Escape From Hell (3 page)

I patted my face. It was frozen in a great wide grin. I understood then that I was still grinning from my triumph. I’d fought my way out of Hell, and I was back of my own will, knowing why. I’d come back to rescue others, like Benito had. Paying the debt forward. I felt
good.

I shouted at him, and managed to wrap my words around his speech. “I know the way out of Hell. Follow me!”

We approached each other. He was grinning, too. When he was close enough, he wrapped his arms around me and exploded.

•    •    •

I
waited for Sylvia to react, but of course she said nothing until I ripped a twig loose.

She said, “Exploded? Like he’d swallowed nitroglycerin?”

“Just like that. Like a fool, I let him hug me. I thought he was just very glad to find me. Some peoples are demonstrative —”

“I know. Italians,” she said. “What was he speaking? Irish?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, but I could understand it. I’ve understood everyone since I came back from the grotto. I’ve been given the gift of tongues.”

“You’re a
saint?
Lucky you. Then what?”

“Bang. He must have blown us both into an aerosol. I didn’t know anything until my body congealed again, and I don’t know how long that took. I was back on the rim, back where I started, where the undecided are.”

She said, “Vestibule. Undecided and Opportunists. Were you one of those?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me understand. You started in the Vestibule? With those who couldn’t or didn’t choose?”

“Ditherers. Yes. In a bottle. I don’t know how long I was in that bottle, but when I got out, Benito was standing next to me.”

“Ben —”

I tore off a larger twig.

“God, that hurts.”

“Sorry —”

“Don’t be. You can’t imagine how good it feels to talk again. And to listen.”

“I don’t have to imagine,” I told her. “I can remember.” The memories poured over me. I had just died —

The big surprise was that I could be surprised. That I could be anything. That I could be.
I was, but I wasn’t. I thought I could see, but there was only a bright uniform metallic color of bronze. Sometimes there were faint sounds, but they didn’t mean anything. And when I looked down, I couldn’t see myself.
When I tried to move, nothing happened. It felt as if I had moved. My muscles sent the right position signals. But nothing happened, nothing at all.
I couldn’t touch anything, not even myself. I couldn’t feel anything, or see anything, or sense anything except my own posture. I knew when I was sitting, or standing, or walking, or running, or doubled up like a contortionist, but I felt nothing at all.
I screamed. I could hear the scream, and I shouted for help. Nothing answered.
Dead. I had to be dead. But dead men don’t think about death. What do dead men think about? Dead men don’t think. I was thinking, but I was dead. That struck me as funny and set off hysterics, and then I’d get myself under control and go round and round with it again.
Dead. This was like nothing any religion had ever taught. Not that I’d ever caught any of the religions going around, but none had warned of this. I certainly wasn’t in Heaven, and it was too lonely to be Hell.

I shivered and fought off the memories. “I was in that bottle almost as long as you’ve been a tree. Or I think I was. The books about you tell when you died, about ten years before I did. Time’s funny in this place, it seemed like I was in that bottle a thousand years, but it might not have been long at all.”

“Oh. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I hate it. I thought if I killed myself it would all be over. I guess that’s what I thought. Make it all go away.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You’ve been depressed, too?”

“I was a writer,” I reminded her.

“Hah. Ted was a writer, and he was never depressed. Wild, stupid, wonderful sometimes, angry a lot, but not depressed.”

“He was after you died,” I told her. “Especially when the best known biography about the poet laureate of England had the title
Her Husband.
”

She giggled. It was a horrible sound. “It was?”

“Yep.”

“He really became poet laureate?”

“He did.”

“I wonder where they put Ted? Maybe he’s in Heaven. Did he reform? Get religion?”

“Not that I read,” I told her. “But I’m not even sure he’s dead. Nobody thought he was as interesting as you were. They didn’t make movies about him.”

“Movies. And you said books, too. About me?” There was a bit of wonder in her voice, but not too much. She’d thought about it.

When I was in the bottle, I’d thought about everything.

“Allen?”

“I’m here.”

“Do people still read my work?”

“Yeah. They made a movie out of
The Bell Jar,
too. Julie Harris. Ted Hughes sold the rights. He published most of your work. Letters, stories, poems. Your journal, or nearly all of it. Hughes burned the last month’s entries. Some say he burned more, burned your best work because it made him look bad. I wouldn’t know, I never read much literary gossip.”

“I read too much of it,” she said. “So. You were in a bottle. Then you were outside the bottle, and your friend Benito was there. Who sent him to get you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Your friend came to rescue you. Didn’t he know who sent him?”

“Benito was a good Catholic. He was sure everything was according to God’s will. But Sylvia, he wasn’t my friend. Not then. Sylvia, he was Benito Mussolini! And he didn’t really know who sent him. God never talked to him.”

She was quiet. I reached to take hold of a branch.

“You don’t have to do that. I can talk. I was just trying to comprehend that. Benito Mussolini. There were movies making fun of him when I was growing up during the war, but there were people who admired him, too. Fascist. Made the trains run on time. Il Duce. In German that’s Führer. He taught Hitler. At least that’s what I learned in school. You’re sure it was him?”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

“And he got out. Benito Mussolini led you all the way to the exit. Then he got out of Hell, and you could have, but you didn’t follow him. And you know the way out now, but you’re not going until you know everyone can get out. Have I got all that right?”

“Yes. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

She ignored that. “And you have the gift of tongues. You can wander through Hell.”

“Yes —”

“Allen, all my life I prayed for a Sign. You had one. Allen! So do I! You’re my Sign.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I was curled up like a knot on Sylvia’s twisted roots. “Because it’s not doing either one of us any good, that’s why!”

“Maybe that’s wrong. Dante wasn’t a theologian, he was a poet. We can trust his geography, but Allen, you already know something he didn’t know!”

“What’s that?”

“That even someone who has been condemned can get out. That people like you and Benito can wander through Hell.”

“Oh.” I felt better for a second. Benito had certainly been condemned to the Pit of the Evil Counselors, and now he was out. “But we still don’t have a way to get you out!” I slapped her trunk. Rooted.

“We’ll get to that later. O Allen, don’t leave me! Tell me, tell me everything. This has to make sense. I know it makes sense! We’ll figure it out. Start in the Vestibule, and tell me everything.”

Chapter 3

The Vestibule

Opportunists

We to the place have come, where I have told thee
Thou shalt behold the people dolorous
Who have foregone the good of intellect.

I
hurt all over. It felt like I’d been blasted to bits. I felt motion within myself, like a sluggish dust eddy. I was coming back together, but the process wasn’t fast. After about a hundred years — well, it might have been just a few minutes, how can you tell? — I looked around to see where I was.

I was exactly where I found myself the first time, in an endless expanse of stinking mud studded with old clay and metal bottles, with insects buzzing around me. There were low hills all around me. Far off in the distance one way was a wall, and in the other direction, closer, was an evil–looking river. Acheron. There was the faint smell of decaying flowers, and overhead was the gray haze that passes for sky in Hell.

There was an opened bronze bottle next to me. It might have been mine, my prison. I was home.

•    •    •

“B
ut you weren’t, Allen.”

Sylvia had interrupted my narrative. I looked up at her, startled for the moment. “You can still talk.”

“Yes. I can talk as long as I bleed. Allen, you weren’t right back where you started. You were outside the bottle.”

“Yeah.” I shuddered at the thought. What if I’d been bottled again? I wasn’t alone, either. There was a small crowd drifting around me, swatting at themselves and watching me. When I tried to talk I squawked. Just like I did with you, I guess. Eventually I was able to ask what the Hell they were looking at.

“They all talked at once. In half a dozen languages. The funny part was that I understood every one of them. They were all saying there’d been a big bang, and there I was, in wisps of pink fog that were coming together, and they’d never seen anything like that.”

“Simple curiosity,” Sylvia said. “I can understand that.”

“Maybe.”

•    •    •

I
t would have to be damned strong curiosity. Have I mentioned the wasps? The Vestibule is full of them. Maybe they’re attracted to people standing still. This crowd was drawing a lot of them.

I bent over to pick up my bottle. Someone shouted at me, and I said something stupid like, “It’s all right, that’s my bottle. It’s where I started.” Wasn’t there something else I ought to tell them? “I know the way out!”

There was this tall guy, clean shaven, funny haircut. Ordinary dirty robe like most wore. Like I was wearing. My robe had reassembled itself, too. I thought I ought to recognize him, but I didn’t. He had a question.

“Is that a cause worth dying for?” He sounded serious, but there was this cynical flavor, too. Infuriating.

“You’re already dead,” I informed him.

“You are certain of this?”

“Damn straight I’m certain. I know how I died, and I met lots of other people who know how they died. Everyone here is dead. Don’t you know what killed you?”

“Of course I do. And I have been here long enough that I cannot still be alive.”

“So why do you doubt that you’re dead?” This seemed like a silly conversation, except that I noticed a dozen others listening to me.

“Sir. What is your name?” one asked me. She was a woman about forty, and she’d been attractive in life. Even here she was primped, her dark hair braided since she didn’t have a comb, and her robe was clean. I wondered if she’d washed it in the river. That would have been dangerous, or Benito said it was.

“Allen Carpenter.”

“Rosemary Bennett, Mr. Carpenter. I’ll take your case.”

She seemed serious. I studied her. Dark braided hair. Brown eyes, large and clear. A full mouth with what I can only describe as a professional smile designed to put me at ease.

“What?”

She ignored me. “Mr. Carpenter represents that it is self–evident that we are all dead,” she said. “Signor Crinatelli disputes this, but admits that all the evidence known to him supports that hypothesis.”

“I dispute that.” He was on the other side of this circle around me. Tall, silver haired, a voice that practically reeked of credibility. Silver–tongued devil, I thought. “We do not stipulate that all the evidence known to us supports that hypothesis.”

“The admission was made in open court, and we all heard it.
Resipso loquat.
”

“It was not, and in any event it was an unprepared statement made before counsel was appointed, and thus not admissible.”

“I object!”

“You can’t object, you don’t represent anyone here.”

“I am amicus curiae!”

“Overruled.”

“You’re not the magistrate! It’s not your day!”

“How do you know what day it is? It is my day to preside.”

“It is not. I appeal!”

But now they were all talking at once, and I realized something. They were all talking, and I could understand what they were saying, but half of them didn’t understand each other. Or did they? Maybe they just weren’t listening.

“I have doubted everything. Why should I not doubt that as well?” Signor Crinatelli asked.

“May it please the Court to ask the witness to speak through counsel,” said the man who’d claimed he was a friend of the court.

I kept wondering who these people were. Then again, this was the Vestibule, the place for ditherers. They weren’t likely to be famous.

I ignored them all and went over to Crinatelli. “What have you been doing all the time you were here?”

“Slapping wasps.” He slapped hard at one.

“Please, I can’t hear you, how can I plead for you if I can’t hear you?” The lady who’d appointed herself my counsel was near tears.

“Just who are you?” I asked her.

“Rosemary Bennett, Esquire.”

I noticed the accent. Southern. Not Deep South drawl, but definitely Southern. Texas, maybe. “Ms. Bennett, I thank you for trying to help, but I didn’t appoint you as my lawyer, and I don’t need a lawyer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

She turned to Crinatelli. “I will accept your case.”

“He already has counsel.”

“Objection.”

“Overruled.”

“We told you, this isn’t your day to be magistrate!”

“The wasps guide us. They force us to chase those banners,” Crinatelli said. “We stopped when you appeared. Ouch.”

“How do you stand this?” I waved to indicate the group.

He shrugged expressively. “We run together. You get used to it. You see where we are.”

And why, I thought. I pointed to a group running pell–mell after a green banner. Words flowed across it. DON’T LET THEM IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON. I looked at it and blinked. It still said that.

“The wasps force you to chase banners?” I asked.

“Yes.” He slapped again.

“Does it matter which one you chase?”

“Not that I can discern.”