The Love of the Dead Read online

  It’s not real.

  You’re dead, Beth. Remember? You’re dead. He can’t hurt you. There is no pain.

  “There is no pain,” said a new voice. Someone else here.

  “There is no death,” Miles said. Beth saw him and thought for a second she might cry, dead or not.

  But he wasn’t her eight year old son. Not anymore.

  Miles looked the same as ever, an eight year old boy. But something was inside him. Something other. He was beautiful, his voice soft yet strong. It was a confident voice like a young man’s might have been, the young man’s voice he might have grown into, if she hadn’t killed him.

  He shone so brightly she had to close her eye against the light, and still she could see him.

  “There is no other God,” he said, standing a foot in front of Sawyer, “But He who lives in me.”

  Sawyer slashed Miles’ face but his talons passed through, hitting nothing but still air.

  Miles ignored Sawyer’s roar and held up a hand for silence.

  In his other hand Beth saw that he held a skillet. Her skillet, from the kitchen.

  Did he intend to fight him with it? Beth realized she wasn’t the mother here. Peter, crouching and spitting teeth that didn’t really exist, he wasn’t the father anymore. Miles was somehow set above them.

  She watched him, and though she felt so many conflicting emotions at the sight of her son, above all she felt pride.

  As though he could sense her thoughts, he smiled at her. Gone were his wounds, the gaping throat, the ribs, his smashed skull. But the Lara Croft T-shirt remained, and for some reason that made Beth smile, because whatever was within her son, he remained her son, and he always would.

  Miles stood before Sawyer, and the beast flailed at him, raking him with filthy black nails, but Miles was untouched.

  “You think you’re the angel of death. You style yourself the Devil, but my father threw him down.” Beth didn’t think he was talking about Peter anymore. “You are nothing in His eyes. You are less than the lowest beast. Less than the basest demon. Nothing man. Bird man, hollow bones and hollow soul. I am judgement. His hand, in me.”

  “I’m going to fuck your god like I fucked your mother!”

  “No.”

  Simple. Elegant in the face of brutality, and beautiful. So beautiful.

  Peter stumbled toward Beth on weak legs, and she held him up. Stronger now, without pain, without fear.

  Knowing. Seeing the other side made flesh. Seeing the power and the love and the fury that waited for everyone on the other side of life.

  Miles stepped into the circle of Sawyer’s flailing arms and held him tight. Squeezed him hard enough to make Sawyer scream in terror. The light blazed and sweet smells blew away the foulness.

  The light faded, and Miles held a raven in one fist and a heavy iron birdcage he had made from the skillet in the other. He put the birdcage on the throne of bone and flesh and pushed the bird inside. It pecked at his fingers but drew no blood.

  Of course it didn’t, Beth thought. The dead don’t bleed.

  And, as suddenly as it had come into being, hell was gone.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  They were a family again, for the first time since she’d killed the boy sitting on the couch between her and her husband. She knew it couldn’t last. She knew it wasn’t real. But she could feel the solid warmth of her boy nestled against her chest, his pale hair tickling her chin. She could feel Peter’s slender fingers against her neck. The sun shone through the living room window.

  She knew it wasn’t real, because this was her home. It had never been their home. Her family had ended before she even knew the home by the sea existed.

  So warm, though. Dust motes shifted and drifted lazily in the sunlight beaming through the window. She could see the road and the dunes beyond. She could hear the murmur of the sea behind her, through the open window, gently lapping the shore.

  She wanted to close her eyes, drift and fall asleep with her boys in her arms. She felt a tinge of fear at the thought. What if this was all a dream, and upon waking it blew away to dust?

  She wanted to speak, but if this was a spell she never wanted to break it.

  Peter’s fingers touched her neck, and hit something rough. She reached up and took his hand, and in doing so her fingers brushed against her neck. The flesh there was torn and her fingers sank into her own flesh.

  Her breath rushed out, but there was no breath.

  So it was all a dream, and this is what death was like.

  Then she remembered. The Devil in his tower, her boys, fighting him. So brave. So strong.

  Being dead didn’t matter half as much as she thought it would. She put Peter’s hand back on her neck and left it there. She didn’t want to look at them. Not yet. Just let this moment of peace last a little longer. Forever wouldn’t be too long.

  But Miles broke the spell. He had to. She knew that. They couldn’t stay, and she could. She saw it all. She wasn’t meant for the other side.

  “You know we can’t stay, Mum.”

  “We want to,” said Peter, and finally he looked at her. His flesh was pale from drowning. The dead wore their wounds in this limbo where they waited before they crossed over.

  Her son and her husband waited to say goodbye to her.

  “I don’t wish it on you. It’s not hard here. But it’s going to be lonely. I’ve missed you both so long, and now you’re gone, really gone...”

  “I know, Mum. I missed you both, too. But you can’t come.”

  “He won’t let me in. I’m cursed. I cursed myself.”

  Miles shook his head and pulled free of their embrace. He knelt on the floor in front of his father and his mother. He didn’t seem sad. Prepared. Ready to go.

  “Blessed, Mum.”

  “Blessed, cursed...in His eyes it feels like the same thing.”

  Miles shook his head, softly, and took her hand, gently. “He’d let you in. It’s you that won’t let yourself cross. He can’t change the nature of a soul.”

  Beth sighed, out of habit. The memory of flesh still held her and Peter, but Miles was different. How different she would never know.

  “There are no answers, are there? Not for the living. Not for the dead. Who was he? What was he? Why...why? I have so many questions.”

  Miles smiled and took her hand again.

  “There are answers. Answers to every question. On the other side. But the answers can’t come to this side. Do you understand why?”

  She thought about it. Thought hard.

  “No. I don’t understand.”

  “Because people wouldn’t live. They wouldn’t learn. Life couldn’t exist without questions.”

  “Just answering a few wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You have to find the answers for yourself then, or learn to live with questions. That’s why you’re not ready. It’s not because He doesn’t want you.”

  “And what? You leave? I stay? Until when? Until the end of time?”

  “Until your questions are answered.”

  “When? When, Miles?”

  Miles shook his head. Kissed his mother gently on her cheek with so much love that if she’d had a heart it would have broken all over again. But heartbreak was surely a thing for the living, not the dead. But as with so many things she thought she knew, she was wrong in that.

  “We’ll be there. When you come,” said Peter. He rose, too, and leaned over her. He kissed her, and she imagined she could feel soft lips pressed against hers, not with the cold of the dead, but the warmth of life.

  “What am I supposed to do? What does He mean for me?”

  Peter looked at Miles. Knowing passed between them.

  “Wait. Watch. He’s caged, but he’s not dead. He never will be.”

  A flutter of fear passed through her. Her spirit remembering terror. Remembering his claws, pulling at her soul.

  “Forever?”

  “Nothing is forever, Beth,” said Miles, but he wasn
’t talking with his own voice. Just for a second, that older voice, full of strength and compassion, and yes, fury. Then he was Miles again, just her sweet son. “We’ll see you again. It comes around, you know?”

  “No.”

  “Then wait. Watch. Learn.”

  “Alone until then? I don’t know if I can bear to lose you both again.”

  “We have to go, Mum. We feel it pulling, and we can’t resist it. But you won’t be alone. Never alone.”

  She discovered the dead could cry.

  “Until then,” said Miles. Peter kissed her again. He had no words.

  Then they were gone, and her shade was left standing in her living room. Where her family had been there were only sunbeams, hitting the dust in the air, shining through her and leaving no shadow behind.

  The dead pass on, and leave no shadow but memory. She would live. She would remember.

  She would wait.

  But she didn’t have long to wait.

  She heard the door open, and a voice called out, and her heart soared because, once again, she realized she didn’t know everything. Sometimes the answers came. Sometimes more questions. But that was the joy of living, and why she wouldn’t move on. She still wanted to know. One more time, always one more time.

  Part Seven

  Judgement

  Epilogue

  Coleridge smiled. It lifted her soul.

  “You see me?”

  “I see you, Beth. I see you.”

  He limped heavily on a prosthetic foot, his massive frame tilted sideways to take some of his weight on the crutch he now used.

  “Your foot...I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Weren’t much for walking anyway. Lost weight, too.”

  He grinned as he said it.

  “Can I hug you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. You want to try?”

  He did. They could.

  “How is it you can see me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Maybe. No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  “Me either. I’m getting used to it, though. Smoke?”

  “I’m dead, Coleridge, and you don’t smoke.”

  “I do now. I’ve lost a ton of weight. I’ve got one foot. My heart’s so full of fat my blood takes a few hours to reach the foot that’s still there. I figure, fuck it. You know? You can only die so many times. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.”

  She shook her head. “You want to get out of here? I feel like I’ve been stuck in this house forever.”

  “Sure,” he said. He walked through to the backdoor and slid the key into the lock. He walked through her house like he owned it.

  Then she realized. He did.

  “You bought the house?”

  He nodded, looking a little sheepish, but pleased with himself at the same time. “I told you I loved this house. I love it even more now that you’re here.” As he said it, he blushed. She took his hand. She didn’t think she’d be happy being dead, but she was looking at things in a different way now. With new eyes, eyes that saw only sunshine when the sky was gray and the wind was cold.

  She could see whatever she wanted, and she knew she wanted to see Coleridge. He lifted her up. He was there for her. Even now, he was there for her.

  He’d promised, and he hadn’t forgotten.

  She saw he still had his partner’s watch on.

  He saw her looking.

  “You know?” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “You know you didn’t kill him, right?”

  Coleridge shrugged. “I guess so. But I screwed his wife.”

  “Can I give you some advice, Coleridge?”

  He smiled. “I guess,” he said. “You the oracle now?”

  She laughed. “Hardly. But let it go, Coleridge. The things we hold onto, they’re heavy, you know?”

  He sighed.

  “I know.”

  You think you do, she thought.

  “You ever take it off?”

  “No.”

  “Take it off.”

  He looked at her. Shrugged and pulled the watch over his thick hand.

  “Look at the back.”

  He looked. Laughed.

  “Fucking hell.”

  We all think we know, she thought. But it doesn’t matter. It never did, not alive, not dead. All that mattered was how it ended, not the beginning, or the middle, but the end.

  And even at the end, there were always questions left unanswered. But at the end?

  Hand in hand they walked down to the sea. They sat and stared out at the sun and a lone seagull drifting over the sea. Together they watched the sun set into the sea. Coleridge smoked, and Beth could smell it, sweet and heavy on the air before it blew away.

  He’d not be around forever. But then maybe he would. She still had questions, and so would he. He always had questions.

  Together, maybe, they could find the answers.

  Beth smelled the sweet smoke and the sea air. She smelled Coleridge’s scent, unique and comforting.

  As she put her head on his shoulder, she thought about Miles and Peter, and her charge. To watch. To wait.

  With Coleridge beside her? It wasn’t so bad.

  Sometimes you get what you want, she thought with a smile, and sometimes you get what you need. But in the end, you always get what you deserve.

  30th August 2010 – 23rd September 2010