Chapter 3: It's the children

He was near despair. Slugthorn did not have a coherent plan that he could present to Screwtape. Time was running out. He was finished.

He had no luggage to pick up. As he made his through the airport, he started brain-browsing again, out of desperation. He was clutching at straws -- anything to stay alive a few moments longer.

He found nothing.

Here was a neatly-groomed man in a business suit, rushing to make connections to another flight, inwardly cursing the inefficiency of the airlines. Over there was a young couple in casual dress, waving their arms, bodies arched and tensed. They were arguing about something. Slugthorn didn't stay long enough to figure out what.

He kept searching. A young, attractive woman flitted by. She was intent on making a good impression at her upcoming job interview. Traveling at a slower gait was a plain, but not homely woman, perhaps in her late twenties. She was miserable. She was empty. She wanted a home and family, but couldn't even attract a boyfriend. She hadn't had a date in three months.

Anguish rent Slugthorn's brain. A harried, heavyset man with wild hair lumbered by. He was worrying about his job. Sales were down in his department. His boss had called in him for a “job performance conference.” That meant only one thing. He was going to be fired, to make room for younger men with newer ideas and lower paychecks. It was a way to save the company money on both ends, and get rid of deadwood. They got a younger man for less money, and didn't have to pay his retirement benefits. On top of everything else, his wife had filed for divorce. He was desperate. Wild thoughts of murder and suicide raced through his brain, and Slugthorn picked them up.

Slugthorn, for the first time in his existence, felt something for this human whose fate seemed so similar to his own. It was a slowing of the pulse rate, almost like sadness. It wasn't sympathy, but it was probably as close to it as a lower demon could come.

[“I'm really slipping. Maybe my time is up.”] Slugthorn shook his head to clear his thoughts. He had to come up with something -- anything. No, not just anything. Something grand -- a coup.

There was a buzzing in his brain. Something repelled and attracted Slugthorn at the same time. He swiveled his head, zeroing in on the signal like radar. At last he pinpointed the location. It was coming from a little boy.

Suddenly, a searing pain almost knocked Slugthorn down. A blinding white light exploded in his head, and he reeled backwards. The Enemy's aura emanated like a beacon from this insignificant human child.

Slugthorn was knocked unconscious. He staggered in a drunken daze, attracting the suspicious looks of passersby. His brain was out, but his legs still held him up.

When his brain did check back in, he was careful to keep the brain-browsing switched off. Cautiously, he looked over to where he had last seen the child. He was gone. Slugthorn breathed a sigh of relief.

[“What is going on here? I haven't experienced anything like this since that accidental brush with Gabriel. It was ten times worse than the sting I felt when I bumped into Mother Teresa in JFK airport in New York. What's that insignificant whelp doing with so much of the Enemy's power?”]

“Hey, old man -- why don't you go somewhere and sober up?” A cocky teenager wearing a filthy short denim jacket with spears of hair sticking straight up from his head, wearing garish rings on his fingers and in his ears, bopped by with two of his similarly-attired friends, bouncing up and down, full of youthful energy. They were laughing and looking over their shoulders at Slugthorn.

“You young whelps,” Slugthorn snarled in his most hideous growl, “I'll send you all to HELL!” Hate gleamed from his furious, fiery red eyes. He didn't look like a drunken bum anymore.

The faces of the three teenagers blanched, and the hair on their necks stood up. Their intended victim, the butt of their crude jokes, had become an awful, ugly, towering monster. The hot breath of Hell breathed out of his flaming red nostrils. A pungent smell like the acrid fumes from the molten iron of a blast furnace assailed them, suffocated and singed them.

They stumbled in their haste to get away from the old man. They quickened their steps, looking back over their shoulders to make sure he wasn't following. When they got further down the corridor, and groups of people came between them and Slugthorn, they resumed their mocking, but without their former exuberance. Their voices were subdued. They strove to convince themselves, without mentioning it in so many words, that their glimpse of Hell had only been a mirage; all in their imagination.

They kidded each other in hushed tones.

“Hey, you were really scared by that old geezer, weren't you?”

“Nah.”

“Yeah, sure. I saw your face.”

“Was not.”

“Were too.”

Slugthorn shook himself again and tried to regain his equilibrium. Even dazed as he was, he had been able to scare the wits out of those young hoodlums. Now he was trying to collect his thoughts.

He proceeded down the corridor to the main concourse, went out onto the street and hailed a cab. All the while, his brain was trying to make sense out of the incident. Cautiously, he switched his brain-browsing back on.

Nothing. Just the usual clutter. Shopping lists, car repairs, stereos, TVs to buy, rock concerts to attend, etc. Slugthorn increased the power slightly, expanding his range. Right away, he picked up another buzzing, frighteningly like the one that came from the child. Slugthorn couldn't see the source of the emanations; perhaps that was well, considering what had happened last time. So he fine-tuned the audio. They were the thoughts of a child.

It was lucky for Slugthorn the signal was weak. He couldn't distinguish clear, complete, formulated ideas, but the general feeling was love -- clean, pure and bright -- blinding white sound. Love for his mother, father, brothers and sisters was there, of course. But there was more. Something Slugthorn had never experienced. Something huge and grand. Awful. It was love overflowing; boundless, limitless, selfless love. Love without walls. 

Slugthorn was severely wounded. He shut off the brain-browsing mode before he sustained real damage. [“What in Hell's name is going on here? First that brat at the airport, now this. What is the earth coming to?”] Slugthorn wondered, wounded. No matter. It wouldn't be his concern much longer. His end was near.

The rest of the taxicab ride to Screwtape's office building was uneventful. Slugthorn paid the cabby and stepped out. He looked up. The office building was like dozens of others in the city -- modern, tall, clean lines, lots of glass and stainless steel -- soulless. Slugthorn took a long breath (it tasted foul and polluted; he loved it). He looked at his watch. It was time to go.

It was quick. Quick movement. Something caught his eye. A shuffle and a jumble, a scattering of footsteps. A youth in blue jeans and tennis shoes was bumping his way through startled pedestrians on the sidewalk, running. Now Slugthorn saw why. Three other youths were chasing him, bumping and shoving and shouting. It was the kind of thing you could see every day in the city, although not usually in this section; usually farther down in the lower end where the newspapers blow across the street and the smell of rotting vegetables hangs heavy in the air.

The youth stumbled and fell. A few more jostling, bumping leaps, and the others caught up with him before he could pick himself up. They began beating him and kicking him. The passersby who had been bumped and jostled now made a wide path around the small knot of flailing elbows and feet and yells and shouts. Most of them didn't even look, Slugthorn noted with approval.

Suddenly, there was something else. A little boy was suddenly in their midst, pulling and tugging at the ruffians. He was so small that the attackers didn't notice him at first. But when he started kicking and biting and punching and yelling at them to stop, they became annoyed. One of them lashed out viciously, kicking the small intruder in the head. He went down.

Slugthorn was intrigued. He walked over to where the small boy was lying, unconscious. He turned his back to the continuing melee, and turned his attention on the tot, who was now quietly moaning.

The three attackers, however, noticed the presence of the big man, and mistook his intentions. They fled, leaving their victim holding his stomach and gasping for breath.

Slugthorn bent down over the small child. The child had a small bruise on his forehead. His legs twitched. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He looked up into Slugthorn's face, and smiled.

Slugthorn shrieked.

He shot straight up as if a million volts of electricity had slammed into him. His body straightened up, then went past the vertical, and arched backwards. He fell. His head hit the pavement first.

Stone cold blackness. Slugthorn groped through eternal night. Long, hairy, rough things pulled and tugged at him. Rough, scratchy, clawing heat. Terror in the ether like an implacable hand; like an oily, choking, poisonous gas penetrating every pore, blotting out rational thought; unreasoning terror. He had to flee. But flee where? There was no refuge, no asylum. No escape from the scratching, tearing claws.

In his nightmare, Slugthorn ran and stumbled, stumbled and ran. A hellish gauntlet; Slugthorn a victim of his own device. Yes, it was he who invented the little game and taught it to the ones called Indians, those who marched the long icy trek to the undiscovered country. Their life was hard and cruel, dictated by a hard country and cruel climate. They had to make themselves tough. So Slugthorn had taught them the gauntlet. Let the members of the tribe, women and children included, form a double row, facing each other, about two arms' length apart. Let the victim run down between the two rows, while the people beat him with their war clubs. If he survives, well then, he may be counted innocent.

        But Slugthorn's hellish gauntlet was neverending. The unseen blows rained down upon him incessantly. There was no end in sight.

Nothing in sight. Nothing but blackness and stumbling and terror. He wandered in the Realm of the Dead. He could sense, not see, horrors floating in the inky depths. Slugthorn screamed, but his screams were voiceless; gagged in his throat.

What is a demon's notion of Hell? Are his imaginings any closer to the terrible reality than the frightened imaginings of man? Slugthorn had never visited the Lower Regions, not even on tour. He had only heard rumors from some of the older demons. He didn't believe the half of it; it was surely nothing but braggadocio, calculated to impress and frighten the young rookie -- or was it?

Slughthorn shriveled, and tried to hide. No good. They were finding him, poking, prodding, torturing him.

“I don't know. One minute, he was just crouched there, bending over the boy; the next minute he was lying on the sidewalk.”

“I think maybe some of those young hoodlums did it.”

“No. They were already gone by that time. Maybe he had a heart attack.”

Slugthorn heard voices out of a fog. His consciousness began to register people crowding around him, poking at him. He felt things. Fingers were jammed down his throat. Human hands were probing all around him, rhythmically compressing his chest. The first semi-conscious feeling he registered was revulsion.

His head was yanked back, his jaw thrust opened, and one of the disgusting humans actually put her mouth over Slugthorn's, and began to blow.

“Rau ow owwwrr,” Slugthorn groaned. The humans jumped back, startled. He hadn't intended to frighten them, just get them away.

“Are you all right?” He heard one of them say. Slugthorn tried to open his eyes to see who was addressing him. Then he realized his eyes were open.

He was blind!

His mind was amazed; dumbfounded. His thoughts were disordered. Painfully, he tried to recount what had happened to him. It hurt to think. What had happened? Where was he? Slowly, bits of  information began filtering into his consciousness. He remembered Screwtape's furious, terrifying voice on the phone. He remembered why he was here. Then he remembered the plane ride, and brain-browsing.

Brain-browsing. It had all started with that old, tired tactic.

The child. It all goes back to the child. That's where things started going wrong. The child had blown his brain-browsing circuits. And now this. The child. The same child. Or was it another child? No matter.

Then he remembered bending over the child. The child opened his eyes. Slugthorn looked into the face of... blinding white light, searing pain...

“Where does it hurt?” a voice called down him. Slugthorn hadn't realized that he had been screaming.

So this was how it was. They had always told him it would be like this. If one from the Lower Regions ever dared to look into His face (they even capitalize His name down there), he would be blinded, and die a painful death.

But Slugthorn was still alive. Still alive. That was it. Suddenly, Slugthorn felt another blinding flash. But this one was internal only. A blinding brain-flash. Sudden insight. From whom? Slugthorn was afraid to ask. But now he knew. He knew the meaning of it all; why the child... That was it. His one and only chance. He had to tell Screwtape. It was his only chance to live.

“Stay right there. Don't move,” a voice said. Slugthorn was rolling over, was trying to get to his feet. He rubbed his eyes, trying to make them see. Something was starting to come through. His vision was clearing at last.

An anxious face peered down at Slugthorn. It was a young woman in a down skier's jacket. Her blond hair was cropped close and brushed back.

“I'm ... I'm all right.” Slugthorn managed to mumble. His tongue was thick.

“The paramedics are on their way,” the young woman said. “Just take it easy. You'll be fine.”

“No. I don't have time. I have an appointment.” Slugthorn tried to look at his watch. He must be late already. Why hadn't they sought him out?

“Your appointment can wait. You need to be checked. Just lie still.”

“No. I said no. I'm fine. Please leave me alone. I must go now.” The urgency in Slugthorn's voice was increasing. He started to get up.

“Just lie back.” The young woman gently pushed Slugthorn.

“Rowrrrr!” Slugthorn growled. He rolled over, got to his knees, stood up and roughly brushed her backwards. He had had enough of these meddling humans.

“You've got to take it easy. You might have a head injury,” she insisted.

“I think he really hit his head hard,” someone in the gathering crowd said. “He's acting funny.”

Without a word, Slugthorn tore himself loose from the grasping hands and groped his way toward the revolving door.

“Well, that's gratitude!” an elderly woman snapped. “Could at least have said ‘Thank you.’” Slugthorn wasn't listening. His thoughts were racing. He knew he was on the right track. But how to put it to Screwtape? How to manage it so Screwtape would have to trust him? If he could only figure out the details in time. Time. There was so little time.