Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire (21 page)

FLESH AND FIRE

JournalStone’s DoubleDown Series, Book VIII

By

Lucas Mangum

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2016 by Lucas Mangum

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN:   978-1-942712-91-6 (sc)

ISBN:  978-1-942712-92-3 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933401

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date: April 22, 2016

Cover Art and Design: Robert Grom

Author Photo:  Jim Julian

Photo Credits: 
Woman in Forest © lekcej/shutterstock, Fire circle © lassedesignen/shuttstock

Edited by:  Aaron J. French

For Tim. 1985-2007

Acknowledgments

It's been said that no one achieves anything on their own. That claim is especially true of first novels, so I'd like to thank the following people: my wife, Jean, because living with a writer is hard and she's been a trooper; Jonathan Maberry for believing in me, encouraging me, and being an all-around righteous dude; and Christopher Payne at Journalstone for accepting my little story about Hell and transcendence. A huge thanks is also owed to anyone who helped get this manuscript into its current form, namely: crime author Dennis Tafoya; thriller author Jon McGoran; my brother, Vincent Mangum; Patrick Galloway; filmmaker and critic, Scout Tafoya; and screenwriter Joe Augustyn. From the bottom of my heart, thanks to all of the above listed, as well as anyone who bought me a drink, talked writing, or kept me company over the last four years. You know who you are, friends, and if you look hard enough, you may see pieces of yourselves in the story you are about to read.

~Chloe~

If this is dying
, Chloe thought,
I’d like to do it again sometime
.

The brightest light she’d ever seen washed over her, burning brilliant whitish yellow. Blinding, but soft, it reminded her of the sun, finally showing its brilliant face after weeks of rain and starless nights. It brought warmth, security, and a deep sense of euphoria, better than the greatest high, more intense than her strongest orgasm.

Moments ago, she’d been in her room, sinking into the bed below, as if it were a cloud. Her vision blurred and her surroundings fell further away. She gave each of them one final glimpse, pausing the longest on the Yamaha DX7 keyboard, upon which she played all of her music, and the photograph of her and Todd smiling drunkenly as they held each other in the parking lot of the Black Horse Pub.

As she slipped away, she only regretted not being able to tell him goodbye. Maybe even apologize. She settled for humming the melody to "Blissfully Damaged," a song he'd written for her. Maybe doing so would, through some kind of clairvoyance, allow her to commune with him in her final moments.

The poison killing her now had also destroyed their relationship. She’d been clean for a while, but it hadn’t lasted. Once he’d seen he couldn't help her, he’d run away. She didn’t blame him. He didn’t really know everything. He didn’t know about the dreams, or the monster that pursued her in them, or how she sometimes even saw and heard the monster when she was awake. She’d never told him and because of this he just saw her as an addict, no matter how much he’d loved her.

Now she’d never be able to tell him.

Now she was dying.

And she accepted it.

Embraced
it.

~Les~

Les’s fingers trembled as he reached for the phone. He mentally talked himself through dialing the number scrawled on the crumpled Post-It. As he cranked each digit he opened and closed the fist of his free hand. When the phone started to ring he cleared his throat, which was raw from hours of crying. His pulse thudded in his ears.

Another ring.

He clenched his fist but nothing stopped the pounding of his blood, the trembling in his limbs, or the looming threat of more tears.

A click.

“Yeah.”

Les froze at the sound of Todd’s familiar greeting. What the hell was he supposed to say? The man on the other line had loved his daughter, but the relationship had ended months ago. How much would it matter that Chloe was dead? All he knew for sure was that he wouldn’t tell Todd what he had seen when he found her.

“Hello?” Todd said, with a touch of annoyance.

“Todd, it’s Les.”

“Les! What’s up?”

Les bit his lip and grabbed a handful of stringy hair with his free hand.

“Les?”

“I…” He leaned on the counter in hopes that the presence of something solid would stabilize him. “It’s Chloe.”

Todd didn’t respond. For a moment Les thought the call had been disconnected, but when he listened he heard faint breathing just below the hiss of the phone line.

“An overdose?”

Les closed his eyes and saw his daughter splayed across the bed, her dark hair in the clutches of… Of what? He tried to wipe the image from his mind.

“Yes, an overdose.”

And that’s what the police and paramedics knew it as. After all, the bag of heroin had been found on the bed beside her. The syringe still hung from inside her elbow, the needle embedded in her soft flesh.

“Fuck, man, I’m sorry,” Todd said.

“Yeah.” Even with his eyes open, he saw her dead gaze staring up at him.

“I just… Jesus… Are you okay?”

“I guess I have to be, right?”

The two men hung on the line, saying nothing. Something had to be said. Chloe deserved better.

“I thought you might want to know.”

“Thank you.” Another pause. “Do you need anything?”

A hell of a question; Les couldn’t even begin to answer it properly. Chloe was dead. He wanted to believe her pain had reached its end, but his gut told him otherwise. Though he couldn't say for certain what awaited her after death, he feared damnation, especially for a lost junkie soul like hers.

Instead of telling Todd all of this, he swallowed to fight back more tears and asked if Todd wanted to know the funeral arrangements.

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” On the last word Todd’s voice cracked and Les thought that in the next moment they’d both break down. They’d do it without shame because they were old friends, because they both loved her.

Instead Todd cleared his throat. “Listen, Les, I… I better go.”

“Of course. I just thought you should know. That’s all.”

“Thanks. Take care, Les. You call if you need anything.”

“Will do,” Les said, knowing he would not.

~Anna~

Anna watched Todd from the doorway of his study. His face in the lamplight had gone ghostly pale since hanging up the phone. He sat with his shoulders crunched against his neck. One hand tapped on the desk, making a hollow, rhythmic drumming that echoed through the hallway. She didn’t like the way he looked or that tapping, not one bit. He seemed far away, like maybe he’d left his body and the tapping was just some remaining nervous twitch.

“Babe?” she said, using caution.

The tapping slowed, but did not cease. It became more dissonant, unsteady. She liked that sound even less.

“Babe.” She tried to add firmness to her tone without losing the sense of concern. It wasn’t as easy as she hoped. To her she just sounded annoyed.

He jerked in his seat to face her and she saw redness in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He looked down at his nervously drumming fingers, then back at her. He offered a smile that was gone as quickly as it appeared.

“Fine.”

“Who was that on the phone?”

He frowned, looking at the phone as if noticing the object for the first time. He opened his mouth. Thankfully, he stopped tapping and she almost let him be. Not one to eavesdrop, she hadn't heard the conversation, but his demeanor in the moments since had troubled her deeply.

She knew their relationship was off to a rocky start. Their fathers had set them up. She knew about Chloe, the girl who used to play shows with him at the Black Horse, and that he’d been seeing her most of the summer. But that September, Todd had shown a real desire to commit. He'd taken a higher paying position within the bank and asked Anna to move in with him. This was their first apartment, a modest one-bedroom in the wooded suburbia of Havertown. They could afford a bigger place with Todd’s bank manager salary, but she’d insisted on saving as much as possible so they could have a
real
home in which to raise a family someday. She feared that this phone call, whoever it had been, could erase all of their progress.

“Who was it?” she asked again.

Todd shook his head. “It was no one. Just a friend.”

“Todd…”

“Chloe died.” The words came out of his mouth as if her prying had loosed something within him.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” She crossed the room and made to embrace him, but he closed his arms against his chest and turned away.

“I don’t know. I guess I saw it coming, but…”

She knelt down in front of him. “That’s silly. There’s no way you could’ve…”

“She was always in trouble, like there was something after her.”