Heven & Hell Anthology (Heven and Hell) Read online

  I wished my brother were here.

  * * *

  That night I dreamed of pain. Of wandering down a country back road that seemed to cut right through a wooded mountain. It was so dark that I could barely see three feet in front of me and it was eerily silent.

  Then, from behind, a tree branch snapped.

  I turned, looking over my shoulder, but nothing was there. I kept walking, looking for something, trying to find my way home. It was cold out and all I was wearing was a T-shirt. I tried to ignore the way my skin prickled with cold and I jammed my icy fingers into the front pockets of my jeans.

  Suddenly, headlights flashed behind me, projecting a shadow of me across the ground. It was long and distorted, far wider than I could ever be. I studied it, imagining that I really did have those wide shoulders and head, that I looked that menacing and intimidating. No one would mess with me then.

  I wasn’t concerned about the car closing in on me from behind, and I didn’t turn around until it stopped right behind me. The driver got out, but was no more than a dark figure, standing at the hood of the car, the headlight’s glare making the person impossible to see.

  “I saw your car a few miles back. Did you run out of gas?” His voice was deep and low and it sent shivers down my spine.

  I felt myself nodding.

  “Nearest gas station is ten miles. Hop in and I will give you a lift.”

  Suddenly, fear slammed into me. I couldn’t accept a ride from a stranger, even if it meant walking ten miles to civilization. My heart started slamming against my ribs and sweat prickled my skin.

  “No, thank you,” I told the driver.

  I saw him shrug and then climb back in the car. I heaved a relieved sigh and began walking again. I waited for the driver to go on by, but he didn’t. Instead, the engine revved and when I looked over my shoulder, the car was barreling toward me at an impossible speed. With a great shout, I began to run and dove off the road and into the trees.

  The trees were close together here; there was no way that car could fit between. I watched in horror as the car backed up and then sped forward, slamming into one of the trees. There was a great cracking sound as the tree split and began falling toward the ground. Toward me.

  I ran. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, ignoring the pull and tugs of the branches and the burning of my lungs. Then I stumbled.

  And fell.

  I fell forever, it seemed. My scream echoed around me, making it sound like I had screamed a hundred times.

  Suddenly, I hit the ground and I heard the crunching of my bones. Pain exploded through my limbs and I lay there, sweating and shaking. A figure floated into my vision. Once again it was so dark I couldn’t see anything but the outline of the body.

  I tried to get away, to get up and run. But my broken body wouldn’t move.

  The person standing over me began to laugh. A high-pitched laugh that never ended and invaded my brain until it was all I heard. Every hair on my body stood on end.

  Abruptly, the laughing stopped. The silence was so complete it was almost as loud as the laughing had been. Then the figure—the person—bent closer. I flinched, waiting for them to do something vile to me and wanting it to just be over.

  But he didn’t touch me.

  He whispered.

  Welcome to Hell.

  * * *

  My entire body ached when I woke up. I was disoriented and confused. I had fallen asleep in my clothes, which were now wrinkled and sweaty, and the iPod had gotten stuck and was skipping over and over again, a loud screeching sound that filled my ears. I ripped it away and threw it aside. It landed just feet in front of me with a soft thud. That’s when I realized I wasn’t in bed.

  I was outside. In the backyard, lying in the grass.

  How did I get out here? The last thing I remembered was going to bed. And the dream… I remembered the dream. Welcome to Hell.

  Forcing myself to stand up, I snuck back into the house and down the hall to the bathroom, where I stripped off my clothes and took a shower, turning the water as hot as I could stand, hoping to relieve my achy muscles. When I was done and dressed in loose basketball shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I flopped back onto my bed. I tried to remember going outside, how long I had been out there, but my mind was blank.

  Mom came in and fussed over me, taking my temperature (normal) and bringing me a bottle of Gatorade, which I downed in one gulp. She gave me some pills that I dutifully swallowed, then she left me in peace. For all of five minutes. After half a day of her hovering, I began to pretend that I was feeling better, sitting up in bed and “reading” a comic. I asked for soup that I knew we didn’t have and some popsicles. When her car pulled out of the driveway, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Dad was here and I could hear the TV on in the family room and some game playing. He would leave me alone.

  My body didn’t hurt as much as it had when I woke up, but my joints and back still ached. I felt strange… and even though I was weak from hunger and illness, somehow I still felt stronger.

  The words from my dream echoed through my head, taunting me until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Welcome to Hell.

  I swung my legs over my bed and quietly slipped out into the hall, pausing at a closed door. I listened to make sure Dad was still in the family room and I was startled when I seemed to pick up on the slightest shift of his body against his leather recliner. Knowing that he was occupied, I took the doorknob in my hand and turned, pushing the door open soundlessly and slipping inside.

  Into Sam’s room.

  What used to be Sam’s room. It had been untouched since the day he left. My parents merely closed the door and pretended this room no longer existed. Dust coated the surfaces and a few drawers were closed crookedly in his dresser. There were a couple socks lying on the floor and his hamper was overflowing with dirty jeans. Comics were stacked on the nightstand and his bed wasn’t made. The air was stale in here, but I took a deep breath and could catch just a hint of the way he used to smell.

  Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked them back. Men didn’t cry.

  I went across the room and sank down on the foot of his bed. Everything changed that day. The day he shifted into a hellhound. A creature that wasn’t supposed to exist. I still remember lying in bed at night and hearing Mom cry. She hardly ever slept and she used to creep into my room at night to check on me. I eventually figured out that it was because she was afraid Sam would attack me in my sleep.

  Hellhounds were dangerous, they said. Hellhounds were sins of nature, freaks. A hellhound would kill you in your sleep and then drag your soul to Hell for all eternity.

  But even after Sam changed, to me, he was still only Sam. He was my brother.

  I asked him once what it felt like to change, to have something bad inside his body. He said that the first time felt like he was being torn apart and he hurt for days, but after that, his body seemed to know what to do and it didn’t hurt so much. I remembered something else, too.

  The first time he shifted, he went out in the yard.

  My body ached. I hurt. I woke up in the yard…

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Pushing away the terrifying thought that wouldn’t leave me alone.

  But it wouldn’t go away. It sank into my aching body like the rain does the grass.

  I was turning into a hellhound.

  Welcome to Hell.

  * * *

  The next day, I woke up in my own bed, relieved that I had slept soundly there all night. Yet, I was exhausted, feeling as though I had barely gotten any sleep at all. But I wasn’t sick anymore and my body didn’t hurt. And I was hungry. My appetite was back full force and then some. I grabbed a hoodie, pulled it over my head and headed to the kitchen. I ate so much that Mom could hardly keep up with my growling stomach.

  When I finished my countless plates of pancakes and bacon, my body felt heavy and I went into the family room to watch a little TV. Dad was out back mowing the grass, and
when I looked over at his recliner, I smiled.

  Then I sat down. I put up my feet and turned on the TV to channel surf.

  It was a comfortable chair. But my comfort was momentarily forgotten when a news report flashed onto the television screen. The image of a dark-haired woman in a white blouse, holding a microphone and standing outside across the street from a mini mart, made my stomach do a little flip. My first reaction was to change the channel, but I couldn’t. I was somehow mesmerized and couldn’t look away.

  “Sometime in the early morning hours, a series of disturbing events rocked this normally quiet Maine town when the local mini mart, seen behind me here,” she spoke and gestured behind her to the place that was surrounded by crime scene tape and broken glass, “was vandalized and robbed. The single witness, the cashier, was knocked unconscious and found in a crumpled heap in the bathroom by the police after a would-be customer called 9-1-1. The officers who arrived first at the scene told us what they found.”

  I don’t know why my palms were suddenly sweaty and my heart was beating fast. This wasn’t the first time a crime was committed and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Still, I watched, swallowing past the lump in my throat, as two men wearing uniforms came onto the screen.

  “As soon as we pulled into the lot we could see how badly the place was vandalized. All the large front windows were shattered, destroyed merchandise littered the parking lot as well as trash from the busted trash cans. Once we ascertained the store was empty, we went inside and noted that the entire mart had been destroyed. All the drink cases were busted and thousands of dollars in inventory was ruined. The cash register was torn from the counter and cracked in half. All the money was gone and there wasn’t anything left that was salvageable. When we searched the premises, we found the cashier unconscious in the bathroom with a large wound on the back of his head, and a set of deep scratches on his leg, and it was clear he had a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm.”

  A tingling in my own arm had me looking down at a set of scratches on my forearm. I couldn’t remember where they came from. They hadn’t been there when I went to bed last night… I slid the sleeve of my hoodie down to cover the marks.

  The screen flashed back to the news reporter, who was frowning as she stared into the camera. “The cashier, a Mr. Manning Rogers, was taken to the hospital where he regained consciousness long enough to tell police that he only saw one man—who he described as a huge man in a mask. The victim then slipped into a coma.” The reporter paused. “Doctors are hopeful for his recovery.”

  I noticed that she didn’t say optimistic. They must not expect the guy to wake up. My stomach twisted. Who could do something like that to another person? It was sick.

  “If that wasn’t enough tragedy for one evening,” the reporter continued, “there was also a fatal car crash only three miles away from the mini mart where two vehicles crashed head on and then flipped onto opposite sides of the road, where they both caught on fire and burned until the fire department arrived to put out the blazes. The occupants of both cars were pronounced dead at the scene. Names are being withheld until families are notified and the mystery around the crash can be solved.”

  What was so mysterious about a car crash?

  “The eye witness to the crash told channel eleven that the cars wouldn’t have crashed had there not been some sort of animal that burst from the bushes and rushed out into the center of the street, causing the northbound car to swerve, lose control and collide into the southbound car. The animal then rushed into the woods and no one has seen it since, but it was described as being”—she paused to look at a note card that was suddenly in her hands—“large, hulking and angry.”

  I switched the channel to some movie I had seen a million times and stared at the screen without really seeing it. I couldn’t escape the bad feeling that was rising inside me. A feeling that I was having a hard time ignoring. I replayed last night in my head. I was sick. I was tired. I went to bed early. I woke up this morning in my clothes and still in my bed. I slept there all night.

  Hadn’t I?

  What about the scratches on my arm? Was it possible that I had gotten up in the middle of the night and went out without remembering?

  A sound from the kitchen brought me out of my thoughts and back to reality. What was I thinking? I scoffed. Even if I hadn’t slept in my bed all night, there was NO way that I had been the one to destroy that mini mart. That much destruction couldn’t be caused by a single person. The logic made me feel better.

  And as for the car accident, that wasn’t caused by a person, but an animal and I certainly wasn’t that, either. I glanced down at my scratched arm, still completely covered by my sleeve and I put it all out of my head. A little while later, Dad came into the room and I swear his eyes about bugged out of his head. “Are you sitting in my chair?” he asked incredulously.

  “Didn’t see your name on it,” I said lazily.

  “What did you say to me?” he said, his voice low as he moved across the room to stand in front of me.

  “I said, I didn’t see your name on this chair.” I clicked to another channel, anger building in my chest.

  “Get your ass out of my chair, boy!” he bellowed. Vaguely, I wondered if the vein in his temple was going to pop.

  When I didn’t get up, he reached down and grabbed my arm, yanking me out of the chair. I stumbled, then righted myself. Rage burned through me. I snapped my eyes to my father’s. “Keep your hands off of me.”

  His eyes flared and I took a menacing step toward him, our eyes colliding.

  Dad actually took a step back. “What’s gotten into you?” he said, quietly.

  Just like that, my anger evaporated and I was standing there, wondering what I had just done. “I’m sorry, sir.” I dropped my eyes to the floor.

  “Everything okay in here?” Mom said, sticking her head in the room.

  I glanced over at her. Dad waved her off. “Everything’s fine.”

  She disappeared without another glance.

  Dad took a step toward me. It took everything I had to not back up. He looked straight into my eyes. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you better get rid of it right now. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in my house.” He said the word behavior, but I knew exactly what he actually meant. “This is the only warning you’re gonna get, son.”

  I rushed from the room, running past Mom, who was standing in the hallway, looking like she’d seen a ghost, and into my room, slamming the door. I stayed in there until dinner when I sat at the table and did exactly what my parents expected of me.

  To pretend.

  * * *

  I floated through the morning at school, not really paying attention in any of my classes. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sam and how I might be like him. I just wanted to talk to him, but I had no way of contacting him at all. I didn’t know where he was.

  When the lunch bell rang, I went into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I was feeling weird again, unbalanced, and the scratch on my arm was tingling. I knew what it meant. It meant that there was a hound inside of me, trying to take over. I couldn’t let it. I had to fight. I could be stronger than Sam. I didn’t have to give in.

  The bathroom door swung open and Brent and his crew came in. I wanted to groan. “Hey, Loogie. I forgot my lunch money. Give me yours.”

  “I don’t have any money, Brent.” The five dollars in my pocket began to feel heavy.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  I squared my shoulders. “Yeah. So why don’t you go find someone else to torture because I’m not gonna be your punching bag anymore.”

  Brent’s eyes widened at my declaration and then he laughed. “Yeah? Who’s gonna stop me?”

  Are you gonna let him talk to you like that? a voice in my head whispered. Brent took a menacing step toward me and I snapped. My hand snaked out, grabbed the front of his T-shirt and yanked him forward. I reached up and slammed his head d
own on the countertop. He howled in pain, but I didn’t release him. I shoved him backward and he flew through an open stall door, slumping over the toilet and then scrambled to his feet. He charged me and I grabbed the door and swung it closed so that it hit him right in the face.

  “Get him!” Brent yelled from behind the door.

  They all took an unsure step toward me and I let out a growl. It was deep and rumbled through my chest. All three of Brent’s “friends” rushed from the bathroom. I turned toward the sink and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  I was wearing Sam’s “look.”

  I smiled.

  Brent came racing out of the bathroom stall. I stepped aside and he ran right into a headlock. I dragged him across the room, stuck his head in a urinal, held it there and hit flush. Water rushed over his head as he made gurgling sounds, spitting at the water. When I released him, he slumped to the floor, looking at me with shock in his eyes.