“What?”
“You’ve changed,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know. It’s change.”
Something between a croak and a laugh came out of him.
“It’s surreal being back.”
“You’re telling me.” He pointed up at the brick structure that housed her father’s apartment. “Do you think he can help us figure this out?”
“If anyone can do it, he can.” Saying that centered her a little.
“Nervous?”
“He’s gonna freak when he sees me.”
The spark in Todd’s eyes got brighter. “Well, if I didn’t have a heart attack, I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s always been a trooper.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Her finger danced around the rectangular door bell.
“Maybe you better.”
“He may be just as shocked to see me. We haven’t spoken since you died.”
Sadness jabbed her in the chest when he said that. She'd hoped that after her death Todd and her father would have become friends again.
“I think you should go first.”
Todd stepped forward and stared at the ground as he reached for the doorbell. This was going to be as difficult for him as it would be for her. He depressed the doorbell and it emitted a tinny buzz.
They waited. A full minute passed before the door locks clicked open. The sounds set her pulse into a frenzy. Though confident that her father could help them, it didn’t change the fact that seeing him again scared her. Before she had time to walk away and rethink her decision, the door swung open with a light groan.
He stood on the other side, leaning on a black and silver cane. His hair still fell to his shoulders, now white and stringy. Pinkish puffs of skin clouded the outside of his eyes. Though always skinny, he’d lost a lot of weight and exuded a frailty that she hated. He frowned at Todd.
“Something I can do for you, son?” Then his eyes shifted to her and his mouth fell open. He took a step back. A tear trickled out from one eye, slid down his nose and fell on the concrete step. He said her name once, under his breath. He pressed his hand against his chest. "Dear God."
Todd held up his hands. "It's okay, Les. We can explain everything."
"Explain? You can't be fucking serious." All the color had drained from his face. The way he clutched at his chest made Todd worry that he would have a heart attack right there.
"Dad," Chloe said and reached out to touch him and he stumbled backwards. "It's okay. It's really me. I need your help."
He looked from her to Todd, holding his cane out like a weapon. Chloe stepped forward, her hands outspread in a defensive gesture. "Please, Dad."
"Don't come any closer."
"Les, it's really her."
"That doesn't make me feel any better, son. And who the hell are you?"
"It's me, Todd. Please let us in. She needs our help."
"No way."
Chloe took another step toward him. "Dad, I escaped Hell. The last thirty years have been a fucking nightmare. I know you blame yourself for not being able to help me, but it's not your fault. Right now, though, you have the chance to help me. Please, I don't know where else to turn."
He bit his lip and nodded, but fresh tears fell from his eyes. He sucked in a lungful of air. “My sweet girl, is it really you?"
~Todd~
“Are you sure neither of you want a drink?” Les called from the kitchen. Tremors filled his voice.
Todd couldn't think of anything he wanted more. The events of the day had swept him up like a treacherous wind and dropped him in the middle of something deep and unexplainable. Being with Les and Chloe again, in spite of how much he and Les had aged and how long it had been since Chloe’s death, felt like he’d entered a time warp to the past, a past he'd buried with an overabundance of work and a family coming apart at the seams. Tension moved into his nerves and tightened around the back of his neck. He could only imagine how the old man felt. Les had watched his daughter die, and now she was here, alive, in a body that hadn't aged a day. Todd could use a drink, and certainly couldn't fault Les for having one.
Todd looked at Chloe and she shook her head.
“No thank you," Todd said. "We’re fine.”
Yeah, right, he thought. Pretty fucking far from fine.
The thud of Les’s cane on the wood floor jolted Todd out of his thoughts. Les entered the living room, spun the chair at the desk around and lowered himself into it. He laid the cane across his knees and folded his hands around a glass filled with a generous serving of bourbon. The color had not returned to his face, though his eyes had reddened from the tears.
“It’s good to see you again. Both of you.” The ghost of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. "But I don't know what to say. I’ve known for most of my life that the supernatural exists, but God, seeing you here alive…”
“It’s good to see you, too, Dad, but we don't have much time."
"Why?" Les asked. "What is it?"
“When I died, it was peaceful at first, the only time I truly felt free.”
Color came back to Les's cheeks. He looked angry. He said, “When I found you there was something in the room with you.”
“It was him… Samael. He was waiting for me when I fell into that other place.” She looked down at her hands. “The truth is I knew him. I feel like I’ve always known him and now he's after me.”
“Who is he?” Todd asked.
She shook her head. “He said he knew me from a long time ago. He called me Clare. When I was below he used to show me things from his memories."
"He wasn't a demon?" Les asked.
"No, he was human. At least he used to be. Maybe he's a demon now, after six hundred years in Hell, after the..." She paused. "His parents were killed in some kind of inquisition when he was very young and a rich family took him in. Though devoutly Catholic, his adopted mother was quite... depraved. As he turned to step down from the altar the day of his Confirmation, he saw the lust in her eyes, her teeth grazing her bottom lip. He was just a boy then, but on the verge of manhood and old enough to understand what she wanted, what he wanted.
"Their first night alone, she used a leather strap on his chest and belly. With her fingernails, she raked his back; with her teeth, she gnawed his shoulders. The sex followed, but only after the pain, which she delivered and demanded in return. Through his encounters with her, he learned how to use pain as a source of power, as a gateway to pleasure.
"It went on for years until his adopted father caught them together, and Samael fled into the night. He wandered the countryside for untold time. Starved and weary from his travels, he stumbled into this Clare woman's village.
"He showed her to me and I can see why he thinks I'm her. I look like her. They loved each other and for that period of his life, however short it was, he knew what it was like to live like a human being, to love."
Les knocked back some of his bourbon. "He told you all of this?"
Todd looked from Les to Chloe. He leaned forward, completely enthralled by her story, believing it, despite how crazy it all sounded.
"No, he showed me." Terror flared in her eyes and she looked away. "The people of her village didn't like that he stayed with her. He was an outsider and they were sleeping together out of wedlock. Finally, their affair caused enough trouble to incite the authorities to do something about it.
"They refused to repent and were killed, maybe even by the same people who killed his parents. He became the monster he is today in exchange for being reunited with his love. I guess that’s who he thinks I am. And maybe I am her, I just don’t know anymore. I’ve been down there so long everything just kind of runs together.”
Todd felt a spike of jealousy. “What’d he do to you?”
Les trembled. His hands squeezed the cane in his lap.
“When I was a child, I used to dream about him. He entered my room and I'd
leave my body behind. At first it was nice. He used to entertain me with magic tricks, most of them involved fire, but he always assured me there was nothing to be afraid of. I believed him because he seemed so friendly.
"He told me that I wasn't who I thought I was. My real name was Clare. I dismissed it all because I thought I was dreaming."
"Sometimes you mentioned him, but I thought the same thing. Either you were dreaming or you had an imaginary friend. I should've known."
"You couldn't have. I was just a little girl."
"Exactly why I should've protected you."
"There's nothing you could've done, Dad." Les bit his lip. "Anyway, for a while, he stopped coming. I forgot about him."
She choked on the last word, seemed to consider for a long time what she would say next. Todd dangled in suspense.
"When he came to me again, I was nearly thirteen years old. I remember it so clearly. That day in school, a classmate and I put on a presentation about the story of Persephone and Hades. I'd been so fascinated by that story."
She paused again. The terror in her expression increased. Todd could see that she almost didn't want to tell this part of the story.
"That night he came up from the floor. I thought I was dreaming, like before, right up until the moment he..." The terror dispersed from her eyes and her face tightened with anger. Lively red washed her pale cheeks. "He raped me that night. The next morning I had my first period."
"Jesus," Todd said and put his face into his hands.
"He came to me many times throughout my teenage years. Sometimes I saw him in broad daylight, following me down the street, watching me in a crowd."
Todd took her hand. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I stopped seeing him when we met. That’s part of why I called you when you gave me your number. I thought maybe there was something special. Maybe something about our bond would hold him off. When he started appearing again, what could I say? You wouldn't have believed me. It was crazy."
Todd pointed at Les. "Your father would've."
"She had no way of knowing that." Les gritted his teeth. "I don't know if I could've helped her anyway. All the things I've learned, fucking useless. All it did was make me realize just how futile our lives are. There are forces outside that can come in and do with us as they please. Rape our daughters. Turn us into monsters. I'm so sorry, but I don't think telling me then would've made any difference."
"We might not be completely helpless," she said. "I escaped when I heard Todd’s music this morning. I don’t know how, but it opened a door and I was able to escape through it.”
Something shifted in Les's expression. “‘Such strains as would have won the ear/Of Pluto, to have quite set free/His half-regained Eurydice.’”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Todd said.
“It's Milton, a reference to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. A part of you, a very deep part, still loves Chloe. That old passion combined with the power of music, played in the right tuning with the right amount of soul can do incredible things.”
Todd said nothing.
“Do you remember the way I told you to tune your guitar? It came from an old book I used to have, and it was supposed to give your songs a special power.”
“The power to raise the dead?”
“Among other things. I truthfully never thought it would work.” He smiled and got to his feet, rising with incredible energy for his age. “Her being here proves otherwise.”
He limped to one of the several bookshelves in the room and reached for one of the texts. He held it out in front of him with the cover towards Todd and Chloe. A symbol drawn in charcoal decorated the center. Around it were other smaller symbols—stars, animals, and shapes—spiraling into the central image.
“Have either of you seen this symbol before?”
Todd leaned forward, examining its angles and points. “No.”
Chloe bit her lip and nodded.
Todd took the book in his hands. “What is it?”
“It’s everything,” Les said, as if the very statement overwhelmed him.
~Anna~
The steering column of Anna's Infinity protested as she pulled into her neighborhood, as if it, too, was afraid of what waited at home. She reminded herself that Todd was at work. She could at least put off the confrontation until later tonight. In the best case scenario she wouldn’t have to deal with it until after the weekend. After she sorted out matters with Keith.
She examined the rows of opulent homes that lined the street with their sprawling lush grass, expensive cars parked like oversized trophies in the driveways, and manicured trees that shaded the sidewalks. A dog leapt with canine exuberance as a teenaged boy threw a Frisbee in one yard. A brightly colored Playskool swing hung from a tree branch in another.
When they had first purchased the home she and Todd had stood outside the house with Holden Stillwell, the fast-talking realtor with the cartoonish smile. She’d been seven months pregnant with Katie then, her belly swollen like a beach ball. Todd had held her hand and looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Dale, smack dab in the middle of his terrible twos had been very vocal, often interrupting Holden and making the realtor stumble.
She hadn’t thought of that day in years, but now she remembered it like it was yesterday. Their excitement. Their idealism. That romance had faded over time, but she couldn’t pinpoint one deciding event that had killed it. There were numerous things she was tempted to attribute it to: the death of Todd’s father, her miscarriage of their third child, Dale leaving to join the Marines in a fit of rage; but the truth was that the spark in their relationship just dwindled.
She thought of the night Todd had gotten the news that his former girlfriend (what had her name been? Clare? Zoe?) died and wondered if his heart had ever been in their marriage. They both worked a lot and spent little time with each other. He often seemed obsessed with his job, as if he was working to distract himself from some ache, some longing. Perhaps she seemed the same way to him. Once both kids had been old enough for school, she started her career at Marcus and Marcus and worked her way up to where she was today. One of the top performers, she made almost as much as Todd did at the bank. For all of their other shortcomings, they'd never had to worry about money.
She parked her car in the driveway, behind Katie’s black Corolla. She looked through the windshield at her house. The sun shone in the sky behind it and the home’s boxy, angular shape cast a long shadow upon her. She opened the glove box and contemplated the pack of cigarettes hidden within.
“No.” She closed it, took a stabilizing breath and stepped out of the car.
~Todd~
Les's words repeated in Todd’s mind. The cruel Hell from which Chloe had escaped was believable in the face of her dread. The fact that she was here, too, had become easier to accept. She was either really here or he was having a really long, strange, and realistic dream. Harder to accept was Les's assertion that Todd still loved her and how that love, along with his music, had been enough to raise her from the dead. How was that even possible? Then again, his criteria for what was and wasn't possible had changed a lot in the last few hours. Did he still love her? They'd been together so long ago. In the time since, she'd died and he'd raised a family. Still, the question remained. He would’ve given anything to know what was going through her mind. Did her father's statement disturb her as much as it disturbed him? She hadn't taken her eyes off of the symbol.
“I was given this book by a friend in the Navy,” Les said. “No one knows exactly how many are in existence, though he suspected that there were very few. When he heard about Natalia, your mother, Chloe, he said the book might help me with the pain.”
He took a sip of bourbon and grimaced bitterly.
“I thought he meant that it would help me contact her, possibly bring her back, but I was wrong. What it did was help me see just how large the world is, that maybe she’s out there… somewhere.”
/> Todd looked from the book to Chloe to Les. “Wait, but why were my songs able to raise her from the dead? You're a musician, why couldn't you do it?”
"I tried. Believe me." Les's face darkened, making shadows in his eyes. "Maybe there's something about you. Did anything ever happen to you that you couldn't explain?"
"Shit, Les, life is fucking inexplicable sometimes," Todd said, but he thought back to the night Chloe died, to the glowing figure who had touched him out by Potter Way. He remembered it the way he remembered dreams, and some days, he wasn't sure if it had even happened, but he remembered feeling marked by the experience. He nodded. "Yeah, the night Chloe died, I was visited by...I guess it was some kind of spirit."
"Perhaps that gave you the power to wield the magic your songs possessed," Les said.
"If that's true, why didn't I bring Chloe back before? I wrote those songs years ago."
“I wish I knew how to answer that."
"Well, what does that book say?" Todd asked.
"Just that music, played in the right key, with the right amount of emotion can shift the cosmos, reconcile God to man, raise the dead. I suppose that today, for whatever reason, the timing was right."
"What does it say about keeping me safe?" Chloe asked.
Les handed the book to Chloe and she put it on her lap and traced the symbol with her fingertips. Les took a gulp of bourbon. "There are passages about bringing spirits home so they can finally be at rest. I think what it means is that Chloe has to go home."