90A/N: Please note; I just wrote this off the top of my head, and if there's anything anyone can offer to make it a better story, email it to me (here) and I'll worship you forever. ^_~
A Heaven of Hell
Chapter 1: Friends & Goblins
This is no time for making new enemies.
-Voltaire on his death bed when asked to renounce the Devil (attributed).
I wanted the huge wrought iron gates to have a great stone sign that read "Lasciate Ogni Speranza Voi Ch'Entrate", because it would be too perfect for real life. It would seem suitable that the gates of the place would mirror the gates of Hell in some way, only Dante's vision of Hell was wrong this time. The gates had a pathetic little plastic sign that read, 'St. Maria's Hospital'. It would have been less of a deception if they just called it an Asylum for Deranged Children. As it was, I felt slightly cheated. I wanted an adventure. This place looked like a boring hell-hole where I would waste away in stagnation.
As we entered the gates, I felt something in me slide away. I think it was Hope, but it was an alien concept to me anyway. I wouldn't really miss it. I'd never had much to hope for, because I hadn't exactly had a hard life.
The Hospital itself was a weird little building that looked as if someone had cut-and-pasted details from different architectural styles and mashed them all together with the mistaken idea that it looked pretty. It was terrifically ugly. The main building was a squat Sixties horror that looked about as exciting as a leaf of spinach. It was soulless, and that's as much as I can say about it without comparing it to what you find in the toilet bowl after a vicious curry. Beside it was a tall grey tower that looked like some rotting remainder of an old fort, a cluster of moss-smothered rocks assembled in the time after Merlin and before Dumbledore. I stared at it for a while as we passed by in the car, hoping that it might turn out to be some beautiful Romantic ruin from a fallen castle, but it was an ugly misshapen spur that looked ready to collapse at the slightest breath of air. A long red-brick building behind it, twice the size of the Monstrosity and far more solid than the Tower, glittered dully in the afternoon sunlight. There was something alluring about it, but as we drove around a gentle corner right underneath, I saw the chubby little gargoyles that glared at us from the edge of the roof with the baleful glares as if they knew you were going somewhere you really oughtn't.
The Reception of the hospital was a sweet-looking white-washed little thatched cottage with red roses around the door and flowers growing up the path. It was too perfect. Definitely just for show.
"Welcome to Saint Maria's," a doctor with pristine blue eyes and immaculately white clothes said to me as unwanted help emptied our car of my belongings. "You'll like it here. We have your room ready."
I fixed a dispassionate look on my face as I looked up at him. He wasn't tall; I was short. I wrinkled my nose. He could have been an evil scientist from a B-movie for all I cared, or could tell. He had all the vital signs of a dead person.
"She's been acting like this since we-"
The doctor stopped my mother's self-effacing tirade with a simple motion, holding his hand up to prevent her from going any further.
"Zara," he said, lowering his voice to a tone that sounded much more natural to him. His voice seemed to ring in my ears, dark and rich like the low notes from a clarinet. "My name is Doctor Grigori Knull. I'll be in charge of your treatment."
"Why is only half of your name Russian?" I asked petulantly.
"Because only part of me is."
"Your mother, obviously, or else your surname would be Russian seeing as women have to give up their last names on marriage," I said rapidly, drawing out the last syllable as I noticed the sudden hardening of his features. "A slight case of inequality, don't you agree? I think that female children should take the mother's surname whilst the male children should take the father's, although that wouldn't help you with that awful last name. Why don't you change it?"
My mother moved to speak, but yet again, the Doctor held up his hand to prevent her speaking. His eyes were narrowed to bleached-blue slits, focused like some Siberian tiger watching a stranger's cub toddling onto his territory. I couldn't tell what he was thinking or seeing, but I knew that he didn't like me much. I couldn't make myself care. I had enough confidence in myself, then, to know that I could make anyone's life hell if I wanted to.
Well, I didn't give a hedgehog's ass if he didn't like me. I didn't think he was anything wonderful either.
He led us inside; I said goodbye to my parents (my mother cried, my father said something supportive but instantly forgettable) and heard their car drive away. Suddenly it wasn't the family car anymore; it was the adult's car. They'd left me here in the company of a Doctor Knull, who had the personality of a fridge and the name of some bad Gothic villain. They'd abandoned me as Dante's Hell had told those who entered its gates to abandon all hope. The family unit was destroyed, my parents had their own lives, and now I was left to fend for myself.
"Through here," the Doctor said with a chilly smile as he led me on through some old winding corridors that were as dark as crypts. He was too cold to be a vampire, too solid to be a ghost. I toyed with the idea of Doctor Knull as a zombie, but it was too ridiculous. For a start, he had a red flush in his cheeks and throat; it occurred to me that he'd been nervous for some reason, keeping it hidden until my parents had gone. Slightly odd, but I didn't really care this time. In any case, it proved he had a pulse and a bloodflow. Our Arctic Doctor did exist and was alive.
I hadn't been concentrating. When I looked down, I was walking on a shiny black-tiled floor that seemed to have too much depth, making me dizzy when I looked down. I could see my reflection in those tiles, and the blackness shifted around my feet like clouds. Or it didn't. I was having trouble seeing properly, and everything was too bright but too muted and something didn't fit. I looked up and saw white-marbled walls and a high white ceiling, in which bright yellow lights seemed to glow with an almost celestial radiance that flared quietly in gold and stone.
I looked around me and pondered the existence of goblins.
"This is your room," Doctor Grigori said, opening some featureless door for me. "Number Six-Six-Five. You'll have your own room for a while before we work out who would be the best patient for you to room with. Your things will be with you shortly."
I didn't go into the room.
"Will you be going through my things?"
"Of course, but only to make sure you don't have anything potentially harmful."
My scarred arm started throbbing. I was on the verge of hysteria suddenly, without knowing how in the Seven Circles of Hell I'd managed to become terrified and angry and worried all at once. He was watching me with that inscrutable gaze, as cold as ice and a corpse. I swallowed the random urge to burst into tears and scream and cry, turning my voice into an indifferent drone.
"I want my scrapbooks."
"I shall bring them to you personally," he said smoothly. It was a dismissal. I hated him for that more than for anything else. It was also a downright lie, because we both knew he was going to send some lackey with them instead of bothering to bring them himself.
He gave me the card-key for my room and left me alone. I stood in the hallway for a while, dazzled by the lights and the whiteness and the odd shapes that were reflected in the neat black tiles under my boots. I looked down at my reflection, at the strange globules of light from the ceiling, at the little shadows that shifted inperceptibly if I stared at them for too long. I got lost staring into the floor, staring down the black gullet of a cavernous hole under my feet that might swallow me at any moment.
"You're the new girl," a voice said, suspicious. It sounded like crushed red velvet.
I looked up; she was taller than me, with a sharp face that was all angles and beautiful because of it. Large dark emerald eyes glittered like a cat's above angled cheekbones, an eyebrow raised quizzically, and her mouth was pulled into an odd thin tilted line that showed her strange mistrust. Her hair was a dark curly mass like an oak-brown stormcloud, bound back with a rubber band, and her skin was burnt bronze without the effect of the sun. She should have been in a fairy-tale.
"Yes," I said quietly.
"I'm Mia. Who're you?"
"Zara."
"Good. Don't trust the doctors, don't trust the nurses, don't trust your parents and don't listen to the kids who paint their hands blue. Don't do anything to get yourself noticed."
"Why?"
"Because that's just silly. Half the guys here would love to punish any mad teenager of the female gender, whilst the other half have a distinct liking for buggery."
I tilted my head questioningly. It was a bit much.
"Trust me," Mia said, taking my wrist in her hand and pulling me forwards to my room. "There's not much you can do here but piece jigsaw puzzles together, watch kid's TV, do random lessons in the classroom, paint pictures of rainbows and avoid the bastards who'll stick a hand up your shirt. Give me your key."
I handed her the card. She slotted into a long thin hole in a box above the door knob and a little green LED lit up. She twisted the doorknob and pushed me inside, and I was confronted by the most lifeless room I'd ever seen. There were two low beds with white pillows and sheets, while walls, a long window with dark red curtains, a low pinewood desk and chair, and two wardrobes to the right of the door. I despaired of the place. It had no soul. I hate places that have no soul. When you die, your soul gets sucked into the vaccum and you become a ghost and haunt there. I hate places with no soul.
"Ugh," I said, despite myself.
"Don't worry about it. You can draw on the walls, stick things up there, move the beds anywhere except against the door and leave your windows open. They're strict about everything except for our rooms," Mia said. "You're lucky. This room's just been redone. The door at the far end is a shower room, and you share that with me."
"Oh," I said, frowning, and stepping out into the hall and looking in vain for number plaques. "Your room's six-six-six?"
She grinned and shook her head. There was a glimmer there of something else, something like the shadows that shifted in the floor when I stared at them. Something in her eyes shifted when I looked at her, and she set the air alight with a barely perceptible golden shimmer.
"The room across from you is six-six-six, and don't go near that one, cos the boy's one of the serious loons. This side of the hallway is the odd, that side is the evens. I'm six-six-seven."
I stared around me, at the eerily empty stone hallway devoid of all life except for the girl beside me who didn't seem real, and at the sparks of light that glimmered and flickered and vanished in the air, and at my new home. I almost cried. Almost.
Footsteps coming down the hall. Mia frowned distantly and took my arm again, drawing me back into my room and closing the door. Even when she scowled she was uncommonly pretty. I wanted a picture or two in my scrapbooks. My scrapbooks...
"Listen," she hissed, and I realised she was scared. "Take care. It's not just that the guards are lechs. It's that there are other patients here who can do things they shouldn't. The doctors are not our friends. Careful who you take onto your side. This is not a place for healing. Something's here that shouldn't be."
"Something?"
"I've been here for two months. Things happen. People have nightmares that get passed on from one to another. One person starts humming a tune at the same time as someone else the other side of the hospital. Things move of their own accord. The doctors know what's going on, and they're not telling us, and people have died."
I studied her face, seeing eyes dark with worry and a keen gleam that I would have missed had I not been looking for it. She knew what she was talking about. She was telling the truth. Or, she was telling what she thought to be the truth. She was in a madhouse. Who knew what she was telling me? Maybe it was just me trying to find the adventure in every nook and cranny of the world I'd suddenly fallen into. I was sure that was it. But sincerity can't be dismissed outright.
"Died?"
She glanced towards the door as the footsteps came close, paused, and continued onwards. Heavy boots, and the definite sound of rustling clothing as if someone was walking from the shoulders, as men tend to do. A guard. I was pleased with myself.
"Ask Will. He's been here the longest. A year. His parents won't take him out now, even though he's the most sane of all of us. Go to the History room sometime. He's always in there. He has a fixation with the Greeks and the Romans. He'll be happy to talk, if you have something to swap for the information."
"What... why? What is all of this? A joke?" I managed feebly.
She shook her head at me and left me alone in my room, and she walked with the self-possession of a goddess or a queen. She was wonderful. She was mad, like I was meant to be. I didn't know what to think. I was too frightened to think. I didn't want to leave the dull, lifeless room for fear of the hallway floor that might rise up in tendrils of thin, curling whisps of black mist to pull on my ankles and suck me down into a netherworld. I didn't like this. The closest I'd ever come to an adventure and I was scared, but worried, and I was wishing for a big thick book to stick my head in and never emerge from. But I didn't have any.
I stood and thought for a long time, watching the light fade as the sun set. There was a strange crimson tint to the light through the red curtains. I would make them dark blue like the sea, I decided. I opened the curtains and found I had a fantastic view to the west over the lush green valley, and above the horizon there was a band of light blue sky that reared into darkness right over my head. The stars were bright, and I could make out Orion right above my head, as long as I leant out of the window a little. Bet they wouldn't have liked me doing that, if they'd known.
They brought my things. Everything had been rifled through. They brought my scrapbooks last. And that was what made me really angry, when I sat on the small grey foot-carpet on the shiny black floor between the two beds and went through them all with the attention I could give nothing else.
Gone were the pictures of Amy, of my old life, of her funeral and stills of my favourite films. Almost all my pictures had been ripped out, and clumsy greasy fingerprints had smudged quotes from Jules Verne and Emily Bronte. My third scrapbook had been crumpled and torn, and several beautiful pictures of old castles and models in daydream white had coffee stain rings that wrinkled the paper and turned it shit-brown. Ruined.
I didn't cry, and I'm proud to say it. I got very angry instead. Little star-specks of eyes gleamed from the darkness of the floor around me, bright in the darkness of the room. I put my scrapbooks aside and got to my feet, clenching my fists tightly enough to draw blood with my fingernails. The star-specks seemed to waver, and for a moment, I was sure I heard someone singing. But it wasn't singing. It was something else entirely.
I'd never heard the Goblin Song before.