Lamp Black: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 2) (18 page)

He never imagined he’d end up in such a place, but he was helpless to change it. If he was dead, then he never expected to end up in such a hellish place. And if it wasn’t hell, then it was pretty close to being like it. He didn’t know what he did to deserve such an ending, but he came to terms with it. He thought only bad people ended up in such a place, and he didn’t think of himself as a bad person. In fact, he knew he wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t live a bad life. He was honest in all his dealings. He went to church on important days. He accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. He didn’t understand what he did, but being in the stream was the single greatest agony of his life.

Another man fell into the stream next to him, and when he broke the surface John was shocked to find that he recognized the man. It was Corbin’s dad. He flailed his arms madly as he tried to keep his head above the surface of the stream. Surprised and horrified, John flung himself backward, away from the man. But then he stopped. The man wasn’t dead down here, not in the stream. John didn’t know why he was in the stream, but he knew what it was. It was the death stream.

John quit trying to distance himself from the man when he saw that he wasn’t even interested in him, and that made him wonder. If John was here, and so was Corbin’s dad, and only one of them was actually dead, then he didn’t belong in the death stream. Another difference John noticed was that he was watching everyone, but everyone else was looking up, lost in their pain and agony. They were self-absorbed, not aware of anything but themselves.

John watched Corbin’s father drift away and sink below the surface. John considered reaching out for him, but he knew it was hopeless, pointless even. People all around him were either sinking below the surface, or bobbing along in the stream with utter hopelessness etched on their faces.

Something gripped John’s ankle. Thinking it was Corbin’s dad he kicked out, but the grip returned with a fierce firmness. John reached down to attempt to pry the grip free of his ankle, and he was pulled under the surface. He kicked out in self-defense, but the grip on his ankle was too strong. It cut into his ankle like a vise. John held his breath as he was towed under, not knowing if it was necessary, but not eager to have the death stream in his mouth. He didn’t yet realize that breathing wasn’t a condition of this place, only actual existence, as real as life itself. Maybe even more real than life.

When he emerged on the underside of the stream, he saw that he was falling through the air. He looked up and saw the death stream looked the same from the bottom as it did from the top. The long red stream of energy moved through the yellow air high above him. John was falling so fast that he felt like a meteor. He saw, below him, a vast and expansive, ruinous landscape. Exposed mountains of black rock, razor sharp, like large slabs of knapped obsidian, rose high into the air. The land below was rust colored and desolate, void of all life, as if utterly wasted from having been blasted by a cruel dry wind.

To his escalating horror, John finally noticed what was pulling on his ankle. It was a hideous and loathsome creature, a nightmare mixture of man and animal. It seemed to be smiling up at John with
large, red rimmed, green eyes. The creature’s face was reptilian, but his body was covered in a combination of scales and fur, horns and nobs. Its muscular humanoid arms ended in pincer-like claws, its large tail swung freely below, as if a long cord connected it to hell. John’s horror must have been obvious, for the creature bayed with terrible laughter as it pulled him further into the abyss.

John suppressed his feelings of revulsion for the demon, and saw its features soften, just a little, as if John somehow managed to diminish its horrible continence. The creature flashed from man, to animal, and back to man again in flickering pulses that enraged the demon. It reached up and grabbed John’s other ankle with its remaining claw and John screamed with renewed pain. The demon laughed with delight and John calmed himself. Not wanting to give the demon any pleasure, John endured his pain in silence. He was just able to subdue the agony of the demon’s grip when they approached the highest peak of the black mountains.

When John was pulled down the side of the peak, he was better able to see the rust colored plain below him. In a quick moment of clarity, he saw that the plain was not entirely devoid of life. The windswept surface held a multitude of men and women. They stood on the plain, shoulder to shoulder, spaced equally at arm’s length, but stationary, frozen in place. Thousands upon thousands of people, more than the eye could see, stood perfectly still with their heads tilted upward, as if looking for relief. They looked like pegs on a great wooden board, prisoners in hell from across the span of time.

John’s view of them was blocked when he was pulled down behind a sister peak of black rock. He saw the ground approach suddenly, and before he could brace for impact, he was slammed to the hard surface of the dungeon floor with enough force to kill a mortal man. He could feel the pain of that death many times over, but it was obvious to John that death was not a means of escape in this place. He began to think that if there was no escape, then surely he must be dead. His body screamed in protest from the impact, but he refused to cry out. Every
bone was broken, every organ crushed, every muscle torn, but he lived, and remained silent.

His mind screamed in agony, but he held on. The pain of the assault filled his mind and he unwillingly allowed a single moan to escape his lips. The demon picked John up and flung him across the room like a rag doll. John crashed against the roughhewed stone wall and collapsed to the floor in renewed agony. Pain upon pain flooded into his mind as he was lifted up the wall and shackled to it. Heavy iron straps were secured around his wrists and ankles, suspending him in the air above the floor.

John opened his eyes and immediately closed them again when he saw the demon staring at him from only a few inches. The noxious smell of the demon’s breath made John gag, and he gasped as the demon clamped a claw around his throat. John struggled for breath and wondered how many times he could die, and yet continue to live, in this place. He wanted to die, to find peace in death. He willed himself to wake from the terrible nightmare, but he was trapped. Like the men and women on the plain, John knew he was a prisoner. He now knew that hell was a very real place, as real as any place he had ever visited on earth.

The demon released John’s throat and allowed him to hang limply in the iron bonds. The cold hard straps dug painfully into his flesh, but the agony of it was lost in the greater agony that he had already endured. John hung his head and tried to understand why he was in here, what he had done to deserve such a fate. After untold minutes, John heard a foul and guttural conversation between two unseen adversaries. The conversation sounded like garbage, it was low and obscene, filled with many grunts, hisses and slurs. It sounded to John like a boiling cesspool of waste, and it assaulted, no, it ravaged his ears. A harsh rebuke issued forth from a third voice in the hall, only to be followed by blessed silence.

John looked up and watched, in amazement, as a well-dressed man entered the dungeon. He approached John and studied him silently for
a moment. John was so surprised by the man’s appearance and presence that he was speechless. “Surely you haven’t lost your ability to speak?” asked the man. His voice was smooth and refined, as if he had been richly bred, and highly educated.

John tried to speak, but the words came out slurred and lazy, like he had a mouthful of marbles. To his own ears his voice sounded like, “Whaa-thum-eiw-ooling-errr!” He was unable to enunciate his words, much less form a complete sentence.

“Yes, speech is different down here, but you will adapt to it,” said the man, in a smooth but unfamiliar accent.

John spat to clear his mouth. “What . . . what am I doing here?” gasped John, now able to speak clearly.

“I would ask
you
the same question,” replied the man, with a smile, and a lingering emphasis on the pronoun.

John felt the craftiness of the man, and knew he had to guard himself closely. “Return me home immediately. I don’t wish to be here!” spat John, through clenched teeth.

“Yes. They all say that when they arrive,” said the business man with a wave of his hand, as if he were shooing away a fly.

“Who are you?” asked John. Two demons stood in the doorway of the dungeon, and they laughed hideously at John’s question. The escort demon now had a partner, some kind of spiked creature who carried a wicked looking whip. John knew the new demon was his jailer, and the well-dressed man was either Satan himself, or hell’s warden.

“Let usss whip him a bit, master,” said the jailer demon, in long hisses, “Then you can come back and question him more plainly.”

The suited man raised a hand and flicked the demon to silence without turning around. “I am not who you think I am,” he replied, “but I’m not without status down here, either. Let’s just say I’m in . . . upper-management.” The two large demons began laughing again, and the suited man did nothing to discourage them this time.

John wasn’t sure what to make of the verbal exchange, but he was helpless to influence it. He was a prisoner, in bondage to this hell-spawn
crew. His only option was to try and understand why he was here. “What am I doing here?” he yelled with a choked and hoarse cry.

“You tell me!” yelled the man in return. He calmed himself and added, “After all, it is you who came to us,” said the man. He slapped John’s face and said, “Perhaps you have earned your place among us?” The man reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small spiral notebook. He hummed to himself as he flipped through the pages. “Ah, yes. Here we are. You took the lives of twenty-three innocent men . . . oh, and one woman,” he concluded, with an exaggerated sigh, as if it revealed a terrible truth behind John’s fall down to hell.

John was aware of the fact that he had taken lives in combat, but not how many. He didn’t keep a count, and he didn’t know that he had killed a woman. One thing that he did know, however, was that he never took an innocent life. The lives he took were all combatants. “I took no innocent life!” replied John.

“Ah, but who are you to judge their innocence?” asked the suited man, as he squinted an eye at John.

“It did not involve judgment,” replied John. “I acted in self-defense.”

“Yes, an act of premeditated violence,” said the man, with a wide grin.

“It’s a lie,” moaned John. “And you’re . . . also . . . a . . . lie.”

“Yet here you are, chained to my prison wall,” said the man, in a voice as smooth as silk. “There is no lie in that, so I will make you an offer. You can stay here, chained to my wall, or you can work for me.”

“I’d rather stay here than work for you,” replied John. “You’re foul, and you reek of deception. I want nothing to do with you, or this place. Be gone with you!” screamed John.

The man laughed, long and deep, but John noticed the man’s eyes were not laughing. “Very well,” said the man, “but you will have a change of heart very soon. Yes, very soon indeed.”

The man turned and nodded to the jailer demon as he passed through the dungeon opening and out into the hall beyond. The jailer demon immediately walked forward with open arms. John saw that
he had several long spikes that were much longer than he first realized. In fact, about a dozen or more spikes were several feet in length. John realized they must have been visually lost in the bed of spikes the creature carried. There were thousands of smaller, but still very lethal, five and six inch long spikes that covered his entire front. The spikes were not armor, but rather a part of the demon himself, and each one dripped with a noxious liquid that looked venomous, and smelled of rot and decay.

John stiffened in the shackles, and screamed in agony as the demon pulled him into his embrace. The long spikes were the first to pierce John’s flesh. They passed completely through his body along the length of his torso, and he screamed in pain. It was an exquisite pain, more precise and focused than any he had ever before felt. Once again, John reached a new level of pain, and yet again he wondered how much he could endure. He knew a human body could never endure such pain and remain conscious, let alone alive. Is this what hell was for him, he wondered, through white-hot flashes of pain. Was he to endure endless torment and exquisite pain?

John gasped and screamed as the demon pulled him deeper into its foul embrace. Now the shorter spikes reached John, and they too began to penetrate his flesh along the entire length of his body. No part of John was free of puncture and pain, yet the demon did not stop pulling John forward until they were close together, joined in an intimately horrible embrace. Many of the spikes passed completely through John, but he could not see them because his head was pinned into place by the demon. Several spikes had pierced his face and neck, and his head remained locked against the demon’s chest.

When John was completely impaled against the jailer’s spikes, the escort demon unshackled him from the wall. The jailer’s rotten breath filled John’s mind with terror and abandonment, and he felt small and insignificant. He was entirely helpless, and very nearly broken. When free of the wall shackles, the jailer turned and carried John to the middle of the dungeon. The escort demon secured John to a new set of
shackles, ones hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the dungeon. Once secured to the new shackles, the jailer pried John free and left him hanging, suspended in the air by his upraised arms.

The Jailer drew his metal barbed whip and dangled it in front of John’s face. “Do you sssee the barbsss? They will cut you to the bone, yessss they will,” he said with riotous laughter. A long and hideous chorus of vulgarities and curses issued forth from the mouths of the two demons, as if they were singing a demonic song of delight. John vowed to stifle his pain, to not give them any pleasure over his agony, but that thought faded with the stroke of the first lash.

The barbs cut into his back, opening his flesh to the bone, just as the jailer had promised. John gasped for breath, unable to scream, so terrible the pain between each agonizing lash of the whip. The lashes, fierce and powerful, never stopped. John didn’t know how long he endured the abuse, but he couldn’t slip away. He couldn’t escape into unconsciousness. There was no release from the pain, no escaping from its hold over him.