Once Upon a Time in Hell (5 page)

They were like no other beings I had seen, each sat quite comfortably on a separate chair that overlooked the causeway and the door that offered escape from it.

On the left was a creature that reminded me of some of the pictures of Injuns in feathered headdresses I'd seen when I was a kid. At first I took it to be wearing a heavy coat of black, raven feathers but, once I was close enough to see clearly I could tell the feathers were its own.

They shimmered and rustled, undulating as if things worked their way between them, giant fleas perhaps. Which left me to wonder if fleas would feed on one of their own because, the legs that protruded from the feathers were definitely those of an insect, thin and segmented, the joints hooked and vicious. It's head showed the same split origin, a sharp, pointed beak jutting out from beneath big, segmented eyes like those of a fly. Next to him was the most human of the trio: a woman whose skin fluttered around her in dried flakes. A creature of dust. She wore a waistcoat that I took for leather until I spotted the pert nipples to either side of its thin lapels and was forced to accept that the skin had been flayed from a man rather than beast.

Finally, the least definable of the three. It was a figure lacking dimension. As it turned you were presented with a rough silhouette, like a child's drawing of a man, then it would turn again and it was lost from sight as you were presented with the thin edge of the paper. It was a sketch brought to life.

"And who do we have here?" asked the woman in the centre. "What little man is this who wishes access to the Dominion of Circles?"

They were looking at me and, having hoped that the old man would do all the talking, I looked to him for advice. He simply held his finger up to his lips, like a child asking you not to rat out its behaviour to a vindictive parent. He slid from his skeletal ride and immediately began to climb the escarpment to the left, the three gatekeepers not acknowledging him one bit.

"Well?" squawked the bird creature, "cat got your tongue?"

"I would like its tongue," the woman said, "I would wear it like a tie."

"Maybe I'll roll the dice with you for it," said the bird, "as I bet it would make a nice snack too. A fat, spurting worm that would lick all the way down the gullet. A French kiss that fills the belly."

The third creature, the insubstantial impression of a man, fluttered and I saw words appear above its silhouetted head like smoke signals, melting away the moment they were read.

Flesh suit, the words said. Precious warmth. Wear it till it melt. "I think its damaged," said the bird. "It cannot speak. Its brain has curdled. Maybe it's a Buzz freak. You like Buzz little man?"

"Mmmm..." the woman licked her dry lips, pink clouds of lip skin fluttering in front of her yellow teeth like butterflies as her tongue dislodged them from where they nested on her skull. "Curdled brains served hot from the skull like oatmeal, perhaps we could share?"

She reached for the bird creature, her skin thrown into temporary disarray as she moved, revealing the skeleton beneath. When she was still once more, her hand resting on her companion's feathered shoulder, the skin settled, dressing her once again. "A romantic meal," she continued, "to sharpen all appetites."

The bird-thing turned to her, its beak chattering in what I took to be pleasure. "My appetite is always sharp."

Sharp, appeared in a word cloud above the third creatures head. Brittle. Cut. Shine.

"I think I'd prefer my brains to stay exactly where they are," I said.

"It does speak!" The woman clapped her hands into swirling clouds of dust.

Speak, appeared above the third's head, then: Scream.

"I'd rather not do any screaming just now," I said. "It's been a hot ride and my throat's parched. Maybe after a rest and a nice cold drink I could work up a holler or two but not right now."

I couldn't say where this sudden reservoir of fortitude sprang from, most likely the fact that, out of the corner of my eye, I was watching the old man creep closer and closer to where the three beasts were sitting. Why they couldn't see him was beyond me, but clearly they couldn't, and equally clearly, he had a plan. It seemed the best way forward just to keep chatting until he got around to acting on it. Besides, my throat was parched... "It's a cheeky little thing!" said the bird, "I can't decide if I like it or hate it."

H ate, suggested the third, the word swelling slightly for emphasis before it broke up.

"We could always play with it for a little while," the woman suggested, "just to decide if it's entertaining. "

"What would we play?" the bird wondered. "Bleed the Pig?"

"Split and Spit!" said the woman, laughing so hard her own skin vibrated all around her so she appeared little more than a blur.

"'Skin the Dog'?" wondered the third, the word 'dog' briefly running through the air above its head.

"I don't suppose the three of you could be persuaded to start off with a little poker first and see how things move on from there?" I asked.

Strip, offered the third, though I was fairly sure he would want me to take off more than just my undershirt.

"How did you come to be here, little thing?" asked the woman, "I can't smell the grave on you."

"Perhaps the earth was particularly sweet," suggested the bird. "You don't get here with a heart that still pumps, after all."

The picture of a beating heart appeared above the third's head.

"I may have got turned around a little. I was aiming for California."

"California is not a dominion I've heard of," said the bird. "Perhaps it's one of the new settlements. They say there are camps springing up all the time on the shores of The Bristle."

"Maybe he's one of Greaser's people," suggested the woman, "his popularity is on the rise, so the whispers tell me." Whispers, agreed the third. Soul farts.

The old man had made it to the top of the gate and was now walking along behind their chairs. Still they seemed to have no idea he was there. He pulled out his gun and pointed it at the head of the bird creature.

"The kid's with me," he said and pulled the trigger.

There was a startled squawk and the air filled with feathers and brains.

The old man kicked the woman's chair forward and she fell with a yell of surprise. When she hit the ground she exploded in a cloud of dead skin. The skeleton at the heart of her broke into separate pieces but immediately rolled around trying to reconnect.

"The skull!" he shouted, "grab the bitch's skull!"

This was not a suggestion I took kindly to, but the urgency of his words and the innate trust I'd developed for him had me running towards her thrashing bones before I really had time to question the sense of it.

Her skin was whipping around like a swarm of flies wanting nothing more than to calm down and settle back down on a nice piece of shit.

I grabbed hold of her skull, avoiding the gnashing teeth.

"Throw it up into the air," he said, "high as you can."

I did so, sending it sailing up above my head. A pair of eyes appeared from within the cloud of skin, clearly hoping to bed themselves back down in their sockets. They were too late, the gunslinger took his shot and blew the skull into fragments. The eyes dropped back down to earth like gelatinous hail stones.

"What about that?" I asked, pointing to the third who was flexing in what could have been anger or panic. It presented itself as a series of static images, like a magic lantern show. Flickering silhouettes, some more human than others. A man throwing his hands in the air, a large wolf's head roaring, what looked like flames...

"Yes," the old man asked, "what about you? Are you going to try and fight?"

It swept towards him with the sound of a blanket being whipped in the air before seeming to vanish inside the gunslinger. For a few moments the old man looked troubled, as if stricken by gas after a heavy meal, then that flaming light in his throat sparked once and he exhaled a slow plume of deep, black smoke.

"The Consequence is a conceptual creature," he said, "it's power lies in corrupting the mind with its thoughts and ideas."

"And you're beyond corruption?"

"Hardly that. But I'm certainly out of its league."

He began to climb back down the slope, his boot heels kicking up twin waves of ash as he slid towards ground level.

"Who were they?" I asked.

"Lesser presences," he replied, "gatekeepers, loiterers, gossipers. Nothing worth talking about."

"Oh good," I said, "as long as they weren't terrifying or anything."

"Terror is more than an ugly face," he said, reaching the bottom. "There are things ahead that will make them seem like the pale shadows they were."

"You say it as if that's reassuring. It's not."

"Just saying it like it is."

He walked up to the gate and threw his weight into pushing it wide open. "Appreciate a hand here," he said. "Fine," I stood next to him. "I just get to forgetting you can't do everything by yourself."

"If I could you wouldn't be here, boy."

Slowly the gate parted, the two heavy doors swinging to either side. The ash clouds this kicked up forced me to close my mouth and eyes as I kept pushing.

"Can't see a damned thing," I said, waving my hand in front of my face.

A cool wind hit my face and, as the ash settled I found the world had changed. "Welcome to the Dominion of Circles," he said.

T
O DESCRIBE THE
movement between outside and in is quite impossible as there simply didn't appear to be any.

One moment I had been walking towards the town and then the next I was within its streets. I looked around, assuming that I would see Alonzo, or one of the many other people I assumed had been brought within Wormwood alongside me. There was no sign of anyone. I was, as far as I could tell, quite alone.

At a loss as to an alternative plan, I decided to explore.

I crossed the street to peer into one of the shops, stopping almost instantly to investigate the dirt at my feet. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest I had given the ground any thought but, if pressed, I would have assumed it to be the same patch of empty earth that had been sitting here minding its own business before someone dropped a magical town upon it. Taking a handful of the dry, powdery stuff that shifted beneath my boots I realised that couldn't possibly be the case. It had the texture of ash; the remains of winter fires or funeral pyres. It was entirely different to the heavy, clay-laden soil we had been tramping across for the last few days, dirt that would have swallowed us all had any heavy rains come. Perhaps it wasn't important but it made me think nonetheless. How much of this town was physically real? Was it a solid chunk of matter—extending down even into the earth foundations—brought from elsewhere? Was it just a dream of a town (if so then had they had gone so far as to dream the dirt I walked in?) Was it somewhere else entirely, a place that appeared to exist right before us and yet really was simply a representation of another place entirely? Had the dirt changed because I was now many miles away from where I had last stood?

Surrounded by miracles, you might wonder at my obsessing over such detail but I was determined to know the answers to this place, inside and out. Naivety? Yes. Of course. I would be shown to be an idiot for believing such things to be within my comprehension soon enough.

I mounted the boardwalk, unnaturally aware of the feel of the wood beneath me, the physical creak of the planks as they bore my weight. If they were imaginary planks they had been hewn from very sturdy imaginary trees.

The shop that faced me claimed to offer livery supplies. A faux saddle, carved from wood and painted a gleeful shade of red hung from a chain above me alongside the sign: M. Peele, Livery and Leather Goods.

I looked through the window at the racks of bridles and straps, the wall was festooned with them, pulled from one hook to another until the whole resembled nothing less absurd than a web as spun by a cow. There was no sign of a shopkeeper so I pushed open the door and stepped inside. The air was heavy with the smell of leather. Everywhere you looked, studs and clasps winked in the sunlight that passed through the window, every shadow lit by a constellation of false stars. I pulled at a few, becoming more and more confused as I tried to imagine them applied to anything so mundane as a horse. Following the pattern of the straps and hoops I had to concede that Mr Peele catered for a wider zoological range than normal. Some -- the least bizarre of them -- seemed to be designed to harness a human.

The opposite wall housed saddles and here, again, the absent craftsman had refused to be bound by a single species. Some were more than an arm's length, their padding thick and their girth wider than any horse's back. The horns that rose from their pommels were extended and grotesque, military applications perhaps, designed to intimidate opposing cavalry.

Conceding that Mr Peele was clearly not at home for business, I left his emporium and made my way further up the street.

I glanced in the windows of each building and store as I passed, taking notes, even mak ing the odd sketch.

The only other life I found were the coiling forms of impossibly large silk worms that wove the stock of Ma Ninny's Dresswear & Lace.

Ahead I saw the doors of a saloon, if there were to be life anywhere, I reasoned, it would be there.

There was no sound coming from beyond those doors—not the refrain of a piano, the susurration of conversation, nor even the chink of glass against glass. Nonetheless, I pushed the swinging doors aside and entered the Holy Ass Saloon.

Inside was as empty as everywhere else.

Now, I have sworn to you that I am making the best possible effort to curtail my drinking, and that is certainly true. Liquor was the fuel that kept Roderick Quartershaft running and I was quite determined that his engine should stay quiet forever more. That said, the overwhelming thirst that struck me as I ran my eye along the bottles behind the bar, like the prizes on a fair ground stall, all shining and precious, was hard to ignore. It seemed to me that one, small measure, as an aid to fortitude in my current, unusual circumstances, could hardly be seen as a sin.