Stairway to Hell

by CW Hawes

  “Oh? Get to know each other.” She said the words as if the concept was foreign to her. “But you do enjoy each other, don’t you? You like to feel orgasms, don’t you?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Oh, very good! Pánfilo did as well. Although he had this strange emotion. He called it ‘guilt’. Do you feel this ‘guilt’?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Will you feel guilt when I bed you?”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t even know your name.”

  “I’m called H’tha-dub. What are you called?”

  “Most people call me ‘Mostyn’.”

  “What do the others call you?”

  “Pierce.”

  “How delightful!” She cocked her head to one side and slowly said his name, as though she were tasting wine. “Mostyn. Pierce.” She undid the gold belt at her waist and let it fall to the rug covering the stone floor. She slipped her robe over her head and stood before Mostyn naked.

  His eyes ran over her body. The alabaster skin. Her small, pert breasts. Her womanhood covered in black hair.

  “Have we gotten to know each other?” She went to the bed and lay on it. She motioned for Mostyn to come to her. “Ven a mí Mostyn Pierce y fóllame.”

  He picked up her robe and belt, walked to the bed, and handed them to her. “No, we haven’t gotten to know each other, and I’m not having sex with you.”

  Her face registered complete surprise. “You, you don’t want me? You don’t hunger for me?”

  “You’re very attractive, but, like I said, I need to get to know you first. So why don’t you get dressed and we continue this conversation another time. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Her face was filled with puzzlement. “You don’t like looking at my body? Is it ugly to you?”

  “No. You have a fine body.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe too fine.”

  “I don’t understand.” And then her face brightened. “Is this a game? To make me suffer from longing?”

  Mostyn thought a moment. “Yeah. Perhaps it is.”

  “You foreigners. Your ways are so mysterious and exciting. Such new sensations!” She put the robe back on, handed Mostyn the belt, and backed into him. “Oh, Mostyn Pierce, you are a devil. And you are excited.”

  Mostyn put the belt around her waist and fastened it. She turned to face him.

  “I shall play this game, Mostyn Pierce. I shall enjoy this pain of suffering, and then you will pleasure me and turn the pain into ecstasy!” She kissed him and dematerialized.

  Mostyn stood and looked at empty air, then shook his head, and in English said, “Shit.”

  8

  The insistent knocking at the door woke Mostyn from a sound sleep. A moment passed before he realized where he was. He swore under his breath and shouted in English, “Go away!” The knocking stopped. Satisfied that his tone of voice if not his words had conveyed his message, he turned over and attempted to go back to sleep. However, a voice disturbed his attempt.

  “Debes despertar. Usted debe ser testigo de la ejecución.”

  “Like hell I do.” There was no way this side of the lake of fire Mostyn was going to voluntarily witness the murder of his people.

  Suddenly he was surrounded by four men who picked up his struggling body and hauled him out of bed to face Ger-Hy’la-T’la.

  “On the other hand, maybe I will,” he muttered.

  The K’n-yanian informed Mostyn by way of telepathy that he had no choice. If he didn’t voluntarily witness the deaths of his people, he would join them.

  Mostyn’s looks and thoughts had all the intent to kill that Mostyn could muster. Nevertheless, the K’n-yanians did not expire, and the one holding a robe held it out to Mostyn, indicating he should take it. He grabbed the clothing from the man and stormed off to the bathroom.

  In a few moments, having performed his morning toilet, Mostyn returned to face his jailer. Although he didn’t look him in the eyes. Probably best if the K’n-yanian didn’t see his thoughts right now.

  Ger-Hy’la-T’la guided Mostyn and the guards out to the street where they climbed aboard a carriage drawn by four hideous creatures that were clearly not human and yet had a vaguely human countenance. Perhaps the semblance to humans was due to their facial structure, in spite of the horn protruding from the foreheads of the beasts, or that their four legs ended in paws that possessed a certain look that made Mostyn think of hands and feet.

  In any event, a disquietude settled upon Mostyn after his viewing of what could be nothing more nor less than a foul degeneration of the human species into a ghastly abhuman beast of burden.

  Ger-Hy’la-T’la informed Mostyn that the odd beasts were called gyaa-yothn and had been found running wild in the abandoned world of Yoth that lay below K’n-yan. “They are quite harmless,” Ger-Hy’la-T’la said, via telepathy, “in spite of their somewhat ferocious looks and their carnivorous diet. They even have a rudimentary intelligence. Some of our learned ones are of the opinion the gyaa-yothn are actual descendants of the people of Yoth.”

  Mostyn thought back to his reading of the Binger file. He recalled Langley had written Zamacona was of the opinion that it was due to the rudimentary human intelligence of the gyaa-yothn that the K’n-yanians had been alerted to his presence in the first place and that it was one of the Spaniard’s own beasts that had torpedoed his attempt to escape.

  He watched the hideous monstrosities plodding along, pulling the carriage to whatever the destination. Beasts of burden that could be just as deadly as the most concealed and determined spy. He would have to remember that when his own time to escape presented itself.

  Through the streets of Tsath the carriage travelled. Mostyn took note of the route, committing it to memory as best he could. Such information could possibly prove very useful when it came time to escape. And Mostyn was very much intent on succeeding where the Spanish conquistador had failed. In fact, Mostyn had no choice. If the executive was telling the truth, getting caught attempting to escape was an immediate death sentence.

  After a time, the carriage left the city proper and Mostyn saw the amphitheater. It was a circular structure, not unlike the famous Coliseum. An imposing edifice, quite easily capable of holding many tens of thousands of K’n-yanians.

  The building was surrounded by a park. The plant life was strange and unfamiliar. Certainly not like any grass, trees, or shrubs in the world he knew. The foliage was a uniformly strange greenish blue, which prompted Mostyn to speculate the origin of the plants to be some specimen that had once lived in a prehistoric world on the surface. And had somehow morphed into what he now saw before him. The remaining chlorophyll a testimony to the one-time need for sunlight. A need now long gone.

  The carriage pulled up a drive and stopped. The K’n-yanian, Mostyn, and the guards stepped down onto the pavement. Ger-Hy’la-T’la led the way into the amphitheater, up a broad staircase, to the second level, and then along a broad hallway to a door which opened into a room with seats. To Mostyn’s surprise, his team members had preceded him. What was painfully obvious was the absence of his soldiers. Although the room was filled with K’n-yanian soldiers.

  When Dotty Kemper saw him, her face lit up and she jumped up out of her chair and ran to him. Her arms went around him and she pulled him into a deeply passionate kiss.

  There was a chorus of comments, a cheer or two, and a round of applause. Mostyn’s face flushed, matching his strawberry blond hair. He joined the group, Willie Lee Baker making room so Mostyn and Kemper could sit together.

  Ger-Hy’la-T’la addressed Mostyn and his people in Spanish. “You are aggressors and what you are about to witness is the punishment given out to those who harm the people of K’n-yan. Let this be a warning to you. Live here peacefully and you will have a good life. If you prove to be a threat, then today will show you your fate.”

  Doctor Beames asked in Spanish, “What will happen to us?”

  The K’n-yanian replied, “You will be confined to your rooms. However,
you will not be alone. Our scholars will meet with you to learn of your world and you will each be assigned to an affection group. You will only be able to go about the city or countryside when accompanied by one or more of your affection group.”

  “In other words,” Mostyn replied, in Spanish, “we’re prisoners. Will we be able to visit with each other?”

  “No. You will not be allowed to visit with one another after today. We cannot take any chances.”

  “That’s not right!” Doctor Beames said, her voice tinged with fury.

  “Right?” the K’n-yanian shot back. “You had no right to come to our world. We warned you to stay away and you disregarded the warning.”

  “How will I be able to ensure the compliance of my people if we aren’t together?” Mostyn asked.

  “Once every other day, you will meet with one of your people to insure their compliance. If any choose to disobey you, they will die and you will lose a part of your body.”

  “Will someone please tell us what’s going on?” Kemper said. “I, for one, don’t know Spanish.”

  “Whatever it is they’re saying, it can’t be good,” Slezak added.

  Mostyn told the group what Ger-Hy’la-T’la had said. Slezak began crying, Jones’s face registered no emotion, Zink muttered something about his work, Baker said, “God. Poor Lisa”, and Kemper, looking at Mostyn, softly uttered the words, “No. Please, no.”

  After a moment passed, Mostyn said, “You are my team. From today on, we are following Plan Epsilon. Understood?”

  There was general assent.

  The K’n-yanian spoke. “The entertainment begins. Watch. If you do not, you will join your fellows.”

  Mostyn looked out onto the floor of the amphitheater. The place looked an awfully lot like a surgical theater for teaching students who were studying to become doctors.

  The first three brought into the theater were PFCs Josh Michelson, Evan Tanner, and Patty Gibson.

  Tanner, who’d operated the flamethrower, was tied upside down to a pole and wrapped in black strips of cloth until only his head remained. His feet were set on fire and the blue flames slowly advanced down his body. He was a living torch and his screams echoed throughout the building until the flames reached his knees, when he apparently passed out.

  The other two soldiers were each tied to a metal table. Gibson was screaming her head off and Michelson was trying to comfort her. The acoustics in the place were excellent. Mostyn could hear every word as if they were sitting next to him.

  Speaking in the K’n-yanian language, one of the executioners held up a metal device and the crowd cheered. Another executioner held up a clamp and walked over to Michelson.

  Michelson’s voice was loud and clear and filled with panic. “Wait! No! What are you—”

  His words were cut off as the torturer with the clamp grabbed Michelson’s tongue and the other executioner-torturer cut it off. A third person held a tray into which the tongue was deposited.

  Next they turned their attention to Gibson. Her screams turned to whimpered pleading. A conversation ensued between the spectators and the two torturers. After a few moments, they proceeded to sew Gibson’s mouth shut.

  Slezak threw up and tried to escape. Two of the guards grabbed her arms and returned her to her chair. She struggled until one of them put his sword point between her eyes.

  “You hurt her,” Mostyn said in Spanish to Ger-Hy’la-T’la, “and I will end your immortal life here and now.”

  He smiled and looked Mostyn in the eyes. In Mostyn’s mind the words appeared, “You are brave. To be willing to die to save one of your people. Very well. You will only have to hear them and see the results. I think that will be sufficient.”

  Without any words being spoken, two of the guards drew thick black curtains across the large glassless window, blocking the view to the stage. They did nothing to block the sounds coming from the surgical arena, however.

  The screams, cries, and curses of the men and women who had been under Mostyn’s command rang throughout the amphitheater. Mostyn clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. Dotty, next to him, uttered a string of curses fit for a drunken sailor. Mostyn watched Beames try to block her ears, only to have her hands tied together so she couldn’t. She sat, softly sobbing the entire time. Slezak’s screaming was silenced by a gag. Mostyn saw Jones clenching and unclenching his fists and Zink appeared to be in a trance. Baker’s muttered litany of epithets, probably learned in his Coast Guard days, provided a counterpoint to Kemper’s.

  At long last, the screaming from the amphitheater stopped and Ger-Hy’la-T’la led Mostyn and his people, surrounded by guards, to the huge hall circling the interior of the edifice, by the main floor entrance where Mostyn had originally entered. They were formed into a line with a guard between each of them and one on each end of the row. Slezak’s gag was removed and Beames’s hands were untied.

  From out of a door came the horrific mutilations. Ger-Hy’la-T’la informed them their former compatriots were now y’m-bhi slaves. They had been reanimated into the live-dead. They would serve the K’n-yanians by forever guarding the tunnel to the surface world that Mostyn and his people had used to gain access to K’n-yan.

  At the sight of the first mutilation, Slezak fainted and Kemper threw up, even though she was used to seeing bodies in all manner of decay and dismemberment. The thing was a pair of legs joined together where the hips should have been and two arms attached to where the legs were joined together.

  Next was a long snake-like body with Patty Gibson’s head attached, mouth still sewn shut. All Mostyn could think was the torturers had completely reassembled her body. Tanner’s head was attached to a pair of hands, the fingers slowly pulling the monstrosity across the floor.

  Another body was headless, and its arms and legs had been swapped, so the thing now walked on its hands. Yet another of the living dead had Eliza Pettigrew’s head, shoulders, and arms directly attached to her hips. Her torso was missing.

  The ghastly and grizzly parade continued to pass by and moved slowly out into the street until the last nauseous insane deformity disappeared out the door.

  Mostyn heard Kemper mutter, “God, these bastards make the Ahnenerbe-SS look like kindergartners.” And he couldn’t have agreed more.

  His team members were taken away one by one until Mostyn was the last one remaining. As Dotty Kemper was taken away, she told Mostyn she loved him and he replied, “And I you, Dot.” He blew her a kiss.

  The carriage ride back to Mostyn’s room was a long, lonely journey even though there were the four mannikin guards and the jailer that Mostyn now hated with a passion he had never felt before. He did not look at the man and the K’n-yanian made no attempt to communicate with him.

  Mostyn didn’t know how he’d do it, but he was going to escape with the remainder of his people, and he hoped he had the chance to let at least a few of these immortal K’n-yanians experience death.

  9

  The land of K’n-yan is constantly bathed in a bluish light. Consequently, there is no natural division into day and night. As near as Mostyn could tell, there seemed to be an arbitrary division of time into rest periods and activity periods which simulated the day and night of his own world. Perhaps this was an indication that the K’n-yanians had once lived on the surface of the planet. If he had the time, he might see if he could find out from the records of the past the K’n-yanians had.

  Stripped of his watch, he had no idea how long the cycles were, nor did it seem that the times of rest and activity were universally followed. After all, the K’n-yanians did no work. That was taken care of by slaves. At least, that is how it seemed to Mostyn from his limited observations.

  When he’d gotten back to his room, he’d found guests waiting for him. Ten members of his affection group. The table was filled with food and a second table had been brought in and was filled with an assortment of bottles. Four of the men and women were sitting, eating, drinking, and laughing. A slave was perfo
rming music on a type of harp and singing, a man and a woman were copulating in Mostyn’s bed, and two other couples were dancing.

  Mostyn, however, was in no mood for partying and asked them to leave. They didn’t protest, although three of them seemed upset at being tossed out. Mostyn didn’t care. He’d just witnessed the butchering of six good men and women. Men and women he was responsible for. As far as he was concerned, they could all go to hell. Or better yet, be lunch for Tsathaggua.

  He was tired. Emotionally drained. He looked at his bed in disgust. He had no desire to sleep where two people had been getting his sheets wet with love juices. Instead he flopped down on the sofa. His gaze rested on the tables. He got up and walked over to them. All manner of food and drink and he had no idea what any of it was. He filled a plate with whatever looked good and picked up a bottle. There was no stopper in it and he took a swig. Some type of wine. He would have preferred gin. But any port in a storm, as they say.

  Back to the sofa he walked and stretched out on it, balancing the plate of food on his stomach. He took another swig of wine and ate something that looked like a cracker with a dollop of a salmon-colored paste on it.

  “Whatever that was, it doesn’t taste too bad,” he said out loud.

  He took another swig of wine and ate some slice of a blue-green veggie that had a chunk of something dark brown on it. Maybe roasted fungus. That too was pretty tasty.

  If he had even briefly entertained a thought to stay in K’n-yan, today’s event had put an end to it. He had to escape with his people. There was no doubt in his mind Bardon was planning some manner of rescue. But he couldn’t wait for that. He had no idea if Bardon would be successful.

  According to Langley’s summary of Zamacona’s journal, there were other tunnels and the K’n-yanians had closed them off. But what if they had missed some? Like the one Zamacona had discovered? There was, of course, the one they’d uncovered. It would be heavily guarded, yet it might be their only route to the surface. He needed to find out more about the country. He needed to learn the K’n-yan language so he could read. Or he needed a friend.