The Deal (2 page)

‘
I always thought you were the
master of this domain. Hell or purgatory or whatever you want to
call it. What I mean is…’

He cut me off by raising a languid
finger
into
the air.

‘
You mean slaves Samuel. My
kingdom is overflowing with them and I simply cannot manage them
all on my own. Argatol is one of a few Angels who help me manage
those countless souls. I need him back where he belongs. Here and
by my side. And that is where you come in.’

Here it comes, I thought. As the Mafia would
so elegantly put it, I was about to be made an offer I couldn’t
refuse.

‘
I will grant you eternal life on
the earthly plane if you return Argatol to me by midnight. If you
refuse me I can promise you that all the human imaginings of life
in hell will pale in comparison to the things I will personally do
to you.’

His voice, although deep, was
strangely quiet. The words he spoke, although fierce some,
were
said so softly that I had no misgivings when it came to him
following through on his promise.

I could feel his eyes burn holes
in my head as I sat there, blankly looking at my shaking hands.
There wasn’t really a lot to think about in this case, and to be
honest it wasn’t as if eternal life was such a bad thing to have,
at least not that I could
foresee
for the time
being.

I still hesitated and he must have sensed my
inner turmoil.

‘
Let me sweeten the deal.’ He said
eventually after a few agonizing moments. ‘On top of everything I
have already
promised,
I will also grant your wife
Lisa the freedom to go to heaven.’

Suddenly, all the fear,
anticipation and everything else I was currently feeling left my
body and my mind was flooded with images of Lisa. I had tried for
many years to put her to the very back of my mind,
after all,
she was dead and I was still very much alive, but
in that instant all I could see was her.

I could clearly see the way her long blonde
hair danced in the wind as she made her way back from the phone box
and across the road to where I waited patiently in the old ford we
had rented for the day.

I also remembered the sound of the flatbeds
horn sounding in the summer air moments before it struck and sent
her mangled body crashing back against the phone box with enough
force to render her face unrecognizable.

By the
time,
I had gotten out
of the car and made it across the other side of the road she was
gone. The last thing I held on to about that day, and it was still
the one moment which, if I thought about it long enough, would
bring tears to my eyes, was when I sat next to her crumpled
remains, holding her hand and softly praying that she would survive
even though I knew in my heart that she had probably died on impact
with the flatbed.

Lisa had been one of those rare
people in my life who actually cared about others. As a
kindergarten
teacher,
she loved children and we had
often talked about having one of our own someday. She was a truly
gentle soul and what puzzled me was why she was suffering in hell
for it.

‘
She shouldn’t be here.’ I tried
to force back the tears as the image of her remains faded from my
thoughts.

‘
Samuel, there is not a soul in my
kingdom that does not deserve to be where it is. However, if you
accept the deal then you can put an end to her
suffering.’

It was in that moment that my mind was made
up. Even though I knew the deal was pretty much rigged against me,
if Lisa was suffering then I had to put a stop to that. She had
been the one and only good thing to ever come into my life, and she
had given me five years of a normal life with all the peace,
happiness and love I had ever wanted.

It was the very least I could do for her and
Satan knew it because I was slowly nodding my head as the memories
of her faded to the back of my mind.

‘
So, do we have a deal’ His tone
was final and there would be no more opportunities to question
him.

‘
Yes, we do.’ I said, firmly and
with as much determination as I could muster.

‘
Very good Samuel. You have made
the right choice.’

I watched as he rose to his feet, a small wisp
of a smile on his face as he turned and looked down at
me.

‘
You have until midnight to bring
Argatol back to me. You will need this…’

I watched as he reached into his jacket pocket
and produced a small calibre bullet made of pure gold. He held the
bullet out to me in his open hand.

‘
You will need this to succeed, so
whatever you do, don’t waste it.’

‘
I’ve got plenty bullets of my
own.’ I said, noting how cold he was to touch as I picked the
bullet from the palm of his hand.

‘
I can assure you that your
earthly bullets will not inflict the kind of damage that this one
can. If that was not so then he would not have survived your
attempt on his life. Now go. You have thirty minutes to complete
our deal.’

The last thing I heard was Satan clicking his
fingers and then for the second time that night everything went
black.

Unlike my transition into the underworld, my
return to the world of the human race was abrupt. Pain wracked my
head and the left side of my body. I could hear the crumbling of
broken glass and sirens in the distance.

It took a few seconds for me to realize that I
was still seated behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The gurney Jim
Mancini had occupied, took up most of the space where the
windshield should have been but I quickly noticed that the man
himself was gone.

I could feel all the muscles in my body
tighten as I unclipped my seatbelt with far more effort than it
should have taken. In my right hand I could feel something cold and
hard, and once I mustered the energy to bring it up for inspection
I could see the small gold bullet resting there in the palm of my
hand.

It hadn’t been a dream at all.

I really had made a deal with the
devil, and for the first in a long
time,
I could feel my stomach
lurch.

It was then that another
realization dawned upon me. The sirens I thought
were
coming towards me
were
actually moving away from
me.
Sure
enough,
when I looked
at
the shattered
remains of the windshield and gurney I could see an ambulance
driving off.

Grimacing in pain I forced the
door open and quickly as I could I made my way to the front of the
car. The ambulance I had crashed into was gone, and so was Mancini,
or Argatol as he was to be called. I noticed there
were
gouge marks on the hood of the Mercedes and assumed that
the
paramedics
probably tried to free both the gurney and the
patient only to give up and settle for taking the patient
instead.

The
wail
of the siren was
almost gone now and I knew I had to make up for lost time quickly.
Mustering up all the energy I had, I climbed
onto
the hood of
the car and yanked at the bed.
At first,
nothing seemed to
happen, it was well and truly stuck.

Another tug and then another and
still nothing. Then
finally
after one last release of
energy I was able to pull the gurney free enough so that it slid
the rest of the
way
off
the hood and clattered to the road
under its own weight.

Sliding
off
the car, I got back behind the wheel
and tried to start the engine which simply wheezed and then died on
me.

‘
God, fucking damn it!’ I
screamed, more out of frustration than anger.

I turned the key again and nothing. Not even a
wheeze this time. More frustrated than I had ever felt in my life,
I slammed my fists against the steering wheel.

The deal had been rigged. The devil must have
known I was never going to get the damn car started in time. He was
probably sitting in his chapel of horror laughing his ass off at my
puny attempts to give him what he wanted.

Sam, remember when it comes to
working with cars you need to treat them the same way you would a
woman.
Roughhousing
them just won’t work and
you’ll be left even more pissed off when you first
started.

It was the voice of my old mentor Clark. He
was long gone now, another dark spot in my past, but his advice was
always solid when it came to cars.

‘
Okay, please start for
me,
baby. Please.’ I begged as I turned the ignition
key.

For the briefest of moments there was nothing,
not even a sign of life, and then like a punch to the jaw, the
Mercedes roared to life and I couldn’t help but smile as the
instrument panel lit up in its gentle orange glow.

The digital clock situated at the
top of the dashboard stated I had no more than twenty minutes
before my end of the deal would be broken, so without
further
hesitation,
I threw the car into gear
and steered it in the direction of the ambulance.

Someone must have been on my side as every set
of traffic lights I reached where green which in turn meant it took
only five minutes of driving before I was able to catch up with the
ambulance.

I found it hard to believe that it
was the same ambulance I had
run
into only moments ago. In
the back of my
mind,
I had envisioned a recovery crew
coming to take it away and a new ambulance arriving to recover the
patient and restart the journey from where the last one left
off.

As I got
closer,
though, I was
actually quite surprised to see the battered and bashed doors of
the emergency vehicle. It only served to make the whole night all
that more bizarre.
First,
I fucked up with the hit, and
then just to add insult to injury I had to make a deal with the
devil just so I could complete what I had originally started out to
do; only with the added bonus that I get to live forever if I can
pull it off.

Then there was Lisa. My beautiful
wife. The woman who had
given
me five years of real love and
not the shit I had to pay for from the girls on the street. My
heart ached for her, it never really stopped aching, but I tried my
best to ignore it, hoping that it would eventually go
away.

The problem with that way of
thinking is that you simply can’t ignore what your heart feels. If
it wants then you must give it, otherwise you only end up torturing
yourself. It was in realizing that
I
knew I wasn’t trying to save
myself, I was trying to save the woman who had given me so much and
asked for so little in return a chance to enjoy the heaven she so
truly deserved.

It seemed totally unfair that she had been in
hell all this time, while I was out roaming the streets and killing
people for money like I had done for so many years before I met
her, and probably would continue to do so even if I did manage to
pull off the impossible.

I tried to change my mode of
thought and concentrate on the job at hand, which for now was
following the ambulance.
This time,
I kept a safe distance. The
rain outside was slowly turning to snow as had been forecast
earlier this morning.

I had to narrow my eyes as the
snow began to fall faster and harder, almost blinding me at times
due to the speed of the car which was fast approaching seventy
miles an hour. The glimpses I caught of the outside world
were
nothing more than a stream of blurred buildings and the
occasional blurred face of a homeless person scavenging for food or
shelter or both.

For what seemed like an eternity I
kept a cars distance away from the battered emergency vehicle,
knowing that for some reason the breaks on the Mercedes
were
not working as they should and if I had to stop suddenly then
it was going to involve hitting something hard.

That hard object eventually turned out to be a
police cruiser.

I had been so focused on keeping up with the
Ambulance that I had not been paying attention to the roads as much
as I should have been; so when both my Mercedes and the ambulance
reached the junction just a quarter mile from the hospital I did
not notice that the lights had changed to red just as the ambulance
screamed on through.

In one sense I was fortunate that
I only clipped the front of the cruiser, and I could see the look
of shock on the
driver's
face as his cop car spun until
it was parallel to mine before crashing into the side of my car
with a loud thud.