“Forget who you were before. Now you’re Gabriel.” Bara smiled his unnerving smile. It didn’t seem real. As if it were a mask he wore to disguise his truth self underneath. “They’ll make sure you forget who you ever were before you came here. Just wait.” Bara turned to the other boys in the room. “All seven names are taken.”
Joseph opened his mouth to protest, to tell Bara he was Joseph and would only ever be Joseph. He wanted to ask what the priests would do to him. What this place even was. What happened here?
But Bara walked away before Joseph could. When Bara reached his bed, he turned to face Joseph, arms out wide. “Welcome to Purgatory.” His smile dropped, and Joseph suddenly saw the boy that lay underneath, unmasked, the one with death in his eyes and a wretched blackness to his soul. “Or, as it’s better known . . . Hell.”
Chapter Four
Joseph woke the next day to the sound of a heavy lock opening. His eyes slammed open in time with the door. He blinked against the darkness, the light from the hallway being the only light in the underground room. Naturally there were no windows. There wasn’t even a clock on the wall. Joseph had no idea how long he’d been asleep. After the introductions were made last night, the boys all fell asleep. James—no, Michael—grasping the vial in his hand. Joseph had stared at his brother from the end of his bed. His throat grew thick as he watched Michael sleep. For as long as Joseph could remember, Michael had been a tortured soul. Joseph had always put it down to the fact he’d been so young when they’d lost their mother and been placed into Holy Innocents Home for Children. But as Joseph had looked around the room at the other boys in the dorm, the ones named after the archangels, he’d wondered if something else truly did live within his brother. These boys . . . his eyes had fallen in the direction of Jegudiel, or Diel, as Bara had said he was named for short. Joseph could hear the clanging of the chain against the metal of the bed as the boy moved in sleep. He was chained to a bed.
He likes to attack . . .
These boys . . . they were all like Michael.
And nothing like him.
Joseph had curled up on his bed and tried to push away the dread and fear he felt choking his heart and soul. Sometime after that he must have fallen asleep.
“Gabriel.” Father Brady stood in the doorway, wearing black-and-purple robes. He was looking right at Joseph. Joseph heard the other boys begin to stir. Joseph got to his feet. He glanced at Michael. His brother was watching him with a neutral expression on his face. Joseph walked toward Father Brady.
Playing his role, he donned the mask of malice he had worn yesterday. As he approached Father Brady, Joseph curled his lip as though the priest’s very presence offended him. Fire lit in Father Brady’s eyes. A challenge. He grabbed hold of Joseph’s arm and threw him forward. Father Brady guided him left and right through the hallways until they arrived at a door. It was wooden, and carved in the center was an ornate medieval-looking “B.” Joseph had no idea what it stood for.
Father Brady pushed the door open and nudged Joseph inside. Gregorian chant music filled the space; the harmonizing voices that were once a comfort to Joseph now seemed like a dirge, the soundtrack to his fear. The second Joseph entered the large room, he felt all the blood drain from his face. His feet were frozen to the ground as he scanned the surroundings. Devices of all kinds, again medieval in nature, were scattered around the room. It was a room of wood and metal and the promise of pain. The fear it instilled was instant. Joseph’s blood ran cold. Joseph recognized many of the tools. He had sat in Father Quinn’s lectures on the Spanish Inquisition. He had heard from Father Quinn’s mouth how the Inquisitors would punish and torture the heathens, pushing them to confess to their sins, to witchcraft, to the fact the devil had visited them and bought their mortal souls. He hadn’t known such devices even still existed. He couldn’t have imagined, even in his worst nightmares, that they were still being used.
Joseph’s hands hung at his sides. He fisted them when he realized they were shaking. These were the exact torture devices from that period. His breathing turned shallow. A fireplace sat in the right-hand side of the room, the flames climbing high up the chimney. And in front of it was Father Quinn beside a wooden bed. When the priest turned, Joseph stared at his clothes. He was dressed in black robes, but instead of being white, his clerical collar was red. And on the center of his robes was a red embroidered “B.” The same design as the one on the door to the chamber.