CHAPTER 17: LA GUILLOTINE
Passing by one tower, two, three, four...it feels like a long, repetitive bit of travel for us, and in the absence of sunlight or even moonlight moving above us, there's really no proof otherwise.
Five, six, seven...but not eight. The seven towers, and no more. I guess if this version of Hell were a little more Eastern-mystic, there would be eight. Isn't eight a lucky number in China? I think so, because the Chinese words for "eight" and "rich" are supposed to sound similar. Something Corbin told me once. Not God-Corbin, the real one. At this point, I think it's going to be way too hard to not imagine God resembling Corbin at all times. I mean, I suppose He could also take on some alternate form in which He resembles...shit, I dunno. Sam Jackson?
Don't tell God I said that. I don't want Him knowing I figured out his true form, you know what I mean?
Beyond the seventh tower, there's a small crowd gathered around some high platform, on which a hooded hangman awaits his next victim. I avert my eyes quickly, not wanting to attract his attention with my gaze. Knowing my luck, I probably would. Nikki, smartly, does as I do, hurrying along with me and forcing Joe to accelerate his pace as well.
Soon, we come across another execution scene, one even bigger than the last one. Like a lot of obstacles we've had to face on our journey so far - Vulcan's, God-Corbin's too many castles, etc. - there's no getting around this one. It's right in our path, and if we want to try and detour around it, our only choice would be to climb onto the sharp volcanic rocks lining this pass. I suppose it'd be just as amusing for this crowd to watch us cut ourselves to ribbons - they'd get all the blood sport they came here for. Damn vultures.
And as we draw closer in spite of ourselves, I realize that my "vulture" joke is a lot less funny when I see that the crowd really is a bunch of vultures. Or, well, they're wearing vulture-shaped hats. But still, they all look like actual stuffed, taxidermized raptors. Gross. But it also reminds me of that one Harry Potter scene where the boggart becomes Snape and Neville makes it dress like his grandmother, complete with a vulture hat just like these. I was...nineteen, I think, when that movie first came out, but I was laughing my head off along with all the kids in Sleepy Hollow's little local theater during that scene. The sight of Snape wearing women's threads, it was just too much to resist.
The magic of J.K. Rowling, mis amigos y amigas.
What's decidedly a lot less magical (well, maybe more so, but for the wrong reasons) is the execution these people are witnessing. A hooded figure kneels, his head (I'm only saying "his" because the person looks to have a man's build) slotted in a large hole in a wooden panel attached to a larger framework with a sharp, angled metal blade suspended about six feet above him.
A guillotine.
The executioner, himself hooded, now removes his hood for some reason. "It is time," he says in a deep, sonorous voice, "to remind you all of the punishment for so much as attempting to break away from this place."
I gasp.
Joe and Nikki both look at me, waving their hands as if to tell me to shush. Nikki then whispers, "What's wrong?"
"I know that guy," I say.
"Who, the one about to get his head cut off?"
"No, his executioner." I focus my gaze once again on the guillotine stage and get a long split-second glimpse of the executioner's wavy gray hair and lined, weathered face. I almost expect to see him wearing glasses to project a mild-mannered, if timid and unusually touch-sensitive, aura. But down here, he has no need for such an affectation.
"I've dealt with him before," I tell Nikki - and Joe, whom I don't think ever had the displeasure of meeting this man. "He's Crane's son. The Horseman of War."