Hades' Melody. JD Belcher

       PROLOGUE

      Spring 1986.

      Many things happened that year; the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded live on national TV, my father left our family for the first time to work on an engineering project in California, and my mother planned a trip from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my two brothers and I to Fort Wayne, Indiana to visit my grandmother Barbara over the course of a weekend that would forever change my life.

      Grandma lived in a single level ranch home—similar to ours back in Monroeville—on Broken Arrow Drive with her second husband George, a pastor and part-time taxi driver, inside a suburban development called Concordia Gardens not far from the banks of the Saint Joseph River. Apart from the incident which transpired during our stay, I can barely conjure up any extraneous details. I remember the gray clouds and rain that day; sitting on the piano bench practicing chords; the white carpet in the living room; and my brother Amos, who had the nickname AJ, perched on the couch, watching the bulky floor model television which sat up against the wall. In a framed painting above me was a rendering v

      so vivid that it almost looked like a photograph, one of the resurrected Christ walking with two men—all of them with their backs turned—down a shaded dirt road to the town of Emmaus. Next to me, a dining room table with placemats squarely positioned in front of each seat circled a basket of fake fruit covered in shiny fur.

      Two candles plugged the weighty, amber-colored holders on either side of the decorative bassinet. Behind the table, a sturdy, wooden china cabinet displayed vintage plates sketched in dull blue ink, depicting various long-forgotten American countryside landscapes.

      My younger brother Jodan, who everyone called Tre, rose to his feet, and wandered past me down the hallway that led to three bedrooms and a bathroom. A few minutes later, I heard him screaming at the top of his lungs, as if someone was attempting to take his life, with the rumbling voice of my step-grandfather ranting in the background.

      There are two versions of the story that survive. One, as was always the case with Tre and his manners as my mother recalled, was that he entered my grandparent’s master bedroom, grabbed a piece of butterscotch candy from a dish, and attempted to return it to her and ask if he might have it. The second version, as I remember, involved Tre entering the same bedroom, swiping the wrapped, hard candy and asking George for