All the Gates of Hell

by Richard Parks

  Jin stopped. Ship Island. Footsteps in the white, white sand. She'd gone with Joyce on a quick weekend trip...what? A year ago? Didn't seem so long. It was Joyce's idea. She'd said Jin was much too gloomy for someone her age. She needed to get out, have a little fun...

  Jin finally understood why she was dragging her feet in this unnamed hell. It was because, when she finished here, it was back to Medias and what was waiting for her there. And who wasn't. Suddenly the current hell didn't seem quite so bad.

  Maybe I'll just stay here. It's sort of like being on the beach. Except for the firepits and no ocean, but that's ok. Just as well Joyce isn't here, though, she loved the ocean... oh, damn.

  Jin had a thought. She didn't want it; she'd have given anything that was hers to offer to be rid of the horrid thing, but it was too late for that. The thought Jin had was that, perhaps, Joyce was there after all. Oh, Jin knew it was almost certainly not true. As she understood things, Joyce would be reborn in Medias, to try again to learn whatever lesson her premature death may have prevented her from learning the first time. Madame Meng had said as much. Still, Jin couldn't not be entirely sure. It wasn't as if Jin had known for certain where Joyce was going to go after her visit to the Tenth Hell. She could be anywhere. She could be one of those screaming people bleeding on one those jagged-edge trees. Jin walked a little faster from that point on, and she took far less interest in what she might see to the left or right as she followed the golden thread.

  The place it led her to was not quite so full and noisy as the plain she'd just crossed. There were still the blackened trees, but they were empty of either people or the bloody remnants of them. Jin wondered, when she thought of the bloody wounds on the people she'd seen so far, if they would die there, and then be reborn right back where they'd started, just in time for their next turn on the tree. Perhaps, that seemed to be the way most of the hells worked, though the idea of someone giving birth in that place struck Jin has highly unlikely.

  Maybe they just reappear, just as those who finish with a hell simply vanish. Different hells, different methods?

  Possibly. Perhaps that was why all hells had devils, but not all devils were visible. Even though Jin had the unshakeable feeling, somewhere deep in that Guan Yin inside her, that at heart all the hells were the same. She knew it wasn't true, at least not on the surface, yet she had a hard time shaking the notion and didn't see any particular reason to try.

  In the distance Jin saw a dark mountain spire of what looked like granite rising from the plain. She thought perhaps the person she was looking for was there, since that was the way the thread was pulling. It was only when she got closer that she realized that her path led down, not up. Around the base of the mountain the sand had either sunk in or blown away to reveal a deep valley; it reminded Jin just a little of the vast valley system that almost surrounded Madame Meng's mountain palace in the Ninth Hell, but this one was not nearly so grand; she estimated it was no more than about a hundred feet deep, with slides that sloped fairly steeply down but were more rock than sand. Jin stepped to the side as a nearby firepit shot ash and lava bombs in all directions, then picked her way through the resulting smoking piles of slowly cooling rock as she made her way down toward the valley floor.

  Now that Jin was a little more acclimated to her surroundings, she noticed something definitely odd about the section of valley floor in front of her. Rather than the haphazard arrangement of firepits, black sand, and old lava fragments that made up the rest of the landscape, the valley floor in front of her, a section about forty yards wide that abutted the base of the mountain, had a certain...ordered, quality about it, something that she had seen nowhere else in that hell. Yes, there were some large stones and the ubiquitous black sand, but there was also an almost total lack of small bits and rubble. More, the sand itself was ordered. Rather than flat and windswept, it was arranged into long narrow ridges that seemed to almost flow past the few large stones there, as if she were looking at miniature islands in a black water sea. For a moment Jin just stopped and stared at it in wonder, idly rubbing the spot on her head that was still sore from being smacked with that lava bomb. She was certain that she'd seen something very much like this before, if only she could remember!

  Oh.

  Jin did remember, though she was having a great deal of trouble believing that what she saw once on a trip to Memphis years ago was the same thing she was looking at now -- a zen garden.

  In hell.

  Jin ignored the faint tugging at her wrist for a few moments as she carefully traced out the limits of the garden. She was very careful to stay just outside the boundary as she paced off the length. It was around forty feet long and about the same across, and bordered on three sides by a line of flat stones, almost like paving stones. They were rough and unpolished, but apparently carefully selected for the purpose. The base of the mountain itself formed the fourth side, and within those boundaries the chaos of hell was kept at bay. Here and here alone all was ordered and serene. Jin just stared at it for a very long time as if the meaning of it would unravel before her and the place would explain itself to her, but nothing happened. Jin finally shrugged and let the golden thread tug her further down the valley to where a demon was torturing a little girl.

  "Mommy used to whip me too," said the child, who appeared no more than eight or nine years old. She lay draped over two dead limbs of one of the cutting trees. Her voice was weak, and blood dripped from her arms and legs to pool in the dark sand beneath the tree. Yet, faint as the voice was, Jin heard every word.

  "I'm sure she meant well," said the demon. "Try not to think too badly of her. Is that the highest you can go?"

  Jin was too stunned to move. The demon, a big green thing looking somewhat like an ape crossed with a bulldog, held the whip that it had just used to drive the child up to a higher branch; Jin could see the dark bloodstains on the limb just below where the child lay now. Yet, for all that was clearly happening, the two seemed like old friends. The child was not upset, not crying, and the demon, for all his ugliness and the whip in his hand, sounded like someone's indulgent grandfather. The strangeness of the scene held Jin in horrid fascination even though her every impulse was to rush forward, dash the demon against a convenient rock, and rescue the poor child. Wasn't that what she was there for?

  "I'll try," the little girl said. "You might need to whip me again."

  "I don't think I can," the demon said.

  "I must climb this tree," the little girl said. "Please help me."

  Jin could barely believe what she was hearing, and she could not reconcile it at all with what she saw. The demon raised the whip again and snapped it expertly at the girl's battered legs, raising an angry red welt across her foot. The child winced and reached for the next branch. That was as far as she got. Her bloodied hand lost its grip as she overextended, trying to go higher. She fell.

  The demon rushed forward as if he meant to catch her, but he was too far away, as was Jin, who finally shook off her immobility and ran to the base of the tree. She found the demon kneeling beside the still form. It glanced at Jin, but that was all. Its attention was on the girl.

  "I'm sorry," the girl said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I tried."

  "It's all right," the demon said. "You can try again when you're feeling better."

  "I think..." she began, and that was all.

  Jin fervently hoped with every ounce of her being that the child had merely fainted. "Get out of the way if you're not going to do something!" she said, but the demon didn't even look at her.

  "Very little one can do at this point," the demon said. "She's dead."

  I'm...too late? Jin drew back to strike the demon, but her arm froze in mid-blow: the demon was very carefully picking up the tiny body to cradle it tenderly in its arms. Then he slowly stood up and very carefully bore his burden along a well-worn path. After a moment Jin lowered her fist and followed him.

  "If you've come to help me with my duties," the dem
on said over his shoulder, "it's really not necessary. As you can see, I can manage my tortures very well."

  It was only when they had gone just a little further Jin began to realize just how long the demon had been managing. The valley floor beyond the one torture tree was littered with cairns of stone, several hundred of them, and Jin knew it didn't take the sharpest knife in the drawer to realize that they were graves. The demon lay the child's body on an empty patch of sand and started gathering stones. Jin watched him as he worked.

  "Who is in all the other graves?" Jin asked, furious. "Where they all children, just like her? Is that your specialty?"

  "Of course they were just like her," the demon said calmly. "They were her."

  Jin didn't know what to say. The thought that the poor child had been tortured to death in the same hell by the same demon for incarnations almost past counting was almost more than she could bear. If only she had gotten there sooner! If only she hadn't stopped to look at that stupid garden. She still didn't know why it was there or who made it, but it seemed so pointless now, compared to her horrible failure, and the reality of what had just happened there and, apparently, was going to happen again.

  "I'll stop it next time," Jin said. "Count on that."

  "I don't think that's within your power, but please do try."

  The demon finished his work and now there was one more grave among all the others. It dusted off its hands like any other workman after a job well done and then started back down the path. This time the demon paused when it passed Jin, and stared at her with some curiosity. "You are an odd one. I'd think a Demon Lord of your obvious stature would have more pressing matters than watching one poor demon at his infinite work. Didn't I torture her well enough?"

  "She's dead," Jin said. "No one's faulting your...enthusiasm. Though one might ask why you bothered to bury her."

  "I don't like bones lying about," the demon said. "It's untidy."

  Jin just stared. "In the depths of hell, and you talk about 'untidy'? Are you insane?"

  "I've often wondered that myself," the demon said. "Excuse me, I have work to do."

  The demon trudged past the tree while Jin just watched him. No point in hanging around there, really. If it was true she'd missed her chance this time around, then the time would come again.

  "I'm sorry," Jin said aloud, and to no one in particular since she didn't even know the little girl's name. Jin left the path and started up the slope to go back the way she had come.

  She felt a tug.

  Jin just stared at her wrist for several long seconds. The tug had been fierce this time, and there was no mistaking it. But... that couldn't be! The girl was dead! It was too late.

  The tug wasn't coming from the grave. Jin opened her third eye just a bit, and ignored the infinite nothingness it showed her long enough to see what was in front of her there, what was real. The golden thread was real, it was there, and it led to someone. Not the girl.

  I'm here...for the demon?

  Jin couldn't believe her eyes -- any of them -- but there was no mistake. The thread connected to Jin's wrist played out through the smoke and ash of hell to connect to the demon's wrist. The one who had killed the child even as she watched like a useless lump was the one she had come to this hell to free.

  "I don't believe this," she said aloud. "This makes no sense!"

  "Were you talking to me?" the demon asked over his shoulder.

  "I-I don't know."

  Now the demon stopped, and turned back to look at her again. "You seem confused," it said, "Come with me and let's talk about it."

  (())

  Chapter 19

  While Jin had been watching the demon and his victim several lava bomb fragments had landed within the boundaries of the garden. First the demon scooped up the erring rocks and flung them out of the valley entirely with its powerful arms. Then the demon fetched a crude rake from a cleft in the mountain and began to make the sand right again. Jin sat on a stone further up the slope and watched him work.

  "This is your garden," Jin said. "I didn't know."

  "Even a demon can get bored," it said. "And there will be a delay until Azuki-chan can return from the Tenth Hell."

  "And then you torture her to death again. I guess it's a good thing that she won't remember you," Jin said.

  The demon shrugged. "That doesn't matter. I have my role to play. She has hers."

  "Such a good way to avoid responsibility for what you do."

  The demon grunted as it raked up and discarded another stone. "No one avoids responsibility for what they do, though it pleases many to think otherwise. The only uncertainty is when payment will be demanded and in what form."

  "Azuki-chan? That was her name?" The demon just went on raking, but Jin didn't really need his answer. She was beginning to wonder what answers she did need. "Why her?"

  The demon paused in its raking. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean most demons here work in packs, torturing people who also suffer in packs. Yet here we have one demon, one tortured denizen of hell. You've devoted all your time to one person, this 'Azuki-chan.' Why?"

  The demon shrugged. "Have there been complaints?"

  "Please answer my question."

  The demon shrugged again. "Why should I? The fact that I am a demon and I am here means I am serving my function. There isn't much leeway for our kind."

  "Did you enjoy torturing Azuki-chan?"

  "The question is meaningless. I did what I had to do, as did she."

  "Yes. Quietly, with dignity on both sides. No screaming. No fear. No anger. What would you have done had she screamed at you? Begged? Cried? Think of this, then tell me it's a meaningless question."

  The demon raked harder. "I would have done my duty. That is all there is, and all I am. As a servant of hell, what I want doesn't matter."

  "What if you were wrong?"

  The demon stopped raking. It looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and went back to raking. "I see. You've come to torment me. That's a little unfair," he said. "Those graves attest to how attentive I am to my duties."

  "It was a simple question."

  "Simple?" the demon bared its tusks. "If I tortured Azuki-chan and there was any other option then it was for nothing. How shall I dance around the thought that what I did was wrong, that I picked up her broken body from under that same tree so many times for no reason? That I did what I did --" He stopped. "Please go away," he said.

  "Why her?"

  "It doesn't matter. I told you that."

  "If it doesn't matter, then you can answer my question as well as not. Tell me what I want to know, and I'll go away."

  "Demons lie. I know."

  "That doesn't mean I'm lying now and that doesn't mean you'll lie to me."

  The demon stood on the edge of its garden and leaned on its rake, examining its handiwork. "Because she asked me to," he said. Jin didn't say anything and after a little while it went on. "Frankly I expected you to challenge me on that, but it's true. I don't understand it, myself. When she came here she wasn't like the others. They are all angry, almost as fierce as demons themselves. Not Azuki-chan. You saw. It was no different then than from her first time. I remember. I had just struck her particularly hard and she looked at me. She just said. 'I want you to be my teacher.'"

  "Teacher? Did you know what that meant?"

  "No, and I still do not. I don't even know why I agreed, but from then on I was the one who drove her up this killing tree in our own corner of hell. I had to. And to answer your previous question truthfully: Yes. I-I enjoyed it."

  Jin shrugged. "You didn't look like you were enjoying it today. Oh, I admit you were unflinching, but that's not the same thing."

  "At the time," the demon said, "all I could think was that I had my very own poor fool to torment. I didn't have to share her with any of the other demons. I practiced with my whip until I could strike her body any place I wanted. Sometimes I killed her quickly, using the whip as much as the tree. So
metimes I killed her slowly, let the tree do its work. Sometimes both equally. I was a master at torturing Azuki-chan."

  "What did she do through all this?"

  "The same as now. Bore it all and came back to me for more. Never afraid, never angry. In pain, yes. Sometimes she would cry out. Then she would apologize." The demon shook its head. "Can you imagine? Apologizing to a demon?"

  Jin took a long slow breath. "When did it change for you?"

  "I don't understand."

  "Yes you do. When did you get tired of being angry and cruel?"

  "I never -- "

  "When did you become tired of being a demon?"

  "One cannot tire of one's fundamental nature! It's ridiculous!"

  "Unlike, say, a demon tending a garden in hell?"

  Jin wasn't entirely sure where her words were coming from, but she'd learned to follow her instincts in these matters. She knew what she said was true, but she also knew that, so far, it was not enough. What was she missing? After a moment that understanding came to her, too.

  The demon shrugged. "This is a diversion, nothing more, as I await Azuki-chan's return. I'll destroy it if you like."

  "You'll just rebuild it again. You are a demon in hell and yet you insist that this one little patch of sand be something more than hell. How many times have you tried to destroy it before today, only to make it anew?"

  The demon was so startled it nearly dropped its rake. "How...how did you know that? Who are you?"

  "Let me borrow your rake for a moment, and I'll tell you."

  The demon frowned, but held the rake out to Jin, who rose from her stone seat and walked down the slope to grasp it. She wasn't looking forward to what she was about to do, but so far she had not learned what she needed to learn, and there was only one way she knew to do it. Jin reached out for the rake, and deliberately brushed the demon's hand.