Al’Gamesh faced him. “I will not stand here and wait for you until eternity ends, Ransom. This doorway can not remain open for long. Find this woman, and get back here, if you expect to find your way out still here.”
“This woman, is my wife,” Ransom said, heat in his voice.
“And you have bargained three years of your life to me in exchange for her. Don’t waste yourself unnecessarily. I have plans for you.”
Can’t wait, Ransom thought. But that was a worry for a later time, after Julia was safe. For now, he couldn’t allow himself to think of anything else except saving her and getting out again. Not if he expected to survive.
Speaking of which.
“I need something else from you,” he told Al’Gamesh.
Misty blackness filled the distance that had been between them and then the thing that was Al’Gamesh was inches from his face in a split second’s time. Ransom stared into the depths of darkness and nothingness that existed inside that black cloak.
Al’Gamesh whispered. The deafening roar of it nearly put Ransom on his knees. “OUR BARGAIN IS SET. DO NOT SEEK TO CHANGE IT NOW.”
Ransom breathed, slowly, and had to swallow twice before he found his voice. “Okay, fine, but think about something for a minute. If I go in there, through the Veil, with nothing to protect myself, what are the chances you’ll ever get those three years of service out of me that I’m supposed to pay you?”
Freezing cold slid off Al’Gamesh in waves. “What do you ask?”
“Give me the Orb.”
A hiss was the immediate answer. “You are mad. Insane.”
“My wife has been kidnapped and dragged unwillingly into Hell. I’m bargaining with you to get myself inside so I can save her. Yes, I’m a little insane right now. I’m close to an edge I can’t return from right now, actually, and I know it. But that’s not my point. I want to get out of there with Julia. You want me alive when I do. So help me protect your investment and do what I have to do.”
Al’Gamesh retreated, leaving Ransom shivering as he tried to control his racing heart. There were few things he had ever faced as frightening as Al’Gamesh. And the two of them were—almost—on the same side of the unholy game.
“Fine, Ransom, you will have the Orb. And it will be returned to me when you come back.”
“Of course.” Ransom doubted he’d be able to deliver on that promise. The Orb was the only item he knew of with enough power to get him out of Hell in one piece. Except for maybe his old sidearm. But he had mothballed that weapon after meeting Julia. He wasn’t even sure where it was, now. But he knew where the Orb was.
Al’Gamesh held out an arm, and from the end of the sleeve appeared a floating, shining silver sphere about the size of Ransom’s fist.
It floated across the room from Al’Gamesh to him, and Ransom plucked it from the air. It felt heavy in his hand, heavier than he remembered. It shined brightly one last time, then turned dull and gray in his hand. Perfect.
He put it into one of the front pockets of his coat. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, Ransom. This is no favor. This is business.”
“I know. Thanks, anyway.”
Al’Gamesh didn’t answer, but Ransom actually had the feeling that the creature was surprised by Ransom’s gratitude.
The Veil stood open. He was armed, so to speak, with the Orb. And Julia was waiting. Time to go.
He stepped up to the shimmering liquid surface of the doorway. Holding in a deep breath he reached his hand out to it. It seeped over and around his skin, sucked at his fingers, pulled at him, drew him forward, and he took another step, and another.
And then he stepped into Hell.
Chapter 3
There are a lot of depictions of Hell, each one more poetic than the last. Pit of souls. Blasted wasteland. Lakes of fire. Landscapes made of broken and tortured bodies. Rivers of blood and tears.
None of them even come close.
Ransom stood on a field of flowers growing from cracks in the hard clay. They were black roses, with short, hooked thorns, and the buds were filled with mouths. They struck out hungrily at his feet as he stepped through them, sucking and nipping at him. Ransom’s heavy boots kept them from getting at his flesh. The ones he stepped on screeched in pain and gushed black ichor.
The air was thick with ash. It floated everywhere, gray and hot. He was choking on it in seconds and had to stop to take out a handkerchief from an inside pocket to cover his mouth. He tied it around his face as he tried to get his bearings. The sky was a red that never existed anywhere in nature, full of black swirling clouds.
And all along the distant horizon, fires blazed tall and eternal.
Ransom knew the basic layout of Hell. Everyone in the business did. And because he did, he knew he was nowhere near where he needed to be.
He needed an Imp.
The Imps were the little gophers of Hell. Almost literally. They took care of the place, ushered the dead to their proper holding area, kept out intruders. Intruders like Ransom.
He surveyed the rock-hard earth at his feet where the gluttonous flowers thinned out. Sure enough, he found just what he wanted.
Waiting for the right moment he reached down quickly, between the grasping mouths of the flowers, and grabbed into the fresh furrow the Imp had been digging under his feet. One of the roses bit into his wrist deeply. It ripped from the ground, its teeth dug deeply into his flesh, and hung limply from his skin as he pulled the Imp up by its collar. Ransom tore the flower off and tossed it aside.
The Imp squirmed in his grip, little hands trying to pry his fingers loose from the back of its garment. It was more of a filthy rag than a piece of clothing, really, that wrapped the Imp from shoulders to crotch. It had sagging blue skin, and was big for its kind, which was to say it might have measured two feet tall if it stood erect. Its yellowed and cracked teeth jutted out of its mouth at odd angles from an underbite. And it glared at Ransom.
“You lemme go,” the Imp demanded, shaking its fist.
“I no let you go,” Ransom mocked in an imitation of the Imp’s speech pattern. “You gonna show me how to get someplace.”
The Imp gave up its efforts to force Ransom’s fist open and crossed its arms over its chest. “Why me do that? You trespasser. Trespasser no belong here.”
“There’s someone else here who doesn’t belong, either, Imp. My wife. You’re going to take me to her.”
“Am not.” The Imp waggled its head.
“Yes, you are.”
“Am not.”
Ransom shook the little creature. He wasn’t gentle about it either.
When he stopped, the Imp’s eyes rolled around in opposite directions. “You going to show me what I want to see now?” Ransom asked.
The Imp’s purple tongue lolled out of its mouth, but it nodded its head to show agreement.
“Good.” Ransom smiled with relief. Without the Imp’s special method of travel, he might have been days climbing over the landscape of Hell to get to where he wanted to go. “My wife. Now.”
“When your wife die?” the Imp asked in a petulant voice.
“She didn’t die. Someone brought her here before her time.”
The Imp’s yellow eyes got very wide. “OOooh,” it said, slowly. “You mean that wife.”
Ransom shook the Imp again. “What wife? What do you mean?”
“Stop it! Stop shaking Romock!”
“I’ll shake you until those rotten teeth fall out of your skull, you little toadstool! What do you know about my wife!”
Ransom stopped shaking Romock when he heard its teeth clacking roughly together. Then he waited.
The little Imp hung its head and almost looked like it wanted to cry. But it answered Ransom’s question. “Bad things bring woman to here. She not dead, but she here.”
“Where?” Ransom asked through gritted teeth.
Romock sighed out a nasty smelling breath. “In caves.”
“Caves? What caves?�
�
“Caves where you no go!”
The Imp reached up behind its head and grabbed Ransom’s hand, then it pulled itself over until its teeth could bite.
It clamped onto Ransom with a painful sinking in of its sharp, pointed canines. Ransom cried out and shook his arm wildly, trying to get the Imp to let go.
Which was what the thing had wanted.
Ransom shook Romock loose, and the Imp fell to the ground, laughing and digging into the dirt under the black flowers.
But Ransom was faster. He grabbed hold of the Imp’s left foot and pulled until it came out of the ground with a loud sucking sound.
This time Ransom grabbed it by its scrawny neck and squeezed. Romock gagged, and choked, and scrabbled at Ransom’s wrist. Ransom squeezed harder and shook the thing again, unmercifully. “You little bastard! I’ll choke you to within an inch of your miserable little life if you do that again.”
He stopped shaking Romock but still held on tight to the Imp’s neck as he examined his right hand. The Imp had bit him deeply, and the puncture wounds bled, but it wasn’t too severe. It hurt, but that was all.
Ransom let up on the pressure he was putting on the hateful little creature’s neck and the Imp sucked in a deep breath. “You…you not nice man,” Romock said to him.
“No. I’m not a nice man. I’m a man you don’t mess with. I’m the guy who puts people here in Hell. People, and non-people, and all kinds of things nastier than little Romock, so little Romock had better not mess with me anymore!”
To Ransom’s surprise, Romock smiled at him. “You guy who put people in Hell. Someday, you die and be in Hell with Romock too.”
“Someday,” Ransom acknowledged. “But not today. Today, you’re going to take me to my wife and then I’m leaving.”
Romock glared at him. But nodded.
Chapter 4
Hell is immense.
Imps have free run of Hell. The souls of the dead and damned are restricted to a certain area, where they exist in pain and misery. The demons of Hell have their own designated places of existence, when they’re not on Earth. Satan, of course, runs the place and can go wherever he wants within Hell’s boundaries. Visitors are escorted in, and back out. But the little Imps go here, there, and everywhere, pretty much at will.
Traveling in Hell is a matter of wanting to be somewhere. That’s why the souls of the dead can’t ever leave the place they're bound to. They don’t know any of the other places in Hell. They can’t want to be somewhere they don’t know exists. The Imps know everywhere. And when they want to be in a different place, they think about being there, and then they are.
Romock closed its little Imp eyes tightly, stuck its tongue out between its teeth, and thought about the place Ransom’s wife had been taken.
And just like that, they were somewhere else.
Ransom stood on a cliff face overlooking a barren plain below. A narrow ledge of rock ran under his feet, along the face of the cliff in both directions. He hugged the cliff wall, the sheer drop below into nothingness taking his breath away. Romock sniggered at him until Ransom squeezed its neck harder.
To his right there was a cave opening, and Ransom thought that maybe it was the one Romock had spoken of. Until he saw the naked man step out and onto the ledge.
The man was dead, of course, and this was only a representation of the guy’s soul. The essence of the man’s self-image as he remembered himself from life. He was tall, pale skinned, and scrawny. His nude body was coated in sweat, and his light blonde hair was filthy and stiff with it. Next to the man walked a beautiful woman, as naked as the guy was. At a second glance, Ransom changed that opinion. She wasn’t just beautiful. She was the kind of woman that Playboy and Penthouse would have paid top dollar for. The kind of woman a guy would do anything for, just to be allowed to touch her.
The woman made it painfully obvious that she was offering herself to the man. And the man’s face twisted in agony the more she did. She kept pushing up against the man, humping him, putting his hands on her body, forcing him to do things to her that would have made any man burn with desire. But for this man, Ransom could see, what she was doing was torture. His eyes grew wide and glassy and terrified as he slowly gave in to her advances. The man’s stiff erection quivered as it pierced her dripping cleft.
And then, pulling away violently, he turned and jumped off the cliff into the ashy air to fell to the plains far below.
This was Hell. Your choices in life were fed back to you again and again. Ransom knew that. But it was still disturbing to see. That guy had probably cheated on his wife with this woman, ruined his marriage, ruined his life, maybe even killed himself over it, and the choice was being offered to him again and again. Either that or the woman was the guy’s sister. Hard to tell what agonies plagued a man in life.
She looked over at Ransom. And winked.
Ransom looked quickly away from her. The fewer…people you engaged in Hell, the better. On his left, another cave burrowed back into the cliff face.
“This way?” he asked Romock. The Imp nodded. And smiled. Ransom did not like that smile.
“You’re coming with me, Imp, so I wouldn’t be so happy.”
Romock snickered. “Go in, go in. Romock brought you where you wanted.”
“If you’re lying to me, I will kill you. I know how hard it is to kill an Imp. But I’ll enjoy every minute that it takes me to make it happen, got it?”
Romock snickered again.
There was nothing for it but to go into the cave, so Ransom stepped in.
The walls of the cave were lined with bones. Human bones. Animal bones. Ransom even recognized the bones of a Megolith, and what might have been a dragon’s skull. Nothing would surprise him. Not here.
Torches lined the walls, giving off an oily black smoke and very little actual light. They created shadows that wavered over the skeletal pieces and gave the illusion of movement to things long dead. Ransom stepped carefully as the cave floor sloped down, and down further still.
At its end the cave opened up into a round room. An empty, round room.
Ransom swung Romock back against the wall, knocking the Imp’s head against some poor soul’s spinal column, shattering several vertebrae and making the Imp scream. “You said she was here!”
“Don’t blame Romock for nothing, Ransom, truly” a whispery voice said behind him. “I tolds him to bring you to me first.”
Ransom looked back over his shoulder and saw a form materialize against the far wall. It had been cloaked against the bones, like a chameleon blending into its background.
“Lan Protegux,” Ransom named the demon. It stood hunched over, its massive arms trailing hands against the floor, muscles made of thick cords rippling beneath its thin skin. Its head was elongated like a dog’s, thick canine teeth poking out of its mouth, pointed ears laid back flat.
It smiled at Ransom. “What an honor that I woulds be remembered by you, truly an honor.”
Ransom held tight to his little blue Imp as he turned to face Lan Protegux. “I remember you, Lan. I sent you back to Hell, what was it, twice?”
“It was three times, truly, but who is counting, right?” The demon smiled and stepped closer to Ransom with a rolling gait, its hands knuckling against the floor.
“That’s close enough, Lan,” Ransom threatened.
Lan Protegux stopped where it was, but then smiled. “What is you goings to do, Ransom? You can’t sends me to Hell again. I’s already here.”
“I just want my wife, Lan. After that, I’m gone again.”
“Oh, yes. Your wife. She is a lovely woman. Truly lovely. I can see why you woulds fight your way through Hell to saves her, truly I can.”
Ransom didn’t have time for this. “I can’t stay and reminisce with you, Lan. I need to go get her.”
Lan Protegux nodded its long head. “Yes, truly you do. There are some very nasty…things thats are holding her here.”
Ransom lost control of himself f
or a second and nearly crushed Romock’s neck in his hand. “What things, Lan? Where is she?”
The demon shrugged. “I knows where she is, Ransom. Truly I do. But I should tell you? Why?”
“Because I’m going to tear through this place with my bare hands until I get to her, and you know I will. You know I can.”
“But, Ransom, you do not understands me. I wants you to do exactly that. Truly.”
Ransom knew he was missing something. “What are you talking about?”
The demon stepped closer still. “You is one of the few beings who could stands a chance against him, yes? Truly? You will takes him down, and then you will gets your wife back.”
Take…him down?
Ransom couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You want me to take out Satan?”
Lan Protegux smiled. “I knews you was smart, Ransom. Do this thing for me. You will haves your wife. You will haves money, and power, and anything you wants.”
Ransom almost laughed. “That’s it? Just take out Satan for you? Just kill the most powerful demon in creation? And then what, go spit in God’s eye?”
“Whatever makes you happy, truly,” the demon said, spreading its hands wide. “But Satan first.”
“No,” Ransom said. “This is not a suicide mission for me. I’m here for my wife. That’s all.”
Lan Protegux sneered at him, growling. “You will do this for me. Truly.”
“No, Lan, I won’t.”
Ransom turned to go.
The demon hissed behind him. “Kills him.”
From the walls appeared another four demons, hidden with the same camouflage technique Lan Protegux had used. All of them had twisted, deformed bodies, long and segmented legs carrying muscular masses of flesh, long arms sprouting from heavy shoulders, heads with faces that had been modeled by some insane artist. All of them carried long, twisted daggers.
Ransom For Hire - Appointment In Hell Page 2