Coffin Island (27 page)

Chapter

Casket Island was a graveyard without
any coffins or holes. Apparently the gravediggers were previously
engaged. Or they had perished in the holocaust with the horses of
the apocalypse. You had to gingerly step around all the dead
bodies.

However the dead bodies were painted in
revolting colors. What fresh hell is this? Why are all the dead
bodies painted? Were there fine artists in hell? And they were
painting the corpses in garish colors?

Some of the bodies were covered in
words. Could they be the bodies of the writers of the library of
The Coffin Island School for Witchcraft? I supposed it served them
right. You have to wear those words in the afterlife. That’s what
you get for taking on the big man swiveling in his captain’s chain.
You pay dearly in the afterlife. He’s a catcher of souls. That’s
how the big guy rolls. You show him cheek. You little foal. And
your corpse is a painted pony for all eternity. How do you like
your horsemen now?

Perhaps the paint was a preservative.
An artistic fancy that had an embalming as well as fixative touch.
Or the devil liked to paint nudes. He enjoyed portraiture on your
corpse for all eternity. You were somehow locked in their suffering
his vulgar attempts. It somehow made dreadful sense. The devil was
an artist of the first right. Or the Third Reich, something wasn’t
right.

I had known that we were steaming the
riverboat downstream towards an ungodly destination of ghastly
proportions. I just didn’t expect it to be a city of corpses. How
do you prepare yourself for such a horrendous thing? I had been
warning my cardiovascular system of a massive coronary. A heart
attack is in the offing. Prepare yourself, system.

I had expected something a bit more
livelily to attack me. Black claws flashing at me. A quick heart
attack was what I had been forecasting. Something that was so
horrible that the look of it would just kill me. Was the beast
running late? Or the beast wasn’t coming at all?

This world was just a vast graveyard
with painted corpses strewn everywhere like a Flemish vision of
hell. This was merely a medieval lunatic’s misconception of The End
of the World? I didn’t seem somehow right. My mind was vibrating
with suspicion. Was witchcraft playing another trick on me?
Something just isn’t right here in Flemish hell, I thought. And I
know it. You can’t fool me.

Shouldn’t all these painted corpses be
attended to by some horned sexton? A paintbrush and wooden palette
loaded with oils in his claw. Putting the finishing touches on all
his corpses? Had some hideous creature planed down the beast? Some
creature had taken out the devil, himself? Where was this fearsome
carpenter that wore down the beast?

I was shouting to no avail for him to
come out. I was desperate for a fight. I couldn’t be trifled with
by man or beast. It was time for whatever was running my test to
reveal itself.

Come darken my door for the final
showdown. Or just kill me. I don’t care which. I’ve had my fill of
this. It wouldn’t come out though. I was back shouting to no
avail.

There were plenty of trowels in this
Flemish hell which I was viewing somewhat ominously. What is the
symbolic import of a garden of shovels that is littered with
corpses? Surely we aren’t going to have to be the gravediggers of
Flemish hell? Where was Flanders located anyway? Was it geography
that I needed here?

It was always advisable to leave that
treachery to others. They’ll just move the borders on you if you
draw them yourself. Let the cartographers speak for you. My mind
was definitely slipping. I was able to observe it a bit from the
side and shake my head. That guy is crazy. Who is he anyway? It’s
just you, that’s all. What the fresh hell is going on here in hell?
Stop playing with my head.

I yelled for the beast to reveal
himself. So that’s how you want to play this hell, I yelled. You
will come out. I have all eternity to yell.

“I’m not digging,” Professor Coffin
declared.

How dare that costumed fool interrupt
my tirade? Surely I am not powerless to do something about that
insult that is Professor Coffin.

I peered deeply at Professor Coffin as
I continued my tirade against the devil. I was able to divide
myself as it were and continue to harangue the devil with my mouth
while peering with my eyes elsewhere. Why not multitask a bit? So
what do we have here?

Professor Coffin was walking in circles
like a schizophrenic. He had to be certifiable to be interrupting
my tirade. What sort of fool interrupts a man that has lost his
mind in hell and is demanding immediate showdown with the devil,
himself? It didn’t seem terribly clever to me. However I did admire
Professor Coffin’s quick appraisal of the situation as well as his
indolence. He wasn’t digging any graves in hell. Good call, dead
man.

Professor Coffin was not without his
uses. He helped you fixed your mind in a given direction. It was
just atypical that it was his direction. I was going to have to
dispose of him in an indelicate fashion before this became a
dangerous habit. You can’t let your enemies start infiltrating you
like that. They begin with the affront to put you off balance.
You’re standing there a bit off-kilter. Wobbling back and forth
from the assault like a bowling pin. Then the mind control begins
to set in like a gutter ball. You’ve got to strike them out as a
preventive measure. Why do you think people that go bowling wear
such ugly shirts? It’s a reflection of their souls. The shoes are
merely a diversion. It’s the bowling shirts that you’ve got to
worry about. Did I just think that or shout it out loud?

“It’s one hell of a body of work,”
Madison snorted. “Booster has flipped out in Flemish
hell.”

“
How do we jump into the red
sky?” The Red Lady demanded. “My work is done.”

The fiery sun was hanging over us like
an atmosphere. A few fingers were reaching down for us. The red sun
of this world was the volcano from the prior world. We had just
traveled through it to get here like some sort of fiery mass
transit? The sun in this world was the bubbling lake of rum in the
prior world? I pondered what it had been on Coffin Island. Perhaps
the flaming birds in the entrance maze if I had to hazard a guess.
The phoenix was a symbol of death in witchcraft. Not a symbol of
life.

Chapter

Flash was on the red sun. Just when I
didn’t think hell could get any worse. There was Flash again. The
flaming ape was peering down at us malevolently. He was walking on
the sun like his old cantankerous self. He was roaring down at us
heartily. Was the flaming ape the god of this awful world? I could
never stand for it.

An almighty being that was also somehow
utterly powerless. Flash seemed like an appropriate god for this
world. That’s how I knew he wasn’t it. He was demanding for our
deaths in his fiery tongue. You didn’t have to speak his vernacular
to understand the message.

Flash wanted us dead but he couldn’t do
it himself. He wasn’t the god of this world. He was powerless to
kill us. I laughed in his fiery face. You fiery eunuch, I shouted.
Give it a break.

At least some order had been restored.
What’s a world without hate? I was starting to feel like my old
self. That’s why you don’t extinguish the light at the end of the
tunnel even if it’s a flaming ape. You never know when that
incendiary creature might come in handy.

“That lovely beverage is failing me
again?” Professor Coffin pouted as he reached towards the
sheltering sky which wasn’t particularly sheltering unless you were
a fireball in need of a home. There he was interrupting my dark
thoughts again. You make a habit of that, Professor Coffin, and
it’s going to be perilous to your health, I thought. Shortly, I am
going to be short on distractions and you will rise to the
forefront of my murderous mind. Then I will kill you.

“
What do I have to do to
placate you, my dark fairy?” Professor Coffin cried while dropping
to his knees in front of his god. “Booster is threatening to kill
me. Take me out of this rum-less place.”

“The demon rum,” Madison snorted. “It
refuses to save you from Booster.”

“The rum or me,” Professor Coffin said
and raised his hands to the fiery heavens in supplication. “One of
us has got to go.”

“We got it,” Madison shrugged at the
fiery sky.

“Eighteen gallons is my record,” The
Red Lady said apropos of nothing. “Get up off the ground. Rum
doesn’t love us. It’s left us to these cruel children. It’s Lord of
the Flies time.”

“Why has it forsaken me?” Professor
Coffin cried as he stood up. “I’ve done everything that lovely
beverage has requested of me. Think how I suffered for it in the
doldrums.”

“You didn’t kill Booster,” The Red Lady
said.

“Don’t remind rum or Booster,”
Professor Coffin shouted.

“Rum had it out for you, Booster,”
Madison snorted.

“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” The
Red Lady said.

“It was out to kill me too?” Madison
snarled.

“You’re magically attached,” Professor
Coffin shrugged.

I was desperately trying to ignore
Professor Coffin and The Red Lady. They were beginning to speak in
their language of symbolism that only they could decipher. They
were also speaking in the language of the dead in the land of the
dead. I was about to edit them right out of the frame.

There are certain horrors that I just
won’t tolerate even in hell. However there were more pressing
matters in hell. There was some fresh hell that had to be attended
to immediately. Even in hell there is an orderly path of
destruction. Otherwise the locusts will takeover.

The books had reentered the rebuilt
glass Cadillac. They were driving it now. They were actually trying
to escape. The glass Cadillac was trying to pull a Houdini? The
Coffin Island library was fleeing from my malevolent presence. I
didn’t blame the books for trying to escape. Everything in this
world should run from me including the corpses. I had firmly
established my intentions with all the murderous
shouting.

Paper was flying out the tailpipe of
the glass Cadillac. The vast library of Coffin Island was being
dispersed all over the killing fields of hell. Some say the dead
can’t read but I begged to differ. They can.

They just can’t learn because they’re
dead. How else to explain that the library was dumping its
knowledge all over hell? Something interesting would surely grow. I
was thinking a bountiful crop of ignorance. But I doubted that
plentiful harvest too.

I wasn’t going to be surprised if
nothing more than hypocrisy took root in hell. Climbed all over
those corpses like vines and snarled its way down those dead
throats. The Coffin Island library would flourish heartily. It
would probably revive those corpses for some dark purpose
too.

Those books were nothing but trouble.
Knowledge was best left to nude hermits standing on pillars in the
desert. How else to explain how they got there? You didn’t want to
make your life out of knowledge that was for sure. Those books were
being tossed into the inferno as soon as I crafted one in this
hell. Why not spark one if I was sticking around as the
keeper?

Honey Badger was trotting off into the
hinterland. Or more like running for her life. Kaiser was chasing
after her. Or more like running for his life. Under different
circumstances this would have been a cause for celebration. Cue the
champagne. Kaiser and Honey Badger were running away from me with
great haste. They were running off into hell. Why might I
care?

Kaiser kept looking over his shoulder
at me. He was doing it at every convenience. Honey Badger too. They
were peering over their shoulders at their inconvenience too. This
caught my particular attention.

Kaiser and Honey Badger were tripping
over the dead at the expense of their escape. They wanted to see
what I was going to do next. I was getting some discernable guilt
vibrations from their direction. It was hard to say how I deduced
this. They were both screeching in abject terror. My shouting at
the devil had apparently alienated someone. It was just the wrong
someone.

That’s the problem with alienation. You
alienate the wrong people. Then you refuse to apologize. It’s the
refusal to apologize that frightens people. Not the alienating act
itself. That’s far more understandable. It’s being hideously bold.
That’s what frightens people.

Kaiser and Honey Badger were also
fleeing from the crash. I wasn’t about to let them getaway with
that. I was not going to idly stand still like a spectator in hell.
Hell no, I was an active participant in hell. I was going to kill
them for what they had done. There was not a question in my mind. I
merely wanted to prolong their horror as they had done to me.
That’s why I had been threatening and shouting for so
long.

Chapter

I was also casually considering that I
might be the most horrendous force in this new world. I had
summoned the devil himself, after all. Where was he? It somehow
seemed appropriate that he might be me. I didn’t see any other
fierce candidates.