by Bruce Blake
Welcome to my life.
“What are you doing here?”
Lame.
“You needed help. Why are you here?”
“Does Dominic know you came to help me?” I swallowed hard. “Azrael?”
I glanced around the crowd, looking for the priest’s leering face, the angel of death’s looming presence, but saw only the lost, confused-looking souls. I didn’t recognize any of them.
My mother shook her head and put her hand on my cheek. Her touch didn’t hold the tingle of Poe’s or Piper’s, the shock and threat of Azrael’s or Mikey’s. She wasn’t an angel in the true sense of the word, but after wandering the labyrinth for God-only-knew how long, she was my angel.
“Did you do something wrong? Did you die again? Is that why you’re here?”
“No.”
The concern in her voice touched me. There were so few times in my life I’d had anyone who cared enough to be concerned about me: Rae, though I drank away any concern she’d had for me, and Sister Mary-Therese. But this was different; this was the woman who gave me life.
She dropped her hand from my cheek and took my arm to lead me through the crowd. We walked in silence for a while, the unexpected reunion leaving both of us speechless. Other people in a similar scenario—long lost son reunited with his mother—might have many things about which to talk: how’s life? What have you been up to? Tell me what’s been going on for you.
‘How’s Hell been treating you, Ma,’ didn’t seem appropriate.
As for her, I got the sense she’d been watching me and knew about my life. When your son’s been abused, berated, a druggie, an alcoholic, murdered and resurrected against his will, you probably also want to tread lightly around conversation.
We weaved our way through the crowd, her arm hooked through mine, neither of us speaking. I looked at her from the corner of my eye, saw her sharp jaw and high cheek bones and understood how even an archangel might give in to temptation. Understanding didn’t make what he did acceptable. Thinking about it made me angry, and that anger transferred to thoughts about what happened to bring me to this unusual point in my life—strolling through Hell with my dead mother. I felt the time appropriate to attempt conversation.
“People died because of me.”
“I know.”
“I came here to get them back.”
She didn’t reply, looking at her feet as she walked. As I watched her watching her steps, a thought occurred to me. I stopped. She continued a step, tugging at my arm before coming to a stop. One of the lost walked into my back and moved on without excusing him or herself.
“I’ll take you back.”
Why didn’t I think of that before?
She smiled and touched my cheek.
“But I’m not here because of you.”
I shook my head. “You’re the first person to die because of me.”
“No, Icarus. I didn’t die because of you.” She tried to smile but the sadness in her eyes leaked into her lips, into her tone.
I thought about my first visit to Hell. I’d seen my mother as she gave birth to me, Sister Mary-Therese aiding her as Michael and Azrael loomed over the scene and a Carrion waited in the wings. Okay, given those circumstances, maybe her death wasn’t my fault, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take her back.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t come back with me.”
She pulled on my arm to get me walking again; I complied, watching her features as we went. Her smile faded but her eyes looked sadder than before and I sensed a debate going on behind them. When she looked up, I knew one debating team had convinced the other.
“I don’t deserve to be anywhere but here.”
“What are you talking about? You’re a good person. You shouldn’t be here.”
“You don’t know what kind of person I am.”
“You’re my mother.”
“Exactly. I was a nun and I am your mother. One doesn’t go with the other”
Touché.
“That wasn’t your fault.”
A path through the crowd of milling souls cleared before us so readily, a cynic like me might have thought we were being herded. I looked up and saw a group of souls ahead of us gathered around something.
“Azrael didn’t force himself on me, Icarus. I could have refused but didn’t. I’m where I should be.”
“But you have to come with me.”
“I can’t. For you to take a soul, one must replace it. Who would you leave? Trevor?”
“I...”
I didn’t have an answer. I’d come to Hell to rescue souls, not trade them. Who was I to decide who should replace someone else in Hell? I suddenly felt relieved I didn’t bring Tony McSweeny back. The thought of trading for a seeming pedophile churned my stomach.
‘For you to take a soul, one must replace it.’
The words bounced around my head looking for a place to grab on so I could understand their impact. It took a few seconds; my mind can be a slippery slope at the best of times. When they finally found purchase, they brought a memory of the crowd I’d seen before Marty and Todd found me, the woman condemned to public-speaking-Hell. But it wasn’t her, it was the face in the crowd.
Detective Williams.
I’d dropped him off to be taken to Heaven, yet saw him amongst the crowd in Hell. I didn’t have time to think it through at the time—Marty and Todd’s stinking bag being yanked over my head distracted me from discerning a reason for his presence—but my mother’s words told the truth of it.
When I brought Elizabeth Elton back, Hell took the detective as payment.
Great. First I kill the guy, then I get him condemned. Nice work.
“Shit.”
We drew closer to the group, close enough I saw they were gathered around another person, jostling to get close. The path to them lay clear before us, each side lined with more lost souls like well-wishers at a ticker-tape parade or the receiving line at a wedding.
“I must stay here, Icarus, but others need you.”
“Ric.”
She gestured toward the group of souls shuffling and circling twenty feet away and let her arm slip from mine. I stepped forward, looking at the faces, but I recognized none of them.
“What do you mean?” I asked looking back at her. “Who needs me?”
She directed me on a route around the small mob. As we came around, I saw who the souls were elbowing each other aside to get to: Orlando Albert.
In life, he’d been my supplier, and even after Father Dominic killed him during his murderous spree to cleanse the earth of everyone I’d ever known—the reason I’d come to Hell to recover souls—he showed up with drugs when I’d sunk to my lowest. If not for whoever pulled me out of that alleyway—a person not my guardian angel—I’d likely still be slouched in the grime doing anything to score more dope. Or, more likely, I’d be dead. Deader, I mean. Really dead.
The rickety-looking stool supporting Orlando creaked as he turned to face one of the lost souls who stepped in front of him, rolled up his sleeve and offered his bare arm. In response, Orlando reached into a doctor’s bag on the ground by his feet and pulled out a syringe. He stuck the needle into the lost one’s arm and depressed the plunger. Apparently Mr. Albert’s Hell and his life bore a striking resemblance.
The lost soul leaned forward, bit off Orlando’s ear, then stumbled away.
Okay, maybe a little different.
Orlando watched the man he’d injected as he teetered on unsteady feet. I could identify—Orlando always provided good stuff and it occasionally affected me the same way, at least up until the point when the soul bent at the waist and spewed a gush of vomit onto the ground.
I grimaced. The soul heaved again and puke splashed in the dirt. My own stomach did a small back flip as the smell wafted to where we stood. My mother made a small gulping sound at the back of her throat.
The soul vomited again and again. After the fourth time, I noticed his skin was tightening across hi
s bones with each retch, turning him from a desperately lost but otherwise normal looking man to Vietnam prisoner-of-war physique in a matter of five heaves. One more made him a skeleton with skin. The seventh time he puked, it looked to be his heart he threw up, and his desiccated body folded to the ground.
The next soul stepped up, arm exposed, and Orlando obliged with another injection. The woman who received his wares took a bite out of his forearm, then turned and wandered toward us, apparently handling the drugs better than her friend. As she came close, blood began running first from her nose, then her eyes. Blood streamed down her cheeks, ran from her ears. Blood soaked her pants, dripped from her fingertips. Every possible opening in her body, and a few improbable ones, flowed with blood until she finally stumbled and fell at my feet, blood spattering my shoes.
I looked up and my eyes met Orlando’s.
“Icarus? Icarus Fell? Is that you?”
I had the ridiculous urge to look over my shoulder as if he’d directed his comments to someone else. Instead, I stared at him, half-mesmerized by his missing ear, the bite out of his forearm, the bag of drugs.
He stood, grabbed the bag, and came toward me.
“That is you, Icarus.”
“Ric,” I conceded grudgingly.
“What are you doing here?”
I shook my head and shrugged as if I didn’t know the answer. He raised an eyebrow like he didn’t buy it and approached close enough his sweet odor of stale sweat wafted to my nostrils, overpowering the pukey stench his customer left behind.
“Orlando. Good to see you.”
A lie. I didn’t extend my hand. Good things never happened when Orlando Albert showed up in my life. He’d been one of the architects of my life’s ruin; no reason to think it would be different in Hell.
He looked from my face to someone in the crowd of souls and back again. His fingers scratched his stubbly chin and he took another step closer, tilted his head like a dog deciphering his master’s command.
“I saw you in the alley, you know.”
My casual survey of him morphed into a glare.
“He sent me to give you drugs. I fed you enough to kill a horse.”
The hair at the base of my head prickled. “Who sent you?”
“You should be dead. You don’t look dead.”
“Who sent you to give me drugs?”
A look of realization crossed his face. He stepped forward, grabbing me by both shoulders.
“You’re alive,” he said in a husky whisper. “You’re in Hell, but you’re alive.”
His stink overpowered me, clawed its way up my nostrils into my brain. The feel of his fingers pressing against my shoulders and his words incited my anger.
He was sent to give me drugs. Someone sent him. To kill me.
My molars clamped down tight. Behind Orlando, the crowd to which he’d been dispensing drugs grew restless as they milled around his vacated stool. One of them spied him and stumbled our way.
“Who sent you?”
Insistent words spilled through clenched teeth and between tight lips. I thought I’d spoken loud enough, but he responded as though he didn’t hear me.
“You have to take me back, Icarus. Take me away from this place.”
“No.”
“I was always good to you. I always gave you what you wanted, sometimes when you couldn’t pay for it.”
More of the lost souls gathered behind him, closing in but not close enough that he noticed them.
“You deserve to be here.”
“No. I did what I had to.” He grabbed the front of my shirt, resorting to begging. “Please, please. Please take me back.”
“No.”
“Icarus. I was your friend.”
“My friend?” I swiped his hands off my chest. “My friend? You ruined my life.”
“No. I gave you what you asked for. You came to me.”
Anger exploded, coursing out of my chest, down my arms. My flat palms hit him in the chest, pushing him away. The impact surprised him and he stumbled backward into the waiting arms of two dozen drug-hungry souls; they engulfed him like an avalanche taking a skier.
Grabbing hands pulled him down, snatched the bag of drugs and ripped it open spilling syringes to the ground causing a frenzy amongst the damned.
My anger dissipated as I watched lost soul after lost soul scoop syringes off the ground and insert the dirty needles into their arms. Immediately after each one did, they stepped forward and took a bite out of Orlando Albert, consuming him like the slice of lime after their shot of tequila.
I should have been disgusted, felt guilty for causing this, but I didn’t.
I should have looked away; I didn’t.
Instead, I watched: interested, titillated, vindicated. I watched each bite, each piece of his soul gulped down the throat of one of those lost souls until roughly half of Orlando Albert remained.
“Icarus, please,” he called from beneath the pile of desperate damned.
I didn’t respond.
When the puking and the bleeding began seconds later, en masse, I remembered my mother standing behind me and decided to get her away from such a spectacle.
What kind of son am I?
I turned, intending to take her arm and lead her away much the way she’d led me here in the first place, but my fingers closed on empty air.
“Mother?”
The word felt foreign on my lips, an ill-tasting chunk of food ejected from my tongue, but I let it go without querying why it tasted so bad. I scanned the crowd around me, moved away from the Orlando Albert buffet in search of the woman who birthed me. Lost souls pushed by me, some moving to join the feeding frenzy, some milling in the aimless manner of the damned. I snaked my way between them and caught a glimpse of my mother heading for a door which hadn’t been there before.
“Mother!”
I spat the word as loudly as possible but the tumult of damned feet shuffling in dirt and Orlando’s screams as his tormentors got down to the good stuff smothered it. I jogged after her, squeezing my way through the crowd as she pulled the door open and stepped through. Halfway to her, a squat, dense soul which bore more resemblance to a sumo wrestler than to the others gathered here stepped in front of me. I hit the man’s broad chest and bounced back a few steps. His deportment immediately suggested he didn’t intend to let me pass. I held my hands up, palms toward him in a gesture of surrender.
“I don’t want any trouble. Just let me by.”
His lips pulled back in a growl revealing teeth a few decades beyond their best days. A ragged piece of meat hung between two of them. The way he looked told me reasoning with him might not be an option, so I didn’t bother.
I deked right, then went left, but he didn’t bite—exactly why I never played football. A massive arm shot out and caught me across the throat with a text book clothesline move right out of Wrestlemania. I hit the ground in a puff of dirt and felt the chance of catching up with my mother disappear like the dust dissipating in the air.
For a second I saw chaotic sky swirling overhead, but then the pseudo-sumo wrestler’s figure moved over me, blocking it. The muscles in his arms and legs tensed giving me a fraction of a second to panic. I’d seen this move before: the Big Splash. Seasoned wrestlers didn’t recover from a monster like this coming down on them.
He leapt impossibly high in the air, arms waving like he wanted to swim. I gritted my teeth, readying myself for the impact.
And then he exploded.
Blood and goop rained down, spattering me. I lay unmoving for a few seconds, not sure what happened, then climbed to my feet cautiously—Hell had proven unpredictable more than once. I took a few steps away and looked back at a perfect outline of my body painted on the dirt in blood.
Adds a whole new meaning to the name ‘Big Splash’.
Under other circumstances, I might have marveled at the cartoon-esque nature of an exploding man, maybe laughed a little—or maybe lost my lunch—but the need to find w
here my mother had gone tied my intestines into a lasso. I wiped the sumo off my face and continued along the path he’d blocked. Ten seconds later I arrived at the door, threw it open and spilled through with no regard to what might be on the other side.
My first sensation was of heat, though my nerve endings and eyes quickly combined to rectify that to reality: cold. A dusting of snow shrouded the sidewalk at my feet and the parking lot stretching before me. I looked down, confused.
Snow in Hell?
No, not snow in Hell. And no footprints in the snow which wasn’t in Hell. Wherever I’d ended up, it wasn’t where my mother went. I pivoted on one heel, tore the door open and rushed through again.
And tripped over a stack of patio chairs.
I righted myself and looked around the dark warehouse which I’d now visited at least one time too many.
“No,” I said aloud, the word dying against a plastic-wrapped stack of cushions. “No.”
I went out the door into the same parking lot, realizing where I was. Thirty yards away, a couple strolled arm in arm through the pleasant winter night, content with each other and with whatever beliefs they did or didn’t have in the existence of Heaven and Hell.
“No,” I bellowed into the wintery night.
The man hugged his lady close, shot me a baleful look and crossed the street to a sidewalk safe from shouting lunatics. I wished I shared their uncertain beliefs, but I’d been to Hell and back in the realest sense of the cliché and, more disturbingly, my turncoat guardian angel lost my son there.
And I didn’t know how to get back.
Bruce Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost
Chapter Twenty-Four
The boy was Caucasian but of dark hair and complexion, as though another lineage combined to give his skin a shade two steps darker than olive. Or perhaps the unwashed nature of his face gave it its shade. In any case, his skin looked taut and smooth like most any twelve year old, and he stood a full head shorter than Trevor, but his demeanor made him seem older, bigger.
