CHAPTER 7

The convulsive retching stopped, Joe wanting nothing more than to collapse to rest of the way into the mud. He'd done it. He'd killed Frank. Oh God. The squelching tug at his forearms invited him to sink into the ground, let the remaining keres absolve him from the enormity of what he'd done.

The spirits slinked about Frank for a moment, disappointed whimpers escaping their throats. The prize they'd been waiting to claim no longer drew breath. The dead unfit...

Their confusion slowed the transfer of their fury to Joe, brain capacities slowly accepting that the younger Hardy might be injured, but he was clearly among the living.

In the end it was their violence that ironically saved Joe, unwanted survival instinct ending his detachment and forcing him back into the fight. The first of the women launched at him just as Joe tried to stand, causing her to overshoot her intended grip on the bowed neck and instead skitter claws down his exposed back. The surprised spirit thumped onto the ground behind Joe, rearing her head just in time to meet the bullet he'd spun to fire.

The winged creature crumpled, but the spin cost Joe his balance allowing the other to bear him back to the ground. Why aren't they gone? Frank's g-gone. The nearer shadow lunged in toward his exposed throat; the younger brother instinctively dipping his chin to minimize the target. He thrust his weaker left arm under the snapping teeth, prying her head upward, straining to reposition his gun. Clawed nails raked across his previously bitten shoulder, hurt sharpening his attention. He fired again, reducing the number to one.

The last of the keres circled Joe, iridescent obsidian wings outstretched, almost wary without her sisters.

"Afraid now?" Joe hissed the words between clenched teeth, desperate to be rid of her and get to his brother. He struggled to reload the musket, finally releasing a last shot. "You should be."

The moment she exhaled a last breath, the forms of all the spirits began to fade, carcasses dimming into translucent grey shadows and then dissolving into the dirt. Livid red eyes lingered a second longer, disembodied accusing stares fixed on Joe before they sank into the earth.

Joe rolled to his hands and knees, grief too heavy to push himself up any further. No matter as long as he could crawl to Frank. He stopped a few feet away, almost afraid to touch the mangled still form. Something nudged him to extend shaking fingers to Frank's neck, resting against a pulse that wasn't there.

The focus of the fight left him once more, shuddering breaths wracking his frame as he rocked back to sit on the ground, pulling his brother's corpse against his chest. Uninjured right arm wrapped tight around him, left fingers twining in the short dark hair to support the lolling head.

I did this. I killed you. You trusted me and instead I killed you. I thought by morning you'd be dead or I'd be a murderer. How could it have come to both? I sorry, I'm so very, very sorry...

She watched from the trees, realizing Joe remained unaware of her presence. Intruding seemed cruel, perhaps even vulgar, but she wasn't sure how much more Joe could take. How much more she could take.

"Joe?" Her approach was silent, the word nearly so. "Joseph?"

A tightening of his jaw was the only sign he might have heard her.

"Joseph?"

He lifted his forehead from where it rested against Frank's hair. Solitary tear track on his cheek, he lifted empty eyes to hers, unseeing. "Nessa? That you?" Tell me I wasn't too late, Frank. I figured it out too late, let the keres hurt you. She can't help you now. You're gone. G-gone, and it's my fault. All my fault, all of it…..

"Joe?" Her palm on his face went unnoticed. He didn't move until her fingers strayed lower, back of her hand grazing over the bruise on Frank's jaw. The reaction to that was instantaneous, Joe suddenly rolling sideways to place himself between them, half covering Frank's body with his own.

"Don't. touch. him." The voice was low, fierce. She wasn't Vanessa. She couldn't have Frank.

"Joe!" She retreated a step, hands open and spread wide, grey dress trailing in the churned mud. She froze until she was certain he had truly seen her this time. "Joe? You have to let me look at him."

Slowly he sat back up, again propping Frank against him before offering her a single clipped nod. The living sculpture from the crypt. He wasn't quite willing to label her an angel.

She dropped to her knees, fingers ghosting over Joe's bloodied shoulder before turning her attention to the dead man at her feet. His skin was already taking on a dulled yellow cast, but he was still warm beneath the soft hand that sought out his injuries. The torn skin from his left hand now paled in comparison to the crooked bone twisting his right forearm, the deep gouges crisscrossing the bare chest. A rip in his pants offered a glimpse of teeth marks in his thigh. She frowned as she finally turned to the bullet hole.

"I too late, wasn't I?" Joe closed his eyes, dreading her answer.

"W-what?" She drew a quick breath at the evident pain in his voice. "No, Joe. Not too late. I … I just" She forcibly reminded herself that the brothers didn't know her although she knew them. "I'm just sorry, that's all."

"Then you can…?" He held his breath, needing the reassurance as everything within him teetered on the brink, one path cautiously trying to hope, the other a despair that would eventually solidify his soul to stone.

"Yes. Not yet, but yes." She risked a small smile as blinked away a few tears of her own. "We need to get him out of here. I'll get his feet."

"No!" Joe grabbed her wrist before she could slide her arm below Frank, then released it just as quickly, trying to rein in a resurgent protectiveness he didn't quite understand. "Sorry. I got him though, ok?"

"Sure Joe. It's ok." She watched as Joe struggled to balance his brother against his uninjured shoulder, standing slowly as he remembered he'd have to keep all the weight on his right leg. Saw his eyes stray to the uphill climb through the trees to the house. "Maybe I could help at least a little?"

"Uh, yeah." He was grateful she accepted his need to be the one to carry Frank, even when it was obvious he couldn't. Not up that bank anyway. He tried to shift Frank's torso against his own, but gave up with a grunt.

She nodded, accepting half Frank's weight as tactfully as she could.

Long minutes later Joe collapsed back on the divan, tugging Frank's body with him. In spite of the hope the ah, whatever she was, offered, the sensation of holding the cooling corpse threatened to overwhelm him.

He glared at the room they'd left such a short time ago, limp form in his arms. It felt like longer. Before was on the other side of a gaping divide that he knew would be there forever, no matter the outcome of this night. An hour ago was on the other side of before Frank died. Before Joe killed him.

"So how do we do this?" His free hand plowed through his hair. His mind wouldn't leave what it would feel like to surrender yourself to agents of Hades only to look up in time to see your own brother fire the shot that kills you. "Please…" The tremors he'd avoided for hours fought their way to the surface for an instant as he hung his head.

She knelt beside Joe, a hand resting on his knees. "Intentionally or not, this land is tied to the men who died violently here and all of you opened that up when you brought the soldiers back to life."

"But we didn't. It's just costumes."

"It still looked that way to the keres, apparently, and then your father opened a conduit." Her hands moved to cup his face, a tenderness in her countenance that undermined her earlier words. She hadn't adopted Vanessa's eyes and voice by chance. "Go close it while I see to Frank."

"I'm supposed to leave him like this?" Joe waited, flinching when he saw her nod. "Can you stay with him?"

She hesitated, knowing he was reluctant to go. "I can. Leave him with me."

Leave him with me. This was hard, harder than anything other than aiming that gun at his brother and pulling the trigger. He fingered the edge of the stained waistcoat, reluctantly brushing over the mottled gray skin. "I'll be right back, Frank, I swear." He choked back everything else he wanted to say, eyes closed.

####

"Mary, Mary won't you help this man

Take his troubled soul into your hands

Cause all this dyin', it ain't meant to be

Lord if it is please won't you come for me

Here I go out to St. Joseph's

Watchin' Georgia pass me by

I had a friend come up and get me

Made him drive so I could cry"

#####

'Hey all you fellow insomniacs out there that's Curnutte and Maher from back in '91 with Mary, Mary. It's 4:52am and I for one am headed for another meeting with my good friend Mr. Coffee. I'll be right back with some CCR after these fine messages from quisinart…'

Joe cranked the radio up another notch, the fatigue of the night encroaching on the edge of his vision. It wasn't far to the gate house at the entrance to estate, but he'd still opted to take his car to collect the shovels from storage there. He didn't want to be gone any longer than absolutely necessary.

"Frank?"

Silence.

"Frank, you ok?"

A searing pain rocked through Joe's slumber, not from his physical state but from the realization that he'd just called out for his brother. His dead brother. The one he'd killed himself. No, no, no, no, no,no,nononononoooooo…..

"FRANK!"

Joe's eyes shot open, the screaming in his mind giving way to the crunch of gravel and metal shearing against stone. Realizing the GTO was no longer moving, he let his head flop back on the seat, staring unseeing at the roof through clipped panting, willing the thumping in his head to subside.

The pounding against his ribs stilled to a more tolerable speed, allowing Joe to open the car door. His first try to climb out failed, leading to a more deliberate second attempt. Twisting a handful of linen pant leg into his left hand, he hoisted the leg out of the car, settling his boot in the pea sized stones before lurching the rest of the way out. He leaned heavily on the car, willing his stomach into acceptable behavior. He remembered he was driving when the dream started and being stopped when it ended. The actual stopping part, not so much. What happened?

He made his way around the front of the pontiac, discovering two things. First, although he had wrecked it, the damage was minimal, a wrinkled front quarter panel that left it completely drivable. Second, there was no need to drive anywhere. The single working headlight joined the early morning light to reveal what had halted the progress of the wayward vehicle. Joe had crashed into a tall cemetery headstone. He was back.

Joe grabbed the shovel from the back seat and scanned the tombstones, the carved letters fading from more than distance as his gaze traveled to the center. Clearly older that direction. Slipping among the stone ghosts of the graveyard, he easily spotted the mausoleum at the center. The white granite walls were roughened by decades of lichen, grime, and vines obscuring the archaic inscriptions, but the grey carved angel on top was not to be found. Not like I don't know where she is.

Filling in the crevice in the ground behind the crypt occupied more time than hoped, the trench wider than it had been when Fenton stuck his foot in there. Finally, Joe scraped enough loose soil together to seal the earth, tamping it down with a myriad of thumps and stomps worthy of a percussive dance troop. Nothing else was coming through there. Yeah, Stomp versus the underworld, live on tour...

The headache's a little better. Strange how your first thought can be so mundane when you're sprawled face up in graveyard earth just before sunrise. He hadn't meant to rest. Joe pushed himself up with one hand, blinking into the lightening sky. He had to get back into that dining room.

Even knowing Frank was there, the sight still stopped Joe in his tracks. A layer of ivory cloth spread over the stone tiled floor, held at each corner by a candle a foot in diameter, wicks softly flickering. Frank's corpse occupied the center, the same fabric covering him chest to knee. His skin was ghost pale, verging on silver blue, but every trace of an injury was gone.

Joe allowed his fingers to gingerly reach for the side of the still face, trembling over the unmarred skin of his neck. The bullet hole that Joe would see forever wasn't there.

"Joe?" Her whisper tentatively reached him. "You ok?"

He raised his bowed head, searching an incredibly familiar face. No stone angel stood sentinel over his brother any longer. Vanessa perched on the divan, long legs curled beneath the voluminous colonial gown.

"Nessa?" Joe reached out a hand, needing physical confirmation his wife truly sat beside him.

She saw the uncertainty there, the fluid brightness in the blue eyes. She lowered herself to the floor, palms on either side of Joe's face, and breathed a kiss across his cheek before recapturing his gaze, shuddering at the aching desperation etched there.

"It's okay, Joe. Everything's ok."