The Day the Angels Fell

by Shawn Smucker

  “Are you okay, Sam?” she asked.

  I put my foot on the ground. I looked around the car. Every shadow was suspect. Every shadow was an Amarok waiting.

  “Bye,” I said, but at first I didn’t move. I turned and looked at her with what was surely a desperate gaze. “Bye,” I said again, dashing from the car and sprinting through the darkness, holding the key in my hand as if it were the one thing that could save me from the Amarok.

  “Sam!” Mrs. Miller called out from the car, her words barely fast enough to catch me. “Sam! You forgot to close the door!”

  My father’s hand shook my shoulder, leading me away from the nightmares. Shadows. The Amarok running alongside our car before hiding in the blackness surrounding the church. The lightning tree exploding over and over again. And there was a key, always a key that I could never find or hide or fit into the lock. A key that slipped from my fingers and fell down, down through the cracks in the floor to a place I could never reach.

  “Sam,” my father said, shaking me again. “Sam, it’s time for morning chores.”

  I was happy to escape those dreams, and I rolled over and climbed out of my bed without a single complaint. I was also happy to hear my father’s voice again. He walked downstairs while I fumbled my way into my work clothes: jeans, holey socks, and an old T-shirt. My boots waited for me in the mudroom inside the back door. I put the key Abra had given me into my pocket, and while the dreams began to fade, that key felt very, very real. I rubbed my finger along the edges of the sharp teeth. I felt the ring at the top, smooth and cold.

  I followed the smell of bacon downstairs.

  “Breakfast is served,” Mr. Tennin said, loading eggs and bacon onto the three plates on the table. He looked wide awake, refreshed. Had he slept? Did he even need to sleep?

  I didn’t want to make eye contact with him. I couldn’t tell whether or not he knew his box was missing. It didn’t seem as though he did—nothing was said about it, and I hadn’t heard him up in the attic after I got home the previous night. But he could have easily been up there while I was over at Abra’s house. He even would have had time to search my room. On the other hand, he seemed happy enough. Still, it made me nervous even looking at him, so I kept my eyes down, focused on my food, and decided to answer any of his questions quickly, with as few words as possible. For some reason I was worried that he might find the truth somewhere in the sound of my voice.

  Thankfully, we ate without talking, but breakfast was still a noisy business of tired breathing and silverware clanking on plates and the sound of chewing. It was a fast meal because there was always too much work to be done and not enough time, and soon our dishes were in the sink and we were walking out the front door into the mostly dark early morning. The eastern sky held a faint glow. The sun would rise in less than an hour.

  Mr. Tennin and I followed my dad into the main level of the barn, and Dad turned on the lights. Five or six lightbulbs blinked on, reminding me of the attic, that the bulb up there needed to be replaced.

  “Boy, why don’t you go back and feed that lamb before I forget about it? Mr. Tennin and I will be up in the hayloft throwing down some hay.”

  He handed me the bottle and I walked back through the barn, past the cows waking up in their stalls, past the chicken run that connected to a small opening that allowed the chickens free access to the outside world. There in the back corner, where dusty light fell through a small window, I saw the lamb. As soon as it saw me it started bleating and shaking its little tail back and forth, back and forth, as fast as it could. Its face was tiny. Its whole body shook with excitement at the sight of breakfast.

  I took the bottle my father had given me and stuck it between the bars. The lamb squatted down, stuck its butt up in the air, and reached up with its mouth, jerking on the bottle and wagging its tail. I laughed and patted it on the head. I thought about how my mom used to love to come out and feed the lambs. She wasn’t much for the other farm work, the milking or the mucking out of the stalls. But she loved the lambs.

  I thought, too, of Abra. She’d probably like to meet this little guy.

  “Yeah, you’ll have some more friends before this summer is out,” I said quietly to the lamb.

  I heard the sound of hay falling down through the large holes in the ceiling as my dad and Mr. Tennin used their pitchforks to shovel it from the upper level of the barn. It made a wispy, hushing sound, and hay dust swirled around in the light.

  A shadow fell over the lamb, and at the same time the light coming through the dusty window was blocked out. I couldn’t tell what was outside the barn that might be casting such a large shadow, but there was also something behind me. I looked over my shoulder.

  Mr. Jinn stood there, his arms crossed, his eyes stern. His presence startled me and I jumped, banging my head on the bars. I looked around, but I had nowhere to run. When I finally caught his gaze, I could tell he wasn’t happy.

  “Hello, Sam.”

  “Mr. Jinn,” I said.

  The lamb jerked the bottle out of my hands. When it hit the concrete on my side of the bars, the glass shattered, sending milk everywhere. I groaned.

  Mr. Jinn looked at the ground and kicked lightly at the concrete, his foot sending up small clouds of dust and straw. He looked back at me, squinting. “I don’t get the feeling that you’re helping me very much.”

  “With what?” I asked, but I knew what he was talking about. When I first realized he could help me find the Tree, his presence had filled me with a kind of hope. Leery hope, perhaps, but still hope. Now? He made the pit of my stomach drop. I found it hard to breathe when he was around. I could feel my pulse beating solid and fast in my neck. But right alongside the fear he filled me with was the sense that I needed him. I needed his help.

  He stared at me but didn’t say anything, so I continued, stammering through whatever story I could come up with.

  “Well, it’s just that I had to show Abra something last night, and now this morning I’ve got to do my chores. I don’t have much choice with that. But this afternoon—this afternoon I’ll spend the whole rest of the day looking for the Tree. Honest. I’m sure we’ll find it.”

  “Oh, I’ll find it,” Mr. Jinn said. “I always do. But we’re running out of time. Your mother is running out of time.” He paused and let those words sink in.

  They sank in deep, resonating with me, and I had a moment of clarity.

  Oh, I’ll find it. I always do.

  Mr. Jinn was the angel who wanted to possess the Tree. He was the one. A chill spread over my body, tingling in every hair on my head. He was the cursed angel. The realization should have shut down any other plans I had—knowing his true identity should have scared me off. But it didn’t. It only entangled me with him even more. I needed his knowledge and I needed him, because he could help me with the Tree.

  “This Tree doesn’t hang around forever, Sam, and I’ve waited a long time for this. We’ve got about ten days from when your mom died until the Tree withers. If we don’t find it before that”—he lifted clenched hands, then opened them suddenly—“pow. The small white flowers fall off and it will die, and that will be the end. The Tree will not show up here again. It might not even regrow in your lifetime.”

  I pictured those white flowers on the small tree Abra had shown me. They were heavy, all right, and weighing down their branches. I could imagine them snapping off at any minute.

  “I’ll help. Honest.”

  I tried to erase the images from my mind. I had a strange sense that he could go in there, inside my brain, and help himself to whatever it was I happened to be thinking about.

  “I hoped you would,” he said, “but I wasn’t so sure. So I had to call in the big guns. I had to call in the helpers. Specifically, one helper.”

  I knew what he was talking about. The Amarok.

  “I think you saw him last night on the way home from Abra’s house, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Sam,” he said, s
uddenly very serious, “the Amarok will not . . .” His voice trailed off, and he sighed. I pictured the large shadow loping alongside Mrs. Miller’s car, the long tongue, the eyes.

  When he spoke again, his words came out with resignation, as if things had moved somehow beyond his power. “The Amarok is not easily appeased. It hunts for one thing: the Tree. It wants to feed on one thing: fruit from the Tree. But anything that stands in the way?”

  He raised his eyebrows as if to ask me if I understood. I nodded again.

  “It devours,” he said with a shrug.

  I looked over my shoulder through the dusty window, but that shadow was gone.

  “Come to my house when you’re finished here,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  So that’s how I found myself just after lunch, walking through the knee-high corn to Mr. Jinn’s house. I had lied to my father, telling him that Mr. Jinn had some chores he’d like me to help with. I guess it wasn’t a complete lie, but it felt like one. Anyway, my father said I could go but I had to be back in time for dinner and after-dinner chores. I agreed.

  As I walked through the field, my own house growing smaller and smaller behind me, I noticed the vultures were circling. All of them wheeling and gliding, occasionally flapping their giant wings, their bare heads barely visible from the ground. They hovered over me as if they were protecting me, or perhaps pointing me out to someone or something.

  I left our fields behind and entered the tall weeds, glad for the boots I still wore after morning chores. The small path used to have walking stones, but those were mostly buried by mud and time. I walked up the rickety steps to the porch and knocked softly on the door.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Jinn said from deep inside the house. “Come on in.”

  I pushed the door open, walked inside, and reluctantly pulled the door closed behind me. The latch made a loud click, and I stood there for a moment, wishing Abra was there with me.

  We have to stay together.

  I was so far from that.

  “Hungry?” Mr. Jinn asked from the kitchen.

  “No thanks. I just ate.”

  I walked in and sat down in the same chair I had sat in the first time I was there. Mr. Jinn’s back remained turned toward me as he chopped something that smelled like onions with a large knife on the counter. The chopping made a solid sound, a kind of knocking that ran around the otherwise silent house.

  “How’s your friend?” he asked.

  Chop-chop-chop-chop-chop.

  I grew nervous. I couldn’t think of her without picturing the Tree of Life, its small green shininess, its three white flowers. I tried to keep it out of my mind. I worried that if it was there, Mr. Jinn would see it and pluck it out of my head, bring it into reality.

  Yet wasn’t that exactly what I wanted? Didn’t I want Mr. Jinn to have the Tree so that together we could bring my mother back? I thought that was what I wanted. I thought that was why I was there. But something in me hesitated.

  “Fine,” I said. “She’s fine.”

  He threw a large slab of meat into a frying pan and added the onions on top. It fried and it spit and it hissed, and the rich smell of it filled the house. Still, Mr. Jinn didn’t turn around.

  Suddenly, I knew that he knew that I knew where it was. And he was angry. And he would get angrier and angrier until I told him. And if I didn’t tell him, my mother would be gone forever.

  Forever is a very long time, especially to a twelve-year-old boy.

  “I know where the Tree is,” I said quietly.

  He flipped the large piece of meat in the skillet. I thought I recognized it as a slab of liver. I had never liked liver very much. The texture reminded me too much of sawdust. I was glad I’d eaten before I came. But he didn’t say a word. I wondered if he had heard me.

  “I know where the Tree is,” I said, louder and with more confidence.

  “’Course you do,” he said, turning to the side and emptying the meat and the onions onto a plate, which he carried to the table and put down with a loud thud. “’Course you do.”

  He started cutting and the meat was very bloody. Soon the bottom of his plate was nothing but a red pool of onions. He ate like a man who hadn’t eaten in weeks, like a man who was eating for the very first time. He savored every massive bite.

  “It’s in Abra’s house.”

  He stopped. He placed his knife and fork on the table quietly. He leaned back and stared at me, chewing and chewing that bite. When he swallowed, the whole thing went down. I could follow the lump in his throat as the food descended. It was like watching a snake consume a rat that was too big for it.

  “That’s not good.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not good at all.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I can’t go over there. You’ll have to bring it here.”

  “Bring it here? Can’t we go get it together?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”

  We sat in silence. I could tell he was thinking. It seemed he had completely forgotten about the liver and onions cooling on the plate in front of him.

  “You’ll have to go and get her. Bring the Tree here. Bring her here too. That’s what we need.”

  “I don’t know if she’s going to—”

  “Bring her!” he shouted.

  A shadow darkened the dirty kitchen window. I looked through it, but I couldn’t see anything.

  “Bring her,” he said in a calm voice, as if he regretted losing control. “Once she is here, once the Tree is here, we can find the rest of the things we need.”

  “The rock, the water, and . . .” I couldn’t remember the final item.

  “And the sunlight. That’s right,” he said. “But first, bring your friend here. And bring the Tree.”

  He seemed satisfied. He took another large bite, and the red juice ran down his chin.

  I stood up. I knew that if I was going to do it, I would have to do it quickly. “Okay.”

  I walked out of Mr. Jinn’s house and started the long walk to Abra’s. It was a mild July day, and I realized the shadow I had seen in the window had not been from a storm cloud. The sun shone in a clear, blue sky. But I felt a darkness surround me, and the vultures came again, circling high above.

  21

  ONCE I WAS ON THE ROAD, everything seemed less mysterious. Without the thousands of rustling cornstalks all around me, the day took on an almost boring note. The July heat came up off the stones like a mirage. Even the cemetery and the church, both vacant, seemed drab and normal.

  Soon I walked the stretch where the dogs had attacked me the day before. But again, the earth seemed to deny that anything supernatural had ever occurred. I wondered what had happened to the dogs’ bodies. I thought about the tiny plant in the log, and it all seemed silly and impossible.

  By the time I arrived at Abra’s house, I fully expected us to find the closet empty. Maybe there was no Mr. Jinn. Maybe there was no Mr. Tennin.

  Maybe my mother had never died.

  Yet when I walked up Abra’s driveway and slipped my hand into my pocket, there was the key. The skeleton key that would unlock the door. It was hard and metal and very, very real in my pocket. I knew that all of it had happened, every last strange thing, and in that moment I also knew that I would have to make a choice soon about what I was going to do with that Tree, a very real choice that would have very real consequences.

  Abra’s baby brother was crying when I knocked on their front door. I walked in without anyone answering or inviting me in.

  “Hello?” I called out to the house.

  Mrs. Miller came into the room, carrying the baby. I could never remember his name. He cried a lot.

  “Hi, Sam,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Abra went out with her father to the milk barn. She’ll be back in a minute. Can I get you a drink?”

  “No thank you,” I shouted over the loud cries of the baby.<
br />
  “Oh my. Oh my,” Mrs. Miller said to the baby. She placed him on one of the sofas, on his back, and looked over at me. “Would you watch Francis for just a minute? I have to run upstairs for something.”

  That’s right. His name was Francis.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  “Just one minute. I promise. Here.” She waved me over. “Sit here, like this, and make sure he doesn’t roll off.”

  I walked to the sofa, but I didn’t want to watch the baby. Babies were breakable, like fancy glasses with stems.

  “Oh, stop it,” she said, laughing at my hesitancy. “You’ll be fine.”

  She was off and I was left sitting there on the edge of the sofa, my skinny, twelve-year-old legs the only things that separated the baby from a long fall and certain death. But he clearly didn’t appreciate the crucial role I played in keeping him alive, and he kept crying.

  “Francis,” I said in a singsong voice. “Francis. Stop crying. Stop crying.”

  For a moment his cries grew even more shrill, making me even more nervous, but then his eyes caught mine, and he stared up at me. His mouth uncurled, smoothed out. His eyes went from that squinty crying position to wide open, though still filled with tears.

  I looked down and understood what it was about babies that so fascinated people. Inside those bright blue eyes, eyes that reminded me of Abra, I saw the essence of life. A spark resided there that could not be explained biologically. It was life, and it was moving and beautiful and a little scary, like a flash of lightning or a fish showing its shiny self for a moment in a fast-moving river.

  Francis looked up at me and, as if disappointed by what he found in my own eyes, started crying again. This time a louder, more persistent cry than before. Abra came running in the front door.

  “Francis?” she called, dashing over to where I sat.

  “He’s crying,” I said, shrugging.

  “Is Sam being mean to you?” she asked the baby, picking him up.

  Mrs. Miller came down and reached for Francis. “Aw, you poor thing. Thanks, Abra. Thanks, Sam.”