Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

It did not take long before Charon dropped us at the other side and steered his boat back into the fray. “I think I did quite well,” I said, trying and failing to smile. “Didn’t Dante faint when he met Charon?”

A mountain stood in front of us, rising from Acheron’s shore, and Francesco took the lead.

The pitch was gradual at the beginning but soon cut sharply up. It became necessary to wedge our hands into cracks wherever we could find them. This was not easy with my missing fingers, and I had to pass the burning arrow from hand to hand each time I shifted my body. The higher we went, the harder the damp winds blew.

Francesco advised me to tuck the arrow into Sigurðr’s scabbard. I didn’t see this as a very good plan; I was quite sure my animal pelts were not fire retardant. Nevertheless, I did as I was told. There was a slight tickling along my hip where the flames danced, but my clothes did not burn.

Human forms were carried in the gale around us, jerked about like struggling fish caught on lines. I knew who they were: the souls of the Carnal, swept up by their passion on Earth and so doomed in Hell. I considered my own career as a pornographer, which didn’t bode well. I asked Francesco if this was where I would end up, someday.

“You never knew passion,” Francesco yelled back, “until you met her.”

He didn’t need to say her name; we both knew about whom he was talking.

I tried to ignore the howling, both wind and human, and eventually we passed through the worst. When I was finally able to let go of the cliff’s wall, my fingers remained curled like the pincers of a frightened lobster.

The path opened off the mountain and we entered into a place that was hotter. I cupped my hands around the arrow’s flame and my fingers finally started to uncurl; as soon as I was able, I began to peel away the outer pelts of my Viking clothing. Remembering Sigurðr’s advice, I did not discard them.

As I bundled up the furs to carry them, I noticed that my amputated fingers were slightly longer at their nubs and there was some hair growing out of my forearms where the follicles had been destroyed. I touched my skull and found that new stubble was emerging there as well. My scars were perhaps a little less thick, a little less red. I’d run my fingers over my body a million times, like a blind man memorizing a story in Braille, but now I was reading a different plot.

Try to imagine, if you can, the emotions of a burnt man discovering that his body is regenerating, or of the man growing hair after having resigned himself to a lifetime of beef-jerky baldness. I excitedly informed Francesco of my discoveries.

“Remember where you are,” he warned, “and remember who you are.”

We came to the edge of a forest where screaming trees grew out of burning sands. A shimmering heat rose, distorting everything, and the tree limbs looked as if they were moving. Birds flew around, snapping at the branches. “The Wood of Suicides,” Francesco said.

I soon realized that the trees were not exactly trees. The branches were human limbs, gesticulating wildly, with blood running out like sap. Tormented human voices poured out from the holes that had been ripped by the birds-which were not birds, I could see now, but Harpies that resembled vultures with pale female faces and claws as sharp as razors. Their stench overwhelmed us every time one flew anywhere near.

“The voices from the trees,” Francesco said, “can only come forth after the Harpies have ripped their flesh and their blood is flowing. Suicides can only express themselves through that which destroys them.”

“Quod me nutrit, me destruit,” I muttered under my breath, too low for Francesco to hear.

I remembered then that he had deliberately inhaled his wife’s plague before commanding his brother to shoot him through with an arrow. “Is this what Hell is like for you?”

“My choice to die came within hours of my inevitable death, and it was a decision made with love, not cowardice. An important distinction to remember.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Although my afterlife is not this one, there is a reason that I am your guide here.”

I thought he was going to say more, but he only told me that we still had a great distance to travel.

I was now stripped to the waist. My skin was definitely improving. We continued through the woods and I heard what seemed, at first, to be the murmur of a throbbing beehive. As we came closer, I realized that it was a waterfall at the wood’s edge. The rushing wind swept back our hair, mine still growing.

This waterfall did not fall over the edge of any cliff; it just dropped straight down from the sky and cut through the desert floor in front of us. Francesco indicated that I needed to throw Sigurðr’s scabbard into the waterfall, as it would make an appropriate gift. Why? And for whom?

After removing the flaming arrow, I did as instructed. I watched the leather loop of the belt tumble down, bouncing in the froth, before being finally swallowed into the angry mouth at the bottom of the waterfall.

Almost immediately, a dark figure emerged and started climbing towards us.

This creature was three united bodies working together from a single torso. It had six gangly arms, whose six hairy hands reached into the waterfall to secure handholds, and it moved like a spider climbing a web. At first I thought there must have been some rock behind the waterfall but as it came closer, I could see its hands were wrapping around the liquid itself, twisting the streams of water into something like ropes. The beast had a sharp tail that cut into the waterfall, and though it was still some distance away, its smell already reminded me of piles of decaying mayflies on a beach.

“Geryon,” Francesco said, “who was once a king in Spain but is now the monster of fraud. It’s the guardian of this waterfall, and is the one who must deliver us into the pit.”

When Geryon reached ground level, its six legs pushed against the stream and it catapulted towards us, making a perfect six-point landing.

It was a large thing (as most things in Hell seemed to be), its torso littered with shiny scales. Its three heads were about six feet above my single one. Each face had similar features: all were lumpy with great welts, large lips that held rotting teeth, and eyes like black pearls housed in half-opened shells. Still, despite their ugliness, the faces seemed to be without deceit. All three heads began to speak at once.

“WHAT DO YOU…”

“WHY ARE YOU…”

“HOW DARE YOU…”

“…WANT?”

“…HERE?”

“…DISTURB ME?”

“We wish to enter the next circle,” Francesco answered.

“NO, IT CANNOT…”

“WE WILL NOT…”

“THIS ONE…”

“…BE DONE!”

“…HELP YOU!”

“…IS NOT DEAD!”

“It is true that we ask a great deal, and it is true that this one is not dead,” Francesco admitted. “But he is a friend of Marianna Engel.”

The name seemed to mean something to Geryon and the three heads muttered amongst themselves. Eventually, they took a vote-“YES. NO. YES”-before deciding to take us. (Who would have guessed that the monster of fraud was a democracy?) It turned so that we might climb onto its broad back. Francesco ushered me up first, whispering, “I’ll ride between you and the tail. It’s poisonous.”

When we were settled, the beast took a robust leap from land’s edge towards the waterfall. When we hit the water, I saw Geryon’s hands plunge into the liquid and grasp the fluid that flowed through its fists like translucent snakes. While it was difficult to keep my grip, I noticed that my arms were stronger than they had been since my accident. At one point Geryon’s three heads said, “NOT…SO…TIGHT.”