The Devil Gave Them Black Wings

by Lee Thompson

  He thought, She kept journals… And he had the urge to dive into them now, to read what she could only share on paper with ink what she had never been able to share with another living soul…

  And now, with her gone, he wanted to know all the parts of her he’d only been able to guess at, and yet…

  Jacob withdrew his hand, shook his head, leaned forward and returned the books, half-concealing what he considered a treasure he had no right to take.

  He wondered if he had brought her down here while she was still alive if she would have retrieved the journals and shared them with him. He imagined she would have laughed at herself, over how she’d been such a big dreamer, or so naïve at the time, back when she believed whole-heartedly that anything was possible.

  He stood and rubbed his face thinking that if she saw him now she wouldn’t even recognize him. He sat on her bed. It was lumpy in places and he considered lifting the mattress to see if she’d hidden more journals beneath it, but her dresser was against the wall to his right, and a shelf had been screwed to the wall above it, and on the shelf there were a half-dozen trophies, and proudly hanging behind them, a number of first place ribbons. He stood again and approached them even as he heard Victor pacing in the hall outside the door, probably torn between entering or staying outside.

  It was a big thing he did for her, and for you.

  He ran a finger over one of the trophies—a golden sprinter running a relay—and he smiled to himself. He couldn’t imagine her winning races in high school, couldn’t even imagine her competing at anything athletic; she’d been one of the clumsiest people he’d ever met.

  He called Victor’s name. The giant poked his face in the doorway and said, “You okay?”

  “What gives?” he said, smiling, pointing at the trophies and ribbons.

  But Victor wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked as if he might cry again and there was anger there too, in the set of his mouth, and it frightened Jacob slightly. “What’s wrong, Victor?”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No,” Jacob said, shaking his head. “Are these awards real?”

  “They are.”

  “But—” Jacob said, unable to finish the thought because he saw Victor was sweating profusely and had pulled a handkerchief and was now dabbing his face. Jacob crossed the room and gripped his elbow and said, “What’s wrong?” He led the big man to the bed and urged him to sit down. Victor pulled at his collar as if he was having trouble breathing but he didn’t loosen his tie or unbutton his shirt, or even remove his suit coat.

  Victor said, his voice barely above a whisper, “She never told you?”

  “Told me what? What am I missing?”

  “Is it really that important? She’s gone. We’re not getting her back, man.”

  “It’s important to me. I’m not accusing her of anything.” He pointed at the shelf and said, “I just want to understand this because this isn’t the Santana I knew. She couldn’t even jog; some days it was hard for her to walk.”

  Victor said, “It’s going to fuck you up even worse.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you ever feel it?”

  “Feel it?” Jacob said. “Feel what?”

  “We need something stiffer to drink. Come on.” He was still sweating profusely and it seemed to take considerable effort to push his bulk from the bed to his feet. He gestured for Jacob to follow him as he staggered out of the room, and out of the house, into the bright, unrelenting sunlight. Jacob heard the door rattle in the frame. He stood in her room a moment longer, not wanting to leave. But something had happened to Santana and he had no idea what it was. The most likely scenario was a car accident her senior year. Standing there wouldn’t give him the answer, although her journal might, but he didn’t want to invade her privacy, and he preferred to hear it straight from Victor’s mouth. He glanced around the room again and noticed a dark splotch on the back of the door.

  He thought he could smell something burning for a second and then it passed. He closed the door and looked at what he assumed to be something Santana had painted when she was younger.

  Close up, the black and white swirls made no sense, but as he stepped away from the closed door, the image came into focus and the air rushed out of his lungs. The storks flew in the form of a tornado, their wings brushing, their beaks opened wide and looking as sharp as honed butcher’s knives. Wide at the top of the vortex they seemed to be rushing in a gracious, yet violent manner, into the tiny base of the funnel.

  One stork stared out from the painting and looked into Santana’s bedroom.

  Jacob thought: Sebastian.

  He had never had any type of encounter like the one when he’d met Santana’s guardian. Of course, the painting itself could have been another hallucination, but he didn’t think so, and he stretched his arm out and touched the texture. The paint was thick and the door beneath it felt cool. He wondered where Sebastian was now, figuring that he was close by, and worried too, because the man had said he would kill someone. It hadn’t seemed like a threat toward Jacob at the time, but after hearing Sebastian say that he almost hated Jacob for leading Santana toward her destruction, that the guardian was tempted to let Jacob suffer a much worse fate than the one intended for him, Jacob shook his head. The threat meant nothing. The painting wasn’t real.

  He touched it one more time, his heart beating hard. For a second he thought his heart might dissolve as quickly as the painting would beneath his touch.

  But both were still there, and he heard Victor honk the car horn.

  I’m walking among happiness and ruins, he thought. How can that be?

  There were too many sensations moving through him, but there were also the first sprouts of questions he had never asked. The largest was, if—and it was a big if—Sebastian happened to be who he claimed, could he still reach her on the other side? Could he tell her something for him? Could he bring a reply back?

  It was almost too much to hope for, but if it were possible, he wanted to know. It was no mystery that so little of his species knew truths about the invisible world, the everlasting and constantly expanding universe, the doorway beyond death…

  He walked through the house and onto the porch. He guessed that Victor had taken the key with him and turned back and locked the front door. Nearing the car, he said, “Do you want me to drive?”

  “I’m fine. Just tired and I hate coming down here.”

  Jacob rounded the front of the Lincoln. “Then why did you come down here?” He studied him over the roof of the car, tried to make the juggernaut smile as he said, “I don’t really need a babysitter.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” Victor said, pale and trembling. “Get in the car.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just get in. I need to get out of here for a bit.”

  Jacob got in and held his trembling hands in his lap. He wanted to tell Victor what he had been experiencing but he couldn’t. He said instead: “Tell me about her accident.”

  2

  When Nina woke in a soft bed, her legs entangled in the sheets, she believed the horrible things that had happened at her house were nothing more than a nightmare. She turned onto her stomach and squeezed the pillow tightly and let out a breath, her flesh riddled with goose bumps. She thought, It was only a bad dream…

  She hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but she knew, somewhere deep in her mind, that the scents here were unfamiliar ones. As she woke further she knew that she wasn’t in her own room. Her bed smelled of the lavender fabric softener her mother used, it smelled of her finger nail polish and her dirty clothing and bright sunlight. This place smelled of plastic more than anything. And then there were the noises, or the lack of them. She could not hear children playing in the park, nor could she hear Rick’s voice, or her mother’s brazen laughter, or her mother’s sighs when exhaustion would sometimes overshadow her optimism about work and family and life. Nina did not hear the familiar creaks and groans in the floorboar
ds and walls.

  Yet she heard Patricia’s voice dimly through the scream building in her throat, and she had no idea at first why she felt such a profound sense of loneliness. Her body felt as if it had been run through a meat grinder, every nerve tingling, her fingers stiff and sore, a deep ache in the pit of her stomach.

  And out there, in another room of this strange place, she heard her sister sob, and she heard another voice, a man’s voice, trying to comfort her, his words broken mumbles filled with as much devastation and hopelessness as the storming realization building inside Nina’s heart.

  She opened her eyes slowly as she twisted onto her side. The brightness of the sunlight through the window near the bed felt like a spike being driven by an unseen hand into her forehead, and she thought she might puke as she mouthed, “It wasn’t a bad dream. Oh God, he killed them…”

  As her eyes adjusted to the light, her frail body feeling disconnected suddenly from her mind, yet both awash in the early afternoon blaze, she recognized the room and the bed she lay in for she’d seen them recently when she brought Mrs. Stark one of her mother’s roses and a frozen pizza to share with her. Two boxes of toys were filled to overflowing and there were toys scattered about the floor.

  And in her mind’s eye, she could see all too clearly, her mother’s body on the kitchen floor, and Rick at the table, reaching for her, and Nina remembered hiding outside, beside the porch, behind the shrubbery, believing that her mother’s killer would find her.

  But he’d simply left, and she, barely able to walk, had staggered around the front yard until Richard Stark had materialized from the darkness and he’d looked at her as if she was the one who had died, or as if part of her had been amputated, and he’d held her, held her so tightly she could barely breathe. And she remembered that she hadn’t wanted to breathe, not when her mother no longer could, and the police came in a roar of sirens and lights and screeching tires and those were the only things that could drown out her cries. There had been the flashes of arms and legs and badges, and she remembered an ambulance, and someone, a young, dark-haired woman, a paramedic, giving her a shot to sedate her because Nina’s throat had grown sore and hoarse from screaming after she watched them carry her mother out on a gurney, the white sheet covering her stained with a splotch of blood.

  She was crying then and she began to tremble as she pushed herself out of bed, feeling as if the world were tilting beneath and around her. She stuck her hands out in case she fell and noticed that her feet were bare and dirty. Her eyes seemed to have trouble focusing though as she glanced at the shelf where Robin Stark or her mother had arranged Robin’s toy horses. Nina whimpered, forgetting herself for a moment as she realized what she felt—this horrible sense of loss and injustice that the Stark family, and Robin Stark in particular, knew all too well.

  “My pain is their pain, and their pain is my pain,” she whispered, wiping her eyes.

  And Jacob’s, she thought, and all those poor people who died at the trade towers, and those left behind to deal with the fall-out, we’re all the same. Why God? Why hurt people? What did we do wrong?

  She couldn’t think of any reasons for anything as she stumbled to the door, her sister’s sobs growing louder. Mrs. Stark said to Patricia, “Drink this, honey. That’s it…”

  The heaviness in her chest gained more weight. It felt like something had clogged her airways and she was afraid if she couldn’t get it under control she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all and she’d pass out. She placed a hand against the cool wall and it felt great against her palm. It felt smooth, and solid, and real. More real than the last twenty four hours, and, as she took a few more steps toward the living room, she realized that she loved her family more than she’d ever said, ever admitted, or ever shown.

  Tears wet her cheeks and she wanted to tell herself to be strong, but she couldn’t. She took another step and thought of her mother and she thought: I should have been a better daughter… I should have told you I loved you more often than I did…

  Mrs. Stark said, “Richard?”

  Richard said, “Nina’s up. Hold on…”

  His shadow filled the hall. He approached her a moment later, a look of such sympathy on his face that she wanted to believe the world wasn’t as cruel as it had proven itself to be.

  He said, “Take my arm, I got you.”

  But even before Nina had a chance to take his arm, to bury her head against his shoulder and let her tears free, unabashed, her sister entered the hall, her eyes red and wet, her normally perfect auburn hair askew and her clothing wrinkled. For a moment Nina felt as if she was looking at a stranger, until Patricia said, “Oh God, Nina,” and ran to her with her arms held wide, her face stricken, almost falling into Nina with so much force that she feared they’d topple and crash to the floor, just two pieces of already cracked pottery that could never survive a fall like that no matter how hard they clung to each other.

  But Richard caught them and the sisters embraced and Nina sobbed into Patricia’s hair and her sister rubbed her back and said, “Thank God you’re okay.”

  Richard stepped away from them, his hands hung tensely at his sides, a muscle jumping beneath his left eye. He said softly, “Take whatever time you need together…” and he backed away, into the living room where his wife waited to embrace him, to hold his hand and give him a look that he hadn’t seen on her face much these past two weeks, a look of such adoration that he thought it should have filled his spirit with love and hope, but instead it had only left him feeling tired and useless.

  He tried to smile at her, because he knew that Loretta was counting on such a reunion between them and their own daughter. But where he was afraid to trust that angels would protect her, his wife prayed ceaselessly and refused to give up. They sat on the couch but neither of them could say, What now? What happens next?

  And in the hall, Nina, smothered by her sister, and hurting as their bony frames embraced, also thought, What now? What happens next?

  But wasn’t yet ready to say it aloud.

  Patricia, as if hearing her thought, said, “We’ve got to get you cleaned up and get you out of here before we even begin to think about anything else.”

  They stepped away from each other and Nina wiped her eyes.

  Her sister said, “The police want to talk to you once you’re… awake.”

  Once I’m sane, you mean, she thought. But I’m not sane, not yet. I don’t want to be sane or I might not survive this world…

  “Poor Mom and Rick,” Patricia said. She wiped her eyes, trying to maintain her composure, and Nina hoped she could because if Patricia started crying again so would she. She could hear Mr. and Mrs. Stark speaking quietly in the living room. Cars passed on the street. The day grew brighter but she could take no pleasure in it, nor see any good that could come of going to the police station and trying to explain to them that she’d met a man at the Waffle House who claimed to be an angel, and he’d promised her something—she couldn’t remember what. But he’d made her uneasy in ways no one else, not even Victor, had. And part of her feared he was telling a partial truth—that he was an angel, a fallen one, who was beyond the laws of men and would never pay for what he’d done.

  She imagined he could only appear at night, when tensions were high in the hearts of men, and bloodlust ran rampant through the minds of everyday people; and she imagined with each new dawn he would watch the sunrise and the day’s first light would cause his form to disperse like mist.

  The only comfort she found in such speculation was that the man, or creature, might suffer great pain with each morning’s undoing. She knew it was wrong to hate so intensely, but she didn’t care.

  Patricia held her hand. “I want you to stay with me at my dorm for a few days, Nee.”

  She nodded numbly, hardly hearing her sister, thinking of how the police would respond when she told them about Sebastian, how they would look at her like she was crazy. She couldn’t blame them. She said, “Okay.”

&
nbsp; She couldn’t stay in the home she’d grown up in, and she feared Patricia would contact their father to see if he could take her in, and she hated that idea, even the possibility of hearing him say, No, I can’t do that, and she knew he would say something along those lines, and thinking about it made her want to cry again but she only bit her lip and whispered, “What’s going to happen to us?”

  And there was a small voice inside her that whispered back. It said that Patricia would be fine. Patricia would stay in school and get her degree and meet a man who loved her and they’d move away, either for work, or to forget this place and leave the heartache it had caused them behind.

  But me, Nina thought, what about me?

  Patricia sighed and draped an arm over Nina’s shoulders and said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, but we’ll figure it out.”

  As they walked into the living room Richard and Loretta stood and Mrs. Stark said, “Are you hungry, Nina? I bet you are. Let me make you something. Come on,” waving her closer, “come with me.”

  And Nina felt as if she drifted toward her, unable to stop herself, but halfway there she paused and looked at Richard and said, “Thank you.”

  Richard’s face seemed to twitch and he hung his head, his dark face flushed with blood. Nina wondered if she’d said something wrong. She couldn’t think straight. All she could say was, “You’re a hero, Mr. Stark. You might not know it, but you are.”

  3

  Richard retreated to his garage, Nina’s words—You’re a hero—clanging hollowly inside his skull. He leaned against the shelf that held his tools and called the police station and asked for the detective working his daughter’s case—a tall black man named Reeves who always smelled of cigarettes and who had promised he’d call when there was a development in Robin’s abduction. But the Starks’ phone had never rung, at least not with the authorities on the other end to offer hope or closure.