by Shaun Hamill
“Come on,” she said, and gestured to a little town at the bottom of the hill. “I’ll show you around.”
I followed her down along a path. The nestled buildings and towering church steeple grew larger as I approached, and I noticed warm lights in the windows, figures bustling in the streets despite the late hour. I heard the hum of conversation, scattered laughter, music.
She led me up the street and into the village, past closed doors and frosted windows with orange lights behind them. One of the doors opened and a small figure darted out—a child, wearing a black cape and cowl. He ran up the road in front of us, cape fluttering behind him, and turned a corner, disappearing.
“Was that?” I said, pointing after the boy, sure I’d recognized him.
“Come on,” Brin said, as she pulled me up the road. “You’ll see.”
The winding street ended at a sort of town square, wide and cobbled, with a well in its center. People clumped around vendor stalls to buy fruit and fish and bread, children ran, and a man played accordion while young couples danced. The notes he played were as visible as the wind, an aurora borealis flashing up from his instrument. I recognized Mr. Ransom, portly and flush, selling fish, and Sydney dancing with a handsome man I didn’t recognize, her peasant dress flying around her, caught in the wind. I began to recognize other people as well—Merrin Price, my old writing partner from The Wandering Dark, selling fruit. Hubert Sangalli, my friend from grade school, buying a hat. Rick, Dad’s old coworker from the highway department, building a stage. While I watched him hammer a leg into place, I realized that, as the wind had moved in time with my breath, the world moved in time with the music. The visible wind flowed along with the accordion’s melody, performing a sort of interpretive dance. And beneath the music, almost buried, the sound of tapping keys on an old manual typewriter, giving the song its rhythm.
“Where—” I said, searching the square for signs of a typist, but before I could finish the question, Brin pressed her body flush against mine, her right hand on my hip.
“Dance with me,” she said, and pulled me into a turn. The world spun around me, slowly at first, then faster. Discernible shapes—people, houses, the well, the shop stalls—lost definition, became a stream of paints squeezed from their tubes and running together, a thick vortex of color. The only thing retaining its definition was Brin, the center of gravity holding me in orbit, spinning me about. Somehow I knew the steps of the dance; my day-to-day awkwardness vanished, washed away in the flood of color, the typing of my feet on the cobblestones. I kept my eyes on Brin. As the song reached its climax, she twirled me into her embrace and kissed me. I lingered on her mouth as she pulled away, leaving my face hanging in empty space. She seemed about to say something else when the little boy in the cape darted through the square again. You, Noah, age six and obsessed with Batman, weaving between people on your way to the doors of the high-steepled church. You grabbed the handle of one of the double doors and pulled. It didn’t move at first, so you leaned back and put your weight into it. The door groaned open with obvious reluctance, spilling pure, almost-blinding white light into the square.
I let go of Brin and ran after you as you went into the church, but stopped on the threshold, confused by what I was seeing. Try to imagine two or three different movies being projected on a screen at once, a jumble of competing images, none of them a church. I saw Dad, pushing me on a swing at a park; Mom, giving me an ice pack after I bumped my head at the playground; me and Merrin, writing together at The Wandering Dark; me and Brin in my dark bedroom, nose to nose and covered in sweat, a sheet tangled around us. I saw the Tomb and The Wandering Dark layered atop each other, the former somehow scaffolding for the latter. I saw the monster dragging away Katies and Brads while I stood by in my white robe, watching. And then the competing images faded, and I saw what appeared to be an art gallery—a wide, dimly lit space, white walls lined with paintings, and in the center of it all, a red-haired woman I’ve never seen before, in a red dress. You ran up to her, and she put an arm around you, and the door swung shut with a bang. I ran forward and tugged at it, but it was locked against me.
I turned to find Brin next to me, her hands folded in front of her.
“What is this place?” I said.
Brin opened her mouth as if to answer—but then I woke up.
I’ve been trying to get back to that dream ever since, but it eludes me, and I’m back to my vague dreams about failed classes and misplaced car keys. I can’t get that village out of my mind—full of people I know, smiling and laughing, painted as their best, most perfect selves. That church–art gallery, with you and the red-haired woman and all of eternity inside. The dream Brin, about to answer my question—the question that could answer all other questions. After a dream like that, how can I live with the drudgery of being trapped in this ugly, rotting body, going to my shitty college and moving slowly through time in the wrong direction?
Sitting here, typing all this out, I think I finally understand. Dad told me once that every horror story has a happy ending, but he was wrong. Look at how his life ended. Noah, there’s no such thing as a happy ending. The songs, books, and movies with “happy endings” all stop at the moment of triumph. They don’t tell the whole story. Only the old tragedies tell the truth. Beowulf triumphs over Grendel and his mother, only to fall fighting a dragon. Gilgamesh loses his best friend. Achilles, too. Everyone dies in Hamlet. This is the whole truth.
There are, however, good stopping places. I made the mistake of traveling past mine, is all. I’m like spoiled milk stuck in the jug. I need to pour myself out and move on. I need to be free to move through eternity and infinity, to spend a century on Brin’s breast, listening to her heart pound, and an aeon tucking you into bed, your eyes bright with love and trust. I’ll spend a decade watching Sydney dance, Dad making Mom laugh. I’ll have eternity with my greatest hits. That has to be what’s inside the church. It has to be the answer. We can’t make new happiness past a certain point, but we can linger in past joy forever, perfectly captured with the rememberer’s eye.
Remember me, Noah, tucking you into bed, kissing you good night. Remember the stories I told you. We will see each other again.
Love Always,
Eunice
PART FIVE
The Nameless City
1
In the fall of 2002, I took a night off from The Wandering Dark to visit a Christian Hell House in Mansfield, Texas, called Inferno. I’d meant to go with Kyle, but he bailed at the last second, citing plans with Donna, so I made the drive to Holy Spirit Bible Church that evening with an Anne Rice paperback for company. The book was a good idea, because the line to get in at Inferno stretched from the church doors all the way across a wide, grassy field, and everyone in said line started staring as soon as I arrived.
I should have been used to the attention. The eye patch made more of a statement than a glass eye, and even without it, I would still have been recognizable as Vandergriff’s own Hardy Boy, the kid who inadvertently cracked the case of the child snatcher in 1999. Stares were going to be a normal part of life as long as I lived in or around Vandergriff, but the scrutiny still made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like being stared at unless I was in my monster costume at work.
I read in the failing sunlight and ignored the assorted gawkers until I reached the front of the line. There, an employee in an INFERNO polo shirt tacked me onto the odd-numbered church youth group in front of me. The gaggle of teenagers and their thirtysomething chaperone gave me uncomfortable looks as we passed through the rubber-flap entrance together.
A slight figure draped in black robes met us inside, its head tilted down. The lights around us gradually rose and the figure lifted its head, revealing a rubbery, skeletal demon mask. The eyes behind it were caked with black makeup and bright with malevolent glee.
“Welcome!” it said. It was a teenage
girl, her voice twisted and cranked up to carry past the rubber mask. “I’m so glad you could make it to this little open house. I hope you enjoy yourselves so much you’ll make a permanent residence! But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why don’t we go look around?”
We followed her down a long hall, red lights above us, blue lights shining up through a clear plastic floor. Blue fog swirled beneath the surface, hypnotic and tranquil, until a hand sheared through the wisps and smacked against the plastic, fingers spread and scratching. One of the girls in front of me shrieked and jumped back. More hands emerged from the fog, slapping and banging, scattering the haze and revealing wide-mouthed faces crying for help.
“Don’t mind them,” the guide said. “Just a few of our new arrivals.” She cackled and moved along, but I lingered, impressed with the workmanship.
When I caught up with the group, they’d arrived at a house party set. A kid with a long zitty face pretended to DJ, running his hands back and forth over two empty turntables, and colored lights splashed random patterns over stiff, awkwardly dancing teenagers. Two girls stood near the audience, drinking from red plastic cups. One of the girls had long, straight blond hair, a large nose, and big brown eyes. The other had green hair and more of a club-kid look.
“Meet Miranda and Ashley,” the guide said, pointing to each girl in turn. “Miranda just moved to town from Connecticut. Cut off from her old church and her Christian friends, Miranda has fallen in with a bad crowd. Ashley grew up with atheist parents and reads Harry Potter for fun. She doesn’t see anything wrong with partying and drinking on a Friday night.”
“Isn’t this fun, Miranda?” said Ashley, the green-haired girl.
Miranda cast a mistrustful glance into her cup and took a sip. “Sure,” she said, grimacing. “It’s all so new, you know?”
“Look over there!” Ashley said, stepping on Miranda’s line. She pointed across the room to boys leering at them and moving their heads in time with the beat. “Trent and Evan. Oh my god, they’re coming this way.”
“Having a good time, girls?” one of the boys said.
“Totally,” Miranda said.
“You know what could make it even better?” the other boy said. “This.” He held up a small white pill, cheating it toward the audience. “It’ll make you feel amazing.”
“I’ve already had two,” said the first boy.
“Sounds great,” Ashley said. She took the proffered pill and washed it down with her drink.
“How about you, good-looking?” the second boy asked Miranda.
“I don’t know,” Miranda said. She looked at Ashley, tortured with indecision. While her head was turned away, the second boy dropped the pill into her cup. Unaware, Miranda downed the rest of her drink.
The boys closed in on the girls, and the Guide swept in front of them, blocking our view.
“What Miranda doesn’t know is that she’s just taken a date-rape drug,” she said, in her faux–Crypt Keeper screech. “She feels good now, but in about thirty minutes she won’t feel anything at all.”
Further chambers told similar cautionary tales: school shootings, drunk driving accidents, the violent culture of buying and selling drugs, attending a black mass, reading fantasy fiction not written by C. S. Lewis, domestic abuse, et cetera. The scenes grew more viscerally upsetting as they progressed, most ending with the protagonist dying in some horrible way. My discomfort increased, as it was meant to, until we passed into what was obviously supposed to be a teenage girl’s bedroom, and Miranda, the girl who’d taken the date-rape drug, wandered in with tangled hair and a dazed expression, arms wrapped around her middle as though she didn’t feel well.
“You remember Miranda,” our guide said. “So desperate to make new friends that she would try anything with anyone. Of course, now she can’t remember what she tried or who she tried it with. Isn’t that right, Miranda?”
Miranda sat on the bed and stared into the middle distance. I wondered how they shuttled the actress back and forth between rooms without disrupting the flow of visitors. Was it difficult to muss and unmuss her hair and makeup over and over?
“What’s wrong, Miranda?” the Guide said. “Didn’t you have a good time?”
“Shut up,” Miranda said, voice low and pained.
“It’s a simple question,” the Guide said. “Unless maybe you can’t remember?”
“Shut up,” Miranda said, louder this time, rocking herself.
“Remember the day at your old church when you signed an abstinence oath? You were so proud. You felt so sure God would protect you.”
Miranda slumped to the floor. She opened a drawer in her bedside table and pulled out a framed painting of Christ.
“There He is!” the Guide said. “Hiding in a drawer, out of sight. Didn’t do you much good there, did He?”
“How could you let this happen?” Miranda asked the picture. She dropped it and reached into the drawer again. This time she withdrew a pistol. This girl kept strange stuff in her nightstand.
“Ooh, what’s that?” the Guide said.
“I hate you,” Miranda said to the picture of Jesus. She pressed the gun to her forehead, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger. A loud BANG sounded, and the lights turned from soft yellow to muddy red. The Guide knelt next to her and caught her as she slumped over.
“Good girl,” the Guide murmured. “Good girl.”
I thought I might throw up.
Next came a mock-up of an emergency room, where a woman covered in blood from “an abortion pill” begged for God’s grace and forgiveness right as she died. I followed all of this only vaguely, willing myself not to get sick in the middle of the attraction. It took me until the next room to regain control of myself. This one was lined with golden foil, and ethereal music poured through hidden speakers behind a huge cross. Characters from previous scenes wandered in, faces lit with wonder.
“It’s beautiful,” said the abortion pill girl. “Like nothing I ever dreamed.” She stood so close I could smell the red paint on her pants.
“Is this Heaven?” Miranda asked.
“It is, my child,” came a booming voice from the speakers. “Tell me—did you obey my commandments and take my Son into your heart? Did you keep Him there all of your days and repent of your sins?”
Miranda and the others stuttered excuses. They’d been confused, misguided, unsure. They fell silent and parted as the abortion girl approached the cross.
“I went to church as a little girl,” she said, “but I stopped going when my parents stopped making me. I grew up outside your grace and love, and I laughed when good people tried to minister to me. But then I had unprotected sex with a stranger, took a pill to keep from getting pregnant, and everything went wrong. I couldn’t stop the bleeding, and your Son’s name was the only one I could call for help.”
“Welcome home, my child,” the deep voice rumbled. A door opened beneath the cross and she walked through. As the others tried to follow, however, the entrance slammed shut.
“What about the rest of us?” Miranda said.
“You denied me in life,” the disembodied voice said, “and I deny you in death. Get thee gone!” The room plunged into darkness.
“Finally!” the Guide crowed from somewhere behind me. “Payday!”
Red light rose from the baseboards. The characters denied Heaven turned slow circles.
“What’s happening?” Miranda said.
“It’s time to go home, dear,” the Guide said. “Get ’em, boys!”
A horde of monstrous figures dashed out from behind the wall hangings. The damned struggled and cried for help as they were dragged away. Miranda fought hardest, lunged forward and lost her balance. She landed on her hands and knees in front of me and made eye contact. The panic and fear disappeared from her face, replaced with bald surprise. She stared at me, mouth hal
f-open as demons grabbed her arms and towed her out of sight.
“Well, that was fun,” the Guide said, “but this is where I leave you. I hope to see you all again soon!” She cackled as she followed her minions out of the room. Another door opened, and a woman in jeans and a T-shirt appeared in the doorway, limned by fluorescent light.
“This way please,” she said, her warm, gentle voice a comfort after all the screaming.
The group shuffled into a final room with wood panels and gray carpet. A tall, somber man stood between two doors on the opposite end of the room.
“How y’all doing?” he said.
The youth group exchanged furtive looks, and a ripple of nervous laughter passed over them.
The somber man gave us a look probably calculated to appear sympathetic. “I’ve been seeing that same look all night, and, believe me, now that you’re out the far end of Inferno, I’d like to offer you some relief. What you’ve seen here tonight is the absolute undying and eternal truth of the universe. Bad things happen all the time. People get hurt. People die. And if they die without Christ in their hearts, they’re sentenced to a pit of never-ending pain and suffering.” He paused, clasping his hands and surveying our faces. “You could get hit by a drunk driver on your way home. A drug addict could break into your house tonight and murder you for the contents of your piggy bank. Christ could return tomorrow morning and carry the faithful to Heaven before your alarm clock goes off. You can’t know. What you have to ask yourself is, if one of these things happened, would you be ready? Could you look Christ in the eye on your day of judgment and truthfully say you lived and died in His grace?” Again he paused, giving us time to reflect on the question. “There are two doors behind me. Through the door to my right, there’s a room full of good folks waiting to pray with you, and that room will be open for the next sixty seconds.” The gentle-voiced woman who’d brought us to this room opened the door to the prayer room and stepped aside, hands folded in front of her.