Diary of a journey through Hell

by Trudie Collins

  “We walk,” I instantly said.

  “Hold on,” Robert said, holding his hand up to me in a very annoying way. “Kris would not be asking the question if it was that simple. What’s the catch?”

  “Walking will take 5 days longer.”

  Damn. I knew exactly what Robert was going to say and he didn’t disappoint me. “Then we jump.”

  Wonderful. Just what I wanted. (Note the sarcasm).

  We walked all morning, arriving at our destination just before noon judging by the position of the sun. Yes, I know it wasn’t real, but it seemed to be acting like the real one in regard to the timing of it moving across the sky. We heard the waterfall long before we saw it. The number of trees was increasing the closer we got and I knew we must be approaching water as I started to see the occasional deer and other wild animals. At first I wasn’t sure what the roaring sound was, but it soon became obvious.

  The view was breath-taking. We approached it from the side and at first all I could see was a wide, fast flowing river. Then the top of the waterfall came into sight and it looked like the water was falling off the edge of the Earth.

  “This is why we have to jump,” Kris said. “There is no way down this side and the river is too rapid to cross until you get a long way upstream.”

  I peered cautiously over the side and gasped. The foaming white water was streaming down and ending up in a deep blue pool at the bottom. From there it looked like a number of smaller rivers took the water away at a much slower pace. A multitude of differing shades of green surrounded the pool, making it seem calm and peaceful. I longed to be down there.

  But that is not what made me gasp. It was a long way down. A very long way down. Was it even possible for a human to jump that far and not die?

  “Can’t you just transport me down?” I asked Kris, knowing what the answer would be. “I know that Robert has to experience the entire journey properly, but why do I have to?”

  “You agreed to help him,” Kris said. “That means you have to go through the same experiences.”

  “I think you are only doing this because you enjoy making me suffer.”

  Kris smiled. “That is just an added bonus.”

  Robert looked over the edge. “It doesn’t look too bad,” he lied. “Where do we jump from?”

  “There are a number of large rocks that we can climb on,” Kris said. “They are close enough to each other that we can leap along them and they are high enough out of the water that we won’t get our feet wet. At least not until we jump. They will take us to roughly the middle of the river. We could jump from the side, but the pool is deeper in the middle so it is safer.”

  I’m glad he said safer instead of less dangerous. Why did I feel like I was about to commit suicide?

  Kris led us onto the first of the protruding rocks and from there we easily made our way across the rest until we reached the last one. All three of us looked over the edge at the water below. I gulped and quickly moved back.

  “I’ll go first,” Kris said, throwing his bag down into the water as he spoke. Before I could protest, he dived off the edge. I leaned over, watching his descent and his seemingly perfect entrance into the water. There was surprisingly little splash. He had obviously done this before.

  “Your turn,” Robert said, nudging me closer. If he had pushed me any harder I would have fallen.

  “I can’t do this,” I stammered and backed away.

  “Of course you can,” Robert said. “Here, give me your backpack.”

  I did as instructed and handed him my bag, which he then unceremoniously threw over the waterfall.

  “Look out below,” he called out. I stepped a little closer and glanced over the edge, just in time to see Kris swim over to the bag and drag it to shore. Robert then threw his own backpack over.

  “It’s a good job they are waterproof,” I said, hoping that they actually were. What if I hadn’t done mine up tightly enough and the water leaked in? All of my stuff would be ruined.

  “Now you have no choice,” Robert said. “Your diary is in that bag. Do you really want to leave it with Kris?”

  No, of course I didn’t, but I didn’t want to jump either. “It will be perfectly safe with Kris,” I said, though whether I was trying to convince Robert or myself I wasn’t sure. “He won’t read it without my permission.”

  Robert just looked at me. He didn’t believe a word I was saying. Nor did I. Nervously I peered down. Big mistake. It looked a long way to the bottom.

  “Don’t look down,” Robert said. Thanks for that. Sound advice, but couldn’t he have said that BEFORE he saw me doing it?

  “I could break my neck,” I said. He rolled his eyes.

  “Do you really think Kris will allow that to happen?”

  No, I didn’t and I was rapidly running out of excuses.

  “You had a hard enough time getting me to climb over the rail to jump into the river Styx. That drop was nothing compared to this.”

  “Either jump or I will push you,” Robert threatened, losing patience with me. I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not and I didn’t want to find out. Bracing myself, I shut my eyes tight and jumped.

  I screamed the entire way down.

  The water was cold and the shock of hitting it made me instinctively gasp, drawing water into my mouth. I thrust upward and surfaced, coughing and spluttering. Kris was on the shore, pulling towels from his bag. Once I had coughed up what I hoped was all of the water I had swallowed, I swam toward him, dragging myself out of the water as soon as I could stand.

  I was cold, dripping wet, my chest hurt and I was thoroughly pissed off. I walked up to Kris and started yelling at him. I know it was not his fault that I hadn’t closed my mouth on entry, but he hadn’t warned me the water would be cold and I needed someone to take my embarrassment at having screamed as I fell out on. Kris was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “I hate this god forsaken place,” I shouted at him once I had run out of nasty names to call him.

  Kris didn’t react to my outburst. Instead he calmly informed me that this place had been designed and created by a god, so how could it possibly be god forsaken? He had a glint in his eye and a smile on his face as he spoke. I know he was not laughing at me, but it still made me see red. I balled my hand up into a fist and punched him in the face. At least I would have done if he hadn’t moved out of the way at the last moment, causing my clenched hand to fly past him, knocking me off balance. I would have fallen onto the ground if he had not grabbed me.

  I struggled out of his arms and turned to face him, intent on trying again, but something stopped me.

  It was like a veil had lifted. I had told Rhea that what I desired most was Kris and suddenly I realised it was true. The next thing I knew I was kissing him. And I don’t mean a polite kiss on the cheek. It was hard, passionate and frantic, as all of the emotions I had been hiding, even from myself, boiled to the surface and I could not contain them.

  After a momentary pause he was kissing me back.

  “That was rather unexpected,” he said when we finally pulled apart.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered in embarrassment and started to move away from him.

  “I’m not,” he said, then he pulled me closer to him and kissed me once more.

  It felt good. It felt really good.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” a voice behind us shouted, making us both jump. Neither of us had heard Robert’s descent nor his splash as he entered the water. “Take your hands off her.”

  Kris did as asked, removing his arms from around me and dropping them by his side. He slipped his hand into mine, but Robert did not seem to notice. His eyes never left mine as he told Robert that we should make a fire to dry out our clothes.

  Robert didn’t know what to say and stomped off, presumably to look for firewood. Kris lifted his free hand and gently stroked my cheek. He tried to say something, gave up and kissed me again.

  Then the spell that see
med to have taken over us broke and he noticed that I was shivering.

  “You’re cold,” he said. He was right, though I’m not sure that that was the reason for my shakes. “Take off your wet things.” He handed me a towel and a dry jumper then turned his back to me. Glancing around I saw Robert in the distance. He, too, had his back to me, so I quickly stripped off my t-shirt and bra, roughly rubbed myself with the towel, then slipped the jumper over my head. It must have been one of Kris’s. It was a little big for me, but was incredibly warm.

  He turned around and looked at me. “You look good in that.”

  “I think I’d prefer my own clothes,” I said.

  He threw me my bag and informed me that I would find dry clothes in there. I opened it up and was pleased to find he was right. He turned his back to me as I changed clothes then handed both the jumper and the towel back to him. Only then did he turn around to face me once more.

  “You need to get dry as well,” I said and he started to unbutton his shirt. “Allow me,” I continued, moving his hands out of the way. I undid the rest of the buttons then slowly eased the wet material off his shoulders, letting it fall to the ground. Unable to control myself, I ran a shaking hand over his bare chest. Until I touched him, I didn’t realise how badly I had been wanting to lay my hands on him, or for how long.

  He grabbed my hand, holding it close to his skin. “You’re still cold,” he said, feeling my tremors.

  “No I’m not,” I said softly, slipped my arms around him and kissed him again.

  “I really need to get into some dry things,” he said when I finally released him. He had a huge grin across his face. “Turn around.”

  I did as instructed and a few moments later I felt his arms encircle me.

  “I told you to keep your hands off her,” Robert snarled at us, making us jump once more as he dropped a pile of twigs at our feet.

  Kris released me and threw a dry towel to him, informing him that he would find a change of clothes in his bag. Robert didn’t bother to ask how. We were both getting used to the way things worked down here.

  He stripped off without bothering to turn his back to me. I averted my gaze and helped Kris pile up the twigs and start a fire.

  “We need some bigger ones,” he said and left to look for some. He could have just extracted some from his bag, but I guess he wanted to give Robert the opportunity to talk to me alone.

  “He’s too old for you, you know,” Robert said as he slipped a dry t-shirt over his head.

  That was not how I had been expecting the conversation to start.

  “What are you talking about? He’s only a few years older, five at the most.”

  Robert looked at me with undisguised pity. “Think about it. He lives in Hell. He is the son of War. He is the grandson of Hades, for God’s sake. How old do you think he really is?”

  Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I collapsed onto the ground. Robert was angry with Kris and now I could understand why. He was worried that Kris was just using me for a bit of fun. Deep down I knew that wasn’t the case, but how could I convince Robert?

  I was sitting on the ground, staring at the dwindling fire, when Kris returned. He placed some of the sticks he had brought with him on the fire, putting the rest in a neat pile nearby once he was satisfied that it was blazing properly.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, noticing how quiet I was.

  “How old are you?” I asked, unsure if I wanted to hear the answer.

  I knew Kris would not lie to me and he did not disappoint. “I was born in 1421. I’m not sure of the actual date. We don’t bother celebrating birthdays down here. I guess that makes me five hundred and eighty one, give or take a year.” He said it so calmly as though it was the most natural thing in the world to say.

  “We don’t age down here,” he continued. “Not in any of our three realms. The gods and all of their offspring can travel freely between the four realms, the fourth being yours of course, but we only age when we are on what you consider to be the normal world.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said in confusion. “You said you grew up with Ankou and you both went to school together. How?”

  “Most of our time on Earth, if that is what you want to call it, we spent together. It is where our bodies grew up. Ankou is actually a little under a hundred years younger than me. I must have been about the equivalent of 7 or 8 when he was born. I spent a number of years on Earth, living with Ankou’s mother, before he arrived. I then came back down here until she died and he came to live with my family. We enjoyed our childhoods so much we postponed turning into men for a long while, eventually deciding to go to school sometime in the 1950s. It was a fun time to be on Earth. You would have enjoyed it.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “What about college?”

  “Late eighties, early nineties,” he said. “University was a very enjoyable experience, especially for Ankou.”

  “I can imagine,” I said lamely as I tried to take it all in. Kris was nearly six hundred years old. Robert was right; he was too old for me, by quite a number of years.

  Colour drained from my face and I began to feel dizzy. I didn’t realise I was holding my breath until I heard Robert telling me to breathe.

  “Is this a problem?” Kris asked in concern, taking my hand in his and caressing it tenderly. As soon as I heard the words, I knew it wasn’t. What difference did it make that he was a little (OK, a lot) older than me? What was that compared to him being the son of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse?

  “No,” I said, squeezing his hand tightly. “It isn’t.”

  “You are completely nuts,” Robert said, unable to comprehend my reaction. “If you want to make a fool of yourself over someone who is old enough to be your great great great with a few more greats added grandfather, don’t let me stop you. Just don’t expect me to pick up the pieces when it all goes south.”

  He stood up and walked away, yelling over his shoulder that he was going to look for more wood. We had plenty piled in front of us, so I knew it was just an excuse to leave, probably before he said something he would regret.

  “I’ll go after him,” Kris said and followed him. I have no idea what he said, but when they returned, Robert was in a lot better mood, even apologising to me for his outburst.

  While they were gone I rummaged in my bag for my diary and was pleased to find it was still dry, as was everything else. I know that my clean clothes had come from there, but I had still expected the things beneath to be sodden.

  The boys were not gone long and I was still checking through my stuff when they returned.

  “Why is everything dry?” I asked Kris, expecting him to be evasive.

  “I put a protection bubble around the bags as they descended. It kept the water out.”

  I stared at him. “And it never occurred to you to do the same for me?”

  He had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Yes, actually, but I rather enjoyed seeing you wet.” I didn’t know whether to hit him or kiss him.

  As soon as we had warmed through it was time to move on. Kris put out the fire, took my hand and led the way. We were walking through some sort of jungle, by the look of things, which was filled with rainbow coloured birds calling to each other. The jump had been worth it just to see this. Well almost.

  Not long before the sun set we reached a clearing and decided it would be the ideal place to stop for the night. After a quick meal Robert went to his tent, leaving me and Kris alone by the fire. I sat between his legs and leaned back against him, pulling his arms tight around me as I did so.

  “This feels familiar,” he said and kissed my neck.

  “Not quite,” I said, thinking back to the massage he gave me. “Your arms weren’t around me and I was sitting up straight instead of leaning into you.”

  He remained silent. Suspiciously silent. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He kissed the side of my neck again. I could get used to that. “You fell asleep while
I was massaging you.”

  “And?”

  “And I held you in my arms, just like this, for quite a while before finally putting you to bed.”

  “I guess that explains the strange smile on your face the next morning.”

  “You cannot imagine how hard it was for me to let go of you,” he said. “Ever since I saw you I knew I wanted you. Then you met Ankou and I thought I had lost my chance. I believed cuddling you while you slept was going to be the closest I would ever get.”

  I pulled myself forward out of his arms, turned around and kissed him softly and gently. “We should get some sleep. It has been an eventful and very tiring day.”

  He reluctantly nodded his head. We stood up, Kris put out the fire then took me in his arms once more.

  “Goodnight,” he said and kissed me so deeply I felt my legs giving way. When he let me go, he started to head toward his tent.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked him, grabbing his arm to stop him moving further away. He turned around and looked at me in confusion. “I thought you said something about cuddling me while I slept.” I let go of his arm, took hold of his hand and led him into my tent.

  Day 33

  We both slept well and it was very nice waking up in Kris’s arms. It was still early, but neither of us felt like trying to go back to sleep, so for the first time in my life I knowingly updated my diary while someone was reading it over my shoulder. It felt weird, especially when Kris started to make suggestions as to what I should write. Eventually I put my pen down and politely told him to go away.

  He kissed me goodbye and said something about breakfast before leaving my tent. Thankfully Robert was still asleep; I wasn’t in the mood for the sarcastic comments he may have made had he known that Kris spent the night with me.

  “Freshly baked croissants would be nice,” I called after him, not that I was expecting Kris to provide them, but a girl can wish can’t she?

  And sometimes wishes come true. I had just finished writing when I was called into the morning air by the smell of fresh pastries.

  “I thought you said this realm will only provide us with what we need,” I said.