Mama had her first breakdown at Daddy’s funeral. Lucy had only been six and a half when the tractor rolled on her father, but she remembered how Mama went into hysterics at the cemetery—insisting she could see Daddy watching the mourners from a distance. She worked herself into such a state Doc Moody had to give her a shot just to get her into the car. When the doctor stopped giving her shots, Mama moved on to more freely available medication prescribed by men with last names like Beam, Dickel, and Walker.
Mama was in and out of the state hospital in Benton on a regular basis after that. By the time Lucy was eight he was living more or less full-time with her grandparents. After five years of electro-shock therapy and heavy medication, the doctors let Mama come home. While Mama’s delusions were under control, the alcoholism certainly wasn’t, so Lucy continued to live under her grandparents’ roof.
During junior high, Lucy had been forced to suffer the shame and embarrassment of being the daughter of the town’s crazy drunk. Doc Moody had tried to explain to her that what was wrong with Mama was beyond his—or anyone’s—ability to fix, but Lucy was convinced her mother’s behavior was deliberate.
When Pappy died during Lucy’s sophomore year in high school, Mama’s craziness came back in spades, landing her in Benton for another protracted stay. She was still in a padded room when Lucy graduated. By the time Mama was finally released, she was off at college. Mam-Maw pretty much looked after her after that, and for a while it seemed like Mama might have finally put her demons behind her.
Then Mam-Maw passed away, and suddenly Mama was on her own for the first time in her life. She sold her parents’ house to Cousin Beth and bought herself a trailer on the edge of town, where she pretty much lived the life of an alcoholic recluse for two years. Then one night Lucy got a call from Mama, just after midnight, rambling on about how she could hear ‘them’ walking around outside the trailer—meaning Mam-Maw, Pappy and Daddy. She pleaded with Lucy to come back to Seven Devils, to look after her. Lucy told her no and to go sleep it off. Sometime after Lucy hung up on her, Mama took a double handful of pills and washed them down with a pint of Old Crow. And now, if what Ezrael told her wasn’t utter bullshit, it seems Mama wasn’t crazy after all. At least, not at first, anyway.
Poor Mama—one moment she was just another rural Arkansan housewife who enjoyed making peach cobbler, crocheting socks and listening to Loretta Lynn, the next she was seeing beyond the veil into the Great Beyond. She simply wasn’t prepared for it. Lucy liked to think she’d stretched her consciousness far beyond the narrow limits of what was considered possible in Choctaw County, but even she was having trouble absorbing what was happening to her. She could just imagine how having the doors of perception thrown wide must have shattered Iris Bender’s grip on reality—and Mama never claimed to see anything as outré as angels or giant floating eyeballs, just dead relatives.
Still, what Ez told her explained a lot—such as Mam-Maw’s side of the family’s reputation for witchy ways. Lucy always had the feeling that Mam-Maw knew a lot more about what was plaguing her daughter than she let on. Lucy could remember several occasions where her grandmother stopped whatever she was doing to stare off into space, or appeared startled by something Lucy could neither see nor hear.
Her grandmother had been a no-nonsense woman whose creative energy manifested itself in hand-made quilts and elaborately embroidered hankies and pillow-cases. What memories Lucy possessed of her mother before the illness were dim—she remembered Mama had a fondness for puzzles and crosswords, but nothing genuinely creative. In fact, one of the few things she’d brought back with her when she went to Seven Devils for Mama’s funeral was her mother’s collection of jigsaws puzzles, which she kept stashed in the hall closet. They were one of the few things that reminded her of Mama from happier days.
Perhaps whatever it was that enabled members of her family to see into the Protoverse, or whatever Ez called it, was apparently augmented by creativity. That made sense, in a way—maybe it was the creative side of the brain that kept Mankind from permanently freaking whenever it glimpsed the Unknown peeking in through the kitchen window.
Still, buffer zone or not, Lucy was starting to wonder if her neurons might be deep-fried to a crackly crunch. She now knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what numberless mystics, philosophers, and saints had died trying to discover—that, yes, Virginia, there is an Afterlife, a God, and a Devil---and all because she was unlucky enough to trip over an angel and drag it back to her apartment like it was an old lamp someone had set out on the curb with the garbage. However, none of this inside info was providing her with much in the way of warm-and-fuzzy religious awakening. The only thing worse than discovering that There Is No God is discovering There Is A God—but that It doesn’t know or care that you exist. Frankly, she preferred it when the Universe was a cold, cruel place devoid of reason and where all life was motivated only by the need to create more of itself.
She wept until she fell asleep, wearied from the emotional stress that had accompanied the events of the last twenty-four hours. The last thing she saw before her heavy eyelids closed was Joth squatting on the living room floor, as silent as a stone.
The next thing Lucy knew she was being roughly shaken. She struck out blindly, catching Ezrael in the gut. The former angel groaned and dropped the gym bag he was carrying.
“Watch where you’re punching!” he snapped. “It’s just me!”
Lucy knuckled her eyes and looked around, feeling slightly dazed. “Sorry—I thought you were my ex-boyfriend.”
“Never mind that!” Ezrael replied. “Where’s Joth?”
“What do you mean—?” she said stifling a yawn. “He, I mean it is right over there.” Lucy pointed where the angel had been squatting. Except that it wasn’t there. “Where—? Where did he go?” She jumped to her feet, looking around frantically. “Joth? Joth—?” She hurried down the hall and looked in the bedroom and the bath, but Joth wasn’t to be found in either one.
“You didn’t open the door, did you?” Ezrael asked. “I told you not to open the door!”
Lucy opened the hall closet and peered inside. “I didn’t! I swear!”
“Then where is Joth?”
“I don’t know! Maybe he went back to heaven or whatever the hell it is he’s from?”
“I seriously doubt you would have been able to sleep through a portal being opened,” Ez commented dryly.
“So where is he?”
The former angel peered into the kitchen then quickly motioned for Lucy to join him.
“I think I may have an answer.” Ez pointed to the open window facing the air shaft. “Wasn’t that closed earlier?” He plucked a pin feather from the window sill and held it up between thumb and forefinger. “That’s what I was afraid of—it looks like our friend has decided to go sight-seeing.”
Part 2
The Devil You Know
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.
—Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter & Forgetting
Chapter Nine
Deathlings were a curious breed. As far as Joth could tell, they were noisy, smelly, and always in a big hurry, rushing here and there at a furious pace, whether alone or in groups. Some deathlings had traveling companions, while others were solitary. There was even an entire sub-group that appeared to be alone, but spoke into small devices clutched in their hands.
And it wasn’t just the deathlings—the creatures they traveled in were also in a hurry, even though they spent much of their time sitting still and honking at one another. Indeed, the deathlings’ world was in such a rush to go somewhere its skin rumbled beneath Joth’s feet on a regular basis. Hurry-hurry-hurry. That’s all this plane of existence seemed to be about.
This need for constant and frantic motion of the part of the deathlings appeared to be the result of Time. Time seemed to matter to deathlings as much as the
Clockwork did to the Host.
Joth could not understand why the deathlings pushing past it seemed so determined to get from where they were to somewhere they were not. After all, there were no ducts that needed clearing, no valves requiring turning, no mouths to feed, no colons to flush. What possible function could these deathlings be serving, scampering to and fro at such a pace?
This city, as Lucy called it, was tiny, but there was much about it that reminded the angel of the Clockwork. But where were its servants? Occasionally Joth spotted deathlings with shiny yellow skulls emerging from holes in the city’s surface that burped steam or smelled of sewage, but it did not spot any Repair Squadrons wheeling about the spires towering overhead.
As Joth continued to wander through the city, it followed no set path or predetermined course, instead allowing itself to be pushed along by the human tide that surrounded it, much like a cork riding a wave. The neighborhoods the angel passed through went from yuppie to trendy to sleazy to scary, the middle-executives and secretaries gradually being replaced by far rougher types of more dubious employment, while the Starbucks and bagel shops were replaced by liquor stores and check-cashing businesses. Joth, the ultimate tourist, observed it all, from the street vendor selling Coco-Lada from a wheeled cart, to the shop windows overcrowded with cheap electronics, to the botanicas with their storefronts full of saints and multi-colored candles. As far as the wandering angel was concerned it was all the same.
Julio leaned against the front stoop of his apartment building and scowled openly at the wino ambling past, then turned to the youth beside him, spitting in disgust.
“You see that, Juan? Fuckin’ juicer couldn’t steal a fuckin’ shirt. Like we want to look at his skanky chest.”
The other members of the gang—four in all, ranging from fourteen to nineteen years old—laughed over-loudly. They wanted the butt of their joke to know he was the focus of their derision, but the wino appeared oblivious. The other boys muttered amongst themselves and looked to Julio, who was taller, sported a light mustache and had gold-capped front teeth, which made him the nominal leader. Julio’s derisive sneer quickly turned into a frown. “Yo! Asshole! Whachoo doin’ on our side of the street?”
The wino smiled vacantly at the sky, the pavement, the fire hydrant, showing no sign that he’d heard him in the first place.
`Julio reached out and roughly grabbed the wino’s shoulder, spinning him around like a rag doll. “Yo! I’m talkin’ to you, retard!” he snarled, throwing gang sign in the bum’s face.
There was no anger or fear in the old man’s eyes—not even surprise at being manhandled. Instead, he regarded Julio with an open, slightly unfocused gaze. “I am Joth,” the wino replied, smiling.
“What he say, Julio?” asked Juan, trying not to giggle.
“He say he Josh,” Julio replied over his shoulder. “Fucker’s trippin’.” He returned his attention to the wino. “What you doin’ this side of the street, culo?” he snapped, pushing the wino’s shoulder in provocation. “This our side of the street, motherfucker! Whachoo lookin’ at, mamao?”
“I am just—looking,” Joth replied.
Julio twisted his mouth into a wicked parody of Joth’s vacuous smile. “Oh, you just lookin’? You just lookin’ at what, asshole? Our women, no? Mebbe you lookin’ at my dick, huh? I tell you what you lookin’ at—you lookin’ at trouble, asshole!”
“I am looking at everything.”
Julio’s scowl deepened as the other members of his gang exchanged slightly baffled glances. The wino wasn’t responding to their taunts and insults with anger or to their threats with fear, and it was making them uncomfortable.
“What you tryin’ to pull, culo—you gettin’ Kung Fu on me?”
“C’mon, Julio—leave him be,” Juan snorted, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Fucker’s weak in the head.”
“Fucker’s dissin’ me is what he is!” Julio snarled, angrily shrugging Juan off his arm, fixing his angry gaze on the wino. “Yo! Cabrón! You know who I am?”
The wino nodded.
Julio smiled and his chest swelled noticeably. “Oh? Who am I, then?”
The wino’s voice was as placid as that of someone reeling off information they have learned phonetically and committed to memory without ever understanding its true meaning. “You are Julian Alvarez, known as Julio. You were born to Ernesto Alvarez and Concha Rodriguez. When you were four your father broke your arm in a drunken rage. When you were he sexually molested you—”
Julio’s chest rapidly deflated as his eyes bugged out of their sockets. “Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut your lyin’ mouth—!”
“When you were twelve you began molesting your younger sister, Maria. When you were fifteen you stabbed to death Elvira Mae Johnson, aged sixty-seven, when she caught you stealing her Social Security check from her mailbox...”
“I said shut up!” Julio’s voice climbed the register, becoming a shriek of mixed pain and anger. He did not know how the wino knew these things about him and he didn’t want to know. These were things not even his mother or Social Services knew. All Julio wanted was to shut the wino up—shut him up good—and there was only one way he knew how to make things go away.
The wino stared at the knife in Julio’s hand as if it were a flower or a shoehorn. He didn’t try to run away or dodge the attack as the youth plunged the knife into his bare chest. Julio looked into the wino’s eyes, expecting to see pain and fear in their depths, but all he saw was himself, as if reflected in the windows of an empty house. He was nose-to-nose with the wino; his fist still gripping the knife hilt, yet the old man did not cry out or even seem aware that he’d been stabbed through the heart. Julio glanced down at the blade jutting from the wino’s chest, just to make sure, but there didn’t seem to be any blood.
“What the fuck is this?” Julio wailed, panic making his voice crack. As he yanked the knife free, something like milk spurted from the wound, drenching his hand. It glowed like the goop in the glow-sticks he bribed Maria with to keep her from telling Mama about the stuff he made her do. He staggered backward, trying to shake off the white liquid dripping from his fingers. It was cold but somehow seemed to burn. Julio continued to back away, clutching his afflicted hand.
“What did you do to me?” he screamed at the wino.
But the wino wasn’t standing there anymore. In his place was Mrs. Johnson, a crimson stain spreading across her withered chest. Julio had known Mrs. Johnson all his life. She had lived on the block for as long as he could remember. She handed out lollipops and bubblegum on Halloween. But that hadn’t kept him from putting the knife he used to jimmy her mail box open into her heart when she fought him for her Social Security check. Mrs. Johnson looked at Julio from her place beyond the grave and pointed an accusing finger at her killer. Julio screamed like a man who has peered into the eye of hell and seen himself burning in its depths. He dropped the knife and fled back up the stairs to his apartment. His friends exchanged frightened glances and immediately broke ranks, scattering in every direction.
Joth watched the deathlings run away, somewhat baffled by the exchange that had taken place. The elohim had never seen such negative energy focused through a deathling before. Julio’s halo, however, was all sharp and pointy, like black lightning bolts. The Machine was in ascendance in all the young deathlings that had been gathered around Joth, but it had been strongest in the one called Julio.
The moment the gang members fled, Estrella Martinez darted out of the doorway of a nearby bodega. She had seen the hoodlums terrorizing the poor woman, but was too frightened to come to her aid. Estrella grabbed the young girl’s sleeve.
“Honey, you okay?” she asked. “You need a doctor?”
The woman shook her head. “I am Joth,” she replied, her smile identical to those of the plaster saints for sale in the botanica.
Estrella clucked her tongue in pity. It was obvious the poor girl was crazy in the head. The woman’s smile suddenly disappeared a
nd she said out loud to no one in particular. “Julio’s coming back.”
Estrella glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the tenement the Alvarez kid had disappeared into, then turned back to assure the young woman that there was nothing to be afraid of, only to find her daughter Nina, who had died of leukemia thirteen years ago, smiling at her. Estrella gave a tiny cry and grabbed the nine-year-old’s hand, covering it with kisses, her eyes filling with tears.
Joth tried to pull its hand away from the deathling, but she refused to let go. The elohim saw a deathling child—her body wasted by disease— lying in a hospital room, tied to machines by tubes and wires. The image filled Joth’s mind, threatening to push everything else out.
“Diablo!”
Estrella gave a small cry of fear and let go of Joth’s hand to look in the direction of Julio, who stood at the top of the tenement stoop.
The youth shivered and twitched like a man in the grips of malaria, skin blanched and drenched in sweat, his eyes hot and wet. His halo, however, belied his physical appearance. It was blacker than before and throwing off sparks in all directions, like a reverse-negative Fourth-of- July pinwheel.
“Get out of my head!” Julio howled as he pulled the Glock out of his warm-up jacket and aimed it at Joth.
Estrella Martinez screamed her daughter’s name and stepped in front of Joth. The bullets tore through the middle-aged woman and into the angel’s upper torso. Estrella spun about like a marionette caught in its strings and collapsed onto Joth, knocking the angel to the pavement.
Julio stared at where the two lay sprawled on the sidewalk like lovers and wiped the sweat from his brow with his gun hand because he didn’t want to look at the hand with the wino’s blood on it. It was like someone else’s hand, not his. At the sound of the approaching sirens, his eyes suddenly cleared. It was like he’d been awakened from a deep sleep only to find himself walking down the middle of a busy street. The woman he’d shot was still alive and screaming in pain—calling out for someone named Nina.
Angels on Fire Page 8
