His new family's home had been a gothic mansion erected on skeletal stone frames with vast expanses of glass and doors between pointed arches. As a young boy he would run through the expansive hallways, relishing the hollow sounds of his feet striking the marble, loving the feel of the air rushing through his lungs. While his new family had stressed prayer, concentration on the Gospel stories, and the lives of the saints, he had preferred sensation. Intense moments of physicality had brought the elation he had been told to expect from spiritual discipline. Soon he had even come to love the tears, the pain, the loss.
But that was a long time ago. The sensations of this place were shallow, insignificant to the pleasures and pains of the world below.
Most would consider the place he’d come from to be Hell, but for him it was home. He’d been there long enough to have made himself more than comfortable. He fed on suffering. For a man of his tastes, that other world was like a sprawling, endless smorgasbord, but his favorite dish had escaped, and he intended to make her pay dearly for it. It was more than that, wasn't it? It hurt having her gone. Agony filled every moment he spent apart from her.
He pushed his way through the woods, sensing that she’d been there. A burn swept across the map of his body, danced over every scar, and made his loins stir. He closed his eyes and focused.
He moved forward a few paces and the warmth faded. He stepped right and the sensation became even fainter. The itchiness from the sunlight returned to his skin. At the flare of pain he sucked in a seething breath. He stepped to his left and the burn became pleasant again. He was walking in her footsteps, ascending the same hill she had only moments before, each step filled with fire. At the top of the hill, he opened his eyes. A paved road stretched below. He grinned. He closed his eyes again, forgetting that he was back in an earthly vessel. Focusing on which direction she’d gone, he made his way to the bottom of the hill and waited by the side of the road.
~Bradley~
For Bradley Farnsworth, this morning marked the end of another shitty shift at Omega Suppliers where he worked as a night watchman. He’d left home in a rush that evening and grabbed one of Maggie’s bodice-rippers from the bookshelf instead of one of the crime paperbacks he enjoyed. With writing too laughable for him to even use the content as spank material, he’d given up a few pages in and spent the rest of the night staring at the security feeds and squeezing a stress ball.
Now free, he burned down Route 32 behind the wheel of his blood red Chevy Camaro. The rumble of the V8 engine surged through his body and brought with it a feeling of immense power. He bought the car as a present to himself after his honorable discharge from the Coast Guard. Maggie joked that he loved the car more than her. When behind the wheel with the pedal pressed all the way to the floor and the blacktop disappearing beneath the hood at an alarming rate, he suspected that might be true.
The Black Veil Brides tore through his speakers with their brand of grandiose heavy metal and Bradley pounded his fist against the steering wheel in time to the beat, occasionally singing along. He knew he wasn’t much of a singer, but in the loins of the Camaro, he was a rock star. No doubt about it. As he grooved to the music and zipped the car around each curvaceous bend, the night's stress seemed to fall away. A case of Molson waited for him at home and maybe he could coax Maggie into a morning fuck before she left for her shift at Kohl’s.
Trees flew by in his periphery. The road bent and arched. The engine of the Camaro roared with furious life. Bradley’s hands clenched around the wheel, his palms slick with sweat, his shoulders tight with tension. The sun peaked above the horizon, illuminating the sights around him.
Beyond the next turn, a naked man stood right in the middle of the road.
~Samael~
By the time Samael heard the car and felt its vibrations beneath him, his patience had worn thin. His desires for Chloe burned his nerve endings as she drew farther and farther away from him. More than anger, a piercing agony skewered his spirit. He felt desperation at losing her, as he’d lost her before. Back when she’d been called Clare.
Clare lived alone in a hut on the edge of a small village. A widow, her husband succumbed to plague the previous year. She had no children. When Samael found her, she was outside tending a small garden. He fell at her feet, too weak to do anything else.
She reached down and touched him with a tenderness that he’d never known. She spoke to him in the most soothing voice and without quite understanding why, he wept, soaking the earth below with his tears.
Clare took him inside, fed him bread and some meat. After he ate, he rested. She let him stay without as much as hinting that he should move on, her manner as tender as her touch.
On his third night there, she called him into her quarters. When she pressed her naked body against his, he found that she’d lost none of her tenderness. They made the sort of love he never knew existed. A human love. There was only pain in knowing it would end, that their embrace would break. They exchanged no harsh words, nor did they subject each other to hurt. It was tenderness as he’d never experienced it.
He stayed with her until the day they were killed.
Now as the vehicle approached, a grin spread across Samael’s face. The chase would be resumed, but a more immediate gratification of his urges awaited. He stalked out onto the road and watched as a red car whipped around the corner at incredible speed. Its brakes screeched as it swerved to avoid him.
Samael watched in awe as it slid out of control and into the opposite lane. Its red body demanded attention, burning like a bright fire in the middle of the road. He felt the sudden urge to feel its curves and angles beneath the caress of his fingertips. He imagined its heat, its rumbling engine, purring at his command. Up close this machine's majesty inspired awe unlike anything from his time on Earth or the place from which he’d come. Such wonder had escaped him for so long, but feeling it now elated him.
He'd get that bitch, and after her punishment, she’d never even think about running away again.
The car jolted to a stop and the owner got out, throwing his arms into the air.
“What are you? Fucking crazy?”
Samael smiled, the horror he would inflict upon this man crossing his thoughts like an elaborate play, Grand Guignol blood flowing like a waterfall over the edge of the stage.
“You just walked out into the middle of the highway! You have any idea how fast I was going?”
The man pressed his lips together and scowled when Samael said nothing in return.
“What’s your problem anyway?”
Samael smiled wider. As he did, his eyes burned and he saw the world through a red orange filter. The man’s angry expression instantly became one of fear.
“What the…?”
“…hell. Exactly.”
Samael’s arm stretched forward, the skin and bones extending beyond its normal length. The man barely had an opportunity to avoid Samael’s fist as it thrust into his chest. Upon impact, the breastbone shattered and the organs in the vicinity ruptured. He reached in deep and tiny slits opened in his palm. Worms crawled through the slits and spread through the car owner’s chest cavity, greedily devouring his insides. The man’s dying gasps would have been horrible had anyone else listened, but to Samael, they rang out like notes in the most beautiful song.
The car owner’s body dropped to the pavement as Samael's hand retracted. Touching the man so deeply, he’d learned the man’s name was Bradley Farnsworth. Twenty-nine years old. Survived by a wife and two children. Worked as a night watchman at a nearby warehouse. His father, a vacuum salesman.
Normally, Samael enjoyed learning the stories his victims' bodies told with their dying breaths. He liked the memories that weren’t his, songs he’d never heard, lovers he’d never taken. They made him stronger, made his blood rush and set the fire in his belly to maximum heat. But he didn’t have time to relish them now. He sifted through Bradley’s most treasured memories and most embarrassing failures and deepest fears un
til he found what he needed. When finished, he knew how to drive Bradley’s car.
Samael ran his hand across the vehicle's red, metal skin before entering. The leather seat cooled his bare flesh as he hunkered down. He pressed his foot down on the pedal and the engine revved, sending pleasant tremors through his body that brought ecstasy and power. He now understood why humans worshipped these vehicles. Why they lost themselves behind the wheel, drove recklessly and died in them.
He thrust into gear, eager to taste that freedom, and slammed on the gas pedal. As he split the open highway and focused on his target, he realized he had a hard-on.
~Todd~
“I died. I’m sure my father told you.”
Todd veered off of the main highway and onto another road, not wanting to drive into Havertown behind the wheel of a perfectly drivable car with a strange girl in the passenger seat. He’d already called Shay, his boss’s secretary and told her he’d been in an accident and wouldn’t make it to work. She’d responded with that mix of concern and suspicion she expressed whenever anyone called in sick.
Todd processed what Chloe said and thought again of the phone call he’d received from Les thirty years ago. The unspoken tension between them. The grief he’d known was there.
“I know. Sorry I didn’t come to the funeral.” The sentence felt weird coming out, but what the hell else could he say?
“I don’t blame you.”
The music played at a whisper, overwhelmed by the hum from the road below.
“So, you died. How are you here?”
The calm in his voice surprised him. His instincts screamed at the insanity of it all. Perhaps his need for answers held him together.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
It took a moment to register what she asked. “I gave those up years ago. I’m sorry.”
“Shit.”
She slouched in her seat and looked out the window at the trees as they passed. Her bare feet rested on the dashboard and she folded her hands against her mouth. Her eyes betrayed the presence of deep dark thoughts.
“Most people think death is the worst possible thing that can happen to someone. I never felt that way. Sometimes I thought it would be quite nice, maybe even a release. I romanticized it. In an immature way, I thought it would let me stay young forever. You remember? We talked about this.”
Todd wanted to correct her. Death was the worst thing for anyone to face. Just this morning, thoughts of his looming death had brought a feeling of anxiety.
“I don’t know if I still agree with that. I mean, getting old isn’t ideal, but to glamorize death is taking things a little far. My life isn’t perfect, but I certainly don’t want to die.”
He thought about that a moment, the sum of the parts that made up his life. Anna’s absence. Dale’s estrangement. Katie’s hopeless devotion. Maybe it went beyond imperfection. Maybe death was the only thing that could set it right.
“You shouldn’t.” Her eyes reminded him of people interviewed after a traumatic event. Wherever she’d been for the last thirty years had left her broken. “Everyone thinks death is the end, and that they should accept it. They have no idea. No amount of suffering can compare to what awaits beyond this world.”
“You were in Hell?”
“You say it like there’s an alternative.”
He tried to process what Chloe said and his thoughts clashed with each other. Through most of his life, he believed there were only two possibilities for what came after death. He didn’t think about it often, but he figured that either atheists were right, and that once dead, people fell asleep forever, or that religions were right, and the good went to Heaven while the bad went to Hell. Was there really only Hell, or was that just all Chloe knew? Was she paying for sins she committed during life? Nothing she’d done could have been that bad. If her claim proved correct, then everyone he knew who’d died (his parents, several friends and coworkers, Anna’s father) all suffered in some cruel afterlife. One day he would suffer. His children too.
“This can’t be possible. That can’t be all there is.”
“It might not be, I mean, I escaped didn’t I? From what I understand, and I don’t understand everything, there are several doorways between your world and that one. Hundreds, maybe. Maybe even other worlds.”
Todd shook his head, not wanting to believe any of it. Everything she said challenged his worldview. He considered himself a realist, someone who believed in what he saw and experienced. Chloe in flesh that should’ve decomposed long ago, tore open the veil that covered his eyes and showed him a new reality.
“How did you get out?”
“I don’t know. I heard music. This music, I think.” She turned a knob on the dashboard and the music grew louder. He had almost forgotten his album on the car stereo. His thoughts since picking up Chloe had provided his head with enough noise. Now his singing voice ruled the car again. He looked from her to the system. The seconds on the track’s running time ticked forward.
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. I was there, in the middle of that nightmare, and I heard you. Through everything, I heard you. It was like you were calling me back. So I ran to your music, toward the sound of your voice like they were the only things that mattered.”
He wanted to pull over, but her sense of urgency spooked him enough to think stopping would be a bad idea. She retreated into her own thoughts, while he looked at the road ahead and mused that it seemed to stretch on forever.
He asked her what dying had been like.
“Dying was a lot like being high, or getting off.” She laughed dryly. “Maybe I felt that way because I was overdosing. I’m not sure. You do see a light at first. It’s blinding. You tingle all over, feel more alive in that moment than you ever could imagine. If you’re not afraid, and that’s a big if, it’s actually the greatest feeling in the world. In some ways, exactly how I imagined it would be, until I started to fall.”
The whole time she spoke, he sat still, not even breathing. When she finished his phone rang, nearly jolting him out of his seat. Anna.
“Jesus,” he said, looking at the phone. “This is crazy.”
He showed her the lit faceplate.
“Your wife?”
He nodded.
“Answer it if you have to.”
He looked from her to his phone and back to the road. A spectacular view of distant mountains loomed ahead. Between the road and the mountains lay a deep valley with some homes, a lake, and sprawling acres of forest. A large white cross stood on one of the mountains and Todd wondered about the relevance of such symbols in the face of what Chloe had told him.
He sighed, acknowledging the crossroads that faced him. Ringring. Thirty years of marriage to Anna meant he owed her an explanation, even if only partly true. Ringring. On the other hand, her absence lately really bugged him. Ringring. He didn’t know if there was a legitimate reason for her unavailability. Ringring. Or if she was cheating.
His phone stopped ringing and he put it down. He could help Chloe today, then come home and try to repair the rift between him and Anna.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
“My father, is he still alive?”
“I think so. I don’t know.”
“If he is, we need to see him. He’ll know where to start.”
~Chloe~
The prospect of seeing her father again made her eyes prickle with the promise of tears. The last time she had seen him, he had been on his way to work, dressed in an apron and his black slip-resistant shoes, and holding his keys in his hand. He had asked what she had planned for the evening. "Not sure," she'd said. "Might go see friends, or I might stay home and listen to music." He had asked her if she was okay and she had known he had meant to ask if she was sober. As she had given him all the reassurances that she was fine, she did her best not to think about the twenty-bag of dope waiting for her in the drawer to her nightstand. That had been the night she'd died.
/> Her father’s apartment stood in a complex called Blue Bell Springs, a development of box-shaped brick buildings in the suburb Millville. Designed to look like a small neighborhood the complex was divided into sections named after trees: Holly Court; Willow Court.
“Kind of a downgrade from his old place,” Todd said as they got out of the car.
“He probably lives alone and doesn’t need the extra space.”
“You think?”
“He never remarried after Mom died.” She led the way into her father’s section. “I got the idea he never stopped loving her. I used to catch him sometimes, looking through old photos and drinking a bottle of bourbon. I doubt that it’s changed. If anything, I bet he spends his nights looking through photos of me.”
She stopped walking as a sob squeezed out from between her lips. She wanted to believe her father could move on and live life despite the fact that she and her mother hadn’t, but she knew the wish was in vain. He’d always been emotional, attached, devoted; a good man.
“Hey.” Todd put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna figure this out. I don’t know how, but we have to.”
She nodded. Todd was a lot like her father in that way, which was why she’d fallen in love with him so many years ago.
They found the right apartment and went to the door. Todd had looked up her father’s address on his cell phone, which was fascinating in its own right. Even more fascinating was that the phone was able to navigate their route to the apartments. It blew her mind because there hadn’t even been cell phones when she’d been alive.
How Todd had aged impressed her less. In his early twenties, lean muscles armored his wiry frame and thick, wild hair topped his head. She guessed he’d put on a pound for every year she’d been away, and he'd lost most of his hair. He stood beside her a soft shell of his once vital soul. She worried about him. Regardless of what they learned when they visited her father, she didn’t anticipate an easy journey and worried he wouldn't survive the ordeals ahead. She examined his face to see what remained of the man he’d once been. Something had to be there. How else had he found the power to call her from the fire? Otherwise they were doomed. She settled on his eyes, twin blue-green kaleidoscopes that carried a faint trace of the fire he’d once possessed. He caught her looking.