Dark Rising

by Monica McGurk

  Don leaned into the table, ignoring Mona.

  “The angels that visited me warned me to prepare her. For what, they never said. But why would I need to prepare her if it weren’t for something great? For something dangerous? And now the voices have stopped. They stopped around the time she asked to move in with you, Mona,” he added for her benefit.

  Her dawning sense of disappointment only deepened. Nothing had changed, after all. “So that’s why you barely put up a fight? Because the angels were telling you to let her go?”

  He nodded. “And then there is this. I’d almost forgotten about it.”

  He dug into his pockets and pulled out some papers, crumpled and yellow. He laid them out on the table, smoothing them over carefully.

  “These are the program notes from the choir that was singing in the church the first time I heard the voices,” he said. “I guess I’d grabbed them on my way in to pray and had tucked them away. I’d forgotten them until recently. Look at what they say.”

  He moved to pass the papers around. Tabitha took them swiftly from his quivering hands.

  “Missa de Angelis,” Tabitha read. “Mass of the Angels. You were listening to Gregorian chants about angels?”

  “Apparently so. Now read the translation of the chants. They are printed near the bottom of the program.”

  Tabitha squinted and continued. “You were sent to heal the contrite of heart.”

  Her mother reached across to take the papers from her. “Please, let me.” She turned to Mona and Don, adding by way of explanation, “I studied liturgical music while Roger was getting his PhD.”

  She held the sheets up closer to her face, pulling her reading glasses down on her nose to get a better look. “The program says this was followed by a Misereris Omnium. If I remember correctly, that work begins with ‘Your mercy extends to all things, O Lord; you despise none of the things you lovingly made.’”

  “Wisdom 11,” Roger Franklin whispered. “As well as Psalm 56. It is a redemption story. Poetry about God’s unending love for his creation. All of it.”

  “It’s too many coincidences,” Don said, rubbing his face with his shaking hands. “Too many—all pointing to the same thing.”

  “What? That Hope is the second coming?” She said dismissively, ignoring the cold fingers of fear gripping her heart. “Give me a break. It could be anything but that, Don. Anything but that,” Mona said, each word dripping with weariness.

  Abruptly, she pushed herself away from the table and stood. “Your theories are interesting, but you’re ignoring the simplest explanation. We have proof that she was taken by traffickers this time. Hard evidence,” she added for emphasis.

  “Evidence that keeps disappearing as if it never existed,” Don countered. “How do you explain that away?”

  “Not by heavenly intervention!” She had shifted into the cold professionalism in which she cloaked herself every time she strode into a boardroom. Her mind rejected the mystery. She could only deal in facts.

  “You’re all wrong,” Tabitha interjected, cutting through the mounting tension. The recriminations evaporated from the air as they stopped arguing and all swiveled, as if marionettes on a string, to stare at her.

  “You’re all wrong,” Tabby repeated, swallowing hard and squaring her shoulders. “Look at the evidence.”

  Her father peered at her over his glasses. “Go on.”

  “Everything keeps pointing to angels. You, Mr. Carmichael, heard voices saying Hope is of the angels. They keep telling you her work isn’t finished. The choir you heard when she disappeared was singing about angels.”

  “So?” Don leaned into the table, wondering what Hope’s friend was getting at.

  “And the lyrics of that sung mass, they were about forgiveness. About God loving all his creatures. All of them. Don’t you see?”

  Her father’s brow crumpled in puzzlement. “I’m afraid I don’t, Tabitha. What do you see that we don’t?”

  Tabby raised her chin, almost anticipating they would reject her idea. “Hope isn’t part of the Second Coming, or the Apocalypse. She’s here to save the Fallen Angels.”

  She felt them staring at her and crossed her arms. “It’s obvious.”

  Her father pushed away his coffee cup, bemused. “That’s an interesting theory, Tabitha, but I’m afraid …”

  “Roger—” his wife shook her head, cutting him off. “Not now. Now is not the time for another theoretical debate. I have to say I agree with Mona. The evidence points to the traffickers. Time is running out. We need to find Hope, and the traffickers seem to be the key to it. From what Tabby has said, I suspect this boy, Michael, was part of it, too.”

  “Mom!” Tabby burst out, jumping up from her chair. “Michael’s not a trafficker! He’s an angel, I’m sure of it. If he was here to protect Hope, it all makes sense. And it explains why all signs of him have disappeared, too!”

  “Tabitha Marie, that is enough.” Mrs. Franklin’s tone was sharp. Tabitha looked around the table, shocked that, for the first time she could remember, her inquisitive mind and sharp intellect were being shut down instead of stoked by her doting parents. She choked back a sob and ran, knocking over her chair.

  Mona’s eyes trailed after her as she ran up the stairs. She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. This must be hard for her, too.”

  She addressed the rest of her words to the Franklins.

  “I’m sorry—perhaps this was a waste of your time. Dr. Franklin, I can’t see things the way you do. Nor you, Don. I do appreciate you letting Tabitha share more of what she knows about Hope’s disappearance, but I’m not sure we have any more concrete idea of what to do than we did before.” She could feel the panic snaking its way to her heart, making her sweat.

  Roger looked at her with what she swore was pity.

  “You might need to keep an open mind,” Roger nudged, not unkindly.

  “Let her be, Roger,” his wife retorted gently.

  He sighed heavily before letting his head sag into his chest in a resigned nod. “Fine. Fine. Then we are happy to have met with you. But, Mona, from now on, if you have anything else you need to talk to Tabitha about, please come to her mother or me first.”

  Mona stared at her hands, clasped tightly on the table, chastened. Of course, he was right. She would have felt the same way if their roles had been reversed. She nodded swiftly. Then she steeled herself to part from her husband, ignoring the impulse she felt to draw him to her, to kiss his troubled brow.

  “Don,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “I assume you’ll head back to Alabama tonight. Good night,” she added, not waiting for him to acknowledge her implicit rejection not only of his ideas, but of him.

  To her surprise, he simply smiled. “Yes. If I am right, there is nothing more for me to do here. Hope’s path is laid out for her, and the best thing for me to do is to get out of the way. Of God’s plan, or the investigation. Either way.” She ignored the hollow feeling that filled her at the thought of him actually leaving her alone, again, in Atlanta. She ignored the urge to scrabble after him, begging him to stay with her while they waited for their daughter to come home to them. She realized, then, that perhaps her disappointment was all the deeper, because she still loved him. After all this, and all these years, she still did love him.

  She left them sitting at the table as she let herself out. Once outside, she sat for a moment in the drive, thinking. A tiny voice spoke inside her head. Are you dismissing their explanations too easily? Are greater mysteries than your daughter’s disappearance winding their way through your world while you sit, blind to them?

  She shook her head and pushed the questions away. Slowly she shifted the car into drive, leaving her doubts behind on the weathered surface of the Franklins’ cul-de-sac.

  She spent a sleepless night at home, alone. She felt like a caged animal, the days of endless waiting—unable to do anything—weighing on her, and her complicated feelings about Don made things worse. As morning approached,
she made up her mind.

  She would go into her office and distract herself. She texted Arthur to arrange a pickup.

  Her movements were almost mechanical. Hair pulled tightly back. Lipstick and blush to cover her pallor. She faced the row of nearly identical suits hanging in her closet and pulled one out; she pushed to the back of her mind the awareness that it now hung too loosely on her frame, that the stress of the wait had whittled her body down to nothing.

  She sidled into the front seat next to Arthur, taking comfort in the mundane. Arthur took one look at her and whistled low.

  “Mona. You look like hell. What are you trying to prove by going into the office? You know there’s nothing for you to do there. You said yourself, Clay shifted your caseload to other partners so you could focus on the investigation.”

  She ignored the flutter of guilt that she felt at his mention of Clayton.

  “I need to distract myself, Arthur. This waiting … it’s getting to me.”

  “Obviously,” he agreed as he shifted into gear and began backing out the driveway. The reporters swarmed about the vehicle, like bees searching for nectar, until he managed to burst through, leaving them to wait for something new to happen.

  Mona sighed, sinking back into the leather seat. “Arthur. Don is bringing up his old theories again. His theories about Hope’s disappearance being part of some master plan of God’s.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “Of course it bothers me,” she retorted, feeling defensive. “We don’t have time for wild goose chases like that. We need to focus on things that can actually bring her back.”

  Arthur didn’t take his eyes of the road. “Is that what bothers you? That if Don is right, there is no way to bring her back?”

  She felt the cold fingers of doubt and fear trailing through her insides, winding their way up to twist themselves in her brain.

  “She has to come back,” she whispered.

  “Mona,” Arthur continued. “Just because God has a role for her doesn’t mean she is lost to you.”

  “But he’s saying it’s the End Times. He’s implying she is part of it, Arthur. If I were to take him seriously, how could I possibly think she is coming back?”

  “Do you take him seriously?”

  She thought about his question. She thought about the resolute conviction that she’d been met with last night as they talked things through with the Franklins. She thought about the strange series of coincidences, each a marker on a trail that led in one direction. And yet, too many things were unexplained by her husband’s theory. There were just too many questions left unanswered.

  “I think he is serious. But no, I do not think his explanation fits the evidence.”

  Arthur nodded, thinking over her response.

  “What if you thought there was a chance he was right? Maybe not in all the details, but in the big-picture sense that this is all happening for a reason. Would you do anything differently, Mona?”

  His question startled her. She hadn’t expected him to take such a balanced view of the situation. Then again, he had been a friend to Don, too, and his equanimity was one of the things she valued in his friendship.

  “I’d stop hanging out at the FBI office.”

  “To do what instead?” he prompted.

  “To pray,” she whispered, a spasm of real fear shaking her to her core.

  Mona arrived at work. She’d been so engrossed in her conversation with Arthur that she couldn’t really recall the details of their drive in from Dunwoody, nor the ride up the elevator to the floor her firm occupied, high above the city. Even though she was early, more than a few people were already deep into their work, and she was vaguely aware of their curious stares as she moved past them, down the hall, to her corner office.

  She walked in and closed the door behind her. It was just as she had left it; piles of reports and memos were strewn across her desk. Books fought with one another for space on her crowded shelves, spilling over into piles on the floor. A diagram filled her whiteboard, forgotten by whatever project manager had last met with her here. It was sterile and impersonal; only a gallery of photos showing Hope’s progress through the years gave any indication that a real person occupied this office.

  Mona picked up Hope’s latest school photo and wiped away the layer of dust that covered the glass. It pained her to see how self-conscious her daughter seemed, her neck wrapped in a scarf and her eyes peeking through her hair, which she always hid behind. She was so young. Too young. Too vulnerable. Certainly not the leader of some biblical movement.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Mona.”

  She turned to find Clayton looming in her doorway. She’d been so deep in thought she didn’t hear the click of the door as he entered. Automatically, she stiffened. She hadn’t spoken with Clayton since the incident at the FBI office. The ease she’d always felt with him was gone, replaced by the awkwardness that inevitably came along with her rejection of his advances.

  “Clayton,” she answered, looking away as she carefully placed the picture frame back on the desk with the others.

  He closed the door behind him with an emphatic click.

  “You shouldn’t be here, and you shouldn’t have done what you did, Mona.” He looked at her, accusation in his hurt eyes.

  She felt herself flush. How could he know about Don?

  “I … I don’t know what you mean,” she answered hesitantly.

  He shook his head. “Just because the FBI said you were no longer under suspicion doesn’t mean that they stopped watching you. For God’s sake, Mona, they’ve tapped your phone. They know you held back information from them. And what’s more, you’ve tampered with a witness.”

  She felt a simultaneous wave of relief and anger as she realized he wasn’t talking about Don. He was talking about her meeting with Tabitha.

  “All I did was get more information out of her,” Mona protested. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “When were you planning to share that information?”

  She stared at him defiantly, refusing to answer his question.

  Frustrated, Clayton ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t help you now. There is nothing I can do to intervene.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve labeled you ‘uncooperative.’ They’re shutting down your access to the investigation. You’ll have to wait for news on their terms.”

  “No!” Mona cried. “They can’t do that. They know I’m not involved. Neither one of us!”

  “Us?” Clayton folded his arms across his chest and pinned her beneath his sharp look.

  She stammered. “Hope’s father.”

  “Yes,” he murmured. “Hope’s father.” He continued to stare at her, the hurt and anger in his gaze undeniable. She felt the heat of shame stealing across her face as she realized that he knew everything.

  “You’ve made your choice,” he said softly as he turned to go. “I can’t help you anymore. I’m sorry, Mona.”

  The click of the door closing behind him seemed final.

  “I’m sorry, too, Clayton,” she whispered as she watched him walk down the hall, shoulders hunched in defeat.

  nine

  IRELAND

  I won’t let you do it. I won’t let you die. I clutched Michael’s hand to my heart, sending my unspoken words to him in a fierce burst of love. We were huddled together on the floor, our limbs entwined—unable to stop touching, unable to let go of each other, as if by clinging together we could stop our fates. I had climbed into his lap, wanting there to be no space between us now that we both knew the truth.

  He took my hands in his, looked up into my eyes and smiled weakly, brushing aside my bold words.

  “All this time … all the accusations the other angels made, saying that I set myself apart, or even above them. That I wanted to be worshipped by man, that I wanted the churches and the saints days and all of it—that I wanted to be elevated like Christ. How could their barbed words come so close t
o the truth? How could they know that when I didn’t even know it about myself? How could I go through eternity not knowing who I really am?”

  I rubbed my thumb across his knuckles, knowing I had no explanation.

  “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” he continued. “They always said that I loved humans more than I loved our own kind. It was at the heart of their jealousy; it rankled and soured in their very hearts. The reality was that while I admired humans, I protected them as my duty. I didn’t love them. How fitting that now that I have found you, my life is forfeit.” He pressed his lips together into a grim line, as if bracing himself before continuing. “That’s what I must do, to free my fallen brothers and bring them back to Heaven, because I love them still, despite their crimes.

  “And I will do it. It is inevitable,” he began, saying the words slowly and deliberately. He had a look I had come to recognize—the look of forced distance, with hooded eyes and a set jaw. He was preparing himself to push me away. “The Gate must open. The pain is gone because I accept that I love you, and despite that love, I must leave you and give up my life. But I will do everything I can to keep you safe. You have to go.”

  He winced as he said it, a rush of pain reminding him of what we both knew. It wasn’t possible for me to leave, even if I was willing. I had to find the rock that first brought murder into the world. And I had to deliver it—an instrument of death—to the ones who would take Michael’s life.

  I shuddered, blocking out the rush of bloody images that came to mind.

  “How can God be so cruel?” The accusing question flew from my lips as more hot, angry tears spilled from my eyes.

  Michael wiped away a drop that rolled over my cheek.

  “Remember when I said He was jealous? He isn’t jealous after all. But He wants more than my obedience. He wants my love. A sacrificial love. Why should it be any different than it was for Abraham?”

  I clutched at a wild hope. “An angel stayed Abraham’s hand before he slaughtered Isaac.”

  Michael tucked a lock of my long hair behind my ear and gave me a wistful look. “I was that angel,” he whispered. “I was the one who sent the animal that would replace Isaac on the altar. Nobody is going to come and defend me, I’m afraid. There is no one who could.” He frowned. “Maybe none of my angelic brethren would, even if they were capable.”