Visitants-Stories of Fallen Angels and Heavenly Hosts

by Stephen Jones (ed)

  Most of my memories of the adventures I’d had here in this ten-acre patch of scrubby woodland originated in someone else’s imagination. They were my personal take on whatever book I happened to be reading, and if I could recall them with any degree of accuracy I was sure they would only embarrass me. What mattered was the emotion, the happiness I’d known in this place—that’s what I was so eager to recapture.

  What added to the charm, I’m sure, was that it was so private. I didn’t share it with anyone. I had no brothers, sisters or cousins, and never took any friends along on these family visits. I learned early not to talk to the adults about what I got up to. To them, the bayou was a source of danger and contamination. It was polluted with sewage and industrial waste, it was a source of disease-carrying mosquitoes and the home for at least three different varieties of poisonous snakes. I was strictly forbidden from swimming in it, and although I always kept to the rule about not swimming alone, I did sometimes just wade in the clear-running shallows. Afraid that if they were reminded of it too often they might eventually forbid me to play there at all, I kept quiet about it.

  Now, as I plunged deeper into the woods, eager to return to the bayou, the old passion rose up again, making me forget my age. I’d never forgotten this part of my childhood; it was too basic to who I was, but for the first time it seemed strange to me that I’d never tried to go back, to make my way through the familiar woods and look upon the bayou again. It was as inexplicable as if I’d stopped visiting some close relative. After all, I’d kept coming back to Houston—in the last decade I’d managed a visit every year to see my parents.

  I had to stop to disentangle myself from a bush. I paused, wiped the sweat out of my eyes, and fanned my face ineffectually with one hand, knowing it was probably blotched with red. Although I hadn’t gone very far, I was already breathless and much too hot. Insects buzzed and whined about my head, and my right arm was stinging: I saw a blood-beaded line where a thorny branch must have caught me.

  Where was the path?

  In my memory, there were several distinct trails I could take down to the bayou. But now that I considered it, unless my grandmother used to give her yard man special instructions, the only person who could have cleared a trail was either me or Mr. Boudreaux. Whatever existed back in the 1960s would have disappeared long ago.

  For a moment, I thought about giving up.

  There was a very good reason for not returning to a childhood playground, and that was that I was no longer a child. I was one of the grown-ups now, aware there was more chance of picking up a tick (which might give me Lyme disease) or stepping on a copperhead (whose bite might kill me) than there was of discovering something truly wonderful in these woods. I no longer believed in magic, and knew too much about geography and history to imagine I might stumble across the ruins of an old Aztec or Mayan temple.

  But when I looked around behind me I couldn’t see the house. Reasoning that it might take me just as long to struggle back to it as it would to press on and be rewarded by the sight of the bayou, I decided to continue.

  With an effort, trying not to think of snakes or worry about poison ivy or biting insects among the mass of undergrowth surrounding me, I forced my way ahead and eventually—probably no more than five minutes later—the forest thinned, and I found myself standing on a sand-and-clay bank, a few feet above a wide, gleaming stretch of brown water.

  I was amazed at how well this peaceful vision matched my memory. The bayou, winding away into woodland, overhung by trees, was beautiful and mysterious and roused a feeling in my heart that I’d class somewhere between aesthetic pleasure and religious awe. Although I’m very much a city person—or maybe because of it—my occasional encounters with nature produce a powerful impact, making me realize there’s a lot more to the world than I know. Of course, I usually forget this insight a moment after I’ve had it. Or at least I continue to live as if I had.

  I looked down at the darkly glinting water and wondered about its depth. A stone at the water’s edge moved, and I caught my breath, imagining I’d seen something impossible, then recognized it as a turtle, one of four, basking in the early sun. I heard the sharp, impatient hammer of a woodpecker in the woods behind me. More distantly came the unending, windy rushing sound I knew must be the freeway traffic, but apart from that, which was easily ignored, it was quiet. It was almost impossible to believe this land actually existed, unknown and unspoiled, inside a big city. I felt as if I’d stepped back in time, or been transported in space—like a child again.

  I didn’t want to leave.

  The heat, the scratch on my arm, worries about tick bites and snakes—they no longer bothered me. I made my way along the embankment. With the bayou to follow, I didn’t need a path. My old passion for exploring had hold of me again.

  The scenery became more and more familiar; a feeling I distrusted. I had to be kidding myself. It was forty years since I’d roamed these woods, and even the natural course of the stream had probably changed in that time.

  But it was more than a vague sense of déjà vu—I knew this place. Gradually, the banks rose higher from the water, and the sandy strand on this side widened out into a beach, which I remembered well as a favorite place to play. And there, where the bank rose up especially steeply, showing a pale, pitted face where nothing grew, that was “the cliff,” and I’d practiced my mountaineering skills there. (Pathetic, yes, but the best I could do on this flat, coastal plain.) A little further along—my pace picked up as I remembered—there was a natural hollow that I’d managed to enlarge. I’d made it into “my cave” and it was a great place to escape the heat of the sun and curl up and read. And it was still there. After all this time, natural forces had not eroded it away. My little hidey-hole was still a snug retreat.

  For a moment I regretted not having brought a book along, for old time’s sake. And then I saw that somebody was there before me.

  No. My heart gave a lurch, and I stopped and stared. There was something inside the “cave”—some blankets and maybe a cushion ...?

  Were they mine? I remembered the trouble I’d gotten into when a couple of my grandmother’s cushions went missing ... how was I to know they were so special? But whatever was out here now, it could not be my grandmother’s cushions. I’d returned my makeshift bed to the house, and my allowance had been docked for several months, to pay for specialist dry-cleaning.

  It was the wrong color, anyway; not elegant cushions but something lumpy, off-white, beige, khaki ... maybe a pile of old clothes. Some other children might have found their way to this hideout, or else it was only litter, deposited there when the waters rose above flood level.

  I went closer, and then closer still, picking my way along the water’s edge far more slowly and cautiously than I would have as a child, because there was a prickling, crawling sensation all down my back as I began to suspect it was something more, and worse, than a pile of rags.

  It was a body. I stopped and fought the urge to turn and run away. Stupid to go running for help only to find out my deteriorating eyesight had tricked me. I made myself go closer, until I was absolutely sure. Yes, it was a body, small as a child.

  Strangely, now that I was sure, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t even horrified. It was like a discovery made in a dream, where normal reactions are inappropriate.

  Not so much calm as detached I went closer for a better look. It was not a child’s body after all, but an old man’s, and I wasn’t sure he was dead.

  “Mr. Boudreaux?”

  I spoke on impulse, not because I recognized him, but simply because that was the name of the old man whose fate I’d been wondering about. And yet as soon as I spoke, everything changed. I saw for sure that he was still breathing, and as I gazed so intently at his face, trying to match it to one already in my memory, the waxy stillness of it softened beneath my gaze, almost as if my attention had brought him back to life. I looked from that ancient, sleeping face, to the hand I could see curled against his side
, tiny and claw-like. If he wasn’t Mr. Boudreaux, his presence here on my property became even more mysterious.

  I looked around. There was no sound, as if the whole world held its breath. Sunlight lanced off the water below, unbearably bright.

  “Mr. Boudreaux?” My voice trembled. “Mr. Boudreaux, is that really you?”

  I stared down at the wizened figure curled into the hollowed-out space in the earth and saw his eyes were moving behind their closed lids. His breathing was so shallow that it scarcely lifted his sunken chest, but there was no doubt about it: he was breathing, was dreaming. Alive, but for how much longer?

  I took a deep breath and spoke with determination. “I’m going to get help. I don’t have a phone with me, so I’ll have to go back to the house and call from there. I won’t be long, I promise—”

  His eyes flashed open. For a moment they seemed like a new baby’s, unable to focus, but then they fastened on to my face, and he smiled with recognition. He tried to speak—the dry, cracked lips parted slightly, and I saw his tongue moving—but he made no sound.

  “It’s all right,” I said gently. “I’ve found you, and I’m just going to get help.”

  I hadn’t finished speaking when he put his arms out to me, and I realized that, of course, the simplest, quickest way to rescue him was to carry him back to the house myself. Once I’d given him some water and he’d had a chance to recover, he could tell me who to call. So I took hold of him, bracing myself for a weight that wasn’t there. To my astonishment, he was lighter than a baby. I’d carried luggage that weighed more than him across half of Europe, not to mention up and down the steps of the Métro. And, unlike most burdens, he wasn’t a dead weight. He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled his legs up out of the way, to make it easier for me to carry him.

  And it was easy—more than just easy, it was a pleasure. And this time I found the path right away, so had no problem in getting back to the house.

  Inside, I put him down gently on the bigger of the two couches in the living room, propped him up among cushions, and fetched him a glass of water from the kitchen. I made sure it was lukewarm, and warned him not to drink too much or too quickly or he might make himself sick.

  He smiled at me as if to say he’d been around long enough to know all about that, and took a careful sip. I watched in peaceful silence as he slowly drank the water. I had a lot of questions, of course, but they could wait.

  He didn’t want anything to eat, and he shook his head, a look of sadness on his face, when I asked if there was anyone I should call.

  “Don’t you have any family?”

  Another slow, mournful turning of his head. Like me, he was all alone in the world. Maybe whoever had been taking care of him had gotten fed up and dumped him in the wilderness, or maybe he’d wandered off. I didn’t know if he could speak or how well his thought processes worked. He seemed to understand everything I said perfectly well, but when I asked him his name he gave me a puzzled yet hopeful look, as if expecting me to supply it.

  “Mr. Boudreaux?”

  He gave me the same uncertain look. He couldn’t remember, it said, but if that’s what I wanted to call him ... I sighed. “How about a bath?”

  He brightened up at that, nodded, and held out his arms to be lifted with the perfect simplicity and trust of a young child.

  This time, as I gathered him into my arms again, I recognized the feeling that flowed through me as love: not desire, not gratification, not as I’d ever felt it before, but something pure and strong and deep, the way I think a mother must love her child.

  I carried him upstairs to the master bathroom, and settled him into a comfortably cushioned wicker basket chair to wait while I ran the bath. When I turned back to look at him and saw that he had not moved, he was waiting for me to undress him, I knew a little flicker of unease. I’d never undressed another person except erotically; I had no experience as a caregiver. But I think I managed to avoid any hesitation, even the slightest sign that I was uncomfortable.

  I unbuttoned his shirt, and gestured for him to lean forward so I could slip it off. As I did so, I saw the scars on his back. Alongside his shoulder blades were two dark, curving lines, a parenthesis carved into his flesh. No accident had put them there; they spoke of ancient surgery, of an excision long ago.

  I understood. He had been born—perhaps created is the better word—with wings. I could see them in my mind’s eye, magnificently large and strong, bigger than a swan’s, and covered entirely in glossy dark feathers, perhaps reddish brown, perhaps sable. Or maybe the feathers never had a chance to sprout; maybe the operation took place soon after his birth. However it was, it must have been traumatic for him. He was fearful, I could see, that having discovered his difference I would turn on him. Although it seemed impossible to me, I knew it must have happened before.

  Carefully, with infinite tenderness, I embraced him.

  “Welcome home,” I whispered, and might have been speaking to myself.

  A FEAST OF ANGELS

  Jay Lake

  ST. PETER MADE FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE coroner of Heaven. Though Heaven stands outside time, all things there both concurrent and infinite, being human Nietzsche’s perceptions were perforce more or less sequential. Heaven’s coroner was a stultifying job, as death was unknown there.

  “I am convinced,” Nietzsche told Origen of Alexandria over a six-pack of Stroh’s, “that this is my punishment.” They sat at a picnic table on a small, isolated cloud.

  The little Egyptian’s hand spasmed, crinkling his own can of beer. “This is hell,” he whispered. Lately they spoke American English, equally foreign to both. Also equally offensive in its colloquial imprecision. “The Adversary has crafted this eternity for such as us.”

  “Could be worse.” Nietzsche stared down off their cloud at a bus loaded with joyful Charismatics bound for Branson, Missouri, on a three-day pass. “We could be with them.”

  “Though all days in Heaven are the same, still I have been here a very long time.” Origen tugged another Stroh’s off the six-pack. “There have been worse things. Old Hermes Trimegistus got it wrong. As below, so above.”

  Nietzsche shuddered, imagining the Heaven of the Inquisition, or John Calvin. Origen had lived through them both. Aimee Semple McPherson had been bad enough for him.

  St. Peter appeared, pot-bellied and irritated. His robes were askew and his halo appeared to have developed a crack. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “This is Heaven,” said Nietzsche. “There are no problems.”

  Origen burped for emphasis, the yeasty odor of recycled Stroh’s disturbing Heaven’s usual pine-scented freshness.

  Peter frowned, obviously picking his words with care. “This problem has always existed, but now I wish to address it.”

  “Sh-sh-shimultaneity,” said Origen, who had been talking to Einstein lately. “No shuch thing.”

  Nietzsche shot Origen a hard glare. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Coroner trouble,” said Peter.

  “In Heaven? I thought you were just yanking my chain.”

  “Consider yourself yanked,” said Peter darkly. “We need you now.”

  “Now is the same as then in Heaven,” muttered Nietzsche, disentangling himself from the picnic table. “Where are we going?”

  “Other end of time,” said Peter.

  “Hot dog,” Origen shouted. He vaulted over the table after Nietzsche and St. Peter. “I always wanted to see Creation.”

  They stood on nothing, slightly above a rough-textured plain receding into darkness. Scattered vegetation struggled from the surface; thin, sword-like plants. The only light was from St. Peter’s Heavenly effulgence. Somewhere nearby, water lapped against an unseen shore. Unlike the rest of Heaven, this place stank of mold and rust and an odor of damp rock.

  “I’m impressed,” observed Nietzsche. “What is this? The root cellar?”

  “Foundations, more like it,” Peter said.

  They both glanced
at Origen, who looked intently into the darkness.

  Peter waved his staff and the three of them, still standing on nothing, began to cruise over the landscape. Nietzsche found this far more unnerving than Heaven’s usual cloudscape.

  “Clouds,” said Peter, “simply hide the unsettling reality.”

  Nietzsche stared at him.

  Peter shrugged. “This close to the source, thoughts are words.”

  “Mind your soul.” Origen spoke quietly. He sounded very sober.

  There was a glimmering of light ahead, a false dawn that grew into a constellation of fireflies as they approached.

  “This is the problem.” Peter’s voice was stony and grim. “This has always been the problem.”

  The fireflies became bonfires, and the bonfires became a sky full of light, and the sky full of light became a host of angels, in their naked majesty all swords and pinions and flames and power, burrowing amongst ribs larger than rivers.