by Eden Maguire
Phoenix half closed his eyes and took a sharp breath, as if he was in pain. His face was drawn. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
I sat beside him, focused all my energy on him.
“Yes, you will,” I told him softly. “So long as you keep on believing.”
My words touched a nerve. He opened his eyes and smiled sadly. “So now you talk to me about belief!”
“I know. But it’s true—belief is what it takes to get us through. You can make another trip. I know we can find the truth.”
Phoenix closed his eyes again, and I wasn’t sure that he’d taken in what I said. But when he opened them, he looked up at Dean. “I’m ready,” he said.
• • •
This is it—my last journey through time, the extraordinary trip that begins with beating wings as we stand in the yard under a starlit sky. The stars seem to drift then fall toward the ground, the ground dissolves, and I feel a tingling sensation at my shoulder blades. The starry mist, the beating wings surround me as I stand with Dean and Phoenix. I join the world of the Beautiful Dead and spread my magical white wings.
I am surrounded by starlight. I beat my angel wings in a universe of lost souls—all those wings, souls without a voice, and me hand in hand with my beloved Phoenix.
The glow of the stars fades. We fly with the lost souls and enter a dark, spinning space, the eye of an unnatural hurricane, more powerful, more deathly than any earthly storm. I see a million death-heads. Skulls crowd in on me, grinning, sightless, flashing by. So many skulls in the vastness of the dark universe and every one attached to a soul in torment. They long for me to let go of Phoenix’s hand, for him to be sucked into the dark vortex, to spin away into infinity.
“Hold on,” Phoenix whispers. “Look ahead at the light.” I see the pinprick of light. Dean leads the way, his wings spread wide. We follow, battered and torn.
It’s a light like no other, out of thick blackness, growing stronger, pulling us on. The light opens up, defeats the darkness, and our wings thrust us spinning toward it. It surrounds us with an incandescent glow.
We’re back in time twelve months to the Friday night when Phoenix died, standing in front of the gas station. At the roadside a red and green neon sign on top of a tall pole advertises gas for sale. In the small glass office Kyra sits behind her cashier’s desk handing out receipts. A steady stream of customers fills their tanks without seeing us.
Dean leads Phoenix and angel-me between a line of cars to the awning over the entrance to the office where we have a clear view of the vehicles approaching the gas station in both directions. We stand beside a rack of newspapers and wait.
Three more cars swing into the forecourt and join the lines for gas. Jacob Miller arrives on a bicycle, dumps his bike by the door, and goes inside to buy candy and a Coke. Then a guy shows up on a Harley Softail, cruising around the edge of the lot, followed by a second rider on a Dyna. They get off their bikes. The second guy waits in line for gas while the other looks up and down the street. Beside me, Beautiful Dead Phoenix grows more alert.
Soon more Harleys arrive. I count three, four, five. The riders join the Softail guy, and they begin to laugh and joke.
Someone picks up a magazine and goes into the office to pay. With wings outspread, Phoenix stands between me and Dean, silently watching the minutes leading up to his own death.
A car crests the hill. Its headlights swoop toward us, past the white church and the psychiatric hospital into the gas station. Under the red light we recognize Nathan Thorne in his black Chevy. He joins the line nearest us, music blasting from his sound system.
Seconds later, Phoenix pulls up behind the first Dyna rider.
Beautiful Dead Phoenix sees his old living self sitting at the wheel of his truck with Zak beside him.
For a second I tell myself: Act now. Go to Phoenix, stop him from getting out of his truck. Change everything!
I believe in that moment that anything is possible, that I can cheat destiny after all. This is my chance to save Phoenix.
I feel my heart jolt. I know I have to grab the opportunity with both hands.
I can change this! I silently tell my Beautiful Dead boyfriend. There’ll be no fight, no stabbing. You and I can go on living together…In that moment, I believe this with all my heart. So I step out with my angel wings from under the awning, raise my hand, and put it on living Phoenix’s arm.
His skin is warm. I say, “Leave now, before it’s too late.”
Living Phoenix walks right through me without seeing me. He goes up to the guy ahead of him in the line and says, “I need gas in a hurry. Is it OK for me to go ahead?”
The guy tells him no, wait in line like everyone else.
I still want to believe I have the power to change history. My heart hammers, my mouth is dry.
“Turn around, walk away. If you don’t want to die you have to leave,” angel-me pleads.
Phoenix jumps back in his truck, reverses, then pulls up behind Nathan Thorne.
“Get out of here!” I cry, leaning against Phoenix’s door to stop him from getting out.
Dean steps out from under the awning, pulls me back. He shakes his head. “Phoenix can’t see you,” he tells me. “He can’t hear you. You don’t exist.”
I close my eyes, swallow hard, feel the frantic energy drain away as Dean pulls me back. It was a moment when I could have healed all wounds, mopped up all the tears, but it’s gone.
Customers line up inside, more bikes arrive. Oscar Thorne’s Mercedes sweeps into the station followed by Vince Hall and Robert Black. From the opposite direction, Brandon arrives on his Dyna. Ignoring Thorne and the others, he goes straight into the store to talk with Kyra.
“Man, I’m in a hurry,” Phoenix tells Nathan as music blares. Jacob has bought his candy. He’s left his bicycle in a bad place. A biker customer goes inside to pay, comes out, trips over the bike. He picks it up and throws it against the newspaper stand. There is a clash of metal. Jacob comes out yelling and cursing. The customer puts his hand in his face and pushes him over.
“Yeah, and I’m in line ahead of you,” Nathan sneers at Phoenix as the fight begins. “I’m taking my time, see?” And he leans into his car, into the clash of drums and whine of guitars, making a big deal of looking for something. A small plastic envelope falls from the glove compartment onto the ground by Phoenix’s feet. Phoenix stoops and picks it up.
Now Zak gets out of the truck to snatch the envelope. He says something to Phoenix that we don’t hear above the music and the noise of the fight developing by the newsstand.
Jacob has half a dozen buddies on mountain bikes who appear out of nowhere, from side streets and from the main drag. They include Taylor Stafford, who skids to a halt and starts to kick someone’s Dyna, knocking it over and stamping on the mirrors and wheels. Another kid picks up a garbage can and swings it at another’s head. The kid is grabbed from behind.
By now there is a smell of spilled gas and ordinary customers are backing out of the station and driving away. Inside the store, Kyra waves Brandon aside and picks up the phone.
Nathan stops searching in his car and stands up straight.
“Give me back that packet,” he demands. “Hey, Oscar—Zak took the envelope!”
Phoenix steps across Nathan’s path. The fight outside the office is out of control, and now he loses it with Nathan. “Forget the envelope—move your car!” he demands, fists clenched.
Nathan tilts his head back and grins. “Make me,” he says.
Zak moves in and quickly hands the packet to Nathan, who doesn’t thank him but laughs in his face. Brandon strides out of the store toward them, through the brawling kids, past Oscar, Hall, and Black. He punches Nathan then grabs hold of Zak’s collar and marches him onto the street, sends him sprinting off toward town. When he comes back, Phoenix has been surrounded by the younger kids,
who are being forced back toward the road. Jacob and Taylor smash windshields and slash tires as they retreat.
A woman passenger stranded inside a white car begins to scream. Brandon has stopped to calm her, leaning an arm against the roof of her car, when Nathan opens his trunk and pulls out an iron bar. Blood runs from his nose as he charges at Brandon, wielding the bar over his head.
Glass shatters, tires hiss, the woman continues screaming.
Invisible, helpless, we watch as Oscar, Hall, and Black draw knives from their belts.
Nathan uses the metal bar to strike Brandon on the back of his head. Brandon staggers away from the white car into the path of Oscar Thorne. Phoenix breaks free of Jacob, Stafford, and the brawling kids and runs to catch Brandon as he falls.
Nathan comes at them again with the metal bar, this time with Oscar at his side. A passing kid rides his bike at Oscar’s legs, sends him off balance, crashing into a gas pump and losing hold of his knife. Phoenix picks up the blade from the oil-stained ground. Nathan’s bar misses Brandon and strikes the hood of the white car. Brandon stumbles clear.
There is a pause, a moment of thinking that it’s all over, but it’s only so that everyone can regroup.
Still with Oscar’s knife in his hand, Phoenix faces Nathan, who is now flanked by Hall and Black. Nathan’s nose is still bleeding, his face streaked scarlet.
The demented bike kids are wrecking cars and Harleys.
Taylor sets fire to a narrow trail of leaking gas, raising a tongue of flame across the station’s lot that flares, lights the whole scene, then fizzles out in a dark stain.
Now Black throws a spare knife to Oscar, who catches it.
That makes four armed guys versus Phoenix. Seeing this, Brandon bends sideways, slips a hand down his boot, and pulls out a short, pointed knife. Then he goes to stand by his brother.
Angel-me tears my attention from the unfolding scene and glances at Beautiful Dead Phoenix. The pain in his eyes is terrible—the helplessness, the not wanting to know what comes next.
Blades flash red in the neon light. Black and Hall jab at Phoenix and Brandon, who is still unsteady from Nathan’s first blow. Drums clash, guitars whine from Nathan’s Chevy.
Oscar lunges at Brandon with his knife. Brandon sways and sidesteps into Phoenix, who falls against a gas pump then spins quickly to face Nathan.
Blades glint again, bodies stagger and blunder. As Brandon advances shakily on Oscar, Hall thrusts Phoenix across his path.
Brandon raises his knife. His blade flashes down as Phoenix stumbles in front of him. He pushes the point between Phoenix’s shoulder blades. Phoenix falls to the ground.
Phoenix lies bleeding, looking up at Brandon.
Angel-me cries out one sharp syllable. “No!”
Beautiful Dead Phoenix stands beside me, looks at his dying self then at Brandon, and he spreads his arms wide.
In an agony of realization, Brandon falls to his knees.
In the confusion, only he knows what he’s done. Oscar pulls Nathan back. Black and Hall grab Oscar’s knife from Brandon and run with it. All across the gas station lot, cars and Harleys start up, race away. The kids on bikes vanish down the side streets.
Brother, I forgive you! Beautiful Dead Phoenix looks on and spreads his arms. The feathers in his wings flutter. He looks like a crucified angel.
Out on the blacktop, Brandon holds Phoenix in his arms.
“Tell Darina I’m sorry,” Phoenix whispers before the whine of sirens splits the black silence.
He lies bleeding to death, gazing up at the brother who has killed him.
• • •
There was the journey back—the black vortex, the million tortured souls—but nothing so terrible as the knowledge we had gained.
Dean said nothing. He led the way into the darkness, beating his wings to rise above the awning up into the cloud-heavy sky. Phoenix and I followed, looking down at two small figures, one hunched, one sprawled on the ground, waiting for the paramedics in a pool of harsh neon light.
Clouds surrounded us, the figures below were hidden by mist that twisted and turned, wound itself around us and carried us into the dark tunnel where there were no stars, no skies or earth, only a spinning force that dragged us out of the past toward an unbearable present and the last good-bye.
I held Phoenix’s hand, followed the overlord, closed my eyes, and prayed for it to end differently.
Let this not be true.
The forces of time tore at us. The death-heads reappeared.
Go back. Tell it a new way. Take the knife out of Brandon’s hand. Put it in Nathan’s or Oscar’s—anybody’s.
Spare us.
Skulls grinned and crowded in. We were hurting in body and soul.
Dean led, and Phoenix and I followed, turning, falling, tumbling toward the here-and-now blinding light, torn apart.
Iceman waited at the barn door, under the branching moose horns, beside the rusting truck. He reached out and offered me his hand.
“I’m OK,” I gasped, looking around for Phoenix, who had slumped against the barn wall, head back and staring at the starlit sky.
Dean stood a few paces from him, watchful and still silent.
I ran to Phoenix and led him into the barn, willed him to bring his attention back to me as I took his hands in mine. “Talk to me!” I whispered.
“This is how it ends,” he murmured out of the musty darkness of dust and spiderwebs, a century of planting, harvest, and toil. “Not how we wanted, but how it was.”
“I am so sorry!” I breathed. “I see now why you were afraid. And if I could alter it…if we could wipe it from our minds.”
But his brother’s name was branded there forever.
I put my trembling hands to Phoenix’s ice-cold cheeks.
There was one more thing I needed to be sure of. “Did you know this from the beginning?” I asked.
There was no light in his dark eyes, no spark of comfort.
“No,” he insisted. “After I left the house with Zak, there were a thousand fragments—faces, sounds, voices calling—but no clear knowledge.”
“Did you suspect?”
He sighed. “A fight like that, a feud—I knew that anything was possible.”
“Did Dean know?”
“He was a cop so he saw the files, he understood the background.”
The overlord came into the barn with Iceman, watchful and still keeping his distance.
“Was Brandon’s name on the list?” I asked Dean.
“Everyone who was there that night was a possible suspect, Brandon included.” His answer fell heavily into the silence.
“And so what do I do now?” I demanded, turning in anger on Dean for the way things had worked out, hating the whole world for leaving me with the one answer I didn’t expect. “Do I name Brandon? Do I say, ‘Here’s the guilty one’?”
The overlord stepped around us in a wide circle, his footsteps muffled, walking in deep shadow. “It’s a tough call,” he said quietly.
“Do I?” I asked Phoenix as gently as I could.
He sighed and shook his head. “We could have stepped back from the brink,” he reminded me. “We could have let it go.”
I saw again the death-heads that had spun toward us in the time tunnel, desperate souls in a limbo of doubt, and I knew that stepping back from an answer would have meant that Phoenix would have joined them forever.
“No.” I held on to the belief that I’d always had. “We needed to know.”
“Darina’s right,” Iceman agreed. “Sometimes the truth hurts, but without it we can’t move on.”
We stood for a while in silence, except for the creak of hinges as the door swung open and closed. We were all waiting, holding our breaths. Phoenix was rapidly fading from me.
• • •
“So what do I do?” I cried again.
Dean took me on one last journey, promising me that Phoenix would still be at Foxton when I got back.
“Wait for me,” I begged in the midnight barn.
Phoenix’s spirit was ebbing, was withdrawing from the far side like the tide pulling back from the shore. When he embraced me, I couldn’t be sure how much longer his arms would have the strength to hold me.
“Be here,” I pleaded.
Then Dean surrounded me in gentle light and carried me away from Foxton, across the dark mountains to Deer Creek where he set me down under the stars. “Talk to Brandon,” he told me. “Make your decision.”
The overlord left me at the water’s edge.
I waited where I had waited for Phoenix a year ago, by the big boulder in the middle of the creek. Stars shone over my head and in the stream at my feet.
In the dead of night Brandon rode out to meet me.
“I got your text,” he said, laying his bike in the tall grass, standing uncertainly beside it, his jacket zippered to the chin, hands in pockets. “What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“This couldn’t,” I murmured. I wanted to look into the face of the man who had killed his brother.
Brandon narrowed his gaze and walked down the steep bank toward me. “So?”
I stared at him, at the face of a guy whose suspicious eyes permanently said, Don’t come near me. Don’t try to understand or fix me.
The creek ran at our feet. We stared down at the shimmering reflection of the stars. “There’s something I have to tell you,” I murmured.
He looked away. The barrier stayed up.
“I know what happened a year ago.”
Still no reaction. The water flowed on.
Say it quiet and clear in the electric midnight air. “You killed Phoenix.”
If Brandon had made excuses, said it was a mistake, if he’d asked me how I knew or had tried to blame the Thornes or the confusion of that night, I might have had a clear idea of what to do next.
