CHAPTER FORTY

Falling

 

HEAVEN BREAKS APART like a cookie crumbling in a man’s grip. Shards and fragments. Golden discs and severed wires.

Cason falls, and so does his son.

They find one another in the whipping winds. Pieces raining down all around them. Angel bodies tumble. Cason holds his child tight as they turn and tilt and rocket downward, the boy wailing, now, sobbing at these moments—Cason doesn’t know what’s happening, or where they’re going, but he knows this isn’t good. He thinks, this must be what it’s like to fall out of a plane, to have it break apart and to plummet to the earth below. A fear that gives way to peace assails him. He whispers in his son’s ear, tells him it’ll all be fine. Even though he knows that it won’t.

Something grabs him, lashes around him.

And pulls him back up.

 

 

HE AND THE boy are drawn up through what feels like Hell’s asshole. It’s soft and hot and burns the skin and—

They both belch up out of a puddle of blood and onto the floor.

Nearby lays a minister’s corpse.

Cason gasps, grabs Barney, scoops him up and covers his eyes. All he says is, “We’re here. We’re home. It’s okay. Shh. Shhhh.”

There stands Psyche, looking frazzled and freaked out.

And Tundu sits on a nearby pew. Gut-shot. Gray-skinned. Eyes staring ahead, empty. Dead as dead.

“Oh, shit,” Cason says, feeling his own tears starting to well up.

Except, then Tundu gasps. His body stiffens. Eyes roll around in his head like loose marbles.

“He’s still alive,” Psyche says. “I’ve tried to soothe his mind. Calm his shock. But he needs a hospital soon, or he’s going to die.”

Cason nods. “I... okay. I don’t know how.”

“I’ll take him,” she says. Wings erupt from her back.

“My wife. She’s... out there somewhere. I need her.”

Psyche touches his brow.

He can see Alison. Out there. In the corn. Sobbing over—

My own corpse.

He knows just where she is. He kisses his son’s cheek, tells the boy it’s time to go see Mommy, and it’s time to go home.