The Ninth Circle

by Alex Bell

  ‘We’re all the family each other’s got,’ Casey said softly. ‘I’m frightened that something might happen to you. You will look after yourself, won’t you, Gabriel? Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t get involved in any fights or anything like that. Just . . . stay here with me. I can’t shake the feeling that something might happen to take you away, and I can’t do this on my own.’

  ‘Casey,’ I said gently, unable to prevent a smile, ‘I’ve already promised to be there for you whenever you need me.’

  ‘But what if you recover your memories one day and go back to your old life?’

  ‘You know I don’t have one.’

  ‘So no matter what you remember, you won’t leave me?’

  ‘No, I promise.’

  ‘Don’t make the promise lightly, Gabriel. People can get hurt that way.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said again, and with all my soul I meant it.

  I already knew from Stephomi that I had nothing of any value to return to anyway - everyone I cared about was dead. But regardless of what Stephomi had said, I knew that there was nothing I could possibly remember - nothing anyone could possibly tell me - that would take me away from Casey. There is a limit to how much you can love another person, and I know I couldn’t care for anyone more than I care for her. But if, for argument’s sake, I did have to go somewhere or do something, then I would take Casey with me; and if I couldn’t take her then I wouldn’t go, simple as that. I told her as much, willing her to understand how deeply I meant what I’d said.

  ‘And you don’t need to worry about me,’ I said. ‘You know that I can take care of myself. But this crucifix is beautiful, Casey, thank you. And of course I will wear it. In fact, I’ll put it on right now. Are you reassured?’

  She nodded and gave me a grateful smile. When I took the present I had brought from my bag, and handed it to her, she told me with smiling exasperation that the shopping we had done at the Luxus Department Stores was supposed to have been her Christmas present.

  ‘No, that was for the baby,’ I said. ‘I don’t think those little woolly hats would fit you, somehow.’

  I could see from Casey’s face how delighted she was when she unwrapped my gift. ‘She’s perfect, Gabriel,’ she said, smiling at me.

  During one of my afternoons in the city, I had come across a tiny little shop, owned by an elderly Hungarian man, that was stuffed full of wooden carvings, most of them religious in nature. The old man told me he made them all himself with the help of his brother and nephew. Some of the carvings were painted, some were left as they were - the naturally pale golden hue of the wood the craftsmen used. Everything in there was extremely expensive due to the time and skill involved in making even the smallest piece.

  The figure I had chosen for Casey was a small, unpainted statuette of the Virgin Mary, head humbly bowed, a long shawl clasped about her shoulders and falling gracefully around her slender figure to her feet. It really was a beautiful piece and seemed particularly appropriate for Casey because of her fatherless baby - and she had told me herself that she found pictures and images of the Virgin Mother comforting.

  ‘What’s that on your hand?’ I suddenly asked sharply as I noticed the thin streaks of scarlet trickling over her palm.

  ‘What?’ she asked, glancing up at me.

  I looked down at the white tissue paper lying on the table in which the figurine had been wrapped. It was stained with red.

  ‘Can I see that for a minute?’ I asked, snatching it from her grasp.

  Then I gazed at the thing in horror. The tiny statue was weeping. Scarlet tears of blood were soaking into and staining the soft wood, and trickling over my fingers as I held the figure.

  ‘What is it?’ Casey asked.

  I glanced at her and then held up the statuette. ‘What do you think of this?’

  ‘I love her, Gabriel, really. She’s perfect.’

  I felt my mouth twisting into a grimace as I realised she couldn’t see the bloody tears, and my mind raced for an excuse. I could not possibly leave this thing in Casey’s possession. It might be dangerous.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Casey, but they seem to have given me the wrong one,’ I said apologetically. ‘The one I picked out for you was much better than this. I’ll take it back to the shop as soon as it opens after Christmas and get them to exchange it.’

  Casey protested that she really was delighted with the one I was holding in my hand, but I was firm. The fine lines and details of the carving’s face were virtually imperceptible now, so covered was the figure in its own scarlet tears. Then I made the mistake of looking up at the kitchen worktop and saw Casey’s hateful little Black Madonna standing there, also weeping tears of blood, and I knew I had to get out of the apartment fast. That same raw, desperate revulsion was rising up in me at the sight of the dripping blood, just as strong as the day I had sunk my knife into the rare steak, and it took everything I had not to leap to my feet with a cry of disgust and bolt from her apartment to the safety of my own.

  I stood up abruptly, walked round behind Casey in the pretence of putting my mug in the sink, and snatched up the Black Madonna, stuffing it into my pocket without Casey noticing. Somehow I managed to thank my young neighbour for a lovely day and for the gift she had given me, before saying goodnight and returning to my apartment where I flung the Virgin Mary and her black counterpart onto the kitchen table and stared in trembling fear at the blood that was all over the palms of my hands. The sight stirred something inside me. It tugged at a memory that refused to come to the surface, for which I was grateful. But I knew in that moment that this was not the first time I had had blood on my hands. It wasn’t the first time. This had happened before. Something really, really terrible . . .

  I didn’t realise I wasn’t alone until Stephomi spoke. ‘You’re late tonight, Gabriel. I’ve been here for hours.’

  I spun round with a startled yell, making Stephomi jump himself. ‘How did you get in here?’ I asked hoarsely.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. I just came to tell you, well, to warn you . . . But I see you already know—’

  ‘Know what?’ I managed, willing my body to stop shaking. It was all the more disturbing because, even if something deep inside me remembered, I had no conscious recollection of what I was so scared of.

  ‘It’s begun,’ Stephomi said, with a nod towards the furthermost wall of the room. On it was hung a painting of Jesus, and I could see even from here that he was weeping. Tears of blood ran down the canvas, staining and marking the picture horribly. ‘Your neighbour will give birth this Sunday - six days from now. Every religious picture or statue in the city is weeping like that. Eerie, isn’t it?’ he said, with a glance of distaste at the carvings on my kitchen table, now floating in a pool of their own blood.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked, holding up my bloody hands.

  Stephomi frowned at me. ‘I just told you. Every painting and—’

  ‘No, no, what is this? What is this?’ I asked again, gesturing with my hands. ‘Why do I remember this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stephomi asked, looking puzzled. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Did I hurt someone?’ I asked, afraid of the answer. ‘I did something, didn’t I? I did something really, really awful to someone.’

  Something was tugging at me. I needed to remember something that had only happened a few weeks ago. Something that had been wrong though I hadn’t realised it at the time . . . Something Stephomi had said to me that hadn’t been right . . . He had contradicted himself; he had lied to me . . . If I could just remember what it was, I could confront him with it and he could give me the logical explanation that I knew must exist. I glanced at the weeping statues and painting again, hating them. They were doing this to me! Along with those devils in my head. It wasn’t me, it was them!

  ‘Make them stop,’ I pleaded. ‘They hate me! They want me to be insane like them! Don’t you understand? They’re trying to destroy me! They want me to forget again!’

&n
bsp; Calmly, Stephomi picked up a kitchen towel and handed it to me. ‘Clean that blood off your hands,’ he ordered.

  I did as he said; glad to have someone telling me what to do. At the same time, Stephomi turned the painting of Jesus round to face the wall, then took the towel from me and dropped it over the bloody virgins on the table.

  ‘No more blood,’ he said. ‘All right? Do you feel better now?’

  ‘The rest of your family were there . . .’ I said, remembering at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I asked you if you came to Nicky and Luke’s funeral, you said yes.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘And then you said that the rest of my family went to support me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I don’t have any other family. I said so in that letter I wrote my aunt before she died. There wasn’t anyone else apart from Nicky and Luke. You’re not still lying to me, are you, Stephomi?’ I was almost begging him.

  I saw him hesitate and then I knew for sure, and it made me feel sick. With myself as much as with him . . . I was so tired of having to rely on other people to tell me who I was. How many times was I going to have to go through this miserable uncertainty? It was starting to make me feel like a shadow rather than a real person.

  ‘Why did you lie about the funeral?’ I demanded. ‘How much of what you told me about that day was true?’

  Stephomi sighed. ‘None of it.’

  ‘None of it?’

  ‘Gabriel, you have to understand; I lied only because I knew the truth would hurt you. You weren’t all that stable and I thought these stories might help you to become more grounded. Make you feel more normal.’

  ‘More normal?’ I almost whispered.

  ‘If I’d told you the truth, you might have done something stupid. You hated yourself for everything that’d happened.’

  ‘I killed them, didn’t I?’ I said, almost to myself, realising what Stephomi was going to say. ‘I killed my wife and son somehow. That car crash was my fault, wasn’t it?’

  ‘There never was any car crash,’ Stephomi said quietly.

  I stared at him, felt my heart begin to lift. ‘You mean . . . Nicky and Luke . . .are alive?’

  ‘No. They, er . . . they never existed.’

  Never existed . . . ? After a moment I laughed, sure that he must be joking. But Stephomi didn’t laugh. For once, he wasn’t even smiling.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, staring at him. ‘I have the documents that prove they existed. I have their death certificates and our marriage certificate and—’

  ‘Forgeries,’ Stephomi said.

  ‘Rubbish! If they never existed then why do I miss them so much?’

  ‘Because you love the idea of them,’ Stephomi said, with a shrug.

  I shook my head, torn between amusement and irritation, ‘All right, humour me. Where is my real family?’

  ‘You don’t have one,’ Stephomi said simply. ‘You’ve never had one.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You mean, I was miraculously conceived as well?’

  ‘You were orphaned.’

  I gazed at Stephomi - for the first time realising what a pathetic person he was. How could I ever have relied on him the way that I had? Well, I had Casey now. I didn’t need him any more.

  ‘I don’t think we should continue to see each other,’ I said stiffly. ‘It’s quite clear to me that you have a compulsive lying disorder. It probably relates to some kind of repressed childhood trauma. I’ve read about these things, you know. It’s all psychological. I would advise you to seek help. All you’ve ever done is lie to me. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard about this so-called religious War or the Antichrist from anyone but you; I’m half inclined to believe that you were making it all up to impress me.’

  ‘That would be a very dangerous thing to do,’ Stephomi warned, quietly.

  ‘You’re jealous of her, aren’t you?’ I said, realisation dawning.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Stephomi asked, watching me with a strange look on his face.

  ‘You’re jealous of Casey.’

  ‘Why should I be jealous of her?’ he asked me patiently, like someone humouring a madman.

  ‘Because of me!’ I said gleefully. The thought gave me this happy, selfish little glow inside. ‘I really needed you before I met her, didn’t I? You just loved it, didn’t you? All that attention. I relied solely on you for companionship, advice, answers about my past . . . And then I started spending more time with Casey and less with you, and you decided you’d come round here and tell me another story about my past to get me interested again. It’s not a dead family this time, it’s a lonely orphan. How stupid do you think I am? You need me far more than I need you now. I’m not interested in the past any more, Stephomi. I know that my family were real. I can feel it. I don’t need anyone to prove it to me. And there’s nothing you can say that’s going to make me doubt that.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ Stephomi said, shrugging easily. ‘But don’t be too quick to dismiss me, my friend, for you might need me in what’s to come, and then you might regret what you’ve said.’

  ‘What’s to come!’ I repeated derisively. ‘Assuming that there is anything to come, I will just pray to God if I need help.’

  ‘Prayer! ’ Stephomi practically spat the word. It was the first time this evening that I had seen him show annoyance. ‘Christ, Gabriel, how can you be so naïve? When has prayer ever worked? Do you know what happens to people when they pray? They draw attention to their own sins and God punishes them. He sends plagues, He sends floods—’

  ‘You’re still doing it! You’re still lying!’

  ‘I don’t need to lie about God to make Him sound like a cruel, selfish bastard!’ Stephomi snapped. ‘People suffer and die pointlessly every day, Gabriel, every day! I tell you it would be a relief to go to Hell after this; it would be a relief ! What about Noah’s Ark? The whole world had been praying for salvation and how did God reward their prayers? By drowning them all. Apart from Noah, of course, but then he had to live with what he’d seen and done for the rest of his life, and he ended up wishing he’d died with the rest of them. It’s the same tired old story - you pray to God, you get kicked in the fucking teeth. Anyone who can pledge allegiance to a God like that disgusts me! You’re just a lot of fucking brainless sheep! You can’t even conceive of the possibility that God’s a sick, selfish bastard, can you?’

  ‘Shut up!’ I said angrily, finding my tongue at last. ‘Shut up, shut up!’

  To my surprise, Stephomi fell silent - breathing deeply, collecting himself, as if he’d said more than he’d meant to. I’d never seen his control waver like that before. It unsettled me. What kind of a person could talk about God in such a way anyway? Just hearing it made me feel like twisting his damn head off.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry, Gabriel’ he said with an effort. ‘I didn’t mean to be disrespectful to your faith. I’ll go if you want. But I’m telling you the truth about yourself, however much you might have preferred the lies. Nicky and Luke were a beautiful dream, but that’s all they ever were.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said, waving my hand dismissively, just wanting to be rid of him. ‘Look, you were there for me when I needed you and I won’t forget that. So I’ll help you with this, okay? This lying disorder you have. We’ll go and see a psychiatrist or something. Together we can . . . we can . . .’ I faltered, my attention caught by the large mirror on the wall across from me. The burning man was there, staring out at me, his blue eyes blazing as fire rained down about him. And then, in another moment, he was gone and a name appeared written in fiery gold on the mirror’s surface: Stephomi. Unable to help myself, I glanced at my friend, who turned his own gaze sharply towards the mirror; but it seemed that Stephomi was not a party to this particular mirror vision for he turned back to me with an exasperated, ‘What is it now?’

  I forced my gaze back to the mirror and, as I watched, the letters of my friend’s name
rearranged themselves until at last there was an altogether different name burning like fire on the mirror before me: Mephisto.

  I turned back to the man standing in front of me, horror written all over my face, determined to speak, to question, to demand an explanation as to why the letters of his surname were an anagram of the name of one of the most notorious demons of all time: one of the Seven Princes of Hell, and the Devil’s second in command himself. But the expression on my face must have given me away, for it was Mephistopheles who spoke first.

  ‘Oh dear. I believe Michael might have just taken matters into his own hands and exposed me. I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that, Gabriel, as if you hardly knew me at all.’

  ‘Why?’ I managed, staring at the demon with revulsion. ‘Why the pretence and the lies and the deceiving? Why pretend to be my friend like that?’