by Ramy Vance
I was starting to worry that this place didn’t just throw three-headed raptors at us. It also messed with our minds on a level that was beyond devious. It was entirely possible that this place somehow conjured things that shouldn’t be. And that’s how I saw it.
Whatever was in the forest wasn’t Medusa. It was a construct, a conjuring … an illusion. Something created by my mind. And if I can conjure her, what else can I conjure? I thought, staring at Bella.
Except that stroke of cognitive dissonance was too strong, too unappealing.
Bella’s different, I told myself. She had to be. For one thing, she was the lone occupant in Heaven. I knew that. I also knew that Heaven and Hell were inexorably connected. Opposites. Two sides to the same coin. A yin-yang kind of thing—just to confuse religious traditions.
And since this place was the opposite of Heaven, there was a strong connection between them. That connection could explain how and why she was here.
She was real. Not a construct. Not an illusion.
Before those thoughts could fully consume me, Marty hissed, jarring me out of my own head. Looking down at the forlorn viper who also looked in every direction other than the one we walked, I began to wonder if it was his hopes, his love that had summoned the construct of Medusa.
Maybe all our minds could do that … And if we could, what other fresh hells were coming our way?
I shook my head, resolving myself to one simple thought: Bella looked and felt real. Even if she wasn’t, she felt like she was real to me. And the same thought I had when I’d first stepped through the portal ran through my mind.
I would happily live a lie with her than the truth without her.
Wouldn’t I?
Besides, what were truths and lies? Humans lived in narratives, after all—they were what made our lives feel safe, satisfying, logical. What harm would it do if I chose to believe in the narrative of this Bella being real?
Not a narrative, my mind shot back. She’s real.
We walked along the shore of a river that ran in a loop, the same waves cresting over rocks, the same leaves and sticks floating downstream for several feet before resetting, only to float down the same stretch of water again.
We walked on for what felt like forever, our footsteps the only progress made in this place, until we came upon a cliff face where the stream narrowed into a tiny cave large enough for an oversized goose to swim through.
An oversized goose, or a moderately-sized crocodile.
I would have dismissed the cave as another anomaly in Hell’s landscape except for the strange inscription carved above its mouth: Lasciate ogne speranza, coi ch’intrate.
“I don’t read Latin,” I said, “but I’ve heard Penemue quote that line enough times to know exactly what it means.”
“ ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ ” Bella muttered to herself with a sigh both familiar and troubling.
I drew close to her. “What is it?” I asked gently. I knew if I tried to force the issue, she’d clam up and I’d never get it out of her.
“It’s nothing.”
“Come on,” I said. “I know you better than that. You shuddered when you spoke the words, like you used to. That glint in your eyes, the slight fluttering of the eyelids—you only ever did that when you had some bad news that you didn’t know how to tell me.”
Bella pursed her lips like she was trying to suppress a smile. “You know me way too well.”
“In this life and the next,” I said, echoing my words to her from the night I proposed.
“Such knowledge is dangerous.”
“Well, you know what my middle name is?”
“Luc?”
“I was going for ‘Danger,’ but Luc will have to do.”
We chuckled. It felt good to banter with her. It felt more than good. It felt—
“If you two are done with whatever mating ritual this is,” Judith growled, “maybe we can get a move on or something?”
Mothers-in-law … nature’s prophylactic.
“Do what?” I said, turning to her, my cheeks flushing.
“Well, for one thing, Bella needs to share what she knows.”
“I’m not sure that it’s relevant and—”
“Out with it,” Judith said.
I figured it was done. Bella would clam up and we’d have to wait until she was good and ready to tell us. There wasn’t a mental can opener in the world that would get her to talk.
“There is a place with the same inscription in Heaven. What I know is that speranza doesn’t just mean hope … it also means future. I guess because hope can only happen at some point in the future. So really, you can read this as, ‘Abandon all futures, ye who enter.’
“But the place in Heaven, speranza is replaced with the word, praeteritum. The past. There, you must abandon all pasts.”
So much for her clamming up. I guess that was one of the special gems of our marriage.
“So?” Judith pressed.
“So, Mother”—Bella turned to the once-poltergeist—“Heaven is a ridiculously friendly place that is literally rainbows and puffy clouds. Everything there bends to my will like it’s trying to serve me. Make me happy. Everywhere but there … the only place in all of Heaven that scares me. The only place I have never dared to enter.” Bella’s voice trailed off, and I knew there was something else. Another tidbit she wasn’t sharing. But I wasn’t about to press for it. Not when we had the human can opener—Judith—to do the dirty work for me.
But either Judith didn’t pick up that Bella knew more, or wasn’t about to push her luck, because she didn’t say anything. Typical. The one time I wanted her to speak and she kept her mouth shut. But when I wanted her to shut up, it was a tornado of judgement destroying my house of straw, wood and bricks.
Yeah, yeah, I’m mixing The Wizard of Oz with The Three Little Pigs. But get Judith in the mood and she’s the Wicked Witch of the West and the Big Bad Wolf all rolled into one.
“In Dante’s Inferno, that insignia marked Hell’s entrance, right?” I said.
Bella nodded.
“But if that’s the way in, why is it so small?”
“ ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life,’ ” Bella said.
“I thought you said Heaven was a fun place, like being on vacation. That’s pretty dark for someone spending eternity on vacation.”
Bella chuckled. “It’s another quote.”
“From Dante’s Inferno?”
Bella shook her head. “The Bible. Genesis 3:14.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The Bible? I never knew you to be into that, let alone quote it.”
“I’m not. Well, I wasn’t. Just up there, you know … alone, you have a lot of time on your hands. So I started reading everything I could get my hands on: the Quran, the Sutras, the Vedas, Tanach, Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash … the New Testament. Even the Book of Enoch. All of them, really.”
“The Book of Enoch? Is that official canon up there?” I asked.
“It’s all official canon up there,” she said. “There’s a library in Heaven filled with books that you’ve never heard of … and more. It would take an eternity to read them all. Good thing I have that and—”
Before she could finish, I grunted, “Yeah, good thing, huh?” and bent down to examine the hole.
“Jean, I didn’t mean it that way. I was just saying …”
“I get it. Always look on the bright side of your death,” I mockingly sang to the tune in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
I looked up and saw Bella giving me that look she always gave me when she was sorry for how something she did made me feel—but not sorry for actually doing it. And given that she wasn’t sorry for allowing herself to be killed—granted, so she could find a way into Heaven in the hope of reopening the place and saving millions of lives—didn’t change the fact that I was bone-breaking, guts-hanging
-out-of-me hurt that she’d chosen the world over me.
I knew that I should have taken the high road, given her a smile and kept on keeping on. But me and high roads don’t really go hand in hand, so I gave her a sarcastic smile, an exaggerated Borat-esque thumbs-up and turned my back on her to examine the tiny archway. We’d have it out soon enough, but I just couldn’t face that with her now. So I chose to face Hell instead.
The hole was big enough for us all to crawl through, but the problem was I couldn’t see what was on the other side. It was a black hole and I had no source of light, no way to see beyond the threshold.
And that was the weird thing: the light. Yeah, we were outside in the dark, and in there was an even darker cave, but you’d still expect some of the outside light to seep into the hole, even if only a couple feet.
But the light just stopped at the edge, like some sort of invisible shield prevented it from entering.
Judith must have noticed it, too, because she stooped next to me with a heavy, banana-looking leaf and scooped some of the water from the stream in it. Then, angling the water’s surface so it caught the light, she projected it into the hole.
No light went in. Don’t get me wrong—the light went in, we just couldn’t see anything beyond the hole itself.
“Holy—” I started.
“Language,” Judith snapped.
“What? I was going to say ‘Holy physics-defying Hell, Batman.’ I mean, what did you think I was going to say? Holy shit? Holy fuck, maybe? I’d never say such vile words.”
“Jean,” Judith growled in that warning tone a tiger gives you just before mauling your eyes out.
“I’m just saying. It was you who assumed I was about to swear.” I lifted my hands in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger way, knowing full well that my mother-in-law had no problem shooting the messenger when said messenger was me.
But instead of another snide remark, Judith—ever the mature one—sighed before pinching the bridge of her nose in exaggerated exasperation (or maybe it was on-point exasperation … I can be pretty annoying) and said, “So light can get inside, but we can’t see it. Which means that we have no idea what’s inside. It could be anything.”
“It could,” Bella agreed. “But what we do know is that’s the entrance, and if we’re going to get Penemue before …”—she paused—“before he is consumed by this place, then we’d better get to it.”
“Yeah.” I narrowed my eyes as I examined my wife; Bella was holding back again. Whatever it was, it was obviously important, but also something she deemed not for us to know. Not yet. Which meant it was either some great danger or distraction, which in turn meant … “Holy shit,” I said, lifting a hand in Judith’s direction to stop her from being the language police. “You’re in danger here, aren’t you?”
↔
Judith eyed me before looking up at her daughter. “What is he talking about, honey?”
“I’m not in danger, Mom.” She gave me that look that said, Shut up.
I ignored it. “Bullshit,” I said. “You’re hiding something … something about this place, and you won’t tell us. That means you’re in danger.”
Bella folded her arms—her opening stance in every fight we’ve ever had. “How do you figure that, genius?”
“Because you’re hiding something—and don’t tell me you’re not. I know you far too well for that waste of time. And the only reason you hide anything is because you think it would be a distraction. But this is what I do …” I said, gesturing to our surroundings. “I’ve been in places like this before. So have you. Well, not like this, but you know, up there.” I pointed to the sky. “Which means that the only reason you won’t tell me everything you know is because you’re worried it’ll distract me. And the only thing that would distract me is something that’s affecting you and not the rest of us.”
Now it was my turn to fold my arms and wait for an answer.
This could go two ways: either she’d keep her arms folded and we’d get into it, or she’d uncross her arms and tell me what was up.
Bella did neither. Instead, she ran her hands through her hair before nervously flattening the sides of her dress. Shit—in Bella’s world that was a DEFCON 1 gesture. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s um … this. If we can’t get Penemue out of here—and soon—I’ll be stuck here, too.”
“What?” Judith and I said together.
I resisted the urge to call “jinx” and silence her for the rest of the trip. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not supposed to be here—I’m supposed to be in Heaven. But I was literally ripped away from my home up there and brought here against my will. As I came here, I knew what had happened, but not because I heard a voice or saw a vision. For lack of a better word, I remembered being here. Like I’d always been here and never up there.
“Every minute I spend here, I forget a bit of Heaven. I don’t know much, but in my time up there, I’ve learned a few things—lots of things—about how Heaven and Hell work. Hell is now. And if I forget what came before—if I can no longer dream of tomorrow—I’ll be stuck here forever.”
Bella stopped rubbing her hands against her dress and looked up at me. “But I knew that telling you as much would make you run through Hell.” She chuckled at the expression. Good ol’ Bella, always up for a smile or laugh no matter how bad things got. “And that’s how you make mistakes. That’s how you get hurt. So …” She let the last word hang.
“So, you didn’t tell me,” I said, nodding in understanding.
“Oh honey.” Judith pursed her lips. “Why were you brought here in the first place?”
Bella shook her head. “I’m not sure, but what I said earlier is my best theory. I am the only viable soul available. Literally. I am the only human soul to occupy any domain anywhere.”
“But you said that you were brought here as our guide.”
Bella nodded, gesturing around us. “I think so. This is, after all, Penemue’s construct. He was obsessed with Dante’s Inferno, Paradise Lost, Spencer’s Faerie Queene, Beowulf … all the epic poems. And they all had narrators and guides, characters whose sole purpose was to explain this place. It’s the only reason I can think of why he’d summon me here.”
“Well, let’s stop dilly-dallying and ask him.” I fell to my knees and crawled through before my rational mind could reason with me.
I’m not sure what I expected on the other side of the hole. I’m guessing fire and brimstone, or tortured beings having their skin slowly peeled back. Demons made of molten lava.
The last thing I expected was this.
Part II
Hell
Prologue to Part 2—
When the gods left, Penemue was sitting in the Complete Archive—a library containing every tome, every book, every grimoire, every trashy romance novel … hell, even every pamphlet ever written.
The words collected in the Complete Archive represented, perhaps, Penemue’s greatest achievement, second only to the fact that he’d taught humankind how to read and write.
He heard the message the same as everyone else. “Thank you for believing in us, but it is not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.”
At first, Penemue was confused, believing this message to be a mistake—or, worse, an expression of his insanity.
Then Hell started to rumble as lava seeped up from the ground.
The world around him was, quite literally, falling apart.
In the distance, Penemue could see a pinprick of light and, whether it was part of the message or simple instinct, he knew that the light offered his only chance of escape.
Penemue had a choice: fly toward the light, or be consumed by the fire.
Not much of a choice at all, really.
But his books—millions of pages, hundreds of millions of words—would all be lost if he didn’t do something.
Drawing from the well of magic within, he began encasing them in shells impervious to flame. But as he encased the books, he f
elt something he had never felt before.
His life was draining out of him.
He was getting older.
He was dying.
Penemue did not need to be told what was happening. The gods were gone, and with them went their magic. To use his powers now meant to use his life force. And with every book he protected he lost—what? A second? Five seconds of life? He wasn’t sure.
And with millions upon millions of books to encase, protecting his life’s work could very well kill him.
Still, he had to do something.
Burning decades of time, Penemue drew out all the words ever written and turned them into a single Word that he whispered into the halls of his crumbling library.
He knew he could not take the Word with him, but at least the fire would not consume it, either. He would find his way back here. He would summon the Word again and he would restore his library.
But that would have to come later. Now, he needed to escape.
Flying toward the light, he flung himself out of the only escape the gods gave him and down to Earth.
All Public Libraries Should Look Like This
Over the years, Penemue got into a lot of trouble. I’m talking constant run-ins with the law, public intoxication—with all the fun, fun, fun that brought with it—and the occasional fight (usually brought on by the bravado of drink). There was hardly a week where I wasn’t pulling him out of the drunk tank or paying for some public vandalism. But even though he had a bed with his name on it at the Paradise Lot Police Station, his revelries were harmless.
Most of them, at least.
Perhaps the most common crime Penemue committed—one carried out nearly daily and for which he was never caught—was breaking into the Paradise Lot Public Library. He’d crawl through an attic window and walk through the halls late at night, reading every book that tickled his fancy.
