Dead Angels (17 page)

“What is his message?” she asked, pounding her chest with her fist.

“He wanted me to tell you, that anyone who hurts a child should kill themselves, rather than face his anger.” 

I then pushed her away from me, and she looked up into my shadowy face. I could see that hers looked panic-stricken.

“It’s not me who is the angel,” I roared at her. “It was your daughter and you will burn in Hell for what you have done to her!”

“No!” she screamed, dropping to her knees again. She then started to cover my feet with kisses. “I beg you...please, you must forgive me.”

“There is no forgiveness for what you have done,” and I didn’t like myself for pretending to be a messenger from God, but I hated her. I could have ripped out her heart with my claws, and the urge to do so was overpowering. But I wanted her to spend every second of every day, fearing the moment she would die and face the God that she believed in. There was a spike of anger that knifed its way through my soul and I couldn’t do anything to stop the pain that it caused.

“There must be some way that I can redeem myself, a way so that I can enter God’s kingdom someday,” she pleaded on her knees.

I kicked her off me, and with my wings casting long shadows all around us, I said, “Sacrifice yourself. That is the only way you will ever enter his kingdom.”

I then left her sobbing on the chapel floor, full of self-pity and no remorse for killing Melody.

The first rays of sunlight cut through the clouds, and as I stumbled back across the fields, I dropped to my knees. Pounding my fists into the earth over and over again, I screamed. I threw my head back and roared up at the sky until my throat was raw.

“I hate you!”
I screamed.
“I hate you!”

With tears of anger gushing down my face, I raced up into the sky. Tearing through the clouds I wanted to fly as high as I could. I wanted to come face to face with the humans’ God. When the air became so thin and cold that I thought I was going to lose consciousness, I hovered above the clouds, my wings rippling beneath my arms.

“Show yourself to me!”
I screamed up into the heavens.
“Go on, you chicken shit!”

The wind buffeted me from side to side.

“What sort of God lets shit like this happen
?” I roared.
“What kinda God would let Ray’s father hurt him like that? What sort of God would have allowed Melody to die?”

The wind dragged me left then right, almost as if it were trying to play with me, like a child when it plays with a ragdoll.

“There is no God. There is no heaven,” I muttered. Then, looking down at the Earth, I whispered, “There is only Hell.”

Lowering my arms and placing them against my sides, I dropped back through the clouds like a stone. Melody’s necklace whipped about my chest as I fell. Within inches of the ground, I snapped open my arms and soared away. I just wanted to go home, back to The Hollows.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Isidor

I dropped through the canopy of trees that sheltered the woods. In the distance I could smell the fresh water of the lake, but I couldn’t go back there, not now. I stretched out my wings and tensed my muscles. My wings didn’t disappear, they just hung there. Inspecting my arms, I could see that those purple scars had gone, leaving my wings permanently on show. They were a part of me. Maybe they didn’t want to hide anymore? Perhaps they wanted to be free. My mother had said they would get stuck someday if I used them too much, and it looked as if she had been right all along.

I made my way through the woods to the grate and the tunnel that would lead me home. The grate was hidden by a blanket of leaves and twigs. On my knees, I brushed them aside and then stopped, my hand hovering above the grate. Someone had placed a folded piece of paper between the slits. With my heart racing, I pulled the paper from the grate and unfolded it. It wasn’t a piece of paper at all, but a photograph. I looked at it and stumbled backwards onto my arse. Sitting amongst the damp leaves that covered the ground, I stared down at the photograph of Melody and me. But we looked different – we looked a few years older – late teens, maybe? We had our arms around each other, both of us staring into the camera lens. Melody looked beautiful, her hair free and flowing about her shoulders, as if caught in a gentle breeze. I could see those roses covering her arms and neck, bright and red and pink and full of life. But I had tattoos, too. They looked like black flames seething up my left arm and neck. There was a little stubby black beard covering my chin, and an eyebrow piercing in my right brow. Around my neck, not only hung Melody’s rosary beads, but several others, and in my hand I carried a crossbow. 

I didn’t have to wonder who had left the picture for me; I knew it was Melody who had somehow placed it there. I had given her the idea. Just like Steve Edwards had in the story that I had written for Melody, I sat and looked at the picture. But it wasn’t of Michael Blake amongst a screaming crowd of adoring Marilyn Monroe fans; it was a picture of Melody and me from another time, another place – another
when
. But just like Michael had in the postcard he’d left for Edwards, Melody and I looked happy at last. 

I turned the photograph over, and across the back she had written the word
PUSH!

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kiera

Isidor had talked throughout the night. Dawn was fast approaching, but the storm still raged outside, and the heavy, black clouds gave the impression that it was still night. Isidor suddenly stopped talking, and apart from the sound of the wind screaming outside and the sudden burst of thunder, the waiting room had fallen into a hushed silence.

Isidor sat across from me, his head down, crossbow in his lap. His story had left me feeling shocked and upset, and I looked around the waiting room at the others. Kayla sat at the end of the bench where Sam still lay asleep, and Potter sat on the floor, his back against the wall. I think all of us had been affected by Isidor’s story. Kayla slowly got up from her seat, and sitting next to Isidor, she put her arm around his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Isidor, that you lost Melody,” she said.

“I didn’t lose her, she was murdered,” Isidor said numbly. “Sometimes, I miss her so much that I wish I had never met her. I went above ground for an adventure, to see those faces in the clouds, to feel the sun against me, to watch cars pass by, and see those machines that soar through the sky. But instead, I only discovered monsters.”

“Not all humans are monsters...” I started, but before I could finish Isidor cut in.

“Sometimes, Kiera, I wish you had made that decision back in The Hollows and chosen the Vampyrus to live!” he shouted.

“Isidor, you don’t really mean that,” I whispered.

“My mother told me if the humans found out that I was different to them, they would cut me open to see how I worked,” he snapped. “But it’s not the Vampyrus who are the monsters – it’s the humans.”

“But, Isidor, like me, you are a half and half,” I said softly, understanding his anger and frustration.

“And that’s what I can’t reconcile,” he said. “I hate myself for being part human.”

“But you fell in love with a human,” Potter said, staring at Isidor. “Melody wasn’t evil. You yourself said she was an angel.”

“And now she’s a dead angel, thanks to a human,” he said bitterly. 

No one said anything for a while after this. When the silence became too uncomfortable to bear, and wanting to know more about the picture that Melody had left in the grate for Isidor, I looked at him and asked, “Have you still got that photograph?”

Without saying a word, Isidor reached inside his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to me. Taking it very carefully in my hands, as I knew it must have been very special to him, I unfolded the picture. It was Isidor, just as he looked now. He stood beside the girl he had called Melody and she was beautiful – how could anyone have ever thought otherwise? Her long, blond hair was just how Isidor had described it, long, thick, and curly. Her arms were covered in the most realistic tattoos. The roses looked almost real, as if they were swaying in a gentle breeze that was obviously blowing around Melody and Isidor in the photo. I could have stared at those tattoos for hours, believing at any moment those roses were going to open and flower. Then, turning the photo over in my hands, I saw the word
PUSH!
which had been written in ink across the back. 

Handing the picture to Potter, I looked at Isidor and said, “So you have no idea where that picture was taken?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“So you haven’t met up with her since she was driven away that day by her mum?” Potter asked, inspecting the photo.

“I’ve told you already that she is dead,” Isidor said.

“But the tattoos,” Kayla breathed, peering over Potter’s shoulder at the picture. “You must have seen her again since having your tattoos done.”

“I had those done because of the photograph,” Isidor said, taking the picture from Potter and placing it carefully back into his coat pocket.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“I was so desperate to see Melody again, that I did everything that I could think of to make sure that day would come,” he told us. “So I went and had the tattoos done. I took the photograph along to the tattooist. He worked from the picture. I then had my eyebrow pierced and trained myself in the art of using a crossbow. I didn’t know why I needed to do any of these things, but that’s how I looked in that photograph – so I made sure I copied it.”

“So you never met with her again?” Potter asked a second time.

“Look, how many ways have I got to tell you?” Isidor sighed. “I’ve not seen Melody since the day her mother snatched her away from me. She’s dead.”

“But she can’t be,” Kayla said. “She’s in that picture with you and you’re very much alive.”

Then, looking at the three of them, I gasped and said, “But that’s the whole point don’t you see? We’re not alive – we’re dead.”

Isidor looked at me, and leaning forward on the bench, he said, “You mean Melody might be here? Just because she’s dead in the other world, it doesn’t mean that she is dead here.”

“This world has been
pushed
,” Kayla gasped. “That’s what she was trying to say when she wrote that word across the back of the picture!”

I listened to what Kayla had said, and I thought of my own dad. He was dead in the other world – but what about here? He could still be alive! I looked at Potter and our eyes fixed on one another’s momentarily.

As if knowing what I was thinking, he looked at me and said, “Don’t go getting any funny ideas, Kiera.” 

“What do you mean by that?” I asked him.

“All I’m trying to say is, don’t give Isidor false hope,” he said, lighting up a cigarette. “Just because that girl died before the world got
pushed
, it doesn’t mean that she is alive here.”

“But what about my dad...” I started.

“Don’t go there, Kiera,” he cut over me. “You’ll only get hurt.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked him with a frown.

“I’m not sure about anything, but we haven’t come back to go waking the dead,” he said, and sucked on the end of his cigarette.

“But he might not be dead...”

Again Potter spoke over me and said, “Look, we don’t know anything for sure and raising ghosts isn’t what I call a good idea.”

I looked at Potter and I got a feeling that perhaps he knew more about this world, which had been
pushed,
than he was telling me.

“What I want to know is,” Kayla piped up, “how did the photograph end up in that grate if it came from this world which has been
pushed
?”

“How should I freaking know?” Potter shrugged, blowing out a mouthful of smoke. 

“Pictures, postcards and stuff like that shouldn’t be able to slip between the two different worlds, should they?” she asked him.

Potter paused for a moment, as if he had been slapped across the face. Then, recovering quickly, he barked, “Why are you asking me? I don’t know every goddamn thing.”

Again, I got that sinking feeling that he was keeping something from us.

But before I’d the chance to question him further, Potter turned on Isidor and said, “So, you sure you didn’t see Melody again?”

“No,” Isidor insisted. “After what happened to Melody, I spent most of my time on my own. I felt utterly lost without her being around. I looked at the picture constantly, and in my heart I knew that one day we would meet each other again. We had to – we were in the picture together. I just didn’t know where or
when
that would be. A couple of years later, I was about sixteen, I went back to the lake and the bushes where we had our camp. To my surprise, I found one of the old eyeliners that Melody had stolen from the shop, and the comic she had first brought me. They were hidden in the camp beneath some dry leaves and twigs. But it wasn’t the same without Melody. I would wait for hours, sometimes days hoping she would come back, just like the photograph suggested she would. Eventually, it became too painful to go there.

“I returned to The Hollows, where I would lie on my bed writing stories and rereading that comic she had given to me. But in my heart, I just couldn’t stop wondering where Melody was or what she was doing. I just hoped she was happy. I only went back to look for Melody once more, and that time, I went to the house where she had lived with her mum.

“The windows were all boarded over. The front garden was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. The house looked derelict and abandoned. I wanted to know what had happened, so I returned to the library and checked the local newspapers. I didn’t have to look for very long, as I soon came across an article about a local woman who had hung herself in a chapel constructed in the basement of her house. There was other stuff written about her but I didn’t need to read it. I knew she had sacrificed herself in search of the redemption she hoped to find. Did I feel bad about what had happened to her? No more than she felt bad about punishing her daughter in that chapel,” Isidor said.