“W-What did you say?” I blinked, stupefied.

“Hell.” She said the word with grave finality. “That’s the awful, awful place where people hurt for ever and ever.” She nodded, her lips quivering as she nodded. “That’s what the darkness does. It is Hell. It puts people in Hell.”

By the Angel…

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Once it takes them, Andalon can’t save them anymore,” she said. “Andalon can never know them anymore, Andalon can never… ” she squinted her eyes, trying to remember. “Never find the… the answer to…” She grabbed her head and yelled. “I don’t remember! I don’t! I want to remember, but I don’t! And it hurts! It hurts!”

The darkness was putting people in Hell?

Wait a minute. Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute!

“Andalon,” I asked, trembling, “does that mean Hell is… real?”

Shakily, she nodded.

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD…

So, now Hell was real.

By this point, my freak out was in full swing: hyperventilating, finger-clenching, the works.

“How many people will the darkness kill?” I asked.

“Kill?” she asked.

“End,” I said. “Destroy. Make no more. Make them go away for ever.”

She gulped. “Mr. Genneth, the darkness kills everything. It’s gonna put everything and everyone in Hell, and they’ll stay there forever and ever.” She wept, shaking her head vigorously. “No one should go to Hell, Mr. Genneth. Nothing can live there. No one can survive. It’s only badness and stress and sadness, and it never ever ends.” She shivered. “I don’t want you to go there. Andalon doesn’t want anybody to go there! All the things I do, it’s to stop that from happening!”

Honestly, it was a relief to hear that.

No wonder Andalon wanted to save everyone. I mean… none of this situation was the least bit okay, but it definitely helped knowing that Andalon seemed to hate the idea of Hell almost as much as I did, and that she was doing everything she could to keep everyone out of Hell. Yeah, I was a member of the living dead now, but, whatever Andalon was, the “living” part of “living dead” was entirely because of her. She’d kept me from dying. Was that a kind of “salvation” that I could accept? I didn’t know. Heck, I didn’t even know if I wanted it, but… it wasn’t nothing, and it was certainly better than being Hell.

Anything was better than being in Hell.

Of course, Andalon heard my every thought. “You are!” she answered. “It is better! So much better!” Her big blue eyes were wet with tears, even as she nodded.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to make of it. This was so much to take in, and I’d be lying if I said I was brave enough to look directly at it and scrutinize it down to the last detail.

I’d always loathed the concept of Hell. Its… eternity. A world where Hell was everlasting was a world without justice, without kindness. It was a world where evil would always have a place to reign. Now, Hell as a period of punishment and cleansing, in preparation for final salvation? That made sense. But, for the Godhead to allow Their creation to suffer without end? A loving creator wouldn’t do that, certainly not to a creation it loved. Oblivion would have been preferable.

But, no, the Angel really would do that. Really and truly.

I think most arguments for God were ultimately arguments for Hell—or, at least, they weren’t arguments against Hell. And I’d heard many. The most beautiful argument I’d ever heard in favor of God’s existence went like this: God must exist, because the idea of death in a world without God was so horrifying and repugnant—so evil—that, if goodness had any value at all, then had to be something after death, because the alternative was simply unthinkable.

Even now, after all this time, that argument still moves me. I wish I could have had that much faith in goodness. I wish I could have believed that goodness had the power to conquer death. Yet, the same voices that said the might of goodness could conquer death claimed goodness was powerless to abolish an eternal Hell. Goodness shouldn’t have been able to condone unending suffering. Yet, for some reason, it did.

So much for faith in goodness.

It just goes to show: in general, belief in a thing does not give power to that thing.

I looked up at the fluorescent lights once more, and then back down at Andalon. “You said something went wrong with Frank. What happened to him?” I asked. “Is he in Hell? Is that why he’s a monster?” My words echoed through the restroom like sea-snakes’ hisses.

“I think so,” Andalon said, tremulously. Sniffling, she smacked her lips together. She was starting to calm down.

“But why Frank Isafobe?” I asked. “He was a good man! Why did he become a demon while Aicken didn’t? Aicken was a murderer—a madman!”

Andalon’s answer was a somber one. “The darkness grows,” she said. “It makes monsters. So many monsters.” She looked me in the eyes. “It’s like the thing Ms. Eggy likes to do. It’s doin’ that.”

Ms. Eggy?

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No: Heggy.

A shiver ran down to the tip of my tail.

Heggy equalled military, or army, or whatever analogy you wanted.

My eyes widened. You could have used them as dinner plates.

“Andalon,” I whispered, “did you… did you just say the darkness is building an army?” My words echoed in the restroom.

She nodded.

Fudge.

“And you want-slash-need my help to stop it?”

There was the tiniest pause, and then she nodded.

Leaning back against the wall, I tilted my head up and stared at the ceiling.

“I think… I, uh…” I spoke softly and breathlessly. “Mr. Genneth has gotten enough questions answered,” I said, “for now.” My voice trailed off into a helpless whimper.

An army of darkness—of demons. And Frank was just the first.

The Last Days really were approaching. Miracles were coming back. People like Nina and Dr. Horosha were going to be the foot-soldiers in the Angel’s battle to rescue the righteous from the forces of darkness.

I looked back down at her. “I really don’t think I’m cut out to fight a demon army, Andalon. I’m not the protagonist of a book or a game. I’m just a neuropsychiatrist with a goofy bow-tie.”

“Andalon isn’t very good at being Andalon, either,” she said. “It is supah hard. But,” she wiped her face on her nightgown’s sleeve and looked me in the eyes, “I gotsta do it. Or nobody else will.”

“Well,” I sighed a deep, deep sigh. “I can certainly relate to that.” I nodded. “It isn’t easy being Mr. Genneth, either.”

“R-Really?” she asked, concern gripping her face.

I nodded. “Yep.”

For a second, I was about to ask her what, if any, plans she had for stopping the fungus from creating an army of demons, but I stopped myself.

“Plans?” Andalon asked. Once again, she was reading my thoughts.

I stuck out my hand and shook my head. “No. Not right now. Let me be clear, I do want to hear whatever you have to say about that—just, not right now. I’ve got a job to do, and I don’t think I’ll be able to keep myself in one piece if I hear any more. I need some time to decompress, okay?”

Shakily, she nodded. “Okay.”

Now, come on, let’s get out of here, I thought-said. I don’t want to get in trouble.

Rising to my feet and minding my steps, I used the door-side console to unlock the bathroom and then walked back out to the cafeteria. I left the cafeteria as quickly as I could without arousing any suspicion, making sure to grab myself a fresh F-99 mask from the dispenser by the trash bins on my way out. On a hunch, just as I was about to leave the room, I turned around to see if Andalon was still following me. And, though she was, she was also doing a lot more than just following me.

She was… exploring.

That was new.

Before, when Andalon manifested to me, she’d been focused solely on me. She’d never shown any awareness of her surroundings. The only exceptions to this were Aicken and Frank, both of whom were ghosts that—according to her—she’d put inside me so as to “save” them, though, apparently, with Frank, something had gone wrong.

But now, things were completely different. It was like Andalon was seeing the world for the first time. Everything was a wonder to her, and she was reveling in exploration. She wandered up and down the aisles between the table, gawking at the people seated there, and at the meals they were eating, and, most of all, at the consoles in their hands. Not wanting to draw any undue attention to myself, I stepped away from the trash bins as I watched her—and I didn’t want to draw undue attention to myself because “undue attention” lived right next door to “noticing I had a tail stuffed down my pants-leg.”

As I watched her, I kept mulling over the recent revelations.

If I got hungry again, she’d fall asleep and go back to the aptly named “not-here-place”. Did that mean that her manifestations had time limits?I guess only time would tell, and—right now—I didn’t have any time to waste. I had a lot of questions to ask and an unknown amount of time to ask them.

Andalon, I thought, please come here. I have questions for you.

Andalon turned toward me where she stood, atop a table many yards away.

“There’s so much neat stuff here!” she said. Andalon spoke to me without bothering to get any closer, and, bizarrely, I heard her as if she was standing right next to me.

Please, Andalon, I don’t want to waste any time.

She nodded. “Okay.”

Suddenly, she was standing next to me. I flinched, yelping softly

Uh, please walk next time. Teleporting all of a sudden like that makes me stressed.

Since she seemed to understand the concept of stress, I figured it would be a good idea to reference it when communicating with her.

“Sure.” Nodding, Andalon wrapped her hands behind her back and looked up at me. “What’s tel-por-tation?”

Well, I began, walking out of the cafeteria, teleportation is—

“—And what’s wah-king?” she asked, scampering along behind me.

I guess I was going to have to explain everything.

Why does everything have to be complicated?

“What’s complicated?” she asked.

I chuckled bitterly.

With Andalon the Friendly Ghost in tow, I slowly made my way back to Ward E. My mission? To try and learn as much as I could from her as quickly as possible. Of course, as usual, this was easier said than done. In many ways, Andalon was almost as confused as I was, except her confusion was with concepts like “walking”, “human beings”, “blood”, “money”, “air” and pretty much everything else that everyone took for granted.

Talking with Andalon gave me an opportunity to reflect upon recent events. In my reflections, I realized I still hand’t finish my message to Brand. I decided to take care of that while I sat down to put on a fresh set of PPE in the changing area that led into Ward E.

I was a bit of a slow writer, on account of being overly deliberative, and so, not wanting to waste any of my remaining time with Andalon (assuming there was, in fact, a time limit), I tried dismissing Andalon. My intention was to practice summoning her again once I finished typing up my.

At the moment, Andalon wasn’t manifesting to. I’d asked her to go away (nicely, of course), and she’d promptly complied.

Can you still hear me, Andalon? I thought-asked.

“Yep yep!” Andalon said. Her words spoke directly into my mind.

Are you in the not-here-place?

“Uh… Andalon is in a place that is not the here-place but also not the not-here-place.”

What does that look like? I wondered.

“Andalon does not know.”

Whipping out my console, I got back to work on my message to Brand. Thankfully, I didn’t need to take off my gloves to use the console’s touch-screen—another technological innovation worth bragging about.

Brand, I’m sorry for rushing out like that, and I’m sorry for not having replied to your question earlier. Things have been…, well, crazy. You wanted to know my opinion? Well, here it is: you’re not crazy. The world is crazy, and it’s our misfortune to be stuck in the middle. Brand, the things I’ve seen…

On second thought, I deleted that last sentence. I didn’t want to make Brand’s thoughts any wilder than they already were.

Brand, no matter what happens, don’t lose faith in yourself. You’re the smartest, most capable man I know. And, trust me, you don’t want to lose that faith. Losing faith is one of the worst experiences any of us can ever have. Focus on one thing at a time; progress step by step. And if you ever fear you’re losing trust in yourself, remember that I always have trust in you.

—Genneth

I read it over one more time, and then pressed Send.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my thoughts back to Andalon.

Andalon, come on out. Let’s talk some more.

I was ready for my answers.

As if on cue, my console buzzed in my grip.

“What’s that?” Andalon asked, popping back into existence.

A videophone call.

I answered the call, and then immediately regretted it.