Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades (12 page)

BOOK: Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades

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Wanda had only met Calvin personally once, and he had looked her body up and down as if to demonstrate that he wasn’t one of his hated homosexuals. Wanda had grown afraid then, because she knew she was attractive, and she had heard rumors that Calvin and other Angels sometimes took the Damned to bed, and could be as rough with them as the Demons in Hades were. But Calvin’s attention had been diverted elsewhere a moment later, to her relief, and he’d seemed to forget about her after that.

The woman whose home she was currently working on, however, struck Wanda as being much more pleasant, and she even watched her work on occasion. Presently Wanda was sketching in a figure with charcoal, making it life-size, as befitted the mural that would run the length of the entrance hallway on both walls. The woman had pretty much only specified that she wanted the vaulted ceiling to be blue with fluffy clouds and flying birds, and that lovely figures should adorn the walls, as if guests to her home would be entering a Heaven within Heaven. The homes of the Angels demonstrated that Heaven could be shaped to the vision of each blessed soul, but this woman—not being an artist—trusted Wanda’s artistic ability in envisioning her vision for her.

"It’s wonderful," the woman said, as Wanda roughed in one of the figure’s hands, reaching out to touch the hand of a smiling child. "You don’t even need to work from photographs. You have it all up here." She tapped her own temple, as if her brain and all its complex cells resided within her skull, though in reality that brain was beginning to rot in a coffin somewhere in the material world. They were both animated statues, in a way, created in the likeness of their mortal selves—the artwork of the Creator Himself.

"Thanks." Wanda smiled over her shoulder at the woman politely.

The woman, whose name was Suzanne and who had died at the age of fifty-three from cancer, shifted her admiring gaze from sketched figure to figure, in their present state a waltz of transparent ghosts. "Did you go to school for this, Wanda?"

"No, actually. Art was my hobby. I worked in Human Resources for an electronics manufacturer." Now she was part of Hades’ Inhuman Resources, she thought.

"Oh my. Well, I envy you. What I wouldn’t give to be able to paint, or play an instrument, or do something creative." Suzanne sighed wistfully. "Though I suppose I have all eternity to learn something like that, now. Maybe you could teach me, hm?"

Wanda smiled at her again. She knew it was said playfully. Bringing Damned laborers into Heaven to construct and adorn houses for Angels was one thing, but she sincerely doubted that the Damned would ever be employed as art instructors or the like.

Suzanne soon excused herself and drifted further into her house, to see what other progress was being made. A moment later, though, Wanda heard another voice behind her. Its quality might have made her confused as to whether or not it came from a man or woman, had she not already recognized the owner of that voice.

"You should try not to engage the Angels in conversation," it said.

Out of an apprehensive respect, Wanda turned around fully to address the speaker. "I’m sorry, but she initiated the conversation. It would have been rude of me not to respond to her." She had tried not to sound argumentative in her self-defense.

This new person let the matter drop, as it directed its eyes to the mural behind Wanda. "You work quickly. Good. It’s coming along well. When do you think you can begin the actual painting?"

"It will be soon." What could she say—a few days? A week? Again, there were no real days, though the Damned did still use that term, based upon the rest periods that broke up periods of work or, if one were in a torture plant for instance, grueling suffering.

The Celestial stepped closer to the sketched mural, absorbed, as if filling in the brush strokes to come with its gaze. Wanda had learned this sort of Celestial being was dubbed a Seraph. This Seraph, whose name was Zaraiah, was one of the Overseers for the construction of Angels’ dwellings, and thus in charge of this particular project. Until meeting these Overseers in the course of her work in Heaven, the only Celestials Wanda had ever been exposed to were the ones who accompanied Angel tourists into Hades to serve as their bodyguards, such as when those tourists hunted the Damned for sport. That Celestial caste of warriors was also sent into Hades to oppose uprisings of the Damned, and to do battle with factions of rebellious Demons. Therefore, with all the current turmoil in Hades, Wanda had seen quite a few of these beings. But they were mute, even struck her as automatonic. Zaraiah could have been one of them, at least in appearance. The Seraph had white-blond hair, shoulder length, and skin so white it gave off a subtle luminescence. Eyes of such an uncanny glowing blue that when the entity turned its head, brief afterimages of blue light marked the air as when a child twirls a flashlight in the dark. The toga the being wore fell loosely from a frame that was slim but athletic, and which was as androgynous as the face with its fine cheekbones and full, cupid-bow lips. So androgynous that Wanda still didn’t know whether to consider Zaraiah a male or a female. She supposed that, owing to what the creature was and the fact that its kind had existed before men and women had come into being, its sex could not be an issue. Its kind were the direct creations of the Father, not of procreation. The Creator’s perfect art, not human offspring like copies degraded through repetition.

The Celestials she was accustomed to never spoke a word, but she knew them to be just as harsh as the Demons whose function it was to preside over and torment the Damned. So despite the Seraph’s softly modulated voice, like the voice of a feminine man or a masculine woman, she always feared saying something that might be deemed impertinent, and incurring the thing’s righteous wrath.

"When I look at this," Zaraiah said, "and watch you at your craft, I see the hand of the Creator inside you…and I cannot help but wonder how a soul given such a gift could have allowed herself to become Damned."

First of all, Wanda did not like the image of the Creator’s hand inside her, rammed up her ass as if she were His puppet. Second of all, she did not think she had
allowed
herself to become Damned. The game was unfair; she had not known the rules. Or had she, and just never taken them seriously? She had the letter B branded onto her forehead (the one wounding that never regenerated) to indicate her sin, her great crime: that of being a Blasphemer. She probably would have been condemned to Hades anyway, simply for not having embraced the Father in life, but she knew it was one particular act that had cinched it for her. For an art show meant to protest animal abuse, she had contributed a painting of a lab monkey crucified to a cross, the top of its head opened up and electrodes drilled into its skull like a crown of thorns, a huge syringe hanging out of its side like a spear. That was all it took. Monkey as the Son of the Father? One would have thought she was Darwin, for all the punishment she had been meted out ever since her premature death.

"Well," Wanda replied, "at least I’m doing something constructive with my gift now, right? Making pretty pictures for Angels?"

She had tried to make her sarcasm sound like sincerity, but the Seraph immediately turned its head to stare at her with bland, robot-like disapproval, leaving those blue trails in the air.

"Yes. Now you are doing good. Now that it is too late to save you."

««—»»

"Here, dear, wait," Suzanne had said, scurrying to catch up with Wanda as Zaraiah and his team of silent guards, armed with sheathed swords and cradled submachine guns, escorted the slaves toward the edge of her property. She huffed as she pressed a package into Wanda’s arms. "Some fruit, from the garden," she whispered conspiratorially. "Delicious. Share it with your friends if you want; there’s more where that came from. It grows overnight after you pick it."

"Thanks," Wanda said uncertainly. She glanced nervously toward Zaraiah. Sure enough, the Seraph had noticed, but what could it say? It mustn’t insult one of the Angels by making her withdraw her gift, right? From here, Wanda couldn’t read the being’s expression. Then again, even up close she found that difficult. Ectoplasmic androids, she thought.

The workers climbed into the back of a large carriage of white lacquered wood with gold trim, drawn by a team of white horses. In Hades, on their way back to their barracks for their rest period, they would ride in a black metal carriage pulled by a team of naked Damned wearing yokes fastened to their shoulders with bolts through their flesh.

The two rows of laborers rode in silence as the carriage conveyed them to the portal. When they arrived, the Celestial guards who had accompanied them watched them disembark. Zaraiah was still with them. Wanda felt the Celestial officer’s eyes still following her, but she pretended she didn’t notice. They began to file toward the portal, housed inside a small white structure like a pillbox. Two more Celestials guarded it, and at the approach of the Damned one of the guards turned the wheel of a metal hatch like something from the inside of a submarine. Steam hissed free as the hatch was swung open. Wanda could just make out the white-tiled walls of its interior through the bright white light that filled the little structure.

Right up until it was her turn to approach the threshold of the portal, Wanda expected Zaraiah to step forward and demand that she hand over the package of fruit. But the Seraph did not, though she still felt the weight of its cold blue eyes on her back before the white light burned her soul to ashes that would be reconstituted in Hades, which was her home.

««—»»

"Did the mistress tell you what colors she wanted these figures to be wearing?" Zaraiah asked, watching Wanda as she swabbed in the green lawn of the background in rough up-and-down strokes. She would work on the fine details of grass blades later in the process.

"No; she’s left all that to me. She said she wants it to have a feel like
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
, by Georges Seurat. Idyllic like that. But in a romantic style, not pointillism. If any of that makes sense to you."

"I’m afraid my knowledge of earthly art is limited." After a few moments, the Seraph went on, "So do you have all the colors worked out in your head, then?"

"Some of it. I’ll make choices as I go along, to keep things balanced."

Zaraiah paced behind her, as if the Celestial might leave the hallway to monitor the progress of other workers in the building, but came pacing back the other way again. "You follow your instincts."

"Yes. I improvise. And I take advantage of happy accidents. I surprise myself when I push the brush a certain way and it looks just the way a wave of hair should look, or how light should fall on a fold of cloth. The trick is to not overwork it—to know when to leave it, and move on."

Wanda surprised herself that she had become so talkative with the creature, but then its inquisitiveness had prompted her, and she was less in awe of it with it behind her back where she couldn’t see it.

"It’s all very interesting," Zaraiah said.

Something had been on Wanda’s mind for a while, and now with the Celestial engaging her in pleasant conversation she decided to seize the moment. She turned to face it, steeling herself for those beautiful and ghastly blue eyes that never seemed to blink. "In the city of Carceri I had some artist friends who contributed to the gallery I founded. They do beautiful seascapes and landscapes, sculptures and so on. I think the mistress and other Angels would love having their work in their homes. Do you think we could bring some of them into this project, too?"

"That is not for either you or I to decide."

"But could you suggest it to someone? Their talents could be put to good use…for the benefit of the Angels."

"For their benefit? Or for the benefit of your friends? So that they too might walk in Heaven a while? Enjoy the fruits of the blessed?"

The pleasantness was slipping away, though the entity’s expression and tone hadn’t changed that much. Still, Wanda pressed on. "To be honest, it isn’t so much that. It’s that they have skills that are going to waste. Ability that could be appreciated by others."

"As I told you, it is not for me to decide or you to suggest. These matters are determined by others. They have their reasons for who they select."

"Then I guess I’m one of the lucky ones," Wanda said, with barely contained bitterness.

"You are fortunate, yes. To step within the glory of Heaven, even as a slave. And to give pleasure to the Angels is the greatest honor of your eternal existence."

"Will it buy me salvation?"

"You squandered your salvation. It will buy you respite. That will have to be enough."

BOOK: Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades

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