Hell's Bells

by K. B. Draper

  “On the jumbotron?”

  “They draw a big crowd. I don’t go to every one of them. They’re every day, well except for Sunday, of course. They take that whole day of rest thing seriously up there. I usually go on Taco Tuesday and when they do the fried popcorn shrimp buffet special, unless it conflicts with my pickleball league.”

  “Pickleball?”

  “Yes, it’s really fun. Oh, when you get there, maybe you and I could team up. Grandpa is good, but he’s a little soft when we play the nuns’ team, Nun Ya Bizness. They’re ruthless. Probably all that built-up sexual energy. They have taken us out in the last round of the tourney for the past three years running.”

  I had no words. Wait, found some. “This is the most messed-up spirit walk ever. You sure I’m not hallucinating from one too many Frappuccino’s? Or maybe I accidentally licked one of those poisonous frog butts?”

  Grandma chuckled. “Wouldn’t put it past you. You were always good at getting into messes. Remember the time you tied a sheet around your neck, crawled up on the well house, and thought you could fly? Or the next week when you got your new cast suck in the toy grabber game?

  “I was robbed.”

  “Or the time you thought there was a pirate ship full of treasure in the backyard, and you spent all day out there with a shovel. You found three bottle caps and a license plate. Oh, and then when you thought you—”

  “Let’s be honest, this could go on for a while. Can we maybe …” I rolled my wrist.

  Grandma chuckled. “Oh, I could go on for an eternity, which I have.” She sighed, “But, sadly, you don’t.”

  “Wow, spoiler alert much?”

  “You’re good. Well, for now you’re good. Or I think you are. Honestly, they don’t tell us that either. I have no idea really, but when do we ever know? My best friend up there, Rita, one minute she was eating a churro, and then the next she got taken out by a lawn chair.” Grandma clapped her hands together. “It just folded right up on her.”

  “Your best friend got killed by a lawn chair folding up on her?”

  “Well, technically, it was the bull that ran over her. She was over in Spain watching the Running of the Bulls from a street-side patio …”

  “In a lawn chair,” I finished for her.

  She bobbed her head. “Yep, one of her orthopedic shoes got caught up in the legs and … whammo. I didn’t say Rita was the smartest, but she can put a mean spin on a pickleball. We do women’s doubles together.”

  “Nice.” I waited a second or two. “Grandma?”

  “Yes?”

  “Spirit walk?” I prompted.

  “Right. What about it?”

  “That was my question.”

  “Oh, well I don’t know. It’s your journey. You are supposed to find the answers you need here. I’m just here as a friendly guide.”

  “Got to be honest, Grandma, you’re nailing the friendly part, but the guide …” I waffled my hand back and forth.

  “Listen here, Miss Sassafrass.” I couldn’t help but grin at her grandma slang for smart mouth. “You are the only one who can make sense of it all.”

  “Nothing about my life makes sense,” I said, sliding lower in the booth.

  “You were never one to throw a pity party. A kegger, yes, but not a pity party.”

  A sphere of light opened up next to our booth. “Looks like my ride is here. I have to go.” She slid out of the booth and held open her arms, which were also fading. “Come here, sweet child.”

  I stood and walked into her arms. “I don’t want you to go.” Words I’d said to her a thousand times, the last time having been before they closed the casket at her funeral.

  “Know that I’m never far. Oh sorry, I almost forgot. Granny Mattox told me to tell you, ‘Answers are in your past.’”

  I stared blankly at her. She gave me another hug and kiss on the cheek. “You will figure it all out. I have faith in you. You always were a tenacious little thing. I’ll see you soon.” Then she stepped into the light and was gone—for a whole second, and then she leaned back out. “But not too soon. Be careful.” And with a tootleoo wave of her fingers she was gone. And the light was gone.

  I dropped back into the booth, pushing the tray aside to make room for my exhausted brain, which I banged repeatedly on the table. “Answers are in my past? What the freak am I supposed to do with that.” Before my brain could populate a useful answer, shadows shifted in the room, and a glow of a flashlight began to sweep the dining area. “Shit.” I stayed low as I slid out of the booth. I duckwalked two feet, then sighed, “Damn, environmental conditioning.” I retreated to grab our tray and trash, disposed of them and fled the scene.

  Ashlyn was standing on the small patio, her fingers playing an unknown riff on the side of her plastic-foam motel coffee cup. “Go for a run?” she asked as I approached.

  I forwent the bushes and their hidden treasures, choosing to leap from the parking lot to the patio. “Yeah. It was interesting.”

  “Lights and sirens interesting?” she asked as police sirens were sounding in the background. I shrugged in response. She ran a hand over my cheek. “You’re exhausted. Samuel’s up and on lookout. Why don’t you come in, lie down for a bit, and tell me about it, including how you got lipstick on your cheek.”

  I laid a hand over hers, pressing my two favorite DNAs closer to me.

  Chapter 15

  Light piercing my eyelids had me stirring a few hours later. I rolled over, auto-reaching for Ashlyn. I cracked an eyelid when I didn’t find a body next to me and pulled the pillow over my head, not even caring that I had a three-star motel petri dish of cooties covering so many of my exposed orifices. And wouldn’t that be an awesome end to all this. All this epic buildup only to have Lucifer taken out a la War of the Worlds style by him getting infected by bed cooties coming out my earholes. Wow, I was obviously still tired.

  I felt the bed dip. “Morning, sunshine.”

  I groaned.

  Ashlyn lifted the pillow from my face. “I got you coffee and a cinnamon roll from the café down the street.”

  The smell of coffee mixed with melting icing was enough incentive to have my eyelids exert a little more effort. I pushed up to sit against the headboard. “Thanks. How long was I out?”

  “Not long enough. Only about three hours. It’s just after eight.”

  “Danny and crew?” I asked as I pulled at the outer ring of the roll, pinching off a bite-size piece.

  “Spoke to them about an hour ago. They weren’t seeing anything new. They have Grand and are heading this way. Danny wants us to stay here and wait for them. Go in together.”

  I filed that in the “to be determined” file as I pulled off another bite and stuffed it in my mouth. “You tell him about my little encounter?”

  “No, I figured that was your story to tell.”

  “He was driving so Mia was going to start looking into it.” I nodded. “But you already have an idea.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I don’t know. I hope I don’t.”

  Ashlyn rubbed a hand up and down my thigh. “Apoc?”

  “Apoc,” I repeated without the question mark. I set the cinnamon roll on the bedside table, any appetite for the sweet treat gone with my thoughts. Ashlyn did the same with the cup of coffee.

  “I had the same thoughts, unfortunately. Wouldn’t that be the ironic twist. We end up using the very thing we’re trying to keep out of the hands of others.”

  “Every good story has one.”

  “If that’s the case, we’d be doing it to protect him. Not to gain power or take over …” Her words died out as they sank in. “Maybe there’s another way,” she said instead, moving to tuck herself along my side, her head lying on my chest, her arm wrapping around my waist.

  “Maybe.”

  We fell silent. My mind was trying to navigate all the unknowns only to hit road closed and detour signs at every turn. Ashlyn’s hand wandered underneath my shirt, bringing me back to the here
and now. I was usually the one that kickstarted this ride, but when she took the handlebars, let’s just say all my parts roared to life. V to the vvv-room.

  “Maybe we give our brains a rest for a while?” she asked as her caresses moved north and she swung a hip over mine. I reached for her, but she caught my wrist, giving my palm a quick kiss before guiding it up to the short newel post. She wrapped my fingers around it, ordering them, “Stay.”

  “I have a second one,” I said, and to prove my point I cupped her ass with it.

  “I’m very aware of your hands, trust me.” She leaned down for a kiss. “And I have plans for it as well,” she offered, removing it from its current parking spot and valeting it around to her chest. She pressed my hand, kneading it, so in turn it did the same to her breast. She leaned back in pleasure, her hips grinding against mine. Her hand left mine to lift my shirt, exposing Righty and Tighty. True to form, they responded to the attention. Ashlyn’s mouth moved to my collarbone, my neck, and then to my ear, before taking my hand again and guiding it above my head. “Let me take you first,” she whispered, before nipping at my earlobe, chuckling low and huskily, when she heard the wood of the headboard crack. “Don’t make me tell Danny he has to pay for another motel bed.” She didn’t give my lips a chance to respond, deliciously distracting them instead. She went on to entertain a few other of my parts and pieces and my whatsadoodle. And my Winn-Dixie. Twice.

  Too many moans to count later, the bed enjoyed a final shuddering release. Or maybe it was me. Probably me since I couldn’t feel my legs. Not a great thing heading into an apocalypse, but I really didn’t care at the moment. “Holy crap,” I said on an exhale.

  Ashlyn tucked herself into the crook of my shoulder, satisfaction on her lips. I let her bask in her moment for a whole three seconds before kissing the smirk off her face.

  The bed did break this go-around. Our heads ended up lower than our asses. “Holy crap.” I repeated my earlier words as we lay there, our blood reversing course and heading back to our frontal lobes.

  Eventually we untangled our limbs and decided to shower and get ready. “What does one wear to a possible apocalypse?” I asked, pulling out my “L’Eggo My Eggo” and “You’re Killing My Vibe” T-shirts. “Which one?”

  Ashlyn stopped unzipping her own bag to ponder. “Vibe. I’m praying no one gets close enough to get hold of your Eggo or anything else for that matter.”

  “I can get behind that,” I replied, pulling the shirt over my head.

  “Oh, and here.” She pulled out a nondescript cardboard box. “Last box in Granny Mattox’s stuff. Maybe what she left you is in here. Or answers to your past? We have time, so do you want to go through it?”

  “Yeah.” I reached for the shoebox-sized package, glad now that I’d thought to ask her to grab it. I’d already looked through the larger of the boxes, which had held mostly papers, a couple of photo albums, and other mementos. The family stuff was interesting, but I didn’t find anything relevant to our current situation, and I hadn’t had time to look through this last container. The box was plain, with no logos or commercial markings. It did however look like someone at some point had written a short message on its top in maybe a felt-tip marker. But the years in storage had taken its toll and the letters were faded beyond recognition. It was heavy for a box its size, roughly eight inches by fourteen. The yellowed tape holding the lid in place offered little resistance when I picked at a corner.

  Within the box there was another container, this one made of wood.

  “Jewelry box?” Ashlyn asked leaning over.

  “I was never a jewelry kind of girl. For that matter, neither was Granny Mattox.” I removed the chest, tossing the outer box aside as I took in the details of the lid. It was a simple design, the wood darkened and weathered. Its edges and small scroll work had smoothed with time, losing some of the finer details. There were no visible hinges, and the only metal showing was the small ornate lock and clasp that held it secure. I inspected the lock and suspected, though old, it was not the original. The bottom was smooth, though there was a script in one corner. I held it under the light.

  “Can you make it out?” Ashlyn asked.

  “No.”

  “Here.” She grabbed her phone, swiped though her apps, “Magnifying glass.” I held it at an angle so she could zoom in and snap a pic.

  I waited for her to do her thing, going back to my old-school way of using my eyes and fingertips. She dropped on the bed, holding her screen out for me. “What the—” Hoyo Abi was inscribed in the wood. The bringer of death and my super-fun title at the moment.

  “It was meant for you,” Ashlyn stated.

  “But, I don’t … how?”

  Ashlyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s open it. Maybe there are answers in there. I’ll grab the Leatherman.”

  Flipping the chest back over, I examined the scrollwork. It was a large tree-like design, something like a Tree of Life, simple in its detail. Rays of an unseen sun were running through its branches to reach the ground. And there, carved at the base of the tree, was a simple symbol that I knew all too well as I’d had it supernaturally tramp-stamped—crookedly I might add—on my lower back. I tapped it when Ashlyn returned to sit next to me.

  “The bow and arrow.”

  “Danny and Grand’s bloodline. Why would my great-grandmother have something with that on it?” I asked, knowing there was no way Ashlyn would have the answer.

  She handed me the multitool with the screwdriver already deployed. I worked on the lock and latch, not wanting to damage it or the box. It took me awhile, but I finally had the top half of the latch pried from the box, the three small nails holding it in place giving in first. The box lid slid open as I eased it along its carved tracks.

  Within it was paper, rolled up like a scroll, bound by a simple cord. I handed it and the Leatherman to Ashlyn so I could remove the second and only other item in the box. A knife in a leather sheath was held in place by a wood tray, which had a notch cut out to hold the blade and a wider one to hold the handle. I carefully slid it out of its hold, examining first its handle and then the sleeve. In all it was just shy of a foot long, maybe ten inches. The handle was wrapped, in again what I assumed to be leather or hide as the edges were lighter brown whereas the middle where it had presumedly been gripped was darker, almost black. I slowly slid out the blade, expecting stone or bone if its origins were actually Native American. But it was neither. It was clear. I ran my fingertips over it. It was hard like stone, its edges sharpened like arrowheads.

  “Crystal?” Ashlyn asked beside me.

  I held it out to her to get a closer look and feel. “I guess.”

  “It’s incredible,” she said as she ran a finger over the blade.

  I had to agree with her. I held it up toward the window and turned its handle in my hand, watching the blade throw prisms of light around the room.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe this will tell us more.” She carefully unwrapped a single sheet of paper that had been wrapped around the larger and different textured core. “This looks newer than the other.” She rolled it out to take in the words. “AJ.” I stopped the rainbow lightshow to look at her. “It’s to you.”

  “To me?”

  She held the paper out. “It’s from your Granny Mattox.”

  I sat the knife between us on the bed, taking the paper from her. “I don’t …” My words dying off as I began to read.

  Dear Addison,

  I am sorry that we never spoke of this while we were together, but my time here in this world is coming to an end and I fear you are still too young to comprehend what I need to tell you.

  I had hoped the prophecies were wrong when I birthed a son, and he a son as well, but when you were brought into this world and I held you in the hospital, I knew you were special. I knew you were the one the ancestors spoke of in our legends. With this letter, I have left you one last story. It is our ancestors’ story. It
is my story. It is your story.

  With love and great pride,

  Granny Mattox

  “Interesting,” Ashlyn stated when I rolled the letter back up.

  “What the heck does that mean?”

  “Hopefully, this will tell us.” Ashlyn uncurled the second piece of … not paper, but what looked more like a thicker fibrous material. She started to hand it to me, but I waved her off.

  “You read it. I can’t, I’m too …” I didn’t even have words to finish the sentence.

  It took only three words before I was off the bed and pacing. What Ashlyn read changed everything I knew about my world and how I’d come to be here. Well, not come to be in the biological sense, thankfully ’cause ick, but here on the edge of an apocalypse, chilling in this cheap motel with Ashlyn, an escaped hellhound-previous-heaven hound, three angels—one fallen—and an Apoc.

  I’ll Cliffs Notes the story for you starting with the big WTF spoiler alert. Apparently, Norm has, or would it be had? I don’t know the proper tense since Norm was currently parked curbside. Whatever, anyway, Norm has/d a twin sister. As we already knew, or assumed very strongly, Lucifer sent demons to attack the tribe in an attempt to cut the prophecy off at its roots or at least the ass-kicking part of it a.k.a. kill the TBD Hoyo Abi, who was supposed to be born to the tribe.

  At the time Chief and Mama Chief had two kids, twins, a son to be later renamed by me Norm and apparently a daughter, my great-times-three-grandmother. Before going into hell to try to save his wife and son, Chief ordered a surviving elder to take his daughter, who had miraculously survived after being concealed in a basket under some deerskins, and hid her in the “white” world. I think you can see how the rest of the story unfolded from there. And isn’t that just the most big holy freaking twist-of-fate shit.

  There was other stuff in there like a fun cryptic riddle about twin souls, old and new connected in power like thunder and lightning. Because why not. I might as well stop to solve today’s Word Jumble or decipher the DaVinci Code, while I’m at it. Oh, and hey, do you know what wasn’t included? A user’s guide for the super knife. Because why make things easy?