by Brom
“Let’s go,” Ana said, and when Johnny just stood there staring, she grabbed him. “Now.”
They moved on, Ana keeping a sharp eye on the alleys as they passed, and here and there she saw them, those hungry faces watching them from the shadows. A shudder ran down her body. I hate this place. Fucking hate this place.
“Hey . . . there,” Johnny said. “That’s has to be it.”
They came to the edge of the small plaza and stopped. Six standing stones, seven or eight feet tall, ringed the plaza, each tiled in broken bits of mirrors. A handful of souls sat in front of the stones, staring into the glass, their eyes glazed and distant. A woman was sobbing as she leaned against the base of a stone, touching her reflection with her fingertips.
Johnny walked up to one of the stones, peered into the glass, fell back a step, obviously surprised. He turned his head from side to side, studied his reflection. “That’s really strange.”
Ana walked up, looked at his reflection, noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Then her own reflection caught her eye. She let out a gasp. It was her, but not.
“Ana, how old do you think I am?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t know. Seventeen. Eighteen maybe?”
“I was thirty-eight when I killed myself.”
She looked at him again.
“I’m like I was . . . before . . . the accident.” He touched the glass. “After the accident, I avoided mirrors. Hated what I saw there.” He pointed at his reflection. “When I thought of myself . . . this is who I saw. The kid, the one who could run and jump. Not the twisted, shriveled thing I became. I think there’s something to that. Remember all the old people on the barge? They changed too.”
Ana looked again at her own reflection. He’s right. It’s me, but a younger me, before all the hard lines and shadows, before all the bad. She started to turn away when something else caught her eye: the background of the glass. It wasn’t reflecting the gray walls of the square, but . . . she leaned closer, stared, as it slowly came into focus. “Oh.” Her breath left her.
“Hey,” Johnny said. “It’s . . . why that’s my old bedroom.”
Ana nodded. It was her living room she was seeing, the one in San Juan. But before the fire. It was so vivid. God, the colors.
Johnny turned away from his reflection. “I hated that place. It was a prison. I never want to see it again.”
Ana put her hand on the glass. God, please . . . one more chance.
“We need to go,” Chet said. Ana heard him, but didn’t.
Chet sat a hand on her shoulder. “Ana.” His words were soft, but stern. “Ana.” He tried to tug her away and she shoved his arm, her eyes never leaving the glass. “Wait . . . just a little longer.”
He wrapped his arms around her, lifted her, dragging her from the mirror.
“Stop it!” she cried. “Fuck, let me go!”
He turned her toward the sobbing woman and pointed.
The sobbing woman began scratching at the glass as though she might be able to claw her way in, began to wail. Ana glanced around at the others, the souls sitting in front of the mirrors, all lost in the reflections.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You can let go. I get it.”
He let her go, but still kept an arm around her, leading her away. She fought not to look back, wanting one more glimpse of a time, of a place, when things had been so good.
CHAPTER 17
They met no other souls as the narrow lane slowly wound through the crumbling buildings, nothing but shadows staring at them from the windows and doors. Chet dug through some rubble, found two shafts of bone, and handed one to Ana. The club felt solid and she was glad to have something in her hand.
After a bit the thick mist turned into a light drizzle; a drop of water hit Ana, another, then another. “You have to be kidding me,” she said. “Rain, down here?”
They marched along to the sound of water dribbling from overhangs and gutters. The rain mixed with the ash, melting, turning into muck, the stones becoming dark and slick. Soon they were soaked.
“Johnny,” Ana said. “You said you killed yourself. Well . . . but . . . weren’t you a quadriplegic?”
“Hard to figure, huh?” He gave her that big grin of his.
“It’s not my business. I just—”
“I spent most of the last fifteen years trying to answer that question. Just how does a man, who can’t move anything but his mouth, eyes, and a few fingers, kill himself? Well, one way is to chew off your own tongue and bleed to death. Thought about that one a lot, just couldn’t do it. You can not eat. But that wasn’t an option, not while my mom was looking after me. Not unless I wanted a feeding tube crammed down my throat. My answer arrived one day in the form of a powered wheelchair.”
“Wheelchair?”
“Yes, ma’am. Bright red. Damn thing could hit six miles per hour. Only needed one finger to operate. Well, that I had.
“Mom liked to get me outside as much as she could. Felt the sunshine was good for me. Our house backed up to my uncle’s property. He had a little catfish pond. Mom used to wheel me over there to watch my cousins fish. I can tell you, there’s not much more exciting than watching other people fish.” He laughed, but Ana didn’t hear any humor in it.
“Well, she brought me over in my brand-new, used power chair. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind getting me a soda. The minute she was out of sight, I maneuvered that vehicle up onto the dock, pushed that stick forward, and off I went. Flew off the end going full speed and sp-lash!” He punctuated the sound by slapping the end of his club into a puddle. “I was strapped into that hunk of metal, so down I sank. Right to the bottom. The sunlight was so pretty from down there . . . you should’ve seen it.” His grin faded. “Of course I was long gone by the time they dragged me out. I did hang around a bit. Y’know how it is. Watched them pull me out. Might’ve stayed awhile, but it was hard to watch my mom. She was so broken up.”
Ana nodded. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“No, it’s fine. Really. I mean it was best for everyone. I did it as much for my mom as for me. That’s the thing, the way she cared for me . . . she was just as much a prisoner to that chair as I was. I just hope to God she’s getting on with her life now.”
Ana reached over, touched his arm. “I’m sorry anyway, about you . . . and your mother.”
He smiled. “I don’t know what this place holds. But for now, I’m just trying to enjoy being free from that chair. If there’s a way to have a life down here, any kind of life, I’m going to find it.”
They continued on, the sound of their shuffling feet accompanied by rain dripping from the desolate buildings.
“How about you, Ana?” Johnny asked. “How’d you go?”
Ana started to answer, hesitated.
“Don’t feel like you need to say if you don’t want to.”
Ana took a deep breath. “Overdosed.”
“Drugs?”
“No. Yes. But not like you think. They were prescription . . . pain pills. I took two bottles of them.”
“You killed yourself?”
“Yeah, Johnny, that’s what they call it when you take two bottles of pills.”
He was quiet.
“Sorry,” she said. “Hard to talk about. I . . . just . . . I screwed up. Screwed up so bad.” She choked up, unable to continue.
“Hey,” Johnny said, putting an arm around her. “Don’t be so hard—”
“No!” She shrugged his arm off. “Don’t comfort me. Don’t you dare. I should be burning in Hell for what I did.”
Both Chet and Johnny looked at her surprised, concerned, and it was their concern that did it, that brought on her tears.
“I killed him.” She stopped walking. “I killed my little baby boy.”
They both looked at her in horror and she knew she deserved it, deserved their scorn, their disgust. She turned away.
“I set the place on fire. It was my fucking smoking. How many times had J
uan told me not to smoke in bed? Y’know, and I’d get all pissed off at him. Tell him he wasn’t my father. And look, look what happened.” She let out a sob. “I woke up coughing, choking. The carpet was burning, the curtains. It was like they were made of gasoline. Smoke already so thick I couldn’t see the door. I heard him, can’t stop hearing him. My little baby boy . . . coughing, crying. He was over by the curtains.” Ana let out another sob. “I tried to get to him, swear to God I did. Couldn’t breathe. Smoke burning my eyes. I kept trying to find him. Trying, and trying. I was on my knees by then, crawling around and around. At some point I passed out.”
She sat down on the curb, crying and staring at her feet.
Johnny sat down beside her.
“If God had any mercy he would’ve let me die with my baby. But I didn’t . . . no . . . woke up in the hospital. The inside of my lungs were burned pretty bad. My parents came and took me home. No one said anything, y’know. Not to me . . . not the things they should’ve. I might’ve kept going. But when I heard they were sending Juan home from Vietnam on bereavement leave . . . well . . . well, how could I face him? How do you ever look a man in the eye after killing his only son? Can you answer me that one?”
Johnny shook his head.
“That’s when I took all the pills. Just wanted an end. Wanted to stop hearing my baby crying in my head. Now here I am. I guess this is my punishment . . . my Hell. To have to live with what I did for all eternity.”
She buried her face in her hands. Johnny put his arm around her again. This time she didn’t push him away. After a moment she touched his hand, held it, and for the first time since the fire, felt some comfort.
A clack, it sounded like it came from down the alley behind them.
“We should keep going,” Chet said in a hushed voice.
They heard another clack, they couldn’t tell from where. Johnny stood up, pulled Ana to her feet, and the three of them got moving, keeping a sharp eye on all the dark windows and doors as they plodded up the narrow street.
CHAPTER 18
Tony watched the Green Coats, or the Defenders of Free Souls, as they liked to call themselves, spill into the square. Tony hung on the wall next to Brenda, Brenda who’d been telling him to shut up for the last month. Or was it the last year? He wasn’t sure anymore; time felt so foggy these days. He feared it wouldn’t be much longer before he was like the other hanging heads, the ones who had lost their minds and were crumbling to dust. Brenda, stupid big-mouthed Brenda, had sent those three fresh souls on their way before he could talk them into taking him with them. Never gonna get a chance like that again, he thought. Never.
“Macy,” called the man in the wide-brim hat. He didn’t have a tin star, but it was obvious he was in charge.
The door opened and Macy rushed out. “Carlos,” he said, almost choking on the name, stiffening as he glanced anxiously at the armed guards. “I know we’re behind. The copper . . . it overheated again. But . . . we did manage to save most of the ka.”
Carlos tugged at his mustache, not looking the least bit pleased. “We’re looking for three souls. Two men, one with red hair, and a Latino woman. You seen them?”
Tony perked up.
“Yeah,” Macy replied, sounding relieved. “As a matter of fact I did. They were heading up the street.”
“Did you talk to them? Hear anything?”
Macy shook his head.
“I did,” Tony volunteered and almost wished he hadn’t as Carlos set hard eyes on him.
“And?”
Tony suddenly found it hard to speak, searching for just the right tack, knowing if he played this right he just might get down. “Well . . . well, see. I was hoping maybe we could strike a deal? I’ll tell you where they’re heading and you cut me down off here.”
Carlos’s face didn’t change.
Tony swallowed hard. “Mister, all I’m asking for is a chance. I’ll ride with you. Fight with you . . . whatever you want. Just cut me down from here.”
“Okay,” Carlos said.
“Okay? It’s a deal then?”
Carlos nodded.
“All right, sir. I can see you’re a man of his word.” Tony hesitated, knew he was playing a dangerous game. “They were asking how to get to Calvary Hill.”
Carlos exchanged a look with the big man next to him. “Must be looking for a seeker.”
“Then we know just where to find them,” the big man said.
Carlos nodded and the lot of them headed off.
“Hey,” Tony called. “Hey, man. C’mon. C’mon!”
“You’re a fool,” Brenda said. “A thickheaded fool.”
“We had a deal!” Tony cried after them. The men kept going, disappearing up the alley into the fog.
“Please!” Tony shouted, his voice breaking down into sobs. “Please!”
CHAPTER 19
We’re lost,” Ana said.
“No, it’s this way,” Chet said, not wanting to admit she might be right. The road had spilt so many times he had no idea if they were still on the right path. They stopped at an intersection, the narrow avenues forking off in three directions.
“Which way?” Johnny asked.
Chet shook his head, finally giving in. “I don’t know.”
A scraping sound drifted up one of the avenues, growing steadily louder. A moment later, two men came around the bend dragging a cross made up of beams bound together with frayed rope.
“Anyone care to take a guess where they’re going?” Johnny asked.
As they drew near, Chet noticed the barbs tied tightly round their chests. The barbs dug deep into their skin, peeling back the flesh, all the way to the bone in some places. They grunted in obvious pain as they dragged the heavy cross.
“Calvary Hill?” Chet called out to them. “You know the way?”
They looked up, somewhat surprised. One of them managed a smile. “You seek salvation, brother?”
Chet nodded. “Of sorts.”
“Well, you’re on the right path,” the man grunted. “Calvary Hill is just there, that way.” He nodded to the avenue they’d been following.
“Thanks,” Chet said and started away.
“Suffering is Jesus’s language, brother.”
“Yeah?” Chet replied. “Seems everyone speaks it down here.”
The man frowned. “You’re new here, I can see that. You haven’t seen his words upon the old wall, have you?”
Chet shook his head.
“Well, you need to. It’ll open your eyes. ‘Rebirth to all thee who suffer in my name—Jesus Christ O Mighty,’ it says in letters ten feet tall. Jesus put them there himself. Put them there for us. For you, brother!” His voice grew more severe and demanding with each word, his eyes bearing into Chet. “Come join us. Save yourself!”
Chet had always considered himself a Christian, just not a very good one. He’d stopped going to church as soon as he was old enough to get away from Aunt Abigail. He’d never felt the need to have someone preaching at him and he certainly didn’t right now. Chet smiled at the man and moved on, the three of them leaving the cross-bearers behind as they made their way up the hill. A few blocks later they overtook another man, who carried a large hammer in one hand and a sling full of spikes over his shoulder. He nodded at them, touching the brim of his straw hat as they passed.
“I do believe we have arrived,” Johnny said.
The lane ended abruptly in an open field, a park of sorts surrounded by a low wall, the field disappearing up a steep slope into the mist. Upon the hill, not hundreds, but thousands of crosses of all shapes and sizes.
Moans, groans, chants, drifted here and there and it took Chet a moment to see that the figures hanging from many of the crosses were not statutes or effigies, but actual souls—men and women, some tied up but most with large spikes driven through their hands, feet, and torsos. Souls also lay about on the ground around the crosses, some in heaps, looking like bags of bones.
“Think they did that to them
selves?” Johnny asked.
Chet and Ana both nodded.
The man carrying the hammer and spikes caught up with them. “Pick a cross. There’s plenty unoccupied. For two coins I stake you. For three I’ll throw in a crown of thorns. Hell, I can even make a package deal for the three of you. What d’you say?”
“Gosh, that’s a tempting offer,” Johnny replied.
“I’m the best. None better. You won’t be pulling loose. That’s for sure. Got my word on it.”
They kept walking.
“Look here, I hate to see a good soul denied the kingdom of Jesus. Tell you what, I’ll do it for one. How does that sound? You won’t find a better deal than that. What d’ya say?”
“Fuck off,” Ana snapped.
The man shrugged, spotted a woman wandering up the hill looking at the crosses, and headed after her.
“I don’t know, Ana,” Johnny said. “That package deal was sounding pretty good to me.”
She shook her head. “This place is so fucked.”
They continued on, passing a cluster of souls flogging one another—thanking Jesus with every blow. A man held up his severed legs to them as they passed. A woman sat in the middle of the walking path, nails and spikes driven into every part of her body. She caught them staring and smiled. “I’m going to Heaven.”
“Over there,” Chet said, pointing to an arch with six ravens carved into the stone.
They passed beneath the arch and stopped. Wide stairs descended before them, weaving down the hill, disappearing into the foggy valley below. Terraces and balconies branched off on either side of the stairs, leading to structures, some looking like temples, others like large mausoleums. Elegant buildings with delicate architecture all in ruins—columns toppled, arches broken, walls collapsed and blackened from fire.
“This can’t be it,” Johnny said.
Chet saw a man and a woman digging through the rubble of a collapsed temple, piling planks into a cart. “Hello. Hey. Excuse me.”
Neither looked up.