Fallen Angel

by Heather Terrell

  A thought occurred to me. What if you didn’t use your powers for their intended objectives, for good? What if you started using them only for your own selfish purposes, like I had with Michael lately? Could that explain why I’d felt so dark recently? Why I’d sort of lost that compulsion to help others? All these questions assumed that I was an angel, of course. I asked my dad, “What if angels used their gifts for their own purposes?”

  My dad paused before answering. I could tell my question kind of disturbed him. “That is precisely what these angels did at first, when they were sent to guard mankind. After all, even angels have free will, the capacity to choose darkness over light. That is why they were cast out. Once these angels were cast out and became fallen, they fully submitted their powers into the service of their own desires. Then the darkness—the urge to serve self rather than something higher—took hold. And that hold was—is—very, very hard to break, nearly like an addiction.”

  Before continuing, he sort of shivered. Then he pulled himself together and said, “Over the centuries, people in every culture, every society, began to take notice of these angels—especially the fallen angels trying for redemption. Remember, these angels striving for salvation were trying to bring souls to God at the moment of death. People occasionally saw them in that instant, and attributed to them the deaths they witnessed. People started to fear these angels. Who could blame them? Sometimes, the people watched the beings draw close to the dying and whisper in their ears. Other times, they saw the creatures touch their loved ones as they took their last breaths. And in rare occasions, they observed an exchange of blood between the dying human and the being. Of course, the people believed that the beings were causing the deaths—rather than facilitating the afterlife journeys of their loved ones. People created entire legends around these beings. The myths differed from culture to culture, from age to age. But the core always remained the same, and it gave birth to the legend. The legend of the vampire.

  “And you can see how that legend was not too far off the mark with certain of the fallen angels, the ones who continued to serve themselves and reject the light. For they used their gifts to suck away humans’ souls and create a civilization that worshipped them, instead of God.”

  My dad paused, and in the quiet, I couldn’t help but think that this last bit sounded a lot like the musings of Professor McMaster. Since when was my biologist dad a vampire scholar? Or a biblical scholar, for that matter? I looked over at him and noticed that, during the course of his long talk, his handsome face had grown craggy. He suddenly looked so sad and so old that I couldn’t possibly challenge him.

  He reached out to caress my cheek. “So my lovely daugh-ter, you cannot possibly be a vampire, because there are no vampires. Only fallen angels. Good and bad.”

  “How do you know all this?” I finally asked, one among the many questions I’d amassed.

  Before answering, he looked over at my mom, who’d remained still and silent during the whole of his monologue. She nodded her head once, and he turned back to me.

  “Because humans once called me and your mother vampires.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  No way. My parents were perfectly normal, perfectly terrestrial. No way were they angels, or vampires, or anything else that whiffed of the otherworld. The very notion of my mom and dad as unearthly beings was ridiculous.

  In fact, all of this suddenly felt laughable. It was too much, and I could feel the hysteria bubbling up in me. Tears streamed down my face. My stomach ached from the force of my laughter. When I realized that my parents weren’t joining in, the hilarity subsided a little bit. But then I looked over at them, somber and respectable and silent in their flannel nightgown and pajamas and robes, and the whole concept of them flying and divining thoughts seemed so hysterically ridiculous that the laughter took hold again.

  Finally, I calmed down enough to ask, “You two? Angels?”

  “Yes,” my dad said quietly. Almost apologetically.

  “So, we’re like a family of angels? Are you two the good kind or the fallen ones?” I said with a giggle.

  “We were fallen. But now we are trying to redeem our-selves,” my dad solemnly answered my not-so-serious question.

  “Come on.” I don’t know why I was having such a hard time buying their claims, when I’d thought of myself as a vampire for some time. Except that they were my parents, and parents were supposed to be ordinary and respectable. Especially mine, who were boring academics.

  But the more I thought about it, the less ridiculous it seemed. My parents were uncommonly beautiful; people always commented on it. They carried themselves with an unusual grace and calmness, excepting their reactions to my most recent behavior, of course. They dedicated themselves to teaching others how to protect the environment while still feeding the multitudes. They were the only people whose touch did not give me a single flash. And they were my parents, the ones who’d created me. If I was some kind of supernatural being, why not them? Lately, crazier things had happened.

  The thought sobered me up—although I wasn’t quite ready to buy the entire notion.

  My mom shot my dad a look, and he left the room. My mom and I sat there in an uncomfortable silence as we listened to Dad’s slippers clop up and down the attic stairs. He returned bearing a small wooden box covered in metal designs, kind of like the tin-imprinted, wooden trunks Irish immigrants brought over with them on the ships a couple of centuries ago.

  Reaching into her nightgown, my mom pulled out a long gold chain made up of open, circular links. I knew that there was a plain, heavy oval pendant, also gold, on the chain too. As a child, I’d loved to play with it, running it up and down the chain until my mother tired of my game and admonished me to be careful with it. Over the years, I’d grown to see it as my mom’s one vanity, her one decoration in a wardrobe of simple, functional clothes. But I was wrong.

  She twisted the pendant, and it popped open unexpectedly. The little motion made me jump; I never knew that the pendant was a locket. Then she reached inside, pulled out a small key, and handed it to my dad.

  He slid the key into the box’s lock and opened it with one deft turn. Moving slowly and carefully, he thumbed through the items inside and removed a yellowed envelope. He placed it in my hands.

  The envelope was sealed. Working my finger under the one loose corner, I looked up at my dad for confirmation that I could open it. He nodded. Gingerly, I loosened the flap on the back and peered inside. A stack of what looked like photographs rested within.

  I slid them out. They were indeed photographs, all of varying vintages. Some were fairly recent—black and whites from the nineteen forties maybe—and some were so old that they were printed in sepia. Flipping through them quickly at first, I thought they were postcards because they depicted so many exotic locations. They showed the pyramids of Giza in the late eighteen hundreds, the Great Wall of China in the early nineteen hundreds, even the Empire State Building under construction, with an attractive couple in the foreground.

  As I examined the pictures more closely, they appeared too amateurish and informal for postcards. The lighting and focus were often blurry, and the centering sometimes seemed a bit off. The more I studied them the more they looked like snapshots of different couples on their holidays. Why were my parents giving me these? Particularly now.

  As if reading my thoughts, my dad said softly, “Look closely.”

  I stared at the pictures, willing them to make some sort of sense. Then I recalled that the couple was identical in every photo. Different hairstyles, different clothes, but otherwise the same couple looking precisely the same for a span of nearly one hundred and fifty years. Only then did I realize that I knew them: they were my parents.

  “Oh, so this is supposed to be your proof of immortality, I take it?” I asked. My skepticism had returned.

  “You think these are fake?” my mom said. She sounded stunned and a little hurt.

  “Anything can be Photoshopped,
Mom.”

  “You think we prepared these so that we could make up an elaborate lie about being angels?” She moved past stunned and on to furious. “And how do you explain your little flying sessions?”

  When she put it that way . . . The crazy thing was my parents were the most practical, down-to-earth people I knew. Or thought I knew, anyway. I scrutinized the photographs again. There, among the pictures of all the far-flung destinations was one smallish photo of my parents in period garb staring at each other. The joyous expressions on their faces caught my eye, and I took a closer look. They were seated before the white-washed church on the Tillinghast town green, a familiar enough setting. Except that the church was the only structure in sight; none of the other storefronts and homes that surrounded it had been built yet.

  I held up the picture. “This is Tillinghast?”

  My dad drew close to the photo, and smiled at the memory it evoked. “Yes, that is Tillinghast in the late eighteen hundreds.” He handed it to my mom. “Remember, Hannah?”

  She smiled back at him. “Yes, we were so happy here, despite all troubles.”

  “What troubles?” I asked.

  The grin disappeared from her face. “Like many New England towns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tillinghast suffered from several outbreaks of tuberculosis and consumption. Some of us who were attempting to find a path toward redemption visited here in the early days and tried to bring the many dying over to God. Unfortunately, these efforts were witnessed by a few Tillinghast townsmen and mistaken as the work of vampires, as your father described.” The smile resurfaced. “Still, we loved it here. That’s why we came back—when you arrived.”

  I stared up at my parents, seeing them as if for the very first time. Suddenly, without warning, I believed them.

  “You two are angels. Fallen angels, to be exact.” I didn’t intend it to be a question, but a statement. “The good kind.”

  “Yes,” they answered in unison.

  “So you can fly and read people’s thoughts? By touch or blood?”

  “We could,” my mom answered, alone this time.

  “What do you mean? I thought you said that angels could do all that stuff.”

  “They can. But we can no longer do those things. For the most part,” my mom said.

  “Why not?”

  “That part is not really important. We chose a different path.”

  “What path is that?”

  “Part of our path is to teach people ways to care for this earth so it can be saved.”

  I nodded. “What’s the other part of your ‘path’?”

  “To watch over you,” my mom said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  What was so special about me that two angels needed to keep an eye on me? Then it dawned on me. Angels weren’t supposed to be able to procreate, but my parents obviously ‘procreated’ me. “Is it because you were able to have a child, even though God—or whoever—banned the angels from conceiving?”

  “Something like that, dearest. We have always felt blessed to care for you,” my dad said.

  “So I’m a fallen angel? Like you two?” Just saying those words aloud, aligning myself with them, made me feel lighter. Less alone. I was shedding the weighty, dark secret I’d been keeping—and living—for the past couple of months.

  “Not exactly, Ellie. You are somewhat different from the rest of us, either those that keep to the darkness or those that chose the light.”

  “But I can do all the things that you described—the flying, the reading of people’s thoughts.”

  “We know. Now.”

  “What am I?”

  My mom stepped in. “We cannot tell you just yet. It isn’t time. But we will. Please trust us.”

  My dad reached over and touched my cheek. “Maybe it’s better for you to get some rest, dearest. We can talk more tomorrow and answer some of your questions. At dinner.”

  Sleep? Who could sleep with all this revelation? The very suggestion made me mad. They wanted me to sleep on a secret they’d kept from me for sixteen years. A major, major secret. I needed answers about my nature, my powers, and my immortality—for God’s sake. And I needed them now.

  “No way. There is no way you’re going to spring all this on me, and then expect me to go to sleep.” I was as angry at my parents as I’d ever been.

  “We know that you are angry, dearest. It is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. But there’s time enough for your questions when you’ve slept,” my dad said. His voice had a curious, singsong quality to it.

  I started to object, when all of a sudden, sleep really did seem like the most logical suggestion in the world. My dad took me by the hand and brought me to my bedside. My mom pulled back the quilt and motioned for me to slide into the sheets. I had no choice but to follow them like an obedient child. Even though a tiny voice in my head wondered whether they still had some of those angelic powers of persuasion and were using them on me.

  Snuggling down into my covers, I looked up at my parents. My mom cast upon me a smile that could only be described as beatific, like some Madonna. Or maybe I was just seeing angels and saints everywhere.

  The last words I remembered hearing before I drifted off into a deep sleep came from my mom. She said, “Ellspeth, try to shroud—in your mind—what you’ve learned tonight from Michael.”

  The last thought I remembered thinking before I drifted off into that deep sleep was that it took a curiously long time for them to mention Michael. Especially since he and I were the same.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Michael was waiting for me at school the next morning.

  “Where were you last night? I was so worried about you,” he said before I could even get my locker door open.

  I quickly scanned the hall to make sure no one was listening. Fortunately everyone looked just as rushed as I was; I was seriously late for Miss Taunton’s class. “My parents caught me,” I whispered.

  “Caught you?” Inexplicably, he seemed confused.

  “Caught me trying to sneak out.”

  A look of horror crossed his face. “They didn’t see you—”

  I knew he was about to say “flying,” so I cut him off. “No, they didn’t see me do that.” The words were technically true—if not accurate. My parents knew about my flying; they just didn’t witness it last night. Why didn’t I tell him?

  I wondered why I felt uncertain. I’d woken up confused about what my parents had told me, and mad that they’d kept such secrets from me. But at the same time, I retained that sense of lightness I first experienced when they told me, at the thought I might be part of something better and bigger than myself. That hopeful sensation stayed with me as I got ready for school and drove in with my mom—even when she fended off my relentless questions with assurances that we’d talk later and even when I started to get angry at her withholding explanations. All morning, I could barely contain my excitement to tell Michael what I’d learned about my identity, our identities. Despite my promises to my parents to the contrary.

  Yet now that the opportunity was at hand, I wavered. There was something different, even off-putting, in Michael’s manner—something I couldn’t quite describe—that made me hesitate. And I hadn’t hesitated with him for a long time.

  “Thank God for that,” he said.

  “Thank God.” I smiled a little; the phrase had taken on new meaning.

  He took me by the hand and asked, “Do you think you’d be able to get away after school today? I know it’s tough with your grounding and all, but something happened last night. I want to tell you about it.”

  “I don’t know, Michael. The grounding isn’t my only problem. After my parents caught me trying to sneak out last night, they specifically told me I couldn’t see you anymore.”

  He withdrew his hand. “Me? Why?”

  “They guessed that I was going to meet you. Not that I admitted it.”

  “Great,” he said sarc
astically. “Now we’ll only be able to see each other during the supervised school hours of eight thirty to three thirty and after midnight. Assuming your parents don’t camp out in your bedroom.”

  “Assuming they don’t camp out in my bedroom,” I repeated, sadly. Although, given what I knew they knew, I was pretty certain that’s just about what they’d be doing.

  Michael grabbed my hand again and pulled me away from the throngs of students racing to class. He led me down a dark corridor that led to the empty auditorium. Backing me up into a niche holding a set of double doors, he breathed into my neck. “Ellie, I won’t be able to stay away from you at night. One night was hard enough. Say you’ll meet me at Ransom Beach after school.”

  All morning, I’d experienced a sense of lightness, like the black fog in which I’d been living had lifted. But now, with Michael so close, I felt the bloodlust again, along with the intoxication of the darkness. And I knew I’d find a way to meet him after school.

  I made it into Miss Taunton’s classroom just before the bell finished ringing. Weaving down the crowded aisle to my seat in the back, I tried to ignore the hateful stares of my classmates. In fact, I tried so hard to ignore them that I tripped on a foot that had been outstretched for that very purpose. I pretended not to hear to delighted giggles—among them, Miss Taunton’s—as I picked myself off the floor and dusted off my pants.

  Settling into my seat, I rifled through my bag for the paper due on Edith Wharton. The text icon on my cell flashed, a rarity. With my hands still in my bag, I clicked on it. To my surprise, it was from Ruth. Are u ok? she asked.

  That text was the first time she’d communicated with me since the night of the dance. Immediately, I texted back. Fine. Used to it. Thx for asking.

  Want to meet for coffee after school? she responded.

  I raced to answer her. Yes! Just yesterday, if she’d asked me to coffee, I wouldn’t have cared. The darkness’s hold had been that firm. But now that a sliver of light had poked through the clouds, I felt excitement at reconnecting with Ruth. Plus, I had another reason to be thrilled: I had my way to meet Michael.