“Hold on,” Zag said. He stopped and raised a hand. “Ah, as I expected. You don’t really need that globe. More light is on the way.”
Ahead, there was a light under the surface of the river. It moved toward them in serpentine fashion, outpacing the current. Beyond that, more followed, like submerged lanterns. When the first drew close and drifted toward the surface, Donny got a good look. He flattened himself against the wall as his heart whumped like an unbalanced washing machine.
It was an aquatic horror, like the fish that lived in the ocean’s deepest places, creating their own light. A fleshy bulb of light grew from its head and dangled forward, poised in front of a yawning mouth with teeth as long and thin as pencils. It back-paddled with its fins and swam in place. The light pulsed and the jaw stretched even wider, inviting him in. It floated up, higher and higher, and touched the surface. Donny realized with a sick feeling that his entire head would fit in that frightful mouth.
Three more of the things appeared beside the first, and dozens more lights drifted toward them from every direction.
“See? The light-fish. Come to light our way,” Zag said.
“They seem kind of dangerous,” Donny said, panting.
“Oh, absolutely!” said Zig. “They’ll eat anything, including us. But there is nothing they enjoy so much as mortal flesh.”
“So you should try not to fall in,” said Zag.
“I’ll definitely try,” Donny said.
“You see them now because we are closer to the water, and they can sense us,” said Zag. “But they are everywhere, not just the tunnel.”
Donny grimaced as he looked down at the monstrous fish, and ahead at the narrow path. “Um. Don’t you guys believe in railings?”
“Are you nervous? Would you like to turn back?” said Zig.
“Don’t coddle the boy,” said Zag.
“I’m fine,” Donny lied. That electric, panicky feeling was starting to surge through his veins again. He took a deep breath and then another. In the nose. Pause. Out the mouth. “Angela said I should see this, right?”
“So she did,” said Zag. “Come along. We don’t have far to go now.”
They walked, and the dozens of light-fish swam below them, casting pale light in a rippling band on the walls of the tunnel, all the way up to where they met in a peak, high overhead.
The river ran straight between the walls, where the channel was narrower. It had to run straight, Donny figured, or else the barge would get stuck in the curves. The mist thickened and clung to the water as they advanced. It was deadly silent except for the scrape of their feet on the stone, and the water that dripped from above and struck the river with a plink or a plunk.
“There is no schedule for the barges, but they come frequently,” said Zig.
“Can’t the ferrymen tell you?”
Zig-Zag shook both heads. “The ferrymen rarely speak,” said Zag.
“Look now,” Zig said, pointing. “The end of our journey: the mouth of the River of Souls.”
Donny saw it ahead, above the dense mist that carpeted the surface. The path they were on was a dead end, tapering to nothing. The mouth of the river was a literal mouth in an enormous primitive face carved from stone. It loomed over them with a heavy brow, blank eyes without pupils, and a crumbled nose. With the chin submerged, the river poured out of the yawning jaw, and the mist flowed out too, thick and milky-white. Inside, Donny saw nothing but dull illumination and occasional flashes of light. Thunder rolled deep within.
In an ominous and mysterious world, this place was the most ominous and mysterious of all. It felt as old as creation. Donny had the strangest compulsion to fall to his knees and lower his head. It seemed necessary to whisper. “What’s that light?”
“A mystery,” answered Zig.
“Where does the river come from . . . I mean, past here? What’s on the other side?”
“Another mystery,” answered Zag.
“Nobody ever tried to find out?”
“A few went in, paddling a boat against the current,” said Zig. “They floated out dead, and the fish consumed them.”
Zag shook his head. “Some things are not meant to be known.”
“But you can understand the curiosity,” said Zig.
Zag harrumphed.
There was a splash at the surface of the river. The glowing fish scattered suddenly, dove deep, and vanished. Inside the gaping mouth, the light went dark, as if something huge had snuffed it out.
“Ah. How well we have timed our visit,” said Zag.
“Serendipity,” said Zig.
Another barge appeared within the mouth and pierced the fog. The horn at its bow sounded, reverberating off the walls so loudly that Donny felt it in his chest. This time he did fall to his knees.
Zag lifted him by the elbow. “This, you have to see.”
Donny stood again and looked into the barge as it slipped past. He expected a crowd of people, but there were none—only the ferrymen at the bow and the stern.
And yet, on the bare deck where the people would have stood, it wasn’t empty. Many hundreds of things floated just above the planks: clouds of swirling gas and twinkling light, like celestial objects scaled down to the size of apples.
“Walk with the barge and watch,” Zig said, prodding Donny along. Donny obeyed and stared, and something amazing began to happen.
The globs of light took shape. They stretched tall. Ovals formed at the tops, and tails oozed down below. When the tails touched the deck of the barge, they divided and formed legs. The ovals at the top became skulls and fleshed out into heads. Faces grew. Torsos formed and arms appeared, all made of mist and light, and hair bloomed on the heads. Finally clothing manifested on top of it all. Everything had just appeared, crafted from those clouds of mist and light.
Donny opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t think of a thing to say.
The barge was now full of people standing shoulder to shoulder in rows, transfixed. They seemed to come from all walks of life. They were dressed like everyday folk, except for a few who looked more formal in suits or dresses. Here and there Donny saw people in uniforms. A nurse, a fireman, a chef, a soldier, a policeman, a baseball player. One or two wore hospital gowns.
Something about the crowd of people struck him. “Wait,” he said.
“A question?” asked Zig.
Donny spoke quietly. “They’re not old. Most of them, anyway. Shouldn’t they be old?”
“What you see is not how old they were when they died. It is the way they always saw themselves,” Zag explained. Donny scanned the faces on the barge. There were lined faces and gray hair among the crowd, but most were far younger. Some even looked like teenagers.
“And it is the same for the clothes they wear. Ask a mortal to close his eyes and picture himself. The clothes he sees in his mind are the clothes that will appear after death,” Zig said.
Donny stopped walking. He didn’t want to talk anymore while the dead were right beside him. It seemed disrespectful, no matter how awful those people were. He watched the current pull the ship away. “Where is the barge taking them?”
“To the place where the dead will disembark,” answered Zag.
“Then where does the barge go?”
“To the end of Sulfur, far from here,” answered Zig.
“What’s at the end?”
“Another mouth, much like the one you see here,” answered Zag. “The river vanishes inside. And then, in time, it reappears here.”
“Are there lots of barges?”
“Oh yes. And lots of ferrymen, although you could never tell them apart,” said Zig.
Zig-Zag gestured downriver, and Donny started to walk again, still thinking about what he’d seen. “Well . . . what do you do with all those people?”
“We show them the error of their w
ays,” said Zag.
Donny tugged on his collar. “Um. How?”
“Not the way we used to, thankfully,” said Zig.
“I beg to differ,” countered Zag. “There was nothing wrong with the old ways. They worked perfectly well for a few millennium.”
Zig sighed. “Zag doesn’t believe in progress.”
“I believe in tradition and fidelity. I don’t believe in change where none is due.”
“Let us bring the boy to the great pit, and show him how things used to be,” said Zig. “Let him decide.”
CHAPTER 8
They retraced their steps to the cavern and followed the river’s course until they arrived at a place where the banks were carved into steps. “This is the first landing. The dead would disembark and march to the pit,” said Zig.
“And so it was for thousands of years,” said Zag.
They followed a path that led away from the landing, and within a few minutes they had arrived at the brink of the pit that Donny had seen from afar. Back on Earth, it would have been an attraction to rival the great canyons of the American West. The pit wasn’t especially deep. It couldn’t have been seventy feet to the bottom. But it was wide, and it went on for miles, with the other end out of sight in the distance. Narrow towers of rock rose from the canyon floor. Steps spiraled around them all the way to their tops, where thrones had been hewn from the stone. One throne towered high above the rest, and Donny shuddered to think whose seat that was.
The stone walls below were charred and blackened by fire. Steam hissed from cracks and fissures at the bottom. The rotten-egg smell of sulfur that rose up was almost overpowering. He held his sleeve across his nose.
“Come along,” Zag said, and they followed the path out onto a long tapering fin of rock that projected a hundred yards into the pit. It stuck out like a diving board and thinned at last to a point that Donny could have covered with his foot. They stopped before it became dangerously narrow.
“Picture the dead, marching this way by the thousands, prodded from behind by an army of howling, giggling imps with pitchforks,” said Zig.
“Loyal servants who willingly performed the task they were born for,” said Zag.
“With the dreadful and heartless overseers watching from their perches atop the spires,” said Zig.
Donny gazed into the pit. The drop was purely vertical at first, but then the walls curved out and flattened near the bottom. It looked to Donny like he could step over the side, slide roughly down . . . and then never be able to crawl out again.
“The fires are extinguished now. But in those days the pit was filled with Flames of Torment, a special fire that burned but did not consume,” Zig said. “Can you picture it, Donny? The hopeless march to the edge?”
Donny could picture it, and the vision made his gut clench. He imagined the crowd forced onto this ramp. Those in front would see the path before them shrink to nothing. They might try to turn and push back, only to be bulldozed over the edge by the sheer mass of bodies, and they would slide and roll and tumble into the inferno below. He remembered his own brush with fire on top of the old building, and how the flames felt even before they’d reached him. The memory was so fresh that he had to remind himself to breathe. To suffer in flames for seconds, never mind centuries or an eternity or whatever the sentence might be, was a pain his mind could never comprehend.
“Let us not forget that these are the wicked we speak of,” Zag said. “And this was the fate they earned.”
“All of them?” asked Zig. “All of them earned it, forever and ever?”
“Can we go now?” asked Donny. His nerves had started to jangle again. Then he almost screamed when a new voice spoke behind them.
“And who do we have here?”
Donny spun around. A tall stout man stood there. He wore a white shirt and a striped apron, a red bow tie, dark pants, black shoes, and a paper hat atop his head that came to a point in the front and back. The man looked like a character from a black-and-white movie, the kind of fellow who might take orders behind the meat counter in a small-town grocery. It should have been a friendly face, with that broad, toothy smile under the thick shiny mustache. But there was a hungry look in the eyes that made it chilling instead. The man’s chest heaved, his eyes watered, and his complexion was pink and red-cheeked, as if he’d been laughing too hard for too long.
Donny looked him over and saw more reasons for concern. There were frightening dark stains all over the apron, and the wooden handle of a blade stuck from the deep pocket at the bottom of the apron. And besides—whoever this was had crept up silently and cornered them on this point of rock.
“Mind your manners now, Butch,” said Zag.
“Keep your distance,” said Zig.
The man giggled. “It’s a live one, isn’t it?” He leaned over and gave Donny a wolfish grin. “Wherever did you find him?”
“That is none of your business, Butch,” said Zag.
“Hmmm,” said Butch. He tickled his chin and eyed Donny closely. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Hardly,” said Zag.
“My name was Marty,” the man said to Donny, his hand cupped beside his mouth, whispering when there was no need to whisper. “But down here they call me Butch. Do you know why?”
There was something about this man and the appearance of his skin that reminded Donny of the other dead residents of Sulfur who he had met. Even before Butch had referred to himself in the past tense, Donny was sure this man had passed his expiration date. “Um. Because you used to be a butcher?”
“Right you are!” Butch shouted. It sounded all the more startling after his whisper. “But not just any butcher! No, not an ordinary butcher!”
“Enough of this,” said Zag.
Zig gave a weary sigh. “Donny, it was long before you were born, but this wretched man was known in his lifetime as the Jolly Butcher.”
“A murderer of some renown,” said Zag.
Butch found this hilarious. He clapped his hands and danced in place. “A clever one! It took them twenty years to catch me!”
“He’s also a madman. Obviously,” said Zig.
“Putting a little more depression in the Depression,” Butch added with a giggle.
“Run along now, Butch,” said Zag. “This boy is under Angela’s protection. If you cause any trouble, she’ll make you pay for it.”
“Under Angela Obscura’s protection?” Butch tapped his fingertips together, an imitation of applause. “How wonderful! Does Havoc know?”
“What does that matter?” said Zig. “Run along, Butch. Don’t you dare cause any trouble here.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Butch said. He grasped the handle that stuck up from his apron pocket and pulled out a knife with a thick, nearly rectangular blade. Donny gulped and took another look at the sloping wall of rock below. He wondered if he might escape that way without fracturing half his bones.
Zig-Zag stepped in front of Donny. “Last warning,” Zig said.
“I won’t lay a hand on his head, shoulder, or flank,” Butch said. “I just want to know if he’s seen the trick!”
“Trick?” asked Zag.
“The trick of the dead!” Butch dropped to his knees and shuffled sideways until Donny could see him clearly. He put his free hand on the ground with his fingers fanned out, and he raised his knife with his other hand.
“Don’t!” cried Zig, and he flung his arm in front of Donny’s eyes as Butch brought the knife down.
“Ugh,” said Zag.
Butch howled with pain and laughter. Zig dropped the arm in front of Donny’s eyes, and Donny’s stomach lurched as he saw three fingers on the ground.
But they weren’t simply lying there. The fingers wriggled like worms and inched their way back toward the butcher. Where there should have been bloody wounds, instead there was vapo
r drifting out.
“That’s not the trick,” Butch said, barely getting the words out between his guffaws. “This is the trick!” He slipped the knife back into his apron, picked up one of the fingers, and brought it to the place on the hand where it had been severed. There, just below the knuckle, was another misty, bloodless wound. When he touched the finger to that spot, it healed instantly. The mist vanished, and the finger was whole once more. Butch laughed again and replaced the other two fingers, making his hand complete. “Ta-dah!” he cried. He held his hand toward Donny and flexed the digits. “Bet you can’t do that!”
Donny was almost afraid to answer, because he was on the verge of throwing up. “You’re right. I can’t.”
“No—we couldn’t put you back together, could we?” Butch caressed the handle of his knife.
“Warning you again,” said Zig.
“Didn’t that hurt?” Donny asked.
“Oh yes,” Butch said, getting to his feet. “The pain is just as exquisite as in life. But we dead can reassemble ourselves—and then do it all over again!” He rubbed his hands together and winked at Donny.
Zag was about to say something, but Butch just waved with his recently severed fingers and bounded away. He laughed over his shoulder. “I can hardly wait to tell Havoc about Angela’s new friend!”
There was a long, stunned silence as they watched Butch depart. “Sorry about that,” said Zag.
“Unfortunate, running into him,” said Zig.
“Didn’t know he was back,” said Zag.
“That means Havoc is back too, I suppose,” said Zig.
Donny realized that he had clamped his hand over his mouth, and had to remove it so he could speak. “So Butch is one of the dead, right? He came here after he died, a long time ago?”
“That’s right,” said Zag.
“But how come he’s just running around free? Isn’t he supposed to be somewhere? You know, getting punished?”
“Mmm,” said Zig. “This is a special case. Unfortunately for the rest of us, somebody down here took a liking to Butch and now keeps him as a pet.”
Donny's Inferno Page 5
