Carol Ann released her grip on my mother’s wrist, and I saw the damage that she had caused—how she had bitten her so hard that it had broken the skin and droplets of blood rolled down the side and splashed onto the white carpet, staining it.
“I can’t take much more of this,” I said louder than necessary. “How many more of these do we have to go through?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Val said, her violet eyes flashing like little strobe lights as she felt with her hands against the window, before moving on to what would be the closet door. “But I can tell you that we’re getting closer to her. I can feel it.”
I shifted my gaze back to my mother, watching as she held her bleeding wrist to her chest and rocked back and forth, whimpering in pain while Carol Ann laughed. She lunged forward to bite her again and instinctively, I moved to stop her, but Jet’s arms were wrapped around my waist in an instant, holding me back.
“You can’t do anything to stop it, so don’t feed into it,” Jet said, his lips brushing against my ear.
He was right. All I was doing was fueling Purgatory with my emotions. I was feeding it.
“Over here,” Val said, motioning for us to join her next to the door at the far end of the room.
“C’mon, maybe she’ll be at the next one,” Jet insisted as he tugged on me, forcing me toward Val and away from the horrific scene of my mother being attacked.
Bitter-tasting tears streamed down my cheeks as Val opened the door and stepped through its threshold into solid whiteness. I didn’t know how my mother, being as young as she was, had managed to handle all that she had in her life.
“I don’t know how she went through all of this,” I said with a sniffle. I shook my head. “I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you could. You’re strong just like her,” Jet said, his eyes penetrating through me. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”
“Come on, we don’t have all day,” Val insisted as she started at us from inside the doorway.
“Let’s go,” Jet said stepping forward and pulling me along.
CHAPTER TEN
A sterile smelling hospital hallway stood on the other side. Sea foam green walls with a dingy, peeling white chair rail caught my attention first. Then, the white and gray marbled flooring came, and an extra hospital bed entirely empty except for crisp white sheets and a folded blanket the color of puke sitting at the end. The year or time of day was unknown, but I found myself immediately beginning to search the long hall for my mother.
“There,” I said, pointing to a young girl who looked to be about fourteen standing outside someone’s room. She was dressed in a pink and white candy striper outfit and carrying a pitcher of ice water. “That’s my mother.”
Val walked ahead of us, glancing around as though she could see something I couldn’t. “We aren’t that far behind in her cycle. Your mother’s trace is faint, but it’s still here.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
Val glanced at me, her eyes flashing a slight bit faster. “Souls leave a trace—an energy—behind. Something that is very distinct to who they were. I can see and feel it. It’s almost like being synesthetic in a way.”
“What’s synesthetic mean?” I wondered, knowing that I’d heard the word before, but not remembering its definition.
“It’s something certain people have. When they look at a color, instead of the color, they see numbers or days of the week. I’m not sure I know how to explain what I do in a way that you would understand,” Val insisted.
“All right,” I replied, deciding I wouldn’t question what she could do any further.
Jet’s fingers laced through mine. “I know the last memory was another horrible one. I don’t know what this one will be like, but I don’t expect it to be any better, and I really am sorry you have to go through all of this in order to find your mother.”
I couldn’t even bring myself to smile at his words, his sympathy, because I didn’t feel like I deserved it. All he should have done was take me to the Purgatory Portal and nothing more. It wasn’t fair of me to have him here no matter how much I wanted him to be. I leaned against him, feeling the warmth of his soul press into mine. I was going to miss him when all of this was said and done. The sound of shattering glass mixed with animals howling pulled me from the security of Jet’s arms.
I spun to find my mother’s fourteen-year-old self standing in the threshold of the hospital room closest to us. The pitcher of ice water she’d been holding was on the floor in front of her, shattered to pieces. She was gazing at something, whatever was causing the commotion inside the room, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Her face was pale and her legs trembled beneath her as they struggled to keep her standing. The three of us took a few steps until we stood directly behind her and gazed into the room.
It was a typical hospital room the same horrible shade of sea foam green as the hall. The patient inside was a younger guy who was probably in his late twenties. He lay on the bed, his eyes closed. The volume on the corner-mounted TV was down low, and he had an IV and different machines hooked up to him. Beside him stood a female Reaper with long, flowing blond hair, his soul, and a pack of large, angry wolves that looked as if they were made of rippling gray smoke. They growled and snapped their jaws at him as they stood in a straight line in front of him, acting as though they were a barrier between him and the door.
This was what had started my mother. No question.
I wondered if it had been the sight of a soul being harvested that had startled her initially, or if she had simply entered the room to refill a drink and saw all of this.
“What are they?” I asked as I stared at the wolves with horror, watching as the smoke they were made of rippled as they moved and taunted the soul of the man. “How are they here?”
“They’re his demons,” Jet answered. “His soul must have been corrupt while he was alive. When you harvest a corrupt soul, not only do you take it to the Purgatory Portal, but also its inner most demons. Each wolf represents something horrible he did while alive…a demon he will have to deal with in his Purgatory.”
I stared at the wolves, amazed by what they stood for, while noticing each tiny detail about them—how vibrantly red their eyes were, how the smoke they were created by seemed unmoving and yet ever-changing, how pungent the taste of evil was against my lips. I counted five wolves snarling their teeth at the man, and my gaze shifted to his peaceful-looking body lying on the hospital bed. He looked so normal and good looking even. How could he have been such a horrible person? I guessed what they said about people—looks can be deceiving—was true. This guy was proof.
A thought came to me then. “What about the old man from the first bedroom? Shouldn’t his Reaper and his demons have taken him to the Purgatory Portal? ” If they had, then my mother would have at least been spared from his viciousness.
“He either escaped them somehow or fought them off,” Val answered, going back to searching for our exit as she followed the trace my mother had left behind.
One wolf howled and the others followed suit. The five of them began moving toward the young man’s soul, circling him as though they were forming a cage. Without warning, they lunged and began tearing into him. I could see no marks or blood, but it was obvious from the man’s cries and the terror he felt mirrored in his expressions, that he was in physical pain.
“No, get them off me! Get them off me!” he cried out.
The Reaper who stood beside him did no such thing. Instead, she watched with a blank expression for a long drawn out moment before finally gripping his shoulder and blinking him away to the Purgatory Portal, taking the wolves with her. My eyes flicked back to my mother. She still stood in the doorway, her entire body trembling uncontrollably. I couldn’t imagine seeing something like that when I knew nothing of Reapers and how things worked. I ached to reach out to her, to tell her that what she saw was real and that she wasn’t going crazy, but I knew I couldn’t. This was just another memory. It wasn’t something happening right now, I reminded myself for the millionth time.
“There are no windows to climb through,” Jet pointed out, glancing inside the now quiet and quite empty hospital room. “Not even a door.”
Val started down the long hallway, her high-heeled black boots clicking across the tiled floor. “It’s not going to be a window every time or a door, but it’s still going to be a choice. This time it’s between left or right, again,” she said, stopping at the edge of a hallway to turn back and look at us. “I’m sensing that if I choose left, we’ll get to her faster, maybe even before she repeats the cycle again.”
I was amazed by the rapid succession of Val’s eye flashes. It caused excitement to spark through me due to the fact that we were getting close. Real close. My hell was finally about to be over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As soon as we cut the corner at the end of the hallway and turned left, we were standing in a different hallway altogether. It was bright and airy with one wall made up of solid windows and Berber carpeted floors. I had no idea where we were or what the place was. All I knew was that we were really high up and in the middle of an unfamiliar, large city. I scooted closer to the solid wall as my incredibly debilitating fear of heights I’d long since forgotten in my death plummeted me, causing my knees to quiver.
“Nice view,” Val said as she stepped to the windowed wall and gazed out.
“What is this place?” I wondered as I glanced around at the generic art hanging on the walls that gave away nothing about our location.
Jet walked ahead of me, scoping out the eerily silent hallway. “I don’t know, but we’re definitely in the middle of New York City.”
“How can you tell?” I asked, wondering how he could be so sure.
Jet pointed to something in the distance beyond the windowed wall. “That’s the Statue of Liberty, isn’t it?”
I took a small step forward, stopping once I reached the center of the hallway, and glanced toward where he was pointing. There, standing in all her glory, was the giant statue of the green woman with her crown. It had always been something I’d wanted to see when I was still alive. Kami and I used to daydream for hours when we were younger about how we were going to move to New York City and go to school for something amazing like photography. We were going to share an apartment—one with exposed brick on the interior walls—and we were going to be waitresses at some really awesome coffee shop. One of the very first things we’d always said we would do when we finally made it to New York City was visit the Statue of Liberty. Seeing it now reminded me of how many of my dreams would forever be unfollowed because of my death. It was more fuel to find my mother.
The distinct noise of footsteps coming down the hall shifted my attention and pulled me from my depressing thoughts. A slender woman with long dark hair dressed in a gray pencil skirt and a lavender button-up top strutted down the hallway toward us. She was lost in thought, flipping through Manila folders in her arms. I didn’t recognize her at first, not until she stopped in front of the elevator and began to whisper.
“Please don’t be in the elevator; please don’t be in the elevator,” she repeated while nervously tapping her stiletto-heeled toes.
Anxiety bubbled within me, panic being its catalyst, as I waited with her for the elevator doors to open so I could see what she was so afraid of this time. When the stainless steel doors slid open, revealing the elevator’s insides, my mother and I released an audible gasp at the same time. Inside the elevator was something I had never seen before, something so dark and vile it coated my tongue entirely with its hostility.
“What the hell is that?” Jet asked as his arm reached for me, tugging me behind him.
Val hesitated in her answer, and I knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good, not if it made her become mute while in its presence. “A Shade,” she whispered as though she were afraid it could hear her.
“A Shade?” I repeated, my eyes never wavering from its continuously shifting blackness hovering in the corner of the otherwise empty elevator. “What’s that?”
“No way.” Jet shook his head and took a slight step backward, crashing into me. “There’s no way.”
“Oh, it’s true… That is most definitely a Shade,” Val insisted as my mother stepped inside the elevator with this thing that even death feared floating in the corner. “As much as I don’t want to, we have to get in the elevator with her and follow this memory out.”
Jet turned to face me. He closed his eyes and sighed as both of his hands gripped my forearms.
“What?” My voice came out louder than I had anticipated—its volume controlled by my fear and alarm, caused by the obvious distress this Shade’s presence placed on Val and Jet. “What is that thing?”
“Shades are souls, technically, but they’re the most vile and evil souls imaginable. If you believe in actual demons, Shades are as close as you will ever find in reality,” Jet said.
“Finish the conversation in here,” Val demanded from where she stood inside the elevator, pressed up against the wall and as far away as she could possibly be from the Shade. “We have to go with her or else we risk being looped all the way back to the beginning.”