TWENTY-FOUR
“You must be pretty excited.”
“Well, it is nice to see you again, and doing so well. It’s not the first time I’ve been glad the children didn’t kill you.”
“That’s not what I meant. And besides, they did, but the Bling Waddlers couldn’t keep me down for long.”
“I decline to rise to the bait, young lady.” He’d been looking out over the amusement park, which was set in the middle of the Hell mall. The lines were hideous, the park employees were sullen, the food was either too cold or too hot or too stale, and the smell of vomit from woozy ridegoers lingered. Ever had stale popcorn after riding a ride that flipped you upside down? Glurt! “I know you know they’re the Blade Warriors. I’m not going to keep reminding you.”
“You caught on a lot faster than my friends and family,” I admitted, sipping an Orange Julius that tasted like water. Was water, I was pretty sure. I had to laugh at the old saying (people in Hell want ice water). Water was Hell when you wanted a frosty, tangy, sweet Orange Julius. Coke was Hell when you wanted lemonade. Steak was Hell when you wanted couscous. I could go on, but won’t.
We were seated at the far end of the food court, looking out over the Hell mall. Yes! Seated! Tables, a place to sit and have a convo and people-watch. Hell was finally becoming civilized.
And crowded! Because that was the worst thing about malls. However a necessary evil gigantic shopping plazas were, we endured them a lot more than we enjoyed them. The Hell mall would always be crowded bordering on claustrophobic. I didn’t see anyone I recognized, either waiting in a never-ending line for a ride that was under repair, sitting at one of the tables staring dejectedly at cold rubbery fries, or behind the counter handling food they wanted no part of. Several of them were sneaking glances my way, but no one came over. Did not blame them.
They didn’t have to come to me, anyway. Nobody did. And I didn’t assign anyone to do anything, but the mall format was taking care of that. Hell had employees, which I’d always unconsciously known but was only now remembering. It wasn’t staffed entirely by damned souls. The human resources office probably had a file cabinet stuffed with demon résumés. “It kind of looks like Hell almost . . . runs itself? Is that right?”
“It can. But only under the proper dominion. There needs to be a—how to put this?—a guiding hand. Which it now has.”
“Wait’ll Laura sees this! She’ll be super impressed by what I’ve managed to accomplish entirely by accident.” I was practically rubbing my hands together. “Accuse me of shirking, will she? This’ll show her.”
“About the lawless one,” Father Markus began.
“Are we back on the Ant again?”
“Your sister. You have of course noticed that this realm has been a void until you put your mind to changing it, yes? From the moment the Morningstar went to her reward—”
“Not sure it was a reward.” Also, where does an unrepentant unforgiven fallen angel go after goading a vampire with great shoes into killing her? Not Heaven. Definitely not Hell. I think my earlier theory—that she just let herself go into nothingness—was the answer.
“There has been nothing at all for weeks. Or centuries, I’m not sure.” He made a vague gesture encompassing the amusement park, using the hand that was holding his flat Pepsi (if the lack of carbonation wasn’t bad enough, the priest was a Coke man all the way). “Time is different here.”
“Ugh, really? The ‘time moves differently in Hell’ trope? Yawn.”
“What is a trope?”
I took another sip and watched the employee working the ice cream stand, where the only flavor they had left was spumoni. “It’s like a TV or movie cliché, I guess. Or a stereotype. It’s something that, when you see it, you know exactly what that character or situation is going to be. Like the sexy librarian trope.”
“But librarians are sexy.”
I waved that nonsense away. Despite (because of?) that particular trope, every librarian I’d ever seen had crow’s-feet like canyons and wore thick support hose to control the varicose veins. “You’re a priest, what do you know?”
Father Markus laughed so suddenly it was startling. “I suppose that’s my cue to say something like ‘I’m a priest, not dead’ except—”
“You are dead!” I replied, giggling. Luckily the dead guy was also giggling, so it wasn’t as insensitive as it could have been. “Okay, fine, you think librarians are sexy. How’s this for another example . . . you’re a trope.”
“But I’m not on television or in the movies.”
“Yes, but you’re a symbol of organized religion in an unlikely place where I would not expect to find aid, and you’re friendly and helpful.”
“That’s a trope?”
“Yeah, and it’s a boatload better than the evil unhelpful priest trope.”
“There’s an evil priest trope?” he repeated, horrified.
“I think we’re losing focus.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Focus, damn you and your librarian-loving ways! We’re not going to wonder about tropes, we’re going to wonder about why time’s different here, remember? I wonder how Satan handled it. Or is she the one who made it like this? That would be so her, making time be all—uh—whatever the opposite of linear is, that’s what she did to it. Just to make things more difficult for me!” I paused. “Okay, I hear it. Her decision probably didn’t have anything to do with me. Or much to do with me. What d’you think?”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with you.”
“About Satan. About how she did it, or why she did it.”
Father Markus shook his head. “I rarely saw the Morningstar.”
“The devil didn’t have a sit-down with all the newcomers? You must have met her at least.” Maybe that had been the Ant’s job. “No ‘Welcome to Hell, flogging to the left, delousing to the right, and you’ll never finish the paperwork’ sort of thing?”
“Well, yes, but we weren’t sitting. I was hearing Eva Perón’s confession—”
“I don’t want you to get off track but we should circle back to that later.”
“—and she came right up to me and asked just what I thought I was doing.”
“And then the flogging started!”
“No. She laughed when I explained. Then she said—”
“‘Begin the flogging!’”
“No. She said it was brilliant. Then I said I was sorry for her—”
“So then flogging started.”
“No. I’m not sure why you’re obsessed with my flogging. I was never flogged. She just laughed again.” Father Markus paused, thinking about it. “I didn’t expect her to have such a sense of humor. Which was naïve, I know. Who would laugh more than the devil herself? She’s seen everything of the human condition and lacks our Father’s compassion. She must have found nearly everything funny.”
“Uh-huh. She said you were brilliant?”
“No, she said giving hope to the damned was brilliant. She said I could raise their spirits just enough for her to stomp on them again. And so she gave me the run of the place.”
“The better to get to the stomping, no doubt. I can’t say I’m surprised. If she was slowing down time in Hell to have sit-downs with all the souls, however brief the meetings were, no wonder she was so grumpy. No time off? No sick days? God must be the worst HR head ever. And you never answered my question.”
Father Markus tried another sip, grimaced, then pushed the cup full of room-temperature flat pop (the Hell food court was always out of ice) away with a sad look. “I don’t recall you asking me a question.”
“About how you must be pretty pleased. You know. Relatively speaking. This.” I gestured. “All this. It proves Catholics are right about Heaven and Hell and all that. It must be vindicating. Right?”
“I think,” he began slowly, “that ‘pleased’ and ‘vindicating’ aren’t the words I would use.”
“Except that doesn’t really solve anything. Hell exists, so what? That just raises a fuckload more questions I think God better get around to answering. Does that mean there’s a Purgatory? What about Jews? Are any Jews down here? There must be.”
“Must be?”
“You know what I mean,” I snapped. “Not ‘must be’ in the sense that they’re here because they are Jewish, ergo ‘see you in Hell, yarmulke boy!’ And if there’s Hell, there must be Heaven, too, right?”
“Oh, definitely,” the priest said with a nod. “I haven’t been there yet, but I’ve heard about it from people who have.”
Intriguing! And deeply confusing. “How does that work?”
“There’s an exchange program.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Pardon, my dear?”
“You did not just say there’s an exchange program between Heaven and Hell. Between Germany and the U.S. I get. We had a German exchange student when I went to high school and she was pretty cool. She was one of the few people in that school who appreciated my shoes. That’s something I can wrap my head around. I can’t wrap my head around exchange programs and field trips to and from Hell.” But even as I said it, I realized how stupid I sounded. “Except that’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it? Field trips.”
“I think so.”
I spoke slowly, the way I did when I was realizing something and verbalizing it at the same time. “And I can’t do that anymore. Can I? This isn’t a place to visit and forget about when I leave; this is my responsibility.”
The priest’s gaze was steady. “I think so.”
I nodded and sipped my Orange-Julius-that-wasn’t. I should have been scared and angry, realizing that. But instead I felt relief. It was good, it was so very good to finally face the thing I had been so carefully, obsessively avoiding. And it wasn’t like I had to do it alone. I never had to do anything alone again. I’d changed the timeline and obliterated Ancient Betsy, that worthless tyrannical bitch, to ensure it.
“Will you help us?” I asked, straight-out, no fucking around. Father Markus was in or out. I’d understand if it was the latter but hoped for the former.
“I’ll help you.”
“Oh. Sure, I get it, you don’t know Laura that well.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Would you like a refill?”
We both looked up and there was the Ant. She was still wearing her awful outfit but now had a small gold name tag pinned just below her left shoulder with her name: “Antonia.” A round white pin with black lettering on the opposite side read, “Serving seven billion and counting!”
“There are no refills in Hell,” I replied almost without thinking.
“Correct. That was a trick question.” She was holding a clipboard and looking from the priest to me to the priest again. “So I should put your father down—”
I nearly spilled my Orange Not-Julius. “He’s not my father. I mean, he’s a father. Just not mine. My father, I mean.” Was I saying “father” a lot? Did they notice? “Right, Father? Who is not my actual father? Faaaather father father.”
She kept going like I hadn’t interrupted her and, for once, I was grateful. “—as a consultant?”
“Yeah, sure, put him down. Wait! Let me elaborate: put him down as a consultant. Don’t insult him or anything.” To Father Markus: “Thank you.”
“And thank you,” the Ant said after scribbling something on the clipboard. She made a point of looking around the Hell mall. “Very well done, Betsy.”
“It was an accident,” I bragged. Wait, why was I proud of that?
“Yes, I assumed. You’re off to a good start.”
Why, why was her praise cheering me up? God, this place was so insidious, making me feel things I had never felt and never wanted to felt. I mean feel.
“It still smacks of being way too simple. The fact that this is how it really works. It’s almost anticlimactic.”
“I’ll never understand why people think anticlimactic is bad,” said the damned priest who used to help orphans kill vampires.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you don’t, Father. But this place . . . you believe you’re supposed to be here, so here you are. Same with my Ant—”
“Your aunt?”
Over the Ant’s annoyed huff, I replied, “Long story, no time. Same with her, same with Henry Tudor, same with the guy over there allergic to ketchup who’s only allowed to eat ketchup . . .” We all shuddered at the far-off retching noises the poor bastard was making. “If we’re here because we want to be, can we leave? I mean, I know I can, but could you?” To my stepmother: “Could you?”
“Yes. I think,” he added. The Ant said nothing, just stood there with her dorky clipboard and shifted her weight from one foot to another. “There are souls I’ve spoken to here that I no longer see.”
“Yeah, but billions. Billions of souls, right? Of course you couldn’t be expected to remember ’em all.”
“Correct. But it’s not difficult to track down someone here. It’s not a planet with a defined area like Earth, it’s a different dimension with different rules, as you’re busy discovering. I do think people are leaving.”
I nodded, remembering Laura’s warning. But I need you. They’re leaving! “Yeah, that’s part of the reason I’m here.”
Puzzled, Father Markus tilted his head. His small dark eyes were bright like a sparrow’s. “I don’t understand. Some souls are leaving when they’re ready to move on. When they’ve learned. Or been forgiven. Or forgave themselves. Or repented. They’re—”
“There’s a lot to take in,” the Ant cut in, almost like she didn’t want the priest to keep clarifying for me. Which was nuts; she wanted me up to speed ASAP to ease some of the burden from poor precious Laura’s delicate creamy shoulders. “I think you’ve done very well in a short time.” That explained the praise, too. Should have known it wasn’t entirely sincere. “Once you actually showed up,” she added in a mutter, because she was, after all, still the Ant, no matter how pleasant and helpful she was being. Or pretending to be. It was almost a relief to hear the knee-jerk insult.
“All I can tell you, Betsy, is what I learned myself not long after I arrived here.” Father Markus kept forgetting his drink was nasty, because he again picked it up and again put it down without sipping. Torture! Oooh, I was a genius. “It has been the joy and sorrow of my afterlife to find that there are more questions than answers. The only thing I have learned is that I have much to learn.”
“Yeah, I learned that, too. Way before I died, even.”
“There are Muslims here, and Jews. I’ve debated theology with Sikhs and Baha’is and I’ve heard confession from atheists and Taoists and Lutherans.”
“Bet the atheists are pissed to be here.”
“You’d be surprised. Some of them were relieved. Not to be in Hell, but that people they’d known who’d judged them for their beliefs were also in Hell.”
Heh. “Okay, that’s funny.” What? It was.
“This is not a dimension set aside solely for Catholics who believe in a concrete Heaven and a concrete Hell and an Almighty Father and a Devil and punishment and redemption. It’s for everyone and I don’t know why. I may never know why. And there are children, too.”
I was so startled I sucked in a breath. “Kids? Aw, no. Don’t tell me that.”
“Not being tortured, not damned,” he reassured me. Tried to, I mean, jeez. I wasn’t sure I could be reassured, though he’d get points for trying. The whole idea—toddlers in a food court that wasn’t childproofed!—was horrifying. “They didn’t sin, how could they, the precious ones? But here they are. What does that mean? And there are people who absolutely deserve to be punished for quite some time, if not forever, who aren’t here.”
“Like my dad!” Wait. Did I say that out loud?
“It’s puzzling.” I was relieved he’d let the dad comment pass. “Like Jewish vampires being burned by crosses. One of the Blade Warriors’ victims. It shook me and I could never get it right in my mind. I’d hoped to find the answer to that here, as well, but so far I haven’t.”
I remembered, vaguely. They’d told me about it before they disbanded. They’d tracked and killed an old-school vampire, one who had a taste for rabbinical seminary students, men as well as women. He’d been old enough, and experienced enough, to give them enough trouble that one of the Blind Worriers ended up in a wheelchair. They got him down, finally, and killed him. The cross worked great, and they’d brought buckets of holy water, which was even better.
Afterward, they realized he was Jewish (I was a little surprised his victim predilection didn’t tip them off). Which raised all sorts of problematic questions. Why did the cross work? Why did any of it work?
“Oh, not that suggestibility thing again.” I managed, barely, to keep from rolling my eyes. This had come up before, and I’d dismissed it before. It was either too dumb for me to understand, or too sophisticated.
It goes like this: vampires couldn’t stand crosses or Bibles or what-have-you because in life, they had believed the books and comics and movies. Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot was inserted so far into popular culture that even people who didn’t read the book (or read Stoker’s Dracula or watched Buffy and Angel on TV or read the 30 Days of Night graphic novels or went to the movies to see Shadow of the Vampire or The Lost Boys and shut up, that was a great movie!) knew how to kill vampires. Ergo crosses hurt. So even if you were a Jew or an atheist in life, a cross would burn you once you turned into a vamp.
Which, again, makes no sense. It was so dumb I spent a lot of time deliberately not thinking about it. Unfortunately (or maybe the opposite?) Father Markus had zero interest in marinating in ignorance.
“I think there are many dimensions out there. I don’t think we’ll ever know how many or what it means or even how they came to be. Perhaps not even how we came to be. If we can come to grips with that, if we can accept the thought that after an eternity of trying we still won’t have all the answers, there’s hope.”
Hmm. Interesting thought. And possibly depressing as shit; I’d have to think about it. Also, did “we” mean he and I? The Ant, he, and I? Just me? Just him? Him and the demon standing behind him? (Not that there was one.)
“So . . .” Gah. I’d had about all the theological chitchat I could take for one day. Or one hour or one year or however long I’d been here this time. “To answer the question I asked ages ago, you don’t have to stay here, probably?”
“But I will.” He touched his collar, as if reminding himself it was still there. “Can you think of a place more in need of a sympathetic ear? And we need to set up a rotation schedule for those keeping an eye on the children.”
With a jolt, I realized the Mall of America—my model for Hell Mall—had a day-care center. And again: children? I didn’t care that they weren’t being tortured, I had to look into that. If BabyJon—ohgodpleaseno—died, would he come here? Who would look after him and play with him and sneak him maple sugar candy?
I shook the horrifying thought off with a determined effort. “I appreciate that, Father. But stay or go, I can put in a good word for you with . . .” Whom, exactly? The devil was dead by my hand. (My hand, my other hand, my feet, my teeth—toward the end I was lashing out with everything I had and I’m still kind of astonished I pulled it off.) I couldn’t imagine the Antichrist would care about a sinful priest—one willing to help us, no less! or help me, anyway, which was almost as good—and if she did, what could she do? Send him away? Where? Back to “the real world”? The Heaven dimension? Could she banish a sinner to Heaven? Could we call God on the phone (cue Joan Osborne and her intensely annoying song “One of Us” and, no, Joan, God wouldn’t be a stranger on the bus, and He wouldn’t be anything like a holy rolling stone, either; God, I hate that song) to ask for leniency? And how would that phone call go? Hey, God, how’s it going? Can you believe so-and-so won the Super Bowl? Anyway, we’ve got a defrocked priest down here, he’s a pretty good guy, really, and maybe you could let him trade up?
“Maybe you don’t have to spend an eternity here,” was all I could come up with.
My stepmother let out another trademark inelegant snort. “I’m sure Father Markus is touched by your vague offer to help in some undefined way.”
I scowled. “Careful, or I’ll put you on amusement park barf detail.” The shudder I received was more than satisfying. And speaking of being satisfied . . .
“I’ve gotta tell you guys, this is pretty nifty. I’ve gotten a lot done.” They opened their mouths and I went on anyway. “Yeah, yeah, by accident, but who cares? The point is, a lot got done.” At her eye roll I revised. “Some stuff got done.” Another eye roll—her optic nerves were gonna go into spasm if she kept that up. “All right! A tiny amount of stuff kind of got done and there’s ever so much more to do, yes, fine, I get it. But cut me some slack. I (eventually) stepped up and (finally) took action and frankly, I think I deserve a smoothie break!” My hip buzzed and I reached for my phone. Perfect timing. I wondered how long I’ll have been gone from the mansion this time.
Babies gone again. Your father is alive.
“Oh, fucking fuck,” I nearly shrieked and then nearly died of mortification. “I’m so sorry,” I added at once.
“I’ve heard those words once or twice,” Father Markus said, eyes going teeny as he grinned. “Even before I got sent to Hell.”
“Trouble at home again.” I noticed the Ant hadn’t phrased it as a question.
“Yeah. My friend’s weird babies keep disappearing except not really. But I think I know what to tell her. At least, in a way that won’t result in her permanent nervous breakdown. Or my decapitation.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t.”
I stood, ready to empty my tray, when I realized all the garbage cans were full because of course they were. I set the tray back down. “I have to go . . . do you have to go find your Hell? Is one of these stores for you?”
The Ant immediately started flipping through pages on her (magic, right?) clipboard. “I can answer that for you. I’ve got it here somewhere . . .”
“I can, too,” he said politely then turned back to me. “No, I don’t have to participate. My penance is to forever offer counsel and be rebuffed nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand.”
Sounded grueling. But knowing Father Markus, reaching that one soul kept him going. I admired his dogged compassion, even if I couldn’t match it.
“I just don’t want you to get flogged or burned or whatever you don’t want to have happen to you.”
“Not all penance is of the body. I prefer a flogging to despair,” he admitted. “I prefer it to nothing, to be honest.”
“Come on, how bad can nothing be? Getting lashed has to be way worse.”
“Even if I just wandered around the food court and no one ever laid a hand on me, it’s eternity, Betsy. You don’t have to be burned or flogged forever to realize it’s punishment.”
“Oh.” Wow. Hadn’t thought of it like that. What a depressing thought. “Good. I think.” I clipped my phone back to my hip. “I’ll be back when I can.”
“Oh, we’ll be here,” the Ant said with annoying cheer.
“Again with the threats,” I said, and I vanished with the smug thought that, in Hell, getting the last word felt soooo good.