He broke off. It all began at that moment and happened too fast for us to have any control over events. As we followed Melani, we felt the platform resound slightly and, with a discreet but quite distinct click, descend about half a palm.
We started, aware of imminent danger.
'Get back! 'Tis a trap…' screamed Sfasciamonti.
It was already too late. A massive and immensely heavy wooden and iron trapdoor slammed thunderously behind us, cutting us off from the stairway from which we had come and brutally striking the ground, like a peasant's hoe biting into the bare and arid earth. Fortunately, the lantern had not gone out, but what the light was about to reveal to us was enough to make us wish for the blackest darkness.
Tongues of infernal fire flickered before and around us, illuminating us with their horrid light and making our faces seem like those of damned souls. Once they touched our skin those fiery daggers would surely inflict unspeakable suffering upon us.
'God Almighty help us! We have ended up in hell,' I exclaimed, overcome by panic.
Atto said nothing: he was trying to keep those demonic fireflies from his face, hitting out at them as one strikes at mosquitos, but with thrice the force and thrice the desperation.
'Damnation, my feet!' cried Sfasciamonti.
At that moment, I felt it too: unbearable heat burned as though within my shoes. I had to raise one foot, then the other, then again the first, for keeping them on the ground was quite intolerable. Atto, too, and the catchpoll were leaping like madmen, brushing off the tongues of fire and struggling to keep each foot on the ground as little as possible.
'Out of here, damn it!' screamed Atto, rushing with Sfasciamonti towards the little door that we had not wished to pass through but which had now become our only way out.
Fortunately, like the other doors before it, this too was open. This time we were confronted by a series of rusty iron rungs. The catchpoll entered first. The opening was so tight that we had to bend almost until our noses touched our knees. We advanced breathlessly, one stuck to the other, our feet still half burned, while some of the malignant droplets of fire mockingly invaded our little hole. Thus, I found myself caught between Sfasciamonti's powerful bulk and Atto's more scrawny and weary body, trembling with fear and imploring Our Lord to have pity on my soul.
'No!!'
It was then, just when Sfasciamonti let forth that desperate scream, that I saw him disappear, engulfed by a sudden abyss and felt him grasp at my right arm, dragging me down the precipice with prodigious force.
The invisible and natural mechanism that governs human actions in such upheavals moved of its own accord and caused me, willy-nilly, to grasp at Atto, who thus fell with me. Hanging onto one another in a wretched bundle of flesh and bones, we were sucked by an invincible force into a vertiginous and endless fall.
'Et libera nos a malo' I had the presence of mind to gasp as the alien vortex almost robbed me of my breath.
The fall seemed to last forever. We were piled up one on top of the other as though Lucifer's pitchfork had cast us among the damned and was bringing us before the judges of the Inferno.
Sfasciamonti, motionless under me, was hunched up in terror as well as under the combined weight of Atto and myself. Melani was overcome by shock and pain and moaned, barely moving. With an immense effort I struggled out from under that double human carpet and gave thanks to the Lord that I was able to sit on the ground. The floor was no longer burning hot. A pungent and familiar odour, disquieting under those tragic circumstances, impregnated my skin and my clothing. I became aware of the environment surrounding me, and anguish gripped my soul.
The lantern, of course, was broken. It was, however, possible to descry everywhere a weird luminosity, a mixture of fog and bluish half light, like that which glow worms dispense in gardens after nightfall, subtly pervading all things.
Was I still in one piece? I looked at my hands and trembled. They emitted light, no, they seemed even to be made of light.
I was no longer a man. An opalescent glow issued from every point on my body, as I could see when I looked at my legs and my belly. My mortal remains were elsewhere. In their place was a poor lost soul, a wretched effigy wandering in the Underworld, of substance translucent and immaterial.
At that moment, Sfasciamonti rose to his feet and saw me.
'You… you are dead!' he whispered in horror, his eyes fixed on what remained of me.
He looked all around him with mad, bulging eyes. Then he looked at himself, his hands and his arms. He too emitted that bluish light which was everywhere, within us and without.
'Then I too… all of us… oh, my God,' he sobbed.
Then came the apparition. A being of darkness, enveloped in a menacing black shroud, his face hidden by a great mystic cowl, was watching us from a niche in the wall, closed with an iron grate.
Atto too rose from the ground and saw him. All three of us were suspended for long, interminable moments between breathing and breathlessness, between desperation and hope, between life and death. Other hooded figures appeared behind the figure in the niche, which must have been, or so it seemed, a little gallery. Evil emissaries of the infernal regions, they would soon be upon us. It was clear that they were about to seize and devour us.
The grate rose. Now nothing separated us from the demons. Their leader, he who had appeared to us first, took a step forward. Instinctively, we drew back. Even Sfasciamonti, or rather the great bluish phantom who had taken his place, trembled like an autumn leaf.
It all happened in moments. The satanic being extracted from his shroud a long, lurid orange object. It was a glowing dagger, in keeping with the white heat of the flames of Hades. This he pointed at us, as though casting an anathema. Soon, said I to myself, from it would issue the tongue of flame that consumes every residual mortal atom, reducing us (if our luminous manifestation still possessed any substance) to poor wandering ectoplasms.
He pointed the dagger in my direction, in a gesture of condemnation. Whatever had I committed, I asked myself blubbering, to merit, not purgatory, but the irremediable horrors of hell? Four devils ran to me, seized me and forced me to the ground on my back, nailing me down with their horrid clawed arms. I did not scream: terror itself, choking my throat, prevented that.
Besides, said I to myself in a flash of desperate humour, who can hear the lament of the damned?
Their leader came to me. Even now, his face could not be seen, only the macabre hooked hand (likewise bluish and phosphorescent) brandishing the fiery dagger. Meanwhile, I knew not what had become of Atto and Sfasciamonti; I heard only an indistinct scuffling. Probably they too had been overcome in their turn.
The angel of evil leaned over and was upon me. With his dagger, he aimed directly at my forehead. He directed the tip just above my eyes, in the middle. He was about to penetrate the bony covering (or its appearance) with the overwhelming force of fire. Then, twisting the blade in the hole, he would stir and fry the grey matter of my brain.
'No,' I implored, I know not if with thought alone or with the whisp of voice that I had been allowed to retain from my earthly life.
In the lightless abyss which was my executioner's hood, I thought I saw (the powers of darkness and their agents) a malign smile, which heightened my terror at the approaching end. The absurd heat of the blade dried my eyeballs (had I still any?). Only an animal lust for life still kept them open.
The point of the incandescent blade was less than a hair's breadth from my forehead. It was about to strike. Now, in less than a second. Now, yes, Cloridia my love, my sweet little girls…
It was then, as though in a gentle prelude to death, that I lost consciousness. Before fainting, heart and soul beat together for one last instant. Just long enough to hear:
'One momentary: periculous blunderbungle.'
'What? Wretched imbecile, I'll blast you to bits!'
Then, violent noises, as of a struggle, and the shot.
'Take courage, hero, stand up.'
A smack. Rapid, violent and alarming as a bucketful of water in the face. It had awoken me, recalling me from the torpor of my swoon. Now I heard Atto's voice addressing me.
