Hellwalkers

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  “Pan?”

  She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t seem to move. She wanted to open the door more than she’d wanted anything in her life. But what would happen if she twisted that handle and the door didn’t open? She’d be sealed in here forever—or at least until Ostheim and the Devil hauled their way up from the cavern. She could still hear them down there, their rage threatening to shake the Nest to dust.

  “Pan,” said Herc, struggling with the weight of the canister, his arms knotted with veins. “Just crack the damned thing before I give myself a hernia.”

  She swallowed painfully, walking the last stretch of corridor, reaching for the handle, pausing again. The Red Door linked to a dozen other places—maybe more—and they had no idea which of those it would open onto now. For all they knew, it might take them back into Meridiana’s lair, where Ostheim’s demonic offspring would chew them to pieces. Or maybe back into the graves beneath Paris where they would slowly rot in the Liminal.

  For all they knew, it might open up to a brick wall.

  Pan turned the handle and the door clicked, but when she pulled nothing happened.

  “Dammit!” she yelled, kicking it, shouldering it, hanging off it. The door didn’t so much as tremble. “Locked.”

  “No,” said Marlow. He limped to the door, Pan stepping out of his way.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “Like you’ll be able to—”

  He grabbed the handle, twisted it hard, then pulled. The Red Door made a sound like a gunshot, which echoed down the corridor. Pan’s ears popped, and she felt her stomach cramp as she rode out the wave of horror that always followed. Marlow pulled and the door opened smoothly, without the slightest creak.

  Pan swallowed, leaned out, feeling the awful sensation of crossing the Liminal. She saw a barren stretch of stone, empty of life.

  Beyond it, clustered on the horizon, distant buildings that might have been ruined skyscrapers.

  And ash, so much ash, a world drowning in the stuff of the dead.

  “No,” she said, her body carved from ice. “No, no, please God no.”

  The door had opened up into hell.

  They were still there.

  “Please,” she said again, less than a whisper. She looked at Marlow, his face gaunt, everything good sucked right out of him.

  Pan heard the drumming of feet, pictured a demon running for them, ready to burst into the corridor and pull them to pieces.

  “Close it,” she yelled. “Close the door!”

  And Marlow was doing just that when a woman in yellow gym gear and pink sneakers jogged past, a huge pair of headphones resting on her head.

  What?

  “Did you just see that?” Marlow asked.

  “The demon in Lycra?” Pan said, nodding.

  They craned out of the door together, watching the jogger run along an overgrown path then turn out of sight. Pan saw that the door was in a huge brick wall covered in graffiti tags. Ahead of her was a wasteland, crisscrossed by rusted railway tracks, but she could see a shopping cart, and past that a burned-out car, and past that a shingle drive thick with weeds.

  Something honked from close by and she suddenly heard traffic, the growl of engines, somebody yelling. And it was those muffled words—“Go screw yourself, pal!”—those beautiful, incredible words, that finally stripped the strength from Pan’s legs, sent her crashing to the floor. She felt like crying, but the truth was she was too exhausted, she couldn’t even remember how to do it. She just knelt there, sucking in air, listening to the sound of home.

  “Oh my god,” said Marlow, taking a step outside. He ran his bare foot along the ground, leaving trails in the ash there. Only, it wasn’t ash, Pan realized. It was sand. She could smell the river, that gut-wrenching stench that had made her want to chuck her guts every summer but which was now as welcome as fresh bread. Marlow looked back at her, his shy smile like a bird, ready to take flight at any second. “We’re here.”

  “Here?” said Herc, pushing gently past Marlow. He looked around, studying the distant skyscrapers—not abandoned, not ruined, just shrouded in mist. “This is New Jersey.”

  “I thought you said hell was behind us,” said Charlie, joining all of them in the doorway.

  “We’re in Greenville,” Herc said. “Near the railroad yard in Jersey City. This building, I know it. I bought it.”

  “Huh?” said Pan.

  “Well, technically the Fist bought it,” he said, spitting. “Ostheim. It was supposed to be another safe house, we bought dozens of them in New York and Jersey; Philly, too.”

  “Like the walk-up in Hoboken?” said Pan, thinking back to the place they’d camped out before their battle with Patrick—before one of the battles. Herc nodded, studying the Red Door, swinging it back and forth.

  “I didn’t know he’d put one of these in,” he said. “I didn’t even know you could. How’d we get here anyway?”

  “I asked it to take us home,” said Marlow. “Must have been the closest exit.”

  “Doesn’t seem real,” said Pan, finally taking a step away from the door. She felt like an astronaut pushing away from the safety of the airlock. The buildings on the horizon were Manhattan, she saw, and the sight of them sent a spear of longing through her ribs, enough to snatch her breath away.

  “Smells real,” said Charlie, holding his nose.

  Pan looked back along the corridor. It was still shaking in there, dust raining down. She could hear that low rumble, more like a dog growling.

  “Close the door,” she said. “Make it real.”

  “Wait,” said Marlow, holding out his hand. “Night.”

  She looked through the door again, imagined Night running from the stairwell, heard her calling—and knew it could never happen.

  “Make it real,” she said, nodding to Charlie.

  “Done,” said Charlie. He grabbed the handle and, without hesitation, slammed the door shut. The growl was cut off, the tremor beneath Pan’s feet thrumming into nothing. And there was just New Jersey, grinding and honking and swearing.

  It was real.

  Charlie was turning the handle again, bumping the door with his shoulder.

  “No going back now,” he said. “It’s locked.”

  Nobody challenged him. Nobody wanted to go back. Not ever.

  Please let it be over, Pan said. It felt like a nightmare already, like she’d just woken from a yearlong sleep. The horror was draining from her head, too awful to be contained in the real world. If it wasn’t for the layers of metal in her skin she might have convinced herself that none of it had happened at all.

  Please let it be done.

  She knew it was an empty wish because Ostheim was down there. And Marlow had finished the job for him, he’d opened the gates and unleashed something terrible.

  But it was all a little easier to handle now that the Red Door was locked and sealed behind them.

  “First things first,” started Herc, resting the canister on the ground, leaning on it. Up close Pan could see that it was a monstrosity, it was something from a museum of freaks and curiosities. It was a cylinder, the top and bottom of which were made of an impossibly complex tapestry of copper parts. The middle was made of glass, streaked with dirt and gore. It seemed too dark in there, but in the inky black water she thought she could see something move, something beating, emitting that weird, bowel-loosening pulse.

  Gross.

  Herc was still speaking but she interrupted him with a hand, trying to swallow down a throat that was lined with carpet.

  “First things first. We get water,” she said. “And food.”

  “But—”

  “Herc, if you get between me and a meal then I’m gonna end up eating yo—”

  And then she remembered seeing Patrick feasting on his sister, ripping chunks off her. Her words died in her throat, and Herc must have sensed the pain there because he nodded.

  “Sure, Pan,” he said softly. “Food first.”

  He hefted the can
ister up and lurched off one way, doubling back, finding his bearings. The track meandered around countless boxcars, then half a dozen warehouses, some shuttered, their windows smashed, before joining a busy street. Workshops and garages spilled noise, the air thick with exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke. There were people everywhere, real people, and Pan watched them warily, half expecting to see their jaws distend, their skin tear, black limbs slicing out. When it didn’t happen, she wanted to throw herself onto each and every one of them, just hug them.

  It wasn’t going to happen. Those few who noticed them walking up the street took one look at their clothes, their bare feet, or just breathed in their stench, and backed out of the way.

  Herc cut left, through a wooded patch beside the road—the trees swaying overhead, caught in the same breeze that caressed Pan’s skin—and onto another street, this one packed with apartment buildings.

  “Uh … there, bingo,” the old guy said, pointing across the road. There was a coffee shop or something that looked like it belonged in a storybook. It had flowers painted all over it, and the name on the window was Petals’s Cake’s.

  “Really?” said Charlie. “I dunno, Herc. That place looks like it has serious code violations, all involving apostrophes.”

  “Who cares?” said Pan, practically running across the street. She barged through the door hard enough to smack it against the wall, the half dozen customers inside all flinching. “Sorry,” she said, bolting for a soda dispenser and putting her mouth beneath the nozzle while pressing the Dr Pepper button.

  “Hey!” said the old lady behind the counter, presumably Petal.

  Pan ignored her—she’d have ignored her if she’d been standing there holding a bazooka. The taste of the soda was incredible, she could feel it travel every inch of her body, then a soft, cool detonation in her stomach.

  Two people were already walking out the door, the rest of them definitely considering it. Petal had a phone in her hand, holding it as a warning.

  “Hold up,” said Herc, the canister thumping to the floor with a sound like a cathedral bell. “No rush. She … she just got stung. By a bee. In the mouth.” He tried to smile at her, his horror-show face making her twice as nervous. “No need to panic, we’re…” Herc looked at Marlow, dressed in nothing but shorts, his torso covered in dirt and scars, at Pan in her just-hanging-on ensemble, and at the metal that glinted in their faces. All of them were filthy, and there was more than one bloodstain among them. Not to mention the canister that hummed like a generator. “We’re doing a play, over in the high school.” He waved his arm in a full circle. “Uh…”

  “Of Mice and Men,” said Charlie. “I’m … the man.”

  He looked at Marlow for help and Marlow shrugged.

  “I’m the mouse,” he said. He lowered his head beneath the soda machine, drinking deeply. Pan grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and gulped it down, finishing the entire bottle. It seemed to go up rather than down, settling in her skull.

  “Brain freeze,” she said.

  The woman was actually dialing now and Herc walked to the counter, dwarfing her. He reached into his pocket and she flinched, but it was a wallet he pulled out. He shook the dust from it, opened it up, and pulled out a wedge of cash. He placed it on the counter, trying to smudge a bloodstain from the top bill.

  “This should be enough to cover everything they need, and everyone else’s meals,” he said. “It should be enough for exclusive use of your café, if you get what I mean.”

  She put the phone down, her jaw dropping.

  “Uh, shop’s closed,” she said. There was a trickle of blood winding its way down from her ear and she smudged it away without noticing. “Sorry, folks.”

  There was a round of groans, but nobody seemed too sorry to leave—especially as their bills had been settled, and especially as half of them were starting to bleed. Petal scooped up the cash, and fled after her customers.

  Pan walked through the door behind the counter, finding a small kitchen. She wasn’t sure what to take so she grabbed everything she could—taking a bite out of a block of cheese, stuffing an entire bun into her mouth, almost choking herself with it. She saw Marlow ripping open a bag of chips, devouring them like a demon.

  “It’s like feeding time at the zoo,” said Herc, watching them.

  “You go four days without eating,” Pan tried to say, but there was too much in her mouth and all that came out was food.

  She ate until she could eat no more, until she actually had a stitch—like her sides were physically splitting. Then she limped back to the table where Herc and Charlie and Marlow were waiting. Herc had a mug of coffee in his hand and the smell of it was so good it nearly knocked her out. She breathed it in and it seemed to calm the monster inside her. The sun was burning through the morning mist outside and she basked in it, closing her eyes, sleep there almost instantly. She welcomed it, happy to let it come. All she wanted to do was forget.

  “So,” said Herc, drumming his fingers on the table, snapping her out of the doze. “Tell me everything.”

  EVERYTHING

  She did. She took a breath and told Herc everything.

  Not before she had a wash, though. There was no shower here, but there was a sink in the kitchen and she stripped, using dishwashing soap and a sponge to scrub away the blood, the filth. There was so much of it that she didn’t think it would ever come off completely. She wondered if she’d have to simply scour away her skin until there was no trace of hell left. But even then there were those pieces of shrapnel woven through her. They would never let her forget.

  At least her wounds had healed. The big one in her side had clotted with something so dark and so hard it might have been plastic, the scrapes and grazes just poor memories of themselves, as if reality had rejected everything that had happened outside its boundaries. She wondered if it would last, or if the injuries would catch up with her eventually.

  She rooted through the cupboards until she found a box of black polo shirts, Petals’s stitched on the breast in pink cotton. She found her size and threw it on. There were no trousers, sadly, so she used a pair of scissors to cut off the filthy bottoms of her sweatpants, turning them into shorts. Putting them back on was like crossing the threshold again. She could feel the blood, feel the fluid of the Black Pool. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t exactly stroll through Jersey in her birthday suit.

  There was nothing in the lost property box that was any use, but she spotted an inhaler there. It was nearly empty, the nozzle chewed out of shape, and she handed it to Marlow as he met her at the door.

  “Oh, cool, thanks,” he said, taking it, then firing off a shot into his mouth.

  Pan left him to it, walking to the others. Herc and Charlie had hefted the canister onto the table and they were trying to pry it open with a spoon.

  “Stuck fast,” Herc said, the spoon pinging across the café.

  The door opened and Marlow strolled out with another of the polo shirts, brushing crumbs from it.

  “Anything else you need to do?” Herc asked them both when Marlow had taken a seat. “I think there’s a barbershop across the street. And I spotted a nail salon down the way.”

  Pan flashed him the nails of her middle fingers, just to show him how clean they were.

  Then they began.

  Pan didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to relive any of it. She was happy to let Marlow do the talking. But he was making such a meal of it—going over every little detail, missing half the stuff that Herc needed to know, that she kept interrupting him. After the third time she just told him to shut up and took charge, telling Herc and Charlie about the mountains that grew from dead people and black blood, the demons and the ghosts and the war that was waging between them down in hell, the fact that it looked like an old city, ruined by time. She told them about the fact you couldn’t die there, that you were murdered and reborn in endless violence, about the fact that Patrick and Brianna had been there, driven insane by time and
terror. She told them about meeting Night, how she’d saved them. She was still down there, Pan said. She’d have regenerated, and opened her eyes to see that she was alone again—and at this point Pan put her head to the table and wept.

  “We can do this later,” said Herc, but she waved him away, speaking into the tablecloth, telling him about the sun that didn’t do what suns were supposed to do, the ash that covered everything, and which might have been all that remained of the living. She told them everything, because it was like she was purging herself, like she was extracting some kind of poison from her system. She just talked and talked and talked until an hour had passed and the last few drops of truth had spilled from her lips.

  For a while, there was only silence. Herc and Charlie had both turned gray. Herc stroked his stubble, shaking his head.

  “If I’d known…” he started. “I mean, I had no idea, Pan. I knew it would be bad, but I always thought…” He put a hand to his mouth. “All those people. I sent them there. God forgive me.”

  She took his hand, squeezed it.

  “None of us knew, Herc,” she said. “Nobody but Ostheim.”

  He nodded, smudging a tear away. Then he looked at Marlow.

  “So there’s just the bit with the Devil,” he said. “Cough it up, Marlow.”

  Marlow spluttered, lifting his hands as if to say where do I start?

  “It … it wasn’t one thing, it was two,” he said after a moment. “The Devil, and something else. Someone else. Trapped together.”

  “Whoa,” said Charlie. “Slow down. Who?”

  “A man. His children died—five kids, including Ostheim, and Mammon, and Meridiana. A long time ago, like centuries. They were killed in a fire, and then he tried to rescue them, but the Devil was there, it set the whole thing up, I think, it made a deal with him. Only, it wasn’t really a devil. I don’t know what it was, something powerful, and really, really old. Anyway, this thing had been making deals with people since forever, letting them drink its blood, and giving them powers. It made a deal with the man, to bring his children back.”