Heaven Bent E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

• Herausgeber: Pie Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Where do superstars go when they die? A special Heaven, of course, where the music and parties go on forever. But when Stag the movie star gets there, he soon discovers that all is not as it seems. Hidden horrors lurk around every corner, and every angel has a devil inside. Worst of all, a deadly menace brews in Heaven's heart, a force of pure evil about to turn both Heaven and Earth into full-on, blistering hells. When Stag learns the truth, he teams up with the greatest dead rock stars, rappers, and movie stars to take on the danger rocketing toward them...but do they stand a chance of stopping it? Angels and devils clash in an apocalyptic struggle that shakes the foundations of reality. Shocking secrets and mysteries collide, casting aside all the lies in a final conflict that could tear down Heaven and Earth...or forge a dazzling, surprising destiny in the hands of Stag and his band of superstar rebels. Don't miss this exciting novel by award-winning storyteller Robert Jeschonek, a master of hard-hitting science fiction and fantasy that really packs a punch.

Leseprobe

Heaven Bent

A FANTASY NOVEL

ROBERT JESCHONEK

HEAVEN BENT

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

www.robertjeschonek.com

Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

Subscribe to the Blastoff Books Newsletter: http://newsletter.blastoffbooks.net

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

About the Author

Special Preview: Day 9

Also by Robert Jeschonek

A Pinstriped Finger’s My Only Friend

Bloodliner

Dolphin Knight

Six Fantasy Stories Volume One

Six Superhero Stories Volume One

The Return of Alice

ChapterOne

If I'd known then what I know now, I never would have gone toward the light. Seriously. This Heaven, I could've done without.

My actual life before death was much better. I was a movie star, for cryin' out loud. I had it all.

As recently as twelve hours ago, I had it all.

"So tell me, Stag, how does it feel to be nominated for your third Academy Award?" That's what the perky blonde morning show host asked during the live interview.

"Unbelievable." I said it with my patented humble-yet-confident grin, letting the bright lights cast a glare on my teeth. Down-to-Earth, salt-of-the-Earth, salt-and-pepper hair parted on the right. "It never gets old."

"What a track record." She, Susan F., was in a New York City studio. For reasons that weren't clear to me, I was in a separate studio across town, watching her on a monitor. Doin' the ol' split-screen tango. "And with two Best Actor wins under your belt, how do you feel about chances for a third?"

"Crossing my fingers, Sue." I flashed my bright whites and showed my crossed fingers to the camera. "It would be an indescribable honor."

"We wish you the best," said Susan with her most endearing smile, as if I were family.

"Thank you, Sue." Nod and a wink. "I hope to see you at the after-party."

Aaaand cut!

"On a cold day in Hell," I added after the red light on the camera went dark.

"Screw you, too, Stag." That's what Susan F.'s voice said in my earpiece. Looks like my mic was still hot.

Not that I cared. "Love and kisses, S.F.," I told her as I unclipped the mic. Reaching under my gray sweater, I pulled the mic down and out by the cord.

As I popped out my earpiece (to the sound of her angry cursing), I saw someone open the studio door and stroll in. It was a guy--six-three, six-four--with broad shoulders, dark business suit, and red tie. High roller maybe?

"Hello?" I was irritated, because the only one walking in on me at that point should have been my manager, Shisha M. "You know I have to be at a film shoot in fifteen minutes, right?"

The guy cleared his throat. He was standing with his hands folded over his lower abdomen. "Hello." I couldn't make out his face in the shadows beyond the studio lights. "Hello, S.L."

I hopped off the stool, squinting for a look at him. "Very funny." More than a little pissed off because he was riffing on my call-people-by-their-initials routine. "What do you want?"

At that instant, somebody switched off the lights, and I saw the guy's face. For a moment, the pissed-off-ness poured right out of me.

My breath caught in my you-know-what. A cold chill rushed up my you-know-where.

That guy...

"About the film shoot." He shook his head. The hair wasn't salt-and-pepper, it was solid silver. But otherwise...identical.

To me. He could've been my twin.

"What about it?" I said, but my head was tingling. I had a feeling like very strong vertigo, like being stoned.

"Don't go back," said my twin. "Not today. Not ever."

As the initial shock wore off, I started thinking this through. I had no twin, so... "Who sent you, pal?" I straightened my back, squared my shoulders, copped a sneer. "Was it Brad? Was it Morgan? I've gotta say, you're the best Stag Lincoln impersonator I've ever seen."

My twin walked toward me, looking intense. As he got closer, I swear I could smell the ocean. "I'm begging you. Don't go back to the shoot, Willy."

My sneer turned into a frown. How could he possibly know that ancient nickname? The one I paid millions (conservatively speaking) to bury forever? "Whatever was remotely funny about this just stopped being funny." I yanked the phone out of my pocket and started punching 9-1-1.

At which point, my twin charged up and smacked the phone from my hand. "Listen to me!" Next, he hauled off and slapped me across the face. "If you go to that shoot, it's all over! Can you get that through your thick head, you arrogant ass?" He slapped me again, harder.

Where the hell was Shisha while this was happening? Where the hell was anyone? "Get your hands off me!" I pushed away from him, planning to plow my fist into the middle of his copycat kisser.

But that was when he started glowing with bright golden light. I thought I could hear a bell chiming somewhere far away.

"Last warning!" His voice was beyond urgent, beyond serious. "I'm telling you...you're telling yourself...stay away from the shoot!" He glowed brighter with each passing second. "And whatever you do, Jerry..."

He flared so bright, it was blinding, and then he was gone.

I stood there, blinking at the spots in my eyes. Wondering what the hell he'd been trying to tell me before he disappeared.

Just as I thought that, he popped back into existence in front of me, still roiling with golden glow. His voice crackled, and the bells I'd heard earlier were louder than before. "Whatever you do...don't...toward..."

I thought I heard screams between the chiming of the bells. The screams of not a few, but a multitude of people.

"Jerry!" Suddenly, his voice grew clear and strong. "Don't go toward the light!"

This time, when his glow flared and his body vanished, he didn't come back. I was left there with the echo of his words, the lingering smell of the ocean, and the tingling in my head, asking the one question that kept circling in my mind again and again.

"Was it Cameron?" I stared into space, my mouth wide open with amazement. "That was some serious 3-D, man. That had to be Cameron."

* * *

An hour later, I got out of my limo at--you guessed it--South Street Seaport, the shoot location.

For a moment, I stood and took it all in. A four-masted tall ship, the Peking, bobbed gently in the water. A vast brick building spanned the pier, filled with shops and restaurants. Bright sunlight flared off the bold orange and red awnings and umbrellas fanned out around it like plumage. The air smelled like the East River, like gasoline (from the water taxi docked at the pier?)--and like the ocean, too.

I wondered briefly if that was important.

Shisha, that redheaded fiftysomething fireplug of a manager, never stopped texting as she slid out of the limo behind me.

Did I feel a little apprehensive after the warning from my twin? Not enough to breach my contract.

Looking back, well duh, how dumb could I get? But I'd mostly convinced myself the visitation had been nothing more than an elaborate special effect arranged by a prankster. I was in a TV studio, after all. Ever hear of motion capture? No way no how was I going to call off work and give whoever was pranking me the satisfaction.

If I had a hundred bucks for every time some self-proclaimed future me showed up to complicate my life, well...I'd be rollin' in it, these days, actually. But back then, there was just that once, so the odds seemed better that it was B.S.

"Seemed" being the operative word, in retrospect.

"This Distefano character, what a peach pit!" Shisha's upper lip curled as she texted. Unattractive? I didn't hire her for her looks; I needed a bulldog, and she brought plenty of bark and bite to the dogfight. "He won't budge on the backend points."

"Sounds like a deal-breaker, Mom." She's not my mom, but I call her that anyway. I even take her out for Mother's Day because it's good to keep a bulldog happy at all times.

"Only if I minded tearing him a new one." Shisha pulled on her giant sunglasses with the leopard-print frames. "Unzip the body-bag, Larry." (That's what she calls me, though it isn't my name.) "I'm goin' in with the spear gun." She dialed the phone like she was squashing bugs on it.

I almost said something to her about my twin, but it sounded too crazy in my head to sail it out there. Anyway, why bother?

How important could it be?

"Hey, anal probe!" That's what she said to the studio boss on the phone as she waddled away from me. "You better be wearing an adult diaper right now at this moment!"

Her voice quickly faded in the ruckus of the shoot. Members of the film crew shouted from every direction as they scurried around, prepping the camera, lights, talent, and set. Extras milled around one corner of the pier, blabbing to each other and on phones while they waited. A mob of onlookers crowded the street, yelling for attention, yelling at...me. (As usual.) And let's not forget the director, D.X. (That's his full name, FYI, I didn't abbreviate.)

"Yo, Stag!" He waved me over to where he was standing, in an open section of the pier near the tall ship. "There's been a change."

"What kind of change?" I frowned. "Another rewrite?"

D.X. pushed up his black ballcap with the movie's title on the front in white letters--Lie-Jacker--and scratched his forehead. I couldn't see his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses, just the reflection of my own face. "More like an opportunity."

That exact moment was when I first heard the sound of the helicopter coming in from the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I was hanging from a cable as the helicopter lifted me up into the air. All part of the "opportunity" D.X. had mentioned.

Now, I'm not afraid of heights, and I was secured by a safety harness wired to the chopper, but still. As I rose high above the pier, then swung out over the glittering surface of the river, I felt a punch of adrenaline. My heart pounded, and the pit of my stomach clenched. My hands, protected by thin leather gloves, clamped tight around the cable.

I was really out there. My feet were perched on a big iron hook at the end of the cable, clipped to stirrups on either side--but it didn't seem like there was much between me and the void. I knew the harness and wire held me fast, but the illusion of imminent danger, of being fractions of an inch from plunging into a vast gulf of space, was powerful.

It was one of those moments when maybe it wasn't so great being Mr. Movie-Star-Who-Does-His-Own-Stunts.

But I still had no inkling whatsoever of what was coming next. It was just another day on the job to me. My twin's warning was the furthest thing from my mind.

So the helicopter kept climbing and heading out over the river. Gazing down at the crew on the pier, I saw sunlight glinting off camera lenses and cell phone screens.

The plan was this: the helicopter would swoop in from the Brooklyn Bridge toward the pier; the whole time, I'd be suspended underneath, swinging back and forth as I tried to get a bead on the pilot with the gun I was carrying. According to the script, the helicopter was packed with explosives and aiming at the pier...but just before it got there, I would appear to get off a shot that appeared to hit the pilot. The helicopter would start to wobble like it was going to crash...

...aaaaand cut.

Simple enough, no? All I had to do was hang on and shoot a pretend gun. I'd been in lots of more complicated stunts with more room for disaster.

So I sucked it up, determined to ride this puppy out. Remember the multimillion-dollar contract, remember the multimillion-dollar contract--that was my mantra.

The helicopter cruised toward the bridge, then looped around to face the pier. I swung in a gentle arc under it, buffeted by the downdraft from the rotor.

How far up were we? Three hundred feet, I guessed--higher than the Brooklyn Bridge towers, which I thought were two hundred and fifty. Fear-of-God high, let's say.

We hovered around the same point for what felt like a long moment. My hands sweated inside the gloves as I gripped the cable more tightly than ever.

Then, I heard the signal in my earpiece. "Fill your hand, Stag!" D.X. snapped the words over the radio. I knew he was watching me through his binoculars--one of the glints of light on the distant pier. "Thirty seconds, yo!"

I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and reached into the holster strapped across my chest. I drew out what looked like a perfectly ordinary Smith and Wesson revolver--in this case, a stunt gun loaded with blanks instead of .357 Magnum cartridges.

The helicopter drifted sideways as the seconds ticked away. Hanging there, in those lost beats of time, I took one last look at the view--Brooklyn sprawling to the left of me, the lower tip of Manhattan at my right...the East River flowing ahead of me, running down to the upper bay of New York Harbor. It looked so vast, so alive, so intricate...and yet so distant, so small. From my God's-eye view, suspended at a great height, it looked like a tabletop diorama spread before me, built by a lonely hobbyist to serve as his own little world. A place for him to project his hopes and dreams, to live vicariously in the million million secret nooks and crannies where an unfulfilled heart can dwell. It reminded me of another cold and distant world cobbled together to hold a lonely soul, a bitter, jaded bastard only fit to inhabit imaginary places.

It reminded me of my life, in other words. My career in film. My self. Because that's what I've gotten from twenty-two years in the movies--two Oscars and a portable fortress of solitude that follows me wherever I go. More money than I can count and less happiness than the scabbiest bum in that city out there.

That's what I was thinking as I hung there, waiting for the call. The next scene.

And then the clock ran out.

"Action!"

As the word came over my earpiece, the helicopter surged forward. I swung back on the cable as if I were riding a flying trapeze.

"Okay...okay..." D.X. was watching, timing my next cue. "Aaaand...gun up!"

Gripping the cable tightly with one hand, I raised the Smith and Wesson with the other. As the helicopter zoomed toward the pier, I aimed the barrel at the belly of the aircraft.

Clenching my jaw, I jerked the gun around as if I were fighting to get a bead. For the benefit of the distant cameras, I made the movements bigger than they had to be.

The helicopter charged ahead. We were coming up fast on the pier, on the end of the line.

"Stand by, Stag," D.X. said in my ear. "Just a few more seconds..."

I continued to jerk the gun, trying to aim at the pilot...but I couldn't get a clear line of sight from my angle below and behind the aircraft. Then, the helicopter lunged to one side, swinging me out wide, and I finally had it.

The shot. The gun-sight was lined up with the pilot's helmeted head.

At that exact second, you-know-who barked in my you-know-what. "Fire! Fire! Fire!"

I hesitated for a heartbeat, as if I could sense that this was the tipping point. As if I knew deep down that this would be the last normal second of my life.

And then my finger squeezed the trigger.

The sound of the blast roared in my ears. The recoil spun me around like a pinwheel in a tornado. As I spun, I saw the glass of the cockpit shatter, and the pilot's head buck forward in a blossom of red.

And I knew instantly, without the slightest doubt.

That gun was not firing blanks.

I spun like a stone on a string and pinched my eyes shut against the dizziness. Instantly dropping the gun, I clamped both hands on the cable.

D.X. dropped the F-bomb five times in a row in my earpiece. "Oh my God! What happened up there?"

But his voice didn't matter much to me. I was too busy hanging on as the helicopter lurched out of control. It pitched from side to side, then seemed to stabilize for an instant.

Just before it bolted hard left and plunged toward the water.

"He's going down!" said D.X., as if I needed the running commentary.

Snapping my eyes open, I saw the glittering surface of the East River spinning toward me as the helicopter spiraled out of the sky. It was coming up fast.

Things looked bad for me, but my mind still raced, straining for a plan.

"Get the rescue crew out there!" said D.X. "Hang on, Stag!"

I decided to do the opposite. Maybe I'd stand a better chance if I jumped clear instead of being pulled in with the wreckage.

Reaching under my shirt and into my pants, I released the wires from the safety harness. They sprang away from me like snipped piano wires.

So now only the single cable tethered me to the helicopter as it spiraled downward. And I had only seconds to leap free of the whole mess.

I whipped around on that cord like a tail behind the falling aircraft, waiting for the best moment to move. The lower the better, I thought; the lower I jumped, the less likely I'd be to pancake on the water's surface.

"Goodbye, Stag!" said D.X. "I'm sorry this happened!"

Just before the helicopter hit, I let go of the cable and tried to dive free. But I forgot something.

"Good luck!" said D.X. "Good luck on the other side!"

The stirrups clipped to my feet.

Instead of jumping free, I flipped forward, caught by the stirrups. Hanging upside-down, I saw the chopper break the river's surface below me.

The helicopter dove, but its momentum was cut by the splashdown. The cord leashed to it snapped me forward like a pebble in a slingshot, pitching me at the water.

Time seemed to slow down as I rocketed toward the roiling surface. The helicopter disappeared below, leaving only churning brown waves pierced by the cable.

Here it comes. That's what I thought. And then I thought of something else.

For the first time in years, I thought of my turning point, the night when I really started my climb to the top. The night when I left A.E. for dead.

"Remember," said D.X. "Go toward the light!"

And then the river parted around me, bitterly cold. And I plunged into darkness and silence.

And the breath I'd meant to hold for as long as I could rushed right out of me, and I was gone.

* * *

I came back slowly. And, at first, still in darkness and silence.

From an absence of thought, my awareness slowly coalesced. Gradually, the most rudimentary aspects of my mind drifted back into being. I began to realize, as I had before, that I existed. That I was something more than emptiness.

Then, the basic memory of who I was filtered back to me. The core of my identity gathered like iron filings around the poles of a magnet.

That was when I first saw the light.

It started as a distant, pale speck in the pitch darkness of my field of vision. Then, it slowly grew larger, expanding as if it were moving toward me. It got brighter, too, and gave off a palpable warmth.

Go toward the light. As reduced and incoherent as I was, D.X.'s words still came back to me...rose up within me as a kind of imperative. These last words I'd heard before the crash became a command for me to follow, guidance like a lifeline for me to clutch.

Go toward the light, he'd told me, and that's what I did. I willed myself to push toward it, and that accelerated its approach. It grew steadily larger until it filled my sight, flaring to envelope me in hot white brilliance.

I'd made it! I'd reached the light! It was everywhere around me, its welcome radiance blotting out the barren darkness.

So what was I supposed to do next?

I remember floating there, basking in that white warmth, happy to be aware of it, to be aware of anything after my time of nonexistence. I felt weightless, unencumbered by the bonds of a body or the physical laws of Earth, unchained from the grip of my life. So this was the afterlife, I thought. So this was Heaven.

Then, suddenly, there was a burst of pain. An explosion like a bolt of lightning ripped through me.

I fell...at least I felt like I was falling. And then, I had the distinct feeling that I had crashed.

Whoosh...then whoom. A stunning impact, as if gravity had hauled me back down out of the white firmament. As if I'd plunged back into my physical body.

And just like that, my eyes shot open.

The first thing I saw was the face of a beautiful dark-haired woman smiling down at me. Her skin was as pale as porcelain, her eyes such a bright blue that they were nearly white. Her lips were painted with diagonal black and white stripes; the stripes on the upper lip slanted one way, the stripes on the bottom slanted the other.

"Mr. Lincoln?" Her voice was high-pitched and melodic. She was haloed in light and dressed in white--white blazer and blouse--but her necktie was black-and-white-striped. "Can you hear me?"

My neck hurt when I nodded. So did my head. In fact, I quickly realized that pretty much every part of me ached.

"Good, good." Her smile widened. "How do you feel?"

I scowled and shook my head. "Lousy."

"You'll feel better soon." She winked. "This is very typical when one makes the transition. Especially the way you did."

"Transition?"

"My name is Lillian, by the way." She tipped her head to one side. "And I think you know what transition you've just made."

"Not really." I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. We were in a small, Spartan room with white everything--walls, door, ceiling, floor, table, lamp, chair. "I can barely think straight."

"I'll give you a few clues, then." Lillian leaned closer. "Pitchforks. Fiery pit. Brimstone. Eternal damnation." She raised her eyebrows. "Ring any bells?"

Things were starting to trickle back to me. I had a memory of hitting the water, hard. The full story wasn't there yet, but I remembered my lungs filling, my vision going dark. Was that death I was vaguely recalling? "Hell? You're telling me this is Hell?"

Just then, she threw her head back and laughed fiendishly...looking beautiful even then, so slender and delicate.

But the laughter didn't last. Suddenly, she stopped and snapped her head down to smile at me again. "I'm just kidding, newbie." She flicked a finger over the tip of my nose. "This is the other place."

My heart was pounding. "So I'm...I'm really..."

"You betcha." Lillian spread her arms wide. "Welcome, Stag Lincoln, to the first day of the rest of your death."

I swung my legs off the side of the bed and sat up straight. "Oh my God." I held my head in my hands and shook it. There was too much information all at once...too much to process. "This can't be...can't be..."

"Don't worry." Lillian reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "I promise, I'll help you adjust to all this...Daddy."

My hands fell away from my head. Right there, just like that, I went from too much information to total meltdown. "Did you say...?"

"Yes, I did." Lillian squeezed my shoulder again. "You'll see. Everything's going to be just fine from now on, Father."

ChapterTwo

"I never had a daughter!" That's what I said as Lillian helped me off the bed in the all-white room where I'd awakened. "This is impossible!"

"Um, no it's not." Lillian laughed and gave her long black hair a toss. "You're not going to make me explain the birds and the bees, are you, Dad?"

Standing there, I stared at her, looking for something familiar in her face. "But, see, I never had a daughter. I never had children, period."

Grinning, she pressed a finger against my lips. "That you know of."

She had a point. I did sow my share of wild oats. "Then tell me, who's your mother?"

Lillian shook her head. "That's a secret. I'll tell you later." She took me by the arm and led me toward the door. "For now, we need to get you settled in."

"Secret, huh?" I scowled at her. "Then at least tell me how you can be my daughter when you look like you're in your thirties."

She shrugged. "Time has no meaning here." She reached for the doorknob. "All times are one in Heaven."

As she opened the door, bright light flooded into the room. Squinting, I shaded my eyes with my hand.

"This way, Dad." Lillian stepped through and pulled me with her. "Let me show you around."

Still squinting, I followed her out of the room. My heart beat harder as I wondered what was coming next--and if getting expelled from paradise would be part of it.

You know the old toast that goes, "May you be in Heaven a half-hour before the Devil knows you're dead?" Well, I was starting to wonder when my half-hour would be up. I hadn't exactly lived the kind of life that's supposed to lead to a heavenly reward. And then there was that last bit, during the movie stunt that killed me.

The part where I shot the helicopter pilot in the head.

"You'll love it here, Dad." Lillian squeezed my arm as she walked me down a white corridor filled with light. The ceiling, walls, and floor all gave off an intense white radiance. "I'm so glad you made it."

I just smiled at her. Because, honestly, I didn't want her or anyone else thinking too much about whether I deserved to be there in the first place.

We stopped at a door at the end of the hall, and she reached for the handle. "After you." She bowed as she pulled the door open and ushered me toward an even stronger brightness.

Bright light wasn't the only thing she was guiding me toward. I heard the sound of harps playing and bells tinkling softly. The sweet fragrance of flowers mingled with salty sea air.

It reminded me of the visit from my supposed future self, back before the helicopter crash. I'd heard bells and smelled sea air then, too. I'd thought it was all special effects, a load of B.S. from prank-playing colleagues--but, in retrospect, maybe it hadn't been such B.S. after all. The warning had certainly come true, hadn't it?

Maybe this was where so-called Future Me had been "broadcasting" from in the first place...and he hadn't been so "so-called" after all.

"Okay, Dad?" Lillian looked at me with concern. I guess I'd been standing there longer than I thought.

"Sure, sure." I flashed her a big Stag Lincoln Hollywood grin, the one that always made the ladies melt. "I'm just excited, I guess."

The truth? Future Me's words were playing in the back of my mind: Whatever you do, don't go toward the light.

"Well, go on." She gestured at the doorway.

"Thanks, Lillian." Not much else I could do at that point, so I straightened my white sweater, took a deep breath, and marched forward.

When I got through the doorway, I was almost blinded by the dazzling sunlight streaming from every direction. The harps and bells were louder and the smell of the sea stronger, with the sound of rushing waves to go with it.

I could barely pinch my eyes open against the blazing light. Peering through narrow slits, all I could manage to get were a series of impressions--lots of whiteness, metal and glass, moving figures, vast space.