CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BLIND
The boat steadied, and Mina felt a pulsing warmth across his skin as he lay crumpled and curled in on himself at the bow, hands fisted against his eyes, knees tucked up between his elbows.
He wondered how many more of these portals he’d have to go through, because he wasn’t sure how much more of it his body could take.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and stood to find that he was in…
Hell. Literal hell.
Mina yelped, clapped his hands to his mouth, and folded himself back into the tight corner at the bow of the boat.
Stalactites hung from the ceiling like giant drips of lava and glowed a bright fire red.
Around him, huge obelisks and pyramids and sphinxes rose in various states of construction.
But it was something else that caused terror to course through Mina’s veins.
Across every surface of the place, hanging from the cave formations and scurrying over all of the stone structures, pale and lank humanoid creatures clung like giant, cave-dwelling spiders.
The Land of Demons, Mina thought, again somehow possessing some innate knowledge of the places he was traveling through.
Mina buried his face in his hands, willing the boat to pass through quickly. Go, he thought. But nothing happened. He squeezed his eyes. GO, GO, GO.
Nothing.
This was a different land with different rules.
Carefully, Mina untucked his head from his arms and looked up and around.
About midway up one of the particularly large pyramids, he saw one of the creatures hauling a huge stone and setting it down with a loud thud and snarling grunt.
But no sooner had the creature pushed the stone into place than another came up behind him, wrapped two spindly arms around it, and pushed it over the side so that it toppled and broke apart down the side of the structure and into the river.
His neck screaming in agony at the awkward angle, Mina watched the demons in their toiling.
Building and tearing down structures in an endless loop.
None interacting directly with one another.
They seemed not to even register each other’s existence.
And certainly they hadn’t noticed him or his boat or even seemed to have heard his cry earlier.
Slowly, Mina unwound himself from his crouched position.
He looked in every direction, but still none of the creatures reacted.
On the right bank, the square base of what he guessed would eventually become an obelisk was just being started by a pair of demons, and Mina got his first good look into the face of one of them.
And he understood why they had not reacted to his presence here.
The demons were blind.
Where their eyes should have been were empty, bloodied holes. Mina watched on in horror as, every so often, one of the creatures reached up to dig a clawed finger into the socket of its eye before going back about its work.
Mina gagged, stuffing the corner of his fist into his mouth to keep from vomiting.
What was the point of this place? Were these creatures stuck building up and tearing down for all eternity? Raising meaningless structures that seemed to serve no purpose? That would never be completed?
Mina wiped dripping sweat from his brow and collapsed to the floor of the boat. A memory began to surface. The warm fire back at the temple. Quiet conversations in the afterglow of passion. Anubis always trying to help Mina see and understand himself better. To rebuild his broken soul.
“These pretenses, these facades that mortals build to show a false version of themselves to the world,” Mina recalled Anubis saying on one of these evenings.
“It’s an endless toil. A temple with no foundation that, when it falls, will leave you blind to yourself and to others around you because you’ve been living in the darkness of their shadow for so long.
You will lose yourself, Mina. The more you build yourself in the image of others, the more you become nothing in your own eyes.
” Anubis walked his fingers across the trinity of stars dotted low on Mina’s stomach, still come-slick and sweaty.
“When the cosmos loses a star, a black hole remains. And you, son of man, born of stars, are no different. Don’t toil away at that meaningless work or you’ll find yourself lost to it for eternity. ”
Mina looked up and around at the creatures and wondered if this was what became of souls who spent their lives as he once had. If a place like this was where he had been destined to end up.
Move, Mina thought.
But the boat did not move.
“Move,” he hissed, still not trusting that one of those horrible things wouldn’t hear him.
But still, the boat wouldn’t move.
Mina looked around for something, anything, he could use to propel himself forward. A loose board he could pry away from the side, a nearby fallen tree branch he could reach.
As Mina walked to the left side of the boat, his eyes raking the shore, he froze.
A creature stood on the bank.
It was staring at him.
Seeing him.
But this creature wasn’t as horrible as most of the others. It had graying skin but no long, spidery legs. And this one still had its eyes. Its body was large and round, traces of plum still coloring its cheeks. Shredded remains of a tattered blue polo clung to its sagging skin.
Mina felt bile rise up in his throat. “Professor Cornelius?” he whispered.
The creature, the professor, cocked its head. Blinked at him. It opened its mouth, but only a stifled gurgle came out. It clutched at its throat, appearing surprised that it couldn’t speak. The professor-creature took a tentative step toward the bank.
How was this possible? How long had he been here?
“Professor, find something I can use for a paddle! I’ll come over for you.”
The creature looked around, frantic, still clutching its throat, words trying to form but jumbling into guttural nonsense.
But as the creature turned around, it froze.
Staring at a half-finished structure behind it, which Mina hadn’t noticed at first. It was a small building, with walls only a couple of feet off the ground.
Beside it, a block of stone was chiseled into the shape of a cross.
A steeple. The professor-creature was building a church.
“Professor, hurry!” Mina wasn’t moving fast, but even at this slow pace, he was already starting to pull away from where the professor stood.
It looked back toward Mina. Back at the structure, then back to Mina again.
It shook its head violently from side to side as if the sight of Mina on the boat were a phantom vision.
It rubbed its eyes and looked again. And then Mina watched in helpless horror as the creature’s fingers began to elongate, grow sharp and black on the ends.
This time, when it went to rub its eyes to clear away the vision of Mina, fingers found their way to the fleshy orbs and started to dig.
“No, stop!” Mina screamed. “It’s me! It’s Mina! Please, help me! I can still get to you!”
But it was too late. Two crimson rivers ran down the creature’s face, already pooling at its feet. Mina squeezed his eyes shut and turned away.
“God fucking dammit!” he screamed into his fists. Why would he do that? Mina collapsed onto the floor of the boat. Who would do that to themselves?
But he knew the answer. The same as he seemed to know everything about this place somehow. All he had to do was be willing to ask the question, and the answer rose up in him like it had always been there, waiting.
He had been no better than these creatures.
Closing his eyes to things he didn’t understand, because blinding himself had been easier than learning.
Because hiding his truth had been easier than facing it.
He was no better.
Mina hung his head into his hands and wept.
For every person he’d ever looked down on and thought he could save.
For every unkind thought he’d ever had against himself.
He wept for his love whom he now began to fear he would never see again.
There was no telling how long he’d been here.
If the professor was here, that meant he’d probably died in the temple.
Had his entire class been killed when Osiris collapsed it?
If so, then that was entirely his fault.
He was the one who’d wandered off. And it was his fault his professor had ended up here.
He could have taken more time to explain.
To help him see the truth of his arrogance and hatefulness before it was too late.
Mina dug his fists into his hair as the sobs wracked his small body, scraping their way out of his throat so that they echoed through the cave around him.
The boat lurched forward.
But Mina no longer cared.
Another land was coming, and he didn’t think he could take it. He just wanted to see Anubis again. But Mina understood it now. That this was to be his fate in the underworld. To travel forever through land after land, remembering all of the things he had done wrong while he was still alive.
That’s why Osiris had agreed so quickly.
Because this was what he deserved.
This was the afterlife he had earned.