There’s nothing here that points to Tartarus. No signs, burning bushes, or sphinxes playing Jeopardy! for clues. The one time a sphinx tried that with me, I held it down and shaved it until it looked like one of those hairless cats you see in Beverly Hills pet stores.

I’m not far from a burned-out, crumbling version of the old Fourth Street Bridge. It’s all big Roman arches with a few out-of-place Victorian streetlamps to class up the thing because you don’t want your industrial wastelands to look tacky.

There’s something strange under the bridge. A bright patch of green. There are palm trees on either side and they’re not on fire. The green looks like fresh, healthy grass. In the middle of the little oasis is a white stucco forties bungalow. It has red slate shingles and it’s styled with the vaguely hacienda look you see on the older places. I go up the pristine walkway out front and knock on the door. It opens and the woman inside sibuman insmiles at me. Her face shifts and re-forms, showing the phases of the moon.

“I told you that in the end you’d come to me,” says Medea Bava.

“So this is your dirty little secret. Tartarus is the Inquisition.”

“No. I’m the Inquisition. Tartarus is your fate. The Dies Irae,” she says, and recites, “ ‘Just judge of vengeance, grant me the gift of forgiveness before the Day of Judgment.’ ”

“I like the sound of that forgiveness part.”

“And some receive it, but I’m afraid you’re a bit too late for that.”

I step out of Bava’s way, tromping on her perfect lawn with my bloody-sewage-waste boots.

“Then why don’t you scoot us on over to the Club Double Dead and let me in?”

She comes out, locking the door behind her.

“Seriously? You think someone’s going to steal your stamp collection all the way out here?”

“You’re not the only one in Hell with a chip on his shoulder. I don’t believe in taking foolish chances.”

“That sounds boring.”

She leads me to a rickety-looking metal staircase leading up to the bridge through a hole chiseled in the roadbed. Medea gestures for me to go first. I take hold of the railing and shake it. The stairs wobble a little, but it looks like they’ll hold. I start climbing.

“You know, I’ve been waiting here for you your whole life.”

“I hope you’ve got cable, or you’ve missed a lot of good TV.”

When we reach the top, she heads for the far side of the bridge and I follow. She stops abruptly halfway across and looks at me.

“You know that once you get inside, you can never leave.”

“That’s what Angie Summers said in the back of her daddy’s Cadillac on prom night. If I can get away from her, I can get away from you.”

“It’s refreshing to meet a man so anxious to embrace annihilation.”

“Okay. You’ve had your supervillain moment, now can you show me to the front door?”

Medea steps back a few paces and holds out her arms.

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“We’re here. Behold Tartarus.”

I turn around, looking for something.

“We’re nowhere. Behold fuck-all.”

“Look down,” she says. “Then jump.”

I look over the edge. We’re right over the Styx.

“In your dreams, Vampirella.”

“Is Sandman Slim afraid of a little blood?”

“He’s afraid of how deep that is. You want me to jump and crack my head on the bottom.”

She shakes her head. Shadows make her shifting features even more disturbing.

“This is the way in. You can keep a little dignity and jump, or I can push you.”

“Try it.”

I start for her and suddenly I’m airborne. When I land I slide about twenty feet. Medea just smacked me with a hex that felt like a tornado giving birth to a hurricane. I climb to my feet and brush the dust off my coat.

“If you put it that way, maybe I’ll just go ahead and jump.”

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you’ve been here.”

I climb onto the wide concrete railing and tightrope-walk down to where Medea is waiting.

“You’ve got the home-field advantage here, but I bet you can’t throw hoodoo like that back on earth.”

“We’re not on earth, and whatever power you have in this place, I will always have more. Now jump.”

“I’m going to look you up when I get back to L.A.”

“You’re not the first person to say something like that.”

“Yeah, but I’m the first one who means it.”

She gestures impatiently toward the river.

“Go.”

I glance down at the bloody waves and turn back to her.

“I don’t have time for one last smoke, do I?”

“Jump or I’ll throw you.”

I put my arms out and take a breath.

“As a great man once said, ‘I should never have switched from scotch to martinis.’ ”

I lean back and let myself go over the edge, tumbling through the air and slamming into the red river.

I hit flat on my back. It feels just as good as falling fifty feet into blood sounds. I hold my breath and try not to breathe in anything.

I sink and keep sinking, like the gravity in the river isn’t the same as the gravity outside. I’m pulled down into soft mud at the bottom. At least I hope it’s mud. Another gladiator once swore to me that he’d sailed to Pandemonium on a river of shit. I hope there wasn’t any backwash down here.

I’m instantly engulfed in the muck. My lungs want to crawl up my throat and hitch a ride back to Hollywood. The angel in my head chants a serenity prayer. If I could punch my own brain, I would. The angel stops long enough to remind me that everything has a bottom, even Hell.

I’m being squeezed down through sediment that gets harder every inch I go. The sucking soon turns into pushing, like a hydraulic press is pounding me down into the riverbed. This must be what pasta feels like coming out of a spaghetti extruder.

Then I’m fucking falling again. But only a few feet this time. I slide through a tight fleshy opening in the roof and down a steep incline, like a garbage chute. Nice touch.

I slip down another level and slam into the ground. At least I’m not moving anymore. I lie on the floor and breathe. My heart is pounding. I know I’m surrounded by souls, but they’re not paying any attention to me. They’re used to hard-luck cases sliding down the poop shoot.

The angel is awestruck by where we are and pissed about being stuck inside me. It never really believed I’d take us this far. The absolute end of the line.

Welcome to Tartarus.

I FELL THROUGH what felt like a mile of blood, but when I get to my feet, there isn’t a drop on me and my clothes are dry.

It’s cold here and dim, like light that can’t decide what it wants to be. Dark. Light. Or some strange wavelength that’s simultaneously the opposite of each.

The walls and floors are dull gray metal. There are gleaming conveyor chains overhead. Souls hang from hooks by their ankles. They’re being taken away, but I can’t see where from here. If we were on earth, I’d swear that I’m in a busy industrial meat locker.

The place is packed shoiv>s packeulder to shoulder with double-dead Hellions, human souls, and Lurker spirits. I can even see Kissi scattered around in the mob. It’s like a strange exodus, frozen just before it got started.

Aside from the overhead conveyor and the distant hiss and bang of machines, the place is almost silent, like the tens of thousands of dead around me and the thousands in the adjoining lockers have sunk so low in their misery that they can’t even acknowledge each other.

I didn’t think seeing Tartarus would get under my skin the way it is. I always imagined it would be Hell cranked up to eleven. Torture, chaos, and cruelty on a planetary scale. Mountains of flensed flesh. Mad bone seas. But this is worse. Tartarus is a dim, crushing despair. Heaven might not have been where you were headed, but now even Hell is a long-gone distant memory. Dante got it wrong when he put the “Abandon All Hope” sign at the entrance to Hell. This is where all hope dies, even for monsters.