All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (36 page)

Trevor looked at
the boy, then back at the tapestry where the thread-Icarus ran
across the yard, opened a door in the wall and disappeared. The teen
shook his head trying to rearrange his thoughts.

“
What?”

“
You
saved Icarus. That man would have killed him. For real, this time.”

“
That
really happened?”

“
Mmm
hmm.”

“
I
saved my father.”

“
Yes.”

“
That
means--”

“
You
killed the other man, yes.”

“
But...isn’t
he already dead?”

“
Mmm.
To a point. Now he is all the way.”

Trevor’s
throat tied itself in a knot and he stumbled back a couple of steps,
head spinning. He looked at the tip of his finger, then wiped it
vehemently on his pant leg, wiping away debris which didn’t
exist.

I killed him.

“
Sacrifices
must be made, Trevor. Choices. It was him or your father. Would you
prefer it the other way? I can change it.”

The boy raised a
hand toward the hanging but stopped when Trevor shook his head.

“
No.
You have already lost him once, haven’t you? You would not
want to be responsible for losing him again.”

The boy turned
toward him and took two steps. Trevor backed away until he bumped a
piece of furniture behind him. He heard the click-clack of skeletal
jaws snapping and knew he’d backed into the table with its
caged lizard-thing.

“
I
told you I would not hurt you. Quite the opposite. It is by accident
you are here, so I am keeping you safe.”

Trevor glanced at
the stretched flesh of the comedy/tragedy masks on the wall and
doubted his safety. He wanted to go home.

“
Don’t
worry. You will get home soon enough. I need to show you some things
first, however.”

He gestured for
Trevor to follow again and the teen did despite an urgent desire to
either stay put or flee—anything but follow the boy again.
They went to the same wall, the same tapestry, but this time it
showed a different scene. A church on a stormy night, a man not
dressed for the weather seeking refuge beneath its eaves. Across the
churchyard, two other figures lurked beneath a giant oak tree, a
silver-threaded knife flashing in one of their hands.

“
It
is time someone knew the truth.”

Trevor watched the
thread-version of his father leave the protection of the church’s
eaves and head across the churchyard where two muggers waited to
kill him.

Bruce
Blake-All Who Wander Are Lost

Open the door.

Close the door.

Open the door.

Close the door.

Open the door.

Each time, the door
opened on the same darkened warehouse, the same stacks of plastic
chairs and tables.

How do they do
it?

After
manipulating the door through its paces enough times to make my arm
sore, I saw the futility in the venture and began wracking my brain:
where
else did I see people go to Hell?

I’d
seen Hell the first time in my hotel room at the hands of the
archangel Michael. Real as it seemed, I’d assumed it a
representation of Hell, not that my hotel room hid a Hellish portal
a la
The
Amityville Horror
or
Buffy
the Vampire Slayer
.
The second time, I’d ended up there because of Father Dominic.
That time it had been at the church.

The church.

When we’d
brought Beth Elton back, Piper took me through the church, at least
what remained of it. Makes one wonder about the nature of the church
when it proves the best method of ingress to Hell.

I always knew
something was wrong with that place.

I slammed the
warehouse door shut one last time with authority so it would know I
was done with this silliness, then took two steps across the parking
lot and stopped. Before I went any further, I returned to the door
and peeked through once more. Chairs and tables.

I headed for the
nearest bus stop.

†‡†

The crowd had grown
since my last visit to the church. How long ago was it? A couple of
days? Time loses its meaning in Hell and the battery in my
throw-away digital watch gave up the ghost a few weeks before, so I
threw it away.

I surveyed the
situation from beneath the oak tree, keenly aware I stood bare yards
from where two muggers killed me for a few bucks and an Xbox game:
Halo—good game. Every time I came here, the memories sent
shivers reverberating up my spine, partially due to the shock and
pain of dying, partially because part of me wondered what life would
have been like if I didn’t bump into the guys with the knife
that night. What if I never met Mikey and took this job? Where would
I be? What would I be doing?

Good chance I
wouldn’t be hanging around here trying to find my way to Hell.
Also a good chance I wouldn’t have reconciled with Trevor. If
nothing else, dying gave me back a relationship with my son I’d
lost years before.

But now you’ve
lost him.

Emerging from
behind the oak tree’s broad trunk, I headed across the
churchyard toward the tents pitched there, studiously doing my best
to avoid the police presence in place to keep the peace like it was
some kind of ‘Occupy Heaven’ protest. At the edge of the
crowd, I settled in beside a man with a wool hat pulled down to his
eyebrows, his hands encased in thick mitts which matched the hat and
looked like they’d been knitted by someone’s
grandmother.

“
What’s
going on?” I asked, aiming for a friendly tone but barely
hiding my impatience.

“
What?”

“
I
said: what’s going on?”

“
Don’t
you watch the news?”

I shook my head and
the man looked me up and down. I had no coat and wasn’t
feeling the cold—a by-product of being in Hell for a while, I
suppose—but hugged myself against the chill and feigned a
shiver to avoid creating suspicion.

“
Jesus.”

“
Whoa,
tone it down a bit, buddy,” I said leaning toward him. “This
doesn’t seem like the kind of crowd that would approve of you
using the big guy’s name in vain.”

“
No.
We saw Jesus last night.”

I pressed my lips
together stifling a giggle, though part of me felt jealous. I’d
been dead for months, met angels, archangels, demons, but no sign of
this Jesus fellow. Didn’t seem right these people should see
him before me. The thought bubbled a chuckle to the edge of my lips.

“
What?
He just came strolling up and said ‘what’s up, Doc?’”

“
He
was in the window.”

The man’s
face remained serious, my poor humor lost on him.

“
Has
he been back?”

“
No.
But he’ll come. I know he will.”

I nodded, ending
the conversation. My experience with people like this guy told me
once they got talking about Jesus, getting anything else out of them
was impossible. Probably he wouldn’t be too helpful if I
straight up asked ‘have you seen a doorway to Hell around
here?’

I skirted the
outside edge of the crowd, hiding my face as I passed necessarily
close to one of the police officers monitoring the gathering, but
his eyes didn’t waver from the stained glass window,
apparently counting himself one of the flock. The way they all
stared, faces blank with wonder, reminded me of the souls I’d
seen in Hell, though their eyes held hope instead of despair.
Doesn’t the one often precede the other?

My circuitous route
took me through the dilapidated graveyard with its tumble-down
headstones. A rime of snow and frost lay atop the cracked and
chipped stones, bringing more lightness and joy to the little
cemetery than it had seen in years. I followed the wrought iron
fence, checking over my shoulder frequently to ensure no one saw me,
but the miraculous window held all the onlookers rapt. After a
minute, I came directly behind the still-standing section of church
and hopped the fence back into the churchyard, careful not to skewer
myself on its black tines.

For some reason,
the Jesus-seekers stayed away from this side of the ruined church.
Maybe out of respect, or fear, or maybe the cops kept them away.
Whatever. I crept across the snowy lawn, noticed a couple of sets of
footprints mostly filled with new snow, and made it to the church
unnoticed.

No snow dusted the
ground within the ruins despite the explosion that left the church
with no roof. The shattered pews and chunks of stone walls scattered
around the one-time nave lay free of the white shawl of winter
beautifying the cemetery. I scampered toward the window sending
wayward pebbles skittering before me with each step, cursing myself
in my head with each sound for fear someone would hear, but I didn’t
slow. The closer I got to the window, the more sure I became this
would get me where I needed to go.

I felt Hell getting
closer.

The pew Piper had
man-handled against the wall still rested there, propped up to serve
as an awkward ladder to the window. I boosted myself up, the smell
of its charred wood entering my nostrils, but it didn’t do so
alone. Buried deep beneath it, a hair’s breadth from being
unnoticeable, I caught a whiff of cinnamon and fresh baking.

Mikey’s
been here.

I grabbed the sides
of the bench to haul myself up and got a sliver in the index finger
of my right hand. The quick jab of pain it brought made me realize
the other injuries I’d sustained had all but disappeared—if
I’d healed this well in life, maybe I’d have stuck with
football and gotten better at it. Probably wouldn’t have
helped.