Chapter 9
DAMIEN
When the lift had fallen at speeds deadly to a human, Damien had nearly passed out for the first time since his death. It seemed endless. The lift sped past Floor Violence, the lowest floor before Hell. The contents of his bowels liquified.
Halfway between Floor Violence and Hell, the lift stopped moving.
Thank the Lord – or whoever was up there watching over him.
For a long time, Damien lay there, staring up at the ceiling.
He tried to press a button for a higher floor. He would have settled even for Floor Violence. The lift would not budge.
He’d been so confident that nothing in Purgatory could hurt him . . . but what exactly would happen if he dropped all the way down to Hell?
It will be fine, he told himself. If I drop to Hell, then I just won’t open the doors.
The doors didn’t seem to be in perfect working order, though. What if they opened on their own?
He was spiralling again. It did him no good to imagine horrors that hadn’t yet happened. That was how he always ended up frozen.
The first time he’d done anything brave, it had ended with him nearly dropped to Hell. He should never be a hero again.
The air felt very cold here. Funny, that. Wasn’t he supposed to be close to Hell?
The chill sank down deep under his skin to penetrate his heart. It carried sorrow and a darker malice. He shivered. Each chilly breeze drifting up through the metal floor brought back his worst memories.
Damien had been nervous even as a child.
He walked on the balls of his feet throughout his home.
If he made a sound, then his father would yell at him.
He’d never worn glasses growing up and struggled to see the chalkboard at school.
His father thought that glasses were for nerds, then got angry at Damien for bumping into furniture.
They’d lived in an expensive apartment in London. His father had a high-stress banking job and demanded total silence at home. His mother was a small woman who had grown more withered over the years from bending to his father’s demands.
Since his father provided for the family’s expensive lifestyle, he felt strongly about gratitude in return.
Every Christmas and birthday turned into a nightmare for Damien, because nothing he could give his father was ever good enough.
He handmade a card? It was too cheap. He purchased a card?
It wasn’t personal enough. He spent his entire allowance on an expensive golf club?
It would never be the right type and brand.
A new laptop? His father would mock him for being nerdy.
A hat? His father would make jabs at his poor fashion sense for weeks.
Gifts for his mother were also a landmine, because his father would get upset if he believed his wife had got a better present than him.
One Christmas Eve when he’d been eight years old, Damien remembered breaking down crying in the shop aisle because he knew no matter what he purchased, it would be wrong.
On Damien’s own birthdays, he was expected to show gratitude for whatever he got whether it suited his tastes or not.
His father had mood swings: sometimes he could be generous; other times he would turn cruel.
Some years, presents would be extravagant; other years, Damien would receive only a pair of socks to test his gratitude.
If he did get presents, he’d pay for them for months with little jabs about the debt he owed.
On Damien’s tenth birthday, his father had suddenly burst into his room and started quizzing him on school subjects.
After Damien got one answer wrong, his father cancelled his birthday party and said he would receive none of the presents he had purchased. Damien had cried all day.
The lift attendant in their apartment block had always been kind to Damien, asking about his day at school and slipping him sweets. The day after his birthday, the lift attendant whispered to him that there had never even been any presents to take away.
‘If packages for birthday presents had been delivered up to your room, then I would have noticed. Your father forgot about your birthday. Then he came up with an excuse for why you weren’t getting any presents, in order to make it seem like it’s all your fault.’
It was the first time in Damien’s life that someone had validated that his father treated him unfairly.
His mother (who had no money of her own to buy him presents) had always adopted a strategy of appeasing his father instead.
She would excuse any cruelty, telling Damien to try harder to be good next time.
Teachers and other adults in authority told Damien that his father loved him and wanted what was best for him with a careless, unwarranted certainty.
That small moment of kindness had planted a seed of desire in Damien’s heart to some day follow in the footsteps of the lift attendant.
Live a kind and simple life. He’d made the mistake of mentioning this around his father, who had ranted and raved about how any son of his would be too important for such a menial job.
When it came to jobs, Damien also could never make a right choice.
His father insisted that he was too stupid to be a doctor.
Art was too feminine. Science was too nerdy.
Working in trades was too low-class. Wanting to become a politician was too ambitious.
If he suggested he might become a banker like his father, then he was a pathetic louse relying on nepotism.
If he picked any other job, then was banking not good enough for him?
According to Damien’s father, he was stupid, clumsy, a liar and a mess. He should be grateful his tolerant parents put up with him.
All throughout college, Damien had been called a leech for living at home, but as soon as he tried to move to the dorms he was ungrateful.
His mother had begged him to stay to keep the peace.
He’d kept his head down and dreamed of moving out on graduation day.
Then he would finally be free. He would take any job at all that would make enough money for him to get out of that house.
Secretly, he still thought it would be fun to work in a lift.
A few weeks before his graduation, with a deposit down on his new flat, Damien had developed a cripplingly painful stomach ache. Just as he’d put on his coat to go to the emergency room, his father had mocked him for being a weakling.
In that moment, Damien had wondered if his father was right. What if he’d been making a fuss about nothing? He’d been in a lot of pain yet terrified of making his father angry. In the end, he went to bed, thinking he would make up his mind in the morning.
Damien never woke up. He never knew how he’d died, either. Purgatory didn’t come with a list of causes of death. He only knew that he’d made the wrong choice yet again.
Clinging to the lift railing, the cold fingers of Hell kept dragging him back to that moment.
Frustration swamped over him like a wave, stealing his long-dead breath.
If he’d been able to have confidence in his decision, he might have reached the hospital in time to survive.
If only he’d had a different upbringing, he could have been a healthy, happy, confident, living person.
Yet, even knowing that, he couldn’t stop second-guessing every decision he made. Even after he’d died, his father’s voice still lived rent-free in his head.
Trapped between floors, the coldness and darkness rushing up from below, Damien distinctly remembered the pain in his stomach that had killed him. Cramps shook his body. Or was that shivers? This was the closest he’d come to pain since dying.
Perhaps Damien’s personal Hell would be reliving his mistake leading to his death for the rest of eternity. That might be what seeped up through the lift floor from the Great Below.
His teeth chattered. Losing his grip on the railing, he sagged down and collapsed to the floor.
He feared what would happen if his lift fell to the final level.
He had no faith that being a good person or obeying the rules of Purgatory could save him.
After three decades in this hotel, he no longer believed in its fairness.
If only he wasn’t alone.
As if summoned by the thought, Nefertiti landed on Damien’s chest. Hackles raised, she snarled at the floor and at Hell itself.
Warmth seeped into Damien’s body, coming straight from his cat. He was fully back in the present – which remained a stuffy, cramped box, but at least it wasn’t Hell. Slowly, he raised his hand to pet Nefertiti. ‘Thank you.’
She purred. ‘Everyone wants me, I drive some people insane and people are hurt when they lose me. What am I?’
Ah, yes, he knew this riddle. She’d spoken it before. ‘I love you too.’ He kissed the tip of her nose.
Patters struck the roof of the lift like rain or hail. They came hard and fast, increasing in number, until it sounded like a rainstorm.
‘What the Purgatory?’ Damien muttered. ‘Rain? Inside the hotel? What madness has infected us now?’
Nefertiti rubbed against his ankles. Then she leapt on to the railing, using it as a foothold to reach the ceiling. Her claws aimed for the emergency escape hatch.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Damien said. ‘What if it’s acid rain? On the other hand, what if that’s my only way to escape? On the other other hand, the emergency escape hatch isn’t designed to be opened from the inside. The latch is on the outside, for emergency workers.’
Nefertiti took this as a suggestion. She vanished. He heard her claws scratch against the top of the lift. There came a scraping sound.
The escape hatch opened, and lollipops, packaged cakes, hard candies, gumballs and biscuits came pouring into the lift.