She stepped sideways and launched Cockren into the air.
His limp body rose higher and higher, until it finally dropped from the air, landing halfway down the sanctuary, on top of a pew.
Brandon, no longer trying to free himself from the cross, was pawing at the cross on his hip.
The angel got it first.
“You were the one who tried to skewer me.” She ripped the cross free of his belt. His pants sagged, revealing his white briefs underneath. “You will be punished.”
“By the way of God, I will not suffer long.”
“Not if I can help it.” Grabbing the shaft of the cross with her right hand, she braced it against her chest with the left. The she yanked down, separating the shaft from the rest of the cross, and revealing a nine-inch blade underneath.
Stiltson emptied the rest of his clip through the angel, but she didn’t seem to notice. He ran over to Sam.
“Here, take this!!” He presented a gun to her, not the .357 he’d been using, but another. A .41 Magnum six-shooter.
“Make sure the safety’s off!”
Sam nodded. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Her brain could not adjust to the events that were unfolding in front of her.
She heard Brandon’s tortured screams and gargles. She aimed the gun, but was too late. He was being dissected, the bladed cross slicing from his stomach up to his throat. Brandon looked down at his insides, astonished, as if he couldn’t believe that was what made him tick on the inside. It was short-lived, though. As they seeped out of him and sloughed onto the floor, he died.
The angel stepped back. Brandon’s slack body sagged down, bound only by one wrist and ankle.
Sam clicked back the hammer.
The angel looked at her intently, raising the blade. To demonstrate her strength, she mashed it, crumpling it as if it were a dislodged paper towel roll. She pitched it over her shoulder. She smiled. Then turned around. Facing David, she kept her back to Sam and Stiltson. She raised her hands to his secured arms and clutched them. With one stern jerk, the rope split in two. His arms dropped to his side, dangling freely.
Stiltson jacked a fresh clip into his gun and aimed it at Natasha’s back. He squinted one eye, turned his neck, and adjusted his line of sight.
Sam saw what he was about to do. The way her body soaked up those last shots, these could travel straight through her and into David. Or, what if he missed?
“No, Stiltson, don’t shoot!”
“Why not?” he asked, without taking his eyes away from the target.
“You might hit David!”
The angel grabbed the rope that had snarled David’s feet together with her right hand and used her left to grab his tied right arm. She tugged them, snapping the ropes in half without much effort. David’s lifeless body fell into her arms. Turning, she held him like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold.
Stiltson lowered his gun, finally understanding that David was too much at risk of being hit by a stray bullet.
Sam met the angel’s eyes. Coal-black ovals of fury. Wet tears streamed down her face, dripping off her cheeks. When they splashed the wooden floor, they sweltered, burning holes through the lumber like acid.
“He’s hurt,” she said. Much calmer than Sam had ever heard her speak. “I’m afraid he’s going to die.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She crouched down, gently settling David’s body on the floor by her feet. His right arm draped over his stomach. She took it and lowered it to his side. “I can still hear his thoughts. They’re faint, but I can still hear them.”
Sam walked to her, kneeled down. “What does he say?” She slowly raised her hand to the angel and brushed back a clump of her hair, tucking it behind her ear.
“He says,” she began. “He says he still loves…” She turned her burning gaze upon Sam. The soft tone was gone, her quivering lip replaced with a snarl. “You!” Her voice rattled the sanctuary as if a massive earthquake had just hit.
Sam saw only a blur of movement then felt a tightening clutch around her neck. With one quick lash, Sam was sailing through the air. She slammed against something hard and tumbled to the floor. Behind her, she could hear rapid gunshots, a man’s scream–Stiltson’s–and then nothing.
Rolling onto her stomach, she felt broken wood sliding under her. Looking down, she realized she’d landed on the offering table. It had broken under her. Worse yet, she no longer had her gun. She could not back Stiltson up like she had wanted to do.
By the cross, Stiltson kicked the angel board into the air and fired at it. Three holes ripped through it. The angel kept coming, laughing that she was unharmed by Stiltson’s sudden idea. She took his gun from him and smashed it between her hands. Shards of metal rained from her clenched fists.
She backhanded Stiltson. He fell to his knees, bracing himself up on one arm.
She moved in for the kill.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Somewhere in the darkness, David could hear the shouts, the screams, the gunshots. As if looking through frosted glass, he thought he had seen Natasha throwing a priest across the church. Attacking Sam, and Stiltson. Both of them had been wounded badly. Natasha was on a rampage. He knew that much, but seeing exactly what she had done was impossible.
Until he opened his eyes.
At first, his surroundings were unclear. His eyes were taking too long to adjust. He heard an old man scream. Stiltson. Then wet punching sounds.
David’s head pounded. His mouth ached with a ferocious surge of pain. His arms and legs felt as if he’d slid across a plain of sandpaper. As his focus cleared, he spotted Natasha crouched over Stiltson, gripping him by the shirt and smashing him again and again in the face with her bare fist. His face was a mess of blood and meat. He was no longer screaming.
Nor moving. His arms, limp, hung by his sides like noodles.
Lifting him high, she flung him against the pews. Instead of bouncing off and landing, he surged through them. One, two, three, four pews splintering behind him as his limp body crashed through. Buried somewhere under the rubble of broken boards was what was left of Stiltson.
Then she went after Sam.
Sam’s punishment would be much more severe. He’d sensed the hatred Natasha had for her, feeling it build into a bubble that had finally popped. Now she was creeping toward her, stalking her like helpless prey.
He couldn’t let this happen. Not to Sam. Enough people had been killed by Natasha’s lustful wrath. His mother, sister, possibly Stiltson, and even George. David couldn’t imagine how many others could possibly be slain by the hands of Natasha. How could something so beautiful hurt so many people? How could she do such horrible things? She was wonderful, a treasure.
A treasure of madness.
He no longer felt her presence inside him. For what felt like the first time in years, he was thinking for himself. Without influence—all on his own accord. “No more,” David mumbled through his cracked jaw. He could not stand. He didn’t have the strength for it. But crawling would work just fine. Just a moment ago, he’d eyed what he needed. It wasn’t far away, on the floor near the pummeled angel board, and if he crawled, he could get there.
A gun. It looked an awfully lot like the one Martin had in his closet. For fun, they had taken it to the target range numerous times. It was therapeutic to them, being men, shooting things, and making a lot of racket. Not just manly, but fun.
Martin. I’m going to miss him. At least he’s been spared all of this.
Hearing David’s thoughts, Natasha turned away from Sam, who was cowering against the shattered table, one arm over her face, as if to shield her from an impending attack.
She started to walk cautiously to David. “David?”
“Don’t come near me,” he said, his jaw crunching as he spoke.
“Please, my love. Don’t. I know what you think must be done. But don’t. If
you do that, we can never be together. I saved you once before, but this time, I won’t be able to. I’m too close to human now. Look.” Her voice was shaky with tears. Holding her arms out, she forced what was left of her wings to spread. One was intact, but just barely; it hung low like old celery. The other had deteriorated into nothing more than a bloodied, jagged stump.
“See David? Once these fall off, I’ll be completely human. I won’t need to use your body to cross anymore. I’ll be here, with you. And we can hold each other, flesh to flesh. No more passages to keep you in a slumber and me trapped inside. No more priests or exorcisms. Just the two of us. Forever.”
“I do love you,” he muttered.
“I know you do, and I love you too.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Natasha. I was talking to Sam.”
Natasha froze in place. Her arms went rigid, her back stiffened. She scowled.
“I know you do,” said Sam. “I love you too. So much, so very much.” She spoke between heavy breaths.
“David?” shrieked Natasha. “Don’t do this!”
“You lied to me, Natasha. So many times you made me believe one thing while you were actually doing something else. You killed Amber but made me believe she’d done it to herself. And my mother, I can remember seeing you kill my mother. You’ve murdered so many… It has to end…”
He placed the barrel under his chin. “I was supposed to die in that bathtub. You both should have just let me die.”
Using his thumb, he cocked the hammer back. The cylinder turned, a bullet popped into the chamber.
Natasha flung her arms in front of her, patting at the air. “David, please don’t, I love you. Don’t!”
David pulled the trigger. The gun fired. And Natasha, watching helplessly as David took his own life, fell to her knees. Arching her back, she raised her arms in the air and screamed at the sky.
The stained-glass windows exploded from the depth of her cries.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Giles entered what was left of the church with two officers for backup. As they were nearing the church, his radio intercepted a call about an explosion at the abandoned church just outside of Middleton. Giles quickly responded, and informed the dispatcher he was already on his way and for everyone else to remain on standby until hearing from him.
Standing in the sanctuary, Giles had stumbled upon the remains of a massacre. He found an old priest, broken, bent awkwardly at the middle of his back, folded over the pew.
“Stay back,” he said to the officers.
“Where?” asked the younger one. Eager beaver. Giles knew he’d be trouble, and wished he had left him behind.
“At the doorway. I’ll take a look around.” Drawing his gun, he went ahead. Stepping over rubbish and broken boards, he called out. “It’s Giles! Where is everyone?”
“G…Giles?”
Sam.
He ran to the front of the sanctuary and found Sam lying on her side. Kneeling next to her, he didn’t bother looking anywhere else. “Are you all right?”
“A little banged up.”
“What happened?”
Sam burst into tears, sobbing out of control. Unable to answer him, she pointed ahead of her.
Giles looked. His mouth dropping, his eyes going wide, he saw David. He lay on his back, his head secured in the lap of a rotting corpse. The corpse of a woman. Not just a woman. Looking closer, he saw the degenerated waste of a shriveled wing.
“Is that…?”
Cupping her hand over her mouth, Sam nodded. Her cries turned to shrieks. “He killed himself…to stop her…from killing me…”
From what Giles gathered, David had used the gun still clasped in his right hand to kill himself. The angel decomposed because of it. He stood up and slowly walked to the angel. With the tip of his gun, he lightly tapped the side of her face. She whipped her head around, frightening Giles, and burst into a cloud of dust. Her remains blew away like a storm of sand.
“Giles?” asked the eager cop. He sounded much closer than he should have been.
“What?” He jumped to a stance, glaring straight through the young cop.
“I found Stiltson.”
“What?”
“He’s under all this mess.” Eager beaver pointed down at a pile of broken lumber.
Giles dropped his dour look and bolted for the exuberant officer. “Is he all right?”
“He’s alive, but not in the best of shape. He asked for a cigarette.”
Giles smiled as he slowed his pace down to a walk. “He’s all right then.” Giles stepped over some broken boards and found his partner lying on his back. His face, battered and broken, was covered with blood, and swelling. Both lips were busted, and his nose appeared to have been shattered.
“You’ve looked better.”
“I’m sure I have,” Stiltson said, talking through lips he could barely move.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sam was glad Stiltson had made it, but she could not take her eyes away from David long enough to go check on him. She thought back to Natasha. The way she had reacted to David taking his own life. Through all the anger and jealousy, she truly loved him. Sam could not help but to feel sad about that.
But Sam loved him too, deeply.
She hoped that David would not have to suffer for such a heroic act. And she even hoped that Natasha would finally be able to be at peace with her emotions.
With her aching arm, she reached over and brushed David’s hand. It was snowed over with Natasha’s dust, but she wiped his hand clean. She wanted to feel nothing but him. Natasha had her moment—now it was her turn. She squeezed his hand. It was still warm.
Sam began to cry again.
Afterward
Angel Board was the first novel I completed. I began writing stories when I was eleven and regularly alternated between writing fiction and screenplays. I’d started a few novels before and failed. But Angel Board was an idea that I knew from the start would have to be a novel. I was (and still am) reading a lot of Richard Laymon, Clive Barker, Edward Lee and Jack Ketchum at the time. In fact, when the idea first came to me at my old job one day, I had a paperback copy of Ketchum’s OFFSPRING in my car for me to read on my lunch break. The drive to finish a novel was buzzing in-side me, and when I nearly lost my eye while making a cardboard bale it all seemed to fall into place.
In the book, an unfortunate man is killed in a wild accident involving a cardboard bale. The cables holding the cardboard together snap and mysteriously take on a life of their own. In the process, somebody is torn to shreds by the ridiculously sharp wires.
Back when I nearly lost my eye, I knew there was no way a death like I had imagined could really happen unless supernatural forces were at work. Could a ghost be picking off people, one by one, in gloriously gory ways?
It was in that critical death scene where the idea for Angel Board began.
I was working as an assistant manager for a popular office supply chain at the time. The hours were good, the pay was decent, but the work was shit. I tried to convince myself I could be happy with a career in that field, but deep down (not too deep), I knew writing was all I could ever do if I wanted to be happy with my job. Even now, I wouldn’t be that great to be around if I couldn’t write stories.
I had just opened the baler’s gate so the compacted cube of cardboard could drop onto the pallet. When it landed, the wires snapped. One whisked right past my face with a whistling lash. It didn’t get me, but it came very close, too close for comfort. I wondered what would have happened if it had popped me in the eye. I pictured the wire plucking it right from the socket.
And the idea of somebody being killed by those wires stayed with me.
Shortly after, I was visiting a friend. His mother, a very eccentric woman, was performing an angel tarot card reading on a girlfriend of hers. I’d never heard of such a thing, so I began asking her questions about the process. This led to her bring
ing out an angel board, which was nothing more than a Ouija board that was painted to look heavenly. I asked her that since it had a halo on it, was that how it knew it was supposed to communicate with angels and not demons? She wasn’t too thrilled by my sarcasm. How Carol explains angel boards and how they work to David in the book is almost verbatim to what my friend’s mom told me.
Over the next couple of weeks, I researched angel boards and my mind began to assemble a story. I began to wonder what would happen if somebody used an angel board alone. Would the angel try to manipulate them? Control them? Possess them? There’s plenty of information—and a great movie called Witchboard—about evil spirits using the Ouija board to trick humans into allowing their bodies to be possessed.
Hatching out the ideas through my notes, I decided the story would have to be deeper than just somebody being possessed. The angel needed to somehow be emotionally attached to the person, and incredibly obsessed with him. I wondered what would happen if this angel somehow intervened and saved this person’s life, making a connection with him that was now eternal. And if he reached out to her through an angel board, would it open the door for him to be possessed by her?
I was giddy with the idea, and began writing it in January 2009. About twenty-thousand words in, I was backing up the file when a glitch caused me to lose it all. I could no longer open the original file, or the backup. Crushed and defeated, I decided to forget about the story.
I worried that because of my adding Detectives Stiltson and Giles to the story, I’d somehow cursed it. My favorite pair of detectives have found their way into many of my stories, and before Angel Board, they were only in one that was ever completed. It had been rejected by nearly everyone who read it, and now the only copy that exists is a hardcopy that’s locked up in my plastic trunk. One day it might come out, but I doubt it.
As I was working on Angel Board, I felt Stiltson calling out to me and asking if he could come into the story. I told him it was okay so long as he brought along Giles. He ensured me he wouldn’t dream of coming without him. And I had just completed their debut chapter when the glitch happened.
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