Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire (28 page)

“The power to raise the dead?”

“Among other things. I truthfully never thought it would work.” He smiled and got to his feet, rising with incredible energy for his age. “Her being here proves otherwise.”

He limped to one of the several bookshelves in the room and reached for one of the texts. He held it out in front of him with the cover towards Todd and Chloe. A symbol drawn in charcoal decorated the center. Around it were other smaller symbols—stars, animals, and shapes—spiraling into the central image.

“Have either of you seen this symbol before?”

Todd leaned forward, examining its angles and points. “No.”

Chloe bit her lip and nodded.

Todd took the book in his hands. “What is it?”

“It’s everything,” Les said, as if the very statement overwhelmed him.

~Anna~

The steering column of Anna's Infinity protested as she pulled into her neighborhood, as if it, too, was afraid of what waited at home. She reminded herself that Todd was at work. She could at least put off the confrontation until later tonight. In the best case scenario she wouldn’t have to deal with it until after the weekend. After she sorted out matters with Keith.

She examined the rows of opulent homes that lined the street with their sprawling lush grass, expensive cars parked like oversized trophies in the driveways, and manicured trees that shaded the sidewalks. A dog leapt with canine exuberance as a teenaged boy threw a Frisbee in one yard. A brightly colored Playskool swing hung from a tree branch in another.

When they had first purchased the home she and Todd had stood outside the house with Holden Stillwell, the fast-talking realtor with the cartoonish smile. She’d been seven months pregnant with Katie then, her belly swollen like a beach ball. Todd had held her hand and looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Dale, smack dab in the middle of his terrible twos had been very vocal, often interrupting Holden and making the realtor stumble.

She hadn’t thought of that day in years, but now she remembered it like it was yesterday. Their excitement. Their idealism. That romance had faded over time, but she couldn’t pinpoint one deciding event that had killed it. There were numerous things she was tempted to attribute it to: the death of Todd’s father, her miscarriage of their third child, Dale leaving to join the Marines in a fit of rage; but the truth was that the spark in their relationship just dwindled.

She thought of the night Todd had gotten the news that his former girlfriend (what had her name been? Clare? Zoe?) died and wondered if his heart had ever been in their marriage. They both worked a lot and spent little time with each other. He often seemed obsessed with his job, as if he was working to distract himself from some ache, some longing. Perhaps she seemed the same way to him. Once both kids had been old enough for school, she started her career at Marcus and Marcus and worked her way up to where she was today. One of the top performers, she made almost as much as Todd did at the bank. For all of their other shortcomings, they'd never had to worry about money.

She parked her car in the driveway, behind Katie’s black Corolla. She looked through the windshield at her house. The sun shone in the sky behind it and the home’s boxy, angular shape cast a long shadow upon her. She opened the glove box and contemplated the pack of cigarettes hidden within.

“No.” She closed it, took a stabilizing breath and stepped out of the car.

~Todd~

Les's words repeated in Todd’s mind. The cruel Hell from which Chloe had escaped was believable in the face of her dread. The fact that she was here, too, had become easier to accept. She was either really here or he was having a really long, strange, and realistic dream. Harder to accept was Les's assertion that Todd still loved her and how that love, along with his music, had been enough to raise her from the dead. How was that even possible? Then again, his criteria for what was and wasn't possible had changed a lot in the last few hours.
Did
he still love her? They'd been together so long ago. In the time since, she'd died and he'd raised a family. Still, the question remained. He would’ve given anything to know what was going through her mind. Did her father's statement disturb her as much as it disturbed him? She hadn't taken her eyes off of the symbol.

“I was given this book by a friend in the Navy,” Les said. “No one knows exactly how many are in existence, though he suspected that there were very few. When he heard about Natalia, your mother, Chloe, he said the book might help me with the pain.”

He took a sip of bourbon and grimaced bitterly.

“I thought he meant that it would help me contact her, possibly bring her back, but I was wrong. What it did was help me see just how large the world is, that maybe she’s out there… somewhere.”

Todd looked from the book to Chloe to Les. “Wait, but why were my songs able to raise her from the dead? You're a musician, why couldn't you do it?”

"I tried. Believe me." Les's face darkened, making shadows in his eyes. "Maybe there's something about you. Did anything ever happen to you that you couldn't explain?"

"Shit, Les, life is fucking inexplicable sometimes," Todd said, but he thought back to the night Chloe died, to the glowing figure who had touched him out by Potter Way. He remembered it the way he remembered dreams, and some days, he wasn't sure if it had even happened, but he remembered feeling marked by the experience. He nodded. "Yeah, the night Chloe died, I was visited by...I guess it was some kind of spirit."

"Perhaps that gave you the power to wield the magic your songs possessed," Les said.

"If that's true, why didn't I bring Chloe back before? I wrote those songs years ago."

“I wish I knew how to answer that."

"Well, what does that book say?" Todd asked.

"Just that music, played in the right key, with the right amount of emotion can shift the cosmos, reconcile God to man, raise the dead. I suppose that today, for whatever reason, the timing was right."

"What does it say about keeping me safe?" Chloe asked.

Les handed the book to Chloe and she put it on her lap and traced the symbol with her fingertips. Les took a gulp of bourbon. "There are passages about bringing spirits home so they can finally be at rest. I think what it means is that Chloe has to go home."

She looked up from the book. “I don’t understand.”

Todd tensed. He didn’t understand either, any of this.

“Here’s what I know.” Les drained his glass with a grimace. For a moment, Todd thought that would be it, that Les finishing his drink was a way to say that there was no way of knowing anything. It was a scary prospect. Finally, mercifully, Les said, “Hauntings are believed to be ghosts that haven’t moved on because of some trauma that keeps them trapped in a certain place. In some cases that’s true. In others, the haunting is when a ghost returns home, someplace familiar, someplace where its happiest memories are replayed. The home becomes a personal paradise for the inhabiting spirit, as if the spirit has found a way to hang onto life.”

Todd's nerves begin to settle. Though outlandish and far-fetched, it at least carried some positivity with it.

“But where’s home?” she asked, handing the book back.

Les met her eyes. The darkness in his face never left. Instead, the shadows grew longer, deeper. “I don’t know, but you will. You just have to make it there first. After that, you'll be safe. Samael won't be able to get to you there."

Todd broke eye contact and turned to Chloe. Her leg jittered urgently. “We should go.”

She nodded in agreement. They went to the door and Chloe embraced her father.

“I love you,” she said. “I missed you so much.”

“I love you, too, my sweet girl. No matter where you go, don’t ever forget that.”

“I won’t, Daddy.” She planted a kiss on his cheek.

Todd held his hand out to Les after Chloe opened the front door.

Les took it. “Nice to see you again, old man.”

“You, too, gramps.” They shook like old friends, keeping their eyes on each other, transmitting so much emotion and calling up years’ worth of memories with just one brief contact and few words. They broke and Todd caught up with Chloe outside. When the door closed behind him, there was a terrible sense of finality to it.

~Anna~

Anna pushed open the front door and entered her home. As she crossed the foyer and went to the stairs, she noticed how quiet the house was. She guessed Katie was asleep. Otherwise, there'd likely be music on the stereo.
Good.

She crept past her daughter’s bedroom and stepped into hers. She pulled clothes off of hangers in her walk-in closet, careful to select the proper outfits and deciding on two nice dresses, a casual outfit, and a silky robe. In the middle of draping the clothes over her side of the bed, she stopped to notice Todd’s side, unmade and still holding the indentation of his body. The sheets on her side were neatly tucked in. Before her conscience could act up, she threw the rest of the clothes on the bed and dragged her overnight bag out of the closet.

As she unzipped the bag and flipped it open, the image of Todd’s side of the bed returned to flood her mind's eye. A moment of honesty washed over her and she wondered how such a wedge had come between them. They’d loved each other once, hadn’t they? She thought about how they’d met, the first awkward date set up by their parents, and the sudden rush to marry that had been welcome but had come unexpectedly.

Things moved at the speed of life after that. Both of them worked a lot. Between that they’d somehow managed to raise two children. When she thought about it, they’d never really taken the time to talk about what each of them needed, what their goals as a couple were. The truth was that she had liked the brash musician who stubbornly pursued his artistic dreams without worrying too much about the future. The man he grew into, overworked, with little rigid aspirations for himself and his children wasn’t a bad man, but he was boring, too much like her, as if he was trying to remake himself in her image. And they never talked about it.

Too late to do anything now, she thought and started to pile the clothes into her overnight bag.

Footsteps shuffled out of Katie’s room. She took a breath and held it, as if doing so would prevent her being detected. The footsteps got closer until they approached her bedroom door. Anna shut her eyes and tensed as the door opened and in popped Katie’s head.

“Hi, Mom.”

Anna opened her eyes. Katie was fully dressed and Anna got the crazy notion that her daughter had been waiting for her to come home. Katie looked past her, at the suitcase on the floor and frowned.

“Are you going somewhere?” she said, her voice razor sharp.

Heat rushed into Anna’s cheeks. The lie came out almost involuntarily: “A business trip…”

“Cut the shit, Mom. Dad said you didn’t even come home last night.”

“He what?” The temperature of the heat in her cheeks rose dramatically.

Katie raised an eyebrow.

“Listen, honey, I don’t know why your father is letting you in on our business, but…”

“Seriously, Mom?” Katie gave her mother a look that said they were two adults having a conversation, that this wasn’t a talk between a mother and her little girl where one was in a position above the other. Here, in this moment, they were equals.

Anna wished that Katie would be that little girl again. Things had been a lot easier back then. She could just be a mother, not worry about the growing rift between her and her husband, or have to keep any secrets. Motherhood was a challenge, but a manageable one. This was manageable, too, but there was much more at risk. Could it end with anything other than heartache? She forced herself to loosen up and turned on her saleswoman persona. A little P.R. would do the trick, at least for now.

“Katie, I understand this is all a little strange, but I assure you things are fine. Your father and I have both been working really hard. I’m sure you can appreciate that, with your workload from school. I’m hoping to put away enough so I can retire earlier than originally planned, so I’ve taken on a lot of extra work. Sometimes I stay late at the office. Sometimes I have to go away. That’s all. There’s nothing going on that you need to concern yourself with. Okay, honey?”

She knew that was going to bite her if the truth ever did come out, but damned if she wasn’t somewhat impressed with herself.

Katie nodded once. “If you say so…”

Anna did something then that sealed the deal and thus made the guilt swell larger within her. She reached out and hugged her daughter, tightly, reassuringly, and closed her eyes against the regret.

“Thanks for understanding, sweetie. Your father and I love you very much.”

When Katie left the room, Anna breathed a heavy sigh, but felt no relief. She looked from the stuffed suitcase to the door Katie had just walked through.

Just get through the weekend. After that… what?

After that what?

~Samael~

The roaring of the rapidly turning engine was the perfect companion to Samael’s frantic inner workings as he pulled into the town called Millville. Sensing that she was close, fire worked in his nerve endings. Hot blood rushed through his veins, making every capillary feel as if it could burst at any minute. The pursuit was nearing an end. As he grew closer to her location, he could almost taste her flesh on his tongue.

According to the sign, the town’s population was over forty-seven thousand. These thousands were totally unaware of the events unfolding. Insects, oblivious to anything beyond the doomed corner of the universe they occupied. Too weak to explore anything else; too dependent on tomorrow to
really
live. As he drove into the heart of the town, he fantasized about pulling them from their homes, stretching their thresholds of pain and fear, making them forget about tomorrow and experience every agonizing moment of the present. But their faces all became Chloe’s. It would be all too easy to lose focus with the temptation of raining down new carnage, devouring the darkest secrets of new souls, showing these people the only type of love he understood, but
she
belonged to him and
she’d
run away. That was more important than playing with new toys, because he couldn't live without her.