The Heavens Rise

by Christopher Rice

  “Ben?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really thought you’d get a little bit taller.”

  He laughed into her chest, and then she tightened her arm around his back, and after another few minutes or so, he slipped away. But it was the kind of fitful sleep he typically had after too many drinks, where the brief snippets of dreams seemed raw and close to the surface of wakefulness; he dreamed that he was awake and they were talking to each other when they really weren’t, and then the images from the aquarium played rapid-fire across his mind, each one too quick to startle him awake. But the high-speed-download quality of it left him with the awareness that he wasn’t slumbering so much as processing, and underneath this realization was the vague fear of who he would be once the impossible events he’d witnessed that night became a part of his memory.

  Then Nikki was shaking him awake, and there was a noise outside like a low, crackling fire. “Ben,” she whispered fiercely. “He’s here.”

  • • •

  He could barely walk upright, not without the support of his wings pumping the air behind him, and the effort seemed to be exhausting him as he shambled across the empty parking lot. He switched to all fours but his forearms were ill designed for the task. In order to take a step, he had to flatten his five-nailed talons entirely against the asphalt, then take them up high into the air with each step, like a cat pulling its paws out of something sticky, all the while making sure the long curved nails didn’t fold together on each retraction, preventing him from taking another step.

  Ben realized what was so awful about the creature; there was no evolution to its form, no logical physical adaptations to environment that had been refined over millennia. He remembered the photograph of the giant, deformed woman, whose giant tongue had been too big to fit inside her mouth. This creature had the same lunatic quality to it; its giant, protruding beak didn’t close entirely and the huge, ovular eyes—too full of human-shaped iris and pupil to look anything like those of a bird—didn’t blink because there were no eyelids to go with them.

  If they left him like this, if they didn’t do something, he would not survive for long. Ben was sure of it. And the more he studied its imbalanced form, the more he realized why the creature seemed exhausted. Its massive wingspan made it more suited for flight, but the weight of its heavy, humanoid body must have created incredible drag. There was no way this creature could survive in the wild, if it wasn’t killed by a human. What choice would it have if it went on like this? Fly itself to death?

  As he and Nikki crouched against the railing outside the wheelhouse watching its approach, Ben was grasping to figure out what memory of Anthem’s could have given rise to this thing. Then he remembered a drunken late-night phone call, right after Deepwater Horizon blew. They’re burning birds, Benny. In the oil. They’re caught in it but they don’t get them out before they light the fires to burn it off, and they’re all just going up. Are you going to write about it, Benny? You got to write about it, Benny.

  The creature jumped down into the water with a great splash and began walking down the side of the boat, away from the wheelhouse, toward the yawning opening in back. The push boat’s weight shifted beneath them as the creature crawled inside the lower deck, and that’s when Nikki turned to Ben and looped several strands of red Mardi Gras beads around his neck. Then did the same to herself.

  “I’ll get as close as I can,” she whispered. “You stand by, and when I’m ready . . . you drive him. But not until . . . not until . . .”

  “Not until what?”

  She bent forward and whispered words into his ear. They were short and sweet and simple enough to remember, but he was still sure he’d forget them in the terror of the moment, so he started whispering them to himself over and over again.

  “I don’t know how much of him is still in there, Ben. I don’t know if—”

  “He came here, Nikki,” Ben whispered. “Remember that. He came here.”

  Nikki turned from him and started slowly down the exterior staircase that lead to the lower deck. He followed a safe distance behind. When they reached the lower deck, they found the creature slumped against one corner of the shadowy steel cavern, its feathered chest heaving. From the way it had jammed its wings up into the corner of the ceiling, holding them there by leaning his upper back against the wall, Ben could see what a terrible compulsion they made for the thing; a giant, undeniable invitation to take to the air, even though the rest of the thing’s body wasn’t properly crafted for flight.

  Ben stood his ground outside the door to the lower deck.

  Nikki entered the shadows. The creature didn’t seem to notice her approach, then, when she was eight feet from it, she said, “You know, you’re not going make a lot of friends around here with that T-shirt you got on.”

  The avian head jerked back on its neck. The beak opened and closed, but no sound came from it.

  “True,” Nikki continued, taking several slow steps toward the thing. “You did meet the two of us today, so I guess that’s something. But maybe after school, we can run you by Perlis and get you some of those polo shirts with the crawfish on them. You know, help you fit in a little bit more. What do you say to that, huh, Anthem Landry?”

  The creature leapt forward, talons slapping to the metal floor inches from Nikki’s feet. Ben gripped the door frame, prepared himself to take the creature under his command, but when its beak opened, the sound that came ripping out of it had the tinge of a man’s wail in it. Nikki had held her ground and lifted one palm.

  “After all,” she continued, but her voice was trembling. “You are the most beautiful man I have ever laid eyes on, so you can’t blame me for coming up with an excuse to get close, now, can you?”

  The creature lifted one talon off the floor, and slowly extended one sharp, curving nail. “Nikki . . .” Ben said quietly.

  Nikki shook her head, but she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, and her chest was heaving as the creature’s one nail traveled slowly up the length of her torso. To Ben, it looked like he was searching for a target, and he prayed it wasn’t Nikki’s beating heart or her carotid artery.

  “You know . . . Mardi Gras is coming up soon, and we like to watch the parades from Third and St. Charles. It’s not too far from my house. Maybe you could join us, Anthem Landry. Would you like that? Would you like to watch the Ares parade with us?”

  The nail found its target, the plastic medallion attached to the beads hanging from Nikki’s neck. A soft, gentle whine escaped from the winged beast. And Nikki said, “Would you like that . . . my hero, my God, my angel?”

  Having heard the signal, Ben opened, and just as the scene before him turned silvery and luminescent, the creature’s soul sent him stumbling backward. He felt his ass hit the steel staircase, and then all sense of up and down, all sense of a bordered, orderly world was lost as he was battered by the nightmare-gnarled images pouring through him. The writhing body of the serpent Marshall Ferriot had become, Nikki shrinking from view as the creature rose up through the jungle exhibit’s shattered ceiling. And then there was a soft, radiating glow, beating like a heartbeat within the chaos. And Ben recognized the twirling knots of flame blossoming throughout his consciousness. He could hear the music, he could smell the spilt beer. He could feel the memory of a long-ago Mardi Gras parade coursing through him, and that’s when he realized Anthem Landry was moving through him too.

  VII

  * * *

  MARISSA

  33

  * * *

  How ’bout you fuck yourself?” Marissa finally said to the lawyer. “How’s that sound?”

  Hilda Lane’s lackey and henchman had been lecturing her for a good fifteen minutes on how her actions had violated the standards clause in her contract, giving the Lanes grounds to fire her as editor in chief of Kingfisher without severance.

  The man hadn’t even bothered to inquire after her physical condition when he’d forced his way into her room, even though
she’d just been moved out of post-op recovery two days before after running a high fever for the three days. He’d been droning on about how even though there were no witnesses to her shooting, the simple fact that an officer of the law had seen fit to put a bullet in her—God rest his soul; the poor man hadn’t survived his injuries—combined with the slanderous allegations she made against Hilda Lane during their last phone call gave Kingfisher’s owner ample cause to—and then she told him to go fuck himself and things got real quiet all of a sudden. She’d said it brightly and casually, as if she were suggesting he try adding a little Tabasco to his scrambled eggs every morning.

  “I take it this is your way of saying you don’t intend to—”

  “I’m real tired and I don’t feel that well and you’re a jerk. So no, it’s my way of saying you should go fuck yourself is what it is.” Maybe it was fatigue that kept her tone breathy and casual. Or maybe she really thought it was good idea for the beady-eyed prick to use some blunt object on one of his orifices. She’d lost track of which pain meds they were giving her. “Seriously, take that contract in your hand, roll it up real narrowlike and see how far up it’ll go. I’ll wait right here till you’re through. And I’ve got some pills lying around if it starts to hurt too bad.”

  “Okay,” the lawyer muttered. He sprang to his feet, placed the contract in question back in his briefcase and closed it with a punctilious snap. “Ms. Lane asked me to inform you that she appreciates the time you gave to her—”

  “Her? Her newspaper? Is that what you were going to say? Well, you tell Ms. Lane I was working at that paper when she was doing PTA. And I’d rather mop floors before I go back to being her house negro. She’s not getting any fight out of me. Don’t you worry your bald little head.”

  “I wish you a speedy recovery, Ms. Powell.”

  “Then get outta here and let me get back to it.”

  And then she was alone again with rebroadcasts of that morning’s WWL Eyewitness News and the endless photos of Anthem Landry that kept rolling across the screen, along with the now familiar helicopter shots of the giant grain ship he’d allegedly been at the helm of when it speared the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. There were more tearful interviews with Landry’s relatives, some of whom looked vaguely familiar to her from birthday dinners and crawfish boils where she’d been the token black lady over the years. And she prayed that whatever had happened with that damn ship, whatever had caused Anthem to go missing, was the real reason Ben hadn’t come to visit her.

  Indeed, her only visitors over the past five days had been Mr. Suit and a bunch of police officers who were desperate to find out why one of their own had put a bullet in her, even though she insisted to kingdom come, and despite the influence of all manner of tongue-loosing medications, that she couldn’t remember a damn thing that happened out there on that river after the corpse of Danny Stevens had bobbed to the surface. She’d gone from being included in their collective head-scratching sessions to being flat-out accused of all manner of crimes; all of which only served to convince her the cops didn’t have a damn clue what had happened out there either. Not with the murder of Danny Stevens and his wife, not with the explosion at the house, and not with the bullet some cop had seen fit to put in her. But she was a lot more willing to put up with their nonsense than she was some prick Uptown lawyer who’d been dispatched by a boss too cowardly to fire her in person.

  The doctors came about an hour later, told her she would be free to go in the morning, and she put on her best game face, tried to look grateful over the news, and then they were gone and she was back alone with the news. She dreamed fitfully that night, dreams with Anthem Landry’s face in them and corpses tumbling through green water.

  The map was there when she woke up, folded neatly and resting on the tray table she’d been eating her meals on.

  When she opened it, she saw a thick red line that went from the hospital she was in, across Lake Pontchartrain, then west on I-10 before meeting up with 310 Freeway just past Louis Armstrong International Airport. She traced the line with her finger, past Destrehan, over the Mississippi River on the Luling–Destrehan Bridge, and then on some crazy unfamiliar spur that appeared to lead right into the swamp, to a fat red dot. And right next to the dot, Ben’s handwriting: As soon as you can.

  Then she saw her own car keys, tucked underneath the map.

  She’d pocketed both by the time she was ready to leave a few hours later. A silent assemblage of most of the cops who had questioned her during her stay were waiting next to the nurses’ station as she walked past, and she wasn’t quite sure how to read their brusque nods and penetrating stares. But there was no sliding out from under the terrible weight of the feeling it left her with. An accomplished journalist and writer, a graduate of one of the best universities in the country, one of the hardest-working girls ever to come out of her neighborhood, and now what was she? A black lady with no job, nursing a gunshot wound in her left side, leaving a hospital under a cloud of criminal suspicion.

  Once she was in the open-air parking lot, she hit the button on her remote and the headlights of her Prius flashed several rows away.

  This better be good, Uptown Girl. Please, Lord. Make this good.

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes after she turned off the highway, Marissa came to a ruined chain-link fence surrounding what looked like an abandoned zoo. The Keep Out signs along the fence were as stained and perforated as the chain link itself, and in the center of the concrete courtyard, a ridiculous statue of a smiling, humanoid alligator with a plumed hat welcomed her with open arms, even though the fountain basin around its feet was dry and choked with vines. Past the old ticket booth, with its shattered front windows, there were three one-story wooden buildings around the courtyard, each with a steeply pitched roof, and signage that was no longer legible.

  The door to the center building was standing open, and when she entered, she found herself staring at the glass wall of a giant aquarium tank, filled with cloudy green water. The tank’s glass panel had once been bordered by carved wooden alligators and snakes, but the paint had faded away entirely, leaving behind a jumble of dark wood that looked more like the outline of a dark lava flow.

  She kept walking, waiting for Ben to show himself at any moment, too exhausted and too dispirited to marshal anything close to fear. So often in her life fear had taken the form not of self-regard, but of concern for those who’d first receive the news of her car accident or stabbing or immolation in a house fire. But now her mother, the same mother she’d returned to New Orleans for, had been in the ground for years. There’d been no real man (or woman, for that matter) in her life for some time. (Unless you counted Ben.) This realization felt strangely liberating, but it also left her feeling hollowed out.

  She passed the aquarium and stepped into the room at the end of the hallway. Once, long ago, it had been a gift shop of some kind. Many of the shelves were still there, a couple of rusted metal spin racks still leaning against the walls. There was enough pale daylight coming in through the door she’d left open behind her that she almost moved on without noticing the single gooseneck desk lamp, new-looking and startlingly out of place amidst the decrepit surroundings. It had been set on what had once been the cashier’s desk, and positioned right under its halo was a scored, leather-bound journal, with a single notecard on top that said READ ME.

  She glanced up briefly when Ben entered the room, but when he didn’t say a word, she went back to reading. As soon as she turned the last page, he began to tell her the rest.

  34

  * * *

  Prove it,” Marissa said.

  “What? On you? No way. You heard what I just said—”

  “Ten seconds, fifty seconds. What’s it gonna hurt?”

  “You! It’ll hurt you.”

  Ben rolled his eyes, brushed past her and threw open the back door. A few seconds later, a tiny sparrow zipped into the room and landed on the cashier’s desk right next to the j
ournal.

  “Left,” Ben said. The sparrow fluttered up into the air, then dropped to the table a few inches to left. “Right,” Ben said.

  The sparrow complied, and Marissa felt a strange heat spreading through her abdomen, then turning to icy chills as it ascended her spine, and suddenly her hands were going to her mouth against her will. Ben continued to manipulate the tiny bird. Left, right, left, right . . . And then the thing’s skull collapsed into a tiny little spill of gore and it fell to one side with a soft plop and all Marissa could hear was the sound of her own breaths rasping against her sweaty palms.

  Ben walked toward the aquarium, holding the door open until she found the wherewithal to follow him, and then they were standing before the cloudy, moss-dappled glass, and finally she saw it, pulsing in floating tendrils through the water. And even though she wanted to bring her hands away from her mouth, she couldn’t, and this made her feel both terrified and terribly self-conscious at the same time.

  “We wouldn’t have to hurt anyone,” Ben finally said. “Not physically, anyway. We’d never have to spill a drop of blood. Not one.”

  “We?”

  “Think of the potential, just for a minute. Before you freak out. Think of the confessions we could force from their lips when the cameras were rolling. Think of what it would mean if we married it to our investigative skill. Vultures will start to feed off an animal just because it’s stopped moving. And they’ve been feeding off this city for years, Marissa. If we scared the vultures away, this city could walk again. Hell, it could run. We could—”

  “I need to go. I need to . . . just . . .” She started for the open doorway to the courtyard. “This is . . .”

  “We don’t have time,” Ben called out to her. “Isn’t that what you said to me that day, after the pipeline blew? This city lost its margin of error fifty years ago. That’s what you said, Marissa. And somebody’s supposed to be telling the truth. Even when no one wants them to.”