Once Upon a Time in Hell (2 page)

According to Elwyn, whenever he thought about asking the voice died in his throat and he had long-since given up trying. I could go on, naturally, this place was filled with characters and stories. But there's no need. As well as being liars, writers have one other defining characteristic: they are insufferable know-it-alls. Out of a crowd of characters they can point to a distinct handful and warn you to mind them well. Why? Because they know how the story is to turn out and they already know the key players in what is to come.

A
ND THEN, THE
town appeared.

I am tempted to say that there are not words to successfully capture what happened, but that would be an admission of literary mediocrity too far. If I must be a liar and a know-it-all let me at least take consolation from the fact that I pursued those sins with literary skill.

I hadn't given a great deal of thought as to how the town would manifest itself amongst us. Indeed, when Quartershaft had been behind the wheels of this ageing body of mine, he had considered the whole thing a fool's errand. Once we had completed our journey, that cynicism had gone. I'm not altogether aware of the moment it departed. There was no defining realisation, no sudden conviction. It was something that occurred in hindsight. I was sat in one of the chairs we'd positioned outside the Land Transport, looking around at the crowds aware—with some amusement—that I was as certain of Wormwood as everyone else.

As to the specifics of its appearance, I couldn't predict it. Would it simply arrive, empty space one minute then a town the next? Would it fall from the sky? Or perhaps push itself up from within the earth itself? (Those last two rather depended on the province of the afterlife I now realize; was it a celestial Heaven or a subterranean Hell?) In actual fact the process was gentle, a gradual shift in the reality of the plain ahead of us.

It began in the sky, the clouds building as if for a storm, a thick, curdling of cumulous and cirrus that piled high into the clear blue. Then came rain, thick and heavy, purple-tinged, that pounded down on the dust, leaving marks that made it seem as if a stampede of invisible animals had passed.

Then the air seemed to coalesce. I was reminded of the heat mirages I had seen on my journey west, the way the vista in front of you would gain weight, distort as if through a weak lens, as if the air was so affected by the sun it had begin to fry. After ten minutes or so, that distortion began to take tangible shape. A straight line here or there, the hint of a rooftop, a railing, the boardwalk, a doorway.

Small towns over here had fascinated me, the way they were so functionally built from timber. I was used to the weighty permanence of stone or tile, here everything was erected with hammer, saw and nail. It made the towns seem like toys to me, full-size replicas of doll's houses.

I had no doubt that such an attitude was doing a disservice to the hard work of those who had built such homes (I had been know to get confused trying to open a window let alone construct one). Culturally though it was something I had yet to get used to. That said, it somehow made the construction of a town something I was able to relate to. I had no real concept of the use of brick and slate, but I could look at those American conurbations and see them for the man hours they represented, the long days of sweat and splinters. Watching Wormwood materialise was an entirely different experience, an entire town dreamed into life in a matter of an hour or so.

We began to walk the half mile or so towards it, crowds of the expectant moving across the plain in a way that could hardly fail to bring biblical imagery to mind. As we drew closer, we could hear the town gaining weight, a creaking and groaning of wood as the dream of it became solid and was forced to settle.

A ring of people formed around it, nobody quite daring to cross over the threshold and set foot within its streets.

I had become separated from the rest of my party, rubbing shoulders with strangers as I tried to get a better view.

Wormwood was immaculate, real in everything except an affectation of age. The structures were clean, roofs unstained from winter rain. The signage (Milton's Supplies, 'Best Value in Town') wore fresh paint, un-faded from the sun. It was an illustrator's impression of a town, an impossible perfection as yet unspoiled from having to exist in the real world.

A bright pulse of light burst from the town's centre. Nobody could recognise its source, from all angles it was obscured, flowing from a building just around the corner from everywhere you could possibly be. The crowd panicked slightly, everyone taking a few steps back, one particularly nervous old maid knocking my notebook from my hands as she made to run for the safety of the camp.

There was nothing to fear. The light faded and all was quiet.

A murmur of fresh excitement worked its way through the gathered hopefuls as a figure appeared at the end of one of the town's streets. He began to walk towards us. I would later dis cover that this same man had appeared to walk towards every portion of the crowd, a simple miracle by comparison to the manifestation of an entire town but further, delicious proof of his unearthly provenance.

He was terribly familiar. A blond-haired fellow in a smart suit and waistcoat. The last time I had met him I had been drunk (this was not saying a great deal, I had been drunk a lot of the time). He was the man who had first approached me with regards the myth of Wormwood.

He had presented himself as an enthusiastic follower of my work, a devotee of Quartershaft's ad ventures, with a brilliant idea as to where his next could take place. I began to feel like a character in one of my own fictions (which, now I come to think about, is exactly what I've always been), manipulated to this very spot by the hand of a divine author.

"Welcome!" he shouted, his voice carrying perfectly, either through a natural gift as an orator or, more likely, a magical quality of amplification. "My name is Alonzo. And I'm here to welcome you to Wormwood.

"You've been through terrible ordeals to get here," there was a general murmur of consensus on this, "and some of you have travelled thousands of miles to reach this point. Well, what can I say? What has come before is nothing. This is where your adventure really begins."

Which, naturally could only be true, we stood at the threshold of Heaven (or Hell), it would be a terrible anti-climax were the real world—however outlandish it had proven itself to be over the last few days—found to rival its wonders.

That factual point aside, I grew cold at his words. This is not a case of dramatic exaggeration (though I admit I am only too capable of such trickery) rather a genuine sense of unease.

There was something, a quality to the words, that struck me as not altogether positive. He had an air of the showman, yes, and his speech could have been taken in that context, the theatrical host promising fresh wonders in store. Somehow, however, the words also struck me as a warning.

"Never before," he continued, "have we seen such a response to our arrival. Never have so many undertaken a pilgrimage to our door." He bowed his head as if saddened. "And to think, of all those who perished en route." He smiled. "But then, they made their way to us all the quicker. Death is a road like any other, after all. A painful one at times, certainly, but I hope you'd agree the destination is worth the journey.

"Because there are so many of you, we will need to organise ourselves a little differently.

For now I must ask you to wait a little while longer..." There was a predictable uproar at this to which he raised mollifying hands. "Please don't worry, time is ours to control, you will all get to walk our streets. Just not all at the same time. We will need to take you a party at a time."

Again this caused dissent but he held up his arms for quiet and got it. After all, as argumentative as the crowd certainly was, it takes a greater confidence than was to be found here to pick a fight with an emissary from God. "Patience. You have waited this long, another hour won't hurt."

And with that, he turned on his heels and walked away again, leaving several hundred people utterly bemused. A couple made to follow before finding that they were unable to pass from the plain into the streets of the town itself. It was as if there were an invisible barrier lying at a defined point between one world and the next. Those attempting to cross it ended up falling back into the dust, embarrassed and angered even further.

The air was filled with questions: "But it's only supposed to be here for twenty-four hours anyway! We're wasting the precious time we have!"

"Since when did Heaven get so small it couldn't accommodate a crowd of a few hundred people?"

"Maybe they're not going to let us in after all..." They were all good questions and many like them passed through my own head. For the most part, though, I was unsurprised. The dominant feeling I had was that of being part of some one else's plan. I had been manipulated to this place and now the plan continued to unfold.

The mistake you are all making, I thought, as I pushed my way through the crowd in search of a familiar face, is the assumption that you were ever in control of this situation. This was not a cheat. This was not you getting one over on Creation. This was the plan from the beginning and now we'll see how it plays out. What God wants he gets.

Or maybe I'm just being wise after the fact, we writers are terribly prone to that sort of thing.

I
HAD BEEN
hoping to find the rest of my party but the familiar faces I stumbled upon first were those belonging to Elwyn Wallace and his aged companion.

"Well," he said, "I won't lie, I was hoping for more than that."

"You'll get it," said the old man, staring over my shoulder at Wormwood.

I told them my thoughts, my suspicion that all of this was pre-ordained and part of a bigger plan. The old man said nothing but gave a small nod. Trying to talk to him was as productive as discourse with a rock. He looked like one too. A particularly ugly piece of granite that had been left in too many rainstorms.

"I guess God moves in mysterious ways, huh?" said Elwyn.

The old man gave a gruff laugh at that. It sounded like an engine driver shovelling coal.

"Well," the young man continued, ignoring his friend, "I didn't even know I was coming here so what do I care if I have to wait another hour?"  

I
FOUND
E
LISABETH
Forset and Billy shortly after. They had moved away from the main crowd, sitting down on some rocks a little distance away.

"Welcome to Heaven," said Billy, "join the line and wait to be seen. Who knew the after life would be like visiting the dentist?"

"I hope it works out to be a little less painful," I replied, sitting down next to them. "Did you recognise Alonzo?"

"Nope," said Billy, looking to Elisabeth, "you?"

"Never seen him before," she replied.

"When I was a child," I said, "my grandfather built me a puppet theatre. It was the most wonderful thing. Florid proscenium arch, real velvet curtains. Beautiful. The puppets were designed after Punch," I looked to Billy. "Do you have Punch and Judy over here?"

"Never heard of it."

"It's a puppet show about a psychotic wife beater who kills his baby."

"Sounds charming."

"In our country we think of it as a comedy for children."

"Now I understand why we decided to go it alone."

"The puppets were all hand carved, strung on wires and I would sit and play with them for hours, making up my own stories. That's probably where my love of stories came from. It was my most favoured possession. Until, like all children, I suddenly forgot about it and it was left to get tangled and jaded. But for those few months there was nothing I liked more than making them all dance to my stories. God to those little, clacking, people."

Elisabeth smiled. "And now you know what they fell like?"

"Absolutely," I nodded. "I wonder how your father's feeling? I can't imagine he's one for sitting quietly and waiting his turn."

"The last I saw he was storming off in the direction of the Land Carriage, muttering. He'll be back soon, I'm sure."

"He'll probably try and drive the thing through the town," said Billy, "smash his way into the ever-after."

"You think you're joking," Elisabeth sighed.

"What about our brotherhood?" I asked. "I imagine they're probably happily praying their appreciation heavenwards?"

Elisabeth nodded towards the rear of the crowd where I could see them doing just that.

"If they get an answer," Billy wondered, "maybe they'll be good enough to pass it on."

"You're being frightfully dismissive of a God that's probably sat a few yards away," noted Elisabeth, her voice perfectly serious. "I wonder if that's a good idea."

"If God is as all-powerful as I've been led to believe," said Billy, "he'll hear me clearly whether I'm sat here or in Tucson. Proximity ain't got a thing to do with it. Besides, I don't mean any harm. I'd hope he can take a joke."

"We'll find out soon enough," I said. "That's a rather worrying thought isn't it? As long as God is speculative—or, at the very least, insubstantial—he's open to interpretation. He can be the wise beneficence Jesus spoke of or the terrifying brute that commanded Abraham to kill his son as a test for his faith. Who knows what he's really like?" "I hadn't thought about it," Elisabeth admitted, "until now."

We looked towards the town and waited for our strings to be tugged once more.

"I
T'S JUST PREPOSTEROUS
," announced Lord Forset, who had indeed returned, albeit sans Land Carriage. While this was a relief it might have allowed him to more easily bear the burden of the supplies he had brought: notebooks, tools, an Eastman Kodak box camera, a food hamper and a rifle.

"Planning on shooting a cherub?" Billy asked, noting the rifle.

"In my current mood I wouldn't rule anything out," Forset replied. "Everything I've ever read about Wormwood contradicts this farce of a situation. Organised walking tours of the after life? Ludicrous and utterly contrary to the principles of scientific exploration."