Lucifer's Lottery

manner of demonic species: Imps, Trolls, Gargoyles, Griffins, Ghouls, Incubi, Succubi—everything. The Morning Star wanted his first monument to be symbolic. ‘Serve me or die.’ He liked it so much that he ordered the highest echelon Bio-Wizards to put a Pristinization Hex on the entire mountain. The corpses, in other words, will never decompose.”

You keep staring at the twisted faces and limbs of the mountainside. Kind of makes the Hoover Dam look like Tinkertoys.

“And below,” Howard adds, “the abyssal river Styx.”

Only then do you let your vision span out, to a ghastly, twisting waterway of black ooze marbled with something red. “What is it called?”

“The Styx!” Howard exclaims. “It’s the most renowned river in all of mythology! Surely you’ve read Homer!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that one. But I was thinking of the rock band.” You try to shrug. “Never got into them.”

The noxious river is so distant you can’t see details but you can make out tiny things like boats floating on the putrid surface as well as swarming, dark shapes beneath. Every so often, some colossal thing breaks the surface, swallows a boat in its pestiferous maw, then resubmerges.

You’re grateful for the distraction of still another sign: THE DEPARTMENT OF PASSES AND BYWAYS UNWELCOMES YOU TO THE HUMANUS VIADUCT. You envisioned yourself gulping when you get a good look at this “bridge,” which stretches miles from the top of the corpse-mountain, across the appalling river, to a polygonal black structure sitting atop another mountain (this one of pinkish rock). The sights are spectacular in their own horrific way, yet your thoughts can only dread what must be to come.

The bridge—this Humanus Viaduct—is scarcely ten feet wide and consists of objects like railroad ties lashed together, one after another—countless thousands of them—which all comprise the spans of the bridge. A meager rope-rail can be seen stretching on either side.

“We’re not driving the car over that, are we!” you object.

“Why, of course, we are,” Howard says. “The view is thrilling, and it’s crucial that you be thrilled.”

“No way, man! That bridge looks like something in a damn Tarzan movie! It’ll never hold us!”

“Mr. Hudson, please, don’t worry yourself. Naturally the Viaduct has been charged by various Levitation Spells.”

You try to feel reassured. You can see the rickety bridge sway in a sudden hot gust, and as the car rises to the gatehouse, your vantage point rises as well. Now you can see the surface of the links.

And all at once, you don’t need to be told why it’s called the Humanus Viaduct.

Atop the links of railroad ties exist a virtual carpet of naked human beings, who have all been lashed together as well. All these people—like the ties, thousands upon thousands—form the actual driving surface of the bridge.

You can only stare when you rattle through the gatehouse and pull in. The Golemess robotically shifts the vehicle into a lower gear; then you lurch forward.

“We’re driving on people, for God’s sake!” In a panic you look down. “And they’re still alive!”

“Indeed, they are. Hell exists, in general, as a domain of all conceivable horror, where every ideology functions as an offense against God. But in particular, it’s a domain of punishment. Hence, the ‘human asphalt’ beneath us.”

They chug onward, narrow tires rolling over bellies, throats, faces, and shins. You watch the faces grimace and wail. “How come they don’t die?”

“They’re the Human Damned—who cannot die. That is why they call it Damnation; it’s eternal. Only Demons and Hybrids can die here, for they have no souls. But as for the Human Damned, their bodies are nearly as eternal as their spirits. When your soul is delivered to Hell, you receive what we call a Spirit Body that’s identical to the body you lived in on Earth. Only total destruction can ‘kill’ a Spirit Body, in which case the soul is spirited into the Hellborn life form with the closest propinquity. It could slip into something as large as an Abhorasaur, something as commonplace as an Imp, or something as minuscule as a Pus-Aphid.”

Men bellow, women shriek, as the steam-car rocks on. Rib cages crack and sink inward, bones snap.

Yet in spite of the horror you’re witnessing, more questions spin in your mind. “Great, but I don’t have a ‘Spirit Body.’ I have a pumpkin—”

“A Snot-Gourd.”

“Okay, so what happens if this Snot-Gourd gets destroyed?”

“An astute question but immaterial. Should your Auric Carrier be subject to mishap, your Etheric Tether would simply drag your soul back to your physical body at the Larken House. But I say immaterial since you are not, as yet, one of the Human Damned.”

As yet, you consider. I’m not Damned . . . but they WANT me to be?

The Viaduct sways back and forth as the car lumbers ahead. In the middle—with already several miles behind them—the bridge dips so severely that you feel certain it will break from the vehicle’s weight. Levitation Spell, my ass. But soon enough, you begin to ascend again, that queer black shape drawing closer. You think of a pyramid with a flat top.

“So what’s with the pyramid-looking thing? A rest stop, I hope.”

“A pyramid? Really, Mr. Hudson, you must’ve studied your geometry with the same zeal you studied Homer. It’s not a pyramid, it’s a trisoctahedron: a quadrilateral polygon bearing no parallel sides, also referred to as a trapezohedron. Lucifer is very much enamored of polygons, because in Hell, geometry is thoroughly non-Euclidian. Planes and the angles at which they exist serve as a heady occult brew. I wrote of such stuff and wonder now from whence the ideas arrived.” Howard seems to be trying to recollect something. “Gad, I do hope my Shining Trapezohedron in ‘Haunter of the Dark’ was born of my own creativity and not that of some sheepshank scrivener in Hell.” Suddenly a look of utter dread comes to his marbled face. “What a cosmic outrage that would be.”

You still don’t know what he’s talking about, but in an attempt to divert your attention from the staggering height, you offer, “Maybe it was Lucifer’s idea, and he’s the one who piped it into your head.”

“Impossible,” Howard quickly replies. “Fallen Angels, though essentially immortal, are completely estranged from creativity and imagination. Every idea, every occult equation and sorcerial theorem, every ghastly erection of architecture, and even every invention of social disorder—it all comes from a single source: the Human Damned.”

This is getting too deep for me, you consider. Your pumpkin-head reels—or it would have, if it could. Now you think of ski lifts carrying skiers to the peaks, only there’s no snow here, just craggy rock pink as the inside of a cheek. As you near the black polygon, you discern that it’s about the size of Randal’s Qwik- Mart. Just when it appears that the steam-car would drive directly into the polished black side of the thing, an opening forms: a lopsided triangle that stretches from the size of a Dorito to an aperture sizeable enough to admit the car.

Well, that was nifty . . . I guess. Relief washes over your psyche; the Humanus Viaduct is at last behind you. But now what?

“Welcome to the Cahooey Turnstile,” Howard says, “a superior mode of entertaining your tour. The process saves us from driving for untold thousands of miles.”

“What do you mean, turnstile?” you counter. “You mean like in a subway?”

“Think, instead, of an occult revolving door.”

A revolving door . . . to where?

The aperture closes silently behind, leaving you to peer around the unevenly walled room of smooth black planes. It looks like something born of science fiction, save for the sputtering torches that light the chamber. Then —

Whoa!

A shadow moves. When the Golemess shuts down the steam-car, you see the hulking shape approach: a sinewy Demon with meat cleavers for hands and a helmet fashioned from the jaws of some outrageous beast.