by R. Twine
Satanail raised his hands, calling the demons in. In several minutes they filled the space, coming to their master from all directions. When everything around him became silent and motionless, the Prince of Darkness addressed his devoted servants. ‘Omnipresent demons, I order you to fly to the house to watch everything that goes on there! You will be my eyes and ears.’
Satanail made some passes in the air – and a little girl’s face appeared before him. She saw him too and cried out, frightened. Obedient to his order, the demons turned into black clusters and went flying to the Hendersons’ dwelling while Satanail continued watching what was going on in the house.
‘This picture again! After so many years she unearthed it, she did! Indeed, humans are queer creatures. She lost her mother but never realized she had to throw that picture away! Quite on the contrary – she’ll be keeping it anyway even though her subconscious comprehension tells her this thing will bring her nothing but misfortune,’ he said contentedly.
The little angel smiled, looking carelessly straight into his eyes.
Miriam was now calm, and Satanail looked at her inquisitively again. He realized that the baby felt his presence and could see him. The Black Angel knew that time on Earth goes by quickly, and not one precious moment of Miriam’s life could be lost…
The little girl lifted up her big emerald eyes and looked at Satanail again. This time she didn’t get scared, she just looked away at her parents and smiled at them sweetly. Her mother came up to her, and the girl gestured at the dark windows with strange faces behind them. But unfortunately Laura could not see what her little daughter was seeing.
Michael the Archangel was also following the events in the house – the golden red light he gave off was spreading all over the place. Satanail noticed the Archangel and merged into the darkness without saying a word…
In recent years Satanail had brought the world to the brink of disaster. People caught in his intricately- woven traps almost always remained there. The time had come for mankind to pay for the unforgiven sins it accumulated during its existence on Earth. The Kingdom of Darkness relished the unending human squabbles. The world of demons fed on human sufferings caused by mankind’s own sins, and the forces of evil anticipated their oncoming victory over man. Sinful souls that failed to get through rigorous trials and temptations were being recruited into the Kingdom of Darkness with every passing second.
‘The Universe cannot do without me!’ Satanail bawled. ‘I'm one of the most powerful angels! I am the Lord! No one but me can be the Judge of the Earth! Without me all life shall cease to exist right away!’ he said triumphantly while descending to the center of the Earth where the demons of fire stood guard over the most cherished of his treasures. ‘Few are those who know what my true destiny is. Unlike the rest of the heavenly angels, no one but me is capable of experiencing human emotions. Mankind's future life depends upon me alone!’ He focused his gaze on two vials where a boiling red fluid was splashing. ‘That's where the secret lies of how mankind is going to survive after people perish from the face of the Earth! New civilization! New men! Now it is my turn to create!’ His demonic laughter echoed through the darkness.
Tongues of flame danced, illuminating the dark vault. Satanail looked lovingly at the tiny figures cavorting in the boiling vials.
‘Soon I'll be able to liberate you, my creatures yet unborn!’
Miriam was asleep, but Laura felt uneasy.
‘Alex, I have a dark foreboding, and there’s fear in my heart. I guess there’s some invisible connection between Miriam and the picture because it was for a reason that my mom told me in my dream to take this little angel away from our house.’
‘And why didn’t you do what she told you?’ Alex looked surprised.
‘Because this is my first work of art, and it’s dear to me. Besides, the picture seems to be keeping me close by.’
‘To my mind, it’s because of your mother. You don’t want to betray your memory of her.’
‘I really don’t want to part with this painting,’ Laura admitted. ‘All these years I’ve been treasuring it, having made up my mind to keep it at all costs. You know, I believe this little angel helped us become parents, and maybe this is what explains the strange likeness between the angel and Miriam. I have been thinking about it all these years.’
‘Laura, I don’t want a lot of bad feelings and the like to be gnawing at our hearts. Honey, please forgive me for all the things that I said that I shouldn’t have said. I was wrong. We are tired and that’s why we’re so susceptible. The picture is beautiful, indeed. And I see no reason why it shouldn’t remain in our house.’ Alexander put his reassuring arm around her shoulders, ‘We could hang it in the library or in the hall, if you like.’
‘I’ll give it some thought,’ Laura replied. ‘It’s very late, we’re really tired…Let’s go to bed. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.’
‘As you wish, honey,’ Alexander said.
Nightmares tortured Laura all night long. She saw her mother standing far off trying to tell her something, but the words failed to reach her because the distance between them was too great… Laura couldn’t make out what Catrine was trying to convey to her, and whenever she made an attempt to come nearer to her mother, the image would vanish. In her dream she saw somebody holding Miriam in his arms – Laura tried to make out who that dark man was, but every time some fog blurred her vision…
In the morning, being completely exhausted, she entered her daughter’s bedroom. Miriam was already awake, standing in her crib. Laura took the little girl in her arms and pressed her to her heart. ‘I love you so much, my little darling! You are my dearest love in the whole world. I’ll do my very best for you to be happy; nobody is ever going to take you away from me!’
‘Ma-ma’ Miriam prattled and smiled, putting her small arm around her mother’s neck. Laura heard her tiny heart beating.
‘Here comes your daddy!’ Laura smiled on seeing a rather sleepy Alexander who looked into bedroom.
‘Morning, my sweet ones,’ he said, kissing his wife and daughter. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, we did,’ Laura replied, trying to sound as calm as possible. She wasn’t willing to overshadow a beautiful and sunny weekend day with her worries.
‘And how did our princess sleep?’ Alexander scooped Miriam up and sat her down on his lap. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk in the park? What do you say, Laura?’
‘Why not?’ she said approvingly. ‘Fresh air – that’s what we need now.’
After breakfast the bouquet-holding angel was already on the wall in the hall.
Laura, had sold quite a lot of her paintings over the past three years and was now working on her new orders. She was content with the way life went on, and even considered quitting her university chair. She wanted to have a free hand in implementing her creative ideas.
And her life did change – almost overnight: she quickly acquired a respectable clientele and a steady income; her work won public recognition, and so Laura gained confidence. The only thing she longed for was to play light-heartedly with Miriam - there never seemed to be quite enough time for this.
Chapter 6
The days ran their course, and now Miriam was six. The girl went to school and devoted a lot of time to drawing: art always attracted her.
Despite the fact that she had many friends, she often asked her parents, ‘When are you going to give me a brother or a sister? I don’t want to be alone anymore.’
‘But you are not alone! You have mommy and me!’ Alexander would say, much surprised.
‘If you abandon me I will be completely alone,’ Miriam insisted.
‘Where did you get this idea?’ asked Laura in quite a serious tone.
She was well over forty now. New pregnancy wouldn’t come, and the issue of having one more baby had been dropped long ago by their silent mutual consent.
‘I know that soon I will be alone,’ Miriam harped on. ‘I saw you in my dream: you were
leaving me and waving me goodbye. I tried to catch up with you but someone stopped me.’
Alexander and Laura exchanged bewildered glances, but said nothing.
The bouquet-holding angel had been hanging in the hall for several years now, watching everything that went on in the house. On one Saturday afternoon Miriam started a strange conversation with her parents.
‘Mommy, the little angel often flies around the house when you are away. He talks to me and shows me pictures. He said he saw some people dying, and he also said that he talked with my granny – your mommy – before she died.’
Laura froze in her tracks not knowing how to reply; her heart began pounding heavily.
‘Darling, things do happen. And there are things which are hard to explain, but you don’t have to be afraid of them.’
‘But I’m not afraid at all. It just seems to me that I’m never alone: someone invisible is always by my side. Some dark figures and faces surround me day and night. And, sometimes I hear sad songs sung in a language I don’t understand.’
‘Miriam, feel free to tell us about everything. Daddy and I love you very much and we are always ready to stand by you,’ Laura said confidently.
‘You’ll hardly be able to help me, Mom. The angel said he’d give his bouquet when Death was to come to take somebody away. There was one more thing that he said: all people die sooner or later, some go to Heaven and some have to suffer, and some start to help the evil ones…’ Miriam was very serious. ‘He’s getting me ready for something bad, but he says he’ll help me when it happens…’
‘Don’t pay attention to it, Miriam. You’re just a child; all children are fond of horror stories, and now you’ve made up one of your own…’
Laura tried to find any credible explanation to explain in realistic terms what she’d just heard from her daughter. Miriam’s words frightened her: it appeared that her daughter was having the same weird dreams and inexplicable phenomena as she was. Couldn’t it be some hereditary condition?
Laura finally made up her mind. ‘I’m going to take this spooky angel away from our house for a while.’
‘Don’t!’ Miriam said obstinately. ‘We’ve already become friends. If you take him away it will make me sad.’
In the evening Laura told her husband everything. Alexander got seriously alarmed. ‘Laura, I don’t like it at all. Why should an angel be bothering our little Miriam? I think we’d better take it off the wall for a while, don’t you think so?’
‘I told Miriam the same thing, but she refuses to listen. However, I don’t think the picture is dangerous in any way. Many children have similar dreams at such a young age – in my dreams I have seen and heard my mother, too. To my mind, there are people capable of receiving information from parallel worlds. You should not be afraid – this isn’t a mental disorder. It’s rather a gift from above. Apparently, there’s a channel between the worlds opened to Miriam. This channel is beyond other people’s reach, while the picture per se has nothing to do with any mystical phenomenon. It has no evil in it, that’s for sure. Quite the contrary: this angel is trying to protect our daughter from some future disaster, but I don’t know exactly which kind of disaster it is.’
‘True, this picture is dear to you, but I guess we’d better get rid of it. Especially in view of the fact that it is a harbinger of death,’ Alexander said.
‘Alex, if this angel really warns us about future troubles, we should be paying more attention to what Miriam tells us. It is through her that this creature will be able to warn us and protect us from harm.’
Alexander smirked. ‘Suppose this isn’t true. What then?’
Laura tried to explain her point of view, ‘I don’t understand your reaction. Well, I admit this is a weird thing to hear from your own daughter, but she’s not the only one who says such things; a lot of children have a similar experience.’
‘Your mother passed away shortly after you gave her this picture! In your own words, she was found dead in her bedroom, wide-eyed with horror. The cause of her death has never been established. Now we have this picture hanging in our house. The angel is free to fly wherever it chooses, and our Miriam talks to him! Aren’t you alarmed about it?!’
‘I am and I am not. Quite a lot of people die the way my mother did. They do so every day, and do it without any pictures hanging in their halls,’ Laura said in a tough tone of voice.
‘Would you be so kind as to tell me who else sees angels that fly and talk? If there’s some hidden danger in this angel we’d better get rid of this creature. And the sooner, the better. Any museum will gladly buy this unusual painting from you.’
‘The problem is that my mom was very fond of this picture. One day she said I was unlikely to paint anything as good as that again. And she was proved right in the end: in all these years, I have never been able to create anything of the kind. This angel was given to me from above…’
‘Laura, I don’t know what else I should do to win you over. Unfortunately, foreboding is not an argument. Miriam is my entire life and the only thing I want to do is to protect her from harm.’
‘By the way, it was Miriam who asked us not to touch the picture,’ Laura said tiredly.
Their argument came to a standstill, and there was no sense in pursuing it further. Alexander saw there was no point in insisting: there was a wall of misunderstanding building up for the first time between them. It took a lot of effort for him to refrain from tearing the picture off the wall and shredding it to pieces.
Satanail rubbed his hands. The demons he’d sent to the house were doing their job slowly, but inexorably.
‘Even the happiest people are not always happy,’ he chuckled.
Miriam was a clever girl, loved and admired by her parents. It wouldn’t be long before he brought about major changes in her life!
Lately Satanail had to recruit the souls who left the earthly world and were rejected in the Kingdom of Light; there were a lot more of them than before. ‘One might think that the only thing people do is die,’ Satanail smirked. He selected downright scoundrels and sinners who then turned into demons to become his eyes and ears. They penetrated into every nook and cranny to watch humans without harming them, unless ordered otherwise. Those were the creatures rejected by the Angels of Light.
But there also were the souls that no one needed. They migrated around the universe, suffering from fear and cold, being a nuisance for both the living and the dead, while remaining totally unaware of what was happening to them…
‘I’m becoming sick and tired of my own existence; I’m fed up with the endless circle of deaths and souls. Almost all of Earth has been seduced, and is now falling, tumbling into the abyss…Nothing and nobody can stop this process. And who needs to stop it?’ Satanail mused. ‘Miriam, if only you knew how dear you are to me! You’re my liberation, and it is in you that my glory resides.’
Nothing whatsoever could be changed. There was only some room left for minor corrections in the future because all people and all souls were interconnected, and connected to Heaven and Earth by the unbreakable strings of destiny. Everything that had to do with Miriam also concerned both the Archangel and Satanail.
‘‘It’s a big pity Miriam’s life ended so abruptly during her past incarnation, and she failed to fulfill what was promised,’’ Satanail thought. ‘‘And my wretched existence still drags on…But it won’t be long. Bring it on!’’
Chapter 7
Miriam was twelve. She had long and slightly wavy thick blondish hair; her big emerald eyes watched the world with enthusiasm. Her small well-shaped nose and tender slightly pouty lips made her look like a doll. Miriam had a lively imagination which gave her a creative personality. She loved nature and everything that stemmed from it; she enjoyed every single moment of her life.
Since her early childhood Miriam had been on friendly terms with Natalie, their neighbors’ daughter. Natalie was a year older than Miriam. They spent a lot of time together: they played, chatted and shared
their secrets; both girls had weird dreams and therefore tried to find the answers to the questions that often bewildered their parents. Miriam had long ceased to ask her parents about the Hereafter: she saw that her revelations and hard questions made her father panicky, while her mother withdrew into herself. So she gave up worrying them.
****
One more summer arrived. The Hendersons decided to go down to Savoy to get some rest at Évian-les-Bains after their trip to Paris. They planned to visit Alexander’s parents and some old friends.
‘Do you think there’ll be enough room left for you in the car, Laura?’ gasped Alexander, on seeing his wife’s two enormous travel bags and painting tools.
‘Don’t worry, Alex, there’ll be enough room for everything,’ she said, smiling. ‘I need these things. That’s all.’
‘And I’ve got my things packed and ready!’ Miriam said bringing in her big suitcase and a briefcase filled with books.
‘I’ll squeeze everything into the car this evening so that we can set off tomorrow as early as possible.’ Alexander sighed with resignation and smiled.
‘Thanks, Daddy. I’m going to say goodbye to Natalie. I'll be back in a little while!’ Miriam kissed her parents on their cheeks and ran out of the house.