Escape from Gehenna

Book One

by bradley j. knefelkamp

Introduction: The Page

I come from a long line of historians. And since history has been the passion of my family for six generations, I had become determined to carry it on to the seventh. So years ago when I had the privilege of going through my grandfather’s library, I jumped at the opportunity. It was there that he kept his favorite and rarest finds, works that needed not only explanation, but accounts clouded by ages of ambiguity and in need of further validation from outside sources, in other words myths, legends, and undiscovered histories.

The smells of aging paper, cracked glue bindings, and pipe tobacco filled the air as I made my way inside the study, and to me it was like stepping on hallowed ground. We were never allowed into this room when we were young, for the obvious reason that it was a place of serious business not tomfoolery. I walked in slowly and took in the sight. It was unorganized to the untrained eye, which is everyone’s except my grandfather’s, with teetering stacks of papers around the large dark walnut desk, and bookshelves filled to overflowing with scrolls and loose papers as well as countless numbers of the bound kind of documents. The atmosphere was that of years of intense study over minute details and fitting together misplaced pieces of the past. It was in this clutter that I came across a particularly interesting piece of parchment in which I read the following inscription:

“Forty feet below the cold earth of Gehenna, and near the northern banks of the Pishon River which runs through that country, lay Tartrus. Hated by all who lived in that region those ages past, Tartrus was an iron mine and a holding place, a prison for the young, so everyone had spent time in that hole. Those were the years they remembered neither light nor love. It was a place where wills were not merely broken, but crushed into fine dust never to be remade. Torches strained to illuminate its halls and tunnels, but mere flames could not permeate its darkness. It was a place of gloom and deep shadow, of truest black where even light was like darkness. Down there darkness was not something, it was someone, an entity of its own that filled the halls and corridors and shafts with its presence. It left no room for anything else except the sound of picks chiseling away at the rock walls. This echoed on continuously, interrupted only by the cracking of whips against the backs of the young.”

The paper was old and the letters were fading, and since its theme was brief, I wrote it down to examine its contents at a later time without again disturbing the frail original. When I returned again to my grandfather’s estate I told him of the piece, and he proceeded to tell me the fascinating tale, or as he insisted calling it, the “history” of Hamar.

He said he had devoted years to uncovering this obscure legend, but had to put it aside a long time ago when he was called upon to research a sect of people called the Essenes and their connection with the then newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course as years slipped away, Hamar’s history got pushed back into the dusty corners of grandfather’s library in much the same way it was designated to the far corners of his mind. Other histories needed research and grandfather’s work on Hamar was left on a back shelf where I found it.

We spent many weekends together over the next several months pouring over all the documents he had discovered earlier on the topic. Most of them were transcribed from oral traditions, which had been documented on paper centuries later but with absorbing detail.

Watching Grandfather dig back in again with the renewed passion of his youth made me realize just how much I admired the man. And so I have written down here its account as unveiled by my grandfather. I took the liberty to present it in story form, using the order of events as uncovered in diaries and letters, and filling in details with probabilities in much the same manner as its oral tradition.

I am sad to say that a short time after our research was complete Grandfather passed away. So I share the tale with you now in loving memory of him.

The Author

Chapter 1: The Find

There it was sticking out from the wall, reaching out desperately for someone strong enough to set it free. How could this happen? He couldn’t swing it that hard. He didn’t have the strength. Every cell in his body ached from years of non-stop labor, and the meager rations of too often moldy food left him too thin and weak. Yet there it was, his pickaxe, sticking out right where he had swung it. He glared at it and felt the black hand of hatred for this place reaching deeper inside of him. Every waking minute in these mines meant pain, hunger, and ultimately despair. That was their goal, and he didn’t want to let them win. He wouldn’t. He let go of the bitterness, lifted his unwilling arm and grabbed the handle, smooth and well worn by his own calloused and blistered hands. He really didn’t have the strength to free it, but he had inherited the tenacity. One more pull. Prying hard, his knuckles whitened around the handle. “It…is…stuck!” Chase grunted.

He heard the mutter of another from across the tunnel. “Weak,” he heard him say, then turned around to see Nash walking up beside him and nudge him aside.

“Move over then.” Nash said. Grabbing the handle with one hand, he gave it a quick jerk. It didn’t budge.

“See.” Chase snickered.

Nash grabbed the handle again with both hands, shot a glare back at Chase, and pulled. His face began to turn colors as he wrenched at it, but the pickaxe refused to give. “How’s that…?” Nash was visibly perplexed. “Give me a hand,” he insisted, and Chase grabbed hold next to Nash.

It was Nash who had befriended Chase when he was first sent down into the mines of Tartrus. Friendship was something that was rarely ever offered below. Those who became too close to others would be separated. Nash had learned that early on, so now whenever a Guard was in sight he would shove his friends against the walls and yell obscenities at them. This ensured that they would stay together because Batrauks who guarded over the young, loved strife. Chase was shocked the first time Nash assaulted him and reciprocated with a shove, which escaladed into a short scuffle that ended with Nash on top of Chase threatening to pummel him. After the Batrauk had gone Nash smiled and whispered, “Great, you catch on quick.”

It actually wasn’t until a few days later, when he figured out what that scene had actually been about, that he reintroduced himself as Chase. Just Chase. Family names were not useful in the mines and soon became forgotten by those who still had them. Chase however remembered his, as did his father before him. He carved it into his mind with every swing of his pick, but kept it a secret from everyone else - everyone except his twin sister Chelly. Chase would remind her every day when they woke and every night before they slept. It was the only thing he tried to remember. Because if he could remember who he was, he knew he could survive.

The two of them continued straining at the pickaxe, ignoring a third figure who sat back in the darkness. It was Tanner, and he was Nash’s shadow. The two had long been best friends, and wherever Nash was or whatever Nash wanted to do, Tanner was a willing companion to it. Batrauks thought they hated each other, because they put on the best show, actually getting into fistfights in front of them until blood was finally spilt. This time, however, Tanner evidently didn’t want to join. It probably seemed like a perfect opportunity to catch a few moments of rest before the ore cart returned and the drudgery of work would resume. Chase watched from the corner of his eye as Tanner folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.

Soon the familiar sound of wheels grinding along the tunnel floor came out of the darkness. The torches mounted on the front of the car illuminated the walls as it came around the corner. Tanner stirred but still didn’t move from his place of rest. The two girls who returned with the empty wagon slumped down next to Tanner. Chase overheard the conversation but said nothing.

“What are they doing?” The girl with the bright blue eyes asked Tanner

“I don’t know. Chase’s pick got stuck, I guess.”

“How could that happen?”

Tanner just shrugged and closed his eyes again. The two girls did the same.

Chase and Nash felt the pickaxe give slightly. They paused and Nash shot a grin over to Chase. They grabbed the handle tightly and once more gave a quick, strong tug. Suddenly it gave way, sending Chase backwards tripping over the ore cart.

“Chase!” Nash exclaimed.

Chase’s head appeared from behind the cart and his eyes widened. Springing back on his feet he stumbled toward his friend who was still standing next to what was now a large black hole where his pickaxe had been. The others also approached from where they rested and gathered around the dark void.

“Fresh air,” they all sighed. For a few minutes they took in deep breaths, drinking it in like water. The air was a relief from the musty dankness that hung around them.

It was Chase who then blurted out, “I wonder what’s on the other side?”

Then without hesitation, without another word spoken, they all grabbed their picks and in turn began swinging them furiously. They attacked the wall.

The digging was tiresome and the progress slow, so they stopped just when the hole was large enough for the smallest of them to squeeze through, which was the girl named Bethany; she was the youngest of the five and Nash’s little sister.

Small and thin, she was about two years younger than her brother and had thick dark hair that almost covered her dark round eyes. When she had entered the mines, she was sent to work in the same section as her brother. That’s when the brutality began against Nash for what seemed like no reason. And to make matters worse, they always made her watch. Every time she would break down into sobs, and those large eyes would overflow with tears.

They made up for the tears Nash refused to shed. Chase saw him get more calloused with each beating. He tried to talk to him after one such occasion, but Nash ignored him. When he tried again Nash retorted with accusations against his own father.

“This is all Dad’s fault,” he huffed. “He was the one who let us get taken, so he was the one to blame.” He turned away but Chase heard him mutter under his breath, “He didn’t even try to stop them.” Which of course was exactly why Batruaks always arranged siblings that way. It was very effective, punishing the one to torment the other.

Later Nash had approached Chase and admitted that on the day she arrived it was good to see the face that looked so much like his mothers, but he hated to see her subjected to the dark, cruelty of Tartrus. Since that day he never let her leave his sight.

Now however, that was exactly what he wanted her to do.

“I don’t want to go first,” she protested. “And I’m not going to.”

“Come on, Bethany,” her brother urged. “We don’t have time to argue about this. You’re the smallest, now go.” But she was too frightened even to obey the dictates of her brother, for on the other side was what she feared most – the unknown.

“Let’s just make it a little bigger and I’m sure I can fit,” Chelly insisted, relieving Bethany from her brother’s orders.

Chelly was quite the opposite of Bethany. With long hair that would have been blonde except that it was always filthy, and a rounder face with bright blue eyes that still sparkled even in the dim torchlight, she seemed to never be afraid.

She took up her pick, swung, and swung hard. The others joined in and in a few minutes later, Chelly was squeezing through to a cave on the other side. Feet first she descended it’s smooth sloping wall. Sliding over loose stones and small stalagmites that caught her pant legs and hoisted them up to her knees, she reached the level ground below. Chase tossed a torch down to her, and she walked about the room as the rest waited for her report.

“What’s there?” Chase called out, squeezing as much of his torso through the opening as he could. He watched as his sister’s torch lit small sections of the cave.

“It’s huge!” she called back.

Then she turned and hurried to a part of the cave a little further on. “What is it?” Chase asked as he watched her bend down near an obscure mound.

“It looks like people used to live here! There are pots and things. Tools, candles.” She was rummaging through the small pile when she quickly withdrew her hand in disgust. “Even bones,” she added. He saw brown spots appear on her shoulder and her arm. She started to brush them off. “It’s muddy in here,” she called back as another brown drop hit her other arm.

She stood back up to continue her search and Chase began to wiggle his way back out of the hole. Taking another glance back, he saw more dark drops hit her. As she looked up to see why, the warm glow of her torch lit the ceiling, revealing an enormous living mass of bats! Chelly stood shaking for a moment, then let out a shriek that pierced every slumbering little creature’s ears, sending thousands of them flying overhead in a canopy of flapping.

Her screams continued, as crouching into a ball she held the torch’s flame over her head. Bats filled the room looking for a quick exit. In a split second reaction, Chase jumped back as the onslaught of bats came rushing through.

“Behind the ore car!” Chase shouted to the others.

Nash leapt out of the way in between the car and the wall, following Chase’s lead and tackling Bethany beneath him. But Tanner stood dumbstruck when the winged rodents streamed through. Knocked back as if by an explosion, He stumbled over the ore car onto Nash and Bethany.

The stream of bats forced the hole to almost twice its size in the process. When the last of them had escaped, Chase bolted through the hole and stumbled into the large cavern. In the middle of the floor, Chelly sat crouched in a ball, a smoldering torch still held above her head. As Chase walked up to let her know that all was clear, he touched her shoulder.

“Aaauu! Get it off me, get it off me!” she screamed, waving her torch wildly in the air almost burning Chase with its embers.

“Watch it! Hey, hey, careful, it’s me!”

Chelly heard her brother’s voice and began sobbing. Fresh droppings covered her shoulders and back and she sat there quivering.

“It’s okay sis. It’s over. They’re gone,” Chase reassured, brushing off her shoulders with his own dirty shirt.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be fine. Just a second,” came her reply between sobs. Chase had never seen his sister so visibly shaken.

* * * *

He closed his eyes and winced, clenching his mouth tightly but not letting out a sound. The pain from the branding would last for hours, he knew that, but this was the honor of becoming a General, one of the few under the direct command of Ophis. He was lucky, he had hatched brown, not grey and dumb like most.

The other brown officer that administered the hot iron to his flesh, smiled. “You took it well enough,” he hissed. “Now back to work! You won’t get your new rank fully for a few days.”

The Batrauk opened his eyes and looked at the long red scar running down his arm from his shoulder. His flesh reeked from being cauterized and he wanted to vomit, but kept every notion inside, telling himself it would all stop soon enough. Stomping over to the tunnel entrance, he threw open the door to step into his new authority.

What he actually stepped into, however, was pandemonium. The young were running and screaming up and down the corridors in panic as bats infiltrated its tunnels. For the first time ever Batrauks had lost control. The new General stepped out of the hole and hollered out in his wet, guttural voice, “What’s happening out here!”

“Ngraauuk...young ones, running and screaming,” a subordinate grey croaked back. “Don’t know why.”

“Well, get control over this situation or…Mmmff”. A large bat suddenly collided with the new General’s face, knocking him backwards. He tried to catch himself but toppled over a couple small children who were crawling away from the flying invasion.

Lifting himself from the ground, he grabbed a bat in mid-flight and crushed it in his fist. Shaking it in the face of the grey he screamed, “Where did these come from?”

“Don’t know...ngraauuk. Just appeared and are filling the place,” he flinched.

The General turned in anger from brown to a reddish color, his eyes began to bulge and pulsate. He shoved one of the young out from under him and backhanded his fellow Batrauk, leaving his arm stinging furiously. He grunted.

The grey cowered, then grabbing a bat for himself commented, “They’re so scared of them. Don’t know why,” he mumbled, “They’re delicious.” Then cramming the rodent into his toothless mouth, he swallowed it whole.

“Enough!” the Brown shouted, drool flying from the corners of his mouth in all directions. “If bats can get in, brats can get out!” Gathering a couple more greys as he tromped through the tunnel, he barked out. “Follow me! We must find out where this trouble is coming from and stop it!”