The Fallen

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “What the hell is it?” Aaron asked, both fascinated and disgusted by the wagging, vestigial appendage.

  “It’s all I’ve got left of them,” Zeke said softly, an almost palpable sadness emanating from him in waves. “It’s all that’s left of my wings.”

  chapter five

  “Y’know what, I’ve had enough,” Aaron said as he threw up his hands and backed away from Zeke. “I’m done.”

  He felt as though he were falling farther and farther into the depths of insanity, only with Zeke’s addition, he had a buddy for the trip. Even the voice of reason inside his head was beginning to come undone. Maybe it is all true, he thought. What else could those things be on his back but the stumps of wings… He wanted to slap himself for thinking it. No way. It would be better if it were a brain tumor making me understand these languages—making me think that my dog is talking to me. That would make it easier, he reasoned. Then he could brush off the old man as just another lunatic.

  Aaron called again for his dog. “C’mon, Gabriel,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  He continued to walk away from the crazy old man, and his equally crazy delusions.

  “Aaron, please,” Zeke pleaded. “I have more to tell you—to show you. Aaron?”

  He didn’t turn around. He couldn’t allow himself to be ensnared in this madness. Yes, Zeke was pretty convincing and knew all the right buttons to push, but angels? It was just too much for Aaron to swallow. Space aliens, maybe—angels, not a chance. He would see Dr. Jonas later today and then set up an appointment with the doctor’s friend at Mass General. Between the two of them, a rational explanation for his condition—could it actually be called a condition? he wondered—a rational explanation for his current situation would be found. At this stage of the game a tumor might not even be so bad. At least it was some kind of concrete explanation that he could accept, understand, and deal with.

  Angels. Absolutely friggin’ ridiculous.

  Aaron looked down to see if Gabriel still had his ball. It was the Lab’s favorite toy, and Aaron could see himself here at ten o’clock tonight with a flashlight searching for it.

  The dog wasn’t with him.

  He looked around the common. Had the dog become distracted, as he so often did, by a squirrel or a bird or an interesting smell in the grass?

  Aaron caught sight of him on the other side of the common where a section of the pipe fence was missing. The dog was standing with Zeke. He took a few steps toward them and wondered how they could have gotten way over there so fast.

  “Hey, Gabriel,” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. “C’mon, pup, let’s go for a ride.”

  The dog didn’t pay him the least bit of attention. He was standing attentively alongside Zeke, staring up at the man with his tail wagging. An uncomfortable feeling began somewhere in the pit of Aaron’s stomach. He’d felt like this in the past, usually right before something bad happened. He remembered a time not too long ago when he had experienced a similar feeling and discovered that Stevie had turned on the hot water in the bathtub when nobody was looking. If he hadn’t searched out the source of his uneasiness, the child would surely have scalded himself badly. Aaron felt kind of like he did then—only worse.

  Aaron began walking toward them. “Gabriel, come here,” he said in his sternest voice. “Come.”

  The dog glanced his way briefly but was distracted as the old man held up the ball for Gabriel to see. Zeke looked in Aaron’s direction, ball held aloft.

  The awful feeling squirming in his gut got worse and Aaron began to jog toward them—and then to run.

  Zeke looked toward the street outside the common, checking it out as if getting ready to cross. It was getting later in the morning and the traffic had begun to pick up. Zeke again showed the ball to Gabriel and Aaron could see the dog’s posture tense in anticipation.

  “Hey!” Aaron yelled, his voice cracking. He was almost there, no farther than twenty feet away.

  The old man looked into the traffic and then to Aaron. “I’m sorry,” Zeke said, raising his voice.

  Panic gripped him and Aaron began to run faster. “Gabriel!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Gabriel, look at me!”

  The dog paid him no mind, his dark eyes mesmerized by the power of the ball. Aaron was almost there.

  “There’s no other way,” he heard the old man say as he again studied the flow of oncoming traffic—and threw the ball into the street.

  Aaron saw it as though watching a slow-motion scene in a movie. The tennis ball left the old man’s hand and sailed through the air. He heard a voice that must have been his screaming “Gabriel, no!” as the dog followed the arc of the ball and jumped. The ball bounced once and Gabriel was there, ready to snatch it up in his mouth, when the white Ford Escort struck him broadside and sent him sailing through the air as though weightless.

  They were the most sickening sounds Aaron had ever heard, brakes screeching as tires fought for purchase on Tarmac, followed by the dull thud of a thick rubber bumper connecting with fur, flesh, and bone. His slow-motion perception abruptly ended as Gabriel’s limp body hit the street in a twisted heap.

  “Oh my God—no!” Aaron screamed as he ran to his pet.

  He fell to his knees beside the animal. There’s so much blood, he thought. It stained the Lab’s beautiful yellow coat and oozed from the corners of his mouth. It had even begun to seep out along the ground from somewhere beneath his body.

  Aaron carefully wrapped his arms around his best friend. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God,” he cried as he pressed his face to the dog’s side.

  He placed an ear against the still-warm fur and listened for a heartbeat. But the sounds of horns from backed-up traffic and the murmur from curious bystanders was all he could discern.

  “Will you shut up!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, lifting his head from the dog’s side.

  Gabriel shuddered violently. He’s still alive. Tears of joy streamed from Aaron’s eyes as he bent down to whisper in his friend’s ear. “Don’t you worry, boy, I’m here. Everything is going to be fine.”

  “Aaron?” Gabriel asked, his voice a weak whimper.

  “Shhhhh, you be quiet now,” he told the dog in a calming tone. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be all right.”

  He stroked the dog’s blood-stained fur, not sure if he believed what he was saying. He wanted to fall apart, to scream, rant, and rave, but knew that he had to keep control. He had to save Gabriel.

  “Aaron…Aaron, hurt bad,” Gabriel croaked, and began to spasm as frothy pink blood bubbled from his mouth.

  “Hang on, pal, hang on, boy. I’m going to help you.”

  Aaron tried to pick him up, and Gabriel let out a heartrending shriek so filled with pain that it affected him like a physical blow.

  “What do I do?” he asked aloud, panic beginning to override a cool head. “He’s dying. What do I do?”

  The thought of praying strayed into his head, and he was considering doing just that when he realized that he wasn’t even sure how.

  “If you want Gabriel to live, you must listen to me,” said a voice from behind.

  Aaron turned to see Zeke standing over him.

  “Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” he spat. “You did this! You did this to him!”

  “Listen to me,” Zeke hissed close to his ear. “If you don’t want him to die, you’ll do as I say.”

  For the first time Aaron felt as if he couldn’t go on. Even after all he had been through, caught up in the merciless current of the foster care system, he never gave up hope that eventually it would turn out for the best. But now, as he gazed at his best friend dying in the street, he wasn’t sure.

  “Aaron,” Zeke shouted for his attention. “Do you want him to bleed to death on this dirty street? Do you?”

  He turned to look at the man, tears running down his face. “No,” he managed. “I want him to live. Please�
�please, help him….”

  “Not me,” Zeke said with a shake of his head. “You. You’re going to help Gabriel.”

  The old man knelt beside him. “We don’t have a moment to spare,” he said, looking upon the dying animal. “Lay your hands on him—quickly now.”

  Aaron did as he was told, and placed the palms of both hands on the dog’s side.

  “Now close your eyes,” the old man instructed.

  “But we can’t—” Aaron started to protest.

  “Close your eyes, damn it!” Zeke commanded him.

  Aaron did as he was told, his hands still upon Gabriel’s body. The dog’s flesh seemed to have grown colder, and he grew desperate. The noise around them receded.

  “Please, Zeke,” he begged as Gabriel’s life slipped agonizingly away.

  “It’s not up to me now,” the old man said. “It’s up to you.”

  “I don’t understand. If we can get him to a vet maybe…”

  “A vet can’t help him. He’ll be dead in a couple a’ minutes if you don’t do something,” Zeke said. “You gotta let it out, Aaron.”

  “Let what out?…I don’t understand.”

  “What’s to understand? It’s there, inside you, waiting. It’s been there since you were born—just waiting for its time.”

  Aaron sobbed, letting his chin drop to his chest. “I…I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “No time for crying, boy. Look for it in the darkness. It’s there, I can smell it on you. Look closely. Can you see it?”

  Gabriel is going to die, Aaron realized as he knelt by the animal, hands laid upon him, feeling him slip away. There was no way around it. The old man was delusional and dangerous. He debated whether he should hold the man for the police—imagine if Gabriel had been a child. It might be best for the old man to be behind bars or at least in a hospital where he could receive the proper care.

  Aaron was about to open his eyes when he felt it stir inside his mind, and he saw something. In the darkness it was there, something he’d never seen before.

  And it was moving toward him. Is this what the old man is talking about? he asked himself near panic. How did he know it would be there? What was it? What was coming at him through the blackness behind his eyes?

  “I…I see something,” he said with disbelief. “What should I do?”

  “Call to it, Aaron,” Zeke cautioned, “not with your voice, but with your mind. Welcome it, let it know that it’s needed.”

  Aaron did as he was told, and reached out with his mind. He couldn’t make out exactly what it was, its shape kept changing—but it seemed to be some kind of animal—and it was moving inexorably closer.

  “Hello?” he thought, feeling foolish, yet desperate to try anything. “Can…can you hear me?” Was it all some bizarre figment of his imagination brought on by the stress of the situation? he wondered.

  It was a mouse scrambling through the darkness toward him, a mouse with fur so white that it seemed to glow.

  “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do—or what you are—but I’m willing to try anything to help my friend.”

  The mouse stopped, its beady black eyes seeming to touch him. It reared back on its haunches, as if considering his words, and then began to groom itself.

  “Do…do you understand me?” he asked the tiny creature with the power of his thoughts.

  It was no longer a mouse, and Aaron gasped. The mouse had become an owl, its feathers the color of snow, and before he could wrap his brain around what had just happened, it changed again. From an owl it turned into an albino toad—and from the toad, a white rabbit. The thing inside his head was now morphing its shape at a blinding rate; from mammal to insect, from bird to fish. But though its form continued to alter, its eyes remained the same. There was an awesome intelligence in those deep, black eyes, and something more—recognition. It knew him, and somehow, he knew it.

  It had become a snake—a cobra—and it reared back on its bone-colored muscular shaft of a body, swaying from side to side, its mouth open in a fearsome hiss as it readied to strike.

  “I don’t like this, Zeke,” Aaron said aloud, eyes still tightly closed. “You have to tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Aaron. It’s a part of you. It’s been a part of you since you were conceived,” Zeke counseled. “But you have to hurry. Gabriel doesn’t have much time left.”

  “I don’t know what to do!” he cried as a humming-bird fluttered before him.

  “Talk to it,” Zeke barked. “And do as you’re told.”

  “My dog is dying.” Aaron directed his thoughts toward the shape-changing creature floating before him in a sea of pitch. “In fact he might already be dead, but I can’t give up. Please, can you help me? Is there anything you can do to help me save him?”

  It had become a fetus that looked vaguely human. It simply hovered there in its membranous sack, unresponsive, its dark eyes fixed upon him.

  Aaron was angry. Time was running out, and here he was talking to some fetal figment of his troubled state of mind.

  “I’ve had enough,” his thoughts screamed. “If you’re going to help me, do it. If not, get the hell out of my mind and let me get him to a vet.”

  Like a ship changing course, the child-thing slowly turned, shifted its shape to some kind of fish, and began to swim away.

  “It’s…it’s leaving, Zeke.”

  Aaron felt the man’s hand roughly upon his shoulder. “You can’t allow it to go. Talk to it, Aaron. Beg it to come back. Whether you’re ready or not, it’s the only way that Gabriel will survive.”

  “Please,” Aaron projected into the sea of black. “Please don’t let him die, I…I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

  The fish, now an iguana, continued on its way. A luminous bat, and then a centipede, the force within his mind receded, growing smaller with distance. Aaron wasn’t sure why he did what he did next.

  In the ancient language first spoken to him by Zeke, what the old man had called the language of messengers, he called out once more to the thing in his mind.

  “Please, help me,” he thought in that arcane tongue. “If it is in your power, please don’t let my friend die.”

  At first he didn’t think his pleas had any effect—but then he saw that a chimpanzee had turned and was slowly returning with a comical gait.

  “It’s coming back,” Aaron said to Zeke, not in English, but in the old tongue.

  “Open yourself to it,” he responded in kind. “Take it into yourself. Accept it as part of you.”

  Aaron shook his head violently, eyes still clamped shut. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  The old man dug his nails painfully into his shoulders. “Accept it, or you both die.”

  A jungle cat was almost upon him, and Aaron gazed into the fearsome beast’s eyes.

  “I accept you,” he thought in the ancient speak, unsure of what he should be saying, and the panther lifted its head to become a serpent, but this was unlike any snake he had ever seen before. It had tufts of silky fine hair flowing from parts of its tubular body, and small muscular limbs that clawed at the air as if in anticipation. And the strangest and most disturbing thing of all, it had a face—something not usually associated with the look of a reptile. This serpent wore an expression on its unusual facial features, one of contentment, and spread its malformed arms, beckoning in a gesture that suggested Aaron, too, had been accepted.

  The ophidian beast began to glow eerily, and Aaron could discern a fine webwork of veins and capillaries running throughout the creature’s body. The light of the snake became blinding and the solid black behind his eyes was burned away like night with the approach of dawn.

  A painful surge of energy that felt like thousands of volts of electricity suddenly coursed through Aaron’s body. He opened his eyes and looked down on his dog. He knew that Gabriel’s life was almost at an end.

  “It’s time, Aaron,” he heard Zeke say.

  Aaron looked
at him. For some reason the old man was crying. Aaron’s hands tingled painfully and he gazed down at them. A white crackling energy, like eruptions of arc lightning, danced from one fingertip to the next.

  “What’s happening to me?” he asked breathlessly.

  “You’re whole now, Aaron. You’re complete.”

  Instinctively Aaron knew what had to be done. Gazing at his hands, he turned them palms down and again placed them upon Gabriel. He felt the energy leave his body, leaping from his fingers to the dog, burrowing beneath fur and flesh. And the air around them was filled with the charged scent of ozone.

  Gabriel’s body twitched and thrashed, but Aaron did not take his hands away. The blood that spattered the dog’s fur started to dry, to smolder, evaporating into oily wisps that snaked into the air.

  “I think you’ve done all you can,” Zeke said quietly nearby.

  Aaron pulled his hands away from the animal. For a brief moment his handprints glowed white upon the dog’s fur—and then were gone. The powerful sensation throughout his body was fading, but he still felt different, both mentally and physically.

  “What did I do?” he asked, looking from Zeke to the dog.

  Gabriel was breathing slow regular breaths, as if he were merely taking a little snooze.

  “What needed to be done if Gabriel—and you—are to survive,” Zeke answered ominously.

  Aaron reached out and touched the dog’s head. “Gabriel?” he said softly, not sure if he believed what he was seeing.

  Gabriel languidly lifted his head from the street, yawned, and fixed Aaron in his gaze. “Hello, Aaron,” he said as he rolled onto his belly.

  Aaron could feel his eyes well up with emotion. He leaned forward and hugged the dog. “Are you all right?” he asked, squeezing the animal’s neck and planting a kiss on the side of his muzzle.

  “I’m fine, Aaron,” Gabriel answered. The dog seemed distracted, pulling away from his embrace.

  “What’s the matter?” Aaron asked the dog as he looked around.

  “Have you seen my ball?” Gabriel asked in a voice filled with surprising intelligence.