Angel City

by Jon Steele

  “There will be, then all will be well, I promise.”

  Gilles Lambert’s voice flared with panic: “But, monsieur, I can’t see anything. I can’t move.”

  “It’s all right. Hang on. I’ll find you, don’t worry.”

  He reached through the dark, found Gilles Lambert’s head, pulled him closer.

  “I’m right next to you, Gilles. Just look into my eyes.”

  “There’s nothing. Oh, monsieur, there’s nothing!”

  “It must be, it has to be. Keep looking, Gilles, don’t stop.”

  Silence.

  “Gilles?”

  Harper heard the man’s final breath escaping from his lungs, brushing by his face like something lost.

  “No, Gilles, not yet.”

  Harper let the weight of his form crush down on his eternal being. His blood pumped faster and he pulled Gilles Lambert’s face close again.

  “Look into my eyes, Gilles. I can make it work.”

  Harper’s eyes were running on empty.

  “Fuck. Hold on, Gilles. Keep looking.”

  The man’s last breath was gone.

  “No, Gilles, wait. Fucking wait.”

  Harper felt himself blacking out, slumping down, losing hold of the dead man.

  They’re dying . . . They’re all fucking dying . . .

  “God dammit, no!”

  Harper threw his fist through the dark, hit the stone wall, felt the bones snap and pain burn firelike through his body.

  “Fuck! C’mon, fucking do it!”

  He felt a spark of light in his eyes. He reached for Gilles Lambert in the absolute dark but couldn’t find him.

  “Gilles, where the fuck are you?”

  Harper crawled over the floor, slapping the stone, the light in his eyes fading. He found the dead man curled on the floor.

  “It’s in my blood, Gilles, I just can’t hold it in my eyes. But it’s in my blood, it’s . . .”

  He heard Gilles Lambert’s voice, still drifting through the dark.

  I thought about my Laguiole pocket knife . . . a gift from my father . . .

  Harper dug frantically through the dead man’s pockets, found the knife, opened it. The blade was razor sharp. He made a slice across the palm of his broken right hand, set the knife between his teeth, raised the palm of his left hand to the blade and sliced across it. The blade cut deep, and Harper spit out the knife. “Christ!” He rolled the dead man onto his back, pressed his bleeding palms down onto Gilles Lambert’s eyes.

  “Listen to my voice, Gilles. C’est le guet. Il a sonné l’heure. Il a sonné—”

  Something rushed through the dark, grabbed Harper’s arms, and pulled him from the dead man. Then a muffled voice: “Lachêr de lui, il est mort.”

  “No! Not yet! I can save him!”

  Two sets of unseen hands dragged Harper over the stone floor, shoved him hard against the wall, then a muffled voice: “Bougez plus. Il est mort.”

  Harper twisted to break free.

  “He’s not dead, not yet, there’s fucking time!”

  “C’est plus trop.”

  “Let go of me!”

  Harper’s feet were kicked out from under him and he fell. The unseen hands caught him, lowered him to a sitting position, pinned him down. Harper pushed back.

  “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  He felt something cover his nose and mouth.

  Sissshhhh.

  The muffled voice again: “Respirz.”

  Harper swung his arms, caught something with his broken hand.

  “No, let go of me!”

  Then a voice: “Bougez plus et respirz.”

  “Sod off!”

  A fist slammed into Harper’s guts, and air exploded from his lungs. He felt himself yanked upright, his nose and mouth covered again. Then another voice, English with a French accent.

  “Breathe, Mr. Harper, just breathe.”

  An autonomic response in his brain flashed; he sucked in the gas. Cool, pure—every muscle in his form relaxed.

  “I’m giving you a mixture of pure oxygen and radiance.”

  Harper felt it seeping into his blood.

  “Light,” he mumbled. “I need light.”

  “If we hit you with the full spectrum, the radiance in your blood will fry your optic nerves. You need to take it slow. We’re going to turn on a small lamp in the UV range at three hundred nanometers. It’s outside the range of human perception, but under the gas your mind will register it as dark blue. You can’t look directly at it for more than ten seconds. When I tell you to close your eyes, do it. Keep them closed and continue to breathe. Nod if you understand what I’m telling you.”

  Harper nodded.

  “On y va.”

  A pinprick of blue appeared in the absolute dark. In the beginning, he thought, there was . . . no bloody idea.

  “Close your eyes. Continue to breathe.”

  Remnants of blue light still excited the receptors of Harper’s optical nerves, and he saw the light as long threads stretching from the other side of the universe. He felt radiance sparkle in his blood, and a burst of pure light pumped through his form and into his eyes. He settled back against the stone wall, inhaled deeply. The voice coached him along.

  “That’s it. Now, keep breathing as you open your eyes, but don’t look directly at the lamp. Do you understand?”

  Harper nodded.

  “Good. Open your eyes.”

  A blue-tinted glow swelled throughout the cavern and gave it shape. High dome, coves cut into the walls. He was in the middle of the cavern, his back against the central pillar. No sign of Astruc or his pal, no sign of the reliquary box.

  Two men kneeling in front of him.

  Both of them wearing night vision goggles fitted with infrared illuminators; both of them with gas masks over their noses and mouths. One of the men was setting a pressure bandage to the palm of Harper’s left hand and wrapping it in gauze. He had a Belgian SCAR submachine gun hanging from his shoulder. The other one held a respirator over Harper’s nose and mouth. He was looking at his watch, counting seconds. He was the one speaking English.

  “We can’t give you morphine with the gas, but we need to stop the bleeding. This will hurt.”

  Harper nodded.

  The medic lifted Harper’s forearm, rested it on his leg, and ripped apart a pressure bandage. He stuffed the cotton pad into Harper’s right palm, wrapped the gauze strips around the crumpled fingers. And it did hurt like hell. Harper gritted his teeth, sucked hard at the gas. Didn’t stop the pain, but with radiance saturating his blood, he couldn’t have cared less.

  Harper saw a third man crouching at the entrance of the cavern. Night vision gear over his eyes, MAC-10 submachine gun in his hands, targeting up the passageway. Harper’s eyes focused on a fourth man, a Micro UZI hanging at his side. He was the one holding the small blue light. Harper saw their rough, dirty clothes. The kind that hadn’t been washed in a week, maybe never. Harper mumbled through the respirator.

  “The tramps from under the bridge.”

  They didn’t answer.

  Harper shot another glance at the mismatched weapons. They weren’t French police.

  “Who are you people?”

  The one holding the respirator over Harper’s mouth, the one speaking English, said, “You don’t need to know who they are. I’m the only one you need to know. Continue to breathe.”

  Harper looked at him. SIG strapped to his side, killing knife hooked to his belt.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Sergeant Gauer. Special Unit Task Force of the Swiss Police.”

  Took a second to click. The man behind the wheel of Inspector Gobet’s Merc during the Lausanne job. Ex–Swiss Guard, the one who made a head shot from a kilometer and a hal
f with a sniper’s rifle.

  “Inspector Gobet’s driver?”

  “I’ve been tracking you since l’Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”

  Harper looked at Sergeant Gauer’s clothes again, analyzed his voice.

  “You were the tramp on the steps. The one reading from Purgatorio. You thanked me for dropping a coin in your hat.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “What the hell are you doing in Paris?”

  “What’s it look like? Saving your ass. Now shut the fuck up and breathe.”

  Harper rested his head against the pillar, took another deep breath. Images began to flash through his eyes. He turned his head, saw the curled form on the cavern floor. Lambert . . . Jesus. Harper reached for him. “Gilles.”

  Both men held Harper down. Sergeant Gauer checked his watch.

  “Sixty more seconds of gas.”

  “It’s enough, I can fire up my eyes now. His soul needs to see my eyes.”

  The tramp slammed Harper into the pillar.

  “J’ai vous dit. C’est trop tard.”

  “Let go of me, there’s still time.”

  Gauer slapped Harper’s face. Harper took a sharp breath.

  “Continue to breathe, and listen. It’s too late, his soul has separated from his body. It’s too late.”

  “What?”

  “Astruc set off an explosive charge at the top of the corridor. A ten-meter section collapsed. It took us three days to tunnel through. Gilles Lambert has been dead that long.”

  Harper worked the timeline of human death. Four hours: skin turns purple, waxy. Twelve hours: full rigor mortis as the body tries to hold on to the soul. Twenty-four hours: body temperature equals surroundings, cell death complete. Thirty-six hours: rigor mortis fades, soul abandons form, dust to dust.

  “Can’t be. I was just talking to him. He’d just taken his last breath.”

  Fifteen seconds ticked by. Sergeant Gauer closed the valve on the gas tank, removed the respirator from Harper’s face. The cavern reeked of rotting meat. Harper gagged and spit.

  “What the hell?”

  The tramp across the cavern, the one holding the small blue light, moved close to Gilles Lambert’s body and rolled it over. Harper saw the swollen limbs and distended stomach, the discolored skin.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “What’s to get? You were talking to an empty corpse.”

  Harper saw the smears of fresh blood over Gilles Lambert’s dead eyes. He looked down at his own bandaged hands. He flashed the scene through his eyes. Like something out of a horror flick.

  “Christ, what the hell was I doing?”

  Gauer looked at the dead man, then Harper.

  “From the looks of it, I’d say you were reaching way above your pay grade.”

  THIRTEEN

  I

  KATHERINE HAD BEEN SITTING WITH MAX FOR THE LAST HOUR. He was in his crib, on his back, his blue-green eyes watching shadows moving over the walls and ceiling of his bedroom. He’d always been a sound sleeper. Give him a bath, dress him in his jammies (Shaun the Sheep jammies tonight, the ones he wanted), and lay him down with a bottle at seven. Ten minutes later, he was down for the count. Not a peep for twelve hours. But since Portland, three days ago, he would lie in his crib for hours before sleeping.

  Not like he was upset.

  Not like he was anything.

  He’d just stare at the never-the-same shadows, babbling to himself now and again. And not baby kind of babbling, Katherine thought. No, this was more like the little guy was talking to the shadows. And damn if there weren’t a few times when it seemed Max would tip his head as if hearing the shadows talk back.

  Earlier in the day, Katherine called the doctor in Portland to talk about it.

  “What kind of shadows are they?” the doctor said.

  “What do you fucking mean, ‘What kind of shadows are they?’” Katherine replied.

  “Where do the shadows come from, Ms. Taylor? How are they made?”

  “Security lamps in the back garden, bleeding through the evergreen trees outside the window,” Katherine explained.

  “So have the lamps and trees and shadows always been there?”

  “Yes, but they never kept him awake at night. And now he’s talking to them.”

  The doctor told her not to worry. Just exploring his imagination, he said. Perfectly normal. Important thing is not to show any distress, but to let him think it’s a game.

  Katherine was relieved and spooked at the same time. Relieved that Max was “normal,” spooked to think that if Max’s imagination was anything like hers lately (especially the part where she imagined Max was communicating with shadows), then therapy and/or medication might be in order.

  She expressed that concern to Officer Jannsen.

  Officer Jannsen rattled off a thesis-length description of Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in children. Something about young children’s brains constantly being rewired to organize and interpret sensory data into schemata, aiding in the cognitive representation of self. Katherine had no fucking idea what Officer Jannsen was talking about. But the lecture did end with, “So relax, Kat.”

  Katherine was telling herself those very words when she remembered: teasing shadows. It was what Marc Rochat called the shadows in the high corners of Lausanne Cathedral. And she remembered Marc in the belfry of Lausanne Cathedral, greeting the shadows in passing, or scolding them for their teasing ways. For a moment, she saw him. Long black overcoat, black floppy hat on his head, lantern in his hand, pointing to the wiggly, dark, high-above things and telling her, “Because they’re the teasing kind of shadows. They like to play in the cathedral. Sometimes they leave the door to the tower open and sometimes they chase after echoes. They’re very friendly shadows.”

  He faded from her eyes.

  She looked up at the ceiling, saw the shadows in Max’s bedroom. She laughed to herself. They really did look like the teasing kind of shadows. She looked at Max.

  “Is that what you’re doing, honey? Playing with the teasing shadows?”

  Max didn’t answer. His eyes stayed locked on the ceiling.

  Katherine tickled his belly. “Don’t you dare ignore Mommy Dearest . . .”

  Max squealed with delight.

  “. . . or she might have to tickle you forever.”

  Max kicked his legs and laughed. She bent down and kissed his forehead.

  “You know, I knew someone once. He talked to shadows, too, and he had lots of imaginary friends. They all lived in a cathedral. And some of his friends were lost angels.”

  Max stared at her, as if hypnotized by the sound of her voice, not even blinking.

  She remembered the first time he looked at her that way. He must have been two months old, and it totally freaked her out. She called Officer Jannsen, thinking something was seriously wrong with him. Officer Jannsen told Katherine that Max had lived inside her body for nine months, and that from twenty-four weeks, he not only heard her voice, but felt her voice vibrating around him, especially the sound of vowels. And that outside the womb, now, certain sounds in Katherine’s voice created a harmonic wave that resonated in the thalamus region of Max’s brain, like a tonic note of a musical score.

  “Your voice is like no other voice in the world to Max, it always will be,” Officer Jannsen said. “Of course he’s going to stare at you sometimes. He’s looking to you to guide him through his imagination. You should tell him stories.”

  “I read him stories all the time.”

  “No. I mean stories from your own imagination. Tell him those stories.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about?”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s more about the sound of your voice. It’s magical, it’s mysterious to him.”

 
Katherine raised an eyebrow.

  “This time you’re making it up.”

  “What?”

  “The whole harmonic vibration thingy.”

  “Actually, research on the impact of sound on fetuses is well documented. The rest of it, the part about the harmonic resonance of your voice impacting the thalamus region of Max’s brain, that’s my own theory.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Officer Jannsen wasn’t kidding. And staring at Max just now, Katherine thought Anne Jannsen was not only pretty damn smart (and pretty enough to make Katherine melt just thinking about her), but right. The expression on Max’s face said he was hanging on the very sound of Katherine’s voice.

  “So what do you think? You want me to tell you a story about the angels hiding in the cathedral?”

  “Angeh.”

  “Yeah, angels.”

  “Angeh.”

  “Come on, you can say it: angels.”

  “Angeh.”

  “I know, that L sound is kinda tough when it gets stuck in the back of your throat. Let’s try it in French. Les anges.”

  “Weezangeh.”

  “Weezangeh? What the heck is a weezangeh? Come on, say it properly and I’ll tell you the story of the lost angels in the cathedral.”

  Max kicked his legs and giggled. “Weezangeh.”

  “Okay, okay. What was I thinking that French would be easier? It’s French, for cripes sake.”

  “Fensh.”

  “Exactly. We’ll stick to English. Ready?”

  “Goog.”

  “Okay. Here we go. Once upon a time . . .”

  She stopped, had a thought.

  “Wait a sec, wait right here. I’m going to get something so I can really tell you the story about the lost angels. Okay?”

  “Fensh.”

  Katherine tickled Max’s tummy, and he giggled and kicked again.

  “Whatever. I’ll be right back.”

  She walked through the adjoining doors into her own bedroom. On the dressing table, near the window, was an old lantern and a black floppy hat. Some of the things left to her in Marc Rochat’s will, and presented to her in two large cardboard boxes by Monsieur Gübeli at the end of his visit to Grover’s Mill. She remembered Gübeli’s driver slowly opening the trunk of the limousine to reveal the cardboard boxes as if they were lost treasure. And she remembered before he left, Monsieur Gübeli said, “I trust these simple things will serve to remind you of the goodness and kindness that was Master Rochat’s nature, madame.”