Chapter Text
BELOW
It was honestly just like every other day, she would think, when she looked back. A Tuesday…maybe. A bike ride to work, definitely. A stray stone in the road. A crash, an oncoming bus. Rats.
Hazel often wondered what her last words had been – she couldn’t remember the conversation she’d had with her dad when she’d left the house. Undoubtedly something banal. She had no doubt that those people that had great last words – kiss me, Hardy, was the only thing coming to mind, but they were out there – had said something ridiculous, and the people who had been at the death had made up something more befitting of their stature.
Hazel’s death had been too quick for anyone to realise that there were last words to be spoken, and at any rate her twenty-year-old stature didn’t really warrant last words more inspiring than “I’ll see you later.”
That was ironic.
Anyway, there had been a bike, and a bus, and a crash, and a scream – hers? Who knew – and then nothing, nothing, falling, darkness-
And suddenly, she was in an office. A nice office, with a dark wood floor, and a large bookshelf, and a leather sofa. She turned, taking in a fancy lamp, and windows with the blinds drawn – was it night-time? It had been daytime when she’d-
At that point, her stomach lurched, and she vomited all over the nice hardwood floor.
“Oh, Jesus,” A voice said, and she heaved again. “Can you – hang on – how the fuck did you get in here?”
“Where am I?” She croaked, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “I don’t – I don’t understand.”
“Who are you?” The speaker was sat behind a nice desk, with an outdated computer on it, staring at her. When she turned to face him, he leapt to his feet – he was tall, but narrow enough to avoid imposing, with sandy brown hair and a non-descript shirt and tie. Young-ish. He was the man who matched the office. Hazel was distressed.
“I was on my bike,” She said, feeling panic build in the back of her throat. She wanted her dad.
“How did you get in here?” The tall man asked again.
“I don’t know,” She gulped. “I don’t know, I don’t-” Now her chest was heaving, breaths coming thick and fast but never bringing any oxygen with them.
“Woah, just – calm down there, kid,” The tall man said, holding his hands out placatingly and moving out from behind his desk, in his office, on the other side of the world, apparently. “Don’t panic.” He had an awkward gait, perhaps made more awkward by the fact that he was deliberately trying to move as slowly as possible.
“Panic?” Hazel squawked. “I was hit by a bus!”
“You were hit by a bus?” The man said, but it was in a way that said good, we’re getting more info now, rather than what an astonishing turn of events! “What’s your name?”
“H-Hazel,” She said, wiping away the tears now streaming freely down her face. “Hazel Montgomery.”
“Any, uh, middle names?” The tall man asked, slowly but surely moving towards a set of filing cabinets by the windows.
“No?” She asked, baffled.
“Where are you from, Hazel?”
“Evanton. Near Chicago.” Her palms were sweating fiercely.
“Oh, I’m from around there!” The tall man said, delighted. “You’re sure you don’t know how you got here?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” She exclaimed, wiping away fresh tears. “Where the hell is this place? Who are you?”
The tall man’s lips quirked ironically. “I’m Shane. I’m here to help, I swear.” And then he opened the filing cabinet, reaching an arm impossibly far inside and pulling out a file seemingly at random. He flicked through it, whilst Hazel watching in astonishment. She was losing feeling in her feet; ice was creeping up her spine and along the backs of her arms. Something was really, truly, wrong here.
“Hazel Montgomery, Chicago,” Shane murmured, coming to a stop. “April 2020. Road accident…collision with a bus, you said that. Paramedics reported her dead on arrival.”
Her? Me, the creeping voice in the back of her mind whispered, and the cold advanced further, freezing her lungs and making her palms clammy. “What are you talking about?” She whispered, clenching her fists to stop them shaking.
“But you still shouldn’t be here, no matter what the evaluation says,” He mused, reading through the file with one hand in his hair. “This is my office. Nobody comes here.”
“Nobody comes where?” At that, he seemed to remember that she was there, and he put the file carefully back in the cabinet. He shut it, and then moved to stand by the window.
“Do you understand what’s happened, Hazel?” He said, in a horrifyingly gentle voice. “The bus? Your report? You seem like a smart girl. I think you can work it out.”
“No,” She sniffed. “I don’t – I can’t. Please.” She was shaking her head, almost mechanically, a panic response to something she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
“You died,” Shane said, and with that the cold reached even the last vestiges of her fingertips, and she felt her breath halt in her chest, and her entire world shattered like brittle glass. She stood there for a long time, staring at the grain in the hardwood floor, feeling every inch of her body – she could smell the old books in the bookshelves, feel her nails puncturing her palms, how could she be dead –what a marvel of engineering it was, that she could feel all these things.
Shane let her stand, quietly, leaning back against the filing cabinet.
“Where am I?” She finally said, after a long time.
“Jeez,” Shane exhaled, running a hand through his hair and making it stick out every which way. “You've got a knack for the awkward questions, bud.”
“The after-life?” She asked, and though the concept had occurred to her before it had never weighed particularly heavily on her mind – it was something to worry about another time, something that wouldn’t even matter until after the fact and at that point it would be too late to worry anyway, but now it seemed really very important indeed.
“Kind of,” He said, with a wry quirk of his lips that made Hazel fairly worried – more worried than she already was. She was becoming oddly numb, to be honest.
Then Shane pulled the blinds up, and Hazel looked out the window onto something utterly incomprehensible to the human eye.
Red, as far as the eye could see. Flames, burning. A pit, deep below, from which plumes of lava erupted and broke in the air, whilst they looked out from the nice office at a vantage point too far away to suffer any harm.
This was hell. With a capital H, Hell. And she – she was in it.
“What the fuck?” She said without even thinking, and Shane let out a shocked gasp of laughter. “How am I in Hell? I was a good fucking person!”
“I don’t know, Hazel Montgomery,” Shane said, reaching over and closing the blinds again before the ever-shifting flames could drive Hazel insane. Could she go insane in Hell? Did it even matter? Maybe she’d already gone insane, and this was some bizarre hallucination-
“No, you’re definitely dead,” Shane said, and Hazel came to a conclusion that had been percolating in the back of her mind without her realising. The nice office, the view, the business casual-
“Are you a demon?” She asked, and the wry smile vanished. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“I think you could probably say that,” He said.
“You don’t look like a demon,” She said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.
“That’s a little racist, don’t you think, Hazel?” He asked, cocking his head to one side and eyeing her.
“R-racist?” She gulped, and a sudden wheeze of laughter took her by surprise. “Is that why I’m in hell?”
“God, no, I was – I was obviously joking,” Shane threw his hands in the air, flailing his long arms exasperatedly. She laughed again – the faux indignance on his face kind of reminded her of her dad.
Oh, jeez.
“Am-” Her voice broke, stalled, “Am I gonna see my dad again?” Shane’s face fell, immediately telling her everything she needed to know, and the tears were coming again. Hazel had never considered herself a crier, per se, but then, she’d never died before. You learn new things about yourself every day.
“You’ll see him again, Hazel,” Shane said, softly, quietly. “It’ll – it’ll just be a while.”
“My – my dad’s not going to go to hell!” Hazel said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “He’s a good person!”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” Shane said, brow furrowing. “Something’s gone wrong, somewhere. Ugh, that means I’m going to be the one that has to sort it out.”
ABOVE
It was honestly just like any other day – a plane ride, a phone camera shoved in his face, Ryan bouncing his knee in the seat next to him until he vibrated. Shane sighed, and leaned his head back, and the minute he closed his eyes –
“Do you think we’ll see a demon?”
“You know I don’t,” Shane said, trying to keep the bite from his voice. He’d slept badly the night before; tossing and turning, plagued with vivid dreams and strange voices. It was just another shoot. A demon one, yeah, which meant Ryan’s…Ryan-ness would be turned up to eleven, but just another shoot.
Ryan never told him much about the places they went before they arrived. It was part of his authenticity schtick – he wanted a genuine first impression from Shane. He didn’t mind, really. The old houses, the voices in the dark…something inside Shane delighted in it. A deep, primal part of him. It made him want to shout, yell into the deep forest, laugh in the face of Ryan’s fear, say every weird thing that came into his head.
But he didn’t like aeroplanes. No leg room. And Bergara was snoring, frustratingly cute even when he was annoying Shane.
They landed in Ireland in the middle of the night and trudged out to the hotel on heavy feet. Ryan was quiet, eyelids drooping with the weight of the early morning. This was what they did now.
And there it was – the house on the peninsula, the edge of the Irish Sea. Facing out towards Britain as if to say, “fuck you!” Or maybe Shane was putting words in the house’s mouth.
A flashing red light. A floorboard creaking. The tenor voice announcing “hello, and welcome to Buzzfeed Unsolved.” Customary shake of the head at “are ghosts real?”
“This is Loftus Hall, which has been long rumoured to play home to the Devil.” Ryan’s voice did that, that thing. The really intense thing. Shane felt like he knew the cadences of Ryan’s voice better than he knew his own; weeks of his life spent listening to voice-overs, late night phone calls, old episodes of his own show (wow).
“And for the first time in a long time, Shane and I will be staying overnight.” Ryan said, flashing white teeth down the camera lens, and Shane jolted out of his reverie.
“You better fucking sleep, my guy,” He mumbled, and Ryan huffed a laugh.
“Get ready for a storm,” He said. “Ryan doesn’t deal with demons. Especially the King of Hell.”
“Oh, so we’re referring to ourselves in the third person now?”
“Yeah. We are.” Ryan said, folding his arms. TJ was spacing out behind the camera; a sign that he should move it along.
“So lay it on me. All the spooky shit that they claim went down here.” Shane leaned back in his chair leisurely, master of his own domain. Which wasn’t saying much, considering he was sat in an abandoned house in a godforsaken corner of Ireland.
He liked this one. A lot of the places they visited had character, but the atmosphere in this old manor house was Off The Charts. He didn’t know who’s dick Ryan had sucked to get a camera crew in here, but the episode was going to be a tour de force.
“This place reeks of Catholic guilt,” Shane said aloud, interrupting Ryan’s narration. He usually listened just fine to the stories behind the locations, but tonight he was distracted by the house. They were sat in the front foyer, the sweeping staircase behind, and the wide double doors leading out onto the flat shore outside. It was typical Unsolved set-up; just the boys lit, the background in shadow for maximum Spook.
“…yeah, so, anyway,” Ryan continued, “In 1666, the Tottenham family received a visit from a ship, and a young man. One night, the family and the visitor were playing cards, when Anne, Charles’ daughter, reached under the table to pick up a dropped card. She saw that the young man had a cloven foot, and when she asked about it, the man leapt through the ceiling. The place where the hole was reportedly still visible to this day.”
“Oh boy!” Shane said, flicking his torch upwards. “Where?!”
“In the drawing room,” Ryan said. “Don’t worry, we’ll go and look. Couldn’t be a self-respecting demon hunter otherwise.”
“Do we hunt demons now?!” Shane demanded. “I thought you didn’t fuck with demons?”
“I’m getting tired of the lack of them fucking with me, on camera,” Ryan said. “It’s time to employ more aggressive tactics.”
“You heard it here first, folks. We’re gonna dance with the devil tonight.”
“God,” Ryan muttered.
“No sleep for the ghoul boys.”
“I regret everything. I regret it.”
BELOW
Hazel sat with her knees under her chin, back to the bookcase, staring at the blinds behind the desk. Shane’s head bobbed as he hung up the phone, only to immediately dial another number.
“Hey, Andromalius? It’s Shane. I've got a - a stray girl just appearing in my office. Yeah, I know where the children go. She’s like, 16, and she definitely doesn’t belong here. Look, I rely on you to sort shit like this out for me, I’m still getting to grips with it. Fuck, I keep swearing in front of her.”
“Where do the children go?” She asked, feeling like the voice speaking was not her own. She was numb, fuzzy inside.
“Hmm? Oh, not here. This is hell.” Of course, that was explanation enough.
“So…what do you do with them?”
“Send ‘em upstairs.” Shane gestured, and Hazel made a face. “God, please don’t vomit again.”
“Heaven?!”
“Honestly, I don’t know any better than you. Can’t be worse than here.”
“Can’t you just send me…upstairs?”
“We haven’t got the right paperwork.” Hazel gaped at him. “Don’t give me that look. Every soul is accounted for, and you’re not. We have to make sure everyone gets what they deserve.” He ran his hand over the five o’ clock shadow on his jaw. “I guess I’m more like Hades than the devil, really.”
“Been a while since I read those books,” Hazel muttered.
“What, the entire mythology of Ancient Greece?”
“No. The ones about the kids who were half gods. And they fought monsters.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The blazing fires seem to skew more Christian than Classical.” Hazel gestured to the blinds, shuddering at the thought of what she’d seen behind them.
“Yeah, I’m working on that. Nobody seems to care what I do, so we’re working on implementing a more transparent decision-making process in our applicants’ eternal damnation. And a more tailor-made approach to individual punishments. Sisyphus-style.”
“The rock dude.” Hazel said.
“Yyyyup,” Shane said, popping the P. The two sat in silence for a while, Shane leaning back in his fancy office chair and Hazel in her best foetal position.
“Is – is Hell boring?” She finally asked. “It seems…really boring.”
“You're kidding. I’m having a great time. Paperwork, you having a breakdown on my office floor. Brilliant.”
The phone rang and Shane snatched it from its cradle. “Andy? Yeah, I have to call you that, Andromalius is a fucking mouthful…wait, what?!”
“What is it?” Hazel demanded, but Shane gave her the universal gesture for shut up I’m on the phone.
“Everyone has paperwork. Are you telling me she was never going to die? Everyone is going to die. The Antarctic?!” He sat back in his chair, face a picture of incredulity. “So what do we do? She’s not meant to be here, not for another forty years. Alright, less lip from you, Andy. Don’t forget who I murdered to get this job.”
Hazel felt bile rising in her throat as Shane hung up the phone.
“So, two options: you stay here with a demon childminder until we get this shit sorted, or you can come home with me.”
“Where – where does the Devil live?”
“I’m not the Devil, and I live in Los Angeles. For the irony. Though I’m not the devil.”
There was a knock at the door and an eldritch horror slithered into the room. It waved an indescribable tentacle at her, and Hazel threw up before squeezing her eyes shut.
“Jeez…you can clean that up, right? Okay, I’m calling it a night. See ya later, Merihem.” Shane grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and a briefcase from nowhere at all. “Hazel, you coming or staying?”
“Coming,” She croaked, scrambling to her feet and swallowing back further nausea before hurrying after him and out the door.