He(LL) is Risen, Part I, "Seasons in the Abyss"

The first chapter...

"HoldOn"

There'san older guy with a black pompadour and a bushy black mustache. Hewears tinted red glasses and a dark blue track suit; gold chains inoily black chest hair. He has a toothpick in his mouth and looks likea dark-skinned version of Saddam Hussein who spends a lot of time atcasinos.

Infront of Saddam is a thug, tall and lanky. His arms seem abnormallylong, peppered with crude tattoos. He has on a light blue tank topwith a big white 47 on the back and jeans that sag halfway off therear of his powder blue boxer shorts, sandy brown hair shaved closeto his scalp.

47shifts his weight then raises his long,

gray-white,pimple-spattered face to glance around with glassy bloodshot eyesthat jut from their sockets like hard boiled eggs. Looking back downat his phone he types rapidly with the thumbs of both hands. When itchimes with a response he grins broadly. His quivering lips reveal anunsettling amount of gum-line and symmetrical rows of white teeththat make Henry think of the tombstones at Arlington.

At47's hip is a dark haired boy, maybe

eight-years-old,pale and slender with big, shadowed eyes. He gazes dreamily around at

kid-levelitems placed on the racks in the check out line, gasping when henotices some sort of magical trading cards. The boy studies a goldfoil wrapped packet of the cards in his hand, then looks upuncertainly. Finally, he taps 47's bare arm several times with thepacket.

47looks from his phone with a scowl of annoyance. The thug wrenches thecards from the boy's hand and jams them into the rack where theyslide to the floor. He then puts his phone into his pocket and startsyelling as the boy backs up and winces repeatedly.

Ahead of these two inline and a couple customers shy of the counter is a young Latinasurrounded by kids. She has a pretty oval face, curly black hair upin a bun. While 47 escalates and the boy shrinks away from him more,she presses her cart and her brood further ahead in line. She staresin apprehension and growing disgust at the explosive anger with which47 yells at the now sobbing boy.

Saddam the casino kingkeeps rolling the toothpick back and forth from one corner of hismouth to the other, nods his head, and smiles. Other customers aredistracted, many from talking or texting on their phones, the prettygirl's kids terrified, the younger ones pressing into their mother asif maybe they'd like to go back where they came from.

47shouts, mouth wide open, flecks of spit flying as Saddam throws backhis head and starts to laugh.

Henry swallows inapprehension when a

fist-sizedarea in the center of his chest just below his collarbone feelssuddenly cold. Tingles spread out from around this cool dead area asburning pain pulsates down his midsection and out toward bothshoulders in broad bands.

Thanks to 47, the woundone no one sees is acting up for the first time in decades as Henryhears something. Like some gigantic beast bellows with rage, hoarseand ragged, baritone and shrill both at once. With the sound of theroar, he continues to feel the rhythmic throb in his torso but it nolonger hurts, churning with energy as his hand wraps around thehandle of one of several gallon jugs of purified drinking water inhis cart. The prolonged roar should be ear splitting. It shouldshatter the Wal-Bucks windows and the sliding glass doors and makethe harsh fluorescent ceiling lights explode to rain down pulverizedglass and white sparks. But it does none of those things because asHenry realizes no one but him can hear it.

Theboy struggles, both of his little hands on 47's forearms as the mangrins horribly and the boy's feet begin to leave the floor. He isbeing lifted by his head. Henry thinks about the tendons in the boy'sneck and about his spinal cord and wonders how hard this crap sack issqueezing the kid's skull.

Hecan barely hear the kid's screams above the monstrous roaring and thesoul vision suddenly takes over for the first time in memory. TheLatina mother has a fair amount of bright blue, designating lifeforce and humanity. There are pink-purple splotches that signifyhealed injury to her soul and blobs of red where she is currentlydamaged. She has her patches of shadow like anyone but Henry likesher.

Heside steps around his shopping cart and moves forward with the waterjug, each fall of his boots a prolonged somehow distant andthundering process. It is as if he witnesses his own actions.

Saddam's soul ishideous, churning grey brown muck, as is 47's. Almost devoid of thered light of pain or the blue indicating inner life. The boy's soulreveals a gaping wound of angry red that runs down the front of historso.

Thepretty mother gazes at Henry with wide eyes as she wraps a handprotectively around several of her cringing children and continues topress her cart and her whole brood forward, displacing the customersahead of her who have started to reluctantly spread out like a herdfrightened away from a watering hole. She is beautiful in a classicRenaissance way.

Henry raises the waterjug rapidly, swinging it toward 47. "Jug for a thug," he thinks.The roar explodes inside his skull and courses through every cell ofhis body and helps to drive his muscles in the act he performs. Hehas not heard from "Mother" in a very long time.

Thegallon jug strikes the back and side of 47's ugly reptilian head andbursts, water spattering as the man falls back, his bulging eyessqueezed shut, mouth wide in shock like he might start bawling. Theboy with his deeply injured soul falls away, sliding across thesmooth floor on his side.

Henrykeeps toward the thug and they go down to take out the rack full ofgum and candy and trading cards, small personal flashlights, andother knick-knacks. People, with their ugly souls and their injuredones and their healed areas and their beautiful human essences andall of these things in infinite combinations, scream and shout andcurse as they are displaced in the next aisle over by the fallingracks; candy and gum and trinkets spilling out everywhere. Sometumbling bystanders take out the next rack of stuff at theneighboring checkout line like dominoes.

Theyboth get back to their feet as the roar reverberates in his skull. Anold black and white stop action movie scene flits into his mind ofKing Kong grappling with a tyrannosaurus.

47sneers at Henry, looking psychotic and driven by amphetamines, hishead and shirt soaked. Henry plows toward him, the shattered emptyplastic jug skittering from his hand as 47 reaches into his backpocket. His long veiny muscular arm sweeps up then comes down towardHenry in a blur just before Henry body slams him to the floor anddrives his large fists into 47's small firm gut.

Itfeels like his cranium has become a pressure cooker, his brainboiling with rage and adrenaline and Mother's terrible voice. Crimsondroplets rain down on 47 and a flap hangs off the side of his ownface, deep beet red spattering from it, more so each time he sinks afist into this scumbag's stomach below him. Several pairs of coldfirm hands suddenly snake through Henry's arm pits to hoist himforcibly upward and jerk him back as other men grab the screaming 47and drag him away, his face now smeared with blood.

Henry is processingthat the bloody flap is his own flayed cheek as he becomes dizzy andgoes over onto his back. The hands of strangers slow his descent tothe floor, a pillow still in its clear plastic wrapp­er slippedunder his head. He notices Saddam stumbling backward with both handsclasping at his fake hair which he has managed to put back in placemore or less backward. Or is it sideways?

Thebeautiful Latina holds a dark blue bath towel to Henry's cheek. Thesensations of the wound and the roaring and the soul vision havestopped. He makes the absurd observation that a price tag stilldangles from a corner of the bath towel on one of those littlelengths of plastic that runs through both sides and has to be cut orsnapped apart or melted with a lighter to remove it. A woman sobs andpeople gasp and chatter and shout.

Theyoung Renaissance mother gazes down. "He had a knife," she says,applying pressure to the right side of his face with the darkeningtowel. The loose flap of meat has begun to scream pain like a rapidlyapproaching locomotive and his face feels hot as a fair amount ofblood trickles down to gurgle into the opening for his right ear. "Anambulance is on the way. He had a knife and he cut you but you'regonna be okay."

Shelooks horrified and pale, yet still beautiful. As everything becomesquiet and dark and peaceful, Henry finds it easy to imagine that theyoung mother holding the towel as well as his severed cheektohisface might be an angel. Then pain and fear and thoughts fade aseverything goes black.