The Torment of Rachel Ames

by Jeff Gunhus

  “If you knew who I was, then you wouldn’t be bothering with that gun,” he says.

  She throws the gun aside and walks up to him until they stand toe-to-toe.

  “I know exactly who you are. You’re the Devil.”

  He smiles. “Not my favorite name, but it will suffice. Beelzebub. Shaitan. Memnoch. So many more poetic options.”

  Without warning she slaps him across the face. She connects hard enough that it turns his head and stings her palm. She’s surprised she made contact and, for a split second, she sees that the Devil is surprised too. When he turns his head back to her, the arrogant sneer on his face has transformed into a menacing snarl.

  “Do that again and you’ll regret it.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” She gestures all around them. “Send me to Hell? Trap me in purgatory for all eternity? I’m already there.” She lashes out again, but this time he’s ready for her. He grabs her wrist painfully.

  “It can be worse,” he says. “It can be infinitely worse, believe me.”

  She pulls her hand back but her anger is now doused with a good measure of fear.

  “Why do you think you’re here?” the Devil asks.

  She hears the sound of fire and sirens. “I remember…” she says. “I remember everything.”

  The Devil steps closer, their faces almost touching. He eyes her like she’s a specimen to be studied.

  “Then tell me why you’re here,” the Devil says.

  “Where’s John?” she asks. “Where’s my husband?”

  The Devil looks surprised and doesn’t even try to hide it. “Interesting. Perhaps you do remember.” Then his voice turns hard. “Tell me why you’re here.”

  “I killed myself. I killed… I killed someone I love. That’s why I’m here. There’s a circle of Hell just for people like me. That’s why I’m being punished.”

  “And why did you kill yourself?”

  “My son…”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “You said you killed someone you loved. Was it him?”

  Silence.

  “Was it him? Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re here because of that?”

  Silence.

  “How’d you do it? How’d you kill him?”

  Nothing.

  “With your hands?”

  “No.”

  “With a weapon then. A knife. A baseball bat maybe?”

  “Nothing like that. He was… he was trapped. We were both trapped. There was an accident…”

  The Devil spits on the ground at her feet. The ground sizzles and burns where it hits. “An accident? I thought you said you killed him.”

  “I didn’t… I didn’t save him.” Her voice cracks and her eyes sting as the tears come. She doesn’t try to stop them. “I watched him die… right in front of me… and I didn’t save him. What kind of mother does that?”

  The Devil pulls out a bottle from his pocket. As he does the wolves prowling the property howl in unison. She stares at the bottle as the Devil shakes it from side to side.

  “You know what this is, don’t you? It’s what we talked about before. Drink this and you can forget everything. The accident. The fire. All of that pain that nearly killed you. Just strip it away. The burden of that memory isn’t bearable, so why even try?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can feel whole again. Don’t you want that?”

  She squeezes her eyes shut but all she can see is her son’s final seconds in the fire. All she can hear is his screams.

  “It’ll be like none of it ever happened,” the Devil says. “So easy. Just one drink.”

  She opens her eyes but her son’s screaming is still in her head.

  “Don’t you want to end the pain?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “God, yes, I do.”

  She reaches for the bottle, but the Devil pulls it away from her at the last second.

  “One last question,” he says. “What was your son’s name?”

  She shakes her head. It’s too much. Too painful. It feels like there’s a knife in her gut. “Just let me have the bottle. Please.”

  The Devil grins as he holds the bottle back out. “Maybe you have suffered enough.” He lets her take the bottle from his hand. “Take it and drink. It’ll all be better soon. It’ll be like your son never existed.”

  The bottle is halfway to her lips when she stops. She closes her eyes and pictures her son’s face. Sees him playing with John, laughing as they chase each other on the back lawn. She hears his sweet voice, so light and pure that her heart nearly breaks. She cradles her arms as she stands there and she swears she can feel his weight there as she rocks him to sleep.

  “Can you answer the question?” the Devil asks. “What was your son’s name?”

  “Charlie,” she says. “My son’s name was Charlie.”

  “And how did Charlie die?”

  “A car accident. He burned in a fire.”

  “Did you kill Charlie?” the Devil asks.

  She sways on her feet, her eyes still closed. She can see Charlie in the backseat of the car, upside down, flames engulfing him. But there are no sirens. No smell of smoke.

  “Was it your fault?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Say it,” he says.

  She opens her eyes and the Devil is in front of her. Only now his eyes are kind and gentle. In a softer voice, he says, “Rachel, can you say the words?”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she whispers. She turns the bottle and drains the contents onto the ground. “It wasn’t my fault.” The bottle drops from her fingers. “His name was Charlie and I want to remember him.” She looks up to the Devil’s eyes. “It’s worth any price to be able to remember him.”

  The Devil reaches out and takes her hands in his, his eyes searching hers. He gives her a reassuring squeeze.

  “You know what? I think you’re right,” he says. “It is worth it.”

  A silent moment stretches out between them and she enjoys the blissful silence of her quieted mind.

  “You did very well. Very well.” He lets go of one of her hands and pulls her carefully with the other like they were the best of friends going for a stroll. “Now I want you to rest for a while.” He guides her over to a chair. “Just for a few minutes. Can you do that?”

  She sits in the offered chair, numb and exhausted. She’s not sure what just happened, but she’s too tired to try to work it out. The Devil seems pleased with her cooperation.

  “Good,” he says. “Wait here and I’ll be back. I have a surprise for you.”

  He turns and walks to his cabin. The Devil searches his pockets for something, gives up and then knocks on the cabin door. A few seconds later, the door opens and the Devil disappears inside.

  She glances around her. All of the Devil’s creatures are gone. No more wolves or snakes. Or screaming black birds that burst into flames. The sun is high in the sky and warms her skin. A slight breeze carries the scent of pine and wild huckleberry to her. She listens to the birdsong and the sounds of the trees doing their slow dance in the wind. She feels completely at peace. A broken heart to be sure, the terror of what happened to her son still there, but a memory now, not something relived by the smallest trigger. Her heart aches for her son and she knows it always will. But her mind is quiet. At long last.

  Then she notices something shiny in the grass at her feet. She bends over and picks up a key. She thinks that the Devil must have dropped it before he left, which is curious. She stands up and looks around, half-expecting him to appear and ask for it back. But it’s just her there. She turns the key over in her hand, wondering if she’s better off just putting it back in the grass where she found it. But curiosity is a powerful thing and she closes her fist around the key.

  She walks to the Devil’s cabin and inspects the door. It looks different from the last time she was there. Now it’s made of old, weath
ered boards hung vertically with rusted iron bands holding it together. The handle is a gnarled piece of tree root that looks like an arthritic finger. Right above the door handle is a shiny metal plate, the size of a silver dollar, with a keyhole in the center.

  She reaches out and slides the key into the hole and turns.

  Click.

  The door unlocks and edges open half an inch.

  She hesitates, some part of her brain trying to warn her away from what she’s about to do. But she doesn’t listen. She opens the door with the key that she was never meant to find and enters a world she was not yet meant to see.

  Chapter Twenty

  The last time she walked into Granger’s cabin it was a single dark room filled with trash and stuffed dead animals. But all of that’s gone now. It’s not even a room on the other side of the door now, but a brightly lit hallway with a linoleum floor and immaculate white walls.

  The door has changed too. It’s no longer wood but a sleek metal door with white enamel paint. There’s a small rectangular window in the center but it’s blocked by a piece of black cardboard taped on the outside of the door. Panicked, she steps back and pulls the door shut, hoping that it will transform back into the wooden door. But it doesn’t. It stays metal and, in a rush of understanding, she realizes that it’s been that way the entire time.

  Slowly, she turns around and looks behind her.

  She’s in a windowless room. Her room. There’s a metal frame bed with white sheets and a grey wool comforter, the same kind that she laid outside at her own cabin the night she made love to John under the stars.

  Under the stars…

  Above her, stuck to the white plaster ceiling, are dozens of star-shaped stickers, the glow-in-the-dark kind used in kids’ rooms. Her eyes track down to the table at the foot of the bed. In the center of the table is Underwood in all of his gleaming glory with a stack of blank paper and a large water bottle next to it. She walks over to the table and picks up the bottle. Scratched in her own handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the bottle are the words Jack Daniels along with a crude drawing of the label. She unscrews the cap and smells the contents, confirming what she suspected. Just water. As she puts it back on the table, she notices two chairs around a pile of rolled up pieces of paper stacked up to look like a campfire.

  But it is the far wall that really draws her attention. Floor to ceiling, the wall is covered with drawings. The middle of the wall has a large swath of butcher paper taped to it but the crude sketches continue off the paper and onto the walls themselves. She walks to the wall, her fingers tracing the images. Massive wolves. Hundreds of black birds, some of them on fire. A lake surface with hands reaching out. And in the center of it all, in the middle of the wall, are drawings of a door. Drawn and then scratched out. Drawn and scratched out. Over and over until there are gouges through the paper and into the wall itself.

  She suddenly feels claustrophobic. She turns in place and notices leather restraints attached to the bedframe. She spins again, dizzy now, and she knows she has to get out of the room. On the way to the door she steps on a toy plastic gun and it cracks under her bare foot. That’s when she notices that she’s not wearing the clothes she thought, but sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. She reaches up to her head and nearly screams from what she feels there.

  Her hair is gone. Her scalp feels rough and strange beneath her fingers. Slowly, she moves her hands down her forehead and over her face. It’s the same rough skin as her scalp. She looks around the room for a mirror but there isn’t one. In fact, she can’t find any reflective surface at all.

  There’s a pain in her chest and it feels like the air has run out. She has to get out of the room. Twisting the key again, she opens the door and bursts through into the hallway. It’s a long corridor with closed metal doors on either side, each with a window in the middle of it. A few are covered with black paper like hers. She chooses one of these on the opposite side of the hallway and raises it up.

  There’s a man inside, sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around his shoulders as he sways back and forth in an invisible wind. His mouth moves in a torrent of unspoken words while a line of spittle hangs from the edge of his mouth and drips down his chin. She puts the paper back into place and moves to the next door.

  This one is padded and its occupant is a woman in a loose-fitting restraint, not as restrictive as a straightjacket, but enough to limit her arm movements. Even though the woman is standing on the far wall opposite from the door, she’s observant and notices Rachel looking into her room. The woman smiles and nods, the way she might if they were acquaintances passing one another in a supermarket aisle. Rachel waves back. Then the woman launches herself across the room, screaming. She rams the window with her forehead. On reflex, Rachel jerks backward and drops the piece of black paper back over the window. She carefully slides it back to the side and sees a smear of blood on the glass. Craning forward, she sees the woman sprawled on the floor, half-conscious.

  “I once was lost, but now am found…” comes a voice from down the hallway.

  She recognizes the voice. She searches for a hiding spot but there isn’t one.

  “Was blind, but now I see...”

  She doesn’t want to do it, but she knows if she stays in the hallway she’ll be caught. And, once caught, she’ll be back in the room and her shiny key will be taken away. So she runs to her room and goes back inside, but not before ripping down the piece of black paper covering the window on her door.

  She double-checks that she still has her key before she pulls the door closed behind her until the lock clicks into place. Then she looks out the window until Ollie comes into view, still singing. He’s behind a janitor’s cart, the kind with two garbage receptacles on it and spots for a variety of mops and brooms. Her mind’s clicking now. She remembers meeting Ollie in the forest as he was sweeping the path of leaves. Only he hadn’t been sweeping leaves, she realizes. He’d been sweeping the hallways, his opinions about Sisyphean tasks still holding true.

  She waits until Ollie passes and then sneaks back out into the hallway. She turns right, the opposite direction of where Ollie just headed, and makes her way to the end of the hallway until she hits a T intersection. She hears voices, raised and angry coming from a room to the left and she goes that direction, staying close to the wall like she’s a cat burglar in some old movie.

  “…then why can’t I see her?”

  She freezes. It’s John. Not shot in the stomach. Not dead in a lake full of bodies. But alive. Her impulse is to run to him, but something holds her back. She wants to know what is going on. She creeps closer until she’s right outside the door. Most importantly, there is a second door only a few steps away marked SUPPLY giving her an escape if she needs it.

  “…gotten this far on my advice, why are you questioning me now?” It is the Devil’s voice. No, she thinks to herself. That wasn’t right.

  She looks at the bronze plaque on the wall right next to her, so close that she has to take a step back from the wall to get a better look at it.

  Dr. Horace Granger, PhD

  Director of Psychiatry

  “Your wife had a breakthrough today,” Granger says. “Reintroducing you into the mix could set her back.”

  “It was when I was with her that things got better. After we… after I stayed with her overnight…”

  She hears Granger make a disapproving grunt. “No, that just made her burrow deeper into her imaginary world. She would have stayed there forever if you let her, playing house at her imaginary lake cabin with the man who rented it to her.”

  “Maybe that would be better,” John whispers. “Maybe she could have been happy.”

  “But it wouldn’t be real. She’d be living a fantasy.”

  “And just what the hell’s so great about reality?”

  She hears the pain in his voice, but she still resists the temptation to go to him.

  “Today was a good day,” Granger says. “Your wife has fabricate
d an amazing world, more intricate than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s an amalgamation of the trauma she experienced from the accident, her real-world interactions here like her meeting with the janitor Ollie, and her knowledge of literature. She has layered aspects of the circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno into her constructed reality. It’s quite amazing.”

  “She did her thesis on Dante,” John says.

  “Yes, it was in her file from the previous doctor,” Granger says. “It explains the lake of damned souls, the black wolves, the purgatory for suicides where Dante says the damned are endlessly hunted by harpies. And in her mind she assigned me the role of the Devil. She believes I’m the one punishing her for her sin.”

  “Which you played up.”

  “This is my process. You knew it was unconventional when you applied to bring her here.”

  There’s a long pause. She closes her eyes and leans heavily against the wall, trying to process what she’s hearing.

  “So what happened today?” John finally asks.

  “She came back from her world enough to remember the accident. To remember your son’s death. Even so, she still put me in to the role of the Devil persecuting her. Because of this she believed that I had the power to deliver on my promise to have her forget your son and his death. Even with that belief, she chose not to forget. That’s a powerful thing.”

  “It would be a blessing if she could forget,” John says.

  “If you could erase your memory of the death of your son only by forgetting he ever existed, would you?”

  There’s another long pause. “No, of course not,” John says, but he doesn’t sound very convincing.

  “There’s more,” Granger says. “When I made you leave her room, in her mind, it was like I’d killed you. Even after you were out of the room, she went on for a long time talking about you being shot and bleeding. Then she went quiet, like she went somewhere deep inside herself. When she came out, she remembered you as her husband.”

  “Wait… what did you just say?”

  “She remembers you,” Granger says. “Not as the man who rented the cabin to her, but as her husband and father to your son. What we need to do is… wait… you can’t see her yet.”