Dancing on the Head of a Pin (9 page)

“Do you want to go for a ride?”

The response was as he expected.

A ride in the car trumped chasing a stuffed monkey hands down.

 

It wasn’t common knowledge, but there was an entrance to Hell on Newbury Street.

It had been there for nearly forever, even before there was a Newbury Street, when the Back Bay was underwater. And Remy was sure that the fissure had existed even long before that. There was no specific reason why it was there, no violent series of events so horrible that it had ripped the very fabric of reality. Nothing so dramatic. It was just that all over the planet there were places where the barriers between this world and the worlds beyond it were quite a bit thinner, and doorways between these planes of existence had been established.

As luck would have it, Remy had found a parking space at a meter that still had close to an hour left on it. He didn’t figure he’d be that long, but he popped a few quarters into the meter anyway. One never could tell when a legion of meter maids could descend, dispensing their forty-dollar greetings. The seventy-five cents was much more palatable.

“I’m a good dog,”
Marlowe said to him as they stood beside the car, Remy sliding the chain collar attached to the leash around the animal’s neck.

“I know you are, but you still have to wear the leash when you’re in the city,” Remy explained.

“I know you won’t run away, but some people are afraid of good dogs and don’t appreciate you trying to say hello.” Remy placed the file folder of his latest case beneath his arm.

“Say hello,”
the dog said, wagging his tail at a man in a very expensive suit who walked by talking on a cell phone.

“I doubt that man would like slobber on his suit. C’mon.” Remy gave the leash a slight tug and the two of them headed down Newbury. “Let’s go see what Francis is doing.”

“Say hello, Francis?”
Marlowe asked, looking up at Remy as they navigated the somewhat busy sidewalk.

“You can say hello all you want to him. Francis likes slobber.”

The former Guardian angel’s brownstone had been built in 1882. Francis had actually supervised its construction himself and had lived there ever since, acting as doorman and parole officer between the prison realm of Hell and Earth.

It was his job to guard this passage, allowing only those fallen who had served their time in the pit to pass. Some really did try to live good lives, hoping that someday they would be allowed to return to Heaven, while others seemed to be permanently altered by their time in the pit, gravitating toward a life of crime as a Denizen.

Marlowe stopped at the tree in front of the brownstone, before angel and dog started up the steps. Remy pulled open the heavy wooden door, allowing the dog into the entryway first. He was about to push the buzzer to let Francis know that he had arrived, when the door into the building opened from the inside.

A man was backing out of the door, holding a box in both hands, a long duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He turned to leave the building and nearly fell over Marlowe, whose tail was wagging so hard it made his whole body shake.

The man gasped, throwing himself back against the door, so frightened that he nearly dropped the large cardboard box.

Remy reached over, grabbing hold of Marlowe’s collar and pulling him away. “Sorry about that,” he apologized, forcing the dog to stand at his side as he reached to hold open the door to the brownstone. “He thinks everyone is his friend.”

“Say hi!”
Marlowe barked happily.

The man glared at them, eyes filled with both fear and anger. The look was one Remy had seen before, of someone who had once known the glory of Heaven but had been subjected to the tortures of Hell.

Which way will you go?
Remy thought, as the man quickly left the building without a word.
Will you seek the forgiveness of God, or the company of those tainted by the netherworld?

“Not nice,”
Marlowe said.

“No, he wasn’t,” Remy answered as the two entered the lobby.

Francis lived in the building’s expansive basement, and that’s where Remy headed, opening another door to the left of the lobby. Marlowe excitedly passed through first, his nails clicking on the wooden stairs as he descended.

“Careful,” Remy called after him.

“See Francis,”
the dog woofed.
“Get cheese.”

Isn’t it just like a Labrador,
Remy thought, holding on to the banister as he walked down the steps.
Only excited to see you if there’s a promise of food somewhere in the equation.

Marlowe had already disappeared through a doorway at the end of the stairway, and Remy expected to hear Francis respond to the dog’s appearance, but he heard nothing.

Remy entered the apartment. The place was simple in its furnishings, an old leather couch by the wall, a recliner not too far from the ancient furnace that squatted like a monster in the center of the living room area. Gray metal heating ducts snaked from its squat body across the ceiling, exiting up to the multiple residences above. A blocky armoire across from the recliner hid the big-screen TV. A framed movie poster from
The Wild Bunch
hid a door to a closet where Remy knew his friend kept a large majority of the weapons he used during his freelance work.

The coffee table was covered with Sudoku books and sundry other puzzle magazines. Most angels loved puzzles, but Remy couldn’t stand the things. His wife had been the puzzle person in their household. He felt that sad feeling in the pit of his belly again, remembering how she’d spend what seemed like hours at the grocery store magazine racks searching for just the right puzzle magazine.

Marlowe barked from one of the back hallways.

“Did you find Francis?” Remy asked as he maneuvered around the coffee table.

The Labrador stood before another door, his body rigid, tail wagging. This door was weathered, the paint peeling as if it had been exposed to the constant changes of New England weather.

“In there,”
Marlowe said, body rigid, head bent to sniff at the crack at the bottom of the door.

“You might want to get away from there,” Remy suggested.

The door began to tremble in its frame, shaking so hard, so violently, that pieces of peeling paint started to flake to the floor. Remy reached out to grab Marlowe’s collar, pulling him back, the door suddenly opened, giving them both a glimpse of the infernal realm.

From what Remy could see, it hadn’t changed a bit.

If Heaven was a place of awesome beauty and wonder, then Hell was its polar opposite.

Marlowe yelped in fear as a warm wind tinged with the scent of hopelessness wafted from the realm beyond the open door.

“Go,” Remy told the frightened animal, who had lost control of his bladder, leaving a puddle of urine on the wood floor in front of the door.

Marlowe ran off as Remy stared out across a bridge made from the bodies of the most unrepentant of the fallen angels. Their moans and cries for mercy made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and the Seraphim nature crave to be unleashed so that it could end the suffering of its brethren.

He would have preferred to turn his back on the sights before him, but the realm of Hell demanded to be looked upon, to be feared and respected.

Geysers of molten lava exploded up from the blighted land far below, the intense glow from the liquid rock illuminating the nightmarish landscape. It was said that there lived bands of fallen angels, those who chose not to complete their penance upon the Earth, preferring to live out the remainder of their contrition upon the wastelands of Hell.

Remy couldn’t imagine how they survived.

Turning his attention from the fearsome landscape to what loomed at the end of the bridge, he had to wonder, which was actually worse: the wilds of Hell . . .

Or Tartarus?

The prison glistened before him, and though surrounded by the scorched, molten landscape, it remained frigidly cold. Tartarus grew up from the barrens of the nether regions, so cold in its growth that not even the fires of Hell could melt it. It was wide at its base, rising to a jagged, gradual point like a pyramid of ice crafted by a long-extinct polar civilization.

Remy’s head was suddenly filled with a quote from a poem by Robert Frost,
“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.”

It wasn’t the end of the world—Remy had already been close enough to see what that would look like—but as a sight to steal away any sense of hope, it ran a close second.

The screams and moans from the bridge made of the fallen grew suddenly louder, their bodies writhing in horrible discomfort, causing the fleshy structure to undulate.

And Remy then saw the reason for the fallens’ distress, an orange light, like the pulsing of a star, had appeared from behind the wall of ice at the front of the frozen prison. The light grew brighter, and brighter still, an opening—an exit—melting in the face of Tartarus.

Remy stumbled back a bit, bumping into the wall behind him as two Sentries emerged. They were fearsome creations, angels whose sole purpose it was to watch over the magnitude of Tartarus’ prisoners, none more deadly than Lucifer Morningstar.

He could not see their faces, for their entire bodies were adorned with ornate armor forged from the stuff of Heaven, making them impervious to the malignancy of this damnable place. Their wings were armored as well, each and every feather coated in the same Heavenly metal that dressed their bodies.

Remy could feel their eyes on him, assessing whether or not he was a threat to them. They must have deemed him harmless because they turned back toward the cavernous opening, standing on either side as two more figures emerged from within the chilling blackness.

Francis escorted a naked man from the icy prison, holding on to his scrawny arm as they passed under the gaze of the Sentries, whose helmeted heads slowly turned to watch them as they passed.

Francis appeared as he often did, unfazed and perhaps even a little bit bored by the whole thing. He was wearing his gray suit, with a coral-colored dress shirt and red-and-black striped tie. Remy wasn’t entirely sure that the colors matched, but for some reason, it worked for the former Guardian.

The naked angel looked a wreck, his emaciated body caked with the filth of confinement in Tartarus. His eyes bulged from his skull, obviously in a state of shock. They walked across the bridge of misbegotten flesh, the screams and moans of those whose bodies they walked upon agitated all the more by the fallen’s passing. They knew that he was leaving and were jealous of him.

Just before reaching the doorway to the earthly plain, the Sentries turned and walked back into the ice prison. At their passing, the frozen wall began to re-form, and soon there was no trace that a door had ever been there at all.

“Hey,” Francis said with a friendly nod as he caught sight of Remy in the doorway.

Remy gave a wave.

The former Guardian was about to step over the threshold with his charge when he came to a sudden stop.

“Who the hell pissed on my floor?”

 

The parolee from Hell sat in the chair, wrapped in a towel, and shivered. Remy wasn’t sure if it was from cold or from having the residue of Tartarus scoured from his lean frame by Francis.

Francis handed him a steaming cup of coffee. “Here, drink this. It’ll warm up your guts.”

He took it, his eyes filled with emotion. It was probably the first act of kindness he had been shown in God only knew how long.

Remy watched the fallen bring the mug slowly to his mouth, a look of euphoria spreading across his haggard features as he took the hot liquid into his system. In Tartarus, they were denied any physical sensation at all, except for pain.

The toaster popped, and Francis took two slices of bread from the machine and slathered them with butter.

“You’re going to give the guy a heart attack,” Remy said as his friend brought the plate over to the towel-draped figure. With a shaking hand he set his coffee down and took the offered plate. With a ravenous glee, he began to devour the toasted bread.

“He needs some meat on his bones,” Francis said.

Marlowe’s wagging tail thumped the floor as he covetously watched the man eat.

“Where mine?”
he asked.

“You’re not getting anything; you pissed on my floor,” Francis said to him.

Marlowe lowered his head, ears flat in shame.
“Scared,”
the dog whined sadly.
“Marlowe scared.”

Remy reached down and patted the big dog’s side. “That’s all right, buddy. We cleaned it up. It’s all good.”

Before the toast was completely devoured, Francis reached down to the man’s plate, grabbing one of the pieces and tearing away a section of crust.

“As long as you’re sorry,” he said, tossing it to the dog.

Marlowe snapped it out of the air, swallowing the bread with a minimum of chewing.
“Very sorry,”
the Labrador said.
“Pee outside only.”

“Yeah, well, you be sure and remember that next time.”

“You’re such a hard-ass,” Remy said, petting his dog’s head.

“Damn straight,” Francis agreed. “Got to keep up my reputation.”

He turned his attention back to the man sitting wrapped in a towel, eating toast and drinking coffee.

“How are you doing?” Francis asked him. “Do you know where you are?”

The fallen looked around the room. He seemed to be in shock, which would be perfectly understandable, considering where he’d just come from. He opened his mouth to speak, but could only manage a dry croak. Remy gestured for him to drink some more of the coffee.

He did and once again attempted to answer Francis’ question.

“Limbus,” he managed.