The Ninth Circle

by Alex Bell

  I have to say the whole thing completely pissed me off. He’d put me in a really awkward position. The Castle District wasn’t far away in a car but it would take far too long to walk there uphill, and we couldn’t get on any of the late night buses looking like this. The only thing I could think to do was phone for a taxi and ask that it pick us up from the hotel just a few minutes walk away, relying on the dark to disguise the large amount of blood on Stephomi’s clothes.

  ‘My friend here’s had too much to drink,’ I said to the taxi driver in a lame attempt to explain why I was virtually carrying him. ‘He’s, er . . . he’s getting married tomorrow.’

  The taxi driver grunted as if this explained everything, and drove us to the Hilton in silence. I shook Stephomi hard when we got there and after a moment, to my relief, he groaned and tried to push me away.

  ‘Come on, we’re at the Hilton!’ I hissed, shaking him harder. ‘Wake up! I can’t drag you through the reception area like this, bleeding all over the place! Stephomi—’

  ‘All right, all right, I’m awake! Stop shaking me, damn you! Christ, Gabriel!’

  I hauled him out of the car before the taxi driver could catch on to the fact that anything was amiss, and was relieved when the car at last drove off.

  ‘You’re going to have to help me,’ Stephomi muttered.

  I glanced round and saw that he was leaning against the wall, looking like he was about to throw up. I stripped off my coat and handed it to him.

  ‘Put this on,’ I said. ‘It’ll hide your shirt. Hopefully no one inside will notice your hands if we move through the lobby quickly. They’ll just think you’re drunk. And dirty,’ I added, glancing at the soot in his hair.

  Stephomi eased himself stiffly into one of the armchairs once we were at long last back upstairs in the suite.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he said, waving his hand in the direction of the well-stocked bar.

  ‘What do you want? Water?’ I asked, walking over to it.

  Stephomi scowled and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Gabriel, if you bring me water, I’ll throw it at you.’

  I glanced at the many bottles lined up on the shelf and took down the whisky. It seemed like quite a good idea so after I’d poured Stephomi’s, I turned round holding a second glass. ‘Do you mind?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not at all.’

  I poured myself a drink and then walked back to the chair and handed him the whisky, but I hadn’t even sat down before he’d knocked it back and was holding his glass back out to me.

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ I asked.

  ‘Just get me the damn drink, Gabriel. On second thoughts, bring me the bottle.’

  ‘Look, you can get drunk later!’ I said irritably. ‘But right now you owe me an explanation! And no lies! I want the truth.’

  ‘You don’t want much, do you?’ Stephomi snapped. ‘You know what, Gabriel? I feel fucking awful and the last thing I feel like doing right now is having this particular conversation with you. I’ll do it because I said I would, but you are going to have to shut up and give me a minute, all right? Now either get me that bottle or bugger off.’

  I opened my mouth to carry on arguing but checked myself when I looked at him, for he did still look awful - hunched awkwardly in the chair covered in blood and ash and wearing a coat that was too big for him, his face horribly white. If I hadn’t been so upset by what I’d seen that night, I’m sure I would have been more patient. As it was, if ever a man looked like he needed a drink it was Stephomi, and I could afford to wait a few minutes.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I handed him the bottle and bit my tongue for the next few minutes. The alcohol quickly returned some of the colour to his face and it wasn’t very long before he set his empty glass down on the table and said, ‘What do you know about the Antichrist?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s a simple question.’

  ‘Well, the Antichrist is supposed to be . . . Jesus’ adversary,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Mysteriously mentioned in the Bible only as the “Beast” and prophesied to appear just before the end of the world. Well, he’s coming. In fact, he’ll be here any time now.’

  ‘And how could you possibly know that?’ I scorned.

  ‘Raphael told me.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re on speaking terms with the seven great archangels, are you? Tell me, do you chat with them often?’

  ‘No, not often,’ Stephomi said with a smile, ignoring my sarcasm. ‘Only when necessary. They’re very busy, you know. What with the War and all.’

  ‘Angels don’t go to war!’

  ‘Of course they do, Gabriel. Theirs is the first War. God’s team against Satan’s. It’s been raging for millennia.’

  ‘Satan doesn’t have angels, he has demons,’ I said sharply.

  ‘Whatever. It’s all the same, really,’ Stephomi replied with a shrug.

  ‘It’s not the fucking same!’ I snapped.

  Stephomi grinned, easing himself into a more comfortable position. ‘You never did like the idea, did you? What’s this grudge you have against Lucifer’s angels anyway? Do you know what Samuel Butler once said? “An apology for the Devil: it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case; God has written all the books.” Come on, Gabriel, don’t look at me like that. I promise you I’m not a devil worshipper. Just devil’s advocate, perhaps. Did it ever occur to you that there may be good and bad devils as there are good and bad men? Devils are scapegoats, that’s all. Blamed by the angels for all of Earth’s failings. We need scapegoats like we need oxygen, to ease the guilt and the shame of being human.

  ‘Politicians seem to be the prime choice nowadays. Poor bastards. I’d sooner nail my own hand to a railway track than be the President of the United States at the moment. Can’t win, no matter what he does, can he, poor sod? It’s never black and white, although I admit that if it was, things would be a hell of a lot easier. What of Wladyslaw Szpilman and the courageous Captain Wilm Hosenfeld?’ he asked, a ghost of a sneer curling his lip.

  ‘And what of Hitler himself? He wanted to be an artist, you know. He tried, without success, to get into an art college in Vienna. An art college! If only they’d let him in, eh? He might have lived an inoffensive life of beauty then. He might have left paintings behind when he died instead of all those graves and slaughterhouses. Wouldn’t that be nice? I mean, if there had been just one man at that art college who had seen something promising in Hitler’s application and argued his case, Hitler might be remembered today for his contribution to the art world instead of for how many people he murdered. Should it really be so dependent on chance, where we deserve to go once we’re dead? Hitler liked animals as well, you know. He befriended a little stray terrier while he was serving in the First World War, which he doted on, apparently. And when Hitler put a gun in his mouth, his new bride, Eva Braun, killed herself too rather than face a world without him. What do you think that means, Gabriel?’

  I gazed at Stephomi feeling sickened. ‘I can’t believe you’re really suggesting Hitler wasn’t evil.’

  ‘Evil is a tricky word,’ Stephomi said with a slight shrug. ‘Evil people don’t scare me because I’m free to hate them. And hatred is so easy, isn’t it? Much, much easier than love. Did you know that Hitler was regularly beaten by his father as a boy and was once even put into a two-day coma by him? Wouldn’t it have been nice if he’d just killed him instead?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ I snapped. ‘But what has this to do with anything? You’re getting off the point.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, really. What does matter is that the battle between the angels has escalated.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just told you - because the Antichrist is coming. Did you know that Nostradamus predicted it would happen around this time? Devoutly religious man, Nostradamus. He published hundreds of prophecies, all in quatrains. I have to say the language of t
he Antichrist prophecy is a little vivid for my taste. It goes like this:

  The Antichrist three very soon annihilates,

  Twenty-seven bloody years his war will last.

  The heretics dead, captive, exiled.

  Blood human corpses water red hail cover the Earth.

  ‘You know, it’s that last line I really don’t like the sound of, Gabriel,’ Stephomi said quietly. ‘The Antichrist War lasts twenty-seven years and after that -’ he snapped his fingers ‘- blood. Human corpses. Red water. End of the Earth. All over.’

  I glanced at him and, despite the lightness of his words, for once there was no amusement on his face. I even thought I caught a faint spasm of fear before he quickly hid it.

  ‘But what makes you think that this will happen now?’ I asked, hoping for reassurance. ‘Nostradamus wasn’t right all the time, was he? Or perhaps his prophecy has been misinterpreted?’

  ‘It’s a little difficult to misinterpret this one since, unusually for Nostradamus, he gives specific dates. The years 2007 - 2008 in Century X, quatrain seventy-four, as well as the 2008 Olympic Games, are highlighted by Nostradamus as marking the beginning of the end, so to speak. The last two lines of the quatrain refer to the end of the world, Judgement Day itself:

  Not far from the great millennium,

  When the dead will leave their graves.

  ‘Chilling thought, isn’t it? But anyway, forgetting Nostradamus for the moment, I know that this is all beginning to happen because Raphael told me so. Nostradamus believed the future was fixed, immutable, but luckily angels don’t think that way. They’re not ready for Judgement Day yet. They’re trying to delay it. So are the demons.’

  ‘Delay Judgement Day?’ I repeated incredulously.

  ‘That’s right. Angels don’t like being judged either, you know. But, er . . . there is one little problem. Apparently, there’s some uncertainty as to whether this person is indeed the Antichrist or, well . . . effectively Jesus’ second coming.’

  ‘What? How can there possibly be any uncertainty over which it is when the two are so different?’

  ‘Are they so different?’ Stephomi asked sharply. ‘It all comes down to greatness, doesn’t it? Angels can sense greatness but they don’t know what form it will take, that’s all.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ I protested. ‘Good and evil are opposites.’

  ‘No, not really,’ Stephomi said mildly. ‘Hot and cold are so-called opposites, but haven’t you ever touched something so scalding that for a moment you think it’s freezing? When you get to extremes, the brain confuses the two, can’t process them properly, mixes them up. Or perhaps it’s just that they’re really not that different to begin with.’

  We lapsed into silence for a moment as I thought about what he’d said and tried to twist it into something I could make sense of. Devils . . . angels . . . wars . . . prophecies . . . I would have thought it was all some kind of practical joke if I hadn’t seen the demon with my own eyes.

  ‘How do you know all this anyway? Who are you that you can talk to angels?’ I asked suddenly.

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the question, isn’t it?’ Stephomi sighed. ‘Did you know that babies can see angels, Gabriel? They’re innocent, untainted by the world. So they’re close to angelic realms and can see angels all around them. They lose this ability as they grow up. The world strips people of their innocence before long, one way or another. But there are some rare adults who can see the angelic and demonic realms which overlay our own. You should count yourself lucky you live in this time. We’d have been accused of witchcraft in the past and been burned at the stake by a pious, Christian mob of killers. That fire you saw at Michael’s church . . . most people wouldn’t have seen it. And they wouldn’t have heard the bell ringing either.’

  ‘Then why can I?’ I asked, very much fearing the answer. ‘Why can you?’

  ‘Well . . . sometimes it’s possible to catch glimpses of angels and demons in places of the In Between. Graveyards - because they’re places that belong to both the living and the dead. Churches - places of both the mortal and the divine. The moments before sunrise and sunset where the Earth belongs to both the night and the day. Mirrors that reflect reality the wrong way round and dreams that allow both the impossible and the possible all at once ... There are some people . . . who are themselves people of the In Between, neither truly one nor the other. And this allows us to see things that others can’t. As I understand it, the insane and the dying can see the devils around them, just as the newborn can see angels. But the reason is not always quite that extreme.

  ‘Take me, for example. I used to give lectures on religious philosophy. Guest lectures at various universities and religious functions. Because of the . . . passionate nature of my teachings, my lectures always seemed to be filled with either the zealously religious or the fiercely atheist. The clash of the two extremes between faith in God’s existence and an equal faith in his non-existence caused a spark somehow, with me at the centre. My teachings themselves are a place of the In Between.’

  ‘And what about me?’ I asked fearfully.

  Stephomi frowned. ‘There are many professors of religion out there like me who aren’t people of the In Between. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. With you, Gabriel, who knows? You never told me and I assumed you didn’t want to talk about it.’

  I ran my hands through my hair in frustration, an unreasoning fear building from within me as I paced agitatedly. ‘What is the Ninth Circle?’ I threw at Stephomi, rounding on him suddenly.

  ‘Ninth Circle?’ he repeated in genuine bemusement. ‘I . . . well, according to Dante, the ninth circle of Hell was the—’

  ‘Yes, yes I know the theology of it,’ I snapped. ‘But there’s something more to it, isn’t there? There’s some other reference. Something of this world.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Stephomi said, gazing at me curiously. ‘What makes you say that?’

  I hesitated, but then shook my head and said it was nothing. I didn’t want to tell him of the note I had received. ‘Well? Is it true?’

  ‘Is what true, Gabriel?’

  ‘Are there really nine circles of fiery, torturous Hell?’

  Stephomi gave a slight shrug. ‘I have never been there, my friend, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps you should ask Keats.’

  ‘Keats? The poet?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘Keats longed for Hell,’ Stephomi said in a strange, soft voice that sent chills down my spine.

  ‘John Keats wrote of beauty,’ I snapped. ‘He wrote of joy and life and—’

  ‘Yes, yes, joy and life, very nice. But he also wrote of Hell,’ Stephomi said, his mouth twisted in a smile. ‘He rather seems to have enjoyed it.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I virtually shouted in an effort to drown out what he was saying. Why was I so angry? What was it about Stephomi’s suggestion that frightened me so badly?

  ‘On a Dream?’ Stephomi prompted. I am sure there was something of maliciousness about the way he looked at me as he spoke. ‘Aren’t you familiar with that particular sonnet, Gabriel? Keats wrote it after he dreamed of visiting the Second Circle. I think I’m accurate in quoting the great poet when he said that, “The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life—”’

  ‘No! No, no, you must be wrong! Keats was an artistic genius! He wrote of love and . . . and beauty and—’

  ‘Who’s to say that Hell itself is not beautiful, Gabriel? Can you really be so sure it isn’t?’

  I could feel my mouth twisting in a grimace of revulsion at the disgusting suggestion and, turning on my heel, I started to stride towards the doorway but paused and turned back when Stephomi called out to me over his shoulder, ‘I don’t think I’ve said thank you.’

  ‘What? What for?’

  ‘For saving my life, of course,’ Stephomi replied, twistin
g slightly in his seat to glance back at me, with that amused expression on his face once again. ‘I think I might have been prematurely parted from my head had it not been for your fortuitous arrival. What where you doing on the island, anyway?’

  ‘Oh. I couldn’t sleep,’ I said, staring back at him. ‘Would that thing really have killed you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Stephomi replied with a wry smile. ‘Did you not see the large, impressive sword?’

  ‘What can we do about all this?’ I asked.

  He looked at me incredulously. ‘Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’ he asked. ‘This is an angelic war, Gabriel. There’s nothing you or I can do about it. Oh, wait . . .’ he said, and I looked at him hopefully as a thoughtful look came into his eyes. ‘Do you have a spaceship?’ he asked after a moment.