like a tropical fruit. Whatever it was didn’t really matter, he thought. And if it did-well, he’d figure that out later, when he got to where he was supposed to be.
2
It seemed like he fell forever. Somewhere on the way down, he lost his grip with Johnny Dovecrest and the two men were separated, but he knew his friend was beside him, falling down as well. He felt like he was dropping like a bullet, with no end to the fall in sight. Everything around him was a piercing black that no light could penetrate, and he felt the wind rushing past him. He never had minded heights, but falling terrified him; he tried to close his eyes and pretend he was floating, but his stomach had different ideas. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting, and his head whirled around as if he’d been in a centrifuge.
At last the speed of the fall seemed to slow, and he began gliding, or so it seemed. Tentatively, he opened his eyes. In the distance far below him he saw a black opening, surrounded by a cherry-red circle of what appeared to be hot coals. He wasn’t sure if that was where he came from or where he was going to, but the opening seemed to be getting larger. He could now vaguely see Dovecrest’s shape beside him. The Indian flashed him the thumbs up sign to indicate he was all right. Though Erik didn’t feel all right himself, he flashed the sign back.
He tried to speak and, even though he was shouting, no sound escaped his lips. It just seemed swallowed up in this endless, vast expanse of nothingness. There was no sound and no light other than the cherry-red glow of the coals below.
Finally, they landed on solid rocky ground. It was, in fact, the same kind of black, polished obsidian that the altar was made of. Only this was a virtual sea of volcanic rock. It went on for as far as the eye could see, downwards towards the black hole surrounded by hot coals. It was as if they were standing on the rim of a giant funnel leading downwards with a fire-ringed opening at the center. The center looked miles away, and it didn’t appear that there was anything here except that endless black rock.
Erik wasn’t sure what he imagined hell would be like, but it wasn’t anything like this. Hundreds of millions of tortured souls, perhaps. Sinners being cut or burned or ripped apart by monsters. Endless pain and suffering. Fire and brimstone. Whatever vision he had of hell contained people, people who had sinned. He had imagined hell contained people like Adolf Hitler, Caligula, and Vlad the Impaler. Rapists, murderers, serial killers. He’d imagined there would be millions of sinners, from the most notorious criminals to those who simply did not believe.
But this place was empty, barren, devoid of any life whatsoever. This version of hell was an aching void of emptiness and loneliness. It was silence and it was aloneness, the ultimate form of solitary confinement with miles and miles of hard, barren landscape and no where to lie your head. It was like being on the moon, but with no spaceship and no way back. And it would be like this for an eternity. He would have preferred the fire and brimstone. At least it would have been something.
For the first time he understood what it meant to be eternally separated from God-not only God, but all of his creations.
He looked at Dovecrest and saw the same thoughts reflected on the Indian’s face.
“It’s worse than you could possibly imagine,” he said, and realized that his voice could now be heard after all. “I was expecting Dante and his circles of suffering. Not this. Where is everyone?”
“Oh, I suspect they’re here,” Dovecrest said. “Probably by the millions. But this place is so vast, so infinite, that they won’t ever find one another.”
“Then how will we ever find my wife and son. And that awful thing that took them?”
“Your wife and son are alive. They don’t belong here. They’re not damned souls, remember? And for that matter, neither is that demon. At least not damned in the way we know it. We’ll be able to find them. They will stand out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Simple,” the Indian said. “You can see me, can’t you?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“If I were a condemned soul, we’d never be able to find one another and communicate. Not even if we were standing just three feet apart. That’s the punishment, don’t you see? Eternal banishment-from everything.”
Erik nodded. In a weird way, it made sense.
“All right,” he said. “Where do we begin?”
3
The demon Wrath didn’t need to climb down the portal that entered hell. It flew straight down the center and through the red-hot fiery gates, carrying the pregnant woman with it.
It was not pleased with the fact that it had been driven away and forced to come back to this wretched place. It had looked forward to spending some quality time with the people of earth, just getting to know them and their suffering. It had enjoyed the time spent there and was looking forward to a very extended vacation, so to speak. It hadn’t grown tired of inflicting pain and suffering-after all, that’s what Wrath was all about.
It believed it was one of the most formidable of the demons and, in fact, was not really a demon at all, in the true sense of the word. It was more a personification of sin itself. Compared to other demons-lust, envy, spite, and a host of others-Wrath felt very terrible indeed. It almost laughed to itself. It just couldn’t see lust biting a man in half and chewing on both parts at the same time.
Things had been working out exactly according to plan until that meddling preacher had shown up and sent him back down to hell again. Not that it was the end of the world. It felt more like a child that had been disciplined and sent to its room without supper. The demon’s pride was hurt as much as anything, that this little, meek, half- baked pastor had gotten the better of it.
Not that it liked being in hell. No, by all means, hell was…well, hell was hell, even to those who ran the place. There was a reason people did not want to go here. It wasn’t all fun and games and good times. It had looked into some human minds during its time on earth, and it had been amazed at the things it had seen. There were some who actually thought hell was where you were able to do all of the forbidden things that you couldn’t do when you were alive because they were wrong. These people thought hell was just a huge orgy of sex, drugs, and good times. If that were so, they’d be dying to get here, the demon thought.
On the contrary, hell was not a happy place. It wasn’t like the way it was pictured, though, that was for sure. There were no devils with pitchforks or scalding hot oil or perpetual burning. What kind of God would torture His creations that way? No, but the reality of hell was much worse. Sometimes it wondered at God’s sense of humor.
The reality of hell wasn’t burning and fires, at least not in the traditional sense. When people came here they got exactly what they had wanted, and what they deserved. People who came here did not want to know God, had, in fact, turned away from Him, and did not want to be bothered with Him or his rules. So that’s what God gave them. Eternal separation. He showed them the light, dangled it before them like food to a starving man, and told them what they could have had, if they had chosen it. But they chose the alternative, so He took it away, just as they realized how absolutely wonderful it would have been….
Wrath knew all about hell. Because the demon too, was eternally cursed and could never be redeemed. It had chosen the dark side, never realizing the absolute radiance of the light until it had seen for itself, and then had been taken away. And now, to have to live for the rest of eternity with its sin burning up inside it like horrific brimstone, burning and eating away from the inside out forever and ever. And to have seen what could have been, and then given this instead, this miserable existence that could never know love or comfort, or freedom from the burning sin within…. That, indeed, was hell, and it was worse than anything that could ever be imagined.
Sure, it had escaped for a short time, and had been able to indulge in the sin that burned within it. But the story was the same. It was forced back into its room, and the wrath inside it would continue to burn and blaze and smolder. It was the personification of a sin that it could not indulge in while it was here, not without a trip back to earth. And now that was over, at least for now.
