by Tim Greaton
Maybe I would at least have that to look forward to.
Sedrick didn’t have an answer for me.
When I woke the second time, Ricky was still at my side. It was light outside. My throat felt stiff from disuse.
“How long have I been asleep?” I croaked.
“Three days, Nate.”
I looked down at his pants and smiled. He was still the picture of whiteness.
“You stay much longer, and you’re going to sprout wings,” I said.
“Wings or no wings, I’m here until you get better.”
“Your uncle?”
“Back in Heaven, I guess. There wasn’t room for four of us here.”
“Four?” I craned my neck.
Relief flooded into me. The hollow that had been my soul was suddenly filled with gratitude. I lifted myself and leaned into my Grandma Clara. For the longest time I rested in her loving embrace. I didn’t ever want her to let me go.
Not ever.
“I’ll be on the porch,” Ricky said politely.
I wanted to tell him “no,” that he was fine. I wanted to say he could stay as long as he liked, but I couldn’t bear to detach myself from my grandmother’s embrace for even that simple task. It was she who finally separated us though she still held onto both my hands.
“The monster?” she asked.
I looked inside myself. The prison cell was still there, but the door and its frame lay in a mangled waste off to the side. I had paid a terrible price, but the creature was finally gone.
“It’s not there,” I said. “I remember everything.”
She hugged me again.
I had so many questions, so many things I needed to know, but at that moment, nothing seemed as important as just being held. I learned that angels can hold you for as long as you need.
True to his word, Ricky never left my side until I was ready to go outside with him. His uncle had come and gone a few times, but it seemed agreed that his lessons could wait. I was a sickly boy who had his grandmother and his friend looking after him. I felt guilty for not thinking of Ricky as my best friend, but the memories had changed all that. I had only one best friend, and he walked about on four legs.
Though my monster was gone, the memories it left behind filled me with deep sadness. I learned from Grandma Clara that, as I had feared, my mother had died that night. My grandmother didn’t go into details, but I suspected her end had been as horrible as my father’s and mine. Only one solitary shaft of light pierced the gloom of my tragic last day on Earth: my baby sister had survived.
Though wounded, Whiskey had somehow managed to drag and prod two-year-old Vicky through the woods and down the hill to the docks. Under the main wharf, he kept her warm against his fur for the rest of the night. Knowing how the fishermen hated our family, my dog remained quiet throughout the early morning until he heard the sheriff’s car arrive. As the lawman walked along the weathered pier to see if my father had launched another skiff, Whiskey began to bark, softly at first but then louder until the sheriff ducked his head under the dock. That’s when my dog whimpered and licked my sister’s face one last time before allowing the gentle lawman to pull her safely from his blood-matted fur.
I cried seemingly endless tears when I learned that was the last thing my Whiskey ever did. After carrying out my final wish that morning, he had died. We had truly been friends to the grave.
Nearly two weeks passed before I felt ready to go outside. Ricky joined me for a stroll around the edges of our Under-Heaven. I was walking a few steps behind him dragging my hand through the moist clouds that ringed our tiny world when I realized the tan color had again wicked up pant legs and was now nearly to his waist. I wanted to ask him about it, but I knew, as with my own monster, a person needed to handle some things in their own way, at their own pace.
Ricky and I started to play a game of tag but somewhere along the way we realized that neither of us was in the mood. So, instead we sat in the grass and spent the rest of the day watching souls migrate to and from the fountain pond at the center of our little neighborhood. We knew that nearly everyone in our Under-Heaven arrived with an object from his or her past. Mine, of course, had been the beat up lobster trap that once held my sister’s bloody doll. Ricky’s porch swing, on the other hand, had been a positive symbol from his past life. It was there he and his mother had shared intimate discussions when his father worked late. But of all the items we had ever seen souls carry with them, nothing could have prepared us for the clump of white hair that we suddenly saw slipping smoothly through the grass on its way to the pool.
“Look,” Ricky said, pointing someplace ahead of the mini-wig.
Confused at first, I finally saw the thin strand of twine that connected the wig to a balding man who walked a few feet in front of it. For some reason, he was pulling the hairpiece like you or I might walk a dog.
But why?
Fascinated, we watched the man settle to his knees at the edge of the cherub pool. He ran his free hand over the water’s surface and stared downward for quite some time. Then I saw what might have been the most bizarre thing I’d ever witnessed in Under-Heaven. He gently drew in the twine like a fish on a hook. Then lifted the hairpiece and placed it gently on his head, the twine dangling from behind like a slender ponytail. As he adjusted the patch of hair, it was as though a switch had been flipped. Suddenly, his all-white clothing burst into brilliant shades of blue, green, and red. Even the tuft of artificial hair changed from white to a deep black, which was especially odd given that the ring of natural hair around the man’s head remained heavily streaked with gray. It was almost as though he had a dead kitten sitting on his head.
Unable to peel our eyes away from the now dangerously colorful man, Ricky and I were thankful he never looked up to catch us gawking. Instead, he continued to stare down into the water for another few minutes before snatching the hairpiece from his head and flinging it away. It might have gone further but caught up short on the twine that was apparently tied to his wrist. The mini-wig flopped down onto the grass just a few feet from him. By then, it was white again as were all of the man’s clothes. Even his shoes were bone white by the time he got to his feet and walked by, completely oblivious to us. Without so much as a glance back, he disappeared into one of the new houses not far from Ricky’s home.
During life, Ricky or I might have made some comment or snickered about a man with such an unusual pet, but in Under-Heaven none of that seemed proper. Even small events in Under-Heaven, especially those involving color, had such potentially serious consequences that laughing would have been akin to making jokes about a fatal car accident on Earth. No, we kept our thoughts to ourselves as we got to our feet and returned to Ricky’s home.
After he said goodbye and I waved, Ricky fondly brushed a hand along the top of his porch swing before going inside. I stood there for a few seconds, wondering why his color had gotten so bad and why it had remained that way throughout the entire day. I didn’t know what made Ricky feel so guilty, but I prayed he would get past it. In the meantime, I was committed to being as good a friend to him as he had been to me. Unfortunately, that made me worry all the more.
It had been nearly four weeks since I faced my monster for the last time, and each day I found I missed my family more and more. I knew Vicky was back on Earth and living her life as best she could, but my parents should have been someplace where I could see them.
“Can I go to Heaven to be with them?” I asked Grandma Clara when she arrived one morning.
“I’m sorry, Nate, but it’s not that easy. Your parents are not in Heaven yet. They’re in two different purgatories.”
“Purgatories?”
“You mother was a Christian, like me,” Grandma Clara said. “She believed in Purgatory, so that’s the kind of Under-Heaven she went to. And your father, though not a full-fledged Christian, also chose form of Under-Heaven similar to Purgatory.”
“Will I ever see them again?”
“I think so, Nate. They’re good people, and it’s likely they will decide to go on to Heaven. Sometimes in the Purgatories it takes a while, but I believe you will all be reunited in Heaven someday.”
“I thought God decided who got into Heaven and who didn’t.”
“Ultimately, it is his decision, but in the Purgatories souls have to make their own judgment first. Then God makes a final judgment.”
“Why didn’t I go to Purgatory?”
She smiled warmly, a look I have grown to treasure, and said, “You mean besides the fact that you didn’t even know what Purgatory was until I just mentioned it?”
I shrugged.
“I didn’t know about this place either.”
She nodded.
“You didn’t have any preconceptions about Heaven, Nate, so you were sent to a simple Under-Heaven. Here, you are judged by your instinctive feelings of guilt. Here, you don’t have to relive every decision you made in life to decide whether you belong in Heaven.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I said. I’d had enough of relived memories to last several lifetimes.
“When do I go to Heaven?”
“You’ll know when the time is right, Nate. Your instincts will tell you. But for now, you have lessons to learn and some growing up to do.”
“I thought no one grows in Under-Heaven.”
“It’s true that your body will always remain the same,” she said, “but you do grow mentally and spiritually. Now that your monster is gone, the rest should become much easier. You’ll soon have decisions to make about what you’re going to do next, but right now God wants you to relax and take some time to realize who you are and what you really want as a soul.”
Even looking back at them, Grandma Clara’s early answers seemed more like riddles than actual information. I was often forced to ask the same question in dozens of ways before I could make sense of her responses. That was where Ricky came in handy. He was amazing at interpreting my grandmother’s elusive answers. Though he had been a year younger than me when he died, in many ways he was a lot wiser. So, when it came to Grandma Clara’s answers, Ricky often found meaning where I only found confusion. Of course, there was always the chance that his interpretations were wrong, but I figured a skewed view was better than no view at all.
As much as I relied on Ricky for answers, he relied on me for fun. At times, it seemed like he had never been a kid at all. Even the simplest of games could sometimes be an effort for him. It was as if he had to work to enjoy himself. One day, though, we were both having an incredible time. Two older girls had appeared in Under-Heaven. Though older than us, they were the youngest people we had ever seen in our small neighborhood. One seemed to be about seventeen, and the other I would have guessed to be fifteen or so. Ricky and I had spent most of that morning spying on the younger girl. We ducked behind the fountain, behind other people, crawled in the grass and crept silently along the neighbors’ houses like foxes on the hunt. We actually got within ten feet of her and were hiding behind the railing of her porch before she finally spotted us.
It was then that I realized she had grown more colorful as we approached. As I stared at her dark red shoes, green skirt and the light cream bottom half of her blouse, I tried to remember how colorful she had been when we started. Only her shoes and socks, I thought. She waved and smiled when she caught sight of us, but her angel relative, a tall man with a cowboy hat, shooed us away.
Next, we tried spying on the older brunette girl, but she was tough. Within minutes, she had nabbed us for lurking three times. This girl wore a long white dress with shoes as white as my sneakers. She smiled the third time she caught us, but didn’t laugh like she had the first two times. We decided to move onto another game.
I offered to race Ricky back to my house. He had no visitors that day. I, on the other hand, knew my Grandmother would be waiting for me when I got back. Though my soul hadn’t inexplicably flittered away again, my grandmother wasn’t willing to take any chances. She now spent most of my waking hours at my home.
“On the count of three,” Ricky said. “One. Two. Three!”
Ricky bolted for the win, and I immediately tore after him.
I shudder to think what might have happened if Ricky had been alone that day, because he didn’t notice the black creature that swooped down from the sky off to our right. As we rounded the cherub fountain, I saw it and immediately realized it was aiming straight for Ricky’s back.
Instinctively, I dove and grabbed Ricky by the ankle. He tripped and fell headlong into the soft grass in front of me. Unable to change its course in time, the mass of black wings and claws careened past, mere inches above Ricky’s head.
The creature’s scream made my ears ache and my skin crawl.
A demon!
I’d heard Grandmother Clara talk about them, but this was the first one I’d ever seen. Horrified, I watched as it soar upward and bank for another attack. About three times taller than either Ricky or me, the creature had coal-black skin with no fur. The two streaks of red along its cheeks looked like open wounds. Bat-like wings churned at the air as its gnarled arms and legs, all tipped with gleaming black claws, dangled beneath it. A long pointed tail flicked back and forth like the dangerous water moccasin snakes I’d seen in the swampy water at the edge of the Mica Mine in Coldwell. The creature’s black ears curled back in tall narrow arcs, almost like horns. I felt hateful its black eyes rake over me before it swooped for Ricky again.
Suddenly, a blur of white streaked down from the sky and rammed into the creature’s back. The force of the blow sent both objects hurtling to the ground with a small explosion of soil and grass. In a flurry of motion, the white object separated itself and landed nimbly between Ricky and the demon.
I immediately recognized the new combatant. Tall, muscular and dressed in a flowing white robe, he was astounding. His long wavy hair was as white as his garb. Two huge, powerful wings sprouted from his shoulder blades and, unlike the demon’s misshapen leathery appendages, they were covered with beautiful snowy feathers.
Awestruck, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the archangel.
The demon snarled and hurled itself at the much bigger archangel, but it might as well have been throwing itself at the open air. With grace and speed that made it hard to see him move, the archangel dodged a dozen different strikes. The demon cackled, and spat, and struck out twice more with its front claws but to no avail. Suddenly, its barbed black tail whipped from behind, but once again the archangel easily dodged the blow.
Suddenly, thudding like a hammer against wood, a heavenly fist struck the demon solidly in the chest. The black creature staggered back and let loose a scream that would have given any living child nightmares; as it was, the chilling sound was to stay with me for several weeks.
Before the demon could fully recover, the archangel struck it in the chest again. This time, the blow echoed like thunder across my Under-Heaven. Crashing backwards, the demon crashed into the ground and rolled several times before it came to a scrabbling halt on its knees in the grass. After a short struggle, it untangled its gangly limbs and got to its feet. Arms lowered in what looked to be a fighting stance, it flexed its long claws and snarled, revealing razor sharp fangs, but didn’t otherwise move. The look of hatred on its drawn face was enough to make me wither inside.
Simultaneously awestruck and terrified, I could not have moved if I tried. The contrast between these two creatures, one of light and goodness and the other of darkness and hate, was almost too much to comprehend. If I hadn’t already been persuaded, that one incident would have been enough to convince me to avoid Hell at all costs. Nothing could possibly have been worth exposure to a world filled with those creatures.
The archangel stepped toward the demon. Though about the same height as his opponent, which is to say three times as tall as Ricky or I, the archangel’s mass made the demon look sickly and pathetic. Apparently realizing it was grossly outmatched, the vile creature trembled even as i
t stood its ground.
The hatred, however, never left its black eyes.
I wondered if an archangel would kill a demon. The difference of size alone left no doubt in my mind that he could if he so chose. But would he? I couldn’t say why, but somehow I doubted it.
“Away, foul one!” the archangel said, his voice like a powerful wind.
The demon’s lips pulled back into a grimace, revealing rows of deadly sharp fangs.
“That one is mine.” It pointed at Ricky.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized Ricky’s slacks were entirely tan and most of his shirt had turned a dark shade of blue. Only a few inches below his collar remained white. Maybe spying on those girls had been a bad idea. I glanced down. Strangely the game hadn’t turned me at all. If anything, my sneakers were whiter than they had been earlier.
“The other boy,” the archangel said, “should never have had to endure even the sight of your foul presence.”
The demon’s shifted his gaze toward me. I hadn’t seen such a look of hatred since Tommy Edds’ father had killed me. I shivered, although whether it was from the evil gaze or my brief recollection of my own last day on Earth, I couldn’t have said.
“You’ll go without prey this day,” the archangel bellowed. “Leave or I will smite you now and strew your remnants throughout the sky.”
The archangel’s powerful wings unfurled to several times the width of his already impressive size and hid the demon from my view. By the time the glistening white feathers folded back in place, the misshapen creature was gone.
I tried to get to my feet, but my knees were weak.
The towering archangel turned and stepped toward me. Long, white curls cascaded over alabaster cheeks to frame his glorious smile. Waves of kindness and love washed over me. In that moment, I glimpsed Heaven.
As perfect a creature as has ever existed reached down for me then. And when his hand gently gripped my skinny shoulder, my entire body tingled with warmth and strength. Suddenly, my weakness was gone, replaced by an intoxicating sense of wellbeing. At that moment I would have sworn my allegiance to him forever.
