A Hideous Beauty

by Jack Cavanaugh

  “It could happen!” I quoted the line with little J.P.

  Click.

  Redheaded angel Roma Downey was revealing her true identity to a suicidal artist. “I’m an angel, sent from God,” she said with her soft Irish brogue. Special effects lighting simulated a halo.

  “It’s nothing like that!” I shouted at the screen. “Trust me, I know.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d said that. I knew nothing of the kind. This whole angel scenario was Professor Forsythe’s theory, not mine. What I saw in Shepherd’s office was a hallucination, not an angel.

  But three angel programs in a row? What a coincidence, especially considering all the talk about angels today.

  My thumb paused over the channel changer. I grinned. What are the odds of four programs in a row about angels?

  Click.

  John Travolta was the Archangel Michael. His wings were molting.

  I stared dumbly at the television. This was beyond coincidence. It was downright spooky.

  Click.

  Angel Cary Grant swooped his arms and a Christmas tree was miraculously dressed.

  Click.

  Probationary angel Michael Landon adjusted his ball cap and climbed into a car driven by Victor French.

  Scared now, I turned the television off. It came back on by itself.

  Angel Clarence explained to Jimmy Stewart that every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.

  Click.

  I didn’t change the channel. It changed by itself.

  Pluto the dog was torn between two opinions, with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder.

  Click.

  I pushed the OFF button repeatedly.

  Angel Nicholas Cage stood on a beach with a whole city of angels wearing trench coats and listening to the sun rise.

  Click.

  Feminine hands displayed a ceramic angel figurine on the shopping channel.

  I dropped the remote. Reaching behind the set, I pulled the plug. The screen blinked out.

  My hands were shaking.

  “Now that was weird,” I said.

  I paced the room.

  “Coincidence. Malfunction. Had to be.”

  I stared at the television’s electrical plug.

  I ordered room service. Feeling the unmistakable need to distance myself from anything even remotely related to heaven, I ordered a burger and fries . . . and a dessert, Chocolate Sin.

  Ten p.m. Jana obviously wasn’t going to call.

  “Why am I still here? I should be thirty thousand feet over Kansas by now, halfway home.”

  I kept telling myself I’d stayed because of Jana, that I wasn’t staying because I’d been invited to meet an angel. “I’d be a fool to go out there in the morning.”

  Big joke on Grant. I knew what would happen. I’d show up and the professor would give me some lame excuse about the angel being called away suddenly to deliver an emergency scroll, or administer a plague in Kazakhstan, or transport a holy man in Tibet to heaven on a fiery prayer rug.

  “It would have to be a Tibetan holy man,” I said. “Who’d believe an angel could even find a holy man in Washington, D.C.?”

  I chuckled at my own humor and crammed a cold fry into my mouth.

  “Now if the angel looked like Roma Downey, that would be a meeting worth going to,” I said.

  Ten-thirty p.m. I climbed into bed and turned out the lights. I was tired, but not sleepy. My eyes were closed, my mind active.

  Why Semyaza? I asked myself.

  It had to be a code name. The other participants in the assassination plot no doubt had similar names.

  The thing that disturbed me about the name Semyaza was that historically it was the name of a subordinate, an angel lieutenant. Semyaza answered to Lucifer and Myles Shepherd wasn’t the kind of person who answered to anyone. It was a matter of ego.

  But, as unlikely as it seemed, I had to allow for the fact that given the scope of the plot, Myles might be someone’s subordinate. Did that mean the code name of the top guy was Lucifer? Or better yet, Satan?

  “This is ridiculous. What am I doing here?” I said to the darkness.

  Throwing off the bedcovers and chastising myself for letting a small-college professor pull me into his religious fantasy about supernatural beings, I got dressed, threw my stuff into my travel bag, and ordered a cab to take me to the airport.

  I booked a flight that would get me to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., by 9:40 the next morning.

  At thirty thousand feet over Omaha, Nebraska, my eyes were too tired to read but not tired enough to sleep. I’ve never been able to sleep on planes. My legs are too long and the headrest hits me in the back of the neck. The best I can do is doze.

  The cabin was dark. I had an aisle seat four rows from the back galley. Flight attendants floated up and down the aisles like night fairies. A dozen or so reading lights were on, but mostly people slept. Some wore earplugs or headphones.

  My back hurt and my right leg had fallen asleep. I shifted position for the hundredth time. My eyes were closed and I was dozing when I heard a skittering sound in the overhead luggage bin across the aisle.

  Awake now, I focused on the bin and listened. Nothing. Just the constant drone of the engines.

  A man with heavy jowls, seated next to the window across the aisle, squirmed, folded his arms, laid his head against the window, his eyes closed. His cheek twitched nervously as he slept.

  I tried folding my arms to see if it would help. My eyes drooped closed.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  There it was again! Something was in that overhead bin. Something alive.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  It sounded like some kind of rodent.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  I pushed the call button. A flight attendant responded immediately. She turned off the call light. “Can I get you something?” she asked.

  Thick was the best way to describe her—thick middle, thick legs, thick neck. She appeared to be Scandinavian, with a slight accent and a motherly demeanor.

  “I think there’s something in that bin,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Something alive.”

  She turned and looked at the bin. “Alive?”

  “An animal. Maybe a rodent. I heard scratching.”

  We both listened.

  Nothing.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  To my chagrin, neither did I.

  “I’m sure I heard something,” I said.

  She assessed me and apparently concluded I wasn’t drunk or the practical-joker type. She pushed the call button.

  Another flight attendant appeared. Younger. Black hair. No-nonsense eyes. Before inquiring, she sized me up, the man with the problem that required a consultation of attendants.

  “He says he heard a rat in the luggage bin,” the first attendant reported.

  “A rat?”

  “I didn’t say a rat,” I protested. “I said I heard something. Something scratching.”

  People three rows in front and behind me were awake and looking at us. The word rat skittered from row to row.

  “What do you think we should do?” the first attendant asked.

  “Open the bin,” the second attendant replied.

  “What if there’s a rat in there like he says?”

  The first attendant took another assessment of me. “You’re certain you heard it?”

  “I’m sure I heard something.”

  She put her hand on the bin, not to open it, but to keep it from opening. Then she put her ear close to it.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  “Neither did I,” the first attendant said.

  Without taking her hand off the bin, the black-haired flight attendant asked if anybody else had heard scratching noises. If they had, nobody admitted it.

  She thought a moment. “All right. Here’s what we’ll do.”

  She sent the first attenda
nt to get a large trash bag. Then, she had everyone sitting within three rows of the bin get out of their seats and move a safe distance away. To protests the length of the plane, she had the lights turned on. Then she informed the pilot they might have a rat in a luggage bin. Within minutes the copilot was present to oversee the plan.

  “Ready?” the second attendant asked.

  With the first attendant holding the trash bag, the plan was to open the bin and brush anything that moved into the bag. Taking a linebacker stance, the copilot stood at one end of the bin. The second attendant would open the bin and man the opposite side.

  “On three.”

  The pilot and bag-holding attendant indicated they were ready.

  “One . . . two . . . three!”

  The door to the bin flew open.

  A gray streak fairly flew out of the bin and into the trash bag. People jumped. Gasped. Muffled screams.

  “I got it!” the first attendant shouted, closing the bag with a stranglehold.

  Something definitely was in the bag. But it wasn’t moving. The attendant held up the bag to get a better look at it.

  “Let me see,” the copilot said.

  She handed him the bag.

  The copilot instructed people to step back. He looked inside the bag. His face registered disgust. He reached into the bag. A woman passenger squealed in protest. Ignoring her, the copilot pulled the rat out of the bag by its tail.

  A gray, plush toy rat with big eyes and a silly grin.

  “It appears we do indeed have a rat on board,” he said. “Only it’s a passenger.”

  He tossed the toy at me. I caught it.

  For the next hour I stood in a corner of the back galley and endured the scorn of passengers, flight attendants, the copilot, and the pilot, who left the cockpit to lecture me on why there was no place for practical jokes on commercial flights.

  I heard most of it. When I wasn’t listening I was thinking about what else was in the overhead bin with the plush toy rat—a Los Angeles Angels sports bag and ball cap, and a child’s backpack decorated with angel wings.

  When I was finally allowed to return to my seat, I avoided eye contact with the other passengers, buckled into my seat, folded my arms, and closed my eyes, though sleep was the farthest thing from my mind.

  It wasn’t five minutes later that I heard it again.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  Same sound coming from the same bin.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  I ignored it. I didn’t care if the whole plane was crawling with rats.

  Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

  Through half-opened eyes I saw a demon fall out of the bottom of the bin and plop onto the back of a seat. It was the same kind of creature I’d seen in Myles Shepherd’s office, a three-dimensional spirit resembling a gargoyle.

  It looked at me, then jumped onto the chest of the man next to the window with heavy jowls. He appeared to be asleep. The demon clung to the man’s shirt, looked at me again, then clawed its way into the man’s chest.

  I looked around me, hoping that someone else had seen what I’d just seen. No one had. Those who weren’t sleeping were glaring at me and shaking their heads with disgust.

  The man next to the window moaned and squirmed with a pained expression, but he didn’t wake up.

  In the front of the plane a man was excusing himself as he stepped over the other passengers in his row, making his way to the aisle.

  It was Myles Shepherd.

  He looked at me. Nodded. Smiled.

  Turning his back, he made his way to the front lavatory.

  I bolted from my seat, but was held in place by the seat belt. Clutching frantically at the latch, I freed myself and charged up the aisle.

  A few rows in front of me a woman got up, blocking the aisle. She just stood there.

  I tried to slip by her. “Excuse me,” I said.

  She refused to let me by. “Wait your turn,” she said. Belligerent eyes glared at me from a well-wrinkled face.

  “I’m going to the lavatory,” I said.

  “So am I, joker. Whatever happened to ladies first?” Mumbling something about the sad state of the world due to an absence of gentlemen, she made her way forward with a modified crawl, hand over hand clutching the backs of seats.

  At first I danced anxiously behind her until I realized that in order to get back to his seat Myles would have to pass us.

  Following the woman through the forward galley, when she reached for the lavatory door I said, “I believe it’s occupied.”

  She swung the door open. “It is now, sonny.”

  I craned my neck to look past her. The lavatory was vacant.

  The woman pulled the door shut in my face. “Pervert,” she said.

  Bewildered, I glanced around. There was no place for Myles to have gone. No place to hide.

  I asked the flight attendant if she’d seen a man of Myles Shepherd’s description. She said no one had walked by recently.

  It didn’t make sense, but then nothing about Myles Shepherd had made sense lately. I retraced my steps to the row where I’d seen him exit.

  In the window seat a young woman wearing earphones slept with her head against the pane. A curly-headed man occupied the aisle seat. He was hunched over a book of word puzzles.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for the man who was sitting in the middle seat. He’s a friend. Do you know where he went?”

  The curly-headed man looked at me, then at the middle seat as though he expected to find someone sitting there. “There’s no one in that seat,” he said.

  “I know there’s no one sitting in it now,” I said. “He was sitting there earlier.”

  “No one has been in that seat all flight.”

  The puzzles must have done a number on this guy’s brain. How could he sit next to someone for two hours and not notice him? “He just climbed over you to use the restroom!” I said.

  “No one has sat in that seat . . .”

  Despite his protests, I reached over him and shook the shoulder of the girl in the window seat. From beneath bangs, sleepy eyes tried to focus on me.

  “The man who was sitting in the middle seat, do you know where he went?”

  She shook her head. “No one’s been sitting there, dude.”

  Someone behind me took my arm. The black-haired flight attendant. “Is there a problem, sir?” she asked testily.

  “I’m just trying to find my friend,” I explained. “He was sitting in the middle seat and he’s not there now.”

  “He’s crazy,” the puzzle guy said. “There’s no one sitting there.”

  The attendant looked to the row’s other occupant. “Is someone sitting in the middle seat?” she asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  “I just saw him!” I protested. “He climbed over this guy and went to the forward lavatory.”

  The attendant looked to the front of the plane. The forward attendant shook her head. “He asked me. I told him no one had walked by.”

  Having finished her business in the lavatory, the woman I’d followed up the aisle was making her way, hand over hand, back to her seat. She pushed her way past us, but not without comment. “If you ask me, he’s a pervert,” she said.

  I have to give the airline personnel credit. To satisfy me, they politely checked the manifest and showed me the computer printout that indicated the seat in question was open. No one had occupied the seat the entire flight.

  I was positive I had the right row. All the other rows around it were full.

  My request—all right, it was more of an insistence—to check inside the pilot’s cabin was met with an introduction to an air marshal who escorted me back to my seat.

  For the remainder of the flight I pretended I was asleep, although in reality I spent the hours cursing Myles Shepherd. He’d haunted me with his success all my adult life; it was just like him to haunt me in death.

  I knew one thing, though. If Myles Shepherd didn’t w
ant me going to Washington, D.C., I was on the right track.

  CHAPTER 10

  Professor J. P. Forsythe stared out the library window. He did some of his best thinking here. It was quiet and he was sandwiched between two things he loved, books on one side, a blue sky on the other.

  Familiar footsteps interrupted him.

  “It’s ten o’clock. Do you think he’ll come?” Sue Ling asked.

  “Grant? No.”

  Setting an armload of books on the table, Sue Ling sat down. The professor studied her for a moment with an amused expression. “You were pretty hard on him yesterday,” he said.

  “I had my reasons.” She looked away. It was her way of saying she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “He’s on his way back to D.C.,” the professor said.

  “He called you?”

  “Abdiel told me.”

  Sue Ling showed no surprise that the professor would get word of Grant’s no-show from an angel.

  “He visited me last night,” the professor said. “Abdiel, not Grant.”

  Sue Ling’s eyebrows rose. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

  “He had news. It has to do with our Mr. Austin.”

  “Oh?” She made a poor attempt to feign indifference.

  “Abdiel knows why Semyaza is interested in him.”

  “Why do I think that’s not a good thing?”

  “Because you know enough to be cautious.”

  “But not enough to be scared out of my wits?” she asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. Shouldn’t I be?”

  The professor grinned. It had taken a little more than a year of working together for Sue Ling to treat him as an equal rather than a professor. He was comfortable with her familiarity. More than comfortable.

  “Are you going to tell me?” she asked impatiently.

  “It’s not my news to tell. Mr. Austin will have to tell you himself.”

  She let out an exasperated gasp. “Why bring it up if you aren’t going to tell me?”

  “Abdiel brought other news.”

  “More news? Oh my . . .” She rubbed her bare arms as though she’d suddenly felt a chill. It didn’t go unnoticed.

  “You know the account he’s been narrating to me?” the professor asked.