by V. Cobe
CHAPTER 22
The Black Angel
“Do you think anyone saw us?” Lael’s nails were carved into Alem’s back.
“Don’t think about that,” cut Hazael.
Nothing moved in the street. Hidden at the back of the alley, barely breathing, Alem, Jaala, Lael and Hazael intermingled with the darkness.
“One of us should go to the entrance to see if the Brigade shows up,” suggested Jaala.
“I’ll go first,” said Alem. “You guys stay there.”
He walked, silent, until the entrance of the alley and then stopped, stuck to the wall.
The street was completely deserted. He was immersed in the shadows of the alley, but the roads were lit, even if by weak lamps.
He looked back and couldn’t distinguish his friends in the dark until they waved. Still, the only things he saw were their outlines and the brightness of their eyes.
For a long time he remained there hidden, crouched.
Someone at the monastery would’ve certainly noticed his absence. Maybe not. If they discovered he wasn’t at the monastery, he could forget about getting into the Institution. At best.
I could pretend someone kidnapped me again. He felt like vomiting after thinking such absurdity.
Footsteps sounded on the street. At the same time, in the corner of his eye, he saw a movement in the shadows, a figure. But when he looked over there, nothing moved anymore.
His friends were still hidden at the end of the alley.
He gestured for them to go closer.
Jaala whispered for the others to stay and went to Alem.
“Something’s walking around there!”
“What do you mean?” asked Jaala.
The other did not need to answer; more footsteps sounded, then a figure in the dark and a bush moved.
Jaala’s eyes widened.
“So this must be it…,” he murmured.
“What?”
“I’ve heard of this. I’m scared.” He extended his arm to show him the goose bumps. “It’s the undershadows. It must be!”
“I don’t understand,” whispered Alem. “What are you talking about?”
“When I was little, my uncle told me that the curfew existed to protect us from the creatures of the night. He said they moved like shadows and were elusive, just smudged figures. He called them undershadows. It must be them! I’ll tell the others.” He returned to the back of the alley.
Alem looked at the deserted street. Why hasn’t anyone told me about this? Creatures of the night sounded like something out of a story to frighten children, but at the same time, he was sure there was something out there.
His thoughts were interrupted, but this time it wasn’t by shadows. At first he couldn’t figure out what it was and then couldn’t believe his eyes: behind the top of a row of buildings lurked something black and huge. It rippled like a cat hidden with its tail extended against the starry sky and then disappeared on the top edge of the building.
Alem looked at the back of the alley to his friends. He motioned for them to wait and ran toward the block that was covering whatever that figure was. He skirted the building carefully and stopped, panting, around the corner. He peered but saw nothing: the street was deserted. However, he was sure he’d seen a giant figure sliding behind that row, so big that its ends could be seen on either side. But now there was nothing. It was just another road flanked by rows of buildings on the right and left. Further ahead was a crossing where two other roads spawned, diagonally, one from the right and another from the left side, but there was nothing strange there.
I must be dreaming.
He was about to turn back when he heard something. It came from one of the streets that diverged at the crossing, yet sounded as if it was right behind him. It was a soft, familiar whisper, “Amennnn….”
His heart raced. In the street, nothing moved. Footsteps sounded in the distance, but it was just the other three running toward him.
Alem couldn’t waste any time. The whisper seemed to be a beckoning call, though he didn’t know how to explain why he felt that.
He stormed off through the diagonal road from where the whisper had come, without looking back, but stopped right at the beginning. The street seemed to have no light, like a dark hole, torn in the ceiling that was the starry sky. But then he realized what it was.
About a hundred yards ahead, two gigantic black wings were spread out diagonally along the street, covering every lamp along the way to Alem. The entity from which the feathery appendages stretched was the man whom Alem had seen in the church. His long hair, black like death. He had his back turned to Alem, but was looking back at him, as if waiting.
Without warning, he started running forward, and Alem followed.
The black wings of the man swung at Alem’s side, giving him the feeling of being wrapped in them, because some had already stayed behind, from his right and his left. They were two spectacular things. The feathers, thousands of them gathering all the way to the top of the buildings, were black as night and two feet long.
Alem was catching up with the man. The black hair whipped the air, and Alem could almost grab it. He needed to know who he was, what he wanted with him. He needed to know what Umbra was and why they had abducted him.
The man’s naked back revealed two tears, about a foot in length, just below his shoulder blades, from where the wings protruded. He looked back while running and with enormous beauty said, “Revelation 1”
As he did, he was swallowed by the ground so suddenly that Alem had no time to stop.
The wings were sucked into the earth, like water going down the drain of a bathtub. Alem jumped over them, over an open sewer hole in the ground from where the tips of the black wings had just disappeared, fell onto the ground and stopped. He bent over the hole and peered into the void. He still had in his memory, like a photograph not fully revealed, the slight smile of that man with very straight, very long and pitch black hair.
The others found Alem on his knees, motionless, peering into the hole.
“We’re completely exposed here,” whispered Hazael.
Alem didn’t answer or give them any explanation.
They ripped him out of the ground by the arm and dragged him back to the alley they had left, looking for the remaining sense of security they might still have.
“What is it you lost in the sewer that’s so important?” Hazael was panting, sitting on the ground against a wall.
Fear grew in the silence until Alem broke it. Trying to remember all the details, he turned his thoughts into words with effort and told them all he had seen.
“Giant black wings?” asked Jaala.
“It’s the truth.”
“Oh my God,” squeaked Lael.
No one spoke for a long while.
“That’s very hard to believe,” said Hazael.
“I know. I said just that.”
“No one here is doubting you. If there’s anyone here who doesn’t make up things, it’s you,” said Jaala.
“I didn’t say that. But maybe… maybe you’ve been deceived by your brain. Tonight has been stressful enough to do that.”
“I didn’t hallucinate; it was all too clear.”
“Do you think he broke the vase so we’d come here to find him?”
“I don’t know.”
Lael asked them not to speak about the matter anymore, and they agreed not to tell anyone what had happened; it would stay between them.
None of the four said anything else for the rest of the night. They surrendered themselves to their own thoughts on night, angels, demons, undershadows, hallucinations and sewers.
When the sky began to lighten in the east, Alem said, “We have to go to Umbra.”