Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire

by Jonathan Maberry

  As he studied the patterns, a hand fell on his shoulder.

  “Get out of the rain, son, you’re gonna catch your death out here.”

  He looked over his shoulder and saw the man that loomed over him. Stringy long hair fell across square shoulders. When he’d last seen the face, it had been much older and twisted in a determined expression, a fighting spirit afire in its eyes. Now the face held a restful serenity and seemed much younger, but he still recognized it. Todd got to his feet and backed away, hardly believing his eyes despite all he’d learned about the fine lines between life and death.

  “Les.”

  The old man gave him a single nod and regarded him with deep, staring eyes that couldn’t possibly belong to a dead man.

  * * *

  Todd sat with Les inside the Cadillac. In spite of the fact that it was the dead of summer, Todd ran the heater to dry his clothes. Seeing the ghost of Chloe’s father inspired a curiosity that made him want to live, at least a bit longer.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know why I’m here.”

  “Chloe.”

  Les nodded. Sheets of rain splashed against the windshield.

  “I guess it’s the how I’m confused about.”

  “I wish I could attribute it to all the reading I did about the occult, but I can’t help but feel there’s maybe something more to it.” He stared ahead at the rain gushing down the windshield for several moments before he continued. “That demon, that Samael, got his hands in me. I couldn’t have been alive for more than few seconds after that but it sure felt a lot longer. I thought the pain would never end. When it did, I had an out of body experience, but not like the ones you read about. I didn’t float above my corpse or see a bright light. I sunk into the earth.”

  “Was it Hell?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a part of it, certainly some kind of underworld, but peaceful. There were others there, dead people. They wandered aimlessly in what looked like some kind of vast cave system and I joined their numbers. I don’t know how long I was down there with them, could’ve been hours or it could’ve been days. Then I saw her, Chloe’s mother, Natalia.”

  Todd sat up. He hadn’t expected that, but maybe he’d hoped for it. Les had been good to Todd when Todd was young and downright saintly when he'd sacrificed himself. He deserved a reunion with his long lost love.

  “She embraced me and I felt this powerful sense of relief, and contentment, as if I’d finally arrived at the place I needed to be.” He sighed, tears in his eyes. “I wanted to stay so badly, but she said I couldn’t and I knew she was right. I couldn’t rest while our daughter suffered.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw. When Natalia touched me, she showed me, and I knew. I knew that Chloe was back in the hands of that animal.”

  On the last word, Les’s tone became a growl of anger.

  “Then you found me.”

  “Yes, because I can’t help her.”

  Todd shook his head. “Well, fuck, man, neither can I. I failed her. The whole reason she’s back in Samael’s hands is because I couldn’t keep her safe.”

  “There was nothing else you could’ve done. Choosing between loved ones… I couldn’t imagine.”

  “I didn’t choose. I just gave up.”

  “And maybe that was the right choice then, but you can’t give up now. She needs you.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Remember how you called her here in the first place. You can call her back again and free her from that pit.”

  “Yeah and then what? We run? Because you know that son of a bitch will come looking for her.”

  “So take her home.”

  “And where's that? Every place we’ve ever been is tainted by something. We’ve never been home before, either of us. We’ve just been running all our lives.”

  “What if you found a new home? Built a new home, maybe?”

  Todd studied Les hard. The old bastard may have hit on something. Over the last few days since Anna left, his house, despite its size, had felt increasingly more claustrophobic. He could either sell it or give it to Anna. He had money saved up that he could use to purchase some land on which to build. The wheels began to turn in his head and for the first time since he left Chloe behind in the warehouse district, he felt a sense of hope.

  “Yeah, I can do that. I will.”

  “Good. I’ll be watching.”

  * * *

  The first place he looked into was the farmland near Potter Way, where he and Chloe had first made love. Back then, a farmhouse had stood in that field, but now it was empty. Empty and for sale.

  He took a loan out through Havertown Community Bank, at the officer’s preferred rate, and hired a team of builders out of the phone book. He wanted something simple, a freestanding, shotgun house. Wood-paneling. A front porch. One bedroom, one bathroom. It had to be quaint because it only had one purpose: to be the house he lived his last days in.

  It took several months, during which he went through each day as if nothing was happening. He went to work, even though the anticipation for this new chance at saving Chloe sometimes drove him into fits of excitement where he could hardly sit or focus. Some nights as he tried to sleep, it drove him mad thinking that the longer the build took, the more Chloe would suffer, but he reminded himself that this was the only way to do it. It had to be a brand new place otherwise it wouldn’t work at all.

  Though the land was old, it only held pleasant memories. He figured that the only reason it hadn’t worked before was that there’d been nowhere for her to be contained. Inside the home, she, they, could be safe.

  The builders finished in mid-September. He moved in the day after. Since he left Anna mostly everything from their house, he’d bought all new furniture. There was very little, because that was all he needed. A couch and chair for the living room, a dining room table with a set of stools, a bed, a bookcase. The rest could wait. From his and Anna’s house, he brought everything from the study: all the stacks of notebooks, his guitar, and a photo album from the old days. The new place was a downgrade from the five bedroom house he'd shared with Anna, but he needed this stripped-down life. After everything that had happened, the need to go back to basics seemed to be the only logical choice.

  While he was upstairs putting the bed together, someone knocked on the front door. He raised his head, looked out of the bedroom and down the hallway. He set down the Allen wrench and got off his knees. The sound of his joints cracking reminded him that his days of putting furniture together were coming to an end. He left the bedroom and went downstairs. There was another knock.

  “Coming,” he said.

  As he put his hand on the knob, he contemplated not answering. For a crazy moment, a vision of opening the door to see Samael standing on the other side crossed his mind, Samael, back to take Todd to hell with him. There Todd would watch helplessly as the monster had his way with Chloe for eternity. Todd closed his eyes and took a breath to compose himself. He opened the door to see his daughter standing on the other side.

  She greeted him with a hug and a wry smile. The scar on her cheek was healing nicely, but it still wasn’t one hundred percent. Angry inflammation still reddened the skin around it. Todd hoped her boyfriend, Jake, wasn’t the shallow type. It would be a while before she looked like herself again.

  “How’re you holding up?” he asked.

  “I’m holding up, Dad. How about you?”

  He gave a dry laugh because it was all he could do. Her sympathetic smile held. She reached out, squeezed his shoulder. Her hand was warm and it felt pleasant where she touched him. She followed him inside and he closed the door behind her. He motioned for her to have a seat and offered her a cup of coffee. She sat and shook her head. They stared at each other for a long time before either of them spoke.

  “Dad…”

  “Katie… I…”

  They exchanged awkward smiles. The separation had luckily been drama free. Todd wouldn’t have gone s
o far as to call it painless, it was a separation after all, but it had been mercifully quick. Regardless of how smooth it had gone, this was the first time he’d had a chance to sit and talk with Katie in a long while. He took a breath before speaking again.

  “I’m so sorry about all of this.”

  “You don’t have to be,” she said. “No matter what you were involved in, I don’t think you ever intended for us to get hurt.”

  “You’ve always been the most forgiving member of this family.”

  She dropped her eyes for a moment and shifted uncomfortably. Only one lamp shined in the room, and in the vague light, she appeared almost ghostlike, embraced by shadows. A grave expression crossed her face.

  “I saw things when that man had Mom and me. Things I can’t begin to explain.”

  Todd nodded slowly. Outside in the distance a coyote cried.

  “Dad, who was he? Who was that girl?” She paused. “What were they?”

  “I don't know if I can tell you.”

  “You can,” she said. “You can trust me.”

  He examined her closely. There was something haunting about her eyes, as if her experiences had given her a much grimmer worldview. It was a look that he’d come to recognize in his own eyes since losing Chloe again. To confirm, he asked her if she believed in ghosts.

  “I can’t say that I don’t. Not after everything I’ve seen.”

  He collected his thoughts, his memories, everything that he wanted to tell her, everything that he wanted to tell somebody. Even as he worked out what he would say, he knew how crazy it all sounded. When he looked into his daughter’s eyes, he felt she was beyond judging him, her outlook now far too complex to judge anyone for what they claimed as reality. He told her everything starting with the first time Chloe walked into his life at his concert’s after party, continuing with how he ran away when her issues seemed too big for him to manage. He told her how he and her mother ended up getting married according to the wishes of their parents, how after Chloe’s death he buried her memories and the essence of who he was in work and building a life that he thought he was supposed to lead.

  “For the longest time, I repressed those memories, but then things started to fall apart with your mom, and I found myself thinking about those days more and more. I started thinking about Chloe more and more. The day you gave me that CD was when everything really changed. She came back to life.”

  Todd tried to gauge Katie’s reaction to that statement, but she kept a poker face. Someone coming back from the dead seemed to have no effect on her.

  “With her back in my life, I couldn’t let her go again. But I didn’t know how to tell anyone, so I ran. I never intended for you and your mom to be involved. I love you, Katie. You’re the best thing to have come out of the mess I’ve made of my life. I love your mom, too, but...”

  Katie nodded. Her genuine understanding made her look incredibly mature to him. Flashes of the little girl she used to be danced across his mind and faded away. She leaned forward and squeezed her hand around his.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  Todd opened his mouth and closed it. He had no answer for her.

  “I don’t know, Katie. I feel fucking lost… like…” He forced himself not to finish the sentence. What he had to say was nothing someone should ever hear from their father.

  She pressed him. “Like what?”

  “Like… I have nothing left to do but try to find her.”

  She swallowed. He had a feeling that it was anger she was gulping down. He almost wanted to beg her to get angry with him, to really let him have it. At least then it would be honest. With her, he felt like he always got off too easily.

  “I don’t want to see you give up, Dad. Do some soul searching. You’ve got plenty of time to do it now. I know you’ll find whatever it is you’re looking for, but please don’t endanger yourself again. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I do understand. Trust me. You’re in a lot of pain.” Her hand went to the scar on her cheek and he was reminded that the wounds inflicted on her were likely much deeper than physical. “What’s important is what we do in the face of the pain.”

  “That’s why I have to try again.”

  Katie got to her feet and hugged him. “Do what you have to do, but be careful. Whatever you decide, I’ll always love you, Dad.”

  Upon hearing that, warmth bloomed in his chest. He walked her to the door. After she’d driven away, he shut off the lights in his house and sat there in the darkness until he plunged into the depths of sleep.

  * * *

  Todd dug through his closet. He pushed aside boxes of things he knew he would never look at again. When he found what he was looking for, he wrapped his fingers around it. He relished the feel of the smooth wood and the strings on the flesh of his hand. Lifting the guitar took considerably more effort than it used to. His back and shoulder came alive with dull aches as he carried it over boxes and into his arms. Dust had collected on its body and its strings were rusted. He took it out to the porch, set it in his lap and got to work restoring the instrument to its former majesty.

  An hour went by as he polished, restrung and tuned. When he finished, the Gibson shined darkly in the cherry light of the setting sun. He set it down on his knee and leaned over it, gazing down into the cracks in the floor of the wooden porch. In that darkness, so many things lived and died, so many things he couldn’t see and never would. Even parts of the world like this, that were so close and seemed so small, were far bigger than he could ever understand. Understanding this brought bittersweet humility.

  He put his fingers on the fret board. It was awkward, like touching an old lover for the first time after years apart. He bent, repositioned, adjusted until familiarity returned. He was gentle when he found and pressed down on the first chord. He strummed and let it ring. Though the guitar was an electric, it wasn’t plugged in. The music was soft, a subtle voice on the soundscape of the night. That was okay. He heard it; that was what mattered. Maybe she would too.

  He recalled the patterns and progressions. He remembered the words. His voice cracked on the first line. Clearing his throat, he began again, from the top of “Blissfully Damaged.” By the end of the first verse, he was in tears, but he continued playing. It didn’t matter to him that his voice wasn’t as strong as it used to be or that his hands no longer had their dexterity. What mattered was that it was all he had to give now. He transitioned into “The Lie,” the inflections stronger, the emotion escalating. Minutes went by. A third song poured from him. Then another and another.

  He cried for Anna and Dale, who never talked to him. He cried for Katie and her undying devotion that he didn’t deserve. He cried for Chloe wherever she was now. Above all, he cried for her to return.

  Eight songs and his throat hurt. His fingers burned with strain. He expelled a sigh of exhaustion and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he raised his head to look across the moonlit field that stretched before his house. In the distance, the clearing gave way to thick woods. Crickets filled the air with their indifferent song. All of them chirped in sync with each other, unaffected by the outpouring of Todd’s soul. Just another night in the mountains. Nothing worth breaking their routine.

  Todd looked farther into the woods, tracing the dark outline of the hill. The moonlight made everything appear bluish gray. A strong scent of pines hung thick in the air. He sat there, guitar over his knee expectantly, not even one hundred percent sure what he was expecting. He sighed again. For him, too, it was just another night in the mountains. Summoning her with his songs was no longer feasible. He’d lost the ability to do even that.

  He started to lift the guitar off of his knee when his eyes caught a faint orange light glowing between the trees. It expanded and contracted like a fiery heart. He thought maybe there were campers on the hill. Probably not uncommon in this area. When the light grew larger, Todd sat bolt upright. From an insignificant speck
, the orange expanded to a bright explosion that engulfed the side of the hill. A chorus of wails overwhelmed every other sound.

  Todd’s breath caught in his throat and he clutched the guitar tightly, holding it in front of him like a shield. The flames grew redder, angrier. The wailing increased in volume. Hearing the cries of tortured billions Todd wondered if Hell had grown impatient with waiting and had come for him.

  His mind, still unable to accept the new worldview, grasped desperately for other meanings to what he saw. Even though Chloe had given him a different understanding of the world beyond, even though he thought that maybe through his music he could conjure her, this still felt unbelievable to him.

  The fire became a spiraling tower, growing from the side of the hill and licking the dark sky. Within the column, among bright orange bursts and black clouds of smoke, bodies tried to squirm free from the torment. Even from the distance, he saw the anguish in their features. Their wailing was amplified, as if from the world’s most powerful PA system, and the sounds chilled him to the marrow.

  Run, a voice in the back of his mind commanded. Run away, now!

  Quicker than it appeared, the column of fire shrunk and the crying stopped. Todd blinked several times, trying to make sense of what he’d seen. The hellish images were tattooed on his mind and the wailing echoed in his ears. Dread gnawed at him. Though he had hoped to open the door again, he now regretted it. What he’d seen made the idea of even the slightest bit of hope seem foolish.

  The crickets resumed their song. The hillside was unmarked as if the flames had never been. Todd sat frozen in his chair, staring out into the night. He tried to reason that he had hallucinated the column and the tortured souls within, but the truth was that he finally knew the hell Chloe had described. It was enough to make the furthest depths of oblivion seem attractive.

  From between the trees, Chloe stepped out. She wore the same black dress he’d last seen on her. She staggered as if in a drunken daze, but she was certainly alive. Her pale skin glowed with vital energy. As she came forward, a slight inkling of hope stirred within him. Despite all he’d seen tonight, he thought maybe salvation had come for him after all. A bitter notion that maybe she’d come to punish him for being unable to save her also rose and threatened to eclipse all optimism.