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No. It is sentient but it cannot become physical. If you remember who you are, where you came from, you’ll be okay. He pauses. Who are you?
Ada Palomino.
Where did you come from?
Portland, Oregon.
He nods. Good enough. And to answer your question, I don’t know why we’re in New York but I have an idea.
So we’re actually in New York, not just a place that looks like it?
Hell is your world, many layers below. Your mother died here and she’s your reason for all of this. This is where you’ll find her.
I glance around nervously.
And there are people here, he says. We’ll see them soon enough. Souls of the damned. But there are layers to Hell too. It’s not just full of murderers and rapists and pedophiles. Hell has a hold on the guilty.
The guilty?
Self-guilt. Self-loathing. Feeling that you belong here, that you deserve eternal punishment. I’d say most of the souls you see here belong in that category. Not bad people, just . . . unable to deserve better. They most likely lived their lives the same way, unable to escape from the wrongs of the past, the scars on their souls. If they were never happy in life, they can’t be happy in the afterlife.
Shit. I never thought about it that way. My heart aches for them, to think that this is what they deserve.
That’s good, Jay says, studying me. Keep feeling. It’s the only thing in the end that will remind you that you don’t belong here.
I have a hard time looking at him. So where to now?
Reach inside your head, he says. Call for her. Feel her.
I close my eyes and try.
I imagine her, I call to her.
Nothing happens.
Again.
Nothing happens.
Moooooom!
Nothing. Just an inky void in the base of my skull that gets bigger and bigger and bigger . . .
Jay lays his hand on my shoulder, bringing me out of the darkness. Focus on her as a person, not a thought. Don’t imagine. See.
I try again.
I try and put her pieces together until suddenly she’s in our kitchen making cookies at Christmas time. My mother was never like everyone else’s moms. She had a cold way about her, always a bit distant, even from me. But I never saw any malice in it. It was just the way she was. Like someone who never wanted kids or marriage or that whole suburban life but she got it anyway and was just trying to do her best.
But at Christmas time, my mother wouldn’t just look the part of the beautiful Scandinavian housewife, she would act it too. She would make ginger snaps, a million times better than the ones you get at IKEA, and light the kitchen with vanilla candles and every time you stepped inside the smells made your mouth water.
And my mother would smile—genuinely this time—and take the cookies out and we’d all stare forlornly at the tray, waiting for them to cool, and when they were ready we’d dip them in eggnog and they would be the best things we’d tasted all year.
My mother watched us the whole time, only having one cookie for herself, and against the candle light her face would glow and I knew she was happy.
The rest of the year was always touch and go, but at those moments I knew it, and I would look forward to that even more than the Christmas presents (which usually sucked anyway, I don’t know why my parents would always get me those shitty Pot of Gold chocolates, there was only one good piece in the box and you had to bite your way through so many disgusting ones to find it).
I can see that scene in front of me, my mother, Perry, the cookies, the candles. I’m in it. Living it.
Ada!
My mother’s voice is calling me. Her spirit tugs my arm to the left.
The mother in my vision is oblivious, trapped in that time and watching her children happily, but I know I feel her all the same and she can now feel me.
Ada, she cries out again. Hurry.
Where are you?
Silence.
Where are you?! I repeat, yelling so loud inside my head my blood vessels nearly pop.
You know where, her voice trails off into a whisper and I at once know that she can’t tell me outright.
But it doesn’t matter. I know all the same.
I open my eyes at look at Jay, his face taking on a plastic sheen. Doll-like, indeed.
I know where she is, I tell him, ignoring the change in his face. The subway tunnels. Where she died.
He nods and waits for me to walk. He doesn’t know where she died. He wasn’t there.
It’s up to me to lead us through Hell.
I take in a deep but eternally empty breath and start walking toward the Empire State building, Jay falling in step behind me.
