Chapter 4: The Terminal of the Dead

Wet and warm sensations all over my face, in a slobbery, affectionate way that for a moment I think I’m back at Nuestra Señora de la Buen Viaje and being woken up by Gamby. Then I remember the stray puppy has been dead over a decade ago and my eyes snap open. A bear of a dog is licking my face – or rather, the blood dripping out of the open wounds in my face – while something close is making a hissing sound like a pit of snakes.

I drag my ass through the muddy bank and scream. Another dog turns to snarl at me and then a third, till my brain registers that all three heads are attached to the same giant, thickly-muscled neck.

{Kerberos}. Greek mythology from high school floods over me and I whimper. {The Hellhound. Sibling to the monsters Chimaera and Hydra}.

All three heads are barking a volley of thunder so I press my hands over my ears to protect them from further damage, but then my eyes fall on the curious mane down the dog’s broad back. I note how the hair is sort of glistening, slimy and MOVING. I watch horrified as the sight resolves into a hundred small snakes with their tails all knotted and matted together, bodies writhing and heads spitting in agitation.

{Good doggie}, I think to myself. {Please don't bite my head off. If I remember correctly, you're not here to stop people from coming in. You're just here to prevent them from leaving. Right? Good doggie…} 

As irresponsible as it sounds, I’m betting my personal safety on my rusty memory of high school extra-curricular readings. Then I spy past the hellhound a throng of humans pouring out of a familiar boat that has ploughed ashore. No sign of its demonic boatman anywhere, thank God.

Every man, woman and child seems sluggish and hypnotized. They shamble together just outside a dense fog that covers the whole place and then, out of the dimmest instinct, organize themselves in wavy lines that disappear into the white curtain. Overhead, a giant LED message sign greets: “WELCOME TO SOUL CITY!!!!”, its red letters scrolling across over and over. A growl from Kerberos tells me I have no choice but to move on through the fog to face the music. 

****

The first impression I got of Hell, if it still wasn’t clear, is the presence, even the abundance, of water in the form of rivers. First, there was the River Akheron, where the chilling Kharon ferries the souls of the dead across. Then there’s Lethe, River of Forgetfulness, whose waters the departed drink to shed every vestige of their past lives. And finally Kokytos, Greek for "lamentation", the frozen river where people lie entombed in ice except for half their faces. They sob their hearts out but the tears freeze as soon as they fall, pressing their eyes shut and taking away that last bit of comfort people normally find in crying.

My fear grows with every step I take. It’s chilling to realize how stories of eternal damnation are coming true before my very eyes, what in life I’ve always treated with skepticism and even mockery as a non-practicing Catholic. Eventually, my lethargic companions and I find ourselves at an airport tarmac that’s literally swarming with people.

Behind the distant gates, everything – the moving walkways, the seats in the waiting area and the glass booths where passengers are supposed to get their passports stamped – are dark and empty. In front of the gates three different entities stand guard like this world’s version of immigration officers. My psychic ability must be heightened in this place because I instantly become aware of these three creatures, these… {reapers}.

The first is Kera, the Spirit of Vengeance, responsible for conducting everyone who suffered a violent death. She’s a battle maiden in plate armor, with an ebony face and short, curly blonde hair. Exactly the type to bring home to mama except for the fangs, talons and the huge pair of raven wings on her back.

The second is Ankou, a really creepy clown with a constantly nodding Jack-in-the-box head. The face has owl eyes and a mouth filled with canine teeth stretching from ear to ear like a frozen Cheshire cat’s grin. In one hand he holds a whip that used to be somebody’s spine and in the other a drippy clot of blood the size of a volleyball.

The last is Yama Ranger, a Westernized Hindu deity with indigo skin and four arms, the bottom pair of which are presently crossed. He wears a ten-gallon hat whose shadow isn’t enough to hide the devilish burning of his eyes or the glow of his tobacco, and then the rest of the authentic cowboy outfit: bandanna, vest, chaps, woolen trousers, boots and spurs. He has two six-shooters tucked in his chest cross-draw holsters and hooked to his gun belt is a lasso that has the ability to banish overstaying souls to the depths of the underworld.

A cordon of invisible bouncers keeps the hysterical mob back and the three reapers stand impassively in front. Ankou, the clown reaper, assigns a destination to every weary traveler by flicking and wrapping his whip around his own body. The crack the whip produces each time is as loud as thunder and the number of coils it makes around his body is a code for something.

All at once I witness yet another desecration of the basic principles of physics.  One second I’m waiting among tens of thousands of people of varying ages, races and trades: office workers, wage earners, students, elitists, hipsters, rednecks; all terrified out of their wits because who knows how to face death properly? Even the few who attempt to put brave fronts look pathetic in the giant shadow of what’s coming for them. One second I’m waiting pressed in this mass of bodies, the next I’m standing before the three reapers and quaking in naked fear, shamefully wetting myself again and crying in repentance and supplication, all to deaf ears because it’s too late, much too late; all along hundreds of other people stand in the exact same spot.

Through my tear-blinded eyes, I see Ankou’s plastic leer as he hands down my sentence. The clown’s ossified whip makes seven coils, indicating the Seventh Circle which is the place for suicides (I imbibe psychically yet again), and then a gust of wind blasts up from under my feet like too much gas pressure belching out of a manhole – only there was no manhole, covered or otherwise; just solid tarmac. This release is forceful enough to launch me hundreds of feet up into the air.

In a wide parabola, I float back to earth amid the desperate flapping of my arms, proving I’m still bound by the rules of gravity. I take in the view of a citywide mine burrowing straight down to the molten bowels of the earth. There are rock walls so vast and grotesque they could be the work of giants, and yet for all their superhuman propotions every crag and crevice is filled with the bestial howls of the damned. I shut my eyes to the sight.

I land violently – breaking both legs at once with a terrible cracking sound and white flashes of pain in my mind. I console myself with the thought that anything that happens to me on this plane couldn’t bring any real harm since I’ve left my physical body behind in Concepcion. My mind, still teetering on the brink, is a whole other matter though.

I manage to rise back up on two legs that appear to be broken in several places, thinking I probably look like a Pinocchio who only has a vague understanding of pain. I dust myself and wince at my skinned face, palms and feet before realizing with some fascination that I’m still wearing my wetsuit. I proceed to consider the ground I’m standing on: a razor-thin ledge of dry, cracked soil. Ahead is a lone structure that resembles an elevator, notwithstanding the grotto of rock that appears to have thrust out of the earth and wraps around the frame of its doors.

Robbing me of even a moment’s reprieve, the precarious stage begins to shake and the elevator doors hiss apart. Out of the yawning blackness, chains fly forth as though carried by invisible harpoons. They pierce the edges of my neck, wrists and thighs, and then bloom at the exit wounds into mini-grappling hooks that secure their catch and drag me writhing and screaming into the dark maw.