There But For The Grace (18 page)

“I’m fine,” I lied. Of course it was a lie: I was heading into Hell, the gates looming dark and ominous out of the silt-fine ashes misting down around us. I took a sip out of God’s canteen and swished it around in my mouth before swallowing, drawing up short.

“Can I let go of your hand long enough to dig out a handkerchief?” I asked. Azrael obliged me, and I reached into my inside jacket pocket to pull out an old, but clean, black bandana. I tied it bandito-style over my nose and mouth and tucked the point of the triangle into the top of my tee’s neck. I retook Azrael’s hand, and he nodded. As I thought, the barrier made it easier to breathe through this mess, and we moved on.

It was eerie, the ‘fog.’ Made more so by what appeared to be indistinct figures, slipping past us in the dark. It was as if we walked against the tide, the tide being figures as gray as the atmosphere and landscape around us. I gave Death’s hand a slight squeeze.

“Am I seeing things?” I asked, “Or are there people out here with us?”

“There are. They are the souls nearly through with their time in Purgatory.”

“So that’s really a thing, huh?”

“It is.”

“So these people walking by out there?”

“Have very nearly finished serving their time and will reach the fields even as we attempt to reach the gates. Their atonement has been made.”

“I see,” I said and tried valiantly to drag up what I knew of Purgatory from out of my rusty memories of Catholic school. I was failing, so I just asked.”

“What’s the deal with Purgatory again? I mean, how does it work? I can’t remember.”

“Purgatory is for those souls who have died within God’s grace, yet are imperfectly purified. They either have unresolved minor sins, or, unresolved issues within themselves that keep them from moving on into the presence of God.”

“Right, ‘
nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in Heaven
,’” I recited, Azrael nodded, though a bit burdened by sadness.

“My guess is I am going to be spending some time here myself when I go. Seems everyone should in some capacity or other.”

Azrael chuckled, “You humans are far stricter and harder on one another than Our Father could be on anyone. Our God is a merciful and forgiving one. The time spent here is mostly time spent because those involved have trouble forgiving
themselves.
”

“That’s kind of convoluted and fu—jacked up,” I caught myself, though who knows why. I mean, I was going into Hell, it was a little late to start cleaning up my language now, wasn’t it?

“It’s never too late for anything, Adelaide.” I startled and looked down. Miri looked up at me with a ghostly smile, pleased with herself for giving me a scare. I sighed inwardly.

“Point well made. Keep my guard up at all times.”

“Indeed,” she uttered and took my free hand so that I walked between both Death and War.

Pretty soon the man-sized gates, if you could call them that, loomed out of the dark and ash. They resembled the old and twisted iron of cemetery gates, and were malformed with corrosion, black as pitch, and nothing you’d want to touch without a current tetanus shot on board.

The ghostly shades of ash-covered souls were thicker here, at the bottleneck of the gate, as they slipped out of the narrow opening. Azrael, Miri and I stopped, the drift of ashes gathering over ankle height while we watched them slip free and walk around us. The faces, when I could see them, appeared rapt; almost beatific as they stared forward, up the incline we had just come down. I looked back the way we’d come and couldn’t for the life of me see what was so special up that way.

“You can’t see it because you’re alive,” Miri explained, and I nodded.

We moved forward and stopped once again beside the open gate. I sighed out and looked to the both of them.

“I guess from here I go it alone, eh?”

Azrael and Miri both held pity in their eyes and nodded. “Once you step beyond the gate, you will be absent the Grace of God,” Miri imparted.

“Yeah, Azrael mentioned that. There’ve been times before when I’ve felt that way. I don’t suppose this will be much different.”

They exchanged a look, and Azrael was the one to speak, “Except, in those times before, He held you in the palm of His hand. It is in the time when you feel most alone and abandoned that He is closest to you.”

I looked up on impulse and made out the Latin sign above the gates, twisted from the metal, and had to shiver. It reminded me of the Nazi’s message above Auschwitz, except this message didn’t say anything about work setting us free… I remembered this much out of Dante’s tale.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,”
I said aloud.

“Yes, that is what it says.”

“Well, fuck that. Hope is all I’ve got left, and they can pry it from my cold, dead, hands.”

Miri smiled then. “Fight well, Adelaide.”

“You can bet your ass I will.” We stood for a heartbeat or two longer, and I laughed a little. “I feel like I should hug you guys, but I guess that would be weird, wouldn’t it?”

“Not at all,” Miri said, reaching up. I bent and hugged her bony little body tightly but carefully, and I hugged Azrael next.

“We will watch from here as long as we can still see you,” he murmured, and I nodded.

“Thanks. It makes me feel better. I know it’s silly, but it does.”

“It’s not silly,” he said. “Good luck, Addy.”

“Thanks.”

I turned around and faced the gates, squared my shoulders, and forced my feet to move. Just before I passed through them, I sent one last prayer to Tab. I would keep praying to him, but if the entirety of Hell were outside of God’s purview, then I didn’t imagine prayers in Hell would go very far. In any case, I would still do it, but it seemed important I say one now, especially, just before I went in.

“I’m here, Tab. I’ll see you soon,” I prayed, and Miri called out behind me.

“You should find Merihim in the Third Circle, in a tavern there called the Brazen Bull. Knowing her, she’ll be wearing red. Ever since that idiot Poe immortalized her in that story.”

“Thanks,” I called back as I stepped over the threshold, past the gate, and into an even more oppressive darkness. Melancholy threatened to overwhelm me, but I forced it back, much the same way I pushed back Iaoel, who was attempting to rail at me in her own way. I was just getting better at ignoring her ass.

The ash fell thicker, and the wailing cries from out in the dark that stretched wide in either direction were both heartbreaking and unsettling enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck. I trudged through the drifts of ashes, which were, thankfully, not as difficult as trudging through snow, nor cold at all. About twenty steps into Purgatory, I stopped. I turned to look back at the gate which was just still in view with the way the falling gray flakes of ash obscured everything. I didn’t spend much time looking back, but rather turned to look ahead.

I started to choke up, but it had nothing to do with smoke or ash or whatever and everything to do with who stood in front of me. He heaved a great, sorrowful sigh and plucked his familiar half-moon spectacles off of his face, attempting to clean the fine ash from the lenses. I took one or two more steps in his direction and, ever cautious, put one hand on the butt of my right gun, ready to draw it if need be.

“Piorre?” I called softly, and he looked up, and for sure it was him. He looked confused, and I reached up and pulled my make-shift dust mask off my face.

“Oh! Oh, no! Addy-girl, no, not you, not here!”

“Shh, shh, shh, it’s okay.” I raised my left hand and waved down his worry and protestations. “It’s okay, Piorre. I’m here, but I’m not dead. I promise I’m not dead. Everything’s okay.”

He came forward, rushing me, and took up my free hand between his old, gnarled ones. He looked just as he had when he’d died, except without the grievous wounds and without all the blood. His skin was pale and his sweater vest covered in ashes. I felt tears spring to my eyes and sniffed them back.

“I’m okay. It’s okay,” I said again, and my voice sounded mournful, even to me.

“What are you
doing here
, Dear Girl?” he asked, and I couldn’t keep myself from crying if I wanted to.

“I’ve come to get Tab out, he’s here from protecting me. We did it Piorre, we did it, and now it’s time to get him out and for you to go home. You don’t belong here.” I tugged on his hand gently, and he took a faltering step with me before he leaned back, stopping me from tugging him forward.

“Please, you have to understand, Adelaide, I never wanted to do this to you, not to you… There wasn’t time. I was out of time, and I feel so guilty,
so guilty
, for what I’ve done to you.” He began to mutter to himself, and it was as if a confusion or a madness gripped him.

“Don’t. You didn’t have a choice. You believed in me when nobody else did. You took a chance on me, and I just hope I’ve done you proud. I just need you to be okay. One of us has to be okay. If you’re okay, then I’m okay, and then I can do it. I can make Tab okay.” I pulled on his hand, but he dug his heels in.

“
Please, Piorre!
You have to come with me,” I said. “You’re almost there.” I didn’t know what the rules were about liberating a soul from the First Circle of Hell, or if it could even be done, but I was damn sure going to try. Piorre seemed confused. He looked up at me, frowning, and murmured to himself like he would when he was puttering around the shop.

Finally he looked up at me. “Do you forgive me for what I’ve done to you?” he asked, and I seized the lucid moment for what it was, a gift from freaking God. I suddenly wasn’t so sure about His lack of a presence here.

“Yes. If that is what it takes for me to get you out of here, then yes. But there’s nothing to forgive, Piorre! Nothing at all.”

His eyes fixed on mine, and he reached up, smearing tears and ash along my cheek before something, seemingly past my shoulder caught his watery blue eyes. He cried out, and the expression on his face was one of shock and splendor. I smiled, hot tears slicking their way down my cheeks and I felt a surge of equal parts triumph and peace.

“Come on, Piorre, I have a couple of friends outside the gate, closer to the light. I want you to come with me.” I tugged on my old boss’s—my old
friend’s
hands, and he came willingly this time. I tucked his hand in the crook of my arm and walked him to the gate. I looked up at Azrael, who held kindness and love on his dark face.

“This is my friend, Piorre. Can you take care of him, please?” My voice held pleading, and Azrael nodded readily.

“Addy-girl?” I looked at Piorre, unwound his rosary from my wrist, and pressed it into his hand.

“You’ve got to go, Piorre,” I told him. “I still have work to do.”

He looked down at the rosary clutched between our hands and nodded numbly before squeezing my fingers around the hard, wooden beads.

“Keep it, for luck, and to remember me by.”

“You got it,” I told him, and I had to let him go. It wasn’t like I could or would ever forget. I mean how could I? He stepped out of the gates to Hell, and I nodded to both Azrael and Miri. The little girl that was the horseman of War looked at me as if I’d just done something particularly fascinating before she inclined her head once.

“The Brazen Bull. Third Circle,” I repeated, and she nodded once again. “Thanks again, guys,” I told them and pulled the bandana back up over my face. I’d gotten Piorre out, now to go find Tab and do the same. Fuck this fucking place. It’d gotten the last of my tears for a while, and it wasn’t hanging on to any more of my people.

I plunged forward into the dark and ash, and this time, I didn’t look back.

***

The wind picked up. That’d been my first clue that I was moving from one circle to the next. The wind picked up, and the ash blew, and I could barely see. The wind just kept getting worse and worse until finally, there was no ash left to blow. Instead, freezing rain pelted down, and in no time, I was soaked to the skin. Bright side? I was also rinsed the fuck off. The water that streamed from my clothes started as a muddy gray until even
it
ran clear, washing away the last vestiges of the ash of memory from Purgatory completely.

I pushed on through the storm, the howling of the wind barely masking the moans of the tortured souls caught in it. I didn’t dare look skyward again. When I had the first time, the clouds that boiled with lightning and hail had had shapes in them—shapes of naked, writhing people of both sexes—and it occurred to me that I must have crossed into the Second Circle, the Circle of Lust.

The storm intensified, and the next time I looked ahead, I realized that it raged in what appeared to be a dark, urban environment. Buildings rose up to either side of the cracked, blacktopped street. There were no streetlights, but the buildings seemed sturdy enough. I ducked into a doorway here and an alleyway there, fighting for every inch of progress that I made. It wasn’t working. I was just tiring myself out, and finally, it was Iaoel who stopped me. She sent me a vision of eating one of my power bars, drinking from God’s canteen, and finally of going into one of the buildings that seemed to stretch for blocks at a time.

“I think you may be right,” I muttered to her. “I just wish I knew what was in the buildings.” A big question mark floated up behind my eyes, and I grunted. I took shelter in one of the alleyways, snug up against one brick wall, under the overhang of the building’s roof. I chowed down on one of the protein bars from my bag, washing it down with the crisp, sweet water from the canteen, and gave a gusty sigh. I tucked the wrapper back down in my bag and got the impression that Iaoel thought it was funny I didn’t want to litter in Hell.

“It’s not that, Chick. Why leave a trail if they figure out I’m here? Somehow, I don’t think dead people eat power bars, and I don’t think Fallen or Demons are fans of ‘em either.”