Better off Dead Book Two

by Odette C. Bell

  Long before I jerked my head back and screamed, I saw a flash of Hilliker’s face. I was right – he was still controlling them, even from the depths of Hell. Which meant... which meant he was still alive and Sonos hadn’t managed to destroy him.

  The thought of Sonos sacrificing himself for me gave me the last blast of power I needed. I rounded both hands into fists and shunted them forward as magic escaped over my form. It was so bright, I looked like a candle. The two bats that had bitten me were thrust back. So much of my magic bled into them that they exploded. They didn’t splatter blood and guts across the wall – but instead sent shadows dancing everywhere that quickly disappeared.

  The remaining bats screeched all the louder, following me through as I broke the wall and ran into a barely finished corridor beyond.

  Their shrieking became so loud, the floor started to shake – my eardrums threatened to explode, too. But I ignored everything. I ran down this unfinished corridor. There was still construction equipment everywhere. It looked as if it was fresh out of the seventies. Perhaps, back then, someone had tried to extend this hospital, but stopped. Judging by the sheer destruction I’d seen outside and inside, maybe the place had become overrun by monsters.

  I still had no clue where I was – what country I’d ported to, let alone what city.

  Wherever I was, there would be a transport node – I repeated that to myself as, thrusting my hands to the side, I caught several more bats and forced them to disintegrate. Their dancing, writhing shadows played across the walls until they disappeared with no further fanfare.

  If the bats weren’t bad enough, soon the scurrying of rat feet met my ears. Darting my head to the side and opening my eyes wide, I watched them pull themselves up out of cracks that were far, far too small for their bodies.

  They shrieked – as one – their cacophonous sounds joining in with the high-pitched wails of the bats.

  It was loud enough that I thought I’d never be able to hear my pounding heart again. As the first few rats reached me, I kicked them back. They soon tried to amass upon me, dragging me down. I felt their claws and teeth sinking into me. But I fought back.

  All the while, I kept a hand clutched on my cross. As my fingers sunk further around the filigree, it felt like I was trying to meld with the gold – then beyond to the symbol itself.

  “Give me strength,” I muttered. “Strength to get through this.” I had no clue who I was praying to. I was clutching a cross, so maybe it was God – but it felt like it was something more than that.

  I thought of Sonos – heck, I even thought of Sato and Barney. Then my thoughts increased, encompassing the whole world.

  Though I hadn’t wanted to admit it, Sonos was right. All of Earth was on the line. If I failed, the Banished would be back.

  So I ran. So I fought. So I didn’t look back once, even though it was killing me inside to leave Sonos behind.

  I finally made it to the outside of the hospital.

  I heard more priests – saw more bats and rats. They chased me down, clearly trying to stop me from getting out of the front doors.

  Coming from every angle, I knew I couldn’t take them all on at once.

  So clutching that cross, and thinking of nothing else, I ran.

  The doors were right in front of me. The broken, tortured grounds of the hospital were just beyond.

  It was dusk – but it had been dusk when I’d arrived. It made no sense – as the long, dark shadows being cast by the ethereal golden clouds looked as if they were exactly the same as the ones I’d witnessed half an hour ago.

  I thought nothing of it. I reached the doors.

  The priests chanted as one, trying to use the compulsion charm to capture me again, but I was long past letting that work. With a scream, I finally did it – I made it out of the doors.

  But I did not make it to safety. For this was Purgatory.

  Chapter 7

  As soon as my feet hit the ground outside, I knew that this couldn’t be a real space. It was dead silent. Even though I could see the wind rustling through leaves, I couldn’t hear it. Even though I watched as crows alighted on the twisted limbs of the broken trees around me, I couldn’t hear them, even as they opened their beaks and cawed.

  “Purgatory... Purgatory,” I stuttered, that realization dawning on me. I could speak, but that was the only noise I could hear.

  I should’ve figured it out earlier. When I had initiated the portal from New York, I’d done so with the phrase where Heaven meets Earth.

  You might think that place would indicate the world itself – you would be wrong.

  Purgatory was a realm both above Hell and below Heaven. It was more of a buffer space – a place that separated both of those powerful realms from Earth so that their all-encompassing energy could not spill in and destroy this fragile planet with a pop and a sizzle.

  “Oh God,” I hissed as I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. I didn’t need to look down to realize that nothing came off my fingers.

  I looked up at that eternal dusk. It hadn’t moved. There were clouds in the sky, but they remained still, too.

  I was standing, just a few meters from the open door. You would think that would leave my back open to the numerous priests and creatures trying to attack me, but they stopped at the doorway. They didn’t dare step through.

  ... The hospital would be a node – an anchor point in Purgatory. And you needed one of those. Because if you were stupid enough to wander through Purgatory on your own, you’d never get out.

  As I sliced my gaze to the side, I saw a patient in an old, worn hospital gown sitting on top of a broken car. The guy stared at me, his gaze completely empty.

  I staggered back.

  The most powerful of the priests were waiting for me, right inside the open doorway. Their hands were even stretched toward me, though they wouldn’t let their fingers pass the door.

  I took a step forward. I turned and stared at them, then stared at the rest of the broken hospital grounds. Beyond that, I saw a broken city. And somehow, beyond that, I swore I saw a broken country. My gaze pierced through the landscape, because it wasn’t real. It was nothing more than a barren place – a realm where the only thing that was possible was simple existence. And the only purpose one can have in such a place is to wander aimlessly.

  As I shivered, I locked my arms around my middle.

  “Return,” a barrel-chested priest demanded. “If you wander in Purgatory, your soul will never be reborn. It is a fate worse than death.”

  I didn’t snigger at that, even though I could see the irony. Fate worse than death? How about dying over and over again for eternity?

  I took a step forward.

  People like me – practitioners who had worked both for the light and dark – had no place in Purgatory. We made too many enemies. Hell, I couldn’t count the number of souls I’d sent to this place. They would be out there, waiting for me.

  I turned around and faced the priests again. I knew precisely what fate awaited me in there, however.

  I took a deep breath. I tried to push through my fear, but I couldn’t.

  I stared out at Purgatory again.

  “Return, or you never will be able to again,” that priest warned in such a dark tone, he could’ve pulled the sun from the sky.

  It was tempting to return. Even the horror of being sacrificed over and over again wouldn’t match the... well purgatory of Purgatory.

  Here my soul would be awake, writhing within me, dying with every step as its dreams were crushed to create this place. In Purgatory, you existed to wander. Though the soul existed to explore, it would become locked within you, never capable of escaping, never capable of dreaming ever again. It existed solely to keep you tethered to your punishment.

  Fastening my arms further around myself, I took another step away from the hospital.

  “You will be forsaken if you walk away,” that massive priest spat again.

  I closed my eyes. “You’re right.
But at least I won’t forsake anyone else.”

  I made my mind up. Perhaps eternal sacrifice would be better than Purgatory, but at least I wouldn’t be taking anyone else down with me.

  With a terrified breath, I walked away from the hospital.

  There were other patients hanging around, sitting on broken cars or wandering under smashed-up trees. They turned to me, their clothes and bodies old, but nowhere near as ancient as the looks in their eyes. I had no clue how long some of these souls would’ve been here, but judging by the way their stares made me feel, it felt as if it was thousands of years.

  I’d only been here for less than a minute, but time was already dragging. It was convincing me that the rest of my life hadn’t existed at all. Everything that had ever happened to me had been nothing more than a momentary delusion – for this barren world was my life.

  I made it to a winding path that led down from the broken hospital grounds. I thought the priests were still screaming at me, but I couldn’t hear them anymore.

  I closed my eyes. I stared at that winding path then lifted my chin and glanced at the rest of the broken city before me.

  I could wander in Purgatory forever, coming across equally barren landscapes and never finding the one thing I needed. That was the point.

  So I continued.

  I’d always told myself that being dragged down to Hell would be the worst thing that could ever happen to me. But right now, I would take the open embrace of that place – and its seventh demon – over this. For eternity now beckoned me – a cold, lonely, never-ending demise.

  A single tear trailed down my cheek. I pushed my head down, and I began to wander.

  Chapter 8

  You lose your direction in Purgatory – because without a soul, you can have no direction. Most people wouldn’t appreciate that. They would think that it was their mind, their personality, and their preferences that decided what they would do in life. But few people actually understand the world as it really is. There are sources of motivation beyond simple preferences and rationality. It is that which gets you out of bed every morning. It is that which takes you on life’s winding journey and never allows you to look back. It is that which fills you every night as you close your eyes and refills you every morning when you open them.

  Without it, purpose melts away. Without it, achievement is meaningless. Because without it, you have no direction. For what is the point of moving if you do not know what you are moving toward?

  I faced things on that lonely, dusty road. I saw old souls, sitting down on their haunches, hugging their legs, rocking back and forth as the lost looks in their eyes overcame them.

  Everything around me was broken. At one point I thought I saw a car with a set of keys in the ignition. When I got close enough, I realized that not only did it not have any wheels, it didn’t have a base.

  “What’s the point? Why would you need a car? There’s nowhere to go.” Defeat swirled around me. I felt so cold, I almost wanted to collapse. Do that and I knew that I would lose the contents of my mind all the sooner. Those waking corpses I kept passing were people who had been stuck in Purgatory for so long that they no longer had minds. If I continued to move, I’d be able to keep hold of my thoughts – for now.

  So, though it was murder, I pushed on.

  “Maybe Sonos will find me here,” I whispered to myself a few times, but I couldn’t clutch hold of that hope for long. He had no way of finding me. That was the whole point of Purgatory. You didn’t just lose yourself, but others lost you too. It wasn’t only your own life that found direction with an outward-looking soul. Without one, even the strongest practitioners of the light and dark would not be able to find me, for they would have nothing to track.

  “But at least that means that Hilliker will have no chance, either.”

  I took the little comfort I could from that thought as I continued down the winding road.

  I finally reached the city. It looked a lot like a town I knew, but as soon as I tried to figure out exactly what one it was, the memory kept slipping away from me.

  My mouth opened in a horrified gasp. So it was happening already? I was losing hold of myself, and I’d only been in Purgatory for....

  I jerked my head around and tried to figure out where the hospital was – I tried to use my senses to ascertain how long I’d been walking for – but I couldn’t do it.

  I couldn’t even see the hospital.

  Maybe I’d... been in Purgatory my whole life, after all.

  The city looked like it had faced a nuclear apocalypse. Not a single building was untouched. I thought I found one that at least had walls and a ceiling, but when I walked in, I quickly realized there was no floor. There was just a hole that led to blackness.

  I desperately wanted to find a place to hunker down – somewhere to feel comfortable. But I couldn’t. As such a place did not exist in this realm.

  As I continued to wander, tears trailed down my cheeks.

  Unbeknownst to me, they trailed down my torn collar and touched the cross. It was still around my neck.

  “Maybe... there’s another node around here?” I whispered to myself. I tried to hold on to that thought – tried to make myself realize that it would not be impossible, but I just couldn’t. It perpetually felt as if I was on the edge of a never-ending sleep.

  I continued to wander. It didn’t take long for news to spread that there was another lost soul in Purgatory.

  Though most of the souls I passed were two ancient and decrepit to do anything, as I walked out onto an empty street littered with the carcasses of cars, I saw a man standing there, his back to me.

  There was something about the clothes he was wearing that sparked a memory in me, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was.

  He turned. That’s when I realized he didn’t have a throat. Where his neck should have been was nothing but steel poles.

  It ignited a memory. Once I’d tracked down a possessed man to a carnival. He’d consumed the ghost of a puppeteer. But it had become stuck in his throat. So his neck had disintegrated into the poles used to control a puppet instead.

  As he jerked now, his head wobbled. “You,” he hissed.

  He threw himself at me. Reluctantly, I had to pull my arms from around my middle. I said reluctantly, because in Purgatory, my sense of survival was halved.

  I did it just in time. I grabbed his face just as he tried to wrap his loose jaw around my neck. I kicked him off.

  He clattered to the side, instantly placed his hands and feet down on the broken bitumen, then scuttled toward me as his mouth opened wide.

  I went to grab my ring and call on my sword, but my ring had disappeared.

  He reached me. I tried to kick him back, but he wrapped his teeth around my ankle and squeezed.

  I managed to kick him off. But then I heard something from behind me. I turned around to see another possessed soul that I’d sent to Purgatory. This guy had absorbed the power of a monkey god. As he moved, his limbs continually expanded and contracted, growing hair only to have it shaven off as his human legs reappeared.

  With wild yellow eyes, he tilted his head down, bared his stump like teeth, then threw himself at me.

  But the carnival ghost was not done yet. They circled me, working in tandem.

  I managed to fight them off, but I couldn’t fight everyone off forever. More news about me was spreading. I turned my head up to see the building above me. I saw a man in a dark cloak. Judging by the way the fabric swayed around him, he was one of my old enemies, too. I dispatched him long ago. He’d been feeding off the energy of deceased children in a graveyard. I had not held back. I’d sent him to where he belonged.

  Which was here. I had never, in my wildest dreams, ever thought I would venture to Purgatory myself.

  That monkey god suddenly wrapped a hand around my throat and smashed me down on the bitumen. The puppet ghost grabbed my leg. The guy in the cloak jumped off the roof of the building, sailed down,
and landed on my gut.

  I bent in half from the momentum and pain.

  I heard more footfall.

  Staring through the furry legs of the monkey god, I saw more creatures running my way. I didn’t need to recognize them all to understand they were my enemies.

  ... So this was it?

  I had narrowly avoided being sacrificed forever on Earth, but in Purgatory, I’d be killed, over and over again until these wandering souls lost their minds. By that time, mine would’ve been shredded, anyway.

  I closed my eyes.

  As they bit and kicked and punched me, I closed my eyes further.

  I had no weapons – no one to call on. No hope. No love. No life. And critically, no light.

  Chapter 9

  I didn’t bother to fight back – there was nothing I could do.

  More and more enemies came. I recognized some. Maybe the rest simply knew of who I was and wanted to crash this party – I was somewhat of a celebrity, after all.

  I’m sure, if the minds of the monsters around me were still functioning, that they could appreciate the irony. Here I was, the Cursed One, she who could never die, sentenced to eternal nothingness.

  That puppet ghost was the worst. I couldn’t really remember the details of the case anymore, but I must’ve caused him great agony for him to be doling out revenge like this.

  My mind... it went to another place. I couldn’t really tell you where that place was. It just disassociated from my form. At the back of my head I knew that that was a very dangerous thing. Because the more I allowed my mind to wander from my body, the more Purgatory would set in. It would become infinitely harder to think straight. It would....

  As I rolled back and smashed into the cracked bitumen, another ghost jumping on my chest and smashing his fist into my stomach, I started to see things flashing at the edges of my consciousness. At first I just thought they were broken, muddled memories as if someone had taken my past, placed it onto a continuous film, then shredded it until nothing was recognizable. Here and there, I started to remember things. It was just faces at first. Some of them came from my adult life. The rest were from my childhood. I could see the austere gray brick building that had been Saint Fredericks. I could see the nuns walking past demurely in their gray and white habits.