by Scott Reeves
“Thank you, Nigel,” Paula said. She didn’t even try to stop him. Stacy was out there, boiling alive, and had to be rescued. And right now, it seemed poor Nigel was the only one with the fortitude to brave the lava and manage to keep enough wits about him to find her.
He simply nodded at her, stepped into the lava and sank from view. The bright orange molten rock oozed in to cover all traces of his departure.
CHAPTER ELEVEN – The Beast
AFTER WENDING THEIR way through another maze of tunnels hewn from solid rock, Diabolus led Jason into another large cavern. This one wasn’t nearly as large as the cavern that held the lake of fire, nor the torture cavern, but it was large nonetheless.
And it was filled with men and women copulating. From one end of the cavern to the other, naked young couples writhed on the rocky floor, thrashing against one another, lost in the throes of ecstasy. Like those in the lake of fire, these people were also boiling, but with hot passion rather than pain. Moans and shrieks echoed through this cavern as well, but they were inspired by lust rather than agony.
As Jason surveyed the cavern, he squirmed uncomfortably as an irresistible tide of desire washed over him. He tried to stay calm, but his trembling voice gave him away as he asked, “I thought this was supposed to be Hell. These people aren’t suffering.”
Diabolus intoned, “For it is written: ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ These people are fulfilling God’s directive.”
“Oh, fuck,” Jason gasped, horrified as he realized the import of what he was seeing. “You people are breeding down here! You’re breeding children who will grow into a life of torture!” People were literally being born into Hell. And they were doing it willingly.
Two young women walked into the cavern. They saluted Diabolus and smiled at Jason as they passed.
Diabolus looked significantly at Jason’s rebelliously swollen crotch. He pointed to the two women, little more than girls, really, who had just entered. “Take one of them. Do your duty. Your flesh is clearly willing.”
Jason shielded himself with his hands. He suddenly felt as ridiculous as he probably looked, standing there wearing only his sweat-soaked underwear and sporting a flaming erection against his will. “Fuck off!” he hissed at Diabolus.
From the corner of his eye, Jason saw unusual movement. Looking in that direction, he saw a dark opening to his right, at the far side of the cavern. From the darkened maw, a long tentacle of rubbery flesh with a rounded bulb at its tip groped outward, hovering above the ground. Apparently something was in the shadows of that far blackness, extending an appendage into the cavern.
The two women who had just smiled at Jason were walking toward the reaching tentacle. When they drew near, one of them knelt and lay back on the ground, spread-eagled. The tentacle dipped down between her spread legs and penetrated her. It thrust in and out in a bastardized version of sex.
Jason whirled away, sickened. “What the hell?”
“Those two are giving themselves to the Beast. They will give birth to my Minions.” Diabolus indicated the two winged creatures that had been escorting them throughout this horrific tour of this underworld.
Jason shook his head. “No, no.” Those winged, skittering, stinging monsters were born of human mothers and some nightmarish beast he hadn’t even seen yet? “No, that’s not possible. It’s just not genetically possible.”
Diabolus smiled. “I know nothing of genetics. But surely you cannot deny the evidence before your eyes?”
Jason thought he was going to be sick all over again. “Are you done with our tour yet? If not, let’s get on with it. I can’t wait to see what you’ve got planned for the big finale.” He clung to his sarcasm like a life raft, because right now, in this insane place, it was all he had left.
But Diabolus absorbed Jason’s sarcasm without comment, rendering it impotent. The tall devilish man merely turned and left the cavern, beckoning for Jason to follow.
Diabolus, Jason and their two winged escorts wended their way through more tunnels, passing a steady stream of naked young people headed to who-knew what sort of perversity in this purgatory. Before, he’d seen them as possible allies. Now, he was beginning to see them as willing accomplices in their own degradation. They were disgusting.
As they trudged toward their next destination, Jason began hearing the tortured screams of the poor people boiling in the cavern of lava. So they were drawing close to where this ghastly tour had started. He was certain of it. That dreadful cacophonic wailing was utterly distinctive. He would never forget it. Somewhere mixed in that unending drone of agony were the screams of his friends as they were boiled alive, unable to die.
Through a wide opening up ahead, he could see the orange glow of the molten earth; he could feel its heat.
But apparently the lava cavern wasn’t their destination. Diabolus stepped into a side tunnel and they walked for a good mile. As they walked, the tunnel sloped gradually upward. The tunnel apparently ran parallel to the lava cavern, because Jason could feel its heat through the solid rock: the wall to his left radiated a very uncomfortable heat.
Soon the tunnel ended, issuing onto a wide cliff that looked out over another lake of lava. The lava bubbled about fifty feet below, filling yet another immense cavern. To his left at the far end of the cliff, there was an opening in the rock wall through which could be heard the cacophony of shrieks and wails.
So, Jason speculated, they must be next door to the lake of fire where his friends were.
To his right, the cliff widened. Several men walked among piles of huge square sheets made of a translucent, paper-thin material. Each pile was as tall as a man. Given the gossamer thinness of the sheets, Jason thought there must be thousands of them in each pile.
They were sheets of skin.
Jason knew this because the men on the ledge were using blades of chipped stone to peel the shedding flesh from the hide of an enormous creature that filled the cavern. The creature rose from the lake of lava below, and was so huge that it reached as high as the ledge and even higher, almost to the roof of the cavern high above.
Its hide was pale white and blubbery. It looked like nothing so much as some sort of horrifically large albino whale. There was even a huge eye, tall as a man and just as wide, that was on a level with the ledge and peered at Jason, unblinking.
But it wasn’t a whale. Tentacles radiated down at the level of the lava, dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, immensely thick cables of blubbery flesh that snaked away down into the lava, or into openings that peppered the cavern walls, apparently reaching into the farthest corners of this nightmarish realm. Somewhere on this creature’s bulk, Jason assumed there was even a huge tentacular cock that reached into the orgy room he had so recently left.
No, this thing wasn’t a whale. More like a monstrous octopus, a grotesque accident of evolution that lived far beneath the ground, swimming in molten earth rather than water.
The creature apparently shed its skin at a prodigious rate, requiring a team of men to tend it and scrape off the dead skin, making enormous piles of it.
“Behold the magnificent Beast,” intoned Diabolus, his eyes aflame with a zealous pride.
“This just gets better and better,” Jason sighed.
“The Beast,” Diabolus continued, “who called to my ancestor from deep within the Earth a thousand and more years ago, offering salvation. Answering the call, the people dug down to him. We dug deep, deep down, much deeper than we are now, where we found the Beast and the lake of fire, to which we gave ourselves. Over the centuries, we’ve been moving back up, moving the Beast and the lake ever upward. It is our precious Beast that makes it possible for us to live in the lake, that our minds might be pure when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ returns to take us to Heaven.”
Jason barked a laugh. “You people think you’re Christians?”
Diabolus cast a withering look at Jason that caused him to take a step back. “Of course we’re Christians. We are the only true Christians i
n the world. The Beast, by allowing us to suffer without death, has given us the way to remain pure until Christ’s return. Soon, we will bring this gift to the rest of the world, allowing all sinners to join us in the lake.”
Nigel’s words echoed in Jason’s head. “The seal must not be broken. What’s inside must not get out.” Suddenly, the words he’d once mocked took on a dreadful importance. Though he thought he knew the answer, he had to ask. “What do you mean?”
Diabolus smiled. “We have been bound to remain here by wards set in place long ago by agents of the devil. But the master of the wards is now inside. Sin has led him astray, as it always does to men. We sense him, and we will find where he is hidden.” As he spoke, his words grew increasingly maniacal, a zealot caught in the throes of his beliefs. “Soon, he will be in our grasp. My minions have burned their way almost to the surface, to the very edge of the wards. Some have already gotten beyond the wards, when the wards briefly fell.”
Jason recalled the winged creatures they’d first encountered in the chasm, melting the ceiling as if trying to reach the surface.
Diabolus continued, eyes gleaming, “We are ready. His blood in the wards is the circuit. His body and life is the battery that powers the circuit. When he is found, the circuit will be broken and the way to salvation will be opened for the entire world.” He cast an insane leer on Jason. “We are doing God’s work, down here. And you are a part of it.”
Jason knew he should be worried by that last statement, but his mind had latched on to something else. “What a minute,” he said. “How do you know about batteries and circuits? They weren’t invented until hundreds of years after you came down here.”
Diabolus took the sudden switch of topic in stride. “You’d be surprised by the sort of things that find their way to us here beneath the ground, carried by the currents of underground rivers or falling through the cracks as the Earth shifts and settles. Radios. Televisions. Toys. Cell phones. Oh, yes, the world has truly become a place of marvels. We’ve been listening, and learning.”
There was sudden motion as the Beast moved closer to the ledge and fastened its unblinking gaze on Jason, seeming to peer into the very depths of his being.
Diabolus moved to the edge and lovingly stroked the Beast’s hide. “And now, young Jason, we come to the true reason you’ve been spared from the lake.” He smiled a predatory smile. “You are a special person. Like me and my ancestor before me, your mind is open to the Beast. He can come into you, and you into him. You will become a part of each other.”
Jason felt a strange sensation, which he could only describe as a tugging in his mind. For a brief moment, he seemed to be staring at himself from outside. Staring at himself from the perspective of that monstrously huge, unblinking eye hovering a few feet away.
His blood went cold, and he scrambled backward. “No!” he shouted.
The two winged creatures that had been escorting them skittered forward and grabbed hold of him.
The mind tug came again. The world around him wavered. He suddenly felt the presence of thousands of souls nearby, like lights shining in a dark room. The souls were in agony, screaming silently inside his vast mind. His tentacles moved in the lava, brushing their bodies, absorbing their pain, feeding an unquenchable hunger that gnawed inside him. He felt their pain, and it tasted good.
He tasted dirt and opened his eyes. He had fallen to the ground. Diabolus knelt beside him, patting his head. “You will share with the Beast, and the Beast will share with you.”
Jason sat up, his head pounding. He was trembling, and it was difficult to focus on the world around him. “That... that thing,” he stabbed a finger at the beast with its huge staring eye, “feeds on suffering.” It was a nothing but a parasite, a nightmarish parasite.
“You’re wrong. It’s not a parasite,” Diabolus said in response to Jason’s unspoken thought. “It’s not a parasite, it’s a symbiote. It gives us salvation, and we give it sustenance.
“Open your mind,” Diabolus continued, stroking Jason’s head as the Beast looked on. “Open your mind.” It took Jason a moment to realize that Diabolus’s lips hadn’t moved. The man hadn’t spoken, yet Jason heard him as clear as day.
Telepathy? No. Goddamn, no! It just wasn’t possible!
Again he felt that insistent tugging inside his mind. He tried to resist, to close the door into his mind. “Get out!” he shouted. “Get out of my mind!”
But he couldn’t resist. He had absolutely no idea how. How could he resist something he still didn’t even really believe was possible? He was a man of science, and this seemed to be the complete antithesis of that.
His vision wavered, and the world faded to black even as a new form of sight opened within his mind. For a time, he became one with the Beast.
CHAPTER TWELVE – Out of the Fire and Into the Frying Pan
NIGEL HAD BEEN GONE a long time. How long they didn’t know, since there were no clocks down here, no daylight to judge the progression of time.
Mike sat watching the pool of lava intently. Every time a bubble broke the surface and popped, sending drops of lava spattering in all directions, he hoped that it was the Englishman returning. But so far, nothing.
Mike had gained a great deal of respect for Nigel. In addition to rescuing Mike from the torment of boiling alive, he was now attempting to do the same for Stacy. But it sure was taking a long time. Mike had to keep telling himself that there were a lot of people out there. Finding Stacy among that uncountable mass was a Herculean undertaking.
The woman, Siri, hadn’t said much since Mike’s rescue. She sat off to the side by herself, pensively hugging her legs to her chest, silently watching the pool for signs of Nigel’s return.
Paula sat on the other side of the pool, across from Mike. She glanced at Mike occasionally, but otherwise didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. He could read the unspoken words in her eyes: Nigel couldn’t do this alone. Mike, the jock, the football hero, should be out there helping him.
Finally, he could no longer resist the silent urgings. He stood. “I’d better get out there and find Stacy, or rescue Nigel, or... or whatever.”
“No, Mike, don’t go, honey,” Paula said. But he could tell that it was an obligatory objection. She didn’t really mean it. Well, of course she wanted him to stay safely with her. But this whole situation had become bigger than the two of them as lovers. There were people that needed rescuing. Nigel was right; this place was the epitome of the term abomination. It needed to be shut down. Now.
“I’ll be okay,” Mike said. He swiveled on his butt, craning his legs out over the pool. The best way to enter freezing water was to just dive right in. He supposed the same must be true of entering boiling lava. So he took a deep breath, levered his legs down and slipped into the pool in one smooth motion.
Excruciating pain ignited his brain, threatening to overwhelm all higher thought. He gritted his teeth, trying to hold on to sanity. He kept telling himself that it was only pain, and that his body wasn’t going to be injured in any way. Which was true, thanks to the stings of those skittering monstrosities.
He couldn’t see through boiling, molten earth; it was entirely opaque. He had only his sense of touch to guide him. Reaching out, he touched the walls on either side of him, feeling the rough rock of the passageway as it descended into the earth a short distance, then curved sideways, heading into the lake of lava in the huge cavern.
As he felt his way along, the agony constantly threatened to slop over into the small crucible of sanity he’d managed to retain. His chest began to burn as his lungs were starved for air.
The small underground river of lava soon spilled into the lake, and he kicked upwards, seeking air. He didn’t bother to surface carefully, or be discrete to avoid the attention of the winged creatures standing guard on the shore. He’d been in the lake long enough before his rescue to notice that people were constantly floundering to stay afloat, not always successfully. When he surfaced, taking great gree
dy gulps of air, he rose halfway out of that damnable lake, trusting that he appeared to be nothing more than one of the ordinary tormented people who had momentarily sunk beneath the surface.
He let himself bob on the surface as he looked around, hoping to catch sight of Stacy. As he did so, he thrashed and screamed, writhing in pain. It was no act for the sake of the winged beasts stalking the shore, staring out across the lake, kicking back the occasional brave soul who attempted to climb from the lake. He was truly in agony. His nerves were aflame, and he longed to escape from the lava.
He looked around desperately. Sanity was slipping away fast. If he didn’t find Stacy, and soon, he would lose all memory of himself and why he’d come back out here. Soon, he would be helplessly lost to himself, just another damned soul adrift in the lake, needing to be rescued again. The pain was rapidly overwhelming all thought.
He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see Nigel, either. Suddenly, he realized he wasn’t even sure whether he would be able to find the entrance to the underground river that led to the pool in the secret cavern.
He had to return, now, or he was lost.
There was a man next to him, bobbing in the water, shrieking, screaming for God and Jesus to save him.
Mike let himself sink beneath the surface. There, hidden from the eyes of the guards, he took hold of the man’s leg and began swimming back in the direction he thought led to the river. The man didn’t struggle as he was tugged down and hauled through the water. Hopefully he had enough sense to hold his breath.
Purely by touch and memory, Mike found the small opening and swam into it. There was a moment of resistance as the man’s leg caught on the edge of the hole. Mike had to worm himself around and free the man, who didn’t have enough sense left to tuck in his limbs. So Mike did it for him, and then resumed swimming.