Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  Bella and I are looking for places to go in the city that we can afford, when PopPop comes into the kitchen. He’s looking at us, a devilish smile veiled behind wisps of steam.

  “There are two bundles of wood in the trunk of the car. It’s cold up by the lake and without electricity or a bathroom, and you’ll have to use a flashlight at night …”

  At first we’re confused, but then we notice the keys to my PopPop’s old Plymouth Road Runner sitting on a map to his cabin.

  “Newlyweds should save their money for important things, like good wine,” he says with a wink.

  So we go up north to spend our honeymoon in a cabin without heat or electricity. That night, we make love in the living room, as close to the fireplace as possible, neither of us feeling the cold.

  ↔

  It’s midnight when it happens.

  First we hear the message:

  “Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck.”

  The voice I hear is soft and calm. Reassuring but firm. And from its tone, I get this strong feeling that whatever has been done cannot be undone.

  Bella and I look at each other, confusion painted on our faces.

  “Did you hear that?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, pulling her in close. I put my hand under her shirt and cup her bare breast. “And I don’t care.”

  “But …”

  “But nothing,” I say, pulling off her shirt.

  She lets me, but she’s still thinking about the voice. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” she says.

  I suppose if I weren’t a teenager with raging hormones, I would think it strange. But there are perfect, perky nipples reflecting the embers of the fire. And I am very badly in love. I pull back the wool blanket and run soft kisses down her torso, murmuring, “What’s weird? Tell me about it.”

  “The voice …” she says, her own voice trailing off as my tongue finds her special spot. “It was so …”

  The thought is lost and we are together again.

  ↔

  After making love for a second time, we are content. Our bodies exhausted, we fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. But not for long. An explosion wakes us.

  Not just an explosion, but a cascade of detonations that erupt all around us. It is not coming from the road or the nearby town. The sound is coming from the sky.

  Naked, we run outside and look up. The sky is filled with fire that rolls through the night like a river bursting through a dam. And from the flames fall what look like meteors. A hundred thousand comets fall from above and ignite the world around us.

  Isolated in the woods, we do not know that the Others are arriving, and that everything we once knew and loved is being ripped away from us with their arrival. All we know is our world is burning.

  I guess, in a sense, that is all we need to know.

  ↔

  We drive home on empty country roads, more out of curiosity than fear. We are young. We are in love. We are immortal. Sure, the sky is on fire, but how will that hurt us?

  Without warning something hits the Plymouth, causing me to lose control. I twist the wheel against the spin and pump the brakes. We slide to a stop, facing the opposite direction. That’s when we see it.

  A monster. There is no other word for it—not in those first days, at least. The monster has a woman’s body, naked breasts heaving in the moonlight. Her head is covered with a hundred squirming tendrils, each ending with the head of a snake, and her legs—oh God, she has no legs! Did I run her over and sever them from her body?

  But then she rears up and shoots into the sky. Her body stops at least nine feet above the ground. It looks like she is standing on top of a podium. The podium moves as she lowers her body, and it is then we see that her torso ends where the body of a giant snake begins. Medusa, I think, and it turns out I’m not far off. I will later learn that we’ve just met a far less famous member of the gorgon race.

  The creature looks at us. Fear fills her eyes. What the hell does she have to be afraid of? She’s the monster.

  Bella opens the door, pulling out the flashlight. I grab her arm. “Don’t,” I say, but she ignores me and steps outside.

  She approaches the monster like one might an angry dog, palms out, tone steady, eyes locked. “We’re not going to hurt you,” she says. “We just want to help.” Even back then, Bella was always so kind. So good.

  The gorgon’s features soften. Then she starts to cry. What the hell? Monsters cry?

  Bella continues to speak softly, offering the gorgon a granola bar. The creature takes it with care before devouring it greedily. “Where did you come from?” Bella asks, but before the monster can answer, we hear a shot, followed by the roar of a pickup truck. Without hesitation or looking behind her, the gorgon slithers into the forest.

  The pickup truck stops next to us and the driver steps out, rifle in hand. Two more men get out the back and a third darts out of the passenger-side door. All but the driver chase after the monster.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “Didn’t you hear?” the driver says. “We’re being invaded.”

  “By who?”

  “Aliens, the news says. But I say they’re demons. This is the End of Days and the angels’ trumpets are sounding, boy!” And with that, he’s off. Shots can be heard, but Bella and I do not stick around to see what’s going on.

  It will be two days later when I will pick up a local paper and see the driver of the truck and his friends standing around the gorgon’s dead body. They’ve strung her upside down from a tree like a fisherman might a shark. They are smiling, thumbs out, beers in hand, the headline reading: “Local Heroes Kill Snake Lady, Save Town.”

  ↔

  We get back to the city and head home. Not that there is a home to greet us. PopPop’s house is one of the hundreds hit.

  Please. Please don’t be home, I pray.

  But there are no gods left to answer my prayers. PopPop is dead. And when the local Army starts recruiting, I join, leaving Bella alone in the crappy apartment we rented in the worst part of town.

  ↔

  There is this girl whom I love very much. Eventually an uneasy peace settles throughout the city and, as a result, soldiers are sent home.

  I am so happy to be discharged because, like I said, there is this girl and on the day I proposed to her, I promised that in this life and the next I would love her forever. I plan to make good on that promise.

  ↔

  She meets me at the airport and takes me home. Only thing is that home isn’t home. It is this old three-story building with seven rooms, an attic and a cellar.

  “Welcome to the One Spire Hotel,” she says with a grand gesture as we walk into its tiny foyer. The room is filled with desperate Others, broken by the GoneGod World. Each one of them has been mortally wounded by the loss of their home. A wound, Bella tells me, that will eventually kill them all.

  “Poetic way of looking at it,” I say.

  They look up when Bella enters the room. An angel, better dressed than most, sees me and comes over. “Jean-Luc Matthias, I presume? I am Miral, former captain of the Lord’s army and now assistant to the human called Bella. Welcome home.” The angel extends her hand, but I do not take it. I might have left the Army, but the Army has yet to leave me.

  “Jean,” Bella admonishes, “honestly.” She apologizes to the angel Miral, who takes it with grace and kindness.

  “There is a problem with tonight’s event,” Miral says to Bella, pulling her aside. They go off to discuss what needs to be done.

  A shorter woman wearing an old Victorian dress comes into the room. She pokes my side and says, “The name is Sandy. I am a werewolf. Treat me like you did the angel and I will rip out your throat.” Sandy extends a hand and, a little bit afraid of the five-foot-nothing woman, I shake it. She nods and whispers, “Your wife’s the real angel, helping so many O
thers by giving them hope. You better not muck it up. Otherwise, I’ll—”

  “Rip out my throat?” I offer.

  Sandy nods her head. “Glad we understand each other.”

  Bella returns and informs Sandy that the caterers have cancelled. Sandy offers to rip out their throats, but Bella says she has a solution. She hands me an apron. We need four dozen chocolate-chip-and-macadamia-nut cookies.

  “But I just got back,” I say.

  Bella shoots me her best So what? look and says, “Don’t burn them,” a bit of anger in her voice. As she walks away, Miral looks back at me, a devilish smile touching her lips.

  “I hate baking,” I protest feebly. “Could this day get any worse?”

  “Oh,” Bella says, “that reminds me. Remember my mother, Judith? Well, she’s back …”

  “What?”

  “Welcome back,” Bella says, and trots off to deal with some crisis or other.

  ↔

  Days turn into weeks, and even though I do not trust the Others, I am inspired by how much they love Bella. Paradise Lot is filled with hope, and it is mostly because of my wife.

  As for me, I am happy just to be with Bella. I’ve even made an uneasy peace with Judith—or rather, we don’t speak, which is an improvement.

  Everything is going smoothly. I want this to last forever. But it seems that the Devil has other plans for us.

  Unleash the Dogs of War

  There weren’t many cops walking the streets of Paradise Lot, and when something big happened—like let’s say an explosion in the only human-run hotel—they still didn’t come running. There was just too much baggage in a place like Paradise Lot: too many ancient beefs that spanned millennia, too many creatures with claws and fangs, and too many once-upon-a-times with enough time on their hands to turn you into a pillar of salt. Given that, I figured I had half an hour before anyone official-looking turned up.

  A lot can happen in half an hour.

  Penemue and Astarte knelt by Joseph’s body, both offering prayers from their respective ancient traditions. Penemue hummed as golden tears flowed from his face, and Astarte washed the body with a cloth, using the pools of water from pipes that no longer gushed. I guessed Judith must have found the main—at least one thing had improved. Both of them were just as devastated by the loss of Joseph as I was. I couldn’t watch anymore, and looked around the blown-out room. One of the problems of this GoneGod World was that you could no longer blame some silent entity, saying something meaningless like “He works in mysterious ways” or “Joseph was called for a higher purpose.”

  But there were no signs and no clues. No one to make sense of this for me. All that remained was a room with two Others paying respects to an empty, soulless body.

  Judging from the way the explosion happened, time was burned. A lot of it. This ruled out EightBall, and ruled in my Fanatic theory. There was only one body in the room, which meant the Fanatic was still breathing, and the one thing I’d learned from dealing with Fanatics was that once they started, they didn’t stop until they were dead—which usually meant a lot more explosions.

  I looked over the angel’s shoulder at Joseph. His features were slowly returning now that his body was no longer being crushed down by the Fanatic’s magic. I forced myself to look at his hollow, empty eyes. His arms were folded over the same double-breasted suit he had worn earlier today, his coat pockets turned inside out and empty. Whatever happened here was more than revenge or a fight. The Fanatic was looking for something, something that Joseph owned or left behind …

  Just as the thought entered my mind, the lights flickered.

  “He’s still here.”

  “Who?” Penemue said, but without answering him I ran out the door and down the stairs, sure that when I got into the reception I’d be met by that friggin’ unnatural smile.

  The last thing I expected was a bat to the back of the head.

  ↔

  Whoever took a swing at my skull wasn’t very experienced. For one thing, if you are looking to knock a person out, you have to hit the point where the skull meets the neck. A good hit will take someone down, and if the angle is just right, you have a good chance of permanently paralyzing them. If you are looking to kill the guy, aim for the crown, angling your swing downward. That’s the most likely way to get enough impact to crush the skull, and even then, you’ve got to go at it repeatedly to actually break through to the brain.

  All that to say that the skull is friggin’ hard, and few are harder than mine. So when I was hit flat on the back of my head, all it did was knock me down, sending shooting stars across my vision and giving me a mind-numbing headache. I turned to see a scruffy HuMan holding the bat.

  “Batter up!” He chuckled at his pun through crooked teeth.

  “Good one,” a voice said. “Looks like someone ruined your hotel.”

  I looked up to see EightBall and several more HuMans, laughing as they surrounded a less-than-pleased Judith—she must have come across the HuMans on her way up from the basement. They should have been in jail for at least another two nights.

  The kid, as if reading my mind, pointed to my attacker and said, “BallSack’s mom bailed us out. Guess not everyone’s given up on us yet.”

  Little opportunistic bastards—when the explosion happened, I guess they decided to take advantage of the situation. Hell, they were probably planning on taking responsibility for it, a nice little press release sent out by the HuMans Weekly newsletter.

  “EightBall,” I said, getting to my feet. BallSack took another swing at the back of my thigh, but I stepped to the side. The kid missed, the momentum causing him to fall forward. Ignoring him, I locked eyes on EightBall. “I know you’re not going to believe me, but your timing couldn’t be worse.”

  “I should have suspected,” Judith said in an unforgiving tone, “that you would know miscreants such as these. I warned my daughter not to marry a man like you.”

  “Really, Judith,” I said. “Now?”

  EightBall and his three thug friends started laughing. “Daughter? Married? Don’t tell me you married this ghost’s daughter? What is she? A white sheet with the eyes cut out?”

  “You would be safer not to speak of my Bella in such terms,” Judith growled as the chair from behind my desk flew right at one of the thugs standing next to EightBall. It hit him square on the head, knocking him hard to the ground. Way to go, Judith! Got to hand it to her, when she’s pissed, she’s dangerous.

  Things started to shake around the room. Judith was about to go into a tantrum and that would cost her time. A whole bunch of it. As much as I wanted to spend less of it with her, I couldn’t let her burn herself out.

  “Judith,” I said, “please calm down. Time, remember? We talked about this.”

  She met my eyes, fury in hers, and for a moment I thought she was too far gone in her poltergeist’s rage to calm herself down, but then my mother-in-law took a deep breath and the room stopped rattling.

  BallSack got to his feet and tried for another swing at me. This time I was ready for it, planning on taking the brunt of the blow on my side. But instead of swinging, he let the bat drop. I turned to see a petite woman in an old Victorian dress—complete with bonnet and all—leap into the fray, her teeth flashing red as they sank into his side. Sandy! Her bite was definitely worse than her bark.

  Everyone looked down at the five-foot-nothing doily of fury, and I took the opportunity to punch EightBall square in the nose—I can be just as opportunistic as the next guy. He went down, but got right back up, pulling a switchblade from only the GoneGods knew where, and lunged at me at the exact moment when reality decided to go out the window.

  ↔

  Have you ever worried that gravity will suddenly disappear, causing you to float off to oblivion?

  Yeah, me neither. Until the moment when EightBall lunged at me, blade in hand, and the air in the room lost all of its weight, causing me to feel naked even though I was fully dressed.

  Th
e practical effect of suddenly losing gravity was that EightBall’s feet lifted off the ground, the momentum of his attack propelling him forward at a pace so slow that it would have embarrassed a turtle. EightBall flailed his arms wildly as he tried to gain balance in a room where up and down became abstract concepts. He looked like a man falling sideways, his face a hodgepodge of confusion, shock and fear.

  Not that I blamed him. We all wore looks of surprise as our feet left the ground. The rest of us had been standing relatively still, so the effect on us was that of simple levitation. We looked like a bunch of astronauts floating in a low-gravity environment—except that, as far as I knew, the One Spire Hotel had not teleported to the Moon.

  At least we were all breathing normally. Thank the GoneGods for small miracles.

  EightBall hit the wall on the other side of the room with a silent thud as the kid mouthed, What the hell? All of us tried to scream, but we were on Mute, our mouths contorted in shock as nothing came out. Sandy’s neck was outstretched as her lips formed an O from which no howl emerged. And I’m ashamed to admit it, but I joined right in with the silent chorus of horror.

  I guess Hollywood got it right—no one can hear you scream in space.

  Only Judith was calm. Having no feet to speak of, she was used to floating around, so I guess not much changed for her. Despite the obvious panic we were all in, she still managed to give me a look that clearly blamed me for everything that was going on. To her, I was a criminal, so why not add Broke the laws of physics to my Rolodex of felonies?

  “Human,” spoke a voice, breaking the silence, and flat-soled heels clicked on the ground. “Yes … indeed.”

  ↔