Paradise Lost Boxed Set Page 2

  The chiming grew louder and I heard him say with a heavy Scottish brogue, “What’s this? A wee lad lost in the park?”

  So he was a Scottish bogeyman. Cheers, mate.

  The shelleycoat took three steps closer to my Cabbage Patch Doll. Another step and he’d be in my trap … and then—Wham! Bam! Pow! Holy shelleycoat trap, Batman!

  But the shelleycoat didn’t take that last step. Instead, he looked around. And around.

  Until his eyes fixed on me.

  Hell … Hell-le-lujah.

  ↔

  When I was a kid, my PopPop used to tell me all sorts of stories about the bogeyman. The bogeyman, he’d say, would get me if I didn’t sleep, didn’t finish my dinner, didn’t do my chores. Sheesh. Talk about fear-based parenting.

  Still, despite all the stories, I was never really afraid of the bogeyman. I knew that my PopPop, as grandfather-old as he was, would always save me, after all.

  But my PopPop wasn’t here now, dangling from this tree in the dark following my dead wife’s instructions, and I felt old childish fears overrun my soul as I dropped down from the tree to face the bogeyman alone.

  “What do ye want, mortal?” the shelleycoat said.

  On the ground, I got a good glimpse at his coat. It was covered with all sorts of bells, from tiny silver ones all the way up to town-crier brass carillons. He was also considerably shorter than I was and at five foot ten, I’m not particularly tall (or short)—and not even remotely as handsome—with a crooked nose that was a Pinocchio I-didn’t-eat-the-children long.

  Oh, fun.

  “We’re all mortal now,” I said, stepping forward as I tried to push him into my trap.

  I’m pretty strong. I mean, I’m not Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson strong, but I’d probably hold my own against Vin Diesel or Chris Hemsworth. But despite putting everything I had into that shove, I didn’t move the ugly bastard an inch.

  Grinning, he backhand slapped me. I went flying across the ground, by body rolling over dry autumn leaves that crackled as loudly as my bones did. Ouch.

  The shelleycoat took three steps toward me, reaching a bell-jangling arm down as he grabbed my ankle then swung me like a five-iron. I went flying, this time in the direction of my Cabbage Patch Doll/Sony Walkman trap.

  Landing beside the old Walkman, I put it out of its misery, thankful that at least the damn baby’s crying was over.

  Looked like it might be time for my own crying.

  “What do ye want?” the bogeyman asked, taking long strides in my direction.

  Still on my butt, I pushed my feet against the ground as I crab-walked away from him.

  “A bell,” I said.

  “A … bell, you say?” He did a little shimmy that sent all his bells a-ringing and a-ranging. “I got plenty o’ these, but they be mine, not yours, not anyone’s to take. Mine,” he growled with Gollum-esque rage.

  “I know,” I said, shuffling away. “That’s why I did this.”

  I waited until he took another step, then I pulled at the yarn threads I’d lain earlier. A fence-like structure swung up around him. It was no higher than the shelleycoat’s ankles and it was literally made of thread and beads, but it did the trick.

  The shelleycoat stopped dead in his tracks, looking down at a barrier that a kitten could tear through in two seconds flat. But the shelleycoat was no kitten. He was a bogeyman of legend, a monster of old … and those kinds of creatures had rules. And one of the rules, explained to me long ago by my good-ol’ PopPop, was that no shelleycoat can ever cross over a line made from thread and ceramic—hence the beads.

  These days, jails weren’t just iron bars. Glass to hold dwarves, bird cages for sprites …

  And beaded thread for bogeymen.

  “No,” he growled. “Explain the meaning of this! I have done ye or yours no harm. I nae deserve this.”

  I lifted a placating hand. “And I’ll let you go in a minute, I promise. But I needed to get your attention first.”

  “Fer what?”

  “Like I said—a bell. Specifically, the …”

  I thought back to my dream and searched for the word that Bella had used. I should have been able to recall it without a second thought—after all, Bella wasn’t actually my dead wife; she was a figment of my imagination, a manifestation of my broken mind that was unable to accept that she was really gone. The name of the bell wasn’t something she told me about. It was something I knew about and had forgotten. And for some reason that I can’t quite put together, my subconscious decided I needed this damn bell and sent Bella to deliver the message.

  I hummed for a couple seconds longer as I searched for the bell’s name before finally remembering it.

  “Ismick. The Bell of Ismick.”

  “That bell is mine,” he said. I half-expected his nose to grow longer, but it was true.

  “I know, but given that you’re trapped and I really don’t have anywhere to be, I thought—”

  “Thief!” he shrieked, pointing a green finger at me. As he did, his sleeve-bells chimed their accusations in agreement.

  I mimicked being wounded— “Oh, such harsh accusations! However, will I look at myself in the mirror again.”—before saying, “Don’t worry, ugly, I’m no thief. I offer you an exchange.” I pulled out three obsidian bells from my pocket. “My guy says these were the very bells that were sown to David’s saddle.”

  “David?”

  “As in David and Goliath,” I clarified.

  “They … they be real?” He held out a quivering, bell-chiming hand.

  I threw him one of them. “You tell me.”

  The shelleycoat bogeyman examined the bell like an appraiser might a gem, before nodding. “Very well,” he said, plucking a copper-colored bell from his coat. “This bell for all three.”

  “And how do I know you’re not tricking me? I mean, a bell is a bell to me. Swear you’re giving me the right one.”

  He sighed, grumbling some ancient fae curse under his breath.

  “Swear it,” I repeated, “or I won’t let you go.”

  Swearing, oaths, promises … those were the currency of Others. Once a pledge was given, the creature had to follow through or suffer some wrath from their gods. Of course, with the gods gone, divine wrath was in short supply, but most Others still took their ancient ways seriously. I wasn’t about to remind him of his new GoneGod World rights.

  Luckily, this shelleycoat was no different. He growled before plucking another bell off his coat, this time a silver one with black runes etched into it, and tossed it to me. “I swear that be the bell ye are looking for.”

  “Very well,” I said, tossing him the remaining two bells and cutting the thread barrier, thus setting the bogeyman free.

  ↔

  I prepared myself for another attack, but, once free, the shelleycoat made no indication that he held a grudge. Instead he turned his attention entirely to his newfound treasures and hung his new bells on his coat, then started down the park’s path—most likely toward his gathering, whatever that was.

  Strangely touched that the creature wasn’t really that bad a guy after all, no matter how ugly he was, I scooped up my Cabbage Patch Kid and said to it, “I’m gonna have to tell PopPop about this one.”

  Great. Now I was heeding my dead wife’s advice, trading bells with the bogeyman like they were Pokémon, and asking a doll to pass a message to my long-past father.

  I shook my head as I collected the quilt and the Walkman, but quickly turned my thoughts back to the bell at hand.

  I still didn’t know what the damn thing did.

  I followed the jingling bogeyman until we made it out of the park before speaking. I figured the walk would help him with any anger issues he might have over me trapping him.

  Once onto the main road, I matched stride with him and said, “Sorry about what I did to you back there. But you understand why I did it, right? I mean, you know the legend?”

  He nodded. “A shelleycoat will never give
up one of his bells without being trapped.”

  “Yeah, like a leprechaun. You gotta trap them if you want the pot of gold.”

  “I be no leprechaun,” he said, his bells ringing in fury as he turned to face me.

  I lifted my hands up in surrender. “I never said you were. I’m just saying that I had to trap you to get the bell … otherwise, you know …”

  He nodded in understanding. “I would have turned ye around so that no map in this world or any other would have helped ye find home.”

  “And I like home,” I said. “That’s where my toys are.”

  If he thought I was funny he made no indication of it. Instead he doubled his pace as he walked to his gathering.

  “So,” I said, trotting to catch up, “what does the bell do?”

  “Ye don’t know?” he asked with an admonishing shake of his head.

  “No. All I know is that someone I trust said I needed it. But I don’t know why.”

  “And I suppose that ye will not leave my side until I tell ye.”

  “My wife always said she’d inscribe the word ‘tenacious’ on my tombstone.”

  He chuckled at this. “Yer wife is a wise woman.”

  “Was,” I corrected him.

  At this he turned, his face softening. The look wasn’t pity, but more of understanding. So, you’ve lost too, the look said.

  “Read the inscription on the bell, then ring it three times next to each ear, then hang it above the threshold of your abode,” he said before continuing on his way.

  Others, with their cryptic answers, I thought. I chased after him, not wanting to let this go.

  “Abode?” I said. “Who says ‘abode’ anymore? It didn’t even rhyme! And, you didn’t answer my question … What does it do?”

  The bogyman sighed. “ ‘Do’? Humans always want things to do things, when sometimes things are just things.”

  “Ahhh, I get it. It doesn’t do anything. Well that makes sense.”

  The shelleycoat shook his head in frustration—or maybe his way of saying no, or both. Probably both. The book on Other body language hadn’t had enough time to be written.

  “Human, the bell does something. Hang it above your abode—um, I mean, home’s threshold and see.” He stopped at a main door entrance to what was obviously someone’s home and rang the doorbell.

  “I really would love to know what it does before I hang it any—”

  My words stopped dead in their tracks and I stared at the figure who opened the door.

  He—I only call him a he because he lacked any of the curves normally associated with a she—was tall, easily seven feet … and without a face. No eyes or mouth or nose or ears.

  Just a taught-skinned surface … like the face of a drum. A creepy, animated, drum on a humanoid body.

  Having no eyes, however, didn’t stop him from looking in our direction. I shivered, making the bell in my hand tinkle.

  “Slenderman?” I muttered. “I thought he was an urban legend.”

  “Aren’t we all?” the shelleycoat said with a wry smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a poker game to attend to.” And with that, the bogeyman went inside.

  So that was the gathering he was going to—poker with other bogeymen. Sounds like a hoot.

  Fan-friggin’-tastic, I thought as I held the little bell in my hands. Now why do I need this, Bella?

  She didn’t reply. After all, Bella was dead.

  ↔

  ↔↔↔

  ↔

  Later that night—

  I’ve had the same dream every night since they left. I’m running from a devouring darkness that rushes over the world like a tidal wave of emptiness. I run on charred earth, unsure if the darkness or the fear will get me first. In the distance, I can just make out a pinprick of light ahead. If I can get to it, I will be safe. My legs burn and my lungs heave. I run and run toward the light, but before I reach it, the world stops. Not like a ledge or a shore: the world just stops. Null and void. And I know, in that way you do in dreams, that I’m standing at the end of everything.

  I turn around. If I’m going to die, I want to see it coming. The darkness slows down as the rushing wave breaks into a creeping black fog. It knows I’m trapped. It’s savoring my terror.

  Just before the darkness envelops me, a burning light grows from the Void.

  Like the darkness, it blinds.

  I am surrounded by light and dark until a hand reaches from the burning halo and pulls me somewhere else.

  That’s when the dreams differ, because every night she takes me somewhere new.

  ↔

  Tonight, we walk on a sandy beach that reminds me of where I proposed to her. This is more secluded though—there’s no other sign of life. An imperfect memory of a place made perfect by time and imagination.

  I’m in linen shorts and little else. Bella is in the same sleeveless sundress she wears on all our nightly rendezvous. It’s the dress she wore the night we got engaged; the one she wore when we drove up to PopPop’s cabin for what would pass as our honeymoon.

  The dress she was wearing the day the Others killed her.

  The hem is dry despite her being ankle-deep in the ocean. She’s standing next to me, so close that we could hold hands. But we never do. Even though I want it more than anything, we never touch. I don’t know why.

  “Hi, Bella,” I say. She doesn’t look at me, her eyes fixed on the cloudless blue sky. “I thought you hated saltwater. What was it you used to say? ‘Salt’s a preservative and I don’t like the thought of anything preserving me.’ ”

  “Dust to dust,” she says, still staring at the same spot in the sky. A single cumulus cloud has crept in from beyond the horizon.

  “Yeah, yeah—‘dust to dust.’ Mummify me, I say. I want to be this beautiful forever.”

  “I stand by my words,” she chuckles, looking at me for the first time that night. “I wanted life to use me up, and when it was done with me, I wanted to fade away into whatever came next.”

  “And did you?”

  “Nothing comes next. You know that.”

  Yeah, I do. Everyone knows that Heaven is closed and Hell doesn’t exist.

  “So what are you? A ghost, haunting my dreams?” I ask. The words come out bitter and angry.

  Her mood darkens, and in a distant voice she says, “Ghosts aren’t real. Not anymore.”

  “Well, they kind of are,” I say. “Have you spoken to your mother recently?”

  A smile creeps across her face as she shoots me her You-better-behave look.

  “Be nice. You promised.”

  “That I did … and speaking of promises, I got the bell,” I say.

  She give me a chuckle, “I knew you would.”

  “Say, now that I got it, what does it do?”

  “You didn’t hang it up, yet?”

  “I was kind of in a hurry to get here and see you,” I say, kicking some beach sand into the water.

  “You’re sweet,” she says, giving me that look than—when she was flesh and bones—would have lead to somewhere special and warm and … heavenly. But given she’s not flesh and bones, but a figment of my imagination, I have to settle for that look. Another cold shower for me… “Hang it up and see,” she says, “Trust me, it’ll make your life that little bit easier when you do.”

  “I could use a little bit easier,” I say reaching out my hand.

  She doesn’t take it, instead her smile fading as she looks at the horizon again. The lone cloud has been replaced with a gray, ominous skyline. She points. “There’s somewhere you need to be.”

  I hear the distant roll of thunder as the wind picks up.

  “There is nowhere I want to be,” I say, raising my voice so she can hear me over the wind.

  A fork of lightning strikes the sand beside us as a gale-force wind blows in from the sea, far too fast to be natural. The once-blue sky is now blanketed in grays.

  “I didn’t say it was somewhere you wanted to be. Th
ere is somewhere you need to be,” she says, flattening the wrinkles of her impossibly dry dress against her thigh.

  “I don’t want this to end. Not yet.”

  “Oh, Jean, I don’t want you to go either.” She captures me with her intense cerulean-blue eyes and, in a serious tone I’ve seldom heard her use, says, “Jean, there’s a storm coming. The thing about storms is that they always end. Remember that, and remember your promise.”

  I nod. My promise. A promise I made to the dream of my dead wife one lonely night in the middle of nowhere. A promise that I would go to Paradise Lot and help Others. A promise I plan to keep.

  The storm is getting stronger. I need to wake up. “Will you be back?” I ask her this every time I have to leave.

  “Whenever you sleep,” she always replies, smiling. “Someone has to save you from your dreams.”

  I know she will. She always does.

  “In this life and the next,” I say, just before my body jolts as the real world comes into focus.

  ↔↔↔

  My mobile phone was ringing. I glanced at the clock. Three in the morning. Only one person would call me at this time: Penemue.

  Of Angels and Men

  I parked in front of the Paradise Lot Police Station. I had been summoned there—if such a lofty term could be used for being roused from a perfect dream at such a GoneGodless hour—to bail out a certain guest of mine. My head throbbed from lack of sleep. I hated being woken up; I hated being taken away from Bella.

  From outside, the station looked like any other: redbrick building; a boring backlit sign with the name in big blue letters; a flex-face shield above the door. Typical—until you went inside.

  The first indication that the Paradise Lot Police Station—and by extension the world—was different was that the entrance had been unceremoniously enlarged. Whereas the doors were previously wide enough to accommodate three humans standing shoulder to shoulder, now they could fit an elephant.