I soon realized that the trees were not exactly trees. The branches were human limbs, gesticulating wildly, with blood running out like sap. Tormented human voices poured out from the holes that had been ripped by the birds-which were not birds, I could see now, but Harpies that resembled vultures with pale female faces and claws as sharp as razors. Their stench overwhelmed us every time one flew anywhere near.
“The voices from the trees,” Francesco said, “can only come forth after the Harpies have ripped their flesh and their blood is flowing. Suicides can only express themselves through that which destroys them.”
I remembered then that he had deliberately inhaled his wife’s plague before commanding his brother to shoot him through with an arrow. “Is this what Hell is like for you?”
“My choice to die came within hours of my inevitable death, and it was a decision made with love, not cowardice. An important distinction to remember.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Although my afterlife is not this one, there is a reason that I am your guide here.”
I thought he was going to say more, but he only told me that we still had a great distance to travel.
I was now stripped to the waist. My skin was definitely improving. We continued through the woods and I heard what seemed, at first, to be the murmur of a throbbing beehive. As we came closer, I realized that it was a waterfall at the wood’s edge. The rushing wind swept back our hair, mine still growing.
This waterfall did not fall over the edge of any cliff; it just dropped straight down from the sky and cut through the desert floor in front of us. Francesco indicated that I needed to throw Sigurðr’s scabbard into the waterfall, as it would make an appropriate gift.
After removing the flaming arrow, I did as instructed. I watched the leather loop of the belt tumble down, bouncing in the froth, before being finally swallowed into the angry mouth at the bottom of the waterfall.
Almost immediately, a dark figure emerged and started climbing towards us.
This creature was three united bodies working together from a single torso. It had six gangly arms, whose six hairy hands reached into the waterfall to secure handholds, and it moved like a spider climbing a web. At first I thought there must have been some rock behind the waterfall but as it came closer, I could see its hands were wrapping around the liquid itself, twisting the streams of water into something like ropes. The beast had a sharp tail that cut into the waterfall, and though it was still some distance away, its smell already reminded me of piles of decaying mayflies on a beach.
“Geryon,” Francesco said, “who was once a king in Spain but is now the monster of fraud. It’s the guardian of this waterfall, and is the one who must deliver us into the pit.”
When Geryon reached ground level, its six legs pushed against the stream and it catapulted towards us, making a perfect six-point landing.
It was a large thing (as most things in Hell seemed to be), its torso littered with shiny scales. Its three heads were about six feet above my single one. Each face had similar features: all were lumpy with great welts, large lips that held rotting teeth, and eyes like black pearls housed in half-opened shells. Still, despite their ugliness, the faces seemed to be without deceit. All three heads began to speak at once.
“WHAT DO YOU…”
“WHY ARE YOU…”
“HOW DARE YOU…”
“…WANT?”
“…HERE?”
“…DISTURB ME?”
“We wish to enter the next circle,” Francesco answered.
“NO, IT CANNOT…”
“WE WILL NOT…”
“THIS ONE…”
“…BE DONE!”
“…HELP YOU!”
“…IS NOT DEAD!”
“It is true that we ask a great deal, and it is true that this one is not dead,” Francesco admitted. “But he is a friend of Marianna Engel.”
The name seemed to mean something to Geryon and the three heads muttered amongst themselves. Eventually, they took a vote-“YES. NO. YES”-before deciding to take us. (Who would have guessed that the monster of fraud was a democracy?) It turned so that we might climb onto its broad back. Francesco ushered me up first, whispering, “I’ll ride between you and the tail. It’s poisonous.”
When we were settled, the beast took a robust leap from land’s edge towards the waterfall. When we hit the water, I saw Geryon’s hands plunge into the liquid and grasp the fluid that flowed through its fists like translucent snakes. While it was difficult to keep my grip, I noticed that my arms were stronger than they had been since my accident. At one point Geryon’s three heads said, “NOT…SO…TIGHT.”
As we neared the bottom, Francesco called out over the water’s roar, warning me to prepare for the next level. It would be, he said with a tone that forced me to take note, particularly unpleasant.
We dismounted and Geryon disappeared back into the waterfall. I took stock of exactly how far my healing had progressed. Most of my skin was smooth, and the pancreatitis scar that had adorned my stomach was gone. Nearly all of my hair had regrown. My lips were once again full. I bounced on my shattered knee and found it strong. My lost fingers were more than half recovered and I used them to rub, at the juncture of my legs, the small nub of my emerging cock.
“We are now in Maleboge, home of the Seducers. In this Circle,” Francesco advised, “I am useless to protect you.”
I could hear what sounded like gunshots and crying voices, coming ever closer. Soon they were upon us: men and women in an endless line being driven by horned demons. What I’d thought were shots were actually the cracks of the demons’ flaming whips, brought down repeatedly with merciless precision. The seducers were hunchbacked in fear, curling their bodies to stave off the thrashing for an extra half-second. Their arms hung limply, only jerking upwards in their sockets each time the whip connected. Perhaps the seducers had once been of great beauty, but they were no longer; now, they were little more than lumps of well-beaten flesh.
The woman closest to me was struck and blood jumped out of her mouth. When I gasped, she was alerted to our presence. She looked up and I saw that much of her face had been eaten away by maggots. Her right eye looked like a bulging egg and her left one dangled an inch out of the socket on the optical nerve. With her egg-eye, she winked at me lasciviously, and she licked her lips. For this she was whipped to the ground by a legion of demons that didn’t let up even as she lay writhing in agony. Her skin opened in crisscrossing patterns until she was practically spilling out of herself. Dozens of snakes emerged from holes in the ground, twisting up her like chains upon an escape artist.
After she was tightly serpentbound, more snakes-different snakes, with oversized fangs dripping with venom-appeared from the holes and began to roll merrily over her. Eventually a cobra took a position above the seductress’s face, pausing only a moment before it dove down to attack the mongoose of her neck. Spurts of blood cascaded into the air before showering down upon her body, each drop erupting into a tiny bead of fire. Flames quickly engulfed her, and her bulbous eye swelled until it burst like an overfilled balloon. She screamed until her vocal cords were incinerated; all the while, the serpents remained lashed around her body. Her flesh fell away, like tender meat, to expose the skeleton within. Her bones glowed yellow, then red, then black, before finally crumbling into the earth. She disappeared this way, into nothingness-except for what should have been her spine.
Her spine was not a spine; her spine was a snake that looked directly at me from its nest of ash. It flashed a dastardly, reptilian smile, and hissed: AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.
