Angel Falls

by Michael Paul Gonzalez

  “I’m keeping you alive!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think really happened back at Nin-Agal’s palace? You think you have full control of your anima? You’re still missing one crystal. It was my essence that held the Mirror of Smoke open for you. Your hand on my body that reached out to grab the crystal. So yeah, the power of the crystal is inside of you. But the battery is in here.” One of my fingers flicked around, trying to gesture up to his head.

  “I get it. Stop twitching like that, you’re grossing me out. Why did you betray me?”

  “You’d be dead if I betrayed you. I’m keeping you alive. Because I love her! Don’t believe me? Go ahead and throw me in, then! Look at me. I’m useless to her now anyway. I have no body, my beauty is gone. All I wanted was one more minute with her. One more breath, even. He had no right to separate us!”

  “Put him down!” Eve screamed. She ran over to me and clasped her hand around mine.[23] “No more death today. No more!”

  “We have come close to death at least three times on this trip. I’ve come face to face with Yaotl when I wasn’t equipped to handle him, and I have a sneaking suspicion that all of this bad mojo isn’t just following Lenny around. He’s calling it!”

  “No!” Lenny yelled.

  I reared back again, ready to throw Lenny to an uncertain fate in the Brink of Insanity, but Eve stayed my hand. She intertwined her fingers with Lenny’s, and tugged gently until I let him go. She set him on the ground and looked at me. “If the girl truly loves him, and she’s possessed by the Brothers, then he may be the only one who can talk her out of what she’s about to do. Right? You’ll never change.”

  She walked off towards the trees and disappeared behind a massive root. I knelt down in front of Lenny. He tried to turn away from me, but Goliath stepped up behind him, impeding his progress. He turned to face me, and I brought my face close to his.

  “Eve just bought you a few extra minutes of existence. Let’s use them wisely, shall we? Explain yourself. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I’ve seen plenty of these ‘I’m going into Hell to rescue my love’ stories and they never turn out well.”

  Lenny’s eyes were downcast. His mouth worked for a moment, and then, barely audible, he said, “You’re the only one who can fix this. You’re the only way I can get her back. Everyone thought she was using me. Back on Earth, they all thought I was just a boy toy, arm candy. But we had something special.”

  “I thought you and Phaleg had something special.”

  “It was a means to an end.”

  “You turned gay just to get out of Heaven?”

  “When you put it that way, it sounds wrong. I learned a few things my first days in Heaven. Same as back on Earth, I’ve always been able to read people, figure out who I need to know and what I need to do to get ahead. In this case, all I wanted was to be back with Aspen.”

  Monkey hopped down from a nearby branch. “Can I ask a question? No offense, but you seem kind of…smart…for the likes of her. So is this just a sex thing, because around here you can find a lot more quality—”

  “No!” Aside from the fact that he was just a head stuck onto my right hand, Lenny looked every bit the sullen, brooding teenager.

  I held my new right hand in front of Lenny’s face. “You’re going to show me everything. I’m getting in your head, and I’m coming out with answers.”

  “You strong enough for that?” Monkey asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. If I don’t like what I hear, Goliath is going to heave your head as far and as deep into the Brink of Insanity as he can throw. You won’t like it there.”

  “I’ll help you,” Lenny said.

  “We’ll see.”

  I rested my right hand on Lenny’s head…

  And we were emerging from the River Jordan in Heaven, I saw it through Lenny’s eyes. I hadn’t seen these sights since my ejection. Lenny was making his way to the Ledge, our little nickname for the jump point between Heaven and an assignment on Earth.

  He stretched his arms up as the Holy Fire of Michael the Archangel surrounded him, imbuing him with his assignment. He tumbled headlong from the cloud, bursting through the line of un/reality to emerge high above New York City. We floated down to a high rise in the Bronx, slipping through the thoughts and prayers of millions of New Yorkers, so many innocent cows just asking for help, and we ignored them. We get paid by the job, as the saying goes, so what’s the use in putting any extra effort in?

  I broadcast a thought out to Lenny to get to the good stuff, skip past this backstory, but he assured me it was all important. We phased through the brick wall into the rundown apartment of Dolores Quintal, an ancient Colombian grandmother who’d been living here illegally since the ’50s. Today, Dolores was settling in to her easy chair after putting a kettle on to make tea. Only problem was, she didn’t notice that while the stove was on, the fire wasn’t lit. Her apartment was slowly filling with gas.[24]

  Lenny focused his energy, preparing to dive through Dolores’s cerebral cortex, to send those signals to tell her to check on her water, but a slight movement at the corner of his eye stopped him.

  Dolores was not a world traveler, and certainly not a woman of means, but she did possess a fine collection of knick knacks from her native land. There were woven baskets and pottery on her mantel that had been passed down through generations, objects older than her building, older than the city itself. At the center of a dusty bookshelf, there was a familiar looking black obelisk, one face highly polished. And on that face, Lenny saw a glimmer of Aspen Biltmore, floating, staring at him.

  Had I been there at the time, I could have told him of the nature of Dark Objects, the false promises of Dark Magic. Sometimes an object shows you what you need to see, sometimes only what you want to see.

  Aspen was there, standing at the top of a black tower in a field of roses. She spoke to him without words, connecting directly to his brain, and sending him messages of pain, suffering, and torment.

  Lenny nodded his head, certain that he’d found an answer to his prayers. He walked across the living room and picked up the Mirror of Smoke, pocketing it and heading for the window.

  “Aye, I guess I couldn’t keep hiding it forever, huh?” Dolores opened one eye. “I’m too old and slow to stop you now. You take it back to him, and you tell him he can choke on it. I hope we’ve kept it out of his hands long enough that having it back doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m not taking it to anybody. I’m just borrowing it for a little while. I’ll bring it back to you.”

  “We’ve been keeping that cursed thing since time first began.”

  “We? You’re an immortal?”

  “No, no,” she chuckled. “Time passes and objects pass. Hand to hand, mother to daughter, generation to generation. And now, you

  caught me sleeping. I never leave the gas on. Why did I leave the gas on?” She shook her head, on the verge of making some connections, a big realization, tracing things back like she knew she’d been set up. “I don’t know what you saw in there, but it’s not true. Whatever he’s asking you for, you won’t get anything in return.”

  “He?” Lenny croaked. “There was nobody else there. Only her. Only her…”

  Lenny’s hand squeezed down and the Mirror of Smoke turned into its namesake. It whirled around his body and sucked up into his nostrils. His hair began secreting a thin, runny black ooze. It was inside him.

  Dolores raised her fingers to ward off the Evil Eye, and then Lenny leapt from the window and began his journey skyward. Half a second later, a warm breeze puffed against his back as Dolores’ apartment erupted into a fiery explosion. If Lenny noticed it, he didn’t care. He was back in Heaven moments later, scrambling down the Via Angelus towards his living quarters.

  Phaleg was apparently out on a mission of his own. Lenny jogged across their living room and climbed a set of gleaming stairs to their private chambers. Phaleg’s Heavenly A
rmor was resting in a display case. Yeah, those angels are always babbling on about peace and love, but almost every one of them has a case like this, yearning for those days of old when they were out smiting and wreaking havoc in the name of God.

  Lenny drew a fist back and punched through the glass, extracting Phaleg’s Shining Sword. It’s been rumored that the blade was sharp enough to cut a hole in the fabric of space and time, and Lenny was about to put it to the test. He stripped off his shirt and knelt on the floor. A glimmering black tear rolled down his cheek. He brought the blade close to his eyes, studying the intricate filigree on the flat. I noticed the slight gleam of dark liquid surrounding each curlicue and engraving – this sword was cursed. Whether it had always been that way, or if the blackness infecting Lenny had moved that quickly, I couldn’t say.

  “I’m coming, Aspen.” Lenny rested the hilt of the sword on the floor and drove his stomach forward, impaling himself. I felt the blade sever his spinal column, felt his body becoming insubstantial. And as his essence bled out onto the floor, a hole began to form, growing out of his spine, twisting around the tip of the sword still lodged there. Lenny got sucked backwards through it, through a deep darkness. A cacophony of voices, the dagger, the mirror, Yaotl, darkness. An explosion of light and he skidded to a halt in front of one of my favorite cafes by Lake Samael.

  I heard footsteps approaching behind him. “Special Delivery,” a voice said. “Right on time, as promised.” The Brothers. Everything became a blur from there. I felt Cain yank the sword from Lenny’s body and stab him a few more times with it. Lenny collapsed onto the pavement, and the Mirror of Smoke, once more back in obelisk form, clattered across the ground. Abel picked it up, then delivered a swift kick to Lenny’s nose.

  I never made out any words they were saying, but heard Abel yelp in pain as he discovered that an angel’s skull is more substantial than anything he’d probably encountered. The Brothers left him there to die, but Lenny wouldn’t be defeated. He began to pull himself across the ground, dragging himself to safety. When he had some of his strength back, he managed to stand, but I felt the panic welling in him as he discovered that his body was disappearing from the inside out.

  “Aspen,” he whispered. He shuffled down the street towards the comforting glow of The Garden of Eatin’.

  I withdrew my hand from Lenny’s head. He’d fallen into a deep sleep from exhaustion, and I was close behind in that respect.

  “What did you see?” Monkey asked.

  “Enough to know we’re in trouble. Cain’s got Phaleg’s sword. Not sure how to deal with that. Lenny hasn’t been totally honest with us, but I don’t think he’s out to destroy us.”

  “So no drop-kicking then, huh? Eh, that’s a shame,” Goliath said.

  “No drop-kicking. But we do need to keep an eye on him. He’s infected with Yaotl. Or whatever part of Yaotl is in the Mirror of Smoke. And part of me, too. Need to figure out how to extract part of me back from him. Keep an eye on him. I have to talk to Eve.”

  “We get all the fun jobs, huh, G?” Monkey asked.

  “Fun? Kickin’ stuff is fun. I hate watchin’ stuff. Watchin’ stuff makes me want to break stuff.”

  I left Monkey to discuss the finer points of sarcasm with Goliath. I approached the edge of the grove that ran alongside the road where we’d parked. The bark was a very pale lime green, and the trees themselves slowly crawled alongside the rift. They were great behemoths exiled from the rainforest, whose trunks were supported high in the air by a series of tall, twisting spiderlike roots that rose aboveground ten or twenty feet before meeting the trunks. I walked around and between some of these roots as I made my way to a tree that seemed to be sighing contentedly. The roots shifted in the ground, like toes digging into sand on a warm beach. Eve had to be up there somewhere. I hooked my fingers into the gnarled roots and began to climb.

  Two minutes later, out of breath and a couple of stories off the ground, I found Eve leaning back into the curve of a bough, the leaves of the trees caressing her face. “Made a new friend, eh?”

  She was positively glowing. Her hair hadn’t returned to its normal shade, and I was starting to think it never would. But her skin was supple, her eyes more focused. She wore a look of bliss. “These trees are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They’re so full of energy, life…like a focused beam of spiritual—”

  “Most of them are sentient, and all of them are insane. Clinically. You have to be careful up here, Eve. They can turn on you at a moment’s notice.”

  She ran a hand along the bark of the tree and it shuddered like a cat getting its back scratched. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have any problems with George.”

  “You named it?”

  “It’s what I do…”

  “It’s what you used to do.”

  “We’re close, aren’t we?”

  “We’re certainly getting there.”

  “What did you find out from Lenny?”

  “He’s confused, but mostly on our side. In the end, his faith in Aspen might be the thing that averts this disaster. Or pushes it over the edge. Which brings me to my next point. How are you feeling?”

  “Better.”

  “I need you to make me a promise. There’s a reason I didn’t want to bring you along on this. We’re going to be right at the Gates of Heaven. There’s a good chance that the Gates will be breached.”

  Her eyes brightened at that, which got me worried.

  “Eve. You shouldn’t get your hopes up for getting through the Gates. You shouldn’t be approaching this with the idea that you’ll be seeing Adam when it’s all said and done. It’ll just break your heart. If we get through the Gates, it’ll probably be because we’re fighting Yaotl. If we beat him on our side, I can pretty much guarantee you that Pete’s not gonna let you through. You know how he gets.”

  “You’ll find a way to get me through. This isn’t debatable. I kept Goliath alive. I kept your hand alive. You owe me something.”

  “You’re asking me to pick a fight with The Boss after I pick a fight with Yaotl. There’s only so much I can do in one day. I know this is going to sound like the height of hypocrisy coming from me, but sometimes it’s not about what you want.”

  “Not want,” she said, sliding down to sit on the branch. “Need. I didn’t come all this way to help you. I don’t want out, I need out! Is that selfish? Fine! I’m only human! Mark II, second off the line! Flawed and damned and I. Want. My. Husband BACK!”

  “We’ve got all of Creation crashing down—”

  “I don’t care about all Creation! Not anymore. I care about Adam. I have to see him again. We’re so close,” Eve dragged a hand across the tree, clutching a small branch and tearing the leaves off. I felt the branch shudder beneath us. “It’s not fair, Morningstar – that He could sit up there, on His throne, and make these grand proclamations about life, and love, and what’s right and wrong, and not care the slightest bit how it affects us. All He cares about is His Plan, the stupid Plan. Well, what the Hell were you all trying to make? Why would you create a race of creatures only to watch them struggle and fail? Why would He have me be the fount of the entire human race, and then deny me the right to guide my children? He made me a soul mate and tore him away. Why?”

  “Honey, if I had an answer for that, I’d be in a much better place right now. I’m not going to lie to you—”

  “HA!” she spat.

  “—I’m not going to lie to you and tell you the Plan is for the best, or to trust in a higher anything, because really, I know nothing about it. I screwed it up once to save you, and I’ve been out of the loop ever since.”

  And at this point I’ve officially said too much. Spilled the beans on a secret I’ve been keeping since time began.

  “Do you ever stop with the fables and tales? I’m not interested in you. I can’t be. Don’t make up stories about being my hero. Save me. Save me from what?”

  “Not what. Who .”

  Eve couldn’t
meet my eyes.

  “I roamed the garden, yes, to admire you, and to admire all of the work we’d done Up Top. Yes, I wanted to lure you away from your husband. I wanted you all for myself. But do you remember the day I had my corporeal privileges revoked?”

  “Yeah, The Boss caught you trying to – how did you put it – fraternize with me.”

  “How would you put it?”

  “Saving me after you tried to kill me. Trying to cover up your mistake.”

  “No. No!”

  “You wanted me! You waited until I was asleep and then—” “Your son is a murderer! Plain and simple. He killed your

  youngest, and then he came back for you. After he was banished from the Garden, he spent his every waking hour trying to finish the job he started. First Adam. Then you. Cain was expelled, yeah, but do you think he just walked away? No, he stalked the Garden every night, trying to find a way back inside. You were asleep under the Tree of Knowledge, and he crept up with a dagger he’d made from Abel’s rib. He stabbed you right below the heart.”

  “You killed him.” Her finger traced over her ribs, circling the puffy scar just beneath her breast.

  “Of course. It was the only way to stop him. I knew he’d keep coming back for you. I knew he’d never quit. He wanted to kill all of your children. He wanted it all to end. But I stopped him. And I came back to you, made a patch of clay to heal your wounds, and I breathed life back into you. And God saw it, and that was it. That was the end. He thought I’d fully lost my marbles, that I was trying to usurp his authority. He reversed the whole thing. Renewed his curse on Cain and set him walking the Earth. And stopped me from being human. Made me eat dirt. Turned me into a belly-crawling snake, and why? Because I cared too much. Because I loved you too much to watch you die.”

  I ran out of breath. I couldn’t talk anymore. I’d never dared to bare my soul to Eve in all of these millennia, because I knew she was wired for Adam, and I knew pouring my heart out would be to no avail. I needed to hear her say she loved me, and I knew she could give me no more than a heartfelt thank-you. She stood slowly on the tree branch and walked over to me. I couldn’t bear to look at her. Even now, her face ageless, those shocks of white hair glowing in the dark, I felt like I’d move Heaven and Earth again for her.