The Tent of Gehenna

The Tent

                                                             by Rich Kopacz

“That shouldn’t be there,” Hadassah mused as she trudged slowly through the sand, her weary legs fighting the burn of ascending the steep incline.

But the tent was a welcome sight, pitched upon a high dune, its huge shape silhouetted against the darkening sky. It was the only structure she’d seen since leaving the Babylonian markets that morning. She thought she would reach the Persian Royal Road by noon, but that was several hours ago. Hadassah had begun to despair that she would have to spend the night in the cold of the desert if she didn’t come upon something soon. To make matters worse, a storm had formed as twilight brought cooler temperatures, and it would be only moments before it erupted its fury upon her.

But then she’d seen it. A large tent set on a sandy plateau, like a beacon of rest and relief.

As she got closer, however, that feeling started to waver. This was not like any other tent she’d seen.

The outside of it was colorful, and it was decorated in large, strange symbols that she thought might be a language, although none of the symbols looked recognizable. They resembled, in a crude way, stick drawings of animals and people in unusual poses, almost as if they were in some kind of ritualistic dance. Another thought occurred to her, which she found disturbing in the horror of its implication. There was something about their poses which led Hadassah to suspect an attitude of strain, or even suffering. The figures, if that’s what they were, might not be dancing. They might be in pain. They might be convulsing in agony.

The colors, too, were less playful than she first thought from a distance. The top of the tent was black, with only the tiniest specks of scattered white, the middle was ringed with a deep blue, which then descended into a dull greenish-yellow, then a burnt orange, then a deep red with reaching tongues of varied orange, making the bottom of the tent appear to be in flames.

Haddasah suddenly felt a growing uneasiness at the singularity of a tent appearing in the middle of nowhere. Worse yet, it was on the border of the Babylonian remnant, that race of people who worshipped Moloch.

Moloch, Hadassah shuddered, the god who demanded child sacrifices.

Or so she’d been told. Tales of Moloch abducting children back to Gehenna had been used to frighten Hadassah and her siblings into minding her parents. As she grew older, she grew somewhat dismissive of superstitions, but she couldn’t completely abandon her fears, nor ignore the macabre details of the stories, such as Moloch’s blood-red cord which he used to bind the children to the sacrificial alters, or the ritualistic practices of mutilating the faces of his acolytes.

Hadassah could not fail to notice the unsettling coincidence of the reddish hue used to make the strange figures, with their seemingly convulsing limbs and blackened marks about the heads.

Suddenly her thoughts were interrupted by a crash of thunder which shook the ground, and Hadassah realized she’d spent too much time musing about childhood fancies and ignoring the immediate dangerous reality.

Without hesitation, she moved the oversized tent flap aside and darted out from the first spattering of raindrops.                                         

The inside of the tent was dark and her eyes were still adjusting from the comparative brightness outside as she peered around. She stepped as carefully as she could, keeping to the side where she was less likely to bump into anything. 

When she heard the curtains flapping violently behind her, Hadassah glanced back in alarm, but it was only the wind of the storm. The entrance shone harshly in contrast to the inky blackness around her, glaring like the single eye of an angry serpent. From the light it gave, she could almost see into the center of the tent. Scattered all over the ground were dark shapes that she thought looked like rolled-up rugs with a rope or something tied to them. Then her feet stumbled into something and she lost her balance. She fell heavily, grunting as she bruised her elbow. She groaned, rolling over, and her feet brushed against the rug she must have tripped over. But it didn’t feel like a rug, and while her feet were still touching it, it moved.

Instantly, she recoiled. Then she watched in horror as the shape, only a lighter shadow than the space around it, sat up. It was not a rug at all.

Suddenly a fierce gust blew through the entrance curtains, whipping them wildly, and a flash from the lightning outside illuminated the scene. Hadassah caught a single, split-second glimpse of the terrifying reality within the tent. The entire inside, which somehow appeared much larger than it did from outside, was filled with huddled, sleeping bodies of what looked like children. They were dressed in costumes of golden and red with intricate patterns, and their faces were all painted in similar fashion with their eyes and mouths darkened. She could see a crimson cord that bound each of them to the other by their necks, intertwined among the children like some terrible, monstrous spiderweb.

A few of the children were half-sitting up, their faces turned towards the light coming from the tent’s entrance. The child nearest Hadassah, the one she had tripped over, was also looking in that direction and did not seem to notice that Hadassah was not one of them. She didn’t know how long that would last or what would happen when she was discovered, but the thought of it made her shudder with dread.    

A second flash of lightning showed that more of the children were up now, their faces peering into the brilliant flickering of light. But they didn’t just look towards the light. Each of them had an unnatural tilt to their heads as they wrinkled their noses, sniffing the air. Like animals. Like wild, dangerous animals on the hunt. Hunting for her.

The tent was plunged into darkness again. Hadassah sat frozen, listening past the patter of rain upon the outer canvas for movement or breathing or any kind of sign that she was about to be attacked. Slowly, silently, she began to crawl backwards, her eyes straining to see if the shadows in front of her grew closer.

Another burst of lightning lit the inside of the tent and Hadassah saw with horror that the child nearest her, the same girl she had tripped over, had started to crawl in her direction. The girl was in the act of pulling on the rope at her neck when the lightning flashed. Her expression wore a look of surprise as her dark-rimmed eyes met Hadassah’s, and then the tent went dark again.

Hadassah started crawling back quicker, her heart pounding as she watched a second and then a third shadow join the first. The lightning flashed again and she saw the silhouettes of more children gathered behind the girl, all of them struggling for slack on the red cord so that they could reach her. 

She felt like screaming. She wasn’t going to make it. Even hampered by the red cord, the ghastly children were going to overwhelm her and tear into her like a pack of wild dogs. 

Then she suddenly had a thought.

With an unnatural calm, she reached up and drew her scarf off her head and quickly tied a knot in it.

She took a breath and then threw it as hard as she could over the heads of the approaching children. It hit the side of the tent near the entrance with a thud that was just audible over the storm.

There was a loud scuffle followed by cries and frustrated grunts from the children closest to her as she saw their shadowy figures being yanked backwards. Hadassah turned and half-stumbled, half-ran to the furthest corner of the tent.

She scrambled down and began pulling on the underside of the canvas, her fingers immediately soaked from the rain as water began to puddle around her knees. She braced herself and struggled frantically to lift the edge, digging into the mud with her feet and elbows. It was useless. There wasn’t enough slack in the canvas to get anything more than her hand under the edge. She quickly crawled to where the tent spike was holding it in place, but it had been pounded into the ground from the outside. She could only try and grip the canvas around it. She yanked back and forth, trying to dislodge it. She started digging into the mud to loosen it, but it wouldn’t budge. She started crying, her nails tearing as she clawed blindly at the only bit of spike she could feel. Despair closed around her in the darkness like a shroud. Lord, help me!

She stopped suddenly, her breath caught in her throat. She felt, rather than saw, someone beside her. She was on her knees, her right side against the canvas wall while hunched over with her hands on either side of where the spike was driven through the tent and into the earth.

There was a boy crouched directly across from her, close enough for her to feel his breath on her face in the shadowy gloom. She was too frozen with fear to even scream.

He leaned forward, his body almost touching hers. He smelled of dirt and burnt wood and some herb she knew from her mother’s garden but couldn’t remember the name. She felt his hands grip her trembling fingers. Then with surprising gentleness, he pulled them away from the tent spike. He reached down again and she thought he might be pushing on it but in the next moment she heard him grunt and the sound of the tent fabric stretching between them. The bottom edge of the tent rose a few inches and the outside light filtered in to show a glimpse of his wiry, muscled forearms as his hands drew the stubborn spike up from the mud. Another bolt of lightning reflected off the puddled water, and for an instant Hadassah saw him, braced against the ground, his eyes closed, his face a mask of fierce determination, his lips curled into a snarl, his teeth pointed and sharp. Then the wind and rain began to enter the tent as the spike pulled free and the edge of the canvas rose up off the ground, creating a two-foot gap.

Again Hadassah felt his strong fingers upon her, his hand gripping her arm and guiding her under the pulled-up canvas. She moved stiffly as she was pushed out into the raging storm, her mind trying to accept what was happening. It was like waking up from a nightmare and not knowing which parts, if any, were real.

Then the wind and the rain broke the trance and she started to scramble to her feet. He was still holding her arm, however, and he suddenly squeezed it, stopping her. She looked back but could only see his hand sticking out from under the canvas as he held her in place. She felt a crumpled cloth being thrust into her palm, and then he let her go. The tent edge closed back down into the mud.

Hadassah saw that she held her scarf, still with the knot in it.

Lightning struck and startled her. The storm was in full force and being in it was very different than being in it while in the tent. After a moment, her senses came back to her and she started running.

She only had one thought. That was a tent from Hell, but by God’s mercy, she didn’t belong there.