by HP Mallory
“It journeys through the City o’ Dis, venturin’ wherever it chooses. There is nae holdin’ it back, an’ nae defeatin’ it.” Tallis faced me more resolutely. “If ye remember nothin’ else, remember this, lass … should ye see it, be sure tae roon as fast as ye can! Dinnae dare look back. Ye moost fend fer yerself.”
I nodded again while Bill threw his hands up in the air, expressing what looked like desperation.
“Where the fuck are we?” he whined as he shook his head, nearly ready to cry. “An’ I thought the Underground City was bad! This place makes the Underground City look like a trip to Disneyland!”
“I don’t know about all that, but I guess we’re about to find out,” I answered glumly. I watched Tallis turn toward the wall and push his palm against it. The area right around his hand suddenly caved in as if he were accessing a secret access panel, which was exactly what it turned out to be. One of these days I really hoped that Tallis would trust me enough to divulge his secrets about how he knew as much about the Underground City as he did. But, alas, today was not that day.
Snatching his hand away, he barked an order at me to get right behind him. I did as I was told and then focused my attention on Bill, who immediately raced over, taking his place behind me. Tallis nodded at us just as the wall began to slide apart, revealing a narrow gap, which continued to widen as the wall slid away. Tallis took a few steps forward while he waited for the wall to open all the way and grant us entry.
After it slid open another five feet or so, it stopped moving, so Tallis walked forward, with us right in step behind him. As soon as we walked through the iron walls, and into the City of Dis, we found ourselves confined inside a wire chain-link fence, a holding area in the shape of a rectangle. It was probably no more than ten feet long by five feet wide. Hearing the sound of the iron wall starting to slide shut behind us, I turned around and watched it slam with a loud clank. In response, a red light started to blink from over my head, bathing the three of us in a crimson hue. The cacophonous sound of clanging metal drew my attention to the chain walls that surrounded us, thereby isolating us from the interior of the city. The chain-link gate was opening itself.
Clearly, someone had gone to great lengths to keep whatever was in the City of Dis from getting out. Now, I had a feeling that “whatever it was” must have been the Juggernaut. As soon as that creepy thought crossed my mind, an icy shiver jolted up and down my spine.
Once the gate finished opening, Bill and I followed Tallis as he stepped out of the holding area and into the City of Dis. The first thing I noticed was the wall of Watchers who were gathered just outside the isolation area. They were standing in an arc, thereby blocking the road. I estimated maybe twenty or so of them, all standing as still and straight as statues, just staring at us.
“Git oot o’ the bludy way!” Tallis yelled while raising his sword and forcing them aside. Breaking a path through the middle of the mute observers, I could feel the collective weight of their stares as they all turned as one to view us. After we passed, a few broke their formation and started to follow us.
“Stay alert, an’ be oan the ready,” Tallis said from the corner of his mouth as he continued forward along the uneven street. Glancing down, I realized we were walking on cobblestones. “An’ dinnae bother yerself with the smaller ones.”
“What? The smaller ones?” Bill repeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean!? What smaller ones?”
The words had no sooner left his mouth when a pack of about ten little creatures, for lack of a better word, ran across the bumpy street right in front of us. Each was maybe the size of a possum and had a similar face with a narrowed snout, sharp teeth and beady, little eyes. Their fur was unsightly and matted, in a deep red color that matched their eyes. I immediately noticed their razor sharp claws and two small wings on each of their backs. I could only imagine how troublesome and vexing a pack of them could be to anyone unlucky enough to encounter them alone. Luckily for me, there were three of us. The one at the front that appeared to be leading the pack suddenly slowed down. Then, its black, leathery, bat-like wings began to beat until it was airborne. The rest of the pack followed suit, quickly disappearing into the dark sky.
“I suppose we should assume those were an example of the smaller ones,” I ventured to guess before turning my head to face Bill. He just nodded and said nothing.
Inside the iron walls of the city, the darkness seemed even more pervasive than it was in the Underground City. After a few seconds, I realized the abysmal blackness was owing to the lack of any streetlights. As soon as that revelation crossed my mind, however, I spotted an eerie glow that seemed to be coming from beyond a bend in the road. Glancing to my left, I tried to trace the source of the light, but there was nothing visible except a large concrete wall. Then I realized the wall ran alongside the right side of the road as well.
“Where to now, Bill?” I asked without bothering to turn around and look at him. “Can you pull the map up on your phone so we can find where the soul is currently located?”
“Yeppers,” Bill answered cheerfully as I heard him fumbling with his phone. He yanked it out of his pocket, retrieving the text that Jason sent to both of us regarding our mission. “Okay, nips … looks like we gots to make a left here; then we truck on down that street for a bit before we gots to veer left again.”
“Aye, tae the graveyard,” Tallis added with a curt nod. “Ah know where Ah’m goin’.”
I chose not to pursue that point. Instead, I observed that the closer we got to the bend in the road, the brighter the light became. My heart suddenly began to hammer away in my chest. I wasn’t sure why that light all at once appeared so intimidating. Maybe it was just residual anxiety after Tallis’s stern warning about the Juggernaut.
“Where’s that light coming from?” I whispered to Tallis.
“The moon,” he answered without further elaboration. I figured there wasn’t much more he could say on the subject.
Just then, my cell phone started buzzing from inside my pocket. I didn’t have to think twice about the caller's identity. Feeling convinced it was Alaire, I assumed he was probably calling in that favor I still owed him. Talk about bad timing. Since the coast seemed to be clear, I reached into my pocket and pulled the duct-taped phone out. I flipped it open and read:
It is very fortunate for you that I managed to retrieve information pertaining to your mission and your consequential location from Afterlife Enterprises, he started. You are currently traveling through the most dangerous section of the Underground City; I do hope you will proceed with extreme caution. Any valiant acts of courage would likely be rewarded with a mercilessly cruel death; thus, I must ask you to heed my words carefully! Upon arriving at your destination, I should like to know that you honored your end of our agreement by retrieving an object for me. I will follow this text with more pertinent information shortly. Please respond and advise me immediately that you have received this message and have not already met your demise.
Glancing up briefly to make sure the coast was still clear, I quickly typed back 10-4 before putting the phone back into my pocket. I decided it was more important to pay attention to the current situation rather than pursuing my texted conversation with Alaire. Yes, I briefly considered telling Tallis about the text, but eventually concluded there really wasn’t any helpful information in it. Now, it was better for everyone to focus on the task at hand. If Alaire reached out to me again, however, I planned to inform Tallis, if only so we could retrieve whatever Alaire requested together.
When we reached the end of the street, we had to make a left turn at the bend. Once we did that, I found myself inexplicably bathed in a blue light that seemed to be coming from the moon. As to the moon, it was so gigantic, it occupied the majority of the sky and highlighted the cobbled walkway. We wound our way up to an iron and stone wall which did very little to hide the endless rows of above-ground tombs inside the cemetery.
“We have arrived,” Tallis said
, his voice a monotone.
He walked up to the weathered, decrepit gates and pulled the right one open. It cackled, sounding just like an old witch. He turned around, nodding briefly at me before he started forward again. I was practically glued right behind him, and Bill was so close to my backside, I could feel his breath on my neck. Looking to my right in the blue light of the moon, I took in the never ending expanse of beaten-up tombs. Standing on top of the ground, most of them were broken and weathered with extreme age. The stones that delineated each gravesite were in complete disarray, some of them missing altogether.
On the other side of the street were larger tombs that loomed up and out of the ground, making quite a statement with their intricate details and overwhelming size. These crypts were in far better condition than the rotted-out tombs of the fields. As to who or what lay within their cement walls was anyone’s guess. I just hoped that whoever or whatever occupied them stayed right where they were.
“Be oan the ready,” Tallis whispered again before he partially turned to face me. “This way,” he said while taking a sharp right. We began trudging through the uneven terrain of the cemetery floor. Oddly shaped pieces of stone were strewn here and there. I imagined they were chunks that had broken off from the tombstones. The random dips and divots on the ground, combined with the irregular chunks of stone, made it nearly impossible for anyone to traverse quickly. Holding my sword up beside my face, I mutely continued to follow Tallis while wondering with dread what awaited us.
As long as it’s not the Juggernaut, I think we can handle it, I pep-talked myself.
And if it is the Juggernaut? my other voice snapped back.
Then you must do what Tallis told you and roon!
At the sound of someone screaming, I stopped so quickly in my tracks that Bill walked right into me. My heart hammered in my chest, roaring so loud, I half wondered if it were my heartbeat, or if my ears were just deceiving me.
“What was that?” I asked, just to make sure.
“Sinners,” Tallis replied with little interest. All at once, he stopped walking and turned around to face me with what looked like impatience. He raised his eyebrows several times as he frowned; then quite inexplicably, he turned around again and continued forward.
“W-w-w-where are they?” I stammered, furtively glancing to my left and right but seeing only the wide plain of decrepit graves with nothing and no one either in or around them.
“Doon the embankment,” Tallis responded in an offhand manner as he continued forward.
After another few seconds, I saw the slope of the small hill he was referencing. We were on the top, but when we reached the edge of the hill, I could see miles of what looked like burning tombs. They were littered around the landscape haphazardly. There were so many of them, they looked like fireflies glowing against the dark night sky.
“Holy fuck!” Bill exclaimed as he came up behind me.
Tallis didn’t respond as he started going down the hillside. I noticed he was walking on the sides of his feet because of the steep incline and unstable rocks and dirt. Taking a deep breath with my heart lodged in my throat and a boulder in my stomach, I followed him.
“Say, nips …” Bill began, “you sure it’s too late to like, go back to Skeletorhorn an’ ask him ta get us transferred to Shade?” Bill asked from behind me. “I mean, yeah, I get it’s like, boring as hell there, but think of the alternative! It’s gotta beat the fuck outta this shit!”
“No, Bill,” I whispered back to him. “I’m not going to take the easy way out.”
“Shhh!” Tallis scolded us both before he turned and glared at us. “Keep yer wits aboot ye!”
I rapidly nodded before following him down the remainder of the hill until we reached a stretch of flat ground below. I noticed the tombs that ran along the periphery of the flat plain were all missing their lids. Thankfully, however, there weren’t any corpses lying inside them. That made me wonder if these empty caskets were simply awaiting new tenants. Hopefully, the old ones hadn’t escaped …
“Where’s the soul, Bill?” I asked, hoping Tallis wouldn’t get angry with me for talking.
“Lemme look,” Bill replied. He made a clicking noise with his tongue as he presumably tried to locate the soul using the app on his phone. After another few seconds, he answered.
“Looks like it’s smack dab right in the middle of all them boxes.” Pointing to the center of the fiery tombs, he indicated a structure that looked like a small house, or a mausoleum, or something of that sort.
Part of me wanted to inform Bill that the “boxes” were really tombs, but I decided it wasn’t worth taking another chance by talking. Obviously, I didn’t want to further irritate Tallis either.
After hearing Bill’s answer regarding the soul’s location, Tallis nodded; then he started weaving his way around the empty tombs. Winding in and around the crypts, I felt like we were suddenly trapped inside some type of macabre maze.
“Ah!” Bill screamed at the same time that my heart rode up into my throat and I wheeled around. I didn’t even have enough time to gasp when I found myself up close and personal with … something.
Any humanity it possessed must have been a very long time ago. It looked to me like a skeleton covered in skin, but the skin was leathery, deeply wrinkled and the color of sand. The thing had no hair to speak of anywhere on its body. Its nose was missing; but in its place were two distinct holes, similar to what you would find on a skull. While its eyeballs were still intact, they were deeply sunken inside its orbital sockets. They glowed an unnatural white, and were also very bloodshot. When it pulled its lips back, I saw its pronounced sharp, yellow teeth and black gums.
Dropping its mouth open, a long purplish-black tongue slowly unraveled before its lower jaw seemed to detach from its head. Finally, my body and my brain synchronized to get with the program, and I hefted my sword up high above my head, prepared to defend myself.
“But there I was alone…”
- Dante’s Inferno
TWENTY-ONE
Thrusting my sword forward, I intended to run it clean through the creature’s stomach, but the horrid thing leapt up straight into the air before landing on a crypt maybe five feet from me. It looked like a cricket, soaring through the dark sky with its long, thin legs tucked beneath it. When it landed, it touched down on its toes with its knees still bent. It used its hands for balance and remained in that position. The only sound I heard was when it hissed at me before detaching its lower jaw and allowing its purple tongue to roll out again.
It almost seemed like the creature was emitting some sort of a signal. Once it touched down on the tomb several seconds later, a bunch of its ugly friends decided to come out and play. A few appeared from around the crypts while four or five others jumped through the air. They landed on the tombs, all of them surrounding us and blocking our approach to the center of the crypts. These creatures were just as hideous as the first one with whom we had the displeasure of crossing paths.
“We moost put our backs together!” Tallis called out as he strode toward me. Gripping me by the upper arm, he rotated me around so that my back was against his. Bill was momentarily beside us and took up the same stance until all three of us were facing our adversaries, our backs against one another.
“What the hell are those scabby things?” Bill whispered from the side of his mouth. I was so frightened, I could barely breathe, let alone speak.
“Zombies,” Tallis responded in his usual cool, calm and collected manner. “They protect the graveyard an’ the furies.”
“Okay … so howz the hellz do we kill ’em?” Bill inquired, his voice suddenly verging on panic.
“We dinnae,” Tallis calmly responded. Brandishing his sword from side-to-side, he began swinging it in such a way that nothing could come near him without risk of being hacked to pieces. “They are relatively peaceful oonless we provoke ’em.”
“Da-fuq dude?!” Bill railed back hysterically, shaking his head all the
while. “An’ what the hellz d’ya mean by that?”
“Jist whit Ah said,” Tallis replied with a tightened jaw.
“You better have one damned good reason for why we aren’t gonna try to kill ’em!” Bill said as he continued to shake his head. “’Cause how I’m lookin’ at it, it’s either us or them!”
“Nae,” Tallis persisted, spearing Bill with a stern but quick glare. “There are tae many o’ ’em,” he added coolly. “We wouldnae be able tae win.”
“No? Then what, exactly, is the plan, Frodo?” Bill spat back, visibly dismayed. As for me, my heart kept thumping in my chest so hard, it made me light-headed and dizzy. It took everything I had just to keep my sword above my head. Strangely enough, the zombies showed no sign of any intent to attack us. Instead, they stayed exactly where they were, albeit watching us curiously.
“Our plan is tae keep movin’,” Tallis said as though that much should have already been obvious. All the while that Tallis had been brandishing his sword and arguing with Bill, he’d been inching the three of us ever closer toward the center of the crypts. Granted, we hadn’t gotten very far. But now I realized his plan was to keep the creatures at bay by drawing their attention to his swordplay while the three of us continued shuffling nearer our destination.
The zombies, somewhat entranced by Tallis’s admirable skill, didn’t budge from their positions. They remained draped on top of the tombs, and the others just stood beside them. Despite fastening their eyes and attention on us, none of them seemed particularly threatening. Some of them held their mouths open, exposing long tongues, while others just stared at us from behind bloodshot, sunken eyes which I imagined would haunt me for the rest of my life. Well, that is, providing I survived this level in the City of Dis.
