The Fallen

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “What’s up, Gabe?” he asked, refusing to open his eyes.

  The dog bounded from the bed in response and began to root around the room. Aaron moaned. He knew what that meant. The dog was looking for a toy.

  He prayed to the god of dog toys that Gabriel’s search would come up empty but the ancient deity of cheap rubber and squeakers seldom heard his pleas. The eighty-pound dog leaped back up on the bed. Even though his eyes were shut, Aaron knew that Gabriel loomed above him with something in his mouth.

  “What do you want, Gabriel?” he asked groggily, knowing full well what the dog’s response would be.

  It was no surprise when he felt a tennis ball thump onto his chest.

  What was a surprise was when the dog answered his question.

  “Want to play ball now,” Gabriel declared in a very clear and precise voice.

  Aaron opened his eyes and gazed up into the grinning face of the animal. There was no doubt now. The day’s descent into madness was complete. He was, in fact, losing his mind.

  chapter three

  Dr. Jonas seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

  “You’re not someone I’d expect to see waiting out front at eight thirty on a Friday morning, Aaron,” the burly man said as he walked behind his desk, removed his tweed sports jacket, and hung it on a wooden coatrack stuck in the corner.

  “How long has it been?” the psychiatrist asked, smiling warmly as he began to open the paper bag he’d carried in.

  Aaron stood before the chair stationed in front of the doctor’s desk. He glanced casually about the office. Little had changed since his last visit. Cream-colored walls, a framed Monet print bought in the gift shop of the Museum of Fine Arts—in a strange kind of way it felt comforting.

  Dr. Michael Jonas had been his counselor after his placement with the Stanleys, and had done him a world of good. It was with his help that Aaron had learned to accept and cope with many of the curves life had seen fit to throw at him. The man had become a good friend and at the moment, Aaron was feeling a little guilty for not making more of an effort to keep in touch.

  “I don’t know, five years maybe?” he responded.

  Jonas shook his shaggy head, smiling through his thick salt-and-pepper beard. “That long?” he mused as he removed a banana and a small bottle of orange juice from the bag. “Doesn’t seem it, does it? But again, once you hit forty, the dinosaurs don’t seem all that long ago.” Jonas laughed at his own joke and sat down in the high-backed leather chair behind the sprawling oak desk. He grabbed the banana and juice and held them up to Aaron. “Do you want to share my breakfast? I’m sure I could find a fairly clean mug around here somewhere.”

  Aaron politely declined as he sat facing the doctor.

  “Suit yourself,” Jonas said. He twisted the metal cap off the juice and took a large gulp. “If you don’t want breakfast, you must’ve skipped school for some other reason. What’s going on, Aaron? What can I do for you?”

  Aaron took in a deep breath and let it escape slowly, gathering his wits so as not to spew out the events of the past twenty-four hours in an incoherent babble. How exactly do you explain that you can suddenly understand foreign languages—and, oh yes, your dog has started to speak to you?

  “You okay?” Jonas asked, starting to peel his banana. The man was smiling, but there was definitely a touch of concern in his tone.

  Aaron shifted nervously in his seat. “I don’t know,” he answered with uncertainty.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you.” Jonas broke off the top of the banana and popped the fruit into his waiting maw.

  Aaron gripped the armrests tightly, sat back, and began to explain. “I’m not exactly sure what’s happening…but I think I might be having some kind of breakdown.”

  The doctor took another swig of juice. “I doubt that very much,” he said, “but if you want to explain, I’m all ears.”

  Aaron was very careful as he talked about what had happened at school the previous day, at the lockers with Vilma and her friends. He was sure to include that he had been experiencing a very bad headache just before he was suddenly able to understand their Portuguese. He decided to stop there, not yet wanting to broach the incident involving Gabriel.

  Aaron had been staring at his sneakers through most of his explanation, and gradually looked up to meet Jonas’s gaze as the psychiatrist finished the last of his banana.

  “It’s all right,” Aaron said, again looking down at his feet. “If you want to call and get me a room up at Danvers State, I’ll understand.”

  Jonas continued to chew as he picked up the fruit peel and threw it inside the empty paper bag. “This is interesting, Aaron,” he said after swallowing. He wheeled his chair over to the side of his desk and tossed the bag into the trash barrel. “Very interesting.”

  “And I think…no, I know I could speak it if I had to,” Aaron added, “and…and it’s not just Portuguese.” He thought of the conversations he’d had with his dog since last night.

  “Definitely not just Portuguese.”

  The doctor drank some more juice. “Let me get this straight,” he said as he wiped the excess from his beard. “You had a headache and now you can understand and possibly speak foreign languages. A skill you’ve never had before. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Aaron felt a flush of embarrassment bloom across his cheeks and leaned forward in his chair, studying his shoes. “I know it sounds really stupid but…”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid,” Dr. Jonas said, “but it does sound a little weird. Do you have any other symptoms?”

  Aaron looked up. “No. Do you think it has anything to do with my headache?”

  The doctor had been smiling, but his smile gradually began to fade as Aaron spoke.

  “Is…is there something wrong?” he asked.

  Jonas reached over to a pile of papers at the corner of his desk and removed a yellow legal pad. “You understood what I just said to you?” he asked, picking up a pen and writing something on the pad.

  Aaron nodded. “Sure, why?”

  “What exactly did I say?”

  Aaron thought for a minute. “You said that what I was saying wasn’t stupid, although it was weird and did I have any other symptoms.”

  Jonas stroked his beard. “I was speaking to you in Spanish, Aaron.”

  Aaron squirmed nervously in his chair. “But…but I don’t know Spanish.”

  “You’ve never taken it in school?” Jonas asked. “Or had friends who spoke it?”

  Aaron shook his head. “The only language I ever took in school was French, and I never got a grade higher than a C.”

  Jonas nodded and began to write again. Finished, he set his pen down on the pad and looked up. “Describe your headache to me, Aaron—but do it in Spanish.”

  Aaron rubbed at his temple. “In Spanish?” He smiled uneasily. “All right, here goes.” Aaron opened his mouth and began to speak. “It was like somebody was sticking a knife into my head.” He touched the top of his head. “Right here. Like somebody put it through my skull into my brain. I’ve never had a headache like it, I can tell you that.”

  He stopped, and a lopsided grin crept across his features. “How was that?” he asked, returning to English.

  The doctor was shaking his head in disbelief. “Impressive,” he said, failing to keep his growing interest in check.

  Aaron leaned forward, eager to know why this was happening to him. “So you don’t think I’m crazy or anything? You believe me, Doc?”

  The desk chair creaked in protest as the doctor leaned back. He held the pen in one hand and was tapping it against the palm of the other. “I believe you. I just don’t know what to make of it,” he said thoughtfully. “Let’s see….”

  Aaron watched as the big man wheeled his chair over to a bookcase against the wall on the other side of his desk. He disappeared as he bent down to take something from the bottom shelf. When he came up, he laid a large text on top of the desk.
Aaron could not see what its subject was, and waited nervously as the doctor thumbed through the pages.

  “If you…can tell me…what I’m saying to you…right now,” he said, struggling with the complexity of the words he pulled from the book, “I’ll have no choice…but…to believe…the incredible.” Jonas looked up from the text and stared with eager eyes.

  “I understood you perfectly,” Aaron said. “It was Latin, right?”

  The doctor slowly nodded, looking stunned.

  “It looks as though we’re both going to have to start to believe in the incredible,” Aaron said.

  Jonas’s expression was that of a man who had just been witness to a miracle. His eyes bulged as he slowly closed the Latin text. “Aaron, I…I don’t know what to say.”

  Aaron was growing a bit nervous. The doctor was staring at him, and he felt like a bug beneath a microscope. “Why do you think it happened?” he asked, to break the sudden silence. “How?…”

  Jonas was shaking his head again as he combed his large fingers through his graying beard. “I have no idea, but the fact that you had such a powerful headache before this talent manifested suggests that the how is likely neurological.”

  “Neurological?” Aaron questioned, suddenly concerned. “Like there’s something wrong with my brain—like a tumor or something?”

  The psychiatrist leaned forward in his chair again. “Not necessarily,” he said, stressing the words with his large hands. “I’ve heard stories of neurological disorders that caused individuals to gain unique abilities.”

  “Like understanding and speaking foreign languages?” Aaron suggested.

  Jonas nodded. “Exactly. The case I’m thinking of involved a man from Michigan, I believe. After suffering severe head trauma in a skating accident, he found himself able to calculate the most complex math problems in his head. He hadn’t even finished high school, never mind classes in mathematical theory.”

  “So you think that something like that might have happened to me?” Aaron asked the psychiatrist.

  The doctor pondered the possibility. “Maybe something happened inside your brain that’s caused this unique capability to develop.”

  Jonas grabbed his pen again and furiously began to take notes. “I have a friend over at Mass General, a neurologist. We could talk to him—after we’ve done some testing of our own of course and—”

  The sudden rapping at the office door made Aaron jump.

  The doctor pulled up his sleeve and glanced at his watch. “Damn it,” he said with a hiss. “My nine thirty must be here.”

  Aaron’s heart still pounded in his chest from the sudden scare. He watched Dr. Jonas step out from behind his desk and move toward the door.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Aaron,” he said as he opened the door and stepped into the lobby.

  Alone, Aaron’s mind began to race. What if there is something wrong with me—something wrong with my brain? He began to bite at his thumbnail. Maybe it would be wise to make an appointment with the family physician just in case.

  He thought about missing another day of school and felt himself begin to panic. This business couldn’t be coming at a worse time. He’d be hearing from colleges shortly and needed his grades to reflect how serious he was about getting into the schools of his choice. He wondered if colleges looked at the number of absences before making their acceptance decisions.

  The door opened. “Sorry about that, kid,” he said, moving behind his desk. “Listen, I’m booked solid for the entire day, but why don’t you come by tomorrow and see me. How would that be?”

  Aaron stood. “It’s Saturday. Is that all right?”

  Jonas nodded. “Sure, I was going to be in tomorrow anyway. Why don’t you stop by—say early afternoon? We can do a few more tests before I give my buddy at Mass General a ring.”

  Aaron agreed with a slight nod and walked to the door. “Thanks for seeing me this morning, Doc,” he said, a hand on the doorknob. “I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

  Dr. Jonas was removing a file from inside a cabinet beside his desk. “No problem, Aaron,” he said as he opened the file. “It was good to see you.”

  Aaron had opened the door and was about to leave when Jonas spoke again to him, bringing him back into the office. The man was standing, looking calm and confident.

  “Relax,” the psychiatrist said. “We’ll work this out, I promise. See you tomorrow.”

  As he stepped out into the morning sunshine, Aaron could not shake the gnawing feeling that something was suddenly not right with his world.

  Something over which he had no control.

  Aaron crossed the street and stepped over the low, dark green, pipe fence that encircled Lynn Common.

  He’d arrived early to his former psychiatrist’s office, so he had parked on the other side of the common and waited there. He’d always enjoyed this place, with its oak trees and unkept grass. Even though it was a bit rundown, it still had its charms. Besides the beach, it was one of his favorite places to walk Gabriel when the fickle New England weather cooperated.

  He walked across the expanse of green trying to clear his head. As he reached the middle of the open area, he remembered an odd bit of Lynn trivia: the common had been built in the shape of a shoe. The voice of his junior high history teacher, Mr. Frost, droned on in his brain about the history of the city.

  Settled in 1629, Lynn ultimately became a major producer of shoes. Though the construction of the common was first begun in 1630, the present-day sections were shaped into the approximate proportions of a shoe during the nineteenth century, the larger area being the sole, and the smaller, the heel. At that moment, Aaron was inside the sole.

  He’d always wanted to take a helicopter ride over the city to verify that the common was indeed in the shape of a shoe. Mr. Frost had talked about a book at the library that contained an aerial shot of the common. Since he had planned to finish out the day at the library anyway, perhaps he’d take the time to look it up, he thought as he continued on a path to his car.

  Aaron suddenly shuddered, as if someone had just slipped an ice cube along his spine. The strange feeling that he was being watched rolled over him in waves, and he stopped to look around.

  He glanced at the ancient bandstand squatting in the center of the sole. The shabby structure was once used for summer band concerts, but was now more of a hangout for kids skipping school or people passing time between unemployment checks. Today it was empty.

  He continued to look about, and there, just where the heel began, he could make out a figure standing over one of the “Keep Lynn Beautiful” trash barrels. There was a shopping cart parked near the man. Probably collecting cans for the deposit money, Aaron thought as he continued on his way, studying the lone figure in the distance. Yes, he was sure of it. The man was staring at him. Aaron could actually feel his gaze upon him.

  “Probably deciding whether he should run over and hit me up for change,” he muttered beneath his breath as he reached the other side of the common.

  Aaron stepped over the low fence. His metallic blue, ’95 Toyota Corolla was parked directly across the street, and he waited for an opportunity to cross. As he fished his keys from his pocket he thought about what he would do for the rest of the day. He had skipped school, but it didn’t mean that he was going to shirk all his academic responsibilities. He’d spend the afternoon in the library beginning his research for Ms. Mulholland’s senior English paper, a paper required for graduation. He hoped a look around the library would help him decide on a topic. Ideas danced around in his head: the duality of good and evil in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and religious symbolism, Shakespeare’s use of—

  The hair at the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. His senses screamed. Someone was behind him.

  Aaron whirled around and came face to face with the man he’d seen at the barrel far across the common. The old man was dressed in a filthy overcoat, pants worn at the knees, and sneakers. The faint smell of b
ody odor and alcohol wafted off him, and Aaron almost gagged on the unpleasant stench.

  He was taken aback, not sure of what to do as the man began to lean toward him. What the hell is he doing?

  The man appeared to be smelling him. He moved in close to Aaron and sniffed at his face, his hair, his chest, and then he stepped back. He nodded, as if in response to a question to which only he was privy.

  “Can…can I help you with something?” Aaron stammered.

  The man responded, speaking in a language Aaron had never heard before, a language he somehow sensed had not been uttered by anyone in a very long time.

  “Can you understand the tongue of the messenger, boy?” asked the old man in the arcane dialect.

  Aaron answered in kind. “Yes,” he said, the strange words feeling incredibly odd as they rolled off his tongue. “I can understand you…but I don’t understand the question.”

  The old man continued to stare, his gaze even more intense. Aaron could have sworn that he saw what appeared to be a single flame dancing in the center of each ancient eye, but knew that it was probably just a trick of the light.

  “You answer my question as you speak,” the man responded, still using the bizarre-sounding language, “and what you are becomes obvious to me.”

  “What…what I am?” Aaron asked. “I don’t understand what…”

  The strange old man shuffled closer. “Nephilim,” he whispered as he raised a dirty hand to point. “You are Nephilim.”

  The word reverberated through Aaron’s skull and a sudden panic gripped him. He had to get away. He had to get away from this strange old man, from that word. He had to get away as fast as he could.

  “I really have to be going,” he muttered as he slipped his key into the lock and hauled open the car door.

  Aaron got inside his car and locked it. He couldn’t remember a time when the need to run was so strong. He put the key into the ignition and turned the engine over. As he put the car in drive, he chanced a look at the old man. He was still standing there, staring in at him with those intense eyes.