Once Upon a Time in Hell (25 page)

Did you all travel to Wormwood like me?"

I intentionally looked to the other couple, hoping they'd answer. They took pity on me.

"We all came together actually." Hope said.

"Though I don't really remember it," admitted Soldier Joe.

"And most of my friends, and the woman I loved more than life itself, died on the way,"

announced the blind man.

Much more of this, I thought, and I would have no other choice but to impale myself on a fish knife. "That's awful," I said.

"Henry Jones," he replied. It took me a moment to understand the significance of the two words. Eventually I realised he was offering his name.

"Ah, right, good to meet you Mr Jones."

"You ain't heard of me?"

"No... I don't think so." I smiled awkwardly and then realised he couldn't see it so it didn't help.

"Oh," he replied. "Most have."

"The burden of fame, I know it well. My books have sold so well that..."

"I killed a lot of people in my time."

"Ah. Right, you're that sort of famous. I see. Lovely. Probably better actually, I imagine you're rarely troubled for autographs and the such." I looked around, desperate for someone to mention the arrival of soup.

"I've signed many," he replied, forming a pretend gun with his fingers and miming a shot in my direction.

I was saved the need to faint or hide under the table by the arrival of Alonzo.

"My friends!" he called, walking through the empty hall towards us, "so sorry to have kept you waiting. It's all work, work, work for me at the moment."

Whether I trusted the man or not, he drew the focus of a room and I was so relieved to have it taken from me I could have kissed him. Following in his wake was the young girl I'd dreamed about earlier. Or not. For all I knew I was dreaming the meal too. It had all got a little confused by that point. It suddenly occurred to me that it might be a bit of a squeeze at the table for another two, yet, even as I thought it, I looked down and found the table had expanded. I wasn't aware of it having done so, it was simply as if it had always been that size.

"I trust you slept well?" Alonzo asked Soldier Joe and Hope.

"Our heads were kind of busy," Soldier Joe replied. "Speaking for myself, I've slept so long I can skip a night here or there."

"You've been here longer than me, then?" I asked. I had assumed they had been vanished from the camp at the same time as I.

"I'm afraid," explained Alonzo, "I have had to indulge in some gentle manipulation where time is concerned. Unlike my patron, I have not the blessing of omnipresence. I therefore have found myself spread somewhat thin over the last day or so."

He sat down facing me, whipping his white napkin from the place in front of him and draping it across his lap.

"Such is the curse of one who wishes to get things done," he added. "Long days and nights."

The little girl pulled herself onto the last empty chair, placing her toy train between her knife and fork. I looked at it and noticed, for the first time, what a startling similarity it bore to Lord Forset's Land Carriage.

"You like trains I think? I travelled here in something rather like one."

"They're a means to an end," she said, in a rather adult tone.

"W
E'RE TURNING BACK
on ourselves!" Billy announced. "Heading right back towards Wormwood. At a hell of a pace, too."

"Oh Lord," said Elisabeth, "you don't think he means to..."

"Smash his way in?" Brother William interrupted.

"He can't!" Lord Forset said, his face blanching at the thought.

"You never know," said Billy, "he might make a dent."

"You don't understand," Forset replied. "My equipment, the stores on the back. The power unit for the Forset Thunderpack alone is likely to level half the valley if it ignites."

"We've been travelling around with that kind of cargo and you didn't tell me?"

"I'm pretty sure I mentioned the Thunderpack was capable of extreme damage if it was in operation for too long."

Billy waved his hands in the air, exasperated. "Yes, probably but it slipped my mind what with recent events. Besides, you have a tendency to..."

"What? Are you accusing me of exaggeration? I am a scientist, sir! Whatever I say can be taken as nothing less than the simple, unvarnished truth!"

"Stop arguing, the pair of you," insisted Elisabeth. "It's hardly helping."

"Fine," agreed Billy. "I just wished I'd known to be a bit more careful when I was driving this thing full pelt through uneven terrain."

"It's stable enough in normal circumstances," said Forset. "I didn't anticipate a situation where someone might consider driving the Land Carriage at full speed towards a solid object."

"We've got to get control of the engine," Elisabeth said. "Get up there and deal with him."

The Land Carriage jolted as it picked up speed, forcing them to steady themselves against the walls of the carriage. "And quickly," Billy agreed. "At this rate we'll be nothing but scrap and splinters in a matter of minutes."

Lord Forset checked his rifle. "We can work our way through the carriages but we're likely to be stuck in a bottleneck when we get to the end, if he's armed..."

"And he's bound to be," added Elisabeth.

"Then we have the problem of how we get through the final adjoining door without his taking pot shots at us," her father continued.

"I might have an idea about that," his daughter said.

T
HE OPEN PLAIN
had given way to mountains. This place just loved mountains, I decided, and it did them so well. Great towering, evil looking things they were. The sort of rocky outcrops that looked like they were stabbing the sky right in its guts.

"Nearly there," shouted Meridiana, who had been riding alongside me for the last stretch.

"I came this far once, when I was a kid. Just to take a look at how the other half lived."

The trail opened out onto a plateau that looked out onto nothing but fresh air. Lucifer stopped his rakh and dismounted, walking up to the edge and gazing into the thin, white mist ahead.

I joined him, trying to see anything ahead, a shadow of another mountain, or the faint outline of the ground below. There was nothing, just mist and clouds.

"Here we are," he said. "The entrance to the Dominion of Clouds."

"I kind of assumed the name was... what was that word you used before? A meatavore"

"Metaphor. And it doesn't mean quite what you think it does." "Ah, what does these days? So the place is really built out of clouds huh?"

"No. This is just the gateway."

"Which we need to cross somehow?"

"Yes."

"Any idea how?"

"No."

"Great."

I walked the edge of the plateau, not because I had an idea but because I didn't.

As I turned to head back, a small, unhealthy looking bush that was growing out of the rock, began to grow larger. It became healthier, greener, it's leaves more dense. Then it dropped forward and seemed to pour itself onto the ground in front of me.

Branches of Regret.

"Hi Branches," I said, as he took his normal shape. "You missed a fun ride."

"I was communing with my brothers," he said.

"Of course you were. We're now looking at the road ahead and figuring it might be a bit harder to travel than we'd hoped."

He walked to the edge. "This is not a problem," he said. "All you need is a bridge."

With that he stamped his feet, fine roots erupting from between his toes and embedded themselves in the cracks in the rock. He reached his arms up into the air and began to stretch, and stretch, and stretch...

He toppled forward, his body creaking and groaning as it grew wider and longer, vanishing out into the mist. After a moment there came a noise in the distance, like a tree falling over. Slowly, he settled, flattening out, filling in the gaps. Eventually we were looking at what —if you had no qualms about riding over someone you'd frequently had a conversation with— you could call a bridge.

"See?" I said to anyone that would listen. "How could you not like him?"

"Please move quickly," came a voice through the clouds, his normal, deep tone now strained and reedy, "this is not as easy as it may look."

"And it looked real easy," said Biter.

We climbed back in our saddles and rode across Branches of Regret's back. Every now and then there was a creak or groan from beneath us. At one nerve-wracking point there was even the sound of splintering.

"Quickly now," he said, his voice more strained than ever. "I would be saddened were I forced to drop you all into the infinite chasm between one Dominion and another."

I decided I would be saddened too and swore at my rakh until the useless piece of shit found a bit more speed.

There was nothing to see on either side of us, just the same white mists. We weren't even sure we'd arrived until the air filled with the sound of creaking wood and Branches of Regret appeared next to us, his face looking as impassive as ever, despite what he'd just been through.

"You are safely across," he announced. "I suggest we travel the last short distance together."

We all slowed our rakh to a trot and pushed through the mist in silence.

I guess Lucifer knew what was ahead but it was obvious the others didn't. For all Agrat's pretensions and history, she had never stepped out of the Dominion of Circles. These were Hell's children and what we don't know, or struggle to relate to, is what scares us most. Slowly—barely noticeable to begin with, just shadows in the fog—shapes began to form.

Huge towers, lights pulsing at the top of them, like lighthouses warning lost souls not to crash into Heaven's shore. Then the building—the citadel as Lucifer called it. To call it a building is to suggest it was limited in size. Buildings are what humans make when they want to shove them selves into a manageable box. It's our way of breaking up the huge spaces that make us feel so small by creating smaller ones we can fill out easier. The architects of Heaven had no such fears.

The citadel was bigger than anything I can try and compare it to. I could say it was the size of a city but that would be to shrink it. The size of a country? Maybe. Though how do you fit an idea like that in your head? That was my problem I think, looking up at its white walls, filled with regular lit windows stretching as far as I could see, I couldn't make the place fit in my head.

For all its size it was incredibly plain. Straight lines and no ornamentation. White walls, untarnished. It looked like something your mom would beat you for touching. Perfect. Clean.

Huge.

Yep. That about sums it up. Heaven. Big, clean and intimidating.

"That don't seem like the sort of place you'd come from," I said to Lucifer. "They put sheets down on the floors in case you tracked dirt in?"

"It was a long time ago," he said. "We've all changed."

There was nothing so obvious or welcoming as a door or gate, Lucifer just came to a halt in front of one patch of blank white wall that looked much the same as any other.

"It's strange," he said, looking around. "For all its austerity, the citadel is always buzzing with life. You could feel it, even on the outside, the energy of all the souls inside. This is... dead, empty... hollow."

He looked up at the wall. "Alonzo! Either come out or let me in, I don't intend to stand here for eternity."

That's it, I thought, let's start on the right foot why don't we?

I
HAD WISHED
for soup but I got fish. I suppose, from what I can remember of my Sunday School lessons, it is a notoriously holy dish.

Jones was clearly no more in the mood for dining than he was polite conversation.

"Enough of this," he said, pushing his plate to one side. "Why are we all sat here like it's a goddamned party? You brought us here for a reason and I want to know more."

"You know my offer, old friend," said Alonzo, "The governing of the Dominion of Circles, or Hell if you must. I don't think I can put it any clearer."

"You want him to run Hell?" asked Hope Lane.

"Problem with that?" Jones replied with a sneer.

She stared at her fish, a bloated, glistening thing with skin like mercury. "I'm sure you're ideally suited to the job."

"Precisely!" Alonzo said. "That's the thing! You're all perfect for the roles I have in mind for you. A brave new start, learning lessons from the past and forging a better, controlled, future."

"It is rather hard to swallow," I said. "Maybe it's because we're just simple, mortal folk, but I can't say I'm clear on things either. You say you want a new Bible?"

"Yes! The old one is far too conflicted. Full of mixed messages, confusing imagery and contradictions. People don't know what to believe! Should they turn the other cheek or stone those who trespass against them? Are you sinners or are you incapable of sin because you're God's creatures? Does God forgive or does he condemn? Does he tempt or does he not? Is God loving or brutal?"

"Or both?" I suggested.

"Precisely!" Alonzo removed the skin from his fish with once perfect sweep of his knife.

"That's exactly the problem! The damn thing can't even agree how many apostles there were! This is what happens when you let a mortal edit... Especially as a group. Mortals can't handle complexity. They don't deal with nuance. You've proved as much for two thousand years, fighting each other over interpretation, symbology... We need to start again. Clear messages," he looked to Soldier Joe and Jones in turn. "Clear heroes and villains. The sort of thing your lot can handle and work with. Then, perhaps, we can get everything back on an even keel."

"Which begs the question," said Jones, "who the hell are you to be doing such a thing?"

"I'm the last authority," Alonzo sighed, "the one left holding the pieces."

"Well," said Soldier Joe, "I'll ask as everybody else is pussyfooting around it. Where's God?"

Alonzo sighed. "Lost in his own disinterest as usual, I'm afraid. Ever since he created you he has grown more and more obsessed with mortality. He says it's the key to enlightenment if you can believe such a thing! That you can never truly know the point of it all unless you're in a position to lose it. Utter guff, both philosophically and theologically in my opinion. If God doesn't know the meaning of existence then there simply isn't one. But he will have his little games and experiments."