Spirit Mary

Chapter 10, Limbo

I feel my skin burning; I speak of no cost

I.

When the falling stopped, Mary felt the sudden lightness--the sudden weightlessness. It lifted her shoulders, her legs, her torso, her head.

No one has entered it and returned to our world alive. She lingered around Fr. Peter's words.

She opened her eyes to a slow river coursing ahead. Mounds of dark soil piled on the sides, the sky bore no clouds amidst its purple and blue, and a thick gray fog rolled all around, swarming and eating. She paddled on the water, but at the hint of sinking, she stopped and allowed the current to take her.

The air was neither cold or hot; it was empty. Stale. Water splashed gently and calm winds blew; Mary heard them well for they were the only sounds around.

After some moments, the river took a sharp turn--too sharp for her weight to follow. She slid beyond the rough bank and lied limp like a corpse. She continued to listen to the subtle splashing of the river before getting up on her feet.

Behind her rose more hills of dark soil. In the distance, they were like large ant hills--sans the life. An array of colors pierced through the fog from afar, lined up in the order of the rainbow. They called to her in pulses.

Mary forced herself through the disorienting terrain. Her feet sunk through the ground as she treaded. Numerous times did she lose her footing, causing her to stumble. She crashed unto one of the mounds in the process, reducing it into a cloud of ash.

As she neared her destination, the wonder finally came into view; standing on a lonely hill jutting out of the main land, overlooking a lagoon of murky water, a massive fortress shone like a beacon. Seven gates--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet--took their place along the facing wall. In the middle of the fog, the darkness, and the silence, Mary clung unto it with hope and interest.

She paced past the lagoon by her left and continued forward, her footsteps of no sound. There was nobody else in sight--not a single movement or creak. It felt like she was back in the underground complex again.

As she neared the bastion, she began to hear them: the wailing, the sighing. She climbed up the crumbling stone steps that led to the cliff and stood before the seven gates. They all glowed with blinding light. Keeping the Umbral Scepter firm by her side, she passed through the green gate.

She winded up in a massive foyer. A delicate giant chandelier hung from above, below it a red carpet. Four balconies stretched over the walls, connected by narrow walkways. There were paths ahead, to her left, and to her right. Everywhere, people of all ages, clothing, and variation scrambled about with their mouths rattling with words.

But Mary couldn't understand any of them. Collectively, their words were sighs, wails, howls--incomprehensible gasps of air. Their eyes were empty, too--white balls of shine. Some bumped into Mary without apologies, some passed by as if she wasn't there.

Seeing nothing else of interest, Mary continued forward. She passed through the path straight ahead and found herself in a garden.

With its wide fields of grass, flowers of all colors, trees of varying heights, slopes that ran high and low, and flocks of birds, insects, and other life, it was easy to go lost. She approached the nearest bunch and admired them--velvet red roses, enclosed in buds. She hoped they would open, but the bastion permitted no sunlight.

Ahead, there were more people. Two men in ancient Roman armor sparred with wooden blades. A tall, slender lady in a toga leaned back on a tree with a leather-bound book propped open on her hands. Despite having things to busy themselves with, they were ghastly. Dead.