"But you have not gotten to a full explanation of what you do in Hell. And how can you be winning? Are you sending them speedily to His arms?"
"Speedily and with powerful acceptance," he said. "But I am not speaking to you now about my offer to you, or my Earthly opposition to Him; I'm asking you this: Given all that you have seen¡ªWhat do you think Hell should be!"
"I'm afraid to answer. Because I belong there. "
"You're never really that afraid of anything. Go on. Make a statement. What do you think Hell ought to be, what should a soul have to endure to be worthy of Heaven? Is it enough to say 'I believe in God'; Jesus, 'I believe in Your Suffering'? Is it enough to say, 'I'm sorry for all my sins because they offend thee, my God?' Or to say, 'I'm sorry because when I was on Earth, I really didn't believe in You and now I know it's true, and wham, bang, one look at this infernal place, and I'm ready! I wouldn't do anything the same way, and please let me into Heaven quick. ' "
I didn't answer.
"Should everyone just go to Heaven?" he asked. "I mean, should everyone go?"
"No. That can't be," I said. "Not creatures like me, not creatures who have tortured and killed other creatures, not people who have deliberately duplicated through their actions punishments as severe as disease, or fire, or earthquake¡ªthat is, not people who have done wrongs that hurt others just as much or worse than natural disasters.
It can't be right for them to go to Heaven, not if they don't know, not if they don't understand, not if they haven't begun to comprehend what they've done! Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven. I don't want to meet the unreformed monsters of Earth in Heaven! If it's that easy, then the suffering of this world is damned near. . . . "
"Damn near what?
"Unforgivable," I whispered.
"What would be forgivable¡ªfrom the point of view of a soul who died in pain and confusion? A soul who knew that God didn't care?"
"I don't know," I said. "When you described the elect of Sheol, the first million souls you took through the Heavenly Gates, you didn't speak of reformed monsters; you spoke of people who had forgiven God for an unjust world, didn't you?"
"That's right, I did. That's what I found. That's what I took with me with certainty to Heaven's Gates, yes. "
"But you spoke entirely as if these people had been victims of God's injustice. You didn't touch upon the souls of the guilty? Those like me¡ªthe transgressors, those who were the doers of injustice?" "Don't you think they have their story?"
"Some may have their excuses, engrained in their stupidity and their simplicity and their fear of authority. I don't know. But many, many evildoers must be just like me. They know how bad they are. They don't care. They do what they do because . . . because they love it. I love making vampires. I love drinking blood. I love taking life. I always have. "
"Is that really why you drink blood? Just because you love it? Or isn't it because you were made into a perfect preternatural mechanism for craving blood eternally, and thriving only on blood¡ªsnatched out of life and made a gleaming Child of the Night by an unjust world that cared no more for you and your destiny than it cared for any infant who starved that night in Paris?"
"I don't justify what I do or what I am. If you think I do, if that's why you want me to run Hell with you, or accuse God . . . then you picked the wrong person. I deserve to pay for what I've taken from people. Where are their souls, those I've slain? Were they ready for Heaven? Have they gone to Hell? Did those souls loosen in their identity and are they still in the whirlwind between Hell and Heaven? Souls are there, I know, I saw them, souls who have yet to find either place. "
"Yes, true. "
"I could have sent souls into the whirlwind. I am the embodiment of greed and cruelty. I devoured the mortals I've killed like so much food and drink. I cannot justify it. "
"Do you think I want you to justify it?" Memnoch asked. "What violence have I justified so far? What makes you think I would like you if you justified or defended your actions? Have I ever defended anyone who made anyone else suffer?"
"No, you haven't. "
"Well, then?"
"What is Hell, and how can you run it? You don't want people to suffer. You don't even seem to want me to suffer. You can't point to God and say He makes it all Good and Meaningful! You can't. You're His opposition. So what is Hell?"
"What do you think it is?" he asked me again. "What would you morally settle for . . . before rejecting me out of hand! Before fleeing from me. What sort of Hell could you believe in and would you¡ªif you were in my place¡ªcreate?"
"A place where people realize what they've done to others; where they face every detail of it, and realize every particle of it, so that they would never, never do the same thing again; a place where souls are reformed, literally, by knowledge of what they'd done wrong and how they could have avoided it, and what they should have done.
When they understand, as you said of the Elect of Sheol, when they can forgive not only God for this big mess, but themselves for their own failures, their own horrible angry reactions, their own spite and meanness, when they love everyone totally in complete forgiveness, then they would be worthy of Heaven. Hell would have to be where they see the consequences of their actions, but with a full merciful comprehension of how little they themselves knew. "
"Precisely. To know what has hurt others, to realize that you didn't know, that nobody gave you the knowledge, yet still you had the power! And to forgive that, and forgive your victims, and forgive God and forgive yourself. "
"Yes. That would be it. That would terminate my anger, my outrage. I couldn't shake my fist anymore, if only I could forgive God and others and myself. "
He didn't say anything. He sat with his arms folded, eyes wide, his dark smooth brow barely touched with the moisture of the air.