BURN IN HADES

by Michael L. Martin Jr.

  Suddenly, the banging stopped. His finger hovered over the trigger, and he tip toed over to the side of the door preparing to blast whatever came through when he kicked it open. He prepared his foot to kick the door in.

  A click sounded behind him. He spun around and came face to face with the Raven.

  Ropey danced around like a cobra. Cross stood there naked and dripping, unsure of the Raven’s intentions. After all, it was he who had squealed on her to Diamond Tooth. Regardless, he was still happy to see her.

  Her eyes glided down his naked body from his chest to down below his stomach. “We’re not even in the cold Naraka. Does that thing even work?”

  Cross squinted sideways. “Come over here and test it out. Make sure.”

  Ropey darted towards him, but he didn’t budge.

  He patted the dart on its head as if it were a dog. “Good to see you, too.”

  “Well, at least you smell better,” said the Raven.

  “How the hell did you get out of that camp?” he asked her.

  “I’m tagging along with your old friend Diamond Tooth.”

  “I didn’t peg you for a talker.”

  “I didn’t tell her anything. If I did, I’d probably be burned.”

  Cross smiled and laughed. “You and I, we make a better team anyway. I’m so glad we’re together again. Let me get dressed. Then I’ll burn her. Be right back.” He grabbed his shirt.

  “She’s not alone,” said the Raven. “There’s five more of ‘em.”

  In the middle of fastening his shirt, Cross halted. “Five?”

  “Five demons,” said the Raven. “And they all have objects. Our objects.”

  The initial intimidation Cross had felt left him and was replaced by a sudden confidence burgeoning within him. He had tamed Grum. He had defeated the red giant Ignatius. He had taken on the serpent form of the Nothing and walked away unharmed. He evaded squals and survived the Rudimen. He was a true survivor. It wouldn’t be easy for him to take on five demons, let alone demons with objects, but they weren’t the only ones with objects. The Great Goddess was on his side, and the Toran was his destiny.

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ll burn them all.”

  The Raven said nothing more as he finished buttoning his shirt and slipped on his pants.

  He left the Raven in the tower, and crept down the middle of the road. Explosions boomed closer to the village than they had earlier. The whistle of falling brimstone grew louder. Lava dropped from the sky and splashed in the road before him. He stepped around the puddle of lava, blocking the heat with his hands and continued down the road.

  At the opposite end of the road, four demons stood posted inside the threshold of a bell-shaped building. In a blink, they fanned out in opposite directions and disappeared behind the smaller buildings of the village.

  Cross stepped sideways out of the center of the road. A noise rustled beside him. He aimed his revolver and discovered the Raven leaning against a post, smiling.

  “Thought I’d let you burn alone?” she said.

  She joined him in the road, and they walked together. It felt good to have someone on his side that was capable of watching his back for once. Even if it was a temporary partnership, he finally had someone again. Someone who wasn’t afraid to burn beside him. Although, Diamond Tooth would want the Raven alive given that she was the only one who knew the name of the skull. Still, the Raven was willing to risk her afterlife to fight beside him, and that meant everything to him.

  Side by side, they both paced down the middle of the road between the abandoned buildings, step after cautious step. Cross constantly twisted his head around every which direction checking porches, shadowy corners, and eaves for hidden demons.

  Boomph. An invisible force bent the air at one end of the road. The blur raced towards them. The wavy ripple smashed into the ground. Dirt exploded. The force knocked him back a peg.

  Boomph. Another pulse of energy sailed from out the mound-shaped building that the demons had exited earlier. Cross and the Raven both rolled out of the way. The energy hummed between them and leveled a building behind them.

  Out the corner of Cross’s eye, a demon leapt from an eave above. He aimed the Peacemaker. The demon landed before he could squeeze the trigger and cracked him over the head with a cane.

  The demon then tapped the can on the ground. Spider legs sprouted from the demon’s midsection. Three of the legs kicked Cross in the stomach at once. He twisted around. Three more kicks connected with his spine. He dropped to his hands and caught kicks to his face. His world spun.

  Ropey maneuvered through all eight of the demon’s legs and tied them together. The Raven yanked her end of the rope and swept the demon off his many feet. He slammed to its back and flailed its eight legs. Cross fired, putting a round in the demon’s chest. Its legs curled and stiffened.

  Cross crossed himself and got to his feet. The Raven smiled at him for the first time since he had known her. He liked that look on her. It was off-putting, but at the same time, nice. He went to grab the demon’s cane, but it had splintered to pieces.

  Boomph. The air pounded. The energy missed them both without them having to dodge it. The Raven sent her rope dart in the direction of the force’s origin. A pulse repelled Ropey and sent it flying back to the Raven.

  Cross shot at the blur. The bullets bounced off it. If only he had possession of his parasol, the lightening could most likely break through the ripple.

  Lightning struck the ground in front of him. A demon standing on an eave twirled his pink parasol. The Great Goddess was paying attention. He thanked her and fired at the demon. She ducked.

  An invisible force knocked him off his feet, but it wasn’t one of the energy pulses. It was a blur of light. It raced away, leaving a trail in the dirt behind it. The Raven’s rope dart chased the flash, but failed to catch it. Ropey had finally met its match in speed.

  Two female demons stepped out into the middle of the road. One carried the Raven’s amphora. The other held a lantern.

  A squeal seared through the sky. All four of them dropped to the ground, covering their heads. A steaming blob of molten lava flopped down between them and exploded into a cloud of steam.

  Cross and the Raven broke away from each other, dashing in opposite directions, leaving both demons coughing in the steam. Cross hid on a crumbling porch behind a pillar.

  The demon with the amphora emptied a stream of water onto the lava. Flowers grew inside the cooling lava until a full garden had sprouted up. The demons stalked within the steamy garden, hunting for their prey.

  The Raven stepped out from her hiding spot between buildings and whistled at the demons. They turned in her direction. Ropey struck for the demon carrying the lantern. She whisked away in a flash of light, escaping the impaling.

  The other demon tilted the amphora and poured a river onto the road. The cascade bashed the Raven and swept her down the road.

  Cross aimed at the demon from his spot on the porch. A lightning bolt struck the porch railing in front of him before he could shoot. The blast knocked him backward, and he almost broke through the front door of the house.

  He gathered himself to his feet in time to see the Raven flap her wings and fly over the river that was once Main Street. One of her wings went limp. She dipped to the side, but she managed to launch her rope dart through the demons amphora, shattering it and skewering the demon in one motion. The river ran dry and left behind a garden path down Main Street.

  Lightning struck the Raven out of the whistling sky. She twirled and flopped into a flower bed.

  Cross raced towards her, dodging falling lobs of lava and lightning strikes. He dove into the garden, rolled to his back and fired at the roof. The demon stuttered and tumbled off the eave.

  He crossed himself and winked at the Raven before racing over to get the parasol. The speed demon beat him to it. She snatched the umbrella from the ground and flashed away in a blur of light.


  The ground exploded in lava, wilting the colorful flower peddles and singeing the nice grass. Heat and steam now clouded the garden.

  He peered through the mist, looking for movement. When the steam settled, he discovered the speed demon lying on the ground, injured in the lava blast. Her broken lantern lay beside her, and the parasol was within a crawl’s reach of her.

  At the sight of Cross approaching her, she crawled backwards frantically and reached for the umbrella. Ropey impaled the demon.

  “That one was Ropey’s,” said the Raven, now on her feet.

  Boomph. The pulse slapped Cross in the back. He hit the ground chest first.

  Ropey darted, swiveled around another pulse and pierced through the wall of the building that harbored the demon. The Raven heaved the rope.

  The final demon burst through the wall, yanked by the end of the rope dart. It was the ugliest of all the demons. It looked like a skeleton made entirely of thorns. Its skull reminded Cross of Bolon-Hunahpu, and he had the odd feeling that he was staring into Diamond Tooth’s eyes.

  Even though impaled, the thorny demon managed to bang a hammer at the air. Boomph. A wave of energy cracked out of the hammer and bowled Cross over. The blur hummed away until it clashed with the tower at the other end of the road where he had taken his bath. The tower collapsed onto itself. Cross hoped the Ankou had gotten that baby out of there.

  He snatched up the parasol and struck the demon. The hammer jolted out of the demon’s hands.

  “Hey Raven, none of the demons burned.”

  “I noticed,” she said.

  “But if this is their first death, that means they were born in the underworld.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “But I thought no spirits or souls could reproduce here.”

  “This place changes the rules to benefit itself and to torture us.”

  “You know, I saw a baby earlier.”

  “A baby? Here?”

  “An Ankou was guarding it in that tower at the other end of the road. You don’t think these demons were Diamond Tooth’s children, do you? They all kind of looked like her.”

  “I noticed that too.” The Raven picked up the hammer and clipped it to her belt.

  One of her wings was splotched with blood as black as her feathers. A part of him cared enough to want to bandage her wing, but his mind shifted toward the astrolabe—his ticket out of the underworld. Instead of asking the Raven about her injury, like he wanted to, what came out of his mouth was: “Diamond Tooth is mine.”

  The Raven nodded in a way that made him feel low, as if she wanted him to finally cater to her, but was disappointed that he didn’t. It was the wrong impression he wanted her to have, but it would most likely serve his best interest to keep her at arm’s length.

  He crept up to the bell-shaped building and stepped through the whole in the wall. Not a soul remained inside. The Raven’s burlap sack lay on a broken cot.

  A single calabash was left in the sack. Words were carved into the side of it: Some people have a terrible attitude towards everything.

  THE RAVEN TOSSED HER SACK OVER HER SHOULDER AND FOLLOWED CROSS deep into the heart of Naraka. The sounds of war drew closer near the cliffs.

  Cross halted. “There should be a bridge that crosses a river around here.” He pointed at a spot on his map and then surveyed the surrounding area. “The Atman River.”

  A faint gurgle sound over the cliffs was drowned out by the booming racket of war, and that was interrupted by a drilling noise beneath her feet. Spikes rose out of the ground and encircled the two of them. Needle-mouth imps sprung from the earth and shoved their thorns in Cross and the Raven’s faces.

  “Come along now,” said an imp, and the group of imps escorted the two prisoners at poisoned needle-point to a base camp hidden in the cliffs just a few minutes way from where they were captured.

  The stench there hit the Raven’s nose like the smell at Camp Erutrot; foot odor, dried sweat, overflowing latrines, stagnant mud, tobacco smoke, and burnt barbot all mixed into an amalgam of foulness that scraped her throat every time she swallowed.

  Filthy soldiers of many races drooped around the camp. They were mostly the souls of men, but there were also giants, squals, demons and more imps amongst them. All wore war torn expressions and wobbled as though drunk on devil’s water. Many lay down in the pits asleep or sat in the trenches with their heads resting on their knees. One man’s hands grew into his face, forever stuck in a position of grief.

  A man dressed in the colors of an Anarchist captain staggered in drunkenly. His unbuttoned jacket fitted him sloppily. He plopped down at his desk and poured himself a drink, which seemed like one he didn’t need.

  “What realm you from?” he slurred.

  “Tuonela,” she lied. It was the most neutral underworld in regards to the wars.

  “And you?” the captain asked Cross.

  “Same as her,” said Cross.

  The captain sipped his drink and sighed. “Only two kinds of souls come way down here to Naraka: Tribulation and Anarchists. What brings you two?”

  Cross saluted. “We want to enlist.”

  Of all things, why’d he say that? Joining the war, even for pretend, was a stupid idea. His acting was perfect, but he needed to rewrite his script. The Raven could have punched him for saying something so dumb. But that was just Cross, always saying the first thing that came to his mouth.

  The captain threw his head back. “Enlist?” He stared at Cross skeptically and peered around at his camp of beaten down spirits as if to show Cross what it meant to join the war. He stood up and walked towards them until his face was less than a foot away from each of theirs. “You want to take the plunge, huh?” The burnt odor of devil’s water floated off his breath. The captain stepped away and grabbed another bottle of devil’s water from a crate. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and spit it onto the ground. “We’ll see.”

  He held the bottle in the Raven’s face, offering her a drink. Reluctantly, she took the bottle. She blocked the mouth of the bottle with her tongue and pretended to sip and only swallowed the drop that landed on her tongue, just to lubricate her dry throat.

  The captain stared her in the face, squinting as though unimpressed with her drinking skills. He grabbed the bottle away from her and passed the bottle to Cross, who turned the bottle upside down and drank as if he had just escaped Sheol after traveling through it for thousands of years. Devil’s water dripped down both sides of his face. He belched a flare of flames and wiped his mouth.

  The captain chuckled and shook his head. “Volunteers.” He said the word as if no soul had ever volunteered before. “You really want to enlist?” He paused as though giving them an opportunity to change their minds, and was met with both their silence. “All right,” he said. “Follow me. Soon you can join the saviors of Jnana Yoga Ladder.”

  She should have spoken up when the captain gave them the chance. She and Cross glanced at each other sharing a look of “what have we gotten ourselves into again?” They both followed the captain through the narrow trench.

  Piles of rotting sand bags towered above their heads, and exhausted soldiers stood on guard, staring out into the battlefield intensely, sharpening their swords and scratching themselves incessantly.

  The captain stopped at a fortified safe area carved into a jagged mountain made entirely of blades and other sharp things. From inside that safe area, they overlooked the entire battlefield, where soldiers prepared trebuchets and repaired barbed wire, and hodders gnawed on the corpses.

  “See that ladder?” The captain pointed out into the center of the battlefield.

  A massive ladder sprang from a black river. It covered the same amount of land that a basilica would and reached much higher than a tower. It corkscrewed from the ground all the way up into the blazing blue sky. Where the helix made contact with the lashing flames, rainbows swirled and flickered.

  “The Tribs have declared that damn ladder sacred,” said th
e captain. “They say it belongs to the Great Goddess. Our President Layil has insisted that we take that ridiculous pig tail, even if all of us get burned. Both sides want the ladder intact.” He gulped devil’s water. “We’ll all burn to Nothing. But one thing’s for sure, Jnana Yoga Ladder will always stand.” The captain took another long sip from his bottle. “I tell myself all the time that one day this will all make sense. It pains me to think that the energy we spend defending this stupid useless ladder, we could spend stopping the Nothing.”

  “Stopping it?” asking the Raven.

  “The higher-ups don’t speak of it to souls like us. That information is only available to the elite. But we’ve seen what it can do right out here on the battlefield.”

  “What have you seen, captain?”

  “The Nothing is spreading, and if no one does anything about it, it’s going to overtake the entire underworld.”

  “But isn’t that what the Anarchist want?”

  “All I know is that everyone has their own idea of what’s going on, and no one can agree on anything. So we’re all just running around and not getting anything of worth accomplished. See, neither side—Anarchist or Tribulation—is without its faults. Our side has too much pride to admit to any short comings we may have, because our sciences and discoveries have changed everything we once knew about our miserable existence. But the faith of the Tribs holds up where our science fails. They’re done converting us over to their side and we’re done speaking our truth only to have it fall on deaf ears. They just have the nerve to call us a gang.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “They’re the gang, the oldest gang in history. If anything, we learned everything we know from them. We just improved the methods. No, we’re not a gang. What we are is just a group of souls who believe in a cause.”

  “What cause would that be?”

  “Depends on who you ask. Different leaders have brought in their own agendas. I’ve heard rumors. Something about a bounty on a Verboten Cherub. But, I’m not so sure of anything anymore.” The captain paced through soldiers in the trench.