The Mephistophelean House Read online

  Menos Hall

  “Menos Hall. This is it.”

  The rocks in the pile were full of holes. I took the biggest one I could find and pressed the courtyard door, the fear of getting caught replaying itself over and over.

  What if my timing was off?

  What if I ran into someone?

  I tiptoed upstairs. There was a judas hole. I looked inside. The felt faced rube leaned against the gate.

  “Just what the Doctor ordered.”

  I pressed the door.

  The hinges creaked.

  The felt faced rube did not stir.

  I doubted myself.

  Could I go on?

  The burnished door swung noiselessly ajar.

  Water dripped from my clothes. The felt faced rube must have been asleep for he remained in his chair.

  I crept up behind him.

  The rube opened his eyes.

  “Hey.”

  I smashed the rock in his eye.

  “You’re going to pay for that.”

  A roughshod roundhouse cracked his temple.

  The rube fell on the floor.

  “Erhh.”

  I discarded the rock, took the straight stick, and found a set of keys in his pocket. Tubing his appendages in a straightjacket I dug my foot in his back, looped the bracers, and secured the restraint.

  “Surprised I knew how to do that.”

  The rube bled on the floor.

  “Shouldn’t sleep on the job.”

  Jonsrud was nowhere to be seen.

  I dragged the rube in a cell.

  “What the, hey, what!?”

  I hogtied the double bracer to the posterior restraint and leaned against the wall.

  “Bu….Wh...Wha......Why? What did I do? What did I do?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  No one would hear his cries.

  I double checked the outer cells, certain Jonsrud was there. All were occupied by the unfortunate wards of the House on Asylum Road, umbrageous, recondite, rueful, with eyes that hung from their sockets. The cell in which I remembered Jonsrud to be was unoccupied.

  The bars of the iron gate blocked access to the inner ward. I unlocked the gate and looked inside.

  Jonsrud was gone.

  The rube whimpered.

  I drew the straight stick.

  “You know what,” I reminisced, “this is the same cell I was in, isn’t it?”

  “I just did what I was told.”

  “The cell you put me in.”

  The straight stick pivoted.

  “Please. Don’t.”

  “Where is the blonde man with long hair who was housed here?”

  “Wh...wh...wh...what?”

  I scoffed.

  “Where is Jonsrud?”

  The rube feigned.

  “Is it me or is everyone here crazy? Jonsrud. The blond man with blue eyes and long hair? Where did you take him, you bastard?”

  “To...to...to...to... but...but...but...”

  “But what?”

  “But...I...I...just…did what I was told...”

  “Where is he?”

  “I...I...I...I did what I was told, oh Lord, I did what I was told, I did what I was told, oh Lord, don’t put me in the hole.”

  “Speak up, you loony.”

  “Don’t put me in the hole again, don’t put me in the hole. I beg you on my mortal soul, don’t put me in the hole. I did what I was told, oh Lord, I did what I was told, I did what I was told, oh Lord, don’t put me in the hole.”

  “Tell me where he is or I’ll...”

  “He’s...he’s..mma...he’s in...he’s in...mma”

  “Spit it out, fat boy,” the straight stick tapped his temple.

  “Mma, mmm, mmale, Malebolge...mmm...Malebolge Manor, The Operating Theater...but I did what I was told, oh lord, don’t put me in the hole...I beg you on my mortal soul, don’t put me in the hole...”

  I left him in the cell. Sensation returned to my extremities, the sensation of pain. I made my way back to the courtyard, straight stick in my hand, keys in my pocket, rain in the courtyard.

  “I feel a sickness in my soul take hold and start to spread, what tortures are awaiting me, what travesties, what dread, what alternate reality is this through which I tread, eternal life bequeathed the dead, what secrets hide within my head, which secrets better left unsaid?”

  There was a high wall running from Menos Hall to an iron promontory. I exited the courtyard trusting in the imperative for self-preservation. There was no one in sight. I followed the wall up the path. A portcullis with a griphoist joined the promontory to the hedge. A key from the rube’s ring penetrated the lock. The portcullis retracted.

  It was bedlam. A knot garden was immured in thunder and lightning. A man ran in a boot of nails, men wrestled in a pit, a hip faced girl hid in the hedge beneath a pruned soffit. The tortured souls stripped to the waist sought shelter from the storm, but there was nowhere to hide inside a warren of dolor.

  A guard appeared in a tower. I cornered the gangway unchallenged, keeping out of sight. An attendant stepped from the trees, blocking my way.

  I clutched the straight stick.

  The attendant shunted the gangway.

  How could I have gone unnoticed?

  Was I a ghost?

  A non-entity?

  “They must think I'm one of them."

  Metal spiders ran down my spine. I ripped a thorn out of my shoulder and looked at it.

  It was barbed, like a flail.

  “This place is a torture factory.”

  I heard screaming. I snuck under the gangway and followed the hedge, coming to a copse. A man climbed a trellis of thorns pursued by a gristly hound. Thorns ribboned the poor man’s hands, the hound pulling him down. Feathers of flesh as it clamped and it jerked and reworked the man's bleeding leg stumps matted the fur of the bullheaded cur with his offal, his man-hash, and lumps. A sneering attendant looked on in delight as he fed the hound more and more chain, biting and clawing it's way up the trellis he gave the hound complete free reign.

  Clouds swallowed the trees, the grounds a marshy mire, a metallic lockstep under thunder tripping through the wire. I pressed against the hedge and turned to face that which I feared, the noxious spit and stinking breath of ludic whispering in my ear.

  “They locked me in a boot of nails, bolted to my bones, and force me till I’ve had my fill, a stomach full of stones.”

  The booted man then let me go and cried out in despair, clanking ankle deep in mud began to pull out all his hair. In his wake I saw a break hewn in the hedge a flight of stairs, a columned concourse overlooking the inimical parterre. Thunder bled and lightning scoured alternating shadows, and I pitied the abandoned souls cast out and left to harrow, jabbed in guts and sucker punched with straight sticks snapped across their knees, the tortured souls left to succumb to an insane hierarchy.

  I had a change of heart.

  “Each and every tortured soul, a victim of the State’s control, an offshoot culled to stave the whole, it's time to give back what you stole.”

  A column with scrolls and acanthus leaves bore the inscription,

  Malebolge Manor

  Chapter 12

  Malebolge Manor

  “Jonsrud.”

  I tried to get my bearings. A field of capitals bracketed a stylobate. The field was constructed with such mathematical precision that every direction terminated in a colonnade. I projected a solid line through the columns, careful not to lose myself in the illusion.

  Lightning arrayed. Wind hit my face. I wondered if I was coming to the center. To my surprise I found myself back over the parterre. Unable to judge direction, I returned to the very same spot from which I began.

  The journey was catching up with me. I was horrified by the prospect that I might become one of the tortured souls in the yard, stripped to the waist in the thunder and lightning. I reengaged the field but every direction looked the same. There was no way through.r />
  I picked a piece of slate off the concourse and marked the entasis of the outer column, stepping across the grid to the next. I repeated the process, thereby marking each entasis. Column by column I vectored the field in what I reasoned a straight line to be.

  The rain quickened. The wind blew in my face. I stepped out onto the columned concourse.

  A roving attendant took out his straight stick and unloosed upon those sinking into the pit. The sneering attendant emerged from the copse, the gristly hound foaming and licking its chops. A man in the pit fought to pull himself up and ran into the copse with his tongue sticking out. The sneering attendant then let loose the chain, from the copse came the sound of the screaming again.

  I faced the colonnade.

  “If everything’s upside-down, would a straight line really be straight? Wouldn’t it curve? Into a circle? Wouldn’t a straight line curve into a perfect circle?”

  The hash marks projected a theoretical line. I veered, expecting to find myself back on the concourse, but to my astonishment the rain faded and vapor collected on the stones.

  “This is it.”

  Columns jutted like deadwood. I continued, going nowhere, looping around and around, losing sight of the hash marks. I noticed a discoloration in the distance. A wall with no doors stretched uniformly into a ruined field.

  “A wall. But no way around.”

  I heard footsteps.

  A shadow crossed the colonnade.

  The footsteps halted.

  I gripped the straight stick. My breath misted. From behind the entasis I could hear breathing. Vapor sluiced like slurry. The wall stretched in both directions, staid columns a broken field of monoliths.

  The straight stick descanted.

  The vapor coalesced.

  The footsteps receded.

  The shadow split the mire.

  I exhaled.

  “How long until my luck runs out?”

  I trailed the footsteps through the columns, keeping my distance, but the shadow gave pause and I began to second guess myself.

  “This is too easy.”

  In the stony field I could hear perfectly. A key was inserted in a lock. A door opened. The door shut. The footsteps were gone.

  I peeked from behind a shaft.

  A blivet was vaulted in a recess.

  “Menos Hall.”

  I grasped the blivet.

  It seared like a devil’s fork.

  “I hope I have the right key.”

  I began feeding keys into a mortise lock. Heat from the wall radiated across the bridge of my nose. The metal surface glowed. I was running out of keys. Several I had used; of the few that remained, only one fit.

  The mortise released the blivet.

  The door opened.

  Luciferin effused a hellish painting upon an ambulatory wall. A city caught fire, lit coals fell from the sky, burning bodies in boiling rivers, the vanquished clawing their way from immolation only to be quartered by blade wielding daemons who appeared to be the very same overlords inciting battle in the first place.

  The longer I looked at the painting, the more cracks appeared. The columns in the ruined field were in the library. The gargoyles on the old dorm block were pigeons in the tree.

  There were two doors. One was a storage closet. The other was a checkpoint.

  Guards played cards on a metal folding table.

  “Hey, did you hear something?”

  The door shut.

  I backtracked through the ambulatory and hid in the storage closet.

  I could hear footsteps.

  My breathing slowed. I cleared my mind, gripping the straight stick.

  The closet opened.

  Light spilled on the floor.

  ‘Don’t turn the light on…’

  The door shut. I could hear voices.

  Had I been discovered?

  Somebody laughed.

  A match struck.

  The ironclad door gnashed shut.

  Menos Hall was silent.

  The ambulatory was empty. I infiltrated the checkpoint and operated the lever to the gate. To my disdain I found yet another locked door. I withdrew the ring, wondering how much time I’d have before the guards returned.

  What if I didn’t have the right key?

  One by one the keys didn’t work.

  Down the corridor I could hear the mortise lock.

  The ironclad door opened.

  The guards were returning.

  I dropped the keys.

  “No!”

  Before I knew it I had snatched the ring off the floor and inserted another key. The lock unbolted and I stepped onto a cellblock, slamming the door behind me.

  It was as hot as hell. A maniacal ensemble of despondency and despair cased holding pens like animals in cages, alerting one another to my presence.

  It was as if they were expecting me.

  “Heretic, Heretic!”

  “My eyes! My eyes!”

  “What I wouldn’t give to meet you face to face!”

  To cross the module I had to pass through the holding pens. Each pen had a chuck hole, vestibule, and flume. I passed the first pen. Instinctually I stepped back, and not an instant too soon, for two arms shot through the bars and wrapped around my neck.

  I fell backwards.

  “Almost got you, Doc.”

  “Doc,” I choked. “Me?”

  “Of course your honor.”

  An albino with tattooed jowls cracked his knuckles.

  “You mistake me for someone else.”

  “You’re an infernal bastard but I love you none the less. Listen Doc. You got to let me go. I’m on your side. You were right. Everyone here is nuts.”

  “I’m trapped here, just like you.”

  The albino jeered.

  “Come on Doc. Give me a shot before you put me in the hole.”

  “Let me alone.”

  “Leaving well enough alone lent itself well enough. I’m a dissenter.”

  “Let me pass.”

  “One shot is all I ask. Bring one up from the hotel. We can have some fun. Some good, clean fun.”

  I left the albino in the pen. Fungused fingernails tapped the bars of the next pen.

  “Afternoon, Governor.”

  I shivered.

  Jackleg forearms collared the chuck hole.

  “Purple Face and I we’re wondering if you could settle an argument.”

  “I’m sorry, I…"

  “Don’t walk out on me,” the forearms lunged.

  I jumped.

  “Didn’t mean to be antisocial, Gov. I can barely control myself. It’s a sign of the times. A sign of the times. Reason with me Gov. If each person is a product of their environment, why am I held responsible for that which the environment produced? Am I on trial?”

  “Here,” I vouchsafed, “we are all on trial.”

  “I guess that makes you judge, jury, and executioner.”

  I flinched, and not a moment too soon.

  I was missing a piece of my hair.

  “Purple Face and I have our disagreements, but there’s one thing we can agree on.”

  “You are mistaken. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “If Purple Face is a product of his environment, is it fair to condemn him for what he will become?”

  “What’s that smell?”

  In the adjoining pen a figure sat in a chair. The figure didn’t move.

  A fullered seax lay at its feet.

  The ash was streaked in crimson.

  “Oh my god…”

  “You could say I talked him into it. But he didn’t need much convincing. Good old Purple Face, a sign of the times, Gov, a sign of the times. The thing I want to know is, if Purple Face really is a product of his environment, why is he being held responsible for factors beyond his control?”

  I was sick.

  “A sign of the times, a sing of the times. Might be tempted to do it myself. Mind you he knew what crimes he was committing. W
e’re all guilty of something. No one is without sin. Look at how he displeases himself in his own image. A crime against nature, for what criminals are worth, a dime a dozen I daresay, consider yourself, Governor, locking me in this cell, next to Purple Face, you maniacal, bloody bastard!”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” I pleaded, “you mistake me for someone else.”

  “Purple Face and I are Devil’s Advocate. For us there is no common ground. He says one thing, I say another. He’d say I’m upside down, I’d say he’s inside out.”

  Flies buzzed. The heat was incapacitating. The odor of purification made me wretch. A pale spot of light illuminated the next pen. A man was bolted to the wall.

  I seized the bars.

  “Can you hear me?”

  The figure twitched.

  “He’d say I’m up in arms, I’d say he’s checked out. He’d say I’m spinning yarns, I'd say it's in doubt. But there was one thing, one thing, Purple Face and I could always agree upon. Know what it is?”

  Jonsrud wasn’t anywhere. The cellblock ended and I came to another locked door.

  “Take a guess, Gov.”

  I looked over my shoulder.

  “He said you’ll pay for what you’ve done.”

  A key from the ring unbolted the door to a Penrose staircase. A sign was affixed to some bricks in the wall that were moldered and had been replaced.

  F3 Administration

  F2 Records

  F1 Holding Cells

  B1 Bolgia 1-10

  B2 Operating Theatre

  “The Operating Theatre. That’s it.”

  A knob shot off a radiator, hitting me in the face.

  “Damnation!”

  The knob clattered down the staircase.

  Tungsten jets cast an uneven, sickly glow over the corkscrewing steps. I tried to keep pace but my feet were too big. The risers were pitted in knots and cavities cut in the mineral rift, the olivine wedges and quartz framework grains receding back into the cliff. Newel posts cast toxic shadows across the sandstone wall; I lost my footing on the tread and began to slip and fall.

  “Argh.”

  Vortex streets and strange attractors blocked the long descent, a conic helix winding down the deeper that I went. After what seemed an eternity of paradox and peril, a lancet door was reinforced and hewn into a carrel.