All the Gates of Hell Read Free Page B

toward it, and now she did not see a shadow at all. A little girl sobbed on the stones. She might have been five or six, but no more than that, with long auburn hair in ringlets and very pale skin. She held a doll with a broken head cradled in her arms.
    "...won't let the monster get you, Matthew. Won't! But I'm so scared..."
    Somewhere in Jin's brain she was still screaming, but for some reason she could not focus on her own fear, her own shock. That remained, but Jin could not take her eyes off the child.
    That's all it was? A child ?
    Why hadn't she known that? How could she possibly have mistaken that little girl for some sort of monster?
    "I won't hurt you," Jin said. "I'm not what I look like!"
    It seemed a silly thing to say, even then. Of course she wasn't what she looked like. She was Jin Hannigan, not some demon. It suddenly occurred to her that this, too, might have been one of Teacher's tricks. Not real. She held onto that thought with all her strength, even as she held out her hand toward the child. "I won't hurt you," Jin said again. "It's all right."
    Jin gasped. Her hand was back to normal. She reached up and touched her face. She was herself again; the demon was gone. Jin was almost giddy with relief, but she forced herself to concentrate on the child. "What are you doing here? Are you lost?"
    The little girl finally opened her eyes and looked at Jin, blinking through her tears. Jin was doing the same, though in her case they were tears of relief.
    "There was a mo'ster," the little girl said.
    "Don't worry, it's gone now. What's your name?"
    "Rebecca. This is my brother Matthew. He's broken. Can you fix him?"
    Jin stared at the doll. It had a porcelain head that had cracks radiating out its crown; the body was of rotten and stained cloth. Jin didn't see how the thing managed to stay together. "I'm sorry, I can't fix your doll..."
    "Not a doll!" the child shrieked. "He's Matthew! Please fix him!"
    As the child screamed, Jin saw the shadow again. It flowed out from the body of the doll as if the thing was sweating ink, then crawled out to touch and flow over the little girl. In that moment her voice changed back to the one Jin first heard, the one that had made her blood turn to crystal shards of ice.
    "Fix him!"
    Jin did not flinch this time. Whatever was happening here, this was not some sort of monster. This was a little girl named Rebecca who needed help. Jin stared at the broken doll, at the darkness oozing out of it and, finally, realized that the thing was staring back at her. She didn't give herself time to think about it.
    "It's you. You're causing this!"
    The shadow actually recoiled from her, but in that instant Jin's hands shot out and she ripped the doll from the girl's fingers. There was a shriek that could have shattered stone, and in that instant Jin went away. She was in the passageway and yet she was not there at all. She was in a hundred places at once, a thousand, more. She was with Rebecca in the passageway. She was with a young man named Shiro in a garden made of stone. She was with an old woman named Pei in a temple where the incense was thick and choking and the sound of chanting never stopped. She was with a woman named Two Doves in a place of fire and choking ash. She was in all these places and more, and in every one she saw the shadow. She knew him, had known him for years past counting, and yet she could not see his face, hear his name. Then the motion she had begun at that one time and that one place came to an end and she flung the broken doll back down the passage in the direction she had come from.
    "Matthew!"
    Rebecca tried to scramble past her and Jin grabbed her arm. "That's not your brother! That's..." Jin stopped. She didn't know. She refused to know. Then the images started again, only this time they featured Rebecca, not the shadow at all. Jin held Rebecca and she saw the tragedy unfold, like watching a dream that she couldn't control: No fast forward. No pause. No way to