Mercy, A Gargoyle Story

by Misty Provencher

  Cletus, of the freckles and fuck words, shuts his mouth. But the kid with the glasses, the one Ayla used to call Nerdiac, opens his.

  "She ain't my mom," he says.

  "She's not mine either," Ayla says, which is funny, because Ayla used to call her foster mother Mom. She was vehement about it until about three months ago, when Ayla realized that on her eighteenth birthday the state child care system would cut her loose. Ayla kept waiting for her foster mom to invite her to stay, but the last I knew, Selene had not. From Ayla’s response now, it doesn't look like anything has changed.

  The door to the stairs opens and does not shut, as the boot must still be in place. From around the corner comes a woman that looks as worn as a sixty year old sneaker. Her hair is gathered up in a large bun on the top of her head. She looks like she was very fat once, but now her skin is just a withered, translucent balloon. Her bones move inside it like tiny, trapped birds held together with string and she moves as if it all hurts. The moment she spots me, the soft furrows of her face deepen.

  "What's this?" she asks the children. Nerdiac stands at attention. "I expect that when I ask a question, someone will be polite enough to answer."

  "We don't know,” Ayla says. Of course, she would answer. She's the oldest, the tallest, and the most expected to answer. It would be cowardice not to. It appears that Freckles is vying for a higher position, but he still doesn't have the guts to speak up. I remain motionless and a real bird lands on my head, drizzling its previous meal on the edge of my wing. The children giggle. The woman frowns.

  "Do you know when it got here?" she asks. She hobbles her way around me.

  "Just now,” Freckles says. Selene lurches to a stop and sidesteps me to stare at the boy. He flushes hot pink beneath his worm-colored freckles. "It was just sittin' here when we come up."

  "It was sitting here when we came up,” the woman corrects him.

  "It was. Just like the other one,” Ayla says, and she jerks her head in Trickle's direction. Freckles finally exhales, all his pink running out and leaving him a little pale.

  "Well, I have no idea who would put this here. Whoever it was should be ashamed. This isn't a storage shed for their evil."

  "It's a statue. It's not evil," Ayla says.

  "Those things are the embodiments of evil,” the woman says. Her eyes grow misty as she points to me. "Their evil is trapped within the cement. Trapped, thank the Lord."

  Nerdiac goes flat-footed and frowny, but Freckles gazes at me, his mouth slack with awe.

  "Evil? Like real, devil kind of evil?"

  "That intrigues you, Cletus?"

  Freckles drops his eyes and closes his mouth. It's obvious that yes is the wrong answer. He rubs one battered sneaker toe over the other, caught. "Uh...no, ma’am."

  "You can call me Selene," the woman's voice grows softer. "Or you know you can call me Mom, if you like."

  Freckles scrapes one battered sneaker toe over the other and Ayla saves him by saying, "It intrigues me."

  Ayla crosses her arms firmly on her chest. Her gaze sweeps right over me - I don't think it's me that matters to her at the moment - but she keeps one foot pointed straight at the woman, as if Ayla can shoot bullets from her toes. I know she started telling me she couldn't stand it at Selene's house, because Selene was "a controlling, Bible-beating Jesus freak", but I also know that Ayla would tear up when she told me she had to leave Selene's house in a couple of months, when she turns 18. I guess the child care system just cuts everyone loose on their 18th birthdays, and I think it broke her up that Selene never invited her to stay.

  However, the way Ayla's standing now, I don't think she cares if she is thrown out or not. "So who traps them and what happens if we break the cement? And why would someone dump it here? And how? The maintenance guy doesn't even know where they came from."

  "You think Maintenance would know what's happening anywhere in this building?" Selene says. "They don't even know where they keep the replacement door knobs."

  Ayla rolls her eyes and looks away, lifting a thumbnail to her lips. I guess challenges are either won or lost immediately here.

  "What're we gonna do with it?" Tadpole asks.

  "Well, that's what I've got to figure out," Selene says as she claps her hands. "In the meantime, all of you - leave it alone. I don't want you all playing on the roof until I decide what to do about this."

  "Awwww!" Freckles howls as Selene herds the children back to the stairway door. "There's already one up here and we ain't scared! That ain't fair!"

  "Are not scared. We are not scared," Selene corrects him again. "And safe is always fair, Cletus."

  "It ain't nuthin' but a stinkin' ol' statue! It can't hurt nobody!" Tadpole adds, joining the fight.

  "Pay attention to your grammar, Randall," Selene says. "Although I completely disagree, and since I am the one responsible for you, we'll have to do this my way."

  "Not for long,” Ayla grumbles, but she doesn't resist going in. She even helps Selene herd the younger ones to the door.

  "Maybe not for long, but for now," Selene says, but it's me who gets her one last glowering stare, before she yanks out the workman's boot and slams the door shut.

  ***

  A few hours later, I am still trying to understand Selene's glare, when the door hitches open. It makes a slow, grinding whine, and Ayla emerges with the workman's boot in hand. There is barely enough time to get back to the same spot where she found me this afternoon. I pose, hoping it is the same pose as before.

  It doesn't matter. Ayla barely glances around the rooftop before jamming the boot under the door. She hardly seems to notice me at all. Glazed with the moonlight, her eyes wander off the edge of the building. She drifts past me like a ghost, until she stands at the edge of the high, curled lip of the building. She fingers something on a chain around her neck, but before she drops the chain back into her shirt, a triangle of cola-colored plastic drops off and falls at her feet. She doesn't notice. Instead, she thumps her hips against the ledge, looking out over the street.

  From over her shoulder, I follow her gaze like a zip line. It is tethered to the very last place in the world it should ever be.

  She is watching The Boy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We both hear the squeak of rubber soles on the stairs. Ayla backs away from the ledge. My eyes flick to Selene, standing in the boot-wedged doorway, staring at the girl.

  "I thought I was quite clear about staying off the roof," Selene says, wide eyed and puffing from the long climb up. Her chin quivers like a turkey gobble. All of her flesh is even paler in the moonlight than I am. Her lungs struggle another breath. My own breath is lodged in the exposed bones of my throat.

  "Because Randall is right," Ayla says. "It's just a statue. I don't know why you're freaking out."

  "I'll tell you why," Selene says. She reaches up and sticks a loose finger in the bun atop her head. When she scratches, the whole thing wiggles like it will fall off. She sighs and looks Ayla dead in the eyes. "Two years before you came to me, Mr. Gate...my husband...contracted cancer. He was a good man and he certainly didn't deserve the hand he was dealt. He suffered through a miserable year, and when he was at his worst, one of these things showed up and killed him."

  "Yeah, right. Statues don't just show up. They didn’t just walk up here."

  "Ayla, you think you know things and you don't," Selene says. I want to speak up, to assure Ayla's foster mother that I am as harmless as a winter moth, but I remain breathless, silent. "I brought my husband up here to get some fresh air. He was having such a horrible time breathing in our stuffy apartment...and the monster appeared."

  Ayla doesn't say anything. Her face is flat and unreadable. She must be trying to figure out if her foster mother is crazy or not.

  "The demon came and it killed him," the woman's voice cracks. "It landed on the roof. I wasn't scared of it at first. I should have been, but I was shocked. Arrogant, even. The demon was as small as Randall, but it walked up
to Mr. Gate and pulled a hard, little stone right out of its chest." Selene holds out her fingers, dripping with skin and cupped like a claw, as if she's holding a nest in her palm. "The demon forced it right into Mr. Gate's chest, and my husband went so delirious, he actually thanked the demon for killing him!"

  "That one, down there?” Ayla asks, pointing to Trickle. She doesn't sound curious. Instead, her lips are pulled off to the side like she doesn't believe a word of it. Selene isn't detoured.

  "No, not that one," she says. "That one came long after Mr. Gate died...to do his devil work on me, I assume. But I cast him out. My faith turned him to stone."

  "There's a trick.” Ayla rolls her eyes. "You turned a statue into a statue."

  "You've got a beautiful voice that could be used for better things than back talk," Selene says. "You think I'm lying, even though I've never lied to you about one single thing. You know that."

  Ayla looks away. She used to quote Selene to me as if her foster mother was a doctor, a news anchor, or the President. We both agreed back then that anything Selene said was law. But to see the actual woman now, who is so saggy and frail at once, and to hear her insisting that Gargoyles are alive - I can see why Ayla might think Selene has finally lost it. Ayla has no way of knowing that what her foster mom is saying is still dead-on accurate. Except for the demon part. But I also understand why Selene would assume what she does, if she saw a gargoyle plunging it's roasted and shriveled black pepper of a heart into her husband only seconds before he died.

  "I don't think you're lying.” Ayla looks back at her foster mother. "Not on purpose."

  Selene smirks. "You think I'm crazy."

  "I think you’re trying to scare me so I stay off the roof," Ayla’s eyes dart toward The Boy’s apartment house across the street, but Selene doesn’t seem to notice. Ayla doesn’t name the real reason she’s thinking of and Selene steps away.

  "Think what you like then," she says. "But think it inside and don't let me see you up on this rooftop again. If I'm crazy or sane, either way, it won't hurt you to stay off the roof."

  "Whatever," Ayla grumbles, pushing past her foster mother. I'd never thought Ayla would give in so easily, with all the tough talk she'd always given to anyone that bothered us at the coffee shop. She could shut down a boy who trash-talked her in seconds, and stop a girl from giggling, while looking at us, from 50 feet or more. Those days in the coffee shop had convinced me that no one was more powerful and less frightened of confrontation than Ayla. It's strange now to see her back down and scurry away from this tiny, empty balloon of a woman.

  Selene watches Ayla disappear down the stairs and then she turns her glare on me. Her hands begin to tremble at her sides as she steps closer. The bird bones of her fingers curl into her palms except for the one finger that she pushes into my face.

  "I don't know where you came from, but I know why you are here,” Selene says. Her voice might be shaking, but her eyes are harder than the dark waves that pulled me down that last night of my human life.

  She takes one quaking step forward and then she throws herself against me. She crashes against my dusty skin with all her might. Her bones are sharp and relentless, and the feeling that bursts from her touch is so strong, it could destroy me. I tumble backward over the ledge, frozen from the shock of her touch. Her skin on mine sends a burst of anger and fear tearing through me. I plummet through the sporadic shadows toward the lamp-lit street below. Even the air conspires, spitting me toward the ground. Selene's gasping shout echoes from above, "Your evil has no power here!"

  ***

  I glimpse Selene only as I tumble from the edge, still frozen as a statue, my back to the ground. Her face is a polluted moon that does not follow my descent to the ground. It's what saves me. Vaguely.

  My limbs explode out on the way down, like a broken umbrella, but my wings won't hold the air. Opening them only sends me into a spinning free fall.

  I'm dead, so I can't be scared of hitting the ground, of dying, but I am. The fall is terrifying; the concrete comes up fast. The only thing I can do is hope to find something to break my fall.

  I push out one wing, hard, and it catches the air. I'm thrust toward the gray bricks of the apartment building wall. Just before I hit them, I reach out. I grasp, I cling. I catch a windowsill with the sharp tips of my talons, digging into the brick as if it is foam. Jerked to a halt, my grip, even though I am holding on by only the very tips of my claws, is stronger than it ever was in life. I pull myself closer to the windowpane and peer in.

  Inside is just an empty, dark living room. No one is home. Splayed against the building, I feel like a hole blown open, the bottom gone. I reach out, dig into the bricks above me, and pull myself up. It is almost effortless. I scale away from the window, feeling for the fissures that only the millimeter ends of my claws can detect. I don't look down. I keep my eyes focused on the extended, curled lip of the rooftop, far above my head.

  I pass my arm over the brick and it nearly disappears. I pull it away from the building and see the gray stone of my limb, jutting away from the structure like an odd and misshapen waterspout.

  But I continue climbing. Slowly, I scuttle up the chest of the building, my wrinkled gray skin invisible against the flecked gray brick. I don’t understand why it is so incredibly easy, but I don’t care either. I may not be able to fly, but I can climb.

  At the roof’s ledge, I peek over the side before hauling myself up. Selene is gone, the workman's boot missing from the door. She thinks I am gone for good. I waver between wanting her to continue believing it and wanting her to find me, poised and immobile once again, on my tarred canvas. I haul myself back up onto the roof where I belong.

  ***

  It takes about ten minutes of being relieved before the rush of what just happened bolts through my veins. I stretch my claws, curved warrior swords with razor sharp tips that make falling impossible. The talons grew from where I once had fingers, thick as Brazil nuts, but a lighter gray than my gargoyle skin. When I hold my arm against the concrete in the pale moonlight. I can hardly see myself at all. I move with the noticeability of a fleck in my own eye. I blink trying to see it and hardly can. When I pull my arm away, against the black backdrop of the sky, it finally appears, like imagination.

  I sidle back to the edge and put my claws on the concrete, feeling them sink in. I heft myself onto the ledge, dizzy the moment I look down, but then I focus on how solid my talons are rooted, how very much like an anchor I am. I look across the ledge, to the corner where Trickle is silently perched and I instantly find my goal.

  I concentrate on releasing my nail from the brick, pulling it out like it is stuck in soft gum, and then rooting it a step ahead. The first few steps are slow and cautious, but then I challenge myself to move along a little faster and then I'm sprinting like a crazy train gone off the tracks, clinging to wherever the tips of my claws land. I race toward Trickle's corner and when I come up on him, faster than I expected, I hook into the brick below him, throwing myself up over his edge. My back claws swing out, away from the building, and my wings splay on their own and there's a moment where I can't breathe, right before my feet stick into the brick and I have to swallow down my dirty heart. Face to face with the lion on his pedestal, the warm, giddy feeling I had a whole lifetime ago returns. It feels as good as when The Boy with the Golden Rod Voice would sneak into the coffee shop and throw his hands over my eyes. I’d giggle so hard I could hardly catch my breath to make my guess.

  The giggle that comes out of me now is a shallow wheeze, frightening instead of endearing, a gargoyle sound.

  "Did you see me?" I ask Trickle. His great stone eyes roll forward. Trickle's gaze rests on me, and without any change in expression, the longer he stares, the more ominous it feels. I look away and skitter off to sit beside him. Trickle's eyes grind to the side to find me again.

  "Amazing, isn't it?" I say. His eyes remain still. "I've almost learned to fly! At least, I can stop myself from falling now! It
should rain soon...I can't wait to talk with you! Did you see what happened? No, I'm sorry, of course you couldn't. A woman pushed me off the roof. Selene. Do you know her? She believes we’re evil. Has she pushed you too? Probably not, since you are sort of part of the roof."

  Trickle, without moving a pebble, seems to stretch toward me. Like a magnet, my bizarrely clawed hand reaches out, compelled to touch him. My voice dies inside me the moment we connect.

  Trickle's small gargoyle life suddenly floods into my heart, filling me up first with his radiant confidence, then easing back to bleary hope, and finally, it all fades like a watercolor picture left in the sun. I look over his shoulder and watch the moonrise and set, the sun make its way across ten years of Trickle's immobile time on this ledge. I feel how dry his head and mouth can get. I recognize how brittle the years are to him now. He was not built to be here. He was left, as he'd told me before, by Moag, to see something, and he is bitter about not being able to find it. However, it was Trickle that fastened himself to the ledge, not Moag. I see that clearly in his memories. He is proud of how his square pedestal fits the width of the ledge so perfectly.

  One of my talons brushes over a gash I saw on the back of Trickle's mane, my first day on the rooftop. Some of them are deep enough to expose the thick lump of his folded wings, hidden beneath. My mind touches the chips and gently exhumes one of Trickle's specific memories from the depressions. An image of Selene appears, even more vivid than she appeared to me in person, armed with a metal roof top pipe and her ugly belief that gargoyles are entrapments of evil. Proud Trickle on his pedestal, trying to see, never saw Selene come upon him. I envision the silent, weepless beating that Trickle endured, and I feel every crack and chip of him that fell away on the rooftop floor. The pieces were eventually covered over with tar, rooting the lion further to this place. Selene gave up on the beating, eventually. She was too tired to continue and the gargoyle hadn’t budged a hair from the ledge.