Chapter 27
Tell you what: hell was like a big evil torture-laden
hive. If you stood back from it, you could see there were all sorts
of chambers, going down and down and back and back, too many even
to count, with something yuck-o or boring or stupid or terrifying
or weird going on in each individual cell. As you got closer, you
could make out faces and the like. If you pulled back, you couldn’t
see anything specific but had the sense that lots and lots of stuff
was going on all around you.
Hell: nature’s other
beehive.
I could hear the Ant
and Laura having a quiet conversation; I’d been so busy musing and
looking around I’d dropped about twenty feet back. They must have
thought if they kept their voices low enough, I couldn’t hear them
over the screams and moans and bitching and tantrums of the
damned.
“Of course I jumped
at the chance,” the Ant was saying. Laura’s head was bent
attentively toward her birth mother; she had about five inches on
the Ant. Laura looked almost protective as she walked beside her.
“I had a chip, you know. The you-possessed-me-to-have-a-child chip,
and in all this time I never played it. I never wanted to. But then
I heard you were coming. That you were alive, I mean, and coming,
and Lucifer said I could help show you around.”
“Is she nice to you?
Relatively speaking?”
“Sure. It’s all hype,
you know.”
“I don’t, Antonia.
Could you explain?”
“Lucifer doesn’t
spend all her time thinking up ways to torture the souls who come
to her. Hell is—it’s almost a business. One she’s been running for
tens of thousands of years, with no sick time or vacation days. Or
holidays. Or even maternity leave.” And then she—did she? She did!
She actually elbowed my sister, a sort of yuk-yuk elbow
dig.
I rolled my eyes.
Boo-hoo. Poor Satan. All work and no dental benefits; sounded
terrible.
“Can you imagine?”
the Ant exclaimed in what sounded like genuine sympathy. I couldn’t
be sure, though. Since I’d never actually heard that tone from her,
you’ll understand my confusion. “I thought the customs line at
O’Hare was dreadful. That’s part of the reason you’re here, you
know.”
“What? What do you
mean?”
The Ant shut up, in
the way she alone shut up: she kept talking. “I, um, probably
shouldn’t have—it’s not appropriate for me to be talking to you
about this.”
“But—”
“Oh, look, there’s
Ted Bundy being raped and strangled again today.”
“Aaaiiggh!” Laura
clapped her hands over her eyes. “Antonia, I don’t want to look at
that! Please don’t call my attention to things like that. And now
please finish your thought”
What thought? I snickered but managed not to say it
aloud.
“I really need to
finish this tour,” the Ant said, sounding rattled and
nervous.
“I don’t want you to
get into trouble, so I’ll leave off it for now. But ... is that
part of the reason you’re helping her? Is Baal ... this will sound
so silly, but is Baal overworked?”
“Not so much
overworked as I think she’s lonely,” the Ant said after a long
pause. Mother and daughter had lowered their voices more, and I
ruthlessly decided not to mention I could still hear them. “She’s
the only one of her kind, you know. And she’s been doing this for a
long, long time. Ever since the terrible fight with
you-know-who.”
The building super?
Her mechanic?
“Yes,” the Ant
concluded. “I’d say she was lonesome.”
Laura stopped short
and glanced back at me. “Oh, look,” I said, pretending I hadn’t
been eavesdropping. “Kenneth Lay is being buried alive in
Krugerrands. Gah, that must hurt—look at the welts! They’re doing
that to him naked? Oh, ew, did you see where some of those
Krugerrands went? Hey!” I yelled. “How
‘bout in your next life, you come back as someone who doesn’t screw people out of billions?”
“Don’t taunt the
damned, Betsy,” the Antichrist chided. “Isn’t it bad enough they’re
stuck here?”
“It’s bad enough
we’re stuck here.”
“Stuck isn’t really the right word,” the Ant said.
“No one is here against their will.”
“What?” I gave up all
pretense of pretending I couldn’t hear. “Not even him?” I gestured
to Henry VIII, who was on his knees begging Anne Boleyn not to let
a French swords-man cut off his head for witchcraft. Old Anne
wasn’t looking very forgiving. “Because I don’t see an egotistical
pig of that size—and that’s not a fat joke, although there must be
Stair-masters in hell—signing up for hell of his own free
will.”
“But he did. We all
did.”
“But why?” Laura
asked, and I admit, I was interested in the answer
myself.
“This isn’t a place,”
the Ant began. She was speaking slowly, but I didn’t have the sense
she was lying. Just trying to explain so we’d get it. Proof I was
in hell: the Ant knew lots of things I didn’t, and had to break
them down for my understanding. “Not a place like Africa or the
Mall of America. You can’t get in your car and find
it.
“Hell is a zone, a
plane, where spirits can visit. Any spirits. At any time. You two
are special because you still have your bodies. We”—she gestured
vaguely—“don’t anymore. In hell you’re only limited by your
imagination ... just like heaven.”
“I don’t get it,” I
admitted, and boy, did that one hurt.
To my astonishment,
the Ant didn’t seize the opportunity to try and squash my ego or
cripple my will to live. “No, I don’t think either of you can—not
right now. It’s really, really hard to explain.”
“Nevertheless,” Satan
said, popping in from wherever, “I shall try. Thank you, Antonia,
that’s all for now.”
“Ma’am,” the Ant
said, and blinked out of sight.
“Wait!
Shit.”
“Have no fear nor
fret, Betsy, you’ll see her again.”
“Don’t you threaten
me, Satan. I just had stuff I wanted to ask.” Why did she haunt me
right after she and my dad died? Why did she quit? Why did she play
tour guide? Where was my father? Why did she choose to have awful
hair in hell? These were the questions beating against my brain for
answers.
“Is it true,
Mother?”
“Which,
darling?”
“Is my birth mother
right? Are you lonely?”
“Of course.” No
denials. No sarcasm. Just a simple statement. I won’t try to deny
it; I was impressed. Why couldn’t Satan be like this all the time?
“I’ve lived long and long. It’s why I had you.”
“What?” I asked,
because Laura suddenly seemed afraid to say anything.
“I want you to take
over the family business,” Satan said to her, as if Laura had asked
the question. “I’d like to retire.”