Free Letters From Hades by Jeffrey Thomas Page B

vents and grills in the bodies of buildings. Oblivion was like a gargantuan factory busily manufacturing itself.
    There was a wall surrounding the entire city, about four stories in height, and made from huge plates of iron impossibly soldered or welded together, these seams like silvery scars against the thick black sheets. Beyond the wall rose a refinery of some kind, and an immense mound of glistening coal. Structures that might be steeples or minarets, their metal surfaces layered and richly detailed. Huge fans turned atop various rooftops, perhaps windmills generating power. Water tanks rested atop others. Catwalks connected many of the tall buildings. Everything looked tremendously congested, lumped together, as if a city like New York had been compressed into half its length and breadth.
    The wall around Oblivion was a hexagon, with a slender metal tower soaring at each corner. Like a skeletal iron lighthouse, each turret was surmounted by a glowing orange bulb. And then I noticed that an elevator-like contraption inside one of these needle-like towers was raising an illuminated globe up toward its presently unlit summit. I realized that the globe was that Buddha-faced Jack-O’-Lantern being I had seen in the carriage.
    "What is that thing?" I asked the Indian woman, pointing.
    "An Overseer."
    "So…they monitor the city?"
    "Yes. More or less."
    "Where did that one go off to?"
    "He didn’t go; he’s coming. He’s replacing one that must have perished. Sometimes Overseers sicken…grow dim, then black, and die. Sometimes they’re murdered by the Damned because the oil in their bodies can be used inside lamps."
    Ahh. I recalled the mysterious lamp Caroline and I had used back in Caldera.
    "Well, where is this one coming from?"
    "He was probably born in the city of Tartarus. That is where most of the Demons in this region are spawned."
    "Have you ever been there?"
    The woman turned eyes of marveling horror upon me. "Go there? No one would go there! Not willingly…"
    We were coming up on the massive gates to the city, which were set into grooved tracks and could be slid shut and bolted, closing the city off. I asked my companion what the city might want to shut out.
    "Sometimes armies of Angels come here to lay siege to this city or that. War games, for their entertainment. They expect us and even the Demons to put up a good fight."
    The exodus into the city was log-jamming at the gates, trickling through it at a slower rate. There were several Demons posted there, prodding people in the crowd with longer versions of the metal pike I carried, herding them in or out through the entrance. And I saw that these Demons were like the one I had rescued—very human, very white, with jagged dragon-like wings. These were the only devils I had seen in Hell that resembled Dore’s illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy —the beautiful muscular bodies (but without the horns and tails). And I had thought the Demon I rescued had been stripped naked by her tormentors, but I could see these four males were nude, as well.
    One of the Demons stabbed a man in the buttock with the sharp end of his lance. "Move, hog! You’re blocking traffic!" And he barked a laugh.
    His companion laughed, too, until he abruptly turned to face… me . He had an alert look as if he recognized me from somewhere, and didn’t like what he saw. He shoved into the crowd to get to me.
    "What?" asked his friend.
    "Don’t you smell it, Vetis?" he growled. "Demon blood…from this one!"
    The pike in my hand, I realized with terror. I wanted to fling it away from me but it was too late. I saw the Indian woman squeeze ahead between two people to get away from me. I didn’t blame her.
    "Wait," I said, frozen in my tracks while other souls uncomfortably flowed around me, eyes averted. "Listen…"
    The first Demon to reach me snatched the iron bar from my hand, and raised it to his nose. The one named Vetis soon joined him, seizing me by the hair of my head and