Angel of Death

by J. Robert King

  Perfect. It is as though I had orchestrated this death at the height of my powers rather than the depths. Too bad I cannot stay. My spirit body is complete now. I am angel once more. This mound of hamburger can no longer hold me to the world.

  But there is other flesh – skin the color of clouds and eyes as pink as a rabbit’s – he would bind me here. He would witness to my physical presence in the world. His name in the Book of Life would seal my fate forever. Hello, Donna. It is good to see that your travail is done. This is our son, then, yes? He is ghastly, wouldn’t you say? The color of paper. I know, to you he is precious, but to me he is unfinished business. Ah, yes, let me touch my son. He frowns in his sleep and arches his back. Good. He recognizes me after all.

  Hush my child and death attend thee,

  All through the night.

  I, your killing angel send thee,

  All through the night.

  While the weary world is creeping,

  Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,

  I your lovely soul am keeping

  All through the night.

  Ah, there, Son, your breath ceases, your struggle ceases, your flesh gives up the ghost.

  I watch you flee through the ceiling and heavenward like a rocket. All is right. Once again, all is right.

  Glory to God in the Highest.

  When Detective Leland awoke, she felt the cold stillness in her arms. She struggled to her feet, clutching the child tight beneath breasts that had not yet even fed it.

  “My baby! My baby! Mother of God! He’s dead!”

  I know you, Mrs Billings, you with your splendid lawyers bought by splendid money and your splendid not-guilty verdict bought the same way, and the bag of splendid cashmere under your arm. I know you. You have worked hard this year, endured much. You deserve an easy descent. Take the escalator, my beautiful lady. Take the escalator. I have been preparing it for you. Do not mind the slight tugging on your dress. Do not mind the way the teeth separate there at the bottom and give enough space for one masticated human body to be yanked, living, down among the gear work. Do not fear, my sweet Mrs Billings, for this thirty-three seconds of grinding and spattering and thrashing is not nearly as much woe as the store management will have when folk begin to talk of the butcher-turned maintenance-man who lives beneath the floors.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J. Robert King is the award-winning author of over twenty novels, most recently The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls and the Mad Merlin trilogy. Fifteen years ago, Rob founded the Alliterates, a cabal of writers in the Midwest and West Coast of the US. Rob also often takes to the stage, starring in local productions such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and Arsenic & Old Lace. He lives in Wisconsin with his lovely wife, three brilliant sons, and three less-than-brilliant cats.

  Extras

  Coming soon :

  Death’s Disciples

  P R O L O G U E : F L I G H T

  I hate flying. Always have. It’s not just the old man on my left snoring, his liver-spotted hand brushing my leg, or the young man on my right darting looks down my blouse. It’s not just the plume of rebreathed air in my face or the flight attendants staring dead-eyed as they hand out bags of pretzels. It’s the impossibility of it.

  People aren’t supposed to fly. Hundred ton machines certainly aren’t. My stomach’s a knot.

  “Look at that,” the young man says. His name is Jason. He’s got an Amish-style beard not because he’s Amish but because he’s too young to grow anything better. Too young for me. Jason hooks his nose toward the TV screen, which shows our current position over Billings. “We’re at 35,000 feet, and the air outside’s negative 75.”

  “Cold,” I agree, staring at the in-flight magazine as if I cared what meals were available for purchase.

  “Fall out of this plane, and you’d be frozen before you hit the ground,” he enthuses. “You’d shatter like a glass doll.”

  The knot tightens. “There’s a Darwin Award for you.” They offer a turkey croissant with baby carrots and chocolate pudding.

  How much longer? It’s five minutes till noon. I hate flying, but business calls.

  “I need to get up,” I tell the Amish kid. “Business calls.”

  Jason grins, pivoting his legs to one side and watching my ass as I squeeze past.

  The midcabin lavatory is closer, but I’ve got time to kill, so I turn and pick my way back among the crammed seats. Can’t believe I booked in coach, a purgatory – all these dreary, drowsing people, their faces slack, eyes lidded, oblivious to the fact that people aren’t supposed to fly…

  The rear lav is occupied. I wait.

  Three minutes to noon.

  I knock. The person inside groans. The bolt hisses in the slot, the door cracks and out comes a fiftysomething woman wreathed in a cloud of perfume and flatulence. She glances at me with annoyance, and I return the look as she shoe-horns past. I enter the cubicle, lock the door behind me and look at myself in the mirror. Blonde, thirty-two, and smart – and watch that smile, that killer smile.

  I can’t wait for this flight to be over.

  It is.

  There’s a noise so loud I can’t hear it, only see it – a white ball in my head. It hurls me up to the ceiling and pins me to the wall and flings me back down. Teeth crack on stainless steel. Chemical water gushes up my nose. Water and blood.

  Another white ball. I’m on my knees on the floor. There’s a terrible tearing. Metal shredding. The sound becomes a scream. Screams.

  An all-encompassing roar.

  I can’t see anything. I can only hear. It’s too much.

  Why is everything so loud?

  My face is slick. Blood?

  I stagger up. My hands are on walls, plastic walls. There’s panels and metal frames. I paw the space and find a metal knob and yank on it, and the door opens.

  The roar is louder now – a narrow hallway with carpet below and blood beside.

  I step out.

  I’m inside a plane, except there’s no floor. Just three rows of seats, then a big hole and torn walls. I look through the hole. Grassy hills flash golden below and the shadow of the plane skims across them.

  The shadow grows larger and larger.

  We’re going to crash.

  I can see trees and rocks. They slide past, surreal.

  They’ll soon be real.

  I step back through the door and pull it closed in front of me and sit down on the toilet and bend my head down between my knees and wait for the end. It comes.

  It sounds like a broken motor.

  It looks like the sun exploding.

  It feels like tigers tearing me apart.

  Death’s Disciples by J Robert King

  Susan Gardner is the sole survivor of a terrorist attack on her plane. Now she can hear the voices of all the dead passengers in her head.

  Their latest message is this: the terrorists are coming back.

  For her.

  TWENTY MINUTES WITH

  J ROBERT KING

  Sometimes we grab our authors and throw a bunch of questions at them. Occasionally, it’s like we opened the floodgates…

  One book

  One of the best books I’ve ever read was written by a guy with a second-grade education. Harpo Speaks is the autobiography of Harpo Marx, and it tells the story of a life that spanned vaudeville, movies, and television. Harpo was part of the Algonquin Round Table and rubbed elbows with the greatest thinkers and performers of his day. The book is intriguing and funny and poignant.

  One story

  One story I often tell is about myself as an undergraduate in England. I went to Oxford to have a cider in what the locals call the Bird and Baby pub (OK, actually called the Eagle and Child). I sat in the seat where Tolkien and Lewis sat and let the cider fill me with a warm fire. After finishing it, I asked to buy the glass, but said apologetically, “All I have is a five.” The bartender looked at me as if I were insane and said, “Then I’ll give you chan
ge.” I felt like a relic hunter. But I still have that glass to this day, twenty years later.

  One book to burn

  I’m actually not into burning books. Yeah, ideas are dangerous things, but that’s why we’ve got to use our brains when we read. Burning books is like saying people can’t figure out what’s good and what’s not. When I worked for TSR (the people who created Dungeons & Dragons), there was a religious group buying up the game and having bonfires. Our marketing department sent them catalogs. Burning the games didn’t do anything but put money in our pockets and smoke in the air. It didn’t stop D&D. Why would I burn Mein Kampf? Let people read it and realize the man was crazy. Besides, Hitler was the book burner, not me.

  One song/record

  My current favorite is Icky Thump. I think Jack White is a genius. Of course, I also think Jack Black is a genius. I have a secret hope that they team up and form a band called the Black and White Stripes, or Jack Squared, or Jacked Up.

  One record to smash

  I think records are like books. If they suck, don’t listen. Who are they hurting? And the record may not suck, but just be something you don’t get. I’ve made a conscious decision never to utter the words “That’s not music. That’s just noise.” Instead, when I don’t get something, I shrug and say, “I don’t get it, but obviously a lot of people do.”

  People say that music is the universal language, but why is it you can’t turn on a radio without the two people sitting closest to you objecting to the kind of music you like? Muzak tried to create an utterly inoffensive form of music that everyone would like and instead created a type of music that everyone reviles. So, I think, there’s something inherently divisive in music. It makes groups of fans by alienating everybody else. As for my own tastes, I like hard rock and classical. But I’m not a fan of Mozart. I don’t get his music, but obviously a lot of people do.

  One creative person you always wanted to be

  When I was a kid, I wanted to be CS Lewis. In fourth grade, I wrote a sequel to the Narnia series, and called it Aslan vs Caplaner. Caplaner was a big monster, and the story was all about the mighty lion fighting the grotesque monster – a professional wrestling-style slugfest. Clearly, it was not very Narnian. Later on, I wanted to be Tolkien. I was blown away by The Lord of the Rings, so much so that I even slogged through The Silmarillion. I wanted to be able to create a world that was as beautiful, real, and true. Interestingly, though, my books have tended to have a much darker gradient. I’m sometimes shocked to look at what I write. These aren’t beautiful worlds. They’re often terrifying ones. I’ve not been able to find a magic wardrobe. My closets are much darker.

  One book you wish you’d written

  As a young person, I wished I had written The Lord of the Rings –except that that would mean I would have little success in my lifetime and would have died in 1973.

  It’s not really possible to write someone else’s book. A book is like your face – it shows your identity to the world. I have blue eyes and a big nose and receding hair, and I write the kind of books that I write. To write somebody else’s books, I’d have to have that person’s face, that person’s identity.

  Though, come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind being JK Rowling.

  One book/author that’s been unjustly neglected

  There are a lot of unjustly neglected authors. I have drinks with them once a month.

  Here’s the thing, though. A book may be a great book, but if it doesn’t find its audience, it never becomes part of the zeitgeist. I think of Shakespeare. He was competing with bear-baiting pits, and yet he still turned out some of the greatest plays ever written. He played simultaneously to the groundlings and the queen.

  That’s what great authors do. So maybe there’s no such thing as an unjustly neglected author. You have to write a great book and reach an enthusiastic audience. Everything’s got to come together, and until it does, well, you’re not yet great.

  One film

  One film that nobody knows about but I love is Night of the Iguana. When I mention it to people, they think it is a Godzilla film. Actually, it’s a John Huston film based on a Tennessee Williams play, with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. Not one of them wears a Godzilla suit. And the movie has some of the best lines ever – including, “Nothing human disgusts me – except cruelty,” and “God is not being God here tonight, so we will be God and release a creature at the end of its rope.”

  On the other end of the spectrum, I also really like Tenacious D & the Pick of Destiny. It both parodies and embodies my favorite aspects of rock-and-roll culture.

  Your hero

  As a kid, I had plenty of heroes – Captain James T

  Kirk and Luke Skywalker and Frodo Baggins. All were adults and all were fictional.

  As an adult, my heroes are younger than me and real. My sons are my heroes. They’re just heading out on their heroes’ quests, and I want them to know how to fight, how to find shelter, how to make alliances. I want them to slay the God-damned dragon.

  Ideal dinner party guests

  There’s a difference between the people you admire and the ones you’d actually like to have at your dinner table. It’s good to keep your idols at a distance. Otherwise, you’ll see their many flaws, and they’ll see yours. I love Wagner’s music, but I’m sure I’d hate the man. What would I say to Galileo? I don’t even speak Italian. Would I want to sit down with Jesus? Well… if we had an interpreter and he brought the wine. There’s also the size problem. Jesus was probably 5 foot 4 and weighed 120. I’d feel weird hulking there above him. You’re not supposed to be bigger than Jesus, even if you’re John Lennon.

  And I’d be the kind of host who’d accidentally offer Jesus some ham.

  The biggest influence on your writing

  My life. The best writing is not entirely conscious. The clever part of the brain isn’t where the stories come from. The stories come from the deeper part, the lizard part, the part that wants and needs and fears. Then the conscious mind gives words to express those deep utterances. Writing has to mean something, and the only way it can is if it is rooted in life.

  The biggest influence on your life

  I used to say that writing was the biggest influence on my life. After all, I have over twenty novels published, and I work as a writer and editor at a company that creates texts for teaching writing. But, really, my family is the biggest influence on my life. When a person has a child, the person’s heart migrates out of his chest to hang in space halfway between him and the child. It’s not about him anymore. It’s about them both. And the heart never returns to its cage. That means it’s free, but its also forever unprotected. Having children means that you are no longer safe, but it also means that your safety no longer matters.

  One influence you wish didn’t keep showing through

  I have a depressive personality. It’s what happens when an idealist keeps getting the shit beat out of him but doesn’t give up the idealism. It’d be much easier to be simply practical, to look at life and say, “Well, there it is.” But I can imagine a much better world, and the discord between that and the world as it is leaves me often feeling like a stranger. That feeling seeps into my writing. My characters are rarely at home, rarely among friends. This is the difference between me and Tolkien, me and Rowling. Their success lies in the fact that everyone feels they really belong in Hobbiton or Hogwarts. I have never felt that I really belonged anywhere. My novels are for the dispossessed. Luckily for me, there are about six billion of us.

  Tell us a joke

  My favorite comedian is Mitch Hedberg, who died too soon. He was the master of the non sequitur oneliner, like these:

  “I find a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread.”

  “Dogs are forever in the push-up position.”

  “I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a lar
ge, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Look out, he’s fuzzy, let’s get out of here.”

  “Last week I helped my friend stay put. It’s a lot easier than helping him move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load shit into a truck.”

  What do you sing in the shower?

  I don’t think I sing in the shower. I used to. I sang there and everywhere. Now I do a lot more ruminating. It’s less fun for me but more merciful for everyone around.

  Support a team?

  I’m a casual fan of the Arizona Diamondbacks, mostly because I was born in Phoenix and because I shared an office with a rabid Chicago Cubs fan. At the time, the Diamondbacks were on fire and the Cubs were struggling. I enjoyed asking my colleague for updates about “my Diamondbacks” and having him recount their latest win. Then I would asked about the Cubs, and he’d scowl and tell about their loss. That year, the Diamondbacks edged the Cubs out of the playoffs. I once said, “You know what I love about the Diamondbacks? I love how they get so many points.” My office mate’s eyes flared, and he said,

  “They’re called runs.”

  Any notable pets?

  I have three cats, two of which were named after books I was writing – Merlin and Sherlock. My son also has a hamster named after a brutal warrior in my most recent book. The hamster Rytlock just had four babies.

  Got a nickname?

  In Cambridge, I was called Mr Milk because I hadn’t yet learned how to drink. Shortly afterward, I led two other undergraduates on an ill-considered run up a mountainside in Grasmere and got us lost. After that, the three of us were the Mud Brothers. At my current job, there was a time when four of us writers occupied an office we called “The Shire.” I was Frodo, and we had a Sam, Pippin, and Merry as well. Then I got promoted to editor-in-chief. Now the only nickname I have is the Furnace because of the way I burn through work.

  Earliest memory?

  They say your very first memory tells a lot about you. That’s sad, because my very first memory comes from when I was three and my older brother hurt me and I was walking out to the backyard of our house in Phoenix, intending to tell on him and thinking, “I will remember this for the rest of my life.”