His companion looked up for a moment, nodded, then accidentally dropped his spoon into the muck at his feet. He picked it up, carefully licked it clean, and then went back to work.
I passed buildings that looked like factories, the sort of hellish mills that even William Blake probably couldn’t have imagined. Some streamed blood-colored sewage, and the doorways were littered with burned and mangled bodies of what were probably accident-prone employees, many of them scraping at the iron factory doors to get back in, despite their horrible wounds. I heard the clang of huge machines and watched smoke and steam belching from furnace chimneys. I couldn’t help noticing that things on this level had advanced from the medieval tech of Abaddon to something a bit more eighteenth century, steam and infernal machines dwelling happily alongside plague and utter poverty.
The closer I got to the lifter shaft, the more awesome the structure became. Like a skyscraper, the stone cylinder was nearly as big around as a city block, but that was nothing compared to how high it stretched upward before its length vanished in the upper darkness. I couldn’t imagine how something so tall supported its own weight without guy wires or buttresses. It was an engineering feat that would have made any pharaoh proud.
The lifter stood in the middle of a busy town square, an open plaza like the kind you sometimes see around the big cathedrals in Europe. As I approached, more cautiously now, a few people wandered out of the archways at the bottom of the shaft. The crowds in the square here seemed all but oblivious to Niloch’s burning citadel, going on with their public business of theft, gambling, fornication, and various other pastimes. I was in an area where someone in a hurry drew no attention at all, except for the usual swarm of pickpockets, rapists, and knife-wielding psychopaths that hang around anywhere people arrive and depart. If I had slowed down I’m sure they would have begun to move in on me, but as it was I must have looked like too much work.
I entered the lifter tower through the nearest arch and saw there were actually several individual lifter cars traveling up and down narrower shafts that ran through the big building like nerves in their sheaths. I stayed back for a bit, watching, but in most ways it looked pretty straightforward, not much different than an elevator bank in a modern office building: One of the lifter doors would open, and those waiting would push their way on while others forced their way out. The passengers looked more prosperous than the wretches lolling outside in the plaza. Many of these travelers were dressed in impressive outfits, and some were so physically imposing that no one else would get into the lifter with them for fear of being smashed or spiked. That made sense, though: the wealthy were more likely to be using the lifters than the pathetic groundlings. I knew from Lameh’s implanted memories that Hell’s inhabitants were strongly discouraged from going above their designated levels, and who was going to go any farther down voluntarily?
After watching for what felt like ten minutes or so, I waited until the most recent group of passengers had dispersed, then gathered my courage to walk to the nearest lifter door. Another fellow shuffled up beside me, probably the demon equivalent of a Japanese salaryman at the end of a long night’s work, and we entered the lifter together.
We were the only passengers, but the interior of the rusty iron box was full of trash and spattered fluids, some still wet. My fellow passenger had a head like a buzzard, but his eyes were multifaceted like a fly’s. He was dressed in shabby but fairly clean gray robes that exposed only his clawed feet. He gave me a cold look and an even colder nod, then lifted his hand—instead of being feathered it looked like another bird’s foot—and placed it on the wall of the lifter. He mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear, but I was already scrambling to imitate him. I put my hand against the gritty iron wall and quietly said, “Pandaemonium.” I was half ready to be quizzed about my bona fides, but instead the door slid creakily shut and the lifter started to shudder. The shuddering went on and on for what seemed like a full minute, then at last the lifter groaned, a noise like a giant metal cow giving birth, and to my silent joy and relief the box began to move upward.
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, we rattled up the great pipe. The lifter car, which was built more like a bank safe than a flimsy human elevator, nevertheless shook and screeched so much as it was tugged or pushed upward that at first I was certain we were going to derail, or whatever the hell elevators do when they go wrong. Instead we just kept going faster and faster, so that my ears began popping like popcorn. Then a flat, uncaring voice said, “Sour Milk Park, Hateful, Lower Childskull,” and the elevator slowed to a banging halt. The fly-buzzard man waited until the door squeaked open, then stepped out without a backward glance, as if in a hurry to get away from me. Just like folks back home.
I waited as the steam built up again (or whatever), everything hissing and vibrating. The door began to slide closed. It was amazing to consider that after all I’d gone through, I was now only a short elevator ride from my destination. If I had been a regular angel I would have felt confirmed that God really was watching over me after all, and was going to reward me for all my years of good behavior. Of course, if I had been a regular angel I would already have banked a few years of good behavior just in case. Sadly, though, that is one of the many accounts with my name on it that’s come up a bit short.
But just before the door finished closing, something dark poked through and stopped it. The appendage gripping the door looked less like a hand and more like something you might find buried in a cat’s litter box. The force of the door being restrained seemed to make the whole lifter strain, as if it was determined to break the deadlock or destroy itself trying. The mechanism whined, the shuddering increased. Then the door slid back open.
The thing that stepped in was a bulky man-shape made entirely of mud. It was naked and nearly without features except for a popped bubble of a mouth and a blob of wet clay that I guessed was a nose, mostly because it was somewhere near the two glowing yellow smears it wore for eyes. If I tell you those eyes looked like some kind of irradiated slugs emerging from a seabed, you’ll maybe begin to grasp how much I didn’t like looking at them. But it wasn’t just the eyes. I could feel this new thing, feel its age and its inhumanity. I don’t know what it was, but it was no ordinary demon.
The passenger-blob stopped inside the door, and its weight actually made the massive car tilt. The shapeless face swiveled toward me for a moment but then slowly kept turning, examining the entire empty lifter, as though I was so insignificant that before it acknowledged me it had to establish what someone not being there looked like. Being alone in a confined space with the thing made me feel trapped and queasy. This was no mere infernal salaryman. This was something old and powerful.
The door closed. The thing stretched its flat, muddy paw to the wall. When it spoke its destination, I was so disturbed by the squelchy, inhuman voice that I only registered some moments later that it had said, “Tartarus Station.”
Something was seriously wrong. I knew a bit of Hell’s geography, both from Lameh and my travels, and I was pretty fucking sure that the direction to Tartarus Station wasn’t up, where I was going, but down. Way down.