Morning Star (Sins of the Father 3)

“You know,” I said, “this place really isn’t all that bad, for one of the prime hells. I guess I thought it’d be a lot worse. And a lot bigger.”

“Oh,” Belphegor said, matter of factly. “That’s because you haven’t looked at the fields.”

He clapped me on the shoulder as I walked past him, as he ushered me out to the edge of the balcony. My stomach swooped as I looked far below us, at the acres upon acres of dead red earth.

And planted there, in the thousands, like crops sorted into equidistant plots and rows, were the corpses.

10

I couldn’t even hold myself back at that point. The words were bubbling out of my throat. My hands reached for the balcony railings, like my body was trying to steady itself.

“What the fuck?” I turned to Florian, then Belphegor. “Seriously. What the fuck?”

Belphegor smiled at me, then brushed his bangs aside, his horrible third eye pulsing red as he cast his gaze across his fields of butchery. “Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s an elegant solution, really. I hardly have to do any of the work myself. The system is self-sustaining, for the most part.”

Florian covered his mouth, a sound like restrained retching burbling in his chest. I raked the ends of my fingers along my scalp, staring at Belphegor in disbelief.

“Elegant? Self-sustaining? You have a garden with plants that feed on blood and entire fields filled with dead bodies. Just rows and rows of corpses planted in the ground.”

“Corpses?” All three of Belphegor’s eyes blinked at the same time as he stared at me in bemusement. “What makes you think that they’re dead?”

And right then, as if on cue, one of the bodies in the middle distance convulsed, reached red-stained hands up to a bloody sky, and screamed.

“Oh dear God.” Florian grabbed onto the railing. “They’re alive. They’re all alive.”

Belphegor tapped the point of his chin. “Well, for a given value of ‘alive,’ that is. This is one of the prime hells, after all. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, but these aren’t actually bodies. They’re the souls of the dead who ended up in my realm.”

Thousands of them, I thought, as I looked out over the fields, my heart lurching when I realized that they stretched on forever, fading as their endless rows met the horizon. Where I couldn’t see, way into the distance, the souls potentially numbered in the millions. My head throbbed with the impossibility of it. Half angel or no, the human mind can’t possibly be equipped to grasp such enormity – so much, so very, very much – just laid out like that.

Imagine seeing all the stars in the universe, all of them, at once. Now imagine that each of them was a soul that once belonged to a living, breathing person, half planted in crimson earth.

Florian, bless him, tried to speak again, in between heaves and burbles. “So you’re saying – ugh, Christ – you’re saying that these people are all asleep and you’re just harvesting their dreams?”

Belphegor’s laughter tumbled out across his horrific plantation, the sound of it scraping the air. More of the bodies planted in the earth convulsed and screamed as his voice passed their plots, as if it had physically hurt them.

“None of them are asleep. Down here, they don’t have that privilege. They’ve been lazy all their lives, so now they get to undo all that and work for me. They can feel every little stimulus here, every grain of soil shifted by the wind, every insect’s legs as it perches on their foreheads, every last drop of their essence siphoned by my harvesters.”

“By your what?” I didn’t think it was possible for me to be even more disgusted, but there it was. “What do you mean by your ‘harvesters?’”

The prince’s eyes narrowed as he smiled at me, three irises burning with malevolent glee. “You mean you didn’t notice the tubes running out of their bodies?”

I was afraid to look. But the curiosity burned me, and my eyes went searching, finding the tubes Belphegor had described. They looked very much like that slender bloodsucking tendril I’d swatted away from my body back outside in the Crimson Gardens.

“You’re sucking the blood out of every one of them,” I breathed.

“Well, it’s not blood. Not exactly. Not anymore. The dead don’t bleed. It’s the essence of their suffering. The fate of those condemned to the hell of Sloth is to be stimulated forever, to make penance for their apathy and inertia in life. None of these people ever amounted to anything, even the wealthy ones, who only ever got that way from inheritance, from excess.” I recoiled when Belphegor’s hand pressed against mine, as he smiled into my face. “You’ve accomplished so much with your small, short life, Mason. It’s unfortunate, but you’ll never have to fear being condemned to this particular prime hell. More’s the pity.”

I retrieved my hand quickly, slipping it into my pocket, overcome with hatred and revulsion for this cruel, three-eyed thing and its terrible plantation of souls.

Belphegor raised an eyebrow. “You look at me as if I’m such a monster. This is the way of things, boys. This isn’t even the worst you’ll ever see among the prime hells. Gluttony, your good friend Beelzebub? He has punishments that would make even my skin crawl. You know that thing about Prometheus on the rock, how his liver keeps growing back even though vultures eat it every day? Worse. Way worse. And Wrath? Hah! Forget about it. You’d never sleep another wink.”

Florian gagged again, all six, almost seven feet of him doubled over and pale from queasiness.

“Besides,” Belphegor said, indicating lazily over the balcony with a wave of his hand. “These people have it easy. It’s the ones in the subterranean sector who really have all the fun.”

My stomach turned. How much worse could things possibly get? “Don’t even start. Don’t tell me anything. Florian and I can only take so much.”

“Suit yourselves. Ugh. Babies.” Belphegor stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, leading the way back into the mansion, the fringe of hair on his forehead falling into place and hiding his awful third eye from view once more. “You won’t be tilling the fields, after all. Like I said, those are mostly self-sustaining. The hags have all that covered.”