Chapter 19
DELILAH
Despite being tossed down a lift shaft, Delilah had a good feeling about Floor Anger.
Gluttony had been fun. The gingerbread castle had been beautiful. Delilah only regretted that she hadn’t tried the caramel river. She could have taken the test a second time if she’d failed the first one, like Howard and Lucy. It made her curious to see what the next floor would be like.
Delilah had never been described as an angry person. If anything, people called her happy-go-lucky. She figured Floor Anger would be a piece of cake. Just like Floor Gluttony, though not quite so literally.
In the waiting room, Lucy told them, ‘Floor Anger is a more personalised test. It will draw upon your past life to re-create the most infuriating scenario. After we enter the floor, we’ll be separated into our own rooms. I’m warning you in advance because I don’t want you to be startled when it happens. ’
Heather raised a hand. ‘I always scheduled Floor Anger as one person at a time. I didn’t realise we could enter together.’
‘No, you acted correctly.’ Lucy inclined her head.
‘This test should be separate; it could interfere with the results if they blend together. However, I believe the floor should be able to handle a mere six of us. It will be better if I am in a different room from the rest of you, so that I can’t accidentally harm you if I have another rage blackout.
’ She coughed. ‘Not that I anticipate that happening again.’
Just in case, Delilah edged away from Lucy.
Lucy opened the door and entered first. Howard followed her, then John, then Jaime, then Heather. Delilah entered last.
Delilah had just enough time to glimpse a plain white space, as empty as Floor Heresy. For a brief moment, she stood in the presence of all five of her companions. Then white walls sprung up between them, separating them.
Delilah blinked, then rubbed her eyes. This place looked almost exactly like the living room of her childhood home.
The faded yellow wallpaper had a dent from where she’d flung open the front door too hard in primary school.
The striped couch reeked of mothballs and perched on four predatory claws.
Stuffing stuck out of the blue armchair.
The glass end table held potted ivy doing its best to cling to life in the long spaces between watering.
There were no windows, and the room seemed smaller and more cramped than she remembered.
The other difference was that this room had a total of six doors.
The door behind her must lead to the waiting room.
The other doors were positioned oddly, some next to each other and others far apart.
She vaguely remembered another person being in the direction of each door.
Did these lead to her fellow test-takers?
Dust made Delilah sneeze. The chandelier overhead rattled. She’d never wanted to set foot in this place again after leaving home. Still, she would classify this as more annoying than angering. Would this be another test where she couldn’t even figure out what she needed to do in order to pass?
‘Girl, stop making such a racket early in the morning!’ Delilah’s mother appeared in the armchair. Her bloodshot eyes meant she’d been drinking, a tattered brown shawl wrapped over her shoulders like armour. Two mean brown eyes glared out of a prematurely aged face.
‘Mum?’ Delilah took a step backwards. ‘Ugh, it’s obvious it would be you.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘If you wanted to get on my nerves, then, I must admit, this was the perfect test. Well done. I’m already feeling irritated.’
‘Whatever are you wearing?’ Mum squinted at the black dress. ‘You’re not pretty enough to wear that. It’s better if you know your own limitations. Dressing fancy just makes your frumpy face stand out more. That dress would look better on Sally’s daughter next door.’
Delilah rolled her eyes up to the ceiling.
‘As if I haven’t heard enough about Sally’s daughter.
You know what? Sally’s daughter later got arrested for drunk driving so maybe you shouldn’t have idealised her throughout my entire childhood.
’ Even though she’d barely known Sally, Delilah had been entirely too smug to hear about that arrest.
Mum continued, ‘What kind of girl spends all her time on maths puzzles? Maths won’t help you get married. You’re not attractive so you need to make your personality meeker.’
‘Maths got me an accountant job that pays double what you ever made,’ Delilah hissed. ‘I bought this dress with my gambling winnings, using my maths skills.’
‘Are you gambling again, girl?’ Mum shot to her feet, eyes blazing. ‘Gambling is a sin!’
‘It is not!’ Delilah winced as memories of Floor Greed came flashing back to her. ‘Okay, apparently it is, but I’m working on getting that changed with the designer of Purgatory herself. You hear that? I’ll rewrite reality if necessary to stop you from being right!’
Delilah paused, panting. This all felt very familiar. She was falling into the same trap again.
‘Nice try.’ Delilah addressed her comment at the ceiling, not her mother. ‘You nearly got me to melt down with rage. But I know better than that. I’m going to leave.’ She cast a smirk at her fake mother. ‘You can’t force me to listen to your lectures any longer.’
Head held high, Delilah strode to the door leading to the waiting room and turned the knob.
It was locked.
‘This doesn’t make sense!’ Delilah wailed. She’d passed Floor Greed and Floor Gluttony by walking away. Why was the door locked? What did this test want from her? She felt her blood pressure rising. At this rate, she’d fail. She counted as she took deep breaths: One, two, three, four . . .
Mum said, ‘You were born very sinful. It will be difficult for someone like you to get into Heaven.’
‘That’s not true!’ Delilah exploded. She turned away from that hateful face and tried to count again: four, five, six . . .
‘You were naturally difficult from the moment you were born. You cried too much as a baby. You broke my favourite vase when you were two.’
‘Stop that.’ Delilah hated how she sounded close to tears.
Her mother shouldn’t have the power to hurt her even now.
And certainly not a fake mother. Unfortunately, every last word had been spoken to her in real life.
‘I don’t believe you even cared that much about the vase until I broke it.
I wasn’t a bad kid. I got good grades in school and stayed out of trouble.
You know what? You weren’t such a great mother either. ’
‘I’m a sinner too,’ Mum admitted. ‘God punished me for everything I’ve done wrong in my life with a daughter like you.’
Those words hit Delilah straight in the gut, exactly as they had the first time. Because if she was nothing to her mother except a punishment, then what was she supposed to do? She could never be good enough. She’d been unwanted from the start.
‘Let me out of here!’ Delilah pounded on the door. ‘I can’t go through this again. I suffered enough the first time. Shouldn’t dying young at least have prevented me from meeting my still-living mother in Purgatory?’
The door wouldn’t budge. In sheer desperation, Delilah staggered to the next closest door.
For some reason, this door opened easily. She didn’t have time to think about why. She ran through and slammed the door behind her.
Lucy stood amongst shadows, addressing a particularly dark sphere. ‘Your words have no power over me, Barbara. I saw you run from me like a rabbit before a sabretooth tiger. If you were real, you’d be covered in injuries.’ She looked up. ‘Delilah? What are you doing here?’
‘I was wondering that myself,’ Delilah said. ‘How is it possible for me to be in your test?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘This floor was designed to be one person at a time. You’re only locked out of the waiting room, not other parts of the floor.’
‘Why am I locked out of the waiting room?’ Delilah cried. ‘Shouldn’t that be how I pass my test? I can prove that I’m not angry by walking away from the source of my anger.’
‘That would be too easy. You can’t always leave situations. In order to pass your test, you must endure the source of your anger until the door unlocks. You can’t leave until either you explode with anger and fail the test, or the test completes.’
‘How long is that?’
‘It varies from mortal to mortal.’
‘That doesn’t seem fair,’ Delilah grumbled. ‘You didn’t hear what my mother said to me.’
‘If I can endure Barbara, then I’m sure you can tolerate some human woman.’ Lucy did not sound very sympathetic.
‘Why is it so hard for me to pass? Anger isn’t even my sin!’
‘People have more than one sin,’ Lucy said. ‘Anger might not have been your primary sin, but you clearly have some of it in you.’
‘Your hotel is diabolical.’
‘Why, thank you.’ Lucy grinned.
Delilah flat-out refused to endure more of her mother’s cruel, delusional rantings. Instead, she tried another door in this room.
The other side led to a prison cell with cream walls, a barred window, a narrow bed and a very basic desk.
The barred door hung open. Delilah ran forward, yet, even as her hand stretched out, the door turned into more solid cream wall.
Someone must have just passed this trial and left.
‘So close,’ she grumbled. But she did spy another door and, since prisons were not known for multiple exits, it could only be someone else’s trial.
Delilah stepped into a claustrophobically tight spiral staircase going down. The stone walls smelled musty and earthy. Smoke drifted from the torch on the wall, the weak flame insufficient to light the area.
A shadow flickered on the wall, the dim outline of a human.
The shadow cried, ‘Howard, please help me. I don’t know what to do.
It was just a rugby-team initiation rite.
I never thought we’d summon a real demon.
It felt like a dream until our team kept on winning and I realised I’d sold my soul .
. . You’ll help me get it back, won’t you?
The demon promised to return my soul if I stole a ring from another, more powerful demon.
Then I injured my leg in a game. I need someone else to fulfil the task for me. I’ll show you the way . . .’
The shadow dived down the stairs, beckoning for her to follow.
Coldness drifted up the stairwell. Delilah gripped her arms. The chill had seeped under her skin and now emanated from her own blood. A buzzing drifted up the stairs, like a million flies . . . or a million very soft screams . . .
‘Howard? Are you still there?’ Delilah grabbed the torch off the wall and waved it round the corner. She glimpsed the outline of a door fading into the wall.
Then the torch slipped from her fingers and extinguished on the stones.
The darkness came alive, velvety fingers stroking Delilah’s hair and running down the goosebumps on her arms.
Delilah screamed and ran out of the door, back into the fake prison.
Gripping the bed, she panted, her breathing coming out in harsh gasps as if she’d run a marathon. Gradually, her heart rate calmed.
It had only been a test. Still, the shaking lingered in her ankles.
If Howard had once walked into that darkness to save a friend, then he must have balls so big he’d need a wheelbarrow to carry them around.
He’d need another wheelbarrow for his foolishness, because Delilah would have gone all-in betting that his friend with the conveniently injured leg had been using him.
Howard had already passed his test and left. Whatever had happened to him so long ago apparently didn’t anger him any longer. His exit had vanished with him, suggesting that the test only allowed one person out of each door.
Delilah backtracked until she found a different door to try. She didn’t feel up to returning to deal with her mother, not yet. Even the darkness of Hell had been slightly more congenial.
The next door led to a bright room with floral wallpaper and giant bay windows.
The view outside the windows showed an oddly static garden where the flowers didn’t move.
The air smelled sweet, drifting off the flowers lying on long wooden tables.
In the background, soothing orchestral music played quietly enough to allow for conversation.
Half a dozen women stood at the tables, arranging flowers into vases. Each had a nameplate in front of them. The closest nameplate read Heather but no one was there.
This must be Heather’s test. But where was Heather?