by Jon Jacks
Si crouched down beside her, stretching a consoling arm around her shoulders.
‘She might come back.’ He didn’t sound convinced. ‘She has done before.’
Chrissy shook her head as she wept.
‘No, no; not this time.’ She turned to Si, speaking as if she herself couldn’t believe what she was saying. ‘She’s gone, Si. Jial’s gone. For ever this time.’
She looked up towards the open wall cabinet, towards the red switch.
‘We don’t have to do this,’ Si pointed out, judging that he was reading her thoughts correctly. ‘All we have to do is make sure we stay calm. We could live as we are.’
Ignoring him as if he were as invisible as the chiasmus she’d just seen murder Jial, Chrissy rose to her feet. She stepped towards the beckoning switch.
‘Jial said she’d given us a chance…’
‘She’d would say that, just to make you flick the switch.’
Si joined Chrissy by the switch.
They both glanced Emma’s way. She was wringing her hands fretfully.
Did she understand what they were about to do?
‘I love–’
Si placed a finger against Chrissy’s lips.
‘We’ve already gone through all this,’ he grinned.
Moving his finger aside, he brought his lips towards hers. They kissed, briefly yet warmly.
‘If you’re going to do it,’ he added, backing away a little, ‘do it. Do it now!’
With a last trembling chew of her bottom lip, Chrissy flicked the switch.
*
Chapter 54
Even as she felt the switch lock into place, Chrissy sensed the first intimation of a fire raging uncontrollably through her brain.
Alongside her, Si was already screaming in agony. He was clutching his head as if he would rather tear it off his shoulders rather than let this torture continue.
Emma was even worse, already writhing on the floor, wrapping her head in her arms as if to prevent it exploding.
Si’s eyes rolled in his head, revealing nothing but a blank, lifeless white. Then he dropped to the floor.
Chrissy fell with him, unable to cope much longer with the flood of pain surging around inside her head, her entire body.
Emma was no longer moving. Si’s body was wracked by a last few spasms, then he too lay lifeless.
Chrissy felt her own life hurriedly retreating from the unimaginable torments of her own body. She fought to remain conscious, praying she could somehow survive all this agony, this inferno that was in her head. She wondered how Jial had ever hoped she might survive this.
But there was no hope.
Her life was ebbing. flowing away
leaving her
and this was
the end
Light.
An orb of swirling, coruscating light.
It wasn’t real, of course,
It was simply swirling round and round in her mind.
She realised that.
There was also the unmistakable sound of anguished weeping.
She recognised that too.
Oddly, the light seemed to expand until it was no longer simply within her, but was, rather, suffusing her in its intensely bright glow.
She strained to open her eyes.
As she had feared, the light was blinding, making her immediately close her eyes once more.
She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to this new light. And as her eyes became used to it, she recognised that it wasn’t, probably, a new light after all. It was sunlight, bathing her face as it streamed in through an open window,
No, not an open window, she realised, as she sat up, as the hazy shapes around her became more distinct, more full of colour.
It was a window with smashed, splintered boarding partially covering it. And a dead girl skewered on the sharp, bloodied barbs of a broken steal shutter.
Chrissy glanced to her side, hoping she wouldn’t see what she knew, what she feared, she would see.
Si was lying beside her.
Chrissy hopefully reached out towards him.
‘Si?’ she whispered.
But even as she touched him, she sensed the icy aura of lifeless flesh, the unmovable hardness of rigor mortis. She drew her hand back – then leant over his cold corpse, weeping.
*
Chapter 55
What had she done, what had she done?
She slipped into the jeep’s driving seat.
Emma, like Si, had been still, lifeless. Cold.
Ahead of her, in the middle of the road, another child lay dead and naked.
Avoiding the body as she drove off, she sedately made her way towards the nearby town green. Here and there, she passed more naked bodies. Most of them were in unusual positions, such as bent over a hedge, or ungainly strewn across a roof top. Chrissy wondered what they had been doing when they had been struck dead.
At least there were signs of life around the green, but these were all adults.
Despite the fact that they had survived, only a few of them weren’t openly weeping, mourning the deaths of all the children they saw scattered around them. Some couples were crouching down by the corpse of a child, having recognised their daughter or son. They had each tenderly covered the naked body with a quickly removed coat of jacket. Others wandered as if in a daze, searching for their own child, already dreading what they must know they would find.
That odd, coruscating light hadn’t left her, Chrissy realised with a start. It hung around her, as it were a glow reflected from a mirror. The weeping was still there too; not just coming from the couples lamenting the death of a child, but hovering by her as if an indistinguishable part of the light.
A couple crouching over the naked corpse of their daughter looked up, as if spoken to by an invisible person standing over them. They smiled.
Another couple, one of those morosely seeking their own son amongst the dead children, abruptly stopped their searching to smile blissfully. Then they rushed off, this time with more purpose and eagerness.
‘Angels?’
‘Angels!’
Bewildered murmurs were beginning to rise up from the couples making their way across the green.
‘Yes, yes, we can see angels!’ a man and woman cried out together joyously.
*
Chapter 56
With a shake of her head, as if she had suffered nothing more than a mild faint, one of the older girls sat up on the ground.
She seemed surprised to find her parents weeping over her, even more surprised when they elatedly clasped her to them as if they would never let her go again. She blushed with embarrassment when she realised she was naked beneath the coat her parents had covered her with.
On the other side of the green, another couple yelled out thanks and praise as their son similarly rose up from the grass with a stunned, confused grin.
Yet the weeping by Chrissy’s side continued. She reached out into the floating, now slightly diffused light.
It wavered to her touch. It partially solidified.
The light flowed, becoming a simply cloaked body, a bowed head; a pair of perfectly beautiful white wings.
‘You’re back?’ Chrissy softly gasped. ‘The angels are back?’
The angel stopped his weeping. He looked up, looked towards her.
‘You can see me? You can see us once more?’
He said it as if he couldn’t be more shocked.
‘But Jial? Where’s Jial?’ Chrissy demanded, attempting to look everywhere she could all at once.
It was as if she were clearly seeing everything for the first time. Everything was sharp and bright, with nothing out of focus or hard to define.
There were angels everywhere she looked.
They were kneeling by and praying for the life of the dead children.
They were offering a helping hand and words of encouragement to children rising to their feet.
They were calming those adults bursting with happiness as
they welcomed their son or daughter back to the world of the living.
They were offering reassuring words to those still waiting for their own child to regain life.
‘Yes, yes, of course we can see you again,’ Chrissy said distractedly to the angel standing by her.
She was still hoping to find Jial amongst these angels, even though they looked different to the ones she was used to.
‘Even our parents can see you now,’ she added, fighting back a sudden pang of anxiousness she felt for her mom and dad. She quickly reassured herself that they were probably fine.
‘Even adults?’ The angel laughed kindly. ‘Well, of course! We’ve always been here for everyone! We remained by you, unseen yet waiting and hoping that the connection between us, broken millennia ago, would one day be restored: and you would be aware of our presence once more!’
‘Jial did it! Yes, she did something, somehow!’
‘And who’s this Jial?’ the angel asked curiously.
‘Jial, my angel – my guardian angel. She’s the one who – well, I don’t know what she did! Reawakened more ancient, dormant sections of our brains, other senses?’
‘But I’m your angel. I’ve been with you ever since you were born. I’ve had to watch in growing anguish, for I realised I was incapable of influencing you as I was charged to do. It is indeed a miracle that everyone has been reconciled with their angel once more.’
‘Yes, yes, it is a miracle!’ Chrissy breathed excitedly, glimpsing Si and Emma making their way across the road towards the green.
Si was still dressed in the tablecloth, draped about him and tied in place so that it looked more like a toga than ever. Emma no longer seemed as stupefied as she had been before. She beamed happily as she watched children rising up from the ground as if from a long, dreamy sleep, smirking in baffled embarrassment as their parents firmly hugged them.
Would Emma’s parents also regain life? Chrissy believed she had the unhappy answer to her own question when she noticed the odd couple being consoled by their angels.
‘Si! Emma!’
Chrissy waved high in the air to gain their attention. They looked her way, waved back. They set off in a swift jog across the grass as she sprinted towards them.
Si and Emma’s guardians flowed alongside them, their angelic forms fluctuating between bodily shapes and orbs of whirling light, emanating a tangible sense of peace and comfort.
Chrissy and Si hungrily threw their arms around each other, clenching hands as they finally parted and stepped back a little.
‘She did it, Jial did it!’ Si exclaimed elatedly.
‘Jial? Don’t you mean Elly?’ Chrissy teased mischievously, releasing Si’s hands to give the patiently waiting Emma a brief yet welcoming squeeze.
Chrissy pulled back, grinning. She turned to Si, intending to wrap her arms around him once more – but stopped, and stared with disbelieving eyes.
A large, pure white feather silently fluttered down between them.
Hardly daring to breathe, Chrissy let the feather gently settle within her cupped hands.
‘Coincidence?’ Si said, staring as wide-eyed as Chrissy and Emma at the tenderly held feather.
Chrissy glanced up. There was nothing but pure blue sky stretching high above them.
In answer to Si’s question, she shook her head.
‘No Si – I think Elly’s a real angel now.’
End
If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg
Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak
