“I think I found where it should be,” began Betty from the shadowy distance. Dakota followed Betty’s voice and raced over to where she stood, her hand resting on a gap in the books.
“What? It’s not here?”
“No, love. Looks like someone else is interested in him, too!” Dakota felt lost suddenly. What should she do now? Run through the library asking anyone she met if they had Jackson’s book?
“Problem is, sweetie, you can’t just go and demand everyone hands over their book. You might just have to come back another time. Besides, it would probably take you all week to search every corner of this place for everybody who’s in here.” Dakota felt deflated suddenly, as though she had been let down at the last minute. She would have to keep trolling through her past for more evidence, more clues to help her solve the elusive mystery of her death. In her mind, she was completely convinced that Jackson had killed her, but she needed to know. She needed to see it happen.
“Hang on… I’m so stupid! You can read the end of my book for me! Save me reading it all, you can read it!” Dakota half yelled excitedly. She picked up her book and thrust it towards Betty who had a slightly less excited look on her face.
“I don’t know, love, it seems like cheating… I wouldn’t ask you to read mine.”
“But you are reading my past life. Why not my last one?”
“It’s different… it’s the one that matters most, isn’t it? Your last chance to get it right? And you didn’t get it right for some reason, so… maybe you should be reading it?” Betty replied uncomfortably.
Dakota looked disappointedly at the book and then back at Betty.
“Could you just look and see if you can see the last page?” Dakota pleaded. Betty leant forward and flicked to the last page silently. Then she laughed.
“No, love, it won’t let me,” Betty said, shaking her head.
“Why’d you laugh then?”
“It said… ‘Perhaps you should be reading your own last page, Betty.’”
“This place is stupid. You can read that book but not this one? This place is just so fucked up it’s not even funny!” Dakota threw a brief tantrum and then sat down to realise that this place had its own rules and they changed whenever they saw fit.
“I think I’ll go home, Betty. If I go back, I will know. There might be some clue as to what happened. Lula might still be living with him. I need to warn her!” She filled with panic again.
“Do you think he would hurt her, too?” Betty asked. “Sorry, but it seemed to me that you were an obsession that he could only end by one of you dying! He might never hurt another thing as long as he lives! But if you want to go back, you go. I’ll stay here and read more of your lives. If they’re as racy as the last one I read, I might just have to read ’em all!” She giggled.
“OK, if I don’t get anything, I’ll come back here and carry on reading, myself,” she said and smiled weakly. Betty patted her arm affectionately and turned back to the reading table.
“You be careful going back home, dear. Last time you went took it out of you; you need to be strong,” said Betty, wagging a motherly finger at her as she turned for a moment in the dark of the library.
On her way out, Dakota paused at the door to the Bar. Through the frosted glass on the door, she saw the dim glow of the table lamps and the brighter glow of the bar area. She thought of Danny being stuck in there for all eternity, forced forever to serve alcohol to the dregs of humanity, listening to their woes and seeing the horror in their eyes as they recalled past transgressions, never able to partake in the mind-numbing, deepening blankets of drunkenness.
She pushed the door open slightly and peered through the soft-edged gloom of the Bar, past the tables and chairs and through the layer of cigarette smoke to the silhouetted figures by the shiny-topped wooden bar. She recognised Danny’s shape sitting on a bar stool, his head resting on his hand holding a cigarette, smoke curling up into the dark air. He was listening intently to a person sitting beside him, whose back was turned to her. She decided she had nothing to say to Danny right then. She felt bad that she had lost her temper with him before, but she didn’t have it in her to apologise, so she decided to leave him with his companion. But just before she closed the door, he looked across at her in time to catch a smile on her lips, a smile he half returned, with a look of surprise in his eyes.
EIGHTEEN: Down Amongst the Living
It was early evening. The last remnants of the day were slipping lower beyond the houses she could see through the window. Cars passed by, oblivious to anything but their own worlds, each car, a life that was a secret from her.
Dakota wandered down the hall and paused in front of the photo her father had taken of the Dakota Badlands before she was born. She had that feeling again, of wilderness and wide-open spaces, of endless dark and unforgiving terrain. She felt so alone among the living; it accentuated the feelings of eternity and separation. She was dead. She was dead and nothing would ever bring her back – nothing to jolt her physical body back into motion. Her dead eyes were closed forever while the eyes death had given her could never shut again. No amount of sleep would relieve her of the burdens of eternity. Nothing would ever be good again.
Somewhere in the twilight house she could hear her sister’s voice, talking through tears.
She was on the telephone in the lounge, her head resting on a hand full of soggy tissues, her bloodshot eyes staring through her sister’s ghost.
Dakota felt a lump rise in her throat. To see Lula now, knowing what she had done to her in life, made her feel more sadness than she had felt so far since waking up in Purgatory. Poor Lula, alone again, no brothers or sisters or parents to help her through her grief, no hope that there might be a replacement for her dead sister. Dakota was just another baby she couldn’t save. But she guessed that her body hadn’t been found yet, and that poor Lula was still thinking her little sister was alive somewhere, not dead and alone out in the woods.
She wanted so badly to tell Lula it wasn’t her fault – that she could never have known what Jackson was like. She wondered if Lula knew yet. Had Jackson confessed to years of secrecy with Dakota? Had he confessed out of guilt and used that excuse to leave her?
Dakota wished that it had all come back to her, that at some point, in a rush, she would remember it all clearly. Yet nothing came to her unless she was staring into the pages of her life, unfolding out in front of her, metamorphosing into the hideous monster her life became in the end.
Dakota could tell Jackson wasn’t in the house. She could feel all the empty spaces in the house, closing in on themselves and whispering of all they had seen.
Lula was discussing Dakota's disappearance with whoever was on the other end of the phone call.
“I know her; she will write at some point. She’s just done her ‘running away’ trick again.” … “No, I’m not worried – she’ll be in touch.” … “No… no, I’ll be OK. I’ll see you tomorrow.” … “Goodnight,” she said and hung up the receiver.
Dakota looked sadly at her sister as she got up and trudged off into the kitchen to flick the kettle switch on. She could tell that Lula must have snapped at some point, as some of the pictures she used to have on the walls and mantelpieces were gone, no doubt smashed up in a fit of grief. The pictures of Lula and her as children that used to line the lounge wall were gone, leaving pale squares like ghosts of the pictures on the wallpaper.
Even the pictures of Jackson were gone. All that remained were empty spaces in the dust, sad reminders of a life that Lula had once had. Dakota guessed that her sister could not look upon the faces of her parents anymore, angry at them for leaving her alone.
Perhaps Lula knew about Jackson and that was why he wasn’t there with her. He might already have been kicked out by her, or run away. Wherever he was, she felt he hadn’t been in the house for a while, and she was relieved that she did not have to warn her sister that she was living with a murderer. He was gone and Lula was safe.
At last she came to her own bedroom and paused before entering. The door was locked but the key still sat in the lock. She found for the first time she had the ability to move objects, allowing her to turn the key and open the door. She stood for a moment prodding at the door, amused that she did not pass through objects like the ghosts she had seen on the TV.
For a moment, she thought something had moved in her bedroom, a brief shadow that was gone the moment she pushed the door open.
Her room looked different to the way she remembered it looking when she was fifteen. The religious pictures that had belonged to her mother were now gone, replaced by posters of bands like the Smiths and The Doors. Above her bed was a huge poster of Nick Cave, and for a moment it startled her in the waning light. Just for that second she thought it was Jackson staring out at her from the wall, but it was just the man he modelled his looks on. The same long black hair, the same smart suits. She shook her head as the music she now remembered playing in that very room echoed faintly around her head.
Her books were still there, worn and battered from over-use, and her music collection still sat on the table beside her stereo. It felt odd to be back there. She wasn’t comfortable there, and the memories of what had happened in that room were beginning to rise up in her. She could almost see it again, the movement of the man in the dark, coming towards the bed. She turned back to the doorway from where she stood by the bed, and almost felt that tiny twinge of fear and excitement in her stomach. The sound of their rhythmic movements on the bed, the smell of the sex assailing her senses; it was getting too much, as though the volume on the stereo was rising uncontrollably, and she unable to stop the noise and the smells. She was trying to cover her ears, close her eyes to the tidal wave of emotion and memory that was attacking her from every angle. She had not even heard Lula climb the stairs, but she heard her when she started screaming.
Dakota's eyes flicked open to the sight of her sister, eyes bulging and red, fear bursting in her larynx as she stared directly at her.
“You can see me!” cried Dakota, but Lula was hysterical. She seemed to be staring from the poster of Nick Cave to her and back again. “It’s OK! It’s me!”
The moment was becoming more and more frightening. The sight of her sister screaming at her as if she were a hideous monster, and the sound in her dead ears. Her sight began to blur, and she managed to make out Lula slamming the door shut and the click of the key locking the door again just as darkness swarmed into her eyes.
Dakota woke on the lobby floor again. She was looking straight up at the ceiling when Ariel’s face came into view.
“That little visit to the living was a bit more than you could take in your still fragile condition. Did you mean to show yourself or did it happen by accident?”
“Uh... I don’t know why she saw me. I wasn’t trying to be seen. I didn’t know that I could be,” she managed as Ariel reached down and began helping her to sit up.
“You got upset, didn’t you?”
“I guess I did. I was in my old room and I was remembering… stuff.”
“Stuff that upset you? That’s when they can see you if they are sensitive enough. If you get emotional you can become visible to certain people, especially family. You have to try and keep a hold of yourself if you go back. I don’t think you should go back for a while.” Dakota felt as though she was being scolded. She propped herself up and tried to put the sound of her sister’s screams out of her mind.
“Oh god, poor Lula! She didn’t even know I was dead; she must do now, at any rate.”
“Hmmmm… well, it’s a bit of a shock if they don’t even know you have passed on,” said Ariel, pulling Dakota onto her feet. Dakota wobbled uncertainly until she leant against the wall. She closed her eyes again, trying to will away the pain in her head.
“I went back to find something out, but I didn’t get enough time. Can I go back quickly?”
“No! You need a break from visits for a while. No, you will have to stay away from the living until you learn to control yourself.”
Ariel walked away, back to the room behind reception, leaving Dakota to try and steady herself alone.
NINETEEN: A Meeting in the Woods
Her head was still throbbing as she looked up into the dim light of the lobby. Residents glanced across at her, blowing smoke about their faces and sniggering at her. She trudged back through towards the Bar and muttered, “Oh fuck off!” as she passed a group of snickering old men and women.
She was about to walk past the bar when Danny popped his head out and pulled her into the dark room.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, slightly perturbed by his actions.
“Nothing, I just wanted to know how you are... you doing, OK my love?” he asked, offering a glass of clear liquid she suspected was neat vodka.
“No, I’ve been back again. I went back to my house to see my sister,” she muttered and surprised herself by taking the drink and necking it as Danny guided her towards the barstools.
“Oh dear, how did it go? Not too well, I gather, if you ended up looking as shaken as you do!” He laughed slightly as he lit a cigarette for her.
“No, not well at all. She saw me and freaked out, so they won’t let me go back now.” She sighed and smoked another cigarette, wondering if she’d smoked this much when she was alive.
“Oh dear, no they don’t like that when you get seen. Got upset, did you? Remembering stuff, I suppose?” he asked.
“Yes, I was in my old bedroom, and I was... well, remembering. I guess I did get upset and she saw me. She screamed so much, but then again, she didn’t even know I was dead! Guess they still haven’t found my body yet.”
Danny ignored her last comment and poured another drink for her.
“Well I guess that’s it for your investigating, then? You’ll have to wait a bit before you remember, I expect.”
“No. I’ll just have to keep reading until I remember it all.” She sighed and paused a moment. “I just really hoped that if I went back, I would remember everything suddenly, like my brain would suddenly switch back on and everything would be back in my brain again instead of in that book.”
“Oh... you have been in the library, then?” He seemed disappointed at the hint of the library.
“What’s your problem with the library, Danny? Why are you so against me going there?” She felt suddenly annoyed at him again.
“Nothing, I just wonder if you might be better off not remembering? You know, just getting by here like I do…”
“You mean just give up and stay here for all eternity? Why would I want to do that? I want to make amends! I want to get out of here and go to Heaven! I lived who knows how many lifetimes and I want to have a happier eternity! As far as I can tell my lives weren’t that great.” She was becoming irate now and her voice was getting louder, attracting the attention of the other patrons.
“All right love, calm down…”
“No! I am fed up with you trying to silence me! I want to know why I am here so I can say sorry! Just you are too fucking scared to face up to whatever you did! And what did you do, Danny? You are dreadfully quiet about that, aren’t you?”
“Get out before I have you removed!” he snapped, standing up. She had never seen him angry before and it caught her off guard. But in a moment her anger returned and she stormed out of the Bar yelling, “Fine! Fuck you, too!” knocking people’s drinks over so that a few of them lurched after her, ready to thump her.
Fury raged in her as she stormed down the corridor towards the Library. If anyone had tried to speak to her she felt she might beat them to a pulp. When she saw a figure up ahead, half-concealed in shadows, the tiny glow of a cigarette letting her know where his mouth was, she stuck two fingers up and spat out, “Got nothing better to do, you wanker?” before stomping into the library.
She didn’t know why Dan
ny made her so angry, but she couldn’t help it. She had felt so much trust towards him since meeting him. He was one of only two allies and it made her upset that he was trying to hold her back.
He had lied when she arrived, saying he was never allowed to leave the Bar, and that was the excuse he used for never making an effort to make amends. She knew he had been out of the Bar because he had told her he had visited earth once and had taken ages to recover. What had he done? What was his crime and what had happened to him when he returned to earth?
These were all questions she ranted off to Betty when she found her sitting in the same place she had left her, dozing over a large book.
“Not being funny, love, but don’t you think you should be concentrating on yourself? Whatever Danny has done or won’t do isn’t going to help you. You can’t force him to face up to his crimes; that’s up to him. What I am doing here won’t help me. But in the long run it might. And it’s my choice. You can’t help Danny. He’s been here a long time, and he will do whatever he wants. You need to focus on getting your head straight and your memory back.”
Dakota felt she had been scolded by her mother, but smiled at Betty. She knew she was right. Placing her attentions on Danny was only slowing her own progress out of Purgatory, perhaps another trick by the Powers that Be.
“I’m sorry, what have you been reading then?”
“I’ll tell you after you tell me what happened to you. I went to Ariel when you were gone so long.” She tutted and lit another cigarette.
Dakota filled her in on her unhappy return home, and how she had been advised against going back for a while.
“Well according to the Miriam Page book, you were once known as Maud Pope and you lived in London in the 1940s. This time you were lower class and worked as a house maid. It was all very basic... rich people, poor people, upstairs downstairs antics.” Betty laughed behind her cigarette smoke and continued. “After a year’s service, the man of the house, a wealthy gentleman called Harry Blake, took a shine to you and began having sex with you in secret. No one in the house knew and you were too afraid of losing your job to tell anyone. So you let him have sex with you whenever he wanted to. He was a cruel man but always saw that you had a little more in your wages than others, which was also a secret. It didn’t continue for too long, only a year before he murdered you for no apparent reason in his drawing room in the early hours of the morning.”
Purgatory Hotel Page 14
