Seraphim

by Jon Michael Kelley

  “If Chris’s right about tomorrow, then we’re screwed, aren’t we?”

  “Hey, what did I just tell you?”

  “I heard you,” he said. “But since we’re sailing down the River Styx, ‘going with the flow’ could mean white water rapids, and that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Really, pal, you need to work on your pep-talks.”

  A half-grin fluted the indigo glass. “Just be nice to the gondolier.”

  Amy had advised him similarly, except that such niceties were to be lavished upon a “dead man.” Interesting. But he was too tired to ask any more questions. “Goodnight, then.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  18.

  Eli stared down into the grave, its two boarders staring back, horror-stricken. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. One girl seemed considerably less horrified than the other. Katherine Bently.

  Not for long, though, he thought. The worms would soon wipe away that smug look. Clean off her face.

  He’d not bound their arms and legs; just taped their mouths shut. He wanted the pleasure of seeing them thrash. Seeing them flail like crickets in a toaster.

  *****

  Death was a damp, loamy smell.

  The light cast from the nearby porch cleaved to the peaty walls like the soggy skin of a ghost.

  Melanie turned to her friend, who’d told her earlier in confidence that her name was really Amy and not Katherine, and that she was an angel. Figured. Melanie had come to the grim and unnerving conclusion that she was already dead.

  Amy’s chest rose and fell. She looked incredibly calm. Relieved but still light years from all right, Melanie turned her eyes to the lanky man standing at the edge of the grave. He leaned on his shovel, staring down into the pit. The errant light from the porch was enough for her to see that he was enjoying himself.

  Something’s wrong, she told herself. I should have woken up by now.

  The ground was cold; so much so that she almost wished the man would hurry up and throw in some dirt—just enough to make her teeth stop chattering.

  A really, really bad dream

  Now, that’s just plain fiction, she heard her grandmother say in her immanent German accent.

  It’s time to recognize the facts, Melanie. Now go along.

  Upon the reality of those words, her situation struck her with no less force than if the man himself had cracked her skull with a batter’s swing of his shovel. Up until this very moment, dying had only been a likely prospect.

  Now it was here, a raw and inconceivable certainty.

  Death. How...alien. And utterly horrifying.

  Panic was now pulling violently at the scruff of Melanie’s neck, wanting to muscle her up and out of this dank grave. Her chances would surely be better against Eli, she insanely reasoned, than they would against a mountain of dirt.

  As if sensing her intentions, Amy grabbed Melanie’s arm. Her eyes wide, she shook her head.

  No.

  No?

  Melanie shut her eyes and clenched both fists. Cheeks bulging, she was now screaming behind the tape. But the noises rose no farther than the laces of the man’s soiled shoes.

  Then she heard the shovel slice the mound.

  Oh my God…Mommy…Dear sweet Jesus

  With the deftness of a heavyweight’s gloved fist, the first trowel of dirt landed squarely on Melanie’s stomach. Groaning, she turned her head sideways and stared wide-eyed at the sepulchral wall of earth. Then—when it was absolutely no longer possible to keep it down—she threw up. A weak blend of water and bile spewed from her nostrils, etching the membranous passages like acid. Despite her fear that it might come back up, she swallowed the acerbic backwash, not wanting to leave it in her mouth.

  Her eyes stung. Through the diaphanous lens of tears things appeared bejeweled. Tiny bits of quartz along the walls twinkled like diamonds, and the white, spidery roots dangling around her looked like crystal coral brooches.

  She heaved again.

  The man grunted as he slung another lump of death, this one striking both her and Amy’s knees.

  Muddy trails now sashayed down Melanie’s hot cheeks, merging into even dirtier globs of emesis adhering to the gray duct tape.

  Panting vigorously, and still choking down bile, she dug her fingers at her nostrils. Grit and snot and vomit were all conspiring to choke off her air supply.

  When the man turned to refill his shovel, she loosened a corner of the tape. Sweet air trickled in. It might have been the most cherished event of her short life.

  Amy grabbed Melanie’s hand and squeezed it with senseless assurance.

  Feebly, Melanie squeezed back.

  Don’t let go of my hand, she heard Amy say in her mind. No matter what happens, don’t let go.

  Maybe she was an angel.

  A sensation flared in Melanie’s palm. The feeling seeped up her arm into her shoulder, up her neck, then into her eyes, where it formed into a white-hot sun. In a wondrous explosion, the sphere’s remnants were then hurled like stars into the cosmos of her being.

  Then she was somewhere else.

  Was someone else.

  A little black boy, about ten or twelve and wearing tattered overalls, was fishing from the weedy banks of a pond. He was crying, blubbering to himself that incomprehensible language of trauma, of shock. Abiding a routine that, in these terrible moments, felt so shameful, so dishonorable—yet so alarmingly necessary, for the familiar was now the only thing between him and the utter collapse of his heart, his soul. Two perch were pulled through a string tied around his waist. A few hundred feet behind him sat a dilapidated shack, as gray as the smoke curling from its chimney. On its rickety porch a black woman was shuffling in circles, wringing her hands, sobbing. An old bloodhound lay some feet away from her, concerned but careful to remain a tolerant distance.

  In a giant oak tree adjacent to the road, just twenty yards from the boy, a big black man was hanging from a rope.

  Melanie knew herself to be—or rather had at one time been—this man.

  He was speaking to the boy.

  Crying even harder now, the boy threw down his cane pole, slapped his hands to his ears, and waded into the cattails. His murdered father was talking to him, and that just couldn’t be.

  “You’re not alive, you’re not alive!” cried the boy.

  “Isaiah,” the man said in a choked voice, “For the last time, son, go get yer mama and help her get me down from this branch. Those bad men are long gone now.” He coughed tenuously, and as he strained to swallow, the mahogany irises of his eyes rolled back into marshmallow-white orbs, then wobbled slowly back down, as if he’d been momentarily tilted, then righted again.

  The boy lowered his hands to his sides. Sniffling, he turned and slowly headed for shore. As his resolve grew, his pace quickened. Soon he was sprinting toward the house, his legs flinging water like a pair of wet dogs, the afternoon sun igniting a rainbow aura around him.

  “Mama, mama!” he cried. “I think Papa’s still alive!”

  Melanie inhaled sharply as the cold, peaty grave embraced her once again.

  Amy was still there, their hands still interlocked.

  She understood the meaning of the vision, that she had been someone else in another life; had, perhaps, lived many lives. But if this divination was supposed to mollify her, then it miserably failed.

  Another chunk of dirt. Seconds later, a large beetle broke through her dirt pelisse. A dot of light rolled across its black liquid shell as it lumbered away, aimlessly drunk.

  In the rectangle of sky above her, stars sparkled between the willow branches like they never had, each one an enduring legacy to a sun. And now, after eons of traveling through frigid space, they’d finally found a place they could warm again. Melanie thought that hugely unfair, as those stars had searched so long and so hard for her, and now all she could offer them in return was just another cold, dark place in which to shine.

  God, there was so much that she was going
to miss; so much she would never see.

  Another clod landed between her and Amy. But this time it wasn’t dirt.

  It was a gob of worms.

  Earthworms. No, something similar to earthworms, but with mouthparts very much like those of the hideous bugs she sometimes found at night, crawling around the kitchen floor. Bugs that her mother called sun scorpions.

  Quickly the worms began dividing, and within minutes the grave was teeming with writhing, shimmering, disgusting life.

  The worms did not seem interested in Melanie, but instead began clustering upon her friend. Then, in a kind of synchronized demonstration, the worms started stitching themselves through Amy’s flesh.

  Each red mass grew larger as the worms continued to divide. The feeding sounds reminded Melanie of the wind pushing dry leaves across asphalt.

  Amy began to convulse. Her eyes were open now, wide as saucers. Her breaths were jerking in and out of her nose, short pants that quickly turned to watery wheezes as her nostrils filled with blood. Awful choking sounds rose from her throat. Then her face began to contort. Soon, her entire body was a paroxysm. Her arms flailed savagely, legs twitching and kicking. There seemed to be an enormous pressure building behind her eyes, as they were now bulging from their sockets. Behind her taped lips, agony sung like an approaching siren.

  Ligaments and tendons snapped and popped like fat on a rotisserie. Blood, black and oily, spurted now from any number of places. As she thrashed, twines of hair leaped from her head, some drifting blithely down toward the mayhem with profound indifference, while others, knotted with blood and mud and sweat, plummeted like foul to a hunter’s waiting dog.

  Then, from the knee down, her lower right leg dropped like a log in a crackling hearth.

  Melanie turned away, praying she wouldn’t vomit again.

  Eli was leaning over the hole, observing with sick intensity. With all she had left, Melanie stared challengingly into his eyes, as if she could kill him with mere concentration, maybe set his brain afire with the ancient heat of all those stars that now burned defiantly in her eyes, in her heart.

  He stared back at her with a longing so sick, so deviant and perverted that it doused her puny flickers of death and made her very being shudder with revulsion.

  She pulled her eyes away and forced herself to look at Amy one last time. But very little remained of her friend. Only a piece of gray tape now lay where her head had just been moments before. She looked down and found the only thing left of Amy was her rib cage. Between the few remaining curved bones of her chest squirmed a greasy knot of worms, feeding on her heart.

  Soon, all that was left of Amy was her left hand, still gripping Melanie’s own. Somehow overcoming a fierce compulsion to fling it out of the hole, she held on to it. Tightly.

  Eli dropped two large objects at Melanie’s feet.

  Her tattered wings.

  “It’s a shame I couldn’t see you fly,” he lamented. “But then, this is almost as good.”

  He raised the camera to his face as the worms turned on her.

  She couldn’t tell the camera’s flashes from those created by her own astonishing pain.

  Amid the devouring of her flesh, the nightmare began to finally lift. She awoke not in her warm bed in Iowa, but on the edge of a pond…

  Something was toying with her bobber.

  “I’m gettin’ a nibble,” said the black man.

  Isaiah rolled his eyes. “Papa, you’ve been gettin’ cleaned out all afternoon, and I’m gettin’ tired a’ hookin’ them worms for ya.” He shook his head. “Big man like yourself outta not be afraid of a little slimy bug. It’s embarrassin’.”

  The black man reached under his hat and scratched his head. “I reckon that’s so. Just never took a shine to ’em, boy. Just somethin’...evil about ’em,” he said, his massive shoulders quaking with revulsion.

  “Does mama know?”

  “What? That I’m a’scared a worms? Heck no. And she ain’t gonna know.”

  Grinning, the boy pulled his bobber slowly along. “Guess that’s gonna kinda depend.”

  “On what?”

  “On if’n you buy me an orange soda down at Fender’s.”

  “How ’bout I just drown you in this pond, tell ’em a granddaddy bluegill pulled ya in.”

  “And one a them licorice candies,” Isaiah added, laughing.

  “Alright,” the big man smiled. “Bring in your pole. I wanna get back ’fore dark.”

  As they walked down the dirt road, Isaiah said, “I don’t understand. They’re just worms, Papa.”

  “Yeah, I know what they are.” He sighed. “Just somethin’ deep inside a’me can’t fancy a likin’ to ’em. Been that way, I reckon, since I was born.”

  The boy looked up and smiled. “I don’t think any less of ya, Papa.”

  “That’s just ’cause I’m buyin’ you a soda.”

  “And a candy.”

  “And when that’s gone, you’ll be reachin’ for yer mama’s apron, pinchin’ me for more.”

  “Won’t either.”

  “Will so.”

  “Won’t.”

  He grabbed the boy’s neck, pulled him close. “I love ya, son.”

  “I love you too, Papa.”

  Part Four

  Wonderland

  1.

  Now that Juanita was finally asleep, he was going in.

  From a spiral space station orbiting the moon, Chris eased the ship from its mooring. This ship, this illusion, had logged the most miles, and that’s exactly why he’d selected it. The more habituated the ruse, the less energy he would have to spend keeping it structurally intact. And this one remained as tangible as his first kiss.

  The ship looked remarkably like the Proteus from the movie Fantastic Voyage, and not by any coincidence. That flick still ranked as one of Chris’s favorite. Like Donald Pleasance, Chris preferred to navigate from the glass bubble on top because it afforded a 360 degree field of view. And he would love nothing more than to imagine Raquel Welch on board, to reprise her original role where all she did was squirm deliciously in her wetsuit whenever things got a little hairy.

  Just moments earlier, he’d placed a beacon in Juanita’s psyche, one that the ship would continue to follow in case Chris’s own mind became distracted for a moment or two. And it would. He’d also psychically downloaded a special program that would not only allow Juanita to read his extrasensory software, but to interact with it, as well. This facet was imperative for the intrusion to succeed on a covert level. It would permit Juanita to play along and not be suspicious of its origins. In essence, she would believe the dream was of her own design. Chris could then get wherever he needed to go and complete the job. He was the architect. He would know the layout. Even if the dreamers participated enough to alter the landscape, he could still find his way around, unless they were excessively creative or deranged. Both cases were rare. The downside was, if the implanted dream glitched for any variety of reasons, Juanita could erase it and fill in the void with whatever she desired, something perhaps not as safe and neutral as Chris’s creation.

  She could even change him.

  Once, a dreamer had transformed him into a skinny black lady who was throwing a baby shower for a pregnant Ed Asner. Another time he was mutated into an underwater camera fastened to the hull of the Calypso, filming a school of Yoko Onos chasing a yellow submarine. He’d always go along with his new role for awhile, behaving like the parasite that he was.

  Because the last thing Chris ever wanted to do was arouse suspicion in the dreamer. Like a safari where tourists discover that the Jeep’s canvass top and their screaming guide are no match for a pride of starving lions, the dawning awareness of a dreamer was terrifying. The psyche had its own lymphatic system, but rather than dispatch phagocytes or white blood cells, it eradicated prowlers and burglars with something a bit more unique: it turned their own fears against them. Chris had named this potentiality “Door Number Three.”

  Chris
had already decided that, once he reached Juanita’s subconscious mind, he would conjure the interior of a church. Since she was always lugging around that rosary, he figured some pews, an altar, and a baptismal would be great fodder. He would go in dressed as an acolyte, a liturgical task he’d shared with other teens while going through the Lutheran equivalent of catechism. And he would most certainly have to alter his face, as he was quite sure that Juanita would reap about as much pleasure in seeing him hanged by his testicles as she would getting a conjugal visit from the Pope. However, mask or no mask, given enough time she would eventually intuit that it was him.

  The ship, now free of the space station, drifted lazily toward the moon. Chris started the main thrusters. On the console before him, an array of soft, blue lights pulsed with the ship’s engines. A red flashing bulb to his lower left indicated that the beacon was functioning. He grabbed the joy stick with his right hand, pressed a button marked EGO, then one marked ID. The star field wavered, then was lanced simultaneously by a million dazzling trails of white light.

  “Han Solo, eat your heart out.”

  To hook up someone could take as little as a minute, or as long as twenty. Chris had never been gone more than thirty minutes, and was estimating no more than five for this job. But that was time registered by his digital AM/FM clock radio on the nightstand by his bed. The sort of time that passed in Wonderland was almost sedentary compared to the hasty brand Timex doled out in the waking world. Chris returned every time suffering from astral jetlag, finding that he’d only been gone eight or ten minutes, when it seemed more like hours or sometimes even days.

  Regardless of its gender, time was still of the utmost importance. Sometimes he got lucky and the host kept the mirage going because he or she was such a willing participant, contributing their own fun rides to Chris’s traveling carnival. When that happened, the pressure was lifted, and Chris could work at his leisure. But that was rare. He had to always keep in mind the IA Factor (Inevitable Annihilation). This was when the dream started to really break down, leaving the intruder with three options. One: get out; Two: stay and let the host cast him into the next production; or Three: hastily create another dreamscape and pray it passed inspection by the host’s psyche. Chris avoided option Three at all costs. He had no desire to have his tenuous carcass buried in someone’s mind’s eye to fester there like the proverbial splinter.