Jake's Wake Read online

  JOHN SKIPP

  AND CODY

  GOODFELLOW

  JAKE’S WAKE

  LEISURE BOOKS NEW YORK CITY

  For Stephen Walter,

  The one and only Jake.

  IT’S JUDGMENT DAY

  The blood-drenched monstrosity standing before her could not be the man she loved. It was a dream, or a punishment from God, or a demon made flesh. But not Jake. Not Jake.

  Then it smiled at her, and Emmy knew that smile. It was the one he used to charm, to smooth over the rough spots. It was the one that she had fallen in love with.

  And the voice, as it spoke, was his, too.

  “Look at you. My little Bible baby.” He stretched out the last words affectionately, just as he reached out with gore-matted arms. “Don’t be scared. It’s all right. You knew this would happen.

  “Come to me…”

  As if in a dream, she took another helpless step. The smell got to her, the closer she came. Emmy held her breath and forced herself closer, tears streaming down her chin.

  Then he closed the distance, grabbing her up in a huge embrace, squeezing so hard that she wheezed and turned as red as the blood on his hand, now painting her face and hair…

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  It’s Judgment Day

  Prologue: Sugar Turns To Dust

  Part I: Old Home Night

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part II: Mopping Up The Hard Parts With Gray

  Chapter Nine

  Part III: Letting It All Hang Out

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part IV: Gospel Of The Resurrection, From The Book Of Gray (45 Minutes Ago)

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part V: Putting The Haunt Back In Haunted House

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Part VI: The Tale Of The Dumb-Ass Mexican

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Part VII: God’s Law

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Part VIII: Lisa And The Resurrection Rangers

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Part IX: The Wisdom Of Whores

  Chapter Forty-four

  Part X: At The End Of The Night Of Judgment Day

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Epilogue: Giving Up The Ghost

  Acknowledgments

  Praise

  Other Leisure books by John Skipp

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Sugar Turns To Dust

  One minute before the knife went in, Jacob Connaway was up to his nuts in glory.

  It was Saturday night—nearly one A.M. (Amen!)—and as usual, he had scored a sinner to save. A saucy little number named Sugar—hot, tight, and hammered in every sense, already drinking off a lifetime of abuse at the ripe old age of twenty-three.

  He could smell her damage from the moment he opened the pool hall door, then zeroed right in. And sure enough, she was ripe for the plucking. She wore fuck-me clothes on a fuck-me body, with a fuck-you attitude that was purely for show.

  When he got up close, she had fuck-me eyes.

  A total paint-by-the-numbers seduction.

  It had taken an hour of drinks, sweet-talking, and Jesus to get her out to the parking lot. Another fifteen minutes of lewd jokes and groping to get her into the car. At that point, with less than an hour until showtime, his crib in Joshua Tree was out of the question.

  So it was either her place in San Bernardino, or a cheap hotel with cable. But even cheap hotels cost money.

  One fifteen-minute multiorgasmic finger-bang later, they were on their way to her place.

  So there was no way anyone could call it rape, when they got there just in the nick of time, and he hustled her down to the basement rec room, turned the TV on. Tuned in Cable Access Channnel 23, serving the whole Inland Empire.

  Skootched up the nearest chair.

  Ripped her panties off from underneath her skirt, despite her sudden protestations.

  And took off the belt, just to let her know he meant business.

  There was panic in her eyes. And self-loathing. And hunger. All of them as naked as her ass had just become. They masochistically commingled as he whipped her around. Bent her over the chair. Dropped his trousers. Spat in his hand. Juiced her up, just in case (though she was wet as could be).

  And slid himself up to the hilt.

  When his theme song kicked in, Jake was slamming away, with that godly feeling already comin’ on strong.

  Closer to Jesus than even he knew.

  But the demons were closer still…

  “Oh, god,” Sugar moaned, and then again, harder, transfixed by the helplessness, pleasure, and shame. He had her ass in the air, and was banging it hard, with her face so close to the TV screen that she could feel the static electricity off the glass. Feel it tug at her hair, and tickle her skin, sparkle off of the tears streaming down her face.

  For Sugar, the situation was as typical as it was retarded: so hot, so destructive, so completely insane.

  She wanted to ask her herself how did this happen, but the answer was same as it always does, stupid. Get drunk. Get in a fight with Frankie. Go do something to make him crazy…

  Only this time, it struck her, she might have finally gone too far.

  The preacher on the screen looked the way she’d always seen him on late-night cable, at the end of the drinking day: rugged, handsome, persuasive, and powerful. Like a barbarian turned Old Testament prophet turned rock star at a fashion shoot, with his wild dark Jimmy Page locks sweeping over the broad shoulders of his impeccably tailored suit.

  She’d always figured he’d be very large in person, just from the way he filled the screen, with the billowing digitally enhanced blue sky behind him. A giant among tiny believers, standing on a freshly conquered mountaintop, delivering his sermon to all who had ears.

  She stared into the eyes of the man on the screen. They were beautiful, deep, dark, scary eyes, in riveting counterpoint to his wide, boyish smile.

  “Oh my god,” she whimpered again, drawing the notes out, almost ululating at the pounding from behind.

  The man on the screen nodded and grinned at the raucous
applause that greeted him now, as it always did. These people clearly loved him. How could they not? The sound of it flooded her ears as she grunted and moaned.

  “Shhhhh!” hissed the harsh voice behind her. The music trailed off.

  And the sermon began.

  “Let me tell you something, people,” said the man on the screen. His voice was sonorous, sexy as hell. “I’m a sinner. Lord KNOWS I’m a sinner! I have broken the laws of God and man so many times that it’s a wonder I’m still standin’ here today!”

  Televised applause and hoots of audience approval filled the room, nearly drowning out her own mounting groans.

  “I have stared death straight in the eye. Felt its gaze down to my soul.”

  “OHHH…! Oh god, oh god…”

  “SHUT UP!” roared the voice from behind her, slamming into her so hard that her forehead smacked the screen.

  “Felt the full force and fury of Judgment Day howlin’ like a hurricane inside me, rattlin’ around in my bones, as if to say, ‘Jake? This time, there is gonna be hell to pay!’”

  And then, God damn it, she began to cum hard, as if she were the one with the hurricane inside her, obliterating thought in a shattering crescendo, ripping her apart with jagged, painful spikes of bliss. It blinded her, deafened her, wiped the universe clean. She couldn’t see the TV right in front of her eyes, and felt more than heard herself screaming.

  Next thing she knew, there was a hand over her mouth, and the world came back in violent focus. She bit down hard, pure animal now, heard him yelp as the hand yanked away. But the fucking barely broke its rhythm, and the hurricane was far from done with her.

  She didn’t hear the door at the top of the stairs open, any more than the man on the screen: the man who was about to make her go off again, whether she liked it or not.

  So far as they knew, they were alone in the world.

  She had totally forgotten that Frankie might come home.

  Frankie Tatum had a lot of faults. He talked over people. He got angry quick. He was diabetic, so he shouldn’t drink or do speed, but he drank and did speed anyway. Those things all sort of ran together, and, with rare exceptions, made Frankie all that he was.

  He also had a tendency to act first, and think about it later, if ever. Which accounted for his list of regrets.

  But if there was one good thing about Frankie Tatum, it was probably this: he really loved his Sugarplum.

  So it was one thing to know that she would run off and grudge-fuck her way into his deepest, darkest place. It had happened before, and would happen again. After today, maybe even to night.

  But to hear her doing it right here, in their home, right in front of him…

  From Frankie’s drugged-out point of view—quivering with rage, at the top of the stairs—there was nowhere to go but down.

  And so he went, hunting knife already in hand, one thunderous step at a time, the world a rush and a blur that converged on two shapes before a TV set where that preacher Sugar thought was so hot bellowed out his bullshit about a so-called loving God.

  “And HERE’S THE MIR ACLE, brothers and sisters! The thing I’m here to tell you, one and all, today!”

  And Frankie was crying, oh yes he was, one wracking sob for every moan and thrust of the rutting couple before him. Not a speck of hesitation as he brought the blade up.

  “THERE IS NO DEATH!” roared the voice on the screen. “Do you hear what I’m sayin’? THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS DEATH!”

  Then the blade came down.

  And changed everything, forever.

  A split second before the knife went in, Jake was shouting along with his TV self while the jism pressure mounted. He could feel it swimming up from the soles of his feet as he looked from his face to her ass and back again.

  “‘It’s a lie that Satan taught you!’” he howled. “‘It’s a joke that isn’t all that funny!’ AHH, FUCK…!” Almost getting off more on himself than this sweet, twisted little girl before him…

  …and that was when his own penetration began, right between the shoulder blades, cold steel sliding in so fast that he didn’t even feel it happen, the blade was just suddenly there, inside him, all the way in and almost through his chest, point grinding against the back of his breastbone.

  Jake howled, his cock forgotten as his ruptured heart-meat started squirting instead. He started to spin, and the knife pulled out, blood gutters letting the steel slide smoothly back into the open air, glittering black in the blue TV light.

  “And right behind it is the SECRET TRUTH that Jesus has been tryin’ to tell you the whole time!”

  Then the knife came back, gutting him this time, carving his insides and spilling them out in the open. He bent over as if to catch them, dimly aware of the woman who scrambled away from him, hysterically screaming.

  And over it all, the sound of his own voice.

  “Christ has promised us life everlasting. It’s in the Book. In black-and-white.”

  The knife pulled out, went in again.

  “NO!” Sugar screamed, was not the only one screaming.

  Jake felt blood squirt out of his mouth and staggered back, then collapsed to the floor, hitting it hard and yet barely aware of it. His perception was a crumbling mosaic, life dissembling into death one broken shard at a time.

  “Omigod, Frankie, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…!”

  From his perspective on the floor, he could see Sugar wrap herself around Frankie, sobbing and clutching him tight. The killer just stood there, swaying, unsteady, then dropped the knife, sobbing, letting her kiss the tears from his face.

  “All we have to do is pledge our souls to him…”

  Jake hissed out another thick mouthful of blood. It was the only thing that didn’t feel cold. He could feel the warmth drain from his face, his shivering limbs and ruptured torso.

  “Pledge our souls…”

  “I love you,” Sugar said, but not to him. “Look at me. I love you so much. Look at me, baby. I’m so sorry…”

  Look at me, Jake tried to say, but he couldn’t do it, and they didn’t care. He faintly heard Frankie slap her, heard her sudden yelp of pain, but found himself staring straight up at the crappy stucco on the ceiling.

  “…all our hearts, and all our souls…”

  He had always expected a motion picture at the end. Jake’s Greatest Hits: a biblical travelogue, in Cinema scope and Technicolor.

  But there was no vision, no thought, no revelation. Just the numb wash of shock, like an icy gray tide, slowly drowning out his pain.

  “…to that DIVINE RESURRECTION!”

  And that was when Jake’s demons appeared.

  It began as a flicker at the far end of the room, like a strobe light from another, even uglier dimension. A crackling in the air that made his short hairs stand on end.

  Something was taking shape there, with the body

  (jake)

  of a woman, flicker-flashing

  (jake)

  in and out of the darkness.

  (jaaaake)

  It whispered to him as it writhed upright, like some malformed exotic dancer, hips undulating obscenely, arms snaking through the air. Too many arms. Two, four, six

  (look at you)

  and then they were laughing, the three-demons-in-one: almost solid now as its spectral body crouched, nearly squatting, as if to shit or give him birth…

  …and Jake couldn’t feel his fingers or toes, but he could feel his balls contract in terror. It was the only emotion he had left, and it screamed through every still-working nerve in his body.

  Worse yet, it screamed through his soul

  (and your life everlasting)

  with horrible recognition

  (everlasting jaaaake)

  and before he could blink, the three-faced demon was upon him. Leaning over him. Leaning down close

  (in everlasting judgment)

  with all of its six flickering eyes so knowing

  (death everlasting)

&n
bsp; knowing him, as he knew them.

  (but only for the blind, jake, does death never end)

  Jake’s own eyes were glazing over, smoke-clotted windows between this world and the next. But he could see the demon smiling now, and knew that it hadn’t just come to claim him.

  His great work was only beginning.

  The miracle had finally come.

  Part I

  Old Home Night

  Chapter One

  Three nights later, and the chill autumn wind prowled over a desert painted silver by a brooding half-moon. It simmered like a window fan set angrily on low, fretting at chimes and whirligigs on porches, then gusted up hard enough to rattle windows in their frames and bow the jagged crowns of Joshua trees and yucca plants, roaring in across the empty California desert as if looking for a place to hide from what ever chased it.

  A storm was coming, but nobody had the slightest clue how bad it was going to get.

  The news of the day was focused elsewhere, loaded with the same domestic absurdity and foreign atrocity as ever, fodder aplenty for arguments that the world continued to chase its own tail, or charge straight off a cliff.

  For those looking for signs of the end times—aside from the wars, floods, famines, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, conspiracies, scandals, UFO sightings, soaring oil prices, homosexual agendas, and polar ice caps melting—there were more than a few bits of good news.

  A “rather popular” Shiite cleric—whose name reporters dutifully mangled with every repetition—was killed by a suicide bomber in Basra, along with two dozen of his followers. After loudly denouncing the sectarian violence and American occupation of Iraq, he foretold his own death, but proclaimed that “I will be the last to die.”

  The assassin who made the cleric a martyr was disguised as an Iraqi policeman. His prophecy held true for three eerily quiet days, until this morning, when an IED outside Kirkuk flipped a Humvee filled with marines.