CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
1
The last of the sand finally collapsed enough to where Erik and Johnny Dovecrest could crawl out of the sand pit and back to the surface of this strange world. Erik got to his feet and helped pull his friend up. Then, suddenly, he jumped back as he noticed that the place was very different from the way it was when he was unconscious. There were people everywhere.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
Dovecrest shrugged. “I’m not sure why, but I think we can see them all now.”
“See them all? Who?”
“The damned. The souls of all those who were sent to hell.”
“Oh my God…,” Erik said.
They were everywhere, looking pathetic and empty and completely without hope. He could hear them now, too, as they moaned and wailed. There were hundreds of them, no, thousands of them, stretching off as far as they eye could see. There were young and old, men, women, and children, in all sizes and shapes and from all races and cultures. They weren’t people, really, but were shades, ghost-like and yet human at the same time. They were all dressed in their burial clothes, which had rotted away to rags on their bodies, and now hung from them like moldy laundry.
They did not seem to be aware of one another as they ceaselessly wandered, searching, it seemed, for something.
Then, all at once they stopped and turned towards Erik and Dovecrest. The two men looked at one another, and with sudden realization he knew what had happened. The shades couldn’t see each other, but they could see them. In a single moment of realization, Erik understood. He could tell that Dovecrest did, too, and sudden terror flooded his soul.
All of these damned souls were searching for someone, for
“We are so screwed,” Erik said softly.
It took a moment for the scene to register, but when it did the hundreds of damned souls nearest to them reacted as one. Erik could see their faces lighting up. They thought it was merely a vision, at first, a mirage. But then he could see the realization dawning on their faces.
There were three of them closest to him, an old woman, a middle aged-man, and a teenaged boy. They stepped forward, coming towards him, and leading a swarm of hundreds more that followed. They held their hands out to him and began to touch him, grope him. He staggered backwards, but more were surrounding him now. He looked over at Dovecrest and saw that he, too, was being overrun. The voices were everywhere, almost blending into one.
“Help me!” the teenager screamed. “Mom, please help me.”
“Betty, is it you? Is it you at last?”
“Oh, Harold, hold me!”
They all thought he was their loved one. And they all wanted a part of him. They swarmed like an army of ants, knocking him down, climbing on him. Their bodies melded into one another, and still they weren’t aware of the shade next to them, the shade that had actually melted into them….
So this was how the demon had really imprisoned them, Erik thought. He’d trapped them within a mountain of damned souls. He’d buried them in a sea of ruined, lost souls who were searching for something that he couldn’t give them….
“Leave me alone!” he screamed. “I’m not your mother! I’m not your wife!”
But still they came, an endless tide that overwhelmed him, suffocated him with their needs. He could hear their thoughts, feel their despair. Their misery was infinite; their wretchedness was endless. And he knew he was now doomed to endure their agony and despair forever.
“This isn’t fair!” he screamed. “I wasn’t sent here! I’m not one of you! I don’t belong here!”
Their need suffocated him as more and more of them came, like vultures to a rotting carcass. They buried him so he couldn’t see. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, and he desperately gasped for air that didn’t even exist in this nocturnal place. His mind, his body, and his soul were crushed beneath them. Even as their mass was without weight, their need was so very heavy. Their voices were deafening. Their smell was stifling. They grabbed him touched him, squeezed them against their formless bodies.
He felt like Jesus must have felt when the crowds of deformed and sick and diseased had come to him, swarming upon him to heal them.
“Dear, sweet Lord, help me!” he screamed. “I can’t heal them!”
2
The demon knew his prisoners had escaped their sand trap when the hordes of doomed souls stopped their aimless wandering and all turned in one direction, like a massive herd of animals all driven to one central point. There were billions of them. Surely those meddlers now faced the ultimate hell. This was worse than if they had been damned themselves, it thought. To be overrun by the needs of a billion lost souls.
The sand pit had been a diversion. They thought they had escaped, but in reality they had gone from bad to worse. The sand pit was for its amusement, really. It was designed so they’d be able to dig out rather quickly. It would give them hope. Giving hope in the hopeless place was the most fun thing to do. The portal actually did say “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” but no one took the oath seriously. If they had, they would be better off. But in reality they had been given their chance and had not accepted it. So now they were consumed with false hope for things that were never going to change. They’d led their lives the wrong way, but somehow they thought that God would show up one day and say, “Ooops, I made a mistake about you, Jack the Ripper. You don’t belong down here at all. You’re a good man, just ridding the streets of those evil women. You need to be upstairs with me. Besides, I understand you’re a great cook and do extraordinary things with kidneys.”
No, God didn’t make mistakes. If you were doomed to be down here, it was for a reason, a very good reason, and you knew damned well what it was. There would be no stay of execution here. No slap in the wrist and just don’t do it again. You had a whole lifetime to make things right and you couldn’t be bothered. Even after you did, you had a chance to plead your case. No one did. They just didn’t think hell was real. They’d be sent off to some summer camp to play.
But the shock of hell was all too real. Still, most of them kept their hope, which was ironic about the sign, for they really needed to abandon it. Hope just did not exist in this place. Their search for something that was completely lacking made their existence all the more unbearable.
It was a very cruel joke. But this one belonged to the creator. This time God was having the last laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Todd said. He’d been watching the demon closely. Very closely.
“Don’t worry, son, you’re going to get to know me like the back of your hand in no time flat. We’ll be best buddies, you and I. We will be a force to be reckoned with.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” he sneered, “All I want to do is get my Mom out of this terrible place and then to never see you or hear from you again. Isn’t that simple?”
“You have a well-developed mind for one so young. Unfortunately, you don’t understand the one cardinal point of this whole game.”
“And that point is?”
The demon laughed. “The point is that I’m the demon and you’re not. That means I have the power and you
