The Descent

THIRTEEN

I made some excuse to Sophia in order to take my leave, but I don’t remember what I said in my desperation to get away from her. As sad as I was for her and her baby, to be perfectly honest, I was horrified by what had become of her, horrified that a person could be made to endure such a merciless penance in the afterlife. Was the next plane of existence nothing more than a prison? If that was the case, that meant the queen might be its warden, making sure the offending souls did not escape from their punishment. But if she was the warden, who was the judge who handed down the sentences? Who had put her in charge of hell?

I ran out of my old childhood home and down the dirt wagon trail. I didn’t think to linger in town; no, I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Luckily, this St. Andrew was exactly like the St. Andrew of my past and not like a location in a dream, where a road suddenly grows twice its length, or where you take a turn only to find that you’ve ended up somewhere else entirely, a place you’d never seen before. This St. Andrew remained true to form and so I could find my way back to the spot in the forest where I’d entered. I found the door without too much difficulty, locating it in the middle of a big, old oak tree as though that was perfectly normal.

Once on the other side, I leaned against the door huffing and puffing from exertion and fright, trying to force the vision of Sophia’s blue-faced baby from my mind. I was relieved to be in the quiet hall again and wondered if it would be possible to sit for a minute and collect my thoughts. Again, I listened for the heavy thump-thump I’d heard before, the sound I’d been sure was an indication of a demon. Nothing. Cautiously optimistic, I looked in both directions. The hall to the right seemed the shorter of the two. I could almost see the end of the hall, where it turned a corner. What waited down those other hallways? I wondered. Perhaps this hall was my hall, the doors representing different phases of my life, and the doors on those other halls led to someone else’s life, perhaps someone close to me. Perhaps they led to Jonathan’s life. It was a silly notion, undoubtedly, but I had to try to make sense of the fantastic world in which I found myself.

I trotted down the hall as noiselessly as possible and peeked around the corner. The red runner stretched away from me, beckoningly, down the new hallway. This hall was longer, one of those fun house ones that seemed to go off into infinity. I tiptoed up to the first door and pressed my ear against it: there was silence within. I gripped the doorknob, and opened the door.

It opened onto a great, whistling canyon, its walls of craggy yellow rock climbing to the pale blue sky. The canyon itself was narrow, barely wide enough for a man to pass through. I didn’t recognize it at first, but as I crept along the trail, running my hands over the pebbly walls, I remembered the Hindu Kush and my adventures there with Savva during the Great Game, living among the Afghans.

What a strange place the underworld was turning out to be, not nearly as frightening as I’d feared, the episode with Sophia notwithstanding. It was like getting to live forever in your memories, reuniting with old friends over and over, revisiting the places you’d lived. Take this place, for instance: if I was in the Hindu Kush, that meant I might be about to meet up with Abdul, the wonderful tribal warlord I’d met and fallen in love with. Fate had dealt with us unfairly and we’d had only a short time together. I would be absolutely delighted for an opportunity to see him again. The thought made my heart beat excitedly, and I’d even begun to jog down the path, expecting to find him around the next corner, when I realized I was being foolishly optimistic. This was the afterlife, not a video game. I couldn’t expect to dial up an old memory and relive it on the spot. I could be in the mountains of Afghanistan, or not. I could be in someone else’s life. I was running toward nothing. In any case, the chances of finding Jonathan here seemed slim.

Deflated, I retraced my steps and found the door I’d entered stuck incongruously in the side of the canyon wall. Strangely, as I stepped back into the hall, in that split second suspended between the canyon and the corridor, it came to me: I suddenly knew what I had to do to find Jonathan. I had to go to the place my dreams had told me I would find him. I had to go to the cellar.

It wasn’t a pleasant prospect. Frightening things lurked in basements, and the fortress was no exception. My knees went a little weak as I set off, but before long I managed to find a staircase. Removing a candle from one of the sconces, I descended the stairs as quietly as possible, only too aware that any noise I made would rattle and rumble down the cavernous stairwell and let anyone within earshot know I was coming. A slight draft wafted up from the bottom, which was lost in darkness. The breeze carried a bitter tang of rot and decay.

The stairs deposited me in an alcove made of stone, made of the same large granite blocks as the passageway in my dreams. The air was clammy and I could have sworn I heard a faint plop, plop of dripping water off in the distance. Holding my candle overhead, I began down the passage, wary for the slightest movement in the shadows ahead. An eternity seemed to pass before I came to the first door, and it was not the one from my nightmare. My inclination was to keep looking for the door, the familiar one, but that approach seemed shortsighted. I might find something of value behind one of the other doors: someone who could advise me; a clue of some kind to help me deal with the dreaded queen.

I grasped the rough iron latch and opened the door.

Standing directly in front of me were not one but three demons. If they were ugly individually, they were positively fearsome in multiples. They were so large that they filled the room wall to wall with reddened muscle, the tips of their long, curving horns scraping the ceiling. Their three brutish heads turned on me as soon as I’d opened the door, watery snot dripping from their black snouts, their topaz eyes gleaming. When I entered the room, I distracted them from what they were doing, and my gaze involuntarily fell downward to the locus of their activity. I saw, to my horror, that there was a man on the floor between them. They’d circled around him, had him on his hands and knees, and one of the demons was hunched over him, caught in the midst of an unspeakable act. I was aware, all at once, of their great heavy phalluses, the weightiness between their legs, their brutal animal need. Surprised by my sudden presence, they’d broken off what they were doing to the poor man, who fell to the dirt floor in a swoon.

I turned and bolted. Candle dropped, I ran in pitch blackness, bumping and crashing against the stone walls. I held back the vomit that rose in my throat, tried to push the horrific sight out of my mind, and ran. Behind me, I heard the thudding of the demons’ hooves on earth, the occasional scrape of dagger-tipped horn against stone, their grunts and groans as they tried to squeeze through the narrow passageway after me. I felt the heaviness of their bodies behind me, swore I could feel their hot, damp breath on my neck, the brush of their fingers reaching for me. . . . I could swear I heard their voices calling me, Lanny, Lanny, we’re going to catch you, and when we do . . . the threat hanging in the air. One of the voices sounded vaguely familiar . . . not that I was going to wait around and find out why.

A door suddenly popped up in front of me. It wasn’t the door, but it was either my salvation or a trap. I had only an instant to decide. Instinct took over. I reached for the latch, threw the door back, and leapt inside.