Hellbound

Hell Bound

1

Uncle Reggie never remarried after his wife miscarried, so, I was the only one left to leave anything to. The abortion inducing medication Mifepristone was found in Auntie Beth’s system, and she allegedly hadn’t put it there. Beth told everyone it was Reggie, and he made no attempt to deny it, which was as good as an admission to my folks. She didn’t end up pressing charges; she mentioned vaguely that Reggie had connections, though dad scoffed at that. Auntie Beth divorced him soon after, and we never saw her again, which was a shame, because, of the two, we actually liked her.

Now, Uncle Reggie was no longer “at capacity,” which was another way of saying his mind was gone, and he couldn’t take care of himself anymore. Despite his deterioration, the old hatred of the man certainly hit different now that I had a kid on the way. My wife, Emily, wasn’t showing, so it didn’t feel real yet, but it was scary all the same. I didn’t know how to react when the Will said he had bequeathed all his possessions to me in the event of his Death or losing capacity. It was a pleasant surprise, but now I felt only frustration as I knelt on the carpet searching old dusty boxes for receipts and paperwork. Anything. The deed to the house, proof of ownership of the car, the guns; couldn’t find a hint of it. The lawyer said it wasn’t entirely necessary, but it made transitioning the assets easier, when it finally was time to send him to the assisted living home.

“You find it, yet?” Uncle Reggie asked from his armchair, overgrown fingernails sketching pale lines in the leather of the armrests. He grinned with stained teeth cracked like weathered porcelain.

“This is a game, isn’t it?” I asked. “You know where the papers are.”

Reggie shrugged, and I sighed, and he grinned again.

“Look,” I said, “the sooner I find the papers, the sooner I’m out of your hair.”

“But maybe I like the company,” he said. “I haven’t seen you since you were knee high.”

“You were at my wedding, actually.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah, I insisted you be there. I think that’s maybe why you left everything to me in the Will rather than Dad. But if you were going out of your way to do me a solid, why aren’t you helping me now?”

“Perhaps I’m not eager to make that next step. Believe it or not, kid, it’s no fun losing control of your life. No fun at all.”

I frowned and squatted by a box yet unopened. On day three of searching through his things, my sympathy well had all but run out at this point. A quick perusal of the newest box revealed documents, government seals, and creased ID badges of a younger man with determined eyes and a smug smile.

“NASA?”

“Yes’sa,” he answered, and cackled wildly.

“I thought you worked onboard a researching vessel in the Antarctic.”

“It’s a good place to see the stars,” he murmured.

Uncle Reggie was a shut in, even when married; but, after the miscarriage, he shunned the light of day. He couldn’t so much as look at a picture of a starry night, which begged the question.

“How does an agoraphobe work for NASA, the organization all about shooting people into the wild blue yonder?”

“I don’t like that word.”

“NASA?”

“‘Agoraphobe.’ Phobia suggests the fear is irrational.”

I sifted through the documents, all of it dating back to the 1980s: consent forms, memos, and graphs, so many graphs. Pages of equations. Nothing here but work-related crap. I doubted the deed would be there. A picture peaked from under the pages; a polaroid, mostly white except for the corner where a red mist glowed. Looked like firelit smoke.

“What is all this? What’s with this expedition anyway? You never talked about it. What was ‘MAYA?’”

“The Indian Goddess of Illusion.”

“The MAYA project you worked for, I mean.”

“Ah, that,” he grinned, “we didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing, honestly. We were given a grant and a stipend to work on creating an algorithm that predicted suborbital trajectories with imbedded irregularities, concealing the actual nature of the mathematics from all but the most dedicated investigation.”

“What?”

He waved his hand impatiently, “We were tasked with creating a computer program that could track the real flight paths of planes while concealing the fact that they did not match the reality the operators were experiencing on their monitors.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“You’re soft in the head, are you? Here it is, then; the trouble with the Earth being dome-shaped in the age of airplanes is keeping the day-to-day operators in the control towers from realizing the irregularities in expected plane pathing. It’s not like you can trust thousands of aircraft controllers to be in on the secret without hundreds if not all of them slipping up. It was the only way.”

“Wait,” I said, “what?”

“Because, if the system didn’t muddy the waters, everyone would notice and there’d be alarm bells ringing in every control tower in the world, and how do you keep that quiet? Seemed pretty mundane at the time, didn’t it, Arty?”

“I’m not Arty.”

He flushed, “Crap. Crap! Now listen to me ramble. Did you find any of the old cassettes, yet? I want to make sure you get them.”

“No thanks; I have the internet.”

I sifted through the papers and found a map of the Earth. Lines and arrows crisscrossed it with equations scribbled along them and the margins. Reggie’s eyes went soft on seeing it.

“Sliding coefficients, that was the key to the longitudinal problem,” he muttered, “phew, Arty, locked up in that room for a year it felt like, living off of what? Macaroni and Cheese and beer. Breakfast of God-damn champions.”

“I’ll bite. What’s this about the world being a dome, then?”

Uncle stood suddenly, “The Earth is round, you imbecile. How many scientists had to die on that altar before you accept their sacrifice? Christ like, really. They gave you a chance to have a normal life, at least for a time.”

“What is your problem?” I said, picking up the fuzzy picture again.

He shrieked, an inhuman squeal, that ended in a demand, “Drop it!”

I froze, afraid he’d attack, but he remained firmly rooted like some great oak, but leaning dangerously. He searched the room, as if remembering where he was, suddenly. He shuffled over to the box, and with a rippling crack of arthritic joints, he knelt in front of me.

“You’re not,” he said, placing his hands down on the face down polaroid, “seeing the whole picture.”

He reached into the box and found three more pictures, holding them tight to his chest, like a winning hand of cards.

“I’ve read these theories on the internet. The Ice wall that keeps the water from spilling over the edges of a flat earth.”

“Not flat, dome shaped.”

“Oh, really? And what does it gain anyone to lie about the Earth being a ball?”

“If the Earth is round, then our backs are against the wall, so to speak, so we need not fear some terror sneaking up behind us. Listen, you want to know why they’d lie; perhaps it is because the truth is so goddamn mind numbingly bad that it’s preferable to spend trillions of dollars and killing thousands to perpetuate the illusion that the Earth is all alone, hurtling through a cold void without a care.”

“If the Earth were dome shaped, we’d know. We have pictures of the Earth, videos of it from orbit.”

“Yes, and the horizon curves away because the Earth is a dome, not flat. You don’t believe me, fine. Your phone, search for a photo of the moon landing.”

I looked up a photo on my phone and smirked, “Let me guess, how is the flag waving when there’s no wind?

“Notice anything missing?”

I frowned. “No.”

“When you live in the city, you can’t really see the stars because of the lights. But out in the void of space, the stars are the light you see by. At least they should be.”

My heart jumped. Every picture on my phone showed the earth as a half bubble of blue embedded in the black void like a rock partially submerged in mud. I immediately searched for an explanation and quickly found sites explaining the absence of stars in the picture.

“They’ll say lighting,” he went on, eyebrow cocked, “that was the excuse, I believe. A lot of technical jargon to throw off suspicion. People are eager to cling to explanations they don’t understand. But think about this. Imagine going all the way to the moon and missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to capture an image of naked space, without the obscuring haze of the atmosphere. You won’t find a photo like that anywhere, a direct picture of the stars from any satellite. Even today. Because when you rise above the veil, it’s not at all what it looks like from below.” He held up the photograph and set it down. “Not at all.”

It was an alternate photo of the Earth rise on the moon. The astronaut stood in the same place, still facing away, the earth still a half bubble, like a mushroom top, but it rested on a phallic crimson column reaching below the horizon of the moon. A twisted inverted spire, radiating crimson, with visible columns, archways, and towers.

“They didn’t really have good editing technology back then, the best they could do was erase everything aside from the Earth and call that truth. Naturally, curiosity got the better of them and they flew in for a closer look under the hood, so to speak.”

Reggie set down another picture, this one a closeup view of the inverted archways, the fiery aura revealing complex swirling shapes. My mind whirled with the intricate patterns, clockwork archways and convoluted geometries that beggared my understanding. The architecture defied the polaroid’s attempt to hold it still; the image swam restlessly as I examined its details.

“Sorry for the quality, these are actually just the pictures I managed to take of the originals. You could get lost observing the shapes of it, beyond human imagination and creativity. But look here.”

To the side of the image was a box containing an area of the spire zoomed in greater detail. There were shapes, limbs, a face.

“Are those people?”

“Yes.”

“No, they’re just the shape, though, they’re…”

“Souls.”

“Souls? Then you’re saying that’s-”

“Hell, in all its infernal glory, and the Earth its crowning jewel.”

“How?” I asked.

“A question without answer. There’s so little we understand about existence; it could always have been anything. A child’s plaything, a swirl of embers above a campfire, an amoeba on some titanic toilet bowl.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

He laughed, suddenly, and it snapped me out of it, but I realized tears were streaming down his face, “You’re afraid.”

“Damn right. That’s Hell!”

“But you haven’t even realized the worst part.”

Reggie began sobbing suddenly into his hands.

“What?” I demanded. “What!”

“If that’s Hell, where’s Heaven?”

2

“And, so, if there is no Heaven,” Uncle Reggie raved, “if there is only ever Hell, that means there is only one shared destiny for us all. Eternal torment. At first it was just me I worried about. I sobbed uncontrollably, inconsolably, but then she conceived and… What else could I do?”

“Of course, it’s that,” I said. “God damn it, of course. You’re just a coward, that’s all. We all know what really happened, and no one is ever going to forgive you for it. Have the grace to accept that, at least. Instead of making up these stupid stories, maybe go confess to a priest, or better yet, the cops.”

“It was mercy after all because it goes without saying that bacteria can’t suffer as men do, and mice cannot suffer as men do, and it is only when man is imbued with a complex soul that he becomes capable of Divine suffering. So, it was certainly a mercy to prevent this, to keep it from ever being complex enough to be damned. It is merciful, preferrable, you understand.”

That’s when I slammed the door in his face. He caught me off guard, granted. I ruefully laughed at the effort it must have taken, the amount of time he spent on creating the ruse. I guess when you never leave the house, you’ve got time for such nonsense.

Bastard! You can’t just do whatever you want and justify it with fables. I couldn’t imagine being so terrified, so frustrated, that I could take matters into my own hands like that. Halfway home I realized that he was alone, not “at capacity,” and his overnight nurse wouldn’t be there for another hour, because I said I would handle watching him. I thought about it, him disappearing suddenly, everyone asking me what happened and why wasn’t I there, all pretending suddenly to care. And that’s when it hit me even harder that if he wasn’t even put together enough to be trusted home alone or even to remember I wasn’t his friend from decades back, how was he maintaining such an elaborate tale about a hell spire beneath the Earth. Could someone that confused maintain a lie like that? I turned around the Camry and drove back. I reached his house and on opening the front door, I heard mumbling, and I entered the living room silently.

“Seeing it,” he was saying, wiping his blackboards methodically, “ourselves bound to the vestigial evil. The Earth a jewel atop a vast cosmic scepter for a God that lies dormant or dead amidst the shattered remains of a conquered Heaven. That’s if there ever was a Heaven to begin with. There’s always the chance that there has only ever been a Hell, eh? How do we know that the Bible wasn’t written by the Devil? As the Bible says, know the tree by the fruit it bears, and what wicked fruit it has produced. Even their most holy men, torturing themselves in dark halls while denying food for themselves, casting off pleasure, inverting it so everything that feels good is deemed evil. Strange, that. What kind of God would make things feel good when they’re bad?”

“You know I left, right?” I said, leaning on the doorframe, and he whirled.

“Weren’t you going home to Beth?” he asked dismissively.

“Emily. Aunt Beth was your wife remember? And yes, I was going home to my pregnant wife who is eager for me to come home.”

Reggie stared at me for a breath and turned away to the blackboard.

“We don’t know if there ever was a Heaven,” he continued, “but of God, we believe we found him.”

“Are you still talking about that?”

“You honestly have something of greater importance to discuss?”

This was getting out of hand, he was spiraling, but what if he wasn’t lying? What harm could come from probing?

I bit my lip briefly, “God’s a ‘he?’

“It, then.”

“How do you know you found it?”

“Well, if God were to appear onto us, how do you suppose it would look. What would it be like, the master of creation?”

“Incomprehensible, powerful. I don’t know.”

“Infinite, even?”

“Sure.”

“Mathematically infinitely powerful,” Uncle said drawing an equation and then wiping it with his palm before settling for drawing a cone, a vortex, “and yet so beyond comprehension, we can’t see it, we just know it by its power and weight.”

“Sure,” I said impatiently.

“Exactly like the black hole at the heart of our galaxy.”

My jaw dropped. Never in all my life had I genuinely gaped at anything. Despite the insanity of it, it did kind of make sense. If the Creator of the universe were anywhere, a black hole is exactly what I’d expect to see. And he was still focused on the lie. How was he doing it? He couldn’t even keep people’s names straight.

“There’s more, of course, much more to it,” Reggie went on. “When I retired the standard theory was that the black hole at the center of the ‘galaxy’ was essentially God’s sucking chest wound, the Milky Way its spreading bloodstain.”

“But you don’t have a picture of that, I bet. No pictures of God. And this hell spire, all you ever saw of it were pictures. How can you be sure it’s real if you never saw it in person?”

“I did see it. They brought me to the wall, but you couldn’t see much. Red tinted vapors, an endless landscape of roiling red clouds, shedding from the ice. But it cleared, for an instant, and I saw all the way down. Demons, monsters. And something else. We aren’t the only world that springs from this mighty stem, but what remains below? Smoldering discs of land, pruning away to dust.”

“So, if that’s Hell down there, why don’t we just hit first? We’re going there anyway, right?”

“Who do you think the nuclear stockpiles are really for? Each nation has enough munitions to annihilate the Earth several times over, and yet they’re still building more. They’re for what comes from below. There is fear that the pillar of Hell prevents the Earth from plummeting into some greater void below, that to attack Hell would be to attack the Earth at its very root. And there’s no telling if a new Earth might not bud from the tip of a wounded Hell to repeat the process all over again.”

“Think about it, though. What good is Hell? Who made it, and what do they want? It doesn’t make any sense. What is the spire attached to?”

He shrugged, “Perhaps it’s no different to them then our relationship to cattle. Perhaps this is something like a farm to them where they raise souls in their pasture to grow up. Free range human soul. Who can say? What conclusions does the canary come to from inside a cage, fed but trapped, at times entirely ignored and yet bound to a single spot when all it wants in the world is to be free.”

A knock on the door startled me.

“Where are you going?” Reggie asked suddenly. “We haven’t worked it out, yet. We have to do something, prepare for it somehow.”

“I’ve got to let your nurse in,” I said, “my shift is over.”

“You think you can just forget,” he said, turning away, “go home to Beth and live as if you didn’t even know, like it won’t gnaw at you. Even if you say you don’t believe, you’ll wonder, and it will guide your actions from the darkness. It’s far too late for ignorance. Better to have never lived than to be cattle. It’s mercy, understand. Mercy!”

I left him staring at the blackboard in the unlit living room. I let in the nurse, relieved to return to normalcy

“He’s really out of it today,” I said, and she laughed.

“He can be that way, but sometimes he’s with it, and his stories about the Antarctic are incredible. Man, what a lucky guy. I always wanted to go.”

I walked past her after saying goodbye, but no sooner had I gotten to my car then she ran to my window and knocked on it.

“Excuse me, sorry,” she said, her eyes wide, “where is he?”

“He was in the living room, he’s probably just back in the basement rummaging through old papers. I got him feeling all nostalgic, I think.”

She shook her head, “I checked everywhere. I was hoping I misunderstood you, that maybe you were bringing him over later, or something. I don’t know.”

We ran to the house to search, but he was gone. He was gone. A photo was on the end table in front of the chalkboard. The polaroid of whiteness with firelit smoke. I picked it up and turned it over to the back to see written, “The Edge,” and I reexamined the image with sudden urgency. In the smokey vapors was a face. And it was screaming, and behind it, a hazy acorn of darkness.

3

Not real, that was all. The sun was setting, and it would rise on the other side of the world; the moon would appear, lit by the selfsame sun, and then a new day would start. I would not feel the Earth shake as its stem was shaken by a cosmic wind. Because it was steady. I was sweating through my shirt; a headache was threatening between my eyes.

A conversation with the cops steadied my nerves, as I went through the mundane channels of making a statement and alerting them to my AWOL relative. I was more annoyed than worried. There was always a chance he believed that nonsense, and I know if I believed it, I would have already blown my brains out. Didn’t anyone ever have pleasant delusions? Like, where was the guy who just looks at the world and everything’s made of cotton candy and smells like coffee? No, it’s always hellfire with them. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and stopped. Arty. He thought I was Arty and called my wife Beth. My breath caught, and I accelerated through a red light, even as I fumbled for my cell phone.

“Call Emily,” I shouted, and the phone dialed.

“I was just about to call you,” Emily said, “that’s funny. Did you know your uncle made it all the way here, on foot? I thought you were supposed to be with him.”

Too late, I realized, as I felt myself almost float out of my seat. He was there, he would hit her in the stomach, hard, and then it was all over. Save the baby from hellfire, abort it before it could have a soul to torment. I brought the car to a skidding halt at the curb, and a weight lifted. Horrifyingly, I was relieved.

“Did he hurt you?” I asked.

“What? Why?” she said in a hushed tone. “I’m sorry, I meant to say he was here, but he was picked up already. Why would he try to hurt me?”

“The police were there?”

“This is embarrassing, but I didn’t ask. They showed up wearing suits and asked for him by name and took him. They flashed a badge, but I didn’t really see it.”

Why no uniforms? FBI, maybe.

“He was on the lamb, then?” she asked, with a laugh.

“Yeah,” I said, slowly, “left him alone for a moment, and he was off like a shot.”

“What’s this about him wanting to hurt me, though?”

“Nothing, nevermind. Everything’s fine. See you soon.”

The baby was safe. I pulled off the curb. Maybe he’ll come back. If he doesn’t, I’m going to be a father. I suddenly felt disappointed, tired, trapped. I let out a shuttering breath and called the police, but they couldn’t update me on Reggie’s condition, yet. I stepped through the front door into the foyer, finding no blood, or turned over furniture. No screaming. I sighed. Better tell my parents what he was up to, while I was at it.

“Emily,” I said, “I’m back.”

“Seriously, what’s this about him wanting to hurt me?” she asked from the kitchen.

“He was acting strange, crazy even,” I said, slipping out of my coat.

“Crazy how?

“Well, turns out Hell is real, but the jury is still out on Heaven.”

I heard her laugh, “Reggie had stories, then?”

“Yep,” I sighed, as my foot kicked something from under the key stand, a small box. I picked it up and read the label: Mifepristone. Four pills had been popped from the foil inside. I ran to the kitchen where she leaned against the counter, a steaming cup in her hand, she was still inhaling the vapors.

“Did you drink any, yet?” I asked.

“No, why?”

My mouth hung open, for perhaps the second time in my life. It’s real, something hissed to me. It’s all real. “Looks hot is all.”

I can still say something. Maybe it wasn’t even there, maybe it was in the pot or in the sink. Maybe she was the one who took it, maybe it was her decision. If I had come home just a few seconds later, if I had not kicked it from under the key stand, I would be none the wiser. I resented the missed opportunity, the chance to be clean of conscience. To say something now, she would know I hesitated, she’d always wonder why. It was better if I said nothing, for both of us.

I can still say something.

“The kettle’s still warm, you want some?”

“No,” I said, flushing, “thanks, I’ve got to make some calls.”