The Children of Eternity (26 page)

“I deserve it!” cried Leona. “I have killed my own son.”

“Do not cry on his account,” said the Father in a kind voice. “Before you are cast out into that place, I wish you to know that your son is safe and in Heaven. He will grow up in a good home with loving parents, who shall train him in My ways. He will grow up to become a fine young man. He shall set the captives free and bring hope to the hopeless, for he is special, a child of Heaven, and you had a part in bringing him to be. He is your hope.” There was a pause. “Now go, child—to meet your own destiny.”

Leona wiped the tears from her eyes. “Thank You for looking after my son.”

The Father didn’t reply. Leona was escorted by the angel toward an arching passageway that led out of the arena. The passageway ended in a sort of circular portal framed by a silvery ring of metal. The portal emptied into a void of darkness.

“Take my hand,” said the angel.

Leona did as she was told. A moment later the angel took her in his arms and flew into the abyss, plunging ever downward. Jerry remained behind. He peered into the darkness. The angel and his mother were nowhere to be seen.

“I thought I’d find you here,” said a voice from behind him.

Jerry turned to see Christopher standing there. “I thought you left with the others.”

“I did,” confirmed Christopher. “That was two days ago.”

Jerry looked at Christopher incredulously. He quickly wiped the tears from his eyes. “Two days? It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.”

“You sort of lose track of time when you get into these books,” said Christopher. “Some people even lose control. They can’t figure out where the books end and their reality begins. They lose their way and find that they can’t get out. When you didn’t come back I sort of figured that was what happened.”

“Thank you for coming back for me,” said Jerry.

Christopher stepped forward and looked into the portal. “I didn’t think you’d want to go beyond this point, Jerry. You don’t really want to know what happened to her. That’s why I stopped you. Actually, I stopped the flow of time in the book.” Christopher paused. “I guess she wasn’t the way you thought she was.”

Jerry shook his head. “No, she wasn’t. I’ll never forget her. I feel so sorry for her.”

“Life on Earth is tough, tougher than we realize,” said Christopher. “Are you ready to go home?”

Jerry gazed into the darkness of the portal. Then he turned to Christopher. “I probably should, but I can’t, not yet. I have to know what happened to her.”

Christopher looked at his friend in shock. “Why would you want to do that? There’s nothing you can do for her. You know that.”

“But I have to know,” insisted Jerry.

Christopher nodded. “Then I’m going with you. You shouldn’t do this alone.”

“I appreciate you going with me,” said Jerry.

“I’m taking control of this,” said Christopher. “She could have ended up stuck in a holding cell for days before they finally got around to dealing with her. It’s just the way things work down there. So we’re not going in there in real time. There is no point in you waiting there with her for days. It would only upset you needlessly. We’re going in there to find out exactly what happened. So we’re just going in there long enough to get the facts.”

“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” observed Jerry.

“I have,” confirmed Christopher. “Now you know. The angels didn’t know about it. They wouldn’t have allowed it, but I did it anyway. You see, I had to know what it was like in Hell.”

“That’s why you took so much interest in the story of Chris and Serena Davis,” said Jerry.

“Not exactly,” replied Christopher. “It was the story of Chris and Serena that got me thinking. It led me to go on my first journey to Hell using the books. I’m probably the best guide you’re going to find. But understand, I’m in control; we leave when I say we leave.”

“OK, fine,” confirmed Jerry. “When do we start?”

“We start now,” replied Christopher.

Within a second, they found themselves plunging into a netherworld of darkness. They were swept through what looked like a huge rocky tunnel in space, which led to the fiery world of Hell—the lone planet of the red star Kordor. Within another few seconds they stood before a tiny 8-by-8 foot cell, one of apparently thousands of cells along a dismal and musty stone corridor. The entrance to the cell was guarded by a crude set of heavy, metal bars, and within that cell was Jerry’s mother, still dressed in her hospital gown. She stood with her hands firmly gripping the bars, gazing out into the corridor. Her dusty cell contained no furniture, not even a bed, and the air was filled with the cries and moans of the prisoners of this terrible realm. The corridor in which they stood was illuminated by a series of huge crystals imbedded in the ceiling that glowed with sallow amber light.

“It looks like most of the cells in this block are already filled,” noted Christopher, looking about. “It won’t be long before the demons arrive to harvest them.”

“Harvest them?” asked Jerry.

“Yes,” said Christopher. “The angels bring the condemned souls to this place and lock them into the cells. When all of the cells of a block are filled, the demons come to harvest them. They first prepare them, dressing and shackling them appropriately. Then they may take a soul off to Satan himself, if the case of that particular individual interests him. But more often they are taken to their eternal fate, and that is determined by their crimes.”

“Their crimes?” asked Jerry. “My mother is not a criminal.”

“Anyone who sins falls short of the glory of God. You know that,” replied Christopher. “I saw some of your mother’s life. Yes, terrible things happened to her; she was treated very badly, but sin is sin. Without Jesus we’re all lost.”

Jerry only nodded.

“We need to move forward in time,” announced Christopher.

Again Jerry nodded silently.

The scene around them changed. The vast dungeon itself was engulfed in dense mists. Only Leona’s cell was visible. Leona was surrounded by three demons. Her eyes were damp with tears and her wrists had been shackled behind her back. She no longer wore the hospital gown, but rather a skimpy, ragged, gray top and a sort of loincloth, which was narrow at the sides and somewhat longer in front and back. Its tattered fabric barely covered her more intimate areas. The demons roughly escorted the barefoot woman from her cell and into a dark vortex that had formed in what used to be the corridor. Christopher and Jerry followed.

Within seconds they were transported to a hot, barren plain. The boys had a momentary sense of disorienting vertigo, but it passed quickly. They scanned their surroundings; they were alone, at least they appeared to be. Yet all about them they beheld an astonishing sight: thousands upon thousands of 6-foot-tall metal statues arranged with geometric precision as far as the eye could see. Each sat upon a light gray marble base and was set about 20 feet from the next.

The bloated, red sun hung rather low in the sky over the distant hills. The dry air was filled with the odor of sulfur and what smelled like hot tar, and it reverberated with the sound of crashing waves. The boys quickly identified the source of the loud sound and offending odor. They stood near the edge of a high cliff overlooking a turbulent, stormy sea. But this was no sea of water—it was a sea of black, shiny oil smashing again and again into the rocks of the cliff below them. Flames of yellow and blue fire roared across the heaving surface of the sea, surging into tall, raging pillars of fire in some places. The statues continued right to the edge of the cliff. Indeed, some seemed as if they were on the threshold of tumbling off.

“The Great Sea of Fire,” said Christopher, turning to his friend. “It covers nearly half of the surface of this world called Hell. Mostly it covers the dark side. You see, Hell is a planet circling a small red star in the midst of outer darkness. One side of Hell has perpetual day; the other side lies in eternal night. This place is in a sort of moderate zone between the intense cold of the dark side and the terrible heat of the light side.

“At least that is a break for your mother. Under the midday sun, the temperature of Hell is over three hundred degrees. On the dark side it could easily be a hundred degrees below. It seems to be about ninety here.” Christopher continued to survey their surroundings. “But these statues…this is something I never saw before. I have no idea what these are about.”

“Where are the demons and my birth mother?” asked Jerry, looking around.

Christopher said, “I thought we may need a little time to sort things out, so I did a little trick with the book. Most people don’t realize that you can do it. You felt the dizziness when we arrived? I brought us here about five minutes before the demons will arrive with your mother. It will give us a moment to figure out where we are before things get crazy.”

“Good idea,” said Jerry, walking away from the cliff and toward one of the nearby statues. To say the least, the metal statue was crude, lacking any detailed facial or body features beyond the basic curves. Based upon that observation, Jerry figured that this was a representation of a woman. The next one in the row looked like a male figure, at least from where he was standing. They had no arms. He assumed that these statues depicted persons with their arms behind their backs. The legs were represented as a single column and flared out at the bottom where the legs met the stone pedestal, like an old style chess piece.

One of the stranger features of these statues was the large circular stone basin attached to the front of the base upon which they sat. A trough cut into the stone base ran from a hole in the front of the metal statue to the basin. What was this for?

Jerry knocked on the side of the statue; it resounded with a dull, hollow ring. It wasn’t solid, but what was inside? This statue reminded Jerry of a sarcophagus, a coffin, somewhat similar to those of Egyptian pharaohs of old. He walked around it. It had three sets of heavy hinges on one side and a barely visible seam that appeared to divide the statue vertically in two. Clearly, this thing was intended to open up, but how? He followed the seam to the other side of the statue. Here he saw some sort of odd metal dial just behind the seam. There were strange markings on it. “What do you make of this?” asked Jerry.

“I don’t know,” replied Christopher, walking up to the statue. He glanced at the hinges, then turned his attention to the dial. “Those symbols are angelic. I believe it is the dialect of the demons. Jonathon is the real expert on this stuff.” He paused and then pointed at the inscribed symbols. “I believe this word means
open
, and this one is
close.”

Once more he hesitated as his finger moved on to the third word, a word inscribed deeper into the metal than the others. “I’m not sure about this one. The written demonic language is different from the angelic in so many ways. I just don’t know, but I wouldn’t mess with that dial. Actually, it probably wouldn’t move anyway.”

Christopher moved on to the next statue, while Jerry continued to examine this one. About half a minute passed. Jerry scanned the scene more carefully. Some of the statues depicted men. But now that he took a closer look, most of them were crude depictions of women. He was at a loss to explain that inequity.

“Jerry, come over here, quick!”

Jerry practically ran to the statue Christopher was pointing at to find a trickle of blood flowing from the base of the statue and into the trough. The basin at the end of the trough was lined with dried and clotted blood that had apparently entered it through the trough. Apparently the statue had been dripping blood off and on for a long time. Jerry looked to his left to discover a large blackbird drinking what appeared to be blood from one of the nearby basins. Then Jerry heard a muffled moan from within the metal statue before him.

He discovered that the dial of this statue had been turned to the third setting, the one that Christopher couldn’t translate. More than that, the dial seemed to have been partially melted to the statue. Clearly, it would never be able to be turned again. The seam itself seemed to have been welded shut the whole way around. Even the hinges had been ruined.

He rushed over to the statue he had observed previously. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned the dial to the open setting. The hinges creaked and groaned as the statue began to slowly open by itself.

A wave of trapped heat from within startled him. This thing was indeed hollow. The interior of the back side of the statue was smooth enough, but the interior of the front side was quite another matter. It was lined with over three dozen long, sharp metal spikes, the purpose of which became only too clear. The back half of the device was equipped with five heavy lengths of chain connected to one side, apparently to wrap around and tightly secure the victim. This was no statue.