Authors: Karina Halle
“I don’t like it here,” I tell him, my gut pierced by a corkscrew of unease, thin and sharp and winding its way into the heart of me. “It’s wrong. This is all wrong.”
“And that’s how we know we’re going the right away,” he says. “Because in no way should this feel comfortable to you. Then I’d really have to worry.”
I glance at him. “Does it feel comfortable to
you
?”
He gives his head a grim shake. “No. It doesn’t. Every part of me is telling me to turn the car around now.”
Every
part? Or just most of you?
I don’t want to dwell on it, especially as the forest here seems to be more than just trees. It seems . . . sentient.
When I was younger, a child of six or so, before the subdivisions and developments started popping up in our neighborhood, Perry used to take me to the nearby woods to play. In reality it was probably the size of a block but when I was younger it was a huge, carnivorous beast. I’m not sure why I feared the forest. Perry was thirteen at the time and fearless, a few years away from losing her marbles and shutting herself away from me. But Perry loved that forest and would take me there often.
Normally we just stayed at the area closest to the street, but sometimes Perry would take my hand and lead me through the scaly trees to where the forest skirted the edge of the lake. She liked to try and catch the frogs, often wading up to her knees trying to find them. What can I say, she was a weird girl.
I did as she told me because I liked her attention and I thought she was cool, even if catching frogs grossed me out. She would go into the water and grimace gleefully at how icky the bottom felt on her bare feet, then she’d yell at me to come do the same.
Again, I did it to please her. I took off my shoes and stepped in and squealed because the muck felt like fingers, holding me down.
And then one day, one hot, hot summer day, no different from this one, Perry went all the way in up to her bum, her shorts wet, a net grasped determinedly in her hand as she searched the water.
I stayed on the shore for as long as I could. The lake was shallow and had a very gentle slope in this section where you could walk quite far out without having to swim.
Eventually though, she was too far away and when I called for her, she didn’t listen, or maybe even hear me. She just swung her net at the water, lost in her attempts.
I didn’t want to stand on shore anymore. A cloud passed over and swallowed up the sun. The temperature dropped dramatically but I was the only who seemed to notice. And the forest, that black, seemingly endless forest was at my back. I could swear that every time I turned away from it, it crept closer. It wasn’t just a bunch of trees, it was a hungry, primitive beast that gobbled up girls like me. Of this I was sure.
So I tried to follow Perry. I stepped into the water. It was cold as ice and I was instantly chattering.
The trees started whispering.
Come to us Ada, we’ll bring you home.
I whipped around, nearly losing my footing in the gooey bottom.
The forest was still.
But still in the sense that a snake is still when really it’s waiting.
Waiting.
I called out for Perry, my voice sounding so small and weak, because I
was
small and weak. I moved a few more steps, the water coming up to my knees now. The mud clung to my legs.
And then I couldn’t move. My feet sank into some kind of hole and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t bring them out.
Now I was really yelling for her and finally she turned around and saw me. Started moving toward me fast, water splashing.
But I had the most real, succinct feeling that she wouldn’t be fast enough.
I looked over my shoulder at the forest.
It was now at the water’s edge.
It had
moved
.
And more than that, the shadows inside it were moving too, clicking like insect legs, branches reaching forward like stick fingers.
You’re almost home
, it hissed.
It was going to swallow me whole.
Then I don’t know what happened. Next thing I knew I was back at home and running a fever. Later on, like a decade later, when I brought it up around the family, Perry said I was sinking into the mud and if she hadn’t gotten there in time I would have drowned.
She never mentioned the forest moving closer on its own, one giant whispering creature that oozed evil. She never mentioned it and I never brought it up. Chalk it up to childhood memories gone wrong.
But now, now that I was here in this forest, I knew I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t in my head back then and this isn’t in my head now. This forest isn’t just made up of trees, it’s made up of something much larger, blacker, unfathomable.
And it’s waiting too.
“I think we’re here,” Jay says as the car bumps over a pothole and comes to a stop. We’re at the end of the road, the gravel tire tracks fading into Salal bushes, ever grainy in the descending darkness.
I don’t want to leave the car. I grip the pebbled leather seat as if it will tether me to this world.
Jay twists in his seat to face me. “We don’t have to do this,” he reminds me. “Some things are beyond one’s capabilities and there is no shame in that, only sensibility.”
“We’re getting my mother back,” I tell him and I know now I won’t turn back.
He nods and we get out of the car. He stands beside me as we crane our necks back to stare at the sky. It’s black, void of stars, blending in with the tops of the trees. In the distance a blood red moon glows.
“How is this possible?” I whisper. “This was my dream.”
“Many places where portals exist operate on a separate reality. The other worlds can leak through, mess up physics and what we know as truth. Sedona, Stonehenge, Easter Island, there are many more. And here.” He grabs my hand and tugs me toward a faint path in the forest. “Come on. Now or never.”
We walk through the forest, the path cutting through the trees like a scar. I hold my breath at first, afraid to breathe the air. The branches seem to reach for me and when they brush past my skin, I can feel them try to take hold, like fingers wrapping around my clothing.
Jay holds my hand for the first few minutes, bringing me comfort, until he drops it. I know he’s too afraid he’ll lose himself, his duty, if he feels me for too long.
So I follow him down the path until it becomes a slope and then we’re winding down rocky terrain, moss and vines and branches tripping up my feet.
The crimson moon is glowing now and even though I don’t hear the song from my dream, the one my mother was singing, I can feel its rhythm pulsing in my blood.
So hurry now and listen
Run to the pond that does so glisten
They knew. They knew all along that I would come to this exact spot to do this.
Everything has been destined.
The only thing I don’t know is what fate has been chosen for me.
Or if I get to choose my fate.
Eventually the forest starts to open up, letting in more of the blood red glow until it’s like we’re standing in an old-fashioned darkroom, developing film. Giant bats flutter in the distance, not seen but definitely heard. Leathery wings that flap the hot air, stirring up a putrid smell that makes bile slide up my throat.
Then in front of us is the pond.
Skinny alders grow around it, some leaning over as if trying to reach it—or escape—while one large tree slices through the middle. Reeds and lily pads pop up around the edges of the brackish water while the middle is black as sin. It’s not large in diameter but it looks infinitely deep. I know that it doesn’t have a bottom, that it keeps going and going, to no end.
“I’ll have to go in first,” Jay says softly.
“What?” I exclaim. A flurry of wingbeats emerge from the trees. The whole forest seems to take in one giant breath.
“Shhh,” he shushes me, finger to his lips. “You have to be quiet.”
“But we’re not in the Veil,” I say.
“But we’re definitely surrounded by things that have escaped,” he says, just as I hear something rustle in the bushes. A raspy, wet breath.
“Ada,” he whispers and takes my hand in his. “You need to listen to me very carefully. I have to go into the pond first. I have to be the first out the other side. If you go first, they’ll see you. I can make you . . . invalid.”
“Invalid?” I’m not sure I like the sounds of that, even though if you have to be invalid anywhere, Hell is a good start.
“They won’t see you if you stay quiet. We’ll have to communicate otherwise but they won’t see you if you just stay beside me and don’t make a sound.”
“But what if they
do
see me?”
He grimaces. “Then we better make sure we can find the nearest portal out of there.” He lets go of my hand and walks toward the pond. He glances at me over his shoulder. “As soon as my head disappears into the water, you follow. I’ll be there, I promise.”
I can’t believe I have to walk in there. What if I drown? What if I get to the other side and he’s not there?
“How can you promise you’ll be there waiting?”
“Because I can,” he says. His eyes grow tender. “Ada, you can do this. Just think about your mother. Walk into the pond, hold your breath and go under. Think about her the whole time. Imagine her face, her voice, her smell. Hold her to you as close as you can and do not, do not let go, no matter what.”
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
I can’t.
I can’t.
“If you want her back,” he adds, “you have to.”
I have to.
I nod, my mouth gone dusty with horror.
“I’m very fond of you, you know,” he says softly.
I’m not sure if this is Jay’s equivalent of telling me he loves me but I’ll take it.
“Fond enough to wait for me?” I ask.
“Always.” He looks behind me, eyes fixed on something in the forest. “Now we have to hurry. Don’t dawdle here too long, come in right after me. As soon as my head is gone under, step in and don’t stop moving.”
“Why, why?” I ask but it’s too late, he’s striding into the water like a man on a mission, the water quickly rising from his shins to his thighs to his waist as he approaches the middle.
I make the mistake of turning around to see what he was looking at.
There is a woman hovering at the edge of the trees, on all fours, naked and pale as milk, the moon tinting her red.
Long black hair hangs around her face.
No eyes at all, just smooth, taught skin.
A smile full of shark’s teeth.
She can’t see me but she’s watching me all the same.
Waiting.
I turn around just in time to see Jay go under, the pond swallowing him whole. There’s one ripple and then it stops and it’s like he never went in there at all.
A gurgle spins me back around. The woman is crawling toward me, upside down, like the scene from the fucking
Exorcist
, scuttling fast like a crab. Her mouth snaps open and shut with sickle teeth, a piranha.
I have no choice.
I practically jump into the pond, splashing in the ice cold water that takes my breath away, disorients me, freezes me in place. It’s like jumping into a frozen lake, hypothermia just minutes away.
I don’t have minutes.
I can hear the woman splashing into the water after me. If she’s like a crab at all, it won’t slow her down. I can imagine her fish mouth closing around my calf, the teeth going all the way through flesh, muscle, bone.
I manage to lift my leg, then the other, numb stumps I can’t feel.
I go and go and go, the muck of the bottom pulling at my shoes just like the lake did. It too wants to hold me here so the forest can suck me in, eat my soul and turn me into whatever this woman’s been turned into.
A creature that even Hell didn’t want.
Now the water is at my chin, my mouth, then my nose.
I’m almost under.
And she’s right behind, her snapping mouth at my ear.
This is it.
I shut my eyes.
Then the bottom drops beneath me and instead of floating, I freefall.
Straight down underneath.
But it’s not so much that I’m sinking, as my ears pop and the darkness envelops me.
I’m being pulled.
A hand around my ankle.
A hand that isn’t Jay’s.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
The world around me is black, my ears filling with pops and clicks, like the sounds you hear from the bottom of the sea. Things brush past my limbs, bare branches or skeletal fingers, it’s hard to tell.
I go down, down, down until I’m going up.
My head bursts out of the water and I instinctively inhale as big and deep as I can, trying to fill my lungs.
But there’s no air to be had.
I make a faint choking sound, my eyes opening in throbbing terror, a brown grey haze staring back, momentarily forgetting where I’m supposed to be.
I’m here, Ada
, Jay’s voice comes in my head.
Swim to me.
I can’t even look around to find him, I just start moving my arms and kicking my legs in the direction I feel his pull, surprised that they’re even working with no air coming in my lungs.
Somehow I crawl onto solid ground. I feel strong, familiar hands wrap around my arms and pull me further up, the icy water letting go of my feet with a nasty
slurp
.
I flip over on my back, gasping for breath, panicking when I can’t get it. The grey brown sky presses down from above.
Take it easy
, Jay says.
There is no air here. You don’t need it.
I know he’s beside me, I can see him out of my peripheral, but I can only stare up at that oppressive sky, alien and alive, and fight along with every natural instinct I have.
Eventually though I realize that I should have died a long time ago. It’s been minutes (years?) without air and that breathing will be one of the things I miss about our world.
I sit up slowly, Jay’s hand at my back for support, and look around.
Hell isn’t fire and brimstone.
It’s New York City.
To be more specific, the look of New York City in January but with mid-July weather. A bleak and grey sky above dark and hollow buildings, a jungle of mildewed concrete and decaying plants, dead trees, and shrubs reduced to skeletons. The air is no-air and it’s thick, muggy, brimming with humidity that has beads of sweat already rolling down my face. The only smell is one of garbage and something so vile that I can feel it eating away at my core. A smell that makes the lizard-brain of my cortex shrink in fear.
Of course how can you smell without breathing? Hell has many tricks up its sleeves, that I’m sure.
For one, I’m lying at the edge of a pond in Central Park.
Are you okay
? Jay asks.
I think so
, I tell him, having a hard time conjuring up my “inside” voice.
Considering where we are
.
I twist around and look at him.
I balk.
I don’t look so good, do I?
he asks with a dour expression.
No. He doesn’t. It’s not that he looks horrible or gross or even really that different. At a glance he would look the same. But the more I stare at him, the more his face seems to separate from his skin, like he’s wearing a mask and it’s hinting at something terrible underneath. It’s the debilitating sense that he’s been taken apart and put back together and the end result isn’t human at all.
Do I look the same?
I ask him.
He gnaws on his lip for a moment before answering.
You’re never not beautiful, Ada. You just look like a doll that someone’s made to look like you.
That’s a pretty good summation of what I’m looking at too.
It’s good for me to keep using your name, Ada. Names have power. You’ll need to be reminded of who you are in here. You’ll need to remind me too.
I glance around. Aside from the smell and the awful humidity, there isn’t anything too terrifying here. Still, I can’t say I feel relieved in the slightest.
Are we actually in Hell? Why is it New York?
I ask.
Where is . . . everybody?
Careful, Ada,
he warns me, slowly getting to his feet. He hauls me up effortlessly before dropping his hands to his side.
Don’t question things too much. I have no doubt this place would act upon it. Hell itself isn’t just governed by Satan and his disciples, it’s governed by the very essence of Evil itself.
More Evil than Satan?
I ask, finding it hard to believe, though a chill sinks deep into my flesh like ice-pick claws.
He’s the prince of fucking darkness.
Satan is a fallen angel. He fell here. This place already existed. It was waiting for him to lead.
He says this simply, just another fact
. It can feel you, hear you, even now. It will start to mess with your head pretty soon.
Can . . . can it keep me here?
I wish he’d keep a hold of my hand, my skin is pins and needles in new fear, craving his stability.
No. It is sentient but it cannot become physical. If you remember who you are, where you came from, you’ll be okay
. He pauses.
Who are you?
Ada Palomino.
Where did you come from?
Portland, Oregon.
He nods.
Good enough. And to answer your question, I don’t know why we’re in New York but I have an idea.
So we’re actually in New York, not just a place that looks like it?
Hell is your world, many layers below. Your mother died here and she’s your reason for all of this. This is where you’ll find her.
I glance around nervously.
And there are people here
, he says.
We’ll see them soon enough
.
Souls of the damned. But there are layers to Hell too. It’s not just full of murderers and rapists and pedophiles. Hell has a hold on the guilty.
The guilty?
Self-guilt. Self-loathing. Feeling that you belong here, that you deserve eternal punishment. I’d say most of the souls you see here belong in that category. Not bad people, just . . . unable to deserve better. They most likely lived their lives the same way, unable to escape from the wrongs of the past, the scars on their souls. If they were never happy in life, they can’t be happy in the afterlife.
Shit. I never thought about it that way. My heart aches for them, to think that this is what they deserve.
That’s good,
Jay says, studying me.
Keep feeling. It’s the only thing in the end that will remind you that you don’t belong here.
I have a hard time looking at him.
So where to now?
Reach inside your head,
he says.
Call for her. Feel her.
I close my eyes and try.
I imagine her, I call to her.
Nothing happens.
Again.
Nothing happens.
Moooooom!
Nothing. Just an inky void in the base of my skull that gets bigger and bigger and bigger . . .
Jay lays his hand on my shoulder, bringing me out of the darkness.
Focus on her as a person, not a thought. Don’t imagine. See.
I try again.
I try and put her pieces together until suddenly she’s in our kitchen making cookies at Christmas time. My mother was never like everyone else’s moms. She had a cold way about her, always a bit distant, even from me. But I never saw any malice in it. It was just the way she was. Like someone who never wanted kids or marriage or that whole suburban life but she got it anyway and was just trying to do her best.
But at Christmas time, my mother wouldn’t just look the part of the beautiful Scandinavian housewife, she would act it too. She would make ginger snaps, a million times better than the ones you get at IKEA, and light the kitchen with vanilla candles and every time you stepped inside the smells made your mouth water.
And my mother would smile—genuinely this time—and take the cookies out and we’d all stare forlornly at the tray, waiting for them to cool, and when they were ready we’d dip them in eggnog and they would be the best things we’d tasted all year.
My mother watched us the whole time, only having one cookie for herself, and against the candle light her face would glow and I knew she was happy.
The rest of the year was always touch and go, but at those moments I knew it, and I would look forward to that even more than the Christmas presents (which usually sucked anyway, I don’t know why my parents would always get me those shitty Pot of Gold chocolates, there was only one good piece in the box and you had to bite your way through so many disgusting ones to find it).
I can see that scene in front of me, my mother, Perry, the cookies, the candles. I’m in it. Living it.
Ada!
My mother’s voice is calling me. Her spirit tugs my arm to the left.
The mother in my vision is oblivious, trapped in that time and watching her children happily, but I know I feel her all the same and she can now feel me.
Ada,
she cries out again.
Hurry.
Where are you?
Silence.
Where are you?!
I repeat, yelling so loud inside my head my blood vessels nearly pop.
You know where,
her voice trails off into a whisper and I at once know that she can’t tell me outright.
But it doesn’t matter. I know all the same.
I open my eyes at look at Jay, his face taking on a plastic sheen. Doll-like, indeed.
I know where she is,
I tell him, ignoring the change in his face.
The subway tunnels. Where she died.
He nods and waits for me to walk. He doesn’t know where she died. He wasn’t there.
It’s up to me to lead us through Hell.
I take in a deep but eternally empty breath and start walking toward the Empire State building, Jay falling in step behind me.
***
The first rule of Hell is: don’t talk about Hell.
The more your brain wants to process where you are, the more your brain starts to leak out, like a draining bed pan. Your heart goes next, a gummy mess at the bottom of your shoe. Inconsequential. Then it’s your soul, siphoned from the marrow of everything you are.
I don’t know this yet, but I can feel it. I can feel Hell as one fathomless hungry beast, watching and waiting for me to just give in. I know this like the blood in my veins.
So I try not to think about where we are, I just keep moving through the streets, ignoring everything I see and hear.
Well, almost everything.
So far Hell has been disquieting. Jay and I do a fast walk down Fifth Avenue (the thick airless air holds us back from a run like an invisible hand), the dead weeds of Central Park to our right, the dark and silent buildings to our left. I get the creeping sensation, spiders up my spine, of being watched through all the windows. Sometimes I see a curtain pulled violently across a window, other times hear the sound of a door slamming but there is no one there. I’m reminded of Shakespeare: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
But Hell isn’t empty. It’s an illusion, one to lull you with a false sense of security, the way a cat might lick you before it bites.
Slowly you start to hear the screams. At first they are in the distance, maybe blocks away. Short yelps of surprise. Then they turn to screams of absolute horror, someone being tortured over and over again. It comes closer.
And then it’s behind you.
A sharp inhumane scream that curdles your blood instantly, the type of scream that’s also a plea for it all to stop.
I whirl around, Jay grabbing me by the elbow to steady me, and see a little boy standing ten feet away from us. Big big eyes, bowl-cut hair, holding an old-fashioned doll with a cracked open head, the ones that roll open their eyes when you move them.
Why is a child in Hell?
I think, my mind trying to wrap around the sight of innocence.
Jay hears me.
That is not a child.
And the moment he says it, I know it.
The doll in his hands opens its eyes.
The boy smiles.
Wider and wider.
Splits his face in two.
Opens his mouth to let out a scream.
At the back of his throat, a long, thin hand comes out, skinny black fingers that belong to something charred.
I am caught, unable to look away as the child’s head splits open, his skull cracking into jagged rivets, just like his doll, and a bony, charred arm comes out, placing long fingers into the child’s eyes and gripping them like a bowling ball.
The creature starts to emerge.
We have to get going
, Jay says, pulling me toward him.
I’m yanked helplessly, even though Jay is straining to pull me along.