King of Hell (The Shadow Saga)

by Christopher Golden

  And when he spoke, the words emerged from that same slit, the spines on his chest clicking against one another with the undulation of his flesh.

  "Go, then, man-flesh," the hellion said, his voice thick with mucous. "But you'll have to come out of the dungeons eventually, and there are so many more of us in the ruins above."

  "There are other ways out of the offal pits of Dis," Octavian replied warily, watching as the demon shifted on the stairs, spines clacking.

  "Don't fuckin' talk to it," Squire muttered from behind him. "Cut it in half."

  Chermosh narrowed his eyes, staring at Octavian. "How would you know that?"

  Octavian brought the sword around in an arc that shattered hundreds of the demon's spines. Chermosh let out a roar of pain and twisted away, leaving his side vulnerable for Octavian's blade. The spines prevented a deep wound, so Octavian held the sword with both hands and slashed downward, opening the demon down to his crimson bones. Black blood and purple viscera spilled out, crawling with worms and other parasites. The stench that wafted up off of Chermosh's innards was worse than any they had thus far smelled, and both Octavian and Squire held their breath and hurried down the last dozen spiral steps to the dungeon's giant door, which stood open and rotted and canted to one side as if something had burst its way in instead of breaking out.

  They crossed the threshold, weapons held out before them.

  Octavian had been prepared for the despairing screams of the Suffering, but they were met with silence. A faint red dust floated in the air as they walked began to explore, first the anteroom and then the vast central cavern, whose ceiling echoed back their footfalls. Chains and hooks were strung for miles along the walls, which were lined with empty cells. The bright light of Dis, generated by anguish, had gone dark.

  "I take it this ain't what you expected to find," Squire said.

  "Nope." Octavian sheathed his sword.

  The hobgoblin's yellow eyes gleamed in the dusky gray light that filtered into the dungeon from Hell's burning places.

  "So where are all the souls that are supposed to be here?" Squire asked, putting away his axe.

  Octavian frowned. "Nobody's supposed to be here. This is Hell's Hell. Or it was, once upon a time. As for where they are, there are fields of punishment all through Hell. Infinite caverns of sorrow and pain —"

  "You should write the vacation brochure," Squire muttered.

  Octavian wished he could have laughed at that.

  "There are a couple of other places I can think of," he said. "One in particular . . . the Pit. Outsiders are often taken there."

  "It's Hell, Pete. It's full of pits. Fire pits and blood pits and pits of screaming babies."

  "This one is special," Octavian said, forging ahead with purpose now, remembering the last time he had been in this place and the madness that had seized him. There were cold places in the dungeon of Dis, frozen corners where the walls were made of ice — and ice could be broken. That would be their exit.

  "What's so special about it?" Squire asked, hurrying to keep up.

  Octavian glanced around, listening to the echoes of the past. "The war between Heaven and Hell ended eons ago, but even now, from time to time, an angel will fall. When angels fall, they go to the Pit. I saw giants there in my time, as well as boggarts and kelpies and, once, the god of bats. If Kuromaku and Allison and the others are here and they're alive, and they're not in the dungeon, my best guess is the Pit."

  "And if they're not there?"

  "Is it possible for you to be optimistic, just for maybe half a second?" Octavian asked.

  Squire scowled. "Excuse the fuck out of me, but we are in Hell. Down here, optimism's for assholes."

  Octavian felt a draft and glanced at an alcove up ahead and to the left. A cool mist swirled out of it and he knew he would find a wall of ice there, blocking an ancient passage. When the dungeon had been inhabited there would have been guards there, though the crevices inside where treacherous and most who tried to escape that way would have died in the attempt.

  "That's where you're wrong," he said. "When you're in Hell, a little shred of optimism may be all that keeps you alive."

  Squire nodded as if impressed. "Wow. Somebody call Hallmark. You could make a million bucks with crap like that."

  Octavian paused and stared at him. "I could just leave you here."

  A smile spread across the hobgoblin's ugly, leathery features. "Good thing I'm so cute, huh?"

  Octavian lifted a hand and ran it over his face, first covering his eyes and then scraping his palm across his stubbled chin. He tried to stifle the soft chuckle that rose in his throat, but couldn't do it, and quiet laughter whispered its echoes off of the walls of the dungeon of Dis. He suspected it must have been for the first time.

  Drawing his sword, he lifted it over his head and brought it down with enough force to shatter the ice wall. Searing heat rushed all around them, sucked into the frigid chimney beyond the wall. Red dust stung their eyes and they shielded themselves as the burning air buffeted them for long moments, until at last it slowed.

  "You want to explain this?" Squire snapped.

  "I'd be guessing," Octavian said, stepping through the gap he had created by shattering the ice. The walls were frosted but there were wide ledges all around that would make for simple enough climbing, if they were careful.

  "How is it so cold?" Squire asked as he followed. The hobgoblin bent to peer down into the deep crevice that fell away below them. "And what is this place? You said the dungeon was the basement of Hell or whatever. But this looks like it goes down forever."

  "Maybe to the center of the planet," Octavian replied. "I don't know."

  "But it's fucking freezing cold in here. It's like we're in a vent, but the breeze is coming up at us. How can that be? I mean, Hell's all fire and brimstone."

  "Not all the way through. At its core, Hell is ice cold."

  Octavian began to climb. His boots gripped the icy ledges well enough, but his fingers slipped several times. From below him came Squire's grunts and the rustling of the hobgoblin's rough clothing. With every new step — every handhold — Octavian expected to hear a cry for help and he prepared himself for the possibility that he would need to use magic to save his companion. Only his prowess as a warrior, honed through the centuries, had kept him from having to use magic thus far, but his skill with a sword or in hand to hand combat would not save Squire if he fell.

  Yet they climbed higher and higher and the frigid air became slightly less frigid and still Squire scrambled upward without requiring help. An hour passed and another and the muscles in Octavian's shoulders and arms weakened, a burning sensation passing through him, and Squire held on.

  When they emerged, Octavian crawled out onto scorchingly hot stone and lay there for a moment to catch his breath. Squire sighed and stretched and let out an enormous belch and then stood over him, yawning.

  "I can't lie down or I'll fall asleep. You ready to move along?"

  Octavian stared a moment and then nodded. "Ready. Just let me get my bearings."

  For once, the hobgoblin did not have a snappy retort. Octavian furrowed his brow and glanced over to see that Squire had wandered away. Rising quickly, Octavian pursued him up a small rise. They had emerged from the ice vent into a crater in the stone floor of a cavern and when they had climbed to the crater's rim, Octavian felt his heart sink. A quiet chorus of whimpered prayers and whispered promises filled the air, along with the soft weeping of the truly hopeless. They were surrounded in all directions by hundreds of the damned — perhaps thousands — all of them on their knees with their heads hung.

  "Don't stop," Octavian said quietly. He grabbed Squire by the arm and propelled him forward, finding a path amidst the kneeling damned. "And whatever you do, don't listen. The sorrow can be crippling."

  "Wait," Squire said, yanking his arm away.

  On their knees, the Sorrowful — for that's how Octavian had always thought of them — were about the same hei
ght as Squire, so when he looked at them he could not help but see the contours of their regret.

  The hobgoblin glanced up at him and Octavian saw the uncertainty in his eyes.

  "Where are we?"

  "One of the fields of punishment," Octavian replied. "I'd hoped to avoid you seeing one of these."

  "But there are no demons here. Nobody's getting their skin ripped off or their guts torn out or . . . I mean, what kind of Hell is this?" he asked, voice pinched by the depth of his horror.

  "During my time here, I saw fields where the damned are eaten by putrescent demons and then shit out again, over and over for eternity," Octavian said. "Places where they're flayed over and over as their skin grows back each time, or where they're forced to fuck forever until their joy and passion becomes their Hell. But this . . . this is the worst. All these people jammed together, but they can't see or hear or feel the presence of the others. They're in a crowd of thousands who could give them some meager comfort, but they think they're alone, forever."

  "Forever?" Squire echoed. "They feel that for eternity?"

  Octavian nodded.

  "So much for whoever said 'Hell is other people.'"

  "Only the people who believe in Hell and that they deserve to be there end up coming here," Octavian said, looking out over the sea of the Sorrowful. The lonely. "Them, and the truly evil ones. Hell is ourselves, my friend.

  "Hell is personal."

  Phoenix's World

  Manhattan, New York City, New York

  Sometimes, Annelise thought she could see the ghosts. Tonight she sat in her usual chair in her little kitchen — the one with the rip in the seat, a little stuffing coming out — and she sipped tea from a cup that belonged to a set her grandmother had bought in Austria in 1923. The tea had a healthy spoonful of honey and a twist of lemon in it, just the way she liked it. The lemon and honey helped with the rasp that had begun to sneak into her voice over the past decade, the result of her being a secret smoker. Oh, some of her friends knew that she still smoked, but for the most part she hid it well, kept her smoking to the little balcony at the back of her place and aired out her clothes any time the acrid scent of cigarette smoke seeped into them.

  She wanted a cigarette tonight.

  Her hands shook as she picked up her teacup and a drop of it sloshed over the rim to stain her faded flannel nightgown. The spot soaked in and spread a bit but she paid it no mind. It would wash out.

  "Please, Annelise," Manolo said. "You must listen."

  His imploring voice did not make her look up from her teacup, for there would be nothing to see. Manolo normally had a gentle way about him, a sweetness that sometimes became playful flirtation, which she allowed to go on because there were so few men willing to be playful or flirtatious with her. Of course, Manolo was not like other men. She did not look up when he spoke because she would not be able to see him. Manolo had been killed in an accident six years earlier, when he'd fallen onto the subway tracks at 125th Street. A young mother had taken her eyes off of her baby stroller, texting or something, just long enough for the stroller to roll across the platform and onto the tracks.

  Manolo had retrieved the infant, but there hadn't been time for him to climb back up before the train had barreled through, brakes and driver and waiting commuters all screaming. His death had been gruesome, but at least it had been instantaneous.

  Some weeks later, Annelise had been riding the subway across town, nowhere near the site of the accident, when she had heard his kind voice whispering in her ear. A little birdy told me you could hear me, he had said in his pleasant, thickly accented voice. Is this true? When she had replied — a low mutter under her breath to avoid drawing attention from other riders — she had heard the sound of quiet weeping as he was overcome with joy at the thought that his connection with the world of the living had not been completely severed. Years had passed since then, and in all that time she had never heard Manolo sound afraid, until now.

  Annelise sipped her tea, relishing its earthy flavor and the sweetness of the honey. It might need a bit more lemon, she realized.

  The salt shaker on her little kitchen table fell over, spilling a few grains across the autumn-themed table cloth. Annelise frowned.

  "That's not very nice, my friends," she said. "Manolo, was that you?"

  A chorus of voices replied, all speaking up at once, and a spike of pain went through her head. Her hand shook and more tea spilled. Her hand began to jitter so badly that he forced herself to put the cup down.

  "Quiet!" she snapped.

  But the spirits did not comply. A dozen of them spoke to her at once, worried for her or frustrated with her, or both. Loudest among them were sixteen year old student Thandie Carver, seventy-eight year old painter Priya Lahiri, and a butcher named Stroud, who had been dead two hundred years and somehow managed to linger on. Once, she had used a spirit guide to help mediate her interactions with the dead, but after the Uprising that had become virtually impossible. The dead knew her, now, and how to find her, and they haunted the corners of her mind just as constantly as they did the shadowed corners of her kitchen.

  "Please," she said, and buried her face in her hands with a deep sigh. "I know you all mean well, but what do you expect me to do?"

  The refrigerator hummed and the faucet released an occasional drip. A truck rumbled by on the street outside and she could hear the thump of club music coming from the building that backed up to hers. Inconsiderate little shits, she thought. More than once she had wished that she could send some of her accumulated ghosts over to spook them.

  Annelise blinked. The spirits had gone silent.

  She glanced around the kitchen, though she refused to look at the water marks on the floral wallpaper where the rain had seeped in during last year's worst storm. Soon, she would get it fixed, inside and out, but that would mean new wallpaper, and she had always so loved this pattern and its colors.

  "You've got to run," said Stroud the Butcher.

  Breathing deeply, focused and calm, Annelise raised her cup and took another sip of tea. This time she did not spill a drop. Stroud's first name was Herman — a family name — but he despised it because it had been his father's name, and his father had beaten him so often and so badly that in life he had been deaf in one ear.

  "I'm not going anywhere," she said.

  "Annelise," Manolo begged. "You must stop listening to the dead and seek only the voices of the living. Evil is coming, don't you understand? We can all feel it, in here with us. It feels us, knows us, overhears us even when we whisper."

  A shudder went through Annelise. Despite the sagging of her skin and the iron gray of her hair, she rarely felt truly old, but now an icy chill passed through her that she could feel in her bones. It made her want to cry, not in fear but in sorrow. What her friends were asking was impossible.

  "Where could I run?" she asked the empty kitchen, its corners full of ghosts. "Where could I hide from my own soul?"

  "Run!" other voices cried out. Priya, quavering with age. Stroud, almost angry with her.

  Annelise stiffened. Her body began to quake and the teacup fell from her grasp, struck the edge of the kitchen table and shattered, fragments raining to the floor. With a sharp inhalation of breath, she felt the cold weight of a spirit slipping inside of her, the fullness of its presence. The sensation was familiar, going all the way back to her ninth birthday, when the ghost of her grandfather had used her as a vessel to speak to his wife.

  Manolo, she thought, anger rippling through her. Tears slid down her cheeks. With the exception of her grandfather, she had only ever served as a medium to those spirits she invited, those she welcomed. During the Uprising, she had been betrayed by the dead, but for the most part it had been a tremendously satisfying existence, offering herself as a conduit in that way. But this . . . this was a violation.

  Her slippered feet pushed against the floor and her chair slid back from the table. Without her help, her body rose from the chair.

>   You bastard, she thought.

  "I am sorry," the dead man said, using her mouth. Her lips. Her voice, though the accent belonged to him.

  Annelise fought him, but the other spirits cheered Manolo on as he walked her across the kitchen, manipulating her as if she were some kind of puppet.

  "Oh," her mouth said, and she felt a sudden fear, deeper than any she had ever known. In that moment, the tears on her face were not her own. "Oh, no."

  Manolo left her. Where the spirit had been, a void appeared within her, a hollow place that made her feel bereft. Annelise frowned, listening to the shadows and to the spaces between spaces, the whispers of the spirit world. They were truly silent, now, as if there had come a sudden exodus of ghosts. The last time Annelise had felt so alone, she had been a child.

  The whole building seemed to hold its breath. The only sound that reached her in that moment was the tick-tock of the moon-and-stars clock on the wall.

  Something struck her, some invisible presence that knocked her reeling across the kitchen. She crashed into the refrigerator but she did not feel the impact. Annelise felt herself pushed, felt her own spirit forced deeper into herself, and she was not alone inside her flesh. What had joined her there, what had barged its way into her body, was not one of the ghosts with whom she was so familiar. This was no lost soul.

  The malevolence of its thoughts crushed down upon her and she would have screamed if only she had control of her own lips.

  Its mind touched hers and she knew her soul was forever tainted. It was a putrid thing, a foul sentience, but for just a moment she could see into it just the same way that it could see into her, and she knew that it had been searching for her. Not her, precisely, but someone like her. A medium. It wanted doorways, and it had found some already. Joe Cormier had been the first and the place he had died had become the locus of an incursion of evil so pure that her soul screamed at its touch.