“He’s not mine, and I don’t care. Do whatever you want.”
Vandriel let out a long, good-spirited sigh. This guy… Its long black claw snatched Isaiah’s robe and tore if off him, leaving Isaiah in his jeans and a gray, long-sleeved work shirt that had seen better days. Knotting the robe into a make-shift bag, Vandriel held his closed fist over it, and then as magically as can be, large golden coins—seven in all—trickled out of his fist and into the bowl of rough-spun wool. Vandriel knotted the bag then handed it to Isaiah. “Hey, Isaiah. Don’t say I never did nothing for you.”
Hesitant at first, Isaiah took the bag of coins. It was quite the miraculous gift, a token to avoid the final judgement of mankind—seven free passes. Now the surprise hit him. Isaiah asked, “Why? Why me?”
Vandriel shrugged. “Why you, why him… who cares? The truth is: I really should be more diligent about how I handle this, the coins, but I just don’t care. And to be quite honest, I just want to get down to the burning, you know, the fun part. Why you, Isaiah? because you are worthy. That night oh-so-long ago, when you faced the darkness, when you came face-to-face with my whisperers, it was a test, a test to see if you would give in to the darkness… and you didn’t. In a way, you have already been judged.”
Vandriel wrinkled its tar-colored brow and gave Isaiah a sideways look. “Now, Isaiah, I have a question for you. Since that night—those months, if you want to get technical… since then, you… quit fighting, quit killing. You met your wife had a family and yet… you haven’t prayed once—not once, not since that night. When you sit down for dinner, and your family bows their heads and say their blessings, you do not join them. Why is that?”
Isaiah sighed then glanced over to where Armand was, making sure that he was really gone. Malick caught his eye. Strangely and patiently enough, Malick was now using his pocketknife to clean his fingernails and seemed more concerned with them than anything else going on around him. “Why?” Isaiah said, “because after my time in the darkness, I found what I was searching for. The bullet hole in my calf, it showed me that the words of men and the wars of men are not God’s—the gods’—intent. They are what they’ve always been, the ambitions of men, using god to justify their actions. As for my family, they are evidence enough—at least for me, they are—of a higher power. But if you are implying that, perhaps, my faith has ever waivered… it has not. I just quit listening to men who claim to know the mysteries of God.”
Vandriel grinned and nodded somberly. “Isaiah, you are full of surprises. Most certainly, you are a wise goat herder indeed—if not the wisest.”
Vandriel snapped his giant, tar-covered fingers, and Isaiah was yanked back the same way that his son was. All the while, Malick remained quiet, only grinning with a twinkle in his beady little eyes.
Atop his pillar of flames, Vandriel slid back over to Malick. “And now… what are we going to do with you?” Vandriel scanned the honeycombs of the cavern filled with the bright red eyes of his whisperers. They smiled with mouths too wide to be human with two rows of perfectly fitting, picketed fangs—so perfectly uniform and white they looked almost cartoonish. “Don’t worry about them,” Vandriel advised Malick. “Your soul is already too dark to offer them any nourishment.”
“I know.”
Vandriel made a gleeful sucking sound and shook his head. “So… what were you going to do with them, Isaiah and his son?”
“Rob and kill them… maybe.” Malick jabbed his tongue into his bottom lip and curiously looked around the best he could while remaining stuck in his harness of black webbing. “Eventually.”
Vandriel let out a big smile, and it almost seemed like he had found a kindred spirit. “You liked him, didn’t you? You respected him. It’s always harder to kill someone you respect.”
“He was a good man. He had a code—so few men do nowadays, and more importantly, he stuck to it. To live-and-die by a code, that’s something to respect.”
“Yes it is, and what is your code?”
“Survival… at any cost.”
“Well,” Vandriel said and shrugged. “At least it’s simple. Empty but simple.” The pillar of flames swayed backwards then snapped forward like a cobra. Malick screamed as the Vandriel dove into chest, clawing and jamming himself inside. Then, just as Malick thought it was all over, the pillar of flames followed Vandriel in.
Sliding into Malick, the pillar of flames swung around something fierce, something like a wet spaghetti noodle. Malick’s head snapped back then forward, and his chest closed up like nothing even happened. “That’s better.”
His eyes turned to polished tiger’s eye and glinted with the same color as the flames below. Malick examined his arm and hand. “This is nice,” he said then stabbed his hand with the pocketknife—straight through it. Examining his new, self-inflicted wound, he smiled as it healed almost immediately. Flipping his hand over, he examined the back of it. It slowly shifted into the tar-covered, clawed mitt it had been. “Well alright.”
Still, the human soul that had been inside Malick’s mortal husk remained. It whispered to him like something that resembled a conscience. What now, Vandriel? “It’s Malick. Now it’s Malick. I’m taking over.” Okay, so what happens now? “What happens now? Now it beginnings.” With his arms wide and palms upwards, the strange rubbery substance wrapped around his shoulders fell away and the cord that was holding him up whipped away to somewhere above him. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need them. Malick was now hovering in the air.
The whisperers started up again. “Witness… Witnesss… Witnessss…”
Grinning, Malick said, “yes, it is now time to witness, witness the horrors that I will rain down on humanity. Then Malick floated upward and higher above the pit of fire and the sandstone tower that had risen out of it.
CH 18: Homecoming
Diana was a nervous wreck as she waited for word, any word, from Mea as her only and first-born daughter had gone missing. And like any mother would do, she hoped for the best, if not only to keep herself from thinking the worst
She looked as horrible as she felt. Her dirty-blond hair looked dirtier than usual and was scattered over her face and shoulders. The bags under her eyes were twice as big as they were a week ago.
While she was used to her daily bout with exhaustion. Her missing daughter had given her exhaustion the upper hand, and today exhaustion won the battle. Diana was passed out on their couch, the furniture older than Mea herself. An open photo album lied on the shag carpet, opened to a scurry of childhood pictures, from Diana’s memories captured on film. A five-year-old Ryan blowing out his birthday candles; Harris’s family day at the beach; another of Anna and Mea, from Anna’s family barbeque (so many summers ago). The right page held an impromptu picture of Mea and Diana that was less than flattering and a class picture of Mea nestled in the middle of Mrs. Wagner’s fifth-grade class at Baysville Elementary. The photo album had dropped from Diana’s exhausted hands hours ago, before the commotion had commenced just outside her door.
Yet, as the creaking stairs whispered her awake and as the loud clank of the old deadbolt finished the job, Diana jumped to attention with the alertness of a Navy SEAL. Realizing the time and what danger might lie just behind the opening door, Diana darted into her tiny kitchen which was lit up in dull yellow light. Looking around for protection and in a moment of fear-induced hyper-lucidity, she grabbed a butcher knife before stepping out of her poorly-lit kitchen and stepping into the even darker entryway of her apartment, ten feet away from the opening door.
Clenching her butcher knife, Diana found that worries were not unfounded. Though the door was still opening, a large homeless man with a square jaw was casually standing inside her home, next to the opening door. While it was probably just the moon, his eyes seemed to be glowing with a low green tint.
“Stay back,” she commanded, her voice as shaky as the butcher knife she held. Flooded with fear and adrenaline, an invisible force seemed to be guiding her movements. She backe
d into the doorframe of the kitchen’s entrance as she waved the butcher knife in front of her. “Stay back. I mean it.”
What came next was more shocking. The knife fell from Diana’s hand. The falling blade found the battered hardwood floor and stuck in it—just right of Diana’s naked foot and dangerously close to severing at leave one of her toes.
“It’s okay, Mom. He’s with me. He’s…”
“A friend,” finished Azazel, temporarily saving her from an awkward conversation.
Then as Mea stepped through the door, her mother lost all inhibitions. Ignoring Azazel and caution all together, she ran up and hugged her daughter. “Mea, you’re… you’re okay. You came home.”
“Yeah, Mom. I’m good. I’m sorry that I…”
Diana was already rapid-fire kissing Mea’s forehead and squeezing her cheeks. “It’s okay. I thought you were dead. Why didn’t you…”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I just… needed some time to clear my head.”
Diana’s joy of seeing her daughter outweighed the ass-chewing that she had already planned during the breaks of her endless nights of worry. “Come-come in. Come sit on the couch. You-you and your friend…”
“Trevor,” said Azazel. “My name is Trevor.” Trevor, the fallen angel that I just killed, he recalled. As good a name as any, I suppose.
Diana brought them both into the living room while she scurried to clean up the pigsty that had accumulated over the past week.
With Azazel sitting in the beat-up recliner, Diana and Mea sat on the frayed couch that seemed a hundred-years-older than the last time Mea saw it and compared to the wonders she had seen since then. Still, it felt good to be home, better than Mea anticipated.
Diana clung to her daughter, as if determined to never let her go again, and she tried her best to make light conversation. She would soon find both to be impossible tasks.
“So,” Diana said, as she tried to pull the rats’ nest atop her head into something remotely presentable. “So do you go to school with…” Diana’s face squinted with pain as she sucked at her teeth and grabbed at her back. “Sorry, I think I pulled a muscle from… jumping up earlier. I just…” With a double-take, she caught Azazel’s glancing suspiciously at her. She thought, he knows. “Honey, where have you been? That doesn’t matter. I’m just happy that you’re home.” Diana patted Mea’s hand and smiled. Seeing her mother smile, Mea thought that it and the deepening crow’s feet along her mother’s eyes that came with it were the most beautiful thing she ever saw.
Diana saw something similar. Looking at Mea, really looking at her, Diana saw something else inside her daughter. A warm glowing light filled her vision. She was suddenly sitting next to a great star of gleaming silver. An aura of light encompassed her, and Mea was suddenly all-but-flawless. “Oh, my god. You are so beautiful.” She stroked her daughter’s suddenly light sprinkled hair as it glistened like ocean waves at noon. The light flashed even brighter. Kissing Mea’s forehead again, Diana was blinded by the bright light.
“Thanks,” said Mea, slightly puzzled. “Mom, I’m sorry for…”
Diana cut her off. “No, it’s okay. It’s…” It finally make sense, Diana thought, all of it. That night eighteen-plus years ago, it wasn’t an angel that saved her, it was Mea, her daughter. Sinking in the Pacific Ocean and into warm oblivion, Diana’s blood was drowned in opiates while her lungs drowned in salt water, and she was ready to die. While her suicide attempt was planned flawlessly, she didn’t die and was instead saved by an angel. Diana had always thought that it was an angel, but no. It wasn’t an angel. It wasn’t a dream. It was a god. It was her daughter.
Now, this night, the memory from that night was as clear as day. Seeing Mea like this, like she never had before, had cleared the cobwebs from her aged memory. In silver armor and bathed in light, Mea lifted her out of the ocean. She lied her down in some empty bed in some upscale hotel room. Healed her wounds. Saved her life. It was all Mea, somehow.
Then, she saw Mea, Mea as she was now, as her daughter. Diana woke up in that strange hotel room and found a tiny baby girl in a wicker basket. This was Mea too, as Diana knew her, as the daughter she raised. And that baby, the morning after that night, sitting in the room saved her as well. It gave her gave her a reason to live. Somehow, Mea was both the baby and her angel, and somehow, she had saved her life twice.
Diana blinked away the lights and hugged her daughter, hard. “I love you, honey. I love you so much. Thank you.”
Still darting looks at Azazel, Diana noticed his eyebrows shifting into something more inquisitive. He thought: she sees her, really sees her, her daughter the god but… why isn’t she saying something about it?
Diana’s tears trickled down her cheeks and she hugged Mea again. “My beautiful baby girl.” Diana sniffled away the snot in her runny nose that had come with the tears, and in doing so, she caught a whiff of Mea and sighed, “But you need to shower.” Releasing Mea, she wiped away her tears and chuckled awkwardly. “And do something with that hair.”
While Mea was still oblivious to what Diana saw, she knew that she needed a shower, and now that she was out of her armor, she could feel the accumulated, greasy sweat that coated her from head to toe. “Yeah, I… I’m a hot mess, I’m sure.” Mea chuckled and wiped away her own tears then when to the bathroom. As Diana watched her leave with a sad look of a mother’s pain, Azazel was still watching Diana.
Her face and pupils were a shade of dull yellow that was hard to see in the dim yellow lighting but seemed to match it as well. The bags under Diana’s eyes were deep but only lightly wrinkled, and her skin was pale and hung off the sides of her face. From rapid weight loss, most likely, Azazel surmised. Still watching, he noticed that Diana had been squirming around, trying to keep her weight off the tender spot from earlier.
When Diana finally turned to him, Azazel said, “You’re dying, aren’t you?”
CH 19: Dr. Patterson, I Presume
Daikon stepped out of the shadows of an overgrown tree, a different tree in a different lawn, of a house within the same suburban neighborhood. Across the street was the home of the recently decease Dr. Patterson. Raven’s memories, Daikon thought, from when I was a reaper, when I spied on Dr. Patterson for Mea.
He stepped back into the tree’s shadows and emerged from a different set of shadows. Stepping out of the dark corner of Dr. Patterson’s living room, he pushed the coat rack aside and stepped into the stagnant room. Grabbing the lapel of his trench coat, he shook loose the wrinkles from it. The flapping coattail slapped into a stack of book that was next to the wall. Piled high, the flapping coat was enough to send the tower tumbling down.
The tower of books was one of many others that were stacked around the room and every other room in the house. Just like old times, Daikon thought, and then he looked over the books that he’d stirred,
The Legend of Atlantis. The Facts and Legends of Middle Eastern Theology. Sumerian Myths and Lore. Commonalities Found in Regional Mythologies. Angels and Their Symbolism. Different books, different names, same general subject. All of them were focused on ancient civilizations, their myths, their gods, and modern religious beliefs. “You stupid, curious man,” Daikon said, shaking his head. “Mortals should not dabble in the affairs of gods,” he said then kicked aside a book titled: The Symbolism of Resurrection in Religion and Mythology. I don’t think he’ll be finishing that book.
Daikon stepped through the tiny, untouched two-bedroom house. Tracing his fingers along the wall, Raven’s memories—his memories—came rushing back to him. Lilith trapped in within a mirror. Behind her, an ancient pantheon lied atop an eerie mountain range. Lilly sucking Dr. Patterson into the mirror then spitting out his bones. The army of banshees behind her. The mirror turning to ashes.
Daikon gasped and pulled back his hand. “Too much.” He held up his hand, and black leather leaked from his fingertips and dripped down his hands, covering them in a pair of soft, black-leather gloves. He smiled and said, “Ah, mu
ch better.”
Finally making it into the room with Patterson’s bones and his wall of pictures and articles—pictures and articles of his various, numerous conspiracy theories about mythology. Daikon stared down at Patterson’s bones and rubbed his fingers against his leather covered palm. Daikon held up a gold coin, Lilly’s coin. “Hope this reaches you in time (before your soul is claimed).” Daikon looked over the coin again. A beautiful woman with cold eyes was etched on one side while marking that appeared to be Chinese were on the other one. This belongs to you, he thought. It did, until you died, and Raven took it. Each night, Patterson would stare at the coin, like he was hypnotized by it—mesmerized by its and Lilly’s charms. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first man to succumb to the Queen of Sorrows, or a beautiful woman, for that matter.”
He tossed the gold coin onto Patterson’s bones. Sadly enough, as the coin landed atop the bones, they dissolved into a chalky, white powder. Daikon shook his head in disappointment, knowing that he was too late and that Patterson’s soul was gone to the winds.
He moved over to the wall covered with pictures and articles. Patterson’s multi-colored twine was still zigzagged across all of it. Wrapped around a handful of scattered thumbtacks, the twine drew lines between each of Patterson’s supposedly connected dots.
Daikon examined the pictures and articles that covered the board. Plucking each one of the wall as he finished, he dropped it to the ground and moved on to the next one. Gilgamesh. The great flood. Atlantis. Grigori, fallen angels. Nephilim; half-human, half-angels. Ragnarok, the apocalypse from Norse mythology. Armageddon, the Christian apocalypse. The Mayan calendar with the date adjusted to October 20, 2020—based on some half-crazy, half-genius algorithm that Patterson had devised. That thread led to an article on the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
One picture—off to the side and not connected to anything in particular—caught his eye. It was Sekhmet, the Ancient Egyptian warrior goddess who was often depicted as a lioness. For some reason, it reminded him of Mea.
The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones) Page 32
