Hell's Pawn (7 page)

Teeth bit into him, and now J ohn found his scream. He fought and struggled as the poison made him sluggish, almost escaping from the P rop’s grip, but the fangs stabbed out over and over again. I t hurt. E ach puncture was the burning cold of ice. J ohn’s screams faltered as even his throat muscles went numb. That his mind soon followed was a mercy.

Chapter Four

A face, pristine in beauty, serene. A sculpture made of light. No, not light. G lass. The hypnotic eyes were two perfectly fashioned orbs, glass grapes set delicately inside their sockets, impossible detail carved into each iris. W hat master craftsman could create such perfection?

The brow above the glass eyes furrowed, shocking J ohn out of his repose. He tried to open his mouth to speak, to ask any number of questions, but he could not. He was completely paralyzed, unable even to blink, his field of vision filled by the beautiful face looking down at him.

The glass head pulled back, bringing into view a neck and chest just as immaculate.

J ohn watched in fascination as the glass man put a thoughtful finger to his lips. The gray walls of P urgatory were visible through his transparent body, telling J ohn that his escape had been a failure. But had he been rescued? He saw no sign of the spiders.

“You should be unconscious,” the glass man said, each word perfectly formed, his voice ideal in pitch and volume, “and yet, here you are, seeing things that no soul in Purgatory has ever laid eyes upon.”

As pleasant as the voice was, it was laced with disapproval. J ohn hadn’t been rescued after all. He had been captured.

“C aptured?” the glass man said, pursing his lips. “Yes, I suppose you could say that.

You were, after all, behaving like an animal, scurrying after a dog like part of a depraved pack. A more formidable man might have been restrained, a dangerous opponent neutralized, but you? C aptured. Downed like a mindless beast. B ut who is your keeper? Who unleashed you and allowed you to run free?” J ohn silenced the name before it could reach his mind, focusing instead on the image of a solitary tree in a park.

“Amusing,” the glass man said. “Normally in these situations I am unable to read minds since my guests are always unconscious, but I do have other methods at my disposal. There is one in particular that I enjoy. I am quite eager to see how a conscious mind reacts to it. Shall we begin?”

The glass man came near, his graceful crystalline hands poised before him. The beautiful transparent face came close to J ohn’s own, as if proposing a kiss, before the delicate hands pressed against J ohn’s abdomen. After minimal resistance, the fingertips passed into his body.

C old! L ike the spider’s fangs but a thousand times worse. C old and hard. The fingers slid further inside J ohn until immersed up to the wrist. G lass hands moved through him, opening him up in impossible ways, exposing his insides to air and causing them to ache. Was this what rape felt like? This violation, helplessness, exposure?

The face in front of him grinned, diamond teeth framed by lips made of stars. S o beautiful, but the sensations coursing through J ohn’s body were of pure revulsion.

L ike a careless surgeon, the glass man’s hands scampered inside of him, but instead of organs and intestines, memories were being manipulated. Dozens of experiences were brought to the surface, all of them painful. The heartbreak of being left by his first love, the crushing pain that came with losing his grandmother, the humiliations he had suffered in junior high, each feeling as fresh as the moment it had happened, but now all were occurring simultaneously. The glass man had found J acobi’s name long ago, but still he played.

L ife’s brutality came next: his drunken father beating him, or the night he was jumped by three men and became the victim of random violence. He felt everything, the physical pain dim and distant compared to the anger, frustration, and powerlessness that had accompanied the experiences. J ohn longed to moan, but even that release was denied him.

Then it was over. The glass man’s lips curved in satisfaction before he spoke again.

“There is only one system, J ohn, one path to walk correctly. We try to teach you that in life, to break your insignificant spirit before you come here. You don’t realize how generous that is of us. P urgatory was your last chance to learn your place. You’re nothing but a rat ungrateful for his cage, when you should be thankful for the shelter given to you. You should have obeyed our love. Disappointments like you don’t even deserve to be broken, only discarded. The rest of eternity awaits you, John Grey.” The glass man snapped his fingers and everything went black.

* * * * *

A rainbow of balloons soared into the overcast sky, theoretically breaking through the clouds to the blue beyond. A crowd cheered, and J ohn noticed that he was being carried, hoisted heroically for all to see. His head lolled to one side. He could see Dante to his right, pale and limp, like a fish starved of water. The two P rops beneath Dante carried him above their heads like a giant entrée making its way toward the dining room. W ith a grunt of effort, J ohn rolled his head to the other side to find J acobi also being carried, his wide eyes full of panic.

“We’re graduating!” the old man said. “You have to do something!” O n the contrary, J ohn thought. Heaven, Hell, or whatever came next had to be be er than here. He never wanted to set foot in P urgatory again, or to think about the icy hands that had played with his insides as if they were a toy.

J ohn managed a groan as they began ascending a hill. Dante had pointed it out to him once. Here was where every good soul went to graduate, an inaccessible green slope covered in grass that led upward to an ancient stone archway glowing with golden light. B eyond lay the greatest of promises. Heaven, sponsored by M cDonald’s, they had joked. J ohn noticed with some disappointment that the grass appeared to be artificial.

They passed through the golden arch and the sound of the jubilant crowd ceased.

The plastic grass and the hill had disappeared too, replaced by choking fog that suggested they were on the edge of P urgatory again. W hy hadn’t they been allowed to escape? Their punishment for trying was to be exiled? This was nonsense, but J ohn didn’t care as long as he got away. The P rops set him on the ground, then transformed into their natural spider forms.

J acobi began yelling, begging J ohn to “do something, do something, please do something!” Dante was roused from his sleep and panicked, reaching out to J acobi before the spiders bit them both to silence their screams. J ohn was bi en as well and went still after the first bite, not wanting to earn extra venom by revealing his natural resistance. O ne of the spiders tensed its abdomen and shot a blue line of web somewhere above before gathering John like freshly caught prey and rising upward.

All around him, other souls were rising into the air, not just J acobi and Dante. Their expressions of terror or confusion, all frozen in place the moment they had been bi en, showed that they had expected something more from graduation. J ohn almost envied their unconsciousness, the tranquil oblivion that followed the brief moment of fear. Perhaps he should struggle, be bitten more until his mind went blank.

The gray sky slowly faded into blue, but instead of hope J ohn felt only puzzlement.

This blue wasn’t that of the sky, but the electric, stinging blue he had first seen with the dampeners. Their ascension stopped abruptly, and John was hoisted upward.

Above him was a ceiling that stretched as far as the eye could see, a dome glowing with blue energy that pulsed around the frozen, unmoving bodies that were its bricks.

C ountless souls were pressed together, their twisted limbs forming a barrier against whatever was beyond. Already the spiders were working the new arrivals into this patchwork, binding with blue web that soon dissolved to become part of the abominable structure.

J ohn was stuffed unceremoniously into the mass of bodies. He wanted to scream, but the thrumming blue energy overwhelmed him, made even worse when more souls were layered on top of him. All he could see in front of him were bodies, souls transformed into corpses, translucent like frosted glass.

Despite his growing claustrophobia, J ohn didn’t dare move until the activity behind him had ceased. Then he tried moving his arm, causing a shock to run along his body.

He tried again and again, every movement sending another burst of pain that subdued him like the spider’s venom had. W incing with each effort, he maneuvered to identify his neighbors. J acobi was beside him, the old man’s hand reaching down to grasp the hand of someone below. I f the spiky hair near J ohn’s feet was any indication, it was Dante. Neither of them stirred. E xcept for J ohn, no one in the hideous barrier was awake.

He reached out to shake J acobi’s arm, but before he could reach it, the repeated shocks overwhelmed him and he lost consciousness. W hen J ohn awoke some time later, he chose to remain still and think rather than suffer further.

S o this was graduation. No Heaven or Hell. J ust a bizarre traffic jam of souls with nowhere to go. M aybe that was the truth. M aybe P urgatory was all there was in the afterlife. J ohn’s mind drifted, thinking of how J acobi and Dante had reached for each other before being stung, clasping hands like frightened children. He wondered how they felt now in their sleep, and whether or not it was a state he could ever a ain. J ohn tried his best to join them. W hen this failed, he grew restless and moved, clambering through the other bodies before passing out, but he was no longer certain which way was up and which was down, or if either held meaning anymore.

J ohn returned for his companions, and found that he could drag them along when he moved. J acobi was a lifeline linked to Dante, their grip on each other’s hand unbreakable. This gave J ohn hope. I f there was somewhere to go, he had an eternity to find it. M aybe he could work his way down and drop through the sky back where they had come from. The thought of the glass man’s hands made him abandon this idea.

I nstead he tried moving upward, hoping to find something beyond the dome’s barrier.

Time stretched on as he continued dragging his companions along with him, even though it doubled the amount of movement necessary and increased his suffering.

The process was slow and painful, like moving through electrified jelly. J ohn passed out countless times, awaking with his will diminished. For how many centuries had souls been left here to rot? Was it everyone who had ever died? Was the pain he endured for nothing?

Days, maybe even weeks, passed like this. S ometimes J ohn would quit, not moving a muscle and preferring to lose himself in his thoughts rather than suffer any more pain. Then he would grow bored and try again.

He shifted, feeling a sting and screaming in response. He continued screaming. No longer needing to breathe meant his screams could continue for as long as he pleased.

The sound wailed out of him like a ship lost at sea until it eventually broke into a sob.

A dog barked.

Hope, desperate and tiny, blossomed within J ohn. He screamed again, primal and formless. The bark came again, from behind him. I f the bark was coming from outside the barrier, as he hoped, then J ohn had been travelling horizontally through the bodies. He had experienced the same disorienting sensation in the ocean once, when the waves had sent him tumbling below the surface. O nly by relaxing and allowing his body to float had he rediscovered which direction up was. The bark came again, se ing J ohn into motion. He ignored the pain, only screaming now to trigger another bark that he could hone in on.

E ventually he stopped howling and began calling B olo’s name, for J ohn knew it had to be the same dog. B olo had been there since the first day.
M aybe the dog is G od,
he thought madly as the barks continued to guide him. J ohn still passed out regularly.

E ach time he awoke he was terrified that the dog might have wandered away, but every time he called out the bark came again.

Thrusting an arm upward for the thousandth time, J ohn was overjoyed when it was greeted not by pain but by a barrage of licks. J ohn laughed joyously and redoubled his efforts. W hen his head broke through the surface, he felt reborn. L e ing go of J acobi, he squirmed out of the sea of souls and found himself free, moving without pain. B olo bounded into him, moving through the air like a canine version of S uperman. He continued to laugh with joy as the dog licked his face, tears streaming from J ohn’s eyes.

* * * * *

B odies of light, very much like suns, radiated strange vibrations that could be felt across the endless void, swirls of color without names and in impossible shapes.

S ounds chased each other across space, noises more haunting than whale song and twice as hypnotic. S ensations travelled in waves, feelings floating along on an invisible astral wind.

J ohn stared, taking it all in, one hand scratching the scruffy fur on B olo’s neck. They were si ing on nothing. They had no gravity, and yet it wasn’t like the free-floating astronauts he had seen on television. J ohn could stop and move at will, depending more on his mind than on physical movements. All of this took a lot of ge ing used to, which is why he hadn’t yet freed J acobi or Dante. He wanted to be sure of his abilities and to regain some of his strength before he even tried. S o he sat with his dog and marveled at the wonders surrounding him.

W hen J ohn felt ready, he turned back to the sobering blue dome of bodies. I t stretched impossibly far in all directions, like the atmosphere of a planet and just as beautiful, despite its horrid nature. Bracing himself against the pain, John reached in to where he thought he had left his friends, grabbed a body part, and pulled. W hat came out of the barrier wasn’t J acobi, but a li le old lady. S he came to life instantly, gasping as if she had been holding her breath for a very long time. Her face flushed in excitement.

“Can you see it?” she asked with watery eyes.

“Yes,” John said, smiling in return.

“I t’s Heaven! J ust like they said it would be. The white clouds, the angels, and S aint Peter’s gate. Oh the gate!”