Four

  After flying over the city for what seemed ages the demon finally reached what I could only describe as a castle. It was a massive structure built out of stone, surrounded by high walls, and set on top of a hill in the middle of town, looking out over the rest of the city. The demon flew around the castle one time, giving me a good look at its many towers and pointed spires, and then suddenly flew downward at an alarming rate, aiming for the base of one of the smaller towers near the center of the complex. We approached the ground so quickly that I was certain we were going to crash. I would have let out a scream except that my stomach was up in my throat – kind of like the feeling you get when making the first, biggest drop on a roller coaster, except far more terrifying. Just when I was certain we were going to hit the ground, the demon pulled up, beating its wings hard against the air. For a brief moment, I relaxed, until I realized that it had let go of me and I was still racing towards the ground. I dropped into a narrow chute that I hadn’t noticed before and everything went dark. I slammed into the ground a moment later, pain and shock competing for dominance over my senses. I lay there, stunned, amazed that I wasn’t dead, and certain that I had just broken every bone in my body. The air was damp and I could hear water dripping all around me. Soft moaning and chittering sounds echoed against the walls, and I guessed I was in some sort of cave or corridor. I opened my eyes and tried to look around, but it was too dark for me to make out much of anything. I pushed myself up carefully and was amazed to find that my body still worked fine despite the drop it had just suffered. I supposed that I must have been much more resilient now, given that I was already dead. I stood the rest of the way up, feeling somewhat dizzy, and tried to get my bearings. I could see a small pinpoint of light far above me. That must have been the shaft that I had been dropped down. It had to have been at least a hundred feet up there and I was again shocked that I had survived the fall. Being dead was going to take some getting used to, it seemed.

  The chittering sound grew louder and I turned in the direction I thought it was coming from. A bobbing, flickering torchlight was coming towards me and my stomach churned once more. More demons. I considered turning tail and running but immediately dismissed the idea. I had no idea where I was and couldn’t see squat besides. For all I knew there was a giant pit only a few paces away from where I was standing. The demons moved quickly and were on me before I had finished contemplating my options anyway. There were two of them, and one grabbed my arms and forced them behind my back, clamping some cold iron shackles around my wrists while the other held the torch and pointed a spear at me. “Move it, soul,” the demon with the spear hissed, its voice higher-pitched than the one that had carried me. The demon behind me gave me a hard shove and I stumbled forward, following the demons back the way they had just come. I was ashamed at how docile I was being in all of this. In life, I had always been a tough guy, getting in fights at school, and bragging about all sorts of pointless crap, most of it not true. But ever since arriving in this strange afterlife, I had been chased and dragged about like a rag doll, helpless to do anything. But what could I do? These creatures could fly, were much stronger than they looked, and were armed with magical swords and sharp teeth and claws while I was unarmed and squishy. That made me think about Nicole. Just how had she become a stinking angel of all things? And a pretty hard-core one at that?

  Once again I wasn’t given much time to think about matters as we entered a large room lit by a dozen or so torches on the wall. In the center of the room was a large table with heavy chains attached to it at the four corners and a shallow oval-shaped bowl carved lengthwise into the surface. It was well-worn and covered with dark stains. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what had made those stains. Other sinister-looking implements and racks were strewn about the center of the room, none of them doing anything to ease my mind. As my panic began to rise to nearly bursting a low moan drew my attention to the walls of the room. About two dozen people were there, chained to the walls. These were the first humans I had seen since arriving and it was strangely reassuring to see them, even though they were clearly prisoners just like me. It seemed to be a nearly even split between men and women, and there were even a few children among them, which made me sick. They all wore rags that barely clung to their skin, doing little to protect what dignity they had. Most looked like they were barely hanging onto consciousness and several looked dangerously pale. “We got ourselves some fresh meat,” the demon with the spear said as we stepped further into the room.

  “Good,” said another demon that I hadn’t noticed at first. It stood up and walked over to us, looking me up and down with a critical eye. “Looks like this one’ll do nicely.” It nodded its head toward one of the walls. “Put it over there, in number twenty’s spot. That one’s nearly gone anyway.”

  The demons shoved me over to the spot the other one had indicated. A man was chained to the wall there, so thin and pale-looking I was sure that if he hadn’t already been dead then he would have been. He weakly lifted his head at our approach and watched us with sunken eyes. I gasped as we got closer and I realized that he was beginning to fade away and I could actually see through him slightly. They unchained the pitiful soul, who dropped to the ground as soon as he was released, and roughly chained me to his spot, my hands above my head so that if I had been shorter I would have been dangling off the floor like some of the other unfortunates in the room with me. I struggled, of course, but it was futile in the end. As I said — these creatures were a lot stronger than they looked. The demons laughed and chittered as they kicked the poor, fading soul a few times and then lifted him, cowering and whimpering off the floor and over to the table in the middle of the room. They clamped his arms and legs down at each corner so that he rested in the bowl-shaped indent in the middle. He whimpered some more and then wailed. I watched, horrified but unable to turn away. On the other side of the room, a young girl began to cry. The demon that had inspected me before stood over the table and looked down on the man. “This is it for you, soul. You got one last offering for Master Nergal. Time to make a choice. Do we drain you away and give you over to the abyss, or will you serve the Master as one o’ us?”

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  “No!” a woman cried from somewhere off to my side. “Don’t!”

  “Silence, soul!” hissed the lead monster. “You still got plenty left in ya’. Wanna try giving it all in one shot? I hear it’s particularly excruciating. I’m sure the Master’d love that.” The woman fell silent as the man on the table wailed even more. “Come now,” the demon said, leaning close to the man’s face. “You’ve known this day was coming for ages. Don’t tell me you haven’t had time to think about it. What else you got to do down here? You don’t have to go to the abyss. You can be one of us. Think about it. You’ll be strong again. Stronger than you’ve ever been. More powerful than any pathetic old human. You won’t be stuck down here in the dark, but flying free outside, serving the Master. You’ll have a purpose. You’ll be useful again. Won’t that be nice? In the abyss there’s nothing for you but eternal cold and emptiness.”

  The man let out one more long, heartwrenching wail then nodded. “Yes,” he said, so weakly I could barely hear it. “Yes, I’ll serve Nergal. Just don’t send me to the abyss. Please.”

  All the demons laughed with glee and the head demon met the man’s eyes. “That’s Lord Nergal to you. Don’t you be forgetting that. He’s your master now, and forevermore.”

  The man began to convulse, only slightly at first but it quickly grew more violent. The chains at his wrists and ankles shook and rattled as he alternated between arching his back and pulling against his restraints. His whimpering and wailing began to change into a low, breathy growl and his voice took on a raspy, inhuman note. A loud popping noise was followed immediately by another and then another, and I noticed that his limbs had begun changing, taking on the more animal-like shape of the demons. His legs even grew an extra joint in the middle of his shins, which was accompanied by a sickening crack and a particularly excruciating howl from the unfortunate soul on the table. His face grew flat and his nose became larger and more snout-like, while his mouth widened and jutted out. His teeth began falling out as sharp fangs grew in their place. His skin changed to a greenish-grey tone and became solid once again. What little hair he had left on his head fell out, joining his old teeth on the table’s surface and leaving him bald. He suddenly arched his back more violently than ever and with a mighty snarl ripped his arms free from their restraints, leaving the mangled metal to fall with a clang. He leaned forward and ripped his legs free, then, before he could go any further he twisted around and fell back down, face first on the table. He pushed himself up, agony on his hideous face as two lumps rose under the skin at his shoulder blades. He howled again as bony points poked out of his skin, ripping it as they grew, black blood dripping down his back. The points grew longer and longer until two large, batlike wings unfolded behind him, dripping fat and blood as they twitched with each of the poor man’s convulsions. At last, he collapsed onto the table, panting.

  I stared, horrified, as the demons laughed in glee and the other humans around me groaned or cried softly. Was this where these demons came from? Humans who surrendered in despair, swearing their allegiance to the very monsters who captured and tormented them in the first place? What about Nicole? Was that how she became an angel, swearing to serve some other denizen of this hellish place? It was all I could do not to throw up. No. Scratch that. That’s exactly what I did.

  The demons didn’t even notice. They were busy helping their new companion, tossing aside the tattered remains of his old rags and helping him stand up as he examined his new body, in all its horrible glory. They led him toward the exit, telling him of all the wonderful, terrible, new things he could expect. One of them gave him a friendly slap on the back. It must have hit a sore spot because the new demon let out an angry shout and swung his arm out, a sword suddenly in his hand. It sliced the head clean off the other demon, which fell to the ground and immediately began burning away into dust. The other demons just laughed and kept leading their new companion away. “This has got to be Hell,” I muttered, tasting bile in my throat, unable to wipe my mouth because my hands were bound above my head.

  The man beside me, who had been silent until now, laughed. It sounded half-mad. “Hell would be better than this place, newbie.”

  I turned my head to get a better look at him. He was thin and pale, but not nearly so much as the other man had been. His hair was a mess and a beard was growing thick on his face. His eyes were wild. “This can’t be heaven,” I replied. “So where in the hell are we?”

  “Welcome to the Soul Divide, my friend,” he replied. “Believe me. In a few days you’ll be begging them to send you to Hell. But they never do. It’s either become an imp, like that fellow, or get tossed into the abyss. Those are the only two options for us.” He laughed again, spraying me with spit.

  “Lovely,” I muttered, hoping with all my might that Nicole had not given up on rescuing me.

  End of Chapter Four