Authors: Karina Halle
Ada!
he yells.
Focus Ada. Think about your mother.
My mother. My mother.
I want to stay and look at the creature but I must think about my mother.
Jay leads me down the street until the creature is just a dot in the distance, then two dots going two separate ways. He grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him. One hand goes to my cheek.
Soft. His touch is soft.
Everything here is hard but he is soft.
Ada,
he says and I’m reminded of the doll in the boy’s hands, the way Jay’s blue eyes seem made of marble, unseeing.
You can’t lose it now. We are close but we’re running out of time. I can feel it. Focus. Focus.
I close my eyes, letting his touch soothe me, sink in beyond the skin, fusing us together as we should be fused.
He feels good.
He always feels good.
Feels.
I feel.
I am alive.
I don’t belong here.
My eyes snap open. My gut churns with tiny pinpricks. I feel like I’ve been seconds away from going over the edge of a cliff and he’s pulled me back just in time.
Oh my god
, I cry, trying to get my brain back on track.
He can’t hear you
, is Jay’s answer.
Come on. You said the station at fifth and fifty-third, right?
I nod quickly. We hurry down the street again and I do my best to ignore the sights that this New York has to offer.
I wonder what Hell’s Kitchen is like here.
Is that a joke
? Jay asks, peering down at me as we walk, sweat streaming down his plastic face.
I’m not sure. I don’t know what’s funny anymore.
I can’t remember what laughter is.
Call for your mother
, he tells me, grabbing my hand and pulling us across the street. A bike messenger speeds past in a hurry, no helmet, the back of his skull blasted open and his brains trailing behind him like streamers.
I ignore the bike messenger, ignore the cabbie a few feet away sitting on the top of his cab and tossing breadcrumbs to the empty pavement. I call for my mother. Loud and louder and louder.
Nothing.
But I know she’s there. It compels me. There’s a golden rope around my soul linking me to hers. I can’t see it but I can feel it and it’s tightening on the winch as we go.
So we keep going.
We pass the Apple store which looks the same as it does in real life, only this time it’s teeming with giant wood lice, thick as trash cans and shining a slick grey. They burrow through the walls with their shearing mandibles, slowly destroying it. Outside on the curb, a couple sits, iPads in their hands. iPads that don’t work, given the agony on their faces.
“That’s someone’s person Hell,” I comment.
My voice sounds so foreign and robbed of all essence that it takes me a moment to realize I said it.
Ada!
Jay admonishes me.
Shit.
SHIT.
I wasn’t supposed to talk out loud.
The couple with the iPads look up at me.
Dead eyes.
Angry eyes.
They see you
, he says to me.
We have to try and run.
What about before? The little boy. With the thing inside.
It only saw me,
he says.
If it had known you were there . . .
He doesn’t have to explain.
The couple is getting to their feet.
More than that, the wood lice have all paused, their antennas flickering in my direction like leathery pipe-cleaners.
Down the wide open street, the bike messenger is turning around and coming back to us.
We start running.
The wall of humidity pushes back against us, just like those dreams when you can’t run, but we stagger on and on until my legs turn to jelly, my thighs on fire. Jay picks me up, throwing me over his shoulder and his supernatural strength powers us both through.
We round the corner onto fifty-third and from my angle, my head hanging down Jay’s back, I see a parade of people coming toward us. They’re running, a stampede, their angry screams and shouts climbing.
We don’t belong here
, Jay tells me.
They know we can leave and they can’t and they’ll try and stop us. It doesn’t matter. Here we are
.
Suddenly the street starts to rise above me as Jay runs down the stairs into the subway station. It’s familiar. Too familiar. I feel like I’m heading into a tomb, that the ceilings will collapse on us and we’ll be buried here for all time.
Down, down, down.
Further than the station is in the world above.
Jay leaps over turnstiles made of razor blades like a track and field star and I bounce wildly on his shoulder, his strong arm keeping me from flying off.
Then he runs down a few steps, the slick, oozing tile walls of the stairwell rising up around us like a crypt, and
stops
.
Suddenly, like he hits a wall.
I’m about to ask him what happened but before I can form the question, my mouth goes dry with the acidic tang of pure fear. Terror buzzes in my brain like angry yellow jackets. I’m certain . . . certain . . .
I am no longer Ada.
I am just a small mass of tissue, insignificant against purest horror.
Put her down
, a voice says.
No, not one voice but a
hundred
voices say, metallic and empty, all at once.
Jay’s grip on me intensifies.
You’ll have to kill me first
, he says.
You know we can’t,
the voices say, buzzing like a million flies on shit.
Then we have a problem,
is Jay’s firm response.
I try and twist to turn around to see but can’t. I can only stare up the staircase.
The mob has crowded around the top, staring down at us with hateful eyes.
But they don’t dare come closer.
Because there is fear in their eyes too.
They watch and wait. I know they want us to be ripped to shreds.
Perhaps we will be
, the thought comes into my head.
I find that I don’t care.
We have a bargain for you
, the voices say.
A fair one
.
Give us the girl. We’ll give you the mother. It’s what she wants.
I’m not sure who they’re talking about. She? Me? Mother?
The words make no sense.
Blood leaks out of my eyes, drips onto the stairs. I think my soul might be contained in some of those drops. It too wants to leave me, leave this place.
Stay with me!
Jay’s voice comes slamming into my head like fist.
Ada!
My head jerks up and a snuffling noise escapes my lips.
The crowd at the top of the stairs stamp their feet, drool spilling from their gaping, hungry mouths.
No bargain
, Jay says.
Her mother, Ingrid, doesn’t belong here. Neither does Ada.
He puts special emphasis on
Ingrid
and
Ada
. All it took was a second for me to forget them again.
She’s Ingrid. My mother. I’m Ada.
She’s Ingrid. My mother. I’m Ada.
Names have power.
That’s right,
Jay encourages.
That’s right
, the voices leer.
Very right. Silas Black.
Jay stiffens. His heartbeat slows.
Silas Black. The name means something to me.
Images of fire and screaming babies and gaping knife wounds.
Dead horses with their intestines cascading into a field.
Body parts scattered down a dark alley.
Birds with their wings chopped off.
Silas Black is evil.
Silas Black is holding me.
He is walking down the stairs with me.
Silas Black will kill me.
I start to fight against him with every muscle I have but Silas Black is huge, laced with black magic and preternatural strength.
With one swift movement I am tossed through the air. I spin, wet tiles sliding past my face and I land on the ground in excruciating pain. It shoots up through my knees, my hands, splinters my sense of self. I try to move but collapse.
It was over so fast. How long was Silas waiting inside of him to do that? For Jay to just switch, to forget. Jay was obliterated in the blink of an eye. A snap of the fingers at the demons’ indulgence. It was almost like they’d forgotten and had done it on a whim.
We’ll still hold the bargain
, the voices say. They come from under me, rumbling the ground like passing train, they come from above me.
Inside me.
We’ll let your mother go if you stay here
, they say.
We promise.
The devil lies
, I tell myself, my head pressed against the hard ground. I don’t even want to get up, to see.
We are all devils
, they say.
Every one of us. Maybe even you. If you let yourself.
The voices get closer, like they are whispering in my ear. I feel hot, sulfurous breath.
We know all those little things you’d like to do. The things you would never admit to yourself. The pleasure you get from them. The difference between that world and this one is freedom, my girl. Here you are free to act in any way you please. The ways you truly want.
And yet somewhere, somehow, I hear Jay.
I hear him from a small, dark cage, like a bird under sheet.
Get your mom. Use the walls.
My heart glows in response.
And then it’s gone, snuffed out.
Hands dig into my hair and pull me up by the roots until I’m nearly on my feet.
I open my eyes and stare into the face of something I don’t have words for.
It yanks me up further and then shoves me back until my back hits a wall, my head cracking on it.
My eyes dart around, taking in the scene.
Jay is gone.
So are the people.
There aren’t hundreds of devils here.
There is only one.
I am alone in Hell.
Aside from the demon standing across from me.
Studying me.
Waiting.
I still can’t look at it, my retinas balking at its appearance before I can even take it in. It’s like looking at the sun if the sun held unimaginable, mind-bending horror in its rays.
So while I can’t look at its face, I can look at its clothes.
It’s at least ten feet tall, dressed in what looks to be a cloak of purple and black, the structure made from charred animal bones, leathery wings and human hair, with baleful and blinking eyes, and oozing blood, sticky as tar, filling in the gaps.
The demon takes a step toward me, the cloak making a whispering sound. I have no doubt that it’s compromised of captured souls.
You’re right,
the demon says. Its voice causes my brain to cave in.
Lost and forgotten. As you will be too.
My back flattens against the wall as it steps closer again and I move my head to the side in order to avoid its faceless face. It brings the smell of rotting meat, a cellar full of dead rats and feces and sour milk.
A bony, furry finger reaches out from the end of its sleeve—a hem of eyelashes, wavering like seaweed—and touches my cheek.
Softly at first.
Then it presses in until my skin is being punctured, the finger bones drilling down, down, down into my cheekbones and the gummy flesh beyond.
I scream. It is soundless. Endless.
The demon’s fingers are quick. It reaches into my mouth, pinching my tongue like forceps. Spiders, hundreds of tiny red ones, come skittering from out of the demon’s sleeve, over its black furred hand and onto my tongue. I can feel each one as it descends down the back of my throat, some slinging webs from one tonsil to the other.
Kill me, kill me, kill me,
I think to myself. I am still screaming. I am crying. I am reduced to a shaking mass of fear. A second longer and I’ll lose my mind forever.
I welcome it.
Ada . . .
My mother’s whisper settles inside me like snowflakes.
My mother.
Love.
Heartache.
Loss.
It’s enough.
It’s enough.
I erase the demon from my reality. I create a new one inside my head. A reality born of fury and anger of determination and revenge. A reality built on hope.
Hope is what’s missing down here.
Hope resounds in my mother’s voice.
She’s still here.
I’m still here.
Perry is out there, her face fresher than ever.
Jay is . . . somewhere.
I will not give up until there is no hope left.
And I know, I know, there is still some.
Despite the spiders filling up my throat, my gut, skittering into my veins, I open my eyes.
I stare at what should not be stared at.
I take nothing of it in, but I give it every ounce of myself. All my scorn and all my power. I aim to freeze it in its place.
And the funny thing is, I think it works.
Its hands drop away from my mouth and in a second the spiders are gone, pouring out of me like vomit.
In that same second I start to run, wiping them from my mouth as I go.
I don’t know where I’m going.
I just need space.
Some space.
The subway tunnel looms ahead, no trains.
My mother’s echo floats down from one end.
I head there.
The demon is laughing, not even bothering to run after me.
It doesn’t know.
But it will now.
In the seconds before I leap off the platform and onto the train tracks—the same train tracks my mother died on—I pull up something from deep inside of me. I imagine my soul a pool of white downy feathers. I bring up something to protect it.
I land on the train tracks, rolling to my feet and when I look up at the platform, I see the devil. The devils. Only one but with many trapped inside.
It stares down at me, radiating amusement along with intense hatred.
The walls go up.
First a steel one at the end.
Then the other side.
The demon swivels its head in surprise from one end of the platform to the other.
Finally one in the middle.
I hear its furious cry, like mangled machinery, in the seconds before all the walls seal shut.
It is trapped on the other side. It can’t see me. It can’t feel me.
For now
, I remind myself, all sense of clarity coming back. I feel like my brain is getting resuscitated by the second, if only seconds mattered down here.
Ada!
My mother yells.
I’m here!
I call after her, running down the tracks, my legs pumping as fast as they can go.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel. Only darkness. More darkness. But my mother’s voice is getting clearer.
Stronger.
We call to each other back and forth, back and forth.
Until finally I see a faint glow up ahead. Maybe another station but in any case, it flickers like fire.
And as I get closer, I see it is fire, burning neatly in the middle of the tracks. It’s the only thing I’ve seen down here that has any symmetry or beauty at all.
So beautiful.
So perfect.
The flames.
I reach out to touch them.
Don’t.
A hand grabs my wrist.
It is my mother.
She’s got the same appearance that Jay did, like her pieces don’t quite fit together, that she’s just a shell, a pretty coating. But it’s still her. My heart thumps happily like it’s springing to life.
I might cry.
I might scream.
I just stare at her, taking her in, feeling her love.
I feel it, everywhere, giving me the future.
Mom,
I cry out softly, not daring to open my mouth.
She gives me a sad smile and reaches out to brush my hair from my face.
You look like you but not like you. Still my beautiful baby.
She pulls me into a hug and I’m hit with a hundred shudders of grief and sorrow and joy, all flowing through me at once, a raging, unstoppable force.
It’s okay
, she says soothingly, petting my hair like she did when I was a child. I’m now so thankful for her cool, calm demeanor, present even down here. She’s keeping me together when I can no longer be.
I don’t know how long I cry into her. I know that there is an hourglass with sand tumbling toward an end. But I’m so afraid of what happens after this that I would rather stay like this forever. In her arms, being loved, feeling safe.
Ada
, she says, pulling away and drying my tears with her hands.
They’ll find us here. They always do. This is their world, not ours.
She pauses and looks at me with remorse.
You shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have asked. I knew you were my one hope, I understood it, felt it, but I shouldn’t have asked. No child should make that sacrifice for their parent.
No parent should make that same sacrifice for their children
, I counter.
You took the demon out of my body and held it in yours. You killed yourself for me, for us. I had to repay you. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, live with myself otherwise. And I know now what happens to those lost to their own guilt . . . I would have ended up here anyway.
With no escape.
But there is an escape for us,
I tell her.
I just have to find a portal back to our world. If I was Perry I could create one myself . . .
It’s too dangerous to involve her. She’s had it bad enough as it is. But it doesn’t matter,
she says.
I know where there is one. I’ve seen them leave through it. But we would never get there.
We’re going to try. Hope is the only thing we’ve got on our side, mom. The only thing that they can’t control or even begin to understand. Love and hope. Those are the bonds that will break them.
Something wet drips on my shoulder.
Blood.
I glance up.
For the first time I’m really seeing the tunnel we’re standing in.
Its round walls are comprised of people, stretching off in both directions until the flame’s light can’t reach and then they’re swallowed by darkness.
All types. Fat, skinny. Young, old. Men, women. Some more alien than anything, faces and bodies warped by torture. All naked, some flayed, some nearly skeletal. All strewn together like sinewy fabric, their eyes glued to us.
I have the same sensation I did in the restaurant when all the eyes were looking my way.
My mother is staring at them too.
They would have alerted them by now
. She pauses, closing her eyes briefly.
They are here.
And I can feel it too, that buzzing, droning sound of insects in the base of my skull, building and building and building.
Suddenly the tunnel of ravaged people start screaming. Loud helpless shrieks that echo and echo, until it sounds like the whole world is screaming.
Oh they are very near indeed.
This way
, my mother says, grabbing my hand.
We run off back the way I had come before, the screams following us like angry wasps, except this time instead of reaching the previous station, the tunnel turns to the right. Up ahead I see a tiny pin prick of light, like we’re bugs in a can and someone’s punched in one hole for us to breathe. I can imagine Satan himself, sitting outside of this all, larger than all the world, the tunnel in his hand. Ready to squish us if he chooses.
The thought nearly reduces me to rubble.
Keep going
, I tell myself.
You have her, you can’t give up now.
I keep going. It gets harder. The light seems to be getting further and further away.
It’s an illusion
, she says.
We’re getting closer.
I trust her, I have to, even though every cell in me wants to lie down and roll over.
But I have faith.
And then suddenly we’re under the light. It’s an open manhole about forty feet up and surprisingly I think I see blue sky. It’s hard to tell, my eyes can’t seem to focus through the glaze that covers it like a plastic seal.
Is that . . .?
I ask.
Climb,
my mother says, taking my hands and placing them on the iron rungs of a ladder that I hadn’t noticed until now.
No arguments.
But I want to argue. I came here for her.
Climb,
she says again.
Now!
A blast of putrid heat plows into us at sonic speed.
Ants crawl under my skin.
I turn to see a single match is lit, illuminating the demon from before, standing in the middle of the tunnel.
It’s smiling, I think. I still can’t look at its face.
The manhole cover slides on from above like rusty scissors.
We are enveloped in darkness with no escape.
I try to put up the walls, try to think but my brain is slush, dark and wet and melting.
Suddenly candles light up all around us, one by one, a magic trick on slender white wax sticks, held by aged candelabras.
We’re in a crypt of bones and altars and cracked stone slabs and rising up the tunnel walls are skulls.
Of men.
Of children.
And of beasts.
Terrible, terrible beasts that watch us with empty sockets.
The demon raises its hands as if to cast some spell on us, its horrible cloak screaming, then it lowers them.
Steps forward.
We would have upheld the bargain
, it says.
Truly. But then you pissed us off.
The sound is hatred personified.
I don’t say anything. My mouth has been strangely muted and my brain has stuttered. The pillowy down of my soul has been severed from my reach.
If only I’d known I would get only
one
shot at this.
Don’t feel too bad
, the demon(s) say.
Your guide didn’t do a very good job with you. It’s not your fault.
My guide.
Jay.
My Jay.
Even the thought of him hurts, hurts me like I never thought possible.
Down here there is pain after pain after pain.
Infinite.