But we must be nearing the general vicinity of the colder region, because you can feel the outside air coming in through our shattered windows. I hope they aren’t so accustomed/adapted to the cold in Gehenna and Pluto that they don’t use heat from steam and fires!
Lyre looks like a man now. A man dissected by first-time—and blind—medical students, but a kind of man…though he’s too incomplete and in too much pain to talk. Still, I sit on the edge of his bunk and talk to him, for company. I tried to hold his hand but it hurt his exposed nerves and broke small blood vessels so that my palm came away wet. Poor guy. We writers suffer for our art.
I told him the plot of the great novel I had always planned to write. "Now don’t steal my ideas," I warned him. But I won’t summarize it here. I don’t want to cash in its magic prematurely, if you can get what I mean. Sometimes you can talk and think a novel out of your system before you even type the first word.
Whether this novel, set in the mortal world, with mortal concerns and absolutely no sense of an afterlife, will emerge as I had planned it…or whether it becomes informed by what I know now…I can’t yet say. We’ll see when I get there. I think I’ll write that next, instead of a second volume of this journal. I can always catch up on my memoirs later on. After all, they’ll be an on-going, endless series. Whether my readership here in Hades would be better entertained by—better relate to—my experiences in the afterlife or by fictions of the world they once knew, I can’t say, either. But I’m so anxious to begin. Talking about it to Lyre has rekindled my old enthusiasm for it, minus my former debilitating, fatalistic despair that had me take up a shotgun instead of a pen. Or, keyboard, that is.
I want to ask Lyre what he plans to write when he is whole again. Maybe we can even collaborate on something…
Day 87.
Final Entry.
W
e have arrived in Gehenna, where nearly half of our crew has decided to remain. The rest of us will continue on to Pluto on foot and in wagons we’ll purchase here, pulled by blocky hair-covered animals that apparently don’t have heads under all that foul-smelling shag.
The sky here is as white and featureless as the ground, and in fact I’m told it is a solid ceiling of ice, and that sometimes chunks of it break off and come crashing down onto the town. Gehenna is much smaller than Oblivion, the tallest structures being only about six or seven stories in height. Most structures are black, but their sides frosted over with a lace of wind-blown crystalized snow, and snow packed in a solid layer on their roofs. Pluto, with the majority of its structures built from bricks of ice, is even colder than this? I’m almost tempted to remain here myself, but I’ll get used to it. Chara has taken to wearing clothing for the first time since I’ve known her. Oddly, seeing her in clothing stirs my lust anew. Seeing her thighs tightly gripped by coarse tan pants, teases of her breasts peeking out from the shawls she’s wrapped around her middle and between the obstacles of her wing roots. Her nakedness now will be all the more alluring, as will her hair unveiled from the kerchief she has made over her head.
There are very intimidating, very primitive Demons here like bears, or huge shaggy hyenas, that lope around on four legs as often as they shamble along on two. But my comrades have satisfied them with this story and that. I’m supposedly a servant, and they’ve been told not to mistreat me. My heart goes out to the hard-faced, empty-eyed Damned of this town, though, for the mistreatment they suffer. Too many of them have no shawls, kerchiefs or pants against the whistling, white-misted winds that weave between the long, low buildings.
The Demons of Chara’s ilk who live in Gehenna have been trusted with the knowledge of the genocide in Oblivion, and our flight from it. Though we suspect there will be resentment about the possibility of Celestials tracking the fugitives to this place, the overwhelming sentiment appears to be one of sympathy and solidarity.
By now Lyre could stand in the doorway of the Black Cathedral and gaze outside, wrapped in blankets, but he wasn’t quite up to venturing forth. The animal-like Demons had been instructed not to harass him, either. He was very gaunt, I found, and nearly bald…though maybe he’ll fill out and his hair grow back some more, before he’s done.
Already Allatou had reprogrammed the Black Cathedral, and was about to send it away unmanned, backwards, off in another direction to throw any pursuers off our trail. But a request from Lyre made me ask that she hold off for a little while longer…
"I think my father is back in Oblivion," he told me. "Not to make you feel guilty…but I was hoping not to leave there. I thought maybe somehow, sometime I’d find him. If I ever got out of that book…as unlikely as that ever seemed…"
"You didn’t tell me," I said, feeling guilty nonetheless.
"Well…it didn’t seem like enough of a possibility for me to resurrect and do anything about it. I was helpless. I couldn’t even bring myself to communicate it to you. Communication was difficult enough without trying to articulate how I felt, and…"
"Frank, you know, I’ve never met anyone who ever encountered a relative or a loved one or even an acquaintance from life. Somehow it seems like they place us so far apart in Hades, it being so vast, maybe infinite, that we can’t possibly cross those distances. And for all we know, there are more Hells than this one…"
"I know that. I’ve heard that said. But I’m telling you…one day when you had me propped in the window I swear I saw him walk along the street. I swear it was him." He wagged his head, averted both his eye I knew so well and its long missing twin.
"Hey, you know you’re free to do anything you want now, Frank…but…"
"Genie in the lamp set free, huh?"
"It’s a dangerous town these days."
"It always was. Always will be."
I nodded, mocked a disappointed pout. "I was hoping you’d tell me about what you wrote, that pissed off the Creator so much."
"It doesn’t take much."
I turned away from the white vista beyond the doorway to face him directly, suddenly inspired. "Frank…would you take the diary back with you? You carried it along with you all this time anyway, right? You can bring it to Necropolitan Press for me. Have it published right there in Oblivion…"
"That’s a great idea…sure, I can do that. But—hang on, now…if the authorities ever see a copy, they’ll know where you are. Where you all escaped to."
"True. Shit. Huh. Well…ahh…I could tolerate a little editing, if you’re up to it. As long as you’re a sensitive editor, and don’t mess with my style."
He smiled. "Don’t worry. I don’t like hands-on editors either. Sure…I’d be pleased, and honored. And somehow or other, some way, I’ll get some copies of it back to you. If you don’t stay in Pluto, just be sure to leave enough of a trail that I can follow."
"I will." Grinning, I clapped him on the shoulder. "If it takes a while for you to get copies to me—assuming they actually want to publish the thing—don’t worry. It’s not like we don’t have the time to find each other, sooner or later."
"And I’ll want to be seeing that novel of yours when it’s finished, too. I’ll come back here in maybe a year. How about that? We’ll set that as a date. Then I’ll bring your novel back to Necropolitan with me when I return to Oblivion, if you have it done by then."
"That sounds like a plan. But don’t you forget to write your own work while you’re at it."
"We’ll see." His smile looked frozen by the frigid air. "We’ll see if my muse reincarnated with the rest of me."
And so, after the delay in departure, the rest of us will now watch the cathedral’s dark shape recede across the icy frozen plain beyond Gehenna’s walls, and then vanish inside a cave-like maw in the side of a rocky cliff, to incline down into the underworld again with its sole passenger. Soul passenger. These will be the last lines I write in this book. But it’s appropriate, as I told Frank Lyre, that it should be carried back in his arms, its text having so long rested within the binding of his skin.
Rather than have him omit certain crucial details, I’ve given him permission to change them where needed. For instance, I am not going to Pluto. And I was never in Gehenna. But I’ve heard enough about them to conjure them. They will serve as useful destinations to mask the real ones. In fact, so that he won’t be persecuted himself—since he intends to return to Oblivion—and tortured for information on our actual whereabouts, he has adopted the rather unsubtle pen name of Frank Lyre to use throughout this book in place of his real name, which I had been using.
My lover, in fact, is not really named Chara. Lyre will call her Chara, now, as he polishes and edits my humble manuscript.
And he will omit references to my own name. Much as I have ached for the imagined glory of publication, of readers eagerly bending over the words I have set down, I want to protect our identities, to make our tracking more difficult. We will assume new ones. We will reinvent ourselves. Reincarnate ourselves. Lots of authors use pseudonyms, after all. Look at Samuel Langhorne Clemens. So Lyre will eradicate all instances of my real name within the book. And my new name, my pen name, that will appear on the cover will be Dan Alighieri.
It’s time to send away the Black Cathedral. To hand these glued leaves back to Lyre. Chara will walk beside me to see him off. I might dare to encircle her waist with my arm, even in front of the other Demons. It’s just something they’ll need to get used to. Things are changing, one of the Demons said…if it’s possible. And it seems to be possible.
Tomorrow, the Demon whom Lyre will dub Chara and I will set out for the destination Lyre will replace with Pluto. I hope these last minute revelations about certain subterfuges and fictional tweaks in my story don’t make you doubt its veracity. Truth transcends facts. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. My suffering has been real. And the scraps of happiness that I have gnawed from its bones are real as well. The setting, the events, are true in essence, and that’s all that’s required.
As far as this memoir is concerned, I am the Creator.
As Goethe said in
Faust
: "The spectral drama thou thyself hast made!"
I have escaped from Oblivion. I have fallen in love with the enemy (maybe it’s the Helsinki Syndrome; or rather, the Hell-sinki Syndrome)…and the enemy loves me. I have learned that God is the Devil at worst, at best a sad, lost soul Himself. I’m confident I will finally be published, posthumously, and I have more worlds yet to create with words. Being dead has brought me back to life.
Now here’s Lyre. Smiling, hand extended, waiting. He has to wait a few moments more. I want Chara to read these last couple of pages.
"Don’t I get anything more to do or say?" she grumbled.
"You just did," I told her.
There. She’s finished.
And for now, so am I.
Author’s note: The following short story,
Coffee Break
, formed the inspiration for
Letters From Hades
. It was publisher David G. Barnett’s idea that I take the concept of this story and open it up to novel length, a suggestion which I eagerly ran with. While my two versions/visions of Hell are not entirely compatible, one will see how the longer work drew breath from the shorter.
Coffee Break
originally appeared in the publication
Strange Days
(#4, 1992), and was reprinted in my collection
Terror Incognita
(Delirium Books, 2000).
—JT
Coffee Break
H
ell didn’t have to freeze over; it was already icy cold in places, and Fleming was as glad to get in out of it as he was to get out of the roaring flames in other regions. The windows of the café had glowed warmly to him across frigid expanses of white tiled floors with drains to collect the rivers of blood. Now, here he was. Bells tinkled when he opened the door.
Chani looked over from behind the counter; after a moment to recognize his cold-blackened face she smiled and waved. Fleming grew warmer. Chani’s cat Bast looked toward him also. The black cat had liked to ride on Chani’s shoulder in life; now it was fused there, inseparable. Her punishment for loving animals but not the Son. But like some punishments here, it was actually in Chani’s favor. She had loved Bast dearly and now could have him with her through eternity. Though all animals automatically went to Hell, that didn’t guarantee that pets and their owners were reunited in the afterworld.