Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel) (4 page)

“
Dallas. At least, I was.”

I reached beneath my overcoat and yanked Gabe’s scroll out of my back pocket, fumbling it open to see if I missed a name. I scanned the address, the time, the drop-off location (a pickle factory, believe it or not), and the same two names I’d seen before: Benjamin and Taylor Trounce. Somehow, I’d acquired one extra soul.

My new rule didn’t last long.

The pickle factory smelled of—you guessed it—pickles. I’ve never been fond of the things; I always picked them off my Big Mac and gave them to Rae, or threw them away on the many occasions I found myself gorging on fast food alone. Considering pickles are cucumbers soaked in evil, this place seemed an odd choice to bring souls finding their way to Heaven.

Being the middle of the day on a Wednesday didn’t help our situation. It meant a shift in full swing and too many people around for us to be inconspicuous. To my surprise, none of them wore yellow protective suits and inhalators like the guys on
Breaking Bad
, but regular clothes and hair nets instead, as if they worked in a place devoid of the stink of cucumber death.

We gained access by way of a back door propped open with a broken piece of brick, presumably placed there by someone sneaking out for a smoke. I marveled at the size of the place. We hadn’t stumbled into a Heinz factory, just a local operation, but it was huge. Fluorescent lights dangled from the high ceiling, their harsh glow reflecting on the surfaces of gleaming silver vats and pristine machinery; the interior sparkled with a level of clean to make most hospitals jealous. But neither its cleanliness nor the fact it showed up in my scroll brought it close enough to godliness for me to consider devouring one of the hated little things.

“Why are we here?” the little girl, Dallas, asked. Not the first question she’d posed as we made our way across town to the drop-off, which shouldn’t have been a surprise for a child her age. Two-hundredth might be a more accurate estimate.

“
Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

I glanced at her and swear I didn’t have to look down as far as when she first appeared. Did she grow? No, more likely I wasn’t paying close enough attention to a child. Not the first time—ask my son.

We wended our way between sealed barrels that, in my opinion, should have been labeled with toxic waste symbols on the side, avoiding the workers busy mauling perfectly good cucumbers into little slices of Hell. Somewhere amongst the clattering labyrinth of machines, we’d find a well dressed man who wasn’t really a man, but my new friends’ conduit to Heaven.

The Trounce family trailed behind me as we searched for the angelic escort, the three of them holding hands and looking around with a sense of wonder as if on their first trip to Disneyland. I’d once heard a rumor that Walt Disney had his body preserved while they searched for a cure for what ailed him. Urban legend? Or might Mickey Mouse’s father be folded away in one of these barrels?

After five minutes of finding dead ends and avoiding hair-netted workers, I located the fellow we searched for seated in a cramped office on the farthest wall from where we’d entered. I think they wanted me to walk through the toxic wasteland of pickles, inhaling their deathly fumes. See the sense of humor angels have?

The four of us shoe-horned ourselves into the office and I shut the door behind us, then cranked the blind closed on the window looking out onto the factory floor. Once closed in, the angel regarded us as though he didn’t notice our arrival.

“Icarus,” he said, standing.

“
Ric,” I corrected, more out of habit than with any hope an angel would develop the ability
not
to use my full name.

The overhead fluorescent light turned the escort’s whiter-than-white suit, shirt and tie combo blinding. The walls and ceiling of the office glowed with white paint. If not for the desk’s brown laminate top and the off-white file cabinet beside it, we might have thought ourselves lost in a snowstorm tainted with the reek of pickles.

“Benjamin and Taylor Trounce, I presume?” the angel asked in a dulcet tone hinting at an English lilt, or perhaps German. Russian, maybe.

“
And Dallas,” I said, stepping aside for him to see the young girl. She raised her hand and one corner of her mouth and twiddled her fingers.

The angel shook his head.

“I am to escort two.”

My eyebrows dipped and the annoying crease my forehead didn’t possess a few years ago showed up. Obviously, three souls accompanied me, so there must have been a mistake.

“There must be a mistake,” I said. I looked over at Ben and his teen bride, saw concern in their expressions, so gave them an ‘I’ve got everything under control’ hand gesture, despite the fact I didn’t think it the truth.

The angel shook his head. “What did the scroll say?”

“Two,” I conceded.

“
There is no mistake.”

“
But you can take one more, right?”

He stared at me with an expression one might consider a glare on the face of someone less angelic, but didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to, I’m pretty good at reading between the non-lines.

“But the guy shot her. It couldn’t be an unscheduled death.” My gut stirred with discomfort, and not because the odor of dill coaxed it into doing flips.

“
Actually, that’s not completely true.”

Despite the fact we spoke of her, I’d almost forgotten Dallas’ presence in the room. The four of us turned to her.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“
The man shot my mom,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone she might have used while discussing geography rather than her own death. “The bullet went through her and killed me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded once, apparently satisfied at possessing a fact the grown-ups didn’t.

“An unscheduled death,” the angel said. “She stays here.”

“
No,” Taylor cried. “What do you mean?”

The angel didn’t respond, leaving it to me to be the one who explained how things worked.

“Angels have sticks squarely up their asses,” I said and peered sideways at the escort. If he insisted on making me break the bad news to these people, I’d do it my way. “They only do what they’re told.”

Taylor’s eyes widened and moved from me, to her daughter, to the angel and back with a concerned expression strange to see on the face of a teenage girl. The escort cleared his throat, prompting me.

“If they do anything beyond what they’re supposed to, bad shit happens.”

“
Bad shit?” Benjamin said. “What’s worse than leaving our daughter behind?”

“
People going to Hell when they’re not supposed to.” Saying it made me think of Poe again. My eyelids sagged shut and I gave my head a shake.

“
You have to do something,” Taylor said. I opened my eyes, surprised to find her talking to me.

A well-buried part of me wanted to tell her I could help, or at least that I’d try, but my give-a-hand quality felt a little raw after recently seeing the guardian angel I abandoned in Hell the last time I ‘did something’. Instead of spouting supportive bullshit, I shook my head. Taylor began to cry.

Great.

“
It is time,” the angel intoned. I raised my eyes to him and it seemed his bright suit had become brighter; it took a second to realize it was because he’d begun to glow.

“
No, we can’t leave her,” Taylor cried. She put her arm around the young girl’s shoulders, pulled her close.

“
What will happen to her?” Benjamin Trounce asked, his eyes penetrating me, begging for the right answer.

I swallowed hard. The angel’s glow increased, smearing the desk and file cabinet at his back into a hazy blur. The emanation crept across the floor toward us, and Ben put his arms around his wife, who hugged their daughter tight against her chest. If not for the expressions of stark fear on Ben and Taylor’s faces, it might have made a nice family portrait. In contrast, Dallas appeared to be enjoying the proceedings.

The glow touched their feet and they stepped back, but couldn’t move far in the tiny room; it made its way up their shins toward their knees like floodwater on the rise. It tickled me, too, and I glanced down to see my lower legs gone, hidden in the white light. For an instant, I thought maybe he’d given in and decided to take all of us. Delight flashed through me at the prospect of seeing Sister Mary-Therese again, but it died a quick death. No way he’d take either of us. It didn’t work that way.

The angel had become an outline in a bank of fog and the emanation climbed to our waists. Both Ben and Taylor looked at me, their desperation poking a hole in my tough guy facade. I nodded once before they disappeared.

“I’ll take care of her.”

It was the right thing to say, but I also suspected I’d end up regretting it. The white light engulfing everything didn’t help my mood; the last time I’d seen it was when I died. Not pleasant memories.

A second later, the light disappeared, leaving me standing in a tiny, sparse office with a curly-haired child wearing a smirk on her face. I ignored her to survey the room, surprised to find the white walls different than a moment before: one sported a cork board littered with schedules, memos and notices; another bore pictures of—that's right—pickle jars; on the third hung a clock with hands inching close to quitting time.

“
What happens now?”

I frowned down at Dallas; shook my head, too, for good measure.

“To be honest, I’m not sure, Dallas.”

“
Never liked that name. If I’m staying, can I change it?”

I raised an eyebrow at her; she put on a little pout.

“Well, your parents aren’t here anymore, so I guess that leaves me in charge. What do you want to change it to?”

“
Dido.”

I tried to stifle my laugh, but some of it sneaked out of a nostril. “Dido? As in Fido Dido?”

“Who?”

“
The guy on the 7up can.”

“
Nope, don’t know him.”

“
Isn’t there a singer named Dido?” I went to the door and opened it a crack to see the workers still working, a fact whoever normally occupied the office would be happy to know, I’m sure.

“
Dido was the founder and first queen of Carthage. It means ‘the wanderer.’ Seems appropriate if I’m going to be stuck here.”

I looked at her and the crease climbed onto my forehead again. Every time it showed up, it made me remember my age.

Great. A know-it-all.

I shook my head, as though the action might get rid of my age line. It didn’t, but it did prevent me from speaking words I might regret. I didn’t know how long it might take me to ditch the little know-it-all, so I decided to play nice in the meantime.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said pulling the door open. “I hate pickles.”

A line of sunlight oozed through the space between the not-quite closed curtains and fell across the bed, creeping up and up until it alit on Cory’s face. It warmed his cheek and found its way to his eyes, brightening until it became impossible to ignore.

The teen cracked one eye open, saw he was still in his room, still in his bed beside the window. Outside, the world at large probably continued to exist, too.

The thought churned nausea in his stomach.

Cory had a vague memory of his mother hammering on his bedroom door, shouting about school without coming in to wake him—she’d refused to enter his room since Uncle Robert’s funeral. But how long since her incessant knocking disturbed him? How much time had crawled past?

Not enough.

He turned his back on the ray of sunshine, the old mattress squeaking under his weight. If not for the annoying light, he’d stay in bed until he died, and the sooner the better, but it was too bright, and he was too awake.

“
Fuck it,” he said, threw the covers off and dangled his legs over the side.

Shoulders slumped and head hanging forward, Cory sat on the edge of the mattress with his unkempt hair dangling around his nipples and noticeable ribs. After a while, he stood and scratched his ass, frowning at the golf ball-sized bump his fingers encountered beneath his boxers. He often woke hoping he’d not have to deal with the world anymore, but he also hoped he’d wake one morning to find the lump gone. No such luck. As the saying goes, if not for bad luck, Cory would have no luck whatsoever.

The teen pulled on the black jeans he’d worn the day before, and the day before that, passing his hand over the bump to make sure the pants hid it. Satisfied they did, he retrieved a long sleeved black t-shirt off the floor to give it a sniff. It smelled like a shirt worn for a week straight, because he’d been wearing it for a week straight. With a disinterested shrug, he put it on.

Cory pulled open his bedroom door and went down the hall, scuffing his bare feet along the wood-look floor as he walked. His mother hated when he dragged his feet, but she wouldn’t say anything about it. She was in the living room where the TV barked forth the cheers and cheesy music of some game show that premiered around the time Lincoln freed the slaves. He didn’t want to go in there, didn’t want to see her, but he’d abandoned his socks and boots beside the chair when he came in the night before.

In the kitchen, the sink overflowed with dirty dishes, and a jar of grape jelly sat open on the counter beside a tub of no-name peanut butter. She’d probably left them out for him; it was the closest she came to making him a meal these days, but eating held no interest for him. He’d lost count of the days since he last ate when the number passed seven.

He passed through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, where his mother sat on the couch watching a very excited woman spin a huge wheel labeled with different denominations. A plate with a half-eaten PBJ sat atop an empty pizza box on the couch beside her; her feet rested on the coffee table amidst a mess of Vogue and Better Homes and Gardens magazines, and not-quite-empty take-out coffee cups. Though he didn’t want to speak with her, Cory didn’t hide his presence as he shuffled past to grab his socks and boots. She didn’t look up.

Sometimes he wondered if he did want to engage her, if some part of him longed for the past, when it was him and her against the world.

What’s the point?

Those days were gone. Now, there was her and there was him, and he didn’t know how the world felt about her, but it was certainly against him.

He pulled on his socks and cursed under his breath when his big toe poked through a hole. He resituated the sock to make it more comfortable, then pulled on the scuffed black boots and buckled them while the woman on the TV screamed and jumped around. His mother didn’t react to the woman’s exuberance except to pick her sandwich up off the plate and take a bite. A dollop of jam squished out between the crusts and onto her cheek. She didn’t wipe it off.

Cory’s boots clomped on the entry’s linoleum tiles as he went to the door and threw it open. Though thin ice edged the scattered puddles, he didn’t grab a coat from the closet, and no one told him he should wear one. Despite his skinny frame, the cold didn’t seem to affect him these days.

He stepped across the threshold, then paused to glance back toward the couch, and saw his mother peering over her shoulder at him. Caught, she looked away, but not before Cory recognized disgust pulling down the corner of her mouth beside the glob of jam.

And fear in her eyes.

***

Judging by the traffic flowing along the highway beneath the pedestrian overpass, Cory guessed it must have been sometime after three in the afternoon. He’d given up time pieces long ago because the passage of time held no interest to him; it always went by too slow, creeping and dragging him along behind like a run-over raccoon stuck beneath a car.

As he suspected, the day was cold despite the sun. The chill touched his skin, but penetrated no deeper, as if his flesh was armor protecting him from the cold, a force field keeping temperature from affecting him. Deep inside, a small part of him long hidden away wished he could feel it, wished he could feel anything. If he did, maybe life might be worth sticking around for. But he couldn’t...and it wasn’t.

“Right,” he said aloud with no one nearby to hear.

The intoxicating exhaust stench from the vehicles whizzing by on the highway below wafted up to him. He filled his lungs with it, already knowing it would have no more effect on him than the cold—one day not so long ago, he’d spent an entire afternoon in the garage with the door pulled closed and his mother’s 1991 Toyota Tercel running while she was off having coffee with a friend and telling stories about him. It didn’t even give him a headache.

A transport truck pulling two trailers rumbled past beneath the pedestrian overpass, shaking it under his feet. Sun glinted on steel and mirrors. Many people might have thought this a perfect winter day, but not Cory; to him, perfect days didn’t exist, winter or otherwise. He preferred the dark, if he must put up with wakefulness and living at all.

The overpass had been built around the time the highway went in, with no roof to keep rain or bird shit off the heads of pedestrians, and no fancy curved railings or plexiglass barrier. Only a stout, three foot wall of concrete, tagged by a number of graffiti artists, separated the walkway from the turbulent air above the busy highway. Cory leaned his elbows on the wall, stretched over to see the road below. Pavement flashed between vehicles rushing by, carrying their occupants oblivious to the world around them hither and to in the self-contained compartments. Glimpses of the white lines separating the lanes showed through between car and truck, van and SUV.

Cory gathered saliva in his mouth, parted his lips and let it spill out. It stuck to his bottom lip, lengthening and stretching until it plummeted toward the roadway below, landing on the sunroof of an orange Camaro. He leaned forward until his feet came of the walkway and spit again. This time it struck the windshield of a generic looking green mini-van.

I wonder if they think it’s raining again.

It seemed enough traffic roared beneath him at a quick enough pace to make it impossible for something to go over the side without hitting a vehicle. The thought brought an unaccustomed smile to Cory’s lips.

He leaned back and set his feet on the sidewalk, gauging the traffic and the sizes of the vehicles coming toward the overpass. In the distance, plumes of diesel smoke belched out of twin exhaust pipes mounted on either side of a dump truck’s cab, a wilted Christmas wreath still strapped to its grill.

Like a target.

Cory touched the bump at the base of his spine, used the dull pain in it to summon the courage to boost himself up on the wall where he crouched gargoyle-like, anticipating the truck’s speed and distance, then he stood.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, held his arms out to the side as though awaiting a hug from a friend he hadn’t seen in a long time, though no such person existed in his life. No one wanted to be his friend. No one had wanted to hug him for years.

He listened for the roar of the dump truck’s stinking diesel engine amongst the sounds of the other vehicles, relished the touch of cold on his flesh and no deeper, inhaled exhaust and crisp winter air. With the whine and growl of the approaching truck growing in his ears, he stood up on his toes, leaned forward a few inches.

“Hey!”

The unexpected voice jarred him. He opened his eyes and lowered his heels flat on the top of the wall.

“What are you doing?”

The voice carried the barest hint of concern, little enough for Cory to guess it didn’t belong to an adult. A puff of diesel exhaust wafted against his face and he watched the dump truck disappear beneath the overpass. Cory inhaled a deep sigh and pivoted away from the road.

The boy appeared to be around his age. His brown hair hung to his shoulders and he wore a black leather jacket with zippered pockets, worn elbows, and a belt dangling by his waist. A rocker, no doubt. Cory crouched, hand on the top of the wall, and lowered himself to the sidewalk.

“
What were you doing?” the teen asked again.

For one inexplicable instant, he wanted to tell this kid everything—not just why he was standing atop an overpass wall above a busy highway, but about his mother, the bump, the deaths. He swallowed hard and the urge passed.

“Enjoying the weather, I guess.”

The other teen stopped in front of him, hands jammed in his pockets. Past the zipper of his open leather jacket, Cory saw a faded picture of a cracked skull with pointed fangs and the words Shadows Fall above it. He gestured at the shirt.

“Good band,” he said.

“
What? Oh, yeah. One of my favorites.” The teen shifted his weight, one foot to the other. “I know you, don’t I? Do we have a class together?”

“
Don’t know. I’m not at school much.”

“
I wish I wasn’t, but my Mom’d kill me if I skipped.”

“
Great.” Cory looked back to the traffic again, at the sea of colors roaring along the road’s surface, and their movement brought nausea to his gut. He didn’t want to jump into the rushing line of cars anymore.

“
Wait, I know,” the teen said pulling his hand out of his pocket and shaking his finger at Cory. “You’re the guy they call Scarecrow.”

Cory curled his lip into a snarl he didn’t mean but needed to show to keep up appearances.

What is it about this kid?

“
I hate that name.”

“
Oh, Geez, sorry.” He stuffed his hand back in his pocket. “I don’t know what your real name is.”

“
Cory.”

“
Cory. I’m Trevor. Trevor Fell.”

Cory grunted, nodded.

“Standing on an overpass looking like you’re going to jump is a funny way to enjoy the day.”

“
To each his own.” Cory shrugged.

“
It is a nice day. Aren’t you cold, though?”

“
It’s my birthday,” Cory said, then wondered why he mentioned it. He’d purposely not thought about the fact seventeen years had passed since his mother cursed the world with him. Why celebrate a day you wish didn’t happen?

“
Well, happy birthday,” Trevor said.

“
Right.”

“
Want to do something to celebrate?”

“
Naw.” Cory watched a crow fly overhead, a scrap of something dead dangling from its beak. A second black bird chased it, cawing. “I’m going to head home.”

“
Okay.” Trevor pulled a pen out of his pocket, held the tip hovering over the back of his hand. “Give me your digits and I’ll call you sometime.”

“
I don’t have a cell.”

“
What? Really?”

“
No one to call me.”

Trevor nodded “Me either. Maybe I’ll run into you at school sometime and we can hang. I just downloaded the new Lamb of God. It kicks.”

Cory noticed the tiny wire trailing out from under Trevor’s hair and into his jacket, no doubt attached to an iPod.

Why did he shut off his music and talk to me?

“Look, Trevor, you don’t want to hang out with me. Bad things happen to people who hang out with me.”

Trevor arched an eyebrow in question, but Cory turned and raised his right hand, both in a gesture of good-bye and a measure to stop the other teen from asking.

“See you around,” Trevor said instead.

Cory stalked away, wondering when he’d last even wanted to talk to someone, yet it took an effort to stop himself from going back. He stuck his hands in his pockets and shivered a little, but not because of the cold.

Something is different about Trevor Fell.