Hell and Back

by Patricia Blackmoor

  “All my stuff is gone. They took it out already.”

  Instead of the usual things I’d kept in my drawer—the phone charger and birth control pills and books in progress—the drawer held perfume and a box of condoms. Courtney had been here.

  “Small condoms?” Parker asked, looking into the drawer.

  I tried not to smirk. “You be quiet.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I never really thought about it, but that sounds about right,” I said. “We didn’t use condoms because I was on birth control. Oh shit, I hope he didn’t give me an STD since he was cheating on me.”

  “You’re dead anyway.”

  “It’s the principle.” I stood up from the side table. “I still can’t believe they took out all my stuff.”

  “Could that all have ended up in one of these?” Parker asked, pointing to the boxes of my stuff.

  “Probably. I hope not. That’s going to be a pain to go through.”

  Parker tried to help me lift the top box, but he couldn’t grasp it as well as I could. Instead, I used my anger at Mitchell’s affair to pull up the flaps. A quick glance inside showed me the laptop buried under a stack of books.

  “Someone is on our side,” I said, reaching in and yanking the laptop out. I didn’t want to sit on the bed; it felt gross to sit where Mitchell and Courtney had been having sex. Instead, once the laptop was in my hand, I sank down onto the floor, leaning against the wooden bed frame, and set the laptop on the ground in front of me. I took a deep breath and lifted the lid, the laptop cold against my hands.

  The screen lit up, and I breathed a sigh of thanks that it still had somewhat of a charge. I took a deep breath as I punched in my passcode. It took several attempts as I had to focus my energy to press the buttons, and sometimes I’d miss one or press it twice. I’d tried my passcode once, twice, three times, and I started to panic at the thought of possibly getting locked out. This was absolutely not the time for that. I took another deep breath, focusing with everything I had to put in my password right. Finally, the screen changed and my background popped up.

  “Thank God,” I murmured. “Now the hard part.”

  I ran my fingers over the mouse pad on the computer, but it was hit and miss on whether it would pick me up, sort of like if your fingers were wet and you tried to use the touch screen on a phone.

  “Come on, come on,” I murmured, using short bursts to navigate the cursor to the little button for my browser. Once the icon was lit up, I forced myself to double click. I held my breath until the window popped up.

  It took some more short bursts with the cursor to get to the button on my bookmarks bar for my email. Once more I clicked twice and my email loaded.

  It was so strange to look at the archives of my past life. I had emails with coupons from Victoria’s Secret, reminder emails to pay my student loans, emails for all the frivolity I had dealt with in life. I tried not to let my eyes dwell on that too much. Instead, I navigated over to the “compose” button, double clicked, and a fresh email came up.

  “Okay, I need your sister’s email,” I said.

  Parker came and sat next to me and rattled off his sister’s email address. Just like typing in my passcode, typing in Hope’s email address was a pain in the ass, requiring me to hit the same button several times, and then sometimes the backspace.

  “Here’s what I came up with,” I said to Parker. “Dear Hope, you don’t know me, but I’m writing on behalf of your brother Parker. He has left you money to take care of you and your brothers, but he had to hide it. Please come get it right away. The address is 4243 East Hamilton Street. Go to the woods in the backyard and down to the stream. You’ll find a willow tree, and the money is buried at the base of the tree facing the river. Do not knock on the door; the people living in the house don’t know. I wish I could tell you more. Your brother loved you very much.”

  Parker nodded solemnly. “It will work.”

  “I know it’s not perfect.”

  “We don’t have time for a rough draft,” he said. “It will work just fine. You’re all right. Send it.”

  I reached out and rubbed his arm as I hit Enter, then hit Enter again since it didn’t go through the first time. The screen changed back to my inbox. It had sent.

  “They’ll be all right,” I said to Parker, putting a hand on his arm.

  “Thanks to you,” he said. “I can never thank you enough.”

  “I don’t need thanks. I just want them to be safe.”

  Parker leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “You really are sweet, you know that?”

  “You think too much of me.”

  “I really don’t. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  “Are we really going to have this conversation again?”

  We heard a bump from down the hallway and I jumped, my heart racing. Down in the living room, Mitchell was climbing up from the couch, stumbling a little bit as he clung to the wall to steady himself.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. He continued down the hallway and slipped into the bathroom, and after a moment we could hear him vomiting into the toilet.

  “Gross,” I sighed.

  I’d thought that he’d go back to the living room, but instead, after he left the bathroom and flicked the light switch off, he turned toward the bedroom.

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “He can’t see us,” Parker reminded me.

  “He can see this,” I said, motioning to the mess we had left the bedroom. “And this,” I said, pointing to the laptop. I pushed the computer off of my legs, a little roughly, but really, it wasn’t like I’d be using it again, and as Mitchell took a step into the bedroom, I shoved it under the bed.

  Mitchell paused for a moment, looking at the open drawer and the open box on top of the stack.

  “What the fuck?” he asked, squinting his eyes.

  “He’s got a great vocabulary,” Parker said.

  “Shh,” I said, nudging him. My body was frozen with fear. I knew he couldn’t see us, but I didn’t want him hauling out the ouija board again and pulling me back. I wanted him to forget I ever existed unless he was being haunted with the reality of murdering me.

  Mitchell stood standing in the doorway for a few more moments before he shook his head. “Whatever,” he muttered. He reached over and shut off the light, then flopped through Parker and I as he dropped down onto the bed.

  “All right, we’re good,” Parker said once we heard Mitchell start snoring. He stood up and held his hand out to me to help me up.

  “Thanks,” I said with a sigh as I stood up. Parker began pulling me toward the door but I paused, looking back at my drunk and slumbering ex-boyfriend sprawled across the bed.

  “I’ll see you in hell, motherfucker,” I told him before stomping out.

  We slipped out the back door into the summer night. The stars were out now, but the warm air still lingered. Enjoying possibly my last few moments of freedom, I sat down on the steps from the deck to the ground.

  “You know what the best part of being, essentially, a ghost is?” I asked.

  “What’s that?” he asked, taking my hand.

  “No mosquitoes.”

  Parker laughed. “I never thought about that.”

  “What now?” Parker asked.

  “We should wait and make sure your sister gets the money,” I said.

  “You really want to wait that long? Could be hours. She may not even check her email until tomorrow morning.”

  “We don’t really have anywhere else to be.”

  He was quiet for a moment, playing with my fingers gently. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  “Which thing? We’ve spent like the last forty-eight hours together,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.

  “And it’s been the best forty-eight hours of my...well, my afterlife, I guess. My existence, though, really.”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes as a grin spread across my face. “Mine too.”
/>
  “But the thing I was talking about was your idea to travel the world.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I like what you said, the idea of traveling from place to place, exploring sights we never would have been able to see when we were alive. Yeah, we’ll be running from demons, but that’s better than being in hell. So, if you’ll have me, I want to run away with you.”

  My heart almost melted. “Of course. Of course.”

  I leaned in to meet his lips in a heated kiss.

  “Let’s go now,” he said, resting his forehead against mine, hand on the back of my neck. “Let’s catch a bus, head to the airport, and take the first flight wherever it goes.”

  “But your sister,” I said. “Shouldn’t we wait for her?”

  He squeezed my hand. “I want to. Of course I want to. I want to make sure she’s safe and has money. But I’m worried that if we don’t leave right away, the demons will find us.”

  Underneath us, the ground shook. I turned around and the blood drained from my face.

  “I think they already have.”

  Chapter Twenty–Three

  Parker and I froze as the ground shook harder, not like an earthquake, but the steady boom, boom, boom that came from the footsteps of the giant creatures sent to hunt us. A moment later it rounded the corner, towering over the little houses along the river, tentacles writing in the air, each one as wide as a house. The creature had caught our scent and was trying to figure out where it was coming from. It would be here soon, it would find us, and we’d be dragged back to the pits of hell. I swallowed.

  “We’ve got to move,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Inside, come on.”

  We sprang up from the stairs and I pulled Parker behind me, his hand in mine. We charged through the back door into the living room where Courtney was still sleeping in the corner of the couch.

  “You think we’re going to be any safer in here?” Parker asked.

  “That thing finds us by scent, right?” I asked. “It’ll be harder to sniff us out if we’re inside rather than outside.”

  “I suppose. Wouldn’t it be better to run to a bus stop?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, my heart thumping. “We’re blocks from the stop and I don’t know where another one is.”

  Parker sighed. “All right.” He squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back.

  The ground was shaking harder and harder. The beast had to be close now. Parker and I glanced at each other before rushing toward the front of the house to look out the window. All we could see was the beast’s thick and scaly leg. Like the tentacles, it was at least as wide as the house. After a minute the monster took another step, its tail dragging behind him and past the window. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to breathe a sigh of relief, so instead I headed toward the kitchen.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Parker asked me.

  “I’m looking for a weapon or something,” I said.

  “You really think something in that kitchen is going to save our asses? These are demons; supernatural creatures. They aren’t going to be chased off by a steak knife.”

  “I was thinking more of a chef knife,” I said, scanning the kitchen for something, anything to save our asses. What fought off demons? Holy water, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to find any of that in this place. “Iron. Doesn’t iron fend them off?”

  “I think you watch too much TV.”

  “Maybe, but I’m taking this,” I said, crossing back to the living room and grabbing the fireplace poker. I was pretty sure it was iron. Like, sixty percent sure.

  “Megan Cross and Parker Cole.” A loud, booming voice filled my head, radiating through my bones. The sound dropped me to my knees, my hands covering my ears even though I suspected the sound wasn’t coming from outside but rather in our heads.

  “I know you are in there. I am Chthal’a the Dark One. Come out now and return to hell.”

  I looked over at Parker as pain racked my body from the voice in my head. On the couch, Courtney continued to sleep peacefully. She couldn’t hear what we heard.

  “If you do not obey, we will be forced to destroy this house and those in it.”

  I swallowed hard, my eyes flickering back to Courtney. Could I do this to them, even after everything? Could I drag them into this mess I had created for myself? And not just Courtney, not just Mitchell, but what about the couple on the other side of the duplex, the adorable empty-nesters who wore matching sweaters at Christmas? Could I end their lives early?

  I dropped my hands from my ears and tugged at Parker, who was kneeling on the floor beside me. “We have to give ourselves up,” I said.

  “What?” His jaw dropped. “You want to give up now?”

  “Parker, I don’t think we have any other choice.”

  “We could run. Out the front door, down the street. Meg, we can’t stop now.”

  “Parker, I can’t…” I took a deep breath. “I can’t put other people’s lives at risk. It’s not fair.”

  “I understand, but Meg, these people killed you. They’re your murderers.”

  I nodded. “I know,” I said. “I know. I should hate them, and in a way, I do. I’m so angry with them. But I know where they’re going when they die. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I’ve screwed up so many times in my life, Parker. I’ve hurt people. This is my chance to keep the people I used to care about safe for a little while longer. They’ll get to hell eventually, but it’s not going to be today.”

  Parker swallowed. “What about us?”

  I took a deep breath. For once, I wished I could cry, because it felt like tears should be coming. “Parker, you are the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m a better person just because I met you. I know that we’ll probably never see each other again after this. I know that the moment we go out there, our relationship is dead. I also know that I will never have a love like this again. But I can’t let people die because of how I feel about you. I hope you can forgive me for that.”

  He looked at me a long time. “I love you, Meg.”

  I choked on the lump in my throat. “I love you too.”

  He pulled me close to him, and I buried my head in his neck, savoring the last moments of our touch. My lips found his, warm and calming in the middle of the storm.

  “Megan Cross and Parker Cole, this is your last warning.”

  I sniffled. “We’d better go.”

  Parker helped me to my feet and we joined hands. Together we crossed the living room, past still-sleeping Courtney. We gave each other one last long look before we stepped out onto the deck.

  “There you are,” the creature said, though it was still in our heads. I didn’t see a mouth. I wasn’t sure he could speak out loud if he wanted to. “You have been sentenced to eternity in the fire.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It is the worst pain you can imagine for all time.”

  I nodded, glancing at Parker. “Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.”

  He gave me a slight, sad smile and I was hit with a regret stronger than anything I had ever felt. Here, holding my hand, was the only man I would ever be able to trust. Parker had broken me out of hell, brought me to my ex-boyfriend’s house, and fought off demons with me. He was unlike anyone I was ever going to meet ever again, and I was about to give all that up. I was about to lose everything. This was worse than when I found out I had died. I’d had things to live for, sure, but I had never had anything in my life that made me feel more alive. I was mourning all over again, but it was a harsher devastation, like my heart had been torn from my chest. The pain I would feel in hell would never, could never compare to the pain of losing Parker. And thanks to me, my antics, Parker was going to suffer for all eternity.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said, stepping forward.

  “Meg, what are you doing?” Parker hissed.

  The creature looked at us through sunken eyes. “It does not matter.”

  “It d
oes. Let me argue on his behalf, please. I forced him to take me here.”

  “You forced him?”

  “Yes. I made him bring me here. I had unfinished business. He didn’t want to come in the first place. I called all the shots. You can burn me in your scary fire if you want, but Parker is innocent in all of this. Please, have mercy on him.”

  Parker put a hand on my arm. “Meg, I’m not going to let you do this.”

  I turned to face him, my lower lip trembling. “Parker, please, let me do this one thing for you. This was my idea, you know that.”

  “But I went along with it willingly,” he said in a low voice.

  “I know that, but they don’t,” I said. “I’m screwed either way, so please, let me advocate for you. You’ve done so much for me, let me give you this one thing in return.”

  He shook his head, pinching his lips together. “You’ve got to stop that, Meg. You’ve got to stop putting the burden of the world on your shoulders. You don’t owe me anything. If anything, I owe you.”

  “Just don’t tell them that.”

  I turned back to the monster. “We will come willingly, without any more fight, without any more running, if you promise to have mercy on Parker.”

  “That is not my decision to make.”

  “Then whose is it?”

  “The Great One’s.”

  I looked at Parker, who shrugged.

  “What do we do then?” I asked the beast.

  “I take you with me.”

  He reached out with his slimy tentacles, wrapping it around my body and pulling me in. I don’t know if his eyesight was poor or if we were too small or if he just wasn’t paying attention, but he never noticed what I held tight in my hand. As Parker and I dangled several feet above the ground, entangled in slimy tentacles, I arched my arm back and stabbed at the one ensnaring Parker with the pointed edge of the fireplace poker. The tentacle released instantly, dropping Parker onto the ground.

  “Run!” I screamed to him. “Run and don’t look back!”

  “Not without you,” he called to me.

  “No, Parker, run! I’ll follow if I can!”

  I turned my attention back to the beast who had me in his arms. I reared back once more, stabbing him again with the poker. This time, I fell to the ground, hitting it hard, landing on my side.