She moved aside. “Okay, just let me know if you need anything.”
He passed her and went into the living room. At the front door he glanced over his shoulder and gave her a weak smile. She had to give him points for trying.
Then he was gone.
~Les~
It wasn’t that Les didn’t believe in ghosts. To say that meant that he didn’t believe his eyes. Or what he’d heard. Or what he knew.
The night he found his daughter dead, he'd come home from a ten-year high school reunion at Master’s Catering. His white cooking apron sat crumpled on the passenger seat of his Malibu and the car reeked of fried scallops.
Up until he came home, it'd been a good evening. A mild breeze in the air gave the night a comfortable chill. He had gotten up that morning—something he had learned to appreciate. In spite of the dying trees and the looming winter, things never seemed livelier.
He pulled into his garage and killed the engine. The quiet night amplified the grind of the rusty gears as he closed the garage door. Once confined, the mustiness of the garage felt more oppressive. With an urgency that he didn't so much think about as felt, he rushed into the house.
The living room was silent, except for soft music coming from upstairs. Chloe. He’d seen lights in her bedroom window when he’d pulled up. It was odd she was home. She’d been out much of the time since she and Todd had broken up. He’d hardly seen her since and had worried she was using again even though the times he'd asked her, she would smile, hug him, and tell him, “no.”
His worry for her increased each day. The same way fathers usually worried about their children, he would sometimes think. Other times he suspected that maybe he worried because she was special and being special meant sometimes you faced greater challenges, more powerful adversaries.
Like addiction.
Was it just addiction?
It had to be, right?
Thinking of all this compelled him to take the stairs two at a time, not giving a damn about the hip he had injured overseas, or his high blood pressure. He knew, like parents sometimes just know, that something was wrong. Either it was the quiet in the house, the way his every movement echoed like voices in a crypt, or the fact that as soon as he'd come inside the joy he’d felt in the October air had fallen away—but he knew.
He rounded the first flight, then the second, and stumbled into the hallway, barely slowing his pace. The door to her room hung ajar. He said her name. He knocked. He said her name again, this time with more force, doing nothing to mask the alarm in his voice.
“I’m coming in.”
He pushed the door open and saw it kneeling over her on the mattress.
Its skin was the color of charcoal. Tendrils of flame wrapped around the figure’s gaunt limbs and rose from its hunched back. Through the flames, he made out the lean definition of the shape’s musculature, the imprints of its ribcage, the tendons sticking out behind its knees. The figure was man-shaped, but Les doubted it was human.
Despite the fire, the room was cold. Like a meat freezer. The chill cut through Les’s shirt and raised gooseflesh upon his chest and arms. It made his balls shrivel between his legs, and his shoulders shudder.
It held her hair and face in its fiery grasp. Her dead eyes stared up at Les. He screamed her name and reached out, but couldn’t move forward. His feet planted, his legs locked into place. Bad hip flaring, his teeth gritting against the pain.
The fiery shape turned and looked at Les with eyes that burned a brighter red than the flames consuming its body. An expression of anguish held its face. Les had lived down the street from a kid, Allen Wentworth, who'd always been in trouble for hurting the neighborhood pets. Once, Les had seen Allen strangling a cat in the woods, the cat's claws digging into Allen's forearms as the boy throttled the animal. The figure’s eyes reminded Les of Allen’s that day. Full of suffering, as if it regretted its actions, but couldn’t stop itself.
Then it disappeared. Its eyes, the fire, the chill. Everything. No evidence of the charcoal-skinned creature remained. The drapes hung unscathed. The sheets crumpled beneath Chloe were clean. Her body remained, though she was gone too. She lay sprawled across her bed. Lifeless eyes staring. Syringe hanging from the inside of her elbow.
He had read deeply about the occult and considered himself a believer in the supernatural, yet he felt he couldn't have seen what he thought he'd seen. What would a demon want with his daughter? How could it have left no trace behind? Could he have hallucinated it?
Les touched his daughter’s face and wished he could use something from his books to bring her back, but he knew from past experience that it took a special type of person to properly utilize those spells, and he had no such ability. Instead, he remained at her bedside, before calling the authorities so they could come and take her away forever.
~Chloe~
She knew only the light and a euphoric sense of floating. She hadn’t expected this; she hadn’t expected anything. No undeserved reward, no cruel and unusual punishment. Only sleep. Whatever this was, this was better. As she glided through the sea of bright warmth, a soothing swish, like the gentle splash of waves on a beach, accompanied every movement. The place had a smell, too, sweet and strong. Like Mother, she thought, without understanding how she knew.
Natalia, her father's only true love, had cast a shadow over their lives. She'd died while giving birth to Chloe, and existed only in photographs and Les's stories. A mythic figure. Unreal in her legacy and tragic in her absence. Thinking of her brought a wave of sadness that broke through Chloe's ecstasy, like a wind chill on an otherwise warm day. The next thing she knew, she was falling into darkness.
In the inky surroundings, the cries of countless others assaulted her ears. Some of them human, some animal, she could only interpret them as full of agony and fear. Underneath, a dry, gritty sound. Bone against bone, a chorus of grinding teeth.
Her heart hammered like a machine gun. No longer dying, desperation took hold.
As she fell hands clutched at her from out of the darkness and she screamed. They tore at her clothes and kneaded her skin, pulling her out of the chasm and moaning like diseased animals. She saw only glimpses of the rotting, scaly things as they tore her black dress to shreds.
She twisted and kicked in their clutches, preferring to fall than to be groped. She clawed through a forest of bulbous hands. Something primal was awake within her, a violent will to live as old as the universe itself. Rather than pull away from the creatures and back into the pit, she dove into the tangle of limbs and reptilian bodies. She bit and scratched. She drove forward until she fell again. This time she tumbled down a spiraling wet shaft. She reached the bottom, wounded and bleeding, not yet broken, happy to stand on solid ground.
Dirty crimson light illuminated her surroundings. Pointed rocks grew from above and below. Somewhere nearby, waves crashed against land. Behind her, wailing and gnashing of teeth. The rocks along the wall jutted out like gnarled tree branches. Gray rags hung on them, along with something like hair. Some of them moved. She realized then what they were as the skeletal limbs reached for her.
“Help me,” one rotting mouth said, “please…”
Sobs fell from her mouth as she backed away, her cries echoing in the massive cavern. She turned and ran toward the sound of the waves but in front of her, she heard more bellows of pain. She stopped and looked around. Water splashed upon the shore, blood red in the dirty light. The dome of the cavern gave way to a sky full of swirling fire and black smoke. Panic surged through her, beginning in her heart and spreading like wildfire on a dry field throughout her body until a scream burst from her lips, joining the chorus of terrified, suffering voices. Like them, she had nowhere to go.
A lean, shadowy figure emerged from the blood-red ocean and put his face into the light. Deep angry scars marked his cheeks and brow. His eyes burned with something like rapture. She knew him. He was the monster of her dreams, her rapist and lover, her imaginary friend, her ange
l and demon, but this was no dream. Every precise detail overwhelmed her senses: the wet jagged earth digging into her feet; the stenches of burning hair and rotted meat filling the air. She had entered a new reality and he had brought her here. She thought of how she had felt guided tonight, by something outside of herself to buy the heroin, to shoot enough to overdose, and she understood.
Samael approached her, reached out his hand like he was blessing a martyr, and she knew she was destined for pain.
~Todd~
The guitar felt heavy as Todd pulled it out of the back of his car. He hadn't played since breaking up with Chloe and now, holding it under the moonlight while pulled over on Potter Way, the full weight of Les's news crushed down upon him and he wailed. His cries tore from his chest and carried across the empty field. The secluded farmhouse in the distance stood silent. The night birds and insects kept up their incessant chirps and whines. The world moved on, unaffected by his anguish.
After their first show at the Black Horse Pub, he and Chloe had stopped here on Potter Way. The energy of performing a song together, the patterns she traced on the inside of his thigh, and her teeth nibbling his neck made him unable to postpone his passion for her. Anyone looking closely enough from the main highway could have seen them, but that was part of the thrill.
They kissed hungrily. He fumbled at the straps of her dress from across the car’s center console. She climbed away from him, cast a devious smile and went out the passenger door. He pursued her farther down the dirt road. Every few seconds, she glanced over her shoulder at him. She stopped in the middle of the tall grassy field, turned to face him, and let her dress fall to the ground. Her skin glowed softly in the moonlight. Bluish light accentuated the swell of her breasts and smooth angles of her hips. Black shadow concealed the mystery between her legs. He ran to her, shaking off his clothes.
The heat of her embrace enveloped him in the summer night air. He collapsed on top of her and slipped inside of her oily warmth. It almost ended before it began. He shut his eyes and buried his face against her neck. They jockeyed to find the perfect rhythm, giggling like children. When they synced together, he felt as if they were not just in harmony with each other, but with everything from the smallest blades of grass in the field to the moon shining upon them.
It ended with her on top of him, her head and shoulders thrust back, hair suspended behind her, breasts heaving. They lay naked in the grass afterwards, her breath slowing, his legs tingling.
Now, recalling the memory brought bitter tears. He felt none of the closeness with nature that he had felt that night. Instead, a deep gulf surrounded him, separating him from everything, and that seclusion brought a longing that hurt him physically as much as emotionally. His hands hung suspended over his guitar, unable to form a chord and strike it. The effort of moving beyond this moment felt impossible, like a force held his body in place, condemning him to experience this pain over and over.
He mouthed her name and it came out in a cracked whisper. The last time he'd seen her, he'd ended their relationship. He thought of his words to Anna, There's so much I'll never know about her. The longing ran deeper than wanting to know more about Chloe. He lived with Anna now. They had a date planned for their wedding. As that day approached, he felt that it held a deathlike finality. His old self, the guitar-playing free spirit, had little time left before the beast of true adulthood swallowed it. He’d laid awake nights, thinking of breaking off the engagement and running back to Chloe, because in spite of her damage, Chloe felt like more of a kindred spirit to him than Anna. Maybe taking her back would have proven disastrous, but he feared a life without her. He feared a life without passion.
Todd reached up the neck of the guitar to its tuners and twisted one knob and plucked the associated string. In one of Les's books, there had been a passage about a special way to tune instruments to make the notes resonate within the spirit world. He wasn't sure if he believed in any of that, but he liked the idea and had even written a few songs in the secret tuning. A vain hope that he could contact Chloe by playing a song rose within him. At least he could tell her goodbye and that he was sorry for leaving her. As he fine-tuned the D-string, he saw a glowing figure standing in the middle of the field.
It shined white with hints of green and formed the shape of a man. The shape moved forward, gliding over the blades of grass and illuminating the night. Todd set his guitar down and stared at the approaching specter. He tried to move back inside the car, but his feet locked into place. The rippling outline of the figure held him hypnotized as it came closer. A smell like creamy lavender drifted across the field and created an instant sense of euphoria, like Todd was standing in a dream. The shape drew closer, the smell stronger, the glow brighter.
Inside the light, he saw his reflection. The figure reached a shimmering hand forward and pressed it against Todd's chest. The touch burned for a moment, before the spirit disintegrated into the night, and Todd knew he was marked.
~2~
~Todd~
Todd’s eyes snapped open. He touched the empty spot on the bed beside him, sighed and squeezed the satin top sheet. Where the hell was Anna?
He sat up and groaned, feeling aches in his bones that he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there a week ago. He got out of bed and checked his phone for a message from Anna. She’d been working late, but had she come home at all? He dialed her number, expecting nothing. After five rings, her voicemail picked up to tell him his expectations weren’t unreasonable.
He would’ve called the police if this hadn’t become somewhat normal for her lately. She’d been working a lot, well into the night. Since she worked in Philadelphia, which was a long commute, sometimes she got a hotel. Usually she called.
“Hey, where the hell are you?” he asked after the tone. “You said you’d let me know if you weren’t coming home.”
He hung up, slumped his shoulders and sighed. He tossed his phone down on the bed and staggered to the bathroom, stopping to grab the pressed suit that hung on the door.
Fuck. He remembered feeling like he wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing a suit.
In the bathroom mirror he shaved away the growth on his face from the past day and examined himself. Most of his hair had gone gray, even though his driver’s license still said it was brown. Laugh lines creased the corners of his mouth and eyes. He was old.
Fifty-two, to be exact. He remembered not being sure if he’d make it to fifty-two and living too much in the moment to give a damn. His father had died last year, at seventy-seven. Twenty-five years away from fifty-two. Didn’t seem so long at all now and that scared him. Too much of his life felt unresolved for death to loom so near in the future. Could he get his life together in another twenty-five years? What if he died sooner than that? How much would be left unfinished?
In his twenties, during those rare times when he did think about getting older, he certainly never saw himself here at fifty-two. With how much he and Anna worked and how little they saw each other, he had a hard time identifying as a married man. His son, Dale, had run off to join the Marine Corps and they no longer spoke. His daughter, Katie, still lived at home as she worked her way through nursing school, but it was only a matter of time before she left. He’d miss her.
Sometimes he thought about getting out of the house himself, perhaps even starting over completely.
While more stable than his family life, his job left much to be desired. He spent eight hours a day in a cubicle, the sort of thing he once swore he’d never do. He supposed it had gotten him far, by someone’s standards, his father’s, perhaps. An acre of land. A Cadillac. A big, three-story house with two-hundred thousand left on the mortgage. A newly remodeled kitchen that he wasn’t sure he could pay off if his marriage fell apart. A son that refused to talk to him. A daughter too sweet for her own good.
On the way to the kitchen, he saw that the door to his studio hung ajar. He stopped and stared into the crack, catching glimpses of the items inside. Forgetting th
at he had to be at work soon, he pushed the door all the way open.
The stacks of old notebooks, the in-home studio equipment, and the black Gibson that hung on his wall brought a wave of nostalgia. Stickers from local bands that hadn’t existed for decades covered the guitar. Todd sighed. He hadn’t entered that room in years.
“Dad?”
He closed the door quickly, as if ashamed of the room's contents, then turned and saw Katie standing in the foyer. She wore a too-short denim skirt and a bright yellow top. Open toed shoes revealed toenails painted bright pink. She smiled and it lit her entire face. It was summertime and she embodied the joy that it brought younger people. Since she was in school and summer still held some significance for her. For Todd, it just meant the days got longer and hotter.
“Want some breakfast?” she asked.
He caught the aromas of bacon and coffee. He checked his watch to make sure he had sufficient time to enjoy the food. He smiled at his daughter, nodded, and followed her into the kitchen. She moved with a spring in her step, seeming to dance as she walked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such energy.
“What are you so happy about at six thirty in the morning?”
“Can’t I be excited to cook my dad breakfast? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
Todd tried to recall the last time he’d sat down to a meal with his family and couldn’t.
“Besides, I had a long and crazy night, and I’m running on my second wind.”
He sat down at the granite island in the center of the kitchen. “You didn’t sleep?”
Katie giggled. “Nope. Summer’s officially here. No more finals, no more early classes. I’m looking forward to three months of enjoying myself.”