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I clung to Memnoch. Was this beautiful, or was it not hideous,this throng of all nations and times? The naked, the black, the white,the Asian, those of all races, reaching out, moving with confidencethrough the lost and confused souls!
The ground itself hurt my feet; blackened, rocky marl strewn withshells. Why this? Why?
In all directions slopes rose or gently fell away, to run into sheercliffs rising beyond or opening into chasms so deep and filled withsmoky dissolving gloom they seemed the abyss itself.
Doorways flickered and flashed with light; stairways woundprecipitously up and down the stark, steep walls, leading out of sight,to vales I could only glimpse, or to gushing streams golden andsteaming and red with blood.
"Memnoch, help me!" I whispered. I dared not let go of the veil.
1 couldn't cover both ears. The howls were picking at my soul as ifthey were axes that could tear away pieces of it. "Memnoch, this isunbearable!""We will all help you," cried the Helpful Ghosts, a cluster ofthem closing in on all sides to kiss and to embrace me, their eyes widewith concern. "Lestat has come. Lestat is here. Memnoch's broughthim back. Come into Hell."Voices rose and fell and overlapped, as if a multitude said theRosary, each from a different starting point, voices having becomechant.
"We love you.""Don't be afraid. We need you.""Stay with us.""Shorten our time."I felt their soft sweet soothing touch even as the lurid light terrifiedme, and the explosions blazed across the sky and the smell ofsmoke rose in my nostrils.
"Memnoch!" I clung to his blackened hand as he pulled me along,his profile remote, his eyes seeming to sternly survey his kingdom.
And there below us, as the mountain was cleft, lay the plains withoutend, covered with wandering and arguing dead, with the weepingand lost, and seeking, and afraid, with those being led and gatheredand comforted by the Helpful Ghosts, and others running headlongas if they could escape, only to find themselves tumbling through thespirit multitudes, in hopeless circles.
From where did this hellish light come, this magnificent and relentlessillumination? Showers of sparks, sudden bursts of burningred, flames, comets arching over the peaks.
Howls rose, echoing off the cliffs. Souls wailed and sang. TheHelpful Dead rushed to aid the fallen to their feet, to usher thosewho would at last come to this or that stairs or gate or cave mouth orpathway.
"I curse Him, I curse Him, I curse Him!" It echoed off the mountainsand through the valleys.
"No justice, not after what was done!""You cannot tell me....""... someone has to make right....""Come, I have your hand," Memnoch said, and on he walked, thesame stern look on his face as he led me quickly down an echoingstairs, steep, dangerously narrow, and winding about the cliff.
"I can't bear this!" I cried out. But my voice was snatched away.
My right hand plunged into my coat again to feel the bulk of the veil,and then I reached out for the pitted and crumbling wall. Were thesecarvings in the rocks? Were these places where other hands hadclawed or tried to climb? The screaming and the wails blotted out myreason. We had come again to yet another valley.
Or was it a world, as vast and complex in its own right as Heaven?
For here were myriad palaces and towers and arches as before, incolors of sombre brown, and burnt sienna, and ochre, and burnished ifnot blackened gold, and rooms filled with spirits of all ages and nationsagain, engaged in argument, discourse, struggle, or even song,some holding each other like newfound friends in the midst of woe,uniformed soldiers of ancient wars and modern wars, women in theshapeless draped black of the Holy Land, the souls of the modernworld in their store-made finery now covered with dust and soot, sothat all that blazed was muted in the blaze, as if no color could shineforth itself in its more baleful glory. They wept and patted eachother's faces, and others nodded as they screamed their wrath, fistsclenched.
Souls in ragged monks' habits of coarse brown, nuns with the stiffwhite wimples intact, princes in puffed sleeves of velvet, naked menwho walked as though they had never known clothes, dresses ofgingham and old lace, of modern glittering silks and chemical fabricssheer and thick, soldiers' olive green coats, or armour of gleamingbronze, peasants' tunics of crude cloth, or fine tailored wool suits ofmodern fashion, gowns of silver; hair of all colors tangled andmingled in the wind; faces of all colors; the old knelt with hands clasped,bald heads pink and tenderly wrinkled at the neck, and the thin whitesoulbodies of those who had starved in life drank out of the streams asdogs might do it, with their mouths, and others lay back, eyes halfshut against the rocks and gnarled trees, singing and dreaming, andpraying.
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