Beyond Perdition, page 11
Logan looked up at where Hades sat and saw a skeletal hand nuzzling the centre head of Cerberus. Persephone sat above sipping from a golden goblet. This was just like a day out to them, a sick, sadistic day out. Logan raised his circular shield questioning its ability to defend him against anything. Fortunately, the sheer weight of his Damascus blade instilled some degree of confidence. Maybe, if he swung the sword ruthlessly enough, he might get lucky, might keep his adversaries at bay. Matt must have been thinking the same, for Logan could feel his partners sword arm thrusting indiscriminately through the air at an unseen enemy.
‘Keep it together Matt, let’s not lose ourselves, let’s not give these sick spectators any reason to cheer.’
No sooner had he completed his short-improvised rhetoric; he noticed the portcullis at the north side of the arena shuddering open. A dark maw was slowly revealed but nothing else. Three of the other prisoners from before had fanned out into the arena to await whatever stepped through the newly created opening. Two held long swords, whilst another a spear.
‘Ladies and gentleman’ came a disembodied voice from within the stands, amplified by some unseen means.
‘You are gathered here today to witness a great fight. We have procured the Queen of the Hives of Hell and her soldiers at arms. From the darkest depths of the pit, where even Lucifer dares not tread...’ this last line elicited a cheer from the audience.
‘Welcome the hive Queen Althanzia and her loyal soldiers.’
Logan looked towards the north entrance; his sword poised to attack. Though it was cold in the arena, he felt himself sweating profusely. He had no armour but his normal clothes. No protection but the soft linen of his shirt which stuck to his skin. From out of the darkness came a loud piercing buzz like a pneumatic drill accompanied by a series of shrill whines. As the sounds grew louder a swarm of bees forming a black and yellow tsunami flooded into the arena. Each was the size of a fully grown locust. They spread out towards the far sides of the arena, the sounds of their wings as deafening as a lion’s roar. The two prisoners equipped with swords had gone into kneeling positions, one gauntleted arm guarding their face the other holding the blade aloft.
The man armed with the spear had retreated from his initial position near the entranceway and was digging his heels into a patch of sand towards the stadium’s centre.
‘We can’t fight these with swords’ Matt called over the persistent buzzing.
‘Keep our formation, use the shield as best you can. We can at least keep them at bay until...’
The large bees dropped abruptly to the floor crawling and scampering over each other. At that moment the chatter of the crowd fell silent, not even a murmur.
A conical shadow spilt out from the opposite entrance stretching over the sands like oil diffusing over water. There was a new sound now. Not the erratic buzzing of the hordes but something akin to thunder. Following in the wake of the shadow, dappled by the intermittent lighting of the kerosene lamps appeared Athanzia.
She stood bipedal though her legs were far larger and far more muscled than any human. Her abdomen was thrust through the centre of her legs, the stinger stuck out like a rapier. Black and yellow banding crossed over the cone-like structure, the fur bristling as she stepped forward. Her thorax was covered in the same carpet-like fur from which a set of transparent wings extended like around him, he charged towards Athanzia. The distance was closed in an instant. Spear thrust against stinger. Athanzia beat her membranous wings until her sizeable body was aloft. Her stripped abdomen pulsed as the elongated stinger parried the frantic thrusts of the spear.
‘We have to move now’ Logan uttered ‘whilst she’s distracted’.
Logan could feel Matt turning to join him. Twenty feet or so divided them from the jousting fighters. The spearman was doing an admirable job of deflecting the blows but his arm was tiring, his movements becoming laboured.
Logan led the way, circling the back of Athanzia’s hovering form. From there, her wings looked like the masts of a great ship, her fur like the reeds in some uninhabitable swamp. Suddenly her spike trained as it was on the chest of her attacker, thrust forward with the speed of a freshly launched javelin. It was too quick to evade, too powerful to parry. It pierced the spearman’s chest cavity with an enormous thumping sound. As she retrieved her stinger Matt noticed a feverishly pulsating heart skewered at the tip like the meat on a sheesh kebab. The man dropped to his knees, his skin a ghostly white. The sand was soon covered in an ever-expanding, murky puddle of red.
Logan had used this time to creep round on Athanzia and now with unyielding force, he drove his sword up and into her thoracic spine. The thunderous din of her wings was replaced by an agonizing screech. She wheeled round only for Matt to strike her lower abdomen and detach the offending stinger.
Logan had retrieved his blood-spattered blade and wasted no time in lunging forward once again detaching her left-wing and causing her to spiral to the floor like the leaf of a sycamore tree. As she hit the sands, her body quivered. Her muscular legs kicked out like a toddler in the throes of a tantrum, and then all was still. That same pervading silence filled the stadium. Even Persephone put down her goblet and observed the proceeding with enraptured awe.
Hades quickly stood to his feet and began to clap.
‘Meet our new Under-Olympia champions. But don’t disappoint my loyal audience. This was a mere teaser, a warm-up if you like. When they return, the real fight will begin’
4
Logan and Matt were thrown roughly back into the cell. There were fewer inmates than before but those sitting in the dappled shadows were wraith-like. Their pale, gaunt bodies could barely support their own weight and each harboured a significant wound crudely bandaged with strips of linen or lengths of leather belt tied into tourniquets.
Logan had spent many a night in the St Augustus hospital’s A &E department amid the beaten wives and injured alcoholics. He’d seen the graphic conclusions of face planting the curb or the rabid results of overdosing on Vicoden and regurgitating a narcotic froth. Yet none of that seemed comparable to this. At least in the hospital, the stringent antiseptic smell, though sometimes intolerable, at least reminded one they were in a place of medicinal remedies and with people trained to administer such remedies. Here, the only smell was of stale sweat and urine far stronger than that of any drunk tank.
Matt was scrubbing the blade of his sword with his sleeve as he muttered to himself. Logan stared forlornly through the bars contemplating the next battle with increasing dread. What had Hades meant when he said that the battle was just a teaser? What could possibly be worse than a humanoid-bee hybrid who could direct a personal army of kamikaze servants to dispatch any opponent?
If Hell had taught him anything, it was to expect the unexpected. His mind cycled through the same thematic thoughts. He imagined this would be how a death row inmate would feel when after two decades they were told it was, at last, their time with ‘old sparky’.
His heart skipped a beat as two guards appeared and hauled him and Matt to their feet. Matt’s mood had transformed from apprehension to frustration. He was still intently scrubbing the blade as he was dragged from the cell. Perhaps it was a form of distraction, a crude coping mechanism Logan thought.
The crowd cheered as the two men were shoved through the arena entrance. No other fighters were called. Hades stood above Cerberus and signalled for the opponent to enter. No words were spoken, the tension was palpable.
Three men began rolling a large spotted egg into the centre of the arena. The egg itself possessed an alabaster shell with long thin cracks zigzagging across the casing. It was at least three meters in diameter and rolled across the sands like some cumbersome boulder. Logan and Matt found themselves transfixed on the giant oval structure. The multitude of cracks widened across the surface of the egg until jig-saw like pieces of the shell fell away.
A grunting sound emanated from within as if someone or something was exerting great effort to escape their confines. Then a hand appeared, human but for its gigantic proportions. The neck and torso followed carrying with it the embryonic mucus. Long globular pillars rose out of the egg’s opening, detaching themselves with a sickening flop from his thrashing limbs.
Finally stood upright, the individual revealed a frame of at least four meters in height. A humongous belly cascaded over any evidence of genitalia whilst more of the gelatinous goo oozed from his almighty girth.
His face was deformed. Sunken eyes were set aside a vacant nasal cavity and below a toothless maw. A handful of hair sprouted out from his scalp matted down by the biological slime. Logan took a cursory glance towards Matt and clocked a bewildering expression. A kind of twisted anger entwined with fear. It gave him a ghoulish, maligned look similar to his opponent.
Neither of them had had time to strategize as in a singular movement the giant figure lumbered forward, his hands clenched into clumsily swinging fists.
Matt dug his heels into the ground. Although his entire body was trembling, he managed to grip his sword resolutely. The blade marked with the remnants of Athanzia’s blood still gleamed as it caught the light of the suspended lamps. Logan found his own feet frozen to the spot, his voice caught in his throat. He was acutely aware of the inescapable shadow cast by their foe as if night itself had descended over the arena. He watched as Matt raced forward from his initial position and advanced unwaveringly towards the giant.
The events which followed passed in the literal blink of an eye. Matt’s sword was knocked from his hands, his shield shattered into splinters and his body picked up from the sands and crushed with the ease of a polystyrene cup. The cracking bones synced with the eruption of applause and the baying for further bloodshed. His cries were cut short and what was left of his torso, arms and legs tumbled independently onto the reddening sands.
Logan’s hands trembled vibrating his sword’s steel like a plucked guitar string. His opponent stood unphased, his large stomach moving tidally. Great vascular protrusions patterned his bulging biceps and his throbbing forearms. His hands now streaked in viscera sought to grab at Logan’s quaking form. A quick dodge, innate, unconscious as if Logan reacted in a state of distant detachment, a safe state observing the events from the amphitheatre seating sharing in the collective enthralment. In this state, there was no fear, no pausing for thought or planning the next offensive move. He saw the giant’s arm swing powerfully to his left, rise up and come again from his right. The motion was slowed in the moment so that every finite detail stood out with particular clarity.
As quickly as this meditative state had been achieved, Logan was cast into earth-shattering reality. The second downward swipe had hit the sands so hard Logan had tumbled backwards nearly losing his sword. Jumping reactively to his feet, he side-swiped the third blow and thrust his blade instinctively towards the giant’s enormous midriff. The effect was instantaneous. Intestines unravelled like a rope of sausages still coated in offal. Blood and biological fluid clung to the assortment of less identifiable organs. The giant’s face had contorted in pain, not a grimace but a subsuming of all his outwardly features, a kind of reluctant acceptance of his fate.
His hands moved to his gushing stomach desperately trying to scoop the innards back inside. Logan stepped back suddenly aware of the thousands upon thousands of stoic gazes turning abruptly into enthralled stares. The clapping followed, their blood lust had been satiated and now they turned to the orchestrator of their entertainment waiting with bated breath. Hades rose to his feet, his black cloak flaring up behind like an escaping shadow. Persephone had placed her goblet down on the table beside her and, like the paying spectators, was watching Hades’s every movement. He broke the enraptured silence with a slow clap and then with a bellowing voice he spoke.
‘This man has truly proven himself. Against all odds, he has won against one of our greatest fighters. So, I put it to you, the people… has he earned his freedom? Has he earned a chance to return to the abode of the living?’
The crowd appeared divided. Uncertain murmurs turned to a resounding cheer.
‘Then it is decided! You have won your freedom as decreed by my people. Step forward warrior of Sheol.’ Suddenly a great white curtain of light materialised in front of him. Logan could make out movement from beyond the veil and the voice of someone familiar coaxing him through the ephemeral gateway.
CHAPTER 9
CARNIVAL CLOWNS
1
There was only darkness, a thick rich blackness which held within it an icy cold. Then joining the darkness like an old friend, an antiseptic smell, a medicinal aroma that, although not completely identifiable, was strong and pervasive. As if being loaded into existence, there came a light, a dull light which barely broke through the pitch. After a few seconds, it grew brighter and the shadows receded.
Mason was sat upon a dentist’s chair, his writs and feet strapped tightly to the leather upholstery. A broken bar-light hung above, and to his left, laid out in neat rows, were the tools of the trade: scalpels and drills of varying sizes.
He pulled at his restraints but to no avail. Grabbing peripheral shots of the room in his heightened state of panic, he saw only anatomical posters and children’s crayon drawings. One child had written ‘We love the doc’ in red crayon. Another had drawn a crude heart with Cupid’s arrow piercing it from left to right. A skeleton not unlike those used in a science lab or a high school classroom stood in the far corner, but there was something else standing there. A figure whose motionlessness had camouflaged him against the sterile white linoleum tiling. A man dressed in a white coat stood and stared and frowned.
His frown was not created by curling of his lips rather drawn on in rouge paint. His skin had the same pallor as his coat, which in turn emphasized the eyes bordered by heavy mascara and bulbous nose. His hands were gloved but in such a way that the fingers were exaggeratedly long, almost, Mason thought, like E.T’s as he asked to phone home.
He stepped forward and his feet squeaked comically. He moved in the animated fashion of a mime, emphasizing each step, gesticulating with white pronged digits and never losing that drawn on frown. He didn’t speak but again, like a mime, seemed to signal his intentions with exaggerated movements. He first picked up the scalpel and though his fingers were twice its size, expertly twirled it between his digits until it rested as last in his open palm. Then using his other hand, he picked up a drill bit and let what muted light inhabited the room dance off its highly polished sides glinting like a new penny in the sun. He moved round the seat, placing the tools back before stopping at Mason’s feet and carefully and methodically removing his shoes and socks.
Mason could feel the searching fingers moving over his toes like curious worms. He could feel the sharpened nail tips ripping at his cotton socks and then, at last, he could feel the cold clamminess of exposed feet, of naked flesh. The figure moved purposefully towards the tabled tools and picked up what in Mason’s limited knowledge of dentistry appeared to be a pair of small pliers. He returned to his feet making a game of crossing slowly to the end of the chair and twirling the tool like a mini baton between those pronged fingers.
Then although the frown was clearly drawn on, its upside-down crescent pre-determined by the thick red lines, it had reversed and now the corners pointed upwards in a grotesque grin. It was with this expression that the figure began to pull at the nail of the large toe on Mason’s right foot. At first, he only pulled lightly, letting the cold metallic feel of the pliers enter the sensitive flesh. Then he began to pull with intensity, wrenching the nail from the bed.
Mason screamed as he saw his entire toenail held aloft by the sadistic clown, but it wasn’t over. The clown had already begun tugging at the nail of the next toe taking less time to wrench it off entirely and savouring the drippings of blood accompanying the extraction. Then as if suddenly bored, the frown returned. He set the pliers down on the tray and began moving his hands over the other instruments indecisively. When at last he did pick one, it was a cordless electric drill. He moved round, back to Mason’s feet and let the drill whir loudly. Mason’s screams were lost to the mechanical buzzing and then to the thick fleshy squelch as the drill bit pierced the sole and kept on going.
2
There was something intensely satisfying about the glass smashing on the rear wall trophy cabinet. It was a loud triumphant sound which shattered the silence. Paulie with his flock of ginger hair (strawberry blonde as he would continually protest) remained at the threshold, staring down the corridor like a vigilant Meerkat.
‘Hey man, hurry up before the old bat comes back.’
Mason swept his hand over the pine-wood desk and watched as the loose sheets of paper fluttered into the air like a disturbed flock of gulls. A paperweight sat precariously at the edge of the desk before tumbling to the floor and exploding in a million glittering shards and the white dust of faux snow.
‘Come on man, let’s get back to the dorms, hey?’
Paulie’s freckled face had turned a deep crimson. The same flushed complexion he had when talking to girls or running a cross country but this one was pure unadulterated exasperation. Mason looked around the room at the scene he had created, the haphazard piles of paper and the jagged triangles of glass. That would teach the bitch a lesson he thought, as he kicked a three-tier trophy for the inter-tutor sports day across the cluttered floor.
The dorms were mostly empty but for Billy, his nose in a book.
‘You think she’ll call an assembly’ Paulie asked unable to hide the underlying concern.
‘Probably hold an emergency church service.’ Mason jested rifling through his bag where he’d kept an illegal stash of protein bars. ‘You want one, they only had coconut, I prefer the chocolate myself.’
‘No thanks mate, but ain’t you worried man?’
Mason shrugged, at the same time several more students piled in, blazers unbuttoned, ties loosened, shirts untucked.
