I wasn’t a religious man by any means. My parents weren’t and they pretty much instilled that in me from birth. Their beliefs became my own and life in this world has only reinforced it - war more than anything else.
To escape from a crappy small town and a few people who had it in for me, I turned to the military. My story I realized was painfully common when talking with some of my friends there. Don’t get me wrong, many of them had this idea of “getting back” at the enemy, but for many other people, it was an excuse to avoid the troubles at home.
It’s pretty selfish, now that I think about it. These were the same people that would break in wartime conditions too. Seeing someone you love like a brother die beside you adds fuel to the fire for some, but for people like me, it has them questioning why they are there. Why should a guy with not a single patriotic bone in his body be sent home in a box when all he wanted was a little more excitement?
I got out in 2006 and was glad to see it behind me. My cynicism was at its peak, my depression was growing and the opportunities to numb myself were always there. Tried a few of them, but it was cheaper and easier to get my hands on booze.
I tell you all of this because when I look back, I realize how much of an asshole I was. It’s not who I am now, not for the most part. I’m trying. And in trying, I realize that my story needs to be told.
It happened in 2010, my birthday. I had turned thirty-two and I was breathing vodka fumes into the face of my girlfriend.
*
“There’s still time,” I murmured, one hand holding the small of her back, keeping her close to me. “Come on, Kasey, baby.”
She gave me this charming smile, flashing her pearly whites, and for a moment, I saw her consider staying with me that night. I was slow dancing her in the empty living room of my new home. All I had were the kitchen basics and a mattress on the floor. I was missing a few things, left behind at my friend’s place, but I decided I would get them the next day after work.
Humble beginnings and she was with me at the beginning.
We finished our dance, I put a cigarette in my mouth and tried to make another move on her with my free hand. She gently moved my hand back by grabbing my wrist with her thumb and index finger. She leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek, telling me it was a fun evening, but she had work in the morning.
I walked with her out the front door and watched her get into her car in my front driveway. The light behind me hit her just right - she looked beautiful. Yet, I could see her eyes weren’t looking at me or the house. Eventually, she focused on me before getting into her car.
“Take care of yourself, John,” she said.
Looking back now, it was clear she was thinking about something else. She waved goodbye. I watched her drive away, sighed, and closed the door.
“Just you and me tonight,” I said to the empty home.
I looked around and felt a smile spread across my lips. A house. A real home, without noisy neighbors right beside me, above me, and below me. For some people, apartment life was the best, but I liked my space. I wanted to be alone sometimes.
I’d thought I’d wind down with another drink and watch some movies on my laptop. No vodka, I needed something smoother. Something that gave me that spinning feeling - brandy. Maybe it was the rich smell that did it for me, I don’t know. I poured a glass that made my heart flutter, I walked through the house, turning off lights until I ended up in the bedroom.
Two stories, basement, three spare rooms, two bathrooms. The dream. I could already see the future I had in it. My girlfriend on my arm, the friends we would have over, the things we would do when they left. I would have to marry her, of course. I giggled to myself like a child at the thought and told myself to calm down as I settled down on the mattress.
I heard a bang, loud and sudden. I almost spilled my brandy.
It didn’t come from inside my home. I listened out for something, an indication of what they might have been. I heard another bang. Then another. It was definitely a gun. Three shots were fired and no screaming. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the property behind my house or the one to the left.
I put the glass down, hopped to my feet, and hit the lights. In the dark, I found my jeans and pulled them on, then my shoes. Another shot was fired. It was a lot closer. I was sure it had come from my neighbor’s house to the left of mine. The gun sounded like a large firearm, a rifle. It was that loud, so why wasn’t anyone reacting?
Where were the alarms, the sirens, the screaming?
Maybe it was all the drink in my system, but I didn’t shy away from gunshots anymore. I had heard and seen worse. I had a service pistol. I stuffed it into the front pocket of my jacket and opened the front door to my house. I was out in the open, but I stuck to the shadows, approaching the corner of my house. I looked up at my neighbor’s house, scanning the dark windows.
The curtains weren’t drawn, yet I would have still seen the flash of the gunshot through them as the fifth and final shot was fired.
I stepped back and looked around. All the houses across the street were silent. Not a light. I imagined that everyone was panicking, hiding under their beds. I shook my head and took out my phone, placing a call to 911. The phone died just as my thumb hovered above the call button.
“Shit,” I hissed.
One of the things I forgot at my friend’s place - a phone charger. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. Still, that mattered very little to me. In such a ‘quiet’ suburban neighborhood, people call 911 for far less. I counted on that fact, thinking at least one other person had called the police for help.
Instead, I watched the house for any signs of movement. I kept my hand in my jacket, finger along the barrel, but safety off. The front door burst open, the doorknob hitting the wall hard. A much softer bang, but still, it was clear the guy didn’t care about noise. He ran outside, rifle in hand.
It looked like an old single shot, which explained the gaps between shots.
It was the drink that made me do it. I drew my firearm, pointed at the guy, and yelled, “Freeze!” My best impression of a cop was enough to make the man stop and turn around, raising the rifle. He fired before I did. I only registered the wood of the wall behind me splintering later. Luckily, my bullet hit its mark.
The man dropped his rifle, gripped his shoulder, and ran to the car on the pavement. He was quick to start it, driving off just as I reached his rifle. For safety, I picked up the rifle with my sleeve and threw it into the bush in front. There was no finding it in the dark.
My Dutch courage finally failed me. Drink could only numb the fear for so long. I had a close brush with death and my left leg wobbled beneath my weight. I breathed out and in, counting the seconds, trying to get my heart to settle. It wasn’t working. My heart just kept pounding - must have been the energy drink I had with the vodka.
I then turned to the house. He had to have been shooting something. I thought someone might have been killed, but if they were only hurt, they needed help. I ran up to the door, stopped just outside it, and called inside.
“H-Hey, it’s John, your neighbor,” I called. “Are you injured? Do you need help? Can I come inside?”
I listened for any sound, anything. I knew well enough that being shot in some places can make it impossible to speak. I heard a thud inside and that was all I needed.
“Okay, I am coming in,” I said. “If you’re armed, don’t shoot! I am here to help, okay!”
Stepping into a stranger’s home with the lights off had my left leg hopping even when I stood in place. The breathing techniques weren’t working at all. I think they were making me panic more. The gun in my hand was my only comfort, but with it came some other worries.
What if that man I shot was innocent? What if he was running from an intruder? What if I was tampering with a crime scene? Oh God, I threw a weapon into the bush! True, I had enough brains to pick it up with my sleeve, but I picked it up by the stock - what if I wiped away important fingerprints?
I refocused on finding the sound of the thumps. I heard another further into the house, so using the blue light of night to break the major shadows, I stepped between furniture towards a hallway. The hall was dark, but at the end, I could see a parallel hallway lit by moonlight. The wall was a cool blue in that dim light, but the frame of the doorway was a crisp white.
The door was open, a dark portal to the room where I could hear moaning. Another thump.
I think I was calming down. I no longer heard my heart pounding in my ears. My body seemed to relax with every step. I felt a bit more confident, my gun hand a lot more steady. I was going to be okay. There is nothing wrong with helping someone who is hurt.
Stairs leading down into the darkness. The moaning was pained, clearly the victim of one of the shots. It sounded like he was hitting the ground with his shoe. I could understand that - maybe he was using his hands to stop the bleeding.
“I’m here, coming down now,” I said.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I walked further into the basement, towards the sound of the ragged breathing. The thumps had stopped when he heard my voice. I heard a whimper. I was close. I felt something sticky on the bottom of my shoe. I took another step, the breathing stopped with a sigh, a red light, and…the floor opened up beneath me.
Before I fell, I saw several things in the red light. There was a circle in the basement. It vanished as quickly as it appeared but in that light, I saw bodies. Four bodies with bags over their heads and their bodies slumped over, bloodied, with their hands and feet tied together. The wounds were caused by a gunshot to the head.
The fifth body was seated, without a sack over the head. Also unlike the others, his hands weren’t bound behind his back, the bind hanging from one hand while it clung to the gunshot wound to the chest. That explained why the man couldn’t speak - his lungs were no doubt filled with blood. He died just before I reached, just as I entered the circle.
The fall itself was a rush, but my mind refused to get excited. It was like stepping into a room. Simple, easy, boring. Yet, it was far from that. When I landed, I didn’t crumple, I didn’t even fall on my ass. I landed on my feet, perfectly fine.
In a meadow of yellowed grass.
*
I don’t know how many times I turned on the spot, taking it all in. The trees were pale gray, the leaves a deathly, cool green, becoming gray themselves. The mountains were distant, rocky, and beautiful. All of this, especially the yellow grass around me, seemed to glow with warmth, as if the perfect Summer sun were shining down on it all.
Yet, the sky was not blue and the sun was missing. There was only darkness behind the beautiful landscape. The bodies around me erupted in flames, turning the grass around it into ash almost instantly. The heat was sudden and overwhelming.
I stuffed my gun back into my jacket and leaped between two bodies and away from the dead. Even that close it felt like I had stuck my whole body in the fire for a second. I hissed with pain and spun to look back at the dead. I watched them twist and change, flaking into gray tendrils which also separated into thinner flakes.
The bodies lost their shape, becoming a hot gray mass of familiar movement. A few seconds later, as the flames died down, the ashen color became brighter until the bodies completely changed into the yellow grass, blending in perfectly - as if they were never there.
Suddenly, a spark caught the light. I backed away, expecting to see something burning near me, but it was my clothes. I tried patting away the flames, but that didn’t work. The fire spread fast, but it didn’t burn as hot as the flames I had just seen.
That fact did not alleviate the fear I felt.
I itched as the panic gripped me. Burning to death in a fire, anybody would be afraid of that. I tried dropping to the ground, rolling on the spot. Stop, drop and roll didn’t work. I felt the flames lick at me and I gave up. I didn’t accept death, but I knew I couldn’t escape it.
When I stopped rolling, the flames stopped. My body remained, my clothes were gone, taken by the fire. My gun rested in the yellow grass beside my hip. My peace of mind, my security. I reached for it, picking it up and holding it tight. As I shakily got to my feet, I held that gun tight, afraid to lose it like I had lost everything else.
I wanted to get away, so I started walking, afraid somebody would see me in that state. How could I explain it to them? I still hadn’t fully realized where I was and how I had got there. I was plagued with smaller fears and I just focused on them.
Leaving the meadow, I stepped onto a path that began where I stepped and continued between two cast iron fences. There was a gate, but it was wide open. The bars were twisted and bent as if warped by heat.
The trail continued further on between the gray trees, but I could only make out what was there after walking for a long while. I can’t say how long exactly I walked, or how long I was there…it makes sense to say I walked for a few minutes, but when I say I walked for an hour, a week, or a year…it all sounds right.
And I found myself there, at the edge of a cemetery. Broken hills, tall grass, many large and dead trees, but it was open enough to see the peaks of gravestones. There were so many. I couldn’t see as far as I normally could, but when I looked towards the middle distance, I felt the pulling of eternity.
Yet, I stuck to the path that was set out before me. The sand reminded me of my deployment. The air felt heavy, the scent of sweat and death was so close. I felt like I had left the shade and stepped into an empty road between some screwed-up city and an insignificant village. No friends to watch over me, no car to hide in, no direction to run.
And I wept like I had never wept before. It was a place of grief and every part of me was made to feel that grief.
The gun was in my hand. It felt so heavy. I let it go just so I had the strength to keep walking. When it hit the ground, it shattered into glittering dust and I barely registered what I saw. I marched on.
I started talking to myself. The trees were thinning out. They lost their leaves. The knots in their trunks seemed to move, open and close like mouths. I talked to them, they talked to me and I wept loudly when they spoke.
I can’t recall the rest of the journey, except for the end.
A man. Black hair, curly and shining. His skin was as pale as bone. Black robes. Burning eyes. A look of such indifference when he saw me, I felt smaller than a grain of sand. He stared at the grave in front of him, the only grave I had seen in the entire cemetery which had a cross.
“You don’t belong here,” he said. “I won’t ask how you came to be here. It won’t be long before you are gone.”
“Where am I?”
“You already know. Don’t cry so loudly.”
At that moment, my weeping stopped, but the pain remained. I could feel the tears on my cheeks. The man looked at me. His eyes were piercing, an orange glow deep within the coal that was his iris. A face so beautiful it was ugly, or a face so ugly that was beautiful. It was not human. Even now I can’t tell you what the shape was, what the nose was like, or the mouth.
It was pale, the eyes were as black as the hair…that’s all I have. The rest I cannot pin down in memory.
“Ah, my own have come to collect you,” he said, turning to look down the path.
I followed his gaze and saw something in the distance. Something that seemed to warp the landscape, almost the same way heat created heat lines in the distance.
“They won’t reach you in time, but they still choose to try,” he said. “I can understand that desire.”
I looked at him and he looked at me.
“So unworthy,” he said, studying me with hatred. My insides were burning. I felt teeth on my flesh, testing how far it could sink before it broke the skin.
Snap.
*
I was standing in the basement of my neighbor’s house. The bodies were missing, as were my clothes and gun. I stepped back and away from where the circle had been, leaving the basement, walking through the house, and onto the path outside.
The cold night and the thought of being seen weren’t enough to deter me. I walked straight home, closed the door behind me, and crawled up on the floor.
The next day, I checked the house next door from a distance. There was blood on the path. The door was still open. I could spot the rifle in the bushes. No cops. I drove to my friend’s place and collected my phone charger among other things.
When my phone turned on, I saw apologies and goodbyes from my girlfriend. Turned out she was seeing someone else. The messages would have broken me before, but it felt like nothing. I swiped the messages aside and called the police, telling them that I saw a rifle in the bushes.
When I returned, I answered some questions, only telling them I heard gunshots and saw a man flee with a rifle. The stink of alcohol must have answered their silent question of why I didn’t phone them sooner.
Later that day, I received calls from a woman who didn’t tell me her name and asked me strange questions, but I told her to talk with the police and hung up. I wanted to distance myself from it all and fix the emptiness I was feeling.
And it took me a long time, as I am only telling this story now. Fourteen years later, I still live next door to the same house. I have seen two families come and go, living happily there. There is nothing wrong with that place, not anymore.
As for me, I wasn’t a religious man before, but I am now.