I was thankful Lana had told me to wear some good walking shoes. The path was long and winding, taking us up and down sloping hills, alongside dribbling streams, and through large fields of wildflowers.

Everything around me was both familiar and foreign. There was some sort of sun above us, but the light it gave off was more silvery than golden. When a brook wound its way along the path, the water looked clear and refreshing, yet when I plunged my hand into its depth, it made my fingers tingle, as if I had dunked them into a river of seltzer. And all of the plants that dotted the fields were somewhat reminiscent of home, but just a bit off: swirling green roses, blue dandelions, and hot pink lilacs.

There were a few times I could almost convince myself I was back on Earth. Occasionally we saw houses in the distance, set in the middle of farmland with some people too far to make out clearly tending the fields. During these stretches of our trek, I tried to close my eyes and imagine I was in the middle of Italy, or at a farm out in the countryside. And yet something strange would always draw me out of my fantasy, and I'd question for the millionth time whether all of this was just a façade that could turn into barren fields of ash and boiling pools of lava at any moment.

"We should be seeing a city soon," I said to James, repeating a line I'd been saying for at least an hour. It was almost as if I thought repeating the phrase would make a skyline suddenly appear in the distance. But the only thing in view at this point was the mint green pathway fading off into the horizon, climbing over the honey hills.

"We just have to keep walking," James said.

I glanced down at the teddy bear, who was comfortably lounging in my arms. "Easy for you to say. You're not the one actually walking."

"Neither are you, technically. You're unconscious on a picnic table right now, remember?"

"Ooh... Touché, James. Touché."

"Excuse me!"

The addition of a new voice made me jump and whip my head to the right. There was a girl sitting under a willow tree about twenty feet away from the path. She had a sketchpad balanced on her knees and a small collection of colored pencils scattered on the grass around her. Had we been up on Earth, I'd have assumed she was an art student at the local college.

She gave a little wave, gesturing us over. I looked down at James, whose shrug was nearly imperceptible as he once again pretended he was just an inanimate object, and I tentatively took a few steps off the path to join her.

"Sorry to interrupt your walk," she said, "but you smell fresh and I have a question for you."

I wasn't a fan of everyone remarking on my scent down here, but I ignored the comment and said, "Sure, what is it?"

She showed me her sketchpad, where she had drawn, in intricate detail, the surrounding countryside. In the one illustration, she had the hills, the willow tree, some flowers, and of course, the winding path, all lightly shaded in with colored pencils. She pointed to the pathway with a slender finger, and asked, "How do you like the mint?"

"Sorry?"

"The mint color." Now she pointed to the actual path behind us.

"Oh... it's nice, I guess."

This clearly wasn't the right answer. She frowned and pressed her finger to the page. "What about a soft blue? Would that work better?"

Before I could say anything, she pointed, again, at the path behind me. This time when I turned to see it, it was no longer mint, but a faded robin egg blue. When I looked back to the girl, she was looking at my face eagerly, judging my reaction.

"It's pretty," I said truthfully. "Reminds me of the sky back on Earth."

She grinned as if I'd made her day. "Thank you so much!" She held out her hand. "I'm Gretchen. What's your name?"

"Jessa," I said, shaking her hand. I think I had been expecting it to feel dead and cold, because I was surprised that her hand felt normal and human. It was a nice feeling after so many hours with just a talking teddy bear and a never-ending path.

She lounged back against the tree trunk. "You're alive, right? You look like you're heading on a mission; the newly dead don't look nearly as perky as you."

"Yep. You caught me."

"And is this your first time down here?"

I nodded. "Wait—are there people who make multiple trips down here?"

"Just a few," Gretchen said. "Some humans have complicated deals with the Devil so they come down here every so often to work things out while they're still alive. And sometimes the recently deceased are awarded 'haunting passes.' They get to visit Earth for a little, and when they come back, they sort of smell like spring, just for a little bit." She tapped on her notebook. "I've been trying to work on the spring smell for a while, but I haven't nailed it yet."

"Work on it?"

"It's my job," she said with a smile. "I'm the lead artist here, tasked with making the Underworld as aesthetically pleasing as possible, sights, scents, and all."

"Well it's definitely beautiful," I said. "I've actually been admiring the scenery on my walk. Were you an artist back on Earth?"

She nodded. "A struggling one, but an artist nonetheless. I made a lot of pieces that I was super proud of, but this is by far my biggest project. It's a labor of love and I'm trying to get it just right."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Fifty-three years," she said.

"And it's still not done?"

"Nope. Perfection is illusory. Plus, Lana likes a change of scenery every once in a while. She sends me notes every few days with tweaks and modifications. It's my job to make them happen."

I looked around and shook my head. "I just don't understand this place."

Gretchen frowned, and gestured for me to sit down next to her. "What don't you understand? Do you think I need to install signs?"

I laughed a little as I settled into the golden grass; unlike the grass at home, these blades were soft rather than scratchy, as if each wisp was spun of silk. It just further added to my confusion. "That's not what I meant. I guess I just... thought Hell was going to be a lot different."

"Ahh." Gretchen nodded. "I forget how much of a shock it can be when you first get here. You think it's going to be fire and brimstones and men with pointy tails running around with pitchforks, but it's not. And why should it be? It's not like we're bad people down here."

"Surely there are some bad people," I said.

She paused, then nodded. "Well, I mean, yeah some people made incredibly selfish deals. But most people here are regular folk who did something good to help a loved one or try to fix the world. And Lana recognizes that. She's trying to build a community here. She doesn't want us to suffer."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," came a hiss.

I turned towards the sound, and what I saw nearly made me vomit. Two people had joined us—but people wasn't the right word. They both must have been people at some point, but now they were grotesque things. One of them was just a skeleton with a few leathery flaps of skin clinging to her lower limbs. The other one was naked and bloated, like a body that had sat out in the sun too long, with his inners spilling out of him like snakes trailing to the ground. And his eyes were gone, leaving nothing but sunken bloody pits in his skull.

Death forms, I realized. I was thankful the boatman had warned me, but it didn't make it any easier to look at them.

Gretchen stood up, shutting her sketchpad with a thump. "Elizabeth and Cornelius. Stop it. You're going to scare this girl."

Cornelius took a step forward, one of his intestines dangling near his feet and nearly tripping him. I stood up hastily so I wouldn't get too close to the blackened bowel. "We merely speak the truth," he said in a voice that was half hiss, half drowned gurgle. "Hell isn't as pleasant as it appears."

"Not at all," Elizabeth agreed. The skeleton's voice was raspier than her companion's and seemed to float out of thin air.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I tried my best to not be afraid, to look directly into their eyeless sockets, but I couldn't help but stare at their other grotesque parts: skin, bone, and small curling horns jutting out of their temples...

Gretchen frowned. "Don't listen to them. They've been dead too long—hundreds of years. They've gone funny."

Cornelius snarled like a bear and held out a rotting finger. "You're too young. You don't understand the horrors of this place. The monsters that the Devil keeps here. The darkness that lies beneath this beautiful veneer. You can paint over it all you want, but you can't hide the truth."

I clutched James closer to my chest. He had been silent for so long, I was afraid he was no longer with me. But when I squeezed his hand, he subtly squeezed back, giving me the confidence to ask, "What monsters?"

Elizabeth grinned, her skeleton teeth jagged and broken. "Let us show you."

"Don't go with them," Gretchen said, looking at me desperately. "Stay on the path. Get to where you need to go."

I didn't know who to listen to, but in the end, my decision was made for me.

Cornelius slithered up to me at a surprisingly fast speed. His decaying lips smacked out, "Nice toy," and before I realized what was going on, he snatched James out of my hands.

"James!" I cried as Cornelius laughed and began to run off.

"You'll get it back if you come follow us," Elizabeth cheered with her skeletal grin, and she too began to dash off.

I turned to Gretchen, about to ask her to come with me, but when I looked down at where she had been sitting, she was gone. All that remained was a single yellow colored pencil nestled amongst the blades of grass.

"Shit!" I cursed, and started running, leaving the sky blue path behind with every thudding step.