Heaven and Hell (12 page)

“Extend your open palm.”

Again Serena complied, stretching out her right hand, upturned and open. Satan placed a very small hourglass into her palm.

“Look at me, little one,” he continued.

Serena looked up, their eyes met. To be this close to the prince of darkness was nothing short of terrifying. She felt overwhelmed by his evil.

“You can not stop the flow of sand through this hourglass,” he said, pointing to the tiny glass. “It will always flow in the same direction. It will require twelve hours to travel its course. During that time, you may travel as you please, and observe what you wish, with but two provisions. One, you may not intervene in any way in the torments of any of my guests. Two, when the last grain of sand has traveled its course, you must be atop the cliff overlooking the great sea of fire. There you shall throw yourself from the precipice, to begin your eternity of burning torment.”

Throw herself in? That was too much to ask.

“If you are late for your appointment, or attempt to aid one of my guests, I shall send my minions out to hunt you down. Believe me when I tell you, that it is within my power to make your torment here far worse. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Serena said.

“Then go,” replied satan, pointing to the portal behind Serena. “Follow your shadow. It will lead you to your eternal destiny.”

Serena turned to discover that the portal displayed an image of a barren desert. Yet it seemed three dimensional, holographic. It was her doorway, her gateway to Hell. She glanced once more toward the hourglass in her hand. Its sand had already begun to flow. Serena took a trembling step toward the portal; then stopped.

“I will give you a gentler journey through the portal this time. I do not wish to confuse or dull your senses. I want you to experience my kingdom with a clear mind, behold it in all of its grandeur.”

Serena still hesitated.

“Go before I change my mind!” commanded satan in a demanding tone.

Serena took five quick steps. The fifth carried her through the portal, and into the realm of the damned.

T
HE journey from the audience chamber, through the portal, and into the barren landscape beyond was instantaneous, more like walking through a doorway between rooms. It was hot and dry here, perhaps 90 degrees or so, and the air held a faint odor of sulfur. A great red luminary, far larger but dimmer than the Earth’s sun, illuminated her surroundings with a somber, amber light. Serena turned around to see nothing but the desert and the barren, craggy mountains beyond; the portal through which she had traveled was gone.

Serena stood there for a moment taking in the unearthly landscape. She was situated near the edge of a wide, boulder-strewn valley, at least a few miles wide. Its length was indeterminate, extending in both directions as far as the eye could see. The rocks and ground were rusty brown, and the sky was filled with billowing gray clouds of smoke and dust that swept swiftly across the face of the swollen sun, yet here at ground level there was hardly a breath of wind.

So this was Hell. Serena wasn’t really sure what she had expected, but somehow this was not quite it. It sort of reminded her of the Mojave Desert, perhaps Death Valley. Hell was not a series of subterranean passageways winding their way through the deepest recesses of the Earth. No, Hell was an entire world unto itself, a world circling a lone red star in a region beyond the known universe. That much she had deduced from her conversation with the angel. It seemed like science fiction.

Serena looked at the small hourglass in her hand. It was scarcely an inch long, and no matter how she held it, the sand flowed in the same direction. It was as incongruous as the rest of this place.

What now, follow her shadow? That wouldn’t be too difficult, her shadow stretched out before her, at least a dozen feet long. It occurred to her that she hadn’t asked how long or difficult a journey this might be. Such questions hadn’t been on her mind at the time. Maybe it would have been better to have simply been cast directly into the sea of fire and get it over with all at once. What was she going to accomplish out here during the next twelve hours?

“Delay the beginning of eternal agony,” she said out loud, answering her own question.

Almost unconsciously she began to follow her own shadow. The way she figured it, her route would take her directly down the valley, through a lonely realm of hard packed clay and rocks. At least it was preferable to scaling the steep mountains on either side. That would have been a considerable task for anyone, short of an expert climber with all of the right equipment.

She paused for a moment, again gazing at her bleak surroundings. As far as she could see, she was the only traveler upon this barren landscape. That in itself surprised her. Where were all of the tormented souls? Did she really want to know?

Perhaps she was going about this all wrong. Perhaps she should have taken off in the other direction, up the valley, perhaps into the hills. But could she really hide from satan in his own realm? Perhaps satan would lose track of her, perhaps forget her. After all, there had to be billions of souls in this place. Did he keep tabs on every one of them? No, now she was trying to delude herself. There wasn’t so much as a chance of that happening. She continued on with her scientific expedition.

A scientific expedition? There was a time when such concepts had held a very strong appeal. She had had such a passion for science in high school. She had hoped to major in science or engineering in college. But there were financial considerations. Her parents hadn’t seen science or engineering as proper professions for a young woman. With no support from home, she and her first husband had attempted to put themselves through college, working as a team. It had sounded like a good plan, yet she’d been forced to drop out of community college after only two semesters to get a full time job. That had been the end of her academic career and her dreams of becoming a scientist. That was, until now.

The journey before her was, in a way, a sort of scientific expedition, a journey of discovery. She looked at her clothes. She was not very well outfitted for an expedition. Nonetheless, she would see and experience things that no living human had ever seen or experienced before. It was an incredible opportunity, if only she had a camera, a tape recorder, even a notebook.

No, Serena realized that she wasn’t thinking straight. She wondered if she was in the midst of some emotional condition akin to shock. This wasn’t some sort of research project. At the end of this excursion into the unknown was an unimaginable fate. Yet she couldn’t allow herself to think of such things. Better to exist in a state of denial for now, create in her mind some sort of fantasy. Perhaps she would find Chris at the end of the road. Perhaps God would grant her a last minute pardon, a reprieve. Perhaps He was just testing her, seeing if she would surrender to the devil’s will, or find a new faith in her Creator. It was a hope that she would cling to, cling to until the flames of the sea of fire burned it to blackened ashes.

Serena saw not a single sign of life as she carefully navigated her way around the rocks and boulders strewn randomly about the barren valley. Not even a trace of lichens adhered to the brown angular rocks. In the absence of life, it was amazingly quiet, only the sound of wind in the hills disturbed the silence.

Quite suddenly there was a sound. Amidst a realm of silence it seemed greatly magnified. It was a distant screech, like that of a bird of prey. Serena turned in surprise to see it flying swiftly through the air not too far to her left. It was a large dark bird, perhaps an eagle or a vulture. Its wings beat swiftly against the hot air. It was apparently in a hurry to get somewhere. Serena followed its course with her eyes, and in the distance saw still more of them, many more, pirouetting upon the thermals, diving and soaring, as if they had discovered a source of food amidst this barren land. The place of their gathering lay directly in her path. She figured that she would soon discover the object or objects of their interest. She quickened her pace.

It was about ten minutes before she heard the distant sounds of distress from someplace up ahead, the dreadful sounds of the screaming and wailing of a great multitude. As yet she couldn’t see the source of the distress, for it lay hidden beyond a ridge of rubble that ran the entire width of the valley, but it had attracted a vast armada of the large birds. In places the sky was visibly darkened by their presence. Never had she seen such a multitude of birds in one place, especially ones of this size.

Serena scrambled up the low ridge of rocks and gravel. The wailing beyond grew ever louder. Reaching the top of the rise, she beheld the source of the terrible commotion. The land before her had been cleared of boulders and leveled. Stretching across the entire width of the valley and as far down the valley as she could see, were millions of rectangular black altars arranged in orderly rows. All appeared to be identical, perhaps two and a half feet high, two feet wide, and three feet long.

Upon most of the altars were human forms, men and women, dressed in the same filthy attire. Stretched across the altars in unnatural positions, their heads and legs hung over the ends of black stone slabs. Their feet dangled a few inches above the ground, held by a pair of ankle shackles mounted by short chains to the base of the altar. A tight, heavy chain looped around their throats forced their heads back. Their wrists were also secured in shackles mounted to the left and right sides of the slab, rendering them totally helpless. They screamed, cried, and cursed in a chorus of agony that echoed across the barren landscape. They wiggled and squirmed wildly, yet in total futility, as the armada of large vultures feed ravenously upon their prone human prey.

It was a ghastly sight as the large black birds, perched upon the hapless victims, digging into their flesh with their long beaks, and pulling forth chunks of meat and lengths of entrails. Blood pulsed from severed arteries, and oozed from deep wounds drenching the altars in crimson essence. Some of the blood dripped down the sides, while even more was lapped up by the merciless black vultures. No less than two or three of the winged tormentors at a time would feed upon a victim. As one bird would leave with a bloody piece of stringy meat in his beak, another would quickly replace it, and the feast would continue.

“Oh God!” gasped Serena turning away in disgust. What sort of sick mind would come up with such nightmarish torment? Yet she knew the answer to that one, a being full of hate and jealousy.

If there were only another way around, a means by which she might avoid this field of agony. There wasn’t. After a minute, Serena made her way down the small ridge of crumbling rock and into the midst of a nightmare.

At first she was afraid that the birds might turn upon her; but they were too preoccupied with the easy pickings upon the altars to concern themselves with a victim who might resist. She went virtually unnoticed.

Physically, it wasn’t difficult to make her way through this place. The ground was hard and level, and there was at least a half dozen feet of open space between each of the altars. She tried not to look at the horror around her, tried not to hear the moans and screams of the tormented. But how could she not? Perhaps she would go unnoticed by the victims, but those around her cried out to her, pleading in a hundred different languages for mercy. She could hardly ignore their pleas, yet she knew she could do nothing. Tears streamed from her eyes as she made her way through the field of carnage.

The tormented victims around her existed in many different stages of dismemberment. Some were almost fully intact, while the flesh of others had been almost completely ripped from their bones, leaving little more than indigestible sinew and unpalatable organs. Yet, even the most horribly desecrated continued to moan and cry in pain, for there was no death beyond death, only eternal existence.

From above, a new commotion arose, a terrible scream. Serena looked up to see two demonic beings with leathery wings, robed wholly in black. Their skin was dark gray, their faces ancient, wrinkled, and contorted. Their hands were not at all like human hands. No, they were as much claws as hands, with sharp glistening nails at the end of each slender finger. Between them, they held a rag-clad woman.

Within seconds they had landed, scarcely 50 feet away. Serena came to a halt, surprised that they took no notice of her. Instead, one roughly pushed the poor woman toward a vacant altar. The middle aged woman turned toward the dark being, a look of horror upon her face.

“Your altar awaits you, wench,” said the demon in a deep gruff voice. He motioned to the shiny black monolith. “Lay down upon it now, the vultures are famished.”

The woman looked about frantically, as if searching for any means of escape, yet there was no place to run, no place to hide. “Please, no,” she pleaded, tears in her eyes. “It’s inhuman!”

“But as you may have noticed, we are not human,” said the other demon. “Let me make it simple for you; you can lay yourself down upon this altar, or we can do it for you, perhaps breaking some of your fragile bones in the process. Choose!”

Weeping bitterly, the woman sat down upon the edge of altar, then after a few seconds she leaned back. Her shoulders met the warm stone, never to leave it again, while her head and legs hung over the stone slab.

The demons went quickly to work, placing her arms and legs in black manacles. The spiny manacles closed decisively, welding themselves together with a horrible searing heat that Serena knew all too well. Amidst the smoke of burning flesh, the woman cries were temporarily muted, as one of the demons brought the chain around her throat and locked it in place. Her head swung backward; as she struggled to reduce the brutal pressure its links applied to her soft pulsing throat.