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"He killed me," I said, pointing. "I didn’t exactly want to come here."

"Yes, I see." The devil sounded thoughtful, like someone who has just realised that things happen which are not strictly under his control. "Well, come along."

"Where to?" I asked. "And what about him?"

"We’ll have to decide what to do about you," the devil said. "As for him, well..." He turned one of his jewelled eyes on the killer, who was staring back at him in open-mouthed horror. "You stay right here till you’re called for. Don’t go wandering, no matter how long it takes – not if you know what’s good for you. Understand?"

Without wasting any further time on the murderer, the devil led me up a long staircase which rose along the side of a great stone wall. The wall, of black rock dark as night, rose overhead as far as one could see, and plunged into invisible depths below. To the right, red and yellow mists coiled, and there were flashes of violet and white, for all the world like silent lightning.

"What will happen to him if he does go wandering off?" I asked.

"Nothing at all," the devil said cheerfully. "But I couldn’t resist the temptation. He can sit there for a few thousand years for all I care. After all, we aren’t bothered about him."

"But you’re bothered about me?"

The devil was silent for a while. "Let’s put it this way," he said eventually, "I personally don’t care who you are or what happens to you. But there are more important things than what I think or care."

We rose further in silence, until I couldn’t bear the silence any longer.

"So," I asked, "is this hell?"

The devil moved his heavy head until one of his eyes swivelled towards me. "You could call it that," he said agreeably. "Or you could call it anything else you want. Just don’t call it heaven, that’s all."

"Something wrong with heaven?" I asked.

He merely shuddered in reply, so expressively that all his scales rattled together and parasites went jumping away as if on springs.

At length we came to a kind of plateau. It was actually a vast flat space on the side of the wall, the stone cracked and fissured, and filled with bubbling pools and puddles of liquid fire. And the space was filled with devils – devils of all shapes and sizes, from little devils which scuttled around our legs to brooding masses so huge I took them at first to be part of the wall itself. A lot of them gathered around us, jabbering and grinning. If I hadn’t been dead I might almost have been scared.

My devil led me all the way through that mass of grinning, gibbering fiends for so long that I thought we’d keep going for the rest of eternity. But at last we came to a devil so huge that I couldn’t even see all of him – he vanished into the distance to left and right, and his body merged into the substance of the wall. Very, very far overhead, I could make out a pair of dim red eyes and a gaping mouth full of serrated yellowish teeth. From way up there came a distant rumbling.

My devil turned towards me. "This is His Holeyness the Infernal Pope, Demon CLIV," he said.  "He wants to know what you’re doing here."

I repeated everything that had happened since I’d first noticed the disappearance of the building. The gathered devils all stared at me, and the laughter fell off to a murmuring full of consternation.

"And that’s all I know about it," I finished. "I can’t tell you any more than that."

"And you’re dead," my devil repeated. "You’re sure?"

"Of course." I pointed to the wound over my heart. "I’ve been stabbed right there, haven’t I?"

"Um, well." The devils all looked at one another, and there was some rumbling from overhead. "That is a problem."

"I don’t understand," I said. "I died, so I came to hell. I suppose that’s pretty much standard, isn’t it?"

My devil shook both his horns in vehement denial. "The problem is," he explained, "that dead people do not come to hell. No dead person has ever come here – except you."

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