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It feels like an anti-climax, all things considered.
John sits in the passenger seat of his own car—because, God knows he’s far too tired to drive or do much of anything besides press his cheek against the cold glass of the window and let the world fade into static—soaked to the bone from rain and shivering despite the heat being on full blast. He’d faced down his worst fears, seen Hell on Earth and come out on the other side, and now he’s here. Heart still beating, a bone deep ache still resounding dully through his entire body, because he’s still alive, despite it all.
He’s still alive and he doesn’t know what to do now.
He’d thought about it the entire time he was stuck in that forsaken place deep below, what he’d do if God would just let him live a day longer—all of the amends he’d make, all of the places he’d visit before it was too late, all of the things he never did because he thought he’d have more time. It was easier when he thought he’d never live to see the sun rise again in the morning, when he thought he’d be giving up his life to purify the world if just a little bit.
It’s all too much to process all at once. Even with his whole life ahead of him—no matter how short it might be—he doesn’t know if he’ll ever make sense of it all. And so for now, he closes his eyes and rests.
Tomorrow will come, he’s convinced himself finally, and he’s earned his rest.
—
John awakes again finally to an elbow jabbing him in the ribcage. He groans, dragging a heavy hand over his eyelids and leans back further into the stiff headrest. He feels like he’s been struck by a train and one look in the side view mirror confirms he looks like he has, too.
“I know, I know,” Lisa says from beside him and elbows him again, gentler this time, “There’ll be time for that later, John. Get up.”
It’s a herculean effort just to reach out and push the passenger side door open, let alone drag himself out of it.
“Are you alright? Can you walk?” Her hand hovers over his side, ready to catch him if he takes a spill. It feels like when they were still just naive kids ready to take on the world side by side if only for a moment.
“I’m okay. You don’t need to worry about me,” John says, leaning heavily on the car door because he doesn’t trust the way his legs wobble and threaten to give out on him.
“Ha, yeah right. I’ll stop worrying when you can walk in a straight line again, scrawny.”
Despite his reassurances, Lisa wraps her arm around his side and shoulders some of his weight as they walk together.
When the last surviving remnants of sleep finally start to fade from John’s eyes, he sees a glowing motel sign lighting up the darkness. Vacancy Open blinks and flickers against the night sky and he can hear the hum of electricity all around them.
Lisa holds out a room key for John to see. “It’s less than ideal, but it’s a place to stay for the night. God knows we deserve a good rest after everything we’ve been through.”
The walls in their room reek of nicotine, the air is stuffy and stagnant with the broken ceiling fan, and the lamp flickers when left on for too long, but like Lisa said, it’s a place they can rest. John lays back into the single bed in the room, body sinking all too easily into the mattress like it might swallow him whole. He stares up at the ceiling, tracing the popcorn pattern with his eyes and bidding sleep to overtake him when he hears the motel room door creak open again.
“Stay here,” Lisa says, halfway out the door again, “I’ll be back.”
A “Please don’t go” dies in John’s throat, pathetic and desperate. Rationally, he knows the nightmare is finally over. Rationally, he knows that Lisa will be back, but he can’t shake the fear that she’ll disappear from beyond his grasp if he takes his eyes off of her. This world is cruel, John knows that better than anyone else, but there are a great many things in it that are worth protecting.
Lisa is one of them.
When Lisa returns, she plops down on the bed next to him, making the box springs creak and whine. And then, she pelts John in the face with a bag of chips.
“Hey!” John bats the bag off his face with a laugh.
“Aha!” Lisa looks all too proud of herself, brilliant in the low, dying light. “Looks like I dragged a smile out of you. Looks like there might still be hope for you yet, preacher.”
“Oh, please. I’m not that bad.” John manages to sit up slightly, resting his elbow against his pillow so that he can look at her and her smug grin.
In response, Lisa presses her freezing cold hands against the back of John’s neck until he squirms away from her and places his hands up defeatedly.
“Okay, okay. I get it!”
“I knew you’d come around.” Lisa shifts, sitting cross legged beside him on the bed and pushes the bag of chips and a bottle of soda in his direction again. “You should eat. It’s been a long night.”
John can’t remember the last time he had a decent meal. Molly had always chided him for forgetting to take care of himself and then after she left… Well, he didn’t exactly want to think about that.
Food sounds wonderful to his half-starved mind and his aching body, but he doesn’t know if he can force himself to stomach it. Just the smell makes his stomach churn.
Still, he knows he should and so he takes the bottle of soda and twists the bottle cap off. The fizziness fights away the dry and bitter taste left in his mouth. “Surprised you didn’t shake the bottle before giving it to me.”
“Oh, please, you make me sound like such a villain,” Lisa says, taking a sip of her own drink, “That’d never work, anyway, I pulled that one on you too many times as a kid. You know all my tricks.”
Nausea gnaws at John’s nerves even as he forces himself to finish the bag of stale chips and then washes it down with soda. He appreciates the gesture even if it makes his skin crawl.
“They really need to work on their selection,” Lisa says conversationally, tossing her empty bag of pretzels to the side and narrowly missing the trashcan in the corner, “They were out of all of the good stuff.”
“How dare their vending machines not be fully stocked at three in the morning,” John says sarcastically, his balled up empty bag joining Lisa’s on the floor next to the trash can.
“I know.” Lisa does a fake indignant roll of her eyes. “The audacity. Don’t they know some of us just got done saving the world.”
There’s a moment of calm that John hasn’t felt in God knows how long as they sit together in the darkened room. Pale moonlight trickling through the half-closed curtains is the only light, casting harsh shadows upon the both of them. Everything is still, alive but resting.
“Thank you, Lisa.”
“Don’t mention it.” She shrugs and lays back against the pillow. “Get some rest. We’ll figure out something in the morning.”
—
The nightmare that’s haunted John ever since he made the mistake of entering that damned house is finally over. He’s defeated The Unholy Trinity and the world is safe, for now. But in his mind, it’s still all too real.
In his dreams, he still sees Amy, vengeful and angry and in pain. God, he couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her. He dreams of portals to Hell, of being back in the decrepit remains of the Martin family home, of being drugged and strapped down onto a gurney, of monsters that lurk in the forest and that sink their teeth into his flesh until he’s nothing but a bloody splatter against the grass.
And he awakens all at once, bolting upright with sweat dripping down his forehead and heart beating a mile a minute. He shakes, chest convulsing and heaving like he’s about to throw up the first meal he’s eaten in days. The hotel room in front of him is gone, darkness pulled taut over his vision, leaving only him, alone and burning in Hell.
“John! John! It’s okay, I’m here with you!”
Things come back to John slowly. His mind struggles to fit words with meaning, to separate reality and fantasy. There’s another heartbeat in the room, beating just as fast and frantically as his own and there’s a warm set of arms wrapped around him, shaking him, trying to bring him back down from the ledge. Lisa’s there, with him, like always.
“I’ve got you,” she says, low and quiet, words meant for John and John alone, “You’re going to be okay.”
John wraps his arms around her in return, feeling the warm pulse in her neck against his own. The nightmare is over and they’re both alive, but he’ll never be safe again.
John breathes in deeply and then shatters all at once, going limp in Lisa’s arms. They fall together, sinking deep into the mattress in a messy tangle of limbs. His face buries deep into her shoulder, muffling a broken hiccuping sob that’s been a long time coming. They hold onto each other almost painfully tight, clinging desperately like how a drowned man claws at the water’s surface.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispers again, nails digging into his back through his robe, “I got you. We’re safe.”
He wishes he could believe that.
Even so, he pulls away from her—a leap of faith that she will still be there when his grip breaks—and wipes uselessly at the tears clouding his eyes. It feels like a dam finally breaking loose after years of cracks spreading through the foundation. It’s been a long time coming.
Lisa grabs for his hand again, sitting heavy and calloused against her smooth palms, and waits. There’s a second where neither of them move or even breathe.
“John, please tell me what’s wrong,” Lisa pleads, reciting the words like a desperate prayer, “Let me in. I want to understand.”
“I don’t… I don’t want to scare you.”
Lisa almost laughs at that. It’s such a stupid, selfless thing to say that’s just so much like him that it hurts. They’ve been to the gates of Hell together and stared the Devil in the face and he doesn’t want to scare her.
“John.” Lisa leans in so close that John can feel her breath on his neck. “After everything we’ve seen tonight, you think you’re going to be the thing that scares me off?”
“Molly… She couldn’t… She wanted to help me, she really did, but… It was too much for her.” It’s the first time John’s told anyone about this and it feels like a weight off his chest to finally admit it. They loved each other very much for what had felt like a lifetime and yet what happened to John in that house drove them apart in a way they could never recover from. He cared too much about Lisa to risk committing the same mistake again.
“I’m not Molly. I want to help you, John, but I need you to let me in. Show me.”
John’s breath hitches in his throat as he rolls up his sleeve, exposing a myriad of scars marring his flesh. Her cool fingers curl around his arm, examining each scar with reverence. She presses her index finger along a jagged scar that stretches the length of his forearm and then brings it to her lips, planting a gentle kiss on the damaged tissue.
“How did this happen?”
He could still feel the phantom pains from when it had happened, when vicious teeth had torn his flesh to ribbons, when all he had to defend himself was his faith. He could still feel the demon’s viscous saliva dripping onto his skin as it towered over him. “There was a monster in the forest in Sterling.”
Lisa nods, her fingers continuing to trail upward still until she reaches a smaller scar on the side of his wrist. Again she kisses the scar with the same amount of care one would use when handling a precious antique. “And this one?”
“In the abandoned clinic. It looked almost human.”
There will never be a time where these stories don’t carry a tremendous weight for him, but speaking them aloud, allowing himself to admit what happened and what he survived through, helps.
“I see.” Lisa moves to his other arm, rolling up his sleeve carefully. She trails lightly over a fresh bruise, green and purple against his skin. Her lips leave a parade of kisses up his arm. She doesn’t even have to ask this time.
“That one’s from one of the cultists. Still aches.”
“I bet,” Lisa says gently, “You’ve lived such a life, John. Make your survival mean something.”
There’s a great many things John could say, but instead he just says “I still can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.”
Lisa lets John’s arm drop into his lap and opts to cup his face with both her hands. She gently thumbs over his eyelids, brushing away any surviving tears and he leans into her touch. “I’m real, John. Do you believe me?”
He does. More than he’s ever believed in anything else before.
“I do.” His hand reaches for hers on his cheek and their fingers intertwine. “We both should be dead… but we’re not.”
Lisa laughs quietly, leaning in further. “We’ve never been very good at doing what we’re told, have we? Even as kids.”
“Back there, I was certain that I would die and I had made peace with that fact. I thought… if my life could prevent a great darkness from being unleashed upon this world… then it would be worth it. My death would not be in vain. And yet, I’m… glad I survived.”
“What happened down there?”
“I don’t know,” John admits. The memories were fuzzy and scrambled in his mind, like a broken collage of images and sounds. What he did know, however, is that Divine Intervention was the only reason he survived his trial of faith. “But I wasn’t alone. I had to keep fighting to protect the ones that I love. I had to hold on until I was thrown off.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you survived too. You deserve to be happy.”
“I’m glad you survived as well, Lisa. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. Knowing that you’re real, that you’re alive, is more than enough for me.” He closes his eyes again, dropping his forehead to meet hers.
—
They stay up until the sun begins to fracture the horizon, hues of blazing orange and pink creeping in through the motel window.
The Earth is still spinning, the sun is still rising to pierce the darkness, and for a moment everything is okay.