Angel of Darkness

by Charles de Lint

  The death left behind in Charlie Thornton’s cottage lay forgotten under the sweep of sound, body moving with the wind, hair streaming behind. It was only Walt Hawkins’s arrival at the cottage that shook the creature—

  (Beth)

  —from its—

  (her)

  —peaceful mood.

  Movement ceased. The creature drifted to the ground, sand squeezing up between its toes, dry plants crushed underfoot. The plains faded and they were back in the ruined cabin, peering through the thin membrane that separated the world they were in from the one Beth had left behind when she’d fallen asleep. A part of, apart from, the creature, Beth watched through its eyes as Walt came in through the cottage door.

  She was only dimly aware that a murder had been committed, that she had been a party to Ted Rimmer’s death. She remembered only that he’d been cleansed. In her mind it was akin to taking a shower and washing the day’s dirt from the pores of one’s skin. When she saw the corpse lying where it had fallen, uncertainty stole up through the calm layers that the creature and the music had erected inside her to block her from her memories of the past. Of the pain. The hurting.

  The creature plucked at the membrane separating the worlds, long nails tearing at its invisible fabric, reaching for Walt. In the creature’s mind Beth saw what it meant to do with him. He was to be cleansed. As the other man had been. The furnace breath burning away his skin, flesh bubbling, charring . . .

  Beth gagged.

  She drew back from her joining with the creature, fighting its influence on her. As Walt fled the cottage, the creature sent images cascading through Beth’s mind.

  It let her know that if they let Walt live, all Beth would ever know was the pain he had waiting for her.

  It filled her with an image of—

  (that dark place filled with pain)

  —Walt dragging her down the stairs, throwing her on the mattress he kept there, drawing the leather belt from its loops in his jeans.

  “No,” she said.

  She would know pain forever, the fury let her know. She would always be in—

  (that dark place)

  —there.

  And then they were no longer joined.

  A woman, beautiful as an angel, held Beth. All around them was the ruin and stink of the cottage. The angel smelled of apple blossoms and lilacs. Beth leaned closer to her, resting her head on the angel’s ample bosom. She closed her eyes to hide the ruin surrounding them. She burrowed her face in the angel’s hair, breathed in deeply the sweet scents.

  Stay with us, little sister, a voice said, riding the music.

  Then there was a chorus of voices speaking all at once.

  Stay with us . . . stay with us. . . .

  Beth looked up into the angel’s eyes, and in her mind’s eye she could see the speakers. Bruised and battered women. Boys and girls wearing the scars of their abuse. Infants not even out of their cradles.

  Victims.

  Stay with us. . . .

  All of them victims.

  Stay with us. . . .

  She could stay with them and know peace or return to—

  (that dark place)

  —a world that gave her only pain. “What. . . what is it that we become?” she asked. Strong, came the answer, not in words, but she understood all the same. In control. Free from hurt. Strangers to pain.

  “I...”

  The angel drew her close. The voices murmured and caressed her with their sound. They were the same voices that made the unearthly music, but the torment was drained from their tones.

  “I don’t want to be hurt anymore,” Beth whispered.

  And then she was back, a part of the host once more, riding in the angel’s body as it rose to follow her fleeing ex-husband. They rode the winds of the dead lands, flickering between the worlds where the membrane was thinnest.

  Following him.

  And she was no longer alone.

  Strong now. In this company. Free from pain.

  No one would ever trouble her again, she was promised as the winds bore them on. Her time had finally come. . . .

  12

  ANNA WASN’T EVEN aware of falling asleep. It wasn’t until she looked up to find herself back in the ruined squad room, the minutes passing by without the flicker that would return her to the waking world, that she realized what had happened.

  Just stay here, she told herself. Don’t move. You’ll wake up soon enough.

  But the sense of confinement pressed in close around her. The graffitied walls were too close. The stink was too strong. A foul wind blew in from the hallway, fluttering a sheaf of papers against her feet. Some were flat, others loosely crumpled into unevenly sized balls. There was something familiar about the handwriting on them, so she leaned over to pick one up.

  Lined three-holed foolscap, the holes ripped as though it had been torn from a binder. A phrase of three words was repeated over and over again, covering the surface of the paper.

  . . . stop hurting me. . . stop hurting me. . .

  It was Beth’s handwriting.

  Anna bent down and picked up more of the sheets. They were all the same. The same phrase covering each sheet. Thousands of times. Rising slowly from the chair, Anna walked over to the door and peered down the hall. The paper rustled underfoot. She wanted to call Beth’s name, but something held her back. She had a sense of being watched, that there was danger near. A warning prickle at the back of her neck.

  She wiped her damp palms on her skirt and retreated back into the room. Wherever she stepped, paper crinkled underfoot. There was far more of it on the floor than there had been only moments ago. It seemed to be growing like drifts of snow, only each big flake was exactly the same. Lined paper. Torn from a binder. Drifting around her feet. The same words covering each sheet.

  . . . stop hurting me. . .

  Anna thought of Beth—God, was it just this morning?—and what she’d been saying.

  “You don’t know what it’s like being me. Or somebody like me. Everybody’s always hitting on me, using me.”

  And she didn’t know, did she? Not really. How could she?

  . . . stop hurting me . ..

  But in Beth’s dream . .. Here. In this place.

  “I was the one in control,” she’d said. “I felt like nobody could hurt me—nobody could even touch me.”

  And in her own dream. She’d seen Beth come floating out from beside their house, drifting down the street, then leading them both into that wasteland. That Beth had been strong. In control.

  The paper was up to her ankles now, loosely crumpled balls of foolscap. She couldn’t move without setting up a teeth-gritting sound as the stiff edges rubbed against each other. Where was it all coming from? She uncurled a couple more of them, but the message was still the same. She let them fall from her hand.

  What did it matter, anyway? What did anything matter? With Jack dead—

  She turned at a sudden sound. Paper rustled, then slowly fell still as she stood without moving, looking into a corner of the room. The sound was repeated there. A rustling. Under the growing drifts of paper. Anna had a sudden flash of rats coming for her, invisible under the drifts, the only clue to their presence being the sound they made as they moved through the ever-increasing sea of paper.

  She grabbed a thick handful of sheets that weren’t crumpled and, using them as a makeshift broom, began to sweep away the paper in the direction of the corner from which the sound was coming. She thought she heard a faint voice as she worked her way closer. A voice calling her name.

  Goose bumps raced up her arms. She hesitated just a few feet away from the source of the sound.

  “Ah-nuh . . .”

  Definitely her name. Muffled by the paper. The sound of the faint voice was familiar in a way that was too horrible to contemplate.

  “Ah-nuh . . .”

  I can’t move, she thought. I can’t go on.

  But her hand moved of its own volition, sweeping away pape
r, parting the sea of crumpled sheets, drawing her on toward the source of that faint voice. A last sweep and then she could see what it was. A face rising from the floor.

  It looked like one of the fabric-mâché masks that hung in her workroom—as though someone had stolen one and laid it here on the floor. Except this face grew right out of the carpet. The skin of the brow, the cheeks, and the chin flowed seamlessly into the rotting fabric. The flesh was a dead white, almost translucent. The eyes were cloudy but they still focused on her. The lips moved, still calling her name.

  “Anna.”

  Clearly now. No longer muffled.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Anna.”

  All the strength left her, and she fell back onto her haunches, hands limp on her lap as she stared at the thing. Her head whined with a sudden headache. Her stomach roiled sourly. Slowly she reached out a trembling hand to touch one cold cheek.

  “J-Jack . . . ?” she said in a low, shaky voice. “Is . . . is that you?”

  “There’re only two kinds of people in this place,” the face with Jack’s features said, echoing the words of the old bum Jack had run into himself, just before he died. “Those that’re dreaming and those that’re dead. I’m going on, Anna. I can feel the pull of that other place, but I knew you were coming. When I saw Cathy, I knew you and Beth would be coming, so I stayed to warn you. Get out of here, Anna.”

  “You . . . you’re dead,” Anna said.

  “When you step into this place,” the face continued, ignoring her, “it doesn’t matter whether you’re guilty or not. The goddamned fury burns you all the same.”

  “Jack—”

  “There’s only one kind of time here, you see. A killing time. That Baker guy—he opened up some kind of a door to this place with what he was doing. This is where the victims wait to get even, Anna, and they don’t give a shit whether you were one of the ones dumping on them or not. You step in here and all they want to do is burn you.”

  Tears were streaming down Anna’s cheeks. “Oh, God, Jack. . . .”

  “The thing is, you bring your own pain in here with you, and it changes things too. Calls up your private demons. Makes it personal. But things don’t work the same here as they do in our own world. Here it’s the weak that’re strong. It’s their place to get back at everything that ever hurt them, Anna.”

  “Jack, you never hurt any—”

  “Everybody’s done some shitty stuff, Anna. Everybody’s carrying a bit of guilt. You, me—Christ, even the victims. So you’ve got to get out of here.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You got to close that door that Baker opened or it’s just going to keep on getting worse.”

  “Jack. I—”

  “I can’t hang on any longer, Sis. Just get out of here.”

  “Don’t leave me, Jack!”

  The face looked as though it were deflating, disappearing back into the rug. Anna lunged forward. She put a hand on either side of its cheeks, her lips against its cold lips. Something moved against her skin. Wriggled. She pushed herself back and saw that the oval where the face had been was now a writhing mass of white maggots.

  A scream started up her throat but drowned in vomit. She emptied the contents of her stomach, wiping desperately at her mouth. Stumbling to her feet, she bolted for the door. The crumpled paper was now up to her knees in places.

  She burst out into the hallway and turned to her left. Manlike shadows appeared suddenly from another doorway. There was a gleam of metal in the hands of the foremost. A shotgun. The scream that finally loosed itself from Anna’s throat was drowned in the booming thunder of the weapon’s discharge in the narrow confines of the hall.

  13

  THE TABLOIDS THAT Walt picked up every week at the supermarket were full of stories not so different from what Walt, himself, was experiencing right now. Strange deaths. Lights in the sky. UFOs. Weird cults. Animal mutilations. Babies giving birth to kids of their own.

  Weird shit.

  The glowing shape was still following him as he reached the city limits. He looked away from the rearview mirror. He didn’t need no frigging close encounter, thanks all the same. The old Chevy shuddered under him. Tires humming on the asphalt. Sounding like a tank with the muffler gone.

  Walt kept remembering what was left of Ted—the burned shape lying against the wall, charred skull grinning up at him from the ruin of its body. It didn’t take a whole lot of thought to put two and two together. Whatever was chasing him was the same thing that had stolen Beth and done in Ted. And now it wanted him.

  The dusky streets outside the Chevy kept flickering in his vision. Half the time he was fighting light traffic, cutting in from lane to lane, just trying to put distance behind him. Streetlights and the glowing windows of the houses and fast-food outlets whipping past. Then everything would go dark except for the Chevy’s headlights, and it was like he was barreling through a ghost town. Swerving around dead cars and mounds of rubble. Nobody out except for him and whatever the hell it was that was following him.

  Ever since he’d discovered Ted’s body, the weirdness didn’t really surprise him. Whole fucking world was going down the tubes—no question about it.

  Or maybe he was just losing it.

  A glance in the rearview mirror showed him that the bobbing light was still on his tail. Floating there above the streets, keeping pace.

  What the fuck do you want with me?

  But all he had to do was think of Ted again, and there was no question as to what it wanted. Knowing what it was going to do when it caught up with him didn’t explain dick-all, but right now Walt wasn’t about to stop and ask twenty questions.

  Flicker.

  The dead city was back. The parking lot of Billings Bridge Shopping Centre on his right went black as the lights winked out. He swerved around a stalled delivery truck in the right lane, wheels screaming on the pavement as he went around it. His headlights picked out a shopping cart in the middle of the left lane. It came up too suddenly to avoid. The left front end of the Chevy gave it a whack as he went by, sending it onto the grass verge where it rolled over three times before it came to a halt. The impact took out the left headlight. He gripped the wheel tighter and kept his foot on the gas.

  Bank Street came up then. He made a decision and tromped on the brake. The car skidded sideways into the intersection. When he booted the gas again, it shot up Bank, heading across the bridge over the Rideau River toward downtown.

  Where’m I going? he thought suddenly.

  He looked in the rearview mirror. The light behind him was still on his ass, hanging steady.

  He’d go someplace safe, he’d thought when he fled the cottage. Where there were lots of people. But the whole frigging city seemed to be in the middle of a blackout. Nothing looked right. His lone headlight continued to pick out dead cars and buses, buildings with holes gaping in their walls, rubble pooling under them. The air coming in from the Chevy’s vents had a bitter, metallic sting to it.

  He caught a billboard as it flashed by. It read, NO WHERE LEFT TO GO and there was an old beat-up Chevy under the letters, driving down a deserted street. What the—

  As he turned to look back at it an intersection loomed up, a stalled car right in the middle of it. He hit the brakes, swerving around it. The Chevy started to slide across the pavement. It scraped against the other car with a whine of screeching metal. He fought the wheel, straightening the tires until he was aiming north again.

  His whole body shook as he continued up Bank, and it was all he could do to keep going.

  Going where?

  It was still on his tail. The goddamned UFO, or whatever the hell it was. The whole frigging city was gone. Ted was dead. Probably Beth too. And the goddamned Martians were after his ass now. Where the hell was a cop when you needed one?

  He was past Gladstone Avenue now, still heading north, the nose of the Chevy pointed straight at Parliament Hill. Where the hell was he going to go? Then, a block past Gladstone
, the car just gave out. The one headlight continued to pierce the gloom, but the engine sputtered, then died. The car continued to coast for another block, finally coming to a halt just past the corner of Waverly and Bank, right in front of Arthur’s Comics and Used Records store.

  He tried the ignition, then saw the gas indicator sitting on empty. Jesus. He turned and looked out the back window. The frigging Martians were coming up fast.

  He jumped out of the car and started to run up the block, but the sidewalk in front of Arthur’s was strewn with moldering comic books. He slid and fell, scrambled to his feet. He could see what the glowing shape was now. Some kind of flying woman. Blond hair streaming behind her. Thin nightgown kind of a thing not doing a whole hell of a lot to hide a body that just wouldn’t stop.

  He backed away until he was up against the storefront of Randall Paints, two stores up from Arthur’s. The plate-glass windows were gone, so he could step over the ledge and get inside. Here the stink of paint drowned out the metallic smell outside. He crept toward the rear of the store, his gaze locked on the front. When the woman came floating in through the window, he ducked around behind a broken counter.

  His heart drummed a wild staccato in his chest. He had to grip his knees to stop his hands from shaking. It didn’t do much good. He peered about in the gloom behind the counter and found a length of wood with some nails sticking out one end.

  Okay, he thought. Fuck this shit.

  He stood up from behind the counter, his makeshift club raised over his shoulder. The woman was in the middle of the store, just floating in the air. The glow that came from her laid a soft white light throughout the room. He could see her face now. She had the perfect, airbrushed features of one of those Playboy centerfolds, with a body to match.

  “Listen, lady,” he began. “I don’t know what you . . .”

  His voice trailed off as the face began to change. Her lower jaw dropped, the mouth widening. The smooth, pale flesh took on a mummified look. Incisors sprouted from under her upper lips. He could see things wriggling in the back of her throat. The fingernails of each hand merged with the fingers to become claws. The hands lifted, one claw beckoning to him.