Angel Burn

by L. A. Weatherly

  Her thoughts broke off as the stream caught fire. Only it wasn’t fire at all; it was light: a bright, hot light that blazed suddenly across the water, dancing on the ripples. Beth looked up with a gasp . . . and saw an angel.

  I could feel my own shock rising, and I pushed it down, just letting the images come as they would. The angel stood on the opposite bank, a beautiful winged being of light. Radiant. That was the word that Beth kept thinking.

  It was gazing at her with an expression of great tenderness. “Don’t be afraid,” it said, and it came toward her, not even stirring the water with its robes.

  I opened my eyes in a daze. “You . . . saw an angel,” I said.

  “Yes!” cried Beth, leaning forward. Her fingers clutched mine. “Oh, Willow, I really did. It was real — I know it! It came right up to me, and it put its hands on my head, and I felt such — such peace. I suddenly realized that none of it matters, not my grades or school or anything that I thought was so important before!”

  This all came out in a wild burst. Beth’s eyes were intense, fervent. I started to say something else and then stopped.

  The truth was I didn’t know what to say. Were angels real, then? I had never thought so, but then I’d never been very much into religion — probably because so many of the churches around here were the type that held revivals in giant tents and regarded psychics as spawns of Satan. My mind raced. Had Beth only imagined what she’d seen? Maybe she’d cracked under all the self-imposed strain, so that she needed to believe in an angel to make herself feel better.

  But that didn’t seem right somehow. Even if I was only experiencing all of this secondhand, through Beth, the angel in her memory had felt real.

  I swallowed. “OK, well . . . let me see what else I can get.” I closed my eyes again. Beth’s fingers were tense now, almost quivering with anticipation.

  The angel had cradled her head for a long time. A feeling of immense peace had come over her. Yet there was something else there, too. I frowned, trying to put my finger on it. A draining. The touch had felt wonderful, but had also left Beth so weak that when the angel finally departed, she could barely make it home again.

  Had her condition been physical or just emotional? I couldn’t really tell; she was trying not to remember that part. She had gone back to the stream every day since, hoping that the angel would return. And frequently, it had. The images became confused in places; sometimes I was seeing an angel and sometimes a man with the angel’s face. Through it all, I could sense Beth’s joy, her wonder . . . a swirling of energies as the angel touched her. Unease shivered through me. What was this thing, anyway?

  “You’ve seen the angel several times now,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “I’m also seeing a man with the angel’s face.”

  “Yes, that’s him,” said Beth. Her voice was soft, ardent, like a prayer. “Angels can do that — they walk among us, to help us. Oh, Willow, I couldn’t believe it when he really came back again. He’s promised that he’ll always be there for me. I — I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  And she was, but I could sense that she was also the most miserable. But before I could say anything else, Beth leaned forward, gripping my hand as the words burst out of her: “I just feel like school and clubs and all that — they don’t have any meaning anymore, not when all that is out there.” She waved her free hand in the air. “Angels are real, and that means . . . Well, why am I bothering with anything else?”

  I stared at her. “What are you saying?”

  There was a pause as Beth gazed down at the dining table, tracing a pattern on the lace tablecloth. Finally she took a deep breath and looked me squarely in the eyes. “I’m thinking of dropping out of school and joining the Church of Angels.”

  I opened my mouth and then slowly closed it again, at a loss for words. The Church of Angels was this massive church that had sprung up out of nowhere in the last couple of years. More like a cult, really. I was always seeing their commercials on TV: lots of blissed-out-looking people going on about how the angels were pure love and had helped them with practically every problem known to humankind.

  “Yes, and helped them empty their bank accounts to boot,” Aunt Jo always sniffed.

  Beth was still talking. “Now that I know angels exist, I want to be with people who know what I know, who’ve seen angels, too, who understand. And my angel’s told me that if I join, we can really be together. But then when I think of my parents . . . ” She trailed off, her eyes bright with tears. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue. “I tried to talk to them about it, you know. Joining the Church, I mean. It was awful. They said I’d be throwing my life away and that if I was that ungrateful for all the advantages I’ve had, then they wouldn’t lift a finger to stop me.” Choking back a sob, she dabbed at her eyes, shaking her head. “I don’t know. When I’m away from the angel, it all feels sort of — unreal. But at the same time, it’s the most real thing in my life. How can I ignore it?”

  She looked up at me, her gaze pleading. “Willow, can you tell me what to do?”

  At a loss for words is an understatement. I’d never felt so taken aback in my life. “Let me see what I can find out,” I said finally.

  Closing my eyes, I pushed away my turbulent thoughts and went deep within myself, searching for Beth’s possible futures. They grew before me like a tree, branching and dividing with each choice she might make in her life. Mentally, I blinked. With most people, this map of what might come looked golden and glowing, but Beth’s was dull. Stunted. Even worse, her tree had only two main branches: a pair of twisted, spindly boughs that grew up from the trunk in a wobbly V shape.

  I stared at them in dread. How could this be? Beth’s future held only two likely possibilities . . . and neither of them looked great. I explored the first branch and felt my heart clench. Oh, my God, poor Beth. Praying that the second branch would be more hopeful, I turned to it — and felt a strange chill settle over me. Images flashed past, but they were jumbled; any details just slithered away into a cloud of gray as I tried to focus on them. Even so, I caught my breath at the sheer, bone-wrenching coldness of this future. Whatever the gray cloud meant, it felt utterly final, like a gravestone with mist curling over it.

  My eyes flew open. “Beth, you’ve got to listen to me; the angel isn’t good for you,” I said urgently, my words tumbling over each other. “It’s hurting you. The best thing you could do is to never go back to that stream again. It might still find you, but there’s a chance it’ll let you go, and then you could —”

  Beth gasped, yanking her hand away from mine. “No!” she cried. “You’ve got it all wrong!”

  “Listen to me! In one path, I see you taking my advice. You try to forget about the angel and choose school and college. You . . . well, it’s not a bad life,” I faltered. “You major in politics, and —” And suffer on and off from depression for the rest of your life, always wondering whether you made the right choice. I couldn’t say the words. “And make a real difference,” I finished weakly.

  Beth’s face was stone-cold. She stuffed the tissue back into her purse, not looking at me. “What about the other path?” she asked. “Do I join the Church of Angels?”

  “Yes, but it’s not good for you. You seem to get sort of sick.”

  “Sick?” She glanced up.

  “Like, tired all the time. Exhausted.”

  “Does it make me happy, though? Being there?” She leaned forward, her expression very still, very intent.

  “I think so,” I admitted reluctantly. “It was all sort of mixed up, but — yeah, you seem to encounter your angel again, and then later there are other angels, too. You’re accepted by the people in the Church. For the first time, you feel like your life has meaning.”

  Beth’s eyes were shining. “Willow, that’s wonderful!” she said, breathless. “That’s exactly what I needed to know! It wouldn’t be a mistake, then.”

  “It would!” I snapped. My voice was like a harsh
whip, and Beth’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. “Trust me: it’s not a good path. Everything just . . . felt cold.” My heart beat faster as I remembered the slithery gray clouds. Words suddenly seemed so totally, stupidly inadequate.

  Beth sat motionless, staring at me. I could hear the TV going faintly in the other room and the low murmur of the caregiver’s voice, saying something to Mom. Finally Beth cleared her throat. “What do you mean, cold? You mean, like . . . death?”

  I scraped my hair back in frustration. “I don’t know! I’ve seen death before, and it wasn’t like that. I don’t know what it was, just that it wasn’t good.”

  Beth seemed deep in thought, her eyes troubled. She shook her head. “I — I don’t know what to think. What you’re saying . . . it goes completely against my own gut feelings. I know that the angel is good for me. I can feel it, in here!” She thumped her hand on her chest. “I don’t know what you saw, but —”

  “There’s a part of you that’s not sure, though, or else you wouldn’t be here,” I broke in desperately. “What about the tiredness, Beth? It all started with the angel, didn’t it? You’re still feeling it even now! Your muscles ache, and you feel draggy and worn out and —”

  Beth flushed. Without meeting my gaze, she pushed her chair back and stood up, swinging her purse over her shoulder. “Thanks for the reading, Willow,” she said flatly. “What do I owe you?”

  I leaped up. “Wait! Just ask yourself, please — if something is really good for you, then it wouldn’t make you feel like that, would it?” I gripped the back of the chair with both hands, my voice pleading.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Beth, keeping her eyes down. “I feel fine. Here, is this enough?” She took a leather wallet out of her purse and thrust a twenty toward me. When I didn’t take it, she put it on the table, tucking it under the sugar bowl. “OK, I’d better be going now.”

  “No!” I clutched her arm. “Beth, please, please listen to me. That thing is killing you!”

  Her eyes flashed, and she jerked free. I fell silent, my spirits sinking. I’d gone too far, and now I’d pushed her away from me. Damn it! Damn it.

  “Thanks for the reading,” she said again, her voice cool. “It was really interesting. Don’t bother seeing me out.” And then she was gone, pushing open the French doors and disappearing down the hallway. A moment later I heard the front door shut, harder than necessary.

  I leaned against the table as defeat washed over me in a gray sea. Could I have done it any differently? If I had used another combination of words, a better one, then could I have stopped her? Because I could tell that she had made her decision now; it had been written all over her. She was heading straight for her angel.

  What was that thing, anyway? I thought back over the reading, trying to get a handle on it. But as far as I could tell, it was exactly what it had felt like: some sort of powerful being, which had somehow set Beth on a path to disaster.

  But that couldn’t be true . . . could it? What had I actually seen?

  Sinking back into the chair, I looked dully at the velvet painting of a sad clown that hung over the sideboard. He was holding a drooping daffodil and had a big glistening tear on one cheek. Aunt Jo had bought it at a garage sale a few years ago. “Can you believe this bargain?” she’d said as she hung it proudly on the wall. “It was only twenty dollars!”

  Twenty dollars. My eyes went to the bill under the sugar bowl. I pulled it out and gazed at it, and then I gently slipped it back under the bowl and put my head in my hands.

  “Look, Miranda, isn’t that pretty?” demanded Aunt Jo, pointing to the TV.

  It was later that same night, after dinner — which I had cooked, because I don’t like plastic food, and as far as Aunt Jo’s concerned, if it doesn’t say Hamburger Helper or Chef Boyardee on the label, then it’s not one of the basic food groups. So I had made a big pot of spaghetti for the three of us, because it’s something I can do without really thinking about it. Besides, there’s something very soothing about chopping vegetables and stirring a bubbling sauce, and I really needed to be soothed just then. I couldn’t stop thinking about Beth.

  Aunt Jo had gone on and on during dinner, talking about this woman at her office who she doesn’t like. Big surprise; she doesn’t like anyone very much. I kept my head down while we ate, letting the torrent of words wash over me and saying, “Mm-hmm,” at intervals. Mom had just ignored her, of course. She sat stirring the food around dreamily on her plate and occasionally took an absentminded bite. Sometimes I envied her. She didn’t even have to pretend to listen to Aunt Jo.

  Now we were all in the living room, and Aunt Jo was trying determinedly to get Mom to “engage with her,” as the therapist puts it. That means actually getting her to pay attention to you, as if she’s still part of the real world instead of off on her own personal planet. To be honest, I’m not really sure why any of us bother. I think Mom’s probably happier where she is.

  “Miranda!” said Aunt Jo again, leaning across and tapping Mom sharply on the arm. “Are you listening to me? Look at the TV. Isn’t that tropical beach pretty?”

  She spoke a little more loudly and slowly than usual, as if she were talking to a three-year-old. Mom didn’t respond. She was sitting in her favorite easy chair, staring off into the distance. The two of us look a lot alike, I guess. She has the same wavy blond hair that I do, except that hers is cut into a bob so that it’s easy to take care of. And she’s short like me, though she’s not slim anymore. Too many years of sitting lost in her own thoughts have left her pale and doughy, soft around the edges.

  She’s still beautiful, though. She always is. I glanced over at Mom’s wide green eyes, so like my own. Peas in a pod, she used to say.

  Because she wasn’t always like this; she used to talk — to me, at least. When I was little, we’d play games together and she’d laugh. Yet even back then, she was so strange and shy around other people that by the time I was five or six I felt protective of her, knowing that she couldn’t cope with the world the way I could. And then there was the cloud that would drift over her at times, carrying her far away from me. She’d just sit there, the way she was sitting now, and no amount of crying or yelling would bring her back until she was ready. I had to learn to cook my own meals, brush my own hair — and somehow I knew that I could never, ever tell anyone, or else they might take her away from me altogether.

  But then as the years passed, what I’d feared so much had happened anyway. My mother had just sort of . . . slipped away, retreating further and further into her dreams until finally she hardly ever came back from her other world at all.

  “Miranda!” pressed Aunt Jo, joggling her arm. “Wouldn’t you like to be on that beach?”

  Mom sighed, still looking at something none of us could see. “It’s so pretty,” she murmured. “So many colors . . . rainbows . . . ”

  “No, there aren’t any rainbows,” said Aunt Jo firmly. “Look, Miranda. Look! It’s the beach.”

  Mom didn’t answer. Her lips curved upward in a slight smile.

  “Miranda —”

  “I don’t think she wants to engage with you right now, Aunt Jo,” I said tiredly. I try a lot with Mom when Aunt Jo isn’t around, but I do it my own way, just talking to her — not treating her like she’s mentally deficient.

  “Well, we shouldn’t just let her sit there,” grumbled Aunt Jo. Giving up, she sank back against the sofa and we fell into silence. On the TV screen, the perky female detective was ordering a mai tai in a tropical bar. I hugged a cushion to my chest, barely taking it in. All I could see was the angel, holding Beth’s head in its hands. Though I wanted so much to believe that Beth had only imagined it, I knew she hadn’t. Whatever that thing was, it was real, and it might have already ruined her entire life. I had to do something, but I didn’t even know where to begin.

  The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I said, standing up. “It’s probably Nina, seeing if I want to go out or something.”
Nina was always forgetting her phone or running out of minutes. I sort of hoped it wasn’t her, though. I didn’t really feel up to dealing with Nina’s own special brand of cynicism right then.

  Glancing at Mom to see if she’d notice, Aunt Jo switched over to the Home Shopping Network — her spiritual home, needless to say. Settling back against the cushions, she nodded without taking her eyes from the screen. “If you go out, get some milk,” she said.

  But it wasn’t Nina; I could tell that immediately from the height of the silhouette that stood on the other side of the front door’s glass panes. Whoever he was, he was tall — over six feet, with broad shoulders.

  I opened the door a crack. “Yes?”

  The man on our front porch had sandy-brown hair and a strong, attractive face. He was in his mid-twenties or maybe a few years older — it was sort of hard to tell. “Hi,” he said, leaning to one side to peer in at me. “You must be Willow Fields, right? I’ve heard that you give psychic readings.”

  My pulse skittered and went cold: it was the same man I’d seen in my reading for Beth. Oh, my God, it was her angel; he was here. I wanted to slam the door, but I felt frozen by his eyes — they were so intense. Looking into them was like falling into a well you would never find your way out of again.

  “I . . . only sometimes,” I stammered.

  “I see. Well, would you be able to give me a reading?”

  I wondered if I was going crazy and if he was actually a customer — one of the word-of-mouth clients who often turned up on our doorstep. At the thought of touching his hand, I felt a wave of nausea. My voice came out high, panicked.

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m really busy right now.” Wrenching myself away from his endless eyes, I started to shut the door, but before I knew what was happening, he’d stepped forward, wedging it open with his foot. His hand shot out and grabbed my own.