Hell and Back

by Patricia Blackmoor

“So, we need to bring Hope to the money.”

  “Yeah. But I’ll be honest, I have no idea how to do that.”

  We were quiet as we considered.

  “Well, Mitchell and Courtney used a ouija board,” Parker said.

  “Does your sister have a ouija board?”

  “Nope. At least, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.”

  “Which brings us back to square one—getting it to her. We can’t exactly steal and carry a ouija board across town.”

  “What if we...found a map and marked the address with an X?”

  I frowned. “Like a pirate?”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t my best idea.”

  “Wait though,” I said, the gears in my head turning.

  “You can’t be serious about the pirate idea,” said Parker.

  “No, but that gave me a thought. What if we wrote her a note?”

  “You’d have to be able to hold a pencil for a long time.”

  “Yeah, but I think I could do it. Slowly, maybe.”

  “And when people see a pencil moving on its own?”

  “Yeah, maybe that wouldn’t work.”

  I frowned still, feeling like I was close, like I was almost onto something. It was there, on the tip of my tongue, at the front of my brain, a needling thought, just not quite tangible yet.

  “Email,” I finally said. “I can send her an email.”

  “With what? You don’t have your cell phone or laptop.”

  My heart nearly stopped. “But I know who does.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Mitchell and Courtney. They’ve got to.”

  Parker shook his head. “I doubt it. Don’t the police usually take that stuff after a crime?”

  “Yeah, but I highly doubt that Mitchell and Courtney would have let them take my laptop. We had plans on there, plans involving the bank robbery. My bet is that it’s still at the apartment. My cell phone, yeah that’s probably in police custody, but no way my computer is.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Parker shrugged. “You want to go back to your place?”

  “Oh God,” I sighed. “That used to sound so much better.”

  He smirked. “You’re not exhausted from last night?”

  “I don’t know if that could ever exhaust me,” I told him, suppressing a grin.

  “But, to get back on track,” he said, nudging me, “we go back to your house? That’s the next step on our agenda?”

  I nodded. “I think it should be. We send her an email, I’ll tell her where to find the money, tell her to come at night when nobody will notice her. We can wait at the house until she arrives to make sure she has the money.”

  “Then what?”

  I shrugged. “Then...I don’t know. We go back to that hotel, maybe, until the demons come for us?”

  “I like that,” he said with a grin. “I like that a lot.”

  “What time is it?” I asked, looking around for a clock. “We probably don’t have a lot of time to linger.”

  “My best guess is around five? But the late summer sun always throws me off.”

  “All right, well, we’d better start heading back,” I sighed.

  He leaned his head on my shoulder. “Do we have to go back into the fray already?”

  “I’d love to stay here just as much as you do,” I said, “but we should probably get going. We can have our fun,” I gave him a nudge, “after the job is done.”

  “You sound like a super spy.”

  “I might be having a little bit of fun with this,” I admitted. “Of course, it’s easy to be a super spy when no one can see you or hear you.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what AJ said back at the apartment.”

  “Which thing?”

  “About how he thought I was there.”

  “Could be just a ten-year-old being hopeful.”

  He nodded, but his brow was furrowed.

  “You think it’s more than that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I wonder if maybe he’s sensitive to stuff like that, that’s all.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said. “Definitely could be.”

  “It was just a thought,” Parker said. “But you’re right, we should probably get going.”

  I looked out over the park, the warm sun beating down on us, the kids playing and running, the wind brushing against my skin. I was going to miss this when we went back to hell. The thought hurt, but I redirected my thoughts back to the next task at hand. The money.

  Parker stood up from the bench and held out his hand to help me up. I took it, threading my fingers through his as we started down the pathway in the park toward the busy street. I didn’t need to ask to know we were headed for the transit station to get back to my old house. I leaned my head on his shoulder as we walked, and he pulled his hand from mine to wrap an arm around my waist. Had we been alive, had we been visible, we would have been like any normal couple out for a stroll on a sunny summer afternoon. Of course, we weren’t that simple; we were a pair of hell escapees who had been shackled and tortured and were crossing one of the biggest cities in the country to communicate with an impoverished woman so she could find our bag of stolen money.

  You know, simple stuff.

  “How far are we?” I asked. With my body now adjusting to the temperature on earth, I was starting to get warm. Of course, it was nothing like what we’d face when we returned to hell, but if I could sweat, I would have been.

  “Few more blocks,” he said. “We could probably take one of these stops but I have no idea what time the next bus comes around and when the next bus leaves for your neighborhood.”

  “Old neighborhood,” I corrected him.

  “Still, we’re better off going to the transit station.”

  “Fine by me.” It didn’t matter either way, but I was getting a little uncomfortable in the heat. Still, I reminded myself to savor the mild temperatures. We would never have this time back, and soon enough, I’d be begging to go back to this summer weather.

  I tucked my hair back; I had forgotten to look for a hair tie at Parker’s apartment, but since we were headed back to my old place, I could get one there. If I remembered.

  “I never thought we’d be going back,” I said. “I really thought that was the last time.”

  “I get that. I never thought I’d be back on Earth.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh, looking around at the bright blue sky and green trees. I would miss this so much.

  Parker stopped short, putting his hand out to stop me too. “Shit, shit.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t need to answer; I looked up and saw exactly what he was upset about. In front of us, skulking down the street, was a line of demons.

  Parker grabbed my hand and whispered, “Run.”

  Chapter Twenty

  They had sent both man and beast after us.

  The men were dressed just like Parker had been, all in black: tight black shirts, black cargo pants, black shoes, all dirty and worn and torn. They seemed haggard despite firm expressions on their faces. They held guns, heavy guns with thick magazines.

  They can’t kill you, I reminded myself. You’re already dead.

  The demons themselves, those were different. Those were the giant creatures I had seen in the shadows of hell, but in the daylight they terrified me even more. I counted three, but I hadn’t had a good chance to look. We were running now, trying to escape their view before they found us, but the images would stick in my mind forever.

  One of them was thin with wings like an ancient pterodactyl that probably stretched half a mile fully extended. It stood on lizard-like legs and had a beak that was long and pointed. It was colored a dark blue with eyes an eerie yellow. It took me little more than a glance to see that its beak was sharp enough to tear through flesh with ease.

  The second demon I had seen had thick tentacles writhing from its face like something from a Lovecraft story, but it didn’t have wings. Instead, its body had spines comin
g out the back, sharp and curved, legs thick like a lion.

  The third one may have been the most terrifying of all. It looked like a giant spider, with ten long, spindly black legs, each full of spines. The body of the spider was a thin gray membrane similar to a jellyfish, red and pink pulsing underneath it. The monster had three rows of fangs and dozens of eyes.

  And that was just what I had caught in a glance, a brief freeze-frame in my mind. Instead of standing and staring at the monsters, I was running through the streets.

  “Stop, stop,” I begged, gasping for air.

  “We can’t stop.”

  “We’re blocks away!”

  “Doesn’t matter. They can find us easily.”

  “Seriously, Parker, I can’t breathe!”

  He pursed his lips tightly and without warning pulled us inside the nearest building. I smelled foreign spices and realized we were in a Somali coffee shop. Instead of sitting, he pulled me along the inside wall so we were out of view of the windows.

  “How can they find us with all these people?” I asked.

  “Because they don’t see these people.”

  I was still trying to catch my breath, hands on my knees. “What?”

  “They don’t see them. All they can see are the souls of those who don’t belong on Earth. Angels, ghosts, demons, and those escaped from hell. Us.”

  “Okay. So we hide under somebody’s bed or in a closet.”

  He scoffed. “If only it were that easy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You saw the one with the tentacles?”

  “The one that looked like Cthulhu?”

  “Sure. Those tentacles can smell. It can smell that we’re not supposed to be here. It’s basically a spiritual bloodhound.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “It’s bad for us, is what it is. It makes hiding all the more difficult. They’ll be on us soon.”

  “Does it have weaknesses? Does it lose our scent in water or something?”

  He shot me an annoyed look. “It’s a demon, Meg.”

  “I’m just trying to figure this out, no need to be so snarky.”

  “Sorry, happens when I’m stressed.”

  I paused. “Why don’t I hear screaming? Shouldn’t I hear screaming, like in a Godzilla movie?”

  “No one else can see them,” Parker said. “As it is, demons are only allowed on Earth really for things like this. Otherwise, they’d be causing chaos all the time. Earth would constantly be one big kaiju movie.”

  “Hell without the heat. Okay. That doesn’t help us with our situation at all.” I sighed. “And what about the guns?”

  “They’ll send you straight back to hell if they hit you.”

  “Avoid the guns. Got it.”

  Parker leaned his head around to get a quick view out the window.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Too fast. I’m going to try again.”

  He stretched out his neck once more and his eyes widened. “They’re coming down the street. We’ve got to run.”

  “If they’re coming down the street, where are we supposed to go?”

  “Um,” Parker searched the restaurant. “This way.”

  He pointed to the doors that presumably led to the kitchen. We ran across the room and slipped inside as the monstrous creatures thundered past. It was so strange, the running, the noise, the giant monsters, and not one patron in the restaurant batted an eye.

  They were in their own world, the cooks focused on the food they were frying, the waiters running their orders, the patrons chatting or looking at their phones. They lived in their own world of peace, unaware of the horrors surrounding them, unaware of what was waiting for them on the other side.

  Parker and I made a narrow turn around a prep station, and I narrowly missed burning myself on a sizzling pan cooking on the stove. As it had been made abundantly clear to me during my time in hell, just because I was dead didn’t mean I was exempt from pain.

  “This way,” Parker said, pulling me through the kitchen and out the back door. The two of us stumbled into the alleyway. The air stank of garbage and the grease was almost tangible. Breathing hard, Parker and I glanced both ways down the alley.

  “Where do we go?” I asked him.

  He rubbed his temple. “Okay, we should head toward the transit station. If we can take a train somewhere, it will buy us some time. Even better if we can get it going toward your house. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can email my sister. If we get that done, then it doesn’t matter if they pull us back to hell.”

  “All right. Which way is the station?”

  He closed his eyes, thinking. After a moment he pointed to the left. “That way.”

  We didn’t run, as much as we wanted to. Instead we treaded cautiously, tiptoeing to the edge of the building and looking in both directions before we darted across the street and into the next alley.

  “I think they’re still going in the other direction,” Parker said, “but it won’t be long before they catch onto us. We need to keep moving.”

  I was trusting Parker to guide us in the right direction, because I had no idea where we were going. The rocks kicked up under our feet as we hurried to the edge of the next building, the smell of garbage still lingering in the air. It was cool in the shadows of the buildings and goosebumps prickled my skin, despite feeling overheated from the running.

  We ran like this for several blocks, darting across the street and down the alleyway, slowing before we reached the edges of the buildings so we could survey the street before crossing again. We had gone several blocks without any sight of the demons or monsters.

  “Almost there, I think,” Parker said as we slowed to the end of another block. He pointed diagonally to our right. “There it is. Let’s go.”

  We had a few blocks down the street to go to reach the transit station. Hearts racing, we grabbed hands and stuck close to the wall, my free hand brushing against the brick exterior as we proceeded with caution. The station was in sight, and the glimpse of it on the corner of the block made my heart race.

  I could hear the monsters. Even with the noise of the city in the background, the cars and the bustle of people, the sound of the demons overpowered everything. Their footsteps stomped through the streets, mixed with the sounds of tentacles slapping against cars and buildings.

  And it was getting closer.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” I murmured to Parker.

  “I know, but I also don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” Parker said. “Running draws attention.”

  “Would they be able to hear us?” I asked.

  “No, but I’m worried that a glimpse of our movement will catch their view. We need to move casually. Once we get a little closer, then we can make a run for it.”

  “Deal,” I said with a sigh. My whole body was shaking as my adrenaline wound down, but I was also terrified about being dragged back to hell.

  I knew that it was going to happen. I had expected it from the moment we began to plan our escape. But now that they were after us, now that the time was falling through the hourglass, I began to get anxious.

  We didn’t know what would face us when we arrived. We had a vague idea; we knew what hell had in store, but we had no idea what sort of punishment awaited us when we were dragged back. It was likely we’d be subjected to eons of torture for our escape. I would probably never see Parker again.

  At the thought, I squeezed his hand, swallowing my sorrow. I had fallen for this man, and I couldn’t imagine my life without him. Being sent back to hell would be like dying all over again, being torn away from the person I had cared about most.

  “Shit,” Parker said, breaking me from my thoughts. I looked up to see one of the monsters, the one with the wings, coming around the corner.

  “Do you think we can make it to the transit station?”

  “Not with him coming this way,” he said. “Let’s run. Now!”

&nbs
p; I didn’t pause or hesitate. Parker and I turned into the nearest alleyway. I thought for a split second that maybe the beast didn’t see us, but as we ran, we could hear it stomping behind us. The creature gave out a high-pitched shriek, harsh enough to shatter glass. He was calling the others, and they’d be here within moments.

  “This way,” Parker said, and I followed him, trusting that he knew where we were going. Even if he didn’t, I didn’t want him to tell me that. We needed to get out of here as soon as possible.

  Parker swung me around a corner and as soon as I regained my footing we continued running, my lungs on fire as I breathed in the air from the alleyway. The monsters were still easy to hear behind us, stomping, clomping, shrieking.

  “Look out!” Parker called as I nearly hit a dumpster. With my surging emotions, I don’t know if I would have hit it or run right through it, but we didn’t have the time to find out. I twisted my body around it, narrowly missing it thanks only to Parker’s tug on my arm.

  “We’ll have to go around if we have any hope of getting to the transit station,” Parker said.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  With the running, the noise, the adrenaline, I almost expected buildings to fall apart around us. But everything stayed peaceful and intact, the people milling about as we ran and dove around them, darting between cars, not being cautious but instead trying to run as fast as we could and cover as much distance as possible. We were no longer in stealth mode; we were prey and we were being hunted.

  I wasn’t sure how many blocks we were away from the transit center. I wished I knew this area better, instead of having to rely on Parker. I trusted him implicitly, but having to rely on his directions meant my reaction time was a second or two slower than it would be if I knew my way around by instinct.

  “This way,” he said, pulling me with him as we rounded another corner. I was almost certain we were either on the same block as the transit station or slightly above it. From far away we could see the top of the spider-like monster as it straddled buildings just beyond the transit center.

  “All right,” Parker said, whispering in my ear, sending adrenaline back up my spine, “We need to run, fast. Count of three.”

  I nodded.