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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

Even worse, though, I could feel something else now, something that enwrapped and increased the other bad feelings like a crushing, ice-cold fist. I can’t explain it—I’ll never be able to. Although it came on slowly, when I finally could pick it out from the other kinds of horror, it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. Freezing cold, but I’m not talking about temperature, like ice and snow. This was the cold of the absolute dark, the cold in which nothing could live, the point at which even the play of atoms slowed to a stop. Empty. Nothing. The end. But what was most terrifying about it, what blasted even the horrors of all Hell’s pain and suffering out of my head, was that this bleak void at the bottom of everything was alive. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. It was alive, and it thought, and even though it was still tremendously far away, its presence sent my own thoughts shrieking in all directions like chickens trapped in a henhouse by a bloody-mouthed wolf.

I realized that I had fallen on my knees, clutching my head to keep my skull from exploding, retching out what little was in my stomach. Still the pressure and the sense of the thinking, waiting darkness grew worse. I was shrieking, babbling—I might even have screamed that I was an angel, for all I know—but the clay creature sharing the lifter paid no attention. I could feel my eyes forced out of their sockets from within, could feel my guts crushed like I’d been rammed from both sides by garbage trucks, could feel what was left of my sanity pouring out of a me-shaped hole like dirty water down a drain. And then we stopped.

When the shuddering ended, I lay in a limp blob where I was, unable to stand or speak. Something closed on me like a claw in one of those arcade games, lifting me up until I dangled in midair, wheezing and moaning. I could dimly see the stale yellow eyes of the mud man as he looked me over, then the door of the lifter opened and he threw me out like a dirty shirt. A moment later, as I wriggled on the baking stone floor outside the lifter, helpless as a waterlogged earthworm, the lifter door hissed shut. I heard the pressure build again, then it was gone, the cage clanking and groaning as it dropped into the depths.