Page 41 of Where Light Cannot Follow

"I don't know," I whisper. "Perhaps she does this for eternity."

“Christ above.”

"Indeed." I wait another moment, then gently urge him forward. "Come. I'm afraid I do recognize where we are now, but we'll have to witness more of the same before we make it back to the path."

Dante continues his endless, sorrowful staring for another moment. Then he blinks, nods, and starts walking alongside me.

18

DANTE

We weave silently through the trails crossing the bog. The chirping of crickets is broken by the gasping, screaming, weeping, and thrashing of souls drowning. Repeatedly.

I want to stop. Try to help another.

But somehow I know what Virgil says is true. I cannot save anyone here.

Hearing the guttural cries, grief torn from the very essence of being, sounds I didn't know a human throat could produce, has left me heavy with a weight I can't name.

I slide my hands into my pockets, only to realize I'm wearing different clothing. Dark, well-fitted trousers and a navy wool pullover with a zipper at the throat. When did that happen? It's perhaps this startling revelation that spills words from my lips.

“Is my father here?”

Virgil glances over at me, and there's something soft in his expression. He is layers of softness—soft curls, soft words, soft voice. He is everything I've denied myself for a decade, and somehow I feel drawn to him like oxygen now. I step closer, but not too close. He’ll pull back if I do.

He clears his throat. “You wouldn’t find him in these swamps. There are other places... for souls who are more... tormented. When they've done a great deal of harm to others."

"Ah." This realization lands heavier than I would expect, like I've swallowed one of the dozens of glass trophies my father proudly displayed in that office he gained through using and abusing those weaker than him, by doing the same to me.

It bothers me that it bothers me. The bastard deserved hell. A part of me wants him to drown for eternity, to never escape the misery of this place.

But another part—the part that hears the wails and terror ripping from throats filled with the same pungent, brackish water I've had in my own mouth, choked on myself—draws me up short.

"Is this what hell is really like?" I gesture around us. "People begging for help and not receiving it? Stuck in their hopelessness and misery. Some of it misery that others forced onto them?"

Virgil looks over to a lake where two men wail. One goes under and doesn't resurface. Then he looks at me with a gaze so searing I nearly feel the whip of it sting my flesh. But his voice is gentle as a spring breeze. "From what I understand from those I've guided, and my own limited mortal experience, I think life was just like this. Only here, people don't bother with masks and stories. People often don’t help in the mortal world either, and in that realm, much good could have come from their intervention."

I gape at him as a memory slams into me.

Ms. Hernandez begging me to give her a single day off to spend with her dying mother.

Something about this revelation steals the breath from me. He's right, of course. I saw people who needed a limb offered into the waters where they drowned every single day. I had resources, connections, and influence. And I walked right past them, avoiding eye contact, leaving them to sink. I felt justified in my decisions. After all, I'd never harmed anyone intentionally. I asked nothing of others.

Now, walking to the riotous shrieks of hopeless souls in hell, it all feels so hollow.

"What kind of literature did you enjoy in life?” Virgil's eyes twinkle, his lips lifting. But there's something else there, too. Like he knows I need this distraction.

"Mostly business journals and quarterly reports." The answer spills from me before I can think it through, and it feels as hollow as I do when it sits between us. "Of recent years, at least."

"And what did you enjoy in earlier years?"

The light in the sky is golden and hazy choking the horizon. I clear my throat. "I perhaps... when I was much younger... enjoyed some fantasy."

"Fantasy!" Virgil claps his hands as if we aren't two miserable souls walking through hell listening to the agonies of the damned like grocery store muzak. "So you too enjoy the epics. Homer and Ovid and—ah, what's his name—Shakespeare! Yes!"

"Shakespeare didn't write fantasy. He wrote romances."

"Romances?" Virgil scoffs and flings his hands away from himself as if he wants to hurl the entire notion into the swamp. “I’ve had several souls share his stories with me and never heard a single romance. Name one."