Hell Hill

When she was a child, she used to push her bike back up to the top of the hill, just so that she could free wheel it all the way down. She swore to herself that she would never forget that feeling of utter release, that it would be one that would stay with her until her dying moment.

“Hell Hill”, they called it, the kids, “Hell Hill” because it had a good rhythm, “Hell Hill” because in a childishly dramatic way it was torture to get up, “Hell Hill” because when you tipped over the edge it was as if you were descending into the fire-pits themselves. Reverend Vickers had told them about hell and she’d seen images of flames and torture, morbidly, perversely fascinated. Sometimes, at night, she would find herself imagining it, trying to conceive the agony of burning flesh and red-hot pokers. Then she would shake her head, guilty, shaking out the ideas, and try to put them to the back of her mind. Sometimes they would flash in her brain for a second, like a garish motel sign and in the roads of her mind she would slow down to decide if she wanted to stay, but nearly always chose to flee the unbidden images.

The descent at first was slow, like the unavoidable falling into sin, like the slipping into madness. Inch by inch she would let the bike knock forward, both afraid and excited, tentative and keen, the pressing of a razor blade to her translucent wrist. Slowly, slowly, the wheels would follow the curve, blood droplets beginning to appear slow, slowly, faster...

Then the wheel would pass the brink and it didn’t matter if she clung to the handlebars so tightly her knuckles popped, turned whiter than eyes that rolled back into her head; she sensed that she was in the hands of something more than mere gravity. As the bike tipped she changed her mind, but it was too late, like Mr Spence in Beauchamps asylum, she would reach out with her fingertips, with her all, like she was stopping herself from being dragged to a cell, scratching, bloody claws.

Other children whooped as they went down. She watched and listened to the instinctive animal noises that poured out of their mouths, leaving a dust trail behind them. She would wonder why they did that, showing their fear and exhilaration, mingled. Then again, they did that often, these children only had one face and they showed it to the world unashamedly and without reserve.

She was different. She knew that, and when she remembered she would feel an odd, sick sensation in her tummy, and she would bite her fingernails, though she didn’t know why, and Mother kept telling her to stop because Daddy might be back soon and he wouldn’t want a daughter with no fingers now, would he? And she would shake her head and not tell Mother about taunts of playmates, your Dad’s never coming home, your Mum’s a whore.

She was not like the others. She was their shadow, she would play when they played, jabber when they did, cry when they cried, but inside she knew that she was different and she knew that she was bad and then the mot-hell sign would flash, neon, in her mind and she would bite her fingers again.

So when she flew down Hell Hill she always screamed, so that the other children would think she was like them, but she screamed so loud her lungs burst and her throat tore and it turned mute, so all that scream remained unheard and the shriek stayed inside, growing too loud and too high for anyone else to hear.

The wind would rush up to greet her, forcing the grass aside in rough, haphazard clumps; a train enraged, pushing, trying to force her back up to the top, the fingers of God and his minion angels trying to lift her to safety in the clouds. She would squeeze her eyes shut tightly here, wish upon a star, pray to God for He is everywhere, if I should die before I wake, longing for Him to reach out and pluck her from this degeneration, to gently hold her in his hands as she tenderly cradled the three inch dolls she cherished so dearly at school. 
Instinctively, she opened her eyes, afraid, just in time to seize control, wrench the handlebars to the side and violently swerve to avoid the pond.

You’re so brave. You always get so close.

She kept quiet. It was not bravery that made her swing the handlebars while so close, but cowardice. She knew that she should trust the Lord to keep her safe and take her only when it was right for him to do so: trying to die was a sin. But at the same time, she wanted to try it. That was why she turned so late.

One time, she left it too late.

The water was cool as she floated downwards, bubbles kissing her skin, reeds decorating her hair, loving Sunday school ribbons. It caressed her face and hair, comforting; nurturing; mothering. She was enclosed, the violent racket of the world outside were muffled and fading, radio in the background, like in a car, turned low to concentrate on directions. She did not open her eyes, but stared at eyelid blackness.

Then, the awakening. A traumatic labour as the water frothed and churned, imposing hands reaching in and snatching. The bubbles grew vicious, thorn bullets across her back; the reeds jealously grasped their water baby.

Head, shoulders, torso broke the waters; screams, shouts of joy, relief, a sudden bright light, a terrified pause as she struggled to breathe and use her lungs- who was crying? Through cheers, she realised it was her and with each cough she rejected death reluctantly.
The pond held her hand tightly for a long time after. It clustered all her thoughts, drawing together all the threads of her life like weeds trapped in the mud. Like an infant returning to her mother, trusting the arms to enfold and engulf, she returned, to watch the wind tickle the water and see it squirm and kick, ticklish.


When she was a teenager, they moved away. Get away from the whispers. She didn’t bother to ask now when Daddy was coming home. In the city, enough people were gone. It didn’t matter that he was missing. She never considered trying to find him in the dirty city street. There was too much of herself missing to even care.

School was pointless. She didn’t need money, so why would she get a job? Mother got angry and shouted. Made no difference. She was too hollow, too fragile for the harsh words to stay inside. They just floated out of her head, as if she were no more solid than a cloud.
She imagined sometimes that she was one of them. She wasn’t one of the big solid looking ones, the ones she so often tried to touch but failed; the ones like Johnny. He was a solid as a photograph, one her mother framed and kept out for people to see. No, she was one of those thin, wispy clouds, stretching weakly out over grey sky, tendrils hopelessly clasping onto each other; the sky mists where sections free themselves and float off into the atmosphere, unbidden.

The water still called to her, in the form of bathtubs and city park ponds, but the summons were muffled here, cramped by bricks and cars and people. She wondered idly to herself if God was calling to herself, crying because she no longer heard the song of the womb water.

She missed Hell Hill though. There was no Hell Hill in the city. She would lie in her blazing bed in the arctic apartment and feel the disparity between paradise and inferno so vividly, so powerfully, that she knew that angels and demons must be fighting over her. She could feel Heaven’s whispers tickling her ears and Hell’s fire scorching her feet dry and hadn’t Reverend Vickers said that demons will fight for anyone’s souls? Then it all became too real and she pulled the covers over her head to flee the night terrors and thought of The Pond and how she had run a gentle hand over her hair and kissed her softly and was more of a mother than her own ever was.

Then the guilt came like cold December wind on wet hair and the fire would burn at her feet and the one day she woke up and Mother was dead and all she could think was it should have been me. It should have been me.

And then not long after she heard that Mother Pond had taken on another child, adopted a young boy’s body and he not been dragged out and away screaming, but had been smothered by the love of Mother, holding him tighter and tighter, she didn’t mean to hurt him, she just loved him too much.

She went back with Patrick once, Patrick and the baby. She wanted her little boy to come here one day and ride his bike down it. That little red bike, rusting in the garage, as much use to him now as his headstone. Unused. Why do we mark out the dead’s final resting places? They won’t know. They won’t care if flowers are there. The flowers only die too.

Patrick grows just as impatient with this mumbled monologue as when she talks about Mother Pond, gripping her arms bruise-tightly and shaking her. Blood ink drops into the water and swirls like the red eye of Jupiter. She sees it all now.

Razors, pills, hangman’s noose. They don’t work, they don’t work. It’s like she always knew, Mother Pond is the only one who can save her.


She stands at the top of Hell Hill, staring at the wooden prison of Mother Pond. Wondering why she’s been so caged for so long.  It’s all changed, not the just the wooden slats keeping her out, but the dishevelled grass peppered with needles, the grey buildings, sprung up like dead dandelions, the wheel and roaring hum of a car instead of the white handlebars of her little pink bike with the wicker basket on the front.
 
The car growls when she starts it up, and she presses lightly on the accelerator. She hasn’t judged it properly though, and the tip-over came before she expected, over, picking up speed, the holy wind, God wind, screaming at her to stop, to reconsider, to try for heaven-

Or is that her? She can’t tell anymore-

The wood splinters, shatters around her. The car howls like the screams of childbirth. The water floods in and she closes her eyes and let Mother wrap her arms around her.