Letters From Hades Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Jeffrey Thomas
my head. On the tree facing that one, I saw two more feet…growing out of the bark rather than poking out of holes in it. I craned my head further back, and saw two hands protruding out of the trunk, but too high up to belong to the same person who owned the feet. The same was true of the second tree. And yet I knew there must only be one person buried, somehow, inside both of these trees. And I knew, though they were too high and lost in branches for me to see, that a human head must protrude from both of those trunks as well. The source of the wails.
These two people had been merged with the trees, back when the trees were young. But as they had grown, over decades, they had stretched out the bodies of their entombed victims, as if on a gigantic rack. One pair of feet looked male, the other more feminine. Were they lovers, then, who had loved each other more than they cherished the Father? And so here they were together for eternity, perhaps…or at least until Demons came some day to cut down the trees, and release the prisoners so that they might be free to encounter fresh new punishments.
This spectacle made me think of my living book, and both made me terrified. I should not take for granted my freedom to roam, to explore. There were not only those who would hunt me as an animal, but capture me and imprison me in one certain torture for a generation at a time. I must stay alert, be stealthy. And so, in case those who were responsible for the suffering of this couple might be lingering nearby, I resumed my plunge into the deep woods.
Several hours later, by my reckoning of time, I stopped to rest. My soul was panting and exhausted. In the morning, as I preferred to think of it, I might try to find something edible around me. I had thought I’d heard a bird screech several times…though I couldn’t be certain it had been a bird.
I crawled on hands and knees into a thorny thicket, shaded by the trunk of an especially large tree, and lay on a bed of needles. I was actually able to sleep for what must have been several hours straight…though I was awakened at one point by the very distant but unmistakable rolling thunder of gunfire.
Unable to get back to sleep, I have caught myself up in my journal.
Day 33.
T here is nothing to eat in this forest except insects. At least I assume these plump, segmented black organisms I’ve found inside rotted holes in some of the older trees are insect larvae. They aren’t too bad…especially after not having eaten in a month. But the slow-crawling, six-inch long albino millipedes I uncovered yesterday under a mound of damp, decomposing leaves made me violently ill after I ate just one of them. The leaves and stems around me bleed red blood and stink like rotting meat when I break them, like that ivy back at school. In fact, the waxy purple leaves of one kind of plant which grows close to the ground are so big that you can see their veins pulsing very subtly.
But I find this purple forest quite beautiful, in fact…especially the tall, gently stirring fir trees. Is the beauty an intentional effect of the Creator, or an oversight? One would think He wouldn’t want a scrap of beauty to exist here, that every tree should be dead or black and misshapen. Maybe He doesn’t realize that there are those like myself who can find beauty in so alien an environment.
Yesterday, I saw a group of a half dozen primitive hominids passing through these deep woods. Hunched, naked, raggedly hairy and with heavy anthropoid faces. When they saw me they scampered off out of sight in fear, but they must know enough not to cry out and call attention to themselves. They looked unscathed, and didn’t even seem to have brands on their prominent brows, though I didn’t get a close look. Frankly, at first they terrified me as much as I did them; I thought they were lower caste Demons like those winged baboons, until they were gone and the truth occurred to me.
They were cursed to Hell because they
These two people had been merged with the trees, back when the trees were young. But as they had grown, over decades, they had stretched out the bodies of their entombed victims, as if on a gigantic rack. One pair of feet looked male, the other more feminine. Were they lovers, then, who had loved each other more than they cherished the Father? And so here they were together for eternity, perhaps…or at least until Demons came some day to cut down the trees, and release the prisoners so that they might be free to encounter fresh new punishments.
This spectacle made me think of my living book, and both made me terrified. I should not take for granted my freedom to roam, to explore. There were not only those who would hunt me as an animal, but capture me and imprison me in one certain torture for a generation at a time. I must stay alert, be stealthy. And so, in case those who were responsible for the suffering of this couple might be lingering nearby, I resumed my plunge into the deep woods.
Several hours later, by my reckoning of time, I stopped to rest. My soul was panting and exhausted. In the morning, as I preferred to think of it, I might try to find something edible around me. I had thought I’d heard a bird screech several times…though I couldn’t be certain it had been a bird.
I crawled on hands and knees into a thorny thicket, shaded by the trunk of an especially large tree, and lay on a bed of needles. I was actually able to sleep for what must have been several hours straight…though I was awakened at one point by the very distant but unmistakable rolling thunder of gunfire.
Unable to get back to sleep, I have caught myself up in my journal.
Day 33.
T here is nothing to eat in this forest except insects. At least I assume these plump, segmented black organisms I’ve found inside rotted holes in some of the older trees are insect larvae. They aren’t too bad…especially after not having eaten in a month. But the slow-crawling, six-inch long albino millipedes I uncovered yesterday under a mound of damp, decomposing leaves made me violently ill after I ate just one of them. The leaves and stems around me bleed red blood and stink like rotting meat when I break them, like that ivy back at school. In fact, the waxy purple leaves of one kind of plant which grows close to the ground are so big that you can see their veins pulsing very subtly.
But I find this purple forest quite beautiful, in fact…especially the tall, gently stirring fir trees. Is the beauty an intentional effect of the Creator, or an oversight? One would think He wouldn’t want a scrap of beauty to exist here, that every tree should be dead or black and misshapen. Maybe He doesn’t realize that there are those like myself who can find beauty in so alien an environment.
Yesterday, I saw a group of a half dozen primitive hominids passing through these deep woods. Hunched, naked, raggedly hairy and with heavy anthropoid faces. When they saw me they scampered off out of sight in fear, but they must know enough not to cry out and call attention to themselves. They looked unscathed, and didn’t even seem to have brands on their prominent brows, though I didn’t get a close look. Frankly, at first they terrified me as much as I did them; I thought they were lower caste Demons like those winged baboons, until they were gone and the truth occurred to me.
They were cursed to Hell because they