Jake's Wake (16 page)

“The thing about Jesus is that you can get away with just about
anything
, as long as you invoke his name. You can start a war. You can burn a witch. You can hang a heathen. You can bang anybody you fucking want. You can milk the poor for everything they’ve got, and give the rich a cheap way to look like saints.

“All you have to do is say the magic J-word, and you give them hope they can’t get anywhere else.”

Eddie just listened, not even nodding. Every word out of Jake’s mouth might as well have been a cockroach.

“Faith doesn’t move mountains of anything but bullshit.
Will
is what makes it all happen, Eddie. If you have the will, you can control your own reality. I’m living proof of that, right?”

Scraping the eyeball crust out from under one thumbnail with the other, Jake let his face cloud over, genuinely troubled by these hard truths.

“I’m not trying to say this is how the world should be. It’s just the way it is.”

Jake’s thumbnail popped wetly out of its rotten bed and dangled from his thumb by a streamer of pus.

“And you can tell yourself all you want that the good guys always win, and the meek will inherit the earth. But that’s not the way it fucking works. You know it. And I know it. Right?”

Eddie closed his eyes and sighed: not with contempt, but with utter despair.

“Am I wrong,” Jake pressed, “or am I right, on this particular point?”

Eddie did not want to answer, did not want to open his eyes. But Jake stepped closer, close enough to touch; and he would sooner cut his own hand off than suffer Jake’s hands upon him.

So he opened his eyes; and the sight made him shrink back, shrivel into himself, as if Jake’s gaze alone was giving him cancer.

Jake’s unblinking eyes were dry as hard candy, but they pulsated red, as if swollen with thick neon blood that blazed bright as the fireplace.

And inside them was a glistening, eternal damnation.

Eddie seemed to see himself falling, sucked out of the windows of his own eyes and plummeting into the bottomless, ravenous fires of hell that waited inside Jake. You would burn forever there. You would never stop burning and falling.

I am the gate
, he heard Jake’s voice echo inside his head, though the undead lips were not moving.
On the right hand is the fire. On the left hand lies the dark.

And I am in the center.

Where the darkness burns.

For a moment, the room behind Jake seemed to vanish completely, and in its place, a black billowing void full of screaming vapors, full of nothing at all…

None shall come unto resurrection, except through me…

…and that was when Eddie broke his gaze from Jake’s, and turned his back.

The second the spell broke, Eddie collapsed against the door frame, panting. Every sweat gland opened up and doused him like a fever, but he shivered all the way down to the veins in his bones.

Nothing short of getting sprayed with Esther’s blood could have pulled such a reaction out of him. Or so he would have thought.

But seeing the fate that might await his soul was too much. Too much for any mortal man to bear.

And just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, Jake laid a brotherly, crushing hand on his shoulder.

“So that should tell you something about how your bread is actually buttered,” Jake nearly whispered in his ear. “You think about that. And you let me know when you make up your mind. Cuz Judgment Day has finally come. And you might even come in handy. But believe me, you will be judged.”

It had been quiet for a long time now.

No screaming, no crying.
Maybe it’s over
, Emmy thought. Maybe Jake saw the light, and repented. Or the Devil in him had been driven out.

Emmy stared out the barred window, seeing nothing but pale walls and dark curtains. She might as well have been staring at the floor, for all the information it gave her.

But given what she’d witnessed, was there any other explanation?

Jake was dead for three days. Then he got up. It was not a miracle, but a mockery of the resurrection, and a desecration of the body that had been so powerful a messenger for God’s word, in life.

Hell would try to undo all the church’s good works like that, because that’s what hell did: it turned truths to lies, and weakness to evil.

The others in the cell with her were proof of that. Whatever truth there was in their accusations, they hadn’t seemed surprised by Jake—oh, by his return, certainly.

But the vulgar, violent beast that murdered that poor man, blasphemer or not, had only seemed like the one they knew all along.

The one who fooled only her.

No, there could be no other answer. Jake had a demon inside him. But the question now was, how long before he died had it hidden inside his heart?

Maybe…all along?

She jumped at the sound of keys, jumped again when the holding cell door flew open. And there was Gray, grimacing at them all.

Growing up, she never watched that many movies, but she always found herself identifying every new face she saw with a movie star.

This one—this sullen, rage-drunk, hag-ridden man—looked like a young Lee Marvin, who would never grow into an old one.

Gray stepped inside and smiled tightly at the terrified women. He pointed at each of them with his gun. Emmy found it easier to watch the nickel-plated eye of the weapon than the face of the man holding it. The obvious pleasure he took in their fear made her feel dirty, as if some part of her were getting raped every time he looked at her.

“Eeny, meenie, miney…” he recited, as if bored. “Ah, fuck it. He wants you.”

The gun pointed at Emmy.

She stepped forward, dizzy, feeling like she was falling out the door as Evangeline and Esther stepped back like the runners-up in a beauty contest, both terrified and ashamed at their relief.

The door slammed shut behind her.

Gray had to push her, to remind her to walk.

Above, the moon was bloodred, peeping down through the leafy cathedral dome of the old oak tree in the Connaway backyard. The wind howling across the desert took on a throaty, panpipe tone as it blew through the eaves of the big house, inescapably spreading out before her.

So quiet. Where had everyone gone? The screaming
was so loud, and the laughter…had it only just ended, or was it longer?

Emmy’s mother always said she had a wandering mind.
Senile from birth
, was one of the nicer ways she put it. A little Devil in her head, was what she meant.

Emmy’s mother saw demons hiding behind every human flaw. She believed fallen angels blew on the wind like germs, looking for homes in uncovered, yawning mouths, unbaptized babies, and all men, everywhere.

When she saw that she couldn’t beat the demon out of Emmy, or the right attitude in, she’d taken shelter in her own illness.

But Emmy had found her own cure.

The Lord was, quite literally, Emmy’s tether to the world. When she dedicated herself to his work, her mind ran clear and true as an alpine brook.

But to night, prayer had only tranquilized her, helped bring her in line with the paralyzing shock. She didn’t know how long they’d stood in the holding cell. Surely it must be morning soon…

The back door seemed miles away across the lawn, or maybe her mind made it feel that way, by packing her thoughts with distractions.

Gray tugged on her arm, almost pulling her off balance. Her feet wanted to please him, and the rest of her was so terrified of his anger, that she would have followed him off a cliff. But she planted her foot and started, feebly, halfheartedly, to resist him.

It didn’t matter what he’d do to her, her heart told her. If he killed her now, that might be best.

What awaited her inside, she knew, would be much worse.

Gray hissed smoke out his nose in disgust. The leaves rattling in the breeze sounded like mindless applause.

That was when they heard the laughter behind them.

Gray whipped around and searched the shadows between
the house and the garage. Crazy chuckling and muttered curses strung out of his mouth; he reminded Emmy just then of her mother, seeing and hearing demons everywhere.

Except that Emmy heard it, too.

The sound was like a spray of icy water, stretched thin on the wind, but a shock on her exposed skin, not just her ears…as if everywhere it touched, the wrongness of the sound raised goose bumps. It pulled her out of her shock as she cowered behind him, looking over his shoulder.

“Oh, my God…” She searched her mind, but no prayers came.

Gray looked at her, his face as white as his bloodshot eyes weren’t. “You heard that, too?”

Emmy took hold of his arm, tears streaming.

“What is
happening?
Do you know?”

The demon laughed again. It was a lewd, lascivious woman—no, higher, giddy like a girl, or a woman abused so badly in childhood that her voice never grew up. She was playing hide-and-seek, and couldn’t wait to be found…or she was the seeker, and could not contain her amusement at how badly they were hiding.

When Emmy used to play hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids, she always found the best hiding place; nobody ever found her. She’d stay hidden as they gave up right away and went to play something else, stayed hidden until she wet her pants and her stomach rumbled, too proud, then too ashamed, to run for the safe place.

They should run for the safe place now.

But where was safe?

Suddenly, she wanted him to take her into the house.

But Gray was frozen, too.

Emmy stared, dumbfounded. Up until this moment, it had never occurred to her that even this vicious killer might be out of his depth.

“Don’t
you
even know what’s out there…?”

All at once, he raised a shaking hand to slap her, looked equally stunned by the fact that he didn’t. The hand just hung there as they stared at each other, searched each other’s eyes for proof that they weren’t going insane.

But what they saw didn’t make things better.

“NO, I DON’T!” Gray howled, and the admission seemed to deflate him. “Okay? I don’t know
anything!
”

His voice faltered, hand fell.

High above them, up in the branches of the oak tree, the shrill demon voice let out haunting, rollicking giggles. Such games, such
fun
, for the suffering on earth.

Emmy watched the voice shudder through him, even as she shuddered herself. Gray was just following Jake’s orders. Just as she had…

“We have to get out of here,” Emmy begged. “All of us. Even you…”

“Even
me?
” Gray retreated into a hateful glower. She could see that she had somehow, amazingly hurt his feelings…

…and though it hadn’t seemed impossible, she suddenly felt pity for this poor, lost, frightened man. Couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten even he had a soul. And was instantly ashamed.

“Oh, no!” she cried, frantic on too many levels to count. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

“You didn’t mean
what?
”

Words failed her; and without thinking, she threw herself sobbing into his arms like a child.

Gray’s arm enfolded her. He was stiff, unyielding, but also shaking; and if she could have seen his eyes, she would have noted, in that moment, that he looked almost sane.

The laughter circled overhead, like a murder of mad crows. He squeezed her tighter, as if to comfort them both. She squeezed tighter in return.

Then Gray’s gun pressed softly into her back; and south of his belt line, something else jabbed insistently at her thigh. His breath, stale cigarettes and something deep down gone to rot inside, came faster and harsher in her ear.

Oh God
, she blurted in her head, too quick to take the small blasphemy back. He was, Lord help her, aroused.

“Please,” she whispered. “Just help us. Please…”

Gray slid the barrel, slowly, up Emmy’s back, getting some unspeakable kicks out of the contact.

The wind whistled and howled with laughter.

Gray clung tighter against her, even as he brought the gun up to Emmy’s head. Barrel to temple. And chambered a round.

Emmy froze: too frightened to move, too horrified even to pray. She was no longer squeezing him, but her arms were still wrapped around him in a hideous charade of affection.

“Why?” she whimpered into his shoulder.

“Because I don’t give a shit about you,” he said in a flat-ironed voice. “I think you’re an idiot. Come on.”

Christian rationed the lighter. Even if he only sparked it to check out each item he dug out from under the sink, it still burned his left thumb.
Poor baby, it almost matches the other one now.

He lay on his left side on a wadded-up bath mat and some towels, with his ruined right arm curled up against his cracked rib cage. Blessed shock had finally set in, and the reality of his predicament had settled in, as well. Perhaps he was delirious and looking at the same things over and over, but the bathroom cabinet was a bottomless cornucopia of house hold products he should have been able to make into a flamethrower or a lunar lander, if he’d been more mechanically inclined.

Jake loved his hair. Hated insects.

Christian could think of plenty of ideas, sure. He could indeed use some of the old aerosol hair spray cans and his lighter to burn the fuckers when they came for him, if he only had two hands.

He could try to make Molotov cocktails out of Jake’s cologne collection, but they were alcohol based, and though their stench would make baboons impotent, it wouldn’t burn too long, and the bottles were thick, tacky smoked-glass bricks, all but impossible to shatter.

He could try to set fire to the door and the exterior wall, maybe punch a hole in the drywall and pour the cologne and a couple hair spray cans inside, and lie in the bathtub, covered in wet towels. Wait for the firemen.

Or he could give himself a make over.