another sign:

ABANDON HOPE All YE WHO ENTER HERE

He realised it would be futile - rearrange the words but the message remains the same.

A leper with one side of his face consumed by his malady, beckoned to John, as a green, slimy substance emanated from his suppurating boils. Reaching out to him, he tried to tear at his skin with claw-like nails, as if to pollute him with the same terrible affliction. Nauseated, John flinched away, but there were more gruesome sights yet to behold.

An impaled head, the eyes plucked out by searing talons and its life-blood still dripping from ruptured vessels, became carrion for a huge raven-like bird. An ashen corpse could be seen rising up from its coffin in the centre of a dismal necropolis, while shadowy spectres wailed in an inharmonious moribund chorus. Leaping out from upturned tombs, they summoned him to participate in their unholy rites. John heard another discordant dirge coming from a macabre organ without a player, the keys depressed by some unseen hand. So this is Purgatory, Hades, Tartarus or whatever one cares to call it, all rolled into one, he mused.

Trying to envision Heaven in a vain attempt to block out the horrendous sights before him, he found himself longing for those sweet fields of Elysium, an eternal paradisiacal existence - and salvation. And why oh why, he wondered, if God was so all-forgiving and loving did there have to be a place as abominable as this?

A horned, satanic-looking creature complete with forked tail, attempted to prod John savagely with a pitchfork, urging him forever forwards. How much more of this desolation would he be forced to see? He was tempted to cover his eyes but if he did, he knew that he would stumble in the darkness and be trampled underfoot by those behind him.

'Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...' somebody recited nearby. Clutching a cross that hung on a chain around his neck, he pressed it desperately to his lips.

'Bit too late for praying now, mate,' John observed dryly.

Imagine your most terrifying nightmares; they were all here amidst the carnage of this godforsaken place, this dominion of the damned, where misery and malevolence reign supreme.

John and his companion were afraid but both were reluctant to show it in case the wicked, little devils running at their heels would torment them all the more. Watching in utter repugnance, John cringed as a blood-spattered executioner dragged a gory cargo of severed heads to a pit of hungry wolves and tossed them remorselessly over the edge. Howling relentlessly, their appetite insatiable, the ferocious beasts barred their razor-sharp fangs as they began to devour putrefying scraps of human flesh. A partially-masked vampire sank his teeth into the neck of some hapless victim, his pallid complexion a shocking comparison to his blood-red lips. He grimaced maliciously at John and his companion as they hurried past. Then slowly opening his cloak, like some perverted exhibitionist, he revealed the remains of a bloodstained stake that protruded from a gaping wound in his gangrenous torso.

Just then, as John began to think he could bear no more, a small warm hand, the lifeblood still coursing through it, searched for his in the murky darkness. And a shrill little voice piped up: 'Daddy... I don't like it here any more... please can we go on the roller coaster now?'

'Of course son, it won't be much longer; I can see the EXIT sign,' John replied. Turning round, he pointed to the man behind him, 'look who's here! It's Mr. Evans from down the road. He's brought his kids along to the theme park too. Perhaps we can all go and buy some pop-corn and have lunch together by the boating lake afterwards.'

Learn more about this author, Stella Kaye.
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