Alex Bell - The Ninth circle

After Lucifer’s fall from grace, other angels rebelled against God and fled to Satan’s side. Even now, the battle between God’s angels and Satan’s devils continues, although most of it takes place at Hell’s border. According to the book, angels are still being seduced to Satan’s ranks and it’s the angels patrolling the borders of Hell who are most likely to fall prey to him, due to their regular close contact with demons.

But it seems that this works both ways and the angels are sometimes able to win devils from the border over to their side as well. I find this idea utterly disgusting. Such intermingling should be absolutely forbidden. One being should not be able to flit between angel and demon in such a manner, forever crossing lines, becoming one then the other and back again. The very notion is deeply repugnant.

Worse still is the idea that some devils, like Satan in the book of Job, have special ‘passes’ to occasionally visit Heaven for duels of wits with the angels. Duels of wits! The sacrilegious, blasphemous frivolity of it!

There is one story in the book, concerning the demon Mephistopheles, that I find especially disturbing. Mephistopheles, or Mephisto, said to be the next angel after Lucifer to fall from grace, was made Satan’s second in command and became one of the seven Princes of Hell. The etymology of his name is unclear, but the most common meaning appears to be ‘he who destroys by lies’. While Lucifer’s rejection of God was born from pride and jealousy, it would seem that it was Mephistopheles’ passion for sardonic wit and sneering cynicism that caused him to turn from God to find more entertaining pastimes in the form of relentlessly pursuing human souls on Earth. What it came down to was that being an angel bored him. He was said to be the most adept at causing humans to stray from the divine path of righteousness into sin and damnation, for he was the cleverest and slyest of the devils and could tempt people in subtle and cunning ways.

The story in question concerns Mephistopheles venturing into Heaven and making a bet with God regarding the scholar, Faust. The demon claimed that he would be able to tempt the scholar onto the path of sin if only he was allowed the chance; and God accepted the challenge, granting Mephistopheles permission to interfere in Faust’s life and insisting that, even in his darkest moments, Faust would not stray from the path of righteousness. But ultimately Faust did succumb to the wiles of Mephistopheles and, as the demon had predicted, the scholar ended his life with blood on his hands.

There appears to be a broad consensus that Faust never wanted or imagined the horrors that came to befall him and those he cared about; that he did not instigate these disasters, and that they would never have occurred at all without the sly manipulation so cleverly exercised by Mephistopheles as the demon posed as the man’s friend.

After reading of Mephistopheles and his corruption and seduction of Faust, I was so repulsed that I was going to put the book aside and get out of the apartment, which suddenly seemed heavy with claustrophobia. But then a name caught my eye. It was my own, the name of the archangel Gabriel; and just seeing it on the page, surrounded by the names of devils, demons and Princes of Hell, made me feel nervous and uncomfortable.

As I read I remembered that there was a subclass of fallen angels known as the Watchers, who were sent to Earth to supervise the development of the human race but tried to give mankind secrets for which they were not yet ready. And then, worst of all, the Watchers fell in love with the daughters of men and procreated with them. A race of giants was produced that drained the Earth of its resources and cast a blight of famine and misery over the land. So God decided to destroy his creation by sending a great flood and starting anew..

But there is something wrong with this, isn’t there? I mean, the people were praying to God because they were hungry, because they were starving… and he answered their prayers by drowning them all. I am sure that this cannot have been the help everyone had in mind when they kneeled down to pray… I’m sure our ancestors must have got this story very wrong indeed…

Angels were sent to round up the Watchers and imprison them in the Third Circle of Hell, where they were told of God’s plan to obliterate all that they had helped create on Earth — but not until they had been forced to watch their children destroy each other. Gabriel was instructed to incite war between the giants so that they might all die vicious deaths at one another’s hands, before the great flood swept through the land destroying all else. The Watchers appealed to God for mercy on behalf of their children and themselves, but their pleas were coldly rejected, and Gabriel did as he’d been told and stirred up such venomous savagery in the giants that they tore each other apart in a brief and bloody war. And now the Watchers hate Gabriel for what he did. But, of course, I don’t believe a word of this — angels do not have sex with humans. And even if it did happen, there must have been a damn good reason for God’s furious response. He’s not evil — He wouldn’t kill people over love affairs. But the book frightens me, even if it is a pack of lies, so I have hidden it away under the floorboards with the money. I am going to pretend that it is not there. That I never even saw it.

To reassure myself, I opened one of my other old books about archangels — one that portrayed them in a much more accurate light — describing their goodness and compassion and mercy to all of mankind, and their desire to save as many souls as they could. It was then that I made two discoveries. Like all my other books, this one was heavily annotated with highlighting, underlining, and the occasional note pencilled in the margin in my own slanting handwriting. Two angels in particular were covered in pencil marks. One, naturally, was Gabriel. Written in the margin in tiny script were the words: ‘Heroes’ Square, Budapest — Gabriel’s Millennium Monument.’ I’ve never been to Heroes’ Square but I intend to go there tomorrow to see the monument for myself.

The second discovery I made was in the form of the second most heavily annotated archangel — Zadkiel, angel of memory, mercy and benevolence, and one of the two standard bearers who closely follows Michael into battle. I felt a horrible ache as I realised that here was a fourth thing I shared with Zadkiel Stephomi — we both shared names with angels. And we were both somehow linked to Michael, greatest of the archangels and God’s most trusted servant. It had been his church beside which we had met that day. I think I must have some kind of special connection with angels. My name is Gabriel. Everyone knows that that is an angelic name. I saved a woman who stupidly ran off into a back street alley at night… Oh, yes, and I’ve also saved children’s pets that would otherwise have killed each other. In some ways, I am like an angel. I save people. I rescue them. I am here

… to help people.

God is with me. Truly He must favour me, for once again angels have led me to the most extraordinary good fortune. It’s very late but I’m not tired at all. I was reacquainted with Zadkiel Stephomi today. What are the chances? Really, what are the odds of chance meetings happening twice like that?

I wrote before of my intention to visit Heroes’ Square and the Millennium Monument, with which Gabriel had been linked in my own notes in the margin of one of my books. When I got up this morning, the weather was so miserable outside that I was tempted not to go out at all. The sky was choked with heavy, forbidding storm clouds, and rain was rocketing into the windows, shaking them in their frames as a vicious chill crept in through the floorboards and the cracks in the doors. I thought about turning the heating up and crawling back under the covers of my bed, since I had no responsibilities to co-workers, employers, friends or relatives to draw me from my dry apartment into the thundering gale outside.