Happy Hour in Hell

sixteen: a filthy river runs through it

GOB AND I hid out at Gagsnatch’s until the second beacon had been lit, then our new friend Riprash buried us (carefully) under a load of ship’s provisions on a wagon and drove us down to the docks. My view was entirely of the undersides of coarse sacks full of dried maggots, but I’m not sure it was any worse than seeing the actual city of Cocytus Landing, at least judging by the astonishing variety of unpleasant noises and odors that made their way through the cushioning layers of bagged demon yummies.

Riprash unloaded the provisions himself to make sure we weren’t accidentally beheaded by one of his helpers, then hurried us up the swaying gangplank.

“You’ll stay in my cabin,” he said, gesturing proudly around the low-ceilinged room, which would have been adequate for us if Riprash never came in. As it was, he took up so much of the space that it felt like sharing a bathtub with a humpback whale.

When day had passed and only the afterlights burned, the dockworkers went home. Riprash took us out on deck and showed us around the ship like a retiree displaying his rhododendrons. The Bitch was halfway between a garbage scow and a Chinese junk, long and low, with sails that must have looked like bat wings when they unfurled. It was built with timbers that didn’t seem to match, and was so smeared with tar all over that the ship might have been made from chewed licorice. But from what I could gather from Riprash’s proud descriptions, despite its age and decrepitude, The Nagging Bitch was state of the art when it came to things like shackles, cages, and tools of punishment. I tried to smile and look impressed, but when you’re looking at a thing with metal teeth meant for digging into someone’s crotch to prevent escape . . . well, like I said, I tried to smile.

Riprash had apparently decided he liked me. He showed this newfound solidarity by clapping me on the back from time to time, hard enough to make my bones creak. He also introduced me to the hellish rum he liked to drink, which tasted like bile and gasoline and packed the clout of pure moonshine. No, I didn’t ask how it was made, or from what. Riprash loved to watch me trying to swallow the stuff and rewarded me for the entertainment of seeing me cough, retch, and sputter by telling stories late into the night when I would rather have slept.

But the liquor helped, and it wasn’t that the stories were bad. In fact, by Hell standards my new, large friend’s tales were quite sweet, really, of a simple ogre and his slave ship having interesting adventures around the infernal world. By local standards, Riprash was really an okay guy. Yes, he’d killed a few people—a few hundred, more accurately—during the course of his life, and he had trouble thinking of the damned souls he trafficked in as anything other than mobile meat, but once we got to know him I never felt afraid of him, and there’s very few hellfolk I can say that about. Including my girlfriend.

The ship set sail just before the first day-lamp was lit. Riprash let us out on deck once we were underway so we could look around. The Nagging Bitch had so many black sails that the masts looked like some kind of vampire nesting trees. Weighted down with a hold full of caged slaves, she wallowed so low that the river was constantly slapping over the gunwales, and the deck was always at least ankle-deep in Cocytus sludge. but I was delighted to breathe the (comparatively) sweeter air outside the cabin.

That first night, as the city fell away behind us and we sailed into the dark, the great black snake of river soon became invisible. With only the distant beacons on the walls of Hell for light, we might have been traveling through a universe of flickering red stars. I felt suddenly lonely, lonelier than I’d ever been, even with Gob beside me, open-eyed and open-mouthed as he journeyed into what must have been a life he’d never dreamed of living. I was desperate for Caz and that unique moment of completeness she’d given me, I was badly in need of friends like Sam and Monica, and I missed my familiar haunts. You’ve been there, I’m sure, but it feels different in Hell. Chances were very small I’d ever see any of them again. Little Gob was company of a sort, but he wasn’t exactly chatty, and since I was planning to ditch him before things got really dangerous, I didn’t want to get too close, either.

Riprash thumped toward us and spread his massive arms. “This . . . this is freedom,” he said, conveniently ignoring the shrieks of the damned in their cages below. “No master but the winds and the tide. When I felt this, I was first lifted. But I did not even know it then.” He laid a huge paw on my shoulder; if he’d pushed down, I’m pretty sure he could have driven me into the deck like a finishing nail. “Perhaps you come to another fellowship with me, Snakestaff? When we reach Gravejaw, maybe?”

I mumbled something noncommittal. I’m not really a joiner, but out of curiosity I asked, “How many are in your fellowship?”

“Ah, it is not as small as it was back in that other day, when your master first spoke to me. More join every day. Still, we are few.” He nodded. “But we are lifted, in our thought if not in our bodies.”

I never found out where he picked up the Origen stuff, but he had a pretty good understanding. Origenes of Alexandria was a Christian scholar, back in the third century or so, who proposed that if free will and forgiveness were real, even Satan himself had a chance someday to make peace with the Highest and achieve forgiveness. Needless to say, the early church stomped all over this idea, because they thought a Hell that wasn’t forever was pretty toothless. Plainly, many of those early Christians had never spent centuries dogpaddling in molten lava, or they would have rethought that concept; even a mere decade of constant, agonizing burns might adjust attitudes, I’d guess.

I was impressed by Riprash’s belief, and I speak as a confirmed cynic. Gob was interested too, or at least I guessed that he was, because he listened carefully when the ogre spoke.

“But the lords of Hell . . . they can’t like that idea very much,” I said at last.

“And they don’t, that’s a fact.”

I couldn’t help thinking that my supervisor Temuel was playing a pretty dangerous game, encouraging the rank and file of Hell to start thinking about salvation. Did our superiors have any idea? Because it sounded like just as revolutionary and dangerous a plan as Sam’s mystery-angel Kephas had hatched with the Third Way, which I was already trying to wipe off my shoes. Bobby Dollar sneaking off to aid a religious rebellion in Hell wasn’t going to make the Ephorate any happier with me. Not that I wasn’t already fucked before I got here; I had slept with a high-ranking demon, helped a rogue angel (who happened to be my best friend) escape, bashed another angel over the head while he was pursuing his lawful duties, and then lied to Heaven about all of it.

Slam dunk, I believe our friends in the earthly legal profession would call the case against me.

Riprash sang in a voice like a slow avalanche.

Yeah. Why worry about one more strike against me at this late date? In fact, as long as I was down here in Hell, I decided I should look around for a nice piece of property, because the odds were high I was going to be coming back soon on a more permanent basis.