LITMIR.BIZ

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it’s fine,” said Zac.

      “Are you sure? Maybe I could just...” He rubbed the wet stain with a bare foot. “Oh no, that’s just made it worse if anything.”

      “I said leave it, it’s fine. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

      Angelo blinked. “Have we?”

      Zac stared.

      “Yeah, yeah, right. Of course. I forgot,” Angelo said. He slipped his flip-flops back on. “How do I look?”

      “You look –” Zac hunted for something complimentary to say – “marginally less ridiculous,” was the best he could do in the circumstances.

      “Really?” said Angelo brightly. “You’re not just saying that?”

      “No, you look... good,” Zac said, but that last word came out much higher than he’d intended. “So, are you ready to do this?”

      “Before we go, I should warn you. Watch out for the demons. They’re horrible. And I mean really horrible.”

      “Seriously?” said Zac. “And here I thought they were going to be a right old barrel of laughs.”

      “Well, you’d be wrong,” said Angelo with absolute sincerity. “So it’s lucky you’ve got me to keep you right.”

      “Oh, yes. I’m a lucky guy,” Zac said. “Now, you ready?”

      Angelo took a few quick breaths. He held out his hand. “I’m ready.”

      “Then let’s do it.” Zac slipped his hand into the boy’s.

      Angelo grinned nervously. “Here we go, then. Bowels of Hell, here we come!”

      NCE THE WORLD had stopped spinning, Zac looked down at his legs. They were buried in snow up to the knees.

      A light flurry of flakes continued to fall from an otherwise bright blue sky above. Beside the boys, smoke curled lazily from the chimney of a large stone building with a thatched roof. Muted laughter and singing squeezed out through gaps in the shuttered windows and heavy oak door. It all sounded quite jolly, really.

      “So,” said Zac, “this is Hell, is it?”

      “Yes,” said Angelo.

      Zac shot him a withering look. “Are you absolutely sure?”

      “Yes. I mean, no. I mean... it might be.”

      Zac blew a snowflake off the end of his nose. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say it isn’t.”

      “You might be right,” Angelo admitted. He smiled shyly. “I’m a bit of a novice when it comes to teleporting.”

      “A novice? How often have you done it?”

      “What, including the two times with you?” Angelo asked. He began counting up on his fingers. “Twice.”

      “Twice,” Zac said. He shook his head. “Can you take us to Hell? Honestly?”

      “Yes!” said Angelo enthusiastically, then, “Maybe...” Then his shoulders slumped and he admitted, “Probably not. It’s trickier than it looks. I might send us somewhere really dangerous by mistake.”

      “What, more dangerous than Hell?”

      “You never know,” Angelo said in a half-whisper. “There could be worse places out there. It’s not like Heaven and Hell are the only afterlives, is it?”

      Zac frowned. “Isn’t it?”

      “No!” Angelo laughed. “They’re all real.”

      “What do you mean? What’s all real?”

      “You don’t know?”

      “Know what?”

      “You really don’t know, do you?”

      Zac gritted his teeth. “Know what?”

      “That every religion in history has been right. Although,” Angelo added quickly, “Christianity is more right than the others, obviously. There are thousands of afterlives out there. Xibalba. That was the Mayan underworld. Then there’s, let’s see... Olympus, home of the Greek Gods. Adlivun...”

      “What’s Adlivun?”

      “It’s where Sedna the She-Cannibal lives,” Angelo explained. “But I wouldn’t recommend going there. Everyone says she’s a right cow. Besides, it’s underwater, so we’d get wet.”

      Zac rubbed his temples. “This is nuts,” he said. “This is too nuts.”

      He straightened and looked around them. The stone building they were next to stood at the top of a high hill. A number of other large buildings stood close to one another down the snowy slopes, as if huddling together for warmth. They all gleamed in the faint sunlight, each one a palace of silver or gold.

      Beyond them, the snow extended miles into the distance until it met a wall that stood several hundred metres high. Clearly someone wanted to keep whatever lay on the other side of the wall out.

      A kilometre or so in the other direction, the land stopped like a shore meeting the sea. There was no water there, though, just blue sky and a bank of cloud and, if Zac looked hard enough, the beginnings of a rainbow leading away from the edge.

      “So, where are we now?” asked Zac. Despite the mounting evidence, he was still finding it hard to believe any of what he was being told. “Santa’s grotto?”

      “Haha, very funny. Of course it isn’t.” Angelo gave Zac a playful nudge on the arm. “Santa’s grotto’s got a green roof. I don’t know where this is.”

      Zac looked at the door. The wood was dark, and the metal handle had been sculpted into the shape of a gargoyle-like head. An iron ring was gripped in the creature’s unmoving mouth. The place may have sounded quite jolly, but it didn’t look particularly inviting.

      “Only one way to find out,” he said; then he turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

      A moment before, the bar had been filled with the sounds of cheering and laughter and the loud-mouthed gloating of a hundred drunken men. Tankards had clattered against tankards, ale had been quaffed, food had been scoffed and the din of it all had been deafening.

      That all stopped when Zac and Angelo stepped into the Great Hall. The laughter died. The cheering ceased. And an amusing ditty about ritual disembowelment came to an abrupt, scratchy halt. A sea of horned helmets turned as one in the direction of the door.

      An enormous wooden table filled the hall. It groaned beneath the weight of the feast spread out upon it. If you could call it a feast. It looked to be light on food and heavy on alcohol.

      Standing in the corner closest to the door, a bearded man who had been juggling six short swords lost his concentration and then, a moment later, lost several of his toes. He didn’t scream. He didn’t so much as gasp, and as the echo of the clattering swords faded, silence filled the vast room.

      Zac felt Angelo step close behind him. He surveyed the faces that looked back at him. Their expressions were a blend of surprise, confusion and annoyance, all tied up in bristly beards and long, matted hair.

      The silence was broken by the sound of chair legs scraping on the flagstone floor. At the far head of the table, a man stood up.

      At least, Zac assumed he was a man. He was man-shaped, certainly, but looked to have been scaled up somewhere along the way. He stood taller than anyone Zac had ever seen, with shoulders

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