Stone Angels

by Michael Hartigan

I gave her what was left of a water bottle I had; she downed it and stretched out her hand for more. She regressed in age before my eyes, reaching out her delicate little hands, opening and closing them, grasping nothing but air and futility. She required nurturing and protection from this hasty vulnerability.

  If I had learned any first aid in my few collegiate years it was the miracle of water. Alcohol dehydrated. Water revitalized.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to her. “I’m going to go fill up the bottle. Lean against the wall and I’ll be right back for you.” She nodded and her eyes widened in acknowledgment. I could see the beautiful glimmer in them from behind a pane of alcohol.

  It took me a few minutes to get to bathroom. The swarm from downstairs had multiplied and migrated to the second floor.

  A guy I went to high school with was in line outside the bathroom door. He wanted to chat about our four years of Catholic all boys Prep school. He started the usual complaints about how we went through puberty without girls.

  “But we really did love that place, right bro,” he said.

  I nodded but I barely heard him. I wasn’t paying attention. My mind was focused on the present, on Lily slouching across the room. The situation didn’t feel right.

  I constantly checked on her, looking back over my shoulder even as the line progressed. I eventually got myself close to the bathroom door.

  Then Lily swayed. The plastic cup in her hand swayed with her in unison. She put it to her lips and, after draining it of its contents, let it fall to the ground from her wilted fingers. I noticed a few guys around her that I did not know laughing and prodding at her, Lily too drunk to notice or too oblivious to care. For a split second I thought I saw the same red designer sweater Duncan was wearing earlier that night moving in the midst of the group and then skitter out the doorway down the stairs.

  I thought he had left a long time ago.

  The bathroom line moved and I checked my status: next in line.

  Letting my eyes lose focus on Lily was my first mistake.

  As soon as I turned my head back in her direction I saw it happen. It looked like the guy in the black coat next to her had taken a scythe to her legs and sent her tumbling to the ground like a sheared crop. I dropped my beer and the empty water bottle and plowed through the mass of people. My shoulder lowered and my legs churned, driving a wedge into the swarm.

  “Hey man, where you going? Aren’t you gonna piss?” the kid from high school yelled. The words evaporated into the swarm’s buzzing and then lingered as my world turned slow motion.

  Lily’s body corkscrewed downward and I, halfway across the crowded room, lunged with my hands outstretched, hoping to reach something, anything, in time. How I got to Lily before her head hit the ground, I don’t know. The people around her scattered and my hand hit the floor a fraction before her head. My body was sprawled across the floor, laid out at full extension, arms outstretched with skyward palms, my face pressed into the foul, muddy floor. But I had a handful of red hair. Lily had literally crumbled in the blink of my eye; one moment she was leaning, sipping and the next she was falling to the beer soaked hardwood floor without a clue.

  In an instant a tall, flowing stalk of wheat was harvested right in front of me. My only reaction was not to let it get dirty. My senses were numb. I tried to speak but nothing came out. I shifted to my knees, propped up her head and stared into her eyes. I couldn’t look away from them. It was like staring at an emerald hillside far away in some remote Irish county. Some place that her grandparents raised sheep. Some place where a family sat around a fire and belted out folk songs in perfect tune to dancers. She embodied my fairy tale, my fantasy, and my perfect love story.

  Her eyelids drooped; were falling slowly. The green alcohol-stained windows, through which I looked into fantasy, closed their blinds. That hillside song waned and the dancers fell one by one. The slivers of green that were still visible were transfixed on the ceiling.

  Two things hit me simultaneously: someone’s hand and reality. Lily’s clouding perfection wore off as I twisted around to see a group of people looming over us. The kid from high school jabbed my shoulder asking, “what’s wrong” repeatedly.

  I ignored him. In one single, smooth motion I scooped Lily’s whole body and lifted her vertical.

  Lindsey appeared from some unseen corner of the room. She propped up Lily’s other shoulder.

  We carried her through the murmuring crowd of people, frantically searching for the staircase. The other partygoers barely noticed. The ones that did pointed and giggled. One or two looked legitimately concerned but still offered no assistance. The only logical choice was to get her outside, the only place to bring a natural beauty of Lily’s caliber. My mind raced away from fantasyland and my legs raced even faster down the stairs, out the back door and into the street.

  Emily emerged from the house followed by a few other girls. The other ones screamed at Lindsey and me about how they didn’t want to leave. Emily opened her mouth to bellow something but no words emerged. She closed her lips, a vacant stare watching as Lindsey and I dragged our friend across moist crabgrass, over the curbing and into the black street.

  “What should I do?” Emily finally yelled.

  “Go find Shoddy,” I tossed out without looking back at her. “He’ll walk you home.”

  “No, not for me. For Lily. What should we do for her?”

  I had no time for her intrusions and just yelled the first thing that came to my mind.

  “Pray.”

  Lindsey stumbled and paused. She shot me a horrified look from over the head of her slouching friend, my fading lover.

  “What the hell was that, Shaw?”

  “Just walk, Linds,” I struggled to talk and keep our balance. I was taking on the majority of Lily’s 108-pound frame, as well as the added awkward momentum Lindsey caused.

  I looked straight ahead down the road and breathed in to calm my quaking heart.

  “Everything will be fine, Linds,” I said. “I’ve done this before.”

  “Done what, dragged her home blacked out?”

  “No, saved Lily. Don’t worry, I can do it again.”

  Chapter 11

  I remember a lot of things from that walk, but I remember the darkness the most. It was intolerably dark out. The moon provided some light but no comfort. It really just illuminated the grays and blacks permeating the entire street.

  Large weeping tree branches overhung in a dreary canopy. Snarled, twisted limbs intertwined up towards Heaven, reaching like a beggar’s fingers searching for alms. The branches that stretched outwards over the road formed a fractured awning that let the slivers of moonlight through in random shards. The broken moonlight crossed and danced on the asphalt as we stepped down and up, down and up on top of it. Thorns wreathed round the trunks and several trees had branches that pierced through one another in a mad, chaotic attempt at order. The chain fence that ran along one side of the street had been engulfed by many of the hideous trees. They grew and enveloped the rusted links, merging nature and metal.

  And everything was helplessly fighting off the shadow—it cloaked everything along the street. I saw no color, only various shades of black and gray. The mailbox, the fire hydrant and the street signs all sat silent like tombstones with epitaphs of “stop” or “local mail.”

  Lily, hanging off Lindsey and me like an old coat, moaned inaudible phrases. We basically pulled her down the street like dogs with an empty sled. The night uttered nothing as we shuffled off the road, up onto the sidewalk in the direction of the main campus.

  As we meandered away, the house party seemed far off in time and place. Before we got to the end of the street I looked back at the house, wanting to be sure it truly existed. The blackness of the street hurt my eyes, but the burning sensation they got when they focused on the house was unbearable. A distant, hazy and artificial glow of fluorescent bulbs and burning cigarettes contrasted the house against the pitch-black street. Imagine the De
vil’s dream house. It probably looks similar to where we just were.

  I turned away, disgusted at my peers and myself.

  Lindsey and I took a left onto Eaton Street with Lily in tow and caught sight of campus proper. Had we taken a right, walked a half-mile and taken another right, we would have been on the street that led to Primal. We definitely didn’t want to go that way. That night, Primal was the beginning not the end.

  We crossed Eaton Street and walked next to the varsity soccer field, stopping every few yards so Lindsey could catch her breath and I could make sure Lily was still breathing. I had seen overly drunk people before. I was a junior in college; I had been one of those overly drunk people on numerous occasions. But until that point, I had never seen someone that drunk. She wasn’t just drunk she was intoxicated. Her system was poisoned. Lily wasn’t right.

  Eaton Street was a slightly inclined road and a short stonewall formed a boundary between the fenced in soccer field and the sidewalk. Lindsey leaned against it, resting Lily’s hip on her knee.

  “Ya know, for a stick figure this girl weighs a ton,” she complained.

  “Doesn’t help that you’re wasted,” I snapped.

  I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t Lindsey’s fault. But she was the only coherent one in our traveling trio and I needed to vent.

  “Fine, let’s go.”

  She shifted to push Lily’s limp body from off her lap when an acrid smell hit my nostrils. Lindsey’s face melted and she started spitting out locker-room profanity.

  “Are you kidding me?” She pushed Lily up into my arms and stared at the wet stain on her lap. “She fucking peed on me!”

  Lily’s eyes were closed and I knew she had no control over her motor functions. Lindsey was lucky it was only urine.

  “I’m gonna kill her tomorrow. These are new jeans!”

  “Relax, Linds. I doubt she did it on purpose.”

  I remember wanting to laugh but when I looked at Lily in my arms, with no ability to hold herself up, the humor of the situation disappeared. Lindsey eventually recognized it too. Her snarled lips softened with sympathy. She got up, grabbed a shoulder and we traipsed up Eaton, turned right onto Huxley Avenue and moved towards the beacon that was Lily’s ten-story dorm building rising up from the center of campus.

  Until September of our junior year, when the school completed construction on a new chapel, Lily’s dorm building, McVinney Hall was the highest point in the entire state of Rhode Island. The new chapel’s apex, a golden cross, allowed the house of worship to steal that title. That night Lily’s dorm building, a utilitarian concrete behemoth full of double bed dorm rooms, underage drinking and parietal-breaking freshmen, would be our lighthouse and our guide, not the chapel.

  As we approached the main gate of upper campus I decided to cross the main road, avoid that main entrance and take Lily up one of the less-well lit pathways. Besides the danger of the security guard at the main gate, I wanted to avoid the group of three guys sitting on the wall ten yards away. They all wore hooded sweatshirts, their faces shrouded. The monkish anonymity added to the already palpable aura of danger they radiated. It was easily distinguished even from our distance.

  All the orientation seminars and security department notices did nothing to prepare a freshman for the long walk down the dark road past the housing projects and the cemetery, to reach the college bars. Every weekend the hyenas emerged from their dens and stalked the local watering holes, crouching in wait for a wounded adolescent to fall away from the group, ready to be snatched up and devoured. Undergraduates learned very quickly what characteristics separated the generally naïve and thirsty students from the local thugs preying on them. Being juniors, Lindsey and I had run that gauntlet for years. Instinct improved with experience.

  “C’mon, let’s take her up near DiTraglia Hall and around the chapel, I don’t like the look of those kids up there.”

  “Seriously Shaw, grow up,” she said. “They’re probably just stoners. If we go that way we have more stairs to climb. And she’s getting heavy.”

  Apparently Lindsey’s instinct wasn’t as sharp as mine.

  “Then let’s go that way so security doesn’t see us and call it in,” I said, keeping the group of thugs in my peripherals.

  “Alright fine, I guess it’s a good idea,” Lindsey said. “You know they’d just love to transport her to the hospital.”

  Together we heaved Lily off one sidewalk and across the street to the other. Our awkwardly stealth maneuver may have eluded the security guard hut but the group of thugs noticed.

  “Hey! Not bad, man, one passed out and one on the way,” one of them cackled. “Can someone say threesome?”

  “Haha, nah he’s probably too wasted for his shit to work. Maybe I’ll have to pinch hit for him,” hissed the tallest one. A discernable hooked nose protruded from the hood’s shadow. They started to cross the street towards us.

  “I love drunk girls,” the other one said, “And I really love passed out girls.”

  “She can’t say no if she can’t talk,” the tall one snickered.

  “Just ignore these assholes,” Lindsey said. She was clearly losing patience with the entire night.

  “Linds, if these guys come over here, run over to security,” I whispered.

  “Oh please, PC guys don’t have the balls to fuck with me right now.”

  “I don’t think they’re PC guys, Linds, they look like . . .”

  A quick siren burst and green lights interrupted my observation. One of the security SUVs pulled up in front of the guys before they could cross the street.

  “Show me your IDs, gentlemen,” said a portly security guard from the comfort of the car. The guard saw us but decided it was more important to first flex his muscles instead of offer us a ride. I wasn’t going to complain; just avoiding serious trouble with authorities would be a positive in a night of negatives. Lindsey and I took the opportunity to pull Lily off the sidewalk, along a pathway with two sets of stone steps, around a corner. By the time the new chapel loomed in front of us, we were out of sight.

  Dragging Lily’s body through the chapel courtyard was slow going. Lindsey and I were both exhausted. Ooze pulsed in the newly formed blister on my right heel. Luckily, we knew the security guards rarely patrolled this area this time of night. The welcomed feeling of safety slowed our pace and we stopped every few steps to readjust our grip on Lily and catch our breath. I used the relief to indulge in our surroundings. I immediately noticed the intricate detail inlayed into the chapel’s edifice and its religious accoutrements. The brick walkway that wrapped around the building converged in a large, circular patio, on which we were standing.

  The large reddish oak doors were usually open in the daytime, causing the smells and sounds of an empty place of worship to sneak out onto students passing between classes. The smell that wafted out was flowery, sweet and smoky. The aromatic flavors mixed with a faint, musical sound of tinkling metal and sloshing liquid. Whenever I smelled and heard the chapel during the day I always thought of Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. I don’t know why, but something about those sounds added to those smells was pleasurably inane. On the off chance I entered the chapel, I half expected (and half hoped) to see the head chaplain sitting around the altar surrounded by animals drinking tea. Maybe I just liked the idea of a world where party hosts spoke in roundabout riddles and wore senselessly large hats; where naïve young people stumbled onto something they could never truly understand, and left better for it.

  But that night there was definitely no tea party in the chapel. The doors were shut. The smells were trapped inside. The lights inside were dimmed to almost nothing.

  Above the doors on the façade was an upside down triangle, Latin writing etched around the outline. In the middle of the triangle was a single torch and a banner with the word, “veritas” scrawled across. It was the college’s symbol, a torch to light the way to knowledge. One small spotlight shined from the ground onto the school emblem. Oth
er bigger spotlights planted at the edges of the patio beamed up to illuminate the golden cross that watched over campus and the state of Rhode Island.

  Around the rim of the patio was a low wall of artistic stonework punctuated by six stone pillars. Atop each pillar sat the only other source of light in the courtyard: familiar stone angels, each holding a torch mimicking the one on the school crest, save the 100-watt light bulb that cast an eerie blue glow over each angel’s androgynous face.

  Whenever I passed that chapel at night, tragedy was on the wind. Those stone angels only herald dread.

  Chapter 12

  Lily was completely passed out as Lindsey and I pulled her through the chapel courtyard, past the indefatigable stone angels, down a bush-lined pathway and onto the Quad.

  “Her room or your room?” Lindsey asked, taking a deep breath. She used to be an athlete, but it was a long walk to be carrying dead weight. I was out of breath too.

  “I don’t know, I thought her room. I was heading in that direction.”

  I stared up at the concrete tower breaching up above the rest of campus, save the golden cross. Most of the lights were out. The building didn’t look as inviting from closer up. I changed my mind.

  “On second thought,” I said, “We should probably go to my room. No security guard at my building. There are a few at Lily’s.”

  Lindsey and I both knew the first authority figure to see Lily’s state would immediately call an ambulance. That should have tipped me off, but as was usually the case with Lily, my emotions clouded my judgment. I wanted to keep her safe; I wanted to fix her myself. I was her hero, no one else.

  We diverged, went across the grass on the Quad and through the side door of my building. No one else was around so we waltzed in undisturbed. The most cumbersome part of the trip was getting her up the stairs. Lily was no help whatsoever and by now Lindsey’s strength had given out.

  Instead of stairs we chose the rickety elevator that students barely used. We didn’t have to wait.