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There was nothing especially interesting about the story. A middle aged woman in a small town had a dream about Hell. Just the kind of simple, every-day nothing that made up the bread and butter of the Christian publishing agency I worked for. Small miracles and witnesses of faith. We reporters drove around the country collecting as many as we could, and then we’d pick the best of them and put them into the books we published every month.
Frankly, I never understood how our company turned a profit. I don’t even know if we sold to bookstores, at least, not normal ones. But somehow, they had the money to send me out on road trips to gather them more quotes and pictures. People doing nice things for homeless people. Church communities that came together for someone.
And an old woman who had a dream about Hell.
You’re probably wondering if I believe in all these small miracles and witnesses of faith I write about. The answer is no, but also maybe. You can’t work gathering these things for as long as I have and not notice that a lot of them sound more like slightly interesting coincidences than the Hand of God. You’ve gotta laugh at them a little.
But you’ve also gotta think that it’s, at least, not harmful to believe in them. That maybe there’s something there, or at least something that would be nice if it were there. Maybe the real answer is I just didn’t think about it much.
And I didn’t think about this case much while I was driving there. I might have thought it was a bit gloomy to have a vision of Hell without one of heaven. In my experience, when people saw only one, it was usually the good one. But that was about it. I wasn’t expecting much different, because there never was much different. Once you’d seen your first batch of small miracles and witnesses of faith, you’d pretty much seen them all.
The only other thing I knew was that the pastor who had reported the case said he wanted to talk to me before I met the woman in question. That didn’t seem strange to me either. Pastors always wanted to talk with me. Sometimes it was good stuff too. A solid detail about what a Christian life the person led could make all the difference for a dream story.
That was the most important thing I’d learned in my job. The main thrust of the story is always the same. It’s supposed to always be the same. And that means the details are what make it. If there was an interesting detail about this lady or her dream, it might make it into the book. If not, at least I was wasting time on someone else’s money.
It was about four in the afternoon, a full hour later than I said I’d arrive, that my car pulled up in the gravel parking lot of the West Mill Baptist Church. It was a humble enough brick building, but the stained glass window and the roof at least made it clear it had been built as a church, which wasn’t always the case. I was just getting out of my car when I saw a man with close cropped hair in a blue button up shirt walking over to me.
“Pastor Michael?” I said, and he nodded, glad to be recognized.
“And you’re Julia Fields? From Miracle press?”
“That’s right,” I said, pulling out my notebook and a pen. “Is Ms. Shale still around? I’m sorry for showing up late.”
“She’s here,” said the pastor. “She was quite anxious to meet you, actually.”
As he said that, I noticed something curious in his tone. He wasn’t proud and talkative the way pastors almost always were with me. He sounded quiet, ashamed. Maybe even a little afraid.
That was the first time I suspected something might be wrong.
“You wanted to talk to me first?” I said.
He nodded. “Why don’t you come inside? I feel a little strange saying any of this.”
We walked into the vestibule of the church. It was a simple, small room, with a table for pamphlets between the two doors to the chapel. The pastor glanced into the chapel, then shut both doors. Once he was satisfied, he turned back to me.
I didn’t know what to make of it.
“So, what is it you wanted to talk about? Is it to do with Ms. Shale’s dream?”
“Yes,” he said, lowering his voice. “It is. Let me ask you something first though. Do you believe in demons?”
“Demons?” I repeated, surprised.
He leaned closer to me.
“What I mean is, do you think there are forces other than God? That someone can have a vision which is more than a hallucination, but was sent for unwholesome purposes?”
His tone was cautious, but under it there was an intensity that frightened me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about it, I guess.”
“Neither had I, before,” he replied, straightening back up. “Which is odd, in a way. I’ve always believed in heaven, and the Judgement. So I had to believe in Hell. And if I believed in Hell, I must have believed that there were things that ran it, things that pursued its interests. Only I never thought much about it. I never thought what that might mean. Not until Elizabeth came to me with that dream.”
His words echoed slightly in the empty vestibule. Somehow, even though everything he said was perfectly normal, the effect of them felt almost blasphemous. I had never thought of myself as someone who was even bothered by blasphemy, but in that moment, I felt it.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s so unwholesome about a dream?”
“The effect it’s had on her, for one thing,” the pastor said. “And also, that it came to her. Elizabeth has never been our most devout member. In fact, when her husband died, about half a year ago-”
But just as he was about to tell me more about her, the door to the chapel opened. There was a woman, around forty years old with blonde hair wearing a blue blouse and dark slacks. She had a tired look about her, as if she needed a break and hadn’t gotten one for a long time.
“Sorry for barging in,” she said, and nodded at me before turning back to the pastor. “I just got tired of waiting around in that office, and I thought I heard a car pull up.”
She had a slightly mischievous smile on her face. How long had she been at the door, I wondered. And how much could she hear?
“Are you the person interviewing me?” she asked, turning suddenly away from the pastor.
“That’s right,” I said. “Julia Fields, Miracle Press. Obviously, I can’t promise you that your story will make it into our collection in particular. I’m just collecting as many stories as I can...”
I trailed off awkwardly. Her gaze was disconcerting. She was too focused on me, too intent on my words, and it made me nervous.
“That’s fine,” she said. “Just getting to share it with you is enough.”
There was an intent to those words that I didn’t understand. They stuck in my head, somehow.
“First of all, can you tell us a little about yourself?” I asked.
“My name is Elizabeth Shale,” she said. “I own a gas station and convenience store up the road a little bit. I’ve been a Christian ever since I was a little baby. This right here has been my church for about as long as I can remember.”
“Mostly on Christmas and Easter, of course,” the pastor added. It was a rude remark, one I was sure he wouldn’t make about anyone else. But Elizabeth ignored it, and went right on with her story.
“Well, I admit, there are some in the community who God has not granted me the grace of friendship with.”
She was playing a part, I realized. Trying to be the kind of interviewee that I would want. She wanted to sound like a churchlady. That was why the pastor had felt he needed to leap in and correct her story. He was afraid I would think this is who she really was.
“So you wouldn’t say you’ve ever had a crisis of faith?” I prompted. “That your vision maybe helped you refind some of your belief?”
That was one of the most popular kinds of stories in our book. Also the easiest kind to write. The reader filled in their own doubts, and then you just had to tell them they’d been solved.
“It certainly helped me believe something,” she said, and stared into the distance with a haunted look in her eyes.
“And what exactly was it you saw?” I prompted.
“The fire. I saw the fire that burns forever. And I heard a demon laugh.”
The affect dropped a little when she said that. She didn’t sound like a churchgoing lady anymore. She sounded more like she looked: tired and grim.
“Were there any details that surprised you?”
She stood silent for a few seconds, staring, then shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
I looked down at my notepad. There was barely anything on it.
“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to take a break? End the conversation there?”
“You can keep asking me questions,” she said. “Just not about the dream. I saw the fire. I heard a laugh. You’d have to see to understand more.”
“All right.” I looked at the pastor, then at my notepad again. What even could I ask anyway? It felt rude not to have any questions. “Can you tell me what made you sure your vision was a vision, and not just a dream?”
“I knew it because I saw it,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
I looked at her, then at the pad again. This was too much. I needed to get away from this.
“Well, I think that’s everything I need. Unless there’s something you think I missed?”
She shrugged. “You’ve got everything that fits in words.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Slate.”
“You’re welcome,” she answered.
“Er, Ms. Shale,” the pastor said, as I started to walk towards the door. “How have those sleeping pills you got at the pharmacy been working out for you?
I paused. Clearly, it was something he meant for me to hear.
“They’ve been helpful,” she said. “They keep me from dreaming.”
“That’s good,” said the pastor. “And you’ve stopped hearing things? No more laughter, anything like that?”
She looked at the pastor with a cold, tired hate in her eyes that startled me. “I was never hearing things.”
“Glad you’re doing well,,” the pastor said, turning away with a fearful look on his face. “And thank you so much for your time, Ms. Fields..”
I smiled and walked outside as quickly as I could. The pastor was clearly nervous being left with Elizabeth, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I had to get out. I had to drive away from all this.
I climbed into my car. Why did it all bother me so much? It was just a strange woman who’d had a strange dream, and some small town drama I didn’t follow. There wasn’t anything really weird going on. There was no such thing as visions. There was no such thing as Hell.
That was what it all came down to. I didn’t believe in Hell. Not really. I never had. I believed that good people got it better than people. But to actually face Hell, torture that lasted forever under the power of forces of genuine evil, was too much. I rejected it. Or rather, I lightened it, twisted it and hid it away in the background.
When you really faced Hell, it didn’t fit well with a world of small miracles and witnesses of faith. It suggested a darker, uglier world, one whose contours were written on Elizabeth Shale’s face. One I wanted to escape as soon as possible.
I turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered loudly. And it didn’t start.
No, that wasn’t possible. I turned the key again. Sputtering, smoke, and nothing.
“Having car trouble?”
It was Elizabeth Shale’s voice. I hadn’t seen her leave the church, but there she was, right in front of the car.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll figure it out.”
She just looked at me. “If you need a place to stay tonight, I have a spare bed.”
And I knew, with a certainty that sat heavy in my stomach, that I would have to say yes.
––––––––
Everything went just the way I was afraid it would. The auto repair store said they’d need a day to replace the broken part. The pastor said there wasn’t a hotel for fifty miles. And I ended up agreeing to sleep in Elizabeth Shale’s house.
The idea that she had done something to my car occurred to me, of course. The whole time the pastor and I had been talking in the vestibule, it had just been sitting there. She would have had to be quick of course. Quick and determined. But it was possible.
That was part of why I said yes.
For the last two years, my job had been to look for signs of a greater order. Not really, of course. My job was to gather stories that would sell to a certain kind of Christian. But no matter how fake it got, no matter how saccharine the actual product ended up, it could never be completely fake. It always had to have just a corner of reality, if only because we had to pretend it did.
And now, something had happened that felt like it just might be real.
Was it actually? Maybe not. Maybe she was just weird. But something about the look I saw in her eyes, and the way the pastor treated her felt real. Ugly and blasphemous, but real.
I ate at a diner, alone and sat there, reading and trading half-hearted conversation with the waitress until it got late enough that I knew I had to go to her house. It wasn’t hard to find. The sign for the gas station was visible from anywhere, and her house was just behind it. It was a run down, one-floor little place with peeling blue paint and a dying lawn. I knocked on the side of the screen door and she appeared, as if she’d been waiting, just out of sight.
“I’m glad to see you,” she said. “I’d almost thought you weren’t coming.”
She opened the door and I stepped in. The house was cold, almost weirdly cold, and dimly lit. It was also a mess. Random items covered the tables and counters, and sometimes spilled onto the floors. In some places, I saw dark stains, as if someone had lit a fire inside the house for some reason.
“Thank you for offering your hospitality,” I said, as politely as I could. “Sorry for being so late. I lost track of time.”
“Of course,” she said. “I used to do that all the time.”
“Used to?” I repeated, still looking around the house. I noticed suddenly that there were matchsticks everywhere. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them, burnt down and then tossed about at random.
“Not since the vision,” she said. “You can’t lose yourself in time once you’ve seen eternity.”
I jerked my head around, instinctively. There was nothing there, but I felt certain I had felt something, a presence, especially as she said those words. What did it mean?
She led me into the living room and pointed to a sofa she had opened to reveal a bed. There were more matchsticks in the room, and lots of boxes of old frozen foods. I sat down on the bed, and saw that a clock had been taken down from the wall and smashed on the floor.
“Does that look like it will be comfortable for you? If you need pillows, blankets, anything at all, I can get that for you.”
There was that sense of a presence again. Elizabeth seemed to be staring at something behind me, but when I looked, there was nothing there.
“This looks fine,” I said. “I’ve slept in worse.”
She nodded, and walked towards her bedroom door. As she reached it, she stopped.
“Can I ask you a frank question?” she said, turning back to me.
“Sure. Anything you want.”
“What do you think Hell is like?”
I stared. It was a question I’d been thinking about the whole evening, and I still struggled to pull words together to make a response.
“I don’t know,” I said, finally. “I guess I’ve always thought of it as more, like, a state of mind or an idea than a real place.”
“Yes, of course you do,” she murmured, clearly to herself, not me. “It’s easier that way, isn’t it...”
Before I could answer, she walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
With nothing else to do, I turned out the lamp and went to bed.
––––––––
I don’t think I dreamt anything that night. It took me a long time to fall asleep. I was exhausted, but the house made me nervous. I remembered Pastor Michael talking about unwholesome purposes. Whatever had happened to make Elizabeth live like this, it was certainly unwholesome.
But the worst was that feeling of something watching. The moment I turned out the lights and lay down in the thin, squeaky bed, I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew there was something else in the room, something that found me faintly amusing. Over and over, I repeated to myself that there was nothing there, but still, I felt it, and it felt very close. Something totally strange and totally malignant.
And yet, somehow, I fell asleep. I must have, because I remember the moment of waking up so clearly.
The feeling of presence was stronger now, a hundred times stronger. And she was standing over me, her mouth clenched tight and her eyes wild. There was an offensive odor, which I couldn’t quite identify.
“Don’t worry,” she told me. “Don’t you worry at all. Nothing will happen to you. You’re only here to see. All you have to do is see.”
Her voice was full of wild, uncontrolled emotion. It terrified me, and I tried to sit up to talk to her or run away if I had to.
But I couldn’t.
There was nothing visible to stop me, but I felt as if two massive hands were pressing down on my body, forcing me back into the bed. It wasn’t paralysis. I could move and push against them, but they pushed back just as hard. One of the invisible hands covered my chest and one arm, while the other was wrapped tightly around my legs.
The sense of malevolence filled the entire room. Was that what was holding me? Had it been watching me all this time?
“I wish there could have been another way, but there isn’t. You have to see to understand. You have to see to understand.”
“See what?” I cried, struggling against the unseen pressing force.
“Just one moment of what it’s like. One fragment of eternity.”
She held up a small, red lighter in her hand. And that was when I realized what the offensive smell was.
Gasoline.
“Imagine it forever,” she said, pressing on the lighter, but without making a spark. “You have to imagine it forever.”
She struck the lighter again and suddenly, her entire body leaped into fire. I screamed and reached out my one free arm, but there was nothing I could do to help. There was nothing to do but watch.
Elizabeth wailed as the fire spread over her, loud, wild cries of sheer pain and terror. And as her flesh blackened and burnt, the room filled with another sound. A wicked, cruel laughter that seemed to come from every direction at once. A laughter that could be nothing but demonic.
It couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes. Not really. But something had happened to time. Nothing moved any slower than it should have, but it simply kept going. She kept standing there and screaming and the fire kept roaring and the laughter rang in my ears for what seemed like hours, days, years.
But it wasn’t. It can’t have been. Because it did end. She did collapse onto the floor, the hands released and the laughter became an echo of itself.
And I ran. I ran out into the night blindly. I ran and I cried.
I cried because she had shown me the truth. She had revealed to me one moment of eternity. One grain of the sand that the bird carries across the ocean.
I understood it now. I knew. And I could never be lost in time again.
They had to see.
It was never possible for there to be a Hell and a God. They were too opposed, too antithetical.
Someone else had to see it. I had to show it to them.
If Hell existed, it was because God was defeated.
I had to show the truth to as many people as possible. I had to.
If its fires burnt forever, it was because God burnt in them.