Through the Gates of Hell

Chapter Twelve

Walt looked around at the broken and mangled machinery and spat on the floor. He walked over to Robert and the others, his pickaxe resting on his shoulder. “We gonna keep lookin’ for that girl or not? More of them things might come out any second now.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “We shouldn’t waste any more time.”

They gathered themselves and made their way to the other end of the long chamber. A diagonally-shaped doorway led back outside. The wind was still swirling and blowing snow, and it looked to Walt like the sky was a slightly darker gray than it had been before.

“Didn’t think I would be happy to come back out here in the cold,” Maggie said. “But I think it’s better than being in that messed-up place.”

Eleanor nodded. “I wonder if Mr. Hodges felt the same way. He must have gone through that building. He could have taken shelter there, but he came back outside instead.”

As the others resumed their pace down the next curving alley, talking amongst themselves, Walt followed them a few steps behind. The wind whipped and battered at them relentlessly, but it did not bother him. Walt barely felt the cold at all. He barely felt anything.

There was an inferno burning just underneath his skin. It was the dark stone, trying to get free. It burned and itched maddeningly, tormenting him with every step. It was like a nest of burrowing worms in his guts, digging and chewing their way to the surface.

The dark stone was turning him into something else. As he’d always known, it was a drug that poisoned him the more he indulged in it. Almost as soon as he had reclaimed his bag of dark stone from the mine, he had felt it pulsing and echoing in the back of his mind. When he had fallen to the ground and cried over the deaths of his friends, the dark stone sensed his weakness and spread even further, growing like a cancer.

It was like a fuse slowly burning, ticking away the seconds until it ignited the dark stone that infected every cell in his body. He’d felt it even worse when he came through the glowing rift into this world of ice and snow. He wondered if this was the place that dark stone had originally come from.

It would not be much longer now, he knew. It was a miracle he had kept it together this long, fighting and resisting the pull of the dark stone with what little dignity he had left. But he was falling into a huge dark pit, pulled into it by a flood of dark stone, and at any moment he was going to hit the bottom and the last shreds of his humanity would be torn away like screams in a tornado. There wasn’t much humanity left, having been slowly burned and scraped away by years of exposure to dark stone, but once it was gone, he would become something else, something no longer human.

Just give me a few more minutes, Walt thought. His life didn’t matter at all, if it ever had. He was just a husk of a person trying to make one last stand in the face of oblivion. He just wanted a bit more time to strike a final blow against this evil that had corrupted him. One final defiant blow against incomprehensible horror. Maybe, if he was lucky, his death would mean something.

Walt glanced at the others. Did they know what was happening to him? Had they figured it out yet? Were they suspicious of him, or afraid of him? If not, they should be.

Robert and Maggie probably suspected the truth. Maggie had been looking at him with concern and disgust for awhile now. She knew something was wrong, and Robert likely understood what was happening to Walt but kept it to himself. The only one who had no idea was Eleanor, but she was blinded by her own religious madness, and nothing was going to distract her from that.

They continued down the winding, serpentine alley, toward their unknown destination. Walt knew this place had not been built by humans, but he didn’t much care. It was all alien and mysterious, like dark stone itself. But one thing that was clear to him was that this world was old, older than the United States, older than Europe, older than anything humans had ever made. It was probably older than the ancient pyramids of Egypt.

Walt could feel the age seeping right out of the stone, eons of time encased in these strange carvings and symbols. It was a city lost to history, its creators many eons dead. Those mechanical things back in the building were just mindless machines acting out ancient commands, he was certain. But that didn’t mean there weren’t still other things dwelling in this place. Even in the ruins back on Earth, there were always animals and scavengers living among the wreckage.

The wind picked up, whipping their clothes and leeching the heat out of their bodies. They almost had to lean into the wind to keep going. Despite the cold, Walt was sweating. The dark stone was keeping him warm, blazing with unholy heat like a furnace in his chest. The heat was fueling the change, helping whatever was writhing and squirming around inside him until it was nearly able to break free.

They passed another alley that zig-zagged away in different directions, but Eleanor kept them going forward. Robert had his hand on his hat to keep it from blowing off his head, and stopped them momentarily. “Eleanor,” he said, “are you sure this is the right way?”

Eleanor looked at him blankly. “Can’t you feel it?” she asked, pointing down the alley. “It’s coming from that way.”

Maggie and Robert glanced at each other but said nothing. This time, for once, Walt and Eleanor were in agreement. Walt could feel it as well, like a pressure in the air, and it was definitely coming from the direction Eleanor was pointing. The dark stone in his blood was pulling him in that direction like metal towards a magnet. He didn’t know exactly what they were going to face once they got there, but Walt knew for sure that it was what they had come here for.

“She’s right,” he grunted. “That’s the way.”

Maggie still seemed unsure, caught between distrusting Walt and not quite believing in Eleanor’s religious certainty. Robert, however, gripped his shotgun tighter and nodded with a sense of determination. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

At the end of the twisting passage, it opened up into a wide courtyard angled in the shape of a triangle, with Walt and the others entering from the wide end. The courtyard narrowed to a large semi-circular archway that led into another weird alien building. The walls of on either side of the courtyard went up steeply about twenty or thirty feet, and ended in jagged uneven spikes like shards of broken glass. Ice and snow were caked into every seam and crevice, and the corners were covered in drifts of long-frozen snow.

Eleanor stopped as soon as they reached the courtyard, holding the lantern up high against the growing twilight. Walt hefted up his pickaxe and peered up at the tops of the walls, as if expecting something to be up there watching them. Then his gaze gradually swept down to the arched doorway directly across from then. Beyond it they could see nothing but blackness, but Walt knew there was something there waiting for them.

Robert looked from Maggie to Eleanor and back to Walt. There were crystals of ice in his mustache, and his skin had a sickly look to it. It was obvious he was hurting, but he kept it to himself. Walt respected him for that. In a way, Walt respected all of them. Robert for his fearless bravery in the face of danger, Eleanor for her righteous unbreakable faith in the very midst of evil, and even Maggie for carrying on despite her obvious fear and apprehension. The only person in the group that Walt had no respect for was himself.

“It’s in there,” Eleanor said, speaking so softly that the wind almost stole her words away.

“All right,” Robert said. “This is it. Are we ready?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said serenely.

Maggie swallowed and held up her pistol. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Walt was eager to end this. “Yeah,” he said, “let’s get on with it.”

They marched onward across the barren courtyard, the wind screaming around them like a formless, elemental hatred, and reached the entrance to the warped structure. Like the other one they had seen, the inside was lined with glowing red runes and symbols and cracks in the distorted edifice. Almost as soon as they breached the threshold, the wind behind them seemed to stop entirely, leaving them shocked by the sudden, eerie silence. It took them a few seconds to discern other sounds, their ears still ringing from the howl of the wind.

A throbbing hum seemed to emanate from all around them, like the growl of a living machine, or perhaps the dying breath of this damned world. Walt felt it in his bones, in his blood. Every muscle in his body seemed to scream out in agony, begging him to give in and surrender to that hideous pulse of energy that surrounded them.

And there was something else, something quieter, barely perceptible on the very edge of their hearing. It was hard to discern, since their ears were still accustomed to the howl of the wind. A tinny sound, high-pitched but muffled, and even to Walt’s ears it sounded painfully familiar.

The sound of a child crying.

Eleanor gasped in surprise, raising the lantern high.

Robert barked out, “Come on!” and ran heedlessly into the shadowy chamber. The others followed after him a split-second later.

Even Walt, who hadn’t even cared one way or the other if the survivors were rescued, felt an urgent, primal need to know if the little girl Hannah was still alive. That tiny speck of human compassion flared up inside him, something he had believed was long since dead and buried, and it felt like redemption. He hurried after Robert, into the chamber that he knew would become his tomb, and for the first time in years, he thought that he had found something more important than dark stone.

The chamber was huge and imposing, much larger than the other one. The floor was composed of jagged red and gray shapes of stone or possibly metal. The ceiling was so high above their heads that they could not see it through the shadows and gloom. All around along the walls, there were strange curved and twisting shapes like huge pulsing pipes lined with glowing red seams. The whole chamber seemed to echo with the hum of incredibly ancient alien machinery. It was like they had entered the beating mechanical heart of this abandoned frozen city.

There were bodies. Scattered around the entire chamber were human corpses, dozens of them at least, but some were ripped apart that only pieces remained. Scraps of clothing and bits of random items were mixed in with the blood and gore. A dismembered leg still wrapped in a piece of denim, wearing a cowboy boot. A decayed corpse of a woman in a gray dress. A nude male torso missing its head and limbs. A bare arm that might have belonged to a woman once. More bodies and pieces of bodies piled in the corner, the blood seeping in between the misshapen floor tiles like some kind of demonic design.

Walt heard Maggie gag in horror, and she turned away to retch. Eleanor whispered some kind of prayer to herself. Robert meanwhile, held his shotgun up and scanned the room with clear eyes, unfazed by the death and horror laid out in front of them.

“Hannah!” he shouted. “Hannah Thompson! We came here to find you! Hannah, if you’re here, please come out!”

His words echoed into the blackness, and there was silence, a terrible haunting silence. The four of them stood around, motionless, holding their breath. They had heard her crying! Or had they? Had they heard nothing but a ghost, or a trap to lure them to their deaths?

And then, from out of the shadows off to their right, there was movement. Walt stared in disbelief as a little girl wearing a blood-stained blue dress staggered into the light. She was a skinny little thing, and one look at her told them all they needed to know. She was barefoot and smeared with blood from head to toe. It was soaked into her clothes and matted in her long blonde hair. Her eyes were wide open and completely vacant, the stare of someone paralyzed by fear and horror. It hurt just to look at her, to see the emptiness in her eyes. The girl had seen things no child should ever see.

Robert ran over to her and knelt down. He set his shotgun on the floor and put his hands on Hannah’s shoulders. “Hannah? My name’s Robert. We’re here to help you. Are you injured? Please tell me if you’ve been hurt.”

It was hard to tell if the blood was hers or someone else’s. The girl looked like she’d been dragged through a slaughterhouse. Eleanor and Maggie hurried over as well, but Walt remained where he was. There was nothing he could do to help the girl, so he let the others handle it. He hefted his pickaxe and slowly turned to look around the entire chamber.

“Is she … is she okay?” Maggie asked.

Eleanor licked her sleeve and used it to wipe some of the blood from Hannah’s cheeks and forehead, like a fussy mother wiping a dirty child’s face. “I don’t think she’s hurt. Not physically, at least.”

“She’s in shock,” Robert said. “We need to get her out of here.”

It was never going to be that easy. Walt knew they had not fought their way to this demonic place just to rescue the girl and sneak off unnoticed. The others were preoccupied with the girl, so they didn’t notice that they were not alone here.

Walt sensed the malevolent presence in the chamber long before he saw it. The dark stone in his blood called out in ecstasy, like a wolf howling to the rest of its pack, signaling to the others that there was prey to be found.

This is it, he thought. This is what I came here for. This is the end.

“It’s here,” he choked out.

The creature seemed to materialize out of thin air, coalescing into existence like a vengeful specter achieving physical form. It was a gargantuan beast straight from their worst nightmares, a demon borne out of the darkest shadows, an enormous leviathan that defied all natural law, a hulking goliath summoned from the very soul of madness.

The others all stepped back and wordlessly tilted their heads up to gaze upon its terrible form. It towered over them at nearly ten feet tall, its thick and bulky body covered in mottled green skin stretched tight over bulging muscles and sinews. Its legs were like heavy tree trunks, and its arms were huge undulating tentacles without hands or fingers. The ambient red light of the chamber illuminated its stocky torso that ended in a rounded stump of a head, dotted with a dozen or more tiny black eyes, and a huge mouth that split across its face like a jagged slash.

When it moved, its steps shook the floor. It stomped towards the group, slowly but inexorably, unstoppable and relentless, a destructive force of nature like a tidal wave or a landslide. It reared back and opened its huge mouth to let out a thundering roar that sounded like all the damned souls of Hell crying out in horror. Inside its mouth were more tentacles, bloody pink and purple, writing and hissing like a swarm of enormous snakes, spewing foul ooze and slime.

Walt could not hold back any longer. After keeping it inside for so long, he suddenly doubled up and groaned in unbearable pain, his voice rising in pitch until it was a shriek of agony. It all happened at the worst possible moment. Maybe it was the corrupting aura of the gigantic creature, maybe it was the influence of this otherworldly chamber, or maybe it was his own fear and misery finally betraying him, but the horror that had been building up inside of him for so long finally broke free. The dark stone had completed its metamorphosis and now its true form was revealed.

With the hideous rip of tearing flesh and bone, Walt’s left arm shredded apart like tissue paper and a flailing blue-green tentacle erupted from his body, spurting blood and fluid. Scraps of bloody skin fluttered to the ground. He arched his back and howled in uncontrolled fury, the mutation spreading like a wildfire in his veins. Distantly, he heard the others cry out in shock, but it was easy to ignore them. They weren’t important to him now, and would only get in the way of his destiny.

The giant creature turned toward him and Walt faced it fearlessly. This was what he had come for, what he had known was coming. This was the end of the journey. The dark stone that had infected him and made him its slave. This was where it wanted him to go. Back to its home, back to its origin. This colossal demon was the heart of the infection, the source of all Walt’s agony, and it was time for him to face it.

He screamed something unintelligible and ran at the beast, raising his pickaxe high. The mutation seemed to give him increased strength and speed, and he launched himself at the titanic monster, slamming the pickaxe deep into its thick green hide. It roared in response, its massive tentacled arms flapping furiously, and slammed down on him like meaty sledgehammers. He reeled momentarily and brought the pickaxe down again and again, goring the beast’s flesh. Gunshots rang out as Robert and Maggie opened fire, adding their weapons to his own, but the goliath barely reacted to the shots even as they riddled its hide.

Walt struggled as the monster wrapped one of its arms around his waist and hauled him off the ground. It shook him like a wolf shaking a rabbit in its jaws, and he was barely able to hang on to his pickaxe. He cried out and slammed the axe into the tentacle holding him, disgusting purple blood spurting from the wound. The creature began to squeeze his chest, crushing his ribs, but he kept fighting until his last breath. The beast roared and wrapped its other arm around his legs, holding him sideways.

His senses were dulled as the life drained out of him, but he could hear the others shouting his name, and it gave him a strange sense of comfort to hear the desperate concern in their voices. He had never been kind to them, and yet he believed they would grieve him when he was gone. It was more than he deserved. In a life wasted in the selfish pursuit of wealth and greed, it was good to know that people might remember him.

With his last ounce of strength, he swung his pickaxe at the goliath’s hideous face. The pickaxe blade buried itself right in one of the demon’s glossy black eyes. Its scream was like a sound emanating from the very void of the abyss. Swinging its massive head, it shook the pickaxe free, and it clattered to the ground, smeared with purple gore.

And then, with the sickening crunch of bone and tearing flesh, the colossal demon raised Walt up with both arms and tore his body completely in half.

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->