What the Hell

by Hunter Blain

  Looking out the clearing windshield, I saw we were pulling into a vast cavern. A cavern that I recognized.

  My mouth dropped open and my eyes grew to the size of twin moons as my dream came full circle.

  “No. No, no-no-no-no-no!” I breathed out as I forcibly rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Stars bloomed in my vision until I relented and opened them again, leaning forward until I was almost in the passenger seat.

  “That’s an awful lot of noes you said there.”

  “I’ve been here before,” I lamented as I leaned back in my seat and raised my face to the ceiling.

  “Really?” Collin asked, legitimately interested. “Our files show you haven’t been to Israel. At least, not since the organization started.”

  “You wouldn’t have files of it because it was a dream. Oh, Lilith! What am I doing?” I asked myself as I leaned forward again and lowered my head into my palms, cradling my face.

  SAC Baker sat still in his seat, waiting for me to continue as the SUV came to a halt.

  I began to hyperventilate and my hands trembled enough to make holding my face uncomfortable. I pulled my head back and turned to face my chauffer to Hell.

  “I dreamed of this place, back in 1990. Satan himself came to me and warned me against working with Father Thomes. He-he told me it was useless and that I would end up his no matter what I did.” I could feel snot dripping down my nose, and I inhaled sharply to suck it back in. “An-and he was fucking right. Here I am, about to go to Hell. Oh Lilith! What am I doing?!” The tremor in my hands had moved up to my elbows, and I had to grip my knees to keep from shaking out of my seat.

  “You’re saving the soul of every human who has ever existed, and who ever will. Which, by the way, is over one hundred billion, in case you were wondering. And that’s just the people who have lived and died, not counting the infinite amount that haven’t even been born yet. You are being the strongest man in history, next to Jesus of Nazareth himself.”

  I looked out the window into the cavern where a single fire danced. It was only the size of a small campfire, but I knew the significance of those flames.

  “What will the history books say about John Cook?” Collin spoke.

  My trembling abruptly ceased, and my shoulders slowly relaxed as if on hydraulics. I set my jaw, wiped at the few tears that had squeezed out of my eyes, and opened the door, ready to face my deepest fears.

  Chapter 4

  My boots touched the stone of the cavern and, for a reason I couldn’t articulate, I crouched down and rested a palm on the floor. It was both warm and cold at the same time. I took in a deep breath and felt the cool, moisture-rich air of the cavern flooding my lungs. There was a slight aroma of brimstone lingering in my nose.

  I stood again and made my way closer to the fire. Terror stole my breath as duty kept my legs moving.

  “For my parents. For my parents,” I repeated over and over again under my breath. The thought of my mother and father was the powerful fire hose that erupted confidence over the roaring flames of existential terror. They believed in me.

  I stopped ten feet away from the flame, feeling its pull like a cartoon hand beckoning me off the ledge. I took a deep breath, stuck my hand in my breast pocket, and removed the vial of enchanted blood.

  “Would it be alright if we go over the details?” Collin asked.

  “I guess. But why does it matter?”

  “Well, I’d like to know what to look for, say, if you’re in danger.”

  “I don’t know how you would be able to tell because my soul will leave my body and I’ll be in the in-between. Once there, I don’t think you’d be able to do anything about it, even if you were to detect something was wrong, which you won’t because time will freeze for me, I think.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Fine,” I relented. “I’ll drink this, and my soul will go to the in-between, like I said. I suppose I’ll walk through the flames, just as Lucifer did in my dream, then I’ll use this,” I said, pulling out the silver key, “to guide me to the chest that contains the prophecy scrolls. While I’m down there, I’ll scoop up Dawson’s soul and smuggle him out of Hell on my return.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?”

  “I don’t know. Up my ass if I have to. All I know is nothing will stop me from bringing him back.”

  “If I may ask, what will happen to his soul once he returns to this plane?”

  That stopped me cold.

  “I-I haven’t gotten that far yet. Maybe you can ponder that very problem whilst I am whisked away on vacation.”

  “Didn’t you just say that time will freeze for me?”

  “Man, I don’t know what you’ll experience, alright?”

  “I’ll make some phone calls, just in case. But I must admit that this is unprecedented.”

  “Just . . . just see what magic you can pull. That’s all I ask. It’ll make me feel better, I guess,” I said as I pulled the cork on the vial. I brought it to my mouth, my hand threatening to start violently shaking again, and repeated, “For my parents,” and added, “For Dawson.” My hand stilled and I brought the vial to my lips, closed my eyes, and tilted it up.

  The blood was delectable. It tingled my lips, tongue, and throat as it slid down into my core. Warmth spread over my entire being, and a rush of power enveloped me, making my hairs stand on end.

  I checked on my well of power and was amazed to see that it was spilling over.

  That’s some enchantment, babe, I said internally.

  The light-headed feeling began as a grain of rice in the center of my forehead before spreading like a drop of oil over a glass-top lake.

  Knowing what was coming, I lowered myself into a seated position and began meditating. I focused on giving in to the parting between body and soul rather than fighting it, like my instincts were screaming at me to do.

  Within a few minutes, I could feel the final separation, and stood.

  The cavern was darker than it had been before. I turned to see Collin frozen in time as he stared at me with his hands clasped in front of his waist. Stepping forward, I pivoted on my feet and looked down at my own body. A string of drool was slipping through my lips and into my beard.

  “Ah, damn it!” I lamented, unable to do anything about how ridiculous I looked.

  I noticed as I turned that there was a pull in my incorporeal trench coat. My hand went to my breast pocket where the silver key was tugging me in the direction of the fire.

  I turned my head and saw the fire was gone, replaced by an archway with glowing hellion runes adorning the petrified wooden frame. Inside that frame, a single ancient door made of bones stood between me and the most terrifying plane in all of existence.

  Stepping forward, I steadied my nerves and placed a hand on the skull that protruded out. Turning it, I pulled, and the door creaked open. The overwhelming aroma of sulfur invaded my nostrils as heat plumes distorted the air around me. I had to squint lest my eyes melt in their sockets — which, quite frankly, I was getting tired of happening. Stupid soft, gelatinous orbs.

  Once the door was fully open, the heat seemed to diminish as I looked down a throat that vacillated slightly, as if alive. I stepped through the yawning maw of Hell and began my descent.

  Chapter 5

  My footfalls echoed in the tunnel as I crept slowly deeper and deeper. The passageway was at a noticeable decline and smelled acrid enough that I covered my nose with my sleeve.

  I was surprised to see that the simple gesture did the trick and helped alleviate the smell, if only a tad. I looked down at my crosses and was relieved to see that they were where they belonged. I would have to really give Papa T a hearty pat on the back for a job well done. My mind flashed to my aged mortal friend struggling to do simple body weight exercises on the workout ball, and thought maybe a not-so-hearty pat would suffice.

  After discovering my pendants had traveled with me, my hand reflexively went to my breast pocket where I could feel that Ch
rist’s nail and the silver key were still with me. I pulled out the nail and was surprised to feel an unseen power humming from within. Holding it made my fingers tingle slightly, and I returned it to my pocket with a, “Hmph,” of appreciation.

  The door creaked behind me and I jumped in a full one-eighty to see that the portal was gone. Though I had only gone about a hundred feet or so, the tunnel went on for miles in both directions now.

  “Shit,” I barked in a hushed tone as I clenched my fists, not wanting to alert anyone to my presence.

  While facing where I had come from, I could feel the key pushing against my chest, and decided I would worry about the portal later. I needed a clear mind for the task at hand.

  “Dawson, scrolls. Dawson, scrolls,” I repeated to myself in a mantra of muscle memory. If I said it enough times and began to panic, maybe my body would instinctively continue on. Yeah, that made sense to me. “Dawson, scrolls.”

  Facing in the direction the key was suggesting, I picked up my pace and began jogging down the tunnel. My throat was dry while my mouth salivated, but I increased my speed toward potential danger.

  I kept to the walls, pushing off from time to time with my hand as my balance shifted. I wanted to be as hard to see as possible, and jogged in a half-crouched stance.

  After what had to be thirty minutes of a steady pace, the tunnel began to widen until I was stopped at the edge of a cone. Looking up, I could see that I was standing on the ledge of a cliff smack-dab in the middle of the biggest mountain I had ever seen.

  Dropping my gaze below the ledge, I saw something that would definitely haunt my dreams. What was worse was not what my eyes took in, but what my ears relayed. From below, I heard the overwhelming din of countless souls lamenting in sorrow, wailing in anguish, or crying out in maniacal hysteria. It was an abattoir of agony that sent chills up my spine. The differing sounds roiled against one another, struggling to be heard in a cacophony of chaos.

  The key tugged at my chest, changing direction once I made it to the very end of the ledge.

  “Well, that’s good to know. Turn-by-turn navigation!” I said to myself, trying to focus on the positive rather than the monster of a shrieking elephant in the room.

  Unable to help myself, I returned my gaze to the first horror of Hell. My eyes scanned the scene below, and I began to understand that this was the funnel from which all new souls entered their eternity.

  From my vantage point, I could tell that fully armored demons, clad in obsidian, were ushering the hapless souls toward a pillar of flames. A lone demon stood at a podium in front of the pyre in unholy contrast to Peter manning the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Squinting, I could see he was reading an impossibly massive tome and giving directions to the demons, who responded by picking up the unwilling souls and throwing them into the eager flames.

  They’re being sorted, I thought to myself.

  My eyes broke away from the sight, feeling pity for those below, and scanned all around me. I was standing in between two massive mountains, with apparently no way to cross to the other side, except through the pillar of flames. At the bottom of the mountains was a narrow passage with a river of lava. As my eyes flew upward and the mountains grew in height, so too did the separation, almost like an ever-lengthening V. There was no sky, only a space between infinite mountains. Clouds of sulfur roiled, with green forks of electricity violating the air. At least when you looked upward on Earth, you had the sense of being encased by the world you loved, with beautiful outer space beyond. Galaxies littered all you could see, as dense as clouds, all shining to get your attention. In Hell, there was just the sickening feeling of an infinite nothing. No galaxies glinted at you, only the abyss beyond the sulfur clouds.

  Hearing the consistent churning of screams, I looked back down and wrinkled my face in disgust at the complete lack of efficiency the demons demonstrated. I instantly knew that souls would have to wait years, even decades, before they had to face eternity. That might not seem so bad, considering the reprieve they were experiencing, unless you considered the distinct fact that waiting was worse than anything. How did the saying go? When you worry, you suffer twice? The palpable anxiety and helplessness below flooded the entrance to Hell enough that I felt like I could do a swan dive and never hit the stone floor.

  Looking at the mountain across the River Styx, because I realized that was what the lava was, my gaze was drawn by movement below. My eyes searched the edge and saw souls being trampled and knocked from the stone bridge from which they clamored and into the river of molten lava comprised of viscous hellfire.

  My hand shot to my mouth as my eyes widened at what I saw. The souls fought to climb back to either shore or bridge before disintegrating like a piece of paper over a roaring fire.

  “Jesus Christ,” I exhaled between my fingers as I saw the souls vanish from existence.

  A moan of shock escaped my throat as I saw some souls jumped willingly into oblivion.

  “They do not cease to exist,” came a raspy voice from beside me.

  I nearly jumped out of my incorporeal skin as I landed in a fighting stance a few feet away from the one who had startled me.

  He was incredibly tall, at least seven feet, and made entirely of blackened bone. A tattered gray piece of cloth wound around his entire body, covered in ash that continually billowed off of him in slow motion, like a steady breeze over a desert or a current underwater. Lidless sockets stared directly at me.

  “Who the hell are you?” I cried out.

  “I am Charon, the ferryman,” he rasped at me with a muscleless jaw. His voice was almost a whisper.

  “Then what the fuck are you doing way up here on a mountain?” I asked, still on the defensive. This guy gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  “I am no longer needed,” Charon said as he waved a bony hand in the direction of the pillar of fire. As his arm pulled away from his body, the flaps of his robe waved toward me. The slow-motion effect was really making me uncomfortable.

  “So, what . . . you just roam the mountainside?” I asked, straightening my stance a little.

  Charon slowly nodded once, letting his arm return to his side as he faced me again.

  “That, ah . . . that sounds terrible, man,” I said empathetically as I dropped my defensive stance altogether.

  “I have waited for you, John Cook.”

  My head rocked back and I blinked, hard, as his words sunk in.

  “M-me? Why?” I stammered.

  “I am to show you the path to salvation.” His words were slow and purposeful, dripping with a destiny that I could not disregard.

  “Heh, already found that, buddy. My soul’s clean now.”

  “Not yours.”

  “Then whose? Dawson’s? Is Dawson down there?” I asked, feeling a spark of hope.

  “The one you seek has already passed through the flames. I will show you where he suffers.”

  “Where?” I asked, wanting to grab him by the collar of his, um . . . bedsheet? But I decided it was best to not mess with the ancient, seven-foot-tall skeleton guy.

  A finger lifted to point toward a path I hadn’t noticed before. My eyes drifted down the winding trail that descended the mountain until it landed on an obsidian boat.

  “Holy shit,” I exclaimed. “That thing is massive.” My eyes shifted between the ferryman and his boat. “You can drive that thing?”

  He nodded again, creeping me out with how slowly and purposefully he did the simple gesture, much like his spoken words.

  “Neat! Lead on, then, Skeletor.”

  The tall man stared at me for a moment longer and then began to float toward the path. How the heck had I not noticed the trail before? It was right by me, damn it!

  I followed close behind, but giving the scary dude a wide enough berth that I felt like I could run away if needed. I mean, not run away per se, because I wasn’t no pussy. I gave him a respectable distance just in case, you know, someone behind me up the path cried out for help and needed a sexy v
ampire to save them.

  Anyway.

  As I walked behind him, I glanced to the bridge where more souls were falling in, and a question came to mind that I needed to ask. “What do you mean they don’t cease to exist?”

  “When a soul perishes in Hell, they go to a place much, much worse.”

  I stopped in my tracks as I looked at the bodies that were sinking into the River Styx, melting. Now that we were closer, I could hear the distinct shrieks of unimaginable pain.

  “Wh-where?” I asked between shallow breaths. My mouth was dry all of a sudden, which was an odd thing to happen to a soul.

  “Sheol,” he said coldly, giving it the respect it deserved.

  “She . . . ol?” I repeated, sounding it out.

  “Yes. It is the bottommost place a soul can go. A pit of darkness and despair. No sight. No sound. No touch. Only infinite nothingness.”

  My mind flashed with the memory of being stuck in the after-verse as I waited for Heaven or Hell to claim me. It had felt like weeks or months just floating in the abyss of nothing. Oh, how I had longed for even a lake of fire to claim me over the maddening nothingness of the after-verse.

  “There’s no escape? Like, a soul can’t — I don’t know — commit extra suicide and just disappear?”

  “None has escaped from Sheol. None have found reprieve from the eternal punishment,” Charon stated. His voice was an unmeltable iceberg in a sea of licking fire.

  I shuddered as I looked and saw more bodies being consumed by the river of lava.

  “Come,” Charon instructed. I did as commanded, opting to walk a tiny bit closer as I eyed the River Styx warily.

  We made it down to his boat, which had shrunk in size. Before, it had been nearly as wide as the river that I now saw was at least a half-mile across. All the souls on the bridge had made the river look much narrower.