Beyond the room the horror was even worse.
They found themselves standing on another endless plain but, unlike Limbo, here the floor was mustard-colored and featureless save for the slick of food waste that coated everything and stuck to the soles of their shoes as they walked. In fact food was everywhere, but not the elegantly prepared meals of the banquet hall. Here the food was a mess of brown pulp and green fleshy gobbets, black crumbs and gray gruel.
And there were people everywhere.
They were even larger than the ones in the room they had just left. Unable to move, they mewled as they reached for morsels of fetid material that lay just beyond their reach, crawling, rolling, or sliding toward them as best they could. But their vast bulk meant that they could only move very slowly and, more often than not, by the time they reached their intended target the morsel had been snatched and gobbled up by someone slightly quicker than they. Unlike the people in the room, the gluttons out here were naked, and their maggot-like bodies were so loaded with fat that their skin had been stretched to the point of transparency. As they moved, it was possible to see the adipose tissue beneath sliding against the taut epithelium, straining to be free. These cursed souls were on the point of bursting, always hungry, and never granted any relief from the need to eat and the simultaneous desire to feel less bloated.
Karen took another step forward, slipped, and nearly fell onto the enormous body of a naked man preoccupied with licking up a sticky pink liquid in which tiny crawling insects floated. It was impossible to tell whether the putrescent smell was coming from him or his food.
“Careful!” Chambers caught her arm. “If you land in that stuff we might not be able to pick you up again.”
“I can hardly breathe.” Karen’s coughing fit became a bout of retching. Chambers couldn’t blame her. The stink in the Third Circle of Hell was unbelievable—a combination of rotting food and unwashed bodies, sickly sweetness tinged with sour sweat and other bodily excrescences allowed to ferment for an eternity.
“We have to keep going!” Dr. Cruttenden was physically pushing them forward. “They haven’t noticed us yet, but when they do . . .”
They already had. Chubby, sausage-like fingers reached for Chambers’s ankle and missed. The glutton zombie in question (he could think of no better term for the creature) dragged itself a little closer. He dodged it easily, but was struck at the same time by the thought that if he hadn’t seen it coming it might just have been strong enough to hold him there.
“Come on!”
More of the creatures were taking notice of them now, abandoning their leaking fistfuls of squashed food, the pools of sweet-looking glutinous substances spilled on the ground. Instead tiny, hungry eyes were slowly focusing on the strangers in their midst.
“Can you see the way out?” Karen was looking around, but there was no obvious exit.
“No.” Dr. Cruttenden was looking too. “Perhaps you have to cut yourself, like in Limbo.”
“Why should I have to be the one to cut myself?”
“There’s no glowing golden light, either,” said Chambers. “But then I’m sure you’d agree that each Circle of Hell probably has its own kind of entrance and exit.”
“A good point.” Dr. Cruttenden hopped over a glutton zombie that was getting too close for comfort. “In that case we should be looking for something that stands out, something that’s different from the rest of this place.”
“That room was different.” Karen dodged another slow-moving, grease-streaked crawling monstrosity. “The one we arrived in.”
Chambers and Dr. Cruttenden exchanged looks. It was a good point.
“But that room is full of them now.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Dr. Cruttenden was already on her way back. “That’s where we need to go.”
“But there wasn’t an obvious door or anything.” Karen was trying hard to keep up, avoid the glutton zombies, and not slip in their leavings.
“That’s just because we weren’t looking hard enough.”
“There were stained-glass windows,” said Chambers. “I thought that was a bit odd the minute we arrived there.”
“Perhaps that’s the way, then.”
“But they were close to the ceiling,” Karen wailed. “And the ceiling in that room is about forty feet high!”
“There’s nothing that says the entrances and exits have to be easily accessible,” said Dr. Cruttenden.
“Why are there exits at all?” It had suddenly occurred to Chambers. “You yourself said that these souls are trapped here, so why make it possible for people to enter and leave?”
Dr. Cruttenden shrugged. “Presumably because part of the eternal torment one is intended to endure in Hell is the knowledge that escape is possible, just highly improbable.”
They were at the archway to the banquet hall now, where they encountered another problem.
“The room’s full of them!” Karen was staring, wide-eyed, at the literal mass of bodies that fought over the scraps now remaining on the long trestle table.
“Perhaps we should wait until they finish, and then they’ll go?”
Dr. Cruttenden shook her head at Chambers’s suggestion. “If you look behind us, I think you’ll find we haven’t got time for that.”
It was true. The glutton zombies of the third plain of Hell were all slowly making their way toward the three free souls who had intruded upon their domain.
“What about the table?”
Dr. Cruttenden looked at Karen. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t we upend it? It looks as if it might be able to reach to those windows.”
“It should.” Chambers was constantly looking right and left, from the gluttonous plain to the room that might be their escape. “But look at the surface. We’d never be able to get a grip on it to climb up.”
It was true. The elegantly placed food had been gobbled so furiously and without etiquette that now all that remained were tossed-aside plates, bones almost bitten through in the desire to consume every last morsel. Even the candles bore teeth marks. The surface of the pine table, so recently polished and clean, was now home to a slick of grease and gravy that would thwart anyone’s attempts to climb up it.
“Not if we turn it over.”
Karen was right, of course, they could use the legs and frame like a makeshift ladder. But it would take a hell of a lot of doing, never mind upending the thing once they’d managed to roll it. And before all that, they had to get the gluttons out of there.
Or did they?
The gluttons were still amassed along the nearside length of the table. The far side, the one that ran close to the wall with the windows, was host to only a couple, presumably because it would have taken more effort to get around there, and why bother when the food was in easy reach from here?
“I’ve got an idea,” Chambers whispered. “You two go around to the other side of the table, and when I say so, pull it toward you with all your might.”
“It’s huge.” Karen couldn’t see where he was going with this. “We’ll never be able to roll it on our own.”
“We’re not going to.” Chambers was searching beneath the table now. “We’re going to have some help.”
The mess outside was testament to the fact that the denizens of this part of Hell weren’t especially thorough when it came to eating as much as they could, and he had been relying on the thin hope that something in this banquet hall had been missed—a morsel of meat, a crumb of bread. Something that had escaped their notice. Finally, he found what he was looking for. A whole loaf that had somehow slipped from the table and become hidden behind one of the table legs. He grabbed it, wincing as he felt the fluid it was soaked with. He hoped it had not come from one of the glutton zombies. Then he jumped onto the table.
He almost skidded straight off again, and had to take a moment to balance himself. He waited until Karen and Dr. Cruttenden were in position and then he called out in the loudest, clearest tones he could
muster.
“You’ve missed something!”
All eyes were suddenly on him.
It was a disconcerting moment. In fact, Chambers found it terrifying. As one, every bulky form in the room turned to look at him. Or, to be more accurate, what he was holding up in his right hand.
“I said, you’ve missed something!” This time he shouted to make sure the gluttons outside the room could hear as well. He wanted as many of them in here as would fit.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He darted a glance at Karen. “Trust me,” he said. “And when I say pull, you pull as hard as you can.”
The ones grasping at him at the front were already pushing so hard the table was starting to move, and as more bodies crammed themselves into the room the pressure increased. Chambers raised a foot and brought it down as hard as he could.
Right on the join that ran the length of the table.
He thought he heard a crack, but he couldn’t be sure, so he did it again, and again.
The table was beginning to lurch now as it was pushed toward the wall with the windows.
“We’re going to be crushed!” Karen yelled.
“No you won’t! Grab the table when I say so!”
Chambers dealt another blow to the middle of the table and was rewarded with a satisfied cracking sound. He moved onto the half behind him. The gluttons before him pushed harder at the table, which was starting to pivot in the middle.
“Grab this side and start to pull!” he shouted.
Karen and Dr. Cruttenden did as they were told.
The effect was startling. With the combined weight of the gluttons pushing from the other side, the pivoting effect and the two women acting as a counterbalance, the far side of the table began to overturn. Before the angle became too steep Chambers jumped down to join them. He still had the bait held high, but with luck he wasn’t going to need it much longer. With his free hand he helped them pull.
It happened all at once. Their half of the table tipped toward them and with a crunch came free from the other half it had been connected to. Karen and Dr. Cruttenden made sure it rolled right over while Chambers threw the bread as far from them as he could.
As one, the gluttonous residents of the Third Circle of Hell turned and went for it.
“We’ve only got seconds before they make short work of that.” Chambers had already gone around to the length of table’s other side. “Help me lift it against the wall.”
“But it’s still too short!” Karen was helping anyway.
“It doesn’t need to reach right to the window,” Chambers gasped as together they struggled to push the table upright and wedge it against the stone wall at an angle. “Our own height should do the rest.”
“They’re coming.”
Chambers didn’t waste any time looking.
“Climb up the table,” he told them. “And keep your fingers crossed that it actually is the way out.”
For someone who probably hadn’t climbed anything more challenging than a tree when she was a little girl, Dr. Cruttenden proved remarkably agile. Soon Karen was following her up the wooden lattice. Once the lecturer was at the top, she raised a tweed-coated elbow and, with a lack of hesitation that was impressive even if it was probably born of panic, smashed through the stained glass.
“I can’t see anything beyond!” she shouted down.
Chambers picked up a broken piece of table leg and hit the closest glutton zombie in the face with it. The creature was surprisingly soft, and its head burst like a rotten grape, the fat-stained fluid that leaked out spraying its colleague, who immediately began to lick it up.
“Just go!” Chambers knew he wouldn’t be able to fend them off for long. “We’ve got no other option!”
Two more of the creatures were close enough to grab at him. Chambers aimed the bulbous length of wood at an outstretched arm and brought it down as hard as he could. The arm fell away at the elbow, greasy yellow blood spurting from the stump. He picked up the severed limb and, wincing at how very soft it was, threw the pulpy mess into the voracious crowd.
“Has she gotten through yet?”
There was no answer. Chambers looked up to see that both Karen and Dr. Cruttenden had disappeared.
Time to go.
It would be impossible for him to climb and hold onto his weapon. His delaying tactics so far had only bought him a few seconds, and he needed longer to get up there.
There was only one thing for it.
Professor Robert Chambers of the Human Protection League’s Cthulhu Investigation Division in Washington, D.C. raised the piece of wood he was carrying high above his head, uttered an ear-splitting roar, and proceeded to deliver a series of savage blows to every single glutton zombie that was within his range.
The creatures burst open at his touch. Soon the floor was slick with greasy fluids, yellow fat, and bile-stained blood. The gluttons behind Chambers’s victims immediately dropped to their knees and began to suck up what remained of their fallen comrades.
Chambers threw his weapon into the crowd. It had become too slippery to hold onto anyway. He wiped his hands on a shirt peppered with chunks of fat and soaked with fluids that reminded him of the hamburger bar where he had worked for a while as a student. Once his palms were as dry as he was going to get them, he turned and started to make his way up the underside of the table.
There was a cracking noise as soon as he got on it. Obviously it hadn’t been made to support the effort of three people climbing. He reached up, grasped a broken support, and took another step.
Crack.
Okay, we’re going to have to go very gently, but you can still do it. He didn’t dare look behind him. It would only take one of those things pulling themselves on here to try and get him, and the whole structure could fall to pieces.
Slowly, but at the same time get on with it. He climbed another step, and then another.
Crack, crack.
He was nearly halfway up when there was a much louder crunch, and the length of table sagged in the middle, almost dislodging him. Regaining his hold, he looked down to see that one of the glutton zombies had crawled beneath the table and was now trapped in the angle between the wood and the stone wall. It was trying to grab at him and, in doing so, was putting an unbearable strain on the wood.
He kicked down at it once, and the table almost gave way.
Only one thing to do, he thought. Calling on every scrap of luck he might still have, Chambers took a deep breath and clambered up the remainder of the table as fast as he could. He could feel the wood collapsing beneath him as he went. He was almost at the window when the table gave way beneath him. With a final burst of energy, he leapt the last couple of feet and grabbed the window ledge.
Now he was hanging twenty feet above a room filled with creatures hungry for his flesh.
Hanging by fingers smeared with the fat and grease of their own decimated numbers.
Hanging and starting to slip.
He was about to resign himself to a horrible death when he felt hands around his wrists and arms, and his body being pulled upward. He passed through the window with surprise that equaled the shock he felt when he didn’t plummet twenty feet down the outer wall of the building he had assumed they were trapped in. Instead he found himself in a tunnel with dark red walls.
Karen and Dr. Cruttenden were looking at him anxiously.
“Are you all right?” Karen asked.
He resisted the urge to laugh hysterically with relief. “I think so. But I’m in a bit of a mess.”
“You are indeed,” said Dr. Cruttenden. “You were almost too slippery for us to pull up.”
“Well, I’m relieved I wasn’t.” He tried wiping his hands on the smooth surface of the tunnel. “Is this our next Circle of Hell?”
Dr. Cruttenden shook her head. “It’s far too peaceful for that. I very much suspect it’s down there,” she said, indicating toward the receding darkness.
The lecturer
seemed eager to set off, but Karen laid a hand on her shoulder, for which Chambers was grateful—he needed at least another minute to catch his breath.
“What things are we going to have to face this time?”
Dr. Cruttenden shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t really know. Let’s just hope it’s not more of the same.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed. “Why? What’s the Fourth Circle all about?”
The lecturer looked from one to the other of them, and waited for Chambers to stop panting before she answered.
“Greed.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY WERE IN A city.
Chambers thought that was what it looked like. At first impression. If you didn’t look too closely. A grid system of streets down which walked somber-faced people in smart suits, moving between slate-gray skyscrapers that threatened to penetrate the dome of pallid cloud that enclosed this level of Hell. But it didn’t take much to see that there was something horribly wrong with this semblance of a metropolis.
Because that was all it was—a semblance, a fake, an impression. The buildings were solid—towering cuboids of concrete with false windows and doors that couldn’t be opened because there were no interiors for anyone to access. One after another, they were all the same. Chambers knew because they’d been checking them for the last half an hour, ever since they had arrived here. The only office building that was different was the one they had emerged from onto the busy city street. Their journey down the featureless tunnel from the land of the gluttonous dead had terminated in a very ordinary-looking door which, when opened, had led them onto the concourse they were now exploring.
It had seemed sensible to assume that their way out of the Fourth Circle of Hell lay through a similar-looking door in a similar-looking building, but so far their efforts to find it had proved fruitless.
The Lovecraft Squad Page 26
