Escape From Hell Read Online Free Page A

said. “So. You were in a bottle. Then you were outside the bottle, and your friend Benito was there. Who sent him to get you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know. Your friend came to rescue you. Didn’t he know who sent him?”
    “Benito was a good Catholic. He was sure everything was according to God’s will. But Sylvia, he wasn’t my friend. Not then. Sylvia, he was Benito Mussolini! And he didn’t really know who sent him. God never talked to him.”
    She was quiet. I reached to take hold of a branch.
    “You don’t have to do that. I can talk. I was just trying to comprehend that. Benito Mussolini. There were movies making fun of him when I was growing up during the war, but there were people who admired him, too. Fascist. Made the trains run on time. Il Duce. In German that’s Führer. He taught Hitler. At least that’s what I learned in school. You’re sure it was him?”
    “Oh, I’m sure.”
    “And he got out. Benito Mussolini led you all the way to the exit. Then he got out of Hell, and you could have, but you didn’t follow him. And you know the way out now, but you’re not going until you know everyone can get out. Have I got all that right?”
    “Yes. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”
    She ignored that. “And you have the gift of tongues. You can wander through Hell.”
    “Yes —”
    “Allen, all my life I prayed for a Sign. You had one. Allen! So do I! You’re my Sign.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    I was curled up like a knot on Sylvia’s twisted roots. “Because it’s not doing either one of us any good, that’s why!”
    “Maybe that’s wrong. Dante wasn’t a theologian, he was a poet. We can trust his geography, but Allen, you already know something he didn’t know!”
    “What’s that?”
    “That even someone who has been condemned can get out. That people like you and Benito can wander through Hell.”
    “Oh.” I felt better for a second. Benito had certainly been condemned to the Pit of the Evil Counselors, and now he was out. “But we still don’t have a way to get you out!” I slapped her trunk. Rooted.
    “We’ll get to that later. O Allen, don’t leave me! Tell me, tell me everything. This has to make sense. I know it makes sense! We’ll figure it out. Start in the Vestibule, and tell me everything.”

Chapter 3
    The Vestibule
    Opportunists
----
     
    We to the place have come, where I have told thee
Thou shalt behold the people dolorous
Who have foregone the good of intellect.
    I hurt all over. It felt like I’d been blasted to bits. I felt motion within myself, like a sluggish dust eddy. I was coming back together, but the process wasn’t fast. After about a hundred years — well, it might have been just a few minutes, how can you tell? — I looked around to see where I was.
    I was exactly where I found myself the first time, in an endless expanse of stinking mud studded with old clay and metal bottles, with insects buzzing around me. There were low hills all around me. Far off in the distance one way was a wall, and in the other direction, closer, was an evil–looking river. Acheron. There was the faint smell of decaying flowers, and overhead was the gray haze that passes for sky in Hell.
    There was an opened bronze bottle next to me. It might have been mine, my prison. I was home.
    •    •    •
    “B ut you weren’t, Allen.”
    Sylvia had interrupted my narrative. I looked up at her, startled for the moment. “You can still talk.”
    “Yes. I can talk as long as I bleed. Allen, you weren’t right back where you started. You were outside the bottle.”
    “Yeah.” I shuddered at the thought. What if I’d been bottled again? I wasn’t alone, either. There was a small crowd drifting around me, swatting at themselves and watching me. When I tried to talk I squawked. Just like I did with you, I guess. Eventually I was able to ask what the Hell they were looking at.
    “They all talked at once. In half a dozen languages. The funny