Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire (38 page)

“Who cares? He made a mistake.”

“Are you really that noble, love, that you would let his mistake condemn you forever?” He came towards her, floating over the filth. She tried to cringe backwards, but hit a fleshy wall. He pressed a dripping, meaty hand upon her shoulder. “Think about it. Just say the words and you can finally be at rest.”

He drew out the word ‘rest’ and said it without the accompanying buzz. For the duration of the word, he almost sounded human. Hearing it spoken in such a way brought strange, unexpected comfort. His touch warmed her against the cold filth in which she stood.

“He left you. Make him pay and have your freedom.”

She touched the beast’s hand. The suffering cried above her and she imagined what it’d be like to never hear them again. She pictured existence without Samael's cruelty. She believed it would be much like the warm light and euphoria that had greeted her in the first moments after her initial death. Or maybe she'd be on earth, wandering, but without the threat of Samael's pursuit. Either way, it beat her current situation.

But she couldn't betray Todd. She'd never seen his abandonment of her as a betrayal. It had always been about the claim Samael had made on her. She thought about the devil's words, how Samael mistaking her for Clare had been his fault.

"You're wondering how I caused Samael to believe you are his lost love?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who your mother was?"

"You know that I don't."

Again, that almost-smile spread across the beast's features, revealing the dying crustaceans squirming in his mouth. Some fell out and plopped into the soupy filth below.

"I needed him. Souls like him are integral to existence here. Only one thing keeps this great machine moving and that's pain. I told him he'd see his love again, that she'd be born of fire, so long as he keeps feeding the machine."

"Who was my mother?"

"She was a spiritual being. Something like what you'd think of as an angel. She traveled the world for centuries, healing people and inspiring spiritual movements. Having children was never something she was meant to do, so your birth destroyed her body."

"Is she still alive somewhere? Maybe down here?"

His eyes flashed a deeper shade of red. "Enough questions. Do you want your freedom or not?"

"I won't give you Todd."

He held up a hand. "Then..."

"I'll give you Samael."

"What do you mean? I already have him."

"Hardly. He's too busy chasing me when he should be doing work for you."

The beast said nothing, but the sound of buzzing wasps filled his chest.

"Chasing me to the surface and causing all kinds of chaos above can't be what you had in mind when you gave him his deal."

The red eyes narrowed as the creature examined Chloe. The buzzing rose in volume as if whatever was causing it would burst from the devil's chest. He said, "I won't just give you your freedom. You have to earn it."

She cringed. Of course there'd be a catch. She'd have to blow this devil or have sex with him or worse, she thought.

Reading her mind, the devil laughed. "Oh, don't worry. I've no carnal interest in you."

"What then?"

"When Todd calls you back, you must go to him. Samael will follow, I'm sure." The devil reached underneath a fold of skin and pulled out a tuning fork. "If you can beat him, use this to call me and I'll take him back to Hell."

She took the tuning fork in her hand. "How do I know Todd will call me back?"

"He will. He never could exist without you."

"So, what do I do now?"

This time, when the devil smiled, it looked genuine. He said, "You wait."

~Todd~

The black iron gate of Red Grove Cemetery hung open. Todd drove his repaired Cadillac between the two marble columns and onto the gravel road that wove through the field of headstones. He passed a couple of mourners at one grave, standing under umbrellas. Gray clouds threatened a summer storm and made this an all too fitting day to visit an old graveyard.

The tires groaned against the gravel below as the car stopped. He got out and glanced around. The gray clouds moved across the sky with a sense of urgency. He didn’t bother to get his umbrella out of the back seat. He left his car behind and wandered out among the headstones.

Though not one hundred percent sure where her grave was, he had a general idea. He vaguely remembered from the last time he'd visited it, several years ago. He walked down the nearest row. After spending two days alone in an empty house, hardly moving except to wrap up his wounded hand, it felt nice to be on his feet again.

Down one row, then another, he watched the names as he passed each marker. He recognized none of them, despite once living in this town. The more time that passed, the quicker he moved. A raindrop kissed the top of his head as he turned down another row. By the time he found her, a light drizzle had begun to fall. He dropped to his knees and traced the curves and lines of her chiseled name. He braced a hand against the top of the headstone and squeezed. He shut his eyes. Instead of words, a dry croak slipped from his lips. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders back and tried to begin again.

“Chloe.” Hearing her name broke his heart, even though he thought it impossible for his heart to break any further. “Chloe, I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know where you are now, but I hope you’re not suffering… I hope somehow…”

He knew it was dead hope. He’d last left her in the arms of a monster that claimed to love her but would surely drag her back to Hell. Maybe Samael did love her in some twisted way. In fact, Todd was pretty sure he did, but it was a monster’s love, the love of someone incapable of loving in a nondestructive way.

The rain picked up and the drops fattened. In blatant disregard for the summertime, the precipitation fell in ice cold sheets.

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Chloe. My life… everything since the day I left you thirty years ago has been full of failure and regret. I’ve lived a falsely and I had a way out and I couldn’t leave. You can say that none of this is my fault, but I’ll always think that it is. Had I never left you back then, it never would’ve had to come down to a choice between saving you and protecting my family. If I’d just protected you back then, I wouldn't have fucked everything up.”

Tears flowed as he uttered the last sentence. The rain fell with them, now a steady downpour. His clothes soaked through, stuck to his skin.

“I don’t know what to do anymore. How can I live on knowing what I know? Knowing that you’re suffering? Knowing that my family is broken? Knowing that the world beyond is fire and chaos? What am I supposed to do?”

He pressed his head against the cold wet stone. Shivers wracked his body in the icy rain. A brief fear crossed his mind that he’d catch pneumonia and die, but was quickly eased when he realized that he wasn’t sure if he even cared about dying. Whether he died or lived, all was lost.

He hugged his arms to his chest and opened his eyes. The rain fell in rivulets down the marble face of the headstone. The carved letters of her name bled water. The ground below him turned to mud. He knew she wouldn’t feel the rain where she was, but knew it’d probably be better if she could.

As he studied the patterns, a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Get out of the rain, son, you’re gonna catch your death out here.”

He looked over his shoulder and saw the man that loomed over him. Stringy long hair fell across square shoulders. When he’d last seen the face, it had been much older and twisted in a determined expression, a fighting spirit afire in its eyes. Now the face held a restful serenity and seemed much younger, but he still recognized it. Todd got to his feet and backed away, hardly believing his eyes despite all he’d learned about the fine lines between life and death.

“Les.”

The old man gave him a single nod and regarded him with deep, staring eyes that couldn’t possibly belong to a dead man.

* * *

Todd sat with Les inside the Cadillac. In spite of the fact that it was the dead of summer, Todd ran the heater to dry his clothes. Seeing the ghost of Chloe’s father inspired a curiosity that made him want to live, at least a bit longer.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know why I’m here.”

“Chloe.”

Les nodded. Sheets of rain splashed against the windshield.

“I guess it’s the
how
I’m confused about.”

“I wish I could attribute it to all the reading I did about the occult, but I can’t help but feel there’s maybe something more to it.” He stared ahead at the rain gushing down the windshield for several moments before he continued. “That demon, that Samael, got his hands in me. I couldn’t have been alive for more than few seconds after that but it sure felt a lot longer. I thought the pain would never end. When it did, I had an out of body experience, but not like the ones you read about. I didn’t float above my corpse or see a bright light. I sunk into the earth.”

“Was it Hell?”

“I don’t know, maybe a part of it, certainly some kind of underworld, but peaceful. There were others there, dead people. They wandered aimlessly in what looked like some kind of vast cave system and I joined their numbers. I don’t know how long I was down there with them, could’ve been hours or it could’ve been days. Then I saw her, Chloe’s mother, Natalia.”

Todd sat up. He hadn’t expected that, but maybe he’d hoped for it. Les had been good to Todd when Todd was young and downright saintly when he'd sacrificed himself. He deserved a reunion with his long lost love.

“She embraced me and I felt this powerful sense of relief, and contentment, as if I’d finally arrived at the place I needed to be.” He sighed, tears in his eyes. “I wanted to stay so badly, but she said I couldn’t and I knew she was right. I couldn’t rest while our daughter suffered.”

“How did you know?”

“I saw. When Natalia touched me, she showed me, and I knew. I knew that Chloe was back in the hands of that
animal
.”

On the last word, Les’s tone became a growl of anger.

“Then you found me.”

“Yes, because I can’t help her.”

Todd shook his head. “Well, fuck, man, neither can I. I failed her. The whole reason she’s back in Samael’s hands is because I couldn’t keep her safe.”

“There was nothing else you could’ve done. Choosing between loved ones… I couldn’t imagine.”

“I didn’t choose. I just gave up.”

“And maybe that was the right choice then, but you can’t give up now. She needs you.”

“What can I do?”

“Remember how you called her here in the first place. You can call her back again and free her from that pit.”

“Yeah and then what? We run? Because you know that son of a bitch will come looking for her.”

“So take her home.”

“And where's that? Every place we’ve ever been is tainted by something. We’ve never been home before, either of us. We’ve just been running all our lives.”

“What if you found a new home? Built a new home, maybe?”

Todd studied Les hard. The old bastard may have hit on something. Over the last few days since Anna left, his house, despite its size, had felt increasingly more claustrophobic. He could either sell it or give it to Anna. He had money saved up that he could use to purchase some land on which to build. The wheels began to turn in his head and for the first time since he left Chloe behind in the warehouse district, he felt a sense of hope.

“Yeah, I can do that. I will.”

“Good. I’ll be watching.”

* * *

The first place he looked into was the farmland near Potter Way, where he and Chloe had first made love. Back then, a farmhouse had stood in that field, but now it was empty. Empty and for sale.

He took a loan out through Havertown Community Bank, at the officer’s preferred rate, and hired a team of builders out of the phone book. He wanted something simple, a freestanding, shotgun house. Wood-paneling. A front porch. One bedroom, one bathroom. It had to be quaint because it only had one purpose: to be the house he lived his last days in.

It took several months, during which he went through each day as if nothing was happening. He went to work, even though the anticipation for this new chance at saving Chloe sometimes drove him into fits of excitement where he could hardly sit or focus. Some nights as he tried to sleep, it drove him mad thinking that the longer the build took, the more Chloe would suffer, but he reminded himself that this was the only way to do it. It had to be a brand new place otherwise it wouldn’t work at all.

Though the land was old, it only held pleasant memories. He figured that the only reason it hadn’t worked before was that there’d been nowhere for her to be contained. Inside the home, she,
they
, could be safe.

The builders finished in mid-September. He moved in the day after. Since he left Anna mostly everything from their house, he’d bought all new furniture. There was very little, because that was all he needed. A couch and chair for the living room, a dining room table with a set of stools, a bed, a bookcase. The rest could wait. From his and Anna’s house, he brought everything from the study: all the stacks of notebooks, his guitar, and a photo album from the old days. The new place was a downgrade from the five bedroom house he'd shared with Anna, but he needed this stripped-down life. After everything that had happened, the need to go back to basics seemed to be the only logical choice.

While he was upstairs putting the bed together, someone knocked on the front door. He raised his head, looked out of the bedroom and down the hallway. He set down the Allen wrench and got off his knees. The sound of his joints cracking reminded him that his days of putting furniture together were coming to an end. He left the bedroom and went downstairs. There was another knock.

“Coming,” he said.

As he put his hand on the knob, he contemplated not answering. For a crazy moment, a vision of opening the door to see Samael standing on the other side crossed his mind, Samael, back to take Todd to hell with him. There Todd would watch helplessly as the monster had his way with Chloe for eternity. Todd closed his eyes and took a breath to compose himself. He opened the door to see his daughter standing on the other side.