Knight in Charlotte

  Jeremy poked the MPN out from under his coat. “Back up.”

  “You can’t do this,” the man said in outrage.

  Jeremy shoved the man. Shadowheart and Joan filed in behind him.

  “Camille,” Joan shouted. “Where are you? It’s me, Joan.”

  Footsteps sounded and a girl appeared on the stairway opposite. She bore a superficial resemblance to Joan, though her hair was longer and darker. She wore dull black robes that covered her from head to toe. Disbelief warred in her face with… hope? “Joan, is it you? Could it be you? You’re in Hell, too?”

  “Another dirty girl,” Fakemother said in disgust.

  “Go back upstairs,” Fakefather ordered. “Stop displaying your body.”

  “Silence,” Jeremy growled, raising the MPN.

  “A dirty girl with dirty friends,” said Fakemother.

  “No, Jeremy,” Shadowheart said. “The battle is again joined. We must leave it to Joan and Camille to break free of this torment.”

  Joan walked over and Camille came down the stairs, staring at the literal sister of her soul. “You came for me?”

  “I’m the reason you’re in Hell,” she said.

  “She’s in hell because she’s a whore,” Fakemother said. “She tempts men.”

  “It's not my fault,” Camille whispered. “I didn’t want that. I didn’t!”

  “Yes you did,” Fakefather said, “always showing your body. The way you stand, the way you move. You tempted him.”

  “Your poor father,” Fakemother said. “You killed him.”

  “I didn’t,” Camille said tearfully.

  “You’re a bad girl,” Fakemother insisted.

  “Camille,” Joan said. “You must deny them. Stand up for yourself!”

  “Or what,” Camille demanded, “will you kill them too?”

  “Do you wish me to kill them for you?” She put her hand to her sword. “Isn’t that the reason you conjured me into existence?”

  “I was lonely, afraid,” Camille said.

  “I know,” Joan replied. “I tried to protect you in the only way I knew how. Bid me slay them and we will be free of this place. Jeremy and Shadowheart are friends. They’ve come to get us out of Hell. I will make an end of these demons and we will be on our way.”

  “No,” Camille cried. “No more killing.”

  “They’re the dead and the damned already, if they were ever real in the first place.”

  “I don’t want anyone else killed,” Camille insisted.

  “Camille,” Joan shouted, “you must stand up for yourself.”

  “Not that way.”

  “Then what way?”

  Camille looked at her fakeparents.

  “You know you need to stay with us,” Fakemother said. “You’ll never be clean without us. You’ll never be a good girl. You killed your father.”

  “That wasn’t me,” shrilled Camille.

  “We all know that’s a lie,” Fakefather laughed. “There is no ‘Joan,’ she’s just a part of you. You can’t hide behind her.”

  “I have no memory of it,” Camille said. “I didn’t want him to die. I wanted him to stop.”

  “You liked it,” Fakefather said. “We’re very disappointed in you, Camille.”

  “You need to stay here,” the mother said. “You’ll never be any good if you leave. You have so much to atone for.”

  Camille stood, her shoulders hunched, hands under her chin. “No,” she shouted. “No, my sins were only against myself. I didn’t hurt anyone else. I don’t deserve this. I don’t!”

  Joan came up behind her. “Yes, Camille.”

  “No Joan. Don’t help me. For once I must do something myself.”

  She turned to the fake family. “I am leaving. I deny you power over me. I refuse your expectations and demands. I’m leaving.”

  “You were never any good,” the Fakemother said.

  “Such a disappointment,” the Fakefather added. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful child.”

  Camille backed away from them as if wading through mud. Joan, silent, her hands away from her weapons backed with her. They reached the door, and with a sob Camille burst through, Joan on her heels.

  Fakemother and father stepped forward.

  Jeremy leveled the MPN. “I don’t care whose torment this is,” he said quietly, but with a conviction that had often eluded him on Earth. “I don’t care about the rules. I don’t care what will follow. You take one more step and I’ll cut you both in half.”

  “That was an oath,” Shadowheart said. “Count on it being fulfilled.”

  Jeremy and Shadowheart also backed to the door. Fakemother and Fakefather stared at them with their hideous eyes.

  They walked out and the horrible pink town was gone. When they turned around the house they’d walked out of had disappeared too. They were on a darkling plain by themselves.

  Camille lay in the dirt weeping. Joan stood over her.

  “You did it,” Joan said, almost as if she didn’t believe it herself.

  “Finally,” Camille said, “I finally stood up for myself. Too late of course, but at least once.”

  Shadowheart handed Jeremy her trident. She walked over and put her hands on Camille’s shoulders. “You’re free, Camille. You have broken your torment.”

  The girl laughed with a wild bitterness. “Oh, not hardly. I carry my torment with me.”

  “We have another chance, Camille,” Joan said. “Jeremy and Shadowheart were sent by the powers to rescue us. We’ll be together again.”

  “I hate you,” Camille screamed. “You ruined my life. Everything I wanted to hide, you pulled out for the whole world to see. Why couldn’t you wait?”

  “Wait,” Joan said, anger reddening her cheeks. “For how long? Wait for what obscenity to happen before you acted?”

  “I’d have gotten stronger. I’d have put an end to it.”

  Joan shook her head in sorrow. “You have no strength, Camille. You were always the victim.”

  “Is that the real reason?” Camille said, anger cutting through her own tears. “Or is that you felt you could live my life better than I could? You wanted to be the real one.”

  Joan looked stricken and fell back from Camille. “No,” she muttered, “that’s not true.”

  “It is,” Camille shouted. “You wanted the same things I did: to go out to the movies, to go on vacation, to make Christmas cookies, to have a date with a boy. You wanted our body and my life.”

  Joan staggered to lean against the Land Rover. “Could this be true? Is this more of my sin? I deemed you weak, worthless, pushed you out of the way to better deal with it all? Was this about my pride?”

  “It’s my life,” Camille said. “Well, it was. For better or likely for worse, I lived it as I did.”

  Joan looked at her, her face drawn tight. “I could not stand by and allow such evil to go unchecked. It was you, Camille, who imagined me into what I am. How else did you expect me to act?

  “You wanted to make Christmas cookies, to travel, to date? At least there was some chance that you could have these things. What would I have beyond the moments of being alive when you dreamt of me? What was there for Joan?”

  “You’re not real,” Camille insisted.

  “Am I not here in Hell? Do I not suffer? Here I am real.”

  “You’re not,” Camille sobbed.

  “If she is part of you,” Jeremy said softly, “a part of your soul, then you must take her back to be whole.”

  Camille shook her head.

  “Do you hate me so?” Joan whispered.

  “Hate you? Yes, but far less than I despise myself. I hate that you’re so much better than me. Pure, where I’m… I’m pathetic, Joan. If we were still alive I would probably have welcomed your replacing me. I’d have been happy to let you live and to become the real one. But that’s not even the reason. If I take you back I’ll acquire your memories, the memories of killing my father with a
knife. I can’t have those memories. I’d go mad.”

  “If I cannot go back to you,” Joan said, “where do I go? Is my only existence to be in Hell?”

  “No,” Jeremy said. “It’s not. I don’t understand this. It requires someone better than me to fix what has come before.” He looked at Shadowheart but the succubus’ ruby eyes merely gazed steadily back. “What I do know is that neither of you deserves this place. We are getting you out.”

  “Who are you to overturn the judgment on me?” Camille said.

  “We’re the ones who were sent to get you.”

  Camille shook her head. “Take Joan. She’s right. She deserves a chance. Me, I’m here because of what I was. It was my fault. I was weak. I could have told my teacher, my doctor, a policeman. Instead I stayed quiet because I’m a coward. I nursed my hate until it became Joan.”

  “Joan is not from hate,” Jeremy snapped. “She’s from love. She loves you, Camille, as if she was your big sister.”

  Camille turned away, weariness in every line of her body. “I know. She wanted to protect me. She was the strong one. But because she was strong, I never had a chance to be. When the crisis came she took over.

  “I wanted… I wanted Dad to stop, but I didn’t want him to die. He’d been a good father before Mom ran off. I thought he could find his way back. To be like he should –”

  “Camille,” Jeremy said slowly, feeling hopelessly out of his depth. “I don’t know that when a man goes that wrong, that he can ever find his way back.”

  “We’ll never know. My father came to abuse me. I went into that little dark place in my mind where I hid. That left Joan there. Joan, my lovely Joan, the creature of heroic charges and noble defeats, to whom right was right and wrong was wrong, took up a knife and ended all my troubles.”

  “You were a child, an abused child,” Jeremy said. “None of this is your fault – not the abuse, not your father’s death, not even your own.”

  “Wrong,” she said. “Suicide was the one hard decision I ever made for myself.”

  “No,” he said. “You were there with a weapon in your hands, blood on the blade and your father’s body at your feet. You knew you would be blamed for a death you did not cause. It was more than your poor mind could handle. No one your age should ever have been asked to face such a thing.”

  Camille’s eyes remained downcast.

  “I am sorry,” Joan said. “I destroyed you. I should be here alone to pay for my sin of pride.”

  Shadowheart walked over to the Land Rover and pulled out the Tablet. “Jeremy, there’s an airport fifty miles from here.”

  “Come on girls,” Jeremy said. “We have a plane to catch.”

  *****

  Camille sat in the back with Shadowheart, her head on the succubus/angel’s shoulder. Joan sat up front, staring at the endless landscape, responding only in monosyllables when addressed.

  They reached the airport on the edge of Tartaros where Jeremy dropped the Land Rover at the rental desk, paying a horrific drop-off fee. With the silent girls they pushed their way through a crowd of the damned. Jeremy saw a room labeled Pilot’s Lounge. He walked in. A man in a leather uniform with a white scarf gave him a look before returning to his paper.

  Another man displayed more interested. “Can I help you?”

  “You a pilot?”

  “Wrong Way Corrigan,” the man said. There was a mad cheerfulness in his eyes and voice.

  “I’ve heard of you,” Jeremy said. “You’re the fellow who claimed he flew to Ireland in the thirties because he misread his compass.”

  “Yeah, 1938.”

  “What are you doing in Hell?”

  “I was trying to get to Heaven.”

  Jeremy sighed. “Why did I ask?”

  “Can you get us to the admin ring of Hell, Pandemonium Airport?” Shadowheart interjected.

  “Sure, babe. You fly up front with me?”

  “No, she won’t.” Jeremy said.

  “Territorial, aren’t you?” Shadowheart said.

  “You’ll thank me later.”

  “You two and the kids, huh?” Corrigan said. “Well there isn’t much going on just now and I do have some cargo. Ok, 4,000 Satans for the whole kit and caboodle.”

  “What are you flying?” Jeremy asked.

  “Tupolev 134.”

  “Crap,” Jeremy said.

  “Hey,” Corrigan said. “They’re not that bad. Problem is all the third-world pilots who kept hitting the planet with them.”

  “Three thousand Satans,” Jeremy said, just to keep Corrigan from being suspicious.

  “Thirty five hundred, I’ll throw in snacks. We leave in an hour.”

  “Deal. You do know how to get there…”

  “Sure,” Corrigan laughed. “I just head for the ninth ring of Hell and we should end up in the first.” He roared at his own joke and walked off toward the hanger.

  The was no security at the airport, they simply walked up to the Tu-134, passing a brace of JU -87s and up the gangway – swords, shields, guns and trident notwithstanding. The Tu-134 had seen better days and not recently. There was a goat pen in the back and cargo was tied down along the deck. The front section still held seats, so they buckled themselves in – tightly. Corrigan leaned out of the control cabin. “Make yourselves comfortable folks. It’s a long flight and the transiting barriers can be a bit bouncy.” Corrigan’s female copilot was working through her checklist.

  “There are no airwitches on this flight,” Corrigan said. “We aren’t Pan Slam Airlines.” He tossed them each a bag with sandwiches and drinks. ”If you want milk for coffee, though, you’ll have to milk one of the goats in the back.”

  “Just get us there intact and in this lifetime,” Jeremy said.

  “You bet,” Corrigan said. He closed the hatch and the crew outside rolled back the gangway. Engines whined. “Come on, Amelia. Let’s go flying.”

  “Is this safe?” Camille whispered to him. “He can’t navigate and she never made it back.”

  Jeremy gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I guess we have to put our trust in a higher power.”

  “Never thought I’d hear him say that,” Shadowheart muttered.

  He looked at his voluptuous guardian angel. “The trip has been full of firsts. Some of which we should talk about.”

  Shadowheart looked scandalized. “Please Jeremy, not in front of the children.”

  He turned to look at Camille but the young girl was already asleep, exhaustion having claimed her.

  The jet started to roll.

  As promised, the flight to Pandemonium was long and full of bumps. Jeremy tried to talk to the girls, but Camille wouldn’t speak to him. Joan remained sunk in despair as well. They ate Corrigan’s snacks and rested.

  “Coming into Pandemonium,” Corrigan finally announced. “Thank you for flying Wrong Way Airlines. You can get your frequent flyer applications on exiting the aircraft.”

  The Tu-134 came up to the gate and a ground crew rolled the gangway against the plane.

  The four of them stepped into the brisk wind. At the foot of the gangway stood Velos, beaming up at them. “Wonderful,” he called as they walked down. “You got them. It’s a miracle.”

  “Actually.” a deep voice called from behind him, “a miracle is what you are going to need.” From inside the terminal a tall, handsome, red-skinned demon in an impeccable suit walked out. A gorgeous succubus stood next to him and a horde of Minotaurs and other demons trailed along with some SS troopers.

  “Screwtape,” Velos groaned.

  “Yep,” said the demon, “in the red-skinned, black-horned flesh.”

  Velos and Screwtape faced each other. The horde of minotaurs and lesser demons behind Screwtape rustled their weapons and looked on hungrily. The succubus standing next to Screwtape gave Velos a pout. “That stunt with the squeegee men cost me 8,000 Satans. I thought you loved me.”

  “Well, I err…” Velos stammered.

  �
��Honey,” Screwtape said, “personal stuff later. We got business now.”

  She pouted more.

  “I don’t look like that. Do I?” Shadowheart said.

  “No,” Jeremy reassured her.

  “Got a rendition order for these two?” Screwtape asked.

  “You know I don’t,” Velos returned.

  The demon shrugged. “Had to ask. Unlike some, I prefer that we do things legally.”

  Velos smiled. “Do you? Excellent, then shall we look into the legalities?” He pointed at the two girls. “What do you see there?”

  “The damned, of course; a suicide and a murderer. I know their story. Your asking around about this case brought it to my attention. Why ask me anyway? You’re the Legate; your side sent them here for punishment. You’re supposed to be preventing me from getting them un-damned. Instead, I find you staging a breakout. I can barely contain my disappointment.”

  “Merely correcting a mistake by an overzealous magistrate,” Velos said. “They offered no defense and in fact condemned themselves. Joan blames herself for Camille’s death. Camille blames herself for her father’s death and for not having the strength to put an end to the abuse in some other way. They do not belong here.”

  Again Screwtape shrugged. “Who does? But they’re the condemned.”

  “You and I are going to reopen the matter.”

  “Velos, you know I like you but come on, this is crazy. There are no grounds for rendition or asylum here.”

  “Untrue. You see before you something of a miracle: Camille Aldane, who suffered for years alone and in silence until Joan came to be, and Joan, whose love for her creator-sister was so profound that it gave her actual birth into reality.”

  “Very touching,” Screwtape said, “but what does it have to do with anything?”

  “Camille,” Velos asked gently. “Did you kill your father?”

  Camille turned her wan face toward the angel.

  “Velos,” Screwtape interrupted, “it's all over Hell on the telly. She stabbed her unarmed father to death with a kitchen knife. The SOB is down on Level Nine. You can ask him yourself.”

  “No!” Joan stepped in front of Camille. “It was I who slew the beast. True, I used Camille’s hands and body, but I am Joan and it was I who struck.”