Page 29 of A Serpent in the Garden

I closed my eyes, the firelight shining through the shell of my thin, wrinkled lids. Can you tell me about Hell?

Not much of a bedtime story. It sounded surprised.

I just want to know what to expect, should I make it there. What it’s like.

In what way? I felt him recline in his cell, scaly arms crossed over his chest. For the extended-stay guests, or the demons who run it?

Both?

Some souls think they’re dreaming when they wake up in the antechamber. They can’t believe they’ve done anything to earn an eternity with us. They don’t understand how a life of little cruelties can add up to what they’ve won. Some beg. They try to reason with us because they think we can’t possibly be any better than they are. That if we’re evil incarnate, we can hardly judge.

I could sort of see their point, but It cut across the thought. It’s our job to punish. That’s the entire point of the establishment. You can’t force us into a job and then turn around and call us evil for doing it.

You sound mad.

I’m not, he said, his voice brimming with anger in both clipped syllables.

I don’t think you’re evil. I just think you’re an occasional ass. I’d hardly equate you with the Devil.

There is no Devil, he said, amused now. Hell has no overlord. I’m not sure where whoever wrote that Book got that idea. Hell is run by a council. Eve was tempted by her own free will and then punished for it. Though I guess that makes for a less interesting story. Gives you all someone to blame when you sin. The Devil made you do it.

What does it look like?

It depends which floor you’re on.

A helpful description. I rolled onto my left side, which turned out to be just as uncomfortable as the right.

It’s not a giant black pit in the ground with an endless wall of fire, It said, as though the notion was ridiculous. There’s a moat for the ones destined for the In Between. A gate so demons can come and go. An antechamber for receiving souls. Judgement Day is every day, but only for a few set hours, so one should try to die between midnight and three in the morning if one doesn’t want to wait. The crimes of the soul determine which circle they’ll spend their eternity in. If a soul is guilty of many sins, sometimes the circle regents will fight over it.

Circle?

There are several.

And your mother is from a cold one.

She is.

And that means you are, too.

Partly. I have blood from a few different circles, but I was raised in my mother’s.

And all these—these circles, they fight for the right to rip someone apart for all eternity.

They don’t always fight over souls. You’re not all that interesting. And there’s only ripping in a couple circles.

I swallowed back the lump forming in my throat, my mind shying away from the images he’d brought to life behind my clenched eyelids. Imagine being ripped apart forever. The constant pain, the sound of it, the agonized, piteous wailing that must certainly accompany it all. The gore, the miles of flayed flesh, the demons with perpetually red smiles. I’m afraid of dying. Of ending up there.

I know.

It’s what will happen when I die. I killed the baker, and even if I hadn’t, wouldn’t I still wind up there? I can’t just suddenly change my feelings on His teachings, pick and choose what I believe and call it good. It’s all or nothing. And even if I could convince myself to believe in every word, the best I could hope for was to drift, if It could be believed that Heaven was no longer active. But if Hell wouldn’t have me, my most likely destination would be the In Between, a bleak landscape of fog where souls stumbled through eternity, alone in the dark. Their reward for turning away from His light. Surely I’d have some friends should I wind up there, but I would never find them. Everyone in the In Between walked alone.

I don’t know for sure where you’ll go when you die, but I doubt you’ll be damned.

But what if they won’t let me leave once we get there? Would I be delivering myself to my doom decades before I died?

He laughed like it was a silly thing to fear, and I’m sure it was, to him. He’d grown up there, after all. Hell was his home. Presumably the setting of some fond memories. You won’t be forced to stay, if for no more reason than you’re not dead.

And what will happen if we’re finally separated? If, if, if. If I made it to the gates. If I could somehow convince the demons not to kill me on sight. If whoever laid this curse upon It consented to lift it.