by James Wymore
I was the one who had to get away. I had to escape from everyone who loved me.
I was suffocating here in heaven. There was too much love here.
“You want to be alone? Come with me and I’ll show you what it’s like,” said John.
He took me to a man who muttered to himself constantly. He had scars of war on his skin and he held out his hands as if for money, but no one ever gave it to him.
“Who is he?” I asked John.
“His name is Timothy. He’s one of the first people I ever saw in hell. I think he likes it there.”
“But he seems miserable.”
“No, I don’t think so. He’s peaceful there. I think it’s what he wanted for himself.”
“Isn’t there anyone else?”
Timothy looked like he was diving for cover from a bomb, reliving past things that I had no interest in.
“It’s his own hell, just like yours would be,” said John. But because he was patient, he took me next to his old friend, Richard.
“Who is he?” I asked. I didn’t recognize him and I thought I had known all of John’s friends.
“He was someone I knew from high school. Before we met,” said John.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He committed suicide,” said John. “When he was eighteen. He hanged himself after he got rejected from the college he’d always dreamed about.”
“Oh, how terrible,” I said.
“He was a huge snob. I never liked him much when he was alive,” said John. “But I always thought about him, later. I wondered if I could have done something to stop him.”
Timothy wasn’t talking to anyone, nor reliving parts of his own life. He seemed trapped in a bubble of some kind, where the only world was two feet in front of him. He didn’t flinch when we approached him or when John waved a hand in front of his face.
“A lonely hell,” I said.
“All hells are lonely,” said John. “That’s what makes them different from heaven, which is so full of people.”
“But do you think he was ever in heaven? I mean, did he go to hell after he decided he didn’t want to be here?” I asked.
John shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t here then.”
I hung back then. After all, I had been married to John for so long that I didn’t know if I could be apart from him, not forever.
The rumors that the long-absent God was coming back to Earth grew more persistent and convincing. I thought of the images of God I’d seen before I came to heaven: light and sound and power. Terrifying and beautiful. Loving, but strict.
I listened to my daughter as she became fanatic about His arrival.
One day, we heard cries of terror in the distance. Then light so bright that we were burned by it. And the terror turned to exclamations of joy.
But I could not see Him. What was wrong with me?
John and my daughter rushed toward Him.
And I, I did not.
I do not know what became of heaven after that. I only know that I was alone, and the light was gone, as was all sound and taste and smell and touch. There was nothing in the world but me. There were no living people around me that I could see, no other spirits, no God.
It was peace. It was heaven. And it was Hell.
don’t understand.”
The demon spread his hands over the desk and said, “Zoroastrianism.”
Gordy Clinton scratched at his mouth. The preacher and the woman in the pantsuit had already been sent away. They had vanished with the snap of the fingers like a magic show.
He stared at the picture window behind the desk, behind the demon, with lava blasting up from the pool. The demon had said something about it being a show before the preacher was sent out. The actors’ mouths opened in silent screams. As far as Gordy could tell, it all looked pretty real, at the same time he couldn’t quite believe any of it. It could have been part of the magic, but demons were liars and Hell was where liars went, so how could he believe him? He looked just like the pitchforked devils from the color plates in the family Bible he got after his mother died.
“Is this because I killed myself?”
The demon narrowed his eyes. “The not understanding part, or the being in Hell part? Well, Gordon, I’m going to cut this conversation short and tell you it’s neither. I suppose you might be a little confused coming off being stone drunk and blasting the back of your head out with a shotgun in your shed. It was your kids that found you—which will probably mess them up pretty good—but none of that carries weight down here like you think it would.”
A woman in a flowered dress scooted away from Gordy and muttered, “That’s terrible.”
He felt like pointing out to her that she was in Hell with him, but unlike how he usually felt after a couple bottles or a case, he wasn’t much up for the fight.
“I’ve sent a lot to the library lately,” the demon muttered to himself. “I might be getting into a rut. What to do? What to do with you, Gordon?”
“I can’t read.” Gordy swallowed hard.
He admitted it to few in life, although he knew a lot of people knew. He took lessons from one of the teacher’s husbands at the elementary school where he was a custodian before the fellow died of cancer. Gordy still used the color on the labels to know which chemicals to use for cleaning. When the company changed their label colors for wax and paint thinner, he nearly melted the floors one summer. A lot of people knew, but he told no one straight out.
It occurred to him that teacher’s husband was already here somewhere. He was agnostic, which was a fancy word for atheist. Of course, a preacher had been on the couch beside him, too, for what that was worth.
“Well, the library would just be cruel, although you would have plenty of time to learn and teach yourself.”
Gordy shook his head and thought about his brains being splattered on the wall on Earth. If the shot from the shell left holes and they didn’t patch it right, the damaged area would rust through. Maggie probably wouldn’t think about it, and Gordy hadn’t taught his boys enough to know it needed doing or how to do it. He pulled his lips back from his teeth. He hadn’t taught them much of anything worth knowing. Drake was nine and Buster was only three. After today, Buster would only remember his father as the thing with no face in the shed. Gordy blinked and started to ask if both boys had found him together.
Instead, he said, “Hell isn’t supposed to be cruel?”
“You’re supposed to learn something before you leave, but it’s best if you don’t think too much on that. That’s on the rules you’ll read… well, no matter where you go, I recommend you learn to read. Until then, get someone to read them to you.”
“There’ll be other folks there?”
“Yes, but you might feel alone for long stretches. You won’t be. But at times it will seem that way.”
“So, Hell’s not forever?”
“You Christian folks, I tell you. You have a dark view of eternity. I guess you could live with it when you thought it was someone else’s destiny.”
Gordy shrugged. “I always kind of figured my baptism didn’t take. I never felt saved the way my mama described it.”
“There are some books on Zoroastrianism where I’m sending you. Read up once you are able and learn the rules.”
“All Christians ended up here? Not just the Catholics and Democrats?”
Gordy spotted another man in the corner. A fellow he recognized from the real world. He was some kind of hobo or panhandler that hung out near the railroad bridge. His name was Old Tommy or Timothy or something like that. It appeared Hell was taking all kinds.
The demon shook his head, bringing Gordy’s attention back to the desk. “You’re a piece of work, Gordon Clinton. I need to move on, so I’m going to send you on where you can get started.”
The demon snapped his fingers for the magic trick, but Gordy missed the end of it. He thought he was plunged into the eternal darkness of the underworld, but he turne
d his head and saw the bare lightbulb screwed in at an angle on the underside of an A-framed roof above him.
Exposed nails jutted from the wood above his head, and pink insulation piles dotted the gaps between supports under him where the plywood sheets didn’t extend. A few of the cardboard cartons were sealed with brown packing tape curling at the edges. Others were open, overstuffed with baby clothes or three ring binders. There were stacks of Christmas tree boxes and large wreaths near him to the right.
“Hell is an attic with Christmas decorations?” Gordy said. “I guess that makes sense.”
A squared track of ventilation trunk work crossed the floor long ways extending into the darkness of the attic in both directions. Two hot water heaters stood in their catch pans beyond the silver foiled trunks. Only one was connected down into the house Gordy assumed must be below him.
“Satan? Are you down there? It’s me. Gordy.”
It hadn’t been Satan, though. The demon at the desk had gotten into a long discussion with the preacher before Gordy about some ancient Arab god he couldn’t pronounce. That was the dude in charge of Hell. Gordy couldn’t remember the name of the right religion anymore, either. It had started with a Z sound, but he hadn’t retained it. It wasn’t one of the cults the preachers screamed about at the primitive Baptist church Gordy took his family to. He had heard about the Pope, Mormons, Moonies, and even some hippies in California that said Jesus was a mushroom, but not the Z one. They heard about the devil a lot, but not the Arab dude the demon mentioned.
Gordy thought about one revival preacher that had gone into exhaustive detail about the structure of Hell for three hours one summer. Not only did Gordy’s church not believe in an organ, a piano, or a sound system, they didn’t do air conditioning either. His boys had quivered beside him while their mother sat across on the women’s side of the sanctuary. That guy had talked about the place like he had a time share there and knew the project foreman personally, but he never mentioned an attic.
“The red label is the hot stuff,” Gordy spoke into the stale air. “Don’t use that on the floors.” Of course , Gordy thought, I haven’t explored much . “Maybe the road of unbaptized baby skulls and the dark pit of unrepentant tyrants are closer to the front of the property.”
He ducked under the triangular slant of the support boards and was careful where he grabbed on for balance because of the nails. He straddled the trunk work and walked between the water heaters along the plywood path.
Once he was past the Christmas decorations, another lightbulb cast light out along the next stretch of attic.
Gordy’s foot caught the edge of a box that wouldn’t give. A marbled cover of an encyclopedia like the set his mother used to have fell off the top beside the box. Gordy picked it up and cracked open the pages. The edges were yellowed and stuck together from moisture. The pictures were of men he did not recognize from which he could not figure out what letter he had. He closed the volume and saw the shiny, embossed “G” on the front. G is for Gordy. That much I know . He set the book back on the stack on the box that was splitting on one edge.
The plywood ran out and he stepped back over the trunk work to keep going on the other side. He pulled open the flap on one of the boxes on the next stack. Easter eggs poured out and rolled into the insulation. Most were not matched with their other halves. Even in the blunted light, Gordy could see the bright pinks, purples, and greens. The preachers talked about Easter eggs being pagan symbols of sex adopted by the Catholics and pushed on the children of wayward Christian parents.
“They’d have quite a laugh to know there’re Easter eggs in Hell’s attic.”
He stepped over and left them scattered. Gordy looked down at the open top of a plastic under-the-bed box. No bed, but he popped open the lid and saw another book on top. It started with a “Z.” He flipped through, but didn’t see any pictures. Underneath the book were photo albums and loose pictures in plastic photo boxes. He dropped the book on the plywood with an echoing crash.
Gordy opened the top album. It had a thick leather cover and felt gritty against his fingers. The first four pictures under the cellophane over the sticky pages were black-and-whites of an old farm house. It reminded him a little of the house he grew up in, but more of his grandparents’ house—the ones on his dad’s side that shot at them once when they came up the driveway unexpectedly.
The pages crackled like paper being ripped. The next images were more black-and-white photos of what looked like branches. Some were out of focus. Others were too dark to tell for sure. He ripped to the next page. One picture was missing at the corner of the right-facing page. A discolored outline marked its missing border.
The others were more colorless blurs that looked like mistakes that had been developed, carefully sorted, and placed in the album. Maybe they’re art? Gordy didn’t know much about art. If he didn’t understand a picture, it was usually because it was art.
He ripped to another page of nonsense photos. One looked like the camera was set down across tall grass. The blades were blown out by the flash and a blur that could have been a person’s arm clawing up at the sky from the weeds that occupied the mid-ground. Another photo showed the exquisite details of a single pine needle with all its partners lost in the blur around it. Another was through branches and the washed out white of a face leered at the camera from around the trunk of a tree.
Gordy felt cold inside and slapped the album closed. He slid it off the top and opened the next in the pile. The pictures were in color, but had the tacky sepia look that pictures from the sixties and seventies took on from acids in the chemicals. Careful what you use to clean the floor . People with computers made their pictures look like that on purpose, but it was uneven and different when the pics were the real deal. These had the shape and white border that Gordy specifically associated with the seventies.
The pages hissed when he turned them. Most looked like mistakes. A man posed in a corduroy sports coat, but the picture cut him off at the side showing one sleeve, a watch, and one sideburn. The rest of the picture was off center on the mustard curtains and a wooden lamp. Under the side table on which the lamp stood were gilded edged pages Gordy was pretty sure was a family Bible.
He smiled as he turned the page. “Don’t bother reading it. We guessed wrong, Daddy-o.”
Daddy-o was more of a sixties thing, I guess , Gordy thought.
He saw the noses of rocking horses, a Ferris wheel from a distance through trees, the backs of kids running down a hill toward a lake, a neighborhood of matching white houses with black cars in the driveways like in a factory town.
He closed the album and started thumbing through the pictures lined up on the sides in the plastic sleeve box. Gordy paused on a picture looking up at a Buddhist temple. He slid it back into the sleeve and kept flipping. He saw the back of a bald man’s head, a fountain, pigeons eating bread, and a man riding an old-timey bicycle with a giant front wheel.
He took out the bicycle picture and stared at it. He felt around the clothes he wore, which looked a lot like ones from his closet, but not the ones he was wearing when he blew his brains out the back of his head. He slid the bicycle picture into the front pocket of his shirt.
He flipped through the others. He paused on a rose with the thorns in focus, but the pink and white petals were just out. He pocketed it. He flipped through a few more and pulled one of a beach looking out toward the ocean. He only took one beach trip his whole life before his dad died. His mother said she hated the beach and only wanted to visit the mountains. There was a resort hotel overlooking the sand on the left edge of the picture. He pocketed it.
Gordy flipped through a few more pictures before giving up. He left the box open and walked on between the containers.
Brooms leaned against the rafters, and Gordy stepped over them. A bicycle frame with no tires and no handlebars hung from plastic hooks mounted near the apex of the ceiling.
Gordy slid a carton of stuffed animals out of his way to ma
ke a path. The blank eyes of a pink bunny with matted fur stared up at him in the darkness between lightbulbs. He looked ahead through the space over the insulation where he could see nearly two dozen more lightbulbs in the sections of attic extending ahead of him. It looked like more than a football field and then a set of taller moving boxes on plywood blocked his view of what he expected to be dozens more sections with dozen more lightbulbs with dozens more after that.
He swallowed and tried to clear his throat. “The preachers did warn about being parched. They got that part right.”
He looked down and saw the retracted ladder and hatch next to his feet. Gordy’s mouth went dry again. Do I want to know what’s below Hell’s attic? He whispered, “Hello?”
Gordy knelt and extended his leg. He pushed down with the tip of a work boot that was a shade lighter than a pair he had in his closet on Earth. The colors are faded in Hell like aged photographs , he thought. Gordy pushed and the hatch opened enough to show a lit room and an eggshell wall.
He lost his nerve and pulled back, letting the hatch slam closed. Gordy listened, but heard nothing. In the angle of the light where he knelt, he could see the long, dark specs that roaches left behind as they crapped out whatever they’d eaten. He wondered if Hell’s attic had mice. He’d need to check the boxes for traps. If the attic was infinitely long, there had to be everything in here somewhere.
“Or at least a picture of a mousetrap.”
Gordy lifted his heel over the hatch and paused. His mind filled in the rest of the room below him. Millions of roaches could pour up from below and chew Gordy down to the bone.
“Then crap me out in tiny pellets.” He imagined glowing eyes and a demon with shadowed fangs waiting below.
He dropped his heel and knocked the hatch open with force. It bounced when it hit a forty-five-degree angle. The ladder folded down and hit the hardwood floor below with a crash.
From his vantage, he could see a cot with a folded brown blanket, a small counter with a curved faucet, a sink, and a shelf. There were no pictures or decorations on the eggshell walls.