by A. L. Mengel
Delia cocked her head to the side. “I…try? I’ve never been able to fly, Tramos. Why would you even think…”
Tramos put his arm around her shoulder. “Because of who you are, Delia. Because of what you are. You don’t think that you were placed in Paris with your mother and father by chance, did you?”
She closed her eyes.
She saw father again. The blood was seeping across the floor. And then she saw mother. Her face in the casket. And before that vision, when mother had still been alive. He saw her father, whipping her with a belt as she bent over the kitchen table, clawing her way away from his assault, screaming and crying.
“No! Stop! Stop!”
Tramos embraced Delia as she shook. She looked up to him. “I have been blocking those memories…”
“There are no chances, Delia. No coincidences. Everything is planned.”
Tramos lifted Delia’s chin. She looked up at him and he smiled. “You were placed there for a specific purpose,” he said, as he smiled warmly. “I know it was very upsetting to you. But we angels are never placed in easy situations. When others flee the evil in the world, we run towards it. We rescue those who cannot save themselves. We protect those who cannot do so for themselves. We shadow them from the storms, and shield them from the fire…”
And then she thought of Darius.
He saw his face, his long dark hair, his smile.
And then many times that he called on her, in her little apartment in Miami, those humid nights that he gently knocked on the door, when she sat with him on her sofa, sipping wine, reading the books that Darius had consulted with the hopes of saving himself.
But there had been no solution in the books they read together.
Tramos sensed her thoughts.
“You were a great influence on Darius,” he said. “And have been equally so on Antoine as well. Do you see how you have been placed in their lives also, Delia?”
Delia thought of her time at the chateau. “Am I to protect Antoine as well?”
Tramos nodded. “In time, you will recognize your assignments more quickly. And your powers. You will learn how to use them. You have extraordinary power, Delia. And that’s why I am visiting you. That’s why I came to your dressing room at that precise moment in time. Because I have felt a significant need to guide you. You are having memories, in this vision with me, of events that you have yet to experience as a young starlet in Paris. But I felt the need to interject. To give you some guidance. And some knowledge.”
“And take me under your wing.”
“Do you want to try?”
Delia reached around towards her back. “I don’t feel anything,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Will it to happen, Delia. And it will happen.”
She thought about father.
And mother.
Antoine and Darius.
And Atticus.
The images flooded her mind, flashing towards her and composing her cerebral vision. Again, and again, the images permeated her thoughts, until she felt her feet lift off the ground.
She opened her eyes and looked down. The beach was below and Tramos stood in the sand, looking up at her.
“I’m flying!” she squealed, laughing and crying at the same time. She looked up and saw the expanse of her wings, the same brightness, the same white, the colors and the music. They were moving, soaring and flapping and carrying her into the sky. “Oh they’re so beautiful!”
Tramos spread his wings and joined her in the sky. They levitated above the beach as the chorale strengthened, and they held hands, floating across from each other, their sprawling wings reaching far across the sky, flapping up and down.
Delia beamed as she felt warmth. She closed her eyes as the sun brightened.
“The light!” Tramos said. “You are absorbing the light. Now look down below!”
Delia looked down and saw the beach, as it got tinier and seemed very dark, very black, like it was a film that was fading away to black.
“You are moving towards the light, Delia! Everything else will seem like darkness. You have found your wings! Oh, I’m so proud of you Delia!”
Delia threw her head back and felt the wind catch her hair, treasuring the warmth of the light on her face. Nothing else seemed to matter. Tramos let go of one of her hands so they were levitating together, next to one another, facing the sunlight. “It’s time, Delia. Time to go and finish our mission. The immortals need us.”
“I’m having a vision!” Delia exclaimed. “I see a cross!”
“That is part of your mission, Delia. It’s time for us to focus on why we are here. It’s time for you to focus on your mission, and for me to focus on mine.”
They flew across the sky together, their wings spread wide and flowing, as Delia felt the wind against her face, she could not stop laughing.
“I am an angel! That is who I am!”
*****
And then the clouds parted, as Delia envisioned Claret on the Cross.
The clouds retreated; leapt across the sky, as the sun fingered its way through, and down towards the rolling sandy hilltops. She remembered, so many times, a Ms. Claret Atarah. She had been an immortal who had the ability to time-travel. And the same immortal who had been responsible for Delia’s descent into darkness and the ways of the earthly immortals.
But it was Claret who had taken Delia under her wing, back when she had first encountered her in the ancient, dusty streets of Jerusalem, and again in Paris.
How she remembered Paris.
She could still see the nights when Claret would watch her from the audience while Delia performed her stage routine. Over so many years, so many points in time…Claret would always be there.
Watching her, waiting for her.
Delia could remember the visions, and the days when Claret had walked the earth, searching for someone to be her successor. But it was the act of what happened in Gethsemane, on the night before the Messiah was to be tried by Pilate and hung on a cross, that she had first encountered Claret.
So many thoughts permeated her mind.
And from so many different points in time.
But when she looked down, she saw the result of The Hooded Man.
The aftermath of the destruction that he left.
The cross still stood at the crest of the hill, as those who had gathered stood below, were watching…and waiting. Was something else about the happen? Was some great prophecy still yet unfulfilled?
The body on the cross had slithered away.
Claret.
Delia knew now.
The body glided down the wood like a snake burned by a relentless sun; but then, after everything was said and done, and as the watchers stood and waited, it was a strange kind of silence.
And the rest of those who watched, who saw the death, who had watched her head raise to the sky, stood in solidarity as Claret had called out to her maker: Why, oh why, have you forsaken me?
But the watchers did not move when they saw her slither down the cross; they did not call for help. Nor did they look for the decanter.
Or for the blood.
But everyone searched for the truth to the conundrum: if she did not die on the cross, for if she were truly immortal, where did she then go? And who would then lead them?
Thunder crashed as the clouds retreated entirely. The sun shined with intensity. Delia looked down and saw herself, standing with the others at the base of the cross. And then she knew.
This was it.
This was her mission.
This is what she had been called to do.
Tramos was gone. She was now alone. Time to go to work…
*****
…and Delia opened her eyes. She hung her head and looked downwards. On the ground lay, in a heap, a large, red cloak. It was lying in a puddle of muddy water.
And then, when Delia stood above the pile of clothing, next to the cross, as she looked down at the cloak, the dirty, torn fabric, she saw
the glass shards. Tiny fragments of glass, millions of miniscule shiny pieces that caught the light; scattered all around the cloak and the ground, they seemed like tiny puzzle pieces of annihilation.
She bent down and inspected the pieces. She set her cane down on the ground next to her.
As she looked closer, she saw the top of the decanter, which was still intact; the crystal caught the sunlight coming from the sky and shined up towards her face, drawing a patchwork of light reflected against the lines on her skin; her tired eyes squinted, drawing more lines across her face, making her appear even older than her aged years.
She reached for it and held it up towards the sky. “It just looks like a plain wine decanter.” She turned around and faced the others, who stood, watching her examine the decanter plug. “Do you see this? What I am showing you? It seems so powerless now.”
Antoine joined her and brushed his long, dark locks aside. “I don’t understand, Delia. But the power it had. Look around at us, Delia. We are barely existing. There are scarcely any of us left!”
Delia examined the decanter closely, holding it up to the light. The sun reflected through it. She brought it down and held it close to her heart.
And then she remembered.
She was forced to remember. As she closed her eyes, she saw the coming of the white mist on dirty, wet dark city streets. In the areas of town where one would never venture during the small hours of the night.
But she knew what the cloud of mist would signify.
For the man who would come – the villain – The Hooded Man …would follow shortly thereafter. The long, dark, red cloak would drag on the dirty pavement, splash through the puddles of muck. And when Delia stood on the pavement, barefoot and dirty herself, her feet still bled.
She looked down and saw her reflection in one of the puddles. Her lipstick had smeared across her face.
Her mascara ran down her cheeks. Too many tears. Too much sadness.
The music still wafted from the club’s interior. Her burlesque show had ended hours ago, and she was alone in the alley. She could smell the stink of the trash in the cans next to her as she pulled the door shut. It locked with an audible click. Still wearing her heels, she clicked across the bricks towards the open street, where there would be more lighting and more people, even at this late hour, Paris seemed to always be awake.
And then she heard footsteps behind her.
Deep, heavy footsteps, coming from further back in the darkness of the alley.
She caught her breath in her throat.
The street still seemed so far away. For she could hear the deep throated and chesty breathing.
“I have waited for you for many years, Delia.”
That voice.
So utterly familiar.
It could not possibly be, could it? Certainly, it was not The Hooded Man. So who was speaking to her from the darkness?
She faced the street ahead, her eyes still closed, as she held her bag over her shoulder. “You have been following me.” She didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. She hadn’t encountered him since she had been a little girl, in her tiny bedroom in Paris, back on the day they had buried her father’s plain wooden coffin. In the days when Auntie Thelma had still been alive. Before the cirrhosis set in.
Delia took a deep breath and exhaled. She shook her head. “I don’t even have to turn around, do I? To even know who you are? Correct?”
She heard shuffling and paper cups blowing in the wind. “Have you considered my offer? What I asked you the last time we talked?”
She sighed.
She could remember.
Back in her bedroom, when he had questioned her faith. And then she remembered the thorns. And the angel who stood in the field of skulls.
“I remember your proposal.”
She turned around.
She could see a figure in the shadows, but it appeared to be far less than how he had appeared to her when she was a little girl. Not a monster, not a demon.
Just a man.
She cocked her head to the side, but the darkness obscured him far too much. “Yes...” she said again. “I remember our conversation. And I remember the visions you showed me after. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it too.”
“But you haven’t done anything about it.”
She thought she saw the glimpse of a foot. A work boot, perhaps. “Why don’t you show yourself? I know you’re just a man back there. Don’t see any horns this time…”
The man chuckled. “I’m keeping myself in the darkness. I’m not so sure you can handle this one, little darlin’.”
“Try me.” She shifted her bag to her other shoulder and stared intently at the darkness back in the alley beyond the group of small trash cans.
“Suit yourself, Delia.”
And the man stepped forwards into the light, as Delia gasped. She recognized the sandy brown, mussed hair. The unshaved beard. The white sleeveless shirt and work boots.
Her mouth dropped open as she felt tears well up in her eyes. “Daddy!”
She turned her head around, closing her eyes and hanging her head down low. “Go away!”
He was closer now.
“Don’t you see why you see me this way now? In the form of your father? Isn’t he the one, single man who you loathed so much as to kill him? A little girl! Didn’t think you had it in you, Delia…”
She shook her head, keeping her eyes closed.
“You’re not really him,” she said. “I know who you are.” And then she lifted her head, and opened her eyes. Her fathers’ likeness dripped away, pooling on the ground, like wax from a burning candle. And then she saw him again. The same red, beastly muscular skin.
But she only got a glimpse of the horns as he retreated back to the darkness. “Don’t you worry! You can deny me all you want! For you will be traveling through time. I have those on the planet who will convince you to follow me. I already know it’s going to happen!”
“Be gone!” she screamed. The wind blew trash around as the darkness fell silent.
*****
Delia opened her eyes and saw she still held the top to the decanter in her hands. She threw the damaged piece back on the ground. She looked up at Antoine, who remained fixated on the shattered decanter. “It was pure evil,” she said. “And this cloak. This horrible cloak. It must be burned. Destroyed. Buried. Whichever. The evil that surrounds this – must be extinguished.”
A balding, older man joined Antoine and Delia. “Let me do it. Only I can do it.”
Delia and Antoine looked at the man. “George!” Delia said. She shook her head and got up. She held her hand out and George assisted her to her feet. “How did you!? I have been to your grave! How did you?” She shook her head. “You must not touch that cloak,” she said. “Or the decanter for that matter. Look at it down there. It still resonates with evil. The power that surrounds it is still there.” She looked up and over at George. He stood, his hands clasped in front, fidgeting and shifting from foot to foot. He no longer seemed like the one who might have donned the robe. “And you, George, are still susceptible to that power.”
George looked down at the robe as Delia placed her hand on his arm. “You can still be redeemed,” she said. “You may no longer have a physical body. I know you are stuck in this world, away from reality. But you can still be saved.”
George looked down at the robe he once wore to commit evil. And then, for a moment, as Delia remained focused on George, she could tell he was thinking about his life before the robe. Before the decanter. His shook his head and hung his head down, as he felt the warm wetness of a tear streaming down his cheek. “I had the cages in my basement,” he said. “I still remember sitting in my driveway watching Nick.”
And George had remembered Nick very well. It wasn’t the tanned and fit torso, or the sweaty muscles that had glistened in the sun as the young man mowed his lawn and paused every so often to take a drink from his bottle of water. It was what had
happened after that. For Nick was not the reason he was here.
He was here because of the decanter.
And because of Claret.
Delia looked at George as they made eye contact. She nodded as George smiled a tired smile.
They looked up as Monsignor Harrison, the leader of the immortals, walked up and joined the others. He was large, imposing. Overweight and balding. He wore horn-rimmed glasses. “Leave it there,” he said. “Leave the cloak, leave the shattered glass. We have other things to worry about. We must get back to Rome at once. We are a dying race now. I must call a meeting of the High Council. This has gotten to a point where we cannot worry about trivial material items that may or may not hold a power.”
He looked over at Delia and Antoine, who looked back up at him. Monsignor Harrison stood in confidence and authority, and his considerable heft and stature solidified his role as the supreme commander of the immortals. “We shall leave Golgatha and head to Rome. I have already sent Ramiel ahead to contact those who are still living – and still immortal – to organize their districts and prepare for a meeting in Rome. We all must attend. Every last immortal that hasn’t been destroyed.”
Delia stood and balanced herself on her cane as Antoine assisted her, taking her arm. “Are you calling a convention?” she asked. “Every last one of us?”
The Monsignor nodded. “There aren’t many of us left now,” he said. “We must band together. Join forces. We have to save our own kind.”
“So we shall leave now?” Antoine asked. “Now that Claret is gone?”
The Monsignor reached his arms out. “Come with me,” he said. “And remember, Claret may be gone physically from this world, but her soul still lives on. And because of that, she is never truly gone.”
Delia paused and looked back at the cross as the group started to make their way down the hill. The sun shined from behind the cross, and it seemed, at least to her, that the sun had not shined that brightly in this world for a long time. At least not from what she could remember, during her time as a mortal or after she received the gift.