“Put your arms out, baby.” Constance’s voice meandered from one ear to the other, making it sound like she was on both sides of him. “No matter what happens, just do what I tell ya, ok?”
Keenan lifted his arms out to the side and attempted a feeble shrug. “Sure thing, Cee. What are you going to do?”
There was a long silence. A cold draft brushed the hairs on his neck, making them stand at attention.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” A deep sigh rolled over him like mist. “Brace yourself; this is goin’ to hurt like hell.”
Cold settled into his back, his outstretched arms, and into the base of his skull. It was like pressing his back into an iceberg. With a jolt that rocked Keenan from top to bottom, needles of pain stabbed into every pore.
Entangled in the arctic freeze, Keenan’s screams grew louder and louder as winter moved through him. The intense pain caused endorphins to fire one after the other, but it was no good; they sputtered out as soon as they ignited, too weak to battle the overextended neurons in his brain. The only thing keeping him conscious was the black goo now growing exponentially through his body.
“Trust me.” He heard the soothing words through his screams.
Scenes from Keenan’s life flicked through his mind like an old nickelodeon. A fight with a boy named James when he was seven, cleaning up vomit after one of his mom’s binges, holding a breast in his hand for the first time and the girl’s sweet smile, tourists buying his first painting on the streets of Florence, breakfast with Isabella. The images picked up speed, churning out emotions like toothpaste from a tube; Keenan didn’t have time to experience any of them.
Suddenly, just before the cold reached his heart, his endorphins threw in the towel. In one final thrust of agony, everything stopped and Keenan shut down for good.
Chapter Twenty-One
Living in a Non-Material World
Keenan couldn’t open his eyes. There were no eyes to open. But he could see… sort of. It wasn’t black, exactly, just a misty dark gray that swarmed around him. He could make out shapes, but they were fuzzy too. Behind him a presence nestled against the back of his awareness, warm, comforting, like the cocoon of the succubus. The silence was absolute; no background noise, no hiss of the world inside his head. No head. No heartbeat. No blood rushing through his veins. Nothing.
He was dead.
That realization was the first concrete actuality that penetrated the smoke of his existence. He was dead. He no longer existed. He was a…
Ghost.
If he had had a body, he would have screamed his lungs out. Keenan settled for the next best thing.
The single elongated word was as clear as a diamond in his psyche.
Fuuuuuuuuuck!
It’s okay, baby.
The thought fell through his understanding like icy water on hot feet.
Constance?
I’m here. Are you all right?
Where am I? I can’t see anything.
You’re with me, baby. The haze will pass quickly. Do you remember what happened?
Yeah…that son of a bitch made you kill me. What the fuck is going on?
You need to be calm, Kee, or the fog won’t lift. I’m going to help you.
Keenan wanted to pull away from her but didn’t know how. In fact, he didn’t know how to do anything. Like being born, he imagined. He kept trying to get his legs to work, his arms to flail, his head to turn, his eyes to see, but none of those things existed. Thought was the only thing he had and it just didn’t have the clout he wanted. His frustration was growing by the second.
Don’t do me any favors. You want to help? Then get me the hell back into my body! The next thought was plaintive. Why, Cee? Why did you do it?
You have to trust me, Kee. You have to have faith that what we did we did for you and your kind.
Well, that was a big fat help. He didn’t want to talk to her anymore and wished he could get away, but it was useless.
All at once, that soft soothing at his back intensified into something much less comfortable. The first sensation was like an increasing pressure building up around him. But it wasn’t physical. It was as if someone was squeezing his thoughts. It was the oddest feeling. The gray eddies of smoke lightened.
The first things he saw were the other ghosts. They materialized one by one from a dreary blob to their more solid forms. Solid was a good word for it; not one of them was transparent any more. They were warm, complete, like living people. Even the scary parts were gone. A crowd of friends stood around him, some throwing him a tiny wave, others laughing at his condition, and still others ignoring him completely.
Keenan had just stepped through the looking glass.
“What you are seeing is a residual image of who they were, from their point of view,” Constance whispered in his ear. “Look down at yourself.”
Keenan patted down his body and everything seemed to be intact: jeans, faded T-shirt, feet, knees, stomach, arms. He took his imaginary hands and ran them over his imaginary face to make sure it was still imaginarily there. Seemed the same, but you never knew.
When he turned around to glare at Constance, he had to take a step back. The change was drastic. Keenan hardly recognized her. She was still heavy and black, but the similarities stopped there. A glow like liquid fire radiated around her. Her black hair fell in beautiful waves to the back of her knees. She wore all white, making her coffee skin and black eyes as dark as midnight. But it was her face that got Keenan’s attention. He had never seen her majestic before and it was a little alarming.
“Constance?”
“Yeah, baby. Sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, but I didn’t want him to know.”
“You’re…you’re an angel.”
“Yes, Keenan. I’m Amos’s friend Gazardiel. I have been with you for centuries.”
Keenan blinked imaginary eyelids at her. “Now wait just one flipping second,” he exclaimed. “What the hell do you mean centuries? Last time I looked, I’m thirty five next December.”
Constance placed her hands into her sleeves and looked Keenan squarely in the eye. “You made this sacrifice of your own free will, is that right, son?”
Keenan prepared a scathing response, but his mouth clamped tight on a single sound.
Had he made this sacrifice of his own free will? He turned away from her and watched the meandering ghosts; had any of them made choices of their own free will? Reggie’s word resonated soundly against his reason: …humans were given the great gift of free will. In essence, the Father told them they could make their own decisions, good or bad, right or wrong; their fate was in their own hands. This royally pissed off our friends the angels… So, what are you going to do? I’ll tell you; you’re going to create a situation where the new guy looks bad every time he enjoys even one of those benefits. You’re going to create sin.… who do you think whispered into the ears of those men in the beginning, started them on that long path?
The Bounce, looking profoundly sad as always, had his hands behind his back and paced in small circles; Grumpy, still muttering profanities to anyone within hearing distance, was flailing his arms; Agnes, who now just looked very old and very tired, sat on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees and rocked. Did any of them become part of this other existence of their own free will? He wondered. All of the ghosts looked miserable, tired, and lonely. For a microsecond Reggie’s words punctured his assurance; doubt branded a kernel of hesitation into his soul. Were they all just puppets to gods, angels, and demons? It was then the human condition took over and he denied it all. Ego had come to his rescue again and he let it. Despite everything, he still had choice. It was the one thing that bound his soul and kept him from blowing apart. He sighed deeply at the liberating realization.
“Yeah, I guess I did,” he said to Constance, searching the crowd. “But what difference does it make? Reggie’s won.”
“Not by a long shot, baby. We got a real chance here, but you got to do something for me.”
“Yeah? What?”
“You got to remember, Kee. It’s time for you to remember it all.”
“Remember what?
“The last few centuries.”
“What?”
She put her hands on his shoulders and his head began to spin. “You got to remember and real quick. Sorry, baby, but this is necessary. It’ll sting a might.”
The spinning got worse until colors pin wheeled around his head. It was like being inside a taffy hurricane.
He was suddenly back in Renaissance Florence. It was very real, but Keenan couldn’t get his wits wrapped around it. Someone was there, in the street, a very real someone. The man didn’t look like Keenan, hell, not even close. But a realization was making him sick to his stomach; that man was him. Certainty clanged against his eardrums as he took in the scene. Keenan was under the wheels of a carriage…deader than yesterday’s entree.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eyes Flashing Before His Life
The images were fuzzy at first. Keenan was above the scene, staring down at Luciano’s body cut in half under a wooden wheel. A pool of black blood coated the cobblestones on all sides of the wagon. Dabria stood stock still in terror. Reggie was behind her, a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away. A pang of intense jealously clouded Keenan’s vision. He felt so useless. There was nothing he could do.
Truth hit him square between the eyes as the swirling picked up speed. Luciano… his name had been Luciano Moretti. The details of that long ago life flooded his memory like a wild tsunami. He had been married to Dabria, had loved her… did love her more than anything else in the world. Reggie filled his ears with sweet poison centuries before. And Keenan had let him.
Keenan remembered it all now; the demon had made it sound so good…and it was good. Reginald had tempted Keenan with irresistible pleasures one after the other until his resistance melted like fragile snow. Had it not been for Dabria and her bargain with the devil…
Keenan couldn’t face the fact that it was his weakness that condemned Dabria to nearly four hundred years as a slave to this bastard. Because of him, she had been damned to exist as a night creature, forced to live off the sexual desires of men. But hadn’t she just betrayed him? It was his fault. It was all his fault. The guilt churned up from his heart like black tar, suffocating his desire to go on.
Constance’s voice in his mind soothed the pain and gave him courage.
No regrets, baby. You made up for it.
The swirl started to pick up speed and images pulsated through his memory. He wasn’t remembering them exactly; it was as if an extreme 3D movie played all the way around him, fast-forwarding until it came to something interesting.
It was 1524 and Keenan had a new name, a new identity, a new body, and no recollection of the past. He was studying to be a chronicler, and his patron was introducing him to Giovanni de Verrazzano, a navigator commissioned by France to explore the west. Keenan was taken on as a scribe and sailed west with his captain.
Dabria had escaped him. Azazel knew the way to her was through you. Constance’s voice sounded far away. I had to get you out of Italy, off the continent. I hoped he would not find you in the new world… but I was wrong.
The trip was a blur of blue ocean, shouted orders, smells of humanity, and persistent seasickness, but Keenan religiously kept the journals for his captain and even developed a friendship with the explorer.
Memories stumbled forward to the raw West Indies. It was hazy, but it seemed he was part of a small crew that accompanied the captain to explore the coast.
They didn’t see the natives until it was too late. Hundreds of them scurried out of the deep brush and killed the entire landing party in less than a minute. Cannibals. Before the others on the ship could retaliate, the natives disappeared with their kill into the thick jungle.
Images snaked across his vision, a spinning top churning out colors and souls. It froze on a flame.
1562. Keenan was laughing with a group of natives, his friends, his family. They finished their meal, the bones in mounds next to their knees. A hunting party. There was a blast of gunfire. They scattered like leaves in the night, but it was too late. A net twirled out of the air above Keenan’s head and caught him. The white men beat him down and forced manacles around his wrists and ankles. They took him along with hundreds of others into the bowels of a giant ship.
Nestled among dozens of dirty friends in the darkness, a white man appeared out of the shadows to speak to Keenan. He spoke their language like a native.
“You have given me quite the chase, old friend.” The light in the man’s eyes was so familiar, but Keenan had never known a white man. “It is good to see you again. When we land, I think I will buy you for myself. “
Keenan never made it to land. During a stormy night, he was visited by a spirit, a woman dressed all in white, shining like a lantern in the blackened hull. He heard her words in his head and it terrified him, but omens were sacred so he listened. The vision told him where to find a tin cup. She said to drink from it and it would free him. When he awoke from the dream, to his surprise, the tin cup was there. When he drank, he fell asleep and never woke again.
I could not let him take you. Not again. The regret in Constance’s voice was clear.
A long period of black filled with only glimpses of eyes, then screaming as he entered into the cold bright world.
It was 1617. Jamestown. This was perhaps the strangest of all. Keenan was a woman. It was an odd feeling to be both familiar with the body and yet unfamiliar with it at the same time. He had adjusted.
While Azazel was in Virginia, I couldn’t risk him finding you, so I disguised you as a woman, Kee. It was the only way to keep him from you. He searched and searched for decades. When you were 30, he discovered my diversion. I had no choice; there was only one way to hide you from him.
Keenan died on a winter evening in 1647 in an old Virginia house under mysterious circumstances.
But he did not move on.
The next hundred years were veiled, dreamlike. For some reason it wasn’t his house anymore and yet he still lived there. Strangers came with all their things. He couldn’t stop them. Their children grew older and replaced the parents; the children’s children grew older and replaced them; generation after generation, each changing his house. Keenan could do nothing but howl in the night. His voice grew stronger with each new year. They brought priests and psychics to give him some ecclesiastical exercise, but he resisted their intrusion. The nightmare crawled into decades and then a century.
In 1750, Keenan found himself free.
I had to keep you from another body. As a mortal he is drawn to you like a moth to a flame. As a ghost, you are vague to him, hidden. It took me over a hundred years, but finally I convinced him through others that you had returned to Italy. Azazel was gone, and I thought I was finally rid of him.
I let you go after that, Kee, to live whatever life you wished without guidance or manipulation. You were a soldier, a painter, a musician, a poet. Each face he had possessed scrutinized him from ancient mirrors, like cards spread by a magician. Every lifetime was richer than the last.
I watched over you, protected you when I could, but let you go, hoping you would at last be free from Azazel’s influence, and the maneuverings of angels. Over the many lifetimes, you became stronger, skilled, until your psychic abilities blossomed into something that stunned me. I had no idea where they would lead you.
In 1988, I couldn’t stay away from you any longer. Your gift had doubled over the years. It would soon manifest itself in ways that would make it impossible for you to cope or for society to accept. I knew when you reached adolescence you would start seeing them… all of them. That was when I appeared to you, Keenan, to teach you how to live with your gifts.
Unfortunately, just as I had sensed your abilities, so had Azazel. He found you through your art and came back to use you.
When you told me of this new ghost friend in college,
I thought nothing of it. Reggie was very clever; he made sure I never saw him. I would have recognized him at once, if I had. You spoke of him so fondly, I was happy you found at least one other ghost you could relate to. After all, you needed a friend, someone who could guide you as a man, who seemed to have your best interest at heart. Reggie was the perfect companion to help you deal with your special gift. As he took over, I felt confident you were in good hands. It was only when Amos descended from heaven that I learned the truth and so did Dabria. She came here to look for you. What she found instead was her old master and her mentor. Azazel used you both to capture Dabria. There was only one way to stop him.
You had to die.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Death Becomes Him
You had to die.
The words twisted his ethereal middle into knots.
Keenan was back with his friends, staring out into a real world that was distinctly surreal.
He could see a very human Dabria/Isabella backing away from the body lying on the floor, the chapel musty and small in front of them. In one corner was the storm cloud of Amos suspended there like gray cotton candy. The body wasn’t moving and a twinge of hope surfaced; maybe it didn’t take.
“Is he dead?”
Constance said nothing.
Every ghost held his or her breath for what seemed like an eternity, but the body did not move. Isabella pressed against a wall, biting her thumb. Was it hope or grief he saw in her eyes as she watched the still body? She wasn’t breathing either. It was the most held breaths Keenan had ever witnessed.
After several minutes, murmurs of joy leaked out of the ghostly mass, tentative at first and then picking up volume. Constance squeezed Keenan’s arm until it hurt, something he found very curious since he didn’t have nerves to speak of, but he didn’t mind. Maybe just the act of giving up his body had been enough. He let out a whoohoo and touched her hand. Azazel still didn’t move.
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