Quentin sat at the top of the triangle. He hadn’t imagined that his journey to the underworld would be quite this ridiculous. He’d rather hoped it would involve drawing unholy sigils in the sand in letters of fire ten feet high, and flinging open the portal to hell. You can’t win them all.

“Slide down the slide,” the sloth said again.

It was a raw pine board, so he had to scooch himself along for a few feet, but eventually he managed to slide the rest of the way to the bottom. He was ready at any moment for a splinter to stab him in the ass, but none did. His bare feet planted in the firm cold sand. He stopped.

“Now what?” he called.

“Be patient,” said the sloth.

Everyone waited. A wave flopped. A gust of wind ruffled the fabric of his pajamas.

“Should I—?”

“Try wiggling your toes a little.”

Quentin wiggled them deeper into the cold, damp beach. He was about to get up and call it a night when he felt his toes break through something into nothing, and the sand gave way, and he slid down through it.

The moment he passed beneath the sand the slide became a real slide, made of metal, with metal guardrails. A playground slide. He slid down it in total darkness, with nothing around him as far as he could tell. It wasn’t a perfect system—every time he got up a decent head of speed he would get stuck and have to scooch again, his butt squeaking loudly in the pitch-black.

A light appeared, far ahead and below him. He wasn’t moving very fast, so he had plenty of time to check it out on his way down. It was an ordinary unshaded electric light set in a brick wall. The brickwork was old and uneven and could have used some repointing. Below the light was a pair of metal double doors painted a gray-brown. They were absolutely ordinary, the kind that might have opened onto a school auditorium.

In front of it stood someone who looked too small to be standing in front of the entrance to hell. He might have been eight years old. He was a sharp-looking little boy, with short black hair and a narrow face. He wore a little-boy-sized gray suit with a white shirt, but no tie. He looked like he’d gotten fidgety in church and come outside for a minute to blow off steam.

He didn’t even have a stool to sit on, so he just stood in place as well as an eight-year-old boy can. He tried and failed to whistle. He kicked at nothing in particular.

Quentin thought it prudent to slow down and stop about twenty feet from the bottom of the slide. The boy watched him.

“Hi,” the boy said. His voice sounded loud in the silence.

“Hi,” Quentin said.