Vigil

by Robert Masello

  “Beth,” he said, “what are you doing?”

  “This has to stop,” she said hoarsely, and before he could stop her, she’d thrown it herself, straight at the bedroom window.

  The window shuddered with the impact, a thousand tiny cracks appearing like a spider web, but the glass remained intact.

  In the bedroom, Arius still clung to the body of his victim, but his head turned, slowly, toward the window.

  Beth picked up another brick from the ground, and threw it again. This time the damaged window shattered, the slivers of glass cascading down.

  Arius released Abbie, and she dropped on her back to the bed.

  Carter didn’t need to see any more. “Come on!” he yelled, pulling on Beth’s hand. “Come on!”

  He dragged her away from the house and into the blackness of the field beyond. Beth, barefoot, stumbled on the uneven ground, and Carter had to right her and keep her moving. But where were they going? At the end of the field, about a hundred yards off, was the abandoned apple orchard, the black branches of its dead trees glistening in the moonlight, and beyond that the looming hulk of the only refuge in sight.

  “The barn!” he said, still gripping Beth’s hand.

  She staggered along at his side, and all he could think of was hiding her there, then coming back to deal, somehow, with Arius.

  They ran toward the orchard, where the orderly rows that the trees had once been planted in were now uneven and hard to discern; roots had raised the soil and twisted branches reached out toward each other, sometimes joining like bony fingers. As they ran, Carter kept turning his head to look behind them. Where was Arius? Why wasn’t he following them?

  “How can we . . . kill him?” Beth gasped.

  “I don’t know,” Carter said, knocking a brittle branch out of their way.

  Beth was slowing down, and Carter could see something dark on the inside of her legs. At first, he thought it was just dirt, but then it glittered dully in the moonlight and he could see that it was probably blood. She must have cut herself climbing down from the roof, or on one of the branches blocking their way.

  “You want to stop for a second?” he said, glancing back at the house and seeing nothing so far. The lights were still on, but he could see no movement.

  “No, I can keep . . . going,” she said, her hot breath fogging in the night air. But she did stop, bending over and putting her hands on her knees. She’d tied her hair into a ponytail, which drooped down against her cheek. Carter laid a hand gently on the top of her back.

  “We’re going to be all right,” he said, wondering if it was true. Was it possible that Arius wasn’t coming after them?

  Or was he still occupied with Abbie?

  “How,” Beth said, still bent over, “did you get here?”

  “Borrowed Ezra’s car.”

  She glanced up at him, with hope.

  “It’s in a ditch. Unusable.”

  Her head dropped down again, and she took a deep breath.

  “We should keep going,” Carter said. No point in telling her now what had happened to Ezra.

  Beth straightened up, pulling the lapels of her bathrobe closed. “There is something he’s afraid of,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m still not sure. But it might have something to do with water.”

  Carter’s mind raced—had there been anything in the scroll about that? Had Ezra dropped any clue? “Why do you say that?”

  “I was taking a bath when he found me. And he kept his distance.”

  “From the water?”

  “It had blood in it.”

  Carter looked puzzled.

  “I’ve been bleeding.”

  Before he could pursue it, something stirred in the upper story of the house. Carter pulled Beth down in a crouch, and as he watched a figure passed in front of the wide-open bathroom window.

  “He’s upstairs,” Carter said.

  The light from the window grew brighter, as if someone had just brought a floodlamp into the room.

  “Why would he go there?” Beth said. “He knows I’m gone.”

  “Maybe he’s using it as an outlook,” Carter said. “Let’s go.”

  They turned and started scuttling through the trees, keeping their heads down, and when Carter looked back again, the house was dark. It was almost more frightening not to see Arius anywhere. And he was worried about Beth—why was she bleeding? The blood on her legs looked fresher and wetter than it had before. When they got to the barn, he’d have to see what was wrong, and get some of his own warm clothes onto her.

  And then? What else could he do? Ezra, Lord knows, may not have had all the answers, but at least he’d had some. Now Carter was on his own—if there was something else in those scrolls, or the lab results, something that might tell him how to defeat an angel as old as time, he’d have to figure it out on the run, and on his own.

  There was a sound overhead, like the whooshing of broad wings, and when Carter looked up, he saw through the tangled branches of the dead trees a golden light moving swiftly against the night sky. He knew what it was. The light swooped up, until it was no bigger than a star, then paused as if fixed in place . . . before suddenly plunging back toward earth.

  “Hurry!” Carter said, grabbing Beth’s hand and dragging her through the orchard. As they ran, they could hear what sounded like a rushing wind, coming closer all the time; a faint illumination revealed the unseen ground and fallen leaves that lay ahead of them.

  Carter pulled Beth into a sheltering thicket. The branches stirred and rattled, like broken bones, and the dead leaves swirled up from the ground. When the light faded again, Carter said, “Come on.” The barn was only a hundred yards or so away, but there wasn’t any more cover between them and its gaping, unhinged doors. “We can make it.”

  Beth scrambled to her feet and took off across the open ground. Carter glanced up, then set off after her. His hot breath fogged in the air, and his knee began to ache; he must have hit it harder than he thought when the car went into the ditch. But he kept running toward the old white wooden doors, wondering all the while what he would do once they got inside.

  The gap between the barn doors was just a few feet, but Beth slipped in swiftly. Carter followed, then quickly turned and tried to push the doors closed. But the hinges on one door were broken, and its corner was firmly wedged into the dirt. No matter how hard he pushed, the door didn’t budge. He put his shoulder against it and tried again, while Beth got down on all fours and started frantically digging away at the dirt and roots that were keeping it open. “We’ve got to clear this away,” she said, scrabbling at the soil and flinging it away. Carter tried lifting the door up, but it was far too tall and heavy. Beth clawed at the dirt like a dog unearthing a bone and said, “Now, try it now!”

  Carter pushed again, kicking at the base, and this time the door creaked and moved an inch or two. “It’s moving!” Carter said, and Beth dug deeper into the dirt. Carter leaned his entire weight against the door, then Beth stood up and pushed against it too, the old wood groaned, then shuddered forward, almost meeting the edge of the other door. “Close enough!” Carter said, reaching up for the crossbeam and dropping it down. But the beam refused to fall all the way into place; he had to stand on tiptoe and shove it down, with both hands, until the two doors were braced from behind.

  Still, the doors were closed, and he stepped back, panting. Beth brushed her hair away from her eyes and shivered in her robe. Carter unzipped his leather jacket and said, “Quick, put this on.”

  “No,” she said, shuddering. He was afraid she was starting to go into shock.

  “Yes, do it.” Instead of trying to get it on under her robe, he just forced her arms into the sleeves, then fumbled with the zipper. “We’re going to get through this,” he said, “we’re going to be okay.”

  Her eyes were wild, unfocused, and he pulled her against his chest. Moonlight filtered in between the spaces left between the rotting roof beams,
but it was enough for Carter to see that the barn was nearly empty. At the far end, he could just make out a couple of dilapidated horse stalls. A sagging hayloft loomed above.

  “Should we hide?” Beth mumbled into his shirt, and Carter said, “Yes, up there,” pointing to the loft. It was as good, or bad, a plan as any. But he also knew it wouldn’t much matter either way; surely, Arius knew where they’d gone . . . or would figure it out, soon enough.

  Holding the bottom of the rickety ladder, he let Beth climb up first. It was a fairly roomy space, but in the rear wide open to the night. If there’d once been doors, they were gone now. The wooden floor was still matted with mounds of moldy, decayed hay, and several rusted tools—an old pitchfork, a rake, and a hoe—hung forlornly from the walls. “Stay down,” he said, kneeling beside her, “and out of sight.”

  But when he started to disengage, she clutched his arms and said, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said, “I just want to look around. There might be something in here we can use.” Gently he took her hands from his sleeves and rose—just as the barn doors banged against the crossbeam holding them closed.

  “He’s here!” Beth moaned.

  As Carter knew he would be.

  The doors banged again, shaking the crossbeam, and through the narrow aperture between them a bright light shot like a gleaming dagger onto the dirt floor.

  “I’m going down,” Carter said, and Beth clutched his sleeve and whispered, “No! Stay up here!”

  But Carter didn’t want to wait for the enemy to come to him. He went down the ladder and moved stealthily toward the doors.

  The doors thumped again, as if they’d been hit with a sledgehammer, and a shard of wood flew off.

  He crept to the doors, waited until everything was still, then cautiously put one eye to the opening.

  Another eye was staring right back at him, so close the eyelashes could almost have touched his own.

  “We’re not enemies, you know,” Arius said. His breath was like an evergreen forest after the rain. Carter wanted to jump back, but something held him there. In the angel’s eye, there was something, a rippling flame in the iris, which was as hypnotic as watching a crackling fire.

  “We have a common interest.”

  Carter could guess what that was, and it sent a chill through him. Not taking his gaze from the opening between the doors, he pulled back a few inches. But it was like resisting some invisible force. There was something in the angel’s voice, too, that was powerfully alluring, something that was so . . . familiar. Like the voice of an old friend that you haven’t spoken to in ages.

  And have sorely missed.

  Carter felt as if his hands, his thoughts, his very will, were being subtly bound. He knew what he needed to do, he knew what he wanted to do, but Arius’s voice, that golden light, that verdant scent, had all but overwhelmed him.

  As he watched, a long, white hand, perfectly shaped except for the middle finger, which was blunted at one end, extended itself sideways through the aperture and placed itself under the crossbeam holding the doors closed. “We will talk,” Arius said, calmly, the way a police negotiator might address a jumper.

  Carter watched in mute horror as the fingers gripped and lifted the crossbeam. The board rose, an inch, then two inches, and was almost free, when he heard, from the hayloft, Beth shouting “Carter! No!”

  It was if someone had just thrown a bucket of ice water in his face.

  “Stop him, Carter!”

  He shook himself, looked again at the slender hand lifting the crossbeam, and saw now that it looked more like the bone-white hand of a skeleton, the hand that had killed his friend Russo, the hand that could bring unutterable death and destruction to the world. He slammed the crossbeam down, and the hand flew back.

  The doors banged together again.

  The bright light from other side of the door was abruptly extinguished, and just as suddenly there was silence. No cry of anguish, no angry curse, not even the beating of wings. Carter stood stock still, listening, but all he heard now, over his own ragged breath, was the chirping of crickets.

  He stepped back, his eyes still on the barn doors. “Where is he?” he heard Beth ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But he’s gone, isn’t he? The light is gone.” Her voice was a mixture of wishful thinking and near-hysteria.

  Yes, the light was gone. Yes, there was no sound. And much as Carter wished it could be that easy, he knew it would not be. He didn’t know where Arius was, or what he was up to, but he knew, in his heart, that he wasn’t gone.

  He moved even farther from the doors. The only way he’d know for sure would be to open them up and see what was outside.

  And that was something he wasn’t yet ready to do.

  He turned around and saw Beth’s head poking up just above the edge of the loft. Her face was dirty and scratched, and her dark hair, matted and half-frozen to her head, was adorned with broken bits of pale straw. But he was certain that he would never in his life see her looking more beautiful. Keeping one eye on the barn doors, he mounted the ladder again, and she fell into his arms; together they stood, rocking gently in place, not saying a word. He lifted one hand to stroke her hair, but then, feeling her shiver, he lowered it again to her back and tried to rub some warmth into her instead. The cold night air poured in through the rear of the open loft.

  How long they stood that way, he couldn’t have said. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t want to open them again; he wanted to just hold her there, to believe the danger was passed, to imagine they were safe and that, when they went back to the house, they’d find Abbie alive and unharmed. But something else was telling him, more and more insistently, that he had to open his eyes again, right now. That they weren’t alone in the barn anymore.

  He opened his eyes. The barn was still dark. He said “Shhh” to Beth and urged her to crouch down. Then he turned and looked down toward the wooden doors; the crossbeam was still in place, and the doors were closed. Nowhere in the barn did he see a sign of Arius, but the feeling wouldn’t go away; the back of his neck positively tingled.

  “You are born,” the voice said, “screaming.”

  He wheeled around, and there, in the deep shadow beneath the eaves of the loft, perched Arius, atop a bale of ancient hay. His naked body gave off no light right now; it was stark and white and perfectly still.

  “You live in fear.” His voice was sepulchral, and strangely mournful.

  Carter backed up to stand between the angel and Beth.

  “And you die with dread.”

  Beth crouched against the wall, below the rusty tools.

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way.” The angel was barely visible, lost in the gloom of the rafters. “It never did.”

  Carter, reluctant as he was to take his eyes off the motionless figure, still had to glance around for any sort of weapon. Any means of escape. But what escape could there be? The ladder they’d never get to, and the drop from the loft to the hard ground outside was enough to kill them.

  “We were your friends,” the angel intoned, “and we could be again.”

  “No, you can’t,” Beth said, and when Carter turned, he saw that she had taken the old pitchfork off the wall, and was holding it to her own abdomen. “I know what you want, and I’ll kill myself before I let it happen.”

  “Beth,” Carter cried, terrified by the wild look on her face, “put that down!” He reached for the tool, but Beth suddenly swung it out to ward him off, accidentally slashing the palm of his hand. “No, Carter! I mean it.”

  As Carter cupped his wounded hand, a sudden breeze—fresh and verdant—brushed past him. A pale golden light suffused the loft. The pitchfork clattered to the wooden floorboards.

  Arius, glowing, was dragging Beth by one arm.

  How had he gotten there?

  He strode to the rear of the loft, and Carter could see—though his eyes and mind could hardly believe it�
��wings unfurling from between Arius’s shoulder blades.

  But not the wings of a bird, sleek and feathered; these were leathery, batlike wings—a pterodactyl sprang to his mind—that swept up to a jagged point high above the angel’s head.

  “No!” Beth shouted, wrenching herself away from his grasp. The angel turned toward her, but too late.

  She teetered at the edge of the loft, and then toppled, screaming, to the ground below.

  “Beth!” Carter shouted, and before the angel could react, he had snatched up the pitchfork and run at his back. One of the rusted tines pierced the angel’s side.

  But that was all. In the next instant, the great wings had folded forward, and Carter felt himself wrapped in Arius’s embrace, like a helpless animal caught in the coils of a boa constrictor.

  The more he squirmed and writhed, the tighter the wings grew; the breath was being forced from his lungs, and when he tried to take another, the wings pressed harder, making it impossible.

  He thought of Beth, falling . . .

  He could feel his lungs burning, his heart straining.

  . . . and what she’d said about the water . . .

  His vision was already starting to narrow.

  . . . and the scroll . . . where it said the blood of Man and the blood of the Unholy . . .

  Tiny black spots started to swarm before his eyes.

  . . . could never again commingle . . .

  And just as he felt a black fog beginning to descend over him, he forced his hand up, up inside the shroud of wings.

  His lungs were collapsing, his body was shutting down.

  Until he found the ragged wound left by the pitchfork, and pressed his own palm, his own blood-encrusted palm, against the angel’s side.

  There was a shudder, and the angel’s grip loosened just a fraction.

  But it was enough. Carter managed to catch half a breath—then used his own nails to scratch his wounded palm open again, to wet the dried blood that was already there with a fresh new flow.

  Arius exhaled, the scent of evergreen overpowered now by the scent of a hot, desert wind.

  And Carter pressed his bleeding hand harder against the angel’s wound. His wings shivered, at first a little, then uncontrollably. Their grip loosened even more.