Hearts in Purgatory

Prologue

Book One: Prologue: Robert
 
***Gold Rush Country, Sierra Nevadas, California, Fall 1851***
 
He awoke to utter darkness.  He furrowed his brow in concentration trying to remember where he was.  Had he been asleep? Suffering temporary amnesia? Was it considered amnesia if one did indeed remember one’s own name? Robert Smith Tardot III.
 
Though his surroundings were presently unknown, Robert could somehow sense that he was nestled into tight quarters.  The air pressure indicated a limited space of about two inches around his entire body. The stale air around him felt heavy, dead, and it smelled of pine and wood lacquer.  Curious.  As Robert moved a hesitant hand forward to test, he found that, alas, he must have been mistaken because his thick palm swiped in front of him without any resistance.  Very curious.  Next, Robert sat up by lifting his torso at ninety degrees and found that even with this new vantage point, he was still nestled in darkness.  It was like swimming through wool blankets. Making an effort to stand, Robert finally broke through to the cool night air. Heavy stars greeted him from above.  The boughs of an oak tree cast a jagged line across an oblong nearly-full moon, as if it was a cracked dinner plate held above in shame for all to see.  
 
Feeling out of sorts, Robert initially made a move to run through his practiced tics: rebalance the top hat, twirl the end of his mustache, and adjust his monocle.  But he stopped those urges in order to look around himself instead. He spun his head as if on a swivel, slowly peering left and then right. Robert realized that he was situated in one of his most favorite places on God’s good Earth, the Hangtown City Cemetery.  
 
This site had earned recognition in his heart and mind for a few good reasons.  Firstly, this cemetery, commissioned about a year ago in the fall of 1850, was one of his greatest achievements on the road to becoming the most eligible candidate for town mayor.  Secondly, the cemetery was a peaceful spot to write poetry. Lastly, and probably most importantly, it was the location where Robert had met the love of his life, Ms. Morgwena Tempest.  Though Robert was thankful to be here in a beloved locale, it was rather odd to be settled into an open grave in the middle of the night. How had he gotten here? 
 
Blinking quickly, Robert tried to remember how he had stumbled into this hole in the ground.  After climbing out, Robert raised a hand to stroke his long red mustache. The motion was a habit that he often did while deep in thought, contemplating his mathematical proofs or grasping for the right word for his prose.  Except this time, Robert’s fingers ran straight through the exaggerated arm of the left side of his mustache as if it did not exist at all. He tried again, and this time his entire hand passed freely through that part of the air that was his face.  In horror, Robert raised his right hand to regard it, utterly shocked to find a see-through green and ghoulish limb tipped with twiddling ghostly fingers.
 
“Ahhh!” he squawked and fell backwards.  Heart pounding, Robert ended up back in the hole in the ground; his insubstantial eyes widened as he realized he was once again nestled in what appeared to be a pine box coated with that pungent lacquer.  However, the earth was not open at all like he had previously thought; he had slipped through the layers of dirt like he was entering a swimming hole. This was a coffin inside a covered grave that he had awoken within!
 
Disbelief motivated him to jump up!  He was up and away from the plot in the ground, running, running, running towards the iron gates that marked the cemetery entrance.  Robert saw the gate halfway open and made that his target. His body was thwarted, however, when he tried to pass that familiar threshold; Robert was literally thrown in the opposite direction he wanted to go, as if he was a drunkard being tossed out from a Hangtown saloon.  He looked up from the sodden ground, wet from the light fog and damp layer of oak leaves. It was a wetness he could not feel. Brow creased in confusion, he sneered at the gate, “Fiddlesticks and rubbish!”
 
Righting himself, his logical brain reasoned that a slower approach to the open gate should shed some light on this inconsistency.  Unfortunately, it was not to be. A delicate touch to the iron gate provided the same outcome. He could not pass. The six-foot-four man pushed on an invisible line that he could not cross no matter how insistent he pressed against it.  Further inspection showed that the entire cemetery provided an impenetrable border. He felt like a pantomime at the state fair, running his hands along a transparent but very real barrier. What in tarnation…?!  For many minutes, Robert studied the perimeter of the graveyard’s premises looking for a weakness, astounded beyond belief that he was quite literally stuck to this site.  
 
He tried kicking a tombstone in frustration, but his leg went right through it.  Robert, a well-off thirty-year-old entrepreneur from San Francisco who had been in the prime of his life was now trapped in a ghostly form that could seemingly move undetected through any solid object.  He tried it over and over again; his hands passed right through the large gnarled trunk of a white oak. A line of shrubs near the front gate offered no resistance to his long gait. Only the perimeter of the cemetery seemed to give him trouble.  Even descending into the layers of earth would not allow him to burrow under the fencing. Similarly, floating up above the gate was not an option because an invisible ceiling halted his advances that way.
 
Standing back by the gate, Robert stared longingly at the other side wondering if he would ever get to leave.  Working himself into a panic, Robert shouted, “Gwinnie!” which was a pet name for his wife Morgwena. Where was she and why was he here all alone?  Usually, the two of them shared the solitude of the cemetery together. Again, Robert screamed for his wife; choppy images of their wedding flashed into his mind.  They had married in a private ceremony just two days prior. Yet lately, she had become too tied up in her profession and had let her work come between them. The past few weeks they had quarreled.
 
Robert’s memory slowly came crashing back into his ghostly grey matter in fits and spurts.  Her profession was truly unique. In fact, Gwinnie was unlike anyone he had ever met. Robert’s dear wife was not human.  She was special, otherworldly. This was something he could barely believe when he had found out and yet at the same time, had known from the moment they met.  A demoness; she was a storm demoness of close to two-thousand years old. Gwinnie’s job as a soul catcher for Lucifer had been even more incredulous and had caused friction throughout their relationship.  Why could not his wife stand down from her duties and slip into the life of mortals? They loved each other, was that not enough?
 
Apparently not because here Robert stood alone.  Alone and dead. His attention settled on the tombstone above where he awoke and to his dismay, it was carved with his name.  How had he died? Looking down at his tweed suit, Robert choked in horror to see a large blood stain right under his rib cage. The dried blood was but a shadowy green circle against his specter form.  Robert’s mind swirled trying to connect the dots; recollection just a sliver away from his grasp.  

He tried to prod at his incorporeal wound and was flustered when his own hands passed through his chest.  From what he could see, it had been made with a knife or some type of sharp object; it was not a bullet hole.  Robert’s memory failed at this point. He absently and ineffectively stroked at his wound in small circles trying to remember what had transpired to lead him to this moment.  Then in aggravation, he reached up to tug on his once-coppery curls which were now a translucent chartreuse. His hair could not be clutched; he was like smoke waving at a fog bank.
 
“No, no, no! Gwinnie! GWIIIIIINNNNIIIEEEE!” he hollered into the quiet night.
 
Anger rolled inside Robert.  He may be insubstantial, but he still had feelings.  Robert turned about himself and focused on a tombstone.  His wrath, his sorrow, his disbelief that this was his fate became a force that pushed outwards from his incorporeal body.  The large stone grave-marker was like a tree that had been chopped at the base, twisting as it fell. The tombstone crashed backwards, smashing into the soft, oak leaf-lined earth.  

Had he done that with his mind?  Turning a hundred-and-eighty degrees, Robert launched more of his emotional upset at a set of matching tombstones. The two went careening away as if they were wooden blocks knocked over by a toddler caught in the throes of a tantrum.  Telekinesis.  Robert’s ghoulish eyes widened in surprise at what he had wrought, but he recovered quickly.  

How could this have happened to him?  In desperation, his hand shot up towards the heavens, a jagged gesture to God that reminded him of Gwinnie’s lightning bolts.  As a storm demoness, she could control the weather and often rode within the lightning as a mode of transportation.    

Why was he stuck here as an apparition?  Why had he failed to move on towards heaven or hell?  Then a memory came flooding back to him. The Light had called to him, beckoning him to leave this world and to move his spirit onwards in its journey, but Robert had ignored it.  He remembered the warm tugging pull of the Light as it had sparkled down on him, but he also remembered Gwinnie on her knees, crying for him. Robert had turned away from the Light and had chosen to stay on Earth.
 
More frustration fueled him.  He focused on the nearest white oak—trying to grind his non-existent molars, bulging his phantom eyes—until the tree toppled against the iron gate of the cemetery.  With the sounds of metal squealing, tree branches snapping, and a hellish rustling of tens of thousands of leaves kissing the ground, Robert was about to destroy more of this place when her heard her voice…
 
“R-R-Robert?”
 
Her lilt had him pin wheeling, turning to look at her.  “Gwinnie?” he hissed loudly.
 
“I… I can barely hear you, I can’t see you, but I can sense you.  Faintly. Where are you?” she breathed, her voice hitching. “Please tell me I have gone mad?”  Her stormy blue eyes darted about, searching.
 
Robert closed his eyes and concentrated, pouring all his emotions into it, but instead of throwing them outwards, he focused them inwards.  Miraculously, he was able to turn more substantial. His eyes opened to see his hands had filled in with dulled color. 
 
He knew the moment Gwinnie saw him; her eyes widened and her mouth fell open on a small gasp.  “Is it really you?” she questioned, seeming to ask the fates instead of Robert specifically.
 
Robert groaned and relaxed back into a nearly-invisible state.  Holding a solid existence was entirely too taxing. He regarded his wife; she had lost weight.  She seemed disheveled; her blonde hair lay flat against her head, exposing her small tawny horns and her normally kohled eyes and rouged cheeks were pale.  “Gwinnie, it is I, your husband Robert. Seems I have traded in my flesh and bones for a phantom form, my own dedicated gravesite, and some intriguing powers…”