Happy Hour in Hell

seventeen: gravejaw house

THE RIVER was as horrible and dangerous as you’d imagine, full of skeletal pirates on leaking rafts and fanged serpentine creatures big as slimy commuter trains. But we were on a large, well-armed boat, and the nightly tales of Sinbad the Split-Skull Sailor almost made up for the stench and the constant terror that something was going to eat us.

Riprash had started out in the service of a demon lord named Crabspatter and worked his way up to a position of responsibility in the guy’s personal guard, until Crabspatter was cut to ribbons by another, badder demon in a sea battle at a place Riprash called Sucking Marsh.

“Old Crabby went down to the bottom with a spear through his guts, yes he did,” said Riprash in the nostalgic tone of someone talking about a dotty uncle. “He’s probably still down there, trying to get out of the mud—he was a mean fucker. That’s when I got this.” He reached up and touched the huge gash in his head. “And then I woke up, stripped and robbed of everything, chained in a line of captives. The winner kept some of us, sold the rest.” He laughed. “Not surprised he didn’t keep me. My head didn’t stop bleeding for months.”

But the slave trader who bought him recognized Riprash’s quality, or at least his immense size, and put him to work as an overseer. Freedom is kind of a moot point in Hell, apparently, and Riprash was never granted his, but he worked his way up to positions of greater trust until he was the slave trader’s right-hand man. Centuries later, Gagsnatch took over the trader’s business (neither a gentle nor a legal transaction, from what I could tell) but he kept Riprash in the same position of trust, and my new chum had worked for Gagsnatch ever since. He gave me a startled look when I asked him how many years ago that had been.

“Years? Words like that don’t mean anything much here. Some of the new ones come in and they ask how long this, how long that, but the rest of us find it doesn’t do any good to think about it.”

It made me wonder how many years Gob had been a child, scuttling through the narrow alleyways of Abaddon. The kid had been born in Hell, but time here didn’t seem to mean much, and Gob didn’t remember much beyond a few days back, probably because, until he hooked up with me, it had all been pretty much the same.

I was beginning to see that the whole Hell thing, including the timelessness, had been craftily arranged to make the inmates as unhappy as possible. They had to scramble for food and shelter every day, but other than that, things hardly ever changed—or changed just enough to make the repeated doses of punishment more painful. If things are always the same, you get used to them. If they change, if sometimes they get a little better, that makes the return to misery all the more painful. So if any of you plan to open your own Hell, remember this time-tested recipe: Vary the suffering so your victims don’t get completely numb. Show them something better from time to time, just to keep them hoping.

I couldn’t help wondering whether Riprash’s fellowship, the Lifters, might actually be part of the infernal master plan. After all, what better way to insure suffering than to wave a little hope for better days in front of the damned and the doomed? Riprash didn’t believe that, though, and I certainly wasn’t going to argue. I had come to trust him, and he even seemed to like Gob, in a how-demons-do-it sort of way. Since Gob was always as hungry as a feral cat, he gave the boy little handouts of food and was amused by the kid’s elaborate caution whenever we left the confines of the tiny cabin. “Don’t you know you’re on my ship, little bug?” Riprash would bellow. “Nobody even pisses on The Nagging Bitch without my say-so!”

I never did find out if Riprash’s ship was named after anyone in particular, but Riprash had women (using the term loosely) in every port the slaver traded. Not that I ever encouraged him to share those stories. If you ever want to lose your interest in sex, try spending your vacation in Acheron Landing or even Penitentia, the spit of mud, rock, and ramshackle huts where we stopped for supplies on the second day. The dockside hookers looked like extras from Attack of the Mole Men, but Riprash assured me that only the best looking ones got to work the incoming vessels.

I won’t bore you with a description of the entire trip. From the middle of a river, one Hell city looks pretty much like another—namely horrible. The third day we finally sighted Gravejaw, a sullen knob of black lava rock that stuck out into the black swell of Cocytus like a bunion. A natural bay at its base had made it a port, and the desperate nature of life in Hell had soon turned it into a crawling ant heap of souls and demons. At the top of the great mound of stone, surrounded by walls as high as those of the city itself, stood a castle, a forest of black towers slender and sharp as an eel’s teeth. A huge banner flapped on the uppermost spire, a white bird’s claw painted on sable ground. It wasn’t the tallest thing on Gravejaw, though: at the center of the city a massive column loomed over everything else like a giant central pillar holding up the sky.

“The banner’s Niloch’s, and that place with the black towers is his,” Riprash said. “Don’t go near it, that’s my advice. I’ll tell you how to get across the city from here. See that?” He pointed to the great pillar, which, as we grew closer, I could see was made from some kind of mud brick but loomed higher than any skyscraper. Even now that the second set of beacons had been lit on the walls of Gravejaw—the closest thing to full daylight—it was impossible to see where the great cylinder ended, since it stretched up into the blackness of the monstrous cavern’s invisible roof. “You just get there, and the lifter’ll take you where you want to go.” I could ride it all the way up to Pandaemonium, apparently, many, many levels above us. That part was heartening, but I was still a bit confused by it all.

See, our river trip had taken us up at least a dozen levels, which didn’t make any sense at all. I certainly hadn’t noticed us sailing uphill, and the Cocytus, black and sticky and noxious as it was, seemed in all other ways to obey the laws of gravity and physics I knew. But this was Hell, after all, and although it was more realistic (for lack of a better word) than Heaven, it wasn’t any more real. As an angel I was used to the slippery distances and untellable time of Heaven, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to accept that some things in Hell, no matter how illogical, just were.

I scrubbed myself with bits of sail-mending canvas to get the worst muck off me, since the river was way too dangerous for swimming. In fact, ordinary souls didn’t use water to bathe in Hell: it was too rare. Then Gob and I waited for Riprash to give us the sign that it was safe to disembark. We sat for what seemed like hours, the boy pacing back and forth across the tiny cabin until I wanted to clout him. I was already wondering what I was going to do with Gob. I didn’t want to take him with me any farther, because I might have to make a hasty retreat from some very bad place, and it was going to be hard enough to figure out how to smuggle Caz out without adding Gob to the equation. On the other hand, I’d dragged him far away from the places he knew, I didn’t have a single iron spit to pay him off with, and leaving him on his own here in Gravejaw might put him in even greater danger.

Then a sudden idea hit me. I left Gob pacing and went to find Riprash. I should have stayed in the cabin like he told me, but I was suddenly fired up with the idea of doing someone a good turn (I am, or used to be, an angel, remember?) and I blundered up the ladder to the main deck.

The first thing I ran into was one of Riprash’s minions, the catlike, bug-eyed one who had gaped at me back at the slave stall in Cocytus Landing like I was some long-lost relative. I couldn’t imagine any reason why this grubby little thing should be looking at me with such insolent familiarity (you can see that Hell was starting to get to me) so before he could work up his nerve to say something, I demanded to know where Riprash was.

“On the d-d-dock,” said Krazy Kat in a high, stuttering voice, “but I th-think, I think . . .”

I probably just looked like his old Uncle Pitchfork or something. Worse, despite Temuel’s promises, maybe the little creature had recognized the demon body the archangel and Lameh had given me. Either way, I didn’t want that conversation, so I brushed past him. I was a few steps down the gangplank when I realized something about the busy dock looked wrong. Not the weird, insectlike beasts of burden being loaded with cargo, nor the other ghastly, half-naked creatures sweating beneath the whips of the overseers, some of them so deformed it was a wonder they could work at all, let alone carry such huge loads, but something far more disturbing.

Riprash stood on the dock, but he was completely surrounded by armed demon soldiers, a dozen of them or more, all wearing Niloch’s white bird claw insignia. What was worse, Niloch himself sat mounted on the back of a tall and only slightly horselike insect creature, and Riprash was talking to him.

Niloch saw me so quickly it seemed like he had been looking for me. For a moment I was convinced Riprash had sold me out, and I cursed myself for ever trusting a demon. After all, that was what had landed me here in Hell in the first place.

“And here he is, dear, dear me! How charming!” His bony tendrils wavering in the sea breeze like the fronds of a sea anemone, Niloch spurred his weird insect-horse toward the base of the gangplank. “Riprash has just told me of your bad fortune, Lord Snakestaff! It is a credit to you that you have climbed so far back after such a nasty little trick.”

I was frozen on the top of the gangplank. “Trick. Of course . . .”

Riprash turned and gave me a look of what I assume was mute pleading: It’s hard to tell when so much of a person’s face has been ruined. “Yes, I told him how you were betrayed and abandoned in the lower levels by your enemies.” He turned back to Niloch. “Snakestaff needs only to reach the lifter, Lord Commissar, and then he’ll be right as rot.”

Niloch let out one of his whistling laughs. “Of course, of course, but first he must come and take his ease with me in Gravejaw House and tell me about all the adventures he has had!” He almost sounded sincere, but even if I’d trusted him I wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere with that fluting, inhuman thing. “Surely you must be longing for a proper meal, Snakestaff, hmmm? Delicacies, yes? And I shall see you have some proper clothes, too. Going naked as the crawling damned will not smooth your passage back to Pandaemonium. They are dreadfully judgemental up at the capital.”

“That’s very kind,” I said, croaking a little in my effort to sound casual. “But there’s no need for you to trouble yourself over a creature like me, Lord Commissar.” Whatever else Niloch was, he clearly outranked me, so there was no way I could just refuse.

“Nonsense. Where in the Red City do you live?”

“Blister Row. It’s near Dis Pater Square.” I was glad Lameh had given me a response. I couldn’t help wondering if the place actually existed. Perhaps I could use it as a sanctuary when I made it to Pandaemonium. If I made it to Pandaemonium.

“A delightful little neighborhood! I’ll be pleased to let you repay my own insignificant hospitality when I next journey to the great metropolis. Now come, Snakestaff, brave traveler! You shall enjoy a night with me after so long on shipboard and so many tiresome experiences in the depths.”

I only had time for a quick whispered conference with Riprash. I begged him to take care of Gob, and he said he would, at least until he could deliver him back to me, which wasn’t really what I’d hoped for. “We’ll meet again, Snakestaff,” the giant rumbled. “That you can rest yourself on.”

I wasn’t as confident as Riprash. I said goodbye, keeping it formal because Niloch’s beady little scarlet eyes were watching us. “You’ve been kind to me,” I told him quietly. The giant frowned, and I realized it was an unfamiliar term. “You’ve done me no harm, you’ve even done me a good turn. I’ll remember that.”

Then, my heart in my mouth, where it was the only thing keeping my meager yet repulsive breakfast from being forcibly ejected, I followed the rattling commissar across the dock. He directed me to a pallet, already loaded down with the cage of slaves and carried by more slaves who moaned in quiet hopelessness as I added my weight. Then the whole procession followed Niloch up the winding road through the vast slum of Gravejaw, bound for the needle-towered citadel at the top of the hill.

My first impression of Gravejaw House was that I had somehow fallen out of Hell and landed smack dab in the middle of Shoreline Park, the abandoned and thoroughly dilapidated amusement park back home in San Judas. The commissar’s fortress, rising like a bizarre tumor from the crest of the hill, looked less like a castle than a pile of giant toy blocks left behind by some bored and colossal infant. It was hard to tell under the red lantern-light of Hell, but the leaning walls and the bottoms of the crooked towers seemed to be painted in broad multicolored stripes and whorls and other odd patterns. The entrance road wound through vast, chaotic gardens, which seemed to consist mostly of partially skeletonized corpses planted waist-deep in dry, stony ground, tangled in vines and prickling thorns so that it was hard to tell where the foliage left off and the muscle fibers and slickly gleaming nerves began. When I saw one of them twitch and its ragged mouth form a soundless cry for help, I was reminded that nothing in Hell really dies.

“Ah,” said Niloch, watching my face. “Do you like it? It is so hard in these rustic areas to know what to do with servants when they become too decrepit to work. I could have sold them for scrap, but I wouldn’t have got much. This way they continue to serve.”

“Wonderful,” I said, which was as much as I could manage without throwing up. The worst part was that all the shrub people struggled to turn as we passed, trying to catch the commissar’s attention, their mouths gaping and eyes (where eyes still remained) bulging as they struggled to make their ruined bodies plead for them. Not that Niloch would have cared.

“Did you see this one?” he asked. “My old butler.” He pointed to a thing I wouldn’t have noticed, since it was one of the few ornaments not moving. There was only the barest hint of a face and limbs. “He dropped an entire jeroboam of maiden’s tears.” The shrub was bent beneath the weight of a stone dish the size of a truck tire. “I told him when he catches enough to make up for what he spilled, I’ll put him back to work.” The unlikely chance of any maidens happening by and crying into that huge stone bowl, let alone enough of them to fill it, seemed to make Niloch very cheerful. As I went past I saw that I had been wrong, and the shrub was moving, trembling so slightly beneath the great weight of stone that there might have been a breeze, but no breeze was blowing.

We reached the front gate, a pair of crude demon-statues with a length of iron grille between them, which swung open at our approach. Beyond it lay a couple dozen yards of curious, bumpy pathway and then the big, black door.

“Are you barefoot?” Niloch asked me. Several of his servants had come spilling out the gate, scurrying out on either side of the path to help the commissar dismount from his strange insectoid horse. “Of course you are, your enemies have taken your clothes. But that is good, good! The house needs to know where you’ve been so it can prepare the proper hospitality.” He pointed one of his strange, bony fingers, and the spiraling horns on his arm rattled a little. “Go on, friend Snakestaff, walk forward. On the path.”

I did. It was gray as old meat, and it felt like it as well, spongy and giving beneath my soles. I didn’t like it much, but it wasn’t the worst feeling in the world, at least not until I was halfway, at which point I felt the bottoms of my feet getting moist. Within a few more steps I was sloshing ankle deep in fluid. The path seemed almost to cling to my feet each time I put them down. The whole thing reminded me of something but I couldn’t quite figure out what, until just before I stepped off onto the front porch.

A tongue. I was walking on a huge tongue. I all but leaped from the end in my hurry to get off it. When I turned back I could see the furrow down the middle, the little bumps that had allowed it to taste me, the shine of the saliva that was even now draining back into the coarse pores. It was all I could do to stay upright.

Niloch’s slaves had taken off his boots, and as he walked up the path behind me, his cloud of horny extensions shaking gently around him, he muttered little endearments at the thing: “Oh, yes, my hungry beauty. Ah, you like that? Goodness, you do! I trod on that one—it squealed like a puppy. Is it sweet? Yes, between my toes.”

I turned away. The toes in question were like armor-plated worms wriggling against the soft, gray flesh of the tongue, and Niloch kept stopping to let the path enjoy them. No sane person should have to see that.

Niloch gestured for me to go inside. It was too late to run, so I stepped forward. The entry hall was a chaos of monstrous angles and pools of shadow. Things scuttled past that I didn’t want to look at too closely.

“Why so dark?” Niloch asked, with just a hint of impending mayhem, and several slaves, small creatures like burned apes, leaped forward to begin spinning wheels set into the wall. Translucent spheres mounted on the wall began to glow, driving many of the smallest crawlers back into hiding.

“What do you think?” the commissar asked. Slaves were removing his armor. I turned away, not eager to see more of Niloch’s horrible form. “My lanterns are as good as anything in the Red City, you must admit. There is a gas that seeps from beneath this hill that feeds flame. It is why I made my home here. Long after the last lamp is extinguished, lights blaze in Gravejaw House. They can be seen for miles and miles!”

His slaves stepped away. Niloch now wore something like a camel’s saddle blanket, a shapeless black thing that could have been a housedress, covered with splotches that might have been a pattern or just Niloch’s breakfast mess, the whole thing stretched over his protrusions like a very ugly parade float waiting to be unveiled.

“Now come, my dearest,” he said. “You will dine with me, charming Snakestaff, oh, most certainly. After the poor fare of a slave ship you will be pleased to see what my kitchen can provide!”

I was ushered into a long, low hall. The huge table was solid stone pitted with holes that I only realized later were actually drains. A pair of battered-looking slaves hurried me to my seat, little more than a stone lump beside the table. Niloch had a more elaborate chair, a kind of trestle under a canopy of wrought-iron antlers that duplicated the curls of horn hidden by his caftan. Strange creatures clung to the wall, things like inside-out lizards and globby things as shapeless as amoebas. Some were servants, as it turned out, and some were on the dinner menu, but they all came when Niloch called.

With help from his slaves, the commissar clambered up onto the trestle and bestrode it like a saddle, so that he was a good twice my height. He seemed to enjoy that, his sideways jaws positively clacking with good cheer. “Ah, yes,” he called, “so good to be home! And now, feed us! Bring us out all the finest delicacies! Your master is back and we have a guest!”

I won’t tell you much about the meal. You’re welcome. Everything was still alive, and I wouldn’t have eaten any of them by choice even if they weren’t. As it was, though, I had to smile and pretend to enjoy the feeling of scrabbly little legs in my mouth, or the whimpers of something that didn’t enjoy being chewed. Dessert? Dessert was alive too, even after it had been doused in something and lit on fire. Niloch insisted I try it before it stopped shrieking.

The only thing that saved me was the demon body I was wearing, which apparently had literally more stomach for this sort of thing than I did. I managed to get a few things down but knew I would spend the rest of my life, however short, trying to forget this meal.

“Now, my good fellow,” Niloch said when the last plate of quivering ruin had been cleared away, “you must tell me of your travels after this unfortunate kidnapping.” He gestured for the nearest slave to pour something lumpy as gravy into my cup. “You must have seen some wonderful sights in Abaddon. Did you visit the Fountain of Pus? Travelers come from many levels above and below just to see it! Lovely!”

I did my best to sound like a disgruntled petty noble complaining about his unwanted trip to the depths, of course. Niloch’s questions were sympathetic at first, but after a while I began to think he was trying to trip me up, pulling out little inconsistencies and asking me with poison sweetness to explain them.

“You see,” he told me after I had finished one long, self-conscious answer, “there are things afoot, my sweet, oh, yes. Apparently an outsider,” he said the word with a hissing emphasis, “has got into Hell through one of the old, disused gates.”

“Outsider? Got in?” I was suddenly finding it hard to talk, despite the absence of small kicking things in my throat for the first time in an hour. “Who . . .?”

“Who would be so rude as to enter our fair lands without making themselves known—especially if they were sent by You-Know-Who?” He gave me a look. If those little red eyes could have twinkled, they would have, but instead they just sat there like drops of wet paint. “I couldn’t say—but I’m sure you can, my dear Snakestaff?” The eyes went opaque. “Can’t you? Hmmm?”

“But I told you, I didn’t see anything!”

“Oh, come, my squishy, breakable friend. The time for that is over. I am so very certain that you have more to share with me, that I’ve arranged an appointment for you with my court jester, Greenteeth. He’ll jolly it out of you. Come in, Master Greenteeth, I know you’re eager!” he called out. “We’re ready for you now.”

Something waddled in through one of the doorways. It was only about half my height but squat and muscular and slick as an amphibian. I couldn’t see any eyes on it, but it had plenty of mossy, sharp teeth. Far more than a reasonable mouthful. When it reached Niloch’s side he reached down to pet it with a clawed hand as though it were a beloved pet. Invisible bells jingled faintly when the creature moved. He might have been a jester, but I wasn’t laughing.

“You see,” the commissar warbled, “I promised to bring back some new toys from the Shrieking Meat Bazaar for little Greenteeth. Oh, and I did, my sweet lump, I did. He’ll be aching to try them out, and from the way you have behaved at dinner, I suspect you don’t like pain.” Niloch raised a hand as I began my desperate protests. “No, no, do not be foolish, darling one. I’m sure you’re in a hurry to prove me wrong, but we cannot start tonight when you’re weary from your travels. That would dull the piquancy of the thing, would it not? Tired flesh is insensitive flesh.” He raised a hand. Instantly, I was surrounded by burned apes. Their rough fingers closed on my arms and lifted me from my stone seat. “We will begin when the morning beacons are lit, or just a little before,” Niloch said. “I have not had a conversation orchestrated by my beloved Greenteeth for some time. It will be a joyful day.” The commissar patted the thing and it showed its teeth in an even wider grin, until I thought the whole top of its head might fall off and roll away. “Until the morning, then. Take him to his chamber.”

I was dragged deep into Gravejaw House, past weeping animals and scarred servants with empty expressions, then shackled to the walls of a bare, dank stone room. The slaves’ torches reflected from floor and walls slick with various liquids, only a few of which were obviously blood. Just before my captors left me, I heard something screech in a nearby room, a shrill, ragged sound that wasn’t anywhere near human. I was pretty sure it was another guest being softened up for a session with the commissar and his pal Greenteeth.

The door closed. I heard the heavy bolt being thrown. I thrashed in my chains but could barely move them, let alone break them. With the torches gone, darkness filled the room, a blackness close to absolute.