Chapters (60)
- DAW Books Presents
- HAPPY HOURINHELL
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Dedication
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- interlude
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- interlude
- thirteen
- fourteen
- interlude
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- interlude
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- epilogue
The lifter was dropping faster now, the voice spitting the names of the levels into my ears like a racetrack announcer trying to call a close four-horse finish. Abaddon Heights. Disease Row. Necro Flats. Acheron Fork. Lower Acheron Fork. Abaddon Waste. And then we were through the Abaddon levels and still plunging downward. At first I thought it was just fear that was making me feel feverish, but then I realized that the lifter cage was getting hotter and closer by the second. The sweat vaporized from my skin as soon as I squeezed it out. My blood hammered in my ears.
The mud man ignored my gasps, immersed perhaps in thoughts of the horrible place he was going, the horrible things he would be doing, but now he began to change. His hide, or whatever it was that had made him look like he was smeared with something sticky, peanut butter or some less pleasant material, was beginning to harden like clay fired in a kiln. As he dried his skin grew smoother, stonier, until he really did begin to look like a statue, a seven foot tall golem, dead but for the smoldering, piss-yellow eyes.
I could barely understand the announcements now, the words running together so that I could snatch only fragments: “Flensing Scar Tissue Junction Hook Burning Shrike Fistula . . .” But it wasn’t just the heat that made me feel like I was dying now, it was the words turning into pictures in my brain, with no work from my own imagination. Somehow the depth acted on me like increasing pressure, forcing images into my head, endless halls full of screeching voices, reflex cries for help that the screecher knew wasn’t coming, chambers as big as grand ballrooms full of stone tables, each table with a ruined but still living body writhing atop it, animals without eyes, rooms full of thunder and blood spray, the pounding of metal against vulnerable flesh, barking dogs, howling wolves, and through it all a sensation of unparalleled misery and hopelessness that squeezed my skull like a monstrous pair of pliers.
“I can’t,” I gasped.
The clay thing stared at me for a moment, then looked away, as if I were a leaf that had blown across its path.
The pressure grew stronger, but the other passenger had simply become more compact, more shiny, as if it had been glazed and fired in a kiln.
Punishment. Punishment. Punishment. Every name the voice whispered into my head seemed to have that word in it. Punishment. We were heading down into the ultimate depths, where the worst work of Hell went on in endless night, pain measured out in just the right size doses to last as long as the universe itself.