Hellbound Hearts (14 page)

Tim Lebbon

He knew the way to Hell, because he had a map.

“There,” he said, even though there was no one to hear, “just there.” And he sat slowly in the long, lush grass, dropping his rucksack, water bottle, and hat. He was sweating, even though the air was cool and the leaden sky promised snow. The only item he refused to let leave his grip was the clear plastic wrapper containing the map. He had laughed, once, just after leaving the main road and starting down into the valley, because he'd imagined himself as one of those Sunday-afternoon orienteers he and Michelle had so often watched from the pub window. Come rain or shine they had always appeared, and come rain or shine he and his wife had taken their usual seats by the bar, watching, mocking. After that first burst of laughter two days before, he had mocked no more. He realized now part of what drove them: the need to know the way. And he knew the danger in maps.

Where routes and roads had once led here there was now forest, and streams, and places where the sense of wildness would put off many casual travelers. It was an easy place in which to get lost, and several times he had seen evidence of people having come this way,
only to turn back again: abandoned walking gear, discarded food wrappers, and once an old tent that had been home to moss and flies. He wondered what thoughts would intrude to wanderers coming this far without knowing for sure what they sought. He thought perhaps they would return home with the urge to kill, or to hurt even more.

But he had gone farther, and found his way.

The old house seemed to be in good condition, considering it had been abandoned for so long. The map placed it farther along the valley floor. Perhaps it moved sometimes, when no one was looking; or maybe the mapmaker was insane. He stared down from the lower slopes of the valley side at the place where he was going, and tried to take stock. The walls were alive with ivy and other parasitic growths. The grounds were overgrown, yet order was still discernable here and there; walls stood upright, rose arches protruded above barren paths, and trees were set at precise spacings across the extensive gardens. Between trees and rose gardens, beyond a pond gone to scum, he could just make out the elaborate entrance to the maze.

Labyrinth
, he thought, because it was so much
more
than a maze. The hedges beyond the stone entrance were confused from this distance by overgrowth, and he was worried that time had stolen the route away. But then he looked at the map again and knew that was not the case. The map said “maze” but promised so much more, and such promises were rarely wasted on lies.

Carrying only the map, he started down the hillside on his final approach to the place where life would change. Already he had come farther than most, and he felt a scratch of pride at that. He smiled—a sad, vacant expression like a corpse opening its mouth. Pride would be taken from him soon. He was where he needed to be, and solving the labyrinth would punish him for every wrong turn he had made in his life.

“Take me,” he whispered, hoping that Hell would reach forward and snatch him away. It knew his intentions and perceived his mind, didn't it? It knew that he belonged? But it could never be that easy.

As he climbed the dilapidated wall marking the boundary of the garden, he prepared himself for what he would soon face.

The house itself held no interest for him. It was said that an old man had once lived here, a one-eyed veteran of the Great War who had returned with something he'd found on the battlefields of Ypres and gone about constructing the labyrinth that bound the house to the valley forever. It was common knowledge that he had disappeared many years ago, but the truth of his disappearance was more precious. According to the map, and the jumbled and confused notes inscribed in its borders by some of those who had used it, the old man was still here.

So he walked into the garden, and it had gone wild. Rosebushes with stems four inches through ran rampant. Grasses grew long and swayed in the slight breeze. Brambles had invaded from beyond, smothering less hardy plants, and here and there he saw the vain attempts of those drowned plants to peer through; weak flowers, insipid leaves. That they were not yet dead meant, perhaps, the brambles were still embarking upon their gradual invasion. Close to the garden pond, a spread of Japanese knotweed had one part of the garden all to itself. He could still make out evidence of cultivation and some form of order, but now it was only slight. Easier to perceive it from a distance; this close in, he saw only the wildness.

It had the air of a fairy-tale garden, but he knew there was no princess trapped at its center.

He stopped to pick some fruit. They looked like strawberries, though easily twice the size of any he had ever seen, and the color was a deep, rich bruise purple. When he touched a fruit, though, it was warm. He left it alone.

The map clasped in his hand, he pushed his way along a path that was no longer there. The house loomed to his left, dark and gloomy with the sun falling behind it. There were open windows there, and doorways shorn of their doors, and he thought he saw the glitter of smashed glass. He was not close enough to hear the whisper of windblown ivy, but he could still make out the subtle
movements even in the darkness, as if the house's skin were flexing as it prepared for night.

“This way,” he said, challenging the garden to tell him otherwise. From a distance the route had seemed clear, but down in the garden the fear persisted that he was going in the wrong direction. He had seen the stone entrance to the labyrinth, but if he could not find it, would it remain open for him forever? Panic settled over him like a dusting of pollen, and he started to push faster through the exotic undergrowth.

One moment there was a wall of foliage before him, alive with the movement of flies and insects; the next, a spread of unkempt lawn, and then the stone gate. He gasped and paused, glancing back the way he had come, expecting to see nothing but lawn behind him as well. But the wall of undergrowth stood behind him, and there was no evidence at all of where he had just emerged. It was as if he had been standing here forever.

“There it is,” he whispered to the air, expecting and receiving no answer. “That's the way.” He walked forward slowly, reached out to touch the stone surround . . . and then stopped.
Is this my last chance?
he thought. He looked back up at the hillside, trying to make out the place from which he had so recently observed this gateway. But he could see nothing. He tried to blink away darkness, but the hillside had shunned sunlight and welcomed the shadows. “I deserve this,” he said, and a flush of such intense self-hatred washed across him that he could have finished it there and then.

But if he did that, there would be no
more
.

So he passed through the stone gateway into the labyrinth, a smile on his face.

He had spent a long time looking for this place. He'd explored labyrinths far and wide trying to find the right one, and researched those of antiquity: the Cretan labyrinth, created by Daedalus to imprison the Minotaur; the labyrinth of Clusium, ordered by King Lars Porsena of Etruria for his tomb. And more modern constructs had featured in his research as well, from those built in the grounds of great
manor houses, to the less obvious labyrinths contained and hidden within inner-city housing plans. Each had fascinated him; none had been what he sought.

And then the map. He had been searching for a long time, but in the end it had found him. And that is what convinced him of its worth.

Heart beating, skin sheened with sweat even though the sun was going down and the already cool air was colder still, he followed the path away from the stone gate. Minutes or hours passed, and not for an instant did he know what to expect. So he walked on, fascinated by the walls of the labyrinth, because they seemed to be maintained.

Given time and neglect, this place would have filled in with untempered growth. But the routes he took were free of intrusion.
There must be a gardener
, he thought, and he listened for the sound of shears.

Around the next corner he saw the first of his great sins.

He gasped and went to his knees.
I always knew it would be this
, he thought, but the reality of being faced with such a moment from his past was almost too much. His blood ran cool, and yet, as if to mirror the great sin, the blood in his crotch flushed hot. He closed his eyes in shame, but opened them again in lust.

So then, and as now, lust overcomes the shame.

She is far too drunk to even stand, and he has one arm slung around her back, hand beneath her armpit to prop her up. She is laughing and giggling, crying and muttering, and he is half dragging, half carrying her uphill toward the park. People pass them on the way home from the pubs, most of them too drunk to even notice.

He does not have that excuse. A few drinks, yes, but he is far from drunk, and far from not knowing right from wrong. Yet every now and then her loose left arm stiffens a little, her hand stealing across to the front of his trousers as she utters something between a purr and a belch.

“I'm taking you home,” he says, and that is not the truth at all. The park gates are closed, but the railings have been bent aside by a
generation of drunken teens. He feeds her through and follows, picking her up and guiding her toward the bandstand.

She slips from his grasp, loose and weak, and vomits as she falls onto her side. She has passed out completely now, and he looks around, trying to judge whether it is safe enough here, or if he should pull her into the shadows.

He watched himself, knowing what was to come next. His erection had subsided, because the memory was too harsh to bear, and though he tried to close his eyes, he could not, and he saw himself turning the unconscious girl over and tugging at her clothing.

To his left lay another route into the labyrinth, and he went that way before he had to see any more.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I'm sorry, Michelle. So sorry.” He had married her four years later, and she had always remembered their first lovemaking to be in her own bed weeks after that dark incident in the park. Over time he had somehow driven it deep down in his mind, giving it the hue of some minor indiscretion rather than what it actually was. And sometimes during their marriage, Michelle liked to role-play, and she asked him to treat her rough. To his shame, the memory made that much easier.

He started running, as if to outrun the recollections. He glanced back, but already his younger self was lost to a curve in the path, still grunting back there in that park from many years before. If only he could go back and change things . . . but this was not about going back. This had always been about going forward. His greatest wish was that he could do so without reliving the reasons why.

Still running, he came to another junction.
Always keep left
, he thought.
Or is it right?
But he was sure that such rules would not apply in here.

He paused and looked up at the dusky sky. A few stars were out already, and he wondered whether any of them would be in constellations he knew. That chilled him, and for a moment he almost turned back.
What have I done?
he wondered. He still clasped the map in his hand, and though he willed his hand to open, he would not
let it go. Bringing it closer to his face, he tried to see whether anything on it had changed. But it was growing too dark to see.

What he wanted, craved, was here, he knew it. What he
deserved
. Such things he had done in life, and in death—or whatever death became in a place like this—he would experience so much more. Much of it was the suggestion of punishment, but beyond that, hidden deep like the memories of that secluded park's rape, was the need for him to feel what this place offered. His loathing of mediocrity had often been his target of blame for the things he had done, and now here he sought the means to go beyond the mediocre spread of sensations he had experienced through his life. He sought more, and there were such stories . . .

He turned right, and soon the path led down a set of stone steps, treads worn through time and use. The paving underfoot changed from simple lawn to an elaborate jigsaw of stone pieces. The hedges continued higher than before, so that even if he jumped he could not touch their heads. Roses and brambles, flowers and fruits hung heavy. Some of the roses were scented to match their appearance; fleshy, secretive. He found himself aroused, so he ran again in case more memories came back to him.

The path opened into a small square, surrounded on all sides by the high hedges. There were two other exits from the courtyard, and before one of them he saw a man he had killed fifteen years before.

He froze, gasping in a breath that would not come.
Of course not, no breath, no air, because this is when it happens, this is when they come for me, when they're reminding me of one of my greatest sins
.

But a breath came then, and with it the memory began to play out.

Marcus is twenty-five, and he thinks he knows pain. His body is a shrine to agony. Piercings have given way to more intrusive adaptations: a tin can inserted into his abdomen; three thick nails driven just so that they pierce but do not break his skull; tattooed skin flayed from his legs, stretched and hung around a framework of
matchsticks and knitting needles. Marcus cries often, and sometimes his tears are dark as blood.

But he knows the truth. He knows that Marcus is a fake, and that the bloody tears are simply dye injected into his tear ducts each morning along with the heroin that goes into his eyes.

“I'm going further,” Marcus says.

“You're pathetic,” he says, laughing.

Marcus looks sad, offended, dye-streaked eyes wide as a whipped dog's.

“Look at you,” he says. Such a command is easy, because Marcus has his room lined with mirrors, both walls and ceiling. His dedication is such an indulgence. “You think pain is the way, and then you dull yourself with that shit you inject every day. You strut through town, thinking that stares are the badge to being different. But you're still just like them.”