SARIELA: I’m not really quibbling over booze. I’m grousing about our asensual incorporeality.
HASHMAL: Oh. I see. Of course.
RAPHAEL (shouting): Bartender, another Michelob Dark, a glass of Zinfandel, and an “ouzo” for the lady!
BARTENDER (shouting back): You got it, Raffy!
HASHMAL: “Raffy”?
As the ANGELS talk, the BARTENDER prepares their drinks, sets them on a cork-bottomed tray, and eventually dispatches little AUBREY across the room to them with the tray.
RAPHAEL: I’ve made dozens of trips to Ackley over the past few months. What’s so heinous about some friendly banter with the local tavern keeper?
HASHMAL: Nothing. Not a thing.
SARIELA: I’d like to taste what I eat and drink. I’d like to process my food and liquids internally. I’d like to excrete them, once processed. Not to put too fastidious a label on it, I’d also like to screw.
HASHMAL (off-guard again): Who?
SARIELA: “Whom,” I think you mean. Anyone. Well, almost anyone. Almost anyone with the requisite anatomical equipment, the tactile sensitivity to enjoy the performance, and the courtesy to impart gratification in turn—if, that is, I were so constituted as to experience such pleasures.
AUBREY arrives with the drinks, distributes them, gives a mannerly, if awkward, bow, and retreats.
SARIELA (nodding at the boy): Even that living prepubescent facsimile of a Renaissance putto has more erogenous impulses and tissues than we do. It’s outrageous.
RAPHAEL (to HASHMAL): You see. She has a virulent case of spiritual dysfunction, with counterangelic longings of such insistent strength that—were she to publish her discontent in Heaven—she could wreak havoc among all nine orders.
SARIELA: Hogwash.
RAPHAEL: Do you deny that you suffer an uncommon—for angels—spiritual dysfunction?
SARIELA: Do you deny that we have “genitals,” albeit ones that generate neither offspring nor waste, so that we would do better to call them “naturalia,” “privates” or even “doodads”?
HASHMAL (his interest wholly engaged): Why, I never think about them at all.
SARIELA: And why should you? They don’t do anything. We can neither squirt nor swyve. Yours may swing some, guys, but mine merely—I don’t know, reside. It’s a joke: a sick, sad, unfunny joke.
RAPHAEL: Sariela, they exist at all only when we incarnate as emissaries to humanity. Why rail against their absence of functionality when, ordinarily, we have our essence as bodiless spirits about the Holy Throne.
SARIELA: Because the Occupant of the Throne should not have made us, even in our roles as emissaries, as sexless as kewpie dolls. Instead, He made me in my guise as a guardian with what I now recognize as a nearly perfect simulacrum of the quiff of an adult human female. (She starts to hike up the hem of her robe.) Look.
RAPHAEL (catching her wrist): There’s no need. We believe you.
HASHMAL: “Quiff?”
SARIELA: You guys could show me yours. I wouldn’t mind. All I’ve had to go by—the Hembrees being my first assignment and my access to photographic representations virtually nil—is Philip’s endearing set: so soft in repose, so salient in arousal.
RAPHAEL: Sariela!
SARIELA: Phooey. Why this avoidance? This shame? This Puritanical squeamishness?
HASHMAL: I don’t think that’s wholly fair. After all, I’m wearing a codpiece.
SARIELA: All right, then. Unbutton it. Snap it out.
HASHMAL (flustered): No, thank you. I couldn’t.
RAPHAEL: Such prurient curiosity ill serves you, Sariela. But I’d argue that our “shame”—a decent, angelic shame—stems from sympathy for our fallen wards.
HASHMAL: Or maybe from the realization that our equipment has only a place-holding, or representational, function. Wow, that is a downer.
SARIELA: Crap. (She knocks back the shot glass of ouzo, or whatever, that AUBREY has brought her and runs her tongue around her lips sensually.) Double crap.
RAPHAEL: Why these mad physical desires? Why such sighing and panting? Sariela, you have in you the distilled essence of pure spirit, whatever your current status as a guardian.
SARIELA: And yet I want ... I want to get it on. The Hembrees have corrupted me past recall or liberated me to joys I’m helpless to know—except, that is, in the witnessing, the hearing, and the heat of my fancy, where such joys, worse luck, seem only to carbonize and drift away.
The jukebox plays Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” A MAN and a WOMAN at the back of the room get up, clasp each other, and shuffle about the dance floor, more like shadows than apprehendable human beings. SARIELA stands.
SARIELA (enraged): How can you dance to that song? (The COUPLE ignores her.) Two people dancing together are “lonesome” only on sufferance! Stop it! (A beat or two, then:) I said, Stop it!
The COUPLE goes on dancing. The three ANGELS watch in a mood of perplexity (RAPHAEL, HASHMAL) or of raw disgruntlement (SARIELA). The song ends, the MAN and the WOMAN sit back down, the jukebox lever-locks an old Eddie Arnold 45 r.p.m. disk into play position: “Welcome to My World.”
SARIELA paces beside the table, methodically rather than feverishly—in the same studied way that she wrings her hands and clenches her jaw. RAPHAEL and HASHMAL regard her with abashed wonder. At one point, they exchange a helpless shrug. Finally, SARIELA slams herself back into her chair and stares glassily out over the bar’s clientele.
SARIELA: You guys are firing me, right?
RAPHAEL: Unless you can quell this morbid infatuation with the concupiscent, we’ll surely post you back to Guardian Dispatch Central for, well, retraining.
SARIELA: Mothballing, you mean.
RAPHAEL: Nonsense. You can’t—
SARIELA: Endless spiritual storage. Eternity will closet, then disassemble, and then wholly absorb me.
HASHMAL: Never. Never. We love you, Sariela.
SARIELA: Not as Philip Hembree loves his Angel Marie. Or vice versa.
RAPHAEL: Vice—animal frailty—has more to do with it than you seem willing to admit.
SARIELA (acidly quoting): “Love not the Heavenly Spirits, and how their love / Express they, by looks only, or do they mix / Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?”
RAPHAEL: I beg your pardon.
HASHMAL (enthusiastically): Adam’s appeal to Raphael—to you, Your Radiant Seraphacy—toward the end of the eighth book of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
SARIELA (to RAPHAEL): It made you blush, for your smile “glowed / Celestial rosy-red, Love’s proper hue,” and you said to Adam, “Let it suffice that—”
RAPHAEL: You suppose me, after all these countless eons, a halo-bearing illiterate? I know what I said. (Rises and strides about in peeved majesty.) Through Mr. Milton’s cheeky ventriloquism, I replied
“... Let it suffice thee that thou know’st
Us happy, and without Love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou may in the body enjoy’st
(And pure thou were created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint or limb, exclusive bars;
Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.”
HASHMAL (clapping mildly, once): Bravo.
RAPHAEL: Stifle it. (To SARIELA:) A bit earlier, my namesake cautioned Adam to remember—as I caution you, Sariela—that
“... Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat
In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale
By which to heavenly love thou may’st ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause
Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.”
SARIELA: Then the beasts among whom no mate was found for me, a guardian spirit, are those same dear, las
civious monkeys whom you posted me to defend. Is that it?
RAPHAEL: Exactly, my pretty picket.
SARIELA: Fine. But the ache persists. The hunger, too. In recesses I fear inaccessible.
RAPHAEL (to HASHMAL): You’ve got an appointment elsewhere, I believe.
HASHMAL: I do?
RAPHAEL: So you said. Feel free to depart for it.
HASHMAL (somewhat bemusedly): Thank you. (He demanifests, promptly and entirely.)
Meanwhile, RAPHAEL swings around SARIELA’s chair, stalks to the bonsai apple tree, pulls from it a small crimson fruit, and extends the fruit to SARIELA.
RAPHAEL: Here. For your ache. For your hunger.
SARIELA (examining it): I wouldn’t have supposed apples in season. And the hunger of which I spoke doesn’t submit to this sort of feeding.
RAPHAEL: Taste it. Take a bite.
SARIELA: A bite will engulf it.
RAPHAEL: Please. For me.
SARIELA takes a bite. The bite does encompass the tiny apple. She marvels at her empty hand and savors the fruit’s peculiar taste. Then she swallows and smiles.
SARIELA: Yes. I see.
RAPHAEL:
“Whatever pure they in the body enjoy’st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb ...”
SARIELA (radiant): I understand. But show me. No one has ever showed me.
RAPHAEL: An anomalous—indeed, an unforgivable—hole in your education.
SARIELA: Fill it. Please.
RAPHAEL: Immediately. But not here. (Takes SARIELA’s hand, guides her to her feet. Then, as they tower in the center of the dance floor, he clicks his heels together three times.) Presto, Sariela: The Rapture!
RAPHAEL and SARIELA vanish, hand in hand, from the Cat’s Eye. Over the dying strains of “Midnight Train from Georgia,” a riff of laughter from the departing SARIELA. Then the dance floor stands empty, and the only audible sound is that of AUBREY’s toes kicking the turquoise Chevy.
A door to the right of the car bar opens, and a MAN in his mid-thirties wrestles a wheelchair containing a smiling young WOMAN over the Cat’s Eye’s threshold. Every PATRON at the bar looks toward the newcomers, including AUBREY, who stops kicking the bar’s body metal.
BARTENDER (affectionately): Hey, Phil! Hey, Angel Marie!
ANGEL MARIE: Hey, Troy.
PHILIP: How goes it, Troy?
BARTENDER: Can’t complain. The usual?
ANGEL MARIE: Sure. And rack up some songs by the King.
BARTENDER: You got it.
PHILIP wheels ANGEL MARIE past the bar, tilts her chair so that it rolls onto the dance floor, and pushes her to the table where the three ANGELS sat. Here he parks his wife and sits in RAPHAEL’s former spot. AUBREY carries the HEMBREES a couple of amber longnecks, while the BARTENDER leaves the bar to feed the jukebox a handful of coins.
BARTENDER (over his shoulder): Y’all trust me to do this?
PHILIP (nuzzling ANGEL MARIE and prompting a series of giggles): Why shouldn’t we?
BARTENDER: It’s out of my era. I’m a Travis Tritt kind of guy. (To ANGEL MARIE:) Hey, darlin’, need a bodyguard?
ANGEL MARIE: Got one. Got one real close.
BARTENDER: I’d say. Well, Aubrey and me’re real proud to have you all here.
ANGEL MARIE (glancing at him): You are? Why?
BARTENDER: The head-in-the-clouds riffraff leaves and the bona fide class comes in.
ANGEL MARIE: What?
AUBREY pulls a fruit off the bonsai apple tree and hands it to ANGEL MARIE, who gives him an appreciative buss and takes a dainty bite of the apple. THE BARENDER comes over, picks up AUBREY, and totes him back down to the bar. From the jukebox, “Love Me Tender.” A MAN and a WOMAN get up from a shadowy rear table, embrace, and box-step slowly about the floor. ANGEL MARIE takes what’s left of her apple and feeds it to PHILIP.
PHILIP: Mmmmmm. Delicious.
ANGEL MARIE: Even half-bitten?
PHILIP (nuzzling her): Even half-bitten.
The lights fade. Soon, about all the audience can discern is ANGEL MARIE outlined in her wheelchair and PHILIP’s silhouette leaning into hers. The King continues to croon and the rapt COUPLE to step about rhythmically in swirls of shoe-displaced sawdust....
WITH THE ANGELS
Ramsey Campbell
RAMSEY CAMPBELL was born in Liverpool, where he still lives with his wife Jenny. His first book, a collection of stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, was published by August Derleth’s legendary Arkham House imprint in 1964. Since then his novels have included The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Face That Must Die, The Nameless, Incarnate, The Hungry Moon, Ancient Images, The Count of Eleven, The Long Lost, Pact of the Fathers, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear and Creatures of the Pool.
His short fiction has been collected in such volumes as Demons by Daylight, The Height of the Scream, Dark Companions, Scared Stiff, Waking Nightmares, Cold Print, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead and Just Behind You. He has also edited a number of anthologies, including New Terrors, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, Uncanny Banquet, Meddling with Ghosts and Gathering the Bones: Original Stories from the World’s Masters of Horror (with Dennis Etchison and Jack Dann).
The author’s latest novel is Solomon Kane (based on the recent film and various drafts of the screenplay, it attempts both to capture the film and include deleted elements that director Michael Bassett would have liked to include). Forthcoming is another novel, The Seven Days of Cain, while Ghosts Know is in progress.
Ramsey Campbell has won multiple World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Awards and Bram Stoker Awards, and is a recipient of the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the Howie Award of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival for Lifetime Achievement, and the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend Award. A film reviewer for BBC Radio Merseyside since 1969, he is also president of both the British Fantasy Society and the Society of Fantastic Films.
“My fellow clansman Paul Campbell will remember the birth of this tale,” he reveals. “At the Dead Dog party after the 2010 World Horror Convention in Brighton, someone was throwing a delighted toddler into the air. I was ambushed by an idea and had to apologize to Paul for rushing away to my room to scribble notes. The result is here.”
AS CYNTHIA DROVE BETWEEN the massive mossy posts where the gates used to be, Karen said “Were you little when you lived here, Auntie Jackie?”
“Not as little as I was,” Cynthia said.
“That’s right,” Jacqueline said while the poplars alongside the high walls darkened the car, “I’m even older than your grandmother.”
Karen and Valerie giggled and then looked for other amusement. “What’s this house called, Brian?” Valerie enquired.
“The Populars,” the four-year-old declared and set about punching his sisters almost before they began to laugh.
“Now, you three,” Cynthia intervened. “You said you’d show Jackie how good you can be.”
No doubt she meant her sister to feel more included. “Can’t we play?” said Brian as if Jacqueline were a disapproving bystander.
“I expect you may,” Jacqueline said, having glanced at Cynthia. “Just don’t get yourselves dirty or do any damage or go anywhere you shouldn’t or that’s dangerous.”
Brian and the eight-year-old twins barely waited for Cynthia to haul two-handed at the brake before they piled out of the Volvo and chased across the forecourt into the weedy garden. “Do try and let them be children,” Cynthia murmured.
“I wasn’t aware I could change them.” Jacqueline managed not to groan while she unbent her stiff limbs and clambered out of the car. “I shouldn’t think they would take much notice of me,” she said, supporting herself on the hot roof as sh
e turned to the house.
Despite the August sunlight, it seemed darker than its neighbours, not just because of the shadows of the trees, which still put her in mind of a graveyard. More than a century’s worth of winds across the moors outside the Yorkshire town had plastered the large house with grime. The windows on the topmost floor were half the size of those on the other two storeys, one reason why she’d striven in her childhood not to think they resembled the eyes of a spider, any more than the porch between the downstairs rooms looked like a voracious vertical mouth. She was far from a child now, and she strode or at any rate limped to the porch, only to have to wait for her sister to bring the keys. As Cynthia thrust one into the first rusty lock the twins scampered over, pursued by their brother. “Throw me up again,” he cried.
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