Ghost Shadows (8 page)

Once that had been revealed, the fire in his non-existent body would steadily grow to a level even more unbearable, if such a thing were possible, spurred on by the addition of this visually terrifying aspect of his torture. Eventually he would succumb to his pain and fall back into the blessed blackness. When his time in whatever particular room of torment was over he would find himself outside of the cave on what he thought of as the Path. Then he would once again be required to walk along the Path to the next available room, where, once inside, a new and even more horrifying form of torture awaited him. Oh yes, Winston had no doubt this was Hell.

 As more of the candles sprang to life the room became ablaze with their glow and in his immobile state, Winston could only see directly in front of him. Against the far wall of the cave was a large area with an irregularly-shaped reflective stone embedded inside. At first Winston could not see well, but after a few moments of blinking away his blurring tears he saw his own reflection—and then wished he hadn't.
 

Earlier, Winston had felt some pain in his forehead, but had not known, nor could he imagine the cause, but now he suddenly understood the horrid truth. Winston could see in the reflective stone there was some type of rusted barbed wire wrapped in a circle around his head and its sharp spines had dug deep furrows into the flesh. Dried blood tracks covered his face. He looked strangely like pictures he had seen of Christ with his crown of thorns. But there was no Jesus Christ in this unholy place. Then he noticed something previously inconceivable happening above the encircling barbed crown.

He had to strain to look more closely to make sure he was not imagining what he was seeing. He could not believe the site before him. The entire top of his skull had been removed and his brain sat completely exposed. As if that fact alone was not disturbing enough, he realized that dozens of thin rusted metal pins or rods of some sort were scattered about and imbedded deep into his unprotected brain. And although the horrifying sight repulsed him beyond his worst imaginings, strangely he could not feel any pain in his skull, other than the superficial pain he originally felt from the barbed wire. What he did feel however, was a fiery misery in his arms.

Winston followed his gaze in the reflective stone down along his body and saw he had been placed in a large wooden-framed chair, curiously resembling the electric chairs used in the early days of Earth's death penalty executions. The wood was thick and heavy and deliberately uncomfortable. Winston could tell by the pain he was starting to feel in his buttocks that something had likely been placed on the seat to increase his level of discomfort; they always used something that felt like broken glass, metal shards, razor wire, or hot coals, but for some blessed reason he was not quite able to feel it as intently as believed he should have. And that was fine with him because the pain he already felt in his arms was unbearable enough.

As he continued to try to determine the level his unfortunate situation, Winston saw that he was naked, which also was not a surprise, as he had been naked since arriving in this horrible place so long ago. In fact, it seemed like everyone in Hell was naked. But there was no sexual reason for the nudity. The obvious purpose for the exposure was to make access easier for the armies of pain inflicting demons.  

Then in the foggy mirror-stone Winston saw why his arms had been hurting him so badly. Oh my God, no! he thought as he bellowed out yet another blood curdling scream. In the matter of a second, time seemed to stop as Winston took in the extent of what the vile demon of this particular torture chamber had done to him.

Both of his wrists were secured to the top of the heavy arms of the chair buy two large rusted spikes driven down through them, essentially crucifying him to the arms of the chair. He thought again about his wire crown, about Jesus Christ and the blasphemy portrayed in Winston's own painful crucifixion. In the mirror he could see that his fingers, which were curled around the front of the arms, had been relieved of all of their flesh and most of the musculature, leaving only skeletal remains, which he was strangely still able to move although doing so only caused him increased pain.

As if that was not bad enough, he could see that the area behind his wrists and up to the tops of his forearms had suffered the worst of the damage. Strips of bloody flesh perhaps a half inch wide had been peeled back the length of his arms and curled up into rolls that were pierced and held together with long tarnished pins.

Each forearm had ten or more of these crimson coils of flayed flesh and Winston could see his own exposed red glistening muscles dripping with blood reflecting in the light. To Winston, it didn't matter that what he was seeing was not physical because the agony he felt most certainly was.  

He prayed for this particular session to soon be over long before the real pain began, yet he knew his prayers would go unanswered as they always did. Hell was no place for prayer. Winston also understood, once his time in this particular torture chamber was over there would be another, even more unbearable period of pain waiting somewhere further up the Path.
 

“How you like me work? Good job, no?” Winston heard an ominous guttural voice, not possibly human in origin, say from behind him. Like most of the hideous beings that were responsible for inflicting pain, this one was no doubt another moronic monosyllabic beast whose sole purpose for existence was to exact untold levels of agony. Winston slowly pulled his eyes away from his throbbing arms and looked into the reflective stone to see an incredibly heinous looking demon standing behind him. This abomination stood over seven feet tall and was rail thin but sinewy with ropy muscles. Its fingers were long and bony and had great yellowed talons. Like the rest of the creatures Winston had previously encountered, its face was pig-like in appearance with a pushed up snout and a large slobbery mouth from which long fangs jutted both upward and downward. Its cat-shaped eyes bugged from the sunken sockets of its skull and it had two long ram horns curling back from its forehead continuing over top of a long mane of greasy black hair. It stank like a filthy barnyard animal and its grayish flesh, sporadically adorned with long, rat-like hairs, glistened with sweat adding to its already obnoxious stench.

The horrifying thing grinned sheepishly at Winston in the reflection and slowly lifted its right clawed hand upward toward the area atop Winston's head where his vulnerable brain had been stippled with so many pins.

“Humm.” The horrid creature said, “It have too many pins. You don't feel ‘nuff ouches.” With that, the creature began to meticulously extract one pin after another from Winston's brain. With each pull of a pin the level of pain intensified until it reached its crescendo and Winston once again found himself blessedly, albeit temporarily unconscious.  

***

When he started to regain awareness again, Winston suddenly recalled the details of what he had just been through and reflexively grabbed for his head and arms, certain he would find them still ripped and exposed. But they were not. He was whole once again, still naked, outside of the room where he had just endured one of the worst sessions to date. He was also momentarily free of pain and he knew he would have to enjoy whatever small amount of blessed relief he might have. It wouldn't last long, although it seemed time, at least as Winston understood time, was without meaning in this place.
 

Long ago, a demon in one of his many intervals of torment had mentioned to him that in Hell, a thousand years of pain could take place while only a few seconds passed in terms of earth time. Likewise just a few moments in Hell might be a century on the other side. Although the creature was not intelligent enough to articulate what he wanted to explain, Winston was able to take the beast's grunts and half sentences and turn them into what he thought might be a cohesive representation of the concept. He deduced that in Hell, the relationship of time was not linear; neither did it always go forward. Sometimes time stood still and sometimes it might even move backward depending on the particular need.  

 As Winston sat peacefully on the Path he knew exactly what he had to do next; he knew the routine. He was never allowed to sit for very long. He would have to eventually get up and begin walking to whatever door he was supposed to find next. Failure to do so would mean more severe repercussions in the next room. He also knew he could not go backwards and would not even consider attempting to do so. He had made that mistake once shortly after his arrival and discovered he was forced to go through every single agonizing second of every torture he had previously encountered all over again; from the beginning. That was only after five or six sessions. Now with literally thousands of periods of torture behind him he didn't want to even look behind him let alone try to go backward.

He stood up and looked out in the distance. Although he could only see for about fifty or sixty feet ahead of him in the dimly lit cavern he instinctively knew that the Path was endless. Spaced irregularly along both sides of the Path were doors made of large, heavy wooden planks bolted together with huge rusted iron hinges. The doors had no windows and were mounted into the stone cavern walls providing the only access into or out of each chamber. Winston learned shortly after his arrival that the rules of Hell were simple; walk forward on the Path and look for the next open door.  
 

As he slowly made his way along the Path, Winston heard screaming of other unfortunate souls from behind those doors that were closed. The large main cavern was ceaselessly resonant with the unending shrieks of the damned. But despite the screams of the multitudes, Winston never met anyone else either in Hell or on the Path. That was another apparent rule of Hell; he was always alone except for those times of immeasurable suffering when he was in the capable hands of a vile demon.  

Next to each of the doors hung a candelabrum formed from a real once living human hand, their withered gray fingers pointing upward as if reaching to catch some unknown object falling from a nonexistent sky. Melted fast to the cupped palm of each hand was a thick blood red candle; the hot wax dripping down forming puddles in the palm before spilling over and sliding along its shriveled forearm. The candles never seemed to burn down.

Not long after his arrival in Hell, Winston had been naturally curious and reached out to touch one of the hideous appendages, thinking them cast from stone because of their veined appearance, and was frighteningly greeted with the icy chill of dead, rotting human flesh. Then the hand had actually moved, ever so slightly; just enough to send chills down Winston's spine and to teach him one of his first of many lessons. It seemed to him as if almost every single minute in the horrible place he was learning something new whether he wanted to or not, and each new lesson was more horrifying than the last.

Winston kept the gruesome sconces in his peripheral vision as he slowly walked along the Path, among the howls of the countless damned, searching for the next open door; which he unfortunately saw up ahead. He understood the opening was meant for him and as such, was to be his next destination. Dutifully but reluctantly, Winston stepped through the doorway and was once again thrust into complete darkness to blindly face whatever fate awaited him inside. He heard the thick wooden door slam shut behind him as he had heard a thousand times before. Then he stood in the blackness of the room where he awaited his next torture.
 

Suddenly the room burst into light and Winston had to shield his eyes from the blinding brightness. After a few moments, when he became accustomed to the light, he looked around and was shocked to discover he was not in another stinking fetid cave filled with devices of inhuman anguish as he had anticipated, but was in a room; a real room like he recalled from life.

He was standing in a brightly lit office very similar to what he recalled his own office looking like back before he died. In fact, it was his office, he was certain of it. Winston was no longer naked, but was dressed in a casual shirt, dress pants, and expensive shoes. The office was decorated exactly like his office had been and had his same large mahogany desk and comfortable leather manager's chair positioned behind it. Winston turned to look at a certificate hanging on the wall. He was shocked to see it was his own college diploma.

“You are Mr. Winston Peter James, is that correct?” a voice said from his left. He turned to face the desk once more and saw that the chair was no longer empty, but was now occupied by a peculiar looking sort of man. The man was dressed in a business suit and sat up in a manner that appeared straight and proper, almost as if he were posturing and assuming what Winston supposed was the man's interpretation of how a businessperson should appear.

He was not however doing a very good job of looking the part he was trying to portray as his suit didn't seem to fit him well and was somewhat rumpled and disheveled. He appeared to be about middle age, slightly built with a full head of thick brown hair, which was graying somewhat at the temples, giving him a slightly distinguished look despite the issues with his attire. He wore a pair of round wire-framed glasses, which sat askew upon a long thin nose. He had a pencil thin mustache and no other facial hair. His hands were folded and resting on the top of the desk, giving Winston the impression that the man was unsure what to do with them.
 

Besides the obvious incongruity of the office itself being recreated in its entirety in Hell and the presence of the odd looking character behind the desk, Winston noticed there was also something else that was very wrong. It was the man's eyes. For starters, the skin around the eyes hung loosely and seemed to bag in places as if to suggest the flesh was not his own, but was some sort of skin mask worn to cover whatever countenance lie beneath it. Likewise, the man's eyes were just as strange; they did not appear to be quite human but were more cat-like and seemed to stare out at Winston without blinking.