by Bruce Blake
He didn’t answer.
“Is Todd here, too, then?”
“Hey, Ric.”
“Shut up, Todd.”
I smiled beneath the bag. Todd had never been the smartest one in the group. Maybe I had a chance of figuring out what was going on.
“Where are you guys taking me?”
“Someone wants to see you,” Todd answered.
“Will you shut up?” Marty’s voice betrayed his annoyance. He shook me again. “You, too. No more questions.”
“Okay.” Not a question. “I’ll just keep to myself under this stinky bag.”
Someone wants to see you.
There were only a few people in Hell who might desire my company, none of whom I looked forward to seeing. They began with people I didn’t like much and the list went downhill from there. I didn’t get a good feeling from this.
Where’s Piper?
We walked in silence for a long time, the scrape of our feet on the ground and my captured breath rattling against cloth the only sounds. I should have been nervous, scared, but distracted myself by watching my steps kick up puffs until the ash-covered sidewalk disappeared, giving way to parched orange earth scattered with black rock. I kicked at pebbles but quickly grew bored and my mind wandered back to my bleak situation.
Who wants to see me? Azrael? Probably. Father Dominic? Bad. Someone else I’d pissed off over the years? A long list. Red guy with horns and a tail?
I shivered a little and decided debating who wanted to punish me was detrimental to my state of mind. Time to find some other distraction.
“So, this Hell place is pretty nice. Warm little vacation spot.”
No response but I thought I felt the angry look Marty shot Todd keep him quiet.
“I really expected it to be dirtier, nastier. All-in-all, it’s not bad. No Disneyland, but it’s not exactly third-world, either.”
Marty shook me again, this time without words-of-warning, and I stumbled. Todd’s grip kept me from going ass-over-tea kettle, as the British say. I don’t even drink tea.
“You know, I feel bad about how you guys got here. Horrible what happened to you, but it’s not my fault. What a maniac, that priest.”
Feet scraping on ground.
“He tried to kill me, too, you know.” Then, more to myself: “Of course you know. You helped.”
“We had no choice, Ric,” Todd’s disembodied voice responded.
“Enough,” Marty snapped and pushed me hard.
My one left foot caught behind my other left foot and down I went. Before I could recover, one of my escorts lashed my wrists together behind my back with something that felt warm; it pulsed and moved. My stomach churned.
“Marty--”
“Shut up, Todd. He’s on his own from here.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean ‘on his own’?” I scuffled my feet against the orange earth, pushing myself to a sitting position. Mission finally accomplished, I waited for them to respond.
No one spoke. A minute passed.
“Guys?”
The thing binding my wrists pulsed, slithered, held still. As if gym shorts over the face wasn’t disgusting enough, I had to touch a snake, too. So much for all the good things I said about Hell.
“Come on, guys. Let me go. I promise I’ll be good.”
I thought I heard a furtive step, maybe a whisper, but couldn’t be sure—blood pounded too loudly through my head.
“Guys?”
No doubt about the footsteps this time. Two sets of feet hurried away making no effort to conceal their movements.
“Marty! Todd! Don’t leave.”
The footsteps receded, leaving me alone.
I hoped.
From the beginning, I’d felt some fear being in Hell, but the longer I spent, the less it bothered me.
Until now.
I scrambled to my feet, blind and unsteady. The world swirled and tilted beneath me and I swayed with vertigo; the meager contents of my stomach tried to find their way up my esophagus and out, but I convinced them otherwise. I stumbled forward a couple of steps to keep my feet under me where they belonged.
The rank taste of the air I gasped through the stinking hood in an attempt to relieve my claustrophobia brought nausea back, but breathing eventually succeeded in calming me. I stood, head sagging, staring at the tops of my shoes. They needed polishing, but that would have to wait for a more opportune time—I had to get the hood off first.
I bent quickly at the waist and jerked back to standing. The stinking material slapped against my face but didn’t come off. I bowed again, shook my head back and forth to work it free. It shifted a little but stayed put.
“Damn it.”
Given the locale, it was probably too late for such a sentiment to be granted.
I lowered my ass to the ground and sucked a sharp breath through my teeth as a jagged rock dug into my left cheek. Hell gets you any way it can. A few seconds of butt-shuffling brought enough comfort for me to draw my legs up, lower my head and hold the edge of the hood with my knees. I smiled, confident and satisfied, and pulled my head back, but the shroud slipped from my grip.
Shroud.
An ominous word I hadn’t thought of until this point.
They put shrouds on dead people.
The idea really shouldn’t have bothered me—I’d already died once. But I didn’t want to end up here for good.
I tried again, and again the material slipped from my grasp. I rolled onto my side, grunting, attempting to pin hood between shoulder and ground but only succeeded in banging my head on the same rock my ass met moments before.
“Get the fuck off me.”
I rolled the other way, tossing my head side-to-side with the same result. When I rolled back, I hit something solid.
It felt like a leg.
I froze, panic coursing through my veins as I realized whoever or whatever stood over me had me at their mercy. Pictures of leering demons jumped into my head. I thrashed and pushed away but a hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“Icarus.”
The voice was lyrical, familiar, female.
“Piper?” Where were you?
“Yes. Be calm.”
“Untie me.”
“Trevor’s here.”
I held my breath, mind swirling. Did I hear her right?
“Trevor?”
“Not here, but in Hell.” She paused; my breath rasped in and out. “Poe brought him.”
Any questions about where Piper had been fled my mind.
‘Trevor’s here. Poe brought him.’
The two fragments didn’t seem to go together. Poe was an angel—my guardian angel.
Why would she bring Trevor to--
A memory flickered, something Piper said. I’d been angry at the time and didn’t give her words much credence, but they came back full force as I lay on Hell’s burnt soil with a bag over my head.
‘Some are suspicious. They think Poe might be playing for the other side.’
“Where are they?” I demanded. “Take me to them.”
“I can’t, Icarus.”
Ric, God damn it.
“Why not?”
She paused and it seemed like a wind blew across the scorched plain, a sigh of warm air bearing her words:
“Because I’m not here.”
With the breeze and the whisper, a shiver shook my spine and the pulsating rope binding my wrists disappeared. Despite my anger at Poe for involving my son, I was shaken. I sat up cautiously, rubbing my wrists and expecting a ring of slime. Instead, I found them dry and raw, chafed like the hands of someone who’s worked hard in their lives. I hadn’t experienced it, but I’d heard of such a thing.
I brought my hand up to the hood, listening to the sounds around me as I did. A wind which no longer touched me rattled pebbles across hard ground; a flap of huge wings passed high overhead. Someone laughed—a low, mirthless, throaty laugh.
And it was close.
The hood
slid off my head easily, making me wonder why I couldn’t remove it before, but the thought evaporated like a drop of water on a hot pan when I gazed up at the man standing before me. His filthy coat hung in tatters, his bare feet were covered with blisters long burst and turned to weeping sores. He held his hands in front of his chest, rubbing them as if trying to clean them without benefit of soap and water. Streaks of soot obscured his face, hiding the crosses carved into his forehead and cheeks, but no amount of dirt could hide this man’s identity, not after all our history together.
“It’s hot enough down here to melt a man’s wings, eh, Icarus?”
I frowned, my molars grinding against one another, and I wished they did so with him between them. The last things I needed while trapped in Hell with my son roaming the abyss with a rogue angel was this man and his corny mythological references.
I spat his name on the dry ground at his feet.
“Father Dominic.”
Bruce Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost
Chapter Seventeen
Trevor turned slowly, breath held, and thought he felt Poe stir minutely in his arms. He glanced down at her, but her eyes remained closed, her limbs limp, so he raised his eyes and looked at the thing which plucked them from the abyss.
Trevor’s mouth fell open as he looked into the face of a demon.
No horror movies could have prepared him for the thing; no amount of prosthetics, make-up, masks or latex could have created it. White maggots squirmed across its face, dragging themselves out of one fissure and into another; its black skin stretched to the point of breaking across misshapen muscles no body builder would wish upon their greatest rival. Leathery wings creaked as they moved, shifting slightly like a tightrope walker’s pole as the thing stood on taloned feet not designed for the purpose.
Trevor’s skin went cold with goose bumps despite the heat the creature emitted.
The demon’s chest heaved as it gulped air in through its mouth and blew it heavily through flapped nostrils set in the middle of its noseless face.
Fuck me.
Trevor took a step back and found the mob of damned souls crowding behind him, their desire to be close to the angel greater than their fear of the demon. One reached out tentatively and stroked Poe’s hair, pursed its lips and started the chant again, so quietly it may as well not have been there.
“P.”
For a moment, there was no response. The demon’s purple eyes darted back and forth across the wall of souls surrounding them, his gaze daring them to pick up the mantra. Trevor didn’t think any would, not in the face of the monstrosity, but one was finally overcome.
“Oh.”
A sigh, nothing more; or it might have been one soul breathing louder than the others. The demon needed no more provocation. It leaned forward, mouth open to reveal two rows of pointed teeth dripping saliva, and screamed, a sound part fog horn, part siren mixed with the roar of a lion. Deafening. Trevor flinched and cowered away as the beast grabbed the closest soul and flung it over the edge of the canyon. It went over without exclamation, the chains binding it to the next clanking then going taut and pulling its neighbor along with it, then the next and the next. A dozen or more toppled into the chasm in succession like the coils of a giant slinky but with no next stair to land on. The other souls backed away.
Poe stirred in Trevor’s arms.
He looked down and saw her eyelids flutter then close, shielding her sensitive eyes from light. She shifted and Trevor became acutely aware of the weight in his arms, an awkward weight he’d been carrying a long while. His shoulders felt as though they might detach from his body and his arms drop to the rocky ground with the angel in them.
“What’s happening?”
She whispered the words like a child waking, but it wasn’t Trevor alone who heard. A gasp rolled across the crowd of souls; the demon reared back, wings spread in a menacing pose, its face twisting into further grotesque contortions. Trevor held his breath, waiting to see what would happen, whether he would survive.
The damned souls held their ground, undeterred by the possibility of following their compatriots over the edge of the canyon. The demon leaned forward, propping itself on its knuckles in a gorilla-pose, its head three feet from Trevor and Poe. The nostril flaps quivered and danced as it sniffed the angel. What passed for its lips pulled away from its teeth, a growl reverberated in its chest.
Poe’s hand shot out and grabbed it by the throat.
†‡†
A dream. It’s only a dream.
It was beyond hot in the dream—sweltering, scorching, burning—and dark. Sounds came and went; first the sound of feet walking, then labored breathing, a muffled shout she didn’t hear. None of this made her afraid in the dream, they were simply there, like the people touching her which came next, the chanting of her name and finally the sensation of falling.
It felt nice, the falling. Wind whipped her hair and she imagined it to be flying instead of falling. She liked flying. It gave her the freedom and solitude she craved but never got. She only flew in her dreams.
The flying stopped.
Nothing happened for a minute. It wasn’t that she was asleep and not dreaming—she was aware, but there was nothing of which to be aware. Darkness. Quiet.
Then the scream woke her.
She’d heard such a scream before, in a time she wanted to forget and place she never wanted to be again. A place to which she’d now returned. Without opening her eyes, she knew—the smell told her. She tried to stretch her aching muscles, felt arms supporting her and remembered everything: following the Carrion, the trip to Hell with Trevor, passing out. Her eyelids resisted opening but she caught a glimpse of the teenager looming above her.
Trevor.
“What’s happening?”
She felt the reaction to her words as much as heard it. Trevor wasn’t the only one here. She sensed thousands of presences, all of them lost and afraid, except one which overpowered the others with its rancor, its hatred. She felt it close to her, the rumble of its growl shook her core.
Poe opened her eyes.
The thing leered at her, rage gurgling in its chest, readying to spill out on her, on Trevor. It only took a glimpse to recognize the beast and the severity of the situation. She reached out her hand and grasped the demon by its throat. The movement unsettled her in Trevor’s arms and he dropped her but Poe moved lithely, twisting herself to land on her feet without losing her grip on the demon.
“Abaddon,” she said. “Angel of the Bottomless Pit.”
“So it is you, Poe,” the thing replied. “Thought never to see you again.”
“You’ll soon wish you hadn’t.”
The beast stood to its full height—easily nine feet to the top of its head—but Poe didn’t let go. Her feet left the ground, dangled level with the creature’s waist. It shook its head and shoulders sharply like a horse dislodging a fly; her grip remained strong.
What am I doing?
She looked up into the beast’s face and terror filled her lungs, threatened to gag her. She wanted to let go, to drop to the ground and run, seek refuge amongst the damned souls watching with uncharacteristically agape mouths, but her fingers wouldn’t obey her wishes. Their grip continued to hold fast when the demon stretched its wings and took to the sky with a powerful stroke.
“Poe!”
She heard Trevor’s voice disappear beneath her as the beast shot them into the roiling sky. Hot wind rustled her hair around her ears and cheeks, stole the breath out of her nose.
Flying, really flying.
The demon clutched at her legs with its taloned feet. She twisted, avoiding their grasp, but a claw raked her leg, drawing blood. The panic in her chest flooded into her head, clouding her thoughts and blurring her vision as her free hand drew back, clenched into a fist. She looked down at her own hand, dimly wondered how it acted of its own accord, and watched in shock as it shot forward and penetrated the demon’s chest.
The beast thrashe
d and contorted, spun in circles attempting to throw her off. Poe’s fingers dug deep into the thing’s chest until they found a hard, pulsing lump, then they squeezed.
The demon screamed, its cry high-pitched with rage and pain. It twisted again. Spun again. Thrashed. Clawed.
And then they fell from the sky.
†‡†
The force of the wind created by the creature’s wings drove Trevor back a step. He threw his arm over his eyes to keep the dust it stirred up from blinding him but saw over the top of his forearm as the demon shot into the sky, Poe dangling in front of it.
“Poe!”
They climbed toward the clouds at an unbelievable rate, quickly becoming a black dot against the gray sky. He squinted and strained to see, but they disappeared. Trevor faced the crowd of souls and found they’d crept up behind him, pressing at his back.
“What happened?” he said to the closest of the slack faced things. It acted as if it didn’t hear him. “Where did they go?”
All of the gray-skinned faces were tilted skyward, mouths open. They encircled him, all of them trying to fit into the place where the demon leaped into the sky with their angel, their salvation, dangling from its throat. After a few seconds, one a few rows deep from Trevor began the chant again.
“P.”
“Oh,” a second on his other side responded.
Then, without warning or apparent reason, the entire group of thousands turned and ran as fast as their shackles allowed. Trevor pivoted in a tight circle, searching the plain around them.
Nothing.
The cloud of dust kicked up by the souls’ shuffling feet obscured the horizon, but through it he saw no others crossing the plain, nothing climbing from the misty-bottomed cavern. One other alternative dawned on him and he raised his eyes to the sky.
Immediately he picked out the black dot against the clouds, growing larger, coming closer, moving fast. Trevor took a step back, eyes steady on the falling object, then moved carefully toward the edge of the crevasse.
“Poe,” he said.
Crazily, he thought about catching her, or at least breaking her fall, but the thought vanished quickly. The dot falling through the sky looked to be moving at the speed of a missile. Trevor glanced down to see where he’d stopped at the lip of the chasm, peered over the edge. The mist swirled faster than before, more violently, like a school of sharks circling, preparing for a frenzy.