by R. E. Vance
“Penemue?” I asked again.
Judith nodded. “I saw Penemue make this. And then I watched him walk in.”
“Are you sure?”
Judith nodded again.
I examined the portal. I knew enough about these things to know for certain that this was a doorway to somewhere else. A forest, to be precise, but although this place had trees and bushes and earth, it was unlike any forest I’d ever seen before. For one thing, it was impossibly eerie. Eerie is a misused word—I know that now—because “eerie” is something we say to children when we want to tell them a scary story without actually scaring them all that much. But as I stood in front of the portal that led onto a forest path, I suddenly understood what eerie really meant.
When you say “The forest is eerie,” what you are really saying is that you can sense danger but have no idea where or what it is. All you know is that it is real, imminent and terrifying.
And this drab forest was nine shades of eerie.
“What is this place?” I muttered to myself.
“Hell,” I heard a voice from within say.
I immediately went on full alert, my sword out and ready. “Who said that?” I demanded as I looked into the gloom.
In the distance I saw a shadowy figure approach. I couldn’t make out any of this creature’s features other than to say that it was a she and humanoid in shape. As it drew closer it said in a soft voice, “When Sinbad died, Penemue was so overcome by grief that he wanted to punish himself for failing the little warrior pirate. And because the Creation Crystal is so close, he was able to create this place.”
“And what is this place?” I asked.
“Hell, Jean-Luc. Penemue’s Hell. Seems he modeled this place after Dante’s epic poem.”
“Dante’s Inferno,” I said. “His favorite poem. It’s about a man named Dante who traversed the nine circles of Hell to retrieve his dead wife.”
“Indeed,” the figured chuckled in a forlorn way. “Penemue’s Inferno.”
She still hung in the shadows, but the more she spoke, the greater a sense I got that I knew her. “Who are you?”
“In the poem, Dante is guided through Hell by the poet Virgil. I guess you can say that’s who I am, Jean-Luc. Your Virgil. I’m here to help you get Penemue back.” The figure stepped out of the shadows and for the first time her face was illuminated by the ambient light. I heard Judith gasp as my head swirled with the impossibility of who I saw.
Rubbing my eyes, I took a step forward. “Bella?” I said. “Is that really you?”
INTERLUDES
Good Enough
Aau stands at the precipice of his kitchen window, staring across the alley. He is looking into the bedroom of a little boy who is no older than three mortal years, watching as the child scampers about.
Oh, how Aau despises the boy.
Before the gods left, Aau was part of the great half-jackal, half-man guardians that protected the Twelve Hours of Night. His dominion was that of the Fifth Hour, where he protected the great sun god RE, during his perilous journey into the underworld of night.
Aau and his brother, Tekemi, guarded the sun god, and never once in the centuries since the Egyptian gods created jackal guards, had he and his brother failed to fulfill their sacred duty.
Back then, his life meant something. He was the jackal guard to the gods, his name inspiring fear in any who dared challenge him.
But now he is castrated and pathetic. And what’s worse—he must live across from a child who smells of piss and feces. A child that shrieks day and night. A child too stupid to do anything but scamper about in meaningless play.
This is a worthless life, he thinks.
A terrible existence.
↔
It wasn’t always this bad. Sure the boy cried and he regularly smelled, but a human female was always quick to attend to him. But lately, things have gotten worse. Much, much worse.
The soft smell of rotting fecal matter emanates from the child’s unchanged diapers as he screams piercing shrills that would deafen a banshee. Back when Aau was a guardian, he sent unpleasant human souls to hell, but now his only recourse is to call the police.
The phone rings and a young woman’s voice answers. “Paradise Lot Police Station,” the voice says—there is a hiss and Aau knows that the voice at the other end of the phone is not that of a human, but rather a gorgon.
He explains that the smell and cries of the child across the alley is disturbing him. The gorgon official informs him that diapers are a natural part of a young human child’s life and that the child would soon grow out of the need for them. The same applies for his cries. How does she know? Aau wonders. She has never had a childhood with which to compare.
If his youth is the issue, then Aau would happily burn a little bit of time to mature the child. In fact, he’d gladly give up a year of his life if it meant not living with the smell. The gorgon spits out whatever earthly drink she is sipping and tells him that under no circumstances is he to burn time—especially to age a helpless, innocent child.
He protests a third time informing the gorgon that he could live with the cries, it was the smell that was insufferable. A third time he is denied, this time in an agitated tone where the gorgon informs him that just because he has the super-sensitive nose and ears of a jackal, most creatures—humans especially—do not. He would just have to learn to cope with it. If, the voice hisses, this proved to be difficult, he could always join the seminar, ‘Coping with Mortality’, which was held once a week at the Millennium Ho—
Aau slams down the phone. Stupid snake fiend. Back before the gods left, Aau would have trampled the scaly abomination under his heel, biting off her head with his more than ample incisors.
Fine, he thinks. I’ll find a way to cope. After all, when Moses brought forth the frogs and locusts, Aau pretended to be a statue for seven days and seven nights as he waited for them to depart. And when the same uppity prophet blotted out the sun, hiding his god from him, Aau howled at the moon—his cry serving a beacon to guide his god’s return.
Did he complain then? No, he just did what he had to do.
Aau puts out bowls of rose water and burns frankincense. Still, the smell of human feces wafts into his apartment. Why doesn’t the child’s guardian clean him? Certainly that would help.
He stuffs his nose with cotton dipped in pepper and still he can smell the sickly sweet odor of fermented milk piss. He looks across the way and sees the child sitting in front of a closed door, his little hand on the brass of the doorknob. The child is crying—again—this time his shrill cry carries with it desperation and pain.
The door opens and a man walks in—presumably the boy’s guardian. The human male picks up the child. Good, Aau thinks. Finally the child will be cleaned. But the human male does not clean the child, instead yelling at the little boy as he demands that he shut the hell up. Then the man slaps the little one … hard across his face.
For a moment, the child is silent, stunned by his father’s rage. Then the moment passes and the child cries even louder than before, shrieking to the heavens above. Aau knows this cry. He has heard it many times before when a lost, unworthy soul would enter his Fifth Hour and fail Aau’s test. It is the cry of the hopeless.
Another human enters—a female this time. She tries to take the child from the man. He slaps her with the back of his hand and tells her that she spoils the boy. Then he opens the closet door and throws the child inside, slamming the door shut. With a grunt the man slaps the woman again saying that he didn’t get out of jail to have his peace and quiet disturbed by her and the little cunt she calls his son. The man slams the bedroom door as he leaves the room.
The female human sits on the floor, softly whimpering before she crawls to the closet and takes the child out. She attends to him, changing him and quietly singing him a song.
Aau is shocked by what he has just witnessed. In the two months he has been living in Paradise Lot, he has never seen this male hum
an before and considers calling the police again. But Aau doubts they will care. After all, if they were unwilling to do anything about the smell, why get involved in this?
Aau is a creature born of violence—for violence—and does not understand where the mortals draw the line in what they get involved in and what they do not.
Still, he thinks, aren’t human fathers meant to protect their offspring? Be their guardians? This man is no guardian.
There is so much that Aau does not understand.
↔
In the next three days, Aau witnesses various atrocities committed against the child and his mother. Beatings, yellings, insults. Once, for no reason Aau can understand, the father takes a cup of hot earthly brew and throws it at the child. The boy screams as his soft pink skin turns bright red under the heat.
Aau does not understand. But then again, there is so much about his new home he does not understand.
Home—his old home—was the only place he did understand. There were the Twelve Gates—Twelve Hours—that separated the night from day. Every night, the sun god would dip his head into the horizon and begin his nightly perilous journey into the underworld below. Twelve hours must be endured, Twelve Gates must be passed through before RE could be reborn once again in the eastern sky.
Aau and, his brother Tekemi, aided the sun god as he entered the Fifth Hour. And when the sun god was not there, they guarded the gate from the treacherous monsters who sought to lie in wait for RE to return. Many nights were filled with Aau and Tekemi fighting the enemies of his god.
Those were good nights. Nights that meant something.
Not like these nights that are filled with the cries of a child.
↔
Home—Aau’s real home—was gone now. Gone forever.
When the gods left, the darkness of night was consumed by the darkness of nothing. The First Hour disappeared without warning. The Second Hour was lost and by the time the Third Hour had petered out into nothing, Tekemi and Aau understood that the Underworld was disappearing. Their dominion, their home was dying. Tekemi summoned a portal, searching for a realm to escape to, but all the heavens and hells he knew were also being consumed by the same darkness. Only one plane of existence remained. The mortal plane. He opened the doorway and, handing Aau the amulet known as the Eye of Fire—their most sacred relic and the symbol of their existence—and commanded his brother to jump through. Aau protested, saying they should go together.
Tekemi shook his head. He would stay behind and fight the darkness. But should he fail, someone must protect the Eye.
Before Aau could protest, Tekemi pushed his brother through the gateway.
Tekemi was not like Aau. Whereas Aau is forgiveness, Tekemi was vengeance. Whereas Aau is life, Tekemi was death. Whereas Aau is hesitant, Tekemi was resolved.
Aau never understood why Tekemi did not follow. Yes, they were opposites, but why stay behind and perish? Why force Aau to leave? To live? Aau does not know.
All Aau does know is that Tekemi would have hated living on Earth even more than he himself does, and in a way he is glad his brother is not here, suffering, too.
Still, he misses his brother. He misses home. But most of all, he misses being the guardian of the Fifth Hour. That was, after all, why Anubis created him.
↔
The boy is in his room, drawing on a piece of old newspaper with crayons. He is concentrating, his little tongue absently clasped between his lips. Aau cannot see what the boy is working on. Until, that is, the boy holds it up to the window and shows him.
It is a crudely drawn picture of Aau. It looks more like a dog’s head on a human body, but for one so young, it is an impressive rendition of the once-upon-a-time jackal guardian. The child does something he has never seen him do before. He smiles. And for the briefest of moments Aau gets a glimpse of what a human childhood should be like. Drawings and giggles, play and joy.
Then the moment passes as his father walks by and seeing the boy by the window yells at him. He snatches the newspaper out of his hand.
He rips up the picture and slaps the boy. Then looking out of the window, he sees Aau. At first the father is taken back—a momentary hesitation before anger returns to the man’s face and he sticks up his fist, the middle finger erect. Aau does not know what this means, but guesses it is an insult.
Once-upon-a-time Aau would have destroyed this man, shredded his soul as he entered the Fifth Hour. But that was long ago and Paradise Lot is no Fifth Hour.
Aau looks away lest he burn time and turn this man into a weasel. He gaze goes to the alleyway below. It is long and narrow. Straight.
Paradise Lot may not be the Fifth Hour, but it does have night. Granted it is mortal, natural night, but it has night nonetheless. Maybe not everything here is different. Maybe…
Aau’s lips curl in a half-crescent smile. Yes, Paradise Lot has night and it is long.
So very, very long.
↔
The jackal guard waits on the road adjacent to the alley that divides his apartment from the boy’s building. Aau lives on the south side of Paradise Lot, near the river that marks one border of this tiny, Other-infested island. Just beyond his apartment is a bridge to somewhere the humans call the Mainland. Aau does not know what makes the other side the mainland, when Paradise Lot is, in itself, land, but such is his lot in life—he no longer lives anywhere considered main, primary. Important. Near the bridge is where most of the humans live. Aau guesses that they gather there because they are comforted by having an easy escape from where the Others live. Aau does not know how right he is.
Aau wears the Eye of Fire around his neck. It feels good to have it on him again. When he used to stand guard at the gate, Aau used the unfaltering Eye to reveal the cowardly enemies who often disguised themselves as weary travelers or—sometimes—as the great sun god RE, himself. Sacrilege!
Aau waits, folding his two arms across his chest and resting his hands on his shoulders. It is the guards’ stance. A pose of honor and one he has not stood in for a very, very long time. It feels good. Familiar. Strong.
And Aau waits.
He waits, knowing that the dishonorable father returns home after the Third Hour from a place called the bar. The Third Hour is not Aau’s hour, it belongs to the ‘Mistress of Nurturing’. The irony is not lost on the jackal guard.
Aau smells him before he sees him, stinking of fermented barley and sugar, of cigarettes and cheap cologne. It is an unpleasant smell. Lifting the Eye of Fire to his face, Aau looks at the man as he staggers towards him. The Eye reveals all, but without magic, it shows just a man. To use magic in this mortal realm means to lose life, lost time on this plane of existence. How much time is needed to use the Eye? Aau is not sure.
But still—this realm is so unpleasant and Aau knows that a minute less here is a minute less to suffer. He summons magic from the well of time within and burns it. First a minute, then two. It feels good to use his powers again. It has been too long.
Aau burns an hour before the Eye shows him what this man really is—a clawless monster, a fiend without fangs. Unworthy.
That is all he needs to know.
The man staggers down the road until he is at the mouth of the alleyway that divides their two homes. He fumbles with his keys, trying to thread the thin metal tip into the eye of the lock, but he is too drunk to do so. One attempt, then two. On the third he drops his key. Aau approaches, arms still crossed over his chest. The man looks up, “I know you …” he stands and points at the jackal guard. “You’re the freak that keeps looking into my little boy’s window … Why are you always looking at him? You some sort of baby-eating monster … Well, let me tell you something maybe you haven’t heard. Things are different now and—“ He pokes his finger on Aau’s chest striking the iris of the Eye.
That is a mistake.
The Eye cannot be touched by the unworthy. Not without consequences. It demands retribution—Tekemi’s role, but Tekemi is not here, so it is up to Aau
to oblige. The jackal-guard once again summons magic from his well of time and burns it. This time it is not a paltry hour. It is week, then two, and the Eye—the all seeing Eye—does what it is designed to do.
It shows you.
This man—this clawless monster—sees all the sins that he has committed on this earth. But it is not his own sight that he experiences. It is sight as seen from the offended. He is literally looking at himself through their eyes.
Not just sight—he also smells what they smelt. Hears what they heard.
And feels the pain they felt. Not as a man, whose skin has hardened with years of age—he suffers exactly as they did.
As his child did.
The father feels every back of the hand he gave his son. Every punch his wife endured. He tastes their blood and hears their screams.
And there are others. Several drunken brawls, the weakling he tortured in prison, a cat he tortured to death.
He knows their terror as if it were his own.
Strike after strike, blow after blow, this man is beaten by his sins until he falls back onto the ground. Using his legs he kicks, pushing himself into the alleyway, desperately trying to get away from the jackal guard and his strange Eye. He pushes himself down the lane until his back is up against a chicken-wire fence that cuts off the road.
Good, Aau thinks as he follows him, walking forth, his arms never uncrossing. Aau understands Tekemi better now. Vengeance is so … so satisfying.
Standing over the cowering man, he unfolds his arms and pulls out the scythe from his belt. With it, he will strike this coward down. Aau knows that once he destroys the unworthy man, he will feel a sense of elation he has never known before.