All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel)

by Bruce Blake

  The Carrion approached, his black hood hiding his face, my mother in tow. No choice but to watch. A step away, the Carrion looked up and reached for the door knob. The hood fell away.

  My flesh went instantly cold.

  “Poe?”

  Our eyes met and hers widened. I opened my mouth to question her, to ask what she was doing here, what was going on, but breath failed me. Seeing her taking my mother to Hell took it away.

  They brushed past me, opened the door and went through. I stood in shock for a few seconds, my eyes looking at but not seeing Sister Mary-Therese as she held me in her arms, comforting me even as she screamed for help. The archangels struggled behind her. The noise of the crying babe, the shouting nun, dragged me from my stupor and I turned to follow the Carrion. Conflicting emotions hammered my brain—anger and disappointment at Poe, whom I’d trusted, whom I very nearly loved, but also excitement. If I was here, if I could affect the outcome, then I intended to find a way to win my mother back. This was my chance to make up for all she’d sacrificed so I could live.

  When I spun around, the rough-hewn wall of a Hell cave stood at my back. I stumbled forward, disbelieving my eyes, unwilling to give up the opportunity to make amends, but the rock remained. My fingers brushed the stone, felt its warmth and solidity, and my stomach slipped.

  They’re gone.

  The crying and shouting had ceased. I looked back to where Sister Mary-Therese had been holding me in the first moment of my being and found her gone. No bedroom, no gold shag, no wooden crucifix. Instead, I gazed upon a roughly square stone room with a pile of hay pushed into the far corner. A wan light emanating from nowhere and everywhere illuminated the area; I saw a dark patch of crimson on the ground near the straw. Part of me wanted to go to it, but I already knew that the stain was a marker to remind me of and torture me with my mother’s death.

  She was in love against her will. She didn’t deserve this.

  I loped down the tunnel without knowing where it might lead. Would it take me back to the ledge I’d left or deep into Hellish catacombs I’d never find my way out of?

  As I left the room behind, the dim illumination receded along with it. I slowed my pace, bumped into walls as the corridor twisted and turned leaving me in a darkness only experienced underground. Claustrophobia threatened the edge of my consciousness, but the roil of emotions twisting my guts and rattling my mind wouldn’t let it in.

  Azrael, my mother, Father Dominic, Marty and Todd, Piper and now Poe. Could I trust no one? Didn’t anyone care?

  The thought of Poe made my teeth clench. For these past months I’d trusted her, listened to her, only to find her a part of the machinations which ruined my life, the impetus which started the proverbial ball rolling. She told me once Michael rescued her from Hell, but she’d never mentioned being a Carrion.

  She didn’t tell me it was her who took my mother’s soul to Hell.

  I blundered down the dark corridor, seething and sad. After a while, light began to filter down from ahead of me. I quickened my pace, desperate to get out before my other emotions waned and the sickening feel of claustrophobia enveloped me, constricting my chest and wrenching my stomach inside out.

  The light grew and I saw the tunnel ahead clearly, so I pushed myself to go faster. I filled my lungs with air likely no different than what I’d been breathing, but that tasted so much fresher. It revitalized me, gave my limbs new energy. I rounded a bend and saw the exit, the source of the light shining through the portal. I stepped through.

  I collected comic books in my teens—one of the few normalities in which I engaged between street life and drug use. Neil Gaiman wrote some of my favorites: Sandman, The Books of Magic, and Death—now eerily appropriate reading. One of my favorite lines came from a Sandman story and went something like this: Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you, and sometimes when you fall, you fly.

  As I plunged through the doorway and over the precipice of whatever drop I didn’t know lay before me, I crazily wondered which would be the case this time.

  Given my name, I didn’t feel good about my chances.

  Bruce Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Poe pushed by Icarus, diverting her eyes from the stunned expression on his face. Her cheeks went hot, like she’d been caught watching a Paul Newman movie with her hand down her pants. The urge to stop and explain that if she had a choice, she’d never have taken any souls, least of all his mother, coursed through her, but the forward movement of her feet couldn’t be slowed.

  She burst across the plane of the doorway with Sister Agnes’ soul in tow, but didn’t find the nun’s living room as she should have. Instead, she entered a hazy, indistinct place, like she saw it through a heavily frosted pane of glass.

  Poe took a step forward and her toe contacted something solid. She looked down, but her leg below the knee was as disguised by whiteness as the area around her, like she looked at it in a misted-over mirror. After a second, the haze cleared revealing the bottom of her leg, her foot, the stone she’d kicked sitting on brown, loamy soil. The blur around her foot disappeared as though sucked up by a cosmic vacuum cleaner. When she raised her head, she saw her surroundings clearly: Arbutus trees with their peeling bark and red, slick-looking wood beneath; the broad leaves of oak and maple; the black-shingled roof of a house showing through the branches. She turned slowly, hoping she wouldn’t see what she knew would be there: the shack.

  It was.

  “Oh no.”

  She spun one-hundred and eighty degrees, not sure why: to avoid the rundown shack, to run, to find Icarus and beg his forgiveness and help, maybe to explain to the nun’s spirit what happened. But the nun was gone, the door to the bedroom was gone, Icarus was gone. The path back to the old neighborhood snaked through the trees behind her and somewhere up the path she heard two voices talking as they came closer.

  Poe’s mouth went dry. She knew who the voices belonged to, knew Aaron Baxter and his cousin would soon come swaggering into the small clearing, then take her into the shed to rape her and lose their lives for it.

  Not again. Please, not again.

  She deviated off the path and willed her feet to take her toward the shed; it surprised her to find they obeyed this time. Her pace increased, carrying her across the short distance to the crooked door as the boys’ voices came closer. She slid through the doorway and eased it closed behind her so as not to attract the boys’ attention. Crouching behind the rickety door, Poe peeked through the crack between it and the door jamb.

  The two boys reached the edge of the clearing and stopped, sly smiles crossing their faces. Aaron Baxter elbowed his cousin in the ribs and pointed. Poe’s gaze followed his finger to the younger girl standing in the middle of the clearing staring directly at the door through which she peered. The slightly open door mesmerized twelve-year-old Paula Edgar so she didn’t notice the boys creeping toward her.

  I thought there was something in the shack. Someone...me.

  The boys reached the girl and Aaron spoke, startling Paula and making her jump. She turned to engage them in conversation and Poe stood, backed away from the door. Hell already forced her to endure that awful day again, now it appeared she would have to relive it once more, this time as an observer, which might be worse.

  Poe spun away from the door with its crack which would have shown her Aaron and his cousin coaxing Paula toward the shack. Though she knew the shed was empty, the guardian angel wanted to find somewhere to hide, or at least hide her eyes until the terrible event concluded, but she knew she wouldn’t find anywhere to conceal herself. At least she thought she wouldn’t until she found she was no longer in the shack.

  The brightly lit room was opulently—if weirdly—decorated. Tapestries hung on the walls; a huge desk supported by thick wooden legs carved into the shapes of gargoyles with lolling tongues dominated one side of the room. She glanced back over her shoulder and found the cracked shed door by a wall cov
ered with another tapestry. The scene on the hanging showed a copse of trees sewn with brown trunks and green leaves, a clearing, three small figures and a gray shack leaning to one side. The three embroidered people moved across the clearing toward the shed.

  Poe closed her eyes and jerked away from the tapestry, returning her attention to the room. When she opened her eyes, she noticed a chair set close to the desk. Over-sized and made of wood, the chair looked as though it may have been carved out of a single piece, like a huge stump ripped from the ground and chiseled into a seat, back and four legs. A man sat in the chair, his feet on the seat, knees drawn up to his chest. Poe took a cautious step forward, eyes fixed on him. His shaggy hair hung down past his shoulders and his frame was slight. She realized, even without seeing his face, this wasn’t a man but a boy, a teen. Her breath caught in her throat as she thought it must be Aaron Baxter or his cousin.

  She took another step. On a table beside the teen, a skeleton lizard scuttled across the bottom of its wooden cage and clacked its bony jaws at her. The teen’s head inclined slightly toward the cage, but then returned to the same position, staring at the tapestry on the wall in front of him. Poe followed his gaze but the tapestry was a blank sea of black velvet.

  She approached the large chair; the boy still didn’t notice her. She leaned forward, attempting to see his face, but his hair hung down by his cheek, hiding his features. She lifted her hand, reaching for his shoulder to get his attention, but stopped.

  What if it is Aaron? What if it’s his cousin?

  She shivered. She’d never found out the name of the other boy who raped her, the young man she killed. Not knowing what to call him made it all the worse. Poe drew a halting breath and forced her hand to complete its journey.

  Her fingers touched the young man’s shoulder; he didn’t react so she squeezed, lightly at first, then more firmly when he didn’t acknowledge her presence. Finally, when she felt she must be gripping hard enough to cause pain, the teen faced her, their gazes met and she looked into the unmistakable eyes of the boy’s father. It seemed like an eternity since the two of them traveled to Hell together, since she’d lost him at the edge of Abaddon’s pit. Poe swallowed hard.

  “Trevor?”

  The teen stared back at her without recognition, eyes glassy and unfocused. Poe threw her arms around his neck and pulled him to her.

  “Trevor. Thank God.”

  Trevor didn’t respond.

  †‡†

  Wind rushed by, flapping my hair against my forehead and temples. At first, I fell beside a cliff of orange, chalk-like stone, but it disappeared leaving empty air on all sides. I plummeted blind—back toward the ground—past strange creatures floating or flying through the air, some of them gargoyles on ragged wings, others wisps of smoke shaped like people full of holes. A fish, a turtle, misshapen birds, a clown with smeared make-up and pointed teeth. The only thing missing was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from the movie Ghostbusters. Although I fell at an incredible speed, I saw each of the creatures clearly, saw every detail of their hideous faces and twisted bodies.

  Eventually, the creatures disappeared. I braced myself for impact presuming I must be approaching the ground, but instead of hitting earth, a movie began to play around me as though I fell through the screen of an over-sized IMAX theater. The movie at this particular theater showed the story of my life.

  I stifled a yawn.

  Of course, I’d lived all this crap—the abuse at the hands of Father Dominic, the time on the street, the booze, the drugs, my sham of a marriage—but I also saw the first cut when those bastard muggers slid a knife into me in the churchyard a few months back. My life in syndication.

  You’d think Hell would have more original tricks up its sleeve.

  As I fell and watched, I noticed differences in the familiar scenes playing around me. The same happenings as before—same unlikely plot line, same unbelievable events, same hammy actors. The thing which differed from when I saw it last and from when I lived it hid in the background.

  Standing off to the side, or in the shadows, or hidden behind a curtain in every event was Michael or Azrael, sometimes both.

  The revelation startled me. If I could have sat up to take a closer look, I would have, but the act of lying on one’s back and falling precludes the possibility of straining into a seated position. Or maybe I needed to do a few more crunches if I ever saw a gym again.

  As I took stock of what seeing them meant, the movie ended with my murder and it seemed to me the faces beneath those hoods pulled up to block out the rain belonged to the two archangels.

  And then I was no longer falling.

  I didn’t hit the ground with a bone-jarring jolt, I simply stopped. With no warning, my feet touched solid ground. More precisely, my feet settled on a scattering of dirty straw close to what looked like a large pile of shit which would have required a huge bowel. The thought of how big the beast which made the heap of feces must have been made me shudder as much as the smell of it did.

  I glanced away from the mountainous turd at my surroundings. It was night and I stood in a lane created by a network of drab canvas tents pitched in rows on either side of me. Frayed ropes ran from their edges to wooden stakes driven into the ground. I took a few steps away from the mound of fecal matter leaving its smell behind and caught a whiff of the old canvas instead. Evidently the tents had been put away wet a few times.

  Stepping over the lines anchoring tents to ground, I picked my way along the makeshift boulevard feeling like a youngster who sneaked into the carnival. I heard no sounds beyond the occasional snap of a corner of canvas picked up by a wind I didn’t feel. No carnival music emanating from a Ray Bradbury-esque carousel, no pitchman barking about freaks, no screams of pain or pleasure.

  Light shone between the tents, casting shadowy spider webs on the ground as it played over the cat’s cradle of ropes, but the light prevented me seeing beyond the far edge of the tent. I pressed on, sometimes remembering to draw breath, always expecting some Hell-thing to jump out at me—something capable of leaving behind a bowel movement the size of a Volkswagen.

  My eyes darted left and right, watching, and it seemed every time I looked right, I saw movement in my peripheral vision to the left. When I looked left, movement on my right. Nothing jumped me, and by the time I made it to the end of the canvas alley, all the muscles in my body felt like some demonic boy scout had removed them, used them to practice for his knot-tying badge, then replaced them.

  The straw-strewn ground continued a couple of yards beyond the end of the tents, carrying on into blackness. And I don’t mean it was dark: there was nothing. Like the artist drawing the scene ran out of ink or time and left the rest of the page a colorless blank. I crept to the edge and considered extending a toe out into the dark like a swimmer testing the temperature of the ocean, but decided against it. At the beach, you could pull your toe out if it was too cold—I wasn’t so sure I could retrieve my toe if the void wasn’t to my liking.

  I stutter-stepped my way crab-wise along the edge, ducking under ropes disappearing into the dark which remained taut despite ending. When I reached the front corner, I peered around while trying to keep the majority of myself hidden behind the canvas pavilion. A broad, brightly lit avenue stretched between the tents on one side and the edge of a forest of trees taller than any I’d ever seen on the other. Cages lined the boulevard at regular intervals, exactly the type of enclosures you’d expect to see at a traveling zoo: gray metal bars ran vertically between wood fascias painted in one-time bright reds and golds now faded to dull pink and yellow.

  The nearest cage held an animal I’d have to compare to an elephant, only bigger. It looked sort of like an elephant—wrinkled gray skin, stump-like legs, a writhing trunk—but the similarities weren’t as similar as they appeared at first glance. The wrinkled skin looked wet, slimy, the way a snake’s looked. The six thick, stumpy legs each ended with a huge hand like the foot of an orangutan. The writhing tr
unk protruded off the beast’s forehead, three tiny, bloodshot eyes winking at me beneath it. It also had tusks: two great, curved, black tusks set atop its head.

  It appeared to ponder me, then circled away, its attention drawn somewhere else. As its other end faced me, it lifted its tail, loosened a sphincter large enough to swallow a compact car, and proved beyond doubt this beast created the mound of dung I nearly landed in. I turned my head away in disgust.

  Imagine cleaning that off the bottom of your shoe.

  †‡†

  The scene on the tapestry neither moved nor changed. The embroidered rendition of the mythological Icarus hung suspended in the blue sky, the wings strapped to him with a leather harness falling to pieces as the warmth of the sun melted the feathers composing them.

  Trevor stared, waiting for the man to fall to his death or the scene to shift again, but neither happened. The man floated in endless free fall, head thrown back, his face hidden from Trevor, but he knew it was his father’s face. He hugged his knees tighter to his chest, chewed on the inside edge of his bottom lip. What happened if the fall ended?

  Is this happening? Can I save him?

  Time the teen no longer felt capable of measuring passed and the man continued his fall. Trevor stared and, after a while, didn’t know why he did, couldn’t remember why he found it important. His vision blurred, his eyes hurt, and he forgot who was falling. Forgot why he was in the room, where the room was.

  When the woman interrupted his stare, he no longer recognized the word she spoke.

  “Trevor?”

  He re-aimed his head toward her with great effort, as though a sand bag sat atop his shoulders rather than his head. He gazed at her blond hair, golden eyes, and recognition flickered somewhere at the back of his mind before the urge to return his gaze to the tapestry snuffed it out.

  She put her arms around him, pressed herself against him, and her touch ran a shock through his shoulders, into his chest—a huge, living joy buzzer pressed uncomfortably to his entire body. When she released him and held him by the shoulders at arms’ length, the vibration subsided to a tolerable level and he began to breathe again.