Murder of Angels

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “I never get tired of looking at it,” Spyder says, not the least bit winded by the long climb, and she’s leaning far out over the balustrade, the wind blowing through her white hair. “I never will, because it’s always like the very first time.”

  The stairs have ended in a small balcony, rough-hewn half circle and a tall statue near the center that reminds Niki of a griffin, though it’s really something altogether different. She stands next to Spyder and stares up at the Van Gogh sky, and then down at the abyss stretching away beyond the ragged edges of the Palisades.

  “Some people say that’s the way to Paradise,” Spyder tells her. “And other people say it leads to an endless black sea filled with demons.”

  “What do you think?” Niki asks her, unable to look away, beginning to think she’ll never be able to look away.

  “I think I don’t ever want to find out.”

  A mile or more beneath them, an ocean drains over the side of a world, a churning, roiling cataract as far as she can see to the left or the right, north and south perhaps, unless there aren’t directions in this place. And she can also see that the balcony is perched near the top of one of the countless barren islands scattered out along the rim of the Palisades, a spire of mist-cut rock rising like a crooked, skeletal finger.

  That’s enough, she thinks and shuts her eyes. Don’t look at it anymore, Niki.

  “What’s wrong?” Spyder asks. “Did you see something?”

  “I see that it’s terrible,” Niki replies between gritted teeth, and she wants to back away from the edge but is too afraid to let go of the balustrade. “At first, I thought it was beautiful, but it isn’t beautiful at all. It’s terrible.”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  “No, Spyder, it can’t. It’s like dying. It’s worse than dying. It’s like being alone and knowing that you’ll never be anything else.”

  “Yes,” Spyder says. “It is. It’s exactly like that.”

  “Then how the hell can you stand there and say that it’s beautiful, you of all people?”

  “I’m not who I was, that’s how. Now open your eyes, Niki. You look like a damned fool, standing there with them squeezed shut that way.”

  Niki shakes her head and doesn’t open her eyes, wishing she could drive her fingers deep into the stone so there’d be no danger of the balcony shaking her loose. “I’m afraid I’ll fall. It wants me to fall.”

  “That’s silly. It doesn’t want anything from you,” but Spyder puts an arm around Niki and holds her close. “Turn loose, Niki. I wouldn’t let you fall. You’ve fallen enough.”

  “Where does it go?” Niki asks, not releasing her hold on the balustrade. “All that water, and all the things that must live in it, all the fish and everything—”

  “Over the side,” Spyder tells her. “It all goes over the side,” and Niki giggles and bites her tongue because it’s better than screaming. But that’s what she wants to do, wants to scream so loud and long and hard that she’ll be hoarse for a week, and maybe then she can stop imagining what it would be like to be pulled over the Palisades. What it would be like to stare into endless night until her light-starved eyes finally surrendered and went blind. And even that would only be the beginning of it, because each and every second is the first in an eternity, and whatever’s waiting past the Palisades, she knows that it must surely be eternal.

  “Help me,” she whispers, sinking very slowly down until she’s crouching on the balcony, exchanging her grip on the top rail for one of the balusters. “I don’t think I can do this, Spyder. It’s too much for me. I thought I could, but it’s just too much.”

  “Yes, you can,” and now Spyder’s lips are pressed gently against her right ear, Spyder’s breath as warm as the wind and mist are cold. “I know you can do it because you’ve come this far. If you couldn’t do it, the jackals would have had you on the bridge.”

  “No,” Niki whispers. “You’re wrong. I want to go back. I want to go home.”

  “Well you can’t,” Spyder snaps, her patience frayed in an instant and this anger so big, so certain of itself, it must have always been waiting there beneath the surface. “You can get up off your ass, and you can stop whining, or you can stay here and die. But you can’t go back, Niki, so that’s your choice. That’s the only choice you have. And this time there’s no fucking psychologist to give you pills and coddle you and pretend the world gives a shit what happens to you, and there’s no fucking Marvin to do everything for you and make you think you can’t even take care of yourself.”

  “Please stop,” Niki begs, but Spyder shoves her, and she loses her balance, loses her grip on the baluster, and lands flat on her back, staring up at the mad and swirling stars. The night sky and Spyder Baxter standing over her, and the stone between Spyder’s eyes has gone an ugly, vivid purple.

  “This place was born hurting,” she says, her lips throwing words like sparks to sear Niki’s skin. “It was born insane and lost, and there’s no room here for self-pity and weakness.”

  “I didn’t want to come here,” Niki whispers. “I was scared, and you said you needed me, and I didn’t know what else to do,” and there are tears leaking from her eyes now, hot tears rolling down her cheeks. Spyder sneers and turns away.

  “There’s so much strength in you, Niki,” she says. “But if you can’t find it, if you can’t see it, then I’ve made the wrong decision and we’re all damned.”

  “I don’t know what you think I can do.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now is what you think,” and then Spyder starts back down the stairs alone, leaving Niki on the balcony with the statue that isn’t a griffin and the stars and the unending, unequivocal roar of the Palisades.

  In a little while, Niki Ky follows her.

  Not far from the base of the stairs, there’s a narrow catwalk leading up and then straight out across the swiftly flowing water and into the darkness and mist obscuring whatever lies beyond the Palisades. The wood creaks and groans underfoot and is almost as slippery as the stones were, weathered slats gone black with age and decay, sprouting small blue-gray mushrooms and moss and mold; in places, the wood has rotted completely through and Niki has to take very wide steps across the gaps. There are no handrails, just the noise of the draining ocean on either side, and she tries to keep to the center as much as possible. Spyder walks fast and stays always ten or twenty feet ahead; Niki imagines that the mist seems to part for her, seems to cringe as if it fears her touch and the clean white light that flows from her hair and gown to shine their way through the gloom.

  “Are we going to walk all night?” Niki asks, finally, the first thing that she’s said to Spyder since the balcony, not asking because she’s too tired to keep going and her hand hurts, but because she can’t stand the silence wedged in between them any longer.

  “No,” Spyder calls back, her voice warped and muffled by the fog so that she sounds even farther ahead of Niki than she is. “The nights are long this near the edge. You couldn’t walk until sunrise. Not many living people could.”

  “I’m not sure I can walk another step,” Niki says, then stops to catch her breath and glances back the way they’ve come. There’s nothing there, at least nothing she can see, as though the catwalk has collapsed or disappeared in their wake. But the roar of the Palisades is growing more distant by slow degrees, each step carrying her away from the abyss. She doesn’t have any idea how long they’ve been walking, or how far they’ve come, though it seems like hours and miles. In the mist, with even the star-choked sky hidden from her eyes, she has only the diminishing roar of the cataract and her exhaustion to gauge distance and the passage of time.

  “Where are we going?” she asks. “I mean, where does this thing lead?” But if Spyder hears her, she doesn’t respond. So Niki starts walking again, moving as quickly as she dares now, trying to close the space between them.

  Somewhere to their right, there’s a tremendous splash, as if a gigantic b
ody has risen from and fallen back into the sea, and then there’s laughter and a sound like thunder rolling across the water.

  “You don’t want to know,” Spyder says, “so don’t ask.”

  And the catwalk shudders slightly beneath their feet as the thunder fades away.

  “Jesus,” Niki whispers to herself, trying not to let her mind make too many pictures of the things that might be out there in the mist, floating or swimming just out of sight, watching their progress along the catwalk.

  “Keep moving, Niki. There’s a village up ahead. It’s not much farther.”

  “Another island?” Niki asks hopefully, but Spyder shakes her head.

  “Not exactly,” she replies. “Just a little fishing village. But there will be men with boats there who can take us to land.”

  “Are you still pissed at me?”

  “No. I’m still disappointed, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well,” Niki says, keeping her eyes on her boots and the moldering boards of the catwalk. “Maybe that’s because you expected too much.”

  “Maybe so. Or maybe it’s because I know you’ve spent too many years looking for the answers you need in prescription bottles, listening to people who are too afraid of the truth or too stupid to even ask you the right questions.”

  “People tried to help me,” Niki tells her, but she isn’t sure she believes it, and she can hear the doubt in her voice. She starts to say something about Dr. Dalby, then thinks better of it. “Marvin tried to help,” she says, instead.

  “Did he?” Spyder asks, and leaps easily across a particularly wide gap in the slats. She stops and waits for Niki to cross it.

  “Yes,” Niki replies, gazing at mist filling the empty space left by the missing boards, wondering how far down it is to the water. “I think he did. Spyder, I don’t know if I can get across this one.”

  “You have to. You can’t stay here.”

  “If I fall—”

  “—you’ll drown,” Spyder says. “Or something will eat you. Or both.”

  “Marvin tried to help me,” she says again.

  “Daria paid him to take care of you. You were his job, Niki, just like that other girl he told you about, the one who saw wolves.”

  “How do you know about her?” Niki asks, taking off her pack and handing it across the gap to Spyder.

  “It’s all about salvation,” Spyder replies, and holds an arm out to Niki. “He couldn’t save that girl, so he had to try to save you. When he lost her, he lost himself. You were supposed to be his redemption.”

  “I can’t do it. I’ll fall. It’s too far across.”

  “Christ, girl. A little while ago, you were throwing yourself off fucking bridges. Now you’re afraid to hop over a little bitty hole like that?”

  “It’s not the same,” Niki says, and she looks up at Spyder, at her pale blue eyes and the glowing red gem between them. “There’s nothing down there but water.”

  “How do you know that? You don’t, do you? For all you know, there’s another place waiting for you underneath this one. Hell, for all you know, next time it’s Heaven.”

  “You just told me I’d drown, or get eaten—”

  “Come on, Niki. Take a deep breath, and keep your eyes on me, and jump. I can help, but I can’t do it for you.”

  “What makes you any better than Marvin?” Niki demands, looking back down at the hole. “You brought me here because you think I can save this place, because you can’t.”

  “Yeah,” Spyder says. “Exactly,” and when Niki looks up again, she’s smiling. “Now you’re thinking. Come on, Niki. You could make this jump in your sleep.”

  In my sleep, Niki thinks. In my dreams, and she takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with the damp and salty air, and jumps.

  Just over the Tennessee-Alabama state line, the rusted purple Lincoln pulls into a BP station because the girl in the backseat is awake now, and she has to pee. The big car glides smoothly across the wide parking lot, past the double row of self-serve pumps and cases of canned Coca-Cola stacked up like Mayan ruins. Archer Day lights a cigarette and points at an empty parking space between an SUV and a pickup truck.

  “Where the hell are we this time?” the girl asks from the backseat and rubs her eyes.

  “Just about a hundred miles north of the asshole of the world,” the driver replies and squints through his cheap truck-stop sunglasses at the sun glinting bright off the wide and tinted plate-glass windows of the convenience store.

  “So we’re almost there?”

  “We’ll be in Birmingham before noon,” the man tells her and slips the Lincoln in snug between the SUV and the pickup, easy as you please. There’s an NRA decal on the rear windshield of the truck and a bumper sticker that reads THOSE WHO LIVE BY THE SWORD GET SHOT BY THOSE WHO DON’T.

  “Shit. It looks even worse than Kentucky,” Theda says, and opens her door, letting in the cold.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Walter Ayers says and removes his sunglasses. He glances at his aching, bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror. Nothing a few drops of Visine and a couple more ephedrine tablets wouldn’t fix, but he thinks maybe he’ll let Archer drive the last leg. Maybe he’ll get lucky and sleep an hour or so before the city. “From here on, it just keeps getting better.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Theda sneers, and gets out of the car, slamming the door loudly behind her.

  “I think she’s having second thoughts,” Archer says, whispering, watching the frowzy girl in her ratty black sweater and black-and-white striped leggings, her tall Doc Marten boots, the tangled poppy-red hair hiding her eyes.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No,” Archer Day tells him. “Not now. I know better now.”

  “Do you?” he asks, and slips his sunglasses on again. “Well, I gotta admit, that sure puts you one up on me.”

  “There’s no time left for doubt.”

  “I’m not talking about doubt. I’m talking about finally having the good sense to look the other way. Maybe sit this shit out and let someone else pick up the pieces.”

  Archer turns her head and glares at him with her hard brown eyes. “After all you’ve seen?” she asks. “After all these years?”

  He shrugs and turns the key in the ignition; the engine sputters once or twice and dies. “Sometimes I think you got a hard-on for Armageddon,” he sighs.

  “I know why I’m here, that’s all. I know what I have to do.”

  Theda is standing in front of the car, talking to a shortish, potbellied man in a John Deere baseball cap and a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. She points at the Lincoln, and the fat man nods and grins, showing off a mouthful of dingy, uneven teeth, then opens the door for her.

  “You know, if we sit here much longer,” Archer says and frowns, twirling a strand of her long yellow-brown hair around her right index finger, “there’s no telling what sort of trouble she’ll get into.”

  “She can take care of herself,” he replies.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of, Walter. We’re too close. We don’t need any delays because Theda can take care of herself.”

  “Maybe we’re not as close as you think, maybe we’re not even halfway—” but she’s already getting out of the car, already shutting the door, and Never mind, he thinks. Never mind, because this is all going to go down the way it has to, the way that Spyder always meant for it to go down, and, in the end, all he can do is read his lines on cue and go through the motions.

  Because the story isn’t complete without the villian.

  Or the hero.

  And these days he’s forgotten exactly who is who and which is which, if he ever knew, if there’s really any difference. Walter shuts his eyes, because he knows that Archer can handle Theda if she gets into any trouble, because they feel like he’s rubbed them full of sand and cayenne pepper. No sleep since somewhere back in Pennsylvania, and that seems like at least a week ago.

  And the dream is right there, waiting for him the
way it always is, patient and unchanging, unconcerned about the drugs he takes to stay awake or the insomnia he’s spent more than a decade nurturing. Some part of him, something small and ancient and driven more by simple instinct than intellect, tries to pull back from the slippery edge of consciousness. But it’s too late, and he’s already sliding down and back, across the years and memories, stumbling and lost in those hours or minutes or days after Robin’s peyote ceremony, before Spyder comes down to the basement from the brilliant, burning hills to take him home, to lead him across the Dog’s Bridge and back to the World.

  The familiar, smothering aloneness, the severed cord, the broken chain, knowing that Robin and Byron are free, that they’ve slipped away, escaped, and he’s still cowering in the sulfur rubble on the crumbling edge of the Pit. The thing that Spyder called Preacher Man knows he’s still there, knows that he’s all alone now, and it roars so loud the heavens rumble and the Pit rips open wider, devouring more of this place that is no place at all. The powdered-glass ground beneath his feet tilts and is turning, accelerating counterclockwise spiral down and down, and the Pit yawns and belches, grinding its granite teeth.

  Preacher Man fills up the entire roiling floor-joist sky, opens his scrawny, hard sermon arms as wide as that, and his ebony book has become a blazing red sun bleeding out his voice. Ugly black things cling to his hands and face, biting, burrowing things, and Walter is crawling on his skinned hands and knees now, clambering for a hold, crawling as the earth shivers and goes soft. He remembers his wings, beautiful charcoal wings for a mockingbird boy, and he knows that’s why Preacher Man hates him. Walter tries to stand and spread his wings, but the fire and acid dripping from the clouds have scorched them raw and useless, and Preacher Man laughs and laughs and laughs.

  “Come back with me,” Spyder says, her hands tight around his wrists and Preacher Man filling up all creation behind her. “It’s gonna be all right now, Walter,” but the world turns, water going down a drain, down that mouth, and the earth is shaking so violently that he can’t even stand up.