The Heaven Trilogy (54 page)

She walked. Halting at first until she realized the pain had left, as before.

It roared back with a vengeance six blocks later. This time Helen hardly stopped. She limped for ten yards, mumbling prayers through gritted teeth, before finding sudden relief.

The pain came every five blocks or so, first in her right leg and then in her left leg, and after an hour, in both legs simultaneously. A sharp, shooting pain right up each bone for half a dozen steps and then gone for a few blocks only to return like clockwork. It was as if her legs were thawing after months in the deep freeze and a thousand miles of pain was slowly coming due. Each time she cried out to God, her face twisted in pain. Each time he spoke to her quietly.
Walk. Walk, child.
Each time she put her foot forward and walked on into the falling darkness.

Three things contributed to her relentless journey despite its apparent madness. First was that quiet voice whispering through her skull.
Walk, child.
Second was the light—it had not fled. The blackening skies crackled with light in her mind, and she could not ignore that.

The third thought that propelled her forward was the simple notion that this might very well be the end.
The
end. Maybe she
was
meant to walk right up to the horizon of heaven and enter glory. Like Enoch. There might not be a flaming chariot to whisk her away. That had been Elijah’s treat. No, with Helen it would be the long walk home. And that was fine by her.
Glory!

The sun left the city dark by five-thirty. An occasional car hissed by, but the early storm had left the streets quiet. Helen limped on into the black night, biting her lower lip, mumbling against the voices that mocked her.

Walk, child. Walk on.

And she did walk on. By six o’clock both legs were hurting without relief. The soles of her feet felt as though they might have caught fire. She could distinctly imagine, if not actually hear, the bones in her knees grinding with each step. Her hips joined in the protest soon after. What began as a dull ache around her upper thighs quickly mushroomed to sharp pangs of searing pain throughout her legs.
Walk, child. Walk on.

Still she walked. The snow fell in earnest now, like ashes from a burnt sky. Helen kept her eyes on the ground just in front of her feet mostly, concentrating on each footfall as her destination—one . . . two, one . . . two. When she did look up she saw a dizzying sea of flakes swirling around the streetlights. The night settled quietly. Biting cold now numbed her exposed knees, and she began to shiver. She tucked her hands under her arms in an attempt to keep them warm, but the new posture threw her balance off, nearly sending her to the ground, and she immediately withdrew them. Oh, God! Please, Father. I have lost my mind here. This is . . . this is madness!

Walk, child. Walk on.

So she walked, but barely now, dragging one foot at a time, inching into the night. She lost all sense of direction, fighting through the landscape of her mind, aware of the pain ravaging her bones but no longer caring. At the eighth hour, back there, she had crossed the point of no return. She had stepped off the cliff and now fell helplessly onward, resigned to follow this still small voice or die trying. Either way the crackling light waited. And there would be laughter in the light. The notion brought a smile to her face, she thought, although she could not be sure because her face had gone numb.

The last fifty yards took twenty minutes—or an eternity, depending on who was counting. But she knew they were the last when her right foot landed on a cement rise of some kind and she could not pull herself up or over it. Helen fell to one knee, collapsed facedown, and rolled to her side.

If she’d been able to feel, she might have thought she had ground her legs to bloody stumps, judging by the pain she felt, but she could feel nothing at all. She was aware of snowflakes lighting on her cheek but no longer had the strength to turn away from them.

Then her world faded to black.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

DESIRE FOR death is a unique sentiment, like a migraine sufferer’s impulse to twist off his head in the hopes of banishing a throbbing headache. But Kent was still craving death—and increasingly so as the minutes ticked by in his dark apartment.

It might have been some deep-seated desire to delay his death that pushed him back to the church despite the falling snow. But if it was, it did not feel like any desire he’d ever felt. Nevertheless, he would do this one last deed. He would find his priest.

Snow rushed past his headlights, and it occurred to him that coming out for a priest on a night like this was nuts. But then, so was killing himself. He was a nutcase. The church’s tall spiral reached into the night sky like a shadowed hand reaching for God.
Reach on, baby. Nothin’ but black up there.

He parked the car and stared at the dark cathedral. A monument to man’s search for meaning, which was a joke because even the robed ones knew, way deep inside, that there was no real meaning. In the end it was just death. A dusty graveyard on the top of a cliff.

Get on with it, Kent.

Kent pushed the door open and slogged toward the wide steps.

The lump on the first step caught his attention immediately. A body lay curled like a fetus, covered with snow. Kent stopped on the sidewalk and studied the form. The priest had fallen down on the job—closed the temple up too early and now his God had dashed him on the steps. Or possibly a vagrant had come to find God and discovered a locked door instead. Either way the body did not move. It was the second dead body he’d seen recently. Maybe he should curl up and join this one.

Kent mounted the steps and climbed to the front door. It was locked. His mouth no longer had the will to swear or speak or even breathe, but his mind swore. He slogged down the steps, his mind still swearing long strings of words that no longer had meaning. He veered to the body and shoved it with his foot.
Death becomes me.
The snow fell from the vagrant’s face. An old woman, smiling to beat all. A wide grin frozen on that pale face. She’d finally found her peace. And now he was on his way to find his own peace.

Kent turned from the body and walked for the car. An old memory crawled through his mind. It was dear old Helen, smiling with moist eyes in his living room.
You crucified him, Kent.

Yes, dear Helen. But I will make amends soon enough. Like I told you, I’m going to kill my—
The next thought exploded in his mind mid-street, like a stun grenade.
That was Helen!

His legs locked under him, stretched out for the next step.

Kent whirled back to the body. Ridiculous! That old woman lying over there was no more Helen than he was
God!
He turned back to his car.

If that wasn’t Helen, then Helen has a twin.

He stopped and blinked.
Get a grip, Kent.

And what if that
is
Helen by some freak accident, dead on the step?

Impossible! But suddenly the impulse to know trumped the rest of it.

Kent spun back toward the form and walked quickly. He bent and rolled the dead body to its back. Only it wasn’t dead; he knew that immediately because its nostrils blew a few flakes from its upper lip in a long exhale. He jerked back, startled by the ghostly face smiling under a cap. His heart crashed against the walls of his chest. It
was
Helen!

It was not the grin or the face or even the hair. It was the yellow dress with small blue flowers, all but covered in snow, that made it so. The same yellow flowered dress she had worn to Gloria’s funeral. The same yellow flowered dress she had worn to his door that first night moving in. That and the socks pulled to her knees.

He was staring at Helen, crumpled on the steps of this church, wearing running shoes clotted with frozen snow, smiling like she was in some kind of warm dream instead of freezing to death on this concrete slab.

Leave her.

I can’t. She’s alive.

Kent glanced around, saw that they were alone, and shoved his arms under Helen’s limp body. He staggered to his feet with her dead weight hanging off each arm. The last time he’d done this, the body had been naked and gray and dead. He’d forgotten how heavy these things were. Well, the paramedics could deal with the crazy old fool as they saw fit.

Kent was halfway back to his car with Helen in his arms when that last thought crossed his mind. A swell of sorrow swept through his chest, and immediately he wanted to cry. For no reason that he could think of, really. Maybe because he had called her a crazy old fool and, really, she was no such thing. He looked down at the sagging body in his arms. No, this was no fool he carried. This was . . . this was precious. Helen, in all her eccentric craziness, somehow embodied a goodness. A tear came to his eyes, and he sniffed against it.

Get ahold of yourself, fool. And if she is goodness then what does that make you? Human waste.

Yes. Worse.

Yes, worse. Get rid of her.

Kent barely managed to open the passenger door without falling. He slid Helen onto the seat, slammed the door, and climbed in behind the wheel. She had fallen against the door, and her breathing came steadily now. A knot rose to his throat, and he shook his head. Thing of it was, she brought a strange sentiment out of him. One that had his windpipe aching. He missed her. That’s what it was. He actually missed the old lady.

He started the Lincoln and pulled into the deserted street. The snow had eased to a powdery mist, visible only around a row of streetlights on the right. A white blanket lay undisturbed over parked cars and bushes and pavement alike. The sedan crept quietly over the snow, and Kent felt the fingers of death curl around his mind. It was death—death everywhere. A frozen graveyard. Kent swallowed hard. “God, let me die,” he growled under his breath.

“Uhh . . .”

The groan from his right slammed into his consciousness like a bullet to the brain, and he reacted instinctively. He crammed his foot on the brake and pulled hard on the wheel. The Lincoln slid for the sidewalk, bumped into the curb, and stalled. Kent gripped the wheel with both hands and breathed heavy.

He whirled to the passenger’s seat. Helen sat there, leaning against the passenger door with her head resting on her shoulder, cockeyed but wide eyed, and staring ahead past snow-encrusted brows. Kent’s breath seemed to freeze in his throat. She was awake! Awake from the dead like a lost soul from the cast of a cheap horror movie.

Slowly she straightened her neck and lifted a hand to brush the snow from her face. Kent stared dumbly, thoroughly confused on how to feel. She blinked a few times in succession, climbing back into the land of the living, still staring out the windshield.

A small grunt came from Kent’s throat, and it was this that clued her in to the fact that she was not alone. She turned to him slowly. Now her mouth was open as well. They locked like that for several long seconds, two lost souls gaping at each other in the front seat of a car, lost in a silent snowfall.

But Helen did not remain lost for long. No, not Helen.

She blinked again and swallowed. She breathed out deliberately, like the sigh of one disappointed. Perhaps she had not intended to wake up on the front seat of a car, staring at a stranger.

“Kent? You look different. Is that you?”

Well, then, perhaps not a stranger.

Kent more guffawed than answered. “Helen! What are you doing? You could have killed us!” It was an absurd statement considering his intentions, and having said it, he swallowed hard.

“You are Kent.” She said it as a matter of simple fact. Like, “The sun has gone down.”

“And how do you know I’m Kent?” He caught himself. “Even if I were?” But he’d already called her Helen, hadn’t he? Good grief !

Either way, Helen was not listening. She was lost; he could see that in her eyes. She turned to the windshield without blinking. “Did you see it, Kent?”

He followed her eyes. The street still lay empty and white. Condensation was beginning to gather on the windshield from the hot breath. “See what?”

“See the light. Did you see the light? It was everywhere. It was heaven, I think.” She spoke in awe.

The anger flared up his spine, but he bit his tongue and closed his eyes. “Helen . . . you were out cold and hallucinating. Wake up, you old religious coot. There’s nothing but cold snow and death out there.” Then he turned on her and let his anger swell past his clenched teeth. “I swear, I’m
sick
of all your crazy heaven and God talk!”

If he expected her to shrink, he should have known better. She turned to him with bright eyes. She did not look like an old woman who had just been dragged, half dead, from a snowstorm. “What if there
is
life out there, Kent?” Her lips flared red. “What if, behind this veil of flesh, there is a spiritual reality crackling with light? What if it was all created for a purpose? What if, behind it all, that Creator is craving relationship?” Tears sprang to her eyes.

“What if you were made to love him? What then, Kent?” Her eyes did not blink but turned to pools of tears. One of those pools broke, and a trail of tears ran down her right cheek.

Kent had his mouth opened to retort, to put her back in her place, before he realized he had nothing to say. Not to
this
. What she suggested could not be. He tried to imagine a God desperate for love, like some huge, smiling ball of light with outstretched arms. The image refused to hold shape. And if there was truth there in those words, if somehow there was a Creator who loved him so . . . he would kill himself anyway. He would slit his wrists in agony.

Kent turned from her and clenched his jaw.

“Kent.” Her voice warbled soft to him.

Shut up, Helen! Just shut up!
His mind screamed obscenities, locked in torment.

“Kent.” She was begging. The small, stuffy cabin of the Lincoln seemed to throb with the beating of his heart. He wanted to reach over and slap her, but his hands had frozen on the wheel.