Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007)

by Coorlim, Michael

  Profane Apotheosis: Infernal Revelation

  Collected Episodes 1-4

  Michael Coorlim

  © 2014 Michael Coorlim

  Pomoconsumption Press

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Smashwords Edition

  Big thanks to my beta-readers:

  Kat O'Connor

  Nikki M. Pill

  Pol Subanajouy

  Synopsis:

  High-school senior Lily Baker thought that the car accident that had claimed her best friends had changed her life forever, but that tragedy was only the first thunderous rumblings of the coming storm. The track star finds herself hurled into a world where demons walk the earth, monsters stalk the night, and the adults in her small town conspire to keep from her the truth of who - and what - she really is.

  Her only hope rests in solidarity with the town's outsiders, each of whom have their own demons to wrestle with - internally and external. The track star, the bully, the anarchist, the prodigy, the faithful - can these five orphans see through their elders' lies and solve the mystery of their shared heritage?

  EPISODE 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lily woke from an apprehensive nightmare, gradually coming to the realization that this wasn't her bed, that she wasn't in her pajamas, that something was very wrong. Her eyelids felt heavy, like they'd been glued shut, but she was comfortable, so she was content to lie in a half-sleep twilight and just listen until she could get her bearings.

  Voices murmuring. Quiet conversation, close by, though she was too disoriented to pick out any meaning. A steady noise, an electronic chirp. Other sounds from further off, machine sounds, industrial sounds. Where was she?

  The linens were crisper and slightly rougher than her own bedding. The air had a faint antiseptic tinge to it.

  Someone moved alongside her bed. Lily managed to open her eyes, letting in far too much light. Everything was blurry, but she managed to make out a woman in white.

  "Mom?" she tried to say, producing little more than a croaking groan.

  There was a flurry of activity and someone was leaning over her, not the woman in white, a familiar scent, that of Mother, half-weeping, half-talking. She couldn't understand a word.

  Father's bass rumbled over Mother's fear, soothing, and drawing her away, leaving behind hot tears on her shoulders.

  Mother was crying.

  Mother never cried.

  A note of worry crept into Lily's confused stupor, and she tried to focus, tried to draw the world into cohesion.

  The woman in white displaced her mother, gloved fingers prying open Lily's eyelids, and she was unable to look away from the bright light shining into each of her eyes.

  "Lily?" the woman said. "Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

  "Nneh," Lily managed, turning away from the brightness.

  As her vision adjusted she could see more of her surroundings. An unknown room, sparse and white-walled, in a tall metal-framed bed. The woman in white had moved to the foot of her bed, slipping a thin silver flashlight into her breast pocket.

  A doctor. Doctor Janssen. Not her doctor, not the one Lily had been seeing since she was a girl, but Laton General wasn't as big as the medical center in Odessa, and she did, dimly, know the woman's name.

  "Hospital?" she said, though some of the vowels got lost along the way.

  "That's right honey." Her mother was still there, gripping the side of the bed. "You were in an accident."

  The turquoise of her mother's shirt had a surreal clarity to it, popping out from the almost monochromatic blur of her vision.

  "Give her space, Lisa." Daddy.

  Lily hadn't noticed her father. He was dressed in his church clothes, a black jacket with a crisp white dress shirt and tie that befitted a deacon.

  Was it Sunday? Was yesterday Saturday? What was she doing last night?

  "Accident?" Lily asked, more clearly.

  "Disorientation is normal," Doctor Janssen was telling her parents. "A severe concussion sometimes includes a period of amnesia, but her memory may return within the next twenty-four hours."

  Her parents were paying rapt attention to the woman, but to Lily it all seemed distant. Something she was watching, rather than something that was happening to her.

  "But other than that, she's fine?" Unlike her father, her mother was dressed more casually. Well. Casual for her mother.

  "She's very lucky."

  Lily spoke up. "What happened?"

  To her frustration, Doctor Janssen continued to address her parents, not even glancing in her direction. "We'd like to keep her here for observation for another few hours. Just to make sure she's recovering."

  "Whatever you think is best," her father said. "We'll wait here with her."

  "Of course," Doctor Janssen said. "I'll send a nurse along to run some tests. Try to keep her awake."

  "What happened?" Lily repeated, apprehension growing.

  The doctor patted her leg and offered a sympathetic smile. "You just focus on feeling better. You can worry about the rest later."

  Lily looked from the doctor's smiling face to her parents'. If this fog in her head would just lift, if she could just concentrate and remember what had happened, how she'd gotten here, everything would make sense.

  "What accident?" she asked, hands curling into the hospital bedding. "Mom? Dad?"

  The doctor hesitated, looking to her father.

  He sighed and sat down in the chair alongside her bed. Her mother moved to stand beside him, worry crossing her face. They didn't look much like Lily, her foster parents, even if you discounted the contrast between their tan northern European features with their adopted daughter's own African heritage. Where Lily's build was slender and athletic, Tom and Lisa Baker were broadly built, stout folk from a stout people, strong but soft from good living. Despite these dissimilarities, there was little doubt in the minds of those who saw them together that they were a loving family.

  Her father opened his mouth and stalled. His wife put a hand on his.

  "You were in a car accident, dear," Lily's mother said, patting her father's hand. "Along with Ashley and Lauren."

  "Oh my Lord," Lily said, fingertips flying to her lips, her stomach taking a sudden twist. "Are they alright?"

  "You're fine," her father said. "You took a bump on the head, but the doctors say that it isn't anything serious."

  "No, Ashley and Lauren," she said, her gaze darting from her father's face to her mother's. "Are they okay?"

  "You need to try and relax, Lily." Doctor Janssen whetted her pale lips and picked up the chart at the end of the bed. "You've been through a traumatic experience."

  Lily locked eyes with her father. "Are Ashley and Lauren okay?"

  Her father looked away, and that churning in Lily's stomach turned into a gnawing dread.

  "Sweetheart." Her mother leaned forward, a hand on her arm. "Ashley was hurt badly. She's in intensive care. And Lauren..."

  "Miss Clark was killed on impact," Doctor Janssen said.

  Lily's father was saying something, but words had lost their meaning. The girl let out a choked moaning sob and curled up, her shoulders hunching forward, drawing her knees up to her chest. She cried for her friends, crying to God, to Jesus, to anyone that would listen, barely acknowledging the soothing
voices and soft hands trying to comfort her. Compared to the icy blackness welling up from the pit of her chest, they just weren't enough.

  Lauren dead. Ashley injured.

  And she was okay. Unhurt. Unharmed. Was that God's justice? Was that His will?

  She had faith. No matter what happened to her -- to her -- she could maintain her composure with an iron faith in God's plan. She could endure. He had given her a beautiful life with a foster family who loved and cared for her as if she were their own, and for that she would be ever grateful to Him.

  But this? To spare her when her best friends in the world were taken, were hurt, to leave her untouched... it was a miracle.

  That's what her father was calling it. A miracle.

  And he was right. But did she deserve it? She was no more righteous than her peers. She had her sinful thoughts. Why would God punish them, take Lauren, and leave her unharmed?

  Was it a test?

  It had to be a test.

  All her life, her father, a deacon in the International Church of Christ Everlasting, had told her stories about God and his tests. Tests of virtue, of faith, of compassion. It was only through tests and temptations, her father said, that we could be sure of cleaving to the Christian values of compassion and tolerance. It was easy, her church taught, to rely on weaknesses like hate and fear to unite a community, but these were not the ways that Jesus taught.

  As she lay there, in the hospital bed, eyes focused past her anxious parents towards the small shelf holding cards and flowers -- lavender, her favorite -- from well-wishers, Lily realized that she'd never really been tested. She was lucky. Very lucky. Her family was close and well placed within the community, she was athletic, pretty (so they said), and popular at school. She had been given so many blessings, and now this miraculous survival?

  Did she deserve it?

  She didn't know.

  She couldn't remember what had happened.

  ***

  After Lily had stopped weeping, a nurse with her hair in a bun came by with the release forms and a wheelchair. Her father signed the papers, and the nurse started to help her into the chair.

  "I think I can stand," Lily said in a small voice, sliding with stiff limbs to the side of the bed.

  "It's for insurance reasons," the nurse said.

  Lily nodded and allowed the nurse and her father to help her into the chair, falling silent, her thoughts drifting as they wheeled her through the hospital's corridors. She wanted, desperately, to ask her parents about the accident, but her earlier attempts had been rebuffed. They wanted her to rest. How could she rest with that question hanging overhead?

  As bright as the hospital's fluorescent lights had been, the Texas sun burned all the more furiously overhead. The heat of the late morning blasted Lily's skin as her family left the cool hospital to where the family minivan was parked near the entrance. Her mother gazed off towards the horizon as her father crossed around to the driver's seat.

  Lily barely noticed the heat, lost in thought as she was. "It's Sunday?"

  Her father glanced back over his shoulder. "Deacon Ross took over for me today. It's more important that I be with my family."

  "When did I..."

  "You've been in the hospital since late last Saturday," her mother said.

  A week? She'd been unconscious for a week? Sudden fears of brain damage filled Lily's thoughts, and she panicked when she realized she couldn't remember what she'd been doing last Saturday night. Where had she have been going? What had she been up to?

  A sudden spark of fear bloomed in her chest. "Was Derek hurt?"

  Her mother climbed into the passenger's seat, a wan smile on her face. "No, dear, Derek was in Boston, remember?"

  Boston. Right.That whole big thing.

  "He's been here every day, sweetie," her mother said, "waiting by your side."

  "He'll be sorry he missed your awakening." Her father started the car and checked his mirrors again. "You can call him when you get home, but I want you to rest, sweetheart."

  "Yeah," Lily said, laying her forehead against the heat of the window. "Sure."

  CHAPTER TWO

  The dreams had been getting weirder lately, but that wasn't the worst of it.

  Gideon was ready when the sheriff kicked his door open. He'd been ready since he'd heard the old man's car pulling up out front. The noise of wheels on gravel was subtle, but his body reacted to it the same way it reacted to the soft 'click' before his stereo's alarm clock went off, flooding his system with adrenaline and a cold urgency that propelled him out of bed. It would take his father between twenty and thirty seconds to get from the street to Gideon's room, and in that time the heavyset young man had pulled on and laced up his steel-toed work boots.

  That's all he needed to do. He'd been sleeping in his clothes for years.

  Sheriff Bill Cermak knocked the bedroom door open with a kick, a dark look on his face. Gideon hadn't been absolutely certain that the man who had adopted him would barge in first thing. There was never any consistency to it, but some county business had kept the old man out until five in the morning, and when Bill was working overnight he always came home in a devil's mood.

  "What the fuck did I tell you about your goddamn room?" A swipe of his hands knocked the chair with Gideon's backpack on it aside.

  "Dad,I--"

  The sheriff picked up the chair and slammed it down again with a sharp wooden crack. "I told you to clean up this piece of shit last night, boy!"

  Gideon took a half-step back and felt his lip curl in contempt, feeling an itchy heat rising up his back. The sheriff's temper wasn't always so rough, but work had kept Sheriff Cermak out every night this week, and every night he'd come home in a fouler mood. Gideon had been anticipating this confrontation, had played it out in his head again and again. Sometimes it ended in violence. Sometimes he was cool and collected and logical while his foster father raged and pouted.

  "I don't know why you care, you're not the one living in here."

  The sheriff's ruddy face darkened. "What'd you say?"

  Gideon stood firm, even though he knew he shouldn't. The social worker at the school said as much, told Gideon and his father that their best bet was to just avoid each other, to avoid antagonizing each other, but his father's behavior filled the young redhead with disgusted contempt. Bullies were pathetic, and he couldn't help but see Bill Cermak's inability to deal with him peacefully as an admission of weakness. There was some part of himself that exalted in his ability to reduce the Sheriff of Laton to an unthinking idiot brute.

  "You don't even have to come in here if it bothers you so much, why--"

  "This is my house, and I'll go where I damn well please!" Teeth bared, Bill picked the chair up again and slammed it down powerfully enough that the wooden cross-bar beneath it splintered and split, legs out akimbo.

  Gideon stumbled back, tripping over the side of his bed to splay across the mattress. The sheriff stared at him for a long moment.

  He pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes and tucked his chin to his chest. "Clean this shit up."

  Gideon stared, mute, jaw slack, as his father backed out of the room. He remained very still until he heard the door to Bill's room click closed, and gave it a three-count before standing up.

  He picked his backpack up from the ruins of the smashed chair, brushing splinters off its straps, and slung it over one shoulder. He grabbed the torn-sleeved denim vest, patched with various punk and heavy-metal band logos, from the closet doorknob.

  "Fuck you, dad, you clean it up."

  He paused, reflecting that the old man actually might. Bill might be a big dumb ogre, but sometimes after an outburst his adoptive father had these weird moments of contrition. He'd fix a door he'd torn from its hinges, or he'd buy a new window to replace one he'd broken.

  Like that helped. Like that made it better. Like that unsaid what had been said. Like that took it all back, or made up for a single god-damned thing.

  Having
considered the possibilities, Gideon stooped and felt around under his box-spring. He retrieved a small cellophane package containing plant matter he would much rather his father not discover and slipped it into his pocket.

  His hands were shaking. He closed his eyes and calmed himself, willing them to stop.

  He stepped into the hall, eyes on the sheriff's door at the other end, but it was the one next to his that opened.

  "Are you okay?" Dale asked.

  It was obvious that Dale and Gideon weren't blood-related. Where Dale was ruddy, blond and rail-thin, Gideon was of thicker build, overweight, with pale skin unsuited to the Chihuahuan Desert and a shock of red hair that was just as out of place. Where his younger brother differed from either Gideon or his father, though, was in temperament. The grade-schooler was quiet, shy, meek, traits that Gideon strongly suspected were due to the near constant conflict he had to live alongside.

  He tried not to feel bad about it, tried to tell himself that the young boy just took after a mother he could scarcely remember. Sometimes that worked. The rest of the time he just blamed Bill.

  Gideon held a finger to his lips and turned away, creeping down the hall towards the living room. He heard Dale's door close quietly behind him, and carefully slid open the glass door leading to the ranch-style home's side patio.

  He squinted as he stepped out into the orange Texas dawn, grabbing his bike from where it lay against the fence.

  Fuck this shit. Fuck it. He did not need this shit. There was no way he was going to sit through Mrs. Criske's first period algebra, not in this mood.

  "Fuck it," he said, taking a few steps before hopping onto his bike.

  ***

  "You shoulda kicked his ass," Juan said, smacking a fist into his palm. "Fuckin' fascist bastard. That's what I would have done."