Free The Fall of Hades by Jeffrey Thomas

wrapping her arms around her knees. She slept that way for an indeterminate time, her dreams a dissolving and reforming collage of images and associated, dislocated sound, the tatters of a former life. She woke with a start, and a vertiginous look into the spiraling vortex that gaped hungrily for her to fall. She rose unsteadily, resumed climbing.
    With no sense of destination, up seemed the only viable direction—up, and up. Her only impulse, her only instinct, for ascension.
    She even passed huge stenciled numbers painted in white on the curving wall. 3…4…5…6. It had to be an indication of the level she had reached. Or was it the current circle of Hell?
    There were other things painted beside or overlapping these numbers, in red paint. At level 6, there was the quote: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out ofheaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” Not only that, but the giant number 6 had a slash through it, and over it in red was painted: 666. There were misspellings, besides, as there were in the quote that appeared at level 7 when she reached it: “Upon the wicked he shallrain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.”
    The winding staircase terminated at this, the 7th level. Another metal hatchway, and Vee opened it on squealing hinges, stepped over its threshold.
    It was another stupendous room, a factory floor, murkily lit; only occasional lights spaced here and there inadequately. Not far from the door were several padded cradle-like chairs, like something astronauts might recline in, with an intricate control panel between them, a few bejeweled lights still twinkling upon it. Bullet holes punctured both chairs and Vee thought she saw ancient blood stains. Beyond the chairs loomed a number of massive steel vats that took up most of the room, but lining one entire wall was a row of vertical glass cylinders. Some of these were broken, shattered by bullets. A few still contained a vile-looking greenish solution, with scum that almost looked like bits of macerated flesh collected at the bottom. She moved down this aisle, and came upon a couple of tubes in which a body floated in the greenish fluid, reminding her of the deformed fetuses carnival sideshows called “pickled punks.” But these had obviously been Demons in the making, looking close to completed. Dead now, however. They were a little like the insect Demons she had seen in the recorded memory Jay had played for her, but these appeared more like ticks than locusts, bipedal, with pale greenish exoskeletons. Their forelimbs resembled those of a praying mantis, but bladed, and lesser pairs of limbs ended in a variety of surgical-looking implements of torture.
    One of the cylinders was punctured by bullets; the fluid had long since all run out, and the insect Demon was slumped at the container’s bottom with half its head shot away. Painted in red words across this cylinder was the quote: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils.”
    Having reached the end of the aisle, Vee turned and saw an odd obstacle between this and the next factory chamber beyond.
    It was a row of human heads, maybe thirty or so, hanging from the ceiling via long chains affixed to metal rings screwed into the top of their skulls. The dangling chains were like the strands of a beaded curtain demarcating the border between this room and the next—and the heads suspended from the chains were alive. Vee saw eyes blink, mouths move soundlessly for want of vocal cords. But shouldn’t even severed heads regenerate into full bodies again? As Vee warily neared the heads, though, she saw why this hadn’t occurred. The neck stumps had all been capped over with a metal covering, bolted through the flesh into the bone perhaps, that prevented the