Purgatory Hotel

by Anne-Marie Ormsby

  The mention of her mother’s name was too much for Dakota, and her head began to ache again as memories of her mother swam back to her across the years: how much she had loved her and how beautiful she was. And all those years she had been lying to them all; she wasn’t happy with her husband, she was in love with someone else, someone they would never know about.

  It seemed to Dakota that now, even after all she had found out about her life, this was the final crushing blow. She had accepted how her life had turned out with Jackson, but the only true and pure thing in her whole life was her mother. Her beautiful mother, baking scones on a Saturday afternoon, dressing for church on a Sunday morning, brushing her brunette hair into perfection before leaving their house to take the short walk up to St Brigid’s for morning Mass.

  None of it was real, none of it was pure. Her mother had loved her though, loved her enough to stay with a man she did not love just to ensure their happiness. There could be no doubt that Hannah Crow was a good mother, but she was not a good wife.

  Dakota had no words. Rage seemed pointless now, here in the dirty Bar at Purgatory Hotel. Her anger and tears would be wasted, for all they could do was to disappear against the grim walls, be drowned out by the endless storm at the windows. She saw finally that no matter what else she could possibly hear, it would do her no good to lose her calm.

  “So you knew about it all, I take it?” she half whispered to Jackson, snatching the whisky from his hand.

  “Yes, I did, only from my own snooping. I found out where you all lived, and on the way there found the cemetery. I went inside and chanced upon the graves of your brothers and sisters, and after that I went there a lot. Then I met Lula, and the rest you know,” Jackson replied.

  “You even knew about my brothers and sisters?”

  “Yes, Dad was so obsessed that he kept the burial notices of them all. I suspect part of him always knew they were his.” This set off a whole new direction in Dakota’s head.

  “Oh Christ, please don’t tell me you’re my father.”

  “I’m not your father, Dakota, I’m not, I’m not Lula’s either. But the others were mine and they all died. I guess God knew better than to let them live.” Danny sighed and finally came around from behind the bar and sat back down beside Dakota. “That’s another thing, you see, Dakota. Your mother was my first cousin; our relationship would have been frowned upon anyway, whether she married someone else or not.”

  “You were cousins? Christ, my dad thought you were family?”

  “Your father never knew about me, but it seemed that my genes mixed with your mother’s caused cot death in the babies. Back then nobody asked a lot of questions. Cot death was cot death, babies died sometimes.”

  “But so many, one after the other?”

  “Well your mother and father were both questioned to ensure that neither of them harmed the babies, but in all cases death was natural. Your father assumed that they were only lucky to have Lula, and that somehow he and your mother were incompatible for making children. As it happened, one night they got lucky and she fell pregnant by your father and you lived. You were their miracle baby, and after you were born she saw me less and less. She said all her other babies had died because God was punishing her for her adultery, but because she had returned to the arms of her husband she was allowed to keep you. The truth is, we were too close genetically to have ever had children.”

  “And yet you still had Jackson? Didn’t your wife ever suspect anything?”

  “I don’t know, she never said, but she seemed happier once she had a baby. After he was born, I never touched my wife again.” Danny looked ashamed, and Jackson looked disinterested, as if he had heard the story a million times.

  “Did you know all of this while you were alive?” she asked Jackson.

  “Most of it. I didn’t know that the reason I had no siblings was because my father did not want my mother; I didn’t learn that till I got here and he told me for certain that all those babies were his. But the rest, I already knew.”

  Dakota sipped at the foul-tasting liquid as she considered the fact that all stories start somewhere, every story has a beginning. She knew now that her story began long ago, when Hannah O’Leary met her cousin, William Shade. Through their own twisted and dangerous love they destroyed the lives of everyone they touched, and through this both had paid the ultimate price with their own lives.

  Her mother’s love for the ‘wrong man’ meant that one day she would have a child, and she would call her Dakota, and Dakota would meet a man called Jackson, and together they would start the story all over again, falling in love and destroying so many other lives all on their own.

  Dakota looked at Jackson and knew that even now, in the afterlife that they had earned, a dark and dismal existence on the edge of forever, she still felt that fire in her stomach for him, that even now she might destroy lives because of her love for him.

  She wondered what sort of afterlife her mother had gone on to. Did she get to go straight to heaven, to a more beautiful hotel, somewhere where the sun shone and gentle breezes ruffled her brunette hair, and live out her eternity holding the hand of her husband, the man she had loved enough to have a family with? Enough to leave the man she had first loved? Dakota felt sure that wherever she was it was more beautiful than this place.

  But then again, maybe Jackson had been right that day in the cemetery, all those years ago. Maybe her mother was alive again somewhere, a new person in a new life, and it was a part of that low murmur that was the backdrop of the Library of Remembrance. Her mother’s life was somewhere else now with other people. But she would not be with Danny this time; maybe she had a chance at a normal life.

  And how long might it take for Dakota to pay for her crimes? How many years might she have to spend in David’s temple praying for forgiveness?

  But part of her knew that she might never see Heaven, never feel the sun on her face again that this was it for her: occasional visits to earth to remember what living was like, the endless dark night of Purgatory yawning out in the storm as she wandered the hotel corridors forever, trying not to earn the wrath of the Punishers. She knew this because she felt deep down that there truly was no hope for her soul. She loved a murderer, and would suffer the aching stretch of eternity in this Godless place, just to be by his side. Dakota knew that she could take any kind of punishment as long as she was with him. He was the last trick up God’s sleeve for her, the one thing that would keep her in Purgatory, the one thing that she could never seek forgiveness for.

  And here she would be, as long as they allowed it, an eternity with Jackson, the devil at her door, her Loverman, until the bitter end.

  And yet might she be able to resist? Able to fight it out and earn a place in Heaven, able at last to be rid of Jackson Shade and be forgiven for her crimes? Only time would tell, and that was something she had plenty of.

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