When I read this to Ricky he starts laughing. Actually, it's more of a cackle. Like a coyote or a hyena. “You'll never see half of that shit. You just have to memorize it for the test.”
But what happens in an emergency?
“In an emergency you're going to probably flip-out, anyway. No sign is going to keep you from doing that. You need to just get behind the wheel and learn it in the streets.”
I don't know if that's a good idea, I say. What if I get into a wreck, learning how to drive?
“No, Jack. We'll head out to some old parking lot and let you drive around. Practice parking. Skidding. J-turns. Bat-turns—”
“Hold on,” I say, flipping through the manual, and I can't find any section on Bat-turns. J-turns, either.
“Jack,” he says turning his head sadly, “you have so much to learn.”
As we near Addison Circle, where our penthouse loft is located, we stop, waiting to make a left across the tollway. I turn to the section on making left-hand turns in different scenarios.
We are turning left from a two lane, one-way, onto a four lane, two-way. There are several steps that need to be followed and as far as I can tell, Ricky is violating each and every one of them.
I think he sees me grading him, and he says, “What?”
I close the book, reaching to make sure my seatbelt is firm across my chest so that when we have a collision I might make it out alive.
He laughs and we somehow make it across the Tollway, and find ourselves at our parking garage. Three minutes later we're riding the elevator upwards, waiting for our floor.
As the doors open we are bathed in cool, freon-charged air as we walk across white, marbled tile on the way to our loft. We live in 6-A. It's big—about 4,200 square feet. And it's lavish. Ricky's parents had the oak floors redone, even though they were brand new.
The loft is spacious, with the first floor being composed of a large dining area, a large living room with an entertainment center that rivals the movie theaters. In the center, just behind the staircase is a decked-out kitchen with every kind of appliance and cooking utensil known to man. We have a giant Sub-zero refrigerator and freezer combo that looks like it could hold a full cow, un-cut.
This penthouse, it has a balcony that runs around three of the four sides, since we're out on the corner of the building. And really, it's so nice that I feel like I'm breaking the law by living here. I almost feel guilty, except that Ricky says his parents like the idea of him getting me back together as a person.
As weird as this seems to me, I'm pretty sure that I wasn't wealthy in my past life. The furniture is all white leather. The tables, thick glass—so thick that it has a blue hue to it. The lights are “moody,” Ricky says. “The perfect place to entertain.”
He's also been pressing me to start talking to women. This is another one of those things that I haven't been able to 'get' yet. I'm ordering every kind of romantic comedy that there is from NetFlix. But you know, they make it look so easy. I definitely wasn't a Casanova in my forgotten past.
Ricky and I unload the bags of groceries near the mammoth refrigerator and then sit at the bar. I've got my Drivers Handbook. He's got a small notepad.
I read, A flashing red light . . .
He says, “Give it a glance and then haul ass.”
A flashing yellow light . . .
“Slow your roll to around forty-five or fifty, glance, then haul ass.”
A flashing red light, with a flashing left-hand green arrow . . .
His eyes narrow, “Glance in all directions, then perform a late-apex, controlled slide to the left. Try not to let the ass-end come around.”
I'm in real trouble. I ask him, “How is it you're still alive?”
Ignoring my question he scribbles something down on his notepad, chewing on the back of his pen between thoughts.
“Jack?”
Yeah.
“These twenty-three Evils . . . will they be coming after us?”
I'm looking at the standard colors of road signs. “I'm not certain,” I answer. “ . . . maybe.”
Red: Stop or prohibition.
Green: Indicated movements permitted, direction guidance.
“If the Evils take a proactive approach, wouldn't it behoove them to just come and kill us?” Ricky suggests.
It's something I had considered, I say. I just don't think they'd risk it. They're on the run, and we're like, INTERPOL or something. Mostly, I figure, they'll try and stay hidden.
Blue: Motorist services guidance.
Yellow: General warning.
“But if they did come after us, they would certainly have an easier time finding us, than us finding them,” Ricky says as he writes something down. Then he taps on the page a few times, “We're easy to find. Too easy.”
Black: Regulation.
White: Regulation
“And we haven't even considered the art dealers and collectors that still want the Book of Sighs,” he adds. Just making sure I am totally and completely unable to ever sleep again. That's a headache I don't even want to think about. So I'm just reading colors.
Orange: Construction and maintenance warning.
Brown: Public recreation and scenic guidance.
I sigh, closing my ugly yellow little book, folding my hands on top. “What should we do about it? What can we do about it? Run and hide? Rich eccentric collectors will always find a way to get to us. They may even try to use your family.”
Chewing on the cap of his pen, Ricky says, “Maybe the more public recognition we get the better. Our exposure could be our safety net.”
Will that work? I ask him.
And even though he says, “Sure,” I don't think he's so sure about it.
Then something comes to my mind. “You know,” I tell him, “I don't know if the Evils know that we're on their trail. They all took off before the Angels gave me the third-degree. So, there's a good chance they have no idea what we're up to.”
Ricky nodded to himself, and went back to scribbling.
And even though I'm reading about pavement markings, all I can think about is Kristen. That one moment when I saw her in full color, on the other side of the door I wasn't supposed to open. She was the most magnificently beautiful woman I had ever seen.
Of course, I was dying at the time, so my perspective might have been a bit skewed.
But that moment, seeing all her perfect and wonderful beauty, I felt like we had eternity to spend together getting to know each other. Falling in love again. And then, in that instant, her face turned cold and haunting. And there was suffering and contempt in her menacing eyes. And she told me,
“ . . . you killed me . . . you killed me when I was so young. I had my whole life in front of me. You robbed me of that. You stole my life away from me, Jack. And then I was sent to the Land of Sorrows. Why? Because my faith was not strong enough?! I was twenty-three years old!”
And right at that moment my stomach churns and I feel like the most horrible scumbag that has ever existed. Even though I know I would never have killed her . . . I know that I did. The fact that it was in my vile invisible past is no excuse.
I'm a monster that forgot his teeth.
The devil that misplaced his horns.
I killed the only person that I can remember loving. And the real stink of it is, now I have to do it again. To this girl that I loved enough to drown myself in the most exotic and terrifying ways, I have to do the one thing I could never do, but must have done. This delicate creature that I gladly walked among the dead for, I have to look her in the eyes and snatch the life right out of her.
And the thing about it is, I know when the time comes, that even though I can't possibly do it . . . I will. I'll do it because God and the Angels have ordered it. I'll do it because she represents true evil in this place.
And I'll do it because I'm a killer. Somewhere in my programming, hiding in my neurons, buried in my DNA, is the coded sequence for murderer .
I hate the
me I used to be.
The me that I, biologically, still am.
“Jack?” Ricky says, startling me from my morose thoughts.
I look up, “What?”
Delicately he asks, “You want to talk about . . . her ?”
No .
I flip over to Vehicle Registration , and he goes back to scribbling. He's avoiding me avoiding myself. We're just one-upping each other with emotional procrastination.
It's getting to be that darkening, aqua blue when the sun has run west for cover, and the sky looks like a thousand miles of deep ocean. The French say that this time of the evening—dusk—is the time between dogs and wolves.
For me, it's just when the shadows start walking.
5
The loft, Addison Circle.
Wednesday morning, 2:12 am . . .
You know that feeling, at like o-dark-thirty, when you have to take a piss so bad that you don't know if you're going to make it to the bathroom? Well, I'm running the gauntlet right now, trying to avoid smashing my toes on all of our expensive furniture. Because if that happens, I'll be on the floor, curled-up in the fetal position, hurt and pissing all over myself.
As I'm running, I see things vibrating all around me. Lamps are blurry they're shaking so much. End tables look smudged. Chairs look like humming birds' wings they're oscillating so quickly. The only thing that seems solid is the cold tile floor beneath my bare feet.
I know what's happening, but I've got to pee so bad that I can't stop to watch the world melt all around me.
At this point I'm just hoping that our toilet isn't bouncing around. Because if it is all excited, like everything else, I'm going to make a real mess. One of those unexplainable messes that ends up in me tapping my thumbs together while Ricky scowls.
I high-step my way into the bathroom and luckily the shaking and vibrating of everything starts to subside. Of course, everything is now bent and warped. Mirrors that were rectangular are now oddly stretched trapezoids. Paintings are hanging at impossible angles. The toilet is twisted—quite to my advantage—into something that resembles a long urinal.
Everything is wrong-shaped and demented.
And all the colors of our world have been replaced by shades of grey.
Tones of melancholy.
Cold, lifeless color.
Like what deep space is probably like on an average day.
This is the place between dogs and wolves. Somewhere between the Land of Sorrows, and the place I used to think of as just earth. And as good as it feels to relieve myself in our mangled toilet-urinal, I know that something creepy is about to happen.
The last time I was stuck in this half-alive, half-dead middle-ground I was communicating with the girl I thought I was deeply in love with while she conned me into usurping God's will. In the six or so months that I can remember of my life, that was one of the more thick-headed things I've done.
I walk slowly out of the bathroom, ducking because the ceiling is lower and bent at one end. Glancing back and forth, I expect to see spooks using our loft as a playground. But to my surprise . . . they're curiously absent. And while this should comfort me, it doesn't. It only means there could be some more complicated, or nightmarish reason I'm seeing this.
Like that old joke: What's worse, the monster you can see, or the one you can't? So, I'm taking short cautious steps toward the staircase, peeking slowly around each corner. I should see something unnerving any second.
I peer down our staircase trying to pick out the shadows from the furniture, and even that's quite difficult. It's all just jumbled weird shapes down there. And as bothered by this place as I am; as frightened as I know I'm probably going to end up being . . . I hope it's her.
Kristen.
Even though I know she would only be stopping in to kill me, putting an end to the monster I used to be, I still would risk it to see her. Put aside, for a moment, that she's physically dead, or was. Forget that she duped me into letting pure evil walk the earth, thereby guaranteeing that my soul was forever lost and I had no chance for salvation. Take all of that leading-me-into-the-Deadside stuff and what you're left with is that . . . I was in love with her.
And I can't even explain why I felt this way.
I didn't even know her for more than a couple of weeks. But I know that some part of me really cared about her. I'm glad I don't remember killing Kristen. And I'm probably better off without the memories of my erased life. No amount of hugs, and self-help books, and psycho-pharmaceuticals would be able to clean that up.
Ignorance may not be bliss, but it's a lot better than eternal guilt.
I tiptoe down the steps, shifting my weight slowly from toe to heel, just like in Ninja Warrior 4 —you know, where the white ninja sneaks up on two hundred yellow ninjas and takes them out one by one, only to find out later that they were all his cousins. Anyway, I'm all stealth mode , now.
When I get to the bottom I kneel down for a moment, just letting my peripheral vision grab things that my brain can sort out. If this is an Evil ambush, I want to have a fighting chance at hauling ass. Ricky's advice is to apply liberal amounts of head butts and knees to the balls, but I'm not sure if that would do any good against the 23 Evils. Might just make them want to toy with me before they do me in.
I don't even know if the undead have balls.
As I sit there I wonder if this is all an elaborate dream my mind is weaving for me. I wonder if I've just wet the bed, and am waiting to awaken? I guess I'd rather be embarrassed than dead. But a 30-something-year-old guy soaking his sheets is a pretty horrible concept to grapple with.
Perhaps this is one of those fugue states that my doctors were telling me to expect? That's a condition where an individual wanders away from his home or place of work for extended periods of hours, days, or even months. Psychiatrists see it as a symbolic escape from conflicting events or emotional indecision. And I've definitely got all of those going on.
I pinch myself, and it hurts. I'm not sleeping, I guess. I count my fingers, and move each and every one, reciting my name silently four times like I was taught.
Jack Pagan.
Jack Pagan.
Jack Pagan.
Jack . . . whatever. I'm awake. Good news is I didn't wet the bed. Bad news, I'm halfway to hell, waiting for something unpleasant to happen.
And then I hear it.
6
The loft.
Moments later . . .
“Jack . . . .”
Somebody is out on the gnarled, uneven balcony, and he's big. He looks to be dressed in a black cloak. Kind of like what I imagine the grim reaper wears to parties and social gatherings. He looks in my direction, his face hidden under the hood of this cloak and he says my name again.
“Jack, we need to talk.”
My heart is racing, and my hands start to sweat. Man up, or back down. That would be Detective Todd Steele's advice. Although, the cunning detective Steele didn't see the things I see. Nevertheless, I take a deep breath and head towards the balcony.
The door that during normal earthly hours is in a nice rectangular shape, it's now skewed where the right side is curved and angled towards the ground. I grab the knob, hoping that the frame has been warped proportionate to the door. It would be rather embarrassing if I couldn't open my own door. You know, the grim reaper is out there, tapping his toe impatiently, maybe chewing on his fingernails . . .
But the door opens easy enough and within a few steps out, I am suddenly panicked. The guardrail that goes around ¾ of our loft, it's all mangled and bent, and if you aren't paying good attention, you might fall ass-over-elbows right off the damn thing. That is dangerous!
“You have nothing to fear, Jack,” the slightly familiar voice says.
And then I realize where I know this voice from.
“Uriel?” I ask delicately. “Is that . . . you?”
Like he's practiced it a hundred times, he turns his head slightly and the hood falls down to his shoulders. And there he is
, the only Angel I have on my Friends and Family calling plan.
His face is like, perfect. Smooth, symmetrical. Angelic. He looks like a monk, with his shaved head. His eyes are brilliant blue-green, with golden specs—like glitter, almost. And . . . he has color in his skin. He looks like a perfected human.
The mold.
More human than I, in this place.
“It's been a while,” I tell him, my eyes nervously glancing back and forth between the edge of the balcony and Uriel.
“ . . . just over four of your weeks,” he says, being factually correct.
Yeah, I say, but you know how it is . . . time takes forever. I'm trying to be clever and disarming at the same time. From his expression it would seem that I've accomplished neither.
“This,” he says, walking right up to the very edge of the balcony, just flirting with death, “ . . . is a very nice place you and your friend have, here.” He turns his head back, motioning to the impossibly expensive loft that the Chamberlain family fortune pays for.
Wondering if he's going to fall or not, I say, “Well, we're just doing the best we can with what little means we have.”
Uriel almost smiles when I say that. I don't even know if Angels have the necessary muscles to make a smile. He has that almost smile that statues have—the same smile that characteristically appears on the faces of Greek statues of the Archaic period ( c. 650–480 BC), especially those from the second quarter of the 6th century BC. I've got a lot of spare time.
“You and your friend—”
Ricky, I correct him. Ricky.
He eyes me, almost half-scolding, “ . . . yes. You and Ricky, you need to start looking at strange deaths in recent weeks.”
Strange deaths? I don't follow.
“Deaths that have occurred on this earth, in this plane, since you released the twenty-three evil spirits,” he clarified. “You need to pay special attention to any oddity, no matter how minuscule. It may lead to finding them.”
We started a company, I tell him.
See Jack Hunt (See Jack Die) Page 3