The Hell Season

by Ray Wallace

  Besides the actual construction of the dome there was other business that needed attending to. The building’s black surface had to be polished with a dark, oily substance that was delivered via the winch in crude buckets. Sections that gleamed with a black, almost mirror-like perfection were polished again. And again. And again. A seemingly pointless and repetitive exercise invented for the sole purpose of finding work for those, mostly the women, who were not as physically capable of lifting and maneuvering the weighty black pieces of which the dome was made. Also, a section of the roadway was being torn up and a new one laid down which led away from the largest of the dome’s seven archways. More buckets were brought up in the cage, some of them filled with a nearly transparent, tar-like substance and others filled with various, uncut, gem-like rocks in every color imaginable: ruby red, emerald green, sapphire blue, amber yellow, and all the hues in between. An untold fortune in what appeared to be precious and semi-precious stones reduced to nothing more than adornment for a fifty foot section of road leading nowhere.

  “Soon, my friend, soon,” said Ron and he gave Thomas a pat on the shoulder, “the waiting will be over. All of the hard work will be behind us. The dome’s purpose will be revealed!” He smiled, the expression slowly fading as Thomas watched. “I have to tell you, being trusted with such a great secret can be a bit... trying at times. The need to tell someone... anyone... can eat at you. How I wish that I could lean in, cup my hand to your ear and impart to you what I know. But I can’t. It would be like having an invitation to a surprise party, the biggest, most lavish surprise party ever imagined and letting the guest of honor in on it beforehand which, of course, would ruin everything. And I wouldn’t want to do that. Definitely not. Just getting to see the expressions on everybody’s faces... That alone will make it all worthwhile.”

  Ron started to laugh and Thomas went back to staring through the binoculars, tried to ignore the sounds of merriment escaping the man beside him and the feelings of deep unease they stirred within him. Because it didn’t take a genius to realize that whatever big surprise was on its way would put to shame everything else that had already happened. And the fact that Ron found any humor whatsoever in the idea said all that needed to be said as to the depths of the man’s insanity. And why Thomas now hated him so.

  *

  Just past noon on Wednesday, September the eighth, the last piece of the building was fitted into place. The light from the red sun above could no longer shine down directly into the black maw of the pit. The dome was complete.

  “It’s an affront against nature,” Thomas heard someone say.

  “It’s an affront against God.” He knew who that would be, recognized the voice from directly behind him. Patricia. She with the omnipresent Bible in hand. Not surprising to hear those words leave her mouth. And he found himself having to agree with her. If the God that she worshipped did in fact exist, Thomas saw no way that He could be happy with what had been assembled here over the past several weeks. All those long, terrible days put into the construction of the thing, as bad in their own way as those marked by the various attacks which had come from the great hole in the earth over which the building now rested.

  There stood the dome. Black. Rune covered. Seven archways around the base, tall enough for even the demons to walk through without bowing their heads, six of them placed equidistantly around the building, the seventh just a bit larger and facing due west. Ready for something even taller than the demons to pass through? Thomas did not want to imagine what sort of creature that might be. The building seemed to actually emanate darkness, if such a thing was possible. Thomas found himself constantly looking away from it, the very sight of it causing a churning sensation deep down in his guts. Despite this, however, his eyes were drawn back to it time and time again.

  “A temple,” Patricia went on. “A place for concentrating power. An evil place designed for evil purposes.”

  She was interrupted by the sound of Ron’s voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, gather round, gather round.” He stood before the larger, seventh archway that led into the dome, the demons standing in lines as if at attention to either side of him. The survivors approached the area a bit tentatively. No one got within a dozen or so paces of the building. This was the first time anyone had seen it complete and in full daylight. This was the first time they got to see it in all of its dark majesty.

  “Now don’t be frightened,” said Ron. He was smiling, as usual. Thomas had a sudden and very powerful urge to try and knock his teeth down his throat. “Today is a most wonderful day. Our work has been completed. On time, no less. For that you are to be commended.” He clapped his hands a few times. “Come on, you deserve a round of applause.” There was a smattering of clapping in response to this. None of it sounded very enthusiastic. Ron scanned the crowd. “Thomas! Ah, there you are. Come here, my friend. Assume your rightful place beside me.”

  Now Thomas fantasized about shooting the man in the face.

  “That’s alright,” said Thomas, feeling the eyes of those around him looking his way. “I’m right where I belong.”

  For a moment Ron’s smile faltered. “If that’s the way it has to be...”

  Thomas felt a hand in his. He looked to his side to see Dana standing there. She offered a tiny smile, gave his hand a squeeze. He squeezed back.

  “I just wanted everyone to know,” Ron continued, “that for the next three days there will be nothing required of you. We have finished the project early. For now, you may relax. Enjoy the companionship of your friends. Throw a party if you want. You’ve earned it. In three days time we will gather here once more. Then you will see why it was so important to finish this job on time. A very special day is approaching. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I will say that I know all of you will be quite impressed. And proud. Yes, proud that you have been such an integral part of it all. So, in three days time I expect to see all of you here, present and accounted for. Until then…”

  With that he strode toward the crowd which parted before him, let him pass through. Everyone watched as he made his way over to the repair shop where he had set up residence. Then the crowd broke and started to flow over toward the Wal-Mart parking lot. People were murmuring, speculating on what could possibly be in store for them on the day that Ron had mentioned. And, understandably, no one sounded even remotely anxious for that day to arrive.

  *

  Thomas decided to go home. He figured it might very well be the last time he ever had a chance to see the place. Dana came with him. They didn’t tell anyone besides Tanya where they were going. She decided to stay behind to keep an eye on things. To keep an eye on Ron, Thomas figured. To see if he was up to anything unexpected. After the sun went down and most of the others were congregated within the Wal-Mart, Thomas and Dana walked outside to Dana’s car and drove away.

  First, they went and tested the barrier in a couple of places.

  “Maybe it’s weakened,” Dana said in one of her rare moments of verbal communication.

  “Maybe,” Thomas agreed if a bit half-heartedly.

  But it hadn’t. There was that queasy, gut churning feeling of disorientation and then they found themselves turned around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, driving back along the section of road they’d just traveled. After a few of these experiences, Thomas called it quits. No sense making himself sick beyond recovery for the remainder of the evening.

  At a little past nine o’clock they pulled up in front of the house. The place was a wreck. The wind and the rain of the storms that had rolled through in all the weeks that he’d been gone had found their way in through the broken windows and taken their toll. As he led the way inside through the open front door he saw papers, stained and wrinkled from water damage, scattered across the living room floor in the beam of the flashlight he carried. Lamps and vases had been toppled. A couple of shelves previously mounted to the walls, one of them loaded with CD’s and DVD’s, another with Julia’s figurines, had collapsed, scatte
ring their contents across the carpeting. Throwing the flashlight’s beam around the room, Thomas saw streaks of mold and mildew marring the previously pristine white surfaces of the walls.

  “At least there’s one lifeform that can survive in this world,” he said.

  Upstairs, things weren’t much better. The blankets on the beds were thick with the odor of mildew. The surface of the mirror in which he’d once seen Julia’s ghost was streaked with grime. Upon first approaching the master bedroom, Thomas had been nearly overwhelmed by a cascade of memories, most of them involving the many wonderful moments he’d shared there with Julia. But there were the horrors too: the bug storm, the ghosts, Gerald’s death.

  It had taken Dana’s touch upon his shoulder to give him the strength to cross the threshold. After a few minutes spent looking around the place, he set about the task of pulling the blankets off the bed, finding some clean, relatively fresh replacements in the closet down the hall. When he had finished with this small task, he declared, “I want to cover the window.”

  Downstairs, he went through the garage and out the door that led into to the back yard. Past the swing set and the sturdily built doghouse with the word “Rex” over its entrance, there was an aluminum shed standing just a few feet from the wooden privacy fence that separated his and the neighbor’s property. Inside were sheets of plywood, stored there in the event of a hurricane and the windows needed protecting. With Dana’s help, he carried in one of those unwieldy planks, brought it upstairs to the master bedroom along with a toolbox he kept in the garage, then nailed the plywood into place over the broken window.

  “There, that’s better,” he said when the work was done.

  That night the two of them slept in that room, Thomas on one side of the bed, Dana on the other. He dreamed pleasant dreams of his wife and children and the dog. The next morning he woke up early, spent some time in the children’s rooms going through the toys and various other possessions each had collected in their short lives. As he did so his heart was heavy but he took comfort in the act, feeling a connection with his lost children during the process. At one point he sat down on the edge of Jenny’s bed, her favorite stuffed animal—a panda bear with a big, dopey smile on its face—in his hands. He stared at it for a long time until he became aware of Dana standing in the doorway watching him.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  He nodded, gave the toy a kiss on the head and said under his breath, “See you soon.” Then he stood and set the animal back down on the bed where he’d found it and left the room. For the last time, he figured.

  “Let’s go,” he told Dana a few minutes later as they stood in the living room. She wanted to go home too so they drove the short distance to her house and pulled into the driveway. The front windows were still intact. No one inside for the bugs to go after, Thomas figured. The front door was locked which Dana opened with a key.

  In the kitchen Thomas got to see pictures of Bill and Nina for the first time, stuck to the refrigerator with magnets along with a couple of drawings done in a child’s hand. Bill was a handsome guy with short, dark hair and a moustache, Nina a beautiful little girl with a head full of unruly brown hair.

  A short time later found Thomas in the living room, seated on the couch, flipping through a photo album Dana handed him as she went back into the kitchen in search of some nonperishable items for them to eat. The pictures in the album covered the past several years from Dana’s life. Her marriage. Her pregnancy. The days following the birth of her daughter. Various vacations and celebrations. Downtime spent relaxing around the house... Thomas took it all in until it was time to eat. Then he closed the book, sealed the memories once again between the pages and the thin layer of transparent plastic that both covered and protected them.

  The day passed slowly, quietly, while outside the red sun ruled the sky and the heat continued to rise. Thomas relaxed on a section of the L-shaped couch reading a dog-eared, paperback sci-fi novel that served as a rather mindless diversion from the stress that seemed to have been a constant companion for too long now. Dana was curled up at the couch’s other end with a book of her own. Eventually Thomas closed the book and then his eyes. When he came to it was dark outside. Dana was asleep where she’d been reading. He covered her legs with a thin blanket that was draped over the back of the couch then walked out into the front yard.

  The heat had dipped a little for which Thomas was thankful. Up above, the moon was red. Large. Menacing. He half expected it to blink, for the sky to rumble with laughter. But it didn’t happen. The world was so quiet and still. Nothing moved. Anywhere. He felt frozen in the moment, as though the universe and everything in it had wound down like an old clock. Like time itself had ceased to exist. The last particle of sand had fallen through the hourglass and there was no one to turn it over, to start it running again. Now he and Dana and all the other survivors back at the Wal-Mart would be stuck here in this dark and dead place, forever.

  He took a deep breath, turned and went back inside. Returning the couch, he managed to find sleep once again.

  In the morning he felt tired, like he hadn’t slept much if at all. Vague dream images followed him into wakefulness, fleeting visions of alien worlds, sinister jungles and towering cities through which he walked, utterly alone, overpowering feelings of uncertainty and dread his only companions.

  “You don’t look so good,” Dana told him from where she stood next to the couch looking down at him.

  “I’m fine,” he said then slowly got to his feet, searching for the strength to face another day.

  With nothing better to do, they set out that morning to test the perimeter again. They drove north to a place where they saw a post that marked the barrier, placed there weeks earlier when they had set forth in a group with the same purpose in mind. The barrier was still there. Thomas had volunteered to be the one to walk into it. As anticipated, the twisting, sickening sensation assaulted him, like having every molecule of his body rearranged and then put hastily back into the proper order again. Dana was there beside him, hand on his arm, helping him up to his feet. He felt disoriented, slightly nauseous. Nothing new there. But…

  “It’s not as bad,” he said, wiping at his eyes and the tears that had formed there.

  “What?”

  “For a moment I felt as though I might make it, that I might pass through to the other side and keep on going. It feels… weaker somehow.”

  Dana repeated the experiment with similar results and came away with a similar impression.

  They drove off and found a couple of other places where the wooden posts marked the invisible shield. Each time Thomas entered the barrier he felt that he just… might… make it… But then he’d find himself turned around, on his knees and gasping for air. The barrier was weaker, he was sure of it, but not yet weak enough. Still… It gave him a reason to hope.

  They returned to Dana’s house, stayed inside for the rest of the day. Thomas had seen enough of that blood red sun. Eventually night fell. The world cooled off, if just a bit. Quiet. So quiet.

  And then came the morning.

  It was time to return to the store, to Ron and the demons.

  It was time for the big surprise.

  *

  They parked in the sprawling lot before the Wal-Mart and walked over toward the dome where, it seemed, most everyone had already gathered.

  Saturday the eleventh.

  September the eleventh.

  Not too hard to find the significance of the date. Was another disaster waiting to strike? Thomas felt his mouth go dry at the thought. People were talking in strained voices all around him, waving their hands to accentuate their points. They were nervous, obviously anxious to see what was in store for them. Understandably so, given what they’d been through so far.

  Dana spotted Tanya and they were walking toward her when Thomas heard his name shouted. He turned and saw Ron standing near the edge of the crowd, a pair of demons next to him. The man was well dressed for
the occasion, whatever the occasion might turn out to be. He wore a tuxedo. A red tuxedo. Red top hat. Gleaming black shoes and a black cane upon which he leaned with what appeared to be feigned nonchalance in Thomas’s opinion. It was a getup that would have elicited laughter from Thomas if there wasn’t something so odd and disturbing about it given the circumstances.

  “Let me see what this is all about,” he said to Dana before making his way over to where Ron was waiting.

  “Follow me,” said Ron and he turned with a flourish, a move Thomas found himself associating with Gene Wilder’s performance as Willy Wonka in the classic movie, and led the way over to the repair shop, the demons falling into step behind them.

  At the shop, Ron opened the door, motioned for Thomas to enter. “After you.” Once inside he closed the door leaving the demons outside. They went into the office where Ron asked Thomas to take a seat. He did. Ron paced back and forth for a minute or more, filled with a wild, pent up energy of his own. And then it all came blurting out:

  “It’s a test run. All of it. A test run for the end times. The real end times. Just to make sure it all goes right, that everything goes according to plan. Because, you see, even God couldn’t get things right the first time around. Not even close. So many worlds… So many universes… Each one a little bit closer to the way he wanted it. Building a world, a universe, it’s quite the undertaking, as I’m sure you can imagine. And nobody’s perfect. Not even God, contrary to popular belief. So he makes a universe. And when he looks at it he says, ‘Oh, no, no, no, that will never do.’ Maybe the gravitational force is just a bit too strong. Or too weak. Or the rate of entropy isn’t quite right. The speed of light a little bit off. You see? And the whole thing kinda falls apart and it’s back to the drawing board. He does this, oh, a few million times. Each time it gets a little better. Each time it comes a little bit closer to the perfection he holds within his mind. Until, toward the end, it’s just the little details. ‘Orange skies? What was I thinking? Green oceans? I must have been crazy. Not here, not in this world where these little playthings of mine, these human beings are going to live.’ And so he tweaks it. And tweaks it. Until… Voila! It’s all just right. Like in the story about the three bears. Not too hot and not too cold. Sure, God may have been able to create the universe, the one that you’re familiar with, in seven days time. But, trust me, he had a lot of practice leading up to it.”