It was his mother, he felt, who had inspired his love of movies, particularly older movies. Bette Davis had been her favorite actress. Watching these women always brought his mother to the front of his mind, as if she were the actual star of each film; their immortality lent her a wispy immortality, too. She had been a pretty woman herself; photos of the poet Anne Sexton put him in mind of his mother. The lean tapered face, the dark hair, the pale intelligent eyes.
His mother had passed away, from breast cancer, when McComis was twelve years old.
Thinking of her now, he wanted to go dig out his scrapbooks, filled with photos of her. But instead, he stared at the blank television screen with a slowly mounting intensity...as if he expected to suddenly hear the tape machine begin to whir again, and it would be his mother’s face he would see on the screen, once again alive.
* * *
“She’s waiting for you,” said Dore. Smiling.
McComis locked his eyes with the man for several beats. Dore began digging for a cigarette, breaking their gaze. McComis then turned and let himself into the bedroom.
A woman stood silhouetted at the window, peeking out secretly around the torn shade. At his entrance, she turned. Her slender frame was draped in a light, flowered summer dress. Dark hair, limned in the light from the window in a nearly extinguished corona.
“Oh, honey,” the woman cooed, stepping away from the window. “Oh, Tom...baby...how I’ve missed you.” She held open her arms to him. “How I’ve missed you, all these years.”
And he found himself staggering to her, again drawn as if against his conscious will, but some part of him obviously anxious, desperate, in need. McComis fell into the youthful arms of his mother, dead for these many years but not aged a day since he’d last seen her. And he crushed her in his arms, as hers went around him. It was the smell of her familiar lily-of-the-valley perfume, ultimately, that made him cry.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he sobbed in her hair, against her slim throat. “I’ve missed you, too.” He bucked hard with his sobs, and she kissed his neck to soothe him, ran her hands across his back.
“Shh, it’s all right now, darling,” she whispered. “We’re together now.”
“I think about you all the time...but I never dreamed I could see you again...I never dreamed...”
“I know,” she sighed. “We need each other, don’t we? I’ve dreamed of you, too. I can still remember holding you as a baby in my arms. Breast-feeding you. And now...at last...here we are again. You in my arms.” She gently pushed him out of their embrace, her hands running tenderly down his chest. She unfastened the one button that held his jacket closed, and began to slip it off his shoulders. “We don’t have to be alone any more...”
McComis took hold of her thin wrists, held them away from him. “What are you doing?” he rasped.
His mother, now shorter than he was—yes, even a few years younger than he was—smiled up at him. “Don’t worry, honey,” she giggled softly. “I won’t bite you. Not unless you want me to...”
McComis shoved the woman away from him. She almost fell, grabbed the footboard of the bed for support. He, in turn, backed away from her...against the door...
“You aren’t my mother!” he cried.
“Of course I am, Tom!” She still smiled, despite his violence, her pale eyes hungry. Hungry for his love.
“My mother wouldn’t do that! And I never loved my mother like that!”
“Every woman a man loves is really his mother, Tom.”
McComis whirled around to grapple with the doorknob.
“What are you doing?” his mother demanded, floating suddenly toward him. “Wait!”
He finally got the knob turned—he mustn’t let her touch him—and was out through the door, slamming it in her face. He heard her slight but solid body thud against it, heard her pound the heels of her fists against it.
“Tom!” she wailed. “Come back! Please—I need you!”
“What’s wrong?” Dore asked, alarmed, straightening up warily. The dead man, as well, swivelled about to face him.
But McComis plunged between them, bolted down the hall.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Dore asked, trailing after him.
* * *
This time, McComis made his way to the house in the woods without his escort. He knew the secret, unmarked path through the forest by now. Dore wasn’t even aware of this excursion.
In each hand, McComis slung a heavy red container filled with gasoline. In one pocket was a tin of lighter fluid, in the other a disposable lighter. And in his own waistband, a semi-automatic handgun.
He saw it, through the trees, gray beneath a gray sky. Just before he entered the clearing, he heard that chittering scolding sound again. An alarm, a warning? He expected to see one of the sentries come around the edge of the house then...but none did. Still, he mustn’t take any chances. He worked swiftly, uncapping the first container and splashing the outside of the house, working his way entirely around it.
Did she watch him through the bedroom window, peeking around the shade? Golden Marilyn? Tragic Jean Harlow? His mother? And were they, perhaps, really all the same creature, or merely made the same by their desperate longing?
Finally, he emptied the lighter fluid in a short trail, like a fuse. And crouching down, he lit it. The flames began to spread, an invasion of bright light and bright color in this bleak, ashen spot.
He backed off quickly, and pulled the pistol from his waistband, lest something come blundering out from the interior, howling and grasping for his throat.
And as the flames spread and engulfed the old structure, began to consume it in their own greedy lust, he did in fact see one of the dead men smash his upper body through one of the windows, extend its arms toward him threateningly, its mouth wide and full of fire—but it made no sound, and after only a few seconds it fell away back inside the house with the inferno closing over it. He lowered the gun he had been pointing at the thing.
He returned his attention to the upper floor. The bedroom window. But he saw no face at the glass, no imploring arms reached for him. He did, however, believe he heard one pitiful cry—just briefly. Yet it sounded too far away, much farther away than the house directly before him.
Tears began to fill his eyes, and they reflected the wavering light of the flames, until he became blinded by the two. But he wiped his sleeve across them. He had to hurry now, back to his car, and drive away where he could make a call, report the fire before it spread into the forest. Leave here before Dore should come and find him. Not that he really cared about either of those things too greatly. Most of all, he just wanted to leave here. He wished he had never come here in the first place. But he couldn’t change that, could he?
Despite the conflagration, he knew that the past could be resurrected much more readily than it could be burned away.
COFFEE BREAK
Hell didn’t have to freeze over; it was already icy cold in places, and Fleming was as glad to get in out of it as he was to get out of the roaring flames in other regions. The windows of the café had glowed warmly to him across frigid expanses of white tiled floors with drains to collect the rivers of blood. Now, here he was. Bells tinkled when he opened the door.
Chani looked over from behind the counter; after a moment to recognize his cold-blackened face she smiled and waved. Fleming grew warmer. Chani’s cat Bast looked toward him also. The black cat had liked to ride on Chani’s shoulder in life; now it was fused there, inseparable. Her punishment for loving animals but not the Son. But like some punishments here, it was actually in Chani’s favor. She had loved Bast dearly and now could have him with her through eternity. Though all animals automatically went to Hell, that didn’t guarantee that pets and their owners were reunited in the after world.
Fleming took a vacant stool, the red vinyl sighing under his weight. “Man,” he breathed.
“It’s been a while, Flem,” said Chani. “Espresso?”
She remembered him so well. It felt good. You could still feel good like this, in little ways, in Hell. “You got it. How you been?”
“Bored.” Wasn’t that the way? Chani was forever warm in here, never in cold or in flames, always with people with whom to chat. But that was her curse. In life she had been a traveler. Here, she not only never went outside but never even came out from behind the counter. “Where you been to? Someplace new?” Her back was to him as she worked.
“I found a jungle. A lot of animals there, and native-type people. Aborigines. Neanderthals. It was interesting. They didn’t seem to be suffering too much. Diseased and everything, but...” He shrugged. “I did see hunting parties after them, though. One of those chased me out.”
“Bastards.”
Fleming glanced over at a Neanderthal who sat at the end of the counter, in fact. In his loincloth, he was huddled over a hot chocolate. Born before the birth of the Son, the only gate to salvation, he was eternally damned. His heavy brow was forlorn.
At least he could come in here for a hot chocolate. In fiery regions there were far-spaced bars where you could get a beer, ice cream parlors floating in lakes of magma. The Father, in His mercy, gave the damned breaks. Once a year, every damned soul could stop in one such establishment for one hour. It became the anchor for sanity, the reason to trudge on rather than give up and fall and suffer in one spot for all time. It was a place to draw those tiny moments of pleasure. But even that was a punishment. The punishment was experiencing the contrast of pleasure, in a brief, teasing taste. The punishment was having to leave.
Fleming glanced elsewhere about him as his face slowly reverted to its normal color and shape...without pain. Inside these establishments was the only place one could regenerate painlessly. Normally, regenerating from one’s mutilations was more agonizing than receiving them, and much slower. Once Fleming had been overpowered by a gang of drawling Angels in white hoods, who had tied him up and attached a number of hand grenades to him. Reforming after
that
had been the worst suffering Fleming had experienced in his twelve years in Hell.
At a corner table gazing out the great window was a man with no arms, the stumps closed now and slowly lengthening. He drank tea through a straw. Oriental; shaven head and a robe. Had to be a Buddhist monk. At his feet was a wicker basket with four babies in it. They were healing also, all dozing. He must have found them and collected them up, carried them in here on his back for some fleeting peace. Carved or tattooed on them all were the words found on every unbaptized infant or child:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”
Fleming looked back around as Chani set his espresso before him. The aroma made him want to cry. He sipped it without waiting for it to cool; extremes of temperature were now second nature to him. He wanted to drink it quickly so he could have more. “Mmm,” he moaned.
“Hungry?”
“Everything you have for breakfast. I want a taste of it all. Pancakes, eggs, sausages, home fries...”
“Ed,” Chani called over her shoulder. “Barnyard.” She smiled at Fleming, shook a cigarette out of a pack from her apron. She lit it for him while his eyes wandered to a TV up near the ceiling behind the counter. Teasing taste of the upper world. Not some evangelical program to lecture and berate his unsalvageable soul; you could see them on TVs everywhere in Hell, hanging from trees and nests of barbed wire. Here, a sitcom played. Fleming didn’t recognize any of these new actors. It didn’t matter. He ached to be with them. To have sex with that pretty young actress. And most of all, to
warn
them. They were so dangerously oblivious...
“You weren’t here last year,” Chani noted.
He returned his attention to her. “Sorry. Too far away. I stopped in a Chinese restaurant. Had me a Zombie. A Zombie for a zombie.”
“That’s okay.” She lowered her eyes. “So many other places to explore, any way. Why always go to the same rest stop?”
“Well,” he said, feeling guilty, “this is my favorite one.” He meant it.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling sadly, reaching up absently to scratch Bast under the jaw.
“Hey, at least you get to explore TV...see the world. Anybody famous die we might be seeing?”
“That serial killer they executed, the one who used to dress up like a clown? He came in here last year. Ate two Barnyard breakfasts. Be careful for his type, Flem; they go around hunting their own kind, folks like you and me. It’s a field day for them. As if the Angels weren’t bad enough.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a guardian angel.” Fleming held his coat open to show her the automatic pistol he wore in a holster. “Got it off an Angel I managed to get away from. I messed that goon up good...not that it hurt him any, but it incapacitated him so I could run. This thing’s a beauty...never runs out of ammo.”
“Neat.”
The Angels were people who had died in the good graces of the Father. Hell was the chosen Heaven for many Angels, who spent their eternity hunting Demons like Fleming, torturing them when they found them. Raping women. For some Angels, this was more entertaining than the replicas of Disney World and Las Vegas up in Heaven. Of course, they could always go up there and come back here as their moods changed, as they grew bored. No limitations for Angels.
On the specials blackboard behind Chani she had written at the top: “We’re No Angels!” Fleming hoped none ever came storming in here and saw that. Once she had mouthed off to an Angel, a visiting minister, who had chopped Bast off her shoulders with his sword and taken the cat away with him, tossing him into a mile-deep ravine. It had taken months for Bast to return to Chani and pull his sad body up to his perch by her head, there to blend again.
Breakfast came. Chani laughed at the amount of salt Fleming shook across the expanse of fried food. “That stuff’ll kill ya,” she told him.
Sipping his orange juice, he smiled up at her. God...what he wouldn’t give to vault over the counter top and hold her. Make love with her on her side, standing up if they had to. But he would be repelled violently from her floor, and she from his. Magnets of the same pole.