The Edge of Hell
How would it feel to be scattered across the rocks? Fifty feet, jagged edges, no mercy for a drunken teenager. A few swigs of whisky under the blazing Arizona sun and suddenly, Brian Poletree had sprouted wings. Or at least his thick, flabby arms felt feathered.
"He won't do it," a kid behind Brian said purposely loud to another. "Poletree Chicken. A dish best served cold." The boys laughed.
"I'll do it," Brian snapped and lifted the bottle to his lips. Sour mash pushed his courage and his wide bare feet to the edge of the cliff. His bloodshot eyes made final calculations. He'd need a running start, a leap of about ten feet out, and the hope that the others were not lying about the Salt River's depth below.
"Come on Poletree. Get your fat ass out there. You're holding up the line." Jimmy Peters jumped up and to his friend, Johnny St. John, whispered, "Watch this."
Brian backed from the cliff's edge as Jimmy stepped onto the hot sand behind him. A tattooed hand slapped hard on Brian's reddening shoulder. "Man," Jimmy said, "let me explain something to you. You see all those people down there?" Brian looked at the tubers floating in arbitrary masses like clumps of discarded black doughnuts. "No. Not out there. Down there." Jimmy shoved Brian forward. Tiny pebbles skittered over the cliff's edge and echoed within the rocks and water below.
"Those people made a bet with me...made a bet with us that we'd chicken out. I told them, 'Naw, Poletree's no chicken. And as for me and J. Saint J., we speak for ourselves.' But they didn't believe me, Poletree. They really thought you'd chicken out." Jimmy's grip tightened. Johnny St. John stood and swigged from his whiskey bottle. "I've put my trust in you, Poletree. You're not gonna let me down...let us down...are you?"
Jimmy removed his hand leaving the five-fingered grip printed in red on Brian's shoulder. "No. I won't let you down, Jimmy." Brian lifted the whiskey, drunk slowly. "Shit no. I'm not gonna let any of us down." He turned his back to Jimmy Peters; a drop of whiskey spotted his hairless chest.
Johnny St. John staggered to Jimmy's side. "What'cha gonna do, man,"
And then Jimmy pushed, lightly, to cause the fat boy some fright. He'd not intended to push Brian over the edge, and it was beyond his wildest nightmare that he was being pulled in the grip of the fat boy's flailing arms.
Ocean of sand; heaven of sapphire. The beautiful, postcard panorama Brian saw before plunging toward the rocks did nothing to suppress the whiskey-bile rising in his throat, the nausea, the headache. He floated in mid-air for the smallest second. Somehow, he'd lost his wings and he grasped the thick, hot air for support.
When the blackness faded, Brian found himself under water unable to breathe. He scrambled for the surface with arm strength only; something about his legs was painfully wrong.
Panic struck in his search for oxygen. Ahead, the surface remained hidden and hopeless. The Arizona sun would never stroke his face again.
And Brian thought that he was dead.
He feared that he'd flap his arms forever, bound for an eternity to God's own customized redemption. He'd copied one test answer during finals. Just one. Anatomy was the hardest subject he'd ever encountered; and Professor Chutney was an asshole. This one sin would forever damn his soul, never to smell sweet oxygen again, the warm, southern air.
Then, his lungs exploded.
As he broke the surface of the water, his lungs filled so quickly that his chest felt unable to withstand the sudden inflation.
Brian Poletree was alive. He'd jumped, he'd survived, he was no chicken. But the victory was fleeting. The river was deserted. Night had fallen.
Brian waded, looked for the shoreline in the pitch black, felt his arms quickly tiring and decided on a direction. His first stroke brought his hand down on the inflated surface of a large truck tube. He hoisted himself into the doughnut and waited for his lungs to still.
The Arizona desert, in its strange way, had turned the bright blue, infinitely visible day into a black sheet of barren mysteries and reptilian fears. The Salt River seemed motionless in the heavy ebony. Somewhere, something hissed, something howled; a predatory scream erupted far ahead of Brian's blindness.
It didn't make sense, Brian thought as he searched the dark sky for a constellation, a star, any comforting point of direction. He'd fallen, hadn't he? Where was everyone? Why hadn't anyone helped? His right leg was broken. He couldn't really see it, but he knew. The cool river rushed through the toes of his left foot only.
And where was that "brother-to-brother, anything for a brother" fraternity of his. In particular, where was Jimmy Peters. A score needed settled with that idiot. Brian had given Jimmy Peters trust. He'd dropped his summer classes in Flagstaff to "take a little vacation from it all" with the brothers. "Drive down to Phoenix with us," they'd said. "We'll blow a few brain cells in the desert." Brian had sacrificed three months of valuable pre-med study time and the promise that he'd amend his cheating by giving anatomy extra time. He'd been stupid...not chicken. The Jack Daniels had juiced his courage; he would have jumped. That damned Jimmy Peters. Brian smacked the water with both fists.
"Brian. You're dead." From behind, Jimmy Peters' voice broke his thoughts with sinister undertones. Jimmy's voice had lost its matter-of-fact inflection and now hissed with nasal congestion. "Follow the S·S·Styx to Hell, Poletree. It is your only s·s·salvation."
Brian spun the tube quickly, searched the darkness. "Jimmy. What happened? Where are you?" he asked. From behind, something tickled his ear like the soft tip of a wet tongue. "You're s·s·soul give it to us·s·s," Jimmy whispered.
Brian slapped at his head and empty air. Again, he spun the tube and spied a retreating image as it paddled into the darkness. A skeleton in a tube. Its white rib bones and curved spine were barely visible. Long, white arms propelled its fleshless self from sight. Jimmy Peters?
Perhaps.
"Jimmy?" Brian said aloud, then mumbled, "shit no, Brian. What the hell are you saying." He cupped some river water and slapped his face with one hand. Skeletons didn't talk; they didn't lick your ear. Like Professor Chutney had chuckled a week before finals, the skeleton, the backbone of human flesh. Nothing more and nothing less. Professor Chutney, the poet; what a joke. A pompous ass and a flesh-hacker, yes. At these, he brilliantly shined. But to begin every dissection with his own poetic didies?
The skeleton, the backbone of human flesh.
As Brian stared at the spot where the boney tuber had disappeared, he heard the professor's saw as it had resounded in the 300 seat lab that day, as the dear professor had begun his lecture by displaying the spine of a donated female corpse.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Brian flowed blindly through the warm night bouncing off trees and rocky barriers as the river snaked its way around hidden turns. He had begun to believe that his crumpled, nearly dead body still laid at the bottom of the cliff he'd been pushed from. This whole scenario was his final vision before heavenly transfer. Most people saw the faces of loved ones and a slide presentation of cherished memories. But not Brian Poletree. Uh-uh. Some unearthly being had been feeling a bit jocular when his fate had been unsealed. Skeletons on tubes, uncertain darkness, a broken leg that painfully throbbed and prevented him from swimming or walking; these were the wonderful visions he'd been sanctioned for, thank you very much.
The course of the river slowed, and for a long stretch moved straight and slow. Brian plucked the cactus needles and twigs he'd accumulated from his bare upper torso. His broken leg had collided helplessly with assorted desert landscape and now trembled with urgency for repair. His head dropped backwards, settling on the cool rubber inner tube, and his shoulder length hair swirled through black water.
A deep breath to cleanse his lungs. A sigh as the oxygen sped to his wounds. When would it end? How far would the river take him? He wished this nightmare would have at least offered a starry sky. Stellar twinkles always comforted him, made him aware that he was not alone. And loneliness was the killer of the spirit as he'd grown to understand in nineteen short years. Besides, that's exactly what he was right now; a bodiless spirit; a wisp of afterlife gas; a toy for the gods of Heaven and Hell. Why should he let them have all the fun? He could end it all right now. There was the water. Here was his broken leg. He couldn't swim even if his spirit struggled for survival. Then Heaven and Hell would have to make a decision, cast him one way or the other, and Brian's loneliness would end.
Brian turned on his side, let his arm hang through the hole in the tube, and stared at the water. His vision had acclimated to the darkness. Tiny black ripples rolled away from the tube as he bobbed the water's surface, and he considered diving into them. The ripples pulled him down with wet hands. His eyes drooped, his body slid, and Brian tottered on the tube at the center of gravity.
Suddenly, the sky burst open. An orange ball of flame illuminated everything. The intense reflection off the wet ripples nearly blinded him. He jerked forward, nearly plunged into the water and fell back into the tube. His broken leg twisted. Bone grinded bone.
High above, like a comet from deep space, the orange ball revealed his true setting. There were no stars. There were no clouds. Brian was not outdoors at all. He was underground. The streaking flame bounced along the rocky ceiling of an immense cavern, twisted, rolled as if angrily entrapped, then slowly descended.
For the few seconds before it hit, Brian followed the fireball's reflection across the water's surface. A Jules Verne landscape flanked the river on both sides. Brian was headed toward the center of the earth, chaperoned by red jagged cliffs, groping leafless trees and bushes, the orange light from the underground comet, and the river.
It was like nothing he'd ever seen; sunset on another planet. The ball of flame dropped below a rock formation far ahead. Then a dazzling display at impact. The cavern shook. The river trembled. For a few seconds, Brian traveled upstream as the force reversed the river's flow. A thousand bands of light—red,orange, yellow—fanned the hallow horizon. Brian knew his irises were being cooked but didn't care; none of this was real...only a vision. Then, slowly, as the comet cooled, the brilliance faded as did Brian's surroundings. At the horizon, a halo of orange remained, tinted the cavern peach, reflected off the winding river like a beacon.
In all the excitement, Brian had not noticed the tubers that had floated up behind him. "Sure was perty," the one with the cowboy hat said. "Don't know 'bout you, but I sure do wish I had some popcorn right now."
Startled, Brian jerked forward, turned around. A man clothed in tattered jeans and plaid shirt, wearing a straw cowboy hat, smiled big-lipped and wide. A woman with long black hair, naked above the waist, stared into the glowing darkness beside him. Brian's eyes bugged.
"What the HELL's wrong with you, boy? Ain't 'cha never seen a cowboy on a tube before. Shee-it." The cowboy moved closer, paddling lightly with his fingertips. "You better close yer mouth there 'fore somthin' flies inside. You look like ya just seen a ghost or somthin." The cowboy tilted his head, laughed heartily, sent echoes through the cavern.
As the cowboy straddled Brian's tube, he saw on the man's face a horrible accident. From the center of his nose to his left ear, the cowboy's face was purple-black and puffy. The eye was nearly closed. When he smiled, or laughed, small tears of sticky liquid rolled from the misshapen pores of his cheek. Brian's leg throbbed at the sight.
"Name's Junior Dalton. This here's my sidekick. Don't know what her name is. She won't tell me." The cowboy offered his hand.
Slowly, Brian took it as if diseased. "Brian Poletree," he said. Junior Dalton strangled Brian's hand. "I'm, ah...glad to know you."
As funny as that sounded, Brian really was glad for the company. A cowboy with a half-crushed face and a bare-breasted woman was better than lonely. "Where you comin' from?" Junior asked.
"Flagstaff," Brian said.
"Flagstaff? What the hell is a Flagstaff?"
"It's a town...in Arizona...north of Phoenix."
Junior shifted his hat and scratched his head. "Oh yeah. I been to Phoenix once or twice," he said. "Shithole little town. Got no water. Too much dust. Texas is the place you oughta be. Damn pretty state."
Brian couldn't help staring at the man's face. It's battery was quite detailed. "If you don't mind me asking—" Brian said, "but how did..."
"The face?" Junior Dalton craned his head forward, bringing his puffy cheek within inches of Brian's mouth. He pointed at a darker spot on the bridge of his nose. "Scorpion bit me. Shee-it. Got me while I was sleepin. But I crushed the little bastard with the heel of my boot. I think there's still a little of him left." Junior lifted a booted foot from the river. Water cascaded out the shaft. "Wanna see," he offered, proudly.
Brian shook both hands. "No thanks," he said.
Junior settled into his tube and chuckled. "Shee-it."
The woman stayed an obscure distance behind as the three floated in silence for several minutes. Suddenly she rushed to the cowboy's side, away from Brian. She yanked Junior's plaid sleeve and pointed at the shadows behind them. Her fright immediately alarmed Brian. He stared intently upstream but saw only the hazy peach glow of the landscape they had already passed.
Junior patted the woman's head then lightly squeezed one of her breasts. "Don't know what's wrong with her," he told Brian, his hand still cupping the woman. "She does this about every 30 minutes. Haven't seen anyone yet. Don't reckin I will. I think she's just shy and needs a little attention every now and then, if'n you know what I mean. Hell, she been on this damn river fer more'n two hundred years." He tweaked the woman's nipple then let go.
"Two hundred years!" Brian gasped loudly.
Junior lost his smile. He glared emotionless. His eyes became lidless marbles. Although Brian could not see them, he knew that the cowboy's muscles had tensed and were rippling under his plaid shirt. He shifted forward in his tube and said, "Listen ta me, boy. You oughta not be hollerin' like that. Not in ma face."
A huge lump formed in Brian's throat that he could not swallow. He felt sure the cowboy would break him in two at any moment. Then, as quickly as he'd angered, Junior settled back into his tube and grinned. "You still don't get it, do ya?" he said. "How long you been on this river?"
"Well, I got here about ten this morning but I'm not sure what time it is now. I'd say at least twelve hours."
Junior Dalton laughed so hard he fell out of his tube. He rose from the water gasping for air and hooked the tube with one arm as he grabbed his dislodged hat with the other. "Boy, I don't know where you was or how you came to be here but you is dead." He coughed up water. "D-E-A-D, dead. Scorpion killed me. A couple'a French soldiers raped and killed her." Junior hoisted himself back in his tube and set his soggy hat in place. "You see, this here is the river Styx and we are floating straight to Hell."
Brian was shocked at the revelation. This was supposed to be The Vision before death, not death itself. And even if he really was dead, he wouldn't have been sanctioned for Hell. Brian Poletree deserved better than that. Who made the decisions around here anyway? He'd always been an asset to society. He was a loving, caring, supporting son—just ask his mother. He was honest, a devoted student, and a pretty damn nice guy...if anything, too nice. Everyone had faults. Everyone screwed up every now and then, but come on! Cheating on one test answer? Brian demanded a recount. Someone screwed up here. And if Junior was right, as long as he stayed on this river there would be no reprieve. He started paddling for the river bank.
"Hey, boy. Where you think yer goin'?"
"I don't know about you guys," Brian said, "but I'm not supposed to be here. And I'll be damned if I'm just going to lay around and allow this to happen. There's been a big mistake and I'm going to wait until whomever or whatever figures it out."
"Shee-it," Junior said. "The big mistake bein' made by you. How far you gonna get on that leg. Looks like its been run over by a freight train. Besides, even if you could walk, I wouldn't be up and about out there. There're things meaner'n a rattlesnake and twice as deadly."
Brian wasn't listening anymore. He beached his tube and slowly turned out of it. When his fractured leg hit the rocky, uneven surface of the riverbank, a wave of nausea sponged his body and a drip of bile rose to the back of his tongue that tasted like restilled Jack Daniels.
Junior Dalton and the woman with no name floated several hundred yards downstream and were quickly approaching the first bend in the river since their meeting with Brian. Junior lounged in his tube, his straw hat dipped low over the brow, a man—or spirit—who showed little concern for what lay ahead, apparently confident that he'd tackle whatever fun fate had in store for him.
By great contrast, the woman stared directly at Brian. She looked frightened, concerned. Her dark, long-lashed eyes, smooth cheeks and pouty, thick lips were drawn into rigid suspense as if each of her facial muscles were tied by string and were being drawn forward by the hand of fear. Still, she was beautiful. Her bare-breasted, peachy glow hypnotized Brian. Her wide eyes bored straight through his head and jumped his heart a beat. Then, she screamed.
"Behind you Brian. They are coming. Get back in the water!" Her voice seemed so close. She must have followed him to the riverbank. She must be sitting right next to him. The pain had been greater than he'd thought and the ensuing shock had created this hallucination. He slapped his face and groped the rough, red rock.
"Brian! Back in the water! Hurry!" Her voice was fading.
The woman and the cowboy swung around the river bend and disappeared behind scraggly bushes. Dreaded loneliness lept into Brian's face but only for a second.
Behind him, movement.
Pebbles bounced across rock.
And breathing, hushed but excited.
A foreboding tremble moved up Brian's spine as he craned to look behind.
He didn't know what they were—humanoid, possibly—but there was no doubt to their number. Brian could feel the presence of hundreds though he saw only a small pack.
Brian was reminded of the first time he'd seen Night of the Living Dead at the old drive-in near his parents' Idaho farm. That movie had given him nightmares. But this wasn't black and white and these corpses didn't walk mummified and act half-stupid. These humanoids dashed between peach-red jutting rocks, boulders and bushes. They flanked him; they headed him off at the pass; they sealed his fate. And Brian was playing the lead protagonist in this bizarre afterlife where dead really meant flesh-hungry and starving.
The humanoids seemed a little tentative about attacking, peering with white eyes from the corners of their hiding places, until the skeleton appeared.
Jimmy Peters.
Then, in single file, they loped, crawled, hopped (it depended on which of their appendages were missing or mangled) behind Skeleton Peters toward Brian.
"That's·s·s him. The one that keeps you here. Eat his·s·s plump flesh and be free. Quickly, while it is fresh." They rushed—all except Jimmy Peters. The skeleton stood to watch the feeding frenzy, a smile lifting its fleshless face.
Brian was paralyzed by fear until the first deformed hand grabbed his broken leg. This humanoid had most of its head but was riddled across its naked torso by large-caliber holes. Al Capone? doubtful. Maybe one of his long dead henchmen. The thing's expressionless, molting face reminded Brian of a prohibition hit man. Its death had done nothing to decrease its powerful grip. Brian heard leg bones snapping into smaller pieces as he tried to pull free.
A tinier corpse...a child...and a tall woman with one leg rushed behind the hit man, ogled the delicacy of Brian's purpled leg and grabbed for it. The hit man back-handed the child corpse, sent it rolling into the water, then released Brian's leg to beat the woman.
Brian scurried on his elbows toward the river. Three more corpses dove crazily for his retreating flesh, collided, and fell in a heap an inch from Brian's toes. Brian grabbed his tube in haste but it squirted free and spun into the flow of the river.
"Get him!" Skeleton Peters screamed.
The corpses came over the rocks in multitude like cockroaches from a hidey-hole that's been sprayed with pesticide. Brian slid into the water, his soft belly scratched and bleeding from the sharp rocks, and paddled several feet knowing that at any second he'd be pulled by a thousand hands backward. His good leg struggled to match his weight; his arms tired quickly.
Then, the child corpse—the one the hit man had slapped into the water—bobbed to the surface and Brian swam straight into it. It grabbed for his throat, wrapped its body around his, vised him with its legs. But there was no strength in the child's grasp, and no skin on the child's body. What had once been a flesh-hungry corpse was now an inanimate mass of bones. Brian shoved the skeleton into the current and looked to the river bank.
There were thousands of them lined up at the river's edge watching their meal swim to safety. Skeleton Peters stood at center, its boney victorious smile turned sour. The skeleton slowly walked into the river until its skull disappeared under a lap of water.
It's coming. Where's my tube? Oh shit! Quickly—get away. Gotta find the cowboy, the woman. Damn this broken leg.
And as if by magic the tube hit him right in the face. Brian flopped inside and didn't stop paddling until he was around the river bend, safe from the staring, hungry mass, from Skeleton Peters' submarine tactics.
It seemed like hours before Brian finally ran into the cowboy and woman again. In that time, the wide cavern had continually narrowed creating the claustrophobic illusion that, eventually, Brian would be squashed when the walls and ceiling collided at the cavern's end.
The pale pink glow created by the underground comet had turned a rustier red, a color resembling a photographer's development room. The impact point of the comet and its blazing halo still hid behind tall cliffs and mountainous peaks but Brian felt near its warmth. Just around the next bend, he figured; or maybe the next.
The river seemed to be heating also. It jagged like a snake before him then swept to the right around a tall cliff, a cliff that Brian Poletree figured he could easily jump from because he was no chicken.
It was under this cliff that Junior Dalton and the woman with no name sat in their tubes, apparently caught up in a pool of water that could not escape the cliff's intrusion into the forward flow of the river.
"Hey," the cowboy yelled when he saw Brian. "If it ain't the greenhorn from Flagstaff. We felt sure you's a gonner."
Brian paddled into the whirlpool and collided with the woman's tube. Once again, he was caught by her beauty. A tiny grin that touched the left half of her face sent yearning chills through Brian's groin.
"Why didn't you tell me about those things?" Brian said to the cowboy.
"Hey, boy. We tried." Junior turned to the woman. "Didn't we darlin'?" The woman only stared at Brian as if she'd never expected to see him again. "'Sides. Where I come from, the best way of knowin' somethin' is by experience. So how was it, boy? The experience?"
"God awful."
The cowboy roared his approval. "Shee-it!" he yelled and the cavern walls and the cliffs and the rocky peaks returned his call in unison. Junior Dalton seemed to be everywhere. Shee-it·it·it!
Brian grabbed the woman's tube as the swirling water attempted to draw them apart. The woman placed her hand on his; Brian's heart roared with approval. "What are those things?" he asked the woman. He wanted to relish the woman's voice, the silky texture, the caressing harmony that had warned him not to leave the river. But Junior crushed his hopes with a shrieking, two-fingered whistle.
"Hey ya'll," he said. "Ain't got no time for that crap." Then he lowered his voice, craned his neck, and spoke with an open hand to the side of the face as if he were revealing a secret to Brian that he didn't want the woman to hear. "Sides, boy," he whispered. "I already tried, but she just ain't innerstead in that kind of fun. If'n ya knows what I mean." He winked.
Then the woman released Brian's hand as if upset with the cowboy's rudeness, scowled, looked fearfully expectant around the trio, then straight up the cliff's ribbed face. The men looked simultaneously.
Something was falling at them, fast. Brian gazed in horror as Skeleton Peters slammed into Junior Dalton's cowboy hat. Brian tried to paddle in retreat with one hand and pull the woman to safety with the other but the whirlpool was too strong. Junior Dalton's tube propelled straight up then tumbled into the river flow and disappeared around the cliff's edge. Skeleton Peters and Junior Dalton went under the water together. Their struggle was at the woman's feet and she curled them into her tube.
Junior's arm popped up, then the skeleton's pulled it down. Junior managed to break the surface once to gasp for air but was quickly yanked back under. A full minute passed before Junior reappeared at the surface. He floated on his face, drowned. A tear dropped from the woman's eye as she reached for the dead cowboy but quickly withdrew it when Skeleton Peters' bony hand ripped through the muscle of Junior's back. Its evil skull broke the surface.
"What's·s·s up, fat boy," it said. "Take a good look at thees·s·s," The skeletal hand through Junior's back wiggled its bloody fingers. "They'll be the last thing you s·s·see before I rip your head off." Skeleton Peters sunk under the water taking the dead cowboy with it.
Junior Dalton's straw hat bobbed to the surface and Brian grabbed it tentatively, feeling the presence of skeletal hands near the surface of the water. Somewhere he'd heard that only death could separate a cowboy from his hat. Too true. Brian straightened the worn memorial, and placed it on his head. It fit perfectly.
The river continued its downward course toward Hell. The cavern walls and ceiling were a few hundred feet closer, and the woman with no name still remained silent. Brian had tried conversation without response. "Who is that?" he'd asked of Skeleton Peters, "who are they?" referring to the zombies in the cavern, and "what is this place?" But she would only stare, her face twisted into complex emotions, a gaze that seemed to grow deeper with each turn in the river.
As strange as it seemed, Brian thought he was falling in love with this two hundred year old mute. In times of confusion and desperation, the heart had a funny way of grabbing what little bit of sanity the crazy world had left in it. The heart filtered this sanity and created hope. For Brian, the woman was all the hope he had. If dream, spirit or reality, this place—this adventure—needed her. If he did not protect her from whatever lay in wait, Brian felt sure that his fate at the end of the river would not be favorable.
Again, the river slowed. The cavern's rusty red dulled to a yellow that brightened as Brian and the woman neared the last river bend that would reveal the impact point a thousand yards ahead.
Electric fingers massaged his scalp. A voice tiptoed across his brain. Brian, it said. He turned to the woman, caught her staring straight through him.
Brian.
Her jaw clenched producing smooth curves that rounded her cheeks and strengthened her chin. Yes, the voice said, it is me.
"You," Brian said, his eyes bugging. "But your mouth didn't...how can you...I—I—"
It is a gift that I have; the ability to talk with my mind. The woman's voice spoke quickly, urgently, as if there were no time for this unimportant conversation.
"You mean you're telepathic. Wow, this dream is something else."
This is NOT! a dream. The woman's exclamation blew through Brian's head. Listen to me. The Circle of Judgement draws near. Whatever happens, you must get to that circle.
"What circle? What do you mean, whatever happens?"
The bend in the river drew closer, less than 500 yards ahead. The woman inhaled deeply. An explanation may threaten your proper destiny, but I see that it has become necessary. Junior was correct. Her face soured with sadness but only for a moment. This is the river Styx, but this is not the Styx the Old Books spoke of. We will not necessarily end up in Hell. That is what the Circle of Judgement will determine.
"Determine?"
It will determine your degree of good or evil. Contrary to belief, the river Styx does not separate the land of the living from Hell, it is a pathway in the spiritual world to the portal of Hell. The woman saw confusion in Brian's eyes.
When the material body no longer functions, the soul will be drawn to one of two places: outside of Heaven or outside of Hell. It is very rare that a soul will be admitted directly to either place without first judgement. It is documented that judgement into Heaven is made on the tops of clouds in front of the Divine Gates. Scholars throughout the centuries have understood this. But none wrote or spoke of this place, perhaps because judgement has never returned a soul to the living world. When you end up here, it is because your bad has out-weighed your good.
Now, Brian was sure that someone had made a mistake. He did not deserve to be here. If anywhere, he should be standing outside the Gates waiting for some angel to realize that he was right, that someone had made a big mistake, that he should be returned immediately to his body lying at the bottom of an Arizona cliff. He was not a bad person. He was good. HE WAS GOOD, DAMMIT! Why was he meant to suffer so: tormented by a living skeleton, made immobile by his broken leg and the flesh-hungry zombies.
They are not zombies, Brian.
Brian gasped at her ability to read his mind. Had she known that he loved her?
Zombies are fiction; they are the walking dead. The malformed bodies you saw are living souls judged to suffer for an eternity or to be eaten by their own kind. All that is beyond the banks of the river is their domain, the Deadlands. In their judgement, they have been forbidden the touch or taste of water, to roam the Deadlands forever thirsty, always searching for a foolish unjudged soul.
"Me, right?" Brian said.
Almost.
"And what of the skeleton. He talks just like Jimmy Peters. This thing doesn't seem to be affected by water at all. He killed Junior but he left the two of us. If he wanted blood, he could have had ours easily."
Two hundred yards from the final left turn that would lead to the Circle of Judgement, the woman whimpered. The impact of feeling her in his mind rather than hearing her aloud thrust Brian's emotions into sudden sadness and fear. For a moment, he was in her body, feeling the rippling of her spine, the damp chill across her naked breasts, the foreboding of what lay in wait. Skeleton Peters.
Her mouth trembled as she spoke with her mind. The skeleton represents all that is evil. Jimmy Peters, as you have called him, did not need judgement. His death in the living world sent his soul straight to the kingdom of the Prince himself. There would be no eternal damnation for his soul. He would not be let into the domain of the Deadlands. That suffering would have been too good. Instead, he would be destined to the worst of all judgements: to burn in hell forever, to adorn the walls of the Prince's kingdom as a bodiless soul forever suffering, forever an inferno.
But the Prince gave Jimmy Peters a choice. He was offered the chance to become leader of the Deadlands, king of the damned souls. He would be given power over the elements to rule as he pleased for as long as he paid the Prince's price. The woman looked from Brian's purpled broken leg to Junior Dalton's sagging straw hat as if Brian were a prime cut of meat ready for butchering.
The price would be the souls of the innocent who were destined to be judged fairly for there is no brighter a fire that burns in Hell than that of an innocent soul. And there is no greater a pleasure for the Prince than to take from the world what should never have been taken.
Brian pointed at himself.
Yes, the woman said.
"And Junior Dalton?"
The woman nodded.
"How do you know—"
So much? the woman finished. As Junior said, I have been on this river for two hundred years. I have known many souls such as yours and Jimmy Peters', but none have been as innocent as yours or as evil as his. Your innocence is powerful. It is never easy for evil to overcome such power, but it can if given the chance. You would burn brightly in Hell. And Jimmy Peters would be greatly rewarded, possibly even be given the chance at a soul in the living world. That can not be allowed to happen. We can not allow that to happen.
Fright, invigoration and pride battled for control of Brian's emotions. We could not allow it to happen, he thought. Me and—
"What is your name?" Brian asked. The woman smiled so widely, Brian saw a flickering nub of flesh at the back of her throat; the remains of her tongue.
Marie Lefonte, she said. Realizing Brian had seen inside her mouth she added, it is penance for my crime. Her smile faded. I am an adulterer.
"To be raped and have your tongue cut out is a high price to pay."
You must understand that in my time, adultery was a high crime. I believe the punishment just.
"And your judgement?"
To roam the the river forever searching for innocent souls, and to protect those that I can.
The final turn came abruptly as Brian pondered Marie's drastic consequences. The tubes bounced against the rocky river bank as he and Marie became immersed in bright yellow light and sudden warmth. The warmth added to that which had grown in Brian's soul, for Marie and for himself. He was innocent. He was good. He...and Marie...had an important mission, a battle against evil itself. He tensed with adrenal anticipation, felt his heart pounding so hard that the rolls of his belly jiggled. To the Circle of Judgement he would go, hand-in-hand with the woman he loved and together they could not be stopped.
That is what he thought until he saw Skeleton Peters and the mass of rotted souls gathered around what looked like a monstrous campfire fifty feet to his left. Their cannibalistic feast made Brian sure that he and Marie were next on the menu.
Skeleton Peters walked to the edge of the river with a ball of flesh in its bony hand. "S·S·Shee-it," it said and threw the mass at Brian. Junior Dalton's head landed a foot from Marie and she shrieked as spray wet and matted her hair to her breasts. As the head sunk, the mouth opened, rippled then burst the small sacs of fluid on the scorpion bitten face, tried to speak as it filled with water. "Runn-ag-gogle."
"That's·s·s it," Skeleton Peters yelled. "Run fat boy. Run you father-loving whore. Run on over here to daddy. Let us·s·s feast together."
Marie turned her head unimpressed with the taunting. She pointed ahead. The Circle of Judgement, there. Another hundred yards ahead, the river and cavern ended in a giant whirlpool. It spun savagely, twenty feet in diameter, crashed against the cavern's solid wall as if trying to escape. From its center, rose tiny orange flames and Brian stared, frightened, knowing that if he entered the whirlpool he'd be sucked through the fiery hole into Hell. Get to the circle! Marie's urgency rumbled in Brian's head as she pushed his tube forward.
What was she doing? She was pushing him toward Hell. No way would he willingly paddle into the whirlpool. Had this all been a ruse, a well-crafted scheme to take his soul? Was Marie actually a Devil's advocate? And to think he'd fallen in love with her.
What are you doing? Go, now, before it is too late.
"Who are you?" Brian asked.
What are you talking about. Dammit, Brian, we haven't time for this. GO!
From behind, a large rock struck the back of Marie's head. The force threw her from the tube and she disappeared in the black water.
"NO!" Brian screamed and started paddling toward her stranded tube.
Skeleton Peters was laughing. He stood with a hundred souls at the river's edge and together they threw stones at Brian. A large one bounced off Brian's broken leg; he screamed in pain; Skeleton Peters laughed louder. Brian began backpedaling toward the whirlpool as stones rained like hail around him. Why hadn't he listened? What was wrong with him?
The river grew shallower the closer he moved toward the whirlpool. Just twenty more yards. Rocks bounced off his body at will. His nose bled from the impact of one. Another had knocked Junior Dalton's hat into the water and it bobbed ahead of Brian, moved swiftly and entered the whirlpool. Brian watched intently, disregarding the continual pounding his body suffered. The hat spun at the whirlpool's edge but would not descend into the fiery center. Then, suddenly, the hat just disappeared.
That was it. The hat had returned to the living world and so would Brian. He paddled with bruised arms faster.
Then the rain fell. Stones dropped in a storm, collected, created a dam—an impasse—ahead of Brian. The dam of rocks was only a foot high, but sufficient enough to keep Brain and his broken leg from advancing. He started moving along the dam hoping he could turn the corner ten feet away before Skeleton Peters introduced another surprise.
And as he finished the thought the surprise came. The mass of damned souls rushed into the river. Each, in turn, rose to the water's surface a skeleton. A mass of bones jammed the river bank as souls continued across their predecessors, fell into the water, became bone. The souls seemed to come from everywhere, from within the rock walls, from the ground; they dropped from the ceiling. Thousands of skeletons collected across the river and Skeleton Peters stepped onto his makeshift pier and walked gayly toward his prey.
"You are going to make a marvelous torch, dear boy," Skeleton Peters happily said. "S·s·so much innocence and a virgin too. Oh, I'm just creaming my jeans thinking about it. First the Deadlands, then the living world, and who knows, in a couple of centuries maybe Heaven itself." Skeleton Peters howled wide-jawed like a wolf to the moon. Ten feet closer. The cat had his mouse cornered.
Then a hand thrust from the water's surface, grabbed Skeleton Peters' bony leg and pulled it into the river. Marie's head broke the surface, went under, came back up, then disappeared. Brian couldn't move. His energy was gone, his body battered and bruised. It was an eternity before Marie finally hoisted herself from the water onto the bone pier. She stood in full naked beauty before Brian. Her hips swayed seductively as she walked to the end of the pier, dropped into knee-deep water, grabbed Brian's tube, and towed him around the edge of the dam.
"You're alive. Dear God, I thought you'd had it. I'm so sorry, Marie. Now we can get out of this together." Marie would not turn around. She continued walking toward the whirlpool which spun a few steps ahead.
Brian could not feel her in his mind. She would not or could not talk. Something was wrong.
Together, they entered the whirlpool and began spinning along its outer edge. Brian gazed into its center where the flames flickered invitingly, wanting. The spinning of the whirlpool and the dancing flames controlled Brian's eyelids, hypnotized them, drew them closed. He did not realize that Marie was pulling him toward the center of the whirlpool—towards Hell.
Brian he heard, but it was only a dream voice. Go away, Brian thought. Let me sleep.
BRIAN! the voice screamed, nearly rupturing the nerves in his brain. He woke to find himself and Skeleton Peters just two feet from the whirlpool's fiery center. "Are you ready for some fun," the skeleton said. "There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight."
Skeleton Peters entered the fire as Brian rolled from the tube and swam with all the strength he had left. The bruises, the broken leg—he would never make it to the whirlpool's edge. Skeleton Peters came after him. "Oh no you don't," it laughed.
For every foot Brian swam, Skeleton Peters gained two. In seconds, the skeleton had him in its grasp and was pulling him back toward the middle.
Then, something hit Brian on the head, dazed him. At first, he thought it was another rock but when his vision cleared he saw Junior Dalton's head clasped tightly to Skeleton Peters' skull. The decapitated mouth worked the bone, snapping it into small pieces, spitting them into the rushing water. Skeleton Peters could not free itself.
Quickly, Brian rose to the whirlpool's edge and saw Marie standing behind the low dam wall, her arm raised in victory. Behind her, the large campfire created by the comet raged bright white. She had found Junior's head, had thrown it, and now Junior was chewing his revenge out of Skeleton Peters. There was little left of the skeleton and Brian watched with relief as the shattered remains spun and disappeared into the whirlpool's fiery center. Junior Dalton's head rose and settled next to Brian, winked, then vanished.
The fire on the shore faded, died. The only light left in the cavern came from its large red embers. As Brian continued to spin, waiting for judgement—to return to the living world—he looked to Marie. "Come with me," he yelled.
In his mind he heard, farewell, Brian, then Marie's naked image dissolved, became blue neon gas, dissipated, and was gone.
The whirlpool spun faster, faster. The cavern was a blur. Colors and shades blended until all was black.
The thrusting wind in his ears...thwump, thwump. His eyes were forced inward.
Once the Medi-Vac helicopter had settled and the dust had cleared, Brian opened his eyes.
"He's awake," someone yelled.
The Arizona sun stabbed Brian's dilated irises and he lifted his arm to shadow his face.
"Quickly. Over here."
Slowly, pain spread from his leg to his groin. His spine protested the jagged ground on which it rested. Scratches and cuts, bared to the warmth of the sun, dotted his body with pin cushion discomfort.
Two men and a woman knelt beside him.
"Keep still," the paramedic with the thick mustache said."You're a very lucky man."
As the paramedics wrestled his painful limbs onto a stretcher, Brian considered his luck: Tortured through an afterlife illusion...not lucky; understanding that the only woman he'd ever loved was a part of that illusion...not lucky; being pushed from a cliff and falling 50 feet, almost to his death for Christ's sake...really not lucky.
But as he was lifted from the ground, he turned his head and understood what the mustached paramedic had meant. Jimmy Peters lay crushed in a puddle of blood; his dead eyes were wide with terror. Somehow, Brian had landed on top of him.
"Keep still." This time the female paramedic offered the advice. She cradled his head and secured a neck brace under his chin. She was very pretty. Her eyes reminded him of his illusionary love.
But Marie was gone. All he had now was rehabilitation, a full load of summer classes, and Professor Chutney. He realized that he'd never see Marie again, not even in his dreams. His nights would be infected by the image of Jimmy Peters' crushed skull, his horror-filled stare. He'd dream of some place far below, where bones burned brightly on the walls of Hell, where Jimmy, the skeleton, Peters hung screaming for an eternity.
And questions: Who, really, was Marie Lefonte? When did she live and why did she deserve such a horrible death? And what had Jimmy Peters done to humanity? What evil secrets had he hidden?
The paramedics hoisted Brian into the helicopter and shoved a needle into his arm.
Thwump...Thwump, the helicopter blades.
Thwump...Thwump, the spinning Circle of Judgement.
He'd never pass anatomy now. His mind would be preoccupied. There were too many answers to be researched. Maybe it was time for a change. He hated pre-med classes anyway, didn't he? Maybe he would become...
"This yours?" the female paramedic asked.
No question now. He would definitely become a writer. All scholars had written about the heavenly afterlife but Brian had a different story to tell. Marie would have wanted it; Junior would have wanted it. It was his judgement.
"Yes, it is," Brian said. "Would you please put it on?"
The female paramedic looked at her companions, each nodded in turn, and she placed Junior Dalton's straw cowboy hat on Brian's head. It fit perfectly.
***END***
"He won't do it," a kid behind Brian said purposely loud to another. "Poletree Chicken. A dish best served cold." The boys laughed.
"I'll do it," Brian snapped and lifted the bottle to his lips. Sour mash pushed his courage and his wide bare feet to the edge of the cliff. His bloodshot eyes made final calculations. He'd need a running start, a leap of about ten feet out, and the hope that the others were not lying about the Salt River's depth below.
"Come on Poletree. Get your fat ass out there. You're holding up the line." Jimmy Peters jumped up and to his friend, Johnny St. John, whispered, "Watch this."
Brian backed from the cliff's edge as Jimmy stepped onto the hot sand behind him. A tattooed hand slapped hard on Brian's reddening shoulder. "Man," Jimmy said, "let me explain something to you. You see all those people down there?" Brian looked at the tubers floating in arbitrary masses like clumps of discarded black doughnuts. "No. Not out there. Down there." Jimmy shoved Brian forward. Tiny pebbles skittered over the cliff's edge and echoed within the rocks and water below.
"Those people made a bet with me...made a bet with us that we'd chicken out. I told them, 'Naw, Poletree's no chicken. And as for me and J. Saint J., we speak for ourselves.' But they didn't believe me, Poletree. They really thought you'd chicken out." Jimmy's grip tightened. Johnny St. John stood and swigged from his whiskey bottle. "I've put my trust in you, Poletree. You're not gonna let me down...let us down...are you?"
Jimmy removed his hand leaving the five-fingered grip printed in red on Brian's shoulder. "No. I won't let you down, Jimmy." Brian lifted the whiskey, drunk slowly. "Shit no. I'm not gonna let any of us down." He turned his back to Jimmy Peters; a drop of whiskey spotted his hairless chest.
Johnny St. John staggered to Jimmy's side. "What'cha gonna do, man,"
And then Jimmy pushed, lightly, to cause the fat boy some fright. He'd not intended to push Brian over the edge, and it was beyond his wildest nightmare that he was being pulled in the grip of the fat boy's flailing arms.
Ocean of sand; heaven of sapphire. The beautiful, postcard panorama Brian saw before plunging toward the rocks did nothing to suppress the whiskey-bile rising in his throat, the nausea, the headache. He floated in mid-air for the smallest second. Somehow, he'd lost his wings and he grasped the thick, hot air for support.
When the blackness faded, Brian found himself under water unable to breathe. He scrambled for the surface with arm strength only; something about his legs was painfully wrong.
Panic struck in his search for oxygen. Ahead, the surface remained hidden and hopeless. The Arizona sun would never stroke his face again.
And Brian thought that he was dead.
He feared that he'd flap his arms forever, bound for an eternity to God's own customized redemption. He'd copied one test answer during finals. Just one. Anatomy was the hardest subject he'd ever encountered; and Professor Chutney was an asshole. This one sin would forever damn his soul, never to smell sweet oxygen again, the warm, southern air.
Then, his lungs exploded.
As he broke the surface of the water, his lungs filled so quickly that his chest felt unable to withstand the sudden inflation.
Brian Poletree was alive. He'd jumped, he'd survived, he was no chicken. But the victory was fleeting. The river was deserted. Night had fallen.
Brian waded, looked for the shoreline in the pitch black, felt his arms quickly tiring and decided on a direction. His first stroke brought his hand down on the inflated surface of a large truck tube. He hoisted himself into the doughnut and waited for his lungs to still.
The Arizona desert, in its strange way, had turned the bright blue, infinitely visible day into a black sheet of barren mysteries and reptilian fears. The Salt River seemed motionless in the heavy ebony. Somewhere, something hissed, something howled; a predatory scream erupted far ahead of Brian's blindness.
It didn't make sense, Brian thought as he searched the dark sky for a constellation, a star, any comforting point of direction. He'd fallen, hadn't he? Where was everyone? Why hadn't anyone helped? His right leg was broken. He couldn't really see it, but he knew. The cool river rushed through the toes of his left foot only.
And where was that "brother-to-brother, anything for a brother" fraternity of his. In particular, where was Jimmy Peters. A score needed settled with that idiot. Brian had given Jimmy Peters trust. He'd dropped his summer classes in Flagstaff to "take a little vacation from it all" with the brothers. "Drive down to Phoenix with us," they'd said. "We'll blow a few brain cells in the desert." Brian had sacrificed three months of valuable pre-med study time and the promise that he'd amend his cheating by giving anatomy extra time. He'd been stupid...not chicken. The Jack Daniels had juiced his courage; he would have jumped. That damned Jimmy Peters. Brian smacked the water with both fists.
"Brian. You're dead." From behind, Jimmy Peters' voice broke his thoughts with sinister undertones. Jimmy's voice had lost its matter-of-fact inflection and now hissed with nasal congestion. "Follow the S·S·Styx to Hell, Poletree. It is your only s·s·salvation."
Brian spun the tube quickly, searched the darkness. "Jimmy. What happened? Where are you?" he asked. From behind, something tickled his ear like the soft tip of a wet tongue. "You're s·s·soul give it to us·s·s," Jimmy whispered.
Brian slapped at his head and empty air. Again, he spun the tube and spied a retreating image as it paddled into the darkness. A skeleton in a tube. Its white rib bones and curved spine were barely visible. Long, white arms propelled its fleshless self from sight. Jimmy Peters?
Perhaps.
"Jimmy?" Brian said aloud, then mumbled, "shit no, Brian. What the hell are you saying." He cupped some river water and slapped his face with one hand. Skeletons didn't talk; they didn't lick your ear. Like Professor Chutney had chuckled a week before finals, the skeleton, the backbone of human flesh. Nothing more and nothing less. Professor Chutney, the poet; what a joke. A pompous ass and a flesh-hacker, yes. At these, he brilliantly shined. But to begin every dissection with his own poetic didies?
The skeleton, the backbone of human flesh.
As Brian stared at the spot where the boney tuber had disappeared, he heard the professor's saw as it had resounded in the 300 seat lab that day, as the dear professor had begun his lecture by displaying the spine of a donated female corpse.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Brian flowed blindly through the warm night bouncing off trees and rocky barriers as the river snaked its way around hidden turns. He had begun to believe that his crumpled, nearly dead body still laid at the bottom of the cliff he'd been pushed from. This whole scenario was his final vision before heavenly transfer. Most people saw the faces of loved ones and a slide presentation of cherished memories. But not Brian Poletree. Uh-uh. Some unearthly being had been feeling a bit jocular when his fate had been unsealed. Skeletons on tubes, uncertain darkness, a broken leg that painfully throbbed and prevented him from swimming or walking; these were the wonderful visions he'd been sanctioned for, thank you very much.
The course of the river slowed, and for a long stretch moved straight and slow. Brian plucked the cactus needles and twigs he'd accumulated from his bare upper torso. His broken leg had collided helplessly with assorted desert landscape and now trembled with urgency for repair. His head dropped backwards, settling on the cool rubber inner tube, and his shoulder length hair swirled through black water.
A deep breath to cleanse his lungs. A sigh as the oxygen sped to his wounds. When would it end? How far would the river take him? He wished this nightmare would have at least offered a starry sky. Stellar twinkles always comforted him, made him aware that he was not alone. And loneliness was the killer of the spirit as he'd grown to understand in nineteen short years. Besides, that's exactly what he was right now; a bodiless spirit; a wisp of afterlife gas; a toy for the gods of Heaven and Hell. Why should he let them have all the fun? He could end it all right now. There was the water. Here was his broken leg. He couldn't swim even if his spirit struggled for survival. Then Heaven and Hell would have to make a decision, cast him one way or the other, and Brian's loneliness would end.
Brian turned on his side, let his arm hang through the hole in the tube, and stared at the water. His vision had acclimated to the darkness. Tiny black ripples rolled away from the tube as he bobbed the water's surface, and he considered diving into them. The ripples pulled him down with wet hands. His eyes drooped, his body slid, and Brian tottered on the tube at the center of gravity.
Suddenly, the sky burst open. An orange ball of flame illuminated everything. The intense reflection off the wet ripples nearly blinded him. He jerked forward, nearly plunged into the water and fell back into the tube. His broken leg twisted. Bone grinded bone.
High above, like a comet from deep space, the orange ball revealed his true setting. There were no stars. There were no clouds. Brian was not outdoors at all. He was underground. The streaking flame bounced along the rocky ceiling of an immense cavern, twisted, rolled as if angrily entrapped, then slowly descended.
For the few seconds before it hit, Brian followed the fireball's reflection across the water's surface. A Jules Verne landscape flanked the river on both sides. Brian was headed toward the center of the earth, chaperoned by red jagged cliffs, groping leafless trees and bushes, the orange light from the underground comet, and the river.
It was like nothing he'd ever seen; sunset on another planet. The ball of flame dropped below a rock formation far ahead. Then a dazzling display at impact. The cavern shook. The river trembled. For a few seconds, Brian traveled upstream as the force reversed the river's flow. A thousand bands of light—red,orange, yellow—fanned the hallow horizon. Brian knew his irises were being cooked but didn't care; none of this was real...only a vision. Then, slowly, as the comet cooled, the brilliance faded as did Brian's surroundings. At the horizon, a halo of orange remained, tinted the cavern peach, reflected off the winding river like a beacon.
In all the excitement, Brian had not noticed the tubers that had floated up behind him. "Sure was perty," the one with the cowboy hat said. "Don't know 'bout you, but I sure do wish I had some popcorn right now."
Startled, Brian jerked forward, turned around. A man clothed in tattered jeans and plaid shirt, wearing a straw cowboy hat, smiled big-lipped and wide. A woman with long black hair, naked above the waist, stared into the glowing darkness beside him. Brian's eyes bugged.
"What the HELL's wrong with you, boy? Ain't 'cha never seen a cowboy on a tube before. Shee-it." The cowboy moved closer, paddling lightly with his fingertips. "You better close yer mouth there 'fore somthin' flies inside. You look like ya just seen a ghost or somthin." The cowboy tilted his head, laughed heartily, sent echoes through the cavern.
As the cowboy straddled Brian's tube, he saw on the man's face a horrible accident. From the center of his nose to his left ear, the cowboy's face was purple-black and puffy. The eye was nearly closed. When he smiled, or laughed, small tears of sticky liquid rolled from the misshapen pores of his cheek. Brian's leg throbbed at the sight.
"Name's Junior Dalton. This here's my sidekick. Don't know what her name is. She won't tell me." The cowboy offered his hand.
Slowly, Brian took it as if diseased. "Brian Poletree," he said. Junior Dalton strangled Brian's hand. "I'm, ah...glad to know you."
As funny as that sounded, Brian really was glad for the company. A cowboy with a half-crushed face and a bare-breasted woman was better than lonely. "Where you comin' from?" Junior asked.
"Flagstaff," Brian said.
"Flagstaff? What the hell is a Flagstaff?"
"It's a town...in Arizona...north of Phoenix."
Junior shifted his hat and scratched his head. "Oh yeah. I been to Phoenix once or twice," he said. "Shithole little town. Got no water. Too much dust. Texas is the place you oughta be. Damn pretty state."
Brian couldn't help staring at the man's face. It's battery was quite detailed. "If you don't mind me asking—" Brian said, "but how did..."
"The face?" Junior Dalton craned his head forward, bringing his puffy cheek within inches of Brian's mouth. He pointed at a darker spot on the bridge of his nose. "Scorpion bit me. Shee-it. Got me while I was sleepin. But I crushed the little bastard with the heel of my boot. I think there's still a little of him left." Junior lifted a booted foot from the river. Water cascaded out the shaft. "Wanna see," he offered, proudly.
Brian shook both hands. "No thanks," he said.
Junior settled into his tube and chuckled. "Shee-it."
The woman stayed an obscure distance behind as the three floated in silence for several minutes. Suddenly she rushed to the cowboy's side, away from Brian. She yanked Junior's plaid sleeve and pointed at the shadows behind them. Her fright immediately alarmed Brian. He stared intently upstream but saw only the hazy peach glow of the landscape they had already passed.
Junior patted the woman's head then lightly squeezed one of her breasts. "Don't know what's wrong with her," he told Brian, his hand still cupping the woman. "She does this about every 30 minutes. Haven't seen anyone yet. Don't reckin I will. I think she's just shy and needs a little attention every now and then, if'n you know what I mean. Hell, she been on this damn river fer more'n two hundred years." He tweaked the woman's nipple then let go.
"Two hundred years!" Brian gasped loudly.
Junior lost his smile. He glared emotionless. His eyes became lidless marbles. Although Brian could not see them, he knew that the cowboy's muscles had tensed and were rippling under his plaid shirt. He shifted forward in his tube and said, "Listen ta me, boy. You oughta not be hollerin' like that. Not in ma face."
A huge lump formed in Brian's throat that he could not swallow. He felt sure the cowboy would break him in two at any moment. Then, as quickly as he'd angered, Junior settled back into his tube and grinned. "You still don't get it, do ya?" he said. "How long you been on this river?"
"Well, I got here about ten this morning but I'm not sure what time it is now. I'd say at least twelve hours."
Junior Dalton laughed so hard he fell out of his tube. He rose from the water gasping for air and hooked the tube with one arm as he grabbed his dislodged hat with the other. "Boy, I don't know where you was or how you came to be here but you is dead." He coughed up water. "D-E-A-D, dead. Scorpion killed me. A couple'a French soldiers raped and killed her." Junior hoisted himself back in his tube and set his soggy hat in place. "You see, this here is the river Styx and we are floating straight to Hell."
Brian was shocked at the revelation. This was supposed to be The Vision before death, not death itself. And even if he really was dead, he wouldn't have been sanctioned for Hell. Brian Poletree deserved better than that. Who made the decisions around here anyway? He'd always been an asset to society. He was a loving, caring, supporting son—just ask his mother. He was honest, a devoted student, and a pretty damn nice guy...if anything, too nice. Everyone had faults. Everyone screwed up every now and then, but come on! Cheating on one test answer? Brian demanded a recount. Someone screwed up here. And if Junior was right, as long as he stayed on this river there would be no reprieve. He started paddling for the river bank.
"Hey, boy. Where you think yer goin'?"
"I don't know about you guys," Brian said, "but I'm not supposed to be here. And I'll be damned if I'm just going to lay around and allow this to happen. There's been a big mistake and I'm going to wait until whomever or whatever figures it out."
"Shee-it," Junior said. "The big mistake bein' made by you. How far you gonna get on that leg. Looks like its been run over by a freight train. Besides, even if you could walk, I wouldn't be up and about out there. There're things meaner'n a rattlesnake and twice as deadly."
Brian wasn't listening anymore. He beached his tube and slowly turned out of it. When his fractured leg hit the rocky, uneven surface of the riverbank, a wave of nausea sponged his body and a drip of bile rose to the back of his tongue that tasted like restilled Jack Daniels.
Junior Dalton and the woman with no name floated several hundred yards downstream and were quickly approaching the first bend in the river since their meeting with Brian. Junior lounged in his tube, his straw hat dipped low over the brow, a man—or spirit—who showed little concern for what lay ahead, apparently confident that he'd tackle whatever fun fate had in store for him.
By great contrast, the woman stared directly at Brian. She looked frightened, concerned. Her dark, long-lashed eyes, smooth cheeks and pouty, thick lips were drawn into rigid suspense as if each of her facial muscles were tied by string and were being drawn forward by the hand of fear. Still, she was beautiful. Her bare-breasted, peachy glow hypnotized Brian. Her wide eyes bored straight through his head and jumped his heart a beat. Then, she screamed.
"Behind you Brian. They are coming. Get back in the water!" Her voice seemed so close. She must have followed him to the riverbank. She must be sitting right next to him. The pain had been greater than he'd thought and the ensuing shock had created this hallucination. He slapped his face and groped the rough, red rock.
"Brian! Back in the water! Hurry!" Her voice was fading.
The woman and the cowboy swung around the river bend and disappeared behind scraggly bushes. Dreaded loneliness lept into Brian's face but only for a second.
Behind him, movement.
Pebbles bounced across rock.
And breathing, hushed but excited.
A foreboding tremble moved up Brian's spine as he craned to look behind.
He didn't know what they were—humanoid, possibly—but there was no doubt to their number. Brian could feel the presence of hundreds though he saw only a small pack.
Brian was reminded of the first time he'd seen Night of the Living Dead at the old drive-in near his parents' Idaho farm. That movie had given him nightmares. But this wasn't black and white and these corpses didn't walk mummified and act half-stupid. These humanoids dashed between peach-red jutting rocks, boulders and bushes. They flanked him; they headed him off at the pass; they sealed his fate. And Brian was playing the lead protagonist in this bizarre afterlife where dead really meant flesh-hungry and starving.
The humanoids seemed a little tentative about attacking, peering with white eyes from the corners of their hiding places, until the skeleton appeared.
Jimmy Peters.
Then, in single file, they loped, crawled, hopped (it depended on which of their appendages were missing or mangled) behind Skeleton Peters toward Brian.
"That's·s·s him. The one that keeps you here. Eat his·s·s plump flesh and be free. Quickly, while it is fresh." They rushed—all except Jimmy Peters. The skeleton stood to watch the feeding frenzy, a smile lifting its fleshless face.
Brian was paralyzed by fear until the first deformed hand grabbed his broken leg. This humanoid had most of its head but was riddled across its naked torso by large-caliber holes. Al Capone? doubtful. Maybe one of his long dead henchmen. The thing's expressionless, molting face reminded Brian of a prohibition hit man. Its death had done nothing to decrease its powerful grip. Brian heard leg bones snapping into smaller pieces as he tried to pull free.
A tinier corpse...a child...and a tall woman with one leg rushed behind the hit man, ogled the delicacy of Brian's purpled leg and grabbed for it. The hit man back-handed the child corpse, sent it rolling into the water, then released Brian's leg to beat the woman.
Brian scurried on his elbows toward the river. Three more corpses dove crazily for his retreating flesh, collided, and fell in a heap an inch from Brian's toes. Brian grabbed his tube in haste but it squirted free and spun into the flow of the river.
"Get him!" Skeleton Peters screamed.
The corpses came over the rocks in multitude like cockroaches from a hidey-hole that's been sprayed with pesticide. Brian slid into the water, his soft belly scratched and bleeding from the sharp rocks, and paddled several feet knowing that at any second he'd be pulled by a thousand hands backward. His good leg struggled to match his weight; his arms tired quickly.
Then, the child corpse—the one the hit man had slapped into the water—bobbed to the surface and Brian swam straight into it. It grabbed for his throat, wrapped its body around his, vised him with its legs. But there was no strength in the child's grasp, and no skin on the child's body. What had once been a flesh-hungry corpse was now an inanimate mass of bones. Brian shoved the skeleton into the current and looked to the river bank.
There were thousands of them lined up at the river's edge watching their meal swim to safety. Skeleton Peters stood at center, its boney victorious smile turned sour. The skeleton slowly walked into the river until its skull disappeared under a lap of water.
It's coming. Where's my tube? Oh shit! Quickly—get away. Gotta find the cowboy, the woman. Damn this broken leg.
And as if by magic the tube hit him right in the face. Brian flopped inside and didn't stop paddling until he was around the river bend, safe from the staring, hungry mass, from Skeleton Peters' submarine tactics.
It seemed like hours before Brian finally ran into the cowboy and woman again. In that time, the wide cavern had continually narrowed creating the claustrophobic illusion that, eventually, Brian would be squashed when the walls and ceiling collided at the cavern's end.
The pale pink glow created by the underground comet had turned a rustier red, a color resembling a photographer's development room. The impact point of the comet and its blazing halo still hid behind tall cliffs and mountainous peaks but Brian felt near its warmth. Just around the next bend, he figured; or maybe the next.
The river seemed to be heating also. It jagged like a snake before him then swept to the right around a tall cliff, a cliff that Brian Poletree figured he could easily jump from because he was no chicken.
It was under this cliff that Junior Dalton and the woman with no name sat in their tubes, apparently caught up in a pool of water that could not escape the cliff's intrusion into the forward flow of the river.
"Hey," the cowboy yelled when he saw Brian. "If it ain't the greenhorn from Flagstaff. We felt sure you's a gonner."
Brian paddled into the whirlpool and collided with the woman's tube. Once again, he was caught by her beauty. A tiny grin that touched the left half of her face sent yearning chills through Brian's groin.
"Why didn't you tell me about those things?" Brian said to the cowboy.
"Hey, boy. We tried." Junior turned to the woman. "Didn't we darlin'?" The woman only stared at Brian as if she'd never expected to see him again. "'Sides. Where I come from, the best way of knowin' somethin' is by experience. So how was it, boy? The experience?"
"God awful."
The cowboy roared his approval. "Shee-it!" he yelled and the cavern walls and the cliffs and the rocky peaks returned his call in unison. Junior Dalton seemed to be everywhere. Shee-it·it·it!
Brian grabbed the woman's tube as the swirling water attempted to draw them apart. The woman placed her hand on his; Brian's heart roared with approval. "What are those things?" he asked the woman. He wanted to relish the woman's voice, the silky texture, the caressing harmony that had warned him not to leave the river. But Junior crushed his hopes with a shrieking, two-fingered whistle.
"Hey ya'll," he said. "Ain't got no time for that crap." Then he lowered his voice, craned his neck, and spoke with an open hand to the side of the face as if he were revealing a secret to Brian that he didn't want the woman to hear. "Sides, boy," he whispered. "I already tried, but she just ain't innerstead in that kind of fun. If'n ya knows what I mean." He winked.
Then the woman released Brian's hand as if upset with the cowboy's rudeness, scowled, looked fearfully expectant around the trio, then straight up the cliff's ribbed face. The men looked simultaneously.
Something was falling at them, fast. Brian gazed in horror as Skeleton Peters slammed into Junior Dalton's cowboy hat. Brian tried to paddle in retreat with one hand and pull the woman to safety with the other but the whirlpool was too strong. Junior Dalton's tube propelled straight up then tumbled into the river flow and disappeared around the cliff's edge. Skeleton Peters and Junior Dalton went under the water together. Their struggle was at the woman's feet and she curled them into her tube.
Junior's arm popped up, then the skeleton's pulled it down. Junior managed to break the surface once to gasp for air but was quickly yanked back under. A full minute passed before Junior reappeared at the surface. He floated on his face, drowned. A tear dropped from the woman's eye as she reached for the dead cowboy but quickly withdrew it when Skeleton Peters' bony hand ripped through the muscle of Junior's back. Its evil skull broke the surface.
"What's·s·s up, fat boy," it said. "Take a good look at thees·s·s," The skeletal hand through Junior's back wiggled its bloody fingers. "They'll be the last thing you s·s·see before I rip your head off." Skeleton Peters sunk under the water taking the dead cowboy with it.
Junior Dalton's straw hat bobbed to the surface and Brian grabbed it tentatively, feeling the presence of skeletal hands near the surface of the water. Somewhere he'd heard that only death could separate a cowboy from his hat. Too true. Brian straightened the worn memorial, and placed it on his head. It fit perfectly.
The river continued its downward course toward Hell. The cavern walls and ceiling were a few hundred feet closer, and the woman with no name still remained silent. Brian had tried conversation without response. "Who is that?" he'd asked of Skeleton Peters, "who are they?" referring to the zombies in the cavern, and "what is this place?" But she would only stare, her face twisted into complex emotions, a gaze that seemed to grow deeper with each turn in the river.
As strange as it seemed, Brian thought he was falling in love with this two hundred year old mute. In times of confusion and desperation, the heart had a funny way of grabbing what little bit of sanity the crazy world had left in it. The heart filtered this sanity and created hope. For Brian, the woman was all the hope he had. If dream, spirit or reality, this place—this adventure—needed her. If he did not protect her from whatever lay in wait, Brian felt sure that his fate at the end of the river would not be favorable.
Again, the river slowed. The cavern's rusty red dulled to a yellow that brightened as Brian and the woman neared the last river bend that would reveal the impact point a thousand yards ahead.
Electric fingers massaged his scalp. A voice tiptoed across his brain. Brian, it said. He turned to the woman, caught her staring straight through him.
Brian.
Her jaw clenched producing smooth curves that rounded her cheeks and strengthened her chin. Yes, the voice said, it is me.
"You," Brian said, his eyes bugging. "But your mouth didn't...how can you...I—I—"
It is a gift that I have; the ability to talk with my mind. The woman's voice spoke quickly, urgently, as if there were no time for this unimportant conversation.
"You mean you're telepathic. Wow, this dream is something else."
This is NOT! a dream. The woman's exclamation blew through Brian's head. Listen to me. The Circle of Judgement draws near. Whatever happens, you must get to that circle.
"What circle? What do you mean, whatever happens?"
The bend in the river drew closer, less than 500 yards ahead. The woman inhaled deeply. An explanation may threaten your proper destiny, but I see that it has become necessary. Junior was correct. Her face soured with sadness but only for a moment. This is the river Styx, but this is not the Styx the Old Books spoke of. We will not necessarily end up in Hell. That is what the Circle of Judgement will determine.
"Determine?"
It will determine your degree of good or evil. Contrary to belief, the river Styx does not separate the land of the living from Hell, it is a pathway in the spiritual world to the portal of Hell. The woman saw confusion in Brian's eyes.
When the material body no longer functions, the soul will be drawn to one of two places: outside of Heaven or outside of Hell. It is very rare that a soul will be admitted directly to either place without first judgement. It is documented that judgement into Heaven is made on the tops of clouds in front of the Divine Gates. Scholars throughout the centuries have understood this. But none wrote or spoke of this place, perhaps because judgement has never returned a soul to the living world. When you end up here, it is because your bad has out-weighed your good.
Now, Brian was sure that someone had made a mistake. He did not deserve to be here. If anywhere, he should be standing outside the Gates waiting for some angel to realize that he was right, that someone had made a big mistake, that he should be returned immediately to his body lying at the bottom of an Arizona cliff. He was not a bad person. He was good. HE WAS GOOD, DAMMIT! Why was he meant to suffer so: tormented by a living skeleton, made immobile by his broken leg and the flesh-hungry zombies.
They are not zombies, Brian.
Brian gasped at her ability to read his mind. Had she known that he loved her?
Zombies are fiction; they are the walking dead. The malformed bodies you saw are living souls judged to suffer for an eternity or to be eaten by their own kind. All that is beyond the banks of the river is their domain, the Deadlands. In their judgement, they have been forbidden the touch or taste of water, to roam the Deadlands forever thirsty, always searching for a foolish unjudged soul.
"Me, right?" Brian said.
Almost.
"And what of the skeleton. He talks just like Jimmy Peters. This thing doesn't seem to be affected by water at all. He killed Junior but he left the two of us. If he wanted blood, he could have had ours easily."
Two hundred yards from the final left turn that would lead to the Circle of Judgement, the woman whimpered. The impact of feeling her in his mind rather than hearing her aloud thrust Brian's emotions into sudden sadness and fear. For a moment, he was in her body, feeling the rippling of her spine, the damp chill across her naked breasts, the foreboding of what lay in wait. Skeleton Peters.
Her mouth trembled as she spoke with her mind. The skeleton represents all that is evil. Jimmy Peters, as you have called him, did not need judgement. His death in the living world sent his soul straight to the kingdom of the Prince himself. There would be no eternal damnation for his soul. He would not be let into the domain of the Deadlands. That suffering would have been too good. Instead, he would be destined to the worst of all judgements: to burn in hell forever, to adorn the walls of the Prince's kingdom as a bodiless soul forever suffering, forever an inferno.
But the Prince gave Jimmy Peters a choice. He was offered the chance to become leader of the Deadlands, king of the damned souls. He would be given power over the elements to rule as he pleased for as long as he paid the Prince's price. The woman looked from Brian's purpled broken leg to Junior Dalton's sagging straw hat as if Brian were a prime cut of meat ready for butchering.
The price would be the souls of the innocent who were destined to be judged fairly for there is no brighter a fire that burns in Hell than that of an innocent soul. And there is no greater a pleasure for the Prince than to take from the world what should never have been taken.
Brian pointed at himself.
Yes, the woman said.
"And Junior Dalton?"
The woman nodded.
"How do you know—"
So much? the woman finished. As Junior said, I have been on this river for two hundred years. I have known many souls such as yours and Jimmy Peters', but none have been as innocent as yours or as evil as his. Your innocence is powerful. It is never easy for evil to overcome such power, but it can if given the chance. You would burn brightly in Hell. And Jimmy Peters would be greatly rewarded, possibly even be given the chance at a soul in the living world. That can not be allowed to happen. We can not allow that to happen.
Fright, invigoration and pride battled for control of Brian's emotions. We could not allow it to happen, he thought. Me and—
"What is your name?" Brian asked. The woman smiled so widely, Brian saw a flickering nub of flesh at the back of her throat; the remains of her tongue.
Marie Lefonte, she said. Realizing Brian had seen inside her mouth she added, it is penance for my crime. Her smile faded. I am an adulterer.
"To be raped and have your tongue cut out is a high price to pay."
You must understand that in my time, adultery was a high crime. I believe the punishment just.
"And your judgement?"
To roam the the river forever searching for innocent souls, and to protect those that I can.
The final turn came abruptly as Brian pondered Marie's drastic consequences. The tubes bounced against the rocky river bank as he and Marie became immersed in bright yellow light and sudden warmth. The warmth added to that which had grown in Brian's soul, for Marie and for himself. He was innocent. He was good. He...and Marie...had an important mission, a battle against evil itself. He tensed with adrenal anticipation, felt his heart pounding so hard that the rolls of his belly jiggled. To the Circle of Judgement he would go, hand-in-hand with the woman he loved and together they could not be stopped.
That is what he thought until he saw Skeleton Peters and the mass of rotted souls gathered around what looked like a monstrous campfire fifty feet to his left. Their cannibalistic feast made Brian sure that he and Marie were next on the menu.
Skeleton Peters walked to the edge of the river with a ball of flesh in its bony hand. "S·S·Shee-it," it said and threw the mass at Brian. Junior Dalton's head landed a foot from Marie and she shrieked as spray wet and matted her hair to her breasts. As the head sunk, the mouth opened, rippled then burst the small sacs of fluid on the scorpion bitten face, tried to speak as it filled with water. "Runn-ag-gogle."
"That's·s·s it," Skeleton Peters yelled. "Run fat boy. Run you father-loving whore. Run on over here to daddy. Let us·s·s feast together."
Marie turned her head unimpressed with the taunting. She pointed ahead. The Circle of Judgement, there. Another hundred yards ahead, the river and cavern ended in a giant whirlpool. It spun savagely, twenty feet in diameter, crashed against the cavern's solid wall as if trying to escape. From its center, rose tiny orange flames and Brian stared, frightened, knowing that if he entered the whirlpool he'd be sucked through the fiery hole into Hell. Get to the circle! Marie's urgency rumbled in Brian's head as she pushed his tube forward.
What was she doing? She was pushing him toward Hell. No way would he willingly paddle into the whirlpool. Had this all been a ruse, a well-crafted scheme to take his soul? Was Marie actually a Devil's advocate? And to think he'd fallen in love with her.
What are you doing? Go, now, before it is too late.
"Who are you?" Brian asked.
What are you talking about. Dammit, Brian, we haven't time for this. GO!
From behind, a large rock struck the back of Marie's head. The force threw her from the tube and she disappeared in the black water.
"NO!" Brian screamed and started paddling toward her stranded tube.
Skeleton Peters was laughing. He stood with a hundred souls at the river's edge and together they threw stones at Brian. A large one bounced off Brian's broken leg; he screamed in pain; Skeleton Peters laughed louder. Brian began backpedaling toward the whirlpool as stones rained like hail around him. Why hadn't he listened? What was wrong with him?
The river grew shallower the closer he moved toward the whirlpool. Just twenty more yards. Rocks bounced off his body at will. His nose bled from the impact of one. Another had knocked Junior Dalton's hat into the water and it bobbed ahead of Brian, moved swiftly and entered the whirlpool. Brian watched intently, disregarding the continual pounding his body suffered. The hat spun at the whirlpool's edge but would not descend into the fiery center. Then, suddenly, the hat just disappeared.
That was it. The hat had returned to the living world and so would Brian. He paddled with bruised arms faster.
Then the rain fell. Stones dropped in a storm, collected, created a dam—an impasse—ahead of Brian. The dam of rocks was only a foot high, but sufficient enough to keep Brain and his broken leg from advancing. He started moving along the dam hoping he could turn the corner ten feet away before Skeleton Peters introduced another surprise.
And as he finished the thought the surprise came. The mass of damned souls rushed into the river. Each, in turn, rose to the water's surface a skeleton. A mass of bones jammed the river bank as souls continued across their predecessors, fell into the water, became bone. The souls seemed to come from everywhere, from within the rock walls, from the ground; they dropped from the ceiling. Thousands of skeletons collected across the river and Skeleton Peters stepped onto his makeshift pier and walked gayly toward his prey.
"You are going to make a marvelous torch, dear boy," Skeleton Peters happily said. "S·s·so much innocence and a virgin too. Oh, I'm just creaming my jeans thinking about it. First the Deadlands, then the living world, and who knows, in a couple of centuries maybe Heaven itself." Skeleton Peters howled wide-jawed like a wolf to the moon. Ten feet closer. The cat had his mouse cornered.
Then a hand thrust from the water's surface, grabbed Skeleton Peters' bony leg and pulled it into the river. Marie's head broke the surface, went under, came back up, then disappeared. Brian couldn't move. His energy was gone, his body battered and bruised. It was an eternity before Marie finally hoisted herself from the water onto the bone pier. She stood in full naked beauty before Brian. Her hips swayed seductively as she walked to the end of the pier, dropped into knee-deep water, grabbed Brian's tube, and towed him around the edge of the dam.
"You're alive. Dear God, I thought you'd had it. I'm so sorry, Marie. Now we can get out of this together." Marie would not turn around. She continued walking toward the whirlpool which spun a few steps ahead.
Brian could not feel her in his mind. She would not or could not talk. Something was wrong.
Together, they entered the whirlpool and began spinning along its outer edge. Brian gazed into its center where the flames flickered invitingly, wanting. The spinning of the whirlpool and the dancing flames controlled Brian's eyelids, hypnotized them, drew them closed. He did not realize that Marie was pulling him toward the center of the whirlpool—towards Hell.
Brian he heard, but it was only a dream voice. Go away, Brian thought. Let me sleep.
BRIAN! the voice screamed, nearly rupturing the nerves in his brain. He woke to find himself and Skeleton Peters just two feet from the whirlpool's fiery center. "Are you ready for some fun," the skeleton said. "There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight."
Skeleton Peters entered the fire as Brian rolled from the tube and swam with all the strength he had left. The bruises, the broken leg—he would never make it to the whirlpool's edge. Skeleton Peters came after him. "Oh no you don't," it laughed.
For every foot Brian swam, Skeleton Peters gained two. In seconds, the skeleton had him in its grasp and was pulling him back toward the middle.
Then, something hit Brian on the head, dazed him. At first, he thought it was another rock but when his vision cleared he saw Junior Dalton's head clasped tightly to Skeleton Peters' skull. The decapitated mouth worked the bone, snapping it into small pieces, spitting them into the rushing water. Skeleton Peters could not free itself.
Quickly, Brian rose to the whirlpool's edge and saw Marie standing behind the low dam wall, her arm raised in victory. Behind her, the large campfire created by the comet raged bright white. She had found Junior's head, had thrown it, and now Junior was chewing his revenge out of Skeleton Peters. There was little left of the skeleton and Brian watched with relief as the shattered remains spun and disappeared into the whirlpool's fiery center. Junior Dalton's head rose and settled next to Brian, winked, then vanished.
The fire on the shore faded, died. The only light left in the cavern came from its large red embers. As Brian continued to spin, waiting for judgement—to return to the living world—he looked to Marie. "Come with me," he yelled.
In his mind he heard, farewell, Brian, then Marie's naked image dissolved, became blue neon gas, dissipated, and was gone.
The whirlpool spun faster, faster. The cavern was a blur. Colors and shades blended until all was black.
The thrusting wind in his ears...thwump, thwump. His eyes were forced inward.
Once the Medi-Vac helicopter had settled and the dust had cleared, Brian opened his eyes.
"He's awake," someone yelled.
The Arizona sun stabbed Brian's dilated irises and he lifted his arm to shadow his face.
"Quickly. Over here."
Slowly, pain spread from his leg to his groin. His spine protested the jagged ground on which it rested. Scratches and cuts, bared to the warmth of the sun, dotted his body with pin cushion discomfort.
Two men and a woman knelt beside him.
"Keep still," the paramedic with the thick mustache said."You're a very lucky man."
As the paramedics wrestled his painful limbs onto a stretcher, Brian considered his luck: Tortured through an afterlife illusion...not lucky; understanding that the only woman he'd ever loved was a part of that illusion...not lucky; being pushed from a cliff and falling 50 feet, almost to his death for Christ's sake...really not lucky.
But as he was lifted from the ground, he turned his head and understood what the mustached paramedic had meant. Jimmy Peters lay crushed in a puddle of blood; his dead eyes were wide with terror. Somehow, Brian had landed on top of him.
"Keep still." This time the female paramedic offered the advice. She cradled his head and secured a neck brace under his chin. She was very pretty. Her eyes reminded him of his illusionary love.
But Marie was gone. All he had now was rehabilitation, a full load of summer classes, and Professor Chutney. He realized that he'd never see Marie again, not even in his dreams. His nights would be infected by the image of Jimmy Peters' crushed skull, his horror-filled stare. He'd dream of some place far below, where bones burned brightly on the walls of Hell, where Jimmy, the skeleton, Peters hung screaming for an eternity.
And questions: Who, really, was Marie Lefonte? When did she live and why did she deserve such a horrible death? And what had Jimmy Peters done to humanity? What evil secrets had he hidden?
The paramedics hoisted Brian into the helicopter and shoved a needle into his arm.
Thwump...Thwump, the helicopter blades.
Thwump...Thwump, the spinning Circle of Judgement.
He'd never pass anatomy now. His mind would be preoccupied. There were too many answers to be researched. Maybe it was time for a change. He hated pre-med classes anyway, didn't he? Maybe he would become...
"This yours?" the female paramedic asked.
No question now. He would definitely become a writer. All scholars had written about the heavenly afterlife but Brian had a different story to tell. Marie would have wanted it; Junior would have wanted it. It was his judgement.
"Yes, it is," Brian said. "Would you please put it on?"
The female paramedic looked at her companions, each nodded in turn, and she placed Junior Dalton's straw cowboy hat on Brian's head. It fit perfectly.
***END***
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