Of Heaven and Hell Read online

  The angel smiled and held his hand over Bailey’s, the familiar blue eyes seeming full of woe. “I’ve taken on a form you would find most... appealing. This is why I’m here, Bailey.”

  Shocked, Bailey pulled his hand away. He stepped from the angel and let angry words rip from him. “Most appealing? You’ve come dressed as the man I loved... love!” He corrected himself, not caring as tears fell; a waterfall of sorrow. “And if you’re not him, which I know you aren’t, and you’re not going to take me back to him, then you’re nothing more than a reminder of why I’m here!”

  It occurred to Bailey then that he didn’t exactly know where they were, and he pulled his eyes from the angel to look around them into the darkness.

  “Purgatory,” the angel declared, following his gaze. “Where lost souls come to waste away. A place neither of us should remain for very long.”

  Bailey thought the angel sounded like a teacher telling a story to a class of young children, not someone who should be warning another to leave a place. He couldn’t sense any urgency in his tone.

  “Purgatory,” Bailey repeated, and although he hadn’t asked the question, the angel answered one which had begun to play out in his head.

  “You’re not with Greyson because you took your life, long before your time.” As the angel spoke, he guided Bailey’s attention back to him. With his thumb, he wiped Bailey’s face clean of the last of his falling tears. “Those who commit the act of suicide, sadly, end up here. In this wasteland.”

  Why? Bailey thought, wishing to have the real Greyson take him in his arms again, to hold him one last time. I’m afraid, Greyson. I need you.

  The angel bridged the small space between them, guiding Bailey into his chest. The mortal closed his eyes and thought of the lover he longed to meet again.

  Like before, the angel answered questions he had yet to ask. “Life is a gift, and when a soul comes here before their time, my kind do all they can to help them return.”

  Bailey gripped the long shirt the angel wore, burying his face into his chest. “What if we don’t want to return, what if we want to be with those we lost?”

  The angel shifted in Bailey’s arms, and when he spoke, his words seemed to fill Bailey with a cocktail of sadness and warning. “Purgatory isn’t a place you should dwell in for very long,” he stressed again, his arms no longer around Bailey, who allowed a whimper to fall from his lips.

  When Bailey looked into the angel’s face, he saw the familiar sad expression Greyson gave him the day he came home with the results from the hospital. Bailey felt the same fear rushing through him. He breathed, preparing himself to hear something that would again shatter his already-broken heart. If it was at all possible, he wondered if his soul would demolish into a million different pieces. Either way, he listened, overcome with terror as the angel with his lover’s face spoke.

  “If a soul comes to this realm and isn’t guided back to their life then this will become their prison.” The angel had reached out to cup Bailey’s cheek in his hand the way Greyson always would, and he found it hard to believe this wasn’t the man he loved. The one he had come to be with. “Stay too long in this darkness and you will be reduced to ash. You saw how close you came to being claimed by it. How easily it can sense the darkness within a person and use it to bring about their end.”

  Fresh tears fell down Bailey’s face as he pulled away from the angel. He wrapped his arms around his body the way he used to do when his life seemed so bleak and there was nobody there to hold him.

  He couldn’t forget how he’d wanted the gravel to take him, devour him as he allowed his sorrow for losing Greyson to rule his every cell. Bailey suddenly felt too nervous to move his feet, in case Purgatory began laying claim to him again.

  “T-take me to Greyson, please,” he begged, wishing he was sleeping and would soon wake from this nightmare. “This isn’t fair. I don’t want to be here.”

  Bailey’s combined fear and confusion had drawn forth the petulant child within him, his head reeling with people to blame for bringing him to the place he’d found himself. For allowing him to meet Greyson, the first caring person to enter his life, only to steal him away after six short years.

  While Bailey fought within himself, he sensed the angel rest his arms on his shoulders and chase away the grains that had crept over his feet and ankles. He could feel a calmness he had not felt for a while beginning to return. One he had been without since Greyson had broken the news regarding his illness. Opening his eyes again, he looked into the blue depths so like his lover’s it caused his lip to tremble.

  “Life isn’t always fair,” the angel told him, something his mother would say when he was a child and on the brink of starvation; one of his parents many games they liked to play. Unlike them though, these words weren’t spat in his direction, but spoken with such remorse and regret that Bailey fought away an urge to crumble again.

  “Why did you have to come looking like him?” The words hadn’t had time to register in his head when Bailey spoke them, and he thought it might have been his heart speaking.

  He already knew the answer though, the angel’s previous words entered his head again. I’ve taken on the form you find the most appealing. It felt like torture cutting through him, for he longed to be with Greyson again, but this was nothing more than a painful illusion.

  The angel nodded as if able to hear Bailey’s thoughts. He offered the mortal his hand as he spoke. “Let me take you from this place so that you may one-day return to the man you love.”

  Bailey didn’t hesitate in taking the angel’s offered hand, and the second their palms connected, the darkness shifted around them.

  BAILEY COULDN’T make out shapes, yet he knew the space around him was moving. A mix of greys and blacks danced an eerie waltz around him, causing him to tighten his grip on the angel’s hand. He felt like a child again, left alone in his home while his parents drank away the money they should have spent on food. Afraid of the shadows around him that, although he couldn’t make them out, felt like an array of monsters creeping his way.

  Hair stood on the back of his neck as a sinister wind whipped against him, and Bailey was certain he could hear endless screams and pleas for help within. Had he been ignorant to these pleas until now? So consumed in his destruction his ears blocked everything else out?

  No.

  Succumbing to his childish fears, Bailey was allowing his head to be fooled by phantoms that didn’t, couldn’t exist.

  Until today, angels hadn’t existed though, he told himself, swallowing a tightening lump in his throat. Does this mean demons are real too?

  Stop it, he demanded of himself. It’s only the drugs. Those multicolored pills had messed with his head and fooled him into believing he’d slipped into Purgatory. A place that wasn’t, couldn’t be real.

  “Wake up... wake up now,” he repeated, wishing himself awake and away from the darkness. He wanted to start again, end his life another way, one that would result in the death he needed and reunite his heart with Greyson’s.

  When he heard Greyson’s familiar chuckle, Bailey was pulled from his inner ramblings and looked at the angel, bewildered. Why couldn’t it have been the Greyson? Why couldn’t the past year be an awful dream he could wake up from? “What’s so funny?”

  A smile dissolved from the angel’s lips, followed by an apologetic nod. “Forgive me, but I sometimes forget how this place can make a mortal, such as yourself, feel. One second of misspent emotion and it began pulling you in.”

  Giving in to a bubbling rage, Bailey snapped. “Funny, is it? Is my plight entertaining?”

  Unlike Bailey, the angel was calm the way Greyson would be when he sat listening to a piece by the composer, Debussy. It managed to still his anger. Reminded him of the classical concert they’d enjoyed the previous winter. Bailey wished to return to that moment. He remembered sitting in a far less frightening darkness, watching the way shadows changed on his lover’s face as the lighting reflected
off the stage. The room smelt of expensive fragrance and far more expensive wine from those seated around them. It might have been a packed show, but to Bailey they were the only two people in the world as he leaned into Greyson’s arms, listening to the pianist playing a variation of Jardin sous la pluie. Bailey longed to have his heart racing with the music again, for Greyson to turn toward him and grace his lips with a cherished kiss.

  He didn’t know the space around him was changing, fear dissolving as the memory unfolded in his mind. However clichéd it sounded when they’d talked it over later, it was as if their hands had a mind of their own as they wandered up each other’s thighs. As they’d felt the push of their erections against pants, and stopped themselves taking things further in the crowded concert. Instead, they sat back and held on to one another until it was time to leave. They raced home, drove through red lights, all so they could litter the floor with their discarded clothing and make love on the sofa.

  That same night, Greyson had played a record of some old recording of Debussy’s music, and they listened to the ageing disk that had more body than on a CD recording as they lay covered in their sex. Bailey longed to have trails of kisses peppering his chest again, to gasp in delight and allow his body to contort as his lover entered him. All evening he’d felt like the piano on the record, with Greyson the musician as he conducted their lovemaking, his fingers gripping the sides of the sofa.

  Hold onto the memory, Bailey. He heard the voice of Greyson in his head, yet somehow knew it was the angel. Recall all your most happy memories, let them guide you back home.

  Bailey felt warmth radiating through him, and although it was just a memory, when he curled his body into Greyson’s he could feel his damp skin against his own. Their lovemaking had left beads of sweat covering them both. He trailed his tongue across his lover’s shoulder and tasted the sweet salt.

  Snaking his hand down Greyson’s body, over his naked chest, he stopped when his fingers met with the short hairs around his pubic bone. Bailey ran his hand through them, felt them part like the branches of trees caught in the wind. Greyson turned to face him, sleep heavy in his eyes, and he smiled.

  “I love you, B,” he declared, breathlessly.

  No.

  As much as he wanted it to be true, to remain in the dream, Bailey knew it was nothing more than a memory. A reminder of all he had lost. It faded away, gone as smoothly as it had arrived.

  Bailey was back in the far less comforting darkness. The bitter domain—his crypt. He felt its binds gripping him, clasping him around his wrists and ankles, ready to drag him in all directions—to tear him apart.

  “Try to ignore the lure of the shadows, Bailey,” the angel urged.

  The angel rested his hands on the mortal’s waist, and Bailey wondered if the being had powers that could ground him. Again, he felt rooted by a mere touch.

  “Hold onto the memory, Bailey,” the angel persisted.

  Bailey found himself in a predicament. He didn’t want to keep thinking about the man he’d lost, the pain too near. Yet, if the angel spoke the truth, he didn’t want to succumb to the darkness either.

  I just want to be back in Greyson’s arms.

  Bailey could feel the darkness washing over him the longer he stood there, the grains creeping up him again. At the same time, the thing that scared him most was how he wanted to succumb to it. To drink in its misery, allow each and every cell in his body to be infected by it. If he couldn’t be with Greyson then he wanted it all to end, just to end.

  “Stop it, Bailey,” the angel whispered. “Stay with me.”

  At the sound of the angel speaking with Greyson’s voice, Bailey became aware of how his feet had begun lifting off the ground, carried by the grains. They floated behind him, ready to envelope him in darkness the moment he gave in.

  Bailey could feel countless hands moving up his body, trying to whisk him into the wasteland. The farther they moved up his body, the harder he fought against it.

  This could be it, the way out of the madness, he thought, closing his eyes. As easy as slipping into a dream. Let them take me.

  After all, there would be nobody there to care for him should he wake again. Nobody to hold him in loving arms after a long day, to hand him a towel to dry off after getting caught in an unexpected downpour. Nobody for him to give his love to.

  Why should I bother to try?

  “Please, Bailey.” The angel begged this time, Bailey could hear it laced in his voice. “Don’t stay here. Fight.”

  Feeling the pull skyward, Bailey allowed the angel’s words to penetrate him, he opened his eyes again and stared down at the angel.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Closing his eyes, Bailey gripped tighter to the angel and buried his face into his side. The way he would with Greyson when something frightened him. “I don’t like this place.”

  The angel gripped his shoulders, but Bailey became consumed with flashes of images flickering in his mind.

  His Greyson, smiling at him, waving him forward, and then stretching a hand out for him to hold. He focused on the smiling face, and when he heard him speak, a strength radiated through him.

  “I love you, B,” Greyson whispered. “Leave this place.”

  The hands no longer held him, and he lowered back to the gravel. Greyson wasn’t hovering in his mind now, and his eyes met with the angel.

  Comforting arms wrapped around his body and Bailey was thankful the angel had chosen to come to him looking like his husband. At this moment, it didn’t matter it wasn’t his Greyson whom he held; an imitation was better than nothing at all.

  “Don’t worry, I am here to lead you back to the life you should be living.”

  Bailey allowed the words to penetrate him but wished he was being led to wherever Greyson was now. Had his man passed through the golden arches and into heaven? The place he’d never quite believed existed, but on some level had secretly hoped was real? He couldn’t bear the thought of Greyson lost in his own darkness, his soul forever tormented when it should have been at peace. One of the only ways Bailey had managed to accept the fact his lover might leave the world without him was imagining him lying in green fields, or flower-filled meadows.

  “I will always wait for you, B.” The small promise bestowed upon him on the numerous occasions they were told the treatment wasn’t working fluttered through his mind.

  Bailey found himself wondering what Greyson would think if he could see him now, knowing he’d taken his own life, but shook the thoughts away when he felt the particles climbing his legs again.

  Instead, Bailey looked into Greyson’s blue eyes and spoke to the angel portraying him. “Where exactly is Greyson?”

  The angel didn’t hesitate. “The same place you will be, when your time comes. A better place than this,” he told him, without mentioning if the place in question was heaven.

  Unless it isn’t called heaven at all and is another word mortals won’t comprehend.

  Bailey didn’t question the angel, and held onto the one thing that mattered to him right at that moment: He is in a better place than this. Wherever that might be, Bailey knew without questioning the angel that his lover was at peace. Somehow he knew it.

  Of course, he wasn’t quite sure how he knew. The only way he could describe it was a sense of warmth blanketing him, like a heated duvet. His skin prickled with something like a gentle hum of electricity surrounding him.

  Bailey closed his eyes for a few seconds and took a cleansing breath, before looking into the familiar blue depths of Greyson’s eyes. He had to remind himself again, this wasn’t the man he loved.

  “Will I....” he began, trying to control the words he seemed to be tripping over. “Will I be without him long, can you at least tell me that?”

  If, like the angel had declared, he had to go back to his life, he wanted to know for how long he would remain there before his own visit from the reaper came.

  His very soul ached when he watched the angel shake his
head, and Bailey could see the start of tears pooling in the angel’s eyes before they disappeared. “I can tell you nothing of your life or death, so please don’t ask me anymore.” Bailey couldn’t help wondering if the angel wanted to tell him everything he longed to hear, but the angel silenced his unvoiced question with a raised hand and continued speaking. “All I can say is we need to make haste and get you back to your body before the option is taken from us.”

  He doesn’t play fair, Bailey thought, cursing the writer of the stupid rules the angel seemed bound by. He wiped away the start of his own tears, before probing the angel for answers.

  “How long do we have?” he asked, and the angel offered a smile Bailey knew from experience with Greyson to be forced.

  “Time isn’t the main factor, I’m afraid.” He hesitated for a moment, creasing his brow in the familiar way that left Bailey questioning if this was, in fact, his soul mate. “Because you took your life, you can’t simply return to your body.”

  What isn’t he telling me? Bailey wondered, his fears of the darkness leaving him as a new fear began to replace it. One of the unknown.

  He was thankful he didn’t have to wait long.

  “For a soul to escape this place, they must first see what brought them here,” the angel began, a soft smile gracing his face.

  Bailey found himself feeling uneasy, sensed the hesitation in the angel’s words. He waited with bated breath for him to continue.

  “Every soul is different. Each has to face new challenges. Yours will be to recall the dark days, and see what took you from it. To run from the lure of darkness and chase the light toward a place where a secret shall be revealed. Then, and this could be the worst of all, you will see the result of your suicide.”

  Bailey hung on his every word, trying to read between the lines for more details. It was all too confusing.

  He wasn’t given time to ask questions. Bailey could no longer see the angel’s once-demanding light as he felt himself fall into a black hole below. The surrounding screams began to lay their claim on him, coming from all directions and taunting him with their cries.