“Us? You mean… like angels?”
“Angels are part of it, but keep in mind that ‘us’ in heaven is a very large contingent.”
“Huh?”
“Surely you don’t believe that you’re an angel, do you, Kyle?”
“No,” Kyle replied.
“Okay. Well, soon, you’ll be able to see the colors too. At the rate you’re evolving, you’ll be experiencing many new things before long.”
“Like what?”
“In due time. But as for right now? I think we’re here.”
Kyle controlled the orb’s descent, slowing it and then lightly touching the ground. When it was almost at a complete stop, it popped softly like a bubble, dropping them to their feet.
The world around him told Kyle that, again, they were too late.
It was a motel of some kind, with old wooden staircases and an ice vending machine against a wall nearby. The door they stood before was painted mint green.
She’d been here, but so had many others. Kyle could still feel them. “Good Lord.”
“She’s been assigned a guard. Five of them.”
“Is that what I feel?”
“Yes. It is. Things have changed some. The man who took her is hurt.”
“He is? Badly?”
“Not badly enough to stop him. He was…” The Gray Man closed his eyes and lifted his head slightly to the sky. “Disciplined.”
“Disciplined? By who?”
“His master.”
“Why?”
The Gray Man said nothing.
Then Kyle had an idea. “Was he having second thoughts? Was he gonna let her go?”
Again, The Gray Man remained silent, but a stern look came over his face.
“Gray?”
“No. He wasn’t trying to let her go.”
“What then?”
Shaking his head, The Gray Man answered in a flat tone, “He was trying to kill her… too early… before he was meant to.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Kyle.”
“Too early? What the hell does that mean, Gray?”
“It means he is going to try again. It’s just a matter of when.”
“Oh my God. Does this ever end?” Kyle bent over with his hands on his knees, then stood up straight and looked up into the sky. “Why? What did she ever do to deserve this, Gray? How could God—”
“Kyle, don’t—”
“No! This isn’t fair. She’s paying, she’s suffering, for my mistakes.”
“Calm down, son.”
“No. I won’t. This is insanity, I accept full responsibility but it makes no sense, it—”
“Kyle. The reality of free will, the ultimate, ugly truth of it, is the unintended consequences that it has. It is both a glorious and a horrible gift. Your kind chose it, and all pain and suffering that can come with it. God’s work now is to affect upon it a purpose.”
“What?!”
“The world acts upon us, but the way it changes us depends on how we react. But since God created the world and everything in it, He can bring good from it all.”
Shaking his head, Kyle turned on his heel and walked away. He needed a moment. To breathe. To think. In his life he had taken so much for granted, so much of what was now proving to be an illusion, and the process of seeing all that he’d seen—hell, demons, angels, universal powers working behind the curtains like so many gears and levers—was beginning to make him feel sick with the feeling of inadequacy.
When he spoke next it was softly and evenly. The words measured and scripted by his heart. “I’m too human, Gray. I can’t do this. It’s all too much.”
The Gray Man waited a moment before he replied. “Yes you can, Kyle.”
“I’m not sure I want this.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I’m not sure I can handle it, Gray.”
“I believe you can.”
Kyle put his hands on his hips.
“Regardless,” The Gray Man continued, “there will come a time when you will have to choose.”
“Choose?”
“Between this life and the next. Between earthly existence and a heavenly destiny.”
“When?”
The Gray Man shot him a sympathetic look. “Only the Lord knows that.”
Kyle smelled something in the air. “What is that? It smells… like iron, or hot metal.”
“Blood. You smell blood.”
Kyle turned and walked to the hotel room door. It opened, seemingly on its own, but Kyle knew better. “Neat trick,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at The Gray Man as they both walked in.
The sensation of walking into a room now painted with evil struck Kyle immediately. To the naked eye it was nothing but a motel room, cleaned and ready for the next guest. But layer after layer of it, fumes of darkness, filled his nostrils. The feeling of being slowly suffocated crept over him.
“Kyle!” The Gray Man shouted. “Leave the room at once.”
But it was too late. Kyle felt the evil and traced it immediately to its source: the mirror over the dresser.
In the mirror was nothing but a reflection of themselves and the room around them, but that too was a lie. Hell was there, on the other side, looking out at them forebodingly.
Instantly, Kyle thought of The Shaman. But this wasn’t him.
This demon had a different calling card. A different name. Kyle focused, intently, for a moment, and then it came to him. “The La—”
“Do not say its name!” The Gray Man commanded.
Kyle shut his mouth.
The mirror shuddered for a moment, then held still. A few seconds later, the images it reflected began to melt and coalesce. Then, without warning, they snapped back into place; the lamps, the bed, the hanging picture of a pond beneath a bridge on the wall over the headboard, all returned back to their true forms.
“What was that?” Kyle asked.
“An attempt to reach us, I think.”
“Reach us?”
“Yes. To transport us there… or something from there to here.”
Kyle looked around the room. It was unremarkable. There were no major defects, no glaring pieces of evidence that pointed to a struggle or punishment of any kind. “There’s nothing else here. We need to move faster to close the gap.”
“I agree. I’ve already gathered the information we need. When they left, they went back out onto the highway. Headed east again.”
“You or me this time?” Kyle asked wearily.
“Me. It’s your turn to rest.”
When the orb around them formed this time, it was the one Kyle was used to; the same one that had formed around him that first fateful night outside the LA Hilton, when this all had begun. The same orb that had transported him to the 76 station in Torrance too. Only this time Kyle recognized that the orb distinctly belonged to The Gray Man. It was made of his force, his power, not Kyle’s.
He was evolving. The Gray Man was right.
But it was a lonely feeling.
“SO, you used to be his partner?” the woman with the red hair asked calmly. Parker had introduced her earlier as Trudy and she had an edge to her.
Napoleon nodded. “Still am. Technically, I think, anyways.”
“You as scared of ghosts as he is?” Trudy said with a smirk as she shot a sideways glance at Parker.
It was just past eleven, with midnight up next. The kids were finally asleep in one of the beds, two small lumps huddled close together beneath an over-sized comforter. Napoleon chuckled at Trudy’s question and raised his eyebrows before he answered, “More, actually.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I don’t think he is,” Parker chimed in.
She sighed. “So, is anyone going to tell me what the hell happened in that parking lot?”
Napoleon noticed that Trudy’s edge seemed to go butter-knife-dull whenever she was forced to think about what was really happening now.
She’
d gotten nervous when she found out that Napoleon was going to be staying in their room too, but she hadn’t said anything. Then, when he and Parker had discussed sleeping in shifts for the night, a concerned look rented space on her face before she evicted it and looked off into the distance.
But these were all second cousins to the look of stunned dismay that had appeared on her face earlier in the day, in the 7-Eleven parking lot, and the pure shock that followed when she’d asked for an explanation of what had just happened and instead only been hustled to the car with the kids and told to keep her head down. Danger was good at shutting people up. Even people like Trudy. But Napoleon had seen the resentment there, flashing in her eyes, at her question being ignored. Napoleon knew it would eventually come back around, and now it had. Really, how could it not?
Looking at Napoleon, Parker shrugged and asked, “You or me?”
“I got it,” Napoleon replied. “Ms—”
“Trudy.”
“Okay. Trudy. What I’m going to tell you is going to sound crazy, but in a way, I’m kinda happy you saw what you did. I think it’ll make it easier for you to accept it.”
Sighing heavily, Trudy rolled her hand impatiently. “Accept what? C’mon. Spit it out.”
“The two men in the parking lot were demons. From hell.”
Trudy blinked, and then looked Napoleon directly in the eye. “Quit fucking around.”
Napoleon said nothing and Parker matched him.
A moment of silence passed before Trudy laughed and said, “You’re serious?”
Napoleon simply nodded. It was no different than telling a mother that her son has disappeared, or a father that his daughter has been raped, or a wife that her husband had been killed in a car crash. The approach was the same: you kept it short and treated the words like pins in hand grenades.
Parker, as always with the etiquette, picked this moment of all moments to yawn.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Is this boring you?” Trudy whispered angrily, snapping Parker so hard he actually sat up straight, which made Napoleon instantly like Trudy more.
Parker shrugged at her and replied, “Hey… I’ve heard a lot of it already, is all.”
“Not really,” Napoleon said. “You haven’t heard what color the sky in hell is—it’s not red, by the way—and I haven’t told you about The Shaman, either. Just so you know, he’s this Indian guy who rides around on a horse, looking for souls that are trying to escape. Like a fucking officer from Animal Control or something.”
Parker’s eyes grew narrow and he leaned in across the small dining table. Trudy did the opposite; she leaned back, an incredulous look on her face. Some people take the bad news on the chin, others do it on the back pedal.
Napoleon looked at her solemnly. “So, Trudy, all cards on the table, okay?”
Trudy said nothing. She didn’t move at all for a second or two. Napoleon wondered if maybe she was thinking that she was in a hotel room with two men who had completely lost their minds. Probably. Whatever. This was no time for the soft sell because Napoleon knew that the idiots in the 7-Eleven parking lot weren’t the only ones. More would be coming. Soon, probably.
Finally, she nodded.
“I don’t know what your religious or spiritual beliefs are, but heaven and hell are real. I’ve heard of the former and, as I said, been to the latter. Angels and demons are real too. I’ve seen them,” Napoleon said quietly, hearing the reverence in his own voice. Then he nodded towards Parker. “And he has too.”
Trudy looked from Napoleon to Parker and then back again.
“Now you have too,” Parker said. “At least, you’ve seen demons. Those two guys in the parking lot. I hope you get to see the angels as well.”
As usual, when a person goes into shock they ask the questions you don’t expect. Trudy was no different. “Why?”
Parker rubbed his chin and looked at Trudy. Napoleon noticed it was a look filled with tenderness, and he smiled to himself as Parker replied to her, “Because I think it helps to see that the demons aren’t all there is. That good is out there too, fighting the fight.”
“You guys are crazy,” Trudy murmured with a nervous giggle. Her eyes darted back and forth, an outward reflection of her mind at work, right there behind her skull, sorting through all the alternative explanations covered in the dust of reason. Finally, she found one. “It was a mass hallucination. That’s all.”
Napoleon countered immediately. “That no one else in the 7-Eleven or on the sidewalk or driving down the street happened to see?”
“Just us and the kids?” Parker piled on.
“Look…”
“You saw what you saw, Trudy. Why don’t you tell us what it was?”
Trudy began to shake her head tightly, back and forth, as if her head were in a vice. “No. I won’t.”
“They had animal faces…” Parker said gently.
“No. Stop.”
“What about the teeth and claws?”
“It was a hallucination. It wasn’t real.”
“Mm-hmm,” Napoleon joined in, “and when we shot them… what happened to them after we shot them?”
“I don’t know,” Trudy replied tersely.
“There are bullets missing from my gun, Trudy, and from Parker’s gun. Where did those bullets go?”
“Off into the trees, or into that brick wall maybe, that was behind the big guy.”
“You mean, the big guy that wasn’t there? That was a hallucination? They were both there, they both transformed, the world came to a stop, we killed them and then—poof!—they disappeared. How in the world—”
Trudy held up her hand for them to stop, so they both did. After all, this wasn’t an interrogation. If it were, then it would’ve been the perfect moment to break her, right when she’d clearly had enough.
Napoleon marveled at her strength. She was in a weird situation, in a weird setting. Alone with her friend’s kids, determined to protect them, now being confronted by the people she trusted as police officers with ideas and explanations that had to be horrifying, if not downright ridiculous. She looked overwhelmed. Still. No tears. No look of panic. Not even a quivering lip.
That’s when it hit him: she knew already.
“What happened?”
“What?” Trudy replied.
“You know something. Something you’re not telling us.”
The visage of self-control finally cracked; she began to chew softly on her lower lip. Like a little girl with a secret to tell. Instead, she shook her head.
It was Parker’s turn to press. “Look. The three of us are into something big here, and those two little kids need us to get our shit straight. Right up front. If you know something? You need to tell us.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Then… what is it?”
She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and took a deep breath. Exhaling through her nostrils, she seemed to come to some sort of an agreement with herself. “When I was young, about fourteen or fifteen, for fun, well, I guess for fun, whatever, I got into witchcraft a little bit.”
Parker looked at Napoleon. It was a look that said what Napoleon was thinking: Oh shit.
“It was nothing serious,” she continued. “Some Wiccan stuff. I fancied myself a white witch, if anything. Harmless stuff. At least I think it was.”
“Yeah. I’m not so sure about that,” Napoleon said warily.
“Well. Anyway. I got out of it once all the pentagram stuff started; first with marbles on the floor of my bedroom, then later with paint on the floor of an abandoned house in our neighborhood.”
“Just you?”
“Shit no,” Trudy said with a laugh. “My friend Cindy got me into it, along with her friend Megan.”
Parker rested his forearms on the table. The bags under his eyes were huge. “And?”
“Anyway, one day, Cindy decides she wants a ‘familiar,’” Trudy continued, making quotation marks with her fingers, “and so we got into some spell shit. It d
idn’t work. She said we needed blood. So, next day, she comes with a can of blood. I asked her where she got it. She said it was from some packs of venison in the meat locker in her parents’ garage, but I never really believed her.”
“Yeah?” Napoleon asked.
“Yeah. Later on we found out she’d gone down to Chinatown and bought some live chickens with her saved allowance. I guess she had them killed and cleaned there and asked for the blood too.”
“Odd request,” Parker said glumly.
Napoleon scoffed. “Not in Chinatown. I’ve heard of pig dishes with blood. Not chicken. But who knows. Maybe she paid extra.”
“She was a kid, man.”
“Poor don’t know age, Parker,” said Napoleon. “The workers down there are mostly indentured servants. At best, they’re making a quarter the minimum wage. Go on, Trudy.”
“Anyway, so we drew up the pentagram in the house with the blood this time, then began the spells and incantations… and some weird shit started to happen.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing Hollywood,” Trudy answered with a shrug, but her eyes looked far away now. Way far away. “But, ya know, the door to the bedroom we were in just closes. All on its own. We nearly jumped out of our pants, then we blamed the wind. Then Cindy tripped out, for just a second, her eyes got… whacky.”
Parker cleared his throat. “Whacky?”
“Yeah. They rolled back for a second. And she stared blinking really, really fast.”
“What’d you do?”
“I thought she was fucking with us, ya know? I was like, ‘Knock it off, Cindy,’ and I threw something at her, a small rock I had in my pocket that I’d picked up the day before for no particular reason. Then it got weirder.”
“How’s that?” Napoleon asked.
“The rock… Shit, this is gonna sound totally ridiculous. I can’t believe I’m telling you guys this. I’ve never told anyone. Not even Tamara.”
“Try us,” Parker pressed.
Trudy reached up to sweep aside some hair that had fallen over her eyes. “Okay. Fine. The rock… it just… froze. It would’ve hit her in the chest. I didn’t throw it hard and she was wearing a puffy jacket that day because it was cold. It wouldn’t have hurt her, but damn it, it just froze, right there in mid-air.”
“Froze?”
One Plus One (The Millionth Trilogy Book 3) Page 18