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“Just be careful what you say in here.”
We take the next turn. And the next.
There’s a pile of bodies. The stink is mind-numbing. Corpses rise high above the stalks. I can’t count them all. Burgess and Charlie are fresh on the ground. I see Jan and Korlin Geistwald. Their daughter Eleanor. Azazel. Piles of Hellions and revolting hellbeasts. Nameless vampires. Mason Faim and his enforcer, Parker. Josef. Teddy Osterberg. Cherry Moon. Doc Kinski. Bodies of everyone and everything I ever killed or allowed to be killed.
I just stare.
Candy pulls my arm.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
“You know what that is?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
It goes on like that. Awful visions and fake salvation. Exit signs. Rest stops with rotten food and pitchers of putrid water.
Around a corner is Heaven. Armored angels throw human souls over the battlements, a nine-day fall to Hell below.
Pandemonium empty, the streets full of bones and sewage.
I’m lying dead in the arena. Starving Hellions eat my raw flesh.
I pull Candy away from that one.
Candy and Alessa are asleep in our bedroom at Max Overdrive. All traces that I’d ever been there are gone.
Candy pulls me away from that one.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery. A year ago when I escaped Hell. Only I can’t dig my way out of the grave. I claw at the dirt, but it’s hard as concrete. I’m trapped there forever, a foot from freedom, in my own idiot tomb.
Candy closes her eyes at that one and I have to lead her away.
And turn another corner.
It’s a few minutes until the next sideshow.
The smell of sulfur and filth is stronger as we near the vision.
The corn row opens on another bleak vision of Pandemonium. The empty street market. Off to the left and not too far away is Wild Bill’s bar. A pale light flickers through the window and under the door.
I start to turn left, but it feels wrong.
Leaving Candy in the corn, I take a step into the empty street. The abandoned market stalls stretch in one direction. The short street to
Wild Bill’s in the other. Nearby is a car repair place where I once hid the Hellion hog.
“I think it’s real.”
“We made it?” says Candy.
“Looks like it.”
I put out my hand.
She takes it and steps into the street. I look back, making a mental note of where the entrance to the maze is. It’s through the entrance of a sushi bar that used to sell slices of animals that look less like fish and more like the Texas Chainsaw night terrors.
And yes, they have sushi bars, street markets, and car repair places Downtown. The place is a bit distorted and full of murderous shitcreeps, but you can still navigate it pretty well with a Maps to the Stars’ Homes.
