by Bruce Blake
She needed help.
“Trevor.”
The word might have been whispered by a bullfrog. She swallowed what little saliva her mouth mustered in an attempt to lubricate a throat gone dry with effort and fear, coughed to clear it like an opera singer preparing to belt out an aria.
“Trevor.”
Louder but still meek. No answer floated down from on high, no promise of help or salvation, no cry of surprise or concern. Poe rested her forehead against the rock wall, felt the hardness of it press directly on her brain.
I have to get out.
The screech again, but she didn’t bother attempting to look. Her fatigued arms wouldn’t go any further, though she thought her fingers would gladly let go and revel in the relief as she fell to her ultimate death or whatever waited in the mist.
She breathed deep and shifted her weight as far to the left as she dared. Her muscles screamed, but the action brought a crumb of respite to their right-hand counterparts. If she held herself like this long enough, maybe she’d be able to continue, maybe she’d be able to climb the last few feet.
As she controlled her breathing, something struck the top if her head, something small and light. She ignored it.
My imagination.
When it happened again, she couldn’t disregard it.
“Trevor?”
She shifted her weight to look up and the muscles on her right side, moments away from finding enough reserve to continue, failed her. Her foot slipped first, her hand followed close behind. Her right side swung away from the cliff and she instinctively gripped tighter with her left. Searing pain shot through her left shoulder into her chest as she struggled to right herself. She saw the edge of the cliff above: still nothing.
“Trevor!”
She heard the chant begin first, quiet and tentative, growing as more voices added themselves.
“P.”
“Oh.”
“P.”
“Oh.”
The first gray face peered over the edge a few seconds later, then others gathered beside it. They stared blankly, thin lips moving with each syllable of their chant.
“P.”
“Oh.”
“P.”
“Oh.”
“Help,” she whispered in response. “Please help me.”
Two of the damned looked at each other, a cursed expression of questioning passing between them. One faced Poe and reached out a bone-thin arm, its long fingers stretching out. The attempt fell well short, though she doubted her ability to grasp it, anyway. She tried to right herself, dig the fingers of her right hand back into the stone wall, but the muscles in her arm refused her request.
The fingers of her left hand slipped out a quarter-inch.
Her useless right hand pawed the cliff face, the numb tips of her fingers brushing the indentations they’d previously made but finding no purchase. She settled her right foot back into a divot in the wall and a knot in her calf squealed its protest.
Above her, the soul which had been reaching out, attempting to help, dangled its legs over the side, its waist bent over the edge.
Not close enough.
It let itself down further until it hung from its fingers, stretched to its full height. Poe looked up at the bottom of its bare feet stained orange by its accursed march across the plains of Hell. She threw her limp arm toward it, missed by a yard.
With a jerk, the damned one moved closer by six inches. The movement startled Poe and her right foot slipped again, but she recovered, the knot in her calf feeling as though it would tear muscle from bone. Carefully she shifted to see past the pendulous soul. The second one had lowered it over the edge by the chain which bound them together. Poe saw the shackles digging into its wrists, shredding the flesh beneath the iron band. No blood flowed from the wound.
A warmth flowed through Poe, giving energy to her fatigued limbs, and she recognized the feeling as hope. Her would-be rescuer jerked down again, inches closer. She reached up, swiped at its foot. Her fingertips brushed the orange-tinted skin.
Somewhere below, an angry shriek echoed up out of the chasm.
The urge to look down, to seek the source of the screech, nearly made Poe shift her position again, but at the last second, she remembered the results of the last time she’d attempted it. Instead, she concentrated on those above her and their attempt to save her.
How do they know me? Why would they save me?
She didn’t have the answers, truthfully didn’t care right in that moment, but they served to distract her when a second howl reverberated up the walls of the canyon.
The second soul lowered itself over the side. The first jolted down three more feet, its knees coming even with Poe’s eyes. She threw her arm up a third time, hand slapping against the soul’s loose, gray flesh. Her fingers slid off without grasping. She did it again, concentrating all her will on her fingers, on being able to grab on. Flesh clapped against flesh, her fingers twitched but her energy, her strength, failed her.
The chains rattled and the soul plummeted another four feet, its slack face now even with Poe’s. She looked into its bottomless eyes and saw the misery churning in them, felt some of the pain and hopelessness this one-time person must deal with for the rest of eternity.
“P,” it intoned.
“Oh,” the one dangling above added.
She smiled.
A sound like a sheet flapping on a clothes line on a blustery spring day sounded and a whoosh of air engulfed her. She wrenched around instinctively and saw the black shape shoot past, headed for the sky, when her hold on the cliff face gave way. Poe tumbled backwards.
So close. So close to making it.
And she fell into the damned soul’s arms.
She hung limply in its grasp, cold radiating from it like its insides housed a million ice cubes. Relief flooded her, though she wanted to wriggle out of its grasp, get free from the icy, dead grip, but she let herself be saved.
Her shoulder scraped painfully against the jagged edge as they pulled her over. The gash in her thigh, almost scabbed over while she clung desperately to the rock face, reopened and started bleeding anew. A second later, she lay on solid ground, safe.
Safe from the fall.
The souls who saved her and their compatriots—it looked like hundreds of them crowded around to see her—backed away a few steps, giving her space to breathe, recover. She raised her head off the ground, pebbles and sand sticking to her cheek, but didn’t have the strength to hold it up.
“Thank you,” she said as her head sank back down to the orangey dirt.
“P.”
“Oh.”
The crowd of souls got through one verse of the chant before the demon landed on the ground between them and Poe. The earth shook as its talon feet struck, its wings flapped giving it balance and kicking up a tumult of dust into the air. It leaned forward on all fours and bellowed at the damned. They backed away a few steps, cowering, then the beast turned toward the collapsed guardian angel.
Poe blinked the dust out of her eyes, struggled to get her arms moving, to push herself to a sitting position, then to her feet to defend herself. All the aches and pains, knots and wounds protested collectively and she fell back.
The demon stalked toward her, covering the space between them in two steps. It leered down at her, huffing hatred through its flapped nostrils, saliva dripping off its double row of picket fence teeth. A split tongue flicked out and brushed Poe’s cheek, tasting her sweat, and she cringed.
I’m so sorry, Trevor. Sorry, Icarus.
The beast reared up, wings spread for balance, and put the talon of one foot against Poe’s throat. It threw its head back and screamed a victory cry toward the swirling sky, then glared back down at her. She swore the demon smiled.
The first of the damned—Poe thought it the one who’d come over the side to get her—hit the demon broadside and bounced off. Abaddon turned his attention away from his foe lying defenseless beneath his foot and drew
back his thickly muscled arm to swat away the disturbing pest, but the rest washed over him like a wave on a beach.
A hundred damned souls swarmed over the demon, their collective force throwing him off balance before he struck back, before he could sink his talon into Poe’s jugular vein. The mob flowed over the angel, feet brushing against her arms, her legs, her torso, but none of them doing damage. Chains clanked and banged, the demon howled, the damned chanted.
“P.”
“Oh.”
“P.”
“Oh.”
With effort, Poe turned her head in time to see the mass of gray bodies topple over the edge, a few patches of the demon’s black skin showing through the throng as they rode him into the depths of the abyss.
The chant, the chains, the demon’s howl receded into the pit.
“Thank you,” Poe whispered, her breath stirring dust into the air, then she lowered her head and closed her eyes.
†‡†
The sky was dark when Poe woke, darker than before. She lay still for a minute, listening to the sound of nothingness, breathing quietly through her mouth. No sounds of feet shuffling, no wings beating the air, no accursed voices chanting her name. Nothing. After what seemed an appropriate amount of time and caution, she rolled on to her back and immediately regretted it.
Every muscle and joint in her body cried uncle. Her head throbbed.
“Ohhh.”
The groan escaped her lips without permission and she squashed it immediately for fear something might lay in wait for her in the silence, biding its time until she regained consciousness.
Nothing responded to her inadvertent lament.
She stared up at the clouds for a while. Every few minutes, a bolt of lightning jumped across them, flashing brief respite in the darkness before disappearing, leaving a green streak in her vision. She breathed deep, thankful to draw breath, thankful for life in spite of the pain in her body.
Trevor!
She sat up suddenly and it felt like her brain slapped against the inside of her forehead with the movement. Ignoring it, she struggled to her feet.
“Trevor!”
Poe circled, shuffling her feet, then remembered where she’d come to rest. She looked down, located the edge of the chasm, and shambled away a few steps to a safer locale. The leg of her pants was stiff with her own blood, the leg beneath stiffer with the gash the demon’s talon had torn in it. She grimaced with the effort.
“Trevor!”
Her voice echoed across the empty plain and disappeared into the distant dark. Panic filled her head, pushing the pain aside. Concern roiled in her gut, energized her limbs. She hadn’t wanted the boy to come but, truthfully, she’d been glad he did. She’d welcomed the company and the possibility he could convince his father to give up his silly ideas of coming to Hell to save a few possibly mistaken damned.
Would he have knowingly traded his son’s life to save them?
The answer was no, but he hadn’t brought the teenager, she had.
Her fault.
“Trevor!”
A flash of lightning punctuated her words, lit the sky and the bleak landscape, showed her its emptiness. Her gaze strayed to the edge of the abyss and she wondered if he’d gone over the edge.
No. He couldn’t have.
Poe set her jaw, teeth clenched tight, and limped away from the precipice, injured leg dragging in the dirt behind her. She didn’t know if Trevor still lived, if he wandered through Hell or ended up at the bottom of Abaddon’s pit, but she couldn’t stay here wondering.
If he was out there, if he lived, she’d find him.
“Trevor!”
A clap of thunder echoed across the plains of Hell.
Bruce Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost
Chapter Twenty
I took a right and came within inches of walking into a wall at another dead end.
“Goddamn it.”
Not the first dead end I’d encountered since Dominic trapped me in the maze and, unfortunately, probably not the last, either. I took a step back and peered along the corridor I’d most recently traversed and thought I saw movement.
I hurried toward it and came to another dead end where I stopped and looked at the wall, touched it, felt the solid stone.
This wasn’t here before.
A surety that the labyrinth didn’t play fair rose in me. It moved and changed behind me, manipulating the path I could choose. No matter what I did, the maze determined where I ended up.
It was herding me.
I thought back to the little bit of mythology I’d read—most of it stolen during furtive trips to the library when I sneaked away from Father Dominic’s watchful eye. Daedelus built the labyrinth to contain the half-man, half-bull minotaur kept by King Minos. The king fed the beast by sending unsuspecting victims into the maze.
I shivered.
No way for me to know if a minotaur, or worse, lurked somewhere in the twisting, frustrating corridors, but I needed to get out. Somewhere else in Hell, my son might be in trouble. Once, not long ago, I’d have trusted Poe to have his best interests at heart but may have doubted her ability to keep him safe in spite of her designation as a guardian angel. Now I doubted both.
I went left—the only available option—trotted twenty yards, then came to a fork, deliberated for a second, and took the path to the right for no deeper reason than I had to go one way or the other. The fork led to a T, where I went left this time, followed it to a right hand turn, went ten yards to another right and walked into another dead end.
Frustrated, I slapped my hand against the wall and the pain it caused made me immediately regret the action.
“Damn you, Dominic,” I cried toward the gray sky and the irony of my words perched me on the edge of laughing—I’d already taken care of that. If I could have sent him to Hell again, I’d have done it.
The thought did nothing to make me feel better about Trevor’s safety.
I backtracked, ran into a wall which wasn’t there before. Left, right, left, left, dead end.
“Fuck.”
Went back, took a left where I’d taken a right before. Left, left, left. A long corridor of unbroken wall stretched before me. I jogged down it, ribs hurting with each stride, a reminder of the priest’s shoe contacting my midsection. The corridor ended in another intersection. I decided to go left because it worked out the last few times. I went a few paces and stopped, listening.
Running water.
I thought the sound came from somewhere ahead but, with so many walls to bounce it around, the source might have been anywhere. With little choice, I continued on, the gurgling water making me realize I’d become thirsty, parched, without realizing.
Every step forward brought a new level of dryness to my mouth. I licked my lips with a tongue which felt like a dusting cloth. Swallowing became a labor. I stumbled down the corridor, pausing each time I came to another corridor to listen, attempting to discern from where the promise of water came.
Straight past two turns, then left. I lumbered fifteen yards and took a right. Each time I turned a corner and didn’t find water, desperation built in me. The virtual desiccation of my mouth made me forget Trevor and his plight, Poe and her possible transgressions. Nothing mattered in my world anymore other than quenching a thirst which grew bigger by the second, overtaking everything.
My steps faltered. My right foot caught up in my left and I fell to the ground, face first. Dust kicked up and found its way past my lips making my impossibly dry mouth impossibly dryer. I hacked a weak cough but, without the aid of saliva, it did nothing to clear the grit from my tongue. The tiny amount of spit I developed turned the dust to sticky paste and I climbed to my feet, smacking my lips like a kid who’d jammed too much peanut butter into his mouth, and lurched forward.
My head spun as I tried to remember the last time I’d taken a drink: of water, of vodka, soda, anything. It had been so long, the memory escaped me.
Have I ever had a drink?
I must have. I wouldn’t have made it to almost forty without drinking something. Whatever I drank, whenever it happened, eluded me completely.
I staggered around another corner, legs threatening to falter again, and saw it: a fountain carved of marble, its height and beauty worthy of a palace. I wouldn’t have cared had it been a urinal.
I stumbled toward it, fell, swallowed more dirt, scrambled to my feet. The few yards between me and the water spouting out of the top of the fountain to careen into the first bowl, then the second and finally the bottom seemed impossibly far. I willed my legs to push on no matter how my thighs burned.
Waterwaterwaterwaterwater.
My swollen tongue sandpapered across chapped lips as I rushed toward the life-giving liquid without getting any closer. A dust cloud rose around me, churned into the air by my useless steps. This was exactly what Hell was about.
I stopped running, my level of frustration reaching the point of giving up. My eyelids slid closed and I attempted to breathe deep through nostrils clogged with dust. It didn’t work, so I opened my mouth and sucked a breath down my constricted throat.
My tongue tasted the water.
My jaw snapped shut, cutting off the freshness that teased me, threatened to drive me mad. I drew another halting breath, filtering the temptation of the unreachable water with my teeth. It didn’t help. A coolness flowed across my tongue with each gasp of air. Behind my closed eyes, I pictured the mist kicked up by Niagara Falls, a stream flowing through a forest, a bottle of water which, if you read its name backwards, spells naive.
My hands started to shake. My knees quivered. I concentrated on stopping these things without success; my mind resorted to any vision of water it could conjure: diving into a pool, brushing my teeth, fishing, flushing a toilet. In my head, I watched the water swirl around the porcelain bowl, round and round, until it disappeared and didn’t refill.