by Duncan, Lex
She looked around her empty room, then leaned toward me, her voice a feather light whisper. “I can't believe you're living with him! That's,” wheeze, “crazy!”
“You don't have to whisper,” I said at a normal volume. “There's no one else around.”
“Still,” she tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. It'd gotten longer. Duller. “It feels like some,” cough, “thing we should whisper about.”
“I guess.”
It hadn't hit me yet that I was living with an international celebrity. He seemed so normal to me, lack of sleeping patterns and knowledge of pop culture references aside. He did everything a regular person would. He woke up, ate breakfast, fed his dog, went for a run, read the paper.
...And then he shut himself up in his study for the rest of the day like a hunchback in a bell tower. Didn't have an explanation for that one yet.
“Bee?” Rosie said after a long while. She didn't have a TV in her room so we'd been sitting there in the evening silence, enjoying each other’s company.
I looked over at her. “Yeah?”
She coughed into the crook of her arm then laid back against her pillows, swollen eyelids fluttering shut. Her pale skin was blotched with big red spots and her gums started bleeding three days ago and hadn't stopped since. Her doctors said this was nothing to worry about, but I didn't believe them. She was fading and she was fading fast.
“I―...” She stopped to catch her breath. The sterile air shuddered through her lungs and her chest arose shallowly underneath her teal hospital gown. “I'm sorry. About―about what I did. I didn't...I didn't mean it.”
I reached over and took her clammy hand in mine, giving it a gentle squeeze. She scared the hell out of me a couple weeks ago, but that didn't matter now. “I know, Rosie. You don't have to apologize.”
She shook her head. “And I―I don't―...You―”
“It's okay,” I said. I could tell she was having trouble keeping up.
She pressed her chapped lips together, her expression distorted into one of pain. “I―I don't want you dying for me.”
“Hey,” I said, trying to keep my demeanor light. “No one said anything about dying.”
“It's not fair.” Her trembling fingers clutched the fabric of her sheets. “You shouldn't―shouldn't have to...”
Ah, yes. This argument. We hadn't had it in awhile, so we were about due. I sighed. “Rose, we've been over this. You and me against the world, remember? I'm not going to run away just because you're sick.”
“But―but it's dangerous―”
“So is eating, but you don't see me quitting that, huh?”
“...Eating?”
“Yeah, y'know, you can choke.”
When she didn’t laugh like I wanted her to, I continued on.
“Don't think you forced me into this,” I said. That couldn't have been farther from the truth. I chose to take responsibility for her. I chose to pay her sanatorium bill. I chose to always be there, no matter what. Because that's what friends did. That's what sisters did. They didn't run when things got hard. They stayed. And for a couple of orphans, staying was the greatest act of kindness we could hope for.
Rosie was quiet again. Before, when her illness was manageable, she looked like one of those girls who could sell beauty products for a living on TV. Thick, curly hair, wide smile that put the sun to shame. Then she got sick. Really sick.
Now, she was all sharp angles and shuddering breaths. Dry skin pulled tightly over bone, sunken cheeks and too blue veins. The demon was killing her from the inside out, chipping away at her former self one day at a time. Watching her deteriorate was the worst thing I've ever had to experience.
“Bee?” She whispered.
I folded my arms on the side of the bed. “Yeah?”
Her eyes opened and she stared up at the ceiling as though she was seeing something terrible, a horror visible to her and only her. “I'm scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of what's going to happen when I die.”
My insides twisted themselves into dreadful knots. This was the first time she ever used the D word. Of the pair of us, she was the optimistic one. She may not have had her health, but she had hope. Hope for a cure, hope for the future. And now that hope had gone away. I wanted to get it back.
“What if you turn out to be immortal?” My voice cracked under the lame excuse for a joke. “What if this whole sickness thing is just a cover-up?”
She leaned over and coughed into her shoulder. “I doubt it.”
“C'mon, Rosie,” I gave her the tiniest of nudges with my elbow. “You're not going to die for a really, really long time.”
She just looked at me. And I looked at her. I was lying through my teeth. Putting on a brave face for the sake of false optimism. She knew it. I knew it. The nurses who kept peeking in to check on her vitals every ten minutes knew it.
She rolled over onto her side. “I'm tired, Bee.”
“Okay,” I said. That was my cue to leave. She'd gotten progressively crankier since she attacked me. Her mood swung from one extreme to the other. The old Rosie would have asked if she could have some time alone. This one just rolled over and mumbled. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I’d be pretty cranky if I had to eat hospital food for months at a time, too. “I'll try and come by after school on Monday, all right?”
Nothing. Not even a grunt. It was hard not to feel angry as I left her there to sulk. I hated demons. Hated them more than I hated Jason Clark and crickets combined. If it weren’t for demons, I'd have my best friend back and we'd be spending senior year together in my apartment, not a stuffy sanatorium that constantly reeked of rubbing alcohol and fatalism.
Scowling, I took the elevator down to the ground floor and was on my way to Dante's car―driven by Max, of course―when the receptionist at the front desk caught me. Her name was Pam and she had a perm.
“Hi, Beatrice,” she smiled. I was on a first name basis with most of the staff here. “Before you go, I have something for you.”
I couldn't find the enthusiasm to smile back. “A million bucks? Please say yes.”
“No, unfortunately.” She rooted around the basket of mail labeled outgoing on her desk and pulled out an envelope, then handed it to me. “Here.”
Knowing exactly what it was, I opened the envelope and unfolded the billing statement to see how much I owed this month. Circled with red pen at the bottom was the total.
Three thousand dollars.
If my jaw wasn't attached to my face, it would have fallen clean off.
Pam rushed to explain. “I don't know if you haven't been getting our letters, but we haven't gotten a payment from you in more than three months. With this place being so in demand, we can't―”
“You're not going to send her away, are you?” I asked, panic bubbling up like cheap champagne. “You can't do that. You can't. I'll get the money, just―please don't send her away.”
“There's a waiting list―”
I didn't give a damn about this waiting list. “Well, they're just going to have to wait a little longer, then.”
“Beatrice,” Pam said, getting that concerned look on her face everyone did when they found out about my circumstances. “The bill needs to be paid in full by the end of the month. If not, they're going to have no choice but to transfer her. To Portland, probably. It's the only other place in the state prepared to deal with your friend's condition.”
Oh, hell no. That wasn't happening. Portland was hours away and Rosie was dying. She was too weak to make the trip. Hell, she'd die on the way there. “I'll get the money.”
“I hope so,” Pam said. She held my gaze. “And Beatrice? Be careful out there. A lot of bad stuff has been happening lately.”
I folded the envelope and slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans. “I know. I'll be fine.”
She wished me goodbye and good luck and I stomped out of that stupid sanatorium. What a bunch of bastards. How could they kick a dying, possess
ed orphan out when they knew she had nowhere else to go? It wasn't her fault I sucked with money. They should’ve been punishing me, not her. I complained to Max the entire way home and he nodded sympathetically as I knew he would.
“It's bullshit,” I said, slamming the door as I got out of the car. Dante's house was silhouetted against the twilight like a grand old ghost. “You'd figure that with possession rates going up, there'd be more places like the sanatorium to deal with it, but nooo. God forbid we actually try to help people!”
Max picked up a shingle out of the yard and tossed it into the trashcan at the side of the house, then returned to me. “No insurance?”
I deadpanned. “You think I can afford insurance?”
“Oh,” he laughed nervously at his own slip-up and shook his head. “Right. Sorry.”
I went back to ranting. “Three thousand dollars? I knew I was behind on my payments, but God! It's like they're looking for an excuse to kick her out. That's got to be illegal. Why isn't being an asshole illegal yet?”
Max shrugged. “Then the vast majority of the world's population would be in jail?”
“Fine by me,” I grumbled, my breath materializing in a steamy plume. As September churned onward, the temperatures dropped and everything looked browner, quieter, deader. Except for the sky. The once blue expanse was set aflame by the setting sun and the ocean reflected it like Mother Nature's own mirror. I was still adjusting to the country and I hated all the crickets, but the view almost made up for it.
Max kept glancing over at me like he wanted to say something, but was too afraid to say it. Weird.
“What?” I asked.
He scratched the back of his neck. “Do you wanna go do something? Something not hospital related? Doesn't have to be anything fancy and I could pay, but I think it'd be good to...take a break.”
Maybe I was reading too far into it, but it sure sounded like Max Morrison just asked me out on a date. I didn't go on dates. “Are you asking me out?”
“Uh,” he got redder than a fire truck. It was cute. “It's not a date. Not if you don't want it to be. I mean, not that it was in the first place. Because it wasn't.”
I bit my lip to stop my grin from spreading. Max, it seemed, didn't go out on dates either.
“You don't have to,” he continued, rambling at warp speed. “But you're clearly stressed and I figured getting out of here for awhile would help, so―”
I reached for his hand and he shut up. “Max. Calm down. It was just a question.”
His gaze fell to my hand, then lifted to my face. “Is that a yes?”
“Are you paying?”
“I said I would.”
“Then it's a yes.”
Ten
Saturday nights in the city were bustling affairs. Freaks, fiends, socialites, politicians, and everyone else in between all stepped out in search of a good time. And in Stone Chapel, that good time usually centered around The Inferno.
Keeping with the city's demon theme, The Inferno was a repossessed (no pun intended) apartment building turned night club on the west side of town with boarded up windows and drink names like “Devil's Blood” and “Lilith's Kiss.” Neither of which sounded appetizing to me, but whatever. I wasn’t looking to get drunk. I just wanted to have a good time for once.
A couple of people with neon colored hair and piercings in places I didn't know you could pierce milled around The Inferno's yard as we pulled up. To an outsider, recognizing the building would've been difficult because it looked like every other crappy apartment complex out there, but Max and I were old pros.
The trick to finding The Inferno was the summoning seal above the door. Hard to see at night, but definitely there when viewed up close, it was small wrought iron seal bolted to the building to give Evangelicals a rage induced stroke and the building a more unholy, diabolical feel. Find that seal and you've found the hottest (again, no pun intended) club in the city.
“I've never been here,” Max said. “Have you?”
“Nope,” I replied. I wanted to go to the movies, but Max suggested this place instead. As long as we were out of the house, right? “Rosie and I talked about it, but we never got the chance.”
We crossed the yard to the stoop and stared at the door, unsure of what to do. Muffled rock music pulsed from within like an angry heartbeat.
“Do we go in?” Max asked.
“I guess so,” I jiggled the doorknob. It was locked. “What the hell?”
“Knock?” Max suggested.
I did, but I felt like an idiot for it. Who knocked to get into a night club?
Idiotic or not, the knocking worked because the door was unlocked when I tried opening it again. Max and I exchanged confused glances, then crossed into the foreboding, smoky world that was Stone Chapel's infamous Inferno.
The door closed shut behind us, and with it the last semblance of light was snuffed out. It wasn't just dark in here, it was pitch-black. The kind of darkness you stumbled around in until the serial killer in the corner caught you and chopped you into pieces.
I needed to stop watching so many horror movies.
“Uh, Max?” I groped around for his hand. “Where are you?”
“Right here―oof!” He bumped into me. “Found you.”
I grabbed a hold of his hand and took a tentative step forward. No booby-traps yet. “We need to get out of here.”
“But we just got here,” he said.
“Not here,” I sighed. I gestured to the place we were in. Which was pointless considering he couldn't see me do it. “Here.”
“Oh,” he replied blankly, letting me know that he still didn't get what I was trying to say. “Yeah, sure.”
I snorted. Boys.
Slowly and cautiously, we made our way through the darkness without getting chopped up by a serial killer. Obviously, I had no way of knowing where we were going, so I picked the best route I could think of: Forward. And we kept going forward until we hit a wall.
“Wonder if there's a door,” Max said, letting go of my hand. The brush of his skin against the surface of the wall sounded loud in the silence of the room.
Weird, because I definitely heard music outside.
I was going to suggest that we leave when Max let out a triumphant whoop. Following it was a soft clicking noise, then above us, a red neon sign blinked on. It was a line I recognized from English class.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
I had a bad feeling about this.
Max's hand fit into mine, easing my fears a bit. “Ready?”
This was the first time I'd gone out in months. And it was the first time in years I'd gone out with a boy. A cute boy who liked me and wanted to do something to cheer me up.
I was going to have a good time here with Max and I wasn't going to be paranoid about it. I was going to have fun, damn it. Even if it killed me.
***
Nine floors for nine circles of Hell. How clever. The floor we entered in had to be Limbo, because the second floor we came to was draped in black and pink silk and smelled strongly of incense. Big, plush couches were scattered throughout, one of them occupied by couple of girls making out. Even if you've never read the Inferno, it was clear which circle this was. Lust.
“The amount of work the owners must've put into this place is incredible,” Max said. He had yet to let go of my hand, despite the fact that it wasn't so dark anymore. “There's no way they could have done all this without gutting the entire building.”
I laughed. We were standing in Stone Chapel's most talked about party spot and all Max could do was comment on its craftsmanship. It was...endearing, really. “You're a nerd.”
“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I'm just saying. It's pretty cool.”
Definitely a nerd. But that wasn’t a bad thing. “I wonder where everyone is. Shouldn't this place be packed?”
“You'd think,” he said. His brow scrunched up in thought. “On another f
loor, maybe?”
Leaving the couple on the couch behind, we ascended another flight of stairs and entered the third circle of The Inferno. Gluttony. A giant statue of a three headed dog―Cerberus, I assumed―dominated the middle of this floor. The pink and black silk that decorated Lust was passed up in favor of deep green and neon yellow. Looked like stomach bile. Appropriate, sure, but gross.
No one was there, either.
So, on we went. Up and up through the building, down and down through the circles of Hell like Dante and Virgil themselves. Next came Greed, draped in gold. Then came Wrath, wrapped in red. Sixth was Heresy, made to look like a tomb. Seventh was Violence, guarded by a mannequin with a bull's head in place of a human's. Eighth was Fraud, whose entrance was marked by a pair of great stone wings, veined like a dragon's. The décor changed with each floor, but one thing remained constant: Emptiness.
As far as we could tell, no one was here
That bad feeling returned as we climbed up the last flight of stairs. “Did we miss something?”
“I'm starting to think so,” Max said.
“This better be worth it,” I muttered. A single, naked lightbulb illuminated our way. “My feet are killing me.”
At the top of the stairwell awaited another door, though this one wasn't like the others. The others were plain. Unassuming. Locked the secrets of their floors away under the guise of normality. This door couldn't be bothered with normality. This door wore its evil on its sleeve.
“That's a seal,” Max said, squinting. “A summoning seal and an incantation.”
The incantation was in Latin, so I couldn't understand what it said, but I'm sure it was something about blood and bringing forth the devil's minions and all that. “Isn't that a little dangerous?”
“A little?” He wrung his hands together. “It's suicidal.”
I knew we should have went to the movies. “We should go. Let these idiots―”
The door opened. A tall man with an eye-patch and a top hat appeared, dark against the yellow background of the urban night. His left hand was curled around a ruby studded cane and his clothes were tattered, his hair dingy and long. A disturbing intensity infected his rotten smile. “Ah!” He said. “I knew I heard voices!”