Highway To Hell

by Alex Laybourne

  “He’s mad,” Sammy whispered to Becky, who had loosened her arm around him, although they still leant against one another not for support but for the company. “He isn’t so bright any more, but kind of flickering like an old lightbulb,” he added.

  “Hey, come on, Graham, don’t you think after all that we’ve been through we can be a little bit open-minded about this?” Becky said, pausing before speaking his name, having overcoming a strong notion to call him either old-timer or Nigel. The latter name, she had no idea of its origins in her mind, but then again given the way that the humming sound had now embedded inside her skull and thoughts it was possible that the name Nigel was simple a result of black noise.

  As the humming increased, they all noticed that it began to sound less musical and more like moaning. It was Becky who recognized it first, for it sounded similar – if not less agonized – to the groans of thousands of humans having their skin peeled from their bodies after being roasted on an open fire like Christmas chestnuts. Her skin crawled and she found herself listening to the sound rather than the words being spoken. She could feel herself getting lost in it somehow, as if it created a maze inside her mind, one that twisted and turned, and the more she followed it the harder it would be to find her way back out again. She wasn’t sure of it, but guessed that the others all felt similar things, given the strained look on their faces.

  “You are a non-believer. Even after everything you have been forced through, you disbelieve. Well, fine, don’t believe, but remember that I pulled you out of that Hell ground myself, and the moment I feel you overstep the mark, I will throw you back myself. I’ll reunite you with that rotting young girl whose life you took and leave her to have you in any way she sees fit. Just remember that as you keep your mouth shut.” Nemamiah was calm as he spoke, although the rage on his face and the obvious anger in his words made his rage clear. The words had that parental effect and tone to them, the same one used to deliver the famous, ‘I’m not angry with you, just disappointed’ speech. The one that crushes you and has more effect than any bellowed argument or length of grounding could even hope to accomplish.

  Graham said nothing, and when he saw the whole party turn to look at him, like the naughty boy in school, he felt himself shrink back a little. He bit his tongue. Even for an old cynic like himself, the existence of God could no longer be denied. He had been to Hell, he had seen an angel, and was now about to watch a world be consumed whole. You cannot have one without the other, that was common knowledge in all walks of life, and so to have a Hell, there must be the other.

  Before he continued talking, even Nemamiah raised his hands to his head and massaged his temples. Beside her, Becky felt Sammy begin to sway on his feet.

  His eyes had begun to pulse, as if behind each blood encrusted socket was a small heart, seeping its precious cargo a little more with each rhythmical pulse.

  “We do not have enough time to discuss everything, so I must be brief. I can feel the barrier breaking and the worlds merging. I’m sure you can, too, although it will sound different to each one of you, just as Hell itself is unique at many levels,” Nemamiah said, with his head lowered, hands still rubbing his temples, and when he took them away it looked as though he had worn through the thin skin that covered them, for where his thumbs had been circling, a bright light shone through, like a torch beneath a child’s bed covers or seen through a tent while camping late at night, telling ghost stories. Finally he was ready to carry on his monologue – without any further interruptions.

  “What I say is what it is, how it is, and there will be no more questions,” he said to the group, but they all knew who his comment was intended for. “It is not only these earthquakes, as you call them, that mark Lucifer’s progress; more often than not a demon simply makes a lucky choice with the portal he takes and finds himself in your when and where. The same is for hurricanes and – what is it – twisters, it is strange that they descend from above while in fact they bring those from beneath up to the surface. It is dependent on the proximity of the portal to your world. The same is for the battles. You have all been witness to them, many times, yet they occur in a time different to yours, so that only the slightest of blows is felt. Thunderstorms, you call them: a clap of rumbling sound and a strike of pure brilliant energy. We are surprised that in spite of the large level of religious fervor in your world, nobody has yet made any concrete connections.” He had sidetracked himself, but without even a pause in the flow of his words, Nemamiah brought the conversation around and continued. “The storms are where you come in, for those who die in a thunderstorm, as a direct result of the storm, being touched by the lightning, or having their head implode as a clap of thunder rolls through their body, are people taken before their time, struck down in a fury. Friendly fire is the phrase you have created for it. Their souls are lost, banished from the world, and often they are grabbed by the beings who stand in wait along the edges of Lucifer’s kingdom like sentries. Others fall into the Purgatory realms, and are left to fend for themselves, for we have no way of tracking them…”

  …Pause for thought.

  ... “Your deaths were the same. Each of you taken before your time: only there were no battles, no storms or earthquakes; nothing out of the ordinary occurred at the times of your deaths. You were simply plucked from the earth and removed, banished to the chambers without the balance being weighed. What did it, I am afraid to say we don’t know, but we had to rescue you. Raguel brought us the word straight from God’s chamber, and so we came, and so we stand.” Nemamiah stopped speaking, his breathing heavy as if he had run for a short while at maximum speed. The shiny spot at his temple had spread, as if the skin, once broken, simply melted away, absorbed by whatever it was that was hidden on the inside; his true body.

  “There was a storm when I died,” Sammy offered, unaware of the strange light that grew before the others eye’s.

  “No, that is true, but it was not your turn to pass,” Nemamiah answered. His voice seemed to be faltering just a little bit, like a boy’s voice breaking at the start of puberty.

  Sammy fell quiet. A sudden image of his girlfriend Mandy popped into his head, and the knowledge that they had been arguing as they died. This fact had haunted him throughout his time in Hell, but it had been a while – or so it felt, at least – since he had thought about it at all, and now it was back, and it hurt. He couldn’t for the life of himself remember what his final words to her had been, but he was sure that they were not the ones he would have chosen. Why? It was another question he had asked himself over and over again. Because some jerk she went to university with wanted the girl he had, the girl who wanted him by return. It was all so pointless. Beside him he felt Becky’s body pressing against him, he felt her fingers locked within his own. It felt reassuring in his dark world to know that there was someone with him, not just a voice or two he could hear speaking, but an actual physical human being who stood beside him and who he knew understood him. To some degree they all did understand each other.

  “While we do not know why Lucifer chose you, we do know that you all now have a part to play in this war. You are to help us travel undetected through the worlds, to find whatever it was that Lucifer was so sure he had found. We don’t know who it is, but we are certain it you are to look for a mortal. It is up to you to find the others who died before Lucifer can claim them,” Nemamiah began, his voice now cracked and reduced to a whisper. His words were kept simple, cryptic but lacking the mysterious audio book quality that it had before the humming noise of the weakened barriers had begun. His eyes had faded, as if the light inside had been drained, or rerouted towards the ever increasing circle at his temple. “There were seven others who died in the same manner you did. These seven were all on the same day, in fact. We found one, but he was lost before we could get to him. The remaining six you must find. Track them down and bring them away, keep them safe, and when the time is right we will come to you and take what we need,” he said, more like a gene
ral now than the occasionally friendly, usually amicable storyteller.

  “Wh-wh-what?” Helen stammered.

  “We do not have time to repeat ourselves. The barriers are weak; this world has become unstable. We must be quick; you have been told you role as it has been decreed by God, our Father, your creator. It is what He wishes that you should now concern yourselves with. If you succeed in your task, you will all be granted entry to the Kingdom of our Father. I give you my word,” Sariel answered. His own physique looked to be just as weakened as Nemamiah’s, yet his words sounded stronger.

  “God told you this Himself?” Sammy asked, aware of how strange the question was, but it came to him and he thought it best to speak it now. Kind of like at a wedding: speak now or forever hold your peace. He could feel his eyes sockets pulse stronger and faster, as if behind the hardened jellied scabs the sockets were simply filled with blood that sloshed around like cola inside a bottle turned over and over in someone’s hands. He could feel the warm fluid coursing down his cheeks, meeting together under his chin like the ribbons on a bonnet, and yet he felt no pain.

  “Do not be so foolish; God does not speak to every angel. The archangels are His passageway for words and messages. Raguel was the one who delivered us the message, the will of God. Our father does not lie; He does not sin, and we do not doubt His words, so we do what we are bade,” Nemamiah answered, his weak voice trying to gain power and resonance, and for a short time it did, but when he was finished speaking it was obvious that he was exhausted.

  “So you’ve never even se-” Graham began to interject, possibly sensing the weakened state of the angels. He put it down to the scratching parasitic sound of church bells ringing that had invaded his head and hammered around inside his skull until his eyes watered. Yet a quick glance at Sariel, whom he believed was the lesser of the two, silenced him. Sariel’s face had not exactly darkened to the same thunderous maroon that Nemamiah’s did, but it certainly showed Graham enough to cut his words short mid-sentence.

  Sariel took a step forward without uttering a word, and for one second Graham held his breath and prepared himself to be flung back into the fiery red ocean that swam beneath their feet. The thin orange veins that had tattooed the underbelly of the ground had burst, merged together to form a giant orange bruise. A contusion on the face of the earth, where, at its center, which also happened to be in the middle of their meeting, a red dot appeared. Graham had noticed it earlier, while Nemamiah had reprimanded the angel who had fled. It had grown steadily stronger as their meeting progressed. It had begun about the same size as one of the marbles Graham remembered playing with as a kid, but now it was as large as a bowling ball, possibly bigger.

  Another tremor tore through the ground, and with it came a great ripping noise that caused one of the buildings at the end of what would have passed for the high street in this ruined western world to collapse. Giant vents of steam plumed into the air. It was a dark red color, and after its ejaculation fell as a pink rain; a blood rain. The tremor didn’t stop; it lessened, but it remained a background factor to their new world. Cracks began to appear in the dry dirt street. The wooden buildings could be heard creaking and groaning their complaints, like a sailing galleon moored on the quayside, its ropes straining to keep it in place.

  Graham breathed a small sigh of relief when Sariel turned his back to him. Instead he chose to face Becky and Sammy, or the kid, as Graham had named him in his silent voice the day they first met. It was impossible to tell how long ago they had met, or how long they had been standing there as a group. It must have been days since he and Sammy met, and hours had passed since they arrived on the streets of Mirantaea, but then again, what did the passage of time matter? They had a clear deadline and that the crux of it all.

  XVI

  “Samuel, come to me,” Sariel said. His voice was different; it was not the voice which had chided them as they were – what was it that Nemamiah had called it again? – enlightened. Now it was a voice that was gentle and soft, one that beckoned you to it like a Pied Piper’s flute. The words formed a melody so glorious to your ears that you couldn’t help but smile and obey. Sammy took a step forward, yet he didn’t relinquish his hold on Becky’s hand. She had to take a small step with him to stop their arms from becoming too stretched.

  Sariel said, “Your eyes were wonderful things; the gift of sight cannot be overestimated. Yet it is not noticed or appreciated until it is gone. We did not reach you in time; you were hidden away better than the others, for some reason.” All around them now the ground shook, harder and harder – not quite like an earthquake, this felt to all of them like something they had ever before experienced. The ground wasn’t quaking; it was being ripped into bite sized pieces. Sariel continued, his eyes fixed on Sammy. He felt it, could see the immense white stack of energy beckon him. Sammy felt Sariel’s hypnotic gaze was held captive by it. “I cannot give you your eyes back – that is beyond even our reach – but we have a gift for you, to make things easier.

  Sariel raised his hands and brought them towards Sammy’s face. The group saw this; they saw the bulging, swollen fingers hook around Sammy’s face. All Sammy saw was a bright light which enveloped him in its embrace and held him tight. He couldn’t move, yet he felt no fear or apprehension. Sammy felt his body begin to rise upwards, straighten until he stood to attention, his back so straight that it felt strange to him. The curve of his spine had straightened out into one vertical mass of bone and nerves. His face felt hot, he felt relaxed, at peace, until an image flashed before his eyes. It was Mandy. She was in a park. She wore a white jacket; a dentist’s coat. She stood still, looking at the world around her. Then she glanced up at the sky. Sammy would have sworn she looked right at him, although he knew she wasn’t there. His heart pulled tight in his chest. Her face had aged, not a lot, but enough that Sammy noticed. She looked even more beautiful than ever. She raised her hands up to her face, her eyes filled with tears. She clutched at her face, hands forming a tent over her nose and mouth. Her eyes reddened by the stinging tears. She lowered her hands again and began picking at the tips of her fingers, a habit Sammy had often told her to stop. ”Sammy.” She mouthed the word; there was no sound; there was nothing – only the warmth which came from being trapped inside an angelic embrace, a distant shuddering of the ground and, even more distant to that, locked away inside his mind, was the humming sound. In Sammy’s mind he heard the screeching of car tires, of metal bodies engaged in an ongoing collision course that nobody can stop. Yet he saw the word on her lips, he saw his name spat out, cried out. Her lips trembled as did the hands she raised skywards, palms away from her. She reached towards his face. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but before she could touch him she began to fade. ‘Sammy, Sammy’ she mouthed, her lips trembling harder now, hands shaking. Sammy could feel them, he could feel them reaching for his face, millimeters away from being reunited with her. He knew that if she reached him, if she could then they would be together again. Yet her image continued to dim. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m so sorry,” she mouthed to him, calling it, he could see from the way her jaw seemed to strain. Then, like a reverse developed Polaroid photograph, Mandy disappeared from his life, wiped out for a second time.

  Before she disappeared completely Sammy saw her body change, like a ghost appearing in a semi-serious horror movie: her imaged flickered, moving between the Mandy he knew in life and the one he had left in death. Her once sweet face alternated like a piece of stop-go animation with that of a corpse. It was wet and rotten, well on the way to total putrescence. She smiled at him: although her lips were gone, eaten or rotted away, the muscles remained, and they tightened, pulling what skin remained of her cheeks upwards.

  “Mandy,” Sammy called, filled with a despair that knew no limits. He tried to move but couldn’t. His arms and legs were locked in place, held together by this angelic embrace. Then, as suddenly has it had started, it was gone, and Sammy was thrown back into a world that was dying. A burning pain
ate away at his face, while tears with no possible outlet stung his soul.

  “Sammy, are you okay?” a voice asked him. It was Becky, although she sounded a long way away.

  “What did you do to him?” another called. It was either Marcus or Graham; he couldn’t tell which. The only thing he knew was that it was a man’s voice and it was angry.

  A hand grabbed his, fingers locked within his, and he was pulled backwards, stumbling over his own feet, which felt as if there were embedded in the earth, already being pulled back down below… to him… to them and their games… to… to.

  “Sammy, Sammy, are you okay?” the voice asked again, not as distant this time. Her voice came from beside him. It was her hand that held his. The sensation of their skin touching was electric. Much like when the wires in a hotwired car are first introduced they create a spark, a similar jolt travelled through Sammy’s entire body and succeeded in pulling him back into the present.

  “Mandy,” he whispered, the words coming out as little more than an exhaled breath. Sammy looked around; his vision was a haze, a swirl of pastel colors all merged together. He saw a shape, a head – it was a woman’s head, dark hair, yes, brown maybe, not black. It wasn’t Mandy. He knew that. Then it came back to him: her name jumped to his lips and made him want to smile. “Becky.” No sooner had he spoken her name and his world went black, as if the lights were just turned out.

  Sariel stepped back from Sammy, while the others simply stood, their mouths gaping, a look of horror frozen on their faces. Through it all, Sammy had stood motionless, calling out a name none of them could hear, and he kept throwing glances over towards Becky, looking right at her, his face finding hers despite the blood that streamed down his face. The black sockets that had housed his eyes stared ghoulishly at Becky’s. His arm reached out, groping towards her. Sariel stepped back even further and Sammy fell, stumbling backwards. He kept his feet and Becky moved without flinching to stand beside him once more, steadying him. Marcus and Graham had both made the move to offer aid, but had pulled up automatically when they saw the pair together; they weren’t needed.