by John Everson
Gordon dropped the robe, and Mark could see the stature of the man. His gut was huge, but so were his shoulders. His arms and legs looked thick as stumps, and when he lifted his arm and cracked a whip against the stone floor…the huge room did not absorb the sound. It slapped loud and clear.
Mark looked around at the silent figures. None of them responded to his gaze in any way. He was just about to look back to Kharon when his eyes lit on one pale face beneath the dark hood of a robe. A face that looked familiar. He looked back and caught her eyes and instantly knew that, yes, he’d been right. She, contrary to all the others, met his gaze with a stare that was filled with empathy and hope.
Selena. What was she doing here?
He held her eyes for a moment, and was about to open his mouth to say something when she shook her head from side to side. The movement was quick and faint…but clear.
No. Betray nothing.
He nodded his head once and she smiled, just a hint of upturn to her lips. Then her eyes blinked, and Mark looked back at Kharon.
“Are you ready to face the pain?” the ghoulish man demanded. “I offer you this one last chance to turn around and go back to your little life. Let this all go. Forget about NightWhere. Forget about Rae.”
Mark took a breath. He would have liked nothing more than to have taken a pass on this. He didn’t think he would ever wash the events of yesterday from his mind. Every little while a horrible memory from the pit suddenly popped out of nowhere to flash before his eyes.
He looked away from Kharon and saw Selena staring at him. Her chin moved almost imperceptibly up and down. Yes, she was encouraging. Take the ‘out’.
Mark forced himself to look away from those eyes buried in the shadow of a black cloak.
He had come this far. He was not going to leave Rae at the hands of this…beast. God knows what Kharon had done to Rae already.
“I have to see Rae once more,” Mark announced.
Kharon nodded his head and answered with a sardonic smile. “As you wish.”
He stepped to the side and filled the gap where Gordon had been. Then he pointed towards the glow of fire on the room’s horizon. “Go in and sin.” He waited a moment and then added, “Or die.”
Mark walked past the Watchers and into the shadowed spaces beyond. Behind him, a whip cracked. He ignored it and walked forward, moving towards the orange light ahead. He couldn’t tell if there was a path there or not, but clearly he was meant to move towards the light.
Another crack echoed from behind him, only this one made him double over. The sting of the whip bit in just beneath his left shoulder blade, and the force of its slap pushed him off balance.
He walked faster, but Gordon continued to dole out the lash. It cracked against the right globe of his ass and he could feel the skin blistering with heat. It cracked against his spine and his back cried out in dull, continuing pain afterward. It ripped the skin of his shoulder blades and stung against his thighs. In minutes the entire backside of his body felt molten with heat, and when he walked he could feel the skin stretch and complain, telling him again and again where the whip had been.
Mark quickened his pace, almost running to escape the steady, rhythmic crack of the leather. But the faster he moved, the faster Gordon followed. The man matched Mark step for step.
He looked ahead. The path he walked appeared to be bordered by something just ahead. The darkness grew darker every few feet; something hung ahead in the shadows. Mark broke into a run. He did not want to be whipped anymore. That was Rae’s kink, never his. For a moment he escaped the sting of the whip; the bigger man couldn’t run as fast as he could, and Mark smiled at the little victory.
The murky shadows ahead grew closer and began to take shape as he ran. Almost triangles, the dark shapes peaked at the top and extended on either side lower to the ground. Mark ran towards the one closest to him, hoping to find some kind of shelter or escape from Gordon. But as he finally drew closer and the darkness slipped away, Mark knew that there was no shelter from this. He had found nothing of protection. He’d found, maybe, his own undoing.
The dark shapes were crosses. Great, wooden beams. Like the one that Jesus Christ hung from, only flipped upside down. Mark stopped in front of the one closest to him and stared at the eyeless corpse that hung upside down from the beams. It was a woman, her feet nailed ten feet in the air, her hands held with iron spikes to the wooden crossbeam at waist height above the ground. Her body was red.
Not because it was covered in blood.
But rather because it wasn’t covered in skin. She was a corpse scoured of skin, and her mouth hung open. She drooled, what little blood remained in her veins siphoning out of her mouth.
Not dead long, Mark thought.
He grimaced at the sight of her raw flesh, but the real things that made him sick to his stomach were the black pits of her eyes. A few bits of white skin still clung to the bridge of her nose, but her eyes…they were cut out; no lids covered the pits where her eyeballs once had been. They were just holes, gouged deep into her brain. Something dim and grey leaked from their sockets to drip on the stone below. Mark realized that the cross was anchored in a stone ditch on the side of what had been his path…apparently it was a truly defined path-on either side of him, a row of crosses stretched, anchored in the stone upside down. The end result was that the blood of the victims drained down the wood and into the stone ditches on the side of the road. Mark could see the ditch ran red with a flow of blood; it had to be a couple inches deep as it drained down the slight hill, back towards the edges of the room where he’d first entered.
Something cracked against his right shoulder and Mark cried out, turning around to face Gordon.
“I was just…”
“Do not turn around,” Gordon growled. “Never turn around. You’re looking at those who tried to turn back. If you turn back…there is a cross here for you.”
With that, the leather-clad “guide” sucker-punched Mark. He doubled over and fell to the ground on his ass, lifting his head to stare into the empty eyes of the dead woman. Something crawled in the flesh near her nose, just beneath the surface. He could see the tiny network of veins shift and move as something struggled to escape.
Mark shook his head and rolled to his feet. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he murmured and began to hurry along the path again. The familiar sting of the whip cracked his back again. His bare feet slapped along the uneven stone pavement, passing the flayed flesh of dozens of people who hung upside down, their skin removed, their breasts or genitals dangling from their bodies like raw meat. None of them had eyes-just empty holes in the fleshy decay of their heads. The farther he ran, the less scarlet their flesh became; their heads began to appear blackened and decayed, and some even betrayed the yellowed hint of bone protruding through elbows and the edges of eye sockets.
It was like a marathon through a nightmare. From ahead of him, the smell and sounds of the fire began to grow more palpable, and Mark strained his eyes to the path ahead, pulling his gaze away from the gore along the way.
The crosses did not stop at the fire.
Mark closed the gap quickly, now and then darting left and right to avoid the smack of the whip he knew was coming, and sometimes succeeding. He could hear the heavy breathing of Gordon behind him. The man wasn’t made for this kind of chase. And that gave Mark his only edge. In close quarters, Gordon could easily crush him.
But then again, this wasn’t so much a chase as a herding. According to Kharon, there was no way back. And Mark didn’t suspect there was any way to escape along the way. They were in some hellish dungeon that would only allow exit by running the gauntlet. Painful as that apparently was going to be.
The orange glow that he’d been seeing from a distance since entering the chamber and walking through the row of Watchers was finally at his feet. The air was thick with the smell of ash and cinder. Mark stopped at the edge of the fire pit, though Gordon’s whip did not. Mark cried out as it hit him again
. He could feel the flesh turning raw and beginning to bleed in various places on his back. His skin cried out with every shift of muscle now. But he couldn’t go farther.
The path had ended in a sea of orange coals. He could see a stairway dozens of yards ahead, and an ominously high stone wall, but between here and there…was a glowing sea of embers. Smoke hung in clouds above it, almost hiding the rows of crucified corpses in a dismal fog. The crosses continued in a dual row on either side of him, straight into the coals, and the bodies in the midst of the fire pit were blackened and smoking. The scent of burned hair and overcooked meat hung in the air. Some appeared to have had all of their flesh sizzled and burned away; they were nothing but dark skeletons hung from the beams of wood, dusky teeth grinning sickly amid skulls skinned in char.
“Jesus,” Mark whispered again.
“Not here,” Gordon said. “Not here at all.”
“Yeah, I guess not,” Mark said. “So now what?”
“You walk the path of fire,” Gordon said.
“Like hell.”
“Exactly like hell.”
“I meant, there’s no way…”
Mark turned to look at his captor. “I can’t survive walking over that.”
Gordon shrugged. “That’s what they thought, and look at them now.”
“Yeah,” Mark laughed grimly. “They’re dead.”
“What makes you think they’re dead?”
“Well, they…”
Mark looked at the bodies on the crosses, especially those whose heads hung just a couple feet above the glowing coals. As he stared, he realized that now and then, the bodies shifted and jolted. Maybe it was because the flesh was bubbling and burning and popping, as he’d first assumed, but then again maybe…
“No way,” he said.
“We are in NightWhere,” Gordon said. “Kharon told me that the crucified are still alive. They can’t die. They tried to escape the path of pain…and they were punished. Kharon won’t let them die.”
“How can he stop it…”
Gordon lifted the whip and readied himself to crack it. “Walk the fire,” he commanded, and the leather snapped with a resounding crack at Mark’s feet. He jumped and felt the blood well up on the edge of his heel, where the whip had caught.
“Fucker,” he said.
“I can beat on you all day,” Gordon said. “And I’d love to do it.”
With that, he lifted his arm and the whip began to rain down on Mark without pause. The thin leather caught him in the back and the neck and slipped around and ripped against his cheek. Mark screamed in anger and turned on Gordon, grabbing at the leather.
He missed it the first time, and the whip smacked against his chest, leaving an instant red welt across his breast. But the next time Mark was ready; his hands held on to the braided leather and would not let it slip through. He pulled, trying to yank it from Gordon’s grasp. But instead, he only pulled Gordon closer to him. And the bigger man laughed. With one beefy fist, he punched Mark in the mouth.
Mark went down, releasing the whip as he slapped his hands on the hot stone ground, trying to keep from falling into the glowing pit.
“Do you know how these people lost their skins?” Gordon asked.
Mark curled in a ball on the warm stones, protecting his face and cock from the sting. His arms and back and ass absorbed one brutal slap after another.
“I’ll tell you how,” Gordon said, when Mark didn’t answer. “They refused to go through the fire. And instead of having their skin burned off, they had it whipped off…by someone just like me.”
The whip came down again and Mark screamed. “Stop it!”
Gordon grinned. “But I’m enjoying this.” He kicked Mark in the thigh and then again in the back. And then in the ass. With each prod, Mark rolled just an inch closer to the glowing pit of coals. His skin was already red and swelling with the heat coming off the sea of fire.
Fire was actually a misnomer. While there were occasional tongues of flame that erupted from the field ahead, the reality was that the stone path ended in a moat of glowing coals. On the other side of the pit was a stone path that led to a wall and a stairway out of this valley of hell…but to get there…
“You have thirty seconds,” Gordon said. “And then I’m going to start using this. I’d prefer, honestly, that you don’t cross the fire. But that’s your choice. I’ll be here for you, if you stay. And I don’t have to be gentle anymore.”
Mark looked up and saw what Gordon held in his hand. His captor had slipped the whip into a holster on his black leather belt, and now in its place he held a flogger. But at the end of each leather strap, the flogger featured a metal hook.
“I call this the shredder,” Gordon said. “I used to use it on my friend Amelia, and by the end…even I barely recognized her. Funny thing was, a month later, she was always ready for more. I don’t think you are half the woman she was.”
“What happens if I cross the coals?” Mark asked, staring at the ripples of orange and yellow that flickered across the top of the bed of fire.
Gordon shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never been here before. But Kharon said that I can’t let you come back, or it will be me walking those coals and hanging from a cross. Believe me, I’d much rather that be you than me.”
Mark made a decision. He crawled to his knees and nodded at Gordon, holding his hand up. “I’ll go,” he said. “Just let me stand up.”
Gordon ran a hand across the sweat of his balding scalp and shrugged his enormous arms. “You have five. Four. Three…”
Mark jumped up and ran. He bolted past Gordon and aimed towards the row of figures he saw still standing far in the distance. The Watchers hadn’t moved. His heart pounded and his breath came hard after all the running he’d already done, but now he felt a sense of victory. He’d ducked the asshole with the whip and the flogger, and he was going to blow past the asshole with the fucking druids from hell down by the doorway and get the fuck out of this goddamned place.
Mark loved Rae, but faced with the glowing fire of the pit…he realized…maybe not quite enough to voluntarily walk through fire for her. Sometimes those love songs about doing anything for your lover exaggerated just a bit.
Sorry, he said in the depths of his heart. I’d like to walk the line. But I can’t.
He ran, until the rough stone disappeared from beneath his bare feet.
Mark hung in midair for a second and then fell five feet to the bottom of a stone pit. The pain was instant.
“Shit!” he screamed, as his leg twisted beneath him and his raw skin slammed against the stone floor at the bottom of the trap. Something trickled underneath his ass, and then he felt a burning sensation.
Gordon looked over the top of the pit. “I’ve got news for you, pal,” the large man said. “The pit is no better than the fire. They pipe acid down this canal every few minutes. And if it touches you… Well…”
Mark could already feel his skin blistering from where a few drops had touched him. He clawed his way up, careful not to step on any of the wet parts of the stone ditch.
He looked down the channel and saw there was more liquid coming, just as Gordon promised. A thin trickle flowed at the center beneath his feet, but down the way…the crest was growing.
“How do I get out?” Mark asked.
Gordon pointed to indentations in the wall a few feet away.
“You can go forward, but you can’t go back. Kharon told you that. If you don’t get out of there in the next couple minutes, you won’t be going anywhere.”
Gordon was right. Already the thin trickle of yellowish liquid at the very center of the brick canal had grown to a six-inch creek. And it was growing every second, the bitter scent of its acid growing with it. Mark watched as it cascaded over the edge of a brick that he’d been standing on just a minute earlier. He shifted his feet and straddled the bottom of the acid canal, making his way over to the wall with the carved stairs.
When he reached it, he qui
ckly pulled himself up and out of the canal. The burn where he’d been touched by the liquid felt like flame, and his skin there was beet red. Behind, the rush of acid sounded like an ocean, as the deadly liquid filled the canal. He stared at the canal and shook his head in disbelief. He’d walked across this place before, and the ground had been flat. Now…there was no way back to Kharon except through the river of acid. And no way forward except the pit of fire. This place was like a Rubik’s Cube, and someone had just shifted a row behind him.
“You have thirty seconds to walk the coals, or I’m going to take all the skin off your ass,” Gordon said. “And frankly, again, I’d rather you stayed right here. I’ve had a shitty week, and I wouldn’t mind taking it out on you.”
“Not interested,” Mark said, daring for a moment to look away from Gordon’s toothy smile to the waves of heat that swam above the orange light beyond. If he took a running start…could he vault himself across the fire in just a handful of steps that didn’t ruin his feet forever?
“Ten, nine, eight…” The rake of steel cut into Mark’s back, and he yelped.
Gordon laughed. “Feel good?”
It didn’t feel good. Mark could feel hot wetness seeping down the crevice of his armpit.
The only way to Rae was forward.
Mark clenched his teeth, stared at the rock path on the other side of the coals, and made his decision.
He ran.
The first step was awful. Sizzling, horrible pain lanced up his calves and Mark screamed. But that was before his other foot set down on the burning coals. He almost fell face-first into the fire, but somehow, that human instinct that says “never give up” kicked in and Mark instead raised his burning right foot and forced it down again onto the fire, propelling himself forward.