Infernus (12 page)

"Is it because you are the despot here and none can touch you?"

"No, putty-brain, it is because I am completely evil, and have no feelings for it or you or anyone else. It warrants no emotional response from me. I simply do not care. You, on the other hand, will want to become a slave to it instantly."

"I can be a slave to it?"

"You
will
be a slave to it. I will have to pull you free, break the spell it has over you or you would never leave. Now, step inside here."

They entered the single room. It was filled with heavy smoke, incense that did not gag them. The son drew the aroma strongly into his lungs. He felt its cooling effect and power pierce his emotions.

"Your first mistake," the father said, looking askance at him. "This, my son, is what is known as The Core of All of Infernus."

"Is this possible?"

"It is. This will be very difficult (for the puddle that was once your brain to conceive), my son, but the lengthy definition of Infernus, its very nature, is explained here."

Red led them to one wall where a cracked, bronze plaque was hanging from bleeding nails. Thin black lines running to the floor could be seen in the red glow that seemed to burn from deep within the leprous walls.

"I knew this was here, and that it is significant, which is why we have come here in the thick fog of pheromones right off. Read it aloud."

"It says, 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made.' Father, is this an unspeakable hideous thing that ye have done to me?"

"Even I, even I, if I had any feelings for you, would gladly spare you this learning experience. But, in order to be fit for what I am training you to become, you must experience everything.

"The dark form that we can just see now floating through the fog seeks you. It has no conscience. What it is will be determined by your thoughts. Whatever you consider to be most precious, the most fragile thing in existence, is what it will be."

The large mass minimized and assumed a feminine shape as it emerged from the perfume-soaked fog. It was wearing only a towel around its (her) waist. An aurora borealis seemed to shimmer dimly around its entire figure.

"Oh, how shocking of you," the father began, "a woman, how original."

Every feature of this slight figure was flawlessly defined, like an alabaster sculpture. From the brilliant blue crystal-ice eyes, the thin nose, the full red lips just parting invitingly, the flowing crimson tresses that he longed to run his hands through (his former self's hands, that is), and the exposed breasts that invited him. That longed for him.

Foolishly, the son breathed deeply of the intoxicating, enslaving fumes. In his mind, a tiny stream spoke chilly rain into his brain. "Never, never leave me. Love me forever. I am afraid." The son looked to the father hopefully (forgetting the utter lack of hope of Infernus). There was an abundance of hopelessness in his soul.

He nodded to the father. "She is totally vulnerable. Absolutely harmless, physically."

"Living proof of the completeness of your moronic mentality. Listen to her."

"Just promise me that you will never send me away; that you'll never make me go away."

Her voice caressed the son's mind like a wet whisper. He listened. She fell like scented feathers into his open arms, sighing, her body perfectly curving until it fit his massive, hard shell. For the first time since his awakening in Infernus, he felt afraid of fear. He looked up at the father with hissing water running from his eyes.

"Look at her now, my son."

He did. Just in time to see a little runner sore streak across her breasts. She cried out weakly and covered her bosom. A sizzling sound. A weak ringlet of smoke escaped between her fingers. She upraised her palm to his face to show that it was white with an [infectious disease].

"My father, what is happening?"

"She is deteriorating, son. All that is beautiful
must
decay."

They heard a sharp crack and saw that her head had opened, and became exposed. She lost weight so rapidly that she became a mere bag of quivering bones in his arms. Her eyes darkened and shrank and fell back into her dry sockets like raisins. She cried out as the shrinkage coursed through her tiny frame and caused unknowable pain. Her skin wrapped itself tighter and tighter around her body until the bones could be felt. Her visage changed as a fever attacked her brain and made her forget who she was, and who they were. She gurgled mindlessly and mewed and spit her teeth onto the dirt floor.

Her hips showed her bones jutting out angrily and her body began to contort as it wracked her violently with pain. Her fragile limbs were shrinking and snapping. Her hands became pencils clothed in flesh.

The son held a heaving bag of bones. She looked into his eyes, reached up with a white, thin hand and ran it over his stony face. She whispered into his shrieking brain, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I came into your life, and ruined it. Forgive me. I love you." She then evaporated in a whirlwind of fleeing ash.

The son fell to his knees and screamed as loudly as he could, which meant that all of Infernus heard it. His pained low-pitch howls shook the walls. The fog magnified his grief and (lack of) love until it was beyond monstrous. The horror of seeing this great sorrow wrapped his heart with barbed wire.

He looked at Red. "How could you do this to me?"

"This is your dream, son, not mine. You are the cruelest bastard in all of Infernus for having thought of it at all in the first place!"

"I could
never
have devised anything so evil!"

"Certainly. However, you did. If it weren't in a dream, you would not continue. What you are about to discover is so horrible, I assure you, if ye knew it beforehand, then you would not press forward. But since you shall press forward, it is living proof that it is
your
dream. Proceed, then, to your horror. The horror that will make you more terrible than any other demon that Infernus has ever seen."

*****

Electricity buzzed like bright veins on the blood walls, and loudly crackled. The moving shadow of light revealed two ambling creatures with great flapping lips and tongues hanging out. The one in front had a black and red caked chain firmly gripped in a quivering hand. It was attached to a collar that was around the neck of the one shuffling behind, shaking, each individual step, in unspeakable agony.

Both shifted along, piteously, while strings of viscous fluid bubbled and burbled from their quavering lips.

The light winked out. And the dream? Continued.

*****

"Here's a clue," said the old man. "In my lovely romance, I slam three doors in your face. This last paragraph is one of them."

Student Amanda, dressed entirely in black, stood and asked. "Why would you do this?"

"Well, what's the point of reading books that don't have puzzles in them?"

"Well, rather a lot, really," she replied, without smiling.

"Not for me. As I was saying, I slam three doors in your face in chapters nineteen and twenty. If I have done my job right, I will throw so much light on them all that you will not notice which one of them cannot be real."

"Not fair!" cried another student. "You have given us no prior clues that would lead us to believe that. How poor."

"Oh, really," the old man said, laughing. "Do you remember the publisher telling the archaeologist that there was something about the Red Ants Escher graphic that wasn't right? Not real? Part of it could
not
be real?" **

"Yes."

"Well, there was your clue. One of these three endings cannot have been real. You figure it out by yourself. You'll get no help from me. Now, here we go to the last chapter of Infernus. Ready?"

**See appendix, at the end of the book, for an explanation of this mystery.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"THE FINAL HIDE"

"Now, my son, I have one final thing to show you to complete your education. You have become the grandest, most powerful demon in all the kingdoms. I have convinced you that you, because you created all this in your imagination, are the most hateful and cruelest creature that ever existed. After all, it is merely the truth. You have fully become the vampiric satyr son, with long, glorious gray wings that can split rocks with their force and strength. The only thing left for you to do is to link eternally with the one who abused you, and sent you here - in your dream. You will link with him and become the thing known in
Infernal Furnace
as 'The Scream!' I am now going to give you the necessary push in that direction.

"You will never see my face again. In fact, your joy will be so complete, and you will be so busy, you will never
wish
to see me again, I assure you. As I told you before, and as you have seen in your vision, you will break through the floor of the hospital where he resides, mount him from behind with no lack of speed, because of your large member, bite through his head with your long fangs, feast on his cooking brain, and then you will ravage him over billions of miles, on many earths, throughout all eternity; your anger will never lessen in intensity, never!"

"Oh, Father, if that were only true!"

"Well, then let me show you what awaits you at the wall that no creature can pass; even I! You see, my son, on the other side of this obstruction, in all appearances a wall, there is another vast park governed by a ruling chief much like me. There are, of course, millions of such parks."

"This brilliant podium - no, a sundial - is this what you want me to see, Father?"

In the distance, there shone, shimmering in the intense heat, a sundial. Beyond it was a wall of flame that none could breach. The image kept flowing in and out of focus in the brilliant, truly yellow flame. Even if the former man had not become a golden demon, he would have appeared thus here. Everything glowed the bright corn-yellow that burned nearly as bright as the sun. The topaz blazed against their skin harshly.

"Yessss," he said, speaking as if the son were not standing next to him. "
It
stands before the wall that no creature can penetrate. There is one before every impenetrable wall. It is known as the final truth - the only truth, which I cannot express. It will cause all of your resistance to the thresholds of pain to burst at once and for all your blood to spoil. Prepare yourself to see the most hideous thing in all your life, my son. Your world will surely never be the same!"

The son approached the golden sundial.

"My father, the sundial -"

"Yes, my son, the sundial," said the father. If he had any eyes, they would have flashed wetly and sparkled in the bright red flash emitting forth. "For this is the
beginning
of the truth of it!"

"The sundial is covered over with - oh, my - living letters. Letters that live! I have ne'er seen anything such as this!"

"And ne'er shall ye e'er again, my son, after you have seen these. There will not only never be a reason to read anything else again, because of the hideousness of its messages, it is the sum total of all knowledge. It will have spent the last of your patience in these things. Just think, after you have ingested this, how many times I have been reminded of it being here. Vibrating, always vibrating. What little hope you may have had will permanently rot, when you see this, you poor tool."

There were larger letters at the top. They shivered because they lived; there were no other words that lived but these two alone:

JESUS CHRIST

"What is this, Father? I thought you said that this was
Untruth
!"

"I could not have told you all of this, or any of this. This is the last betrayal. You now see, at last, the absolute lack of hope, of love, certainly. Now, if you see this, you know I have
never
had any love for such a one that I could have led thus far."

The father fell to the baking plate of infernal earth and began to leak laughing tears to the floor. Even though he had brought countless sons here, it never pleased him less. The immense painful joy it brought him to play along and pretend to adore his sons, each of whom he had assured was his
only
son.

"The rest of the message, Father, oh, my brain is boiling. I cannot read it aloud! Hatred - ahhhhhh!" The son looked up to the vast height of the blood-encrusted ceiling and shouted, "Where are you, Doctor?" His steaming sockets searched the ceiling of Infernus.

Red reached up, roughly grabbing and turning the jaw of the massive golden demon's head here and there, back and forth. "Look for him. Seek him out."

"There!" the golden demon cried. "He's there...where I
was
."

"Go to him," hissed the father.

With a hideous strength the son bellowed, "Oh, Doctor - mortal man who sent me here - I am coming for you now! Our wedding begins this very moment!"

And with a great beating of wind and heat and wings, and the strength and muscular beauty of twelve men, he launched himself into the air and crashed through the roof above.

After many millennia, the father was able to stop laughing long enough to approach the podium and read aloud the final message that had so enraged the worm. He could not circumvent the significance; neither could he get his mind around it. Apparently mortals, or
former
mortals, could comprehend it on some level, which he never ceased to find a constant source of humor. He was tempted to gaze longingly at it when he wanted his torture to be most keen.

"There is no other name under heaven

Given to men by which we
must
be saved."

Acts 4:12

*****

In his white clinical office, the small pock-faced doctor took in the News, leaned back in his vastly oversized chair and sighed. "You're sure, he, uh, Dr. Mountfountain is dead, Carl?"

"Yes, sir, multiple shock treatments are much too stressful on any system for such a long time, Doctor, I am afraid."

"Afraid?" the other replied, looking out a window wistfully, hopelessly.
Now, everything is ruined
, he thought. "I'm not
afraid
of anything. Not really. Well, I suppose we'll need to put him with the others."