First Circle Club

by Alex Siegel

  First Circle Club

  Alex Siegel

  Copyright 2015 by Alex Siegel

  Kindle Edition

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For more information about this book and others by the same author, please visit http://www.grayspearsociety.com/

  First Circle Club is the first in series. Please look for sequels in the future.

  Seams in Reality is an earlier four book series by the same author. Those books are:

  1. Seams in Reality

  2. Cracks in Reality

  3. Breaks in Reality

  4. Shards of Reality

  The Gray Spear Society is yet another earlier series by the same author. Those books are:

  1. Apocalypse Cult

  2. Carnival of Mayhem

  3. Psychological Damage

  4. Involuntary Control

  5. Deadly Weakness

  6. The Price of Disrespect

  7. Tricks and Traps

  8. Politics of Blood

  9. Grim Reflections

  10. Eyes of the World

  11. Antisocial Media

  12. Sharp Teeth and Bloody Claws

  13. Teller of Lies

  14. Faith Defiled

  Revision 9/25/2015

  Chapter One

  Virgil Wheeler stared at his own stomach. Blood was gushing out of a horrifying shotgun wound. The pellets had shredded his nice white shirt and had turned his flesh into hamburger. He was in too much shock to feel pain.

  He looked up at the face of the man who had shot him.

  "Sorry about that," the murderer said, "but it's your fault for following me. If you had just minded your own business, you could've retired with a nice, fat pension. I'll say kind things at your funeral. The official report will state you died in the line of duty."

  Virgil dropped to his knees and fell forward onto his face. Blackness closed in.

  * * *

  When Virgil woke up, he found himself sitting in a comfortable, old-fashioned chair. He looked around and saw thousands of other people in matching chairs. They were all ages and races, although the old outnumbered the young. The chairs were arranged in neat rows. The surroundings were solid white, and Virgil couldn't tell where the walls were.

  He checked his belly and found the wound was gone. He felt fine. Am I dead?

  He knew the answer intuitively. His body was as substantial as cotton candy, and he had no heartbeat. His surroundings had a surreal quality, but he wasn't dreaming. He was fully awake, perfectly alert, and completely dead. It was a bad way to die. My wife will be devastated.

  He tried to stand up, but it didn't work. He seemed stuck to the chair. He tried to talk to the person next to him, but his voice was silent, and he was ignored.

  Virgil realized he was holding a slip of paper. The number 7,331,513,555 was printed on it. He noticed a screen floating above with the number 7,331,497,213 displayed, but it was counting up rapidly. At the rate it was going, he wouldn't have to wait too long.

  He had no choice but to sit quietly. He wasn't hungry, thirsty, or tired, and he didn't need the restroom. Mild anxiety was his only source of discomfort. He thought about his life and wondered about his afterlife. He didn't see any fluffy clouds or pits of fire, but he knew his current circumstances were temporary. He was just waiting for the next step, and he hated waiting. It was like being stuck in the DMV. He performed a mental inventory of the mistakes he had made in life, but he didn't know which ones mattered. Back on Earth, it had seemed nobody could agree on the rules of good versus evil.

  Virgil's turn finally came. His chair abruptly moved as if it were on a track, going faster and faster. He saw mist in the distance with a bright light in the center. He was approaching at phenomenal speed.

  The chair came to a sudden stop.

  "Would you like to make an opening statement?" The distant voice rumbled like a thunderstorm.

  "A statement about what?" Virgil said.

  "Yourself. This is Final Judgement. I will decide whether your soul rises to Heaven or sinks to Hell."

  Virgil understood. His mind was astonishingly clear for a dead man. He decided to talk about his achievements in life.

  "I was a U.S. Marshal for twenty-five years," he said. "I caught over five hundred fugitives during my career. The Service awarded me practically every medal in the book. I'm a hero by any measure and certainly deserve to go up."

  A dark shape emerged from the mist. It looked like a man in a black business suit, except the creature had giant bat wings and eyes made of red fire. Its face was otherwise very handsome. Virgil intuitively knew the thing was a demon, and he wasn't surprised. At some level, he had always known he would go through this process when he died.

  "That's not the whole story," the demon said. "You pursued fugitives with far too much zeal at times. You're responsible for sixty-three serious injuries and twelve deaths."

  "Criminal justice can be a rough game."

  Another voice spoke, "Only four of those deaths were intentional, and the victims deserved their fate."

  Virgil turned his attention as an angel walked out of the mist. It had a white suit and giant white eagle wings. The angel's eyes were glowing white orbs.

  "Murder is murder," the demon said. "He must be condemned to the Seventh Circle of Hell."

  "You can't simply ignore the Eidum Clause, which certainly applies in this case. A hero engaged in the honest pursuit of justice is allowed leeway in cases of...."

  "I'm aware of the clause, but the Pheia Digression is just as applicable. When the justice degrades to vengeance, any moral advantage is forfeited."

  "But the weight of the good in this case is impressive," the angel said. "Even you must admit the Mithraistic sums are positive."

  "A thousand honorable deeds cannot erase a single mortal sin. The Venice Amendment made that clear enough."

  "The Roman Modification took the teeth out of that passage. Why do you persist in quoting obsolete clauses?"

  The angel and the demon went back and forth, citing rules Virgil had never heard of. He quickly gave up trying to follow the baffling argument. Every point had a counter-point. Every rule had an exception. It seemed Heaven and Hell had as many conflicting laws as the United States Government.

  Eventually, Virgil grew frustrated and said, "Do I get to talk? We're arguing over my fate after all! Yes, I made mistakes, and some people got hurt, but I always tried to do the right thing. I fought for law and order. I protected the innocent even if that meant resorting to violence. You of all people should understand how difficult it is to find the shining path when the whole world seems dark. Not every situation can be boiled down to a set of black and white rules."

  "You're mistaken," the invisible judge said. "I've read all the rules, and they are written in black ink on white parchment. I'm prepared to render Judgement."

  The angel and the demon stood at attention.

  The judge continued, "Virgil Wheeler, you led a heroic life worthy of great praise, but I can't ignore the occasional acts of villainy. The sins of pride and wrath cropped up with disturbing regularity. Your predilection for violence had tragic, regrettable consequences too often. I cannot admit a man of your rough character into Heaven, but you almost made it. I condemn you to the First Circle of Hell, otherwise known as Limbo."

  Virgil heard the sound of a giant gavel. His chair dropped down into darkness.

  * * *

  An ominous rattle made Virgil look up at a square
hole in the ceiling of his office. He knew what the sound meant and clenched his jaw anxiously.

  A stack of forms dropped out of the hole and landed in the inbox on his desk. The sound of the impact made him twitch even though he had heard it thousands of times before. The stack was about two feet thick.

  The heavy blow would've broken an ordinary desk, but his was made of solid black iron. The desk matched his chair which looked more like a skillet than a piece of furniture meant for human buttocks. Everything in Limbo was mildly inhospitable.

  Virgil grabbed a handful of forms from the top of the stack. He examined the first sheet which was made of a tough, leathery material. An annotation on the top read "DI-1317," but the rest was in an archaic language only a demon could understand.

  He stood up and started walking towards the appropriate file cabinet. The singular nice aspect of his office was its size. It was big enough to hold a football stadium and an attached parking garage with room to spare. There was no danger of him suffering from claustrophobia. Unfortunately, gray file cabinets filled all that floor space with barely enough room to squeeze between. The cabinets formed a dense labyrinth.

  The journey to cabinet "DI-1317" took a long time, but he didn't rush. No matter how fast he moved, he would be filing paperwork for the rest of eternity. He finally arrived, opened the top drawer, and dropped the form into the cabinet.

  The next sheet had the notation "PL-1667." He started walking towards that cabinet. His footsteps were the only sound in the vast space. The walls were made of solid rock, and thousands of torches provided light.

  Perhaps the worst part of Limbo was the loneliness. He assumed millions of other human souls were stuck in the same place, but he never met them. His only social interactions were with demons, and those conversations were hardly interesting. Demons had as much creativity as a typical tree stump. They simply served as moving parts in the great machine built for torturing sinners known as Hell.

  Virgil wasn't too bitter though. According to the demons, other parts of Hell were far more sadistic and featured bizarre forms of punishment. Heretics were locked in coffins made of red hot stone. Thieves were submerged in vats of boiling pitch. Virgil's quiet corner of Limbo wasn't so bad.

  The office had no windows, but it did have a door. The door opened, producing a loud grinding noise as heavy stone slid across stone. Virgil looked over.

  A demon walked into the office. Its shabby suit, small wings, and misshapen face marked it as a minor fiend. Virgil didn't have any reason to feel fear. The demon probably didn't even have a name.

  "Hey!" it yelled. "Time for your yearly performance review! Come over here."

  Virgil trotted over to the demon. The performance reviews were meaningless ceremonies meant to humiliate the victims, but they did mark the passage of time. This one was Virgil's thirtieth, so he had been dead for three decades. He wondered what was happening on Earth, not that it mattered to him anymore.

  He could smell the demon as he approached it. The stench was a mixture of rotten eggs, burnt meat, and raw sewage. Virgil stood at a respectful distance.

  "You misfiled three forms in the last year," the demon said.

  "Out of how many?"

  "7,712."

  "That's pretty close to perfect," Virgil said.

  "Close isn't good enough! You have to find the misfiled forms and move them to the appropriate cabinets, and we won't tell you where they are."

  Virgil looked at the sea of file cabinets despondently. "OK."

  "And we caught you whistling to yourself."

  "That's a problem?"

  "It shows a lack of dedication to your job!" the demon screamed. Steam shot from its ugly ears. "No more whistling!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "The temperature in here is too cool. The neighbors are complaining."

  "I have neighbors?" Virgil said. "How do I change the temperature?"

  "That's not the point! Once again, you have failed your performance review. You lack commitment to the fine art of filing paperwork. I have no choice but to recommend remedial training...."

  Virgil heard footsteps outside the door. The demon shut its mouth and looked to the doorway with a curious expression.

  The largest demon Virgil had ever seen squeezed through the opening. It was the size of an elephant, and its wings could've covered a house. Enormous bulges of fat hung low and swayed with each step. The demon's black suit was as shiny as polished steel, and it wore a black crown. Jets of fire streamed from its eyes. Virgil had grown accustomed to unpleasant odors, but the thing produced a stench which made him gag.

  The performance review demon squealed.

  "Go," the big demon grunted in a deep, booming voice.

  The little one vanished in a puff of greasy smoke.

  Virgil knew he was in the presence of a major demon, perhaps even a prince of Hell. Virgil felt plenty of fear now, but he tried to maintain his dignity.

  "Who are you, sir?" he said timidly.

  "Mammon. Hold on. I need a snack before we talk."

  Mammon snapped its fingers, and a grand buffet appeared. Fruits, cheeses, caviar, roast meats, cakes, bowls of ice cream, loaves of bread, and many other kinds of food covered enormous stone tables.

  Virgil raised his eyebrows. He hadn't eaten a bite since his death, and he wasn't hungry, but the sight of so much delicious food made him want to try eating again just to see what it felt like.

  Mammon shuffled over to the buffet. Huge rolls of fat weighed the demon down and made each step a labor. It scooped up food with both hands and stuffed its giant mouth. Virgil grimaced in disgust.

  Almost immediately, Mammon began to choke. Chewed food spilled back out and splashed onto the floor. The fine cuisine had putrefied, becoming brown and infested with maggots. Mammon just grabbed more handfuls from the buffet and repeated the process.

  Virgil stood by and waited for the horror show to run its course. He certainly wasn't going to bother a prince of Hell while it was eating. He didn't want to become dessert.

  Virgil distracted himself by thinking about demons in general. Most had a male appearance, but it was a bad mistake to think of them as men. Using a gender based pronoun to refer to a demon actually made them angry. They hated to be categorized in the same way as humans. Virgil had learned the hard way to always refer to demons as "it" even though it made for awkward speech at times.

  Finally, Mammon wiped its mouth with its sleeve. "I have a job for you." Brown goo dribbled down its chin.

  "I already have a job, sir." Virgil glanced at the thousands of file cabinets.

  "This job is more important. Hell has a serious problem, and we have decided a man with your special talents might be just what we need to solve it."

  Virgil didn't know whether he should feel honored or terrified. "When you use the word 'we,' who are you referring to?"

  "The Council of Darkness," Mammon said.

  Virgil gulped. "Does that include Satan?"

  "The Lord of the Pit is the chairman."

  Virgil's eyes widened. He chose his next words with great care because he didn't want to sound the least bit disrespectful.

  "What is the job, sir?" he said in a quavering voice.

  "An evil soul escaped from Hell and returned to Earth. In life, you were a master at catching fugitives, a legend in your day. We need you to catch one more."

  "But I thought escape is impossible."

  "It is impossible," Mammon thundered, "which is why the Council is so upset. In fact, both Councils are engaged. Heaven and Hell are taking this matter extremely seriously. Furthermore, neither side can find the missing soul."

  The demon cut loose a fart which made the room shake. Yellow gas filled the air, and if Virgil had had a stomach, he would've vomited.

  When he recovered, he said, "How can he hide from you?"

  "That is part of the mystery. I'll show you something."

  Mammon slammed its massive hands together producing a thunderclap. Virgil w
as suddenly in another place. He looked around and realized he had appeared in a library. Thousands of books filled long shelves made of dark wood. All the books had gray bindings and were consecutively numbered. The only exception was a golden book in a glass case. That one had no number.

  "Behold," Mammon said, "the Celestial Contract. These are the rules which govern Heaven, Hell, and human souls."

  "There are so many books!"

  "The original work is in the case." Mammon pointed at the golden book. "The rest are amendments written by various committees over the course of millennia. My point is the Contract controls Heaven and Hell. The Supernatural Realms wouldn't even exist without this document. I wouldn't exist. Before the Lord inscribed the Contract, soulless animals inhabited the Earth, and when they died, they simply died. The Contract is much more than just a bunch of words written in an ancient tongue. It is the law, and it specifically states damnation is eternal. Nobody gets a second chance."

  "Except for this one guy," Virgil said.

  Flames shot from Mammon's eyes, and its skin darkened. "You will track him down on Earth, and you will bring him back to Hell."

  "Yes, sir."

  Virgil certainly wasn't going to argue against returning to Earth. Any respite from Limbo was more than welcome, however brief. The specifics were relatively unimportant.

  "Hold on," he said. "My soul is also damned. How can I go back?"

  "Both Councils agreed to a special exception after a difficult negotiation," Mammon said. "The Contract was amended, but not just for you. Your team will consist of two souls from Heaven and two souls from Hell, all experts in their fields. You must understand this is a unique and extraordinary situation."

  Virgil smiled for the first time in thirty years. The assignment was starting to sound exciting. He couldn't wait to meet his teammates.

  "Tell me more about the guy I'm supposed to catch, sir."

  "In life, his name was Daniel Shipman," Mammon said. "He was a serial killer who preyed on young men and women. He stabbed his victims in the throat. He ended twenty-three lives before the authorities finally caught him. He was executed forty years ago and has resided in the Eighth Circle since then. We didn't realize he was gone until a pattern of suspicious deaths started on Earth. It seems he has returned to his favorite hunting grounds: the suburbs of Chicago."