by Zachary Howe
A terrific explosion beneath the earth, followed by an ominous crumbling sound, reached the combatants’ ears. The violet-eyed head looked back at Gordie over its shoulder in alarm as they briefly shared the same injection of horror one feels before a platform gives out underfoot leading to a drop, like an actual Tower of Terror in Hell.
“Sorry, pup,” Gordie said, leaping backwards as the ground gave way.
A ring of emptiness burst into existence where the rock floor used to be. Gordie landed on his hands and knees as the tail end of the three-headed monster dipped into the abyss. Both massive front paws scrabbled on the rock trying to pull the hulk back to solid ground while all six eyes widened in terror. Looking on this pitiful scene, Gordie’s triumphant feeling imploded. The violet eyes bored into his soul, looking at him beseechingly as the body began to slip further into the chasm. Regret and sorrow rose into a crescendo in the dreadful symphony playing in Gordie’s head.
He dove towards the border of this world and the unknown one below at the same instant that all three fearful faces slipped out of sight. His right arm plunged over the edge in time to save his former foe. Gordie had hold of no more than a softball-sized toe. He wasn’t sure if the one-ton carriage of this animal was putting more of a strain on his shoulder or the toe to which he was clinging.
“Hold on!” Gordie screamed, as those purple eyes begged him not to abandon them. He couldn’t see around the mountainous form beneath him, but from deep within the pit, a noise like howling wind reached his ears.
A sickening realization materialized in his gut: the howls he was hearing were not those of the wind, but shrieks of anguish from tortured souls somewhere in the void. The fear of losing this poor creature in this new hell redoubled Gordie’s resolve to rescue it, and inspiration (or madness) struck him as he thrust out his left hand.
“Bite it!” he hollered.
The purple eyes looked at Gordie inquisitively, almost apprehensively, but the middle head shared no concern for his well-being. The black eyes narrowed on Gordie’s, scrutinizing him as the powerful jaws of death closed on his wrist, trying to get a read on his mettle, measuring his strength of character. With his hand encased in a viscous clamp, Gordie began the monumental task of hauling Cerberus to safety.
Never in his life had he attempted such a feat of strength because, until very recently, he believed himself to be a normal teenager. He was now aware that his newly discovered power was not limitless. Lying flat on his chest on the precipice of doom, with one hand grasping a giant, furry toe and the other lodged safely between the mandibles of Cerberus’s most domineering face, Gordie heaved with all his might.
He could see the veins in his arms threatening to erupt, bulging from shoulder to wrist. His shoulder blades strained to meet each other in the middle of his back. He scrunched his knees underneath his body to get some leverage as he dragged Cerberus up, inch by painful inch.
“Help me!” Gordie growled, foaming at the mouth with unyielding effort as his head started to pound with the strain of exertion. Right on cue, Cerberus’s paws came within reach of the rings edge and, shaking off his right hand, the gargantuan mitts gripped the stone and Gordie felt the load lessen. He panicked as he heard those ever ominous signs of the stone breaking. He saw veins spider-webbing away from the cliffs edge. He rocked back off his knees, planted his feet and, with one last enormous heave, sprang backwards as the lip of the stone shattered and tumbled away.
It felt like slow-motion as he flew backwards through the air, relief and fatigue spreading through him with the cessation of adrenaline production. Soaring above him were three lolling tongues attached to the rhinoceros-sized canine he had just saved from damnation.
“Oh, crap,” Gordie said. As he landed on his back on the cold stone floor, he had a millisecond of relaxation combatting an impending sense of tremendous pain before the pooch came crashing down on top of him.
7
The Lord of the Underworld
The second Cerberus’s giant body landed on Gordie, a geyser of vomit was forced out of him, which eventually obeyed gravity and splashed back down on his face. He opened his eyes, covered in sick, to look up at three panting, unmistakably happy faces. Gordie could read their intentions as clearly as if they had tied on bibs, and he shouted, “No!” to little avail.
Every inch of his face was plastered with three enormous tongues, searching and scavenging its surface like the Mars Rover. After a full minute of this violation, Gordie pushed his hands into the broad, furry chest of his gentle lover, bench pressing it off of him, his face now messier than before the tongue bath.
Holding Cerberus out of tongues reach Gordie said, “Okay, buddy, you got it all. Now I’m going to let you back down, but could you please get off me?”
The violet-eyed face released a deafening bark laced with pure bliss, which Gordie decided to take as a ‘Yes’ as his arms were starting to quiver. He lowered his furry friend down to the ground and Cerberus stepped back, allowing Gordie room to sit up. He made a move to wipe his face on his sleeve until he realized that he had no more sleeve.
Looking down on his new digs, Gordie saw that they were in ruins. His new sweatshirt was missing both sleeves and had three large gashes across the chest. His shorts could not qualify as shorts anymore, as the left leg was completely gone, and there was a slit running up the right leg. He looked like quite the provocateur.
“Bogus,” he sighed. But he wasn’t too concerned. Once again, he began inspecting his left hand in awe. A dull pain was pulsing through his entire body, but it stopped midway up his left forearm, where the water of the black river had christened him. With dawning excitement, he realized what this meant.
When the great Greek warrior Achilles was a child, his mother, a sea nymph—or Nereid—named Thetis, dipped him into the River Styx. This river had a magical quality of imbuing the bather with invincibility wherever the skin had made contact with the water. As his mother held him by the ankle while dipping him, this was the only part of Achilles’s body that was vulnerable. Because of this weakness in his defense, King Priam’s son, Paris of Troy, had been able to kill Achilles by shooting him with an arrow through his Achilles tendon. Gordie had always thought this was such a lame way to die for one of the greatest warriors in myth—or history, as it were.
Gordie jumped to his feet and started a brisk walk towards the very same River Styx with every intention of diving in to attain invincibility. Right before he shouted ‘Cannonball!’ Cerberus bounded in front of him and Dark Eyes emitted a low growl. The fiery-eyed guy appeared to be looking around obliviously with his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, but when Gordie turned to look at Violet, she just shook her head.
Bewildered and disappointed, he tried to argue. “Come on! It’s not gonna hurt anyone. I just wanna be like Achilles, ya know?”
To which the middle head responded with another earsplitting bark, this one a definite warning sign meaning, ‘Not an option.’
“Fine,” Gordie said, turning away and kicking the dust like a spoiled child. To their right, the chasm still yawned, releasing the screams of the tormented to echo in the silence. “Let’s get away from that,” Gordie told Cerberus, pointing at the rift as he started walking towards the field ahead.
When he reached the lip of the meadow, he noticed a definite tangibility to the air, like some kind of plasmatic force-field separated the ecosystems of the cave and the prairie. Gordie timidly raised his hand to it and watched it ripple in astonishment, but he was afraid to take the plunge. Will I die if I enter?
Cerberus sauntered past Gordie to his right, the crazy-eyed head watching him with goofy delight, tongue still lolling, as he melted into the gloom. Gordie watched it go with growing anxiety, fearing abandonment in this empty cave. After it walked ten yards into the flowers, Cerberus turned back to look at Gordie over its shoulder. The bright violet eyes were undimmed by the gloom as they silently beckoned him.
“Are you sure?” Gordie a
sked. He feared the gloom would be freezing, dampening in more ways than one, and maybe even producing an irrevocable sense of despair before claiming his soul. The violet eyes held his gaze as the head gave an encouraging nod. Buoyed, Gordie stepped through the plasma-like substance, and much to his relief, felt a sense of warm serenity—the exact opposite of what he had expected. The monstrous dog turned away and resumed its stroll through the lea. “Wait up!” Gordie called, jogging to fall in line.
Despite the dog’s slow gait, it required a brisk walk for Gordie to keep up with its long strides. The head he had now officially dubbed ‘Crazy Eyes’ in his mind, was once again surveying him with that look of oblivious glee. He wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cower in fear. Unclear on his intentions, Gordie just turned his head forward and walked in silence. After a couple minutes he realized they were heading towards the little cottage nestled in the field.
“Who lives there?” he asked Cerberus, pointing ahead. The floppy ears of Crazy Eyes rose up on top of his head, which he tilted as he looked at Gordie. Feeling stupid for trying to question a dog, he fell back into silence and walked on. The gray flowers over which they marched were quite resilient: even after the gargantuan paws of Cerberus trampled over them, they just sprang back up into position. They were sad, but beautiful at the same time, Gordie thought, just like the black trees dispersed throughout the glen.
As they approached the first tree he studied it, awed by its massiveness. The black trunk had a diameter comparable to the length of a small sedan. The bark was ridged and knotted like any old tree, but he couldn’t tell if it was wood or marble. As he walked under the billowing bough, Gordie looked up into the plume of ebony leaves, seemingly no different than ordinary leaves, but eerily immobilized in their suspension. Just as he began to think the tree was chiseled in place, a rustle shook a branch in the heart of the canopy. Squinting, Gordie found the body of a vulture perching on a thick limb, its head tucked into its chest, cocooned by its wings. He stopped and watched with interest as the leathery wings began to unfold.
“Holy crap!” Gordie fell onto his backside with alarm as the long neck untangled itself from its chest, baring the head of an ugly, large-nosed woman. Two gray, mottled breasts were unsheathed, making his stomach turn, as the harpy sprang out of her sanctuary, diving towards him. Gordie scrabbled backwards like a crab, thinking his eyes were about to be torn out, when a snarly bark frightened the bird-lady, sending her flying off towards the cabin in the distance. The night-filled eyes of the middle head watched Gordie reproachfully as he rose back to his feet.
“Uh, thanks,” Gordie muttered as Cerberus’s central head turned forward again, taking his look of disdain with him. They continued their stroll to the house, and Gordie realized that there were no torches to light the way here. He searched around for the source of the dim glow competing with the encompassing gloom and froze in awe again when he finally found it in the distant ceiling.
Billions of stars lit the black sky above, which he knew could not be a real sky since they were underground, but this cosmos looked authentic to him. In fact, he even recognized some constellations: Orion stood astride with his gaudy belt ablaze; Ursa Major romped across the sky, the Big Dipper protruding from her rear end, forming the tail; Taurus stood firm, his mighty horns stretching into the void.
“YARF!” Crazy Eyes released an insane, giddy bark to startle Gordie from his stargazing. He jogged to catch up again.
This time he approached Cerberus on the right side to avoid another demonic staring contest, and also because he had acquired an affinity for Violet. It may not have been the most creative name, but it was easy enough to remember. Those beautiful eyes fixed on Gordie as he approached before the massive head turned to look forward again. He hadn’t thought about it before then, but he didn’t know if Cerberus was a boy or girl.
The soft purple eyes of the head nearest him were unmistakably feminine, while those of the other two seemed more masculine: full of rage—controlled in one case and unchained in the other. Gordie’s curiosity overrode his sense of caution and he reached out to feel the powerful shoulder striding next to him. Pure, unalloyed muscle rippled beneath his fingers, but the coat was silky as any Pinscher. In a state of reverence, he nearly wet himself when the giant beast wheeled around.
The middle head was inches from his face, teeth bared and emitting a palpable growl as he dipped his head to stare Gordie down. Gordie’s eyes were wide with fear—a veritable deer in headlights—but he was rescued by Violet. She snapped at the middle head, after which he averted his gaze and turned back to trot towards the nearing house. As her head swung past Gordie, she gave him one gentle lick on the cheek, and he felt a wave of affection.
The lonely cottage was now less than half a mile away by the looks of it, and he could see a wooden fence stretching outward from this central station as far as the eye could see. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered, struck again by the picturesque quaintness of the place. He half expected to see horses or cattle roaming around beyond the fence, but something more disturbing milled in yon pasture.
People.
Bodies walked around aimlessly here and there. Some were alone, some in groups. Some just sat and stared at the sky. Gordie saw a group of kids chasing each other in a game of tag and he watched, befuddled. He could not tell if this should bring him joy or deep sadness. It seemed to create a volatile cocktail of both emotions in his chest.
They were now less than a quarter-mile away and, with a start, Gordie noticed a man standing on the porch of the cottage. He stepped down onto the front lawn and awaited the arrivals with his arms crossed. Another booming bark escaped the mouth of Crazy Eyes, and Cerberus bounded away towards the man, the ground gently rumbling as it went. The behemoth closed the gap in under a minute and, as he jumped on the man to greet him, Gordie realized what he hadn’t before: this guy was nearly eight feet tall. This must have meant that the house was enormous, and Gordie was not quite as close as he thought.
Sure enough, it took him another five minutes to approach the point where he could make out the features of the gigantic homeowner’s face. Gordie stopped thirty yards short of him and stared.
He was indeed close to eight feet tall and wiry, not overly muscular, but he radiated power nonetheless. His sallow skin was the same pale gray of the flowers populating the field. His eyes were the same black as the ring leader of Cerberus, and they were fixing Gordie with great interest. Pure white hair clung to his closely shaven head, with a similarly groomed beard of snow. He stood with his left hand resting on the shoulder of a seated Cerberus—who was now facing Gordie too, also awaiting his arrival—and his right hand in the pocket of his sleek khakis. His shirt was a button down of jet-black silk (or some equally fluid material) with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. And then he spoke.
“Approach, Gordon Leonhart,” he commanded, not unkindly, but the words startled Gordie as they echoed around him like surround sound, as if the speaker had been standing right next to him. The effect was profound. His voice was deep, sonorous, soothing—it sounded as though it were self-amplifying, like it created its own acoustic space. Gordie obeyed, but warily, as he picked his way towards Hades. He heard a squawk and froze again when he looked up to see three watchful harpies eying him from the roof. Hades lifted his massive hand off his pooch’s shoulder, shooing the flying monsters, which took off in the other direction. Guilt stabbed Gordie as he imagined the people in the adjoining field running in terror from these demons.
He continued his approach to his host, examining the house as he went—it looked like an Abe Lincoln style log cabin only the enormous horizontal lumber blocks were made of the same local, jet-black wood. The chimney atop the house looked like it was made up of millions of black diamonds, sparkling in the twilight. He stopped five feet in front of the homeowner, looking up into his wise and benevolent face. He was comforted to see that Hades was smiling softly at him.
The silence stretched on as they re
garded one another, compelling Gordie to speak. “Um, hello, sir. My name is Gordie, but you apparently already know that.” He screwed up his face, showing the awkwardness he was feeling.
“I do,” Hades’s deep voice rumbled from above like a distant thunder storm announcing its impending arrival. “And I believe you know mine,” he added.
“I suppose you must be Hades,” he said. Hades nodded. “I gotta be honest though, you’re not exactly what I thought you’d be.” Gordie flinched as The Lord of the Underworld boomed with tickled mirth.
“And what, pray tell, did you expect?”
“I don’t know. I guess more evil, with like a big black robe and a scepter with a skull on it.” He shrugged.
“So I have often been portrayed, and so I once was,” he said with sadness in his voice. “But it seems I owe you thanks. You saved my friends here.” He patted the muscled back of Cerberus. “Granted, you necessitated the saving in the first place, but you saved them all the same,” he added with a kind smile.
“No problem,” Gordie said, rubbing the back of his neck. “How did you know what happened?”
“I am Hades. This,” he raised his hands out wide, gesturing to his domain, “is Hades. I am my Kingdom and my Kingdom is me. I know all that goes on here.”
“And this is Cerberus?” Gordie asked, nodding at the three-headed canine.
“This is Cerberus,” Hades said.
“Before you referred to . . .” Gordie paused, searching for the proper form of address: He? She? Them? It? So he safely went with, “Cerberus . . . in the plural. Is . . .” another pause, “Cerberus a girl, or a boy, or more than one?”
“Well, they are quite clearly more than one entity. Your question of gender is interesting. They are not gendered, in the ordinary sense. They are more manifestations of mentalities,” he said. “But they do all have names and, as you have doubtlessly already learned, their own personalities and identities as well. On the left you have Lysson.” Crazy Eyes let out a proud bark like he was responding to roll call. “In the center is Bion.” Bion let his stoicism speak for him, conveying the extreme difference between his brother and himself. “And this,” Hades patted Violet’s neck, “is Eleoa.”
