Escape From Hell (16 page)

“Come with me. We’ll talk,” I said.

“To where?”

“Out of here. To where we can learn what is the truth.”

“And if that truth is not one I can accept?” he asked. “Authors and their characters are not the same people, but sometimes an author accepts what his characters have said. And children do suffer.”

“Not here,” I said. “I haven’t seen children suffering here.”

“And you have been everywhere in this place?”

“No, but I’ve been to many places. I saw children in the land of the Virtuous Pagans. Benito said they might live again. I don’t know about that. But the children I’ve seen since I came here seemed quite happy.”

“So why were they allowed to be tortured on Earth?” Camus demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Because there is no reason,” Camus said. “Nothing can justify the torture of a child! And I for one will have no part in justifying injustice. I have seen — I have seen men do things that cry to Heaven for vengeance. I have seen such horrors that no one can endure, yet God did not intervene. If He has the power to stop such monstrous evils and does not stop them, He is a rock! A stone idol, not fit for the worship of free men!”

“But —”

“That is my truth. If yours allows you to have faith, I will be the last to disturb you.”

“But wouldn’t my faith be evil, then?”

“To whom? Not to you, and my opinion should not matter to you. You have chosen.”

“Come with me. We can find out who’s right.”

“I admire your enthusiasm, but I cannot share your hope.”

•    •    •

“I
couldn’t persuade him. Sylvia, I was so close. Or I thought I was.” I broke off a twig.

“Uf. Albert Camus. We all read him in college. I never met him but I really would have liked to. When I was in Paris I got the boy I was with to take me to a café where Camus was supposed to hang out, but he wasn’t there. Sartre was there, but he wasn’t talking to strangers. Not that I cared. I wanted to meet Camus. But Allen, you read Camus. What made you think you could persuade him? You must have known he wasn’t going to accept any final answer to anything.”

“He had a lot of influence on me once. I thought like him. Or at least I thought I did. I must not have. Sylvia, when I got here I didn’t believe in this place. Not as Hell. I looked for the logic. I thought it was a construct, we were all constructs, part of some ghastly joke.”

“But you don’t believe that now. Why don’t you?”

“I don’t know, it just stopped making sense. Occam’s razor. I kept having to add to the theory. There was too much here. Too much, too elaborate. It can’t be some kind of toy.”

“It was that way with the universe, Sylvia. All that infinite space, suns and warped space and black holes, expanding universe, quantum mechanics, endless mysteries. It’s beautiful but it’s too big! It’s not just a setting for us, for humanity. It must be for something bigger. I
knew
there were alien intelligences.”

“Maybe Camus hasn’t seen enough,” Sylvia said. “He never tried to build a glider to get out of here! Allen, he knows the way and he’s not confined. He can leave when he wants to.”

“But —”

“Allen, you said you wanted to know that everyone can get out of here if they want to. You can’t possibly insist that everyone wants to leave!”

I smiled. “Well, I could.”

“So could God, Allen. He could make them do it, too. Should he?”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“He does give us clues, I think,” Sylvia said.

And past those noise’d feet,
a Voice comes yet more fleet:
Lo, nought contents thee who content’st not me.

“What’s that?”

“ ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ By an English poet, Francis Thompson.”

“I ought to learn it. I think that’s what Benito was trying to tell the Virtuous Pagans.”

“I don’t remember all of it. No one reads it now because it’s about a man finding religion, but Thompson was a popular poet at one time. Chesterton and George Meredith thought he was one of the great poets of all time. What attracted me were his warnings about drugs.”

“Drugs?”

“He was a laudanum addict, Allen. Until his publisher dried him out. Then he wrote:”

Love, love! your flower of withered dream
In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem,
Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme,
From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.
Love!
I
fall into the claws of Time:
But lasts within a leavèd rhyme
All that the world of me esteems —
My withered dreams, my withered dreams.

“From ‘The Poppy.’ He wrote that about opium addiction. I read it in school, and it’s a big reason why I didn’t play with pot and drugs like a lot of my classmates. He talked about how wonderful opium was, but then it betrayed him and ruined his poetry, and that scared me. I wanted to be a poet. I never wanted anything more. Allen — I wonder if he’s down here somewhere? I wouldn’t think so. He died a good Catholic. In a nunnery, I think.”

“And that’s good enough to keep you out of here?”

“Allen, I don’t know. Isn’t that what Rosemary’s professor told you? It’s one way, but not the only way? And you’ll note that it didn’t work for the professor. Or the monsignor, so it’s not enough.”

“Yeah. So what is enough?”

“Whatever it is, Benito found it. Allen, did you see anyone else up there?”

“Yes.”

•    •    •

I
tried to get Camus to come with me, but he wouldn’t. “If you change your mind, there’s an easy way down to the boiling blood,” I told him. “It’s up by that big building.” I pointed to the Great Mausoleum.

“When you get there, just run down. When you get to the boiling blood jump in and swim across. It will hurt worse than anything you ever did, but you can make it. There were four of us, and we all got across, and once you get across the guards leave you alone.”

“It sounds mad,” he said.

“It’s awful,” I told him. “But you can do it. Just keep going down, you’ll get out of Hell.”

“So that I can learn the truth, adopt the faith, and enjoy eternal bliss in Heaven,” Camus said. “Which will give meaning to my life. Yes, thank you. I wish you well.”

“I wish you’d come with me.” He didn’t say anything, so I started walking toward the mausoleum. I kept looking back, but he wasn’t watching me. He seemed to be studying the scene down by Phlegethon.

It wasn’t very far down to there, but the air was thick and hazy so it was hard to see. Squads of soldiers from every era patrolled along the edge of a red steaming river.

I was halfway to the mausoleum when I saw a coffin on the ground. It was stone, and the lid was partway over it. Someone inside was shouting.

“Damn you all! Let me out, damn you!”

This part of the Sixth Circle was cool enough that I could feel steamy heat from Phlegethon down below. The sepulcher lid wasn’t hot until I started pushing on it. Then it got warm fast. By the time I got it open all the way it was blazing hot and my hands were blistered.

A man jumped out. He was short, sharp–faced, beefy with broad shoulders. He reminded me of a policeman I’d once known. “Damn them! Damn them all.”

“Hello.”

He looked at me with deep suspicion. “Yeah?”

“Well, I did let you out.”

“Okay. Why’d you do that?” He looked at my burned hands, but he didn’t comment.

“It seemed the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, sure. Are you a preacher?”

“Good God no.”

“Good God. God’s not good and you know it. Look what he did to me.”

“You’re out now,” I said. “You’re free. Come with me and we’ll get out of this awful place.”

“Fuck off. What makes you think they’ll let anyone leave here? That would spoil the fun.” He looked up to shake his fist at the gray overcast sky. “Damn you! Fuck you all!”

“Who are you cursing?”

“God. The angels. The devils. All of them.”

“Why?”

“Why? Look where they put me! They want me to love them. To worship them! And if I don’t I get that.” He pointed to the coffin. “I’ll never worship them. Any of them. They can fuck off, the lot of them.”

“But you’re out of there now.”

“So what? I should never have been in there. Fuck ‘em!”

“Who are you
not
cursing?”

He stared.

•    •    •

“T
hat doesn’t seem like a very good way to use his freedom,” Sylvia said. “What happened to him?”

“Sylvia, I saw it all. He kept shouting curses. At God, at Lucifer, and me. At anyone and everyone. Whatever I’d try to say to him, he’d just curse me. And then he started popping.”

“Popping?”

“Little explosions, like if you stirred thousands of firecrackers into cotton candy. Little explosions until there was nothing left. As if … well, like he was trying to turn himself into a bomb, like that animal who blew me up on the ice. Like that, but he couldn’t focus on a target.”

“And he wasn’t back in his sepulcher. I looked. And his tombstone was blank, wiped clean.”

“That almost sounds familiar,” Sylvia said. “But I don’t remember where from. Allen, do you think he — died? That he was just gone, forever?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he got put into another circle. Sylvia, I just don’t know.”

“Died. Gone. That’s what I wanted.”

“Sylvia!”

“It’s all right, Allen. It’s not what I want anymore. What I want now is to get out of here! Can you find one of those — one of the ones who explode? Lead him over here, taunt him into blowing me up? Write curses on my forehead? I bet I can think of things to say that would get him mad enough! I’m pretty good at that, even when I don’t want to be.”

“I don’t know where to find them.”

“Surely with the other violent people? Phlegethon. Tell me how you got across Phlegethon.”

Chapter 14

Seventh Circle, First Round

The Violent

But fix thine eyes below; for draweth near
The river of blood, within which boiling is
Whoe’er by violence doth injure others.
O blind cupidity, O wrath insane,
That spurs us onward so in our short life,
And in the eternal then so badly steeps us!

I
got to the mausoleum, still feeling lousy, still alone. I’d been right, the path down to Phlegethon was smooth. There was even some straggly grass growing there.

The river was below me, an evil red with steam rising from it. I would have no trouble getting to it.

I was scared. I can’t remember anything, life or death, that hurt more than swimming through that boiling blood. I knew I could do it, but I sure didn’t want to.

I was trying to get up the nerve, when I saw someone I recognized.

“Billy!”

He came up the slope toward me. “Allen. Hey, I heard you and Benito got out of this place. All the way down.”

“We did! Thanks to you, really. I don’t think we’d have made it without you.”

“So what are you doing back here?” Billy asked. “ ‘Course I’ve been expecting you.”

“Expecting me?”

“Sure, got a message you were coming. Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too.” It was. “Billy, we got to the bottom. Benito climbed out. I thought —”

“You thought you hadn’t earned your way out,” Billy said.

“I didn’t put it that way, but yes. Now I know there’s a way out! I can help people get there. Come with me, we’ll get you out this time.”

“Well, maybe,” he said. “Right now, best I get back to work. You come with me.” He led me down toward the shore.

He wasn’t much to look at. Short, tough looking. His physical age was early twenties, but he was either very young or very old, depending on how you looked at him. He was dressed different from when I’d seen him last. Most of the guards around Phlegethon had uniforms, but Billy wore jeans and boots, and had a holstered pistol as well as a big Bowie knife. When I first met him he had a torn robe and nothing else. “I see they’ve given you an outfit.”

“That they did.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who gave you the stuff?”

“Supply clerks, in the city.” He pointed. I couldn’t see it very well in the steam, but about two city blocks away there was what looked like a canal leading into a tunnel mouth. “City is up that way.”

“You had to swim to the city?”

“Not me. There’s a path. But yeah, some can swim if they want to bad enough. There’s some do it. They always get caught.” He shrugged. “None of mine.”

“What do they do there?”

“Don’t know. They get brought back here. Heard there’s some do it a lot.”

I pictured Leonard Dowl swimming beneath the blood. It would hurt. Would he give it up someday?

The slope leading into the blood was quite gentle here. Just where we were standing the nearest prisoners in the blood were knee to thigh deep, about fifty feet away. There were others out beyond them, waist deep, chest deep, one woman with long dark hair floating around her head.

“Pardon me a moment.” Billy turned to a man carrying a longbow and dressed in a medieval leather jerkin. “Carlos there is supposed to be waist deep,” Billy said. “He’s creepin’ closer.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, my captain.” The archer reached over his shoulder to take an arrow from a quiver, and in one smooth motion nocked the arrow and released it. There was enough steam that I couldn’t see who it hit, but we heard a scream and cursing.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Dunno, really. He tells me some stories about the Black Prince.”

“I didn’t mean the archer. Billy, we’ve been in the blood. It’s horrible, do you think we deserved that?”

Billy shrugged. “Maybe I did. I used to say I never killed a man that didn’t have it coming ‘less he was trying to kill me. ‘Cept one. Maybe I could have got out of town without killin’ the other deputy. Couldn’t take a chance on that, so I put him down with a shotgun. So yeah, I think I had some time coming in there. Dunno about you. You never told me and I don’t ask.”

“But the man you forced to go deeper —”

“You mean Carlos? Allen, you don’t need to feel sorry for him. He liked to bugger little kids. Liked to tie them up and keep them until he could get it up. And he’s only waist deep. Allen, there’s nobody out there don’t deserve to be there.”