Hell

by Tom Lewis

  “Sean...”

  It was the sound he had feared. It was her voice, carried on the wind, in the hollow echo of an empty tomb.

  Then he saw her — Amy’s ghostly figure. She stood twenty yards away, covered in her death shawl and looking pale and emotionless.

  “I’m so cold, Sean...”

  He closed his eyes to shut it out. That thing wasn’t Amy. It was a blasphemy. Don’t look at it. Don’t listen to it...

  “You left me, Sean... You left me alone...”

  With his eyes still closed, he now felt it next to him — the presence of something cold and unloving. He made the mistake of opening his eyes.

  She stood in front of him, with black soulless eyes that bored into his.

  “Come inside me, Sean... like we did on the beach...”

  “You’re not Amy...” he muttered.

  “No one will know...”

  “You’re not Amy!” This time he shouted.

  Her skin began to darken and crinkle. Dark splotches spread across her face, and clumps of hair fell from her scalp. The skin of her face shriveled and tore like thin sheets of paper, and her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grim death’s face.

  She raised a skeletal hand and reached for his face...

  And he felt it touch him.

  Sean shot awake in his bed at the rectory. His pulse pounded in his ears, and his shirt was drenched with sweat. He breathed heavily, clenching his fists and forcing his mind away from memories of that dream. They had disturbed him on so many levels — not just in their degradation of Amy, but in the despair and confusion they had sought to instill in him. And to some extent, they had succeeded.

  As he lay back on his pillow, he couldn’t shake the truth of one thing that counterfeit Amy had said.

  “You left me, Sean... You left me alone...”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It Came Back

  The large bus rumbled down the street on its morning commute. Cassie sat in the back again and watched the town awaken through the window. Shopkeepers flipped the “Open” signs in their windows, and vendors wheeled their pastry carts onto sidewalks. There was the usual morning crowd of early risers, relaxing over coffees at outdoor cafes and reading the morning paper. A few joggers ran past.

  The bus turned onto a new street, and they were soon passing more colorful wooden shops and pedestrians.

  Two men were walking their dogs in opposite directions as the bus groaned to a stop at a streetlight. The man coming from her left had a dark lab, while the man coming from her right had a pit bull. The men exchanged greetings and continued on. They had walked a little ways farther when their dogs stopped and turned to stare at the window Cassie was watching from. The dogs appeared confused at first, cocking their heads to the side, then suddenly burst into barks.

  They lunged forward, yanking the leashes from their startled owners’ grips, and leaped at Cassie’s window.

  The pit bull’s head crashed into it like a mallet, shattering it into jagged shards. Cassie dove from her seat and across the aisle, and passengers screamed. The dogs leaped again, and their paws caught the bottom edge of the broken window. They barked furiously as they scrambled to climb in.

  “Go!” a frightened passenger shouted to the driver, who had been watching all of this through his side mirror. He laid on his horn to alert traffic then pressed down on the gas. Cross-traffic skidded to a stop as the bus lurched forward through the intersection.

  The dogs lost their grips on the window and fell to the street but were quickly back up and chasing the bus.

  Cassie raced back to her window and looked out at the chaos behind them. Cars had piled up in the intersection and the dogs bounded through them after the bus.

  The bus sped down the block and quickly spun the corner onto a new block. Cassie watched the dogs fall farther and farther behind till they finally gave up the chase.

  The dogs had accomplished what they wanted — they had chased away that ghoulish Face they had seen watching them from the window.

  ****

  “You left me, Sean... You left me alone...”

  Sean sat in the front pew of the empty church, alone with his haunting memories of the dream.

  In front of him was the tabernacle, where they stored the consecrated Communion Hosts, and to the right of that was the altar, where a large crucifix hung from the ceiling above it. But Sean barely noticed any of this; his thoughts were on the dream. And try as hard as he could, he couldn’t shake off those words from the dream —

  “You left me, Sean... You left me alone...”

  It was like a stone had lodged in his shoe, and his foot rubbed over it till blisters formed and bled.

  He tried praying, but it came forced and dry... and he felt nobody was listening on the other end.

  What kind of priest couldn’t even pray?

  A bad one, an inner voice whispered to him. A fraud.

  It troubled him that he didn’t disagree with this.

  Maggie Dunne entered at the rear of the church. She looked around the empty sanctuary and spotted Sean at the far end. She headed down the aisle toward him, paying little attention to the religious trappings around her. Those stained-glass windows depicting gospel themes, and statues of saints, meant nothing to this widowed mother of a dead child.

  “Hey, Father,” she said, sliding into the pew beside Sean. “The office said I could find you here. Can we talk?”

  Sean glanced at her and tried not to let his annoyance at her intrusion show. “Sure, Maggie,” he offered reluctantly. “How are you?”

  She let out a breath. “Honestly, it’s been hard.” And it was clear from the worn look on her face that it had been. Sean felt his initial resentment subside. She was grieving and lost, and it was something he could relate to.

  “I’m sorry, Maggie. I know how painful it is.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment. She knew he had lost his brother in the war, but she wasn’t aware he had also lost a close friend in Amy. She stared down at her hands, which she had begun to wring into knots, and took a deep breath.

  “So I guess you heard they’re not going to be filing any charges in the crash.”

  “No. I hadn’t heard.”

  “Well, they’re not. So that means my daughter’s dead, and nobody’s being punished for it.”

  Her hands continued to twist into knots as the rage boiled inside her. Sean wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “That’s gotta be hard,” he finally offered. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

  She cleared her throat. “I understand Cassie Stevens is a student at this school. Can you help me find her?”

  This caught Sean off guard. He sympathized with Maggie and her frustration, but turning over a student to what would be an obvious chastisement wasn’t something he could do. Especially not one as troubled as Cassie seemed to be.

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help anything, Maggie.”

  “Well, it will,” she shot back sharply. “That girl needs to know the hell she’s put me through. Katie was all that I had, and that girl took her from me.” Maggie’s hands were now squeezed into fists, and her nails dug into the flesh of her palms.

  “I want her to know that I wish she died instead.”

  ****

  Coach Bobbie blew her whistle, and the girls’ PE class hustled out onto the field. One girl kicked a soccer ball with her as she ran.

  Cassie was suited up in her gym shorts and ready to play, but Coach had sidelined her because of her ribs. This was the last thing Cassie wanted or needed. She knew everyone already thought she was a freak, and would have preferred having the rest of her ribs broken than giving the girls another reason to hate her. And she could tell from their angry stares that was already happening.

  She let out a sigh and walked over to the coach.

  “Look. I know I’m not supposed to play, but what if I was really careful? Do you think maybe you could let me?”

  The
coach shook her head. “Sorry, Stevens, but Principal Hall would have my ass if I let you play. Excuse the French.”

  “So I’m supposed to just stand here and have everyone stare at me?”

  Coach looked out onto the field and saw the angry glares Cassie was getting from the girls. Cassie had a point.

  “Okay. Go ahead and change back into your school uniform. But I want you in the library studying. Do we have a deal?”

  “Yeah,” Cassie nodded. “Thanks.”

  ****

  Cassie pulled her uniform from her gym locker and pushed it closed. She quickly slid out of her gym shorts and into her school skirt. There was still enough time to make it to the library and maybe get some reading done before her next class.

  She started to leave when Coach Bobbie’s voice called to her from the far end of the locker room. “Cassie, can you come here a second.”

  That was weird. Cassie hadn’t heard anyone else come in.

  “Yeah,” Cassie called back. She grabbed her backpack and headed down the rows of lockers to the back of the room.

  When she reached it, nobody was there. And she hadn’t seen anyone down any of the rows.

  “Coach?”

  A shower came on in the adjoining shower room. Seconds later another shower came on, then another, and then another...

  Did the class return without her hearing them?

  “Coach?”

  There were no other sounds except the showers. She walked back in that direction and looked through the opening into the shower room. It was filled with thick clouds of steam, and even from across the room, she could feel the water was scalding hot.

  Yet there were people in there.

  She could only see their blurred outlines through the steam, but there appeared to be at least six of them.

  “You wanted to see me, coach?”

  There was no answer.

  The steam slowly billowed through the opening, and Cassie felt its damp warmth surround her. She took a step back into the locker room, and noticed those dark shapes approaching her in the steam.

  She took another nervous step back. Then another...

  A hand touched her back.

  It felt cold and clammy. She spun around but saw only the empty locker room, with steam now drifting into it. She turned back to the shower, and those shapes were almost on her.

  Cassie quickly staggered back and tripped on a bench. She fell to the floor and landed hard on her ribs.

  “Ow!” she cringed. But as she looked up, the steam billowed in around her like a dense fog. Tentacles of steam traced across the ceiling, and with loud pops, the lights went out and left the room in complete darkness.

  Cassie felt the steam’s damp warmth surrounding her now — and things moving within that steam. She scrambled as quickly as she could across the floor in the direction she hoped the door was.

  Cassssiiiieeee... a hissed voice came inches from her ear.

  Come, Casssiiiieeee...

  Cassie screamed! Then the school bell rang in the hallway outside. The door was in that direction. She sprang to her feet and ran in that direction till her hands hit the wall.

  Caaassssssiiiieeee... a voice hissed beside her.

  Cassie patted her hands along the wall till she found the door. She grabbed the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Things were moving in the darkness around her.

  Caaasssiiiieee... A foul breath brushed her ear.

  Staaaayyyy Caaasssiiieee... hissed a voice in her other ear.

  “Hey! Hey! Help!” she screamed, pounding on the door.

  Staaaaayyy... A breath brushed against her neck.

  “Hey! Help! It’s locked!”

  The door swung open, and Coach Bobbie and the girls stood outside it.

  “What the hell, Stevens?” Coach Bobbie said, then saw past Cassie into the dark locker room. Before Coach could say another word, Cassie squeezed past her and the girls and raced off down the hallway and out the doors at the far end.

  ****

  Cassie was still a terrified mess by the time she arrived home from school. It was back. Everything added up — the Face in the bus window; whatever Rex had seen in the forest that night; whatever had happened to her at the lighthouse; and now the locker room... all of it couldn’t be her imagination, or hallucinations, or whatever her doctors at the hospital had warned her she might experience. There were just too many of these things happening to her, and they were happening more frequently now.

  It was back.

  As she looked around the empty house, she decided there was no way she was going to stay home alone inside till her mom got home. And who knew when that would even be.

  “Hey, Rex, wanna go for a walk?” she called out, and seconds later he came bounding in. She snatched his leash from the broom closet and patted his side as she attached it to his collar.

  “Hey, buddy. I need you to protect me, okay.”

  Neither of them could know it would be their last walk together.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Grave

  Pioneer Road was the narrow stretch of cracked asphalt and dry leaves that ran from the town’s northern border through grazing fields and forests, and finally up Pioneer Hill. There, it veered a sharp left and ran parallel to the town.

  On its southern side, the road looked out across the town, with its canopy of elms and wood-sided houses and shops. And beyond that lay the tip of the peninsula, where its lighthouse stood against a boundless span of blue.

  On its northern side was the Faulkner Cemetery, which was divided into two sections. The eastern half was the historic portion of the cemetery, with graves dating back to the town’s founding centuries earlier. Its terrain was rugged and steep, and monuments and graves had shifted over the years as the ground beneath them eroded. It was surrounded by a fence of wrought iron bars, barricading it from the road. This section was known simply as the old cemetery.

  On its western border was the portion known as the new cemetery. Its terrain had been graded into the hill and was well kept with trimmed lawns and gravestones. It was the portion where her dad and Katie Dunne had been buried.

  Cassie and Rex had just reached the top of the hill, where the road curved left to run parallel to the town. She stopped a moment to rest and take in the view of the distant town. It was early evening, so people were just getting off work, and the town’s streets were already lined with cars. In the distance, dark storm clouds were gathering over the ocean, so she and Rex would need to head home soon to beat the rain.

  She turned to look at the old cemetery behind them and found that even in the dwindling daylight, its aura was foreboding. With the sun low on the horizon beyond the hill, a grim pall was cast over its monuments and aged gravestones, and long shadows crept toward her like skeletal hands. A few leaves tossed about in the growing breeze.

  It felt like the approach of Death, and she shuddered at memories of the fascination it once held.

  She patted Rex on his side. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get going.” She had spooked herself enough for one day.

  As they turned to head back down the hill, she suddenly froze.

  Something was moving in the cemetery.

  In the growing dusk, something barely perceptible had hovered in the far corner of her peripheral vision like a shadow. Only it wasn’t a shadow, and she knew this. It moved upright, apart from any objects a shadow could have been cast on; and as had happened with that Face in the bus window, it was gone when she turned in its direction.

  It was something she would come to refer to as the Shadow.

  A low growl rumbled from Rex. She looked down at him and found his eyes fixed on a spot in the cemetery near a large granite vault. Every muscle in his large body was tensed, like he had been in the clearing behind her house that night. He was watching something out there among the graves, and his canine instincts had already determined it was a threat.

  You know, animals can see shit that we can’t, Seth�
�s words flashed in her memory.

  Ask your dog, next time you see him growling into an empty room.

  “Rex. Come on. Let’s go.” She patted his side again, and this time she found him trembling. He seemed completely oblivious of her or anything else — every nerve and muscle in his body was focused on the unseen threat that watched them from the graves.

  Without warning, he suddenly lunged forward and yanked the leash from her grip. He bounded across the road to the fence and quickly squeezed between the bars.

  “Rex, stop!” she shouted, racing over to the fence, but Rex was already bounding up the hill on the far side.

  Cassie ran along the fence till she found an opening where two bars had rusted away. She squeezed through, then hurried up the hill as fast as she could.

  “Rex!” she hollered again as the barking grew farther away. The grass came up to her knees in parts and concealed holes where the ground had eroded away. She stumbled through several of them and nicked her ankle on several gravestones that were hidden by the grass.

  “Rex! Dammit, Rex, just stop!” She paused a second to catch her breath.

  Then the barking stopped.

  ****

  The sun had set, and a brisk wind from the approaching storm swept through the grass and fallen leaves of the old cemetery.

  “Rex!” Cassie panted as she trudged up the hill. It had been over twenty minutes since she’d heard his last bark, and the first drops of rain had begun to fall. The ground would soon be slick with mud, so she hurried as fast as she could.

  She reached the northern boundary of the cemetery at the top of the hill and turned to look back down the rugged slope. There was nothing moving below.

  “Rex!”

  She leaned back against the fence and thought about it for a moment. She looked over to her right, where the old cemetery stretched till it reached its western border with the new cemetery. Maybe that’s where he went.

  The rain hit harder now, and the ground was slick with mud. She sloshed through it till she finally reached the fence along the western border. On the far side of it, the ground sloped sharply downward till it reached the fresh-cut grass of the new cemetery. There, the earth had been graded level into the hill.