The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.00h Prologue - Bradley Seward

The Cleansing: June 16, 8:55 pm —
On the Roof of the Wells Fargo Building, Downtown Salt Lake City

At least the screaming has stopped. It's a relief, after the past few hours of her incessant wailing, to have this silence surround me like a warm blanket.

The sun has touched the horizon, and for the first time since... well, since that night in the theater, I can almost feel a sense of peace. Even the devastated city below us seems at rest. A last breath before God brings down the curtain? I suppose the dead have no more to say, and the dying just want to do it alone now, and quietly.

Even the possessed scientist in the lab coat at my side is silent. I don't glance at him, but I know he's there—his face brutally mangled, and still dripping blood onto his dirty white jacket.

Like me, he also is not what he appears to be. I've had a glimpse of what he really is. And that glance was enough.

I remember a word. Gargoyles. That is what we are, staring out over the city, our eyes focused on the setting sun, which has now touched the far horizon. It glimmers and dances in the toxic, smoky air like an angry charcoal briquette. Perhaps, like all of us, the sun is desperate to be done with this wretched, evil day.

In the silence, I can hear my own living heartbeat. Feel my own very human lungs, drawing air. I can sense the blood pulsating in this body I have taken. This body with curves and mounds and softness so unlike what I remember from when I was alive. I have touched women, and loved them, but it's still a revelation—to have flesh in places my old body never had, and flesh... missing from places where it should be.

But it is a comfortable body. If I had time, it's a body I could learn to love.

Too bad it too will be rotting before morning.

I glance at the two black suitcases at our feet. It will be only moments now. God said to wait until the sun disappeared behind the horizon. So we will wait. As always, we will obey God in all things.

What I have in these last few moments are my memories. I wish I could remember more from before I died, but that's all still hazy and indistinct. All I remember well are these past eight days.

No, that isn't completely true.

When I awoke in the theater I didn't know who I was, or where I was, but I remembered that instant before my death—the knife plunging into the soft flesh under my chin, and the butt of my hand hammering it through the top of my mouth and into my brain. And I remembered agony, the sudden blackness, and the moment of numbness and terror after my brain was pierced. I remember lying face down on the sticky theater floor, where out of the corner of my eye, I watched my red and quivering hand fluttering in front of my face.

And I remember thinking, If I'm dead, how is it that I am still screaming?

But all that is from my life before. Scattered images from a hazy past, like individual movie frames, scratched and stuttering through a projector. My new life began when I woke up in that dark theater and knew at once that I was dead.

I remember my new ghost body, reaching up in the dark, until I felt my shattered face. I probed under my chin and slid a finger inside the ragged hole I found there—instantly surprised that there was no knife embedded to the hilt. I thrust my other hand into my mouth, finding my split tongue and shattered palate.

And then I felt the amazing sensation of it all becoming whole under my touch. The closing wound under my chin expelled my fingers with a wet, flatulent sound. I clenched my fist against the agony, and as I did so, I felt the knife as it reformed in my hand, like an insistent enemy, prying apart my fingers.

Instinctively, I threw it from me like a snake that was prepared to strike. Only to find it back in my hand again a moment later. Three times in my agony I tried to cast it away, unsuccessfully, before rolling over on my hands and knees, pressing the point of the knife into the floor below me.

Slowly, my groans ceased and became a ragged breathing. In the silence between breaths, I could now see subtle details in the unrelenting blackness around me. And I felt textures under my hands—a hard texture, like rough pavement or cold concrete.

I flailed at my own mind, trying to uncover some clue to who I had been, where I was, and why I felt such heart-wrenching despair coursing through every cell of my body. I screamed again, clawing at the blackness. I found my feet and stumbled through the dark theater, smashing hard into a row of theater seats, collapsing and righting myself on the unexpected steps. All at once I was sure that I was going to vomit, and I vaulted toward a sliver of light from a ramp that led down. I squeezed between two curtains that were as unmovable as marble columns and collapsed into the hallway beyond.

And then I was in the theater lobby, where I fell to my knees and tried to retch out all the vileness that had invaded my body. But try as I might, my shuddering shoulders and heaving stomach could not bring up anything but moist, fetid air.

As the shudders passed, I fell back against the snack bar, exhausted. And realized the bloody knife was still in my fist. Calmer now, I dropped it, and watched it reappear in my hand. The handle of the knife felt as smooth as glass, and for the first time I realized my hands were pristine and clean, without a sign of blood. But my uniform looked as if I had been working in a slaughterhouse.

Over and over, I dropped the knife. And over and over it reappeared in my hand. Finally, I slid the knife into the pocket of my jacket, and was relieved that it seemed content to stay there.

The lobby was empty. There wasn't a soul to be seen anywhere. The wine red carpet was trampled and dirty, and the popcorn in the glass bin behind my head smelled rancid and stale. There were yellow strips of crime scene tape all around the lobby, laying like twisted snakes across the soiled carpet.

For a moment I thought perhaps the world had ended, and that I was the only man on earth. Perhaps everything I remembered was some kind of dream or hallucination. Perhaps there had been a plague that left the rest of the world dead, and I was the only survivor. Maybe I would leave the theater to find the bodies piled up in rotting heaps.

But that didn't explain the knife. Or the bloody uniform I wore.

I was making a noise that sounded like a dying animal and tried to make myself stop. And just before my mind gave out completely, I realized I was not alone. There was a presence there in the lobby with me. I looked around, desperately trying to see who it was. But there was nobody there. And yet, there was! I could sense it! There was someone there with me. Someone invisible. Someone silent.

Someone who... someone who loved me.

Yes, I thought. It's true. There is someone here who loves me...

The feeling of relief and gratitude flowed through me, stronger than even the terror that still clutched at my chest. I reached my hands out, hoping that this stranger would come to me. Would hold me. Would tell me that I would not be alone in this nightmare forever.

And that was when I heard her. Softly, but drawing nearer. It was a child's voice, singing an old song. The words stirred memories of two little girls, sitting at my feet. Little girls from a life so long gone now, it might as well have never existed.

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,
Lulled by the moonlight have all passed away...

With a deep breath, I wrench my wandering mind free of these memories, and I am back on the rooftop, staring into the setting sun. I know it has only been moments, but how easy, how seductive it is, to be lost in memories. I don't know how much time I have left, but indulging in the past like this is a sure way to lose my mind. And we still have much work to do. Much work to do for God.

Still humming the tune to myself, and staring into the last of the sun as it slips below the horizon, I reach for the first of the two black cases at my feet.

And then I hear a voice behind me...