The Dark Side of Heaven

By Gord Rollo

War can do terrible things to the hearts and minds of even the best of men, but for U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Tyrone Banks the senseless deaths and unnecessary violence in Vietnam have beaten him down and smothered the compassion and good that was once inside of him. Grief-stricken and suicidal; the extreme guilt over the awful things he’s done pushes the young Marine beyond his breaking point until death feels like his only remaining option.

Rather than eating a bullet, Tyrone volunteers for Tunnel Rat duty hoping to finally find release but instead of his carefully planned honorable death, what the Marine finds down in the dark is a backdoor to Purgatory, a secret entrance into the afterlife where he’ll get one last chance to right all the terrible wrongs that constantly haunt him. It won’t be easy, though. Nothing worthwhile ever is. If Tyrone thought the things lurking in the jungle of Vietnam were bad, what’s waiting for him on the dark side of Heaven is worse.

Much, much worse…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashbury Creek Media
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540161260

Gord Rollo

Gord Rollo was born in St. Andrews, Scotland, but now lives in Ontario, Canada. His short stories and novella-length work have appeared in many professional publications throughout the genre and his novels include: The Jigsaw Man, Crimson, Strange Magic, Valley Of The Scarecrow, The Translators, Only The Thunder Knows, and The Crucifixion Experiments.. His work has been translated into several languages and his titles are currently being adapted for audiobooks. Besides novels, Gord edited the acclaimed evolutionary horror anthology, Unnatural Selection: A Collection of Darwinian Nightmares. He also co-edited Dreaming of Angels, a horror/fantasy anthology created to increase awareness of Down’s syndrome and raise money for research.

Book preview

The Dark Side of Heaven

Gord Rollo

Published by Ashbury Creek Media, 2016.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Down in the Dark: August, 1970

1

2

3

4

5

Destination Unknown: August, 1970

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

The Long Haul: Otherwise Known as Life: August, 1970 - Present Day

25

26

Also by Gord Rollo

The Jigsaw Man

Strange Magic

Valley of the Scarecrow

The Translators

Crowley’s Window

The Dark Side of Heaven

Peeler

Gods & Monsters Vol. 1

Time & Space Vol. 2

Flesh & Blood Vol. 3

Copyright © 2016 by Gord Rollo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance it bears to reality is entirely coincidental.

Published by Ashbury Creek Media

Ontario, Canada

Book & Cover Design by Adam Geen

www.adamgeen.com

Cover Image (Tunnel) from Bryn at

www.beyond-oddities.deviantart.com

DOWN IN THE DARK: AUGUST, 1970

1

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate;

only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s pitch black in this section of the tunnel but in my mind I can still easily see the Vietnamese woman’s face. The boy’s too. Yeah…especially the boy’s. He’d recently hurt his right eye somehow and had a fresh red scar running vertically on his face from cheek to eyebrow. His damaged eye was hidden behind a dirty gauze bandage stained brown with dried blood and in need of changing. No matter if I lived to be a hundred years old, I’d never forget the image of his sweaty, innocent little face pleading up at me the moment before I’d tossed the grenade and slammed closed the lid on their pitifully inadequate hiding place beneath the floor of their tiny hut.

I never did hear them scream; nothing but silence from behind the hinged bamboo cover until the explosion, but my shame gives them voice and I’m forced to listen to their anguished sobs and pain-filled shrieks again and again. And though I saw none of it, I constantly picture them huddling together in that cramped space, mother consoling child as best she could in the scant seconds they had left together. Our lives only crossed paths for a few brief moments, but it’s that tragic last instant which is burned into memory, scalded into my psyche, and no matter how far I try to run I can’t escape them. They accuse me, condemn me – haunt me – every moment of every day; which is, after all, why I’m down here in the dark.

The Cu Chi tunnels, Ben Duoc, Vietnam.

It’s terrible down here. Hot. Humid. Big time claustrophobic for sure, but you get used to it. The dirt walls and floor are much harder in these lower levels, packed so solid they scrape my skin raw as I move. It’s like I’m squirming for miles through the twisted intestine of some giant concrete monster. Smells like that too; like bowels: a sickly-sweet odor of shit, piss, and dark nutrient-rich earth. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I probably smell worse.

How far I’m below the surface I have no idea. For a while I was trying to keep a mental map in my head but it was impossible and a colossal waste of time. Fifty feet? Seventy-five, maybe? Doesn’t matter. It’s all the same down here, and regardless of how far I descend into this fucking darkness I know I will never escape the disgrace, the self-loathing that follows close behind perpetually stabbing me in the back with a dagger named guilt. I just want the suffering to end.

Soon.

An explosion sounds nearby, loud enough to make my ears ring painfully. A millisecond later an unseen bullet rockets past my face close enough for me to smell its oily coating and feel its hot breath against my cheek.

Shit! Motherfucker found me again.

Where is he?

I’m so out of it from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion from lack of sleep I didn’t see the flash and can’t tell if the shot came from in front of me or behind. Not good. I don’t know where he is but unless he was just firing off a teaser he undoubtedly knows where I am. My death-wish aside, I wasn’t about to let this scrawny gook be the one who took me out. Screw that. We’d been playing cat and mouse (me being the one that nibbles cheese most of the time) for the better part of two days. My skin color and dark clothing made me virtually invisible but he had the huge advantage of knowing the tunnels. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m sending this slant-eyed bastard to Hell.

Naturally, he’s trying to do the same to me.

I drop to my belly and worm-crawl through the dirt, fast as lightning in my minds eye but agonizingly slow in real time. Expecting to hear another crack of the gun, I’m still wondering where the bullet will tear into me when my fingers discover a new shaft in the tunnel heading left. It’s of a smaller diameter, the walls of the shaft touching both my shoulders but at times like this beggars can’t be choosers. I dive in. It could very well be the same shaft my enemy shot from and he could be sitting five feet from me right now. Doubtful though. If he was, I’d be dead by now.

It’s statue time. Stop moving. Stop breathing.

Stop.

Lay chilly and listen…

They train Marines for this shit. Uncle Sam has a whole bag of tricks for special boys like me. For instance, if you want to preserve your night vision in a tunnel, you always close one eye when you fire - the shielded eye will still have night vision. Some of our rats use NVG - night vision goggles, but I never liked them. Man, shit sure looks spooky through those bad boys: A luminescent green background where any sources of light are glaringly bright. Human eyes glow too, like demons from the pit. Fuck that; I tossed mine in the jungle long ago.

No, right now I can’t see shit – not this deep – but I can hear just fine. I have to. My life depends on it. I open my mouth wide, inhale deep, but exhale out my nose, hard and fast. Then I swallow and listen. It’s another cool trick, a way to divert pressure and fully open your ear canals to increase your hearing acuity for a few precious seconds. It works too.

I hear him.

2

The United States mighty war machine had been getting its ass kicked by the Vietcong for years now, and most of the soldiers knew they were fighting a senseless, losing battle, regardless of what President Nixon was spewing out to their families and friends half a world away. But they fought anyway - sure, partly because they believed in freedom and rallying against communist oppression and all that other jazzed up political bullshit, but mostly they fought to stay alive. To have a chance; even a slim one, that they might get their asses out of the rice paddies and back home to America in one piece. I didn’t share that dream anymore. Not since the night I’d killed the defenseless mother and her poor little boy…and several weeks before that, my twin brother.

You heard me right. My brother.

Tommy was two minutes and twenty seconds older than me, or so we were told, identical twins inseparable since the day we came kicking and screaming out of the womb. We didn’t do the whole ‘dress exactly the same’ routine you see so many twins doing nowadays but that probably had more to do with our parents not being able to find two sets of identical hand me down clothes at the local Goodwill thrift store. Didn’t matter though; no matter what rags we were wearing, we were best buds. He meant the world to me and I followed him everywhere back when we were young. Ironically, it was him who ended up following me to Nam, voluntarily enlisting the day after he heard that I had. I honestly think he did it because he believed he could protect me and that we’d skate through whatever Charlie could throw at us and we’d head back home to the States big time heroes.

Yeah, right. Tyrone and Tommy Banks…heroes? Doubtful. We were just two punk ass skinny black kids from Cleveland, Ohio. Tommy and I had just turned eighteen. What the hell did we know about war?

It didn’t go down the way we’d hoped.

Not even close.

Marine boot camp at Ft. Benning, Georgia, was horrendously tough on our minds and bodies but it was pretty exciting too. Neither of us had travelled very much and we’d never fired a rifle before but it turned out that we had a natural knack for it; me maybe a tiny bit more so than Tommy, but he was damn good too. Once we made our way to South Vietnam – via a pit stop in Okinawa, Japan - our sharpshooter skills landed us in Da Nang under the watchful care and massive shadow of Gunnery Sgt. William Matheson, a 260 pound giant of a man who’d once been a star linebacker with Penn State back in the early 1960’s. Tommy and I had even watched him play on T.V. a few times back in the day and we were in awe of his physical size and how fast he could move for such a big man. Anyway, it fell on Matheson’s broad shoulders to continue our on the job marksman training and keep our raggedy asses from getting killed; at least until Uncle Sam had gotten his money’s worth out of us.

We were sharpshooters but all Marines are trained as infantrymen first and foremost. Trained to get the job done, no matter what was asked of us. We spent the first three months out on regular patrols, getting soaked to the bone humping through the constant downpours and being scared shitless getting our first taste of hardcore action. You can fire all the assault rifles you’d like in basic training, but it doesn’t even come close to preparing you for the first time someone fires a clip of AK-47 rounds at your head or the first time you hear the dreaded THUMP sound of a 60 mm mortar shell leaving the tube and heading your way.

We kept our heads down though and did what we were told, slowly finding our soldier legs and not doing anything stupid. Gunnery Sgt. Matheson took a shine to us and seeing as we were twins anyway, he labeled us T and T2, giving us nicknames that signified we were no longer fresh meat in his; and therefore the rest of the platoons, eyes. I was T2 by the way, not that it matters. We even had our buddies shave our new identities into the stubble of hair on the back of our heads so they could tell us apart. It was a cool bonding moment, but just as we were starting to really settle into the daily grind, Tommy and I were transferred to China Beach to be part of a Combined Action Platoon (CAP) where we were given lessons in Vietnamese culture and a crash course in their language. Each CAP would have around 10 – 15 Marines, usually a navy corpsman, and a platoon of Vietnamese Popular Forces. The basic idea was to enter the various villages, befriend the local population, and offer medical supplies and protection against their northern enemies. On paper, these CAP’s would win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese villagers and had the potential to turn the tide of the war.

Didn’t happen though.

The villagers didn’t trust us, and there were far too many Vietcong or Northern Vietnamese Army sympathizers and spies living among the locals for our plans to work. Instead of walking into town and villages as the saviors we had been taught we were, we’d have to sneak in on full alert always on guard for the presence of booby traps or snipers stationed in the houses or trees. Even the women and children weren’t to be trusted; the shots fired or the bomb detonated by one of them just as likely as it was from a trained soldier. The result of this constant tension and strain beat the shit out of us; mentally and physically, and like most of our brothers-in-arms Tommy and I started taking far too many of the drugs readily available to us. Marijuana was everywhere, even growing wild in the jungles as we walked on by. We’d drying it out, crush it up and make home-made joints by rolling big wads of it inside toilet paper. Heroin was available, and so was opium, and you could buy hash from the local fisherman