Chapter 8: The Final Judgements

In the van, Caleb and Matthew sat in the growing darkness, their friends vanished as if they had never existed. The silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft whisper of wind through the chapel's broken boards and the occasional creak of settling metal.

"They're gone," Matthew said, his voice barely above a whisper. His usual arsenal of jokes had finally failed him completely, leaving behind only the raw fear he'd spent years hiding behind humor. "Liam and Rose are just... gone."

Caleb gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, his practical mind racing through possibilities that grew more desperate with each passing moment. Check the engine again. Try the radio. Attempt to hotwire the ignition. But deep down, he knew none of it would work. This place operated by different rules, and all his mechanical expertise was useless here.

"We have to get out of here," he said, more to himself than to Matthew. "Walk if we have to. Follow the stars, navigate by—"

The world tilted sideways.

Caleb blinked and found himself standing in a phantom garage that existed in the space between memory and nightmare. The familiar smell of motor oil and rust filled his nostrils, but everything was wrong—the tools were too sharp, the shadows too deep, and the concrete floor was stained with substances that had nothing to do with automotive repair.

His van sat in the center of the space, hood open like a patient on an operating table. But this wasn't the reliable vehicle that had carried the Dead Hours crew to dozens of investigations. This was something twisted, its engine compartment revealing mechanical horrors that defied physics and sanity.

Fix it.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, carrying the grinding authority of judgment deferred too long.

"I can fix anything," Caleb said automatically, the words coming out of their own accord. It was his mantra, his identity, the core belief that had sustained him through every challenge life had thrown his way. "Give me the right tools and enough time, and I can fix anything."

Can you?

His hands moved without conscious direction, reaching for tools that materialized as needed. But every repair he attempted only made things worse. Reconnected wires sparked and melted. Replaced components twisted into impossible shapes. The engine seemed to mock his efforts, becoming more broken with each attempt to heal it.

Hours passed, or perhaps minutes—time flowed strangely in this place. Sweat poured down his face as he worked with growing desperation, his methodical approach crumbling into frantic improvisation. Nothing worked. Every solution led to deeper problems, every fix created new failures.

Tell me about the Riverside accident.

The words hit him like a physical blow, and suddenly Caleb understood why he was here, why his mechanical skills had been stripped away. The phantom garage wasn't about testing his abilities—it was about revealing their limits.

"That was three years ago," he said, his voice hollow. "That has nothing to do with this."

Doesn't it? You've been running from that night ever since. Building your reputation as the man who can fix anything, the practical one who always has solutions. But you couldn't fix what happened on Riverside Drive.

The garage shifted around him, walls reshaping themselves to match his memory of that rainy October night. He'd been driving home from work, already running late for his nephew's birthday party. The roads were slick, visibility poor, but he'd been confident in his driving skills, his ability to handle any situation.

You saw her in the crosswalk.

"The light was green," Caleb said desperately, but even as he spoke, he could see the lie reflected in the van's twisted chrome. "I had the right of way."

The light was yellow. She was already in the crosswalk when you accelerated.

The memory played out with brutal clarity. The elderly woman with her walker, moving slowly across the intersection. The split second of decision when he could have stopped, could have waited, could have chosen caution over convenience. Instead, he'd gunned the engine, telling himself he could make it past her before the light changed.

The impact had been surprisingly quiet—just a soft thump and the tinkle of breaking glass. The woman had crumpled like paper, her walker spinning away into the darkness.

You stopped.

"Of course I stopped," Caleb said, but his hands shook as he reached for a wrench that dissolved at his touch. "I got out, I checked on her. I called 911."

But first, you moved her body.

The truth he'd buried for three years clawed its way to the surface. Yes, he'd stopped. Yes, he'd called for help. But in those crucial first moments, faced with the reality of what he'd done, his practical nature had taken over. The woman was clearly dead—her neck bent at an impossible angle, her eyes staring sightlessly at the rain-dark sky.

So he'd made a decision.

He'd carefully moved her body to make it look like she'd fallen after crossing the street. Arranged the walker to suggest she'd tripped on the curb. When the police arrived, they'd found a tragic accident—an elderly woman who'd slipped on wet pavement, a conscientious driver who'd stopped to help.

You let them think you were a Good Samaritan.

"She was already dead," Caleb whispered, but the words carried no conviction. "Moving her didn't change anything."

It changed everything. Her family never knew the truth. The intersection was never fixed because the city thought it was a pedestrian error, not a traffic problem. How many others have been hit there since?

The phantom garage filled with the sound of screeching tires and breaking glass. The walls became windows showing that same intersection over the past three years—a teenage boy struck while skateboarding, a mother pushing a stroller who barely escaped with her life, an elderly man whose cane wasn't enough to get him across in time.

Each accident was a direct result of his cowardice, his decision to protect himself rather than face the consequences of his actions.

You can't fix this.

The words were a death sentence for everything Caleb believed about himself. He was the practical one, the problem solver, the anchor that kept his friends grounded. But when faced with his first real crisis, he'd chosen self-preservation over truth.

"I didn't mean for anyone else to get hurt," he said, tears streaming down his face as the phantom tools turned to ash in his hands. "I just... I was scared. I didn't want to go to prison for an accident."

So you made it her fault. You turned victim into perpetrator with the simple act of moving a body six feet.

The van's engine caught fire, filling the garage with black smoke that carried the screams of every victim who'd suffered because of his deception. Caleb fell to his knees beside the burning wreckage, his identity as the fixer, the reliable one, crumbling like heated metal.

Confess.

The word reverberated through his bones, carrying the weight of divine imperative. And like his friends before him, Caleb found himself speaking in that ancient language, the words pouring out in syllables that predated human civilization.

He confessed to the hit-and-run, to the cover-up, to the cascade of suffering his cowardice had caused. As he spoke, the garage dissolved around him, reality fragmenting like rust flakes falling from corroded metal.

Meanwhile, in another phantom space, Matthew faced his own judgment.

The lanky young man found himself standing before an audience of shadows, their faces obscured but their attention absolute. This was his nightmare made manifest—performing for a crowd that refused to laugh, armed with material that revealed more than it concealed.

Tell us a joke.

The voice carried the expectation of centuries, the weight of every comedian who'd ever faced a hostile crowd. Matthew's mouth opened automatically, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought had failed.

"A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar," he began, but the words came out wrong, twisted into something cruel and revealing. Instead of the familiar setup, he found himself telling the story of Jeremy Kowalski, the quiet kid from his high school who'd trusted him with a secret.

You destroyed him with words.

Jeremy had confided in Matthew about his struggle with his sexuality, seeking friendship and understanding from someone he thought was kind. Instead, Matthew had seen opportunity—raw material for the social media post that would make him briefly famous among his classmates.

You turned his trust into content.

The phantom audience leaned forward, hungry for the punchline. But there was no punchline, only the memory of Jeremy's face when the post went viral, when his most private fears became public entertainment. The boy had transferred schools, but the damage was done—his reputation, his self-worth, his ability to trust others, all sacrificed on the altar of Matthew's desperate need for approval.

You killed him with laughter.

The joke died in Matthew's throat as he remembered the news report six months later. Jeremy Kowalski, seventeen years old, found dead in his family's garage. Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, the victim of cyberbullying that had started with a single post shared for cheap laughs.

Confess.

And Matthew did, the words tumbling out in that same ancient tongue, his sins stripped bare before an audience that finally, terribly, began to laugh. The sound was like breaking glass, like crying children, like the last breath of everyone who'd ever been destroyed by words wielded as weapons.

One by one, they broke. One by one, they confessed. One by one, they were forgiven and damned in the same breath.

The chapel had claimed them all.