I wonder what Crichton is going to do to get us out of this. I am a passenger now, and that gives me time to do what I so rarely have opportunity to do. Think.
“You weren’t in the back of the car. I put my duffel in there.”
He doesn’t reply. But I know very well that men cannot appear from nowhere. The whole thing about being a person very much involves being one place, and then being in another. Things that don't have to be anywhere in particular before being somewhere else are not of this world.
“You came to me last night with the hot chip butty,” I say. “It was so nice, and this is nice too. So I don’t want to throw any of this in your face. But…”
The butty was delicious. Mrs Crocombe must have put it together in the middle of the night just for me. I can only imagine her having a fry up in the wee hours of the morning, then sending Crichton down to me. The two of them have been so very kind to me. They are they only ones who've seemed pleased I was there. Bryn and Thor would rather I didn't exist at all. Yes, even Thor, whose desire has been evident from time to time, and who has shown me some softness, he'd probably wish he'd never met me.
The tires are squealing and the car is sliding from side to side, but Crichton keeps it on the increasingly narrow lanes with the ease of a rally driver.
"Why are you on my side?”
“Because you’re one of us, miss. You knew what was in the case the moment you saw it. Unlike the generally dull public, you were drawn to power, because it comes from the same place you do.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He smiles gently and navigates the car around a sharp bend, over a hillock, and through a portal to Hell.
Literally.
Before I know what is happening, the hill in front of us is no longer a gentle rise with a calm track ascending. It is jagged rock, a hole torn straight through the earth and reality itself. I didn't see it open up, surely such a tectonic event would destroy everything for miles around. But there’s not even a shudder. There’s just the strangeness and the openness, and a cavern made for two before us. The road fractures into a thousand pieces, but Crichton does not slow for even a moment. He presses his foot even closer to the floor, going faster, accelerating into the maw of the world.
“Don’t tell anybody,” he winks. “The Fathers get ever so cross when we do things like this.”
I am too busy being shocked by my sudden new surroundings. Instead of England’s green and pleasant land rolling by the windows, there’s a lake of fire and presumably brimstone on either side and great red rising hills upon which ancient buildings stand. I can see figures moving around in the distance with slow and shambling gaits that speak to pain.
“Are we in Hell?” I cannot believe I am asking that question.
“Oh, yes. You can see the fresh souls simmering in the lake. See their hands?”
I thought the lake was filled with strange rivulets, but actually it is covered in the tips of waving fingers of those who have been cast into it by winged demons who catch them as they come falling through the roof of this world, and then toss them into the lake directly.
It is a horrific and terrible sight, and yet I cannot take my eyes off it, because it's also the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, all this demonic power on display at a moment’s notice.
“Cool.”
“Not cool. Very warm. Positively boiling. You know, those who take the lives of others spend much longer in the lake than others.”
“I thought everybody spent eternity there.”
“Oh no. Hell is much more than a lake district. There are many ways to punish a soul which has strayed.”
I can't stop staring. I know I am supposed to be horrified. I am horrified. This is all terrible. But it’s also awesome, in the old testament meaning thereof. I am awed.
The journey ends too soon. Before I know it, there is a gleaming portal to the world above, ringed in gold. The road goes up and through that portal. Crichton drives us up and out of Hell and when we emerge, we are in the courtyard of Direview Abbey, safely behind the walls encircling the rear, and well out of view of any patrolling policemen.
“I suggest you prepare yourself," Crichton says. “Your punishment is next to come, and I imagine it is arriving on swift wings.”
No sooner has he warned me than Thor bursts out of the abbey's rear door. I never noticed the ornate carvings on that when I was first taken here. It catches the afternoon sun, and I can’t help but see that there is a skull among the roses and thorns.