shadows seemed impenetrable. He hurried to keep up with Damia, as sometimes her pale rear disappeared into that blackness, and as afraid as he was of what was to come, he was more afraid of being lost out here in the corridor. There were movements as they passed along, and sometimes, far away, the echo of screams. God knew what lurked in the corners.
“God doesn’t know,” Damia answered his thoughts from ahead.
“Stop doing that,” he said. It was disturbing to know that the freak could tell every thought that went through his head.
“Not every thought,” Damia laughed, answering his head again. “But when your thoughts scream, I can hear you. And if I’m a freak, well…” she stopped and turned, and Mark almost ran into her. She leaned forward and planted a wet kiss on his mouth. “…well then you’re a freak lover!”
Mark wiped her spit off his lips with the back of his hand. “Not by choice,” he said.
“You chose to be here,” she retorted. “You know you want it.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she put two fingers to his lips. “Later,” she promised. “You can have your way with me then. Now, Kharon is waiting. You don’t want to make him wait. Trust me on this, if nothing else.”
Mark nodded, and Damia motioned for him to step through a dark doorway that exited the hall.
They were waiting.
Twin rows of black-robed figures stood in a line that led down the rough-hewn stone floor. The foreground of the place was shadowed and warm, but Mark could see the orange glow of flames far down the other end. The place seemed to stretch on to infinity, an endless floor of grey-stone bricks and shadowed walls far to the left and right that were lined with wall sconces belching gutters of flame that both lit the room with dancing light and scorched the air with sulphur.
Damia’s cool hands pressed him forward, and Mark walked down the aisle between the figures. They didn’t move as he passed, but he could see the flare of light in their eyes as they watched him walk.
Kharon stood at the end of the aisle. His long pale face was instantly recognizable to Mark from yards away.
“You’ve gone through humiliation for Rae,” Kharon said as Mark drew closer. “But now you must go through pain.”
Kharon gestured to one of the figures at the head of the line of still figures. A large man separated himself from the rest and walked to stand at Kharon’s side. “This is Gordon,” Kharon said. “He’ll be your guide through this maze of hurt. I can guarantee you that he won’t be gentle. Many people in NightWhere bear the scars of his beatings. His wife did not survive them. But in the end, he is just your guide. You will decide how fast and how far you want to go. I have only this warning: There is no going back. Once you begin this path, the only way out is through. If you try to return to where we stand now…you will die.”
Gordon dropped the robe, and Mark could see the stature of the man. His gut was huge, but so were his shoulders. His arms and legs looked thick as stumps, and when he lifted his arm and cracked a whip against the stone floor…the huge room did not absorb the sound. It slapped loud and clear.
Mark looked around at the silent figures. None of them responded to his gaze in any way. He was just about to look back to Kharon when his eyes lit on one pale face beneath the dark hood of a robe. A face that looked familiar. He looked back and caught her eyes and instantly knew that, yes, he’d been right. She, contrary to all the others, met his gaze with a stare that was filled with empathy and hope.
Selena. What was she doing here?
He held her eyes for a moment, and was about to open his mouth to say something when she shook her head from side to side. The movement was quick and faint…but clear.
No. Betray nothing.
He nodded his head once and she smiled, just a hint of upturn to her lips. Then her eyes blinked, and Mark looked back at Kharon.
“Are you ready to face the pain?” the ghoulish man demanded. “I offer you this one last chance to turn around and go back to your little life. Let this all go. Forget about NightWhere. Forget about Rae.”
Mark took a breath. He would have liked nothing more than to have taken a pass on this. He didn’t think he would ever wash the events of yesterday from his mind. Every little while a horrible memory from the pit suddenly popped out of nowhere to flash before his eyes.
He looked away from Kharon and saw Selena staring at him. Her chin moved almost imperceptibly up and down. Yes, she was encouraging. Take the ‘out’.
Mark forced himself to look away from those eyes buried in the shadow of a black cloak.
He had come this far. He was not going to leave Rae at the hands of this…beast. God knows what Kharon had done to Rae already.
“I have to see Rae once more,” Mark announced.
Kharon nodded his head and answered with a sardonic smile. “As you wish.”
He stepped to the side and filled the gap where Gordon had been. Then he pointed towards the glow of fire on the room’s horizon. “Go in and sin.” He waited a moment and then added, “Or die.”
Mark walked past the Watchers and into the shadowed spaces beyond. Behind him, a whip cracked. He ignored it and walked forward, moving towards the orange light ahead. He couldn’t tell if there was a path there or not, but clearly he was meant to move towards the light.
Another crack echoed from behind him, only this one made him double over. The sting of the whip bit in just beneath his left shoulder blade, and the force of its slap pushed him off balance.
He walked faster, but Gordon continued to dole out the lash. It cracked against the right globe of his ass and he could feel the skin blistering with heat. It cracked against his spine and his back cried out in dull, continuing pain afterward. It ripped the skin of his shoulder blades and stung against his thighs. In minutes the entire backside of his body felt molten with heat, and when he walked he could feel the skin stretch and complain, telling him again and again where the whip had been.
Mark quickened his pace, almost running to escape the steady, rhythmic crack of the leather. But the faster he moved, the faster Gordon followed. The man matched Mark step for step.
He looked ahead. The path he walked appeared to be bordered by something just ahead. The darkness grew darker every few feet; something hung ahead in the shadows. Mark broke into a run. He did
The murky shadows ahead grew closer and began to take shape as he ran. Almost triangles, the dark shapes peaked at the top and extended on either side lower to the ground. Mark ran towards the one closest to him, hoping to find some kind of shelter or escape from Gordon. But as he finally drew closer and the darkness slipped away, Mark knew that there was no shelter from this. He had found nothing of protection. He’d found, maybe, his own undoing.
The dark shapes were crosses. Great, wooden beams. Like the one that Jesus Christ hung from, only flipped upside down. Mark stopped in front of the one closest to him and stared at the eyeless corpse that hung upside down from the beams. It was a woman, her feet nailed ten feet in the air, her hands held with iron spikes to the wooden crossbeam at waist height above the ground. Her body was red.
Not because it was covered in blood.
But rather because it
Not dead long, Mark thought.
He grimaced at the sight of her raw flesh, but the real things that made him sick to his stomach were the black pits of her eyes. A few bits of white skin still clung to the bridge of her nose, but her eyes…they were cut out; no lids covered the pits where her eyeballs once had been. They were just holes, gouged deep into her brain. Something dim and grey leaked from their sockets to drip on the stone below. Mark realized that the cross was anchored in a stone ditch on the side of what had been his path…apparently it was a truly defined path-on either side of him, a row of crosses stretched, anchored in the stone upside down. The end result was that the blood of the victims drained down the wood and into the stone ditches on the side of the road. Mark could see the ditch ran red with a flow of blood; it had to be a couple inches deep as it drained down the slight hill, back towards the edges
