by Bruce Blake
“Should we try this?”
“Smart ass.”
She bowed her head and swept her arm toward the open door, ushering me through. I went sheepishly, thinking how different Piper was from Poe. When I first met Poe, she was shy and nervous and had become only marginally less so over the last few months. This woman was the opposite: outgoing, playful, fun to be with. Too bad she was an angel and not a woman I met in a bar.
We entered a massive foyer with crimson walls. No ash covered the smooth gray floor; our footsteps echoed up to the ceiling forty feet above. Other than four walls, a door, a ceiling and a floor, there was nothing—no light fixtures, no comfy places for visitors to rest, no mailboxes. Only the elevator doors set into the far wall broke the monotony of emptiness. I strode across the slate tile floor, the oppression of the dark walls and floor and the dim light weighing on me with each step. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Piper was following and found her two paces behind me, walking with the quiet grace of a careful cat.
Halfway across the lobby, I stopped.
“Did you hear that?”
She paused, listening. “I don’t hear anything.”
We remained there a few seconds, a look of concentration on my face so she’d know I was listening. I’d thought I heard a sound like rock scraping against rock hidden amongst the echoes of my footsteps, but now, listening for it, I heard nothing. We waited a few seconds longer, then I borrowed a page from Piper’s book and shrugged.
“Guess I’m hearing things.”
We set out again, and after a few steps, the sound returned.
“There it is again,” I said without stopping this time. “Do you hear it?”
“No.”
She increased her pace and looped her arm through mine. The electricity of her touch filled me immediately, its buzz in my ears hiding any sound I may have heard. Piper guided me—a little dazed and more than a little aroused—to the elevator doors where she punched the call button, then gazed up at the lighted numbers above the sliding doors. I took the opportunity to peruse the smooth curve of her neck, the drape of her hair across her shoulder, the fullness of her lips. She hummed a tune at the back of her throat as she waited and it sounded to me like the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.
The doors slid open and she stepped through, letting go of my arm.
I crashed back to earth or, in this case, Hell. The murmur in my bones disappeared leaving me feeling empty, alone. She stood in the elevator facing me; my body ached to say something to her, tell her she made me feel like no one ever had, beg her to come back to me.
“Are you coming, silly?”
Her words broke the spell. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and dragged my sleeve across my mouth in case my open-mouth gape left drool on my chin, then stepped into the elevator and pushed the twenty button.
“It was twenty-eighteen, right?” I asked, my voice quaking slightly.
The doors slid closed. At first, I stood close enough to feel the heat radiating from her hand and part of me wanted to hold it, go back to the exotic place her touch took me. Another part knew that if I did, I might never return. I side-stepped a little farther away as the muzak version of Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’ assaulted us from a tinny-sounding speaker hidden in the elevator’s ceiling.
Now I know I’m in Hell.
The trip felt like it took an eternity, but Piper’s close proximity bringing a light sweat to my brow may have been as much responsible for the feeling as the torture of Mr. Manilow or some Hellish trick like our raft ride across the River Styx. At least I didn’t have to pay the elevator-man.
At last, the number twenty above the door illuminated with a coinciding electronic ding. A second later the doors slid open. I went to step out but hesitated, peeking through the doors first.
“Holy shit.”
Instead of the apartment building hallway I expected, our elevator opened on a rough-hewn subterranean passage. Guttering torches set in sconces at regular intervals along the walls threw flickering illumination along the passage.
“This is more like what I thought Hell would be,” I said and stepped out of the elevator.
Piper followed. “Which way should we go?”
I glanced one way along the hall, then the other. No signs like in a hotel or apartment building indicated what number-range of rooms lay in which direction. Frustrating.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Let’s go this way, then,” she said gesturing to her right.
We set out down the passage and, as we approached the first torch, I noticed the sconce was shaped like a human arm: well-muscled, sun-bronzed, the torch held in its fist.
Creepy. A little cliché, but creepy.
The next sconce was a smaller, more feminine arm. We passed a wooden door, fiery roman numerals blazing on its surface: MMI. It took me a moment to recall my schooling and recognize it as two thousand and one–twenty-oh-one.
“Looks like you chose the right way.”
We continued past a more doors and more sconces, each arm different than the previous. One was considerably smaller than the others, created in the image of a child’s. It sagged at an awkward angle, as if it had trouble bearing the weight of the torch. I examined it as we went by and realized it quivered with effort; as I watched, it went slack. The torch dipped, flaming oil dripping onto the stone floor, then I heard a whip crack and a muffled cry of pain. The torch came up to level again.
I hurried to catch up to Piper.
She’d stopped in front of a door, the numerals MMXVIII emblazoned on its surface.
“Here it is,” she said.
“Here it is,” I agreed.
Neither of us reached for the door knob. The air in the passage suddenly seemed thick, filled with the smoke of the torches. I raised my hand toward the knob with more effort than it should have taken, as though I lifted a great weight along with it. I felt Piper’s eyes on me and my cheeks went red, embarrassed at having trouble completing such a basic task in front of this beautiful woman.
Open the damn door.
My fingers brushed the brassy knob—warm to the touch but not unbearable. I gripped it, cranked it, and threw the door open, each movement pronounced like a stage actor ensuring the people at the back of the theater saw my actions.
A sickly-sweet smell wafted from the room, a mix of flowers and something rotten. I hesitated before crossing the threshold. I hadn’t seen Elizabeth Elton in many years, since I was nineteen, when I had scraped together enough money for a less-than-modest basement apartment in the cheapest part of town. Beth was twenty years older than me and lived upstairs with her abusive boyfriend and two children born of different fathers—neither of them him. We got to know each other one day when her man was gone on a multi-day drinking binge. Sometimes I watched the kids for her while she was earning money however she could; sometimes I shared her bed when the boyfriend was away. I don’t know if he found out, but one morning I woke up and they were gone.
She was the first woman I ever loved.
We stepped into the room and closed the door because there’s no telling what might come traipsing down a hallway in Hell. An orange couch which looked like it had been rescued from the side of a road sat against one white wall streaked with smears of dirt. A coffee table and two end tables provided resting places for half a dozen vases of flowers: roses, carnations, and other blossoms of types I couldn’t name. The flowers drooped, loose petals shed onto the dingy beige carpet. Magazines with dog-eared covers spilled across the tables and a picture of a sailing ship navigating a stormy sea, its captain lashed to the mast, hung askew on the wall over the couch.
“A waiting room in Hell?” I asked rhetorically.
Piper provided her now customary shrug and went to the door in the left wall. Four long scratches marred its surface, the curls of wood carved from it littering the floor below. I didn’t want to meet whatever made the marks.
“It’s locked,” she sa
id jiggling the knob.
“Let me try.”
I coaxed her out of the way, careful not to touch her, and tried the door myself. Locked, like she said. I threw my shoulder against it. Nothing.
“We’re not getting through this without a key.”
“What do you want to do, then?”
I looked from Piper’s bluer-than-blue eyes to the couch and the disarrayed magazines. “I guess we wait.”
We sat on the couch necessarily closer than I felt comfortable with to avoid some questionable-looking stains. I felt heat from her thigh and shoulder only inches from mine and picked up a magazine to distract myself from the probable rise of lust it would cause. The issue I chose seemed like it would do the trick: the spring 2008 issue of Torturer’s Quarterly. An overhead photo of a man, his limbs humorously elongated as four horses pulled him to pieces, adorned the cover.
Who knew Hell had its own publisher? Everything I’d ever read about the publishing industry suggested it shouldn’t be a surprise. We’d probably find a few used car lots down here too, and a plethora of law firms.
I flipped through the pages, curious but trying not to look too closely at the pictures. Piper sat straight and motionless beside me, staring at the door. I turned pages and fidgeted, sometimes brushing her thigh and feeling a wave of static electricity flowing through me. I scooched myself as far away as the stain beside me—definitely not a coffee spill—would allow.
After an indeterminate amount of time measurable only by the flipping of one-hundred-and-twelve pages of stomach-turning pictures and articles explaining how best to insert bamboo under fingernails, the lock on the door clicked. I put the magazine down over the ugly stain and we both stood as the door swung open and a young woman in a nurse’s uniform, her features disfigured like she’d had a facelift go horribly awry, poked her head into the room.
“Ms. Elton will see you now.”
Piper and I looked at each other—me with a disbelieving expression plastered on my kisser, her looking like she wondered if I’d be chivalrous and offer for her to go first. I was tempted, given we didn’t know what lay on the other side of the door, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her take the lead. Given the fact that those muggers murdered me some months ago, perhaps chivalry is dead.
We stepped through the door and traded the flowery-rotten smell for a rotten-flowery one. The room was larger than the waiting room but with earthen walls and no furnishings, decorations or trappings. A pit I couldn’t see into from where I stood opened in the center of the dirt floor; Beth huddled against the far wall, shivering. At the sound of our entrance she curled herself into a tighter ball, face hidden in the crook of her elbow.
“Beth?”
I took one step forward before electricity shot up my arm as Piper put her hand on me, halting me. Elizabeth peeked out from behind her arm and her eyes widened, her shivering stopped.
“Icarus? Is that you?”
“Ric. Yeah, it’s me.”
She stood and I saw blood smeared on her thin, bare arms and the flesh of her legs showing through the tatters of what once was a sun dress. Despite her condition, it didn’t seem she was injured, and I wondered to whom the blood belonged.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came for you.”
The look on her face changed. She’d never been a beautiful woman, but the smile helped things a bit.
“Really?”
She walked toward me, shoulders back and toes of her bare feet dragging along the floor the way dancers walk during a performance. I didn’t remember her walking that way when I knew her; perhaps they gave dance lessons in Hell.
“Really,” I said glancing at Piper who watched passively. I guess I’d hoped she’d look a little jealous with the exchange. She didn’t.
When Beth had crossed halfway to me, a bell rang—not an alarm bell or someone summoning the butler, but the brassy clang of a ring bell at a boxing match. Her smile vanished and revealed terror hiding beneath. She turned away like she’d forgotten me and went to the edge of the pit where she sat with her legs dangling over the edge. I raised an eyebrow at Piper; not surprisingly, she shrugged. We watched and, a few seconds later, the growl of a dog boiled up out of the pit. A second growl made it a chorus.
“Beth?” I took one step toward her.
As disconcerting as the growls were, it was the small, high-pitched voice which halted my step.
“Mama?”
“Luke!”
Beth’s youngest child; three-years-old last time I saw her. Her other boy had been five.
What was his name again?
“Brandon!”
That’s it.
The growls turned vicious and one of the boys cried out. Beth screamed. I wanted to rush to her but didn’t, my head spinning. Nearly twenty years had passed; I didn’t need to be a mathematician to realize her sons should be adults.
“Help her,” Piper prompted, touching my elbow. The shock of it jolted me into action.
Everything became a blur. The children screamed, their cries overwhelmed by the snarling dogs. Beth cried and screamed, stood and cursed at the dogs.
“Leave my boys alone, you fuckers!” Her hands were balled into fists at her sides, all the sinewy muscles beneath her skin pulled tight as she leaned forward.
“No.”
I reached for her and my fingers brushed the fabric of her shabby dress as she jumped into the pit. Stumbling, I went head first to the dirt floor and would have tumbled into the pit after Beth if Piper hadn’t grabbed me. I looked at her and nodded my thanks then pulled myself to the lip of the pit to see if I’d be able to salvage Beth’s soul.
I wasn’t ready for what I saw.
Both the boys—aged near what I remembered them—were awash in blood. The dogs were backing away from Beth, tails between their legs, and she held her sons one under each arm. She sat with a puff of dust, pulled them both onto her lap. The youngest, Luke, mewled like a kitten unable to draw milk; Brandon silent and unmoving. Sobs tremored through Beth’s shoulders as she wrapped her fingers around her sons’ throats and squeezed.
“Beth! Wait, no.”
I scrambled to go over the edge of the pit but Piper stopped me. I reached toward Beth, fingers clutching empty air. A minute passed; Luke pulled at his mother’s grip, but his struggle soon stopped. After three minutes, Beth let go and stood.
The dogs growled and stalked toward her.
“Give me your hand,” I yelled. She didn’t face me.
The dogs leaped at her; she didn’t raise her arms in defense. They rode her to the ground, one with its jaws wrapped around her arm, the other gnashing at her throat. Seconds later its teeth found their mark. I looked away, unable to watch.
“Damn it.” I rolled over and sat up, head hung between my knees. “We almost had her.”
“Almost,” Piper repeated and brushed hair out of my eyes, the tip of her finger caressing my forehead. Images jumped into my head: naked flesh, writhing limbs, droplets of sweat. I scuttled away, crabwise. After what I’d just seen, this was no time for lust.
“It always happens like that,” a voice said from behind Piper. “If I don’t finish them off, the dogs do. It looks more painful when the dogs take them.”
I shifted to see past the angel. Beth stood by the door through which we’d entered, the disfigured nurse with her, sewing up the gash on her neck with a wicked needle and flesh-colored thread. Beth’s expression was weary, beaten.
“Beth.” I got to my feet feeling shocked, sickened and relieved.
“They’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“You won’t be here.”
I went to her, took her hand in mine. I felt Piper close behind me as the nurse finished up her ministrations and stepped back. My eyes flickered between Beth’s face and the nurse, expecting her to reveal herself as a demon and jump us, preventing us from rescuing Beth’s soul.
“We’re going to take you where you should have gone in the first
place.”
She looked up into my eyes and I saw hope in them, but it was tempered; she probably suspected we were another aspect of her punishment and torture.
“But I can’t leave my boys.”
“They’re not really here,” Piper said and stroked her arm.
Beth pulled away from her touch like she’d been brushed by the clammy scales of a snake. She looked toward the pit, her bottom lip quivering. I saw in her eyes where her mind went: as awful as experiencing the pit and the dogs and her sons’ deaths over and over was, at least she got to see her boys.
“This is no place for you,” I said and guided her toward the door while looking sideways at the nurse. “Are you going to try and stop us?”
The nurse shook her head and the little nurse’s hat canted to the left.
“Can I come with you?”
I’d assumed her a demon, a thing of Hell, not another soul living out her damnation. I opened my mouth to tell her she could but stopped and looked at Piper first. She gestured me closer.
“We don’t know who she is or what she’s done,” she said, her breath warm in my ear. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She was right—this woman might be a serial killer or a dealer or perhaps she’d played a bit part in Ishtar, the worst movie ever. We shouldn’t bring someone with us and expect Heaven to take them when we didn’t know anything about them. I looked back into her pleading eyes and shook my head.
“I’m sorry.”
I reached for the door as the bell sounded again and the first snarls spilled from the pit. Elizabeth took a step back toward the center of the room but I caught her by the elbow and guided her through the door. She resisted but, once we closed the door behind us, she came back into herself. Her mood lightened, the stress and pain in her face waned.
We crossed the decrepit waiting room and reached the outer door. I paused with my hand on the knob and looked at Piper.
“What do you think?”
She shrugged.
I took a deep breath and opened the door, all the muscles in my arms and legs gathered and ready to choose between fight and flight. I didn’t imagine for a second it would be easy getting out of Hell.