Damnation For Beginners Part 6

"I'll tell you how," Jack said to the teller. "I want every man and woman employed by this corporation to come in here right now, and kneel on the floor and beg for my dead wife's forgiveness." His voice started to falter. "And then I want Henry Sill's corpse dragged out into the sunlight and left to rot until I receive a message from The Lord of h.e.l.l himself telling me that the owner of this corporation has thrown his soul into a Mesmerist cesspit. And I want it done now, because if isn't, I'll go to h.e.l.l myself and spend the rest of my eternity making the rest of his eternity unbearable."

The clock began to chime repeatedly.

"Ten seconds," Jack said.

The teller opened his mouth.

The door to the disembarkation platform opened with a thud and a sudden inpouring of light. The customers fled, until only the silhouette of the elderly man lingered in the doorway. Then he, too, turned away. In a hoa.r.s.e whisper he said, "You made that rope too taut, son."

Jack grinned manically. "Don't you get it?" he said. "This is-"

The trapdoor opened below him.

THE SUICIDE CLUB.

CCORDING TO CHARLES RAIN'S book, surviving d.a.m.nation depended almost entirely on one's ability to control one's mental state, and therefore one's environment. Since an individual's amount of personal s.p.a.ce in h.e.l.l was largely determined by his confidence and sheer-b.l.o.o.d.y-minded aggression, it was all too easy for the d.a.m.ned to give up in despair and allow themselves to be crushed by the minds around them.

Jack resolved to remain focused on his objective. He began to test the boundaries of his prison.

By determined concentration, he found that he was able, after a while, to enlarge the room he occupied by several square feet. He watched as each of the white panelled walls around him swelled, and then slowly pushed outwards. Pale floorboards formed to occupy the extra s.p.a.ce he'd created for himself. A terrible sound of cracking stone and mortar accompanied the whole endeavour; it sounded, for all the world, like breaking bones.

He sat on his bed, trembling and exhausted.

And then the walls began to push back. Jack could feel the other rooms around him-the other souls-reacting to his efforts. It was a sensation of pressure from all sides, of being jostled by a crowd, while remaining strangely dislocated from that same crowd. Within a matter of moments, he found himself suffering from a fierce headache. A dull metallic pounding resounded in his ears, followed by a brief and sinister laugh.

Jack strode over to the curtains and pulled them open.

Red brick lay behind the windows.

He tried one of the wall hatches next, only to find a similar impenetrable barrier. He opened another hatch, and another, but could see nothing of the rooms beyond his own except their exterior brickwork. Finally, he grabbed a claw hammer from the many tools scattered across the floor and approached one of the open hatches. He hesitated a moment, then stove the hammer deep into the mortar.

White light exploded behind his eyes, stunning him momentarily: a flare of pain that seemed to shoot through his entire brain, before coalescing into a single pinpoint of agony in his left temple. He cried out, reeling backwards, and dropped the hammer. For an instant the room around him appeared to be flooded with the same excruciating illumination. The white walls and furniture fizzed like burning magnesium. Jack clasped an arm across his face.

When he lowered his arm again, everything seemed to have returned to normal. A dull ache now pulsed in the back of his head. The muscles under his chin felt raw, as if he'd wrenched his neck around. He swallowed painfully, then looked back up at the hatch. The red brick wall had vanished, leaving a newly-formed opening into the room beyond. Glaring at him through this, was a man.

"The h.e.l.l do you think you're doing?" the man said.

Jack just stared up at him mutely.

For a while, the man worked his jaw left and right as though chewing things over. He was slightly older than Jack, with a grizzled chin and an unruly burst of brown hair. His gaze wandered around Jack's apartment; he frowned at the geometric wall panelling, then his attention lingered on the torture implements scattered across the floor. "What's all this for?" he said.

The walls around Jack began to turn from white to pink.

"You kinky or something?"

"It's none of your business."

The man dragged his gaze away from the iron maiden, and looked at Jack with what appeared to be growing amus.e.m.e.nt. "I'm not making any judgements, fellow. If that's your thing, then..."

"It's not what you think."

"Hey, who cares? It's h.e.l.l, right?"

"It's not kinky," Jack said.

"Yeah, fine, whatever you say." The man was looking around again. "So why did you hang yourself?"

The question startled Jack. "How did you know that?"

The man inclined his head. "Your curtain pulls," he said, "have little nooses on the ends."

Jack hadn't noticed this particular detail before. A marked increase in the temperature of his surroundings accompanied his steadily rising levels of embarra.s.sment.

The man grinned. "Relax, will you? I knew what to look for. It all supports my theory."

"What theory?"

"That suicides always end up together down here. All the people around you killed themselves in one way or another. Knives, nooses, poison, drowning, jumpers. This whole d.a.m.ned crawling monstrosity of a building is packed with them."

"You...?"

"I jumped," he admitted. "Changed my mind halfway down, not that it made any difference. I'm stuck here in the house of fun with the rest of you a.r.s.eholes." He scratched his head behind his ear, then looked at Jack carefully for a long moment. "So how do you feel now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you still want to die?"

"I'm already dead."

The man grunted. "That's just your body. I mean, do you want to continue to exist? You can survive down here indefinitely as long as you have the will to keep on going, and the b.l.o.o.d.y Mesmerists don't find you." He shrugged. "Or you can take other steps, pursue other...options."

"I want to get out of here."

The man pursed his lips. "You mean that?"

Jack nodded.

"Seriously mean it?"

"I said so, didn't I?"

"Well thank the G.o.ds for small mercies." The man closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them. "If either of us are ever going to get out of here, I need your help. I need you to back me up, man, talk to them before it's too late."

"Talk to whom?"

"The others," he said. "Your neighbours. The G.o.d-d.a.m.ned suicide club who are h.e.l.l bent on taking us all to our deaths. The real, non-existence, everlasting sort of death where you don't wake up again. Death of the soul sort of death. Haven't you even looked outside yet?"

"I don't know...which way-"

"That way." He jabbed a finger at the curtains. "Just move this room of yours twenty or thirty feet and you'll reach the edge of the building. Wait till Dunnings is asleep, and then just shove his b.l.o.o.d.y apartment the h.e.l.l out of your way. He'll wake up, but don't let him stop you. h.e.l.l is a contest of wills. If you really want to survive down here then you're going to have to learn to trample over other people's egos." He grinned. "Fortunately for you, Dunnings is a first cla.s.s a.r.s.ehole. He is the epitome of a.r.s.eholeness. If you could bottle a.r.s.eholeness and boil it right down until all that was left was a thick crust of pure unadulterated c.r.a.p at the bottom, then that would be him."

Jack looked at the curtained wall. Now he had a name to give the presence he felt lurking behind there. Dunnings. He turned back to the man in the hatch. "What do I call you?"

"Gillespie," the other man said. "Robert Gillespie, but call me Bob. Do you want me to give you the knock when the a.r.s.ehole drifts off?" He inclined his head towards the wall again. "Most newcomers can't sense things like that."

"Thanks." Jack hesitated. "Do you mind me asking...?"

"What? Why I did it?"

Jack nodded.

The other man sighed. "Because I was an idiot. I owed a lot of money, and..." He shook his head. "You know how it goes."

An idea occurred to Jack. "You're not from Cog, are you?" he said.

"Of course I am," Gillespie said. "Everyone here is from Cog or thereabouts. I lived in Port Sellen. The others came from Knuckletown, the Island, Highcliffe, couple of fellows from The Heights, Minnow Road, Alderney. It's like the suicide thing, there's a geographical connection to it all, too. Souls from a particular area always cl.u.s.ter. Which part of the city are you from?"

"Highcliffe." Jack reached his hand towards the hatch. "I'm Jack Aviso."

Gillespie recoiled. "Wait! Stop!"

Jack froze.

"This room is my soul, you idiot. Keep your b.l.o.o.d.y hands to yourself."

Gillespie reappeared at the hatch several hours later that day-or night. Jack had yet to determine if such concepts even existed in h.e.l.l. He had been lying on his bed, trying to recall the transition between the moment of his death and his arrival here. He remembered the Complaint Wheel cabin, and the rope, and he remembered waking up, but nothing between. Gillespie had referred to him as a newcomer, but how had Jack, along with his surroundings, actually managed to become entangled among this particular group of people?

"You need to watch out for that," Gillespie said through the wall hatch.

"For what?"

"Things start moving about when you try to figure this place out. Furniture, walls, doors...before you know it, you've redecorated." He pressed a finger against the side of his head. "You've got to focus, keep everything in an ordered place, if you want to stay sane down here."

Jack realised the other man was right. Almost all of the furniture in his room had changed position. The iron maiden had moved much closer to the bed, as if it had meant to sneak up and ambush him. Many of the white panels had shifted from the walls and were now traversing the floor and ceiling, giving the whole place a kind of upended feel. It was quite disconcerting. "How did I come to be here?" he said. "Among all of you?"

"You killed yourself."

"No, I mean, how did I actually arrive here. I don't remember."

Gillespie shook his head. "We'll talk about that later. Small steps, Jack. Sort yourself out first, find your place in the hierarchy, build up your confidence. Too much knowledge at once can unhinge a man, and I need you to stay sharp." He looked over at the wall, in the direction of Dunnings's apartment. "So, are you ready to do this?"

Jack said he was.

Gillespie told him to prepare for the push in exactly the same way as one might prepare for a short but intense physical exertion. He made him face the wall he intended to move, the only section of Jack's subconscious obscured by drapes. Deep breaths, psyche yourself up, feel your surroundings, the gentle pressures on all sides, the pulse of your sleeping neighbour's soul. Now imagine what you need to do. Your subconscious created those windows in that wall for a reason. It knew where the outside lay. Get ready...

And push.

Jack pushed.

With a thunderous crack and roar, the wall receded by five, ten, fifteen feet. The ceiling, floor, and adjacent walls all stretched to accommodate the newly created s.p.a.ce. He sensed the structure out with his soul crumble and break apart as he shoved his way through the bricks and mortar of his neighbour's sleeping mind.

And then suddenly he felt resistance. In the back of his own mind, he thought he heard a growl, followed by a furious roar. The window drapes started to shake violently. The receding wall slowed, stopped, and all at once the effort of his expansion became unbearable. Evidently, Dunnings had woken up, and was now fighting back.

"Don't stop now," Gillespie cried. "Shove harder!"

Jack put all of his mind's muscle into the task. He imagined he heard manic screaming coming from beyond the drapes. He bulled forwards, throwing every ounce of his will into moving the wall onwards. It crept forward another foot, then five, and then, quite suddenly, the resistance vanished. The wall shot away from him another ten feet. Behind it he could sense nothing but air.

He slumped on the bed, exhausted, his nerves raw and twitching with a thousand new sensations.

Gillespie clapped his hands. "Well done, son," he said. "You see how easy it is when you put your mind to it?"

"That...wasn't...easy."

"Course it was easy," Gillespie said. "I told you Dunnings was an a.r.s.ehole. Now draw back the curtains, and take a look at where you are. Just try not to panic, will you?"

The curtains, along with the wall itself, now stood some forty feet away from Jack. His efforts had significantly increased the size of the apartment. And yet even now he could sense Dunnings's disapproval. The brickwork lurking behind the right-hand side of the room seemed to throb with anger.

"What are you waiting for? Go on, I'll meet you out there."

Out there?

Jack got to his feet, shakily. He crossed his apartment and stood before the curtains. Then he drew them back.

Beyond the windows boiled a sky as hot and red as furnace metal, its horizons bruised by reefs of smouldering crimson cloud. He was looking down from a height of three or four storeys across a sinuous maze of blood red ca.n.a.ls and interconnected pools, gruesome fluidways that formed loops and whorls between endless tiers of black stone walls, arches, and towers. Rotten temples and huge dark ziggurats rose from flooded quadrangles amidst the ragged stumps of pillars and smashed colonnades, while here and there great piles of broken stonework loomed over the surrounding mora.s.s, glistening like mountains of wet anthracite. Even the air itself looked damp and unwholesome, curried by mists and columns of red vapour.

Jack took a step back, instinctively covering his nose, before he spotted Gillespie. His neighbour was standing outside, on a balcony to the right of Jack's own apartment, gesturing at him to open the window.

Jack shook his head.

Gillespie mouthed something incomprehensible. He gestured again, this time with greater insistence.

Jack laid a hand on the window handle. He took a deep breath and then opened it.

A breeze wafted in, warm and wet and carrying a rich iron odour. It reminded him of the alleyways behind the butchers' shops in Knuckletown. A low rumbling sound came from somewhere below the window.

"...to create a balcony," Gillespie said.

Jack peered down. A confusion of different architectural styles made up the facade below, various faces of brick, stone and ironwork all crushed together into an unregulated mess. Most of it looked stained-or perhaps burnt-black. A nest of ca.n.a.ls separated by dense stone walls stretched out around the base of the building, the b.l.o.o.d.y waters shining dully in the uncertain light. He could not locate the source of the noise. "What did you say?" he said to Gillespie.

"I said, you just need to think of stepping out onto a balcony, and your mind will create one."

"I don't want one," Jack said.

The other man spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. "Suit yourself," he said. "But if you want to get out of this place, you'd better get used to altering your own environment. You think you can just climb down this wall without protection? The shock of leaving all this-" he slapped a hand on the bal.u.s.trade "-would snap your mind."

Jack recalled the warning in Marley's book. If his immediate physical surroundings were actually defensive barriers created by the core of his soul, then he could not simply step outside without leaving himself vulnerable. To escape from his own dwelling in h.e.l.l was not possible. In order to travel, he had to bring his apartment with him.

The floor under him jolted suddenly, nearly knocked him of his feet.