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He stopped for a moment and stood next to me, peering down at me in a way that made me feel two inches tall.
“No… yes… no,” I said.
The closer he stood to me, the colder I felt, but there was something about it that was almost familiar. I felt like the shivers I experienced next to him had been experienced before, but I couldn’t place where. He felt like someone I’d seen in a dream or in a movie but hadn’t ever truly met.
And one teeny, tiny part of me felt like he felt like… home.
“Listen, if you keep following me and listening to what I say, I’ll give you some more answers,” he said.
“How far?” I asked as we picked up the pace once more. The road was cresting up a small hill, and I caught sight of a rolling valley to one side. In the distance, lightning streaked ominously across the sky.
Gabe nodded to the road ahead and whatever lay beyond, hidden past the hill. “Just over this rise. The road dips down and leads to the gate of the third circle.”
“Circle?” I asked. “Like… Dante’s Inferno circle?” He shot me a curious look, and part of me was slightly offended that he seemed surprised I’d known that. “C’mon, man. That’s like… required high school-level reading. Don’t be impressed by that… or pleasantly surprised. I enjoy reading… I always have.”
Gabe shrugged and lifted his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t mean nothin’ by it. Anything would impress me. I wasn’t much of a reader in my day. I preferred girls and cars. I only picked up the Inferno once I got here.”
“So what is the first circle?” I asked. “Is this Limbo?”
“Well, technically, the first circle is Limbo,” he said with a sheepish look. “But the river runs through all circles… and I guess you bypassed level one… and two. Maybe, um, maybe you were meant to be here.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. There was so much he wasn’t saying in all of those little umms and pauses. “So where am I, exactly?”
“We’re on level three,” Gabe said.
I winced, both because I was lower down than I assumed and because I didn’t know what level three even was. After my big to-do about being well-read, I was suddenly blanking on the circles. I hadn’t read the Inferno in probably ten years.
“The third circle is Gluttony,” Gabe said, thankfully moving past the fact that I hadn’t offered the information up myself. “That gate up there leads to the center of the circle, where the damned and the demons reside.”
“Cool, and we’re going to go in it?” I said. “Do we want to go where the damned and the demons reside? Also, we’re still sticking with the elaborate shared Hell delusion?”
“We’re sticking with it,” he said without a trace of humor.
“Neat,” I grumbled.
We walked in silence as we finally crested the small hill, and I was greeted with the sight of a high wall and gates below. It was maybe a quarter mile away, and I saw winding city streets just behind the gates and towering walls.
And in front of those gates were three horrible shapes.
Obviously, I was still holding out hope the whole Hell thing was like… a shared delusion or a weird joke, but seeing the three figures before us defied reason. I sort of had to believe I was in Hell. There was no other logical explanation. Well, logical was a stretch.
“Stay close,” Gabe said tersely as we walked downhill. He reached out as if to touch me but pulled his hand back at the last second. It was a gentlemanly gesture for two reasons. One, he wanted to help, but two, he knew he didn’t have consent for it. I found my respect for him growing a little more, and I got the distinct feeling he was a man of old-fashioned values.
I eyed the three nightmarish figures as we approached. One of them was stout and fat with goatish legs like a satyr or a faun, though I’d loved Narnia as a kid, and this was definitely no Mister Tumnus. Even from a distance away, he smelled like a barnyard, and he was shirtless and filthy. His belly was hairy and hung over his crotch low enough to thankfully cover up what he might have hiding there between his furry legs. The second one was whip-thin and shadowy, almost a solid, obsidian shadow save for his glowing, coal-like eyes. The third was as squat and fat as the goat-like man, but he looked more like a traditional demon with high, curving horns, a forked tail, and bright red skin. He was the only one who was wearing visible clothes of any sort, and he was dressed a bit like the world’s stinkiest cab driver in seventies New York City. Or at least, that was the vibe I was getting based on long hours of watching retro sitcoms on TV Land.
“Gentleman,” Gabe said first, breaking the tension as we drew closer to the gate.
“Oh, I don’t think he’s talkin’ to us,” the satyr said, his voice shockingly high and reedy given his stature. “Nothin’ gentle about us.”
The three demons all laughed heartily at the bad joke, then made a few mocking motions our way. Most of the gestures came off as a lot of posturing, like how teenage boys would flip someone off or jostle each other while they loitered outside a convenience store.
“Come on, Marnie, just keep walking,” Gabe said, his voice firm. He was clearly trying to ignore the demons.
We only got maybe three more steps before things took a turn.
“What’s this?” the third demon said eagerly, his voice thick with a Cockney accent. He rubbed his red hands together. The nails on them were long and curved and yellowed like a lifetime smoker’s might be.
Suddenly, the one that seemed to be made of shadows lunged toward me, and I felt a fiery breath along my skin. He was so thin he easily slipped into the small space between Gabe and me—a matter of only a few steps. My hair singed a little from his proximity, and I smelled burning hair.
