Quite Contrary (16 page)

I wandered up to door number two, chewing on a deliciously greasy mouthful of cheese, tomato sauce, and bread. This door had a wired glass window, and through it, I saw a badly wrecked auto mechanic’s shop. Tools and extra car parts lay everywhere. One car would have blocked the door if it had been any closer, and another was turned up on its side. I checked the handle, and the door was locked. Okay, that annoyed me, but as I jiggered stubbornly, I kept peeking into the room on the other side. My eyes drew to the pinup calendar on the wall, and the strategically not entirely naked girl. I smirked, swallowed my pizza, then clamped down my jaw so my gorge wouldn’t rise. A raw, meaty arm stretched up from where my view was blocked by the nearby car, grabbed the calendar, and pulled it down the wall. The hand left a smeary trail of red on the wall that didn’t look quite like blood or rust.

Yeah, I was not going in there without a shotgun. I wasn’t going in there
with
a shotgun. I wasn’t a moron.

That left me one more door and starting to wonder if there was a way up into the vents after all. This door was simpler than the other two. Shoddy painted metal, like a door you’d find in any basement. I opened it up to disappointment. The tiny wooden room on the other side looked like a closet, complete with rubber raincoat and galoshes. It had another door on the other side. If that one opened on still another closet, I was giving up on this way. I tilted to keep the bulky pizza box out of the way as I turned that knob.

It didn’t open. What did happen was that the door behind me slammed shut so hard it shoved my wedged foot out of the way, and I fell on my butt onto a wooden floor in a suddenly pitch dark room. The room creaked, moaning like an old house, and I felt it roll, and cold water seeped around my butt.

t was pitch dark, I was sitting on hard wood, and my butt was wet. Pitch dark was a new and uncomfortable sensation. I saw black, only black. The floor rolled in a slow, uneven rhythm and cold water sloshed around me, filling the air with a salty smell. With no light and the floor moving, I had trouble telling which way was up.

I didn’t like it. I shouldn’t be scared of the dark, but the jitters nagged at me anyway. Was the puddle getting deeper?

I pushed myself up. I couldn’t feel the water through my impenetrable boots, and they kept me stable even on a moving floor. There’d been a door in front of me. I rearranged the pizza box into one arm and felt for the handle. It took uncomfortably long to find it, but I did. Still locked. I reached behind myself and started groping for the handle of the door I came in by. That took longer to find. Not
longer
. I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. I couldn’t feel a door jamb, just wet wooden planks. The wet wasn’t just on my hand from the fall. Cold water streamed down the wall.

Wetness crept over my toes. I shifted my foot, and water dragged and splashed. The shallow puddle had risen over the tops of my shoes.

My heart got tight and cold. I wanted to panic, but that was just instinct.
Stupid. Don’t be scared of the dark, Mary.

I kicked the door in front of me. It shook, but that was it. I kicked harder, wobbling as the rolling floor threatened my balance. I’d broken doors before by accident. I could break this one. I kicked the handle, kicked it again, and kicked it again. The door shuddered, but nothing happened.

“Help!” I shrieked.

Someone answered. I couldn’t make out any words. My heartbeat nearly drowned out the muffled, girlish voice.

“Is someone out there?” I yelled. I hated the squeak in my voice, but now wasn’t the time for stupid pride. “I’m trapped in here and the water’s rising and I swear to you, if I drown surrounded by magic I will come back and there will be trouble!”

Another muffled voice. A boy’s voice, a question. I still couldn’t quite make out the words.

“Yes, I’m in here, you idiots!” I yelled back, and kicked the door again. Then again.

Someone kicked it from the other side. The door thumped, but nothing happened. A second later it boomed, hit hard. It still didn’t open. Light did flash around the edges.

I didn’t know what the loud crack was, but it happened twice, a third time, then metal clonked and water splashed. The door opened out, spilling water into the brightly lit room beyond. Water that had been up to my shins. I stumbled out into the arms of some other kids my age.

“Patrick, the walls are leaking all over!” squealed the goth girl.

“I told them I heard a voice,” insisted a Japanese looking first grader as she threw her arms around my waist. I didn’t feel inclined to push her away.

“It’s only leaking around the edges. We can caulk that,” the tallest boy insisted, stepping into the closet.

The boy with the wide shoulders moved me into the goth girl’s arms, and the brown haired girl slipped away from me too, letting another boy support me from the other side. The two who’d let go of me joined the tall boy in the closet, running their hands over the walls. The girl had a rusty metal toolbox.

“It’s leaking around every edge. Every plank,” said the brown haired girl solemnly.

“We can’t seal all of them, Patrick. If we did, the wall still might split,” agreed the broad-shouldered boy. He was older than me. Early high school. Big, like an athlete, with deeply tanned skin.

The tall boy with the dirty blonde hair must have been Patrick. Definitely high school, probably not a senior. “No choice, then. It’s just a closet. We’ll have to abandon it.” He sounded reluctant.

The three of them got busy. They left the closet, shutting the door and jamming the broken knob back in. The tanned jock nailed wedges in with a hammer from the toolbox, and they packed a roll of gooey black stuff into every crack. Opening the door had spilled water all over the floor, but if any had been leaking before, it wasn’t now. Then, apparently just to be sure, they nailed two wooden boards over the door.

That gave me time to get my bearings. I’d been wrong, and the room wasn’t brightly lit. One oil lamp hung on the wall. It had seemed like a glare after the blackness of the closet, that’s all. Floor, ceiling, walls, the room was wood. Wood creaked and groaned faintly in the background. The floor rolled, but darkness had deceived me there, too. It wasn’t bad. A wooden table and chair rested against one wall, and a faded map covered another.

“I’m on a ship, right?” I asked.

“Kind of,” said the goth girl behind me. The blond goth girl. She wasn’t Valdis, but her pale hair was trying. The ragged black lace dress didn’t match that look at all. Her words did. “The truth is, you’re dead. I’m sorry.” Regret made her sound sincere.

“Welcome to Purgatory,” grunted the brown haired girl as she twisted the doorknob, jamming the broken base into its socket tighter.

“Pizza,” broke in the brown haired boy holding me, “That box smells like pizza. It’s a pizza box. Please tell me you have pizza.”

Apparently, dead people still like pizza. Each of the six took a slice, and left one for me. I’d already had one, not to mention drinking from Rose’s pool, but it kept me from yelling at them for taking my pizza. That would have been dumb, but like me. So I ate another slice, stuffed myself until I bulged, and figured I’d have wasted the rest anyway.

The seven-year-old tore into hers, but her tiny bites took a while to finish it off. The brown-haired boy my age wolfed his down, but all the rest ate carefully, savoring every bite. Occasionally, they took sips from a big jug of what turned out to be orange juice, but mostly they tried to enjoy it. I couldn’t blame them. Goblins make great pizza.

The boy my age finished first, and as he swallowed the last bite of crust, he spoke first, holding his hand out to me and introducing himself, “I’m Stephen. Welcome to Hell. It’s the place where there’s never any pizza.”

“Purgatory,” corrected the brown haired girl. She spoke calmly. She didn’t lean against a wall; she just stood straight upright. Quiet, serene, she ate slowly and with unfocused eyes as she enjoyed the taste. That was the look you got on kids whose parents had really abused them badly. Her brown skirt and plaid flannel shirt screamed the same thing. She looked dull, deliberately.

While I didn’t shake Stephen’s hand, Patrick cut in, “I’m Patrick. I can’t say for sure that you’re dead, or any of us are dead.”

“You feel alive because this is Purgatory. That means it’s not over, and you still have a chance,” said the brown haired girl, without a flicker of emotion.

The goth had propped herself against the corner. She’d taken it before I could, which said as much to me as the brown haired girl’s deliberate mildness. She was about my height, but she did have slightly more curves than a stick under that dress. The dress really went all the way. Threadbare as it was, that was a lot of lace, and she wore lace gloves, too. “He doesn’t want to scare you,” she told me, “But you need to know. You’re dead. We’re all dead. We have to accept it and keep moving. I feel alive, but I got here by dying, and so did everyone else here.” She lifted her slice of pizza, added quickly, “I’m Rainbow,” and took a bite so she wouldn’t have to explain.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t die,” I countered, and ripped off the last chunk of cheese from my own slice. I didn’t want the crust, and I was about the toss it to Stephen, then thought better of it and threw it to the little girl. She caught it in both hands and gnawed with fierce delight.

“No one remembers dying, but I shut myself in a refrigerator. I’m pretty sure I didn’t live through that,” Stephen remarked, trying hard to sound flippant.

The broad shouldered boy, definitely a high schooler, added, “I fell off our boat in a storm, and Patrick pulled me out of a flooded compartment here.” When my eyes turned to him, he added, “Francis.”

“My stupid brother locked me in the trunk of a car. I’m Joe!” Grousing turned to enthusiastic greeting before I stopped wincing from the image she’d painted.

I guess I had to introduce myself. “I’m Mary.”

That got everyone’s attention. When they all looked at her, the brown haired girl told them, “I’ll go by Maria. I don’t have any reason to mind, anymore. When I face the sun again, I should do it with my given name.”

“Speaking of which,” Patrick announced pointedly.

Rainbow nodded. “The floor is wet in here anyway.” Everyone filed through one of the doors into another badly lit wooden room, and kept walking.

Passing through doorways, they had to form a ragged line, and I followed along reluctantly at the back. That put Rainbow in front of me and a little to the side, and she went on over her shoulder, “I threw myself into a well. I was trying to kill myself. I thought I had problems, but mostly I had a lot of stupid.”

I smirked. “I don’t know. I let someone dare me into being locked in a crawlspace in an abandoned house.”

Okay, that did not sound like something I’d survived. I wasn’t going to fall for this being dead business, but I could see why they had. Rainbow let it pass, but she was letting it pass.

That annoyed me, so to stop myself from being nasty about it I asked, “Where are we going?”

“Up,” Rainbow said.

“Towards salvation,” Maria added.

“Towards the sun,” Patrick didn’t try to disguise the longing in his voice at all.