“Jesus,” Harry said. “How much longer is this gonna keep up?”
“From the looks of it, I think he aims to flatten all of Hell,” Caz said.
“That does appear to be the plan,” Dale agreed.
On the heels of Dale’s reply came three monstrous thunderclaps, louder by magnitudes than anything that had preceded them. They echoed back and forth between earth and sky, their volume not diminishing with each echo but instead becoming still louder, echoes of echoes of echoes soon so numerous they birthed an almost single, solid sound.
“Run!” Lana said.
“Oh shit. Here comes Judgment Day!” Caz yelled.
Despite the danger from the flying fragments, Caz stood up and threw back his head so as to at least see the immense spectacle clearly, for a few seconds. Lucifer’s assaults had finally raised the stone, breaking it into pieces that were still monumental in their fractured state. To Caz’s eyes the cataclysm seemed to be happening in slow motion, the vast pieces sliding apart with a lazy elegance.
“I think I see it!” Lana said.
“Tell me we’re close!” Harry yelled.
“If I’m right, yeah!” Lana yelled. “There’s a spot ahead, between two boulders where the rocks aren’t ricocheting. That’s gotta be it, right?”
Caz pulled his reluctant eyes off the sky and glanced in Harry’s direction. He and Lana were on their haunches six or seven strides away, reaching out to investigate the empty air space between the boulders where the rocks were disappearing in front of them.
“Works for me,” Harry said. “In case it’s not what we think it is, if you hear me scream—”
“Then what? Stay here?” Lana said. “Just fucking move it, Galahad. There is no plan b.”
Before Caz could watch his friends enter the wyrm hole, there was another thunderous clap. Caz turned his head to see the source of the sound and, in that moment, finally understood a piece of what drove Harry to do the things he did. Caz found himself suddenly hungry for another glimpse of the dying sky. The pieces were falling faster now, preceded by a hail of stones monsoonal in its ferocity. It was all Caz could do not to stand still and watch the spectacle unfold before his wondering eyes.
“Caz!” Dale was right beside him, pulling on Caz’s arm. “We gotta go now, hon,” he said. “Or not at all.”
As Dale pulled Caz toward the wyrm hole, a massive block of shed stone struck one of the obsidian boulders nearby. It shattered, throwing immense pieces in all directions. Caz turned and saw that Harry and Lana were already gone—disappeared into the wyrm hole when he wasn’t looking. He hoped that wasn’t the last time he’d see his friends.
Then, from the corner of his eye Caz saw one of the shards coming at them and started to shout a warning, but before he could speak Dale pulled him into the cleft between the two boulders. Abruptly the dark, roaring landscape and its splintered, falling sky were gone and he and Dale were in another place entirely, where only smears of light, speeding across their path or over the uneven ground they stood on, offered any clue to their location.
“So this is a wormhole?” Caz said.
“I reckon,” Dale said. “Never been in one till now.”
“It’s hard to make sense of what’s where,” Caz said. “Harry? Lana?” There was no reply. “Where the hell did they go? Do you see them?”
“Honey, I don’t see shit. I just hope this doesn’t dump us somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.”
“No,” said Caz. “We’re going to step out into Times Square and it’ll all have been a dream.”
His remark was punctuated by one almighty, albeit muted, crash from the other side of the threshold as the remains of the stone dropped out of the sky over Hell, crushing the infernal landscape beneath its bulk. The reverberations leaped at the threshold and dispersed their energies through the broken ground, sparking lights that cavorted in the walls that rose to such heights they seemed to converge.
Seemingly very far away from Hell’s landscape now, Caz and Dale traveled onward as the noise of the infernal cataclysmic scene and its attendant vibrations dropped off into silence and stillness.
“Bon voyage, Perdition,” Dale said. “Until we meet again.”
3
The wyrm hole didn’t deliver them into the icy waters of the Atlantic. But neither did it set them down on a quiet New York sidewalk where they could have readily found a way to transport Norma’s corpse back to her apartment. No, the wyrm hole was exquisitely arbitrary. It first offered Lana, Harry matching her step for step behind her, a tantalizing glimpse of a city street (not New York perhaps, but civilization nevertheless). It did not, however, let them exit there. She had barely reported the street to Harry when a shoal of lights blazed by, erasing the reassuring sight.
“I guess that wasn’t our stop,” Lana said, trying to keep her tone from sounding hopeless. Whatever desperation she presently felt, it was nothing, she was sure, compared with the thoughts circling in the darkness of Harry’s head.
“Where are Caz and Dale?” Harry asked. “Any sign of them?”
“No. But I’m sure they’re not far behind us,” she lied. “Don’t worry. We’ve got another stop coming up.”
She wasn’t lying that time. Even as she spoke, a new door was presenting itself. It was a far less reassuring scene than the city street that had preceded it: a landscape of black rock and unsullied snow, its drifts being stirred into blinding white veils by a relentless wind.
“If this is our stop we’re fucked,” she said.
It wasn’t. Once again she had barely glimpsed the scene when it was erased by the same shoal of lights. A little time passed while they walked on down the wyrm hole in silence. Lana was in the lead, with Harry’s right hand lightly laid on her left shoulder, just to keep Harry from falling as he walked on the uneven ground.
A third doorway came into view, and the landscape at least looked warmer than the one preceding it: an American highway, to judge by the signs, running through a desert landscape. The image solidified, signifying to Lana that this was it. The ground of the wyrm hole then threw a length of its light-streaked darkness out into the yellow-orange dust at the side of the highway.
“Not quite a red carpet,” Lana said, “but it does the job. We should hurry, before this fucking thing changes its mind.”
Lana brought Harry out into the heat of a desert noon and glancing back at the wyrm hole saw Caz, Norma slung over his shoulder, and Dale as they too stepped off its light-smeared ground to find that there was nothing but empty air, shimmering with heat. Then the wyrm hole vanished.
“Where were you?” Lana shouted to them. “I thought you were both dead!”
“I thought you were sure they were behind us,” Harry said, a wry smile on his face.
“Don’t break my balls. I had to keep us moving.”
“How long have you been waiting here?” Caz said.
“We haven’t,” Harry said. “You stepped out right after we did. But it could have been hours apart to you. I don’t expect a wyrm hole to adhere to our laws of time and space.”
“Well, it’s damn good to see you everyone again,” Caz said. “I can’t believe we made it.”
“We didn’t all make it,” Harry said.
“I know, Harold,” Caz said, clutching Norma closer to his body. “You don’t have to remind me. I’m happy we’re all at least together. I didn’t know where that thing would spit us out. Or if it would take us all to the same place. Does anyone know where we are?”
“Out of the fire,” said Dale. “And into the frying pan.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Lana said as he peered down the length of the highway, which ran without so much as a one-degree accommodation down its entire visible length. “Wherever we are, or wherever we go from here, nothing will be as bad as what we just faced,”
“There’s a building a few miles away, in that direction,” Dale said.
“I don’t see it,” Caz told him.
“Me neither,” Harry said.
“There’s that trademark wit,” Lana said. “Anyway, I see the building too. It’s far, but it’s there. It might lead us to a city.”
“I guess we go that way, then,” Caz said.
“We could wait for some traffic,” Harry offered. “Get somebody to pick us up.”
“Please,” Dale said. “I’d like to meet the driver who’d stop to pick up a dandy, a dyke, a blind man covered in blood, and a nearly seven-foot-tall queen carrying a dead black woman.”
“Suddenly, I’m glad I’m blind,” Harry said.
“Yes, you are.”
“So we’re walking, then.”
“Let’s.”
With the plan agreed upon, they started down the straight highway. They walked for a time, and as they walked a few autos heading in their direction passed them by. Each vehicle slowed down more than a little to take a good look at the spectacle. But after having looked, each driver moved on with haste, kicking up choking clouds of yellowish dust as they sped away.
But after the seventh car passed them and sped out of sight, Harry began to hear the sound of gospel music. As it grew in volume, he turned his head toward his friends and said, “Please tell me I’m not the only one who hears that. I’m not ready to be called to Heaven. Not so soon after leaving Hell.”
“No,” Caz said. “I hear it too.”
“Me three,” Dale said. “Matter of fact, I think it’s coming right for us.”
At that, a large black sedan with a foot-tall crucifix serving as a hood ornament was barreling down the highway.
“Christians,” Caz said. “No hope there, I’m afraid.”
Caz turned his attention back to the road ahead and shifted Norma’s weight on his shoulder. Norma’s body had seemed so very light when he’d first shouldered it, mere skin and bones. But he was a lot weaker now, and though he moved her body from his left shoulder to his right and back again (and sometimes, to ease up on his shoulders, he simply carried her draped over his arms), there was no real relief. He had no intention of laying the body down, not without any real notion of their whereabouts.
He would never forgive himself if any harm were to come to Norma’s remains just because he’d neglected them for a moment. Forgiving himself for allowing her to die would be hard enough, he knew. So he trudged on, focusing his diminishing energies on the piece of ground ahead of him where he would presently set down his foot. Then on to the next piece of terrain, indistinguishable from the previous piece except in one vital regard: it brought him closer to the end of this insane journey to Hell and back—closer to his tiny store at 11th and Hudson and the smell of the inks and the prospect of another breathing canvas standing naked before him, shaking, some of them, with happy anticipation of the adventure ahead. Oh, to be there now! To crack a beer—no, fuck the beers, right now he would kill for a glass of ice-cold milk.
“Are you folks looking for a ride?” The voice smashed into Caz’s thoughts like a brick wall. The Harrowers turned to see that the voice had come from the driver of the black stretch limousine.
“Please God, yes,” Harry said.
A young, pale-skinned, bespectacled man in a short-sleeved white shirt and a narrow black tie opened the passenger door and got out.
“The name’s Welsford. You folks look like you need some help, and the Reverend Kutchaver wants you to accept his invitation and step inside and out of this monstrous heat.”
“And we happily accept,” Harry replied, “but I should tell you that one of our number is dead.”
“Yes. I tried pointing that out to the reverend, but—”
“Hallelujah,” came a voice from the back of the car. “One of our beloved sisters has gone to meet her Maker! This is a happy, happy day. Bring her in and make her comfortable.”
Caz labored to get into the limousine with Norma’s body while preserving the dignity of the attempt, but it was hard work single-handed, and very plainly the Reverend Kutchaver, who was sitting in the far corner of the backseat (a very large white man in his late fifties, dressed in a very expensive suit), had no intention of offering any physical assistance.
Caz draped Norma’s corpse half-laid, half-sitting opposite the reverend, and he then guided Harry to the long seat that ran down the length of the limousine.
“A little more, Harold,” Caz said. “Right there!”
“Are you blind, young man?” the reverend asked.
“Only recently,” said Harry.
“Oh Lord, oh Lord,” the reverend said. “You are all mightily afflicted.”
“You could say that,” Caz said as he got out to allow Lana and Dale into the vehicle. Only then did Caz himself get in and, positioning his body between Norma and Dale, closed the door. “We’re all aboard.”
“Y’all look like you’ve been through it,” said the reverend.
Dale groaned. Harry took the conversational reins.
“Thank you for stopping. If you could just drop us off at some place where we can make arrangements to get back to New York—”
“New York?” said the reverend’s assistant. “You are a long way from home.”
“Where are we?” said Harry.
“That is a good question,” said the reverend. “Where in the blazes are we, Welsford? It feels as though we’ve been driving for hours.”
“Arizona, Reverend,” Welsford replied. Then, turning to Harry and company: “The reverend is due at a church in Prescott in”—he consulted his watch—“one hour and twenty-two minutes.”
“Then if it’s all right with you-all we’ll happily travel with you to Prescott,” Harry said, “and make our arrangements from there.”
The assistant glanced nervously at Kutchaver, who seemed not to have even heard Harry’s proposal. Welsford was staring with intense fascination at the rest of the Harrowers.
“Is that all right with you, Reverend?” Welsford asked.
“What?”
“If they come with us to Prescott?”
“Prescott…” Kutchaver said, lost in his thoughts.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
The reverend didn’t reply to the question; his attention remained riveted at the sight of Caz and Dale, who were now holding hands. Finally the reverend said, with an almost tender intimacy in his voice, “And you, brothers, what are your stories?”
Neither man replied. Harry knew what was coming next and, weary as he was, he found himself looking forward to the rude awakening the dear reverend was about to receive. He had picked the wrong day to bring these wayward sinners to his Lord.
“Poor children,” the reverend said. “Being tricked into believing you are born like that. The hardships you must have endured. But God always has purpose, my sons. However difficult it may be for us to understand it.”
“He does?” said Caz.
“Of course, child. Of course. Whatever sins you have committed, He invites you to lay them down and accept His forgiveness and His protection. Oh Glory to God in the highest—I see it so clearly now. This is why you’re here! Thank You, Lord—”
“Here we go,” Harry said, a smile spreading across his face.
The reverend kept up the hard sell.
“Thanks be to the Lord for delivering you all into my care, so that I may save your souls!”
Now it was Caz who groaned.
“God never tests us beyond what we can bear!” the reverend continued. “I promise you, sure as I sit here before you, if you do not repent, you will never see the light of Heaven. But I can save you. There is still time, children! Do you wish to be saved from the flames of Hell?”
“There is no Hell,” Harry said. “Not anymore.”
“Oh, but there is,” the reverend replied. “I have had many visions of that place. I have witnessed its furnaces. I have counted its chimneys. I have watched damned sodomites like you.” He pointed at Caz. “And you”—now at Dale—“driven by demons whose faces were foul beyond words.”
“Scary
,” Harry said.
“It is. And I swear by the blood of Christ, the Devil is in you—is in all of you—but in Christ’s name, I can drive him out. I can—”
The reverend was interrupted by the sound of Harry laughing. “Jesus Christ. Ever hear the expression ‘know your audience’?” Harry said, the air in the limo growing thick. “I swear, on the soul of that dear woman sitting next to you, that we just came from the Hell you’re describing. We followed a demon there to bring my friend back alive. We saw populations destroyed by a plague fog. We saw armies wiped out by magic workings. We saw the Devil himself dead, and then resurrected as he rode a gargantuan sea beast into the sky, where he cracked open the roof of Hell and brought the sky down on everyone’s heads. We barely escaped with our lives. We’re hungry, we’re beaten, and we’re in mourning. We don’t have the patience for a sermon right now, Rev. So either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out, because this car is going to New York.”
“I-I-I,” the reverend stammered. “I-I … Driver!”
The reverend violently slapped at the glass partition that separated the driver from the rest of the vehicle. “Driver!”
“Everything okay back there?” the driver called out.
“No,” Welsford said, his voice shrill. “Stop the car!”
The driver dutifully eased the vehicle over to the side of the empty highway and got out, slamming his door, and then walked the length of the vehicle to open the reverend’s door. The driver bent low and peered into the limo. He found everyone sitting politely in their seats.
“What’s the problem, Reverend?”
“These travelers are beyond hope! Destined for Hell and content to drag every living soul they encounter with them.”
“Of course they are,” said the driver, placating his boss. “So what, you want them out?”
“Yes!” screamed the reverend.
The driver threw the passengers a sympathetic look. “All right. The reverend says out, you’re out.”
“We’ll get out in New York,” Harry said.
“Don’t get smart with me, guy. This here’s the reverend’s ride, and he’s going to Prescott and then on to—I forget where the hell comes next. But New York is not on the list. So you need to find yourselves a different ride.”