“I watched you die.” Visions of Starker came to him. No. Not Starker. Father McKay, his head drenched in blood, choking on his own body fluids and gasping for forgiveness. “I killed you. Slowly.”
Blood so dark it was nearly black trickled from the corners of his eyes. “Did you think that would save your soul?” the priest asked.
“I only knew it would end you.”
The priest moved deeper into the room, stepping between him and Gaby, smiling wide like a demonic Cheshire Cat. “But that’s what you hoped for, wasn’t it. Just like now, you hope it will save you from me, from this place, from those waiting for you outside, from yourself. It won’t. Do you know why?” A fat brown spider scurried across his bald head, disappeared into his ear. He didn’t seem to notice. “Because the illusion of hope is Hell’s greatest joy.”
“And Heaven’s greatest weapon,” Gaby said from behind him, her eyes rolling to black as she grabbed hold of him, sunk her teeth into his neck and pulled him to the floor with shocking strength and violence, straddling him and tearing at his throat the way a wild dog might.
Light and dark merged as blood sprayed the walls.
Rooster backed away until he’d vanished into the safety of nearby shadows, the meager scraps of sanity he still possessed fracturing as night fell over the city of the damned.
Lost in time, through bloodshot eyes Rooster watched the sun rise on a new day, broken dreams collected at his feet, tarnished trophies stolen rather than won. The beautiful innocence of a little boy nailed to a cross of wood in burning fields called to him across the years, tears from a forgotten and wasted life and the sins of ghosts from a past he couldn’t quite remember and perhaps never would. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to.
But rather than destroy, the flames in those burning fields were what would eventually free him.
Rooster rubbed his hands together, they’d gone so cold. He lit a Marlboro and checked the corner. The Crown Vic was gone. From behind him, he heard heels clacking pavement. Bundled in a winter coat and hat, Gaby walked across the courtyard with her typical brisk stride.
Across the street, Nauls’ car waited.
Gaby smiled, no longer wolf, but lamb.
“Where are we going?” Rooster asked.
“Away from here,” she said, offering him her hand.
“Home?” he asked.
“Home,” she said. “But get rid of the cigarette. Those things’ll kill ya.”
He slipped his hand into hers, and for the first time in a long while, felt himself smile.
Fires burned. They always would. But Rooster’s flames no longer trapped him in a Hell of his or anyone else’s creation. Instead, they destroyed those things shackling him to the Devil’s playground, and all the nightmares and lies that had tried so desperately to keep him there.
In a dark and distant field, a hideous scarecrow closed its sightless eyes.
Rooster’s soul quieted as the demons fell back into the lightless abyss from which they’d come.
Hand-in-hand with Gaby, Rooster walked to the car. Somewhere beyond the horizon, death’s other kingdom waited.
A kingdom not of shadows and darkness, but of peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Called “One of the best writers of his generation” by both the Roswell Literary Review and author Brian Keene, Greg F. Gifune is the author of numerous short stories, several novels and two short story collections (
Copyright
First Digital Edition
October 2009
Published by:
Delirium Books
P.O. Box 338
North Webster, IN 46555
Cover Artwork © 2009 by Zach McCain
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
