All the Gates of Hell (3 page)

"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."

Jin let her legs collapse under her and she sank to a sitting position on the sidewalk, her back supported by the lamppost. "That poor child...was in Hell?"

"
A
hell, and I wish you'd grasp the distinction. A little pocket universe all her own so small it was contained within the passageway from this plane to mine."

"She wasn't alone," Jin said, and described her meeting with the shadow after Rebecca had disappeared. "I touched it, too, before then, but I didn't get the same vision from it that I got from Rebecca. Just a swirl of images...I couldn't quite sort them out."

"The attribute of your touch is that it tells you the true situation of a person who is ready to move on. For someone else, someone whose time in a particular hell was not finished, that vision will be either empty or misleading or simply irrelevant."

"Misleading? You mean someone could lie that way?"

"Not exactly. It's more that you'd see what the person
believes
to be true, which is not always the truth. Be careful -- fetching a spirit out of hell is more art than science. I'm guessing Rebecca had some sort of attachment to that thing she was carrying? Is that how you freed her?"

"Yes," Jin said, because she knew it was true.

"Well, there you go. You broke the link, removed the obstacle, the obsessive attachment that had her trapped."

"So I basically take away what people want most? And they call me the Goddess of Mercy?"

Teacher laughed. "Never confuse 'mercy' with 'kindness,' Jin. As for the shadow...."

In another mood she might have taken some grim satisfaction in the obvious puzzlement on Teacher Johnson's face, but not now. Despite her annoyance with him, Jin realized she'd taken some comfort in the fact that
someone
seemed to know what was going on. That comfort was rapidly eroding.

"It seems to know you. I might know what that means. I'll have to give the matter some thought," he said finally.

Jin groaned. "That's what
he
said too. It seems there's a lot of question about what's going on around me, besides mine, I mean. I also turned into a demon for a little while," Jin said. She heard the casual tone in her voice, and wondered if it was there because the only other option was to start screaming. Oh, yes. By the way, I turned into a demon just now. Thought you'd want to know. Jin almost smiled.

Teacher brightened. "Oh, that. He's called Da Shi in some cultures, Pulan Gong in others. Another attribute. You were frightened at the time, yes?"

Jin nodded. "Terrified." She still was a bit, now that she thought about it.

"Well, there you go. Some hells are worse than others and most are no place for a celestial lady, even if she is a bodhisattva. Thus, your demon form. You'll find that aspect quite useful at times, but I would learn to control it, if I were you. I'm guessing you scared the crap out of that little girl."

"The shadow too," Jin said. "It hid from me when I was in that form." She finally managed to get back to her feet, though she felt a bit unsteady.