by Mon D Rea
My ears still seem to be functioning properly. With my head hanging over one side, I can all at once make out that the bloodless whiteness under the water is in fact a field of corpses packed shoulder to shoulder. Despite the warning, I disgorge more of yesterday’s dinner. My eyes are tearing and my last meal drips down from my mouth in stringy bits.
The boatman laughs heartily as he rows with powerful, fluid strokes. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand. “Who are you and what is this place?”
“Fear not. You are in the good, steady hands of your humble servant Kharon. I guarantee you safe passage,” the old man speaks unctuously. “The peace you seek lies on the other side, just across the River of Woe.”
Peace? Is that what I’m here for? I think to myself. My head feels like a jar full of flies, noisy and furious. This stranger’s particular manner of speaking also hits a switch deep inside me and I’m seized by an intense feeling of déjà vu. I feel with absolute certainty that I’ve seen or even met this old man before, a virtual impossibility so my brain defaults to the explanation that it has all transpired inside yet another dream, which incredibly complicates things.
My head’s reeling as I take in my twilit surroundings, but then something else brings my eyes back to the water. The bodies are not alone. I manage to isolate a few ribbony, luminous-white creatures twisting just beneath the surface, similar to jellyfish tentacles in constitution but every one of them shaped like giant polliwogs with shriveled heads.
The reason I didn’t notice them sooner is because they sort of overlap in their sheer number and they employ a form of camouflage. What’s white is actually their underbellies while the skin on their backs and the stuffing of their bodies are diaphanous enough to show me the bottom of the river, affording and shutting off glimpses as they writhe and roll.
The water’s teeming with them: a phalanx of living strips that switch luminescent then invisible, luminescent, invisible. One could even mistake them for the stuff the unreal river is made of, the water itself that buoys and carries the boat.
“What are they?” I ask, mesmerized.
“Discarded umballicus. Discordant chords. Possibilities and connections you’ve once had with others of your kind; now unrealized, now severed. They’re coming home to be crushed, by the one great force that created them. They all wash up in the Drain of the World, to the mouth of Spinstra’s Cave at river’s end.”
Spin-what? The actual water moves so idly it almost looks stagnant. In places it eddies and pulls some of the white stuff underneath, only to burp it out again with a horrid noise.
It’s just as well because to me the water’s a vat of toxic waste, especially with the shades of humans waiting at the bottom like faint aliens of the deep. I turn my attention to the far banks where a jungle lies, looking inhospitable in its primordial state.
“… a small price to pay for such express service.”
I understand the general idea of what Kharon’s saying but it makes as much sense as the plucked tubes of logic in a dream, which is what this is, or so I keep trying to convince myself. I forgo asking any other questions but as it is indeed with dreams or nightmares, the most fearsome enemy’s a character who can read your thoughts. One eye glows like a cat’s from deep within the old man’s hood.
“Certainly you know what an obolus is,” Kharon thunders as he looms like a storm cloud at the opposite end of the boat. “You have family and friends. Or are you an orphan?”
With the agility of a younger man, Kharon pounces on me to part my jaws and actually grope inside my mouth. His uncanny strength strikes terror into me and all the muscles in my body turn flaccid in his grip.
“NOTHING! Then you shall wait a hundred years ashore like the rest!” The old man’s nails are long and yellow and they cut deep, nasty gashes down both my cheeks. His hood thrown back, Kharon reveals wispy hair on a mostly bald pate and the drooping jowls of a tramp. But though one eye turns to focus on me, the other remains still, replaced with a rather modern-looking device that’s a cross between a monocle and a sniping rifle’s scope crudely wedged in the knothole that is his eye socket. Kharon’s grinning with wonky shark teeth and the stench of a vulture’s beak.
He capsizes his own boat.
Thousands of bubbles rise to meet me as I crash and struggle underwater. Now I’m treading, fighting back the onset of panic. Some of the oversized polliwogs have gotten stuck to my hair and arms and they’re all squirming to be free and far from the commotion I’ve stirred up on the surface.
I can hear tiny, dying squeaks as the delicate creatures burst at my touch, effectively clearing the water within a one-meter radius. I know I should propel myself to the riverbanks but before I can put thought to action, the dead reach out of the water with their tender, wrinkly hands. I’m instantly surrounded as the lonesome keening of a banshee fills the cold, quiet air.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glint that’s foreign to the backdrop of the distant thicket. This detail pierces my consciousness because I thought Kharon had materialized on the river bank, but boatman and boat look undisturbed and have carried on across the river. I can hear the old man laughing at my plight and make out the huddled shapes of other passengers on the ferry. How I could’ve missed all those people in one small boat no amount of logic could ever explain.
The discovery races through my brain even as the adrenalin surges through my bloodstream: there’s another entity present in the scene. I know this for a fact because there are four of the metallic objects superimposed on the figure’s face – like two pairs of goggles worn simultaneously, suggesting an insectile mask. With inspiration, I imagine a long-haired, willowy river naiad, half her face swallowed by two pairs of eyes that warp her softness into something harsh and unsettling. But I’m all out of time to indulge this fantasy.
A dozen icy arms smother and pull me under. I can hear Kharon’s laughter fading as I cough and gasp for air. I vaguely realize this is the second time I’m drowning on the same day. And the last thing I see is the bold flash in the jungle as though the voyeur is getting a kick out of watching me die.
Chapter III: Lounge of the Dead
Wet and warm sensations all over my face, in a slobbery, affectionate way that for a moment I think I’m back at Blessed Children’s and being woken up by Gamby. Then I remember the stray puppy has been dead over fifteen years and my eyes snap open. A bear of a dog is licking my face – or rather, the blood dripping out of the open wounds in my face – while something close is making a hissing sound like a snake pit.
I drag my ass through the muddy bank and scream. Another dog turns to snarl at me and then a third, till my brain registers that all three heads are attached to the same giant, thickly-muscled neck.
Kerberos. Greek mythology from high school floods over me and I break into cold sweat. The Hellhound. Sibling to the monsters Chimaera and Hydra.
All three heads are barking a volley of thunder so I press my hands over my ears to protect them from further damage, and my eyes fall on the curious mane flowing down the dog’s broad back. In minute detail, I note how the hair is sort of glistening, slimy, and moving. I watch horrified as the sight resolves into a hundred small snakes with their tails all knotted together, their bodies writhing and heads spitting in agitation.
I take little comfort from the idea that the legendary guard dog of Hell won’t harm me. My memory of high school readings had better be correct when it says Kerberos is here so the spirits of the dead can enter but none can ever leave.
Besides, I realize I’ve got bigger things to worry about as I stare beyond the hellhound at a sea of people pouring out of a familiar boat that has ploughed ashore; its demonic ferryman nowhere in sight, thank God. Every man, woman, and child appears sluggish and hypnotized. They shamble together just outside a dense fog that covers the land. Then, out of the dimmest instinct, they fall in wavy lines disappearing into the white curtain.
Overhead, a LED message sign that’s oddly manmade gre
ets: “WELCOME TO NECRO CITY!!!!” its red letters scrolling over and over. A growl from Kerberos tells me I have no choice but to move on through the fog and face the music.
****
The first thing you’ll notice about hell is the presence, even the abundance, of water in the form of rivers and lakes, contrary to popular belief. First, I’ve come by the Akheron River, where Kharon transports the souls of the dead from the other side. Then there’s Lethe, Pool of Forgetfulness, from which the departed drink to shed every vestige of their past lives; and Kokytos, Greek for lamentation, the frozen lake where spirits lie entombed in ice except for half their faces. They sob their hearts out but the tears freeze as soon as they touch skin, pressing the eyes shut and taking away that last bit of comfort humans normally find in crying.
My fears grow with every step I take. It’s chilling to contemplate how stories of eternal damnation are coming true before my eyes, what in life I’ve always treated with skepticism and mockery. Soon I and my languid companions find ourselves at a derelict airport terminal bustling with people.
Most of the seats in the waiting area are dusty and gutted and the glass booths where passengers are supposed to get their passports stamped have all been emptied. But in front of the booths three different entities stand guard like this world’s version of immigration officers. My psychic ability must be a hundred times stronger in this place because I instantly become aware of these three creatures; these reapers.
The first is Kera, the Spirit of Vengeance who’s responsible for conducting everyone who experienced a violent death. She’s a battle maiden in plate armor, with an ebony face and short, curly blonde hair. She’s exactly the type to bring home to mama except for the fangs, talons and huge pair of raven wings on her back.
The second is Ankou, a really creepy clown with a constantly nodding Jack-in-the-box head. The face has owl eyes and a mouth filled with shark teeth stretching from ear to ear like the Cheshire cat’s grin. In one hand he holds a whip that used to be somebody’s spine and in the other a drippy clot of blood the size of a ball.
The last is Yama Ranger, a Westernized Hindu deity with indigo skin and four arms, two of which are presently crossed. He wears a ten-gallon hat whose shadow isn’t enough to hide the devilish burning of his eyes or the glow of his cigar, and then the rest of the authentic cowboy outfit: bandanna, vest, chaps, woolen trousers, boots and spurs. He has two six-shooters tucked in his chest cross-draw holsters, and hooked to his gun belt is a lasso that has the ability to banish overstaying ghosts to the depths of the underworld.
A line of invisible bodyguards keep the hysterical mob away and the three reapers stand impassively in front. Ankou, the clown reaper, assigns a destination to every weary traveler by flicking and wrapping his whip around his own body. The crack the whip produces each time is as loud as thunder, and the number of coils it makes around his body represents a location.
All at once I witness yet another desecration of the basic principles of physics. One second I’m waiting among tens of thousands of people of varying ages, races and trades: office workers, laborers, students, plutocrats, hipsters; all terrified out of their wits because who knows how to face death properly, even the few who try to put brave fronts look plain pathetic in the looming shadow of what lies ahead. The next moment I’m standing before the three reapers and quaking in naked fear, shamefully wetting myself and crying in repentance and supplication, all to numb ears because it’s too late, all too late; this even as hundreds of other spirits stand in the exact same spot.
Through my tear-blinded eyes, I see Ankou’s frozen leer as he passes judgment on me. The clown’s ossified whip makes seven coils, indicating the Seventh Circle which is the place for suicides (again I learn psychically), then a gust of wind blasts up from under my feet like too much gas-pressure belching out of a manhole – only there was no manhole, covered or otherwise, just solid tarmac; or so I thought. This release is so strong that it launches me hundreds of feet up in the air.
When I finally descend with arms flailing in a parabola bound by the rules of gravity, I’m taking in the view of a citywide mine burrowing straight down to the molten bowels of the earth. There are canyons so vast and grotesque they could be the work of giants, and yet in all their superhuman scale every glowing crag and jagged edge fills with the animal howls of the damned. I shut my eyes to the sight.
I land violently – breaking both legs with a terrible cracking sound and white explosions of pain – but consoling myself with the thought that anything that happens to me on this wild journey can’t bring any real harm since my physical body’s already gone. My mind, still teetering on the brink, is another matter though.
I manage to stand on two legs that appear to be bent in all the wrong places, behaving like some android from the future with only a vague understanding of pain. I dust myself and wince at my skinned face, palms, and feet before realizing with some fascination that I’m still wearing my wetsuit.
I consider the ground I’m standing on: a razor-thin ledge of dry, cracked soil. At a distance stands a lone structure that resembles an elevator, notwithstanding the mounds of rock that have thrust out of the earth and wrapped around the frame of its doors.
Denying any moment of reprieve, the precarious stage begins to shake and the elevator doors hiss apart. Out of the yawning blackness, long chains fly forth as though flung with invisible harpoons. They pierce the edges of my neck, wrists, and thighs like machine-gun fire and, at the exit wounds, bloom into mini-grappling hooks that secure their catch and drag me writhing into the dark maw.
I’m only half-conscious of other people undergoing the same sadistic treatment. Apart from my own, I can hear wails screeching into mad laughter as we are all, slowly but confidently, dragged towards our darkest nightmare.
Our backs slam against the walls and stay there, as though the elevator was actually a rotor ride in an amusement park. As much as I want to glimpse my fellow passengers, I can’t even turn my head as I hang restrained by all the weird g-forces and the tightening chains that smell of either rust or blood.
There’s an elevator boy standing by the doors and shouting out each floor, all of them going downwards and deeper to the true essence of terror. Only it doesn’t look like there are buttons to operate the box; instead, the boy’s fingers tighten and loosen around ropes that stretch up to the ceiling.
In the end, no matter how hard my sanity refuses to accept it, the thing that’s carrying us proves to be less of a modern machine and more of a giant bucket in a well. And what I’ve taken for ropes leading to a pulley above are looking more and more like intestines exiting the kid’s punctured stomach!
“Sub-level 2,” the poor tortured soul, who has his back turned and his head covered with a visor cap, calls out. “Souls driven over the edge by passion. Pervs, pedos, rapists, sex slavers and cyber-stalkers.”
The voice is drugged lethargy mixed with the most potent dose of despair. The doors open and a howling squall, as though from a storm battering a ship, whips inside and spirits several individuals away. I see countless people outside being tossed back and forth like rag dolls in the air, their feet never to touch the ground. Then the doors close.
Without batting an eye, the elevator boy continues: “Sub-level 3: The gluttons and those who gorged themselves while others starved. Junkies and escapists…”
The elevator bell dings. This time the doors let in an icy gust packed with fly-infested black snow and rock-size hail. It plucks the bulkier of my companions off the walls like they were weightless then dumps them in what I believe to be fields of rotting corpses sweeping endlessly. The stench is enough to make a grown man’s stomach churn but, incredibly, the automatic doors shut it all out.
I’m painfully learning that hell is patterned after Greek mythology and Dante. It’s divided into nine concentric circles, nine underground layers, the next more vicious than the one above it until the burning core of the planet where the sentence is carried out on
the great serpent Abaddon himself. Every sinner for all eternity receives punishment equal to the chief sin he committed, ever in a grislier dose of poetic justice.
I know I’m going to faint any second so, as soon as this thought occurs to me, tiny pieces of wire creep delicately under my eyelids to keep them from closing. Compelling electric charges also zap my vision right back into focus as though to remind me not to look away or I’d miss the show.
“Sub-level 4. Money-hoarders, squanderers, and corrupt politicians. ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where gentlemanly Death shall come like a thief in the night’ and all that.”
In addition to the chains, black collars with long spikes materialize out of thin air and snap like cobras around a great many necks. Then all the chosen ones are tugged out of the elevator with their leashes. They are flung against gigantic, cartoony bags filled to bursting and alight with gold shine.
Brief, steam-like hisses accompany the repeated sound of nail guns punching, as the inverted collar spikes sink into human necks, drawing blood and pressuring the new slaves to start pushing the huge money bags along.
“Sub-level 5: Child-killers, mass murderers, and random shooters. Those who bullied the weak. Plus the lazy and the worthless, the depressed and the anti-social. Here you will also find the abominable River Styx.”
I smell something like sewer gas and before anyone can scream “God have mercy,” a tidal wave of thoroughly nasty water has engulfed the elevator. But I savor a few precious seconds of peace thinking how like a blessing it would be to finally die in the intangible hands of the element I’ve first chosen to smother my life. Now already on our third encounter…
I should’ve known better. The water subsides as rapidly as it has come. More have gone missing. I take big, hungry gulps of air while the elevator boy carries on as usual, ridiculously unfazed with just the daintiest trace of algae on his cap. My eyes follow the swampy river as it ebbs back to its original course. On the reddened banks, a myriad of people are locked in an eternal free-for-all because everyone rises back up like rabid animals in spite of their mortal injuries.