When Two Worlds Collide

by Jerome Sitko

  “You love me, don’t you, Bear? You’re a good boy,” she whimpers, still hugging him.

  “What’s up, Reno?” Lance asks when he finally catches up. He calls her by her last name or sometimes he’ll call her Dee. He slides next to her on the step.

  “Hey, Sir Lance-a-lot. Nothing. My mom is being a bitch. She wants me to go my dad’s early for summer vacation and I don’t want to go.”

  “Why not? Is he a dick? Or does your boyfriend not want you to go?” Lance asks, probing for information about her relationship status.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend right now. Keeping my options open. Bear, will you be my boyfriend?” She holds Bear’s head. “What? You will! Thank you, Bear. I promise to always be faithful.”

  I will! I will! Lance thinks.

  “I’m going over to the cabana to meet Jeremy and Joey. Want to go?” he asks, expecting her to decline. He immediately regrets his decision. She’s going to think they are crazy when they start talking about Charlie and Sheol.

  “Is Bear going? If he is, then yes.” She kisses his nappy head and continues hugging him.

  Bear must be in heaven, Lance thinks.

  “Of course. Let’s go,” he says with his heart skipping a beat that she said yes.

  “Okay, let me lock my door and grab my flip flops,” she says, already standing. She looks stunning in her cutoff jean shorts and faded black KISS shirt. Even with her puffy red eyes, Reno is beautiful and Lance is smitten.

  S

  When Jeremy walks into the cabana, he is met by Lance, Reno, Joey, and Bear.

  “A full house, huh?” he says as he kicks over a milk crate to sit on.

  All of them are sitting in a circle and blankly staring at nothing. Reno doesn’t know what’s going on and the three boys don’t know whether they should talk in front of her or not. Since Lance invited them, he decides he will break the ice.

  “How you guys been doin’?” he asks, looking down the hall of the burned-out abandoned trailer house, feigning concern for where Bear has disappeared. He is now second-guessing his decision to call the other two boys. His stomach agrees and decides to stage a revolt to show how serious it is. Lance’s stomach makes a very loud and verbal objection that is amplified in the empty trailer. His face turns beet red and, if possible, he would disappear. Jeremy and Joey uncharacteristically barely acknowledge the sound. Under different circumstances, they would not let him live it down. Reno pretends not to hear it in an effort to minimize Lance’s embarrassment.

  There’s real tension in the room and Reno finally picks up on it and realizes it’s not because of Lance’s stomach.

  “Should I be here? Do you boys have something serious to discuss? I can leave.” She begins to stand.

  “Hell no! I mean no. I think it’s alright if your here. Right guys?” Lance says looking at Joey and then Jeremy with pleading eyes.

  “Yeah, I’m good with it,” Joey says and pries his tried and true knife out of his pocket. He starts flicking it into the trailer floor sticking the landing every time.

  Lance directs his attention to Jeremy. “Well?”

  Jeremy is staring at his feet, pretending to concentrate on the soot he is bulldozing into a small pile with his shoe.

  “I don’t know. It feels weird. She’ll think we’re all crazy.” He’s still not looking up and fidgeting on his crate. It’s obvious Jeremy is not with them mentally. He’s a shell of his old confident self. Even Lance and Joey don’t know how damaged he really is yet.

  “I think I should just go. I’ve got to do some laundry anyway.” And this time Reno does stand.

  “No! Guys, I think she can help us,” Lance stands and pulls the newspaper article out of his back pocket. “Reno, sit down. We want you here, don’t we?”

  Both Jeremy and Joey nod their heads and continue with what they were doing.

  “Look guys, I grabbed the article. Look, it proves Ryan is still alive,” he says with authority and crinkles the paper for emphasis. Now both boys perk up and look at him, interested.

  “What the fuck. Why are you saying that?” Jeremy asks as he snatches the article out of Lance’s hand. Joey slides over next to him so they can both read it at the same time.

  As they are reading, Lance is mumbling, “Huh…huh…see, it’s true.”

  Reno’s interest is piqued and she holds her hand out for the paper, which Joey promptly hands her. All three boys sit in silence as she reads and digests the article. When she looks up, she has an expression of shock on her face.

  “Do you guys really think Ryan can still be alive? Maybe hurt or kidnapped somewhere?” she asks, her olive-shaped green eyes twinkling. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls a pack of Virginia Slims and takes one out and lights it, holding it like a 60s actress with the end of her fingertips.

  “According to this article, it’s not him. So he must still be in Oregon. We owe it to him to try and find him. What do you guys say?” Lance asks excitedly.

  “What are we going to do? Hitchhike to Oregon?” Jeremy mumbles.

  If the tension in the room was not already heavy enough, it would be with what Lance says next. First, he knows he has to be careful; he doesn’t know how Jeremy will handle it. He might get so upset, he just gets up and leaves. Lance fears if that happens, he won’t see him again until the first day of school. Second, Reno. She is coming into this situation blind and with no context. She might think they are all crazy. She might get up and leave and never talk to Lance again. He contemplates his choices; he can go all in and just say it, or he can table it and wait for another opportunity. He decides time is of the essence. They need to start looking for Ryan now and if he doesn’t say it, he might not get another chance with Jeremy.

  “Sheol,” Lance says. His stomach verbally objects again, but it’s in the form of a rumble this time.

  “Shit. Did you just say shit?” Reno asks quizzically.

  Joey slips his orange headphones over his ears and his brown eyes turn dark. Black. He clicks play on his treasured Sony Walkman and says, “S-H-E-O-L. He said Sheol. It’s the other world.”

  All three boys are now staring blankly at the floor, lost in their own worlds, lost in their own thoughts, lost in their own nightmares.

  Lance begins narrating the three-phases from Emma’s visit when she took him glimpsing, the whole time clutching the talisman around his neck. He can feel the power in the rock. It feels warm and soothing in his hand. Lance doesn’t know what, if anything, the other two boys remember, but Joey did remember Sheol. However, Joey has been an anomaly throughout this whole thing. Lance finally finds the courage to look at Reno, starting low at her feet and working his way up to her eyes. She appears amused and bewildered at the same time.

  “Is this all real? Or have you boys been smoking a little too much?”

  Silence.

  “It’s real, all of it. I don’t know if I can go through this again,” Jeremy finally says as he begins to stand and move toward the door. Before hearing Lance’s narration of their journey, all of this was just an amalgamation of bad dreams and emotions. He could not quite put his finger on it. Now he can, and it scares the hell out of him.

  “Wait! I know where to find him. I know where a portal is,” Lance blurts out as he glides himself in between Jeremy and the door.

  Joey instinctively stands, anticipating an argument or maybe even a fight.

  Jeremy has neither the mental or physical strength for either. “Lance, get out of my way, please. I’m leaving.”

  “No, don’t you want to find Ryan?”

  “Dude, I’m tired of all of this. I won’t be any good to anyone anyways. Please move.”

  Lance can see the exhaustion in Jeremy’s face. His eyes are sunken with dark rings and his body is drooped over like an old man. Lance feels sorry for him, but he is mad that Jeremy won’t help them fi
nd Ryan. Lance is tired too and would like nothing more than to go back to his trailer and sleep. He can’t force Jeremy to go, so he reluctantly moves over to allow Jeremy free passage to the door.

  Jeremy sinks his head lower and under his breath says, “I’m sorry,” as he steps out of the fort. Deep in his heart, he wants to help his friends and knows that they will need him, but mentally he doesn’t have the strength. He thinks that maybe a nap will help him think clearly as he slowly walks home.

  “Well, I’m here and I believe you. When do we leave?” Reno asks as she drops her cigarette between her feet and crushes it out on the already burnt floor.

  “Joey, you in?” Lance asks as he sits back down on his crate.

  “You bet. I’m down. When do we leave…? Wait, where are we going?”

  “Baker City, Oregon,” Lance says as he whistles for Bear. He’s going to need support as he explains this to them. Bear comes running out of the bathroom and leaps onto Lance’s lap bringing dirt and soot with him. At first, Lance begins to push Bear off him but then changes his mind. His pair of Rustlers blue jeans are already dirty so what does it matter.

  “Baker City!” both Joey and Reno say at the same time.

  “Where the hell is Baker City?” Joey asks.

  “The portal to Sheol is in Baker City and that’s where Ryan is. Sheol.” Lance says.

  “How do you know?” Joey quizzes him.

  “Emma told me.”

  “Who’s Emma?” Reno asks.

  “It’s hard to explain. She’s like my guardian, my protector. We never would have made it out of Sheol the first time if it wasn’t for her,” Lance says looking down at Bear, visibly embarrassed he admitted he has a guardian angel. Now he’s surer than ever that Reno will think they’re all crazy.

  “Okay, I believe you. How are we getting there? Hitchhiking or riding our bikes?” she asks, silently skeptical, but if it gets her out of here, she’s willing to play along.

  Shifting Bear in his lap, Lance says, “I don’t know. Maybe gather enough money for us to take a Greyhound?”

  Joey pulls his knife out of the floor and starts pacing, “Fuck that. Let’s steal a car.”

  “Right, and you know how to hotwire a car I suppose,” Lance states sarcastically out loud, but in his mind he wonders if Joey really does know how to steal a car; he’s surprised them more than once.

  Before Joey has a chance to answer, Reno says, “We don’t need to know how to hotwire. I know where we can get a car.”

  “Where?” Lance asks.

  “My sister. She lives about a half-mile from here. I can ask to spend the night at her house and I’ll sneak the keys when they fall asleep.”

  Solving the most significant piece of the puzzle, they continue discussing the rest of the logistics for the next few minutes. They have a plan.

  Reno will spend the night with her sister and at midnight she will sneak the keys to the car and they will drive to Baker City. Easy right? She will leave her sister a note explaining that they are only borrowing the car and will return it safe and sound. Reno is sure her sister will understand and not call the police when she wakes up. Joey is bringing his dad’s vacation maps and has been voted the navigator. All of them will bring as much money as they can, which won’t be much. With that, they leave the fort and will all meet at Reno’s sister’s house at midnight. Joey agrees to meet Lance at his trailer at 11:30 p.m., and they will walk together.

  Lance can’t help but feel a little disappointed that Jeremy won’t be joining them. He expected more from his friend. They both survived the same horrors at Charlie’s cruel hands the last time. But then again, Jeremy did commit suicide in Sheol so maybe he is more damaged than Lance knows. If you die in Sheol you can come back to life, but maybe each time you die in that wicked world you lose a little bit of your soul. A little bit of yourself.

  As Lance walks to his trailer, he can’t shake that nagging feeling that he was not totally honest with his friends. He purposely left out the location of the portal, an abandoned pig slaughterhouse. He knew that if he mentioned it, Joey would give him shit. Joey seems to think that every abandoned building was once used as a serial killer’s lair. He still swears that about their fort, the cabana. Lance arrives at his trailer and opens the small gate to let Bear into the yard.

  He mumbles under his breath, “Shit’s about to get real.”

  CHAPTER 3

  House of Horrors

  Lance is shoveling through his closet looking for equipment he thinks they will need for their journey back into Sheol, Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” mood music blaring through cheap speakers balanced on his windowsill. His bed is littered with miscellaneous trip items that he will sort through later.

  He can’t stop thinking about Jeremy and he’s getting upset. Screw it. He decides he’s going to call him. He storms out of his little bedroom shaking the trailer on its foundation as he steamrolls toward the kitchen. He’s mad and is going to give Jeremy a piece of his mind. He snatches the phone receiver from the wall and pounds Jeremy’s phone number with his finger and waits.

  As he’s waiting for someone to pick up on the other end of the phone line, he stretches the cord so he can reach the piece of linoleum on the kitchen floor that is peeling up and begins tapping it with his bare foot knowing it will not magically glue itself back to the sub-floor.

  “Hello?”

  Lance knows the familiar voice on the other end is Jeremy.

  “Hey, Ryan needs you. He needs all of us. Why won’t you come with us to help find him?” Lance blurts out, now stomping the damn disobedient flooring.

  “Dude, I don’t think I’ll be any help and I feel sick.”

  “What kind of sick?” Lance asks, wondering if somehow Jeremy picked up some disease in Sheol or if Jeremy’s suicide is affecting his physical state here in the real world.

  “I just don’t feel like myself. I’m tired, can’t eat, can’t sleep. I have no energy.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel but I’m willing myself to stay strong for Ryan. You can too. He needs us, all of us.”

  Jeremy is lying on his bed with his pillow over his face thinking that if he presses hard enough he can end all of this.

  “Did you hear me?” Lance asks.

  Jeremy grabs his pillow and flings it across his room onto the floor, knowing he won’t be suffocating himself anytime soon. “I heard you, dick, and the answer is still NO.”

  Both boys hang the phone up on each other simultaneously, so they both think they hung up on the other one, but neither feels a sense of satisfaction.

  Lance is convinced Jeremy will not change his mind so they will go without him. He also makes a mental note that he will not be the first one to come crawling back to repair their friendship.

  S

  Charlie feels weak from his battle against Lance and those damn sentinel phoenixes. They nearly destroyed him. Lucky for him they were not in Adamah and when the phoenixes dragged him into the portal Erebus was waiting to free him. Erebus was not pleased and Charlie has paid a high price for his massive failure.

  In Sheol, death is not eternal and pain is very real, and Charlie is going to learn that very soon. Erebus sentenced Charlie to an ad hoc Sheol prison to punish him for his failed commission and to add salt to the wound the warden is a woman. Her name is Madame Delphine.

  Charlie’s status and stature have been stripped from him along with his powers so he will not get any preferential treatment.

  Groggily, Charlie licks his dry and cracked lips and tries to open his eyes but can’t. They are cemented together by sweat, tears, and rheum. He tries to raise his hand to brush the crust away, but feels an odd sensation; he’s raising his arm but his hand is not touching his head. Charlie is confused and his temporary blindness exaggerates his confusion. If he could see, he would see his left arm lying on a wooden table a
bout five feet away from him. He knows that there is a fire in the room; its flames twinkle and shocks of red flicker behind his eyelids. He can hear groans of pain around him and his nose smells rot and decay.

  Maybe dead animals?

  He is still trying to decipher his current situation. Then he hears a voice, a woman’s voice.

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

  All of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men

  Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

  “Ooo, la, la, good you’re awake, Mr. Stratt,” Delphine says. She is using Charlie’s real name, Abel Stratt.

  “Where am I? Why can’t I move?”

  “Oh, well, Mr. Stratt you are being punished by Erebus and they have asked me to kindly tend to you. You are in my home. Well, not my real home, but my house in Sheol. Oh dear, I see why you’re confused. You can’t see. Silly me, let me help you.”

  She walks over to the table and picks up Charlie’s limp arm. When the highwaymen brought Charlie to her she sawed one arm off and was going to start on the other when he woke. Normally, she would make sure her prisoner is awake to experience the pain, but he is different and she doesn’t get to keep him for eternity; Erebus made that perfectly clear.

  Delphine is notorious for her torture techniques and her mansion is the house of horrors in Sheol if such a thing is possible, and right now she’s toying with Charlie.

  “Damn right, you’ll help. What do you mean Erebus asked you to ‘tend to me?’” Charlie is furious that this woman is condescending and he’s helpless to do anything about it.

  Delphine dips Charlie’s severed arm in a wooden bucket full of putrid blood and body parts and he feels the sensation of the cold liquid as if his arm was still attached to his body.