Paul Robertson: According to Their Deeds

“Patrick White? Yes, he’s down here now, too. I don’t know where they’ll put him. There’s a circle for everyone. I hope I’m not in for the traitors, the betrayers. That’s the worst judgment of all, way down at the very bottom of the Inferno. Am I a traitor? Did I betray you, Charles? Is that why I’m still going down?”

“No, Derek. You’re no traitor. I forgive you.”

“Charles.”

“The Inferno.”

“Charles!”

“What?”

The room was dark. Dorothy was beside him. He sat up awake.

“You were dreaming. You were saying something.”

The clock said 3:40.

“I know who it is,” Charles said.

“What?”

“I know who killed Derek.”

The telephone rang.

Or was it sirens? He was still disoriented. He found the screaming telephone.

“Hello?”

“Is this Charles Beale?” the voice said.

“Yes, it is.”

“This is Alexandria Emergency Services. We have a call that your building on South Fairfax street has a fire.”

“In the building?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve dispatched trucks.”

“Fire?”

Dorothy gasped.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Mr. Beale, the Fire Department trucks are just leaving now. They’ll be there in two minutes. Stay away from the building.”

“Yes, yes. But I have to go.”

He put down the telephone. Dorothy was up from the bed getting dressed very quickly.

They did hear sirens.

He ran. The streets were empty and black. He didn’t even think of driving until he was already on the sidewalk running, panting, then walking, then running and coughing and pushing.

The streets were black and red and blue and white. The colors flickered ahead. An infernal world was before him and he raced to it as fast as his slow, uncooperative legs could.

He turned the last corner and it was all before him, bright and screaming.

The grinding lights filled everything and they were still coming.

There was sound, sirens as demonic as the lights.

He was close and he didn’t know how to stop running. But he was halted by a wall of smoke and everything else was unreal; the smoke was real. And the smoke was born of burning.

The smell told him what was burning, not just bitter and choking but horrible with the taste of forest and of old linen. He stumbled closer.

He was stopped by arms and voices, and then he couldn’t move at all but was made stone by the smoke and red light that was inside.

Dorothy stood beside him.

The white spotlight glare made the beautiful old building grotesque and drowned the red light inside. There was only smoke. He choked on the smoke.

It was gray and poured out in an upended waterfall, gushing from windows and streaming from everywhere else. Terrible smoke, full of fragments of pages; they were tiny glittering sparks, scattering everywhere. Scattering everything. Everything that they were.

All of the books.

The men were breaking open the front door. The flames in the window flared and forced out huge planets of smoke. The whole street was smoke.

Water poured in, but the flames were unquenchable. All the windows were full of flames, every story of the building was in flame. Every story in every book was in flame.

The top floor was in flame. Angelo’s window was filled with smoke.

Men with hoses pushed through the smoke at the front door.

Something central inside surrendered and broke apart and fell, and waves of heat and smoke and fire crashed against everything. The men fell back from the door.

Now the whole building was a chimney, pulling in oxygen at the base and feeding itself to the inferno. The flames were insatiable.

Something central inside Charles surrendered and broke apart and fell.

Rivers of water rained in, and how could the fire still burn?

Despair crashed against everything and minutes or years passed.

The flames faltered under the onslaught, finally, or because everything was consumed. The men renewed their attack on the door. There were shouts above the siren howling. There was nothing but smoke; everything was only smoke now. Everything that had been was only smoke now.

More men were in the front door. Why would so many go in? There was no end of the smoke. Charles could smell every book in it, and everything else that was in it. What else was in the smoke?

The men came back out. They were carrying something. It took three of them.

Charles could move again, but he was stopped, held back.

“Who is it?”

The men carrying didn’t hurry once they were out from the smoke. They carried to an ambulance. They laid on a stretcher, slowly, and covered with a sheet and set up into the open doors and the ambulance drove off.

All of the men had come out of the building. Water still rained down on it. There was no flame, only smoke.

“There’s a basement,” Charles said. “It’s a fireproof room.”

“It’s too dangerous,” they said. “We have to wait.”

It was 4:30 in the morning.

Dorothy stayed with him. He stood and waited.

The hoses stopped. The smoke only oozed now, swamp-like. The street cleared. Only a few men stayed.

A police car arrived and a grim man from it came to him. The man wore a jacket, and Charles shivered. It had been so hot before.

“Mr. Beale?”

“I’m Charles Beale. I own the building.”

“Yes, sir.” The man spoke with the weight of death. “Detective Mondelli. We recovered a body from the fire.” The man wasn’t weighed down by it, though. He was doing his job.

“I saw them,” Charles said.

“Can you help us identify it?”

Charles walked away. The man went to Dorothy, but she was crying. Charles took her away and the man waited.

Charles and Dorothy stood and looked at the smoke and black window holes and the black door hole. A fireman stepped up to it and looked in.

“I want to get to the basement,” Charles said to a fireman.

“I don’t think-”

“Now!” Charles pushed him away. “I’m going in. Are you coming with me?”

They did come. Three of the four firemen still there came. Charles crossed the threshold into the black gaping hole.

The fire still raged inside, but a fire of silence and blackness and an unbreathable sopping smoky stench. It was much worse than the fire of heat and light.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t stare at the charred walls and open ceiling or anything else the flashlights touched. It was too different from what it had been to possibly be the same room. The floor held.

He hurried to where the stairs had been. The upper stairs had fallen but the stairs down were still passable.

“Watch out!”

But he didn’t care. He had to get to the bottom. The steps held.

The lights fell onto the door. The knob wouldn’t turn. The walls and door weren’t burned. He used his key and the knob was free, but the door still wouldn’t open.

He pushed but it did not yield. The bottom landing was filled with water, over his shoes.

He was pulled back and stronger shoulders went against the door.

It moved a little and then an axe came down on it and it cracked and fell inward.

Heavy, evil smoke roiled out. The lights could not penetrate. They fell back from Hadean gate coughing and daunted and the smoke came and came, darkness itself.

Charles abandoned hope. Without hope, he still went on.

He dropped to his knees and crawled under the smoke. He felt it running over his back like sand. His eyes were closed. His face was just over the face of the waters and sometimes dipped into them.

His head rammed into something hard as above him came a cracking and then a heavy, rigid weight came down on his back, forcing him down and submerging his face. He pushed up against it, choking and drowning.