Immortal Killers

Chapter Two

Chapter TwoNathan had died. He knew it by the darkness. Never while alive had he known such icy darkness. A cold beneath the cold. A dark that swallowed the dark.

This was Darkness.

This was Death.

Nathan’s skin prickled at the thought. But did he have skin? And where was he? Heaven? Hell?

Not Heaven. Certainly such a place would have more to offer than this. Hell, then. Except, he suffered no pain, no discomfort other than the cold.

Perhaps the religions were wrong. Perhaps all that remained after life was nothingness, frozen darkness. It didn’t matter what this place was — Nathan wanted out.

The Darkness that surrounded him had weight. He could feel it pressing against his skin, rolling along his back, snaking around his legs — if he even had those body parts anymore. He couldn’t see his own hands, let alone legs or a body. Was that a result of the utter lack of light, or was it because he lacked a body to see?

Something took hold of him in his chest, and it lurched him forward. He thought this must be what a hooked fish feels like as the painful grip dug into his sternum and pulled him further along.

With a blinding flash, he saw Jennie lying in her bed. He watched from the ceiling, floating above her while she rolled the covers to her feet. Her naked body revealed, she smiled and reached toward the bathroom door.

“Come on, honey. Don’t make me wait all night.”

Nathan chilled at her voice. Not just the sound of it, but because he remembered her saying those exact words. This was a memory. This was the first time they had slept together. He was in the bathroom, fumbling with a condom, nervous that he would fail to live up to her expectations, chastising himself to think she would have expectations of him as if he held some secret Casanova reputation.

The door opened, and Nathan watched himself enter the room with a goofy smile. Jennie cracked up, giggling and curling into a ball. From the ceiling, Nathan smiled.

Another blinding flash struck, and Nathan floated above another bed. This one he had no desire to see. A motel room, filthy, unknown stains on the walls, the smell of urine and pot permeated the air, and a young man, Dean Schooner, sat on the edge of the bed with a needle in his arm.

Fresh out of high school, Nathan had worked for a bail bondsman, hunting deadbeats who skipped their court dates. Nathan was good at the work and he enjoyed tracking people down, but he had no stomach for the darker side. As Dean removed the needle and sighed, Nathan wanted to scream at him, to warn him, to force him to run.

Moments later, the door busted in. Young Nathan and his partner, Mack, rushed forward. Mack tackled Dean, though there was no need. He straddled the drugged out kid and pummeled him. Young Nathan did nothing to stop the abuse. He watched, and when it was over, when Dean Schooner no longer moved, no longer breathed, they hurried out, vowing never to tell a soul what had happened.

Flashes of memory continued to strike out at him. His only one night stand. The five-finger discount of a comic book when he was fourteen — X-Men with Storm on the cover sporting a super-cool Mohawk. And Jennie, always returning to Jennie.

But the more he observed of his life, the more he saw the bad he had done. Watching Dean Schooner die and not lifting a hand to help had been the worst, but the rest added up. Little by little, sin by sin, he saw the scale tipping toward the bad. He had never thought of himself as a bad person. He tried to be good. Even gave money to St. Jude’s and the Red Cross every Christmas. But each little transgression, seemingly minor, built upon the other transgressions until he faced a mountain of sin.

“I never realized,” he whispered. The weak sound of his voice scared him as much as the Darkness pressing upon him.

“Hello?” he called out. “Anybody?” His voice both echoed and deadened at the same time — an impossible mix that only made sense when he considered the limbo of nothing he floated within.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but he knew nobody heard him. “I didn’t mean to be so bad. And I did some good, too, didn’t I?”

He felt a shift from the dark. A response.

“I mean you showed me that happy moment with Jennie. I never hurt her or lied to her or betrayed her trust. I was good to her, right? And my dad and my brothers, I always helped them. Even when Dad had trouble with the drinking, I stood by him, helped him recover from every night he felt the loss of Mom over and over. I mean, I can’t be all that bad. Can I?”

A pinpoint of light opened far to his right. To his left, he heard a growling from the Darkness.

Nathan stared at the Darkness, feeling it grow at his side. Instinct told him that should the beast touch his soul, he would be forever in this frozen, lightless place. Yet there was a light. Small, but it was there. Nathan whipped around and ran for it. The faster he moved, the larger the Darkness behind became. It loomed over him like a wave ready to crash upon a surfer. Nathan strained for a breath as he raced onward. But the light never seemed to get any closer. Tears welled in his eyes. Perhaps this was Hell. Perhaps he deserved it.

As the thought finished in his head, the pinpoint of light burst forth into a full doorway of blinding sun. He could hear voices in the distance and he smelled fresh air and life. Yes, he smelled life.

“I won’t waste this,” he said, hoping that a true second chance had come his way.

And he ran into the light.