Something More Than Night

by Tregillis, Ian

  And, as she had for the past several days, she prepared lunch for two in her Magisterium, and then met Anne for lunch behind the library. The basket was an antique wicker thing with a hinged wooden flap on the top. Molly had plucked it from the memory of a photograph she’d once seen of her parents on a double date with another couple. Today she’d brought basil leaves, balsamic vinegar, sliced tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella for a caprese salad, plus blue cheese, salami, and crackers for additional snacking. For dessert, she’d rummaged childhood memories of old Christmases for a pair of perfectly ripe pears. She also packed a bottle of sparkling water. Upon reflection she decided to avoid the blue cheese because she didn’t want to have bad breath if they kissed again. She hoped they would.

  “This is extremely sweet of you,” said Anne, taking a seat across from Molly. The bags beneath her eyes had receded since Molly banished the dreams and granted her untroubled sleep. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I know I don’t have to. But it’s the high point of my day. For really real.” A face appeared at one of the windows. Anne’s coworker. Molly tipped her head toward the library. “He’s watching again.”

  “I think he fantasizes about watching us make out.” They hadn’t, not since their first date. But that was okay. It was nice, this slow unfolding of trust and connection.

  Trust?

  Anne continued, “My guess is that he’ll go jack off in the bathroom this afternoon. Pervert.”

  Molly handed her a plate and the bottle of vinegar. “Drizzle this on top,” she said, indicating the layered medallions of mozzarella, tomato, and basil. A cluster of whirlybird seeds from the boxelder tree cast swaying shadows across their lunch. One seed broke free. A gust of wind pushed it beyond the split-rail fence along the edge of the bluff. It spiraled down to the river, like a slow-motion helicopter crash.

  “Wow. Hand-delivered gourmet lunch every day. I’m a lucky woman.”

  “I only know how to make three or four nice lunches. Tomorrow it’s peanut butter and jelly on stale bread.”

  “In that case, we need to talk about our relationship.”

  She said it in jest, but Anne quirked her neck and shoulders like somebody finding balance on thin ice. Silently, subconsciously, her body shouted doubts and concerns. Part of her had sensed a secret.

  And, as had become her habit, Molly changed the subject before those seeds of doubt took root in Anne’s consciousness. It wasn’t purposeful deception, she told herself. It was investigation, and possibly vital to her own survival. Plus she honestly wanted to understand Anne’s experience. She said, “Can I ask you more about what it was like when you received the Indulgence?”

  For each night that passed without Anne adding a new sketch to her dream journal, she opened up a little more. Which brought Molly that much closer to understanding the Plenary Indulgences. Which, she was convinced, were the key to everything. The Nephilim made her queasy: Anne might have become one of them, if Molly hadn’t intervened.

  Anne said, “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, ‘Let sleeping dogs lay?’ Lie. Whatever. My parents’ priest is dead. I don’t see what any of this matters.”

  “I’m sorry I’m always bugging you about it,” said Molly. “But I’m really curious about the experience.”

  A boxelder bug ambled toward her plate, its red stripes almost incandescent in the sunlight. Anne shooed it away. She sighed.

  “The idea behind a Plenary Indulgence is that it erases all temporal punishment for sins committed up until then. Unlike a Partial Indulgence, which just reduces the punishment. So, you know, they don’t pass them out like coupons. Or they’re not supposed to, anyway. It requires doing some charitable work or penance assigned specifically for the Indulgence, followed by the sacraments of confession and eucharist—you have to be in what’s called a ‘state of grace’—followed by prayers for the pope.”

  Molly splashed more vinegar on her plate. She took a sip of fizzy water, then had to suppress a burp before asking, “Was that difficult?”

  “I’d been to Mass with my parents countless times. So I knew the drill. In this case we, all three of us, had been assigned to various works, including recitation of the Rosary and traveling the Stations of the Cross while spiritually penitent.”

  Penitent. The word sent a jolt down Molly’s spine. It tingled in her teeth like a spark aimed at her fillings. Without intending to, Molly found herself drifting upstream against the current of Anne’s reminiscences. She knew that if she desired it so, she could embed herself directly inside the memory Anne described. Bayliss had done something similar in the moment Molly died. But she had built their nascent relationship on misdirection and lies by omission. She refused to compound that by violating Anne’s mind. She wouldn’t implant herself inside Anne’s reminiscences. But she could get the flow of them, ride the sensory impressions and experience the emotional currents they kicked off.

  Molly closed her eyes, smelling incense. As Anne described that very long afternoon, Molly could feel a light weight descend upon each shoulder: a mother’s hand on the right, a father’s hand on the left. The whispering of wind through the boxelder leaves became the murmuring of prayer; the flicker of sunlight along the river became the soft glow of sunset through stained glass. Prayers scudded roughly past her lips, distorted by the mushy remnants of a communion wafer dissolving in the balsamic vinegar on her tongue. The tickle of bugs alighting on her hands became the sensation of hard glass beads wrapped through her fingers, a cold metal cross pressed into her palm.…

  Anne’s emotions shaped her own, like a magnet aligning metal filings: Molly wanted this over, but in a conflicted way also wanted it done well. She wanted to earn approval, even as she knew she didn’t need it. Weary, so weary, of conflict with her parents’ relentless and uncompromising worldview …

  “My parents had to participate,” said Anne, “because it was their failure that had allowed me to descend into a life of mortal sin.”

  “This is really pissing me off. Mortal in what sense?”

  “As opposed to venial. That’s forgivable. Venial sins don’t lead directly to hell. Mortal sins do.”

  “Wow.”

  “Uh-huh. And by being openly gay I was committing a mortal sin, of course. I had full knowledge of what I was doing. In Santorelli’s eyes, and my parents’, I was making a deliberate lifestyle choice with mortal consequences.”

  The gentle emotional currents wafting from Anne disappeared, shredded by gale-force gusts of anger, humiliation, shame. They tossed Molly to a pew near the rear of Santorelli’s church, where she knelt between Anne’s parents. The bench’s thin leather padding didn’t ease the ache in her knees, but the discomfort helped distract her from what she was doing … Jesus.

  “They made you pray for forgiveness? Anne, it sounds like emotional abuse to me. It’s sickening.”

  “It wasn’t fun. But that wasn’t the worst part. The key thing in receiving a Plenary Indulgence, as opposed to a Partial Indulgence, is that one be absent from all attachment to sin, large and small. They say some people can strive for years, no matter how devout, and never obtain an Indulgence because of this.”

  “But doing that would mean—” Molly shook her head. “Doing that would have required you to renounce…”

  Anne nodded. She took a long, shuddery breath. Behind the cosmetic eyeglasses, her eyes shone wetly. “I knew I would never do that, not in my heart. I can’t be somebody else. And I know I’m not flawed or broken or evil. But I wanted so badly to make my parents happy just this one time, to show them I was doing it right. You don’t know what it’s like, constantly falling short of that approval.” She sniffled. “Eventually I wised up and realized it was never going to happen. So I split, and cut them out.”

  Molly’s head pounded. Her eyes watered with the tears Anne suppressed. Anne’s shame clawed at her heart. Anne couldn’t renounce her identity, nor did she intend to, but she wanted so badly to gain her parents’ love and approval th
at her desperation broached some angelic breakwater, exceeded the spiritual activation energy for the tainted Indulgences. Thus was the goddamned Indulgence bestowed, setting into motion a mysterious alchemy that would have turned Anne into a revenant haunting the Pleroma if not for Molly’s intervention.

  Don’t you see? she wanted to yell. This thing your mom and dad claimed to be parental love was nothing of the sort. It was dark and poisonous. Love is unconditional. But theirs was not. It was an instrument they wielded to control you, to mold you into the person they wanted you to be. To change you, to transform—

  And then it hit Molly like an ice pick between the eyes.

  She knew what had happened to the Jericho Trumpet.

  Holy fucking shit.

  It was obvious. She was a moron for not seeing it.

  “Whoa.” Anne rocked back as though slapped. She stared at Molly, eyes wide, lips parted. Somewhere nearby, a car hummed to a stop on the quiet street.

  “What is it?”

  Anne held the stare for a fraction of a second. Then she shook her head, lifted her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. “The sunlight in my eyes … Just for a second there you looked, I don’t know, like you were glowing.”

  “I guess you have that effect on me,” said Molly, scarcely aware of the thin words falling from her mouth. A maelstrom swept through her mind, a chaotic jumble of connections and conclusions.

  METATRON had used the Trumpet to fundamentally alter the nature of the Choir. It was the tool that embedded an infinitesimal fragment of mundanity into the angels, to taint and shackle them.

  Likewise, each Plenary Indulgence bestowed by Father Santorelli had changed the nature of its human recipient. Those people had become something that would, upon death, take residence within the Pleroma. But that ought to have been impossible: mortals could never perceive the divine realm, much less access it. Unless their nature had been fundamentally altered, too.

  Molly had been thinking about this all wrong. The Trumpet wasn’t a physical object: it was a catalyst for metaphysical transmutation. It had changed the angels, and it had changed the PI recipients.

  Because the Plenary Indulgences were the Trumpet.

  Gabriel hadn’t been watching Father Santorelli. He’d hidden the Trumpet within the priest’s pastoral duties, and was keeping an eye on the hiding spot. Gabriel had created the Nephilim.

  The slam of a car door broke Molly’s reverie. She opened her eyes. A car had parked just down the street from the library. The slam she’d heard was the sound of two penitentes emerging from the backseat. They were built like linebackers. To Molly’s human eyes, and doubtless Anne’s, they appeared unusual only in their size. But when viewed with eyes more angelic than human, their faces burned with veils of unquenchable flame.

  Anne hadn’t noticed the car. She said, “It’s happening again. I swear it almost looks like you’re glowing.”

  Molly stood. Without intending to, she imparted to her voice a hint of the same power it had demonstrated in the concert hall: “Anne. Get behind me. Now.”

  Anne scrambled to her feet. Only then did she see the men crossing the street toward the library. She couldn’t have seen what Molly did, and yet she gasped. The lingering touch of the Trumpet had left her faintly attuned to the Pleroma. She could sense Molly’s halo, and she could sense danger in the newcomers.

  Quietly, she asked, “Who are you, Molly?”

  “Right now I’m the person standing between you and those assholes. And I’m pretty sure they don’t have your best interests at heart.”

  “How come? Do you know those guys?”

  Molly flipped her attention between the lumbering human hosts and the angels that rode within them. Overlaid faintly upon the penitentes, like images reflected in clean window glass on a bright day, she saw faces of fire and transparent wings vast enough to enfold the sky. A pair of Cherubim approached the library.

  “Yeah,” said Molly. “We’ve met.”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Gabriel hadn’t been working alone. The Cherubim had been working for him, but not fully aware of his plans. He never told them what he’d done with the Trumpet because they were just hired goons. Their jobs were simple and violent. So when Molly cured the Plenary Indulgence recipients of their deadly maddening dreams, thus indefinitely delaying the appearance of new Nephilim in the Pleroma, the Cherubim were called upon to fix the problem in a means both simple and violent.

  By trying to help Anne she’d inadvertently put her in greater danger. That told Molly three things. First: Gabriel’s coconspirators were still out there. Second: whatever plan they had in mind for the Nephilim, it came with a timetable, because they weren’t content to wait for the remaining PI victims to die of old age. And third: it told her that she and Anne were screwed.

  The penitente angels entered the library. Molly took a quick glance at the street. The penitentes’ car was still there. It wasn’t empty. Anne’s coworker appeared at the window again, but no longer alone. He pointed to their picnic table. Shit. The window glass glowed with an ethereal fire that only Molly could see. With concentration she could even discern METATRON’s gossamer tethers.

  Molly turned to Anne, whose expression had become inscrutable. She spoke rapidly.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I, uh, suppose, sure, except usually when people ask me that it means they’re—”

  “Close enough.”

  She laid a hand over Anne’s eyes. “Look, I know this is a little confusing. But it’s about to get a lot confusing. Don’t open your eyes until I say so, okay?”

  Anne sucked in a breath to have something to hold while making her decision. When she nodded, her eyebrows tickled Molly’s hand. As did her sigh.

  “Follow me,” said Molly. Hope this works …

  Taking Anne by the wrist, she pulled her into the shadow of the boxelder maple—

  —Anne gasped—

  —Molly groaned; pulling Anne into the Pleroma was like lifting a ten-pound weight with her tongue—

  —and they stood in the bedroom of Molly’s Magisterium apartment. The walls drooped and sagged like soft wax. Molly hadn’t anticipated the supreme effort required to move a mortal body into the Magisterium. Anne kept her eyes closed, but she was rubbing her wrist where Molly had touched her. A faint red weal encircled it.

  “How you doing so far?”

  Anne turned toward the sound of her voice. “What was that? It burned!”

  That was me. That was me losing control as I tried to yank you to safety. That was me hurting you because I don’t know what I am. Didn’t I tell you my last relationship ended badly?

  “You’re doing great. Just hold on.”

  Molly dialed Bayliss. As usual, he wasn’t answering. “Comeoncomeoncomeonyouprick. Why aren’t you ever there when I need you?”

  A crash rocked the apartment, followed by a bang so heavy the displaced air ruffled Anne’s hair. Anne jumped. Molly knew it was the sound of a door being ripped off the hinges and slammed to the floor. She’d hoped the Cherubim would be a little slower in figuring out where she’d taken Anne, or in making the transition from Earth to the Pleroma. She wondered, fleetingly, whether they had abandoned their human beards, or if they had dragged their hapless hosts along for the ride. Fucking angels.

  Downstairs, the crashing started anew. Molly took Anne by the shoulders and gently guided her toward the closet. Not wanting to burn her again, she took an old scarf and wrapped one end around Anne’s hand. “Don’t let go, okay?”

  She didn’t wait for Anne’s response. Pulling gently on the other end, Molly nudged her into the closet. She reimagined the configuration of closets in the imaginary apartment, switching the bedroom closet and the downstairs coat closet. The passage to Chicago still hung like a broken one-way mirror in the back of the coat closet. Molly hadn’t gotten around to removing it. She towed Anne through the passage. Then she reimagined the coat closet as it must have been on the night the apartment burned down and clos
ed the egress behind them. A few wisps of smoke followed them into the latticework shadows of an El pillar.

  The hubbub of dozens of conversations enveloped them, the noise of traffic and trains and bicycle messengers. It was much louder and busier here, standing amidst the lunchtime crowds on a Chicago sidewalk, than where they’d been moments ago. Anne noticed.

  She frowned, cocked her head. Her eyebrows slid low over her eyes, though she still hadn’t opened them—a little show of faith in the midst of chaos, so endearing that Molly wanted to kiss her for it. Pedestrians flowed past them in a constant thrum, passing just inches from their spot on the leeward side of the pillar, leaving in their wake the clack of footsteps, the smells of cologne and perfume, the airborne taste of a spinach pirogi.

  Anne said, her voice fluted by a rising edge of panic, “Molly?”

  “Right here.”

  Worry strangled Anne’s voice, rifled its pockets, and dumped the dead whisper in an alley. “Where are we?”

  Molly scanned the crowd for penitentes with invisible riders. She said, “That’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “It feels like I’m sliding back into one of my nightmares. The ones I showed you in my dream journal.”

  Careful not to burn her, Molly pressed her hands to Anne’s face. “You’re not having a nightmare. You’re having a crazy nonsensical Nancy Drew adventure dream. And when you wake up, you’ll look back on it with amusement.”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Yeah, me neither. But hold on.”

  She pulled Anne into the throng, heading toward the lake. Unaware of what it was doing, the crowd parted for them. A woman stopped to take a call; two construction workers jostling for spots in line at a hotdog stand got into a fistfight, the spectacle attracting bystanders and pulling them from Molly’s path; a dog slipped its owner’s leash and sprinted up a side street. The world twisted itself to ease Molly’s passage.