Letters From Hades

by Jeffrey Thomas

  I yanked the pike out of the soil. I supposed I should carry it with me as a weapon. If it had nearly killed one devil, it might protect me from others. And for now, I used it as a walking stick as I slowly trudged after the two who had disappeared before me in the direction of Oblivion.

  Day 39.

  It must have been an Angel who shot this arrow into me. A devil would come right up to you and grin and lop the top of your skull off. It’s the Angels who like to steal and skulk, to track and hunt. It’s their sport. They can come here anytime they like, and do anything they desire.

  I spent the night, as I chose to call the hours of my rest, in a cave-like hollow at the base of a large tree that had fallen years before, either rotted out or struck by lightning. If it was charred, the evidence was covered over in a purplish moss that had blanketed the great trunk. The hollow wasn’t very deep, but deep enough to shelter me when it rained. The rain was water, this time, not blood. Caroline and I had finished the wine but I’d saved the bottle, and I set it out in the rain to collect some of the water. Not a lot accumulated, but I was grateful for it.

  Then in the day I set out again in what I hoped was still the correct direction. Maybe we should have stuck to the path after all. It was only perhaps an hour after leaving my night’s shelter that the arrow hit me.

  It’s a crossbow bolt, actually. What do they call that—a quarrel? Too short to be an arrow, almost like a long dart. The tip must be ruthlessly barbed, because after it had spun me to the ground and I had taken hold of it, I found I couldn’t pull it out without tearing myself inside. It had pierced through to the back of my rib cage, and I think in fact it is lodged in one of them.

  I desperately clawed my way back to my feet, and plunged onward into the woods, frantic to outrun my hunter. My lungs burned so badly I wondered if they were filling with blood. Any moment I expected a second bolt to thunk squarely into the back of my skull…

  No more bolts came. I lost the hunter. Not needing my flesh for food, my skin for leather, he was not inspired to rouse himself much from his easy play.

  That was hours ago. I’ve stopped bleeding, but the razored flange still rubs against my muscles. Grinds at my bone like a knife across a whetstone. There is no real need for doctors, but I can only hope there are people in Oblivion willing to lend aid…

  I find it ironic that I helped that Demon, by removing the spear I still carry from her body. But there is no one here to help me.

  I’ve sat down here on this rock splotched in bluish lichen to rest. To finish the last sip of water from my bottle. I hope to emerge from these desolate woods soon. What if they go on and on for mile after mile, a forest wider than all the continents of the Earth combined? I feel that Hell is bigger than the Earth…despite what they say about there being more people alive on the Earth now than have ever died before them. All this room is waiting to be filled by the many successive generations yet to arrive. Maybe then these forests will be cleared to make way for more towns like Caldera, cities like Oblivion.

  I’m caught up now in my journal. No excuse to remain here any longer. And I still fear that Angel catching up with me. So—onward.

  Later.

  I don’t know how many hours I walked through the woods; perhaps it was longer than a day. Eventually, accidentally, I found myself back on the path through the forest, though maybe it was a different path. It was broader, after all, and even rutted with wheels of apparently various kinds. And straight…so straight that in its distance I could see Oblivion rising from the horizon.

  Earlier I mentioned how the spiral-branded baboon-like devils remind me of the flying monkeys from the film of The Wizard of Oz. It was easy for me to run further with that film as a frame of reference; after all, my surroundings were so patently unreal, as if I had been transported onto some immense and detailed sound stage. The woods reminded me of the haunted forest Dorothy and her friends passed through, and the city beyond the edge of the great forest now put me in mind of the Emerald City as it appeared at the end of the yellow brick road.

  But the gold bricks of the road had all been carted away, and the Emerald City had seen better days.

  Oblivion was a city of blackness. As I drew closer—though it would be several hours yet before I actually reached the city; it seemed as far away as boiling dark storm clouds—this initial impression was only strengthened. I was getting the sense that the city was built largely of black metal, like Avernus University but on a grander scale even than that imposing institution. This was not some town like Caldera that the Damned had built for themselves; the Demons had to have had a major, even organizing part in it. Why they would provide shelter and community for the citizens of Hell was as yet a mystery to me, that I was not counting on ever fathoming.

  The city grew ever taller and wider, becoming more imposing, like some jagged silhouetted mountain range, reminding me of the towering volcano I had encountered above Caldera. But whereas the volcano exhaled massive clouds into the sky, to further blanket and obscure it, the opposite was the case with Oblivion. The sky above the city glowed orange, as if either dawn or dusk were breaking. The usual layer of clouds that had always blocked the sky from my view before was open in a rough circle above the city. Yet what was revealed was no cavernous ceiling of rock, as I had imagined it might be.

  It was lava. An ocean of molten rock, its light subtly fluctuating. It was as amazing as if it had indeed been an inverted sea. How it could resist gravity was beyond my reckoning. Was this what hid behind the cloud cover throughout Hell? And why was it exposed here? If anything, one would think a city’s pollution would only darken its skies further. Perhaps its pollution had burned away the clouds overhead somehow, eaten them away.

  As I walked, gaping at the city and its molten sky, I heard a rattling sound grow quickly behind me. A look back over my shoulder, then I was jumping off to the side of the broad dirt road as a carriage of some sort sped in the direction of Oblivion. When it grew close enough I marveled at its repugnant weirdness. It was like Cinderella’s pumpkin coach gone rotten. Its body was made of intricately wrought black iron, flowery and filigreed, even the wheels being metal. But this baroque framework supported a huge orange globe that had an organic look, and which possessed a luminous property. The carriage was pulled like a rickshaw by a team of six of the Damned, yoked and harnessed into position. Four men and two women, all of them nude, sweaty and dusty. The two women, in the fore, each wore a leather mask, out of the top of which rose a black plume. Every beast of burden had apparently had their eyes removed, and thick black screws fitted into their sockets to prevent the eyes from regenerating.

  At first I thought that massive orange globe contained the coach’s rider. Then I realized it was the rider.

  The spherical entity had a vast face across its front, small eyes nearly lost in rolls of gelatinous, translucent fat…a broad nose, and a wide mouth with thick lips that nearly split the globe in half. No limbs, no ears, nothing but that face. Its eyes were entirely black against its glowing flesh. It seemed a half-ethereal creature. I was reminded of how children draw the sun with a benevolent smiling face on it. It also reminded me of the lopped-off head of a huge statue of Buddha. But I knew that sun-like, Buddha-like smile and those jovial eyes were only deceptively benign.

  Did the thing’s eyes like black marbles roll slightly in my direction as the carriage rumbled past me? I lowered my own eyes as if out of respect, but in reality out of fear. The coach did not stop…and soon, thankfully, it was dwindling in the distance…would reach the city long before me.

  As time passed, I saw smaller paths on either side of the main road, winding out of the forest. And more, I encountered people who emerged from these tributaries, to head in the same direction I did. Some stumbled along befuddled, perhaps newcomers like myself…or perhaps they had long ago let go of their sanity. Maybe these poor souls had even been mentally ill in life, exiled here because their minds had never been sound enough to admit the concept of
the Son.

  More and more people trickled onto the main road, until it was almost like an exodus, a pilgrimage to Oblivion. Inevitably, a few of my fellow travelers would fall in beside me for a while and we would briefly talk. One of these was a boy of about twelve with a British accent, who was carrying a wicker basket strapped to his back. It was filled with gourds like small albino pumpkins, which he said he would trade for some new shoes in the city. He was from some small town in the forest which he called Limbo. As we conversed, I came to understand that he had been in Hell since the nineteenth century. There was a fatalistic composure to him, even a kind of mild cynical humor. He seemed the worldliest person I had ever met.

  Several more carriages happened along, but none occupied by that sort of Jack-O’-Lantern being. One was a wagon loaded with logs, and ponderously drawn by two animals that looked like bulky, shaggy yaks with six curling goat-like horns. An animal designed for multiple uses, like those provided to be hunted by the Native Americans, Neanderthals and such. I asked my youthful companion if dogs and cats and other Earthly animals went to Heaven. Or Hell.

  "Neither," he said. "They don’t have souls."

  "I’ve had some dogs and cats in my life that sure seemed to have souls. More of a soul than a lot of people I’ve known."

  The boy only shrugged. It didn’t matter if he agreed with me or not; protesting this revelation was pointless…even if my own soul strongly argued against these facts. These celestial judgments, these cosmic designs.

  Well, animals are lucky then, aren’t they? To just die, just cease to be. It’s what I longed for that day, seemingly eons ago, when I took my shotgun in my hands…

  I envy the Demons, too. The same release is available to them. To the Creator, they must be like animals. Perhaps He even views His legions of devils as innocents. Merely driven to torture a human as a horse is driven to draw a cart.

  Another traveler who fell in beside me introduced himself as Jesus (Hay-zoos); I expected a bolt of lightning to strike him at this information. He was very chatty and jovial, but the branded "R" for Rapist on his forehead reminded me that there were some people in Hell who truly did belong here. He never mentioned the arrow protruding from my back, as though it were the most natural thing in the underworld. When he discerned I was a relative novice to eternal damnation in general and Oblivion in particular he was a fount of information.

  "Your best bet is to get work in one of the torture plants," he advised. "They’ll pay you for it…"

  "Demons don’t do that work?"

  "Some of it, but a lot of times they just supervise humans. They like to get humans to do that shit to each other…I guess they think it’s funny."

  "They want to see how much they can get us to debase ourselves."

  "But hey, like I said, they pay you. Then you can get better lodgings. Maybe even your own little apartment."

  "I couldn’t do that to my own kind."

  "Well, if you don’t work there or someplace else, you’ll be living in the streets. Maybe sleeping in an alley, some little nook or cranny if you can find one. But I wouldn’t want to be outside when it rains." He tilted his jaw at the churning sky above the city. I followed his upward glance. It wasn’t a pleasant scenario I envisioned.

  I extricated myself from Jesus as quickly as I could. A middle-aged Indian woman in a self-made sari became my next temporary companion. She asked me why I was going to Oblivion. Shrugging, I told her, "I guess I needed some place to go. It’s as good a place as any. And I was advised that it’s safer in a city than out in the wilds."

  "Not necessarily," she said. "But if you work for the Demons they can be lenient."

  "Do you trade in Oblivion?" She had a bundle of possessions or such.

  "No…I’m going there to settle for the time being. I’m coming from another city. The Demons invaded it in great numbers, rounding up the populace, dragging people out of their flats. Even workers in the torture plants."

  "Why?"

  "There is no reason we can comprehend. But I suppose, just so the citizens would not feel too complacent. Too sheltered. A lot of us escaped. The last I saw from a distance, my city was in flames."

  "It’s the incomprehensible that scares me the most," I confessed to her. "More than pain, I think." After a few moments I asked, "Did you have friends and family in your city?"

  "Friends. Friends from Hell, not friends from my lifetime…and I’ve never encountered family here. My friends were scattered in all the chaos. I hope some of them will find their way to Oblivion."

  I nodded. "Have you ever seen a famous person or a celebrity in Hell? Like Ted Bundy…Lee Harvey Oswald?"

  The little Indian woman gave me an uncomprehending frown. "I died in 1927," she explained.

  "Oh. I’m sorry. People all seem like contemporaries here. Well…anyway…back at Avernus University I thought I saw Danny Kaye one time in a hallway. He was a film actor, a comedian; I loved his movies as a kid. But we were being herded along by an instructor so I didn’t dare ask him. I remember thinking that if Danny Kaye is in Hell, then there’s no hope for humanity. He’s the only celebrity I might have seen. No Jimmy Hoffa, no Hitler…"

  "That name I’ve heard mentioned," the woman said.

  "You’ve been here for a long time—do you think it’s possible to escape?"

  "Escape? Hell? Oh, no…no, no…"

  "Well, you know, look at the visions of Hell writers like Dante and Swedenborg, prophets and so forth have given us. Hell mentioned in the Bible…places like Hell in all these different religions and cultures. Where did they get their glimpses of it, unless they might have come here briefly and then returned?"

  "Part of them may have come, a projection, but it is more likely that a window was merely opened for them to see through. Or perhaps they only sensed Hell instinctively. But in any case, no one who ever died and was damned to Hell could ever escape."

  "Orpheus went to Hell and back."

  "Only a myth."

  "I used to say Hell was only a myth."

  Some people weren’t heading toward Oblivion, but coming from it. The traffic grew more congested the closer the city loomed…and now it did indeed loom. It towered above me like the skyline of a great Earthly city, the tallest towers seeming almost to reach the sky of magma, which was now above my head. Looking up at it, and the ebony skyscrapers, was a vertiginous sensation. Orange light reflected on metal and glass, and sent a diffused glow everywhere, so that faces took on the look of people gathered by a fire.

  Many of the smaller buildings appeared to be made from bricks that were either cut from black pumice or baked from clay that had been painted black, nestled between the larger structures like tenement slums. On their flat roofs were tents and lean-tos in a kind of elevated shanty town. The most imposing buildings, however, were even more mechanical than they had seemed from afar…covered in external circulatory systems of pipelines, and in clockwork gears that turned and pistons that pumped and grooved belts that flowed along recessed tracks in the rusty hides of the sooty black edifices, all to no apparent purpose.

  Not only were there several titanic towers that might rival the Empire State Building, but some buildings that were not so much tall as vast overall, covering many blocks, and one of these didn’t even seem to have a single window in it. Most of the towers had rows of windows like Earthly skyscrapers, but some were lit while others were dark, some with glass intact and others smashed. Many were boarded over.

  There was a clamor arising from Oblivion; not of cars and their horns as in the cities I had experienced, but of multitudes of voices, of gnashing and clanging machinery, and the hiss of steam that billowed up out of brick smoke stacks and out of strange vents and grills in the bodies of buildings. Oblivion was like a gargantuan factory busily manufacturing itself.

  There was a wall surrounding the entire city, about four stories in height, and made from huge plates of iron impossibly soldered or welded together, these seams like silvery scars agai
nst the thick black sheets. Beyond the wall rose a refinery of some kind, and an immense mound of glistening coal. Structures that might be steeples or minarets, their metal surfaces layered and richly detailed. Huge fans turned atop various rooftops, perhaps windmills generating power. Water tanks rested atop others. Catwalks connected many of the tall buildings. Everything looked tremendously congested, lumped together, as if a city like New York had been compressed into half its length and breadth.

  The wall around Oblivion was a hexagon, with a slender metal tower soaring at each corner. Like a skeletal iron lighthouse, each turret was surmounted by a glowing orange bulb. And then I noticed that an elevator-like contraption inside one of these needle-like towers was raising an illuminated globe up toward its presently unlit summit. I realized that the globe was that Buddha-faced Jack-O’-Lantern being I had seen in the carriage.

  "What is that thing?" I asked the Indian woman, pointing.

  "An Overseer."

  "So…they monitor the city?"

  "Yes. More or less."

  "Where did that one go off to?"

  "He didn’t go; he’s coming. He’s replacing one that must have perished. Sometimes Overseers sicken…grow dim, then black, and die. Sometimes they’re murdered by the Damned because the oil in their bodies can be used inside lamps."

  Ahh. I recalled the mysterious lamp Caroline and I had used back in Caldera.

  "Well, where is this one coming from?"