Letters From Hades

by Jeffrey Thomas

But when I started to tell her where I lived, she said she knew. Even if some Demon census bureau keeps track of where Oblivion’s residents live, which I find extremely doubtful, why should Chara specifically have knowledge of my living situation? Unless she looked it up. Or, more realistically and improbably at once, observed or followed me one day when I walked to my hotel.

  Having reread yesterday’s journal entry, trying to relive the sequence of events in Blue, I’ve asked myself if Chara attacked the Angels out of scorn for their treatment of her, or to protect me from their threats of bringing me to a torture center. It’s both, of course. But she didn’t act until that gun was aimed at my face. The thing is, I would have reconstituted from a bullet, would have survived even years of suffering at a torture plant. But had she herself been shot in the face during the struggle, she wouldn’t have survived. Just as Verdelet wouldn’t regenerate. I can only hope that Chara doesn’t regret protecting me now. Resent me, even, for the loss of her partner’s life.

  I went to work today as if it were any day, though I looked over my shoulder on the way to work, expecting Angels on bikes to come roaring around a corner—Hell’s Angels—seeking revenge for the actions I had been a part of.

  After my long, mind-numbing shift, my coworker Larry insisted on walking with me even though I had done my best to discourage his dog-like attention. His appeals for my friendship made me feel like a woman with an unwanted suitor. He wanted to go to get a bite to eat, and I only wanted to hide in my little bedlam and breakfast, lighting the candles in my gourds for yet another in an endless chain of Halloween nights.

  "Hey," Larry chirped, almost desperate to engage me somehow, "did you hear they caught five guys who raped a Demon and crucified her on a tree? I hear they’re torturing them in public…they’re really making an example of them…"

  Finally Larry had won my undivided attention; I stopped in my tracks to face him. "Where’d you hear this?"

  "From Jarrod, at work; he saw them yesterday. They’re on display. Jarrod heard they’re going to keep them on display for years, after what they did."

  "Which torture plant are they at?"

  "The one down by the waste treatment center. Do you wanna go have a look with me?"

  "Yeah…sure. Let’s go have a look."

  "Great!"

  All you had to do to find the waste treatment center was follow the smell. It was huge, and employed hundreds whose jobs I had no desire to fathom…though I had heard that sometimes citizens were chained in its depths and forced to dispose of the city’s waste products by eating them, as punishment. Maybe the torture plant next door sent them over.

  Both waste treatment center and torture plant faced onto another of those uncommon wide streets laid with twin rails for trains I had never seen. I asked Larry about them.

  "Oh, those are for the Black Cathedral."

  "Oh. Which is?"

  "It’s a church that moves around the city, stopping in one street for a few days at a time and then moving on to someplace else. I heard it even follows an underground railroad like a subway, and goes to other cities."

  "What for?"

  "You get rounded up and brought inside. It’s never happened to me, though, knock on wood." He rapped his forehead. "They torture you inside; what else would it be for? But they do it psychologically."

  I nodded, hoping to never know more about it than this.

  Speaking of institutes of punishment, before me now stood the largest torture plant I had seen in Oblivion—a skyscraper which inspired vertigo when gazed up at from its base, much taller than the more factory-style structure with its twin smoke stacks, adjacent to the prison where I had been briefly held. Its flanks seemed largely mechanical, and windows were few. I saw enclosed, movable rooms rising or descending like external elevators, sometimes even traveling sideways across the great edifice before they slotted into place. Steam hissed out of dozens of grates or ports, and thick greenish grease like slime lubricated its gears and crankshafts and chains massive enough to moor a battleship. Just beyond this skyscraper was another, equally vast, which Larry told me was the major barracks for Demons. They lived quite well in there, from what was whispered by the carefully selected human servants permitted to work inside it. But Larry said he’d just as soon enter into the Demon city of Tartarus as venture inside that ominous black tower.

  The torture tower had various terrace-like structures, tiers or layers, that grew narrower as the building rose, causing it to taper as if it were some very attenuated ziggurat. It was on the lowest and broadest of these tiers that the five prisoners were being exhibited; there was already a small crowd of pedestrians gathered, craning their necks and shielding their eyes against the glowing sky for a half-fearful, half-morbid look.

  The prisoners were evenly spaced across the front of this ledge, right above the massive iron doors of the plant’s front entrance. Just as we arrived, they were being executed. Again.

  One man sat in a chair with his wrists shackled to its arms, his ankles to its legs, and a noose around his neck. A trapdoor gave out and he fell, jerked in his restraining chair, which turned and swayed as the man choked and gagged and finally lost consciousness. The way the noose was knotted or looped around his neck, or the short length of the fall, or some other factor prevented it from being a quick and merciful hanging. But as soon as he was unconscious, the man and chair were hoisted higher, the trapdoor swung back into place, and the chair was lowered onto it again. Eventually the man would heal, recover, wake…to go through it all again. And this, Larry reiterated, would go on for a year at least. Who knows…maybe ten. Maybe for generations.

  Another man sat in a similar metal chair, but he was being electrocuted. We could smell his burning flesh as he quaked horribly in his chair, the air crackling with a charge so powerful I thought I could even feel the hairs stirring on my arms from this distance. We saw the man’s eyes burst, and blood oozed thickly to further stain his already caked shirt. Like perennials, they would grow back. To be harvested again. The endless cycle of death and rebirth. Yin and yang.

  The other three men suffered in similar ways. Mock executions. A guillotine (this victim was longer in recovering than the hanged man, naturally). A gas chamber made of thick glass, looking a bit like a phone booth. These five young men not only suffered the intense pain of death, again and again, but even more horribly, the anticipation of that death. Would they get used to it eventually? Even find a way, Zen-like, to tune it out, to project their consciousness outside of themselves? Or, similarly, would they merely flee into an insanity from which they might never be resurrected?

  In a voice of exaggerated reverence, Larry said, "When I look at these five guys, I don’t see a warning to behave myself. You know what I see?"

  "What’s that?"

  "I see martyrs. Like saints…"

  My reaction was more mixed, more ambiguous. I had seen what these men had done to Chara, how they had crucified her and stuck a spear into her and perhaps left her to die…die as they themselves couldn’t (though they might well consider her more fortunate, for that). And they had defiled her with that spear before sticking it through her. She was a woman. And they were men.

  But still…she was a Demon, a monster. And they were men. In life, they might not have been rapists, gangsters, terrorists, but just regular working guys like me. For being brave enough to attack a Demon, and best one despite her strength and fighting prowess, shouldn’t I view them as heroes like Larry did?

  Larry raised his hand high and gave the peace sign, so the prisoners could see it, and know at the very least that there were those who appreciated their efforts, and sympathized with their pain.

  I thought I saw the eyes of the man who would soon be hanged again flick to Larry, attracted by his gesture, and then dart nervously to me. I, however, did not raise a gesture to him.

  On the way home, Larry quickly forgot about the tortured men and gave me a list of his favorite movies. (Sophomoric, misogynistic splatter
flicks, mostly.) I was grateful, since I didn’t want to end up telling him that it was me who had rescued the Demon crucified by his five suffering saints.

  Day 66.

  My little wind-up timer woke me up this "morning" after I’d set it for six hours. I’d slept entirely through without once waking from a nightmare, or hearing an especially loud scream from outside, and I was more comfortable at night now that my flu was letting up.

  While I was dressing for work, I thought I heard a rustling sound or movement outside my flophouse flat’s door. I thought it might be the landlord’s young assistant, but when I got my shirt over my head and went to the door, I found no one in the dim narrow hallway beyond.

  Had it been someone? But maybe not the young girl?

  Who was I kidding? Chara wouldn’t be coming to meet with me. For all I knew, she had already been captured. Executed…

  I was late to work because I’d had to wait out a lava shower. Good thing it was only a brief one. I thought my group leader Bruce would be angry, but my concern shifted to other directions when I approached my work area and found Bruce waiting for me there looking very timid instead. An Angel and a Celestial were waiting with him.

  The Angel turned to address me, Bruce remaining quiet all the while—as did the Celestial. After confirming my identity, the Angel introduced himself: "I’m Inspector Turner." And he actually held out his hand for me to shake, which I did. He had a mild Southern accent, a low soft voice, his silvery sideburns the only hair that showed under the conical white hat he wore. He was shorter than I, thickset. The Celestial was distinctly less meaty. Where this Inspector Turner was once a mortal man, Celestials are akin to the Demons in that they’ve never known a terrestrial life, are golems without a true soul. This unspeaking creature was tall, very slender, wearing only a kind of snug white sarong around its hips and legs, its chest shallow and bony. It had no wings, but its flesh was as white as a Demon warrior’s…whiter, in that it seemed to have a faint bioluminescence. This subtle glow gave it an almost blurry aspect. Its hair was longish, more white than blond…the face very pretty, if dour, and so androgynous that I wouldn’t have known its gender if not for the absence of breasts. Then again, unlike the humanoid Demons, it didn’t even have nipples (or a navel), so maybe gender was not a consideration. Its eyes were most disturbing of all; unnaturally blue, weirdly flat like the eyes of a character in a video game, and even more blurry than its phosphorescent flesh. Even when it moved its head only slightly the blue eyes seemed to leave brief trails of color smudged on the air.

  "What can I do for you, Inspector?" I asked in as polite and panic-free a voice as I could muster.

  "Why don’t we go and talk in Mr. Gold’s office, where it’s less noisy, shall we?"

  "Mr. Gold?" I asked.

  "Your supervisor. Mr. Gold."

  Was that his name? This was the first I’d heard of him. I only ever saw Bruce, and I knew no more regarding the purpose of this plant in general and my job in particular than I had on my first day. I suspected there was no purpose. Just something to keep the Damned laboring. Well, from what I’d heard it was better than working amongst the scorching foundries and forges in the multi-leveled cellar world beneath Oblivion, or in the adjacent mine tunnels where ore was transported from the Slag Mountains. If you worked down there willingly, as many did, you could afford a nice apartment, maybe your own little house. Many didn’t work there willingly; if found to be jobless, loitering, aimless, one might be rounded up as slave labor. Either way, I’d stick to my perhaps bogus job, no questions asked.

  Turner led me into a little room dominated by a desk of welded metal plates, so thoroughly oxidized that it looked painted in coagulated and flaking gore. When the Celestial closed the door behind me, I turned to see that Bruce no longer accompanied us. I never thought I’d miss that little prick. Turner gestured to a chair of purplish wood, and I sat. He himself slipped beside Mr. Gold’s cluttered desk. The Celestial stood by the door, unnervingly out of my sight behind me though I imagined I could feel his/her chilly glow.

  "I have a few questions for you, about this Demon named Chara, who attacked two Angels in the establishment called Blue a little while back." He didn’t say a few "days" ago. He might not portion out time in the same way I did.

  "I’ll do what I can," I offered, after I had swallowed a hard lump I thought might choke me. I imagined that ethereal being pinning me from behind while the Angel removed something scalpel-sharp from inside his robe.

  "I was a detective in life, you know," Turner said, leaning back in his creaking chair, absently rifling some enigmatic graphs or charts on Gold’s desk. "Thirty-two years… Montgomery, Alabama."

  "Never been there. Alabama."

  "Ahh. And where are you from?"

  "Eastborough. Massachusetts."

  "Small town boy."

  "Smallish, yeah."

  "I went to Boston once, for a conference. Nice old town."

  "Mm-hm."

  Turner leaned forward again. "You rescued this Demon, I understand, when you chanced upon her on your way to Oblivion."

  "Yes. I found her nailed to a tree, with a spear in her. She was weak and might have died, so I guess I felt sorry for her."

  "For a Demon. Interesting."

  "I’d never met her kind before. The human kind. So that sort of…effected me, I guess. If I’d met them sooner…been mistreated by them…I dunno…maybe I wouldn’t have…I don’t know."

  "Well, it’s a noble gesture. You needn’t try to rationalize it."

  "Thanks." I wanted to glance behind me at that ghost in the flesh.

  "Did you know that they captured the five men who did that to her?"

  "Yes, sir—I saw them yesterday."

  "How did you hear about that?" Did I see his eyes narrow ever so slightly? Where did he imagine I might have learned about the capture of the men?

  "A coworker told me. He took me there to have a look."

  "I see."

  "I never found out what she was doing out there, in the woods, when they caught her," I said truthfully, hoping he might enlighten me.

  "The Demon Chara and some others were flushing out a gang of humans who were camped in the forest. A little gypsy-style band of troublemakers. They’d killed an Overseer and his attendants a while back, and maybe some other Demons. It seems like it was becoming an occupation for these men, but I suppose their biggest mistake was letting one of their victims live to identify them. When Chara’s group raided the humans’ camp they scattered, so the Demons had to split up to chase them down. They became separated from each other. When her companions didn’t find Chara they assumed she’d herded her prisoners on back to Oblivion for proper punishment. She might have been discovered by a search party before she died. Or maybe she wouldn’t have. So it was indeed an admirable thing you did, my boy." He sighed, looked around him at more charts and grease-smudged reports on the walls. "And while I feel badly for what this creature suffered at the hands of those troublemakers, and I’m glad that they’ve been tracked down and brought to justice, it’s still ironic and unfortunate that now she herself is guilty of some grave misconduct. And, has become a fugitive from justice, just like her own attackers." His blue eyes, more piercing than the Celestial’s despite being less unearthly, returned to lock onto my own. "Her attack on those two gentlemen in Blue is an extremely serious matter. Angels visiting Hell during war games expect to be attacked, within the context of those games…but certainly not in this manner. This was not a game, but an act of pure hostility and disrespect. For a Demon to behave in this way toward two Angels…" He wagged his head, tossed up his hands and let them fall fatalistically to the desktop. "It’s beyond insubordination. It’s blasphemous…sacrilege."

  "I understand," I said lamely.

  "At least her partner, the Demon Verdelet, has already paid for her own involvement. In fact, it was by identifying Verdelet’s body that we determined who our fugitive was."

  "I see."

/>   Turner fondled a paperweight, a greenish lump of half-melted glass. Inside it like a fly in amber was what may or may not have been a doll’s eye. He weighed it in his palm, as if contemplating a skull’s resistance to it. "According to my report…the statement of Mr. Butler and Mr. Franklin…you acted in a chivalrous manner toward the Demon Chara, for a second time, in this Blue establishment."

  "Well," I stammered, "it’s just my upbringing, I guess. I know she’s a Demon, but she looks so human. And so when I saw two men bullying her…well…I guess I felt protective, or…"

  "I understand." He held up his free hand. "Honestly. And I realize you didn’t perpetrate any violent acts against either of these gentlemen, yourself. Though I have to tell you, they are rather unhappy with you." He gave a little chuckle, as if sharing a joke with me. "They’d like to see you punished severely, just for the disrespect you showed them as well…"

  "But sir, I…"

  Again the chuckle and the staying palm, raised as if to give me a blessing. He set down that chunk of waste glass with the hopefully insentient eye. "I assured the gentlemen that you’d be helpful when I questioned you. It’s obvious that a human wouldn’t be in allegiance with a Demon."

  "Right. Thanks. I’m trying to be helpful."

  "And I appreciate that, sir. As I said, I knew you’d be cooperative. Granted," he pouted and spread his blunt hands, "it is odd that on two occasions you acted in a chivalrous way toward this same creature, but I imagine that coincidence comes into play."