“Hello, I'm here, where are you?!” I called for the thousandth time through the reminder of the night and early morning. My throat was parched from shouting. Repeated the same message in other languages though I didn't really know many. I simply shouted the same in my native Polish, and random, vaguely rescue-related words in Russian, German, French and even Czech, with the hope that something would trigger a response.

This was getting ridiculous! Even if my interlocutor did not speak any of these languages, they surely understood that I was trying to communicate, and should respond. Maybe they were deaf, and the Morse Code was actually the only way they could communicate?

Most likely though they were just an asshole or maybe simply crazy. After all, the two months I spent here made me pretty unhinged. Who can tell if they weren't even crazier than that. I walked in bigger and bigger circles around my campfire looking for them, to no avail.

Finally I decided to abandon my fire and try to climb up the hill. The slope on this end was far more inviting than rubble of broken pieces of slate I had to climb before. This one was a lot more gentle, with giant slabs of rock neatly stacked like the layers of a pyramid. And between those layers were dark nooks and openings, some of them large enough to drive a truck through. Had to be caves. I snooped around the bottom of the slope until I found a gently shaped stairway leading to a particularly large cavern. But it was not its size, nor it looking like a perfect shelter that attracted me. It was the smell.

Smoke, dried fish, then the unmistakable scent of a human being that had not touched soap for many, many weeks. A reek of a caveman, something that would disgust me only a few months before but on that day smelled like roses. Smelled like victory.

I ran up the slope, pretty much forgetting about my leg injury. I burst into the cave, nearly trampling over the meager possessions of its occupant. Around the opening there were racks made of wood, with drying fish hanging from them. A small tent hung above it, collecting the smoke from a tiny bonfire placed below the smoker. It seemed to be made of hide, probably seal’s. I soaked-in the sight and went deeper. I found a bed also made of seal hides neatly stacked and folded almost like a cot of a military recruit. Beside it was another rack with orderly arranged equipment. Spears, fishing tridents, things that looked like boomerangs or maybe crooked javelins, I didn't know. There were baskets made of some kind of seaweed or maybe roots, and nets, plenty of them, woven out of what looked like leather thongs. Whoever lived there, had been busy. I did not find any duplication pools and I doubted that they had them, but yet, their abode seemed filled with useful equipment, stuff I didn't even think to create.

Everything was as neat and tidy as possible, given the circumstances, even the floor of the cave seemed to be swept with a broom which I also found leaning against the wall. They even had a washbasin made of seal leather, filled with fresh clean water and a towel expertly woven out of grass fiber, rolled next to it. Whoever lived here, was obviously not a recent arrival.

Finally, I saw the writing on the wall. Literally. The inhabitant of the place has written something upon the cave walls, in the precise handwriting that looked like calligraphy. I could not read it but I immediately recognized it. It was Arabic font, or at least looked like it, which made sense if my conversationist was a Muslim. Maybe this was a piece of the Quran?

I exited the cave. “Hello I found your home! Where the hell are you?”

I did not know if insulting them was a good idea but I was pissed. Where were they hiding? And then I heard a peculiar noise.

Whooom, whooom , WHOOOM!

Then a buzz, as if a giant hornet flew past my head and hit the rock wall with a thunder crack. And then another. And another. The projectiles were coming every other second. Were they shooting a gun at me?!

One flew into the cave, hit a rack of dried herring and shattered the fish to smithereens in the process. It was a rock, a pebble really, not bigger than a cherry, but launched with enough force to break my skull open. I ducked behind a boulder, and covered my head and shoulders with the backpack. It was not much of a shield, because even though the spider silk was bulletproof, it offered no padding to cushion the impact.

“Stop! What are you doing?! I'm human just like you. I'm on your side!”

The cannonade stopped, and for a few seconds, there was silence.

“I do not believe you,... demon.” said a gravely baritone voice in curiously accented English, though come to think of it, not more accented than mine.

“I told you I'm not a demon. Look,” I peeked from behind the backpack, briefly showing my face. A stone hit the boulder centimeters from my exposed neck. I yelped in fear and fell back, flattening myself on the stone floor.

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“You are a demon, alright. What else would come to torment and deceive a sinner, wearing a bleached Oyinbo face?” they said.

“What do you… ah, bleached face, you mean white?”

“You know what I mean. You dey demon…” they trailed off, mumbling something to themselves, possibly a prayer, or maybe just cuss words. “This is surely Hell itself, a place of punishment, abi? How come you walk around it wearing white silk, and not dey naked like me? How come you have a boat with a sail and a steel weapon? Sinners come to Hell naked and unarmed, na so?”

I was stumped. Their logic was sound, even if the conclusion was insane.

“Look, I'm a human being like you…” I tried to explain. “When I came here, I stumbled upon a… wellspring that duplicates goods. This is how I survived, and why I have these clothes. They are spider silk actually-”

“So you admit you use magic? And you wear magical robes made of spiders?” Their tone was level, patient, but not a note less hostile than before.

“I… I suppose I do. Look, I promise I'm not a devil, or a demon, not even a sorcerer. Just a guy, like you. I just had the luck to find that thing. Call it magic if you want, I think it's… weird science?”

They did not respond for a minute. I slowly rose to my feet, hands up in the air. If they wanted to kill me, they could have easily sniped me from the many vantage points atop the slope, so there was no point in hiding. And, come to think of it, if they were deeply religious or superstitious, then they would have all the reasons to distrust me. On face value, my story would be deeply suspicious to them.

“What is your name?” they asked. I decided to make myself familiar, so that it would be harder for them to kill me in cold blood.

“I'm Jacek. Jacek Mularski. I'm just a regular guy from Poland. I have a wife, two kids. Sometimes they are little hellions, but they are not demon spawn, and neither am I. And my wife is a saint. She would not marry a sorcerer.”

“Promise on your soul you are not an evil spirit, and that you do not consort with demons,” they said, but their tone softened.

“Pal, I haven’t consorted with anyone except my wife for the last fifteen years. She would tear my head off if I strayed.”

I heard a booming laugh that sounded like its owner was twice my size. My suspicion was immediately confirmed, when one of the slabs of stone moved, and turned out to be a slab of a man instead. He was a barrel chested giant, clad in gray seal furs with a chaotic camo pattern drawn over it with river silt. If not for a pair of dark brown eyes and a white smile, he could be easily mistaken for an upright boulder. He had a sling in his hand, a shot loaded in it, but he let it hang casually. Still, I knew he could whip it faster than I could duck behind cover, and for me, that would be all she wrote. That stone, propelled by his bearlike arm, would burst my head open like a piñata.

“Mister Jack, you are too ridiculous to be a demon. Still, I cannot be sure to trust you, understan’?” As he calmed down, his English became less and less difficult to understand. In fact, they sounded very much like someone accustomed to giving attention-grabbing speeches, like maybe a preacher or a drill sergeant. “Are you a Muslim, Mister Jack?”

“Ah, sorry, that was a lie.” I admitted the truth, deciding honesty was the best course of action. “I just wanted to convince you to meet. In fact, I'm as godless as they come, but I promise, I'm a decent guy. Well, not worse than the next guy, I suppose.”

“That was what I assumed,” he said, with just a hint of paternal disappointment. “The mangled Shahadah was an obvious giveaway.”

“Sorry about that. I had good intentions.”

He chuckled mirthlessly, “don’t we all, brother. And yet, we meet here, in the place where sinners with good intentions end up, besieged by monsters until we wash away our sins.”

“You believe this is Hell, mister…?”

“I’m Yusuf Baba Abdullahi, though I expect you’d just call me Baba, and mispronounce the rest. And let me call you Jack, because Jahtzsek doesn’t really roll off the tongue either, and I don’t want to even try to mangle your family name.” He came nearer, calm, yet no less scary, the sling at the ready. “ Frankly, I no longer know what I believe. Some scholars would likely say a place like this is Barzakh, the gap between the world of the living and the afterlife, where the fire of our sins purifies our dirty souls. On the other hand, I believe that only the Quran, and the pure words of God within it, explain reality, and the verses say of no such place where embodied men are pitted against beasts. So you tell me, mister scientific man, mister unbeliever, is this Hell? Purgatory?”

“I don’t have a clue, Baba. I thought this was some kind of alternate dimension. A reality sideways to ours, in which we are recreated.” I said, but I was not really convinced with my own explanation.

“One filled with giant monsters, and bloodthirsty demons prowling the night, the woods and the waters?”

“uh, yes?”

“One where there is no realistic hope of rescue, survival is a struggle, where hunger and thirst are your eternal companions, where every day is a battle, and every night a longing for the loved ones you shall never see again?” he queried patiently.

“Yes, exactly…” I admitted, heavy-heartedly.

“So essentially, Hell?”

“Hey, it's.. I mean…damn, you might actually be right.”

“See Jack? Doubt and being open to new ideas is the first step. I will make a good Muslim out of you yet.”