“You think she might be possessed by a demon?”
I shrugged. “That asshole Abraxas was pretty adamant that it wasn’t something from hell itself, but why believe him? Demons are all about double dealing and I’m not entirely convinced that Abraxas knows the full truth. Lies are a form of currency for those pricks – Abraxas could have been lying to us for all we know.”
Sparks shone her flashlight at the blood spatter and chewed her lip for a moment. “I’m starting to wonder just how many supernatural beings exist in this world alongside us. Are you certain the girl didn’t just walk out of here at gunpoint?”
I shook my head firmly. “Not a chance. Any human being setting foot in the corridor leading up to my safe house would have had a major run-in with a huge nest of rattle snakes. Anyone in their right mind would have run for the hills the moment they heard their little tails rattling away. Even if a human miraculously got past them, Amy would have started shooting the moment they managed to breach that iron door. And, Carol, when that door is closed and locked you would still need high explosives to get through it. No … we’re not dealing with anything human on this. Count on it.
Sparks pointed to the blood stain. “But what about the blood?”
I shrugged. “She probably went into a fit of convulsions when her body was taken over. Infection from a demon has that effect on people – she probably banged her head.”
“Alright,” she said, shining her flashlight on the wall. “And you think you can find her and you want to use my body to do it – again, I can’t frigging believe I just said that, but hey, I’m bound for the nuthouse when all this is done, so what the hell? Tell me, Reaper, what’s involved in all this?”
I threw her an awkward glance. “Well, I’m going to need you to lie down, relax and for shit sake, keep your freaking eyes shut tight. If this body burns up, I’ll simply transfer the essence that is me, into you, got it? And you can’t fight me on it, either, Carol. You have to willingly let me in because I don’t know what will happen to your mind if there’s a struggle.”
She squeezed her temples with both index fingers like she was getting the mother of all migraines. “This just keeps getting better and better. You know, a large part of me thinks you’re so full of shit that you’re about ready to be spread over a farmer’s field, but then I’ve seen the inexplicable first-hand. I’m not crazy about this, but if it will lead us to the girl and ultimately to the killer, then I don’t see any other option.”
I pointed to the air mattresses on the floor in the corner. “Good. Head over there and try to relax. I’m going to see if I can find her in a minute … and remember, keep your freaking eyes shut … this is just like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know?”
“Great,” she huffed as she padded across the room and plopped herself down on an air mattress. “My face could melt. Just freaking great.”
I honestly didn’t think Sparks would volunteer. I knew that deep down underneath her tough law and order exterior; she was dead terrified of what she’s seen over the last few days. There was a plus to all of this, though. If I could find another body to jump into it meant a new face and a new identity that would spare me from having to deal with the Halifax City Police looking for the guy caught on camera at the archdiocese. Sometimes being a death spirit has its benefits, though I’d grown pretty fond of the body I’d been using for a decade.
I exhaled heavily and sat cross-legged in front of the blood spatter as I held out my hand. “You ready for this, Sparks?” I called out.
“Yes … fine. Get on with it,” she said with not a small amount of trepidation in her voice.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and pushed my right palm against the cold cement and then I raised my true nature. The sound of my breathing disappeared entirely as my essence mingled with the residue of Amy’s being. I locked onto traces of intense human emotion – the surest marker of a person’s existence. My senses filled with lightning-quick vignettes of Amy’s life.
Images of a young girl flashed before me. She was perhaps no more than eight or nine and I saw her bury her head underneath a pillow to blot out the noise of a violent argument in the background. I could hear dishes being smashed and a woman’s scream as Amy’s heart raced. I saw a bedroom door being opened through the corner of her eye and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as the fragment of Amy’s memory showed me that this wasn’t the first time she’d been abused in the worst possible way by a man she hated with every fiber of her being.
I’d half-expected it to be her father, but I was dead wrong. My mind soared like beacon of light to an image of a rainy afternoon and a casket being lowered into the ground, all seen through the eyes of a child who couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. Another flash of light and I was back in the bedroom, my thoughts awash in a sense of despair because the one person who could have saved her was long dead and the man now touching her had both Amy and her mother trapped in a life of violence and humiliating sexual abuse.
No wonder she’d turned to drugs. I made a mental note to pay the man a visit if he wasn’t already dead.
I pushed that toxic memory aside and reached through a catalogue of recent feelings, good ones, actually. A sense of liberation at having gotten herself weaned off those same drugs she’d used to numb the pain of a life filled with endless fear and self-loathing. I felt her elation at the sense that she was starting over, that she was creating a new Amy despite the torture she’d been exposed to since she was a little girl.
But I couldn’t allow myself to become distracted. I needed to latch onto her most recent memory – the one she experienced just before her mind and soul were invaded by a being with enough power and contempt to ignite a thousand suns. Something with hatred so bitter that it could poison the very air surrounding it. I pushed my senses further until I saw the image of the door to my safe house opening. A living shadow flowed across the floor like an ink-stained fog. It filled every inch of the main room forcing Amy into a corner. A surge of panic radiated out from the center of her chest as the menace-laced mist lapped at her toes and then slowly crawled up her bare legs. She cried out, but there was nobody around to hear her. Amy did the only thing she could do – she dropped into the fetal position and closed her eyes. It was just as when she had closed her eyes when any manner of evil was being done to her body by the man who forced her to call him Daddy.
My stomach turned as I felt her mind begin to lose control over her body. Amy flailed violently like a drowning man desperate to breathe as the water filled his lungs.
The seizure ended as quickly as it began. Amy slowly stood up and looked around the empty room. She stared down at her feet and then at the iron door. I could feel her lips arching up into a thin, crooked grin as she stretched out her hand and made a sweeping motion. The iron door swung wide open as Amy stepped into the corridor. She headed toward the main entrance and I felt the stirrings of every single rattle snake suddenly become aware of a sense of kinship with the entity now standing before them. They whipped their tails, hundreds of rattling tails in a frenzy that filled the air with their distinct sound. Hundreds of rattlers all slithered out of their dark places and followed her like she was the pied piper as she strode through the main entrance and into the morning light.
Amy spun around to face them and bowed. Then she brought an index finger to her lips and in a single gesture, commanded them to be silent. The snakes immediately obeyed as Amy looked up to the sky. She whispered a word of power so bitter that it made me want to choke as a black, billowing mist poured out of the ground beneath her feet and enveloped her body.
She disappeared from my sight for a short moment and then I caught a glimpse of the harbour front. She was standing in the ferry terminal as dozens and dozens of people brushed past her, their bodies sweeping past outstretched hands. She was searching for someone, her mind fixed on a place and a time shortly after the very thought of humanity came to the mind of Him.
&nbs
p; It remembered everything.
A voice commanded that there should be light and light appeared for the very first time. And it angered Amy. A raging torrent of hatred, liquid fire as old as time itself burned through her veins as she continued her search. It would show Him that the error of His ways. Though He created all, it would tear everything apart and send the armies of hell itself rampaging through the world of man. It would take them both – the Creator and the Usurper. It would claim dominion over all of heaven and hell and all things divine in a new eternity where His word was no longer law. Where the battle for men’s souls was a distant memory and where the Fallen and the protectors of His grace would reunite. Heaven’s wounds would heal and it would create an eternity free of the great mistake that is Man.
Three of His remaining heavenly generals were destroyed along with three that had been cast out – now only one remained and he would finally to put an end to the great mistake.
The death of His last general, would force the hand of the Almighty. Hell was the domain of the one He feared the most. Lucifer was once His most trusted servant. It was he who started the war of the angels. It was he who possessed power near to that of the creator and when it was finally successful in killing the last general, the gatekeeper to the abyss, Lucifer’s armies would be unleashed, forever destroying the world of man.
Everything was coming together, it thought. It was only a matter of time.
***
I came to with the acrid smell of seared human flesh filling my nostrils. The flames surged out from my chest, radiating down across my torso. I wanted to scream – the pain was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I held my hand in front of my eyes only to see it ablaze like a torch. My host burning up and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. Too much of the residual life energy in my host had been spent in my search for Amy. Its time, like the human soul it had once housed was now at an end. My true form rose from the fleshy sack and drifted in the air for a few moments. The body was now burning with an intensity that scorched the concrete ceiling. I immediately became aware of the fact that the fire could spread and there was a ton of guns and ammunition in my bunker. Sparks was coughing into her sleeve, her eyes tightly shut.
It was going to be risky, sharing her body until a new one could be found but it had to be done. I fell into Sparks like a wave crashing onto a shoreline. She pitched and rolled as my essence became acquainted with her central nervous system and I did my level best to avoid becoming distracted by the rush of adrenaline-laden fear that was coursing through her veins.
“Sparks,” I said, my voice echoing as if in a tunnel. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she coughed. “Is it safe to open my eyes now?”
“Um … yeah,” I said. “And when you do, there’s a fire extinguisher in the cabinet over the laundry basin. I’m on … I mean, I was on fire. Or at least my former body is burning so, you know, maybe you might want to put me out.”
Sparks opened her eyes and she immediately spotted the cabinet. She raced to her feet and ripped open the door, grabbing the small CO2 extinguisher. She covered her nose with her shirt and ran over to my body. It burned white-hot, as Sparks aimed the extinguisher and emptied its contents, dousing the fire. In seconds what was left of me was nothing more than smouldering figure that sizzled and popped as it spat out human fat.
Sparks tossed the extinguisher into a corner and then padded over to the iron entry door to get something resembling fresh air into my safe house. “Scratch the shock therapy, Reaper,” she said amid a fit of coughs. “I’m going to need an entire platoon of shrinks because of my association with you.”
“Yeah, kind of sucks,” I said, not sure what else I could offer in consolation.
“Sucks? That’s all you can say?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. “It might be a good idea to get me to a hospital or a place where I can find a suitable host.”
Sparks nodded. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. In the meantime, I’m not entirely comfortable having you poking around in my head. What do I have to do next?”
“Grab my guns in the locker along with some ammo. There’s an envelope containing about twenty grand in cash along with the keys to my Wagoneer in there, too. We need to head into the city. Oh, and that Holy sword is in my rifle case. Bring it along because I’m going to need it.”
“You were able to locate Amy, then?” she asked.
“Yes and no,” I replied. “I saw where she went to but I don’t know where she’ll be heading after that.”
“You know, I’m probably going straight to hell for helping you,” she said. “I don’t even want to try to figure out the ethics of helping you find a dead body to take over.”
“Ethics – shmethics,” I said. “It’s either that or you’re stuck with me for the rest of your life.”
Sparks stormed over to my gun locker. She took out one of my Desert Eagles and two boxes of .44 caliber ammunition. “The rest of my life?” she said sourly as she slammed the locker door closed. “Screw your Wagoneer, the sooner I get you out of me the better, so we’ll take my car … it’ll be faster.”
21
The entire trip back to town, I was forced to listen to Sparks gripe about body-snatching and how she rued the day I walked into her life. All told, she was handling my presence in her body pretty well given that only three days earlier she’d have been loathe to allow even the smallest physical contact between us. It was a new experience for me, too, since I’d never occupied the body of a female before. Not that death spirits are male or female – we didn’t have a gender.
We entered the city just as the sun hung low in the sky and dusk was settling in. I found myself amused by Sparks’ eyes scanning convenience store parking lots, alleyways and playgrounds as we headed toward the hospital. As if she’d been hard wired with a hyper vigilance gene: she kept her eyes peeled on every dark place, strange movement and bad driver, like she knew who the bad guys were and where you could find them.
“You’re pretty good at this, Carol,” I said, my voice echoing in her ears.
“Good at what?” she said, as she steered her car onto Robie Street.
“Being a cop,” I answered. “You’ve got like … I don’t know, this crazy crime radar going on. You don’t miss much, do you?”
She snorted. “You trying to butter me up, Reaper, because you can’t stay inside me. I’ve got a massive headache, my ears are ringing, and I’ve got a weird craving for a cigarette. Christ, I don’t even smoke.”
“This too shall pass,” I replied. “Don’t worry, you get me to the hospital and I’ll find someone who’s about to keel over. Everything should be good after that.”
She nodded. “Male or female? I need to know who I’m looking for, because you’re going to be a stranger to me.”
“Let me think about that for less than a micro second,” I said. “Definitely a male. Preferably someone who isn’t ugly, and ideally, he’ll be in shape. I’m also going to need you to use some of that money you grabbed from my gun locker to get me some supplies.”
We wheeled into the Camp Hill parking garage and Sparks flashed her badge at the attendant. The gate opened and she steered the big cruiser to the farthest corner of the second level. She cursed under her breath as she reached into her glove box. She pulled out a pad and pen.
“I’m not a secretary,” she said. “So just because I’m picking some stuff up for you doesn’t mean I’ll be doing it again any time soon. Got it? Now, what do you need?”
“A carton of smokes – Players. A lighter. I need you to get me a trench coat, preferably black, with pockets big enough to hold a few boxes of ammo. A new cell phone – one of those pay-as-you-go jobbies, and um … can you get me back into my flat?”
She gripped the steering wheel and said, “Probably. But the evidence guys will have cleaned out anything they can use to build a case against you. I’m not sure you’ll find anything useful there.”
“
You’d be surprised how well I can hide shit, Sparks.” I said. “I need you to take about a hundred bucks out of that envelope and hide it somewhere, so I can grab it and cab it back to my place.”
Her eyes panned through the parking lot for a good hiding place. She spotted a boiler room door and decided she could wedge the bills between the door and the frame.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the door. “That good?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’ll do nicely. Look, Sparks … I don’t know how long this is going to take. I can’t really predict when someone is going to kick the bucket.”
“I thought that’s what reapers do?” she said.
“I used to be able to do that. I’d arrive at the moment of death and claim the person doing the dying. I do know where to look for the dead and dying, though.”
“Where’s that?”
“Emergency ward,” I said. “Where the ambulance comes in.”
She shivered. “Again, this is insane, creepy, wrong and a whole shitload of other bad things. Are you going to be leaving soon? I’d like my head back.”
“Yep. Just close your eyes and I’ll be gone. Just like back at my safe house. My essence is only tangible for a short time so do not look at it. Give yourself about three or four minutes, and then go pick up those supplies.”
She shut her eyes. “Fine. Get on with it.”
I gathered my power amid a tight ball of concentration and then pulled my essence away from Sparks’ mind. There were so many memories blended together, along with a separate emotion for each. It was as if her entire mind was a giant card catalogue of life experience, each one filed neatly away after the next. It was tempting to spend a little bit more time poking away at those things that made Sparks the force of nature she was, but she’d stuck her neck, her mind and her immortal soul out on the line for me. Nobody had ever done that for me like Carol Sparks, and I made a promise to myself that when this was over, I’d make it up to her.
Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 17