Chapter 102

THE MARCH OF TORMENT

He could hardly breathe. Desperately, he sucked in air. But his lungs felt like lead weights in his chest. And there seemed to be a lack of oxygen here. It was blisteringly hot. Molten rock formed the cavern. Lava dripped from them. Fires burned along the passageway ahead of him. Flames crackled, and he could hear shrieks. The smell of burning flesh filled the caves.

Faultless knew where he was.

Am I dead? he thought. Is this where it ends?

Lew—or whoever Lew really was—had told him to climb into the abyss, and he’d obeyed. Faultless realized that many of the answers he sought lay down in the deep. He had to go down to find them.

But now he thought everything after the beating by Wilks and his colleagues might have been a nightmare.

The kicking he took must have killed him. Lew saying he was the second evil meant nothing. It was a dream, he kept telling himself, it was a dream.

And he was actually dead.

And he was in hell.

Everyone has to pay.

He remembered those words.

Was this his payment? The last judgment? The ultimate punishment?

He never believed in heaven or hell. But maybe he should have. Maybe Roy Hanbury had been right. He looked around and felt the heat, felt the agony of the place. Maybe this was hell.

He walked on, clutching his chest. He was hot. His clothes stuck to his skin. Ash rained down. Screams tore through the passageways. He stumbled along. Fire lit his way. The walls were red hot. But as he walked, he noticed that parts of the stone were covered in art—murals depicting suffering.

There were images of torture drawn in blood and soot. Messages had been scratched into the walls. Some of the languages were alien to him. Some were symbols and not words.

Old languages, he thought. Ancient.

Some of the messages he understood. He saw one in English. It had been scratched into the stone.

Damned, I am damned. Forgive me, Heavenly Father. Save me from this torment. I beg, I beg, said the message.

It was signed, George Whittaker, faithful servant of God, July 5th 1703 AD.

There were more messages. Thousands of them in many languages. Some were dated. But dates meant nothing. Time was a human concept. AD was human. But writing went further back than that. And some of this writing stretched to the birth of humanity, Faultless was certain of it. He could sense the antiquity of the languages. He saw a message dated 912 AD, but the words—although he recognized some as English—were not understandable to him.

As he stumbled along the passageway, the shrieking became louder. Desperate crying. And wailing. Howls of pain. Pleas for mercy.

This chorus of anguish filled the caves now.

He came to a dog-leg in the passageway. The noise was coming from around the corner.

His heart thundered. His chest was tight. He was sweating. Adrenaline jetted through his veins.

He was going to see something awful around that bend, so he steeled himself before striding ahead.

He stopped dead.

They filed through the caves ahead of him. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. As far as he could see. They were winding down into the caverns, many columns of them trudging down the many passageways.

They wore suits. They wore nightclothes. They wore uniforms. Some were naked. Some were old and others young. They were men and women and children.

They were all weeping. They were begging and screaming. Faultless heard some of them say, “There’s been a mistake, please . . . I’m a good man.”

He heard many begging in the same way. He heard different languages and guessed they were begging too.

But despite their pleading, the figures overseeing this march of torment showed no mercy.

The guards were huge. Some of them must have been nearly eight feet tall. They were dressed in chain mail. Dark stains covered their armor. On their heads, they wore helmets made of skulls. Faultless failed to recognize the animals the skulls had come from.

The guards whipped the people if they slowed down or if they tried to escape.

A man wearing a black suit stumbled out of the line. He was white-haired. He stood over six feet tall and sported a tan. He looked Mediterranean to Faultless. The man’s clothes were torn, and he was covered in dirt and ash. Stumbling forward, the man knelt before one of the guards and started pleading in Italian.

Although Faultless couldn’t understand what he was saying, he heard the words, “ . . . Gianluca Folcci . . . Bruccino . . . ” and he was jabbing himself in the chest while he was saying this.

Faultless looked at the man and narrowed his eyes.

He was Gianluca Folcci, Godfather of the Bruccino family.

Panic raced through Faultless. He remembered hearing that Folcci had died yesterday, shot by Italian police.

This was confirmation.

Faultless was in hell.

Folcci begged. The guard glared down at him and then made a gesture. Three other guards rushed forward. They grabbed Folcci. They pinned him to the wall and spread out his arms. Taking metal spikes from their belts, they crucified Folcci to the wall of the cave. He screamed while they hammered the spikes through his wrists and his knees.

While he writhed and shrieked, they stripped him naked, tearing away his clothes.

The guards moved away, leaving Folcci to screech and bleed.

But he’s dead, thought Faultless. How can he bleed? How can he be in pain?

And then he knew.

Eternal torment. Pain for the rest of time. Suffering without end.

The line of damned souls trudged forward.

Folcci was squealing now.

Faultless imagined his anguish. But then he realized it was going to get worse. From the shadows around Folcci, things slithered. Faultless reared back, cringing. Creatures came out of the gloom. No bigger than squirrels, they had leathery brown skin and tails ridged with spikes. As they clambered all over Folcci, their talons ripped into his body.

His screams intensified.

The demons clawed at him. They bit him. They lashed at him with their vicious tails. They plucked out his eyes. They tore off his ears. One forced its hand into his mouth and yanked, ripping out his tongue.

The Godfather moaned. Blood poured from his mouth. His face was a scarlet mask. His body had been pulped. He slumped. The spikes in his wrists tore at his skin and ligaments.

One of the demons ripped away Folcci’s scrotum.

With their bloody trophies, the demons scuttled away into the shadows. But not before one of them stopped and turned and looked Faultless in the eye. The look froze Charlie’s bones.

He took a step back, terrified he’d be assaulted in the same way. But the demon scuttled off, lashing its tail as it slipped into the shadows.

Faultless stared at Folcci’s mutilated body. The man was still alive.

How can he be alive if he’s dead? thought Faultless. But maybe we don’t die. Maybe we just suffer. We leave the earth and either come here or go to heaven, where we continue our lives.

Faultless crept towards Folcci.

The Italian moaned. His mouth opened and closed. He was a bloody mess—a pile of torn meat.

Faultless stood in front of the Godfather.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a voice.

Faultless’s bladder almost emptied there and then. He wheeled round.

“You,” he said.

“Who did you expect,” said Lew, “Satan?”

“I think so.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Is he dead?” said Faultless.

“Gianluca Folcci left his human life at 11:58 pm, Greenwich Mean Time, on February 27, 2011, shot by Italian police. The moment he left that life, he began this one. His eternal life. His suffering has started, Charlie. It will never end. And what a beautiful agony, don’t you think?”

“You are the Devil.”

“Oh, I am everything, Charlie.”

“Am I dead?”

“No, you’re not dead.”

“So is this a nightmare?”

“I suppose it’s quite terrifying for you.”

“Is it a nightmare or not?”

“No it’s not.”

“Then why am I here?”

“For the same reason as everyone else—to suffer.”