Angel Fall (18 page)

“I shall take full responsibility.”

With a look as though she were eating poison, Tori picked up several berries and put them in her mouth. Instantly into her mind came the image of little rat fingers wrapped around them and she started to gag.

“Oh, please.” The moth stared at her disgustedly. “They are delicious.”

In spite of herself, Tori knew that he was right. She took some more. And then a few nuts.

“I’m thirsty.”

“Come over here.” The moth flew to a corner and hovered above a little pool of water. Tori crawled over and stared at it.

“How’d this get here? Did the rats carry it in their cheeks?”

“
It came from the ground
. Do you see those drips running down the wall?”

She squinted. “I think so.”

“Well?”

“Okay, I guess it’s all right, but it is on the floor. I suppose you don’t have any cups.”

“No, we have no cups, goblets, or golden chalices.”

“That means I have to drink like a dog.” Bending down, she drank. It tasted wonderful. Finally she sat up and wiped her mouth.

“Now put some ‘rat food’ in your pockets. You’re going to need it. We’ve got to get going. We’ve wasted too much time here.” The moth fluttered toward the stairs. When her pockets were crammed, Tori followed. The steps were old and worn, and if it hadn’t been for the light from the insect it would have been easy to fall.

For a few moments Tori climbed in silence. Then she asked, “Why did the mothers and fathers give away their kids? Did they stop loving them?”

“They loved themselves more.”

“There was a baby girl on one of those tables. She looked so sweet. If I had a baby like that I’d never let anyone hurt her, even if I had to die. Why were we brought to this awful world where they give away their children? We weren’t bothering anybody. We were just flying in a plane to be with our father.”

“You were with Bellwind. Didn’t she tell you anything?”

“Not much.”

Mirick sighed. “Well, there are things that you should know, and it’s time for you to hear them. Your family on Earth is not what you think it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“A thousand years ago you had a grandfather. But he was not born on your planet; he was born on this one.”

“How did he get to Earth?”

“That isn’t important. Who he
was
is all that matters. He was the last of our great kings. During the time of the Great Dying he took something to Earth to hide it. While he was there, he married and had a son. Down through all the generations your family has been watched and feared. Invisible enemies have tried to destroy you. But through it all your ancestors were protected. When the time was right, Bellwind came and brought you home.”

“What do you mean
home
? This isn’t my home.”

“But it is. You are a child of two worlds, and I will tell you the story of this one. It should be sung, but the sadness is too great for me to make it rhyme. Once this world was called Boreth the beautiful, Garden of the Seven Stars, because seven Great Spirits of Light were chosen to live here. There is a word for them in your language. I believe it is angels.”

“I’ve seen pictures of angels.”

“None looked like the images in your mind. If you saw one right now it would appear very strange. They were called the Worwil. Their job was to watch over everything. But one was more powerful than the rest. He could splash the sky with sunsets and streak rainbows in the clouds.”

“You mean Old Paint Buckets?”

The moth fluttered backward so he could stare at her. “Who told you that name?”

“Mr. Hydrogen.”

“And where did you meet this individual?”

“In outer space. He gave me a ride in his Cadillac.”

“You confound me, child. Many strange things are happening right now, and I don’t pretend to know them all. But if you ever come face-to-face with Lammortan, I suggest that you refrain from calling him ‘Old Paint Buckets.’ He is not known for a scintillating sense of humor.”

“Okay. But I hope I never see him. Mr. Hydrogen told me he’s like a pimple on the nose of the universe and he needs to get popped.”

“What a fascinatingly crude but accurate analogy.”

“You said he was like an angel. I thought angels were supposed to be good.”

“Oh, he started out good. For countless years he brought beauty to everything he touched.”

“Then what made him turn into a pimple?”

“All over Boreth people loved what he did and told him so. The more he heard how wonderful he was, the more he wanted to hear it. Finally he lied and said that he was the one who had created everything. He told the people that if they didn’t bow down to him he would stop the rain from falling and keep the sun from rising in the sky.”

“Could he really do that?”

“No, but he was in charge of painting the clouds. So he just started painting them darker with a very dry brush.”

“So everyone did what he wanted?”

“Not at first. The kings, your ancestors, joined with the other Worwil and fought against him. There were many battles. The war continued for centuries, and Boreth was almost destroyed. But slowly the Painter began to win. People saw what was happening and became afraid. They were tired of war so they believed his lies. Lammortan built a great cathedral where they could worship him. So they brought their gifts and became his slaves. But they had forgotten the most important thing of all. There is one who is above the Worwil, and he is so much greater that they are like tiny candles compared to his Burning Fire. On this world he is called the One Who Lives in the Mists, for his home is on a Mountain that reaches to the crown of the sky. He is so high above that the people had stopped believing in his existence. But he is the true Artist who paints all things.”

“So what happened?”

“When Lammortan had almost won, a terrible plague struck the world. The people began dying. The Painter told them that there was only one way for them to be healed. They must give him their children. A life for a life. He promised if they obeyed not only would their sickness go away, he would make them live forever.”

“And they believed that?”

“Most did, but not all. Some cried out to the One Who Lives in the Mists. Lammortan hated them above all others. To those who would not sacrifice their children he gave a hideous disease that hardened their flesh and killed them with agonizing slowness.”

“But the rest brought their children.”

“They did. When it was too late, they found out that he had lied. The sacrifices didn’t save them. They died, but their spirits live on, forced to go back each night to the place where they gave their children away and remember the terrible thing they did. Then they must stand and worship the murderer.”

“Those people-things back in the cave? Were they some of the parents?”

“No. And they aren’t people.”

“What are they?”

“Spirit creatures who followed Lammortan into darkness. He keeps them alive to serve him.”

At that moment they turned a corner and came to a blank wall.

“The stairs don’t go anywhere.”

“Yes, they do.” The moth fluttered to a small crack in the stone. “Stick your left hand in and pull it out quickly.”

“Why? What’s inside?”

“It will open a door.”

“I don’t see any door.”

“Just do it.”

“Are there bugs in there?”

“There are no bugs.”

“Some other yucky thing?”

The moth began beating his tiny head on the stone.

“What are you doing?”

“Expressing extreme frustration.”

“Don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Will you please stick your hand in the hole so we can get out of here?”

“All right, but you don’t have to get upset. You’re not used to kids, are you?” Cautiously she inserted her hand in the crack. To her surprise, it felt like her fingers were sliding into a stone glove that fitted perfectly. Quickly she pulled it out.

“Okay, where’s the door?”

There was a scraping sound, and a section of the wall slid away revealing a hole just large enough for her to crawl through.

“All right, let’s go.” The moth landed on her shoulder. “And from here on out you’ve got to whisper because we don’t want to wake the sleepers.”

“Who are they?”

“You’ll see in a minute.”

Kneeling, Tori crawled through. On the other side hung a heavy curtain. She pushed it back and a cloud of mold billowed around her making her sneeze.

“Shhh.”

“What do you want? I can’t stop a sneeze.”

The stone panel slid shut. She stood up and looked around. Shafts of dusty sunlight revealed what appeared to be a gloomy chapel. Grime-encrusted tapestries sagged from the walls, and masses of cobwebs draped from the ceiling. Twenty rows of broken pews faced toward a low platform at the front. On it squatted a grotesque chair with stumpy legs and a high, round back that was deeply carved with twisted gargoyle faces. Clawlike armrests extended outward making it look like a throne. On the chair sprawled a pile of bones and dirt.

And at the top rested a blackened skull.

T
o her surprise, when Amanda awoke she discovered that she felt a little better. The skin on her arm was rough and hard, but it didn’t appear like tree bark anymore, and while it was still difficult to move, the stiffness in her joints had diminished. She sat up. The baby was playing quietly with the edge of her shirt, gently grabbing and releasing it while he stared in fascination at his own fingers. It was early morning, and Wanderspoon’s wagon was creaking down a dirt track that ran through a desolate gorge. Sheer walls rose on either side, and not a bush or a tree could be seen anywhere.

Amanda forced herself to turn and look toward the front of the wagon. The effort was painful, but at least she could do it. The greasy little man was hunched over asleep. His loud snores were perfectly timed to create a kind of antiphonal response to the periodic squeak that came from the rear axle. It was hilarious, but the humor was lost on her. She was very thirsty, and a water jug was hanging on the seatback. Struggling hard, she managed to crawl over to it. But the instant her fingers touched the strap, Wanderspoon jerked awake.

“What? What–what?
Stop thief! Put that down!
”

He stared at her as though she had been trying to steal gold from his pocket.

“I’m really thirsty and I need a drink.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Did you ever think about asking?”

“You were asleep.”

“That’s right, I was asleep, so you decided to take advantage of me.”

“Look, I just want some water. And I need some for the baby.”

The little man squinted at her. “What’s happened to you? Why are you moving around? Last night you could barely get into the wagon. You should be stiff as a steel plate.”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t hurt quite as much today. Now, could I
please
have a
drink
?”

Reluctantly he handed her the bottle. “One sip. Not a drop more. There’s no use wasting water on someone’s who’s as good as dead.”

“Thanks, I appreciate your concern.” Pulling out the stopper, Amanda put the bottle to her lips, but before she could take more than a swallow, he jerked it away. “That’s all, that’s enough you greedy girl!”

“The baby needs some.”

“Oh, fine, use it all up. Have no consideration for your generous benefactor who might have special needs of his own.”

Glaring at him, Amanda took back the jug. But when the water touched the baby’s tongue, he made a terrible face and spit it out.

“Look at that—the ungrateful little brat!”

“Well, your water tastes like swamp scum.”

“Well, neither of you have to drink it then, do you?” Jerking the bottle away from her, he put it between his feet.

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“Oh, very far. I’m sure you’ll be dead long before we get there.”

“But you said this person, Melania, might be able to help me.”

“If we get there in time, which I highly doubt. Even if we do, ‘help’ is a relative term. Deep inside disordered brains such as yours, there exists a whole series of synaptic connectors autoprogrammed to trigger a set of pitiful responses to a grid of simplistic beliefs. Precisely focused, bolstering verbal/ visual stimuli may create psychophysical responses that could mitigate the progression of your psychosomatic dysfunction.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“Of course you don’t. Let me try to put it into semi-simian terms. Because your species is marked by stupidity and delusional tendencies, you will believe any horse defecation that’s handed to you. Therefore the presentation of a countering delusion may nullify the intensity of your current debilitation, which I have diagnosed as a severe case of dysmorphophobia, an excessive preoccupation with a minor defect in your appearance. Ergo because your arms are turning into branches you have convinced yourself that you are becoming a tree.”

“But you said I had a disease that was turning me into one.”

“I said you
believed
you had a disease that was making you into one. I was simply condescending to your ignorance.”

“Well, do I have a disease or not?”

“Do you believe you do?”

“I feel miserable, I’m stiff, my skin looks like bark, and my fingers are changing into branches…”

“There you have it. Perception is all that matters. First we must discover why you feel the need to
perceive
yourself as a tree. When that is accomplished, we will begin the arduous task of constructing a more positive self-image. Of course, small steps must come before larger ones. From a tree, we’ll try to convince you that you’re a bush, then perhaps a weed, and so forth.”

“Why are we doing this if the Healer can’t help me?”

Wanderspoon stroked his beard and sighed. “Ah, inane child, I suppose there’s no alternative but for me to wallow in your psychonecrotic fantasies in the vain hope that I shall be able to find some common ground of communication. Therefore, though it will be like attempting to converse with a slug or a centipede, I shall begin asking questions to which you will mumble responses as your intellect allows. Is that understood?”

“Whatever.” Amanda was just too tired to argue.

As the cart creaked along, Wanderspoon began grilling her. For hours he wheedled, browbeat, and badgered until, just for the sake of shutting him up, she had told him about the plane crash, meeting Bellwind, Tori falling into the frame, the tree in the sky, and the horse in the stadium. The only thing she left out was her experience in the tower. That was just too personal. Finally Wanderspoon sat back, grimaced, blew air out of his cheeks, and shook his head.

“Well, it’s little wonder that your body is in a state of gross envegetation. You’re nothing more than a collection of disjointed and incoherent hallucinatory stimuli. And since it is ineffably true that we are the sum total of all that we psychologically ingest, I can say with absolute authority that you are not really a person at all, but rather a foul-smelling stew on two legs, lacking a single unifying flavor. Worse than that (if such were possible), you have been utterly misled. First, you’ve been deceived by your own brain.” He pulled a filthy handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose, and then wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak of mucus in the grime. “Take this Bellwind fantasy. In the form in which you have described her, she could not exist at all. Clearly she is a delusion based upon your repressed desire for a nurturing mother figure to replace the stupefyingly insane, narcissistic excuse for a human being who birthed you. It’s like all the rest of your preposterous fabrications, such as imagining that you came from another planet called Chicago and then floated in the ocean with an old woman and a dog.”

Amanda just couldn’t take it anymore. As weak as she was, she exploded. “Don’t you talk about my mother that way. You are such a
jackass
! Chicago is a city not a planet and I did float in the ocean and Bellwind is real and my mother is not crazy! You’re just a filthy little man who lives in a filthy house, and there isn’t a single book on any of your walls because you probably don’t even know how to read. You might as well just
shut up
because I’m not going to listen to anymore of your babbling garbage.” The baby started clapping.

“Is that so? That’s what you think, is it?” Wanderspoon stared at her malevolently. “Well, we’ll see about that. You’re going to be very sorry you spoke to me with such disrespect, you nasty, ugly girl.”

“Okay, that’s it. Just stop and let us out right here.” Amanda tried to slide toward the back of the wagon, but suddenly she was in so much pain that moving was almost impossible.

“Let you out? Oh, no indeed. I promised to take you to the Healer, and the word of Pilfius Bordre Wanderspoon is his bond. No, no, no, you belong to me, my child. You are my prize, a gift from the gods to assuage the misery of my condition. So sit back and enjoy every agonizing bump as we go in search of your
miraculous healing
.” He cackled with laughter. From that moment on the vile little man drove over every rut and hole he could find to make the journey even more unbearable.

A short time later the cart passed an outcropping of rock, and they left the gorge. Before them lay a broad plain that stretched many miles to the base of a mountain so gigantic that its summit was invisible in the clouds. In the middle of the plain stood a strange collection of dark jagged towers. The road led straight toward them.

Amanda squinted, trying to see. “What’s that out there, those things sticking up?”

“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough. That’s where we’re going to spend the night.” And he would say no more.

For the next eight hours the cart creaked through miles of dirt. Twice more her thirst became so unbearable that Amanda had to demand a drink. Each time, Wanderspoon cursed and threw the bottle at her. The baby would take nothing and seemed no worse for it. Other than that, no words were spoken, and the only sound was the grinding squeak of the axle.

Even in her suffering, Amanda couldn’t help but stare at the shadowy towers slowly coming into view. It was a city, or at least it had been, and the buildings at its heart were very tall. But they appeared to be broken and blackened. Spanning out from them were thousands of smaller structures that decreased in size like ripples in a pool of soot.

It was evening when they reached the outskirts of the city, and Wanderspoon began acting even stranger than usual. He began twitching and grimacing, jerking and sighing until Amanda thought he was having a seizure. When they approached the first low mounds, he suddenly jumped up straight as a tent pole. On his face was plastered a fatuous grin that revealed the rottenness of his teeth. Then he began bobbling back and forth, waving and bowing as though acknowledging the adulation of a crowd. Between grunts and groans, he yelled, “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Beautiful…exquisite…mmmhhhmmm, mmmhhhmmm, my my my my…how they gather…how they love me…yes, they do. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Shall I let them kiss my shoes? A small condescension. They’re desperate to do it, and how can I refuse such devotion? But only clean lips. Dirty lips I cannot abide…mmmm, yes. And perhaps only the sole not the top…Thank you! Thank you! Of course you can.”

It was the most amazing exhibition of nuttiness that Amanda had ever witnessed, and it creeped her out almost as much as the eerie place they were entering. The cart was moving down a main street lined with mounds and heaps of what must have been small buildings. All that was left were a few jagged walls of masonry that jutted out from the dirt. On they went, with Wanderspoon continuing his bizarre performance, which now included sticking his shoe over the side of the wagon and laughing uproariously.

After several miles the mounds grew into the blackened hulks of larger buildings that looked as though they had been eviscerated by a horrific explosion. Only stacks of cavelike rooms remained with twisting tunnel hallways that looked like vertical rat warrens. A chill wind started to blow, swirling up billows of dirt. Suddenly a huge dust devil blasted toward the wagon, and Amanda pulled the baby close, covering his face. The filth burned her eyes and stung her skin, but it didn’t seem to bother Wanderspoon at all. He sneezed twice, and dark trickles began running from his nose, but he kept right on waving, smiling, and bobbling.

The last rays of sunlight were fading as they entered the canyons of the city. Amanda shivered. All around her loomed gigantic twisted ruins. Some were broken and jagged; others leaned precariously as though the slightest breeze would bring them crashing down. Many had fallen untold ages ago, crushing everything beneath them, turning the street into a nightmare of debris. The cart staggered through it, bumping and grinding with bone-jarring lurches. And every moment Wanderspoon’s excitement grew. Shrieking with joy, he looked up, down, and around, screaming, “My people, my people…yes, it’s really me. Lick my shoe if you wish. Yes, lick it!” And he almost danced a jig, trying to keep his foot outside the wagon.

A few minutes later they turned a corner, and ahead appeared a great, twisted pinnacle of broken glass. Crimson light from the rising moon reflected on a billion grimy shards. Floor upon floor hung in teetering chaos. The whole shattered mass was draped like layers of crystal skin on an iron skeleton that looked as though it had writhed in a dance of death. When Wanderspoon saw it, tears began running down his cheeks. Raising his arms, he cried out in rapture, “My people, I have come back to you. Did I not promise to return and be your salvation? Though vast forces were arrayed against me, I have kept my word. So worship me, for I am greater than the gods.”

The wagon creaked to a stop in front of the tower. A dozen long stairs led from the street up to a wide plaza beyond which stood a set of splintered doors. But it was an object in the center of the plaza that drew Amanda’s attention. Out of a huge empty fountain rose a gargantuan statue that looked like a shrieking giant. Its fists were raised, and its mouth gaped open as though screaming at the sky. Suddenly Wanderspoon turned and struck a ridiculous pose with his fists in the air and his mouth open.

“Notice a striking resemblance?”

“What do you mean?”

“The statue—it’s
me
!”

“If you say so, but why would they make a statue of
you
?”

Instantly he went almost insane with rage. “
Why?
I’ll tell you why. Because I am their prophet, their priest, their king—their savior.” Leaping into the back of the cart, he pointed. “Look at all of them. Look how they scrape and grovel. Look at the flowers they have strewn in my path. Look how they hang from their windows, sobbing with exultation at my return. Listen to their cries of fervid adulation. You can see all this and ask why they would make a statue to me, their god?”

“You’re delusional.”

“What?”

“All I see are broken buildings and all I hear is you.”

Wanderspoon stared at her aghast. “The crowds—are you blind to the vast multitude all around us?”

“In your dreams! There’s nobody here but us.”