Once Upon a Time in Hell Read online

  The bird-thing turned to her, its beak chattering in what I took to be pleasure. "My appetite is always sharp."

  Sharp, appeared in a word cloud above the third creatures head. Brittle. Cut. Shine.

  "I think I'd prefer my brains to stay exactly where they are," I said.

  "It does speak!" The woman clapped her hands into swirling clouds of dust.

  Speak, appeared above the third's head, then: Scream.

  "I'd rather not do any screaming just now," I said. "It's been a hot ride and my throat's parched. Maybe after a rest and a nice cold drink I could work up a holler or two but not right now."

  I couldn't say where this sudden reservoir of fortitude sprang from, most likely the fact that, out of the corner of my eye, I was watching the old man creep closer and closer to where the three beasts were sitting. Why they couldn't see him was beyond me, but clearly they couldn't, and equally clearly, he had a plan. It seemed the best way forward just to keep chatting until he got around to acting on it. Besides, my throat was parched... "It's a cheeky little thing!" said the bird, "I can't decide if I like it or hate it."

  H ate, suggested the third, the word swelling slightly for emphasis before it broke up.

  "We could always play with it for a little while," the woman suggested, "just to decide if it's entertaining. "

  "What would we play?" the bird wondered. "Bleed the Pig?"

  "Split and Spit!" said the woman, laughing so hard her own skin vibrated all around her so she appeared little more than a blur.

  "'Skin the Dog'?" wondered the third, the word 'dog' briefly running through the air above its head.

  "I don't suppose the three of you could be persuaded to start off with a little poker first and see how things move on from there?" I asked.

  Strip, offered the third, though I was fairly sure he would want me to take off more than just my undershirt.

  "How did you come to be here, little thing?" asked the woman, "I can't smell the grave on you."

  "Perhaps the earth was particularly sweet," suggested the bird. "You don't get here with a heart that still pumps, after all."

  The picture of a beating heart appeared above the third's head.

  "I may have got turned around a little. I was aiming for California."

  "California is not a dominion I've heard of," said the bird. "Perhaps it's one of the new settlements. They say there are camps springing up all the time on the shores of The Bristle."

  "Maybe he's one of Greaser's people," suggested the woman, "his popularity is on the rise, so the whispers tell me." Whispers, agreed the third. Soul farts.

  The old man had made it to the top of the gate and was now walking along behind their chairs. Still they seemed to have no idea he was there. He pulled out his gun and pointed it at the head of the bird creature.

  "The kid's with me," he said and pulled the trigger.

  There was a startled squawk and the air filled with feathers and brains.

  The old man kicked the woman's chair forward and she fell with a yell of surprise. When she hit the ground she exploded in a cloud of dead skin. The skeleton at the heart of her broke into separate pieces but immediately rolled around trying to reconnect.

  "The skull!" he shouted, "grab the bitch's skull!"

  This was not a suggestion I took kindly to, but the urgency of his words and the innate trust I'd developed for him had me running towards her thrashing bones before I really had time to question the sense of it.

  Her skin was whipping around like a swarm of flies wanting nothing more than to calm down and settle back down on a nice piece of shit.

  I grabbed hold of her skull, avoiding the gnashing teeth.

  "Throw it up into the air," he said, "high as you can."

  I did so, sending it sailing up above my head. A pair of eyes appeared from within the cloud of skin, clearly hoping to bed themselves back down in their sockets. They were too late, the gunslinger took his shot and blew the skull into fragments. The eyes dropped back down to earth like gelatinous hail stones.

  "What about that?" I asked, pointing to the third who was flexing in what could have been anger or panic. It presented itself as a series of static images, like a magic lantern show. Flickering silhouettes, some more human than others. A man throwing his hands in the air, a large wolf's head roaring, what looked like flames...

  "Yes," the old man asked, "what about you? Are you going to try and fight?"

  It swept towards him with the sound of a blanket being whipped in the air before seeming to vanish inside the gunslinger. For a few moments the old man looked troubled, as if stricken by gas after a heavy meal, then that flaming light in his throat sparked once and he exhaled a slow plume of deep, black smoke.

  "The Consequence is a conceptual creature," he said, "it's power lies in corrupting the mind with its thoughts and ideas."

  "And you're beyond corruption?"

  "Hardly that. But I'm certainly out of its league."

  He began to climb back down the slope, his boot heels kicking up twin waves of ash as he slid towards ground level.

  "Who were they?" I asked.

  "Lesser presences," he replied, "gatekeepers, loiterers, gossipers. Nothing worth talking about."

  "Oh good," I said, "as long as they weren't terrifying or anything."

  "Terror is more than an ugly face," he said, reaching the bottom. "There are things ahead that will make them seem like the pale shadows they were."

  "You say it as if that's reassuring. It's not."

  "Just saying it like it is."

  He walked up to the gate and threw his weight into pushing it wide open. "Appreciate a hand here," he said. "Fine," I stood next to him. "I just get to forgetting you can't do everything by yourself."

  "If I could you wouldn't be here, boy."

  Slowly the gate parted, the two heavy doors swinging to either side. The ash clouds this kicked up forced me to close my mouth and eyes as I kept pushing.

  "Can't see a damned thing," I said, waving my hand in front of my face.

  A cool wind hit my face and, as the ash settled I found the world had changed. "Welcome to the Dominion of Circles," he said.

  Interlude Two

  IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

  1.

  TO DESCRIBE THE movement between outside and in is quite impossible as there simply didn't appear to be any.

  One moment I had been walking towards the town and then the next I was within its streets. I looked around, assuming that I would see Alonzo, or one of the many other people I assumed had been brought within Wormwood alongside me. There was no sign of anyone. I was, as far as I could tell, quite alone.

  At a loss as to an alternative plan, I decided to explore.

  I crossed the street to peer into one of the shops, stopping almost instantly to investigate the dirt at my feet. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest I had given the ground any thought but, if pressed, I would have assumed it to be the same patch of empty earth that had been sitting here minding its own business before someone dropped a magical town upon it. Taking a handful of the dry, powdery stuff that shifted beneath my boots I realised that couldn't possibly be the case. It had the texture of ash; the remains of winter fires or funeral pyres. It was entirely different to the heavy, clay-laden soil we had been tramping across for the last few days, dirt that would have swallowed us all had any heavy rains come. Perhaps it wasn't important but it made me think nonetheless. How much of this town was physically real? Was it a solid chunk of matter—extending down even into the earth foundations—brought from elsewhere? Was it just a dream of a town (if so then had they had gone so far as to dream the dirt I walked in?) Was it somewhere else entirely, a place that appeared to exist right before us and yet really was simply a representation of another place entirely? Had the dirt changed because I was now many miles away from where I had last stood?

  Surrounded by miracles, you might wonder at my obsessing over such detail but I was determined to know the answ
ers to this place, inside and out. Naivety? Yes. Of course. I would be shown to be an idiot for believing such things to be within my comprehension soon enough.

  I mounted the boardwalk, unnaturally aware of the feel of the wood beneath me, the physical creak of the planks as they bore my weight. If they were imaginary planks they had been hewn from very sturdy imaginary trees.

  The shop that faced me claimed to offer livery supplies. A faux saddle, carved from wood and painted a gleeful shade of red hung from a chain above me alongside the sign: M. Peele, Livery and Leather Goods.

  I looked through the window at the racks of bridles and straps, the wall was festooned with them, pulled from one hook to another until the whole resembled nothing less absurd than a web as spun by a cow. There was no sign of a shopkeeper so I pushed open the door and stepped inside. The air was heavy with the smell of leather. Everywhere you looked, studs and clasps winked in the sunlight that passed through the window, every shadow lit by a constellation of false stars. I pulled at a few, becoming more and more confused as I tried to imagine them applied to anything so mundane as a horse. Following the pattern of the straps and hoops I had to concede that Mr Peele catered for a wider zoological range than normal. Some -- the least bizarre of them -- seemed to be designed to harness a human.

  The opposite wall housed saddles and here, again, the absent craftsman had refused to be bound by a single species. Some were more than an arm's length, their padding thick and their girth wider than any horse's back. The horns that rose from their pommels were extended and grotesque, military applications perhaps, designed to intimidate opposing cavalry.

  Conceding that Mr Peele was clearly not at home for business, I left his emporium and made my way further up the street.

  I glanced in the windows of each building and store as I passed, taking notes, even mak ing the odd sketch.

  The only other life I found were the coiling forms of impossibly large silk worms that wove the stock of Ma Ninny's Dresswear & Lace.

  Ahead I saw the doors of a saloon, if there were to be life anywhere, I reasoned, it would be there.

  There was no sound coming from beyond those doors—not the refrain of a piano, the susurration of conversation, nor even the chink of glass against glass. Nonetheless, I pushed the swinging doors aside and entered the Holy Ass Saloon.

  Inside was as empty as everywhere else.

  Now, I have sworn to you that I am making the best possible effort to curtail my drinking, and that is certainly true. Liquor was the fuel that kept Roderick Quartershaft running and I was quite determined that his engine should stay quiet forever more. That said, the overwhelming thirst that struck me as I ran my eye along the bottles behind the bar, like the prizes on a fair ground stall, all shining and precious, was hard to ignore. It seemed to me that one, small measure, as an aid to fortitude in my current, unusual circumstances, could hardly be seen as a sin.

  For all my attempts to convince myself otherwise, it certainly felt like one, as I cautiously made my way behind the bar and gave the bottles a closer examination.

  Then my eyes fell on a bottle of Dufrockies Single Malt and my indecision vanished. I simply couldn't resist a taste of it. I had never seen another bottle outside the holiday villa of my publisher, a draughty little pile of bricks and resentful servants he keeps on the banks of Loch Ness. He had bought it locally and we had wrung it dry with increasingly warm enthusiasm. The idea of finding a bottle here should, perhaps, have been no surprise. Whether this was my Heaven or my Hell, both regions could hardly be complete without one. I found a glass and poured a small measure into it. Then topped it up a little. If I was only going to have one—and I was determined that would be so—then let it be worth having. It is the breaking of the resolution that's the thing, not the degree by which one has broken it.

  I put the bottle back on the shelf, stood the glass on the bar and stared at it for awhile. It was quite, quite, beautiful, the brown liquid glistening in the glass like the most precious stone a man could ever set eyes on. This was my Koh-i-Noor. The perfection I would chip away at, sip by precious sip, never finding the true beauty I thought had lived at its centre. I wanted to drink it very badly indeed but, in the end, I managed to resist. I would like to say that it was simply a case of resolve but I was also aware of where I was standing, who could say what other eyes might be watching my deliberation? Was this entire scenario a test? An alcoholic trap designed to judge me?

  For all that I wanted that drink, I decided the risks of taking it were too great. I didn't pour it away. I just left it there like a votive candle, flickering a malty prayer.

  I moved back towards the doors of the saloon and suddenly felt my legs crumple beneath me. For a moment I truly regretted not taking that last drink as a bright light flooded over me and I felt myself pass out.

  2.

  WHEN I CAME to again, it was to the smell of old books. As scents go it is certainly one that has clung to me over the years. When I was a child, I can remember no greater comfort than to lie on the floor of the library, close my eyes and imagine that smell transmuting to other odours: a summer's field, an Arabian bazaar, an ancient battlefield. Books were the gateway to all these places and countless more. They were my passage outside of myself before the whisky took over the job.

  "Mr Quartershaft?" asked a voice, "or is it Irish?"

  "Irish," I replied, sitting up and looking around.

  The room was an exact replica of that childhood library, I looked around half-expecting to see the young me curled up in a corner somewhere lost in the fantasies of Sir Walter Scott.

  At one end was the walnut desk at which my father would sit and compose his correspondence. If he ever simply sat and read books in the library I had never witnessed it, it had been a place of business not pleasure. Sat at the desk now was Alonzo, looking perfectly at home.

  "I hope you don't mind?" he said, gesturing to a book on the desk. "But you were unconscious for some time." He held up the book, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. "Jolly fun, especially in his open-minded attitudes towards belief." "'No one has a right to say that no water babies exist,'" I quoted, "'till they have seen no water babies existing, which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water babies.'"

  "Quite." He smiled. "Do you, as it were, believe in water babies? You certainly used to, your books were filled with creatures every bit as bizarre and unlikely."

  "My imagination has never found it hard to fly."

  "Indeed not. More importantly, you have convinced others have you not? It's all very well to talk of strange tribes and lizard creatures but making the reader quite convinced they exist?

  That is another skill entirely."

  "You're most kind."

  "I am merely stating fact, you are one of the greatest liars of your day."

  "I prefer 'novelist'."

  He laughed. "The term is interchangeable."

  I suspect you know my opinion on that and will therefore hardly be surprised to hear that I didn't argue. Instead I asked a question that had been on my mind for some little time: "Why did you want me to come here? It seems to me that you made a concerted effort to ensure I did so. Are there a shortage of liars in Heaven? Presuming, of course you don't come from Hell."

  "The line can get blurred between the two, though they are two different dominions. To answer your question, the simplest one at least: there are plenty of liars in both. But I wanted one who was mortal."

  "I am still that, then?" I asked, "It had occurred to me that I may no longer lay claim to the condition." "Oh no, that's one of the rules of The Fastening, you are a visitor, your life is still your own."

  "The Fastening?"

  "This period, when we join with you, when the barrier between us is lowered."

  "Albeit subjectively."

  "Ah..." he shifted in his seat, a piece of theatre I decided, there was no way this man had been truly uncomfortable in his life, "I confess we are being a little more selective than som
e might hope."

  "So not everyone is going to get their chance to see the hereafter?" I smiled. "There certainly are liars in Heaven then."

  He looked at me in silence for a moment, his fingers drumming gently on the surface of his book. "To answer your other question," he said finally and, I noted, ignoring my potential insult, "I wanted you to come here because I have need of your skills."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, I want you to write a book. A sequel, I suppose you could call it, to a book that we feel has outlived its usefulness. Tell me, have you read The Bible?"

  Chapter Three

  RED SUN

  THE GATE OPENED out onto a large boardwalk and jetty protruding into a lake so huge we might as well hang it all and just call the damn thing a sea. The air was cooler than before and the sky was the heavy red of an overripe plum. The water of the lake was dark and thick, surrounded on all sides by mountains that reached up into that miserable looking sky. The shoreline was flat, sewn thick with long grasses.

  There was a small kiosk at one end of the jetty. A gas lamp hung off the corner of its lop sided roof, throwing a sickly, purple light in a puddle all around it. Here and there other people paced up and down, waiting for whatever boat it was that travelled these waters. Some were clearly human, others less so. I tried not to stare at a thing that looked like a crab with a horse's head in case it got it in mind to snip my legs off with its pincers.

  "The Dominion of Circles?" I asked.

  The old man nodded. "Or Hell, if you prefer."

  "I most certainly do not. I kind of had my heart set on Heaven"

  "All in good time, our journey must start here."

  "And what a lovely place to start."

  "It's known as The Bristle," the old man said, pointing at the water.

  "Nice name."

  "Look at the banks of the lake," he replied. Following his finger I realised that what I had taken as long grass was in fact thick hair. It was as if we had been reduced to the size of mosquitoes, crawling around in the thick beard of a dead man, his mouth wide open and filled with molasses. It was not the most charming place I had ever visited.