“Maybe we should be looking for another way out?” Karen was keeping her voice low. So far they had been able to avoid the attentions of the inhabitants of this level. Obsessed with getting from one place to another, they were actually difficult to distract from their objective. Of course, the ironic thing was that Chambers had seen a few of them several times already, which meant that either one of the curses of this level of Hell was to be cloned, or the people he saw were simply walking around and around the same series of fake office buildings.
“Perhaps,” Dr. Cruttenden hissed back. She brushed her hand against the painted door handle of a building purporting to be the headquarters of a stationery suppliers. “But another real doorway seems the most likely. Besides, there’s little else on this sorry excuse for a street that has suggested itself to me.”
She was right. Up and down the “sorry excuse for a street” drove sorry excuses for cars. All were of the same generic and unspecified model, all were painted the same shade of charcoal, and all had the distinct absence of a driver. Still the cars moved, at an unchanging speed that could not be faster than twenty miles per hour, up and down the street and around the corner, to reappear again a few minutes later. At least Chambers assumed they were reappearing—the lack of registration plates or any distinguishing features made it difficult to tell.
The road itself was just as bad. The tarmac was a uniform black, with no cracks, potholes, or manhole covers to mar the surface. There were no drains, but presumably it never rained here. Nor were there any road markings, but the cars seemed to keep to the correct side of the street without prompting. The sidewalk was a lighter shade of gray, but again boasted a surface free from evidence of the usual traumas such walkways would have been subjected to in a real city. There were no telephone booths, no newsstands, and nowhere to post a letter. In short, nothing that could be the way out masquerading as a street feature.
“I still don’t understand why they aren’t taking more notice of us.” After the previous circle of Hell, Chambers was glad they were being left alone, but it was unnerving to witness the blank-faced denizens pass them by as if they didn’t exist.
“I can’t explain it either.” Dr. Cruttenden had just tried the handle of the last door on the block. It was time for them to cross the street. “Perhaps part of the curse of being here is that you are powerless to prevent yourself from hurrying to your next deal.”
“Should we try the other side of the street, or cross to another block altogether?”
Dr. Cruttenden seemed to be debating the answer to Karen’s question. “Let’s try another block, shall we?” she said finally. “I have a feeling the other side of this particular street is going to prove just as fruitless.”
The crossing did not go as intended.
They managed to get halfway to the other side, dodging the slow-moving cars with ease, but then they hit a wall. Literally. A moment’s exploration revealed that the invisible barrier blocking their way extended for at least the length of the city block they were trying to get to, and possibly beyond. It was also at least eight feet high (Chambers tried throwing a pen over) and was perfectly smooth.
“We need another ladder,” said Karen once they were safely back on the sidewalk.
“Not this time,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “I very much suspect each of these blocks is the same, and each is isolated from the others so that the impossibility of going anywhere else makes the torment of repetition all the worse.”
“But what if the way out is in one of those other blocks?”
Dr. Cruttenden raised an eyebrow. “Let’s hope it’s not, shall we, Miss Shepworth? But to be serious, all that suggests is that there must be an exit here, we just haven’t been looking for it hard enough.”
“The other side of the street it is, then,” said Chambers, leading the way between vehicles chugging up and down and around the block from which they now knew the residents could not escape.
The office building over there also seemed to offer little other than paint and concrete. Once they had exhausted all the doors, Chambers sank down onto the step of a pretend firm of attorneys.
“We can’t give up!” Karen gave him a push.
“I’m just having a bit of a rest,” he replied. “And a bit of a think.”
He moved over as Dr. Cruttenden joined him.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked.
“I was just wondering, if we sit here for long enough, whether or not . . .”
“Yes?”
“Whether or not this picture is going to change. I mean, Limbo felt like limbo, didn’t it? And Lust felt like lust.” He looked at Karen, who blushed as she nodded. “And Gluttony definitely felt like gluttony. So I’m just wondering what wandering aimlessly around the same city street has to do with greed.”
“It’s a thought.” Dr. Cruttenden rubbed her chin. “I had assumed we were looking at a collection of souls so obsessed by greed all they could think of was their next deal, with the result that they never got anywhere at all.”
“That’s what I’d thought too,” said Karen, squeezing in alongside them. “Isn’t that torment enough?”
Chambers nodded. “It is, but I just have the feeling that—”
The sound came abruptly, and from somewhere high above. A rich, deep resonant sound as if a bell were being tolled.
It was deafening.
“What the hell was that?” Karen still had her hands over ears, which were presumably ringing as much as Chambers’s were.
“I don’t know,” he shouted in reply. “But keep your hands over your ears in case—”
The sound came again. The same echoing, all-pervading toll that demanded attention.
It was certainly having an effect on the souls of the Fourth Circle. For the first time since the three of them had arrived, the suited denizens were doing something other than relentlessly marching around the city streets. Or rather, they were doing nothing at all.
They had come to a complete standstill.
Some were in mid-stride, others were in the process of crossing the street, not that it mattered as the cars had come to a halt as well. After the street noise, the absolute silence that ensued following the bell toll was almost stifling. Occasionally it was broken by the clatter of a briefcase being dropped, or a portfolio being released from a loosened grip.
“What now?”
“I bet you any money we wait for the third bell,” said Chambers.
Dr. Cruttenden was nodding in agreement. “There should be a third. Both history and literature are filled with—”
The third bell toll was so loud it made the ground shake and the buildings tremble. Some of the frozen souls fell stiffly to the ground. They didn’t stay there for long.
As the three of them watched, the denizens of Greed began to move again, but this time it was different. Instead of the strict, driven marching of before, these movements were more chaotic, undisciplined, undirected.
No, not undirected.
As each damned soul came to, they looked around them, bewildered. Their previously blank faces were now animated, masks of overt emotion, as if all the need for expression had been suppressed and now it was finally being released.
The horror came when they looked at someone else.
As soon as the eyes of one of the damned souls of the Fourth Circle alighted upon one of their comrades, their expressions changed from bewilderment to a look of indescribable hatred. And there was something else there too.
Envy, desire, lust.
Greed.
As one damned soul gripped another and they began ripping each other’s clothes, Chambers’s initial confusion gave way to horror as he saw what they were doing. Once shirts had been shredded, blouses torn, skirts and trousers wrenched free, those cursed with the sin of greed began to claw at each others’ flesh, burying hands within abdomens, fingers into mouths, nails into eye sockets.
And then the tearing began, the awful, terrible tearing that was the ultimate expression o
f these creatures’ greed—the desire to possess something that is not your own at all costs, even if that meant the flesh and organs of another. Especially if it meant that.
As with any war, there were losers and victors. The losers were quickly reduced to empty, blood-streaked carcasses, lying on the pavement in pools of their own gore.
The winners were doing something very strange indeed.
Rather than holding their dripping trophies aloft, or eating them as Chambers had suspected they might, those who remained in one piece were now themselves seeking their own injuries—the gaping abdominal wounds, the rents in face and flesh—and were proceeding to cram the organs of their victims inside their own.
“It would seem they can never have enough of what belongs to others,” Dr. Cruttenden breathed.
Chambers watched as one man slipped a bile-streaked liver through the rent in his abdomen. Once he had finished pushing the fleshy structure inside, the wound closed. The woman next to him now had four eyes—two crammed into each socket—and appeared to have been momentarily satiated by this. Still others had added to the muscle bulk of their arms and legs from the torn flesh of those who lay around them.
But not for long.
Because now the losers were coming back to life, slowly dragging themselves to their feet and regarding the victors with an even greater desire than they had before. There they stood, on legs of bared bone, abdominal rents gaping, an army of have-nots regarding the unwary haves with eyeless sockets.
Those with their new tissues rapidly became aware of them.
“How long do you think this goes on for?” Karen whispered as the second battle ensued.
“Who knows?” Dr. Cruttenden was watching the grotesque display with fascination. “Perhaps we have been lucky enough to witness the moment when one eternity became another.”
“I’m not exactly sure we could call that lucky.” Chambers got to his feet. It was the wrong thing to do.
“I think they’ve spotted us,” he said as a sea of eyeless sockets, and heads with far too many eyes, turned to look their way.
“Perhaps if we keep still they’ll go back to what they were doing.”
Dr. Cruttenden’s suggestion didn’t work. Now they could see that there were intruders in their midst, the denizens of Greed wanted them, whatever they were. Every single piece of them.
The closest was a woman with nine eyes, a scalp almost completely devoid of hair, and legs whose red raw bones bore scarcely a scrap of muscle. Karen ran out and kicked savagely at the creature’s left knee joint. It buckled backward and the woman fell to the ground with a snarl. Immediately the others were upon her.
“Run!”
They took off down the street at Chambers’s command, not knowing where they were running, but knowing if they stayed still they would be the creatures’ next victims. But what was the point if the streets were all the same? And if they could only circle this one block, again and again, like the cursed souls condemned to remain here, how could they hope to get away?
But as they ran, Chambers realized something.
“The doors have changed!”
Karen said it before he could. She wasn’t quite right. Only some of them were different. Every fifth office door now glowed a dark blue and, if he wasn’t mistaken, these special doors were resonating with a dull hum.
“Those must be the way out!” He hoped he was right. Perhaps that was the final crowning cruelty of the Circle of Greed—the way out was regularly displayed to the damned, but only when they were in this state of heightened hunger, oblivious to anything and everything but their desire to possess that which did not belong to them.
The greed zombies were gaining on them.
“Which one?” Dr. Cruttenden was fast becoming breathless and had already slowed. The creatures would be on her in moments. “Which one?”
“I don’t think it matters.” Chambers stopped at the door closest and hoped he was right. “And if we don’t try, we’re goners anyway.”
He was about to step through when he was pushed aside by Karen, who was shoving Dr. Cruttenden through. He grabbed her outstretched hand and felt a chill as they passed through the deep blue of the entryway. Chambers wondered two things as he did so—whether they might die and, if they didn’t, where they were going to end up next.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THEY WEREN’T DEAD.
Where they were, though, was a matter for debate. It was certainly nothing like the other circles of Hell they had so far visited. In fact, Chambers thought as he looked around him, it seemed rather pleasant.
A breeze was blowing, enough to disturb the grass that covered the gently rolling hills before him, hills that stretched as far as the line of trees he could see on every horizon. The sky was the slate gray of an approaching storm and the breeze was cold but, as far as he could see, there were no zombies, and no one intent on trying to kill him.
“Where are we, I wonder?” His question was directed at Dr. Cruttenden, who had removed her glasses and was rubbing her eyes.
“If you want an honest answer,” she said, popping the spectacles back on, “I’m not exactly sure.”
Karen was shivering. “What level is supposed to come after Greed?” she asked.
“Well that’s why I’m a little confused. We should be on the plain of Anger.”
“I don’t feel angry.” Now he’d seen her shiver, Chambers was feeling the cold too. “And I don’t see anyone who is angry either.”
“Maybe they’re over the next hill?”
“If they are, then I think we’ll stay here for a bit if you don’t mind.” Karen gave Dr. Cruttenden a friendly smile as she said it. “I could use a bit of a rest from running away from people who want to involve us in their obsessions.”
“Agreed.” Dr. Cruttenden gave a wheezy cough.
“Perhaps I should take a look.” Chambers felt uneasy about staying still for too long. “Just in case.”
“Be my guest.” Karen gestured ahead of them. “But please don’t go too far.”
“I won’t.” He looked at Dr. Cruttenden. “Could there be any way we’ve . . . I don’t know . . . bypassed a circle or two?”
“If we really are in Hell,” the lecturer said, still trying to catch her breath, “then who knows what may or may not be possible?”
Karen rubbed the old lady’s back. “What are the other circles of Hell? The ones we haven’t been to yet?”
In between coughs, Dr. Cruttenden listed them. “Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery.”
“I suppose it could be Fraud.” Chambers had already taken a few steps away from them. “Perhaps all of this is an illusion.”
“Or Treachery,” said Karen. “Something’s going to leap up and grab us when we least expect it.”
“At least if we were in the Circle of Treachery it would be the last one,” said Chambers.
His next question occurred to both him and Karen at the same time. She just beat him to it.
“What’s beyond the Ninth Circle?”
Dr. Cruttenden shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps nothing, perhaps the Sea of Darkness that was written about in the Liber de Nigra Peregrinatione.”
“The Book of the Black Pilgrimage?” Chambers was impressed he remembered. “The one that talked about the Black Cathedral and that city?”
“Of Chorazin, yes. Both it and another fabled volume, the Book of Eibon, make reference to a never-ending plain on which wander the most damned souls of all, presided over by something vast and unspeakable, something that has been there since before the dawn of time, perhaps even existing outside of time.”
“It’s the thing that was on the wall.”
Despite having been through so much, Chambers knew exactly what Karen was referring to. The memory of that tripod-legged insect god, towering over its tiny servants, was something he would prefer to forget, and he certainly didn’t want to come face to face with the real thing. Could it be true? Was that what was waiting for them
at the end of all this? And if so, was there really any point in going on?
“We can’t go back.” Dr. Cruttenden seemed to guess what he was thinking. “And if we stay in one place for too long, or rather one circle, we’ll end up trapped there forever. I don’t know exactly where we are right now, but I do think we need to keep moving. Just as soon as I’ve had a little rest.”
Chambers left Karen to look after the lecturer. He was far too restless to stand there for a few moments and besides, they were going to have to see what was waiting for them over the brow of the nearest hill sooner or later. The grass crunched beneath his feet, almost as if it were frozen, or desiccated. When he looked down, it appeared far less healthy than when they had arrived. Instead of green, the short blades were a pale gray and felt as if they were crumbling beneath his feet.
When he reached the brow of the hill, the view beyond was only partly what he had been expecting.
The grassy, undulating landscape continued but now, dotted here and there as far as the eye could see, were wooden crucifixes, all of the same design, all composed of the same anemic wood, and each approximately eight feet tall.
Each one had a corpse tied to it.
The crucifixes may have been similar, but the bodies lashed to them were not. Men, women, even a few children it seemed, off in the far distance.
They were in varying stages of decay.
The ones closest to Chambers were the most advanced—mere mummified wisps of their former selves, clothed in a few threads of material, their eyeless skulls hanging at awkward angles if they had not already fallen from crumbling spines to lie close to the remains of bony feet. Behind those were bodies with a little more flesh still adherent to their bleached bones—mere scraps of muscle hanging from ribs, a few strand of hair stuck to fragments of scalp.
Chambers was tempted to explore further, to enter this bizarre forest of the dead and examine the more substantial corpses positioned in the brow of the next hill about a mile away. Then he remembered his promise to the others and felt a twinge of irritation. He turned on his heel and made his way back to where Dr. Cruttenden still seemed to be trying to catch her breath.
The Lovecraft Squad Page 27