Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

***

The first rule of Hell is: don’t talk about Hell.

The more your brain wants to process where you are, the more your brain starts to leak out, like a draining bed pan. Your heart goes next, a gummy mess at the bottom of your shoe. Inconsequential. Then it’s your soul, siphoned from the marrow of everything you are.

I don’t know this yet, but I can feel it. I can feel Hell as one fathomless hungry beast, watching and waiting for me to just give in. I know this like the blood in my veins.

So I try not to think about where we are, I just keep moving through the streets, ignoring everything I see and hear.

Well, almost everything.

So far Hell has been disquieting. Jay and I do a fast walk down Fifth Avenue (the thick airless air holds us back from a run like an invisible hand), the dead weeds of Central Park to our right, the dark and silent buildings to our left. I get the creeping sensation, spiders up my spine, of being watched through all the windows. Sometimes I see a curtain pulled violently across a window, other times hear the sound of a door slamming but there is no one there. I’m reminded of Shakespeare: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

But Hell isn’t empty. It’s an illusion, one to lull you with a false sense of security, the way a cat might lick you before it bites.

Slowly you start to hear the screams. At first they are in the distance, maybe blocks away. Short yelps of surprise. Then they turn to screams of absolute horror, someone being tortured over and over again. It comes closer.

And then it’s behind you.

A sharp inhumane scream that curdles your blood instantly, the type of scream that’s also a plea for it all to stop.

I whirl around, Jay grabbing me by the elbow to steady me, and see a little boy standing ten feet away from us. Big big eyes, bowl-cut hair, holding an old-fashioned doll with a cracked open head, the ones that roll open their eyes when you move them.

Why is a child in Hell? I think, my mind trying to wrap around the sight of innocence.

Jay hears me. That is not a child.

And the moment he says it, I know it.

The doll in his hands opens its eyes.

The boy smiles.

Wider and wider.

Splits his face in two.

Opens his mouth to let out a scream.

At the back of his throat, a long, thin hand comes out, skinny black fingers that belong to something charred.

I am caught, unable to look away as the child’s head splits open, his skull cracking into jagged rivets, just like his doll, and a bony, charred arm comes out, placing long fingers into the child’s eyes and gripping them like a bowling ball.

The creature starts to emerge.

We have to get going, Jay says, pulling me toward him.

I’m yanked helplessly, even though Jay is straining to pull me along.

Ada! he yells. Focus Ada. Think about your mother.

My mother. My mother.

I want to stay and look at the creature but I must think about my mother.

Jay leads me down the street until the creature is just a dot in the distance, then two dots going two separate ways. He grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him. One hand goes to my cheek.

Soft. His touch is soft.

Everything here is hard but he is soft.

Ada, he says and I’m reminded of the doll in the boy’s hands, the way Jay’s blue eyes seem made of marble, unseeing. You can’t lose it now. We are close but we’re running out of time. I can feel it. Focus. Focus.

I close my eyes, letting his touch soothe me, sink in beyond the skin, fusing us together as we should be fused.

He feels good.

He always feels good.

Feels.

I feel.

I am alive.

I don’t belong here.

My eyes snap open. My gut churns with tiny pinpricks. I feel like I’ve been seconds away from going over the edge of a cliff and he’s pulled me back just in time.

Oh my god, I cry, trying to get my brain back on track.

He can’t hear you, is Jay’s answer. Come on. You said the station at fifth and fifty-third, right?

I nod quickly. We hurry down the street again and I do my best to ignore the sights that this New York has to offer.

I wonder what Hell’s Kitchen is like here.

Is that a joke? Jay asks, peering down at me as we walk, sweat streaming down his plastic face.

I’m not sure. I don’t know what’s funny anymore.

I can’t remember what laughter is.

Call for your mother, he tells me, grabbing my hand and pulling us across the street. A bike messenger speeds past in a hurry, no helmet, the back of his skull blasted open and his brains trailing behind him like streamers.