will all be gone.”
It was time for the million-dollar question. "How many people know about this?"
He knew the question was coming. He didn't want to answer it. He knew I wasn't going to like the answer.
He did another one of those big sighs before he replied. "Other than the angels and demons?” he asked. I nodded. “Counting you and I... four."
Mr. Ross had said I was special. What made me so special that I got to know this anyway? "Why so few?"
"Please, Landon, let us sit again." He waved me back over to the chair and returned to the desk. I was hesitant to follow him, but I needed answers. It was like an itch that started at my feet, ran up my legs, and disappeared deep into my soul. Once I had plopped down into the chair, he picked up a remote control and faced it towards the window in front of me. It became a gigantic screen. Depicted on it was Dante, looking much the same as he did today. The video relayed the scene to me exactly as he described it.
"For me, it was an accident. I was never supposed to stay in this place. The caretaker at the time had tired of the fighting, and wanted to get out. He could never leave Purgatory of course, but he could escape his memories of all that had occurred. As I traveled through this realm, he reached out and touched my arm, and by doing so passed all of his knowledge on to me. Once I knew the truth, I could not abandon the mortal world to the end I knew would otherwise come."
The scene in the video changed. It showed Mr. Ross lying naked on a beach. The same beach I had arrived on.
"Mr. Ross is the next," he said. "He told me he was a tax collector for King Henry the Second. In those days new souls had to find their own way off the beach, but he came straight to my front door so to speak. He knew who I was, I don't really know how. He started asking me questions about Heaven, and about Hell. Nobody else had ever asked me these questions. Everyone else lands on the beach, suffers their Regrets, and moves on to spend their eternity much the same as they lived their lives. I was so grateful for someone to share this burden with, I told him everything I knew. Ever the Collector, he felt there was more information out there, something more that I didn't know."
Now the scene shifted to Mr. Ross torturing a tan, golden haired man. It was disturbing, and I couldn’t bear to watch it. "He knew how to get information. As a Collector, he could collect anything. He found out that we did not have to be bystanders in this war, that there were others that could accept the truth. That there were others who could possibly even prevent total annihilation." He paused and took a sip of water for a cup that had just appeared on the desk.
“Thirsty?” he asked. I shook my head, so he continued.
"We waited over a hundred years for the first to arrive,” he said. “Mr. Ross collected every single soul in order to be sure not to miss her. When she came, we knew her right away because she wasn't naked."
Not naked, of course. "What?"
Dante let himself grin this time. "Almost everyone who dies comes to the afterlife unclothed. I did, Mr. Ross did. She didn't. Neither did you." He paused dramatically, or maybe so I would make the connection. Special. Me. Right. "What it meant was that she was Aware. Not on a conscious level at first, but Aware just the same. She could exert her will upon Purgatory itself, and it bent in response. She didn't want to be nude, and so she wasn't."
I looked down at the clothes I was wearing. "Mr. Ross said I had made this," I told him, waving my hand at the room.
"That is somewhat true,” he said. “But not completely. Everyone who dies experiences Purgatory in a different way. It has no specific shape or form, but rather is consumed by each individual according to what they believe it will be. For me, this place is typical to 14th Century Italy. The others here are peasants, merchants, and farmers. In my mind you would normally be a knight, however your will has changed this place to something you are more familiar