I kept thinking that something was just ahead, but nothing ever was. I kept thinking that we’d encounter a ridge overlooking a valley, or moss sprouting out of granite crests, but each “ridge” was nothing more than the current horizon being replaced by a new horizon. I prayed for anything to break the monotony. A boulder. A moose’s hoof print. A frozen sled dog. A man’s name pissed into the snow with swooping yellow letters. But we encountered only more ice, more snow. On the third day (I think it was the third), I just stopped. Gave up.
“There’s nothing out there. Whatever you think you’ll find…” My voice trailed away. “Sigurðr, you’ve been going ‘there’ for more than a thousand years, and you don’t even know where there is.”
“You travel until you arrive,” he said, “and you have now come far enough.”
This place was absolutely no different from any other place on the tundra. I spun around in all directions, throwing my arms about to emphasize this point. “What are you talking about?”
“Look into the sky.”
My eyes went up. Despite the fact that no one was within miles, a single flaming arrow was arching directly towards me.
I wanted to move but was frozen to the spot, my only reaction to cover my head with my hands. (Although, after hearing all of Marianne Engel’s stories, a more logical decision would probably have been to cover my heart.) The arrow missed me by a few inches, striking the ground, and the earth broke open like an albino monster unhinging its jaw. Huge segments of ice lifted and twisted, throwing us wildly around. A large chunk hit my right shoulder, sending me bouncing into another ragged block. There was a moment of clarity, similar to that moment when I’d driven over the cliff, in which everything slowed as I watched it unfold. Water languidly erupted from a crack in the ground, and I finally understood why there had been nothing to distinguish the landscape in all the time that we’d been walking. We had not been on land at all, but on a massive sheet of ice. Frozen slabs pirouetted around me and soon I found that gravity was pulling me into the newly uncovered sea.
An immediate chill cut through me completely. My pelts were useless; worse than useless, actually, because they absorbed water and started to pull me down. At first I was able to claw my way along the bobbing ice at the surface, digging my fingers into any cracks I could find. I felt the warmth of my body suck itself into the core of my stomach, but soon the heat was not safe even there. I could feel my movements slow, and my teeth were clattering so violently that they drowned out the cracking of the ice around me; I wondered whether even my keloid scars were turning blue.
Sigurðr was nowhere to be seen. He must have been swallowed amid the bobbing ice. A block brushed up against the left side of my body and another smacked at my back. They were circling around me, closing in and pushing me down. Any scientist will explain that broken ice redistributes evenly on the surface of the water, and this is what it was doing in an attempt to cover the hole that the arrow had opened. So even in a hallucinatory ocean the basic laws of physics still seemed to apply; this, no doubt, would have brought a smile to Galileo’s face.
I could no longer hold my head above water, the ice tap-tap-tapping against my cauliflower ears, and I closed my eyes because this is what one does when going under. I felt my body shut down. So this is how it ends. In water. I slipped under, and actually felt some relief. It’ll be easier this way.
I had no trouble holding my breath for many minutes, dropping the entire time, until I tired of waiting for my lungs to give out. I opened my eyes, expecting that I would not be able to see more than a few feet. Just as it had been difficult to gauge distance above the ice, so it was underneath: once again there was nothing to supply perspective. No fish, no other creatures, no weeds, only clear water. Bubbles escaped from the folds of my clothing and rolled up along my body until they caught at the corners of my eyelids. Funny. In the real world I couldn’t produce tears of water, but in an underwater world I could produce tears made of air.
A glow emerged, above me, in the distance. It refracted through my bubble tears and I wondered, Is this the corridor of light that leads a dead man to Heaven? Not bloody likely. The way things were going, it was probably one of those saber-toothed fishes that uses dangling phosphorescent flaps of skin to lure in other animals to eat. As it turned out, however, the glow was neither the path to Heaven nor a Machiavellian fish. It was the fire of the burning arrow that had crashed into the ice, now clenched in one of Sigurðr’s hands as he came plunging through the ocean towards me.
The light (a fire that doesn’t extinguish in water: so much for natural physics still applying in a supernatural place) played across Sigurðr’s beard and into the creases around his eyes. His long red hair stretched out around his head like a glowing kelp halo, and he was smiling serenely, as if something wonderful were happening. He held out the arrow like an Olympian passing the torch and, all the while, we continued our slow descent through the water. My fingers closed around the shaft, I felt glorious warmth spread through my body, and Sigurðr smiled like a man who had done his job. Like a man who would continue to be remembered. He nodded his approval and plunged far below, leaving me to continue falling liquidly alone.
I fell through the bottom of the ocean.
I dropped only a few feet before I hit the ground. When I looked up, the floor of the ocean—the water that should have been a ceiling above me—was gone. My feet were on solid matter and the light had changed from the ocean’s crystal blue to a dead gray.
I was now in a dark wood of twisted trees.
I heard the scurrying patter of feet across the forest floor, coming from at least three sides. Twigs snapping, brush rustling. I held up the arrow to use as a torch. The flash of a four-footed animal sliding among the tree trunks, then a glimpse of another creature. How many were there? Two—no, there went another! Three, at least! What were they? My mind ran wild with bestial imaginings: a lion, a leopard, perhaps a wolf. If they came for me, how could I protect myself? I had the Viking’s scabbard, but not the sword; I had the Buddhist’s robe, but not the faith.
Directly ahead was a path that led through the forest, over a small hill, and I could hear the approach of another, bolder animal. There, a hint of it through the trees. It appeared bipedal, so perhaps some sort of fabulous forest ape? Apparently not. When it came around the corner, I could see that it was a man, dressed in simple clothing, with a large stomach and stubble on his cheeks. When he saw me, a broad smile spread across his face and he lifted his arms out as if preparing to embrace an old friend after years apart. “Ciao!”
“Tu devi essere Francesco.” You must be Francesco. With Sigurðr, I had known Icelandic; with this one, I understood Italian.
“Sì,” he confirmed, taking my hand. “Il piacere è mio.”
“No, the pleasure is mine. A mutual friend has shown me some of your work. It’s good.”
“Ah, Marianna!” Francesco beamed. “But I’m just a simple craftsman. I see you’ve brought the arrow. Good. You might need that.”
“What do we do now? Please don’t say that you don’t know.”
Francesco laughed until his bear’s belly shook. “Sigurðr’s always been a little confused, but I know exactly where we’re going.” He paused for effect. “Straight into Hell.”
You have to appreciate a man who can say such a thing with a straight face, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I think I’m getting used to that, anyways.”
“This Hell will be more complex, so you’d be wise not to laugh too hard.” But, to reassure me after his warning, he added, “I’ve been sent to lead you, at Marianna’s request. She came with prayers for you.”
“I guess that’s a start.” And so we set off on our infernal quest. I was armed with a flaming arrow, a Buddhist robe tied around my waist, a Viking snowsuit, and an empty scabbard, and I had a fourteenth-century metalworker as my guide. I couldn’t have been more prepared.
We passed through a set of gates, and soon we were stand
ing in front of a river that I recognized from Marianne Engel’s bedside readings. “Acheron.”
The river was a terrible thing, with ice bobbing amid garbage and misshapen beasts. There were rotting chunks of flesh, as if a thousand years of coffins had been emptied into congealing blood. The fetid perfume of decay permeated everything. There were almost-men, only somewhat human in shape, floundering in the horrible liquid. Shouts for mercy were thrown out of pleading mouths; I knew that these creatures would continue drowning, unaided, forever.
A mist rose from the river. Through it floated, so calmly as if to seem above the currents, a boat carrying the ferryman Charon. It/he was a dark man-creature, at least eight feet tall, in a ripped, molding robe. His beard was like knotted seaweed and his nose was only half there, with bite marks where the rest must have been ripped off in a battle. From his shriveled mouth jutted rotten teeth, jagged and broken. His skin was gray, wet, and leathery, like that of a diseased sea turtle, and his hands were arthritic claws that held a gnarled wooden pole. His eye sockets were empty but for the blaze within: each eye was a wheel of fire. As he steered towards the shore, he blasted out words more like thunder than speech. “THIS ONE IS NOT DEAD.”
While no small man, Francesco looked feeble compared to Charon. Nonetheless, he refused to be bowed and drew up to his full height to reply, “This is a most special case.”
Charon, now landed at the bank, swept his talons in a dismissive motion. “THIS ONE CANNOT CROSS.”
“He has come far already, so please hear us. Allow us this courtesy, we who are so much less than you. How long has it been since you were visited by one of the living?”
“LABOR NOT TO TRICK ME. HE IS NOT TO CROSS HERE. ANOTHER CRAFT THAN MINE MUST GIVE PASSAGE.”
“Charon, be not so quick with your dismissal,” my guide said. “Forces greater than we have set this voyage into motion.”
Charon’s eyes upon me felt like a condemnation, as if he were looking into the most ignoble corners of my soul. I held the flaming arrow so close to my body that I feared my clothes might go up in flames, but I needed the warmth against his stare.
Charon turned his attention back to Francesco. “YOU MAY SPEAK MORE.”
“We request that you allow us to cross. We’ve brought payment.” Francesco bowed slightly and held out a gold coin.
“THIS IS PAYMENT FOR ONE.”
“Of course, you are correct.” When Francesco beckoned to me to step forward, I shook my head. Who brings money to a hallucination? And then Francesco tapped his chest, to remind me of what was hanging on mine.
I removed the angel coin from my necklace and passed it over into Charon’s claw. He paid particular attention to the side that depicted the Archangel Michael killing the dragon. A strange expression crossed the boatman’s face; I got the feeling it was as close to a smile as his ugly mouth could manage. He stepped to one side and swept an arm to indicate that we were invited to board. Francesco nodded. “We deeply appreciate your generosity.”
The ferryman dipped his pole into the foul water and sent us into the middle of Acheron. The boat, adorned with skulls and ropes of human hair, was constructed of rotten wood, and yet no water entered the gaping breaches in the bow. Small whirlpools folded in upon themselves everywhere, dragging down the perpetually drowning bodies. Occasionally, Charon would use his oar to flail at one of the sinners.
Two figures in the distance, clawing their way ever closer to the ferry, looked strangely familiar. A man and a woman. But my attention was diverted by a screaming man, only feet from the boat. He gulped in a mouthful of the rancid river as others sinners pulled him under. He grabbed at anything in his reach and took a severed leg down with him.
Seeing the look of revulsion on my face, Francesco said, “None are here by accident. Hell is a choice because salvation is available to anyone who seeks it. The damned choose their fates, by deliberately hardening their hearts.”
I couldn’t agree. “No one would choose to be damned.”
Francesco shook his head. “But it is so easy not to be.”
The couple was now close enough that I was certain (as I could be, that is, given their bodies’ decay) that they were Debi and Dwayne Michael Grace. They were pleading for my help, reaching their hands—full of broken fingers—towards me. But the horde of sinners grabbed relentlessly at them. Debi might have been able to reach the ferry, if Dwayne had not clutched at her frantically in an effort not to be yanked under. She responded in kind; each tried to use the other for leverage to push up and away from the multitude. Their battling against each other only ensured they went down together.
It did not take long before Charon dropped us at the other side and steered his boat back into the fray. “I think I did quite well,” I said, trying and failing to smile. “Didn’t Dante faint when he met Charon?”
A mountain stood in front of us, rising from Acheron’s shore, and Francesco took the lead.
The pitch was gradual at the beginning but soon cut sharply up. It became necessary to wedge our hands into cracks wherever we could find them. This was not easy with my missing fingers, and I had to pass the burning arrow from hand to hand each time I shifted my body. The higher we went, the harder the damp winds blew.
Francesco advised me to tuck the arrow into Sigurðr’s scabbard. I didn’t see this as a very good plan; I was quite sure my animal pelts were not fire retardant. Nevertheless, I did as I was told. There was a slight tickling along my hip where the flames danced, but my clothes did not burn.
Human forms were carried in the gale around us, jerked about like struggling fish caught on lines. I knew who they were: the souls of the Carnal, swept up by their passion on Earth and so doomed in Hell. I considered my own career as a pornographer, which didn’t bode well. I asked Francesco if this was where I would end up, someday.
“You never knew passion,” Francesco yelled back, “until you met her.”
He didn’t need to say her name; we both knew about whom he was talking.
I tried to ignore the howling, both wind and human, and eventually we passed through the worst. When I was finally able to let go of the cliff’s wall, my fingers remained curled like the pincers of a frightened lobster.
The path opened off the mountain and we entered into a place that was hotter. I cupped my hands around the arrow’s flame and my fingers finally started to uncurl; as soon as I was able, I began to peel away the outer pelts of my Viking clothing. Remembering Sigurðr’s advice, I did not discard them.
As I bundled up the furs to carry them, I noticed that my amputated fingers were slightly longer at their nubs and there was some hair growing out of my forearms where the follicles had been destroyed. I touched my skull and found that new stubble was emerging there as well. My scars were perhaps a little less thick, a little less red. I’d run my fingers over my body a million times, like a blind man memorizing a story in Braille, but now I was reading a different plot.
Try to imagine, if you can, the emotions of a burnt man discovering that his body is regenerating, or of the man growing hair after having resigned himself to a lifetime of beef-jerky baldness. I excitedly informed Francesco of my discoveries.
“Remember where you are,” he warned, “and remember who you are.”
We came to the edge of a forest where screaming trees grew out of burning sands. A shimmering heat rose, distorting everything, and the tree limbs looked as if they were moving. Birds flew around, snapping at the branches. “The Wood of Suicides,” Francesco said.
I soon realized that the trees were not exactly trees. The branches were human limbs, gesticulating wildly, with blood running out like sap. Tormented human voices poured out from the holes that had been ripped by the birds—which were not birds, I could see now, but Harpies that resembled vultures with pale female faces and claws as sharp as razors. Their stench overwhelmed us every time one flew anywhere near.
“The voices from the trees,” Francesco said, “can only come forth after the Harpi
es have ripped their flesh and their blood is flowing. Suicides can only express themselves through that which destroys them.”
“Quod me nutrit, me destruit,” I muttered under my breath, too low for Francesco to hear.
I remembered then that he had deliberately inhaled his wife’s plague before commanding his brother to shoot him through with an arrow. “Is this what Hell is like for you?”
“My choice to die came within hours of my inevitable death, and it was a decision made with love, not cowardice. An important distinction to remember.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Although my afterlife is not this one, there is a reason that I am your guide here.”
I thought he was going to say more, but he only told me that we still had a great distance to travel.
I was now stripped to the waist. My skin was definitely improving. We continued through the woods and I heard what seemed, at first, to be the murmur of a throbbing beehive. As we came closer, I realized that it was a waterfall at the wood’s edge. The rushing wind swept back our hair, mine still growing.
This waterfall did not fall over the edge of any cliff; it just dropped straight down from the sky and cut through the desert floor in front of us. Francesco indicated that I needed to throw Sigurðr’s scabbard into the waterfall, as it would make an appropriate gift. Why? And for whom?
After removing the flaming arrow, I did as instructed. I watched the leather loop of the belt tumble down, bouncing in the froth, before being finally swallowed into the angry mouth at the bottom of the waterfall.
Almost immediately, a dark figure emerged and started climbing towards us.
This creature was three united bodies working together from a single torso. It had six gangly arms, whose six hairy hands reached into the waterfall to secure handholds, and it moved like a spider climbing a web. At first I thought there must have been some rock behind the waterfall but as it came closer, I could see its hands were wrapping around the liquid itself, twisting the streams of water into something like ropes. The beast had a sharp tail that cut into the waterfall, and though it was still some distance away, its smell already reminded me of piles of decaying mayflies on a beach.
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