Angel Fall (24 page)

A wrenching groan reverberated from the abyss. Amanda looked down. The face and arms of the mother had vanished. Far below whirled a mass of shadows that congealed into a gigantic form with wings and a body of crystal. Within him flowed rivers of color. He was standing in a crimson canyon above a pit of blood.

A thunderous crash.

Amanda looked up. From high above, fingers of lightning were streaking toward her. She saw them coming and all she could do was hold the baby tight and bow her head. When the white fire touched her, she cried out in agony. Her body stiffened as her skin began to burn. Out of her grew branches and limbs. Her face faded beneath the crust of a tree. But as the transformation continued something unexpected happened. In the depth of her suffering…as the last tears rolled down her vanishing cheeks…from within her burned a silver light.

Brighter and brighter…

Her soul was blazing…

Suddenly around her swirled the mists, and within them flashed lightning the color of blood. The crystal being in the canyon disappeared. As the soul of a dying girl streaked upward, the burning hands of her spirit grasped the Tree in the Sky. There was a mighty shout as the sacrifice of Amanda’s life called down the Fire of Heaven and with a roar the flames consumed every limb and branch. From Melania came one last shriek, and the mighty Worwil, the Fallen Healer, vanished, never to live again.

D
aybreak.

A lovely white tree stood on the pinnacle of a mountain. It was all that was left of a girl named Amanda who had come so far from a place called Earth. Though she was dead, wrapped in her silky branches lay a contented baby fast asleep. Gone was the beautiful forest of lying dreams. But in death the girl was not alone. All around her, covering the Mountain, stood the true forest that had been there all the time, white trees by the thousands, large and small, their arms reaching upward as though in prayer toward a far Greater Mountain with mists that shrouded a Crimson Throne.

A
DEMON
!

That’s what it was. That’s what it had to be.

Alex lay where the awful flying things had taken him. Inside the rotting prison of his own flesh, his spirit shrieked and cringed, trying to hide. Then out of the demon’s mouth came a whisper, “Son of Darkness, be still.”

Instantly he choked into silence.

“I must do things that will cause you great pain. Prepare yourself.”

The monster rose into the air. From the end of its body appeared a needlelike stinger as long as a sword. The tip moved downward until it was above his stomach. Then it plunged.

His vision filled with jagged streaks. He lurched and spasmed. Every muscle went rigid. And then began a horror that he had never experienced. A tiny twitching in his guts, something moving from side to side. A twitching…then a twisting and a writhing.

Something inside him. He was not alone. Not alone within the cage. Something else was living there too, and the poison of the sting had awakened it. Like a serpent, it was uncoiling. He could feel it expand. Then it started crawling upward, climbing through the tunnels of his body, through his intestines…into his stomach. Nausea. Expanding. Expanding. And not just up his body, but into his soul. Alex screamed, trying to escape its slithering touch, but he couldn’t; they were locked in the cage together. Through him passed waves of unspeakable knowing.

Food! He was its food!

As it crawled upward, he could feel it eating him, sucking his life, taking him into itself…chewing, swallowing, gorging, digesting, excreting. Passing over his heart…into his throat. He heard the demon in the air whisper, “In the name of the One Who Lives in the Mists, reveal your presence.”

A roar! A mighty roar came from Alex’s mouth! Alex roared because it roared. Using his tongue and teeth and soul, in a shrieking rasp it screeched, “You dare to summon me as though I were a slave without a name?”

With icy calm, the hovering monster replied, “The ancient king lies in the Chamber of Sorrows. The time of the end is upon you.”

The Alex-Thing screamed, “Yes, the end is near, but not the one you expect, my brother.”

The demon hovered closer until its face was inches away. “You have failed. Melania is dead. The final sacrifice was not made. Without it, your power will be broken. You know the Law.”

There was a long mocking laugh. And then, from out of Alex’s mouth, croaked a song.

The Thing laughed again. The tiny awareness that was still Alex heard the awful sound of children sobbing. Millions and millions of echoing voices, sobbing from far away. And up from an abyss within him spewed the memories of hell. Wave after wave of heartbroken screams and visions of horror. Children offered on altars of selfishness and fear, little ones torn from their mothers’ wombs, children crushed, burning like straw on a fiery wind, drowning in darkness, their innocence vanishing in a flood of hate and tears. And the Thing within Alex tasted each memory, loving it all, leeching joy from their dying, bathing in their blood, cherishing their murders, treasuring their shrieks, storing each death within itself, so it could gorge on an endless banquet of horror. All of this Alex knew. But more than simply knew. Because he was one with the slithering Thing, he was forced to join in its memories, to taste the blood, to writhe in the agony.

Loathing!

How he loathed himself. How he hated his own soul. How he hungered to die. If only he could go back and die like the children, innocent and clean. And the Thing that sucked his life took joy in his wretched loathing and showed him more and more, making him smell and taste and see.

But then the creature in the air cried out, “Enough! While you are in my chamber you will look at me alone!”

The hellish visions vanished. From Alex’s lips came a groaning sigh, and the Thing hissed, “Oh, mighty Worwil, weak, pitiful creature, remember the fate of the ones who have stood against me. Sandalban—broken; Faylin—burned; Rindzac—frozen to the ground, a statue in a City of the Dead. And who is left for me to destroy? Bellwind, the old witch. She is nothing. Her life I shall consume in a single swallow. But you! You! For you there will be a special kind of dying, for it is you who plays the Music of the Law.”

Suddenly strange sounds began to fill the room, deep, rumbling creaks and moans. The Alex-Thing began shrieking, “Stop it! Stop it!” But the sounds grew louder and wilder. High, shrill peeps and chirps and rasps in a hideous cacophony. The Thing in Alex’s throat screamed and gurgled as though it were going mad. Then, as quickly as they had come, the sounds ended and the hovering demon whispered, “The Song of All Singing, once you thought it was the most beautiful music in the universe. Now it sings your doom.”

Spitting words came through Alex’s gritted teeth. “How I long for you to die. How I long to taste your agony. Fool, what was your purpose in bringing me here, to torture me? Do you think that my arms have grown so weak that I cannot reach you?”

“You know the Law. Unless Aloi is sacrificed by the hands of one from another world, you will remain bound, living only through the creatures that you possess until the final test is over.”

“Is that what you summoned me here to say? Then your task is finished. Now, return to me that which is mine. You stole my food! My brand is on its arm. It is cattle from my herd. Its spirit was sealed forever when it gave itself to me.”

“On his arm are the marks of the Seeker.”

“Listen to the screeching of your Law, oh, mighty Worwil. The soul that chooses evil, into evil it must go. The beast is mine. Return its rotting flesh. Play the music of its life. I call for the Judgment of the Song.”

“His song will be played at the time ordained. Until then he will remain here. Now, by the name of He Who Lives in the Mists, return to the place where you are bound.”

With shrieking curses Alex felt the Thing within him contract inch by inch down his throat, through his chest and into his belly. There it receded into a pinpoint of fire. But it didn’t go away.

Once more the winged creature spoke, “I did this so that you would know what you have done and what lives within you. Remove him.” Instantly the monster disappeared and the gigantic glowing insects returned. Alex screamed and thrashed as they lifted him into the air. He kept on screaming and thrashing as they carried him down fiery-walled tunnels to a black hole in the floor. Then they lowered him into a deep stinking pit and flew away leaving him in total darkness.

More shrieking.

He shrieked until he was hoarse. Over and over he tried to jam and shove himself out of his body. All that mattered was getting to his window, but he couldn’t break free. Not an inch of his soul could crack through the muscle and bone. Finally, exhausted, he lay twitching and grunting. It was then that a seeping discomfort began to plague his fuzzy awareness; slowly his eyes became eyes again and not just mucus coated windows. Underneath him he felt a slithery slop. The floor was coated with a thick layer of slime.

It had soaked through his clothes and was oozing over his skin, and it smelled like sewage. Yelling curses, he struggled to stand up. But he was too dizzy. He teetered into a squat, but that was worse. Finally, with a croaking burst of foulness, he tipped over and flopped back into the muck, slipping and sliding around until he was even more covered than before. This provoked a new string of obscenities that went on until his energy was spent and all he could do was huddle in miserable silence.

During his tantrum his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and very slowly he began to see things. Slime wasn’t his only problem. Something putrid was on the walls. Hanging like vertical pools in the blackness were vague glowing clusters, so dim they were barely visible. He squinted hard.

They were
moving
.

Some kind of stringy things were slithering around, leaving blurry trails of iridescence. They looked like clumps of centipedes twisting and writhing on top of each other. Alex shivered. He could almost feel them crawling up his pants and wrapping around his legs, but as the minutes passed they stayed where they were, and he began breathing again.

Slowly Alex became fully aware of his surroundings. He was huddled at one end of a narrow tunnel-like cavern with a high ceiling. The opposite end was too dark to see. He was in a dungeon. Something hard and prickly brushed against his ankle. He yelled and jumped. There were scratching and swishing sounds everywhere. Terrified, he shrieked, “Keep away from me. Get away,” and began kicking and flailing. This only brought more scratching and swishing.

“Help! Somebody help! Get me out of here!”

But no one came and the sounds faded. Whatever had caused them didn’t touch him again, but he couldn’t stop shivering. The terror had driven the last patches of fog from his brain, and now, in the darkness, his mind exploded with disjointed pieces of memory. He seemed to remember sliding down a tunnel with Tori, then being in some kind of boat with a body in it. After that, everything dissolved into a terrifying nightmare about bugs.

As Alex tried to make sense of it all, he decided that none of it was real. He had been hallucinating again, which meant that he hadn’t
escaped
to anywhere at all. He was somewhere in the cathedral. But who had put him in this awful pit? And why? They had said he was a hero, a god. You don’t throw a god into a stinking pit. A god belongs in a nice cool window. If that dirty little witch Melesh was responsible for this, he would tear her to pieces.

In his despair Alex buried his face in his arms. But when his head touched the wound he
screamed
and fire shot through him. The pain was so intense that he almost fainted. Slowly the fire turned into a bone-throbbing ache, and sweat poured down his face.

He was burning up all over. And he couldn’t breathe.

What was wrong with him? The illness was coming back. That’s what was wrong. He was burning up with fever. The wound was infected and the fever had made him delirious. It must be coming in waves, which meant that soon he would go crazy again. The way he felt, he must be close to dying.

The hot turned to freezing cold. Now he was shaking uncontrollably and his eyes hurt. He groaned and rubbed them. When he opened them again, something had changed. A subtle shifting. A deepening of the darkness. He realized that the ooze on the walls had disappeared. And what was that? A new thing, a kind of wheel glistening in the distance, sparkling like a cluster of stars. More hallucinations. He shook his head, trying to make the sparkles vanish, but they wouldn’t; instead, the wheel was rolling toward him, growing larger and larger. And it wasn’t stars. The sparkles came from broken glass, giant shards, and little splinters twisting and turning as though a crystal galaxy had exploded. Then they were all around him in an endless stream.

In the pieces he began to see things. The shadow of a skateboard, the glimmer of a comic book. Clearer now: a bed, a poster, a baseball cap, a desk, a chair. More and more. And he recognized them; they were things that had belonged to him and, in each one there was a memory. Wind in his hair. Sleeping late on a Sunday morning. Hero faces on the wall.
Things
. Things he had taken for granted. Things that had just been there and he had thought would never go away. How he longed for them now. If only he could ride the skateboard again. Sit at the desk even at school. Lie in his bed and read comics.
Longing
. Longing for a life that was gone.

But as he watched, the images changed. In the glass he began to see splintered faces. And he recognized them too. His family. His friends.
People
he had taken for granted.
People
who had cared for him and he had thought would never go away. And with each one came a torrent of memories. Talking. Laughing. Hanging out. Doing nothing. Just being together. How he longed for those moments now. How he longed for those
people
. If only he could go back and be with them. As he saw each one, he called their names. Slowly their eyes turned toward him. And in all of them there was hurt.

Why were they looking at him that way?

Without knowing how, he knew. The hurt was because of him. Things he had done, things he had said, a thousand cruelties large and small flickering sorrows on broken glass. Streaming by. Streaming away forever.

Then out of the darkness came fragments of an image crushed more than all the others. The pieces were horrifying, the edges streaked with crimson. At first he couldn’t tell who it was, but soon he realized that it was his mother; in her broken face were a thousand glistening splinters, and all of them were tears. Her eyes were tired, so tired and filled with sorrow, yet still they looked at him with love as though she would give her life to take away his pain. He had never really
seen
his mother’s eyes before. Never seen the hurt they carried. So many things he could have done to take that hurt away—a word, a smile, a hug. But instead, he had hurt her even more.

Suddenly Alex was filled with a longing so great that he couldn’t bear it. If only he could see her one last time; if only he could tell her that he loved her. He hadn’t said those words in years. Why not? Why hadn’t he? It was such a small thing. And how much she had wanted to hear them. Yet he had remained silent. Why? Because silence was the hammer that he had used to smash her, the silence of contempt, of derision, of disdain. And with each raging silence her broken life had been shattered even more. Now the jagged pieces ripped through him.