Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel)

by Blake, Bruce

  I spent fifteen minutes tossing scraps of almost-stale bread to squabbling ducks and doubting Heaven’s existence before I sensed a presence at my elbow. Another minute passed in which I attempted to ignore it, but the heat radiating from the body standing behind me might have tanned my skin if it stayed too long, and the aroma of cinnamon and spices was strong enough to disguise the odor of algae-filled water and duck excrement. I lifted my hand to toss the last scrap to my waiting throng of followers when a hand on my shoulder stopped me.

  Its instantaneous shock ran down my arm and up my neck, tickling my ear and making it ring. The sensation excited me and caused me pain, too. Despite its hold, I forced myself into action, turning my head and ratcheting my eyeballs up toward the blond behemoth of the archangel Michael standing over me.

  He removed his hand from my shoulder and my body relaxed, both relieved at its absence and yearning for the touch to return at the same time. I reinflated my mood with a heavy sigh, then looked back to the group of ducks milling around the pond and hoping for more bread.

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was standing behind me?”

  Strangely, the water fowl declined to respond.

  “Hello, Icarus,” Mikey said, his voice a baritone rumble with the kiss of a man long removed from the British Isles. “You were expecting me, I believe.”

  An instant later, the archangel appeared in front of me, resplendent in a red velvet suit and black shirt reminiscent of an actor in a 1970s porno flick—all he needed was the cheesy mustache. He considered me for a few seconds, as though using the time to show off his choice of attire, then sat beside me; the heat he radiated brushed my arm as surely as if he’d touched me. The aroma of cinnamon and cloves accompanying him like a friendly dog wafted its way to my nostrils and I realized Mikey would suck at hide-and-seek.

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “A very broad question, Icarus Fell. Be more specific.”

  “The woman we harvested; Meg Medlin-Williams. And Dido.” I stopped myself, collecting my thoughts, which is never an easy task in the presence of an archangel. “Dallas, I mean. Dallas Trounce.”

  He shook his head. “I do not know these people.”

  I narrowed my eyes, not quite believing him, but choosing not to argue the point. I leaned forward, glanced around to ensure the ducks weren’t eavesdropping, and lowered my voice.

  “Yesterday I harvested Meg Medlin-Williams. She told us her son is the devil.”

  Silence hung between us for a moment, the ever-present golden glow flickering in Michael’s eyes. He stared back at me and I wished to either look away or stare into his eyes forever. Or poke them out to avoid having to choose.

  “And?”

  His one-word question broke the spell. I leaned back, shaking my head.

  “The kid in Hell. You saw him. Is that who she means? Is he this woman’s child? Is he the devil?”

  “You ask too many questions at once, Icarus Fell. People who request answers in this manner rarely receive the response they desire.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest, biceps bulging against the velvet sleeves, and contemplated me with a serious expression. “The child has been called many names through the centuries, so many he claims he no longer has a name. Call him what you will, but he is the child of no man or woman.”

  I breathed deep through my nose, inhaling the archangel’s pumpkin pie aroma. It made my stomach gurgle.

  What was she talking about, then?

  “So what was she talking about, then?”

  The archangel shrugged. “It matters not, Icarus.”

  “But can you track her down and find out?”

  “She will not remember.”

  I gave him my best doubtful expression. “But I remember my life before I died.”

  “As many who come back to your realm remember their previous lives, at least for a while. But do you remember the time between your conception and your birth?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you remember your death?”

  A memory of two raincoat-clad men, a knife, the oak tree in the churchyard, flashed through my mind. Without thinking, I touched the small of my back where their blade tore my flesh and shredded my innards to pizza cheese.

  Thanks for reminding me.

  “Yes.”

  “And do you remember waking up in a motel room with me?”

  I nodded.

  “What happened in between, Icarus?”

  I chewed my bottom lip, racking my brain, and saw vague memories of the hospital, Sister Mary-Therese in the waiting room, and then blank whiteness and a glowing door that struck me as a bit cliché at the time. Nothing after that until the motel.

  “Nothing.”

  He shook his head. “Because you do not remember. Neither will she.”

  “But--”

  “Let it go, Icarus. Do your job.”

  I leaned forward, elbows on knees, and let out a loud breath to help him sense my unhappiness with his lack of help, not that I expected he cared. How would I follow-up what Meg said?

  “And ‘us’?” Mikey asked.

  “What?”

  “You said the woman told us. Are you now referring to yourself in the manner of the royal we?”

  “No, no.” I shook my head, hardly believing I’d forgotten my biggest problem. “I need to pass a soul along to Heaven.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did you not draw me here by doubting Heaven’s existence?”

  I let out another sigh. I guess I deserved it. I did open that door, after all.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Take her to wherever the scroll instructed.”

  My gaze fell to my feet, pondering the duck shit on my shoes.

  “There was no scroll.”

  “No scroll? Then how did you come by this poor soul?”

  A resonance in his tone made me suspect he knew exactly how I came by this poor soul, but I didn’t say so. In my experience, any argument with an archangel, especially this one, may as well be counted a loss before it begins.

  “She was an unscheduled death. The bullet that killed her mother killed her, too.”

  “I see,” Mikey said. “Unscheduled.”

  I continued my examination of the dirt splashed on the side of my shoe. If I stared hard enough, I saw shapes in it, like cloud watching. A bunny, or someone making a peace sign with their fingers. I raised my head and found Mikey’s glowing golden eyes on me.

  “Can you take her?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “There is not room. Not in Heaven and not...” He directed his eyes toward the ground. “She is caught between.”

  “What am I supposed to do with her?”

  His massive, red velvet-covered shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.

  “But you’re the archangel Michael. The right hand of God. Surely you can do something.”

  “No. Only one can aid you in this matter.”

  A spark of hope.

  “Who?”

  “Chan Wu.”

  Forehead crease again; I made no effort to get rid of it.

  “Chan Wu? Who’s that? Where do I find him? What will he do?”

  “Too many questions again, Icarus. Choose one or receive answers to none.”

  I breathed deeply, teeth clenched tight, and resisted the urge to insist he call me Ric. I’d already tried dozens of times with no success.

  “Where do I find this Chan Wu?”

  “I cannot tell you where you will find him. You cannot find Chan Wu without searching, without needing him in your life. And then, you will only find him if he deems you worthy and wants you to find him.”

  Mikey stood and I stared at him, incredulous. It seemed no matter whether I asked one question or many, I’d get no real answer. I opened my mouth to say so, but the archangel brushed his fingers against my shoulder and my dissatisfaction petered out. He turned to leave, the aroma of fresh baking swirling in the
air, and one more question came to me.

  “Michael,” I called after him. He paused. “What did happen after I died?”

  “You are not meant to know. If ever you are, you will know.”

  Figures.

  Frustrated, I rolled my eyes; getting a straight answer from an angel was more difficult than convincing a fish to breathe out of water. I recalled my death again, and what I’d seen of my birth—both Michael and Azrael standing unseen at my mother’s side. They both insinuated the other was responsible for all the bad happenings in both my life and after, but I didn’t expect to ever discover what actually happened, or why.

  “It seems there’s a lot I’m not meant to know.”

  “Forget it, harvester. And forget the woman. Your job is all we require of you. Do not screw it up. Again.”

  Mikey strode across the wet grass, his polished shoes squelching in the mud, but no dirt stuck to them the way it did to mine. His form faded, disappearing like a man walking into dense fog. I glanced around the park: no fog.

  I glared at the ducks waddling on the bank near my feet, my anger held in behind pursed lips. One mallard let out an expectant quack, as though asking for more bread. I yanked the empty plastic bag inside out and shook the last remaining crumbs onto the web foot-churned ground. The duck’s green head bobbed a couple of times, picking them out of the mud, then it waddled off to the pond, slipped into the algae-skimmed water and paddled away, its question answered.

  A duck can get answers, but I can’t.

  If Mikey refused to help me, then I had no choice but to figure it out myself, as usual.

  I have to find her son.

  ***

  I stood outside my motel room, staring at the gap between the door and its broken frame, my breath frozen in my lungs. Two thoughts occurred to me at the same time:

  ‘Someone kicked in my door’ and ‘They’re going to make me pay for that.’

  I reached out to push the door open before the third thought—the one that should have popped to mind first—finally made its way into my brain.

  Dido.

  A picture of the annoying young girl flashed into my head but in it, she wasn’t speaking. If she had been, I might not have been concerned, but since she wasn’t, I saw her in my mind’s eye as the wayward soul of an eight-year-old. I threw my shoulder against the door, opting for surprise rather than stealth.

  Shambles was a good word to describe my room. Drawers pulled from the dresser lay on their sides on the floor, my meager possessions strewn around the room; the closet doors stood wide, the only suit I owned yanked from its hanger and left in a heap. The mattress was upended off the bed, the night table overturned and its lamp lying on the floor, lampshade askew. I scanned the wreckage and saw no one but my reflection in the mirror, which startled me.

  No one in the room. At least, that’s what I figured until I noticed the closed washroom door.

  Why is death so dangerous?

  I’d already banged the door open when I entered the room, yet creeping to the washroom seemed the thing to do. The soles of my shoes whispered across the worn carpet leaving dirty footprints in my wake. I wished I had a weapon, though experience told me most of them didn’t affect the types of creatures likely to take the time to break into my room. Carrions and demons don’t care much about guns and knives and such. If they’d give me some of those fireballs the carrions shot out of the palms of their hands at me, then I’d be set.

  Maybe it’s not a carrion, but your average, run-of-the-mill burglar.

  That might be worse. I didn’t look forward to opening the door to find a carrion taking a piss or a demon having a bath, but I had some idea how to handle them. What should I do if I found a living, breathing person?

  I held my breath and reached for the chipped gold knob. My fingers gripped its cool surface and I turned it slowly, wincing at the tiny sound it made, then threw the door open.

  Empty.

  Two more thoughts came to mind.

  First: Good. The maid came.

  And then: Where’s Dido?

  Chapter Ten

  10 Years Ago

  Cory stood in the doorway, watching his mother nurse the baby. She didn’t see him peeking around the door frame, but she’d hardly noticed him since they came home from the hospital three weeks ago.

  “She’s not my sister,” he’d said when his stepfather brought him to see her sleeping in the cradle the first night they arrived home. “You’re not my father, so she’s not my sister.”

  Since then, the baby kept his mother occupied and his stepfather remained resentful, giving him food because he had to, barely speaking to him when he dropped him off at school in the mornings and making him walk home from grade one each day. He’d tried to tell his mother, but she was always too tired, or too busy with Kaitlin, or too cranky to pay attention.

  “What are you doing?”

  He hadn’t noticed his stepfather, who insisted he call him Uncle Robert but whom Cory thought of as Ugly Robert, come up behind him. Cory jumped like a ghost said boo.

  “Nothing.”

  Before Cory moved, Robert grabbed his arm, pulled him away from the doorway and into the hall. His thick fingers dug deep into the meat of Cory’s puny, seven-year-old bicep.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Be quiet.”

  Robert dragged him down the hall and pushed him into the bedroom he now shared with his sister. Her cradle, toys given as gifts at her birth, folded cloth diapers, diaper pail, clothes, and odds and ends had taken over more than half of Cory’s room. They brought with them the smell of baby shit and stale milk creeping into the fabric of his personal space, and none of it seemed ready to depart any time soon.

  “You leave your mother alone,” Robert said. “She doesn’t need you getting in the way.”

  With his lips pushed forward and eyebrows pulled into the half-angry, half-pouty expression the domain of all seven-year-olds, Cory stalked across the floor to sit on the edge of the mattress. He stared at the man he refused to call ‘stepfather’, doing his best to look holes through him.

  “Do you understand?”

  Cory responded by crossing his arms in front of his chest and giving more effort to his glare, imagining lasers shooting out of his eyes to fry the man to a smoking crisp. Ugly Robert took a step into the room and raised his open hand. Cory flinched.

  “I said do you understand?”

  This time, Cory nodded.

  “Good. See you stay away, and don’t make me tell you again.”

  Robert left, slamming the door shut and throwing Cory into darkness. He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the lack of light, then took off his clothes and crawled under the covers. Unable to fall asleep, he lay staring at the ceiling as the insidious smells wafted across the room, made their way up his nostrils to swirl around inside his head. He still wasn’t sleeping when his mother came in and put Kaitlin down in her cradle.

  ***

  Meg rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling and listening to the static emanating from the baby monitor they’d purchased at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store. She hadn’t needed one when Cory was small; she’d kept him with her to make it easy to watch him and feed him during the night, but Robert wouldn’t allow her to keep Kaitlin in their room. He needed his sleep, he said, not a baby thrashing about in their bed.

  His ass pressed up against her thigh, his breathing rhythmic and steady. Asleep. Meg shifted again. The monitor was the next best thing to having her child with her, but she found herself spending more time listening to its susurrous hiss than she did sleeping, as though it transmitted the radio’s emergency broadcast system rather than the dull sound of dead air.

  Robert snorted a loud snore, startling her, and she rolled away onto her side. Her breasts ached; soon, she’d have to feed Kaitlin, relieving the baby’s hunger and her own pain.

  The monitor crackled with electricity and empty sibilance; Robe
rt breathed and snorted and snored.

  “I wish you were dead.”

  Meg’s breath stopped and her eyes flashed open when she thought she heard the hissed whisper amongst the monitor’s static. She listened, all the muscles in her body tight and tense, but only the electronic drone, breathing, and snoring broke the silence of night.

  “Robert,” she said after a long ten seconds, her own voice breathy and quiet. “I think I heard something.”

  Her husband didn’t move. She touched him on the shoulder, shook him a little.

  “Robert.” More insistent.

  He grumbled and shrugged her hand away. Her fingers hovered over his arm, hesitant until she realized waking him would likely only anger him. Instead, she threw the covers off and put her bare feet on the cold floor. It creaked beneath her as she stood and made her way to the doorway to peek out at the dark hall. She could make out the black squares of pictures hung on the wall, the semicircular shadow of the hall table set between her bedroom and the one shared by the children, but nothing out of the ordinary. Meg tip-toed out of the bedroom and down the hall, suddenly aware of the thinness of her nightgown, how little protection it offered, and wished she’d stopped to pull on her robe.

  Protection from what?

  She slipped into the children’s room, pausing half a step over the threshold and focusing on keeping her teeth from chattering. A Lion King nightlight Robert didn’t want the kids to have but Meg insisted on—one of the few concessions she’d won—threw dim illumination across their bedroom and made it easier for her to see her daughter’s silhouette.

  Kaitlin lay on her front, knees drawn up under her and bum stuck up in the air, as she often did when she slept. Meg smiled through the bars of the cradle at the baby, her breasts aching at the sight, but she looked too sweet and peaceful to be disturbed. She decided to suffer the pain and let her sleep. The impending explosion of breast milk lurking over the horizon would have to be dealt with by changing the sheets in the morning. Again. Across the room, Cory lay splayed out on his back, mouth open and face slack.

  Everything’s fine.