by Sawyer Black
Samantha laughed again, covering her mouth with her hand.
“You know this tragedy couldn’t have been avoided, yet a part of you is angry with Henry for leaving you alone. After all, his success invited those murderers into your home in search of easy opportunity. Those murderers took your husband, daughter, and life. Amélie’s dead. It’s either your fault or Henry’s. At least according to how you’re probably thinking. Best for your sanity if you let Henry take the rap, for now.”
“All of that’s true. But it’s not what I mean.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’m angry with Henry. But it has nothing to do with … what happened. I’m pissed at him for a million other things, stuff we never got to hash out, mad he never took our sessions with you seriously. Counseling was always a joke or an obligation to sit through. Like being on a talk show he didn’t want to do, where he had to smile and say all the right things. He even had a routine about coming here, but I hated all three minutes, and told him that if he took our therapy on stage again, that was it.”
“Unfinished business,” the pastor said. “Perfectly normal.”
Samantha ignored him. “Remember the W.A.A. joke I told you about?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t think I ever forgave him, even though I promised him I had.” Sam waited through half a minute, gathering her thoughts. “I understand Henry had to be funny, and that our future was born from that humor. I got it then, I get it now. It was always part of the deal. But, Pastor, that man has no filter. Or had no filter. There are basic boundaries of everyday decency that apply to offstage life that should be carried onstage, too. Life’s not lived with a microphone in your hand.”
Samantha’s speech grew fast, almost high pitched, like it always did when she told the Waa! Story. “I was the charity director for Women Against Abuse, and that bastard called it Waa!, like the women were all crying over spilt milk. He had no right to ruin that for me. When that video hit YouTube, I had to resign from something I cared about, something I believed in. Something I was great at and did good for. He knew that joke wasn’t okay. And if he didn’t, that’s worse. Almost. Nothing’s worse than it seeming like he didn’t even care. Acting like it wasn’t even a big deal that I quit and saying it wasn’t like the job was making us rich!”
The pastor nodded, just like he had every time the story was told in one of their counseling sessions.
Watching Sam sob was horrible. Worse was choking on his laughter after remembering the joke’s rhythm and reciting it in his head. He cared that she lost her job, but Henry was also pissed that the organization would get so bent about a joke that was clearly ironic. He wasn’t making fun of battered women, ever. He was making fun of the idiot misogynists who made stupid jokes like the Waa! Story.
How the fuck can you tell jokes when you have to be so politically correct, forever afraid to offend someone somewhere. Of course you’re gonna offend someone. If not, no one’s laughing.
Sensitive cunts.
Still, watching Sam cry, Henry felt no different from those loutish men.
Samantha sobbed for several minutes until the pastor finally rose from his seat and walked over to her side of the desk, dragging his chair behind him. He sat beside her, stroking her long black hair. Henry felt worse with every stroke.
Once Samantha stopped crying she fell into a laugh, a real one, the kind that made Henry fall so hard for her in the first place. “I don’t know, I just felt like he loved his career more than me, sometimes. I know it’s crazy, and I should appreciate the struggle he went through to get where he got, but still, I think making it was more about him than providing for us. That he cared more about what strangers thought of him than about his own family.”
Pastor Owen smiled. “I’m sure he loved you very much.”
I did! I DO love you, Sam.
But even as he thought that, Henry saw the painful truth in what she was saying. And he had no defense. She was right. He had cared way too much about what strangers thought of him, and hadn’t realized how much it had come at the expense of Sam.
His stomach churned. Her voice half-cracked through her next pair of sentences.
“I know you can never prepare for this sort of thing, but I didn’t realize I’d feel so empty. So unfinished. He’s gone, but it’s way worse that she’s gone forever, too.”
Samantha cried again. Not as hard as the first time, but deeper. Henry knew the tone. She’d be finishing her cry alone.
She stood from her chair and the pastor stood from his. He pulled her hands into his and drew her into a light hug. “The church has an ear for you, Samantha. Please don’t be afraid to bend it.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
Samantha thanked Pastor Owen again, then turned and left his office.
Henry aimed for a cluster of shadows outside the doorway. A second from launch, the pastor looked up. “It’s okay, Henry. You can stay.”
Chapter Fourteen
How can he see me?
Henry allowed the shadows to fade into wisps as he fell to the ground and revealed himself to the pastor.
Grateful for the hoodie still shrouding his face, Henry avoided the man’s eyes. “How did you know I was there?”
Pastor Owen smiled at Henry, his lips looking as genuine as they would on any normal Sunday morning. “I wish I had a better answer, Henry. Something to ease your mind. Unfortunately, my response is sure to disappoint. I didn’t expect to see you, and didn’t know I would until you were there. Once I did, it all seemed like part of a plan. For that is how He works.”
“But how can you see me?”
“Because I show God everything, while never holding back, the Good Lord keeps little from me.”
“How can you be sure what God does or doesn’t want you to know?” Henry took another step forward, this time lifting his hands to his hoodie and drawing it back from his head.
“Did he show you this?”
Henry recoiled at his own mangled face, cast in the reflection from the mirror between two full bookcases. Twisted and tormented, hair sprouting on his scalp in dark patches. Points of skin rising above his temples.
Is that fucking horns?
He expected Pastor Owen to fall back in horror, but while clearly surprised, the pastor didn’t flinch. He seemed more fascinated than anything else.
Except perhaps sympathetic.
“I am so, so sorry, Henry.” He placed his open palm to Henry’s face, as though he held gauze and dabbed at blood.
At his touch, Henry was struck by a sudden, soothing calm.
“Would you like to sit?” Owen gestured toward the chair that still held the shape of Sam’s ass in its fabric.
Henry pulled the hood back up over his head, then sat across from the pastor, who had dragged his chair back behind the desk.
What, you don’t want to stroke my hair?
Henry worried about Samantha going home alone and wondered what might happen if she returned to the carport and discovered the missing Lexus. Yet even the weight from that pair of worries couldn’t pull him from a man who saw through his shadows and asked him to stay.
“Would you like to tell me why you faked your death?”
“I didn’t fake my death, Pastor. I died.”
Pastor Owen raised his eyebrows. “Well, this sounds like quite the tale.”
“Where do I start?” Henry was really asking. He had no idea.
“How about at the beginning? What happened during the break-in?”
“I’ve no idea what Samantha said, or the media, but it wasn’t a break-in so much as three murderers forcing their way into our home. I was reading to Amélie when I heard something downstairs. I made it halfway down when some asshole with a gun started waving the barrel at my face. I was running through these different scenarios in my head, to either get them out of the house, or maybe even get one of their guns away. Guess I’ve seen Die Hard too many fucking times.”
Pastor Owen win
ced at Henry’s language but said nothing.
“Before I had a chance to do anything, though, one of the bastards shot me. That was the last I can remember until I woke up dead. And this is where you may think I’m at least one sandwich short of a picnic, but I woke up in Purgatory.”
“And how long were you in Purgatory?”
Henry had no idea whether the pastor’s question was serious or if he was merely placating him, but Henry felt his disturbing new appearance was all the proof he needed to show the pastor that something odd was happening in The Burg. “Just long enough to make a deal with a demon so I could return to save my family.”
“A deal? With a demon?”
“Yes. The demon said he could bring me back. I didn’t know what happened after I was killed, but I had to find out. I had to see if I could come back and do something.”
“I see.”
“Turns out, the demon tricked me, since I have no family left to save. At least not like I thought I would. I would tell you more, but it’s all just too fucked up.”
“And you anticipate my disbelief? I’ve listened to everything you’ve said to me so far.”
With assurances that he believed, and would continue believing, the pastor urged him to continue. Henry finished his story about his time in Nowhere, then told him about the different frequencies Boothe had shown him, as well as what each did. He admitted to being at his own funeral and described Boothe’s apartment and everything else bobbing on the surface of his memory. As promised, the pastor took in every word without a hint of skepticism. He wouldn’t have blamed the man for giving him the same oh yeah right attitude that Henry had always brought to Sunday sermons.
Pastor Owen stayed quiet, his eyes thoughtful as if measuring his options. After Henry finished, the pastor sighed. “I’ll be able to help you, but only if you put your faith in me. You must trust me, more than anything or anyone else. Can you do that?”
“Of course, Pastor,” Henry nodded. He didn’t believe himself, but the nod felt right. “What can I do?”
“For starters, tell me everything.” The pastor smiled through a long pause. “What is it you’re still not saying?”
“I told you everything.”
“No, Henry.” The pastor shook his head. “You haven’t. You’ve told me many things, nearly everything except for one final thing. That’s what I’d like to know. The thing I need most to help you, right now.”
Henry remembered his dream.
The dream that might have been real.
How could I forget about that? And how could he know I was holding something back I couldn’t even remember? Is God showing him shit again?
I have to find Boothe and tell him I need help getting to Nowhere!
“Last night I might have dreamt of Amélie. At least I hope it was a dream. I was too faded to be sure. If it wasn’t a dream, then I saw Amélie was crying for help, screaming for me from Purgatory. I couldn’t do anything, though. I just had to stare at her flicker like a dying TV.”
Surprise surfaced on the pastor’s face for the first time, followed by a ghostly pallor. “Have you told the demon that you saw your daughter?”
“No.” Henry shook his head. “Of course not. This happened last night, either right before or after I fell asleep. I was on my way here five minutes after I woke up, following Sam. Why?”
“The demon cannot know. Not under any circumstances.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, at least not exactly. But I know God, and have learned to listen when the Lord tells me something isn’t right. If you’re here to protect Samantha and Amélie, then you must not allow the demon to know that your daughter is able to speak with you. She will be used against you. Rules are different in places that are not Here.”
“But I have to find her. I have to return to Purgatory!”
“No.” The pastor shook his head with authority. “Amélie is safe in Purgatory. If she is somehow coming Here, you must keep it from the demon.”
Pastor Owen continued speaking, but his words were suddenly thick and scrambled, like someone slowing a record. Henry wasn’t able to decode a single sentence.
Something was wrong, and it was burning Henry’s insides.
There was Hell inside him.
What’s happening?
Henry fell from his chair to the floor, writhing and moaning.
“Are you okay?” Pastor Owen cried, his worried words cutting through Henry’s pain.
Henry groaned, waving the pastor away and trying to focus while working to stand. The pastor tried helping Henry to his feet.
“Oh, my,” he whispered, touching Henry. “You’re burning up.”
Henry squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head until he realized the fire was coming from outside the church. He pushed the pastor from his path and raced from the office. Down a short hallway before erupting from the side door and into the parking lot.
Something pushed him to get away from the church. Like a ball from a cannon, Henry flew across the lot and headed to his Lexus. He’d be safe once inside. He knew it.
But he froze thirty feet from the Lexus, his eyes rolling up to a woman hovering in the air, high in the sky. She seemed to Henry at least ten feet tall, maybe even twenty. She descended, with long, flowing hair of white fire. A flaming sword in her hand, fashioned from a star’s worth of hard light. She was bathed in flowing robes covered in golden armor. The heavy light that had made her seem so large were wings pointed above her head as she fell. Pure white and covered with soft feathers, she spread them wide to slow her descent. She drove them down a single time, and the dust from the parking lot kicked up into twin spirals that shot behind her like exhaust. Then she slowly floated toward him.
As she moved closer, her voice filled the air around him. And his mind. A lullaby that pulled Henry toward her light. He stared as if doing so could somehow allow him to take in all of her majesty. Captured by her beauty for what felt like minutes, Henry was unable to turn away. He needed to see more. He had to hear the song.
Until it turned into a scream, and her sword dropped with its point at the center of his chest.
Her shriek sent Henry to his knees. They smashed into the concrete. His jaw followed. He was on the ground, twitching and blinking between Pastor Owen coming across the parking lot and the strobing light above him. She drifted closer, until she hovered only a few feet above Henry. Her voice was so loud. It pierced his body with true pain, not something in his head that he could somehow ignore.
A second light joined the first. Another voice driving the song into Henry’s soul. The glow doubled as a man in the same robes and armor slipped from behind the woman pointing the sword at Henry's heart. His wings closed as his feet touched the ground, and he pulled a net made of sparkling light over his shoulder. The net unfurled, settling over Henry like a parachute. Wherever the light touched him, it burned and sizzled against his skin.
The heat and agony tore through him, until suddenly, the pain disappeared. Henry felt nothing … and then he was warm. Impossibly, wonderfully, thoroughly warm. He smiled, waiting for the sword, certain that the moment it touched him, his world and everything in it would be flooded with light.
He would feel whole for the first time ever.
Surrender to the light.
The voice boomed in his mind. Commanding. Soothing.
Close your eyes, child.
Boothe appeared in the cracker-thin space between Henry’s aura and that of the descending brightness. Black shadows and white light collided, crashing with each other into an ugly gray mud. Boothe stood with his back to Henry, thrusting his palms in front of his body. He sent a blast of ink-black smoke swirling through the air in an angry spiral. Darkness coiled around the light, slipping like snakes around their brilliant bodies and through the feathers on their wings, extinguishing luminescence as it slithered around their necks.
The man and woman screeched at a pitch deafening enough to shatter his body. He would explo
de like frozen glass. The bright light pushed Boothe to the ground, on his knees beside Henry’s head.
A brilliant ball of white fire gathered in the center of the woman’s chest. She screamed a battle cry, throwing her arms wide. The ball unraveled, flying from her body in a thousand tiny strings.
Henry had died once. He wondered how different the second time might be.
Chapter Fifteen
Boothe spun and spread out, smothering Henry with his body.
The world folded away, more painfully than before, as if the encounter with the light had left shrapnel inside him.
Henry and Boothe blinked away from the chaos.
Back in Boothe’s apartment, Henry’s head swam. His mind and face felt burned and melted. A sorrow welled up, like he almost missed the nightmare’s brilliant beauty as he looked around Boothe’s apartment.
Then the memory of the net burning in his head sent him screaming.
“Stop screaming, Henry. You sound like an infant.” Boothe tapped his foot.
Henry hitched a breath, like a child gearing up for another fit. “What the fuck were those things?”
“One of the many reasons you shouldn’t leave the apartment during daylight. And a prime example of the potential consequences of ignoring me.”
“That’s not an answer,” Henry gasped through gritted teeth.
“Those things were Trackers.”
“Oh, Trackers, well, why didn’t you just say so?” Henry glared at Boothe. “You wanna tell me what the hell a Tracker is?”
“Remember how I said there are rules? Some angels take these rules very seriously, and seem to believe it’s their purpose to go around killing our kind on Earth. They track demons and trap them in those nets.”
“Then what? Do they send us to Hell?”
“Worse. They destroy your soul. Erase you like you never existed.”
Henry shivered as Boothe finished his sentence.
“So, you’re telling me I can’t let people see me as I really am, and I also have to watch out for glowing fucking angels who might erase me in broad daylight? I think you could’ve maybe mentioned something about them before now.”