by August Arrea
Jacob couldn’t believe his ears.
“Where is he then?” he asked. “If this half-angel son of your really exists, why haven’t I ever seen or met him before?”
A noticeable darkness immediately cast itself upon Ava and a sad, mournful look Jacob hadn’t seen since his mother’s funeral settled itself like a widow’s black veil across her face.
“Once understanding that the light of angels do indeed color this world of ours, one doesn’t need to look very far to realize equal yet much darker forces lurk about as well,” said Ava. “Unfortunately, when David was about the age you are now, he found himself in the crosshairs of one of these evil entities. Sadly, he did not survive the encounter.”
Any doubt Jacob may have continued to harbor instantly dissipated as he noted the intense look of sadness that welled up in his grandmother’s face, and even greater sorrow heard in her voice.
“Why haven’t I ever heard this story before?” he asked.
“There are many stories you haven’t heard,” replied his grandmother as she turned away from Jacob to hide her moment of grief.
As the room fell silence, Jacob glanced again at the photograph still clutched in his hands studying first the image of the young boy and then that of Gotham, and in his pensiveness a most inconceivable notion slowly dawned on him.
“This man...he isn’t my father, is he?” spouted Jacob.
“Your fa—?”
The question caught Ava by surprise at first, though it shouldn’t have. The subject of Jacob’s father had always been one of deep mystery to the boy. There were no photos. Jacob didn’t even know his name. It was as if he had never existed. All Jacob was ever told by his mother was that his father had disappeared long before he was born, and she explained it in such a way that Jacob knew it was a topic better left not breached, and so he didn’t though it would always fester in the back of his mind like some unanswered riddle. Now, with all the talk of angels and the incredulous assertion that he himself was some half angel, half human creation, it suddenly seemed to Jacob a logical question to ask.
At first Ava’s hesitation offered a glimmer of hope that the question of who his father would finally be answered, but she quickly dashed such hope with a simple shake of her head.
“No, he’s not.”
“Then...do you know who is?” Jacob pressed. “I mean now that we’ve supposedly narrowed the potential candidates down to those with wings, it shouldn’t be that difficult to figure out right?”
Despite the flippant way Jacob addressed the issue, Ava could hear the serious yearning in her grandson’s voice to finally know the answer which had evaded him his whole life.
“I wish I could answer that question for you,” said Ava when she finally answered, “but I can’t.”
“So then what does this Gotham want with me?” asked Jacob. “When we were at the gym he said something to the effect of once I believed and accepted what it is you two are trying to convince me I am that we could then move to the next stage. What’s the next stage?”
“There’s a place—a very special place few have ever seen with their own eyes—where boys, like yourself, eventually go to learn and develop all the many pertinent skills needed to live life as a Nephilim in a world where such things are considered nothing but a myth,” Ava explained in a way that made it all seem as natural as summer camp.
“You mean like a Hogwarts? Only instead of wizards the student body is made up of the children of angels?”
Ava couldn’t fault the boy for his mocking jokes and did her best to ignore the snickers that slipped past her grandson’s crooked grin.
“Every Nephilim, once they reach a certain age, is brought there. My own son was as well,” she said. “When Gotham showed up here at the house several weeks ago the discussion about him taking you there as well was brought up. He declined, which is why I appeared so flustered when you first told me he came to see you and revealed to you who he is. I can only assume he has had a change of heart.”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” asked Jacob as the look of levity faded from his face.
“I’ve never been more,” answered Ava.
“You’re actually suggesting I go off with some strange man—I’m sorry, angel—and allow him to take me to some secret place that just happens to be some kind of school for mythical beings? Do I have it all correct or am I missing something?”
“It’s what your mother wanted for you when the time was right,” said Ava.
“And where exactly is this place you’re looking to send me off to?” asked Jacob.
Ava turned her sights to a nearby wall of her bedroom where a dozen or so more of her paintings hung. They were all different in size but each equal in framing a beautiful arrangement of color on the canvas to capture breathtaking still-shots of scenic landscapes it seemed impossible for nature to replicate. One painting, however, seemed to hold Ava’s attention more so than the others; it was a view from high above looking out over a vast expanse of forests and open land disturbed only by a mighty river snaking through the lushness lit beneath a brilliant sky.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I were to tell you,” she said.
~~~
To Jacob’s ears, the conversation had passed the point of ridiculous and began stretching itself into the realm of the insane. All the talk of angels and Nephilim and now a secret place where the two converged was becoming too much for Jacob to take in and not feel as if he had fallen into the same rabbit hole Alice had once ventured. If this was all an elaborate joke, no one seemed ready to yell out “April Fools,” and it was that realization which sent an unease of discomfort through Jacob and made him begin a slow retreat out of his grandmother’s bedroom and across the hallway to his own.
There in the doorway he found a saving moment to take in a breath or two, but the more he mulled over the ridiculousness of what he had just heard, the more unwound he became until the need to get out of the house proved too great. He quickly located his sneakers on the floor nearby and as he hastily worked his feet back into them he happened to glance toward his open closet and spy the corner of a duffel bag peeking out from beneath a heap of dirty clothes piled on top and an idea shot to the forefront of his mind. He grabbed it up, bolted from his room and was halfway down the stairs in his race for the front door when his grandmother’s voice brought him to a halt.
“Where are you going?” she asked, looking unusually concerned as she peered down from the top of the stairs.
“To prove to myself whether or not what you’ve just told me is really true or not,” answered Jacob.
And before Ava could say anything more he was gone with the slamming of the front door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Bridge
J
acob rose to his feet and as he stood along the edge at the center of the Darren’s Creek Bridge he took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Gone was the sun, and the last lingering embers of its light coloring the sky had almost completely faded leaving nothing but a far-reaching arm of darkness in front of him. Even the early hours of the arriving night was unable to blot the view of the surrounding woods that had long ingrained itself in Jacob’s mind from all the countless afternoons he spent staring out from the same exact spot on the bridge with his legs dangling over the side and the sun beaming down basking everything in its golden warmth.
The Darren’s Creek Bridge was an old iron truss crossing stretching across a gorge at the edge of town. In its heyday it served as a welcome mat for the countless freight and passenger trains passing through Cain’s Corner on their winding journey through the vast forests of the northwest. However, faster more convenient routes would eventually steer the steel engines and their cargo in different directions, and the echo of train whistles last heard to come from the steep, narrow ravine quickly faded into memory. In its place came the piercing screams of young thrill-seekers who saw the abandoned bridge as the perfect platform from which to willingly leap
off of with nothing but empty air to catch their free fall and an elastic Bungee cord tethered to their ankles to yank them back from the jaws of death.
It was here Jacob first forged his friendship with Ty and, long before graduating to the heights of Penuel Point, where after a lot of prodding and much reluctance he eventually added his own virginal cry of terror to the many screams that had echoed through the gorge before his, not thinking it possible his voice could reach such high girlish octaves. Nor was he prepared that one frightening fall could be able to lift someone to such extreme heights by the intense rush that followed, a frisson of adrenaline Jacob could still feel clutching his insides in a twisting death grip even now as he stood there on the bridge recalling that first jump.
If ever there was one place suited to prove the existence of a so-called angel, this was the place.
~~~
When darkness finally came, his eyes rolled upward to a bare lightbulb burning brightly above him from an old, rusted fixture, and he knew that wouldn’t do. Not tonight. He pulled from his pocket a couple rocks he picked up from the ground near where the bridge began and took aim. The first rock he hurled overshot the light by a couple inches, but the second hit its target and shattered the bulb with a loud pop.
What light remained was a dim silvery blue glow from the fingernail clipping of a crescent moon cradled in the sky of black velvet. Some three hundred feet beneath him, Jacob could hear the dark waters of Darren’s Creek churning loudly and sounding more like the rushing river it was than creek.
“So now what?” Jacob murmured to himself.
This Gotham character had said he’d come when Jacob was ready to further talk, or at least that’s what the voice he was sure he’d imagined hearing inside his head said. How would this man even know he was there on the bridge wanting a second face-to-face? Then again, if he was truly angel he should know—right? Well, now Jacob was ready. Or, at least, he thought he was. He glanced down at his feet to make sure they were hidden by the shadows of the night, but the longer he waited with only the sound of the creek flowing furiously below, and the thump-thump-thump of his heart growing increasingly louder in his chest to keep him company, the more Jacob questioned what he was doing there on the bridge. He couldn’t keep from replaying over and over in his head everything his grandmother had revealed to him earlier. And the more time he had to sit with it all, the more he heard it being repeated inside his head, the more uneasy it made him.
“This is crazy,” Jacob finally blurted. He no longer wanted to be on that bridge and was ready to leave. Not because he found the whole idea about angels and their Nephilim offspring beyond ridiculous, which he did, but rather because he found himself suddenly facing an uncomfortable prospect that filled him with an unwanted anxiety. The prospect of what if.
What if it was all true?
“What do you find to be crazy?”
Even though he had heard it only one time before, Jacob recognized instantly the voice that suddenly made itself heard behind him. He gave a reluctant glance over his shoulder and saw a darkened figure standing a few feet away.
“Is it the fact that you find yourself here on this bridge waiting for someone you don’t believe to exist?” asked the figure. “Or is it the idea you may very well be—”
“A freak?” said Jacob, unwilling to let the man finish.
“More than what you thought yourself to be when you woke up this morning, is what I was going to say,” corrected the man.
“I don’t believe it,” said Jacob.
“Which? That I’m an angel? Or that you’re a Nephilim?” The figure stepped forward sweeping the veil of shadows from his face and, sure enough, revealing it was the man who called himself Gotham, looking the same as when Jacob first saw him in the school gymnasium wearing a long dark overcoat with his long hair pulled back and his eyes looking like two caldrons simmering with molten sunlight.
“Both,” Jacob brusquely replied. “I don’t believe either thing you just said.
“He answered quickly and so definitively,” muttered Gotham as if reciting the narrative to some story.
He stepped to the edge of the bridge and gazed out at the night-cloaked view. “Tell me Jacob, why would I, a complete stranger whom you’ve seemingly never met, come to you out of the blue and tell you such an outlandish thing, if in fact it weren’t true?”
Of course such a thought was among the hundreds Jacob had already entertained.
“There’s a homeless man outside the movie theater who’s been swearing for the past two years that a huge asteroid is going to smash into the earth any day,” said Jacob, giving a glance of disbelief toward the sky. “Have yet to see any cataclysmic boulder headed this way.”
“I see. And what about your grandmother?” asked Gotham.
“What about her?”
“You undoubtedly mentioned to her our meeting, offhandedly of course,” said Gotham. “What purpose would she have in sitting you down and sharing with her beloved grandchild an untold history of her life secreted away inside a box at the bottom of a trunk only to fill your ears with nonsense and untruths?”
Another thought Jacob had mulled over more than once, only this one didn’t bring about as quick a retort.
“She’s...old,” Jacob managed to mutter after a long pause.
“She may show wear from a long path traveled, but you know as well as I her mind holds the same clarity as a freshly washed window,” said Gotham. “Besides, I doubt highly I would have found you waiting here on this bridge at this precise moment if you thought anything your grandmother confided to you was the ramblings of an old woman’s fantasies shaped by senility.”
Perhaps it was because Gotham revealed himself to know more than Jacob felt comfortable with that Jacob found himself slowly growing irritated.
“Alright then, how about I ask you a question?” he challenged. “If you’re an angel as you claim you are, then where are your wings?”
“Again with the wings,” Gotham uttered with annoyance under his breath as if it were a question he was hounded with daily ad nauseam.
“That’s right, wings. You know, to fly. You do have them, right?” Gotham slowly shifted his gaze to the boy.
“I do,” he answered simply.
“Show me, then,” demanded Jacob.
Now he knew he had this charlatan right where he wanted him. Even the overcoat this so-called angel was wearing wouldn’t be enough to cover a pair of wings a man his size would need to even remotely raise him off the ground. There wasn’t even any sign of bulging coming from the man’s back.
“That’s what would convince you that I am what I say I am...a glimpse of my wings?” asked Gotham, with a curious tilt of his head. “Is the fabric of your faith so thin it relies only on what your eyes can see to keep it from completely unraveling?”
Jacob shrugged pompously. “You know the old saying: seeing is believing.”
It appeared as if Gotham was about to meet Jacob’s dare when he visibly drew back.
“I don’t perform tricks like some circus animal,” said Gotham. “I guess you will just have to go on believing that angels are as real as Santa Clause.”
“Not good enough,” said Jacob. “Either you show me a pair of wings, or admit to me right here, right now that you’re a fraud and somehow managed to convince my grandmother to buy into this bogus story. It’s your choice, but pick one of the other or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what?” Gotham pressed as if daring the boy to see through whatever threat was poised on the end of his tongue.
Jacob hesitated under the glare of the bright eyes trained unnervingly on him, but only briefly. “I’ll jump.”
The ultimatum appeared to tickle Gotham. “It’s a long way down just to prove a point.”
“I swear, I’ll do it,” said Jacob, inching his way closer to the edge of the bridge.
“And what if I’m a—what did you call me? A fraud?”
“Then you’ll stop me by admit
ting it. I doubt you’d want my blood on your conscience over a stupid prank,” said Jacob.
“You’ve got a point there,” said Gotham, pondering the boy’s logic.
“And if you’re an angel you’d have to save me and I will know everything you and my grandma have told me is true. Although if it is, I’d rather you just let me perish into the water.”
A dark seriousness passed visibly across Gotham’s face. “Now, you’re speaking nonsense.”
He stretched a hand toward Jacob, but Jacob stepped out of its reach. “Last chance,” Jacob threatened.
The two fiercely locked eyes.
“I’m not lying to you, boy. And I refuse to entertain any more of your childish games,” said Gotham, without a chink to reveal even the slightest glimmer of deception.
Jacob felt his stomach turn. He had betted surely with himself this game of chicken would have long since finished in his favor. Staring at Gotham he felt his jaw tighten and he took in a deep breath.
“Wrong answer,” he exclaimed. And with that he pushed himself free from the footing he had on the bridge. The last thing he saw as he went over the edge and into the arms of the night was a look of unexpected surprise reflected in Gotham’s face.
~~~
The sensation which came from the inevitable fall that followed made Jacob’s stomach roll over. Yet it was not the tremor of excitement which greeted Jacob in past jumps that caused the immediate release of adrenaline to course through his veins. Rather it was the not knowing what was—or was not—about to happen as he plummeted through the smothering darkness.
It was almost impossible to keep his eyes trained on anything around him, especially the black shape of the bridge which was fast getting further and further away. Then, just when Jacob was certain the answer he sought had been given to him, his ears caught a distinct fluttering sound, even through the wail of air he was rapidly passing through whistling in his ears. In that instant, he managed a glimpse of a blurred figure fast approaching him from above. Jacob felt his heart skip a beat, or two, when he saw movement come from the diving figure which looked to be mimicking a pair of giant, outstretched WINGS!
