He hated what he saw. Maybe it was because he knew the evil that lived in his heart, and that made everything else so much worse. Or maybe he just had his doubts that someone like him would ever be able to fit in to normal society.
He felt like a monster, and the monsters would have no trouble accepting him. The regular folks were a different story. He could never see himself being a part of the church-going crowd. They were too vanilla, and he was as far from vanilla as you could get.
"Stop denying what you are." The Reaper spoke from its place on Darrell Gene"s arm. "Stop being ashamed."
"You"re one of us," the winged skull tattoo whispered.
"You can"t change a leopard"s spots---or a snake"s scales," the serpent hissed.
Darrell Gene shook his head violently. To listen to them would be to accept that all hope for him was gone. Of course, deep down, that"s what he believed anyway.
Humanity wasn"t where he belonged. His place was with the monsters.
"We won"t try to change you," the Reaper insisted. "Just be yourself."
"How can I ever really be myself?" Darrell Gene asked.
This time it was the winged skull"s turn to speak. "Sometimes, you have to look beneath the surface, dig deep underneath all that humanity. That"s where you"ll find the real you."
Darrell Gene nodded.
"We"re not talking symbolically," the Reaper explained. "There"s a very real, very angry monster lurking just beneath your skin. Take off that disguise you"ve been wearing all these years and see for yourself. Stop trying to deny what you are."
"Take out your knife," the serpent hissed.
Darrell Gene chose his master in that moment and opened the blade of his pocket knife. It was the blade he"d used to carve the wingless angel. It was the same knife he was going to use to carve out his own life.
"There"s more beneath the surface than anybody knows," he muttered to himself.
Before he could rethink his decision, Darrell Gene made an incision at the wrist and cut all the way around. Then pulling at his hand as if to take off a glove, he removed the skin. He wasn"t at all surprised to see a thick, slimy layer of black scales underneath. The tattoos were right.
He was a monster and this was all the proof he needed.
Now all he had to do was keep acting like one...
Darrell Gene suspected that the wingless angel would have been proud of him.
Chapter 20.
Careful not to make any more sudden movements, I surveyed my situation. It wasn"t good. Lush, tropical plants with leaves the size of axe blades came up to my waist and bordered me on both sides while tulips, daisies, and roses with stiletto-sized thorns occupied the s.p.a.ce next to my feet and lower legs. I couldn"t help noticing that the thorns were coated with a thick, viscous substance that I had to a.s.sume was poison. There were also hanging vines to contend with which formed a sort of living net that shrouded the hallway. It was roughly a hundred or so feet to the next door.
Running through this tangle of plants would be like running through strand after strand of barbed wire. Each leaf was a razor, each vine was a garrote, and each stalk was an unconcealed bear trap.
I didn"t know what to do. I was frozen into place. I couldn"t have been any more isolated if I had been trapped in amber or encased in ice.
"Think Jamie, think." Everything in this maze was a metaphor of sorts. Everything had a double-meaning. Asterion talked in riddles like he was some sort of caveman version of Yoda, and it was up to me to figure out what he meant.
"Sometimes the most beautiful things are the things that will harm us the most." Obviously Asterion was referring to Karen, but was there something else behind the statement, some other hidden truth? How could I get out of this hallway alive without spilling my guts onto the floor?
"Think!" I grew more and more frustrated.
I tried to remember the hours and days leading up to my incarceration in this place and the things I had done. The mistakes I had made then would be reflection enough of the kind of man I was. Maybe that was what Asterion wanted me to do.
...I remembered the way my heart raced when I first saw Karen in that restaurant.
...I remembered the way some of the old feelings had clawed their way up out of graveyard dirt like a bunch of zombies.
...I remembered asking the age old question "What if?"
..Sometimes the most beautiful things are the things that will harm us the most.
The foliage in this room was a direct representation of that fact.
"How do you escape an inescapable situation?" I asked myself. Prayer? A miracle from G.o.d?
I had prayed sporadically while down here in this labyrinth, trying to convince myself that I wanted to turn back to G.o.d. But was anything I had said or done sincere? Or was I just looking for a way out? People frequently turn to G.o.d in tough times. Look at how crowded the churches were right after 9/11. Did that mean that all of them had a true desire to dedicate themselves to the calling of G.o.d? No, it just meant they were scared. Like I was now.
Midnight barked as if trying to tell me something. I wasn"t listening.
He barked again, and this time I gave him my full attention. The dog stared at me quizzically. The look seemed to ask the question, "Don"t you remember what you were doing when I showed up on the scene?"
And I did remember.
I was praying. Frantically. Asterion was on the other side of the door, ramming the walls with enough force to knock jars off the wall, and I asked G.o.d for help.
G.o.d answered my prayer, and He did it in the form of this dog.
"You"re a reply from G.o.d." I felt a wave of understanding. You"re proof that He"s here with me in this place, aren"t you?"
Midnight barked again and panted.
"Do you know how to get past this?"
Midnight shook his head from side to side as if trying to dislodge a thought from his brain.
"Maybe I should pray again? It worked last time."
The flowers cut me in so many places as I knelt down to pray. I welcomed the pain because it reminded me of what I"d done, of my intended sin. It reminded me of the l.u.s.t in my heart that was there even now. It reminded me of the kind of dangers that lurked around every corner, sometimes disguised as something as innocuous as a flower.
As I closed my eyes and asked for help, I experienced a very different kind of hurt. This time the pain didn"t come in the form of a heartache or in a pill of guilt. I knew this pain would be much different than the other I had experienced. I needed to see cause and effect. I needed to see very real consequences for the things I had done.
I pulled the worn note out of my pocket, searching for instructions on how to get through this test. The message had changed again.
"The man who wants proof that he"s still alive needs only to suffer."
Even without thinking too deeply on this mystery, I knew what the clue meant. Thus far I hadn"t truly seen any consequences for the things I had done. I had hurt others but not been hurt in return. This place was created to remedy that. The flowers in this hallway were beautiful, stunning, and filled with color. They were pleasing to the eye, yet deadly. It was all a deception, just like my infatuation with Karen. The moment I laid eyes on her again, I was taken aback by how gorgeous she still was after all these years. Yet, I didn"t take the time to realize that enjoying her beauty would be dangerous to me in so many ways. I realized it now.
I wasn"t going to make it out of this place without suffering. The note all but told me that. This was a cla.s.sroom where Karma was the teacher. I was about to get what was coming to me, and I wasn"t looking forward to it in the slightest.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself for what I was about to do. If I was wrong, it would cost me my life. Of course, Asterion had already told me that I was going to die in here anyway. At least this way, I might find absolution through death.
I summoned a thought of Amy and Peter, and I held onto it in much the same way that a drowning man clings to a life preserver. I thought about all of the good memories we had made, all of the love we had shared; and I realized that I had single-handedly wagered everything we had on a selfish carnal curiosity. I had rolled the dice and lost it all, and now other people were paying for my mistake.
I wondered what Peter must be thinking, if he missed me at all. The thought of what I might have done to my son was enough to make me want to hurt. I deserved it.
I screamed as I ran through the foliage. Razor-leaves sliced me in a thousand different places, cutting my face, my arms, my legs, my feet. There wasn"t an inch of me that wasn"t bleeding or crying out in agony.
The pain made me feel alive. I had been numb for a very long time.
Miraculously I made it to the end of the hallway and collapsed in a b.l.o.o.d.y heap. I waited for something to happen, for Asterion to tell me that I"d failed this test, but the world around me shimmered in and out of focus like the view in a distorted mirror.
My life leaked out of me in a hundred different places, puddling on the floor beneath me. The deja vu was so strong. I flashed back to the way I"d felt after getting shot in the head at close range by that man with the Angel Face. I remembered seeing this maze reflected in the pool of blood, and now as I glanced into this new puddle of scarlet, I was able to see the world I"d left behind.
I caught a glimpse of Amy sitting on her mother"s couch, sobbing uncontrollably. Judith had her arms around her daughter, trying to comfort her. Peter stood there, watching them both, confused, not understanding why his mother was crying so much, wondering where I was.
"Da Da."
His call for me prompted a fresh bout of tears from Amy. Frightened and realizing that something was very wrong, my son began to cry with his mother and grandmother. A tear slipped from my eye too, but I was too hurt to wipe it away. Given all I had done to cause this pain, I didn"t deserve any reprieve. I deserved to hurt like they were hurting.
The sight of their lives falling apart was the last thing I remembered before an unbelievably heavy weight pulled my eyelids closed, blacking out the world.
Chapter 21.
Peter had spent the past hour crying and saying "Da Da" over and over again. It was obvious that he missed Jamie. Amy did too, for that matter. She hadn"t heard from Jamie since she told him not to come home. That was two days ago.
She wanted to believe that Jamie hadn"t betrayed her, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. It was also just a little bit too convenient. Someone was out to get her husband. She had no doubt about that. She just didn"t know why.
Her mother, thankfully, had been there throughout this whole mess to put things in perspective. Judith touched Amy lightly to remind her that she was there.
"Jamie"s a good man," Judith reminded her. "I believe that. And until I see a picture of the two of them beneath the sheets, I"m going to a.s.sume he"s innocent."
Amy sighed. It felt good hearing someone else"s opinion, especially when it was in defense of her husband. It made it a little easier for her to believe him.
Still, there were the pictures and the note. But even those were starting to lose their effectiveness. At first, they had stolen the breath from Amy"s lungs and knocked her feet out from underneath her. She"d had some time to think since then and seen the incongruities for what they really were.
Everything just didn"t add up here. If anything, the evidence of Jamie"s supposed infidelity was too persuasive without actually showing him in a compromised position. If Jamie truly was cheating and someone was following his every action with a telephoto lens, it only stood to reason that a picture of him in the act of adultery would surface at some point or another. And none had.
Amy wanted to get to the bottom of this, one way or another, and see what was true and what was not. If Jamie was womanizing behind her back, she wanted to know that. If he wasn"t, she desperately needed to know that too. The fate of her family depended on the answer to that question.
"Do you have anything going on tonight? I want to do a little surveillance."
Judith gave her a wry smile. "I"m sure I can squeeze in a little extra time to learn more about our friendly neighborhood peeping tom if that"s what you mean."
"Great! "I"ll ask one of the girls from church to watch Peter for a little while. I"ll also pick up a camera and some dark clothes."
"This sounds like fun." Judith smiled. "I"ll bring the tasers."
"Fun might not be the word I would use to describe this. But I can live with fun as long as everything we learn backs up Jamie"s story."
"I"ll be at your house at seven-thirty," Judith said. "And don"t worry. We"ll sort all this out."
"I love you, Mom." Amy hugged Judith tightly.
"I love you, Amy." Judith kissed Amy on top of the head. "Now go and get ready. We"ve got some work to do tonight."
Chapter 22.
Crows squawked a shrill song, only to be quickly silenced by the waving of a clawed hand. The birds tumbled out of the sky, spiraling to earth like falling leaves in Autumn. The Piper surveyed the house on Pinecrest Avenue and saw that it was good. Not only had his destructive music changed the heart of a man, it had completely transformed him.
The minions he"d sent out into town to do his bidding had now returned and chattered nervously amongst themselves in the chamber room behind him.
"You"ve done well." He turned away from his scenic view of Fairpointe. "You"ve turned this man"s heart to stone, and you"ve destroyed a family in the process. What sweeter music can be made than that of a broken heart? Even now I can hear them hurting, hear them crying, hear them feeling sorry for themselves."
The minions gave themselves applause with grimy, soot-covered hands. The Piper motioned for them to be quiet.
"We"re not done with him yet. There have been challenges where he"s concerned. Prayers have been offered up."
The minions recoiled at the word.
"You must be vigilant. Keep singing to him. Keep filling his ears with the sounds of your voices. This man needs to hear a chorus, and you, my fine children, are the choir."
With another wave of his hand, the minions were gone, speeding through the air again to that old familiar street. The Piper stood there for a moment, looking out into the world. Silent.
He waited until he was sure they had gone back to their work before putting his pipes to his lips. He loved his work, certainly, but there were times, even for him, where the music wasn"t enough. This was one of those times.
The song he played was a familiar one. It was a tune composed of suicidal thoughts, curses, and a complete separation from G.o.d. It was the first song he learned after being hurled out of Heaven like a falling star.
As he played, tears streamed down both cheeks. He wanted so very badly to raise his eyes to Heaven and catch one more glimpse of the glory, but he was ashamed.
Instead, he cradled the pipes tightly and played his mournful dirge. It was a funeral song for his soul, and never had it seemed more fitting than now.