The 9th Fortress

by John Paul Jackson

  Above, black angels discarded their damned cargo to the sands; and the longer we paused on it, the more the heat stung. "Move!" growled Kat. "Do not talk — do not stop!"

  Feet feeling the fire, we advanced through the writhing and contorted abominations here. Harmony shrieked at the hand attempting to snatch her ankle. This individual had no ankles or legs himself, but pulled his weight forward with fingers alone, while a noose around his neck tugged on a cart of overflowing treasure — jewels of gold and silver, sceptres, plates and coins; not even an opportunistic Eddinray dared touch a doubloon of that tainted fortune.

  A decrepit woman gagged on all fours, her hands and knees fastened to the sand, her face twisting as she brought up a perpetual supply of vomit from her stomach. A young man, in more agony than any here, had no trace of skin on his bones. He was inside out — and without the protective coat of flesh — a grainy gust scalded like vinegar on an open sore, his horrible screaming alerting us to the intricate inner workings of his vocal chords.

  "Over there!" I said, pointing through the chaos to another far away white fence. "Common!"

  Alongside the many black angels, three giggling cherubs made playful circles in the fierce sky. These cheery children, no more than six years old, passed rocks back and forth before throwing them at their chosen marks — smashing one man's mouth and cracking the skull of a grovelling female, who failed to hold in her dripping brains. "Remain calm,” muttered Harmony to herself. "You do not see it. You do not!"

  The black angels were here for a purpose — to dispose of their garbage — but the winged children appeared to do nothing but idle in evil, dispensing pain to whomever they pleased. I felt sick watching them tear the hair from an older man before removing his testicles with a piece of flint. Giggling, they opened the stomach of one suffering creature, and then pulled the ropey red intestines as far as they could stretch. This was their playground, and these bullies picked on the weakest, those with "target" etched on their foreheads. But with strong personalities in our group, we ignored their carnage and their rocks ignored us.

  ***

  Over the second fence brought relief from the burning sand, but no respite from the incessant grief. The land was burnt black, and over it was a startling yellow sky. Littering that crusted surface was a congestion of pikes standing twenty feet tall; each with an individual impaled and wincing down it.

  "Abominable!" gasped Harmony, feverish. "No more of this!"

  Eddinray mirrored his angel's repulsion while Kat and I shared hopeless expressions. Couching through the spears and the skewered, we criss-crossed toward the next white fence. Bloodied hands reached down for my hair causing me to bend even lower. Spears were stained red and those impaled were so ravaged that they could only choke at our passing them by. There was no order or obvious pattern here, but there was plenty of land, and many unoccupied spears left to fill.

  "I shall never murder again,” uttered Eddinray. "Unless provoked of course."

  Black angels threw young and old onto fresh pikes, followed by excruciating gargles as lances drilled through spine or neck or bellies. "Down!" exclaimed Kat, suddenly.

  We three dropped terrified from a beast now jinxing its way through the vertical poles — a podgy, four-legged dog. "What now?" whispered Harmony.

  This animal came to chew on the flesh of a man who had slid completely through his spear to touch the ground. Rottweilers like it joined in the feed and we peacefully passed as they gnawed on dead meat; no match for our weapons, dogs no match for a Kat.

  The harrowing pits of erotic fire came next — thousands of open graves. Our threadbare route trailed between the pits, and we would have to pass over hundreds before the next white fence roughly three miles away. Already exhausted, I passed the remnants of my canteen for all but Harmony to drink — the angel content with her ordinary barrel water. "Watch steps here,” said Kat, taking the lead over this tightrope.

  Arriving at the first pit, I gazed down and volcanic temperatures assaulted my eyes. Moaning and near blinded, I placed my hands on Kat's shoulders in front to keep me upright. That hole below squashed at least fifty souls standing, all ablaze from the chest down. Pit walls were also ensnared with climbing ripples of fire, making escape or rescue impossible.

  To hold those miserable bodies intact, invincible starlight rained aplenty over this staggered torture field, but it could not disguise the vile stench of constantly cooking flesh. "If I fall," gasped Harmony, balancing before Eddinray; "then I want you to leave me knight. Do you understand?"

  "I do not," he replied, perspiring; "and I will not!"

  "It is my decision!” she said. “I am determined! I would leave you without a seconds thought! Do you hear? I would leave you Godwin! Do not sacrifice yourself here — it is worthless to lose two for one. That is my final — "

  Suddenly, a fountain of flame flared up from one pit, drowning those below in a screaming vat.

  "I pledge my soul to you angel," stuttered Eddinray, holding onto her wing clasp; "it is not whole without yours."

  She reached back to thoughtfully squeeze his hand, then continued their uneasy course at my heels. To make things more difficult, those suffering watched us pass from their pits, and like the wall of tears, they pleaded and pleaded for our assistance.

  "How can you ignore us? How can you?"

  "Have pity!"

  "Raise me! Raise me from this Hell!"

  We could do nothing for them, so moved forever between pits with the screams, smells and heat getting under all our skins.

  "You there! Help us! Lower me your hand!"

  "God Almighty, save us!"

  30. The Crown Wearing Cadaver

  Dropping over the final fence, we landed a world away from those gruesome vistas.

  This was a mine of charcoal rock, its glassy edges glittering like diamonds. Frosty breath left our lungs and an eerie echo of unseen axes could be heard chipping away at stone. Shivering, we stood before a long and teetering bridge of stone, extending over a chasm. "Delve further?" a dull voice asked.

  With the portal closed at our backs, the keeper of this bridge prevented our passage. Waiting, he was a scrawny figure at the bridge's halfway point, with gangly arms gesturing us closer…and closer to him.

  "What is this?" I said, overwhelmed.

  "Mindful,” warned Kat.

  We fell behind our leader, and I couldn't help but glance over the bridge's side to a cavernous carian pit, a great mouthful of wind and darkness. In the walls around this hole, the toiling souls broke rocks with old tools, digging private tunnels presumably, and their own way out of Hell.

  "That's no man.,” sneered Kat, scrutinizing the bridge keeper.

  "Goodness gracious,” whimpered Eddinray. "It's…disgusting!"

  His insect infested appearance brought us friends into a huddle — the beetles, the flies, and the maggots filling up insides like blood. Gelatinous eyeballs gazed down on us from a height of twelve feet; most of his skin was gone and I could see through his chest to an un-beating heart; his nose was a meagre flake of cartilage and his greedy looking mouth revealed a set of rotten teeth. Kat was right: he was no man at all, not anything any-more. Harmony shuddered understandably, and a drained Eddinray found some strength before he might stumble and fall over the side.

  The skeleton wore a crown of gold over his puss-leaking skull — a dazzling coronet of unreachable wealth, but its opulence was tainted by the maggots spilling over top like an overflowing bowl of cornflakes

  "Who are you?" I asked him, his decomposing stench matching the odious sight.

  The crown wearing cadaver swat at flies then raised his hand for us to wait. As we did, a person appeared from behind us. Nearing his fifties, this man was completely naked, morbidly obese, and utterly unsurprised to be in this predicament. I grimaced at the unsightly scars criss-crossing this person’s portly back and buttocks — not an inch of him was free from these blemishes. He was an ordinary looking man like any other gr
anddad, but when he turned his face back at me, his perverted smile made me wince.

  Although he had jumped ahead of the cue, we kept our mouths shut while the naked man bent to his knees before the bridge keeper. Promptly, a golden parchment unravelled out of thin air; the keeper then offered him a quill and beckoned for a signature. The elderly man eagerly scribbled his John Doe, and the parchment rolled up with the sound of crisp satisfaction before vanishing. Strangely, the naked man was ecstatic, clapping his hands and hurrying across the bridge with a manic spring in his overweight step.

  "Masochist," the creepy corpse hissed at us. "His soul seeks deeper pain and ecstasy with it. He will not be disappointed, or have long to wait."

  Even more repellent up close, the bridge keeper chuckled slightly then eyed us over with relish. "And what of you?" he asked, a yellow larva dripping from his nostrils. "The bowels of Hell await — tell me what you seek?"

  "The 9th Fortress,” I answered, before Kat could. The corpse bobbled his head unsurprised, and a creamy shower of maggots trickled from crown to toes.

  "And where are your black angels?" he asked us, intrigued. "Why aren't they dragging you there by the hair?"

  "We are not inmates!" Kat said. "Get out the way!"

  "Do not encourage trouble,” Harmony told him. "There are other ways to the bottom of this Kat."

  Eddinray added to the samurai's vexation with his own warning, before taking it upon himself to question the corpse. "Pray, how does one go about crossing your bridge? What payment is required? I tell you I won't be taken advantage of!"

  The foul thing approached on stick legs and we recoiled. Suddenly, four parchments of golden paper appeared in his emaciated hand then stretched out to each of ours.

  "What is it?" I said, perusing its ancient paper and foreign text.

  "It is your passage," he returned, "and my payment. It allows you entry to the furthest reaches."

  "Including the 9th Fortress?" I asked, interested.

  "Including that most notorious destination,” he confirmed, with another sprinkling of maggots. "There is exclusivity beyond the bridge. The Great Alexander and Vlad the Impaler are just two found suffering there, where Lucifer himself dwells in his castle, and signature is required before passage maybe granted."

  "Latin,” muttered Harmony, her blue eyes examining the parchment. "I…need time."

  "Crap!" I scoffed at the corpse. "You expect us to sign something we can't read? Bullshit!"

  "Hell has rules!" he said, sounding strained. "Identity is necessary. Records must be kept!"

  "Lies!" exclaimed Kat, caressing his sword hilt. "Why haven't I heard of you?"

  "And what keeper wears a crown?" I added, noticing an unmistakeable malevolence on that abhorrent face; the real fire behind the layers of barbecued bone.

  With Kat like impatience, the keeper shunted his quill firmly to my chest and urged me to sign his parchment. "Refusal will see consequences,” he said, thinly. "Terrible consequences. You will all join the drowning in the sea of nevermore, where your skin will be supper for sharks! Reject me, and the slow dissection of your bodies will begin this very minute!"

  I took his quill with a fearful haste, but still reading and with a furrowed brow; Harmony prevented my hand from signing. "We cannot sign that parchment Daniel!" she said, scared. "This is no register, but a contract binding our light to this charlatan!

  She read — "That you wholeheartedly agree to terms stated above — that you're will, your spirit and your soul be taken into his custody, and never be granted liberty!

  Exposed, the fraudulent form remained calm, even as Eddinray tore and threw his parchment pieces off the narrow bridge. "I'm not signing a damned thing!" he announced. "What do you say to that, stinky creature?"

  As the golden fragments flickered down the chasm, Eddinray received an answer. His transformation was immediate — his body shrinking to become a frog the size of my hand. Amazed, all of us gawked over this spotty amphibian as it croaked and hopped, and a distressed Harmony dropped to cradle it. "What have you done?" she moaned. "Bring him back! Bring him back!"

  "Treacherous dog!" growled Kat, removing his sword without grace and aiming the tip at the corpse's neck. "Who are you?"

  "Mephistopheles!" Harmony sobbed. "It says as much in the parchment! He is the Devil! The darkest light!"

  Those words sent images of the formless ice witch into my head, her chilling voice repeating a prediction. "The wizard has come across Mephistopheles. On this journey you will too!"

  If this cadaver were evil incarnate then Eternal's other prediction would likely come true: "One of your friends will not reach the Waiting Plain alive! One will perish in Hell!"

  Superstition overruling instinct, Kat lowered his katana from the corpse, the maggots forming a pile underneath its scraped shins whilst caterpillars slugged through the ribcage.

  "I did not expect you to sign," the corpse said, resignedly. "I have gained numerous souls using that elementary deception, you would not believe how many! But such tricks would not wash with the wily Fox and his headstrong companions."

  "Save your flattery," I said; "and bring our friend back!"

  Harmony held frog Eddinray as he attempted to leap from her cupped hands. "Restore him to me!" she begged. "Restore him, please!"

  "I will do as you ask angel,” he replied, leering at her with watery eyeballs. "On one condition — one little prerequisite…"

  "You'll get no payment from us!" I protested, pulling my sword and slashing at the free air between us. "Nothing at all!"

  Unperturbed, the corpse stepped from his maggoty pile, slid his leg under Harmony's face then revealed his simple condition. "A kiss, angel exile from Heaven. You will bow to your knees, and you will kiss my foot."

  An outraged Kat cursed him, but still had the good sense to keep his distance.

  "You can't make her do that!" I yelled. "It's against everything she believes in!"

  "That is the cost!" he returned, sharply. "And your only way across this bridge. Now kiss…"

  Harmony let go of her frog to smear the tears from her cheeks.

  "You don't have to do this,” I said to her. "I don't want you to!"

  "I have to,” she said, examining the croaking Eddinray. Already, it was clear she would do anything for him; thus swallowing back centuries of pride, she crouched to her knees and bent to the decayed foot of Mephistopheles. However, as she pursed her lips an inch from the kiss, Kat sprang toward the crumbling, Mephistopheles and was supernaturally reduced to a ginger cat, caught in the corpse's own grip.

  "No!" shrieked Harmony, falling back.

  Mephistopheles held the cat outstretched as it scratched, pawed, and wailed.

  "Fool." the corpse said, rattling this animal by the scruff. "The brave have very few brains in their heads."

  Glaring now at the bouncing frog, he kicked the amphibian over the bridge's edge. "You bastard!" I roared. "You fucking bastard!"

  He laughed hard, resulting in several teeth dropping from his mouth. He next threw the ginger cat after the frog and into the chasm, and it meowed all the way out of earshot.

  "Careful!" he barked at me. "You have already lost two companions — and look there goes another!"

  All of a sudden, in a blink of time, another enchantment transformed Harmony into a minuscule white butterfly with a clasp around the wings. Snickering like a child, the wearer of the crown bent, picked up this beautiful insect, then flicked it over his shoulder to join Kat and Eddinray in the pit. "Harmony!" I cried, watching her disappear.

  Friends gone, I was alone. Absolutely alone. "What do you want from me? What do you want?"

  "An explanation,” he curtly demanded, the bridge now disintegrating with the entire location around me, a vortex of ash stirring in the background. "Why has the scientist sent you?" he demanded. "Answer immediately!"

  "The 9th Fortress!" I cried.

  "Do not dare patronize me!" he screamed, clutching my cheeks and lifting
me off my feet. "What is your true mission? Tell me your objective or I carve my names over your chest!"

  I could only think of one idea in this vacuum of swirling doom, one single thing left to do. I slid my dagger free from its pouch, and as I drew the weapon, the corpse instantly released me and staggered back. It was my dagger — he was petrified by it. "You…you keep that away from me! " he baulked, gasping as if out breath.

  "You keep it away!"

  His fear genuine, a stupid confidence consumed me. "The power of God!" I roared. "In my fucking hand!"

  "Keep it away!" he screeched, covering his face with stick arms. "Be gone from here! Be Gone!"

  Was this my true mission? To destroy the blackest soul? I lunged for that prized kill with all my energy and hate, then suddenly found myself falling…and falling.

  ***

  I thrashed in the darkness as a ferocious wind pulled me one way then another. Sound came to my ears before Terra firma, a rousing clash below, as if the two largest creatures in the jungle were fighting for supremacy. Light followed — whites dashing here and there, topped with spurts of random foam. It was water, it was ocean, and I hit it hard. Spluttering to the surface, the ocean was bold black, and a thunderous sky struck that sea with white bolts

  "Help!" I yelled, gulping salt water. "Anyone!"

  "Fox?" a faint voice returned. "Are you there?"

  "Here!" I bellowed back. "Is that you Kat? I'm over here!"

  I searched the rising and falling ocean for any sign, and saw the black angels first. This was the most I had seen gathered in one location — over fifty — tossing soul after soul into the sea; each person with a stone block attached to the soles of their feet. I submerged in a hurry as one of those human anchors bared down on top of me. Both stone and man broke through the water, and before I could return for air, I witnessed this figure's drowning descent not an inch from my face. Gargling desperate, he snagged his arms around my legs then dragged me with him to the weeds.

  Struggling, I witnessed many others sink alongside us, all to experience the full and crushing weight of the sea. Breath rapidly depleting, I challenged this man's grip with every ounce of energy, tugging, pulling and prying; but his bulk was too heavy and his arms too powerful. Suffocating now, I begged his own anguished expression to show mercy and let me live. Like mine, his was a normal face craving air and another chance; but searching deeper, I saw something in this man that profoundly touched my heart — the pitiful remorse, the recalling years of regret playing like a movie over his drowning eyes — but too little for redemption, and all too late for rescue.