Halloween Is For Lovers (20 page)

"Fifteen babies?" Lily's mouth hung open. "That's very near the top of my list of worst fears."

"He's going to force you to wear this hideous prairie dress and these really ugly shoes and then he's going to kill you, murder you."

Lily stared at the monster in front of her, realizing that this was her chance to confront her worst fears. If she could tell him and his disheveled giant off, she'd be free. She stood up, strong with courage. "Two, three, fifteen babies." She shook her head. "Does it really matter? After these past three years, being locked in a basement birthing fifteen babies doesn't sound that bad."

She took a step toward him, her index finger pointing at the bloodshot creeps on his face. "You hurt me. I loved you, all the way down, deep down. I loved you to the bottom of my heart." She turned away, her chin sunk to her chest. "And you broke it. Maybe fifteen babies will be enough to fix it. I don't know, maybe while they're inside me they can crawl around and put the pieces of it back together."

A long silence passed. Hugh mumbled, "But he's crazy, Lil, invisible spaceship, ceremonial sacrifice, the book of
Steve ... Because I Said So
."

"Because I said so?" Morton asked.

"He's writing his own holy book. He thinks he's the new God. He wants people to be naked when they worship him."

Lily shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe the world needs a new God. The one we’ve got doesn't seem to be helping me out much."

She sat down at the dressing table and spoke to Hugh's reflection in the mirror. "I stood at that altar waiting for you, wishing more than anything you'd come." She shook her head. "I'm done waiting. You're not coming. I forgive you but I don't ..." She turned and looked him in the eyes. "You should go now."

"But Lil—" Hugh begged.

She stopped him. "No."

They looked at each other for a long time, remembering everything that was. That first night, that first walk home, that first time their hands touched and then timidly clasped. That first kiss outside her door. That first winter storm together, snowed in for days and rarely clothed. Subsisting on a box of wine and cans of pie filling from the farthest back corner of the shelf ...

Morton prodded Hugh, "You should tell her ..."

"Tell me what?" Lily insisted.

"If you love me again I'll come back to life. We can be together again."

Lily's hands squeezed into fists. "That's not true!" She stood up, ready to fight. "You know what, screw you for saying that. Screw you for saying I don't love you. This isn't my fault, Hugh. You ran away, you got yourself killed. This is your fault, this is all your fault."

She slid open a drawer and snatched up the engagement ring he'd given her. "I don't want this anymore." She reached out and dropped it into the palm of his hand.

In the millisecond before she let go, a hint of a spark went from her fingers, through the fourteen-karat gold and into Hugh's hand. In that spark was the one bit of information that up to this point Hugh had refused to believe.

She was alive and he was dead. Nothing could change that.

Hugh clutched the ring and shrunk away, dumbfounded. "But Lil, I love—"

"No." She raised her voice. "When we met in the graveyard, you promised you wouldn't hurt me. You lied, you're hurting me."

"I'm sorry, Lil..."

"You have to go now, that was the deal." She turned away from him.

Morton put his hand on the shoulder of his mortally wounded friend. "We should go."

They backed out of the room. Lily didn't look up or say anything. Hugh tried to say something, "Good-b—" he choked. The word wouldn't come out.

Morton closed the door behind them and Lily was left alone, staring at herself in the mirror. She sighed. "This dream sucks."

Darkest Night

Crain was in a good mood. The Land of the Living was entering the season of dying. His season. In a few brief hours Hugh would return and love would be proven a lie.

Whispers had spread throughout the Kingdom of Hugh's quest. All eyes would be on the gate as he retreated in defeat or was forcefully returned in the clutch of a reaper, doomed for the vent. There was another possible outcome and that's what most of the whispers were about. What if Hugh didn't return? What if he stayed in life? There would be hope for life after death. Worse, hope for love. Crain would have a revolt on his hands. His power as supreme leader of the Kingdom would be in jeopardy.

Hugh would surely fail. Crain would use the spectacle of that misery to turn the citizens of the Kingdom against the living, once and for all. A jealous hate of life would fuel a war. Battles had been fought in the past, plagues, world wars and famines. This would be a war to end all wars. With the entire Kingdom thirsty to kill, the gate could be crashed. A sea of venomous spirits would flood the earth and ravage. Not a single living soul would remain. Breath would be choked into extinction.

The wall between the living and the dead would fall. There would only be one Kingdom, under Crain. Death would reign supreme.

"Soon," Crain wrung his hands. "Soon."

Hugh dragged his chains through the cemetery. He was despondent, his gaze lost in the tiny diamond that lay motionless without a sparkle in his hand.

"You still have time, you should run." Morton encouraged him forward.

Hugh mumbled, "I never should have come." He looked at Morton. "There's no hope. I'm done for, I'm totally screwed."

"You've got time, get back, spare yourself that vent, that horrible vent," Morton pleaded.

The threat of the vent didn't register with Hugh. His version of a heart, that tiny little bellow of hollow flap, had just been pummeled. He shuffled into the fog, wanting to evaporate from existence.

Morton called out to him. "Could you tell Ana something for me?"

Hugh turned halfway back and listened.

"Could you tell her ..." Morton choked up. "Can you tell her I miss her."

Hugh gave a single nod and turned back, slowly shrinking down into the deep hollow of the cemetery.

Morton watched him dissolve, and listened to the rattle of chains fade into the fog. He wiped away a tear and took a long slug off his plastic bottle of peppermint schnapps.

There Was No Love

Hugh wandered in the dark fog alone. There was no walkway, no trail, no signpost. He could feel the hollow cold of the Kingdom's gate drawing him in. It was beyond his ability to imagine the rest of eternity suffering and dead. He hadn't given the chance of return a single thought. Wedded to Missy, buried with her and Ms. Swindon until the end of time. None of it mattered now, he was out of love, soon to be out of life, dead, all the way through.

Ahead, the gate clawed out of the murk, its iron bars creaking with ravenous hunger for Hugh's soul. The gatekeeper squinted into the sky looking for the sun. "I was starting to think you wouldn't make it." He put his hands on his hips and let out a fake pout. “Aww, things didn't work out, did they?"

Hugh stood a step away from the gate, feeling the last air of the living world fizz across his skin.

"Would you mind if I sang a piece from act four of
Carmen
? I think it fits the occasion perfectly." The gatekeeper opened the gate and gave Hugh a wide berth to cross over into the Kingdom.

Hugh took the final step, but suddenly the gatekeeper stopped him. "If you don't mind, a little stage direction. While I'm singing, you slowly walk through and then on the ‘my Carmen, my Carmen’ part I slam the gate shut with a thunderous clap of finality."

Hugh shrugged his shoulders.
"Okay, I guess."

The gatekeeper got ready to sing but stopped himself once again. "Perhaps a brief explanation. In this scene José is begging Carmen to return his love and start a new life with him. Sound familiar?" The gatekeeper winked. "Carmen calmly replies that she loves him no longer and will not give way, free she was born and free she will die. Then José stabs her to death." He started to sing, "You can take me away, for I have killed my love."

Hugh, head bowed, played the events of the night over in his head. She rejected him three times. He said he was sorry, he said he loved her, he risked his own eternity to save her. Her refrain each time was no.

No, no, no. There was no love.

In that moment his sadness went a shade beyond black. His soul turned in on itself. From someplace at the deep dark bottom, a place he never thought he had, the seed of hate emerged with the force of a thousand gravities pulling all his emotions to its center, mauling and mutilating them.

The gatekeeper sang and motioned for Hugh to walk through the gate, "My Carmen, my Carmen! How I loved you."

Hugh looked up, the ignition of spite in his eyes. His body trembled. Revenge. He reached out and slammed the gate shut, sending the gatekeeper scuffling back in the dust. "Are you mad? Hurry, come through, there are only a few moments left."

Renewed with spiteful strength, Hugh held the gate shut, both his feet firmly planted in the Land of the Living.

"The vent, the horrible vent," the gatekeeper pleaded.

Hugh pulled back his tattered warm-up jacket and brushed the black handgun in his waistband. He turned his head to the side and spit. "I'm already down the horrible vent."

Revenge

Morton sat reclined against the gravestone closest to Ana's. The mist started to warm with the approach of the new day’s sun. He held his hand out and brushed the grass in front of her stone. "Good night, darling." He closed his eyes and nodded to sleep.

He didn't sleep long. The sound of gnashing chains and heavy steps woke him. Hugh emerged from the fog.

Morton sat up, “What are you doing?"

Hugh stopped and looked down at him. The ignited vengeance in his eyes shocked Morton fully awake and sober.

Hugh spoke in a low, sinister fume, "This night has opened my eyes to the true nature of love. Darkest hate wrapped in affection and romance."

Morton was speechless. His clumsy fool of a friend had been transformed into an evil monster.

"You should go, hurry, while you can still make it back," Morton fumbled.

"I ran away from her last time, look where it got me."

The sun crested the horizon and torched Hugh in a brazen glow. He hissed and raised his fists up, brandishing his chains and spitting with rancor, "I'm not running away."

At the center of the Kingdom’s soul clock there was a brief glimpse of the golden butterfly before a heavy iron door guillotined shut, entombing it in blackest darkness. Below the center, deep in the bowels of the animagraph, a craggy portal opened and onyx spikes of lightning birthed a crescent moon of cold steel. A low, hollow bell rang out.

The dead stopped their suffering for a moment to mark Samhain. Their malaise was supplanted ever so slightly by the shameful joy of knowing the Land of the Living was now dying.

Crain motioned to Jerry to raise a skeleton flag.

Above, in the cliffs, the reapers hefted saddles onto the backs of their steeds. Each pegasus bucked and roared as bridle bits were pushed past thirsty fangs.

Black Bolts of Lightning

Gilda trod the aisle of the small church, inspecting the flower arrangements. The florist followed several steps behind, wearing jeans and a tight sleeveless black shirt. Gilda glanced back at her, a bit envious. As soon as this wedding was over, she needed to get to the gym and pump herself a pair of those pipes. She stopped at the foot of the altar, which had been generously cascaded in white flowers.

She turned to the florist, her chin slightly up. "Well, we don't really have time to change anything. I'm just thankful it's not the flowers that make the marriage. Hopefully, Lily will somehow survive all these tacky little plants you dumped on her. It was supposed to be her special day, a shame. I guess it's just not going to be that special. Ordinary, just really ordinary." Gilda shook her head, disappointed, and walked away.

The florist slumped her shoulders, almost crying, and swore this would be the last wedding she ever did. She'd quit the flower business and follow her true passion, professional portrait photography of dogs.

Lily hadn't slept a wink. A professional makeup artist had to be called at the last minute to deal with the dark puffy circles under her eyes. She sat in a folding chair in the church basement, wearing nothing but a slip, as an effeminate fat man with a blue Mohawk held hemorrhoid pads to the circles under her eyes. "We just need to shrink some tissue, honey."

Lily stared at herself in the rented mirror. The basement smelled damp, with just a hint of cheap percolated coffee lingering in the air. She was awake now, exhausted but awake. The sun was nearly up on her wedding day and she wouldn't have to worry about coma dreams or nightmares or ghosts of fiancés past. She took a deep breath and reset her center of reality. It had taken more than three years, but she was right back where she started. It was the morning of her wedding. Hair, makeup, dress, more makeup, and then a full day of glad-handing and smiling, pretending everything was going to be okay. She did a breathing exercise, in through her nose, tiny pants out through her mouth. She counted, "...eight, nine, ten. Begin again." She took another deep breath.