by Brian Fuller
He opened the knapsack and found some briefs, a pair of blue jeans, a Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt, and a serviceable pair of work boots and socks. All of it looked used. He started dressing.
“You wear briefs, not boxers, right?” the man asked with a grin. “The Scholus does good research. There’s a coat in the car. Before you put your pants on, though, look at your left leg. Anything missing?”
Trace had noted it earlier. “No bullet hole. Am I in heaven or hell or what? The last thing I remember, I had been shot and rolled my truck into a creek.”
“Well, you’re standing on the creek. It’s frozen over now, of course. This is where you died. Keep dressing! I’ll give you the spiel, though you won’t believe it yet. Here it goes.” The man exhaled. “You were dead. You are not anymore. You are not dreaming. You are not hallucinating. You are not in heaven or hell. You are not in the hands of some crazy lunatic or the victim of some elaborate practical joke. This is not a reality TV show. You are not cold, even though you are standing in a snowstorm. When you get over the shock, you will realize that you feel as good as Christmas and as alive as a stallion in a field of mares. You also don’t glow, which is a matter for later.”
This had to be some sort of brain damage caused by the accident. “Am I supposed to glow?” he asked after pulling the shirt over his head. Trace kept waiting for Terissa to wake him out of this dream and pull him back into the nightmare she had created for him.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Just so you know, it is almost 5:00 a.m. on December 21, 2019. Winter Solstice.”
December? “Who are you?”
He smiled. “I am Lear. You know, like King Lear from Shakespeare? My name before I died was Justice Norris, though we never call each other by our former names.”
Trace’s mind felt like it had been put in a blender. “Where have I been since June?” he asked while lacing up the boots. Perhaps he had amnesia from the accident.
Lear pulled a phone from his pocket and started tapping with his thumbs, composing a message, maybe. “Dead, remember? Well, okay, if you want the whole journey, here it is. The bullet Darcie shot you with nicked the artery in your leg, though the coroner said it was a bit of a toss-up as to whether the actual cause of death was the arterial bleeding or the trauma from attacking the forest with your truck while not wearing a seat belt—for shame!
“From here they took you to the hospital and then to the morgue. Terissa and your parents agreed to cremate you due to your rather, um, pulpy condition. The cremation, I might add, was very convenient for me. You’ve got a nice—if a bit boring—headstone in Oakcrest Cemetery. I stole your ashes off your mother’s mantel a few days ago, though I was kind enough to replace them with some crap I scraped off the bottom of their barbecue. If they ever bother to sniff your urn, they’ll get a slight whiff of beef. From the mantel, your ashes came here. That answer your question?”
Crazy, Trace surmised. Friendly, but crazy.
Lear shoved the phone back into his pocket. “You know, the Scholus only gave you a 30-percent chance of actually having died a sacrificial death.”
“Scholus? Who’s that?”
“It’s not a who. It’s an organizational division. I won’t bore you with too many details, but I am part of a group that watches the news for stories about dead people, scoping out potential candidates for the Awakening. Based on the initial analysis, they weren’t going to send anyone out here, but I had a hunch about you. Good family. Good friends. So-so cornerback in high school. Solid Marine. I figured the news story had it wrong and dug a little deeper.”
Trace perked up. “What did it say?”
The sound of a car on the road above attracted Lear’s attention, panic gripping his features. With a quick flick of his fingers, he turned the lamp off and waited until the sound faded before he reignited it. “Let’s get going,” he finally said, voice sober, eyes hard. “It’s not likely they’d be hunting this spot, but those bastards have gotten more clever lately.”
“What did the story say? And who is hunting what?” Trace pressed as he and Lear marched up the snowy hill, lantern casting wild shadows around them. The trees bore the scars and ragged stumps of his accident.
“Well, that Simon guy claimed you and Darcie were ‘involved’ and that she had come to shoot you because you said you were going back to your wife for good. That’s what made the news. I read the investigative reports and interviews afterward, though. Darcie and Terissa both said the affair was between Terissa and Simon and that Darcie had come for Terissa. Darcie agreed to plead guilty on attempted murder and take a manslaughter conviction for your death. Don’t worry. I think the people you cared about know you were not the bad guy in that unfortunate mess.”
Simon. Trace regretted taking a bullet for that guy.
Lear held him up before they crested the hill, eyes scanning the shadows before they pressed on. The road waited at the top, tendrils of snow snaking across the blacktop in the weak light. Trace knew where he was now: Route 34. Lear was right. This was where he had died . . . or not. The hazard lights of a white, late-model Buick Regal blinked on and off, casting pools of orange glow on the shoulder. Lear pushed the buttons on the key fob, and the doors unlocked.
“Get in,” he said.
“Where do you want to take me?” Trace asked, making no move toward the car.
“Phoenix. That’s where we take all the new ones.”
“New what?”
Lear sighed. “Look. Don’t let this go to your head. You are what we call an Ash Angel, a person who died sacrificing himself for another and brought back by the ancient promise: He that loses his life for my sake shall find it. Get in!”
Trace vaguely remembered the scripture, but everything this man said was a little insane. But so was the fact that he wasn’t cold. He needed grounding, a frame of reference.
“Hey, Lear,” Trace said, “you can go to Phoenix if you want. I’m headed back to town. Thanks for the clothes and everything, but I need to talk to some people and figure out what’s going on.”
Lear smiled. “Suit yourself. Just remember what I said about being hunted. If you see anyone with a red glow, run. Oh, and anyone with black smoke coming off them. Or people with glowing red eyes and ghosts hanging off their backs. Run away from those, too. Anyway, the town is back that way.”
Whatever. “I know where it is.”
Lear got in the car and extinguished the hazards before cranking it up and driving away. Trace, thoughts a jumble, turned back toward town and started walking. He would head to the home he had left first. Terissa might have betrayed him, but she would tell him the truth. His parents would be next, but they lived in Tennessee.
Reflexively, he lowered his head as the wind and snow slapped at his face, but he could barely feel it. His skin didn’t even goose-bump. The gusts should have cut him like a knife, but all they did was rip away crinkled, dead leaves from stark branches, leaves that had stubbornly refused the call of autumn and death. The lonely road stretched ahead, easy to follow, even on a dark December night. The December part he believed, at least. The weather clearly showed he had left June far behind.
After several minutes, he heard a car coming from behind him and stuck out his thumb, hoping to catch a ride, but the driver accelerated and he put his thumb down and turned away. A second too late he realized the car had swerved off the road onto the shoulder. He snapped around. The revved-up Buick was on him. The car took him just above the knees, snapping both of his thighs and slamming him into and then over the car. He hit the cold-hardened shoulder, gravel scooping out his skin as more bones cracked and broke under the force of the violent impact.
The car skidded to a halt and idled for a moment. The reverse lights ignited as the driver changed gears and backed over him, shattering his ribs. But where was the pain? The car stopped again.
Snow and exhaust filtered through the beams from the headlights. His body was mangled, but nothing bled. One arm was still i
n serviceable condition, and Trace used it to claw away from the car. But it was hopeless. His legs and upper body would not move properly, and his neck cranked around at weird angles when he tried to turn it.
Lear stepped out of the car. “Sorry about that, friend,” he joked. “Believe it or not, it’s all part of the process. We can’t have you upsetting your loved ones.” He stooped down, grabbed Trace under the armpits, and dragged him toward the car. “We’d better hurry. These things are extremely difficult to explain to the police.”
“You really are some kind of serial killer,” Trace said, though his voice sounded a little off, like all the sound was being piped through a thin, convoluted pipe.
Lear laughed. “Well, I have done this before. Don’t worry. You’ll understand in time, and by time I mean a few hours. Besides, mutilating each other is kind of a sport among Ash Angels.”
With difficulty, Lear hefted Trace into the passenger side of the car, shutting the door to keep him from falling out. In a few moments they were headed south, Lear inserting a well-worn Broadway’s Greatest Hits CD into the player and singing along, note for pitch-perfect note, while conscientiously driving the proper speed limit.
Trace’s busted body made struggling pointless. Lear sang happily, his mood as bright as the glow around his body. What further tricks did this madman have in store? But no. This wasn’t real. The dream theory was still the best explanation.
A few buildings appeared along the road. Lear squinted into the storm. “There it is!” he announced, pleased with himself. He pulled the wheel over to the left and slowed, turning into Oakcrest Cemetery. “Let’s see, you were sort of toward the back. Now don’t be angry. They didn’t build you the Taj Mahal or anything.”
Lear angled the car toward a headstone and stopped. Leaving the engine running, he pulled Trace out of the passenger side, then dragged him through four inches of drifting snow toward a plain, unadorned headstone wider than it was tall and chiseled from gray, polished granite. Lear propped Trace’s broken body up to the left of the headlight beams. The light shone right on the inscription.
Trace Daniel Evans
October 12, 1994 – June 23, 2019
Semper Fidelis
“Personally,” Lear said, clearing all the snow off of the headstone, “I think your parents put that last bit on as a dig at your wife. What do you think?”
Trace stared at it. This clearly wasn’t a joke. No one would go to the trouble and expense. The dream theory seemed good, or perhaps this was one of those weird afterlife things where snarky demons would punish him for the things he had done wrong.
“So my body’s down there?” Trace asked. Asking questions was all he could do.
“No. They cremated you, remember? This is one of those dinky plots so people can have some place to throw away perfectly good flowers on Memorial Day. Isn’t that a weird custom? ‘Here, dead person. Here’s a flower I killed for you. Killing beautiful things reminds me of you.’ It’d be much more impressive to kill, say, a deer, and lay it by the grave, don’t you think?”
Trace sat in front of the headstone until Lear trudged over and grabbed him under the armpits again, hauling him back to the car and stuffing him awkwardly in. They pulled out of the graveyard after a snowplow rumbled by, and they followed it south. The music stayed off, and Lear seemed just as content with silence as he was with music.
Everything around Trace induced him to sleep. The quiet hum of the car on the road. The darkness and silence. A need to escape whatever reality he now found himself in. But he couldn’t sleep. He didn’t feel tired, and every attempt to lean his head against the window ended in a sickening pop and his head lolling on his chest.
The clouds lightened as morning approached, though the snow persisted. Lear suddenly straightened up and pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiping and tapping the screen while trying to keep an eye on the road. “About twenty minutes till dawn now. Look, Trace, I know this is hard. It was hard for all of us to accept. I promise you that you can be a free man, but I need you to give me a few days. That’s all I ask. If I get you to Phoenix and you aren’t satisfied with what you find there, you can walk away. You’ve been dead six months. Another few days won’t make a difference. There are things you need to know, dangers you’ll face. You’ve got to understand what you’re going through.”
“You ran over me with a car! How can I trust you? You gonna carry me around? I’m sure I’ll look great sitting in Denny’s.”
“You don’t need to eat,” Lear continued, voice earnest. “I ran over you for two reasons. First, visiting people who think you’re dead takes a great toll on them and causes problems. You’ll learn more later, but if you show up and visit Mom and Dad, you put them in danger, especially now. The second reason is to teach you a dramatic, unforgettable lesson. Getting hit by a car kind of sticks with you, you know what I mean? The lesson will be over in about nineteen minutes. You’re about to find out why Ash Angels love the dawn.”
“Why Ash Angels?” Trace asked, frustrated.
“You don’t pay a lot of attention, do you? It’s part of the ritual. That’s why I had to steal your ashes from your parents’ house. We scatter them on the place you die. If your death came as a result of sacrificing yourself for another, you come back as an Ash Angel. Usually a member of the Sanctus does the ritual, but like I said, you were a long shot.”
Trace would have shaken his head, but the popping sound was unpleasant. “You really expect me to believe all this?”
“You’re gonna be a stubborn one, all right.” Lear chuckled. “You’ll get used to the idea. I promise. Eighteen minutes.”
The dream had to end eventually. Maybe this was morphine administered after the accident, the opiates coursing through his veins and inspiring one big, crazy hallucination that would end when some nurse with chilly hands changed his bedpan.
Darcie had shot him. That memory would never die. Agony and terror clouded the car wreck. Was there an ambulance? The trickling of the creek was the only companion he could remember from before he’d blanked. But waking up in December? Everything around him seemed so real: the puddle from melted snow on the blood-red vinyl seats of the Buick, the worn knobs on the radio, the whick-whack of the windshield wipers—everything vivid and concrete. And then there was Lear with the glow and Trace with a mutilated body that didn’t hurt or bleed, and suddenly everything felt unreal again.
Time padded obediently by.
“One minute!” Lear announced. “All Ash Angel phones are programmed to sound an alarm at ten seconds before dawn. This will be great! I haven’t torn you up as badly as I did ‘wood-chipper’ Warren, but a good high-speed mangling will do quite nicely.”
Trace decided he wouldn’t talk anymore. Every time Lear opened his mouth, things got weirder, so he wouldn’t encourage him. Lear’s alarm went off, a song Trace recognized: “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles.
The clouded horizon prevented any dramatic rays of light from accompanying the classic Beatles tune to announce the beginning of a new day, the iron-gray sky just a shade less dark than it was a few minutes before.
Inside Trace, an inexpressible and unlooked-for joy suddenly enveloped him in a warm embrace that soothed every worry and cradled his heart in rest. Peace. Contentment. Hope.
Doubt and confusion fled. Dimly he could sense his body being knit back together and becoming as whole as his spirit felt. He never wanted to leave the sweet confines of this paradise, and he closed his eyes and strained to hold it in even as it started to fade.
It didn’t leave altogether. A residue remained with him, manna imparted by the divine that would feed him for the day. Never before had everything made sense and been set right as wholly and simply as it had in those few moments. He turned to Lear, who regarded him with a satisfied grin. Trace couldn’t say why, but he knew now that he should trust this odd, glowing person, wherever he led him.
“What was that?” Trace asked.
“That is th
e gift God would bring to everyone if everyone would let Him. We call it Rapture, or Doctor Dawn. Feeling better?”
Trace felt fantastic. “Never better. Phoenix, right?”
Lear chuckled. “That’s the spirit. Yep. Phoenix it is.” He swapped out CDs. “You ever watch Oklahoma!? Has the best morning song ever. Sing along!”
Chapter 4
Trevex Propane
The weather warmed with every turn of the aging Buick’s wheels toward the southern climes, the confining trees and hills giving way to grand western vistas of sand and stone. While the sky brightened with each passing hour, Trace still waded through the devastation of Terissa’s betrayal like a naive child wandering through a broken, dusty desert resembling the one sliding by his window.
Something of the cold Missouri winter still lodged in his heart, a shard of ice the fire of dawn’s Rapture didn’t quite melt. Six months had passed, but for him the disastrous party had happened a day ago. The moments of intense morning bliss had blasted away every shadow but could not completely exorcise the demon of such a fresh, clawing hurt. It hid in the recesses of his mind, ready to scramble back out when the light receded.
Oddly, he could more easily forgive Terissa than he could himself, unable to shake the damning feeling that his inadequacies had driven her into the arms of another. He liked a night at home better than a night on the town. He bought clothes from Walmart. He couldn’t think up clever replies until the next day. If only he could have been more attractive or exciting, perhaps no bullet would have ended his life. Then the dawn would have brought the mortal rapture of waking up next to the love of his life.
In his head he knew a second chance stretched before him, an opportunity to make something of himself, but his failure with Terissa always rose up to chop any hopeful visions off at the knees. According to Lear, as an Ash Angel he could run forever, change his age and appearance, and feel no physical pain. But the heart, it seemed, remained as fragile as it was the night a car wreck had stopped it.
