Page 5 of Hell and Its Pleasures

He spoke calmly, but with a disdainful edge to his voice, and he would not meet my gaze as he said it. He spoke looking up at the sky, like God might be watching, like he had to prove to the Holy Father he meant no harm speaking so freely of pagan myths and hell gates.

But my heart began to race. I had to stop myself from laughing. I thought:could it be so easy?But why on earth would the bishop be leading me here?

He caught the look on my face and tutted. “Fear not. The locals still avoid it—they do not approach the cave, and certainly do not enter it.”

“Enter it?” I said, glancing at the lake, but he shook his head and stalked onwards. For another five odd minutes we walked, crushing through underbrush and overgrown grass, and hidden beneath the mess of foliage sat the yawning chasm of a cave mouth.

My heart jolted.

I looked to the bishop but received no further relief from him. His brow furrowed and he gave the order—not for just anyone to walk inside, but for he and I to go.

I glanced back at the servants, feeling exposed and naked without them. How silly. I craved this moment, and yet. . .

“Come,” the bishop said.

I understood belatedly as we pushed inside. The light disappeared, swallowed by the infernal dark, and whether Bishop Fazio believed it or not, I felt something in my soul shiver. As if the mortal part of me could sense the change, a tingling pain began to throb in my forehead, and the longer we pushed forward into the dark cavern, the less I felt connected to myself. He struck something against the stone wall and a blaze of firelight sparked to life. Soft orange light pulsed over the walls. Water dripped from the walls and a dank smellpermeated from the ground, and then abruptly I was walking over a sheet of waxed canvas—expensive and fairly new.

The bishop kept walking, but I stopped. He reached down and dragged another canvas tarp from its place, and as the light spilled over the central cavern I saw it all revealed: huge chests stacked upon another and bolted with heavy locks.

My heart thudded.

“We will put them here,” Bishop Fazio said.

It wasn’t enough just to dump those now useless tomes in this graveyard. I needed to find that particular tome, the one that could tear this world asunder and give me what I wanted.

“It’s not. . .” I started.

The bishop turned. “What?”

“It’s not enough, Bishop Fazio. You. . .I am sorry, but you must realise that.”

He raised the torch to me. The motion meant shadows danced over his face, pooling deeply in the trenches beneath his eyes.

“You think this is not enough?”

“I know it. These should be. . . the tome to open the Gates of Hell shouldn’t be here, in front of a Gate to Hell!”

“It is just a myth, Don Alessandro.” His voice took on a dangerous edge. “Surely you do not believe this pagan nonsense? It is the best place to hide things. No locals come searching here.”

I was surprised, in a way, by his surety. I wanted him to be swayed, to be frightened. I ended up saying, “Let us take it to Rome. To the Vatican. Let us be sure and make it safe.”

He scanned my face and sighed, but eventually nodded. Relief flooded me. The bishop placed the torch in a sconce I hadn’t noticed and dusted off his hands away from his holy robe.

“That one,” he said, pointing to one of the chest. “Haul itout for me, would you? You are still so young. My body cannot do it.”

I tried to keep the eagerness from my step as I launched forward and hefted the chest out with all my might. My muscles strained and that good ache started up in my joints, and it reminded me of waking the day after Asmodeus was done with me, and feeling the pressure in my spine, the jolt in my neck, and throbbing ache in my hole.

The bishop moved his robe to the side and revealed a ring set of keys, which he unclipped and handed to me.

“Wrap it up in this,” he murmured, pulling a cloth from somewhere unseen. “I had thought. . .” he shook his head. “You are right. I should have listened to my instincts earlier.”

I didn’t know what he meant, not really, but I took the cloth readily anyway and hesitated on my knees before the chest. Very carefully, I put the key in the slot. I breathed in, found a holy reverence in that tension, and put my intention into the unlocking of the chest.

This is a deliberate sundering. Here marks my complete betrayal for my brethren, for humanity, for this world. I want Asmodeus more than I want salvation. Let it be known.

The air shifted as I opened that chest, and its creak sounded like a waking groan as I inhaled the stuffy, long stagnant air that had lived inside it for years. I didn’t need the bishop to tell me which one it was. Something happened in my vision, and I could see nothing else but that old, leather-bound tome, as if a vignette had fallen around me and tunnelled my focus towards it.

The tome itself was nothing special. The paper had a thick quality to it, closer to something woven together than what I was used to. The cover was a supple leather, grey and stained, and no title had been embossed onto the manuscript, and yet I knew.

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