David ran out of the building before Nicholas could even get to his feet.
Students and faculty were just beginning to filter into the schoolyard and the clouds had chosen that moment to part and let the sun take a look. Snow continued to fall, though more lightly now.
David, his red face wet with tears, ran across the yard from the Arts Building. Nicholas emerged into the blossoming daylight, dizzy, weak, feeling his pulse throb throughout his body. He surveyed the grounds for the boy as he stood, wavering, ignoring the looks of the students who were horrified by the blood that flowed down his face. The others gave him wide berth when he caught sight of David and ran after the boy.
—
David crossed the schoolyard, his eyes on the heavens. He suddenly felt empty, scared. He searched the skies, hurting on the outside, but even more on the inside. He looked up at the chapel ahead, the shadow of the cross at the peak of its spire falling across his face. Blackbirds circled and bellowed, calling him, but it was another winged creature he sought. He felt lonely and abandoned, and he needed to be told what to do. His arm hurt him terribly; he needed to be kissed and made better. He had never felt so young, so alone.
The chapel’s door stood open, a welcoming maw, begging him to enter, to give him solace. He was as confused as he was frightened, and the tears would not stop. He needed his angel. Surely this is the place where he would find her. But the chapel was empty, its pews cold, the vestry abandoned. This very special boy was denied his divinity, just as he had always expected.
David wandered through the pews, then came to a halt in front of the lectern, never so alone as he was now. Music began to form in his head, a dirge, a droning left hand pounding the low end of the scale, slowing with the beat of his heart. It was all tone, no melody, a lost chord, seeking and not finding a rhythm. Then, at the far end of the chapel, a light flickered from within an open door that led to a narrow stairway. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he glimpsed a shadow fleeing up its worn stone steps. The bare lightbulb that hung behind the door continued to flicker, as if a Morse code siren, and its draw on the boy was magnetic. He sensed that he was supposed to go up the stairs, that it was his destiny. The slow sonata that was forming inside him encouraged him to follow the stuttering light, to take his stairway to heaven.
He didn’t notice that his arm didn’t even hurt anymore. He followed his music out of the quiet chapel and into the skinny little stairwell.
—
Nicholas saw the boy run catercorner across the snow-covered lawn, leaving tiny footprints in the otherwise unblemished whiteness. Lack of sleep and blood dizzied him, and his eyes were finding it difficult to focus. But he knew he had to catch up to the child, to stop him, to get him help. To get both of them help. He followed the little footprints into the chapel and out of the cruelly burgeoning sunlight.
Little shoe-shaped puddles of melting snow led Nicholas through the chapel’s tiny lobby and into the center of worship itself. He felt the weight of the centuries within, a weathered Christ bleeding on a tarnished cross, worn smooth by worshipping hands. Hymnals lay on the empty benches, waiting patiently for Sunday services. But the room was otherwise empty, hollow of spirits. Nicholas followed the little footprints through the chapel and into the claustrophobic stone stairwell that led only one way: up. As he stepped into the dank, chilly little passageway, the bare lightbulb that was flickering finally gave up and died. Long, narrow stained-glass windows that followed the curves of the winding steps offered the only light.
—
David was sweating now, running as fast as he could up the stairs, his feet wet and slipping against the smooth stone. He just kept going up and up and up. The stairwell was a coil, curving around itself as it reached to the top of the ancient building. And there at the top, way up above him, a door opened out to the world beyond, a doorway that was filled with bright morning light that beckoned to him, begged for his presence. High musical notes played in a two-handed flurry, calling him as if by name, a crescendo orchestrating itself beyond David’s control.
He followed it blindly, his breath ragged as he continued to run up and up and up. The bright light was getting closer, and the symphony in his head was joined by a choir, and the choir was calling his name.
—
Nicholas could see the boy high on the steps above him, scrambling higher and higher.
“Stop!” he called out to him. “You’re going to get hurt!”
The boy either couldn’t hear him or ignored him. Nicholas charged up the stairs two at a time, trying desperately to catch up. He pushed against the walls as he made his way up the steps, leaving crimson handprints on the rough, ancient stone, his brain starting to go squishy. Focus was becoming harder to maintain. But still he pulled himself up the worn stone steps, one at a time now, weakening, his breath becoming labored.
David, however, felt no such ravages; he was driven to take the steps and continued to bound his way up them with as much energy as he started his climb. The steps finally ended at the little room at the top, a claustrophobic, hunchbacked little chamber mostly filled with the works of the giant clock. Oversized gears and pulleys and ratchets and chains and counterweights all performed brilliantly in a concerto that was masterful even without a conductor. The mechanics, coated with a grime of grease and age, maintained a beat of mathematical perfection, and David stopped to stare at it, his mouth open in awe. And then, in a grand flourish of crescendo, the clock struck the hour, and the movement ended in a chorus of pealing bells. The sound was overpowering, but David did not even flinch. He loved when his body and soul, if there were such a thing, were filled with music, and he could feel its vibration coursing throughout his body.
But Nicholas, still a hundred feet or more lower in the steep tunnel of stone steps, pressed his hands against his ears to try to stop the overpowering pain. He stopped his climb, trying to reclaim his breath. The stairwell was growing ever dimmer as he left a trail of blood splatter in his wake.
When the chimes came at last to rest, David, energized by the music, stepped past the bells and machinery and out into the new morning.
—
As he stepped out onto the ledge at the base of the enormous clock face, the overwhelming new brightness the sun had denied the academy for weeks seared David’s eyes. He had to shield them with his hands until they gradually adjusted. It seemed as if he could see the whole world from his perch, even though it hurt to look. With his feet at the very precipice of the ledge as the giant second hand clicked loudly behind him, David felt tiny to the point of insignificance. He wavered there, the earth’s vastness overwhelming him.
Click. Click. Click.
The clock spoke to him, urged him on. He sought the skies, startled when a flock of pigeons shot out of the belfry behind him to circle this curious boy among them. He grabbed on to the hour hand, which had only just struck Golden Lucky Seven, for balance. David looked down to see tiny people gathering on the snow-choked schoolyard way down below him. They looked like toys, like cartoons, little bug-things scurrying, like ants in an ant farm.
Click. Click. Click.
Then a new sound brought his eyes up from the pointing fingers on the play people down below: a strong whooshing noise, the sound of giant, powerful wings. He felt their power blowing the hair back from his face. And there before him, more beautiful than ever, her fully extended, white-feathered wings grandly flapping to hold her aloft, was Miss Featherstone, her brown eyes filled with love, her lips turned up in a welcoming smile.
“I knew you’d be here,” David told her.
“I’ve come to be with you, David,” she said gently. She held her arms out to the boy, whose face was swiftly cleansed of hurt and pain. His own smile was as bright as the new sun and filled with just as much joy.
“Come to me, David,” Miss Featherstone coaxed, lovingly.
“I’m afraid I’ll fall,” David said.
“How can you fall,” she asked, “when you have wings?�
�
He thought it a curious thing to say until he shrugged and felt new muscles flexing themselves. He turned his head to see brilliant, white-feathered wings being born from his own flesh.
Miss Featherstone smiled and nodded gently.
“Come to me, David,” she repeated. “Jump. I’ll catch you.”
So David jumped, aloft in slow motion, the world once again holding its breath as he and Miss Featherstone were alone in a cloud of stillness and silence. Tiny hand reached out for tiny hand, finally meeting in a loving grasp, as she pulled the boy into her arms. She folded him into a kiss as their wings moved grandly through the air, and David was happier than he’d ever been. Music swirled about them, melodious and cacophonous at the same time, urging them ever higher into the heavens. And then, with a swoop of their wings in glorious unity, they lifted off ever higher, disappearing behind the clouds.
—
“No!” Nicholas cried as he emerged from the clock tower and onto the stone ledge. But it was too late. The boy had leapt, way beyond Nicholas’s reach.
The clock at the top of the chapel tower clicked relentlessly with each second, as it did in sunshine and rain, war and peace, and the sunshine glinted off its golden surfaces as it ignored the lives it marked. The growing crowd below, teachers and students alike, watched in horror to see the tiny body above launch itself into the heavens, seeming to hover for just a moment before it plummeted down and horribly down to a sudden, shattering halt on the freshly plowed stone walk.
David the Odd Boy lay half on the path and half in the snow, broken and battered. His eyes filled with tears that soon were tinted crimson by blood, and his limbs were splayed in all the wrong directions, jointed in ways never intended by nature. The crowd slowly gathered around him as his final breath came out in a cloud that dissipated almost immediately. All were surprised by the smile he wore at the end of his life.
It took Nicholas several minutes to make his way down the endlessly long stairwell to the schoolyard below, oblivious to the rawness of his opened flesh that throbbed with each pounding heartbeat, and he had to push his way through the curious children and horrified adults to kneel at David’s side. The boy was already gone, the authorities already called when he took his hand and felt it going cold, colder, coldest. Pale blue eyes, now rimmed with an emerging ring of green and gold, darkened as life had fled, and they seemed to deepen into a rich, chocolate brown before death breathed its fog over them and turned them milky. Nicholas, trapped in their lifeless stare, blood stiffening on his lacerated face and once-white shirt and navy jacket, could not remain in their gaze, and reached to close them with the tips of his fingers. His hands started to vibrate uncontrollably, quivering like spastic puppets.
When Rose came up behind him, he was still folded over the child, his grief overwhelming. She haltingly laid her hand on his shoulder, then pulled away in horror when she saw the dead broken child splayed in such horrific angles at his feet. Her eyes clenched tightly shut, but she could not remove the horrific image of the dead boy lying crumpled on the ground. Choking back a sob, she turned and ran back to the apartment, leaving her husband behind.
Nicholas never even realized she was there. He gripped his hands into fists, pounding on the boy’s chest, trying to beat life back into it. He reached down and, despite the mask of his blood, pressed his lips against the boy’s, hoping his kiss could bring life back to him. But it was too late for breath. Nicholas would not be redeemed. Two lives had ended here, and he felt complicit in both. He slowly stood, reeling in dizziness as the crowd around him gaped at him and backed away. It was not just the blood freezing on his face and hands that so horrified them; it was the look of madness in his eyes.
He turned and recognized the solitary figure of his wife as she ran to the shelter of the old building that contained their apartment. He closed his eyes, feeling terribly alone. When he opened them again, the boy was still a corpse leaking blood into the snow. It was not just an awful dream.
Two lives had ended here at the bottom of the tower, a litter of broken bones and freed blood that sought the snow, seeping into it and reddening it with their memory. Nicholas watched two lives cease on this very spot. He looked up at the tower, at the cross at the very top, and felt its shadow, a new shadow in the harsh new light of the winter sun, wrap around his face and body. A wind grew, whispering its way around the clock tower until it grew into a howl, a howl that seemed to call his name. The clock struck the quarter-hour, and the declining notes rang out in a hollow melody, joining the singing wind in a tiny concerto that spoke only to him: a blood symphony of lives lost and loves rent asunder. The shadow of the spire was short, but long enough to caress him with its shadow as the coagulating blood on his face slowly turned to red ice.
—
Night fell in silence on the campus, a snowbound stillness that held its breath. Nicholas sat alone in front of the fire, watching the flames hungrily devour the logs. Rose had left two days before, and Nicholas was alone with his memories. He could feel the stitches in his cheek and palm throb in a nearly military cadence, so those memories would not be leaving him anytime soon. All he could do is wait for classes to begin on Monday, to be surrounded by fresh young faces to blot out those that haunted him.
Off in the distance, the clock at the top of the steeple chimed a lonely midnight bell, a low, forlorn toll that rang out as if calling him by name. He looked out the window to see the tower standing tall against a bright, full moon. Nicholas went to the window as the bell rang out its dozen mournful calls, watching the seconds tick away.
Click. Click. Click.
The seconds called him by name:
Nick. O. Las.
Nick. O. Las.
Mesmerized, he watched the second hand circle the golden face of the clock, illuminated by the nearly full face of the moon above it. Then a shadow crossed the snowy schoolyard that stood between him and the clock tower, too quick to make out.
Curious, Nicholas took his coat and scarf from the peg by the door, slipped into them, and went out into the hungry night.
He stepped out into the middle of the smooth, unmarked snow of the quad, watching the second hand idly click away time, bathed in blue moonlight.
A wisp of cloud cleared the face of the moon, which, now naked, shone more brightly than ever. The night lay in a hush as Nicholas bathed in it, staring at the clock, then looking to the moon, just as some kind of giant bird flew across its face in a dramatic silhouette.
No. Too big for a bird. Winged, yes, but not a bird. Something more momentous, more balletic.
Still the clock sang his name.
The flying thing, the winged creature, hovered over the trees, finally swooping to a rest on the ledge in front of the clock, flexing its wings one last time before retracting them behind its body.
Nicholas, the wind whispered, joining the call of the clock. Nicholas.
Nicholas crossed the schoolyard, needing to get a closer look at this creature that sat perched at the top of the tower. Even in the distance, he could see that it was watching his every move. He recognized this creature, knew it. It beckoned to him. She beckoned to him.
“Come to me, Nicholas,” she whispered.
She was perched so high, it was almost a perch on the way to Heaven.
He walked to the base of the building, never taking his eyes off of the perch that towered above him. Something was dripping from there, pattering lightly at his feet. Tears? No, too dark for that. Surely it was blood.
Her voice gently called him again, the clock and the wind joining the chorus that urged him ever upward.
With nothing to lose, Nicholas answered her call.
About the Editors
RICHARD CHIZMAR is the founder and publisher/editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than a dozen anthologies, including The Best of Cemetery Dance, The Earth Strikes Back, Night Visions 10, October Dreams (with Robert Morrish), and the Shi
vers series.
BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Publications and the author of several novels and novellas, along with four short story collections, including an eBook-only exclusive that hit #1 on Amazon.com in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain, and France in the short story categories. His blog and website can be found at BrianJamesFreeman.com.
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Dark Screams, Volume 7 Page 18
