When We Join Jesus in Hell Read online

  The main room is huge and crammed with rusty and dark equipment, most of it jutting above the pale gray partitions somebody has put up in the room. It reminds him of a maze. The wheel whines as he enters, the sides of the cart nearly bumping the walls of the tunnel, and the music grows louder yet more brittle and he knows it’s not natural, not alive, just some recording that has been looped. He expects chanting, the hiss of ugly incantations, the devil himself to be waiting around the next corner. Shadows hug nooks and crannies. The music drowns Bethany’s screech. Her eyes bulge, hands locked on the sides of the cart as she presses her back into her mother and Karen holds her, runs fingers through her hair, whispering, It’s okay, we’re safe now…

  A man works over two bodies. They sit together on a park bench, holding hands, the man young and blonde and staring at the floor with eyes like death, something about his posture that screams of tragedy, and the woman next to him much older, nearly twice his age, his mother maybe, with streaks of gray in her dark hair and lips attempting a smile that can never reach her eyes again. And in those eyes he sees himself and the suffering they share. Agony. Grief. Misfortune. Fist watches the man reposition the corpses, take a brush and give color to their faces so that at this distance they appear alive. He turns their heads so they face each other. Clothing rustles. The Artist breathes heavily and it sounds as if he’s crying. The room is filled with the living dead, with photographs of them in various dress and facial expressions, hanging from clothes line and stapled at jaunty angles along the gray moveable walls.

  Fist says over the blaring stereo, “Who are they?”

  The Artist glances over his shoulder. He has one very dark eye and one that seems covered in cataract. He straightens, studies Fist, then his gaze lingers on Karen and Bethany. He smiles a little, sets the brush on a work table, and kills the radio. He says, “They’re a couple.” He points at the young man. “He died young. She lived on but what they had never faded, it burned so intensely that she could never even get close to anyone again, even as a friend. He was gone but she dreamt of him, wrote him poetry, watched their favorite shows and pretended he was there with her. She never let a broken heart take her. But time did, man.” He glances at them again, wipes dust from the dead man’s shoulder. “I think they’re beautiful.”

  Fist nods. It’s a nice story he thinks. He thinks he has that type of love, that it is never going to lessen and in a way it scares him because he’s not sure how long he can handle this kind of loneliness. He says, “What’s up with your eyes?”

  “One is for viewing the living. The other for appreciating those not.” The Artist wipes his hands down his shirt and says, “What are you going to do with those two?” He points at Fist’s family, appraising them with the cataract eye.

  “They’re here to watch me kill someone.”

  The man raises his chin as if in challenge, as if Fist saying something so direct is a slap in the face.

  Fist watches him approach. The Artist stops near the cart. His hands are empty but he’s much larger than he first appeared. Close to six-five. The Artist says, “What’s their story?”

  He shrugs, releases the cart, says, “It’s complex. And it’s not over yet.”

  “Their pain is your pain.”

  Fist nods. “More than you can imagine.”

  The Artist leans forward, one hand on the edge of the cart, his fingers curling over Bethany’s hand. Fist doesn’t like that. He never understood how a stranger could touch someone so easily.

  The Artist pulls Karen’s robe open and smiles. He cups one breast and squeezes gently, his eyes misty. He says, “It’s funny how they can still feel alive if you imagine hard enough.” His fingers dig into her a little as he looks back at the couple on the park bench, and Fist has his hands full too, holding the pistol and rage, shocked for a second because he thinks, Who in the hell would touch someone else’s wife like that? Who would disrespect the dead? And his jaw is a firm line, his hand a guided missile, only the gun is gone, as if somehow part of him knows that he can’t fire a shot yet, not until Jesus is pleading, and the fillet knife is tight in his grip and he slashes quickly. A thick red line sprouts from the Artist’s wrist, sprays Karen’s exposed chest in both heavy gouts and mist, and Fist says, “Do you think that’s beautiful, too? Are you happy to be part of their story?”

  The man holds his wounded arm to his stomach. His eyes fill with tears. His lips stammer but pain makes him mute. Fist lunges forward and slashes the back of his hand, his cheek, clips his neck, and blood showers them. The Artist grows pale. He manages to whimper. His eyes say he envies love, true love, that he’s witnessed it, that’s all he’s ever done, and he doesn’t know why and now he never will. Fist thinks the man should have kept his hands to himself, and that he will like watching him die, but the enjoyment never comes. The artist curls up on the floor and bleeds out. He shivers, holding himself, and Fist kneels next to him. He watches the light fade from his eyes and hopes it will feel more rewarding when it’s Jesus at his feet embracing the final darkness.

  Karen says, The clock is ticking.

  Fist says, “It’s winding down now, babe. Just hold on.”

  His daughter laughs. She says, Things are moving in the shadows behind your eyes, Daddy.

  Fist shivers. He wipes a cold hand across his forehead, part of him afraid that he’s already dead, has been for a long time.

  No, he thinks. The dead are helpless. I am not helpless.

  He glances at the blood on his hands. He whispers, “I’m not done.”

  He strokes Karen’s hair, his fingers twisted and tight, and he hurts from the inside out. Pain flares in his shoulder as he grabs hold of the cart and leaves The Artist behind, those on the park bench watching them until Fist is out in the hall where darkness pools on the floor and inches toward him. Ahead, he sees something small and light flicker on the concrete. It bursts forward in a flash of motion and he realizes its Bianca. He follows her, his wife and daughter crying, gripping the cart with pale hands, fighting the darkness and unknown with sad yet hopeful smiles.

  He thinks they’re proud of him, but he doesn’t know for what. This is not the life he’d imagined for any of them. He just wants them at peace. It was something his mother never had. Something he didn’t believe many people had. The noisy wheel screams. Bethany hums along. Bianca races around the corner and something hitches in Fist’s chest because he’s afraid somehow he’s failed her too.

  Blood hardens beneath his nails.

  He shakes his head, dizzy and hit by sudden weakness.

  But he pushes on.

  He thinks, The darkness has no power over us.

  Six

  The guns weigh down his pants, and the movement has slackened the band, so he pulls them out and sets all but one onto Karen’s lap. He holds the knife. He thinks that Jesus has probably used this knife many times, as he sat and schemed with vacant eyes over a modest but charred table while Jesus’ aunt preached the love of God to him. He hears her voice in the walls…He used to be a good kid…and Fist thinks, His time is almost up. There will be no second chance for him. And the weight of truth nearly crushes him again, he can feel himself and the agony resting on his shoulders and the sluggish blood working through his veins, and memories flash behind his eyes, good and not so good, and he just can’t hold onto any of them, they slip through his fingers. He feels like a weak man, a failure, because his job as a husband and a father has never been demanding. He built walls around his heart, somehow he knows, around theirs too, expectations no one could ever meet, dreams that hovered just beyond reach.

  Ahead something is staked to one of the cheap gray divider walls. He tells Bethany, “Close your eyes, honey.” She shakes her head. He says, “Do it. Just for a little bit.”

  I can’t, she whispers. I’m scared.

  They move closer. Bianca speeds back toward him, climbs his pant leg, up his torso and rests on his shoulder, her sides expanding and contracting, dark eyes doing their b
est to pierce the gloom and as silly as it is he wants to ask her what she’s seen ahead, as if she has a hand in this, some type of guardian angel.

  A bad smell lingers. Rotten meat, he thinks.

  The gecko’s cool body soothes the gunshot wound but a dull throb makes his left eye twitch.

  The wheel screams as he pushes the cart.

  The clock ticks in his head.

  Someone glances around the corner, just a blur of dirty face, long hair, large white teeth.

  Bethany turns her head and studies him with wide eyes, her mouth partially open and frozen in place.

  Fist says, “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  Karen says, You can’t protect us from everything…

  And he fears she’s left off: You can’t even protect yourself…

  He squeezes the knife as if it’s a lifeline even though he knows its work is something completely different. It feels natural in his fist, as if an extension of his soul, a portent, a solid piece of his purpose. Fist keeps an eye on the corner ahead, not sure what types of monsters wait for them, but determined to fight them because to back away now would destroy him.

  Somebody clicks their tongue and the music starts playing again.

  He wonders what kind of place this is.

  No one has the answers. He thinks life is like that, so many people just doing what makes them feel good, not understanding half their choices, the repercussions of their lusts. He can’t wait to see Jesus. Fist doesn’t feel like the vengeful hand of God, he doesn’t think he’s righteous or good, he only wants the grief to lessen, to know that men who destroy lives are held accountable and not free to walk the streets, break down doors, force themselves into the lives of those minding their own business and doing their best just to live however they know how.

  He doesn’t understand why no one ever does anything about it. He had daydreams about being a super hero when he was a kid. To see wrongs righted. To lend a hand in the balance. But even as strong and brave as he felt, he can’t remember ever doing anything noteworthy or noble.

  Karen says, They’re scared, Fist. It’s natural.

  “I know,” he says. “I don’t blame them.”

  Bethany whispers, I hurt, Daddy. My secret spot hurts.

  Fist clenches his eyes shut. He can barely breathe.

  Karen pulls their daughter close and the cart rocks in Fist’s hands. The clock keeps time with his heart. They round the corner and a bright light glows at the center of a long corridor. Fist shields his eyes. Bianca stirs on his shoulder and he wonders if she can see a trace of luminance, if her sight isn’t as completely gone as he’d first expected. He hopes so. He wants her to see.

  Something rumbles far off. It sounds like thunder but he doesn’t recall any warning of rain. Fist wonders where God is in all of this. Or if the only God anyone has ever known is Chaos, a legion of dark angels, a monumental mountain of failed lives, wasted energy and selfish prayers. He knows at his core that the life he’s designed, every choice he’s made, any reaction that first formed in his mind, weighs heavily upon him alone. There is no one else to blame. No scapegoat god or bad relationship to point the finger at. It was always me, he thinks. The intensity of it all nearly crushes him. His wife pulls his daughter’s hair into a pony tail and kisses the top of her head but Fist can barely see them through the brightness and tears.

  He clenches the knife tighter and strides forward.

  Halfway down the hall he hears water dripping. A woman screams. A man cackles and a dog whines. As he moves he thinks the light should grow brighter but it dims. Slowly, pale shapes rise from beyond the light, dark things that look like hunched gargoyles. Sweat breaks out on his forehead and runs down his face. The gargoyles rise. Their red eyes glare. Fist steps in front of the cart between them and his family. His flesh feels scaly and his scalp prickles. But he knows somewhere beyond the guardians lies a feast, and in that quiet room where the lamb lays, he will have his fill.

  He expects resistance. Searing pain as the shadows blur and their claws dig into him, but he wants them to, thinks, I deserve to suffer a lot more than I have…

  A sudden coldness radiates from his wife. She whispers, Don’t talk like that.

  The gargoyles inch forward, their eyes like beacons in the night, and Fist hears some far-off horn blow as a ship breaks waves upon a choppy sea, and he knows he’s nearing the shore, that somehow, in this horrible place he never even thought about, Fate has carved the remaining moments of his life in stone.

  He says to Karen, “Please. Be quiet.”

  Don’t do this to yourself.

  A hand brushes his shoulder. There is love, more than he ever thought existed, in her touch. He sobs, wondering why they couldn’t have loved each other so purely just days ago.

  The creatures move closer and part from the murk and he can see by their dirty and torn clothes that they are men, but when he looks in their eyes he still sees something else. Something base and primal, filled with need and hunger. He smiles at them. They clench their fists tighter. One of them squeezes a lead pipe. The other holds a two-by-four. The one on the left is a few feet closer than the one on the right. Everyone is holding their breath.

  Bethany says, Protect us, Daddy…

  Bianca stirs on Fist’s shoulder and he can’t risk hurting her. He steps back. The men close the distance, the darkness like crescent wings whipping from their backs paints the ceiling and hall behind them black.

  The clock ticks…

  Fist clutches a pistol, his father’s he believes, before he even realizes it. He points it at the closest one and pulls the trigger and the man’s head snaps back and he crumples, sweat stinging Fist’s eyes and red staining the wall and everybody’s pulses crackling like kindling tossed on a dying fire. The remaining man throws his two-by-four on the floor in surrender. Fist smiles a little wider and shows him the end of the muzzle, a welcome to the final and greatest darkness, and says, “It’s too late for that,” though he can’t hear his words over the ringing in his ears or the cries breaking free of the cart behind him.

  He squeezes the trigger.

  Fire lights his way.

  He’s so hungry he almost forgets his family.

  Fist says, “I’m sorry,” as he tucks the pistol in his pants and grabs the cart.

  Karen squeezes his hand. No matter how this ends you’ve done your best, Fist.

  Bianca shivers on his shoulder. He wishes he could knit her a little jacket. He wishes he could believe his wife really means that but knows he’s nothing, this life he’s lived is nothing, a pile of dog shit that didn’t bring one bit of good into the world in thirty-odd years.

  Bethany’s eyes glow in the gloom as they move down the hallway. She whispers, What about me?

  Fist cries. When he stops, he screams, “You were our whole world.”

  His voice echoes throughout the building, off walls he can’t see, and it lingers in nooks and crannies, a faint broken cry, You were our whole world…

  Seven

  And nearing the end of the corridor, he thinks that’s what matters. That Bethany was their whole world and now all he has left is a pet that no one else gives a shit about. But he does. And he cares about the weight of the pistol in his hand, the blowing wind of regret in his mind, and the quiet appreciation for everything he’s had in his life up to this point, and he hasn’t felt this grateful since he was a small child.

  The gray walls end and spill Fist and his family out onto the main floor. Half of it really. The maze crouches behind him and the end of the building looms ahead. The walls are crumbling and water trickles to the floor.

  Jesus isn’t in sight, but he didn’t expect him to be.

  His neck itches.

  Fist scans old machinery as bats flicker in and out of sight.

  He thinks the little gang banger is close by, maybe with a gun too, that he has it trained on Fist and if so there’s not much he can do about it. He believes that coming here has brought him full
circle, closer to the beginning and the love he’d once had for his family before unmet expectations and failure after failure weighed them down. He knows how much of it was his fault. How ungrateful he’d been, because he can remember all the good things that Karen had done—not out of obligation but because she wanted to. And he can feel her so close, better than he deserves down in this dungeon, and he looks up at the glass ceiling and the moon stamped there like the finger of God has drawn it just for him, to let Fist know he is one with the night, a child of darkness as much as he is of light. It rips him apart, the conflicting parts of his nature: the good that believes we dream for a reason, to reach beyond ourselves, to build something wonderful and lasting; and yet the bad manifests in a dark faith that after these few final moments he will have nothing left to live for, nothing to help him struggle forward but memories.

  He screams, “Say my name! Say it!”

  Fist, Karen whispers.

  Daddy, Bethany chokes out.

  He turns to them, hands full of steel, his eyes brimming with ghosts.

  Someone groans in the darkness. He can’t tell where it’s coming from.

  Bianca licks her eyes, shifts on his shoulder, her muzzle close to his neck.

  Fist grips the pistol and knife, but he wants to set them down and use his hands to take Jesus’ life. He tucks the pistol in his pants and pulls out his phone. He dials the number he dialed from the house he torched. A moment later another phone rings near the far left corner and Jesus lets out a sudden, scared breath.

  Fist drops his phone, grabs the pistol and fires six rounds into the darkness, the gunshots so loud he can barely see straight, can’t even feel his pulse for a moment, part of him hoping that one of the bullets found its mark.

  He kisses his wife and daughter and shifts position, sliding into the shadows of the closest machine, some type of bottler or another, its hulking mass like a long dead king. He waits, his breath misting from his lips. It’s colder than it should be. His shoulder weeps. The smell bothers him. He hopes it’s not infected but there’s nothing he can do about it right now. Looking around the machine, he sees something glimmer in the corner and jerks his head back right before an explosion rips through the building, a staccato drum beat that ping, ping, pings, off the rusty contraption shielding him. He sucks in a cold breath, wipes a hand down his pants. Bianca watches him. Her lips move and he can almost hear her talking. He can almost see the future in her blind eyes. Two black and sparkling crystal balls appraising him. He strokes her head as Jesus moves, the quick shuffle of feet as he repositions himself. Fist hopes he’s working his way closer, then thinks about the way the floor is probably laid out.