, the skin around the eyes hung loosely and seemed to bag in places as if to suggest the flesh was not his own, but was some sort of skin mask worn to cover whatever countenance lie beneath it. Likewise, the man’s eyes were just as strange; they did not appear to be quite human but were more cat-like and seemed to stare out at Winston without blinking.

  Winston suddenly feared he might now understand what was going on. He dreadfully suspected this might be yet another new form of torture, one that would start in a place familiar to him, such as his old office, and then quickly morph into another session of agony. Cowed by his time in the countless torture chambers, Winston found himself unable to lift his head to look further at the creature. And the strange way that the creature’s flesh appeared as rumpled and ill-fitting as his suit truly disturbed Winston making him certain that at any moment the scene would change and he would once again find himself the victim of an even more unimaginable torture.

  The weird man repeated his request, but this time with a bit more impatience in his voice. “I asked you a question, sir! Are you Mr. Winston Peter James? Am I correct in making that assumption?” Winston could not bring himself to answer. He was not only terrified by the potential horror hiding deep inside this current scenario but had learned long ago not to willingly engage these sick creatures in conversation. He simply gave a cursory nod of acknowledgement.

  “Well,” the man said, “I suppose you are wondering what this is all about and why you are here with me, Winston. May I call you Winston?” Again Winston gave the slight and suspicious nod. The strange creature continued, “By the way, Winston, it is perfectly all right for you to speak to me. I realize after all you’ve been through while a guest here, you might be a bit reluctant. But I assure you that no harm will come to you if you choose to reply. In fact . . . I insist that you speak and do so immediately.” There was a look of cold emotionless assertion in his cat-like eyes.

  “All—all right,” Winston said in a thin voice that sounded raspy and barely recognizable as the one he remembered. He had spent countless hours screaming in agony and it had been what seemed like years since he had actually had any opportunity to speak to anyone in a normal conversational voice. “Wha—what . . . is this? Why . . . why am I here?”

  “Very good, Winston. Very good indeed,” the being replied. Winston thought he saw the flesh mask on the creature’s face slip ever so slightly. The man behind the desk said, “It’s so good to have you actively participating in our conversation. It will make everything so much simpler. So please allow me to explain why I have arraigned to meet with you here. Here is the situation in a nutshell, as they say.”

  “I suppose you’ve wondered since your arrival here in our fine little corner of Hell, what it was you might have done during your lifetime to deserve such constant and relentless torture. You probably always assumed such punishment would be reserved for the lowest of the low; murders, rapists, child molesters, and so on. Am I right?”

  Winston kept his eyes averted and timidly said, “Y—y—yes . . . I wondered that many times—no . . . all—all the time.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you have,” the strange man said, and then released a loud guffaw of laughter, sending the most ungodly foul stench across the desk between them and directly into Winston’s face. Winston felt his stomach turn over with revulsion at the smell of the vile stink. He noticed once again how the strange man’s hands never left the top of the desk, making Winston wonder if those hands might be fused together into that pose to make whatever lurked inside that bizarre skin seem more human. Winston’s eyes were focused on those hands and he thought for a moment that he saw maggots crawling between the intertwined fingers.

  “NOW PAY ATTENTION, WINSTON!” the being shouted, momentarily losing his composure only to quickly regain it once again and instantly return to his calm, business-like demeanor. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?”

  Winston nodded silently once again, then realizing he had not spoken as requested, he quickly said, “Y—yes . . . please.”

  The man said, “All right then,” and he proceeded to explain. “Well, Winston, it appears there was a slight clerical error, which resulted in your coming here. You see, as it works out, you are actually not supposed to be here after all.”

  Winston felt his heart thudding in his chest. He thought to himself, How could that possibly be? Could I have really been made to suffer all this time over a simple clerical error?

  “Cl—clerical . . . error?” Winston asked cautiously, not believing it was possible.

  “Yes. I’m afraid so,” the man replied nonchalantly.”

  “Wha—what do you mean?” he asked, confused.

  “You see, every so often, the equivalent of one thousand or more earth years, we do an audit of our guests to makes sure there have been no mistakes. And if we do discover mistakes we do our best to try to make them right immediately.”

  Winston asked with a bit of uncertainty, “Mistakes?”

  “Yes, mistakes,” the being replied. “You see, here in Hell we aren’t perfect; nor are we expected to be. Those sort of high and mighty expectations are reserved for that other place.” He cast his eyes upward. “Down here we sometimes have the occasional unplanned faux pas, if you pardon my French. In other words, we have been known to make mistakes.”

  “Mistake.” Winston repeated now as a statement rather than a question. He had no idea where this bizarre conversation might be heading, but he had a very uncomfortable feeling about it.

  The creature behind the desk replied, “It appears you, Winston, have been the subject of our latest unfortunate situation. Winston expected the man to raise his hands and simulate air quotes when he said the word “situation,” but he did not. He suspected the creature before him might not be able to move his hands at all. The longer Winston studied him the more he realized the thing was not a man but perhaps a higher level demon of greater intelligence than most he had encountered and was wearing some sort of suit apparently made of human flesh to make himself seem less offensive. Winston wondered why a place which had subjected him to countless bouts of humiliation and torture would even bother with such a ruse. It made no logical sense to him, but little had made sense in this place since his arrival.

  The being said, “So as I said, it appears you not only are
not supposed to be here, but I am sorry to say you are not even supposed to be dead.”

  “W—what?” Winston managed to stammer. “N—not supposed to be dead?”

  “Yes,” the creature replied. “But that particular fact is somewhat irrelevant as you are now both dead and here as well. It appears what happened was one of our minions who was sent to retrieve the souls of the dead—I believe you call them Grim Reapers in your world—mistakenly brought you to us instead of the human he was sent to retrieve. The error was only discovered a short while ago during a routine audit. You will be happy to know the minion who made that particular mistake is currently being punished for his failure, and I’m certain you can scarcely imagine what we are doing to him.”

  Before Winston could reply, not that he had any idea what to say anyway, the creature asked him, “Do you happen to recall exactly how you died?”

  Winston most certainly did recall every detail of his death just as he remembered every single agonizing moment of every torture he had endured since his arrival in Hell.

  “Shot.” Winston replied, “I was shot during a mugging . . . a robbery.”

  “Yes, that is correct,” the strange being said. “You were shot while being robbed by a very bad human named Wilson Johns, a man who you may recall was about your same age and physical build. You were supposed to overpower him and he was supposed end up dead, but our soul retriever incorrectly interfered and the result was you are here and he is not. ”

  “But . . . but how?” Winston asked, “How could this have happened?”

  The creature explained, “Actually, I see very clearly how something like this might have occurred. Think about it. Two men, physically similar; one Winston James the other Wilson Johns; it makes perfect sense to me. Besides, after a few millennia, all human beings start to look alike to us.”