The Devil's Banshee Page 8

  We had fallen into an exhausted sleep along a dusty row of cabinets in devil resources. It was 1935, and the Great Depression—a catastrophe of epic proportions—had brought on another enormous influx. Starvation is such a tragic way to pass over, especially for the young. Emotions amongst the dead in Hell were running very high, as many parents had been separated from their young at the Half-Way House, where their children began the journey to Up There. For the first time since our original meeting, Elinor and I were truly bickering.

  It got so bad between us, I was even considering marrying her.

  As we slept on the hard ground of Row S, I was abruptly awoken by Elinor’s voice—it had become my personal alarm clock—but I was still pained by lack of food and fatigue, and my red eyes were sore and itchy.

  Elinor was speaking in her sleep, but her words did not make sense to me. She was lying on her stomach and crying out.

  I considered comforting her, but I was irritated. She had disturbed my slumber. A Viking who is tired and armed should not be in the company of others.

  A shadow flickered on the wall, but for once, it was the silhouette of an actual devil, and not the insidious darkness that manifests itself in shapes along the corridors of Hell.

  I soon realized that the approaching figure was one of the young soldiers we had sorted after the Battle of the Somme. I recognized him by his brown uniform, which I could make out in the dimness. But I could not see his face. Most of the torches had long burned out, and the firelighters had yet to arrive to replenish the flame.

  “What do you want?” I asked. My deep voice was intimidating to almost everyone, in life and death, and when it took on a grumpy edge, it was known to loosen a devil’s bowels.

  But the soldier was calm. “I have a message for Miss Powell,” he said quietly, his English accent echoing in the hall. “I was not aware she was sleeping, or had company.”

  “Give the message to me. I will pass it on.”

  “Very well. Tell her, 1967 and 2009.”

  “1967 and 2009? That is not a message. Those are answers to a math equation,” I replied, annoyed that I would have to remember numbers while my stomach and legs were cramping. “Go away, or I will run you through with my blade.”

  Without another word, the soldier melted into the shadows. I was not even sure I had not imagined the episode. I once came down with a sickness in Hell that resulted in a high fever that lasted many days. During that malady, I swore my cousin Loof’s roasted hog started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”—with the apple still in its mouth.

  Elinor awoke.

  “Who were ye talking to, Alfarin?” she asked. Then, before I could answer, a clock chimed the hour. “Oh, look at the time!” Elinor exclaimed. “I have barely had time to shut my eyes, Alfarin, and here ye are, talking away in the middle of the night. I cannot do my job if ye are here under my feet all the time and making noise. Ye need to give me room to . . . room to breathe.”

  To this day, I am ashamed of my disloyalty. But the truth of the matter seemed important at the time: it was her fault that I had awoken in the first place. So, without a word, I picked up my axe, clambered to my feet and left Elinor with enough room to try to be the only devil in the history of Hell to actually breathe.

  I never delivered the message.

  Only decades later did I come to understand the numbers.

  1967 and 2009 were the years Medusa and Mitchell passed over. Which raised more questions: How did the voice in the shadows know that Mitchell and Medusa would be important to us, years before their deaths even occurred? Or did he know nothing at all, and was he just a messenger, a conduit? And if he was just a messenger, who was the message really from?

  But these were questions that I could never ponder with Elinor, because then she would have discovered that I had been deliberately deceitful that night.

  8. The Ninth Circle

  The Ninth Circle of Hell. It was the last circle I had read about and therefore the one I recalled best. In the tome written by Dante, it is the last place the treacherous-in-life will ever see. In four concentric zones, a different kind of treachery is punished, and in the center of this pit of doom resides a three-headed, winged beast. It is written that the beast is forever devouring three traitors, while all along the beast itself is trapped in a huge block of ice, which prevents it from flying away.

  “Keep close . . . to me,” I say, shivering. “We are starting at the bottom of the Circles . . . and so we must work . . . our way to the top. This Ninth Circle . . . is a narrow cave . . . like a funnel . . . it will wind around and around . . . four times in a continuous loop . . . that will get smaller . . . and smaller . . . as we ascend.”

  “No one . . . is going anywhere . . . until . . . until we all have . . . more layers on,” Medusa says, teeth chattering. “Ice in Hell,” she muses. “H-how does it not melt?”

  She slips off her backpack, unzips it and pulls out two sweaters and a knitted beanie. The hat immediately plumps up like a pillow as she places it on her head, such is the incredible mass of hair contained within it.

  We all follow suit. Clever Medusa packed the bags for all extremities, even in the depths of Hell.

  “I haven’t got anything for you to wear, I’m afraid, Virgil,” says Medusa. “I thought we were doing this alone.”

  The old man is shivering. Now that we are in the Ninth Circle, I understand why he wanted my axe so badly. We are treading not on rock, but on thick crusts of pale-blue ice. My blade could mean the difference between escaping to the Eighth Circle and plummeting into the chasms that surround us.

  “Does anyone have any rope?” asks Mitchell, looking around. “If we have to climb up to get to the Eighth Circle, then we’ll have more chance of making it if we’re all tied together. You know, like mountaineers.”

  “That’s in Elinor’s bag,” replies Medusa. “And in case it’s not long enough, there’s also rope in Alfarin’s.”

  “You’re amazing, Medusa,” says Mitchell.

  “She most certainly is,” I say, placing a knitted hat on my head. It is small and barely reaches my eyebrows. “You must have been a Viking in a previous life.”

  “Existing and knowing about one paradox is enough for me,” replies Medusa, patting my arm. “But thanks for the compliment, Alfarin.”

  Mitchell sidles up to me. He is so tall and long in body that his new sweater barely reaches his waist.

  “Dude, do you have a book on women or something?” he whispers. “You kick ass at compliments.”

  I slap my friend on the back, and then quickly grab him when it becomes obvious he is about to stumble over the ledge of ice we are standing on.

  “There is no book on being a Viking,” I reply. “We just are. But I will gladly give you tips on how to keep your woman happy in the Viking way.”

  “Bury your face in my chest, or slap my ass, Mitchell Johnson, and you’ll be begging for the Skin-Walkers to take you away by the time I’ve finished with you,” growls Medusa.

  I give Mitchell the thumbs-up: another modern tradition of the more newly dead, although I’ve noticed that only a few of them actually use it. He gives me a confused look.

  “Dude, she just threatened me,” he whispers. “That’s not a thumbs-up thing.”

  “But she did not deny that she was your woman, and that’s a start,” I reply.

  The upper half of Virgil’s face is hidden by shadows that are reflecting the blue glow of the ice, but I can see that the lower half is contorted into a perverse smile. It is not the look of a devil who is happy to see joviality in the midst of the Underworld. It is the smile of someone who is keeping a secret.

  “Are ye scared?” asks Elinor. “I am.”

  I take her hand in mine and kiss her knuckles. “I am only scared of losing you again, my princess.”

  “If it helps, El,” says Medusa, feeding rope through her hands, “I’m as terrified as I’ve ever been. There’s so much adrenaline coating my tongue, I think i
t’s been replaced by a steel bar.”

  “Then let us get it over with. We are prepared for this circle,” I say to our guide as Medusa finishes tying a length of orange rope around my stomach. “Lead on.”

  “Watch your feet,” calls Virgil. “You don’t want to step where you shouldn’t.”

  An icy wind beats down on us in waves as we inch our way across the ledge that will take us into the main cavern. It is not wide, and it is our only path. As we come out into the circular opening, a towering black rock appears in front of us. It glistens with a blue, shimmering light. If this were not the foulest part of Hell, a devil could wonder at the beauty of it.

  “What is that noise?” asks Elinor. She is right behind me in the line.

  I strain my ears. Elinor is right. There is something beyond the howling of the wind. A continuous, high-pitched noise. It is unmistakable.

  “It is screaming, Elinor,” I reply. “We are reaching the center of the Ninth Circle. If Dante’s words were true, then that sound will be a constant accompaniment as we ascend to the Eighth Circle. Stay strong. We are all here with you.”

  “There was so much screaming . . . when I was his!” cries Elinor. “His dreams . . . are filled with screaming. He enjoys it.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Virgil reach out for Elinor, and then just as quickly, he retracts his hand. Does the guide feel empathy for Elinor? Perhaps that is something we could use to our advantage.

  “Remember we are searching for Beatrice Morrigan,” I shout back to the others. “Do not dwell on what you see and hear in this cursed place.”

  Mitchell is starting to swear. The wind is picking up. It is biting at our dead forms with sharpened teeth. The wails are getting louder. It is the sound of relentless suffering and torment. Elinor had previously said that all victims of the Skin-Walkers had their tongues removed, but there are some here who clearly did not.

  “As we get to the other side of the rock, we will approach the creature that is trapped here,” calls Virgil from the front. “Do not look at its three faces.”

  But the moment we finish the loop of the first zone, I look.

  I am a brave warrior. There is little in death or life that has truly frightened me. Yet the colossal hybrid beast in front of me, covered in fur, with thrashing wings and three flailing scaly heads, is a monster that cannot be ignored by the command of someone so puny as Virgil.

  Elinor screams, and immediately one of the beast’s three heads snaps toward us. It is the red face. The two others are yellow and black. The monster’s skin is cracked and weeping with pus that’s oozing from volcano-shaped sores. In each of its jagged, tooth-filled mouths is a figure, stripped bare of flesh.

  Dante claimed that Brutus, Cassius and Judas were the victims of the three-headed beast, but how could he tell? From where I am standing, there is nothing left of the figures to ascertain if they were man or woman, let alone to know who they once were in life. It is a grotesque sight of flesh stripped to moving bone, each body flailing with desperation as it tries to escape the torment of razor-sharp teeth and claw. Is it their agony we’ve been hearing on the wind?

  “Keep walking,” calls Virgil. “And watch your feet.”

  “That . . . that thing won’t grab us, will it?” cries Mitchell. “Oh, Hell, I’m going to be sick.”

  A shower of blood is dripping from the beast’s mouth. As it falls onto the ice, steam rises up in the form of a wolf on two legs.

  “This is Perfidious’s domain,” I call as we start along a slow incline to the second concentric zone. “We need to watch out for him, as well as look for Beatrice.”

  “And watch your feet,” adds Virgil for the third time.

  “Why does he keep saying that?” asks Elinor, her voice shaking with fear. “We know it is slippery. It is ice. We are not stupid.”

  Mitchell is the first to realize why. As we start to wind our way from the second circular zone into the third, he cries out in terror.

  “They’re watching us!”

  Unlike the footsteps of my featherlight friend, my tread is so heavy, I did not sense what was protruding out of the ice.

  Faces. Faces attached to bodies that are lying supine in the ice. All are totally encased, with the exception of their eyes, mouth and nose, which are left open to the biting wind. Their bodies are twisted into shapes that are inconceivable. Arms bent backward at ninety-degree angles; necks snapped in two; legs splayed under spines.

  “Those who knowingly killed kin are brought here,” says Virgil. “For betrayal of one’s family is the most heinous act of treachery there is.”

  “We are treading on people, Alfarin!” cries Elinor.

  “No,” I reply quickly. “Do not see them as people, Elinor. They are the condemned dead. Not fit to be devils. Remember what you know about the Skin-Walkers and the Unspeakables. They are here because they corrupted and defiled the honor and privilege of living.”

  But there is little conviction to my speech. The pale-blue ice is lighting up all around us, mocking and tormenting Team DEVIL with sights we cannot escape. And to my left, the three-headed beast continues to twist its black, furry body, as if it, too, is in pain from its icy containment.

  “How do we get out of this circle, Virgil?” I ask. Upward, I can see the fourth circular zone winding around perilously close to the back of the beast.

  “You have read the book, have you not, Viking?” mocks Virgil. “How did Dante and I get down to the bottom of the abyss? Remember, we have to undertake this journey now in reverse.”

  But I am unable to recall. The higher in the cave we climb, the closer we get to the continuous screaming from the three forms being devoured in the mouths of the beast. My ears are ringing with a pain that cannot be dislodged.

  “What if it tries to get us, Alfarin?” yells Medusa. “We’re fresh meat, and that monster is going to be close enough to try to grab us soon.”

  “Alfarin,” calls Mitchell. “Give Virgil your axe. He’s guiding us. We have to trust him. If that beast tries to take us, then we have to fight it off, and the guy in front may as well be armed.”

  They are turning against you, whispers a voice. It is neither male nor female. It is the whisper of the wind. You should leave them while you still have the chance.

  Elinor gasps behind me. I hear her cry, “No!” I turn around and Mitchell is staring at Medusa with a look of horror on his face. The wind must be speaking to them, too.

  “Get us out of here, Virgil!” I shout. I have seen no sign of Beatrice Morrigan—only terror. There is no way anyone could conceal themselves on these ice paths. They may be filled with death, but their surfaces are barren, save for the frozen faces staring up at us. There are no crevices in the cave walls, either. There is no place to hide—unless she’s chosen to imprison herself within the ice. And something tells me that a Banshee headstrong enough to leave The Devil would not opt for a shelter so confining and miserable.

  We need to leave before we turn on one another.

  “There is only one way to the next circle,” replies Virgil. “And it is up there.” He points to a red glow, just above the beast’s shoulder.

  “And how do we get up there?” I shout. “The fourth zone ends with solid rock. There is no passage.”

  “Dante and I climbed down the beast to get here, Viking,” replies our guide. “You will have to climb up.”

  Nĭu

  Alfarin and Elinor

  Trustworthiness was a trait that Vikings held very dear. A clan, a group of brethren, was only as strong as its will to stay together and believe in one another. My death came about because I failed at being trustworthy. I had foolishly wandered off alone, placing not only myself in mortal danger, but also the other Vikings I had arrived with in the longships. I laid no blame for my demise on the villagers who attacked me with blades and dogs. It was my fault, and my fault alone.

  I should have obeyed my leader and stayed close. I did not. I believed I knew better, that I cou
ld handle myself alone in enemy territory, and it cost me my life.

  But the question of my trustworthiness—and my ability to trust others—would haunt me well after my death. A truly awful occurrence happened in the year 1942 that had me pondering the notion of trust until I was nearly sick. I was so stricken by the horror of it all, I almost handed over my axe and relinquished my Viking ancestry.

  It all started when I was given a ticket to the Masquerade Ball.

  Oh, the shame, the degradation! I had not applied. Vikings do not go to balls. Dancing is for the womenfolk. Men drink beer and fight.

  Or so I thought.

  It was my third cousin Magna’s fault. Jealous of the giggling girls in her overcrowded dormitory, Magna had applied to the lottery and had won two tickets.

  And I was forced into being her companion for the night.

  I pleaded within the halls of our fathers to be excused from this most vile of tasks, but the decree was made. I was to wear a suit and accompany Magna to defend her honor. If Saxon scum attempted to carry her away, I was to strike them down with my axe.

  Carry her away? She was four hundred pounds when she died. I would like to see the Saxon heathens try.

  Yet my biggest concern was for Elinor. How would she react when I told her I was going to be spending an evening with another woman? Spending time with Elinor had opened my eyes and forced me to acknowledge that other devils had feelings, and that these feelings should be considered. So I placed myself in her shoes, and knew immediately that if Elinor had told me she was attending the Masquerade Ball with another devil, I would have sabotaged the whole affair with my axe and, failing that, with a copious supply of laxatives slipped into my rival’s beef stew. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t trust Elinor, I told myself. It was that I wouldn’t trust the situation.

  Yet Elinor was a better devil than I. When I told her of the duty being forced upon me, she merely smiled and soothed my concerns about the Masquerade Ball’s surely being the worst night of my death. Elinor even came with me to choose my mask.