BURN IN HADES

by Michael L. Martin Jr.

  “Then why tell me at all, sir?”

  “Because,” said Mr. Rowings, “if you recall that elite society I mentioned earlier. Not only are Mr. Carson and I members, but we believe that we may also be the last.”

  “I’m not giving up hope yet, Joseph,” said Mr. Carson. “I have to believe Tivoli is still out there.”

  “I made another attempt to summon him moments ago,” said Mr. Rowings. “But he still isn’t answering.”

  “He wouldn’t. Anyone could intercept the message. Nor would he ever return home. He’s much smarter than that. He’s in hiding.”

  “I surely hope so.”

  “We’ve been searching for candidates to continue our legacy, Charles. And at least one of those persons was in my home the entire time. I was simply blind to it.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first,” said Charles.

  Mr. Carson placed a hand on Charles’s shoulder. “Believe it or not, you’re the only one I can trust with this knowledge. You’re not just a good worker, Charlie. You’ve taken very good care of my family while I’ve been away, as if they were your own. And in that way, you’ve become an honorary member of our family. You’re like a son to me”

  The boss smiled, but not a normal, joyous smile. It was a smile of a man who knew more than he wanted to know, more than he wanted to tell. “I know you don’t understand all this, and you might even forget everything I’ve just told you. But one of these days, there will be an event in your life, and all this will make sense.”

  Charles hadn’t seen Mr. Rowings or his daughter Phoebe after that day, and Mr. Carson vanished with his astrolabe.

  Deep in the realm of Irkalla in the underworld, a torture camp called Erutrot held a cabin owned by a demon named Diamond Tooth who possessed an astrolabe that was dangling in Cross’s bruised and blood-coated face.

  He identified the date engraved on the brass object. He couldn’t read the foreign language, but the symbols matched those on Mr. Carson’s astrolabe exactly as he remembered, down to the last detail.

  It all made sense, like his mother had said it would, like Mr. Carson had said it would, like he had told himself over and over. He was meant to remember. The Toran was meant for him after all. The Great Goddess needed him to endure the red giant’s torture, and wait just a little bit longer. He’d never doubt her again.

  THE RAVEN STOOD AMONGST HUNDREDS OF PRISONERS sectioned off from Diamond Tooth’s cabin by a spiked fence. She cringed at every bang and crunch of Cross’s torture session in the cabin.

  The spirits around her sang, but their haunting hymn failed to drown out the torturous crashes and grunts. Their melancholy melody and weary words only served to increase the sense of dread and depression:

  When laden

  with troubles

  and burdened with grief

  To Mater

  in secret

  I’ll go for relief

  I’m troubled

  I’m troubled

  I’m troubled in mind

  If Mater

  don’t help me

  I surely will die

  Some souls who were justifiably too pained by their surroundings to emote, willed themselves to join the song anyway. It was beautiful and gloomy.

  The Raven closed her eyes and embraced the angelic cry like Cross had encouraged her to do. She allowed the breath of the Great Goddess to anoint her. It cleansed her with a display of astonishing images in her mind.

  She remembered the doleful faces of her brothers and sisters at they watched her fall. None of them came to her rescue. The memories were murky, but she wallowed in the love that she had lost. She felt empty and deserving of the disowning for her disobedience.

  Her rejection was her fault. She recalled having immense guilt and pleading to return home. She couldn’t bear feeling so lonely and forsaken.

  In dark days

  of bondage,

  to Mater I prayed

  To help me

  to bear it

  and She gave me her aid

  I’m troubled

  I’m troubled

  I’m troubled in mind

  If Mater

  don’t help me

  I surely will die

  “Cut the singing,” said a guard. “Or we cut out your tongues.”

  The singing continued without interruption. Half the camp had joined in, but not without physical interference from the guards. Shoves and slaps led to punches and kicks. When those tactics failed, the guards whipped and chocked. The prisoners sang through the beatings. The guards sliced tongues and slit throats, but despite their empty mouths and severed heads, the tortured souls kept singing, relentlessly. Men, women and children defied their captors and pressed on louder. Every voice in the camp lifted to the heavens, and it rang with the harmonies of liberty.

  Their undying spirit touched the Raven. It scooped her up and delivered her into the warm arms of her father. He forgave all her mistakes without her even needing to repent. She repented anyway. He loved her as no one else would, and he never once hated her, even when she hated him. He never gave up on her, even when she gave up on him. He never doubted her, even when she doubted him.

  Oh, Mater,

  my Savior,

  on thee I’ll depend

  When troubles

  are near me

  you’ll be my true friend

  I’m troubled

  I’m troubled

  I’m troubled in mind

  If Mater

  don’t help me

  I surely will die

  The hymn swelled to a deafening crescendo and ended. The compound and the cabin fell into a total silence. A heartbeat later, the fence cracked open. Needle-mouth imps seized the Raven, dragged her to the demon’s cabin and shoved her inside.

  Food was thrown about; shattered dishes were scattered across the floor, and a broken chair lay in a pile in the corner. No sign of Cross. Only speckles of his black blood dotted everywhere.

  Diamond Tooth, now dressed in traveling gear, poured herself a drink and tossed the Raven new clothes, returning her top hat to her, and oddly, her rope dart also. No other demon would have given up such an advantage so easily. That immediately set a tone of unease in the Raven, perhaps exactly what the demon wanted.

  “Get dressed,” said Diamond Tooth. “We’re going to find the last Toran. I know the name of the bone orchard, now. And you know the name of the skull.”

  The Raven wiped her boot in a puddle of black blood on the floor. “I expected a similar greeting.”

  Diamond Tooth sat down on the table top and drank. “Some souls are talkers. Some aren’t. You’re not a talker.”

  “And Cross? Where is he?”

  Diamond Tooth sat her drink on the table. “Gone to the place where he belongs. It’s just you and me now. For you, the arrangement is the same. You just have a new partner.”

  The Raven changed into her new clothes. The only part of her old wardrobe that she kept was her justaucorps and her top hat, which she sat on her head.

  She forgave Cross for giving her up. She would never have given him up, but she understood why he did it. It didn’t surprise her in the least. She expected him to talk. That was his survival technique. He took a vicious beating, and held out for as long as he could, but it was too much for him to handle. The demon won. It wasn’t his fault. It was Diamond Tooth’s.

  Preventing the demon from escaping the underworld became the Raven’s new charge. A demon let loose on the world of the living was much worse than the resurrection of a soul like Cross. She surprised herself with how much she even cared.

  Ever since her encounter with the Nothing in Yomi, a deep compassion for all that was good had blindsided her. A strong sense of altruism stirred within her that she hadn’t felt since before she had fallen. Embracing the songs of the Great Goddess sent her over the top.

  That scared her because the underworld required a malevolent temperament for survival. If she lost that, then she would nev
er be able to stop the demon. She felt like the A’raf in that moment, but her wall had fallen down, and she had to choose which side she was on: good or evil? One thing was for certain, she would personally escort the demon to the Inferno to meet her master for burning Cross.

  She tightened Ropey around her waist.

  The demon rounded up a couple of the Anarchists scorpions for them to ride, and they headed south into the realm of Guinee. An alley of praying statues were carved into the mountain side, each one cloaked with pointy hoods over their skulls like Ankous.

  Her scorpion stepped on a skull. The splitting noise it made when it cracked echoed in between the mountainous statues. Giant bats flapped out the statues’ empty eye sockets and noses.

  The Raven detected a unique reverberation in the air about a mile behind them. At first she thought of Cross and his draggles, hoping the bastard was still in one piece. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the tiny pitter of the draggles. They were long gone of course. It sounded similar to the tuff-tuff-tuff sounds her and Diamond Tooth’s scorpions made crawling through the dust and sand, but more numerous.

  She kept her ear focused on the noise through the following sleep cycle. It always remained at a safe distance, even stopped for rest the exact time she and Diamond Tooth stopped. They were being followed. Another party was seeking the Toran?

  “Something’s different about you.” The demon sniffed the air toward the Raven. “You two must’ve gotten awfully close.”

  “What do you mean?” said the Raven.

  “You and Cross.”

  “No closer than you and I are. He knew the name of the bone orchard and I—”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s just that I recognized a look on your face, when you asked me about him in my cabin. I know that look very well. I’ve seen it on other women, before and after I slit their lover’s throats.”

  “Well, there’s certainly nothing for you to be jealous over, Klesa.”

  Diamond Tooth flinched at the mention of her true name. She lifted her chin and snickered. “Cross is gone to a much worse place than where we’re going. I don’t envy him at all.”

  The Raven placed an abnormally extra effort in keeping her facial muscles relaxed, icy and expressionless. She wished she didn’t care so much. It would’ve been easier not to.

  “You play it off very well,” said the demon. “I’ll give you that. You can fool me with your expression, but you can’t bluff a scent. You reek of concern and compassion and yearning. It makes me want to vomit into a cup and eat it with a spoon.”

  “The feeling’s mutual then.”

  “By the way,” said Diamond Tooth. “It’s not fair that you know my true name and I don’t know yours.”

  “Nobody said the afterlife was fair.”

  “Come on, we’re old friends.”

  “You’re right. We’re old friends. And that’s precisely the reason I have yet to use the knowledge of your true name to my advantage. And I won’t. As long as we’re friends.”

  Deeper into the petrified realm of Guinee, trees made of bone sprouted up throughout the valley. The trunks were bone, the branches were bones, and if the trees had contained any leaves they too would have been bones. The forest beckoned them away in a slow hand-like wave, warning them not to enter and grew denser the further they did.

  “Fon-Ewe forest is forbidden territory,” said the Raven.

  Diamond Tooth kept her determined pace without acknowledging the Raven’s statement. The Raven stopped her scorpion at the edge of the dark forest where the petrified trees interlocked with such density it strangled light. A soul could barely pass through the brush without being a decent climber.

  “We can’t disturb the Loa,” said the Raven.

  “You used to be fun,” said Diamond Tooth. “Since when do you care about breaking rules?”

  “We’ll go around.”

  Diamond Tooth lifted an object from between her breasts and examined it. “We don’t have time.”

  “What time does the Toran close?” asked the Raven.

  Diamond Tooth tucked the object back into her shirt. “The sooner we get there, the better. And going around would put extra periods of sleep on our schedule that we can’t afford. On top of that, we’d get sidetracked by the war. For whatever reason, Tribulation and Anarchist troops converged around this area, but not in the forest.”

  “Because even they aren’t dumb enough to disturb the Loa.”

  “The Loa are more scared of us than we should be scared of them.”

  “We’ll leave the scorpions here, and I can fly us over the forest.” The Raven gazed up. The fingertips of some trees reached up in thirst nearly meeting the smoldering blue sky. Sparks and crackles of heat kept them trimmed. They were lit up like torches at their tips, endlessly burning and expelling clouds of roaring smoke. “There’s gotta be a break in the canopy somewhere,” she said.

  “I’m guessing you never had to fly that high before,” said Diamond Tooth. “Blue sky generates heat at nearly forty thousand Kelvin. It burns at just the right distance to torture us spirits without annihilating us, but there is such a thing as getting too close. You’ve met the red giant, Ignatius. Seen his wings? What’s left of them anyway. He got too close. Flesh melted right off the bone. Not that I care about your flappers, but you’d be carrying me up there. You fall, I fall. And I’ve already been put back together twice in the last four months. We’re going to go right through the heart of Fon-Ewe Forest.” A grin slithered across her face. “Just you and me.”

  They hopped off their scorpions and stepped through the black curtain that the forest draped around its waist. It was a different kind of darkness than Yomi. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face and could no longer hear Diamond Tooth’s footsteps.

  The demon could see in the dark, and the Raven dreaded that she’d just walked herself into a trap. It was too dark to find the way back out, and the brush was too dense to spread her wings and gain flight.

  She kept moving forward, climbing and stumbling over the bulky and uneven ground. She kept her arms extended outward as a precaution, but hidden branches still managed to slap her face.

  In the black, lights flashed and disappeared like fireflies. They weren’t illusions created by her mind as it tried to bring in any light and make sense of the darkness. More lights flickered as she pressed forward. Purples, blues, and greens blinked and dipped behind the trees with rustling movements.

  Wailing chants followed, echoing from all sides. Moaning, hissing and rattle sounds danced around in the black. The evil band played a clunky chorus of gongs and drums, and they laughed tauntingly. A female voice belted out a shrieking cackle to her right. Cross’s Latin cross would have come in handy right now.

  She tripped over a lump in the ground and fell to her knees. Hands grabbed her.

  “They’re not attacking,” said Diamond Tooth’s voice. “They’re just standing around, watching.” The demon’s hands helped the Raven to her feet. “At least the music is nice.”

  Diamond Tooth’s rough hands took the Raven’s wrist and guided her palm onto the demon’s shoulder. Diamond Tooth led her forward. All the sounds in the jungle halted. Rickets in the trees broke the silence. A snap and a thud plunged at her feet as though a tree had toppled over. A thrash and crackle splashed.

  A very large presence loomed somewhere in her vicinity. Branches wisped and warm breath fell on her head. Yellow eyes bloomed far above her head.

  sish. Splintering cracks snapped in the air as if several throwing knives stabbed a log.

  Diamond Tooth backed into the Raven. “Run!”

  The breathless tremor in the demon’s voice alarmed the Raven. Demons didn’t scare easily. Even smart demons like Diamond Tooth were always more excited and willing to go down fighting anything that came her way, but Diamond Tooth sounded afraid enough of the yellow-eyed beast to flee.

  “Run where?” said the Raven, holding in her panic. “I can’t see.”

  “A
way from the yellow eyes.”

  The Raven’s hand slipped off the demon’s shoulder. The monster bellowed with the boom of a hundred trumpets. Her top hat flew off her head. Hot breath nudged her hair over her ears. The Loa yelped in glee around her.

  She flung her rope dart at the monster. In the blink of light, she glimpsed a muzzle of bone that could easily swallow her once it opened its jaws. Her rope dart caught between his bony teeth. She tugged.

  The beast stripped it from her. The roped burned its way through her palms.

  She about-faced and took off into the black. Her foot caught something. She tumbled and smacked her head.

  The Raven slowly regained consciousness and found herself tied to a post in front of a bonfire. Her wings were bound. Next to her, Diamond Tooth was also tied to post made of one large bone protruding from the ground.

  The skeletal frames of the Loa danced around a fire to the tune of beating drums and the chiming of their bones. The colors that decorated their bodies glowed in the dark and swirled as they jigged around, plunking and rattling in a disconcerting conga. They sang behind masks of flesh, and pantomimed as though acting out a story.

  The language sounded like Ịḅanị. The Raven didn’t know how she knew that information. It had just popped into her head the moment she heard it being spoken. She couldn’t speak the language herself, but she gathered from watching their play that it was the tale of the Verboten Cherub, the mythical spawn of evil who would bring two worlds together: the realm of the living and that of the dead. She surmised as much because The Resurrection of the Dead was the tale every member of the damned told in hopes it would one day come true.

  When the song and dance ended, a dreadlocked woman swished up the Raven. Instead of eyes, a purple glow beamed out of her hollow eye sockets just like the yellow-eyed monster.