- Jessa Lucas
- Jan 8, 2021
- 8 min read
Chapter Two
Peter, Paul, & Mika
At approximately a quarter past ten on All Hallows’ Eve, I died.
When I open my eyes in the Afterlife, I assume I’ve been extended visitation rights to Hell. However, there’s a curious lack of raging flames at my feet, and there is certainly none of the teeth gnashing I’ve been promised.
All in all, if this is Hell... well, color me underwhelmed.
Instead, I find myself preoccupied with the worry that I’ve been eaten by an entire mouthful of brightening fog. I take a deep breath. At least, I think I do. Is this breathing? Am I breathing? Does eternity even have air, or is this some sort of outer space situation, where no one can hear me scream?
Whatever this place is, it seems far more like the armpit of the Afterlife.
Peering out into the nothingness, I lament how very little time I had to find out if Sabbath’s God was real or not. My feet trudge forward, and a long sigh escapes me. It’s just really disappointing to go into a night wanting answers and a pumpkin spice latte, only to end up, like, whatever kind of dead this is.
Omens, you perform one teensy, tiny forbidden séance on Samhain and the ancestors are all, Psyche! Come with us!
Death is such overkill as far as punishments go.
Color begins to bleed through the mist as if all the white is being carried away on a breeze. I’m standing on some sort of isolated platform that may or may not be suspended in space. There’s a mountain range encircling it, but beyond that—no sky, no atmosphere. It’s just a wide-open space, the stars grotesquely large, like they’ve been disfigured by a magnifying glass. It’s kind of beautiful, and kind of nauseating.
Oh, yeah. For sure no one will hear me scream in this place.
Looking down, I gulp. This platform is carved with a very large, very intricate rune. A rune that’s slowly revolving in the stone, crawling like a vine up and over the archways of more doors than I can count. Doors which are magnificent, and also make my stomach feel like it’s dropped out of my body.
Propped at the edge of the platform, the gateways are all different shapes and sizes, like headstones in a graveyard. This is appropriate, considering they should be doorways to certain death—instead, they seem to glisten with an ethereal, dewy magic that obscures the scene they contain. They’re essence portals, just like the one we tumble through to reach Spellfall from the streets of Paris.
Wherever those doors lead, I feel certain it’s not here, and it’s not home.
The archway in the middle is the biggest, and it seems to be the source of all this proverbial light. From it, materializes a short and stout little man, in a robe that sways around his ankles.
I have totally died and gone to the most boring place of all time: Purgatory.
The man’s eyes snap up as I approach, apparently surprised to see me. I’m not sure why he’s so shocked—there’s not exactly a line to get into whatever low-key Heaven he just left. In fact, I’m the only one here, which doesn’t bode well for humanity, frankly.
“Are you Saint… dammit,” I mumble. “I can’t remember if you’re supposed to be Peter or Paul.” I curse again, but this time in my head, because no one should stand at the gates of what could be Heaven, and say ‘dammit’ like they’re a pro at damnation.
Ignoring me, Peter-Paul busies himself with a tome that looks approximately eighty times his body weight.
“Sabbath’s going to die if she ends up being right,” I announce gleefully to Peter-Paul, as if he knows who Sabbath is and appreciates the thought of her reaction the way I do. Instead, he frowns at me, clearly confused.
This is fair. I probably sound very chill for a dead girl.
To be clear, though? I am not chill. No. Chill.
“I guess I shouldn’t make jokes about dying,” I mutter, agreeing with the sentiments on his face. “That’s kind of insensitive to myself, at the moment.” Swallowing uncomfortably, I wait as he pages through the book.
“Today is—”
“All Hallows’ Eve,” I answer. “At least, in my time zone.”
Nodding, the man brushes a crinkly fingertip against his tongue and flips another page. “Curious.”
Peter-Paul waves a hand over my face, and instantly a searing pain engulfs my head. Biting back the cry of agony, I clench my eyes shut.
Images pass behind my closed lids, playing out my most suppressed nightmare. I see her there, raging. Different. The wilderness in her eyes is now fully realized as my mother clutches explosive power in her hands.
My father raises his arms high against her. Her scream reverberates through my bones, and I realize that the scream is actually a name—mine. Everything is too dense around me, too thick with anger and sound. I cling so hard to the fabric of Gran’s nightgown that my nails leave marks in my skin. The world blurs to hazy, bright shapes because the tears of a nine-year-old girl have forever obscured the memory.
You shouldn’t have come home.
The light blazes, and takes her away. All that’s left is shock, and the deep ring in my bones that nothing will ever be the same.
Gasping, I open my eyes. The throb dulls in my head, and I unscrew my face. When I look down at my hand, the imprint of four crescent moons leaves a red emblem of pain against my skin.
I glare at Peter-Paul. If this is only Purgatory, I’m not sure why he’s busy making me relive the most traumatic moment of my life.
He cocks his head at me now thoughtfully, reading the obvious pain in my painfully obvious face. I’ve never been good at hiding my emotions.
Then, he nearly smiles. I can see it there, tugging at the corner of his lips, kind and fatherly. I kind of want to punch him for it, because out of all the unkempt, unready souls he could usher through into death tonight, he had to pick me.
“Michlynn Carrow,” he says, and wow, is his voice six octaves lower than I expected for a little dude. It reverberates through this place in a way I’m really jealous of, because my voice totally did not do that two seconds ago. “Your name is not in today’s book.”
“Is that good or bad?” I ask.
“It simply means you have been put here outside of your time.”
No kidding, I want to say. I’m a seventeen-year-old virgin with a lot left to live for, Your Holiness.
“No matter, I’ve found you here. There’s a note.” He points, very unhelpfully, to a page I can’t see and slaps the two sides of the book shut. Dust spits up out of it and I cough indiscreetly.
The look Peter-Paul is giving me makes me wonder if maybe he knows exactly who I am—more specifically, whose daughter I am—and how I wound up dead.
“What’s the note say?” I ask.
“I’m not to return your soul to the waking world…” his words trail off as he considers me.
“What does that mean?” I hear it, the awful quiver in my voice. The awful betrayal of my own fear—that witch or not, I may not be going home. That maybe the world is being saved right now because I won’t be put back into it.
So yeah, I repeat: no chill.
Peter-Paul sighs. I guess he’s spent a long deal of his own eternity putting up with the likes of me, people insistent that they’re supposed to be very much alive. People in denial. People pleading, pathetic enough to start making bargains.
“Please!” My voice cracks. “I swear I’ll never break another rule again! And I’ll stop trying to contact my mom!”
“Your mother…” he trails off, bemused. “Come along, now.” He motions to me, turning swiftly.
Oh, omens. Is he going to take me to her? This was so not what I wanted.
“I didn’t want to, like, travel to my death to find her. I just wanted to see her… from the safety of my own séance,” I clarify.
The pitter-patter of his feet echoes throughout Eternity, and I realize he’s barefoot. Apparently, it’s Casual Thursday here in Purgatory. Reluctantly, I trail behind him. He probably wouldn’t be barefoot if he was about to introduce me to a place teeming with burning coals and landmines of hellfire... right?
We come to a full stop at one of the doorways, a stout round one. As we move closer into its little personal atmosphere, the glimmering mist surrounding it shifts out of sight like a hologram. Now, it’s just a small wooden door with a nice handle of twisted metal.
I’m starting to feel faint as he reaches for it, tipping the door open. I don’t think it’s the prospect of Hell that’s doing me in. This is more a sensation of someone sticking their hand in my stomach and yanking. Tilting my head closer, I catch a quick glimpse of the room. There is fire, but it’s safely contained behind a hearth. The space is homey, warm. It reminds me of the house I grew up in.
“Quickly now,” Peter-Paul urges, ushering me in, but when I get to the threshold, I double over. “Oh, would you give up the ghost,” he mutters into the air, talking to someone I can’t see. “Give an old gatekeeper a minute!” He squats next to me, which isn’t too far for him, and braces me with both hands. “Come on girl, time is short.”
All I want is my bed, with the comfy burgundy duvet and embroidered feather pillows. And Sabbath, obviously. “Please,” I breathe, “can’t you just send me home?”
“Ahh, witches. Funny how you all pretend to give me the choice,” Peter-Paul replies, like it’s the most unfunny thing he’s ever heard. I’m beginning to think Peter-Paul here has felt very misunderstood for a long time. He clucks his tongue contritely. “Here it comes, then. She’s a fast one.”
The fog makes a grand re-entrance; the platform on the edge of the world, the gatekeeper, and the room beyond the door all pale as the shroud of mist sweeps back in.
Peter-Paul tugs at my hand quickly and I feel his wrinkled palm match up against mine. Something is burning into my hand, but I can’t see anymore. This strange place, and the white veil that’s come over it, are fading like a dream, disappearing like a photograph burning from the corners.
“There’s something else,” he adds, voice faint. “About the Claiming. Don’t—”
The pain in my hand is lost in the rapid assault to my senses, kicking all of them into overdrive. I watch the world vanish, and it’s given back to me slowly, coalescing from shadows into a dark room.
Finally, I gasp. I know for sure that this is air, so that’s a good start.
My gut steadies, and I stretch my fingers, testing their mobility. Heart slamming against my chest, I push myself up from the creaky wooden floor.
Outside, the stars twinkle, undisturbed. The smell of amber and cinnamon assails me, and the sound of a tinkering lullaby rolls to a slow, haunting close. There is only one candle left flickering in the darkened room, and it casts a bouncing light on Sab’s face.
I blink, terrified to trust my recently deceased eyes. And then I thrust myself into her arms. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Sabbath breathes with relief.
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