The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

by Brian Evenson

  A moment later, he lifted my father’s head by the hair and then set it down again. And then the pile that had been my father began to glow too.

  “We are sorry about your parents,” he said in that same beautiful voice. “But there was really no alternative.”

  Slowly the piles that had been my parents began to quiver. The parts rose into the air, reshaping themselves into human form, with gaps between the pieces. They were teetering, stretched-out beings, assembled of dead flesh ligatured together with light. They moved jerkily, as if compelled by some other force. I watched their eyes darting about behind the carapace of light that had now swallowed their heads. Confused, they seemed to be casting about for something. And then, abruptly, their gaze came to rest on me.

  “How interesting,” said the being. “They believe they recognize you.”

  Within their carapaces, my parents seemed to be screaming, but I could not hear a sound. Awkwardly, they lurched toward me.

  “It would be better for you to go now,” the being said.

  And when I still did not respond, unable to move as what had once been my parents wobbled toward me, he reached out and took me by the neck and thrust me bodily through the shimmering wall.

  3.

  I grew up. Years passed. I chose to forget my parents. I built another entire life around myself, became a respectable member of society. I acquired a wife—or perhaps she acquired me, if acquired is the right word. I lived wholly in the city that was ours, never groping into that other city, turning away from the shimmering walls whenever I encountered them.

  Things might have gone on like that until I died, but, simply, they did not. My wife, as had many around us, became subject to a wasting disease, her teeth and hair falling out, her body erupting in pustules and sores. She began to bleed from every orifice, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker. I remained unaffected.

  “Kill me,” she begged. “Please, kill me.”

  I took her to the treatment center, but we were turned away. No, they said, they would not treat her.

  What, I asked the admitting nurse, would it take for her to get admitted?

  There was nothing to be done, the nurse claimed. She shook her head. It was not an illness they could treat. They no longer had the proper medication.

  But surely, I said, it was just a question of gathering the materials and then the medication could be made again. Again she shook her head. “We never had the formula, only the medication itself.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. And when she gestured back at an empty vial, distorted and twisted, I knew the medicine had not come from our city, but from the other one.

  I kissed my wife, set off. There were doors in my mind that I had kept shut for so long. Now I opened them. Behind them, I found my parents and all they had taught me. Behind them, I saw again the strange portions of the city. I had seen such a vial before—or had seen a vial somewhat like it, anyway. Where had it been?

  I walked idly, allowing my mind to wander. I tried to think like that young boy, dragged along by his parents as they pushed a hand through a shimmering wall. What kind of parents brought their child along for something like that? I tried to recall each wall my parents had approached and stretched their arms into, sometimes my father, sometimes my mother, and what, from my vantage, I had seen through them. I wracked my brain, saw again their sweating faces, their anxiety, then that moment of triumph as they brought an odd and skewed object back through the wall.

  And then I realized: I would only have seen the vial so clearly if they had brought it back through the wall. No, they must have brought it out and sold it.

  But no, I considered further after clambering out of my despair: I had no memory of the object being in my parents’ hands. And yet I did have a memory of the object, a clear image. Not in my parents’ hands but lying on the floor. Had I seen it myself through a wall? If so, where?

  But no, in my memory the object was too close for that, not glimpsed through a wall. No, it was just there before me, at my feet. Or rather, just at the level of my eyes, maybe half a foot away. And then I allowed the memory to continue, and my eyes flicked up to a strange being swathed in light and holding a bright-edged instrument, and I knew what I had to do.

  4.

  I spent some time trying to find the right wall. I looked at many, dozens, but none seemed right. I tried to be systematic. I would come close and peer through and try to recognize what lay beyond, but each time I could not say for certain that I recognized anything. And then I began to think: Where had that being come from?

  The one who had dragged me and my parents through the shimmering wall? He had not been inside the room when my mother first reached in, I was sure of it, and then, abruptly, he was. Perhaps each encased room behind a shimmering wall led to other rooms and these to others still, and these all were connected. That every encased room led to every other encased room, in which case it did not matter which shimmering wall I passed through, as long as I passed through one. Once I was through, I could rapidly look for the object I remembered by moving from room to room instead of groping through the shimmering wall.

  At least, that was what I chose to believe.

  I had not touched a shimmering wall in several decades, and yet the sensation immediately came back to me. At first the wall resisted, felt almost solid, but then, slowly, it began to yield. With a sucking sound, it drew my fingers in, and then my hand, and then my forearm. The sensation was odd and disorienting, as if my hand were being taken apart and put together in a way that made it something else.

  And then my fingers broke through to the other side.

  I plunged my other hand in. When it was sufficiently deep, I lowered my head and pushed it through as well. The sensation grew worse, much more intense, and for a long moment I didn’t know what or who I was. The stuff pressed against my face in such a way that I began to lose track of where my body ended and the jelly began. Soon, too, I could not tell if I was moving through it at all, and I lost all initiative to do anything but float, suspended, my legs still legs on one side, my hands something like hands on the other, but everything in between an undifferentiated mass.

  How long was I there? Minutes perhaps, or hours, or days. I did not breathe, but I do not know that I needed to breathe. It was as if I were caught between two states and subject to neither one nor the other.

  And then something took me by the hands and pulled.

  I coughed and a spill of jelly slid from my throat. It lay for a moment in a quivering pool beside my face before, very slowly, vibrating its way back to the shimmering wall. I looked up, my vision bleary, and there, above me, was a being of angles refracting off one another, its body encased in light. He held an instrument whose bright edge was moving downward, toward me.

  I lifted an arm to protect myself and suddenly the instrument withdrew.

  “Ahhh,” said a voice that was exceptionally, almost unbearably beautiful. “You’re alive.”

  I coughed up another lump of jelly. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I said.

  “They never are, the adults,” he said. “Until we make them so.”

  I managed to get to my knees.

  “We’ve met before,” the being said, his brow furrowing behind his carapace of light.

  “Yes,” I said. “You killed my parents.”

  “Not killed,” he said. “In fact, we returned them to life.”

  I was on my feet now, stumbling. “Are you the only one here?”

  “Well,” he said. “There’s your parents.”

  “But they’re not like you.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re not sufficiently there. Except for us, nobody is sufficiently there.”

  “There? What do you mean?”

  He shrugged.

  “Because of you,” I accused.

  “In spite of us. That they can function at all is a minor miracle.”

  I glanced around for the vial, any vial. An old swirl of metal, a crumpled wooden bo
x, forks that had twisted on themselves and had their tines bent in every direction. No vial.

  I looked for a door. There it was in the back of the room.

  “Where does that door lead?” I asked.

  “How can you still be alive?” he asked. “Is it because you passed through as a child? We never hurt children.”

  Perhaps he intended to say more, but by this time I was sufficiently in control of my faculties to strike him hard in the temple and knock him off his feet. The light around his head made my fingers tingle but otherwise did not adversely affect me. A moment later my hand closed around his instrument. I activated the bright edge of light and pushed it deep into his side. I could smell flesh burning.

  He grunted. “It won’t do you any good,” he said, and expired.

  Once he was dead, the light around him flickered and went out. He looked now like an ordinary man. Remarkably enough, he seemed to resemble me. So much so that I thought at first he was my father. But no, not quite. And then I thought, If not my father, who? Dreading what the answer might be, I quickly turned away.

  I left the body there. I had thought I might feel some measure of satisfaction in killing the being who had killed and then reanimated my parents, but I felt nothing at all. His face haunted me.

  I went through the door, and from there into another room, and from there into another. I kept moving from room to room, each ordinary in every respect except for the one shimmering wall that opened onto another place, another city, my city. Sometimes I would see shadows on the other side of the wall. Once I even saw a hand protruding through it and feeling around frantically on the floor, though it quickly pulled back as soon as I approached.

  After a few dozen rooms, I found them—the creatures that had once been my parents. They were still encased in light and still seemed to be mutely screaming.

  At first they seemed not to notice me, and when I approached they did not acknowledge my presence. But then, abruptly, they did, coming at me and throwing their strange disjointed bodies onto me until I began to feel suffocated and, for my own protection, had to activate the instrument again. Their light went out and they collapsed into dust and were gone. I continued on.

  How many more rooms? A hundred? Two hundred? More? There have been so many rooms since that I cannot say for certain, but there, at last, it was, the twisted vial, just as I had remembered it, tipped on its side in the middle of the floor. I snatched it up. Was it identical to the vial the nurse had shown me? No, not identical, but very close. I had no way of knowing if I had found what my wife needed to survive, but yes, perhaps it was so. It was not, in any case, impossible.

  And so, vial in hand, I approached the nearest shimmering wall and pushed my hands through, eager to return to save my wife.

  Or at least I would have. But the translucent wall was solid. It would not let me through.

  I tried wall after all, but they all resisted me. I was trapped.

  Only then did I notice the glow that had begun to envelop me.

  5.

  I have lived through one of these cities. Now, I must live through the other. Meanwhile, my wife lies in her bed, suffering, dying. Perhaps she is already dead.

  I am nearly done with this record. Once I have completed it, I will lean this notebook against a shimmering wall and wait for a hand to grasp it and pull it through. If you find this and read it, I ask only one thing of you: come back to this wall and push your hand through again. I will place in it this vial, which you must use to cure my wife. Once she is cured, bring her back here with you and convince her to push her hand through. I will do nothing to her, will not drag her through, for I know that it would likely kill her. No, I will only hold her hand for a moment, squeeze it, and let go.

  And then it will be your turn. I have treasures beyond your wildest imaginings. If you will do this small thing for me, I will bring them to the wall. You will be wealthy, and powerful too. All you have to do is follow my commands, and trust me.

  But if you do not do this, you will have nothing of me. You will have only the bright edge of my instrument, and I will have you in pieces.

  Grauer in the Snow

  The storm was severe enough that Grauer and the two brothers had quickly become separated—even while the oldest brother was shouting over the wind that Grauer should tie himself to them or, at the very least, take hold of his hand. Grauer had not been opposed to this, not in the least—indeed, despite his inexperience with such weather, he sensed it was the safest thing. He was just shoving the canisters and surveying equipment into his pack and heaving it again onto his back when the blizzard struck full force. Almost immediately he couldn’t see a thing: one moment the brothers were there, dark figures just a few yards away, and then, suddenly, there was nothing but snow.

  He tightened the coat’s hood around his head, securely buttoning it. For a moment he stood there, braced against the wind, expecting the brothers to come for him, but then, growing anxious when they didn’t appear, he lurched toward them.

  Or at least he lurched in the direction he thought they were. Perhaps he had unwittingly turned out of the wind when the blizzard struck and hadn’t realized it. Or perhaps they had already come looking for him and had flailed past just a few spans away, unseen and unseeing.

  He moved forward and back, stumbling about. He had lost track of the road as well, he realized with panic. He started to run, boots sinking into the snow, then lost his footing and fell face-first into a drift. When he got up, most of the surveying equipment had spilled out of the pack and had vanished under the snow.

  Between the snow and the darkness he could see nothing, nothing at all. He stood there, eyes squinted, the wind whistling fast around him. Finally, not knowing what else to do, he dug a hole for himself and curled into it, waiting for the storm to pass.

  It took an hour, perhaps two, for the snow to finally stop. The wind went on for a good half hour after that, inflicting the surface of the snow with a scab of ice.

  He heaved the snow away and came up, shaking it off. It was very dark, no moon, stars either masked by clouds or absent for some other incomprehensible reason. Just clouds, he hoped. The only light seemed to come from the snow: ghostly and gray and barely visible all around, and unbearable.

  He shrugged off his pack and searched through it for his flashlight, but it was nowhere to be found. It must have fallen out with the surveying equipment. There would be no finding it now.

  He squinted. He could see almost nothing: no sign of the road, no footprints. Either the snow had covered them or they weren’t visible in such diminished light. No sign of the brothers either.

  He called out, shouted for the brothers. After a moment, he heard a response, distant, perhaps muted by the blanket of snow, but still there. Something, anyway. He moved toward it.

  The going was hard, his boots cracking through the snow’s crust with each step to wallow in the powder beneath. He walked for a time, breathing harder and harder, the moisture in his breath freezing on his beard, then hallooed again. Again they responded, but they sounded just as distant. Were they moving away from him rather than toward him? He hurried after the sound.

  Only after half an hour of that, of call and response and struggle through the snow, did he realize he was hearing the echo of his own voice, that he was walking in pursuit of nothing at all.

  Numb, he kept walking. The wind picked up, and soon he was very cold, almost unbearably so.

  And then, strangely, he started to feel warm again. He was tempted to stop but wasn’t certain that if he did he’d be able to start moving again.

  Just for a moment, he told himself, just to catch my breath.

  Before he knew it, a tree stood in his path. He leaned against it. He felt sleepy. He shrugged off his pack and it fell somewhere behind him. Not long after, he was seated, his back against the tree, snow heaped all around him and over him, his legs somehow covered with it even though none was falling. How had that happened?

  Just a
moment, he thought again, just time to catch my breath, and then I’ll go.

  He wouldn’t have managed to get up at all if he hadn’t heard the sound. A kind of distant hiss: far away at first, then growing closer. It was just enough to catch in his ears and bring him back to consciousness. My echo, he thought at first, coming back to me, but as the sound grew louder it worried at him. How could it be his echo when it had been hours since he last opened his mouth? An echo wouldn’t live so long. And then it grew very loud indeed, a rushing, roaring sound, and he saw or thought he saw, almost lost in the trees, a moving beam of light.

  It was a light rather than something imagined, he was sure of it. He stumbled to his feet, leaving his pack where it was, and made for the sound.

  After only a dozen stiff steps, he slowed. The sound was fading again, moving away.

  I should lie down again, part of him was saying.

  Just follow the sound, another part of him was saying. It’s something to do while you die.

  The second part was slightly louder. And so he kept walking.

  The snow got deeper and deeper. He pondered turning around and going back, but back to where? Suddenly he was stumbling and almost went down, not because of the struggle of pushing through the snow but because, abruptly, there was none to push through. He thought at first he had chanced upon a plowed road, but it didn’t feel like a road underfoot. As he walked down it, he felt what seemed like slats with softer depressions between them. To either side he saw the faintest glimmers of light, which, slowly, he realized were the lines of rails.

  He had found the train tracks. A train with a Bucker plow must have come through. Perhaps that was the noise he had heard, the light he had seen.

  He could either keep following the tracks in the direction he had started, or he could turn around and go the other way. Was there any way to tell which way would lead him more quickly to shelter? No. He kept going the way he was going because it was easier than turning around.