The Violet Hour (21 page)

A scene came alive in my mind. It was Koenji—the Tokyo neighborhood with the nightclub where I’d first realized that I might still have a chance at being something more to Adam than a friend.

“Harlow?” Adam’s voice sounded like it was underwater.

Everything was still, except for the periodic reflection of a yellow light against a storefront. It might have been a siren or the blinking neon of a livehouse. Either way, the eerie vision was missing something. It was devoid of human life.

My mind flickered to the next thing. China, the Great Wall. This time the vision was not empty. Bodies were everywhere—bloody. Dead and unmoving, strewn across the top of the world. Next came Beijing. The scene was mayhem. Bodies littered the edges of Tiananmen Square; blood ran in tributaries along the downward slope of its edges. The not-yet-dead were crawling and collapsing in intervals, clawing over one another in a desperate bid to flee the virus that was eating them from the inside out.

My mind spun in circles, flashing scenes I recognized from our tour. What was missing was any sign of anyone healthy, upright, fleeing, running, or not in the throes of dying.

Ashes. Ashes. They all fall down.
The pain and suffering was too much to bear.

A shock of white blinded me. At first I thought it was the usual electrical storm in my brain, but then I realized it was something else: the vision passed just as every door in the cylinder flew open. A sound like beating wings filled the air above us.

Streaming through the doors, one after the next, were wraiths just like we’d seen in the hallway. They floated above us, filling the space like it was a pitcher. Then, all at once, it was like they noticed our presence. In a simultaneous motion, they looked down at us.

In front of me, Adam’s face went white. But he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking over my shoulder.

“Sacrifice,” Isiris said.

This time her voice was real. And she was standing behind me.

ALL SOULS

I spun around and faced her. It was like looking into a mirror.

Isiris took a step toward me and raised her palms into the air, flashing symbols of the Inner Eye inked on each of them. She bent her pinky and ring fingers, her thumb and other fingers creating the symbol I recognized from the Rite. Another memory came crashing back, an older one: me, slipping through the shadows when no one was looking, past the curtain into the inner sanctum of the Twin Falls temple. Sneaking through one of the doors and wandering down the hallway. Seeing my father performing a ritual on one of the Ministry initiates. He made the same sign Isiris was making now, pressing his hand into the man’s forehead.

It had all come full circle. Isiris was the fount of VisionCrest, my father just her vessel.

The wraiths, now dropping toward us as if magnetically propelled, halted and then scattered. They slid down the outer walls, crumpling in on themselves, huddling like chastised children along the bottom perimeter of the cylindrical chamber. Isiris’s arrival had frozen them like wound-down toys. They looked lost and afraid, and I realized now that whatever they were, they weren’t a threat to me. But she was.

Isiris wore a long purple robe, and her hair was wound in elaborate knots and braids. A bracelet with charms that looked like human eyes wound up her forearm. She closed her palms, and Adam and I both dropped to one knee as if magnetically drawn into the floor. Her power coursed through me. Controlling me. It wasn’t all bad; in a sick way, it felt kind of good. Like we were connected. It was the way I imagined other
people felt about their biological parents. If she was what created me, I wondered what that made me. Was I even human?

“Harlow.”

I lifted my head and met her eyes. A desperate part of me wanted to see kindness there. Instead, Isiris’s gray-green glare drilled through me. She tilted her head.

“I thought I might feel something for you. But there is nothing,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning down. Hearing her speak was surreal; the reflection that taunted me was standing right in front of me. Her words wounded me, despite the fact that the sight of her made my stomach turn.

Isiris then turned a palm face-up and flicked her hand. Adam and I both stood automatically, like puppets on her string. She glided toward us. Fear swept through me. But it was Adam she was now focused on. She stood before him and put her hand up to his face. Then she leaned in, raised up on her toes, and placed a tender kiss on his lips.

“I knew you wouldn’t fail,” she said to him.

He was completely still, not returning her overture. It was impossible for me to read his allegiance. Maybe his contrition had all been a ruse to get me into this place; if so, I was colossally stupid. Isiris looked at me and narrowed her eyes. There was nothing but coldness in their fathomless depths.

“Follow,” she said. Her robes fanned out behind her like the great wing of some horrible purple dragon. I looked at Adam, wanting him to give me some sign of a reaction. The wraiths sped from their spots on the periphery and huddled en masse around the hem of her robes, crowding close as if searching for warmth.

Isiris marched up the ramp that wound into seemingly infinite space. Adam followed closely behind, and I brought up the rear. It occurred to me that I might resist, but I could feel in my very cells that it wouldn’t work. Isiris could command me.

As we passed the still-open doorways that lined the ramp, Isiris dismissed the things huddled around her with a flick of the wrist, her hand making the same three-fingered symbol. They dispersed through the doorways, seeming to know who was meant to go where by some form of silent communication with Isiris.

I looked through the doorways as we passed. Each displayed a different tableau, every one of them remote and
inhospitable-looking. A distant mountaintop. A snow-
crushed tundra with what looked like the Eiffel Tower rising out of it. A desert stretching across an endless horizon, with a Stonehenge-like formation at its center. The wraiths were tossed one by one through these doorways as we wound our way farther and farther up.

I was so absorbed in the strange events unfolding in front of me that I hadn’t noticed how quickly we’d ascended. Finally we were so far above the ground that I could barely make out the symbol of the Inner Eye on the chamber floor below. My head swam and I hugged the wall, unable to take another step. I happened to look down at my hand. It was floating over the space of an open door.

At first I panicked, worried I would accidentally fall through into an alien world. But there was a solid resistance there, and I realized something—the wraiths could leave, but I couldn’t pass through even if I wanted to. I snatched my hand back as if burned.

Isiris spun around, as if sensing my wandering attention. Only one wraith was left, clinging pathetically to her skirts. Isiris smiled at me, the same wicked smile I’d seen reflected in mirrors I thought were playing tricks on me.

“Through each of these doors lies a world—parallel realities, alternate to your own,” she said. “In the Violet Hour, souls who have died in one world pass through the temple and on to another world, with my help, of course. And now, with yours. What shall we do with this one?” She motioned to the thing huddled at her feet. It fidgeted, distressed.

I didn’t respond. The information she’d just shared was overwhelming. Disembodied souls? Alternate realities?

“Well? Would you like to keep this soul for your collection? Another lost wretch with which to pass the time? Or will you send him on and be alone?” Isiris asked me.

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” I clenched my fists.

“Act now, or its journey is ended,” she said. “The Violet Hour is almost over.”

The thing looked at me, its eyes hollow shadows. I thought of the specter that had passed us in the endless hall, aimlessly looking for a way out. I couldn’t let that happen to this … this whatever-it-was in front of me.

The doors began to whoosh closed in unison. There was a door just behind me. Without thinking, I made the initiate sign with my hand. Looking at the wraith, I flicked my wrist toward the door, which led to a misty forest of evergreens. The wraith sped away from Isiris, barely slipping through the door before it closed.

I felt an overwhelming sense of both relief and horror. Why could it leave, but I could not?

Isiris clapped her hands together in delight, looking at Adam with her face beaming. “Perfect,” she said reverently. “The moment I created Harlow was the moment I knew I was truly God.”

She thought she was God. Even more frightening was the possibility that she was right. Adam looked at me with real fear in his eyes.

“What did you just do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, on the verge of tears.

“You just ferried your first soul. This is cause for celebration. Now come,” Isiris commanded.

She breezed past me and opened the door I’d just sent the spirit through. Instead of revealing the forest, it led to the ground floor of the chamber. The tinny sound of Victrola music filtered across it, along with the thunder of a thousand whispered voices. There were people there—not spirits or specters, but real flesh-and-bone people. Their movements were jerky and mechanical. Adam and I looked at each other—these were the zombie things he’d told me about.

Everything here was upside down, like we were trapped inside an Escher painting: impossible staircases leading to nowhere and doorways that opened onto themselves. There was no way we were ever leaving unless Isiris wanted us to. Somehow I doubted that was part of her plan.

We walked through the door, ending up right back where we’d started. Isiris raised her palms. In unison, the revelers stopped. Dead silence. And then they turned to us. I gasped.

None of them had eyes.

Isiris grabbed me and pulled me into the crowd. A thousand pairs of empty sockets followed me. A fist-sized lump of fear lodged in my chest. I thought of Mei Mei, her missing eyes a sick tribute to the cult of Isiris.

“The Guardian has returned to take her rightful place!” Isiris bellowed.

The Guardian? The hush over the crowd was heavy.

“They’ve been waiting to see you,” she said. “Well, not to
see
you, exactly. Obviously.”

“Where are their eyes?” Adam asked.

Isiris thrust me into the pathway formed by the crowd. As she pushed me toward the center of the eye, people were falling to their knees; some were even prostrating themselves, only to get trampled by their fellow revelers. They were sniffing the air as if trying to catch our scent. As they grabbed at us, crushing panic closed in on me. Adam stumbled along behind us.

“They won’t touch.” Isiris looked at me sidelong to gauge my reaction. “They know how to fear properly.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Lost souls—the ones I kept from passing through the doors. Once their cycle is interrupted, they become flesh. Although the flesh soon disintegrates and they are useless as dust. Luckily, there are always more. Even in the underworld, God must have her believers. Just as she must have her slaves.” She looked meaningfully at me.

My toes and fingers went numb with dread. That meant me. I was going to be enslaved or, worse, sacrificed at the altar of Isiris. Either way, she would never let me go, and everyone in my world would be doomed to die of the horrible virus she’d unleashed. I had to find out what she wanted. There was a reason she’d created me, and a reason she’d brought me here. It was my only bargaining chip.

Isiris pushed me to the center of the eye. Thousands of her zombie-like followers were now on their knees, surrounding us. They had all gone terribly still.

“Give them a smile. They’ve waited so long for your arrival, and they owe such a debt of gratitude to you for liberating them. You owe them a little showing off, don’t you think?”

“Liberating them?” Adam asked.

“From the oppression of the non-believers,” she answered.

“They don’t owe me anything,” I said. Just the idea of it repelled me.

“Of course they do. They thank you for being my body in the heathen world. The conduit through which I communicated my religion, however much your surrogate father corrupted it. For taking your rightful place and setting me free.”

My heart beat faster. Taking my place and setting her free where?

“Rise!” Isiris commanded.

The eye began to rise from the floor, like an altar, and we rose with it. The artificial sun beat down on us, glancing off the heads of the crowd, which was now stirring. I felt almost like I was being burned at the stake; there was a spark of madness in the crowd that frightened me to the core. The view from up high was even more surreal. The flock was a bleating, shoving amoeba of color and movement. Upturned faces, with empty craters where eyes had once looked out upon some unknown world.

Isiris held up her palms and the drumbeat of the crowd was silent once more. She was controlling them with her mind, invading them the same way she’d invaded me. That was why she’d robbed them of their sight. The followers looked hungry, like they might devour me if I happened to slip and fall into their clutches. I felt the energy of expectation radiating off of them and flowing over me, unwanted.

“The Guardian is safely home.” Isiris made a sweeping gesture with her arm. “She will take care of you when Adam and I pass into the world.”

“What is she talking about?” I whispered to Adam, feeling a stab of panic. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

She walked over to Adam and slid her hands up his shirt, pulling it up and over his head. “You have done well. You’re mine and you will be rewarded, just as I promised.”

She began to kiss her way across the tattoos on his chest. Adam looked at me. His look was inscrutable. I didn’t know which version of Adam was the act and which version was real.

He took her hand, turned it palm up, and kissed it. “When will we be joined together?” he asked.

“It’s almost time.” She smiled. “I will take your eyes, and in the Violet Hour we will walk together into the one true world, and the doors will close forever.”

Adam leaned in and kissed her, this time like he meant it.

He had been playing me all along.