Camp Damascus(52)

“Do you know where I can find her?” I ask, my body tense.

Saul nods again.

“Tell me!” I demand, coming off much more aggressive than I’d hoped.

“I can’t do that,” he replies, solemn. “It’s a death sentence. I know you miss her. God knows I miss someone, too, but as long as these demons are riding our backs, we have to stay away.”

“Not if we exorcise the demons,” I counter, a critical piece suddenly falling into place. “Actually … I’m pretty sure I already did that. I burned one alive.”

Saul just stares at me, not sure if I’m serious or not. “You what?” he finally blurts.

I shake my head, just barely keeping up with all these new ideas as they come. “I locked Willow’s demon inside a flaming car and killed it.”

“How is that possible?” Saul protests. “They’re so far beyond the limits of—”

“They’re flesh and blood,” I interrupt, reminding him of the tangible nature we’ve ascribed to these otherworldly beings.

Saul is still unconvinced. “Why would a demon burn?” he asks. “They’re from a world of eternal flame. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’”

I consider everything I know about these creatures and my encounters with them, walking through each of my harrowing experiences and allowing myself to catalog every moment. I think back to that time in my dark living room, and at the party, and my memories of the slab.

Suddenly, a chill tickles across my skin.

My heart skips a beat, fear pulsing through my veins and focusing my senses like a stiff shot of adrenaline. I shift awkwardly on the roof, glancing over each shoulder.

“It’s just the breeze,” Saul offers, noting my discomfort. “It gets chilly out here this time of night.”

I’m reminded of my alarm over the draft downstairs, a simple cracked window all it took to put me on edge. It’s sickening how much power a shift in temperature now holds over my mental state—Pavlov’s perfectly trained dog.

The cool breeze comes again, washing over my body like a tear between worlds.

Suddenly, it all falls into place.

“Hell is frozen,” I snap, sitting upright. “It’s not a flaming wasteland, it’s ice cold. Think about what it feels like when they’re around, what happens when they open a tear to their world.”

“Then why is every old Christian painting full of fire and brimstone?” Saul questions.

He already knows the answer, but he’s unwilling to accept it.

“Because God didn’t paint those,” I reply. “The church did. People did. You know why Eve snacked on an apple in the garden of Eden? Because the Hebrew and Greek text said fruit, but the Latin translation for apple was a pun with the word evil. When St. Jerome translated it, he added the pun as a little joke, and now look at every Eden depiction. All of history altered by one guy’s little translation gag.”

“That’s a tiny shift, not the exact opposite thing,” Saul retorts. “If demons thrive in cold and fear the heat, why make a switch? Revelation 20:15, and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

“You ever hear that story about the Vikings discovering Iceland and Greenland, then switching the names to keep the lush beauty of Iceland for themselves?” I ask.

Saul nods.

“There’s your answer. It’s all about control,” I continue. “It always has been.”

This point seems to hit my friend the hardest. He’s reeling from the implication, working it over in his mind as his expression evolves from doubt to dread.

“I’ll see Willow again,” I announce with confidence. “Safely. I know there’s someone you want to see again, too.”

“Yeah” is all that Saul can manage to reply, his voice trembling with emotion now.

I stand, minding the rickety roof under my feet, and place my hand on his shoulder. I can feel a profane eruption bubbling up within me and I push into it, refusing to silence myself. It might seem like a silly thing to care about, but it’s not. This is my voice.

“Let’s do something about it,” I proclaim. “Frick Camp Damascus.”



* * *



On the 14th of September, 1321, Dante Alighieri died in exile. He was called a lot of things—poet, artist, philosopher—but at the time his most prominent label was heretic. He was such a threat to the church that, eight years after his burial, Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget demanded the man’s bones be dug up and burned at the stake.

Ask any historian how he died and they’ll answer malaria, but history is written by the victors, and arsenic poisoning wasn’t quite as easy to spot in the fourteenth century.

I’ve never read Dante’s Inferno, which is strictly banned in the Darling household, but after spending the last two weeks researching all things hellish with Saul, I know the poem pretty well.

In this early epic poem, the bottom layer of hell is described as freezing cold, an icy lake where Satan dwells.

This characterization didn’t stick around, and look where it got Dante.

The last two weeks have been a blur of planning and scheming, Saul and I putting our heads together and manifesting something so much more than the sum of our parts. There’s a madness to our focus, a parallel drive to prove ourselves in the face of a world that’s cast us out.