by Rice, Anne
“Yes, and it is terrible. I created it and I run it to make whole again the souls of the just and the unjust, those who had suffered and those who had done cruelty. And the only lesson of that Hell is Love.”
I was frightened, as frightened as I had been when we went into Jerusalem.
“He loves my souls when they come to Him,” said Memnoch. “And He sees each one as a justification of His Way!”
I smiled bitterly.
“War is magnificent to Him, and disease is like the color purple in His eyes, and self-sacrifice seems to Him a personal magnification of His Glory! As if He’s ever done it! He tries to overwhelm me with numbers. In the name of the cross, more injustice has been perpetrated than for any other single cause or emblem or philosophy or creed on Earth.
“And I empty Hell so fast, soul by soul, by speaking truth about what humans suffer and humans know and what humans can do that my souls go flooding through His gates.
“And who do you think comes into Hell feeling most cheated? Most angry and unforgiving? The child who died in a gas chamber in an extermination camp? Or a warrior with blood up to his elbows who was told that if he exterminated the enemies of the state he would find his place in Valhalla, Paradise, or Heaven?”
I didn’t answer. I was quiet, listening to him, watching him.
He sat forward, commanding my attention even more deliberately, and as he did he changed, changed before my eyes from the Devil, goat-legged, cloven-hoofed beast-man, to the angel, Memnoch, Memnoch in his loose and unimportant robe, his fair eyes beaming at me beneath his golden scowling brows.
“Hell is where I straighten things out that He has made wrong,” he said. “Hell is where I reintroduce a frame of mind that might have existed had suffering never destroyed it! Hell is where I teach men and women that they can be better than He is.
“But that’s my punishment, Hell—for arguing with Him, that I must go there and help the souls to fulfill their cycle as He sees it, that I must live there with them! And that if I don’t help them, if I don’t school them, they may be there forever!
“But Hell is not my battlefield.
“The earth is my battlefield. Lestat, I fight Him not in Hell but on Earth. I roam the world seeking to tear down every edifice He has erected to sanctify self-sacrifice and suffering, to sanctify aggression and cruelty and destruction. I lead men and women from churches and temples to dance, to sing, to drink, to embrace one another with license and love. I do everything I can to show up the lie at the heart of His religions! I try to destroy the lies He’s allowed to grow as the Universe Unfolds Itself.
“He is the only one who can enjoy suffering with impunity! And that’s because He’s God and He doesn’t know what it means and He never has known. He’s created beings more conscientious and loving than Himself. And the final victory over all human evil will come only when He is dethroned, once and for all, demystified, ignored, repudiated, thrown aside, and men and women seek for the good and the just and the ethical and the loving in each other and for all.”
“They’re trying to do that, Memnoch! They are!” I said. “That’s what they mean when they say they hate Him. That’s what Dora meant when she said ‘Ask Him why He allows all this!’ When she made her hands into fists!”
“I know. Now, do you want to help me fight Him and his Cross or not?
“Will you go with me from Earth to Heaven to that filthy Hell of painful recognition, filthy with its obsession with His suffering! You will not serve me in one place or the other or the other. But in all three. And like me, you may soon come to find Heaven just about as unbearable in its pitch as Hell. Its bliss will make you eager to heal the evil He has done, you will seek Hell to work on those tortured confused souls, to help them up from the morass and into the Light. When you’re in the Light you can’t forget them! That’s what it means to serve me.”
He paused, then he asked:
“Do you have the courage to see it?”
“I want to see it.”
“I warn you, it’s Hell.”
“I am just beginning to imagine.…”
“It won’t exist forever. The day will come when either the world itself is blown to pieces by His human worshippers or when all who die are Illuminated and surrender to Him, and go straight into His arms.
“A perfect world, or a world destroyed, one or the other—someday will come the end of Hell. And then I shall go back to Heaven, content to stay there for the first moment of my existence, since the beginning of Time.”
“Take me with you into Hell, please. I want to see it now.”
He reached out and stroked my hair, put his two hands on the sides of my face. They felt evenly warm and caressing. A sense of tranquility came over me.
“So many times in the past,” he said, “I almost had your soul! I saw it almost spring loose from your body, and then the strong preternatural flesh, the preternatural brain, the hero’s courage, would hold together the entire monster and the soul would flicker and blaze inside, beyond my grasp. And now, now I risk plunging you into it before you need to go, plunging you into it when you can choose to go or come, in the hope that you can endure what you see and hear and return and be with me and help me.”
“Was there ever a time when my soul would have soared to Heaven, past you, past the whirlwind?”
“What do you think?”
“I remember … once, when I was alive.…”
“Yes?”
“A golden moment, when I was drinking and talking with my good friend, Nicolas, and we were in an inn together in my village in France. And there came this golden moment when everything seemed tolerable and independently beautiful of any horror that could be or ever had been done. Just a moment, a drunken moment. I described it once in writing; I tried to reinvoke it. It was a moment in which I could have forgiven anything, and given anything, and perhaps when I didn’t even exist: when all I saw was beyond me, outside me. I don’t know. Maybe if death had come at that very moment—”
“But fear came, fear when you realized that even if you died you might not understand anything, that there might be nothing.…”
“… yes. And now I fear something worse. That there is something, certainly, and it may be worse than nothing at all.”
“You’re right to think so. It doesn’t take much of a thumb-screw or the nails or the fire to make men and women wish for oblivion. Not much at all. Imagine, to wish that you had never lived.”
“I know the concept. I fear knowing the feeling again.”
“You’re wise to fear, but you’ve never been more ready for what I have to reveal.”
TWENTY-ONE
The wind swept the rocky field, the great centrifugal force dissolving and releasing those souls who struggled to be free of it at last as they assumed distinct human shape and pounded on the Gates of Hell, or wandered along the impossibly high walls, amid the flicker of fires within, reaching out for and imploring each other.
All voices were lost in the sound of the wind. Souls in human shape fought and struggled, others roamed as if in search of something small and lost and then lifted their arms and let the whirlwind once again take hold of them.
The shape of a woman, thin and pale, reached out to gather a wandering, weeping flock of baby souls, some not old enough yet to walk on two legs. The spirits of children wandered, crying piteously.
We drew near the gates, near narrow broken arches rising as black and fine as onyx worked by medieval craftsmen. The air was filled with soft and bleating cries. Everywhere spirit hands reached to take hold of us; whispers covered us like the gnats and flies of the battlefield. Ghosts tore at my hair and coat.
Help us, let us in, damn you, curse you, cursed, take me back, free me, I curse you forever, damn you, help me, help … a rising roar of opprobrium.
I struggled to clear the way for my eyes. Tender faces drifted before me, mouths issuing hot and mournful gasps against my skin.
The gates weren’t solid gate
s at all but gateways.
And beyond stood the Helpful Dead, seemingly more solid, only more vividly colored and distinct, but diaphanous still, beckoning to the lost souls, calling to them by name, howling over the fierce wind that they must find the way inside, that this was not Perdition.
Torches were held high; lamps burnt atop the walls. The sky was torn with streaks of lightning, and the great mystic shower of sparks that comes from cannons both modern and ancient. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the air. Again and again the lights flared as if in some magical display to enchant a Chinese court of old, and then the blackness rolled back, thin and substanceless and cold all around us.
“Come inside,” sang the Helpful Dead, the well-formed, well-proportioned ghosts—ghosts as determined as Roger had been, in garbs of all times and all nations, men and women, children, old ones, no body opaque, yet none weak, all reaching past us into the valley beyond, trying to assist the struggling, the cursing, the foundering. The Helpful Dead of India in their silk saris, of Egypt in cotton robes, of kingdoms long gone bequeathing jeweled and magnificent courtly garments; costumes of all the world, the feathered confections we call savage, the dark robes of priests, self-conceptions of all the world, from the crudest to the most magnificent.
I clung to Memnoch. Was this beautiful, or was it not hideous, this throng of all nations and times? The naked, the black, the white, the Asian, those of all races, reaching out, moving with confidence through the lost and confused souls!
The ground itself hurt my feet; blackened, rocky marl strewn with shells. Why this? Why?
In all directions slopes rose or gently fell away, to run into sheer cliffs rising beyond or opening into chasms so deep and filled with smoky dissolving gloom they seemed the abyss itself.
Doorways flickered and flashed with light; stairways wound precipitously up and down the stark, steep walls, leading out of sight, to vales I could only glimpse, or to gushing streams golden and steaming and red with blood.
“Memnoch, help me!” I whispered. I dared not let go of the veil. I couldn’t cover both ears. The howls were picking at my soul as if they were axes that could tear away pieces of it. “Memnoch, this is unbearable!”
“We will all help you,” cried the Helpful Ghosts, a cluster of them closing in on all sides to kiss and to embrace me, their eyes wide with concern. “Lestat has come. Lestat is here. Memnoch’s brought him back. Come into Hell.”
Voices rose and fell and overlapped, as if a multitude said the Rosary, each from a different starting point, voices having become chant.
“We love you.”
“Don’t be afraid. We need you.”
“Stay with us.”
“Shorten our time.”
I felt their soft sweet soothing touch even as the lurid light terrified me, and the explosions blazed across the sky and the smell of smoke rose in my nostrils.
“Memnoch!” I clung to his blackened hand as he pulled me along, his profile remote, his eyes seeming to sternly survey his kingdom.
And there below us, as the mountain was cleft, lay the plains without end, covered with wandering and arguing dead, with the weeping and lost, and seeking, and afraid, with those being led and gathered and comforted by the Helpful Ghosts, and others running headlong as if they could escape, only to find themselves tumbling through the spirit multitudes, in hopeless circles.
From where did this hellish light come, this magnificent and relentless illumination? Showers of sparks, sudden bursts of burning red, flames, comets arching over the peaks.
Howls rose, echoing off the cliffs. Souls wailed and sang. The Helpful Dead rushed to aid the fallen to their feet, to usher those who would at last come to this or that stairs or gate or cave mouth or pathway.
“I curse Him, I curse Him, I curse Him!” It echoed off the mountains and through the valleys.
“No justice, not after what was done!”
“You cannot tell me.…”
“… someone has to make right.…”
“Come, I have your hand,” Memnoch said, and on he walked, the same stern look on his face as he led me quickly down an echoing stairs, steep, dangerously narrow, and winding about the cliff.
“I can’t bear this!” I cried out. But my voice was snatched away. My right hand plunged into my coat again to feel the bulk of the veil, and then I reached out for the pitted and crumbling wall. Were these carvings in the rocks? Were these places where other hands had clawed or tried to climb? The screaming and the wails blotted out my reason. We had come again to yet another valley.
Or was it a world, as vast and complex in its own right as Heaven? For here were myriad palaces and towers and arches as before, in colors of sombre brown, and burnt sienna, and ochre, and burnished if not blackened gold, and rooms filled with spirits of all ages and nations again, engaged in argument, discourse, struggle, or even song, some holding each other like newfound friends in the midst of woe, uniformed soldiers of ancient wars and modern wars, women in the shapeless draped black of the Holy Land, the souls of the modern world in their store-made finery now covered with dust and soot, so that all that blazed was muted in the blaze, as if no color could shine forth itself in its more baleful glory. They wept and patted each other’s faces, and others nodded as they screamed their wrath, fists clenched.
Souls in ragged monks’ habits of coarse brown, nuns with the stiff white wimples intact, princes in puffed sleeves of velvet, naked men who walked as though they had never known clothes, dresses of gingham and old lace, of modern glittering silks and chemical fabrics sheer and thick, soldiers’ olive green coats, or armour of gleaming bronze, peasants’ tunics of crude cloth, or fine tailored wool suits of modern fashion, gowns of silver; hair of all colors tangled and mingled in the wind; faces of all colors; the old knelt with hands clasped, bald heads pink and tenderly wrinkled at the neck, and the thin white soul-bodies of those who had starved in life drank out of the streams as dogs might do it, with their mouths, and others lay back, eyes half shut against the rocks and gnarled trees, singing and dreaming, and praying.
My eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom with every second. More details leapt into my vision, more comprehension clarified each square inch or foot of what I beheld! For around each true soul, a dozen figures that danced or sang or wailed were no more than images projected from that soul and to that soul for it to commune with.
The horrid figure of a woman consumed in flames was no more than a chimera for the howling souls who plunged into the fire, seeking to free her from the stake, to stamp out the flames that ate her hair, to rescue her from her unspeakable agony! It was the Witches Place. They were all burning! Save them! Oh, God, her hair is on fire!
Indeed the soldiers stoking the cannon and covering their ears now as they made the shot were but an illusion for those true legions weeping on their knees, and a hulk of a giant wielding an ax was but a phantom for those who stared at him in recognition and stupefaction, seeing in him themselves.
“I cannot … I cannot look!”
Monstrous images of murder, torture, flashed before me so hot they burnt my face. Phantoms were dragged to their deaths in pots of boiling pitch, soldiers sank on their knees, eyes wide, a prince of some lost Persian kingdom screamed and leapt into the air, his arms out, his black eyes full of reflected fire.
The wails, the whispers, took on the urgency of protest, and question, and discovery. All around were particular voices if only one had the courage to hear, to pick the themes fine as steel thread from the raging dirge.
“Yes, yes, and I thought, and I knew …”
“… my darlings, my little ones …”
“… into your arms, because you didn’t, you never …”
“… and I all the time I thought and you …”
“Love you, love you, love you, yes, and always … and no, you didn’t know. You didn’t know, you didn’t know.”
“… and always thought that it was what I should, but I knew, I felt …�
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“… the courage to turn and say that it wasn’t …”
“We didn’t know! We didn’t know.”
It was blended finally into that one incessant cry.
We Did Not Know!
Before me the wall of a mosque rose, crowded with those screaming and covering their heads as the plaster came down upon them, the roar of the artillery deafening. Phantoms all.
We didn’t know, we didn’t know, the voices of the souls wailed. The Helpful Dead gathered on their knees, tears streaming down their faces … “Yes, we understand, you understand.”
“And that year, just to go home then and be with …”
“Yes …”
I fell forward, my foot striking a rock, and pitching me into the middle of a swarm of soldiers on their hands and knees, weeping as they clutched at one another and the wraithlike phantoms of the conquered, the slain, the starved, all rocking and crying together in one voice.
There came a chain of explosions, each more violent than the one before, such as only the modern world can make. The sky was light as day if day could be colorless and merciless and then dissolve into flickering darkness.
Darkness Visible.
“Help, help me out of this,” I cried, but they didn’t seem to hear or notice my screams, and when I looked for Memnoch, I saw only a pair of elevator doors slide open suddenly, and before me loomed a great modern room full of elaborate chandeliers and buffed floors and carpets without end. The hard polished glitter of our machine-made world. Roger came running towards me.
Roger, in all his dandified finery of purple silk jacket and tightly tailored pants, of perfumed hair, and manicured hands.
“Lestat,” he cried. “Terry is here, they are here. Lestat.” He clung to my coat, the very eyes I’d seen in the ghost and in the human in my arms, staring at me, breath on my face, the room dissolving into smoke, the dim spirit of Terry with her bright bottle-blond hair, throwing her arms about his neck, her face open with amazement, her pink lips speechless, Memnoch’s wing touching down, shutting me off from them, the floor cracking open.