Heaven and Hell (22 page)

What lay before her was a vista like none she had ever seen before. No, this was not a lake, but a great sea, with mighty waves pounding at the base of the cliff, as if seeking to drive it back to the mountains. In the back of her mind, she had envisioned the sea of fire to be an enormous sea of red hot lava. Nowhere in the Bible was such a thing inferred, but somehow, that was the picture that was ingrained within the depths of Serena’s mind. Her lofty vista from the mountain top had only strengthened this view. Yet, now that she was here, at close range, she realized its true essence.

Its surface was black and shiny, and its nature slimy and viscous, like crude oil. Much of it burned with a terrible intensity that Serena could feel even from the top of the cliff. Here and there great fountains of super hot liquid erupted from the depths, scattering their scalding essence into the black sea of ooze. In other places, pillars of fire burst forth, rising high into the sky. The evil black mass swirled with incredible fury, as if being churned from below by unseen forces. Amidst it all was the dreadful roar, the pounding of waves against the nearly vertical cliff, the bubbling, the swirling, and erupting. In her most terrible nightmares, Serena had never imagined that it would be like this—was she to be cast into this vast cauldron?

“Oh God, no!” she whimpered. “No!”

She was trembling as she picked up the mystical hourglass. So little time left. Of all the things she had seen here, this was the most horrifying. What had she done to deserve such a terrible fate?

“Glorious, is it not?”

Serena turned to behold the prince of darkness himself. Upon his face was a broad smile. How long had he been standing there? She couldn’t say.

“My crowning achievement,” he said, stretching his hand toward the horizon, “a great sea of turbulent thundering fury that extends farther than you can possibly imagine. It extends far into the darkness beyond the horizon. It is the black heart of Hell itself, and it will be your new home. I wanted to be here to bid you farewell before you took the plunge to meet its hot, wet embrace.” Satan turned to the lifeless plains behind him. “Still, we have some time before you must begin your eternal service to me. Yes, time to see another example of my creative genius.”

Serena had seen enough. “Please, no more,” she begged.

Satan cocked his head in feigned surprise. “This couldn’t be the inquisitive Serena, who knelt in my chambers less than twelve hours ago. Where is the young woman who was so bold as to instruct me on the finer points of governing my dark empire? I thought you wanted knowledge.”

“I can’t bear to see any more,” she whimpered, her honor and dignity long forgotten.

“But see it, you shall,” retorted satan. “It is my will.” He extended his hand to Serena. “Now, come.”

With little choice, Serena placed her hand in his and walked with him away from the edge of the cliff. Almost immediately she noticed a dark figure standing in the distance. He seemed to be leaning over a pit dug into the dry soil of the plain. He must have been standing there all along, yet, in her agitated state, she hadn’t noticed him until now.

“I couldn’t have you missing this,” continued satan. “I’ve arranging this little drama for your benefit. I wanted you to witness yet another example of how I deal with your kind.”

“Why me?” asked Serena, her voice stressed. “Why do you have to show all of this to me?”

“I’ve already answered that question once,” replied satan glancing toward Serena. “Really, little one, you need to listen more carefully. I told you that you were special to God. I know His plans, and I have worked tirelessly to thwart them. This time I succeeded. If you had taken a different path, if you had followed Him rather than me, you would have deprived me of more guests than you can imagine. You would have caused me much trouble. But now, little one, you are here, and I shall take good care of you. I shall put you where you can do me no harm.”

As the thunder of the great sea faded, she could again hear the mournful voices rising from below and they added to her sense of despair.

“When I confer once again with the most holy God, you may be sure that the topic of Serena Farnsworth shall be brought up, if only briefly. You are but another sentence in my story of success. You shall be but one more example of the failings of the Creator’s grand design, and this pathetic little creature called man. I will spare Him no details of your eternal torment. I want Him to realize just how pointless His love for your kind really is. When the final tally is taken, and the game over, I am confident that I shall possess far more souls than the most high God.”

“You talk as if it were a game,” retorted Serena, who no longer cared if she offended the prince of darkness.

“Oh, it is,” assured satan. “And I do enjoy it so. Formulating punishments that befit the nature of the many crimes of mankind constantly challenges my creativity. Behold a case in point.”

Satan stretched his hand forward, toward a mound of dirt and an elongated hole excavated into the dry ground of the plain. A demon dressed wholly in black stood over the pit, while an occasional spray of brown dirt issued from the hole before him.

“Be quick, or it will be all the worse for you!” He demanded, gazing downward toward some unseen individual.

It was then that Serena noticed the plain black coffin setting by the rim of the pit. It was of the oblong variety, a bit wider toward its middle than at its ends, the sort of coffin that might have been used several centuries ago. Its lid sat to one side, allowing Serena to view the inside of the box. Much to her horror, she discovered that it was lined on both its bottom and sides with a multitude of sharp nails, each over an inch long. Even the inside surface of the lid was lined with sharp barbs. The demon came to attention at the approach of the master.

“Is all in readiness?” asked satan, looking briefly at the project before him.

“Yes, my Lord,” confirmed the demon. “You have arrived at a most opportune time; we have just finished with the dull preliminaries. We are prepared for the real drama to begin.”

Now Serena could see into the pit. It was five or six feet deep, and at the bottom, a man clothed only in a gray loincloth labored tirelessly. He moved handful after handful of earth, his only tool; his bloody fingernails. He seemed totally exhausted.

“Now, get out of there!” demanded the demon. “Be quick!”

The thin, barefoot man scrambled from the roughly hewn pit. He appeared to be about 30 years of age and was both filthy and sweaty from his prolonged labors. There were telltale welts upon his back where the demon had apparently applied a lash to his hide as motivation.

The demon pointed toward the grizzly spiked box. “Now, get into your coffin, the master is waiting.”

“Please!” pleaded the man, falling to his knees. “Please, no!”

The demon’s wrinkled face scowled. “Believe me; it will be far better for you if you get in of your own volition.”

Weeping, the man rose to his feet and walked to the edge of the coffin. He hesitated as if searching for some means by which he could enter in with a minimum of pain. How could one willingly step into a box filled with hundreds of sharp nails? Finally, sensing that the demon was about to lose patience with him, the terrified man sat upon the rim of the coffin. He tried to lie on his side, balancing himself on the rim, before attempting to ease himself into the menacing box. His efforts were for naught. He lost his balance and fell in, impaling himself on a hundred or more sharp nails. He howled as blood oozed from his back and down the nails. He tried to rise, but found he lacked both the strength and the conviction.

The demon reached for a large sealed jar by the side of the coffin and opened its wide lid. Serena was horrified as all manners of crawling insects poured from the earthen container and into the coffin. Some appeared to be large beetles, while others were more akin to cockroaches. Still others looked like giant fleas and ticks. They all lit ravenously into the defenseless man in the coffin, even as the demon swiftly closed the lid, sealing the hoard of insects and their human host within.

Serena endeavored to turn from the horrible tragedy being played out before her, but satan held her tightly by the arms, compelling her to watch. An instant later, the demon raised his arms, and the coffin was levitated from the ground and then lowered into the hole that its occupant had excavated. The dirt tumbled in behind it, as if cast down by a hundred invisible spades, covering up the coffin in a matter of seconds. In less than a minute, all that remained was a small mound of slightly darker soil and the muffled screams that emanated from the depths.

“Thus is the penalty of sin,” announced satan, raising his hands. “Pity him not, little one. Do you think I have condemned an innocent man? I have not. He was an assassin, a killer for hire. Many were his victims, killed at the whim of his villainous employer. Men, women, even children; he killed without regard. Most of his victims never saw him coming, for he traveled in the shadows and attacked without warning. In darkness he lived, and in darkness shall he dwell for eternity, attacked by a voracious hoard he can not even see, never to know a moment without terror. So I have decreed, so it shall be.”

Serena was horrified beyond words, this dreadful soul’s crimes not withstanding. She could hardly imagine the torment of those countless souls buried in this cemetery beyond the grave. The nails, the darkness, the suffocation, the horrible insects; it was absolutely ghastly.

“Ah, but I’ve saved the best for last,” promised satan. “I have planned a sort of family reunion. Yes, that is exactly what it is.”

“A family reunion?” asked Serena.

“Yes,” confirmed satan. “But I do not wish to spoil the surprise.”

With the wave of his hand, the prince of darkness, caused a dark portal, the sort that Serena had become only too familiar with, to appear before him. He compelled Serena to gaze into its depths.

It was difficult to see beyond the threshold, for the rocky corridor was misty and dimly lit, perhaps subterranean. More than ever before, Serena dreaded to enter. Something horrible awaited her in that tunnel. She had seen enough. She tried to pull away from the prince of darkness, though it was a vain attempt.

Satan had little patience with this human wench. Yes, she amused him, but his schedule was indeed full this day, and there were so many other matters to see to. He grasped her arm firmly and dragged her into the ethereal gateway.

The first thing that hit Serena was the claustrophobic, hot atmosphere of this realm, an atmosphere that bore a trace of the stench of sulfur, combined with that of burning flesh and hair. Serena could hear the distant muffled roar of flames, like that of a mighty blast furnace. Yet the roar did not come from any specific direction, but from all around her.

The brown, rust-stained walls of the narrow corridor in which she stood extended into the dusty mists in both directions. The mists prevented her from accessing the true size of this place, though she suspected that it was huge.

The roughly hewn walls were lined with a multitude of heavy metal doors, spaced at regular intervals. To the left of each door, a trio of metal wheels, one large and two small, were mounted to the wall, obviously some sort of controls, for as yet unseen machinery. Each door was identical, sealed tightly to its metal frame, and held together by a multitude of large metal rivets. Each door had a small circular glass peephole at about eye level. A fiery orange glow radiated from most of these small portals, illuminating the otherwise dark corridor in stark flickering illumination. They attested to the presence of a roaring inferno, just inches beyond the metal door. It reminded Serena of a scene from an old horror movie, though she really didn’t remember which one.

Serena had always felt uneasy in dark, close quarters. For her, this phobia only compounded the ghastly atmosphere of this place.

Satan allowed Serena a moment to breathe in the gloomy despair that dominated this place before speaking. “Behold, we are over a mile below the torrid sun-baked surface of this world, in a prison with no physical entrance and no route of escape. Above us, the eternal midday sun bakes the landscape at over 250 degrees. It would boil water, if there was water. But let us focus on this dark realm. It was devised by a group of my most skilled and inventive minions, over a century ago, in an attempt to make my kingdom more modern and relevant to the people of the time; a renovation of sorts. I suppose to you, its architecture must seem somewhat dated. Nonetheless, it remains quite an effective means of delivering fear and agony to our human clients.”

“What happens here?” asked Serena, who regretted posing the question almost before she had finished saying it.

“I never thought you would ask,” replied satan, an evil gleam in his eye. “Behind each of these heavy metal doors, fed by an ingenious network of pipes, vents, and shafts, are a series of indeed marvelous furnaces, furnaces fueled by hot volcanic gases escaping from the dark heart of this world. It is, indeed, a beautiful thing to behold.”

The prince of darkness walked to one of the dark metal doors, pulling Serena with him. It was only then when she noticed the plaque riveted to the door, just below the small glassy port. It bore only a name embossed in bold letters: Karl Rienstadt.

Satan motioned to the small viewing port. “Go ahead, take a look. Tell me what it is that you see.”

Serena hesitantly moved toward the peephole and gazed into the room beyond. It was very bright, making it difficult to discern what lay beyond the door. Slowly Serena’s eyes adjusted to the brilliance. She saw a small room, perhaps six or seven feet square, the size of a walk-in closet. It appeared to be composed entirely of riveted metal, of that much Serena was fairly certain. The walls of the furnace seemed to undulate in the intense heat, even as brilliant flames of bright yellow, orange, and blue fire swirled wildly through a large grate on the floor, sweeping through the tiny room like a small but powerful cyclone. They vanished again through a similar grate in the ceiling, spiraling rapidly upward to who knew where. Never had she seen flames that looked or behaved like these, it was unnatural. Indeed, it had a beauty all its own.