Happy Hour in Hell

nineteen: going down

THE GOOD thing was that I could see the gigantic lifter shaft from pretty much anywhere in the city of Gravejaw. The bad thing was that even after I had scrambled across the endless scorched wasteland of Niloch’s gardens and climbed the outer wall, I still had to get across the entire wretched slum to reach it. Apparently the Commissar of Wings and Claws had seen the immense structure as an insult to his own awesomeness, so he had set up housekeeping on the highest piece of land, which happened to be a couple of miles away from the lifter.

Now that his house was going up in flames, the reddish light made it seem like Hell’s midday had come early, and I could see a great throng of hellfolk hurrying up the hill toward me from the surrounding city. I was just looking around for something to use as a weapon when the first of them reached me and sprinted past, hurrying toward the disaster. They just kept coming, more and more, shouting, honking, making noises I don’t have words for. Some hopped and some flew (although not well enough to write home about) and others teeter-tottered along on mismatched legs, but none of them gave me much more than a glance. The stolen robe helped, and I guess I wasn’t burned enough to be worth staring at.

I fought my way against the throng like a queer salmon in spawning season, trying as hard as you’d guess to avoid body contact, but still getting speared, smeared, or dusted every few steps. Very few of the creatures pushing past me seemed upset or frightened by what was happening. In fact, to judge by the hundreds of deformed faces I saw, most seemed downright thrilled, and the rest were at least interested. I don’t think the commissar had a lot of fans.

I pushed free of the worst of the mob at last and hurried down to the base of the hill. There were still residents in the narrow streets of Gravejaw, demons and damned who couldn’t just drop their business to go watch something fun. Many were blind, and some had sensory organs so alien they might not even have realized what was going on. Others clearly just couldn’t move fast enough. I passed a thin man hopping slowly along the road waving his right hand as I passed him. Only when I turned to look back did I realize that he only had a right: he had been bisected from head to crotch like a medical cadaver being prepared for one of those see-through views, and was hopping on one foot, trying to balance that thin half body and half head with his single arm. As I looked back, I could see his exposed organs and brain flash wetly as he wobbled.

Creatures like salted slugs, like toads with bone disease, or broken-winged birds, many with heads too big for the bodies or bodies too big for the heads, I hurried past them all, trying not to see too much but still seeing more than I wanted. The lower part of Gravejaw was built on a series of small hills, and following the tiny streets up and down was like being on the world’s only human-powered roller coaster. I ran through half the city, it seemed, out of the center and into outer districts where trading and torture went on side by side, as if it were any other night. Even this far away, the ones with eyes must have been able to see the burning castle on the hilltop but none of them seemed to care very much. The only comment I heard was from a mostly skeletal, three-eyed giant with a hammer who was carefully crushing the shinbones of a chained prisoner in front of what must have been a very strange shop: He looked up to the hilltop as I hurried by and said to his companion, who was digging at the same prisoner’s eye with a spoon, “It’s burning good. Burning real good.”

His companion looked up for a moment, nodded, then accidentally dropped his spoon into the muck at his feet. He picked it up, carefully licked it clean, and then went back to work.

I passed buildings that looked like factories, the sort of hellish mills that even William Blake probably couldn’t have imagined. Some streamed blood-colored sewage, and the doorways were littered with burned and mangled bodies of what were probably accident-prone employees, many of them scraping at the iron factory doors to get back in, despite their horrible wounds. I heard the clang of huge machines and watched smoke and steam belching from furnace chimneys. I couldn’t help noticing that things on this level had advanced from the medieval tech of Abaddon to something a bit more eighteenth century, steam and infernal machines dwelling happily alongside plague and utter poverty.

The closer I got to the lifter shaft, the more awesome the structure became. Like a skyscraper, the stone cylinder was nearly as big around as a city block, but that was nothing compared to how high it stretched upward before its length vanished in the upper darkness. I couldn’t imagine how something so tall supported its own weight without guy wires or buttresses. It was an engineering feat that would have made any pharaoh proud.

The lifter stood in the middle of a busy town square, an open plaza like the kind you sometimes see around the big cathedrals in Europe. As I approached, more cautiously now, a few people wandered out of the archways at the bottom of the shaft. The crowds in the square here seemed all but oblivious to Niloch’s burning citadel, going on with their public business of theft, gambling, fornication, and various other pastimes. I was in an area where someone in a hurry drew no attention at all, except for the usual swarm of pickpockets, rapists, and knife-wielding psychopaths that hang around anywhere people arrive and depart. If I had slowed down I’m sure they would have begun to move in on me, but as it was I must have looked like too much work.

I entered the lifter tower through the nearest arch and saw there were actually several individual lifter cars traveling up and down narrower shafts that ran through the big building like nerves in their sheaths. I stayed back for a bit, watching, but in most ways it looked pretty straightforward, not much different than an elevator bank in a modern office building: One of the lifter doors would open, and those waiting would push their way on while others forced their way out. The passengers looked more prosperous than the wretches lolling outside in the plaza. Many of these travelers were dressed in impressive outfits, and some were so physically imposing that no one else would get into the lifter with them for fear of being smashed or spiked. That made sense, though: the wealthy were more likely to be using the lifters than the pathetic groundlings. I knew from Lameh’s implanted memories that Hell’s inhabitants were strongly discouraged from going above their designated levels, and who was going to go any farther down voluntarily?

After watching for what felt like ten minutes or so, I waited until the most recent group of passengers had dispersed, then gathered my courage to walk to the nearest lifter door. Another fellow shuffled up beside me, probably the demon equivalent of a Japanese salaryman at the end of a long night’s work, and we entered the lifter together.

We were the only passengers, but the interior of the rusty iron box was full of trash and spattered fluids, some still wet. My fellow passenger had a head like a buzzard, but his eyes were multifaceted like a fly’s. He was dressed in shabby but fairly clean gray robes that exposed only his clawed feet. He gave me a cold look and an even colder nod, then lifted his hand—instead of being feathered it looked like another bird’s foot—and placed it on the wall of the lifter. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear, but I was already scrambling to imitate him. I put my hand against the gritty iron wall and quietly said, “Pandaemonium.” I was half ready to be quizzed about my bona fides, but instead the door slid creakily shut and the lifter started to shudder. The shuddering went on and on for what seemed like a full minute, then at last the lifter groaned, a noise like a giant metal cow giving birth, and to my silent joy and relief the box began to move upward.

Slowly at first, then faster and faster, we rattled up the great pipe. The lifter car, which was built more like a bank safe than a flimsy human elevator, nevertheless shook and screeched so much as it was tugged or pushed upward that at first I was certain we were going to derail, or whatever the hell elevators do when they go wrong. Instead we just kept going faster and faster, so that my ears began popping like popcorn. Then a flat, uncaring voice said, “Sour Milk Park, Hateful, Lower Childskull,” and the elevator slowed to a banging halt. The fly-buzzard man waited until the door squeaked open, then stepped out without a backward glance, as if in a hurry to get away from me. Just like folks back home.

I waited as the steam built up again (or whatever), everything hissing and vibrating. The door began to slide closed. It was amazing to consider that after all I’d gone through, I was now only a short elevator ride from my destination. If I had been a regular angel I would have felt confirmed that God really was watching over me after all, and was going to reward me for all my years of good behavior. Of course, if I had been a regular angel I would already have banked a few years of good behavior just in case. Sadly, though, that is one of the many accounts with my name on it that’s come up a bit short.

But just before the door finished closing, something dark poked through and stopped it. The appendage gripping the door looked less like a hand and more like something you might find buried in a cat’s litter box. The force of the door being restrained seemed to make the whole lifter strain, as if it was determined to break the deadlock or destroy itself trying. The mechanism whined, the shuddering increased. Then the door slid back open.

The thing that stepped in was a bulky man-shape made entirely of mud. It was naked and nearly without features except for a popped bubble of a mouth and a blob of wet clay that I guessed was a nose, mostly because it was somewhere near the two glowing yellow smears it wore for eyes. If I tell you those eyes looked like some kind of irradiated slugs emerging from a seabed, you’ll maybe begin to grasp how much I didn’t like looking at them. But it wasn’t just the eyes. I could feel this new thing, feel its age and its inhumanity. I don’t know what it was, but it was no ordinary demon.

The passenger-blob stopped inside the door, and its weight actually made the massive car tilt. The shapeless face swiveled toward me for a moment but then slowly kept turning, examining the entire empty lifter, as though I was so insignificant that before it acknowledged me it had to establish what someone not being there looked like. Being alone in a confined space with the thing made me feel trapped and queasy. This was no mere infernal salaryman. This was something old and powerful.

The door closed. The thing stretched its flat, muddy paw to the wall. When it spoke its destination, I was so disturbed by the squelchy, inhuman voice that I only registered some moments later that it had said, “Tartarus Station.”

Something was seriously wrong. I knew a bit of Hell’s geography, both from Lameh and my travels, and I was pretty fucking sure that the direction to Tartarus Station wasn’t up, where I was going, but down. Way down.

Then the hissing and the trembling crested and the lifter started to drop. I stared in dismay. The mud thing looked back at me, as disinterested as a statue.

“We’re . . . going down,” I said finally.

The thing gave me as much response as it thought my observation deserved, which was none.

“But I’m going up,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “That is, I need to go up. To Pandaemonium. It’s important.” The thing just stared at me with those glowing egg-yolk eyes. “I’m not joking! I need to go to Pandaemonium!”

At last it opened its mouth. The words came out in sticky chunks, like someone digging in a bog with a shovel. “We have taken control of the lifter. We have been given a priority task by the Mastema. Use of the lifter will be returned to you when we have departed.”

The Mastema was one of the most powerful tools of the Adversary, a security group of sorts, like the SS were to the Nazis. But I had already guessed that this guy was bad, bad news.

In the silence that followed his proclamation, I heard the announcement voice whispering in my ear as we flashed past Gravejaw again, then Greedy Pile, Cellar of Organs, Cocytus Delta, Brownwater, Toe, and Cocytus Landing. In just a few moments we would be hurtling down through Abaddon where I had first entered Hell. My heart was hammering, but I was so obviously outclassed and outranked by the mud man that I dared not make a fuss. Perhaps once he got out, I could simply make the elevator go back up again.

Did I really think it would be that easy? Well, let’s just say I was hoping.

The lifter was dropping faster now, the voice spitting the names of the levels into my ears like a racetrack announcer trying to call a close four-horse finish. Abaddon Heights. Disease Row. Necro Flats. Acheron Fork. Lower Acheron Fork. Abaddon Waste. And then we were through the Abaddon levels and still plunging downward. At first I thought it was just fear that was making me feel feverish, but then I realized that the lifter cage was getting hotter and closer by the second. The sweat vaporized from my skin as soon as I squeezed it out. My blood hammered in my ears.

The mud man ignored my gasps, immersed perhaps in thoughts of the horrible place he was going, the horrible things he would be doing, but now he began to change. His hide, or whatever it was that had made him look like he was smeared with something sticky, peanut butter or some less pleasant material, was beginning to harden like clay fired in a kiln. As he dried his skin grew smoother, stonier, until he really did begin to look like a statue, a seven foot tall golem, dead but for the smoldering, piss-yellow eyes.

I could barely understand the announcements now, the words running together so that I could snatch only fragments: “Flensing Scar Tissue Junction Hook Burning Shrike Fistula . . .” But it wasn’t just the heat that made me feel like I was dying now, it was the words turning into pictures in my brain, with no work from my own imagination. Somehow the depth acted on me like increasing pressure, forcing images into my head, endless halls full of screeching voices, reflex cries for help that the screecher knew wasn’t coming, chambers as big as grand ballrooms full of stone tables, each table with a ruined but still living body writhing atop it, animals without eyes, rooms full of thunder and blood spray, the pounding of metal against vulnerable flesh, barking dogs, howling wolves, and through it all a sensation of unparalleled misery and hopelessness that squeezed my skull like a monstrous pair of pliers.

“I can’t,” I gasped.

The clay thing stared at me for a moment, then looked away, as if I were a leaf that had blown across its path.

The pressure grew stronger, but the other passenger had simply become more compact, more shiny, as if it had been glazed and fired in a kiln.

Punishment. Punishment. Punishment. Every name the voice whispered into my head seemed to have that word in it. Punishment. We were heading down into the ultimate depths, where the worst work of Hell went on in endless night, pain measured out in just the right size doses to last as long as the universe itself.

Even worse, though, I could feel something else now, something that enwrapped and increased the other bad feelings like a crushing, ice-cold fist. I can’t explain it—I’ll never be able to. Although it came on slowly, when I finally could pick it out from the other kinds of horror, it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Freezing cold, but I’m not talking about temperature, like ice and snow. This was the cold of the absolute dark, the cold in which nothing could live, the point at which even the play of atoms slowed to a stop. Empty. Nothing. The end. But what was most terrifying about it, what blasted even the horrors of all Hell’s pain and suffering out of my head, was that this bleak void at the bottom of everything was alive. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. It was alive, and it thought, and even though it was still tremendously far away, its presence sent my own thoughts shrieking in all directions like chickens trapped in a henhouse by a bloody-mouthed wolf.

I realized that I had fallen on my knees, clutching my head to keep my skull from exploding, retching out what little was in my stomach. Still the pressure and the sense of the thinking, waiting darkness grew worse. I was shrieking, babbling—I might even have screamed that I was an angel, for all I know—but the clay creature sharing the lifter paid no attention. I could feel my eyes forced out of their sockets from within, could feel my guts crushed like I’d been rammed from both sides by garbage trucks, could feel what was left of my sanity pouring out of a me-shaped hole like dirty water down a drain. And then we stopped.

When the shuddering ended, I lay in a limp blob where I was, unable to stand or speak. Something closed on me like a claw in one of those arcade games, lifting me up until I dangled in midair, wheezing and moaning. I could dimly see the stale yellow eyes of the mud man as he looked me over, then the door of the lifter opened and he threw me out like a dirty shirt. A moment later, as I wriggled on the baking stone floor outside the lifter, helpless as a waterlogged earthworm, the lifter door hissed shut. I heard the pressure build again, then it was gone, the cage clanking and groaning as it dropped into the depths.

For the longest time I just lay where I was, boiling inside like an Ebola victim. The physical constitution of my demon body was apparently enough to keep me alive, but not enough to save my mind if I went any deeper. I didn’t think I’d last very long even if I didn’t—my head was still hammering so hard that I could barely think. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I had to get out, go up, even though moving my fingers was nearly impossible, let alone my entire body.

Up, damn you! I stared at my hand, willing it to extend, to help me lift myself, then I saw the feet of the first thing approaching. They were hooved, but not with anything so simple as cow’s or horse’s hooves. The great single toe and its nail were metal, dull gray metal. It stopped beside me. I would not have looked up even if I could have.

A moment later something else flapped down and landed. All I could see were legs as thin as a flamingo’s but with blue human hands for feet. A third creature joined the first two, thick legs ending in a cylindrical foot, covered in thick hair and gleaming spines.

“Well, look here,” said one of them in a voice like a rusty leg trap being pried open. It was pretty clear what they were looking at. “Breakfast is served.”

“Let’s make it run first,” another said in a scratchy mumble. It might have been a parrot with half its beak torn off. “I like them when the blood’s really moving. Warm and tender.”

“Piss on that,” said a third, gruff as Baby Bear on steroids. “I’m hungry. Let’s just divide it up now, then you can make your piece run around all you want.”