A Deafening Silence In Heaven

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Something moved in the sky above the ruins in the distance.

  It writhed like smoke, rising up from the crumbled citadels and towers, but it did not drift as smoke would upon the heavy winds that moved across the bleak desert landscape. It collected en masse, like a swarm of locusts, flying over the desert, heading toward the mountain.

  “We need to get out of sight,” the demon dog announced.

  Samson’s son was instantly on the move, the dog right behind him, using his large paws to pull down the tent.

  “Must have been another scout we didn’t see. We’ll head to the caves and hold up there until the Filthies get tired of looking for us,” the dog said, his paws far more dexterous than Remy would have believed.

  Filthies.

  The word exploded in his brain, images like jagged pieces of shrapnel tearing through soft tissue, memories flowing like blood as he turned his eyes to the dark, living cloud spreading over the desert toward them.

  Remy blinked away the nightmarish vision to see the great demon beast staring inquisitively.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” the beast asked.

  “Those are angels,” he said, squinting his eyes, now able to see the twisted mockeries of something once divine as they approached, their disease-ridden wings beating the dust-filled air. “What happened to them?”

  The dog stiffened as he stared at him.

  “What do you mean, what happened to them?” the demon hound asked gruffly. “This happened to them.” The dog looked around at their blighted surroundings. “The world is fucked, and so are they. Are you sure that you’re all right?”

  Remy knew that to answer truthfully would have added another wrinkle, so he decided to play it safe and keep his mouth shut until he had a better idea of what was going on.

  “I’m good,” he said, the swarm of Filthies even closer now. “We should get to the caves.”

  The dog hesitated, but only a moment, then spun his muscular body toward a rocky incline. “Take the tent,” he ordered over his shoulder.

  Remy snatched up the pieces of the disassembled tent and followed the animal down an embankment where others of Samson’s brood were quickly heading toward a mountain wall, surrounded by some heavy brush. As he drew closer, Remy saw the jagged crack that resembled a bolt of lightning. He was the last to enter, careful on the unstable, rocky terrain down into the earth. The passage grew uncomfortably smaller as it reached another crack that bisected a wall of stone and led into a much larger chamber.

  Remy’s head buzzed with what he had just seen above, the bizarreness of this unfamiliar world wreaking havoc on his perceptions of reality. Was this all some sort of twisted hallucination, or was it—as he suspected—something far, far worse?

  Setting the tent down upon the ground, he turned toward the gathering, searching for the demon dog, when he was struck savagely from behind, driving him to the floor of the cave.

  Remy found himself gazing up into the sneering face of the dog, his eyes blazing as if LEDs had been placed inside his large blocky skull.

  “The smell is just a little off. . . . So is the taste,” the dog growled, bearing his tremendous weight down upon Remy’s chest as he lowered his snout closer. “Almost began to think it was just me, but then I saw the look on your face when you saw the Filthies swarm, like you’d never seen such things before.”

  The dog’s breath was awful, and saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth onto the Seraphim.

  “So who the fuck are you . . . and why shouldn’t I eat your face for deceiving us?”

  • • •

  Francis could feel the intensity of Marlowe’s eyes upon him as he knelt beside his friend, the dog’s gaze pleading for him to do something—anything—to bring his master back.

  “I’m working on it, pal,” Francis said, looking away from Remy’s pallid face and into the Labrador’s deep brown eyes. Marlowe whined mournfully, moving closer to where Remy lay, the side of his black muzzle now pressed to Remy’s cheek.

  Francis knew at once what the dog was doing, the physical contact perhaps allowing Marlowe to share some of his strength with that of his master. It was as good an idea as any, Francis thought as he reached down to take hold of Remy’s hand.

  Linda appeared in the doorway, arms filled with pillows and a blanket she’d retrieved from the bedroom upstairs. “Is he . . .”

  “The same,” Francis said. “Marlowe and I are just trying to help him out is all.”

  “This will make him a bit more comfortable,” she said, kneeling beside Marlowe, gently lifting Remy’s head, and sliding two pillows beneath. She shook the blanket out over him and then knelt there for a bit, watching him. “I feel like I should be doing something, but I don’t . . .”

  She started to cry again but sucked it up, wiping the tears away.

  “This is fine.” Francis tried to calm her. “All we can do is wait and hope the physician gets back to us soon.” Just in case, he pulled his phone out again and checked for messages. There were none.

  The silence in the room was deafening, and he felt his flesh begin to squirm, his muscles twitch, desperate for action—any action. Francis was used to dealing with things in a more physical fashion, but his predilection for violence had no place here.

  He was about to look at his phone again, just for something to do, but Linda interrupted.

  “He’s an . . . angel,” she stated, appearing to have some difficulty getting the last word out.

  “He is,” Francis confirmed. “A Seraphim, to be exact.”

  “From Heaven . . . He’s an angel from Heaven that has come to Earth.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that, but yeah, basically that’s it.”

  “And you’re an angel?” she asked, watching him with a combination of fear and fascination.

  “Yeah, but I’m of the fallen variety.”

  “I thought that fallen angels were bad.”

  “Who said I’m not?” The admission stirred more emotion in Francis than he would have expected after all this time. “I made some bad decisions a long time ago, and I’m paying for them now.”

  “Is Remy fallen, too?” she asked, reaching out to gently run her fingers through his hair.

  “Not at all,” Francis said, impressed with this woman. Most humans would have been quivering in a pool of their own piss by now. “Remy is one of the good guys. He came here by choice—couldn’t quite stomach the politics after the war and was looking for some peace and quiet.”

  “The war?”

  “The legions of God against the Morningstar and his armies.”

  “The Morningstar,” she repeated, the meaning starting to sink in. “You mean like the Devil. . . . He’s real?”

  “Of course he’s real,” Francis said, unable to keep the irritation from his tone. “Why is it that you can accept that he . . . that we’re angels of Heaven, but not the existence of Lucifer?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Wishful thinking?”

  “If it makes you feel any better, organized religion has had a field day with his story. Responsible for all the evil in the world? Not even close,” Francis explained. “Sure, there were some pretty heavy doings with the Big Man upstairs, but very little fallout ever made it here to Earth.”

  “But the Bible says . . .”

  “The Bible says a lot of things, but not much of it is all that accurate.”

  Linda looked as though she’d been slapped.

  “Look,” Francis said. “The Bible was written by a bunch of guys trying to explain what they understood of God’s glory and the ills of the world. It’s a helluva lot easier explaining why a guy would slaughter twenty innocent people in a McDonald’s when there’s a supreme boogeyman to lay the blame on.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Linda said.

  “Happy to set things right for you.”

  “You say that he’s one of the good guys,” L
inda said after a moment, looking down at Remy again. “I knew it the first time I met him. . . . It just came off him in waves. I didn’t know how to describe it at the time; I just knew I’d be safe with him . . . that he would protect me.” The tears started again, pouring from her eyes to spatter upon the floor beside Remy’s head. “Who’s going to do that now?” she asked, looking imploringly at Francis. He was about to tell her that he would gladly do that for her, but then his phone vibrated.

  “Is it the doctor?” Linda asked, the expectation nearly palpable.

  “Yeah.” Francis stood and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “I’ve gotta go get him.”

  He headed for the kitchen but stopped. “Stay with him,” he said, turning back to gaze first at Linda, and then at Marlowe. “And you keep them both safe.”

  The dog woofed as Francis stepped into the kitchen and out of sight, opening a passage to the physician.

  • • •

  Linda leapt to her feet, wanting to know if there was anything she should be doing before the physician arrived, but the kitchen was empty; Francis had already gone.

  She had no idea how he had disappeared so quickly, but the air appeared to be strangely unsettled in a corner of the room. She moved her hand through the area of turbulence as it dissipated. Angel stuff, she thought.

  She turned to go back to Remy and caught sight of Marlowe through the kitchen doorway, still sitting loyally by Remy’s side. It broke her heart to see the dog so distraught.

  But there was no use fretting over something that she could do little about. She had to keep things positive. Right now, Remy seemed to be holding on. She only hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Francis returned with the physician, and then they would know.

  Good or bad, at least they would know something.

  She returned to the living room, staring at Remy’s prone form. If she didn’t know better she would say that he was just catching a little nap.

  Do angels even sleep? She tried to recall if she’d ever actually seen Remy sleeping, but her memories drifted back to the last time they’d made love. She couldn’t help but smile. How loved she’d felt since he’d come into her life.

  The tears came again in scalding torrents, and Linda rushed down the hallway to the first-floor bathroom.

  She turned the water on full blast, then caught her reflection in the mirror above the sink, horrified by the puffiness of her eyes and the blotchiness of her complexion. If Remy should awaken now and see her, she thought, he’d probably scream and crawl back into his coma.

  Marlowe joined her, sitting down on the bath mat outside the shower stall.

  “I wouldn’t want to be alone, either,” she told him. “Let me wash my face, and we’ll go back to him together.”

  The dog’s tail thumped twice in response, and Linda bent forward over the sink, splashing cool water onto her face in the hopes of somewhat rejuvenating herself.

  Then a sudden sound made Marlowe bark, startling her. Standing upright, face dripping, she listened. Marlowe stood in the bathroom doorway at attention, growling softly.

  She wasn’t sure what the sound was, but thought she heard the creaking of a door hinge.

  “Francis?” she called out, grabbing a hand towel and drying her face as she cautiously left the bathroom. “Francis, is that you?” she asked.

  Marlowe was ahead of her, growling, the bristled fur on his back somehow darker than his normally black coat. He stopped outside the living room entryway, barked once, and then rushed into the room.

  “Marlowe!” she cried, running to the doorway and stopping short. A man stood over Remy, and the Labrador sat next to him, staring balefully up at him.

  “Hello?” Linda said tentatively.

  The man slowly turned toward her voice, his face scratched and bruised as if he’d recently been in a fight, his eyes filled with emotion.

  “I’m too late,” Stephen Mulvehill said, his voice quivering as he dropped to his knees beside the body of his friend.

  “God forgive me. . . . I’m too late.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Francis stepped onto a street that looked like something out of a postapocalyptic nightmare.

  It took him a minute or so to remember that he was in Detroit.

  “What a shit hole,” he muttered as he began to walk the blighted city neighborhood. Miles of abandoned city blocks, the only apparent life being weeds that pushed up through the broken blacktop and swarms of rats and roaches that skittered about in the darkness of the empty buildings.

  In a way an apocalypse had happened here; it was just of an economic kind.

  He wasn’t sure exactly why places like this, abandoned places, places that had once pulsed with life but were now dead, drew the fallen angels of Heaven. The Denizens, as they were called, having served their time in the Hell prison of Tartarus and now completing their penance here on Earth, seemed drawn to these desolate, hopeless places like lice to a healthy scalp.

  The Denizen known in certain circles as the Physician was no different from his penitent brethren.

  A ragged dog emerged from an alley, its snout pressed to the ground as it tracked what it probably hoped would be its next meal. It stopped when it saw Francis and studied him with dark, bottomless eyes. It looked as though it would turn tail and run when he spoke.

  “I’m looking for Darnell,” Francis said in a language the animal could understand. “I’m looking for the Physician.”

  The dog hesitated only a moment before tossing back its mangy head with a woof and heading back the way it had come. Francis did as he was told and followed.

  At the end of the alleyway, the dog turned right and trotted through three city blocks before stopping in front of yet another dilapidated tenement building, only this one had a former angel of Heaven sitting on its cracked front stoop, sipping from a bottle of cheap whiskey.

  “Fraciel,” the Denizen acknowledged.

  The dog continued on its way, occasionally pissing on random objects that littered the deserted streets.

  “I’d ask if I could have a sip,” Francis said, nodding toward the bottle, “but I’m in a hurry.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to ever see you again.”

  “I thought you were joking. What would a life truly be without a little me every now and then?”

  “Whenever you come calling, trouble follows like a bad smell.” The Physician was going to take another swig from the bottle but stopped and locked his dark gaze upon Francis. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “I need your skills.”

  “My skills?” Darnell asked, then laughed. “The last time you needed my skills, you had a hole in your stomach so big I could put my whole hand into it. You don’t look hurt to me now.”

  “It’s not me; it’s a friend.”

  “A friend?” he asked incredulously. “I didn’t think you were the type.”

  “Not something I’d like to get out,” Francis said. “Will you help?”

  Darnell seemed to consider the question, while Francis thought of options in case he refused.

  “What’s in it for me?” Darnell finally asked.

  “Let’s just say a nice thank-you card might be showing up in your mailbox. Do they even still deliver mail around here?”

  The fallen angel shook his head. “Stopped the same week they cut the power and water.”

  “Bet the rent is good,” Francis said. He studied the front of the tenement, noticing ghostly faces in some of the windows, peering out at them.

  “Can’t complain.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “How bad?” Darnell asked as he slowly screwed the cover back on his whiskey bottle.

  “Bad enough that this could be a waste of both our time.”

  • • •

  The demon dog pressed down upon him with all its monstrous weight.

  “Who. The fuck. Are you?” he growled, the stink of his breath like a slaughterhouse on the hottest day in Aug
ust.

  “I’m who I say I am,” Remy told the beast firmly, looking directly into his large dark eyes. “But at the same time—I’m not.” There, he’d said it—the cat was out of the bag.

  “Bullshit!” the dog roared, plunging his enormous head down and sinking his teeth into Remy’s shoulder.

  Remy cried out, thrashing beneath the immobilizing weight, and he felt something stir within him, something that had been dormant up until now.

  Something that moved with a yawn and a languid, catlike stretch. Something that he had not felt since awakening in this strange, twisted world.

  The essence of the Seraphim still existed inside of him, though he could feel that it had changed. It felt weaker—tired.

  He had no idea what could have happened to weaken it so—weaken him so—but at that moment, it was awake.

  Aware.

  And angry.

  Remy felt the power react to the sudden pain, consuming it, using the searing agony as fuel. He felt it upon his flesh, the mysterious sigils coming alive as his angelic birthright began to flow through them.

  “Get off!” he bellowed as a blast of sheer power exploded from the markings on his flesh, propelling the great animal backward and giving him a moment to collect himself.

  Remy scrambled to his feet, the pain from the bite in his shoulder excruciating. He watched the dog as he majestically rose to all fours, the musculature of his body rippling beneath the tight black fur.

  “You’re going to tell me who you are—what you are—and it doesn’t matter to me if you’re doing it sliding down my gullet or not.”

  Samson’s children surrounded them within the confines of the cave. They had weapons in their hands and were ready to use them.

  “I told you who I am.” Remy flexed his fingers, feeling the altered power of Heaven collecting there. “Just not the version I’m supposed to be.”

  The dog sprang, his powerful back legs kicking up a barrage of rocks. “My patience is at an end!”

  Remy instantly threw up his hands, the power of Heaven flowing from them to erect a shield against the beast’s fangs. The beast hit with a grunt, and Remy thrust him away.