by Tony Moyle
Greco motioned again for the Clerk to restart the tape. In the background they could hear the same track with the added backing vocals of a clearly injured driver.
“Uh no…no don’t do it – oh shit…Jesus Christ, you’ll kill me…I don’t want to die…Jesus.”
The last noise heard was a muffled gunshot.
“John, can you confirm that was your voice?” asked Greco, poised for the killer blow of his cross-examination.
“It sounds like me, yes, although I have no recollection of saying it, or of a gunshot. It sounded like a gunshot, didn’t it?” replied John, worried and confused in equal measure.
“Having no recollection is no form of defence, I’m afraid. ‘Oh, Your Honour, I know I have two kilos of cocaine in my colon, but I have no idea how it got there’: do you think that’s going to work?” Greco mocked. “Quite clearly this man has broken one of the Ten Commandments and therefore the prosecution rests.”
John was torn between the events in front of him and the contents of the tape. It sounded as if there had been some other force at work that had resulted in his death. But there was no context to his comments on the tape. Who had he been shouting at? Why would there be a gunshot if he died in a car crash?
The Clerk stood up.
“This case is unusual but we have been given very strong evidence. Angelo, does your client change his plea based on the evidence?”
“He does not. This evidence is, in my view, inadmissible in this court unless we know who provided it. If the court is determined to go ahead, I must strongly urge a third-party view.”
“Laslow,” said the Clerk, addressing the elderly man, “it seems we need your impartial view as the Arbiter in this case. You have heard the evidence before you, what is your decision?”
Laslow Kreicher rose with a new vigour and more power than his initial withered look had suggested. Without making eye contact with John, he opened his mouth and uttered, “Guilty,” immediately turning to walk from the court. Before he could get more than three feet from the bench, Angelo interjected.
“I call for the Decree of Redemption!” shouted Angelo, the final roll of the dice that was left to him.
Laslow stood motionless as he faced away from the court.
“Under what grounds?” spat Greco.
“Under the terms of this court, evidence from an unknown source has been used without my prior assessment. Unless you are willing to reveal where you got it from, this man must be given a chance to make amends,” responded Angelo.
Before Greco could answer the attack on his sources, a final word from Laslow echoed in the sphere.
“Agreed.” Laslow swiftly retreated up the stairway.
The Clerk approached John’s dock, where he stood drained and utterly flummoxed.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you will be sent directly to Hell with the rare opportunity to redeem yourself. If you are successful in whatever task Satan sees fit to deal you, then you will get a second chance,” said the Clerk.
“No. I’m not going to Hell on any deal. I’ve done nothing wrong, this is a set-up, I demand a retrial. I’m not going there. Over my dead body,” screamed John.
“Not over yours, John, someone else’s,” the Clerk pointed out quite accurately.
John didn’t want to meet the Devil, let alone do a job for him. Scared and angry, he unwisely attempted to jump the ivory dock. Anticipating the move, the Clerk grabbed the escapee in a headlock and pulled him upwards so that he was directly below the white pillar. The pillar moved towards John’s face until the tip connected with the valve in his throat, which he’d used hours earlier to occupy this temporary body.
“Good luck, John,” said the Clerk, throwing a switch on the side of the pillar. In a flash he was gone and in the Clerk’s arms lay a limp plastic body ready for its next occupant.
- CHAPTER THREE -
THE DEAL
John ran his hands over his body to confirm that everything was where he’d left it. His fingers found the cold flagstone floor where he was currently lying face-up. Reassured by what his hands discovered, he opened his eyes. Six feet or so above his head he could see a white column, conical in shape with a hollow point at the end. Had he gone anywhere at all? Yes, he was convinced he was somewhere else, given the uncomfortable circumstances of the last two or three minutes.
The first thing he remembered from the moments after the verdict was a feeling of incredible pressure as his soul was drawn out of its body with the precision of blood being drawn from a vein. Like an elastic band, his soul had been stretched to the point of breaking as it was sent with unfathomable velocity up through the inside of the white column. As it crashed through the air outside, landmarks flashed instantly in front of him before being immediately replaced by something new. First the mountains, then sky, the Earth, the Sun and the Solar System all roared past in a blur. Then there was nothing but space as he passed out of sight of human endeavour towards a patch of utter darkness.
As he approached the nothingness, he felt all of his memories and emotions being compressed and crushed into an incredible density. As he hit the darkness, almost instantly he was on the other side. Here his soul seemed to lose its sense of direction for a while before another force connected with it and again he was off, pulled towards an unknown destination. A few seconds later it was if he’d hit an invisible wall, the point on his journey that John remembered feeling the most uncomfortable.
All around him he heard voices whispering in the darkness, encouraging his own deepest feelings to reappear around him. Most of the voices were unfamiliar and gave no impression that they were talking to him. The voices overlapped, making it difficult to understand what any of them were saying. To his horror, though, some of the voices were recognisable.
Here in space, getting clearer and fighting for an audience, he heard his father. Although he’d died in combat during the Falklands War when John was only a young child, his voice was now shouting loudly and clearly all around his soul. Even though the recollections of his dad were sketchy, he knew the circumstances of his death. Now those details were being broadcast to him thirty years on, his father’s voice screaming with the pain of his injuries and shouting out for help. John wanted to reach out to comfort him, but had no control over his movements or senses. Finally the voice was cut off, as if the macabre play that was being acted out amongst the stars was suddenly cancelled.
The other voices closest to him were faint but crystal-clear. As he listened he realised that they were his own memories replaying events that had had an impact on his life. There were hundreds of his voices all fighting desperately for John’s attention, trying hard to remind him of moments of weakness or regret. The last voice he heard was so close he swore it came from within him. It spoke in a dull and lifeless tone and was the only message that John did not recognise.
“I know why you are here. I know what they have done to you. Find the way, John.”
The final sensation was now a familiar one. One of being injected into a white plastic nozzle and filling a lifeless plastic body, his third different physical appearance today.
The whole experience had been somewhat unsettling but John assumed the worst was still to come. Regaining his composure he pulled himself to his feet and looked around at his surroundings to calculate what sort of place it was. Foul-smelling air swirled around, seeping out from the numerous passageways in the sides of the cavern’s walls where John now stood. One side of the cavern was completely open to the outside world. A short distance into space stood a translucent wall. On the other side of this, a thousand stars were distorted by the effects of the barrier, reducing their sharpness as if viewed through water. John stood for a while transfixed by the sight as if surveying a newly discovered world and needing to take a mental picture to mark the achievement.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
John jumped. He wasn’t the only person looking out at the view. Some ten feet behind, g
radually thumping closer to him, the voice spoke again.
“It kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
John didn’t know where he was, but he was sure what it was: Hell. A place certain to take your breath away, one way or another. He glanced over his left shoulder to see who it was that had spoken. At first he saw nothing, until he lowered his gaze down to the floor. Below him, standing no more than three feet from top to bottom was the figure of a man, but like no man that John had ever seen.
The first noticeable thing about him was that he was smoking. Not the conventional human way. The smoke was coming out of his skin, a composition of solid and molten rock that burnt with the intensity of the sun. The man’s smile showed off his chiselled, pumice rock teeth, and as a result a small crack opened across his stone face, releasing a small line of lava. Even though he was made entirely of rock, most of the normal human characteristics were present. He wheezed as if struggling for breath, coughing a putrid, sulphurous plume of gas in John’s direction.
“Welcome to the second gateway to Hell, reserved for souls like yours and other anomalies. We call it the back gate,” he coughed again, “and they call me Mr. Brimstone. Although what my real name was has long been forgotten and is of little consequence.”
“So this is Hell, then. I thought it might be a lot….hotter,” quipped John. It’s hard to make small talk when you’re confronted with a man seemingly made entirely from the contents of an active volcano.
“One of many misconceptions spun by ill-informed religious imbeciles to scare witless and God-fearing humans. The reality is somewhat worse, I might add, at least for those that listened.” Brimstone shot John a wry smile, further opening the gash on his face and allowing the molten lava to drip onto the floor, burning a small hole in the flagstones.
“It looks quite small when you’re standing here, doesn’t it?” said Brimstone, clomping past John towards the view.
“What looks small?” asked John.
“Your Universe,” replied Brimstone in a tone that suggested he was slightly disappointed with John’s response. “We are on the very edge of your Universe. The barrier that you can see out there in space is the end of a wormhole, the point between our Universe and yours. On this side, time, at least as you knew it, hardly exists. On the other side it continues along, oblivious to our existence. Slowly it changes, ageing, as we watch over it like shepherds watch a flock.”
John took a fresh perspective of the view, feeling more invisible than he did when he was just a soul back in Limbo. To think that no one could possibly know where Hell existed, unless they had the means and the motivation to pass through the wormhole, and then they’d never return to tell anyone about it anyway. It was the perfect illusion.
“Are you telling me I’ve been through a wormhole to get here?”
“Two, actually. The first took you from your Solar System to the other side of your Universe, and this one took you over the bounds of your Universe into this domain. That’s where you were held before we could bring you in.” He pointed to an area on the other side where a blue gas swirled erratically.
“It’s really not what I expected, though. I expected it to be louder, more harrowing, full of screams, the sound of punishment being meted out, hands placed in manacles, that sort of thing?”
“Well, for the majority of souls that’s the case. Even those that normally come in through here would be transferred immediately to one of the ten Circles of Hell that lead from this chamber,” replied Brimstone, pointing to the passageways in the walls of the cavern.
“Now that’s familiar to my vision of Hell. Wasn’t that how Dante described it in The Divine Comedy?” stated John, who had been a keen student of classical studies at school.
“Quite similar, yes, although Dante’s writing was mere guesswork, as we now know. We could stop off and ask him how he feels about it, if you like?” suggested Brimstone, grinning further.
Was Brimstone toying with him or did he just have a slightly perverse, warped sense of humour? John didn’t dislike this creature, even though he was unsure what it had in store for him.
“So, why this treatment for me?”
“Well, you’re special. You’ve been given the right to a reprieve, which is in itself a very rare occurrence. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since we’ve had one. What it means is we need you, because we have a job for you, and we don’t want to damage you before you’ve done it,” replied Brimstone.
He rummaged around his only piece of clothing, a thick, solid silver belt that had pouches hanging along it like a very expensive builder’s tool belt. Having seemingly found what he was searching for, he pulled an envelope from one of the pouches.
“Before I tell you what that job is, I think it might be time for a quick look around on our way over to the front gate.”
Brimstone motioned for John to follow him.
They headed towards the nearest archway in the walled side of the cavern and, once inside, quickly climbed at a steep gradient. Even with his short, heavy body this didn’t seem to hamper Brimstone’s progress, as he marched impressively upwards. After they had walked for several minutes, John heard noises in the distance much more comparable to those that he expected when he’d first arrived. The sounds were not screams but whimpering voices begging forgiveness. These pitiful pleas were undoubtedly aware that the compassion they sought would not be forthcoming.
The tunnel opened up into a much lighter, larger area. When they eventually stopped climbing, John and Brimstone stopped to establish their bearings, neither able to facilitate the need to catch their breath after their hike. This was the very belly of Hell. Stretching to John’s left and right ran towering cliff faces each dotted with a million cell-like caves that went on infinitely. Like the steps of an Inca temple, several more identical cliff faces, each one set further back than the last, were above and below him over the edge of a hollow space. The ends of these cliffs were unsighted, but he guessed they met somewhere to produce huge, oval-shaped levels that returned a hundred feet across the abyss, which dropped below their feet and into the ground.
Just over his left shoulder, in the nearest cell, a harrowing sight attracted his attention. A female inmate was clasping her head with both hands. Tremors shook her body in an exaggerated epileptic fit, as blood-curdling moans emanated through gritted teeth. Eyes red with fear or panic, her mumbled, crazed words were horribly disturbing. The pain deep within her soul was tangible and she reached out from the bars that held her in her public misery, her voice aimed in John’s direction.
“What have they done with my girls? I need to find them…get off me. I never touched them…something made me do it…in my head…shouting at me. No, I can’t take it…get that creature away from me…”
“What’s happening to her?” John asked.
“She’s being cleansed or punished, depending on your point of view. The punishment is always chosen to suit their soul and the evils within it. Sometimes we garnish it with things that we know scare them to pieces, just for fun. I assume that’s what the creature reference is all about. Her mutterings reflect her life’s crimes, now replayed in her head and around her for the rest of eternity,” explained Brimstone rather clinically.
“When does it stop?”
“That very much depends. Most people eventually succumb to the relentless, haunting psychological and physical punishment and their soul diminishes, thoroughly defeated and empty. These become totally harmless and are effectively lifeless. Our job is done and they are released back into your Universe to make up future matter, part of the circle of creation.”
“Why do you do that?”
“There is nothing left to do, their soul has been cleansed and we need the space. Hell’s big but it’s not infinite, you know.”
John couldn’t fathom the likelihood of Hell having a space problem as he once again took in its vastness.
“Anyway, welcome to the Third Circle of Hell. There are two further r
ings below us and seven more above.” Brimstone pointed over the edge of the hollow and then into the opening above as if John might have missed an important part of the tour. “Hell works a bit differently to the version that no doubt you had imagined. The levels reflect how evil you’ve been in your physical form back on Earth. The more evil you are, the higher up the circles you are placed. The higher the number of the level, the easier the afterlife.”
Brimstone continued with the tour by walking along the cliff edge to the left from where they had entered.
“I’m sorry, the more evil you are? That’s not right surely?” replied John, hurrying after him, convinced that he must have misheard Brimstone’s croaky description.
“Yes, the more evil you are the better your treatment. Some of the souls on level ten are like royalty.”
“But why?”
“Think of it as the reverse of Heaven,” replied Brimstone. “There, the better you are the closer to God you will be. Same theory here. Satan is pure evil and relishes anything that has a similar level of malevolence to him. Therefore those souls are kept as close to him as possible. The souls that have marginal negativity get the most frequent and harshest punishment. They deserve it, too, for their naivety and foolishness. The nastier you are, the better it’ll be. Level ten is where you get all the warmongers, madmen and murderous dictators. Satan loves them.”
As the two of them walked along, the line of cells continued to sprawl out in front of them, each containing a new and shocking example of self-hatred. Each was slightly different to the next, but all were extremely difficult to witness. The poor souls on the bottom circles might have been there simply because they did not, or could not, believe in God. They’d done nothing particularly wrong or right in their lives, yet they had to endure the most unbearable punishment. Then others, who had destroyed lives and in some cases whole countries, were treated as if they were saints, or more appropriately anti-saints. It was no surprise that this news had never managed to reach Earth: imagine the consequences to society if people found out.
