Part 7
Cricket carried Juniper under her arm like a football. The once-child, now-creature trotted to the wall of the trench.
With a tremendous leap, Cricket was on the wall, climbing with her free hand and clawed feet.
Juniper, for fear of tumbling into the trench below, didn't struggle or demand release. She held onto the creature's arm and stared at the fiery sky above and tried not to think about the tortures awaiting her in Gareth’s prison.
Even worse, she had failed to save Nikki and the baby. Or did she? Maybe her attack was enough to scare the abusive pig or distract him long enough for him to reconsider his intentions. Regardless, she would never know if her effort was worth the punishment she would receive.
Cricket hit ground level.
Ash rained from the angry sky.
Gareth waited a few yards away, holding the manacles and chains.
The monster lurched forward to drop Juniper on the ground.
"Good girl, Cricket."
She threw back her head and let an otherworldly, forlorn cry. Then she turned around to hop back into the trench.
Juniper considered running, but the ring of jackals constricted around her. She rose from the ground.
"Taking you to Voldrin gives me no joy."
"Liar."
Gareth looked into her brown eyes with his gray ones.
"I know inevitability. Some people possess a certain quality of spirit which makes them more likely to break the laws of Limbo. Hold out your wrists please. This process will be far less painful if you don't struggle."
"For whom?" She stepped away. "Why would I go with you willingly? You said you would punish me."
Several jackals behind her growled.
"I wanted you to fear me so that you would follow the rules. I don't want to hurt you, but I do have to enforce order." He moved toward her.
He eyed her with a hungry look. A grin crept up one side of his mouth, exposing a sharp canine. He kept company with jackals because he was practically one of them. Regrettably, her lack of trust in him was irrelevant. At that particular point in time, escape was not an option.
She reluctantly offered her wrists.
Gareth clamped manacles to them.
Each manacle connected to a short chain, which connected to a longer chain. Gareth held the end like a leash.
They made an odd procession – guardian, prisoner, and the pack bringing up the rear.
Down a trail, they entered a grove of trees with dagger-sharp branches. They crossed trenches, sometimes on rickety bridges that groaned and threatened to drop them into chasms. Juniper couldn’t deny the relative appeal that darkness held now.
Her imagination conjured visions of medieval torture devices. She pictured knives, racks, spikes filed to hideously thin points. She didn’t dare ask her captor what he planned to do exactly.
Gareth didn’t speak to her during their journey either. He didn’t make threats. He didn’t attempt to offer an illusion of comfort. Perhaps he was deciding what to do with her.
Limbo had dimmed to night when they came to a field covered in brittle, wheat-blond grass. A breeze carrying mortal souls to the mortal world brushed her hair from her shoulders. Her freedom slipped farther away. Life did too. She couldn’t watch the living. She couldn’t even get close. Juniper felt more alone than she ever thought she could.
The number of jackals dwindled as they reached the entrance to a cave in the middle of the field. One by one they dissolved into the fog like nightmares at dawn. By the time they reached the cave, only five remained.
Their entrance into the cave crashed any remaining hope for a quick escape. The rock walls shut out the expanse of the field and the overhead gray. Amid golden light, stalagmites stood guard at increasingly close proximity, crowding in a way that only added to her confinement.
"This is the tunnel. The prison is inside a mountain, but don't worry. We aren't descending. We aren't beneath ground level."
She thought it absurd that he believed such a detail made any difference.
"Should I take comfort in that notion?"
Gareth glared over his shoulder, his pale eyes glimmering in the cave light.
"Some people associate a descent with an entrance to Hell. You would do well to appreciate the small things just as you would do well to respect me in my house.”
Voldrin Prison was situated inside a hollow portion of earth the size of a mountain. The structure was a fifteen tier step pyramid, the top levels of which hung forward as if the building were caught in the midst of toppling over.
Harpies circled above like vultures. They were bald women with leathery bat-wings for arms and hawk-like talons for feet. They charged one another and beat against barred windows. A couple of them dove low to get a good look at the new prisoner, and Juniper saw a keen hunger in their shining eyes.
Always claws that catch. Every creature in Limbo seemed to come equipped with them.
The prison walls bled molten fire from the many cracks in the stone. Liquid embers dripped from rough-cut corners to land on each next floor down until they hit the ground. There, the fire pooled and let off puffs of smog that clogged the air. If the prison truly wasn’t Hell, it did a fair impression.
Ghostly, hollow-eyed faces of prisoners peered out the many windows.
So many.
When they saw Gareth approach, a cry went up among them, a melancholy wail that weighed heavy on Juniper's soul.
These were the people who couldn't leave the destiny be. They couldn't let go of the living world. They would suffer eternally because of it.
She was one of them.
A massive set of wooden double doors groaned as they opened for the master.
Juniper and Gareth wound down a narrow corridor of dark stone.
"Stay close to me when we reach the dungeon. Stay clear of the bars unless you want them to grab you."
After the initial labyrinth, they came to the main hall of the prison.
The center of the building was open, all the way to the highest level, Juniper suspected.
Thousands of cells were stacked as far up as she could see.
Again the souls cried out, wordless, discordant moaning and shrieking.
Their faces were wrong. Eyes were shaded sockets. Mouths hung open to bare more blackness inside. Arms were gray skin stretched over bone frames. Hair and clothes were sparse or gone completely.
Cricket told her that souls looked how they wanted to look.
These people had lost all hope, all willingness to do anything but continue to exist. Sorrow had diminished them to a state of inhumanity. They knew death beyond death.
"What did you do to them?" Juniper asked, horrified. “What’s wrong with them?”
"The same thing that's wrong with you." Gareth snapped.
"I don't look like that. Where are their eyes?"
"The souls are lost."
Gareth didn't put Juniper in a cell like the others. He escorted her to a cage at the middle of the hall. It had bars on four sides and a ratty cot against one wall.
He removed the manacles using a skeleton key he wore on a long chain around his neck, then urged her inside with a hand on her arm.
The door let a raucous clang as he closed it.
"I have to go back out on patrol for a while. I wouldn't try to talk to the others if I were you. They're...damaged." He pulled the hood on his coat onto his head and turned to leave. His canine entourage accompanied him.
A white spotlight far above glared brilliance onto her and the cage. She felt vulnerable and exposed under the stark illumination. She couldn’t make out the faces beyond the bars.
Juniper would have rather occupied a cell along the wall. Not only did the cage make her the center of unwanted attention, it caused her to wonder why Gareth placed her on such a stage. If all the prisoners began their sentences in the center cage, he made the others watch him strip the humanity from the new captives. Watching someone endu
re the same torment meant reliving their own.
She felt multitudes of hollow eyes boring into her from around and above.
With Gareth gone, the din of misery died away. The lost souls still called out, but as individuals and not as a constant stream of racket. There were no words, no prayers or questions or declarations of any kind. Instead they released bursts of emotion, most often in the form of wails or moans.
They were the heartbroken. Each of them had once been passionate, loving enough to sacrifice themselves. For that, Gareth took almost everything they had left.
She couldn’t let the so-called guardian do the same to her, not without a fight.
She tugged on the door, which was locked, of course. She tried to squeeze between the bars - also a failure. The only way she could leave the cage was with Gareth’s key.
Juniper then flopped onto the cot.
Nikki might be hurt or in danger, and there was nothing Juniper could do.
She regretted not caring more while she was alive. She kept recalling her memory of the Christmas party, that flurry of relatives, friends and neighbors. Were there signs of abuse then? She couldn't remember for certain and that was the worst thing. Almost.
Not knowing, never knowing if her sacrifice made any difference, that would erode her sanity. She would be one of the lost souls soon enough.
Juniper lay on the cot and curled into a ball and cried.