Angel Radio

by A. M. Blaushild

  The deer-thing had once breathed a name, Orifiel, and left me behind. And I supposed that was its name; it didn’t really make sense for it to be anything else. But I wasn’t sure if I was ready to acknowledge it yet.

  The possibility of working with this figment of my imagination frightened me more than space, and I hadn’t been able to so much as read about space since I was a young child and accidentally stumbled into a 3-D IMAX movie on the subject and got scarred for life. It wasn’t even a horror film. It had been a documentary. But it had been very loud and very, very big.

  It sort of sniffed at me, and I rolled farther away. “I thought I told you to go away,” I said, but even then I could feel its breath on my neck. I considered hitting it to emphasize my point, but I realized how gross it would be if I accidentally hit its eye and decided against it.

  Orifiel, or at least, the creature that knew the word Orifiel, sat next to me and leaned on my back. I shivered at its touch, but it wasn’t cold—in fact, it felt like a furnace.

  “Aren’t ghosts supposed to go away when you ask them politely?” I said, aware I might or might not be talking to myself. “If a ghost can manage that sort of honest behavior, why can’t you?”

  It nuzzled against me, a feeling painfully strange and uncomfortable. Its horns bumped my head and shoulders repeatedly and dully, like being hit lightly with a rolled up newspaper.

  “That’s it,” I said, and I rolled over and kicked it in the side.

  Naturally, this neither killed nor harmed the creature, and its body split open again and took a long and tall, almost human-shaped form that mostly resembled a silk blanket thrown over a lamppost.

  It looked at me a couple times—this I could tell, as the top of the body where I presumed its head to be turned back and forth. I could never know when it was facing me and when it wasn’t, but certainly it had to at some point in its rotation.

  Finally it made up its mind on whatever had been ailing it, and the once-deer-always-angel dashed (if that was the right word for it) away along the lakefront and toward a park.

  I had no desire to follow it, and I felt it would probably start following me again soon regardless. I decided to head back into the city again, thinking I might as well follow the road out of town again and onward.

  Because, you know, I had made it here to Burlington. And now it was time to go back—because if I was going to waste away in solitude for the rest of my days, perhaps it was for the best that it was in my own town. The place was full of old memories made painful in just their ancient existence, but at least some of them were good.

  And many, if not all of them, were better than the ones I had been making as of late.

  When the angel left my presence, another song picked up again in my mind, one that rolled about from ear to ear and had never quite gone silent—one that had risen from the depths of static for air, but never once had truly left me.

  And ahead of me, if it even was possible, the clouds were dark and ever reaching—and carried with them a sort of unearthly and unnatural quality, like oil on water, shifting.

  19

  IT WAS day, and the sky was dark and grainy. The clouds weren’t advancing, not really, but they seemed to be stirring, and it was only as I moved that they did.

  By the entrance ramp to the interstate, it might as well have been night. Obviously there was some sort of external force at work here, something supernatural and related to the angels, no doubt, but it was impossible to pinpoint exactly what that could be. Far away, almost like stars, I could spy holes in the clouds where the sky shone unnaturally blue.

  I had time to spare. It was nothing more than a short leap over a concrete fence to enter the wilderness, and from there all I had to do was look up.

  But the forest was very odd. Dark and empty. Nothing moved, from insect to angel.

  However, I soon found out that the angels were not quite missing. They had simply moved. And it turned out they had fantastic camouflage as well, for I had to step on one to even know it was there.

  With its eyes closed and wings folded and body unidentifiably spread out, it looked like nothing more than something slightly out of place. And yet it blended right in, circling the base of a tree, very, very black.

  I took a careful step back and crouched cautiously. There were more of them, all over the floor of the forest. They melded together impossibly perfectly, so that I was unable to discern where one started and another ended.

  They all looked ill, though, and only a couple eyes out of thousands watched me step through their forms. Somehow I doubted it mattered, the caution I took: angels had never attacked me before, and I had no doubt walked on several others when I had first entered the woods. Still, they made me uneasy.

  I could see the spot of light long before I could make out its details. It was blinding even from a distance, but my eyes slowly adjusted as I got closer. And in the center of the clearing of light, there stood a human.

  Well, not quite, of course. An almost human. Its features were quite good but had a sort of hazy unfinished quality to them. It had a nosebleed of black blood that ran continuously down its face and merged perfectly with the black spots and bulges that had appeared all over its body. It did not move, but stood slackly, head slightly downturned.

  I turned back to walk into the woods but instead walked into a very solid object that looked very much like darkness but was instead completely palpable.

  I backed up fast enough that I ended up pushing the human-shaped angel to the ground. Around me, the darkness grew larger and tighter.

  In my fit of emotions over the last day, I hadn’t bothered packing anything weapon-like with me. I had a couple things of food, water, and a sleeping bag.

  I caught a sudden movement from the corner of my eye, and the human-shaped angel was dragged away. I breathed heavily as the darkness got tighter and tighter around me, tapping into my minor claustrophobia, when the creature that was the darkness reared its head and stared me down.

  Its head emerged from up high like a fast-growing tree, but as it moved into the fading light, I saw its face to be dragonesque. Its neck, spiked and scaled, circled me several times. It breathed heavily through its nostrils, though its mouth hung slightly open.

  I was frozen in place, but as it snapped at me I came suddenly back to my senses. I fell to the ground and desperately crawled to the other side of the clearing and got up, leaning against the solid blackness for support.

  The dragon did not give up, and again lunged at me. Its neck almost seemed out of bounds with reality in the way it moved—it circled and seemed to come from anywhere at all, like there wasn’t a body below it.

  I moved to the side, and the dragon’s head rammed into itself and kept going, reforming again a second later on top of the high wall of dark.

  I ran to the other side of the clearing—a feat that only took a few steps—and pressed myself against the darkness again, moving carefully so I remained under its neck.

  At first this seemed to work, and the dragon was unable to reach me. But then, slowly, I noticed my movement was being restricted. It wasn’t that I couldn’t move from side to side, but rather that I couldn’t move forward.

  My arms were stuck to the wall, and suddenly my left one was pulled right in. With a bit of force I managed to free my other arm and my feet, but my left arm seemed thoroughly stuck in the darkness. I tugged, but all I was doing was causing myself pain. My wrist especially hurt, and it felt on the verge of dislocating.

  Finally I did make progress, but it was all at once, and not at all on my own terms. The dragon let go and moved to the other side of the clearing, waiting.

  However, the force I had been using to free my arm was stronger than it perhaps had expected. I went flying and landed on its snout. One of my shoes caught on one of its teeth, and I quickly slipped it off before the dragon closed its jaws.

  I scrambled to find handholds as the dragon’s head started to thrash about. I clung at first to one
of its large pointed horns but found my grip slipping. I worked my way up the neck instead, finding it significantly more stable.

  The head gave up on its thrashing and started to rise. I clung helplessly as its body began to form from the shadows, but even then it still was incomplete. Though there were shapes like legs and claws, they never quite left the mass of darkness; this was even more apparent with the wings, which billowed up like tents, tips still stuck to the ground.

  It could only leap so high, but then there was the sudden sound of something tearing, and the rest of its body ripped itself out of the murk. Still, it remained tethered to the ground by its absurdly long tail.

  Its wings were giant, almost looking too big, and it seemed to take ages for them to properly flap. But evidently the lift gained was enough to match the slow speed of the flapping, and soon it was airborne and very high up. Its tail extended with it like a loose thread being pulled out of a sweater, and as it grew, it would get larger as well, essentially acting as an extension to the body.

  I was almost too busy clinging to its back to stop and appreciate the view, but I found a moment. Everything around was darkness, though the darkness only rose about ten feet. It almost looked like the ground from up high, if not for the sudden drop-off I could see in the distance where the city was. That too would be consumed soon, I realized, because there was no way I was going to kill this thing.

  It seemed like it had given up on killing me too, but then I realized we were flying up, not away. And as it flew higher and higher, until I was very much cold and finding it a bit harder to breathe, it suddenly stopped.

  Its body melted and dissolved into something like wet sand, and I held a fistful of it before it crumbled.

  The once-dragon fell just like anything else, perfectly filling the dragon-shaped hole it had left in itself. It had finished reforming long before I hit the ground. Which wasn’t going to be for a while, it seemed—I was impossibly high. While this did mean I had more time to think, it definitely lowered my chances of surviving the fall. I was left in the air, falling and freezing.

  I struggled to keep myself steady, but soon started tumbling about in the air dizzyingly. I felt sick, and it was this feeling that accompanied my fall to the ground, and it was this that I felt as I hit the darkness.

  I survived, and I was most likely alive. But it was very, very dark. I hadn’t really hit the ground so much as decelerated over a long distance, even more so when I hit the fog—it had been like fabric, and I barely even felt the moment of impact.

  At least I had survived, even though I was now stuck in the darkness. There was some minimal light, enough for me to see nothing much had changed. I was still in the forest, though there seemed to be a murky fog about the place. Movement seemed harder as well, though perhaps it was the result of the fall.

  I had landed on a bed of moss, one that had been coated in a light layer of ice. It helped keep me alert at least. Above me I thought I saw the stars, but I realized instead they were eyes, far off and blinking.

  I rolled over and pushed myself up. I couldn’t quite get my bearings anymore, but as long as it seemed safe, there was no harm in wandering.

  The forest became something like a hallway in the fog and murk, and wherever I stepped, something seemed to be soggy. I had removed my socks and remaining shoe at first to keep them clean, but now I was starting to lose all feeling in my toes. Even when I walked on roots or stones it felt like wading through water.

  There were no real sounds out in the woods, just the dripping of moisture and the sound of my feet, walking.

  Something was following me, though, and I was only aware of it through whatever extra-sense it is that sends shivers down our spines when we’re being watched.

  I had been watched for a very long time now, wherever I went, and knew this was different. Something was out there—or really, something was inside this demonic darkness with me.

  The something in the darkness wasn’t walking, and it wasn’t making any sound. But it was there. I was too scared to look around, afraid of whatever I might see. When I did stand still and strain to listen, I felt my feet start to sink into the soil, and I sped up.

  The only solution to my problems was to get out of them.

  A sudden rain of dust on my face and one painfully slow turn of the head brought me to finally look up. One of the starlike eyes from above had extended toward me, and it bore two mouths, with its great eye above.

  For once I didn’t trip to the ground. I just ran. Others came down from the sky and joined the pursuit, diving and twirling almost gleefully about. And there was a noise then, but it was gnashing and snapping and something like saliva.

  I was spurred far by adrenaline alone, but as I went forward more and more of the tendrils followed. Even if I had a chance to outwit one of them before somehow, maybe by stabbing its eye with a stick, I couldn’t do so with this many of them.

  Considering I was already inside the dragon’s body, it was hard to guess why it was trying to eat me again. I suppose it just wanted me dead.

  Far off I could still see some patches of daylight, and I was willing to put myself at risk of another fight with a dragon’s head if it meant escaping these things. I willed myself on, and when that started to wear off, just threw myself forward with everything I had.

  I dove painfully into the light. The tendrils followed, but only their heads entered the light briefly to snap at me, and then they backed off.

  The clearing was empty, and bigger than the one before. I fell face-first into the grass to regain my breath. I felt almost like I could throw up from exhaustion. This was not a safe spot to sleep. But I really needed to.

  It was with great pain that I forced myself up, but even then I could only manage to sit.

  My head spun, and I fell back again on the grass, still struggling to catch my breath.

  “Wow, you look just awful.”

  “You’re no keeper yourself,” I replied automatically, before having the sense to turn over and glare at Fex. “Way to show up now.”

  “Way to show up at all, I think you mean.” He was sitting just a few feet from me, looking quite peaceful and relaxed. “This is not a place I’m supposed to be right now, in case you weren’t aware. For a very high number of reasons.”

  “Are you going to magically teleport me out of here or something?”

  “Nah, can’t risk getting caught carrying you. I’m pretty sure they’ve marked you down for dead at this point.”

  “Death?” I said in alarm.

  “Dead,” he emphasized. “You ran off into this place, so naturally they think you died. Of course, it didn’t take much work to find you over here, but most of us don’t have the spare time to even bother.”

  “Aw, were you worried about me?” I asked sarcastically. “Were you searching in misery to check if I really was dead? That’s so sweet of you.”

  “It’s great to know you think so highly of my job and its requirements to ‘know where you are at any given time.’ That really means a lot to me.”

  “So if you’re not teleporting me out, how are you going to save me?”

  “I never said I was going to save you.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re just going to hang out here until I die.”

  “I’m going to offer you a tiny bit of help, just because I still owe you for helping me get my power back.” He got up and pointed to my left. “The exit is that way.”

  I grabbed him by his shirt, just in case he tried to leave. “Oh no. That is not enough. I almost got eaten twice today, and I’m not looking for a third time. I think you owe me a bit more than that. You got some crazy power now, right? So use it.”

  “Uh look, it’s not like I’m opposed to helping you. I’ve told you before, you’re probably my favorite over the other girl. But the thing with all my abilities is that I honestly can’t use them without everyone else knowing I did. And I can’t risk doing something suspicious and getting caught.”

 
; “What, you have some sort of beacon in you that connects you to everyone else? So you are confirming my hive mind theory.”

  “We are not a hive mind. Please stop insisting that.” He rolled his eyes, but then his face fell to a grimace. “The truth is complicated and strange. Perhaps not hard to understand, but do realize I still shouldn’t tell you.”

  “Give me some actual help.”

  He looked lost in thought for a few seconds but then sighed. “All right. I will say I was attacked by a stray outlier or something, and use that as an excuse for this.” He then walked to the edge of the darkness and urged me to follow.

  The wall had begun to resolidify, and he placed his hand on its surface. He then dug his fingertips into the shadows and a sudden flash of light spread through it.

  It was fire, and for a moment the whole wall was covered in small flames like firecrackers. The smoke released blended right with the wall, and soon I could see into the forest.

  “That takes care of that,” Fex said, looking worried. He took a few very cautious steps into the woods, and I realized he looked terrified.

  “You’d think an angel would be able to easily handle some demons. That’s how it is in the Bible, I think.”

  “Demons…,” he said, but he was clearly too busy carefully examining everything he saw.

  He kept a ball of flame alight in his hand, and he tossed it nervously up and down while he took a couple steps in.

  “I really can’t go any farther than this,” he said. “Walk fast, keep your head down, and breathe quietly.”

  “Don’t you have something you can give me? How long of a walk is this going to be?”

  “A while, I’m afraid, and you’re just going to have to hope for good luck. If you get out, remember not to go near here again.”

  “Is there really nothing?”

  “Well… I could probably get away with creating a distraction. Here,” he said, and he tossed the little ball of flames he had amassed off to the side and straight through the trees.

  Above, a couple of the eyed demons suddenly jerked awake and followed it.