"You do realize I don't believe a word of this," Jin said.
"Yes, and that's very strange. A Bodhisattva may choose to incarnate for any number of reasons, but normally they do so with their memories intact. It took me nearly a hundred years to track you to this plane and nearly another seventy to get a rough idea of your location! I hope you're wearing that physical body for a good reason."
"Why shouldn't I be wearing a physical body? I'm a living person."
He shrugged. "Granted, if there's a better way to patch into space and time I don't know what it might be, but incarnation does have its inconveniences. Pain, for one." Teacher felt the side of his face, gingerly. "For a moment I thought you'd broken my jaw."
"I did my best," Jin said grimly.
"You always do." Teacher stopped in front of the door that was flanked by the statues. "The guardians mark the way you came. If you really want to go back to Medias, this is the way."
Jin reached for the door, hesitated. "That's it? I walk out of this mad house and I'm done?"
"You most definitely are not 'done.' I said this is the way back to Medias and it is. There is a catch, of course."
Jin sighed. "Yes, I was expecting that. What is it?"
"Simply this: when you came down the passageway the first time, you thought it was deserted. Now you'll know better. Your third eye is opening, Jin -- " Jin gasped and reached for her forehead, but Teacher smiled and said, "Metaphysically speaking. It was already happening or I wouldn't have been able to find you. You're waking up, like it or not. Perhaps you'll remember more when you meet what's waiting for you in the passageway."
"What is it?"
"I can't tell you that. You'll deal with it or you won't, but it stands between you and Medias."
"Fine, so how do I open this door? It's locked."
"No door is locked or barred to you, Jin. Didn't I mention that? That's an attribute of Guan Yin, in case you were wondering. You'll discover the others in time."
Jin leaned close, examining the door. It looked solid enough. "It damn well is locked. Where's the key?"
"You're the key."
Jin felt a shove on her back and she stumbled forward. She stuck out her hands to block her fall against the door and felt a lurch in her stomach as her hands passed through the door with no more resistance than the surface of a pool of water. She flailed to regain her balance, failed, and landed hard on the cold stone floor of the passageway.
"Crap!"
It was several long moments before Jin could breathe normally again, and several more before she staggered to her feet, her hands pressed into the small of her back all the while. "Lousy old man... that hurt! Hey, Teacher! Where are you?"
No answer. Jin reached toward the door, hesitated, thought better of it. If he wasn't going to follow her now, that suited her fine. The sooner she was out and away from him, the better. Jin headed back down the passage at a brisk walk. Another moment and she was running. She ran until she was out of breath and had to stop; there was no end to the passageway in sight.
Jin told herself that this was some sort of trick. She could go back to her apartment, back to Pepper Street Legal Aid, back to her life. She wouldn't go down any more alleys or breathe anything Teacher Johnson set fire to. In time she could even forget that it happened, or chalk it up to a bad dream. She would be all right again, and if Teacher came anywhere near her she'd swear out a complaint and have him committed. She could do it; she knew the procedure. Teach the Teacher to mess with her...
"If I say it's not real, it's not real."
Jin started walking again for want of a better plan. She hadn't gone more than a few yards more along the passageway when she heard someone crying.
Fool me once... "I'm not listening, Teacher. Whatever stunt you're pulling, however you're doing it, I don't care! It's not going to work this time, you hear me?"
Jin took another step and the crying stopped. "There, that's better -- "
"Fix him."
Jin shivered. There was a rustle of movement ahead of her, but she could see very little. No matter, it was not what she had seen that startled her -- the voice had been enough. It sounded like some unnatural mixing of the cry of a lost child and a madman.
"Who's there?"
What approached her then was a living shadow. It was small, maybe three feet high. She couldn't see its eyes, there was nothing but a greater darkness coming toward her out of the gloom, a darkness in the shape of a child. It held what looked like a broken doll.
"Fix him!"
Jin's notion of running around or over or through whatever she met in the passageway died then and there. She stopped. "Stay back!" In that instant the creature's eyes became visible, as if it had only now opened them, only now truly knew that she was there.
"Please..."
Please?
It was several moments before the word registered, and the change in the voice, but even when it did there was no time to think about it just then. From one instant to the next Jin changed. The hands she held out to ward off the creature turned green, the nails became talons like those of some great cat. She towered over the shadow, impossibly large and, for an instant, she saw herself mirrored in the shadow's eyes. Not as Jin Hannigan, but a green-skinned horned demon, over eight feet tall. Jin recoiled in shock, but there were two screams in the dark passageway and only one belonged to Jin.
What's happened to me?
Jin stared at her hands in horror. She raised them slowly to her face, felt rough scaly skin, tusks. She felt a roaring in her ears and for a moment the world went dim, and for a moment Jin thought that the light would go out completely and she would never find it again, never find herself again. For an instant Jin hovered there, hesitating between insanity and sheer blind terror as if unable to decide which way to run.
The tears brought her back.
Not her own tears though she knew she must be crying; her face was wet. She ignored that. The small shadow shaped like a child was crying. It huddled on the cold stone floor of the passageway. Jin took a step toward it, and now she did not see a shadow at all. A little girl sobbed on the stones. She might have been five or six, but no more than that, with long auburn hair in ringlets and very pale skin. She held a doll with a broken head cradled in her arms.
"...won't let the monster get you, Matthew. Won't! But I'm so scared..."
Somewhere in Jin's brain she was still screaming, but for some reason she could not focus on her own fear, her own shock. That remained, but Jin could not take her eyes off the child.
That's all it was? A child?
Why hadn't she known that? How could she possibly have mistaken that little girl for some sort of monster?
"I won't hurt you," Jin said. "I'm not what I look like!"
It seemed a silly thing to say, even then. Of course she wasn't what she looked like. She was Jin Hannigan, not some demon. It suddenly occurred to her that this, too, might have been one of Teacher's tricks. Not real. She held onto that thought with all her strength, even as she held out her hand toward the child. "I won't hurt you," Jin said again. "It's all right."
Jin gasped. Her hand was back to normal. She reached up and touched her face. She was herself again; the demon was gone. Jin was almost giddy with relief, but she forced herself to concentrate on the child. "What are you doing here? Are you lost?"
The little girl finally opened her eyes and looked at Jin, blinking through her tears. Jin was doing the same, though in her case they were tears of relief.
"There was a mo'ster," the little girl said.
"Don't worry, it's gone now. What's your name?"
"Rebecca. This is my brother Matthew. He's broken. Can you fix him?"
Jin stared at the doll. It had a porcelain head that had cracks radiating out its crown; the body was of rotten and stained cloth. Jin didn't see how the thing managed to stay together. "I'm sorry, I can't fix your doll..."
"Not a doll!" the child shrieked. "He's Matthew! Please fix him!"
>
As the child screamed, Jin saw the shadow again. It flowed out from the body of the doll as if the thing was sweating ink, then crawled out to touch and flow over the little girl. In that moment her voice changed back to the one Jin first heard, the one that had made her blood turn to crystal shards of ice.
"Fix him!"
Jin did not flinch this time. Whatever was happening here, this was not some sort of monster. This was a little girl named Rebecca who needed help. Jin stared at the broken doll, at the darkness oozing out of it and, finally, realized that the thing was staring back at her. She didn't give herself time to think about it.
"It's you. You're causing this!"
The shadow actually recoiled from her, but in that instant Jin's hands shot out and she ripped the doll from the girl's fingers. There was a shriek that could have shattered stone, and in that instant Jin went away. She was in the passageway and yet she was not there at all. She was in a hundred places at once, a thousand, more. She was with Rebecca in the passageway. She was with a young man named Shiro in a garden made of stone. She was with an old woman named Pei in a temple where the incense was thick and choking and the sound of chanting never stopped. She was with a woman named Two Doves in a place of fire and choking ash. She was in all these places and more, and in every one she saw the shadow. She knew him, had known him for years past counting, and yet she could not see his face, hear his name. Then the motion she had begun at that one time and that one place came to an end and she flung the broken doll back down the passage in the direction she had come from.
"Matthew!"
Rebecca tried to scramble past her and Jin grabbed her arm. "That's not your brother! That's..." Jin stopped. She didn't know. She refused to know. Then the images started again, only this time they featured Rebecca, not the shadow at all. Jin held Rebecca and she saw the tragedy unfold, like watching a dream that she couldn't control: No fast forward. No pause. No way to make it stop.
In the vision Jin walked through a large old house lit with flickering gas lamps. That is, the house should have been old. The style was Victorian, as were the furnishings, and yet everything was new. She walked past a man and a woman seated at a formal dining table; their clothing was Victorian as well. The man wore a gray suit with waistcoat and the woman a high-necked blouse with puffed sleeves. He read a paper while she worked at needlepoint. A maid in a starched white cap brought tea. On a whim, Jin reached out toward one of the cups but of course her fingers passed through it. No one there could see her, as if she wasn't really there. Only she was, in some fashion that Jin didn't yet understand. She was there. And this was happening, had happened, was about to happen. Jin leaned close to the man's paper and checked the date: November 2nd, 1897.
"Where are the children?" the man asked. "I hear crying."
"In the nursery," the woman said. "Nanny's mother is ill, poor dear, so I let her have the afternoon off. I'll go up in a moment."
"One of you needs to go up now," Jin said, but of course they did not hear her. She barely heard herself; she sounded like someone whispering at the bottom of a well. Nor did she really think it would have made a difference if they had heard. Whatever was going to happen had already happened. It was just about to happen again, was all.
Jin found the stairway and headed up. The crying got louder, but that was to be expected. Jin knew where she was going, even if she had never been there before. The nursery was just off the landing on the second floor. The crying was coming from there.
Rebecca stood by the large ornate crib containing the crying baby. She was addressing him in her "big sister" voice. Jin knew she'd been practicing it ever since she'd learned that the new child was coming. Jin didn't know how she knew that, any more than she knew where the nursery was. It was as if she couldn't keep from knowing, and that included what was coming next.
"Don't pick up the baby," Jin said. She knew it wouldn't change anything. She still had to say it.
Rebecca lifted her baby brother out of the crib, though it obviously required some effort. Matthew was a large, healthy infant and Rebecca, even at her relatively advanced age, wasn't so much bigger than he was. "Don' cry, Matthew. We'll find Nanny."
Nanny's room was next to the nursery. The door was closed. Rebecca called out, but no one answered, nor could she turn the knob with Matthew in her arms. "Come on, Matthew," Rebecca said. "Mother's downstairs."
Rebecca carried Matthew to the head of the stairs. She'd shifted him to her hip and that helped a little, but not nearly enough when she tripped over the loose carpet at the head of the stairs. The scream seemed to last forever, but it was only a moment. Jin felt the vision shatter around her like glass, and in another moment she was back on the cold stone, cradling the sobbing child in her arms.
"Matthew! Bring him back right now!"
Rebecca struggled against her, flailing with her small fists. Jin caught her hands and held them, forcing Rebecca to look at her. "That was not your brother! Rebecca, I don't know what you've been carrying all this time, but it was not Matthew. He's gone. He's been gone for a long time."
The child just blinked against the tears for several long moments as if she hadn't even heard, but Jin knew that she had. Just as Jin had been forced to watch before, now Rebecca had to listen. Those were the rules. Jin understood this, even if she still didn't really understand what the game was.
"Gone?" asked Rebecca, finally.
"Gone," said Jin, as kindly as she could manage. "He's gone, honey. You can't fix him. No one can."
The child looked away from her. "I'm sorry Matthew," Rebecca said. "I tried to find Nanny and she wasn't there and I didn't know what to do -- "
Jin took the child's face her hands and gently but firmly turned her back to meet Jin's gaze. "You never meant to hurt him, but gone means gone, Rebecca," Jin said. "It's all right -- you don't have to carry him any more."
"Gone," Rebecca said.
Rebecca was gone, too. Somehow, Jin knew it was going to happen before it actually did happen. First there was an odd sense of absence, then Jin felt the very solid child in her arms turn to something like mist, then nothing at all. That wasn't the strangest part. That was when Jin had the feeling that this same exact thing had happened before, but she could not remember who or when. In another moment Jin was alone in the passageway.
Well, almost.
The broken doll was gone, but the shadow that had infused it was not gone. It had taken the general shape of a man, but when Jin tried to focus her gaze on his face and form she found that she could not. The image of the shadow was constantly shifting, like true shadow under candlelight or a reflection cast on rippling water.
"Show yourself!"
"A fine thing to demand, Kannon, when you're the one who's been hiding," it said. "I've been searching for you for such a long time."
Jin blinked. "Why? What are you?"
"What am I? I'm a man, Kannon. Or I once was, and whatever I am now is what you made of me, so don't deny your part."
Jin took a step forward. Only later would it occur to her that perhaps this wasn't a wise move, but at that moment she was too full of anger and adrenalin to care. "I don't what you're talking about. I do know you were feeding that child's delusion. What kind of monster are you?"
The shadow took one step back, keeping its distance. "And now I'm a monster as well? So sure of that, are you? Quick to judge. I suppose one could expect that, considering your nature. Do you honestly not know who I am or why I am here?"
"I have no idea, and you've confused me for someone else. My name is Jin Lee Hannigan. I don't know who this 'Kannon' is..." Jin stopped when she realized this wasn't quite true. She had heard the name before, when Teacher was listing some of the names of Guan Yin.
"Since Kannon cannot lie then Kannon really does not know herself. This is very strange, and I must think about it."
"You know my name. What is yours?"
"If you're telling the truth, as you must be, then my name would mean nothing
to you."
He sounded, no better term for it, hurt.
Jin walked toward the shadow. "Look, you can be stubborn if you wish, and you can think about my unfortunate situation all you want, but I've been rather short on answers lately. I'd like a few. Now."
"So would I," said the shadow. "But I guess we'll both be disappointed for the moment."
He was gone. Jin wasn't sure at first whether he just vanished or flowed back into the spaces between the stones and out of reach. She did know that there was nothing to be gained standing around in the empty corridor. She headed in what she hoped was the direction of Pepper Street, and when she found the door again she passed through into the alley beside Lovechild Florists. She could see the exit to the alley just a few feet ahead. Never mind that it or the doorway hadn't been there before; they were both present now. For the moment that seemed like enough.
Teacher was there, too. Standing on the curb in his too-big duster with the fresh carnation in the lapel. He stood under the harsh glare of a streetlight as the moths and nightbugs swirled and danced overhead. Jin staggered out of the alley.
"I see you haven't completely lost your touch," Teacher said, though I hope you don't think the next one will be that easy."
Jin took a deep slow breath, then decided maybe she would lean against the lamp post for a moment. It was either that or fall on her face on the concrete. "That was...easy?"
Teacher shrugged. "I suppose it's all relative."
"Are you going to tell me what just happened?"
"Are you going to pretend you don't know?" Teacher replied mildly.
Jin shook her head. "Dammit, I'm not an idiot! I was there! I know some of it. When I touched Rebecca it was if I knew her story even as I relived it with her. I knew what happened to her." She didn't mention Jeff, but she was thinking about him. It had been something like that when he kissed her, but this was much more intense.
Teacher nodded affably. "Remember that attribute I mentioned? After you punched me? This is the same thing, only in my case the vision just showed you what I was thinking, not what you needed to know to free me...for obvious reasons. It's up to you to know the difference and interpret what you see, and act on it, if the time has come to act. Part of you remembers, even if you still don't. You will."
All the Gates of Hell Page 2
