Vargas nodded. “You tell Giuseppe that next time, dinner is on me. I’m sorry about this trouble. Of course, you know we are only here to serve the community. I’ll see that she gets calmed down. And do me a favor, Officer, if you see Mrs. Dmitrova around at the market, tell her I’m coming over later for a visit.”
My mother. He was talking about my mother.
He hung up as my heart broke into pieces.
Vargas faced me and sighed.
“Well, Katarina. You just don’t seem able to stop making things harder on yourself. Now, you’ve put me in quite the predicament. Ivan wanted to marry you, but now—how can I let you leave? I can’t kill you, because, like I said before... you’re special... but I can’t have you remembering any of last night. Luckily I’ve planned ahead.”
“You can’t keep me here! I’ll expose all of you and the sick things you’re doing?—”
His slap sent me spinning around. He followed me to the floor and took something from his pocket. It was a picture, grainy and a little unfocused, but I could make out the person in the image. My mother, in church. She went every day. She trusted Father Vargas more than anyone.
“You keep your mouth shut, be a good girl, and take your medicine. You’ll jump when we say jump, and you’ll do your therapy... or else your mother is next. Her organs won’t be worth much, so they might just end up at the local butcher. The whole town will be eating sausages made from your mother if you don’t fucking cooperate. Got it?”
I tried to lean away, but he gripped me hard by the hair and yanked my head back.
I bit down a whimper. I wouldn’t whimper for this man.
I tasted blood in my mouth. The threat to my mother was real. I believed everything this monster said. He and his fellow devils had carved up a sixteen-year-old girl last night. He’d really feed my mother’s flesh to the town to punish me if I stepped out of line.
It was a chance I couldn’t take.
“So, tell me you understand.” He shook my head so hard my teeth rattled.
I nodded slowly, and Vargas released my hair. I fell forward.
“Time to up your doses, dear girl. You can’t tell what you can’t remember. It’s a mercy. Be grateful. Welcome to the real Hallow Hall, Katarina.”
INFERNO
“Before me nothing but eternal things
were made,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Dante,The Divine Comedy
1
MASSIMO
Now
Fear has a smell. It took me years to figure out what the particular odor was. It’s not to be confused with desperation or regret; maybe they have their own scents. Fear is something different.
From the little kid falling and scraping their knees, to the person about to go into surgery, fear has a particular smell... and it’s one my life has made me intimately acquainted with. The tap of my boots echoed through the old building. It had been abandoned halfway through construction, leaving a hollow shell. Exposed studs and rebar jutted out in places. Handwritten measurements and notes in chalk and marker littered the walls and floors like drawings on cave walls in a forgotten place. The vast open-plan rooms were exposed to the elements on all sides, and there were plenty of corners to hide in. A breeding ground for dark deeds.
I passed by a group of men standing around a fire in the bottom of a trash can. They talked quietly, the Neapolitan dialect a lullaby to my ears after years far from home. They went quiet as Ipassed them by. They might have noticed my clothes and weapons and fancied trying to take them from me, but I didn’t think they would.
They didn’t want to die tonight. There was only one person who was dying tonight, and he’d just scrambled up the stairs before me.
I followed slowly, letting him hear me coming.
Scraping sounds and a muttered curse came from ahead.