by P W Hillard
The woman stepped up to the door, raising her hand before the threshold. She traced her hand across the air, drawing some invisible sigil. Then, she stepped to the side, her arm outstretched.
“After you.”
Darren stepped forward, pushing open the door. With some trepidation, he stepped through, across the threshold.
***
He was falling, tumbling through infinity. Around him, nothingness stretching out beyond the limits of his perception. His stomach churned, as he fell. Darren had lost all sense of direction. Had he even fallen through the doorway? Time lost all meaning, his fall feeling like both seconds and hours.
Then he was upright, still within the infinite black. Before him, was a desk, a light drifting down from a lampshade suspended from nothing. There was a door next to it, set within a doorframe standing freely in place. There the woman who had opened the door for him was sat behind the desk.
“Took your time,” she said.
“I…I…where am I?” Darren spluttered. “What is this?”
“Oh right, it’s your first time. You’ll get used to it. It’s a little…metaphysical around here. Mum’s in her office. Just take the door on the left.”
“There’s only one door here?”
“Well then take that one. I can’t control how you perceive this reality.”
“Reality…what is this?” Darren wasn’t feeling well, a buzzing building up in his mind. He realised that he wasn’t hearing anything from the woman before him, no thoughts, no feelings, not a single image. Instead, there was a constant low-level white noise, like hearing a thousand faint voices all at once. At a total loss for what else to do, Darren opened the door.
***
Beyond the doorway was an office. A normal, perfectly sane office. There was an old wooden desk, a heavy thing, hand-carved with ornate flower designs dug into the sides. A few old filing cabinets sat in one corner, half-open, paperwork spilling out from their pale green metal drawers. A ceiling fan span lazily above, a bookcase taking up the wall behind the desk.
Sat behind it in a large leather chair was Ms Sag, her hand beg resting on her desk.
Hello, Mr Bolton. So nice to see you again, face to face this time. Take a seat."
Darren did as instructed, sliding out an uncomfortable looking wooden chair from under the front of the desk. “I am sorry,” he said, his head down.
“Don’t be. When my daughter said she wanted me to see a therapist, I was very insistent I wanted to see you. I had heard the rumours you see.”
“The rumours?”
“Come on, Darren, was it? The rumours you can read minds.”
“Those are nonsense, I’m just good at reading people,” Darren protested.
“Are they? You know I’m different right. You felt it, sensed it. That’s why you followed me right? You had to know, desperately I imagine.”
“You’re right.” Darren gave up the pretence. Everything that was happening, all the weirdness, it was too much. Lying in the face of it seemed pointless.
"Truth be told, I wanted you too. See, my daughter, Perrin, she was insistent I needed to see someone, so I thought I could turn it to my own needs. I want to hire you, Darren. Not as a therapist, as a physic."
“I don’t use my powers like that. I try to help people.”
“You try to help yourself,” Anne said. Her eyes were piercing, somehow drilling right through Darren to his soul. “Let’s not lie to each other. I have a work event. A big bash up north where all the players in my industry are meeting, giving out awards and showering each other with false platitudes. You know those insipid award shows hosted by a c-list comedian?”
“I’m familiar.” He had attended one for therapists some years ago. Darren had found it an excuse for a clique to give themselves congratulations, a circle jerk in a hotel lobby.
“Well, my…industry has a reputation for backstabbing. I want you with me, as insurance in a way. You can tell me about any trickery they might be planning,” Anne said.
“With my telepathy.”
"With your telepathy. You will be paid, extremely well. More importantly, I have…contacts that can help you perfect your power. Get some silence finally. Would you like that?"
Darren never thought it possible. “Very much so, yes.”
“Good. Here’s a leaflet, with the date and address. Sort your own trip and hotel and I’ll cover the expenses.”
Anne slid open a drawer with a swish. She removed a pamphlet from the draw, printed in a horrid off-colour beige. Across the front printed in large letters was the title. ‘Annual Hell Operators Association Awards’, it read.
Chapter Three
Darren was stood in his living room, his foot deep in the slice of pizza that still lay on the floor. In his hands he was clutching the leaflet he had been given. He couldn’t remember walking home, or indeed leaving that strange nightmare space. It felt like a dream, a fading memory, the only proof that it was real the cheaply made plastic feeling leaflet he still clutched.
He turned it over, examining it. It looked like a thousand other leaflets, advertising for niche award shows, round tables pressed tightly into hotel lobbies. From the single one he had attended, they seemed more like excuses for copious drinking and inter company bitching. It seemed totally and utterly normal. Completely mundane in every way, aside from the words across the top. Hell Operators.
Darren wasn’t religious, his only church experience was attending a christening for a second-cousin that had been an exercise in prolonged boredom. His brain frantically tried to rationalise the words before him. There was no such thing as hell, no angels, no demons, no eternal torment for sinful souls.
What then, had happened to him? How else could he explain his experience, that strange place that was everywhere and nowhere at once? A single well-lit office within a sea of infinite nothingness.
“You alright there, champ?” Darren spun around to see Perrin leaning in the doorway to his living room, shoulder pressed against the doorframe.
“How did you get in? Again. You know what, never mind.” Darren’s mind bounced back to the doorway Perrin had moved her hands over, to the portal she had conjured. “I hope you’re not going to just appear and disappear as you like.”
“Doesn’t really work like that. Sadly. Going where I like when I like would be nice.” Perrin stood up straight. There was a groaning noise from the doorframe. “I would save a fortune on gig tickets though.” Her thoughts were washing off her, a wave of calm crashing over Darren.
“I have some questions. A lot of questions really. About, well, everything.”
“Perfectly understandable.” Perrin strolled across the room, dropping herself onto the same sofa where Darren had first seen her. There was a strange creaking noise as she did. “Ok, well, fire away I guess.”
“This says Hell on it,” Darren said, brandishing the leaflet like a weapon. “Was that where I was? Is your mother the devil?”
“Kind of, an no. In that order. In you were in a hell, not the Hell, with a capital H. Or at least as you would think of it. Perrin picked opened the box of day-old pizza, breaking off a slice that had managed to cling onto the cardboard. “Mum isn’t ‘the devil’.” Perrin made air quotes with one hand, pizza slice dangling with the other.
“What is she then? What are you for that matter? Your thoughts are so different. More like sensations than anything more concrete.”
“Eh, Mum used to be a big deal. Collecting souls, sending them to hell, back when the Sumerians were kicking about. It was a whole wide-open world, cosmologically speaking. Nowadays there are an entire bunch of newcomers with their own hells, arguing over which souls go to who. A bit of a crowded market.” Perrin took a bit of the pizza, cheese drooping onto her chin. She slid her hand up, pushing the cold dairy into her mouth.
“That’s…that’s frankly insane. Impossible!”
“Says the man who can read minds.
” Perrin sighed. “I knew Mum was up to something when she insisted on you. She wasn’t too keen on going to therapy, then one day, boom! She was all in.” She took another bite of pizza chewing loudly. “Figures she would find herself an oracle to do her dirty work.”
Darren brushed off a pile of empty cans and takeaway cartons from the milk crate he had been using as a makeshift coffee table, seating himself upon it. “Oracle?”
“Yeah, you,” Perrin said, pointing at Darren with half eaten pizza crust. “Used to be that people had all sorts of abilities. Visions of the future, seeing auras, talking to the dead, reading minds. Oracles we used to call them. Not so common now. People seem to think they’re weird and avoid them, so it doesn’t get passed on. Humanity is natural selectioning themselves out of magic powers.” Perrin swallowed the last of the pizza. “I can see that tradition continues. This place clearly hasn’t seen a woman in a while.”
Darren placed his head in his hands. “You’re telling me I’ve agreed to work for some demon, as her personal prophet or some shit?”
“Demon isn’t quite right, but it’s the closest translation, I guess. And yeah, basically. Goes without saying that the other hells and their bosses are full of totally insufferable pricks. Mum thinks they’ve been cheating, shafting her of the souls we’re supposed to get, and that they’re going to use this event to really stick the boots in.”
“Are there many Sumerian souls to collect anymore?”
“Ehh,” Perrin said. “It’s more complicated than that. Once you go back far enough, everyone is related see. Something like one in two hundred people are descended from Gengis Khan right? Saw that on QI. A lot of people got a little Sumerian in them.”
“Surely someone’s religion supersedes genealogy?”
“It does, but when you get someone who is agnostic, or only goes to church at Christmas, or is an atheist, well then it becomes a lot of paperwork and arguing.”
“So, you’re saying someone could end up in some weird ancient hell because of bureaucracy?” Darren had his hands on his head, gripping his hair tightly. “That’s insane? Aren’t the, uh, entry requirements, different?”
“Yep. I ain’t saying it’s right, but that’s how it is.” Perrin leant forward, sofa creaking beneath her. “You’re taking this all remarkably well.”
“It’s you. Your thoughts are calming. Soothing even.”
Perrin turned a bright red, blood rushing to her cheeks. “Oh, ok. Thank you? I guess? Look, my Mum asked me to keep an eye on you. Here.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulling out a slip of paper. She handed it to Darren.
“A cheque?”
“I know. Mum is old school like that. First payment for your services. Look into booking a hotel, I’ll be round in a few weeks to check up on you.”
***
After Perrin left, Darren had cried for what felt like days, the reality of their discussion hitting him like a moving truck. Everything had been difficult, and he smelt faintly ripe from lack of showering. He had barely had the energy to text Marge, telling her to let his patients know he was ill, and then to take the rest of the month off paid. His receptionist had jumped at the offer. Darren had taken to simply sitting in his living room and absorbing junk television. Even that was hard, his sofa had bent where Perrin had sat, as if the thin woman weighed an impossible amount for her size.
It was a week before he was able to operate somewhat normally. He had found himself standing in his mirror, giving himself advice, words misting the glass as he spoke. It was proving poor relief against having reality itself pulled out from beneath him. He could feel his control over his power slipping, stray thoughts drifting in from people passing on the street outside. In the end, it was this that shook him out of his funk, Anne’s promise of helping control his power totally echoing in his mind. The lure of having true silence was too strong, and Darren had found himself scrolling through hotels and looking at train times.
***
The hotel was a ratty thing, an old Edwardian building on the outskirts of Glasgow, covered in a thick layer of off-white paint. Darren had thought himself lucky at being able to grab a room at the hotel where the event was happening but was beginning to regret it. By the door there was a bronze plaque, half hanging off that declared the hotel to be ‘McKintosh House’ before proudly displaying two and a half stars. On the window immediately to the left of the door was a large sticker that proclaimed it to be ‘Best hotel in Glasgow 1987 winner.’ The years hadn’t been kind it seemed.
Darren had travelled up by train and hadn’t been surprised to find Perrin waiting for him on the platform. She wasn’t in a talkative mood, despite Darren’s head being filled with more questions. Once on the train she had pushed headphones into her ears and gone to sleep, her head resting against the glass window.
The ride itself had been mostly boring. Darren had splashed out for first class tickets and had been disappointed to find that just meant easier access to the overpriced crisps in the food car. He wondered if that was the case for everything expensive. The first payment he had received had been large. Extremely large, and a few more payments like that meant he would be set for life.
Not that his life was what he was worried about. The afterlife, that was what mattered it seemed. Learning that death was this strange arguing over souls between a bewildering array of dimensions, each a fragment of some culture of the other meant everything else seemed a little pointless. He privately hoped that doing a good job here meant he could pull some cosmic strings and ensure something relatively comfortable.
“Ready to go in?” Perrin said, her first words since meeting on the platform. She was standing directly behind Darren, almost pushing him across the threshold.
“I guess. Anything I should know beforehand?”
“Yeah. Sign nothing. Trust no one. And don’t buy the lager, I hear it’s watered down.”
Chapter Four
The inside of the hotel was no better than the outside. Shaggy carpet worn covered the floor, holes worn in around the doorways. The paint on the walls was a kind of patchy yellow, stains from what looked like a thousand years of cigarettes. The ceiling was covered in thick Artex. The air smelt of cheap pine, like an in-car air freshener selected at random from a petrol station. The smell was wafting from a large bowl of potpourri, the bowl of dried leaves and flowers bringing memoires of Darren’s grandmother flooding back.
He hoisted the holdall he had stuffed with clothes over his shoulder, haphazardly inserted shirts threatening to spill out from within. Darren was already regretting his choice of hotel. He had free reign to spend what he liked but picking the venue itself had been the easy option, and Darren had spent his whole life doing whatever was easiest. It was too tempting not to, his ability simply allowed him too many shortcuts in life.
“Want me to carry your suitcase?” Darren said, turning around to face Perrin. She was stood behind him in the doorway, suitcase in her hand. It was an old-fashioned thing, cream with a leather handle.
“If you insist.” Perrin shrugged as she handed the suitcase over.
“Jesus Christ,” Darren said as he wrapped him hand around the handle. The case we heavy, threatening to pull him tumbling forwards. “What’s in here? Rocks?”
“Just the usual things.”
“Yeah, ok sure. That and an anvil.” Darren turned, grunting as he did. He stepped further into the entryway of the hotel, lugging the suitcase with him. Darren stopped before a counter set into the wall, old polished wood behind which was an office. He dropped the suitcase to the ground with a loud thud, before ringing the small silver bell that was on the desk.
He waited there for a moment, impatient, before ringing the bell again. The office behind was empty. For a hotel hosting a large gala event, it showed a worrying lack of planning. He rang the bell a third time.
“Ring that bell again, go on, I dare you,” Perrin said. “I bet you stand at the lights pressing the bu
tton to cross over and over.”
“There should be someone here to greet people. That’s just common curtesy really.
“It isn’t the Ritz. What did you expect?”
“A little professionalism maybe?” Darren said.
“You’re a fine one to talk, digging around in your patients’ minds, learning all their dirty little secrets.”
Darren shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s like…whale watching. You only see what breaches through the surface. Normally. You and your mum are different, it’s like images, sounds, feelings, just pulsating off you.”
“Not sure I really like the idea of…pulsating.”
“I don’t think you can help it.” Darren reached forward, hand edging towards the bell. Perrins look caused his arm to snap back to his side.
There was a noise, the sound of voices coming closer. Two figures appeared, stepped down from the set of steps that shot off from the corridor at a right angle. One was an older woman, wearing a blue blazer, a pink shirt peeking through from beneath. The other was a tall Chinese man in an immaculately cut black suit, every crease razor sharp.
“I am sorry Mr Wang, I’ll can get a repair man out to it tomorrow,” the woman said as she stepped down into the hallway on a sensible heel.
“Unacceptable, I require it now. You will change my room, immediately.” The suited man was scowling, his face framed by a perfectly trimmed beard.
“I’m afraid we are totally booked, there are no other rooms I can put you in.”
Darren watched the two arguing, and as he did a fresh barrage of thoughts slammed at him mind. The man was like Perrin, transmitting sensations, feelings. From him a wave of arrogance washed outwards, along with a strange desire for perfect, measured order. Darren suddenly had an overwhelming urge to find and complete the nearest paperwork.