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Edwin Payne dies screaming.
He screams a lot, after that, for a long time. He’s not sure how much time he loses in the beginning from the shock, the pain, the despair, the knowledge that his classmates, who had never seemed to like him much but had also never seemed to particularly hate him either, had done this to him. He screams while he dies, and then he screams while he’s ripped apart again and again and again. In hindsight, he thinks he must have spent years doing little else but screaming before he truly comes back to himself.
The first time he manages to get out of the dollhouse is an accident.
He’s running (always running, always being caught, being ripped apart, feeling his skin and bones and sinew tear and rend in ways he had never thought possible, over and over and over) and then he takes a turn he’s never been down before, and he sees a door. He opens it, his mind full of nothing but run run run away away away , and it isn’t until he’s through the door and down an unfamiliar hallway that he realizes he is somewhere new.
The creature (is it a demon? Edwin isn’t entirely sure, he had been too out of it with pain and shock when he initially entered Hell to understand what was happening as he was passed back and forth between demons until he ended up with the spider-shaped doll-headed monstrosity he was running from) catches him almost immediately after his first “escape,” but the knowledge that there is something out there besides the endless pain of the dollhouse has opened the door for a sliver of hope.
Edwin grabs hold of that thin hope with both hands and all the bloody-minded determination that had driven him to excel in his studies during his short life, and slowly, slowly , he begins to come back to himself. He’s still jittery with fear and pain, but the fog of despair has lifted enough for him to become an active participant in his afterlife, rather than a victim of it. It takes days, weeks, months to find that door again, and then to get further and further, mapping out his progress painstakingly.
The first ‘exit’ he finds is, of course, not actually an exit, but a path deeper into Hell.
He sees other tortured souls suffer their punishments, their bodies twisted in pain, their minds too far gone for Edwin to reach. He tries to reach them anyway, he really does. He had never been particularly good with people in life, but that does not mean that he found any pleasure in watching others suffer. He tries to speak to almost every soul he meets at first out of a desperate loneliness more than anything else. Most of them are too gone for coherent speech, and Edwin fears becoming like them, wonders how much of this torture he can withstand before he too breaks into irreparable pieces. The few he manages to communicate with are even worse, lost to despair, unwilling or unable to come with him or help him.
He travels down, down, down . He sees torture beyond his imaginings and balks when he realizes that many souls participate in the torture, even as they themselves are tortured, trapped in an endless dance of pain and anger and violence. Edwin wonders what could drive a person to such a thing, if their souls have been corrupted by Hell or if they were sent to Hell because of their corruption. While the doll-headed spider creature that hunts him remains his primary fear, he finds that these corrupted souls are only too happy to turn their wrath on Edwin. It’s only after he’s mapped out several layers of Hell, each more terrible than the last that he comes to a crushing realization.
One: Dante Alighieri was, to at least some extent, correct about hell.
Two: He is going the wrong way.
Perhaps it was foolish of him not to find another path out of the dollhouse earlier, but the initial escape was always the most frenzied part of his attempts, always the place he was most likely to get caught, with the creature so close and so hungry for Edwin’s flesh. The halls of the dollhouse are long and winding, with many dead ends and blind corners that Edwin has been caught in. But if there was a way down, there must be a way up. There must be a way up, because at this point all Edwin has is this desperate hope, and he refuses to let it go, refuses to become one of the screaming, stagnant masses.
So, he starts again. He runs the halls of the dollhouse over and over and over again, getting caught almost immediately so many times that he can feel his mind teetering on the edge. He steels himself and permits a few days (or a few weeks? A few months? Time lost its meaning so long ago) to shake and sob in the corner as he tries to stay as quiet as possible to avoid the inevitable. Then he picks himself up and continues.
Edwin learns every corner of the dollhouse. (Learns what the inside of his own skull looks like. Learns how easily his bones snap when the creature bites down. Learns that there’s no use in trying not to scream because the creature doesn’t care either way and who is he trying to impress, really.) He finds three other exits. He explores each of these exits methodically, and his map grows. He makes every wrong turn, every mistake, and then makes them all again for good measure.
He finds his way up up up, through Wrath and Avarice, and then he reaches a dead end.
Edwin tries again and again and again, running and hiding and carefully writing everything down because there must be a way out. He no longer measures time in anything but the number of times he has died, and he must spend hundreds of deaths combing through every corner of Avarice, but he finds no path but the one he came by. He feels the horrible pull of despair, and in an effort not to give in to it, he gives in to his anger instead.
He runs blindly down the halls and pounds on the walls, screaming his fury, he picks up a metal rod and smashes the wall again and again, uncaring of the fact that the creature will surely come. He’s been a cowering rabbit for so long, it feels good to do violence, instead of have it done to him. After a few hits, the metal rod goes through the wall and sticks so that Edwin has to wrench with all his might to pull it back out. It leaves a hole. Through the hole, Edwin can hear noise, a mass of human misery, moaning and groaning, some of it oddly muffled, as if said through a mouth full of something. He moves forward to look through the hole. He doesn't see the creature coming.
It does not take him long to find where he was. He knows his maps well, now. He does not know how long he has been here, but he knows that he must have spent at least as much time in Hell as he has on Earth at this point. He rarely has to look at his maps, knowing which paths to take by heart. The part of the wall that he had taken his anger out on isn’t actually that far from the dollhouse at all, which seems like a cruel trick, if it leads where Edwin hopes it does. He wastes no time with histrionics this time. He peers through the hole in the wall, and finds that, although he can see light, his view is entirely blocked by something. No matter, he will simply have to expand his view.
He finds the metal rod where he left it (ignores his own blood and viscera splattered across the floor) and carefully lines up his swing before smashing it into the wall with all his power, again and again and again. The hole is almost large enough for him to put his hand through before the creature catches him this time. The work is slow, and painful, but so is everything else. After a dozen deaths or so, the hole is large enough that he can push with both hands against the object blocking his way and see the mass of food and bodies beyond. Gluttony. He sighs with relief just as the creature catches him.
Edwin works on the hole until it is large enough that he can squeeze through it quickly, but too small for the creature to follow him, and he begins the process of mapping this new layer. There is a bit of respite, here. The creature still catches him again and again and again, but whatever path it takes from the dollhouse to Gluttony must be long, because Edwin finds himself going increasingly long stretches between his deaths. The hope that has been his one salvation for so long pulses in his chest as he finds his way through Lust, then Limbo.
There is a bell in Limbo. He rings it once. The trapped souls scream. The creature catches him. He does not ring it again.
Beyond Limbo, he finds a spiral staircase, and he climbs and climbs and climbs, the creature hot on his heels. He has the advantage of his shortcut, but the creature is stronger and faster than him and it catches him again and again. He wonders, after fifty deaths, if he will forever make it only this far, doomed to repeat his failure again and again and again like Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill.
When he reaches the top of the staircase and finds a door, he isn’t sure what he expects to find on the other side, but the creature is hot on his heels so he doesn’t think before he throws the door open and rushes through it, coming out… in the basement where he was sacrificed. The door closes behind him, and he turns and watches as it glows bright blue and disappears. He stands there, quaking on his feet, his breaths coming fast, his hands shaking. Being in this room feels like a nightmare. Is this just more of Hell? Was the staircase a trick, a mockery of an escape?
Edwin forces his feet to move, knowledgeable of the fact that the creature must be right behind him. He wonders why, if this is Hell, the basement looks so different. The walls and stone table are the same as ever, but dusty boxes fill much of the space, covering the table and lining one of the walls. He wants to investigate, but he wants out of this horrible room more. He finds his way to the staircase, remembering the way despite the fact that his life feels like a distant memory at this point.
The rest of the building reflects the same half-memory as the basement. The walls and basic features are the same. The stone is as ancient and enduring as ever, but the wood of the doors has changed and the paintings are different. Almost the same, but not quite right. Sunlight glints through one of the windows and Edwin stares at it, entranced. He thinks wildly that it must be a trick, but he still stumbles forward toward the light blindly, reaching out to push the door open, only to watch as his hand goes straight through the wood. He stares, pulls his arm back, and tries again. This time his hand makes contact, and the door swings open, sunlight pours in, and Edwin’s eyes widen in astonishment. He walks out into the light, holding the door open as he stares upwards at the sky.
It’s a sunny day and the sky is a merry blue, which is rather unusual for England. There are people sitting on the front steps of the building, talking animatedly. They’re dressed strangely, in short-sleeved shirts and light blue trousers, but Edwin supposes he can’t judge, given his own attire. He feels suddenly self-conscious, and looks down at himself, expecting to see the bloody, ripped undergarments he had been wearing since he was sacrificed, but instead, he sees his schoolboy uniform, clean and neatly pressed. He lets go of the door, allowing it to swing shut behind him as he runs his hands down his chest, feeling… not much, actually. He can touch the fabric, hold the weight of it between his fingers, but it has no texture, no temperature, no true feeling. He supposes that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He had always been a little funny about textures.
One of the boys sitting on the stairs looks up towards Edwin, but not quite at him.
“Did you all just see that?” He says, squinting the door.
“See what?” Another boy replies.
“The door.” The first boy responds. “It just opened by itself, didn’t you see that?”
The second boy laughs, “Sure, mate” he says, looking towards the door, through Edwin, as though he wasn’t there.
Something clicks in his brain.
Edwin is out of Hell and back in the living world, but he’s dead.
Meaning that he is now a ghost.
Edwin hadn’t thought of much since his sacrifice besides getting out of Hell , everything else was ancillary. He hadn’t really considered what would happen once he escaped, and he’s a little embarrassed about that now that it’s come to pass. At least no one can see him in his confusion. He’s not sure what to do or where to go now that he’s got an open world in front of him rather than a twisting labyrinth of rooms and hallways leading to nothing but his own death. He still feels the creature hot on his heels, and worries that it still might emerge at any second and drag him back down to the dollhouse.
He points his feet in a random direction and runs.
Ghosts probably don’t have muscles, and thus cannot have muscle memory, but some twilight of memory guides his feet and he ends up sprinting towards his old dormitory. Once he realizes his destination he remembers, suddenly, the feeling of falling asleep in his bed to the sound of quiet breathing around him, and then waking with a clammy palm over his mouth, tasting of salt. With hands holding him down, picking him up, shoving a gag in his mouth, dragging him down a hallway.
He shudders, stumbles, turns, and begins running again. Away from the dormitory and the academic buildings, all the places he frequented in life. He runs until he reaches the far end of campus, where he finds the gymnasium, which had been new when Edwin was a student, but now looks old and worn down. He reaches for the door handle before pausing, taking a breath, and walking straight through the door.
Edwin ends up hunkering down in the attic of the gymnasium for that first day, where he finds shelves upon shelves of dusty storage. At first, he simply sits in the corner of the room with his knees pulled up to his chin, being very quiet and waiting for the creature to come and take him. As time passes and it becomes increasingly clear that the creature is not about to find him, his terror gives way to his curiosity and he begins to poke through the boxes. He’s not sure what he’s looking for until he finds a box of newspapers. He picks one up, noting that it looks old, its pages yellowed. Edwin carefully opens it so that he can see the date. He reads 27 January 1967 and feels his blood run cold. He grabs another newspaper, one with less yellowed pages, and opens it. 16 May, 1985. He swallows. Grabs another, and another, until he has them all laid out in front of him, organized by date. The oldest is from 1947, a year that already sounds like a distant future to Edwin. The newest is from 1987.
He had been dead for at least 71 years. He had been in Hell for at least 71 years.
Edwin sits with that information for a little while, his mind buzzing, and then he deals with the problem the same way he deals with any problem: research. He walks the familiar path to the library, flinching at every sudden noise but determined in his goal. It’s nighttime now, and the campus is deserted. He’s not sure how long he spent in the gymnasium, it could have been a few hours or a few days. Time is still a vague concept for him, and he suspects it will be for a while. He's glad that it's nighttime, now. He's not sure if he could stand being crowds of any size. He thinks of the masses of bodies pushing against each other in the different layers of hell. The naked, bloody horror of Lust, the terrible agonies of Violence, the sickening indulgence of gluttony. He shudders delicately and pushes the thoughts from his mind.
The library door is probably locked, but Edwin simply walks right through the wall, so that’s not an issue. He reflects that there are parts of being dead that are extremely convenient.
He begins his research by finding a calendar on the wall behind the librarian’s desk. It’s printed on strangely shiny paper and it says that the month is May of 1989. 73 years in Hell, then. He’s pleased to see that the library still uses the Dewey Decimal System, meaning that is easy for him to make his way to the history and geography section and begin catching up on seven decades of history. Apparently, the Great War that had been brewing in Edwin’s day had been rather overshadowed by the Second World War that came after it, with thousands dying in trenches, and millions more in death camps that sound like their own kind of Hell.
New countries have been formed, others broken into pieces. Edwin finds a globe and examines it closely, running his unfeeling fingers over the names of nations he didn’t recognize. Pakistan, he traces, and then Bangladesh, both of which had been part of the British Raj during Edwin’s life. He remembers reading stories of unrest and rebellion in India during his life, but independence from the empire had seemed a complete impossibility at the time. The world has changed.
Edwin has a lot to learn.
He throws himself into catching up on modern history, politics, literature, and anything that mentions ghosts or the supernatural. At night, he goes to the library, and during the day he retreats to the attic of the gymnasium to study his books in peace. The longer he spends in the living world the less afraid he feels, but he still isn’t particularly fond of being surrounded by people. He never had been. Without the need to sleep, eat, or even rest, he has no need to do anything but read, so he becomes a sort of ghostly hermit academic.
It quickly becomes clear that the St. Hilarion library is woefully insufficient for his supernatural research, so he ventures out from the school. He meets other ghosts for the first time and learns that most ghosts are spirits stuck on earth who were cursed or had unfinished business (not damned souls who had clawed their way out of Hell). He learns that most living humans can't see them, but some can if they are close to death, or if they have been close to death. He learns that ghosts can travel through mirrors if they study the right books and learn the right spells. He learns that magic, or the arcane, is real, and something that he can master, given time.
He learns that Death will come for them all, someday, to send them to wherever they belong. Edwin does not intend to find out if he belongs back in Hell.
He does other research, too, on anything reported about the disappearance of a 16-year-old boy from St. Hilarion's in 1916. He finds only a short newspaper clipping labeling the event an “Act of God.” He searches for news of the Payne family and learns that his parents died decades ago. He finds no obituary for himself, no headstone. Edwin Payne, it seems, simply disappeared from history. No one searched for him, or at least no one did so publicly. It’s a strange sort of grief when you’re the person who died, and also the person who was left behind. He wonders what his parent's afterlife is like. He wonders if they missed him, or if it was a relief to be rid of their peculiar son with his dandyish mannerisms.
Edwin wants there to be more to the story. He wants his death, his life, to have mattered. He wonders if there’s anything at the school that might contain some record of his existence. He hadn’t found anything at the library, but perhaps one of those old newspapers in the gymnasium attic? He hadn’t ever ended up reading them, not thinking them important once he had proper books in his noncorporeal hands.
He decides to go back to the school. He had always thought it was beautiful there in the fall.
He returns to St. Hilarion's in November of 1989, just six months after his escape from Hell. The school still feels a bit haunted, so he decides to start his search at the gymnasium, where most of his memories are from after his death.
As he approaches, he sees a boy stumble out of the forest.
He’s soaking wet, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, and his whole body is trembling, almost shuddering. He looks behind him as he runs, nearly falling over in his haste. The moonlight glints off of his single dangling earring. Edwin watches him curiously, and then he hears a sound that would have made his blood run cold if he had any - the mocking laughter of teenage boys on the hunt.
His mind flashes to the night he was sacrificed, and he grits his teeth, watching as the boy stumbles blindly into the gymnasium. The door remains open behind him, clearly showing his path, and the other boys are closing in. Edwin steps forward and pulls the door closed seconds before a pack of boys emerges from the forest, crowing with laughter. Edwin notes with a quiet sort of fury that a few of them are holding rocks. Their clothes and accents are different, but their jeering laughter and cruel expressions remind him of his own tormentors of seven decades past. Some things truly never change.
He turns away from the pack of boys and walks through the closed gymnasium door. If he remembers correctly, there should be a lantern somewhere around here. It can get dark in the attic at night, and the boy had looked so very cold.