There was no difference anymore.
Christopher felt as if he would have no blood left, but he would never let go. No matter how much it hurt. Whatever he had left he would give to her. The whisper scratch made Christopher feel the bullet in her body. Every hope and every fear that pulled the triggers. Every broken promise and broken life.
His fever climbed. Christopher’s head screamed. His skull felt like it would snap in half. He knew everything now. Everything his mother had been through. Everything his mother had ever done for him. He looked at her life, and he finally understood this feeling inside him.
The feeling was not pain.
It was power.
He was omniscient. He was omnipotent. He was as close to God as a mortal could be. He healed her broken ribs. Every cavity. Every wrinkle. Every little ache and pain. It all ran through him and disappeared into the clouds.
Christopher’s mother opened her eyes. She was alive.
“Christopher?” she whispered. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing, Mom. You’re okay now.”
He kept touching her chest. Giving her more and more life. He saw all of her memories. Not only the fact of them. The feeling of them. The tears. The rage. The self-hatred. The invisible scars.
“Mom, I can take away all of your pain. Will you let me do it?”
“What?” she said softly.
“You don’t have to feel any hurt again. Will you let me do that for you?”
“Yes, honey. Whatever you want,” she said.
He brought his hand over her shoulder and touched the skin between her breast and collarbone. For a moment, she didn’t feel any different.
And then, it started.
She looked up at her son, blood pouring out of his nose.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked Christopher. “Do you have a nosebleed?”
“I’ll be okay, Mom. Just watch,” he said.
She instinctively reached up and wiped the blood from his face. He took her hand in his and smiled. His warmth spread all over her skin, and she saw her life pass in front of her eyes. Every time she hid her tears because she was not going to teach her son how to be afraid. Every time she smiled to make him feel safe, then went into the next room and counted the thirty-one dollars they had left. All the hits she took for him. All the things she gave up for him. Every time she tucked him into bed at night. Every time she dragged herself out of bed because she would never give up on Christopher the way that everyone she ever knew gave up on her. She felt every moment she ever spent with her son all over again.
But not the way she saw it.
The way he saw it.
At first, she didn’t recognize the feeling, but when she realized what it was, tears began to pour from her eyes. She felt what it was like to be put first. What it was like to be loved without condition by someone bigger who could protect her and make things right. She was her own parent. She was safe. She had never been so happy in all her life. But it was more than happiness. It was more than safety. It wasn’t what she felt. It’s what she didn’t feel anymore.
There was no pain.
It was gone. All of the guilt. The fear. The blame she took for his dyslexia. For their poverty. For their situation. It all melted away. There was no failure. She saw herself only as he saw her. A hero. All powerful. All knowing. The most amazing person who ever walked on the face of the earth.
She looked up at her son smiling down at her like he had every Movie Friday. Every time he picked up a book for her. Every time he pretended to love a movie for her. Every time he made her a beer on the rocks. She felt her own smile. Her hugs. Her cooking. Her beauty. An eternity of moments stretched out in front of them as they looked up at the light of one hundred billion stars.
“Mom,” he said. “This is who you really are.”
In that moment, Christopher closed his eyes and gave his mother back all of the love she had ever given him.
She was in Heaven.
Christopher’s nose stopped bleeding. He put a warm hand on her forehead, and she curled up like a little girl ready to fall back asleep.
“Go to sleep, Mom,” he said. “It’s all a bad dream. It’ll be okay in the morning.”
“Okay, honey. Good night,” she said.
“Good night.”
Christopher bent over and kissed her warm forehead. She would be dreaming now.
“I will never let them hurt you,” he said.
Then, he stood up. Christopher had taken in all of her pain. His joints swelled. His knees creaked. His arms felt skinny and weak. He looked back through the clearing. The town stared back at him with their dead eyes. The nice man had taken them all. All but his mother. There was no one left. Christopher was all alone.
He took his broken body and limped toward the tree.
The town parted like the Red Sea. Hundreds of frogs not understanding why they were suddenly starting to feel so bad. Christopher knew that he was walking to his own death, but he had no choice but to walk. For her. For them. For everyone. He reached the bottom of the tree. He moved his skinny arms up and climbed the little 2x4s like baby teeth.
Christopher reached the tree house.
He opened the door and looked inside. It was just a little room, empty and cold. With nothing but the sheriff and Ambrose lying on the floor, twitching unconsciously, muttering horror in their sleep. The smell was all wrong. The light was too bright. Something had changed. The nice man controlled the portal now. Christopher didn’t know what would be different once he closed that door. All he knew for sure was that the nice man couldn’t kill the hissing lady without him.
And that Christopher was the only thing keeping Hell from Earth.
Christopher stepped into the tree house, holding the hissing lady’s key in his pocket like a lucky rabbit’s foot. He turned and looked at his mother sleeping peacefully on the ground. The only light left in the world.
“I love you, Mom,” he said.
Then, Christopher closed the door and walked into Hell.
Part VII
The Shadow oF Death
Chapter 121
Christopher opened his eyes.
He was still in the tree house. He saw his physical body still lying next to Ambrose and the sheriff, lost and twitching. But something was different. Something had changed. Christopher moved to the door. He put his ear to it. He listened for any signs of the nice man. All he heard was whispering. Voices he’d never heard before. Hissing his name.
“Chrissstopher.”
“We know you can hear ussss.”
He turned to the windows to see who was whispering, but the windows were so fogged over that he couldn’t see out. The clouds were all around them. Covering both sides of the world like a blindfold.
“Chrissstopher…you’re running out of air.”
The voices were right. The air inside the tree house had become hot and thick like breath under a blanket. The whispers scratched at the tree house.
“This is what happens to people in coffins.”
“They run out of air.”
“They are alive down there, Christopher.”
“They are squirming.”
“If you don’t come out, you’ll die just like them,” the voices whispered.
Christopher had no choice. He reached for the doorknob. He opened it just enough to let fresh air into the room. The breeze outside was charcoal-sweet, like cotton candy barbecued on an open spit. He peeked one eye through the door crack. What he saw horrified him.
The imaginary world was beautiful.
The grass was green. The sky was blue. And black. And starry. And clear. All at the same time. The sun was as bright as the moon right next to it. A breeze rustled through the tree leaves, green and ripe as fruit. The weather was a perfect mixture of warm and cold. Balmy and dry. A beautiful spring day mixed with a crisp autumn night. The best of all seasons. The best of all times. Not quite day. Not quite night. The best of both and the worst of none.
The M
ission Street Woods were heavenly.
Christopher looked down into the beautiful world and saw.
Hundreds of deer.
In the clearing.
Staring up at him.
Voices hidden in the wind.
“Hi, Christopher.”
“Hello, friend.”
“Just come down. We won’t eat you. Not this time.”
Christopher felt the whispers on his neck. He whipped around and saw a tree branch reach down like a snake in Medusa’s hair. The branch offered its hand to him and helped him down to the ladder. Light as a feather.
“Right this way, Christopher,” the friendly voice said.
The voice was everywhere. The voice was nowhere. He looked up at the blue moon next to the orange sun. They lit the clouds above the clearing like a lantern. The stars above were twinkling like Christmas lights.
Christopher held the ladder. It felt wet and slick. White and shiny. The 2x4s were now baby teeth. He climbed the ladder.
Down the giant tree.
With every step, Christopher’s body ached. He felt weak after healing his mother. The only thing he had left was his mind. He knew the sheriff was lost somewhere inside here. Ambrose, too. They were running out of time. He looked down at the clearing and saw the deer standing there. Trying so hard to not look like their ribs were sticking through their skin from starvation. They licked their noses with long, scratchy tongues.
“That’s it, Christopher. Careful now,” said the voice.
Christopher kept moving. For his mother. For his friends. For his town. He reached the ground and stared at the deer approaching. Bowing to him. Nibbling the ground around his feet. Nuzzling his hands.
Christopher was too weak to outrun them. Too weak to fly. But he forced himself to walk. They surrounded him like guards. To keep him safe. To keep him walking. He looked ahead at the woods. The tree branches were smiling now, slithering like cat tails. A frown gone sick.
The breeze did its best to cover the sounds, but he could still feel the screaming in the distance. The cries of “Make it stop!” on the imaginary side mixing with the shouts of “Here we come!” on the real. The worlds were bleeding together. The frogs were starting to itch.
Ms. Lasko just opened a bottle of whiskey. She put it to her nose. It smelled delicious. She moved it to her mouth. But her mouth was sewn shut.
Christopher could feel Ms. Lasko cry through her stitches. He didn’t have much time. Christopher walked through the beautiful woods. The branches rubbed his shoulders. Ruffled his hair. Gently nudged him down the path.
“Mom?” he could feel Mrs. Collins scream. “Mom?! Why won’t you let me in the kitchen now?! You promised! Please! I’m so cold!”
Christopher hobbled down the path. He looked down and saw footprints. Every foot was different. Men. Women. Boys. Girls. The feet were getting smaller. Human beings disappearing.
“Mom?!” he could feel Brady Collins cry. “Mom?! Why won’t you let me in the kitchen now?! You promised! Please! I’m so cold!”
Christopher walked past the billy goat bridge. He felt something splash in the creek on the real side.
Jenny Hertzog just pushed her stepbrother into the creek to drown him in floods. She didn’t understand why the creek became his bed. “Mom! Please! Make it stop!”
Christopher looked at the billy goat bridge. It was all up to him. He had to save Jenny. He had to save them all. The splashing in the creek got louder.
The old lady across the street just went swimming with her husband, but she doesn’t understand why he keeps getting tired. “You have to swim, honey! Please! Oh, God! He’s drowning!”
Christopher knew he had to defeat the nice man, or this would be the world’s eternity. The people in the clearing would blame each other. Turn on each other. The nice man had gathered them all together to play a game of pickup war. Shirts and skins. Tribes could be made out of something as small as a sports team. It would start at this clearing. One neighbor would strike another neighbor. And that neighbor would have a cousin somewhere who would join in. Then, another. And another. Until everyone knew a mother or father or brother or sister or spouse or son or daughter who was wronged by some other mother or father or brother or sister or spouse or son or daughter. And the two sides would begin fighting and they would never stop. They would never die. They would never listen. They would just bleed. Hell would come to Earth.
Christopher looked up ahead as flowers lined the path leading out of the Mission Street Woods.
Christopher reached the street.
He stopped the moment he saw it. His neighborhood. His house. The log cabin. The cul-de-sac with a beautiful night fog mixed with the morning dew. All of it was trying desperately to look happy despite the fact that it was burning. He heard muffled screams coming from the houses. Thousands more trapped behind stitches. Trying to sound so cheerful.
“He’s back! He’s back! Hello, Christopher,” they said.
He saw the man in the Girl Scout uniform tip his softball visor. The couple made yum yum sounds as they kept kissing until their teeth landed on the street like pebbles. The mailbox people stood next to each other like passengers crammed into a train. No doors. No seats. No hope. The street stretched forever as the mailbox people lined the sides, keeping everyone in their place as the damned screamed the same thing under their smiles.
“Make it stop! Please, God!”
There was only one person not smiling. She lay on the lawn next to the street. Her feet and hands bound. Surrounded by deer.
It was the hissing lady.
“You’re off the street,” she said, defeated.
Christopher stepped onto the cul-de-sac. Deer started to walk around the circle like a snake hugging its young. A shrouded figure walked toward Christopher. It reached its hand out. Then, it slowly took off its shadow the way others take off clothes at the end of a long day.
It was the nice man.
He looked so handsome. So clean. A charming man in a grey suit. He smiled so pleasantly. His mouth full of baby teeth.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you need to kill her now. it’s tiMe.”
Christopher looked at him. The nice man had no weapon in his hand. Just a pleasant expression. And a paternal nod.
“because god iS a murderer.”
Chapter 122
Daddy.
The sheriff opened the door.
He looked down the hallway of an old tenement building. For a moment, he wondered why he wasn’t in the tree house. He was sure he opened the door to the tree house, but this was definitely an old tenement building. The door closed with a heavy click behind him.
Ding.
The elevator opened down the hall. A teenage couple walked out of the elevator. The boy was about sixteen. The girl was seventeen. He was black. She was white. She held their baby.
The baby was crying.
“Daddy!”
The sheriff stopped for a moment and felt like he had been here before. Like this had already happened. But he quickly shook off the feeling.
He had a job to do.
“Excuse me. I received a complaint about a smell coming from room 217. Do you know who lives—”
The couple quickly looked away and slipped into their apartment without a word. The sheriff heard them dead-bolt their door with a Click. Click. Click. The sheriff was used to people not wanting to talk to police officers, but he hadn’t heard three locks since he moved to the suburbs. It gave his stomach a sinking feeling.
He walked down the hallway toward the elevator. It was one of those old lifts with a gold-plated mechanical display. It looked like the top half of a clock with an arrow that moved from 9 to 3.
But this one was pointing straight down at 6.
It must have been broken.
The sheriff pushed the button. He watched the gold-plated arrow move through the semicircle in the wrong direction.
Ding.
The elevator door opened. He saw a mid
dle-aged couple in the elevator. The man was black. The woman was white. They walked with their little girl, who was dressed in a beautiful white dress for church. The little girl was crying because she spilled something on it. It looked like grape juice. Or blood.
“Daddy!” she cried.
“Excuse me,” the sheriff said. “I received a complaint about a smell coming from room 217. Do you know who lives there?”
“No,” the mother said. “But you dO.”
The mother smiled. She had no teeth. Her husband put a gentle hand on his family and quickly moved them into their apartment and locked the door. Click. Click. Click.
The sheriff walked into the elevator and pushed 21. The doors closed and the Muzak came on. Blue Moon. The sound almost distracted him from the smell of urine and feces. The sheriff was used to tenements smelling like piss and shit, but this smelled like the inside of a baby’s diaper. The baby was crying.
The elevator doors opened on the twenty-first floor.
The sheriff left the elevator and entered darkness. The lights flickered. The carpet was threadbare. He turned and saw room 217 at the very end of the long hallway.
The door was ajar.
The sheriff walked toward it. He heard scratching behind all of the apartment doors. He listened for the familiar sound of dogs or cats, but there was no sound. Just scratching. And breathing.
He reached room 217.
The sheriff tried to see inside, but the room was black.
“Hello. Sheriff’s Department. We’ve received a complaint about the smell.”
Silence. The sheriff opened the door to a smell that made him nostalgic for the elevator. Sweet smoke and rotten meat mixed with spoiled milk. The sheriff gagged and covered his face. His eyes watered so badly that he felt like he was looking through a fog. Wasn’t he just in a fog? He thought he was. He couldn’t quite remember.
He turned on the light.
He looked into the cold kitchen. A milk carton sat on the table. He saw some roaches. A box of Cheerios and a bowl.
That’s when he saw the woman.
She was facedown inside a bowl of cereal. The woman’s body was bloated and rotting. A needle stuck out of her arm. The belt was still loose around her shoulder. It looked like she had been here for days without anyone noticing.
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