by Del Howison
Her emaciated body sat by the window, sunlight illuminating the purple Kaposi’s sarcoma sores around her neck and mouth. She held a single blue balloon that read: “Happy 53rd.” Her hand loosened on the string, releasing the balloon out the window. She watched it slowly drift skyward until it became a tiny dot, swallowed by the clouds.
Then she calmly opened her purse and took out Daniel’s Glock 9mm.
It felt cold and heavy.
She placed the gun in Daniel’s hand, curled his stiff fingers around the grip, and raised it beneath his chin.
“Till death do us part.”
She pulled the trigger and blew Daniel’s brains all over the cross on the wall.
Then she blew out hers.
Just as Daniel had seen in the mirror.
THE FALL
D. LYNN SMITH
“They created a contemptible spirit in order to adulterate souls through this spirit.”
–THE SECRET BOOK OF JOHN
RYAN IS AFRAID of the dark. He is afraid of the thunder that rumbles outside like the stomach of some hungry beast. He is afraid of the lightning that gives glimpses of things hiding in the dark. In one flash he sees the dark maw of the kitchen arch. FLASH, he sees the refrigerator door with an angel magnet, its wings spread to protect the picture of him, his mom and dad, and the twins. FLASH, he sees his father sitting at the kitchen table, head hanging as if he slept sitting up.
Then the darkness returns and he sees only afterimages of those glimpses swimming before his eyes.
“Dad?”
“Go back to bed, Ryan,” his father says.
“When’s Mom coming home?”
“Soon.”
Thunder growls.
“I’m afraid,” Ryan says.
“So am I.”
But Ryan knows it isn’t true. His father is a fireman. He saves people’s lives while risking his own. Lightning pours into the room. His father hasn’t moved. Ryan turns away.
The hall is dark, but a little light pours through a doorway at the far end. He walks past the twins’ room. The door is shut so he can’t see inside. Sometimes he wished he could close a door in his head so he didn’t have to see inside it, either.
He moves down the hall and into the light spilling from his aquarium. Five discus swim over to the glass to greet him. His mother didn’t want him to get discus. The pet-shop guy said they weren’t good for kids. They’re skittish. They don’t like vibrations like those from kids jumping around. But Ryan convinced his mom that at twelve years old he was no longer a kid.
These are red turquoise discus. They have red-brown stripes and are blue around the outside of their bodies. Each one has a name. Sally, Jack, Alice, Sam, and Bill.
Jack is a little bit smaller than the rest, but he acts like he’s the biggest fish in the tank. He eats first and nobody gives him any grief. Ryan likes that. It makes Jack his favorite.
The twins had always wanted to come in to see the fish. But they would tap on the glass, so Ryan had kept them out. He wishes now he had played with them more.
Ryan didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until a deafening crash of thunder makes him jump awake. There are voices in the kitchen, so he creeps down the dark hall and stands beside the refrigerator.
FLASH. His father stands facing Ryan’s mother. She’s beautiful. Her skin is white and smooth, her brown hair short and sort of wild looking. She wears the T-shirt Ryan gave her that says, “World’s Greatest Mom.”
DARKNESS.
“Jess,” Ryan’s mother says. “Let’s not fight. I love you.”
Ryan hears his father murmur something, but thunder rumbles and he can’t make out the words. FLASH. His mother embraces his father and, for a moment, Ryan thinks that maybe everything is going to be okay. Maybe his mother is back for good and they are going to be a family again.
DARKNESS. Ryan hears the muffled sound of the gun. A wail cuts through the night and the thunder crashes in unison. FLASH. The T-shirt blossoms with blood in the “a” of “greatest.” His mother’s mouth twists and her fangs descend. DARKNESS. Ryan covers his ears against the terrible wail filling the kitchen. FLASH. His dad raises the gun to his mother’s forehead. DARKNESS. The crack and flash of the gun is worse than that of the thunder and lightning. The sulfurous stink of the gunpowder hurts his nose.
FLASH. His father picks up a machete and raises it above his head. “I love you, too,” he says. Then he brings the machete down. DARKNESS. Ryan knows his mother is no more.
The keening that should have stopped when his mother’s head separated from her body continues. Ryan realizes it’s coming from his own throat. FLASH. His father drops the machete and turns. His face is a reflection of the grief that Ryan feels ripping through his body. DARKNESS. Ryan runs to his dad and holds on. He cries. But it’s okay, because his dad cries, too.
* * *
Southern Florida is crisscrossed with a network of roads where developers have run out of money and abandoned their housing developments. Palmettos grow where bedrooms should be. Street signs used for target practice are riddled with holes. Rusted-out refrigerators and stained mattresses are the only lawn art here. These are lonely, desolate places.
If you follow one of these roads back into one of the subdivisions, you’ll find an old trailer set on cinder blocks. It looks like it’s been deserted for years, but close inspection shows fresh tire prints in the soft dirt and flattened grass where a jeep has passed.
Ryan’s bike bumps along this grassy track as he races toward the trailer. The air is thick and heavy. His shirt sticks to him. Sweat runs down to sting his eyes.
He bikes past three white crosses. In front of one is a rectangle of freshly turned earth.
He stops when he reaches his father’s jeep. Then he lets his bike fall and runs toward the trailer.
A deep-throated rumble stops him in his tracks. His eyes dart around. A shadow moves beneath the trailer. There’s a hissing and a growl that crawls inside his stomach and curls up into a hard knot.
A twelve-foot bull alligator has taken refuge from the sun underneath the trailer. When Ryan was six years old, a neighbor took him out to show him the alligator that lived in the lake behind her house. The neighbor was going to feed it a chicken breast. It ate her arm instead.
Ryan screws up his nerve and slowly makes his way toward the trailer’s steps, keeping a wary eye on the alligator. Having issued his warning, the gator goes back to napping.
Inside the trailer a man stands spread-eagle, his arms suspended from the ceiling with chains, his legs similarly spread and chained.
Ryan’s father sits on a stool in front of the man. “I told you to go straight home after school,” he says.
Ryan’s mouth is dry as the man’s head swivels toward him. No, not a man. A creature that almost looks like a man. Except its nose is kind of flat and its eyes are round and black like marbles.
The creature’s mouth spreads into a wide smile when it sees Ryan. There are only four pointed teeth, two on the top and two on the bottom. Pink gums glisten through the lips.
“My boy.” Its voice sounds a lot like the hissing of the alligator.
Ryan forgets to avoid looking into the creature’s eyes and he falls into a jumble of disjointed memories. The death smell of swamp in the twins’ room. The thump of a body hitting the floor. A tongue licking blood from pale lips. The sharp smell of pee. A little girl’s whimper.
A stinging slap brings Ryan back to the present. There are tears in his eyes.
The creature’s laugh fills the room with the smell of rotting swamp.
Ryan’s father grabs him by the shoulders, jerking him away. “Go home,” he says.
Ryan’s tears begin to spill down his face. “I didn’t help them,” he says. “He killed them and I just stood there.”
Ryan’s father shakes him. “You couldn’t help them. That thing enthralled you. That’s why you can’t look into its eyes.”
Ryan stares into his father’s e
yes, wanting to believe, wanting to be enthralled so he can forget. “I want to kill it,” he says. “I have to kill it.”
His father’s eyes are hard. Ryan hopes he doesn’t see how afraid he is.
“Food animals don’t kill,” hisses the creature. “They die.”
Ryan’s father takes a deep breath. “It’s late,” he says. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll show you what I know.”
“Aren’t you coming home?”
“I can’t leave him alone. Will you be all right?”
Ryan feels a flash of fear, but he also feels a flash of pride that his father trusts him to stay home alone. “Yeah,” he answers. “I’ll make peanut butter and jelly.”
“Bring me one tomorrow, okay? Extra jelly.”
* * *
When Ryan returns the next day, his father is deep into experimenting on the creature. “This thing isn’t like what your mom became,” says Ryan’s father.
“She was excrement,” hisses the creature.
Ryan’s father raises a cattle prod and touches it to the center of the creature’s bare chest. Its scream sounds like the scream of the neighborhood cat Ryan saw hit by a car. Chessie was dead, lying on her side, and yet her body kept twisting and jumping two feet into the air as that death scream oozed out of her.
Ryan’s father continues to hold the cattle prod to the creature’s skin, not seeming to notice the screaming. “This thing has never been human. The only weakness I’ve found so far is to electric shock. Look at its chest.”
Ryan watches as the creature’s skin blackens in a round circle around the end of the cattle prod.
“Electricity burns it.” His father takes the prod away and the screaming fades into a hiss. “It heals quickly.”
The blackened skin sloughs off and healthy, pink skin appears beneath.
“His arms look funny,” says Ryan.
“That’s because they’re not just arms. Come, look at this.” Ryan’s father was flushed with the excitement of discovery. It had been a long time since Ryan had seen him like this. Not since that time in Zion National Park when he had found a real Indian arrowhead.
“The elbows don’t bend like ours do. They bend kind of sideways and back.” He reaches up and grabs the creature’s arm, bending it back. The creature turns and hisses at him, his face a mask of terror and rage. Yellow spittle flies from its mouth and drips down its chin.
Ryan steps back but his father puts a hand on his shoulder. “He can’t hurt you now,” he says.
He pulls at the membrane that runs along the creature’s arm and down its side to its feet. “It’s a wing, Ryan. Like a bat. That’s how he got out of the twins’ room so quick. He jumped out the window, then flew away.”
“Your young make good food,” hissed the creature. “So easy to take, so succulent. It’s why I came back for the mother.”
Ryan feels the barb hit his heart. I was enthralled, he reminded himself. It wasn’t my fault.
“Can I shock him, Dad?” he asks.
His father’s eyes have gone dead as he stares at the creature. He hands the cattle prod to Ryan. Ryan lifts it to a small pink nipple on the creature’s chest. The creature’s scream is that of many dying cats. Ryan feels satisfaction.
* * *
Ryan’s father stays with the creature each night for a week. Ryan calls in sick for him. Then he microwaves frozen macaroni and cheese or makes peanut butter sandwiches. He takes some to his dad, but his dad doesn’t eat much. He doesn’t bathe. He doesn’t put on the clean clothes Ryan brings him.
He smells bad. His face is dark with whiskers and each time he hugs Ryan they scratch his cheek and hurt.
But the creature doesn’t die. His dad has strangled it, stabbed it, and shot it. Each time the skin heals and the creature laughs, its rotting breath chasing away even the smell of his father.
Ryan knows how to kill it. He’ll do it tomorrow. Then his dad will come home.
At home, Ryan goes into his room, and the discus swim to the glass to greet him. He takes some flake food and drops it in—only what he knows they can eat in five minutes so leftover food doesn’t soil the water. Jack darts around catching the biggest of the drifting flakes. He is greedy. Ryan wonders if the others get enough to eat. Maybe Jack is eating their share.
Ryan taps on the tank. All five fish dart away as if they were hit by an invisible bat. Then they go after the food again. Jack is first. Ryan taps the glass again. The fish dart away.
The creature had called the twins “food.” “Good food,” it said.
Ryan taps the glass.
Before it had drained them, the creature had smelled them.
Tap.
It put its face down by their necks and breathed in their little-kid smell.
Tap.
Then it bit them and Ryan watched the life run out of their eyes a little at a time. He didn’t look into the creature’s eyes. He wasn’t enthralled. He was afraid. And in his fear he’d peed his pants.
The aquarium glass breaks and Ryan’s hand has a deep slice from which blood runs. The discus slide out on a waterfall and land on the floor. They flop up and down like a dead cat, their mouths gaping, their eyes bulging. Ryan stands and watches as blood mixes with water around the tortured bodies. Jack is the last to die.
* * *
Ryan goes to church. He tells them his father is sick. They offer to bring communion to the house, but Ryan tells them he can’t eat anything. Not even communion.
They ask about Ryan’s injured hand. They want to peek under the gauze he has wrapped around it. The blood has started to seep through. Has he seen a doctor? He needs a tetanus shot. They’ll take him to the hospital since his dad can’t.
No, he tells them. It’s not bad. Just a scratch from working on his bike.
Ryan takes communion. He watches the priest bless the sacrament, then, when it’s his turn, he walks to the front and kneels.
On the wall above the altar is a stained-glass window with the image of Christ, broken and bleeding on the cross. An angel hovers above his head, a look of sorrow on its face. Ryan wonders why the angel doesn’t rescue the son of God.
The priest dips the wafer, the body of Christ, into the wine, the blood of Christ, and places the dripping wafer into Ryan’s mouth. The blood will cleanse him of his sins and allow him to enter the kingdom of heaven. His mother used to take communion. The twins had been too young.
Ryan leaves the church and rides his bike back to the trailer. The bull alligator is still there. It hisses and rumbles at Ryan, but Ryan doesn’t even notice.
Inside the trailer, the creature is starving. Its hair is falling out in clumps. Its bones show beneath sallow skin. Its wrists and ankles are raw and swollen. It pants and whimpers.
His father is down on his hands and knees, examining the claws on its feet. He has a pair of pliers on one claw. He pulls. The creature whimpers again as the claw comes free and a bloody hole is left on its foot.
Ryan’s father looks up as Ryan enters. He doesn’t look much better than the beast. “It cuts glass,” he says. “Watch.”
He leads Ryan over to a window where there are several slices. He uses the claw to slice the last side of a square. Then he gently taps on the glass and the square falls out into the weeds. “Just like a diamond,” he says.
He sees Ryan’s backpack with the handle sticking out. “What’s that?” he asks.
Ryan pulls out the machete. His father stares first at it, then at Ryan.
“I’m going to chop off its head,” says Ryan. “I’m going to kill it.”
The look in his father’s eyes fills Ryan with doubt. It looks like panic. “Don’t you want to kill it?” he asks.
“It hasn’t paid enough.”
“I want you to come home.”
His father notices the bandage. He takes Ryan’s hand in his and says, “What happened?”
Ryan shrugs. His father begins to unwrap the bloody gauze. The creature stirs.
“This looks
bad.” The cut is still oozing blood. The skin around it is red and angry-looking. “You need stitches.”
The hand hurts, but Ryan doesn’t care.
The creature raises its head. Ryan meets its eyes. Nothing. No memories. No enthrallment. Ryan sneers at it. Only it’s not looking at him. It’s looking at his hand. It begins to whine.
Ryan’s father turns. He takes the bloody bandage and waves it in front of the creature. The whining grows louder. Yellow drool drips from its chin.
“Is this what you want? My son’s blood? My blood?” He holds the bandage closer, just out of reach as the creature strains to take it into its mouth. “You will not have it,” says his father.
The creature convulses so violently that the trailer trembles. Ryan and his father are knocked against the wall.
The metal roof screams as a second convulsion hits the creature. One of the shackles breaks free from the buckling roof. The arm falls to the creature’s side as if made of lead.
Ryan’s father dives for the cattle prod, but the trailer shakes like a giant metal dog and the prod is knocked away. The second shackle breaks. The creature falls onto his face on the floor.
Ryan watches as its body begins to change, the bones shifting beneath the skin with hideous snaps and pops. The creature flips onto its back and its back arches. It opens its mouth and a darkness issues out like a swarm of gnats.
Right there before them the creature transforms. Its skin becomes translucent. From its back sprout wings of white feathers. All its wounds heal. Its face transforms to one so beautiful Ryan cannot bear to look at it.
The trailer stops its metallic screams. The silence is filled with the angel’s harsh breathing as it struggles to its knees, then to its feet.
Ryan’s father is between Ryan and the angel. He is on his knees, his face in his hands, supplicant to the being before him.
The angel moves to kneel in front of his father. It reaches out and pulls his hands away.
“Do not kneel before me, for I am the source of your anguish,” says the angel, its voice like the chiming of church bells.