The Mephistophelean House (11 page)

Horsetail and sitka sledge moated cinders, toad rush, and ash. I stood ankle deep in the mud, my disappointment ebbing. In losing Mathew I lost nothing.

“Jonsrud.”

Chapter 11

Menos Hall

The turnstile torqued like a man catcher. Northgate was a roping shoot. The gabled roofs and archways were bedizened in the lightning. From my vantage point I could see the red brick path leading through the trees to the building with Palladian windows. Beyond the refectory the red brick path terminated in the courtyard. A drain gurgled next to a rock pile. Pine cones floated in a can. A placard read,

Menos Hall

“Menos Hall. This is it.”

The rocks in the pile were full of holes. I took the biggest one I could find and pressed the courtyard door, the fear of getting caught replaying itself over and over.

What if my timing was off?

What if I ran into someone?

I tiptoed upstairs. There was a judas hole. I looked inside. The felt faced rube leaned against the gate.

“Just what the Doctor ordered.”

I pressed the door.

The hinges creaked.

The felt faced rube did not stir.

I doubted myself.

Could I go on?

The burnished door swung noiselessly ajar.

Water dripped from my clothes. The felt faced rube must have been asleep for he remained in his chair.

I crept up behind him.

The rube opened his eyes.

“Hey.”

I smashed the rock in his eye.

“You’re going to pay for that.”

A roughshod roundhouse cracked his temple.

The rube fell on the floor.

“Erhh.”

I discarded the rock, took the straight stick, and found a set of keys in his pocket. Tubing his appendages in a straightjacket I dug my foot in his back, looped the bracers, and secured the restraint.

“Surprised I knew how to do that.”

The rube bled on the floor.

“Shouldn’t sleep on the job.”

Jonsrud was nowhere to be seen.

I dragged the rube in a cell.

“What the, hey, what!?”

I hogtied the double bracer to the posterior restraint and leaned against the wall.

“Bu….Wh...Wha......Why? What did I do? What did I do?”

I didn’t know what to say.

No one would hear his cries.

I double checked the outer cells, certain Jonsrud was there. All were occupied by the unfortunate wards of the House on Asylum Road, umbrageous, recondite, rueful, with eyes that hung from their sockets. The cell in which I remembered Jonsrud to be was unoccupied.

The bars of the iron gate blocked access to the inner ward. I unlocked the gate and looked inside.

Jonsrud was gone.

The rube whimpered.

I drew the straight stick.

“You know what,” I reminisced, “this is the same cell I was in, isn’t it?”

“I just did what I was told.”

“The cell you put me in.”

The straight stick pivoted.

“Please. Don’t.”

“Where is the blonde man with long hair who was housed here?”

“Wh...wh...wh...what?”

I scoffed.

“Where is Jonsrud?”

The rube feigned.

“Is it me or is everyone here crazy? Jonsrud. The blond man with blue eyes and long hair? Where did you take him, you bastard?”

“To...to...to...to... but...but...but...”

“But what?”

“But...I...I...just…did what I was told...”

“Where is he?”

“I...I...I...I did what I was told, oh Lord, I did what I was told, I did what I was told, oh Lord, don’t put me in the hole.”

“Speak up, you loony.”

“Don’t put me in the hole again, don’t put me in the hole. I beg you on my mortal soul, don’t put me in the hole. I did what I was told, oh Lord, I did what I was told, I did what I was told, oh Lord, don’t put me in the hole.”

“Tell me where he is or I’ll...”

“He’s...he’s..mma...he’s in...he’s in...mma”

“Spit it out, fat boy,” the straight stick tapped his temple.

“Mma, mmm, mmale, Malebolge...mmm...Malebolge Manor, The Operating Theater...but I did what I was told, oh lord, don’t put me in the hole...I beg you on my mortal soul, don’t put me in the hole...”

I left him in the cell. Sensation returned to my extremities, the sensation of pain. I made my way back to the courtyard, straight stick in my hand, keys in my pocket, rain in the courtyard.

“I feel a sickness in my soul take hold and start to spread, what tortures are awaiting me, what travesties, what dread, what alternate reality is this through which I tread, eternal life bequeathed the dead, what secrets hide within my head, which secrets better left unsaid?”

There was a high wall running from Menos Hall to an iron promontory. I exited the courtyard trusting in the imperative for self-preservation. There was no one in sight. I followed the wall up the path. A portcullis with a griphoist joined the promontory to the hedge. A key from the rube’s ring penetrated the lock. The portcullis retracted.

It was bedlam. A knot garden was immured in thunder and lightning. A man ran in a boot of nails, men wrestled in a pit, a hip faced girl hid in the hedge beneath a pruned soffit. The tortured souls stripped to the waist sought shelter from the storm, but there was nowhere to hide inside a warren of dolor.

A guard appeared in a tower. I cornered the gangway unchallenged, keeping out of sight. An attendant stepped from the trees, blocking my way.

I clutched the straight stick.

The attendant shunted the gangway.

How could I have gone unnoticed?

Was I a ghost?

A non-entity?

“They must think I'm one of them."

Metal spiders ran down my spine. I ripped a thorn out of my shoulder and looked at it.

It was barbed, like a flail.

“This place is a torture factory.”

I heard screaming. I snuck under the gangway and followed the hedge, coming to a copse. A man climbed a trellis of thorns pursued by a gristly hound. Thorns ribboned the poor man’s hands, the hound pulling him down. Feathers of flesh as it clamped and it jerked and reworked the man's bleeding leg stumps matted the fur of the bullheaded cur with his offal, his man-hash, and lumps. A sneering attendant looked on in delight as he fed the hound more and more chain, biting and clawing it's way up the trellis he gave the hound complete free reign.

Clouds swallowed the trees, the grounds a marshy mire, a metallic lockstep under thunder tripping through the wire. I pressed against the hedge and turned to face that which I feared, the noxious spit and stinking breath of ludic whispering in my ear.

“They locked me in a boot of nails, bolted to my bones, and force me till I’ve had my fill, a stomach full of stones.”

The booted man then let me go and cried out in despair, clanking ankle deep in mud began to pull out all his hair. In his wake I saw a break hewn in the hedge a flight of stairs, a columned concourse overlooking the inimical parterre. Thunder bled and lightning scoured alternating shadows, and I pitied the abandoned souls cast out and left to harrow, jabbed in guts and sucker punched with straight sticks snapped across their knees, the tortured souls left to succumb to an insane hierarchy.

I had a change of heart.

“Each and every tortured soul, a victim of the State’s control, an offshoot culled to stave the whole, it's time to give back what you stole.”

A column with scrolls and acanthus leaves bore the inscription,

Malebolge Manor

Chapter 12

Malebolge Manor

“Jonsrud.”

I tried to get my bearings. A field of capitals bracketed a stylobate. The field was constructed with such mathematical precision that every direction terminated in a colonnade. I projected a solid line through the columns, careful not to lose myself in the illusion.

Lightning arrayed. Wind hit my face. I wondered if I was coming to the center. To my surprise I found myself back over the parterre. Unable to judge direction, I returned to the very same spot from which I began.

The journey was catching up with me. I was horrified by the prospect that I might become one of the tortured souls in the yard, stripped to the waist in the thunder and lightning. I reengaged the field but every direction looked the same. There was no way through.

I picked a piece of slate off the concourse and marked the entasis of the outer column, stepping across the grid to the next. I repeated the process, thereby marking each entasis. Column by column I vectored the field in what I reasoned a straight line to be.

The rain quickened. The wind blew in my face. I stepped out onto the columned concourse.

A roving attendant took out his straight stick and unloosed upon those sinking into the pit. The sneering attendant emerged from the copse, the gristly hound foaming and licking its chops. A man in the pit fought to pull himself up and ran into the copse with his tongue sticking out. The sneering attendant then let loose the chain, from the copse came the sound of the screaming again.

I faced the colonnade.

“If everything’s upside-down, would a straight line really be straight? Wouldn’t it curve? Into a circle? Wouldn’t a straight line curve into a perfect circle?”

The hash marks projected a theoretical line. I veered, expecting to find myself back on the concourse, but to my astonishment the rain faded and vapor collected on the stones.

“This is it.”

Columns jutted like deadwood. I continued, going nowhere, looping around and around, losing sight of the hash marks. I noticed a discoloration in the distance. A wall with no doors stretched uniformly into a ruined field.

“A wall. But no way around.”

I heard footsteps.

A shadow crossed the colonnade.

The footsteps halted.

I gripped the straight stick. My breath misted. From behind the entasis I could hear breathing. Vapor sluiced like slurry. The wall stretched in both directions, staid columns a broken field of monoliths.

The straight stick descanted.

The vapor coalesced.

The footsteps receded.

The shadow split the mire.

I exhaled.

“How long until my luck runs out?”

I trailed the footsteps through the columns, keeping my distance, but the shadow gave pause and I began to second guess myself.

“This is too easy.”

In the stony field I could hear perfectly. A key was inserted in a lock. A door opened. The door shut. The footsteps were gone.

I peeked from behind a shaft.

A blivet was vaulted in a recess.

“Menos Hall.”

I grasped the blivet.

It seared like a devil’s fork.

“I hope I have the right key.”

I began feeding keys into a mortise lock. Heat from the wall radiated across the bridge of my nose. The metal surface glowed. I was running out of keys. Several I had used; of the few that remained, only one fit.

The mortise released the blivet.

The door opened.

Luciferin effused a hellish painting upon an ambulatory wall. A city caught fire, lit coals fell from the sky, burning bodies in boiling rivers, the vanquished clawing their way from immolation only to be quartered by blade wielding daemons who appeared to be the very same overlords inciting battle in the first place.

The longer I looked at the painting, the more cracks appeared. The columns in the ruined field were in the library. The gargoyles on the old dorm block were pigeons in the tree.

There were two doors. One was a storage closet. The other was a checkpoint.

Guards played cards on a metal folding table.

“Hey, did you hear something?”

The door shut.

I backtracked through the ambulatory and hid in the storage closet.

I could hear footsteps.

My breathing slowed. I cleared my mind, gripping the straight stick.

The closet opened.

Light spilled on the floor.

‘Don’t turn the light on…’

The door shut. I could hear voices.

Had I been discovered?

Somebody laughed.

A match struck.

The ironclad door gnashed shut.

Menos Hall was silent.

The ambulatory was empty. I infiltrated the checkpoint and operated the lever to the gate. To my disdain I found yet another locked door. I withdrew the ring, wondering how much time I’d have before the guards returned.