TWENTY-ONE
Chastity stood before Emily as if awaiting a response, her shiny, disfigured face tilted upward, her gaze unblinking.
Emily read that Chastity was blind, but she had the disconcerting impression the woman was watching her, could see through her hazy, blank eyes.
“I am true blind,” Chastity said. “That’s what you were wondering, wasn’t it? If I could see? These eyes of mine have seen too much.”
“Can you read minds, too?” Emily asked, offended by the woman’s smirk. Her anger at being lied to, at being tested and delayed, simmered beneath her need for information.
Chastity chuckled. “Don’t know that anyone can. Not in the sense you mean. Me, I’m just a student of human nature.”
“True of all con-artists,” Emily muttered.
Tom’s mother rushed forward. Emily thought the woman would have slapped her if the sheriff hadn’t intervened.
“How dare you!” she spat at Emily over the sheriff’s shoulder.
“Judge not, lest you be judged,” Chastity said.
“But, Sister Chastity,” Mom cried, “what she said—”
“Was understandable, given who she is and what she’s been through.” Chastity flicked her hand. “Leave us. All of you. Miss Goodman and I are going to have some tea.”
Mom looked abashed. “Let me boil the water for you.”
“I’m sure I can find my way around my own kitchen,” Chastity said. “Please leave.”
Mother and son, the sheriff, and the council member filed out the door.
When they were gone, Emily said, “Your kitchen? I thought Tom and his mother lived here.”
“They do. She’s my housekeeper by the council’s request. Not that I need looking after. Why don’t you have a sit-down at the table.”
Emily pursed her lips. She needed to know how to get into Satan’s Mirror, needed a map through hell. But her reporter’s instincts told her she could neither bully nor cajole this woman. She took a seat.
Chastity reached to the overhead cupboards and ran her fingers along the nicked wood. Emily realized notches numbered the doors. At the third cupboard, Chastity took down cups and saucers. She put a tablespoon of black tea in each cup.
“Don’t own a telly-vision myself, but I heard about your show. Gotten a few awards, hasn’t it?”
She filled a discolored, copper kettle from a water jug, holding her finger inside evidently to test the water level, and carried the kettle to the stovetop. Emily noticed how stiffly she walked. She watched her stoke a fire in the belly of the stove then hold her hand over the burners.
“People think I can’t do for myself,” Chastity said, “just because I can’t see. The trick is to hold things in your mind. Takes practice is all. Do you like cream and honey?”
Emily rubbed her forehead. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have time for tea and girl talk.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She set the cups on the table. “You’ve got more time than you want or need.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked at her with her blind eyes. “I was born in the year seventeen naught five.”
Emily reeled back in her seat. “That’s impossible. That would make you over three hundred years old.”
“Time stops on the other side,” Chastity said, frowning. “Or maybe it just slows down. Maybe you
are
dying, but so slowly it takes an eternity.”
“Are you saying no one dies?”
Chastity shook her head. “There is neither food nor water in hell, and you suffer a terrible thirst. Be it three hundred years or three thousand. But you don’t die.”
Emily looked away, revolted yet hopeful. She whispered in prayer, “Let my daughter survive.”
“In all my days, I never saw them take one so young. Perhaps their tastes have changed.” She removed the kettle and poured steaming water into Emily’s teacup, laying the flat of her hand across the rim as if to judge when to stop. “I was twenty-one at the time. I was a…strumpet. I was taking my drunken mark into the woods intending to rob him when a portal appeared on the trunk of a tree.”
“You did nothing to call it?” Emily asked. “No pentagram, no animal sacrifice?”
“People do that sort of thing because it makes them feel in control. But there’s no controlling the devil. Satan’s Mirror can appear anywhere at any time.”
“But that can’t be. I heard of a woman who made the Mirror appear on a tabletop, and Vanessa—”
“Those people are marked, tethered to hell so the devil can find them. Sometimes the devil appears, seemingly in answer to their call, but sometimes he does not. No one speaks of the times he fails to show. Cream?” She poured a dollop into Emily’s cup without waiting for an answer.
“So what happened with the portal in the woods?”
“They took the man I was with first. I tried to run, but they caught me from behind and dragged me inside. The portal transported me to a large room with flaming torches on the walls. It was hot—so hot I could barely breathe. Horrible, demonic creatures advanced upon me.”
“What did they do? Poke you with pitchforks? Set you afire?”
“All that came later. They just passed me around, growling in my face. I was more confused than afraid. Eventually, they became bored with me and tossed me outside.”
“Were there more demons outside?”
“Some.” Chastity shrugged. “Mostly you saw the dogs. Then there’s what I call the caretakers. They came out at night.”
“There’s day and night in hell—a sun and a moon?”
“Never saw a sun—least not a shining orb like you’d expect. But the sky brightened and sometimes turned fiery. And there was a night.” Her milky stare seemed to turn inward for a moment, and she shuddered. “Anyway, the caretakers came in darkness, slight wispy creatures in gossamer robes. They would go to those who had fallen, and if the person would not rise or respond in a timely manner, they touched them with a dark rod. Sparks leeched through their bodies until their flesh was consumed and their bones fell as salt.”
“Then you
can
die,” Emily said. “That makes sense. Otherwise, hell would be overrun with sinners.”
“I haven’t thought about the caretakers for a long time.” Chastity sweetened her tea with a spoonful of honey. “I remember watching them, fascinated. They never walked. They glided above the ground like wraiths.” Her voice trailed.
Emily waited impatiently for her to continue, and then asked, “What happened to the man you were with? The one you took into the woods?”
“Him? He was screaming and praying so loud, I guess he must’ve amused them. I never saw him again, and I was in hell a long time.”
Emily’s stomach turned. In a small voice, she said, “I need you to help me get in.”
“I would think you’d be more interested in getting back out. That’s the real trick.”
“You got out. Joey did.”
She stirred her tea, the spoon clinking against the stoneware. “I think Joey made a deal. I think his mission is to locate me. They’re a prideful lot, as you found out, and I expect it stuck in their craw to have me escape.”
Emily nodded. They might send someone for her after she and April escaped. She would have to keep on the move. She could handle that. “What’s it like in hell? Lakes of fire?”
“Oh yes,” Chastity said, “but mostly it’s a flat plain of rock making it so you can’t evade the hellhounds.”
“You mentioned dogs before. Tell me about them.”
“They’re only dogs in the sense that they bark and run in packs. They look like enormous snakes attached to wolf bodies. Even their tails are snake-like. Their eyes are red, and they have slit nostrils and fangs, but their ears are like a bat’s—very sensitive. Their claws are massive, and their haunches so powerful I’ve seen them leap over twenty feet.”
“Can they be killed?”
“Not that I saw. Of course, it could be that nobody had the chance to try.”
“All right,” Emily said, ticking points off her fingers. “There are demons, caretakers, and dogs. Is that all?”
Chastity threw her a look that said she thought Emily was taking hell too lightly. “There are birds that aim to strip the flesh from your bones. Ashes rain from the sky and burn like acid, but you can find no shelter, and you are naked to it.”
“Naked?” Her mind’s eye saw the devil holding her daughter. April had been naked.
“The damned are ever naked in hell.”
“There is no shelter?”
“Only false shelter.” She sipped her tea. “There are copses of trees, but if you get too close they absorb you into their branches and hold you in contorted positions.”
“Contorted positions. That doesn’t sound too hellish.”
“You’re forgetting the birds.” Chastity laughed. “Hellish creatures they are. Their faces are humanlike, and they have talons that would awe an eagle. You hear them before you see them. They scream, and screech, and bicker among themselves.”
“Harpies.”
“Of course, there is the castle itself.”
“A medieval castle. I’ve seen it,” Emily said, remembering the torch-lit wall behind her daughter. Then she recalled a tapestry in Vanessa’s parlor that showed a dark castle. “I think that’s where they’re keeping my daughter.”
“If she is still there, she is lost. They will not release her into the wilderness until she is broken, and you would be fool to brave the castle looking for her.”
“What are you saying? I should just give up?”
“I cannot in good conscience—”
“Fine.” Emily shoved her cup away. Tea sloshed onto the saucer. She got to her feet. “Thank you for the information, but what I really need is constructive advice.”
She stormed across the kitchen, but before she reached the door, Chastity spoke in a low voice. “When I was taken, I arrived scorched with only wisps of smoke to clothe me. But a funny thing—I was wearing a bear tooth on a leather thong about my neck, a keepsake from my brother. The necklace was untouched and whole.” She turned toward Emily as if she could see her. “I’ve since had time to think on that, and I believe the Mirror only gives passage to flesh and bone.”
Emily frowned. “Then if I take a gun—”
“It will disintegrate, or worse, explode at your side.”
“A knife then,” Emily said, more to herself. “I’ll carve it out of ivory.”
“Nothing I say will dissuade you?”
Emily looked at her. “Do you have children?”
“Every child born to the congregation is of my heart.”
“What would you do to see them safe?” She squared her shoulders. “I’m going. With or without your help.”
“If that be the case, you’ll need a full-length leather coat and perhaps rawhide boots or moccasins.”
“I’ll get a coat with a hood. I think I’ll also wear a leather tunic. I can put it on April when I find her.”
“An ivory knife will serve, as you said, but knives are meant for close contact. You don’t want to get that close to a hound.”
“I’m good at archery,” Emily told her, sitting again at the table. “I could make arrows out of bone.”
“And string your bow with cat gut or the like.”
“Right.” She stared at her cup of tepid tea. “You said there was no food or water. What if I carried beef jerky and an animal skin flask?”
“I have gator jerky I can give you,” Chastity said.
“That leaves one last problem. How do I get in?”
“The same way I got out. You wait for a Mirror to open and leap through.”
“But how do I open a Mirror? You said pentagrams and sacrifices don’t work.”
“You need to find a place they frequent,” Chastity said. “Or a person they frequent.”
“Vanessa,” Emily hissed. She looked into Chastity’s scarred face. “Let’s say I make it. How do I find the castle?”
“All portals lead to the castle, so you will either end up in the orgy room or—”
“Orgy room?” Emily stiffened, thinking of her little girl.
“There are seven levels to the castle. The orgy room is the main chamber where the demons cavort. Avoid it if you can. You’d best hope the connection fails, and you drop out of the transporter tunnel to the surrounding plains.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Fairly. The tunnels glimmer in the sky, looking like channels of thick air. They whip about, sometimes dipping to within fifteen feet of the ground. I saw a man fall out of one once. In any case, you’d be better off arriving in the wilderness and walking to the castle than to land in their laps.”
“You said there were seven levels. Do you know these levels well?”
“I know them,” Chastity said, her tone brimming with hatred, “from the uppermost turrets where the harpies nest to the dungeons where the hell-spawn strung me up by my shoulder blades and roasted my feet over molten rock.”
“Then they do more than torment. Sounds like a torture fest,” Emily said.
“That’s what hell is.”
“How did you escape?”
Chastity hesitated, frowning as if deep in thought. “I was never a devout person. My mother raised me with the best intentions, but she was only one and the world is full of influences. Oddly, when I was in hell, the faith she instilled in me blossomed. I wandered the wilderness measuring my steps with the rhythm of The Lord’s Prayer, and I knew in my being that He would deliver me.
“Hope is not often found in hell. The demons drew to me like moths, sidling up to me as if in ecstasy. That’s what they want, you understand—to experience horror or helplessness through another. I don’t think they feel emotions on their own.”
“They’re telepathic?”
“Hardly. If they knew my thoughts, they would have stopped me from escaping. No, I think they are empathic—addicted to emotions they can’t feel themselves. Anyway, the spirituality in me was new to them, so they took me back to the castle.” She shook her head, dropping her voice. “That was how I learned the seven levels. They do to you unimaginable things. I screamed until my throat bled, but my faith never wavered. So I graduated, as it were, to the main chamber. There were many demons there. A celebration, I think. I joined a group of about twenty other souls, and the hell-spawn were in an orgy, sampling our terror and pain.
“Then the leader took a pendant from around his neck and used it to open the air. There is no other way to describe it. I saw people on the other side. I wanted to warn them. I should have done something to warn them, but all I kept thinking was this was my window home. So while the demons welcomed the newcomers, I leapt through before anyone could stop me.