Through the In Between, Hell Awaits

by Robert Essig

  A sound erupted from Acronos’ mouth that would have sounded girlish and weak in his mortal state but came out heavy and thick. Losing balance—his body top heavy from his bulk and the thick calcium deposits that he was riddled with—he couldn’t prevent the inevitable.

  ***

  The pool was neither warm nor cold but devoid of feeling, particularly considering the body numbing anesthetic qualities it possessed. In that moment, as Dagana was pulled in, her mind flashed a million visions all at once and then everything went black: vision, sound, feeling.

  In the black depths, there was nothing. Life seemed to have faded into a reality that consisted of pure thought, an abysmal state of consciousness that was devoid of flesh and human or inhuman renderings.

  And then Baz’s voice came to her, very close as if his lips were touching her ears, though Dagana was wary of the fact that she even had ears any longer.

  “You bitch,” he said in a whispering, drunken drawl as he struggled to speak through the intensity of the water’s numbing properties. “You thought you could leave me and I wouldn’t find you? You thought you could be . . . the one.”

  Dagana was struck with the sheer tenderness of his venom-laced words. He was angry, but she could tell that he still wanted her, loved her in that way their kind wasn’t supposed to be capable of.

  After struggling to speak with her slack jaw and limp tongue, Dagana said, “We . . . could have . . . had it all.”

  She wanted desperately to inflict even worse damage to Baz than Chops had done, enough so that he wouldn’t come back from this pit of nothingness. And then, she became concerned about whether she would be able to make it out of the pit. No one has ever been known to make it out of the death pool dead or alive. Once in its black waters, that’s the end, that’s it—finito!

  Within the nothingness, Baz spoke, but his voice was losing coherence, drowning further in the ethereal muck they wallowed in. He was angry, furious; Dagana could tell by the deep growls he managed to bark out, but as with herself, she imagined that he too was beginning to dissolve, and the sustenance of the life they had known as sentinels was beginning to permute into something they weren’t prepared for. Memories began to line up and shuffle out of her mind like a game of one million and fifty-two card pick up, only she couldn’t pick them up after they fled. And the more she floated in the murky nothingness, the softer her brain began to get. As with the overwhelming state of numbness her body was racked with, her brain was feeling a similar affliction, only it felt like a pinch, as if something was sifting through her mind and picking out her remaining thoughts and memories one by one like picking lice from a child’s head. It was maddening, but she was powerless to do anything about it. She tried to convince herself that she could move the way Baz had when he reached out of the pool to drag her in, but that was an eternity ago, and things had changed, were changing as fast as her mind was being disassembled.

  Through the blissful torture of her decimation, she held onto her will to rule the In Between with everything she had left in her fleeting mind. Baz was gone, his voice having faded out of existence, perhaps finally through this absurd and terrifyingly surreal period of purgatory onto whatever was next, what they referred to as the Etherworld.

  Dagana hung on.

  ***

  From his perch on the awkward, gravity-defying tree with its whimsical branches floating upward like strands of fast growing kelp, Chops sensed danger at the precise moment that Baz had emerged from the black pool and grabbed Dagana.

  Acronos grabbed her as Chops took to the sky, but it all happened so fast, and before the winged assassin knew it, she was pulled in.

  Acronos teetered on the brink of falling, huge arms flailing, the most disgusting roars of tortured fear bellowing from his throat. Chops, in his state of blissful mania, pitied Acronos for having such human instincts. Chops had hardly any humanity within him while he was a human, and there certainly wasn’t a feeling other than that of reckless hatred within him now.

  In a downward motion, Chops flew toward the black pool. As he was about to hit the oily surface just in front of Acronos, he poised the tail end of his sluggish form and used Acronos’ body as a launching pad by pushing off of him to get a better, more streamlined and quicker dive into the forbidden water. The kick thrust Acronos backward and out of danger as Chops dove into the unknown.

  ***

  Dagana struggled to hold onto the remnants of her thinking mind. Her body began to feel again, and what she felt was intense pain as if the numbing properties of the forbidden pool had begun to change into acid. It was hard to tell if she had her eyes open or not, but then something seemed to be floating in front of her, however slight the shadowy vision was. She stared at it, concentrating on saving what remained of her mind, and then it approached, as if it too had realized what it was looking at, and it probably did, because it was Baz.

  His state was horrendous; the flesh floated around his red skeletal body like that of an unfortunate victim of a piranha attack. His grasp was weak, but there was something about his presence that terrified Dagana, something that elicited ancient memories that she had long since banished and forgotten about: true fear, loathing, and horror. For that instant, she felt like a little girl being told a scary tale around a campfire; a pre-teen shivering as she gave daddy some sugar; a woman beaten severely by her husband—a life lived . . . sometime and somewhere before . . . before being a sentinel.

  Baz grabbed at her in a freakish display of flailing arms and legs and chattering teeth, and then his head was obliterated and Dagana breathed him into her body, though her nose and mouth and even her eyes and ears and every other orifice.

  Baz screamed within her, pounding on her mentality with verbal fists, and at that moment, she knew what true madness was. She knew what was worse than being raped and beaten and left for dead.

  Perhaps it was her will to survive or the new depth of the forbidden abyss, but sound began to issue, a great sound from above like a war cry in reverse. Dagana shifted her head upward to see what the cacophonic sound was coming from. All she could see was a swirling shape drilling down at breakneck speed. With Baz screaming inside her head she thought nothing could fill her with a greater plateau of dread, but the thing that barreled down upon her did just that.

  In that moment as she was grabbed, Dagana gave up. She stopped thinking, though Baz insisted on blaming her for everything. Blaming her for the recklessness that had inhabited the sentinels and turned the In Between to a crossroad of pain and suffering rather than a hidden world of incubation for demon youth to thrive before making their pilgrimage to Hell. He blamed her for his own demise and for the future deaths of their fellow tribesmen. He blamed her for what would inevitably be the destruction of the worlds and the melding of the realms and the growing frustration of the Gods and the wrath they would no doubt unleash. It was all on her, and he screamed and yelled and infiltrated her softened brain as she was ploughed into by the shrieking thing that came from above. It grabbed her tight and just as quickly as it plowed into her, it shifted its position and shot back upward at a speed that equaled Baz’s madcap ranting.

  Dagana lost consciousness.

  Everything went black.

  ***

  The pool had turned into quite a maelstrom after Chops dove in, the squid ink waters sloshing further on shore than the dark, grimy shoreline that had shown where the normal tide broke. Not that such a miniscule pool (what couldn’t even be classified as a pond!) should have a tide.

  The sand was soft and Acronos felt a certain reassurance when he could finally feel it again with his toes. He thought the numbness would never go away, and it was a hell of a difficult feat to walk on phantom feet.

  The monstrous beast they rode in on had become agitated by the fight at the black pool. Perhaps a splash of the numbing waters had gotten onto it. Acronos did what he could to calm the beast, but it was vicious if nothing and if it wanted to swing its oblong head from side to side wh
ipping thick strands of sticky saliva, so be it. Let the thing be mad. Everything else in this damned world was.

  The water settled once again and the strange trees caught warm gusts of air that smelled of Satan’s breath. The odor irritated Acronos, causing his stomach to churn. He was hungry. It had been a long time since they feasted, and now without Dagana he wasn’t sure what to do. How was he to navigate the In Between without her?

  There were vile things about, spying on Acronos from bushes that sprouted like pubic hair and produced flowers that resembled human anatomy in a most grotesque fashion. They watched him as he watched the black pool. From time to time, he shot them a glance that would cause them to shrink into the bizarre bushes as if they feared him. He would have liked just one of the beings to be so bold as to confront him. It would give him great pleasure to kill something.

  Time passed immeasurably since time was not recorded or regarded here, and then something stirred within the pool. Acronos took to his feet and watched intently, hoping the impossible was indeed possible. And in a place like this . . . well, anything was on the table.

  The black pool depressed at the center as a great force swelled, and then, like a malformed missile, Chops emerged with Dagana wrapped in his clutches, her head lolling as the pit ejaculated them onto the bone-fragmented shore nearly plowing their bulk into the awed Acronos who had to take several steps backwards to avoid being crushed.

  ***

  On collision with the ground, Dagana was brought back into consciousness. She drew several breaths in deep wheezing pulls and coughed up a bucket-load of black water, bile, and fragments of Baz’s remains. As his remains were dislodged from within her, they screamed tiny screams until they were all out of her.

  Chops unwrapped his arms from around Dagana, retracted them into his body, then slithered a few feet away where he plopped down onto the ground like a dead fish, numb from the mission to save his master.

  “I can’t believe you made it out of there,” said Acronos.

  Dagana eyed him with daggers. “No thanks to you,” she slurred.

  Acronos’ eyes grew wide. “But I tried to pull you free. I couldn’t—”

  “No, you couldn’t. I’m beginning to wonder why I continue to allow you to live. You have hardly proven yourself and you’ve been with me far longer than Chops.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Chops is loyal and he isn’t afraid of risk. You . . . you have too much humanity. There’s no room for humanity here. Believe me.” Dagana glanced at the pile of puke littered with bits of Baz’s remains, then to the pool, thinking about what they shared that was far too human for their kind, so much so that it not only brought the end of their love, but the eventual shattering of the way of life in the In Between. The hypocrisy was deafening.

  “I won’t let you down. You have to believe me. I am here to serve you.”

  It all sounded great, but Dagana was having a difficult time trusting Acronos. Would he be there to catch her fall? It didn’t seem likely.

  On the other hand, Dagana feared nothing, and now that she had been the first to survive the forbidden pool to the Etherworld, she was that much more fearless. In fact, she didn’t need Acronos. Perhaps it was a mistake even giving him a chance at a life such as hers.

  “Chops,” said Dagana.

  The ever-obedient worm-freak lifted its head from the brief rest it took on the bone-dusted ground, mouth salivating from a mix of numbness and hunger. Dagana liked that, the way her precious worm didn’t talk back or make excuses. That was the kind of legion she needed. Not one made of softies like Acronos. He was too soft in life and it carried over into his becoming, and when it came right down to it, he never became anything but a hideous form like so many rovers of the In Between.

  But Acronos wouldn’t stand a chance on his own, and Dagana didn’t want him interfering with her plans, considering his fragile and suspended state of emotions.

  “Hungry, Chops?”

  Chops produced his wings and lifted his form with the muscles whose use he was rapidly perfecting. He nodded his head, loose jowls dripping like Pavlov’s dogs. He grunted his affirmation.

  Dagana turned her back on Acronos and said, “He’s all yours,” to which Chops wasted not a moment before attacking, ripping, and feasting on Acronos before dropping the remains in the forbidden pool, never to be seen again.

  Dagana had ridden off on their bestial transport, but Chops had no trouble locating her after he was finished with his feast.

  Dagana was very pleased with Chops. She’d thought that she would need someone like herself, or a tribe like the sentinels to acquire power and rule over the In Between, but it was becoming clear that having useful idiots like Chops was a far better and a more prosperous advantage than creating an army of thinking fools.

  Hunger bit her belly with gnashing teeth. Having acquired a taste for human flesh, she considered the food here inedible. She would have to jump the realms and have a feast before seeking out the rest of the tribe. Perhaps she would be fortunate to find another psychotic for her minions.

  33

  He wasn’t sure how he knew which way to go, but Austin finally came to the open expanse he recognized as the place where Baz had strung Audrey up on the crude contraption to suffer. Without water and nourishment, she should have died by now, but Baz assured him that life and death as well as time was suspended in this state and that she would be very alive, even if in intense pain and suffering. Baz had assured him that no level of suffering was enough to cause death.

  On his way to this crossroads, Austin had been approached by several traveling demons, but he held his own either scaring them away or fighting them, in which cases he’d unleashed something from within he never knew he possessed. In the duration of those fights, Austin’s wounds tingled in the strangest way. It was as if the wounds spoke to him, driving him forth and giving him the strength to ward off the demonic creatures that, at a look, should have been able to reduce him to a paste of human matter. But Austin stood his ground, gaining a few more cuts and bruises in the process.

  The crossroads was an open area where several arterial roads met. Austin remained tucked in the foliage watching the demons as they came from the several roads to the main path where some of them headed straight for a huge hollowed out tree bulging with snake-like roots from the perimeter. The demons would carefully navigate the lumps and twists of root to get to the hollowed-out doorway of the tree where they would step inside and disappear.

  Austin now understood why this was called a crossroads aside from the obvious crossing of the main roads of the In Between. He could only imagine where the portal led, and he didn’t really want to find out.

  What Austin found to be particularly egregious and disgusting was what the roving demons did before either taking another of the roads or heading for the portal. There were agonizing screams from the expanse of the crossroads. Suspended from trees, locked in crude torture devices, and fastened to poles or locked in pillories were people and demons alike in all forms of decomposition, all moaning and crying. Austin watched as a gruesome looking bastard entered the quad, weary and gray from his travels. He grinned as if he’d been waiting for this moment all his life, and perhaps ha had been. There was a body minus arms with the head crammed into a hole carved out of a dead tree causing the being to be bent over. The grinning demon wasted no time before sodomizing the poor captor, his screams faint and exhausted, trapped inside the hollow of the decrepit tree.

  Austin cringed. He was standing in a goddamned field of screams and horror and rape.

  Somewhere up there, Audrey was lying in a compromised state. Austin feared for her safety, feared for what a sight she would be once he found her. He feared for what she’d likely been subjected to in the time since Baz restrained her here.

  The demon was quick in his excitement, and when he was finished with the husk he violated, he beat the body just for fun, re-opening old wounds and scars and creating fresh ones to be
re-opened at a later date after another raping by another of Satan’s legions.

  Good God, this is Hell!

  After the demon walked through the portal, Austin cautiously took to the quad. It was difficult to focus considering all the tortured souls around him, asking for his forgiveness in fearful tones as if any one of them expected him to use the same level of disregard and brutality as any other rover. These unfortunates have never seen kindness, and some of them were far beyond pleas and whimpers for they knew that nothing would save them. As eternity stretched on and on they submit themselves eternally and try to forget what can never be forgotten.

  Doing everything he could to pay no mind to the husks that hung from trees, posts, and crude devices, Austin quickly scanned the desperate plane for Audrey. He thought of calling her name, but was wary considering the foul things he’d seen roaming the In Between. He also didn’t want to rouse the perpetual moans and cries of the damned. He would never find Audrey if they were all moaning and wailing at the top of their weary lungs, as several of them already were.

  With Baz, they had come from the opposite direction. He had to place himself in that position as best he could and remember which direction they had walked to her from. She had been suspended high in the air, but he saw no such poles or torturous suspensions, which sent a deep chill through him. Had the beasts of this terrible void pulled her from the crude device Baz had placed her in? Austin could only guess what kind of state she was in, physically and mentally.

  His bite marks itched. It was sickening, but there was little he could do to stop them from dripping pus and blood down his body. He used his shirt to sop the mess up, but they constantly oozed and festered. His blood wasn’t coagulating. The sores weren’t scabbing over. And they were beginning to give him a great deal of pain.