On Unfaithful Wings (35 page)

“I love you.”

The words came unbidden to my lips, unraveling the spell and giving me back control. I dropped the knife and ran to the door, throwing it open hard against the wall as I stumbled out of the room and threw up on the flaming hallway floor. Another time and place, I’d have taken a minute to hunch over, panting, wiping the sweat off my brow, attempting to decipher what happened, but the invisible thing encroached again, prompting me to hurry on my way still wiping puke off my chin.

I lurched down the hall like the drunken sailor of song, my stomach game to play the part of seasick gut. The passage stretched on before me, disappearing in the distance without sign of ending. If not for the presence at my back forcing me on, I might have sank to the floor and waited joyfully for the fire to consume me.

No. I have to get back to Trevor.

I steadied my gait and pressed on. The baleful thing behind me closed in, its noticeable pressure heavy against my spine. I fought the urge to look back, fearing whatever-it-was might have materialized, taken a form so awful as to prompt me to claw my eyes from their sockets.

I didn’t notice the door until I’d gone a step past it. After the last two rooms, I forced myself to take a second to open it a crack and peek in. An empty space.

I slipped in, closed the door behind me, and stood with my back against the wooden door for a minute, chest heaving, sucking in air hot enough to singe my lungs. A quick survey revealed a room spacious due to its emptiness but which was the size of an average living room, with nothing but four bare walls painted a light brown Rae would have called ‘mushroom’ or ‘taupe.’ I’d have said brown--tan at best.

I wanted to rest--for a minute, only a minute--to collect my breath and my wits, but feared the thing behind me would search me out. It was closing in and every wasted second brought it nearer. I reached for the doorknob, prepared to run for my life, when five whispered words stopped me.

“You did this to us.”

Goosebumps rose on my arms as my blood transformed into winter run-off. A woman’s voice spoke the words, not one I recognized, but certainty of who it belonged to came along with the chill. My hand gripped the doorknob tighter, intending to twist it, but it resisted. I gave in.

The two women wore nothing except the blood covering them like body paint, its wetness shimmering in a light cast by no particular source. The red layer of gore shellacking their flesh didn’t hide the slashes and stab marks marring their torsos, their chests and legs, their faces. Some of the gashes moved and puckered, like so many sets of lips, all of them accusing me of the heinous crime against these once beautiful women.

“There’s been some mistake. It wasn’t me.”

“You did this.”

They each raised a hand, like two marionettes controlled by the same string, pointer fingers extended in condemnation. I backed away and walked into the door a step behind. My back pressed against it, felt the faint radiation of heat from the burning hall beyond, either real or imagined; I sniffed the aroma coming from it like the smell of a child’s wood burning set and was thankful it concealed the coppery smell of blood.

The women approached and I closed my eyes, willing myself to be anywhere but here. It didn’t work. Their hands touched my face, then their bodies pressed against mine. Anywhere they touched, I felt the trace of blood left behind: tacky prints finger-painting me with guilt for something I couldn’t have done. Their bodies writhed against mine, staining my shirt and pants. I tried not to, but my hand caressed the curve of a hip; I jerked it away when it touched a seeping wound.

Through my clothes I felt their wounds on my flesh, moving like maws seeking to eat me and gain their revenge. The smell of drying blood, metallic and sharp, over-powered the scent of singed wood; it clouded my head, made me feel faint, the taste of it on my tongue worsening with every breath. If I didn’t get away, unconsciousness would leave me at their mercy--though I suspected mercy was one sentiment they’d be loathe to show.

I can’t let them keep me here.

I put one foot against the door, and pushed with all the strength my spinning head allowed me to gather.

“No,” I bellowed, stumbling away.

My feet tangled, spilling me to the floor in a painful heap. I scrambled onto my back, ready to defend myself, but the women were gone, the sole sign of their presence a bloody hand print in the middle of the door. I struggled to my feet, rubbed my hands absently on my soiled shirt and found it free of blood. Gone, all of it gone.

“It wasn’t real,” I said aloud, not expecting the room to respond, but it did in the form of a moan.

The sound startled me. I spun around to see a table in the center of the previously empty room; a woman lay atop it. Sweat plastered dark hair to her forehead, a flimsy white nightgown stretched across her belly bulging with child. Her knees were drawn up, her hands gripped the edge of the table with enough effort to whiten her knuckles.

I gaped.

Three more figures appeared, fading out of empty air like a bad effect in an amateur home video. I recognized all of them. Sister Mary-Therese crouched between the woman’s legs, sleeves rolled up past her elbows, concentration creasing her brow. She was younger than I’d ever seen her, and her lips moved like she spoke to the woman though I heard nothing but the pregnant woman’s rapid breathing and strained moans as she pushed. The other two figures stood back from the table; the women gave no indication they were aware of their presence. Recognizing the two men drained all the blood from my limbs.

Michael and Azrael.

I knew what I was seeing: my birth.

The schoolyard, the murdered women. It didn’t make any sense for them to be in my Hell. I didn’t know any of them, hadn’t lived through any of it. But this...

The woman lying on the table--my mother--screamed with pain and effort, a primal sound that shook my bones. A different sort of sound followed, a startling, joyous sound: the cry of a newborn. Sister Mary-Therese rocked back and held the child up--the child cursed to become me--umbilical cord trailing beneath my mother’s nightgown, a smile across the nun’s face.

The smile disappeared.

I wanted to move forward, see what caused her distress, but it became apparent as the smell of blood filled the air. I almost turned to see if the murdered women had returned, but didn’t. My mother’s face blanched. Sister Mary-Therese’s expression turned to shock as the bed sheets around her turned crimson. Heart in my throat, I reached out in desperation to do anything I could to save her but an invisible barrier held me at bay.

This was the moment of my mother’s death and I could do nothing to help her.

“No!”

The scene froze.

Sister Mary-Therese stood with the baby-me in her arms, face tight with concern, tears glistening on her cheeks. My entire life, she’d been watching over me, mostly from afar, but always there in my times of need, and I’d never stopped to question why. It was no coincidence she found me on the streets, rescued me, been available for me at every turn.

She’d done it for my mother.

If only I’d tried harder to save her.

Michael and Azrael stood like statues looming over my mother, like bogeymen competing to give her the biggest fright. Only my mother remained moving. She bent her head toward me and I saw relief in her eyes despite the dark circles beneath them. The corners of her mouth crinkled into a tired-looking smile, giving her back some of the look of the striking spirit I’d encountered on the bus.

“Icarus.”

“Mother.”

I tried to take a step, but my feet wouldn’t move. I extended a hand toward her, reaching to have the touch I’d never known.

“You must go, my son.”

“But--”

“Now, Icarus. The door at the end of the hall. Stop for no others.”

“Mother, I--”

“Run!”

The urgency in her voice released me. I rushed to the door and burst into the hallway, pausing to look back and glimpse the other three reanimating. Sister Mary-Therese yelled for help as, unseen, Michael and Azrael jostled with each other for position at my mother’s side, each of them reaching for her. Another figure appeared, this one dressed in a black cloak with a cowl pulled down over his face--Carrion. The black-clad figure stepped past the others, grabbed my mother by the arm and helped her soul sit up from the lifeless body. Its head turned my way and I strained to see into the shadow cast by the hood.

“No!”

The door closed.

I blundered a couple of steps down the hall, my head spinning with what I’d seen--not just my mother and the sister, but the inexplicable presence of the archangels at my mother’s death. Before I could make sense of it, the entity in the hall made itself known, pushing me to move. It’s force was immense, smothering, obliterating all thoughts from my mind save for my mother’s last words. For the first and last time in my life, she’d told me what to do. I wouldn’t let her down.

I ran.

Doors appeared at shorter and shorter intervals, each of them whispering to me as I passed, promising riches, women, happiness, bribing me to veer off my path. I wanted to. The pressure of the thing at my back let up and I found myself pausing outside one door, fingers brushing the doorknob. I stared at the brass knob, felt its coolness on my fingertips; I smelled the metal. My fingers tightened on it and a flare went off in my brain.

This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing.

A second thought followed immediately on the heels of the first.

But what is it I’m supposed to be doing?

The knob squeaked as I turned it a quarter turn, but my brain registered the sound as the cry of my son’s voice, quiet and weak, calling for help. I let go of the knob and backed away, hand shaking.

The thing in the hall returned, leaving me no time for regret or guilt. I thought of Trevor as I returned to my flight down Hell’s corridor, kept his face in mind as I rushed by more and more doors.

Most of the doors stood open, revealing their horrors for any who cared to look. I struggled not to peer into them as I ran but found it too much to ask of myself. In one I glimpsed a torture chamber--a man chained to the wall, flayed by an unseen hand. In another, a man knelt naked on the floor, his manhood resting on a stump while a man wearing an executioner’s mask waved an axe in the air above it. The closed doors tempted me still as, despite the atrocities I knew they concealed, I found myself wondering what lay behind them. It took great effort not to stop and find out, but my mother’s words rang in my head and the thing gaining ground behind me kept me moving. Finally, the end of the hall came into view; a nondescript door represented my escape.

Or so the woman I thought my mother said.

What if it wasn’t really her?

Doubt hadn’t occurred to me until the possibility of my escape loomed. They’d disguised someone as Gabe to fool me before, maybe my mother was a demon in disguise, intended to send me to an eternity reliving every terrible instant of my life--and there had been more than a few. My pace slowed as I neared the door, but the pressure at my back pushed me on like a tsunami carrying a body surfer inexorably toward the rocks.

My feet skidded on the floor as I attempted to slow down. Suddenly, whatever might be behind the door mattered less than the fact I was about to be pancaked against it with incredible force. I struggled to gain control and failed miserably, then remembered the door at the rectory, and the Honda’s ignition.

The pressure at my back increased as I focused all my attention and will on the door, pictured it flying open without thought to what might lie beyond. The temperature around me rose, the flames from the walls and floor licking at my flesh, tasting it like a hungry dog. I ignored the flames, the thing filling the hall behind me, and concentrated on the door. It shook minutely, trembled, then nothing. Ii sped toward it, close enough now I could make out the shape of its panels and imagine them impressed upon my body. I took a deep breath that singed my lungs and focused my thoughts again.

The door knob shook. The door shuddered, opened a few inches and slammed closed, then finally flew open the second before I would have become intimately entwined with the grain of its wood. I leapt through, a sprinter making the final push for the finish line.

I skidded across the floor on my shoulder, snow-plowing paper ahead of me and stopping when my back met something hard. I jumped to my feet, ready to defend myself, but found I’d reemerged in the church not far from the altar. It didn’t surprise me when I glanced back and saw no door behind me. The hostile pressure at my back was gone, too, but was it hostile? I’d left Hell undamaged; it merely impelled me to keep going, forced me back to Trevor.

My curiosity over the strange force was as short-lived as my sigh of relief.

My son lay unmoving atop the altar, the priest gone from his side. Seeing him drove thoughts of the thing in the hall from my head; everything in me wanted to race to his side, but the suspicion I’d be walking into a trap overpowered my desperation to save him. The multitude of guttering candles set throughout the room cast odd shadows, flickering hundreds of demons and ghosts along the walls. I ignored the illusion and crept toward the altar, feet scraping through broken pottery and crumpled paper.