Текст книги "Aloha from Hell"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

In a couple of minutes a still-disoriented giant wanders out of the side hall. He’s covered in blood and other colorful fluids that I don’t want to think about. He stares at his stones, lost and desperate without them. I go over and pick up the end of one of the chains. He looks up when he hears the links rattle against each other. I hold the chain out to him. He eyes me for a full minute. I’m not sure what he sees. I wonder if the insane can see through glamours? I still have Hellion skin plastered on my face, so I’d be pretty confusing to look at if he can see my living body.

Slowly, he puts out a hand. I wrap the chain around his palms and close his fingers over the metal. He leans forward. The weight is different, but familiar enough that he knows what to do. The moment he puts his head down, he forgets about me. He leans into the weight and pulls. The stones scrape reassuringly along the floor behind him.

I go down the side hall, stepping over pieces of the guards, until I come to the door in the back. It’s locked and the sliding viewing panel is welded shut. I can’t be a hundred percent sure what’s on the other side. I slash open the iron padlock with the blade. Before the lock hits the floor, I kick the door open as hard as I can. It swings back and one of the hinges pops as the door swings open and hits the wall.

As I step inside I hear a stifled scream from the farthest, darkest corner of the cell. It sounds awfully human.

“Alice?”

Nothing.

“Alice?”

And a second later there she is. Eleven years I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve lost track of how many beings I’ve killed, and destroyed everything in my way. I’ve been beaten, stabbed, burned, and maimed across two planes of existence to get to this moment. And here I am and here she is and we’re together in the same room maybe a few hours before the end of everything. I want to grab her and kiss her, but I don’t think the feeling is mutual.

She has her back to the far wall and her teeth are bared. She’s holding a wooden stake. It looks like she broke the leg off a chair and sharpened it on the floor. That’s my girl.

“Alice . . .”

“Keep away from me!” she screams, and kicks a metal dish covered with foul-smelling slop at me. Have these pinheads been trying to feed her Hellion food? Even I wouldn’t eat most of that stuff and I didn’t come here on a direct flight from Heaven.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s me. I’ve come to take you out of here.”

She holds the stake higher.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, asshole! Leave me alone!”

There’s only one small oil lamp in the cell. All she can see is my shadowed profile from the light in the hall. I get closer so I’m not a ghost anymore.

“Alice. I’ve come to save you.”

She lunges and jams the stake deep in my chest. I fall back against the wall. A couple of months ago Candy gave me the zombie-bite antidote on the point of a knife and now this. Why do all the women I like end up stabbing me?

In this case the answer is obvious. I got so excited at the idea of finally seeing her that I forgot I’m sporting a robo-bug arm and a Hellion’s face.

I pull the wood out of my chest and toss it into the hall. Even unarmed, Alice looks like she’s ready to go Frazier and Ali with me. She’s always been like that. She was never big on backing down from anything.

Are you really going to sacrifice yourself to save your great betrayer?

Shut up, Medea. We’re having a moment. And I know you were lying now, so can it.

Getting staked isn’t going to kill me, but it hurts like a rhino giving you a flu shot with its horn. I sit down on a wooden chair Alice didn’t break and push the hoodie back from my head with my new bug arm. My boots are slick with the dead guards’ innards. My coat is covered in blood and smells like the sewer. And then there’s my face. For those few seconds when I first saw her, it felt like I wasn’t Sandman Slim anymore. I was plain old boring James Stark. With the pain the truth comes back. I’m in a Hellion asylum, rank, mangled, and horrible. I’m finally the monster I always said I was.

I have to laugh. There isn’t much else left to do. Go down into the deepest darkest parts of Hell, and you’ll see what I mean. They laugh all the time down there.

I reach into my coat pocket and feel around. For a second I don’t even know what it is I’m looking for. I pull out what Mustang Sally told me to bring through the Black Dahlia. My hands are bloody from my chest wound and I’ve left sticky red fingerprints all over the small plastic rabbit. I wipe it on my coat, but that just smears the blood. Fuck it.

I toss the rabbit over to where Alice is hiding in the corner.

“I was going to bring you a turkey dinner since we missed Christmas, but it wouldn’t fit in my coat, so you’ll have to settle for that.”

I see a hand dart from the blackness and disappear back inside. My chest burns, but the wound is already closing up. My legs are cramping. I want to stand, but I don’t want to spook her. I wish God hadn’t made me put out my cigarette.

Soon I hear, “Jim?”

I can’t see her, but the angel in my head can. He shows her to me outlined in the deep dark. The atoms that hold her together are the same as the air around her, her clothes, the walls and floor. And me. There’s no difference.

“Jim?”

“Hi, Lucy. I’m home.”

She comes over to me slowly, still afraid it’s a trick. I know the feeling.

“Jim. Are you . . . ?”

“I’m not dead and I’m not a Hellion. I just needed to borrow a face to get here. Trust me. This isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve done since we last saw each other.”

She kneels down and looks into my eyes but keeps some distance between us.

Alice was always the smart one. She read books and thought about what she was going to say before she said it. Sometimes she said the most important things without talking. It was all little physical reactions.

She shakes her head a tiny bit, an almost subliminal m">&sublimiovement.

“Is that really you in there?”

“You tell me.”

She looks down at my human hand. I turn it over so she can see the back. It’s like she’s trying to read a secret in the lines. But the hand is so scarred I doubt she’ll find anything familiar about it.

“Whoever you are, you really need to do something about those cuticles,” she says.

“All the beauty parlors down here are closed or on fire.”

She gets up and looks down at me.

“Say something only Jim would say.”

“Oh shit.”

“Nice start. Keep going.”

I try to think, but my brain is freezer-burned.

“Vidocq has our old apartment. He uses a potion that makes it invisible and makes everyone else forget it’s there so he doesn’t have to pay rent. He lives there with a nice girl who’s a hoodoo doctor but originally worked in my video store. Oh yeah. I own a video store. Remember Kasabian? The store used to belong to him, but I cut off his head, so now the store’s mine. Kasabian’s head is my roommate. He steals my cigarettes and drinks my beer. We usually live over the store, but it’s being fixed up, so now we’re in a hotel. I finally met my real father. He was an archangel, but now he’s dead. I really missed you.”

She crosses her arms. Nods at me.

“What happened to your face?”

“I had to get rid of it to get here and this one was available.”

“Put it back on. I want to see the real you.”

I look at the floor, smiling.

“Of course you do. But it’s not here.”

“Where is it?”

“Jack the Ripper stole it.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. I’m never going to get used to seeing the dead breathe. Or mimic the memory of breathing. I don’t know which it is.

“I almost believe you. Say something else.”

“For almost a year I’ve had the strangest dreams about you. I kno12"t you. w some were just plain old dreams, but others were different. It’s like you were really talking to me.”

She grunts faintly.

“I had dreams about you, too. Some were like you said. Just dreams. But I think a few were something more. Like we were talking to each other. I saw another girl in one of them. She had an accent.”

“That’s Brigitte. She’s Czech. And a zombie hunter. You’d like her.”

“Sounds fun. Is she your girlfriend?”

I shake my head.

“I almost got her turned into the undead, so it didn’t really work out. But I started seeing someone recently. You’d like her, too. She’s a Lurker, and when she gets mad she eats people.”

Alice gives a little laugh.

“They make me sound so boring.”

“That’s the last thing you were.”

She sits on the table and leans in close, like a scientist examining a new kind of bug.

“We need to find your real face because, seriously, human or not, no girl is going to stick her tongue in that thing.” She sits up. “And for the record, I missed you, too.”

She reaches out to touch my Hellion cheek but her hand goes right through me.

“Damn I was afraid of that,” she says.

“What the fuck just happened?”

She stares at her hand.

“It happens with everything down here. I guess since I was in Heaven, Hell things can’t touch me.”

“How did you get dragged down into this cell?”

“It was that crazy angel, Aelita. She had some interesting things to say about you. She said you aren’t human.”

And Medea Bava said some things about you.

“I’m humanish. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“What happened to you all those years ago? Where were you? I know it had something to do with Mason. He’s been behind every lousy thing that’s happened to us.”

“Like Parker.” Mason’s Sub Rosa attack dog who="ltack do murdered her.

“Parker.” She nods. “Whatever happened to him?”

“I killed him.”

Alice looks at me and turns away. She’s not sure if I’m kidding or not. I want to ask how Parker did it, but I can’t.

I say, “I know that Mason’s running what’s going on down here. And to answer your question, I spent eleven years right here in Hell.”

She turns halfway back.

“You seem a lot saner than I would be. I’ve only been here a couple of days and I’m starting to lose my mind.”

“You want to know something really funny? I’m the one who sent Mason to Hell in the first place.”

She shakes her head.

“This is officially the worst three-way ever.” She finally looks at me again. “I’m sorry I stabbed you.”

“That’s okay. The nonhuman thing helps me heal fast. Also, I can park in handicapped spaces.”

“So, are you going to rescue me or what? Aelita is going to drag me off to Mason soon.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Our deal was I had three days. And Mason is still waiting for soldiers and arguing strategy.”

“Whatever he’s doing, Aelita made it sound like I’m part of it, so I’d really like to not be here.” Her eyes narrow and she looks out the cell door. “How did you get by all the guards?”

“There were only two.”

Her eyebrows go up a fraction of an inch.

“There are a hell of a lot more than two.”

Shit.

I let the angel loose and my senses expand across the floor. The entire ward beyond the hall is filled with Hellion guards. The fuckers were hiding in the locked cells.

“Why don’t they attack?”

“They’re probably waiting for Aelita. She seems to be the one in charge around here.”

There’s no way I can get us past all the guards outside. But we’re only on the third floor.

“Step back. Thiighep backs is going to look strange, but don’t ask any questions. Just jump when I tell you.”

Alice goes back to the wall. I manifest the Gladius and smash it into the floor. It cuts through the stones like a blowtorch through a marshmallow. It doesn’t even make much noise. Just a low sizzle. Three hits and a section of the floor gives way.

“Jump,” I say.

I don’t have to say it twice. She hops into the hole and I follow her. The second-floor crazies are still playing their game. A couple glance at us when we hit the floor, but we’re not nearly as interesting as the game, so they turn away. I hack another hole in the floor and we drop through to the first floor.

There are a few Hellion guards stationed downstairs, but only a couple by the stairs. They’re surprised when Alice and I come falling out of the ceiling, but shocked when they see the Gladius. One of the guards tries to shout, but I take his head off before he can make a sound. Unfortunately, the second guard shouts a Hellion alarm command. I stab him in the heart and he disappears. I try to push Alice into the tunnel, but my hand goes right through her. She’s staring at me. She’s never seen me kill anything before.

“Go,” I shout, and she snaps out of it and jumps into the tunnel. When I get out I pull the door back into place and slash at the tunnel ceiling and walls, knocking down as much debris in front of the door as I can.

I let the Gladius go out and we head back to the manhole. She stops and looks at me a little like she did when I first walked into her cell.

She says, “What the hell was that in your hand?”

“It’s called a Gladius. It’s just something I found I can do.” There’s no goddamn way I’m explaining to her how only angels have them.

“You killed those guys and didn’t even flinch,” she says.

“First off, they weren’t guys, and second, I’ve killed a hell of a lot more than them. How do you think I got here? Do you think I got these scars on the debate team? Killing is what I do down here. And it’s what I still do.”

“But only bad things, right?”

“We’re in Hell. I don’t think Mother Teresa or Johnny Cash are in much danger.”

She has to think about it for a minute. It’ll take her a lot longer than that to make sense of the last few minutes and we don’t have time.

“We need to keep moving.”

“Okay.”

As we go, she tries to take my hand.01Cake my It goes right through me.

“Shit,” she says.

I lead her back to the manhole and we climb the ladder out.

I WALK ALICE up the garage ramp, skirting the crazies and the squatters. She can’t take her eyes off them. I get the feeling Aelita dropped her straight into the cell, so she hasn’t seen much of Hell. Lucky girl.

Neshamah is on the roof looking through Muninn’s crystal like a jeweler checking a diamond for flaws. He shoves it back in his waistcoat when he sees us.

“The prodigal son returns. I wasn’t sure you had enough fingers and toes to count to three hundred. I see you’ve brought back a friend and that you have a hole in your chest. Just another day at the office,” says Neshamah. He turns to Alice. “Was he this clumsy on earth or is all this blood a Sandman Slim thing?”

“A who?”

“Alice, this is Neshamah. Neshamah, this is Alice. Neshamah is the one who told me how to get into the asylum.”

“Thanks for helping Jim get me out of that place. I would have gone crazy if I’d been in there much longer.”

Neshamah holds out his hand to Alice. She looks at it like he’s holding out a dead squid. But out of a kind of doomed sense of politeness, she puts her hand out, too. She looks at their hands and then at him when they touch. She starts to say something, but Neshamah cuts her off.

“If it’s any comfort, you wouldn’t have been in there much longer. Probably just a few hours. A day at the most. Wouldn’t you say?”

He looks at me.

“If I don’t get to Pandemonium in about seven hours, the Kissi are going to come down hard on the place. The way Josef is acting I don’t know if they’re going to start a war down here or join up with Mason’s boys and make a play for Heaven.”

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. The angel in my head squirms like something is trying to get inside. I think he’s losing.

“I noticed Kissi lurking about. What exactly are they getting out of all this?” Neshamah asks.

“They’ll get what I give them. Nothing more and nothing less.”

His eyes narrow.

“Do you think it was a good idea to ally yourself with such, let’s say, touchy creatures?”

“I knew I was going to need help to stop Mason and I never got anything but the silent treatment from your bunch, so who was I supposed to go to? Besides, Aelita wants you out of the way, and for all I knew, she was the new CEO of Heaven Inc.”

“Boys? I’m new here,” says Alice. “What are Kissi? Why did Mason bring me here?”

I say, “Kissi are like angels, only worse. I’m not sure why you’re here now. I thought it was just to get rid of me, but with what Aelita said to you, there might be something more.” I look at Neshamah. “You want to jump in here with any insights?”

He shrugs.

“Mason wants to get into Heaven. She’s from Heaven. Maybe he thinks she hid a key under a flowerpot.”

“I don’t even know how I got here,” Alice says. She notices the sky behind Neshamah’s head and it must have just registered that the darkness isn’t night, but a coffin lid of smoke blotting out the sky.

Alice looks at me.

“Did you just say you’re friends with Lucifer?”

“Not friends really. We’re more like professional assholes who play golf occasionally and get drunk at the clubhouse before talking business.”

Neshamah smiles and addresses Alice.

“Actually, there is no Lucifer at the moment. The old one is retired. Your friend James here is up to replace him. As is Mason.”

Alice gives me that I-don’t-know-who-you-are look again. Wraps her arms around herself.

“Is that really why you’re back? You’re finally going to whip them out and see whose is bigger?”

I look at Neshamah.

“The Gnostics were right about you after all, you evil motherfucker.”

I turn to Alice.

“I came back here because I love you. But I’m also here to kill Mason because he needs killing. He’s not going to be Lucifer or this sack of shit,” I say, nodding at Neshamah.

“What does that mean?”

“I have to go. Let Rain Man here explain it to you.”

Alice stares at Neshamah.

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

“You might have run into one of my brothers.”

“Do you think you could possibly not be a prick long enough for me to go and finish this?” I ask.

“Are you running off to Pandemonium alone? That’s magnificently stupid.”

“I’m going to Houdini someone out of Tartarus, but I don’t even know where it is. Do you have a map of the stars’ homes or something I could borrow?”

Neshamah scratches his chin.

“I have to hand it to you, kid. You’re a pain in my ass but you’re not boring. Tartarus is in the Badlands.”

Alice reaches for my arm but her hand goes through me.

“Wait. We finally see each other again and you’re dumping me here with a stranger?”

“I know this stinks. But trust me, getting you out of the asylum wasn’t rescuing you. What I’m about to do is.”

She turns to Neshamah.

“Who are you? You’re part of this, aren’t you?”

“He can explain it to you after I go.”

Neshamah pats Alice’s shoulder.

“And indeed I will.”

“So how do I get to the Badlands?”

“Are you sure you want to do this? Once you’re in Tartarus, there’s nothing I can do for you. It’s not my domain. It belongs to my brother Ruach. And if you think I’m a bastard, you should meet him sometime.”

“If he’s around, I’ll give him a peck on the cheek for you. How do I get there?”

“The same way you got to the asylum. Three hundred and thirty-three paces, but in the opposite direction.”

“You really like that number.”

He nods.

“Actually I like nines. Sacred numbers. You’ve got to love them. If you people were better at math, you’d be as smart as me.”

I nod in Alice’s direction.

“You can take care of her while I’m gone, right?ȁx20right?&D;

“She was taken from her place in Heaven, so unlike some people, she’s one of mine. No one will hurt her.”

I start down the ramp. Alice follows me a few paces. I stop.

“Can you for sure stop Mason?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then promise me this. If you can’t win and everything is going to fall apart, you come back here so we can ride it out together.”

“I promise.”

“Okay, then,” she says.

I half turn away then pivot back.

“Did you spy on me for the Sub Rosa?” The question just charged out on its own. I can almost feel the angel trying to reach into my mouth and snatch the words back.

Alice stands still. I can read faces pretty well. If she had a heartbeat, it would be spiking right now. That’s all I need to know.

There’s a crack like a cannon going off as the building the Kissi set on fire collapses. I wave to her once and go.

I COME UP in the Badlands, though I don’t see how this parcel of the L.A. shit-scape is supposed to be worse than any of the others I’ve seen. In fact, I’d find the area downright restful if it wasn’t for all the blood.

I’m in a deserted industrial area surrounded by collapsed warehouses and bent and twisted railroad tracks following the L.A. River. The river’s concrete banks are stained the color of old bricks from a rushing river of blood, a tributary of the Styx. I guess this is the source of the blood bubbling up out of the sinkholes.

There’s nothing here that points to Tartarus. No signs, burning bushes, or sphinxes playing Jeopardy! for clues. The one time a sphinx tried that with me, I held it down and shaved it until it looked like one of those hairless cats you see in Beverly Hills pet stores.

I’m not far from a burned-out, crumbling version of the old Fourth Street Bridge. It’s all big Roman arches with a few out-of-place Victorian streetlamps to class up the thing because you don’t want your industrial wastelands to look tacky.

There’s something strange under the bridge. A bright patch of green. There are palm trees on either side and they’re not on fire. The green looks like fresh, healthy grass. In the middle of the little oasis is a white stucco forties bungalow. It has red slate shingles and it’s styled with the vaguely hacienda look you see on the older places. I go up the pristine walkway out front and knock on the door. It opens and the woman inside sibuman insmiles at me. Her face shifts and re-forms, showing the phases of the moon.

“I told you that in the end you’d come to me,” says Medea Bava.

“So this is your dirty little secret. Tartarus is the Inquisition.”

“No. I’m the Inquisition. Tartarus is your fate. The Dies Irae,” she says, and recites, “ ‘Just judge of vengeance, grant me the gift of forgiveness before the Day of Judgment.’ ”

“I like the sound of that forgiveness part.”

“And some receive it, but I’m afraid you’re a bit too late for that.”

I step out of Bava’s way, tromping on her perfect lawn with my bloody-sewage-waste boots.

“Then why don’t you scoot us on over to the Club Double Dead and let me in?”

She comes out, locking the door behind her.

“Seriously? You think someone’s going to steal your stamp collection all the way out here?”

“You’re not the only one in Hell with a chip on his shoulder. I don’t believe in taking foolish chances.”

“That sounds boring.”

She leads me to a rickety-looking metal staircase leading up to the bridge through a hole chiseled in the roadbed. Medea gestures for me to go first. I take hold of the railing and shake it. The stairs wobble a little, but it looks like they’ll hold. I start climbing.

“You know, I’ve been waiting here for you your whole life.”

“I hope you’ve got cable, or you’ve missed a lot of good TV.”

When we reach the top, she heads for the far side of the bridge and I follow. She stops abruptly halfway across and looks at me.

“You know that once you get inside, you can never leave.”

“That’s what Angie Summers said in the back of her daddy’s Cadillac on prom night. If I can get away from her, I can get away from you.”

“It’s refreshing to meet a man so anxious to embrace annihilation.”

“Okay. You’ve had your supervillain moment, now can you show me to the front door?”

Medea steps back a few paces and holds out her arms.

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“We’re here. Behold Tartarus.”

I turn around, looking for something.

“We’re nowhere. Behold fuck-all.”

“Look down,” she says. “Then jump.”

I look over the edge. We’re right over the Styx.

“In your dreams, Vampirella.”

“Is Sandman Slim afraid of a little blood?”

“He’s afraid of how deep that is. You want me to jump and crack my head on the bottom.”

She shakes her head. Shadows make her shifting features even more disturbing.

“This is the way in. You can keep a little dignity and jump, or I can push you.”

“Try it.”

I start for her and suddenly I’m airborne. When I land I slide about twenty feet. Medea just smacked me with a hex that felt like a tornado giving birth to a hurricane. I climb to my feet and brush the dust off my coat.

“If you put it that way, maybe I’ll just go ahead and jump.”

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you’ve been here.”

I climb onto the wide concrete railing and tightrope-walk down to where Medea is waiting.

“You’ve got the home-field advantage here, but I bet you can’t throw hoodoo like that back on earth.”

“We’re not on earth, and whatever power you have in this place, I will always have more. Now jump.”

“I’m going to look you up when I get back to L.A.”

“You’re not the first person to say something like that.”

“Yeah, but I’m the first one who means it.”

She gestures impatiently toward the river.

“Go.”

I glance down at the bloody waves and turn back to her.

“I don’t have time for one last smoke, do I?”

“Jump or I’ll throw you.”

I put my arms out and take a breath.

“As a great man once said, ‘I should never have switched from scotch to martinis.’ ”

I lean back and let myself go over the edge, tumbling through the air and slamming into the red river.

I hit flat on my back. It feels just as good as falling fifty feet into blood sounds. I hold my breath and try not to breathe in anything.

I sink and keep sinking, like the gravity in the river isn’t the same as the gravity outside. I’m pulled down into soft mud at the bottom. At least I hope it’s mud. Another gladiator once swore to me that he’d sailed to Pandemonium on a river of shit. I hope there wasn’t any backwash down here.

I’m instantly engulfed in the muck. My lungs want to crawl up my throat and hitch a ride back to Hollywood. The angel in my head chants a serenity prayer. If I could punch my own brain, I would. The angel stops long enough to remind me that everything has a bottom, even Hell.

I’m being squeezed down through sediment that gets harder every inch I go. The sucking soon turns into pushing, like a hydraulic press is pounding me down into the riverbed. This must be what pasta feels like coming out of a spaghetti extruder.

Then I’m fucking falling again. But only a few feet this time. I slide through a tight fleshy opening in the roof and down a steep incline, like a garbage chute. Nice touch.

I slip down another level and slam into the ground. At least I’m not moving anymore. I lie on the floor and breathe. My heart is pounding. I know I’m surrounded by souls, but they’re not paying any attention to me. They’re used to hard-luck cases sliding down the poop shoot.

The angel is awestruck by where we are and pissed about being stuck inside me. It never really believed I’d take us this far. The absolute end of the line.

Welcome to Tartarus.

I FELL THROUGH what felt like a mile of blood, but when I get to my feet, there isn’t a drop on me and my clothes are dry.

It’s cold here and dim, like light that can’t decide what it wants to be. Dark. Light. Or some strange wavelength that’s simultaneously the opposite of each.

The walls and floors are dull gray metal. There are gleaming conveyor chains overhead. Souls hang from hooks by their ankles. They’re being taken away, but I can’t see where from here. If we were on earth, I’d swear that I’m in a busy industrial meat locker.

The place is packed shoiv>s packeulder to shoulder with double-dead Hellions, human souls, and Lurker spirits. I can even see Kissi scattered around in the mob. It’s like a strange exodus, frozen just before it got started.

Aside from the overhead conveyor and the distant hiss and bang of machines, the place is almost silent, like the tens of thousands of dead around me and the thousands in the adjoining lockers have sunk so low in their misery that they can’t even acknowledge each other.

I didn’t think seeing Tartarus would get under my skin the way it is. I always imagined it would be Hell cranked up to eleven. Torture, chaos, and cruelty on a planetary scale. Mountains of flensed flesh. Mad bone seas. But this is worse. Tartarus is a dim, crushing despair. Heaven might not have been where you were headed, but now even Hell is a long-gone distant memory. Dante got it wrong when he put the “Abandon All Hope” sign at the entrance to Hell. This is where all hope dies, even for monsters.

I’ve only been here for a few minutes and the place is starting to bring me down like the permanent residents. I think about Candy, but it’s already hard to remember her face. I can make out the ghost of her body, but not her voice or how she felt. When I try to remember our room at the hotel, it feels as dismal and dead as this place. What am I doing getting close to her? Even assuming I get out of here, do I want to drag her into this life? Look what happened to Alice. Look where I am now. I’ve been here ten minutes and I already miss Hell.

Candy is a big girl and can make her own choices, but what if she chooses wrong? Will I be doing this again in a year when someone murders her and steals her soul?

The angel in my head isn’t handling any of this well. Tough shit. I didn’t exactly enjoy the ride when it took over while I was sick with zombie hoodoo. I suffered through its choirboy routine so now it can limp along while I figure a way out of here.

What looks like mist in the distance shifts and parts. It’s steam coming off an enormous old-fashioned open-face furnace beneath a gigantic boiler with transit pipes on top. Like a scene out of Metropolis, blank-faced but efficient workers take souls off the conveyor chains and toss them into the fire. The ones who aren’t frying the double dead are adjusting iron valves and enormous levers. They inspect gauges and bleed off hurricanes of steam to keep the pressure steady.

I push my way through the mob. It’s like walking through a wheat field. They’re so insubstantial that I can barely feel the spirits around me. The meat locker goes on for miles in every direction. I could wander down here for years without ever seeing a familiar face.

I yell, “General Semyazah!”