Through the Gates of Hell

Chapter Ten

As before, Robert and Maggie walked in front, with Eleanor and Walt behind. They began to descend down the last mine shaft to the bottom of the mine.

Now that they were finally nearing the end, Maggie’s imagination seemed to run wild when she tried to think about what they were going to find. They had faced off against hideous demonic spiders and huge alien tentacles, so what was next? Her mind conjured images of monstrous lions with razor sharp claws, or huge grizzly bears that could rip them limb from limb, or gigantic lizards that could breathe fire like mythological dragons.

Regardless of what Robert believed, Maggie didn’t think they were going to discover the other two victims miraculously alive and well. She didn’t think they would be alive at all. The terrible fate of the miners who had worked this mine left a sick feeling in her stomach, and she couldn’t help but think they would find a similar slaughter in the final chamber. If a group of grown men couldn’t fight off the demons in the mine, then what chance did a little girl have? What chance did any of them have?

Maggie didn’t want to die down here. Suddenly, the hopeless futility of what they were doing seemed to crash down on her, like rocks in a collapsing tunnel. The people back in town had been right all along. The poor folks who had been kidnapped were already dead, they absolutely had to be dead. Coming here after them was a stupid waste of time.

It was more than just a waste of time, it was suicide. Maggie and the others had barely been able to fight off the creatures they had already encountered. Now they were injured and tired, not to mention low on ammunition. With each step, Maggie had to fight the urge to just turn on her heel and run back the way she had come. She could grab an armful of dark stone on the way out of the mine and leave the others to their fate. Walking deeper into the mine was madness.

According to Walt, this last section of mine tunnel was straight, but as they walked, it seemed to twist in a spiral shape, circling around as it descended deeper into the earth, confusing their senses. Maggie could have sworn that the ground was flat and even, but she kept trying to lean backward to maintain her balance, as if the floor was sloping downward at a steep angle. She no longer had any sense of direction at all. The tunnel seemed to stretch endlessly in front of them, disappearing into shadow, but when Maggie glanced back in the direction they had come, the wall curved away to the right, but she didn’t remember it ever turning. Was her mind playing tricks on her, or was the mine actually shifting and moving around them, like a living thing?

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.

“Just keep going,” Robert replied, but she could hear concern in his voice.

Ahead of them, the shadows fanned out and the tunnel seemed to stretch apart, until it split into three forks, one going forward and the others veering off to the left and right. The air felt like it was filled with glittering dust, making it hard to see.

“Walt?” Robert said, his voice faltering. “You said … you said it was one straight tunnel ...”

Maggie, her panic rising, turned again to look at Walt. He seemed to be in physical pain, halfway hunched over, his hand held across his stomach. His face was dripping with sweat. “It ain’t real,” he gasped, shaking his head. “All in our heads. Just keep goin’ straight.”

“We are being tested,” Eleanor said, sounding like she had just woken from a deep sleep. Her eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything. “The forces of evil are trying to hold us back. We must persevere. We must fight them.”

“This is insane,” Maggie hissed, feeling a flare of anger blossom up within her.

It was more than she could handle. The entire mine was pounding in her ears like a giant inhuman heartbeat, and the sound was enough to drive her mad. They shouldn’t have come here, they should have stayed away. Only death awaited them if they kept going.

Her mind raced, directing her anger at the others. Robert was a fool! He had brought them here on this doomed, suicidal mission, it was all his fault! And Walt was just as much to blame! He lied to them about his reasons for coming and he didn’t even warn them about the dangers! And Eleanor had been grating on them since before they even arrived, always babbling about her stupid religion!

Maggie couldn’t stay there any longer, she had to get away from them all! And if they tried to stop her, then maybe she’d just put them out of their misery! No one back in town would ever know! All she had to do was pull the trigger and –

“Maggie!” Someone was shaking her, and she tried to struggle against them. “Maggie! Please, snap out of it!”

A black cloud seemed to slip away from her vision, revealing Robert’s face, close to hers. He was holding her right arm against the wall of the mine tunnel, the hand with her gun in it. Eleanor was holding her other arm, and raising the lantern to shine the light in her eyes.

Her mouth felt dry and all the strength seemed to just drain out of her. “What’s happening?” she asked, her eyes wide in terror.

“It had a hold of you, Maggie,” Eleanor said.

“You scared the Hell out of us,” Robert said, releasing the pressure on her arm.

Walt came over, and at first Maggie didn’t even recognize him, he looked so twisted and distorted, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. “You pointed your gun at ‘em,” he said, his voice hoarse. “The voices got in your head. Trust me, I know. I know all about it.”

“I … I hated you,” she said. “I hated you all for bringing me here. God, I’m so sorry …”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Eleanor said. “Do not be ashamed. Even the strongest of us can be overpowered. This place is the very heart of evil.”

Robert wiped his brow. “It looks like you’re okay now.”

“Yes, yes, I’m better, thank you.”

“Can you continue? Be honest, Maggie. If you can’t go any farther, just say so.”

She gripped her pistol tighter. “I came all this way,” she said firmly, trying to stand up a little straighter. “I’m not going to quit right before we get to the end.”

Up ahead of them, the mine tunnel no longer forked. It was now as Walt had said, just one single straight tunnel leading to a chamber at the end. Whatever hallucinations had been affecting them were gone now, shaken loose like a fading dream. Maggie didn’t even know if the others had seen tunnel split up at all, maybe all of it had been a hallucination to begin with.

She quickly snapped open her revolver and checked to make sure it was still loaded. The world had become uncertain, like anything could be real or imaginary. Maybe she had emptied the gun while hypnotized, or something had compelled her to forget to reload it.

It was clear now that the creatures in the mine were not the only threat to their safety. The mine itself was like a willful entity fighting against them every step of the way. It was like being assaulted by an aura formed from every negative human emotion: fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, and regret. It crept into their minds, feeding on their worst fears and their most violent desires. The damning lure of dark stone was like a vengeful spirit haunting their minds.

“Come on,” Robert said. “We’re almost there.”

“God protect us,” Eleanor said.

They walked onward to the final chamber with a grim determination, not knowing what they would find. The air smelled foul, but not like anything Maggie could recognize. And it was cold, shockingly cold, the drop in temperature hitting them all without warning.

“Shhh,” Robert whispered, bring them all to a halt. They stood in silence for a moment, tightly packed together in the narrow tunnel. Eleanor held the lantern between them all and the light seemed to flicker uncertainly, as if the cold itself was seeking to snuff out the light.

“Do you … hear that?” Robert breathed.

“I hear it,” Maggie said. At first, she had thought it was only a strange trick of sound, like a peculiar echo bounced around and distorted by the stone. But when they all remained quiet, she could hear a faint hum, like the distant tremor of an engine or machine.

“I think ...” she said hesitantly. “I think there’s light up ahead.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “I see it too. Walt, do you know what’s in that last chamber?”

“No, no,” Walt said, shaking his head. “We didn’t finish diggin’ it out. There wasn’t nothin’ there last time ...”

Robert took a deep breath and resumed his pace, and the others followed in his wake. The final few yards to the end of the tunnel felt like it took hours to traverse, and then they finally reached the very bottom of the mine.

As they entered the unfinished final room, they were suddenly bathed in a spectral blue light. There were no monsters there. No victims, no bodies, no one. But the chamber was not empty. Maggie and the others stood together and stared in amazement and confusion at the source of the illumination.

At the other side of the small chamber was a glowing, swirling circle of light at least six feet in diameter, flickering and pulsing silvery white streaked with a pleasant, welcoming blue, like the color of the sky. The edge of the circle sparked and crackled with tiny white arcs of electricity, making the whole room hum with energy.

No one spoke, none of them had any idea what to say.

Until Robert finally whispered, “That’s where they came from.”

Maggie looked at him and then returned her gaze to the glowing disc. “But … but where?”

“I don’t know.”

Eleanor held her Bible in front of her. “It’s the doorway straight to Hell.”

“The other victims,” Maggie said. “They aren’t here.”

Walt choked out, “They took ‘em. Damn, they took ‘em.”

Eleanor stepped forward until she was just a few paces from the circle of blue light. It wasn’t just some glowing light, Maggie realized. It was a window, or a doorway, and it led somewhere else. The creatures that had kidnapped Hannah Thompson and Jake Hodges had returned from where they came from, taking their victims with them.

“What … what do we do?” she asked helplessly.

Eleanor turned to face them. “We must go through,” she said, her voice hard and demanding. “We must bring this fight to Hell itself. We must not waver, we must not fear. This is our mission. With God at our side, we cannot fail. We must go through.”

Even Robert seemed unsure. “We don’t know what’s on the other side. We don’t know if we can even survive in the place those things came from.”

Maggie said, “But they … they took the others. If human beings can’t survive there, then why would they bother taking them?”

“Unless they’re already dead,” Walt said.

Robert took a deep breath and seemed to make up his mind. He raised his shotgun and walked over to the glowing doorway. He tried to look into it, but there was nothing to see except spinning swirls of blue and white light.

He turned to look at the others. “I’m going through. I’ve come this far and I’m not turning back now. You can come with me if you want. I won’t try to force anyone else to come with me.”

“I will join you, Robert,” Eleanor said. “I will walk into Hell itself and I will not be afraid.”

“Thank you, Eleanor.”

He nodded to himself and took another step towards the light. Then he said, “Walt. Maggie. I know I’m asking a lot of you. If you don’t want to follow us, I won’t judge you for it. I don’t know what’s going to happen once we go through, but I have a feeling that it’s going to take all four of us to face what’s on the other side.”

He opened his shotgun and made sure it was loaded. Then he pressed his hat down firmly onto his head and walked directly into the light. Maggie wanted to call out his name, but instead she could only watch in hypnotized fascination as Robert’s leg disappeared into the doorway, then his arm, then the rest of his body, until his other foot was all that was left, and then it swung up and disappeared too.

Eleanor clutched her Bible and her cross to her chest and marched through after him. There was no sound, no crackle of electricity, so popping noise or rush of wind to mark their passage through the doorway, nothing.

Maggie stared for a few seconds and then slowly turned to look at Walt. Ever since his emotional breakdown in the other chamber, he seemed to look even worse than before. He held onto his satchel possessively, a deranged look in his eye. The strange blue light played across his grizzled features in a way that made him seem something less than human. It was hard to explain, but when the shadows hit him just right, Maggie could swear she saw his flesh ripple and twist, as if something else was just under the skin and trying to rip its way free.

“God damn it all,” he growled. He stomped forward and went through the doorway without even looking at her.

And then Maggie was alone. She’d come all this way, faced things more terrible then she could have ever imagined, and for what? They didn’t find the victims at all, and now she had the choice to go through some magical doorway to … to where? To Hell? To another world? For all she knew, the doorway didn’t go anywhere, and Robert and the others had been killed the moment they entered it.

Maggie just shook her head. This was it. She’d had enough. Everyone had their limits, and Maggie had definitely reached hers. She had nothing to be ashamed about, though. She had promised to get to the bottom of the mine, and that’s what she did. No one could say that she hadn’t done her best. But enough was enough, and Maggie knew it was time to head back to town and ...

It suddenly occurred to her that Eleanor had taken their lantern. The glowing doorway provided light in this one chamber, but the rest of the mine was still in absolute pitch darkness. Maybe if this was a normal mine, Maggie could have made her way back to the surface. After all, she just had to keep her hand on the wall and keep going from chamber to chamber. She might trip and fall a few times in the dark, but she couldn’t possibly get lost, she just had to keep going until she reached the entrance.

But not this mine. Maggie turned to look back down the mine tunnel. It was like a black pit into nothingness. Somehow, Maggie knew that she would never make it in the dark. The mine wouldn’t let her leave. It would play tricks on her again. The voices would get into her head. If she tried to go back, she would never make it. The mine would make sure she stayed down here until she was dead.

She wanted to laugh out loud in despair.

“Oh, well,” she said, her voice quavering. “Looks like I don’t have much choice after all ...”

She drew both her guns, one in each hand, and walked into the doorway.

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