Once Upon a Time in Hell Read online

  "We need to get in there," he said. We'd made our way up into slightly higher ground and were sat looking down on the open plain, now a bottleneck stoppered by the town that had appeared at the mouth of the mountains that ranged to either side.

  "We will," I replied, "soon enough."

  "No," he said, "we go in there under our own steam. That is, if you're willing."

  I shrugged. "I'm willing, I guess, you've kept me alive this long."

  He looked slightly awkward at that, by which I mean his blank expression twitched ever so slightly, like a horse fly bouncing off a tombstone. He wasn't what you would call expressive.

  "I wish I could tell you," he said. "Being here, seeing the games and manipulation. I don't like it. Wish I could be better than that..."

  "But there are some things you just can't tell me," I said, "I remember. 'Laws that cannot be broken.'"

  He nodded. "Partly that. Partly because to talk of things is to invite being overheard."

  "I don't think anyone's going to hear what we're saying up here."

  "No?" He nodded towards the town. "The person I'm thinking of can hear pretty much whatever they want."

  He took the time to think for a moment. "I'll be as honest as I can be: accompanying me will be dangerous, terrifying and horrible. But I can't do it without you."

  "I guess I should be grateful you're asking rather than telling."

  He shrugged. "I'm not going to force you." I thought about it, but not for long. I trust it's already perfectly clear that I'm not what you would call a brave man. I have been known to cower in thunder storms and cross the road to avoid big dogs. Still, I wasn't someone who was used to being needed either. That and the fact that, for all his faults, the old man had played fair by me so far, made my mind up.

  "I'll come."

  He nodded. "Thank you. Then we wait for it to grow dark and we make our move."

  "Dark? Will it make it any easier to hide from..."

  "Don't say the name."

  "Fine... 'Him'... if it's dark."

  "No. But He's not what I'm trying to hide from in the first instance. We don't want the rest of these folks to know what we're doing either."

  "You think they'd try and stop us?"

  "I think we'd draw too much attention, that's all. And I don't like attention."

  2.

  WAITING FOR THE dark wasn't so bad. That time of the year, the sun fell low pretty early and it was only a matter of a couple of hours or so before we were on our way. We left our animals tied up by our belongings, trusting that if there was one place you should be able to leave your be longings unattended it was on God's doorstep, and waited in the rocks above Wormwood.

  By this point most people had returned to the camp. Once it was clear that their sticking close to the town didn't offer any advantage, the draw of a warm blanket and food cooking on a fire pulled all but the most devout from their vigil. The few that were left were the kind of folks that would likely never move again. I had seen one of them a few times around the camp, a wildeyed man with tattoos of Bible verses etched all over his skin. Some of us had taken to calling him King James, being the witty sons of bitches we were. He stayed out there on the empty patch of land between the camp and the town, muttering his prayers and waving devout arms skyward.

  It occurred to me that even now, with the doorway to Heaven right in front of him, he couldn't help but address his prayers to the sky. Habits break hard.

  We stuck to the higher ground, meaning to move around the back of Wormwood if we could, so that the town would block the view of us from the camp. Not that it was likely they'd see us anyway. The sky was cloudy and the moonlight as thin and rare as water in the desert.

  Several times I stumbled as we made our way through the rocks, the old man turning and giving me the sort of look you give a small child who will keep insisting on pouring his food all over the table.

  "You may have eyes like a rabbit," I whispered, "but us mortals find running through rocks at night to be a tricky business."

  We descended on the far side of the town where the coast was, as far as we could tell, clear. If there were any extra zealots lurking in the darkness we'd have to hope that their minds were on their prayers not whoever else might be running around out here.

  "So," I asked, "how you figuring on getting in? As far as I could tell earlier the whole place was sewn up as tight as a saloon-owner's purse. It looked like the streets were wide open but if anyone tried to walk on them they ended up flat on their ass in the dirt."

  "It's just a door," he said, "and any door can be opened with the right key."

  He snapped a piece of branch from some low scrub and held it up to his mouth. That terrible light bloomed in his throat and for a moment his mouth was full of fire. He breathed on the wood and it smouldered in the heat. Then he rubbed at the glowing end with his thumb. "You ever had a cough?" I asked him, "I imagine you could kill a man if you came down with a head cold."

  He didn't reply, just stood up close and began to draw on my forehead with the singed end of the branch. Not the most common response I'd gotten to one of my jokes but less violent than some.

  "There," he said, having scribbled some form of swirling pattern on my skin, "we have a key."

  "Right, whatever you say. You need me to do you?"

  He shook his head and threw away the branch. "I can come and go as I like as long as I'm with you."

  "Yeah, 'cos I'm real important like that."

  "You are now."

  He led me by the arm to one of the open streets, the faint light falling down through the row of perfect buildings.

  "You might feel dizzy as you cross the threshold," he warned, "pay it no mind, the feeling will pass."

  We stepped forward and, though there was no sign of a barrier between us and the street ahead, it felt as though I was passing through a cobweb made of molasses. The air pulled at me, my skin tingled and, as predicted, my head exploded like a firework, bright lights flashing in front of my eyes and my legs cutting out from underneath me. If it weren't for the old man I would have ended up flat on my back but he stopped my fall and dragged me over towards the boardwalk where I sat down and waited to get my balance back.

  "My head is burning," I said once I got my voice back. I reached for my forehead, where he had drawn the mark but he pulled my hand away.

  "Don't," he said, "the burning will pass and you need the protection a little longer."

  "Protection," I managed to repeat before turning round and chucking up my guts into the dust at my feet. When it comes to being sacrilegious I won't have it said I do things by halves.

  After a couple of minutes I was feeling well enough to move, got to my feet and began to stagger along the street. "If this is Heaven I can't say I'm much impressed."

  "This is just the way station," he said, "The Transition. This is the first step on your way to the afterlife and it's designed to be familiar. That's why it always fits in wherever it manifests itself."

  He pulled me to one side as a small twister worked its way along the street, kicking up dust as it passed.

  "A shade," he said. "A soul that has yet to cross over."

  We worked our way along the street and I was reminded of Wentworth Falls, the living town that had nearly done for me a few days earlier. It had that same false air to it. A town where everything had been built yesterday and nobody had got around to living in it yet. Some of the buildings had shop signs, others were just homes; a short distance ahead was what looked like a saloon. As we approached, a faint light began to trickle out from beneath its swing doors, getting brighter the closer we got.

  "That where we're going?" I asked.

  He nodded.

  I stood still outside the saloon, the light now so bright that I had to hold my hand up in front of eyes to cut down on the glare. I turned to face him, pointing at my head. "The key going to come in handy again?" I asked. "That and the soul you've got inside you."

  "It ain't
going to take that off me is it?" Not that I'd been using it much.

  He shook his head. "But if you haven't got one then you need to be travelling close with someone who has."

  I followed his meaning. "You lacking a soul? I thought everyone had one."

  "Not of my kind. It was one of his gifts to you. If you can call it a gift..."

  "Can't say I've had much call to use it. Don't even know what it's for."

  "It fills a hole."

  He took my arm and led me up the steps and through the swing doors. The light filled my vision and I couldn't see a thing in front of me. I just kept walking, hoping I wasn't going to crash into anything.

  "This going to..."

  3.

  I HAD BEEN going to ask whether passing through the light was likely to make me feel sick again but the question was redundant after my stomach answered it.

  As the light surrounded me I felt the floor vanish beneath my feet. There was the brief sensation of floating and then the ground was back. Except now I was lying on it and my head felt like it was being chewed on by dogs. I was having a great time.

  I tried to look around but it felt like I was still stuck inside the light, a burning kick to the eyes that had me screwing them shut and pressing my hands to my face.

  "Wait," came the old man's voice, "it takes a moment." What takes a moment? I wanted to ask but the pain in my head was so all-consuming I couldn't be bothered to speak. It was something that could only bring more pain and didn't seem worth the effort.

  Then, all of a sudden, the light ceased. It showed how much effect keeping my eyes shut had had; the minute it was gone I felt the difference. The pain in my head went with it and I finally opened my eyes.

  I was lying in a valley, mountain ranges to either side. The rock was dark and sharp, the sort of thing you'd cut yourself open on if you tried to climb it.

  "This is Sheol," the old man said, walking into my line of sight. "The second stage. It always takes a moment to solidify. The Transition is real but it reflects the mind of those who cross it. It feeds off your head, trying to temper itself in a way you can understand."

  "This is all out of my head? I'm imagining it?"

  "It's real enough. Just subjective. It needs to calibrate to your wavelength."

  He was talking more than usual, shame I couldn't understand a word of it.

  "You know what a metaphor is?" he asked.

  "Of course." I didn't. "I'm not stupid."

  "This is like that. Something big and complicated expressed in a way that allows you to understand it."

  "It's not doing a great job." I sat up, feeling the dust beneath me. "It's like ash."

  "Old bones," he said, "try not to think about it."

  Too late for that. I brushed my hands on my shirt and stood up.

  The valley stretched to either side for longer than my eyes could see. A constant corridor.

  "Is this where the others came?" I asked, "the ones who were vanished up first?" "No, we're going the long way round. They will move directly through The Transition to their final destination. We're entering the place physically, that takes boot leather and strength."

  "Good," I tried to shake the dust from my shirt, "really good."

  "It's hard to sneak in through the front door."

  "I guess. How long a way round? This place looks like it goes on for miles."

  "It does, we're going to need to find ourselves something to ride." He squatted down in the earth, digging away at the dust with his fingers.

  "We going to hitch a ride on some worms?"

  He pulled a long bone out of the ground, then another, and another...

  "You planning on building something here?"

  "Actually, yes." He held up what looked like the skull of a large deer, two large horns stabbing straight out from what had once been the top of its head. "All I need is enough of it for the rest to..."

  Before he'd finished speaking the ground began to ripple and move as more bones pulled themselves free of the dirt and into the air.

  The old man kept digging, unearthing another skull. This one had the look of a giant ram, it's head just as big as that of a horse but with the distinctive curled horns on either side. He threw it to the ground a short distance away from the other bones, which were still moving, pulling themselves together and clicking into each other.

  After a minute or so, there were the complete skeletons of two creatures stood before us, the deer and the ram, swaying slightly on dry joints.

  "Everything clings to life," he said, "here more than anywhere. It remembers what it once was." "So I'm dreaming them as well?"

  "You're not dreaming anything. I told you. You're..." he struggled for the words, "translating a little, that's all."

  "Given a choice, I'd have translated that pair of ugly bastards into something with a bit more meat on it."

  "Just climb on, let's get moving."

  "Climb on?" I circled the ram, not able to believe the thing was ever going to take my weight, certainly not without splitting me in half ass-upwards. I watched as he pulled himself onto the deer, grabbing hold of its bones as if it were a ladder and dragging himself onto its creaking back.

  "Fuck diddly," I moaned and did the same, the ram's bones holding fast as I tugged at them.

  Finally I was sat on it, both hands gripping its spinal column tightly for fear I'd fall off.

  He gave me one last, lingering look. For a man whose face didn't move much it sure seemed to offer its fair share of opinion. He seemed to go from sympathy to contempt without so much as moving a muscle. Maybe I imagined it.

  "Let's ride," he said, kicking at the hollow flank of his beast.

  I'd thought my old mule was bad. At least he'd had the odd ounce of fat and a saddle to lessen the beating on your buttocks. For those wishing to recreate my journey, might I suggest they strip naked, squat and then proceed to firmly beat their gaping asshole with a stick. Do that for an hour or so, just long enough that you've scared that poor puckering bastard into never opening again, and you've about got the measure of it. The view didn't change for some while, enough that I began to wonder if we weren't just riding in a circle, a wide trench coiled around our destination. The hooves of the old man's dead ride kicked up clouds of ash that I had to ride through, desperately trying to think of it as nothing more than dust.

  Every now and then I got a sense of movement on either side of us, nothing I could ever focus on but enough for me to know that we weren't alone in that place, however empty it might seem at first glance. I did my best to pay it no mind. If something planned on leaping down on us then my companion had already proven himself handy in a fight, I'd more than likely be able to practice my special skill—running like hell—while he did something violent. He wouldn't mind, he was used to me by now.

  After about an hour there came sign of something ahead, a large gateway built into rock the same dark shade as the escarpments either side. The gate was of old wood, scorched and warped. Above the gate were what I first took to be statues, then, as we drew closer, sentries.

  They were like no other beings I had seen, each sat quite comfortably on a separate chair that overlooked the causeway and the door that offered escape from it.

  On the left was a creature that reminded me of some of the pictures of Injuns in feathered headdresses I'd seen when I was a kid. At first I took it to be wearing a heavy coat of black, raven feathers but, once I was close enough to see clearly I could tell the feathers were its own.

  They shimmered and rustled, undulating as if things worked their way between them, giant fleas perhaps. Which left me to wonder if fleas would feed on one of their own because, the legs that protruded from the feathers were definitely those of an insect, thin and segmented, the joints hooked and vicious. It's head showed the same split origin, a sharp, pointed beak jutting out from beneath big, segmented eyes like those of a fly. Next to him was the most human of the trio: a woman whose skin fluttered around her in dried flakes. A
creature of dust. She wore a waistcoat that I took for leather until I spotted the pert nipples to either side of its thin lapels and was forced to accept that the skin had been flayed from a man rather than beast.

  Finally, the least definable of the three. It was a figure lacking dimension. As it turned you were presented with a rough silhouette, like a child's drawing of a man, then it would turn again and it was lost from sight as you were presented with the thin edge of the paper. It was a sketch brought to life.

  "And who do we have here?" asked the woman in the centre. "What little man is this who wishes access to the Dominion of Circles?"

  They were looking at me and, having hoped that the old man would do all the talking, I looked to him for advice. He simply held his finger up to his lips, like a child asking you not to rat out its behaviour to a vindictive parent. He slid from his skeletal ride and immediately began to climb the escarpment to the left, the three gatekeepers not acknowledging him one bit.

  "Well?" squawked the bird creature, "cat got your tongue?"

  "I would like its tongue," the woman said, "I would wear it like a tie."

  "Maybe I'll roll the dice with you for it," said the bird, "as I bet it would make a nice snack too. A fat, spurting worm that would lick all the way down the gullet. A French kiss that fills the belly."

  The third creature, the insubstantial impression of a man, fluttered and I saw words appear above its silhouetted head like smoke signals, melting away the moment they were read.

  Flesh suit, the words said. Precious warmth. Wear it till it melt. "I think its damaged," said the bird. "It cannot speak. Its brain has curdled. Maybe it's a Buzz freak. You like Buzz little man?"

  "Mmmm..." the woman licked her dry lips, pink clouds of lip skin fluttering in front of her yellow teeth like butterflies as her tongue dislodged them from where they nested on her skull. "Curdled brains served hot from the skull like oatmeal, perhaps we could share?"

  She reached for the bird creature, her skin thrown into temporary disarray as she moved, revealing the skeleton beneath. When she was still once more, her hand resting on her companion's feathered shoulder, the skin settled, dressing her once again. "A romantic meal," she continued, "to sharpen all appetites."